The Complete Works of

PLUTARCH

(46–120AD)

Contents

The Translations

PARALLEL LIVES

MORALIA

The Greek Texts

LIST OF GREEK TEXTS

The Biographies

INTRODUCTION TO PLUTARCH by Bernadotte Perrin

LIFE OF PLUTARCH by Aubrey Stewart

© Delphi Classics 2013

Version 1

The Complete Works of

PLUTARCH

By Delphi Classics, 2013

The Translations

Ruins of Ancient Chaeronea — Plutarch’s birthplace. The author was born to a prominent family in Chaeronea, Boeotia, twenty miles east of Delphi.

Chaeronea was the site of a famous battle in 338 BCE, between Philip II of Macedon and a coalition of various South Greek states, mainly Thebes and Athens. During the battle, the elite unit of Theban soldiers known as the Sacred Band of Thebes was wiped out completely This fragmentary monument of a lion commemorates the battle and was referred to by Plutarch in his writings.

PARALLEL LIVES

Translated by by Bernadotte Perrin

This famous collection of ‘lives’ contains twenty-three pairs of biographies, each consisting of a Greek and a Roman biography on a leading historical figure, usually followed by a comparison, drawing conclusions to the grand achievements, moral virtues or failings of the persons discussed.  One of the most popular texts of antiquity, sharing a privileged ‘best-selling’ reputation as early as the Roman times, Plutarch’s Parallel Lives is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the subjects of the biographies, but also about the life and times of the Classical world.

Parallel Lives was published by Plutarch late in life after his return to Chaeronea and they appear to be the result of many years of compilation and study. Plutarch explains in the first paragraph of the Life of Alexander that he is not concerned with writing histories, but in exploring the influence of characters on the lives and destinies of famous men. The author strives to prove that the more remote past of Greece boasts men of action and achievement that can vie with the more recent heroes of Rome’s past.

The chief surviving manuscripts date from the 10th and 11th centuries, with the true first edition appearing in Florence in 1517. The first pair of lives, the Epaminondas–Scipio Africanus, no longer exists, and many of the remaining lives are truncated, with obvious lacunae or sections that have been altered by later writers.  Of principal importance is the Life of Alexander, one of the five surviving secondary or tertiary sources about Alexander the Great, which includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, the biography of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, also contains unique information found nowhere else in ancient texts.

Plutarch has been criticised for his lack of judicious discrimination in the use of authorities and the consequent errors and inaccuracies in his text, but he salvages many quotations from lost works, whilst incidentally providing a large amount of valuable contextual information, filling up numerous gaps in historical knowledge found elsewhere. Since antiquity, Plutarch has been celebrated for the concise and lively style of his writing, conveying a sense of warmth in his portrayals and the moral earnestness and enthusiasm with which he analyses some the most important events and personages of the ancient world.

A papyrus fragment of Plutarch’s ‘Parallel Lives’

The 1470 Ulrich Han printing of the Parallel Lives.

CONTENTS

Theseus

Romulus

Comparison of Theseus and Romulus

Lycurgus

Numa

Comparison of Lycurgus and Numa

Solon

Publicola

Comparison of Solon and Publicola

Themistocles

Camillus

Pericles

Fabius Maximus

Comparison of Pericles and Fabius Maximus

Alcibiades

Coriolanus

Comparison of Alcibiades and Coriolanus

Timoleon

Aemilius Paulus

Comparison of Timoleon and Aemilius

Pelopidas

Marcellus

Comparison of Pelopidas and Marcellus

Aristides

Cato the Elder

Comparison of Aristides and Cato

Philopoemen

Flamininus

Comparison of Philopoemen and Titus

Pyrrhus

Marius

Lysander

Sulla

Comparison of Lysander and Sulla

Cimon

Lucullus

Comparison of Cimon and Lucullus

Nicias

Crassus

Comparison of Nicias and Crassus

Eumenes

Sertorius

Comparison of Eumenes and Sertorius

Agesilaus

Pompey

Comparison of Agesilaus and Pompey

Alexander

Caesar

Phocion

Cato the Younger

Agis

Cleomenes

Tiberius

Caius Gracchus

Comparison of Agis and Cleomenes and the Gracchi

Demosthenes

Cicero

Comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero

Demetrius

Antony

Comparison of Demetrius and Antony

Dion

Brutus

Comparison of Dion and Brutus

SEPARATE LIVES

Artaxerxes

Aratus

Galba

Otho

Alexander the Great fighting the Persian king Darius III. The biography on Alexander is one of the most important works to be found in Plutarch’s oeuvre.

The Assaination of Julius Caesar.  Each biography on a Greek historical figure is followed by a biography on a similar Roman figure, providing the ‘parallel’ nature of the work.  Therefore, the obvious counterpart to the Greek Alexander is the Roman Julius Caesar.

Theseus

1 Just as geographers, O Sossius Senecio, crowd on to the outer edges of their maps the parts of the earth which elude their knowledge, with explanatory notes that “What lies beyond is sandy desert without water and full of wild beasts,” or “blind marsh,” or “Scythian cold,” or “frozen sea,” so in the writing of my Parallel Lives, now that I have traversed those periods of time which are accessible to probable reasoning and which afford basis for a history dealing with facts, I might well say of the earlier periods: “What lies beyond is full of marvels and unreality, a land of poets and fabulists, of doubt and obscurity.” 2 But after publishing my account of Lycurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king, I thought I might not unreasonably go back still farther to Romulus, now that my history had brought me near his times. And as I asked myself,

“With such a warrior” (as Aeschylus says) “who will dare to fight?”

“Whom shall I set against him? Who is competent?”

it seemed to me that I must make the founder of lovely and famous Athens the counterpart and parallel to the father of invincible and glorious Rome. 3 May I therefore succeed in purifying Fable, making her submit to reason and take on the semblance of History. But where she obstinately disdains to make herself credible, and refuses to admit any element of probability, I shall pray for kindly readers, and such as receive with indulgence the tales of antiquity.

2 1 It seemed to me, then, that many resemblances made Theseus a fit parallel to Romulus. For both were of uncertain and obscure parentage, and got the reputation of descent from gods;

“Both were also warriors, as surely the whole world knoweth,”

and with their strength, combined sagacity. Of the world’s two most illustrious cities, moreover, Rome and Athens, Romulus founded the one, and Theseus made a metropolis of the other, and each resorted to the rape of women. 2 Besides, neither escaped domestic misfortunes and the resentful anger of kindred, but even in their last days both are said to have come into collision with their own fellow-citizens, if there is any aid to the truth in what seems to have been told with the least poetic exaggeration.

3 1 The lineage of Theseus, on the father’s side, goes back to Erechtheus and the first children of the soil; on the mother’s side, to Pelops. For Pelops was the strongest of the kings in Peloponnesus quite as much on account of the number of his children as the amount of his wealth. He gave many daughters in marriage to men of the highest rank, and scattered many sons among the cities as their rulers. One of these, named Pittheus, the grandfather of Theseus, founded the little city of Troezen, and had the highest repute as a man versed in the lore of his times and of the greatest wisdom. 2 Now the wisdom of that day had some such form and force as that for which Hesiod was famous, especially in the sententious maxims of his “Works and Days.” One of these maxims is ascribed to Pittheus, namely: —

“Payment pledged to a man who is dear must be ample and certain.”

At any rate, this is what Aristotle the philosopher says, and Euripides, when he has Hippolytus addressed as “nursling of the pure and holy Pittheus,” shows what the world thought of Pittheus.

3 Now Aegeus, king of Athens, desiring to have children, is said to have received from the Pythian priestess the celebrated oracle in which she bade him to have intercourse with no woman until he came to Athens. But Aegeus thought the words of the command somewhat obscure, and therefore turned aside to Troezen and communicated to Pittheus the words of the god, which ran as follows: —

“Loose not the wine-skin’s jutting neck, great chief of the people,

Until thou shalt have come once more to the city of Athens.”

4 This dark saying Pittheus apparently understood, and persuaded him, or beguiled him, to have intercourse with his daughter Aethra. Aegeus did so, and then learning that it was the daughter of Pittheus with whom he had consorted, and suspecting that she was with child by him, he left a sword and a pair of sandals hidden under a great rock, which had a hollow in it just large enough to receive these objects. 5 He told the princess alone about this, and bade her, if a son should be born to her from him, and if, when he came to man’s estate, he should be able to lift up the rock and take away what had been left under it, to send that son to him with the tokens, in all secrecy, and concealing his journey as much as possible from everybody; for he was mightily in fear of the sons of Pallas, who were plotting against him, and who despised him on account of his childlessness; and they were fifty in number, these sons of Pallas. Then he went away.

4 1 When Aethra gave birth to a son, he was at once named Theseus, as some say, because the tokens for his recognition had been placed in hiding; but others say that it was afterwards at Athens, when Aegeus acknowledged him as his son. He was reared by Pittheus, as they say, and had an overseer and tutor named Connidas. To this man, even down to the present time, the Athenians sacrifice a ram on the day before the festival of Theseus, remembering and honouring him with far greater justice than they honour Silanio and Parrhasius, who merely painted and moulded likenesses of Theseus.

5 1 Since it was still a custom at that time for youth who were coming of age to go to Delphi and sacrifice some of their hair to the god, Theseus went to Delphi for this purpose, and they say there is a place there which still to this day is called the Theseia from him. But he sheared only the fore part of his head, just as Homer said the Abantes did, and this kind of tonsure was called Theseïs after him.

2 Now the Abantes were the first to cut their hair in this manner, not under instruction from the Arabians, as some suppose, nor yet in emulation of the Mysians, but because they were war-like men and close fighters, who had learned beyond all other men to force their way into close quarters with their enemies. Archilochus is witness to this in the following words: —

3 “Not many bows indeed will be stretched tight, nor frequent slings

Be whirled, when Ares joins men in the moil of war

Upon the plain, but swords will do their mournful work;

For this is the warfare wherein those men are expert

Who lord it over Euboea and are famous with the spear.”

4 Therefore, in order that they might not give their enemies a hold by their hair, they cut it off. And Alexander of Macedon doubtless understood this when, as they say, he ordered his generals to have the beards of their Macedonians shaved, since these afforded the readiest hold in battle.

6 1 During the rest of the time, then, Aethra kept his true birth concealed from Theseus, and a report was spread abroad by Pittheus that he was begotten by Poseidon. For Poseidon is highly honoured by the people of Troezen, and he is the patron god of their city; to him they offer first fruits in sacrifice, and they have his trident as an emblem on their coinage. 2 But when, in his young manhood, Theseus displayed, along with his vigour of body, prowess also, and a firm spirit united with intelligence and sagacity, then Aethra brought him to the rock, told him the truth about his birth, and bade him take away his father’s tokens and go by sea to Athens. 3 Theseus put his shoulder to the rock and easily raised it up, but he refused to make his journey by sea, although safety lay in that course, and his grandfather and his mother begged him to take it. For it was difficult to make the journey to Athens by land, since no part of it was clear nor yet without peril from robbers and miscreants.

4 For verily that age produced men who, in work of hand and speed of foot and vigour of body, were extraordinary and indefatigable, but they applied their powers to nothing that was fitting or useful. Nay rather, they exulted in monstrous insolence, and reaped from their strength a harvest of cruelty and bitterness, mastering and forcing and destroying everything that came in their path. And as for reverence and righteousness, justice and humanity, they thought that most men praised these qualities for lack of courage to do wrong and for fear of being wronged, and considered them no concern of men who were strong enough to get the upper hand. 5 Some of these creatures Heracles cut off and destroyed as he went about, but some escaped his notice as he passed by, crouching down and shrinking back, and were overlooked in their abjectness. And when Heracles met with calamity and, after the slaying of Iphitus, removed into Lydia and for a long time did slave’s service there in the house of Omphale, then Lydia indeed obtained great peace and security; but in the regions of Hellas the old villainies burst forth and broke out anew, there being none to rebuke and none to restrain them.

6 The journey was therefore a perilous one for travellers by land from Peloponnesus to Athens, and Pittheus, by describing each of the miscreants at length, what sort of a monster he was, and what deeds he wrought upon strangers, tried to persuade Theseus to make his journey by sea. But he, as it would seem, had long since been secretly fired by the glorious valour of Heracles, and made the greatest account of that hero, and was a most eager listener to those who told what manner of man he was, and above all to those who had seen him and been present at some deed or speech of his. 7 And it is altogether plain that he then experienced what Themistocles many generations afterwards experienced, when he said that he could not sleep for the trophy of Miltiades. In like manner Theseus admired the valour of Heracles, until by night his dreams were of the hero’s achievements, and by day his ardour led him along and spurred him on in his purpose to achieve the like.

7 1 And besides, they were kinsmen, being sons of cousins-german. For Aethra was daughter of Pittheus, as Alcmene was of Lysidice, and Lysidice and Pittheus were brother and sister, children of Hippodameia and Pelops. 2 Accordingly, he thought it a dreadful and unendurable thing that his famous cousin should go out against the wicked everywhere and purge land and sea of them, while he himself ran away from the struggles which lay in his path, disgracing his reputed father by journeying like a fugitive over the sea, and bringing to his real father as proofs of his birth only sandals and a sword unstained with blood, instead of at once offering noble deeds and achievements as the manifest mark of his noble birth. In such a spirit and with such thoughts he set out, determined to do no man any wrong, but to punish those who offered him violence.

8 1 And so in the first place, in Epidauria, when Periphetes, who used a club as his weapon and on this account was called Club-bearer, laid hold of him and tried to stop his progress, he grappled with him and slew him. And being pleased with the club, he took it and made it his weapon and continued to use it, just as Heracles did with the lion’s skin. That hero wore the skin to prove how great a wild beast he had mastered, and so Theseus carried the club to show that although it had been vanquished by him, in his own hands it was invincible.

2 On the Isthmus, too, he slew Sinis the Pine-bender in the very manner in which many men had been destroyed by himself, and he did this without practice or even acquaintance with the monster’s device, but showing that valour is superior to all device and practice. Now Sinis had a very beautiful and stately daughter, named Perigune. This daughter took to flight when her father was killed, and Theseus went about in search of her. But she had gone off into a place which abounded greatly in shrubs and rushes and wild asparagus, and with exceeding innocence and childish simplicity was supplicating these plants, as if they understood her, and vowing that if they would hide and save her, she would never trample them down nor burn them. 3 When, however, Theseus called upon her and gave her a pledge that he would treat her honourably and do her no wrong, she came forth, and after consorting with Theseus, bore him Melanippus, and afterwards lived with Deïoneus, son of Eurytus the Oechalian, to whom Theseus gave her. From Melanippus the son of Theseus, Ioxus was born, who took part with Ornytus in leading a colony into Caria; whence it is ancestral usage with the Ioxids, men and women, not to burn either the asparagus-thorn or the rush, but to revere and honour them.

9 1 Now the Crommyonian sow, which they called Phaea, was no insignificant creature, but fierce and hard to master. This sow he went out of his way to encounter and slay, that he might not be thought to perform all his exploits under compulsion, and at the same time because he thought that while the brave man ought to attack villainous men only in self defence, he should seek occasion to risk his life in battle with the nobler beasts. However, some say that Phaea was a female robber, a woman of murderous and unbridled spirit, who dwelt in Crommyon, was called Sow because of her life and manners, and was afterwards slain by Theseus.

10 1 He also slew Sciron on the borders of Megara, by hurling him down the cliffs. Sciron robbed the passers by, according to the prevalent tradition; but as some say, he would insolently and wantonly thrust out his feet to strangers and bid them wash them, and then, while they were washing them, kick them off into the sea. 2 Megarian writers, however, taking issue with current report, and, as Simonides expresses it, “waging war with antiquity,” say that Sciron was neither a violent man nor a robber, but a chastiser of robbers, and a kinsman and friend of good and just men. For Aeacus, they say, is regarded as the most righteous of Hellenes, and Cychreus the Salaminian has divine honours at Athens, and the virtues of Peleus and Telamon are known to all men. 3 Well, then, Sciron was a son-in law of Cychreus, father-in law of Aeacus, and grandfather of Peleus and Telamon, who were the sons of Endeïs, daughter of Sciron and Chariclo. It is not likely, then, they say, that the best of men made family alliances with the basest, receiving and giving the greatest and most valuable pledges. It was not, they say, when Theseus first journeyed to Athens, but afterwards, that he captured Eleusis from the Megarians, having circumvented Diocles its ruler, and slew Sciron. Such, then, are the contradictions in which these matters are involved.

11 In Eleusis, moreover, he out-wrestled Cercyon the Arcadian and killed him; and going on a little farther, at Erineüs, he killed Damastes, surnamed Procrustes, by compelling him to make his own body fit his bed, as he had been wont to do with those of strangers. And he did this in imitation of Heracles. For that hero punished those who offered him violence in the manner in which they had plotted to serve him, and therefore sacrificed Busiris, wrestled Antaeus to death, slew Cycnus in single combat, and killed Termerus by dashing in his skull. 2 It is from him, indeed, as they say, that the name “Termerian mischief” comes, for Termerus, as it would seem, used to kill those who encountered him by dashing his head against theirs. Thus Theseus also went on his way chastising the wicked, who were visited with the same violence from him which they were visiting upon others, and suffered justice after the manner of their own injustice.

12 1 As he went forward on his journey and came to the river Cephisus, he was met by men of the race of the Phytalidae, who greeted him first, and when he asked to be purified from bloodshed, cleansed him the customary rites, made propitiatory sacrifices, and feasted him at their house. This was the first kindness which he met with on his journey.

It was, then, on the eighth day of the month Cronius, now called Hecatombaeon, that he is said to have arrived at Athens. And when he entered the city, he found public affairs full of confusion and dissension, and the private affairs of Aegeus and his household in a distressing condition. 2 For Medea, who had fled thither from Corinth, and promised by her sorceries to relieve Aegeus of his childlessness, was living with him. She learned about Theseus in advance, and since Aegeus was ignorant of him, and was well on in years and afraid of everything because of the faction in the city, she persuaded him to entertain Theseus as a stranger guest, and take him off by poison. Theseus, accordingly, on coming to the banquet, thought best not to tell in advance who he was, but wishing to give his father a clue to the discovery, when the meats were served, he drew his sword, as if minded to carve with this, and brought it to the notice of his father. 3 Aegeus speedily perceived it, dashed down the proffered cup of poison, and after questioning his son, embraced him, and formally recognized him before an assembly of the citizens, who received him gladly because of his manly valour. And it is said that as the cup fell, the poison was spilled where now is the enclosure in the Delphinium, for that is where the house of Aegeus stood, and the Hermes to the east of the sanctuary is called the Hermes at Aegeus’s gate.

13 1 Now the sons of Pallas had before this themselves hoped to gain possession of the kingdom when Aegeus died childless. But when Theseus was declared successor to the throne, exasperated that Aegeus should be king although he was only an adopted son of Pandion and in no way related to the family of Erechtheus, and again that Theseus should be prospective king although he was an immigrant and a stranger, they went to war. 2 And dividing themselves into two bands, one of these marched openly against the city from Sphettus with their father; the other hid themselves at Gargettus and lay in ambush there, intending to attack their enemies from two sides. But there was a herald with them, a man of Agnus, by name Leos. This man reported to Theseus the designs of the Pallantidae. 3 Theseus then fell suddenly upon the party lying in ambush, and slew them all. Thereupon the party with Pallas dispersed. This is the reason, they say, why the township of Pallene has no intermarriage with the township of Agnus, and why it will not even allow heralds to make their customary proclamation there of “Akouete leoi” (Hear, ye people!). For they hate the word on account of the treachery of the man Leos.

14 1 But Theseus, desiring to be at work, and at the same time courting the favour of the people, went out against the Marathonian bull, which was doing no small mischief to the inhabitants of the Tetrapolis. After he had mastered it, he made a display of driving it alive through the city, and then sacrificed it to the Delphinian Apollo. 2 Now the story of Hecale and her receiving and entertaining Theseus on this expedition seems not to be devoid of all truth. For the people of the townships round about used to assemble and sacrifice the Hecalesia to Zeus Hecalus, and they paid honours to Hecale, calling her by the diminutive name of Hecaline, because she too, when entertaining Theseus, in spite of the fact that he was quite a youth, caressed him as elderly people do, and called him affectionately by such diminutive names. 3 And since she vowed, when the hero was going to his battle with the bull, that she would sacrifice to Zeus if he came back safe, but died before his return, she obtained the above mentioned honours as a return for her hospitality at the command of Theseus, as Philochorus has written.

15 1 Not long afterwards there came from Crete for the third time the collectors of the tribute. Now as to this tribute, most writers agree that because Androgeos was thought to have been treacherously killed within the confines of Attica, not only did Minos harass the inhabitants of that country greatly in war, but Heaven also laid it waste, for barrenness and pestilence smote it sorely, and its rivers dried up; also that when their god assured them in his commands that if they appeased Minos and became reconciled to him, the wrath of Heaven would abate and there would be an end of their miseries, they sent heralds and made their supplication and entered into an agreement to send him every nine years a tribute of seven youths and as many maidens. 2 And the most dramatic version of the story declares that these young men and women, on being brought to Crete, were destroyed by the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, or else wandered about at their own will and, being unable to find an exit, perished there; and that the Minotaur, as Euripides says, was

“A mingled form and hybrid birth of monstrous shape,”

“Two different natures, man and bull, were joined in him.”

16 1 Philochorus, however, says that the Cretans do not admit this, but declare that the Labyrinth was a dungeon, with no other inconvenience than that its prisoners could not escape; and that Minos instituted funeral games in honour of Androgeos, and as prizes for the victors, gave these Athenian youth, who were in the meantime imprisoned in the Labyrinth; and that the victor in the first games was the man who had the greatest power at that time under Minos, and was his general, Taurus by name, who was not reasonable and gentle in his disposition, but treated the Athenian youth with arrogance and cruelty. 2 And Aristotle himself also, in his “Constitution of Bottiaea,” clearly does not think that these youths were put to death by Minos, but that they spent the rest of their lives as slaves in Crete. And they say that the Cretans once, in fulfilment of an ancient vow, sent an offering of their first-born to Delphi, and that some descendants of those Athenians were among the victims, and went forth with them; and that when they were unable to support themselves there, they first crossed over into Italy and dwelt in that country round about Iapygia, and from there journeyed again into Thrace and were called Bottiaeans; and that this was the reason why the maidens of Bottiaea, in performing a certain sacrifice, sing as an accompaniment: “To Athens let us go!”

And verily it seems to be a grievous thing for a man to be at enmity with a city which has a language and a literature. 3 For Minos was always abused and reviled in the Attic theatres, and it did not avail him either that Hesiod called him “most royal,” or that Homer styled him “a confidant of Zeus,” but the tragic poets prevailed, and from platform and stage showered obloquy down upon him, as a man of cruelty and violence. And yet they say that Minos was a king and lawgiver, and that Rhadamanthus was a judge under him, and a guardian of the principles of justice defined by him.

17 1 Accordingly, when the time came for the third tribute, and it was necessary for the fathers who had youthful sons to present them for the lot, fresh accusations against Aegeus arose among the people, who were full of sorrow and vexation that he who was the cause of all their trouble alone had no share in the punishment, but devolved the kingdom upon a bastard and foreign son, and suffered them to be left destitute and bereft of legitimate children. 2 These things troubled Theseus, who, thinking it right not to disregard but to share in the fortune of his fellow-citizens, came forward and offered himself independently of the lot. The citizens admired his noble courage and were delighted with his public spirit, and Aegeus, when he saw that his son was not to be won over or turned from his purpose by prayers and entreaties, cast the lots for the rest of the youths.

3 Hellanicus, however, says that the city did not send its young men and maidens by lot, but that Minos himself used to come and pick them out, and that he now pitched upon Theseus first of all, following the terms agreed upon. And he says the agreement was that the Athenians should furnish the ship, and that the youths should embark and sail with him carrying no warlike weapon, and that if the Minotaur was killed the penalty should cease.

4 On the two former occasions, then, no hope of safety was entertained, and therefore they sent the ship with a black sail, convinced that their youth were going to certain destruction; but now Theseus encouraged his father and loudly boasted that he would master the Minotaur, so that he gave the pilot another sail, a white one, ordering him, if he returned with Theseus safe, to hoist the white sail, but otherwise to sail with the black one, and so indicate the affliction.

5 Simonides, however, says that the sail given by Aegeus was not white, but “a scarlet sail dyed with the tender flower of luxuriant holm-oak,” and that he made this a token of their safety. Moreover, the pilot of the ship was Phereclus, son of Amarsyas, as Simonides says; 6 but Philochorus says that Theseus got from Scirus of Salamis Nausithoüs for his pilot, and Phaeax for his look-out man, the Athenians at that time not yet being addicted to the sea, and that Scirus did him this favour because one of the chosen youths, Menesthes, was his daughter’s son. And there is evidence for this in the memorial chapels for Nausithoüs and Phaeax which Theseus built at Phalerum near the temple of Scirus, and they say that the festival of the Cybernesia, or Pilot’s Festival, is celebrated in their honour.

18 1 When the lot was cast, Theseus took those upon whom it fell from the prytaneium and went to the Delphinium, where he dedicated to Apollo in their behalf his suppliant’s badge. This was a bough from the sacred olive-tree, wreathed with white wool. Having made his vows and prayers, he went down to the sea on the sixth day of the month Munychion, on which day even now the Athenians still send their maidens to the Delphinium to propitiate the god. 2 And it is reported that the god at Delphi commanded him in an oracle to make Aphrodite his guide, and invite her to attend him on his journey, and that as he sacrificed the usual she-goat to her by the sea-shore, it became a he-goat (“tragos”) all at once, for which reason the goddess has the surname Epitragia.

19 1 When he reached Crete on his voyage, most historians and poets tells us that he got from Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him, the famous thread, and that having been instructed by her how to make his way through the intricacies of the Labyrinth, he slew the Minotaur and sailed off with Ariadne and the youths. And Pherecydes says that Theseus also staved in the bottoms of the Cretan ships, thus depriving them of the power to pursue. 2 And Demon says also that Taurus, the general of Minos, was killed in a naval battle in the harbour as Theseus was sailing out. But as Philochorus tells the story, Minos was holding the funeral games, and Taurus was expected to conquer all his competitors in them, as he had done before, and was grudged his success. For his disposition made his power hateful, and he was accused of too great intimacy with Pasiphaë. Therefore when Theseus asked the privilege of entering the lists, it was granted him by Minos. 3 And since it was the custom in Crete for women to view the games, Ariadne was present, and was smitten with the appearance of Theseus, as well as filled with admiration for his athletic prowess, when he conquered all his opponents. Minos also was delighted with him, especially because he conquered Taurus in wrestling and disgraced him, and therefore gave back the youths to Theseus, besides remitting its tribute to the city.

4 Cleidemus, however, gives a rather peculiar and ambitious account of these matters, beginning a great way back. There was, he says, a general Hellenic decree that no trireme should sail from any port with a larger crew than five men, and the only exception was Jason, the commander of the Argo, who sailed about scouring the sea of pirates. Now when Daedalus fled from Crete in a merchant-vessel to Athens, Minos, contrary to the decrees, pursued him with his ships of war, and was driven from his course by a tempest to Sicily, where he ended his life. 5 And when Deucalion, his son, who was on hostile terms with the Athenians, sent to them a demand that they deliver up Daedalus to him, and threatened, if they refused, to put to death the youth whom Minos had received from them as hostages, Theseus made him a gentle reply, declining to surrender Daedalus, who was his kinsman and cousin, being the son of Merope, the daughter of Erechtheus. But privately he set himself to building a fleet, part of it at home in the township of Thymoetadae, far from the public road, and part of it under the direction of Pittheus in Troezen, wishing his purpose to remain concealed. 6 When his ships were ready, he set sail, taking Daedalus and exiles from Crete as his guides, and since none of the Cretans knew of his design, but thought the approaching ships to be friendly, Theseus made himself master of the harbour, disembarked his men, and got to Gnossus before his enemies were aware of his approach. Then joining battle with them at the gate of the Labyrinth, he slew Deucalion and his body-guard. 7 And since Ariadne was now at the head of affairs, he made a truce with her, received back the youthful hostages, and established friendship between the Athenians and the Cretans, who took oath never to begin hostilities.

20 1 There are many other stories about these matters, and also about Ariadne, but they do not agree at all. Some say that she hung herself because she was abandoned by Theseus; others that she was conveyed to Naxos by sailors and there lived with Oenarus the priest of Dionysus, and that she was abandoned by Theseus because he loved another woman: —

“Dreadful indeed was his passion for Aigle child of Panopeus.”

2 This verse Peisistratus expunged from the poems of Hesiod, according to Hereas the Megarian, just as, on the other hand, he inserted into the Inferno of Homer the verse: —

“Theseus, Peirithous, illustrious children of Heaven,”

and all to gratify the Athenians. Moreover, some say that Ariadne actually had sons by Theseus, Oenopion and Staphylus, and among these is Ion of Chios, who says of his own native city: —

“This, once, Theseus’s son founded, Oenopion.”

Now the most auspicious of these legendary tales are in the mouths of all men, as I may say; but a very peculiar account of these matters is published by Paeon the Amathusian. 3 He says that Theseus, driven out of his course by a storm to Cyprus, and having with him Ariadne, who was big with child and in sore sickness and distress from the tossing of the sea, set her on shore alone, but that he himself, while trying to succour the ship, was borne out to sea again. The women of the island, accordingly, took Ariadne into their care, and tried to comfort her in the discouragement caused by her loneliness, brought her forged letters purporting to have been written to her by Theseus, ministered to her aid during the pangs of travail, and gave her burial when she died before her child was born. 4 Paeon says further that Theseus came back, and was greatly afflicted, and left a sum of money with the people of the island, enjoining them to sacrifice to Ariadne, and caused two little statuettes to be set up in her honour, one of silver, and one of bronze. He says also that at the sacrifice in her honour on the second day of the month Gorpiaeus, one of their young men lies down and imitates the cries and gestures of women in travail; and that they call the grove in which they show her tomb, the grove of Ariadne Aphrodite.

5 Some of the Naxians also have a story of their own, that there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes, one of whom, they say, was married to Dionysus in Naxos and bore him Staphylus and his brother, and the other, of a later time, having been carried off by Theseus and then abandoned by him, came to Naxos, accompanied by a nurse named Corcyne, whose tomb they show; and that this Ariadne also died there, and has honours paid her unlike those of the former, for the festival of the first Ariadne is celebrated with mirth and revels, but the sacrifices performed in honour of the second are attended with sorrow and mourning.

21 1 On his voyage from Crete, Theseus put in at Delos, and having sacrificed to the god and dedicated in his temple the image of Aphrodite which he had received from Ariadne, he danced with his youths a dance which they say is still performed by the Delians, being an imitation of the circling passages in the Labyrinth, and consisting of certain rhythmic involutions and evolutions. 2 This kind of dance, as Dicaearchus tells us, is called by the Delians The Crane, and Theseus danced it round the altar called Keraton, which is constructed of horns (“kerata”) taken entirely from the left side of the head. He says that he also instituted athletic contests in Delos, and that the custom was then begun by him of giving a palm to the victors.

22 1 It is said, moreover, that as they drew nigh the coast of Attica, Theseus himself forgot, and his pilot forgot, such was their joy and exultation, to hoist the sail which was to have been the token of their safety to Aegeus, who therefore, in despair, threw himself down from the rock and was dashed in pieces. But Theseus, putting in to shore, sacrificed in person the sacrifices which he had vowed to the gods at Phalerum when he set sail, and then dispatched a herald to the city to announce his safe return. 2 The messenger found many of the people bewailing the death of their king, and others full of joy at his tidings, as was natural, and eager to welcome him and crown him with garlands for his good news. The garlands, then, he accepted, and twined them about his herald’s staff, and on returning to the seashore, finding that Theseus had not yet made his libations to the gods, remained outside the sacred precincts, not wishing to disturb the sacrifice. 3 But when the libations were made, he announced the death of Aegeus. Thereupon, with tumultuous lamentation, they went up in haste to the city. Whence it is, they say, that to this day, at the festival of the Oschophoria, it is not the herald that is crowned, but his herald’s staff, and those who are present at the libations cry out: “Eleleu! Iou! Iou!” the first of which cries is the exclamation of eager haste and triumph, the second of consternation and confusion.

4 After burying his father, Theseus paid his vows to Apollo on the seventh day of the month Pyanepsion; for on that day they had come back to the city in safety. Now the custom of boiling all sorts of pulse on that day is said to have arisen from the fact that the youths who were brought safely back by Theseus put what was left of their provisions into one mess, boiled it in one common pot, feasted upon it, and ate it all up together. 5 At that feast they also carry the so called “eiresione,” which is a bough of olive wreathed with wool, such as Theseus used at the time of his supplication, and laden with all sorts of fruit-offerings, to signify that scarcity was at an end, and as they go they sing: —

“Eiresione for us brings figs and bread of the richest,

Brings us honey in pots and oil to rub off from the body,

Strong wine too in a beaker, that one may go to bed mellow.”

Some writers, however, say that these rites are in memory of the Heracleidae, who were maintained in this manner by the Athenians; but most put the matter as I have done.

23 1 The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths and returned in safety, the thirty-oared galley, was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones in their places, so that the vessel became standing illustration for the philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel.

2 It was Theseus who instituted also the Athenian festival of the Oschophoria. For it is said that he did not take away with him all the maidens on whom the lot fell at that time, but picked out two young men of his acquaintance who had fresh and girlish faces, but eager and manly spirits, and changed their outward appearance almost entirely by giving them warm baths and keeping them out of the sun, by arranging their hair, and by smoothing their skin and beautifying their complexions with unguents; he also taught them to imitate maidens as closely as possible in their speech, their dress, and their gait, and to leave no difference that could be observed, and then enrolled them among the maidens who were going to Crete, and was undiscovered by any. 3 And when he was come back, he himself and these two young men headed a procession, arrayed as those are now arrayed who carry the vine-branches. They carry these in honour of Dionysus and Ariadne, and because of their part in the story; or rather, because they came back home at the time of the vintage. And the women called Deipnophoroi, or supper-carriers, take part in the procession and share in the sacrifice, in imitation of the mothers of the young men and maidens on whom the lot fell, for these kept coming with bread and meat for their children. And tales are told at this festival, because these mothers, for the sake of comforting and encouraging their children, spun out tales for them. At any rate, these details are to be found in the history of Demon. Furthermore, a sacred precinct was also set apart for Theseus, and he ordered the members of the families which had furnished the tribute to the Minotaur to make contributions towards a sacrifice to himself. This sacrifice was superintended by the Phytalidae, and Theseus thus repaid them for their hospitality.

24 1 After the death of Aegeus, Theseus conceived a wonderful design, and settled all the residents of Attica in one city, thus making one people of one city out of those who up to that time had been scattered about and were not easily called together for the common interests of all, nay, they sometimes actually quarrelled and fought with each other. 2 He visited them, then, and tried to win them over to his project township by township and clan by clan. The common folk and the poor quickly answered to his summons; to the powerful he promised government without a king and a democracy, in which he should only be commander in war and guardian of the laws, while in all else everyone should be on an equal footing. 3 Some he readily persuaded to this course, and others, fearing his power, which was already great, and his boldness, chose to be persuaded rather than forced to agree to it. Accordingly, after doing away with the town-halls and council-chambers and magistracies in the several communities, and after building a common town-hall and council-chamber for all on the ground where the upper town of the present day stands, he named the city Athens, and instituted a Panathenaic festival. 4 He instituted also the Metoecia, or Festival of Settlement, on the sixteenth day of the month Hecatombaeon, and this is still celebrated. Then, laying aside the royal power, as he had agreed, he proceeded to arrange the government, and that too with the sanction of the gods. For an oracle came to him from Delphi, in answer to his enquiries about the city, as follows: —

5 “Theseus, offspring of Aegeus, son of the daughter of Pittheus,

Many indeed the cities to which my father has given

Bounds and future fates within your citadel’s confines.

Therefore be not dismayed, but with firm and confident spirit

Counsel only; the bladder will traverse the sea and its surges.”

And this oracle they say the Sibyl afterwards repeated to the city, when she cried: —

“Bladder may be submerged; but its sinking will not be permitted.”

25 1 Desiring still further to enlarge the city, he invited all men thither on equal terms, and the phrase “Come hither all ye people,” they say was a proclamation of Theseus when he established a people, as it were, of all sorts and conditions. However, he did not suffer his democracy to become disordered or confused from an indiscriminate multitude streaming into it, but was the first to separate the people into noblemen and husbandmen and handicraftsmen. 2 To the noblemen he committed the care of religious rites, the supply of magistrates, the teaching of the laws, and the interpretation of the will of Heaven, and for the rest of the citizens he established a balance of privilege, the noblemen being thought to excel in dignity, the husbandmen in usefulness, and the handicraftsmen in numbers. And that he was the first to show a leaning towards the multitude, as Aristotle says, and gave up his absolute rule, seems to be the testimony of Homer also, in the Catalogue of Ships, where he speaks of the Athenians alone as a “people.”

3 He also coined money, and stamped it with the effigy of an ox, either in remembrance of the Marathonian bull, or of Taurus, the general of Minos, or because he would invite the citizens to agriculture. From this coinage, they say, “ten oxen” and “a hundred oxen” came to be used as terms of valuation. Having attached the territory of Megara securely to Attica, he set up that famous pillar on the Isthmus, and carved upon it the inscription giving the territorial boundaries. It consisted of two trimeters, of which the one towards the east declared: —

“Here is not Peloponnesus, but Ionia;”

and the one towards the west: —

“Here is the Peloponnesus, not Ionia.”

4 He also instituted the games here, in emulation of Heracles, being ambitious that as the Hellenes, by that hero’s appointment, celebrated Olympian games in honour of Zeus, so by his own appointment they should celebrate Isthmian games in honour of Poseidon. For the games already instituted there in honour of Melicertes were celebrated in the night, and had the form of a religious rite rather than of a spectacle and public assembly. But some say that the Isthmian games were instituted in memory of Sciron, and that Theseus thus made expiation for his murder, because of the relationship between them; for Sciron was a son of Canethus and Henioche, who was the daughter of Pittheus. 5 And others have it that Sinis, not Sciron, was their son, and that it was in his honour rather that the games were instituted by Theseus. However that may be, Theseus made a formal agreement with the Corinthians that they should furnish Athenian visitors to the Isthmian games with a place of honour as large as could be covered by the sail of the state galley which brought them thither, when it was stretched to its full extent. So Hellanicus and Andron of Halicarnassus tell us.

26 1 He also made a voyage into the Euxine Sea, as Philochorus and sundry others say, on a campaign with Heracles against the Amazons, and received Antiope as a reward of his valour; but the majority of writers, including Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Herodorus, say that Theseus made this voyage on his own account, after the time of Heracles, and took the Amazon captive; and this is the more probable story. For it is not recorded that any one else among those who shared his expedition took an Amazon captive. 2 And Bion says that even this Amazon he took and carried off by means of a stratagem. The Amazons, he says, were naturally friendly to men, and did not fly from Theseus when he touched upon their coasts, but actually sent him presents, and he invited the one who brought them to come on board his ship; she came on board, and he put out to sea.

And a certain Menecrates, who published a history of Bithynian city of Nicaea, says that Theseus, with Antiope on board his ship, spent some time in those parts, 3 and that there chanced to be with him on this expedition three young men of Athens who were brothers, Euneos, Thoas, and Soloïs. This last, he says, fell in love with Antiope unbeknown to the rest, and revealed his secret to one of his intimate friends. That friend made overtures to Antiope, who positively repulsed the attempt upon her, but treated the matter with discretion and gentleness, and made no denunciation to Theseus. 4 Then Soloïs, in despair, threw himself into a river and drowned himself, and Theseus, when he learned the fate of the young man, and what had caused it, was grievously disturbed, and in his distress called to mind a certain oracle which he had once received at Delphi. For it had there been enjoined upon him by the Pythian priestess that when, in a strange land, he should be sorest vexed and full of sorrow, he should found a city there, and leave some of his followers to govern it. 5 For this cause he founded a city there, and called it, from the Pythian god, Pythopolis, and the adjacent river, Soloïs, in honour of the young man. And he left there the brothers of Soloïs, to be the city’s presidents and law-givers, and with them Hermus, one of the noblemen of Athens. From him also the Pythopolitans call a place in the city the House of Hermes, incorrectly changing the second syllable, and transferring the honour from a hero to a god.

27 1 Well, then, such were the grounds for the war of the Amazons, which seems to have been no trivial nor womanish enterprise for Theseus. For they would not have pitched their camp within the city, nor fought hand to hand battles in the neighbourhood of the Pnyx and the Museum, had they not mastered the surrounding country and approached the city with impunity. 2 Whether, now, as Hellanicus writes, they came round by the Cimmerian Bosporus, which they crossed on the ice, may be doubted; but the fact that they encamped almost in the heart of the city is attested both by the names of the localities there and by the graves of those who fell in battle.

Now for a long time there was hesitation and delay on both sides in making the attack, but finally Theseus, after sacrificing to Fear, in obedience to an oracle, joined battle with the women. 3 This battle, then, was fought on the day of the month Boëdromion on which, down to the present time, the Athenians celebrate the Boëdromia. Cleidemus, who wishes to be minute, writes that the left wing of the Amazons extended to what is now called the Amazoneum, and that with their right they touched the Pnyx at Chrysa; that with this left wing the Athenians fought, engaging the Amazons from the Museum, and that the graves of those who fell are on either side of the street which leads to the gate by the chapel of Chalcodon, which is now called the Peiraïc gate. 4 Here, he says, the Athenians were routed and driven back by the women as far as the shrine of the Eumenides, but those who attacked the invaders from the Palladium and Ardettus and the Lyceum, drove their right wing back as far as to their camp, and slew many of them. And after three months, he says, a treaty of peace was made through the agency of Hippolyta; for Hippolyta is the name which Cleidemus gives to the Amazon whom Theseus married, not Antiope.

But some say that the woman was slain with a javelin by Molpadia, while fighting at Theseus’s side, and that the pillar which stands by the sanctuary of Olympian Earth was set up in her memory. 5 And it is not astonishing that history, when dealing with events of such great antiquity, should wander in uncertainty, indeed, we are also told that the wounded Amazons were secretly sent away to Chalcis by Antiope, and were nursed there, and some were buried there, near what is now called the Amazoneum. But that the war ended in a solemn treaty is attested not only by the naming of the place adjoining the Theseum, which is called Horcomosium, but also by the sacrifice which, in ancient times, was offered to the Amazons before the festival of Theseus. 6 And the Megarians, too, show a place in their country where Amazons were buried, on the way from the market-place to the place called Rhus, where the Rhomboid stands. And it is said, likewise, that others of them died near Chaeroneia, and were buried on the banks of the little stream which, in ancient times, as it seems, was called Thermodon, but nowadays, Haemon; concerning which names I have written in my Life of Demosthenes. It appears also that not even Thessaly was traversed by the Amazons without opposition, for Amazonian graves are to this day shown in the vicinity of Scotussa and Cynoscephalae.

28 1 So much, then, is worthy of mention regarding the Amazons. For the “Insurrection of the Amazons,” written by the author of the Theseïd, telling how, when Theseus married Phaedra, Antiope and the Amazons who fought to avenge her attacked him, and were slain by Heracles, has every appearance of fable and invention. 2 Theseus did, indeed, marry Phaedra, but this was after the death of Antiope, and he had a son by Antiope, Hippolytus, or, as Pindar says, Demophoön. As for the calamities which befell Phaedra and the son of Theseus by Antiope, since there is no conflict here between historians and tragic poets, we must suppose that they happened as represented by the poets uniformly.

29 1 There are, however, other stories also about marriages of Theseus which were neither honourable in their beginnings nor fortunate in their endings, but these have not been dramatised. For instance, he is said to have carried off Anaxo, a maiden of Troezen, and after slaying Sinis and Cercyon to have ravished their daughters; also to have married Periboea, the mother of Aias, and Phereboea afterwards, and Iope, the daughter of Iphicles; 2 and because of his passion for Aegle, the daughter of Panopeus, as I have already said, he is accused of the desertion of Ariadne, which was not honourable nor even decent; and finally, his rape of Helen is said to have filled Attica with war, and to have brought about at last his banishment and death, of which things I shall speak a little later.

3 Of the many exploits performed in those days by the bravest men, Herodorus thinks that Theseus took part in none, except that he aided the Lapithae in their war with the Centaurs; but others say that he was not only with Jason at Colchis, but helped Meleager to slay the Calydonian boar, and that hence arose the proverb “Not without Theseus”; that he himself, however, without asking for any ally, performed many glorious exploits, and that the phrase “Lo! another Heracles” became current with reference to him. 4 He also aided Adrastus in recovering for burial the bodies of those who had fallen before the walls of the Cadmeia, not by mastering the Thebans in battle, as Euripides has it in his tragedy, but by persuading them to a truce; for so most writers say, and Philochorus adds that this was the first truce ever made for recovering the bodies of those slain in battle, 5 although in the accounts of Heracles it is written that Heracles was the first to give back their dead to his enemies. And the graves of the greater part of those who fell before Thebes are shown at Eleutherae, and those of the commanders near Eleusis, and this last burial was a favour which Theseus showed to Adrastus. The account of Euripides in his “Suppliants” is disproved by that of Aeschylus in his “Eleusinians,” where Theseus is made to relate the matter as above.

30 1 The friendship of Peirithoüs and Theseus is said to have come about in the following manner. Theseus had a very great reputation for strength and bravery, and Peirithoüs was desirous of making test and proof of it. Accordingly, he drove Theseus’s cattle away from Marathon, and when he learned that their owner was pursuing him in arms, he did not fly, but turned back and met him. 2 When, however, each beheld the other with astonishment at his beauty and admiration of his daring, they refrained from battle, and Peirithoüs, stretching out his hand the first, bade Theseus himself be judge of his robbery, for he would willingly submit to any penalty which the other might assign. Then Theseus not only remitted his penalty, but invited him to be a friend and brother in arms; whereupon they ratified their friendship with oaths.

3 After this, when Peirithoüs was about to marry Deidameia, he asked Theseus to come to the wedding, and see the country, and become acquainted with the Lapithae. Now he had invited the Centaurs also to the wedding feast. And when these were flown with insolence and wine, and laid hands upon the women, the Lapithae took vengeance upon them. Some of them they slew upon the spot, the rest they afterwards overcame in war and expelled from the country, Theseus fighting with them at the banquet and in the war. 4 Herodorus, however, says that this was not how it happened, but that the war was already in progress when Theseus came to the aid of the Lapithae; and that on his way thither he had his first sight of Heracles, having made it his business to seek him out at Trachis, where the hero was already resting from his wandering and labours; and he says the interview passed with mutual expressions of honour, friendliness, and generous praise. 5 Notwithstanding, one might better side with those historians who say that the heroes had frequent interviews with one another, and that it was at the instigation of Theseus that Heracles was initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis, and purified before his initiation, when he requested it on account of sundry rash acts.

31 1 Theseus was already fifty years old, according to Hellanicus, when he took part in the rape of Helen, who was not of marriageable age. Wherefore some writers, thinking to correct this heaviest accusation against him, say that he did not carry off Helen himself, but that when Idas and Lynceus had carried her off, he received her in charge and watched over her and would not surrender her to the Dioscuri when they demanded her; or, if you will believe it, that her own father, Tyndareüs, entrusted her to Theseus, for fear of Enarsphorus, the son of Hippocoön, who sought to take Helen by force while she was yet a child. But the most probable account, and that which has the most witnesses in its favour, is as follows.

2 Theseus and Peirithoüs went to Sparta in company, seized the girl as she was dancing in the temple of Artemis Orthia, and fled away with her. Their pursuers followed them no farther than Tegea, and so the two friends, when they had passed through Peloponnesus and were out of danger, made a compact with one another that the one on whom the lot fell should have Helen to wife, but should assist the other in getting another wife. 3 With this mutual understanding they cast lots, and Theseus won, and taking the maiden, who was not yet ripe for marriage, conveyed her to Aphidnae. Here he made his mother a companion of the girl, and committed both to Aphidnus, a friend of his, with strict orders to guard them in complete secrecy. 4 Then he himself, to return the service of Peirithoüs, journeyed with him to Epirus, in quest of the daughter of Aïdoneus the king of the Molossians. This man called his wife Phersephone, his daughter Cora, and his dog Cerberus, with which beast he ordered that all suitors of his daughter should fight, promising her to him that should overcome it. However, when he learned that Peirithoüs and his friend were come not to woo, but to steal away his daughter, he seized them both. Peirithoüs he put out of the way at once by means of the dog, but Theseus he kept in close confinement.

32 1 Meanwhile Menestheus, the son of Peteos, grandson of Orneus, and great-grandson of Erechtheus, the first of men, as they say, to affect popularity and ingratiate himself with the multitude, stirred up and embittered the chief men in Athens. These had long been hostile to Theseus, and thought that he had robbed each one of the country nobles of his royal office, and then shut them all up in a single city, where he treated them as subjects and slaves. The common people also he threw into commotion by his reproaches. They thought they had a vision of liberty, he said, but in reality they had been robbed of their native homes and religions in order that, in the place of many good kings of their own blood, they might look obediently to one master who was an immigrant and an alien. 2 While he was thus busying himself, the Tyndaridae came up against the city, and the war greatly furthered his seditious schemes; indeed, some writers say outright that he persuaded the invaders to come.

At first, then, they did no harm, but simply demanded back their sister. When, however, the people of the city replied that they neither had the girl nor knew where she had been left, they resorted to war. 3 But Academus, who had learned in some way or other of her concealment at Aphidnae, told them about it. For this reason he was honoured during his life by the Tyndaridae, and often afterwards when the Lacedaemonians invaded Attica and laid waste all the country round about, they spared the Academy, for the sake of Academus. 4 But Dicaearchus says that Echedemus and Marathus of Arcadia were in the army of the Tyndaridae at that time, from the first of whom the present Academy was named Echedemia, and from the other, the township of Marathon, since in accordance with some oracle he voluntary gave himself to be sacrificed in front of the line of battle.

To Aphidnae, then, they came, won a pitched battle, and stormed the town. 5 Here he says that among others Alycus, the son of Sciron, who was at that time in the army of the Dioscuri, was slain, and that from him a place in Megara where he was buried is called Alycus. But Hereas writes that Alycus was slain at Aphidnae by Theseus himself, and cites in proof these verses about Alycus: —

“whom once in the plain of Aphidnae,

Where he was fighting, Theseus, ravisher of fair-haired Helen,

Slew.”

However, it is not likely that Theseus himself was present when both his mother and Aphidnae were captured.

33 1 At any rate, Aphidnae was taken and the city of Athens was full of fear, but Menestheus persuaded its people to receive the Tyndaridae into the city and show them all manner of kindness, since they were waging war upon Theseus alone, who had committed the first act of violence, but were benefactors and saviours of the rest of mankind. And their behaviour confirmed his assurances, for although they were masters of everything, they demanded only an initiation into the mysteries, since they were no less closely allied to the city than Heracles. 2 This privilege was accordingly granted them, after they had been adopted by Aphidnus, as Pylius had adopted Heracles. They also obtained honours like those paid to gods, and were addressed as “Anakes,” either on account of their stopping hostilities, or because of their diligent care that no one should be injured, although there was such a large army within the city; for the phrase “anakos echein” is used of such as care for, or guard anything, and perhaps it is for this reason that kings are called “Anaktes.” There are also those who say that the Tyndaridae were called “Anakes” because of the appearance of their twin stars in the heavens, since the Athenians use “anekas” and “anekathen” for “ano” and “anothen,” signifying above or on high.

34 1 He says that Aethra, the mother of Theseus, who was taken captive at Aphidnae, was carried away to Lacedaemon, and from thence to Troy with Helen, and that Homer bears witness to this when he mentions as followers of Helen: —

“Aethra of Pittheus born, and Clymene large-eyed and lovely.”

But some reject this verse of Homer’s, as well as the legend of Munychus, who was born in secret to Laodice from Demophoön, and whom Aethra helped to rear in Ilium. 2 But a very peculiar and wholly divergent story about Aethra is given by Ister in the thirteenth book of his “Attic History.” Some write, he says, that Alexander (Paris) was overcome in battle by Achilles and Patroclus in Thessaly, along the banks of the Spercheius, but that Hector took and plundered the city of Troezen, and carried away Aethra, who had been left there. This, however, is very doubtful.

35 1 Now while Heracles was the guest of Aïdoneus the Molossian, the king incidentally spoke of the adventure of Theseus and Peirithoüs, telling what they had come there to do, and what they had suffered when they were found out. Heracles was greatly distressed by the inglorious death of the one, and by the impending death of the other. As for Peirithoüs, he thought it useless to complain, but he begged for the release of Theseus, and demanded that this favour be granted him. 2 Aïdoneus yielded to his prayers, Theseus was set free, and returned to Athens, where his friends were not yet altogether overwhelmed. All the sacred precincts which the city had previously set apart for himself, he now dedicated to Heracles, and called them Heracleia instead of Theseia, four only excepted, as Philochorus writes. But when he desired to rule again as before, and to direct the state, he became involved in factions and disturbances; he found that those who hated him when he went away, had now added to their hatred contempt, and he saw that a large part of the people were corrupted, and wished to be cajoled into service instead of doing silently what they were told to do. 3 Attempting, then, to force his wishes upon them, he was overpowered by demagogues and factions, and finally, despairing of his cause, he sent his children away privately into Euboea, to Elephenor, the son of Chalcodon, while he himself, after invoking curses upon the Athenians at Gargettus, where there is to this day the place called Araterion, sailed away to the island of Scyros, where the people were friendly to him, as he thought, and where he had ancestral estates. Now Lycomedes was at that time king of Scyros. 4 To him therefore Theseus applied with the request that his lands should be restored to him, since he was going to dwell there, though some say that he asked his aid against the Athenians. But Lycomedes, either because he feared a man of such fame, or as a favour to Menestheus, led him up to the high places of the land, on pretence of showing him from thence his lands, threw him down the cliffs, and killed him. Some, however, say that he slipped and fell down of himself while walking there after supper, as was his custom. 5 At the time no one made any account of his death, but Menestheus reigned as king at Athens, while the sons of Theseus, as men of private station, accompanied Elephenor on the expedition to Ilium; but after Menestheus died there, they came back by themselves and recovered their kingdom. In after times, however, the Athenians were moved to honour Theseus as a demigod, especially by the fact that many of those who fought at Marathon against the Medes thought they saw an apparition of Theseus in arms rushing on in front of them against the Barbarians.

36 1 And after the Median wars, in the archonship of Phaedo, when the Athenians were consulting the oracle at Delphi, they were told by the Pythian priestess to take up the bones of Theseus, give them honourable burial at Athens, and guard them there. But it was difficult to find the grave and take up the bones, because of the inhospitable and savage nature of the Dolopians, who then inhabited the island. However, Cimon took the island, as I have related in his Life, and being ambitious to discover the grave of Theseus, saw an eagle in a place where there was the semblance of a mound, pecking, as he says, and tearing up the ground with his talons. 2 By some divine ordering he comprehended the meaning of this and dug there, and there was found a coffin of a man of extraordinary size, a bronze spear lying by its side, and a sword. When these relics were brought home on his trireme by Cimon, the Athenians were delighted, and received them with splendid processions and sacrifices, as though Theseus himself were returning to his city. And now he lies buried in the heart of the city, near the present gymnasium, and his tomb is a sanctuary and place of refuge for runaway slaves and all men of low estate who are afraid of men in power, since Theseus was a champion and helper of such during his life, and graciously received the supplications of the poor and needy. 3 The chief sacrifice which the Athenians make in his honour comes on the eighth day of the month Pyanepsion, the day on which he came back from Crete with the youths. But they honour him also on the eighth day of the other months, either because he came to Athens in the first place, from Troezen, on the eighth day of the month Hecatombaeon, as Diodorus the Topographer states, or because they consider this number more appropriate for him than any other since he was said to be a son of Poseidon. 4 For they pay honours to Poseidon on the eighth day of every month. The number eight, as the first cube of an even number and the double of the first square, fitly represents the steadfast and immovable power of this god, to whom we give the epithets of Securer and Earth-stayer.

Romulus

1 1 From whom, and for what reason the great name of Rome, so famous among mankind, was given to that city, writers are not agreed. Some say that the Pelasgians, after wandering over most of the habitable earth and subduing most of mankind, settled down on that site, and that from their strength in war they called their city Rome. 2 Others say that at the taking of Troy some of its people escaped, found sailing vessels, were driven by storms upon the coast of Tuscany, and came to anchor in the river Tiber; that here, while their women were perplexed and distressed at thought of the sea, one of them, who was held to be of superior birth and the greatest understanding, and whose name was Roma, proposed that they should burn the ships; 3 that when this was done, the men were angry at first, but afterwards, when they had settled of necessity on the Palatine, seeing themselves in a little while more prosperous than they had hoped, since they found the country good and the neighbours made them welcome, they paid high honours to Roma, and actually named the city after her, since she had been the occasion of their founding it. 4 And from that time on, they say, it has been customary for the women to salute their kinsmen and husbands with a kiss; for those women, after they had burned the ships, made use of such tender salutation as they supplicated their husbands and sought to appease their wrath.

2 1 Others again say that the Roma who gave her name to the city was a daughter of Italus and Leucaria, or, in another account, of Telephus the son of Heracles; and that she was married to Aeneas, or, in another version, to Ascanius the son of Aeneas. Some tell us that it was Romanus, a son of Odysseus and Circe, who colonized the city; others that it was Romus, who was sent from Troy by Diomedes the son of Emathion; and others still that it was Romis, tyrant of the Latins, after he had driven out the Tuscans, who passed from Thessaly into Lydia, and from Lydia into Italy. Moreover, even those writers who declare, in accordance with the most authentic tradition, that it was Romulus who gave his name to the city, do not agree about his lineage. 2 For some say that he was a son of Aeneas and Dexithea the daughter of Phorbas, and was brought to Italy in his infancy, along with his brother Romus; that the rest of the vessels were destroyed in the swollen river, but the one in which the boys were was gently directed to a grassy bank, where they were unexpectedly saved, and the place was called Roma from them. 3 Others say it was Roma, a daughter of the Trojan woman I have mentioned, who was wedded to Latinus the son of Telemachus and bore him Romulus; others that Aemilia, the daughter of Aeneas and Lavinia, bore him to Mars; and others still rehearse what is altogether fabulous concerning his origin. For instance, they say that Tarchetius, king of the Albans, who was most lawless and cruel, was visited with a strange phantom in his house, namely, a phallus rising out of the hearth and remaining there many days. 4 Now there was an oracle of Tethys in Tuscany, from which there was brought to Tarchetius a response that a virgin must have intercourse with this phantom, and she should bear a son most illustrious for his valour, and of surpassing good fortune and strength. Tarchetius, accordingly, told the prophecy to one of his daughters, and bade her consort with the phantom; but she disdained to do so, and sent a handmaid in to it. 5 When Tarchetius learned of this, he was wroth, and seized both the maidens, purposing to put them to death. But the goddess Hestia appeared to him in his sleep and forbade him the murder. He therefore imposed upon the maidens the weaving of a certain web in their imprisonment, assuring them that when they had finished the weaving of it, they should then be given in marriage. By day, then, these maidens wove, but by night other maidens, at the command of Tarchetius, unravelled their web. And when the handmaid became the mother of twin children by the phantom, Tarchetius gave them to a certain Teratius with orders to destroy them. 6 This man, however, carried them to the river-side and laid them down there. Then a she-wolf visited the babes and gave them suck, while all sorts of birds brought morsels of food and put them into their mouths, until a cow-herd spied them, conquered his amazement, ventured to come to them, and took the children home with him. Thus they were saved, and when they were grown up, they set upon Tarchetius and overcame him. At any rate, this is what a certain Promathion says, who compiled a history of Italy.

3 1 But the story which has the widest credence and the greatest number of vouchers was first published among the Greeks, in its principal details, by Diocles of Peparethus, and Fabius Pictor follows him in most points. Here again there are variations in the story, but its general outline is as follows. 2 The descendants of Aeneas reigned as kings in Alba, and the succession devolved at length upon two brothers, Numitor and Amulius. Amulius divided the whole inheritance into two parts, setting the treasures and gold which had been brought from Troy over against the kingdom, and Numitor chose the kingdom. Amulius, then, in possession of the treasure, and made more powerful by it than Numitor, easily took the kingdom away from his brother, and fearing lest that brother’s daughter should have children, made her a priestess of Vesta, bound to live unwedded and a virgin all her days. 3 Her name is variously given as Ilia, or Rhea, or Silvia. Not long after this, she was discovered to be with child, contrary to the established law for the Vestals. She did not, however, suffer the capital punishment which was her due, because the king’s daughter, Antho, interceded successfully in her behalf, but she was kept in solitary confinement, that she might not be delivered without the knowledge of Amulius. Delivered she was of two boys, and their size and beauty were more than human. 4 Wherefore Amulius was all the more afraid, and ordered a servant to take the boys and cast them away. This servant’s name was Faustulus, according to some, but others give this name to the man who took the boys up. Obeying the king’s orders, the servant put the babes into a trough and went down towards the river, purposing to cast them in; but when he saw that the stream was much swollen and violent, he was afraid to go close up to it, and setting his burden now near the bank, went his way. 5 Then the overflow of the swollen river took and bore up the trough, floating it gently along, and carried it down to a fairly smooth spot which is now called Kermalus, but formerly Germanus, perhaps because brothers are called “germani.”

4 1 Now there was a wild fig-tree hard by, which they called Ruminalis, either from Romulus, as is generally thought, or because cud-chewing, or ruminating, animals spent the noon-tide there for the sake of the shade, or best of all, from the suckling of the babes there; for the ancient Romans called the teat “ruma,” and a certain goddess, who is thought to preside over the rearing of young children, is still called Rumilia, in sacrificing to whom no wine is used, and libations of milk are poured over her victims. 2 Here, then, the babes lay, and the she-wolf of story here gave them suck, and a woodpecker came to help in feeding them and to watch over them. Now these creatures are considered sacred to Mars, and the woodpecker is held in especial veneration and honour by the Latins, and this was the chief reason why the mother was believed when she declared that Mars was the father of her babes. And yet it is said that she was deceived into doing this, and was really deflowered by Amulius himself, who came to her in armour and ravished her.

3 But some say that the name of the children’s nurse, by its ambiguity, deflected the story into the fabulous. For the Latins not only called she-wolves “lupae,” but also women of loose character, and such a woman was the wife of Faustulus, the foster-father of the infants, Acca Larentia by name. Yet the Romans sacrifice also to her, and in the month of April the priest of Mars pours libations in her honour, and the festival is called Larentalia.

5 1 They pay honours also to another Larentia, for the following reason. The keeper of the temple of Hercules, being at a loss for something to do, as it seems, proposed to the god a game of dice, with the understanding that if he won it himself, he should get some valuable present from the god; but if he lost, he would furnish the god with a bounteous repast and a lovely woman to keep him company for the night. 2 On these terms the dice were thrown, first for the god, then for himself, when it appeared that he had lost. Wishing to keep faith, and thinking it right to abide by the contract, he prepared a banquet for the god, and engaging Larentia, who was then in the bloom of her beauty, but not yet famous, he feasted her in the temple, where he had spread a couch, and after the supper locked her in, assured of course that the god would take possession of her. 3 And verily it is said that the god did visit the woman, and bade her go early in the morning to the forum, salute the first man who met her, and make him her friend. She was met, accordingly, by one of the citizens who was well on in years and possessed of a considerable property, but childless, and unmarried all his life, by name Tarrutius. 4 This man took Larentia to his bed and loved her well, and at his death left her heir to many and fair possessions, most of which she bequeathed to the people. And it is said that when she was now famous and regarded as the beloved of a god, she disappeared at the spot where the former Larentia also lies buried. 5 This spot is now called Velabrum, because when the river overflowed, as it often did, they used to cross it at about this point in ferry-boats, to go to the forum, and their word for ferry is “velatura.” But some say that it is so called because from that point on, the street leading to the Hippodrome from the forum is covered over with sails by the givers of a public spectacle, and the Roman word for sail is “velum.” It is for these reasons that honours are paid to this second Larentia amongst the Romans.

6 1 As for the babes, they were taken up and reared by Faustulus, a swineherd of Amulius, and no man knew of it; or, as some say with a closer approach to probability, Numitor did know of it, and secretly aided the foster-parents in their task. And it is said that the boys were taken to Gabii to learn letters and the other branches of knowledge which are meet for those of noble birth. 2 Moreover, we are told that they were named, from “ruma,” the Latin word for teat, Romulus and Romus (or Remus), because they were seen sucking the wild beast. Well, the noble size and beauty of their bodies, even when they were infants, betokened their natural disposition; and when they grew up, they were both of them courageous and manly, with spirits which courted apparent danger, and a daring which nothing could terrify. But Romulus seemed to exercise his judgement more, and to have political sagacity, while in his intercourse with their neighbours in matters pertaining to herding and hunting, he gave them the impression that he was born to command rather than to obey. 3 With their equals or inferiors they were therefore on friendly terms, but they looked down upon the overseers, bailiffs, and chief herdsmen of the king, and disregarded both their threats and their anger. They also applied themselves to generous occasions and pursuits, not esteeming sloth and idleness generous, but rather bodily exercise, hunting, running, driving off robbers, capturing thieves, and rescuing the oppressed from violence. For these things, indeed, they were famous far and near.

7 1 When a quarrel arose between the herdsmen of Numitor and Amulius, and some of the latter’s cattle were driven off, the brothers would not suffer it, but fell upon the robbers, put them to flight, and intercepted most of the booty. To the displeasure of Numitor they gave little heed, but collected and took into their company many needy men and many slaves, exhibiting thus the beginnings of seditious boldness and temper. 2 But once when Romulus was busily engaged in some sacrifice, being fond of sacrifices and of divination, the herdsmen of Numitor fell in with Remus as he was walking with a few companions, and a battle ensued. After blows and wounds given and received on both sides, the herdsmen of Numitor prevailed and took Remus prisoner, who was then carried before Numitor and denounced. Numitor himself did not punish his prisoner, because he was in fear of his brother Amulius, who was severe, but went to Amulius and asked for justice, since he was his brother, and had been insulted by the royal servants. 3 The people of Alba, too, were incensed, and thought that Numitor had been undeservedly outraged. Amulius was therefore induced to hand Remus over to Numitor himself, to treat him as he saw fit.

When Numitor came home, after getting Remus into his hands, he was amazed at the young man’s complete superiority in stature and strength of body, and perceiving by his countenance that the boldness and vigour of his soul were unsubdued and unharmed by his present circumstances, and hearing that his acts and deeds corresponded with his looks, 4 but chiefly, as it would seem, because a divinity was aiding and assisting in the inauguration of great events, he grasped the truth by a happy conjecture, and asked him who he was and what were the circumstances of his birth, while his gentle voice and kindly look inspired the youth with confidence and hope. 5 Then Remus boldly said: “Indeed, I will hide nothing from thee; for thou seemest to be more like a king than Amulius; thou hearest and weighest before punishing, but he surrenders men without a trial. Formerly we believed ourselves (my twin brother and I) children of Faustulus and Larentia, servants of the king; but since being accused and slandered before thee and brought in peril of our lives, we hear great things concerning ourselves; whether they are true or not, our present danger is likely to decide. 6 Our birth is said to have been secret, and our nursing and nurture as infants stranger still. We were cast out to birds of prey and wild beasts, only to be nourished by them, — by the dugs of a she-wolf and the morsels of a woodpecker, as we lay in a little trough by the side of the great river. The trough still exists and is kept safe, and its bronze girdles are engraved with letters now almost effaced, which may perhaps hereafter prove unavailing tokens of recognition for our parents, 7 when we are dead and gone.”

Then Numitor, hearing these words, and conjecturing the time which had elapsed from the young man’s looks, welcomed the hope that flattered him, and thought how he might talk with his daughter concerning these matters in a secret interview; for she was still kept in the closest custody.

8 1 But Faustulus, on hearing that Remus had been seized and delivered up to Numitor, called upon Romulus to go to his aid, and then told him clearly the particulars of their birth; before this also he had hinted at the matter darkly, and revealed enough to give them ambitious thoughts when they dwelt upon it. He himself took the trough and went to see Numitor, full of anxious fear lest he might not be in season. 2 Naturally enough, the guards at the king’s gate were suspicious of him, and when he was scrutinized by them and made confused replies to their questions, he was found to be concealing the trough in his cloak. Now by chance there was among the guards one of those who had taken the boys to cast them into the river, and were concerned in their exposure. This man, now seeing the trough, and recognizing it by its make and inscription, conceived a suspicion of the truth, and without any delay told the matter to the king, and brought the man before him to be examined. 3 In these dire and pressing straits, Faustulus did not entirely hold his own, nor yet was his secret wholly forced from him. He admitted that the boys were alive and well, but said they lived at a distance from Alba as herdsmen; he himself was carrying the trough to Ilia, who had often yearned to see and handle it, in confirmation of her hope for the children.

4 As, then, men naturally fare who are confounded, and act with fear or in a passion, so it fell out that Amulius fared. For he sent in all haste an excellent man and a friend of Numitor’s, with orders to learn from Numitor whether any report had come to him of the children’s being alive. 5 When, accordingly, the man was come, and beheld Remus almost in the affectionate embraces of Numitor, he confirmed them in their confident hope, and entreated them to proceed at once to action, promptly joining their party himself and furthering their cause. And the opportunity admitted of no delay, even had they wished it; for Romulus was now close at hand, and many of the citizens who hated and feared Amulius were running forth to join him. 6 He was also leading a large force with him, divided into companies of a hundred men, each company headed by a man who bore aloft a handful of hay and shrubs tied round a pole (the Latin word for handful is “manipulus,” and hence in their armies they still call the men in such companies “manipulares.”). And when Remus incited the citizens within the city to revolt, and at the same time Romulus attacked from without, the tyrant, without taking a single step or making any plan for his own safety, from sheer perplexity and confusion, was seized and put to death.

7 Although most of these particulars are related by Fabius and Diocles of Peparethus, who seems to have been the first to publish a “Founding of Rome,” some are suspicious of their fictitious and fabulous quality; but we should not be incredulous when we see what a poet fortune sometimes is, and when we reflect that the Roman state would not have attained to its present power, had it not been of a divine origin, and one which was attended by great marvels.

9 1 Amulius being now dead, and matters settled in the city, the brothers were neither willing to live in Alba, unless as its rulers, nor to be its rulers while their grandfather was still alive. Having therefore restored the government to him and paid fitting honours to their mother, they resolved to dwell by themselves, and to found a city in the region where, at the first, they were nourished and sustained; this surely seems a most fitting reason for their course. 2 But perhaps it was necessary, now that many slaves and fugitives were gathered about them, either to disperse these and have no following at all, or else to dwell apart with them. For that the residents of Alba would not consent to give the fugitives the privilege of intermarriage with them, nor even receive them as fellow-citizens, is clear, in the first place, from the rape of the Sabine women, which was not a deed of wanton daring, but one of necessity, owing to the lack of marriages by consent; for they certainly honoured the women, when they had carried them off, beyond measure. 3 And in the second place, when their city was first founded, they made a sanctuary of refuge for all fugitives, which they called the sanctuary of the God of Asylum. There they received all who came, delivering none up, neither slave to masters, nor debtor to creditors, nor murderer to magistrates, but declaring it to be in obedience to an oracle from Delphi that they made the asylum secure for all men. Therefore the city was soon full of people, for they say that the first houses numbered no more than a thousand. This, however, was later.

4 But when they set out to establish their city, a dispute at once arose concerning the site. Romulus, accordingly, built Roma Quadrata (which means square), and wished to have a city on that site; but Remus laid out a strong precinct on the Aventine hill, which was named from him Remonium, but now is called Rignarium. 5 Agreeing to settle their quarrel by the flight of birds of omen, and taking their seats on the ground apart from one another, six vultures, they say, were seen by Remus, and twice that number by Romulus. Some, however, say that whereas Remus truly saw his six, Romulus lied about his twelve, but that when Remus came to him, then he did see the twelve. Hence it is that at the present time also the Romans chiefly regard vultures when they take auguries from the flight of birds.

Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules also was glad to see a vulture present itself when he was upon an exploit. 6 For it is the least harmful of all creatures, injures no grain, fruit-tree, or cattle, and lives on carrion. But it does not kill or maltreat anything that has life, and as for birds, it will not touch them even when they are dead, since they are of its own species. But eagles, owls, and hawks smite their own kind when alive, and kill them. And yet, in the words of Aeschylus: —

How shall a bird that preys on fellow bird be clean?”

7 Besides, other birds are, so to speak, always in our eyes, and let themselves be seen continually; but the vulture is a rare sight, and it is not easy to come upon a vulture’s young, nay, some men have been led into a strange suspicion that the birds come from some other and foreign land to visit us here, so rare and intermittent is their appearance, which soothsayers think should be true of what does not present itself naturally, nor spontaneously, but by a divine sending.

10 1 When Remus knew of the deceit, he was enraged, and as Romulus was digging a trench where his city’s wall was to run, he ridiculed some parts of the work, and obstructed others. At last, when he leaped across it, he was smitten (by Romulus himself, as some say; according to others, by Celer, one of his companions), and fell dead there. 2 Faustulus also fell in the battle, as well as Pleistinus, who was a brother of Faustulus, and assisted him in rearing Romulus and Remus. Celer, at any rate, betook himself to Tuscany, and from him the Romans call such as are swift and speedy, “celeres.” Quintus Metellus, for instance, when his father died, took only a few days to provide gladiatorial contests in his honour, and the people were so amazed at his speed in preparing them that they gave him the surname of Celer.

11 Romulus buried Remus, together with his foster-fathers, in the Remonia, and then set himself to building his city, after summoning from Tuscany men who prescribed all the details in accordance with certain sacred ordinances and writings, and taught them to him as in religious rite. A circular trench was dug around what is now the Comitium, and in this were deposited the first-fruits of all things the use of which was sanctioned by custom as good and by nature as necessary; and finally, every man brought a small portion of the soil of his native land, and these were cast in among the first-fruits and mingled with them. 2 They call this trench, as they do the heavens, by the name of “mundus.” Then, taking this as a centre, they marked out the city in a circle round it. And the founder, having shod a plough with a brazen ploughshare, and having yoked to it a bull and a cow, himself drove a deep furrow round the boundary lines, while those who followed after him had to turn the clods, which the plough threw up, inwards towards the city, and suffer no clod to lie turned outwards. 3 With this line they mark out the course of the wall, and it is called, by contraction, “pomerium,” that is, “post murum,” behind or next the wall.a And where they purposed to put in a gate, there they took the share out of the ground, lifted the plough over, and left a vacant space. And this is the reason why they regard all the wall as sacred except the gates; but if they held the gates sacred, it would not be possible, without religious scruples, to bring into and send out of the city things which are necessary, and yet unclean.

12 1 Now it is agreed that the city was founded on the twenty-first of April, and this day the Romans celebrate with a festival, calling it the birthday of their country. And at first, as it is said, they sacrificed no living creature at that festival, but thought they ought to keep it pure and without stain of blood, since it commemorated the birth of their country. However, even before the founding of the city, they had a pastoral festival on that day, and called it Parilia.

2 At the present time, indeed, there is no agreement between the Roman and Greek months, but they say that the day on which Romulus founded his city was precisely the thirtieth of the month, and that on that day there was a conjunction of the sun and moon, with an eclipse, which they think was the one seen by Antimachus, the epic poet of Teos, in the third year of the sixth Olympiad. 3 And in the times of Varro the philosopher, a Roman who was most deeply versed in history, there lived Tarutius, a companion of his, who, besides being a philosopher and a mathematician, had applied himself to the art of casting nativities, in order to indulge a speculative turn of mind, and was thought to excel in it. 4 To this man Varro gave the problem of fixing the day and hour of the birth of Romulus, making his deductions from the conjunctions of events reported in the man’s life, just as the solutions of geometrical problems are derived; for the same science, he said, must be capable not only of foretelling a man’s life when the time of his birth is known, but also, from the given facts of his life, of hunting out the time of his birth. 5 This task, then, Tarutius performed, and when he had taken a survey of the man’s experiences and achievements, and had brought together the time of his life, the manner of his death, and all such details, he very courageously and bravely declared that Romulus was conceived in his mother’s womb in the first year of the second Olympiad, in the month Choeac of the Egyptian calendar, on the twenty-third day, and in the third hour, when the sun was totally eclipsed; and that he was born in the month Thoth, on the twenty-first day, at sun-rise; 6 and that Rome was founded by him on the ninth day of the month Pharmuthi, between the second and third hour: for it is thought that a city’s fortune, as well as that of a man, has a decisive time, which may be known by the position of the stars at its very origin. These and similar speculations will perhaps attract readers by their novelty and extravagance, rather than offend them by their fabulous character.b

13 1 When the city was built, in the first place, Romulus divided all the multitude that were of age to bear arms into military companies, each company consisting of three thousand footmen and three hundred horsemen. Such a company was called a “legion,” because the warlike were selected out of all. In the second place, he treated the remainder as a people, and this multitude was called “populus”; a hundred of them, who were the most eminent, he appointed to be councillors, calling the individuals themselves “patricians,” and their body a “senate.”c 2 Now the word “senate” means literally a Council of elders, and the councillors were called “patricians,” as some say, because they were fathers of lawful children; or rather, according to others, because they could tell who their own fathers were, which not many could do of those who first streamed into the city; according to others still, from “patronage,” which was their word for the protection of inferiors, and is so to this day; and they suppose that a certain Patron, one of those who came to Italy with Evander, was a protector and defender of the poor and needy, and left his own name in the word which designates such activity. 3 But the most reasonable opinion for any one to hold is that Romulus thought it the duty of the foremost and most influential citizens to watch over the more lowly for fatherly care and concern, while he taught the multitude not to fear their superiors nor be vexed at their honours, but to exercise goodwill towards them, considering them and addressing them as fathers, whence their name of Patricii. 4 For down to the present time foreign peoples call the members of their senate “chief men,” but the Romans themselves call them “conscript fathers,” using that name which has the greatest dignity and honour, and awakens the least envy. At first, then, they called them simply “fathers,” but later, when more had been added to their number, they addressed them as “Conscript fathers.” 5 By this more imposing title Romulus distinguished the senate from the commonalty, and in other ways, too, he separated the nobles from multitude, calling the one “patrons,” that is to say, protectors, and the other “clients,” that is to say, dependants. At the same time he inspired both classes with an astonishing goodwill towards each other, and one which became the basis of important rights and privileges. For the patrons advised their clients in matters of custom, and represented them in courts of justice, in short, were their counsellors and friends in all things; 6 while the clients were devoted to their patrons, not only holding them in honour, but actually, in cases of poverty, helping them to dower their daughters and pay their debts. And there was neither any law nor any magistrate that could compel a patron to bear witness against a client, or a client against a patron. But in later times, while all other rights and privileges remained in force, the taking of money by those of high degree from the more lowly was held to be disgraceful and ungenerous. So much, then, on these topics.

14 1 It was in the fourth month after the founding of the city, as Fabius writes, that the rape of the Sabine women was perpetrated. And some say that Romulus himself, being naturally fond of war, and being persuaded by sundry oracles, too, that it was the destiny of Rome to be nourished and increased by wars till she became the greatest of cities, thereby merely began unprovoked hostilities against the Sabines; for he did not take many maidens, but thirty only, since what he wanted was war rather than marriages. 2 But this is not likely. On the contrary, seeing his city filling up at once with aliens, few of whom had wives, while the greater part of them, being a mixed rabble of needy and obscure persons, were looked down upon and expected to have no strong cohesion; and hoping to make the outrage an occasion for some sort of blending and fellowship with the Sabines after their women had been kindly entreated, he set his hand to the task, and in the following manner.

3 First a report was spread abroad by him that he had discovered an altar of a certain god hidden underground. They called this god Consus, and he was either a god of counsel (for “consilium” is still their word for counsel, and they call their chief magistrates “consuls,” that is to say, counsellors), or an equestrian Neptune. For the altar is in the Circus Maximus, and is invisible at all other times, but at the chariot-races it is uncovered. 4 Some, however, simply say that since counsel is secret and unseen, it is not unreasonable that an altar to the god of counsel should be hidden underground. Now when this altar was discovered, Romulus appointed by proclamation a splendid sacrifice upon it, with games, and a spectacle open to all people. And many were the people who came together, while he himself sat in front, among his chief men, clad in purple. 5 The signal that the time had come for the onslaught was to be his rising and folding his cloak and then throwing it round him again. Armed with swords, then, many of his followers kept their eyes intently upon him, and when the signal was given, drew their swords, rushed in with shouts, and ravished away the daughters of the Sabines, but permitted and encouraged the men themselves to escape. 6 Some say that only thirty maidens were seized, and that from these the Curiae were named; but Valerius Antias puts the number at five hundred and twenty-seven, and Juba at six hundred and eighty-three, all maidens. And this was the strongest defence which Romulus could make, namely, that they took only one married woman, Hersilia, and her by mistake, since they did not commit the rape out of wantonness, nor even with a desire to do mischief, but with the fixed purpose of uniting and blending the two peoples in the strongest bonds. 7 As for this Hersilia, some say that she was married to Hostilius, a most eminent Roman, and others, to Romulus himself, and that she also bore him children: one daughter, Prima, so called from the order of birth, and one son only, whom Romulus named Aollius, from the great concourse of citizens under him, but later ages Avillius. However, Zenodotus of Troezen, who gives us this account, is contradicted by many.

15 1 Among those who ravished away the maidens at that time, it chanced, they say, that certain men of meaner sort were dragging along a damsel who far surpassed the rest in beauty and stature; and when some men of superior rank met them and tried to rob them of their prize, they cried out that they were conducting the girl to Talasius, a young man, but one of excellent repute. 2 The other party, then, on hearing this, shouted and clapped their hands in approval, and some of them actually turned back accompanied them, out of good will and favour to Talasius, shouting his name as they went along. Hence, indeed, down to the present time, Talasius is the nuptial cry of the Romans, as Hymenaeus is of the Greeks; for they say that Talasius was fortunate in his wife.

But Sextius Sulla, the Carthaginian, a man who lacks neither learning nor charm, told me that Talasius was the word which Romulus gave as a watchword for the rape. 3 All those, therefore, who took the maidens away, shouted “Talasius!” and on this account the custom now prevails at marriages. 3 But most writers are of the opinion — and Juba is one of them — that the cry is an exhortation and incitement to industry and “talasia,” as the Greeks call spinning, Italian words having not yet at that time entirely submerged the Greek. Now if this is right, and the Romans did at that time use the word “talasia” for spinning, as we do, then a more credible reason for the custom might be conjectured as follows. 4 When the Sabines, after their war against the Romans, were reconciled with them, it was agreed that their women should perform no other tasks for their husbands than those which were connected with spinning. It was customary, therefore, at subsequent marriages, for those who gave the bride away, or escorted her to her new home, or simply looked on, to cry “Talasius!” merrily, in testimony that the woman was led home for no other task than that of spinning. 5 And it continues to be a custom down to the present time that the bride shall not of herself cross the threshold into her new home, but be lifted up and carried in, because the Sabine women were carried in by force, and did not go in of their own accord. And some say also that the custom of parting the bride’s hair with the head of a spear is a reminder that the first marriage was attended with war and fighting; on which topic I have spoken more fully in my “Roman Questions.”

Leaving such matters aside, the rape was committed on the eighteenth day of the month once called Sextilis, but now, August, on which day the festival of the Consualia is celebrated.

16 1 Now the Sabines were a numerous and warlike people, and dwelt in unwalled villages, thinking that it behoved them, since they were Lacedaemonian colonists, to be bold and fearless. 2 Nevertheless, seeing themselves bound by precious hostages, and fearing for their daughters, they sent ambassadors with reasonable and moderate demands, namely, that Romulus should give back to them their maidens, disavow his deed of violence, and then, by persuasion and legal enactment, establish a friendly relationship between the two peoples. But Romulus would not surrender the maidens, and demanded that the Sabines should allow community of marriage with the Romans, 3 whereupon they all held long deliberations and made extensive preparations for war. But there was one exception. Acron, king of the Caeninenses, a man of courageous spirit and skilled in war, had been suspicious of the daring deeds of Romulus from the beginning, and now that this violence had been done the women, thinking him a menace to all peoples, and intolerable unless chastised, at once rose up in arms, and with a great force advanced against him. Romulus also marched out to meet him. 4 But when they were face to face and had surveyed each other, they challenged mutually to single combat before battle, while their armies remained quiet under arms. Romulus, then, after making a vow that if he should conquer and overthrow his adversary, he would carry home the man’s armour and dedicate it in person to Jupiter, not only conquered and overthrew him, but also routed his army in the battle which followed, and took his city as well. To the captured citizens, however, he did no harm beyond ordering them to tear down their dwellings and accompany him to Rome, where, he promised them, they should be citizens on equal terms with the rest.

5 Now this, more than anything else, was what gave increase to Rome: she always united and incorporated with herself those whom she conquered. But Romulus, after considering how he might perform his vow in a manner most acceptable to Jupiter and accompany the performance with a spectacle most pleasing to the citizens, cut down a monstrous oak that grew in the camp, hewed it into the shape of a trophy, and fitted and fastened to it the armour of Acron, each piece in its due order. Then he himself, girding his raiment about him and wreathing his flowing locks with laurel, 6 set the trophy on his right shoulder, where it was held erect, and began a triumphal march, leading off in a paean of victory which his army sang as it followed under arms, and being received by the citizens with joyful amazement. This procession was the origin and model of all subsequent triumphs, and the trophy was styled a dedication to Jupiter Feretrius, so named from the Roman word “ferire,” to smite; for Romulus vowed to smite his foe and overthrow him. 7 And such spoils were called “opima,” because as Varro says, “opes” is the Roman word for richness; but it would be more plausible to say that they were so called from the deed of valour involved, since “opus” is the Roman word for deed or exploit. And only to a general who with his own hand has performed the exploit of slaying an opposing general, has the privilege of dedicating the “spolia opima” been granted.

Furthermore, only three Roman leaders have attained this honour: Romulus first, for slaying Acron the Caeninensian; next, Cornelius Cossus, for killing Tolumnius the Tuscan; and lastly, Claudius Marcellus, for overpowering Britomartus, king of the Gauls. 8 Cossus indeed, and Marcellus, already used a four-horse chariot for their entrance into the city, carrying the trophies themselves, but Dionysius is incorrect in saying that Romulus used a chariot. For it is matter of history that Tarquin, the son of Demaratus, was first of the kings to lift triumphs up to such pomp and ceremony, although others say that Publicola was first to celebrate a triumph riding on a chariot. And the statues of Romulus bearing the trophies are, as may be seen in Rome, all on foot.

17 1 After the capture of the Caeninensians, while the rest of the Sabines were still busy with their preparations, the people of Fidenae, Crustumerium, and Antemnae banded together against the Romans, and in a battle which ensued, they were likewise defeated, and surrendered to Romulus their cities to be seized, their territory to be divided, and themselves to be transported to Rome. Romulus distributed among the citizens all the territory thus acquired, excepting that which belonged to the parents of the ravished maidens; this he suffered its owners to keep for themselves.

2 At this the rest of the Sabines were enraged, and after appointing Tatius their general, marched upon Rome. The city was difficult of access, having as its fortress the present Capitol, on which a guard had been stationed, with Tarpeius as its captain, — not Tarpeia, a maiden, as some say, thereby making Romulus a simpleton. But Tarpeia, a daughter of the commander, betrayed the citadel to the Sabines, having set her heart on the golden armlets which she saw them wearing, and she asked as payment for her treachery that which they wore on their left arms. 3 Tatius agreed to this, whereupon she opened one of the gates by night and let the Sabines in. Antigonus was not alone, then, in saying that he loved men who offered to betray, but hated those who had betrayed; nor yet Caesar, in saying of the Thracian Rhoemetalces, that he loved treachery but hated a traitor; but this is very general feeling towards the base on the part of those who need their services, just as they need certain wild creatures for their venom and gall; for while they feel the need of them, they put up with them, but abhor their vileness when they have obtained from them what they want. 4 This, too, was the feeling which Tatius then had towards Tarpeia, when he ordered his Sabines, mindful of their agreement, not to begrudge the girl anything they wore on their left arms. And he was first to take from his arm not only his armlet, but at the same time his shield, and cast them upon her. All his men followed his example, and the girl was smitten by the gold and buried under the shields, and died from the number and weight of them. 5 And Tarpeius also was convicted of treason when prosecuted by Romulus, as, according to Juba, Sulpicius Galba relates. Of those who write differently about Tarpeia, they are worthy of no belief at all who say that she was a daughter of Tatius, the leader of the Sabines, and was living with Romulus under compulsion, and acted and suffered as she did, at her father’s behest; of these, Antigonus is one. And Simylus the poet is altogether absurd in supposing that Tarpeia betrayed the Capitol, not to the Sabines, but to the Gauls, because she had fallen in love with their king. These are his words: —

And Tarpeia, who dwelt hard by the Capitolian steep,

Became the destroyer of the walls of Rome;

She longed to be the wedded wife of the Gallic chieftain,

And betrayed the homes of her fathers.”

And a little later, speaking of her death: —

“Here the Boii and the myriad tribes of Gauls

Did not, exulting, cast amid the currents of the Po;

But hurled the shields from their belligerent arms

Upon the hateful maid, and made their ornament her doom.”

18 1 However, Tarpeia was buried there, and the hill was called from her Tarpeius, until King Tarquin dedicated the place to Jupiter, when her bones were removed and the name of Tarpeia died out, except that a cliff on the Capitol is still called the Tarpeian Rock, from which they hurl malefactors.

2 The citadel thus occupied by the Sabines, Romulus angrily challenged them to battle, and Tatius was bold enough to accept, since he saw that the Sabines, if worsted, had a strong place of retreat. For the intervening space, in which they were to join battle, being surrounded by many hills, seemed to impose upon both parties a sharp and grievous contest, owing to the difficulties of the field, where flight and pursuit must be narrowly confined and short. 3 It happened, too, since the river had overflowed not many days before, that a deep and blind slime had been left in the valley where the forum is now. Wherefore it was not apparent to the eye, nor yet easy to avoid, and besides it was soft beneath the surface and dangerous. On to this the Sabines were ignorantly rushing, when a piece of good fortune befell them. 4 Curtius, a conspicuous man among them, eager for glory and high design, was advancing on horseback far in front of the rest, when his horse sank in the gulf of mud. For some time he tried to drive him out, with blows and cries of encouragement, but since it was impossible, he abandoned his horse and saved himself. Accordingly, the place to this day is called from him “lacus Curtius.” But the Sabines, having avoided this peril, fought a sturdy fight, and one which was indecisive, although many fell, among whom was Hostilius. 5 This man, they say, was husband of Hersilia and grandfather to the Hostilius who was king after Numa. Afterwards many conflicts raged within a short time, as might be expected, but one is most memorable, namely the last, in which Romulus was hit on the head with a stone and almost fell to the ground, abandoning his resistance to the Sabines. The Romans thereupon gave way and began to fly to the Palatine, now that they were repulsed from the plain. 5 But presently Romulus, recovering from his blow, wished to stem the tide of fugitives and renew the battle, and called upon them with a loud voice to stand and fight. But as the waves of flight encompassed him and no man dared to face about, he stretched his hands towards heaven and prayed Jupiter to stay his army and not suffer the Roman cause to fall, but to restore it. 7 No sooner was his prayer ended than many stopped out of reverence for their king, and courage returned to the fugitives. They made their first stand, then, where now is the temple of Jupiter Stator, which epithet might be interpreted as Stayer. Then they closed their ranks again and drove the Sabines back to where the so called Regia now stands, and the temple of Vesta. 19 1 Here, as they were preparing to renew the battle, they were checked by a sight that was wonderful to behold and a spectacle that passes description. The ravished daughters of the Sabines were seen rushing from every direction, with shouts and lamentations, through the armed men and the dead bodies, as if in a frenzy of possession, up to their husbands and their fathers, some carrying young children in their arms, some veiled in their dishevelled hair, and all calling with the most endearing names now upon the Sabines and now upon the Romans. 2 So then both armies were moved to compassion, and drew apart to give the women place between the lines of battle; sorrow ran through all the ranks, and abundant pity was stirred by the sight of the women, and still more by their words, which began with argument and reproach, and ended with supplication and entreaty. “Wherein, pray (they said), 3 have we done you wrong or harm, that we must suffer in the past, and must still suffer now, such cruel evils? We were violently and lawlessly ravished away by those to whom we now belong, but though thus ravished, we were neglected by our brethren and fathers and kinsmen until time had united us by the strongest ties with those whom we had most hated, and made us now fear for those who had treated us with violence and lawlessness, when they go to battle, and mourn for them when they are slain. 4 For ye did not come to avenge us upon our ravishers while we were still maidens, but now ye would tear wives from their husbands and mothers from their children, and the succour wherewith ye would now succour us, wretched women that we are, is more pitiful than your former neglect and abandonment of us. Such is the love which we have here enjoyed, such the compassion shown to us by you. Even if we were fighting on other grounds, it were meet that ye should cease for our sakes, now that ye are become fathers-in law and grandsires and have family ties among your enemies. 5 If, however, the war is on our behalf, carry us away with your sons-in law and their children, and so restore us to our fathers and kindred, but do not rob us of our children and husbands. Let us not, we beseech you, become prisoners of war again.”

Many such appeals were made by Hersilia, and the other women added their entreaties, until a truce was made and the leaders held a conference. 6 Meanwhile the women brought their husbands and their children and presented them to their fathers and brothers; they also carried food and drink to those that wanted, and bore the wounded to their homes for tender nursing; here they also made it evident that they were mistresses of their own households, and that their husbands were attentive to them and showed them all honour with good will. 7 Thereupon agreements were made that such women as wished to do so might continue to live with their husbands, exempt, as aforesaid, from all labour and all drudgery except spinning; also that the city should be inhabited by Romans and Sabines in common; and that the city should be called Rome, from Romulus, but all its citizens Quirites, from the native city of Tatius; and that Romulus and Tatius should be joint kings and leaders of the army. The place where these agreements were made is to this day called Comitium, from the Roman word “conire,” or “coire,” to come together.

20 1 The city thus doubled in its numbers, a hundred of the Sabines were added by election to the Patricii, and the legions were enlarged to six thousand footmen and six hundred horsemen. The people, too, were arranged in three bodies, the first called Ramnenses, from Romulus; the second Tatienses, from Tatius; and the third Lucerenses, from the grove into which many betook themselves for refuge, when a general asylum was offered, and then became citizens. Now the Roman word for grove is “lucus.” 2 That these bodies were three in number, their very name testifies, for to this day they call them tribes, and their chief officers, tribunes. And each tribe had ten phratries, or brotherhoods, which, as some say, were named after the thirty Sabine women; but this seems to be false, since many of them bear the names of places. 3 However, they did make many other concessions to women, to do them honour, some of which follow: to give them the right of way when walking; not to utter any indecent word in the presence of a woman; that no man should be seen naked by them, or else that he be liable to prosecution before the judges of homicide; and that their children should wear a sort of necklace, the “bulla,” so called from its shape (which was that of a bubble), and a robe bordered with purple.

4 The two kings did not at once hold council in common with one another, but each at first sat with his own hundred councillors apart, then afterwards they united them all into one body, as at the present time. Tatius dwelt where now is the temple of Moneta, and Romulus beside the so called Steps of Fair Shore; these are near the descent into the Circus Maximus from the Palatine. 5 There also, it is said, grew the sacred cornel-tree, of which the following tale is told. Romulus, once, in trial of his strength, cast thither from the Aventine hill a spear, the shaft of which was made of cornel-wood; the head of the spear sank deep into the ground, and no one had strength to pull it up, though many tried, but the earth, which was fertile, cherished the wooden shaft, and sent up shoots from it, and produced a cornel-trunk of good size. Those who came after Romulus preserved this with religious care as one of the most sacred objects, and walled it in. 6 And if any visitor thought that it was not green nor flourishing, but likely to wither away and die, he immediately proclaimed it loudly to all he met, and these, as though helping to save a house on fire, would cry “Water! Water!” and run together from all sides carrying full buckets to the place. But when Caius Caesar, as they say, was repairing the steps about the enclosure, and the workmen dug here and there in the neighbourhood, the roots were inadvertently destroyed and the tree withered away.

21 1 The Sabines, then, adopted the Roman months, about which I have written sufficiently in my Life of Numa. Romulus, on the other hand, made use of their oblong shields, and changed his own armour and that of the Romans, who before that carried round shields of the Argive pattern. Feasts and sacrifices they shared with one another, not discarding any which the two peoples had observed before, but instituting other new ones. One of these is the Matronalia, which was bestowed upon the women to commemorate their putting a stop to the war; and another is the Carmentalia. 2 This Carmenta is thought by some to be a Fate presiding over human birth, and for this reason she is honoured by mothers. Others, however, say that the wife of Evander the Arcadian, who was a prophetess and inspired to utter oracles in verse, was therefore surnamed Carmenta, since “carmina” is their word for verses, her own proper name being Nicostrate. As to her own name there is general agreement, but some more probably interpret Carmenta as meaning bereft of mind, because of her ecstasies under inspiration, since “carere” is the Roman word for to be bereft, and “mens” for mind. 3 Of the Parilia I have spoken before. As for the Lupercalia, judging by the time of its celebration, it would seem to be a feast of purification, for it is observed on the inauspicious days of the month of February, which name can be interpreted to mean purification, and the very day of the feast was anciently called Febrata. But the name of the festival has the meaning of the Greek “Lycaea,” or feast of wolves, which makes it seem of great antiquity and derived from the Arcadians in the following of Evander. 4 Indeed, this meaning of the name is commonly accepted; for it can be connected with the she-wolf of story. And besides, we see that Luperci begin their course around the city at that point where Romulus is said to have been exposed. However, the actual ceremonies of the festival are such that the reason for the name is hard to guess. For the priests slaughter goats, and then, after two youths of noble birth have been brought to them, some of them touch their foreheads with a bloody knife, and others wipe the stain off at once with wool dipped in milk. 5 The youths must laugh after their foreheads are wiped. After this they cut the goats’ skins into strips and run about, with nothing on but a girdle, striking all who meet them with the thongs, and young married women do not try to avoid their blows, fancying that they promote conception and easy child-birth. A peculiarity of the festival is that the Luperci sacrifice a dog also.

6 A certain Butas, who wrote fabulous explanations of Roman customs in elegiac verse, says that Romulus and Remus, after their victory over Amulius, ran exultantly to the spot where, when they were babes, the she-wolf gave them suck, and that the festival is conducted in imitation of this action, and that the two youths of noble birth run

“Smiting all those whom they meet, as once with brandished weapons,

Down from Alba’s heights, Remus and Romulus ran.”

And that the bloody sword is applied to their foreheads as a symbol of the peril and slaughter of that day, while the cleansing of their foreheads with milk is in remembrance of the nourishment which the babes received. 7 But Caius Acilius writes that before the founding of the city Romulus and his brother once lost their flocks, and after praying to Faunus, ran forth in quest of them naked, that they might not be impeded by sweat; and that this is the reason why the Luperci run about naked. If the sacrifice is a purification, one might say that the dog is sacrificed as being a suitable victim for such rites, 8 since the Greeks, in their rites of purification, carry forth puppies for burial, and in many places make use of the rites called “periskulakismoi;” and if these rites are performed in grateful remembrance of the she-wolf that nourished and preserved Romulus, it is not without reason that the dog is slain, since it is an enemy to wolves, unless, indeed, the animal is thus punished for annoying the Luperci when they run about.

22 1 It is said also that Romulus first introduced the consecration of fire, and appointed holy virgins to guard it, called Vestals. Others attribute this institution to Numa, although admitting that Romulus was in other ways eminently religious, and they say further that he was a diviner, and carried for purposes of divination the so called “lituus,” a crooked staff with which those who take auguries from the flight of birds mark out the regions of the heavens. 2 This staff, which was carefully preserved on the Palatine, is said to have disappeared when the city was taken at the time of the Gallic invasion; afterwards, however, when the Barbarians had been expelled, it was found under deep ashes unharmed by the fire, although everything about it was completely destroyed.

3 He also enacted certain laws, and among them one of severity, which forbids a wife to leave her husband, but permits a husband to put away his wife for using poisons, for substituting children, and for adultery; but if a man for any other reason sends his wife away, the law prescribes that half his substance shall belong to his wife, and the other half be consecrate to Ceres; and whosoever puts away his wife, shall make a sacrifice to the gods of the lower world. 4 It is also a peculiar thing that Romulus ordained no penalty for parricides, but called all murder parricide, looking upon one as abominable, and upon the other as impossible. And for many ages his judgement of such a crime seemed to have been right, for no one did any such deed at Rome for almost six hundred years; but after the war with Hannibal, Lucius Hostius is reported to have been the first parricide. So much, then, may suffice concerning these matters.

23 1 In the fifth year of the reign of Tatius, some retainers and kinsmen of his, falling in with ambassadors from Laurentum on their way to Rome, attempted to rob them of their money, and when they would not stand and deliver, slew them. It was a bold and dreadful crime, and Romulus thought its perpetrators ought to be punished at once, but Tatius tried to put off and turn aside the course of justice. 2 This was the sole occasion of open variance between them; in all other matters they acted in the utmost concert and administered affairs with unanimity. The friends of the slain ambassadors, shut out as they were from all lawful redress, through the efforts of Tatius, fell upon him as he was sacrificing with Romulus at Lavinium, and killed him, but escorted Romulus on his way with loud praises of his justice. 3 Romulus brought the body of Tatius home and gave it honourable burial, and it lies near the so called Armilustrium, on the Aventine hill; but he took no steps whatsoever to bring his murderers to justice. And some historians write that the city of Laurentum, in terror, delivered up the murderers of Tatius, but that Romulus let them go, saying that murder had been requited with murder. 4 This led some to say and suspect that he was glad to be rid of his colleague, but it caused no disturbance in the government, nor did it lead the Sabines into faction, nay, some through the good-will they had for him, others through fear of his power, and others because they regarded him as a benevolent god, all continued to hold him in reverence to the end.

5 Romulus was held in reverence also by many foreign peoples, and the earlier Latins sent ambassadors and established friendship and alliance with him. Fidenae, a neighbouring city to Rome, he took, as some say, by sending his horsemen of a sudden with orders to cut away the pivots of the gates, and then appearing himself unexpectedly; 6 but others say that the men of Fidenae first made an incursion, driving off booty and devastating the territory and outskirts of the city, and that Romulus set an ambush for them, killed many of them, and took their city. He did not, however, destroy or raze it to the ground, but made it a colony of Rome, and sent thither twenty-five hundred colonists, on the Ides of April.

24 1 After this, a plague fell upon the land, bringing sudden death without previous sickness upon the people, and afflicting the crops with unfruitfulness and the cattle with barrenness. There was a rain of blood also in the city, so that many superstitious fears were added to their unavoidable sufferings. And when similar calamities visited the people of Laurentum, all agreed at once that it was the miscarriage of justice for the death of Tatius and the slain ambassadors which brought the wrath of heaven down upon both cities. 2 The murderers, therefore, were delivered up on both sides and punished, and the mischief visibly abated. Romulus also purified the cities with lustral rites, which they say are celebrated to this day at the Ferentine gate.d

But before the pestilence had ceased, the people of Cameria attacked the Romans and overran their territory, thinking them incapable of defending themselves by reason of their distress. 3 Romulus therefore at once marched against them, overcame them in battle, and killed six thousand of them. He also took their city, transplanted half of the survivors to Rome, and sent to Cameria as colonists from Rome twice the number he had left there, and this on the first of August. So many citizens had he to spare after dwelling in Rome less than sixteen years. Among other spoils he brought also a bronze four-horse chariot from Cameria, and dedicated it in the temple of Vulcan. For it he had a statue made of himself, with a figure of Victory crowning him.

25 1 The Roman state thus gathering strength, its weaker neighbours submitted to it, and were satisfied to be let alone; but the powerful ones, out of fear and jealousy, thought they ought not to tolerate, but resist and check the growing power of Romulus. And of the Tuscans, the people of Veii, who possessed much territory and dwelt in a great city, were the first to begin war with a demand for Fidenae, which they said belonged to them. 2 Now this was not only unjust, it was actually ridiculous, that they, who had not come to the aid of the people of Fidenae when they were in the perils of war, but suffered them to perish, then demanded their houses and land from those who had come into possession of them. Accordingly, Romulus gave them contemptuous answers, upon which they divided themselves into two armies, attacked Fidenae with one, and confronted Romulus with the other. Before Fidenae, then, they overpowered two thousand Romans and slew them; but they were defeated by Romulus with a loss of eight thousand men. 3 Once more a battle was fought near Fidenae, and here all agree that the victory was chiefly due to Romulus himself, who displayed every possible combination of skill and bravery, and seemed endowed with strength and swiftness far beyond the lot of man. But there is a statement made by some writers which is altogether fabulous, nay rather, wholly incredible, namely, that of the fourteen thousand Tuscans who fell in this battle, more than half were slain by Romulus with his own hand; for even the Messenians seem to have been boastfully extravagant in saying that Aristomenes thrice offered sacrifice for a hundred Lacedaemonian enemies slain.e

4 After the rout of the enemy, Romulus suffered the survivors to escape, and moved upon their city itself. But they could not hold out after so great a reverse, and suing for peace, made a treaty of friendship for a hundred years, giving up a large portion of their territory, called Septempagium, or the Seven Districts, abandoning their salt-works along the river, and delivering up fifty of their chief men as hostages. 5 Romulus also celebrated a triumph for this victory on the Ides of October, having in his train, besides many other captives, the leader of the Veientes, an elderly man, who seems to have conducted the campaign unwisely, and without the experience to be expected of his years. Wherefore to this very day, in offering a sacrifice for victory, they lead an old man through the forum to the Capitol, wearing a boy’s toga with a bulla attached to it, while the herald cries: “Sardians for sale!” For the Tuscans are said to be colonists from Sardis, and Veii is a Tuscan city.

26 1 This was the last war waged by Romulus. Afterwards, like many, nay, like almost all men who have been lifted by great and unexpected strokes of good fortune to power and dignity, even he was emboldened by his achievements to take on a haughtier bearing, to renounce his popular ways, and to change to the ways of a monarch, which were made hateful and vexatious first by the state which he assumed. For he dressed in a scarlet tunic, 2 and wore over it a toga bordered with purple, and sat on a recumbent throne when he gave audience. And he had always about him some young men called Celeres, from their swiftness in doing service. Others, too, went before him with staves, keeping off the populace, and they were girt with thongs, with which to bind at once those whom he ordered to be bound.

3 To bind, in the Latin language, was formerly “ligare,” though now it is “alligare”; whence the wand-bearers are called “lictores,” and the wands themselves “bacula,” from the use, in the time of Romulus, of “bakteriai,” which is the Greek word for staves. But it is likely that the “c” in the word “lictores,” as now used, has been added, and that the word was formerly “litores,” which is the Greek “leitourgoi,” meaning public servants. For the Greeks still call a public hall “leïton,” and the people “laos.”

27 1 But when his grandfather Numitor died in Alba, and its throne devolved upon Romulus, he courted the favour of the people by putting the government in their hands, and appointed an annual ruler for the Albans. In this way he taught the influential men at Rome also to seek after a form of government which was independent and without a king, where all in turn were subjects and rulers. For by this time not even the so called patricians had any share in the administration of affairs, but a name and garb of honour was all that was left them, and they assembled in their council-chamber more from custom than for giving advice. 2 Once there, they listened in silence to the commands of the king, and went their way with this advantage only over the multitude, that they learned earlier what he had decreed. The rest of his proceedings were of lesser importance; but when of his own motion merely he divided the territory acquired in war among his soldiers, and gave back their hostages to the Veientes, without the consent or wish of the patricians, he was thought to be insulting their senate outright. 3 Wherefore suspicion and calumny fell upon that body when he disappeared unaccountably a short time after. He disappeared on the Nones of July, as they now call the month, then Quintilis, leaving no certain account nor even any generally accepted tradition of his death, aside from the date of it, which I have just given. For on that day many ceremonies are still performed which bear a likeness to what then came to pass.

4 Nor need we wonder at this uncertainty, since although Scipio Africanus died at home after dinner, there is no convincing proof of the manner of his end, but some say that he passed away naturally, being of a sickly habit, some that he died of poison administered by his own hand, and some that his enemies broke into his house at night and smothered him. 5 And yet Scipio’s dead body lay exposed for all to see, and all who beheld it formed therefrom some suspicion and conjecture of what had happened to it; whereas Romulus disappeared suddenly, and no portion of his body or fragment of his clothing remained to be seen. But some conjectured that the senators, convened in the temple of Vulcan, fell upon him and slew him, then cut his body in pieces, put each a portion into the folds of his robe, and so carried him away. 6 Others think that it was neither in the temple of Vulcan nor when the senators alone were present that he disappeared, but that he was holding an assembly of the people outside the city near the so called Goat’s Marsh, when suddenly strange and unaccountable disorders with incredible changes filled the air; the light of the sun failed, and night came down upon them, not with peace and quiet, but with awful peals of thunder and furious blasts driving rain from every quarter, 7 during which the multitude dispersed and fled, but the nobles gathered closely together; and when the storm had ceased, and the sun shone out, and the multitude, now gathered together again in the same place as before, anxiously sought for their king, the nobles would not suffer them to inquire into his disappearance nor busy themselves about it, but exhorted them all to honour and revere Romulus, since he had been caught up into heaven, and was to be a benevolent god for them instead of a good king. 8 The multitude, accordingly, believing this and rejoicing in it, went away to worship him with good hopes of his favour; but there were some, it is said, who tested the matter in a bitter and hostile spirit, and confounded the patricians with the accusation of imposing a silly tale upon the people, and of being themselves the murderers of the king.

28 1 At this pass, then, it is said that one of the patricians, a man of noblest birth, and of the most reputable character, a trusted and intimate friend also of Romulus himself, and one of the colonists from Alba, Julius Proculus by name, went into the forum and solemnly swore by the most sacred emblems before all the people that, as he was travelling on the road, he had seen Romulus coming to meet him, fair and stately to the eye as never before, and arrayed in bright and shining armour. 2 He himself, then, affrighted at the sight, had said: “O King, what possessed thee, or what purpose hadst thou, that thou hast left us patricians a prey to unjust and wicked accusations, and the whole city sorrowing without end at the loss of its father?” Whereupon Romulus had replied: “It was the pleasure of the gods, O Proculus, from whom I came, that I should be with mankind only a short time, and that after founding a city destined to be the greatest on earth for empire and glory, I should dwell again in heaven. So farewell, and tell the Romans that if they practise self-restraint, and add to it valour, they will reach the utmost heights of human power. And I will be your propitious deity, Quirinus.” 3 These things seemed to the Romans worthy of belief, from the character of the man who related them, and from the oath which he had taken; moreover, some influence from heaven also, akin to inspiration, laid hold upon their emotions, for no man contradicted Proculus, but all put aside suspicion and calumny and prayed to Quirinus, and honoured him as a god.

4 Now this is like the fables which the Greeks tell about Aristeas of Proconnesus and Cleomedes of Astypaleia. For they say that Aristeas died in a fuller’s shop, and that when his friends came to fetch away his body, it had vanished out of sight; and presently certain travellers returning from abroad said they had met Aristeas journeying towards Croton. Cleomedes also, who was of gigantic strength and stature, of uncontrolled temper, and like a mad man, is said to have done many deeds of violence, and finally, in a school for boys, he smote with his fist the pillar which supported the roof, broke it in two, and brought down the house. 5 The boys were killed, and Cleomedes, being pursued, took refuge in a great chest, closed the lid down, and held it so fast that many men with their united strength could not pull it up; but when they broke the chest to pieces, the man was not to be found, alive or dead. In their dismay, then, they sent messengers to consult the oracle at Delphi, and the Pythian priestess gave them this answer: —

“Last of the heroes he, Cleomedes, Astypalaean.”

6 It is said also that the body of Alcmene disappeared, as they were carrying her forth for burial, and a stone was seen lying on the bier instead. In short, many such fables are told by writers who improbably ascribe divinity to the mortal features in human nature, as well as to the divine.

At any rate, to reject entirely the divinity of human virtue, were impious and base; but to mix heaven with earth is foolish. Let us therefore take the safe course and grant, with Pindar, that

“Our bodies all must follow death’s supreme behest,

But something living still survives, an image of life, for this alone

Comes from the gods.”

7 Yes, it comes from them, and to them it returns, not with its body, but only when it is most completely separated and set free from the body, and becomes altogether pure, fleshless, and undefiled. For “a dry soul is best,” according to Heracleitus, and it flies from the body as lightning flashes from a cloud. But the soul which is contaminated with body, and surfeited with body, like a damp and heavy exhalation, is slow to release itself and slow to rise towards its source. 8 We must not, therefore, violate nature by sending the bodies of good men with their souls to heaven, but implicitly believe that their virtues and their souls, in accordance with nature and divine justice, ascend from men to heroes, from heroes to demi-gods, and from demi-gods, after they have been made pure and holy, as in the final rites of initiation, and have freed themselves from mortality and sense, to gods, not by civic law, but in very truth and according to right reason, thus achieving the fairest and most blessed consummation.

29 1 To the surname of Quirinus bestowed on Romulus, some give the meaning of Mars, others that of Citizen, because the citizens were called Quirites; but others say that the ancients called the spear-head (or the whole spear) “quiris,” and gave the epithet Quiritis to the Juno whose statue leans upon a spear, and the name Mars to a spear consecrated in the Regia, and a spear as well as a prize to those who performed great exploits in war; and that Romulus was therefore called Quirinus as a martial, or spear-wielding, god. 2 However that may be, a temple in his honour is built on the hill called Quirinalis after him, and the day on which he vanished is called People’s Flight, and Capratine Nones, because they go out of the city and sacrifice at the Goat’s Marsh; and “capra” is their word for she-goat. And as they go forth to the sacrifice, they shout out many local names, like Marcus, Lucius, and Caius, in imitation of the way in which, on the day when Romulus disappeared, they called upon one another in fear and confusion.

3 Some, however, say that this imitation is not one of flight, but of haste and eagerness, and explain it as referring to the following occasion. After the Gauls had captured Rome and been driven out by Camillus, and when the city was still too weak to recover itself readily, an expedition was made against it by many of the Latins, under the command of Livius Postumius. This general stationed his army not far from Rome, and sent a herald with the message that the Latins wished to renew their ancient relationship and affinity with the Romans, by fresh intermarriages between the two peoples. 4 If, therefore, the Romans would send them a goodly number of virgins and their widows, they should have peace and friendship, such as they had formerly made with the Sabines on like terms. On hearing this message, the Romans hesitated between going to war, which they feared, and the surrender of their women, which they thought no more desirable to have them captured. But while they were in this perplexity, a serving-maid called Philotis (or, as some say, Tutola) advised them to do neither, but by the use of a stratagem to escape alike the war and the giving of hostages. 5 Now the stratagem was this, that they should send to the enemy Philotis herself, and with her other comely serving-maids arrayed like free-born women; then in the night Philotis was to display a signal-fire, at which the Romans were to come in arms and deal with their enemies while asleep. This was done, with the approval of the Latins, and Philotis displayed the signal-fire from a certain wild fig-tree, screening it behind with coverlets and draperies, so that its light was unseen by the enemy, but visible to the Romans. 6 When, accordingly, they beheld it, they sallied forth at once in great haste, and because of their haste calling upon one another many times at the gates. They fell upon their enemies when they least expected it and mastered them, and now celebrate this festival in memory of their victory. And the Nones on which it falls are called Capratine from the wild fig-tree, the Roman name for which is “caprificus,” and they feast the women outside the city in booths made of fig-tree boughs. Then the serving-maids run about in companies and play, after which they strike and throw stones at one another, in token that on that earlier day they assisted the Romans and shared with them in their battle.

7 These details are accepted by many historians, but their calling out one another’s names in the day time, and their marching out to the Goat’s Marsh as for sacrifice, seem to be more consonant with the former story, unless, to be sure, both actions happened to take place on the same day in different periods. Romulus is said to have been fifty-four years of age, and in the thirty-eighth year of his reign when he disappeared from among men.

Comparison of Theseus and Romulus

1 1 Such, then, are the memorable things about Romulus and Theseus which I have been able to learn. And it appears, first of all, that Theseus, of his own choice, when no one compelled him, but when it was possible for him to reign without fear at Troezen as heir to no inglorious realm, of his own accord reached out after great achievements; whereas Romulus, to escape present servitude and impending punishment, became simply “courageous out of fear,” as Plato phrases it, and through the dread of extreme penalties proceeded to perform great exploits under compulsion. 2 In the second place, the chief deed of Romulus was the slaying of a single tyrant of Alba; whereas for mere by adventures and preliminary struggles Theseus had Sciron, Sinis, Procrustes and Corynetes, by slaying and chastising whom he freed Greece from dreadful tyrants before those who were saved by him knew who he was. Theseus might have travelled to Athens by sea without any trouble, and suffering no outrage at the hands of those robbers; whereas Romulus could not be without trouble while Amulius lived. 3 And there is strong proof of this; for Theseus, although he had suffered no wrong at their hands himself, sallied out in behalf of others against those miscreants; while Romulus and Remus, as long as they themselves were not harmed by the tyrant, suffered him to wrong everybody else. And surely, if it was a great thing for Romulus to be wounded in a battle with the Sabines, and to slay Acron, and to conquer many enemies in battle, with these exploits we may compare, on the part of Theseus, his battle with the Centaurs and his campaign against the Amazons; 4 but as for the daring which he showed about the Cretan tribute, whether that was food for some monster, or a sacrifice on the tomb of Androgeos, or whether — and this is the mildest form of the story — he offered himself for inglorious and dishonourable servitude among insolent and cruel men when he volunteered to sail away with maidens and young boys, words cannot depict such courage, magnanimity, righteous zeal for the common good, or yearning for glory and virtue. 5 It is therefore my opinion that the philosophers give an excellent definition of love when they call it “a ministration of the gods for the care and preservation of the young.” For Ariadne’s love seems to have been, more than anything else, a god’s work, and a device whereby Theseus should be saved. And we should not blame her for loving him, but rather wonder that all men and women were not thus affected towards him; and if she alone felt this passion, I should say, for my part, that she was properly worthy of a god’s love, since she was fond of virtue, fond of goodness, and a lover of the highest qualities in man.

2 1 Although Theseus and Romulus were both statesmen by nature, neither maintained to the end the true character of a king, but both deviated from it and underwent a change, the former in the direction of democracy, the latter in the direction of tyranny, making thus the same mistake through opposite affections. For the ruler must preserve first of all the realm itself, and this is preserved no less by refraining from what is unbecoming than by cleaving to what is becoming. 2 But he who remits or extends his authority is no longer a king or a ruler; he becomes either a demagogue or a despot, and implants hatred or contempt in the hearts of his subjects. However, the first error seems to arise from kindliness and humanity; the second from selfishness and severity.

3 1 Again, if the misfortunes of men are not to be attributed altogether to fortune, but to the different habits and passions which will be found underlying them, then no one shall acquit Romulus of unreasoning anger or hasty and senseless wrath in dealing with his brother, nor Theseus in dealing with his son, although the cause which stirred his anger leads us to be more lenient towards the one who was overthrown by a stronger provocation, as by a heavier blow. 2 For since the difference between Romulus and his brother arose from a deliberate investigation of the common welfare, there could have been no good reason for his flying into such a passion; while Theseus was impelled to wrong his son by love, jealousy, and a woman’s slanders, the overmastering power of which very few men have escaped. And what is of great weight, the anger of Romulus vented itself in action and a deed of most unfortunate issue; whereas the wrath of Theseus got no farther than words of abuse and an old man’s curse, and the rest of the youth’s calamities seem to have been due to fortune. On these counts, therefore, one would give his vote of preference to Theseus.

4 1 But Romulus has, in the first place, this great superiority, that he rose to eminence from the smallest beginnings. For he and his brother were reputed to be slaves and sons of swineherds, and yet they not only made themselves free, but freed first almost all the Latins, enjoying at one and the same time such most honourable titles as slayers of their foes, saviours of their kindred and friends, kings of races and peoples, founders of cities; not transplanters, as Theseus was, who put together and consolidated one dwelling-place out of many, but demolished many cities bearing the names of ancient kings and heroes. 2 Romulus, it is true, did this later, compelling his enemies to tear down and obliterate their dwellings and enrol themselves among their conquerors; but at first, not by removing or enlarging a city which already existed, but by creating one from nothing, and by acquiring for himself at once territory, country, kingdom, clans, marriages and relationships, he ruined no one and killed no one, but was a benefactor of men without homes and hearths, who wished instead to be a people and citizens of a common city. Robbers and miscreants, it is true, he did not slay, but he subdued nations in war, laid cities low, and triumphed over kings and commanders.

5 1 Besides, there is dispute as to who actually slew Remus, and most of the blame for the deed is put upon others than Romulus; but Romulus did unquestionably save his mother from destruction, and he set his grandfather, who was living in inglorious and dishonourable subjection, upon the throne of Aeneas. Moreover, he did him many favours of his own accord, and did him no harm, not even inadvertently.  Theseus, on the contrary, for his forgetfulness and neglect of the command about the sail, can hardly, I think, escape the charge of parricide, be the plea of his advocate ever so long and his judges ever so lenient. Indeed, a certain Attic writer, conscious that would be defenders of Theseus have a difficult task, feigns that Aegeus, on the approach of the ship, ran up to the acropolis in his eagerness to catch sight of her, and stumbled and fell down the cliff; as though he were without a retinue, or was hurrying down to the sea without any servants.

6 1 Furthermore, the transgressions of Theseus in his rapes of women admit of no plausible excuse. This is true, first, because there were so many; for he carried off Ariadne, Antiope, Anaxo of Troezen, and at last Helen, when he was past his prime and she had not reached her prime, but was an unripe child, while he was already of an age too great for even lawful wedlock. It is true, secondly, because of the reason for them; for the daughters of Troezenians and Laconians and Amazons were not betrothed to him, and were no worthier, surely, to be the mothers of his children than the daughters of Erechtheus and Cecrops at Athens. 2 But one may suspect that these deeds of his were done in lustful wantonness. Romulus, on the other hand, in the first place, although he carried off nearly eight hundred women, took them not all to wife, but only one, as he says, Hersilia, and distributed the rest among the best of the citizens. And in the second place, by the subsequent honour, love, and righteous treatment given to these women, he made it clear that his deed of violence and injustice was a most honourable achievement, and one most adapted to promote political partnership. 3 In this way he intermixed and blended the two peoples with one another, and supplied his state with a flowing fountain of strength and good will for the time to come. And to the modesty, tenderness, and stability which he imparted to the marriage relation, time is witness. For in two hundred and thirty years no man ventured to leave his wife, nor any woman her husband; but, just as the very curious among the Greeks can name the first parricide or matricide, so the Romans all know that Spurius Carvilius was the first to put away his wife, accusing her of barrenness. 4 And the immediate results of his act, as well as the long lapse of time, witness in favour of Romulus. For the two kings shared the government in common, and the two peoples the rights and duty of citizenship, because of that intermarriage; whereas from the marriages of Theseus the Athenians got no new friends at all, nor even any community of enterprise whatsoever, but enmities, wars, slaughters of citizens, and at last the loss of Aphidnae, and an escape from the fate which Troy suffered by reason of Alexander, only because their enemies took compassion on them when they called upon them worshipfully as gods. 5 However, the mother of Theseus was not only in danger, but actually suffered the fate of Hecuba when she was deserted and abandoned by her son, unless, indeed, the tale of her captivity is fictitious, and it may well be false, as well as most of the other stories. For example, the tales told of divine intervention in their lives are in great contrast; for Romulus was preserved by a signal favour of the gods, while the oracle given to Aegeus, forbidding him to approach a woman while in a foreign land, seems to indicate that the birth of Theseus was not agreeable to the will of the gods.

Lycurgus

(39) 1 1 Concerning Lycurgus the lawgiver, in general, nothing can be said which is not disputed, since indeed there are different accounts of his birth, his travels, his death, and above all, of his work as lawmaker and statesman; and there is least agreement among historians as to the times in which the man lived. Some say that he flourished at the same time with Iphitus, and in concert with him established the Olympic truce. Among these is Aristotle the philosopher, and he alleges as proof the discus at Olympia on which an inscription preserves the name of Lycurgus. 2 But those who compute the time by the successions of kings at Sparta, like Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, prove that Lycurgus was many years earlier than the first Olympiad. And Timaeus conjectures that there were two Lycurgus at Sparta, at different times, and that to one of them the achievements of both were ascribed, owing to his greater fame; he thinks also that the elder of the two lived not far from the times of Homer, and some assert that he actually met Homer face to face. 03 Xenophon, also, makes an impression of simplicity in the passage where he says that Lycurgus lived in the time of the Heracleidae. For in lineage, of course, the latest of the Spartan kings were also Heracleidae; but Xenophon apparently wishes to use the name Heracleidae of the first and more immediate descendants of Heracles, so famous in story.

However, although the history of these times is such a maze, I shall try, in presenting my narrative, to follow those authors who are least contradicted, or who have the most notable witnesses for what they have written about the man. 4 For instance, Simonides the poet says that Lycurgus was not the son of Eunomus, but that both Lycurgus and Eunomus were sons of Prytanis; whereas most writers give a different genealogy, as follows: Aristodemus begat Procles, Procles begat Soüs, Soüs begat Eurypon, and he begat Prytanis, from whom sprang Eunomus, and from Eunomus Polydectes by a first wife, and Lycurgus, who was a younger son by a second wife, Dionassa, as Dieutychidas has written, making Lycurgus sixth from Procles, and eleventh from Heracles.

2 1 Of these ancestors of Lycurgus, Soüs was most famous, under whom the Spartans made the Helots their slaves, and acquired by conquest from the Arcadians a large additional tract of land. It is also related of this Soüs that when he was besieged by the Cleitorians in a rough and waterless place, he agreed to surrender to them the land which he had conquered if he himself and all his men with him should drink from the adjacent spring. 2 After the oaths to this agreement were taken, he assembled his men and offered his kingdom to the one who should not drink; no one of them, however, could forbear, but all of them drank, whereupon Soüs himself went down last of all to the water, sprinkled his face merely, while the enemy were still at hand to see, and then marched away and retained his territory, on the plea that all had not drunk.

But although on these grounds he was held in great admiration, his royal line was not named from him, but were called Eurypontids from his son, because Eurypon appears to have been the first king to relax the excessive absolutism of his sway, seeking favour and popularity with the multitude. 3 But in consequence of such relaxation the people grew bold, and succeeding kings were some of them hated for trying to force their way with the multitude, and some were brought low by their desire for favour or through weakness, so that lawlessness and confusion prevailed at Sparta for a long time; and it was owing to this that the father of Lycurgus, a reigning king, lost his life. For as he was trying to separate some rioters, he was stabbed to death with a butcher’s knife, leaving the kingdom to his elder son, Polydectes.

3 1 Polydectes also died soon afterwards, and then, as was generally thought, the kingdom devolved upon Lycurgus; and until his brother’s wife was known to be with child, he was king. But as soon as he learned of this, he declared that the kingdom belonged to her offspring, if it should be male, and himself administered the government only as guardian. Now the guardians of fatherless kings are called “prodikoi” by the Lacedaemonians. 2 Presently, however, the woman made secret overtures to him, proposing to destroy her unborn babe on condition that he would marry her when he was a king of Sparta; and although he detested her character, he did not reject her proposition, but pretended to approve and accept it. He told her, however, that she need not use drugs to produce a miscarriage, thereby injuring her health and endangering her life, for he would see to it himself that as soon as her child was born it should be put out of the way. 3 In this manner he managed to bring the woman to her full time, and when he learned that she was in labour, he sent attendants and watchers for her delivery, with orders, if a girl should be born, to hand it over to the women, but if a boy, to bring it to him, no matter what he was doing. 41 And it came to pass that as he was at supper with the chief magistrates, a male child was born, and his servants brought the little boy to him. 4 He took it in his arms, as we are told, and said to those who were at table with him, “A king is born unto you, O men of Sparta;” then he laid it down in the royal seat and named it Charilaüs, or People’s Joy, because all present were filled with joy, admiring as they did his lofty spirit and his righteousness. And so he was king only eight months in all. But on other accounts also he was revered by his fellow-citizens, and more than those who obeyed because he was guardian of the king and had royal power in his hands, were those who clave to him for his virtues and were ready and willing to do his bidding.

5 There was a party, however, which envied him and sought to impede the growing power of so young a man, especially the kinsmen and friends of the queen-mother, who thought she had been treated with insolence. Her brother, Leonidas, actually railed at Lycurgus once quite boldly, assuring him that he knew well that Lycurgus would one day be king, thereby promoting suspicion and paving the way for the accusation, in case any thing happened to the king, that he had plotted against his life. Some such talk was set in circulation by the queen-mother also, in consequence of which Lycurgus was sorely troubled and fearful of what might be in store for him. He therefore determined to avoid suspicion by travelling abroad, and to continue his wanderings until his nephew should come of age and beget a son to succeed him on the throne.

4 1 With this purpose, he set sail, and came first to Crete. Here he studied the various forms of government and made the acquaintance of their most distinguished men. Of some things he heartily approved, and adopted some of their laws, that he might carry them home with him and put them in use; for some things he had only contempt. One of the men regarded there as wise statesmen was Thales, whom Lycurgus persuaded, out of favour and friendship, to go on a mission to Sparta. Now Thales passed as a lyric poet, and screened himself behind this art, but in reality he did the work of one of the mightiest lawgivers. 2 For his odes were so many exhortations to obedience and harmony, and their measured rhythms were permeated with ordered tranquillity, so that those who listened to them were insensibly softened in their dispositions, insomuch that they renounced the mutual hatreds which were so rife at that time, and dwelt together in a common pursuit of what was high and noble. Thales, therefore, after a fashion, was a forerunner in Sparta of Lycurgus and his discipline.

3 From Crete, Lycurgus sailed to Asia, with the desire, as we are told, of comparing with the Cretan civilization, which was simple and severe, that of the Ionians, which was extravagant and luxurious, just as a physician compares with healthy bodies those which are unsound and sickly; he could then study the difference in their modes of life and forms of government. 4 There too, as it would appear, he made his first acquaintance with the poems of Homer, which were preserved among the posterity of Creophylus; and when he saw that the political and disciplinary lessons contained in them were worthy of no less serious attention than the incentives to pleasure and license which they supplied, he eagerly copied and compiled them in order to take them home with him. For these epics already had a certain faint reputation among the Greeks, and a few were in possession of certain portions of them, as the poems were carried here and there by chance; but Lycurgus was the very first to make them really known.

5 The Aegyptians think that Lycurgus visited them also, and so ardently admired their separation of the military from the other classes of society that he transferred it to Sparta, and by removing mechanics and artisans from participation in the government, made his civil polity really refined and pure. At any rate, this assertion of the Aegyptians is confirmed by some Greek historians. 426 But that Lycurgus visited Libya and Iberia also, and that he wandered over India and had conferences with the Gymnosophists, no one has stated, so far as I know, except Aristocrates the son of Hipparchus, the Spartan.

5 1 The Lacedaemonians missed Lycurgus sorely, and sent for him many times. They felt that their kings were such in name and station merely, but in everything else were nothing better than their subjects, while in him there was a nature fitted to lead, and a power to make men follow him. However, not even the kings were averse to having him at home, but hoped that in his presence their subjects would treat them with less insolence. 2 Returning, then, to a people thus disposed, he at once undertook to revolutionize the civil polity. He was convinced that a partial change of the laws would be of no avail whatsoever, but that he must proceed as a physician would with a patient who was debilitated and full of all sorts of diseases; he must reduce and alter the existing temperament by means of drugs and purges, and introduce a new and different regimen. 3 Full of this determination, he first made a journey to Delphi, and after sacrificing to the god and consulting the oracle, he returned with that famous response in which the Pythian priestess addressed him as “beloved of the gods, and rather god than man,” and said that the god had granted his prayer for good laws, and promised him a constitution which should be the best in the world.

4 Thus encouraged, he tried to bring the chief men of Sparta over to his side, and exhorted them to put their hands to the work with him, explaining his designs secretly to his friends at first, then little by little engaging more and uniting them to attempt the task. And when the time for action came, he ordered thirty of the chief men to go armed into the market-place at break of day, to strike consternation and terror into those of the opposite party. The names of twenty of the most eminent among them have been recorded by Hermippus; but the man who had the largest share in all the undertakings of Lycurgus and co-operated with him in the enactment of his laws, bore the name of Arthmiadas. 5 When the tumult began, King Charilaüs, fearing that the whole affair was a conspiracy against himself, fled for refuge to the Brazen House; but he was soon convinced of his error, and having exacted oaths for his safety from the agitators, left his place of refuge, and even joined them in their enterprise, being of a gentle and yielding disposition, so much so, indeed, that Archelaüs, his royal colleague, is said to have remarked to those who were extolling the young king, “How can Charilaüs be a good man, when he has no severity even for the bad?”

6 Among the many innovations which Lycurgus made, the first and most important was his institution of a senate, or Council of Elders, which, as Plato says, by being blended with the “feverish” government of the kings, and by having an equal vote with them in matters of the highest importance, brought safety and due moderation into counsels of state. For before this the civil polity was veering and unsteady, inclining at one time to follow the kings towards tyranny, and at another to follow the multitude towards democracy; 7 but now, by making the power of the senate a sort of ballast for the ship of state and putting her on a steady keel, it achieved the safest and the most orderly arrangement, since the twenty-eight senators always took the side of the kings when it was a question of curbing democracy, and, on the other hand, always strengthened the people to withstand the encroachments of tyranny. The number of the senators was fixed at twenty-eight because, according to Aristotle, two of the thirty original associates of Lycurgus abandoned the enterprise from lack of courage. 8 But Sphaerus says that this was originally the number of those who shared the confidence of Lycurgus. Possibly there is some virtue in this number being made up of seven multiplied by four, apart from the fact that, being equal to the sum of its own factors, it is the next perfect number after six. But in my own opinion, Lycurgus made the senators of just that number in order that the total might be thirty 43 when the two kings were added to the eight and twenty.

6 1 So eager was Lycurgus for the establishment of this form of government, that he obtained an oracle from Delphi about it, which they call a “rhetra.” And this is the way it runs: “When thou hast built a temple to Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania, divided the people into ‘phylai’ and into ‘obai,’ and established a senate of thirty members, including the ‘archagetai,’ then from time to time ‘appellazein’ between Babyca and Cnacion, and there introduce and rescind measures; but the people must have the deciding voice and the power.” 2 In these clauses, the “phylai” and the “obai” refer to divisions and distributions of the people into clans and phratries, or brotherhoods; by “archagetai” the kings are designated, and “appellazein” means to assemble the people, with a reference to Apollo, the Pythian god, who was the source and author of the polity. The Babyca is now called Cheimarrus, and the Cnacion Oenus; but Aristotle says that Cnacion is a river, and Babyca a bridge. 3 Between these they held their assemblies, having neither halls nor any other kind of building for the purpose. For by such things Lycurgus thought good counsel was not promoted, but rather discouraged, since the serious purposes of an assembly were rendered foolish and futile by vain thoughts, as they gazed upon statues and paintings, or scenic embellishments, or extravagantly decorated roofs of council halls. When the multitude was thus assembled, no one of them was permitted to make a motion, but the motion laid before them by the senators and kings could be accepted or rejected by the people. 4 Afterwards, however, when the people by additions and subtractions perverted and distorted the sense of motions laid before them, Kings Polydorus and Theopompus inserted this clause into the rhetra: “But if the people should adopt a distorted motion, the senators and kings shall have power of adjournment”; that is, should not ratify the vote, but dismiss outright and dissolve the session, on the ground that it was perverting and changing the motion contrary to the best interests of the state. 5 And they were actually able to persuade the city that the god authorized this addition to the rhetra, as Tyrtaeus reminds us in these verses: —

“Phoebus Apollo’s the mandate was which they brought from Pytho,

Voicing the will of the god, nor were his words unfulfilled:

Sway in the council and honours divine belong to the princes

Under whose care has been set Sparta’s city of charm;

Second to them are the elders, and next come the men of the people

Duly confirming by vote unperverted decrees.”

7 1 Although Lycurgus thus tempered his civil polity, nevertheless the oligarchical element in it was still unmixed and dominant, and his successors, seeing it “swelling and foaming,” as Plato says, “imposed as it were a curb upon it, namely, the power of the ephors.” It was about a hundred and thirty years after Lycurgus that the first ephors, Elatus and his colleagues, were appointed, in the reign of Theopompus. 2 This king, they say, on being reviled by his wife because the royal power, when he handed it over to his sons, would be less than when he received it, said: “Nay, but greater, in that it will last longer.” And in fact, by renouncing excessive claims and freeing itself from jealous hate, royalty at Sparta escaped its perils, so that the Spartan kings did not experience the fate which the Messenians and Argives inflicted upon their kings, who were unwilling to yield at all or remit their power in favour of the people. And this brings into the clearest light the wisdom and foresight of Lycurgus, when we contrast the factions and misgovernment of the peoples and kings of Messenia and Argos, who were kinsmen and neighbours of the Spartans. 3 They were on an equality with the Spartans in the beginning, and in the allotment of territory were thought to be even better off than they, and yet their prosperity did not last long, but what with the insolent temper of their kings and the unreasonableness of their peoples, their established institutions were confounded, 44 and they made it clear that it was in very truth a divine blessing which the Spartans had enjoyed in the man who framed and tempered their civil polity for them. These events, however, were of later date.

8 1 A second, and a very bold political measure of Lycurgus, is his redistribution of the land. For there was a dreadful inequality in this regard, the city was heavily burdened with indigent and helpless people, and wealth was wholly concentrated in the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, to banish insolence and envy and crime and luxury, and those yet more deep-seated and afflictive diseases of the state, poverty and wealth, 2 he persuaded his fellow-citizens to make one parcel of all their territory and divide it up anew, and to live with one another on a basis of entire uniformity and equality in the means of subsistence, seeking preëminence through virtue alone, assured that there was no other difference or inequality between man and man than that which was established by blame for base actions and praise for good ones.

3 Suiting the deed to the word, he distributed the rest of the Laconian land among the “perioeci,” or free provincials, in thirty thousand lots, and that which belonged to the city of Sparta, in nine thousand lots, to as many genuine Spartans. But some say that Lycurgus distributed only six thousand lots among the Spartans, and that three thousand were afterwards added by Polydorus; others still, that Polydorus added half of the nine thousand to the half distributed by Lycurgus. 4 The lot of each was large enough to produce annually seventy bushels of barley for a man and twelve for his wife, with a proportionate amount of wine and oil. Lycurgus thought that a lot of this size would be sufficient for them, since they needed sustenance enough to promote vigour and health of body, and nothing else. And it is said that on returning from a journey some time afterwards, as he traversed the land just after the harvest, and saw the heaps of grain standing parallel and equal to one another, he smiled, and said to them that were by: “All Laconia looks like a family estate newly divided among many brothers.”

9 1 Next, he undertook to divide up their movable property also, in order that every vestige of unevenness and inequality might be removed; and when he saw that they could not bear to have it taken from them directly, he took another course, and overcame their avarice by political devices. In the first place, he withdrew all gold and silver money from currency, and ordained the use of iron money only.a Then to a great weight and mass of this he gave a trifling value, so that ten minas’ worth required a large store-room in the house, and a yoke of cattle to transport it. 2 When this money obtained currency, many sorts of iniquity went into exile from Lacedaemon. For who would steal, or receive as a bribe, or rob, or plunder that which could neither be concealed, nor possessed with satisfaction, nay, nor even cut to pieces with any profit? For vinegar was used, as we are told, to quench the red-hot iron, robbing it of its temper and making it worthless for any other purpose, when once it had become brittle and hard to work.

3 In the next place, he banished the unnecessary and superfluous arts. And even without such banishment most of them would have departed with the old coinage, since there was no sale for their products. For the iron money could not be carried into the rest of Greece, nor had it any value there, but was rather held in ridicule. It was not possible, therefore, to buy any foreign wares or bric-à brac; no merchant-seamen brought freight into their harbours; no rhetoric teacher set foot on Laconian soil, no vagabond soothsayer, no keeper of harlots, no gold- or silver-smith, since there was no money there. 4 But luxury, thus gradually deprived of that which stimulated and supported it, died away of itself, 45 and men of large possessions had no advantage over the poor, because their wealth found no public outlet, but had to be stored up at home in idleness. In this way it came about that such common and necessary utensils as bedsteads, chairs, and tables were most excellently made among them, and the Laconian “kothon,” or drinking-cup, was in very high repute for usefulness among soldiers in active service, as Critias tells us. 5 For its colour concealed the disagreeable appearance of the water which they were often compelled to drink, and its curving lips caught the muddy sediment and held it inside, so that only the purer part reached the mouth of the drinker. For all this they had to thank their lawgiver; since their artisans were now freed from useless tasks, and displayed the beauty of their workmanship in objects of constant and necessary use.

10 1 With a view to attack luxury still more and remove the thirst for wealth, he introduced his third and most exquisite political device, namely, the institution of common messes, so that they might eat with one another in companies, of common and specified foods, and not take their meals at home, reclining on costly couches at costly tables, delivering themselves into the hands of servants and cooks to be fattened in the dark, like voracious animals, 2 and ruining not only their characters but also their bodies, by surrendering them to every desire and all sorts of surfeit, which call for long sleeps, hot baths, abundant rest, and, as it were, daily nursing and tending. This was surely a great achievement, but it was a still greater one to make wealth “an object of no desire,” as Theophrastus says, and even “unwealth,” by this community of meals and simplicity of diet. 3 For the rich man could neither use nor enjoy nor even see or display his abundant means, when he went to the same meal as the poor man; so that it was in Sparta alone, of all the cities under the sun, that men could have that far-famed sight, a Plutus blind, and lying as lifeless and motionless as a picture. For the rich could not even dine beforehand at home and then go to the common mess with full stomachs, but the rest kept careful watch of him who did not eat and drink with them, and reviled him as a weakling, and one too effeminate for the common diet.

11 It was due, therefore, to this last political device above all, that the wealthy citizens were incensed against Lycurgus, and banding together against him, denounced him publicly with angry shouts and cries; finally many pelted him with stones, so that he ran from the market-place. He succeeded in reaching sanctuary before the rest laid hands on him; but one young man, Alcander, otherwise no mean nature, but hasty and passionate, pressed hard upon him, and as he turned about, smote him with his staff and put out one of his eyes. Lycurgus, however, in memory of his misfortune, built a temple to Athena Optilitis, so called from “optilus,” which is the local Doric word for eye. Some writers, however, of whom one is Dioscorides, who wrote a treatise on the Spartan civil polity, say that although Lycurgus was struck in the eye, his eye was not blinded, but he built the temple to the goddess as a thank-offering for its healing. Be that as it may, the Spartan practice of carrying staves into their assemblies was abandoned after this unfortunate accident.

12 1 As for the public messes, the Cretans call them “andreia,” but the Lacedaemonians, “phiditia,” either because they are conducive to friendship and friendliness, “phiditia” being equivalent to “philitia”; or, because they accustom men to simplicity and thrift, for which their word is “pheido.” But it is quite possible, as some say, that the first letter of the word “phiditia” has been added to it, making “phiditia” out of “editia,” which refers merely to meals and eating. 2 They met in companies of fifteen, a few more or less, and each one of the mess-mates contributed monthly a bushel of barley-meal, eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two and a half pounds of figs, and in addition to this, a very small sum of money for such relishes as flesh and fish. Besides this, whenever any one made a sacrifice of first fruits, or brought home game from the hunt, he sent a portion to his mess. For whenever any one was belated by a sacrifice or the chase, he was allowed to sup at home, but the rest had to be at the mess. 3 For a long time this custom of eating at common mess-tables was rigidly observed. For instance, when King Agis, on returning from an expedition in which he had been victorious over the Athenians, wished to sup at home with his wife, and sent for his rations, the polemarchs refused to send them to him; and when on the following day his anger led him to omit the customary sacrifice, they laid a fine upon him.

4 Boys also used to come to these public messes, as if they were attending schools of sobriety; there they would listen to political discussions and see instructive models of liberal breeding. There they themselves also became accustomed to sport and jest without scurrility, and to endure jesting without displeasure. Indeed, it seems to have been especially characteristic of a Spartan to endure jesting; but if any one could not bear up under it, he had only to ask it, and the jester ceased. 5 As each one came in, the eldest of the company pointed to the door and said to him: “Through that door no word goes forth outside.” And they say that a candidate for membership in one of these messes underwent the following ordeal. Each of the mess-mates took in his hand a bit of soft bread, and when a servant came along with a bowl upon his head, then they cast it into this without a word, like a ballot, leaving it just as it was if he approved of the candidate, but if he disapproved, squeezing it tight in his hand first. 6 For the flattened piece of bread had the force of a perforated, or negative, ballot. And if one such is found in the bowl, the candidate is not admitted to the mess, because they wish all its members to be congenial. The candidate thus rejected is said to have been “caddished,” for “caddichus” is the name of the bowl into which they cast the pieces of bread. Of their dishes, the black broth is held in the highest esteem, so that the elderly men do not even ask for a bit of meat, but leave it for the young men, while they themselves have the broth poured out for their meals. 7 And it is said that one of the kings of Pontus actually bought a Spartan cook for the sake of having this broth, and then, when he tasted it, disliked it; whereupon the cooks said: “O King, those who relish this broth must first have bathed in the river Eurotas.” After drinking moderately, they go off home without a torch; for they are not allowed to walk with a light, either on this or any other occasion, that they may accustom themselves to marching boldly and without fear in the darkness of night. Such, then, is the fashion of their common messes.

47 13 1 None of his laws were put into writing by Lycurgus, indeed, one of the so called “rhetras” forbids it. For he thought that if the most important and binding principles which conduce to the prosperity and virtue of a city were implanted in the habits and training of its citizens, they would remain unchanged and secure, having a stronger bond than compulsion in the fixed purposes imparted to the young by education, which performs the office of a law-giver for every one of them. 2 And as for minor matters, such as business contracts, and cases where the needs vary from time to time, it was better, as he thought, not to hamper them by written constraints or fixed usages, but to suffer them, as occasion demanded, to receive such modifications as educated men should determine. Indeed, he assigned the function of law-making wholly and entirely to education.

3 One of his rhetras accordingly, as I have said, prohibited the use of written laws. Another was directed against extravagance, ordaining that every house should have its roof fashioned by the axe, and its doors by the saw only, and by no other tool. For, as in later times Epaminondas is reported to have said at his own table, that such a meal did not comport with treachery, so Lycurgus was the first to see clearly that such a house does not comport with luxury and extravagance. 4 Nor is any man so vulgar and senseless as to introduce into a simple and common house silver-footed couches, purple coverlets, gold drinking-cups, and all the extravagance which goes along with these, but one must of necessity adapt and proportion his couch to his house, his coverlets to the couch, and to this the rest of his supplies and equipment. 5 It was because he was used to this simplicity that Leotychides the Elder, as we are told, when he was dining in Corinth, and saw the roof of the house adorned with costly panellings, asked his host if trees grew square in that country.

A third rhetra of Lycurgus is mentioned, which forbids making frequent expeditions against the same enemies, in order not to accustom such enemies to frequent defence of themselves, which would make them warlike. 6 And this was the special grievance which they had against King Agesilaüs in later times, namely, that by his continual and frequent incursions and expeditions into Boeotia he rendered the Thebans a match for the Lacedaemonians. And therefore, when Antalcidas saw the king wounded, he said: “This is a fine tuition-fee which thou art getting from the Thebans, for teaching them how to fight, when they did not wish to do it, and did not know how.” Such ordinances as these were called “rhetras” by Lycurgus, implying that they came from the god and were oracles.

14 1 In the matter of education, which he regarded as the greatest and noblest task of the law-giver, he began at the very source, by carefully regulating marriages and births. For it is not true that, as Aristotle says, he tried to bring the women under proper restraint, but desisted, because he could not overcome the great licence and power which the women enjoyed on account of the many expeditions in which their husbands were engaged. During these the men were indeed obliged to leave their wives in sole control at home, and for this reason paid them greater deference than was their due, and gave them the title of Mistress. But even to the women Lycurgus paid all possible attention. 2 He made the maidens exercise their bodies in running, wrestling, casting the discus, and hurling the javelin, in order that the fruit of their wombs might have vigorous root in vigorous bodies and come to better maturity, and that they themselves might come with vigour to the fulness of their times, and struggle successfully and easily with the pangs of child-birth. He freed them from softness and delicacy and all effeminacy by accustoming the maidens no less than the youths to wear tunics only in processions, 48 and at certain festivals to dance and sing when the young men were present as spectators. 3 There they sometimes even mocked and railed good-naturedly at any youth who had misbehaved himself; and again they would sing the praises of those who had shown themselves worthy, and so inspire the young men with great ambition and ardour. For he who was thus extolled for his valour and held in honour among the maidens, went away exalted by their praises; while the sting of their playful raillery was no less sharp than that of serious admonitions, especially as the kings and senators, together with the rest of the citizens, were all present at the spectacle.

4 Nor was there anything disgraceful in this scant clothing of the maidens, for modesty attended them, and wantonness was banished; nay, rather, it produced in them habits of simplicity and an ardent desire for health and beauty of body. It gave also to woman-kind a taste of lofty sentiment, for they felt that they too had a place in the arena of bravery and ambition. Wherefore they were led to think and speak as Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, is said to have done. When some foreign woman, as it would seem, said to her: “You Spartan women are the only ones who rule their men,” she answered: “Yes, we are the only ones that give birth to men.”

15 1 Moreover, there were incentives to marriage in these things, — I mean such things as the appearance of the maidens without much clothing in processions and athletic contests where young men were looking on, for these were drawn on by necessity, “not geometrical, but the sort of necessity which lovers know,” as Plato says. Nor was this all; Lycurgus also put a kind of public stigma upon confirmed bachelors. They were excluded from the sight of the young men and maidens at their exercises, and in winter the magistrates ordered them to march round the market-place in their tunics only, 2 and as they marched, they sang a certain song about themselves, and its burden was that they were justly punished for disobeying the laws. Besides this, they were deprived of the honour and gracious attentions which the young men habitually paid to their elders. Therefore there was no one to find fault with what was said to Dercyllidas, reputable general though he was. As he entered a company, namely, one of the younger men would not offer him his seat, but said: “Indeed, thou hast begotten no son who will one day give his seat to me.”

3 For their marriages the women were carried off by force, not when they were small and unfit for wedlock, but when they were in full bloom and wholly ripe. After the woman was thus carried off, the bride’s-maid, so called, took her in charge, cut her hair off close to the head, put a man’s cloak and sandals on her, and laid her down on a pallet, on the floor, alone, in the dark. Then the bride-groom, not flown with wine nor enfeebled by excesses, but composed and sober, after supping at his public mess-table as usual, slipped stealthily into the room where the bride lay, loosed her virgin’s zone, and bore her in his arms to the marriage-bound. 4 Then, after spending a short time with his bride, he went away composedly to his usual quarters, there to sleep with the other young men. And so he continued to do from that time on, spending his days with his comrades, and sleeping with them at night, but visiting his bride by stealth and with every precaution, full of dread and fear lest any of her household should be aware of his visits, his bride also contriving and conspiring with him that they might have stolen interviews as occasion offered. 5 And this they did not for a short time only, but long enough for some of them to become fathers before they had looked upon their own wives by daylight. Such interviews not only brought into exercise self-restraint and moderation, but united husbands and wives when their bodies were full of creative energy and their affections new and fresh, not when they were sated and dulled by unrestricted intercourse; and there was always left behind in their hearts some residual spark of longing and delight.

496 After giving marriage such traits of reserve and decorum, he none the less freed men from the empty and womanish passion of jealous possession, by making it honourable for them, while keeping the marriage relation free from all wanton irregularities, to share with other worthy men in the begetting of children, laughing to scorn those who regard such common privileges as intolerable, and resort to murder and war rather than grant them. 7 For example, an elderly man with a young wife, if he looked with favour and esteem on some fair and noble young man, might introduce him to her, and adopt her offspring by such a noble father as his own. And again, a worthy man who admired some woman for the fine children that she bore her husband and the modesty of her behaviour as a wife, might enjoy her favours, if her husband would consent, thus planting, as it were, in a soil of bountiful fruitage, and begetting for himself noble sons, who would have the blood of noble men in their veins. 8 For in the first place, Lycurgus did not regard sons as the peculiar property of their fathers, but rather as the common property of the state, and therefore would not have his citizens spring from random parentage, but from the best there was. In the second place, he saw much folly and vanity in what other peoples enacted for the regulation of these matters; in the breeding of dogs and horses they insist on having the best sires which money or favour can secure, but they keep their wives under lock and key, demanding that they have children by none but themselves, even though they be foolish, or infirm, or diseased; 9 as though children of bad stock did not show their badness to those first who possessed and reared them, and children of good stock, contrariwise, their goodness. The freedom which thus prevailed at that time in marriage relations was aimed at physical and political well-being, and was far removed from the licentiousness which was afterwards attributed to their women, so much so that adultery was wholly unknown among them. 10 And a saying is reported of one Geradas, a Spartan of very ancient type, who, on being asked by a stranger what the punishment for adulterers was among them, answered: “Stranger, there is no adulterer among us.” “Suppose, then,” replied the stranger, “there should be one.” “A bull,” said Geradas, “would be his forfeit, a bull so large that it could stretch over Mount Taÿgetus and drink from the river Eurotas.” Then the stranger was astonished and said: “But how could there be a bull so large?” To which Geradas replied, with a smile: “But how could there be an adulterer in Sparta?” Such, then, are the accounts we find of their marriages.

16 1 Offspring was not reared at the will of the father, but was taken and carried by him to a place called Lesche,b where the elders of the tribes officially examined the infant, and if it was well-built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it, and assigned it one of the nine thousand lots of land; but if it was ill-born and deformed, they sent it to the so called Apothetae, a chasm-like place at the foot of Mount Taÿgetus, 2 in the conviction that the life of that which nature had not well equipped at the very beginning for health and strength, was of no advantage either to itself or the state. On the same principle, the women used to bathe their new-born babes not with water, but with wine, thus making a sort of test of their constitutions. For it is said that epileptic and sickly infants are thrown into convulsions by the strong wine and loose their senses, while the healthy ones are rather tempered by it, like steel, and given a firm habit of body. 3 Their nurses, too, exercised great care and skill; they reared infants without swaddling-bands, and thus left their limbs and figures free to develop; besides, they taught them to be contented and happy, not dainty about their food, nor fearful of the dark, nor afraid to be left alone, nor given to contemptible peevishness and whimpering. This is the reason why foreigners sometimes brought Spartan nurses for their children. Amycla, for instance, the nurse of the Athenian Alcibiades, is said to have been a Spartan.

4 And yet Alcibiades, as Plato says, had for a tutor, set over him by Pericles, one Zopyrus, who was just a common slave. 50 But Lycurgus would not put the sons of Spartans in charge of purchased or hired tutors, nor was it lawful for every father to rear or train his son as he pleased, but as soon as they were seven years old, Lycurgus ordered them all to be taken by the state and enrolled in companies, where they were put under the same discipline and nurture, and so became accustomed to share one another’s sports and studies. 5 The boy who excelled in judgement and was most courageous in fighting, was made captain of his company; on him the rest all kept their eyes, obeying his orders, and submitting to his punishments, so that their boyish training was a practice of obedience. Besides, the elderly men used to watch their sports, and by ever and anon egging them on to mimic battles and disputes, learned accurately how each one of them was naturally disposed when it was a question of boldness and aggressiveness in their struggles.

6 Of reading and writing, they learned only enough to serve their turn; all the rest of their training was calculated to make them obey commands well, endure hardships, and conquer in battle. Therefore, as they grew in age, their bodily exercise was increased; their heads were close-clipped, and they were accustomed to going bare-foot, and to playing for the most part without clothes. When they were twelve years old, they no longer had tunics to wear, received one cloak a year, had hard, dry flesh, and knew little of baths and ointments; only on certain days of the year, and few at that, did they indulge in such amenities. 7 They slept together, in troops and companies, on pallet-beds which they collected for themselves, breaking off with their hands — no knives allowed — the tops of the rushes which grew along the river Eurotas. In the winter-time, they added to the stuff of these pallets the so called “lycophon,” or thistle-down, which was thought to have warmth in it.

17 1 When the boys reached this age, they were favoured with the society of lovers from among the reputable young men. The elderly men also kept close watch of them, coming more frequently to their places of exercises, and observing their contests of strength and wit, not cursorily, but with the idea that they were all in a sense the fathers and tutors and governors of all the boys. In this way, at every fitting time and in every place, the boy who went wrong had someone to admonish and chastise him. Nor was this all; 2 one of the noblest and best men of the city was appointed paedonome, or inspector of the boys, and under his directions the boys, in their several companies, put themselves under the command of the most prudent and warlike of the so called Eirens. This was the name given to those who had been for two years out of the class of boys, and Melleirens, or Would be Eirens, was the name for the oldest of the boys. This eiren, then, a youth of twenty years, commands his subordinates in their mimic battles, and in doors makes them serve him at his meals. 3 He commissions the larger ones to fetch wood, and the smaller ones potherbs. And they steal what they fetch, some of them entering the gardens, and others creeping right slyly and cautiously into the public messes of the men; but if a boy is caught stealing, he is soundly flogged, as a careless and unskilful thief. They steal, too, whatever food they can, and learn to be adept in setting upon people when asleep or off their guard. 4 But the boy who is caught gets a flogging and must go hungry. For the meals allowed them are scanty, in order that they may take into their own hands the fight against hunger, and so be forced into boldness and cunning.

This is the main object of their spare diet; a secondary one is to make them grow tall. For it contributes to height of stature when the vitality is not impeded and hindered by a mass of nourishment which forces it into thickness and width, 51 but ascends of its own lightness, and when the body grows freely and easily. 5 The same thing seems also to conduce to beauty of form; for lean and meagre habits yield more readily to the force of articulation, whereas the gross and over-fed are so heavy as to resist it. Just so, we may be sure, women who take physic while they are pregnant, bear children which are lean, it may be, but well-shaped and fine, because the lightness of the parent matter makes it more susceptible to moulding. However, the reason for this I must leave for others to investigate.

18 1 The boys make such a serious matter of their stealing, that one of them, as the story goes, who was carrying concealed under his cloak a young fox which he had stolen,c suffered the animal to tear out his bowels with its teeth and claws, and died rather than have his theft detected. And even this story gains credence from what their youths now endure, many of whom I have seen expiring under the lash at the altar of Artemis Orthia.d

2 The eiren, as he reclined after supper, would order one of the boys to sing a song, and to another would put a question requiring a careful and deliberate answer, as, for instance, “Who is the best man in the city?” or, “What thinkest thou of this man’s conduct?” In this way the boys were accustomed to pass right judgements and interest themselves at the very outset in the conduct of the citizens. For if one of them was asked who was a good citizen, or who an infamous one, and had no answer to make, he was judged to have a torpid spirit, and one that would not aspire to excellence. 3 And the answer must not only have reasons and proof given for it, but also be couched in very brief and concise language, and the one who gave a faulty answer was punished with a bite in the thumb from the eiren. Often-times, too, the eiren punished the boys in the presence of the elders and magistrates, thus showing whether his punishments were reasonable and proper or not. While he was punishing them, he suffered no restraint, but after the boys were gone, he was brought to an account if his punishments were harsher than was necessary, or, on the other hand, too mild and gentle.

524 The boys’ lovers also shared with them in their honour or disgrace; and it is said that one of them was once fined by the magistrates because his favourite boy had let an ungenerous cry escape him while he was fighting. Moreover, though this sort of love was so approved among them that even the maidens found lovers in good and noble women, still, there was no jealous rivalry in it, but those who fixed their attentions on the same boys made this rather a foundation for friendship with one another, and persevered in common efforts to make their loved one as noble as possible.

19 1 The boys were also taught to use a discourse which combined pungency with grace, and condensed much observation into a few words. His iron money, indeed, Lycurgus made of large weight and small value, as I have observed, but the current coin of discourse he adapted to the expression of deep and abundant meaning with simple and brief diction, by contriving that the general habit of silence should make the boys sententious and correct in their answers. For as sexual incontinence generally produces unfruitfulness and sterility, so intemperance in talking makes discourse empty and vapid. 2 King Agis, accordingly, when a certain Athenian decried the Spartan swords for being so short, and said that jugglers on the stage easily swallowed them, replied: “And yet we certainly reach our enemies with these daggers.” And I observe that although the speech also of the Spartans seems short, yet it certainly reaches the point, and arrests the thought of the listener.

3 And indeed Lycurgus himself seems to have been short and sententious in his speech, if we may judge from his recorded sayings; that, for instance, on forms of self-government, to one who demanded the establishment of democracy in the city: “Go thou,” said he, “and first establish democracy in thy household.” That, again, to one who inquired why he ordained such small and inexpensive sacrifices: “That we may never omit,” said he, “to honour the gods.” 4 Again, in the matter of athletic contests, he allowed the citizens to engage only in those where there was no stretching forth of hands. There are also handed down similar answers which he made by letter to his fellow-citizens. When they asked how they could ward off an invasion of enemies, he answered: “By remaining poor, and by not desiring to be greater the one than the other.” And when they asked about fortifying their city, he answered: “A city will be well fortified which is surrounded by brave men and not by bricks.” Now regarding these and similar letters, belief and scepticism are alike difficult.

20 1 Of their aversion to long speeches, the following apophthegms are proof. King Leonidas, when a certain one discoursed with him out of all season on matters of great concern, said: “My friend, the matter urges, but not the time.” Charilaüs, the nephew of Lycurgus, when asked why his uncle had made so few laws, answered: “Men of few words need few laws.” 2 Archidamidas, when certain ones found fault with Hecataeus the Sophist for saying nothing after being admitted to their public mess, answered: “He who knows how, knows also when to speak.” Instances of the pungent sayings not devoid of grace, of which I spoke, are the following. Demaratus, when a troublesome fellow was pestering him with ill-timed questions, and especially with the oft repeated query who was the best of the Spartans, answered at last: “He who is least like thee.” 3 And Agis, when certain ones were praising the Eleians for their just and honourable conduct of the Olympic games, said: “And what great matter is it for the Eleians to practise righteousness one day in five years?”e And Theopompus, when a stranger kept saying, as he showed him kindness, that in his own city he was called a lover of Sparta, remarked: “My good Sir, it were better for thee to be called a lover of thine own city.” 4 And Pleistoanax, the son of Pausanias, when an Athenian orator declared that the Lacedaemonians had no learning, said: “True, we are indeed the only Hellenes who have learned no evil from you.” And Archidamus, when some one asked him how many Spartans there were, replied: “Enough, good Sir, to keep evil men away.”

5 And even from their jests it is possible to judge of their character. For it was their wont never to talk at random, and to let slip no speech which did not have some thought or other worth serious attention. For instance, when one of them was invited to hear a man imitate the nightingale, he said: “I have heard the bird herself.” And another, on reading the epitaph: —

“Tyranny’s fires they were trying to quench when panoplied Ares

Slew them; Selinus looked down from her gates on their death,”

said: “The men deserved to die; they should have let the fires burn out entirely.” 6 And a youth, when some one promised to give him game-cocks that would die fighting, said, “Don’t do that, but give me some of the kind that kill fighting.” Another, seeing men seated on stools in a privy, said: “May I never sit where I cannot give place to an elder.” The character of their apophthegms, then, was such as to justify the remark that love of wisdom rather than love of bodily exercise was the special characteristic of a Spartan.

53 21 1 Nor was their training in music and poetry any less serious a concern than the emulous purity of their speech, nay, their very songs had a stimulus that roused the spirit and awoke enthusiastic and effectual effort; the style of them was simple and unaffected, and their themes were serious and edifying. They were for the most part praises of men who had died for Sparta, calling them blessed and happy; censure of men who had played the coward, picturing their grievous and ill-starred life; and such promises and boasts of valour as befitted the different ages. 2 Of the last, it may not be amiss to cite one, by way of illustration. They had three choirs at their festivals, corresponding to the three ages, and the choir of old men would sing first: —

“We once did deeds of prowess and were strong young men.”

Then the choir of young men would respond: —

“We are so now, and if you wish, behold and see.”

And then the third choir, that of the boys, would sing: —

“We shall be sometime mightier men by far than both.”

3 In short, if one studies the poetry of Sparta, of which some specimens were still extant in my time, and makes himself familiar with the marching songs which they used, to the accompaniment of the flute, when charging upon their foes, he will conclude that Terpander and Pindar were right in associating valour with music. The former writes thus of the Lacedaemonians: —

“Flourish there both the spear of the brave and the Muse’s clear message,

Justice, too, walks the broad streets — .”

4 And Pindar says: —

“There are councils of Elders,

And young men’s conquering spears,

And dances, the Muse, and joyousness.”

The Spartans are thus shown to be at the same time most musical and most warlike;

“In equal poise to match the sword hangs the sweet art of the harpist,”

as their poet says. For just before their battles, the king sacrificed to the Muses, reminding his warriors, as it would seem, of their training, and of the firm decisions they had made, in order that they might be prompt to face the dread issue, and might perform such martial deeds as would be worthy of some record.

22 1 In time of war, too, they relaxed the severity of the young men’s discipline, and permitted them to beautify their hair and ornament their arms and clothing, rejoicing to see them, like horses, prance and neigh for the contest. Therefore they wore their hair long as soon as they ceased to be youths, and particularly in times of danger they took pains to have it glossy and well-combed, remembering a certain saying of Lycurgus, that a fine head of hair made the handsome more comely still, and the ugly more terrible. 2 Their bodily exercises, too, were less rigorous during their campaigns, and in other ways their young warriors were allowed a regimen which was less curtailed and rigid, so that they were the only men in the world with whom war brought a respite in the training for war. And when at last they were drawn up in battle array and the enemy was at hand, the king sacrificed the customary she-goat, commanded all the warriors to set garlands upon their heads, and ordered the pipers to pipe the strains of the hymn to Castor; 3 then he himself led off in a marching paean, and it was a sight equally grand and terrifying when they marched in step with the rhythm of the flute, without any gap in their line of battle, and with no confusion in their souls, but calmly and cheerfully moving with the strains of their hymn into the deadly fight. Neither fear nor excessive fury is likely to possess men so disposed, but rather a firm purpose full of hope and courage, believing as they do that Heaven is their ally.

4 The king marched against the enemy in close companionship with one who had been crowned victor in the great games. 54 And they tell of a certain Spartan who refused to be bought off from a contest at Olympia by large sums of money, and after a long struggle outwrestled his antagonist. When some one said to him then: “What advantage, O Spartan, hast thou got from thy victory? he answered, with a smile: “I shall stand in front of my king when I fight our enemies.” 5 When they had conquered and routed an enemy, they pursued him far enough to make their victory secure by his flight, and then at once retired, thinking it ignoble and unworthy of a Hellene to hew men to pieces who had given up the fight and abandoned the field. And this was not only a noble and magnanimous policy, but it was also useful. For their antagonists, knowing that they slew those who resisted them, but showed mercy to those who yielded to them, were apt to think flight more advantageous than resistance.

23 1 Hippias the Sophist says that Lycurgus himself was very well versed in war and took part in many campaigns, and Philostephanus attributes to him the arrangement of the Spartan cavalry by “oulamoi,” explaining that the “oulamos,” as constituted by him, was a troop of fifty horsemen in a square formation. But Demetrius the Phalerean says he engaged in no warlike undertakings, and established his constitution in a time of peace. 2 And indeed the design of the Olympic truce would seem to bespeak a man of gentleness, and predisposed to peace. And yet there are some who say, as Hermippus reminds us, that at the outset Lycurgus had nothing whatever to do with Iphitus and his enterprise, but happened to come that way by chance, and be a spectator at the games; that he heard behind him, however, what seemed to be a human voice, chiding him and expressing amazement that he did not urge his fellow-citizens to take part in the great festival; and since, on turning round, he did not see the speaker anywhere, he concluded that the voice was from heaven, and therefore betook himself to Iphitus, and assisted him in giving the festival a more notable arrangement and a more enduring basis.

24 1 The training of the Spartans lasted into the years of full maturity. No man was allowed to live as he pleased, but in their city, as in a military encampment, they always had a prescribed regimen and employment in public service, considering that they belonged entirely to their country and not to themselves, watching over the boys, if no other duty was laid upon them, and either teaching them some useful thing, or learning it themselves from their elders. 2 For one of the noble and blessed privileges which Lycurgus provided for his fellow-citizens, was abundance of leisure, since he forbade their engaging in any mechanical art whatsoever, and as for money-making, with its laborious efforts to amass wealth, there was no need of it at all, since wealth awakened no envy and brought no honour. 3 Besides, the Helots tilled their ground for them, and paid them the produce mentioned above. Therefore it was that one of them who was sojourning at Athens when the courts were in session, and learned that a certain Athenian had been fined for idleness and was going home in great distress of mind and attended on his way by sympathetic and sorrowing friends, begged the bystanders to show him the man who had been fined for living like a freeman. So servile a thing did they regard the devotion to the mechanical arts and to money-making. 4 And law-suits, of course, vanished from among them with their gold and silver coinage, for they knew neither greed nor want, but equality in well-being was established there, and easy living based on simple wants. Choral dances and feasts and festivals and hunting and bodily exercise and social converse occupied their whole time, when they were not on a military expedition.

25 1 Those who were under thirty years of age did not go into the market-place at all, 55 but had their household wants supplied at the hands of their kinsfolk and lovers. And it was disreputable for the elderly men to be continually seen loitering there, instead of spending the greater part of the day in the places of exercise that are called “leschai.” For if they gathered in these, they spent their time suitably with one another, making no allusions to the problems of money-making or of exchange, 2 nay, they were chiefly occupied there in praising some noble action or censuring some base one, with jesting and laughter which made the path to instruction and correction easy and natural. For not even Lycurgus himself was immoderately severe; indeed, Sosibius tells us that he actually dedicated a little statue of Laughter, and introduced seasonable jesting into their drinking parties and like diversions, to sweeten, as it were, their hardships and meagre fare.

3 In a word, he trained his fellow-citizens to have neither the wish nor the ability to live for themselves; but like bees they were to make themselves always integral parts of the whole community, clustering together about their leader, almost beside themselves with enthusiasm and noble ambition, and to belong wholly to their country. This idea can be traced also in some of their utterances. 4 For instance, Paedaretus, when he failed to be chosen among the three hundred best men, went away with a very glad countenance, as if rejoicing that the city had three hundred better men than himself. And again, Polycratidas, one of an embassy to the generals of the Persian king, on being asked by them whether the embassy was there in a private or a public capacity, replied: “If we succeed, in a public capacity; if we fail, in a private.” 5 Again, Argileonis, the mother of Brasidas, when some Amphipolitans who had come to Sparta paid her a visit, asked them if Brasidas had died nobly and in a manner worthy of Sparta. Then they greatly extolled the man and said that Sparta had not such another, to which she answered: “Say not so, Strangers; Brasidas was noble and brave, but Sparta has many better men than he.”

26 1 The senators were at first appointed by Lycurgus himself, as I have said, from those who shared his counsels; but afterwards he arranged that any vacancy caused by death should be filled by the man elected as most deserving out of those above sixty years of age. And of all the contests in the world this would seem to have been the greatest and the most hotly disputed. For it was not the swiftest of the swift, nor the strongest of the strong, but the best and wisest of the good and wise who was to be elected, and have for the rest of his life, as a victor’s prize for excellence, what I may call the supreme power in the state, lord as he was of life and death, honour and dishonour, and all the greatest issues of life. 2 The election was made in the following manner. An assembly of the people having been convened, chosen men were shut up in a room near by so that they could neither see nor be seen, but only hear the shouts of the assembly. For as in other matters, so here, the cries of the assembly decided between the competitors. These did not appear in a body, but each one was introduced separately, as the lot fell, and passed silently through the assembly. 3 Then the secluded judges, who had writing-tablets with them, recorded in each case the loudness of the shouting, not knowing for whom it was given, but only that he was introduced first, second, or third, and so on. Whoever was greeted with the most and loudest shouting, him they declared elected. The victor then set a wreath upon his head and visited in order the temples of the gods. He was followed by great numbers of young men, who praised and extolled him, as well as by many women, who celebrated his excellence in songs, and dwelt on the happiness of his life. 564 Each of his relations and friend set a repast before him, saying: “The city honours thee with this table.” When he had finished his circuit, he went off to his mess-table. Here he fared in other ways as usual, but a second portion of food was set before him, which he took and put by. After the supper was over, the women who were related to him being now assembled at the door of the mess-hall, he called to him the one whom he most esteemed and gave her the portion he had saved, saying that he had received it as a meed of excellence, and as such gave it to her. Upon this, she too was lauded by the rest of the women and escorted by them to her home.

27 1 Furthermore, Lycurgus made most excellent regulations in the matter of their burials. To begin with, he did away with all superstitious terror by allowing them to bury their dead within the city, and to have memorials of them near the sacred places, thus making the youth familiar with such sights and accustomed to them, so that they were not confounded by them, and had no horror of death as polluting those who touched a corpse or walked among graves. In the second place, he permitted nothing to be buried with the dead; they simply covered the body with a scarlet robe and olive leaves when they laid it away. 2 To inscribe the name of the dead upon the tomb was not allowed, unless it were that of a man who had fallen in war, or that of a woman who had died in sacred office. He set apart only a short time for mourning, eleven days; on the twelfth, they were to sacrifice to Demeter and cease their sorrowing. Indeed, nothing was left untouched and neglected, but with all the necessary details of life he blended some commendation of virtue or rebuke of vice; and he filled the city full of good examples, whose continual presence and society must of necessity exercise a controlling and moulding influence upon those who were walking the path of honour.

3 This was the reason why he did not permit them to live abroad at their pleasure and wander in strange lands, assuming foreign habits and imitating the lives of peoples who were without training and lived under different forms of government. Nay more, he actually drove away from the city the multitudes which streamed in there for no useful purpose, not because he feared they might become imitators of his form of government and learn useful lessons in virtue, as Thucydides says, but rather that they might not become in any wise teachers of evil. 4 For along with strange people, strange doctrines must come in; and novel doctrines bring novel decisions, from which there must arise many feelings and resolutions which destroy the harmony of the existing political order. Therefore he thought it more necessary to keep bad manners and customs from invading and filling the city than it was to keep out infectious diseases.

28 1 Now in all this there is no trace of injustice or arrogance, which some attribute to the laws of Lycurgus, declaring them efficacious in producing valour, but defective in producing righteousness. The so called “krupteia,” or secret service, of the Spartans, if this be really one of the institutions of Lycurgus, as Aristotle says it was, may have given Plato also this opinion of the man and his civil polity. 2 This secret service was of the following nature. The magistrates from time to time sent out into the country at large the most discreet of the young warriors, equipped only with daggers and such supplies as were necessary. In the day time they scattered into obscure and out of the way places, where they hid themselves and lay quiet; but in the night they came down into the highways and killed every Helot whom they caught. 3 Oftentimes, too, they actually traversed the fields where Helots were working and slew the sturdiest and best of them. So, too, Thucydides, in his history of the Peloponnesian war, tells us that the Helots who had been judged by the Spartans to be superior in bravery, 57 set wreaths upon their heads in token of their emancipation, and visited the temples of the gods in procession, but a little afterwards all disappeared, more than two thousand of them, in such a way that no man was able to say, either then or afterwards, how they came by their deaths. 4 And Aristotle in particular says also that the ephors, as soon as they came into office, made formal declaration of war upon the Helots, in order that there might be no impiety in slaying them.

And in other ways also they were harsh and cruel to the Helots. For instance, they would force them to drink too much strong wine, and then introduce them into their public messes, to show the young men what a thing drunkenness was. They also ordered them to sing songs and dance dances that were low and ridiculous, but to let the nobler kind alone. 5 And therefore in later times, they say, when the Thebans made their expedition into Laconia, they ordered the Helots whom they captured to sing the songs of Terpander, Alcman, and Spendon the Spartan; but they declined to do so, on the plea that their masters did not allow it, thus proving the correctness of the saying: “In Sparta the freeman is more a freeman than anywhere else in the world, and the slave more a slave.” 6 However, in my opinion, such cruelties were first practised by the Spartans in later times, particularly after the great earthquake, when the Helots and Messenians together rose up against them, wrought the widest devastation in their territory, and brought their city into the greatest peril. I certainly cannot ascribe to Lycurgus so abominable a measure as the “krupteia,” judging of his character from his mildness and justice in all other instances. To this the voice of the god also bore witness.

29 1 When his principal institutions were at last firmly fixed in the customs of the people, and his civil polity had sufficient growth and strength to support and preserve itself, just as Plato says that Deity was rejoiced to see His universe come into being and make its first motion, so Lycurgus was filled with joyful satisfaction in the magnitude and beauty of his system of laws, now that it was in operation and moving along its pathway. He therefore ardently desired, so far as human forethought could accomplish the task, to make it immortal, and let it go down unchanged to future ages. 2 Accordingly, he assembled the whole people, and told them that the provisions already made were sufficiently adapted to promote the prosperity and virtue of the state, but that something of the greatest weight and importance remained, which he could not lay before them until he had consulted the god at Delphi. They must therefore abide by the established laws and make no change nor alteration in them until he came back from Delphi in person; then he would do whatsoever the god thought best. 3 When they all agreed to this and bade him set out on his journey, he exacted an oath from the kings and the senators, and afterwards from the rest of the citizens, that they would abide by the established polity and observe it until Lycurgus should come back; then he set out for Delphi.

On reaching the oracle, he sacrificed to the god, and asked if the laws which he had established were good, and sufficient to promote a city’s prosperity and virtue. 4 Apollo answered that the laws which he had established were good, and that the city would continue to be held in highest honour while it kept to the polity of Lycurgus. This oracle Lycurgus wrote down, and sent it to Sparta. But for his own part, he sacrificed again to the god, took affectionate leave of his friends and of his son, and resolved never to release his fellow-citizens from their oath, but of his own accord to put an end to his life where he was. He had reached an age in which life was not yet a burden, and death no longer a terror; when he and his friends, moreover, appeared to be sufficiently prosperous and happy. 585 He therefore abstained from food till he died, considering that even the death of a statesman should be of service to the state, and the ending of his life not void of effect, but recognized as a virtuous deed. As for himself, since he had wrought out fully the noblest tasks, the end of life would actually be a consummation of his good fortune and happiness; and as for his fellow-citizens, he would make his death the guardian, as it were, of all the blessings he had secured for them during his life, since they had sworn to observe and maintain his polity until he should return. 6 And he was not deceived in his expectations, so long did his city have the first rank in Hellas for good government and reputation, observing as she did for five hundred years the laws of Lycurgus, in which no one of the fourteen kings who followed him made any change, down to Agis the son of Archidamus. For the institution of the ephors did not weaken, but rather strengthened the civil polity, and though it was thought to have been done in the interests of the people, it really made the aristocracy more powerful.

30 1 But in the reign of Agis, gold and silver money first flowed into Sparta, and with money, greed and a desire for wealth prevailed through the agency of Lysander, who, though incorruptible himself, filled his country with the love of riches and with luxury, by bringing home gold and silver from the war, and thus subverting the laws of Lycurgus. 2 While these remained in force, Sparta led the life, not of a city under a constitution, but of an individual man under training and full of wisdom. Nay rather, as the poets weave their tale of Heracles, how with his club and lion’s skin he traversed the world chastising lawless and savage tyrants, so we may say that Sparta, simply with the dispatch-staff and cloak of her envoys, kept Hellas in willing and glad obedience, put down illegal oligarchies and tyrannies in the different states, arbitrated wars, and quelled seditions, often without so much as moving a single shield, but merely sending one ambassador, whose commands all at once obeyed, just as bees, when their leader appears, swarm together and array themselves about him. Such a surplus fund of good government and justice did the city enjoy.

3 Wherefore, I for one am amazed at those who declare that the Lacedaemonians knew how to obey, but did not understand how to command, and quote with approval the story of King Theopompus, who, when some one said that Sparta was safe and secure because her kings knew how to command, replied: “Nay, rather because her citizens know how to obey.” 4 For men will not consent to obey those who have not the ability to rule, but obedience is a lesson to be learned from a commander. For a good leader makes good followers, and just as the final attainment of the art of horsemanship is to make a horse gentle and tractable, so it is the task of the science of government to implant obedience in men. And the Lacedaemonians implanted in the rest of the Greeks not only a willingness to obey, but a desire to be their followers and subjects. 5 People did not send requests to them for ships, or money, or hoplites, but for a single Spartan commander; and when they got him, they treated him with honour and reverence, as the Sicilians treated Gylippus;f the Chalcidians, Brasidas; and all the Greeks resident in Asia, Lysander, Callicratidas, and Agesilaüs. These men, wherever they came, were styled regulators and chasteners of peoples and magistrates, and the city of Sparta from which they came was regarded as a teacher of well-ordered private life and settled civil polity. 6 To this position of Sparta Stratonicus would seem to have mockingly alluded when, in jest, he proposed a law that the Athenians should conduct mysteries and processions, and that the Eleians should preside at games, since herein lay their special excellence, but that the Lacedaemonians should be cudgelled if the others did amiss. This was a joke; but Antisthenes the Socratic, when he saw the Thebans in high feather after the battle of Leuctra, 59 said in all seriousness that they were just like little boys strutting about because they had thrashed their tutor.

31 1 It was not, however, the chief design of Lycurgus then to leave his city in command over a great many others, but he thought that the happiness of an entire city, like that of a single individual, depended on the prevalence of virtue and concord within its own borders. The aim, therefore, of all his arrangements and adjustments was to make his people free-minded, self-sufficing, and moderate in all their ways, and to keep them so as long as possible. 2 His design for a civil polity was adopted by Plato, Diogenes, Zeno, and by all those who have won approval for their treatises on the subject, although they left behind them only writings and words. Lycurgus, on the other hand, produced not only writings and words, but an actual polity which was beyond imitation, and because he gave, to those who maintain that the much talked of natural disposition to wisdom exists only in theory, an example of an entire city given to the love of wisdom, his family rightly transcended that of all who ever founded polities among the Greeks. 3 Therefore Aristotle says that the honours paid him in Sparta were less than he deserved, although he enjoys the highest honours there. For he has a temple, and sacrifices are offered to him yearly as to a god. It is also said that when his remains were brought home, his tomb was struck by lightning, and that this hardly happened to any other eminent man after him except Euripides, who died and was buried at Arethusa in Macedonia. The lovers of Euripides therefore regard it as a great testimony in his favour that he alone experienced after death what had earlier befallen a man who was most holy and beloved of the gods.

4 Some say that Lycurgus died in Cirrha; Apollothemis, that he was brought to Elis and died there; Timaeus and Aristoxenus, that he ended his days in Crete; and Aristoxenus adds that his tomb is shown by the Cretans in the district of Pergamus, near the public highway. It is also said that he left an only son, Antiorus, on whose death without issue, the family became extinct. 5 His friends and relations, however, instituted a periodical assembly in his memory, which continued to be held for many ages, and they called the days on which they came together, Lycurgidae. Aristocrates the son of Hipparchus says that the friends of Lycurgus, after his death in Crete, burned his body and scattered the ashes into the sea, and that this was done at his request, and because he wished to prevent his remains from ever being carried to Sparta, lest the people there should change his polity, on the plea that he had come back, and that they were therefore released from their oaths. This, then, is what I have to say about Lycurgus.

Numa

1 1 There is likewise a vigorous dispute about the time at which King Numa lived, although from the beginning down to him the genealogies seem to be made out accurately. But a certain Clodius, in a book entitled “An Examination of Chronology,” insists that the ancient records were lost when the city was sacked by the Gauls, and that those which are now exhibited as such were forged, their compilers wishing to gratify the pride of certain persons by inserting their names among the first families and the most illustrious houses, where they had no cause to appear. 2 Accordingly, when it is said that Numa was an intimate friend of Pythagoras, some deny utterly that Numa had any Greek culture, holding either that he was naturally capable of attaining excellence by his own efforts, or that the culture of the king was due to some Barbarian superior to Pythagoras. Others say that Pythagoras the philosopher lived as many as five generations after Numa, 3 but that there was another Pythagoras, the Spartan, who was Olympic victor in the foot-race for the sixteenth Olympiad (in the third year of which Numa was made king), and that in his wanderings about Italy he made the acquaintance of Numa, and helped him arrange the government of the city, whence it came about that many Spartan customs were mingled with the Roman, as Pythagoras taught them to Numa. And at all events, Numa was of Sabine descent, and the Sabines will have it that they were colonists from Lacedaemon. 4 Chronology, however, is hard to fix, and especially that which is based upon the names of victors in the Olympic games, the list of which is said to have been published at a late period by Hippias of Elis, who had no fully authoritative basis for his work. I shall therefore begin at a convenient point, and relate the noteworthy facts which I have found in the life of Numa.

2 1 For thirty-seven years, now, Rome had been built and Romulus had been its king; and on the fifth of the month of July, which day they now call the Capratine Nones, Romulus was offering a public sacrifice outside the city at the so called Goat’s Marsh, in the presence of the senate and most of the people. 2 Suddenly there was a great commotion in the air, and a cloud descended upon the earth bringing with it blasts of wind and rain. The throng of common folk were terrified and fled in all directions, but Romulus disappeared, and was never found again either alive or dead. Upon this a grievous suspicion attached itself to the patricians, and an accusing story was current among the people to the effect that they had long been weary of kingly rule, and desired to transfer the power to themselves, and had therefore made away with the king. And indeed it had been noticed for some time that he treated them with greater harshness and arrogance. 3 This suspicion the patricians sought to remove by ascribing divine honours to Romulus, on the ground that he was not dead, but blessed with a better lot. And Proculus, a man of eminence, took oath that he had seen Romulus ascending to heaven in full armour, and had heard his voice commanding that he be called Quirinus.

4 The city was now beset with fresh disturbance and faction over the king to be appointed in his stead, for the new comers were not yet altogether blended with original citizens, but the commonalty was still like a surging sea, and the patricians full of jealousy towards one another on account of their different nationalities. It is indeed true that it was the pleasure of all to have a king, but they wrangled and quarrelled, not only about the man who should be their leader, but also about the tribe which should furnish him. 5 For those who had built the city with Romulus at the outset thought it intolerable that the Sabines, after getting a share in the city and its territory, should insist on ruling those who had received them into such privileges; and the Sabines, since on the death of their king Tatius they had raised no faction against Romulus, but suffered him to rule alone, had a reasonable ground for demanding now the ruler should come from them. They would not admit that they had added themselves as inferiors to superiors, but held rather that their addition had brought the strength of numbers and advanced both parties alike to the dignity of a city. On these questions, then, they were divided into factions.

6 But in order that their factions might not produce utter confusion from the absence of all authority, now that the administration of affairs was suspended, it was arranged by the senators, who were one hundred and fifty in number, that each of them in his turn should assume the insignia of royalty, make the customary sacrifices to the gods, and transact public business, for the space of six hours by day and six hours by night. 7 The distribution of times seemed well adapted to secure equality between the two factions, and the transfer of power likely to remove all jealousy on the part of the people, when they saw the same man, in the course of a single day and night, become king and then a private citizen again. This form of government the Romans call “interregnum.”

3 1 But although in this way the senators were thought to rule constitutionally and without oppression, they roused suspicions and clamorous charges that they had changed the form of government to an oligarchy, and were holding the state in tutelage among themselves, and were unwilling to be ruled by a king. Therefore it was agreed by both factions that one should appoint a king from the other. 2 This was thought the best way to end their prevailing partisanship, and the king thus appointed would be equally well-disposed to both parties, being gracious to the one as his electors, and friendly to the other because of his kinship with them. Then, as the Sabines gave the Romans their option in the matter, it seemed to them better to have a Sabine king of their own nomination, than to have a Roman made king by the Sabines. 3 They took counsel, therefore, among themselves, and nominated Numa Pompilius from among the Sabines, a man who had not joined the emigrants to Rome, but was so universally celebrated for his virtues that, when he was nominated, the Sabines accepted him with even greater readiness than those who had chosen him. Accordingly, after making their decision known to the people, the leading senators of both parties were sent as ambassadors to Numa, begging him to come and assume the royal power.

4 Numa belonged to a conspicuous city of the Sabines called Cures,a from which the Romans, together with the incorporated Sabines, took the joint name of Quirites. He was a son of Pompon, an illustrious man, and was the youngest of four brothers. He was born, moreover, by some divine felicity, on the very day when Rome was founded by Romulus, that is, the twenty-first day of April. 5 By natural temperament he was inclined to the practice of every virtue, and he had subdued himself still more by discipline, endurance of hardships, and the study of wisdom. He had thus put away from himself not only the infamous passions of the soul, but also that violence and rapacity which are in such high repute among Barbarians, believing that true bravery consisted in the subjugation of one’s passions by reason. 6 On this account he banished from his house all luxury and extravagance, and while citizen and stranger alike found in him a faultless judge and counsellor, he devoted his hours of privacy and leisure, not to enjoyments and money-making, but to the service of the gods, and the rational contemplation of their nature and power. In consequence he had a great name and fame, so that Tatius, the royal colleague of Romulus at Rome, made him the husband of his only daughter, Tatia. 7 He was not, however, so exalted by his marriage as to go to dwell with his royal father-in law, but remained among the Sabines ministering to his aged father. Tatia, too, preferred the quiet life which her husband led as a private citizen to the honour and fame which she had enjoyed at Rome because of her father. But she died, as we are told, in the thirteenth year after her marriage.

4 1 Then Numa, forsaking the ways of city folk, determined to live for the most part in country places, and to wander there alone, passing his days in groves of the gods, sacred meadows, and solitudes. This, more than anything else, gave rise to the story about his goddess. It was not, so the story ran, from any distress or aberration of spirit that he forsook the ways of men, 2 but he had tasted the joy of more august companionship and had been honoured with a celestial marriage; the goddess Egeria loved him and bestowed herself upon him, and it was his communion with her that gave him a life of blessedness and a wisdom more than human. However, that this story resembles many of the very ancient tales which the Phrygians have received and cherished concerning Attis, the Bithynians concerning Herodotus, the Arcadians concerning Endymion, and other peoples concerning other mortals who were thought to have achieved a life of blessedness in the love of the gods, is quite evident. 3 And there is some reason in supposing that Deity, who is not a lover of horses or birds, but a lover of men, should be willing to consort with men of superlative goodness, and should not dislike or disdain the company of a wise and holy man. But that an immortal god should take carnal pleasure in a mortal body and its beauty, this, surely, is hard to believe.

4 And yet the Aegyptians make a distinction here which is thought plausible, namely, that while a woman can be approached by a divine spirit and made pregnant, there is no such thing as carnal intercourse and communion between a man and a divinity. But they lose sight of a fact that intercourse is a reciprocal matter, and that both parties to it enter into a like communion. However, that a god should have affection for a man, and a so called love which is based upon affection, and takes the form of solicitude for his character and his virtue, is fit and proper. 5 And therefore it is no mistake when the ancient poets tell their tales of the love Apollo bore Phorbas, Hyacinthus, and Admetus, as well as the Sicyonian Hippolytus also, of whom it is said, that, as often as he set out to sail from Sicyon to Cirrha, the Pythian priestess, as though the god knew of his coming and rejoiced thereat, chanted this prophetic verse:

“Lo, once more doth beloved Hippolytus hither make voyage.”

6 There is a legend, too, that Pan became enamoured of Pindar and his verses. And the divine powers bestowed signal honour on Archilochus and Hesiod after their deaths, for the sake of the Muses. Again, there is a story, still well attested, that Sophocles, during his life, was blessed with the friendship of Aesculapius, and that when he died, another deity procured him fitting burial. 7 Is it worth while, then, to disbelieve that Zaleucus, Minos, Zoroaster, Numa, and Lycurgus, who piloted kingdoms and formulated constitutions, had frequent audience of the Deity? Is it not likely, rather, that the gods are in earnest when they hold converse with such men as these, in order to instruct and advise them in the highest and best way, but use poets and warbling singers, if at all, for their own diversion? 8 However, if any one is otherwise minded, I say with Bacchylides, “Broad is the way.” Indeed there is no absurdity in the other account which is given of Lycurgus and Numa and their like, namely, that since they were managing headstrong and captious multitudes, and introducing great innovations in modes of government, they pretended to get a sanction from the god, which sanction was the salvation of the very ones against whom it was contrived.

5 1 But to resume the story, Numa was already completing his fortieth year when the embassy came from Rome inviting him to take the throne. The speakers were Proculus and Velesus, one or the other of whom the people was expected to choose as their king, Proculus being the favourite of the people of Romulus, and Velesus of the people of Tatius. These speakers, then, were brief, supposing that Numa would welcome his good fortune. 2 It was, however, no slight task, but one requiring much argument and entreaty, to persuade and induce a man who had lived in peace and quiet, to accept the government of a city which owed its existence and growth, in a fashion, to war. His reply, therefore, in the presence of his father and one of his kinsmen named Marcius, was as follows. “Every change in a man’s life is perilous; but when a man knows no lack, and has no fault to find with his present lot, nothing short of madness can change his purposes and remove him from his wonted course of life, which, even though it have no other advantage, is at least fixed and secure, and therefore better than one which is all uncertain. 3 But the lot of one who becomes your king cannot even be called uncertain, judging from the experience of Romulus, since he himself was accused of basely plotting against his colleague Tatius, and involved the patricians in the charge of having basely put their king out of the way. And yet those who bring these accusations laud Romulus as a child of the gods, and tell how he was preserved in an incredible way and fed in a miraculous manner when he was an infant. But I am of mortal birth, and I was nourished and trained by men whom you know. 4 Moreover, the very traits in my disposition which are to be commended, are far from marking a man destined to be a king, namely, my great love of retirement, my devotion to studies inconsistent with the usual activities of men, and my well-known strong and inveterate love of peace, of unwarlike occupations, and of men who come together only for the worship of the gods and for friendly intercourse, but who otherwise live by themselves as tillers of the soil or herdsmen. 5 Whereas, unto you, O Romans, whether you want them or not, Romulus has bequeathed many wars, and to make head against these the city needs a king with a warrior’s experience and strength. Besides, the people has become much accustomed to war, and eager for it because of their successes, and no one is blind to their desire for growth by conquest. I should therefore become a laughing-stock if I sought to serve the gods, and taught men to honour justice and hate violence and war, in a city which desires a leader of its armies rather than a king.”

6 1 With such words did Numa decline the kingdom. Then the Romans put forth every effort to meet his objections, and begged him not to plunge them again into faction and civil war, since there was none other on whom both parties could unite. His father also and Marcius, when the envoys had withdrawn, beset him privately, and tried to persuade him to accept so great a gift of the gods. 2 “Even though,” they said, “thou neither desirest wealth for thyself, because thou hast enough, nor covetest the fame which comes from authority and power, because thou hast the greater fame which comes from virtue, yet consider that the work of a true king is a service rendered to God, who now rouses up and refuses to leave dormant and inactive the great righteousness which is within thee. Do not, therefore, avoid nor flee from this office, which a wise man will regard as a field for great and noble actions, where the gods are honoured with magnificent worship, and the hearts of men are easily and quickly softened and inclined towards piety, through the moulding influence of their ruler. 3 This people loved Tatius, though he was a foreign prince, and they pay divine honours to the memory of Romulus. And who knows but that the people, even though victorious, is sated with war, and, now that it is glutted with triumphs and spoils, is desirous of a gentle prince, who is a friend of justice, and will lead them in the paths of order and peace? But if, indeed, they are altogether intemperate and mad in their desire for war, then were it not better that thou, holding the reins of government in thy hand, shouldst turn their eager course another way, and that thy native city and the whole Sabine nation should have in thee a bond of goodwill and friendship with a vigorous and powerful city?” 4 These appeals were strengthened, we are told, by auspicious omens and by the zealous ardour of his fellow-citizens, who, when they learned of the embassy from Rome, begged him to return with it and assume the royal power there, in order to unite and blend together the citizens.

7 1 Numa therefore decided to yield, and after sacrificing to the gods, set out for Rome. The senate and people met him on his way, filled with a wondrous love of the man; women welcomed him with fitting cries of joy; sacrifices were offered in the temples, and joy was universal, as if the city were receiving, not a king, but a kingdom. When they were come down into the forum, Spurius Vettius, whose lot it was to be “interrex” at that hour, called for a vote of the citizens, and all voted for Numa. But when the insignia of royalty were brought to him, he bade the people pause, and said his authority must first be ratified by Heaven. 2 Then taking with him the augurs and priests, he ascended the Capitol, which the Romans of that time called the Tarpeian hill. There the chief of the augurs turned the veiled head of Numa towards the south, while he himself, standing behind him, and laying the right hand on his head, prayed aloud, and turned his eyes in all directions to observe whatever birds or other omens might be sent from the gods. 3 Then an incredible silence fell upon the vast multitude in the forum, who watched in eager suspense for the issue, until at last auspicious birds appeared and approached the scene on the right. Then Numa put on his royal robes and went down from the citadel to the multitude, where he was received with glad cries of welcome as the most pious of men and most beloved of the gods.

4 His first measure on assuming the government was to disband the body of three hundred men that Romulus always kept about his person, and called “Celeres” (that is, swift ones); for he would not consent to distrust those who trusted him, nor to reign over those who distrusted him. His second measure was to add to the two priests of Jupiter and Mars a third priest of Romulus, whom he called the Flamen Quirinalis. 5 Now before this time the Romans called their priests “flamines,” from the close-fitting “piloi,” or caps, which they wear upon their heads, and which have the longer name of “pilamenai,” as we are told, there being more Greek words mingled with the Latin at that time than now. Thus also the name “laena,” which the Romans give to the priestly mantle, Juba says is the same as the Greek “chlaina”; and that the name Camillus, which the Romans give to the boy with both parents living who attends upon the priest of Jupiter, is the same as that which some of the Greeks give to Hermes, from his office of attendant.

8 1 After taking such measures to secure the goodwill and favour of the people, Numa straightway attempted to soften the city, as iron is softened in the fire, and change its harsh and warlike temper into one of greater gentleness and justice. For if a city was ever in what Plato calls a “feverish” state, Rome certainly was at that time. It was brought into being at the very outset by the excessive daring and reckless courage of the boldest and most warlike spirits, who forced their way thither from all parts, 2 and in its many expeditions and its continuous wars it found nourishment and increase of its power; and just as what is planted in the earth gets a firmer seat the more it is shaken, so Rome seemed to be made strong by its very perils. And therefore Numa, judging it to be no slight or trivial undertaking to mollify and newly fashion for peace so presumptuous and stubborn a people, called in the gods to aid and assist him. 3 It was for the most part by sacrifices, processions, and religious dances, which he himself appointed and conducted, and which mingled with their solemnity a diversion full of charm and a beneficent pleasure, that he won the people’s favour and tamed their fierce and warlike tempers. At times, also, by heralding to them vague terrors from the god, strange apparitions of divine beings and threatening voices, he would subdue and humble their minds by means of superstitious fears. 4 This was the chief reason why Numa’s wisdom and culture were said to have been due to his intimacy with the Pythagoreans; for in the philosophy of the one, and in the civil polity of the other, religious services and occasions have a large place. It is said also that the solemnity of his outward demeanour was adopted by him because he shared the feelings of Pythagoras about it. 5 That philosopher, indeed, is thought to have tamed an eagle, which he stopped by certain cries of his, and brought down from his lofty flight; also to have disclosed his golden thigh as he passed through the assembled throngs at Olympia. And we have reports of other devices and performances of his which savoured of the marvellous, regarding which Timon the Phliasian wrote: —

“Down to a juggler’s level he sinks with his cheating devices,

Laying his nets for men, Pythagoras, lover of bombast.”

6 In like manner Numa’s fiction was the love which a certain goddess or mountain nymph bore him, and her secret meetings with him, as already mentioned, and his familiar converse with the Muses. For he ascribed the greater part of his oracular teachings to the Muses, and he taught the Romans to pay especial honours to one Muse in particular, whom he called Tacita, that is, the silent, or speechless one; thereby perhaps handing on and honouring the Pythagorean precept of silence.

7 Furthermore, his ordinances concerning images are altogether in harmony with the doctrines of Pythagoras. For that philosopher maintained that the first principle of being was beyond sense or feeling, was invisible and uncreated, and discernible only by the mind. And in like manner Numa forbade the Romans to revere an image of God which had the form of man or beast. Nor was there among them in this earlier time any painted or graven likeness of Deity, 8 but while for the first hundred and seventy years they were continually building temples and establishing sacred shrines, they made no statues in bodily form for them, convinced that it was impious to liken higher things to lower, and that it was impossible to apprehend Deity except by the intellect. Their sacrifices, too, were altogether appropriate to the Pythagorean worship; for most of them involved no bloodshed, but were made with flour, drink-offerings, and the least costly gifts.

9 And apart from these things, other external proofs are urged to show that the two men were acquainted with each other. One of these is that Pythagoras was enrolled as a citizen of Rome. This fact is recorded by Epicharmus the comic poet, in a certain treatise which he dedicated to Antenor; and Epicharmus was an ancient, and belonged to the school of Pythagoras. Another proof is that one of the four sons born to king Numa was named Mamercus, after the son of Pythagoras. 10 And from him they say that the patrician family of the Aemilii took its name, Aemilius being the endearing name which the king gave him for the grace and winsomeness of his speech. Moreover, I myself have heard many people at Rome recount how, when an oracle once commanded the Romans to erect in the city monuments to the wisest and the bravest of the Greeks, they set up in the forum two statues in bronze, one of Alcibiades, and one of Pythagoras. However, since the matter of Numa’s acquaintance with Pythagoras is involved in much dispute, to discuss it at greater length, and to win belief for it, would savour of youthful contentiousness.

9 1 To Numa is also ascribed the institution of that order of high priests who are called Pontifices, and he himself is said to have been the first of them. According to some they are called Pontifices because employed in the service of the gods, who are powerful and supreme over all the world; and “potens” is the Roman word for powerful. 2 Others say that the name was meant to distinguish between possible and impossible functions; the lawgiver enjoining upon these priests the performance of such sacred offices only as were possible, and finding no fault with them if any serious obstacle prevented. But most writers give an absurd explanation of the name; Pontifices means, they say, nothing more nor less than bridge-builders, from the sacrifices which they performed at the bridge over the Tiber, sacrifices of the greatest antiquity and the most sacred character; for “pons” is the Latin word for bridge. 3 They say, moreover, that the custody and maintenance of the bridge, like all the other inviolable and ancestral rites, attached to the priesthood, for the Romans held the demolition of the wooden bridge to be not only unlawful, but actually sacrilegious. It is also said that it was built entirely without iron and fastened together with wooden pins in obedience to an oracle. The stone bridge was constructed at a much later period, when Aemilius was quaestor. 4 However, it is said that the wooden bridge also was later than the time of Numa, and was completed by Ancus Marcius, the grandson of Numa by his daughter, when he was king.

The chief of the Pontifices, the Pontifex Maximus, had the duty of expounding and interpreting the divine will, or rather of directing sacred rites, not only being in charge of public ceremonies, but also watching over private sacrifices, and preventing any departure from established custom, as well as teaching whatever was requisite for the worship or propitiation of the gods. 5 He was also overseer of the holy virgins called Vestals; for to Numa is ascribed the consecration of the Vestal virgins, and in general the worship and care of the perpetual fire entrusted to their charge. It was either because he thought the nature of fire pure and uncorrupted, and therefore entrusted it to chaste and undefiled persons, or because he thought of it as unfruitful and barren, and therefore associated it with virginity. Since wherever in Greece a perpetual fire is kept, as at Delphi and Athens, it is committed to the charge, not of virgins, but of widows past the age of marriage. 6 And if by any chance it goes out, as at Athens during the tyranny of Aristion the sacred lamp is said to have been extinguished, and at Delphi when the temple was burned by the Medes, and as during the Mithridatic and the Roman civil wars the altar was demolished and the fire extinguished, then they say it must not be kindled again from other fire, but made fresh and new, by lighting a pure and unpolluted flame from the rays of the sun. 7 And this they usually effect by means of metallic mirrors, the concavity of which is made to follow the sides of an isosceles rectangular triangle, and which converge from their circumference to a single point in the centre. When, therefore, these are placed opposite the sun, so that its rays, as they fall upon them from all sides, are collected and concentrated at the centre, the air itself is rarefied there, and very light and dry substances placed there quickly blaze up from its resistance, the sun’s rays now acquiring the substance and force of fire. 8 Some, moreover, are of the opinion that nothing but this perpetual fire is guarded by the sacred virgins; while some say that certain sacred objects, which none others may behold, are kept in concealment by them. What may lawfully be learned and told about these things, I have written in my Life of Camillus.

10 1 In the beginning, then, they say that Gegania and Verenia were consecrated to this office by Numa, who subsequently added to them Canuleia and Tarpeia; that at a later time two others were added by Servius, making the number which has continued to the present time. It was ordained by the king that the sacred virgins should vow themselves to chastity for thirty years; during the first decade they are to learn their duties, during the second to perform the duties they have learned, and during the third to teach others these duties. 2 Then, the thirty years being now passed, any one who wishes has liberty to marry and adopt a different mode of life, after laying down her sacred office. We are told, however, that few have welcomed the indulgence, and that those who did so were not happy, but were a prey to repentance and dejection for the rest of their lives, thereby inspiring the rest with superstitious fears, so that until old age and death they remained steadfast in their virginity.

3 But Numa bestowed great privileges upon them, such as the right to make a will during the life time of their fathers, and to transact and manage their other affairs without a guardian, like the mothers of three children. When they appear in public, the fasces are carried before them, and if they accidentally meet a criminal on his way to execution, his life is spared; but the virgin must make oath that the meeting was involuntary and fortuitous, and not of design. He who passes under the litter on which they are borne, is put to death. 4 For their minor offences the virgins are punished with stripes, the Pontifex Maximus sometimes scourging the culprit on her bare flesh, in a dark place, with a curtain interposed. But she that has broken her vow of chastity is buried alive near the Colline gate. Here a little ridge of earth extends for some distance along the inside of the city-wall; the Latin word for it is “agger.” 5 Under it a small chamber is constructed, with steps leading down from above. In this are placed a couch with its coverings, a lighted lamp, and very small portions of the necessaries of life, such as bread, a bowl of water, milk, and oil, as though they would thereby absolve themselves from the charge of destroying by hunger a life which had been consecrated to the highest services of religion.  Then the culprit herself is placed on a litter, over which coverings are thrown and fastened down with cords so that not even a cry can be heard from within, and carried through the forum. All the people there silently make way for the litter, and follow it without uttering a sound, in a terrible depression of soul. No other spectacle is more appalling, nor does any other day bring more gloom to the city than this. 7 When the litter reaches its destination, the attendants unfasten the cords of the coverings. Then the high-priest, after stretching his hands toward heaven and uttering certain mysterious prayers before the fatal act, brings forth the culprit, who is closely veiled, and places her on the steps leading down into the chamber. After this he turns away his face, as do the rest of the priests, and when she has gone down, the steps are taken up, and great quantities of earth are thrown into the entrance to the chamber, hiding it away, and make the place level with the rest of the mound. Such is the punishment of those who break their vow of virginity.

11 Furthermore, it is said that Numa built the temple of Vesta, where the perpetual fire was kept, of a circular form, not in imitation of the shape of the earth, believing Vesta to be the earth, but of the entire universe, at the centre of which the Pythagoreans place the element of fire, and call it Vesta and Unit. 2 And they hold that the earth is neither motionless nor situated in the centre of surrounding space, but that it revolves in a circle around the central fire, not being one of the most important, nor even one of the primary elements of the universe. This is the conception, we are told, which Plato also, in his old age, had of the earth, namely that it is established in a secondary space, and that the central and sovereign space is reserved for some other and nobler body.

12 1 The Pontifices also explain and direct the ancestral rites of burial for those who desire it, and they were taught by Numa not to regard any such offices as a pollution, but to honour the gods below also with the customary rites, since they receive into their keeping the most sovereign part of us, and particularly the goddess called Libitina, who presides over the solemn services for the dead, whether she is Proserpina, or, as the most learned Romans maintain, Venus; thereby not inaptly connecting man’s birth and death with the power of one and the same goddess. 2 Numa himself also regulated the periods of mourning according to ages. For instance, over a child of less than three years there was to be no mourning at all; over one older than that, the mourning was not to last more months than it had lived years, up to ten; and no age was to be mourned longer than that, but ten months was the period for the longest mourning. This is also the period during which women who have lost their husbands remain in widowhood, and she who took another husband before this term was out, was obliged by the laws of Numa to sacrifice a cow with calf.

3 Numa also established many other orders of priesthood, of which I shall mention two, besides, those of the Salii and the Fetiales, which more than any others give evidence of the man’s reverent piety. The Fetiales were guardians of peace, so to speak, and in my opinion took their name from their office, which was to put a stop to disputes by oral conference, or parley; and they would not suffer a hostile expedition to be made before every hope of getting justice had been cut off. 4 For the Greeks call it peace when two parties settle their quarrels by mutual conference, and not by violence. And the Roman Fetiales often went to those who were doing them a wrong and made personal appeals for fair treatment; but if the unfair treatment continued, they called the gods to witness, invoked many dreadful evils upon themselves and their country in case they resorted to hostilities unjustly, and so declared war upon them. 5 But if they forbade it or withheld their consent, neither soldier nor king of Rome could lawfully take up arms. War had to begin with their verdict that it was just, and the ruler, on receiving this verdict, must then deliberate on the proper way to wage it. And it is said that the dreadful disaster which the city experienced at the hands of the Gauls was in consequence of the illegal treatment of these priests.

6 For when the Barbarians were besieging Clusium, Fabius Ambustus was sent from Rome to their camp to bring about a cessation of hostilities on behalf of the besieged. But on receiving an unseemly answer, he thought his office of ambassador was at an end, and committed the youthful folly of taking up arms for the Clusians and challenging the bravest of the Barbarians to single combat. 7 Fabius fought successfully, unhorsed his adversary, and stripped him of his armour. But when the Gauls discovered who he was, they sent a herald to Rome denouncing Fabius for violating a truce, breaking his oath, and fighting against them before war was formally declared. At Rome the Fetiales tried to persuade the senate to deliver Fabius into the hands of the Gauls, but he took refuge with the multitude, and through the favour of the populace evaded his punishment. After a little, therefore, the Gauls came up and sacked Rome, with the exception of the Capitol. But this story is more fully given in my Life of Camillus.

13 1 The priesthood of the Salii is said to have been established for the following reason. In the eighth year of his reign a pestilence, which traversed Italy, distracted Rome also. The story goes that while the people were disheartened by this, a bronze buckler fell from heaven, which came into the hands of Numa, and a wonderful account of it was given by the king, which he learned from Egeria and the Muses. 2 The buckler came, he said, for the salvation of the city, and must be carefully preserved by making eleven others of like fashion, size, and shape, in order that the resemblance between them might make it difficult for a thief to distinguish the one that fell from heaven. He said further that the spot where it fell, and the adjacent meadows, where the Muses usually had converse with him, must be consecrated to them; and that the spring which watered the spot should be declared holy water for the use of the Vestal virgins, who should daily sprinkle and purify their temple with it. 3 Moreover, they say that the truth of all this was attested by the immediate cessation of the pestilence. When Numa showed the buckler to the artificers and bade them do their best to make others like it, they all declined, except Veturius Mamurius, a most excellent workman, who was so happy in his imitation of it, and made all the eleven so exactly like it, that not even Numa himself could distinguish them. For the watch and care of these bucklers, then, he appointed the priesthood of the Salii. 4 Now the Salii were so named, not, as some tell the tale, from a man of Samothrace or Mantinea, named Salius, who first taught the dance in armour; but rather from the leaping which characterized the dance itself. This dance they perform when they carry the sacred buckler through the streets of the city in the month of March, clad in purple tunics, girt with broad belts of bronze, wearing bronze helmets on their heads, and carrying small daggers with which they strike the shields. 5 But the dance is chiefly a matter of step; for they move gracefully, and execute with vigour and agility certain shifting convolutions, in quick and oft-recurring rhythm.

The bucklers themselves are called “ancilia,” from their shape; for this is not round, nor yet completely oval, like that of the regular shield, but has a curving indentation, the arms of which are bent back and united with each other at the top and bottom; 6 this makes the shape “ancylon,” the Greek for curved. Or, they are named from the elbow on which they are carried, which, in Greek, is “ankon.” This is what Juba says, who is bent on deriving the name from the Greek. But the name may come from the Greek “anekathen,” inasmuch as the original shield fell from on high; or from “akesis,” because it healed those who were sick of the plague; or from “auchmon lysis,” because it put an end to the drought; or, further, from “anaschesis,” because it brought a cessation of calamities, just as Castor and Pollux were called Anakes by the Athenians; if, that is, we are bound to derive the name from the Greek.

7 We are told that Mamurius was rewarded for his wonderful art by having his name mentioned in a song which the Salii sing as they perform their war-dance. Some, however, say that the song does not commemorate Veturius Mamurius, but “veterem memoriam,” that is to say, ancient remembrance.

14 1 After Numa had thus established and regulated the priestly orders, he built, near the temple of Vesta, the so called Regia, or royal house. Here he passed most of his time, performing sacred functions, or teaching the priests, or engaged in the quiet contemplation of divine things. He also had another house on the Quirinal hill, the site of which is still pointed out. At all public and solemn processions of the priests, heralds were sent on before through the city, bidding the people make holiday, and putting a stop to all labour. 2 For, just as it is said that the Pythagoreans do not allow men to worship and pray to their gods cursorily and by the way, but would have them go from their homes directly to this office, with their minds prepared for it, so Numa thought that his citizens ought neither to hear nor see any divine service while they were occupied with other matters and therefore unable to pay attention. They should rather be free from all distractions and devote their thoughts to the religious ceremony as a matter of the highest importance. They should also rid their streets of noise and clatter and clamour, and all such accompaniments of menial and manual labour, and clear them for the sacred ceremonies. And the Romans still preserve some traces of this earlier feeling. When a magistrate is busy taking auspices or sacrificing, the people cry “Hoc age,” which means “Mind this,” and helps to make the bystanders attentive and orderly.

3 Many of his other precepts also resembled those of the Pythagoreans. For instance, the Pythagoreans said; “Don’t use a quart-measure as a seat”; “Don’t poke the fire with a sword”; “When you set out for foreign parts, don’t turn back”; and “To the celestial gods sacrifice an odd number, but an even number to the terrestrial”; and the meaning of all these precepts they would keep hidden from the vulgar. So in some of Numa’s rules the meaning is hidden; as, for instance, “Don’t offer to the gods wine from unpruned vines”; “Don’t make a sacrifice without a meal”; “Turn round as you worship”; and “Sit down after worship.” 4 The first two rules would seem to teach that the subjection of the earth is a part of religion; and the worshippers’ turning round is said to be an imitation of the rotary motion of the universe; but I would rather think that the worshipper who enters a temple, since temples face the east and the Sun, has his back towards the sunrise, and therefore turns himself half round in that direction, and then wheels fully round to face the god of the temple, thus making a complete circle, and linking the fulfilment of his prayer with both deities; 5 unless, indeed, this change of posture, like the Aegyptian wheels, darkly hints and teaches that there is no stability in human affairs, but that we must contentedly accept whatever twists and turns our lives may receive from the Deity. And as for the sitting down after worship, we are told that it is an augury of the acceptance of the worshipper’s prayers and the duration of his blessings. We are also told, that, as different acts are separated by an interval of rest, 6 so the worshipper, having completed one act, sits down in the presence of the gods, in order that he may begin another with their blessing. But this, too, can be brought into agreement with what was said above: the lawgiver is trying to accustom us not to make our petitions to the Deity when we are busied with other matters and in a hurry, as it were, but when we have time and are at leisure.

15 1 By such training and schooling in religious matters the city became so tractable, and stood in such awe of Numa’s power, that they accepted his stories, though fabulously strange, and thought nothing incredible or impossible which he wished them to believe or do. 2 At any rate, the story goes that he once invited a large number of the citizens to his table, and set before them mean dishes and a very simple repast; but just as they began to eat, he surprised them by saying that the goddess with whom he consorted was come to visit him, and lo, on a sudden, the room was full of costly beakers and the tables were laden with all sorts of meats and abundant furniture. 3 But nothing can be so strange as what is told about his conversation with Jupiter. When the Aventine hill — so runs the tale — was not yet a part of the city nor even inhabited, but abounded in springs and shady dells, two demi-gods, Picus and Faunus, made it their haunt. In other ways these divinities might be likened to Satyrs or Pans, but they are said to have used powerful drugs and practised clever incantations, and to have traversed Italy playing the same tricks as the so called Idaean Dactyli of the Greeks. 4 These demi-gods Numa is said to have caught, by mixing wine and honey with the water of the spring from which they were wont to drink. When captured, they dropped their own forms and assumed many different shapes, presenting hideous and dreadful appearances. But when they perceived that they were fast caught and could not escape, they foretold to Numa many things that would come to pass, and taught him besides the charm against thunder and lightning, which is still practised with onions, hair, and sprats. 5 Some, however, say that it was not the imps themselves who imparted the charm, but that they called Jupiter down from heaven by their magic, and that this deity angrily told Numa that he must charm thunder and lightning with “heads.” “Of onions?” asked Numa, filling out the phrase. “Of men,” said Jupiter. Thereupon Numa, trying once more to avert the horror of the prescription, asked “with hair?” “Nay,” answered Jupiter, “with living— “sprats?” added Numa, as he had been taught by Egeria to say. 6 Then the god returned to heaven in a gracious mood,— “hileos,” as the Greeks say, — and the place was called Ilicium from this circumstance; and that is the way the charm was perfected. These stories, fabulous and ridiculous as they are, show us the attitude which the men of that time, from force of custom, took towards the gods. And Numa himself, as they say, had such implicit confidence in the gods, when a message was brought to him that enemies were coming up against the city, he smiled and said: “But I am sacrificing.”

16 1 He was also the first, they say, to build temples to Faith and Terminus; and he taught the Romans their most solemn oath by Faith, which they still continue to use. Terminus signifies boundary, and to this god they make public and private sacrifices where their fields are set off by boundaries; of living victims nowadays, but anciently the sacrifice was a bloodless one, since Numa reasoned that the god of boundaries was a guardian of peace and a witness of just dealing, and should therefore be clear from slaughter. 2 And it is quite apparent that it was this king who set bounds to the territory of the city, for Romulus was unwilling to acknowledge, by measuring off his own, how much he had taken away from others. He knew that a boundary, if observed, fetters lawless power; and if not observed, convicts of injustice. And indeed the city’s territory was not extensive at first, but Romulus acquired most of it later with the spear. 3 All this was distributed by Numa among the indigent citizens. He wished to remove the destitution which drives men to wrongdoing, and to turn the people to agriculture, that they might be subdued and softened along with the soil they tilled. For there is no other occasion which produces so keen and quick a relish for peace as that of a farmer’s life, where so much of the warrior’s daring as prompts a man to fight for his own, is always preserved, while the warrior’s licence to indulge in rapacity and injustice is extirpated. 4 Numa, therefore, administering agriculture to his citizens as a sort of peace-potion, and well pleased with the art as fostering character rather than wealth, divided the city’s territory into districts, to which he gave the name of “pagi,” and in each of them he set overseers and patrols. But sometimes he would inspect them in person, and judging of the characters of the citizens from the condition of their farms, would advance some to positions of honour and trust; while others, who were indolent and careless, he would chide and reproach, and so try to make them sensible.

17 1 But of all his measures, the one most admired was his distribution of the people into groups according to their trades or arts. For the city was supposed to consist of two tribes, as has been said, although it had no consistency, but was rather divided into two tribes, and utterly refused to become united, or to blot out its diversities and differences. On the contrary, it was filled with ceaseless collisions and contentions between its component parts. Numa, therefore, aware that hard substances which will not readily mingle may be crushed and pulverized, and then more easily mix and mingle with each other 2 owing to the smallness of their particles, determined to divide the entire body of the people into a greater number divisions, and so, by merging it in other distinctions, to obliterate the original and great distinction, which would be lost among the lesser ones. He distributed them, accordingly, by arts and trades, into musicians, goldsmiths, carpenters, dyers, leather-workers, curriers, braziers, and potters. The remaining trades he grouped together, and made one body out of all who belonged to them. 3 He also appointed social gatherings and public assemblies and rites of worship befitting each body. And thus, at last, he banished from the city the practice of speaking and thinking of some citizens as Sabines, and of others as Romans; or of some as subjects of Tatius, and others of Romulus, so that his division resulted in a harmonious blending of them all together.

4 Praise is also given to that measure of his whereby the law permitting fathers to sell their sons was amended. He made an exception of married sons, provided they had married with the consent and approval of their fathers. For he thought it a hard thing that a woman who had married a man whom she thought free, should find herself living with a slave.

18 1 He applied himself, also, to the adjustment of the calendar,b not with exactness, and yet not altogether without careful observation. For during the reign of Romulus, they had been irrational and irregular in their fixing of the months, reckoning some at less than twenty days, some at thirty-five, and some at more; they had no idea of the inequality of the annual motions of the sun and moon, but held to this principle only, that the year should consist of three hundred and sixty days. 2 But Numa, estimating the extent of the inequality at eleven days, since the lunar year had three hundred and fifty-four days, but the solar year three hundred and sixty-five, doubled these eleven days, and every other year inserted after the month of February the intercalary month called Mercedinus by the Romans, which consisted of twenty-two days. 3 This correction of the inequality which he made was destined to require other and greater corrections in the future.

He also changed the order of the months. March, which had been first, he made the third month, and January, which had been the eleventh month under Romulus, he made the first month; February, which had been twelfth and last, thus became the second month, as now. But there are many who say that these months of January and February were added to the calendar by Numa, 4 and that at the outset the Romans had only ten months in their year, as some Barbarians have three, and as, among the Greeks, the Arcadians have four, and the Acarnanians six; the Aegyptian year had at first only a single month in it, afterwards four, as we are told. And therefore, though they inhabit a very recent country, they have the credit of being a very ancient people, and load their genealogies with a prodigious number of years, since they really count their months as so many years.

19 1 That the Romans had at first only ten months in their year, and not twelve, is proved by the name of their last month; for they still call it December, or the tenth month. And that March used to be their first month, is proved by the sequence of months after it; for the fifth month after it used to be called Quintilis, the sixth Sextilis, and so on with the rest. Therefore, when they placed January and February before March, they were guilty of naming the above-mentioned month Quintilis, or fifth, but counting it seventh. 2 And besides, it was reasonable that March, which is consecrate to Mars, should be put in the first place by Romulus, and April in the second place, since this month is named after Aphrodite. In it they sacrificed to this goddess, and on its first day the women bathe with myrtle garlands on their heads. Some, however, say that April, with its smooth “p,” cannot be derived from Aphrodite, with its rough “ph,” but that this month of high spring time is called April because it opens and discloses the buds and shoots in vegetation, this being the meaning of the word “aperio.” 3 The next month in order is called May, from Maia, the mother of Mercury, to whom it is sacred; and June is so named from Juno. There are some, however, who say that these months get their name from an age, older and younger; for “majores” is their name for the elder, “juniores” for the younger men. Each of the remaining months they named from its arithmetical position in the list, the fifth Quintilis, the sixth Sextilis, and so on with September, October, November, and December. 4 Afterwards the fifth month was named Julius, from Julius Caesar, the conqueror of Pompey; and the sixth month Augustus, from the second Caesar, who was given that title. The seventh and eighth months bore for a short time the names Germanicus and Domitianus, which the emperor Domitian gave them; but when he was slain, they resumed their old names of September and October.c Only the last two months, November and December, preserved the names derived from their position in the list just as they were at the outset.

5 Of the months which were added or transposed by Numa, February must have something to do with purification, for this is nearest to the meaning of the word, and in this month they make offerings to the dead and celebrate the festival of the Lupercalia, which, in most of its features, resembles a purification. The first month, January, is so named from Janus. And I think that March, which is named from Mars, was moved by Numa from its place at the head of the months because he wished in every case that martial influences should yield precedence to civil and political. 6 For this Janus, in remote antiquity, whether he was a demi-god or a king, was a patron of civil and social order, and is said to have lifted human life out of its bestial and savage state. For this reason he is represented with two faces, implying that he brought men’s lives out of one sort and condition into another.

20 1 He also has a temple at Rome with double doors, which they call the gates of war; for the temple always stands open in time of war, but is closed when peace has come. The latter was a difficult matter, and it rarely happened, since the realm was always engaged in some war, as its increasing size brought it into collision with the barbarous nations which encompassed it round about. 2 But in the time of Augustus Caesar it was closed, after he had overthrown Antony; and before that, when Marcus Atilius and Titus Manlius were consuls, it was closed a short time; then war broke out again at once, and it was opened. During the reign of Numa, however, it was not seen open for a single day, but remained shut for the space of forty-three years together, so complete and universal was the cessation of war. 3 For not only was the Roman people softened and charmed by the righteousness and mildness of their king, but also the cities round about, as if some cooling breeze or salubrious wind were wafted upon them from Rome, began to experience a change of temper, and all of them were filled with a longing desire to have good government, to be at peace, to till the earth, to rear their children in quiet, and to worship the gods. 4 Festivals and feasts, hospitalities and friendly converse between people who visited one another promiscuously and without fear, — these prevailed throughout Italy, while honour and justice flowed into all hearts from the wisdom of Numa, as from a fountain, and the calm serenity of his spirit diffused itself abroad. Thus even the hyperboles of the poets fall short of picturing the state of man in those days: 5 “And on the iron-bound shield-handles lie the tawney spiders’ webs”; and, “rust now subdues the sharp-pointed spears and two-edged swords; no longer is the blast of brazen trumpets heard, nor are the eyelids robbed of delicious sleep.” For there is no record either of war, or faction, or political revolution while Numa was king. Nay more, no hatred or jealousy was felt towards his person, nor did ambition lead men to plot and conspire against his throne. 6 On the contrary, either fear of the gods, who seemed to have him in their especial care, or reverence for his virtue, or a marvellous felicity, which in his days kept life free from the taint of every vice, and pure, made him a manifest illustration and confirmation of the saying which Plato, 8 many generations later, ventured to utter regarding government, 7 namely, that human ills would only then cease and disappear when, by some divine felicity, the power of a king should be united in one person with the insight of a philosopher, thereby establishing virtue in control and mastery over vice. “Blessed,” indeed, is such a wise man “in himself, and blessed, too, are those who hear the words of wisdom issuing from his lips.” 8 For possibly there is no need of any compulsion or menace in dealing with the multitude, but when they see with their own eyes a conspicuous and shining example of virtue in the life of their ruler, they will of their own accord walk in wisdom’s ways, and unite with him in conforming themselves to a blameless and blessed life of friendship and mutual concord, attended by righteousness and temperance. Such a life is the noblest end of all government, and he is most a king who can inculcate such a life and such a disposition in his subjects. This, then, as it appears, Numa was preeminent in discerning.

21 1 As regards his marriages and offspring, historians are at variance. Some say that he had no other wife than Tatia, and no other child than one daughter, Pompilia. Others ascribe to him four sons besides, Pompon, Pinus, Calpus, and Mamercus, each one of whom was the founder of an honourable family. 2 From Pompon the Pomponii are descended, from Pinus the Pinarii, from Calpus the Calpurnii, and from Mamercus the Mamercii, who for this reason had also the surname of Reges, or Kings. But there is a third class of writers who accuse the former of paying court to these great families by forging for them lines of descent from Numa, and they say that Pompilia was not the daughter of Tatia, but of Lucretia, another wife whom Numa married after he became king. 3 However, all are agreed that Pompilia was married to Marcius. Now this Marcius was a son of the Marcius who induced Numa to accept the throne. That Marcius accompanied Numa to Rome, and there was honoured with membership in the Senate. After Numa’s death, he competed for the throne with Hostilius, and being defeated, starved himself to death. But his son Marcius, the husband of Pompilia, remained at Rome, and begat Ancus Marcius, who succeeded Tullus Hostilius in the kingdom. 4 This Ancus Marcius is said to have been only five years old when Numa died, not a speedy nor a sudden death, but wasting away gradually from old age and a mild disorder, as Piso writes. He was something over eighty years old when he died.

22 1 His obsequies were as much to be envied as his life. The peoples which were in alliance and friendship with Rome assembled at the rites with public offerings and crowns; the senators carried his bier, the priests of the gods served as its escort, and the rest of the people, including women and children, followed with groans and lamentations, not as though they were attending the funeral of an aged king, but as though each one of them was burying some dearest relation taken away in the flower of life. 2 They did not burn his body, because, as it is said, he forbade it; but they made two stone coffins and buried them under the Janiculum. One of these held his body, and the other the sacred books which he had written out with his own hand, as the Greek lawgivers their tablets. But since, while he was still living, he had taught the priests the written contents of the books, and had inculcated in their hearts the scope and meaning of them all, he commanded that they should be buried with his body, convinced that such mysteries ought not to be entrusted to the care of lifeless documents. 3 This is the reason, we are told, why the Pythagoreans also do not entrust their precepts to writing, but implant the memory and practice of them in living disciples worthy to receive them. And when their treatment of the abstruse and mysterious processes of geometry had been divulged to a certain unworthy person, they said the gods threatened to punish such lawlessness and impiety with some signal and wide-spread calamity. 4 Therefore we may well be indulgent with those who are eager to prove, on the basis of so many resemblances between them, that Numa was acquainted with Pythagoras.

Antias, however, writes that it was twelve pontifical books, and twelve others of Greek philosophy, which were placed in the coffin. And about four hundred years afterwards, when Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius were consuls,d heavy rains fell, and the torrent of water tore away the earth and dislodged the coffins. 5 When their lids had fallen off, one coffin was seen to be entirely empty, without any trace whatever of the body, but in the other the writings were found. These Petilius, who was then praetor, is said to have read, and then brought to the senate, declaring that, in his opinion, it was not lawful or proper that the writings should be published abroad. The books were therefore carried to the comitium and burned.

6 It is true, indeed, of all just and good men, that they are praised more after they have left the world than before, since envy does not long survive them, and some even see it die before them; but in Numa’s case the misfortunes of the kings who followed him made his fame shine all the brighter. For of the five who came after him, the last was dethroned and grew old in exile, and of the other four, not one died a natural death. Three of them were conspired against and slain; 7 and Tullus Hostilius, who reigned next after Numa, and who mocked and derided most of his virtues, and above all his devotion to religion, declaring that it made men idle and effeminate, turned the minds of the citizens to war. He himself, however, did not abide by his presumptuous folly, but was converted by a grievous and complicated disease, and gave himself over to a superstition which was far removed from the piety of Numa. His subjects, too, were even more affected with superstition, as we are told, when he died by a stroke of lightning.

Comparison of Lycurgus and Numa

(75) 1 1 Now that we have recounted the lives of Numa and Lycurgus, and both lie clearly before us, we must attempt, even though the task be difficult, to assemble and put together their points of difference. For their points of likeness are obvious from their careers: their wise moderation, their piety, their talent for governing and educating, and their both deriving their laws from a divine source. But each also performed noble deeds peculiar to himself. To begin with, Numa accepted, but Lycurgus resigned, a kingdom. 2 One got it without asking for it, the other had it and gave it up. One was made by others their sovereign, though a private person and a stranger; the other made himself a private person, though he was a king. It was a noble thing, of course, to win a kingdom by righteousness; but it was also a noble thing to set righteousness above a kingdom. For it was virtue which rendered the one so famous as to be judged worthy of a kingdom, and virtue, too, which made the other so great as to scorn a kingdom.

3 In the second place, then, it is granted that, just as musicians tune their lyres, so Lycurgus tightened the strings at Sparta, which he found relaxed with luxury, and Numa loosened the strings at Rome, where the tones were sharp and high; but the task was more difficult in the case of Lycurgus. For his efforts were to persuade the citizens, not to take off their breast-plates and lay aside their swords, but to cast away gold and silver, and abandon costly couches and tables; not to cease from wars and hold festivals and sacrifices, but to give up feasting and drinking and practise laboriously as soldiers and athletes. 4 Wherefore the one accomplished all his ends by persuasion, through the good-will and honour in which his people held him; but the other had to risk his life and suffer wounds, and scarcely then prevailed.

Numa’s muse, however, was gentle and humane, and he converted his people to peace and righteousness, and softened their violent and fiery tempers. And if we must ascribe to the administration of Lycurgus the treatment of the Helots, 5 a most savage and lawless practice, we shall own that Numa was far more Hellenic as a lawgiver, since he gave acknowledged slaves a taste of the dignity of freedom, by making it the custom for them to feast in the company of their masters during the Saturnalia. For this too was one of the institutions of Numa, as we are told, who thereby admitted to the enjoyment of the yearly fruits of the earth those who had helped to produce them. Some, however, fancy that this custom was a reminder of the equality which characterized the famous Saturnian age, when there was neither slave nor master, but all were regarded as kinsmen and equals.

2 1 In general, both alike manifestly strove to lead their peoples to independence and sobriety; but as regards the other virtues, the one set his affections more on bravery, the other on righteousness; unless, indeed, the different natures or usages on which the government of each was based required different provisions. 762 For it was not out of cowardice that Numa put a stop to the waging of war, but to prevent the commission of injustice; neither was it to promote the commission of injustice that Lycurgus made his people warlike, but that they might not suffer injustice. Accordingly, in removing the excesses and supplying the deficiencies of their citizens, both were forced to make great innovations.

3 And surely, as regards the arrangement and classification of the citizens under their respective governments, Numa’s was strongly popular and inclined to favour the masses, resulting in a promiscuous and variegated community of goldsmiths, musicians, and leather-workers; but that of Lycurgus was rigid and aristocratic, relegating the mechanical arts into the hands of slaves and aliens, but confining the citizens themselves to the use of the shield and the spear, so that they were artificers of war and servants of Ares, but knew and cared for nothing else than to obey their commanders and master their enemies. 4 For freemen were not even permitted to transact business, that they might be entirely and forever free, but the whole apparatus of business was turned over to slaves and Helots, just like the preparation and serving of their meals. Numa, on the contrary, made no such distinctions, but, while he put a stop to military rapacity, he prohibited no other gainful occupation. Nor did he reduce the great inequalities resulting therefrom, 5 but left the acquisition of wealth wholly unrestricted, and paid no attention to the great increase of poverty and its gradual influx into the city. And yet it was his duty at the very outset, while as yet there was no general or great disparity of means, but people still lived on much the same plane, to make a stand against rapacity, as Lycurgus did, and take measures of precaution against its mischiefs; for these were not trifling, but furnished the seed and source of the most and greatest evils of after times. 6 But as regards the redistribution of land, Lycurgus, in my opinion, is not to be censured for making it, nor Numa for not making it. In the one case, the resulting equality was the foundation and base of his polity; but in the other, since the allotment of lands was recent, there was no urgent reason for introducing another division, or for disturbing the first assignment, which probably was still in force.

3 1 With regard to community in marriage and parentage, though both, by a sound policy, inculcated in husbands a freedom from selfish jealousy, still, their methods were not entirely alike. The Roman husband, if he had a sufficient number of children to rear, and another, who lacked children, could persuade him to the step, relinquished his wife to him, having the power of surrendering her entirely, or only for a season; but the Spartan, while his wife remained in his house, and the marriage retained its original rights and obligations, might allow any one who gained his consent to share his wife for the purpose of getting children by her. 2 And many husbands, as we have said, would actually invite into their homes men whom they thought most likely to procure them handsome and noble children. What, then, is the difference between the two customs? We may say, perhaps, that the Spartan implies a complete indifference to the wife, and to the jealous emotions which confound and consume the hearts of most men; while the Roman, as if with shame-faced modesty, makes a veil of the new betrothal, and concedes that community of wives is really insupportable.

3 Still further, Numa’s watchful care of young maidens was more conducive to feminine decorum; but the treatment of them by Lycurgus, being entirely unconfined and unfeminine, has given occasion to the poets. They call them “phainomerides,” bare-thighed (so Ibycus), and revile them as mad after men. Thus Euripides says: —

“They leave their homes to mingle with the youths;

Their thighs are naked, flying free their robes.”

774 For in fact the flaps of the tunic worn by their maidens were not sewn together below the waist, but would fly back and lay bare the whole thigh as they walked. Sophocles pictures the thing very clearly in these words: —

And that young maid, whose tunic, still unsewn,

Lays bare her gleaming thigh

Between its folds, Hermione.”

5 And so their women, it is said, were too bold, putting on men’s airs with their husbands even, to begin with, since they ruled their houses absolutely, and besides, on public occasions, taking part in debate and the freest speech on the most important subjects. But Numa, while carefully preserving to the matrons that dignified and honourable relation to their husbands which was bestowed on them by Romulus, when he tried by kindly usage to efface the memory of the violence done them, nevertheless enjoined great modesty upon them, forbade them all busy intermeddling, taught them sobriety, and accustomed them to be silent; wine they were to refrain from entirely, and were not to speak, even on the most necessary topics, unless their husbands were with them. 6 At any rate, it is said that when a woman once pleaded her own cause in the forum, the senate sent to inquire of an oracle what the event might portend for the city. And for their usual gentleness and readiness to obey, there is strong evidence in the specific mention made of those who were less amenable. For just as our Greek historians record the names of those who first slew kinsfolk, or made war on their brothers, or were parricides, or matricides, 7 so the Romans make record of the fact that Spurius Carvilius was the first to divorce his wife, two hundred and thirty years after the founding of Rome, there being no precedent for it; also that the wife of Pinarius, Thalaea by name, was the first woman to quarrel with her own mother-in law, Gegania, in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus. In such fitting and proper manner were marriages regulated by their lawgiver.

4 1 Further, the practice of the two peoples in the matter of giving their young maids in marriage conforms to their education of them in general. Lycurgus made them brides only when they were fully ripe and eager for it, in order that intercourse with a husband, coming at time when nature craved it, might produce a kindly love, instead of the timorous hate that follows unnatural compulsion; also that their bodies might be vigorous enough to endure the strain of conception and child-birth, convinced as he was that marriage had no other end than the production of children. The Romans, on the other hand, gave their maidens in marriage when they were twelve years old, or even younger. In this way more than any other, it was thought, both their bodies and their dispositions would be pure and undefiled when their husbands took control of them. 2 It is clear, therefore, that one practice regarded nature more, with children in view; the other regarded more the formation of character, with married life in view.

But surely, by his careful attention to boys, by their collection into companies, their discipline and constant association, and by his painstaking arrangements for their meals and bodily exercise and sports, Lycurgus proves that Numa was no more than an ordinary lawgiver. For Numa left the bringing up of youths to the wishes or necessities of their fathers. 3 A father might, if he wished, make his son a tiller of the soil, or a shipwright, or might teach him to be a smith or a flute-player, as if it were not important that all of them should be trained with one and the same end in view from the onset, and have their dispositions formed alike; but rather as if they were like passengers on a ship, each coming with a different object and purpose, and each therefore uniting with the rest for the common good only in times of peril, through fear of private loss, but otherwise consulting only his own interests. 4 Now, it is not worth while to censure the common run of legislators, who fail through ignorance or weakness. But when a wise man had consented to be king over a people newly constituted and pliant to his every wish, what should have been his first care, unless it was the rearing of boys and the training of youths so that there might be no confusing differences in their characters, 78 but that they might be moulded and fashioned from the very outset so as to walk harmoniously together in the same path of virtue? 5 This, indeed, was what helped Lycurgus to secure, among other things, the stability and permanence of his laws. The Spartans took oaths to maintain these laws, it is true, but this would have availed little had he not, by means of his training and education of the boys, infused his laws, as it were, into their characters, and made the emulous love of his government an integral part of their rearing. The result was that for more than five hundred years the sovereign and fundamental features of his legislation remained in force, like a strong and penetrating dye.

6 But that which was the end and aim of Numa’s government, namely, the continuance of peace and friendship between Rome and other nations, straightway vanished from the earth with him. After his death the double doors of the temple which he had kept continuously closed, as if he really had war caged and confined there, were thrown wide open, and Italy was filled with the blood of the slain. Thus not even for a little time did the beautiful edifice of justice which he had reared remain standing, because it lacked the cement of education.

7 “What, then!” some one will say, “was not Rome advanced and bettered by her wars?” That is a question which will need a long answer, if I am to satisfy men who hold that betterment consists in wealth, luxury and empire, rather than in safety, gentleness, and that independence which is attended by righteousness. However, it will be thought, I suppose, to favour the superior claims of Lycurgus, that, whereas the Romans increased in power as they did after abandoning the institutions of Numa’s time, 8 the Lacedaemonians, on the other hand, just as soon as they forsook the precepts of Lycurgus, sank from the highest to the lowest place, lost their supremacy over the Greeks, and were in danger of utter destruction. Nevertheless, this remains a great feature in Numa’s career, and one really divine, that he was a stranger, and yet was summoned to the throne, where he changed the whole nature of the state by force of persuasion alone, and mastered a city which was not yet in sympathy with his views; and that he accomplished this without appeal to arms or any violence (unlike Lycurgus, who led the nobles in arms against the commons), but by his wisdom and justice won the hearts of all the citizens and brought them into harmony.

Solon

(78) 1 1 Didymus the grammarian, in his reply to Asclepiades on Solon’s tables of law, mentions a remark of one Philocles, in which it is stated that Solon’s father was Euphorion, contrary to the opinion of all others who have written about Solon. For they all unite in saying that he was a son of Execestides, a man of moderate wealth and influence in the city, but a member of its foremost family, being descended from Codrus. 2 Solon’s mother, according to Heracleides Ponticus, was a cousin of the mother of Peisistratus. And the two men were at first great friends, largely because of their kinship, 79 and largely because of the youthful beauty of Peisistratus, with whom, as some say, Solon was passionately in love. And this may be the reason why, in later years, when they were at variance about matters of state, their enmity did not bring with it any harsh or savage feelings, but their former amenities lingered in their spirits, and preserved there,

“smouldering with a lingering flame of Zeus-sent fire,”

the grateful memory of their love. 3 And that Solon was not proof against beauty in a youth, and made not so bold with Love as “to confront him like a boxer, hand to hand,” may be inferred from his poems. He also wrote a law forbidding a slave to practise gymnastics or have a boy lover, thus putting the matter in the category of honour and dignified practices, and in a way inciting the worthy to that which he forbade the unworthy. 4 And it is said that Peisistratus also had a boy lover, Charmus, and that he dedicated the statue of Love in the Academy, where the runners in the sacred torch race light their torches.

2 1 Solon, then, after his father had impaired his estate in sundry benevolent charities, as Hermippus tells us, might have found friends enough who were willing to aid him. But he was ashamed to take from others, since he belonged to a family which had always helped others, and therefore, while still a young man, embarked in commerce. And yet some say that he travelled to get experience and learning rather than to make money. 2 For he was admittedly a lover of wisdom, since even when he was well on in years he would say that he “grew old ever learning many things”; and he was not an admirer of wealth, but actually says that two men are alike wealthy of whom one

“much silver hath,

And gold, and wide domains of wheat-bearing soil,

Horses and mules; while to the other only enough belongs

To give him comfort of food, and clothes, and shoes,

Enjoyment of child and blooming wife, when these too come,

And only years commensurate therewith are his.”

3 However, in another place he says: —

“Wealth I desire to have; but wrongfully to get it,

I do not wish. Justice, even if slow, is sure.”

And there is no reason why a good statesman should either set his heart too much on the acquisition of superfluous wealth, or despise unduly the use of what is necessary and convenient. In those earlier times, to use the words of Hesiod, “work was no disgrace,” nor did a trade bring with it social inferiority, and the calling of a merchant was actually held in honour, since it gave him familiarity with foreign parts, friendships with foreign kings, and a large experience in affairs. 4 Some merchants were actually founders of great cities, as Protis, who was beloved by the Gauls along the Rhone, was of Marseilles. Thales is said to have engaged in trade, as well as Hippocrates the mathematician; and Plato defrayed the expenses of his sojourn in Egypt by the sale of oil.

3 1 Accordingly, if Solon’s way of living was expensive and profuse, and if, in his poems, he speaks of pleasure with more freedom than becomes a philosopher, this is thought to be due to his mercantile life; he encountered many and great dangers, and sought his reward therefor in sundry luxuries and enjoyments. 2 But that he classed himself among the poor rather than the rich, is clear from these verses: —

“For often evil men are rich, and good men poor;

But we will not exchange with them

Our virtue for their wealth, since one abides alway,

While riches change their owners every day.”

803 And he seems to have composed his poetry at first with no serious end in view, but as amusement and diversion in his hours of leisure. Then later, he put philosophic maxims into verse, and interwove many political teachings in his poems, not simply to record and transmit them, but because they contained justifications of his acts, and sometimes exhortations, admonitions, and rebukes for the Athenians. 4 Some say, too, that he attempted to reduce his laws to heroic verse before he published them, and they give us this introduction to them: —

“First let us offer prayers to Zeus, the royal son of Cronus,

That he may give these laws of ours success and fame.”

In philosophy, he cultivated chiefly the domain of political ethics, like most of the wise men of the time; and in physics, he is very simple and antiquated, as is clear from the following verses: —

5 “From clouds come sweeping snow and hail,

And thunder follows on the lightning’s flash.

By winds the sea is lashed to storm, but if it be

Unvexed, it is of all things most amenable.”

And in general, it would seem that Thales was the only wise man of the time who carried his speculations beyond the realm of the practical; the rest got the name of wisdom from their excellence as statesmen.

4 1 They are all said to have met together at Delphi, and again in Corinth, where Periander arranged something like a joint conference for them, and a banquet. But what contributed still more to their honour and fame was the circuit which the tripod made among them, its passing round through all their hands, and their mutual declination of it, with generous expressions of goodwill. 2 Some Coans, as the story goes, were dragging in a net, and some strangers from Miletus bought the catch as yet unseen. It proved to contain a golden tripod which Helen, on her voyage from Troy, is said to have thrown in there, when she called to mind a certain ancient oracle. First the strangers had a dispute with the fishermen about the tripod, and then their cities took up the quarrel and went at last to war, whereupon the Pythian priestess of Apollo told both parties in an oracle that the tripod must be given to the wisest man. 3 So in the first place it was sent to Thales at Miletus, the Coans willingly bestowing upon him alone that for which they had waged war against all the Milesians together. But Thales declared that Bias was a wiser man than he, and the tripod was sent to Bias. From Bias, in his turn, it was dispatched to another, as wiser than he. So it went the rounds and was sent away by each in turn, until at last it came to Thales for the second time. Finally, it was carried from Miletus to Thebes and dedicated to Ismenian Apollo.

4 Theophrastus, however, says that the tripod was sent in the first place to Bias at Priene, and in the second place to Thales at Miletus, at the instance of Bias, and so passed through the hands of all the wise men until it came round again to Bias, and finally was sent to Delphi. These, then, are the more common versions of the tale. But some say that the gift thus passed from hand to hand was not the tripod now seen at Delphi, but a bowl sent there by Croesus; and others that it was a beaker left there by Bathycles.

5 1 In particular we are told of private intercourse between Solon and Anacharsis, and between Solon and Thales, of which the following accounts are given. Anacharsis came to Athens, knocked at Solon’s door, and said that he was a stranger who had come to make ties of friendship and hospitality with him. On Solon’s replying that it was better to make one’s friendships at home, “Well then,” said Anacharsis, “do thou, who art at home, make me thy friend and guest.” 2 So Solon, admiring the man’s ready wit, received him graciously and kept him with him some time. This was when he was already engaged in public affairs and compiling his laws. 81 Anacharsis, accordingly, on learning what Solon was about, laughed at him for thinking that he could check the injustice and rapacity of the citizens by written laws, which were just like spiders’ webs; they would hold the weak and delicate who might be caught in their meshes, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful. 3 To this Solon is said to have answered that men keep their agreements with each other when neither party profits by the breaking of them, and he was adapting his laws to the citizens in such a manner as to make it clear to all that the practice of justice was more advantageous than the transgression of the laws. But the results justified the conjecture of Anacharsis rather than the hopes of Solon. It was Anacharsis, too, who said, after attending a session of the assembly, that he was amazed to find that among the Greeks,a the wise men pleaded causes, but the fools decided them.

6 1 On his visit to Thales at Miletus, Solon is said to have expressed astonishment that his host was wholly indifferent to marriage and the getting of children. At the time Thales made no answer, but a few days afterwards he contrived to have a stranger say that he was just arrived after a ten days’ journey from Athens. When Solon asked what news there was at Athens, the man, who was under instructions what to say, answered: “None other than the funeral of a young man, who was followed to the grave by the whole city. 2 For he was the son, as I was told, of an honoured citizen who excelled all others in virtue; he was not at the funeral of his son; they told me that he had been travelling abroad for a long time.” “O the miserable man!” said Solon; “pray, what was his name?” “I heard the name,” the man said, “but I cannot recall it; only there was great talk of his wisdom and justice.” Thus every answer heightened Solon’s fears, and at last, in great distress of soul, he told his name to the stranger and asked him if it was Solon’s son that was dead. 3 The man said it was; whereupon Solon began to beat his head and to do and say everything else that betokens a transport of grief. But Thales took him by the hand and said, with a smile, “This it is, O Solon, which keeps me from marriage and the getting of children; it overwhelms even thee, who art the most stout-hearted of men. But be not dismayed at this story, for it is not true.” Such, at any rate, according to Hermippus, is the story of Pataecus, who used to boast that he had Aesop’s soul.

7 1 However, it is irrational and ignoble to renounce the acquisition of what we want for fear of losing it; for on this principle a man cannot be gratified by the possession of wealth, or honour, or wisdom, for fear he may be deprived of them. Indeed, even virtue, the most valuable and pleasing possession in the world, is often banished by sickness and drugs. And Thales himself, though unmarried, was nevertheless not wholly free from apprehension, unless he also avoided having friends, or relations, or country. 2 On the contrary, he had a son by his own adoption, as we are told, Cybisthus, his sister’s son. For the soul has in itself a capacity for affection, and loves just as naturally as it perceives, understands, and remembers. It clothes itself in this capacity, and attaches itself to those who are not akin to it, and just as if it were a house or an estate that lacks lawful heirs, this craving for affection is entered and occupied by alien and illegitimate children, or retainers, who, along with love for them, inspire anxiety and fear in their behalf. 3 So that you will find men of a somewhat rugged nature who argue against marriage and the begetting of children, 82 and then, when children of their servants, or offspring of their concubines fall sick and die, these same men are racked with sorrow and lament abjectly. Some, too, at the death even of dogs and horses, have been plunged into shameful and intolerable grief. But others have borne the loss of noble sons without terrible sorrow or unworthy conduct, and have conformed the rest of their lives to the dictates of reason. 4 For it is weakness, not kindness, that brings men into endless pains and terrors when they are not trained by reason to endure the assaults of fortune. Such men do not even enjoy what they long for when they get it, but are filled with continual pangs, tremors, and struggles by the fear of future loss. However, we must be fortified not by poverty against deprivation of worldly goods, nor by friendlessness against loss of friends, nor by childlessness against death of children, but by reason against all adversities. This, under present circumstances, is more than enough on this head.

8 1 Once when the Athenians were tired out with a war which they were waging against the Megarians for the island of Salamis, they made a law that no one in future, on pain of death, should move, in writing or orally, that the city take up its contention for Salamis. Solon could not endure the disgrace of this, and when he saw that many of the young men wanted steps taken to bring on the war, but did not dare to take those steps themselves on account of the law, he pretended to be out of his head, and a report was given to the city by his family that he showed signs of madness. 2 He then secretly composed some elegiac verses, and after rehearsing them so that he could say them by rote, he sallied out into the market-place of a sudden, with a cap upon his head. After a large crowd had collected there, he got upon the herald’s stone and recited the poem which begins: —

“Behold in me a herald come from lovely Salamis,

With a song in ordered verse instead of a harangue.”

3 This poem is entitled “Salamis,” and contains a hundred very graceful verses. When Solon had sung it, his friends began to praise him, and Peisistratus in particular urged and incited the citizens to obey his words. They therefore repealed the law and renewed the war, putting Solon in command of it.

4 The popular account of his campaign is as follows. Having sailed to Cape Colias with Peisistratus, he found all the women of the city there, performing the customary sacrifice to Demeter. He therefore sent a trusty man to Salamis, who pretended to be a deserter, and bade the Megarians, if they wished to capture the principal women of Athens, to sail to Colias with him as fast as they could. The Megarians were persuaded by him, and sent off some men in his ship. 5 But when Solon saw the vessel sailing back from the island, he ordered the women to withdraw, and directed those of the younger men who were still beardless, arraying themselves in the garments, head-bands, and sandals which the women had worn, and carrying concealed daggers, to sport and dance on the sea shore until the enemy had disembarked and the vessel was in their power. 6 This being done as he directed, the Megarians were lured on by what they saw, beached their vessel, and leapt out to attack women, as they supposed, vying with one another in speed. The result was that not a man of them escaped, but all were slain, and the Athenians at once set sail and took possession of the island.

9 1 Others, however, say that the island was not taken this way, but that Solon first received this oracle from the god at Delphi: —

“The tutelary heroes of the land where once they lived, with sacred rites

Propitiate, whom the Asopian plain now hides in its bosom;

83 There they lie buried with their faces toward the setting sun.”

Thereupon Solon sailed by night to the island and made sacrifices to the heroes Periphemus and Cychreus. 2 Then he took five hundred Athenian volunteers, a decree having been made that these should be supreme in the government of the island if they took it, and setting sail with a number of fishing boats convoyed by a thirty-oared ship, he anchored off the island of Salamis, at a point of land looking towards Euboea. But the Megarians in the city of Salamis, hearing only an uncertain report of what had happened, armed themselves hurriedly and set out for the place, at the same time dispatching a ship to spy out the enemy. 3 This ship came near and was captured by Solon, who put her crew in confinement. Then he manned her with the best of his Athenians, and ordered them to sail against the city, keeping themselves as much concealed as was feasible. At the same time, with the rest of his Athenians, he engaged the Megarians on land, and while the fight was still raging, the crew of the ship succeeded in capturing the city.

4 Now there seems to be a confirmation of this story in certain ceremonies afterwards established. Namely, an Attic ship would approach the island in silence at first, then its crew would make an onset with shouts and cries, and one man in full armour would leap out with a shout of triumph and run to the promontory of Sciradium to inform those who were attacking by land. Hard by that place is the temple of Enyalius which was erected by Solon. For he conquered the Megarians, and all who were not slain in the battle were released on parole.

10 1 Notwithstanding all this, the Megarians persisted in their opposition, and both sides inflicted and suffered many injuries in the war, so that finally they made the Lacedaemonians arbiters and judges of the strife. Accordingly, most writers say that the fame of Homer favoured the contention of Solon; for after himself inserting a verse into the Catalogue of Ships, he read the passage at the trial thus: —

“Ajax from Salamis brought twelve ships,

And bringing, stationed them near the Athenian hosts.”

2 The Athenians themselves, however, think this an idle tale, and say that Solon proved to the judges that Philaeus and Eurysaces, the sons of Ajax, became citizens of Athens, made over their island to them, and took up their residence in Attica, one at Brauron, and the other at Melité; and they have a township named after Philaeus, namely Philaïdae, to which Peisistratus belonged. 3 They say, too, that Solon, wishing to refute the claims of the Megarians still further, made the point that the dead on the island of Salamis were not buried after the Megarian, but after the Athenian fashion. For the Megarians bury their dead facing the east, but the Athenians facing the west. However, Hereas the Megarian denies this, and says that the Megarians also turn the faces of their dead to the west. And what is still more important than this, he says that the Athenians use one tomb for each body, whereas the Megarians (like the early inhabitants of Salamis) place three or four bodies in one tomb. 4 However, they say that Solon was further supported by sundry Pythian oracles, in which the god spoke of Salamis as Ionian. This case was decided by five Spartans, Critolaïdas, Amompharetus, Hypsechidas, Anaxilas, and Cleomenes.

11 These events, then, presently made Solon famous and powerful. But he was even more admired and celebrated among the Greeks for what he said in behalf of the temple at Delphi, namely, that the Greeks must come to its relief, and not suffer the people of Cirrha to outrage the oracle, but aid the Delphians in maintaining the honour of the god. For it was by his persuasion that the Amphictyons undertook the war, as Aristotle, among others, testifies, in his list of the victors at the Pythian games, where he ascribes the measure to Solon. 842 He was not, however, appointed general for this war, as Evanthes the Samian says (according to Hermippus), for Aeschines the orator makes no such statement, and in the records of Delphi it is stated that Alcmaeon, and not Solon, commanded the Athenians.

12 1 Now the Cylonian pollution had for a long time agitated the city, ever since Megacles the archon had persuaded Cylon and his fellow-conspirators, who had taken sanctuary in the temple of Athena, to come down and stand their trial. They fastened a braided thread to the image of the goddess and kept hold of it, but when they reached the shrine of the Erinyes on their way down, the thread broke of its own accord, upon which Megacles and his fellow-archons rushed to seize them, on the plea that the goddess refused them the rights of suppliants. Those who were outside of sacred precincts were stoned to death, and those who took refuge at the altars were slaughtered there; only those were spared who made supplication to the wives of the archons. 2 Therefore the archons were called polluted men and were held in execration. The survivors of the followers of Cylon also recovered strength, and were forever at variance with the descendants of Megacles. At this particular time the quarrel was at its height and the people divided between the two factions. Solon, therefore, being now in high repute, interposed between them, along with the noblest of the Athenians, and by his entreaties and injunctions persuaded the men who were held to be polluted to submit to a trial, and to abide by the decision of three hundred jurors selected from the nobility. 3 Myron of Phlya conducted the prosecution, and the family of Megacles was found guilty. Those who were alive were banished, and the bodies of the dead were dug up and cast forth beyond the borders of the country. During these disturbances the Megarians also attacked the Athenians, who lost Nisaea, and were driven out of Salamis once more. The city was also visited with superstitious fears and strange appearances, and the seers declared that their sacrifices indicated pollutions and defilements which demanded expiation.

4 Under these circumstances they summoned to their aid from Crete Epimenides of Phaestus, who is reckoned as the seventh Wise Man by some of those who refuse Periander a place in the list. He was reputed to be a man beloved of the gods, and endowed with a mystical and heaven-sent wisdom in religious matters. Therefore the men of his time said that he was the son of a nymph named Balte, and called him a new Cures. On coming to Athens he made Solon his friend, assisted him in many ways, and paved the way for his legislation. 5 For he made the Athenians decorous and careful in their religious services, and milder in their rites of mourning, by attaching certain sacrifices immediately to their funeral ceremonies, and by taking away harsh and barbaric practices in which their women had usually indulged up to that time. Most important of all, by sundry rites of propitiation and purification, and by sacred foundations, he hallowed and consecrated the city, and brought it to be observant of justice and more easily inclined to unanimity. It is said that when he had seen Munychia and considered it for some time, he remarked to the bystanders that man was indeed blind to the future; 6 for if the Athenians only knew what mischiefs the place would bring upon their city, they would devour it with their own teeth. A similar insight into futurity is ascribed to Thales. They say that he gave directions for his burial in an obscure and neglected quarter of the city’s territory, predicting that it would one day be the market-place of Miletus. Well then, Epimenides was vastly admired by the Athenians, who offered him much money and large honours; but he asked for nothing more than a branch of the sacred olive-tree, with which he returned home.

13 1 But the Athenians, now that the Cylonian disturbance was over and the polluted persons banished, as described, relapsed into their old disputes about the form of government, the city being divided into as many parties as there were diversities in its territory. 85 The Hill-men favoured an extreme democracy; the Plain-men an extreme oligarchy; the Shore-men formed a third party, which preferred an intermediate and mixed form of government, was opposed to the other two, and prevented either from gaining the ascendancy. 2 At that time, too, the disparity between the rich and the poor had culminated, as it were, and the city was in an altogether perilous condition; it seemed as if the only way to settle its disorders and stop its turmoils was to establish a tyranny. All the common people were in debt to the rich. For they either tilled their lands for them, paying them a sixth of the increase (whence they were called Hectemorioi and Thetes), or else they pledged their persons for debts and could be seized by their creditors, some becoming slaves at home, and others being sold into foreign countries. 3 Many, too, were forced to sell their own children (for there was no law against it), or go into exile, because of the cruelty of the money-lenders. But the most and sturdiest of them began to band together and exhort one another not to submit to their wrongs, but to choose a trusty man as their leader, set free the condemned debtors, divide the land anew, and make an entire change in the form of government.

14 1 At this point, the wisest of the Athenians cast their eyes upon Solon. They saw that he was the one man least implicated in the errors of the time; that he was neither associated with the rich in their injustice, nor involved in the necessities of the poor. They therefore besought him to come forward publicly and put an end to the prevailing dissensions. And yet Phanias the Lesbian writes that Solon of his own accord played a trick upon both parties in order to save the city, and secretly promised to the poor the distribution of land which they desired, and to the rich, validation of their securities. 2 But Solon himself says that he entered public life reluctantly, and fearing one party’s greed and the other party’s arrogance. However, he was chosen archon to succeed Philombrotus, and made mediator and legislator for the crisis, the rich accepting him readily because he was well-to do, and the poor because he was honest. It is also said that a certain utterance of his which was current before his election, to the effect that equality bred no war, pleased both the men of substance and those who had none; the former expecting to have equality based on worth and excellence, the latter on measure and count. 3 Therefore both parties were in high hopes, and their chief men persistently recommended a tyranny to Solon, and tried to persuade him to seize the city all the more confidently now that he had it completely in his power. Many citizens, too, who belonged to neither party, seeing that it would be a laborious and difficult matter to effect a change by means of argument and law, were not reluctant to have one man, the justest and wisest of all, put at the head of the state. 4 Furthermore, some say that Solon got an oracle at Pytho which ran as follows: —

“Take thy seat amidships, the pilot’s task is thine;

Perform it; many in Athens are thine allies.”

And above all, his familiar friends chid him for being averse to absolute power because of the name of tyranny, as if the virtues of him who seized it would not at once make it a lawful sovereignty. Euboea (they argued) had formerly found this true of Tynnondas, and so had the Mitylenaeans, now that they had chosen Pittacus to be their tyrant.

5 None of these things shook Solon from his resolution. To his friends he said, as we are told, that a tyranny was a lovely place, but there was no way down from it. And in his poems he writes to Phocus: —

86”And if,” he said, “I spared my land,

My native land, and unto tyranny and violence implacable

Did not set hand, polluting and disgracing my fair fame,

I’m not ashamed; in this way rather shall my name be set above

That of all other men.”

From this it is clear that even before his legislation he was in high repute. 6 And as for the ridicule which many heaped upon him for refusing the tyranny, he has written as follows: —

“Solon was a shallow thinker and a man of counsel void;

When the gods would give him blessings, of his own will he refused.

When his net was full of fish, amazed, he would not pull it in,

All for lack of spirit, and because he was bereft of sense.

I had certainly been willing, for the power, and boundless wealth,

And to be tyrant over Athens no more than a single day,

Then to have a pouch flayed from me, and my lineage blotted out.”

15 1 Thus he represents the multitude and men of low degree as speaking of him. However, though he rejected the tyranny, he did not administer affairs in the mildest possible manner, nor in the enactment of his laws did he show a feeble spirit, nor make concessions to the powerful, nor consult the pleasure of his electors. Nay, where a condition was as good as it could well be, he applied no remedy, and introduced no innovation, fearing lest, after utterly confusing and confounding the city, he should be too weak to establish it again and recompose it for the best. 2 But those things wherein he hoped to find them open to persuasion or submissive to compulsion, these he did,

“Combining both force and justice together,”

as he says himself. Therefore when he was afterwards asked if he had enacted the best laws for the Athenians, he replied, “The best they would receive.”

Now later writers observe that the ancient Athenians used to cover up the ugliness of things with auspicious and kindly terms, giving them polite and endearing names. 3 Thus they called harlots “companions,” taxes “contributions,” the garrison of a city its “guard,” and the prison a “chamber.” But Solon was the first, it would seem, to use this device, when he called his cancelling of debts a “disburdenment.” For the first of his public measures was an enactment that existing debts should be remitted, and that in future no one should lend money on the person of a borrower. 4 Some writers, however, and Androtion is one of them, affirm that the poor were relieved not by a cancelling of debts, but by a reduction of the interest upon them, and showed their satisfaction by giving the name of “disburdenment” to this act of humanity, and to the augmentation of measures and the purchasing power of money which accompanied it. For he made the mina to consist of a hundred drachmas, which before had contained only seventy-three, so that by paying the same amount of money, but money of lesser value, those who had debts to discharge were greatly benefited, and those who accepted such payments were no losers. 5 But most writers agree that the “disburdenment” was a removal of all debt, and with such the poems of Solon are more in accord. For in these he proudly boasts that from the mortgaged lands

“He took away the record-stones that everywhere were planted;

Before, Earth was in bondage, now she is free.”

And of the citizens whose persons had been seized for debt, some he brought back from foreign lands,

“uttering no longer Attic speech,

So long and far their wretched wanderings;

And some who here at home in shameful servitude

Were held”

he says he set free.

6 This undertaking is said to have involved him in the most vexatious experience of his life. For when he had set out to abolish debts, and was trying to find arguments and a suitable occasion for the step, he told some of his most trusted and intimate friends, namely, Conon, Cleinias, and Hipponicus, that he was not going to meddle with the land, but had determined to cancel debts. 87 They immediately took advantage of this confidence and anticipated Solon’s decree by borrowing large sums from the wealthy and buying up great estates. 7 Then, when the decree was published, they enjoyed the use of their properties, but refused to pay the moneys due their creditors. This brought Solon into great condemnation and odium, as if he had not been imposed upon with the rest, but were a party to the imposition. However, this charge was at once dissipated by his well-known sacrifice of five talents. For it was found that he had lent so much, and he was the first to remit this debt in accordance with his law. Some say that the sum was fifteen talents, and among them is Polyzelus the Rhodian. But his friends were ever after called “chreocopidae,” or debt-cutters.

16 1 He pleased neither party, however; the rich were vexed because he took away their securities for debt, and the poor still more, because he did not re distribute the land, as they had expected, nor make all men equal and alike in their way of living, as Lycurgus did. But Lycurgus was eleventh in descent from Heracles, and had been king in Lacedaemon for many years. He therefore had great authority, many friends, and power to support his reforms in the commonwealth. He also employed force rather than persuasion, insomuch that he actually lost his eye thereby, and most effectually guaranteed the safety and unanimity of the city by making all its citizens neither poor nor rich. 2 Solon, on the contrary, could not secure this feature in his commonwealth, since he was a man of the people and of modest station; yet he in no wise acted short of his real power, relying as he did only on the wishes of the citizens and their confidence in him. Nevertheless he gave offence to the greater part of them, who expected different results, as he himself says of them in the lines: —

“Then they had extravagant thoughts of me, but now, incensed,

All look askance at me, as if I were their foe.”

And yet had any other man, he says, acquired the same power,

“He had not held the people down, nor made an end

Until he had confounded all, and skimmed the cream.”

3 Soon, however, they perceived the advantages of his measure, ceased from their private fault-finding, and offered a public sacrifice, which they called Seisactheia, or Disburdenment. They also appointed Solon to reform the constitution and make new laws, laying no restrictions whatever upon him, but putting everything into his hands, magistracies, assemblies, court-of law, and councils. He was to fix the property qualification for each of these, their numbers, and their times of meeting, abrogating and maintaining existing institutions at his pleasure.

17 1 In the first place, then, he repealed the laws of Draco, all except those concerning homicide, because they were too severe and their penalties too heavy. For one penalty was assigned to almost all transgressions, namely death, so that even those convicted of idleness were put to death, and those who stole salad or fruit received the same punishment as those who committed sacrilege or murder. 2 Therefore Demades, in later times, made a hit when he said that Draco’s laws were written not with ink, but blood. And Draco himself, they say, being asked why he made death the penalty for most offences, replied that in his opinion the lesser ones deserved it, and for the greater ones no heavier penalty could be found.

18 1 In the second place, wishing to leave all the magistracies in the hands of the well-to do, as they were, but to give the common people a share in the rest of the government, of which they had hitherto been deprived, Solon made an appraisement of the property of the citizens. Those who enjoyed a yearly increase of five hundred measure (wet and dry), he placed in the first class, and called them Pentakosiomedimnoi; 88 the second class were composed of those who were able to keep a horse, or had a yearly increase of three hundred measures, 2 and they were called Hippada Telountes, since they paid a Knight’s tax; the members of the third class, whose yearly increase amounted to two hundred measures (wet and dry together), were called Zeugitai. All the rest were called Thetes; they were not allowed to hold any office, but took part in the administration only as members of the assembly and as jurors. This last privilege seemed at first of no moment, but afterwards proved to be of the very highest importance, since most disputes finally came into the hands of these jurors. For even in cases which Solon assigned to the magistrates for decision, he allowed also an appeal to a popular court when any one desired it. 3 Besides, it is said that his laws were obscurely and ambiguously worded on purpose to enhance the power of the popular courts. For since parties to a controversy could not get satisfaction from the laws, the result was that they always wanted jurors to decide it, and every dispute was laid before them, so that they were in a manner masters of the laws. 4 And he himself claims the credit for this in the following words: —

“For to the common people I gave so much power as is sufficient,

Neither robbing them of dignity, nor giving them too much;

And those who had power, and were marvellously rich,

Even for these I contrived that they suffered no harm.

I stood with a mighty shield in front of both classes,

And suffered neither of them to prevail unjustly.”

5 Moreover, thinking it his duty to make still further provision for the weakness of the multitude, he gave every citizen the privilege of entering suit in behalf of one who had suffered wrong. If a man was assaulted, and suffered violence or injury, it was the privilege of any one who had the ability and the inclination, to indict the wrong-doer and prosecute him. The law-giver in this way rightly accustomed the citizens, as members of one body, to feel and sympathize with one another’s wrongs. And we are told of a saying of his which is consonant with this law. Being asked, namely, what city was best to live in, “That city,” he replied, “in which those who are not wronged, no less than those who are wronged, exert themselves to punish the wrongdoers.”

19 1 After he had established the council of the Areiopagus, consisting of those who had been archons year by year (and he himself was a member of this body, since he had been archon), he observed that the common people were uneasy and bold in consequence of their release from debt, and therefore established another council besides, consisting of four hundred men, one hundred chosen from each of the four tribes. These were to deliberate on public matters before the people did, and were not to allow any matter to come before the popular assembly without such private deliberation. 2 Then he made the upper council a general overseer in the state, and guardian of the laws, thinking that the city with its two councils, riding as it were at double anchor, would be less tossed by the surges, and would keep its populace in greater quiet.

Now most writers say that the council of the Areiopagus, as I have stated, was established by Solon. And their view seems to be strongly supported by the fact that Draco nowhere makes any mention whatsoever of Areiopagites, but always addresses himself to the “ephetai” in cases of homicide. 3 Yet Solon’s thirteenth table contains the eighth of his laws recorded in these very words: “As many of the disfranchised as were made such before the archonship of Solon, shall be restored to their rights and franchises, except such as were condemned by the Areiopagus, or by the ephetai, or in the prytaneium by the kings, on charges of murder or homicide, or of seeking to establish a tyranny, and were in exile when this law was published.” 4 This surely proves to the contrary that the council of the Areiopagus was in existence before the archonship and legislation of Solon. For how could men have been condemned in the Areiopagus before the time of Solon, if Solon was the first to give the council of the Areiopagus its jurisdiction? 89 Perhaps, indeed, there is some obscurity in the document, or some omission, and the meaning is that those who had been convicted on charges within the cognizance of those who were Areiopagites and ephetai and prytanes when the law was published, should remain disfranchised, while those convicted on all other charges should recover their rights and franchises. This question, however, my reader must decide for himself.

20 1 Among his other laws there is a very peculiar and surprising one which ordains that he shall be disfranchised who, in time of faction, takes neither side. He wishes, probably, that a man should not be insensible or indifferent to the common weal, arranging his private affairs securely and glorying in the fact that he has no share in the distempers and distresses of his country, but should rather espouse promptly the better and more righteous cause, share its perils and give it his aid, instead of waiting in safety to see which cause prevails. 2 That law, too, seems absurd and ridiculous, which permits an heiress, in case the man under whose power and authority she is placed by law is himself unable to consort with her, to be married by one of his next of kin. Some, however, say that this was a wise provision against those who are unable to perform the duties of a husband, and yet, for the sake of their property, marry heiresses, and so under cover of law, do violence to nature. For when they see that the heiress can consort with whom she pleases, they will either desist from such a marriage, or make it to their shame, and be punished for their avarice and insolence. 3 It is a wise provision, too, that the heiress may not choose her consort at large, but only from the kinsmen of her husband, that her offspring may be of his family and lineage. Conformable to this, also, is the requirement that the bride eat a quinceb and be shut up in a chamber with the bridegroom; and that the husband of an heiress shall approach her thrice a month without fail. For even though they have no children, still, this is a mark of esteem and affection which a man should pay to a chaste wife; it removes many of the annoyances which develop in all such cases, and prevents their being altogether estranged by their differences.

4 In all other marriages he prohibited dowries; the bride was to bring with her three changes of raiment, household stuff of small value, and nothing else. For he did not wish that marriage should be a matter of profit or price, but that man and wife should dwell together for the delights of love and the getting of children. Dionysius, indeed, when his mother asked him to give her in marriage to one of his citizens, said that, although he had broken the laws of the city by being its tyrant, he could not outrage the laws of nature by giving in marriage where age forbade. 5 And so our cities should not allow this irregularity, nor tolerate unions which age forbids and love does not invite, which do not fulfil the function of marriage, and defeat its object. Nay, for an old man who is marrying a young wife, any worthy magistrate or lawgiver might say what is said to Philoctetes:

“Indeed, poor wretch, thou art in fine state for marrying!”

And if he discovers a young man in the house of a rich and elderly woman, waxing fat, like a cock-partridge, in her service, he will remove him and give him to some marriageable maid that wants a husband. Thus much, then, on this head.

21 1 Praise is given also to that law of Solon which forbids speaking ill of the dead. For it is piety to regard the deceased as sacred, justice to spare the absent, and good policy to rob hatred of its perpetuity. He also forbade speaking ill of the living in temples, court-of law, public offices, and at festivals; the transgressor must pay three drachmas to the person injured, and two more into the public treasury. For never to master one’s anger is a mark of intemperance and lack of training; but always to do so is difficult, and for some, impossible. 90 And a law must regard the possibilities in the case, if its maker wishes to punish a few to some purpose, and not many to no purpose.

2 He was highly esteemed also for his law concerning wills. Before his time, no will could be made, but the entire estate of the deceased must remain in his family. Whereas he, by permitting a man who had no children to give his property to whom he wished, ranked friendship above kinship, and favour above necessity, and made a man’s possessions his own property. 3 On the other hand, he did not permit all manner of gifts without restriction or restraint, but only those which were not made under the influence of sickness, or drugs, or imprisonment, or when a man was the victim of compulsion or yielded to the persuasions of his wife. He thought, very rightly and properly, that being persuaded into wrong was no better than being forced into it, and he placed deceit and compulsion, gratification and affliction, in one and the same category, believing that both were alike able to pervert a man’s reason.

4 He also subjected the public appearances of the women, their mourning and their festivals, to a law which did away with disorder and licence. When they went out, they were not to wear more than three garments, they were not to carry more than an obol’s worth of food or drink, nor a pannier more than a cubit high, and they were not to travel about by night unless they rode in a waggon with a lamp to light their way. Laceration of the flesh by mourners, and the use of set lamentations, and the bewailing of any one at the funeral ceremonies of another, he forbade. 5 The sacrifice of an ox at the grave was not permitted, nor the burial with the dead of more than three changes of raiment, nor the visiting of other tombs than those of their own family, except at the time of interment. Most of these practices are also forbidden by our laws, but ours contain the additional proviso that such offenders shall be punished by the board of censors for women, because they indulge in unmanly and effeminate extravagances of sorrow when they mourn.

22 1 Observing that the city was getting full of people who were constantly streaming into Attica from all quarters for greater security of living, and that most of the country was unfruitful and worthless, and that seafaring men are not wont to import goods for those who have nothing to give them in exchange, he turned the attention of the citizens to the arts of manufacture, and enacted a law that no son who had not been taught a trade should be compelled to support his father. 2 It was well enough for Lycurgus, whose city was free from swarms of strangers, and whose country was, in the words of Euripides,

“For many large, for twice as many more than large,”

and because, above all, that country was flooded with a multitude of Helots, whom it was better not to leave in idleness, but to keep down by continual hardships and toil, — it was well enough for him to set his citizens free from laborious and mechanical occupations and confine their thoughts to arms, giving them this one trade to learn and practice. 3 But Solon, adapting his laws to the situation, rather than the situation to his laws, and observing that the land could give but a mere subsistence to those who tilled it, and was incapable of supporting an unoccupied and leisured multitude, gave dignity to all the trades, and ordered the council of the Areiopagus to examine into every man’s means of livelihood, and chastise those who had no occupation.

4 But that provision of his was yet more severe, which, as Heracleides Ponticus informs us, relieved the sons who were born out of wedlock from the necessity of supporting their fathers at all. For he that avoids the honourable state of marriage, clearly takes a woman to himself not for the sake of children, but of pleasure; and he has his reward, in that he robs himself of all right to upbraid his sons for neglecting him, since he has made their very existence a reproach to them.

23 1 But in general, Solon’s laws concerning women seem very absurd. For instance, he permitted an adulterer caught in the act to be killed; but if a man committed rape upon a free woman, he was merely to be fined a hundred drachmas; and if he gained his end by persuasion, twenty drachmas, 91 unless it were with one of those who sell themselves openly, meaning of course the courtesans. For these go openly to those who offer them their price. 2 Still further, no man is allowed to sell a daughter or a sister, unless he find that she is no longer a virgin. But to punish the same offence now severely and inexorably, and now mildly and pleasantly, making the penalty a slight fine, is unreasonable; unless money was scarce in the city at that time, and the difficulty of procuring it made these monetary punishments heavy.3 In the valuations of sacrificial offerings, at any rate, a sheep and a bushel of grain are reckoned at a drachma; the victor in the Isthmian games was to be paid a hundred drachmas, and the Olympic victor five hundred; the man who brought in a wolf, was given five drachmas, and for a wolf’s whelp, one; the former sum, according to Demetrius the Phalerian, was the price of an ox, the latter that of a sheep. For although the prices which Solon fixes in his sixteenth table are for choice victims, and naturally many times as great as those for ordinary ones, still, even these are low in comparison with present prices. 4 Now the Athenians were from of old great enemies of wolves, since their country was better for pasturage than for tillage. And there are those who say that their four tribes were originally named, not from the sons of Ion, but from the classes into which the occupations were divided; thus the warriors were called Hoplitai, the craftsmen Ergadeis; and of the remaining two, the farmers were called Geleontes, the shepherds and herdsmen Aigikoreis.

5 Since the country was not supplied with water by ever-flowing rivers, or lakes, or copious springs, but most of the inhabitants used wells which had been dug, he made a law that where there was a public well within a “hippikon,” a distance of four furlongs, that should be used, but where the distance was greater than this, people must try to get water of their own; if, however, after digging to a depth of ten fathoms on their own land, they could not get water, then they might take it from a neighbour’s well, filling a five-gallon jar twice a day; for he thought it his duty to aid the needy, not to provision the idle. 6 He also showed great experience in the limits which he set to the planting of trees; no one could set out a tree in a field within five feet of his neighbour’s field, or, in case it was a fig-tree or an olive-tree, within nine. For these reach out farther with their roots, and injure some trees by their proximity, taking away their nourishment, and emitting an exhalation which is sometimes noxious. He that would dig a pit or a trench, must dig it at the distance of its own depth from his neighbor’s; and he that would set out hives of bees, must put them three hundred feet away from those which another had already installed.

24 1 Of the products of the soil, he allowed oil only to be sold abroad, but forbade the exportation of others; and if any did so export, the archon was to pronounce curses upon them, or else himself pay a hundred drachmas into the public treasury. One cannot, therefore, wholly disbelieve those who say that the exportation of figs was anciently forbidden, and that the one who showed up, or pointed out such exporters, was called a “sycophant,” or fig-shower. He also enacted a law concerning injuries received from beasts, according to which a dog that had bitten anybody must be delivered up with a wooden collar three cubits long fastened to it; a happy device this for promoting safety.

2 But the law concerning naturalized citizens is of doubtful character. He permitted only those to be made citizens who were permanently exiled from their own country, or who removed to Athens with their entire families to ply a trade. 92 This he did, as we are told, not so much to drive away other foreigners, as to invite these particular ones to Athens with the full assurance of becoming citizens; he also thought that reliance could be placed both on those who had been forced to abandon their own country, and on those who had left it with a fixed purpose. 3 Characteristic of Solon also was his regulation of the practice of eating at the public table in the townhall, for which his word was “parasitein.” The same person was not allowed to eat there often, but if one whose duty it was to eat there refused, he was punished. Solon thought the conduct of the first grasping; that of the second, contemptuous of the public interests.

25 1 All his laws were to have force for a hundred years, and they were written on “axones,” or wooden tablets, which revolved with the oblong frames containing them. Slight remnants of these were still preserved in the Prytaneium when I was at Athens, and they were called, according to Aristotle, “kyrbeis.” Cratinus, also, the comic poet, somewhere says: —

“By Solon, and by Draco too I make mine oath,

Whose kyrbeis now are used to parch our barleycorns.”

2 But some say that only those tablets which relate to sacred rites and sacrifices are properly called “kyrbeis,” and the rest are called “axones.” However that may be, the council took a joint oath to ratify the laws of Solon, and each of the “thesmothetai,” or guards of the statutes, swore separately at the herald’s stone in the market-place, vowing that if he transgressed the statutes in any way, he would dedicate at Delphi a golden statue of commensurate worth.

3 Observing the irregularity of the month, and that the motion of the moon does not always coincide with the rising and setting of the sun, but that often she overtakes and passes the sun on the same day, he ordered that day to be called the Old and New, assigning the portion of it which preceded the conjunction to the expiring month, and the remaining portion to the month that was just beginning. He was thus the first, as it would seem, to understand Homer’s verse, which speaks of a day when

“This month is waning, and the next is setting in,”

and the day following this he called the first of the month. After the twentieth he did not count the days by adding them to twenty, but by subtracting them from thirty, on a descending scale, like the waning of the moon.

4 No sooner were the laws of Solon put into operation than some would come to him every day with praise or censure of them, or with advice to insert something into the documents, or take something out. Very numerous, too, were those who came to him with inquiries and questions about them, urging him to teach and make clear to them the meaning and purpose of each several item. 5 He saw that to do this was out of the question, and that not to do it would bring odium upon him, and wishing to be wholly rid of these perplexities and to escape from the captiousness and censoriousness of the citizens (for “in great affairs,” as he says himself, “it is difficult to please all”), he made his ownership of a vessel an excuse for foreign travel, and set sail, after obtaining from the Athenians leave of absence for ten years. In this time he hoped they would be accustomed to his laws.

26 1 In the first place, then, he went to Egypt, and lived, as he himself says,

“Where Nile pours forth his floods, near the Canobic shore.”

He also spent some time in studies with Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Saïs, who were very learned priests. From these, as Plato says, he heard the story of the lost Atlantis, and tried to introduce it in a poetical form to the Greeks. 2 Next he sailed to Cyprus, and was greatly beloved of Philocyprus, one of the kings of the island. This prince had a small city, founded by Demophon, the son of Theseus, and lying near the river Clarius, in a position which was strong, but otherwise incommodious and sorry. 93 Solon therefore persuaded him to remove the city to the fair plain which lay below it, and make it more spacious and pleasant. 3 He also remained and took charge of the new city’s consolidation, and helped to arrange it in the best possible manner both for convenience of living and for safety. The result was that many colonists flocked to Philocyprus, and he was the envy of the other kings. He therefore paid Solon the honour of naming the new city after him, and called it Soli; its name had been Aipeia. 4 Solon himself also makes mention of this consolidation. In his elegies, namely, he addressed Philocyprus, and says: —

“Now mayest thou long time be lord and master of the Solii here,

Dwelling in this city thyself, and thy family after thee;

But may I and my swift ship, as we leave this storied isle,

Be brought upon our way in safety by Cypris of the violet crown.

Upon this settlement of thine may she bestow favour and glory;

And upon me an auspicious return to my fatherland.”

27 1 As for his interview with Croesus, some think to prove by chronology that it is fictitious. But when a story is so famous and so well-attested, and, what is more to the point, when it comports so well with the character of Solon, and is so worthy of his magnanimity and wisdom, I do not propose to reject it out of deference to any chronological canons, so called, which thousands are to this day revising, without being able to bring their contradictions into any general agreement. 2 So then, they say that Solon, on visiting Sardis at the invitation of Croesus, had much the same experience as an inland man who goes down for the first time to the sea. For just as such a man thinks each successive river that he sees to be the sea, so Solon, as he passed through the court and beheld many of the king’s retainers in costly apparel and moving proudly amid a throng of courtiers and armed guards, thought each in turn to be Croesus, until he was brought to the king himself, who was decked out with everything in the way of precious stones, dyed raiment, and wrought gold that men deem remarkable, or extravagant, or enviable, in order that he might present a most august and gorgeous spectacle. 3 But when Solon, in this presence, neither showed any astonishment at what he saw, nor made any such comments upon it as Croesus had expected, but actually made it clear to all discerning eyes that he despised such vulgarity and pettiness, the king ordered his treasure chambers to be thrown open for the guest, and that he should be led about to behold the rest of his sumptuous equipment. Of this there was no need, for the man himself sufficed to give Solon an understanding of his character. 4 However, when Solon had seen everything and had been conducted back again, Croesus asked him if he had ever known a happier man than he. Solon said he had, and that the man was Tellus, a fellow-citizen of his own; Tellus, he went on to say, had proved himself an honest man, had left reputable sons behind him, and had closed a life which knew no serious want with a glorious display of valour in behalf of his country. Croesus at once judged Solon to be a strange and uncouth fellow, since he did not make an abundance of gold and silver his measure of happiness, but admired the life and death of an ordinary private man more than all this display of power and sovereignty. 5 Notwithstanding, he asked him again whether, next to Tellus, he knew any other man more fortunate than he. Again Solon said he did, naming Cleobis and Bito, men surpassing all others in brotherly love and in dutiful affection towards their mother; 94 for once, he said, when the car in which she was riding was delayed by the oxen, they took the yoke upon their own shoulders and brought their mother to the temple of Hera, where her countrymen called her a happy woman and her heart was rejoiced; then, after sacrifice and feasting, they laid themselves to rest, and never rose again, but were found to have died a painless and tranquil death with so great honour fresh upon them. 6 “What!” said Croesus, who by this time was angered, “dost thou not count us among happy men at all?” Then Solon, who was unwilling to flatter him and did not wish to exasperate him further, said: “O king of Lydia, as the Deity has given us Greeks all other blessings in moderation, so our moderation gives us a kind of wisdom which is timid, in all likelihood, and fit for common people, not one which is kingly and splendid. This wisdom, such as it is, observing that human life is ever subject to all sorts of vicissitudes, forbids us to be puffed up by the good things we have, or to admire a man’s felicity while there is still time for it to change. 7 For the future which is advancing upon every one is varied and uncertain, but when the Deity bestows prosperity on a man up to the end, that man we consider happy; to pronounce any one happy, however, while he is still living and running the risks of life, is like proclaiming an athlete victorious and crowning him while he is still contending for the prize; the verdict is insecure and without authority.” When he had said this, Solon departed, leaving Croesus vexed, but none the wiser for it.

28 1 Now it so happened that Aesop, the writer of fables, was in Sardis, having been summoned thither by Croesus, and receiving much honour at his hands. He was distressed that Solon met with no kindly treatment, and said to him by way of advice: “O Solon, our converse with kings should be either as rare, or as pleasing as is possible.” “No indeed!” said Solon, “but either as rare or as beneficial as possible.”

2 At this time, then, Croesus held Solon in a contempt like this; but afterwards he encountered Cyrus, was defeated in battle, lost his city, was taken alive and condemned to be burnt; and then, as he lay bound upon the pyre in the sight of all the Persians and of Cyrus himself, with all the reach and power of which his voice was capable, he called out thrice: “O Solon!” Cyrus, then, astonished at this, sent men to ask him what man or god this Solon was on whom alone he called in his extremity. 3 And Croesus, without any concealment, said: “This man was one of the sages of Greece, and I sent for him, not with any desire to hear or learn the things of which I stood in need, but in order that he might behold, and, when he left me, bear testimony to the happiness I then enjoyed, the loss of which I now see to be a greater evil than its possession was a good. For when it was mine, the good I derived from it was matter of report and men’s opinion, but its departure from me issues in terrible sufferings and irreparable calamities which are real. 4 And that man, conjecturing this future from what he then saw, bade me look to the end of my life, and not let insecure conjectures embolden me to be proud and insolent.” When this was reported to Cyrus, since he was a wiser man than Croesus, and saw the word of Solon confirmed in the example before him, he not only released Croesus, but actually held him in honour as long as he lived. And thus Solon had the reputation of saving one king and instructing another by means of a single saying.

29 1 But the people of Athens were again divided into factions while Solon was away. The Plain-men were headed by Lycurgus; the Shore-men by Megacles the son of Alcmaeon, and the Hill-men by Peisistratus. Among the last was the multitude of Thetes, who were the bitter enemies of the rich. As a consequence, though the city still observed the new laws, yet all were already expecting a revolution and desirous of a different form of government, not in hopes of an equality, but each party thinking to be bettered by the change, and to get the entire mastery of its opponents. 2 Such was the state of affairs when Solon returned to Athens. 95 He was revered and honoured by all, but owing to his years he no longer had the strength or the ardour to speak and act in public as before. He did, however, confer privately with the chiefs of the opposing factions, endeavouring to reconcile and harmonize them, and Peisistratus seemed to pay him more heed than the others. For Peisistratus had an insinuating and agreeable quality in his address, he was ready to help the poor, and was reasonable and moderate in his enmities. 3 Even those virtues which nature had denied him were imitated by him so successfully that he won more confidence than those who actually possessed them. He was thought to be a cautious and order-loving man, one that prized equality above all things, and would take it ill if any one disturbed the existing order and attempted a change. On these points, indeed, he completely deceived most people. But Solon quickly detected his real character, and was the first to perceive his secret designs. He did not, however, treat him as an enemy, but tried to soften and mould him by his instructions. He actually said to him and to others that if the desire for pre-eminence could but be banished from his soul, and his eager passion for the tyranny be cured, no other man would be more naturally disposed to virtue, or a better citizen.

4 Thespis was now beginning to develop tragedy, and the attempt attracted most people because of its novelty, although it was not yet made a matter of competitive contest. Solon, therefore, who was naturally fond of hearing and learning anything new, and who in his old age more than ever before indulged himself in leisurely amusement, yes, and in wine and song, went to see Thespis act in his own play, as the custom of the ancient poets was. 5 After the spectacle, he accosted Thespis, and asked him if he was not ashamed to tell such lies in the presence of so many people. Thespis answered that there was no harm in talking and acting that way in play, whereupon Solon smote the ground sharply with his staff and said: “Soon, however, if we give play of this sort much praise and honour, we shall find it in our solemn contracts.”

30 1 Now when Peisistratus, after inflicting a wound upon himself, came into the market-place riding in a chariot, and tried to exasperate the populace with the charge that his enemies had plotted against his life on account of his political opinions, and many of them greeted the charge with angry cries, Solon drew near and accosted him, saying: “O son of Hippocrates, thou art playing the Homeric Odysseus badly; for when he disfigured himself it was to deceive his enemies, but thou doest it to mislead thy fellow-citizens.” 2 After this the multitude was ready to fight for Peisistratus, and a general assembly of the people was held. Here Ariston made a motion that Peisistratus be allowed a body-guard of fifty club-bearers, but Solon formally opposed it, and said many things which were like what he has written in his poems: —

“Ye have regard indeed to the speech and words of a wily man.

Yet every one of you walks with the steps of a fox,

And in you all dwells an empty mind.”

3 But when he saw that the poor were tumultuously bent on gratifying Peisistratus, while the rich were fearfully slinking away from any conflict with him, he left the assembly, saying that he was wiser than the one party, and braver than the other; wiser than those who did not understand what was being done, and braver than those who, though they understood it, were nevertheless afraid to oppose the tyranny. So the people passed the decree, and then held Peisistratus to no strict account of the number of his club-bearers, but suffered him to keep and lead about in public as many as he wished, until at last he seized the acropolis.

4 When this had been done, and the city was in an uproar, Megacles straightway fled, with the rest of the Alcmaeonidae. 96 But Solon, although he was now a very old man, and had none to support him, went nevertheless into the market-place and reasoned with the citizens, partly blaming their folly and weakness, and partly encouraging them still and exhorting them not to abandon their liberty. 5 Then it was, too, that he uttered the famous saying, that earlier it had been easier for them to hinder the tyranny, while it was in preparation; but now it was a greater and more glorious task to uproot and destroy it when it had been already planted and was grown. No one had the courage to side with him, however, and so he retired to his own house, took his arms, and placed them in the street in front of his door, saying: “I have done all I can to help my country and its laws.” 6 From that time on he lived in quiet retirement, and when his friends urged him to fly, he paid no heed to them, but kept on writing poems, in which he heaped reproaches on the Athenians: —

“If now ye suffer grievously through cowardice all your own,

Cherish no wrath against the gods for this,

For you yourselves increased the usurper’s power by giving him a guard,

And therefore are ye now in base subjection.”

31 1 In view of this, many warned him that the tyrant would put him to death, and asked him on what he relied that he was so lost to all sense, to which he answered, “My old age.” However, when Peisistratus had become master of the situation, he paid such court to Solon by honouring him, showing him kindness, and inviting him to his palace, that Solon actually became his counsellor and approved of many of his acts. For he retained most of Solon’s laws, observing them first himself, and compelling his friends to do so. 2 For instance, he was summoned before the Areiopagus on a charge of murder, when he was already tyrant, and presented himself there to make his defence in due form, but his accuser did not put in an appearance. He also made other laws himself, one of which provides that those who are maimed in war shall be maintained at the public charge. But Heracleides says that even before that Solon had caused a decree to be passed to this effect in the case of Thersippus, who had been so maimed, and that Peisistratus was following his example. Moreover, Theophrastus writes that the law against idleness, in consequence of which the country became more productive and the city more tranquil, was not made by Solon, but by Peisistratus.

3 Now Solon, after beginning his great work on the story or fable of the lost Atlantis, which, as he had heard from the learned men of Saïs, particularly concerned the Athenians, abandoned it, not for lack of leisure, as Plato says, but rather because of his old age, fearing the magnitude of the task. For that he had abundant leisure, such verses as these testify: —

“But I grow old ever learning many things;”

and again,

“But now the works of the Cyprus-born goddess are dear to my soul,

Of Dionysus, too, and the Muses, which impart delights to men.”

32 1 Plato, ambitious to elaborate and adorn the subject of the lost Atlantis, as if it were the soil of a fair estate unoccupied, but appropriately his by virtue of some kinship with Solon, began the work by laying out great porches, enclosures, and courtyards, such as no story, tale, or poesy ever had before. 2 But he was late in beginning, and ended his life before his work. Therefore the greater our delight in what he actually wrote, the greater is our distress in view of what he left undone. For as the Olympieium in the city of Athens, so the tale of the lost Atlantis in the wisdom of Plato is the only one among many beautiful works to remain unfinished.

3 Well, then, Solon lived on after Peisistratus had made himself tyrant, as Heracleides Ponticus states, a long time; but as Phanias of Eresos says, less than two years. 97 For it was in the archonship of Comeas that Peisistratus began his tyranny, and Phanias says that Solon died in the archonship of Hegestratus, the successor of Comeas. 4 The story that his body was burned and his ashes scattered on the island of Salamis is strange enough to be altogether incredible and fabulous, and yet it is given by noteworthy authors, and even by Aristotle the philosopher.

Publicola

1 1 Such was Solon, and with him we compare Publicola, to whom the Roman people gave this surname later as a mark of honour. Before that he was called Publius Valerius, and was reputed to be a descendant of that ancient Valerius who was most instrumental in making the Romans and the Sabines one people instead of enemies; for it was he more than anyone else that persuaded their kings to come together, and settled their differences. 2 Such being his lineage, Valerius, as we are told, while Rome was still a kingdom, was conspicuous for his eloquence and wealth, always employing the one with integrity and boldness in the service of justice, while with the other he gave liberal and kindly aid to the poor and needy. It was therefore clear that, should Rome become a democracy, he would at once be one of its foremost men.

3 Now Tarquinius Superbus had not acquired this power honourably, but by the violation of divine and human laws; nor did he exercise it in kingly fashion, but after the manner of an insolent and haughty tyrant. The people therefore hated him, resented his oppressions, and found occasion for revolt in the fate of Lucretia, who made away with herself after violence had been done to her. Lucius Brutus, engaging in the revolution, came to Valerius first of all, and with his most zealous assistance drove out the kings. Then, as long as the people was likely to elect one man as their commander in place of the king, 4 Valerius acquiesced, thinking it more fitting that Brutus should have the office, because he had led the way to freedom. But the very name of monarchy was odious to the people, who thought that it would be less vexatious to submit to an authority which was divided, and therefore proposed and demanded that two men should be elected to the highest office. 5 Then Valerius, who hoped that he would be chosen next to Brutus, and would be consul with him, was disappointed. For against the wishes of Brutus, Tarquinius Collatinus, the husband of Lucretia, was elected as his colleague, instead of Valerius. He was a man of no greater excellence than Valerius, but the influential citizens were afraid of the kings, who were still putting forth many efforts outside, and trying to appease resentment inside the city, and they therefore desired to have as their commander the most pronounced enemy of the royal family, believing that he would make no concessions to them.

2 1 Valerius, accordingly, vexed that his desire to do his utmost for his country should be doubted, merely because he had received no private injury at the hands of the tyrants, withdrew from the senate, gave up his practice as an advocate, and abandoned entirely his public activities. This caused anxious remark among the multitude. They feared lest, in his wrath, he should attach himself to the royal exiles, and subvert the established order of the city, which was in a dangerous pass. 2 But when Brutus, who had his suspicions of certain others also, desired the senators to take a sacrificial oath, and set a day for the ceremony, Valerius went down with a glad countenance into the forum, and was the first to take oath that he would make no submission or concession to the Tarquins, but would fight with all his might in defence of freedom. This pleased the senate and inspired the consuls with courage. And his actions speedily confirmed his oath. 3 For envoys came from Tarquin bringing letters calculated to seduce the people, and specious words by which they thought the multitude were most likely to be corrupted, coming as they did from a king who seemed to have humbled himself, and to ask only moderate terms. These envoys the consuls thought should be brought before the assembled people, but Valerius would not suffer it. He was unalterably opposed to giving poor men, who considered war a greater burden than tyranny, occasions and excuses for revolution.

3 1 After this, other envoys came announcing that Tarquin abdicated his throne and ceased to wage war upon the city, but demanded for himself, his friends, and his kinsmen, their moneys and effects, wherewith to maintain themselves in exile. Many were inclined to grant this favour, and Collatinus in particular joined in advocating it, but Brutus, a man of harsh and unyielding temper, ran forth into the forum and denounced his colleague as a traitor, because he would bestow the means for waging war and maintaining tyranny on men to whom it were a terrible mistake to vote even a bare subsistence in exile. 2 And when an assembly of the citizens was held, the first to speak among them was Caius Minucius, a private man, who exhorted Brutus and advised the Romans to see to it that the treasures fought with them against the tyrants, rather than with the tyrants against them. However, the Romans decided that, since they had the liberty for which they were at war, they would not sacrifice peace for the sake of wealth, but cast this also out along with the tyrants.

Now the wealth, of course, was of very slight consequence to Tarquin, but the demand for it was at once a test of the people’s disposition and a means of instigating treachery among them. 3 And it was with this that the envoys busied themselves, making the property merely a pretext for remaining in the city, and saying that they were selling part of it, and reserving part, and sending part of it away. At last they succeeded in corrupting two of the noble families of Rome, that of the Aquillii, which had three senators, and that of the Vitellii, which had two. All these, by the mother’s side, were nephews of Collatinus the consul, and besides, the Vitellii were related in another manner to Brutus. For Brutus had married a sister of theirs, and she had borne him several sons. 4 Two of these, who had come to manhood, and were their near kindred and close companions, the Vitellii won over and persuaded to join the plot for betraying the city, to ally themselves with the great family and the royal expectations of the Tarquins, and rid themselves of the stupidity and cruelty of their father. For they gave the name of cruelty to that father’s inexorable treatment of criminals, and as for his stupidity, he had for a long time, as it appears, feigned and assumed this, to insure his safety from the cruel designs of the tyrants, and afterwards the surname of Brutus, which had been given him for it, clung to him.

4 1 When, accordingly, the youths had been persuaded and held conference with the Aquillii, it was decided that all the conspirators should swear a great and dreadful oath, pouring in libation the blood of a slain man, and touching his entrails. For this purpose they met at the house of the Aquillii. Now the room in which the ceremony was to be held was, as was natural, dark and somewhat desolate. Without their knowing it, therefore, a slave named Vindicius had concealed himself therein, not with design, or with any inkling of what was to happen there; 2 he merely chanced to be there, and when they came in with anxious haste, he was afraid to be seen by them, and hid himself behind a chest that lay there, so that he saw what they did, and heard what they resolved upon. Their decision was to kill the consuls, and when they had written letters to Tarquin to this effect, they gave them to his envoys, who were living there as guests of the Aquilii, and were then present at the conspiracy.

3 Their business transacted, the conspirators departed, and then Vindicius stole secretly away from the house. He knew not what use to make of what had befallen him, but was at a loss, considering it a dreadful thing, as it really was, to arraign the sons of Brutus before their father, or the nephews of Collatinus before their uncle, on the most abominable charges, and yet believing that no Roman in a private station could be entrusted with such important secrets. 4 The last thing that he could do, however, was to hold his peace, and driven on by his knowledge of the affair, he made his way somehow to Valerius, attracted especially by the affable and kindly ways of the man. For he was easily accessible to all the needy, always kept open house, and never refused to hear or help one of the lowly.

5 1 Accordingly, when Vindicius came to him and told him the whole story, in the presence of his brother Marcus only, and of his wife, Valerius was struck with consternation and fear, and would not now let the man go, but shut him up in a room and set his own wife to guard the door. Then he ordered his brother to surround the royal residence, seize the letters, if possible, and take the servants into custody. He himself, with the numerous clients and friends who were always about him, and with a large company of retainers, went to the house of the Aquillii, who were not at home. 2 Therefore, to the surprise of everybody, he forced the door, and came upon the letters lying in the quarters where the envoys were lodging. Meantime the Aquillii came up in hot haste, joined battle at the door, and sought to take away the letters. But Valerius and his party resisted the attack, threw their togas about their opponents’ necks, and after much struggling on both sides, at last succeeded in pushing them through the streets into the forum. The same success was had at the royal residence, where Marcus laid hands on other letters which were to be conveyed away in the baggage, seized as many of the king’s people as he could, and haled them to the forum.

6 1 When the consuls had quieted the tumult, Valerius ordered Vindicius to be brought from his house, the denunciation was made, the letters were read aloud, and the accused had no courage to reply. Most of the people held their peace for very sorrow, but a few spoke of exile as a penalty, wishing to do Brutus a kindness. They were also somewhat encouraged to hope by the tears of Collatinus and the silence of Valerius. But Brutus, calling each of his sons by name, said: “Come, Titus, come Tiberius, why do ye not defend yourselves against this denunciation?” 2 But when they made no answer, though he put his question to them thrice, he turned to the lictors and said: “It is yours now to do the rest.” These straightway seized the young men, tore off their togas, bound their hands behind their backs, and scourged their bodies with their rods. 3 The rest could not endure to look upon the sight, but it is said that the father neither turned his gaze away, nor allowed any pity to soften the stern wrath that sat upon his countenance, but watched the dreadful punishment of his sons until the lictors threw them on the ground and cut off their heads with the axe. Then he rose and went away, after committing the other culprits to the judgement of his colleague. He had done a deed which it is difficult for one either to praise or blame sufficiently. 4 For either the loftiness of his virtue made his spirit incapable of suffering, or else the magnitude of his suffering made it insensible to pain. In neither case was his act a trivial one, or natural to a man, but either god-like or brutish. However, it is right that our verdict should accord with the reputation of the man, rather than that his virtue should be discredited through weakness in the judge. For the Romans think that the work of Romulus in building the city was not so great as that of Brutus in founding and establishing its form of government.

7 1 After Brutus had left the forum at this time, for a long while consternation, horror, and silence prevailed among all who remained, as they thought of what had been done. But soon the weakness and hesitation of Collatinus gave the Aquillii fresh courage; they demanded time in which to make their defence, and the surrender of Vindicius to them, since he was their slave, and ought not to be in the hands of their accusers. 2 Collatinus was willing to grant this request, and was about to dissolve the assembly with this understanding; but Valerius was neither able to surrender the slave, who had mingled with the throng about him, nor would he suffer the people to release the traitors and withdraw. So at last he seized the persons of the Aquillii and summoned Brutus to the scene, crying aloud that Collatinus was acting shamefully in laying upon his colleague the necessity of killing his own sons, and then thinking it necessary for himself to bestow upon their wives the lives of his country’s betrayers and foes. 3 The consul was indignant at this, and ordered that Vindicius should be taken away, whereupon the lictors pushed their way through the crowd, seized the man, and beat those who tried to rescue him. Then Valerius and his friends stood forth in the man’s defence, while the people shouted for Brutus to come. He turned back, therefore, and came, and when silence had been made for him, said that for his sons, he himself sufficed as judge, but he would leave the fate of the other traitors to the votes of the citizens, who were free, and any one who wished might speak and try to persuade the people. However, by this time there was no need of oratory, but a vote was taken which unanimously condemned the men, and they were beheaded.

4 Collatinus, as it would seem, was already under some suspicion on account of his relationship to the royal family, and the second of his names also was hateful to the people, who loathed the sound of Tarquin. But after these recent events, he saw that he was altogether obnoxious, and withdrew secretly from the city. A new election was consequently held, and Valerius was triumphantly declared consul, thus receiving a worthy reward for his zeal. 5 In this reward he thought that Vindicius ought to share, and therefore had a decree passed which made him, first of all freedmen, a citizen of Rome, and entitled him to vote with any curia in which he chose to be enrolled. Other freedmen received the right of suffrage in much later times from Appius, who thus courted popularity. And from this Vindicius, as they say, a perfect manumission is to this day called “vindicta.”

8 1 After this, the property of the royal family was given to the Romans to plunder, and their house and palace were razed to the ground. But the pleasantest part of the field of Mars, which had belonged to Tarquin, was dedicated to that god. Now it chanced that it had just been reaped, and the grain still lay upon the ground; but since the field had been consecrated, they thought it not right to thresh it or use it in any way. They therefore with one accord carried the sheaves to the river and cast them in. 2 In like manner also they cast in the trees which had been cut, and left the place wholly untilled and barren for the god of war. The quantities of stuff thus heaped together were not borne along by the current very far, but the advanced portions stopped and accumulated at the shallows which they encountered. The portions that followed these could not get through them, but impinged upon them and blended inextricably with them, and the aggregation was made increasingly firm and fast by the action of the stream. 3 For this brought along great quantities of mud, the addition of which increased the size and cohesion of the mass. And besides, the impacts of the current were not rude, but with a gentle pressure pushed and moulded everything together. Owing to its size and position the mass acquired fresh size, and an extent sufficient to receive most of what was brought down by the river. It is now a sacred island over against the city, containing temples of the gods and covered walks, and is called in the Latin tongue “Inter duos pontes.”

4 Some, however, say that this did not happen when the field of Tarquin was consecrated, but in later times, when Tarquinia devoted another field adjacent to this. Now Tarquinia was a holy virgin, one of the Vestals, and received great honours for this act, among which was this, that of all women her testimony alone be received. The people also voted her permission to marry, but she did not avail herself of it. This is how the thing happened, as the tale runs.

9 1 But Tarquin, despairing of attempts to regain his throne by treachery, was eagerly welcomed by the Tuscans,a who set out to restore him with a great force. The consuls led the Romans out to meet them, and arrayed their forces in certain sacred precincts, one of which was called the Arsian grove, the other the Aesuvian meadow. When the engagement began, Aruns the son of Tarquin and Brutus the Roman consul encountered each other. It was not by chance, but both were driven on by hatred and wrath, 2 the one to attack a tyrant and foe of his country, the other to avenge himself on the author of his exile. They urged their horses to the combat, but since they engaged with fury rather than calculation, they were reckless of themselves, and fell by one another’s hands. The battle which had such a dreadful beginning, ended no less disastrously; the armies, after inflicting and suffering equal losses, were separated by a tempest.

3 Valerius was therefore in perplexity, not knowing what the issue of the battle was, but seeing his soldiers as much disheartened by their own losses as they were encouraged by those of their enemies. So undistinguishable and equal was the slaughter on both sides. Each army, however, was more convinced of defeat by the near sight of its own dead, than it could be of victory by conjecturing those of the enemy. 4 But when such a night came on as must needs follow such a battle, and both camps were quiet, they say that the grove was shaken, and a loud voice issued from it declaring that the Tuscans had lost one more man in the battle than the Romans. The utterance was manifestly from some god, for at once the Romans were inspired by it to loud shouts of courage, while the Tuscans were panic-stricken, abandoned their camp in confusion, and were for the most part dispersed. 5 As for those that remained, a little less than five thousand in number, the Romans fell upon them, took them prisoners, and plundered the camp. And when the dead on both sides were numbered, those of the enemy were found to be eleven thousand and three hundred, and those of the Romans as many less one.

It is said that this battle was fought on the last day of February. Valerius celebrated a triumph for it, being the first consul to drive into the city on a four-horse chariot. 6 And the proceeding afforded a spectacle which was imposing and magnificent, not odious and offensive to the spectators, as some say; otherwise it would not have been continued with such ardour and emulation for countless years. The people were also pleased with the honours which Valerius bestowed upon his colleague at the funeral ceremonies. 7 He even delivered a funeral oration in his honour, which was so admired by the Romans and won such favour that from that time on, when their great and good men died, encomiums were pronounced upon them by the most distinguished citizens. And this funeral oration of his is said to have been earlier than any among the Greeks, unless Anaximenes the orator is right in saying that the custom originated with Solon.

10 1 But that which the rather displeased and offended the people in Valerius was this. Brutus, whom they regarded as the father of their liberties, would not consent to rule alone, but once and again chose a colleague to rule with him. “But this Valerius,” they said, “in concentrating all power upon himself, is not a successor to the consulate of Brutus, to which he has no right, but to the tyranny of Tarquin. 2 Yet why should he extol Brutus in words, while in deeds he imitates Tarquin, descending to the forum alone, escorted by all the rods and axes together, from a house no less stately than the royal house which he demolished?” For, as a matter of fact, Valerius was living in a very splendid house on the so called Velia. It hung high over the forum, commanded a view of all that passed there, and was surrounded by steeps and hard to get at, so that when he came down from it the spectacle was a lofty one, and the pomp of his procession worthy of a king. 3 Accordingly, Valerius showed what a good thing it is for men in power and high station to have ears which are open to frankness and truth instead of flattery. For when he heard from his friends, who spared him no detail, that he was thought by the multitude to be transgressing, he was not obstinate nor exasperated, by quickly got together a large force of workmen, and while it was still night tore the house down, and razed it all to the ground. 4 In the morning, therefore, the Romans saw what had happened, and came flocking together. They were moved to love and admiration by the man’s magnanimity, but were distressed for the house, and mourned for its stately beauty, as if it had been human, now that envy had unjustly compassed its destruction. They were also distressed for their ruler, who, like a homeless man, was now sharing the homes of others. For Valerius was received into the houses of his friends until the people gave him a site and built him a house, of more modest dimensions than the one he had lived in before, where now stands the temple of Vica Pota, so called.

5 Wishing now to make not only himself but also the government, instead of formidable, submissive and agreeable to the multitude, he removed the axes from the lictors’ rods, and when he came into the assembly, inclined and lowered the rods themselves to the people, emphasizing the majesty of the democracy. This custom the consuls observe to this day. 6 And before the multitude were aware of it, he had succeeded, not by humbling himself, as they thought, but by checking and removing their envious feelings through such moderation on his part, in adding to his real influence over them just as much as he had seemed to take away from his authority, and the people submitted to him with pleasure and bore his yoke willingly. They therefore called him Publicola, a name which signifies people-cherisher. This name prevailed over the older names which he had borne, and it is the name which I shall use for him in the remainder of this Life.

11 For he permitted any who wished to enter the lists and sue for the consulship. But before the installation of his colleague, not knowing who he would be, but fearing an opposition due to some jealousy or ignorance, he used his sole authority for the enactment of his best and most important measures. In the first place, he filled up the senate, which was much reduced in numbers; for some had long before been put to death by Tarquin, and of this had recently fallen in the battle with the Tuscans. 2 Those who were enrolled in this body by him amounted, they say, to a hundred and sixty-four. After this he enacted several laws, one of which especially strengthened the position of the commons by allowing a defendant to appeal to the people from the judgement of the consuls. A second made it a capital offence to assume a magistracy which the people had not bestowed. 3 A third, following these, came to the relief of the poor; it lifted the taxes from the citizens, so that all engaged more zealously in manufactures and commerce. And the one which was enacted against disobedience to the consuls was thought to be no less popular in its character, and to be in the interest of the many rather than of the powerful. For the fine which it imposed on disobedience was only the worth of five oxen and two sheep. 4 Now the value of a sheep was ten obols, and that of an ox, a hundred, for the Romans at that time did not use much coined money, but their wealth consisted in flocks and herds. Therefore to this day they call their substance “peculium,” from “pecus,” cattle; and their oldest coins are stamped with the figure of an ox, a sheep, or a hog. And they actually gave their own sons such surnames as Suillius, Bubulcus, Caprarius, and Porcius; the last two from “capra” and “porcus,” their words for goat and pig.

12 1 But although in these particulars he showed himself a popular and moderate lawgiver, in the case of an immoderate offence he made the penalty severe. For he enacted a law by which any one who sought to make himself tyrant might be slain without trial, and the slayer should be free from blood-guiltiness if he produced proofs of the crime. For although it is impossible for one who attempts so great a task to escape all notice, it is not impossible for him to do so long enough to make himself too powerful to be brought to trial, which trial his very crime precludes. He therefore gave any one who was able to do so the privilege of anticipating the culprit’s trial.

2 He also received praise for his law concerning the public treasury. When it was necessary for the citizens to contribute from their substance means for carrying on the war, he was unwilling to assume the administration of it himself, or to allow his friends to do so, or, indeed, to have the public moneys brought into any private house. He therefore made the temple of Saturn a treasury, as it is to this day, and gave the people the privilege of appointing two young men as quaestors, or treasurers. 3 The first to be thus appointed were Publius Veturius and Marcus Minucius, and large sums of money were collected. One hundred and thirty thousand names were on the assessment lists, orphans and widows being excused from the contribution.

4 This matter regulated, he caused Lucretius, the father of Lucretia, to be appointed his colleague in the consulship. To him he yielded the precedence, as the elder man, and committed to him the so called “fasces,” a privilege of seniority which has continued from that day to this. But Lucretius died a few days afterwards, and in a new election Marcus Horatius was chosen consul, and shared the office with Publicola for the remainder of the year.

13 1 While Tarquin was stirring up in Tuscanya another war against the Romans, a thing of great portent is said to have happened. When Tarquin was still king, and had all but completed the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, either in consequence of an oracle, or else of his own good pleasure, he commissioned certain Tuscan craftsmen of Veii to place upon its roof a chariot of terra cotta. 2 The Tuscans, however, modelled the chariot and put it in a furnace for firing, but the clay did not contract and shrink in the fire, as it usually does, when its moisture evaporates. Instead of this, it expanded and swelled and took on such size, strength, and hardness, that it could with difficulty be removed, even after the roof of the furnace had been taken off and its sides torn away. 3 To the seers, accordingly, this seemed a divine portent of prosperity and power for those who should possess the chariot, and the people of Veii determined not to give it up. When the Romans asked for it, they were told that it belonged to the Tarquins, not to those who had expelled the Tarquins. But a few days afterwards there were chariot races at Veii. Here the usual exciting spectacles were witnessed, but when the charioteer, with his garland on his head, was quietly driving his victorious chariot out of the race-course, 4 his horses took a sudden fright, upon no apparent occasion, but either by some divine ordering or by merest chance, and dashed off at the top of their speed towards Rome, charioteer and all. It was of no use for him to rein them in or try to calm them with his voice; he was whirled helplessly along until they reached the Capitol and threw him out there, at the gate now called Ratumena. The Veientines were amazed and terrified at this occurrence, and permitted the workmen to deliver their chariot.

14 1 The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus had been vowed by Tarquin, the son of Demaratus, when he was at war with the Sabines, but it was actually built by Tarquinius Superbus, the son, or grandson, of him who vowed it. He did not, however, get so far as to consecrate it, but was driven out before it was quite completed. Accordingly, now that it was completely finished and had received all the ornaments that belonged to it, Publicola was ambitious to consecrate it. 2 But this excited the jealousy of many of the nobility. They could better brook his other honours, to which, as legislator and military commander, he had a rightful claim. But this one they thought he ought not to have, since it was more appropriate for others, and therefore they encouraged and incited Horatius to claim the privilege of consecrating the temple. At a time, then, when Publicola was necessarily absent on military service, they got a vote passed that Horatius should perform the consecration, and conducted him up to the Capitol, feeling that they could not have gained their point had Publicola been in the city. 3 Some, however, say that Publicola was designated by lot, against his inclination, for the expedition, and Horatius for the consecration. And it is possible to infer how the matter stood between them from what happened at the consecration. It was the Ides of September, a day which nearly coincides with the full moon of the Attic month Metageitnion; the people were all assembled on the Capitol, silence had been proclaimed, 4 and Horatius, after performing the other ceremonies and laying hold upon the door of the temple, as the custom is, was pronouncing the usual words of consecration. But just then Marcus, the brother of Publicola, who had long been standing by the door and was watching his opportunity, said: “O Consul, thy son lies dead of sickness in the camp.” 5 This distressed all who heard it; but Horatius, not at all disturbed, merely said: “Cast forth the dead then whither ye please, for I take no mourning upon me,” and finished his consecration. Now the announcement was not true, but Marcus thought by his falsehood to deter Horatius from his duty. Wonderful, therefore, was the firm poise of the man, whether he at once saw through the deceit, or believed the story without letting it overcome him.

15 1 A similar fortune seems to have attended the dedication of the second temple. The first, as I have said, was built by Tarquin, but consecrated by Horatius; this was destroyed by fire during the civil wars. The second temple was built by Sulla, but Catulus was commissioned to consecrate it, after the death of Sulla. 2 This temple, too, was destroyed, during the troublous times of Vitellius, and Vespasian began and completely finished the third, with the good fortune that attended him in all his undertakings. He lived to see it completed, and did not live to see it destroyed, as it was soon after; and in dying before his work was destroyed he was just so much more fortunate than Sulla, who died before his was consecrated. For upon the death of Vespasian the Capitol was burned.

3 The fourth temple, which is now standing on the same site as the others, was both completed and consecrated by Domitian. It is said that Tarquin expended upon its foundations forty thousand pounds of silver. But the greatest wealth now attributed to any private citizen of Rome would not pay the cost of the gilding alone of the present temple, which was more than twelve thousand talents. 4 Its pillars are of Pentelic marble, and their thickness was once most happily proportioned to their length; for we saw them at Athens. But when they were recut and scraped at Rome, they did not gain as much in polish as they lost in symmetry and beauty, and they now look too slender and thin. 5 However, if anyone who is amazed at the costliness of the Capitol had seen a single colonnade in the palace of Domitian, or a basilica, or a bath, or the apartments for his concubines, then, as Epicharmus says to the spendthrift,

“ ‘Tis not beneficent thou art; thou art diseased;

thy mania is to give,”

so he would have been moved to say to Domitian: “ ‘Tis not pious, nor nobly ambitious that thou art; thou art diseased; thy mania is to build; like the famous Midas, thou desirest that every thing become gold and stone at thy touch.” So much, then, on this head.

16 1 But to return to Tarquin, after the great battle in which he lost his son in a duel with Brutus, he fled for refuge to Clusium, and became a suppliant of Lars Porsena, the most powerful king in Italy, who was thought also to be a man of worth and noble ambitions. He promised Tarquin his aid and assistance. So in the first place he sent to Rome and ordered them to receive Tarquin as their king. Then when the Romans refused, he declared war upon them, proclaimed the time and place of his attack, and marched thither with a great force. 2 Publicola was chosen consul for the second time, in his absence, and Titus Lucretius as his colleague. Returning, therefore, to Rome, and wishing, in the first place, to surpass Porsenna in the loftiness of his spirit, he built the city of Sigliuria, although his adversary was already near at hand. After he had fortified it at great expense, he sent to it a colony of seven hundred men, indicating that he had no concern or fear about the war. 3 However, a sharp assault was made upon its wall by Porsena, and its garrison was driven out. They fled to Rome, where the pursuing enemy almost followed them into the city. But Publicola promptly sallied out to their aid in front of the gate, joined battle by the river side with the enemy, who pressed on in great numbers, and held out against them until he was desperately wounded and carried bodily out of the battle. 4 The same fate overtook Lucretius, his colleague, also, so that dismay fell upon the Romans, and they fled for safety towards the city. But as the enemy were forcing their way onto the wooden bridge, Rome was in danger of being taken by storm. Horatius Cocles, however, first, and with him two of the most illustrious men of the city, Herminius and Lartius, defended the wooden bridge against them. 5 Horatius had been given his surname of Cocles because he had lost one of his eyes in the wars. Some, however, say that his nose was flat and sunken, so that there was nothing to separate his eyes, and his eye-brows ran together, and that for this reason the multitude wished to call him Cyclops, but by a slip of the tongue the name of Cocles became generally prevalent instead. 6 This Cocles, standing at the head of the bridge, kept the enemy back until his companions had cut the bridge in two behind him. Then, all accoutred as he was, he plunged into the river and swam across to the other side, in spite of a wound in the buttocks from a Tuscan spear. 7 Publicola, out of admiration for his valour, proposed that every Roman should at once contribute for him as much provision as each consumed in a day, and that afterwards he should be given as much land as he could plough round in a day. Besides this, they set up a bronze statue of him in the temple of Vulcan, to console him with honour for the lameness consequent upon his wound.

17 1 While Porsena was closely investing the city, a famine afflicted the Romans, and another Tuscan army on its own account invaded their territory. Publicola, who was now consul for the third time, thought that Porsena must be met by a quiet and watchful resistance within the city; but he sallied out upon the other Tuscan army, engaged it, routed it, and slew five thousand of them.

The story of Mucius has been often and variously told, but I must give it as it seems most credible to me. 2 He was a man endowed with every virtue, but most excellent in war. Designing to kill Porsena, he stole into his camp, wearing a Tuscan habit, and using a speech to correspond. After walking around the tribunal where the king was sitting with others, not knowing him certainly, and fearing to inquire about him, he drew his sword and slew that one of the group whom he thought most likely to be the king. 3 Upon this he was seized, and was being questioned, when a sort of pan containing live coals was brought to Porsena, who was about to offer sacrifice. Mucius held his right hand over the flames and, while the flesh was burning, stood looking at Porsena with a bold and steadfast countenance, until the king was overcome with admiration and released him, and handed him back his sword, reaching it down to him from the tribunal. Mucius stretched out his left hand and took it (on which account, they say, he received the surname of Scaevola, which means Left-handed). 4 Then he said that although he had conquered the fear which Porsena inspired, he was vanquished by the nobility which he displayed, and would reveal out of gratitude what he would not have disclosed under compulsion. “Three hundred Romans, then,” said he, “with the same resolution as mine, are now prowling about in thy camp and watching their opportunity. I was chosen by lot to make the first attempt upon thee, and I am not distressed at what has happened, so noble is the man whom I failed to kill, and so worthy to be a friend rather than an enemy of the Romans.” 5 On hearing this, Porsena believed it to be true, and felt more inclined to come to terms, not so much, I suppose, through fear of the three hundred, as out of wondering admiration for the lofty spirit and bravery of the Romans.

All other writers agree in giving this Mucius the surname of Scaevola, but Athenodorus, the son of Sandon, in his book addressed to Octavia, the sister of Augustus Caesar, says that his surname was Postumus.

18 1 Publicola himself, moreover, thinking that Porsena would be more valuable as a friend and ally of the city than he was dangerous as its enemy, did not shrink from making the king an arbitrator in his dispute with Tarquin, but often boldly challenged Tarquin to do so, confident of proving that he was the basest of men and justly deprived of his kingdom. And when Tarquin gave him a rough answer, saying that he would make no man his judge, least of all Porsena, seeing that he was swerving from his alliance with him, 2 Porsena was displeased and perceived the weakness of his cause. His son Aruns also pleaded earnestly with him in behalf of the Romans. Consequently, he put an end to his war against them, on condition that they give up the territory of Tuscany which they had taken, sent back their prisoners of war, and received back their deserters. In confirmation of these conditions, the Romans gave as hostages ten young men from their noblest families, and as many maidens, of whom Valeria, a daughter of Publicola, was one.

19 1 After these stipulations had been carried out, and when Porsena had already remitted all his warlike preparations through his confidence in the treaty, these Roman maidens went down to the river to bathe, at a place where the curving bank formed a bay and kept the water especially still and free from waves. As they saw no guard near, nor any one else passing by or crossing the stream, they were seized with a desire to swim away, notwithstanding the depth and whirl of the strong current. 2 And some say that one of them, named Cloelia, crossed the stream on horseback, exhorting and encouraging the rest as they swam. But when they were come in safety to Publicola, he bestowed no admiration or affection upon them, but was distressed because he would be thought less true to his word than Porsena, and because the daring exploit of the maidens would be called a base fraud on the part of the Romans. He seized them, therefore, and sent them back again to Porsena. 3 But Tarquin and his men got timely intelligence of this, set an ambush for the convoy of the maidens, and attacked them in superior numbers as they passed along. The party attacked defended themselves, nevertheless, and Valeria, the daughter of Publicola, darted through the combatants and fled, and with the help of three attendants who broke through the crowd with her, made good her escape. The rest of the maidens were mingled with the combatants and in peril of their lives. But Aruns, the son of Porsena, learning of the affair, came with all speed to their assistance, put their enemies to flight, and rescued the Romans.

4 When Porsena saw the maidens thus brought back, he asked for the one who had begun the enterprise and encouraged the rest in it. And when he heard Cloelia named as the one, he looked upon her with a gracious and beaming countenance, and ordering one of the royal horses to be brought, all fittingly caparisoned, he made her a present of it. Those who say that Cloelia, and Cloelia alone, crossed the river on horseback, produce this fact in evidence. 5 Others dispute the inference, and say that the Tuscan merely honoured in this way the maiden’s courage. But an equestrian statue of her stands by the Via Sacra, as you go to the Palatine, though some say it represents not Cloelia, but Valeria.

Porsena, thus reconciled with the Romans, gave the city many proofs of his magnanimity. In particular, he ordered his Tuscan soldiers, when they evacuated their camp, to take with them their arms only, and nothing else, 6 leaving it full of abundant provisions and all sorts of valuables, which he turned over to the Romans. Therefore it is that down to this very day, when there is a sale of public property, Porsena’s goods are cried first, and thus the man’s kindness is honoured with perpetual remembrance. Moreover, a bronze statue of him used to stand near the senate-house, of simple and archaic workmanship.

20 1 After this, when the Sabines invaded the Roman territory, Marcus Valerius, a brother of Publicola, was made consul, and with him Postumius Tubertus. Inasmuch as the most important steps were taken with the advice and assistance of Publicola, Marcus was victorious in two great battles, and in the second of them, without losing a single Roman, slew thirteen thousand of the enemy. 2 Besides his triumphs, he also obtained the honour of a house built for him at the public charge on the Palatine. And whereas the doors of other houses at that time opened inwards into the vestibule, they made the outer door of his house, and of his alone, to open outwards, in order that by this concession he might be constantly partaking of public honour.

3 They say that all Greek doors used to open outwards in this way, and the conclusion is drawn from their comedies, where those who about to go out of a house beat noisily on the inside of their own doors, in order that persons passing by or standing in front of them may hear, and not be taken by surprise when the doors open out into the street.

21 1 In the following year Publicola was consul again, for the fourth time, when there was expectation of a war with the Sabines and Latins combined. At the same time also a sort of superstitious terror seized upon the city because all the women who were pregnant were delivered of imperfect offspring, and all births were premature.b Wherefore, by direction of the Sibylline books, Publicola made propitiatory sacrifices to Pluto, and renewed certain games that had been recommended by Apollo, and after he had thus made the city more careful in its hopes and expectations from the gods, he turned his attention to what it feared from men. For their enemies were plainly making great preparations and a powerful league against them.

2 Now there was among the Sabines one Appius Clausus, a man whose wealth made him powerful, as his personal prowess made him illustrious, but who was most eminent for his lofty character and for his great eloquence. He could not, however, escape the fate of all great men, but was an object of jealous hate, and when he tried to stop the war, those who hated him charged him with trying to increase the power of Rome, with a view to making himself tyrant and master of his own country. 3 Perceiving that the multitude gave a ready ear to these stories, and that he himself was obnoxious to the war party and the military, he feared the issue, but with a large and powerful coterie of friends and kinsmen to defend him, continued his opposition. This made the Sabines put off and delay the war.

4 Publicola, accordingly, making it his business not only to know about these matters, but also to foment and promote the faction, kept some of his followers employed in bringing to Clausus from him such messages as this: “Publicola thinks thee too worthy and just a man to inflict any evil upon thy fellow citizens in self-defence, even though thou art wronged by them. But if thou wishest, for thine own safety, to change thine allegiance and flee from those who hate thee, he will receive thee with public and private honours which are worthy of thine own excellence and the splendour of Rome.” 5 On repeated consideration of the matter, this course seemed to Clausus the best that was open to him; he therefore summoned his friends, who in like manner persuaded many more, to join him, and taking five thousand families from their homes, wives and children included, the most peaceful folk among the Sabines, of gentle and sedate lives, he led them to Rome. Publicola knew beforehand of their coming, and gave them an eager and a kindly welcome, admitting them to all rights and privileges. 6 For he at once incorporated the families in the Roman state, and gave each one two acres of land on the river Anio. To Clausus, however, he gave twenty-five acres of land, and enrolled him among the senators. This was the beginning of a political power which he used so wisely that he mounted to the highest dignity and acquired great influence. The Claudian family, which is descended from him, is no less illustrious than any in Rome.

22 1 Though the schism among the Sabines was thus removed by the emigration of these men, their popular leaders would not suffer them to settle down into quiet, but complained bitterly that Clausus, by becoming an exile and an enemy, should bring to pass what he could not effect by his persuasions at home, namely, that Rome pay no penalty for her outrages. Setting out, therefore, with a large army, they encamped near Fidenae, and placed two thousand men-at arms in ambush just outside of Rome in wooded hollows. Their intention was that a few of their horsemen, as soon as it was day, should boldly ravage the country. 2 But these had been ordered, whenever they approached the city and were attacked, to retire gradually until they had drawn the enemy into the ambuscade. That very day Publicola learned of this plan from deserters, and took measures accordingly, dividing up his forces. Postumius Balbus, his son-in law, while it was yet evening, went out with three thousand men-at arms, occupied the hills under which the Sabines were lying in ambush, and kept the enemy under observation; 3 Lucretius, his colleague, retaining in the city the lightest armed and most impetuous troops, was ordered to attack the enemy’s horsemen as they ravaged the country; he himself took the rest of the army and encircled the enemy in their camp. Favoured by a heavy fog, at break of day Postumius, with loud shouts, fell upon the ambuscade from the heights, while Lucretius hurled his troops upon the horsemen when they rode towards the city, and Publicola attacked the camp of the enemy. 4 At all points, then, the Sabines were worsted and undone. Wherever they were, they made no defence, but fled, and the Romans straightway slew them. The very hopes they placed in one another proved most fatal to them. For each party, supposing that the other was safe, had no thought of holding their ground and fighting, but those in the camp ran towards those in the ambuscade, 5 while these, on their part, ran to those in the camp, so that fugitives encountered fugitives, and found those needing succour from whom they expected succour themselves. And all the Sabines would have perished, had not the neighbouring city of Fidenae afforded a refuge to some, especially to those who fled from the camp when it was captured. All who did not gain this city were either slain or brought back to Rome as prisoners.

23 1 This success the Romans, although they were wont to attribute all such events to the influence of the gods, considered to be the work of their general alone. And the first thing his soldiers were heard to say was that Publicola had delivered their enemies into their hands lame, blind, and all but imprisoned, to be dispatched by their swords. Great wealth also accrued to the people from the spoils and prisoners.

2 But Publicola, immediately after celebrating his triumph and handing the city over to the consuls appointed to succeed him, died. So far as it can possibly be achieved by men who are regarded as honourable and good, he had brought his life to perfection. The people, as if they had done nothing to show their esteem for him while he was alive, but owed him every homage, decreed that his body should be buried at the public charge, and that every man should contribute a quadrans towards the honour. 3 The women also, by private agreement amongst themselves, mourned a whole year for him, with a mourning which was honourable and enviable. He was buried, too, by express vote of the citizens, within the city, near the so called Velia, and all his family were to have privilege of burial there. Now, however, none of the family is actually buried there, but the body is carried thither and set down, and some one takes a burning torch and holds it under the bier for an instant, and then takes it away, attesting by this act that the deceased has the right of burial there, but relinquishes the honour. After this the body is borne away.

Comparison of Solon and Publicola

109 1 1 There is, then, something peculiar in this comparison, and something that has not been true of any other thus far, namely, that the second imitated the first, and the first bore witness for the second. For it must be plain that the verdict concerning happiness which Solon pronounced to Croesus, is more applicable to Publicola than to Tellus. 2 Tellus, whom Solon pronounced the most blessed man he knew, because of his fortunate lot, his virtue, and his goodly offspring, was not celebrated in Solon’s poems as a good man, nor did his children or any magistracy of his achieve a reputation; whereas Publicola, while he lived, was foremost among the Romans in influence and repute for virtue, and since his death the most illustrious family lines of our own day, like the Publicolae, the Messalae, and the Valerii, for six hundred years ascribed the glory of their noble birth to him. 3 Tellus, moreover, though he kept his post and fought like a brave man, died at the hands of his enemies; whereas Publicola slew his enemies, which is a better fortune than to be slain by them, saw his country victorious through his efforts as consul and general, and enjoyed honours and triumphs before he came to the end which Solon pronounced so enviable and blest. 4 Still further, what Solon says to Mimnermus, in arguing with him on the proper duration of human life,

“May not an unlamented death be mine, but unto friends

Let me be cause, when dead, for sorrow and for sighing,”

110 argues Publicola a happy man. For when he died, his loss filled not only friends and kindred, but the entire city, numbering many tens of thousands, with weeping and yearning and sorrow. For the women of Rome mourned for him as though they had lost a son, or a brother, or a common father. 5 Wealth I desire to have,” says Solon, “but wrongfully to get it, I do not wish,” believing that punishment would follow. And Publicola’s wealth was not only not ill got, but also nobly spent in benefactions to the needy. So that if Solon was the wisest, Publicola was the most happy of men, since what Solon prayed for as the greatest and fairest of blessings, these Publicola was privileged to win and continue to enjoy until the end.

2 1 Thus did Solon enhance the fame of Publicola. And Publicola, too, in his political activities, enhanced the fame of Solon, by making him the fairest of examples for one who was arranging a democracy. For he took away the arrogant powers of the consulship and made it gracious and acceptable to all, and he adopted many of Solon’s laws. For instance, he put the appointment of their rulers in the power of the people, and gave defendants the right of appealing to the people, as Solon to the jurors. He did not, indeed, create a new senate, as Solon did, but he increased the one already existing to almost double its numbers. 2 And his appointment of quaestors over the public moneys had a like origin. Its purpose was that the consul, if a worthy officer, might not be without leisure for his more important duties, and, if unworthy, might not have greater opportunities for injustice by having both the administration and the treasury in his hands. Hatred of tyranny was more intense in Publicola than in Solon. For in case any one attempted to usurp the power, by Solon’s law he could be punished only after conviction, whereas Publicola made it lawful to kill him before any trial. 3 Moreover, though Solon rightly and justly plumes himself on rejecting absolute power even when circumstances offered it to him and his fellow-citizens were willing that he should take it, it redounds no less to the honour of Publicola that, when he had received a tyrannical power, he made it more democratic, and did not use even the prerogatives which were his by right of possession. And of the wisdom of such a course Solon seems to have been conscious even before Publicola, when he says that a people

“then will yield the best obedience to its guides

When it is neither humoured nor oppressed too much.”

3 1 Peculiar to Solon was his remission of debts, and by this means especially he confirmed the liberties of the citizens. For equality under the law is of no avail if the poor are robbed of it by their debts. Nay, in the very places where they are supposed to exercise their liberties most, there they are most in subjection to the rich, since in the courts of justice, the offices of state, and in public debates, they are under their orders and do them service. 2 And what is of greater moment here, though sedition always follows an abolition of debts, in this case alone, by employing opportunity, as it were, a dangerous but powerful medicine, Solon actually put an end to the sedition that was already rife, for his own virtue and high repute prevailed over the ill-repute and odium of the measure.

As regards their political careers in general, Solon’s was more brilliant in the beginning. For he led the way and followed no man, and it was alone and without colleagues that he effected the most and greatest of his public measures. 3 But in the ending, the other was more fortunate and enviable. For Solon lived to see with his own eyes the dissolution of his polity, while that of Publicola preserved order in the city down to the civil wars. Solon, as soon as he had made his laws, left them inscribed on wooden tables and destitute of a defender, and departed from Athens; whereas Publicola, by remaining in the city, serving as consul, and busying himself with public affairs, firmly and safely established his form of government. 4 And further, though Solon knew beforehand of the designs of Peisistratus, he was not able to hinder them, but yielded to his tyranny in its incipiency; 111 whereas Publicola subverted and drove out a kingly power which was strong with the might which many ages bring. Thus, while exhibiting virtues equal to Solon’s, and a purpose identical with his, he enjoyed a good fortune and an efficacious power which supplemented his virtues.

4 1 When we consider their military careers, moreover, Daïmachus of Plataea does not allow Solon even the conduct of the war against the Megarians, as we have described it; but Publicola, fighting and commanding in person, brought the greatest struggles to a successful issue. And still further, comparing their political activities, Solon, in play, so to speak, and counterfeiting madness, went forth to plead for the recovery of Salamis; 2 but Publicola, without any subterfuges, ran the greatest risks, set himself in opposition to the party of the Tarquins, and detected their treachery. Then, after being mainly instrumental in the capture and punishment of the traitors, he not only drove the tyrants themselves from the city, but extirpated their very hopes of return. And if he thus sturdily and resolutely confronted situations which called for active and spirited opposition, still better did he deal with those which required peaceable intercourse and gentle persuasion, as when he tactfully won over Porsena, an invincible and formidable foe, and made him a friend of Rome.

3 But here, perhaps, some one will say that Solon won back Salamis for the Athenians when they had given it up, whereas Publicola relinquished territory which the Romans had acquired. But we must view men’s actions in the light of the times which call them forth. The subtle statesman will handle each issue that arises in the most feasible manner, and often saves the whole by relinquishing a part, and by yielding small advantages secures greater ones. 4 And so Publicola, in that instance, by yielding the territory which belonged to others, saved all that was assuredly his own, and procured besides, for those who were hard put to it to save their city, the camp of their besiegers with all its stores. He made his adversary judge in the controversy, won his case, and received besides what his people would gladly have given for the victory. For Porsena put a stop to the war, and left the Romans all his provisions for carrying it on, owing to the confidence in their virtue and nobility with which their consul had inspired him.

Themistocles

111 1 1 In the case of Themistocles, his family was too obscure to further his reputation. His father was Neocles, — no very conspicuous man at Athens, — a Phrearrhian by deme, of the tribe Leontis; and on his mother’s side he was an alien, as her epitaph testifies: —

Abrotonon was I, and a woman of Thrace, yet I brought forth

That great light of the Greeks, — know! ‘twas Themistocles.”

2 Phanias, however, writes that the mother of Themistocles was not a Thracian, but a Carian woman, and that her name was not Abrotonon, but Euterpe. 112 And Neanthes actually adds the name of her city in Caria, — Halicarnassus.

It was for the reason given, and because the aliens were wont to frequent Cynosarges, — this is a place outside the gates, a gymnasium of Heracles; for he too was not a legitimate god, but had something alien about him, from the fact that his mother was a mortal, — that Themistocles sought to induce certain well-born youths to go out to Cynosarges and exercise with him; and by his success in this bit of cunning he is thought to have removed the distinction between aliens and legitimates.

3 However, it is clear that he was connected with the family of the Lycomidae, for he caused the chapel shrine at Phlya, which belonged to the Lycomidae, and had been burned by the Barbarians, to be restored at his own costs and adorned with frescoes, as Simonides has stated.

2 1 However lowly his birth, it is agreed on all hands that while yet a boy he was impetuous, by nature sagacious, and by election enterprising and prone to public life. In times of relaxation and leisure, when absolved from his lessons, he would not play or indulge his ease, as the rest of the boys did, but would be found composing and rehearsing to himself mock speeches. These speeches would be in accusation or defence of some boy or other. 2 Wherefore his teacher was wont to say to him: “My boy, thou wilt be nothing insignificant, but something great, of a surety, either for good or evil.” Moreover, when he was set to study, those branches which aimed at the formation of character, or ministered to any gratification or grace of a liberal sort, he would learn reluctantly and sluggishly and to all that was said for the cultivation of sagacity or practical efficiency, he clearly showed an indifference far beyond his years, as though he put his confidence in his natural gifts alone.

3 Thus it came about that, in after life, at entertainments of a so called liberal and polite nature, he was forced to defend himself rather rudely, saying that tuning the lyre and handling the harp were no accomplishments of his, but rather taking in hand a city that was small and inglorious and making it glorious and great. And yet Stesimbrotus says that Themistocles was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and a disciple of Melissus the physicist; but he is careless in his chronology. It was Pericles, a much younger man than Themistocles, whom Melissus opposed at the siege of Samos, and with whom Anaxagoras was intimate.

4 Rather, then, might one side with those who say that Themistocles was a disciple of Mnesiphilus the Phrearrhian, a man who was neither a rhetorician nor one of the so called physical philosophers, but a cultivator of what was then called “sophia” or wisdom, although it was really nothing more than cleverness in politics and practical sagacity. Mnesiphilus received this “sophia,” and handed it down, as though it were the doctrine of a sect, in unbroken tradition from Solon. His successors blended it with forensic arts, and shifted its application from public affairs to language, and were dubbed “sophists.” It was this man, then, to whom Themistocles resorted at the very beginning of his public life.

5 But in the first essays of his youth he was uneven and unstable, since he gave his natural impulses free course, which, without due address and training, rush to violent extremes in the objects of their pursuit, and often degenerate; as he himself in later life confessed, when he said that even the wildest colts made very good horses, if only they got the proper breaking and training. 6 What some story-makers add to this, however, to the effect that his father disinherited him, and his mother took her own life for very grief at her son’s ill-fame, this I think is false. And, in just the opposite vein, there are some who say that his father fondly tried to divert him from public life, pointing out to him old triremes on the sea-shore, all wrecked and neglected, and intimating that the people treated their leaders in like fashion when these were past service.

3 1 Speedily, however, as it seems, and while he was still in all the ardour of youth, public affairs laid their grasp upon Themistocles, and his impulse to win reputation got strong mastery over him. 113 Wherefore, from the very beginning, in his desire to be first, he boldly encountered the enmity of men who had power and were already first in the city, especially that of Aristides the son of Lysimachus, who was always his opponent. And yet it is thought that his enmity with this man had an altogether puerile beginning. 2 They were both lovers of the beautiful Stesilaüs, a native of Ceos, as Ariston the philosopher has recorded, and thenceforward they continued to be rivals in public life also. However, the dissimilarity in their lives and characters is likely to have increased their variance. Aristides was gentle by nature, and a conservative in character. He engaged in public life, not to win favour or reputation, but to secure the best results consistent with safety and righteousness, and so he was compelled, since Themistocles stirred the people up to many novel enterprises and introduced great innovations, to oppose him often, and to take a firm stand against his increasing influence.

3 It is said, indeed, that Themistocles was so carried away by his desire for reputation, and such an ambitious lover of great deeds, that though he was still a young man when the battle with the Barbarians at Marathon was fought and the generalship of Miltiades was in everybody’s mouth, he was seen thereafter to be wrapped in his own thoughts for the most part, and was sleepless o’ nights, 4 and refused invitations to his customary drinking parties, and said to those who put wondering questions to him concerning his change of life that the trophy of Miltiades would not let him sleep. Now the rest of his countrymen thought that the defeat of the Barbarians at Marathon was the end of the war; but Themistocles thought it to be only the beginning of greater contests, and for these he anointed himself, as it were, to be the champion of all Hellas, and put his city into training, because, while it was yet afar off, he expected the evil that was to come.

4 1 And so, in the first place, whereas the Athenians were wont to divide up among themselves the revenue coming from the silver mines at Laureium, he, and he alone, dared to come before the people with a motion that this division be given up, and that with these moneys triremes be constructed for the war against Aegina. This was the fiercest war then troubling Hellas, and the islanders controlled the sea, owing to the number of their ships. 2 Wherefore all the more easily did Themistocles carry his point, not by trying to terrify the citizens with dreadful pictures of Darius or the Persians — these were too far away and inspired no very serious fear of their coming, but by making opportune use of the bitter jealousy which they cherished toward Aegina in order to secure the armament he desired. The result was that with those moneys they built a hundred triremes, with which they actually fought at Salamis against Xerxes.

3 And after this, by luring the city on gradually and turning its progress toward the sea, urging that with their infantry they were no match even for their nearest neighbours, but that with the power they would get from their ships they could not only repel the Barbarians but also take the lead in Hellas, he made them, instead of “steadfast hoplites” — to quote Plato’s words, sea-tossed mariners, and brought down upon himself this accusation: “Themistocles robbed his fellow-citizens of spear and shield, and degraded the people of Athens to the rowing-pad and the oar.” And this he accomplished in triumph over the public opposition of Miltiades, as Stesimbrotus relates.

4 Now, whether by accomplishing this he did injury to the integrity and purity of public life or not, let the philosopher rather investigate. But that the salvation which the Hellenes achieved at that time came from the sea, and that it was those very triremes which restored again the fallen city of Athens, Xerxes himself bore witness, not to speak of other proofs. For though his infantry remained intact, he took to flight after the defeat of his ships, because he thought he was not a match for the Hellenes, and he left Mardonius behind, as it seems to me, rather to obstruct their pursuit than to subdue them.

114 5 1 Some say that Themistocles was an eager money-maker because of his liberality; for since he was fond of entertaining, and lavished money splendidly on his guests, he required a generous budget. Others, on the contrary, denounce his great stinginess and parsimony, claiming that he used to sell the very food sent in to him as a gift. 2 When Philides the horse-breeder was asked by him for a colt and would not give it, Themistocles threatened speedily to make his house a wooden horse; thereby darkly intimating that he would stir up accusations against him in his own family, and lawsuits between the man and those of his own household.

In his ambition he surpassed all men. For instance, while he was still young and obscure, he prevailed upon Epicles of Hermione, a harpist who was eagerly sought after by the Athenians, to practise at his house, because he was ambitious that many should seek out his dwelling and come often to see him. 3 Again, on going to Olympia, he tried to rival Cimon in his banquets and booths and other brilliant appointments, so that he displeased the Hellenes. For Cimon was young and of a great house, and they thought they must allow him in such extravagances; but Themistocles had not yet become famous, and was thought to be seeking to elevate himself unduly without adequate means, and so was charged with ostentation. 4 And still again, as choregus, or theatrical manager, he won a victory with tragedies, although even at that early time this contest was conducted with great eagerness and ambition, and set up a tablet commemorating his victory with the following inscription: “Themistocles the Phrearrhian was Choregus; Phrynichus was Poet; Adeimantus was Archon.”

However, he was on good terms with the common folk, partly because he could call off-hand the name of every citizen, and partly because he rendered the service of a safe and impartial arbitrator in cases of private obligation and settlement out of court; and so he once said to Simonides of Ceos, who had made an improper request from him when he was magistrate: “You would not be a good poet if you should sing contrary to measure; nor I a clever magistrate if I should show favour contrary to the law.” 5 And once again he banteringly said to Simonides that it was nonsense for him to abuse the Corinthians, who dwelt in a great and fair city, while he had portrait figures made of himself, who was of such an ugly countenance. And so he grew in power, and pleased the common folk, and finally headed a successful faction and got Aristides removed by ostracism.

6 1 At last, when the Mede was descending upon Hellas and the Athenians were deliberating who should be their general, all the rest, they say, voluntarily renounced their claims to the generalship, so panic-stricken were they at the danger; but Epicydes, the son of Euphemides, a popular leader who was powerful in speech but effeminate in spirit and open to bribes, set out to get the office, and was likely to prevail in the election; so Themistocles, fearing lest matters should go to utter ruin in case the leadership fell to such a man, bribed and bought off the ambition of Epicydes.

2 Praise is given to his treatment of the linguist in the company of those who were sent by the King to demand earth and water as tokens of submission: this interpreter he caused to be arrested, and had him put to death by special decree, because he dared to prostitute the speech of Hellas to Barbarian stipulations. 3 Also to his treatment of Arthmius of Zeleia: on motion of Themistocles this man was entered on the list of the disfranchised, with his children and his family, because he brought the gold of the Medes and offered it to the Hellenes. But the greatest of all his achievements was his putting a stop to Hellenic wars, and reconciling Hellenic cities with one another, persuading them to postpone their mutual hatreds because of the foreign war. To which end, they say, Cheileos the Arcadian most seconded his efforts.

7 1 On assuming the command, 115 he straightway went to work to embark the citizens on their triremes, and tried to persuade them to leave their city behind them and go as far as possible away from Hellas to meet the Barbarians by sea. But many opposed this plan, and so he led forth a large army to the vale of Tempe, along with the Lacedaemonians, in order to make a stand there in defence of Thessaly, which was not yet at that time supposed to be medising. 2 But soon the army came back from this position without accomplishing anything, the Thessalians went over to the side of the King, and everything was medising as far as Boeotia, so that at last the Athenians were more kindly disposed to the naval policy of Themistocles, and he was sent with a fleet to Artemisium, to watch the narrows.

It was at this place that the Hellenes urged Eurybiades and the Lacedaemonians to take the lead, but the Athenians, since in the number of their ships they surpassed all the rest put together, disdained to follow others, — a peril which Themistocles at once comprehended. 3 He surrendered his own command to Eurybiades, and tried to mollify the Athenians with the promise that if they would show themselves brave men in the war, he would induce the Hellenes to yield a willing obedience to them thereafter. Wherefore he is thought to have been the man most instrumental in achieving the salvation of Hellas, and foremost in leading the Athenians up to the high repute of surpassing their foes in valour and their allies in magnanimity.

4 Now Eurybiades, on the arrival of the Barbarian armament at Aphetae, was terrified at the number of ships that faced him, and, learning that two hundred ships more were sailing around above Sciathus to cut off his retreat, desired to proceed by the shortest route down into Hellas, to get into touch with Peloponnesus and encompass his fleet with his infantry forces there, because he thought the power of the King altogether invincible by sea. Therefore the Euboeans, fearing lest the Hellenes abandon them to their fate, held secret conference with Themistocles, and sent Pelagon to him with large sums of money. 5 This money he took, as Herodotus relates, and gave to Eurybiades.

Meeting with most opposition among his fellow-citizens from Architeles, who was captain on the sacred state galley, and who, because he had no money to pay the wages of his sailors, was eager to sail off home, Themistocles incited his crew all the more against him, so that they made a rush upon him and snatched away his dinner. 6 Then, while Architeles was feeling dejected and indignant over this, Themistocles sent him a dinner of bread and meat in a box at the bottom of which he had put a talent of silver, and bade him dine without delay, and on the morrow satisfy his crew; otherwise he said he would denounce him publicly as the receiver of money from the enemy. At any rate, such is the story of Phanias the Lesbian.

8 1 The battles which were fought at that time with the ships of the Barbarians in the narrows were not decisive of the main issue, it is true, but they were of the greatest service to the Hellenes in giving them experience, since they were thus taught by actual achievements in the face of danger that neither multitudes of ships nor brilliantly decorated figure-heads nor boastful shouts or barbarous battle-hymns have any terror for men who know how to come to close quarters and dare to fight there; but that they must despise all such things, rush upon the very persons of their foes, grapple with them, and fight it out to the bitter end. 2 Of this Pindar seems to have been well aware when he said of the battle of Artemisium: —

“Where Athenians’ valiant sons set in radiance eternal

Liberty’s corner-stone.”

For verily the foundation of victory is courage.

Artemisium is a part of Euboea above Hestiaea, — a sea-beach stretching away to the north, — and just about opposite to it lies Olizon, in the territory once subject to Philoctetes. It has a small temple of Artemis 116 surnamed Proseoea, which is surrounded by trees and enclosed by upright slabs of white marble. This stone, when you rub it with your hand, gives off the colour and the odour of saffron. 3 On one of these slabs the following elegy was inscribed: —

“Nations of all sorts of men from Asia’s boundaries coming,

Sons of the Athenians once, here on this arm of the sea,

Whelmed in a battle of ships, and the host of the Medes was destroyèd;

These are the tokens thereof, built for the Maid Artemis.”

And a place is pointed out on the shore, sea sand all about it, which supplies from its depths a dark ashen powder, apparently the product of fire, and here they are thought to have burned their wrecks and dead bodies.

9 1 However, when they learned by messengers from Thermopylae to Artemisium that Leonidas was slain and that Xerxes was master of the pass, they withdrew further down into Hellas, the Athenians bringing up the extreme rear because of their valour, and greatly elated by their achievements. As Themistocles sailed along the coasts, wherever he saw places at which the enemy must necessarily put in for shelter and supplies, he inscribed conspicuous writings on stones, 2 some of which he found to his hand there by chance, and some he himself caused to be set near the inviting anchorages and watering places. In these writings he solemnly enjoined upon the Ionians, if it were possible, to come over to the side of the Athenians, who were their ancestors, and who were risking all in behalf of their freedom; but if they could not do this, to damage the Barbarian cause in battle, and bring confusion among them. By this means he hoped either to fetch the Ionians over to his side, or to confound them by bringing the Barbarians into suspicion of them.

3 Although Xerxes had made a raid up through Doris into Phocis, and was burning the cities of the Phocians, the Hellenes gave them no succour. The Athenians, it is true, begged them to go up into Boeotia against the enemy, and make a stand there in defence of Attica, as they themselves had gone up by sea to Artemisium in defence of others. But no one listened to their appeals. All clung fast to the Peloponnesus, and were eager to collect all the forces inside the Isthmus, and were building a rampart across the Isthmus from sea to sea. 4 Then the Athenians were seized alike with rage at this betrayal, and with sullen dejection at their utter isolation. Of fighting alone with an army of so many myriads they could not seriously think; and as for the only thing left them to do in their emergency, namely, to give up their city and stick to their ships, most of them were distressed at the thought, saying that they neither wanted victory nor understood what safety could mean if they abandoned to the enemy the shrines of their gods and the sepulchres of their fathers.

10 1 Then indeed it was that Themistocles, despairing of bringing the multitude over to his views by any human reasonings, set up machinery, as it were, to introduce the gods to them, as a theatrical manager would for a tragedy, and brought to bear upon them signs from heaven and oracles. As a sign from heaven he took the behaviour of the serpent, which is held to have disappeared about that time from the sacred enclosure on the Acropolis. When the priests found that the daily offerings made to it were left whole and untouched, they proclaimed to the multitude, — Themistocles putting the story into their mouths, — that the goddess had abandoned her city and was showing them their way to the sea. 2 Moreover, with the well-known oracle he tried again to win the people over to his views, saying that its “wooden wall” meant nothing else than their fleet; and that the god in this oracle called Salamis “divine,” not “dreadful” nor “cruel,” for the very reason that the island would sometime give its name to a great piece of good fortune for the Hellenes. At last his opinion prevailed, and so he introduced a bill providing that the city be entrusted for safe keeping “to Athena the patroness of Athens,” but that all the men of military age embark on the triremes, after finding their children, wives, such safety as each best could. 3 Upon the passage of this bill, most of the Athenians bestowed their children and wives in Troezen, where the Troezenians very eagerly welcomed them. 117 They actually voted to support them at the public cost, allowing two obols daily to each family, and to permit the boys to pluck of the vintage fruit everywhere, and besides to hire teachers for them. The bill was introduced by a man whose name was Nicagoras.

4 Since the Athenians had no public moneys in hand, it was the Senate of Areiopagus, according to Aristotle, which provided each of the men who embarked with eight drachmas, and so was most instrumental in manning the triremes; but Cleidemus represents this too as the result of an artifice of Themistocles. He says that when the Athenians were going down to the Piraeus and abandoning their city, the Gorgon’s head was lost from the image of the god; and then Themistocles, pretending to search for it, and ransacking everything, thereby discovered an abundance of money hidden away in the baggage, which had only to be confiscated, and the crews of the ships were well provided with rations and wages.

5 When the entire city was thus putting out to sea, the sight provoked pity in some, and in others astonishment at the hardihood of the step; for they were sending off their families in one direction, while they themselves, unmoved by the lamentations and tears and embraces of their loved ones, were crossing over to the island where the enemy was to be fought. Besides, many who were left behind on account of their great age invited pity also, and much affecting fondness was shown by the tame domestic animals, which ran along with yearning cries of distress by the side of their masters as they embarked. 6 A story is told of one of these, the dog of Xanthippus the father of Pericles, how he could not endure to be abandoned by his master, and so sprang into the sea, swam across the strait by the side of his master’s trireme, and staggered out on Salamis, only to faint and die straightway. They say that the spot which is pointed out to this day as “Dog’s Mound” is his tomb.

11 These were surely great achievements of Themistocles, but there was a greater still to come. When he saw that the citizens yearned for Aristides, and feared lest out of wrath he might join himself to the Barbarian and so subvert the cause of Hellas, — he had been ostracized before the war in consequence of political defeat at the hands of Themistocles, — he issued a bill providing that those who had been removed for a time be permitted to return home and devote their best powers to the service of Hellas along with the other citizens.

2 When Eurybiades, who had the command of the fleet on account of the superior claims of Sparta, but who was faint-hearted in time of danger, wished to hoist sail and make for the Isthmus, where the infantry also of the Peloponnesians had been assembled, it was Themistocles who spoke against it, and it was then, they say, that these memorable sayings of his were uttered. When Eurybiades said to him, “Themistocles, at the games those who start too soon get a caning,” “Yes,” said Themistocles, “but those who lag behind get no crown.” 3 And when Eurybiades lifted up his staff as though to smite him, Themistocles said: “Smite, but hear me.” Then Eurybiades was struck with admiration at his calmness, and bade him speak, and Themistocles tried to bring him back to his own position. But on a certain one saying that a man without a city had no business to advise men who still had cities of their own to abandon and betray them, Themistocles addressed his speech with emphasis to him, saying: 4 “It is true, thou wretch, that we have left behind us our houses and our city walls, not deeming it meet for the sake of such lifeless things to be in subjection; but we still have a city, the greatest in Hellas, our two hundred triremes, which now are ready to aid you if you choose to be saved by them; but if you go off and betray us for the second time, straightway many a Hellene will learn that the Athenians have won for themselves a city that is free and a territory that is far better than the one they cast aside.” 5 When Themistocles said this, Eurybiades began to reflect, and was seized with fear lest the Athenians go away and abandon him. 118 And again, when the Eretrian tried to argue somewhat against him, “Indeed!” said he, “what argument can ye make about war, who, like the cuttle-fish, have a long pouch in the place where your heart ought to be?”

12 1 Some tell the story that while Themistocles was thus speaking from off the deck of his ship, an owl was seen to fly through the fleet from the right and alight in his rigging; wherefore his hearers espoused the opinion most eagerly and prepared to do battle with their ships.a 2 But soon the enemy’s armament beset the coast of Attica down to the haven of Phalerum, so as to hide from view the neighbouring shores; then the King in person with his infantry came down to the sea, so that he could be seen with all his hosts; and presently, in view of this junction of hostile forces, the words of Themistocles ebbed out of the minds of the Hellenes, and the Peloponnesians again turned their eyes wistfully towards the Isthmus and were vexed if any one spake of any other course; nay, they actually decided to withdraw from their position in the night, and orders for the voyage were issued to the pilots. 3 Such was the crisis when Themistocles, distressed to think that the Hellenes should abandon the advantages to be had from the narrowness of the straits where they lay united, and break up into detachments by cities, planned and concocted the famous affair of Sicinnus.

This Sicinnus was of Persian stock, a prisoner of war, but devoted to Themistocles, and the paedagogue of his children. 4 This man was sent to Xerxes secretly with orders to say: “Themistocles the Athenian general elects the King’s cause, and is the first one to announce to him that the Hellenes are trying to slip away, and urgently bids him not to suffer them to escape, but, while they are in confusion and separated from their infantry, to set upon them and destroy their naval power.” 5 Xerxes received this as the message of one who wished him well, and was delighted, and at once issued positive orders to the captains of his ships to man the main body of the fleet at their leisure, but with two hundred ships to put out to sea at once, and encompass the strait round about on every side, including the islands in their line of blockade, that not one of the enemy might escape.

6 While this was going on, Aristides the son of Lysimachus, who was the first to perceive it, came to the tent of Themistocles, who was no friend of his, nay, through whom he had even been ostracized, as I have said; and when Themistocles came from the tent, Aristides told him how the enemy surrounded them. Themistocles, knowing the tried nobility of the man, and filled with admiration for his coming at that time, told him all about the Sicinnus matter, and besought him to join in this desperate attempt to keep the Hellenes where they were, — admitting that he had the greater credit with them, — in order that they might make their sea-fight in the narrows. 7 Aristides, accordingly, after bestowing praise upon Themistocles for his stratagem, went round to the other generals and trierarchs inciting them to battle. And while they were still incredulous in spite of all, a Tenian trireme appeared, a deserter from the enemy, in command of Panaetius, and told how the enemy surrounded them, so that with a courage born of necessity the Hellenes set out to confront the danger.

13 1 At break of day, Xerxes was seated on a high place and overlooking the disposition of his armament. This place was, according to Phanodemus, above the Heracleium, where only a narrow passage separates the island from Attica; but according to Acestodorus, it was in the border-land of Megara, above the so called “Horns.” Here a gilded throne had been set for him at his command, and many secretaries stationed near at hand, whose task it was to make due record of all that was done in the battle.

2 But Themistocles was sacrificing alongside the admiral’s trireme. There three prisoners of war were brought to him, of visage most beautiful to behold, conspicuously adorned with raiment and with gold. They were said to be the sons of Sandaucé, the King’s sister, and Artaÿctus. When Euphrantides the seer caught sight of them, since at one and the same moment a great and glaring flame shot up from the sacrificial victims 119 and a sneeze gave forth its good omen on the right, he clasped Themistocles by the hand and bade him consecrate the youths, and sacrifice them all to Dionysus Carnivorous, with prayers of supplication; for on this wise would the Hellenes have a saving victory. 3 Themistocles was terrified, feeling that the word of the seer was monstrous and shocking; but the multitude, who, as is wont to be the case in great struggles and severe crises, looked for safety rather from unreasonable than from reasonable measures, invoked the god with one voice, dragged the prisoners to the altar, and compelled the fulfilment of the sacrifice, as the seer commanded. At any rate, this is what Phanias the Lesbian says, and he was a philosopher, and well acquainted with historical literature.

14 1 As regards the number of the Barbarian ships, Aeschylus the poet, in his tragedy of “The Persians,” as though from personal and positive knowledge, says this: —

“But Xerxes, and I surely know, had a thousand ships

In number under him; those of surpassing speed

Were twice five score beside and seven; so stands the count.”

The Attic ships were one hundred and eighty in number, and each had eighteen men to fight upon the decks, of whom four were archers, and the rest men-at arms.

2 Themistocles is thought to have divined the best time for fighting with no less success than the best place, inasmuch as he took care not to send his triremes bow on against the Barbarian vessels until the hour of day had come which always brought the breeze fresh from the sea and a swell rolling through the strait. This breeze wrought no harm to the Hellenic ships, since they lay low in the water and were rather small; but for the Barbarian ships, with their towering sterns and lofty decks and sluggish movements in getting under way, it was fatal, since it smote them and slewed them round broadside to the Hellenes, who set upon them sharply, keeping their eyes on Themistocles, because they thought he saw best what was to be done, 3 and because confronting him was the admiral of Xerxes, Ariamenes, who being on a great ship, kept shooting arrows and javelins as though from a city wall, — brave man that he was, by far the strongest and most just of the King’s brothers. It was upon him that Ameinias the Deceleian and Socles the Paeanian bore down, — they being together on one ship, — and as the two ships struck each other bow on, crashed together, and hung fast by their bronze beaks, he tried to board their trireme; but they faced him, smote him with their spears, and hurled him into the sea. His body, as it drifted about with other wreckage, was recognised by Artemisia, who had it carried to Xerxes.

15 1 At this stage of the struggle they say that a great light flamed out from Eleusis, and an echoing cry filled the Thriasian plain down to the sea, as of multitudes of men together conducting the mystic Iacchus in procession. Then out of the shouting throng a cloud seemed to lift itself slowly from the earth, pass out seawards, and settle down upon the triremes. Others fancied they saw apparitions and shapes of armed men coming from Aegina with their hands stretched out to protect the Hellenic triremes. These, they conjectured, were the Aeacidae, who had been prayerfully invoked before the battle to come to their aid.

2 Now the first man to capture an enemy’s ship was Lycomedes, an Athenian captain, who cut off its figure-head and dedicated it to Apollo the Laurel-bearer at Phlya. Then the rest, put on an equality in numbers with their foes, because the Barbarians had to attack them by detachments in the narrow strait and so ran foul of one another, routed them, though they resisted till the evening drew on, and thus “bore away,” as Simonides says, “that fair and notorious victory, than which no more brilliant exploit was ever performed upon the sea, either by Hellenes or Barbarians, through the manly valour and common ardour of all who fought their ships, but through the clever judgment of Themistocles.”

120 16 1 After the sea-fight, Xerxes, still furious at his failure, undertook to carry moles out into the sea on which he could lead his infantry across to Salamis against the Hellenes, damming up the intervening strait. But Themistocles, merely by way of sounding Aristides, proposed, as though he were in earnest, to sail with the fleet to the Hellespont and break the span of boats there, “in order,” said he, “that we may capture Asia in Europe.” 2 Aristides, however, was displeased with the scheme and said: “Now indeed the Barbarian with whom we have fought consults his ease and pleasure, but should we shut up in Hellas and bring under fearful compulsion a man who is lord of such vast forces, he will no longer sit under a golden parasol to view the spectacle of the battle at his ease, but he will dare all things, and, superintending everything in person, because of his peril, will rectify his previous remissness and take better counsel for the highest issues thus at stake. 3 We must not, then,” said he, “tear down the bridge that is already there, Themistocles, nay rather, we must build another alongside it, if that be possible, and cast the fellow out of Europe in a hurry.” “Well, then,” said Themistocles, “if that is what is thought for the best, it is high time for us all to be studying and inventing a way to get him out of Hellas by the speediest route.”

4 As soon as this policy had been adopted, he sent a certain royal eunuch whom he discovered among the prisoners of war, by name Arnaces, with orders to tell the King that the Hellenes had decided, since their fleet now controlled the sea, to sail up into the Hellespont, where the strait was spanned, and destroy the bridge; but that Themistocles, out of regard for the King, urged him to hasten into home waters and fetch his forces across; he himself, he said, would cause the allies all sorts of delays and postponements in their pursuit. 5 No sooner did the Barbarian hear this than he was seized with exceeding fear and speedily began his retreat. This thoughtful prudence on the part of Themistocles and Aristides was afterwards justified by the campaign with Mardonius, since, although they fought at Plataea with the merest fraction of the armies of Xerxes, they yet staked their all upon the issue.

17 1 Among the cities, now, Herodotus says that Aegina bore away the prize of valour; but among individuals, all virtually awarded the first place to Themistocles, though their envy made them unwilling to do this directly. For when the generals withdrew to the Isthmus and solemnly voted on this question, taking their ballots from the very altar of the god there, each one declared for himself as first in valour, but for Themistocles as second after himself. Then the Lacedaemonians brought him down to Sparta, and while they gave Eurybiades the prize for valour, to him they gave one for wisdom, — a crown of olive in each case, — and they presented him with the best chariot there was in the city, and sent three hundred picked youth along with him to serve as his escort to the boundary. 2 And it is said that when the next Olympic festival was celebrated, and Themistocles entered the stadium, the audience neglected the contestants all day long to gaze on him, and pointed him out with admiring applause to visiting strangers, so that he too was delighted, and confessed to his friends that he was now reaping in full measure the harvest of his toils in behalf of Hellas.

18 1 And indeed he was by nature very fond of honour, if we may judge from his memorable sayings and doings. When, for example, the city had chosen him to be admiral, he would not perform any public or private business at its proper time, but would postpone the immediate duty to the day on which he was to set sail, in order that then, because he did many things all at once and had meetings with all sorts of men, he might be thought to be some great personage and very powerful.

2 Surveying once the dead bodies of the Barbarians which had been cast up along the sea, he saw that they were decked with golden bracelets and collars, and yet passed on by them himself, 121 while to a friend who followed he pointed them out and said: “Help thyself, thou art not Themistocles.” Again, to one who had once been a beauty, Antiphates, and who had at that time treated him disdainfully, but afterwards courted him because of the reputation he had got, “Young man,” said he, “ ‘tis late, ‘tis true, but both of us have come to our senses.” 3 Also he used to say of the Athenians that they did not really honour and admire him for himself, but treated him for all the world like a plane-tree, running under his branches for shelter when it stormed, but when they had fair weather all about them, plucking and docking him. And when he was told by the Seriphian that it was not due to himself that he had got reputation, but to his city, “True,” said he, “but neither should I, had I been a Seriphian, have achieved reputation, nor wouldst thou, hadst thou been an Athenian.”

4 Again, when one of his fellow-generals who thought he had done some vast service to the city, grew bold with Themistocles, and began to compare his own services with his, “With the Festival-day,” said he, “the Day After once began a contention, saying: ‘Thou art full of occupations and wearisome, but when I come, all enjoy at their leisure what has been richly provided beforehand’; to which the Festival-day replied: ‘True, but had I not come first, thou hadst not come at all.’ So now,” said he, “had I not come at that day of Salamis, where would thou and thy colleagues be now?” 5 Of his son, who lorded it over his mother, and through her over himself, he said, jestingly, that the boy was the most powerful of all the Hellenes; for the Hellenes were commanded by the Athenians, the Athenians by himself, himself by the boy’s mother, and the mother by her boy. Again, with the desire to be somewhat peculiar in all that he did, when he offered a certain estate for sale, he bade proclamation to be made that it had an excellent neighbour into the bargain. Of two suitors for his daughter’s hand, he chose the likely man in preference to the rich man, saying that he wanted a man without money rather than money without a man. Such were his striking sayings.

19 1 After the great achievements now described, he straightway undertook to rebuild and fortify the city, — as Theopompus relates, by bribing the Spartan Ephors not to oppose the project; but as the majority say, by hoodwinking them. He came with this object to Sparta, ostensibly on an embassy, and when the Spartans brought up the charge that the Athenians were fortifying their city, and Polyarchus was sent expressly from Aegina with the same accusation, 2 he denied that it was so, and bade them send men to Athens to see for themselves, not only because this delay would secure time for the building of the wall, but also because he wished the Athenians to hold these envoys as hostages for his own person. And this was what actually happened. When the Lacedaemonians found out the truth they did him no harm, but concealed their displeasure and sent him away.

After this he equipped the Piraeus, because he had noticed the favourable shape of its harbours, and wished to attach the whole city to the sea; thus in a certain manner counteracting the policies of the ancient Athenian kings. 3 For they, as it is said, in their efforts to draw the citizens away from the sea and accustom them to live not by navigation but by agriculture, disseminated the story about Athena, how when Poseidon was contending with her for possession of the country, she displayed the sacred olive-tree of the Acropolis to the judges, and so won the day. But Themistocles did not, as Aristophanes the comic poet says, “knead the Piraeus on to the city,” nay, he fastened the city to the Piraeus, and the land to the sea. 4 And so it was that he increased the privileges of the common people as against the nobles, and filled them with boldness, since the controlling power came now into the hands of skippers and boatswains and pilots. Therefore it was, too, that the bema in Pnyx, which had stood so as to look off toward the sea, was afterwards turned by the thirty tyrants so as to look inland, because they thought that maritime empire was the mother of democracy, and that oligarchy was less distasteful to tillers of the soil.

20 1 But Themistocles cherished yet greater designs even for securing the naval supremacy. 122 When the fleet of the Hellenes, after the departure of Xerxes, had put in at Pagasae and was wintering there, he made a harangue before the Athenians, in which he said that he had a certain scheme in mind which would be useful and salutary for them, but which could not be broached in public. 2 So the Athenians bade him impart it to Aristides alone, and if he should approve of it, to put it into execution. Themistocles accordingly told Aristides that he purposed to burn the fleet of the Hellenes where it lay; but Aristides addressed the people, and said of the scheme which Themistocles purposed to carry out, that none could be either more advantageous or more iniquitous. The Athenians therefore ordered Themistocles to give it up.

3 At the Amphictyonic or Holy Alliance conventions, the Lacedaemonians introduced motions that all cities be excluded from the Alliance which had not taken part in fighting against the Mede. So Themistocles, fearing lest, if they should succeed in excluding the Thessalians and the Argives and the Thebans too from the convention, they would control the votes completely and carry through their own wishes, spoke in behalf of the protesting cities, and changed the sentiments of the delegates 4 by showing that only thirty-one cities had taken part in the war, and that the most of these were altogether small; it would be intolerable, then, if the rest of Hellas should be excluded and the convention be at the mercy of the two or three largest cities. It was for this reason particularly that he became obnoxious to the Lacedaemonians, and they therefore tried to advance Cimon in public favour, making him the political rival of Themistocles.

21 1 He made himself hateful to the allies also, by sailing round to the islands and trying to exact money from them. When, for instance, he demanded money of the Andrians, Herodotus says he made a speech to them and got reply as follows: he said he came escorting two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion; and they replied that they already had two great gods, Penury and Powerlessness, 2 who hindered them from giving him money.

Timocreon, the lyric poet of Rhodes, assailed Themistocles very bitterly in a song, to the effect that for bribes he had secured the restoration of other exiles, but had abandoned him, through a host and a friend, and all for money. The song runs thus: —

“Come, if thou praisest Pausanias, or if Xanthippus,

Or if Leotychidas, then I shall praise Aristides,

The one best man of all

Who came from sacred Athens; since Leto loathes Themistocles,

3 “

The liar, cheat, and traitor, who, though Timocreon was his host,

By knavish moneys was induced not to bring him back

Into his native Ialysus,

But took three talents of silver and went cruising off, — to perdition,

“Restoring some exiles unjustly, chasing some away, and slaying some,

Gorged with moneys; yet at the Isthmus he played ridiculous host with the stale meats set before his guests;

Who ate thereof and prayed Heaven ‘no happy return of the day for Themistocles!’ “

4 Much more wanton and extravagant was the raillery which Timocreon indulged in against Themistocles after the latter’s own exile and condemnation. Then he composed the song beginning: —

“O Muse, grant that this song

Be famed throughout all Hellas,

As it is meet and just.”

It is said that Timocreon was sent into exile on a charge of Medising, and that Themistocles concurred in the vote of condemnation. 5 Accordingly, when Themistocles also was accused of Medising, Timocreon composed these lines upon him: —

“Not Timocreon alone, then, made compacts with the Medes,

But there are other wretches too; not I alone am brushless,

There are other foxes too.”

123 22 1 And at last, when even his fellow-citizens were led by the jealousy of his greatness to welcome such slanders against him, he was forced to allude to his own achievements when he addressed the Assembly, till he became tiresome thereby, and he once said to the malcontents: “Why are ye vexed that the same men should often benefit you?’ “ He offended the multitude also by building the temple of Artemis, whom he surnamed Aristoboulé, or Best Counsellor, intimating thus that it was he who had given the best counsel to the city and to the Hellenes. 2 This temple he established near his house in Melité, where now the public officers cast out the bodies of those who have been put to death, and carry forth the garments and the nooses of those who have dispatched themselves by hanging. A portrait-statue of Themistocles stood in this temple of Aristoboulé down to my time, from which he appears to have been a man not only of heroic spirit, but also of heroic presence.

3 Well then, they visited him with ostracism, curtailing his dignity and pre-eminence, as they were wont to do in the case of all whom they thought to have oppressive power, and to be incommensurate with true democratic equality. For ostracism was not a penalty, but a way of pacifying and alleviating that jealousy which delights to humble the eminent, breathing out its malice into this disfranchisement.

23 1 After he had been thus banished from the city, and while he was sojourning at Argos, circumstances connected with the death of Pausanias gave his enemies at Athens ground for proceeding against him. The one who actually brought in the indictment against him for treason was Leobotes the son of Alcmeon, of the deme Agraulé, but the Spartans supported him in the accusation. Pausanias, while engaged in his grand scheme of treachery, at first kept it concealed from Themistocles; 2 but when he saw him thus banished from his state and in great bitterness of spirit, he made bold to invite him into partnership in his own undertakings, showing him a letter he had received from the King, and inciting him against the Hellenes as a base and thankless people. Themistocles rejected the solicitation of Pausanias, and utterly refused the proffered partnership; and yet he disclosed the propositions to no one, nor did he even give information of the treacherous scheme, because he expected either that Pausanias would give it up of his own accord, or that in some other way he would be found out, since he was so irrationally grasping after such strange and desperate objects.

3 And so it was that, when Pausanias had been put to death, certain letters and documents regarding these matters were discovered which cast suspicion on Themistocles. The Lacedaemonians cried him down, and his envious fellow-citizens denounced him, though he was not present to plead his cause, but defended himself in writing, making particular use of earlier accusations brought against him. 4 Since he was once slanderously accused by his enemies before his fellow-citizens — so he wrote, as one who ever sought to rule, but had no natural bent nor even the desire to be ruled, he could never have sold himself with Hellas to Barbarians, much less to foemen. The people, however, were overpersuaded by his accusers, and sent men with orders to arrest him and bring him up in custody to stand trial before a Congress of Hellenes.

24 1 But he heard of this in advance, and crossed over to Corcyra, where he had been recognized as a public benefactor of the city. For he had served as arbiter in a dispute between them and the Corinthians, and settled the quarrel by deciding that the Corinthians should pay an indemnity of twenty talents, and administer Leucas as a common colony of both cities. Thence he fled to Epirus, and being pursued by the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, he threw himself upon grievous and desperate chances of escape by taking refuge with Admetus, who was king of the Molossians, 2 and who, since he had once asked some favour of the Athenians and had been insultingly refused it by Themistocles, then at the height of his political influence, 124 was angry with him ever after, and made it plain that he would take vengeance on him if he caught him. But in the desperate fortune of that time Themistocles was more afraid of kindred and recent jealousy than of an anger that was of long standing and royal, and promptly cast himself upon the king’s mercy, making himself the suppliant of Admetus in a way quite peculiar and extraordinary. 3 There is to say, he took the young son of the king in his arms and threw himself down at the hearth; a form of supplication which the Molossians regarded as most sacred, and as almost the only one that might not be refused. Some, it is true, say that it was Phthia, the wife of the king, who suggested this form of supplication to Themistocles, and that she seated her son on the hearth with him; and certain others that Admetus himself, in order that he might give a religious sanction to the necessity that was upon him of not surrendering the man, arranged beforehand and solemnly rehearsed with him the supplication scene.

4 Thither his wife and children were privily removed from Athens and sent to him by Epicrates of the deme Acharnae, who, for this deed, was afterwards convicted by Cimon and put to death, as Stesimbrotus relates. Then, somehow or other, Stesimbrotus forgets this, or makes Themistocles forget it, and says he sailed to Sicily and demanded from Hiero the tyrant the hand of his daughter in marriage, promising as an incentive that he would make the Hellenes subject to his sway; but that Hiero repulsed him, and so he set sail for Asia.

25 1 But it is not likely that this was so. For Theophrastus, in his work “On Royalty,” tells how, when Hiero sent horses to compete at Olympia, and set up a sort of booth there with very costly decorations, Themistocles made a speech among the assembled Hellenes, urging them to tear down the booth of the tyrant and prevent his horses from competing. 2 And Thucydides says that he made his way across the country to the sea, and set sail from Pydna, no one of the passengers knowing who he was until, when the vessel had been carried by a storm to Naxos, to which the Athenians at that time were laying siege, he was terrified, and disclosed himself to the master and the captain of the ship, and partly by entreaties, partly by threats, actually declaring that he would denounce and vilify them to the Athenians as having taken him on board at the start in no ignorance but under bribes, — in this way compelled them to sail by and make the coast of Asia. 3 Of his property, much was secretly abstracted for him by his friends and sent across the sea to Asia but the sum total of that which was brought to light and confiscated amounted to one hundred talents, according to Theopompus, — Theophrastus says eighty, — and yet Themistocles did not possess the worth of three talents before he entered political life.

26 1 After landing at Cymé, and learning that many people on the coast were watching to seize him, and especially Ergoteles and Pythodorus, — for the chase was a lucrative one to such as were fond of getting gain from any and every source, since two hundred talents had been publicly set upon his head by the King, — he fled to Aegae, a little Aeolic citadel. Here no one knew him except his host Nicogenes, the wealthiest man in Aeolia, and well acquainted with the magnates of the interior. 2 During this time, after the dinner which followed a certain sacrifice, Olbius, the paedagogue of the children of Nicogenes, becoming rapt and inspired, lifted up his voice and uttered the following verse: —

“Night shall speak, and night instruct thee, night shall give thee victory.”

And in the night that followed, Themistocles, as he lay in bed, thought he saw in a dream that a serpent wound itself along over his body and crept up to his neck, 3 then became an eagle as soon as it touched his face, enveloped him with its wings and lifted him on high and bore him a long distance, when there appeared as it were a golden herald’s wand, on which it set him securely down, freed from helpless terror and distress.

125 However the may be, he was sent on his way by Nicogenes, who devised the following scheme for his safety. Most barbarous nations, and the Persians in particular, are savage and harsh in their jealous watchfulness over their women. 4 Not only their wedded wives, but also their boughten slaves and concubines are strictly guarded, so that they are seen by no outsiders, but live at home in complete seclusion, and even on their journeys are carried in tents closely hung about with curtains and set upon four-wheeled waggons. Such a vehicle was made ready for Themistocles, and safely ensconced in this he made his journey, while his attendants replied in every case to those who met them with enquiries, that they were conducting a Hellenic woman, fair but frail, to one of the King’s courtiers.

27 1 Now Thucydides and Charon of Lampsacus relate that Xerxes was dead, and that it was his son Artaxerxes with whom Themistocles had his interview; but Ephorus and Dinon and Clitarchus and Heracleides and yet more besides have it that it was Xerxes to whom he came. With the chronological data Thucydides seems to me more in accord, although these are by no means securely established. 2 Be that as it may, Themistocles, thus at the threshold of the dreadful ordeal, had audience first with Artabanus the Chiliarch, or Grand Vizier, and said that he was a Hellene, and that he desired to have an audience with the King on matters which were of the highest importance and for which the monarch entertained the most lively concern. Whereupon the Chiliarch replied: “O Stranger, men’s customs differ; different people honour different practices; but all honour the exaltation and maintenance of their own peculiar ways. 3 Now you Hellenes are said to admire liberty and equality above all things; but in our eyes, among many fair customs, this is the fairest of all, to honour the King, and to pay obeisance to him as the image of that god who is the preserver of all things. If, then, thou approvest our practice and wilt pay obeisance, it is in thy power to behold and address the King; but if thou art otherwise minded, it will be needful for thee to employ messengers to him in thy stead, for it is not a custom of this country that the King give ear to a man who has not paid him obeisance.” 4 When Themistocles heard this, he said to him: “Nay, but I am come, Artabanus, to augment the King’s fame and power, and I will not only myself observe your customs, since such is the pleasure of the god who exalts the Persians, but I will induce more men than do so now to pay obeisance to the King. Therefore let this matter by no means stand in the way of the words I wish to speak to him.” 5 “And what Hellene,” said Artabanus, “shall I say thou art who hast thus come? Verily, thou dost not seem to be a man of ordinary understanding.” And Themistocles said: “This, Artabanus, no one may learn before the King.”

So indeed Phanias says, and Eratosthenes, in his book “On Wealth,” adds the statement that it was through a woman of Eretria, whom the Chiliarch had to wife, that Themistocles obtained interview and conference with him.

28 1 That may or may not be so. But when he was led into the presence of the King and had made him obeisance, and was standing in silence, the King ordered the interpreter to ask him who he was, and, on the interpreter’s asking, he said: “I who thus come to thee, O King, am Themistocles the Athenian, an exile, pursued by the Hellenes; and to me the Persians are indebted for many ills, but for more blessings, since I hindered the pursuit of the Hellenes, at a time when Hellas was brought into safety, and the salvation of my own home gave me an opportunity for showing some favour also to you. 2 Now, therefore, I may look for any sequel to my present calamities, and I come prepared to receive the favour of one who benevolently offers reconciliation, or to deprecate the anger of one who cherishes the remembrance of injuries. But do thou take my foes to witness for the good I wrought the Persians, and now use my misfortunes for the display of thy virtue rather for the satisfaction of thine anger. For it is a suppliant of thine whom thou wilt save, but an enemy of the Hellenes whom thou wilt destroy.” 1263 After these words Themistocles spoke of divine portents in his favour, enlarging upon the vision which he saw at the house of Nicogenes, and the oracle of Dodonaean Zeus, how when he was bidden by it to proceed to the namesake of the god, he had concluded that he was thereby sent to him, since both were actually “Great Kings,” and were so addressed.

On hearing this the Persian made no direct reply to him, although struck with admiration at the boldness of his spirit; 4 but in converse with his friends it is said that he congratulated himself over what he called the greatest good fortune, and prayed Arimanius ever to give his enemies such minds as to drive their best men away from them; and then sacrificed to the gods, and straightway betook himself to his cups; and in the night, in the midst of his slumbers, for very joy called out thrice: “I have Themistocles the Athenian.”

29 1 At daybreak he called his friends together and bade Themistocles to be introduced, who expected no favourable outcome, because he saw that the guards at the gates, when they learned the name of him who was going in, were bitterly disposed and spoke insultingly to him. And besides, Roxanes the Chiliarch, when Themistocles came along opposite him, — the King being seated and the rest hushed in silence, — said in an angry undertone: “Thou subtle serpent of Hellas, the King’s good genius hath brought thee hither.” 2 However, when he had come into the King’s presence, and had once more paid him obeisance, the King welcomed him and spake him kindly, and said he already owed him two hundred talents, for since he had delivered himself up it was only just that he himself should receive the reward proclaimed for his captor. And he promised him much more besides, and bade him take heart, and gave him leave to say whatever he wished concerning the affairs of Hellas, with all frankness of speech.

3 But Themistocles made answer that the speech of man was like embroidered tapestries, since like them this too had to be extended in order to display its patterns, but when it was rolled up it concealed and distorted them. Wherefore he had need of time. The King at once showed his pleasure at this comparison by bidding him take time, and so Themistocles asked for a year, and in that time he learned the Persian language sufficiently to have interviews with the King by himself without interpreters. 4 Outsiders thought these conferences concerned Hellenic matters merely; but since about that time many innovations were introduced by the King at court and among his favourites, the magnates became jealous of Themistocles, on the ground that he had made bold to use his freedom of speech with the King to their harm. For the honours he enjoyed were far beyond those paid to other foreigners; nay, he actually took part in the King’s hunts and in his household diversions, so far that he even had access to the queen-mother and became intimate with her, and at the King’s bidding heard expositions also of the Magian lore. 5 And when Demaratus the Spartan, being bidden to ask a gift, asked that he might ride in state through Sardis, wearing his tiara upright after the manner of the Persian kings, Mithropaustes the King’s cousin said, touching the tiara of Demaratus: “This tiara of thine hath no brains to cover; indeed thou wilt not be Zeus merely because thou graspest the thunderbolt.” 6 The King also repulsed Demaratus in anger at his request, and was minded to be inexorable towards him, and yet Themistocles begged and obtained a reconciliation with him.

And it is said that later kings also, in whose reigns Persia and Hellas came into closer relations, as often as they asked for a Hellene to advise them, promised him in writing, every one, that he should be more influential at court than Themistocles. 7 And Themistocles himself, they say, now become great and courted by many, said to his children, when a splendid table was once set for him: “My children, we should now have been undone, had we not been undone before.” 127 Three cities, as most writers say, were given him for bread, wine, and meat, namely: Magnesia, Lampsacus, and Myus; and two others are added by Neanthes of Cyzicus and by Phanias, namely: Percoté and Palaescepsis; these for his bedding and raiment.

30 1 Now as he was going down to the sea on his commission to deal with Hellenic affairs, a Persian, Epixyes by name, satrap of Upper Phrygia, plotted against his life, having for a long time kept certain Pisidians in readiness to slay him whenever he should reach the village called Lion’s Head, and take up his night’s quarters there. But while Themistocles was asleep at midday before, it is said that the Mother of the Gods appeared to him in a dream and said: “O Themistocles, shun a head of lions, that thou mayest not encounter a lion. And for this service to thee, I demand of thee Mnesiptolema to be my handmaid.” 2 Much disturbed, of course, Themistocles, with a prayer of acknowledgment to the goddess, forsook the highway, made a circuit by another route, and passing by that place, at last, as night came on, took up his quarters.

Now, since one of the beasts of burden which carried the equipage of his tent had fallen into the river, the servants of Themistocles hung up the curtains which had got wet, and were drying them out. The Pisidians, at this juncture, sword in hand, made their approach, and since they could not see distinctly by the light of the moon what it was that was being dried, they thought it was the tent of Themistocles, and that they would find him reposing inside. 3 But when they drew near and lifted up the hanging, they were fallen upon by the guards and apprehended. Thus Themistocles escaped the peril, and because he was amazed at the epiphany of the goddess, he built a temple in Magnesia in honour of Dindymené, and made his daughter Mnesiptolema her priestess.

31 1 When he had come to Sardis and was viewing at his leisure the temples built there and the multitude of their dedicatory offerings, and saw in the temple of the Mother the so called Water-carrier, — a maid in bronze, two cubits high, which he himself, when he was water commissioner at Athens, had caused to be made and dedicated from the fines he exacted of those whom he convicted of stealing and tapping the public water, — whether it was because he felt some chagrin at the capture of the offering, or because he wished to show the Athenians what honour and power he had in the King’s service, he addressed a proposition to the Lydian satrap and asked him to restore the maid to Athens. 2 But the Barbarian was incensed and threatened to write a letter to the King about it; whereat Themistocles was afraid, and so had recourse to the women’s chambers, and, by winning the favour of the satrap’s concubines with money, succeeded in assuaging his anger. Thereafter he behaved more circumspectly, fearing now even the jealousy of the Barbarians. For he did not wander about over Asia, as Theopompus says, but had a house in Magnesia, and gathered in large gifts, and was honoured like the noblest Persians, and so lived on for a long time without concern, because the King paid no heed at all to Hellenic affairs, owing to his occupation with the state of the interior.

3 But when Egypt revolted with Athenian aid, and Hellenic triremes sailed up as far as Cyprus and Cilicia, and Cimon’s mastery of the sea forced the King to resist the efforts of the Hellenes and to hinder their hostile growth; and when at last forces began to be moved, and generals were despatched hither and thither, and messages came down to Themistocles saying that the King commanded him to make good his promises by applying himself to the Hellenic problem, 4 then, neither embittered by anything like anger against his former fellow-citizens, nor lifted up by the great honour and power he was to have in the war, but possibly thinking his task not even approachable, both because Hellas had other great generals at the time, 128 and especially because Cimon was so marvellously successful in his campaigns; yet most of all out of regard for the reputation of his own achievements and the trophies of those early days; having decided that his best course was to put a fitting end to his life, 5 he made a sacrifice to the gods, then called his friends together, gave them a farewell clasp of his hand, and, as the current story goes, drank bull’s blood, or as some say, took a quick poison, and so died in Magnesia, in the sixty-fifth year of his life, most of which had been spent in political leadership. They say that the King, on learning the cause and the manner of his death, admired the man yet more, and continued to treat his friends and kindred with kindness.

32 1 Themistocles left three sons by Archippé, the daughter of Lysander, of the deme Alopecé, namely: Archeptolis, Polyeuctus and Cleophantus, the last of whom Plato the philosopher mentions as a capital horseman, but good for nothing else. One of his two oldest sons, Neocles, died in boyhood from the bite of a horse, and Diocles was adopted by his grandfather Lysander. 2 He had several daughters, of whom Mnesiptolema, born of his second wife, became the wife of Archeptolis her half-brother, Italia of Panthoides the Chian, and Sybaris of Nicomedes the Athenian. Nicomaché was given in marriage by her brothers to Phrasicles, the nephew of Themistocles, who sailed to Magnesia after his uncle’s death, and who also took charge of Asia, the youngest of all the children.

3 The Magnesians have a splendid tomb of Themistocles in their market place; and with regard to his remains, Andocidesb is worthy of no attention when he says, in his Address to his Associates, that the Athenians stole away those remains and scattered them abroad, for he is trying by his lies to incite the oligarchs against the people; and Phylarchus, too, when, as if in a tragedy, he all but erects a theatrical machine for this story, and brings into the action a certain Neocles, forsooth, and Demopolis, sons of Themistocles, wishes merely to stir up tumultuous emotion; his tale even an ordinary person must know is fabricated. 4 Diodorus the Topographer, in his work “On Tombs,” says, by conjecture rather than from actual knowledge, that near the large harbour of the Piraeus a sort of elbow juts out from the promontory opposite Alcimus, and that as you round this and come inside where the water of the sea is still, there is a basement of goodly size, and that the altar-like structure upon this is the tomb of Themistocles. 5 And he thinks that the comic poet Plato is a witness in favour of his view when he says: —

“Thy tomb is mounded in a fair and sightly place;

The merchantmen shall ever hail it with glad cry;

It shall behold those outward, and those inward bound,

And all the emulous rivalry of racing ships.”

For the lineal descendants of Themistocles there were also certain dignities maintained in Magnesia down to my time, and the revenues of these were enjoyed by a Themistocles of Athens, who was my intimate and friend in the school of Ammonius the philosopher.

Camillus

1 1 Turning now to Furius Camillus, among the many notable things that are told of him, this seems the most singular and strange, namely, that although in other offices of command he won many and great successes, and although he was five times chosen dictator, four times celebrated a triumph, and was styled a Second Founder of Rome, not even once was he consul. 2 The reason for this lay in the political conditions of his time. The common people, being at variance with the Senate, strove against the appointment of consuls, and elected military tribunes to the command instead. These, although they had always acted with consular authority and power, were less obnoxious in their sway because of their number. For the fact that six men instead two stood at the head of affairs, was some comfort to those who were bitterly set against the rule of the few.

3 Now it was at this period that Camillus came to the height of his achievements and fame, and he would not consent to become consul over a reluctant people, although during his career the city tolerated consular elections many times. But in the many other and varied offices which he held, he so conducted himself that even when the authority rightly belonged to him alone, it was exercised in common with others; while the glory that followed such exercise was his alone, even when he shared the command. In the first case, it was his moderation that kept his rule from exciting envy; in the second, it was his ability that gave him the first place with none to dispute it.

2 1 At a time when the house of the Furii was not yet very conspicuous, he, by his own efforts, was the first of his clan to achieve fame. This he did in the great battle with the Aequians and Volscians, serving under Postumius Tubertus the dictator. Dashing out on his horse in front of the army, he did not abate his speed when he got a wound in the thigh, but dragging the missile along with him in its wound, he engaged the bravest of the enemy and put them to flight. 2 For this exploit, among other honours bestowed upon him, he was appointed censor, in those days an office of great dignity. There is on record a noble achievement of his censorship, that of bringing the unmarried men, partly by persuasion and partly by threatening them with fines, to join in wedlock with the women who were living in widowhood, and these were many because of the wars; likewise a necessary achievement, that of making the orphans, who before this had contributed nothing to the support of the state, subject to taxation. 3 The continuous campaigns, demanding great outlays of money, really required this. Especially burdensome was the siege of Veii (some call the people Veientani).

This city was the barrier and bulwark of Tuscany, in quantity of arms and multitude of soldiery no whit inferior to Rome. Indeed, pluming herself on her wealth, and on the refinement, luxury, and sumptuousness in which her citizens lived, she had waged many noble contests for glory and power in her wars with the Romans. 4 At this time, however, she had been crushed in great battles, and had given up her former ambitious pretensions. But her people built their walls high and strong, filed the city full of armour, missiles, grain, and every possible provision, and confidently endured their siege, which, though long, was no less laborious and difficult for the besiegers. 5 These had been accustomed to short campaigns abroad as the summer season opened, and to winters at home; but then for the first time they had been compelled by their tribunes to build forts and fortify their camp and spend both summer and winter in the enemy’s country, the seventh year of the war being now nearly at an end. For this their rulers were held to blame, and finally deprived of their rule, because they were thought to conduct the siege without energy. Others were chosen to carry on the war, and one of these was Camillus, now tribune for the second time. 6 But for the present he had nothing to do with the siege, since it fell to his lot to wage war with the Falerians and the Capenates, who, while the Romans had their hands full, had often harried their territory, and during all the Tuscan war had given them annoyance and trouble. These were overwhelmed by Camillus in battle and shut up in their fastnesses with great loss of life.

3 1 And now, when the war was at its climax, the calamity of the Alban lake added its terrors. It seemed a most incredible prodigy, without familiar cause or natural explanation. For the season was autumn, and the summer just ended had, to all observation, been neither rainy nor vexed by south winds. 2 Of the lakes, rivers, and streams of all sizes with which Italy abounds, some had failed utterly, others barely managed to hold out, and all the rivers ran low, between high banks, as was always the case in summer. But the Alban lake, which had its source and outlet within itself, and was girt about with fertile mountains, for no reason, except it be that heaven willed it, was observed to increase and swell until it reached the skirts of the mountains and gradually touched their highest ridges. All this rise was without surge or billow. 3 At first it was a prodigy for neighbouring shepherds and herdsmen. But when the volume and weight of water broke away the barrier which, like an isthmus, had kept the lake from the country lying below it, and a huge torrent poured down through the fields and vineyards and made its way to the sea, then not only were the Romans themselves dismayed, but all the inhabitants of Italy thought it a sign of no small evil to come. There was much talk about it in the army that was besieging Veii, so that even the besieged themselves heard of the calamity.

4 1 As was to be expected in a long siege requiring many meetings for conference with the enemy, it fell out that a certain Roman became intimate and confidential with one of the citizens of Veii, a man versed in ancient oracles, and reputed wiser than the rest from his being a diviner. The Roman saw that this man, on hearing the story of the lake, was overjoyed and made mock of the siege. He therefore told him this was not the only wonder which the passing days had brought, but that other and stranger signs than this had been given to the Romans, of which he was minded to tell him, in order that, if possible, he might better his own private case in the midst of the public distresses. 2 The man gave eager hearing to all this, and consented to a conference, supposing that he was going to hear some deep secrets. But the Roman led him along little by little, conversing as he went, until they were some way beyond the city gate, when he seized him boldly, being a sturdier man than he, and with the help of comrades who came running up from the camp, mastered him completely and handed him over to the generals. 3 Thus constrained, and perceiving that fate’s decrees were not to be evaded, the man revealed secret oracles regarding his native city, to the effect that it could not be captured until the Alban lake, after leaving its bed and making new channels for itself, should be driven back by the enemy, deflected from its course, and prevented from mingling with the sea.

4 The Senate, on hearing this, was at great loss what to do, and thought it well to send an embassy to Delphi to consult the god. The envoys were men of great repute and influence, Cossus Licinius, Valerius Potitus, and Fabius Ambustus, who made their voyage and came back with the responses of the god. One of these told them that certain ancestral rites connected with the so called Latin festivals had been unduly neglected; 5 another bade them by all means to keep the water of the Alban lake away from the sea and force it back into its ancient bed, or, if they could not effect this, by means of canals and trenches to divert it into the plain and dissipate it. On receipt of these responses the priests performed the neglected sacrifices, and the people sallied out into the fields and diverted the course of the water.

5 1 In the tenth year of the war, the Senate abolished the other magistracies and appointed Camillus dictator. After choosing Cornelius Scipio as his master of horse, in the first place he made solemn vows to the gods that, in case the war had a glorious ending, he would celebrate the great games in their honour, and dedicate a temple to a goddess whom the Romans call Mater Matuta.

2 From the sacred rites used in the worship of this goddess, she might be held to be almost identical with Leucothea. The women bring a serving-maid into the sanctuary and beat her with rods, then drive her forth again; they embrace their nephews and nieces in preference to their own children; and their conduct at the sacrifice resembles that of the nurses of Dionysus, or that of Ino under the afflictions put upon her by her husband’s concubine.

After his vows, Camillus invaded the country of the Faliscans and conquered them in a great battle, together with the Capenates who came up to their aid. 3 Then he turned to the siege of Veii, and seeing that direct assault upon the city was a grievous and difficult matter, he went to digging mines, since the region round the city favoured such works, and allowed their being carried to a great depth without the enemy’s knowing about it. So then, when his hopes were well on their way to fulfilment, he himself assaulted the city from the outside, and thus called the enemy away to man their walls; while others secretly made their way along the mines and reached unnoticed the interior of the citadel, where the temple of Juno stood, the largest temple in the city, and the one most held in honour.

4 There, it is said, at this very juncture, the commander of the Tuscans chanced to be sacrificing, and his seer, when he beheld the entrails of the victim, cried out with a loud voice and said that the god awarded victory to him who should fulfill that sacrifice. The Romans in the mines below, hearing this utterance, quickly tore away the pavement of the temple and issued forth with battle cries and clash of arms, whereat the enemy were terrified and fled away. The sacrificial entrails were then seized and carried to Camillus. 5 But possibly this will seem like fable.

At any rate the city was taken by storm, and the Romans were pillaging and plundering its boundless wealth, when Camillus, seeing from the citadel what was going on, at first burst into tears as he stood, and then, on being congratulated by the bystanders, lifted up his hands to the gods and prayed, saying: 6 “O greatest Jupiter, and ye gods who see and judge men’s good and evil deeds, ye surely know that it is not unjustly, but of necessity and in self-defence that we Romans have visited this iniquity upon this city of hostile and lawless men. But if, as counterpoise to this our present success, some retribution is due to come upon us, spare, I beseech you, the city and the army of the Romans, and let it fall upon my own head, though with as little harm as may be.”  With these words, as the Romans’ custom is after prayer and adoration, he wheeled himself about to the right, but stumbled and fell as he turned. The bystanders were confounded, but he picked himself up again from his fall and said: “My prayer is granted! a slight fall is my atonement for the greatest good fortune.”

6 1 After he had utterly sacked the city, he determined to transfer the image of Juno to Rome, in accordance with his vows. The workmen were assembled for the purpose, and Camillus was sacrificing and praying the goddess to accept of their zeal and to be a kindly co-dweller with the gods of Rome, when the image, they say, spoke in low tones and said she was ready and willing. 2 But Livy says that Camillus did indeed lay his hand upon the goddess and pray and beseech her, but that it was certain of the bystanders who gave answer that she was ready and willing and eager to go along with him.

Those who insist upon and defend the marvel have a most powerful advocate for their contention in the fortune of the city, which, from its small and despised beginning, could never have come to such a pinnacle of glory and power had God not dwelt with her and made many great manifestations of himself from time to time. 3 Moreover, they adduce other occurrences of a kindred sort, such as statues often dripping with sweat, images uttering audible groans, turning away their faces, and closing their eyes, as not a few historians in the past have written. And we ourselves might make mention of many astonishing things which we have heard from men of our own time, — things not lightly to be despised. 4 But in such matters eager credulity and excessive incredulity are alike dangerous, because of the weakness of our human nature, which sets no limits and has no mastery over itself, but is carried away now into vain superstition, and now into contemptuous neglect of the gods. Caution is best, and to go to no extremes.

7 1 Whether it was due to the magnitude of his exploit in taking a city which could vie with Rome and endure a siege of ten years, or to the congratulations showered upon him, Camillus was lifted up to vanity, cherished thoughts far from becoming to a civil magistrate subject to the law, and celebrated a triumph with great pomp: he actually had four white horses harnessed to a chariot on which he mounted and drove through Rome, a thing which no commander had ever done before or afterwards did. For they thought such a car sacred and devoted to the king and father of the gods. 2 In this way he incurred the enmity of the citizens, who were not accustomed to wanton extravagance. They had also a second grievance against him in that he opposed himself to a law dividing the city. The tribunes introduced a measure dividing the people and the Senate into two parts, one to remain and dwell there, and the one on which the lot fell to remove into the city they had captured, on the ground that they would thus be more commodiously bestowed, and with two large and fair cities could better protect their territory as well as their prosperity in general. 3 Accordingly the people, which was now become numerous and poor, welcomed the measure with delight, and was for ever thronging tumultuously about the rostra with demands that it be put to vote. But the Senate and the most influential of the other citizens considered that the measure proposed by the tribunes meant not division but destruction for Rome, and in their aversion to it went to Camillus for aid and succour. 4 He, dreading the struggle, always contrived to keep the people busy with other matters, and so staved off the passage of the bill. For this reason, then, they were vexed with him.

But the strongest and most apparent reason why the multitude hated him was based on the matter of the tenth of the spoil of Veii, and herein they had a plausible, though not a very just ground of complaint. 5 He had vowed, as it seems, on setting out against Veii, that if he should take the city, he would consecrate the tenth of its booty to the Delphian god. But after the city had been taken and sacked, he allowed his soldiers full enjoyment of their plunder, either because he shrank from annoying them, or because, in the multitude of his activities, he as good as forgot his vow. At a later time, when he had laid down his command, he referred the matter to the Senate, and the seers announced tokens in their sacrifices that the gods were angry, and must be propitiated with due offerings.

8 1 The Senate voted, not that the booty should be redistributed, for that would have been a difficult matter, but that those who had got it should, in person and under oath, bring the tenth thereof to the public treasury. This subjected the soldiers to many vexations and constraints. They were poor men, who had toiled hard, and yet were now forced to contribute a large share of what they had gained, yes, and spent already. 2 Beset by their tumultuous complaints, and at loss for a better excuse, Camillus had recourse to the absurdest of all explanations, and admitted that he had forgotten his vow. The soldiers were filled with indignation at the thought that it was the goods of the enemy of which he had once vowed a tithe, but the goods of his fellow citizens from which he was now paying the tithe. However, all of them brought in the necessary portion, and it was decided to make a bowl of massive gold and send it to Delphi. 3 Now there was a scarcity of gold in the city, and the magistrates knew not whence it could be had. So the women, of their own accord, determined to give the gold ornaments which they wore upon their persons for the offering, and these amounted to eight talents weight. The women were fittingly rewarded by the Senate, which voted that thereafter, when women died, a suitable eulogy should be spoken over them, as over men. For it was not customary before that time, when a woman died, that a public encomium should be pronounced. 4 Then they chose three of the noblest citizens as envoys, manned with its full complement of their best sailors a ship of war decked out in festal array, and sent them on their way.

Calm at sea has its perils as well as storm, it would seem, at least so it proved in this case. Envoys and crew came within an ace of destruction, and found escape from their peril when they least expected it. Off the Aeolian isles, as the wind died down, some Liparian galleys put out against them, taking them for pirates. 5 The enemy had sufficient regard to their prayers and supplications not to run their vessel down, but they took it in tow, brought it to land, and proclaimed their goods and persons for sale, adjudging them piratical. At last, and with much ado, through the brave intercession of a single man, Timesitheus, their general, the Liparians were persuaded to let the captives go. This man then launched boats of his own, convoyed the suppliants on their way, and assisted them in the dedication of their offering. For this he received suitable honours at Rome.

9 1 Once more the tribunes of the people urged the passage of the law for the division of the city, but the war with the Faliscans came on opportunely and gave the leading men occasion to hold such elective assemblies as they wished, and to appoint Camillus military tribune, with five others. The emergency was thought to demand a leader with the dignity and reputation which experience alone could give. 2 After the people had ratified the election, Camillus, at the head of his army, invaded the territory of the Faliscans and laid siege to Falerii, a strong city, and well equipped with all the munitions of war. It was not that he thought its capture would demand slight effort or short time, but he wished to turn the thoughts of the citizens to other matters and keep them busy therein, that they might not be able to stay at home and become the prey of seditious leaders. This was a fitting and sovereign remedy which the Romans used, like good physicians, thereby expelling from the body politic its troublesome distempers.

10 1 The Falerians, relying on the great strength of their city at all points, made so light of the siege that, with the exception of the defenders of the walls, the rest went up and down the city in their garb of peace. The boys went to school as usual, and were brought by their teacher along the walls outside to walk about and get their exercise. For the Falerians, like the Greeks, employed one teacher in common, wishing their boys, from the very start, to herd with one another and grow up together. 2 This teacher, then, wishing to betray Falerii by means of its boys, led them out every day beyond the city walls, at first only a little way, and then brought them back inside when they had taken their exercise. Presently he led them, little by little, farther and farther out, accustomed them to feel confident that there was no danger at all, and finally pushed in among the Roman outposts with his whole company, handed them over to the enemy, and demanded to be led to Camillus. 3 So led, and in that presence, he said he was a boys’ school-teacher, but chose rather to win the general’s favour than to fulfil the duties of his office, and so had come bringing to him the city in the persons of its boys. It seemed to Camillus, on hearing him, that the man had done a monstrous deed, and turning to the bystanders he said: “War is indeed a grievous thing, and is waged with much injustice and violence; 4 but even war has certain laws which good and brave men will respect, and we must not so hotly pursue victory as not to flee the favours of base and impious doers. The great general will wage war relying on his own native valour, not on the baseness of other men.” Then he ordered his attendants to tear the man’s clothing from him, tie his arms behind his back, and put rods and scourges in the hands of the boys, that they might chastise the traitor and drive back into the city.

5 The Falerians had just become aware of the teacher’s treachery, and the whole city, as was natural, was filled with lamentation over a calamity so great. Men and women alike rushed distractedly to the walls and gates, when lo! there came the boys, bringing their teacher back stripped, bound, and maltreated, while they called Camillus their saviour, their father, and their god. 6 On this wise not only the parents of the boys, but the rest of the citizens as well, when they beheld the spectacle, were seized with admiration and longing for the righteousness of Camillus. In haste they held an assembly and sent envoys to him, entrusting him with their lives and fortunes. These envoys Camillus sent to Rome. 7 Standing in the Senate, they declared that the Romans, by esteeming righteousness above victory, had taught them to love defeat above freedom; not so much because they thought themselves inferior in strength, as because they confessed themselves vanquished in virtue. On the Senate’s remanding to Camillus the decision and disposition of the matter, he took a sum of money from the Falerians, established friendship with all the Faliscans, and withdrew.

11 But the soldiers thought to have had the sacking of Falerii, and when they came back to Rome empty-handed, they denounced Camillus to the rest of the citizens as a hater of the common people, and as begrudging to the poor the enjoyment of their rightful booty. And when the tribunes once more put forward the law for the division of the city and summoned the people to vote upon it, then Camillus, shunning no hatred nor any boldness of utterance, was manifestly the chief one in forcing the multitude away from its desires. Therefore, they did indeed reject the law, much against their will, 2 but they were wroth with Camillus, so that even when he met with domestic affliction and lost one of his two sons by sickness, their wrath was in no wise softened by pity. And yet he set no bounds to his sorrow, being by nature a gentle and kindly man, but even after the indictment against him had been published, he suffered his grief to keep him at home, in close seclusion with the women of his household.

12 1 Well, then, his accuser was Lucius Apuleius, and the charge was theft of Tuscan goods. It was said, forsooth, that certain bronze doors belonging to the booty had been seen at his house. But the people were exasperated, and would plainly lay hold of any pretext whatever for condemning him. 2 So then he assembled his friends and comrades in arms, who were many in number, and begged them not to suffer him to be convicted on base charges and to be made a laughing-stock by his foes. When his friends had laid their heads together and discussed the case, they answered that, as regarded his trial, they thought they could be of no help to him; but if he were punished with a fine, they would help him pay it. This he could not endure, and in his wrath determined to depart the city and go into exile. 3 Accordingly, after he had kissed his wife and son good-bye, he went from his house in silence as far as the gate of the city. There he stopped, turned himself about, and stretching his hands out towards the Capitol, prayed the gods that, if with no justice, but through the wantonness of the people and the abuse of the envious he was now being driven from his country, the Romans might speedily repent, and show to all men that they needed and longed for Camillus.

13 1 After he had thus, like Achilles, invoked curses upon his fellow citizens, he removed from out the city. His case went by default, and he was fined fifteen thousand asses.

This sum, reduced to our money, is fifteen hundred drachmas. For the as was the current copper coin, and the silver coin worth ten of these pieces was for that reason called the denarius, which is equivalent to the drachma.

2 Now there is no Roman who does not believe that justice followed hard upon the imprecations of Camillus, and that he received a requital for his wrongs which was not pleasing to him, but painful: certainly it was notable and famous. For a great retribution encompassed Rome, and a season of dire destruction and peril not unmixed with disgrace assailed the city, whether fortune so brought things to pass, or whether it is the mission of some god not to neglect virtue that goes unrequited.

14 1 In the first place, then, it seemed to be a sign of great evil impending when Julius the censor died. For the Romans specially revere and hold sacred the office of censor. In the second place, before Camillus went into exile, a man who was not conspicuous, to be sure, but who was esteemed honest and kindly, Marcus Caedicius, informed the military tribunes of a matter well worth their attention.  He said that during the night just passed, as he was going along the so called New Street, he was hailed by someone in clear tones, and turned, and saw no man, but heard a voice louder than man’s saying: “Hark thou! Marcus Caedicius, early in the morning go and tell the magistrates that within a little time they must expect the Gauls.” At this story the tribunes mocked and jested. And a little while after, Camillus suffered his disgrace.

15 1 The Gauls were of the Celtic stock, and their numbers were such, as it is said, that they abandoned their own country, which was not able to sustain them all, and set out in quest of another. They were many myriads of young warriors, and they took along with them a still greater number of women and children. Some of them crossed the Rhipaean mountains, streamed off towards the northern ocean, and occupied the remotest parts of Europe; 2 others settled between the Pyrenees and the Alps, near the Senones and the Celtorians, and dwelt there a long time. But at last they got a taste of wine, which was then for the first time brought them from Italy. They admired the drink so much, and were all so beside themselves with the novel pleasure which it gave, that they seized their arms, took along their families, and made off to the Alps, in quest of the land which produced such fruit, considering the rest of the world barren and wild.

3 The man who introduced wine to them, and was first and foremost in sharpening their appetite for Italy, is said to have been Arron, a Tuscan. He was a man of prominence, and by nature not prone to evil, but had met with the following misfortune. He was guardian of an orphan boy who was heir to the greatest wealth in the city, and of amazing beauty, Lucumo by name. This Lucumo from his youth up had lived with Arron, and when he came to man’s estate, did not leave his house, but pretended to take delight in his society. He had, however, corrupted Arron’s wife, and been corrupted by her, and for a long time kept the thing a secret. 4 But at last the passions of both culprits increased upon them so that they could neither put away their desires nor longer hide them, wherefore the young man made open attempt to remove the woman and have her to wife. Her husband brought the case to trial, but was defeated by Lucumo, owing to the multitude of his friends and his lavish outlays of money, and forsook the city. Learning about the Gauls, he betook himself to them, and led them on their expedition to Italy.

16 1 The Gauls burst in and straightway mastered all the country which the Tuscans occupied of old, namely, that stretching from the Alps down to both seas, the names of which bear witness to the story. For the northern sea is called Adria, from the Tuscan city of Adria; the southern is called outright the Tuscan Sea. 2 This whole country is studded with trees, has excellent pasturage for flocks and herds, and an abundance of rivers. It had also eighteen cities, large and fair, well equipped for profitable commerce and for sumptuous living. These the Gauls took away from the Tuscans and occupied themselves. But this happened long before the time of which I speak.

17 1 At this time the Gauls had marched against the Tuscan city of Clusium and were laying siege to it. The Clusians applied for assistance to the Romans, and begged them to send ambassadors in their behalf with a letter to the Barbarians. So there were sent three men of the Fabian gens who were of great repute and honour in the city. 2 The Gauls received them courteously, because of the name of Rome, ceased their attacks upon the city walls, and held conference with them. When they were asked what wrong they had suffered at the hands of the Clusians that they had come up against their city, Brennus, the king of the Gauls, burst into a laugh and said: “The Clusians wrong us in that, being able to till only a small parcel of earth, they yet are bent on holding a large one, and will not share it with us, who are strangers, many in number and poor. 3 This is the wrong which ye too suffered, O Romans, formerly at the hands of the Albans, Fidenates, and Ardeates, and now lately at the hands of the Veientines, Capenates, and many of the Faliscans and Volscians. Ye march against these peoples, and if they will not share their goods with you, ye enslave them, despoil them, and raze their cities to the ground; not that in so doing ye are in any wise cruel or unjust, 4 nay, ye are but obeying that most ancient of laws which gives to the stronger the goods of his weaker neighbours, the world over, beginning with God himself and ending with the beasts that perish. For these too are so endowed by nature that the stronger seeks to have more than the weaker. Cease ye, therefore, to pity the Clusians when we besiege them, that ye may not teach the Gauls to be kind and full of pity towards those who are wronged by the Romans.”

5 From this speech the Roman envoys saw that there was no coming to terms with Brennus, and so they slipped into Clusium, and emboldened and incited its citizens to sally out against the Barbarians with them, either because they wished to discover the prowess of those warriors or display their own. The Clusians made a sally, and in the fight which raged along the walls one of the Fabii, Quintus Ambustus, drove his horse straight at a stately and handsome Gaul who was riding far out in front of the rest. At first he was not recognized, because the conflict came swiftly to pass and his dazzling armour hid his face. 6 But when he had conquered and unhorsed his foe and was stripping his arms from him, then Brennus recognized him, and called upon the gods to witness how, contrary to the general practice of all mankind, which was deemed just and holy, he had come as an ambassador, but had wrought as an enemy. Then, putting a stop to the battle, he straightway let the Clusians alone, and led his host against Rome. But not wishing to have it thought that his people were rejoiced at the outrage, and only wanted some pretext for war, he sent and demanded the offender for punishment, and in the meantime advanced but slowly.

18 1 When the Senate convened in Rome, many denounced the Fabii, and especially the priests called Fetiales were instant in called upon the Senate in the name of all the gods to turn the curse of what had been done upon the one guilty man, and so to make expiation for the rest.

These Fetiales were instituted by Numa Pompilius, gentlest and justest of kings, to be the guardians of peace, as well as judges and determiners of the grounds on which war could justly be made.

2 The Senate referred the matter to the people, and although the priests with one accord denounced Fabius, the multitude so scorned and mocked at religion as to appoint him military tribune, along with his brothers. The Gauls, on learning this, were wroth, and suffered nothing to impede their haste, but advanced with all speed. 3 What with their numbers, the splendour of their equipment, and their furious violence, they struck terror wherever they came. Men thought the lands about their cities lost already, and their cities sure to follow at once. But contrary to all expectation the enemy did them no harm, nor took aught from their fields, but even as they passed close by their cities shouted out that they were marching on Rome and warred only on the Romans, but held the rest as friends.

4 Against this onset of the Barbarians the military tribunes led the Romans forth to battle. They were not inferior in numbers, being no fewer than forty thousand men-at arms, but most of them were untrained, and had never handled weapons before. Besides, they had neglected all religious rites, having neither sacrificed with good omens, nor consulted the prophets as was meet before the perils of battle. 5 But what most of all confounded their undertakings was the number of their commanders. And yet before this, and on the brink of lesser struggles, they had often chosen a single commander, with the title of Dictator, not unaware how great an advantage it is, when confronting a dangerous crisis, to be of one mind in paying obedience to an authority which is absolute, and holds the scales of justice in its own hands. 6 Moreover, their unfair treatment of Camillus was in no slight degree fatal to discipline, since it was now dangerous to hold command without paying regard to the pleasure and caprice of the people.

They advanced from the city about eleven miles, and encamped along the river Allia, not far from its confluence with the Tiber. There the Barbarians came suddenly upon them, and after a disorderly and shameful struggle, they were routed. 7 Their left wing was at once driven into the river by the Gauls and destroyed; their right wing was less cut up, because it withdrew before the enemy’s onset from the plain to the hills, from which most of them made their way back to the city. The rest, as many as escaped the enemy’s hands, which were weary with slaughter, fled by night to Veii. They thought that Rome was lost and all her people slain.

19 1 The battle took place just after the summer solstice when the moon was near the full,a on the very day of a former great disaster, when three hundred men of the Fabian gens had been cut to pieces by the Tuscans. But the second defeat was so much the worse that the day on which it fell is called down to the present time “dies Alliensis,” from the river.

Now concerning “dies nefasti,” or unlucky days, whether we must regard some as such, or whether Heracleitus was right in rebuking Hesiod for calling some days good and some bad, in his ignorance that the nature of every day is one and the same, — this question has been fully discussed elsewhere. 2 Still, even in what I am now writing, the mention of a few examples may not be amiss. To begin with, then, it was on the fifth day of the month of Hippodromius (which the Athenians call Hecatombaeon) that the Boeotians won two illustrious victories which set the Greeks free: that at Leuctra, and that at Ceressus more than two hundred years earlier, when they conquered Lattamyas and the Thessalians. 3 Again, on the sixth day of the month of Boedromion the Greeks defeated the Persians at Marathon, on the third day at Plataea and Mycale together, and on the twenty-sixth day at Arbela. Moreover, it was about full moon of the same month that the Athenians won their sea-fight off Naxos, under the command of Chabrias, and about the twentieth, that at Salamis, as has been set forth in my treatise “On days.”b 4 Further, the month of Thargelion has clearly been a disastrous one for the Barbarians, for in that month the generals of the King were conquered by Alexander at the Granicus, and on the twenty-fourth of the month the Carthaginians were worsted by Timoleon off Sicily. On this day, too, of Thargelion, it appears that Ilium was taken, as Ephorus, Callisthenes, Damastes, and Phylarchus have stated. 5 Contrarywise, the month of Metageitnion (which the Boeotians call Panemus) has not been favourable to the Greeks. On the seventh of this month they were worsted by Antipater in the battle of Crannon, and utterly undone; before this they had fought Philip unsuccessfully at Chaeroneia on that day of the month; and in the same year, and on the same day of Metageitnion, Archidamus and his army, who had crossed into Italy, were cut to pieces by the Barbarians there.  The Carthaginians also regard with fear the twenty-second of this month, because it has ever brought upon them the worst and greatest of their misfortunes.

I am not unaware that, at about the time when the mysteries are celebrated, Thebes was razed to the ground for the second time by Alexander, and that afterwards the Athenians were forced to receive a Macedonian garrison on the twentieth of Boedromion, the very day on which they escort the mystic Iacchus forth in procession. 7 And likewise the Romans, on the self-same day, saw their army under Caepio destroyed by the Cimbri, and later, when Lucullus was their general, conquered Tigranes and the Armenians. Both King Attalus and Pompey the Great died on their own birth-days. In short, one can adduce many cases where the same times and seasons have brought opposite forces upon the same men.

8 But this day of the Allia is regarded by the Romans as one of the unluckiest, and its influence extends over two other days of each month throughout the year, since in the presence of calamity, timidity and superstition often overflow all bounds. However, this subject has been more carefully treated in my “Roman Questions.”

20 1 Now had the Gauls, after this battle, followed hard upon the fugitives, naught would have hindered Rome from being utterly destroyed and all those who remained in her from perishing, such was the terror which the fugitives infused into the occupants of the city, and with such confusion and delirium were they themselves once more filled. 2 But as it was, the Barbarians could not realize the magnitude of their victory, and in the excess of their joy, turned to revelry and the distribution of the good things captured in the enemy’s camp. For this reason the throngs who were for abandoning the city had ample time for flight, and those who were for remaining plucked up hope and prepared to defend themselves. Abandoning the rest of the city, they fenced the Capitol with ramparts and stocked it with missiles. 3 But their first care was for their sacred things, most of which they carried away to the Capitol; the fire of Vesta, however, was snatched up and carried off by the vestal virgins in their flight, along with the other sacred things entrusted to their care.

However, some writers state that these virgins have watch and ward over nothing more than the ever-living fire, which Numa the King appointed to be worshipped as the first cause of all things. 4 For fire produces more motion than anything else in nature, and all birth is a mode of motion, or is accompanied by motion. All other portions of matter, in the absence of heat, lie inert and dead, yearning for the force of fire to inform them, like a spirit, and on its accession in any manner soever, they become capable of acting and being acted upon. This principle of fire, then, Numa, who was an extraordinary man, and whose wisdom gave him the repute of holding converse with the Muses, is said to have hallowed and ordered to be kept sleepless, that it might image forth the ever-living force which orders the universe aright. 5 Others say that this fire is kept burning before the sacred things by way of purification, as among the Greeks, and that other objects within the temple are kept hidden from the gaze of all except these virgins, whom they call Vestals. And a very prevalent story had it that the famous Palladium of Troy was hidden away there, having been brought to Italy by Aeneas. There are some who say that it is the Samothracian images which are hidden there, and they tell the tale of Dardanus bringing these to Troy, after he had founded that city, and consecrating them there with celebration of their rites; and of Aeneas, at the capture of Troy, stealing them away and preserving them until he settled in Italy. 6 Others still, pretending to have larger knowledge in these matters, say that two small jars are stored away there, of which one is open and empty, and the other full and sealed up, and that both are visible only to the holy virgins. But others think that these knowing ones have been led astray by the fact that the virgins, at the time of which I am now speaking, cast the most of their sacred treasures into two jars, and hid them underground in the temple of Quirinus, whence that place, down to the present time, has the name of “Doliola,” or “Jars.”

21 1 However that may be, these virgins took the choicest and most important of the sacred objects and fled away along the river. There it chanced that Lucius Albinius, a man of the common people, was among the fugitives, carrying off his wife and little children, with the most necessary household goods, upon a waggon. When he saw the virgins with the sacred symbols in their bosoms, making their way along unattended and in great distress, he speedily took his wife, with the children and the household goods, down from the waggon, and suffered the virgins to mount upon it and make their escape to a Greek city. 2 This pious act of Albinius, and the conspicuous honour which he showed the gods in a season of the greatest danger, could not well be passed over in silence.

But the priests of the other gods, and the aged men who had been consuls and celebrated triumphs, could not endure to leave the city. So they put on their robes of state and ceremony, following the lead of Fabius, the pontifex maximus, and vowed the gods that they would devote themselves to death in their country’s behalf. Then they sat themselves down, thus arrayed, on their ivory chairs in the forum, and awaited their fate.

22 1 On the third day after the battle, Brennus came up to the city with his army. Finding its gates open and its walls without defenders, at first he feared a treacherous ambush, being unable to believe that the Romans were in such utter despair. But when he realised the truth, he marched in by the Colline gate, and took Rome. This was a little more than three hundred and sixty years from her foundation, if one can believe that any accurate chronology has been preserved in this matter, when that of even later events is disputed, owing to the confusion caused by this very disaster. 2 However, it would seem that some vague tidings of the calamity and capture of the city made their way at once to Greece. For Heracleides Ponticus, who lived not long after that time, in his treatise “On the soul,” says that out of the West a story prevailed, how an army of Hyperboreans had come from afar and captured a Greek city called Rome, situated somewhere on the shores of the Great Sea. 3 Now I cannot wonder that so fabulous and fictitious a writer as Heracleides should deck out the true story of the capture of Rome with his “Hyperboreans” and his “Great Sea.” But Aristotle the philosopher clearly had accurate tidings of the capture of the city by the Gauls, and yet he says that its saviour was Lucius, although the forename of Camillus was not Lucius, but Marcus. However, these details were matters of conjecture.

4 When he had occupied Rome, Brennus surrounded the Capitol with a guard. He himself went down through the forum, and was amazed to see the men sitting there in public state and perfect silence. They neither rose up to meet their enemies when they approached, nor did they change countenance or colour, but sat there quietly, at ease and without fear, leaning on their staves and gazing into one another’s faces. 5 The Gauls were amazed and perplexed at the unwonted sight, and for a long time hesitated to approach and touch them, regarding them as superior beings. But at last one of them, plucking up his courage, drew near Papirius Marcus, and stretching out his hand, gently grasped his chin and stroked his long beard, whereupon Papirius, with his staff, smote him a crushing blow on the head. Then the Barbarian drew his sword and killed him. 6 After that, they fell upon the rest and slew them, made away with every one else they met, sacked and plundered the houses of the city for many days together, and finally burned them down and levelled them with the ground, in their wrath at the defenders of the Capitol. For these would not surrender at their summons, but when they were attacked, actually repulsed their foes from the ramparts with loss. Therefore the Gauls inflicted every outrage upon the city, and put to the sword all whom they captured, men and women, old and young alike.

23 1 The siege lasted a long time, and the Gauls began to lack provisions. They therefore divided their forces. Some remained with their king and watched the Capitol, others ravaged the country round about, falling upon the villages and sacking them, not all together in one body, but scattered about by commands and companies, some here, some there, moved by their successes to great confidence and the fear of nothing. 2 The largest and best disciplined body of them marched upon the city of Ardea, where Camillus was staying since his exile. He lived in complete retirement and privacy, it is true, but cherished the hopes and plans not of a man who eagerly desired to escape the notice and hands of the enemy, but of one who sought to avenge himself upon them if occasion offered. 3 Wherefore, seeing that the Ardeans were of sufficient numbers, but lacked courage, through the inexperience and effeminacy of their generals, he began to reason with the young men first, to the effect that the mishap of the Romans ought not to be laid to the valour of the Gauls, nor the sufferings of that infatuated people to the prowess of men who did not deserve their victory, but rather to the dictates of fortune. 4 It was a fine thing, he said, even at dangerous risks, to repel the attack of an alien and barbarous folk, whose only end in getting the mastery was, as in the work of fire, the utter destruction of what it conquered. But in the present case, if they were bold and zealous, he would find occasion to give them a victory without any danger.

After gaining the support of the young men, Camillus went to the rulers and councillors of Ardea, and when he had won them over also, he armed all who were any other age for service and kept them together within the walls, that they might not be perceived by the enemy, who were near. 5 These had scoured the country round about, and encamped in the plain, without care or concern, and heavily encumbered with their abundant booty. When night had fallen upon them, putting an end to their carousals, and silence reigned throughout their camp, Camillus, acquainted with this by his scouts, led forth the Ardeans. Passing quietly over the intervening space, they reached the camp about midnight, and with shouts and trumpet blasts on every hand confounded the men, who were scarcely brought to their senses by the din, heavy as they were with drunkenness and sleep. 6 A few of them were sobered by fear, armed themselves, and made resistance to Camillus and his men, so that they fell fighting; but most were still mastered by sleep and wine when they were fallen upon and slain without their arms. A few only ran from the camp, under cover of darkness, and when day came, were seen straggling about the fields, but horsemen pursued them and cut them to pieces.

24 1 Rumour quickly carried news of this exploit to the neighbouring cities, and called to arms many of those who were of age for service, particularly the Romans who had made their escape from the battle on the Allia, and were in Veii. These lamented among themselves, saying: “Of what a leader has heaven robbed Rome in Camillus, only to adorn Ardea with his victories! The city which bore and reared such a hero is dead and gone, and we, for lack of generals, sit pent up within alien walls, and see Italy ruined before our very eyes. 2 Come! let us send to Ardea and demand our own general, or take our arms and go ourselves to him! For he is no longer an exile, nor are we citizens, now that our country is no more, but is mastered by the enemy.” So said, so done, and they sent and asked Camillus to take the command. 3 But he refused to do so before the citizens on the Capitol had legally elected him. They were preserving the country, as he thought, and if they had commands for him, he would gladly obey, but against their wishes he would meddle with nothing whatsoever. This noble restraint on the part of Camillus was much admired, but it was hard to see how the matter could be referred to the Capitol. Nay rather, it seemed utterly impossible, while the enemy held the city, for a messenger to elude them and reach the acropolis.

25 1 But there was a certain young man, Pontius Cominius by name, who was, in spite of his ordinary birth, a lover of glory and honour. He volunteered to attempt the task. He took no letter with him to the defenders of the Capitol, lest this, in the event of his capture, should help the enemy to discover the purpose of Camillus; but under the coarse garments which he wore, he carried some pieces of cork. The greater part of his journey was made by daylight and without fear; but as night came on he found himself near the city. He could not cross the river by the bridge, since the Barbarians were guarding it, 2 so he wrapped his light and scanty garments about his head, fastened the corks to his body, and thus supported, swam across, came out on the other side, and went on towards the city. Always giving a wide berth to those of the enemy who were watchful and wakeful, as he judged by their fires and noise, he made his way to the Carmental gate, where there was the most quiet, at which the Capitoline hill was most sheer and steep, and which was girt about by a huge and jagged cliff. Up this he mounted unperceived, and finally reached, with great pains and difficulty, the sentries posted where the wall was lowest. 3 Hailing them, and telling them who he was, he was pulled up over the wall, and taken to the Roman magistrates. The Senate quickly convening, he appeared before it, announced the victory of Camillus, about which they had not heard, and explained to them the will and pleasure of his fellow-soldiers. He exhorted them to confirm Camillus in his command, since he was the only man whom the citizens outside would obey. 4 When the Senate had heard his message and deliberated upon it, they appointed Camillus dictator, and sent Pontius back again by the way he had come, wherein he repeated his former good fortune. For he eluded the enemy’s notice and brought the Senate’s message to the Romans outside the city.

26 1 These gave eager welcome to the tidings, so that when Camillus came, he found twenty thousand men already under arms. He collected still more from the allies, and made preparations for his attack. Thus Camillus was chosen dictator for the second time, and proceeding to Veii, he put himself at the head of the soldiers there, and collected more from the allies, with the purpose of attacking the enemy.

But in Rome, some of the Barbarians chanced to pass by the spot where Pontius had made his way by night up to the Capitol, and noticed in many places the marks made by his hands and feet in clambering up, and many places also where the plants that grew upon the rocks had been torn away, and the earth displaced. They advised their king of this, 2 and he too came and made inspection. At the time he said nothing, but when evening came, he assembled the nimblest men and the best mountain-climbers of the Gauls and said to them: “The enemy have shown us that there is a way up to them of which we knew not, and one which men can traverse and tread. It would be a great shame for us, after such a beginning as we have made, to fail at the end, and to give the place up as impregnable, when the enemy themselves show us where it can be taken. For where it is easy for one man to approach it, there it will be no difficult matter for many to go one by one, nay, they will support and aid one another greatly in the undertaking. Gifts and honours befitting his valour shall be given to every man.”

27 1 So spake their king, and the Gauls eagerly undertook to do his will. About midnight a large band of them scaled the cliff and made their way upward in silence. They climbed on all fours over places which were precipitous and rough, but which yielded to their efforts better than they had expected, 2 until the foremost of them reached the heights, put themselves in array, and had all but seized the outwork and fallen upon the sleeping watch. Neither man nor dog were aware of their approach. But there were some sacred geese near the temple of Juno, which were usually fed without stint, but at that time, since provisions barely sufficed for the garrison alone, they were neglected and in evil plight. 3 The creature is naturally sharp of hearing and afraid of every noise, and these, being specially wakeful and restless by reason of their hunger, perceived the approach of the Gauls, dashed at them with loud cries, and so waked all the garrison. At once the Barbarians, now that they were detected, spared no noise, and came on more impetuously to the attack. 4 The defenders, snatching up in haste whatever weapon came to hand, made the best shift they could. Manlius first of all, a man of consular dignity, mighty in body and exceeding stout of heart, confronting two of the enemy at once, cut off the right hand of one of them with his sword as he was lifting his battle-axe, and dashing his shield into the face of the other, tumbled him backwards down the cliff. 5 Then, taking his stand on the wall with those who ran to his aid and formed about him, he repulsed the rest of the enemy, who had reached the top in no great numbers, and showed no prowess to match their daring. So the Romans escaped out of their peril. At break of day, they cast the captain of the watch down the cliff among the enemy, but voted to Manlius a meed of victory which did him more honour than service. They collected for him the rations which each man of them received for one day, namely, half a pound of native spelt, Roman weight, and an eighth of a pint of wine, Greek measure.

28 1 After this, the case of the Gauls was less hopeful. They lacked provisions, being shut off from foraging through fear of Camillus, and disease lurked among them. They were encamped amid ruins, where a multitude of corpses had been cast at random, and besides, an air made dry and acrid by vast quantities of ashes which wind and heat sent flying abroad, made breathing hurtful. 2 But what most of all affected them was the complete change in their mode of life. They had come all at once from regions of shade, where easy refuge could be had from the heats of summer, into a land which was low lying and had an unnatural climate towards autumn. Then there was their long and idle sitting down before the Capitol, — they were now whiling away the seventh month in its siege. For all these reasons the mortality was great in their camp; so many were the dead that they could no longer be buried.

3 All this, however, brought no relief to the besieged, for famine increased upon them, and their ignorance of what Camillus was doing made them dejected. No messenger could come from him because the city was now closely watched by the Barbarians. Wherefore, both parties being in such a plight, a compromise was proposed, at first by the outposts as they encountered one another. 4 Then, since those in authority thought it best, Sulpicius, the military tribune of the Romans, held a conference with Brennus, and it was agreed that on the delivery of a thousand pounds of gold by the Romans, the Gauls should straightaway depart out of the city and the country. Oaths were sworn to these terms, and the gold was brought to be weighed. But the Gauls tampered with the scales, secretly at first, then they openly pulled the balance back out of its poise. 5 The Romans were incensed at this, but Brennus, with a mocking laugh, stripped off his sword, and added, belt and all, to the weights. When Sulpicius asked, “What means this?” “What else,” said Brennus, “but woe to the vanquished?” and the phrase passed at once into a proverb. Some of the Romans were incensed, and thought they ought to go back again with their gold, and endure the siege. Others urged acquiescence in the mild injustice. Their shame lay, they argued, not in giving more, but in giving at all. This they consented to do because of the emergency; it was not honourable, but it was necessary.

29 1 While they were thus at odds in the matter, both with the Gauls and with themselves, Camillus led his army up to the gates of the city. On learning what was going on, he ordered the rest of his army to follow in battle array and deliberately, while he himself, with the flower of his men, pressed on, and presently came to the Romans. 2 These all made way for him, in decorous silence acknowledging him as their dictator. Thereupon he lifted the gold from the scales and gave it to his attendants, and then ordered the Gauls to take their scales and weights and be off, saying that it was the custom with the Romans to deliver their city with iron and not with gold. When Brennus in wrath declared that he was wronged by this breaking of the agreement, Camillus answered that the compact was not legally made nor binding, 3 since he himself had already been chosen dictator and there was no other legal ruler; the agreement of the Gauls had therefore been made with men who had no power in the case. Now, however, they must say what they wanted, for he was come with legal authority to grant pardon to those who asked it, and to inflict punishment on the guilty, unless they showed repentance. 4 At this, Brennus raised a clamour and began a skirmish, in which both sides got no further than drawing their swords and pushing one another confusedly about, since the action took place in the heart of the ruined city, where no battle array was possible. But Brennus soon came to his senses, and led his Gauls off to their camp, with the loss of a few only. During the ensuing night he broke camp and abandoned the city with his whole force, and after a march of about eight miles, encamped along the Gabinian way. 5 At break of day Camillus was upon him, in glittering array, his Romans now full of confidence, and after a long and fierce battle, routed the enemy with great slaughter and took their camp. Of the fugitives, some were at once pursued and cut down, but most of them scattered abroad, only to be fallen upon and slain by the people of the surrounding villages and cities.

30 1 So strangely was Rome taken, and more strangely still delivered, after the Barbarians had held it seven months in all. They entered it a few days after the Ides of July, and were driven out about the Ides of February. Camillus celebrated a triumph, as it was meet that a man should do who had saved a country that was lost, and who now brought the city back again to itself. 2 For the citizens outside, with their wives and children, accompanied his triumphal chariot as it entered the city, and those who had been besieged on the Capitol, and had narrowly escaped death by starvation, came forth to meet them, all embracing one another, and weeping for the joy that was theirs. The priests and ministrants of the gods, bringing whatever sacred objects they had either buried on the spot or carried off with them when they took to flight, displayed them, thus preserved in safety, to the citizens, who caught the welcome sights with delight, believing in their hearts that the gods themselves were now coming back to Rome with them. 3 After Camillus had made sacrifices to the gods and purified the city, in the manner prescribed by those who were versed in such rites, he restored the existing temples, and erected a new one to Rumour and Voice, having sought out carefully the spot where by night the voice from Heaven, announcing the coming of the Barbarian host, had fallen upon the ears of Marcus Caedicius.

31 1 Owing to the zeal of Camillus and the abundant labours of the priesthood, the sites of the temples were at last uncovered, but it proved a grievous undertaking. And since the city had also to be built up again from a state of utter destruction, the multitude were overwhelmed with despair at the task, and shrank from it. They were bereft of all things, and for the present needed some rest and repose after their sufferings, instead of toiling and wearing themselves out on a task for which they had neither means nor strength. 2 And so it was that insensibly their thoughts turned again to Veii, a city which remained intact and was equipped with all things needful. This gave opportunity for mischievous agitations to such as were wont to consult only the people’s will and pleasure, and ready ear was given to seditious speeches against Camillus. He had an eye, it was said, only to his own ambition and fame, when he would deprive them of a city that stood ready to receive them, and force them to pitch their tents among a mass of ruins, while they rebuilt what had become a monstrous funeral pyre. He wished not merely to be a leader and general of Rome, but to thrust Romulus to one side and be styled its founder.

3 The Senate, therefore, fearful of this clamour, would not suffer Camillus, much as he wished it, to lay down his office within a year, although no other dictator had served more than six months. Meanwhile the Senators, by dint of kindly greetings and persuasive words, tried to soften and convert the people, pointing out the sepulchres and tombs of their fathers, and calling to their remembrance the shrines and holy places which Romulus, or Numa, or some other king, had consecrated and left to their care. 4 Among other signs from Heaven, they laid chief stress on the newly severed head that was found when the foundations of the Capitol were dug, showing, as it did, that the place where it was found was fated to be the head of Italy; also on the sacred fire of Vesta, which had been kindled anew by her virgins after the war. If they should quench and extinguish this again by their abandonment of the city, it would be a disgrace to them, whether they saw that city occupied by immigrants and aliens, or abandoned to flocks and herds.

5 Thus did the Senators remonstrate with the people, both individually and in private, and often in the public assemblies. They, in their turn, were moved to compassion by the wailing complaints of the multitude, who lamented the helplessness to which they were come, and begged, now that they had been saved alive as it were from a shipwreck, in nakedness and destitution, that they be not forced to piece together the fragments of their ruined city, when another stood all ready to receive them.

32 1 Accordingly, Camillus decided that the question should be debated and settled in council. He himself spoke at great length, in exhortation to preserve their common country, and every one else who wished did likewise. Finally, he called upon Lucius Lucretius, to whom custom gave the first vote, and bade him declare his opinion first, and then the other senators in the order due. 2 Silence fell, and Lucretius was on the point of beginning, when it chanced that a centurion with a squad of the day watch passed outside, and called with a loud voice on the man who led with the standard, bade him halt and plant his standard there, for that was the best place to settle down and stay in. The utterance fell at the crisis of their anxious thought for the uncertain future, and Lucretius said, with a devout obeisance, that he cast his vote with the god. The rest, one by one, followed his example. 3 Then the inclinations of the multitude were marvellously changed. They exhorted and incited one another to the work, and pitched upon their several sites, not by any orderly assignment, but as each man found it convenient and desirable. Therefore the city was rebuilt with confused and narrow streets and a maze of houses, owing to their haste and speed. Within a year’s time, it is said, a new city had arisen, with walls to guard it and homes in which to dwell.

4 Those who had been deputed by Camillus to recover and mark out anew the sacred places, found them all in utter confusion. When they came to the shrine of Mars, in their circuit of the Palatium, they found that it had been demolished and burnt by the barbarians, like the rest, but as they were clearing away and renovating the place, they came upon the augural staff of Romulus, buried deep in a great heap of ashes. 5 The augural staff is curved at one end, and is called lituus. It is used to mark off the different quarters of the heavens, in the ceremonies of divination by the flight of birds, and so Romulus had used this one, for he was a great diviner. But when he vanished from among men, the priests took this staff and kept it inviolate, like any other sacred object. Their finding this at that time unscathed, when all the rest had perished, gave them more pleasing hopes for Rome. They thought it a token that assured her of everlasting safety.

33 1 They were not yet done with these pressing tasks when a fresh war broke upon them. The Aequians, Volscians, and Latins burst into their territory all at once, and the Tuscans laid siege to Sutrium, a city allied with Rome. The military tribunes in command of the army, having encamped near Mount Marcius, were besieged by the Latins, and were in danger of losing their camp. Wherefore they sent to Rome for aid, and Camillus was appointed dictator for the third time. 2 Two stories are told about this war, and I will give the fabulous one first.

They say that the Latins, either as a pretext for war, or because they really wished to revive the ancient affinity between the two peoples, sent and demanded from the Romans free-born virgins in marriage. The Romans were in doubt what to do, for they dreaded war in their unsettled and unrestored condition, and yet they suspected that this demand for wives was really a call for hostages disguised under the specious name of intermarriage. In their perplexity, a serving-maid named Tutula, 3 or, as some call her, Philotis, advised the magistrates to send her to the enemy with some maid-servants of the comeliest sort and most genteel appearance, all arrayed like free-born brides; she would attend to the rest. The magistrates yielded to her persuasions, chose out as many maid-servants as she thought meet for her purpose, arrayed them in fine raiment and gold, and handed them over to the Latins, who were encamped near the city. 4 In the night, the rest of the maidens stole away the enemy’s swords, while Tutula, or Philotis, climbed a wild fig-tree of great height, and after spreading out her cloak behind her, held out a lighted torch towards Rome, this being the signal agreed upon between her and the magistrates, though no other citizen knew of it. Hence it was that the soldiers sallied out of the city tumultuously, as the magistrates urged them on, calling out one another’s names, and with much ado getting into rank and file. They stormed the entrenchments of the enemy, who were fast asleep and expecting nothing of the sort, captured their camp, and slew most of them. 5 This happened on the Nones of what was then called Quintilis, now July, and the festival since held on that day is in remembrance of the exploit. For, to begin with, they run out of the city gate in throngs, calling out many local and common names, such as Gaius, Marcus, Lucius, and the like, in imitation of the way the soldiers once called aloud upon each other in their haste. 6 Next, the maid-servants, in gay attire, run about jesting and joking with the men they met. They have a mock battle, too, with one another, implying that they once took a hand in the struggle with the Latins. And as they feast, they sit in the shade of a fig-tree’s branches. The day is called the “Capratine Nones,” from the wild fig-tree, as they suppose, from which the maid held forth her torch; this goes by the name of caprificus.

7 But others say that most of what is said and done at this festival has reference to the fate of Romulus. For on this same day he vanished from sight, outside the city gates, in sudden darkness and tempest, and, as some think, during an eclipse of the sun. The day, they say, is called the “Capratine Nones” from the spot where he thus vanished. For the she-goat goes by the name of capra, and Romulus vanished from sight while haranguing an assembly of the people at the Goat’s Marsh, as has been stated in his Life.

34 1 But most writers adopt the other account of this war, which runs thus. Camillus, having been appointed dictator for the third time, and learning that the army under the military tribunes was besieged by the Latins and Volscians, was forced to put under arms even those of the citizens who were exempt from military duty by reason of advancing years. 2 Fetching a long circuit around Mount Marcius and thus eluding the enemy’s notice, he planted his army securely in their rear, and then by lighting many fires made known his presence there. The besieged Romans at once took heart and purposed to sally out and join battle. 3 But the Latins and Volscians retired within their trenches, fenced themselves in with a great wooden palisade, and barricaded their camp on all sides, for they now had a hostile force in front and rear, and were determined to await reinforcements from home. At the same time they expected aid from the Tuscans also. Camillus, perceiving their design, and fearful of being himself surrounded by the enemy as he had surrounded them, made haste to improve his opportunity. 4 The enemy’s barricades were of wood, and a strong wind blew down from the mountains at sun-rise. Accordingly, he equipped himself with fiery darts, and leading his forces out towards day-break, ordered part of them to attack with missiles and loud cries at an opposite point, while he himself, with those appointed to hurl fire, took his post where the wind was wont to smite the enemy’s trenches with the greatest force, and awaited the propitious moment. When battle had been joined and the sun rose and the wind burst forth with fury, he gave orders for an onset, and scattered no end of fiery darts along the trenches. 5 The flames speedily found food in the crowded timbers of the wooden palisades and spread in all directions. The Latins had nothing at hand with which to ward off or quench them, and when at length their camp was full of fire, they were huddled together into a small space, and at last forced to dash out against an enemy who were drawn up in full battle array in front of the trenches. Few of them made their escape, and those who were left behind in the camp were all a prey to the fire until the Romans put it out and fell upon their booty.

35 1 This business dispatched, he left his son Lucius in command of the camp to guard the captives and the booty, while he himself invaded the enemy’s country. He captured the city of the Aequians, brought the Volscians to terms, and straightway led his army towards Sutrium. He was not yet apprised of the fate of the Sutrians, but thought they were still in peril of siege by the Tuscans, and so hastened to relieve them. 2 But they had already surrendered their city to the enemy, and been sent off in utter destitution, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. As Camillus came marching along they met him, with their wives and children, all lamenting their misfortunes. Camillus himself was filled with compassion at the sight, and noticed that his Romans too, with the Sutrians hanging upon their necks in supplication, were moved to tears and anger at their lot. He therefore determined to make no postponement of his vengeance, 3 but to march straight upon Sutrium that very day. He reasoned that men who had just taken a prosperous and opulent city, leaving none of their enemies in it, and expecting none from without, would be found wholly relaxed in discipline and off their guard; and he reasoned correctly. He not only passed unnoticed through the city’s territory, but was actually at its gates and in command of its walls before the enemy knew it. For not a man of them was on guard, but they were all scattered among the houses of the city drinking and feasting. 4 And even when they perceived that their enemies already had the mastery, they were so sluggishly disposed by reason of satiety and drunkenness that many did not so much as try to flee, but awaited there in the houses the most shameful of deaths, or gave themselves up to their enemies. The city of Sutrium was thus twice captured in a single day, and it came to pass that those who had won it, lost it, and those who had first lost it, won it back, and all by reason of Camillus.

36 1 The triumph decreed him for these victories brought him no less favour and renown than the first two had done, and those citizens who had been most envious of him and preferred to ascribe all his successes to an unbounded good fortune rather than to a native valour, were forced by these new exploits to set the man’s glory to the credit of his ability and energy. 2 Now of all those who fought him with hatred and envy, the most conspicuous was Marcus Manlius, the man who first thrust the Gauls down the cliff when they made their night attack upon the Capitol, and for this reason had been surnamed Capitolinus. This man aspired to be chief in the city, and since he could not in the fairest way outstrip Camillus in the race for glory, 3 he had recourse to the wonted and usual arts of those that would found a tyranny. He courted, that is, the favour of the multitude, especially of the debtor class, defending some and pleading their causes against their creditors; snatching others from arrest and preventing their trial by process of law. In this way great numbers of indigent folk soon formed a party about him, and their bold and riotous conduct in the forum gave the best citizens much to fear. 4 To quell their disorder, Quintus Capitolinus was made dictator, and he cast Manlius into prison. Thereupon the people put on the garb of mourners, a thing done only in times of great public calamity, and the Senate, cowed by the tumult, ordered that Manlius be released. He, however, when released, did not mend his ways, but grew more defiantly seditious, and filled the whole city with faction. Accordingly, Camillus was again made military tribune.

5 When Manlius was brought to trial, the view from the place was a great obstacle in the way of his accusers. For the spot where Manlius had stood when he fought his night battle with the Gauls, overlooked the forum from the Capitol, and moved the hearts of the spectators to pity. Manlius himself, too, stretched out his hands toward the spot, and wept as he called to men’s remembrance his famous struggle there, so that the judges knew not what to do, and once and again postponed the case. They were unwilling to acquit the prisoner of his crime when the proofs of it were so plain; and they were unable to execute the law upon him when, owing to the place of trial, his saving exploit was, so to speak, in every eye. 6 So Camillus, sensible of all this, transferred the court outside the city to the Peteline Grove, whence there is no view of the Capitol. There the prosecutor made his indictment, and the judges were able to forget the man’s past services in their righteous anger at his present crimes. 7 So then Manlius was convicted, carried to the Capitol, and thrust down the rock, thus making one and the same spot a monument of his most fortunate actions and of his greatest misfortunes. The Romans, besides, razed his house to the ground, and built there a temple to the goddess they call Moneta. They decreed also that in future no patrician should ever have a house on the Capitoline hill.

37 1 Camillus, called now to be military tribune for the sixth time, declined the honour, being already well on in years, and fearful perhaps of the envy of men and the resentment of the gods which often follows upon such glorious successes as his. But the most manifest reason was his bodily weakness, for it chanced that in those days he was sick. 2 The people, however, would not relieve him of the office. He had no need, they cried, to fight in the ranks of the cavalry or the men-at arms, but only to counsel and ordain; and so they forced him to undertake the command, and with one of his colleagues, Lucius Furius, to lead the army at once against the enemy. These were the Praenestines and Volscians, who, with a large force, were laying waste the lands of the Roman allies. 3 Marching forth, therefore, and encamping near the enemy, he himself thought it best to protract the war, that so, in case a battle should at last be necessary, he might be strong of body for the decisive struggle. But Lucius, his colleague, carried away by his desire for glory, would not be checked in his ardour for battle, and incited the same feelings in the inferior officers of the army. So Camillus, fearing lest it be thought that out of petty jealousy he was trying to rob younger men of the successes to which they eagerly aspired, consented, with reluctance, that Lucius should lead the forces out to battle, while he himself, on account of his sickness, was left behind in camp with a few followers. 4 Lucius conducted the battle rashly and was discomfited, whereupon Camillus, perceiving the rout of the Romans, could not restrain himself, but sprang up from his couch and ran with his attendants to the gate of the camp. Through the fugitives he pushed his way to their pursuers. Those of his men who had passed him into the camp, wheeled about at once and followed him, and those who came bearing down on him from outside, halted and formed their lines about him, exhorting one another not to abandon their general. 5 In this way, for that day, the enemy were turned back from their pursuit. On the next day, Camillus led his forces out, joined battle with the enemy, defeated them utterly, and took their camp, actually bursting into it along with those who fled to it, and slaying most of them. After this, learning that the city of Satricum had been taken by the Tuscans, and its inhabitants, all Romans, put to the sword, he sent back to Rome the main body of his army, comprising the men-at arms, while he himself, with the youngest and most ardent of his men, fell suddenly upon the Tuscans who held the city and mastered them, expelling some and slaying the rest.

38 1 He returned with much spoil to Rome, having proved that those citizens were the most sensible of all who did not fear the bodily age and weakness of a leader possessed of experience and courage, but chose him out, though he was ill and did not wish it, rather than younger men who craved and solicited the command. They showed the same good sense, when the Tusculans were reported to be on the brink of a revolt, in ordering Camillus to select one of his five colleagues as an aid, and march out against them. 2 Although all the five wished and begged to be taken, Camillus passed the rest by and selected Lucius Furius, to everyone’s surprise. For he was the man who had just now been eager to hazard a struggle with the enemy against the judgment of Camillus, and had been worsted in the battle. But Camillus wished, as it would seem, to hide away the misfortune and wipe away the disgrace of the man, and so preferred him above all the rest. 3 But the Tusculans, when once Camillus was on the march against them, set to rectifying their transgression as craftily as they could. Their fields were found full of men tilling the soil and pasturing flocks, as in times of peace; their gates lay wide open; their boys were at school conning their lessons; and of the people, the artizans were to be seen in their workshops plying their trades, the men of leisure sauntered over the forum clad in their usual garb, while the magistrates bustled about assigning quarters for the Romans, as though they expected and were conscious of no evil. 4 Their performances did not bring Camillus into any doubt of their intended treachery, but out of pity for the repentance that followed so close upon their treachery, he ordered them to go to the Senate and beg for a remission of its wrath. He himself also helped to make their prayers effectual, so that their city was absolved from all charges and received the rights of Roman citizenship. Such were the most conspicuous achievements of his sixth tribuneship.

39 1 After this, Licinius Stolo stirred up the great dissension in the city which brought the people into collision with the Senate. The people insisted that, when two consuls were appointed, one of them must certainly be a plebeian, and not both patricians. Tribunes of the people were chosen, but the multitude prevented the consular elections from being duly held. 2 Owing to this lack of magistrates, matters were getting more and more confused, and so Camillus was for the fourth time appointed dictator by the Senate, though much against the wishes of the people. He was not eager for the office himself, nor did he wish to oppose men whose many and great struggles gave them the right to say boldly to him: “Your achievements have been in the field with us, rather than in politics with the patricians; it is through hate and envy that they have now made you dictator; they hope that you will crush the people if you prevail, or be crushed yourself if you fail.” 3 However, he tried to ward off the threatening evils. Having learned the day on which the tribunes intended to propose their law, he issued proclamation making it a day of general muster, and summoned the people from the forum into the Campus Martius, with threats of heavy fines upon the disobedient. 4 The tribunes, on the contrary, for their part, opposed his threats with solemn oaths that they would fine him fifty thousand silver drachmas if he did not cease trying to rob the people of its vote and its law. Then, either because he feared a second condemnation to exile, a penalty unbecoming to a man of his years and achievements, or because he was not able, if he wished, to overcome the might of the people which was now become resistless and invincible, he withdrew to his house, and after alleging sickness for several days, resigned his office.

5 But the Senate appointed another dictator, and he, after making Stolo himself, the very leader of the sedition, his master of horse, suffered the law to be enacted. It was a most vexatious law for the patrician, for it prohibited anyone from owning more than five hundred acres of land. At that time, then, Stolo was a resplendent figure, owing to his victory at the polls; but a little while after, he himself was found to be possessed of what he forbade others to own, and so paid the penalty fixed by his own law.

40 1 There remained, however, the strife over the consular elections, which was the main problem in the dissensions, as it was its first cause, and gave the Senate most concern in its contention with the people. But suddenly clear tidings came that the Gauls had once more set out from the Adriatic Sea, many myriads strong, and were marching on Rome. 2 With the word, the actual deeds of war kept pace. The country was ravaged, and its population, all who could not more easily fly to Rome for refuge, scattered among the mountains. This terror put an end to the dissension in the city, and brought together into conference both the rich and the poor, the Senate and the people. All with one mind chose Camillus dictator for the fifth time. 3 He was now quite old, lacking little of eighty years; but recognizing the peril and the necessity which it laid upon him, he neither made excuse, as before, nor resorted to pretext, but instantly took upon him the command and went to levying his soldiers.

Knowing that the prowess of the barbarians lay chiefly in their swords, which they plied in true barbaric fashion, and with no skill at all, in mere slashing blows at head and shoulders, 4 he had helmets forged for most of his men which were all iron and smooth of surface, that the enemy’s swords might slip off from them or be shattered by them. He also had the long shields of his men rimmed round with bronze, since their wood could not of itself ward off the enemy’s blows. The soldiers themselves he trained to use their long javelins like spears, — to thrust them under the enemy’s swords and catch the downward strokes upon them.

41 1 When the Gauls were near at hand, being encamped on the Anio and encumbered with untold plunder, Camillus led his forces out and posted them in a gently sloping glade with many hollows, so that the largest part of them were concealed, and the part that could be seen had the look of shutting themselves up in hilly places out of fear. 2 This opinion of them Camillus wished to strengthen, and therefore made no defence of those who were plundered even at his very feet, but fenced in his trenches and lay quiet, until he saw that some of the enemy were scattered abroad in foraging parties, while those in the camp did nothing but gorge themselves with meat and drink. 3 Then, while it was yet night, he sent his light-armed troops forward to hinder the Barbarians from falling into battle-array and throw them into confusion as they issued from their camp. Just before dawn, he led his men-at arms down into the plain and drew them up in battle-array, many in number and full of spirit, as the Barbarians now saw, not few and timid, as they had expected. To begin with, it was this which shattered the confidence of the Gauls, who thought it beneath them to be attacked first. Then again, the light-armed folk fell upon them, forced them into action before they had taken their usual order and been arrayed in companies, and so compelled them to fight at random and in utter disorder. 4 Finally, when Camillus led his men-at arms to the attack, the enemy raised their swords on high and rushed for close quarters. But the Romans thrust their javelins into their faces, received their strokes on the parts that were shielded by iron, and so turned the edge of their metal, which was soft and weakly tempered, so much so that their swords quickly bent up double, while their shields were pierced and weighed down by the javelins which stuck in them. 5 They actually abandoned their own weapons and tried to possess themselves of those of their enemies, and to turn aside the javelins by grasping them in their hands. But the Romans, seeing them thus disarmed, at once took to using their swords, and there was a great slaughter of their foremost ranks, while the rest fled every whither over the plain; the hill tops and high places had been occupied beforehand by Camillus, and they knew that their camp could easily be taken, since, in their overweening confidence, they had neglected to fortify it.

6 This battle, they say, was fought thirteen years after the capture of Rome, and produced in the Romans a firm feeling of confidence regarding the Gauls. They had mightily feared these Barbarians, who had been conquered by them in the first instance, as they felt, in consequence of sickness and extraordinary misfortunes, rather than of any prowess in their conquerors. At any rate, so great had their terror been that they made a law exempting priests from military service, except in case of a Gallic war.

42 1 This was the last military exploit performed by Camillus, for the capture of Velitrae was a direct sequel of this campaign, and it yielded to him without a struggle. But the greatest of his civil contests yet remained and it was harder to wage it now against a people which had come back flushed with victory, and bent on electing a plebeian consul, contrary to the established law. But the Senate opposed their demands, and would not suffer Camillus to lay aside his office, thinking that, with the aid of his great power and authority, they could make a better fight in defence of their aristocracy. 2 But once when Camillus was seated in state and despatching public business in the forum, an officer, sent by the tribunes of the people, ordered him to follow, actually laying hands upon him as though to hale him away. All at once such cries and tumult as had never been heard before filled the forum, the friends of Camillus thrusting the plebeian officer down from the tribunal, and the multitude below ordering him to drag the dictator away. Camillus, perplexed at the issue, did not renounce his office, but taking the senators with him, marched off to their place of meeting. 3 Before he entered this, turning to the Capitol, he prayed the gods to bring the present tumults to their happiest end, solemnly vowing to build a temple to Concord when the confusion was over.

In the Senate there was a great conflict of opposing views, but nevertheless, the milder course prevailed, concession was made to elect one of the consuls from their own body. 4 When the dictator announced this to the people as the will and pleasure of the Senate, at once, as was to be expected, they were delighted to be reconciled with the Senate, and escorted Camillus to his home with loud applause. On the following day they held an assembly and voted to build a temple of Concord, as Camillus had vowed, and to have it face the forum and place of assembly, to commemorate what had now happened. 5 They voted also to add a day to the so called Latin festival, and thereafter to celebrate four days, and that all Romans at once perform sacrifices with garlands on their heads. At the elections held by Camillus, Marcus Aemilius was chosen consul from the patricians, and Lucius Sextus first consul from the plebeians. This was the last public act of Camillus.

43 1 In the year following, a pestilential sickness visited Rome, carrying off an incalculable number of the common people, and most of the magistrates. Camillus also died at this time, and he was full ripe for death, if any man ever was, considering his years and the completeness of his life; yet his loss grieved the Romans more than that of all those who perished of the plague at this time.

Pericles

152 1 1 On seeing certain wealthy foreigners in Rome carrying puppies and young monkeys about in their bosoms and fondling them, Caesar asked, we are told, if the women in their country did not bear children, thus in right princely fashion rebuking those who squander on animals that proneness to love and loving affection which is ours by nature, and which is due only to our fellow-men. 2 Since, then, our souls are by nature possessed of great fondness for learning and fondness for seeing, it is surely reasonable to chide those who abuse this fondness on objects all unworthy either of their eyes or ears, to the neglect of those which are good and serviceable. Our outward sense, since it apprehends the objects which encounter it by virtue of their mere impact upon it, must needs, perhaps, regard everything that presents itself, be it useful or useless; 3 but in the exercise of his mind every man, if he pleases, has the natural power to turn himself away in every case, and to change, without the least difficulty, to that object upon which he himself determines. It is meet, therefore, that he pursue what is best, to the end that he may not merely regard it, but also be edified by regarding it. A colour is suited to the eye if its freshness, and its pleasantness as well, stimulates and nourishes the vision; and so our intellectual vision must be applied to such objects as, by their very charm, invite it onward to its own proper good.

4 Such objects are to be found in virtuous deeds; these implant in those who search them out a great and zealous eagerness which leads to imitation. In other cases, admiration of the deed is not immediately accompanied by an impulse to do it. Nay, many times, on the contrary, while we delight in the work, we despise the workman, as, for instance, in the case of perfumes and dyes; we take a delight in them, but dyers and perfumers we regard as illiberal and vulgar folk. 5 Therefore it was a fine saying of Antisthenes, when he heard that Ismenias was an excellent piper: “But he’s a worthless man,” said he, “otherwise he wouldn’t be so good a piper.” And so Philip once said to his son, who, as the wine went round, plucked the strings charmingly and skilfully, “Art not ashamed to pluck the strings so well?” It is enough, surely, if a king have leisure to hear others pluck the strings, and he pays great deference to the Muses if he be but a spectator of such contests.

153 2 1 Labour with one’s own hands on lowly tasks gives witness, in the toil thus expended on useless things, to one’s own indifference to higher things.a No generous youth, from seeing the Zeus at Pisa, or the Hera at Argos, longs to be Pheidias or Polycleitus; nor to be Anacreon or Philetas or Archilochus out of pleasure in their poems. 2 For it does not of necessity follow that, if the work delights you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of your esteem. Wherefore the spectator is not advantaged by those things at sight of which no ardour for imitation arises in the breast, nor any uplift of the soul arousing zealous impulses to do the like. But virtuous action straightway so disposes a man that he no sooner admires the works of virtue than he strives to emulate those who wrought them. 3 The good things of Fortune we love to possess and enjoy; those of Virtue we long to perform. The former we are willing should be ours at the hands of others; the latter we wish that others rather should have at our hands. The Good creates a stir of activity towards itself, and implants at once in the spectator an active impulse; it does not form his character by ideal representation alone, but through the investigation of its work it furnishes him with a dominant purpose.

4 For such reasons I have decided to persevere in my writing of Lives, and so have composed this tenthb book, containing the life of Pericles, and that of Fabius Maximus, who waged such lengthy war with Hannibal. The men were alike in their virtues, and more especially in their gentleness and rectitude, and by their ability to endure the follies of their peoples and of their colleagues in office, they proved of the greatest service to their countries. But whether I aim correctly at the proper mark must be decided from what I have written.

3 1 Pericles was of the tribe Acamantis, of the deme Cholargus, and of the foremost family and lineage on both sides. His father, Xanthippus, who conquered the generals of the King at Mycale, married Agariste, granddaughter of that Cleisthenes who, in such noble fashion, expelled the Peisistratidae and destroyed their tyranny, instituted laws, and established a constitution best attempered for the promotion of harmony and safety. 2 She, in her dreams, once fancied that she had given birth to a lion, and a few days after bore Pericles. His personal appearance was unimpeachable, except that his head was rather long and out of due proportion. For this reason the images of him, almost all of them, wear helmets, because the artists, as it would seem, were not willing to reproach him with deformity. The comic poets of Attica used to call him “Schinocephalus,” or Squill-head (the squill is sometimes called “schinus”). 3 So the comic poet Cratinus, in his “Cheirons,” says: “Faction and Saturn, that ancient of days, were united in wedlock; their offspring was of all tyrants the greatest, and lo! he is called by the gods the head-compeller.” And again in his “Nemesis”: “Come, Zeus! of guests and heads the Lord!” 4 And Telecleides speaks of him as sitting on the acropolis in the greatest perplexity, “now heavy of head, and now alone, from the eleven-couched chamber of his head, causing vast uproar to arise.” And Eupolis, in his “Demes,” having inquiries made about each one of the demagogues as they come up from Hades, says, when Pericles is called out last: —

“The very head of those below hast thou now brought.”

4 1 His teacher in music, most writers state, was Damon (whose name, they say, should be pronounced with the first syllable short); but Aristotle says he had a thorough musical training at the hands of Pythocleides. Now Damon seems to have been a consummate sophist, but to have taken refuge behind the name of music in order to conceal from the multitude his real power, 154 and he associated with Pericles, that political athlete, as it were, in the capacity of rubberc and trainer. 2 However, Damon was not left unmolested in this use of his lyre as a screen, but was ostracized for being a great schemer and a friend of tyranny, and became a butt of the comic poets. At all events, Plato represented some one as inquiring of him thus: —

“In the first place tell me then, I beseech thee, thou who art

The Cheiron, as they say, who to Pericles gave his craft.”

3 Pericles was also a pupil of Zeno the Eleatic, who discoursed on the natural world, like Parmenides, and perfected a species of refutative catch which was sure to bring an opponent to grief; as Timon of Phlius expressed it: —

“His was a tongue that could argue both ways with a fury resistless,

Zeno’s; assailer of all things.”

4 But the man who most consorted with Pericles, and did most to clothe him with a majestic demeanour that had more weight than any demagogue’s appeals, yes, and who lifted on high and exalted the dignity of his character, was Anaxagoras the Clazomenian, whom men of that day used to call “Nous,” either because they admired that comprehension of his, which proved of such surpassing greatness in the investigation of nature; or because he was the first to enthrone in the universe, not Chance, nor yet Necessity, as the source of its orderly arrangement, but Mind (Nous) pure and simple, which distinguishes and sets apart, in the midst of an otherwise chaotic mass, the substances which have like elements.

5 1 This man Pericles extravagantly admired, and being gradually filled full of the so called higher philosophy and elevated speculation, he not only had, as it seems, a spirit that was solemn and a discourse that was lofty and free from plebeian and reckless effrontery, but also a composure of countenance that never relaxed into laughter, a gentleness of carriage and cast of attire that suffered no emotion to disturb it while he was speaking, a modulation of voice that was far from boisterous, and many similar characteristics which struck all his hearers with wondering amazement. 2 It is, at any rate, a fact that, once on a time when he had been abused and insulted all day long by a certain lewd fellow of the baser sort, he endured it all quietly, though it was in the market-place, where he had urgent business to transact, and towards evening went away homewards unruffled, the fellow following along and heaping all manner of contumely upon him. 3 When he was about to go in doors, it being now dark, he ordered a servant to take a torch and escort the fellow in safety back to his own home.

The poet Ion, however, says that Pericles had a presumptuous and somewhat arrogant manner of address, and that into his haughtiness there entered a good deal of disdain and contempt for others; he praises, on the other hand, the tact, complaisance, and elegant address which Cimon showed in his social intercourse. 4 But we must ignore Ion, with his demand that virtue, like a dramatic tetralogy, have some sort of a farcical appendage. Zeno, when men called the austerity of Pericles a mere thirst for reputation, and swollen conceit, urged them to have some such thirst for reputation themselves, with the idea that the very assumption of nobility might in time produce, all unconsciously, something like an eager and habitual practice of it.

6 1 These were not the only advantages Pericles had of his association with Anaxagoras. It appears that he was also lifted by him above superstition, that feeling which is produced by amazement at what happens in regions above us. It affects those who are ignorant of the causes of such things, and are crazed about divine intervention, and confounded through their inexperience in this domain; whereas the doctrines of natural philosophy remove such ignorance and inexperience, and substitute for timorous and inflamed superstition that unshaken reverence which is attended by a good hope.

2 A story is told that once on a time the head of a one-horned ram was brought to Pericles from his country-place, and that Lampon the seer, when he saw how the horn grew strong and solid from the middle of the forehead, declared that, whereas there were two powerful parties in the city, 155 that of Thucydides and that of Pericles, the mastery would finally devolve upon one man, — the man to whom this sign had been given. Anaxagoras, however, had the skull cut in two, and showed that the brain had not filled out its position, but had drawn together to a point, like an egg, at that particular spot in the entire cavity where the root of the horn began. 3 At that time, the story says, it was Anaxagoras who won the plaudits of the bystanders; but a little while after it was Lampon, for Thucydides was overthrown, and Pericles was entrusted with the entire control of all the interests of the people.

Now there was nothing, in my opinion, to prevent both of them, the naturalist and the seer, from being in the right of the matter; the one correctly divined the cause, the other the object or purpose. It was the proper province of the one to observe why anything happens, and how it comes to be what it is; of the other to declare for what purpose anything happens, and what it means. 4 And those who declare that the discovery of the cause, in any phenomenon, does away with the meaning, do not perceive that they are doing away not only with divine portents, but also with artificial tokens, such as the ringing of gongs, the language of fire-signals, and the shadows of the pointers on sundials. Each of these has been made, through some casual adaptation, to have some meaning. However, perhaps this is a matter for a different treatise.

7 1 As a young man, Pericles was exceedingly reluctant to face the people, since it was thought that in feature he was like the tyrant Peisistratus; and when men well on in years remarked also that his voice was sweet, and his tongue glib and speedy in discourse, they were struck with amazement at the resemblance. Besides, since he was rich, of brilliant lineage, and had friends of the greatest influence, he feared that he might be ostracized, and so at first had naught to do with politics, but devoted himself rather to a military career, where he was brave and enterprising. 2 However, when Aristides was dead, and Themistocles in banishment, and Cimon was kept by his campaigns for the most part abroad, then at last Pericles decided to devote himself to the people, espousing the cause of the poor and the many instead of the few and the rich, contrary to his own nature, which was anything but popular. 3 But he feared, as it would seem, to encounter a suspicion of aiming at tyranny, and when he saw that Cimon was very aristocratic in his sympathies, and was held in extraordinary affection by the party of the “Good and True,” he began to court the favour of the multitude, thereby securing safety for himself, and power to wield against his rival.

4 Straightway, too, he made a different ordering in his way of life. On one street only in the city was he to be seen walking, — the one which took him to the market-place and the council-chamber. Invitations to dinner, and all such friendly and familiar intercourse, he declined, so that during the long period that elapsed while he was at the head of the state, there was not a single friend to whose house he went to dine, except that when his kinsman Euryptolemus gave a wedding feast, he attended until the libations were made, and then straightway rose up and departed. 5 Conviviality is prone to break down and overpower the haughtiest reserve, and in familiar intercourse the dignity which is assumed for appearance’s sake is very hard to maintain. Whereas, in the case of true and genuine virtue, “fairest appears what most appears,” and nothing in the conduct of good men is so admirable in the eyes of strangers, as their daily walk and conversation is in the eyes of those who share it.

And so it was that Pericles, seeking to avoid the satiety which springs from continual intercourse, made his approaches to the people by intervals, as it were, not speaking on every question, nor addressing the people on every occasion, but offering himself like the Salaminian trireme, as Critolaüs says, for great emergencies. The rest of his policy he carried out by commissioning his friends and other public speakers. 6 One of these, as they say, was Ephialtes, who broke down the power of the Council of the Areiopagus, and so poured out for the citizens, to use the words of Plato, too much “undiluted freedom,” by which the people was rendered unruly, just like a horse, and, as the comic poets say, “no longer had the patience to obey the rein, 156 but nabbed Euboea and trampled on the islands.”

8 1 Moreover, by way of providing himself with a style of discourse which was adapted, like a musical instrument, to his mode of life and the grandeur of his sentiments, he often made an auxiliary string of Anaxagoras, subtly mingling, as it were, with his rhetoric the dye of natural science. It was from natural science, as the divine Plato says, that he “acquired his loftiness of thought and perfectness of execution, in addition to his natural gifts,” and by applying what he learned to the art of speaking, he far excelled all other speakers. 2 It was thus, they say, that he got his surname; though some suppose it was from the structures with which he adorned the city, and others from his ability as a statesman and a general, that he was called Olympian. It is not at all unlikely that his reputation was the result of the blending in him of many high qualities. 3 But the comic poets of that day, who let fly, both in earnest and in jest, many shafts of speech against him, make it plain that he got this surname chiefly because of his diction; they spoke of him as “thundering” and “lightening” when he harangued his audience, and as “wielding a dread thunderbolt in his tongue.”

There is on record also a certain saying of Thucydides, the son of Melesias, touching the clever persuasiveness of Pericles, a saying uttered in jest. 4 Thucydides belonged to the party of the “Good and True,” and was for a very long time a political antagonist of Pericles. When Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, asked him whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he replied: “Whenever I throw him in wrestling, he disputes the fall, and carries his point, and persuades the very men who saw him fall.”

The truth is, however, that even Pericles, with all his gifts, was cautious in his discourse, so that whenever he came forward to speak he prayed the gods that there might not escape him unawares a single word which was unsuited to the matter under discussion. 5 In writing he left nothing behind him except the decrees which he proposed, and only a few in all of his memorable sayings are preserved, as, for instance, his urging the removal of Aegina as the “eye-sore of the Piraeus,” and his declaring that he “already beheld war swooping down upon them from Peloponnesus.” Once also when Sophocles, who was general with him on a certain naval expedition, praised a lovely boy, he said: “It is not his hands only, Sophocles, that a general must keep clean, but his eyes as well.” 6 Again, Stesimbrotus says that, in his funeral oration over those who had fallen in the Samian War, he declared that they had become immortal, like the gods; “the gods themselves,” he said, “we cannot see, but from the honours which they receive, and the blessings which they bestow, we conclude that they are immortal.” So it was, he said, with those who had given their lives for their country.

9 1 Thucydides describes the administration of Pericles as rather aristocratic,— “in name a democracy, but in fact a government by the greatest citizen.” But many others say that the people was first led on by him into allotments of public lands, festival-grants, and distributions of fees for public services, thereby falling into bad habits, and becoming luxurious and wanton under the influence of his public measures, instead of frugal and self-sufficing. Let us therefore examine in detail the reason for this change in him.

2 In the beginning, as has been said, pitted as he was against the reputation of Cimon, he tried to ingratiate himself with the people. And since he was the inferior in wealth and property, by means of which Cimon would win over the poor, — furnishing a dinner every day to any Athenian who wanted it, bestowing raiment on the elderly men, and removing the fences from his estates that whosoever wished might pluck the fruit, — 157 Pericles, outdone in popular arts of this sort, had recourse to the distribution of the people’s own wealth. This was on the advice of Damonides, of the Deme Oa, as Aristotle has stated. 3 And soon, what with festival-grants and jurors’ wages and other fees and largesses, he bribed the multitude by the wholesale, and used them in opposition to the Council of the Areiopagus. Of this body he himself was not a member, since the lot had not made him either First Archon, or Archon Thesmothete, or King Archon, or Archon Polemarch. These offices were in ancient times filled by lot, and through them those who properly acquitted themselves were promoted into the Areiopagus. 4 For this reason all the more did Pericles, strong in the affections of the people, lead a successful party against the Council of the Areiopagus. Not only was the Council robbed of most of its jurisdiction by Ephialtes, but Cimon also, on the charge of being a lover of Sparta and a hater of the people, was ostracized, — a man who yielded to none in wealth and lineage, who had won most glorious victories over the Barbarians, and had filled the city full of money and spoils, as is written in his Life. Such was the power of Pericles among the people.

10 1 Now ostracism involved legally a period of ten years’ banishment. But in the meanwhile the Lacedaemonians invaded the district of Tanagra with a great army, and the Athenians straightway sallied out against them. So Cimon came back from his banishment and stationed himself with his tribesmen in line of battle, and determined by his deeds to rid himself of the charge of too great love for Sparta, in that he shared the perils of his fellow-citizens. But the friends of Pericles banded together and drove him from the ranks, on the ground that he was under sentence of banishment. 2 For which reason, it is thought, Pericles fought most sturdily in that battle, and was the most conspicuous of all in exposing himself to danger. And there fell in this battle all the friends of Cimon to a man, whom Pericles had accused with him of too great love for Sparta. Wherefore sore repentance fell upon the Athenians, and a longing desire for Cimon, defeated as they were on the confines of Attica, and expecting as they did a grievous war with the coming of spring. 3 So then Pericles, perceiving this, hesitated not to gratify the desires of the multitude, but wrote with his own hand the decree which recalled the man. Whereupon Cimon came back from banishment and made peace between the cities. For the Lacedaemonians were as kindly disposed towards him as they were full of hatred towards Pericles and the other popular leaders.

4 Some, however, say that the decree for the restoration of Cimon was not drafted by Pericles until a secret compact had been made between them, through the agency of Elpinicé, Cimon’s sister, to the effect that Cimon should sail out with a fleet of two hundred ships and have command in foreign parts, attempting to subdue the territory of the King, while Pericles should have supreme power in the city. 5 And it was thought that before this, too, Elpinice had rendered Pericles more lenient towards Cimon, when he stood his trial on the capital charge of treason. Pericles was at that time one of the committee of prosecution appointed by the people, and on Elpinice’s coming to him and supplicating him, said to her with a smile, “Elpinice, thou art an old woman, thou art an old woman, to attempt such tasks.” However, he made only one speech, by way of formally executing his commission, and in the end did the least harm to Cimon of all his accusers.

6 How, then, can one put trust in Idomeneus, who accuses Pericles of assassinating the popular leader Ephialtes, though he was his friend and a partner in his political program, out of mere jealousy and envy of his reputation? These charges he has raked up from some source or other and hurled them, as if so much venom, against one who was perhaps not in all points irreproachable, but who had a noble disposition and an ambitious spirit, wherein no such savage and bestial feelings can have their abode. 1587 As for Ephialtes, who was a terror to the oligarchs and inexorable in exacting accounts from those who wronged the people, and in prosecuting them, his enemies laid plots against him, and had him slain secretly by Aristodicus of Tanagra, as Aristotle says. As for Cimon, he died on his campaign in Cyprus.

11 Then the aristocrats, aware even some time before this that Pericles was already become the greatest citizen, but wishing nevertheless to have some one in the city who should stand up against him and blunt the edge of his power, that it might not be an out and out monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopecé, a discreet man and a relative of Cimon, to oppose him. 2 He, being less of a warrior than Cimon, and more of a forensic speaker and statesman, by keeping watch and ward in the city, and by wrestling bouts with Pericles on the bema, soon brought the administration into even poise.

He would not suffer the party of the “Good and True,” as they called themselves, to be scattered up and down and blended with the populace, as heretofore, the weight of their character being thus obscured by numbers, but by culling them out and assembling them into one body, he made their collective influence, thus become weighty, as it were a counterpoise in the balance. 3 Now there had been from the beginning a sort of seam hidden beneath the surface of affairs, as in a piece of iron, which faintly indicated a divergence between the popular and the aristocratic programme; but the emulous ambition of these two men cut a deep gash in the state, and caused one section of it to be called the “Demos,” or the People, and the other the “Oligoi,” or the Few. 4 At this time, therefore, particularly, Pericles gave the reins to the people, and made his policy one of pleasing them, ever devising some sort of a pageant in the town for the masses, or a feast, or a procession, “amusing them like children with not uncouth delights,” and sending out sixty triremes annually, on which large numbers of the citizens sailed about for eight months under pay, practising at the same time and acquiring the art of seamanship. 5 In addition to this, he despatched a thousand settlers to the Chersonesus, and five hundred to Naxos, and to Andros half that number, and a thousand to Thrace to settle with the Bisaltae, and others to Italy, when the site of Sybaris was settled, which they named Thurii. All this he did by way of lightening the city of its mob of lazy and idle busybodies, rectifying the embarrassments of the poorer people, and giving the allies for neighbours an imposing garrison which should prevent rebellion.

12 1 But that which brought most delightful adornment to Athens, and the greatest amazement to the rest of mankind; that which alone now testifies for Hellas that her ancient power and splendour, of which so much is told, was no idle fiction, — I mean his construction of sacred edifices, — this, more than all public measures of Pericles, his enemies maligned and slandered. They cried out in the assemblies: “The people has lost its fair fame and is in ill repute because it has removed the public moneys of the Hellenes from Delos into its own keeping, 2 and that seemliest of all excuses which it had to urge against its accusers, to wit, that out of fear of the Barbarians it took the public funds from that sacred isle and was now guarding them in a stronghold, of this Pericles has robbed it. And surely Hellas is insulted with a dire insult and manifestly subjected to tyranny when she sees that, with her own enforced contributions the war, we are gilding and bedizening our city, which, for all the world like a wanton woman, adds to her wardrobe precious stones and costly statues and temples worth their millions.”

3 For his part, Pericles would instruct the people that it owed no account of their moneys to the allies provided it carried on the war for them and kept off the Barbarians; “not a horse do they furnish,” said he, “not a ship, not a hoplite, but money simply; 159 and this belongs, not to those who give it, but to those who take it, if only they furnish that for which they take it in pay. 4 And it is but meet that the city, when once she is sufficiently equipped with all that is necessary for prosecuting the war, should apply her abundance to such works as, by their completion, will bring her everlasting glory, and while in process of completion will bring that abundance into actual service, in that all sorts of activity and diversified demands arise, which rouse every art and stir every hand, and bring, as it were, the whole city under pay, so that she not only adorns, but supports herself as well from her own resources.”

5 And it was true that his military expeditions supplied those who were in the full vigour of manhood with abundant resources from the common funds, and in his desire that the unwarlike throng of common labourers should neither have no share at all in the public receipts, nor yet get fees for laziness and idleness, he boldly suggested to the people projects for great constructions, and designs for works which would call many arts into play and involve long periods of time, in order that the stay-at homes, no whit less than the sailors and sentinels and soldiers, might have a pretext for getting a beneficial share of the public wealth. 6 The materials to be used were stone, bronze, ivory, gold, ebony, and cypress-wood; the arts which should elaborate and work up these materials were those of carpenter, moulder, bronze-smith, stone-cutter, dyer, worker in gold and ivory, painter, embroiderer, embosser, to say nothing of the forwarders and furnishers of the material, such as factors, sailors and pilots by sea, and, by land, wagon-makers, trainers of yoked beasts, and drivers. 7 There were also rope-makers, weavers, leather-workers, road-builders, and miners. And since each particular art, like a general with the army under his separate command, kept its own throng of unskilled and untrained labourers in compact array, to be as instrument unto player and as body unto soul in subordinate service, it came to pass that for every age, almost, and every capacity the city’s great abundance was distributed and scattered abroad by such demands.

13 1 So then the works arose, no less towering in their grandeur than inimitable in the grace of their outlines, since the workmen eagerly strove to surpass themselves in the beauty of their handicraft. And yet the most wonderful thing about them was the speed with which they rose. Each one of them, men thought, would require many successive generations to complete it, but all of them were fully completed in the heyday of a single administration. 2 And yet they say that once on a time when Agatharchus the painter was boasting loudly of the speed and ease with which he made his figures, Zeuxis heard him, and said, “Mine take, and last, a long time.” And it is true that deftness and speed in working do not impart to the work an abiding weight of influence nor an exactness of beauty; whereas the time which is put out to loan in laboriously creating, pays a large and generous interest in the preservation of the creation. 3 For this reason are the works of Pericles all the more to be wondered at; they were created in a short time for all time. Each one of them, in its beauty, was even then and at once antique; but in the freshness of its vigour it is, even to the present day, recent and newly wrought. Such is the bloom of perpetual newness, as it were, upon these works of his, which makes them ever to look untouched by time, as though the unfaltering breath of an ageless spirit has been infused into them.

4 His general manager and general overseer was Pheidias, although the several works had great architects and artists besides. Of the Parthenon, for instance, with its cella of a hundred feet in length,d Callicrates and Ictinus were the architects; it was Coroebus who began to build the sanctuary of the mysteries at Eleusis, and he planted the columns on the floor and yoked their capitals together with architraves; but on his death Metagenes, of the deme Xypete, carried up the frieze and the upper tier of columns; 1605 while Xenocles, of the deme Cholargus, set on high the lantern over the shrine. For the long wall, concerning which Socrates says he himself heard Pericles introduce a measure, Callicrates was the contractor. Cratinus pokes fun at this work for its slow progress, and in these words: —

“Since ever so long now

In word has Pericles pushed the thing; in fact he does not budge it.”

The Odeum, which was arranged internally with many tiers of seats and many pillars, and which had a roof made with a circular slope from a single peak, they say was an exact reproduction of the Great King’s pavilion, and this too was built under the superintendence of Pericles. 6 Wherefore Cratinus, in his “Thracian Women,” rails at him again: —

“The squill-head Zeus! lo! here he comes,

The Odeum like a cap upon his cranium,

Now that for good and all the ostracism is o’er.”

Then first did Pericles, so fond of honour was he, get a decree passed that a musical contest be held as part of the Panathenaic festival. He himself was elected manager, and prescribed how the contestants must blow the flute, or sing, or pluck the zither. These musical contests were witnessed, both then and thereafter, in the Odeum.

7 The Propylaea of the acropolis were brought to completion in the space of five years, Mnesicles being their architect. A wonderful thing happened in the course of their building, which indicated that the goddess was not holding herself aloof, but was a helper both in the inception and in the completion of the work. 8 One of its artificers, the most active and zealous of them all, lost his footing and fell from a great height, and lay in a sorry plight, despaired of by the physicians. Pericles was much cast down at this, but the goddess appeared to him in a dream and prescribed a course of treatment for him to use, so that he speedily and easily healed the man. It was in commemoration of this that he set up the bronze statue of Athena Hygieia on the acropolis near the altar of that goddess, which was there before, as they say.

9 But it was Pheidias who produced the great golden image of the goddess, and he is duly inscribed on the tablet as the workman who made it. Everything, almost, was under his charge, and all the artists and artisans, as I have said, were under his superintendence, owing to his friendship with Pericles. This brought envy upon the one, and contumely on the other, to the effect that Pheidias made assignations for Pericles with free-born women who would come ostensibly to see the works of art. 10 The comic poets took up this story and bespattered Pericles with charges of abounding wantonness, connecting their slanders with the wife of Menippus, a man who was his friend, and a colleague in the generalship, and with the bird-culture of Pyrilampes, who, since he was the comrade of Pericles was accused of using his peacocks to bribe the women with whom Pericles consorted.

11 And why should any one be astonished that men of wanton life lose no occasion for offering up sacrifices, as it were, of contumelious abuse of their superiors, to the evil deity of popular envy, when even Stesimbrotus of Thasos has ventured to make public charge against Pericles of a dreadful and fabulous impiety with his son’s wife? 12 To such degree, it seems, is truth hedged about with difficulty and hard to capture by research, since those who come after the events in question find that lapse of time is an obstacle to their proper perception of them; while the research of their contemporaries into men’s deeds and lives, partly through envious hatred and partly through fawning flattery, defiles and distorts the truth.

14 1 Thucydides and his party kept denouncing Pericles for playing fast and loose with the public moneys and annihilating the revenues. Pericles therefore asked the people in assembly whether they thought he had expended too much, and on their declaring that it was altogether too much, “Well then,” said he, “let it not have been spent on your account, but mine, and I will make the inscriptions of dedication in my own name.” 2 When Pericles had said this, whether it was that they admired his magnanimity 161 or vied with his ambition to get the glory of his works, they cried out with a loud voice and bade him take freely from the public funds for his outlays, and to spare naught whatsoever. And finally he ventured to undergo with Thucydides the contest of the ostracism, wherein he secured his rival’s banishment, and the dissolution of the faction which had been arrayed against him.

15 1 Thus, then, seeing that political differences were entirely remitted and the city had become a smooth surface, as it were, and altogether united, he brought under his own control Athens and all the issues dependent on the Athenians, — tributes, armies, triremes, the islands, the sea, the vast power derived from Hellenes, vast also from Barbarians, and a supremacy that was securely hedged about with subject nations, royal friendships, and dynastic alliances. 2 But then he was no longer the same man as before, nor alike submissive to the people and ready to yield and give in to the desires of the multitude as a steersman to the breezes. Nay rather, forsaking his former lax and sometimes rather effeminate management of the people, he struck the high and clear note of an aristocratic and kingly statesmanship, and employing it for the best interests of all in a direct and undeviating fashion, he led the people, for the most part willingly, by his persuasions and instructions. 3 And yet there were times when they were sorely vexed with him, and then he tightened the reins and forced them into the way of their advantage with a master’s hand, for all the world like a wise physician, who treats a complicated disease of long standing occasionally with harmless indulgences to please his patient, and occasionally, too, with caustics and bitter drugs which work salvation. 4 For whereas all sorts of distempers, as was to be expected, were rife in a rabble which possessed such a vast empire, he alone was so endowed by nature that he could manage each one of these cases suitably, and more than anything else he used the people’s hopes and fears, like rudders, so to speak, giving timely check to their arrogance, and allaying and comforting their despair. Thus he proved that rhetoric, or the art of speaking, is, to use Plato’s words, “an enchantment of the soul,” and that her chiefest business is a careful study of the affections and passions, which are, so to speak, strings and stops of the soul, requiring a very judicious fingering and striking. 5 The reason for his success was not his power as a speaker merely, but, as Thucydides says, the reputation of his life and the confidence reposed in him as one who was manifestly proven to be utterly disinterested and superior to bribes. He made the city, great as it was when he took it, the greatest and richest of all cities, and grew to be superior in power to kings and tyrants. Some of these actually appointed him guardian of their sons, but he did not make his estate a single drachma greater than it was when his father left it to him.

16 1 Of his power there can be no doubt, since Thucydides gives so clear an exposition of it, and the comic poets unwittingly reveal it even in their malicious gibes, calling him and his associates “new Peisistratidae,” and urging him to take solemn oath not to make himself a tyrant, on the plea, forsooth, that his preëminence was incommensurate with democracy and too oppressive. 2 Telecleides says that the Athenians had handed over to him

“With the cities’ assessments the cities themselves, to bind or release as he pleases,

Their ramparts of stone to build up if he likes, and then to pull down again straightway,

Their treaties, their forces, their might, peace, and riches, and all the fair gifts of good fortune.”

(Rogers.)

And this was not the fruit of a golden moment, nor the culminating popularity of an administration that bloomed but for a season; nay rather he stood first for forty years among such men as Ephialtes, Leocrates, Myronides, Cimon, Tolmides, and Thucydides, 3 and after the deposition of Thucydides and his ostracism, for no less than fifteen of these years did he secure an imperial sway that was continuous and unbroken, by means of his annual tenure of the office of general. 162 During all these years he kept himself untainted by corruption, although he was not altogether indifferent to money-making; indeed, the wealth which was legally his by inheritance from his father, that it might not from sheer neglect take to itself wings and fly away, nor yet cause him much trouble and loss of time when he was busy with higher things, he set into such orderly dispensation as he thought was easiest and most exact. 4 This was to sell his annual products all together in the lump, and then to buy in the market each article as it was needed, and so provide the ways and means of daily life. For this reason he was not liked by his sons when they grew up, nor did their wives find in him a liberal purveyor, but they murmured at his expenditure for the day merely and under the most exact restrictions, there being no surplus of supplies at all, as in a great house and under generous circumstances, but every outlay and every intake proceeding by count and measure. 5 His agent in securing all this great exactitude was a single servant, Evangelus, who was either gifted by nature or trained by Pericles so as to surpass everybody else in domestic economy.e

It is true that this conduct was not in accord with the wisdom of Anaxagoras, since that philosopher actually abandoned his house and left his land to lie fallow for sheep-grazing, owing to the lofty thoughts with which he was inspired. 6 But the life of a speculative philosopher is not the same thing, I think, as that of a statesman. The one exercises his intellect without the aid of instruments and independent of external matters for noble ends; whereas the other, inasmuch as he brings his superior excellence into close contact with the common needs of mankind, must sometimes find wealth not merely one of the necessities of life, but also one of its noble things, as was actually the case with Pericles, who gave aid to many poor men. 7 And, besides, they say that Anaxagoras himself, at a time when Pericles was absorbed in business, lay on his couch all neglected, in his old age, starving himself to death, his head already muffled for departure, and that when the matter came to the ears of Pericles, he was struck with dismay, and ran at once to the poor man, and besought him most fervently to live, bewailing not so much that great teacher’s lot as his own, were he now to be bereft of such a counsellor in the conduct of the state. Then Anaxagoras — so the story goes — unmuffled his head and said to him, “Pericles, even those who need a lamp pour oil therein.”

17 1 When the Lacedaemonians began to be annoyed by the increasing power of the Athenians, Pericles, by way of inciting the people to cherish yet loftier thoughts and to deem itself worthy of great achievements, introduced a bill to the effect that all Hellenes wheresoever resident in Europe or in Asia, small and large cities alike, should be invited to send deputies to a council at Athens. This was to deliberate concerning the Hellenic sanctuaries which the Barbarians had burned down, concerning the sacrifices which were due to the gods in the name of Hellas in fulfilment of vows made when they were fighting with the Barbarians, and concerning the sea, that all might sail it fearlessly and keep the peace. 2 To extend this invitation, twenty men, of such as were above fifty years of age, were sent out, five of whom invited the Ionians and Dorians in Asia and on the islands between Lesbos and Rhodes; five visited the regions on the Hellespont and in Thrace as far as Byzantium; five others were sent into Boeotia and Phocis and Peloponnesus, and from here by way of the Ozolian Locrians into the neighbouring continent as far as Acarnania and Ambracia; 3 while the rest proceeded through Euboea to the Oetaeans and the Maliac Gulf and the Phthiotic Achaeans and the Thessalians, urging them all to come and take part in the deliberations for the peace and common welfare of Hellas. But nothing was accomplished, nor did the cities come together by deputy, owing to the opposition of the Lacedaemonians, as it is said, since the effort met with its first check in Peloponnesus. I have cited this incident, however, to show forth the man’s disposition and the greatness of his thoughts.

163 18 1 In his capacity as general, he was famous above all things for his saving caution; he neither undertook of his own accord a battle involving much uncertainty or peril, nor did he envy and imitate those who took great risks, enjoyed brilliant good-fortune, and so were admired as great generals; and he was for ever saying to his fellow-citizens that, so far as lay in his power, they would remain alive forever and be immortals.

2 So when he saw that Tolmides, son of Tolmaeus, all on account of his previous good-fortune and of the exceeding great honour bestowed upon him for his wars, was getting ready, quite inopportunely, to make an incursion into Boeotia, and that he had persuaded the bravest and most ambitious men of military age to volunteer for the campaign, — as many as a thousand of them, aside from the rest of his forces, — he tried to restrain and dissuade him in the popular assembly, uttering then that well remembered saying, to wit, that if he would not listen to Pericles, he would yet do full well to wait for that wisest of all counsellors, Time. 3 This saying brought him only moderate repute at the time; but a few days afterwards, when word was brought that Tolmides himself was dead after defeat in battle near Coroneia, and that many brave citizens were dead likewise, then it brought Pericles great repute as well as goodwill, for that he was a man of discretion and patriotism.

19 1 Of all his expeditions, that to the Chersonesus was held in most loving remembrance, since it proved the salvation of the Hellenes who dwelt there. Not only did he bring thither a thousand Athenian colonists and stock the cities anew with vigorous manhood, but he also belted the neck of the isthmus with defensive bulwarks from sea to sea, and so intercepted the incursions of the Thracians who swarmed about the Chersonesus, 2 and shut out the perpetual and grievous war in which the country was all the time involved, in close touch as it was with neighbouring communities of Barbarians, and full to overflowing of robber bands whose haunts were on or within its borders. But he was admired and celebrated even amongst foreigners for his circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus, when he put to sea from Pegae in the Megarid with a hundred triremes. 3 He not only ravaged a great strip of seashore, as Tolmides had done before him, but also advanced far into the interior with the hoplites from his ships, and drove all his enemies inside their walls in terror at his approach, excepting only the Sicyonians, who made a stand against him in Nemea, and joined battle with him; these he routed by main force and set up a trophy for his victory. 4 Then from Achaea, which was friendly to him, he took soldiers on board his triremes, and proceeded with his armament to the opposite mainland, where he sailed up the Acheloüs, overran Acarnania, shut up the people of Oeniadae behind their walls, and after ravaging and devastating their territory, went off homewards, having shown himself formidable to his enemies, but a safe and efficient leader for his fellow-citizens. For nothing untoward befell, even as result of chance, those who took part in the expedition.

20 1 He also sailed into the Euxine Sea with a large and splendidly equipped armament. There he effected what the Greek cities desired, and dealt with them humanely, while to the neighbouring nations of Barbarians with their king and dynasts he displayed the magnitude of his forces and the fearless courage with which they sailed whithersoever they pleased and brought the whole sea under their own control. He also left with the banished Sinopians thirteen ships of war and soldiers under command of Lamachus to aid them against Timesileos.  When the tyrant and his adherents had been driven from the city, Pericles got a bill passed providing that six hundred volunteers of the Athenians should sail to Sinope and settle down there with the Sinopians, dividing up among themselves the houses and lands which the tyrant and his followers had formerly occupied.

But in other matters he did not accede to the vain impulses of the citizens, nor was he swept along with the tide when they were eager, from a sense of their great power and good fortune, 164 to lay hands again upon Egypt and molest the realms of the King which lay along the sea. 3 Many also were possessed already with that inordinate and inauspicious passion for Sicily which was afterwards kindled into flame by such orators as Alcibiades. And some there were who actually dreamed of Tuscany and Carthage, and that not without a measure of hope, in view of the magnitude of their present supremacy and the full-flowing tide of success in their undertakings.

21 1 But Pericles was ever trying to restrain this extravagance of theirs, to lop off their expansive meddlesomeness, and to divert the greatest part of their forces to the guarding and securing of what they had already won. He considered it a great achievement to hold the Lacedaemonians in check, and set himself in opposition to these in every way, as he showed, above all other things, by what he did in the Sacred War. 2 The Lacedaemonians made an expedition to Delphi while the Phocians had possession of the sanctuary there, and restored it to the Delphians; but no sooner had the Lacedaemonians departed than Pericles made a counter expedition and reinstated the Phocians. And whereas the Lacedaemonians had had the “promanteia,” or right of consulting the oracle in behalf of others also, which the Delphians had bestowed upon them, carved upon the forehead of the bronze wolf in the sanctuary, he secured from the Phocians this high privilege for the Athenians, and had it chiselled along the right side of the same wolf.

22 1 That he was right in seeking to confine the power of the Athenians within lesser Greece, was amply proved by what came to pass. To begin with, the Euboeans revolted, and he crossed over to the island with a hostile force. Then straightway word was brought to him that the Megarians had gone over to the enemy, and that an army of the enemy was on the confines of Attica under the leadership of Pleistoanax, the king of the Lacedaemonians. 2 Accordingly, Pericles brought his forces back with speed from Euboea for the war in Attica. He did not venture to join battle with hoplites who were so many, so brave, and so eager for battle, but seeing that Pleistoanax was a very young man, and that out of all his advisers he set most store by Cleandridas, whom the ephors had sent along with him, by reason of his youth, to be a guardian and an assistant to him, he secretly made trial of this man’s integrity, speedily corrupted him with bribes, and persuaded him to lead the Peloponnesians back out of Attica.

3 When the army had withdrawn and had been disbanded to their several cities, the Lacedaemonians, in indignation, laid a heavy fine upon their king, the full amount of which he was unable to pay, and so betook himself out of Lacedaemon, while Cleandridas, who had gone into voluntary exile, was condemned to death. He was the father of that Gylippus who overcame the Athenians in Sicily. And nature seems to have imparted covetousness to the son, as it were a congenital disease, owing to which he too, after noble achievements, was caught in base practices and banished from Sparta in disgrace. This story, however, I have told at length in my life of Lysander.

23 1 When Pericles, in rendering his accounts for this campaign, recorded an expenditure of ten talents as “for sundry needs,” the people approved it without officious meddling and without even investigating the mystery. But some writers, among whom is Theophrastus the philosopher, have stated that every year ten talents found their way to Sparta from Pericles, and that with these he conciliated all the officials there, and so staved off the war, not purchasing peace, but time, in which he could make preparations at his leisure and then carry on war all the better. 2 However that may be, he again turned his attention to the rebels, and after crossing to Euboea with fifty ships of war and five thousand hoplites, he subdued the cities there. Those of the Chalcidians who were styled Hippobotae, or Knights, and who were preëminent for wealth and reputation, he banished from their city, and all the Hestiaeans he removed from the country and settled Athenians in their places, 165 treating them, and them only, thus inexorably, because they had taken an Attic ship captive and slain its crew.

24 1 After this, when peace had been made for thirty years between the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians, he got a decree passed for his expedition to Samos, alleging against its people that, though they were ordered to break off their war against the Milesians, they were not complying.

Now, since it is thought that he proceeded thus against the Samians to gratify Aspasia, this may be a fitting place to raise the query what great art or power this woman had, that she managed as she pleased the foremost men of the state, and afforded the philosophers occasion to discuss her in exalted terms and at great length. 2 That she was a Milesian by birth, daughter of one Axiochus, is generally agreed; and they say that it was in emulation of Thargelia, an Ionian woman of ancient times, that she made her onslaughts upon the most influential men. This Thargelia came to be a great beauty and was endowed with grace of manners as well as clever wits. Inasmuch as she lived on terms of intimacy with numberless Greeks, and attached all her consorts to the king of Persia, she stealthily sowed the seeds of Persian sympathy in the cities of Greece by means of these lovers of hers, who were men of the greatest power and influence. 3 And so Aspasia, as some say, was held in high favour by Pericles because of her rare political wisdom. Socrates sometimes came to see her with his disciples, and his intimate friends brought their wives to her to hear her discourse, although she presided over a business that was anything but honest or even reputable, since she kept a house of young courtesans. 4 And Aeschines says that Lysicles the sheep-dealer, a man of low birth and nature, came to be the first man at Athens by living with Aspasia after the death of Pericles. And in the “Menexenus” of Plato, even though the first part of it be written in a sportive vein, there is, at any rate, thus much of fact, that the woman had the reputation of associating with many Athenians as a teacher of rhetoric. 5 However, the affection which Pericles had for Aspasia seems to have been rather of an amatory sort. For his own wife was near of kin to him, and had been wedded first to Hipponicus, to whom she bore Callias, surnamed the Rich; she bore also, as the wife of Pericles, Xanthippus and Paralus. After, since their married life was not agreeable, he legally bestowed her upon another man, with her own consent, and himself took Aspasia, and loved her exceedingly. 6 Twice a day, as they say, on going out and on coming in from the market-place, he would salute her with a loving kiss.

But in the comedies she is styled now the New Omphale, new Deianeira, and now Hera. Cratinus flatly called her a prostitute in these lines: —

“As his Hera, Aspasia was born, the child of Unnatural Lust,

A prostitute past shaming.”

And it appears also that he begat from her that bastard son about whom Eupolis, in his “Demes,” represented him as inquiring with these words: —

“And my bastard, doth he live?”

to which Myronides replies: —

“Yea, and long had been a man,

Had he not feared the mischief of his harlot-birth.”

7 So renowned and celebrated did Aspasia become, they say, that even Cyrus, the one who went to war with the Great King for the sovereignty of the Persians, gave the name of Aspasia to that one of his concubines whom he loved best, who before was called Milto. She was a Phocaean by birth, daughter of one Hermotimus, and, after Cyrus had fallen in battle, was carried captive to the King, and acquired the greatest influence with him. These things coming to my recollection as I write, it were perhaps unnatural to reject and pass them by.

25 1 But to return to the war against the Samians, they accuse Pericles of getting the decree for this passed at the request of Aspasia and in the special behalf of the Milesians. 166 For the two cities were waging their war for the possession of Priene, and the Samians were getting the better of it, and when the Athenians ordered them to stop the contest and submit the case to arbitration at Athens, they would not obey. So Pericles set sail and broke up the oligarchical government which Samos had, and then took fifty of the foremost men of the state, with as many of their children, as hostages, and sent them off to Lemnos. 2 And yet they say that every one of these hostages offered him a talent on his own account, and that the opponents of democracy in the city offered him many talents besides. And still further, Pissouthnes, the Persian satrap, who had much good-will towards the Samians, sent him ten thousand gold staters and interceded for the city. However, Pericles took none of these bribes, but treated the Samians just as he had determined, set up a democracy and sailed back to Athens. 3 Then the Samians at once revolted, after Pissouthnes had stolen away their hostages from Lemnos for them, and in other ways equipped them for the war. Once more, therefore, Pericles set sail against them. They were not victims of sloth, nor yet to abject terror, but full of exceeding zeal in their determination to contest the supremacy of the sea. In a fierce sea-fight which came off near an island called Tragia, Pericles won a brilliant victory, with four and forty ships outfighting seventy, twenty of which were infantry transports.

26 1 Close on the heels of his victorious pursuit came his seizure of the harbour, and then he laid formal siege to the Samians, who, somehow or other, still had the daring to sally forth and fight with him before their walls. But soon a second and a larger armament came from Athens, and the Samians were completely beleaguered and shut in. Then Pericles took sixty triremes and sailed out into the main sea, as most authorities say, because he wished to meet a fleet of Phoenician ships which was coming to the aid of the Samians, and fight it as great a distance from Samos as possible; but according to Stesimbrotus, because he had designs on Cyprus, which seems incredible. 2 But in any case, whichever design he cherished, he seems to have made a mistake. For no sooner had he sailed off than Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a philosopher who was then acting as general at Samos, despising either the small number of ships that were left, or the inexperience of the generals in charge of them, persuaded his fellow-citizens to make an attack upon the Athenians. In the battle that ensued the Samians were victorious, taking many of their enemy captive, and destroying many of their ships, so that they commanded the sea and laid in large store of such necessaries for the war as they did not have before. 3 And Aristotle says that Pericles was himself also defeated by Melissus in the sea-fight which preceded this.

The Samians retaliated upon the Athenians by branding their prisoners in the forehead with owls; for the Athenians had once branded some of them with the samaena. Now the samaena is a ship of war with a boar’s head design for prow and ram, but more capacious than usual and paunchlike, so that it is a good deep-sea traveller and a swift sailer too. 4 It got this name because it made its first appearance in Samos, where Polycrates the tyrant had some built. To these brand-marks, they say, the verse of Aristophanes made riddling reference: —

“For oh! how lettered is the folk of the Samians!”

27 1 Be that true or not, when Pericles learned of the disaster which had befallen his fleet, he came speedily to its aid. And though Melissus arrayed his forces against him, he conquered and routed the enemy and at once walled their city in, preferring to get the upper hand and capture it at the price of money and time, rather than of the wounds and deadly perils of his fellow-citizens. 2 And since it was a hard task for him to restrain the Athenians in their impatience of delay and eagerness to fight, he separated his whole force into eight divisions, had them draw lots, and allowed the division which got the white bean to feast and take their ease, while the others did the fighting. And this is the reason, as they say, why those who have had a gay and festive time call it a “white day,” — from the white bean.

1673 Ephorus says that Pericles actually employed siege-engines, in his admiration of their novelty, and that Artemon the engineer was with him there, who, since he was lame, and so had to be brought on a stretcher to the works which demanded his instant attention, was dubbed Periphoretus. Heracleides Ponticus, however, refutes this story out of the poems of Anacreon, in which Artemon Periphoretus is mentioned many generations before the Samian War and its events. 4 And he says that Artemon was very luxurious in his life, as well as weak and panic-stricken in the presence of his fears, and therefore for the most part sat still at home, while two servants held a bronze shield over his head to keep anything from falling down upon it. Whenever he was forced to go abroad, he had himself carried in a little hammock which was borne along just above the surface of the ground. On this account he was called Periphoretus.

28 1 After eight months the Samians surrendered, and Pericles tore down their walls, took away their ships of war, and laid a heavy fine upon them, part of which they paid at once, and part they agreed to pay at a fixed time, giving hostages therefor. To these details Duris the Samian adds stuff for tragedy, accusing the Athenians and Pericles of great brutality, which is recorded neither by Thucydides, nor Ephorus, nor Aristotle. 2 But he appears not to speak the truth when he says, forsooth, that Pericles had the Samian trierarchs and marines brought into the market-place of Miletus and crucified there, and that then, when they had already suffered grievously for ten days, he gave orders to break their heads in with clubs and make an end of them, and then cast their bodies forth without burial rites. 3 At all events, since it is not the wont of Duris, even in cases where he has no private and personal interest, to hold his narrative down to the fundamental truth, it is all the more likely that here, in this instance, he has given a dreadful portrayal of the calamities of his country, that he might calumniate the Athenians.

When Pericles, after his subjection of Samos, had returned to Athens, he gave honourable burial to those who had fallen in the war, and for the oration which he made, according to the custom, over their tombs, he won the greatest admiration. 4 But as he came down from the bema, while the rest of the women clasped his hand and fastened wreaths and fillets on his head, as though he were some victorious athlete, Elpinice drew nigh and said: “This is admirable in thee, Pericles, and deserving of wreaths, in that thou hast lost us many brave citizens, not in a war with Phoenicians or Medes, like my brother Cimon, but in the subversion of an allied and kindred city.” 5 On Elpinice’s saying this, Pericles, with a quiet smile, it is said, quoted to her the verse of Archilochus: —

“Thou hadst not else, in spite of years, perfumed thyself.”

Ion says that he had the most astonishingly great thoughts of himself for having subjected the Samians; whereas Agamemnon was all of ten years in taking a barbarian city, he had in nine months time reduced the foremost and most powerful people of Ionia. 6 And indeed his estimate of himself was not unjust, nay, the war actually brought with it much uncertainty and great peril, if indeed, as Thucydides says, the city of Samos came within a very little of stripping from Athens her power on the sea.

29 1 After this, when the billows of the Peloponnesian War were already rising and swelling, he persuaded the people to send aid and succour to the Corcyraeans in their war with the Corinthians, and so to attach to themselves an island with a vigorous naval power at a time when the Peloponnesians were as good as actually at war with them. 2 But when the people had voted to send the aid and succour, he despatched Lacedaemonius, the son of Cimon, with only ten ships, as it were in mockery of him. Now there was much good-will and friendship on the part of the house of Cimon towards the Lacedaemonians. In order, therefore, 168 that in case no great or conspicuous achievement should be performed under the generalship of Lacedaemonius, he might so be all the more calumniated for his laconism, or sympathy with Sparta, Pericles gave him only a few ships, and sent him forth against his will. 3 And in general he was prone to thwart and check the sons of Cimon, on the plea that not even in their names were they genuinely native, but rather aliens and strangers, since one of them bore the name of Lacedaemonius, another that of Thessalus, and a third that of Eleius. And they were all held to be the sons of a woman of Arcadia.

Accordingly, being harshly criticised because of these paltry ten ships, on the ground that he had furnished scanty aid and succour to the needy friends of Athens, but a great pretext for war to her accusing enemies, he afterwards sent out other ships, and more of them, to Corcyra, — the ones which got there after the battle.

4 The Corinthians were incensed at this procedure, and denounced the Athenians at Sparta, and were joined by the Megarians, who brought their complaint that from every market-place and from all the harbours over which the Athenians had control, they were excluded and driven away, contrary to the common law and the formal oaths of the Greeks; the Aeginetans also, deeming themselves wronged and outraged, kept up a secret wailing in the ears of the Lacedaemonians, since they had not the courage to accuse the Athenians openly. At this juncture Potidaea, too, a city that was subject to Athens, although a colony of Corinth, revolted, and the siege laid to her hastened on the war all the more.

5 Notwithstanding all, since embassies were repeatedly sent to Athens, and since Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, tried to bring to a peaceful settlement most of the accusations of his allies and to soften their anger, it does not seem probable that the war would have come upon the Athenians for any remaining reasons, if only they could have been persuaded to rescind their decree against the Megarians and be reconciled with them. And therefore, since it was Pericles who was most of all opposed to this, and who incited the people to abide by their contention with the Megarians, he alone was held responsible for the war.

30 1 They say that when an embassy had come from Lacedaemon to Athens to treat of these matters, and Pericles was shielding himself behind the plea that a certain law prevented his taking down the tablet on which the decree was inscribed, Polyalces, one of the ambassadors, cried: “Well then, don’t take it down, but turn the tablet to the wall; surely there’s no law preventing that.” Clever as the proposal was, however, not one whit the more did Pericles give in. 2 He must have secretly cherished, then, as it seems, some private grudge against the Megarians; but by way of public and open charge he accused them of appropriating to their own profane uses the sacred territory of Eleusis, and proposed a decree that a herald be sent to them, the same to go also to the Lacedaemonians with a denunciation of the Megarians. 3 This decree, at any rate, is the work of Pericles, and aims at a reasonable and humane justification of his course. But after the herald who was sent, Anthemocritus, had been put to death through the agency of the Megarians, as it was believed, Charinus proposed a decree against them, to the effect that there be irreconcilable and implacable enmity on the part of Athens towards them, and that whosoever of the Megarians should set foot on the soil of Attica be punished with death; and that the generals, whenever they should take their ancestral oath of office, add to their oath this clause, that they would invade the Megarid twice during each succeeding year; and that Anthemocritus be buried honourably at the Thriasian gates, which are now called the Dipylum.

4 But the Megarians denied the murder of Anthemocritus, and threw the blame for Athenian hate on Aspasia and Pericles, appealing to those far-famed and hackneyed versicles of the “Acharnians”: —

“Simaetha, harlot, one of Megara’s womankind,

Was stolen by gilded youths more drunk than otherwise;

And so Megarians, pangs of wrath all reeking hot,

Paid back the theft and raped of Aspasia’s harlots two.”

169 31 1 Well, then, whatever the original ground for enacting the decree, — and it is no easy matter to determine this, — the fact that it was not rescinded all men alike lay to the charge of Pericles. Only, some say that he persisted in his refusal in a lofty spirit and with a clear perception of the best interests of the city, regarding the injunction laid upon it as a test of its submissiveness, and its compliance as a confession of weakness; while others hold that it was rather with a sort of arrogance and love of strife, as well as for the display of his power, that he scornfully defied the Lacedaemonians.

2 But the worst charge of all, and yet the one which has the most vouchers, runs something like this. Pheidias the sculptor was contractor for the great statue, as I have said, and being admitted to the friendship of Pericles, and acquiring the greatest influence with him, made some enemies through the jealousy which he excited; others also made use of him to test the people and see what sort of a judge it would be in a case where Pericles was involved. These latter persuaded one Menon, an assistant of Pheidias, to take a suppliant’s seat in the market-place and demand immunity for punishment in case he should bring information and accusation against Pheidias. 3 The people accepted the man’s proposal, and formal prosecution of Pheidias was made in the assembly. Embezzlement, indeed, was not proven, for the gold of the statue, from the very start, had been so wrought upon and cast about it by Pheidias, at the wise suggestion of Pericles, that it could all be taken off and weighed, and this is what Pericles actually ordered the accusers of Pheidias to do at this time.

4 But the reputation of his works nevertheless brought a burden of jealous hatred upon Pheidias, and especially the fact that when he wrought the battle of the Amazons on the shield of the goddess, he carved out a figure that suggested himself as a bald old man lifting on high a stone with both hands, and also inserted a very fine likeness of Pericles fighting with an Amazon. And the attitude of the hand, which holds out a spear in front of the face of Pericles, is cunningly contrived as it were with a desire to conceal the resemblance, which is, however, plain to be seen from either side.

5 Pheidias, accordingly, was led away to prison, and died there of sickness; but some say of poison which the enemies of Pericles provided, that they might bring calumny upon him. And to Menon the informer, on motion of Glycon, the people gave immunity from taxation, and enjoined upon the generals to make provision for the man’s safety.

32 1 About this time also Aspasia was put on trial for impiety, Hermippus the comic poet being her prosecutor, who alleged further against her that she received free-born women into a place of assignation for Pericles. And Diopeithes brought in a bill providing for the public impeachment of such as did not believe in the gods, or who taught doctrines regarding the heavens, directing suspicion against Pericles by means of Anaxagoras. 2 The people accepted with delight these slanders, and so, while they were in this mood, a bill was passed, on motion of Dracontides, that Pericles should deposit his accounts of public moneys with the prytanes, and that the jurors should decide upon his case with ballots which had lain upon the altar of the goddess on the acropolis. But Hagnon amended this clause of the bill with the motion that the case be tried before fifteen hundred jurors in the ordinary way, whether one wanted to call it a prosecution for embezzlement and bribery, or malversation.

3 Well, then, Aspasia he begged off, by shedding copious tears at the trial, as Aeschines says, and by entreating the jurors; and he feared for Anaxagoras so much that he sent him away from the city. And since in the case of Pheidias he had come into collision with the people, he feared a jury in his own case, and so kindled into flame the threatening and smouldering war, hoping thereby to dissipate the charges made against him and allay the people’s jealousy, inasmuch as when great undertakings were on foot, and great perils threatened, the city entrusted herself to him and to him alone, by reason of his worth and power. 170 Such, then, are the reasons which are alleged for his not suffering the people to yield to the Lacedaemonians; but the truth about it is not clear.

33 1 The Lacedaemonians, perceiving that if he were deposed they would find the Athenians more pliant in their hands, ordered them to drive out the Cylonian pollution, in which the family of Pericles on his mother’s side was involved, as Thucydides states. But the attempt brought a result the opposite of what its makers designed, for in place of suspicion and slander, Pericles won even greater confidence and honour among the citizens than before, because they saw that their enemies hated and feared him above all other men. 2 Therefore also, before Archidamus invaded Attica with the Peloponnesians, Pericles made public proclamation to the Athenians, that in case Archidamus, while ravaging everything else, should spare his estates, either out of regard for the friendly tie that existed between them, or with an eye to affording his enemies grounds for slander, he would make over to the city his lands and the homesteads thereon.

3 Accordingly, the Lacedaemonians and their allies invaded Attica with a great host under the leadership of Archidamus the king. And they advanced, ravaging the country as they went, as far as Acharnae, where they encamped, supposing that the Athenians would not tolerate it, but would fight with them out of angry pride. 4 Pericles, however, looked upon it as a terrible thing to join battle with sixty thousand Peloponnesian and Boeotian hoplites (those who made the first invasion were as numerous as that), and stake the city itself upon the issue. So he tried to calm down those who were eager to fight, and who were in distress at what the enemy was doing, by saying that trees, though cut and lopped, grew quickly, but if men were destroyed it was not easy to get them again. 5 And he would not call the people together into an assembly, fearing that he would be constrained against his better judgement, but, like the helmsman of a ship, who, when a stormy wind swoops down upon it in the open sea, makes all fast, takes in sail, and exercises his skill, disregarding the tears and entreaties of the sea-sick and timorous passengers, so he shut the city up tight, put all parts of it under safe garrison, and exercised his own judgement, little heeding the brawlers and malcontents. 6 And yet many of his friends beset him with entreaties, and many of his enemies with threats and denunciations, and choruses sang songs of scurrilous mockery, railing at his generalship for its cowardice, and its abandonment of everything to the enemy. Cleon, too, was already harassing him, taking advantage of the wrath with which the citizens regarded him to make his own way toward the leadership of the people, 7 as these anapaestic verses of Hermippus show: —

“Thou king of the Satyrs, why pray wilt thou not

Take the spear for thy weapon, and stop the dire talk

With the which, until now, thou conductest the war,

While the soul of a Teles is in thee?

If the tiniest knife is but laid on the stone

To give it an edge, thou gnashest thy teeth,

As if bitten by fiery Cleon.”

34 1 However, Pericles was moved by no such things, but gently and silently underwent the ignominy and the hatred, and, sending out an armament of a hundred ships against the Peloponnesus, did not himself sail with it, but remained behind, keeping the city under watch and ward and well in hand, until the Peloponnesians withdrew. Then, by way of soothing the multitude, who, in spite of their enemies’ departure, were distressed over the war, he won their favour by distributions of moneys and proposed allotments of conquered lands; the Aeginetans, for instance, he drove out entirely, and parcelled out their island among the Athenians by lot. And some consolation was to be had from what their enemies suffered. 2 For the expedition around the Peloponnesus ravaged much territory and sacked villages and small cities, while Pericles himself, by land, invaded the Megarid and razed it all. 171 Wherein it was also evident that though their enemies did the Athenians much harm by land, they suffered much too at their hands by sea, and therefore would not have protracted the war to such a length, but would have speedily given up, just as Pericles prophesied in the beginning, had not a terrible visitation from heaven thwarted human calculations.

3 As it was, in the first place, a pestilential destruction fell upon them and devoured clean the prime of their youth and power. It weakened them in body and in spirit, and made them altogether wild against Pericles, so that, for all the world as the mad will attack a physician or a father, so they, in the delirium of the plague, attempted to do him harm, persuaded thereto by his enemies. 4 These urged that the plague was caused by the crowding of the rustic multitudes together into the city, where, in the summer season, many were huddled together in small dwellings and stifling barracks, and compelled to lead a stay-at home and inactive life, instead of being in the pure and open air of heaven as they were wont. They said that Pericles was responsible for this, who, because of the war, had poured the rabble from the country into the walled city, and then gave that mass of men no employment whatever, but suffered them, thus penned up like cattle, to fill one another full of corruption, and provided them no change or respite.

35 1 Desiring to heal these evils, and at the same time to inflict some annoyance upon the enemy, he manned a hundred and fifty ships of war, and, after embarking many brave hoplites and horsemen, was on the point of putting out to sea, affording great hope to the citizens, and no less fear to the enemy in consequence of so great a force. But when the ships were already manned, and Pericles had gone aboard his own trireme, it chanced that the sun was eclipsedf and darkness came on, and all were thoroughly frightened, looking upon it as a great portent. 2 Accordingly, seeing that his steersman was timorous and utterly perplexed, held up his cloak before the man’s eyes, and, thus covering them, asked him if he thought it anything dreadful, or portentous of anything dreadful. “No,” said the steersman. “How then,” said Pericles, “is yonder event different from this, except that it is something rather larger than my cloak which has caused the obscurity?” At any rate, this tale is told in the schools of philosophy.

3 Well, then, on sailing forth, Pericles seems to have accomplished nothing worthy of his preparations, but after laying siege to sacred Epidaurus, which awakened a hope that it might be captured, he had no such good fortune, because of the plague. Its fierce onset destroyed not only the Athenians themselves, but also those who, in any manner soever, had dealings with their forces. 4 The Athenians being exasperated against him on this account, he tried to appease and encourage them. He did not, however, succeed in allaying their wrath, nor yet in changing their purposes, before they got their hostile ballots into their hands, became masters of his fate, stripped him of his command, and punished him with a fine. The amount of this was fifteen talents, according to those who give the lowest, and fifty, according to those who give the highest figures. The public prosecutor mentioned in the records of the case was Cleon, as Idomeneus says, but according to Theophrastus it was Simmias, and Heracleides Ponticus mentions Lacratides.

36 1 So much, then, for his public troubles; they were likely soon to cease, now that the multitude had stung him, as it were, and left their passion with their sting; but his domestic affairs were in a sorry plight, since he had lost not a few of his intimate friends during the pestilence, and had for some time been rent and torn by a family feud. The eldest of his legitimate sons, Xanthippus, who was naturally prodigal, and had married a young and extravagant wife, the daughter of Tisander, the son of Epilycus, was much displeased at his father’s exactitude in making him but a meagre allowance, and that a little at a time. 1722 Accordingly, he sent to one of his father’s friends and got money, pretending that Pericles bade him do it. When the friend afterwards demanded repayment of the loan, Pericles not only refused it, but brought suit against him to boot. So the young fellow, Xanthippus, incensed at this, fell to abusing his father, publishing abroad, to make men laugh, his conduct of affairs at home, and the discourses which he held with the sophists. 3 For instance, a certain athlete had hit Epitimus the Pharsalian with a javelin, accidentally, and killed him, and Pericles, Xanthippus said, squandered an entire day discussing with Protagoras whether it was the javelin, or rather the one who hurled it, or the judges of the contests, that “in the strictest sense” ought to be held responsible for the disaster. Besides all this, the slanderous charge concerning his own wife Stesimbrotus says was sown abroad in public by Xanthippus himself, and also that the quarrel which the young man had with his father remained utterly incurable up to the time of his death, — for Xanthippus fell sick and died during the plague.

4 Pericles lost his sister also at that time, and of his relatives and friends the largest part, and those who were most serviceable to him in his administration of the city. He did not, however, give up, nor yet abandon his loftiness and grandeur of spirit because of his calamities, nay, he was not even seen to weep, either at the funeral rites, or at the grave of any of his connections, until indeed he lost the very last remaining one of his own legitimate sons, Paralus. 5 Even though he was bowed down at this stroke, he nevertheless tried to persevere in his habit and maintain his spiritual greatness, but as he laid a wreath upon the dead, he was vanquished by his anguish at the sight, so that he broke out into wailing, and shed a multitude of tears, although he had never done any such thing in all his life before.

37 1 The city made trial of its other generals and counsellors for the conduct of the war, but since no one appeared to have weight that was adequate or authority that was competent for such leadership, it yearned for Pericles, and summoned him back to the bema and the war-office. He was lying dejectedly at home because of his sorrow, but was persuaded by Alcibiades and his other friends to resume his public life. 2 When the people had apologized for their thankless treatment of him, and he had undertaken again the conduct of the state, and been elected general, he asked for a suspension of the law concerning children born out of wedlock, — a law which he himself had formerly introduced, — in order that the name and lineage of his house might not altogether expire through lack of succession.

3 The circumstances of this law were as follows. Many years before this, when Pericles was at the height of his political career and had sons born in wedlock, as I have said, he proposed a law that only those should be reckoned Athenians whose parents on both sides were Athenians. And so when the king of Egypt sent a present to the people of forty thousand measures of grain, and this had to be divided up among the citizens, there was a great crop of prosecutions against citizens of illegal birth by the law of Pericles, who had up to that time escaped notice and been overlooked, and many of them also suffered at the hands of informers. 4 As a result, a little less than five thousand were convicted and sold into slavery, and those who retained their citizenship and were adjudged to be Athenians were found, as a result of this scrutiny, to be fourteen thousand and forty in number. 5 It was, accordingly, a grave matter, that the law which had been rigorously enforced against so many should now be suspended by the very man who had introduced it, and yet the calamities which Pericles was then suffering in his family life, regarded as a kind of penalty which he had paid for his arrogance and haughtiness of old, broke down the objections of the Athenians. They thought that what he suffered was by way of retribution, and that what he asked became a man to ask and men to grant, and so they suffered him to enroll his illegitimate son in the phratry-lists and to give him his own name. This was the son who afterwards conquered the Peloponnesians in a naval battle at the Arginusae islands, and was put to death by the people along with his fellow-generals.

173 38 1 At this time, it would seem, the plague laid hold of Pericles, not with a violent attack, as in the case of others, nor acute, but one which, with a kind of sluggish distemper that prolonged itself through varying changes, used up his body slowly and undermined the loftiness of his spirit. 2 Certain it is that Theophrastus, in his “Ethics,” querying whether one’s character follows the bent of one’s fortunes and is forced by bodily sufferings to abandon its high excellence, records this fact, that Pericles, as he lay sick, showed one of his friends who was come to see him an amulet that the women had hung round his neck, as much as to say that he was very badly off to put up with such folly as that.

3 Being now near his end, the best of the citizens and those of his friends who survived were sitting around him holding discourse of his excellence and power, how great they had been, and estimating all his achievements and the number of his trophies, — there were nine of these which he had set up as the city’s victorious general. 4 This discourse they were holding with one another, supposing that he no longer understood them but had lost consciousness. He had been attending to it all, however, and speaking out among them said he was amazed at their praising and commemorating that in him which was due as much to fortune as to himself, and which had fallen to the lot of many generals besides, instead of mentioning his fairest and greatest title to their admiration; “for,” said he, “no living Athenian ever put on mourning because of me.”

39 1 So, then, the man is to be admired not only for his reasonableness and the gentleness which he maintained in the midst of many responsibilities and great enmities, but also for his loftiness of spirit, seeing that he regarded it as the noblest of all his titles to honour that he had never gratified his envy or his passion in the exercise of his vast power, nor treated any one of his foes as a foe incurable. 2 And it seems to me that his otherwise puerile and pompous surname is rendered unobjectionable and becoming by this one circumstance, that it was so gracious a nature and a life so pure and undefiled in the exercise of sovereign power which were called Olympian, inasmuch as we do firmly hold that the divine rulers and kings of the universe are capable only of good, and incapable of evil. 3 In this we are not like the poets, who confuse us with their ignorant fancies, and are convicted of inconsistency by their own stories, since they declare that the place where they say the gods dwell is a secure abode and tranquil, without experience of winds and clouds, but gleaming through all the unbroken time with the soft radiance of purest light, — implying that some such a manner of existence is most becoming to the blessed immortal; and yet they represent the gods themselves as full of malice and hatred and wrath and other passions which ill become even men of any sense. But this, perhaps, will be thought matter for discussion elsewhere.

4 The progress of events wrought in the Athenians a swift appreciation of Pericles and a keen sense of his loss. For those who, while he lived, were oppressed by a sense of his power and felt that it kept them in obscurity, straightway on his removal made trial of other orators and popular leaders, only to be led to the confession that a character more moderate than his in its solemn dignity, and more august in its gentleness, had not been created. 5 That objectionable power of his, which they had used to call monarchy and tyranny, seemed to them now to have been a saving bulwark of the constitution, so greatly was the state afflicted by the corruption and manifold baseness which he had kept weak and grovelling, thereby covering it out of sight and preventing it from becoming incurably powerful.

Fabius Maximus

1 1 Such were the memorable things in the career of Pericles, as we have received them, and now let us change the course of our narrative and tell of Fabius. It was a nymph, they say, or a woman native to the country, according to others, who consorted with Hercules by the river Tiber, and became by him the mother of Fabius, the founder of the family of the Fabii, which was a large one, and of high repute in Rome. 2 But some writers state that the first members of the family were called Fodii in ancient times, from their practice of taking wild beasts in pitfalls. For down to the present time “fossae” is the Latin for ditches, and “fodere” for to dig. In course of time, by a change of two letters, they were called Fabii. This family produced many great men, and from Rullus, the greatest of them, and on this account called Maximus by the Romans, the Fabius Maximus of whom we now write was fourth in descent.

3 He had the surname of Verrucosus from a physical peculiarity, namely, a small wart growing above his lip: and that of Ovicula, which signifies Lambkin, was given him because of the gentleness and gravity of his nature when he was yet a child. Indeed, the calmness and silence of his demeanour, the great caution with which he indulged in childish pleasures, the slowness and difficulty with which he learned his lessons, and his contented submissiveness in dealing with his comrades, led those who knew him superficially to suspect him of something like foolishness and stupidity. Only a few discerned the inexorable firmness in the depth of his soul, and the magnanimous and leonine qualities of his nature. 4 But soon, as time went on and he was roused by the demands of active life, he made it clear even to the multitude that his seeming lack of energy was only lack of passion, that his caution was prudence, and that his never being quick nor even easy to move made him always steadfast and sure. He saw that the conduct of the state was a great task, and that wars must be many; he therefore trained his body for the wars (nature’s own armour, as it were), and his speech as an instrument of persuasion with the people, giving it a form right well befitting his manner of life. 5 For it had no affectation, nor any empty, forensic grace, but an import of peculiar dignity, rendered weighty by an abundance of maxims. These, they say, most resembled those which Thucydides employs. And a speech of his is actually preserved, which was pronounced by him before the people in eulogy of his son, who died consul.

2 1 The first of the five consulships in which he served brought him the honour of a triumph over the Ligurians. These were defeated by him in battle, with heavy loss, and retired into the Alps, where they ceased plundering and harrying the parts of Italy next to them. 2 But Hannibal now burst into Italy, and was at first victorious in battle at the river Trebia. Then he marched through Tuscany, ravaging the country, and smote Rome with dire consternation and fear. Signs and portents occurred, some familiar to the Romans, like peals of thunder, others wholly strange and quite extraordinary. 3 For instance, it was said that shields sweated blood, that ears of corn were cut at Antium with blood upon them, that blazing, fiery stones fell from on high, and that the people of Falerii saw the heavens open and many tablets fall down and scatter themselves abroad, and that on one of these was written in letters plain to see, “Mars now brandisheth his weapons.” 4 The consul, Gaius Flaminius, was daunted by none of these things, for he was a man of a fiery and ambitious nature, and besides, he was elated by great successes which he had won before this, in a manner contrary to all expectation. He had, namely, although the senate dissented from his plan, and his colleague violently opposed it, joined battle with the Gauls and defeated them. Fabius also was less disturbed by the signs and portents, because he thought it would be absurd, although they had great effect upon many. 5 But when he learned how few in number the enemy were, and how great was their lack of resources, he exhorted the Romans to bide their time, and not to give battle to a man who wielded an army trained by many contests for this very issue, but to send aid to their allies, to keep their subject cities well in hand, and to suffer the culminating vigour of Hannibal to sink and expire of itself, like a flame that flares up from scant and slight material.

3 1 Flaminius, however, was not persuaded, but declared that he would not suffer the war to be brought near Rome, and that he would not, like Camillus of old, fight in the city for the city’s defence. Accordingly, he ordered the tribunes to lead the army forth. But as Flaminius himself sprang upon his horse, for no apparent reason, and unaccountably, the animal was seized with quivering fright, and he was thrown and fell head foremost to the ground. Nevertheless, he in no wise desisted from his purpose, but since he had set out at the beginning to face Hannibal, drew up his forces near the lake called Thrasymené, in Tuscany.a

2 When the soldiers of both armies had engaged, at the very crisis of the battle, an earthquake occurred, by which cities were overthrown, rivers diverted from their channels, and fragments of cliffs torn away. And yet, although the disaster was so violent, no one of the combatants noticed it at all. 3 Flaminius himself, then, while displaying many deeds of daring and prowess, fell, and round about him the flower of his army. The rest were routed with much slaughter. Fifteen thousand were cut to pieces, and as many more taken prisoners. The body of Flaminius, to which Hannibal was eager to give honourable burial because of his valour, could not be found among the dead, but disappeared, no one ever knowing how.

4 Now of the defeat sustained at the Trebia, neither the general who wrote nor the messenger who was sent with the tidings gave a straightforward account, the victory being falsely declared uncertain and doubtful; but as soon as Pomponius the praetor heard of this second defeat, he called an assembly of the people, faced it, and without roundabout or deceptive phrases, but in downright fashion, said: “Men of Rome, we have been beaten in a great battle; our army has been cut to pieces; our consul, Flaminius, is dead. Take ye therefore counsel for your own salvation and safety.” 5 This speech of his fell like a tempest upon the great sea of people before him, and threw the city into commotion, nor could deliberate reasoning hold its own and stay the general consternation. But all were brought at last to be of one mind, namely, that the situation demanded a sole and absolute authority, which they call a dictatorship, and a man who would wield this authority with energy and without fear; 6 that Fabius Maximus, and he alone, was such a man, having a spirit and a dignity of hand that fully matched the greatness of the office, and being moreover at the time of life when bodily vigour still suffices to carry out the counsels of the mind, and courage is tempered with prudence.

4 1 Accordingly, this course was adopted, and Fabius was appointed dictator. He himself appointed Marcus Minucius to be his Master of Horse, and then at once asked permission of the senate to use a horse himself when in the field. For this was not his right, but was forbidden by an ancient law, either because the Romans placed their greatest strength in their infantry, and for this reason thought that their command ought to be with the phalanx and not leave it; or because they wished, since the power of the office in all other respects is as great as that of a tyrant, that in this point at least the dictator should be plainly dependent on the people. 2 However, Fabius himself was minded to show forth at once the magnitude and grandeur of his office, that the citizens might be more submissive and obedient to his commands. He therefore appeared in public attended by a united band of twenty-four lictors with their fasces, and when the remaining consul was coming to meet him, sent his adjutant to him with orders to dismiss his lictors, lay aside the insignia of his office, and meet him as a private person.

3 After this, he began with the gods, which is the fairest of all beginnings, and showed the people that the recent disaster was due to the neglect and scorn with which their general had treated religious rites, and not to the cowardice of those who fought under him. He thus induced them, instead of fearing their enemies, to propitiate and honour the gods. It was not that he filled them with superstition, but rather that he emboldened their valour with piety, allaying and removing the fear which their enemies inspired, with hopes of aid from the gods. 4 At this time, moreover, many of the so called Sibylline books, containing secrets of service to the state, were consulted, and it is said that some of the oracular sayings therein preserved corresponded with the fortunes and events of the time. What was thus ascertained, however, could not be made public, but the dictator, in the presence of all the people, vowed to sacrifice to the gods an entire year’s increase in goats, swine, sheep, and cattle, that is, all that Italy’s mountains, plains, rivers, and meadows should breed in the coming spring. He likewise vowed to celebrate a musical and dramatic festival in honour of the gods, which should cost three hundred and thirty-three sestertia, plus three hundred and thirty-three denarii, plus one third of a denarius. 5 This sum, in Greek money, amounts to eighty-three thousand five hundred and eighty-three drachmas, plus two obols. Now the reason for the exact prescription of this particular number is hard to give, unless it was thereby desired to laud the power of the number three, as being a perfect number by nature, the first of odd numbers, the beginning of quantity, and as containing in itself the first differences and the elements of every number mingled and blended together.

5 1 By thus fixing the thoughts of the people upon their relations with Heaven, Fabius made them more cheerful regarding the future. But he himself put all his hopes of victory in himself, believing that Heaven bestowed success by reason of wisdom and valour, and turned his attentions to Hannibal. He did not purpose to fight out the issue with him, but wished, having plenty of time, money, and men, to wear out and consume gradually his culminating vigour, his scanty resources, and his small army. 2 Therefore, always pitching his camp in hilly regions so as to be out of reach of the enemy’s cavalry, he hung threateningly over them. If they sat still, he too kept quiet; but if they moved, he would fetch a circuit down from the heights and show himself just far enough away to avoid being forced to fight against his will, and yet near enough to make his very delays inspire the enemy with the fear that he was going to give battle at last. But for merely consuming time in this way he was generally despised by his countrymen, and roundly abused even in his own camp. Much more did his enemies think him a man of no courage and a mere nobody, — all except Hannibal. 3 He, and he alone, comprehended the cleverness of his antagonist, and the style of warfare which he had adopted. He therefore made up his mind that by every possible device and constraint his foe must be induced to fight, or else the Carthaginians were undone, since they were unable to use their weapons, in which they were superior, but were slowly losing and expending to no purpose their men and moneys, in which they were inferior. He therefore resorted to every species of strategic trick and artifice, and tried them all, seeking, like a clever athlete, to get a hold upon his adversary. Now he would attack Fabius directly, now he would seek to throw his forces into confusion, now he would try to lead him off every whither, in his desire to divorce him from his safe, defensive plans.

4 But the purpose of Fabius, confident of a favourable issue, remained consistent and unchangeable. He was annoyed, however, by his Master of Horse, Minucius, who was eager to fight all out of season, and over bold, and who sought to win a following in the army, which he filled with mad impetuosity and empty hopes. The soldiers railed at Fabius and scornfully called him Hannibal’s pedagogue; but Minucius they considered a great man, and a general worthy of Rome. 5 All the more therefore did he indulge his arrogance and boldness, and scoffed at their encampments on the heights, where, as he said, the dictator was always arranging beautiful theatres for their spectacle of Italy laid waste with fire and sword. And he would ask the friends of Fabius whether he was taking his army up into heaven, having lost all hope of earth, or whether he wrapped himself in clouds and mists merely to run away from the enemy. 6 When his friends reported this to Fabius, and advised him to do away with the opprobrium by risking battle, “In that case, surely,” said he, “I should be a greater coward than I am now held to be, if through fear of abusive jests I should abandon my fixed plans. And verily the fear which one exercises in behalf of his country is not shameful; but to be frightened from one’s course by the opinions of men, and by their slanderous censures, that marks a man unworthy of so high an office as this, who makes himself the slave of the fools over whom he is in duty bound to be lord and master.”

6 1 After this, Hannibal fell into a grievous error. He wished to draw his army off some distance beyond Fabius, and occupy plains affording pasturage. He therefore ordered his native guides to conduct him, immediately after supper, into the district of Casinum. But they did not hear the name correctly, owing to his foreign way of pronouncing it, and promptly hurried his forces to the edge of Campania, into the city and district of Casilinum, through the midst of which flows a dividing river, called Vulturnus by the Romans. 2 The region is otherwise encompassed by mountains, but a narrow defile opens out towards the sea, in the vicinity of which it becomes marshy, from the overflow of the river, has high sand-heaps, and terminates in a beach where there is no anchorage because of the dashing waves. While Hannibal was descending into this valley, Fabius, taking advantage of his acquaintance with the ways, marched round him, and blocked up the narrow outlet with a detachment of four thousand heavy infantry. The rest of his army he posted to advantage on the remaining heights, while with the lightest and readiest of his troops he fell upon the enemy’s rear-guard, threw their whole army into confusion, and slew about eight hundred of them. 3 Hannibal now perceived the mistake in his position, and its peril, and crucified the native guides who were responsible for it. He wished to effect a retreat, but despaired of dislodging his enemies by direct attack from the passes of which they were masters. All his men, moreover, were disheartened and fearful, thinking that they were surrounded on all sides by difficulties from which there was no escape. He therefore determined to cheat his enemies by a trick, the nature of which was as follows.

4 He gave orders to take about two thousand of the cattle which they had captured, fasten to each of their horns a torch consisting of a bundle of withes or faggots, and then, in the night, at a given signal, to light the torches and drive the cattle towards the passes, along the defiles guarded by the enemy. As soon as his orders had been obeyed, he decamped with the rest of his army, in the darkness which had now come, and led it slowly along. 5 The cattle, as long as the fire was slight, and consumed only the wood, went on quietly, as they were driven, towards the slopes of the mountains, and the shepherds and herdsmen who looked down from the heights were amazed at the flames gleaming on the tips of their horns. They thought an army was marching in close array by the light of many torches. 6 But when the torches had been burned down to the roots, and the live flesh felt the flames, and the cattle, at the pain, shook and tossed their heads, and so covered one another with quantities of fire, then they kept no order in their going, but, in terror and anguish, went dashing down the mountains, their foreheads and tails ablaze, and setting fire also to much of the forest through which they fled. 7 It was, of course, a fearful spectacle to the Romans guarding the passes. For the flames seemed to come from torches in the hands of men who were running hither and thither with them. They were therefore in great commotion and fear, believing that the enemy were advancing upon them from all quarters and surrounding them on every side. Therefore they had not the courage to hold their posts, but withdrew to the main body of the army on the heights, and abandoned the defiles. Instantly the light-armed troops of Hannibal came up and took possession of the passes, and the rest of his forces presently joined them without any fear, although heavily encumbered with much spoil.

7 1 It was still night when Fabius became aware of the ruse, for some of the cattle, in their random flight, were captured by his men; but he was afraid of ambushes in the darkness, and so kept still, with his forces under arms. When it was day, however, he pursued the enemy, and hung upon their rear-guard, and there was hand-to hand fighting over difficult ground, and much tumult and confusion. At last Hannibal sent back from his van a body of Spaniards, — nimble, light-footed men, and good mountaineers, who fell upon the heavy-armed Roman infantry, cut many of them to pieces, and forced Fabius to turn back. 2 And now more than ever was Fabius the mark for scorn and abuse. He had renounced all bold and open fighting, with the idea of conquering Hannibal by the exercise of superior judgment and foresight, and now he was clearly vanquished himself by these very qualities in his foes, and out-generalled.

Hannibal, moreover, wishing to inflame still more the wrath of the Romans against Fabius, on coming to his fields, gave orders to burn and destroy everything else, but had these spared, and these alone. He also set a guard over them, which suffered no harm to be done them, and nothing to be taken from them. 3 When this was reported at Rome, it brought more odium upon Fabius. The tribunes of the people also kept up a constant denunciation of him, chiefly at the instigation and behest of Metilius; not that Metilius hated Fabius, but he was a kinsman of Minucius, the Master of Horse, and thought that slander of the one meant honour and fame for the other. The senate also was in an angry mood, and found particular fault with Fabius for the terms he had made with Hannibal concerning the prisoners of war. 4 They had agreed between them to exchange the captives man for man, and if either party had more than the other, the one who recovered these was to pay two hundred and fifty drachmas per man. Accordingly, after the exchange of man for man was made, it was found that Hannibal still had two hundred and forty Romans left. The senate decided not to send the ransom money for these, and found fault with Fabius for trying, in a manner unbecoming and unprofitable for the state, to recover men whose cowardice had made them a prey to the enemy. 5 When Fabius heard of this, he bore the resentment of his fellow-citizens with equanimity, but since he had no money, and could not harbour the thought of cheating Hannibal and abandoning his countrymen to their fate, he sent his son to Rome with orders to sell his fields and bring the money to him at once, at camp. The young man sold the estates and quickly made his return, whereupon Fabius sent the ransom money to Hannibal and got back the prisoners of war. Many of these afterwards offered to pay him the price of their ransom, but in no case did he take it, remitting it rather for all.

8 1 After this he was summoned to Rome by the priests to assist in sundry sacrifices, and put his forces in charge of Minucius, who was not to give battle, nor engage the enemy in any way. Such were not only the commands of Fabius as dictator, but also his reiterated counsels and requests. To all these Minucius gave little heed, and straightway began to threaten the enemy. 2 One day he noticed that Hannibal had sent the larger part of his army off to forage, whereupon he attacked the residue, drove them headlong inside their trenches, slew many of them, and inspired them all with the fear of being held in siege by him. When Hannibal’s forces were reunited in their camp, Minucius effected a safe retreat, thereby filling himself with measureless boastfulness and his soldiery with boldness. 3 An exaggerated version of the affair speedily made its way to Rome, and Fabius, when he heard it, said he was more afraid of the success of Minucius than he would be of his failure. But the people were exalted in spirit and joyfully ran to a meeting in the forum. There Metilius their tribune mounted the rostra and harangued them, extolling Minucius, but denouncing Fabius, not as a weakling merely, nor yet as a coward, but actually as a traitor. 4 He also included in his accusations the ablest and foremost men of the state besides. They had brought on the war at the outset, he said, in order to crush the people, and had at once flung the city into the hands of a man with sole and absolute authority, that he might, by his dilatory work, give Hannibal an assured position and time to reinforce himself with another army from Libya, on the plea that he had Italy in his power.

9 1 Then Fabius came forward to speak, but wasted no time on a defence of himself against the tribune. He simply said that the sacrifices and sacred rites must be performed as quickly as possible, so that he might proceed to the army and punish Minucius for engaging the enemy contrary to his orders. Thereupon a great commotion spread swiftly through the people; they realized the peril that threatened Minucius. For the dictator has the power to imprison and put to death without trial, and they thought that the wrath of Fabius, provoked in a man of his great gentleness, would be severe and implacable. 2 Wherefore they were all terrified and held their peace, excepting only Metilius. He enjoyed immunity of person as tribune of the people (for this is the only magistracy which is not robbed of its power by the election of a dictator; it abides when the rest are abolished), and vehemently charged and prayed the people not to abandon Minucius, nor permit him to suffer the fate which Manlius Torquatus inflicted upon his son, whom he beheaded although crowned with laurel for the greatest prowess, but to strip Fabius of his tyrant’s power and entrust the state to one who was able and willing to save it.

3 The rabble were moved by such utterances. They did not dare to force Fabius to resign his sovereignty, unpopular as he was, but they voted that Minucius should have an equal share in the command, and should conduct the war with the same powers as the dictator, — a thing which had not happened before in Rome. A little while afterwards, it is true, it happened again, namely, after the disaster at Cannae. 4 At that time Marcus Junius the dictator was in the field, and at home it became necessary that the senate should be filled up, since many senators had perished in the battle. They therefore elected Fabius Buteo a second dictator. But he, after acting in that capacity and choosing the men to fill up the senate, at once dismissed his lictors, eluded his escort, plunged into the crowd, and straightway went up and down the forum arranging some business matter of his own and engaging in affairs like a private citizen.

10 1 Now that they had invested Minucius with the same powers as the dictator, the people supposed that the latter would feel shorn of strength and altogether humble, but they did not estimate the man aright. For he did not regard their mistake as his own calamity, but was like Diogenes the wise man, who, when some one said to him, “These folk are ridiculing you,” said, “But I am not ridiculed.” He held that only those are ridiculed who are confounded by such treatment and yield their ground. 2 So Fabius endured the situation calmly and easily, so far as it affected himself, thereby confirming the axiom of philosophy that a sincerely good man can neither be insulted nor dishonoured. But because it affected the state, he was distressed by the folly of the multitude. 3 They had given opportunities to a man with a diseased military ambition, and fearful lest this man, utterly crazed by his empty glory and prestige, should bring about some great disaster before he could be checked, he set out in all secrecy from the city. When he reached the camp, he found that Minucius was no longer to be endured. He was harsh in his manner, puffed up with conceit, and demanded the sole command in his due turn. This Fabius would not grant, feeling that the sole command of a part of the army was better than the command of the whole in his turn. 4 The first and fourth legions he therefore took himself, and gave the second and third to Minucius, the allied forces also being equally divided between them. When Minucius put on lofty airs and exulted because the majesty of the highest and greatest office in the state had been lowered and insulted on his account, Fabius reminded him that his contention was not with Fabius, but rather, were he wise, with Hannibal. 5 If, however, he was bent on rivalry with his colleague in office, he must see to it that the man who had been triumphantly honoured by his fellow-citizens should not be proved more careless of their salvation and safety than the man who had been ingloriously outraged by them.

11 But Minucius regarded all this as an old man’s dissimulation, and taking the forces allotted to him, went into camp apart by himself, while Hannibal, not unaware of what was going on, kept a watchful eye on everything. Now there was a hill between him and the Romans which could be occupied with no difficulty, and which, if occupied, would be a strong site for a camp and in every way sufficient. The plain round about, when viewed from a distance, was perfectly smooth and level, but really had sundry small ditches and other hollow places in it. 2 For this reason, though it would have been very easy for him to get possession of the hill by stealth, Hannibal had not cared to do so, but had left it standing between the two armies in the hope that it might bring on a battle. But when he saw Minucius separated from Fabius, in the night he scattered bodies of his soldiers among the ditches and hollows, and at break of day, with no attempt at concealment, sent a few to occupy the hill, that he might seduce Minucius into an engagement for it.

3 And this actually came to pass. First Minucius sent out his light-armed troops, then his horsemen, and finally, when he saw Hannibal coming to the support of his troops on the hill, he descended into the plain with all his forces in battle array. In a fierce battle he sustained the discharge of missiles from the hill, coming to close quarters with the enemy there and holding his advantage, until Hannibal, seeing that his enemy was happily deceived and was exposing the rear of his line of battle to the troops who had been placed in ambush, raised the signal. 4 At this the men rose up on all sides, attacked with loud cries, and slew their foes who were in the rear ranks. Then indescribable confusion and fright took possession of the Romans. Minucius himself felt all his courage shattered, and looked anxiously now to one and now to another of his commanders, no one of whom dared to hold his ground, nay, all urged their men to flight, and a fatal flight too. For the Numidians, now masters of the situation, galloped round the plain and slew them as they scattered themselves about.

12 1 Now that the Romans were in such an evil pass, Fabius was not unaware of their peril. He had anticipated the result, as it would seem, and had his forces drawn up under arms, wisely learning the progress of events not from messengers, but by his own observations in front of his camp. Accordingly, when he saw the army of Minucius surrounded and confounded, and when their cries, as they fell upon his ears, showed him that they no longer stood their ground, 2 but were already panic-stricken and routed, he smote his thigh, and with a deep groan said to the bystanders: “Hercules! how much sooner than I expected, but later than his own rash eagerness demanded, has Minucius destroyed himself!” Then ordering the standards to be swiftly advanced and the army to follow, he called out with a loud voice: “Now, my soldiers, let every man be mindful of Marcus Minucius and press on to his aid; for he is a brilliant man, and a lover of his country. And if his ardent desire to drive away the enemy has led him into any error, we will charge him with it later.”

3 Well then, as soon as he appeared upon the scene, he routed and dispersed the Numidians who were galloping about in the plain. Then he made against those who were attacking the rear of the Romans under Minucius, and slew those whom he encountered. But the rest of them, ere they were cut off and surrounded in their own turn, as the Romans had been by them, gave way and fled. 4 Then Hannibal, seeing the turn affairs had taken, and Fabius, with a vigour beyond his years, ploughing his way through the combatants up to Minucius on the hill, put an end to the battle, signalled a retreat, and led his Carthaginians back to their camp, the Romans also being glad of a respite. It is said that as Hannibal withdrew, he addressed to his friends some such pleasantry as this about Fabius: “Verily, did I not often prophesy to you that the cloud which we saw hovering above the heights would one day burst upon us in a drenching and furious storm?”

13 1 After the battle, Fabius despoiled all of the enemy whom he had slain, and withdrew to his camp, without indulging in a single haughty or invidious word about his colleague. And Minucius, assembling his own army, said to them: “Fellow-soldiers, to avoid all mistakes in the conduct of great enterprises is beyond man’s powers; but when a mistake has once been made, to use his reverses as lessons for the future is the part of a brave and sensible man. 2 I therefore confess that while I have some slight cause of complaint against fortune, I have larger grounds for praising her. For what I could not learn in all the time that preceded it, I have been taught in the brief space of a single day, and I now perceive that I am not able to command others myself, but need to be under the command of another, and that I have all the while been ambitious to prevail over men of whom to be outdone were better. Now in all other matters the dictator is your leader, but in the rendering of thanks to him I myself will take the lead, and will show myself first in following his advice and doing his bidding.”

3 After these words, he ordered the eagles to be raised and all to follow them, and led the way to the camp of Fabius. When he had entered this, he proceeded to the general’s tent, while all were lost in wonder. When Fabius came forth, Minucius had the standards planted in front of him, and addressed him with a loud voice as Father, while his soldiers greeted the soldiers of Fabius as Patrons, the name by which freedmen address those who have set them free. 4 When quiet prevailed, Minucius said; “Dictator, you have on this day won two victories, one over Hannibal through your valour, and one over your colleague through your wisdom and kindness. By the first you saved our lives, and by the second you taught us a great lesson, vanquished as we were by our enemy to our shame, and by you to our honour and safety. 5 I call you by the excellent name of Father, because there is no more honourable name which I can use; and yet a father’s kindness is not so great as this kindness bestowed by you. My father did but beget me, while to you I owe not only my own salvation, but also that of all these men of mine.” So saying, he embraced Fabius and kissed him, and the soldiers on both sides in like manner embraced and kissed each other, so that the camp was filled with joy and tears of rejoicing.

14 1 After this, Fabius laid down his office, and consuls were again appointed. The first of these maintained the style of warfare which Fabius had ordained. They avoided a pitched battle with Hannibal, but gave aid and succour to their allies, and prevented their falling away. But when Terentius Varro was elevated to the consulship, a man whose birth was obscure and whose life was conspicuous for servile flattery of the people and for rashness, it was clear that in his inexperience and temerity he would stake the entire issue upon the hazard of a single throw. 2 For he used to shout in the assemblies that the war would continue as long as the city employed men like Fabius as its generals; but that he himself would conquer the enemy the very day he saw them. And not only did he make such speeches, but he also assembled and enrolled a larger force than the Romans had ever employed against any enemy. Eighty-eight thousand men were arrayed for battle, to the great terror of Fabius and all sensible Romans. For they thought their city could not recover if she lost so many men in the prime of life.

3 Now, Paulus Aemilius was the colleague of Terentius, a man of experience in many wars, but not acceptable to the people, and crushed in spirit by a fine which they had imposed upon him. Therefore Fabius tried to rouse and encourage him to restrain the madness of his colleague, showing him that he must struggle to save his country not so much from Hannibal as from Terentius. The latter, he said, was eager to fight because he did not see where his strength lay; the former, because he saw his own weakness. 4 “But,” said he, “it is to me, O Paulus, that more credence should be given in regard to Hannibal’s affairs, and I solemnly assure you that, if no one shall give him battle this year, the man will remain in Italy only to perish, or will leave it in flight, since even now, when he is thought to be victorious and to be master of the country, not one of his enemies has come over to his side, and not even so much as the third part of the force which he brought from home is still left.” 5 To this Paulus is said to have answered: “If I consult my own interests, O Fabius, it is better for me to encounter the spears of the enemy than to face again the votes of my fellow-citizens. But if the state is in such a pass, I will try to be a good general in your opinion, rather than in that of all the rest who so forcibly oppose you.” With this determination, Paulus went forth to the war.

15 1 But Terentius, insisting on his right to command a day in turn, and then encamping over against Hannibal by the river Aufidus and the town called Cannae, at break of day put out the signal for battle, — a scarlet tunic displayed above the general’s tent. At this even the Carthaginians were confounded at first, seeing the boldness of the Roman general and the number of his army, which was more than double their own. 2 But Hannibal ordered his forces to arm for battle, while he himself, with a few companions, rode to the top of a gently sloping ridge, from which he watched his enemies as they formed in battle array. When one of his companions, named Gisco, a man of his own rank, remarked that the number of the enemy amazed him, Hannibal put on a serious look and said: “Gisco, another thing has escaped your notice which is more amazing still.” And when Gisco asked what it was, “It is the fact,” said he, “that in all this multitude there is no one who is called Gisco.” 3 The jest took them all by surprise and set them laughing, and as they made their way down from the ridge, they reported the pleasantry to all who met them, so that great numbers were laughing heartily, and Hannibal’s escort could not even recover themselves. The sight of this infused courage into the Carthaginians. They reasoned that their general must have a mighty contempt for the enemy if he laughed and jested so in the presence of danger.

16 1 In the battle Hannibal practiced a double strategy. In the first place, he took advantage of the ground to put the wind at his back. This wind came down like a fiery hurricane, and raised a huge cloud of dust from the exposed and sandy plains and drove it over the Carthaginian lines hard into the faces of the Romans, who turned away to avoid it, and so fell into confusion. 2 In the second place, he formed his troops as follows: the sturdiest and most warlike part of his force he stationed on either side of the centre, and manned the centre itself with his poorest soldiers, intending to use this as a wedge jutting out far in advance of the rest of his line. But orders were given to the picked troops, when the Romans should have cut the troops in the centre to pieces, pursued them hotly as they retreated and formed a deep hollow, and so go within their enemy’s line of battle, — then to turn sharply from either side, smite them on the flanks, and envelop them by closing in upon their rear. 3 And it was this which seems to have produced the greatest slaughter. For the centre gave way and was followed by the Romans in pursuit, Hannibal’s line of battle thus changing its shape into that of a crescent; and the commanders of the picked troops on his wings wheeled them swiftly to left and right and fell upon the exposed sides of their enemy, all of whom, except those who retired before they were surrounded, were then overwhelmed and destroyed.

4 It is said, further, that a strange calamity befell the Roman cavalry also. The horse of Paulus, as it appears, was wounded and threw its rider off, and one after another of his attendants dismounted and sought to defend the consul on foot. When the horsemen saw this, supposing that a general order had been given, they all dismounted and engaged the enemy on foot. On seeing this, Hannibal said: “This is more to my wish than if they had been handed over to me in fetters.” 5 But such particulars as these may be found in the detailed histories of the war.

As for the consuls, Varro galloped off with a few followers to the city of Venusia, but Paulus, caught in the deep surges of that panic flight and covered with many missiles which hung in his wounds, weighed down in body and spirit by so vast a misfortune, sat down, leaning against a stone, and waiting for an enemy to dispatch him. 6 His head and face were so profusely smeared with blood that few could recognize him; even his friends and retainers passed him by without knowing him. Only Cornelius Lentulus, a young man of the patrician order, saw who he was, and leaping from his horse, led him to Paulus and besought the consul to take him and save himself for the sake of his fellow-citizens, who now more than ever needed a brave commander. 7 But Paulus rejected this prayer, and forced the youth, all tears, to mount his horse again, and then rose up and clasped his hand and said: “Lentulus, tell Fabius Maximus, and be thyself a witness to what thou tellest, that Paulus Aemilius was true to his precepts up to the end, and broke not one of the agreements made with him, but was vanquished first by Varro, and then by Hannibal.” 8 With such injunctions, he sent Lentulus away, then threw himself into the midst of the slaughter and perished. And it is said that fifty thousand Romans fell in that battle, that four thousand were taken alive, and that after the battle there were captured in both consular camps no less than ten thousand.

17 1 In view of such a complete success, Hannibal’s friends urged him to follow up his good fortune and dash into their city on the heels of the flying enemy, assuring him in that case that on the fifth day after his victory he would sup on the Capitol. It is not easy to say what consideration turned him from this course, nay, it would rather seem that his evil genius, or some divinity, interposed to inspire him with the hesitation and timidity which he now showed. Wherefore, as they say, Barca, the Carthaginian, said to him angrily: “Thou canst win a victory, but thy victory thou canst not use.” 2 And yet his victory wrought a great change in his circumstances. Before the battle, he had not a city, not a trading-place, not a sea-port in Italy, and could with difficulty barely supply his army with provisions for foraging, since he had no secure base of supplies for the war, but wandered hither and thither with his army as if it were a great horde of robbers. After the battle, however, he brought almost all Italy under his sway. 3 Most of its peoples, and the largest of them too, came over to him of their own accord, and Capua, which is the most considerable city after Rome, attached herself firmly to his cause.

Not only, then, does it work great mischief, as Euripides says, to put friends to the test, but also prudent generals. For that which was called cowardice and sluggishness in Fabius before the battle, immediately after the battle was thought to be no mere human calculation, nay, rather, a divine and marvellous intelligence, since it looked so far into the future and foretold a disaster which could hardly be believed by those who experienced it. 4 In him, therefore, Rome at once placed her last hopes; to his wisdom she fled for refuge as to the temple and altar, believing that it was first and chiefly due to his prudence that she still remained a city, and was not utterly broken up, as in the troublous times of the Gallic invasion. 5 For he who, in times of apparent security, appeared cautious and irresolute, then, when all were plunged in boundless grief and helpless confusion, was the only man to walk the city with calm step, composed countenance, and gracious address, checking effeminate lamentation, and preventing those from assembling together who were eager to make public their common complaints. He persuaded the senate to convene, heartened up the magistrates, and was himself the strength and power of every magistracy, since all looked to him for guidance.

18 1 Accordingly, he put guards at the gates, in order to keep the frightened throng from abandoning the city, and set limits of time and place to the mourning for the dead, ordering any who wished to indulge in lamentation, to do so at home for a period of thirty days; after that, all mourning must cease and the city be purified of such rites. 2 And since the festival of Ceres fell within these days, it was deemed better to remit entirely the sacrifices and the procession, rather than to emphasize the magnitude of their calamity by the small number and dejection of the participants. For the gods’ delight is in honours paid them by the fortunate. 3 However, all the rites which the augurs advocated for the propitiation of the gods, or to avert inauspicious omens, were duly performed. And besides, Pictor, a kinsman of Fabius, was sent to consult the oracle at Delphi; and when two of the vestal virgins were found to have been corrupted, one of them was buried alive, according to the custom, and the other slew herself.

4 But most all was the gentle dignity of the city to be admired in this, that when Varro, the consul, came back from his flight, as one would come back from a most ill-starred and disgraceful experience, in humility and dejection, the senate and the whole people met him at the gates with a welcome. 5 The magistrates and the chief men of the senate, of whom Fabius was one, praised him, as soon as quiet was restored, because he had not despaired of the city after so great a misfortune, but was at hand to assume the reins of government, and to employ the laws and his fellow-citizens in accomplishing the salvation which lay within their power.

19 1 When they learned that Hannibal, after the battle, had turned aside into other parts of Italy, they plucked up courage and sent out commanders with armies. The most illustrious of these were Fabius Maximus and Claudius Marcellus, men who were similarly admired for directly opposite characters. 2 The latter, as has been stated in his Life, was a man of splendid and impetuous actions, with an arm of ready vigour, and by nature like the men whom Homer is wont to call “fond of battle, and “eager for the fray.” He therefore conducted his first engagements in the venturesome and reckless style of warfare which met the daring of such a man as Hannibal with an equal daring. 3 Fabius, on the contrary, clung to his first and famous convictions, and looked to see Hannibal, if only no one fought with him or harassed him, become his own worst enemy, wear himself out in the war, and speedily lose his high efficiency, like an athlete whose bodily powers have been overtaxed and exhausted. It was for these reasons, as Poseidonius says, that the Romans called Fabius their buckler, and Marcellus their sword, and that the mingling of the firm steadfastness of the one with the versatility of the other proved the salvation of Rome. 4 By his frequent encounters with Marcellus, whose course was like that of a swiftly-flowing river, Hannibal saw his forces shaken and swept away; while by Fabius, whose course was slow, noiseless, and unceasing in its stealthy hostility, they were imperceptibly worn away and consumed. And finally he was brought to such a pass that he was worn out with fighting Marcellus, and afraid of Fabius when not fighting.

5 For it was with these two men that he fought almost all the time, as they held the offices of praetor, pro-consul, or consul; and each of them was consul five times. However, when Marcellus was serving as consul for the fifth time, Hannibal led him into an ambush and slew him; but he had no success against Fabius, although he frequently brought all sorts of deceitful tests to bear upon him. Once, it is true, he did deceive the man, and came near giving him a disastrous overthrow. 6 He composed and sent to Fabius letters purporting to come from the chief men of Metapontum, assuring him that their city would be surrendered to him if he should come there, and that those who were contriving the surrender only waited for him to come and show himself in the neighbourhood. These letters moved Fabius to action, and he proposed to take a part of his force and set out by night. Then he got unfavourable auspices and was turned from his purpose by them, and in a little while it was discovered that the letters which had come to him were cunning forgeries by Hannibal, who had laid an ambush for him near the city. The escape, however, may be laid to the favour of the gods.

20 1 Fabius thought that the revolts of the cities and the agitations of the allies ought to be restrained and discountenanced rather by mild and gentle measures, without testing every suspicion and showing harshness in every case to be suspected. It is said, for instance, that when he learned about a Marsian soldier, eminent among the allies for valour and high birth, who had been talking with some of the soldiers in the camp about deserting to the enemy, he was not incensed with him, but admitted frankly that he had been unduly neglected; 2 so far, he said, this was the fault of the commanders, who distributed their honours by favour rather than for valour, but in the future it would be the man’s own fault if he did not come to him and tell him when he wanted anything. These words were followed by the gift of a warhorse and by other signal rewards for bravery, and from that time on there was no more faithful and zealous man in the service. 3 Fabius thought it hard that, whereas the trainers of horses and dogs relied upon care and intimacy and feeding rather than on goads and heavy collars for the removal of the animal’s obstinacy, anger, and discontent, the commander of men should not base the most of his discipline on kindness and gentleness, but show more harshness and violence in his treatment of them than farmers in their treatment of wild fig-trees, wild pear-trees, and wild olive-trees, which they reclaim and domesticate till they bear luscious olives, pears, and figs.

4 Accordingly, when another soldier, a Lucanian, was reported by his officers as frequently quitting his post and roaming away from the camp, Fabius asked them what kind of a man they knew him to be in other respects. All testified that such another soldier could not easily be found, and rehearsed sundry exploits of his wherein he had shown conspicuous bravery. Fabius therefore inquired into the cause of the man’s irregularity, and discovered that he was deeply in love with a maid, and risked his life in long journeys from the camp every time he visited her. 5 Accordingly, without the man’s knowledge, Fabius sent and arrested the girl and hid her in his own tent. Then he called the Lucanian to him privately and said: “It is well known that, contrary to Roman custom and law, you often pass the night away from camp; but it is also well known that you have done good service in the past. Your transgressions shall therefore be atoned for by your deeds of valour, but for the future I shall put another person in charge over you.” 6 Then, to the soldier’s amazement, he led the girl forth and put her in his hands, saying: “This person pledges herself that you will hereafter remain in camp with us, and you will now show plainly whether or not you left us for some other and base purpose, making this maid and your love for her a mere pretext.” Such is the story which is told about this matter.

21 1 The city of Tarentum, which had been lost to the Romans by treachery, Fabius recovered in the following manner. There was a young man of Tarentum in his army, and he had a sister who was very faithfully and affectionately disposed towards him. 2 With this woman the commander of the forces set by Hannibal to guard the city, a Bruttian, was deeply enamoured, and the circumstance led her brother to hope that he could accomplish something by means of it. He therefore joined his sister in Tarentum, ostensibly as a deserter from the Romans, though he was really sent into the city by Fabius, who was privy to his scheme. Some days passed, accordingly, during which the Bruttian remained at home, since the woman thought that her amour was unknown to her brother. Then her brother had the following words with her: “I would have you know that a story was very current out there in the Roman camp that you have interviews with a man in high authority. Who is this man? For if he is, as they say, a man of repute, and illustrious for his valour, war, that confounder of all things, makes very little account of race. Nothing is disgraceful if it is done under compulsion, nay, we may count it rare good fortune, at a time when right is weak, to find might very gentle with us.” 3 Thereupon the woman sent for her Bruttian and made her brother acquainted with him. The Barbarian’s confidence was soon gained, since the brother fostered his passion and plainly induced the sister to be more complacent and submissive to him than before, so that it was not difficult, that man being a lover and a mercenary as well, to change his allegiance, in anticipation of the large gifts which it was promised that he should receive from Fabius.

4 This is the way the story is usually told. But some writers say that the woman by whom the Bruttian was won over, was not a Tarentine, but a Bruttian, and a concubine of Fabius, and that when she learned that the commander of the Bruttian garrison was a fellow-countryman and an acquaintance of hers, she told Fabius, held a conference with the man beneath the walls of the city, and won him completely over.

22 1 While this plot was under way, Fabius schemed to draw Hannibal away from the neighbourhood, and therefore gave orders to the garrison at Rhegium to overrun Bruttium and take Caulonia by storm. This garrison numbered eight thousand, most of them deserters, and the refuse of the soldiers sent home from Sicily in disgrace by Marcellus, men whose loss would least afflict and injure Rome. 2 Fabius expected that by casting these forces, like a bait, in front of Hannibal, he would draw him away from Tarentum. And this was what actually happened. For Hannibal immediately swept thither in pursuit with his army. But five days after Fabius had laid siege to Tarentum, the youth who, with his sister, had come to an understanding with the Bruttian commander in the city, came to him by night. He had seen and knew precisely the spot at which the Bruttian was watching with the purpose of handing the city over to its assailants. Fabius, however, would not suffer his enterprise to depend wholly upon the betrayal of the city. 3 While, therefore, he himself led a detachment quietly to the appointed spot, the rest of his army attacked the walls by land and sea, with great shouting and tumult, until most of the Tarentines had run to the aid of those who were defending them. Then the Bruttian gave Fabius the signal, and he scaled the walls and got the mastery of the city.

4 At this point, however, Fabius seems to have been overcome by his ambition, for he ordered his men to put the Bruttians first of all to the sword, that his possession of the city might not be known to be due to treachery. He not only failed to prevent this knowledge, but incurred also the reproach of perfidy and cruelty. Many of the Tarentines also were slain, thirty thousand of them were sold into slavery, their city was plundered by the Roman army, and three thousand talents were thereby brought into the public treasury. 5 While everything else was carried off as plunder, it is said that the accountant asked Fabius what his orders were concerning the gods, for so he called the pictures and statues; and that Fabius answered: “Let us leave their angered gods for the Tarentines.” 6 However, he removed the colossal statue of Heracles from Tarentum, and set it up on the Capitol, and near it an equestrian statue of himself, in bronze. He thus appeared far more eccentric in these matters than Marcellus, nay rather, the mild and humane conduct of Marcellus was thus made to seem altogether admirable by contrast, as has been written in his Life.

23 1 It is said that Hannibal had got within five miles of Tarentum when it fell, and that openly he merely remarked: “It appears, then, that the Romans have another Hannibal, for we have lost Tarentum even as we look at it”; but that in private he was then for the first time led to confess to his friends that he had long seen the difficulty, and now saw the impossibility of their mastering Italy with their present forces. 2 For this success, Fabius celebrated a second triumph most splendid than his first, since he was contending with Hannibal like a clever athlete, and easily baffling all his undertakings, now that his hugs and grips no longer had their old time vigour. For his forces were partly enervated by luxury and wealth, and partly blunted, as it were, and worn out by their unremitting struggles.

3 Now there was a certain Marcus Livius, who commanded the garrison of Tarentum when Hannibal got the city to revolt. He occupied the citadel, however, and was not dislodged from this position, but held it until the Romans again got the upper hand of the Tarentines. This man was vexed by the honours paid to Fabius, and once, carried away by his jealousy and ambition, said to the senate that it was not Fabius, but himself, who should be credited with the capture of Tarentum. At this Fabius laughed, and said: “You are right; had you not lost the city, I had not taken it.”

24 1 Among the other marks of high favour which the Romans conferred upon Fabius, they made his son Fabius consul. When this son had entered upon the office and was arranging some matter pertaining to the war, his father, either by reason of his age and weakness, or because he was putting his son to the test, mounted his horse and rode towards him through the throng of bystanders. The young man caught sight of his father at a distance and would not suffer what he did, but sent a lictor with orders for him to dismount and come to the consul on foot if he had any need of his offices. 2 All the rest were offended at this command, and implied by their silent gaze at Fabius that this treatment of him was unworthy of his high position. But Fabius himself sprang quickly from his horse, almost ran to his son, and embraced him affectionately. “My son,” he said, “you are right in thought and act. You understand what a people has made you its officer, and what a high office you have received from them. It was in this spirit that our fathers and we ourselves have exalted Rome, a spirit which makes parents and children ever secondary to our country’s good.”

3 And of a truth it is reported of the great-grandfather of our Fabius, that though he had the greatest reputation and influence in Rome, and though he had himself been consul five times and had celebrated the most splendid triumphs for the greatest wars, he nevertheless, when his son was consul, went forth to war with him as his lieutenant, and in the triumph that followed, while the son entered the city on a four-horse chariot, the father followed on horseback with the rest of the train, exulting in the fact that, though he was master of his son, and was the greatest of the citizens both in name and in fact, he yet put himself beneath the law and its official. However, this was not the only admirable thing about him.

4 But the son of our Fabius, as it happened, died, and this affliction he bore with equanimity, like a wise man and a good father. The funeral oration, which is pronounced at the obsequies of illustrious men by some kinsman, he delivered himself from his place in the forum, and then wrote out the speech and published it.

25 1 But now Cornelius Scipio was sent into Spain, where he not only conquered the Carthaginians in many battles, and drove them out of the country, but also won over a multitude of nations, and took great cities with splendid spoils, so that, on his return to Rome, he enjoyed an incomparable favour and fame, and was made consul. 2 Perceiving that the people demanded and expected a great achievement from him, he regarded the hand to hand struggle with Hannibal there in Italy as very antiquated and senile policy, and purposed to fill Libya at once, and the territory of Carthage itself, with Roman arms and soldiery, and ravage them, and thus to transfer the war from Italy thither. To this policy he urged the people with all his soul. But just at this point Fabius tried to fill the city with all sorts of fear. They were hurrying, he said, under the guidance of a foolhardy young man, into the remotest and greatest peril, 3 and he spared neither word nor deed which he thought might deter the citizens from this course. He brought the senate over to his views; but the people thought that he attacked Scipio through jealousy of his success, and that he was afraid lest, if Scipio performed some great and glorious exploit and either put an end to the war entirely or removed it out of Italy, his own failure to end the war after all these years would be attributed to sloth and cowardice.

4 Now it is likely that Fabius began this opposition out of his great caution and prudence, in fear of the danger, which was great; but that he grew more violent and went to greater lengths in his opposition out of ambition and rivalry, in an attempt to check the rising influence of Scipio. For he even tried to persuade Crassus, Scipio’s colleague in the consulship, not to surrender the command of the army and not to yield the time of Scipio, but to proceed in person against Carthage, if that policy were adopted. He also prevented the granting of moneys for the war. 5 As for moneys, since he was obliged to provide them for himself, Scipio collected them on his private account from the cities of Etruria, which were devotedly attached to him; and as for Crassus, it was partly his nature, which was not contentious, but gentle, that kept him at home, and partly also a religious custom, for he was pontifex maximus, or High Priest.

26 1 Accordingly, Fabius took another way to oppose Scipio, and tried to hinder and restrain the young men who were eager to serve under him, crying out in sessions of the senate and the assembly that it was not Scipio himself only who was running away from Hannibal, but that he was sailing off from Italy with her reserve forces, playing upon the hopes of her young men, and persuading them to abandon their parents, their wives, and their city, although the enemy still sat at her gates, masterful and undefeated. And verily he frightened the Romans with these speeches, 2 and they decreed that Scipio should employ only the forces which were then in Sicily, and take with him only three hundred of the men who had been with him in Spain, — men who had served him faithfully. In this course, at any rate, Fabius seems to have been influenced by his own cautious temper.

But as soon as Scipio had crossed into Africa, tidings were brought to Rome of wonderful achievements and of exploits transcendent in magnitude and splendour. These reports were confirmed by abundant spoils which followed them; the king of Numidia was taken captive; 3 two of the enemy’s camps were at once destroyed by fire, and in them a great number of men, arms, and horses; embassies were sent from Carthage to Hannibal urgently calling upon him to give up his fruitless hopes in Italy and come to the aid of his native city; 4 and when every tongue in Rome was dwelling on the theme of Scipio’s successes, then Fabius demanded that a successor should be sent out to replace him. He gave no other reason, but urged the well remembered maxim that it was dangerous to entrust such vast interests to the fortune of a single man, since it was difficult for the same man to have good fortune always. By this course he gave offence now to many, who thought him a captious and malicious man, or one whose old age had robbed him utterly of courage and confidence, so that he was immoderately in awe of Hannibal. 5 For not even after Hannibal and his army had sailed away from Italy would he suffer the rejoicing and fresh courage of the citizens to be undisturbed and assured, but then even more than ever he insisted that the city was running into the extremest peril and that her affairs were in a dangerous plight. For Hannibal, he said, would fall upon them with all the greater effect in Africa at the gates of Carthage, and Scipio would be confronted with an army yet warm with the blood of many imperators, dictators, and consuls. Consequently, the city was once more confounded by these speeches, and although the war had been removed to Africa, they thought its terrors were nearer Rome.

27 1 But shortly afterward Scipio utterly defeated Hannibal himself in battle, humbled and trod under foot the pride of fallen Carthage, restored to his fellow-citizens a joy that surpassed all their hopes, and in very truth “righted once more” the ship of their supremacy, which had been “shaken in a heavy surge.” Fabius Maximus, however, did not live to see the end of the war, nor did he even hear of Hannibal’s defeat, nor behold the great and assured prosperity of the country, but at about the time when Hannibal set sail from Italy, he fell sick and died. 2 Epaminondas, it is true, was buried by the Thebans at the public cost, because of the poverty in which he died, for it is said that nothing was found in his house after his death except a piece of iron money. Fabius, however, was not buried by the Romans at the public charge, but each private citizen contributed the smallest coin in his possession, not because his poverty called for their aid, but because the people felt that it was burying a father, whose death thus received honour and regard befitting his life.

Comparison of Pericles and Fabius Maximus

353 1 1 Such is the story of these men’s lives, and since both left behind them many examples of civil as well as military excellence, let us consider, in the first place, the matter of their military achievements. Pericles was at the head of his people when its prosperity was greatest, when its own strength was at the full, and its imperial power culminating. Apparently, therefore, it was the general good fortune and vigour that kept him free from stumbling and falling, 2 whereas the achievements of Fabius, who took charge of his city at times of the greatest disgrace and misfortune, did not maintain her safely in her prosperity, but rather lifted her out of disaster into a better state. And besides, the victories of Cimon, and the trophies of Myronides and Leocrates, and the many great successes of Tolmides, made it the privilege of Pericles, during his administration, to enrich the city with holidays and public festivals, rather than to enlarge and protect her dominion by war. 3 Fabius, on the contrary, whose eyes beheld many disgraceful defeats, many cruel deaths of imperators and generals, lakes and plains and forests filled with slain armies, and rivers flowing with blood and slaughter to the sea, put helping and supporting hands to his city, and by his firm and independent course, prevented her from utter exhaustion through the disasters brought upon her by others. 4 And yet it would appear to be not so difficult a task to manage a city when she is humbled by adversity and rendered obedient to wisdom by necessity, as it is to bridle a people which is exalted by prosperity and swollen with insolence and boldness, which is precisely the way in which Pericles governed Athens. Still, the magnitude and multitude of evils which afflicted the Romans revealed the steadfast purpose and the greatness of the man who was not confounded by them, and would not abandon his own principles of action.

2 1 Over against the capture of Samos by Pericles, it is fair to set the taking of Tarentum by Fabius, and against Euboea, the cities of Campania (Capua itself was reduced by the consuls Fulvius and Appius). In open and regular battle, Fabius seems to have won no victory except that for which he celebrated his first triumph; whereas Pericles set up nine trophies for his wars on land and sea. 2 However, no such exploit is recorded of Pericles as that by which Fabius snatched Minucius from the hands of Hannibal, and preserved an entire Roman army; the deed was certainly a noble one, and showed a combination of valour, wisdom, and kindness alike. So, on the other hand, no such defeat is recorded of Pericles as that which Fabius suffered when he was outwitted by Hannibal’s stratagem of the oxen; he had his enemy imprisoned in the narrow defile which he had entered of his own accord and accidentally, but let him slip away unnoticed in the night, force his way out when day came, take advantage of his adversary’s delays, and so conquer his captor. 3 And if it is the part of a good general not only to improve the present, but also to judge correctly of the future, then Pericles was such a general, for the war which the Athenians were waging came to an end as he had foreknown and foretold; for they undertook too much and lost their empire. But it was contrary to the principles of Fabius that the Romans sent Scipio against Carthage and were completely victorious, not through the favour of fortune, but through the wisdom and valour of the general who utterly conquered their enemies. 4 Therefore the very disasters of his country bear witness to the sagacity of Pericles; while the successes of the Romans proved that Fabius was completely in the wrong. And it is just as great a failing in a general to involve himself in disaster from want of foresight, as it is to throw away an opportunity for success from want of confidence. Inexperience, it would seem, is to blame in each case, which both engenders rashness in a man, and robs a man of courage. So much for their military abilities.

3 1 As for their statesmanship, the Peloponnesian war was a ground of great complaint against Pericles. For it is said to have been brought on by his contention that no concession should be made to Sparta. I think, however, that not even Fabius Maximus would have made any concessions to Carthage, but would have nobly undergone the peril needful to maintain the Roman supremacy. Nevertheless, the courteous and gentle conduct of Fabius towards Minucius contrasts forcibly with the factious opposition of Pericles to Cimon and Thucydides, who were both good and true men and of the highest birth, and yet were subjected by him to ostracism and banishment. 2 But Pericles had greater influence and power than Fabius. For this reason he did not suffer any other general to bring misfortune upon the city by his evil counsels, except that Tolmides broke away from his guidance, carried through by main force a plan for attacking Boeotia, and met with disaster; but the rest all attached themselves submissively to his opinion, owing to the greatness of his influence. 3 Fabius, on the other hand, though sure and unerring in his own conduct of affairs, seems to have fallen short through his inability to restrain others. Surely the Romans would not have suffered so many disasters if Fabius had been as influential with them as Pericles was at Athens.

And further, as regards their freedom from mercenary views, Pericles displayed it by never taking any gifts at all; Fabius by his liberality to the needy, when he ransomed at his own costs his captured soldiers, 4 albeit the amount of his property was not great, but about six talents. And Pericles, though he had opportunities, owing to his authority and influence, to enrich himself from obsequious allies and kings beyond all possible estimates, nevertheless kept himself pre-eminently superior to bribes and free from corruption.

5 By the side of the great public works, the temples, and the stately edifices, with which Pericles adorned Athens, all Rome’s attempts at splendour down to the times of the Caesars, taken together, are not worthy to be considered, nay, the one had a towering pre-eminence above the other, both in grandeur of design, and grandeur of execution, which precludes comparison.

Alcibiades

191 1 1 The family of Alcibiades, it is thought, may be traced back to Eurysaces, the son of Aias, as its founder; and on his mother’s side he was an Alcmaeonid, being the son of Deinomache, the daughter of Megacles. His father, Cleinias, fitted out a trireme at his own cost and fought it gloriously at Artemisium. He was afterwards slain at Coroneia, fighting the Boeotians, and Alcibiades was therefore reared as the ward of Pericles and Ariphron, the sons of Xanthippus, his near kinsmen.

2 It is said, and with good reason, that the favour and affection which Socrates showed him contributed not a little to his reputation. Certain it is that Nicias, Demosthenes, Lamachus, Phormio, Thrasybulus, and Theramenes were prominent men, and his contemporaries, 192 and yet we cannot so much as name the mother of any one of them; whereas, in the case of Alcibiades, we even know that his nurse, who was a Spartan woman, was called Amycla, and his tutor Zopyrus. The one fact is mentioned by Antisthenes, the other by Plato.

3 As regards the beauty of Alcibiades, it is perhaps unnecessary to say aught, except that it flowered out with each successive season of his bodily growth, and made him, alike in boyhood, youth and manhood, lovely and pleasant. The saying of Euripides, that “beauty’s autumn, too, is beautiful,” is not always true. But it was certainly the case with Alcibiades, as with few besides, because of his excellent natural parts. 4 Even the lisp that he had became his speech, they say, and made his talk persuasive and full of charm. Aristophanes notices this lisp of his in the verses wherein he ridicules Theorus: —

(Sosias)”Then Alcibiades said to me with a lisp, said he,

‘Cwemahk Theocwus? What a cwaven’s head he has!’ “

(Xanthias)”That lisp of Alcibiades hit the mark for once!”

And Archippus, ridiculing the son of Alcibiades, says: “He walks with utter wantonness, trailing his long robe behind him, that he may be thought the very picture of his father, yes,

He slants his neck awry, and overworks the lisp.”

2 1 His character, in later life, displayed many inconsistencies and marked changes, as was natural amid his vast undertakings and varied fortunes. He was naturally a man of many strong passions, the mightiest of which were the love of rivalry and the love of preëminence. This is clear from the story recorded of his boyhood.

2 He was once hard pressed in wrestling, and to save himself from getting a fall, set his teeth in his opponent’s arms, where they clutched him, and was like to have bitten through them. His adversary, letting go his hold, cried: “You bite, Alcibiades, as women do!” “Not I,” said Alcibiades, but as lions do.”

While still a small boy, he was playing knuckle-bones in the narrow street, and just as it was his turn to throw, a heavy-laden waggon came along. 3 In the first place, he bade the driver halt, since his cast lay right in the path of the waggon. The driver, however, was a boorish fellow, and paid no heed to him, but drove his team along. Whereupon, while the other boys scattered out of the way, Alcibiades threw himself flat on his face in front of the team, stretched himself out at full length, and bade the driver go on if he pleased. At this the fellow pulled up his beasts sharply, in terror; the spectators, too, were affrighted, and ran with shouts to help the boy.

4 At school, he usually paid due heed to his teachers, but he refused to play the flute, holding it to be an ignoble and illiberal thing. The use of the plectrum and the lyre, he argued, wrought no havoc with the bearing and appearance which were becoming to a gentleman; but let a man go to blowing a flute, and even his own kinsmen could scarcely recognize his features. 5 Moreover, the lyre blended its tones with the voice or song of its master; whereas the flute closed and barricaded the mouth, robbing its master both of voice and speech. “Flutes, then,” said he, “for the sons of Thebes; they know not how to converse. But we Athenians, as our fathers say, have Athene for foundress and Apollo for patron, one of whom cast the flute away in disgust, and the other flayed the presumptuous flute-player.” 6 Thus, half in jest and half in earnest, Alcibiades emancipated himself from this discipline, and the rest of the boys as well. For word soon made its way to them that Alcibiades loathed the art of flute-playing and scoffed at its disciples, and rightly, too. Wherefore the flute was dropped entirely from the programme of a liberal education and was altogether despised.

3 1 Among the calumnies which Antiphon heaps upon him it is recorded that, when he was a boy, he ran away from home to Democrates, one of his lovers, and that Ariphron was all for having him proclaimed by town crier as a castaway. 193 But Pericles would not suffer it. “If he is dead,” said he, “we shall know it only a day the sooner for the proclamation; whereas, if he is still alive, he will, in consequence of it, be as good as dead for the rest of his life.” Antiphon says also that with a blow of his stick he slew one of his attendants in the palaestra of Sibyrtius. But these things are perhaps unworthy of belief, coming as they do from one who admits that he hated Alcibiades, and abused him accordingly.

4 1 It was not long before many men of high birth clustered about him and paid him their attentions. Most of them were plainly smitten with his brilliant youthful beauty and fondly courted him. But it was the love which Socrates had for him that bore strong testimony to the boy’s native excellence and good parts. These Socrates saw radiantly manifest in his outward person, and, fearful of the influence upon him of wealth and rank and the throng of citizens, foreigners and allies who sought to preëmpt his affections by flattery and favour, he was fain to protect him, and not suffer such a fair flowering plant to cast its native fruit to perdition. 2 For there is no man whom Fortune so envelops and compasses about with the so called good things of life that he cannot be reached by the bold and caustic reasonings of philosophy, and pierced to the heart. And so it was that Alcibiades, although he was pampered from the very first, and was prevented by the companions who sought only to please him from giving ear to one who would instruct and train him, nevertheless, through the goodness of his parts, at last saw all that was in Socrates, and clave to him, putting away his rich and famous lovers. 3 And speedily, from choosing such an associate, and giving ear to the words of a lover who was in the chase for no unmanly pleasures, and begged no kisses and embraces, but sought to expose the weakness of his soul and rebuke his vain and foolish pride,

“He crouched, though warrior bird, like slave, with drooping wings.”

And he came to think that the work of Socrates was really a kind of provision of the gods for the care and salvation of youth. 4 Thus, by despising himself, admiring his friend, loving that friend’s kindly solicitude and revering his excellence, he insensibly acquired an “image of love,” as Plato says, “to match love,” and all were amazed to see him eating, exercising, and tenting with Socrates, while he was harsh and stubborn with the rest of his lovers. Some of these he actually treated with the greatest insolence, as, for example, Anytus, the son of Anthemion.

5 This man was a lover of his, who, entertaining some friends, asked Alcibiades also to the dinner. Alcibiades declined the invitation, but after having drunk deep at home with some friends, went in revel rout to the house of Anytus, took his stand at the door of the men’s chamber, and, observing the tables full of gold and silver beakers, ordered his slaves to take half of them and carry them home for him. He did not deign to go in, but played this prank and was off. The guests were naturally indignant, and declared that Alcibiades had treated Anytus with gross and overweening insolence. “Not so,” said Anytus, “but with moderation and kindness; he might have taken all there were: he has left us half.”

5 1 He treated the rest of his lovers also after this fashion. There was one man, however, a resident alien, as they say, and not possessed of much, who sold all that he had, and brought the hundred staters which he got for it to Alcibiades, begging him to accept them. Alcibiades burst out laughing with delight at this, and invited the man to dinner. After feasting him and showing him every kindness, he gave him back his gold, and charged him on the morrow to compete with the farmers of the public revenues and outbid them all.  The man protested, because the purchase demanded capital of many talents; but Alcibiades threatened to have him scourged if he did not do it, 194 because he cherished some private grudge against the ordinary contractors. In the morning, accordingly, the alien went into the market place and increased the usual bid for the public lands by a talent. The contractors clustered angrily above him and bade him name his surety, supposing that he could find none. The man was confounded and began to draw back, when Alcibiades, standing afar off, cried to the magistrates: “Put my name down; he is a friend of mine; I will be his surety.” 3 When the contractors heard this, they were at their wits’ end, for they were in the habit of paying what they owed on a first purchase with the profits of a second, and saw no way out of their difficulty. Accordingly, they besought the man to withdraw his bid, and offered him money so to do; but Alcibiades would not suffer him to take less than a talent. On their offering the man the talent, he bade him take it and withdraw. To this lover he was of service in such a way.

6 1 But the love of Socrates, though it had many powerful rivals, somehow mastered Alcibiades. For he was of good natural parts, and the words of his teacher took hold of him and wrung his heart and brought tears to his eyes. But sometimes he would surrender himself to the flatterers who tempted him with many pleasures, and slip away from Socrates, and suffer himself to be actually hunted down by him like a runaway slave. And yet he feared and reverenced Socrates alone, and despised the rest of his lovers.

2 It was Cleanthes who said that any one beloved of him must be “downed,” as wrestlers say, by the ears alone, though offering to rival lovers many other “holds” which he himself would scorn to take, — meaning the various lusts of the body. And Alcibiades was certainly prone to be led away into pleasure. That “lawless self-indulgence” of his, of which Thucydides speaks, leads one to suspect this. 3 However, it was rather his love of distinction and love of fame to which his corrupters appealed, and thereby plunged him all too soon into ways of presumptuous scheming, persuading him that he had only to enter public life, and he would straightway cast into total eclipse the ordinary generals and public leaders, and not only that, he would even surpass Pericles in power and reputation among the Hellenes. 4 Accordingly, just as iron, which has been softened in the fire, is hardened again by cold water, and has its particles compacted together, so Alcibiades, whenever Socrates found him filled with vanity and wantonness, was reduced to shape by the Master’s discourse, and rendered humble and cautious. He learned how great were his deficiencies and how incomplete his excellence.

7 1 Once, as he was getting on past boyhood, he accosted a school-teacher, and asked him for a book of Homer. The teacher replied that he had nothing of Homer’s, whereupon Alcibiades fetched him a blow with his fist, and went his way. Another teacher said he had a Homer which he had corrected himself. “What!” said Alcibiades, “are you teaching boys to read when you are competent to edit Homer? You should be training young men.”

2 He once wished to see Pericles, and went to his house. But he was told that Pericles could not see him; he was studying how to render his accounts to the Athenians. “Were it not better for him,” said Alcibiades, as he went away, “to study how not to render his accounts to the Athenians?”

While still a stripling, he served as a soldier in the campaign of Potidaea, and had Socrates for his tent-mate and comrade in action. 3 A fierce battle took place, wherein both of them distinguished themselves; but when Alcibiades fell wounded, it was Socrates who stood over him and defended him, and with the most conspicuous bravery saved him, armour and all. The prize of valour fell to Socrates, of course, on the justest calculation; but the generals, owing to the high position of Alcibiades, were manifestly anxious to give him the glory of it. 195 Socrates, therefore, wishing to increase his pupil’s honourable ambitions, led all the rest in bearing witness to his bravery, and in begging that the crown and the suit of armour be given to him.

4 On another occasion, in the rout of the Athenians which followed the battle of Delium, Alcibiades, on horseback, saw Socrates retreating on foot with a small company, and would not pass him by, but rode by his side and defended him, though the enemy were pressing them hard and slaying many. This, however, was a later incident.

8 1 He once gave Hipponicus a blow with his fist — Hipponicus, the father of Callias, a man of great reputation and influence owing to his wealth and family — not that he had any quarrel with him, or was a prey to anger, but simply for the joke of the thing, on a wager with some companions. The wanton deed was soon noised about the city, and everybody was indignant, as was natural. Early the next morning Alcibiades went to the house of Hipponicus, knocked at his door, and on being shown into his presence, laid off the cloak he wore and bade Hipponicus scourge and chastise him as he would. 2 But Hipponicus put away his wrath and forgave him, and afterwards gave him his daughter Hipparete to wife.

Some say, however, that it was not Hipponicus, but Callias, his son, who gave Hipparete to Alcibiades, with a dowry of ten talents; and that afterwards, when she became a mother, Alcibiades exacted other ten talents besides, on the plea that this was the agreement, should children be born. And Callias was so afraid of the scheming of Alcibiades to get his wealth, that he made public proffer to the people of his property and house in case it should befall him to die without lineal heirs.

3 Hipparete was a decorous and affectionate wife, but being distressed because her husband would consort with courtezans, native and foreign, she left his house and went to live with her brother. Alcibiades did not mind this, but continued his wanton ways, and so she had to put in her plea for divorce to the magistrate, and that not by proxy, but in her own person. 4 On her appearing publicly to do this, as the law required, Alcibiades came up and seized her and carried her off home with him through the market place, no man daring to oppose him or take her from him. She lived with him, moreover, until her death, but she died shortly after this, when Alcibiades was on a voyage to Ephesus.

5 Such violence as this was not thought lawless or cruel at all. Indeed, the law prescribes that the wife who would separate from her husband shall go to court in person, to this very end, it would seem, that the husband may have a chance to meet and gain possession of her.

9 1 Possessing a dog of wonderful size and beauty, which had cost him seventy minas, he had its tail cut off, and a beautiful tail it was, too. His comrades chid him for this, and declared that everybody was furious about the dog and abusive of its owner. But Alcibiades burst out laughing and said: “That’s just what I want; I want Athens to talk about this, that it may say nothing worse about me.”

10 1 His first entrance into public life, they say, was connected with a contribution of money to the state, and was not of design. He was passing by when the Athenians were applauding in their assembly, and asked the reason for the applause. On being told that a contribution of money to the state was going on, he went forward to the bema and made a contribution himself. The crowd clapped their hands and shouted for joy — so much so that Alcibiades forgot all about the quail which he was carrying in his cloak, and the bird flew away in a fright. Thereupon the Athenians shouted all the more, and many of them sprang to help him hunt the bird. The one who caught it and gave it back to him was Antiochus, the sea captain, who became in consequence a great favourite with Alcibiades.

2 Though great doors to public service were opened to him by his birth, his wealth, and his personal bravery in battle; and though he had many friends and followers, 196 he thought that nothing should give him more influence with the people than the charm of his discourse. And that he was a powerful speaker, not only do the comic poets testify, but also the most powerful of the orators himself, who says, in his speech “Against Meidias,” that Alcibiades was a most able speaker in addition to his other gifts. 3 And if we are to trust Theophrastus, the most versatile and learned of the philosophers, Alcibiades was of all men the most capable of discovering and understanding what was required in a given case. But since he strove to find not only the proper thing to say, but also the proper words and phrases in which to say it; and since in this last regard he was not a man of large resources, he would often stumble in the midst of his speech, come to a stop, and pause a while, a particular phrase eluding him. Then he would resume, and proceed with all the caution in the world.

11 His breeds of horses were famous the world over, and so was the number of his racing-chariots. No one else ever entered seven of these at the Olympic games — neither commoner nor king — but he alone. And his coming off first, second, and fourth victor (as Thucydides says; third, according to Euripides), transcends in the splendour of its renown all that ambition can aspire to in this field. 2 The ode of Euripides to which I refer runs thus:

“Thee will I sing, O child of Cleinias;

A fair thing is victory, but fairest is what no other Hellene has achieved,

To run first, and second, and third in the contest of racing-chariots,

And to come off unwearied, and, wreathed with the olive of Zeus,

To furnish theme for herald’s proclamation.”

12 1 Moreover, this splendour of his at Olympia was made even more conspicuous by the emulous rivalry of the cities in his behalf. The Ephesians equipped him with a tent of magnificent adornment; the Chians furnished him with provender for his horses and with innumerable animals for sacrifice; the Lesbians with wine and other provisions for his unstinted entertainment of the multitude. However, a grave calumny — or malpractice on his part — connected with this rivalry was even more in the mouths of men.

2 It is said, namely, that there was at Athens one Diomedes, a reputable man, a friend of Alcibiades, and eagerly desirous of winning a victory at Olympia. He learned that there was a racing-chariot at Argos which was the property of that city, and knowing that Alcibiades had many friends and was very influential there, got him to buy the chariot. 3 Alcibiades bought it for his friend, and then entered it in the racing lists as his own, bidding Diomedes go hang. Diomedes was full of indignation, and called on gods and men to witness his wrongs. It appears also that a law-suit arose over this matter, and a speech was written by Isocrates for the son of Alcibiades “Concerning the Team of Horses.” In this speech, however, it is Tisias, not Diomedes, who is the plaintiff.

13 1 On entering public life, though still a mere stripling, he immediately humbled all the other popular leaders except Phaeax, the son of Erasistratus, and Nicias, the son of Niceratus. These men made him fight hard for what he won. Nicias was already of mature years, and had the reputation of being a most excellent general; but Phaeax, like himself, was just beginning his career, and, though of illustrious parentage, was inferior to him in other ways, and particularly as a public speaker. 2 He seemed affable and winning in private conversation rather than capable of conducting public debates. In fact, he was, as Eupolis says,

“A prince of talkers, but in speaking most incapable.”

And there is extant a certain speech written by Phaeax “Against Alcibiades,” wherein, among other things, it is written that the city’s numerous ceremonial utensils of gold and silver were all used by Alcibiades at his regular table as though they were his own.

3 Now there was a certain Hyperbolus, of the deme Perithoedae, whom Thucydides mentions as a base fellow, and who afforded all the comic poets, without any exception, constant material for jokes in their plays. But he was unmoved by abuse, and insensible to it, owing to his contempt of public opinion. This feeling some call courage and valour, but it is really mere shamelessness and folly. No one liked him, but the people often made use of him when they were eager to besmirch and calumniate men of rank and station. 4 Accordingly, at the time of which I speak, persuaded by this man, they were about to exercise the vote of ostracism, by which they cripple and banish whatever man from time to time may have too much reputation and influence in the city to please them, assuaging thus their envy rather than their fear. When it was clear that the ostracism would fall on one of three men — Phaeax, Alcibiades, or Nicias — Alcibiades had a conference with Nicias, united their two parties into one and turned the vote of ostracism upon Hyperbolus.

Some say, however, that it was not Nicias, but Phaeax, with whom Alcibiades had the conference which resulted in winning over that leader’s party and banishing Hyperbolus, who could have had no inkling of his fate. 5 For no worthless or disreputable fellow had ever before fallen under this condemnation of ostracism. As Plato, the comic poet, has somewhere said, in speaking of Hyperbolus,

“And yet he suffered worthy fate for men of old;

A fate unworthy though of him and of his brands.

For such as he the ostrakon was ne’er devised.”

However, the facts which have been ascertained about this case have been stated more at length elsewhere.

14 1 Alcibiades was sore distressed to see Nicias no less admired by his enemies than honoured by his fellow-citizens. For although Alcibiades was resident consul for the Lacedaemonians at Athens, and had ministered to their men who had been taken prisoners at Pylos, 2 still, they felt that it was chiefly due to Nicias that they had obtained peace and the final surrender of those men, and so they lavished their regard upon him. And Hellenes everywhere said that it was Pericles who had plunged them into war, but Nicias who had delivered them out of it, and most men called the peace the “Peace of Nicias.” Alcibiades was therefore distressed beyond measure, and in his envy planned a violation of the solemn treaty. 3 To begin with, he saw that the Argives hated and feared the Spartans and sought to be rid of them. So he secretly held out hopes to them of an alliance with Athens, and encouraged them, by conferences with the chief men of their popular party, not to fear nor yield to the Lacedaemonians, but to look to Athens and await her action, since she was now all but repentant, and desirous of abandoning the peace which she had made with Sparta.

4 And again, when the Lacedaemonians made a separate alliance with the Boeotians, and delivered up Panactum to the Athenians not intact, as they were bound to do by the treaty, but dismantled, he took advantage of the Athenians’ wrath at this to embitter them yet more. He raised a tumult in the assembly against Nicias, and slandered him with accusations all too plausible. 5 Nicias himself, he said, when he was general, had refused to capture the enemy’s men who were cut off on the island of Sphacteria, and when others had captured them, he had released and given them back to the Lacedaemonians, whose favour he sought; and then he did not persuade those same Lacedaemonians, tried friend of theirs as he was, not to make separate alliance with the Boeotians or even with the Corinthians, and yet whenever any Hellenes wished to be friends and allies of Athens, he tried to prevent it, unless it were the good pleasure of the Lacedaemonians.

6 Nicias was reduced to great straits by all this, but just then, by rare good fortune as it were, an embassy came from Sparta, with reasonable proposals to begin on, and with assurances that they came with full powers to adopt any additional terms that were conciliatory and just. The council received them favourably, and the people were to hold an assembly on the following day for their reception. But Alcibiades feared a peaceful outcome, and managed to secure a private conference with the embassy. When they were convened he said to them: 7 “What is the matter with you, men of Sparta? Why are you blind to the fact that the council is always moderate and courteous towards those who have dealings with it, while the people’s assembly is haughty and has great ambitions? If you say to them that you are come with unlimited powers, 198 they will lay their commands and compulsions upon you without any feeling. Come now, put away such simplicity as this, and if you wish to get moderate terms from the Athenians, and to suffer no compulsion at their hands which you cannot yourselves approve, then discuss with them what would be a just settlement of your case, assuring them that you have not full powers to act. I will coöperate with you, out of my regard for the Lacedaemonians.” 8 After this speech he gave them his oath, and so seduced them wholly away from the influence of Nicias. They trusted him implicitly, admired his cleverness and sagacity, and thought him no ordinary man.

On the following day the people convened in the assembly, and the embassy was introduced to them. On being asked by Alcibiades, in the most courteous tone, with what powers they had come, they replied that they were not come with full and independent powers. 9 At once, then, Alcibiades assailed them with angry shouts, as though he were the injured party, not they, calling them faithless and fickle men, who were come on no sound errand whatever. The council was indignant, the assembly was enraged, and Nicias was filled with consternation and shame at the men’s change of front. He was unaware of the deceitful trick which had been played upon him.

15 1 After this fiasco on the part of the Lacedaemonians, Alcibiades was appointed general, and straightway brought the Argives, Mantineans, and Eleans into alliance with Athens. The manner of this achievement of his no one approved, but the effect of it was great. It divided and agitated almost all Peloponnesus; it arrayed against the Lacedaemonians at Mantinea so many warlike shields upon a single day; it set at farthest remove from Athens the struggle, with all its risks, in which, when the Lacedaemonians conquered, their victory brought them no great advantage, whereas, had they been defeated, the very existence of Sparta would have been at stake.

2 After this battle of Mantinea, the oligarchs of Argos, “The Thousand,” set out at once to depose the popular party and make the city subject to themselves; and the Lacedaemonians came and deposed the democracy. But the populace took up arms again and got the upper hand. Then Alcibiades came and made the people’s victory secure. He also persuaded them to run long walls down to the sea, and so to attach their city completely to the naval dominion of Athens. 3 He actually brought carpenters and masons from Athens, and displayed all manner of zeal, thus winning favour and power for himself no less than for his city. In like manner he persuaded the people of Patrae to attach their city to the sea by long walls. Thereupon some one said to the Patrensians: “Athens will swallow you up!” “Perhaps so,” said Alcibiades, “but you will go slowly, and feet first; whereas Sparta will swallow you head first, and at one gulp.”

4 However, he counselled the Athenians to assert dominion on land also, and to maintain in very deed the oath regularly propounded to their young warriors in the sanctuary of Agraulus. They take oath that they will regard wheat, barley, the vine, and the olive as the natural boundaries of Attica, and they are thus trained to consider as their own all the habitable and fruitful earth.

16 1 But all this statecraft and eloquence and lofty purpose and cleverness was attended with great luxuriousness of life, with wanton drunkenness and lewdness, with effeminacy in dress, — he would trail long purple robes through the market place, — and with prodigal expenditures. He would have the decks of his triremes cut away that he might sleep more softly, his bedding being slung on cords rather than spread on the hard planks. He had a golden shield made for himself, bearing no ancestral device, 2 but an Eros armed with a thunderbolt. The reputable men of the city looked on all these things with loathing and indignation, and feared his contemptuous and lawless spirit. They thought such conduct as his tyrant-like and monstrous. 199 How the common folk felt towards him has been well set forth by Aristophanes in these words: —

“It yearns for him, and hates him too, but wants him back;”

and again, veiling a yet greater severity in his metaphor:–

“A lion is not to be reared within the state;

But, once you’ve reared him up, consult his every mood.”

3 And indeed, his voluntary contributions of money, his support of public exhibitions, his unsurpassed munificence towards the city, the glory of his ancestry, the power of his eloquence, the comeliness and vigour of his person, together with his experience and prowess in war, made the Athenians lenient and tolerant towards everything else; they were forever giving the mildest of names to his transgressions, calling them the product of youthful spirits and ambition.

4 For instance, he once imprisoned the painter Agatharchus in his house until he had adorned it with paintings for him, and then dismissed his captive with a handsome present. And when Taureas was supporting a rival exhibition, he gave him a box on the ear, so eager was he for the victory. And he picked out a woman from among the prisoners of Melos to be his mistress, and reared a son she bore him. 5 This was an instance of what they called his kindness of heart, but the execution of all the grown men of Melos was chiefly due to him, since he supported the decree therefor.

Aristophon painted Nemea with Alcibiades seated in her arms; whereat the people were delighted, and ran in crowds to see the picture. But the elders were indignant at this too; they said it smacked of tyranny and lawlessness. And it would seem that Archestratus, in his verdict on the painting, did not go wide of the mark when he said that Hellas could not endure more than one Alcibiades.

6 Timon the misanthrope once saw Alcibiades, after a successful day, being publicly escorted home from the assembly. He did not pass him by nor avoid him, as his custom was with others, but met him and greeted him, saying: “It’s well you’re growing so, my child; you’ll grow big enough to ruin all this rabble.” At this some laughed, and some railed, and some gave much heed to the saying. So undecided was public opinion about Alcibiades, by reason of the unevenness of his nature.

17 1 On Sicily the Athenians had cast longing eyes even while Pericles was living; and after his death they actually tried to lay hands upon it. The lesser expeditions which they sent thither from time to time, ostensibly for the aid and comfort of their allies on the island who were being wronged by the Syracusans, they regarded merely as stepping stones to the greater expedition of conquest. 2 But the man who finally fanned this desire of theirs into flame, and persuaded them not to attempt the island any more in part and little by little, but to sail thither with a great armament and subdue it utterly, was Alcibiades; he persuaded the people to have great hopes, and he himself had greater aspirations still. Such were his hopes that he regarded Sicily as a mere beginning, and not, like the rest, as an end of the expedition. 3 So while Nicias was trying to divert the people from the capture of Syracuse as an undertaking too difficult for them, Alcibiades was dreaming of Carthage and Libya, and, after winning these, of at once encompassing Italy and Peloponnesus. He almost regarded Sicily as the ways and means provided for his greater war. The young men were at once carried away on the wings of such hopes, and their elders kept recounting in their ears many wonderful things about the projected expedition. Many were they who sat in the palaestras and lounging-places mapping out in the sand the shape of Sicily and the position of Libya and Carthage.

4 Socrates the philosopher, however, and Meton the astrologer, are said to have had no hopes that any good would come to the city from this expedition; Socrates, as it is likely, because he got an inkling of the future from the divine guide who was his familiar. Meton — whether his fear of the future arose from mere calculation or from his use of some sort of divination — feigned madness, 200 and seizing a blazing torch, was like to have set fire to his own house. 5 Some say, however, that Meton made no pretence of madness, but actually did burn his house down in the night, and then, in the morning, came before the people begging and praying that, in view of his great calamity, his son might be released from the expedition. At any rate, he succeeded in cheating his fellow citizens, and obtained his desire.

18 1 Nicias was elected general against his will, and he was anxious to avoid the command most of all because of his fellow commander. For it had seemed to the Athenians that the war would go on better if they did not send out Alcibiades unblended, but rather tempered his rash daring with the prudent forethought of Nicias. As for the third general, Lamachus, though advanced in years, he was thought, age notwithstanding, to be no less fiery than Alcibiades, and quite as fond of taking risks in battle. 2 During the deliberations of the people on the extent and character of the armament, Nicias again tried to oppose their wishes and put a stop to the war. But Alcibiades answered all his arguments and carried the day, and then Demostratus, the orator, formally moved that the generals have full and independent powers in the matter of the armament and of the whole war.

After the people had adopted this motion and all things were made ready for the departure of the fleet, there were some unpropitious signs and portents, especially in connection with the festival, namely, the Adonia. 3 This fell at that time, and little images like dead folk carried forth to burial were in many places exposed to view by the women, who mimicked burial rites, beat their breasts, and sang dirges. Moreover, the mutilation of the Hermae, most of which, in a single night, had their faces and forms disfigured, confounded the hearts of many, even among those who usually set small store by such things. It was said, it is true, that Corinthians had done the deed, Syracuse being a colony of theirs, in the hope that such portents would check or stop the war. 4 The multitude, however, were not moved by this reasoning, nor by that of those who thought the affair no terrible sign at all, but rather one of the common effects of strong wine, when dissolute youth, in mere sport, are carried away into wanton acts. They looked on the occurrence with wrath and fear, thinking it the sign of a bold and dangerous conspiracy. They therefore scrutinized keenly every suspicious circumstance, the council and the assembly convening for this purpose many times within a few days.

19 1 During this time Androcles, the popular leader, produce sundry aliens and slaves who accused Alcibiades and his friends of mutilating other sacred images, and of making a parody of the mysteries of Eleusis in a drunken revel. They said that one Theodorus played the part of the Herald, Pulytion that of the Torch-bearer, and Alcibiades that of the High Priest, and that the rest of his companions were there in the rôle of initiates, and were dubbed Mystae. 2 Such indeed was the purport of the impeachment which Thessalus, the son of Cimon, brought in to the assembly, impeaching Alcibiades for impiety towards the Eleusinian goddesses. The people were exasperated, and felt bitterly towards Alcibiades, and Androcles, who was his mortal enemy, egged them on. At first Alcibiades was confounded. 3 But perceiving that all the seamen and soldiers who were going to sail for Sicily were friendly to him, and hearing that the Argive and Mantinean men-at arms, a thousand in number, declared plainly that it was all because of Alcibiades that they were making their long expedition across the seas, and that if any wrong should be done him they would at once abandon it, he took courage, and insisted on an immediate opportunity to defend himself before the people. His enemies were now in their turn dejected; they feared lest the people should be too lenient in their judgement of him because they needed him so much.

201 4 Accordingly, they devised that certain orators who were not looked upon as enemies of Alcibiades, but who really hated him no less than his avowed foes, should rise in the assembly and say that it was absurd, when a general had been appointed, with full powers, over such a vast force, and when his armament and allies were all assembled, to destroy his beckoning opportunity by casting lots for jurors and measuring out time for the case. “Nay,” they said, “let him sail now, and Heaven be with him! But when the war is over, then let him come and make his defence. The laws will be the same then as now.” 5 Of course the malice in this postponement did not escape Alcibiades. He declared in the assembly that it was a terrible misfortune to be sent off at the head of such a vast force with his case still in suspense, leaving behind him vague accusations and slanders; he ought to be put to death if he did not refute them; but if he did refute them and prove his innocence, he ought to proceed against the enemy without any fear of the public informers at home.

20 1 He could not carry his point, however, but was ordered to set sail. So he put to sea along with his fellow generals, having not much fewer than one hundred and forty triremes; fifty-one hundred men-at arms; about thirteen hundred archers, slingers, and light-armed folk; and the rest of his equipment to correspond. 2 On reaching Italy and taking Rhegium, he proposed a plan for the conduct of the war. Nicias opposed it, but Lamachus approved it, and so he sailed to Sicily. He secured the allegiance of Catana, but accomplished nothing further, since he was presently summoned home by the Athenians to stand his trial.

At first, as I have said, sundry vague suspicions and calumnies against Alcibiades were advanced by aliens and slaves. 3 Afterwards, during his absence, his enemies went to work more vigorously. They brought the outrage upon the Hermae and upon the Eleusinian mysteries under one and the same design; both, they said, were fruits of a conspiracy to subvert the government, and so all who were accused of any complicity whatsoever therein were cast into prison without trial. The people were provoked with themselves for not bringing Alcibiades to trial and judgment at the time on such grave charges,  and any kinsman or friend or comrade of his who fell foul of their wrath against him, found them exceedingly severe. Thucydides neglected to mention the informers by name, but others give their names as Diocleides and Teucer. For instance, Phrynichus the comic poet referred to them thus: —

“Look out too, dearest Hermes, not to get a fall,

And mar your looks, and so equip with calumny

Another Diocleides bent on wreaking harm.”

And the Hermes replies: —

“I’m on the watch; there’s Teucer, too; I would not give

A prize for tattling to an alien of his guilt.”

5 And yet there was nothing sure or steadfast in the statements of the informers. One of them, indeed, was asked how he recognized the faces of the Hermae-defacers, and replied, “By the light of the moon.” This vitiated the whole story, since there was no moon at all when the deed was done. Sensible men were troubled thereat, but even this did not soften the people’s feeling towards the slanderous stories. As they had set out to do in the beginning, so they continued, haling and casting into prison any one who was denounced.

21 1 Among those thus held in bonds and imprisonment for trial was Andocides the orator,a whom Hellanicus the historian included among the descendants of Odysseus. He was held to be a foe to popular government, and an oligarch, but what most made him suspected of the mutilation of the Hermae, was the tall Hermes which stood near his house, a dedication of the Aegeïd tribe. 2022 This was almost the only one among the very few statues of like prominence to remain unharmed. For this reason it is called to this day the Hermes of Andocides. Everybody gives it that name, in spite of the adverse testimony of its inscription.

Now it happened that, of all those lying in prison with him under the same charge, Andocides became most intimate and friendly with a man named Timaeus, of less repute than himself, it is true, but of great sagacity and daring. 3 This man persuaded Andocides to turn state’s evidence against himself and a few others. If he confessed, — so the man argued, — he would have immunity from punishment by decree of the people; whereas the result of the trial, while uncertain in all cases, was most to be dreaded in that of influential men like himself. It was better to save his life by a false confession of crime, than to die a shameful death under a false charge of that crime. One who had an eye to the general welfare of the community might well abandon to their fate a few dubious characters, if he could thereby save a multitude of good men from the wrath of the people. 4 By such arguments of Timaeus, Andocides was at last persuaded to bear witness against himself and others. He himself received the immunity from punishment which had been decreed; but all those whom he named, excepting such as took to flight, were put to death, and Andocides added to their number some of his own household servants, that he might the better be believed.

5 Still, the people did not lay aside all their wrath at this point, but rather, now that they were done with the Hermae-defacers, as if their passion had all the more opportunity to vent itself, they dashed like a torrent against Alcibiades, and finally dispatched the Salaminian state-galley to fetch him home. They shrewdly gave its officers explicit command not to use violence, nor to seize his person, but with all moderation of speech to bid him accompany them home to stand trial and satisfy the people. 6 For they were afraid that their army, in an enemy’s land, would be full of tumult and mutiny at the summons. And Alcibiades might easily have effected this had he wished. For the men were cast down at his departure, and expected that the war, under the conduct of Nicias, would be drawn out to a great length by delays and inactivity, now that their goad to action had been taken away. Lamachus, it is true, was a good soldier and a brave man; but he lacked authority and prestige because he was poor.

22 1 Alcibiades had no sooner sailed away than he robbed the Athenians of Messana. There was a party there who were on the point of surrendering the city to the Athenians, but Alcibiades knew them, and gave the clearest information of their design to the friends of Syracuse in the city, and so brought the thing to naught. Arrived at Thurii, he left his trireme and hid himself so as to escape all quest. 2 When some one recognised him and asked, “Can you not trust your country, Alcibiades?” “In all else,” he said, “but in the matter of life I wouldn’t trust even my own mother not to mistake a black for a white ballot when she cast her vote.” And when he afterwards heard that the city had condemned him to death, “I’ll show them,” he said, “that I’m alive.”

3 His impeachment is on record, and runs as follows: “Thessalus, son of Cimon, of the deme Laciadae, impeaches Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, of the deme Scambonidae, for committing crime against the goddesses of Eleusis, Demeter and Cora, by mimicking the mysteries and showing them forth to his companions in his own house, wearing a robe such as the High Priest wears when he shows forth the sacred secrets to the initiates, and calling himself High Priest, Pulytion Torch-bearer, and Theodorus, of the deme Phegaea, Herald, and hailing the rest of his companions as Mystae and Epoptae, contrary to the laws and institutions of the Eumolpidae, Heralds, and Priests of Eleusis.” 4 His case went by default, his property was confiscated, and besides that, it was also decreed that his name should be publicly cursed by all priests and priestesses. Theano, the daughter of Menon, of the deme Agraule, they say, was the only one who refused to obey this decree. She declared that she was a praying, not a cursing priestess.

23 1 When these great judgments and condemnations were passed upon Alcibiades, he was tarrying in Argos, 203 for as soon as he had made his escape from Thurii, he passed over into Peloponnesus. But fearing his foes there, and renouncing his country altogether, he sent to the Spartans, demanding immunity and confidence, and promising to render them aid and service greater than all the harm he had previously done them as an enemy. 2 The Spartans granted this request and received him among them. No sooner was he come than he zealously brought one thing to pass: they had been delaying and postponing assistance to Syracuse; he roused and incited them to send Gylippus thither for a commander, and to crush the force which Athens had there. A second thing he did was to get them to stir up the war against Athens at home; and the third, and most important of all, to induce them to fortify Deceleia. This more than anything else wrought ruin and destruction to his native city.

3 At Sparta, he was held in high repute publicly, and privately was no less admired. The multitude was brought under his influence, and was actually bewitched, by his assumption of the Spartan mode of life. When they saw him with his hair untrimmed, taking cold baths, on terms of intimacy with their coarse bread, and supping on black porridge, they could scarcely trust their eyes, and doubted whether such a man as he now was had ever had a cook in his own house, had even so much as looked upon a perfumer, or endured the touch of Milesian wool. 4 He had, as they say, one power which transcended all others, and proved an implement of his chase for men: that of assimilating and adapting himself to the pursuits and lives of others, thereby assuming more violent changes than the chameleon. That animal, however, as it is said, is utterly unable to assume one colour, namely, white; but Alcibiades could associate with good and bad alike, and found naught that he could not imitate and practice. 5 In Sparta, he was all for bodily training, simplicity of life, and severity of countenance; in Ionia, for luxurious ease and pleasure; in Thrace, for drinking deep; in Thessaly, for riding hard; and when he was thrown with Tissaphernes the satrap, he outdid even Persian magnificence in his pomp and lavishness. It was not that he could so easily pass entirely from one manner of man to another, nor that he actually underwent in every case a change in his real character; but when he saw that his natural manners were likely to be annoying to his associates, he was quick to assume any counterfeit exterior which might in each case be suitable for them. 6 At all events, in Sparta, so far as the outside was concerned, it was possible to say of him, “ ‘No child of Achilles he, but Achilles himself,’ such a man as Lycurgus trained”; but judging by what he actually felt and did, one might have cried with the poet, “ ‘Tis the selfsame woman still!”

7 For while Agis the king was away on his campaigns, Alcibiades corrupted Timaea his wife, so that she was with child by him and made no denial of it. When she had given birth to a male child, it was called Leotychides in public, but in private the name which the boy’s mother whispered to her friends and attendants was Alcibiades. Such was the passion that possessed the woman. But he, in his mocking way, said he had not done this thing for a wanton insult, nor at the behest of mere pleasure, but in order that descendants of his might be kings of the Lacedaemonians. 8 Such being the state of things, there were many to tell the tale to Agis, and he believed it, more especially owing to the lapse of time. There had been an earthquake, and he had run in terror out of his chamber and the arms of his wife, and then for ten months had had no further intercourse with her. And since Leotychides had been born at the end of this period, Agis declared that he was no child of his. For this reason Leotychides was afterwards refused the royal succession.

24 1 After the Athenian disaster in Sicily, the Chians, Lesbians, and Cyzicenes sent embassies at the same time to Sparta, to discuss a revolt from Athens. But though the Boeotians supported the appeal of the Lesbians, and Pharnabazus that of the Cyzicenes, the Spartans, under the persuasion of Alcibiades, elected to help the Chians first of all. 204 Alcibiades actually set sail in person and brought almost all Ionia to revolt, and, in constant association with the Lacedaemonian generals, wrought injury to the Athenians. 2 But Agis was hostile to him because of the wrong he had suffered as a husband, and he was also vexed at the repute in which Alcibiades stood; for most of the successes won were due to him, as report had it. The most influential and ambitious of the other Spartans also were already envious and tired of him, and soon grew strong enough to induce the magistrates at home to send out orders to Ionia that he be put to death.

3 His stealthy discovery of this put him on his guard, and while in all their undertakings he took part with the Lacedaemonians, he sedulously avoided coming into their hands. Then, resorting to Tissaphernes, the King’s satrap, for safety, he was soon first and foremost in that grandee’s favour. 4 For his versatility and surpassing cleverness were the admiration of the Barbarian, who was no straightforward man himself, but malicious and fond of evil company. And indeed no disposition could resist and no nature escape Alcibiades, so full of grace was his daily life and conversation. Even those who feared and hated him felt a rare and winning charm in his society and presence. 5 And thus it was that Tissaphernes, though otherwise the most ardent of the Persians in his hatred of the Hellenes, so completely surrendered to the flatteries of Alcibiades as to outdo him in reciprocal flatteries. Indeed, the most beautiful park he had, both for its refreshing waters and grateful lawns, with resorts and retreats decked out in regal and extravagant fashion, he named Alcibiades; everyone always called it by that name.

25 1 Alcibiades now abandoned the cause of the Spartans, since he distrusted them and feared Agis, and began to malign and slander them to Tissaphernes. He advised him not to aid them very generously, and yet not to put down the Athenians completely, but rather by niggardly assistance to straiten and gradually wear out both, and so make them easy victims for King when they had weakened and exhausted each other. 2 Tissaphernes was easily persuaded, and all men saw that he loved and admired his new adviser, so that Alcibiades was looked up to by the Hellenes on both sides, and the Athenians repented themselves of the sentence they had passed upon him, now that they were suffering for it. Alcibiades himself also was presently burdened with the fear that if his native city were altogether destroyed, he might come into the power of the Lacedaemonians, who hated him.

3 At this time almost all the forces of Athens were at Samos. From this island as their naval base of operations they were trying to win back some of their Ionian allies who had revolted, and were watching others who were disaffected. After a fashion they still managed to cope with their enemies on the sea, but they were afraid of Tissaphernes and of the fleet of one hundred and fifty Phoenician triremes which was said to be all but at hand; if this once came up, no hope of safety was left for their city. 4 Alcibiades was aware of this, and sent secret messages to the influential Athenians at Samos, in which he held out the hope that he might bring Tissaphernes over to be their friend. He did not seek, he said, the favour of the multitude, nor trust them, but rather that of the aristocrats, in case they would venture to show themselves men, put a stop to the insolence of the people, take the direction of affairs into their own hands, and save their cause and city.

5 Now the rest of the aristocrats were much inclined to Alcibiades. But one of the generals, Phrynichus, of the deme Deirades, suspected (what was really the case) that Alcibiades had no more use for an oligarchy than for a democracy, but merely sought in one way or another a recall from exile, and therefore inveighed against the people merely to court betimes the favour of the aristocrats, and ingratiate himself with them. He therefore opposed him. When his opinion had been overborne and he was now become an open enemy of Alcibiades, 205 he sent a secret message to Astyochus, the enemy’s naval commander, bidding him beware of Alcibiades and arrest him, for that he was playing a double game. 6 But without his knowing it, it was a case of traitor dealing with traitor. For Astyochus was much in awe of Tissaphernes, and seeing that Alcibiades had great power with the satrap, he disclosed the message of Phrynichus to them both. Alcibiades at once sent men to Samos to denounce Phrynichus. All the Athenians there were incensed and banded themselves together against Phrynichus, who, seeing no other escape from his predicament, attempted to cure one evil by another and a greater. 7 He sent again to Astyochus, chiding him indeed for his disclosure of the former message, but announcing that he stood ready to deliver into his hands the fleet and army of the Athenians.

However, this treachery of Phrynichus did not harm the Athenians at all, because of the fresh treachery of Astyochus. This second message of Phrynichus also he delivered to Alcibiades. 8 But Phrynichus knew all the while that he would do so, and expected a second denunciation from Alcibiades. So he got the start of him by telling the Athenians himself that the enemy were going to attack them, and advising them to have their ships manned and their camp fortified. 9 The Athenians were busy doing this when again a letter came from Alcibiades bidding them beware of Phrynichus, since he had offered to betray their fleet to the enemy. This letter they disbelieved at the time, supposing that Alcibiades, who must know perfectly the equipment and purposes of the enemy, had used his knowledge in order to calumniate Phrynichus falsely. 10 Afterwards, however, when Hermon, one of the frontier guard, had smitten Phrynichus with a dagger and slain him in the open market-place, the Athenians tried the case of the dead man, found him guilty of treachery, and awarded crowns to Hermon and his accomplices.

26 1 But at Samos the friends of Alcibiades soon got the upper hand, and sent Peisander to Athens to change the form of government. He was to encourage the leading men to overthrow the democracy and take control of affairs, with the plea that on these terms alone would Alcibiades make Tissaphernes their friend and ally. This was the pretence and this the pretext of those who established the oligarchy at Athens. 2 But as soon as the so called Five Thousand (they were really only four hundred) got the power and took control of affairs, they at once neglected Alcibiades entirely, and waged the war with less vigour, partly because they distrusted the citizens, who still looked askance at the new form of government, and partly because they thought that the Lacedaemonians, who always looked with favour on an oligarchy, would be more lenient towards them. 3 The popular party in the city was constrained by fear to keep quiet, because many of those who openly opposed the Four Hundred had been slain. But when the army in Samos learned what had been done at home, they were enraged, and were eager to sail forthwith to the Piraeus, and sending for Alcibiades, they appointed him general, and bade him lead them in putting down the tyrants.

4 An ordinary man, thus suddenly raised to great power by the favour of the multitude, would have been full of complaisance, thinking that he must at once gratify them in all things and oppose them in nothing, since they had made him, instead of a wandering exile, leader and general of such a fleet and of so large an armed force. But Alcibiades, as became a great leader, felt that he must oppose them in their career of blind fury, and prevented them from making a fatal mistake. Therefore in this instance, at least, he was the manifest salvation of the city. 5 For had they sailed off home, their enemies might at once have occupied all Ionia, 206 the Hellespont without a battle, and the islands, while Athenians were fighting Athenians and making their own city the seat of war. Such a war Alcibiades, more than any other one man, prevented, not only persuading and instructing the multitude together, but also, taking them man by man, supplicating some and constraining others. 6 He had a helper, too, in Thrasybulus of Steiris, who went along with him and did the shouting; for he had, it is said, the biggest voice of all the Athenians.

A second honourable proceeding of Alcibiades was his promising to bring over to their side the Phoenician ships which the King had sent out and the Lacedaemonians were expecting, — or at least to see that those expectations were not realized, — and his sailing off swiftly on this errand. 7 The ships were actually seen off Aspendus, but Tissaphernes did not bring them up, and thereby played the Lacedaemonians false. Alcibiades, however, was credited with this diversion of the ships by both parties, and especially by the Lacedaemonians. The charge was that he instructed the Barbarian to suffer the Hellenes to destroy one another. For it was perfectly clear that the side to which such a naval force attached itself would rob the other altogether of the control of the sea.

27 1 After this the Four Hundred were overthrown, the friends of Alcibiades now zealously assisting the party of the people. Then the city willingly ordered Alcibiades to come back home. But he thought he must not return with empty hands and without achievement, through the pity and favour of the multitude, but rather in a blaze of glory. So, to begin with, he set sail with a small fleet from Samos and cruised off Cnidus and Cos. 2 There he heard that Mindarus the Spartan admiral had sailed off to the Hellespont with his entire fleet, followed by the Athenians, and so he hastened to the assistance of their generals. By chance he came up, with his eighteen triremes, at just that critical point when both parties, having joined battle with all their ships off Abydos, and sharing almost equally in victory and defeat until evening, were locked in a great struggle. 3 The appearance of Alcibiades inspired both sides with a false opinion of his coming: the enemy were emboldened and the Athenians were confounded. But he quickly hoisted Athenian colours on his flagship and darted straight upon the victorious and pursuing Peloponnesians. Routing them, he drove them to land, and following hard after them, rammed and shattered their ships. Their crews swam ashore, and here Pharnabazus came to their aid with his infantry and fought along the beach in defence of their ships. 4 But finally the Athenians captured thirty of them, rescued their own, and erected a trophy of victory.

Taking advantage of a success so brilliant as this, and ambitious to display himself at once before Tissaphernes, Alcibiades supplied himself with gifts of hospitality and friendship and proceeded, at the head of an imperial retinue, to visit the satrap. 5 His reception, however, was not what he expected. Tissaphernes had for a long time been accused by the Lacedaemonians to the King, and being in fear of the King’s condemnation, it seemed to him that Alcibiades had come in the nick of time. So he arrested him and shut him up in Sardis, hoping that such an outrage upon him as this would dispel the calumnies of the Spartans.

28 1 After the lapse of thirty days Alcibiades ran away from his guards, got a horse from some one or other, and made his escape to Clazomenae. To repay Tissaphernes, he alleged that he had escaped with that satrap’s connivance, and so brought additional calumny upon him. He himself sailed to the camp of the Athenians, where he learned that Mindarus, along with Pharnabazus, was in Cyzicus. 2 Thereupon he roused the spirits of the soldiers, declaring that they must now do sea-fighting and land-fighting and even siege-fighting, too, against their enemies, 207 for poverty stared them in the face unless they were victorious in every way. He then manned his ships and made his way to Proconnesus, giving orders at once to seize all small trading craft and keep them under guard, that the enemy might get no warning of his approach from any source so ever.

3 Now it chanced that copious rain fell all of a sudden, and thunder-peals and darkness coöperated with him in concealing his design. Indeed, not only did he elude the enemy, but even the Athenians themselves had already given up all expectation of fighting, when he suddenly ordered them aboard ship and put out to sea. After a little the darkness cleared away, and the Peloponnesian ships were seen hovering off the harbour of Cyzicus. 4 Fearing then lest they catch sight of the full extent of his array and take refuge ashore, he ordered his fellow-commanders to sail slowly and so remain in the rear, while he himself, with only forty ships, hove in sight and challenged the foe to battle. The Peloponnesians were utterly deceived, and scorning what they deemed the small numbers of their enemy, put out to meet them, and closed at once with them in a grappling fight. Presently, while the battle was raging, the Athenian reserves bore down upon their foe, who were panic stricken and took to flight.

5 Then Alcibiades with twenty of his best ships broke through their line, put to shore, and disembarking his crews, attacked his enemy as they fled from their ships, and slew many of them. Mindarus and Pharnabazus, who came to their aid, he overwhelmed; Mindarus was slain fighting sturdily, but Pharnabazus made his escape. 6 Many were the dead bodies and the arms of which the Athenians became masters, and they captured all their enemy’s ships. Then they also stormed Cyzicus, which Pharnabazus abandoned to its fate, and the Peloponnesians in it were annihilated. Thus the Athenians not only had the Hellespont under their sure control, but even drove the Lacedaemonians at a stroke from the rest of the sea. A dispatch was captured announcing the disaster to the ephors in true laconic style: “Our ships are lost; Mindarus is gone; our men are starving; we know not what to do.”

29 1 But the soldiers of Alcibiades were now so elated and filled with pride that they disdained longer to mingle with the rest of the army, since it had often been conquered, while they were unconquered. For not long before this, Thrasyllus had suffered a reverse at Ephesus, and the Ephesians had erected their bronze trophy of victory, to the disgrace of the Athenians. 2 This was what the soldiers of Alcibiades cast in the teeth of Thrasyllus’ men, vaunting themselves and their general, and refusing to share either training or quarters in camp with them. But when Pharnabazus with much cavalry and infantry attacked the forces of Thrasyllus, who had made a raid into the territory of Abydos, Alcibiades sallied out to their aid, routed Pharnabazus, and pursued him till nightfall, along with Thrasyllus. Thus the two factions were blended, and returned to their camp with mutual friendliness and delight.

3 On the following day Alcibiades set up a trophy of victory and plundered the territory of Pharnabazus, no one venturing to defend it. He even captured some priests and priestesses, but let them go without ransom. On setting out to attack Chalcedon, which had revolted from Athens and received a Lacedaemonian garrison and governor, he heard that its citizens had collected all their goods and chattels out of the country and committed them for safe keeping to the Bithynians, who were their friends. So he marched to the confines of Bithynia with his army, and sent on a herald with accusations and demands. The Bithynians, in terror, gave up the booty to him, and made a treaty of friendship.

30 1 While Chalcedon was being walled in from sea to sea, Pharnabazus came to raise the siege, and at the same time Hippocrates, the Spartan governor, 208 led his forces out of the city and attacked the Athenians. But Alcibiades arrayed his army so as to face both enemies at once, put Pharnabazus to shameful flight, and slew Hippocrates together with many of his vanquished men.

2 Then he sailed in person into the Hellespont and levied moneys there. He also captured Selymbria, where he exposed himself beyond all bounds. For there was a party in the city which offered to surrender it to him, and they had agreed with him upon the signal of a lighted torch displayed at midnight. But they were forced to give this signal before the appointed time, through fear of one of the conspirators, who suddenly changed his mind. So the torch was displayed before his army was ready; but Alcibiades took about thirty men and ran to the walls, bidding the rest of his force follow with all speed. 3 The gate was thrown open for him and he rushed into the city, his thirty men-at arms reinforced by twenty targeteers, but he saw at once that the Selymbrians were advancing in battle array to attack him. In resistance he saw no safety, and for flight, undefeated as he was in all his campaigns down to that day, he had too much spirit. He therefore bade the trumpet signal silence, and then ordered formal proclamation to be made that Selymbria must not bear arms against Athens. 4 This proclamation made some of the Selymbrians less eager for battle, if, as they supposed, their enemies were all inside the walls; and others were mollified by hopes of a peaceful settlement. While they were thus parleying with one another, up came the army of Alcibiades. Judging now, as was really the case, that the Selymbrians were disposed for peace, he was afraid that his Thracian soldiers might plunder the city. 5 There were many of these, and they were zealous in their service, through the favour and good will they bore Alcibiades. Accordingly, he sent them all out of the city, and then, at the plea of the Selymbrians, did their city no injury whatever, but merely took a sum of money from it, set a garrison in it, and went his way.

31 1 Meanwhile the Athenian generals who were besieging Chalcedon made peace with Pharnabazus on condition that they receive a sum of money, that Chalcedon be subject again to Athens, that the territories of Pharnabazus be not ravaged, and that the said Pharnabazus furnish safe escort for an Athenian embassy to the King. 2 Accordingly, when Alcibiades came back from Selymbria, Pharnabazus demanded that he too take oath to the treaty; but Alcibiades refused to do so until Pharnabazus had taken his oath to it.

After the oaths had been taken, he went up against Byzantium, which was in revolt against Athens, and compassed the city with a wall. But after Anaxilaüs, Lycurgus, and certain men besides had agreed to surrender the city to him on condition that it be not plundered, he spread abroad the story that threatening complications in Ionia called him away. Then he sailed off in broad daylight with all his ships; 3 but in the night time stealthily returned. He disembarked with the men-at arms under his own command, and stationed himself quietly within reach of the city’s walls. His fleet, meanwhile, sailed to the harbour, and forcing its way in with much shouting and tumult and din, terrified the Byzantians by the unexpectedness of its attack, while it gave the party of Athens in the city a chance to admit Alcibiades in all security, since everybody had hurried off to the harbour and the fleet. 4 However, the day was not won without a battle. The Peloponnesians, Boeotians and Megarians who were in garrison at Byzantium routed the ships’ crews and drove them back on board again. Then, perceiving that the Athenians were inside the city, they formed in battle array and advanced to attack them. A fierce battle followed, but Alcibiades was victorious with the right wing, as well as Theramenes with the left, and they took prisoners no less than three hundred of the enemy who survived.

5 Not a man of the Byzantians was put to death or sent into exile after the battle, 209 for it was on these conditions that the men who surrendered the city had acted, and this was the agreement with them; they exacted no special grace for themselves. Therefore it was that when Anaxilaüs was prosecuted at Sparta for treachery, his words showed clearly that his deeds had not been disgraceful. He said that he was not a Lacedaemonian, but a Byzantian, and it was not Sparta that was in peril. Considering therefore the case of Byzantium, he saw that the city was walled up, that no help could make its way in, 6 and that the provisions already in the city were being consumed by Peloponnesians and Boeotians, while the Byzantians were starving, together with their wives and children. He had, therefore, not betrayed the city to its enemies, but set it free from war and its horrors, therein imitating the noblest Lacedaemonians, in whose eyes the one unqualifiedly honourable and righteous thing is their country’s good. The Lacedaemonians, on hearing this, were moved with sincere respect, and acquitted the men.

32 1 But Alcibiades, yearning at last to see his home, and still more desirous of being seen by his fellow citizens, now that he had conquered their enemies so many times, set sail. His Attic triremes were adorned all round with many shields and spoils of war; many that he had captured in battle were towed along in his wake; and still more numerous were the figure-heads he carried of triremes which had been overwhelmed and destroyed by him. There were not less than two hundred of these all together.

2 Duris the Samian, who claims that he was a descendant of Alcibiades, gives some additional details. He says that the oarsmen of Alcibiades rowed to the music of a flute blown by Chrysogonus the Pythian victor; that they kept time to a rhythmic call from the lips of Callippides the tragic actor; that both these artists were arrayed in the long tunics, flowing robes, and other adornment of their profession; and that the commander’s ship put into harbours with a sail of purple hue, as though, after a drinking bout, he were off on a revel. 3 But neither Theopompus, nor Ephorus, nor Xenophon mentions these things, nor is it likely that Alcibiades put on such airs for the Athenians, to whom he was returning after he had suffered exile and many great adversities. Nay, he was in actual fear as he put into the harbour, and once in, he did not leave his trireme until, as he stood on deck, he caught sight of his cousin Euryptolemus on shore, with many other friends and kinsmen, and heard their cries of welcome.

4 When he landed, however, people did not deign so much as to look at the other generals whom they met, but ran in throngs to Alcibiades with shouts of welcome, escorting him on his way, and putting wreaths on his head as they could get to him, while those who could not come to him for the throng, gazed at him from afar, the elderly men pointing him out to the young. Much sorrow, too, was mingled with the city’s joy, as men called to mind their former misfortunes and compared them with their present good fortune, counting it certain that they had neither lost Sicily, 5 nor had any other great expectation of theirs miscarried if they had only left Alcibiades at the head of that enterprise and the armament therefor. For now he had taken the city when she was almost banished from the sea, when on land she was hardly mistress of her own suburbs, and when factions raged within her walls, and had raised her up from this wretched and lowly plight, not only restoring her dominion over the sea, but actually rendering her victorious over her enemies everywhere on land.

33 1 Now the decree for his recall had been passed before this, on motion of Critias, the son of Callaeschrus, as Critias himself has written in his elegies, where he reminds Alcibiades of the favour in these words: —

“Mine was the motion that brought thee back; I made it in public;

Words and writing were mine; this the task I performed;

Signet and seal of words that were mine give warrant as follows.”

2 At this time, therefore, the people had only to meet in assembly, and Alcibiades addressed them. 210 He lamented and bewailed his own lot, but had only little and moderate blame to lay upon the people. The entire mischief he ascribed to a certain evil fortune and envious genius of his own. Then he descanted at great length upon the vain hopes which their enemies were cherishing, and wrought his hearers up to courage. At last they crowned him with crowns of gold, and elected him general with sole powers by land and sea. 3 They voted also that his property be restored to him, and that the Eumolpidae and Heralds revoke the curses wherewith they had cursed him at the command of the people. The others revoked their curses, but Theodorus the High Priest said: “Nay, I invoked no evil upon him if he does no wrong to the city.”

34 1 But while Alcibiades was thus prospering brilliantly, some were nevertheless disturbed at the particular season of his return. For he had put into harbour on the very day when the Plynteria of the goddess Athene were being celebrated. The Praxiergidae celebrate these rites on the twenty-fifth day of Thargelion, in strict secrecy, removing the robes of the goddess and covering up her images. Wherefore the Athenians regard this day as the unluckiest of all days for business of any sort. 2 The goddess, therefore, did not appear to welcome Alcibiades with kindly favour and good will, but rather to veil herself from him and repel him. However, all things fell out as he wished, and one hundred triremes were manned for service, with which he was minded to sail off again; but a great and laudable ambition took possession of him and detained him there until the Eleusinian mysteries.

3 Ever since Deceleia had been fortified, and the enemy, by their presence there, commanded the approaches to Eleusis, the festal rite had been celebrated with no splendour at all, being conducted by sea. Sacrifices, choral dances, and many of the sacred ceremonies usually held on the road, when Iacchus is conducted forth from Athens to Eleusis, had of necessity been omitted. 4 Accordingly, it seemed to Alcibiades that it would be a fine thing, enhancing his holiness in the eyes of the gods and his good repute in the minds of men, to restore its traditional fashion to the sacred festival by escorting the rite with his infantry along past the enemy by land. He would thus either thwart and humble Agis, if the king kept entirely quiet, or would fight a fight that was sacred and approved by the gods, in behalf of the greatest and holiest interests, in full sight of his native city, and with all his fellow citizens eye-witnesses of his valour.

5 When he had determined upon this course and made known his design to the Eumolpidae and Heralds, he stationed sentries on the heights, sent out an advance-guard at break of day, and then took the priests, mystae, and mystagogues, encompassed them with his men-at arms, and led them over the road to Eleusis in decorous and silent array. So august and devout was the spectacle which, as general, he thus displayed, that he was hailed by those who were not unfriendly to him as High Priest, rather, and Mystagogue. 6 No enemy dared to attack him, and he conducted the procession safely back to the city. At this he was exalted in spirit himself, and exalted his army with the feeling that it was irresistible and invincible under his command. People of the humbler and poorer sort he so captivated by his leadership that they were filled with an amazing passion to have him for their tyrant, and some proposed it, and actually came to him in solicitation of it. He was to rise superior to envy, abolish decrees and laws, and stop the mouths of the babblers who were so fatal to the life of the city, that he might bear an absolute sway and act without fear of the public informer.

35 1 What thoughts he himself had about a tyranny, is uncertain. But the most influential citizens were afraid of it, and therefore anxious that he should sail away as soon as he could. They even voted him, besides everything else, the colleagues of his own choosing. Setting sail, therefore, with his one hundred ships, and assaulting Andros, he conquered the islanders in battle, as well as the Lacedaemonians who were there, 211 but he did not capture the city. This was the first of the fresh charges brought against him by his enemies.

2 And it would seem that if ever a man was ruined by his own exalted reputation, that man was Alcibiades. His continuous successes gave him such repute for unbounded daring and sagacity, that when he failed in anything, men suspected his inclination; they would not believe in his inability. Were he only inclined to do a thing, they thought, naught could escape him. So they expected to hear that the Chians also had been taken, along with the rest of Ionia. 3 They were therefore incensed to hear that he had not accomplished everything at once and speedily, to meet their wishes. They did not stop to consider his lack of money. This compelled him, since he was fighting men who had an almoner of bounty in the Great King, to leave his camp frequently and sail off in quest of money for rations and wages. The final and prevailing charge against him was due to this necessity.

4 Lysander, who had been sent out as admiral by the Lacedaemonians, paid his sailors four obols a day instead of three, out of the moneys he received from Cyrus; while Alcibiades, already hard put to it to pay even his three obols, was forced to sail for Caria to levy money. The man whom he left in charge of his fleet, Antiochus, was a brave captain, but otherwise a foolish and low-lived fellow.  Although he had received explicit commands from Alcibiades not to hazard a general engagement even though the enemy sailed out to meet him, he showed such wanton contempt of them as to man his own trireme and one other and stand for Ephesus, indulging in many shamelessly insulting gestures and cries as he cruised past the prows of the enemy’s ships. 6 At first Lysander put out with a few ships only, and gave him chase. Then, when the Athenians came to the aid of Antiochus, Lysander put out with his whole fleet, won the day, slew Antiochus himself, captured many ships and men, and set up a trophy of victory. As soon as Alcibiades heard of this, he came back to Samos, put out to sea with his whole armament, and challenged Lysander to battle. But Lysander was satisfied with his victory, and would not put out to meet him.

36 1 There were those who hated Alcibiades in the camp, and of these Thrasybulus, the son of Thraso, his particular enemy, set sail for Athens to denounce him. He stirred up the city against him by declaring to the people that it was Alcibiades who had ruined their cause and lost their ships by his wanton conduct in office. He had handed over — so Thrasybulus said — the duties of commander to men who won his confidence merely by drinking deep and reeling off sailors’ yarns, 2 in order that he himself might be free to cruise about collecting moneys and committing excesses of drunkenness and revelry with courtezans of Abydos and Ionia, and this while the enemy’s fleet lay close to him. His enemies also found ground for accusation against him in the fortress which he had constructed in Thrace, near Bisanthe. It was to serve, they said, as a refuge for him in case he either could not or would not live at home. 3 The Athenians were persuaded, and chose other generals in his place, thus displaying their anger and ill-will towards him. On learning this, Alcibiades was afraid, and departed from the camp altogether, and assembling mercenary troops made war on his own account against the Thracians who acknowledge no king. He got together much money from his captives, and at the same time afforded security from barbarian inroads to the Hellenes on the neighbouring frontier.

4 Tydeus, Menander, and Adeimantus, the generals, who had all the ships which the Athenians could finally muster in station at Aegospotami, were wont to sail out at daybreak against Lysander, who lay with his fleet at Lampsacus, and challenge him to battle. Then they would sail back again, to spend the rest of the day in disorder and unconcern, since, forsooth, they despised their enemy. 2125 Alcibiades, who was near at hand, could not see such conduct with calmness or indifference, but rode up on horseback and read the generals a lesson. He said their anchorage was a bad one; the place had no harbour and no city, but they had to get their supplies from Sestos, a long way off; and they permitted their crews, whenever they were on land, to wander and scatter about at their own sweet wills, while there lay at anchor over against them an armament which was trained to do everything silently at a word of absolute command.

37 1 In spite of what Alcibiades said, and in spite of his advice to change their station to Sestos, the generals paid no heed. Tydeus actually insulted him by bidding him begone: he was not general now, but others. So Alcibiades departed, suspecting that some treachery was on foot among them. He told his acquaintances who were escorting him out of the camp that, had he not been so grievously insulted by the generals, within a few days he would have forced the Lacedaemonians to engage them whether they wished to do so or not, or else lose their ships. 2 Some thought that what he said was arrant boasting; but others that it was likely, since he had merely to bring up his numerous Thracian javelineers and horsemen to assault by land and confound the enemy’s camp.

However, that he saw only too well the errors of the Athenians the event soon testified. Lysander suddenly and unexpectedly fell upon them, and only eight of their triremes escaped with Conon; the rest, something less than two hundred, were captured and taken away. 3 Three thousand of their crews were taken alive and executed by Lysander. In a short time he also captured Athens, burned her ships, and tore down her long walls.

Alcibiades now feared the Lacedaemonians, who were supreme on land and sea, and betook himself into Bithynia, taking booty of every sort with him, but leaving even more behind him in the fortress where he had been living. 4 In Bithynia he again lost much of his substance, being plundered by the Thracians there, and so he determined to go up to the court of Artaxerxes. He thought to show himself not inferior to Themistocles if the King made trial of his services, and superior in his pretext for offering them. For it was not to be against his fellow countrymen, as in the case of that great man, but in behalf of his country that he would assist the King and beg him to furnish forces against a common enemy. Thinking that Pharnabazus could best give him facilities for safely making this journey up to the King, he went to him in Phrygia, and continued there with him, paying him court and receiving marks of honour from him.

38 1 The Athenians were greatly depressed at the loss of their supremacy. But when Lysander robbed them of their freedom too, and handed the city over to thirty men, then, their cause being lost, their eyes were opened to the course they would not take when salvation was yet in their power. They sorrowfully rehearsed all their mistakes and follies, the greatest of which they considered to be their second outburst of wrath against Alcibiades. 2 He had been cast aside for no fault of his own; but they got angry because a subordinate of his lost a few ships disgracefully, and then they themselves, more disgracefully still, robbed the city of its ablest and most experienced general. And yet, in spite of their present plight, a vague hope still prevailed that the cause of Athens was not wholly lost so long as Alcibiades was alive. He had not, in times past, been satisfied to live his exile’s life in idleness and quiet; nor now, if his means allowed, would he tolerate the insolence of the Lacedaemonians and the madness of the Thirty.

3 It was not strange that the multitude indulged in such dreams, when even the Thirty were moved to anxious thought and inquiry, and made the greatest account of what Alcibiades was planning and doing. 213 Finally, Critias tried to make it clear to Lysander that as long as Athens was a democracy the Lacedaemonians could not have safe rule over Hellas; 4 and that Athens, even though she were very peacefully and well disposed towards oligarchy, would not be suffered, while Alcibiades was alive, to remain undisturbed in her present condition. However, Lysander was not persuaded by these arguments until a dispatch-roll came from the authorities at home bidding him put Alcibiades out of the way; either because they too were alarmed at the vigour and enterprise of the man, or because they were trying to gratify Agis.

39 1 Accordingly, Lysander sent to Pharnabazus and bade him do this thing, and Pharnabazus commissioned Magaeus, his brother, and Sousamithras, his uncle, to perform the deed. At that time Alcibiades was living in a certain village of Phrygia, where he had Timandra the courtezan with him, and in his sleep he had the following vision. 2 He thought he had the courtezan’s garments upon him, and that she was holding his head in her arms while she adorned his face like a woman’s with paints and pigments. Others say that in his sleep he saw Magaeus’ followers cutting off his head and his body burning. All agree in saying that he had the vision not long before his death.

The party sent to kill him did not dare to enter his house, but surrounded it and set it on fire. 3 When Alcibiades was aware of this, he gathered together most of the garments and bedding in the house and cast them on the fire. Then, wrapping his cloak about his left arm, and drawing his sword with his right, he dashed out, unscathed by the fire, before the garments were in flames, and scattered the Barbarians, who ran at the mere sight of him. Not a man stood ground against him, or came to close quarters with him, but all held aloof and shot him with javelins and arrows. 4 Thus he fell, and when the Barbarians were gone, Timandra took up his dead body, covered and wrapped it in her own garments, and gave it such brilliant and honourable burial as she could provide.

This Timandra, they say, was the mother of that Lais who was called the Corinthian, although she was a prisoner of war from Hyccara, a small city of Sicily. 5 But some, while agreeing in all other details of the death of Alcibiades with what I have written, say that it was not Pharnabazus who was the cause of it, nor Lysander, nor the Lacedaemonians, but Alcibiades himself. He had corrupted a girl belonging to a certain well known family, and had her with him; and it was the brothers of this girl who, taking his wanton insolence much to heart, set fire by night to the house where he was living, and shot him down, as has been described, when he dashed out through the fire.

Coriolanus

1 1 The patrician house of the Marcii at Rome furnished many men of distinction. One of them was Ancus Marcius, the grandson of Numa by his daughter, and the successor of Tullus Hostilius in the kingship. To this family belonged also Publius and Quintus Marcius, the men who brought into Rome its best and most abundant supply of water.a So likewise did Censorinus, whom the Roman people twice appointed censor, and then, at his own instance, made a law by which it was decreed that no one else should hold that office twice. 2 Caius Marcius, whose life I now write, lost his father at an early age, and was reared by his widowed mother. He showed, however, that such loss of a father, although otherwise bad for a boy, need not prevent him from becoming a worthy and excellent man, and that it is wrong for worthless men to lay upon it the blame for their perverted natures, which are due, as they say, to early neglect. On the other hand, the same Marcius bore witness for those who hold that a generous and noble nature, if it lack discipline, is apt to produce much that is worthless along with its better fruits, like a rich soil deprived of the husbandman’s culture. 3 For while the force and vigour of his intelligence, which knew no limitations, led him into great undertakings, and such as were productive of the highest results, still, on the other hand, since he indulged a vehement temper and displayed an unswerving pertinacity, it made him a difficult and unsuitable associate for others. They did indeed look with admiration upon his insensibility to pleasures, toils, and mercenary gains, to which they gave the names of self-control, fortitude, and justice; but in their intercourse with him as a fellow-citizen they were offended by it as ungracious, burdensome, and arrogant. 4 Verily, among all the benefits which men derive from the favour of the Muses, none other is so great as that softening of the nature which is produced by culture and discipline, the nature being induced by culture to take on moderation and cast off excess. It is perfectly true, however, that in those days Rome held in highest honour that phase of virtue which concerns itself with warlike and military achievements, and evidence of this may be found in the only Latin word for virtue, which signifies really manly valour; they made valour, a specific form of virtue, stand for virtue in general.

2 1 And so Marcius, who was by nature exceedingly fond of warlike feats, began at once, from his very boyhood, to handle arms. And since he thought that adventitious weapons were of little avail to such as did not have their natural and native armour developed and prepared for service, he so practised himself in every sort of combat that he was not only nimble of foot, but had also such a weight in grapplings and wrestlings that an enemy found it hard to extricate himself. At any rate, those who from time to time contended with him in feats of courage and valour, laid the blame for their inferiority upon his strength of body, which was inflexible and shrank from no hardship.

3 1 He made his first campaign while yet a stripling, when Tarquin, who had been king of Rome, and then had been expelled, after many unsuccessful battles, staked his all, as it were, upon a final throw. Most of the people of Latium and many also of the other peoples of Italy were assisting him and marching with him upon Rome, to reinstate him there, not so much from a desire to gratify him, as because fear and envy led them to try to overthrow the growing power of the Romans. 2 In the ensuing battle, which long favoured now this side and now that, Marcius, who was fighting sturdily under the eyes of the dictator, saw a Roman soldier struck down near by. He ran to him at once, stood in front of him, defended him, and slew his assailant. Accordingly, after the Roman general had won the day, he crowned Marcius, among the first, with a garland of oak leaves.

3 This is the civic crown which the law bestows upon one who has saved the life of a fellow-citizen in battle, either because the oak was held in special honour for the sake of the Arcadians, who were called acorn-eaters in an oracle of Apollo; or because they could speedily find an abundance of oak wherever they fought; or because it was thought that the garland of oak leaves, being sacred to Jupiter, the city’s guardian, was fittingly bestowed upon one who saved the life of a citizen. The oak, moreover, has the most beautiful fruit of all wild trees, and is the sturdiest of all trees under cultivation. 4 Its acorn used to be food, and the honey found in it used to be drink for men, and it furnished them with the flesh of most grazing creatures and birds, since it bore the mistletoe, from which they made bird-lime for snares.

In the battle of which I was speaking, it is said that Castor and Pollux appeared, and that immediately after the battle they were seen, their horses all a-drip with sweat, in the forum, announcing the victory, by the fountain where their temple now stands. Therefore the day on which this victory was won, the ides of July, was consecrated to the Dioscuri.

4 1 It would seem that when a young man’s ambition is no integral part of his nature, it is apt to be quenched by an honourable distinction which is attained too early in life; his thirst and fastidious appetite are speedily satisfied. But serious and firm spirits are stimulated by the honours they receive, and glow brightly, as if roused by a mighty wind to achieve the manifest good. They do not feel that they are receiving a reward for what they have done, but rather that they are giving pledges of what they will do, and they are ashamed to fall behind their reputation instead of surpassing it by their actual exploits. 2 It was in this spirit that Marcius vied with himself in manly valour, and being ever desirous of fresh achievement, he followed one exploit with another, and heaped spoils upon spoils, so that his later commanders were always striving with their predecessors in their efforts to do him honour, and to surpass in their testimonials to his prowess. Many indeed were the wars and conflicts which the Romans waged in those days, and from none did he return without laurels and rewards of valour.

3 But whereas other men found in glory the chief end of valour, he found the chief end of glory in his mother’s gladness. That she should hear him praised and see him crowned and embrace him with tears of joy, this was what gave him, as he thought, the highest honour and felicity. And it was doubtless this feeling which Epaminondas also is said to have confessed, in considering it his greatest good fortune that his father and mother lived to know of his generalship and victory at Leuctra. 4 But he was so blessed as to have both his parents share in his pleasure and success, whereas Marcius, who thought he owed his mother the filial gratitude also which would have been due to his father, could not get his fill of gladdening and honouring Volumnia, nay, he even married according to her wish and request, and continued to live in the same house with his mother after children were born to him.

5 1 The reputation and influence procured by his valour were already great in the city, when the senate, taking the part of the wealthy citizens, began to be at variance with the common people, who thought they suffered many grievous ills at the hands of the money-lenders. For those of them that were possessed of moderate means were stripped of all they had by means of pledges and sales, while those who were altogether without resources were led away in person and put in prison, although their bodies bore many marks of wounds received and hardships undergone in campaigns for the defence of their country. 2 The last of these had been against the Sabines, and they had undertaken it upon a promise of their wealthiest creditors to deal moderately with them, and after a vote of the senate that Marcus Valerius, the consul, should guarantee the promise. But after they had fought zealously in that battle also, and had conquered the enemy, no consideration was shown them by their creditors, 3 and the senate did not even pretend to remember its agreements, but again suffered them to be seized in pledge of payments and haled away to prison. Then there were tumults and disorderly gatherings in the city, and the enemy, not unaware of the popular confusion, burst in and ravaged the country, and when the consuls summoned those of military age to arms, no one responded. In this crisis, the opinions of those in authority were again at variance. 4 Some thought that concessions should be made to the plebeians, and the excessive rigor of the law relaxed; but others opposed this, and among them was Marcius. He did not regard the financial difficulties as the main point at issue, and exhorted the magistrates to be wise enough to check and quell this incipient attempt at bold outrage on the part of a populace in revolt against the laws.

6 1 The senate met to debate this question many times within the space of a few days, but came to no definite conclusion. The plebeians therefore banded together on a sudden, and after mutual exhortations forsook the city, and taking possession of what is now called the Sacred Mount, established themselves beside the river Anio. They committed no acts of violence or sedition, but only cried aloud that they had for a long time been banished from the city by the rich, and that Italy would everywhere afford them air, water, and a place of burial, 2 which was all they had if they dwelt in Rome, except for the privilege of wounds and death in campaigns for the defence of the rich.

These proceedings alarmed the senate, and it sent out those of its older members who were most reasonably disposed towards the people to treat with them. The chief spokesman was Menenius Agrippa, and after much entreaty of the people and much plain speaking in behalf of the senate, he concluded his discourse with a celebrated fable. 3 He said, namely, that all the other members of man’s body once revolted against the belly, and accused it of being the only member to sit idly down in its place and make no contribution to the common welfare, while the rest underwent great hardships and performed great public services only to minister to its appetites; but that the belly laughed at their simplicity in not knowing that it received into it all the body’s nourishment only to send it back again and duly distribute it among the other members. 4 “Such, then,” said again, “is the relation of the senate, my fellow-citizens, to you; the matters for deliberation which there receive the necessary attention and disposition bring to you all and severally what is useful and helpful.”

7 1 A reconciliation followed, after the people had asked and obtained from the senate the privilege of electing five men as protectors of those who needed succour, the officers now called tribunes of the people. And the first whom they chose to this office were Junius Brutus and Sicinius Vellutus, who had been their leaders in the secession. When the city was thus united, the common people at once offered themselves as soldiers, and the consuls found them ready and eager for service in the war.

2 As for Marcius, though he was displeased himself to have the people increase in power at the expense of the aristocracy, and though he saw that many of the other patricians were of the same mind, he nevertheless exhorted them not to fall behind the common people in contending for their country’s welfare, but to show that they were superior to them in valour rather than in political power.

8 1 Among the Volscians, with whom the Romans were at war, the city of Corioli took highest rank. When, therefore, Cominius the consul had invested this place, the rest of the Volscians, fearing for its safety, came to its aid against the Romans from all parts, designing to give them battle in front of the city and to attack them on both sides. 2 Thereupon Cominius divided his forces, going forth himself to meet the Volscians who were coming up outside, and leaving Titus Lartius, one of the bravest Romans of his day, in charge of the siege. Then the men of Corioli, despising the forces that were left, sallied out against them, overcame them in battle at first, and pursued the Romans to their camp. 3 At this point Marcius darted out with a small band, and after slaying those who came to close quarters and bringing the rest of the assailants to a halt, called the Romans back to the fight with loud cries. For he had, as Cato thought a soldier should have, not only a vigour of stroke, but a voice and look which made him a fearful man for a foe to encounter, and hard to withstand. Many of his men rallied to support him, and the enemy withdrew in terror. 4 With this, however, he was not satisfied, but followed hard upon them, and drove them at last in headlong flight, up to the gate of their city. There, although he saw the Romans turning back from the pursuit, now that many missiles from the walls were reaching them, and although not a man of them dared to think of bursting into the city along with the fugitives, full as it was of enemies in arms, he nevertheless took his stand, and exhorted and encouraged them to the exploit, crying out that fortune had opened the city for the pursuers rather than for the pursued. 5 Only a few were willing to follow him, but he pushed his way through the enemy, leaped against the gate, and burst in along with them, no man daring to oppose him at first or resist him. Then, however, when the citizens saw that few of the enemy all told were inside, they rallied and attacked them. 6 Enveloped thus by friends and foes alike, Marcius is said to have waged a combat in the city which, for prowess of arm, speed of foot, and daring of soul, passes all belief; he overwhelmed all whom he assailed, driving some to the remotest parts of the city, while others gave up the struggle and threw down their arms. Thus he made it abundantly safe for Lartius to lead up the Romans who were outside.

9 1   The city having been captured in this manner, most of the soldiers fell to plundering and pillaging it. At this Marcius was indignant, and cried out that he thought it a shame, when their consul and their fellow citizens who were with him had perhaps fallen in with the enemy and were fighting a battle with them, that they on their part should be going about after booty, or, under pretext of getting booty, should run away from the danger. Only a few paid any heed to his words, whereupon he took those who were willing to follow, and set out on the road by which, as he learned, the consul’s army had marched before him, often urging his companions on and beseeching them not to slacken their efforts, and often praying the gods that he might not be too late for the battle, but might come up in season to share in the struggles and perils of his fellow-citizens.

It was a custom with the Romans of that time, when they were going into action, and were about to gird up their cloaks and take up their bucklers, to make at the same time an unwritten will, naming their heirs in the hearing of three or four witnesses. 3 This was just what the soldiers were doing when Marcius overtook them, the enemy being now in sight. At first some of them were confounded when they saw that he had a small following and was covered with blood and sweat; but when he ran to the consul with a glad countenance, gave him his hand, and announced the capture of the city, and when Cominius embraced and kissed him, then they were encouraged, some hearing of the success which had been gained, and some but guessing at it, and all called loudly upon the consul to lead them into battle. 4 But Marcius asked Cominius how the enemy were arrayed, and where their best fighting men were placed. And when the consul told him he thought the troops in the centre were those of the Antiates, who were the most warlike of all and yielded to none in bravery, “I ask and demand of you, then,” said Marcius, “post us opposite these men.” The consul, accordingly, granted his request, astonished at his ardour.

5 As soon as spears began to fly, Marcius darted out before the line, and the Volscians who faced him could not withstand his charge, but where he fell upon their ranks they were speedily cut asunder. Those on either side, however, wheeled about and encompassed him with their weapons, so that the consul, fearing for his safety, sent to his aid the choicest men he had about his person. 6 Then a fierce battle raged around Marcius, and many were slain in short space of time; but the Romans pressed hard upon their enemies and put them to rout, and as they set out in pursuit of them, they insisted that Marcius, who was weighed down with fatigue and wounds, should retire to the camp. He answered, however, that weariness was not for victors, and took after the flying foe. The rest of their army also was defeated, many were slain, and many taken captive.

10 1 On the following day, when Lartius had come up, and the rest of the army was assembled before the consul, Cominius mounted the rostra, and after rendering to the gods the praise that was their due for such great successes, addressed himself to Marcius. In the first place, he rehearsed with praise his astonishing exploits, some of which he had himself beheld in battle, while to others Lartius bore witness. 2 Then, out of the abundant treasures and the many horses and prisoners that had been taken, he ordered him to choose out a tenth, before any distribution to the rest of the army; and besides all this, he presented him with a horse, duly caparisoned, as a prize of valour. After the Romans had applauded this speech, Marcius came forth and said that he accepted the horse, and was delighted with the praises of the consul, but that he declined the rest, holding it to be pay, not honour, and would be content with his single share of the booty. 3 “But I do ask one special favour,” he said, “and beg that I may receive it. I had a guest-friend among the Volscians, a man of kindliness and probity. This man is now a prisoner, and from wealth and happiness is reduced to subjection. Since, then, many evils have befallen him, let me at least free him from one, that of being sold into bondage.”

At such words as these still louder shouts greeted Marcius, and he found more admirers of his superiority to gain than of the bravery he had shown in war. 4 For the very ones who secretly felt a certain jealous envy of him for his conspicuous honours, now thought him worthy of great rewards because he would not take them; and they were more delighted with the virtue which led him to despise such great rewards, than with the exploits which made him worthy of them. For the right use of wealth is a fairer trait than excellence in arms; but not to need wealth is loftier than to use it.

11 When the multitude had ceased shouting their applause, Cominius took up the word again and said: “Ye cannot, indeed, my fellow-soldiers, force these gifts of yours upon the man, when he does not accept them and is unwilling to take them; but there is a gift which he cannot refuse when it is offered. Let us give him this gift, and pass a vote that he be surnamed Coriolanus, unless, indeed, before such act of ours, his exploit has itself given him this name.” Thus came his third name of Coriolanus.

2 From this it is perfectly clear that Caius was the proper name; that the second name, in this case Marcius, was the common name of family or clan; and that the third name was adopted subsequently, and bestowed because of some exploit, or fortune, or bodily feature, or special excellence in a man. So the Greeks used to give surnames from an exploit, as for instance, Soter and Callinicus; or from a bodily feature, as Physcon and Grypus; or from a special excellence, as Euergetes and Philadelphus; or from some good fortune, as Eudaemon, the surname of the second Battus. 3 And some of their kings have actually had surnames given them in mockery, as Antigonus Doson and Ptolemy Lathyrus. Surnames of this sort were even more common among the Romans. For instance, one of the Metelli was called Diadematus, because for a long time he suffered from a running sore and went about with a bandage on his forehead; another member of this family was called Celer, because he exerted himself to give the people funeral games of gladiators within a few days of his father’s death, and the speed and swiftness of his preparations excited astonishment. 4 And at the present day some of them are named from casual incidents at their birth, Proculus, for instance, if a child is born when his father is away from home; or Postumus, if after his death; and when one of twin children survives, while the other dies, he is called Vopiscus. Moreover, from bodily features they not only bestow such surnames as Sulla, Niger, and Rufus, but also such as Caecus and Claudius. And they do well thus to accustom men to regard neither blindness nor any other bodily misfortune as a reproach or a disgrace, but to answer to such names as though their own. This topic, however, would be more fittingly discussed elsewhere.

12 1 The war was no sooner over than the popular leaders revived the internal dissensions, without any new cause of complaint, or just accusations, but making the very evils which had necessarily followed in the wake of their previous quarrels and disturbances a pretext for opposing the patricians. For the greater part of the land had been left unsown and untilled, and the war left no opportunity to arrange an importation of market supplies. 2 There was, therefore, a great scarcity of food, and when the popular leaders saw that there were no market supplies, and that if there were, the people had no money to buy them, they assailed the rich with slanderous accusations of purposely arraying the famine against them, in a spirit of revenge.

Moreover, there came an embassy from the people of Velitrae,b who offered to hand their city over to the Romans, and begged them to send out colonists for it. For a pestilential disease had assailed them, and wrought such death and destruction among their citizens that hardly the tenth part of the whole number was left. 3 Accordingly, such of the Romans as were sensible thought that this request of the people of Velitrae had come at an advantageous and opportune time, since the scarcity of food made it needful to ease the city of its burdensome numbers; at the same time they also hoped to dissipate its sedition, if the most turbulent elements in it, and those which made most response to the exciting appeals of the popular leaders, should be purged away, like unhealthy and disturbing refuse from the body. 4 Such citizens, therefore, the consuls selected as colonists and ordered them forth to Velitrae. They also enlisted others in a campaign against the Volscians, contriving thus that there should be no leisure for intestine tumults, and believing that when rich and poor alike, plebeians as well as patricians, were once more united in military service and in common struggles for the public good, they would be more gently and pleasantly disposed towards one another.

13 1 But the popular leaders, Sicinius and Brutus, with their following, at once rose up in opposition, crying out that the consuls were disguising a most cruel deed under that most inoffensive name, colony, and were really pushing poor men into a pit of death, as it were, by sending them forth into a city which was full of deadly air and unburied corpses, to be associated with a strange and abominable deity; 2 and then, as if not satisfied with destroying some of their fellow-citizens by famine, and exposing others to pestilence, they proceeded further to bring on a war of their own choosing, that no evil might spare the city, which had but refused to continue in servitude to the rich. With their ears full of such speeches as these, the people would neither answer the consular summons for enlistment, nor look with any favour on the colony.

3 The senate was in perplexity. But Marcius, who was now full of importance, and had grown lofty in spirit, and was looked upon with admiration by the most powerful men of the city, openly took the lead in resisting the popular leaders. The colony was sent out, those that were chosen for it by lot being compelled to go forth under severe penalties; and when the people utterly refused military service, Marcius himself mustered his clients and as many others as he could persuade, and made an incursion into the territory of Antium.c 4 There he found much corn, and secured large booty in cattle and captives, no part of which did he take out for himself, but brought his followers back to Rome laden with large spoils of every sort. The rest of the citizens therefore repented themselves, envied their more fortunate fellows, and were filled with hostility to Marcius, not being able to endure the reputation and power of the man, which was growing, as they thought, to be detrimental to the people.

14 1 But not long after, when Marcius stood for the consulship, the multitude relented, and the people felt somewhat ashamed to slight and humble a man who was foremost in birth and valour and had performed so many and such great services. Now it was the custom with those who stood for the office to greet their fellow-citizens and solicit their votes, descending into the forum in their toga, without a tunic under it. This was either because they wished the greater humility of their garb to favour their solicitations, or because they wished to display the tokens of their bravery, in case they bore wounds. 2 It was certainly not owing to a suspicion of the dispensing of money in briberyd that the candidate for the votes of the citizens was required to present himself before them without a tunic and ungirt. For it was long after this time that the buying and selling of votes crept in and money became a feature of the elections. 3 But afterwards, bribery affected even courts and camps, and converted the city into a monarchy, by making armies the utter slaves of money. For it has been well said that he first breaks down the power of the people who first feasts and bribes them. But at Rome the mischief seems to have crept in stealthily and gradually, 4 and not to have been noticed at once. For we do not know who was the first man to bribe her people or her courts of law; whereas at Athens, Anytus, the son of Anthemion, is said to have been the first man to give money to jurors, when he was on trial for the treacherous failure to relieve Pylos, toward the close of the Peloponnesian war; a time when the pure race of the golden age still possessed the Roman forum.

15 1 So when Marcius disclosed his many scars from many contests, wherein he had been a foremost soldier for seventeen years together, the people were put out of countenance by his valour, and agreed with one another to elect him. But when the day for casting their votes came, and Marcius made a pompous entry into the forum escorted by the senate, and all the patricians about him were clearly more bent on success than ever before, 2 the multitude fell away again from their good will towards him, and drifted into feelings of resentment and envy. These feelings were reinforced by their fear that if an aristocrat, who had such weight with the patricians, should become supreme in the government, he might altogether deprive the people of their liberties.

3 So, being in such a state of mind, they rejected Marcius and others were proclaimed elected. The senators were indignant, thinking the insult directed rather at them than at Marcius, and he himself could not treat the occurrence with restraint or forbearance. He had indulged the passionate and contentious side of his nature, with the idea that there was something great and exalted in this, and had not been imbued, under the influence of reason and discipline, with that gravity and mildness which are the chief virtues of a statesman. 4 Nor did he know that one who undertakes public business must avoid above all things that self-will which, as Plato says, is the “companion of solitude”; must mingle with men, and be a lover of that submissiveness to injury which some people ridicule so much. But since he was ever a straightforward man and obstinate, and since he thought that conquest and mastery in all things and at all times was the prerogative of bravery, rather than of effeminate weakness (which breaks out in anger, like a swelling sore, from the troubled and wounded spirit), he went away full of indignation and bitterness towards the people. 5 The younger patricians, too, that element in the city which made most vaunt of noble birth and was most showy, had always been amazingly devoted to the man, and, adhering to him now, when their presence did him no good, fanned his anger by their sympathetic vexation and sorrow. For he was their leader and willing teacher of the art of war in their campaigns, and inspired them in their victories with a zeal for valour, which had no tinge of mutual jealousy.

16 1 In the meantime grain came to Rome, a great part of it bought in Italy, but an equal amount sent as a present from Syracuse, where Gelo was tyrant. Most of the people were consequently in great hope, expecting that the city would be delivered both from its scarcity and its discord. The senate, accordingly, was convened at once, and the people, flocking about the senate-house, awaited the result of its deliberations. They expected that the market-price for grain would now be moderate, and that what had been sent as a present would be distributed gratis. For there were some in the senate who so advised that body. 2 But Marcius rose in his place and vehemently attacked those who favoured the multitude, calling them demagogues and betrayers of the aristocracy, and declaring that they were nourishing, to their own harm, the evil seeds of boldness and insolence which had been sown among the rabble; these they should have choked when they first sprang up, and not have strengthened the people by such a powerful magistracy as the tribunate. But now their body was formidable, because it got everything that it desired, allowed no constraint upon its will, and refused to obey the consuls, but had their own leaders in anarchy, whom they styled their rulers. 3 To sit there, moreover, voting such a people largesses and supplies, like those Greeks where democracy is most extreme, he said was nothing more nor less than maintaining them in their disobedience, to the common destruction of all. “For they surely will not say that they are getting these as a grateful return for the military services which they omitted, and the secessions by which they renounced their country, and the calumnies against the senate which they have countenanced. They will rather be confident that your fears drive you to subserviency and flattery when you make them these gifts and concessions, and will set no limit to their disobedience, nor cease from their quarrels and seditions. 4 Such action on our part would therefore be sheer madness; but if we are wise, we shall take their tribunate away from them, for it makes the consulship null and void, and divides the city. This is no longer one, as before, but has been cut in two, so that we can never grow together again, or be of one mind, or cease afflicting and confounding one another.”

17 1 With many such words as these Marcius was beyond measure successful in filling the younger senators, and almost all the wealthy ones, with his own fierce enthusiasm, and they cried out that he was the only man in the city who disdained submission and flattery. But some of the older senators opposed him, suspecting the outcome. And the outcome was wholly bad. For the tribunes were present, and when they saw that the proposal of Marcius was likely to prevail, they ran out among the crowd with loud cries, calling upon the plebeians to rally to their help. 2 Then there was a stormy session of the assembly, and when the speech of Marcius was reported to it, the people were carried away with fury and almost burst in upon the senate. But the tribunes made their formal denunciation of Marcius, and summoned him by messenger to come before them and make his defence. And when he insolently drove away the officers who brought their message, they went themselves, attended by the aediles, to bring him by force, and tried to lay hands upon his person. But the patricians, banding together, drove the tribunes away, and actually beat the aediles.

3 By this time, then, evening had fallen, which put an end to the tumult; but as soon as it was day, the exasperated people came running together from all quarters into the forum. When the consuls saw this, they were alarmed for the city, and convening the senate, urged them to consider how, by reasonable proposals and suitable resolutions, they might soothe and pacify the multitude, since it was not a time for ambitious rivalry, nor would they be wise in contending for their dignity, but the crisis was severe and critical, and demanded measures that were considerate and humane. 4 The majority of the senate acceding to these views, the consuls went out and reasoned with the people as well as they could, and tried to mollify them, answering their accusations in a reasonable manner, and making only a moderate use of admonition and rebuke; as regarded the price of provisions and market supplies, they declared there should be no difference between them.

18 1 Accordingly, the greater part of the people showed signs of relenting, and it was evident, from their decorous and sober attention, that they were on the way to be controlled and won over. Then the tribunes rose and declared that since the senate was now acting soberly, the people in their turn would make such concessions as were fair and honourable. They insisted, however, that Marcius should make answer to the following charges: Could he deny that he had instigated the senate to violate the constitution and abrogate the powers of the people? When summoned to appear before them, had he not refused? 2 And finally, by insulting and beating the aediles in the forum, had he not done all in his power to incite the citizens to arms and bring about a civil war? They made this demand with a desire either that Marcius should be publicly humiliated, if, contrary to his nature, he curbed his haughty spirit and sued for the favour of the people; or, if he yielded to his natural promptings, that he should do something which would justify their wrath against him and make it implacable. The latter was what they the rather expected, and they rightly estimated the man’s character.

3 For he came and stood before them as one who would defend himself, and the people were quiet and silent in his presence. But when, instead of the more or less deprecatory language expected by his audience, he began not only to employ an offensive boldness of speech, which at last became actual denunciation, but also to show, by the tone of his voice and the cast of his countenance, that his fearlessness was not far removed from disdain and contempt, 4 then the people were exasperated, and gave evident signs that his words roused their impatience and indignation. Upon this, Sicinius, the boldest of the tribunes, after a brief conference with his colleagues, made formal proclamation that Marcius was condemned to death by the tribunes of the people, and ordered the aediles to take him up to the Tarpeian rock at once, and cast him down the cliff below. 5 But when the aediles laid hold of his person, it seemed, even to many of the plebeians, a horrible and monstrous act; the patricians, moreover, utterly beside themselves, distressed and horror stricken, rushed with loud cries to his aid. Some of them actually pushed away the officers making the arrest, and got Marcius among themselves; 6 some stretched out their hands in supplication of the multitude, since words and cries were of no avail amid such disorder and confusion. At last the friends and kindred of the tribunes, perceiving that it was impossible, without slaying many patricians, to lead Marcius away and punish him, persuaded them to remit what was unusual and oppressive in his sentence, not to use violence and put him to death without a trial, but to surrender him and refer his case to the people. 7 Then Sicinius, becoming calm, asked the patricians what they meant by taking Marcius away from the people when it wished to punish him. But the patricians asked in their turn: “What then is your purpose, and what do ye mean, by thus dragging one of the foremost men of Rome, without a trial, to a savage and illegal punishment?” 8 “Well then,” said Sicinius, “ye shall not have any such excuse for factious quarrel with the people; for they grant your demand that the man have a trial. And we cite thee, Marcius, to appear before the citizens on the third market-day ensuing, and convince them, if you can, of your innocence, assured that they will decide your case by vote.”

19 1 For the time being, then, the patricians were satisfied with this truce, and went away in glad possession of Marcius. But in the time which intervened before the third market-day (for the Romans hold their markets every ninth day, calling them, therefore, “nundinae”), a campaign was undertaken against the city of Antium, which led them to hope that the issue might be avoided altogether. The campaign would last long enough, they thought, for the people to become tractable, after their rage had languished or altogether disappeared by reason of their occupation with the war. 2 But presently, when the citizens returned home after a speedy settlement of their dispute with Antium, the patricians were in frequent conclave, being full of fear, and deliberating how they might not surrender Marcius, and yet prevent the popular leaders from throwing the people again into tumult and disorder. Appius Claudius, indeed, who was counted among the most hostile to the claims of the people, said with all solemnity that the senate would destroy itself and utterly betray the government of the city, if it should suffer the people to wield their vote in judgement on the patricians. 3 But the oldest senators, and those most inclined to favour the people, maintained on the contrary that it would not be rendered harsh or severe by its exercise of this power, but mild and humane; for since it did not despise the senate, but rather thought itself despised by that body, the prerogative of trying a senator would be a solace to its feelings and a mark of honour, so that as soon as it proceeded to vote it would lay aside its wrath.

20 1 Marcius, therefore, seeing that the senate was in suspense between its kindly feelings towards him and its fear of the people, asked the tribunes what the accusations against him were, and on what charge he would be tried if they led him before the people. They replied that the charge against him was usurpation, and that they would prove him guilty of planning a usurpation of the government. Thereupon he rose of his own accord and said he was going at once before the people to make his defence, and would deprecate no manner of trial, nor, should he be found guilty, any form of punishment; “Only,” said he, “see that ye confine yourself to the charge mentioned, and do not play false with the senate.” The tribunes agreed to this, and on these terms the trial was held.

2 But when the people were come together, in the first place, the tribunes insisted that the votes be cast not by centuries, but by tribes, thus making the indigent and officious rabble, which had no thought of honour, superior in voting power to the wealthy and well known citizens of the military class. 3 In the second place, abandoning the charge of usurpation, which could not be proven, they dwelt again upon the speech which Marcius had previously made in the senate, when he protested against the lowering of the market-price of grain, and urged them to take the tribunate away from the people. They also added a fresh charge against him, namely, his distribution of the spoils which he had taken from the country of Antium; these, they said, he had not turned into the public treasury, but had distributed them among those who made the campaign with him. 4 By this accusation Marcius is said to have been more disturbed than by all the rest. For he had not expected it, and was not ready at once with an answer which would satisfy the people, but began to praise those who had made the campaign, whereupon he was clamorously interrupted by those who had not made it, and they were the more numerous. In the end, therefore, the vote was taken by tribes, and a majority of three condemned him. The penalty assigned was perpetual banishment. 5 After the result was announced, the people went off in greater elation and delight than they had ever shown for any victory in battle over their enemies; but the senate was in distress and dire dejection, repenting now and vexed to the soul that they had not done and suffered all things rather than allow the people to insult them in the exercise of such great powers. And there was no need now of dress or other marks of distinction in telling one class from another, but it was clear at once that he who rejoiced was a plebeian, and he who was vexed, a patrician.

21 1 Albeit Marcius himself, who was neither daunted nor humbled, but in mien, port, and countenance fully composed, seemed the only man among all the distressed patricians who was not touched by his evil plight. And this was not due to calculation, or gentleness, or to a calm endurance of his fate, but he was stirred by rage and deep resentment, and this, although the many know it not, is pain. 2 For when pain is transmuted into anger, it is consumed, as it were, by its flames, and casts off its own humility and sloth. Wherefore the angry man makes a show of activity, as he who has a fever is hot, his spirit being, so to speak, afflicted with throbbing, distention, and inflation. And that such was his condition, Marcius showed right quickly by his conduct.

3 He went home, where his mother and his wife met him with wailings and loud lamentations, and after embracing them and bidding them to bear with equanimity the fate that had come upon them, he straightway departed and went to the city gate. Thither all the patricians in a body escorted him, but without taking anything or asking for anything he departed, having only three or four of his clients with him. 4 For a few days he remained by himself at some country place, torn by many conflicting counsels, such as his anger suggested to him, purposing no good or helpful thing at all, but only how he might take vengeance on the Romans. At last he determined to incite some neighbouring nation to a formidable war against them. Accordingly, he set out to make trial of the Volscians first, knowing that they were still abundantly supplied with men and money, and thinking that they had been not so much crippled in power by their recent defeats as filled with contentious wrath against the Romans.

22 1 Now there was a certain man of Antium, Tullus Aufidius by name, who, by reason of his wealth and bravery and conspicuous lineage, had the standing of a king among all the Volscians. By this man Marcius knew himself to be hated as no other Roman was; for they had often exchanged threats and challenges in the battles which they had fought, and such emulous boastings as the ambitious ardour of youthful warriors prompts had given rise to a mutual hatred of their own, in addition to that of their peoples. 2 However, since he saw that Tullus had a certain grandeur of spirit, and that he, more than all other Volscians, was eager to retaliate upon the Romans, if they gave him any opportunity, Marcius bore witness to the truth of him who said: “With anger it is hard to fight; for whatsoe’er it wishes, that it buys, even at the cost of life.” For, putting on such clothing and attire as would make him seem, to any one who knew him, least like the man he was, like Odysseus,

“He went into the city of his deadly foes.”

23 1 It was evening, and many met him, but no man knew him. He proceeded, therefore, to the house of Tullus, and slipping in unawares, took his seat at the hearth in silence, covered his head, and remained there motionless. The people of the house were amazed, and did not venture to raise him up, for his mien and his silence gave him a certain dignity; but they told Tullus, who was at supper, what a strange thing had happened. 2 Tullus rose from table and came to him, and asked him who he was, and why he was come. At this, then, Marcius uncovered his head, and after a slight pause, said: “If thou doest not yet recognize me, Tullus, but disbelievest thine eyes, I must be my own accuser. I am Caius Marcius, he who has wrought thee and the Volscians most harm, and the surname of Coriolanus which I bear permits no denial of this. 3 I have won no other prize for all the toils and perils which I have undergone than the name which is a badge of my enmity to your people. This, indeed, cannot be taken away from me; but of everything else I have been stripped, through the envy and insolence of the Roman people, and the cowardly treachery of the magistrates and those of my own order. I have been driven into exile, too, and am become a suppliant at thy hearth, not for the sake of security and safety, — for why should I come hither if I were afraid of death? — but with a desire to take vengeance on those who have driven me forth, which I take at once when I put myself in thy power. 4 If, then, thou art eager to assail thine enemies, come, good Sir, take advantage of my calamities, and make my individual misfortune the good fortune of all the Volscians; I shall fight better for you than I have against you, in just so far as those who know the secrets of their enemies fight better than those who do not. But if thou hast given up hope, neither do I wish to live, nor is it for thine advantage to spare one who has long been an enemy and a foe, and now is unprofitable and useless.”

5 When Tullus heard this, he was wonderfully pleased, and giving him his right hand, said: “Rise up, Marcius, and be of good courage. In giving thyself to us, thou bringest a great good, and thou mayest expect a greater one still from the Volscians.” Then he entertained Marcius at table with every mark of kindness, and during the ensuing days they took counsel together concerning the war.

24 1 But at Rome, owing to the hatred of the people by the patricians, who were especially embittered by the condemnation of Marcius, there were great commotions, and many signs from heaven were reported by seers, priests, and private persons, which could not be ignored. One of these is said to have been as follows. There was one Titus Latinus, a man of no great prominence, but of quiet and modest life in general, and free from superstitious fears, as he was also, and yet more, from vain pretensions. 2 This man dreamed that Jupiter appeared to him, and bade him tell the senate that the dancer, whom they had appointed to head his procession, was a bad one, and gave him the greatest displeasure. After having this vision, Titius said, he gave it no thought at all at first, but after he had seen it a second and a third time, and still neglected it, he had suffered the loss of an excellent son by death, and had himself suddenly become palsied. 3 This story he told after having been brought into the senate on a litter, and no sooner had he told it, they say, than he at once felt the strength return to his body, and rose up, and went away, walking without aid. In amazement, then, the senators made a careful investigation of the matter.

Now, what had happened was this. A certain man had handed over one of his slaves to other slaves, with orders to scourge him through the forum, and then put him to death. 4 While they were executing this commission and torturing the poor wretch, whose pain and suffering made him writhe and twist himself horribly, the sacred procession in honour of Jupiter chanced to come up behind. Many of those who took part in it were, indeed, scandalized at the joyless sight and the unseemly contortions of the victim, but no one made any protest; they merely heaped abuse and curses on the head of a master who was inflicting such a cruel punishment. For in those days the Romans treated their slaves with great kindness, because they worked and even ate with them themselves, and were therefore more familiar and gentle with them. 5 And it was a severe punishment for a slave who had committed a fault, if he was obliged to take the piece of wood with which they prop up the pole of a waggon, and carry it around through the neighbourhood. For he who had been seen undergoing this punishment no longer had any credit in his own or neighbouring households. And he was called “furcifer”; for what the Greeks call a prop, or support, is called “furca” by the Romans.

25 1 When, therefore, Latinus had reported this vision to the senators, and they were at a loss to know who the unpleasant and bad dancer was who had headed the procession referred to, some of them were led, owing to the extraordinary nature of his punishment, to think of the slave who had been scourged through the forum and then put to death. Accordingly, with the concurrence of the priests, the master of the slave was punished, and the procession and spectacles in honour of the god were exhibited anew.

2 Now it would seem that Numa, who in other respects also was a very wise director of sacred rites, had very properly sought to secure the people’s reverent attention by means of the following ordinance. When, namely, magistrates or priests perform any religious function, a herald goes before, crying with a loud voice, “Hoc age.” The meaning of this cry is, Mind this! and it warns the people to give heed to the sacred rites, and suffer no task or demand of business to intervene, implying that men perform most of their duties under some sort of compulsion and by constraint. 3 And it is customary for the Romans to renew sacrifices and processions and spectacles, not only for such a reason as the above, but also for trivial reasons. For instance, if one of the horses drawing the sacred chariots called Tensae gives out; or again, if the charioteer takes hold of the reins with his left hand, they decree that the procession be renewed. And in later ages, a single sacrifice has been performed thirty times, because again and again some failure or offence was thought to occur. Such is the reverent care of the Romans in religious matters.

26 1 But Marcius and Tullus were secretly conferring at Antium with the chief men, and were urging them to begin the war while the Romans were torn by internal dissensions. And when shame restrained them from this course, because they had agreed to a truce and cessation of hostilities for two years, the Romans themselves furnished them with a pretext, by making proclamation at the spectacles and games, because of some suspicion or slanderous report, that the visiting Volscians must leave the city before sunset. 2 Some say that this was due to a deceitful stratagem of Marcius, who sent a man to the consuls in Rome, bearing the false charge that the Volscians proposed to fall upon the Romans at the spectacles, and set the city on fire. This proclamation made all the Volscians more embittered against the Romans; and Tullus, magnifying the incident, and goading them on, at last persuaded them to send ambassadors to Rome and demand back the territory and the cities which had been taken from the Volscians in war. 3 But the Romans, after hearing the ambassadors, were full of indignation, and replied that the Volscians might be first to take up arms, but the Romans would be last to lay them down. Upon receiving this answer, Tullus called a general assembly of his people, and after they had voted for the war, advised them to call in Marcius, cherishing no resentment against him, but firmly convinced that he would be more helpful as an ally than he had been injurious as a foe.

27 1 Marcius was therefore called in, and held a conference with the assembly; they saw from his speech that he was as eloquent as his exploits in arms had taught them that he was warlike, and were convinced of his surpassing intelligence and daring; so they appointed him general with Tullus, and gave him full powers to conduct the war. 2 Fearing, then, that the time needed to equip and marshal the Volscians would be so long as to rob him of his best opportunity for action, he left orders with the magistrates and chief men of the city to assemble and provide the remaining forces and supplies that were requisite, while he himself, after persuading the most ardent spirits to march forth as volunteers with him and not stop for formal enrolment, burst into the Roman territory of a sudden, when no one expected it. 3 Consequently he secured such abundance of booty that the Volscians had more than they could possibly do to use it in their camp or carry it off home. But the abundant supplies secured, and the great injury and damage done to the enemy’s country, were, in his eyes, the most insignificant result of that expedition; its chief result, and his main object in making it, was to furnish the people of Rome with fresh charges against the patricians. For while he maltreated and destroyed everything else, he kept a vigorous watch over the lands of the patricians, and would not suffer anyone to hurt them or take anything from them. 4 This led to still further accusations and broils between the parties in the city; the patricians accused the people of unjustly driving out an influential man, and the people charged the patricians with bringing Marcius up against them in a spirit of revenge, and then enjoying the spectacle of what others suffered by the war, while war itself protected their own wealth and property outside the city. After Marcius had accomplished his purposes, and greatly helped the Volscians towards courage and scorn of their enemies, he led his forces back in safety.

28 1 The entire force of the Volscians was assembled with speed and alacrity, and was then seen to be so large that they determined to leave a part of it behind for the security of their cities, and with the other part to march against the Romans. Moreover, Marcius left it to the choice of Tullus which of the two divisions he would command. Then Tullus, remarking that Marcius was clearly in no wise inferior to himself in valour, and had enjoyed a better fortune in all his battles, bade him lead the division that was to take the field, and he himself would remain behind to guard the cities and provide what was requisite for the army abroad. 2 With a stronger force than before, then, Marcius set out first against Circeii, a city which was a colony of Rome;e this surrendered to him of its own accord, and he did it no harm. Next, he laid waste the country of the Latins, where he expected that the Romans would engage him in defence of the Latins, who were their allies and by frequent messengers were calling upon them for help. 3 But the commons were indifferent to the appeal, the consuls were unwilling to risk a campaign during the short time left of their term of office, and therefore the Latin envoys were dismissed. Under these circumstances Marcius led his forces against their cities, and taking by assault those which offered resistance to him, namely, Tolerium, Lavicum, Pedum, and later Bola,f he made slaves of the inhabitants and plundered their property. But for those who came over to him of their own accord he showed much concern, and that they might suffer no harm, even against his wishes, he encamped as far as he could from them, and held aloof from their territory.

29 1 But after he had taken Bola, a city not more than twelve miles away from Rome, where he got much treasure and put almost all the adults to the sword; and after the Volscians even who had been ordered to remain in their cities grew impatient, and came trooping in arms to Marcius, declaring that he was the sole and only general whom they would recognize as their leader, then his name was great throughout all Italy, and men thought with amazement how the valour of a single man, upon his changing sides, had effected such a marvellous turn in affairs.

2 At Rome, however, all was disorder; its citizens refused to fight, and spent their whole time in cabals and factious disputes with one another, until tidings came that the enemy had laid close siege to Lavinium, where the sacred symbols of the ancestral gods of the Romans were stored up, and from which their nation took its origin, since that was the first city which Aeneas founded. 3 This produced an astonishing and universal change of opinion in the commons, as well as one which was altogether strange and unexpected in the patricians. For the commons were eager to repeal the sentence against Marcius and invite him back to the city; whereas the senate, on assembling and considering the proposition, rejected and vetoed it; either because they were angrily bent on opposing all the people’s desires; 4 or else because they were unwilling that Marcius should owe his restoration to the kindness of the people; or because they were now angry at Marcius himself, seeing that he was injuring all alike, although he had not been ill-treated by all, and showed himself an enemy of his whole country, although he knew that the most influential and powerful men in it sympathised with him and shared in his wrongs. When this decision of the senate was made public, the people was powerless; it could not by its vote enact a law, without a previous decree of the senate.

30 1 But Marcius, when he heard of it, was yet more exasperated, and raising the siege of Lavinium, marched against Rome in wrath, and encamped at the so called Fossae Cluiliae, only five miles distant from the city. Although the sight of him produced terror and great confusion there, still, it put a stop for the present to their dissensions; for no one longer, whether consul or senator, dared to oppose the people in the matter of restoring Marcius. 2 On the contrary, when they saw the women running frantic in the city, and the aged men resorting to the sacred shrines with suppliant tears and prayers, and everywhere an utter lack of courage and saving counsels, then all agreed that the people had done well to seek a reconciliation with Marcius, but that the senate had made a total mistake in beginning then to indulge its wrath and revengeful spirit, when it had been well to lay such feelings aside. It was, therefore, unanimously decided to send ambassadors to Marcius, offering him the privilege of returning to his country, and begging him to stop his war upon them. 3 Moreover, the messengers from the senate were kinsmen and friends of Marcius, and expected to be treated with great friendliness in their first interview with a man who was a relative and associate of theirs. But matters turned out quite otherwise; for after being led through the camp of the enemy, they found him seated in great state, and looking insufferably stern. 4 Surrounded by the chief men of the Volscians, he bade the Romans declare their wishes. They did so, in reasonable and considerate language, and with a manner suitable to their position, and when they had ceased, he made an answer which, so far as it concerned himself, was full of bitterness and anger at their treatment of him, and in behalf of the Volscians, as their general, he ordered the restitution of the cities and territory which had been torn from them in war, and the passage of a decree granting the Volscians, as allies, equal civic rights, as had been done for the Latins. 5 For no respite from the war would be secure and lasting, he said, except it be based on just and equal rights. Moreover, he gave them thirty days for deliberation, and when the ambassadors were gone, he immediately withdrew his forces from the country.

31 1 This was the first ground of complaint against him which was laid hold of by those of the Volscians who had long been jealous of him, and uneasy at the influence which he had acquired. Among these was Tullus also, not because he had been personally wronged at all by Marcius, but because he was only too human. For he was vexed to find his reputation wholly obscured and himself neglected by the Volscians, who thought that Marcius alone was everything to them, and that their other leaders should be content with whatever share of influence and authority he might bestow upon them. 2 This was the reason why the first seeds of denunciation were sown in secret, and now, banding together, the malcontents shared their resentment with one another, and called the withdrawal of Marcius a betrayal, not so much of cities and armies, as of golden opportunities, which prove the salvation or the loss of these as well as of everything else; for he had granted a respite of thirty days from war, although in war the greatest changes might occur in much less time than this.

3 And yet Marcius did not spend this time in idleness, but fell upon the enemy’s allies, harassed and ravaged their territories, and captured seven of their large and populous cities. And the Romans did not venture to come to their aid, but their spirits were full of hesitation, and their attitude toward the war was that of men who are completely benumbed and paralyzed. 4 And when the time had passed, and Marcius was at hand again with his entire force, they sent out another embassy to entreat him to moderate his wrath, withdraw the Volscian army from the country, and then make such proposals and settlements as he thought best for both nations; for the Romans would make no concessions through fear, but if he thought that the Volscians ought to obtain certain favours, all such would be granted them if they laid down their arms. 5 Marcius replied that, as general of the Volscians, he would make no answer to this, but as one who was still a citizen of Rome, he advised and exhorted them to adopt more moderate views of what justice required, and come to him in three days with a ratification of his previous demands; but if they should decide otherwise, they must know well that it was not safe for them to come walking into his camp again with empty phrases.

32 1 When the embassy had returned and the senate had heard its report, it was felt that the city was tossing on the billows of a great tempest, and therefore the last and sacred anchor was let down. A decree was passed that all the priests of the gods, and the celebrants or custodians of the mysteries, and those who practised the ancient and ancestral art of divination from the flight of birds, — that all these should go to Marcius, arrayed as was the custom of each in the performance of their sacred rites, and should urge him in the same manner as before to put a stop to the war, and then to confer with his fellow-citizens regarding the Volscians. 2 He did, indeed, admit this embassy into his camp, but made no other concession, nor did he act or speak more mildly, but told them to make a settlement on his former terms, or else accept the war. Accordingly, when the priests had returned, it was decided to remain quietly in the city, guarding its walls, and repulsing the enemy, should he make an attack. 3 They put their hopes in time especially, and in the vicissitudes of fortune, since they knew not how to save themselves by their own efforts, but turmoil, terror, and rumours of evil possessed the city. At last something happened that was like what Homer often mentions, although people generally do not wholly believe it. 4 For when some great and unusual deed is to be done, that poet declares in his stately manner: —

“He then was inspired by the goddess, flashing-eyed Athene”

;

and again: —

“But some immortal turned his mind by lodging in his heart

A fear of what the folk would say”

;

and again: —

“Either through some suspicion, or else a god so bade him do”

;

but people despise Homer and say that with his impossible exploits and incredible tales he makes it impossible to believe in every man’s power to determine his own choice of action. 5 This, however, is not what Homer does, but those acts which are natural, customary, and the result of reasoning, he attributes to our own volition, and he certainly says frequently: —

“But I formed a plan within my lordly heart”

;

and also: —

“So he spake, and Peleus’ son was sore distressed, and his heart

Within his shaggy breast between two courses was divided”

;

and again: —

“But him no whit
Could she persuade from his integrity, the fiery-hearted Bellerophon”

;

6 while in exploits of a strange and extraordinary nature, requiring some rush of inspiration, and desperate courage, he does not represent the god as taking away, but as prompting, a man’s choice of action; nor yet as creating impulses in a man, but rather conceptions which lead to impulses, and by these his action is not made involuntary, but his will is set in motion, while courage and hope are added to sustain him. 7 For either the influence of the gods must be wholly excluded from all initiating power over our actions, or in what other way can they assist and co-operate with men? They certainly do not mould our bodies by their direct agency, nor give the requisite change to the action of our hands and feet, but rather, by certain motives, conceptions, and purposes, they rouse the active and elective powers of our spirits, or, on the other hand, divert and check them.

33 1 Now in Rome, at the time of which I speak, various groups of women visited the various temples, but the greater part of them, and those of highest station, carried their supplications to the altar of Jupiter Capitolinus. Among these was Valeria, a sister of that Publicola who had done the Romans so many eminent services both as warrior and statesman. Publicola, indeed, had died some time before, as I have related in his Life; but Valeria was still enjoying her repute and honour in the city, where her life was thought to adorn her lineage. 2 This woman, then, suddenly seized with one of those feelings which I have been describing, and laying hold of the right expedient with a purpose not uninspired of heaven, rose up herself, bade the other women all rise, and came with them to the house of Volumnia, the mother of Marcius. After entering and finding her seated with her daughter-in law, and holding the children of Marcius on her lap, Valeria called about her the women who had followed, and said: 3 “We whom thou seest here, Volumnia, and thou, Vergilia, are come as women to women, obeying neither senatorial edict nor consular command; but our god, as it would seem, taking pity on our supplication, put into our hearts an impulse to come hither to you and beseech you to do that which will not only be the salvation of us ourselves and of the citizens besides, but also lift you who consent to do it to a more conspicuous fame than that which the daughters of the Sabines won, when they brought the fathers and husbands out of war into friendship and peace. 4 Arise, come with us to Marcius, and join with us in supplicating him, bearing this just and true testimony in behalf of your country, that, although she has suffered much wrong at his hands, she has neither done nor thought of doing harm to you, in her anger, but restores you to him, even though she is destined to obtain no equitable treatment at his hands.”

5 These words of Valeria were seconded by the cries of the other women with her, and Volumnia gave them this answer: “O women, not only have we an equal share with you in common calamities, but we have an additional misery of our own, in that we have lost the fame and virtue of Marcius, and see his person protected in command, rather than preserved from death, by the arms of our enemies. And yet it is the greatest of our misfortunes that our native city is become so utterly weak as to place her hopes in us. 6 For I know not whether the man will have any regard for us, since he has none for his country, which he once set before mother and wife and children. However, take us and use us and bring us to him; if we can do nothing else, we can at least breathe out our lives in supplications for our country.”

34 1 After this, she took the children and Vergilia and went with the other women to the camp of the Volscians. The sight of them, and the pitifulness of it, produced even in their enemies reverence and silence. Now it chanced that Marcius was seated on a tribunal with his chief officers. 2 When, accordingly, he saw the women approaching, he was amazed; and when he recognized his mother, who walked at their head, he would fain have persisted in his previous inflexible and implacable course, but, mastered by his feelings, and confounded at what he saw, he could not endure to remain seated while they approached him, but descended quickly from the tribunal and ran to meet them. He saluted his mother first, and held her a long time in his embrace, and then his wife and children, sparing now neither tears nor caresses, but suffering himself as it were to be borne away by a torrent of emotion.

35 1 But when he was sated with this, and perceived that his mother now wished to say something, he brought to his side the councillors of the Volscians, and heard Volumnia speak as follows: “Thou seest, my son, even if we do not speak ourselves, and canst judge from the wretchedness of our garb and aspect, to what a pitiful state thy banishment has reduced us. 2 And now be sure that we who come to thee are of all women most unhappy, since fortune has made the sight which should have been most sweet, most dreadful for us, as I behold my son, and this wife of thine her husband, encamped against the walls of our native city. And that which for the rest is an assuagement of all misfortune and misery, namely prayer to the gods, has become for us most impracticable; for we cannot ask from the gods both victory for our country and at the same time safety for thee, but that which any one of our foes might imprecate upon us as a curse, this must be the burden of our prayers. 3 For thy wife and children must needs be deprived either of their country or of thee. As for me, I will not wait to have the war decide this issue for me while I live, but unless I can persuade thee to substitute friendship and concord for dissension and hostility, and so to become a benefactor of both parties rather than a destroyer of one of them, then consider and be well assured that thou canst not assail thy country without first treading underfoot the corpse of her who bore thee. For it does not behoove me to await that day on which I shall behold my son either led in triumph by his fellow-citizens or triumphing over his country. 4 If, then, I asked you to save your country by ruining the Volscians, the question before thee would be a grievous one, my son, and hard to decide, since it is neither honourable for a man to destroy his fellow-citizens, nor just for him to betray those who have put their trust in him; but as it is, we ask only a relief from evils, something which would be salutary for both parties alike, but more conducive to fame and honour for the Volscians, because their superiority in arms will give them the appearance of bestowing the greatest of blessings, namely peace and friendship, although they get these no less themselves. If these blessings are realized, it will be chiefly due to thee; if they are not, then thou alone wilt bear the blame from both nations. 5 And though the issues of war are obscure, this is manifest, that if victorious, thou wilt only be thy country’s destroying demon, and if defeated, the world will think that, to satisfy thy wrath, thou didst bring down the greatest calamities upon men who were thy benefactors and friends.”

36 1 While Volumnia was saying this, Marcius listened without making any answer, and after she had ceased also, he stood a long time in silence. Volumnia therefore began once more: “Why art thou silent, my son? Is it right to yield everything to wrath and resentment, but wrong to gratify a mother in such a prayer as this? 2 Or is the remembrance of his wrongs becoming to a great man, while the remembrance, with reverence and honour, of the benefits which children have received from their parents is not the duty of a great and good man? Surely for no man were it more seemly to cherish gratitude than for thee, who dost so bitterly proceed against ingratitude. 3 And yet, although thou hast already punished thy country severely, thou hast not shown thy mother any gratitude. It were, therefore, a most pious thing in thee to grant me, without any compulsion, so worthy and just a request as mine; but since I cannot persuade thee, why should I spare my last resource?” And with these words she threw herself at his feet, together with his wife and children. 4 Then Marcius, crying out “What hast thou done to me, my mother!” lifted her up, and pressing her right hand warmly, said: “Thou art victorious, and thy victory means good fortune to my country, but death to me; for I shall withdraw vanquished, though by thee alone.” When he had said this, and had held a little private conference with his mother and his wife, he sent them back again to Rome, as they desired, and on the next morning led away his Volscians, who were not at all affected in the same way nor equally pleased by what had happened. 5 For some found fault both with him and with what he had done; but others, who were favourably disposed towards a peaceful settlement of the dispute, with neither; while some, though displeased with his proceedings, nevertheless could not look upon Marcius as a bad man, but thought it pardonable in him to be broken down by such strong compulsions. No one, however, opposed him, but all followed him obediently, though rather out of admiration for his virtue than regard for his authority.

37 1 But the Roman people showed more plainly, when they were set free from the war, the greatness of their fear and peril while it lasted. For as soon as those who manned the walls descried the Volscians drawing their forces off, every temple was thrown open, and the people crowned themselves with garlands and offered sacrifices as if for victory. But the joy of the city was most apparent in the honour and loving favour which both the senate and the whole people bestowed upon the women, declaring their belief that the city’s salvation was manifestly due to them. 2 When, however, the senate passed a decree that whatsoever they asked for themselves in the way of honour or favour, should be furnished and done for them by the magistrates, they asked for nothing else besides the erection of a temple of Women’s Fortune, the expense of which they offered to contribute of themselves, if the city would undertake to perform, at the public charge, all the sacrifices and honours, such as are due to the gods. 3 The senate commended their public spirit, and erected the temple and its image at the public charge, but they none the less contributed money themselves and set up a second image of the goddess, and this, the Romans say, as it was placed in the temple, uttered some such words as these: “Dear to the gods, O women, is your pious gift of me.”

38 1 These words were actually uttered twice, as the story runs, which would have us believe what is difficult of belief and probably never happened. For that statues have appeared to sweat, and shed tears, and exude something like drops of blood, is not impossible; since wood and stone often contract a mould which is productive of moisture, and cover themselves with many colours, and receive tints from the atmosphere; and there is nothing in the way of believing that the Deity uses these phenomena sometimes as signs and portents. 2 It is possible also that statues may emit a noise like a moan or a groan, by reason of a fracture or a rupture, which is more violent if it takes place in the interior. But that articulate speech, and language so clear and abundant and precise, should proceed from a lifeless thing, is altogether impossible; since not even the soul of man, or the Deity, without a body duly organized and fitted with vocal parts, has ever spoken and conversed. 3 But where history forces our assent with numerous and credible witnesses, we must conclude that an experience different from that of sensation arises in the imaginative part of the soul, and persuades men to think it sensation; as, for instance, in sleep, when we think we see and hear, although we neither see nor hear. However, those who cherish strong feelings of good-will and affection for the Deity, and are therefore unable to reject or deny anything of this kind, have a strong argument for their faith in the wonderful and transcending character of the divine power. 4 For the Deity has no resemblance whatever to man, either in nature, activity, skill, or strength; nor, if He does something that we cannot do, or contrives something that we cannot contrive, is this contrary to reason; but rather, since he differs from us in all points, in His works most of all is He unlike us and far removed from us. But most of the Deity’s powers, as Heracleitus says, “escape our knowledge through incredulity.”

39 1 But as for Marcius, when he came back to Antium from his expedition, Tullus, who had long hated him and been oppressed with jealousy of him, plotted to take him off at once, believing that if his enemy escaped him now, he would never give him another chance to seize him. Having, therefore, arrayed a large party against him, he bade him lay down his command and give the Volscians an account of his administration. 2 But Marcius, afraid of being reduced to private station when Tullus was in command and exercising the greatest influence among his own countrymen, said he would resign his command to the Volscians, if they bade him do so, since it was at their general bidding that he had assumed it; and that he was ready, and would not refuse even before that, to give a full account of his administration to all the people of Antium who desired it. An assembly was therefore held, at which the popular leaders who had been set to the work arose and tried to embitter the multitude against him. 3 But when Marcius rose to speak, the more disorderly part of his audience grew quiet, out of reverence for him, and gave him opportunity to speak fearlessly, while the best of the men of Antium, and those that were especially pleased with peace, made it clear that they would listen to him with favour and give a just decision. Tullus, therefore, began to fear the effect of the man’s plea in self-defence; for he was one of the most powerful speakers, and his earlier achievements secured him a gratitude which outweighed his later fault; nay more, the very charge against him was but so much proof of the great gratitude which was his due. 4 For they would not have thought themselves wronged in not getting Rome into their power, had not the efforts of Marcius brought them near to taking it.

Accordingly, the conspirators decided to make no more delay, and not to test the feelings of the multitude; but the boldest of them, crying out that the Volscians must not listen to the traitor, nor suffer him to retain his command and play the tyrant among them, fell upon him in a body and slew him, and no man present offered to defend him. 5 However, that the deed was not wrought with the approval of the majority of the Volscians, was seen at once from their coming out of their cities in concourse to his body, to which they gave honourable burial, adorning his tomb with arms and spoils, as that of a chieftain and general. But when the Romans learned of his death, they paid him no other mark either of honour or resentment, but simply granted the request of the women that they might mourn for him ten months, as was customary when any one of them lost a father, or a son, or a brother. For this was the period fixed for the longest mourning, and it was fixed by Numa Pompilius, as is written in his Life.

6 The loss of Marcius was keenly felt at once by the Volscian state. For, in the first place, they quarrelled with the Aequians, who were their allies and friends, over the supreme command, and carried their quarrel to the length of bloodshed and slaughter; in the second place, they were defeated in battle by the Romans, wherein Tullus was slain and the very flower of their forces was cut to pieces, so that they were glad to accept most disgraceful terms, becoming subjects of Rome, and pledging themselves to obey her commands.

Comparison of Alcibiades and Coriolanus

233 1 1 Now that all the deeds of these men are set forth, so far as we consider them worthy of recollection and record, it is plain that their military careers do not incline the balance either way very decidedly. For both alike gave many signal proofs of daring and valour as soldiers, as well as of skill and foresight as commanders; 2 except that some may give the preference to Alcibiades, because he was continually successful and victorious in many struggles by sea, as well as by land, and declare him therefore the more consummate general. It is certainly true of each that, when he was at home and in command, he always conducted his country’s cause with manifest success, and, contrariwise, inflicted even more manifest injury upon it when he went over to the enemy. 3 As statesmen, if the exceeding wantonness of Alcibiades, and the stain of dissoluteness and vulgarity upon all his efforts to win the favour of the multitude, won the loathing of sober-minded citizens, it was equally true that the utter ungraciousness of Marcius, together with his pride and oligarchical demeanour, won the hatred of the Roman people. 4 Neither course, then, is to be approved; although the man who seeks to win the people by his favours is less blameworthy than those who heap insults on the multitude, in order to avoid the appearance of trying to win them. For it is a disgrace to flatter the people for the sake of power; but to get power by acts of terror, violence, and oppression, is not only a disgrace, it is also an injustice.

2 1 Now, that Marcius is usually thought to have been rather simple in his nature, and straightforward, while Alcibiades was unscrupulous in his public acts, and false, is very clear. And Alcibiades is particularly denounced for the malicious deceit by which he cheated the Lacedaemonian ambassadors, as Thucydides relates, and put an end to the peace. 2 But this policy of his, although it did plunge the city again into war, made it nevertheless strong and formidable, by reason of the alliance with Mantineia and Argos which Alcibiades secured for it. And yet Marcius himself also used deceit to stir up war between the Romans and Volscians, when he brought a false charge against the visitors to the games, as Dionysius relates; and the motive for his action makes it the worse of the two. 3 For he was not influenced by ambition, or by rivalry in a political struggle, as Alcibiades was, but simply gave way to his anger, 234 from which passion, as Dion says, “no one ever gets a grateful return,” and threw many districts of Italy into confusion, and needlessly sacrificed many innocent cities to his rage against his country. It is true, indeed, that Alcibiades also, through his anger, was the cause of great calamities to his countrymen. 4 But just as soon as he saw that they were repentant, he showed them his goodwill, and after he had been driven away a second time, he did not exult over the mistakes of their generals, nor look with indifference upon their bad and perilous plans, but did precisely what Aristides is so highly praised for doing to Themistocles: he came to the men who were then in command, although they were not his friends, and told them plainly what they ought to do. 5 Marcius, however, in the first place, did injury to his whole city, although he had not been injured by the whole of it, but the best and strongest part of it shared his wrongs and his distress; in the second place, by resisting and not yielding to the many embassies and supplications with which his countrymen tried to heal his single wrath and folly, he made it clear that he had undertaken a fierce and implacable war for the overthrow and destruction of his country, not that he might recover and regain it. 6 Further, in this point it may be said there was a difference between them, namely, that Alcibiades, when he went over to the side of the Athenians, was moved by fear and hatred of the Spartans, who were plotting to take his life; whereas it was dishonourable for Marcius to leave the Volscians in the lurch when they were treating him with perfect fairness. 7 For he was appointed their leader, and had the greatest credit and influence among them, unlike Alcibiades, whom the Lacedaemonians misused rather than used, who wandered about aimlessly in their city, and again was tossed to and fro in their camp, and at last threw himself into the hands of Tissaphernes; unless, indeed, he was all the while paying him court in order that the Athens to which he longed to return might not be utterly destroyed.

3 1 Furthermore, in the matter of money, we are told that Alcibiades often got it ill by taking bribes, and spent it ill in luxury and dissipation; whereas Marcius could not be persuaded to take it even when it was offered to him as an honour by his commanders. And for this reason he was especially odious to the multitude in the disputes with the people concerning debts, because they saw that it was not for gain, but out of insolence and scorn, that he acted despitefully towards the poor.

2 Antipater, writing in one of his letters about the death of Aristotle the philosopher, says: “In addition to all his other gifts, the man had also that of persuasion”; and the absence of this gift in Marcius made his great deeds and virtues obnoxious to the very men whom they benefited, since they could not endure the arrogant pride of the man, and that self-will which is, as Plato says, “the companion of solitude.” Alcibiades, on the contrary, understood how to treat in a friendly manner those who met him, and we cannot wonder that when he was successful his fame was attended with goodwill and honour, and flowered luxuriantly, since some of his errors even had often charm and felicity. 3 This was the reason why, in spite of the great and frequent harm done by him to the city, he was nevertheless many times appointed leader and general; while Marcius, when he stood for an office which was his due in view of his valorous achievements, was defeated. And so it was that the one could not make himself hated by his countrymen, even when he was doing them harm; while the other was after all not beloved, even while he was admired.

4 1 For Marcius did not, as a commander, obtain any great successes for his city, but only for his enemies against his country; whereas Alcibiades was often of service to the Athenians, both as a private soldier and as a commander. When he was at home, he mastered his adversaries to his heart’s content; it was when he was absent that their calumnies prevailed. 2 Marcius, on the contrary, was with the Romans when they condemned him, and with the Volscians when they slew him. The deed was not in accordance with justice or right, it is true, and yet his own acts supplied an excuse for it, because, after rejecting the terms of peace publicly offered, 235 and suffering himself to be persuaded by the private solicitations of the women, he did not put an end to hostilities, but allowed the war to continue, while he threw away for ever its golden opportunity. 3 For he should have won the consent of those who had put their trust in him, before retiring from his position, if he had the highest regard for their just claims upon him. If, on the other hand, he cared nothing for the Volscians, but was prosecuting the war merely to satisfy his own anger, and then stopped it abruptly, the honourable course had been, not to spare his country for his mother’s sake, but his mother together with his country; since his mother and his wife were part and parcel of the native city which he was besieging. 4 But after giving harsh treatment to public supplications, entreaties of embassies, and prayers of priests, then to concede his withdrawal as a favour to his mother, was not so much an honour to that mother, as it was a dishonour to his country, which was thus saved by the pitiful intercession of a single woman, and held unworthy of salvation for its own sake. Surely the favour was invidious, and harsh, and really no favour at all, and unacceptable to both parties; for he retired without listening to the persuasions of his antagonists, and without gaining the consent of his comrades-in arms.

5 The cause of all this lay in his unsociable, very overweening, and self-willed disposition, which of itself is offensive to most people, and when combined with an ambitious spirit, becomes altogether savage and implacable. Such men pay no court to the multitude, professing not to want their honours, and then are vexed if they do not get them. Certainly there was no tendency to importune or court the favour of the multitude in men like Metellus, Aristides, and Epaminondas; 6 but owing to their genuine contempt for what a people has the power to give and take away, though they were repeatedly ostracised, defeated at elections, and condemned in courts of justice, they cherished no anger against their countrymen for their ingratitude, but showed them kindness again when they repented, and were reconciled with them when they asked it. Surely he who least courts the people’s favour, ought least to resent their neglect, since vexation over failure to receive their honours is most apt to spring from an excessive longing after them.

5 1 Well, then, Alcibiades would not deny that he rejoiced to be honoured, and was displeased to be overlooked, and he therefore tried to be agreeable and pleasant to his associates; but the overweening pride of Marcius would not suffer him to pay court to those who had the power to honour and advance him, while his ambition made him feel angry and hurt when he was neglected. 2 These are the blameworthy traits in the man, but all the rest are brilliant. And for his temperance and superiority to wealth, he deserves to be compared with the best and purest of the Greeks, not with Alcibiades, who, in these regards, was the most unscrupulous of men, and the most careless of the claims of honour.

Timoleon

I began the writing of my “Lives” for the sake of others, but I find that I am continuing the work and delighting in it now for my own sake also, using history as a mirror and endeavouring in a manner to fashion and adorn my life in conformity with the virtues therein depicted. 2 For the result is like nothing else than daily living and associating together, when I receive and welcome each subject of my history in turn as my guest, so to speak, and observe carefully “how large he was and of what mien,” and select from his career what is most important and most beautiful to know.

3 “And oh! what greater joy than this canst thou obtain,”

4 and more efficacious for moral improvement? Democritus says we ought to pray that we may be visited by phantoms which are propitious, and that from out the circumambient air such only may encounter us as are agreeable to our natures and good, rather than those which are perverse and bad, thereby intruding into philosophy a doctrine which is not true, and which leads astray into boundless superstitions. 5 But in my own case, the study of history and the familiarity with it which my writing produces, enables me, since I always cherish in my soul the records of the noblest and most estimable characters, to repel and put far from me whatever base, malicious, or ignoble suggestion my enforced associations may intrude upon me, calmly and dispassionately turning my thoughts away from them to the fairest of my examples. 6 Among these were Timoleon the Corinthian and Aemilius Paulus, whose Lives I have now undertaken to lay before my readers; 7 the men were alike not only in the good principles which they adopted, but also in the good fortune which they enjoyed in their conduct of affairs, 8 and they will make it hard for my readers to decide whether the greatest of their successful achievements were due to their good fortune or their wisdom.

1 The state of affairs in Syracuse, before the expedition of Timoleon into Sicily, was as follows. 2 After Dion had driven out Dionysius the tyrant, he was at once treacherously slain, and those who had helped him to free Syracuse were divided among themselves. The city, therefore, was continually exchanging one tyrant for another, and owing to a multitude of ills was almost abandoned, 3 while as for the rest of Sicily, part of it was ruined and already wholly without inhabitants by reason of the wars, and most of the cities were occupied by Barbarians of mixed races and soldiers out of employment, who readily consented to the successive changes in the despotic power. 4 At last Dionysius, in the tenth year of his exile, collected mercenaries, drove out Nisaeus, who was at that time master of Syracuse, recovered the power again, and established himself as tyrant anew; he had been unaccountably deprived by a small force of the greatest tyranny that ever was, and now more unaccountably still he had become, from a lowly exile, master of those who drove him forth. 5 Accordingly, those of the Syracusans who remained in the city were the slaves of a tyrant who at all times was unreasonable, and whose spirit at this time was rendered altogether savage by misfortunes, 6 but the best and most distinguished of them had recourse to Hicetas the ruler of Leontini, put themselves under his protection, and chose him their general for the war; not that he was better than any acknowledged tyrant, but because they had no other refuge, and felt confidence in one who was a Syracusan by birth and possessed a force that was able to cope with that of Dionysius.

2 Meanwhile the Carthaginians came with a large armament to Sicily and were watching their opportunity, and the Sicilian Greeks, in their fright, wished to send an embassy to Greece and ask for assistance from the Corinthians, 2 not only because they trusted them on account of their kinship and in consequence of the many benefits they had already received from them, but also in general because they saw that the city was always a lover of freedom and a hater of tyrants, and had waged the most and greatest of her wars, not for supremacy and aggrandizement, but for the liberty of the Greeks. 3 Hicetas, however, since he had made a tyranny for himself, and not the freedom of Syracuse, his sole object in taking the field, had already held secret conferences with the Carthaginians; yet openly he commended the plan of the Syracusans and joined them in sending the embassy to Peloponnesus, 4 not because he wished that an allied force should come from there, but because he hoped that if, as was likely, the Corinthians should refuse their assistance because the disturbed condition of Greece kept them busy at home, he might more easily turn the control of affairs into the hands of the Carthaginians and use these invaders as allies and helpers in a struggle against the Syracusans or against Dionysius. This, then, was fully proved a little later.

3 But when the embassy arrived, the Corinthians, since they were wont to be ever solicitous for their colonial cities and for Syracuse in particular, and since by good fortune there was nothing in Greece at that time to disturb them, but they were enjoying peace and leisure, voted readily to give the assistance desired. 2 And while they were seeking for a commander, and the magistrates were writing down the names of those in the city who were eager for the honour and proposing them for election, one of the common people rose to his feet and nominated Timoleon the son of Timodemus, although he no longer took part in public business, and had no expectation or purpose of doing so; but some god, as it would seem, put it into the man’s mind to nominate him, 3 such was the kindliness of Fortune that shone forth at once upon his election, and such the grace that attended his subsequent actions and adorned his virtues.

4 He was born of parents who were illustrious in the city, Timodemus and Demariste, and he was a lover of his country and exceedingly gentle, except as he was a hater of tyrants and of base men. 5 As a soldier his nature was so well and evenly attempered that great sagacity was manifested in the exploits of his youth, and no less bravery in those of his old age. 6 He had a brother Timophanes, older than he, not at all like him, but headstrong and filled with a ruinous passion for absolute power by worthless friends and foreign military adventurers who were ever about him, and having the reputation of being rather impetuous and fond of danger in military service. 7 Therefore he won followers among the citizens and as an efficient warrior was given posts of high command. And Timoleon aided him in obtaining these, trying to conceal his mistakes altogether or to make them seem trifling, and embellishing and enhancing his good natural qualities.

4 1 In the battle fought by the Corinthians against the Argives and Cleonaeans, Timoleon was stationed among the men-at arms, and Timophanes, who commanded the cavalry, was overtaken by extreme peril. 2 For his horse was wounded and threw him in among the enemy, and of his comrades, some scattered in panic flight, while the few who remained fought against great numbers and were with difficulty holding their ground. 3 Accordingly, when Timoleon saw what had happened, he came running to the help of Timophanes and held his shield over him as he lay on the ground, and after receiving many javelins and many hand to hand blows upon his person and his armour, at last succeeded in repulsing the enemy and saving his brother.

4 After this, the Corinthians, fearing lest they should suffer a second loss of their city through the treachery of their allies, voted to maintain four hundred mercenaries, and put Timophanes in command of them; 5 but he, without regard for honour and justice, at once took measures to bring the city under his own power, and after putting to death without a trial great numbers of the leading citizens, declared himself tyrant. At this, Timoleon was greatly distressed, and considering his brother’s baseness to be his own misfortune, he attempted to reason with him and exhort him to renounce that unfortunate and mad ambition of his and seek to make some amends for his transgressions against his fellow citizens. 6 But when his brother rejected his appeals with scorn, he took his kinsman Aeschylus, who was a brother of the wife of Timophanes, and his friend the seer whose name according to Theopompus, was Satyrus, but according to Ephorus and Timaeus, Orthagoras, and after waiting a few days went up again to his brother; 7 and the three, surrounding him, besought him even now to listen to reason and change his mind. 8 But Timophanes first mocked them, and then lost his temper and was violent, whereupon Timoleon withdrew a little space from him and stood weeping with muffled head, while the other two, drawing their swords, speedily despatched him.

5 The deed having been noised abroad, the most influential Corinthians applauded Timoleon for his hatred of baseness and greatness of soul, in that, although a kindly man and fond of his family, he had nevertheless set his country before his family, and honour and justice before expediency; for when his brother was fighting valiantly for his country, Timoleon had saved his life, but after he had plotted against her and enslaved her, Timoleon had slain him. 2 However, those who were unable to live in a democracy and were accustomed to pay court to men in power, while they pretended to rejoice at the death of the tyrant, still, by their abuse of Timoleon as the perpetrator of an impious and abominable deed, drove him into despondency. 3 And now he learned that his mother was angry with him and uttered dreadful reproaches and fearful imprecations against him, and went to plead his cause with her; but she could not endure to see his face, and closed her house against him. Then indeed he became altogether a prey to grief and disordered in mind, and determined to starve himself to death; 4 but his friends would not suffer this, and brought all manner of entreaty and constraint to bear upon him, so that he made up his mind to live by himself, apart from the world. So he gave up all public life, and for a long while did not even return to the city, but spent his time wandering in great distress of mind among the most desolate parts of the country.

6 So true is it that the purposes of men, unless they acquire firmness and strength from reason and philosophy for the activities of life, are unsettled and easily carried away by casual praise and blame, being forced out of their native reckonings. 2 For it would seem that not only our action must be noble and just, but the conviction also from which our action springs must be abiding and unchangeable, 3 in order that we may be satisfied with what we are about to do, and that mere weakness may not make us dejected over actions which have once been accomplished, when the fair vision of the Good fades away; just as gluttons who devour cloying viands with the keenest appetite are very soon sated and then disgusted with them. 4 For repentance makes even the noble action base; whereas the choice which springs from a wise and understanding calculation does not change, even though its results are unsuccessful. 5 For this reason Phocion the Athenian, after having opposed the activities of Leosthenes, when Leosthenes was thought to be successful and the Athenians were seen sacrificing and exulting over the victory, said he could have wished that the achievement were his own, but was glad that he counselled as he did. 6 And with more force Aristides the Locrian, one of Plato’s companions, when Dionysius the Elder asked him for one of his daughters in marriage, said he would be more pleased to see the maid dead than living with a tyrant; 7 and when, after a little while, Dionysius put his children to death and then asked him insultingly whether he was still of the same mind about giving his daughters in marriage, answered that he was afflicted by what had been done, but did not repent him of what had been said. Such utterances as these, betoken perhaps a larger and more consummate virtue.

7 But the grief of Timoleon over what had been done, whether it was due to pity for his dead brother or to reverence for his mother, so shattered and confounded his mental powers that almost twenty years passed without his setting his hand to a single conspicuous or public enterprise. 2 Accordingly, when he had been nominated general, and the people had readily approved of it and given him their votes, Telecleides, who was at that time the foremost man in the city for reputation and influence, rose up and exhorted Timoleon to be a noble and brave man in his enterprises. “For if,” said he, “thou contendest successfully, we shall think of thee as a tyrannicide; but if poorly, as a fratricide.”

3 But while Timoleon was getting ready for his voyage and collecting soldiers, a letter was brought to the Corinthians from Hicetas which disclosed his treacherous change of sides. 4 For as soon as he had sent out the embassy, he openly attached himself to the Carthaginians and acted with them in order to expel Dionysius from Syracuse and become its tyrant himself. 5 And fearing lest his opportunities for action should escape him if a general and an army came from Corinth in advance, he sent a letter to the Corinthians telling them that there was no need of their putting themselves to the trouble and expense of a voyage to Sicily with all its perils, 6 especially since the Carthaginians, with whom their delay had forced him to make an alliance against the tyrant, forbade their expedition and were on the watch for it with a large fleet. 7 When this letter had been read publicly, if any of the Corinthians had before been lukewarm towards the expedition, their wrath against Hicetas now incited them all, so that they eagerly joined in supplying Timoleon and helping him get ready for his voyage.

8 When the fleet was ready, and the soldiers provided with what they needed, the priestesses of Persephone fancied they saw in their dream that goddess and her mother making ready for a journey, and heard them say that they were going to sail with Timoleon to Sicily. 2 Therefore the Corinthians equipped a sacred trireme besides, and named it after the two goddesses. Furthermore, Timoleon himself journeyed to Delphi and sacrificed to the god, and as he descended into the place of the oracle, he received the following sign. 3 From the votive offerings suspended there a fillet which had crowns and figures of Victory embroidered upon it slipped away and fell directly upon the head of Timoleon, so that it appeared as if he were being crowned by the god and thus sent forth upon his undertaking.

4 And now, with seven Corinthian ships, and two from Corcyra, and a tenth which the Leucadians furnished, he set sail. 5 And at night, after he had entered the open sea and was enjoying a favouring wind, the heavens seemed to burst open on a sudden above his ship, and to pour forth an abundant and conspicuous fire. 6 From this a torch lifted itself on high, like those which the mystics bear, and running along with them on their course, darted down upon precisely that part of Italy towards which the pilots were steering. 7 The soothsayers declared that the apparition bore witness to the dreams of the priestesses, and that the goddesses were taking part in the expedition and showing forth the light from heaven; 8 for Sicily, they said, was sacred to Persephone, since mythology makes it the scene of her rape; and the island was given to her as a wedding present.

9 Such, then, were the signs from Heaven which encouraged the expedition; and making haste, since they were crossing the open sea, they skirted the coast of Italy. 2 But the tidings from Sicily much perplexed Timoleon and disheartened his soldiers. 3 For Hicetas, after defeating Dionysius in battle and occupying most of the outlying portions of Syracuse, had shut the tyrant up in the acropolis and what was called The Island, where he was himself helping to besiege and wall him in, 4 while he ordered the Carthaginians to see to it that Timoleon should not land in Sicily, but that he and his forces should be repulsed, and that they themselves, at their leisure, should divide the island with one another. 5 So the Carthaginians sent twenty triremes to Rhegium, on board of which were envoys from Hicetas to Timoleon carrying proposals which conformed to his proceedings. 6 For they were specious and misleading suggestions covering base designs, the envoys demanding that Timoleon himself, if he wished, should come to Hicetas as counsellor and partner in all his successes, but that he should send his ships and his soldiers back to Corinth, since, as they claimed, the war was almost finished, and the Carthaginians were ready to prevent their passage and to fight them if they tried to force one. 7 When, therefore, the Corinthians, after putting in at Rhegium, met these envoys, and saw the Carthaginians riding at anchor not far off, they were indignant at the insult put upon them, and were all of them filled with rage at Hicetas and fear for the Sicilian Greeks, who, as they clearly saw, were left to be a prize and reward, to Hicetas on the one hand for his treachery, and to the Carthaginians on the other for making him tyrant. 8 Moreover, it seemed impossible to overcome both the ships of the Barbarians confronting them there with twice their numbers, and the force under Hicetas in Syracuse, where they had come to take command.

10 1 However, after Timoleon had met the envoys of Hicetas and the commanders of the Carthaginians, he calmly said that he would obey their commands (for what would he accomplish by refusing?), but he wished that, before he went away, their proposals and his reply should be made in the presence of the people of Rhegium, a Greek city and a friend of both parties; 2 for this would conduce to his own safety, and they, on their part, would abide more firmly by their promises regarding the Syracusans if they made a people witness to the agreements into which they entered. 3 In making this overture to them he was contriving a deceit which should secure his safe passage across the strait, and the leaders of the Rhegian helped him contrive it, since they were all desirous that the affairs of the Sicilian Greeks should be in the hands of the Corinthians, and feared to have the Barbarians as neighbours. 4 Therefore they convened an assembly and closed the gates, in order that the citizens might not engage in any other business; then they came forward and addressed the multitude in lengthy speeches, one handing over to another the same topic and coming to no conclusion, but protracting the time to no apparent purpose, until the Corinthian triremes should have put to sea, and keeping the Carthaginians in the assembly free from all suspicion, since Timoleon also was there and led them to think that he was on the point of rising to address the people. 5 But when some one secretly brought him word that the other triremes had put to sea, and that one only, his own, had been left behind and was waiting for him, he slipped through the crowd unnoticed, with the connivance of the Rhegians about the bema, went down to the sea, and sailed off with all speed. 6 And they put in at Tauromenium in Sicily, whither they had been earnestly invited some time ago, and where they were now kindly received by Andromachus, the master and ruler of the city. 7 Andromachus was father of Timaeus the historian, and after making himself by far the most powerful of the rulers in Sicily at that time, not only led his own citizens in the ways of law and justice, but was also known to be always averse and hostile to tyrants. 8 Therefore at this time also he allowed Timoleon to make the city a base of operations, and persuaded his citizens to join the Corinthians in their struggle to set Sicily free.

11 But the Carthaginians in Rhegium, after Timoleon had put to sea and the assembly had been dissolved, were indignant, and in their discomfiture afforded amusement to the Rhegians, seeing that, though Phoenicians, they were not pleased with what was effected by deceit. 2 Nevertheless, they sent an envoy aboard a trireme to Tauromenium, who, after a long conversation with Andromachus, in which he menaced him in insolent barbaric fashion if he did not expel the Corinthians as soon as possible, finally showed him his hand with the palm up, and then turning it down, threatened that he would turn his city as completely upside down. 3 Andromachus, however, with a laugh, made no further reply than to stretch out his hand, as the Barbarian had done, now palm up, and now palm down, and then order him to sail off, if he did not wish his ship to be turned upside down in the same fashion.

4 But Hicetas was afraid when he learned that Timoleon had crossed the strait, and sent for great numbers of the Carthaginian triremes. 5 And now it was that the Syracusans altogether despaired of their deliverance, seeing their harbour in the power of the Carthaginians, their city in the hands of Hicetas, and their citadel in the possession of Dionysius; while Timoleon had but a hold as it were on the fringe of Sicily in the little city of Tauromenium, with a feeble hope and a small force to support him; for apart from a thousand soldiers and provisions barely sufficient for them, he had nothing. 6 Nor did the cities feel confidence in him, over full of ills as they were and embittered against all leaders of armies, particularly by reason of the perfidy of Callippus and Pharax, one of whom was an Athenian, and the other a Lacedaemonian; but both of them, while declaring that they came to secure the freedom of Sicily and wished to overthrow its tyrants, made the calamities of Sicily under her tyrants seem as gold in comparison, and brought her people to think those more to be envied who had perished in slavery than those who had lived to see her independence.

12 Expecting, therefore, that the Corinthian leader would be no whit better than those who had preceded him, but that the same sophistries and lures were come to them again, and that with fair hopes and kind promises they were to be made docile enough to receive a new master in place of an old one, they all suspected and repulsed the appeals of the Corinthians except the people of Adranum. 2 These dwelt in a city that was small, but sacred to Adranus, a god highly honoured throughout all Sicily, and being at variance with one another, one party invited in Hicetas and the Carthaginians, while the other sent an invitation to Timoleon. 3 And by some freak of fortune, both generals hastening to answer the summons, both arrived at one and the same time. 4 But Hicetas came with five thousand soldiers, while Timoleon had no more than twelve hundred all told. 5 Taking these with him from Tauromenium, he set out for Adranum, which was three hundred and forty furlongs off. The first day he advanced only a small part of the journey and bivouacked for the night; but on the second day he quickened his pace, and after traversing difficult regions, when day was already declining he heard that Hicetas was just arriving at the little city and pitching his camp. 6 Accordingly, his captains and taxiarchs halted the van-guard, in order to give the men food and rest and so make them more ready to fight; but when Timoleon came up, he begged them not to do this, but to lead on with speed and engage the enemy while they were in disorder, as they were likely to be when just at the end of their march and busy with their tents and supper. 7 And as he thus spoke, he took his shield, put himself at the head, and led the soldiers on as if to certain victory. And they followed, emboldened by his example, being now distant from the enemy less than thirty furlongs. 8 And when they had traversed these too, they fell upon the enemy, who were confounded and took to flight as soon as they perceived them coming up; wherefore not many more than three hundred of them were slain, while twice as many were taken alive, and their camp was captured. 9 Moreover, the people of Adranum threw open their gates and joined Timoleon, reporting to him with terror and amazement that at the beginning of the battle the sacred portals of their temple flew open of their own accord, and the spear of the god was seen to be trembling to the tip of its point, while copious sweat ran down his face.

13 These prodigies, as it would seem, were a sign not only of the victory which was then won, but also of the achievements succeeding them, to which that struggle afforded a propitious beginning. 2 For cities at once sent envoys to Timoleon and espoused his cause, and particularly Mamercus, the tyrant of Catana, a warlike and wealthy man, presented himself as an ally. 3 And what was most important, Dionysius himself, now grown desperate and almost forced to surrender, despised Hicetas for his shameful defeat, and in admiration of Timoleon sent to him and his Corinthians offering to surrender himself and the citadel to them. Timoleon accepted this unexpected good fortune, 4 and sent Eucleides and Telemachus, men of Corinth, into the acropolis, and with them four hundred soldiers, not all at once, nor openly, for this was impossible when an enemy was blockading the harbour; but they made their way in secretly and in small companies. 5 These soldiers, then, took over the acropolis and the castle of the tyrant, together with his equipment and stores for the war; 6 for there were many horses there, all sorts of engines of war, and a great quantity of missiles, and armour for seventy thousand men had been stored up there for a long time. 7 Dionysius also had with him two thousand soldiers; these, as well as the supplies, he turned over to Timoleon, while he himself, with his treasure and a few of his friends, sailed off without the knowledge of Hicetas. 8 And after he had been conveyed to the camp of Timoleon, where for the first time he was seen as a private person and in humble garb, he was sent off to Corinth with a single ship and a small treasure, 9 having been born and reared in a tyranny which was the greatest and most illustrious of all tyrannies, and having held this for ten years, and then for twelve other years, after the expedition of Dion, having been involved in harassing struggles and wars, and having surpassed in his sufferings all his acts of tyranny. 10 For he lived to see the violent deaths of his grown-up sons and the violation of his maiden daughters, and the shameful abuse of the person of his wife, who was at the same time his sister, and who, while living, was subjected to the most wanton pleasures of his enemies, and after being murdered, together with her children, was cast into the sea. These things, then, have been fully described in my Life of Dion.

14 But as for Dionysius, after his arrival at Corinth there was no Greek who did not long to behold and speak to him. 2 But those who rejoiced in his misfortunes were led by their hatred to come together gladly that they might trample, as it were, upon one who had been cast down by Fortune; while those who regarded rather the reversal of his fortune and sympathised with him, saw strong proof, amid the weakness of things that are human and seen, of the power of causes that are unseen and divine. 3 For that age showed no work either of nature or of art that was comparable to this work of Fortune, namely, the recent tyrant of Sicily in Corinth, whiling his time away at a fishmonger’s or sitting in a perfumer’s shop, drinking diluted wine from the taverns and skirmishing in public with common prostitutes, or trying to teach music-girls in their singing, and earnestly contending with them about songs for the stage and melody in hymns. 4 Some thought that Dionysius did these things as an aimless loiterer, and because he was naturally easy-going and fond of license; but others thought that it was in order to be held in contempt and not in fear by the Corinthians, nor under suspicion of being oppressed by the change in his life and of striving after power, that he engaged in these practices and played an unnatural part, making a display of great silliness in the way he amused himself.

15 1 However, certain sayings of his are preserved, from which it would appear that he accommodated himself to his present circumstances not ignobly. 2 Once, namely, when he landed at Leucadia, a city which had been colonized by Corinthians, just like Syracuse, he said he had the same feelings as young men who have been guilty of misdemeanours; 3 for just as these pass their time merrily with their brothers, but shun their fathers from a feeling of shame, so he was ashamed to live in their common mother-city, and would gladly dwell there with them. 4 And again, in Corinth, when a stranger somewhat rudely derided him about his associations with philosophers, in which he used to take delight when he was a tyrant, and finally asked him what good Plato’s wisdom did him now, “Dost thou think,” said he, “that I have had no help from Plato, when I bear my change of fortune as I do?” 5 Further, when Aristoxenus the musician and certain others inquired what his complaint against Plato was and what its origin, he told them that of the many ills with which tyranny abounded there was none so great as this, that not one of those reputed to be friends speaks frankly with the tyrant; for indeed it was by such friends that he himself had been deprived of Plato’s good will. 6 Again, when one of those who wish to be witty, in mockery of Dionysius shook out his robe on coming into his presence, as if into the presence of a tyrant, Dionysius turned the jest upon him by bidding him do so when he went out from his presence, that he might not take anything in the house away with him. 7 And when Philip of Macedon, at a banquet, began to talk in banter about the lyric poems and tragedies which Dionysius the Elder had left behind him, and pretended to wonder when that monarch found time for these compositions, Dionysius not inaptly replied by saying: “When thou and I and all those whom men call happy are busy at the bowl.”

8 Now, Plato did not live to see Dionysius when he was in Corinth, but he was already dead; Diogenes of Sinope, however, on meeting him for the first time, said: “How little though deservest, Dionysius, thus to live!” 9 Upon this, Dionysius stopped and said: “It is good of thee, O Diogenes, to sympathize with me in my misfortunes.” “How is that?” said Diogenes; “Dost thou suppose that I am sympathizing with thee? Nay, I am indignant that such a slave as thou, and one so worthy to have grown old and died in the tyrant’s estate, just as thy father did, should be living here with us in mirth and luxury.” 10 Wherefore, when I compare with these words the mournful utterances of Philistus about the daughters of Leptines, how from the great blessings of the tyranny they fell to a lowly life, they seem the lamentations of a woman who pines for her alabaster caskets and purple gowns and golden trinkets.

11 These details, then, will not seem foreign to my biography, I think, nor without usefulness, to readers who are not in haste, and are not occupied with other matters.

16 1 But though the misfortune of Dionysius seemed extraordinary, none the less did the good fortune of Timoleon have something marvellous about it. 2 For within fifty days after his landing in Sicily the acropolis of Syracuse was surrendered to him and Dionysius was sent off to Peloponnesus. 3 Stimulated by this success, the Corinthians sent him two thousand men-at arms and two hundred horsemen. These got as far as Thurii, but seeing that their passage thence was impracticable, since the sea was beset with many Carthaginian ships, they were compelled to remain there quietly and await their opportunity, and therefore turned their leisure to advantage in a most noble action. 4 When the Thurians, namely, went on an expedition against the Bruttians, the Corinthians received their city in charge, and guarded it honestly and faithfully to the end, as though it were their own.

5 But Hicetas kept the acropolis of Syracuse under siege and prevented the importation of food for the Corinthians there; he also sent to Adranum two foreigners whom he had engaged to assassinate Timoleon; for Timoleon at no time kept a guard in array about his person, and at this time in particular, owing to his trust in their god, he was altogether without anxiety or suspicion in his diversion with the people of Adranum. 6 The men who had thus been sent learned, as chance would have it, that he was about to offer a sacrifice, and therefore came into the sacred precinct with daggers under their robes, mingled with those who stood around the altar, and gradually drew nearer their intended victim. 7 And as they were just on the point of exhorting one another to begin their work, somebody smote one of them on the head with a sword and laid him low, whereupon neither he who had struck the blow nor the companion of him who had received it kept his place; but the one, with his sword still in hand, fled to a lofty rock and sprang upon it, while the other laid hold of the altar and begged immunity from Timoleon on the condition of his revealing everything. 8 And when he had obtained his request, he testified against himself and against his dead comrade that they had been sent to kill Timoleon. 9 Meanwhile others brought down the man who had fled to the rock, who kept crying out that he had done no wrong, but had justly slain the man on behalf of his dead father, who had been murdered by him some time ago in Leontini. 10 Some of the bystanders bore witness also to the truth of his words, and wondered, too, at the dexterity of Fortune, seeing how she makes some things lead up to others, brings all things together from afar, weaves together incidents which seem to be most divergent and to have nothing in common with one another, and so makes use of their reciprocal beginnings and endings.

11 To this man, then, the Corinthians gave a reward of ten minas, because he had put his just resentment at the service of the deity who was guarding Timoleon, and had not at an earlier time expended the wrath which had long been in his heart, but with a personal motive had reserved it, under Fortune’s guidance, for the preservation of that general. 12 Moreover, their good fortune in the present crisis raised their hopes for the future also, and they anticipated that men would revere and protect Timoleon, looking upon him as a sacred personage, and one who had come under divine guidance to avenge the wrongs of Sicily.

17 But when Hicetas had failed in this attempt and saw that many were now thronging to the support of Timoleon, he found fault with himself because, when so large a force of the Carthaginians was at hand, he was using it in small detachments and secretly, as though he were ashamed of it, bringing in his allied troops like a thief and by stealth; he therefore called in Mago their general together with his whole armament. 2 Thus Mago, with a formidable fleet of a hundred and fifty ships, sailed in and occupied the harbour, disembarking also sixty thousand of his infantry and encamping them in the city of Syracuse, so that all men thought that the barbarization of Sicily, long talked of and expected, had come upon her. 3 For never before in all their countless wars in Sicily had the Carthaginians succeeded in taking Syracuse; but now Hicetas admitted them and handed over to them the city, and men saw that it was a barbarian camp. 4 But those of the Corinthians who held the acropolis were beset with difficulty and danger; for they no longer had sufficient food, but suffered lack because the harbours were blockaded; and they were forever dividing up their forces in skirmishes and battles around the walls, and in repelling all sorts of engines and every species of siege warfare.

18 However, Timoleon came to their aid by sending them grain from Catana in small fishing boats and light skiffs; these would make their way in, especially in stormy weather, by stealing along through the barbarian triremes, which lay at wide intervals from one another because of the roughness of the sea. 2 This soon came to the notice of Mago and Hicetas, who therefore determined to take Catana, from which provisions came in by sea to the besieged; so taking with them the best of their fighting men, they sailed forth from Syracuse. 3 But Neon the Corinthian (for he it was who commanded the besieged), observing from the citadel that the enemy who had been left behind were keeping an easy and careless watch, fell suddenly upon them as they were scattered apart; 4 some he slew, others he put to flight, and then mastered and took possession of the quarter called Achradina. This seems to have been the strongest and least vulnerable part of the city of Syracuse, which was, in a manner, an assemblage and union of several cities. 5 Having thus supplied himself with grain and money, he did not give up the place, nor did he go back again to the citadel, but fenced in the circumference of Achradina, united it by his fortifications with the acropolis, and guarded both. 6 Mago and Hicetas were already near Catana, when a horseman from Syracuse overtook them and told them of the capture of Achradina. 7 They were confounded by the tidings and went back in haste, having neither taken the city against which they went forth, nor kept the one they had.

19 In these successes, then, foresight and valour might still dispute the claims of Fortune; but that which followed them would seem to have been wholly due to good fortune. 2 The Corinthian soldiers, namely, who were tarrying at Thurii, partly because they feared the Carthaginian triremes which were lying in wait for them under Hanno, and partly because a storm of many days’ duration had made the sea very rough and savage, set out to travel by land through Bruttium; 3 and partly by persuading, partly by compelling the Barbarians, they made their way down to Rhegium while a great storm was still raging at sea. 4 But the Carthaginian admiral, since he did not expect that the Corinthians would venture forth and thought his remaining there inactive an idle thing, after convincing himself that he had devised something clever and mischievous in the way of deceit, ordered his sailors to crown their heads with garlands, decorated his triremes with purple battle-flags and Greek shields, and sailed for Syracuse. 5 And as he passed the acropolis at a dashing speed amid clapping of hands and laughter, he shouted that he was come from conquering and capturing the Corinthians, whom he had caught at sea as they were trying to cross the strait; supposing, indeed, that he would thus greatly dishearten the besieged. 6 While he was thus babbling and playing the trickster, the Corinthians who had come down from Bruttium to Rhegium, since no one was lying in wait for them and the unexpected cessation of the storm had made the strait smooth and calm to look upon, speedily manned the ferry-boats and fishing craft which they found at hand, put off, and made their way across to Sicily, with such safety and in so great a calm that their horses also swam along by the side of the boats and were towed by the reins.

20 When they had all crossed over, Timoleon took them and at once occupied Messana, then, uniting them with his other forces, marched against Syracuse, relying on the good fortune and success that attended his efforts rather than on the strength of his army; for his followers were not more than four thousand in number. 2 But when Mago got tidings of his approach, disturbed and fearful as he was, he was made still more suspicious for the following reason. 3 In the shoals about the city, which receive much fresh water from springs, and much from marshes and rivers emptying into the sea, great numbers of eels live, and there is always an abundance of this catch for anybody. 4 These eels the mercenary soldiers on both sides, when they had leisure or a truce was on, used to hunt together. 5 And since they were Greeks and had no reason for private hatred of one another, while in their battles they risked their lives bravely, in their times of truce they would visit and converse with one another. 6 And so now, as they were busy together with their fishing, they conversed, expressing their admiration of the richness of the sea and the character of the adjacent lands. 7 And one of those who were serving on the Corinthian side said: “Can it really be that you, who are Greeks, are eager to barbarize a city of such great size and furnished with such great advantages, thus settling Carthaginians, who are the basest and bloodiest of men, nearer to us, when you ought to pray for many Sicilies to lie as a barrier between Greece and them? 8 Or do you suppose that they have collected an army and are come hither from the pillars of Heracles and the Atlantic sea in order to risk their lives in behalf of the dynasty of Hicetas? 9 He, if he reasoned like a true leader, would not be casting out his kindred people, nor would he be leading against his country her natural enemies, but would be enjoying a befitting amount of honour and power, with the consent of Timoleon and the Corinthians.” 10 Such speeches as these the mercenaries disseminated in their camp, and made Mago suspicious of treachery, though he had long wanted a pretext for going away. 11 Therefore when Hicetas begged him to remain and tried to show him how much superior they were to their enemies, he thought rather that they were more inferior to Timoleon in bravery and good fortune than they surpassed him in the number of their forces, and weighing anchor at once, sailed off to Libya, thus letting Sicily slip out of his hands disgracefully and for no reason that man could suggest.

21 On the day after his departure, Timoleon came up with his forces arrayed for battle. But when they learned of Mago’s flight and saw the docks empty of vessels, they could not help laughing at his cowardice, and went about the city proclaiming a reward for any one who told them whither the Carthaginian fleet had fled away from them. 2 However, since Hicetas was still eager for battle and would not let go his hold upon the city, but clung to the parts of it in his possession, which were strong and dangerous to attack, Timoleon divided his forces, he himself attacking along the river 3 and ordering others, under the lead of Isias the Corinthian, to make their attempt from Achradina. The third division was led against Epipolae by Deinarchus and Demaretus, who had brought the second reinforcement from Corinth. 4 The attack was made in all three places at once, and the troops of Hicetas were overwhelmed and took to flight. That the city was taken by storm and fell quickly into their hands after the enemy had been driven out, it is right to ascribe to the bravery of the soldiers and the ability of their general; 5 but that not one of the Corinthians was killed or even wounded, this the good fortune of Timoleon showed to be her own work, vying emulously, as it were, with his valour, in order that those who hear his story may wonder at his happy successes more than at his laudable efforts. 6 For his fame not only filled at once all Sicily and Italy, but within a few days Greece echoed with his great success, so that the city of Corinth, which was in doubt whether his armament had got across the sea, heard at one and the same time that it had safely crossed, and that it was victorious. 7 So prosperous was the course of his enterprises, and such was the speed with which Fortune crowned the beauty of his achievements.

22 When he had become master of the citadel, he did not repeat the experience of Dion, nor did he spare the place on account of the beauty and great cost of its architecture, but guarding against the suspicions which had brought calumny and then destruction upon his predecessor, he made proclamation that all Syracusans who wished should come with implements of iron and help in the demolition of the tyrants’ bulwarks. 2 And when they had all come up, considering that day with its proclamation to be a most secure beginning of freedom, they overthrew and demolished, not only the citadel, but also the palaces and the tombs of the tyrants. 3 Then, as soon as he had levelled off the place, Timoleon built the courts of justice there, thus gratifying the citizens by making their democracy triumphant over tyranny.

4 But the city which he had taken had not citizens enough, since some had perished in their wars and seditions, while others had gone into exile from tyrannical governments. Indeed, for lack of population the market place of Syracuse had produced such a quantity of dense herbage that horses were pastured in it, while their grooms lay down in the grass; 5 and the other cities, with almost no exceptions, were full of deer and wild swine, while in their suburbs and around their walls those who had leisure for it went hunting, 6 and not one of those who were established in fortresses and strongholds would hearken to any summons, or come down into the city, but fear and hatred kept all away from market place and civic life and public speaking, which had produced the most of their tyrants. 7 Therefore Timoleon and the Syracusans decided to write to the Corinthians urging them to send settlers to Syracuse from Greece. 8 For otherwise the land was likely to lie uncultivated, and they expected a great war from Africa, since they learned that the Carthaginians, after Mago’s suicide, had impaled his dead body, in their rage at his conduct of the expedition, and that they were assembling a great force with the intention of crossing into Sicily in the summer.

23 When these letters from Timoleon had been delivered, and were accompanied by Syracusan envoys who begged them to take thought for their city and to become anew its founders, the Corinthians did not seize the opportunity for their own aggrandizement, 2 nor did they appropriate the city for themselves, but, in the first place, they visited the sacred games in Greece and the greatest festival assemblages, and proclaimed by heralds that the Corinthians had overthrown the tyranny in Syracuse, and driven out the tyrant, and now invited Syracusans, and any other Sicilian Greeks who wished, to people the city with free and independent citizens, allotting the land among them on equal and just terms. 3 In the second place, they sent messengers to Asia and the islands, where they learned that most of the scattered exiles were residing, and invited them all to come to Corinth, assuring them that the Corinthians, at their own expense, would furnish them with leaders and transports and a safe convoy to Syracuse. 4 By these proclamations the city of Corinth earned the justest praise and the fairest glory; she was freeing the land from its tyrants, saving it from the Barbarians, and restoring it to its rightful citizens.

5 When these had assembled at Corinth, being too few in number, they begged that they might receive fellow colonists from Corinth and the rest of Greece; and after their numbers had risen to as many as ten thousand, they sailed to Syracuse. 6 But by this time many also from Italy and Sicily had flocked to Timoleon; and when their numbers had risen to sixty thousand, as Athanis states, Timoleon divided the land among them, and sold the houses of the city for a thousand talents, 7 thus at once reserving for the original Syracusans the power to purchase their own houses, and devising an abundance of money for the community; this had so little, both for other purposes, and especially for the war, that it actually sold its public statues at auction, a regular vote of condemnation being passed against each, as though they were men submitting their accounts. 8 It was at this time, they say, that the statue of Gelon, their ancient tyrant, was preserved by the Syracusans, though they condemned the rest, because they admired and honoured him for the victory which he had won over the Carthaginians at Himera.

24 Seeing the city thus beginning to revive and fill itself with people, since its citizens were streaming into it from all sides, Timoleon determined to set the other cities also free, and utterly to root out all tyrannies from Sicily. He therefore made an expedition into their territories and compelled Hicetas to forsake the cause of Carthage, and to agree to demolish his citadels and live as a private person in Leontini. 2 And as for Leptines, who lorded it over Apollonia and numerous other strongholds, when he was in danger of being taken by main force, he surrendered himself; and Timoleon spared his life and sent him to Corinth, considering it a fine thing to have the tyrants of Sicily in the mother city where the Greeks could observe them living the lowly life of exiles. 3 Moreover, he wished that his mercenaries might get booty from the enemy’s country and not remain idle. Accordingly, while he himself returned to Syracuse in order to apply himself to the establishment of the civil polity and to assist the lawgivers who had come from Corinth, Cephalus and Dionysius, in arranging its most important details in the most attractive way, 4 he sent forth the troops under Deinarchus and Demaretus into that part of the island which the Carthaginians controlled, where they brought many cities to revolt from the Barbarians, and not only lived plenty themselves, but actually raised moneys for the war from the spoils they made.

25 Meanwhile the Carthaginians put in at Lilybaeum with an army of seventy thousand men, two hundred triremes, and a thousand transports carrying engines of war, four-horse chariots, grain in abundance, and other requisite equipment. Their purpose was, not to carry on the war by piece-meal any more, but at one time to drive the invading Greeks out of all Sicily; 2 for their force would have been sufficient to capture the native Greeks, even though they had not been politically weak and utterly ruined by one another. 3 And on learning that the territory which they controlled was being ravaged by the Corinthians, they were furious, and straightway marched against them under the command of Hasdrubal and Hamilcar. 4 Tidings of this coming quickly to Syracuse, the Syracusans were so terrified at the magnitude of the enemy’s forces that only three thousand out of so many tens of thousands could with difficulty be brought to pluck up courage, take their arms, and go forth with Timoleon. 5 Furthermore, the mercenaries were only four thousand in number; and of these, again about a thousand played the coward on the march and went back to Syracuse, declaring that Timoleon was not in his right mind, but was more crazy than his years would lead one to expect, and was marching against seventy thousand of the enemy with five thousand foot and a thousand horse, and was taking his force a march of eight days away from Syracuse, so that those of them who fled from the field would find no safety, and those who fell upon it would have no burial. 6 As for these men, then, Timoleon counted it gain that they had shown what they were before the battle; the rest he encouraged and led them with all speed to the river Crimesus, where he heard that the Carthaginians also were concentrating.

26 As he was marching up a hill, from the crest of which they expected to look down upon the camp and the forces of the enemy, there met them by chance some mules laden with parsley; 2 and it occurred to the soldiers that the sign was a bad one, because we are generally accustomed to wreath the tombs of the dead with parsley; and this has given rise to a proverb, namely, that one who is dangerously sick “needs only parsley.” 3 Accordingly, wishing to free them from their superstitious fears and take away their despondency, Timoleon halted them on their march, and after discoursing otherwise as befitted the occasion, said also that the wreath for their victory had come into their hands in advance and of its own accord, the wreath with which Corinthians crown the victors at the Isthmian games, considering the garland of parsley to be traditionally sacred in their country. 4 For at that time parsley was still used for wreaths at the Isthmian, as it is now at the Nemean games, and it was not long ago that the pine came into use instead. 5 Accordingly, when Timoleon had addressed his soldiers, as I have said, he took of the parsley and crowned himself with it first, and then the captains and the common soldiers about him did the same. 6 Moreover, the soothsayers, observing two eagles coming up on the wing, one of which bore a serpent pierced with its talons, while the other flew with a loud and inspiring cry, pointed them out to the soldiers, and all betook themselves to invoking the gods with prayers.

27 Now, the season of the year was early summer, the month of Thargelion was drawing to a close, and the summer solstice was near; 2 the river exhaled a thick mist which at first hid the plain in darkness, and nothing could be seen in the enemy’s camp, only an inarticulate and confused noise made its way up to the hill, showing that the vast host was moving forward. 3 But after the Corinthians had ascended the hill, where they stopped, laid down their shields, and rested themselves, the sun was passing the meridian and drawing the vapours on high, the thick haze moved in masses towards the heights and hung in clouds about the mountain summits, 4 while the regions below cleared up, the Crimesus came into view, and the enemy were seen crossing it, in the van their four-horse chariots formidably arrayed for battle, and behind these ten thousand men-at arms with white shields. 5 These the Corinthians conjectured to be Carthaginians, from the splendour of their armour and the slowness and good order of their march. 6 After these the other nations streamed on and were making the crossing in tumultuous confusion. Then Timoleon, noticing that the river was putting it in their power to cut off and engage with whatever numbers of the enemy they themselves desired, and bidding the soldiers observe that the phalanx of the enemy was sundered by the river, since some of them had already crossed, while others were about to do so, ordered Demaretus to take the horsemen and fall upon the Carthaginians and throw their ranks into confusion before their array was yet formed. 7 Then he himself, descending into the plain, assigned the wings to the other Sicilian Greeks, uniting a few of his mercenaries with each wing, while he took the Syracusans and the best fighters among his mercenaries under his own command in the centre. 8 Then he waited a little while, watching what his horsemen would do, and when he saw that they were unable to come to close quarters with the Carthaginians on account of the chariots which coursed up and down in front of their lines, but were forced to wheel about continually that their ranks might not be broken, and to make their charges in quick succession after facing about again, 9 he took up his shield and shouted to his infantrymen to follow and be of good courage; and his voice seemed stronger than usual and more than human, whether it was from emotion that he made it so loud, in view of the struggle and the enthusiasm which it inspired, or whether, as most felt at the time, some deity joined in his utterance. 10 Then, his men re-echoing his shout, and begging him to lead them on without delay, he signalled to his horsemen to ride along outside and past the line of chariots and attack the enemy on the flank, while he himself made his vanguard lock their shields in close array, ordered the trumpet to sound the charge, and fell upon the Carthaginians.

28 But these withstood his first onset sturdily, and owing to the iron breastplates and bronze helmets with which their persons were protected, and the great shields which they held in front of them, repelled the spear thrusts. 2 But when the struggle came to swords and the work required skill no less than strength, suddenly, from the hills, fearful peals of thunder crashed down, and vivid flashes of lightning darted forth with them. 3 Then the darkness hovering over the hills and mountain summits came down to the field of battle, mingled with rain, wind, and hail. It enveloped the Greeks from behind and smote their backs, but it smote the Barbarians in the face and dazzled their eyes, a tempest of rain and continuous flames dashing from the clouds. 4 In all this there was much that gave distress, and most of all to the inexperienced; and particularly, as it would seem, the peals of thunder worked harm, and the clatter of the armour smitten by the dashing rain and hail, which made it impossible to hear the commands of the leaders. 5 Besides, since the Carthaginians were not lightly equipped, but, as I have said, encased in armour, both the mud and the bosoms of their tunics filled with water impeded them, so that they were unwieldy and ineffective in their fighting, and easily upset by the Greeks, 6 and when they had once fallen it was impossible for them to rise again from the mud with their weapons. 7 For the Crimesus, having been already greatly swollen by the rains, was forced over its banks by those who were crossing it, and the adjacent plain, into which many glens and ravines opened from the hills, was filled with streams that hurried along no fixed channels, and in these the Carthaginians wallowed about and were hard beset. 8 Finally, the storm still assailing them, and the Greeks having overthrown their first rank of four hundred men, the main body was put to flight. 9 Many were overtaken in the plain and cut to pieces, and many the river dashed upon and carried away to destruction as they encountered those who were still trying to cross, but most of them the light-armed Greeks ran upon and despatched as they were making for the hills. 10 At any rate, it is said that among ten thousand dead bodies, three thousand were those of Carthaginians — a great affliction for the city. 11 For no others were superior to these in birth or wealth or reputation, nor is it recorded that so many native Carthaginians ever perished in a single battle before, but they used Libyans for the most part and Iberians and Numidians for their battles, and thus sustained their defeats at the cost of other nations.

29 The rank of those who had fallen was made known to the Greeks from the spoils. For those who stripped the bodies made very little account of bronze and iron; so abundant was silver, so abundant gold. For they crossed the river and seized the camp with its baggage-trains. 2 As for the prisoners, most of them were stolen away and hidden by the soldiers, but as many as five thousand were delivered into the public stock; there were also captured two hundred of the four-horse chariots. 3 But the most glorious and magnificent sight was presented by the tent of Timoleon, which was heaped about with all sorts of spoils, among which a thousand breast-plates of superior workmanship and beauty and ten thousand shields were exposed to view.a 4 And as there were but few to strip many, and the booty they came upon was great, it was the third day after the battle before they could erect their trophy.

5 Along with the report of his victory Timoleon sent to Corinth the most beautiful of the captured armour, wishing that his own native city should be envied of all men, 6 when in her alone of Greek cities they saw the most conspicuous temples, not adorned with Greek spoils, nor possessed of joyless memorials in the shape of votive offerings from the slaughter of kinsmen and fellow citizens, but decked with barbarian spoils which set forth in fairest inscriptions the justice as well as the valour of the victors, declaring that Corinthians and Timoleon their general set the Greeks dwelling in Sicily free from Carthaginians, and thus dedicated thank-offerings to the gods.

30 After this, he left his mercenaries in the enemy’s territory plundering the dominion of the Carthaginians, and went himself to Syracuse; 2 there he ordered out of Sicily the thousand mercenaries by whom he had been deserted before the battle, and compelled them to depart from Syracuse before the sun went down. 3 These, then, after crossing into Italy, were perfidiously slain by the Bruttians, thus receiving from the divine power a penalty for their treachery. 4 Mamercus, however, the tyrant of Catana, and Hicetas, whether through envy of the successes won by Timoleon, or because they feared him as one who distrusted tyrants and would make no peace with them, formed an alliance with the Carthaginians and urged them to send a general with an army if they did not wish to be cast out of Sicily altogether. 5 Accordingly, Gisco set sail with a fleet of seventy ships, and added Greek mercenaries to his forces, although the Carthaginians had never before employed Greek soldiers; they did so at this time, however, because they had come to admire them as the best and most irresistible fighters in the world. 6 After they had all united their forces in the territory of Messana, they slew four hundred of Timoleon’s mercenaries who had been sent thither as auxiliaries, and in that part of the island belonging to the Carthaginians, near the place called Ietae, they set an ambush for the mercenaries under Euthymus the Leucadian and cut them to pieces. 7 Herein even most of all did the good fortune of Timoleon become famous. For these were some of the men who, with Philomelus the Phocian and Onomarchus, had seized Delphi and shared in their spoliation of the sanctuary. 8 Then, since all mankind hated them and shunned them as men who had put themselves under a curse, they wandered about Peloponnesus, where they were enlisted in his service by Timoleon, in the dearth of other soldiers. 9 And after coming into Sicily, they were victorious in all the battles which they fought under his leadership, but when the most and greatest of his struggles were over, they were sent out by him to the assistance of others, and then perished utterly, not all at one time, but little by little. And Justice thus punished them, while at the same time she sustained the good fortune of Timoleon, in order that no harm might come to the good from the chastisement of the wicked. 10 So, then, the good will of the gods towards Timoleon was no less to be admired in his reverses than in his successes.

31 But the people of Syracuse were vexed at the insults heaped upon them by the tyrants. For Mamercus, who valued himself highly as a writer of poems and tragedies, boasted of his victory over the mercenaries, and in dedicating their shields to the gods wrote the following insolent couplet: —

“These bucklers, purple-painted, decked with ivory, gold, and amber,

We captured with our simple little shields.”

2 And after this, when Timoleon was on an expedition to Calauria, Hicetas burst into the territory of Syracuse, took much booty, wrought much wanton havoc, and was marching off past Calauria itself, despising Timoleon, who had but few soldiers. 3 But Timoleon suffered him to pass on, and then pursued him with cavalry and light-armed troops. When Hicetas was aware of this, he crossed the river Damurias, and halted on the farther bank to defend himself; for the difficulty of the passage, and the steepness of the banks on either side, gave him courage. 4 Then among Timoleon’s cavalry officers an astonishing strife and contention arose which delayed the battle. 5 For not one of them was willing to cross the river against the enemy after another, but each demanded to begin the onset himself, and their crossing was likely to be without order if they crowded and tried to run past one another. 6 Timoleon, therefore, wishing to decide their order by lot, took a seal-ring from each of the leaders, and after casting all the rings into his own cloak and mixing them up, he showed the first that came out, and it had by chance as the device of its seal a trophy of victory. 7 When the young men saw it, they cried aloud for joy and would no longer wait for the rest of the lot, but all dashed through the river as fast as they could and closed with the enemy. 8 These could not withstand the violence of their onset, but fled, all alike losing their arms, and a thousand being left dead on the field.

32 Not long afterwards Timoleon made an expedition into the territory of Leontini and captured Hicetas alive, together with his son Eupolemus and his master of horse Euthymus, who were bound and brought to Timoleon by his soldiers. 2 Hicetas, then, and his young son, were punished as tyrants and traitors and put to death, and Euthymus, though a brave man in action and of surpassing boldness, found no pity because of a certain insult to the Corinthians which was alleged against him. 3 It is said, namely, that when the Corinthians had taken the field against them, Euthymus told the men of Leontini in a public harangue that it was nothing fearful or dreadful if

“Corinthian women came forth from their homes.”

4 So natural is it for most men to be more galled by bitter words than hostile acts; since insolence is harder for them to bear than injury. Besides, defensive acts are tolerated in an enemy as a necessary right, but insults are thought to spring from an excess of hatred or baseness.

33 After Timoleon had returned, the Syracusans brought the wives and daughters of Hicetas and his friends to public trial, and then put them to death. 2 And this would seem to have been the most displeasing thing in Timoleon’s career; for if he had opposed it, the women would not have been thus put to death. 3 But apparently he neglected them and abandoned them to the wrath of the citizens, who were bent on taking vengeance in behalf of Dion, who drove out Dionysius. 4 For Hicetas was the man who took Arete the wife of Dion, and Aristomache his sister, and his son, who was still a boy, and threw them into the sea alive, concerning which things I have written in my Life of Dion.

34 After this, Timoleon made an expedition against Mamercus to Catana, conquered and routed him in a pitched battle near the stream of the Abolus, and slew above two thousand of his soldiers, a large part of whom were the Carthaginians sent him as auxiliaries by Gisco. 2 Thereupon the Carthaginians made a peace with him which they sought themselves; the terms were that they should keep the territory within the river Lycus, restoring their families and property to all who wished to change their homes from there to Syracuse, and renouncing their alliance with the tyrants. 3 Then Mamercus, despairing of success, took ship for Italy with the purpose of bringing the Lucanians against Timoleon and Syracuse; but his companions on the voyage turned their triremes back, sailed to Sicily, and handed Catana over to Timoleon, whereupon Mamercus himself also was compelled to seek refuge in Messana with Hippo the tyrant of that city. 4 But Timoleon came up against them and besieged them by land and sea, and Hippo was caught as he was trying to steal away on board a ship. Then the Messanians took him into the theatre, brought their children thither from their schools to behold, as a glorious spectacle, the tyrant’s punishment, and put him to torment and death. 5 As for Mamercus, he gave himself up to Timoleon on condition that he should undergo trial at Syracuse, and that Timoleon should not denounce him. 6 So he was brought to Syracuse, and when he came before the people, attempted to rehearse a speech composed by him a long time before; but being received with noise and clamour, and seeing that the assembly was inexorable, he flung away his mantle, ran right across the theatre, and dashed head foremost against one of the stone steps, hoping to kill himself. 7 However, he was not so fortunate as to die in this way, but was taken away, still living, and crucified like a robber.

35 In this manner, then, did Timoleon extirpate the tyrannies and put a stop to their wars. He found the whole island reduced to a savage state by its troubles and hated by its inhabitants, but he made it so civilized and so desirable in the eyes of all men that others came by sea to dwell in the places from which their own citizens used to run away before. 2 Agrigentum and Gela, for instance, great cities which had been ruined and depopulated by the Carthaginians after the Attic war, were re-peopled at this time, one by Megellus and Pheristus from Velia, the other by Gorgus, who sailed from Ceos and brought with his company the old citizens. 3 To these settlers Timoleon not only afforded safety and calm after so long a storm of war, but also supplied their further needs and zealously assisted them, so that he was revered by them as a founder. 4 All the other inhabitants also cherished like feelings towards him, and no conclusion of war, no institution of laws, no settlement of victory, no arrangement of civil polity seemed satisfactory, unless he gave the finishing touches to it, like a master builder adding to a work that is drawing to completion some grace which pleases gods and men.

36 1 At any rate, though in his time Greece produced many men who were great and wrought great things, such as Timotheus, Agesilaüs, Pelopidas, and Epaminondas (whom Timoleon most emulated), still, the lustre of their achievements was tarnished by a certain degree of violence and laborious effort, so that some of them were followed by censure and repentance; 2 whereas in the career of Timoleon, setting aside his necessary treatment of his brother, there is nothing to which it were not meet, as Timaeus says, to apply the words of Sophocles: —

“Ye God, pray tell what Cypris or what winning love

Was partner in this work?”

3 For just as the poetry of Antimachus and the pictures of Dionysius, both Colophonians, for all their strength and vigour, seem forced and laboured, while the paintings of Nicomachus and the verses of Homer not only have power and grace besides, but also give the impression of having been executed readily and easily; 4 so, if we compare the generalship of Epaminondas and Agesilaüs, which in both cases was full of toil and bitter struggles, with that of Timoleon, which was exercised with much ease as well as glory, it appears to men of just and careful reasoning a product, not of fortune, but of fortunate valour. 5 And yet all his successes were ascribed by him to fortune; for in his letters to his friends at home and in his public addresses to the Syracusans he often said he was thankful to God, who, desiring to save Sicily, gave him the name and title of its saviour. 6 Moreover, in his house he built a shrine for sacrifice to Automatia, or Chance, and the house itself he consecrated to man’s sacred genius. 7 And the house in which he dwelt was picked out for him by the Syracusans as a prize for his achievements in the field; they also gave him the pleasantest and most beautiful of their country estates, and at this he used to spend the greater part of his leisure time, after he had sent home for his wife and children. 8 For he did not return to Corinth, nor did he take part in the disturbances of Greece or expose himself to the jealousy of his fellow citizens, the rock on which most generals, in their insatiable greed for honours and power, make shipwreck; but he remained in Sicily, enjoying the blessings of his own creation, 9 the greatest of which was the sight of so many cities and myriads of people whose happiness was due to him.

37 1 But since, as it would seem, not only all larks must grow a crest, as Simonides says, but also every democracy a false accuser, even Timoleon was attacked by two of the popular leaders at Syracuse, Laphystius and Demaenetus. 2 Of these, Laphystius once tried to make him give surety that he would appear at a certain trial, and Timoleon would not suffer the citizens to stop the man by their turbulent disapproval; for he himself, he said, had of his own accord endured all his toils and dangers in order that any Syracusan who wished might avail himself of the laws. 3 And when the other, Demaenetus, brought many denunciations in open assembly against his conduct in the field, to him, indeed, Timoleon made no answer, but said he owed thanks to the gods, for he had prayed them that he might live to see the Syracusans gain the right of free speech.

4 So, then, having by general confession performed the greatest and most glorious deeds of any Greek of his time, and having been the only one to succeed in those achievements to which the rhetoricians, in their speeches at the national assemblies, were ever exhorting the Greeks; 5 having been removed betimes by a happy fortune, pure and unstained with blood, from the evils which were rife in the mother country, and having displayed ability and valour in his dealings with Barbarians and tyrants, as well as justice and gentleness in his dealings with the Greeks and his friends; 6 having set up most of the trophies of his contests without causing his fellow citizens either tears or mourning, and having in even less than eight years handed over to her inhabitants a Sicily purged of her perpetual intestine miseries and complaints; 7 at last, being now advanced in years, he began to lose his sight, and then, after a little, became completely blind. He had done nothing himself to occasion this, nor was he therein the sport and mockery of Fortune, but suffered from some congenital disease, as it would seem, which came upon him with his years; 8 for it is said that not a few of his kindred lost their sight in a similar way, when it was enfeebled by old age. 9 But Athanis says that while the war against Hippo and Mamercus was still in progress, in his camp at Mylae, his vision was obscured by a cataract in the eye, and it was plain to all that he was getting blind; he did not, however, desist from the siege on this account, but persisted in the war and captured the tyrants; 10 yet after his return to Syracuse, he at once laid aside the sole command and begged the citizens to excuse him from it, now that matters had reached the happiest conclusion.

38 Well, then, that he himself should bear his misfortune without repining is less a matter for wonder; 2 but the gratitude and honour which the Syracusans showed him in his blindness are worthy of admiration. They often went to visit him in person, and brought strangers who were sojourning in the city to his house and to his country seat to see their benefactor, 3 exulting and proud that he chose to end his days among them; and thus made light of the brilliant return to Greece which had been prepared for him by reason of his successes. 4 And of the many great things decreed and done in his honour, nothing surpassed the vote passed by the people of Syracuse that whenever they went to war against alien peoples, they would employ a Corinthian as their general. 5 Moreover, the proceedings in their assemblies afforded a noble spectacle in his honour, since, while they decided other matters by themselves, for the more important deliberations they summoned him. 6 Then he would proceed to the theatre carried through the market place on a mule-car; and when the vehicle in which he sat was brought in, the people would greet him with one voice and call him by name, and he, after returning their greetings and allowing some time for their felicitations and praises, would then listen carefully to the matter under debate and pronounce opinion. 7 And when this opinion had been adopted, his retainers would conduct his car back again though the theatre, and the citizens, after sending him on his way with shouts of applause, would proceed at once to transact the rest of the public business by themselves.

39 Cherished in old age amid such honour and good will, like a common father, a slight cause co-operated with his great age to bring him to his end. 2 A number of days having been allowed in which the Syracusans might prepare for his funeral, while the country folk and strangers came together, the whole ceremony was conducted with great magnificence, and besides, young men selected by lot carried his bier with all its decorations through the precinct where the palace of Dionysius had stood before Timoleon destroyed it. 3 The bier was escorted, too, by many thousands of men and women, whose appearance was one that became a festival, since all were crowned with garlands and wore white raiment; while cries and tears, mingled with benedictions upon the dead, betokened, not a formal tribute of respect, nor a service performed in obedience to public decree, but a just sorrow and a thankfulness arising from genuine good will. 4 And finally, when the bier had been placed upon the funeral pyre, Demetrius, who had the loudest voice of any herald of the time, read from manuscript the following decree: —

5 “By the people of Syracuse, Timoleon, son of Timodemus, from Corinth, is here buried at a public cost of two hundred minas, and is honoured for all time with annual contests, musical, equestrian, and gymnastic, because he overthrew the tyrants, subdued the Barbarians, re-peopled the largest of the devastated cities, and then restored their laws to the Greeks of Sicily.”

6 Furthermore, they buried his ashes in the market place, and afterwards, when they had surrounded it with porticoes and built palaestras in it, they set it apart as a gymnasium for their young men, and named it Timoleonteum. 7 And they themselves, using the civil polity and the laws which he had ordained, enjoyed a long course of unbroken prosperity and happiness.

Aemilius Paulus

1 1 a I began the writing of my “Lives” for the sake of others, but I find that I am continuing the work and delighting in it now for my own sake also, using history as a mirror and endeavouring in a manner to fashion and adorn my life in conformity with the virtues therein depicted. 2 For the result is like nothing else than daily living and associating together, when I receive and welcome each subject of my history in turn as my guest, so to speak, and observe carefully “how large he was and of what mien,” and select from his career what is most important and most beautiful to know.

3 “And oh! what greater joy than this canst thou obtain,”

and more efficacious for moral improvement? 4 Democritus says we ought to pray that we may be visited by phantoms which are propitious, and that from out the circumambient air such only may encounter us as are agreeable to our natures and good, rather than those which are perverse and bad, thereby intruding into philosophy a doctrine which is not true, and which leads astray into boundless superstitions. 5 But in my own case, the study of history and the familiarity with it which my writing produces, enables me, since I always cherish in my soul the records of the noblest and most estimable characters, to repel and put far from me whatever base, malicious, or ignoble suggestion my enforced associations may intrude upon me, calmly and dispassionately turning my thoughts away from them to the fairest of my examples. 6 Among these were Timoleon the Corinthian and Aemilius Paulus, whose Lives I have now undertaken to lay before my readers; 7 the men were alike not only in the good principles which they adopted, but also in the good fortune which they enjoyed in their conduct of affairs, 8 and they will make it hard for my readers to decide whether the greatest of their successful achievements were due to their good fortune or their wisdom.

2 1 That the Aemilii were one of the ancient and patrician houses at Rome, most writers agree. 2 And that the first of them, and the one who gave his surname to the family, was Mamercus, a son of Pythagoras the philosopher, who received the surname of Aemilius for the grace and charm of his discourse, is the statement of some of those writers who hold that Pythagoras was the educator of Numa the king. 3 Now, most of this family who rose to distinction by their cultivation of virtue, were blessed with good fortune; and in the case of Lucius Paulus, his misfortune at Cannae gave testimony alike to his wisdom and valour. 4 For when he could not dissuade his colleague from giving battle, he took part with him in the struggle, though reluctantly, but would not be a partner in his flight; nay, though the one who had brought on the peril left him in the lurch, he himself kept his post and died fighting the enemy.

5 This Paulus had a daughter, Aemilia, who was the wife of Scipio the Great, and a son, Aemilius Paulus, whose Life I now write. He came of age at a time which abounded in men of the greatest reputation and most illustrious virtue, and yet he was a conspicuous figure, although he did not pursue the same studies as the young nobles of the time, nor set out on his career by the same path. 6 For he did not practise pleading private cases in the courts, and refrained altogether from the salutations and greetings and friendly attentions to which most men cunningly resorted when they tried to win the favour of the people by becoming their zealous servants; not that he was naturally incapable of either, but he sought to acquire for himself what was better than both, namely, a reputation arising from valour, justice, and trustworthiness. In these virtues he at once surpassed his contemporaries.

3 1 At all events, when he sued for the first of the high offices in the state, the aedileship, he was elected over twelve competitors, all of whom, we are told, afterwards became consuls. 2 Moreover, when he was made one of the priests called Augurs, whom the Romans appoint as guardians and overseers of the art of divination from the flight of birds and from omens in the sky, he so carefully studied the ancestral customs of the city, and so thoroughly understood the religious ceremonial of the ancient Romans, 3 that his priestly function, which men had thought to be a kind of honour, sought merely on account of the reputation which it gave, was made to appear one of the higher arts, and testified in favour of those philosophers who define religion as the science of the worship of the gods. 4 For all the duties of this office were performed by him with skill and care, and he laid aside all other concerns when he was engaged in these, omitting nothing and adding nothing new, but ever contending even with his colleagues about the small details of ceremony, and explaining to them that, although the Deity was held to be good-natured and slow to censure acts of negligence, still, for the city at least it was a grievous thing to overlook and condone them; 5 for no man begins at once with a great deed of lawlessness to disturb the civil polity, but those who remit their strictness in small matters break down also the guard that has been set over greater matters.

6 Furthermore, he showed a like severity in scrutinising and preserving his country’s military customs and traditions also, not courting popular favour when he was in command, nor yet, as most men did at this time, courting a second command during his first by gratifying his soldiers and treating them with mildness; 7 but, like a priest of other dread rites, he explained thoroughly all the details of military custom and was a terror to disobedient transgressors, and so restored his country to her former greatness, considering the conquest of his enemies hardly more than an accessory to the training of his fellow-citizens.

4 1 After the Romans had gone to war with Antiochus the Great, and while their most experienced commanders were employed against him, another war arose in the West, and there were great commotions in Spain. 2 For this war Aemilius was sent out as praetor, not with the six lictors which praetors usually have, but adding another six to that number, so that his office had a consular dignity. 3 Well, then, he defeated the Barbarians in two pitched battles, and slew about thirty thousand of them; and it would seem that his success was conspicuously due to his generalship, since by choosing favourable ground and by crossing a certain river he made victory easy for his soldiers; moreover, he made himself master of two hundred and fifty cities, which yielded to him of their own accord. 4 He left the province in peace and bound by pledges of fidelity, and came back to Rome, nor was he richer by a single drachma from his expedition. 5 And, indeed, in all other ways he was a rather indifferent money-maker, and spent generously and without stint of his substance. But this was not large; indeed, after his death it barely sufficed to meet the dowry due to his wife.

5 1 He married Papiria, a daughter of Maso, who was a man of consular dignity, and after he had lived with her a long time he divorced her, although she had made him father of most glorious sons; for she it was who bore him that most illustrious Scipio, and Fabius Maximus. 2 No documentary grounds for the divorce have come down to us, but there would seem to be some truth in a story told about divorce, which runs as follows. A Roman once divorced his wife, and when his friends admonished him, saying: “Is she not discreet? is she not beautiful? is she not fruitful?” he held out his shoe (the Romans call it “calceus”), saying: 3 “Is this not handsome? is it not new? but no one of you can tell me where it pinches my foot?” 4 For, as a matter of fact, it is great and notorious faults that separate many wives from their husbands; but the slight and frequent frictions arising from some unpleasantness or incongruity of characters, unnoticed as they may be by everybody else, also produce incurable alienations in those whose lives are linked together.

5 So then Aemilius, having divorced Papiria, took another wife; and when she had borne him two sons he kept these at home, but the sons of his former wife he introduced into the greatest houses and the most illustrious families, the elder into that of Fabius Maximus, who was five times consul, while the younger was adopted by the son of Scipio Africanus, his cousin-german, who gave him the name of Scipio. 6 Of the daughters of Aemilius, one became the wife of the son of Cato, and the other of Aelius Tubero, a man of the greatest excellence, and one who, more than any other Roman, combined the greatest dignity with poverty. 7 For there were sixteen members of the family, all Aelii; and they had a very little house, and one little farm sufficed for all, where they maintained one home together with many wives and children. 8 Among these wives lived also the daughter of that Aemilius who had twice been consul and twice had celebrated a triumph, and she was not ashamed of her husband’s poverty, but admired the virtue that kept him poor. 9 Brethren and kinsmen of the present day, however, unless zones and rivers and walls divide their inheritances and wide tracts of land separate them from one another, are continually quarrelling. 10 These, then, are considerations and examples which history presents to those who are willing to profit by them.

6 1 Aemilius, then, having been appointed consul, made an expedition against the Ligurians along the Alps, whom some call also Ligustines, a warlike and spirited folk, and one whose proximity to the Romans was teaching it skill in war. 2 For they occupy the extremities of Italy that are bounded by the Alps, and those parts of the Alps themselves that are washed by the Tuscan sea and face Africa, and they are mingled with Gauls and the Iberians of the coast. 3 At that time they had also laid hold of the sea with piratical craft, and were robbing and destroying merchandise, sailing out as far as the pillars of Hercules. 4 Accordingly, when Aemilius came against them, they withstood him with a force of forty thousand men; but he, with eight thousand men all told, engaged their fivefold numbers, and after routing them and shutting them up in their walled towns, gave them humane and conciliatory terms; 5 for it was not the wish of the Romans to extirpate altogether the Ligurian nation, since it lay like a barrier or bulwark against the movements of the Gauls, who were always threatening to descend upon Italy. 6 Accordingly, putting faith in Aemilius, they delivered their ships and cities into his hands. Their cities he restored to them, either doing them no harm at all, or simply razing their walls; but he took away all their ships, and left them no boat that carried more than three oars; 7 he also restored to safety those whom they had taken captive by land or sea, and these were found to be many, both Romans and foreigners. Such, then, were the conspicuous achievements of this first consulship.

8 Afterwards he often made it clear that he was desirous of a second consulship, and once actually announced his candidacy, but when he was passed by and not elected, he made no further efforts to obtain the office, giving his attention to his duties as augur, and training his sons, not only in the nature and ancestral discipline in which he himself had been trained, but also, and with greater ardour, in that of the Greeks. 9 For not only the grammarians and philosophers and rhetoricians, but also the modellers and painters, the overseers of horses and dogs, and the teachers of the art of hunting, by whom the young men were surrounded, were Greeks. 10 And the father, unless some public business prevented, would always be present at their studies and exercises, for he was now become the fondest parent in Rome.

7 1 As to public affairs, that was the period when the Romans were at war with Perseus, the king of Macedonia, and were taking their generals to task because their inexperience and cowardice led them to conduct their campaigns ridiculously and disgracefully, and to suffer more harm than they inflicted. 2 For the people which had just forced Antiochus, surnamed the Great, to retire from the rest of Asia, driven him over the Taurus mountains, and shut him up in Syria, where he had been content to buy terms with a payment of fifteen thousand talents; 3 which had a little while before set the Greeks free from Macedonia by crushing Philip in Thessaly; and which had utterly subdued Hannibal, to whom no king was comparable for power or boldness; 4 this people thought it unendurable that they should be compelled to contend with Perseus as though he were an even match for Rome, when for a long time already he had carried on his war against them with the poor remains of his father’s routed army; 5 for they were not aware that after his defeat Philip had made the Macedonian armies far most vigorous and warlike than before. This situation I will briefly explain from the beginning.

8 1 Antigonus, who was the most powerful of Alexander’s generals and successors, and acquired for himself and his line the title of King, had a son Demetrius, and his son was Antigonus surnamed Gonatas. 2 His son in turn was Demetrius, who, after reigning himself for a short time, died, leaving a son Philip still in his boyhood. 3 The leading Macedonians, fearing the anarchy which might result, called in Antigonus, a cousin of the dead king, and married him to Philip’s mother, calling him first regent and general, and then, finding his rule moderate and conducive to the general good, giving him the title of King. He received the surname of Doson, which implied that he was given to promising but did not perform his engagements. 4 After him Philip succeeded to the throne, and, though still a youth, flowered out in the qualities which most distinguish kings, and led men to believe that he would restore Macedonia to her ancient dignity, and that he, and he alone, would check the power of Rome, which already extended over all the world. 5 But after he was defeated in a great battle at Scotussa by Titus Flamininus, for a time he took a humble posture, entrusted all his interests to the Romans, and was content to come off with a moderate fine. 6 Afterwards, however, his condition oppressed him, and thinking that to reign by the favour of the Romans was more the part of a captive satisfied with meat and drink than of a man possessed of courage and spirit, he turned his thoughts to war, and made his arrangements for it in secrecy and with cunning. 7 Thus, those of his cities which lay on the highroads and the seashore he suffered to become weak and rather desolate, so as to awaken contempt, while in the interior he was collecting a large force; he also filled the fortresses, strongholds, and cities of the interior with an abundance of arms, money, and men fit for service, in this way preparing himself for the war, and yet keeping it hidden away, as it were, and concealed. 8 Thus, he had arms to equip thirty thousand men laid up in reserve, eight million bushels of grain had been immured in his strongholds, and a sum of money sufficient to maintain for ten years ten thousand mercenaries fighting in defence of the country.

9 But Philip, before he could put these plans and preparations into effect, died of grief and anguish of mind; for he came to know that he had unjustly put to death one of his sons, Demetrius, on false charges made by the other, who was his inferior. 10 The son, however, whom he left, Perseus, along with his father’s kingdom, inherited his hatred of the Romans, but was not equal to the burden because of the littleness and baseness of his character, in which, among all sorts of passions and distempers, avarice was the chief trait. 11 And it is said that he was not even a true-born son, but that Philip’s wife took him at his birth from his mother, a certain sempstress, an Argive woman named Gnathaenion, and passed him off as her own. 12 And this was the chief reason, as it would seem, why he feared Demetrius and compassed his death, lest the royal house having a true-born heir to the throne, should uncover his own spurious birth.

9 1 However, although he was ignoble and mean, the strength of his position led him to undertake the war, and he kept up the struggle for a long time, repulsing Roman commanders of consular rank with great armies and fleets, and actually conquering some of them. 2 Publius Licinius, for example, who was the first that invaded Macedonia, he routed in a cavalry battle, slew twenty-five hundred good men, and took six hundred prisoners besides; 3 then he made an unexpected attack upon the Roman fleet which was lying at anchor near Oreus, seized twenty ships of burden with their cargoes, and sank the rest together with the grain that filled them; he also made himself master of four quinqueremes. 4 He fought a second battle, too, in which he repulsed the consul Hostilius as he was trying to force his way into Macedonia at Elimiae; and after Hostilius had broken into the country undetected by way of Thessaly, he gave him a challenge to battle which he was afraid to accept. 5 Furthermore, as a side issue of the war, he made an expedition against the Dardanians, implying that he ignored the Romans and that time hung heavy on his hands; he cut to pieces ten thousand of the Barbarians and drove off much booty. 6 He also secretly stirred up the Gauls settled along the Danube, who are called Basternae,b an equestrian host and warlike; and he invited the Illyrians, through Genthius their king, to take part with him in the war. And a report prevailed that the Barbarians had been hired by him to pass through lower Gaul, along the coast of the Adriatic, and make an incursion into Italy.

10 1 When the Romans learned of these things, they decided that they would bid good-bye to the favours and promises of those who wanted to be generals, and themselves summon to the leadership a man of wisdom who understood how to manage great affairs. 2 This man was Paulus Aemilius, now advanced in life and about sixty years of age, but in the prime of bodily vigour, and hedged about with youthful sons and sons-in law, and with a host of friends and kinsmen of great influence, all of whom urged him to give ear to the people when it summoned him to the consulship. 3 At first he was for declining the appeals of the multitude, and tried to avert their eager importunities, saying that he did not want office; but when they came daily to his house and called him forth into the forum and pressed him with their clamours, he yielded; 4 and when he presented himself at once among the candidates for the consulship, he did not appear to come into the Campus in order to get office, but as one who brought victory and might in war and offered them to the citizens. 5 With such eager hopes did all receive him, and they made him consul for the second time, and did not permit a lot to be cast for the provinces, as was the custom, but at once voted him the conduct of the Macedonian war. 6 And it is said that when he had been appointed general against Perseus, and had been escorted home in splendid fashion by the whole people, he found there his daughter Tertia, who was still a little child, in tears. 7 He took her in his arms, therefore, and asked her why she grieved. And she, embracing him and kissing him, said: “Pray dost thou not know, Father, that our Perseus is dead?” meaning a little pet dog of that name. 8 And Aemilius cried “Good fortune! my daughter, I accept the omen.” Such, then, is the story which Cicero the orator relates in his work “On Divination.”

11 It was the custom for those who obtained the consulship to return thanks, as it were, for the great favour in a friendly speech to the people from the rostra; but Aemilius, having gathered an assembly of the citizens, said he had sued for his first consulship because he himself wanted office, but for his second because they wanted a general; 2 wherefore he was under no obligation to them; on the contrary, if they thought the war would be carried on better by another, he resigned the conduct of it; but if they had confidence in him they must not make themselves his colleagues in command, nor indulge in rhetoric about the war, but quietly furnish the necessary supplies for it, since, if they sought to command their commander, their campaigns would be still more ridiculous than they were already. 3 By these words he inspired the citizens with great reverence for himself, and with great expectations of the future, and all were glad that they had passed by the flatterers and chosen a general who had resolution and frankness of speech. 4 Thus was the Roman people, to the end that it might prevail and be greatest in the world, a servant of virtue and honour.

12 1 Now, that Aemilius Paulus, after setting out upon his campaign, had a fortunate voyage and an easy passage and came speedily and safely to the Roman camp, I attribute to the favour of Heaven; 2 but when I see that the war under his command was brought to an end partly by his fierce courage, partly by his excellent plans, partly by the eager assistance of his friends, and partly by his resolute adoption of fitting conclusions in times of danger, I cannot assign his remarkable and brilliant success to his celebrated good fortune, as I can in the case of other generals. 3 Unless, indeed, it be said that the avaricious conduct of Perseus was good fortune for Aemilius, since it utterly subverted the great and brilliant prospects of the Macedonians for the war (wherein their hopes ran high), because Perseus played the coward with his money. 4 For there came to him from the Basternae, at his request, ten thousand horsemen with ten thousand men to run at their sides, all professional soldiers, men who knew not how to plough or to sail the seas, who did not follow the life of herdsmen, but who were ever practising one business and one art, that of fighting and conquering their antagonists. 5 And when these had encamped in Maedica and mingled with the soldiers of the king, — men of lofty stature, admirable in their discipline, great boasters, and loud in their threats against their enemies, — they inspired the Macedonians with courage and a belief that the Romans could not withstand them, but would be utterly terrified by their looks and movements, which were strange and repulsive. 6 But after Perseus had disposed the feelings of his men in this way and filled them with so great hopes, upon being asked to pay each captain of the mercenaries a thousand pieces, he was bewildered and crazed at the amount of gold required, and out of parsimony renounced and abandoned the alliance, as if he were a steward, rather than a foe, of the Romans, and was to give an exact account of his expenditures for the war to those against whom he waged it; 7 and yet he had his foes to give him lessons, for, apart from their other preparations, they had a hundred thousand men assembled and ready for their needs. 8 But he, though contending against so large a force, and in a war where such large reserves were maintained, measured out his gold and sealed it up in bags, as afraid to touch it as if it had belonged to others. 9 And this he did although he was no Lydian or Phoenician born, but laid claim to a share in the virtues of Alexander and Philip, whose descendant he was, — men who mastered the world through their belief that empire was to be bought with money, not money with empire. 10 At all events, it was a common saying that the cities of Greece were taken, not by Philip, but by Philip’s money. 11 And Alexander, when he was starting on his expedition to India, and saw that his Macedonians were dragging along after them their Persian wealth, which was already burdensome and heavy, set fire to the royal baggage-waggons first, and then persuaded his followers to do the same with theirs, and to set out for the war in light marching order, like men released from bondage.c 12 But Perseus would not consent to pour out his gold upon himself, his children, and his kingdom, and thus purchase salvation with a small part of his treasures, but chose to be carried with many treasures as the wealthy captive, and to show the Romans how much he had saved and watched for them.

13 1 For he not only sent away the Gauls after playing them false, but also, after inducing Genthius the Illyrian, on payment of three hundred talents, to assist him in the war, he showed to the king’s messengers the money all counted out, and suffered them to put their seals upon the bags; 2 then, when Genthius, convinced that he had the price he had asked, committed a dreadful and impious deed, arresting and imprisoning a Roman embassy that had been sent to him, Perseus, thinking that the money was no longer needed to make Genthius an enemy of Rome, since before getting it he had given a lasting earnest of his hatred and had involved himself in the war by the great wrong which he had done, 3 deprived the poor wretch of the three hundred talents, and suffered him in a little while to be taken from his kingdom with his wife and children, as birds from the nest, by Lucius Anicius, a general sent against him with an army.

4 Aemilius, coming against such an adversary, scorned him indeed, but admired his preparations and his army. For Perseus had four thousand horsemen, and not much fewer than forty thousand heavy-armed footmen. 5 And planting himself with the sea behind him, along the foot-hills of Mount Olympus, on ground which nowhere afforded an approach, and which had been fortified on all sides by him with bulwarks and outworks of wood, he lay in great security, thinking that by delay and expense he would wear out Aemilius. 6 But Aemilius was a man who clung to his purpose, and tested every plan and method of attack; seeing, however, that his army, by reason of their former license, was impatient of delay, and inclined to dictate to their general many impracticable things, he rebuked them, and instructed them to take no thought or concern for anything, except how each man might keep himself and his armour in readiness for action, and ply his sword in Roman fashion, when their general gave them the opportunity. 7 Furthermore, he ordered the night watchmen to keep watch without their spears, with the idea that they would be more on the alert and would struggle more successfully against sleep, if they were unable to defend themselves against their enemies when they approached.

14 1 But his men were annoyed especially by the lack of drinking water, since only a little of it issued forth and collected in pools at the very edge of the sea, and that was bad. Aemilius, therefore, seeing that the lofty and wooded mountain of Olympus lay near, and judging from the greenness of its trees that there were veins of water coursing under ground, dug a number of vents and wells for them along the foot of the mountain. 2 These were at once filled with streams of pure water, which, under the weight and impulse of the pressure that was upon them, discharged themselves into the vacuum afforded.

3 And yet some deny that stores of ready water lie hidden away beneath the places from which springs flow, and that they merely come to light or force a passage when they issue forth; 4 they hold rather that the water is generated and comes into existence then and there through the liquefaction of matter, and that moist vapour is liquefied by density and cold, whenever, that is, it is compressed in the depths of earth and becomes fluid. 5 For, they argue, just as the breasts of women are not, like vessels, full of ready milk which flows out, but by converting the nourishment that is in them produce milk and strain it out; 6 so those places in the ground which are chilly and full of springs do not have hidden water, nor reservoirs which send forth the currents and deep waters of all our rivers from a source that is ready at hand, but by forcibly compressing and condensing vapour and air, they convert them into water. 7 At all events, those places which are dug open gush and flow more freely in response to such manipulation, just as the breasts of women do in response to sucking, because they moisten and soften the vapours; 8 whereas all places in the ground which are packed tight and unworked, are incapable of generating water, since they have not been subjected to the agitation which produces moisture. 9 But those who hold this doctrine give the sceptical occasion to object that, on this reasoning, there is no blood in living creatures, but it is generated in response to wounds by a transformation of some vapour or flesh, which causes its liquefaction and flow. 10 Moreover, they are refuted by the experience of men who dig mines, either for sieges or for metals, and in the depths encounter rivers of water, which are not gradually collected, as must naturally be the case if they come into existence at the instant that the earth is agitated, but pour forth in a great mass. 11 And again, when a mountain or rock is smitten asunder, a fierce torrent of water often gushes forth, and then ceases entirely. So much on this head.

15 1 Aemilius kept still for several days, and they say that never was there such quiet when armies of such size had come so close together. 2 But when, as he was trying and considering everything, he learned that there was one passage and one only that still remained unguarded, namely, the one through Perrhaebia past the Pythium and Petra, he conceived more hope from the fact that the place was left unguarded than fear from the roughness and difficulty of it which caused it to be so left, and held a council of war upon the matter. 3 Among those present at the council, Scipio, surnamed Nasica, a son-in law of Scipio Africanus, and afterwards of the greatest influence in the senate, was first to offer himself as leader of the enveloping force. 4 And second, Fabius Maximus, the eldest of the sons of Aemilius, though he was still a young man, eagerly volunteered. 5 Aemilius, accordingly, delighted, gave them, not as many men as Polybius states, but as many as Nasica himself says they took, in a short letter which he wrote concerning these exploits to one of the kings, 6 that is, three thousand of his Italians who were not Romans, and his left wing numbering five thousand. 7 In addition to these, Nasica took a hundred and twenty horsemen, besides two hundred of the mixed Thracians and Cretans with Harpalus, set out on the road towards the sea, and encamped by the Heracleum, as though he intended to sail round by sea and envelope the camp of the enemy. 8 But when his soldiers had taken supper and darkness had come, he told his chief officers his real design, and then led his forces by night in the opposite direction, away from the sea, and halted below the Pythium, where he gave his army a rest. 9 From this point Olympus rises to a height of more than ten furlongs, as is signified in an inscription by the man who measured it: —

10 “The sacred peak of Olympus, at Apollo’s Pythium, has a height, in perpendicular measurement, of ten full furlongs, and besides, a hundred feet lacking only four. It was the son of Eumelus who measured the distance, Xenagoras; so fare thee well, O King, and be propitious in thy gifts.”

11 And yet the geometricians say that no mountain has a height, and no sea a depth, of more than ten furlongs. It would seem, however, that Xenagoras took his measurement, not carelessly, but according to rule and with instruments.d

16 1 Here, then, Nasica passed the night; but to Perseus, who did not infer what was going on because he saw Aemilius remaining quietly in his position, there came a Cretan deserter who had run away on the march, bringing him news of the circuit which the Romans had taken. 2 Though Perseus was confounded at this, he did not move his camp, but sent out ten thousand foreign mercenaries and two thousand Macedonians under Milo, with orders to make haste and occupy the passes. 3 These men, according to Polybius, were still asleep when the Romans fell upon them; but Nasica says that a sharp and perilous conflict took place for possession of the heights, and that he himself slew a Thracian mercenary, who engaged him, by striking him through the breast with his javelin, and that after the enemy had been driven away, and while Milo was flying most disgracefully without his armour or his cloak, he followed after them without danger, and brought his army with him down into the plain.

4 After this disaster, Perseus hastily broke camp and retired; he had become exceedingly fearful, and his hopes were shattered. 5 But nevertheless he was under the necessity of standing his ground there in front of Pydna and risking a battle, or else of scattering his army about among the cities and so awaiting the issue of the war, which, now that it had once made its way into his country, could not be driven out without much bloodshed and slaughter. 6 In the number of his men, then, he was superior where he was, and they would fight with great ardour in defence of their wives and children, and with their king beholding all their actions and risking life in their behalf. 7 With such arguments his friends encouraged Perseus. So he pitched a camp and arranged his forces for battle, examining the field and distributing his commands, purposing to confront the Romans as soon as they came up. 8 The place afforded a plain for his phalanx, which required firm standing and smooth ground, and there were hills succeeding one another continuously, which gave his skirmishers and light-armed troops opportunity for retreat and flank attack. 9 Moreover, through the middle of it ran the rivers Aeson and Leucus, which were not very deep at that time (for it was the latter end of summer), but were likely, nevertheless, to give the Romans considerable trouble.

17 1 Aemilius, after effecting a junction with Nasica, came down in battle array against the enemy. 2 But when he saw how they were drawn up, and in what numbers, he was amazed, and came to a halt, considering with himself. 3 His young officers, however, who were eager for battle, rode up and begged him not to delay, especially Nasica, who was emboldened by his success at Mount Olympus. 4 But Aemilius, with a smile, said to him: “Yes, if I had thy youth; but many victories teach me the mistakes of the vanquished, and forbid me to join battle, immediately after a march, with a phalanx which is already drawn up and completely formed.” 5 After this, he ordered his foremost troops, who were in sight of the enemy, to form into cohorts and give the appearance of a battle line, while the others, wheeling to the rear, dug trenches and marked out a camp. 6 And in this way, the troops next to the last wheeling off in due succession, before the enemy knew it he had broken up his battle line and brought all his men without confusion into their intrenchments.

7 Now, when night had come, and the soldiers, after supper, were betaking themselves to rest and sleep, on a sudden the moon, which was full and high in the heavens, grew dark, lost its light, took on all sorts of colours in succession, and finally disappeared.e 8 The Romans, according to their custom, tried to call her light back by the clashing of bronze utensils and by holding up many blazing fire-brands and torches towards the heavens; the Macedonians, however, did nothing of this sort, but amazement and terror possessed their camp, and a rumour quietly spread among many of them that the portent signified an eclipse of a king. 9 Now, Aemilius was not altogether without knowledge and experiences of the irregularities of eclipses, which, at fixed periods, carry the moon in her course into the shadow of the earth and conceal her from sight, until she passes beyond the region of shadow and reflects again the light of the sun; 10 however, since he was very devout and given to sacrifices and divination, as soon as he saw the moon beginning to emerge from the shadow, he sacrificed eleven heifers to her. 11 And as soon as it was day, he sacrificed as many as twenty oxen to Hercules without getting favourable omens; but with the twenty-first victim the propitious signs appeared and indicated victory if they stood on the defensive. 12 Accordingly, having vowed to the god a hecatomb and solemn games, he ordered his officers to put the army in array for battle; 13 but he himself, waiting for the sun to pass to the west and decline, in order that its morning light might not shine in the faces of his men as they fought, passed the time sitting in his tent, which was open towards the plain and the enemy’s encampment.

18 1 Towards evening, Aemilius himself, as some say, devised a scheme for making the enemy begin the attack, and the Romans, pursuing a horse which they had driven forth without a bridle, came into collision with them, and the pursuit of this horse brought on a battle; 2 others say that Thracians, under the command of Alexander, set upon Roman beasts of burden that were bringing in forage, and that against these a sharp sally was made by seven hundred Ligurians, whereupon reinforcements were sent to either party, and thus the engagement became general. 3 So then Aemilius, like a pilot, judging from the surging commotion in the armies the greatness of the coming storm, came forth from his tent and went along in front of his legionary troops encouraging them, 4 and Nasica, after riding out to the skirmishers, saw that the whole force of the enemy was all but at close quarters.

5 First the Thracians advanced, whose appearance, Nasica says, was most terrible, — men of lofty stature, clad in tunics which showed black beneath the white and gleaming armour of their shields and greaves, and tossing high on their right shoulders battle-axes with heavy iron heads. 6 Next to the Thracians, the mercenaries advanced to the attack; their equipment was of every variety, and Paeonians were mingled with them. 7 Next to these came a third division, picked men, the flower of the Macedonians themselves for youthful strength and valour, gleaming with gilded armour and fresh scarlet coats. 8 As these took their places in the line, they were illumined by the phalanx-lines of the Bronze-shields which issued from the camp behind them and filled the plain with the gleam of iron and the glitter of bronze, the hills, too, with the tumultuous shouts of their cheering. 9 And with such boldness and swiftness did they advance that the first to be slain fell only two furlongs from the Roman camp.

19 1 As the attack began, Aemilius came up and found that the Macedonian battalions had already planted the tips of their long spears in the shields of the Romans, who were thus prevented from reaching them with their swords. 2 And when he saw that the rest of the Macedonian troops also were drawing their targets from their shoulders round in front of them, and with long spears set at one level were withstanding his shield-bearing troops, and saw too the strength of their interlocked shields and the fierceness of their onset, amazement and fear took possession of him, and he felt that he had never seen a sight more fearful; often in after times he used to speak of his emotions at that time and of what he saw. 3 But then, showing to his soldiers a glad and cheerful countenance, he rode past them without helmet or breastplate. 4 The king of the Macedonians, on the other hand, according to Polybius, as soon as the battle began, played the coward and rode back to the city, under pretence of sacrificing to Heracles, a god who does not accept cowardly sacrifices from cowards, nor accomplish their unnatural prayers. 5 For it is not in the nature of things that he who makes no shot should hit the mark exactly, or that he who does not hold his ground should win the day, or, in a word, that he who does nothing should be successful in what he does, or that a wicked man should be prosperous. 6 But the god listened to the prayers of Aemilius, who kept wielding his spear as he prayed for might and victory,f and fought as he invited the god to fight with him.

7 However, a certain Poseidonius, who says he lived in those times and took part in those actions, and who has written a history of Perseus in several books, says it was not out of cowardice, nor with the excuse of the sacrifice, that the king went away, but because on the day before the battle a horse had kicked him on the leg. 8 He says further that in the battle, although he was in a wretched plight, and although his friends tried to deter him, the king ordered a pack-horse to be brought to him, mounted it, and joined his troops in the phalanx without a breastplate; 9 and that among the missiles of every sort which were flying on all sides, a javelin made entirely of iron smote him, not touching him with its point, indeed, but coursing along his left side with an oblique stroke, and the force of its passage was such that it tore his tunic and made a dark red bruise upon his flesh, the mark of which remained for a long time. 10 This, then, is what Poseidonius says in defence of Perseus.

20 1 The Romans, when they attacked the Macedonian phalanx, were unable to force a passage, and Salvius, the commander of the Pelignians, snatched the standard of his company and hurled it in among the enemy. 2 Then the Pelignians, since among the Italians it is an unnatural and flagrant thing to abandon a standard, rushed on towards the place where it was, and dreadful losses were inflicted and suffered on both sides. 3 For the Romans tried to thrust aside the long spears of their enemies with their swords, or to crowd them back with their shields, or to seize and put them by with their very hands; 4 while the Macedonians, holding them firmly advanced with both hands, and piercing those who fell upon them, armour and all, since neither shield nor breastplate could resist the force of the Macedonian long spear, hurled headlong back the Pelignians and Marrucinians, who, with no consideration but with animal fury rushed upon the strokes that met them, and a certain death. 5 When the first line had thus been cut to pieces, those arrayed behind them were beaten back; and though there was no flight, still they retired towards the mountain called Olocrus, 6 so that even Aemilius, as Poseidonius tells us, when he saw it, rent his garments. For this part of his army was retreating, and the rest of the Romans were turning aside from the phalanx, which gave them no access to it, but confronted them as it were with a dense barricade of long spears, and was everywhere unassailable.

7 But the ground was uneven, and the line of battle so long that shields could not be kept continuously locked together, and Aemilius therefore saw that the Macedonian phalanx was getting many clefts and intervals in it, as is natural when armies are large and the efforts of the combatants are diversified; portions of it were hard pressed, and other portions were dashing forward. 8 Thereupon he came up swiftly, and dividing up his cohorts, ordered them to plunge quickly into the interstices and empty spaces in the enemy’s line and thus come to close quarters, not fighting a single battle against them all, but many separate and successive battles. 9 These instructions being given by Aemilius to his officers, and by his officers to the soldiers, as soon as they got between the ranks of the enemy and separated them, they attacked some of them in the flank where their armour did not shield them, 10 and cut off others by falling upon their rear, and the strength and general efficiency of the phalanx was lost when it was thus broken up; and now that the Macedonians engaged man to man or in small detachments, they could only hack with their small daggers against the firm and long shields of the Romans, and oppose light wicker targets to their swords, which, such was their weight and momentum, penetrated through all their armour to their bodies. They therefore made a poor resistance and at last were routed.

21 1 But the struggle between them was fierce. Here, too, Marcus, the son of Cato and the son-in law of Aemilius, while displaying all possible prowess, lost his sword. 2 Since he was a young man of the most generous education and owed to a great father proofs of great valour, he thought life not worth the living if he abandoned such spoil of his own person to the enemy, and ran along the ranks telling every friend and companion whom he saw of his mishap and begging them for aid. 3 These made a goodly number of brave men, and making their way with one impulse through the rest, they put themselves under his head and fell upon the enemy. 4 With a great struggle, much slaughter, and many wounds, they drove them from the ground, and when they had won a free and empty place, they set themselves to looking for the sword. 5 And when at last it was found hidden among great heaps of armour and fallen bodies, they were filled with exceeding joy, and raising songs of triumph fell yet more impetuously upon those of the enemy who still held together. 6 Finally, the three thousand picked men of the Macedonians, who remained in order and kept on fighting, were all cut to pieces; and of the rest, who took to flight, the slaughter was great, so that the plain and the lower slopes of the hills were covered with dead bodies, and the waters of the river Leucus were still mingled with blood when the Romans crossed it on the day after the battle. 7 For it is said that over twenty-five thousand of their enemies were slain; while of the Romans there fell, according to Poseidonius, a hundred, according to Nasica, eighty.

22 1 And this greatest of all struggles was most speedily decided; for the Romans began fighting at three o’clock in the afternoon, and were victorious within an hour; the rest of the day they spent in the pursuit, which they kept up for as many as a hundred and twenty furlongs, so that it was already late in the evening when they returned. 2 All the rest were met by their servants with torches and conducted with joyful shouts to their tents, which were ablaze with light and adorned with wreaths of ivy and laurel; but Aemilius their general was a prey to great sorrow. 3 For the two sons who were serving under him, the younger was nowhere to be found, and Aemilius loved him especially, and saw that he was by nature more prone to excellence than any of his brothers. 4 But he was of a passionate and ambitious spirit, and was still hardly more than a boy in years, and his father concluded that he had certainly perished, when, for lack of experience, he had become entangled among the enemy as they fought. 5 The whole army learned of the distress and anguish of their general, and springing up from their suppers, ran about with torches, many to the tent of Aemilius, and many in front of the ramparts, searching among the numerous dead bodies. 6 Dejection reigned in the camp, and the plain was filled with the cries of men calling out the name of Scipio. For from the very outset he had been admired by everybody, since, beyond any other one of his family, he had a nature adapted for leadership in war and public service.

7 Well, then, when it was already late and he was almost despaired of, he came in from the pursuit with two or three comrades, covered with the blood of the enemies he had slain, having been, like a young hound of noble breed, carried away by the uncontrollable pleasure of the victory. 8 This was that Scipio who, in after times, destroyed Carthage and Numantia, and became by far the most noble and influential Roman of his day. 9 Thus Fortune, postponing to another season her jealous displeasure at the great success of Aemilius, restored to him then in all completeness his pleasure in his victory.

23 1 But Perseus was away in flight from Pydna to Pella, since practically all his horsemen came safely off from the battle. 2 But when his footmen overtook his horsemen, and, abusing them as cowards and traitors, tried to push them from their horses and fell to beating them, the king, afraid of the tumult, turned his horse out of the road, drew his purple robe round and held it in front of him, that he might not be conspicuous, and carried his diadem in his hands. 3 And in order that he might also converse with his companions as he walked, he dismounted from his horse and led him along. 4 But of these companions, one pretended that he must fasten a shoe that had become loose, another that he must water his horse, another that he himself wanted water to drink, and so they gradually lagged behind and ran away, because they had more fear of his cruelty than of the enemy. 5 For he was lacerated by his misfortunes, and sought to turn the responsibility for his defeat away from himself and upon everybody else. 6 He entered Pella during the night, and when Euctus and Eulaeus, his treasurers, came to meet him, and, what with their censure for what had happened and their unseasonably bold speeches and counsels, enraged him, he slew them, smiting both of them himself with his small-sword. After this no one remained with him except Evander the Cretan, Archedamus the Aetolian, and Neon the Boeotian. 7 Of his soldiers, only the Cretans followed after him, not through good will, but because they were as devoted to his riches as bees to their honeycombs. 8 For he was carrying along vast treasures, and had handed out from them for distribution among the Cretans drinking cups and mixing bowls and other furniture of gold and silver to a value of fifty talents. 9 He arrived at Amphipolis first, and then from there at Galepsus, and now that his fear had abated a little, he relapsed into that congenital and oldest disease of his, namely, parsimony, and lamented to his friends that through ignorance he had suffered some of the gold plate of Alexander the Great to fall into the hands of the Cretans, and with tearful supplications he besought those who had it to exchange it for money. 10 Now those that understood him accurately did not fail to see that he was playing the Cretan against Cretans; but those who listened to him, and gave back the plate, were cheated. 11 For he did not pay them the money he had promised, but after craftily getting thirty talents from his friends, which his enemies were to get soon afterwards, he sailed across with them to Samothrace, where he took refuge as a suppliant in the temple of the Dioscuri.

24 1 Now, the Macedonians are always said to have been lovers of their kings, but at this time, feeling that their prop was shattered and all had fallen with it, they put themselves into the hands of Aemilius, and in two days made him master of all Macedonia. 2 And this would seem to bear witness in favour of those who declare that these achievements of his were due to a rare good fortune. 3 And still further, that which befell him at his sacrifice was a token of divine favour. When, namely, Aemilius was sacrificing in Amphipolis, and the sacred rites were begun, a thunderbolt darted down upon the altar, set it on fire, and consumed the sacrifice with it. 4 But an altogether more signal instance of divine favour and good fortune is seen in the way the rumour of his victory spread. For it was only the fourth day after Perseus had been defeated at Pydna, and at Rome the people were watching equestrian contests, when suddenly a report sprang up at the entrance of the theatre that Aemilius had conquered Perseus in a great battle and reduced all Macedonia. 5 After this the rumour spread quickly among the multitude, and joy burst forth, accompanied by shouts and clapping of hands, and prevailed in the city all that day. 6 Then, since the story could not be traced to any sure source, but seemed to be current everywhere alike, for the time being the rumour vanished into thin air; but when, a few days afterwards, they were clearly informed of the matter, they were astonished at the tidings which had reached them first, seeing that in the fiction there was truth.

25 1 It is said also that a report of the battle fought by the Italian Greeks at the river Sagra reached Peloponnesus on the same day, and so did that of the battle with the Medes at Mycale come on the same day to Plataea. 2 And when the Romans had conquered the Tarquins, who had taken the field against them with the Latins, two tall and beautiful men were seen at Rome a little while after, who brought direct tidings from the army. These were conjectured to be the Dioscuri. 3 The first man who met them in front of the spring in the forum, where they were cooling their horses, which were reeking with sweat, was amazed at their report of the victory. 4 Then, we are told, they touched his beard with their hands, quietly smiling the while, and the hair of it was changed at once from black to red, a circumstance which gave credence to their story, and fixed upon the man the surname of Ahenobarbus, that is to say, Bronze-beard. 5 And all this is made credible by that which has happened in our time. When, namely, Antonius was in revolt from Domitian, and a great war was expected from Germany, and Rome was in commotion, suddenly and spontaneously the people of their own accord spread abroad a report of a victory, and a story coursed through Rome that Antonius himself had been slain, and that of his defeated army not a portion was left alive. Belief in the story became so strong and distinct that many of the magistrates actually offered sacrifices. 6 When, however, the author of the story was sought, none could be found, but it eluded all pursuit from one man to another, and finally disappeared in the limitless throng, as in a yawning sea, and was seen to have no sure source. This rumour, then, quickly melted away in the city; but when Domitian was setting out with an army for the war and was already on the march, messages and letters announcing the victory came to meet him. 7 And the success itself was gained on the day when the rumour of it came to Rome, although the distance between the places was more than twenty thousand furlongs.g These facts are known to every one of our time.

26 1 But to resume, Gnaeus Octavius, the admiral of Aemilius, came to anchor off Samothrace, and while he allowed Perseus to enjoy asylum, out of respect to the gods, he took means to prevent him from escaping by sea. 2 However, Perseus somehow succeeded in persuading a certain Cretan named Oroandes, the owner of a small skiff, to take him on board with his treasures. 3 So Oroandes, true Cretan that he was, took the treasures aboard by night, and after bidding Perseus to come during the following night to harbour adjoining the Demetrium, with his children and necessary attendants, as soon as evening fell sailed off. 4 Now, Perseus suffered pitifully in letting himself down through a narrow window in the fortress, together with his wife and little children, who were unacquainted with wandering and hardships; but most pitiful of all was the groan he gave when some one told him, as he wandered along the shore, that he had seen Oroandes already out at sea and under full sail. 5 For day was beginning to dawn, and so, bereft of every hope, he fled back to the fortress with his wife, before the Romans could prevent him, though they saw him. 6 His children were seized and delivered to the Romans by Ion, who of old had been a favourite of Perseus, but now became his betrayer, and furnished the most compelling reason for his coming, as a wild beast will do when its young have been captured, and surrendering himself to those who had them in their power.

7 Accordingly, having most confidence in Nasica, he called for him; but since Nasica was not there, after bewailing his misfortune and carefully weighing the necessity under which he lay, he gave himself into the power of Gnaeus, thus making it most abundantly clear that his avarice was a less ignoble evil than the love of life that was in him, and that led him to deprive himself of the only thing which Fortune cannot take away from the fallen, namely, pity. 8 For when at his request he was brought to Aemilius, Aemilius saw in him a great man whose fall was due to the resentment of the gods and his own evil fortune, and rose up and came to meet him, accompanied by his friends, and with tears in his eyes; 9 but Perseus, a most shameful sight, after throwing himself prone before him and then clasping his knees, broke out into ignoble cries and supplications. These Aemilius could not abide and would not hear; but looking upon him with a distressed and sorrowful countenance, said: 10 “Why, wretched man, dost thou free Fortune from thy strongest indictment against her, by conduct which will make men think that thy misfortunes are not undeserved, and that thy former prosperity, rather than thy present lot, was beyond thy deserts? 11 And why dost thou depreciate my victory, and make my success a meagre one, by showing thyself no noble or even fitting antagonist for Romans? 12 Valour in the unfortunate obtains great reverence even among their enemies, but cowardice, in Roman eyes, even though it meet with success, is in every way a most dishonourable thing.”

27 1 Notwithstanding his displeasure, he raised Perseus up, gave him his hand, and put him in charge of Tubero, while he himself drew his sons, his sons-in law, and of the other officers especially the younger men, into his tent, where for a long time he sat in silent communion with himself, so that all wondered. 2 Then he began to discourse of Fortune and of human affairs, saying: “Is it, then, fitting that one who is mortal should be emboldened when success comes to him, and have high thoughts because he has subdued a nation, or a city, or a kingdom? or should his thoughts dwell rather on this reversal of fortune, which sets before the warrior an illustration of the weakness that is common to all men, and teaches him to regard nothing as stable or safe? 3 For what occasion have men to be confident, when their conquest of others gives them most cogent reason to be in fear of Fortune, and when one who exults in success is thrown, as I am, into great dejection by reflecting upon the allotments of Fate, which take a circling course, and fall now upon some and now upon others? 4 Or, when the succession of Alexander, who attained the highest pinnacle of power and won the greatest merit, has fallen in the space of a single hour and has been put beneath your feet, or when you see kings who but just now were surrounded by so many myriads of infantry and thousands of cavalry, receiving from their enemy’s hands the food and drink requisite for the day, can you suppose that we ourselves have any guarantee from Fortune that will avail against the attacks of time? 5 Abandon, then, young men, this empty insolence and pride of victory, and take a humble posture as you confront the future, always expectant of the time when the Deity shall at last launch against each one of you his jealous displeasure at your present prosperity.” 6 Many such words were uttered by Aemilius, we are told, and he sent the young men away with their vainglorious insolence and pride well curbed by his trenchant speech, as by a bridle.

28 1 After this, he gave his army a chance to rest, while he himself went about to see Greece, occupying himself in ways alike honourable and humane. 2 For in his progress he restored the popular governments and established their civil polities; he also gave gifts to the cities, to some grain from the royal stores, to others oil. 3 For it is said that so great stores were found laid up that petitioners and receivers failed before the abundance discovered was exhausted. 4 At Delphi, he saw a tall square pillar composed of white marble stones, on which a golden statue of Perseus was intended to stand, and gave orders that his own statue should be set there, for it was meet that the conquered should make room for their conquerors. 5 And at Olympia, as they say, he made that utterance which is now in every mouth, that Pheidias had moulded the Zeus of Homer. 6 When the ten commissioners arrived from Rome, he restored to the Macedonians their country and their cities for free and independent residence; they were also to pay the Romans a hundred talents in tribute, a sum less than half of what they used to pay to their kings. 7 He also held all sorts of games and contests and performed sacrifices to the gods, at which he gave feasts and banquets, making liberal allowances therefor from the royal treasury, while in the arrangement and ordering of them, in saluting and seating his guests, and in paying to each one that degree of honour and kindly attention which was properly his due, he showed such nice and thoughtful perception that the Greeks were amazed, 8 seeing that not even their pastimes were treated by him with neglect, but that, although he was a man of such great affairs, he gave even to trifling things their due attention. 9 And he was also delighted to find that, though preparations for entertainment were ever so many and splendid, he himself was the pleasantest sight to his guests and gave them most enjoyment; and he used to say to those who wondered at his attention to details that the same spirit was required both in marshalling a line of battle and in presiding at a banquet well, the object being, in the one case, to cause most terror in the enemy, in the other, to give most pleasure to the company. 10 But more than anything else men praised his freedom of spirit and his greatness of soul; for he would not consent even to look upon the quantities of silver and the quantities of gold that were gathered together from the royal treasuries, but handed them over to the quaestors for the public chest. 11 It was only the books of the king that he allowed his sons, who were devoted to learning, to choose out for themselves, and when he was distributing rewards for valour in the battle, he gave Aelius Tubero, his son-in law, a bowl of five pounds weight. 12 This was the Tubero, who, as I have said, dwelt with fifteen relations, and a paltry farm supported them all. 13 And that is said to have been the first silver that ever entered the house of the Aelii, brought in as an honour bestowed upon valour, but up to that time neither they themselves nor their wives used either silver or gold.

29 1 When he had put everything in good order, had bidden the Greeks farewell, and had exhorted the Macedonians to be mindful of the freedom bestowed upon them by the Romans and preserve it by good order and concord, he marched against Epirus, having an order from the senate to give the soldiers who had fought with him the battle against Perseus the privilege of pillaging the cities there. 2 Wishing to set upon the inhabitants all at once and suddenly, when no one expected it, he sent for the ten principal men of each city, and ordered them to bring in on a fixed day whatever silver and gold they had in their houses and temples. 3 He also sent with each of these bodies, as if for this very purpose, a guard of soldiers and an officer, who pretended to search for and receive the money. 4 But when the appointed day came, at one and the same time these all set out to overrun and pillage the cities, so that in a single hour a hundred and fifty thousand persons were made slaves, and seventy cities were sacked; 5 and yet from all this destruction and utter ruin each soldier received no more than eleven drachmas as his share, and all men shuddered at the issue of the war, when the division of a whole nation’s substance resulted in so slight a gain and profit for each soldier.

30 1 Aemilius, then, after executing a commission so contrary to his mild and generous nature, went down to Oricus. 2 From there he crossed into Italy with his forces, and sailed up the river Tiber on the royal galley, which had sixteen banks of oars and was richly adorned with captured arms and cloths of scarlet and purple, so that the Romans actually came in throngs from out the city, 3 as it were to some spectacle of triumphant progress whose pleasures they were enjoying in advance, and followed along the banks as the splashing oars sent the ship slowly up the stream.

4 But the soldiers, who had cast longing eyes upon the royal treasures, since they had not got as much as they thought they deserved, were secretly enraged on this account and bitterly disposed towards Aemilius, while openly they accused him of having been harsh and imperious in his command of them; they were therefore not very ready to second his eager desires for a triumph. 5 And when Servius Galba, who was an enemy of Aemilius, although he had been one of his military tribunes, perceived this, he made bold to declare openly that the triumph ought not to be allowed him. 6 He also sowed many calumnies against their general among the masses of the soldiery, and roused still further the resentment they already felt, and then asked the tribunes of the people for another day in which to bring his accusations, since that day was not sufficient, of which only four hours still remained. 7 But when the tribunes ordered him to speak, if he had anything to say, he began a speech which was long and full of all sorts of injurious statements, and so consumed the time remaining in the day. 8 When darkness came, the tribunes dissolved the assembly, but the soldiers, now grown bolder, flocked to Galba, formed themselves into a faction, and before it was light proceeded to take possession of the Capitol; for it was there that the tribunes proposed to hold the assembly.

31 1 As soon as it was day the voting began, and the first tribe was voting against the triumph, when knowledge of the matter was brought down to the rest of the people and the senate. 2 The multitude, deeply grieved at the indignity offered to Aemilius, could only cry out against it in vain; but the most prominent senators, with shouts against the ignominy of the thing, exhorted one another to attack the bold license of the soldiers, which would proceed to any and every deed of lawlessness and violence if nothing were done to prevent their depriving Aemilius Paulus of the honours of his victory. 3 Then pushing their way through the throng and going up to the Capitol in a body, they told the tribunes to put a stop to the voting until they could finish what they wished to say to the people. 4 All voting stopped, silence was made, and one who had slain twenty-three foes in single combat, Marcus Servilius, a man of consular dignity, came forward and said that he knew now better than ever before how great a commander Aemilius Paulus was, when he saw how full of baseness and disobedience the army was which he had used in the successful accomplishment of such great and fair exploits; 5 and he was amazed that the people, while exulting in triumphs over Illyrians and Ligurians, begrudged itself the sight of the king of Macedonia taken alive and the glory of Alexander and Philip made spoil by Roman arms. 6 “For is it not a strange thing,” said he, “that when an unsubstantial rumour of victory came suddenly and prematurely to the city, you sacrificed to the gods and prayed that this report might speedily be verified before your eyes; but now that your general is come with his real victory, you rob the gods of their honour, and yourself of your joy in it, as though afraid to behold the magnitude of his successes, or seeking to spare the feelings of your enemy? 7 And yet it were better that out of pity towards him, and not out of envy towards your general, the triumph should be done away with. But,” said he, “to such great power is malice brought by you that a man without a wound to show, and whose person is sleek from delicate and cowardly effeminacy, dares to talk about the conduct of a general and his triumph to us who have been taught by all these wounds to judge the valour and the cowardice of generals.” 8 And with the words he parted his garment and displayed upon his breast an incredible number of wounds. Then wheeling about, he uncovered some parts of his person which it is thought unbecoming to have naked in a crowd, and turning to Galba, said: 9 “Thou laughest at these scars, but I glory in them before my fellow-citizens, in whose defence I got them, riding night and day without ceasing. 10 But come, take these people off to their voting; and I will come down and follow along with them all, and will learn who are base and thankless and prefer to be wheedled and flattered in war rather than commanded.”

32 1 This speech, they tell us, so rebuffed the soldiery and changed their minds that the triumph was voted to Aemilius by all the tribes. 2 And it was conducted, they say, after the following fashion.h The people erected scaffoldings in the theatres for equestrian contests, which they call circuses, and round the forum, occupied the other parts of the city which afforded a view of the procession, and witnessed the spectacle arrayed in white garments. 3 Every temple was open and filled with garlands and incense, while numerous servitors and lictors restrained the thronging and scurrying crowds and kept the streets open and clear. 4 Three days were assigned for the triumphal procession. The first barely sufficed for the exhibition of the captured statues, paintings, and colossal figures, which were carried on two hundred and fifty chariots. 5 On the second, the finest and richest of the Macedonian arms were borne along in many waggons. The arms themselves glittered with freshly polished bronze and steel, and were carefully and artfully arranged to look exactly as though they had been piled together in heaps and at random, 6 helmets lying upon shields and breast-plates upon greaves, while Cretan targets and Thracian wicker shields and quivers were mixed up with horses’ bridles, and through them projected naked swords and long Macedonian spears planted among them, 7 all the arms being so loosely packed that they smote against each other as they were borne along and gave out a harsh and dreadful sound, and the sight of them, even though they were spoils of a conquered enemy, was not without its terrors. 8 After the waggons laden with armour there followed three thousand men carrying coined silver in seven hundred and fifty vessels, each of which contained three talents and was borne by four men, 9 while still other men carried mixing-bowls of silver, drinking horns, bowls, and cups, all well arranged for show and excelling in size and in the depth of their carved ornaments.

33 1 On the third day, as soon as it was morning, trumpeters led the way, sounding out no marching or processional strain, but such a one as the Romans use to rouse themselves to battle. 2 After these there were led along a hundred and twenty stall-fed oxen with gilded horns, bedecked with fillets and garlands. Those who led these victims to the sacrifice were young men wearing aprons with handsome borders, and boys attended them carrying gold and silver vessels of libation. 3 Next, after these, came the carriers of the coined gold, which, like the silver, was portioned out into vessels containing three talents; and the number of these vessels was eighty lacking three. 4 After these followed the bearers of the consecrated bowl, which Aemilius had caused to be made of ten talents of gold and adorned with precious stones, and then those who displayed the bowls known as Antigonids and Seleucids and Theracleian, together with all the gold plate of Perseus’s table. 5 These were followed by the chariot of Perseus, which bore his arms, and his diadem lying upon his arms. 6 Then, at a little interval, came the children of the king, led along as slaves, and with them a throng of foster-parents, teachers, and tutors, all in tears, stretching out their own hands to the spectators and teaching the children to beg and supplicate. 7 There were two boys, and one girl, and they were not very conscious of the magnitude of their evils because of their tender age; 8 wherefore they evoked even more pity in view of the time when their unconsciousness would cease, so that Perseus walked along almost unheeded, while the Romans, moved by compassion, kept their eyes upon the children, and many of them shed tears, and for all of them the pleasure of the spectacle was mingled with pain, until the children had passed by.

34 1 Behind the children and their train of attendants walked Perseus himself, clad in a dark robe and wearing the high boots of his country, but the magnitude of his evils made him resemble one who is utterly dumbfounded and bewildered. 2 He, too, was followed by a company of friends and intimates, whose faces were heavy with grief, and whose tearful gaze continually fixed upon Perseus gave the spectators to understand that it was his misfortune which they bewailed, and that their own fate least of all concerned them. 3 And yet Perseus had sent to Aemilius begging not to be led in the procession and asking to be left out of the triumph. But Aemilius, in mockery, as it would seem, of the king’s cowardice and love of life, had said: “But this at least was in his power before, and is so now, if he should wish it,” 4 signifying death in preference to disgrace; for this, however, the coward had not the heart, but was made weak by no one knows what hopes, and became a part of his own spoils.

5 Next in order to these were carried wreaths of gold, four hundred in number, which the cities had sent with their embassies to Aemilius as prizes for his victory. 6 Next, mounted on a chariot of magnificent adornment, came Aemilius himself, a man worthy to be looked upon even without such marks of power, wearing a purple robe interwoven with gold, and holding forth in his right hand a spray of laurel. 7 The whole army also carried sprays of laurel, following the chariot of their general by companies and divisions, and singing, some of them divers songs intermingled with jesting, as the ancient custom was, and others paeans of victory and hymns in praise of the achievements of Aemilius, who was gazed upon and admired by all, and envied by no one that was good. 8 But after all there is, as it seems, a divinity whose province it is to diminish whatever prosperity is inordinately great, and to mingle the affairs of human life, that no one may be without a taste of evil and wholly free from it, but that, as Homer says, those may be thought to fare best whose fortunes incline now one way and now another.

35 1 For Aemilius had four sons, of whom two, as I have already said, had been adopted into other families, namely, Scipio and Fabius; and two sons still boys, the children of a second wife, whom he had in his own house. 2 One of these, fourteen years of age, died five days before Aemilius celebrated his triumph, and the death of the other, who was twelve years of age, followed three days after the triumph, 3 so that there was no Roman who did not share the father’s grief; nay, they all shuddered at the cruelty of Fortune, seeing that she had not scrupled to bring such great sorrow into a house that was full of gratulations, joy, and sacrifices, or to mingle lamentations and tears with paeans of victory and triumphs.

36 1 Aemilius, notwithstanding, rightly considering that men have need of bravery and courage, not only against arms and long spears, but against every onset of Fortune as well, so adapted and adjusted the mingled circumstances of his lot that the bad was lost sight of in the good, and his private sorrow in the public welfare, thus neither lowering the grandeur nor sullying the dignity of his victory. 2 The first of his sons who died he buried, and immediately afterwards celebrated the triumph, as I have said; and when the second died, after the triumph, he gathered the Roman people into an assembly and spoke to them as a man who did not ask for comfort, but rather sought to comfort his fellow-citizens in their distress over his own misfortunes. 3 He said, namely, that he had never dreaded any human agency, but among agencies that were divine he had ever feared Fortune, believing her to be a most untrustworthy and variable thing; and since in this war particularly she had attended his undertakings like a prosperous gale, as it were, he had never ceased to expect some change and some reversal of the current of affairs. 4 “For in one day,” said he, “I crossed the Ionian Sea from Brundisium and put in at Corcyra; thence, in five days, I came to Delphi and sacrificed to the god; and again, in another five days, I took command of the forces in Macedonia, and after the usual lustration and review of them I proceeded at once to action, and in another fifteen days brought the war to the most glorious issue. 5 But I distrusted Fortune because the current of my affairs ran so smoothly, and now that there was complete immunity and nothing to fear from hostile attacks, it was particularly during my voyage home that I feared the reversal of the Deity’s favour after all my good fortune, since I was bringing home so large a victorious army, such spoils, and captured kings. 6 Nay more, even when I had reached you safely and beheld the city full of delight and gratulation and sacrifices, I was still suspicious of Fortune, knowing that she bestows upon men no great boon that is without alloy or free from divine displeasure. 7 Indeed, my soul was in travail with this fear and could not dismiss it and cease anxiously forecasting the city’s future, until I was smitten with this great misfortune in my own house, and in days consecrated to rejoicing had carried two most noble sons, who alone remained to be my heirs, one after the other to their graves. 8 Now, therefore, I am in no peril of what most concerned me, and am confident, and I think that Fortune will remain constant to our city and do her no harm. 9 For that deity has sufficiently used me and my afflictions to satisfy the divine displeasure at our successes, and she makes the hero of the triumph as clear an example of human weakness as the victim of the triumph; except that Perseus, even though conquered, has his children, while Aemilius, though conqueror, has lost his.”

37 1 With such noble and lofty words, we are told, did Aemilius, from an unfeigned and sincere spirit, address the people. 2 But for Perseus, although he pitied him for his changed lot and was very eager to help him, he could obtain no other favour than a removal from the prison which the Romans called “carcer” to a clean place and kindlier treatment; and there, being closely watched, according to most writers the king starved himself to death. But some tell of a very unusual and peculiar way in which he died, as follows. 3 The soldiers who guarded him found some fault with him and got angry at him, and since they could not vex and injure him in any other way, they prevented him from sleeping, disturbing his repose by their assiduous attentions and keeping him awake by every possible artifice, until in this way he was worn out and died. 4 Two of his children also died. But the third, is said to have become expert in embossing and fine metal work; he also learned to write and speak the Roman language, and was secretary to the magistrates, in which office he proved himself to have skill and elegance.

38 1 To the exploits of Aemilius in Macedonia is ascribed his most unbounded popularity with the people, since so much money was then brought into the public treasury by him that people no longer needed to pay special taxes until the times of Hirtius and Pansa, who were consuls during the first war between Antony and Octavius Caesar. 2 And this, too, was peculiar and remarkable in Aemilius, that although he was admired and honoured by the people beyond measure, he remained a member of the aristocratic party, and neither said or did anything to win the favour of the multitude, but always sided in political matters with the leading and most powerful men. 3 And this attitude of Aemilius was in after times cast in the teeth of Scipio Africanus by Appius. For these men, being then greatest in the city, were candidates for the censorship, the one having the senate and the nobles to support him, for this was the hereditary policy of the Appii, while the other, although great on his own account, nevertheless always made use of the great favour and love of the people for him. 4 When, therefore, Appius saw Scipio rushing into the forum attended by men who were of low birth and had lately been slaves, but who were frequenters of the forum and able to gather a mob and force all issues by means of solicitations and shouting, he cried with a loud voice and said: 5 “O Paulus Aemilius, groan beneath the earth when thou learnest that thy son is escorted to the censorship by Aemilius the common crier and Licinius Philonicus.” 6 But Scipio had the good will of the people because he supported them in most things, while Aemilius, although he sided with the nobles, was no less loved by the multitude than the one who was thought to pay most court to the people and to seek their favour in his intercourse with them. 7 And they made this manifest by conferring upon him, along with his other honours, that of the censorship, which is of all offices most sacred, and of great influence, both in other ways, and especially because it examines into the lives and conduct of men. 8 For it is in the power of the censors to expel any senator whose life is unbecoming, and to appoint the leader of the senate, and they can disgrace any young knight of loose habits by taking away his horse. They also take charge of the property assessments and the registry lists. 9 Accordingly, the number of citizens registered under Aemilius was three hundred and thirty-seven thousand four hundred and fifty-two; he also declared Marcus Aemilius Lepidus first senator, a man who had already held this presidency four times, and he expelled only three senators, men of no note, and in the muster of the knights a like moderation was observed both by himself and by Marcius Philippus his colleague.

39 1 After he had performed most of the more important duties of this office, he fell sick of a disease which at first was dangerous, but in time became less threatening, though it was troublesome and hard to get rid of. 2 Under the advice of his physicians he sailed to Velia in Italy, and there spent much time in country places lying by the sea and affording great quiet. Then the Romans longed for him, and often in the theatres gave utterance to eager desires and even prayers that they might see him. 3 At last, when a certain religious ceremony made his presence necessary, and his health seemed to be sufficient for the journey, he returned to Rome. 4 Here he offered the public sacrifice in company with the other priests, while the people thronged about with manifest tokens of delight; and on the following day he sacrificed again to the gods privately in gratitude for his recovery. 5 When the sacrifice had been duly performed, he returned to his house and lay down to rest, and then, before he could notice and be conscious of any change, he became delirious and deranged in mind, and on the third day after he died. He was fully blessed with everything that men think conducive to happiness. 6 For his funeral procession called forth men’s admiration, and showed a desire to adorn his virtue with the best and most enviable obsequies. 7 This was manifest, not in gold or ivory or the most ambitious and expensive preparations for such rites, but in good will and honour and gratitude on the part, not only of his fellow citizens, but also of his enemies. 8 At all events, out of all the Iberians and Ligurians and Macedonians who chanced to be present, those that were young and strong of body assisted by turns in carrying the bier, while the more elderly followed with the procession calling aloud upon Aemilius as benefactor and preserver of their countries. 9 For not only at the times of his conquests had he treated them all with mildness and humanity, but also during all the rest of his life he was ever doing them some good and caring for them as though they had been kindred and relations.

10 His estate, we are told, hardly amounted to three hundred and seventy thousand drachmas, to which he left both his sons heirs; but the younger, Scipio, who had been adopted into the wealthier family of Africanus, allowed his brother to have it all. Such, as we are told, was the life and character of Paulus Aemilius.

Comparison of Timoleon and Aemilius

1 1 Such being the history of these men, it is clear that our comparison of them will have few points of difference or dissimilarity to show. 2 For the wars which both conducted were against notable antagonists; in the one case against the Macedonians, in the other against the Carthaginians. Their victories, too, were far-famed: the one took Macedonia and brought the royal line of Antigonus to an end in its seventh king; the other abolished all the tyrannies in Sicily and set the island free. 3 One might, indeed, argue otherwise, and say that Perseus was strong and victorious over the Romans when Aemilius engaged him, while Dionysius, when Timoleon engaged him, was altogether crushed and desperate. 4 And, again, it might be said in favour of Timoleon that he conquered many tyrants and the force of the Carthaginians, large as it was, with what soldiers he could get, not having at his service, as Aemilius had, men who were experienced in war and taught to obey orders, but men who were hirelings and disorderly soldiers, accustomed to consult their own pleasure in their campaigns. 5 For when equal successes follow an unequal equipment, the greater credit accrues to the commander.

2 1 Further, in their administration of affairs both were just and incorruptible; but Aemilius, it would seem, was made so from the outset of his career by the laws and customs of his country, while Timoleon’s great probity was due to himself. 2 There is proof of this in the fact that the Romans in the time of Aemilius were, all alike, orderly in their lives, observant of usage, and wholesomely fearful of the laws and of their fellow citizens; whereas, of the Greek leaders and generals who took part in Sicilian affairs during the time of Timoleon, not one was free from corruption except Dion. 3 And Dion was suspected by many of being ambitious for a monarchy and dreaming of a kingdom like that in Sparta. 2774 Furthermore, Timaeus says that even Gylippus was sent away in ignominy and dishonour by the Syracusans, because they found him guilty of avarice and greed while he was their general. 5 And how Pharax the Spartan and Callippus the Athenian violated laws and treaties in their hopes of ruling Sicily, has been told by many writers. 6 And yet who were these men, or of how large resources were they masters, that they entertained such hopes? One of them was a servile follower of Dionysius after he had been driven out of Syracuse, and Callippus was one of Dion’s captains of mercenaries. 7 But Timoleon, at the earnest request of the Syracusans, was sent to be their general, and needed not to seek power from them, but only to hold that which they had given him of their own free will, and yet he laid down his office and command when he had overthrown their unlawful rulers.

8 It is, however, worthy of admiration in Aemilius that, although he had subdued so great a kingdom, he did not add one drachma to his substance, nor would he touch or even look upon the conquered treasure; and yet he made many liberal gifts to others. 9 Now, I do not say that Timoleon is to be blamed for accepting a fine house and country estate, for acceptance under such circumstances is not disgraceful; but not to accept is better, and that is a surpassing virtue which shows that it does not want what it might lawfully have.

10 Furthermore, a body that can endure only heat or cold is less powerful than one that is well adapted by nature to withstand both extremes alike. In like manner a spirit is absolutely vigorous and strong if it is neither spoiled and elated by the insolence which prosperity brings, nor humbled by adversity. The character of Aemilius, therefore, was manifestly more perfect, since in the grievous misfortune and great sorrow brought upon him by the death of his sons he was seen to have no less greatness and no less dignity than in the midst of his successes; 11 whereas Timoleon, although he had acted in a noble way with regard to his brother, could not reason down his sorrow, but was prostrated with grief and repentance, and for twenty years could not endure the sight of bema or market-place. 12 One should scrupulously shun disgraceful deeds; but the anxious fear of every kind of ill report among men argues a nature which is indeed kindly and sensitive, but has not greatness.

Pelopidas

277 1 1 Cato the Elder, when certain persons praised a man who was inconsiderately rash and daring in war, told them there was a difference between a man’s setting a high value on valour and his setting a low value on life; and his remark was just. At any rate, there was a soldier of Antigonus who was venturesome, but had miserable health and an impaired body. When the king asked him the reason for his pallor, the man admitted that it was a secret disease, 2 whereupon the king took compassion on him and ordered his physicians, if there was any help for him, to employ their utmost skill and care. Thus the man was cured; but then the good fellow ceased to court danger and was no longer a furious fighter, so that even Antigonus rebuked him and expressed his wonder at the change. 278 The man, however, made no secret of the reason, but said: “O King, it is thou who hast made me less daring, by freeing me from those ills which made me set little value on life.” 3 On these grounds, too, as it would seem, a man of Sybaris said it was no great thing for the Spartans to seek death in the wars in order to escape so many hardships and such a wretched life as theirs. But to the Sybarites, who were dissolved in effeminate luxury, men whom ambition and an eager quest of honour led to have no fear of death naturally seemed to hate life; 4 whereas the virtues of the Lacedaemonians gave them happiness alike in living or dying, as the following elegy testifies: These, it says, died,

“not deeming either life or death honourable in themselves,

But only the accomplishment of them both with honour.”

For neither is a man to be blamed for shunning death, if he does not cling to life disgracefully, nor to be praised for boldly meeting death, if he does this with contempt of life. 5 For this reason Homer always brings his boldest and most valiant heroes into battle well armed and equipped; and the Greek lawgivers punish him who casts away his shield, not him who throws down his sword or spear, thus teaching that his own defence from harm, rather than the infliction of harm upon the enemy, should be every man’s first care, and particularly if he governs a city or commands an army.

2 1 For if, as Iphicrates analyzed the matter, the light-armed troops are like the hands, the cavalry like the feet, the line of men-at arms itself like chest and breastplate, and the general like the head, then he, in taking undue risks and being over bold, would seem to neglect not himself, but all, inasmuch as their safety depends on him, and their destruction too. Therefore Callicratidas, although otherwise he was a great man, did not make a good answer to the seer who begged him to be careful, since the sacrificial omens foretold his death; “Sparta,” said he, “does not depend upon one man.” 2 For when fighting, or sailing, or marching under orders, Callicratidas was “one man”; but as general, he comprised in himself the strength and power of all, so that he was not “one man,” when such numbers perished with him. Better was the speech of old Antigonus as he was about to fight a sea-fight off Andros, and someone told him that the enemy’s ships were far more numerous than his: “But what of myself.” said he, “how many ships wilt thou count me?” implying that the worth of the commander is a great thing, as it is in fact, when allied with experience and valour, and his first duty is to save the one who saves everything else. 3 Therefore Timotheus was right, when Chares was once showing the Athenians some wounds he had received, and his shield pierced by a spear, in saying: “But I, how greatly ashamed I was, at the siege of Samos, because a bolt fell near me; I thought I was behaving more like an impetuous youth than like a general in command of so large a force.” 4 For where the whole issue is greatly furthered by the general’s exposing himself to danger, there he must employ hand and body unsparingly, ignoring those who say that a good general should die, if not of old age, at least in old age; but where the advantage to be derived from his success is small, and the whole cause perishes with him if he fails, no one demands that a general should risk his life in fighting like a common soldier.

5 Such is the preface I have thought fit to make for the Lives of Pelopidas and Marcellus, great men who rashly fell in battle. For both were most valiant fighters, did honour to their countries in most illustrious campaigns, and what is more, had the most formidable adversaries, one being the first, 279 as we are told, to rout Hannibal, who was before invincible, the other conquering in a pitched battle the Lacedaemonians, who were supreme on land and sea; and yet they were careless of their own lives, and recklessly threw them away at times when it was most important that such men should live and hold command. These are the resemblances between them which have led me to write their lives in parallel.

3 1 Pelopidas the son of Hippoclus was of a highly honourable family in Thebes, as was Epaminondas, and having been reared in affluence, and having inherited in youth a splendid estate, he devoted himself to the assistance of worthy men who needed it, that he might be seen to be really master of his wealth, and not its slave. For most wealthy men, as Aristotle says, either make no use of their wealth through avarice, or abuse it through prodigality, and so they are forever slaves, these to their pleasures, those to their business. 2 The rest, accordingly, thankfully profited by the kindness and liberality of Pelopidas towards them; but Epaminondas was the only one of his friends whom he could not persuade to share his wealth. Pelopidas, however, shared the poverty of this friend, and gloried in modest attire, meagre diet, readiness to undergo hardships, and straightforward service as a soldier. 3 Like the Capaneus of Euripides, he “had abundant wealth, but riches did not make him arrogant at all,” and he was ashamed to let men think that he spent more upon his person than the poorest Theban. Now Epaminondas, whose poverty was hereditary and familiar, made it still more light and easy by philosophy, and by electing at the onset to lead a single life; 4 Pelopidas, on the contrary, made a brilliant marriage, and had children too, but nevertheless he neglected his private interests to devote his whole time to the state, and so lessened his substance. And when his friends admonished him and told him that the possession of money, which he scorned, was a necessary thing, “Yes indeed,” he said, “necessary for this Nicodemus here,” pointing to a man who was lame and blind.

4 1 They were also fitted by nature for the pursuit of every excellence, and in like measure, except that Pelopidas delighted more in exercising the body, Epaminondas in storing the mind, so that the one devoted his leisure hours to bodily exercise and hunting, the other to lectures and philosophy. Both had many claims upon the world’s esteem, but wise men consider none of these so great as the unquestioned good will and friendship which subsisted between them from first to last through all their struggles and campaigns and civil services. 2 For if one regards the political careers of Themistocles and Aristides, or of Cimon and Pericles, or of Nicias and Alcibiades, which were so full of mutual dissensions, envyings, and jealousies, and then turns his eyes upon the honour and kindly favour which Pelopidas showed Epaminondas, he will rightly and justly call these men colleagues in government and command rather than those, who ever strove to get the better of one another rather than of the enemy. 3 And the true reason for the superiority of the Thebans was their virtue, which led them not to aim in their actions at glory or wealth, which are naturally attended by bitter envying and strife; on the contrary, they were both filled from the beginning with a divine desire to see their country become most powerful and glorious in their day and by their efforts, and to this end they treated one another’s successes as their own.

4 However, most people think that their ardent friendship dated from the campaign at Mantineia, where they fought on the side of the Lacedaemonians, who were still their friends and allies, and who received assistance from Thebes. 280 For they stood side by side among the men-at arms and fought against the Arcadians, and when the Lacedaemonian wing to which they belonged gave way and was routed for the most part, they locked their shields together and repelled their assailants. 5 Pelopidas, after receiving seven wounds in front, sank down upon a great heap of friends and enemies who lay dead together; but Epaminondas, although he thought him lifeless, stood forth to defend his body and his arms, and fought desperately, single-handed against many, determined to die rather than leave Pelopidas lying there. And now he too was in a sorry plight, having been wounded in the breast with a spear and in the arm with a sword, when Agesipolis the Spartan king came to his aid from the other wing, and when all hope was lost, saved them both.

5 1 After this the Spartans ostensibly treated the Thebans as friends and allies, but they really looked with suspicion on the ambitious spirit and the power of the city, and above all they hated the party of Ismenias and Androcleides, to which Pelopidas belonged, and which was thought to be friendly to freedom and a popular form of government. 2 Therefore Archias, Leontidas, and Philip, men of the oligarchical faction who were rich and immoderately ambitious, sought to persuade Phoebidas the Spartan, as he was marching past with an army, to take the Cadmeia by surprise, expel from the city the party opposed to them, and bring the government into subserviency to the Lacedaemonians by putting it in the hands of a few men. 3 Phoebidas yielded to their persuasions, made his attack upon the Thebans when they did not expect it, since it was the festival of the Thesmophoria, and got possession of the citadel. Then Ismenias was arrested, carried to Sparta, and after a little while put to death; all Pelopidas, Pherenicus, Androcleides and many others took to flight and were proclaimed outlaws. Epaminondas, however, was suffered to remain in the city, because his philosophy made him to be looked down upon as a recluse, and his poverty as impotent.

6 1 But when the Lacedaemonians deprived Phoebidas of his command and fined him a hundred thousand drachmas, and yet held the Cadmeia with a garrison notwithstanding, all the rest of the Greeks were amazed at their inconsistency, since they punished the wrong-doer, but approved his deed. And as for the Thebans, they had lost their ancestral form of government and were enslaved by Archias and Leontidas, nor had they hopes of any deliverance from this tyranny, 2 which they saw was guarded by the dominant military power of the Spartans and could not be pulled down unless those Spartans should somehow be deposed from their command of land and sea. Nevertheless, Leontidas and his associates, learning that the fugitive Thebans were living at Athens, where they were not only in favour with the common people but also honoured by the nobility, secretly plotted against their lives, and sending men who were unknown, they treacherously killed Androcleides, but failed in their designs upon the rest. 3 There came also letters from the Lacedaemonians charging the Athenians not to harbour or encourage the exiles, but to expel them as men declared common enemies by the allied cities. 4 The Athenians, however, not only yielding to their traditional and natural injustices of humanity, but also making a grateful return for the kindness of the Thebans, who had been most ready to aid them in restoring their democracy, and had passed a decree that if any Athenians marched through Boeotia against the tyrants in Athens, no Boeotian should see or hear them, did no harm to the Thebans in their city.

7 1 But Pelopidas, although he was one of the youngest of the exiles, kept inciting each man of them privately, 281 and when they met together pleaded before them that it was neither right nor honourable for them to suffer their native city to be garrisoned and enslaved, and, content with mere life and safety, to hang upon the decrees of the Athenians, and to be always cringing and paying court to such orators as could persuade the people; 2 nay, they must risk their lives for the highest good, and take Thrasybulus and his bold valour for their example, in order that, as he once sallied forth from Thebes and overthrew the tyrants in Athens, so they in their turn might go forth from Athens and liberate Thebes. When, therefore, they had been persuaded by his appeals, they sent secretly to the friends they had left in Thebes, and told them what they purposed. 3 These approved their plan; and Charon, a man of the highest distinction, agreed to put his house at their disposal, while Phillidas contrived to have himself appointed secretary to Archias and Philip, the polemarchs. Epaminondas, too, had long since filled the minds of the Theban youth with high thoughts; for he kept urging them in the gymnastic schools to try the Lacedaemonians in wrestling, and when he saw them elated with victory and mastery, he would chide them, telling them they ought rather to be ashamed, since their cowardice made them the slaves of the men whom they so far surpassed in bodily powers.

8 1 A day for the enterprise having been fixed, the exiles decided that Pherenicus, with the rest of the party under his command, should remain in the Thriasian plain, while a few of the youngest took the risk of going forward into the city; and if anything happened to these at the hands of their enemies, the rest should all see to it that neither their children nor their parents came to any want. 2 Pelopidas was first to undertake the enterprise, then Melon, Damocleidas, and Theopompus, men of foremost families, and of mutual fidelity and friendship, although in the race for heroic achievement and glory they were constant rivals. When their number had reached twelve, they bade farewell to those who stayed behind, sent a messenger before them to Charon, and set out in short cloaks, taking hunting dogs and nets with them, that anyone who met them on the road might not suspect their purpose, but take them for hunters beating about the country.

3 When their messenger came to Charon and told him they were on the way, Charon himself did not change his mind at all even though the hour of peril drew nigh, but was a man of his word and prepared his house to receive them; a certain Hipposthenidas, however, not a bad man, nay, both patriotic and well disposed towards the exiles, but lacking in that degree of boldness which the sharp crisis and the projected enterprise demanded, was made dizzy, so to speak, by the magnitude of the struggle now so close at hand, and at last comprehended that, 4 in undertaking to overthrow the armed force in the city, they were in a manner trying to shake the empire of the Lacedaemonians, and had placed their reliance on the hopes of men in exile and without resources. He therefore went quietly home, and sent one of his friends to Melon and Pelopidas, urging them to postpone the enterprise for the present, go back to Athens, and await a more favourable opportunity. Chlidon was the name of this messenger, and going to his own home in haste, he brought out his horse and asked for the bridle. 5 His wife, however, was embarrassed because she could not give it to him, and said she had lent it to a neighbour. Words of abuse were followed by imprecations, and his wife prayed that the journey might prove fatal both to him and to those that sent him. Chlidon, therefore, after spending a great part of the day in this angry squabble, and after making up his mind, too, that what had happened was ominous, gave up his journey entirely and turned his thoughts to something else. 282 So near can the greatest and fairest enterprises come, at the very outset, to missing their opportunity.

9 1 But Pelopidas and his companions, after putting on the dress of peasants, and separating, entered the city at different points while it was yet day. There was some wind and snow as the weather began to change, and they were the more unobserved because most people had already taken refuge from the storm in their houses. Those, however, whose business it was to know what was going on, received the visitors as they came, and brought them at once to the house of Charon; and there were, counting the exiles, forty-eight of them.

2 With the tyrants, matters stood as follows. Phillidas, their secretary, as I have said, was privy to the plans of the exiles and was co operating fully with them, and some time before had proposed for that day that Archias and his friends should have a drinking-bout, at which a few married women should join them, his scheme being that when they were full of wine and completely relaxed in their pleasures, he would deliver them into the hands of their assailants. 3 But before the party were very deep in their cups, some information was suddenly brought them, not false, indeed, but uncertain and very vague, that the exiles were concealed in the city. Although Phillidas tried to change the subject, Archias nevertheless sent one of his attendants to Charon, commanding him to come to him at once. It was evening, and Pelopidas and his companions in Charon’s house were getting themselves ready for action, having already put on their breastplates and taken up their swords. 4 Then there was a sudden knocking at the door. Someone ran to it, learned from the attendant that he was come from the polemarchs with a summons for Charon, and brought the news inside, much perturbed. All were at once convinced that their enterprise had been revealed, and that they themselves were all lost, before they had even done anything worthy of their valour. However, they decided that Charon must obey the summons and present himself boldly before the magistrates. Charon was generally an intrepid man and of a stern courage in the face of danger, 5 but in this case he was much concerned and frightened on account of his friends, and feared that some suspicion of treachery would fall upon him if so many and such excellent citizens now lost their lives. Accordingly, as he was about to depart, he brought his son from the women’s apartments, a mere boy as yet, but in beauty and bodily strength surpassing those of his years, and put him in the hands of Pelopidas, telling him that if he found any guile or treachery in the father, he must treat the son as an enemy and show him no mercy. 6 Many were moved to tears by the noble concern which Charon showed, and all were indignant that he should think any one of them so demoralized by the present peril and so mean-spirited as to suspect or blame him in the least. They also begged him not to involve his son with them, but to put him out of harm’s way, that he might escape the tyrants and live to become an avenger of his city and his friends. 7 Charon, however, refused to take his son away, asking if any kind of life or any safety could be more honourable for him than a decorous death with his father and all these friends. Then he addressed the gods in prayer, and after embracing and encouraging them all, went his way, striving so to compose his countenance and modulate his voice as not to betray what he was really doing.

10 1 When he reached the door of the house, Archias came out to him, with Phillidas, and said: “Charon, I have heard that certain men have come and hid themselves in the city, and that some of the citizens are in collusion with them.” Charon was disturbed at first, but on asking who the men were that had come and who were concealing them, 283 he saw that Archias could give no clear account of the matter, and conjectured that his information had not come from any of those who were privy to the plot. He therefore said: “Do not, then, suffer any empty rumour to disturb you. However, I will look into the matter; for perhaps no story should be ignored.” 2 Phillidas, too, who stood by, approved of this, and a leading Archias back, got him to drink hard, and tried to protract the revel with hopes of a visit from the women. But Charon, when he got back home, and found the men there disposed, not to expect safety or victory at all, but to die gloriously after a great slaughter of their enemies, told the truth only to Pelopidas himself, while for the rest he concocted a false tale that Archias had talked with him about other matters.

3 Before this first storm had yet blown over, fortune brought a second down upon the men. For there came a messenger from Athens, from Archias the hierophant to his namesake Archias, who was his guest-friend, bearing a letter which contained no empty nor false suspicion, but stated clearly all the details of the scheme that was on foot, as was subsequently learned. 4 At the time, however, Archias was drunk, and the bearer of the letter was brought to him and put it into his hands, saying: “The sender of this bade thee read it at once; for it is on serious business.” Then Archias answered with a smile: “Serious business for the morrow”; and when he had received the letter he put it under his pillow, and resumed his casual conversation with Phillidas. Wherefore these words of his are a current proverb to this day among the Greeks.

11 Now that the fitting time for their undertaking seemed to have come, they sallied forth in two bands; one, under the lead of Pelopidas and Damocleidas, against Leontidas and Hypates, who lived near together; the other against Archias and Philip, under Charon and Melon, who had put on women’s apparel over their breastplates, and wore thick garlands of pine and fir which shaded their faces. 2 For this reason, when they stood at the door of the banquet-room, at first the company shouted and clapped their hands, supposing that the women they had long been expecting were come. But then, after surveying the banquet and carefully marking each of the reclining guests, the visitors drew their swords, and rushing through the midst of the tables at Archias and Philip, revealed who they were. 3 A few of the guests were persuaded by Phillidas to remain quiet, but the rest, who, with the polemarchs, offered resistance and tired to defend themselves, were dispatched without any trouble, since they were drunk.

Pelopidas and his party, however, were confronted with a harder task; for Leontidas, against whom they were going, was a sober and formidable man, and they found his house closed, since he had already gone to bed. For a long time no one answered their knocking, 4 but at last the attendant heard them and came out and drew back the bolt. As soon as the door yielded and gave way, they rushed in together, overturned the servant, and hastened towards bed-chamber. 5 But Leontidas, conjecturing what was happening by the very noise and trampling, rose from bed and drew his dagger, but he forgot to overthrow the lamps and make the men fall foul of one another in the darkness. On the contrary, exposed to view by an abundance of light, he went to meet them at the door of his chamber, and struck down the first one that entered, Cephisodorus. When his assailant had fallen, he engaged Pelopidas next; and their conflict was rendered troublesome and difficult by the narrowness of the door and by Cephisodorus, whose body, now dead, lay in their way. 6 But at last Pelopidas prevailed, 284 and after dispatching Leontidas, he and his followers went at once to attack Hypates. They broke into his house as they had done into the other, but he promptly perceived their design and fled for refuge to his neighbours. Thither they closely followed him, and caught him, and slew him.

12 1 These things accomplished, they joined Melon’s party, and sent into Attica for the exiles they had left there. They also summoned the citizens to fight for their freedom, and armed those who came, taking from the porticos the spoils suspended there, and breaking open the neighbouring workshops of spear-makers and sword-makers. Epaminondas and Gorgidas also came to their aid with an armed following, composed of many young men and the best of the older men. 2 And now the city was all in a flutter of excitement, there was much noise, the houses had lights in them, and there was running to and fro. The people, however, did not yet assemble; they were terrified at what was going on, and had no clear knowledge of it, and were waiting for day. 3 Wherefore the Spartan commanders were thought to have made a mistake in not attacking and engaging at once, since their garrison numbered about fifteen hundred men, and many ran to join them out of the city; but the shouting, the fires, and the great throngs in motion everywhere, terrified them, and they kept quiet, holding the citadel itself in their possession. 4 At break of day the exiles came in from Attica under arms, and a general assembly of the people was convened. Then Epaminondas and Gorgidas brought before it Pelopidas and his companions, surrounded by the priests, holding forth garlands, and calling upon the citizens to come to the aid of their country and their gods. And the assembly, at the sight, rose to its feet with shouts and clapping of hands, and welcomed the men as deliverers and benefactors.

13 1 After this, having been elected boeotarch, or governor of Boeotia, together with Melon and Charon, Pelopidas at once blockaded the acropolis and assaulted it on every side, being anxious to drive out the Lacedaemonians and free the Cadmeia before an army came up from Sparta. 2 And he succeeded by so narrow a margin that, when the men had surrendered conditionally and had been allowed to depart, they got no further than Megara before they were met by Cleombrotus marching against Thebes with a great force. Of the three men who had been harmosts, or governors, in Thebes, the Spartans condemned and executed Herippidas and Arcissus, and the third, Lysanoridas, was heavily fined and forsook the Peloponnesus.

3 This exploit, so like that of Thrasybulus in the valour, the perils, and the struggles of its heroes, and, like that, crowned with success by fortune, the Greeks were wont to call a sister to it. For it is not easy to mention other cases where men so few in number and so destitute have overcome enemies so much more numerous and powerful by the exercise of courage and sagacity, and have thereby become the authors of so great blessings for their countries. 4 And yet the subsequent change in the political situation made this exploit the more glorious. For the war which broke down the pretensions of Sparta and put an end to her supremacy by land and sea, began from that night, in which people, not by surprising any fort or castle or citadel, but by coming into a private house with eleven others, loosed and broke in pieces, if the truth may be expressed in a metaphor, the fetters of the Lacedaemonian supremacy, which were thought indissoluble and not to be broken.

14 1 The Lacedaemonians now invaded Boeotia with a large army, and the Athenians, having become fearful, renounced their alliance with the Thebans, and prosecuting those in their city who favoured the Boeotian cause, 285 put some of them to death, banished others, and others still they fined, so that the Thebans seemed to be in a desperate case with none to aid them. But Pelopidas and Gorgias, who were boeotarchs, plotted to embroil the Athenians again with the Lacedaemonians, and devised the following scheme. 2 Sphodrias, a Spartan, who had a splendid reputation as a soldier, but was rather weak in judgement and full of vain hopes and senseless ambition, had been left at Thespiae with an armed force to receive and succour the renegade Thebans. To this man Pelopidas and Gorgidas privately sent one of their friends who was a merchant, with money, and, what proved more persuasive than money with Sphodrias, this advice. He ought to put his hand to a large enterprise and seize the Piraeus, attacking it unexpectedly when the Athenians were off their guard; 3 for nothing would gratify the Lacedaemonians so much as the capture of Athens, and the Thebans, who were now angry with the Athenians and held them to be traitors, would give them no aid. Sphodrias was finally persuaded, and taking his soldiers, invaded Attica by night. He advanced as far as Eleusis, but there the hearts of his soldiers failed them and his design was exposed, and after having thus stirred up a serious and difficult war against the Spartans, he withdrew to Thespiae.

15 1 After this, the Athenians with the greatest eagerness renewed their alliance with the Thebans, and began hostile operations against Sparta by sea, sailing about and inviting and receiving the allegiance of those Greeks who were inclined to revolt. The Thebans, too, by always engaging singly in Boeotia with the Lacedaemonians, and by fighting battles which, though not important in themselves, nevertheless afforded them much practice and training, 2 had their spirits roused and their bodies thoroughly inured to hardships, and gained experience and courage from their constant struggles. For this reason Antalcidas the Spartan, we are told, when Agesilaüs came back from Boeotia with a wound, said to him: Indeed, this is a fine tuition-fee which thou art getting from the Thebans, for teaching them how to war and fight when they did not wish to do it.” 3 But, to tell the truth, it was not Agesilaüs who was their teacher, but those leaders of theirs, who at the right time and place, gave the Thebans, like young dogs in training, experience in attacking their enemies, and then, when they had got a taste of victory and its ardours, brought them safely off; and of these leaders Pelopidas was in greatest esteem. For after his countrymen had once chosen him their leader in arms, there was not a single year when they did not elect him to office, but either as leader of the sacred band, or, for the most part, as boeotarch, he continued active until his death.

4 Well, then, at Plataea the Lacedaemonians were defeated and put to flight, and at Thespiae, where, too, Phoebidas, who had seized the Cadmeia, was slain; and at Tanagra a large body of them was routed and Panthoidas the harmost was killed. But these combats, though they gave ardour and boldness to the victors, did not altogether break the spirits of the vanquished; 5 for they were not pitched battles, nor was the fighting in open and regular array, but it was by making well-timed sallies, and by either retreating before the enemy or by pursuing and coming to close quarters with them that the Thebans won their successes.

16 1 But the conflict at Tegyra, which was a sort of prelude to that at Leuctra, raised high the reputation of Pelopidas; for it afforded his fellow commanders no rival claim in its success, and his enemies no excuse for their defeat. 286 Against the city of Orchomenus, which had chosen the side of the Spartans and received two divisions of them for its protection, he was ever laying plans and watching his opportunity, 2 and when he heard that its garrison had made an expedition into Locris, he hoped to find the city without defenders, and marched against it, having with him the sacred band and a few horsemen. But when, on approaching the city, he found that its garrison had been replaced with other troops from Sparta, he led his army back again through the district of Tegyra, that being the only way by which he could make a circuit along the foot of the mountains. 3 For all the intervening plain was made impassable by the river Melas, which no sooner begins to flow than it spreads itself out into navigable marshes and lakes.

A little below the marshes stands the temple of Apollo Tegyraeus, with an oracle which had not been long abandoned, but was flourishing down to the Persian wars, when Echecrates was prophet-priest. Here, according to the story, the god was born; and the neighbouring mountain is called Delos, and at its base the river Melas ceases to be spread out, 4 and behind the temple two springs burst forth with a wonderful flow of sweet, copious, and cool water. One of these we call Palm, the other Olive, to the present day, for it was not between two trees, but between two fountains, that the goddess Leto was delivered of her children. Moreover, the Ptoüm is near, from which, it is said, a boar suddenly came forth and frightened the goddess, and in like manner the stories of the Python and of Tityus are associated with the birth of Apollo in this locality. 5 Most of the proofs, however, I shall pass over; for my native tradition removes this god from among those deities who were changed from mortals into immortals, like Heracles and Dionysus, whose virtues enabled them to cast off mortality and suffering; but he is one of those deities who are unbegotten and eternal, if we may judge by what the most ancient and wisest men have said on such matters.

17 1 So, then, as the Thebans entered the district of Tegyra on their way back from Orchomenus, the Lacedaemonians also entered it at the same time, returning in the opposite direction from Locris, and met them. As soon as they were seen marching through the narrow pass, some one ran up to Pelopidas and said: “We have fallen into our enemies’ hands!” “Why any more,” said he, “than they into ours?” 2 Then he at once ordered all his horsemen to ride up from the rear in order to charge, while he himself put his men-at arms, three hundred in number, into close array, expecting that wherever they charged he would be most likely to cut his way through the enemy, who outnumbered him. Now, there were two divisions of the Lacedaemonians, the division consisting of five hundred men, according to Ephorus, of seven hundred, according to Callisthenes, of nine hundred, according to certain other writers, among whom is Polybius. 3 Confident of victory, the polemarchs of the Spartans, Gorgoleon and Theopompus, advanced against the Thebans. The onset being made on both sides particularly where the commanders themselves stood, in the first place, the Lacedaemonian polemarchs clashed with Pelopidas and fell; 4 then, when those about them were being wounded and slain, their whole army was seized with fear and opened up a lane for the Thebans, imagining that they wished to force their way through to the opposite side and get away. But Pelopidas used the path thus opened to lead his men against those of the enemy who still held together, and slew them as he went along, so that finally all turned and fled. The pursuit, however, was carried but a little way, for the Thebans feared the Orchomenians, who were near, and the relief force from Sparta. 5 They had succeeded, however, in conquering their enemy outright and forcing their way victoriously through his whole army; 287 so they erected a trophy, spoiled the dead, and retired homewards in high spirits. For in all their wars with Greeks and Barbarians, as it would seem, never before had Lacedaemonians in superior numbers been overpowered by an inferior force, nor, indeed, in a pitched battle where the forces were evenly matched. 6 Hence they were of an irresistible courage, and when they came to close quarters their very reputation sufficed to terrify their opponents, who also, on their part, thought themselves no match for Spartans with an equal force. But this battle first taught the other Greeks also that it was not the Eurotas, nor the region between Babyce and Cnacion, which alone produced warlike fighting men, but that wheresoever young men are prone to be ashamed of baseness and courageous in a noble cause, shunning disgrace more than danger, these are most formidable to their foes.

18 1 The sacred band, we are told, was first formed by Gorgidas, of three hundred chosen men, to whom the city furnished exercise and maintenance, and who encamped in the Cadmeia; for which reason, too, they were called the city band; for citadels in those days were properly called cities. But some say that this band was composed of lovers and beloved. 2 And a pleasantry of Pammenes is cited, in which he said that Homer’s Nestor was no tactician when he urged the Greeks to form in companies by clans and tribes,

“That clan might give assistance unto clan, and tribes unto tribes,”

since he should have stationed lover by beloved. For tribesmen and clansmen make little account of tribesmen and clansmen in times of danger; whereas, a band that is held together by the friendship between lovers is indissoluble and not to be broken, since the lovers are ashamed to play the coward before their beloved, and the beloved before their lovers, and both stand firm in danger to protect each other. 3 Nor is this a wonder, since men have more regard for their lovers even when absent than for others who are present, as was true of him who, when his enemy was about to slay him where he lay, earnestly besought him to run his sword through his breast, “in order,” as he said, “that my beloved may not have to blush at sight of my body with a wound in the back.” 4 It is related, too that Iolaüs, who shared the labours of Heracles and fought by his side, was beloved of him. And Aristotle says that even down to his day the tomb of Iolaüs was a place where lovers and beloved plighted mutual faith. It was natural, then, that the band should also be called sacred, because even Plato calls the lover a friend “inspired of God.” 5 It is said, moreover, that the band was never beaten, until the battle of Chaeroneia; and when, after the battle, Philip was surveying the dead, and stopped at the place where the three hundred were lying, all where they had faced the long spears of his phalanx, with their armour, and mingled one with another, he was amazed, and on learning that this was the band of lovers and beloved, burst into tears and said: “Perish miserably they who think that these men did or suffered aught disgraceful.”

19 1 Speaking generally, however, it was not the passion of Laius that, as the poets say, first made this form of love customary among the Thebans; but their law-givers, wishing to relax and mollify their strong and impetuous natures in earliest boyhood, gave the flute great prominence both in their work and in their play, bringing this instrument into pre-eminence and honour, and reared them to give love a conspicuous place in the life of the palaestra, thus tempering the dispositions of the young men. 2882 And with this in view, they did well to give the goddess who was said to have been born of Ares and Aphrodite a home in their city; for they felt that, where the force and courage of the warrior are most closely associated and united with the age which possesses grace and persuasiveness, there all the activities of civil life are brought by Harmony into the most perfect consonance and order.

3 Gorgidas, then, by distributing this sacred band among the front ranks of the whole phalanx of men-at arms, made the high excellence of the men inconspicuous, and did not direct their strength upon a common object, since it was dissipated and blended with that of a large body of inferior troops; but Pelopidas, after their valour had shone out at Tegyra, where they fought by themselves and about his own person, never afterwards divided or scattered them, but, treating them as a unit, put them into the forefront of the greatest conflicts. 4 For just as horses run faster when yoked to a chariot than when men ride them singly, not because they cleave the air with more impetus owing to their united weight, but because their mutual rivalry and ambition inflame their spirits; so he thought that brave men were most ardent and serviceable in a common cause when they inspired one another with a zeal for high achievement.

20 1 But now the Lacedaemonians made peace with all the other Greeks and directed the war against the Thebans alone; Cleombrotus their king invaded Boeotia with a force of two thousand men-at arms and a thousand horse; a new peril confronted the Thebans, since they were openly threatened with downright dispersion; and an unprecedented fear reigned in Boeotia. It was at this time that Pelopidas, on leaving his house, when his wife followed him on his way in tears and begging him not to lose his life, said: 2 “This advice, my wife, should be given to private men; but men in authority should be told not to lose the lives of others.” And when he reached the camp and found that the boeotarchs were not in accord, he was first to side with Epaminondas in voting to give the enemy battle. Now Pelopidas, although he had not been appointed boeotarch, was captain of the sacred band, and highly trusted, as it was right that a man should be who had given his country such tokens of his devotion to freedom.

3 Accordingly, it was decided to risk a battle, and at Leuctra they encamped over against the Lacedaemonians. Here Pelopidas had a dream which greatly disturbed him. Now, in the plain of Leuctra are the tombs of the daughters of Scedasus, who are called from the place Leuctridae, for they had been buried there, after having been ravished by Spartan strangers. 4 At the commission of such a grievous and lawless act, their father, since he could get no justice at Sparta, heaped curses upon the Spartans, and then slew himself upon the tombs of the maidens; and ever after, prophecies and oracles kept warning the Spartans to be on watchful guard against the Leuctrian wrath. Most of them, however, did not fully understand the matter, but were in doubt about the place, since in Laconia there is a little town near the sea which is called Leuctra, and near Megalopolis in Arcadia there is a place of the same name. This calamity, of course, occurred long before the battle of Leuctra.

21 1 After Pelopidas had lain down to sleep in the camp, he thought he saw these maidens weeping at their tombs, as they invoked curses upon the Spartans, and Scedasus bidding him sacrifice to his daughters a virgin with auburn hair, if he wished to win the victory over his enemies. The injunction seemed a lawless and dreadful one to him, 289 but he rose upon and made it known to the seers and the commanders. 2 Some of these would not hear of the injunction being neglected or disobeyed, adducing as examples of such sacrifice among the ancients, Menoeceus, son of Creon, Macaria, daughter of Heracles; and, in later times, Pherecydes the wise man, who was put to death by the Lacedaemonians, and whose skin was preserved by their kings, in accordance with some oracle; and Leonidas, who, in obedience to the oracle, sacrificed himself, as it were, to save Greece; 3 and, still further, the youths who were sacrificed by Themistocles to Dionysus Carnivorous before the sea fight at Salamis; for the successes which followed these sacrifices proved them acceptable to the gods. Moreover, when Agesilaüs, who was setting out on an expedition from the same place as Agamemnon did, and against the same enemies, was asked by the goddess for his daughter in sacrifice, and had this vision as he lay asleep at Aulis, he was too tender-hearted to give her, and thereby brought his expedition to an unsuccessful and inglorious ending. 4 Others, on the contrary, argued against it, declaring that such a lawless and barbarous sacrifice was not acceptable to any one of the superior beings above us, for it was not the fabled typhons and giants who governed the world, but the father of all gods and men; even to believe in the existence of divine beings who take delight in the slaughter and blood of men was perhaps a folly, but if such beings existed, they must be disregarded, as having no power; for only weakness and depravity of soul could produce or harbour such unnatural and cruel desires.

22 1 While, then, the chief men were thus disputing, and while Pelopidas in particular was in perplexity, a filly broke away from the herd of horses and sped through the camp, and when she came to the very place of their conference, stood still. The rest only admired the colour of her glossy mane, which was fiery red, her high mettle, and the vehemence and boldness of her neighing; 2 but Theocritus the seer, after taking thought, cried out to Pelopidas: “Thy sacrificial victim is come, good man; so let us not wait for any other virgin, but do thou accept and use the one which Heaven offers thee.” So they took the mare and led her to the tombs of the maidens, upon which, after decking her with garlands and consecrating her with prayers, they sacrificed her, rejoicing themselves, and publishing through the camp an account of the vision of Pelopidas and of the sacrifice.

23 1 In the battle, while Epaminondas was drawing his phalanx obliquely towards the left, in order that the right wing of the Spartans might be separated as far as possible from the rest of the Greeks, and that he might thrust back Cleombrotus by a fierce charge in column with all his men-at arms, the enemy understood what he was doing and began to change their formation; 2 they were opening up their right wing and making an encircling movement, in order to surround Epaminondas and envelop him with their numbers. But at this point Pelopidas darted forth from his position, and with his band of three hundred on the run, came up before Cleombrotus had either extended his wing or brought it back again into its old position and closed up his line of battle, so that the Lacedaemonians were not standing in array, but moving confusedly about among each other when his onset reached them. 3 And yet the Spartans, who were of all men past masters in the art of war, trained and accustomed themselves to nothing so much as not to straggle or get into confusion upon a change of formation, but to take anyone without exception as neighbour in rank or in file, and wheresoever danger actually threatened, to seize that point and form in close array and fight as well as ever. 4 At this time, however, since the phalanx of Epaminondas bore down upon them alone and neglected the rest of their force, and since Pelopidas engaged them with incredible speed and boldness, their courage and skill were so confounded that there was a flight and slaughter of the Spartans such as had never before been seen. 290 Therefore, although Epaminondas was boeotarch, Pelopidas, who was not boeotarch, and commanded only a small portion of the whole force, won as much glory for the success of that victory as he did.

24 1 Both were boeotarchs, however, when they invaded Peloponnesus and won over most of its peoples, detaching from the Lacedaemonian confederacy Elis, Argos, all Arcadia, and most of Laconia itself. Still, the winter solstice was at hand, and only a few days of the latter part of the last month of the year remained, and as soon as the first month of the new year began other officials must succeed them, or those who would not surrender their office must die. 2 The other boeotarchs, both because they feared this law, and because they wished to avoid the hardships of winter, were anxious to lead the army back home; but Pelopidas was first to add his vote to that of Epaminondas, and after inciting his countrymen to join them, led the army against Sparta and across the Eurotas. He took many of the enemy’s cities, and ravaged all their territory as far as the sea, leading an army of seventy thousand Greeks, of which the Thebans themselves were less than a twelfth part. 3 But the reputation of the two men, without a general vote or decree, induced all the allies to follow their leadership without a murmur. For the first and paramount law, as it would seem, namely, that of nature, subjects him who desires to be saved to the command of the man who can save him; just as sailors, when the weather is fair or they are lying off shore at anchor, treat their captains with bold insolence, but as soon as a storm arises and danger threatens, look to them for guidance and place their hopes in them. 4 And so Argives, Eleans, and Arcadians, who in their joint assemblies contended and strove with the Thebans for the supremacy, when battles were actually to be fought and perils to be faced, of their own will obeyed the Theban generals and followed them.

5 On this expedition they united all Arcadia into one power; rescued the country of Messenia from the hands of its Spartan masters and called back and restored the ancient Messenian inhabitants, with whom they settled Ithome; and on their way back homewards through Cenchreae, conquered the Athenians when they tried to hinder their passage by skirmishing with them in the passes.

25 1 In view of these achievements, all the rest of the Greeks were delighted with their valour and marvelled at their good fortune; but the envy of their own fellow-citizens, which was increasing with the men’s fame, prepared them a reception that was not honourable or fitting. For both were tried for their lives when they came back, because they had not handed over to others their office of boeotarch, as the law commanded, in the first month of the new year (which they call Boukatios), but had added four whole months to it, during which they conducted their campaign in Messenia, Arcadia, and Laconia.

2 Well, then Pelopidas was first brought to trial, and therefore ran the greater risk, but both were acquitted. Epaminondas bore patiently with this attempt to calumniate him, considering that forbearance under political injury was a large part of fortitude and magnanimity; but Pelopidas, who was naturally of a more fiery temper, and who was egged on by his friends to avenge himself upon his enemies, seized the following occasion. 3 Menecleidas, the orator, was one of those who had gathered with Pelopidas and Melon at Charon’s house, and since he did not receive as much honour among the Thebans as the others, being a most able speaker, 291 but intemperate and malicious in his disposition, he gave his natural gifts employment in calumniating and slandering his superiors, and kept on doing so even after the trial. 4 Accordingly, he succeeded in excluding Epaminondas from the office of boeotarch, and kept him out of political leadership for some time; but he had not weight enough to bring Pelopidas into disfavour with the people, and therefore tried to bring him into collision with Charon. And since it is quite generally a consolation to the envious, in the case of those whom they themselves cannot surpass in men’s estimation, to show these forth as somehow or other inferior to others, he was constantly magnifying the achievements of Charon, in his speeches to the people, and extolling his campaigns and victories. 5 Moreover, for the victory which the Theban cavalry won at Plataea, before the battle of Leuctra, under the command of Charon, he attempted to make the following public dedication. Androcydes of Cyzicus had received a commission from the city to make a picture of another battle, and was finishing the work at Thebes; but the city revolted from Sparta, and the war came on, before the picture was quite completed, and the Thebans now had it in their hands. 6 This picture, then, Menecleidas persuaded them to dedicate with Charon’s name inscribed thereon, hoping in this way to obscure the fame of Pelopidas and Epaminondas. But the ambitious scheme was a foolish one, when there were so many and such great conflicts, to bestow approval on one action and one victory, in which, we are told, a certain Gerandas, an obscure Spartan, and forty others were killed, but nothing else of importance was accomplished. 7 This decree was attacked as unconstitutional by Pelopidas, who insisted that it was not a custom with the Thebans to honour any one man individually, but for the whole country to have the glory of a victory. And through the whole trial of the case he continued to heap generous praise upon Charon, while he showed Menecleidas to be a slanderous and worthless fellow, and asked the Thebans if they had done nothing noble themselves; the result was that Menecleidas was fined, and being unable to pay the fine because it was so heavy, he afterwards tried to effect a revolution in the government. This episode, then, has some bearing on the Life which I am writing.

26 1 Now, since Alexander the tyrant of Pherae made open war on many of the Thessalians, and was plotting against them all, their cities sent ambassadors to Thebes asking for an armed force and a general. Pelopidas, therefore, seeing that Epaminondas was busy with his work in Peloponnesus, offered and assigned himself to the Thessalians, both because he could not suffer his own skill and ability to lie idle, and because he thought that wherever Epaminondas was there was no need of a second general. 2 Accordingly, after marching into Thessaly with an armed force, he straightway took Larissa, and when Alexander came to him and begged for terms, he tried to make him, instead of a tyrant, one who would govern the Thessalians mildly and according to law. But since the man was incurably brutish and full of savageness, and since there was much denunciation of his licentiousness and greed, Pelopidas became harsh and severe with him, whereupon he ran away with his guards. 3 Then Pelopidas, leaving the Thessalians in great security from the tyrant and in concord with one another, set out himself for Macedonia, where Ptolemy was at war with Alexander the king of the Macedonians. For both parties had invited him to come and be arbiter and judge between them, and ally and helper of the one that appeared to be wronged. 4 After he had come, then, and had settled their differences and brought home the exiles, he received as hostages Philip, the king’s brother, 292 and thirty other sons of the most illustrious men, and brought them to live at Thebes, thus showing the Greeks what an advance the Theban state had made in the respect paid to its power and the trust placed in its justice.

5 This was the Philip who afterwards waged war to enslave the Greeks, but at this time he was a boy, and lived in Thebes with Pammenes. Hence he was believed to have become a zealous follower of Epaminondas, perhaps because he comprehended his efficiency in wars and campaigns, which was only a small part of the man’s high excellence; but in restraint, justice, magnanimity, and gentleness, wherein Epaminondas was truly great, Philip had no share, either naturally or as a result of imitation.

27 1 After this, when the Thessalians again brought complaint against Alexander of Pherae as a disturber of their cities, Pelopidas was sent thither on an embassy with Ismenias; and since he brought no force from home with him, and did not expect war, he was compelled to employ the Thessalians themselves for the emergency. 2 At this time, too, Macedonian affairs were in confusion again, for Ptolemy had killed the king and now held the reins of government, and the friends of dead king were calling upon Pelopidas. Wishing, therefore, to appear upon the scene, but having no soldiers of his own, he enlisted some mercenaries on the spot, and with these marched at once against Ptolemy. 3 When, however, they were near each other, Ptolemy corrupted the mercenaries and bribed them to come over to his side; but since he feared the very name and reputation of Pelopidas, he met him as his superior, and after welcoming him and supplicating his favour, agreed to be regent for the brothers of the dead king, and to make an alliance with the Thebans; moreover, to confirm this, he gave him his son Philoxenus and fifty of his companions as hostages.  These, then, Pelopidas sent off to Thebes; but he himself, being indignant at the treachery of his mercenaries, and learning that most of their goods, together with their wives and children, had been placed for safety at Pharsalus, so that by getting these into his power he would sufficiently punish them for their affront to him, he got together some of the Thessalians and came to Pharsalus. 5 But just as he got there, Alexander the tyrant appeared before the city with his forces. Then Pelopidas and Ismenias, thinking that he was come to excuse himself for his conduct, went of their own accord to him, knowing, indeed, that he was an abandoned and blood-stained wretch, but expecting that because of Thebes and their own dignity and reputation they would suffer no harm. 6 But the tyrant, when he saw them coming up unarmed and unattended, straightway seized them and took possession of Pharsalus. By this step he awoke in all his subjects a shuddering fear; they thought that after an act of such boldness and iniquity he would spare nobody, and in all his dealings with men and affairs would act as one who now utterly despaired of his own life.

28 1 The Thebans, then, on hearing of this, were indignant, and sent out an army at once, although, since Epaminondas had somehow incurred their displeasure, they appointed other commanders for it. As for Pelopidas, after the tyrant had brought him back to Pherae, at first he suffered all who desired it to converse with him, thinking that his calamity had made him a pitiful and contemptible object; 2 but when Pelopidas exhorted the lamenting Pheraeans to be of good cheer, since now certainly the tyrant would meet with punishment, and when he sent a message to the tyrant himself, saying that it was absurd to torture and slay the wretched and innocent citizens day by day, while he spared him, a man most certain, as he knew, to take vengeance on him if he made his escape; 3 then the tyrant, amazed at his high spirit and his fearlessness, said: 293”And why is Pelopidas in haste to die?” To which Pelopidas replied: “That thou mayest the sooner perish, by becoming more hateful to the gods than now.” From that time the tyrant forbade those outside of his following to see the prisoner.

But Thebe, who was a daughter of Jason, and Alexander’s wife, learned from the keepers of Pelopidas how courageous and noble the man was, and conceived a desire to see him and talk with him. 4 But when she came to him, woman that she was, she could not at once recognize the greatness of his nature in such misfortune, but judging from his hair and garb and maintenance that he was suffering indignities which ill befitted a man of his reputation, she burst into tears. Pelopidas, not knowing at first what manner of woman she was, was amazed; but when he understood, he addressed her as daughter of Jason; for her father was a family friend of his. And when she said, “I pity thy wife,” he replied, “And I thee, in that thou wearest no chains, and yet endurest Alexander.” 5 This speech deeply moved the woman, for she was oppressed by the savage insolence of the tyrant, who, in addition to his other debaucheries, had made her youngest brother his paramour. Therefore her continued visits to Pelopidas, in which she spoke freely of her sufferings, gradually filled her with wrath and fierce hatred towards Alexander.

29 1 When the Theban generals had accomplished nothing by their invasion of Thessaly, but owing to inexperience or ill fortune had retired disgracefully, the city fined each of them ten thousand drachmas, and sent out Epaminondas with an armed force. 2 At once, then, there was a great stir among the Thessalians, who were filled with high hopes in view of the reputation of this general, and the cause of the tyrant was on the very verge of destruction; so great was the fear that fell upon his commanders and friends, and so great the inclination of his subjects to revolt, and their joy at what the future had in store, for they felt that now they should behold the tyrant under punishment. 3 Epaminondas, however, less solicitous for his own glory than for the safety of Pelopidas, and fearing that if confusion reigned Alexander would get desperate and turn like a wild beast upon his prisoner, dallied with the war, and taking a roundabout course, kept the tyrant in suspense by his preparations and threatened movements, thus neither encouraging his audacity and boldness, nor rousing his malignity and passion. 4 For he had learned how savage he was, and how little regard he had for right and justice, in that sometimes he buried men alive, and sometimes dressed them in the skins of wild boars or bears, and then set his hunting dogs upon them and either tore them in pieces or shot them down, making this his diversion; and at Meliboea and Scotussa, allied and friendly cities, when the people were in full assembly, he surrounded them with his body-guards and slaughtered them from the youth up; he also consecrated the spear with which he had slain his uncle Polyphron, decked it with garlands, and sacrificed to it as to a god, giving it the name of Tycho. 5 Once when he was seeing a tragedian act the “Trojan Women” of Euripides, he left the theatre abruptly, and sent a message to the actor bidding him be of good courage and not put forth any less effort because of his departure, for it was not out of contempt for his acting that he had gone away, but because he was ashamed to have the citizens see him, who had never taken pity on any man that he had murdered, weeping over the sorrows of Hecuba and Andromache. 6 It was this tyrant, however, who, terrified at the name and fame and distinction of the generalship of Epaminondas,

“Crouched down, though warrior bird, like slave, with drooping wings,”

294 and speedily sent a deputation to him which should explain his conduct. But Epaminondas could not consent that the Thebans should make peace and friendship with such a man; he did, however, make thirty days’ truce with him, and after receiving Pelopidas and Ismenias, returned home.

30 1 Now, when the Thebans learned that ambassadors from Sparta and Athens were on their way to the Great King to secure an alliance, they also sent Pelopidas thither; and this was a most excellent plan, in view of his reputation. For, in the first place, he went up through the provinces of the king as a man of name and note; for the glory of his conflicts the Lacedaemonians had not made its way slowly or to any slight extent through Asia, 2 but, when once the report of the battle at Leuctra had sped abroad, it was ever increased by the addition of some new success, and prevailed to the farthest recesses of the interior; and, in the second place, when the satraps and generals and commanders at the King’s court beheld him, they spoke of him with wonder, saying that this was the man who had expelled the Lacedaemonians from land and sea, and shut up between Taÿgetus and the Eurotas that Sparta which, a little while before, through Agesilaüs, had undertaken a war with the Great King and the Persians for the possession of Susa and Ecbatana. 3 This pleased Artaxerxes, of course, and he admired Pelopidas for his high reputation, and loaded him with honours, being desirous to appear lauded and courted by the greatest men. But when he saw him face of the face, and understood his proposals, which were more trustworthy than those of the Athenians, and simpler than those of the Lacedaemonians, 4 he was yet more delighted with him, and, with all the assurance of a king, openly showed the esteem in which he held him, and allowed the other ambassadors to see that he made of account of him. And yet he is thought to have shown Antalcidas the Lacedaemonian more honour than any other Greek, in that he took the chaplet which he had worn at a banquet, dipped it in perfume, and sent it to him. 5 To Pelopidas, indeed, he paid no such delicate compliment, but he sent him the greatest and most splendid of the customary gifts, and granted him his demands, namely, that the Greeks should be independent, Messene inhabited, and the Thebans regarded as the king’s hereditary friends.

With these answers, but without accepting any gifts except such as were mere tokens of kindness and goodwill, he set out for home; and this conduct of his, more than anything else, was the undoing of the other ambassadors. 6 Timagoras, at any rate, was condemned and executed by the Athenians, and if this was because of the multitude of gifts which he took, it was right and just; for he took not only gold and silver, but also an expensive couch and slaves to spread it, since, as he said, the Greeks did not know how; and besides, eighty cows with their cow-herds, since, as he said, he wanted cows’ milk for some ailment; and, finally, he was carried down to the sea in a litter, and had a present of four talents from the King with which to pay his carriers. But it was not his taking of gifts, as it would seem, that most exasperated the Athenians. 7 At any rate, Epicrates, his shield-bearer, once confessed that he had received gifts from the King, and talked of proposing a decree that instead of nine archons, nine ambassadors to the King should be elected annually from the poor and needy citizens, in order that they might take his gifts and be wealthy men, whereat the people only laughed. But they were incensed because the Thebans had things all their own way, not stopping to consider that the fame of Pelopidas was more potent than any number of rhetorical discourses with a man who ever paid deference to those who were mighty in arms.

31 1 This embassy, then, added not a little to the goodwill felt towards Pelopidas, on his return home, 295 because of the peopling of Messene and the independence of the other Greeks. But Alexander of Pherae had now resumed his old nature and was destroying not a few Thessalian cities; he had also put garrisons over the Achaeans of Phthiotis and the people of Magnesia. When, therefore, the cities learned that Pelopidas was returned, they at once sent ambassadors to Thebes requesting an armed force and him for its commander. 2 The Thebans readily decreed what they desired, and soon everything was in readiness and the commander about to set out, when the sun was eclipsed and the city was covered with darkness in the day-time. So Pelopidas, seeing that all were confounded at this manifestation, did not think it meet to use compulsion with men who were apprehensive and fearful, nor to run extreme hazard with seven thousand citizens, 3 but devoting himself alone to the Thessalians, and taking with him three hundred of the cavalry who were foreigners and who volunteered for the service, set out, although the seers forbade it, and the rest of the citizens disapproved; for the eclipse was thought to be a great sign from heaven, and to regard a conspicuous man. But his wrath at insults received made him very hot against Alexander, and, besides, his previous conversations with Thebe led him to hope that he should find the tyrant’s family already embroiled and disrupted. 4 More than anything else, however, the glory of the achievement invited him on, for he was ardently desirous, at a time when the Lacedaemonians were sending generals and governors to aid Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily, and the Athenians were taking Alexander’s pay and erecting a bronze statue of him as their benefactor, to show the Greeks that the Thebans alone were making expeditions for the relief of those whom tyrants oppressed, and were overthrowing in Greece those ruling houses which rested on violence and were contrary to the laws.

32 1 Accordingly, when he was come to Pharsalus, he assembled his forces and marched at once against Alexander. Alexander, also, seeing that the there were only a few Thebans with Pelopidas, while his own men-at arms were more than twice as many as the Thessalians, advanced as far as the temple of Thetis to meet him. When Pelopidas was told that the tyrant was coming up against him with a large force, “All the better,” he said, “for there will be more for us to conquer.”

2 At the place called Cynoscephalae, steep and lofty hills jut out into the midst of the plain, and both leaders set out to occupy these with their infantry. His horsemen, however, who were numerous and brave, Pelopidas sent against the horsemen of the enemy, and they prevailed over them and chased them out into the plain. But Alexander got possession of the hills first, 3 and when the Thessalian men-at arms came up later and tried to storm difficult and lofty places, he attacked and killed the foremost of them, and the rest were so harassed with missiles that they could accomplish nothing. Accordingly, when Pelopidas saw this, he called back his horsemen and ordered them to charge upon the enemy’s infantry where it still held together, while he himself seized his shield at once and ran to join those who were fighting on the hills. 4 Through the rear ranks he forced his way to the front, and filled all his men with such vigour and ardour that the enemy also thought them changed men, advancing to the attack with other bodies and spirits. Two or three of their onsets the enemy repulsed, but, seeing that these too were now attacking with vigour, and that the cavalry was coming back from its pursuit, they gave way and retreated step by step. 5 Then Pelopidas, looking down from the heights and seeing that the whole army of the enemy, though not yet put to flight, was already becoming full of tumult and confusion, stood and looked about him in search of Alexander. 296 And when he saw him on the right wing, marshalling and encouraging his mercenaries, he could not subject his anger to his judgement, but, inflamed at the sight, 6 and surrendering himself and his conduct of the enterprise to his passion, he sprang out far in front of the rest and rushed with challenging cries upon the tyrant. He, however, did not receive nor await the onset, but fled back to his guards and hid himself among them. The foremost of the mercenaries, coming to close quarters with Pelopidas, were beaten back by him; some also were smitten and slain; 7 but most of them fought at longer range, thrusting their spears through his armour and covering him with wounds, until the Thessalians, in distress for his safety, ran down from the hills, when he had already fallen, and the cavalry, charging up, routed the entire phalanx of the enemy, and following on a great distance in pursuit, filled the country with their dead bodies, slaying more than three thousand of them.

33 1 Now, that the Thebans who were present at the death of Pelopidas should be disconsolate, calling him their father and saviour and teacher of the greatest and fairest blessings, was not so much to be wondered at; but the Thessalians and allies also, after exceeding in their decrees every honour that can fitly be paid to human excellence, showed still more by their grief how grateful they were to him. 2 For it is said that those who were in the action neither took off their breastplates nor unbridled their horses nor bound up their wounds, when they learned of his death, but, still heated and in full armour, came first to the body, and as if it still had life and sense, heaped round it the spoils of the enemy, sheared their horses’ manes, and cut off their own hair; 3 and when they had gone to their tents, many neither kindled a fire nor took supper, but silence and dejection reigned through all the camp, as if they had not won a great and most brilliant victory, but had been defeated by the tyrant and made his slaves. 4 From the cities, too, when tidings of these things reached them, came the magistrates, accompanied by youths and boys and priests, to take up the body, and they brought trophies and wreaths and suits of golden armour. And when the body was to be carried forth for burial, the most reverend of the Thessalians came and begged the Thebans for the privilege of giving it burial themselves. And one of them said: “Friends and allies, we ask of you a favour which will be an honour to us in our great misfortune, and will give us consolation. 5 We men of Thessaly can never again escort a living Pelopidas on his way, nor pay him worthy honours of which he can be sensible; but if we may be permitted to compose and adorn his body with our own hands and give it burial, you will believe, we are persuaded, that this calamity is a greater one for Thessaly than for Thebes. For you have lost only a good commander; but we both that and freedom. For how shall we have the courage to ask another general from you, when we have not returned Pelopidas?” This request the Thebans granted.

34 1 Those funeral rites were never surpassed in splendour, in the opinion of those who do not think splendour to consist in ivory, gold, and purple, like Philistus, who tells in wondering strains about the funeral of Dionysius, which formed the pompous conclusion of the great tragedy of his tyranny. 2 Alexander the Great, too, when Hephaestion died, not only sheared the manes of his horses and mules, but actually took away the battlements of the city-walls, in order that the cities might seem to be in mourning, assuming a shorn and dishevelled appearance instead of their former beauty. These honours, however, were dictated by despots, 297 were performed under strong compulsion, and were attended with envy of those who received them and hatred of those who enforced them; they were a manifestation of no gratitude or esteem whatever, but of barbaric pomp and luxury and vain-glory, on the part of men who lavished their superfluous wealth on vain and sorry practices. 3 But that a man who was a commoner, dying in a strange country, in the absence of wife, children, and kinsmen, none asking and none compelling it, should be escorted and carried forth and crowned by so many peoples and cities eager to show him honour, rightly seemed to argue him supremely fortunate. 4 For the death of men in the hour of their triumph is not, as Aesop used to say, most grievous, but most blessed, since it puts in safe keeping their enjoyment of their blessings and leaves no room for change of fortune. Therefore the Spartan’s advice was better, who, when he greeted Diagoras, the Olympian victor, who had lived to see his sons crowned at Olympia, yes, and the sons of his sons and daughters, said: “Die now, Diagoras; thou canst not ascend to Olympus.” 5 But one would not deign, I think, to compare all the Olympian and Pythian victories put together with one of the struggles of Pelopidas; these were many, and he made them successfully, and after living most of his life in fame and honour, at last, while boeotarch for the thirteenth time, performing a deed of high valour which aimed at a tyrant’s life, he died in defence of the freedom of Thessaly.

35 1 The death of Pelopidas brought great grief to his allies, but even greater gain. For the Thebans, when they learned of it, delayed not their vengeance, but speedily made an expedition with seven thousand men-at arms and seven hundred horsemen, under the command of Malcitas and Diogeiton. 2 They found Alexander weakened and robbed of his forces, and compelled him to restore to the Thessalians the cities he had taken from them, to withdraw his garrisons and set free the Magnesians and the Achaeans of Phthiotis, and to take oath that he would follow the lead of the Thebans against any enemies according to their bidding. The Thebans, then, were satisfied with this; but the gods soon afterwards avenged Pelopidas, as I shall now relate.

3 To begin with, Thebe, the tyrant’s wife, as I have said, had been taught by Pelopidas not to fear the outward splendour and array of Alexander, since these depended wholly on his armed guards; and now, in her dread of his faithlessness and her hatred of his cruelty, she conspired with her three brothers, Tisiphonus, Pytholaüs, and Lycophron, and made an attempt upon his life, as follows. 4 The rest of the tyrant’s house was guarded by sentries at night, but the bed-chamber, where he and his wife were wont to sleep, was an upper room, and in front of it a chained dog kept guard, which would attack everyone except his master and mistress and the one servant who fed him. When, therefore, Thebe was about to make her attempt, she kept her brothers hidden all day in a room hard by, 5 and at night, as she was wont, went in alone to Alexander. She found him already asleep, and after a little, coming out again, ordered the servant to take the dog outdoors, for his master wanted to sleep undisturbed; and to keep the stairs from creaking as the young men came up, she covered them with wool. 6 Then, after bringing her brothers safely up, with their swords, and stationing them in front of the door, she went in herself, and taking down the sword that hung over her husband’s head, showed it to them as a sign that he was fast asleep. Finding the young men terrified and reluctant, 298 she upbraided them, and swore in a rage that she would wake Alexander herself and tell him of the plot, and so led them, ashamed and fearful too, inside, and placed them round the bed, to which she brought the lamp. 7 Then one of them clutched the tyrant’s feet and held them down, another dragged his head back by the hair, and the third ran him through with his sword. The swiftness of it made his death a milder one, perhaps, than was his due; but since he was the only, or the first, tyrant to die at the hands of his own wife, and since his body was outraged after death, being cast out and trodden under foot by the Pheraeans, he may be thought to have suffered what his lawless deeds deserved.

Marcellus

1 1 Marcus Claudius, who was five times consul of the Romans, was a son of Marcus, as we are told, and, according to Poseidonius, was the first of his family to be called Marcellus, which means Martial. For he was by experience a man of war, of a sturdy body and a vigorous arm. He was naturally fond of war, and in its conflicts displayed great impetuosity and high temper; 2 but otherwise he was modest, humane, and so far a lover of Greek learning and discipline as to honour and admire those who excelled therein, although he himself was prevented by his occupations from achieving a knowledge and proficiency here which corresponded to his desires. For if ever there were men to whom Heaven, as Homer says,

“From youth and to old age appointed the accomplishment of laborious wars,”

3 they were the chief Romans of that time, who, in their youth, waged war with the Carthaginians for Sicily; in their prime, with the Gauls to save Italy itself; and when they were now grown old, contended again with Hannibal and the Carthaginians, and did not have, like most men, that respite from service in the field which old age brings, but were called by their high birth and valour to undertake leaderships and commands in war.

2 1 Marcellus was efficient and practised in every kind of fighting, but in single combat he surpassed himself, never declining a challenge, and always killing his challengers. In Sicily he saved his brother Otacilius from peril of his life, covering him with his shield and killing those who were setting upon him. 2 Wherefore, although he was still a youth, he received garlands and prizes from his commanders, and since he grew in repute, the people appointed him curule aedile, and the priests, augur. This is a species of priesthood, to which the law particularly assigns the observation and study of prophetic signs from the flight of birds.

3 During his aedileship, he was compelled to bring a disagreeable impeachment into the senate. He had a son, named Marcus like himself, who was in the flower of his boyish beauty, and not less admired by his countrymen for his modesty and good training. To this boy Capitolinus, the colleague of Marcellus, a bold and licentious man, made overtures of love. The boy at first repelled the attempt by himself, but when it was made again, told his father. Marcellus, highly indignant, denounced the man in the senate. 4 The culprit devised many exceptions and ways of escape, appealing to the tribunes of the people, and when these rejected his appeal, he sought to escape the charge by denying it. There had been no witness of his proposals, and therefore the senate decided to summon the boy before them. When he appeared, and they beheld his blushes, tears, and shame mingled with quenchless indignation, they wanted no further proof, but condemned Capitolinus, and set a fine upon him. With this money Marcellus had silver libation-bowls made, and dedicated them to the gods.

3 1 After the first Punic war had come to an end in its twenty-second year, Rome was called upon to renew her struggles with the Gauls. The Insubrians, a people of Celtic stock inhabiting that part of Italy which lies at the foot of the Alps, and strong even by themselves, called out their forces, and summoned to their aid the mercenary Gauls called Gaesatae. 2 It seemed a marvellous piece of good fortune that the Gallic war did not break out while the Punic war was raging, but that the Gauls, like a third champion sitting by and awaiting his turn with the victor, remained strictly quiet while the other two nations were fighting, and then only stripped for combat when the victors were at liberty to receive their challenge. Nevertheless, the Romans were greatly alarmed by the proximity of their country to the enemy, with whom they could wage war so near their own boundaries and homes, as well as by the ancient renown of the Gauls, whom the Romans seems to have feared more than any other people. 3 For Rome had once been taken by them, and from that time on a Roman priest was legally exempt from military service only in case no Gallic war occurred again. Their alarm was also shown by their preparations for the war (neither before nor since that time, we are told, were there so many thousands of Romans in arms at once), and by the extraordinary sacrifices which they made to the gods. 4 For though they have no barbarous or unnatural practices, but cherish towards their deities those mild and reverent sentiments which especially characterize Greek thought, at the time when this war burst upon them they were constrained to obey certain oracular commands from the Sibylline books, and to bury alive two Greeks, a man and a woman, and likewise two Gauls, in the place called the “forum boarium”, or cattle-market; and in memory of these victims, they still to this day, in the month of November, perform mysterious and secret ceremonies.

4 1 The first conflicts of this war brought great victories and also great disasters to the Romans, and led to no sure and final conclusion; but at last Flaminius and Furius, the consuls, led forth large forces against the Insubrians. At the time of their departure, however, the river that flows through Picenum was seen to be running with blood, and it was reported that at Ariminum three moons had appeared in the heavens, 2 and the priests who watched the flight of birds at the time of the consular elections insisted that when the consuls were proclaimed the omens were inauspicious and baleful for them. At once, therefore, the senate sent letters to the camp, summoning the consuls to return to the city with all speed and lay down their office, and forbidding them, while they were still consuls, to take any steps against the enemy. 3 On receiving these letters, Flaminius would not open them before he had joined battle with the Barbarians, routed them, and overrun their country. Therefore, when he returned with much spoil, the people would not go out to meet him, but because he had not at once listened to his summons, and had disobeyed the letters, treating them with insolent contempt, they came near refusing him his triumph, and after his triumph, they compelled him to renounce the consulship with his colleague, and made him a private citizen. 4 To such a degree did the Romans make everything depend upon the will of the gods, and so intolerant were they of any neglect of omens and ancestral rites, even when attended by the greatest successes, considering it of more importance for the safety of the city that their magistrates should reverence religion than that they should overcome their enemies.

5 1 For example, Tiberius Sempronius, a man most highly esteemed by the Romans for his valour and probity, proclaimed Scipio Nasica and Caius Marcius his successors in the consulship, but when they had already taken command in their provinces, he came upon a book of religious observances wherein he found a certain ancient prescript of which he had been ignorant. 2 It was this. Whenever a magistrate, sitting in a hired house or tent outside the city to take auspices from the flight of birds, is compelled for any reason to return to the city before sure signs have appeared, he must give up the house first hired and take another, and from this he must take the observations anew. Of this, it would seem, Tiberius was not aware, and had twice used the same house before proclaiming the men I have mentioned as consuls. But afterwards, discovering this error, he referred the matter to the senate. 3 This body did not make light of so trifling an omission, but wrote to the consuls about it; and they, leaving their provinces, came back to Rome with speed, and laid down their offices. This, however, took place at a later time. But at about the time of which I am speaking, two most illustrious priests were deposed from their priesthoods, Cornelius Cethegus, because he presented the entrails of his victim improperly, 4 and Quintus Sulpicius, because, while he was sacrificing, the peaked cap which the priests called flamens’ wear had fallen from his head. Moreover, because the squeak of a shrew-mouse (they call it “sorex”) was heard just as Minucius the dictator appointed Caius Flaminius his master of horse, the people deposed these officials and put others in their places. And although they were punctilious in such trifling matters, they did not fall into any superstition, because they made no change or deviation in their ancient rites.

6 1 But to resume the story, after Flaminius and his colleague had renounced their offices, Marcellus was appointed consul by the so called “interreges”. He took the office, and appointed Gnaeus Cornelius his colleague. Now it has been said that, although the Gauls made many conciliatory proposals, and although the senate was peaceably inclined, Marcellus tried to provoke the people to continue the war. 2 However, it would seem that even after peace was made Gaesatae renewed the war; they crossed the Alps and stirred up the Insubrians. They numbered thirty thousand themselves, and the Insubrians, whom they joined, were much more numerous. With high confidence, therefore, they marched at once to Acerrae, a city situated to the north of the river Po. From thence Britomartus the king, taking with him ten thousand of the Gaesatae, ravaged the country about the Po. 3 When Marcellus learned of this, he left his colleague at Acerrae with all the heavy-armed infantry and a third part of the cavalry, while he himself, taking with him the rest of the cavalry and the most lightly equipped men-at arms to the number of six hundred, marched, without halting in his course day or night, until he came upon the ten thousand Gaesatae near the place called Clastidium, a Gallic village which not long before had become subject to the Romans. 4 There was no time for him to give his army rest and refreshment, for the Barbarians quickly learned of his arrival, and held in contempt the infantry with him, which were few in number all told, and, being Gauls, made no account of his cavalry. For they were most excellent fighters on horseback, and were thought to be specially superior as such, and, besides, at this time they far outnumbered Marcellus. Immediately, therefore, they charged upon him with great violence and dreadful threats, thinking to overwhelm him, their king riding in front of them. 5 But Marcellus, that they might not succeed in enclosing and surrounding him and his few followers, led his troops of cavalry forward and tried to outflank them, extending his wing into a thin line, until he was not far from the enemy. And now, just as he was turning to make a charge, his horse, frightened by the ferocious aspect of the enemy, wheeled about and bore mostly forcibly back. 6 But he, fearing lest this should be taken as a bad omen by the Romans and lead to confusion among them, quickly reined his horse round to the left and made him face the enemy, while he himself made adoration to the sun, implying that it was not by chance, but for this purpose, that he had wheeled about; for it is the custom with the Romans to turn round in this way when they make adoration to the gods. And in the moment of closing with the enemy he is said to have vowed that he would consecrate to Jupiter Feretrius the most beautiful suit of armour among them.

7 1 Meanwhile the king of the Gauls espied him, and judging from his insignia that he was the commander, rode far out in front of the rest and confronted him, shouting challenges and brandishing his spear. His stature exceeded that of the other Gauls, and he was conspicuous for a suit of armour which was set off with gold and silver and bright colours and all sorts of broideries; it gleamed like lightning. 2 Accordingly, as Marcellus surveyed the ranks of the enemy, this seemed to him to be the most beautiful armour, and he concluded that it was this which he had vowed to the god. He therefore rushed upon the man, and by a thrust of his spear which pierced his adversary’s breastplate, and by the impact of his horse in full career, threw him, still living, upon the ground, where, with a second and third blow, he promptly killed him. 3 Then leaping from his horse and laying his hands upon the armour of the dead, he looked towards heaven and said: “O Jupiter Feretrius, who beholdest the great deeds and exploits of generals and commanders in wars and fightings, I call thee to witness that I have overpowered and slain this man with my own hand, being the third Roman ruler and general so to slay a ruler and king, and that I dedicate to thee the first and most beautiful of the spoils. Do thou therefore grant us a like fortune as we prosecute the rest of the war.”

4 His prayer ended, the cavalry joined battle, fighting, not with the enemy’s horsemen alone, but also with their footmen who attacked them at the same time, and won a victory, in its sort and kind, was remarkable and strange. For never before or since, as we are told, have so few horsemen conquered so many horsemen and footmen together. After slaying the greater part of the enemy and getting possession of their arms and baggage, Marcellus returned to his colleague, who was hard put to it in his war with the Gauls near their largest and most populous city. 5 Mediolanum was the city’s name, and the Gauls considered it their metropolis; wherefore they fought eagerly in its defence, so that Cornelius was less besieger than besieged. But when Marcellus came up, and when the Gaesatae, on learning of the defeat and death of their king, withdrew, Mediolanum was taken, the Gauls themselves surrendered the rest of their cities, and put themselves entirely at the disposition of the Romans. They obtained peace on equitable terms.

8 1 The senate decreed a triumph to Marcellus alone, his triumphal procession was seldom equalled in its splendour and wealth and spoils and captives of gigantic size; but besides this, the most agreeable and the rarest spectacle of all was afforded when Marcellus himself carried to the god the armour of the barbarian king. 2 He had cut the trunk of a slender oak, straight and tall, and fashioned it into the shape of a trophy; on this he bound and fastened the spoils, arranging and adjusting each piece in due order. When the procession began to move, he took the trophy himself and mounted the chariot, and thus a trophy-bearing figure more conspicuous and beautiful than any in his day passed in triumph through the city. The army followed, arrayed in the most beautiful armour, singing odes composed for the occasion, together with paeans of victory in praise of the god and their general. 3 Thus advancing and entering the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, he set up and consecrated his offering, being the third and last to do so, down to our time. The first was Romulus, who despoiled Acron the Caeninensian; the second was Cornelius Cossus, who despoiled Tolumnius the Tuscan; and after them Marcellus, who despoiled Britomartus, king of the Gauls; but after Marcellus, no man. 4 The god to whom the spoils were dedicated was called Jupiter Feretrius, as some say, because the trophy was carried on a “pheretron,” or car; this is a Greek word, and many such were still mingled at that time with the Latin; according to others, the epithet is given to Jupiter as wielder of the thunder-bolt, the Latin “ferire” meaning to smite. But others say the name is derived from the blow one gives an enemy, since even now in battles, when they are pursuing their enemies, they exhort one another with the word “feri,” which means smite! Spoils in general they call “spolia,” and these in particular, “opima.” 5 And yet they say that Numa Pompilius, in his commentaries, makes mention of three kinds of “opima,” prescribing that when the first kind are taken, they should be consecrated to Jupiter Feretrius, the second to Mars, and the third to Quirinus; also that the reward for the first should be three hundred asses, for the second two hundred, and for the third one hundred. However, the general and prevailing account is that only those spoils are “opima” which are taken first, in a pitched battle, where general slays general. So much, then, on this subject.

6 The Romans were so overjoyed at this victory and the ending of the war that they sent to the Pythian Apollo at Delphi a golden bowl . . . as a thank-offering, gave a splendid share of the spoils to their allied cities, and sent many to Hiero, the king of Syracuse, who was their friend and ally.

9 1 After Hannibal had invaded Italy, Marcellus was sent to Sicily with a fleet. And when the disaster at Cannae came, and many thousands of Romans had been slain in the battle, and only a few had saved themselves by flying to Canusium, and it was expected that Hannibal would march at once against Rome, now that he had destroyed the flower of her forces, 2 in the first place, Marcellus sent fifteen hundred men from his ships to protect the city; then, under orders from the senate, he went to Canusium, and taking the troops that had gathered there, led them out of the fortifications to show that he would not abandon the country. Most of the leaders and influential men among the Romans had fallen in battle; and as for Fabius Maximus, who was held in the greatest esteem for his sagacity and trustworthiness, his excessive care in planning to avoid losses was censured as cowardly inactivity. 3 The people thought they had in him a general who sufficed for the defensive, but was inadequate for the offensive, and therefore turned their eyes upon Marcellus; and mingling and uniting his boldness and activity with the caution and forethought of Fabius, they sometimes elected both to be consuls together, and some made them, by turns, consul and proconsul, and sent them into the field. 4 Poseidonius says that Fabius was called a shield, and Marcellus a sword. And Hannibal himself used to say that he feared Fabius as a tutor, but Marcellus as an adversary; for by the one he was prevented from doing any harm, while by the other he was actually harmed.

10 1 To begin with, then, since Hannibal’s victory had made his soldiers very bold and careless, Marcellus set upon them as they straggled from their camp and overran the country, cut them down, and thus slowly diminished their forces; secondly, he brought aid to Neapolis and Nola. In Neapolis he merely confirmed the minds of the citizens, who were of their own choice steadfast friends of Rome; but on entering Nola, he found a state of discord, the senate being unable to regulate and manage the people, which favoured Hannibal. 2 For there was a man in the city of the highest birth and of illustrious valour, whose name was Bantius. This man had fought with conspicuous bravery at Cannae, and had slain many Carthaginians, and when he was at last found among the dead with his body full of missiles, Hannibal was struck with admiration of him, and not only let him go without a ransom, but actually added gifts, and made him his friend and guest. 3 In return for this favour, then, Bantius was one of those who eagerly favoured the cause of Hannibal, and was using his great influence to bring the people to a revolt. Marcellus thought it wrong to put to death a man so illustrious in his good fortune who had taken part with the Romans in their greatest conflicts, and, besides his natural kindliness, he had an address that was likely to win over a character whose ambition was for honour. One day, therefore, when Bantius saluted him, he asked him who he was, not that he had not known him for some time, but seeking occasion and excuse for conversation with him. 4 For when he said, “I am Lucius Bantius,” Marcellus, as if astonished and delighted, said: “What! are you that Bantius who is more talked of in Rome than any of those who fought at Cannae, as the only man who did not abandon Paulus Aemilius the consul, but encountered and received in his own body most of the missiles aimed at him?” 5 And when Bantius assented and showed him some of his scars, “Why, then,” said Marcellus, “when you bear such marks of your friendship towards us, did you not come to us at once? Can it be that you think us loath to requite valour in friends who are honoured even among our enemies?” These kindly greetings he followed up by making him presents of a war horse and five hundred drachmas in silver.

11 After this Bantius was a most steadfast partisan and ally of Marcellus, and a most formidable denouncer and accuser of those who belonged to the opposite party. These were many, and they purposed, when the Romans went out against the enemy, to plunder their baggage. 2 Marcellus therefore drew up his forces inside the city, stationed his baggage-trains near the gates, and issued an edict forbidding the men of Nola to come near the city walls. Consequently there were no armed men to be seen, and Hannibal was thus induced to lead up his forces in some disorder, supposing the city to be in a tumult. But at this juncture Marcellus ordered the gate where he stood to be thrown open, and marched out, having with him the flower of his horsemen, and charging directly down upon the enemy joined battle with them. 3 After a little his footmen also, by another gate, advanced to the attack on the run and with shouts. And still again, while Hannibal was dividing his forces to meet these, the third gate was thrown open, and through it the rest rushed forth and fell upon their enemies on every side. These were dismayed by the unexpected onset, and made a poor defence against those with whom they were already engaged because of those who charged upon them later. Here for the first time the soldiers of Hannibal gave way before the Romans, being beaten back to their camp with much slaughter and many wounds. 4 For it is said that more than five thousand of them were slain, while they killed not more than five hundred of the Romans. Livy, however, will not affirm that the victory was so great nor that so many of the enemy were slain, but says that this battle brought a great renown to Marcellus, and to the Romans a wonderful courage after their disasters. They felt that they were contending, not against a resistless and unconquerable foe, but against one who was liable, like themselves, to defeat.

12 1 For this reason, on the death of one of the consuls, the people called Marcellus home to succeed him, and, in spite of the magistrates, postponed the election until his return from the army. He was made consul by a unanimous vote, but there was a peal of thunder at the time, and since the augurs considered the omen unpropitious, but hesitated to make open opposition for fear of the people, he renounced the office of himself. 2 He did not, however, lay aside his military command, but having been declared proconsul, he returned to his army at Nola and proceeded to punish those who had espoused the cause of the Carthaginian. And when Hannibal came swiftly to their aid against him, and challenged him to a pitched battle, Marcellus declined an engagement; but as soon as his adversary had set the greater part of his army to plundering and was no longer expecting a battle, he led his forces out against him. He had distributed long spears used in naval combats among his infantry, and taught them to watch their opportunity and smite the Carthaginians at long range; these were not javelineers, but used short spears in hand-to hand fighting. 3 This seems to have been the reason why at that time all the Carthaginians who were engaged turned their backs upon the Romans and took to unhesitating flight, losing five thousand of their number slain, and six hundred prisoners; four of their elephants also were killed, and two taken alive. But what was most important, on the third day after the battle, more than three hundred horsemen, composed of Spaniards and Numidians, deserted from them. Such a disaster had not happened before this to Hannibal, but a barbarian army made up of varied and dissimilar peoples had for a very long time been kept by him in perfect harmony. These deserters, then, remained entirely faithful both to Marcellus himself, and to the generals who succeeded him.

13 1 And now Marcellus, having been appointed consul for the third time, sailed to Sicily. For Hannibal’s successes in the war had encouraged the Carthaginians to attempt anew the conquest of the island, especially now that Syracuse was in confusion after the death of the tyrant Hieronymus. For this reason the Romans also had previously sent a force thither under the command of Appius. 2 As Marcellus took over this force, he was beset by many Romans who were involved in a calamity now to be described. Of those who had been drawn up against Hannibal at Cannae, some had fled, and others had been taken alive, and in such numbers that it was thought the Romans had not even men enough left to defend the walls of their city. 3 And yet so much of their high spirit and haughtiness remained that, although Hannibal offered to restore his prisoners of war for a slight ransom, they voted not to receive them, but suffered some of them to be put to death and others to be sold out of Italy; and as for the multitude who had saved themselves by flight, they sent them to Sicily, ordering them not to set foot in Italy as long as the war against Hannibal lasted. 4 These were the men who, now that Marcellus was come, beset him in throngs, and throwing themselves on the ground before him, begged with many cries and tears for an assignment to honourable military service, promising to show by their actions that their former defeat had been due to some great misfortune rather than to cowardice. Marcellus, therefore, taking pity on them, wrote to the senate asking permission to fill up the deficiencies in his army from time to time with these men. 5 But after much discussion the senate declared its opinion that the Roman commonwealth had no need of men who were cowards; if, however, as it appeared, Marcellus wished to use them, they were to receive from their commander none of the customary crowns or prizes for valour. This decree vexed Marcellus, and when he came back to Rome after the war in Sicily, he upbraided the senate for not permitting him, in return for his many great services, to redeem so many citizens from misfortune.

14 1 But in Sicily, at the time of which I speak, his first proceeding, after wrong had been done him by Hippocrates, the commander of the Syracusans (who, to gratify the Carthaginians and acquire the tyranny for himself, had killed many Romans at Leontini), was to take the city of Leontini by storm. He did no harm, however, to its citizens, but all the deserters whom he took he ordered to be beaten with rods and put to death. 2 Hippocrates first sent a report to Syracuse that Marcellus was putting all of the men of Leontini to the sword, and then, when the city was in a tumult at the news, fell suddenly upon it and made himself master of it. Upon this, Marcellus set out with his whole army and came to Syracuse. He encamped near by, and sent ambassadors into the city to tell the people what had really happened at Leontini; but when this was of no avail and the Syracusans would not listen to him, the power being now in the hands of Hippocrates, 3 he proceeded to attack the city by land and sea, Appius leading up the land forces, and he himself having a fleet of sixty quinqueremes filled with all sorts of arms and missiles. Moreover, he had erected an engine of artillery on a huge platform supported by eight galleys fastened together, and with this sailed up to the city wall, confidently relying on the extent and splendour of his equipment and his own great fame. But all this proved to be of no account in the eyes of Archimedes and in comparison with the engines of Archimedes. 4 To these he had by no means devoted himself as work worthy of his serious effort, but most of them were mere accessories of a geometry practised for amusement, since in bygone days Hiero the king had eagerly desired and at last persuaded him to turn his art somewhat from abstract notions to material things, and by applying his philosophy somehow to the needs which make themselves felt, to render it more evident to the common mind.

5 For the art of mechanics, now so celebrated and admired, was first originated by Eudoxus and Archytas, who embellished geometry with its subtleties, and gave to problems incapable of proof by word and diagram, a support derived from mechanical illustrations that were patent to the senses. For instance, in solving the problem of finding two mean proportional lines, a necessary requisite for many geometrical figures, both mathematicians had recourse to mechanical arrangements, adapting to their purposes certain intermediate portions of curved lines and sections. 6 But Plato was incensed at this, and inveighed against them as corrupters and destroyers of the pure excellence of geometry, which thus turned her back upon the incorporeal things of abstract thought and descended to the things of sense, making use, moreover, of objects which required much mean and manual labour. For this reason mechanics was made entirely distinct from geometry, and being for a long time ignored by philosophers, came to be regarded as one of the military arts.

7 And yet even Archimedes, who was a kinsman and friend of King Hiero, wrote to him that with any given force it was possible to move any given weight; and emboldened, as we are told, by the strength of his demonstration, he declared that, if there were another world, and he could go to it, he could move this. 8 Hiero was astonished, and begged him to put his proposition into execution, and show him some great weight moved by a slight force. Archimedes therefore fixed upon a three-masted merchantman of the royal fleet, which had been dragged ashore by the great labours of many men, and after putting on board many passengers and the customary freight, he seated himself at a distance from her, and without any great effort, but quietly setting in motion with his hand a system of compound pulleys, drew her towards him smoothly and evenly, as though she were gliding through the water. 9 Amazed at this, then, and comprehending the power of his art, the king persuaded Archimedes to prepare for him offensive and defensive engines to be used in every kind of siege warfare. These he had never used himself, because he spent the greater part of his life in freedom from war and amid the festal rites of peace; but at the present time his apparatus stood the Syracusans in good stead, and, with the apparatus, its fabricator.

15 1 When, therefore, the Romans assaulted them by sea and land, the Syracusans were stricken dumb with terror; they thought that nothing could withstand so furious an onset by such forces. But Archimedes began to ply his engines, and shot against the land forces of the assailants all sorts of missiles and immense masses of stones, which came down with incredible din and speed; nothing whatever could ward off their weight, but they knocked down in heaps those who stood in their way, and threw their ranks into confusion. 2 At the same time huge beams were suddenly projected over the ships from the walls, which sank some of them with great weights plunging down from on high; others were seized at the prow by iron claws, or beaks like the beaks of cranes, drawn straight up into the air, and then plunged stern foremost into the depths, or were turned round and round by means of enginery within the city, and dashed upon the steep cliffs that jutted out beneath the wall of the city, with great destruction of the fighting men on board, who perished in the wrecks. 3 Frequently, too, a ship would be lifted out of the water into mid-air, whirled hither and thither as it hung there, a dreadful spectacle, until its crew had been thrown out and hurled in all directions, when it would fall empty upon the walls, or slip away from the clutch that had held it. As for the engine which Marcellus was bringing up on the bridge of ships, and which was called “sambuca” from some resemblance it had to the musical instrument of that name, 4 while it was still some distance off in its approach to the wall, a stone of ten talents’ weight was discharged at it, then a second and a third; some of these, falling upon it with great din and surge of wave, crushed the foundation of the engine, shattered its frame-work, and dislodged it from the platform, so that Marcellus, in perplexity, ordered his ships to sail back as fast as they could, and his land forces to retire.

5 Then, in a council of war, it was decided to come up under the walls while it was still night, if they could; for the ropes which Archimedes used in his engines, since they imparted great impetus to the missiles cast, would, they thought, send them flying over their heads, but would be ineffective at close quarters, where there was no place for the cast. Archimedes, however, as it seemed, had long before prepared for such an emergency engines with a range adapted to any interval and missiles of short flight, and through many small and contiguous openings in the wall short-range engines called scorpions could be brought to bear on objects close at hand without being seen by the enemy.

16 1 When, therefore, the Romans came up under the walls, thinking themselves unnoticed, once more they encountered a great storm of missiles; huge stones came tumbling down upon them almost perpendicularly, and the wall shot out arrows at them from every point; they therefore retired. 2 And here again, when they were some distance off, missiles darted forth and fell upon them as they were going away, and there was great slaughter among them; many of their ships, too, were dashed together, and they could not retaliate in any way upon their foes. For Archimedes had built most of his engines close behind the wall, and the Romans seemed to be fighting against the gods, now that countless mischiefs were poured out upon them from an invisible source.

17 1 However, Marcellus made his escape, and jesting with his own artificers and engineers, “Let us stop,” said he, “fighting against this geometrical Briareus, who uses our ships like cups to ladle water from the sea, and has whipped and driven off in disgrace our sambuca, and with the many missiles which he shoots against us all at once, outdoes the hundred-handed monsters of mythology.” 2 For in reality all the rest of the Syracusans were but a body for the designs of Archimedes, and his the one soul moving and managing everything; for all other weapons lay idle, and his alone were then employed by the city both in offence and defence. 3 At last the Romans became so fearful that, whenever they saw a bit of rope or a stick of timber projecting a little over the wall, “There it is,” they cried, “Archimedes is training some engine upon us,” and turned their backs and fled. Seeing this, Marcellus desisted from all fighting and assault, and thenceforth depended on a long siege.

And yet Archimedes possessed such a lofty spirit, so profound a soul, and such a wealth of scientific theory, that although his inventions had won for him a name and fame for superhuman sagacity, 4 he would not consent to leave behind him any treatise on this subject, but regarding the work of an engineer and every art that ministers to the needs of life as ignoble and vulgar, he devoted his earnest efforts only to those studies the subtlety and charm of which are not affected by the claims of necessity. These studies, he thought, are not to be compared with any others; in them the subject matter vies with the demonstration, the former supplying grandeur and beauty, the latter precision and surpassing power. 5 For it is not possible to find in geometry more profound and difficult questions treated in simpler and purer terms. Some attribute this success to his natural endowments; others think it due to excessive labour that everything he did seemed to have been performed without labour and with ease. For no one could by his own efforts discover the proof, and yet as soon as he learns it from him, he thinks he might have discovered it himself; so smooth and rapid is the path by which he leads one to the desired conclusion. 6 And therefore we may not disbelieve the stories told about him, how, under the lasting charm of some familiar and domestic Siren, he forgot even his food and neglected the care of his person; and how, when he was dragged by main force, as he often was, to the place for bathing and anointing his body, he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes, and draw lines with his finger in the oil with which his body was anointed, being possessed by a great delight, and in very truth a captive of the Muses. 7 And although he made many excellent discoveries, he is said to have asked his kinsmen and friends to place over the grave where he should be buried a cylinder enclosing a sphere, with an inscription giving the proportion by which the containing solid exceeds the contained.a

18 1 Such, then, was Archimedes, and, so far as he himself was concerned, he maintained himself and his city unconquered. But during the progress of the siege Marcellus captured Megara, one of the most ancient cities of Sicily; he also captured the camp of Hippocrates at Acrillae and killed more than eight thousand men, having attacked them as they were throwing up entrenchments; furthermore, he overran a great part of Sicily, brought cities over from the Carthaginians, and was everywhere victorious over those who ventured to oppose him. 2 Some time afterwards he made a prisoner of a certain Damippus, a Spartan who tried to sail away from Syracuse. The Syracusans sought to ransom this man back, and during the frequent meetings and conferences which he held with them about the matter, Marcellus noticed a certain tower that was carelessly guarded, into which men could be secretly introduced, since the wall near it was easy to surmount. 3 When, therefore, in his frequent approaches to it for holding these conferences, the height of the tower had been carefully estimated, and ladders had been prepared, he seized his opportunity when the Syracusans were celebrating a festival in honour of Artemis and were given over to wine and sport, and before they knew of his attempt not only got possession of the tower, but also filled the wall round about with armed men, before the break of day, and cut his way through the Hexapyla. 4 When the Syracusans perceived this and began to run about confusedly, he ordered the trumpets to sound on all sides at once and thus put them to flight in great terror, believing as they did that no part of the city remained uncaptured. There remained, however, the strongest, most beautiful, and largest part (called Achradina), because it had been fortified on the side towards the outer city, one part of which they call Neapolis, and another Tyche.

19 1 When these parts also were in his possession, at break of day Marcellus went down into the city through the Hexapyla, congratulated by the officers under him. He himself, however, as he looked down from the heights and surveyed the great and beautiful city, is said to have wept much in commiseration of its impending fate, bearing in mind how greatly its form and appearance would change in a little while, after his army had sacked it. 2 For among his officers there was not a man who had the courage to oppose the soldiers’ demand for a harvest of plunder, nay, many of them actually urged that the city should be burned and razed to the ground. This proposal, however, Marcellus would not tolerate at all, but much against his will, and under compulsion, he permitted booty to be made of property and slaves, although he forbade his men to lay hands on the free citizens, and strictly ordered them neither to kill nor outrage nor enslave any Syracusan.

3 However, although he seems to have acted with such moderation, he thought that the city suffered a lamentable fate, and amidst the great rejoicing of his followers his spirit nevertheless evinced his sympathy and commiseration when he saw a great and glorious prosperity vanishing in a brief time. For it is said that no less wealth was carried away from Syracuse now than at a later time from Carthage; for not long afterwards the rest of the city was betrayed and taken and subjected to pillage, excepting the royal treasure; this was converted into the public treasury.

4 But what most of all afflicted Marcellus was the death of Archimedes. For it chanced that he was by himself, working out some problem with the aid of a diagram, and having fixed his thoughts and his eyes as well upon the matter of his study, he was not aware of the incursion of the Romans or of the capture of the city. Suddenly a soldier came upon him and ordered him to go with him to Marcellus. This Archimedes refused to do until he had worked out his problem and established his demonstration, 5 whereupon the soldier flew into a passion, drew his sword, and dispatched him. Others, however, say that the Roman came upon him with drawn sword threatening to kill him at once, and that Archimedes, when he saw him, earnestly besought him to wait a little while, that he might not leave the result that he was seeking incomplete and without demonstration; but the soldier paid no heed to him and made an end of him. 6 There is also a third story, that as Archimedes was carrying to Marcellus some of his mathematical instruments, such as sun-dials and spheres and quadrants, by means of which he made the magnitude of the sun appreciable to the eye,b some soldiers fell in with him, and thinking that he was carrying gold in the box, slew him. However, it is generally agreed that Marcellus was afflicted at his death, and turned away from his slayer as from a polluted person, and sought out the kindred of Archimedes and paid them honour.

20 1 The Romans were considered by foreign peoples to be skilful in carrying on war and formidable fighters; but of gentleness and humanity and, in a word, of civil virtues, they had given no proofs, and at this time Marcellus seems to have been the first to show the Greeks that the Romans were the more observant of justice. 2 For such was his treatment of those who had to do with him, and so many were the benefits which he conferred both upon cities and private persons, that, if the people of Enna or Megara or Syracuse met with any indignities, the blame for these was thought to belong to the sufferers rather than to the perpetrators. And I will mention one instance out of many. There is a city of Sicily called Engyium, not large, but very ancient, and famous for the appearance there of goddesses, who are called Mothers. 3 The temple is said to have been built by Cretans, and certain spears were shown there, and bronze helmets; some of these bore the name of Meriones, and others that of Ulysses (that is, Odysseus), who had consecrated them to the goddesses. This city, which most ardently favoured the Carthaginian cause, Nicias, its leading citizen, tried to induce to go over to the Romans, speaking openly and boldly in the assemblies and arguing the unwisdom of his opponents. 4 But they, fearing his influence and authority, planned to arrest him and deliver him up to the Carthaginians. Nicias, accordingly, becoming aware at once of their design and of their secret watch upon him, gave utterance in public to unbecoming speeches about the Mothers, and did much to show that he rejected and despised the prevalent brief in their manifestations, his enemies meanwhile rejoicing that he was making himself most to blame for his coming fate. 5 But just as they were ready to arrest him, an assembly of the citizens was held, and here Nicias, right in the midst of some advice that he was giving to the people, suddenly threw himself upon the ground, and after a little while, amid the silence and consternation which naturally prevailed, lifted his head, turned it about, and spoke in a low and trembling voice, little by little raising and sharpening its tones. And when he saw the whole audience struck dumb with horror, he tore off his mantle, rent his tunic, and leaping up half naked, ran towards the exit from the theatre, crying out that he was pursued by the Mothers. 6 No man venturing to lay hands upon him or even to come in his way, out of superstitious fear, but all avoiding him, he ran out to the gate of the city, freely using all the cries and gestures that would become a man possessed and crazed. His wife also, who was privy to his scheme, taking her children with her, first prostrated in supplication before the temples of the gods, and then, pretending to seek her wandering husband, no man hindering her, went safely forth out of the city. 7 Thus they all escaped to Marcellus at Syracuse. But when Marcellus, after many transgressions and insults on the part of the men of Engyium, came and put them all in chains in order to punish them, then Nicias, standing by, burst into tears, and finally, clasping the hands and knees of Marcellus, begged the lives of his fellow citizens, beginning with his enemies. Marcellus relented, set them all free, and did their city no harm; he also bestowed upon Nicias ample lands and many gifts. At any rate, this story is told by Poseidonius the philosopher.

21 1 When Marcellus was recalled by the Romans to the war in their home territories, he carried back with him the greater part and the most beautiful of the dedicatory offerings in Syracuse, that they might grace his triumph and adorn his city. For before this time Rome neither had nor knew about such elegant and exquisite productions, nor was there any love there for such graceful and subtle art; 2 but filled full of barbaric arms and bloody spoils, and crowned round about with memorials and trophies of triumphs, she was not a gladdening or a reassuring sight, nor one for unwarlike and luxurious spectators. Indeed, as Epaminondas called the Boeotian plain a “dancing floor of Ares,” and as Xenophon speaks of Ephesus as a “work-shop of war,” so, it seems to me, one might at that time have called Rome, in the language of Pindar, “a precinct of much-warring Ares.” 3 Therefore with the common people Marcellus won more favour because he adorned the city with objects that had Hellenic grace and charm and fidelity; but with the elder citizens Fabius Maximus was more popular. For he neither disturbed nor brought away anything of the sort from Tarentum, when that city was taken, but while he carried off the money and the other valuables, he suffered the statues to remain in their places, adding the well-known saying: 4 “Let us leave these gods in their anger for the Tarentines.” And they blamed Marcellus, first, because he made the city odious, in that not only men, but even gods were led about in her triumphal processions like captives; 5 and again, because, when the people was accustomed only to war or agriculture, and was inexperienced in luxury and ease, but, like the Heracles of Euripides, was

“Plain, unadorned, in a great crisis brave and true,”

he made them idle and full of glib talk about art and artists, so that they spent a great part of the day in such clever disputation. Notwithstanding such censure, Marcellus spoke of this with pride even to the Greeks, declaring that he had taught the ignorant Romans to admire and honour the wonderful and beautiful productions of Greece.

22 1 But when the enemies of Marcellus opposed his triumph, because something still remained to be done in Sicily and a third triumph would awaken jealousy, he consented of his own accord to conduct the complete and major triumph to the Alban mount, but to enter the city in the minor triumph; this is called “eua” by the Greeks, and “ova” by the Romans. 2 In conducting it the general does not mount upon a four-horse chariot, nor wear a wreath of laurel, nor have trumpets sounding about him; but he goes afoot with shoes on, accompanied by the sound of exceeding many flutes, and wearing a wreath of myrtle, so that his appearance is unwarlike and friendly rather than terrifying. And this is the strongest proof to my mind that in ancient times the two triumphs were distinguished, not by the magnitude, but by the manner, of the achievements which they celebrated. 3 For those who won the mastery by fighting and slaying their enemies celebrated, as it would seem, that martial and terrible triumph, after wreathing their arms and their men with abundant laurel, just as they were wont to do when they purified their armies with lustral rites; while to those generals who had had no need of war, but had brought everything to a good issue by means of conference, persuasion, and argument, the law awarded the privilege of conducting, like a paean of thanksgiving, this unwarlike and festal procession. 4 For the flute is an instrument of peace, and the myrtle is a plant of Aphrodite, who more than all the other gods abhors violence and wars. And this minor triumph is called “ova,” not from the Greek “euasmos,” as most think (since they conduct the major triumph also with songs and cries of “eua!”), but the name has been wrested by the Greeks into conformity with their speech, since they are persuaded that something of the honour has to do with Dionysus also, whom they call Euius and Thriambus. This, however, is not the true explanation; but it was the custom for commanders, in celebrating the major triumph, to sacrifice an ox, whereas in the minor triumph they sacrificed a sheep. Now, the Roman name for sheep is “ova,” and from this circumstance the lesser triumph is called ova. 5 And it is worth our while to notice that the Spartan lawgiver appointed his sacrifices in a manner opposite to that of the Romans. For in Sparta a returning general who had accomplished his plans by cunning deception or persuasion, sacrificed an ox; he who had won by fighting, a cock. For although they were most warlike, they thought an exploit accomplished by means of argument and sagacity greater and more becoming to a man than one achieved by violence and valour. How the case really stands, I leave an open question.

23 1 While Marcellus was serving as consul for the fourth time, his enemies induced the Syracusans to come to Rome and accuse and denounce him before the senate for terrible wrongs which they had suffered contrary to the terms of surrender. It chanced, then, that Marcellus was performing a sacrifice on the Capitol, but, the senate being still in session, the Syracusans hurried before it and begged that they might have a hearing and justice. The colleague of Marcellus tried to have them expelled, 2 angrily explaining that Marcellus was not present; but Marcellus, when he heard of it, came at once. And first, sitting as consul in his curule chair, he transacted the routine business; then, when this was all ended, coming down from his curule chair and taking his stand as a private citizen in the place where men under accusation usually plead their cause, he gave the Syracusans opportunity to press their charge. 3 But they were terribly confounded by his dignity and confidence, and thought him yet more formidable and hard to confront in his robe of purple than he had been irresistible in arms. However, being encouraged by the rivals of Marcellus, they began their denunciation and rehearsed their demands for justice, which were mingled with much lamentation. 4 The gist of their plea was that, although they were allies and friends of the Romans, they had suffered at the hands of Marcellus what other generals allowed many of their enemies to escape. To this Marcellus made answer that in return for many injuries which they had done to the Romans, they had suffered nothing except what men whose city has been taken by storm in war cannot possibly be prevented from suffering; and that their city had been so taken was their own fault, because they had refused to listen to his many exhortations and persuasions. 5 For it was not by their tyrants that they had been forced into war, nay, they had elected those very tyrants for the purpose of going to war.

When the speeches were ended, and the Syracusans, as the custom was, withdrew from the senate, Marcellus went forth with them, after giving to his colleague the presidency of the senate, and lingered before the doors of the senate-house, allowing no change in his accustomed demeanour either because he feared the sentence, or was angry with the Syracusans, but with complete gentleness and decorum awaiting the issue of the case. 6 And when the votes had been cast, and he was proclaimed not guilty, the Syracusans fell at his feet, begging him with tears to remit his wrath against the embassy there present, and to take pity on the rest of the city, which always was mindful of the favours conferred upon it and grateful for them. Marcellus, accordingly, relented, and was reconciled with the embassy, and to the rest of the Syracusans was ever afterwards constant in doing good. 7 The freedom, also, which he had restored to them, as well as their laws and what was left of their possessions, the senate confirmed to them. Wherefore Marcellus received many surpassing honours from them, and particularly they made a law that whenever he or any one of his descendants should set foot in Sicily, the Syracusans should wear garlands and sacrifice to the gods.

24 1 After this he moved at once against Hannibal. And although almost all the other consuls and commanders, after the disaster at Cannae, made the avoidance of all fighting their sole plan of campaign against the antagonist, no one had the courage to engage in a pitched battle with him, Marcellus himself took the opposite course, 2 thinking that before the time thought necessary for destroying Hannibal had elapsed, Italy would insensibly be worn out by him. He thought, too, that Fabius, by making safety his constant aim, was not taking the right course to deal with the malady of the country, since the extinction of the war for which he waited would be coincident with the exhaustion of Rome, just as physicians who are timid and afraid to apply remedies, consider the consumption of the patient’s powers to be the abatement of the disease. 3 First, then, he took the large cities of the Samnites which had revolted, and got possession of great quantities of grain which had been stored in them, besides money, and the three thousand soldiers of Hannibal who were guarding them. Next, after Hannibal had slain the proconsul Gnaeus Fulvius himself in Apulia, together with eleven military tribunes, and had cut to pieces the greater part of his army, Marcellus sent letters to Rome bidding the citizens be of good courage, for that he himself was already on the march to rob Hannibal of his joy. 4 Livy says that when these letters were read, they did not take away the grief of the Romans, but added to their fear; for they thought their present danger as much greater than the past as Marcellus was superior to Fulvius. But Marcellus, as he had written, at once pursued Hannibal into Lucania, and came up with him, and as he found him occupying a secure position on heights about the city of Numistro, he himself encamped in the plain. 5 On the following day he was first to array his forces when Hannibal came down into the plain, and fought a battle with him which, though indecisive, was desperate and long; for their engagement began at the third hour, and was with difficulty ended when it was already dark. But at daybreak Marcellus led his army forth again, put them in array among the dead bodies of the slain, and challenged Hannibal to fight it out with him for the victory. 6 And when Hannibal withdrew his forces, Marcellus stripped the dead bodies of the enemy, buried those of his own men, and pursued him again. And though his adversary laid many ambushes for him, he escaped them all, and by getting the advantage of him in all the skirmishes, won admiration for himself. For this reason, too, when the consular elections drew near, the senate decided that it was better to recall the other consul from Sicily than to disturb Marcellus in his grappling with Hannibal, and when he was come, it bade him declare Quintus Fulvius dictator.

7 For a dictator cannot be chosen either by the people or by the senate, but one of the consuls or praetors comes before the assembled people and names as dictator the one whom he himself decides upon. And for this reason the one so named is called “dictator,” from the Latin “dicere,” to name or declare. Some, however, say that the dictator is so named because he puts no question to vote or show of hands, but ordains and declares of his own authority that which seems good to him; for the orders of magistrates, which the Greeks call “diatagmata,” the Romans call “edicta.”

25 1 But the colleague of Marcellus, who had come back from Sicily, wished to appoint another man as dictator, and being unwilling to have his opinion overborne by force, sailed off by night to Sicily. Under these circumstances the people named Quintus Fulvius as dictator, and the senate wrote to Marcellus bidding him confirm the nomination. He consented, proclaimed Quintus Fulvius dictator, and so confirmed the will of the people; he himself was appointed proconsul for the ensuing year. 2 He then made an agreement with Fabius Maximus that, while Fabius should make an attempt upon Tarentum, he himself, by diverting Hannibal and engaging with him, should prevent him from coming to the relief of that place. He came up with Hannibal at Canusium, and as his adversary often shifted his camp and declined battle, he threatened him continually, and at last, by harassing him with his skirmishers, drew him out of his entrenchments. 3 But though battle was offered and accepted, night parted the combatants, and next day Marcellus appeared again with his army drawn up in battle array; so that Hannibal, in distress, called his Carthaginians together and besought them to make their fighting that day surpass all their previous struggles. “For you see,” he said, “that we cannot even take breath after all our victories, nor have respite though we are in the mastery, unless we drive this man away.”

4 After this they joined battle and fought. And it would seem that Marcellus made an unseasonable movement during the action, and so met with disaster. For when his right wing was hard pressed, he ordered one of his legions to move up to the front. This change of position threw his army into confusion and gave the victory to the enemy, who slew twenty-seven hundred of the Romans. 5 Marcellus then withdrew to his camp, called his army together, and told them that he saw before him many Roman arms and Roman bodies, but not a single Roman. And when they asked for his pardon, he refused to give it while they were vanquished, but promised to do so if they should win a victory, assuring them that on the morrow they should fight again, in order that their countrymen might hear of their victory sooner than of their flight. 6 At the close of his speech, moreover, he gave orders that rations of barley instead of wheat should be given to the cohorts that had been worsted. Therefore, though many were in a wretched and dangerous plight after the battle, there was not a man of them, they say, to whom the words of Marcellus did not give more pain than his wounds.

26 1 At daybreak the scarlet tunic, the usual signal of impending battle, was displayed, the cohorts under disgrace begged and obtained for themselves the foremost position in the line, and the tribunes led forth the rest of the army and put them in array. On hearing of this Hannibal said: “O Hercules! what can be done with a man who knows not how to bear either his worse or his better fortune? For he is the only man who neither gives a respite when he is victorious, nor takes it when he is vanquished, 2 but we shall always be fighting with him, as it seems, since both his courage in success and his shame in defeat are made reasons for bold undertaking”. Then the forces engaged; and since the men fought with equal success, Hannibal ordered his elephants to be stationed in the van, and to be driven against the ranks of the Romans. A great press and much confusion at once arose among their foremost lines, but one of the tribunes, Flavius by name, snatched up a standard, confronted the elephants, smote the leader with the iron spike of the standard, and made him wheel about. 3 The beast dashed into the one behind him and threw the whole onset into confusion. Observing this, Marcellus ordered his cavalry to charge at full speed upon the disordered mass and throw the enemy still more into confusion. The horsemen made a brilliant charge and cut the Carthaginians down as far as to their camp, and the greatest slaughter among them was caused by their killed and wounded elephants. 4 For more than eight thousand are said to have been slain; and on the Roman side three thousand were killed, and almost all were wounded. This gave Hannibal opportunity to break camp quietly in the night and move to a great distance from Marcellus. For Marcellus was unable to pursue him, owing to the multitude of his wounded, but withdrew by easy marches into Campania, and spent the summer at Sinuessa recuperating his soldiers.

27 1 But Hannibal, now that he had torn himself away from Marcellus, made free use of his army, and going fearlessly round about, wasted all Italy with fire. Meantime, at Rome, Marcellus was in ill repute, and his enemies incited Publicius Bibulus, one of the tribunes of the people, a powerful speaker and a man of violence, to bring a denunciation against him. 2 This man held frequent assemblies of the people and tried to persuade them to put the forces of Marcellus in charge of another general, “since Marcellus,” as he said, “after giving himself a little exercise in the war, has withdrawn from it as from a palaestra, and betaken himself to warm baths for refreshment.” On learning of this, Marcellus left his legates in charge of his army, while he himself went up to Rome to make answer to the accusations against him. 3 There he found an impeachment prepared against him which was drawn from these accusations. Accordingly, on a day set for the trial, when the people had come together in the Flaminian circus, Bibulus rose up and denounced him. Then Marcellus spoke briefly and simply in his own defence, and the leading and most reputable citizens, with great boldness of speech and in glowing terms, exhorted the people not to show themselves worse judges than the enemy by convicting Marcellus of cowardice, whom alone of their leaders Hannibal avoided, and continually contrived not to fight with him, that he might fight with the rest. 4 When these speeches were ended, the accuser was so far disappointed in his hope of obtaining the verdict that Marcellus was not only acquitted of the charges against him, but actually appointed consul for the fifth time.

28 1 After assuming his office, he first quelled a great agitation for revolt in Etruria, and visited and pacified the cities there; next, he desired to dedicate to Honour and Virtue a temple that he had built out of his Sicilian spoils, but was prevented by the priests, who would not consent that two deities should occupy one temple; he therefore began to build another temple adjoining the first, although he resented the priests’ opposition and regarded it as ominous. 2 And indeed many other portents disturbed him: sundry temples were struck by lightning, and in that of Jupiter, mice had gnawed the gold; it was reported also that an ox had uttered human speech, and that a boy had been born with an elephant’s head; moreover, in their expiatory rites and sacrifices, the seers received bad omens, and therefore detained him at Rome, though he was all on fire and impatient to be gone. For no man ever had such a passion for any thing as he had for fighting a decisive battle with Hannibal. 3 This was his dream at night, his one subject for deliberation with friends and colleagues, his one appeal to the gods, namely, that he might find Hannibal drawn up to meet him. And I think he would have been most pleased to have the struggle decided with both armies enclosed by a single wall or rampart; and if he had not been full already of abundant honour, and if he had not given abundant proof that he could be compared with any general whomsoever in solidity of judgement, I should have said that he had fallen a victim to a youthful ambition that ill became such a great age as his. For he had passed his sixtieth year when he entered upon his fifth consulship.

29 1 However, after the ceremonies of sacrifice and purification which the seers prescribed had been performed, he set out with his colleague for the war, and gave much annoyance to Hannibal in his encampment between Bantia and Venusia. Hannibal would not give battle, but having been made aware that the Romans had sent some troops against Locri Epizephyrii, he set an ambush for them at the hill of Petelia, and slew twenty-five hundred of them. 2 This filled Marcellus with mad desire for the battle, and breaking camp, he brought his forces nearer to the enemy.

Between the camps was a hill which could be made tolerably secure, and was full of all sorts of woody growth; it had also lookout-places that sloped in either direction, and streams of water showed themselves running down its sides. The Romans therefore wondered that Hannibal, who had come first to a place of natural advantages, had not occupied it, but left in this way for his enemies.  Now, to Hannibal the place did seem good an encampment, but far better for an ambuscade, and to this use he preferred to put it. He therefore filled its woods and hollows with a large force of javelineers and spearmen, convinced that the place of itself would attract the Romans by reason of its natural advantages. 4 Nor was he deceived in his expectations; for straightaway there was much talk in the Roman camp about the necessity of occupying the place, and they enumerated all the strategic advantages which they would gain over their enemies, particularly by encamping there, but if not that, by fortifying the hill. Marcellus accordingly decided to ride up to it with a few horsemen and inspect it. So he summoned his diviner and offered sacrifice, and when the first victim had been slain, the diviner showed him that the liver had no head. 5 But on his sacrificing for the second time, the head of the liver was of extraordinary size and the other tokens appeared to be wonderfully propitious, and the fear which the first had inspired seemed to be dissipated. But the diviners declared that they were all the more afraid of these and troubled by them; for when very propitious omens succeeded those which were most inauspicious and threatening, the strangeness of the change was ground for suspicion. But since, as Pindar says,

“Allotted fate not fire, not wall of iron, will check,”

Marcellus set out, taking with him his colleague Crispinus, his son, who was a military tribune, and two hundred and twenty horsemen all told. 6 Of these, not one was a Roman, but they were all Etruscans, except forty men of Fregellae, who had given Marcellus constant proof of their valour and fidelity. Now, the crest of the hill was covered with woods, and on its summit a man had been stationed by the enemy to keep a lookout; he could not be seen himself, but kept the Roman camp in full view. 7 This man, then, told those who lay in ambush what was going on, and they, after permitting Marcellus to ride close up to them, rose up on a sudden, and encompassing him on all sides, hurled their javelins, smote with their spears, pursued the fugitives, and grappled with those who made resistance. These were the forty men of Fregellae, 8 who, though the Etruscans at the very outset took to flight, banded themselves together and fought in defence of the consuls, until Crispinus, smitten with two javelins, turned his horse and fled, and Marcellus was run through the side with a broad spear (the Latin name for which is “lancea”). Then the surviving men of Fregellae, few all told, left him where he lay dead, snatched up his son who was wounded, and fled to their camp. 9 Hardly more than forty were slain, but five lictors were taken prisoners, and eighteen horsemen. Crispinus also died of his wounds not many days after. Such a disaster as this had never happened to the Romans before: both their consuls were killed in a single action.

30 1 Hannibal made very little account of the rest, but when he learned that Marcellus had fallen, he ran out to the place himself, and after standing by the dead body and surveying for a long time its strength and mien, he uttered no boastful speech, nor did he manifest his joy at the sight, as one might have done who had slain a bitter and troublesome foe; 2 but after wondering at the unexpectedness of his end, he took off his signet-ring, indeed, but ordered the body to be honourably robed, suitably adorned, and burned. Then he collected the remains in a silver urn, placed a golden wreath upon it, and sent it back to his son. But some of the Numidians fell in with those who were carrying the urn and attempted to take it away from them, and when they resisted, fought with them, and in the fierce struggle scattered the bones far and wide. 3 When Hannibal learned of this, he said to the bystanders: “You see that nothing can be done against the will of God.” Then he punished the Numidians, but took no further care to collect and send back the remains, feeling that it was at some divine behest that Marcellus had died and been deprived of burial in this strange manner. 4 Such, then, is the account given by Cornelius Nepos and Valerius Maximus; but Livy and Augustus Caesar state that the urn was brought to his son and buried with splendid rites.

Besides the dedications which Marcellus made in Rome, there was a gymnasium at Catana in Sicily, and statues and paintings from the treasures of Syracuse both at Samothrace, in the temple of the gods called Cabeiri, and at Lindus in the temple of Athena. 5 There, too, there was a statue of him, according to Poseidonius, bearing this inscription:

“This, O stranger, was the great star of his country, Rome, — Claudius Marcellus of illustrious line, who seven times held the consular power in time of war, and poured much slaughter on his foes.”

For the author of the inscription has added his two proconsulates to his five consulates. 6 And his line maintained its splendour down to Marcellus the nephew of Augustus Caesar, who was a son of Caesar’s sister Octavia by Caius Marcellus, and who died during his aedileship at Rome, having recently married a daughter of Caesar. In his honour and to his memory Octavia his mother dedicated the library, and Caesar the theatre, which bear his name.

Comparison of Pelopidas and Marcellus

316 1 1 This is what I have thought worthy of record in what historians say about Marcellus and Pelopidas. In their natures and disposition they were almost exactly alike, since both were valiant, laborious, passionate, and magnanimous; and there would seem to have been this difference only between them, that Marcellus committed slaughter in many cities which he reduced, while Epaminondas and Pelopidas never put any one to death after their victories, nor did they sell cities into slavery. And we are told that, had they been present, the Thebans would not have treated the Orchomenians as they did.

2 As for their achievements, those of Marcellus against the Gauls were great and astonishing, since he routed such a multitude of horse and foot with the few horsemen in his following (an action not easily found recorded of any other general), and slew the enemies’ chieftain; whereas in this regard Pelopidas failed, for he set out to do the same thing, but suffered what he meant to inflict, and was slain first by the tyrant. 3 However, with these exploits of Marcellus one may compare the battles of Leuctra and Tegyra, greatest and most illustrious of actions; and we have no exploit of Marcellus accomplished by stealth and ambuscade which we can compare with what Pelopidas did in coming back from exile and slaying tyrants in Thebes, nay, that seems to rank far higher than any other achievement of secrecy and cunning. 4 Hannibal was, it is true, a most formidable enemy for the Romans, but so, assuredly, were the Lacedaemonians in the time of Pelopidas for the Thebans, 317 and that they were defeated by Pelopidas at Tegyra and Leuctra is an established fact; whereas Hannibal, according to Polybius, was not even once defeated by Marcellus, but continued to be invincible until Scipio came. 5 However, I believe, with Livy, Caesar, and Nepos, and, among Greek writers, with King Juba, that sundry defeats and routs were inflicted by Marcellus upon the troops of Hannibal, although these had no great influence upon the war; indeed, the Carthaginian would seem to have practised some ruse in these engagements. 6 But that which reasonably and fittingly called for admiration was the fact that the Romans, after the rout of so many armies, the slaughter of so many generals, and the utter confusion of the whole empire, still had the courage to face their foes. For there was one man who filled his army again with ardour and ambition to contend with the enemy, instead of the great fear and consternation which had long oppressed them, 7 inspiring and encouraging them not only to yield the victory reluctantly, but also to dispute it with all eagerness, and this man was Marcellus. For when their calamities had accustomed them to be satisfied whenever they escaped Hannibal by flight, he taught them to be ashamed to survive defeat, to be chagrined if they came within a little of yielding, and to be distressed if they did not win the day.

2 1 Since, then, Pelopidas was never defeated in a battle where he was in command, and Marcellus won more victories than any Roman of his day, it would seem, perhaps, that the multitude of his successes made the difficulty of conquering the one equal to the invincibility of the other. Marcellus, it is true, took Syracuse, while Pelopidas failed to take Sparta. 2 But I think that to have reached Sparta, and to have been the first of men to cross the Eurotas in war, was a greater achievement than the conquest of Sicily; unless, indeed, it should be said that this exploit belongs rather to Epaminondas than to Pelopidas, as well as the victory at Leuctra, while Marcellus shared with no one the glory of his achievements. For he took Syracuse all alone, and routed the Gauls without his colleague, and when no one would undertake the struggle against Hannibal, but all declined it, he took the field against him, changed the aspect of the war, and was the first leader to show daring.

3 1 I cannot, indeed, applaud the death of either of them, nay, I am distressed and indignant at their unreasonableness in the final disaster. And I admire Hannibal because, in battles so numerous that one would weary of counting them, he was not even wounded. I am delighted, too, with Chrysantes, in the “Cyropaedia,” who though his blade was lifted on high and he was about to smite an enemy, when the trumpet sounded a retreat, let his man go, and retired with all gentleness and decorum. 2 Pelopidas, however, was somewhat excusable, because, excited as he always was by an opportunity for battle, he was now carried away by a generous anger to seek revenge. For the best thing is that a general should be victorious and keep his life, “but if he must die,” he should “conclude his life with valour,” as Euripides says; for then he does not suffer death, but rather achieves it. 3 And besides his anger, Pelopidas saw that the consummation of his victory would be the death of the tyrant, and this not altogether unreasonably invited his effort; for it would have been hard to find another deed of prowess with so fair and glorious a promise. But Marcellus, when no great need was pressing, and when he felt none of that ardour which in times of peril unseats the judgment, plunged heedlessly into danger, and died the death, not of a general, but a mere skirmisher or scout, 4 having cast his five consulates, 318 his three triumphs, and the spoils and trophies which he had taken from kings, under the feet of Iberians and Numidians who had sold their lives to the Carthaginians. And so it came to pass that these very men were loath to accept their own success, when a Roman who excelled all others in valour, and had the greatest influence and the most splendid fame, was uselessly sacrificed among the scouts of Fregellae.

5 This, however, must not be thought a denunciation of these men, but rather an indignant and outspoken protest in their own behalf against themselves and their valour, to which they uselessly sacrificed their other virtues, in that they were unsparing of their lives; as if their death affected themselves alone, and not rather their countries, friends, and allies.

6 After his death, Pelopidas received burial from his allies, in whose behalf he fell; Marcellus from his enemies, by whose hands he fell. An enviable and happy lot was the former, it is true; but better and greater than the goodwill which makes grateful return for favours done, is the hatred which admires a valour that was harassing. For in this case it is worth alone which receives honour; whereas in the other, personal interests and needs are more regarded than excellence.

Aristides

318 1 1 Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, belonged to the tribe Antiochis, and to the deme Alopecé. As regards his substance, stories differ, some having it that he passed all the days of his life in severe poverty, and that at his death he left behind him two daughters who for a long time were not sought in marriage because of their indigence. 2 But in contradiction of this story which so many writers give, Demetrius of Phalerum, in his “Socrates,” says he knows of an estate in Phalerum which belonged to Aristides — the one in which he lies buried, and regards as proof of his opulent circumstances, first, his office of Archon Eponymous, which only he could hold who obtained it by lot from among the families carrying the highest property-assessments (these were called Pentacosiomedimni, or Five hundred-bushellers); second, his banishment in ostracism, 3 for no poor men, but only men from great houses which incurred envy because of their family prestige, were liable to ostracism; third, and last, the fact that he left in the precinct of Dionysus as offerings for victory some choregic tripods, which, even in our day, were pointed out as still bearing the inscription: “The tribe Antiochis was victorious; Aristides was Choregus; Archestratus was Poet.”

4 Now this last argument, though it seems very strong, is really very weak. For both Epaminondas, who as all men know, was reared and always lived in great poverty, and Plato the philosopher, took it upon themselves to furnish munificent public performances, the first, of men trained to play the flute, the second, of boys trained to sing and dance; but Plato received the money that he spent thereon from Dion of Syracuse, and Epaminondas from Pelopidas. 5 Good men wage no savage war against the gifts of friends, but while they look upon gifts taken to be stored away 319 and increase the receiver’s wealth as ignoble and mean, they refuse none which promote an unselfish and splendid munificence.

However, as regards the tripod, Panaetius tries to show that Demetrius was deceived by identity of name. 6 From the Persian wars, he says, down to the end of the Peloponnesian war, only two Aristides are recorded as victorious choregi, and neither of them is identical with the son of Lysimachus. One was the son of Xenophilus, and the other lived long afterwards, as is proved by the inscription itself, which is written in the character used after Eucleides, as well as by the last name, Archestratus, of whom there is no record during the Persian wars, while during the time of the Peloponnesian war his name often appears as that of a choral poet.

7 This argument of Panaetius should be more closely examined as to its validity; but to banishment in ostracism every one was liable who was superior to the common run of men in reputation, or lineage, or eloquence. And so it was that Damon, the teacher of Pericles, was ostracized because he was thought to be rather extraordinary in his wisdom. 8 Furthermore, Idomeneus says that Aristides obtained the office of archon, not by lot, but by the election of the Athenians. And if he was made archon after the battle of Plataea, as Demetrius himself has written, it is certainly very credible that in view of such a reputation and such successes as he there won, he should be deemed worthy, for his valour, of an office which men who drew lots for it obtained for their wealth. 9 In fact, Demetrius is clearly ambitious to rescue not only Aristides, but also Socrates from what he deems the great evil of poverty, for he says that Socrates owned not only his house, but also seventy minas out at interest with Crito.

2 1 Aristides was an intimate friend of that Cleisthenes who set the state in order after the expulsion of the tyrants. He also admired and emulated, above all other statesmen, Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian. He therefore favoured an aristocratic form of government, and ever had opposed to him, as champion of the people, Themistocles the son of Neocles. Some say that even as boys and fellow-pupils, from the outset, in every word and deed, whether serious or trivial, they were at variance with one another, 2 and that by this very rivalry their natures were straightway made manifest, the one as dexterous, reckless, and unscrupulous, easily carried with impetuosity into any and every undertaking; the other as established on a firm character, intent on justice, and admitting no falsity or vulgarity or deceit, not even in any sport whatsoever.

But Ariston of Ceos says that this enmity of theirs, which came to be so intense, had its origin in a love affair. 3 They were both enamoured of Stesilaüs, who was of Ceian birth, and in beauty of person the most brilliant of youths; and they cherished their passion so immoderately, that not even after the boy’s beauty had faded did they lay aside their rivalry, but, as though they had merely taken preliminary practice and exercise in that, they presently engaged in matters of state also with passionate heat and opposing desires.

4 Themistocles joined a society of political friends, and so secured no inconsiderable support and power. Hence when some one told him that he would only be fair and impartial to all, he replied: “Never may I sit on a tribunal where my friends are to get no more advantage from me than strangers.” 5 But Aristides walked the way of statesmanship by himself, on a private path of his own, as it were, because, in the first place, he was unwilling to join with any comrades in wrong-doing, or to vex them by withholding favours; and, in the second place, he saw that power derived from friends incited many to do wrong, and so was on his guard against it, deeming it right that the good citizen should base his confidence only on serviceable and just conduct.

3 1 However, since Themistocles was a reckless agitator, and opposed and thwarted him in every measure of state, Aristides himself also was almost compelled — 320 partly in self-defence, and partly to curtail his adversary’s power, which was increasing through the favour of the many — to set himself in opposition to what Themistocles was trying to do, thinking it better that some advantages should escape the people than that his adversary, by prevailing everywhere, should become too strong. 2 Finally there came a time when he opposed and defeated Themistocles in an attempt to carry some really necessary measure. Then he could no longer hold his peace, but declared, as he left the Assembly, that there was no safety for the Athenian state unless they threw both Themistocles and himself into the death-pit. On another occasion he himself introduced a certain measure to the people, and was carrying it through successfully, in spite of the attacks of the opposition upon it, but just as the presiding officer was to put it to the final vote, perceiving, from the very speeches that had been made in opposition to it, the inexpediency of his measure, he withdrew it without a vote. 3 And oftentimes he would introduce his measures through other men, that Themistocles might not be driven by the spirit of rivalry with him to oppose what was expedient for the state.

Altogether admirable was his steadfast constancy amid the revulsions of political feeling. He was not unduly lifted up by his honours, and faced adversity with a calm gentleness, while in all cases alike he considered it his duty to give his services to his country freely and without any reward, either in money, or, what meant far more, in reputation. 4 And so it befell, as the story goes, that when the verses composed by Aeschylus upon Amphiaraüs were recited in the theatre: —

“He wishes not to seem, but rather just to be,

And reap a harvest from deep furrows in a mind

From which there spring up honourable counsellings,”

all the spectators turned their eyes on Aristides, feeling that he, above all men, was possessed of such excellence.

4 1 It was not only against the inclinations of his good-will and personal favour that he was a most strenuous champion of justice, but also against those of his anger and hatred. At any rate a story is told, how he was once prosecuting an enemy in court, and after he had made his accusation the judges were loath to hear the defendant at all, and demanded that their vote be taken against him straightway; but Aristides sprang to his feet and seconded the culprit’s plea for a hearing and the usual legal procedure. 2 And again, when he was serving as private arbitrator between two men, on one of them saying that his opponent had done Aristides much injury, “Tell me rather,” he said, “whether he has done thee any wrong; it is for thee, not for myself, that I am seeking justice.” When he was elected overseer of the public revenues, he proved clearly that large sums had been embezzled, not only by his fellow-officials, but also by those of former years, and particularly by Themistocles: —

“The man was clever, but of his hand had no control.”

3 For this cause, Themistocles banded many together against Aristides, prosecuted him for theft at the auditing of his accounts, and actually got a verdict against him, according to Idomeneus. But the first and best men of the city were incensed at this, and he was not only exempted from his fine, but even appointed to administer the same charge again. Then he pretended to repent him of his former course, and made himself more pliable, thus giving pleasure to those who were stealing the common funds by not examining them or holding them to strict account, 4 so that they gorged themselves with the public moneys, and then lauded Aristides to the skies, and pleaded with the people in his behalf, eagerly desirous that he be once more elected to his office. But just as they were about to vote, Aristides rebuked the Athenians. “Verily,” said he, “when I served you in office with fidelity and honour, I was reviled and persecuted; but now that I am flinging away much of the common fund to thieves, I am thought to be an admirable citizen. 5 For my part, I am more ashamed of my present honour than I was of my former condemnation, and I am sore distressed for you, because it is more honourable in your eyes to please base men than to guard the public moneys.” 321 By these words, as well as by exposing their thefts, he did indeed stop the mouths of the men who were then testifying loudly in his favour, but he won genuine and just praise from the best citizens.

5 1 Now when Datis, on being sent by Darius ostensibly to punish the Athenians for burning Sardis, but really to subdue all the Hellenes, put in at Marathon with all his armament and went to ravaging the country, then, of the ten generals appointed by the Athenians for the conduct of the war, it was Miltiades who enjoyed the greatest consideration, but in reputation and influence Aristides was second. 2 By adopting at that time the opinion of Miltiades about the battle to be fought, he did much to turn the scale in its favour. And since each general held the chief authority for a single day in turn, when the command came round to him, he handed it over to Miltiades, thereby teaching his fellow-officers that to obey and follow men of wisdom is not disgraceful, but dignified and salutary. By thus appeasing the jealousy of his colleagues and inducing them to be cheerfully contented in the adoption of a single opinion (and that the best), he confirmed Miltiades in the strength which comes from an unrestricted power. For each of the other generals at once relinquished his own right to command for a day in turn, and put himself under the orders of Miltiades.

3 In the battle, the Athenian centre was the hardest pressed, and it was there that the Barbarians held their ground the longest, over against the tribes Leontis and Antiochis. There, then, Themistocles and Aristides fought brilliantly, ranged side by side; for one was a Leontid, the other an Antiochid. 4 When the Athenians had routed the Barbarians and driven them aboard their ships, and saw that they were sailing away, not toward the islands, but into the gulf toward Attica under compulsion of wind and wave, then they were afraid lest the enemy find Athens empty of defenders, and so they hastened homeward with nine tribes, and reached the city that very day. 5 But Aristides was left behind at Marathon with his own tribe, to guard the captives and booty. Nor did he belie his reputation, but though silver and gold lay about in heaps, and though there were all sorts of raiment and untold wealth besides in the tents and captured utensils, he neither desired to meddle with it himself, nor would he suffer any one else to do so, although certain ones helped themselves without his knowledge. Among these was Callias the Torch-bearer.

6 Some Barbarian, it seems, rushed up to this man, supposing him to be a king from his long hair and the headband that he wore, made obeisance to him, and taking him by the hand in suppliant fashion, showed him a great mass of gold buried up in a sort of pit. Callias, most savage and lawless of men, took up the gold; but the man, to prevent his betraying the matter to others, he slew. From this circumstance, they say, his descendants are called by the comic poets “Laccopluti,” or “Pit-wealthies,” in sly allusion to the place where Callias found his gold.

7 Aristides at once received the office of Archon Eponymous. And yet Demetrius of Phalerum says that it was a little while before his death, and after the battle of Plataea, that the man held this office. But in the official records, after Xanthippides, in whose year of office Mardonius was defeated at Plataea, you cannot find, long as the list is, so much as the name Aristides; whereas immediately after Phaenippus, in whose year of office the victory at Marathon was won, an Aristides is recorded as archon.

6 1 Of all his virtues, it was his justice that most impressed the multitude, because of its most continual and most general exercise. Wherefore, though poor and a man of the people, he acquired that most kingly and godlike surname of “The Just.” 2 This no kings or tyrants ever coveted, 322 nay, they rejoiced to be surnamed “Besiegers,” or “Thunderbolts,” or “Conquerors,” and some “Eagles,” or “Hawks,” cultivating the reputation which is based on violence and power, as it seems, rather than on virtue. And yet divinity, to which such men are eager to adapt and conform themselves, is believed to have three elements of superiority, — incorruption, power, and virtue; and the most reverend, the divinest of these, is virtue. 3 For vacuum and the ultimate elements partake of incorruption; and great power is exhibited by earthquakes and thunderbolts, and rushing tornadoes, and invading floods; but in fundamental justice nothing participates except through the exercise of intelligent reasoning powers.

Therefore, considering the three feelings which are generally entertained towards divinity, — envy, fear, and honourable regard, men seem to envy and felicitate the deities for their incorruption and perpetuity; to dread and fear them for their sovereignty and power; but to love and honour and revere them for their justice. 4 And yet, although men are thus disposed, it is immortality, of which our nature is not capable, and power, the chief disposal of which is in the hands of fortune, that they eagerly desire; while as for virtue, the only divine excellence within our reach, they put it at the bottom of the list, unwisely too, since a life passed in power and great fortune and authority needs justice to make it divine; by injustice it is made bestial.

7 1 Now, to resume, it befell Aristides to be loved at first because of this surname, but afterwards to be jealously hated, especially when Themistocles set the story going among the multitude that Aristides had done away with the public courts of justice by his determining and judging everything in private, and that, without any one perceiving it, he had established for himself a monarchy, saving only the armed body-guard. And besides, the people too must by this time have become greatly elated over their victory; they thought nothing too good for themselves, and were therefore vexed with those who towered above the multitude in name and reputation. 2 So they assembled in the city from all the country round, and ostracized Aristides, giving to their envious dislike of his reputation the name of fear of tyranny.

Now the sentence of ostracism was not a chastisement of base practices, nay, it was speciously called a humbling and docking of oppressive prestige and power; but it was really a merciful exorcism of the spirit of jealous hate, which thus vented its malignant desire to injure, not in some irreparable evil, but in a mere change of residence for ten years. 3 And when ignoble men of the baser sort came to be subjected to this penalty, it ceased to be inflicted at all, and Hyperbolus was the last to be ostracized. It is said that Hyperbolus was ostracized for the following reason. Alcibiades and Nicias had the greatest power in the state, and were at odds. Accordingly, when the people were about to exercise the ostracism, and were clearly going to vote against one or the other of these two men, they came to terms with one another, united their opposing factions, and effected the ostracism of Hyperbolus. 4 The people were incensed at this for they felt that the institution had been insulted and abused, and so they abandoned it utterly and put an end to it.

The method of procedure — to give a general outline — was as follows. Each voter took an ostrakon, or potsherd, wrote on it the name of that citizen whom he wished to remove from the city, and brought it to a place in the agora which was all fenced about with railings. 5 The archons first counted the total number of ostraka cast. For if the voters were less than six thousand, the ostracism was void. Then they separated the names, and the man who had received the most votes they proclaimed banished for ten years, with the right to enjoy the income from his property.

323 Now at the time of which I was speaking, as the voters were inscribing their ostraka, it is said that an unlettered and utterly boorish fellow handed his ostrakon to Aristides, and asked him to write Aristides on it. 6 He, astonished, asked the man what possible wrong Aristides had done him. “None whatever,” was the answer, “I don’t even know the fellow, but I am tired of hearing him everywhere called ‘The Just.’ “ On hearing this, Aristides made no answer, but wrote his name on the ostrakon and handed it back. Finally, as he was departing the city, he lifted up his hands to heaven and prayed — a prayer the opposite, as it seems, of that which Achilles made — that no crisis might overtake the Athenians which should compel the people to remember Aristides.

8 1 But in the third year thereafter, when Xerxes was marching through Thessaly and Boeotia against Attica, they repealed their law of ostracism, and voted that those who had been sent away under it might return. The chief reason for this was their fear of Aristides, lest he attach himself to the enemy’s cause, and corrupt and pervert many of his fellow-citizens to the side of the Barbarian. But they much misjudged the man. Even before this decree of theirs, he was ever inciting and urging the Hellenes to win their freedom; and after it was passed, when Themistocles was general with sole powers, he assisted him in every undertaking and counsel, although he thereby, for the sake of the general safety, made his chiefest foe the most famous of men.

2 Thus when Eurybiades wished to abandon Salamis, but the Barbarian triremes, putting out by night, had encompassed the strait where he lay round about, and had beset the islands therein, and no Hellene knew of this encompassment, Aristides came over to them from Aegina, venturously sailing through the enemy’s ships. He went at once by night to the tent of Themistocles, and called him forth alone. 3 “O Themistocles,” said he, “if we are wise, we shall at last lay aside our vain and puerile contention, and begin a salutary and honourable rivalry with one another in emulous struggles to save Hellas, thou as commanding general, I as assistant counsellor, since at the very outset I learn that thou art the only one who has adopted the best policy, urging as thou dost to give a decisive sea-fight here in the narrows as soon as may be. 4 And though thine allies oppose thee, thy foes would seem to assist thee; for the sea round about and behind us is already filled with hostile ships, so that even our unwilling ones must now of necessity be brave men and fight. Indeed, no way of escape is left.” 5 To this Themistocles replied: “I should not have wished, O Aristides, to find thee superior to me here; but I shall try to emulate thy fair beginning, and to surpass thee in my actions.” At the same time he told Aristides of the trick he had contrived against the Barbarian, and entreated him to show Eurybiades convincingly, inasmuch as he had the greater credit with that commander, that there was no safety except in a sea-fight. 6 So it happened in the council of generals that Cleocritus the Corinthian declared to Themistocles that Aristides also was opposed to his plan, since he, though present, held his peace. Aristides at once replied that he would not have held his peace had not Themistocles counselled for the best; but as it was, he kept quiet, not out of any good-will to the man, but because he approved of his plan.

9 1 While the captains of the Hellenes were acting on this plan, Aristides noticed that Psyttaleia, a small island lying in the straits in front of Salamis, was full of the enemy. He therefore embarked in small boats the most ardent and the most warlike of the citizens, made a landing on Psyttaleia, joined battle with the Barbarians, and slew them all, save the few conspicuous men who were taken alive. Among these were three sons of the King’s sister Sandaucé, whom he straightway sent to Themistocles, 3242 and it is said that, in obedience to some oracle or other, they were sacrificed to Dionysus Carnivorous. Then Aristides lined the islet all round with his hoplites, and lay in wait for any who should be cast up there, that no friend might perish, and no foe escape. For the greatest crowding of the ships, and the most strenuous part of the battle, seems to have been in this region. And for this reason a trophy was erected on Psyttaleia.

3 After the battle, Themistocles, by way of sounding Aristides, said that the deed they had now performed was a noble one, but a greater still remained, and that was to capture Asia in Europe, by sailing up to the Hellespont as fast as they could and cutting in twain the bridges there. But Aristides cried out with a loud voice and bade him abandon the proposal, and seek rather with all diligence how they might most speedily expel the Mede from Hellas, 4 lest, being shut in and unable to make his escape, from sheer necessity he throw this vast force of his upon the defensive. So Themistocles sent once more the eunuch Arnaces, a prisoner of war, bidding him tell the King that the Hellenes had actually set out on a voyage to attack the bridges, but that he, Themistocles, had succeeded in turning them back, wishing to save the King.

10 1 At this Xerxes grew exceedingly fearful, and hurried straight to the Hellespont; but Mardonius, with the flower of the army, to the number of three hundred thousand men, was left behind. He was a formidable adversary, and because his confidence in his infantry was strong, he wrote threateningly to the Hellenes, saying: 2 “Ye have conquered with your maritime timbers landsmen who know not how to ply the oar; but now, broad is the land of Thessaly and fair the plain of Boeotia for brave horsemen and men-at arms to contend in.” But to the Athenians he sent separate letters and proposals from the King, who promised to rebuild their city, give them much money, and make them lords of the Hellenes, if only they would cease fighting against him.

3 When the Lacedaemonians learned this, they took fright, and sent an embassy to Athens, begging the Athenians to despatch their wives and children to Sparta, and to accept from her a support for their aged and infirm; for great was the distress among the people, since it had so recently lost both land and city. 4 However, after listening to the embassy, on motion of Aristides, they answered with an admirable answer, declaring that they could be tolerant with their foes for supposing that everything was to be bought for wealth and money, since their foes could conceive of nothing higher than these things; but they were indignant at the Lacedaemonians for having an eye only to the penury and indigence that now reigned at Athens, and for being so unmindful of the valour and ambition of the Athenians as to exhort them to contend for Hellas merely to win their rations. 5 When Aristides had made this motion and had introduced the waiting embassies into the Assembly, he bade the Lacedaemonians tell their people that there was not bulk of gold above or below ground so large that the Athenians would take it in payment for the freedom of the Hellenes; and to the messengers of Mardonius he said, pointing to the sun: “As long as yonder sun journeys his appointed journey, so long will the Athenians wage war against the Persians in behalf of the land which has been ravaged by them and of the temples which they have defiled and consumed with fire.” 6 Still further, he made a motion that the priests should solemnly curse all who came to a parley with the Medes or forsook the alliance of the Hellenes.

When Mardonius for the second time invaded Attica, again the people crossed over to Salamis. Then Aristides, who had been sent as envoy to Lacedaemon, inveighed against their sluggishness and indifference, in that they had once more abandoned Athens to the Barbarian, and demanded that they go to the aid of what was still left of Hellas. 3257 On hearing this, the Ephors, as long as it was day, publicly disported themselves in easy-going festival fashion; for it was their festival of the Hyacinthia. But in the night they selected five thousand Spartans, each of whom had seven Helots to attend upon him, and sent them forth without the knowledge of the Athenians. So when Aristides came before them with renewed invectives, they laughed and said he was but a sleepy babbler, for that their army was already in Arcadia on its march against the “strangers” (they called the Persians strangers). 8 But Aristides declared they were jesting out of all season, forasmuch as they were deceiving their friends instead of their enemies. This is the way Idomeneus tells the story. But in the decree which Aristides caused to be passed, he himself is not named as envoy, but Cimon, Xanthippus, and Myronides.

11 Having been elected general with sole powers in view of the expected battle, he came to Plataea at the head of eight thousand Athenian hoplites. There Pausanias also, the commander in chief of the whole Hellenic army, joined him with his Spartans, and the forces of the rest of the Hellenes kept streaming up. 2 Now, generally speaking, there was no limit to the encampment of the Barbarians as it lay stretched out along the river Asopus, so vast was it; but round their baggage trains and chief headquarters they built a quadrangular wall, whereof each side was ten stadia in length.

To Pausanias and all the Hellenes under him Tisamenus the Eleian made prophecy, and foretold victory for them if they acted on the defensive and did not advance to the attack. 3 But Aristides sent to Delphi and received from the god response that the Athenians would be superior to their foes if they made vows to Zeus, Cithaeronian Hera, Pan, and the Sphragitic nymphs; paid sacrifices to the heroes Androcrates, Leucon, Pisandrus, Damocrates, Hypsion, Actaeon, and Polyidus; and if they sustained the peril of battle on their own soil, in the plain of Eleusinian Demeter and Cora. 4 When this oracle was reported to Aristides, it perplexed him greatly. The heroes to whom he was to sacrifice were, it was true, ancient dignitaries of the Plataeans; and the cave of the Sphragitic nymphs was on one of the peaks of Cithaeron, facing the summer sunsets, and in it there was also an oracle in former days, as they say, and many of the natives were possessed of the oracular power, and these were called nympholepti, or “nymph-possessed.” 5 But the plain of Eleusinian Demeter, and the promise of victory to the Athenians if they fought the battle in their own territory, called them back, as it were, to Attica, and changed the seat of war.

At this time the general of the Plataeans, Arimnestus, had a dream in which he thought he was accosted by Zeus the Saviour and asked what the Hellenes had decided to do, and replied: “On the morrow, my Lord, we are going to lead our army back to Eleusis, and fight out our issue with the Barbarians there, in accordance with the Pythian oracle.” 6 Then the god said they were entirely in error, for the Pythian oracle’s places were there in the neighbourhood of Plataea, and if they sought them they would surely find them. All this was made so vivid to Arimnestus that as soon as he awoke he summoned the oldest and most experienced of his fellow-citizens. By conference and investigation with these he discovered that near Hysiae, at the foot of mount Cithaeron, there was a very ancient temple bearing the names of Eleusinian Demeter and Cora. 7 Straightway then he took Aristides and led him to the spot. They found that it was naturally very well suited to the array of infantry against a force that was superior in cavalry, since the spurs of Cithaeron made the edges of the plain adjoining the temple unfit for horsemen. There, too, was the shrine of the hero Androcrates hard by, enveloped in a grove of dense and shady trees. 8 And besides, that the oracle might leave no rift in the hope of victory, the Plataeans voted, on motion of Arimnestus, 326 to remove the boundaries of Plataea on the side toward Attica, and to give this territory to the Athenians, that so they might contend in defence of Hellas on their own soil, in accordance with the oracle.

9 The munificence of the Plataeans became so celebrated that Alexander, many years afterwards, when he was now King of Asia, built the walls of Plataea, and had proclamation made by herald at the Olympic games that the King bestowed this grace upon the Plataeans in return for their bravery and magnanimity in freely bestowing their territory upon the Hellenes in the Median war, and so showing themselves most zealous of all.

12 1 Now with the Athenians the men of Tegea came to strife regarding their position in the line. They claimed that, as had always been the case, since the Lacedaemonians held the right wing, they themselves should hold the left, and in support of their claim they sounded loudly the praises of their ancestors. The Athenians were incensed, and Aristides came forward and made this speech: “To argue with the men of Tegea about noble birth and bravery, there is surely no time now; but we declare to you, O Spartans, and to the rest of the Hellenes, that valour is not taken away from a man, nor is it given him, by his position in the line. Whatsoever post ye shall assign to us, we will endeavour to maintain and adorn it, and so bring no disgrace upon the contests we have made before. 2 We are come, not to quarrel with our allies, but to do battle with our foes; not to heap praises on our fathers, but to show ourselves brave men in the service of Hellas. It is this contest which will show how much any city or captain or private soldier is worth to Hellas.” On hearing this, the councillors and leaders declared for the Athenians, and assigned to them the other wing.

13 1 While Hellas was thus in suspense and Athens especially in danger, certain men of that city who were of prominent families and large wealth, but had been impoverished by the war, saw that with their riches all their influence in the city and their reputation had departed, while other men now had the honours and offices. They therefore met secretly at a certain house in Plataea, and conspired to overthrow the democracy; or, if their plans did not succeed, to injure the general cause and betray it to the Barbarians.

2 Such was the agitation of the camp, and many had already been corrupted, when Aristides got wind of the matter, and, fearful of the crisis that favoured the plot, determined not to leave the matter in neglect, nor yet to bring it wholly to the light, since it could not be known how many would be implicated by a test which was based on justice rather than expediency. 3 Accordingly, he arrested some eight or so of the many conspirators. Two of these, against whom the charge was first formally brought, and who were really the most guilty ones, Aeschines of Lamptrae and Agesias of Acharnae, fled the camp. The rest he released, affording thus an opportunity for encouragement and repentance to those who still thought they had escaped detection, and suggested to them that the war was a great tribunal for their acquittal from the charges made against them, provided they took sincere and righteous counsel in behalf of their country.

14 1 After this, Mardonius made trial of the Hellenes with that arm of his service in which he thought himself most superior. He despatched all his cavalry against them as they lay encamped at the foot of Cithaeron, in positions that were rugged and rocky — all except the Megarians. These, to the number of three thousand, were encamped the rather in open plain. For this reason they suffered severely at the hands of the cavalry, which poured in tides against them, and found access to them on every side. 2 Accordingly, they sent a messenger in haste to Pausanias, bidding him come to their aid, since they were unable of themselves to withstand the host of the Barbarians. Pausanias, on hearing this, and seeing at once that the camp of the Megarians was as good as hidden from view by the multitude of the enemy’s javelins and arrows, and that its defenders were huddled together in narrow quarters, 327 on his own part had no way of rendering them aid against horsemen, since his phalanx of Spartans was full-armoured and slow of movement; 3 but to the rest of the generals and captains of the Hellenes who were about him he proposed, in order to stir up their valour and ambition, that some of them should volunteer to make contention for the succour of the Megarians. The rest all hesitated, but Aristides, in behalf of the Athenians, undertook the task, and despatched his most zealous captain, Olympiodorus, with the three hundred picked men of his command, and archers mingled with them.

4 These quickly arrayed themselves and advanced to the attack on the run. Masistius, the commander of the Barbarian cavalry, a man of wonderful prowess and of surpassing stature and beauty of person, saw them coming, and at once wheeled his horse to face them and charged down upon them. Then there was a mighty struggle between those who withstood and those who made the charge, since both regarded this as a test of the whole issue between them. 5 Presently the horse of Masistius was hit with an arrow, and threw his rider, who lay where he fell, unable to raise himself, so heavy was his armour; and yet he was no easy prey to the Athenians, though they pressed upon him and smote him. For not only his chest and head, but also his limbs were encased in gold and bronze and iron. But at last, with the spike of a javelin, through the eye-hole of his helmet, he was smitten to the death, and the rest of the Persians abandoned his body and fled. 6 The magnitude of their success was known to the Hellenes, not from the multitude of those they slew, for few had fallen, but from the grief of the Barbarians. For they shore their own hair in tribute to Masistius, and that of their horses and mules, and filled the plain with their wailing cries. They felt that they had lost a man who, after Mardonius himself, was by far the first in valour and authority.

15 1 After this cavalry battle, both sides refrained from further fighting for a long time, since only as they acted on the defensive would victory be theirs — so the soothsayers interpreted the sacrifices alike for Persians and Hellenes, — but if they attacked, defeat. At last Mardonius, since he had supplies remaining for only a few days, and since the Hellenes were ever increasing in number as fresh bodies joined them, impatiently determined to wait no longer, but to cross the Asopus at daybreak and attack the Athenians unexpectedly. During the evening he gave the watchword to his commanders.

2 But about midnight a solitary horseman quietly approached the camp of the Hellenes and falling in with the outposts, ordered that Aristides the Athenian come to him. He was speedily obeyed, and then said: “I am Alexander the Macedonian, and I am come at the greatest peril to myself, out of my good-will toward you, that no suddenness of attack may frighten you into inferior fighting. 3 Mardonius will surely give battle on the morrow, not because he has substantial hope or even courage, but because he is destitute of provisions. His soothsayers, indeed, are trying to keep him from battle by unpropitious sacrifices and oracular utterances, while his army is full of dejection and consternation; but he must needs boldly try his fortune, or sit still and endure extremest destitution.” 4 When he had told him this, Alexander begged Aristides to keep the knowledge to himself and bear it well in mind, but to tell it to none other. Aristides replied that it was not honourable to conceal this knowledge from Pausanias, since it was on him that the supreme command devolved, but that it should not be told the other leaders before the battle; though in case Hellas were victorious, no man should remain ignorant of Alexander’s zeal and valour. 5 After this conversation, the king of the Macedonians rode off back again, 328 and Aristides went to the tent of Pausanias and told him all that had been said. Then they summoned the other leaders and gave them orders to keep the army in array, since there was to be a battle.

16 1 At this juncture, as Herodotus relates, Pausanias sent word to Aristides, demanding that the Athenians change their position and array themselves on the right wing, over against the Persians, where they would contend better, he said, since they were versed already in the Persian style of fighting, and emboldened by a previous victory over them; the left wing, where the Medising Hellenes were going to attack, should be intrusted to himself and his Spartans.

2 The rest of the Athenian generals thought it inconsiderate and annoying in Pausanias to leave the rest of his line in the position assigned, while he moved them, and them only, back and forth like Helots, and put them forward where the fighting was to be hottest. But Aristides declared that they were utterly wrong; they had contended emulously with the Tegeans, but a little while back, for the occupation of the left wing, and plumed themselves on being preferred before those rivals; 3 but now, when the Lacedaemonians of their own accord vacated the right wing for them, and after a fashion proffered them the leadership among the Hellenes, they neither welcomed the reputation thus to be won, nor counted it gain that their contention would thus be, not with men of the same tribes and kindreds, but rather with Barbarians and natural enemies. Upon this the Athenians very willingly exchanged posts with the Spartans, 4 and the word passed from lip to lip far through the ranks that their enemies would attack them with no better arms and with no braver spirits than at Marathon, nay, with the same kind of archery as then, and with the same variegated vesture and gold adornments to cover soft bodies and unmanly spirits; “while we have not only like arms and bodies with greater courage which is born of our victories; and our contest is not alone for land and city, as theirs was, but also for the trophies which they set up at Marathon and Salamis, in order that the world may think that not even those were due to Miltiades only, or to fortune, but to the Athenians.”

5 The Spartans and Athenians, then, were busily engaged in exchanging posts; but the Thebans heard of it from deserters and told Mardonius. He, at once, whether through fear of the Athenians or out of ambition to engage with the Lacedaemonians, counterchanged his Persians to the right wing, and ordered the Hellenes with him to set themselves against the Athenians. 6 When this change in his enemy’s order of battle was manifest, Pausanias returned and occupied the right wing again, whereupon Mardonius also resumed his own left wing, just as he stood at the beginning, facing the Lacedaemonians. And thus the day came to an end without action. The Hellenes, on deliberation, decided to change their camp to a position farther on, and to secure a spot where there was plenty of good water, since the neighbouring springs were defiled and ruined by the Barbarians’ superior force of cavalry.

17 1 Night came on, and the generals set out to lead their forces to the appointed encampment. The soldiers, however, showed no great eagerness to follow in close order, but when they had once abandoned their first defences, most of them hurried on toward the city of Plataea, and there tumult reigned as they scattered about and encamped in no order whatsoever. But it chanced that the Lacedaemonians were left alone behind the others, and that too against their will. 2 For Amompharetus, a man of a fierce and venturesome spirit, who had long been mad for battle and distressed by the many postponements and delays, now at last lost all control of himself, denounced the change of position as a runaway flight and declared that he would not abandon his post, but stay there with his company and await the onset of Mardonius. 3 And when Pausanias came up and told him that their action had been formally voted by the Hellenes in council, Amompharetus picked up a great stone and threw it down at the feet of Pausanias, 329 saying that was his personal vote for battle, and he cared not a whit for the cowardly counsels and votes of the rest. Pausanias, perplexed at the case, sent to the Athenians, who were already moving off, begging them to wait and make the march in company with him, and then began to lead the rest of his troops toward Plataea, with the idea that he would thus force Amompharetus from his position.

4 At this point day overtook them, and Mardonius, who did not fail to notice that the Hellenes had abandoned their encampment, with his force in full array, bore down upon the Lacedaemonians, with great shouting and clamour on the part of the Barbarians, who felt that there would be no real battle, but that the Hellenes had only to be snatched off as they fled. And this lacked but little of coming to pass. 5 For Pausanias, on seeing the situation, though he did check his march and order every man to take post for battle, forgot, either in his rage at Amompharetus or his confusion at the speed of the enemy, to give the signal for battle to the confederate Hellenes. For this reason they did not come to his aid at once, nor in a body, but in small detachments and straggling, after the battle was already joined.

6 When Pausanias got no favourable omens from his sacrifices, he ordered his Lacedaemonians to sit quiet with their shields planted in front of them, and to await his orders, making no attempt to repulse their enemies, while he himself went to sacrificing again. By this time the horsemen were charging upon them; presently their missiles actually reached them, and many a Spartan was smitten. 7 And then it was that Callicrates, said to be the fairest of the Hellenes to look upon, and the tallest man in their whole army, was shot, and, dying, said he did not grieve at death, since he had left his home to die for Hellas, but at dying without striking a single blow. Their experience was indeed a terrible one, but the restraint of the men was wonderful. They did not try to repel the enemy who were attacking them, but awaited from their god and their general the favourable instant, while they endured wounds and death at their posts.

8 Some say that as Pausanias was sacrificing and praying, a little to one side of his line of battle, some Lydians suddenly fell upon him and rudely hurled away the sacrificial offerings; and that Pausanias and his attendants, being without weapons, smote the intruders with the sacrificial staves and goads; wherefore, to this day, in imitation of this onslaught, the ceremonies of beating the young warriors round the altar at Sparta,a and of the procession of the Lydians which follows this, are duly celebrated as rites.

18 1 Then, in distress at this state of affairs, while the seer slew victim after victim, Pausanias turned his face, all tears, toward the Heraeum, and with hands uplifted prayed Cithaeronian Hera and the other gods of the Plataean land that, if it was not the lot of the Hellenes to be victorious, they might at least do great deeds before they fell, and show to a certainty that their enemies had marched out against men who were brave and who knew how to fight. 2 While Pausanias was thus calling on the gods, right in the midst of his prayers, the sacrifices showed themselves propitious and the seer announced victory. Word was at once passed all along the line to set themselves in motion against the enemy, and the phalanx suddenly had the look of a fierce beast bristling up to defend itself. The Barbarians then got assurance that their contest was to be with men who would fight to the death. 3 Therefore they made a rampart of their wicker targets and shot their arrows into the ranks of the Lacedaemonians. These, however, kept their shields closely locked together as they advanced, fell upon their foemen, tore away their wicker targets, and then, smiting the Persians in face and breast with their long spears, they slew many, who nevertheless did great deeds of courage before they fell. 330 For they grasped the long spears with their naked hands, fractured them for the most part, and then took to short-range fighting with a will, plying their daggers and scimetars, tearing away their enemies’ shields, and locking them in close embrace; and so they held out a long time.

4 The Athenians, meanwhile, were quietly awaiting the Lacedaemonians. But when the shouts of those engaged in battle fell loud upon their ears, and there came, as they say, a messenger from Pausanias telling them what was happening, they set out with speed to aid him. However, as they were advancing through the plain to his aid, the medising Hellenes bore down upon them. 5 Then Aristides, to begin with, when he saw them, went far forward and shouted to them, invoking the gods of Hellas, that they refrain from battle, and oppose not nor hinder those who were bearing aid to men standing in the van of danger for the sake of Hellas. But as soon as he saw that they paid no heed to him, and were arrayed for battle, then he turned aside from rendering aid where he had proposed, and engaged with these, though they were about fifty thousand in number. 6 But the greater part of them at once gave way and withdrew, especially as the Barbarians had also retired, and the battle is said to have been fought chiefly with the Thebans, whose foremost and most influential men were at that time very eagerly medising, and carried with them the multitude, not of choice, but at the bidding of the few.

19 1 The contest thus begun in two places, the Lacedaemonians were first to repulse the Persians. Mardonius was slain by a man of Sparta named Arimnestus, who crushed his head with a stone, even as was foretold him by the oracle in the shrine of Amphiaraüs. Thither he had sent a Lydian man, and a Carian beside to the oracle of Trophonius. This latter the prophet actually addressed in the Carian tongue; 2 but the Lydian, on lying down in the precinct of Amphiaraüs, dreamed that an attendant of the god stood by his side and bade him be gone, and on his refusal, hurled a great stone upon his head, insomuch that he died from the blow (so ran the man’s dream). These things are so reported. Furthermore, the Lacedaemonians shut the flying Persians up in their wooden stockade.

Shortly after this it was that the Athenians routed the Thebans, after slaying three hundred, their most eminent leaders, in the actual battle. 3 After the rout was effected, and more might have been slain, there came a messenger to the Athenians, telling them that the Barbarian force was shut up and besieged in their stockade. So they suffered the Hellenes in front of them to make good their escape, while they themselves marched to the stockade. They brought welcome aid to the Lacedaemonians, who were altogether inexperienced and helpless in storming walled places, and captured the camp with great slaughter of the enemy. 4 Out of three hundred thousand, only forty thousand, it is said, made their escape with Artabazus. Of those who contended in behalf of Hellas, there fell in all one thousand three hundred and sixty. Of these, fifty-two were Athenians, all of the Aeantid tribe, according to Cleidemus, which made the bravest contest 5 (for which reason the Aeantids used to sacrifice regularly to the Sphragitic nymphs the sacrifice ordained by the Pythian oracle for the victory, receiving the expenses therefor from the public funds); ninety-one were Lacedaemonians, and sixteen were men of Tegea.

Astonishing, therefore, is the statement of Herodotus, where he says that these one hundred and fifty-nine represented the only Hellenes who engaged the enemy, and that not one of the rest did so. Surely the total number of those who fell, as well as the monuments erected over them, testifies that the success was a common one. 6 Besides, had the men of three cities only made the contest, while the rest sat idly by, the altar would not have been inscribed as it was: —

“Here did the Hellenes, flushed with a victory granted by Ares

Over the routed Persians, together, for Hellas delivered,

Build them an altar of Zeus, Zeus as Deliverer known.”

7 This battle was fought on the fourth of the month Boëdromion, as the Athenians reckon time; but according to the Boeotian calendar, on the twenty-seventh of the month Panemus, 331 the day when, down to the present time, the Hellenic council assembles in Plataea, and the Plataeans sacrifice to Zeus the Deliverer for the victory. We must not wonder at the apparent discrepancy between these dates, since, even now that astronomy is a more exact science, different peoples have different beginnings and endings for their months.

20 1 After this, the Athenians would not grant the Spartans the highest meed of valour, nor allow them to erect a general trophy, and the cause of the Hellenes had certainly gone at once to destruction from their armed contention, had not Aristides, by abundant exhortation and admonition, checked his fellow-generals, especially Leocrates and Myronides, and persuaded them to submit the case to the Hellenes for decision. 2 Thereupon, in the council of the Hellenes, Theogeiton the Megarian said that the meed of valour must be given to some third city, unless they desired the confusion of a civil war. At this point Cleocritus the Corinthian rose to speak. Every one thought he would demand the meed of valour for the Corinthians, since Corinth was held in greatest estimation after Sparta and Athens. But to the astonishment and delight of all, he made a proposition in behalf of the Plataeans, and counselled to take away contention by giving them the meed of valour, since at their honour neither claimant could take offence. 3 To this proposal Aristides was first to agree on behalf of the Athenians, then Pausanias on behalf of the Lacedaemonians. Thus reconciled, they chose out eighty talents of the booty for the Plataeans, with which they rebuilt the sanctuary of Athena, and set up the shrine, and adorned the temple with frescoes, which continue in perfect condition to the present day; then the Lacedaemonians set up a trophy on their own account, and the Athenians also for themselves.

4 When they consulted the oracle regarding the sacrifice to be made, the Pythian god made answer that they were to erect an altar of Zeus the Deliverer, but were not to sacrifice upon it until they had extinguished the fire throughout the land, which he said had been polluted by the Barbarians, and kindled it fresh and pure from the public hearth at Delphi. Accordingly the commanders of Hellenes went about straightway and compelled all who were using fire to extinguish it, while Euchidas, who promised to bring the sacred fire with all conceivable speed, went from Plataea to Delphi. 5 There he purified his person by sprinkling himself with the holy water, and crowned himself with laurel. Then he took from the altar the sacred fire and started to run back to Plataea. He reached the place before the sun had set, accomplishing thus a thousand furlongs in one and the same day.b He greeted his countrymen, handed them the sacred fire, and straightway fell down, and after a little expired. In admiration of him the Plataeans gave him burial in the sanctuary of Artemis Eucleia, and inscribed upon his tomb this tetrameter verse: —

“Euchidas, to Pytho running, came back here the selfsame day.”

6 Now Eucleia is regarded by most as Artemis, and is so addressed; but some say she was a daughter of Heracles and of that Myrto who was daughter of Menoetius and sister of Patroclus, and that, dying in virginity, she received divine honours among the Boeotians and Locrians. For she has an altar and an image built in every market place, and receives preliminary sacrifices from would be brides and bridegrooms.

21 1 After this, there was a general assembly of the Hellenes, at which Aristides proposed a decree to the effect that deputies and delegates from all Hellas convene at Plataea every year, and that every fourth year festival games of deliverance be celebrated — the Eleutheria; also that a confederate Hellenic force be levied, consisting of ten thousand shield, one thousand horse, and one hundred ships, to prosecute the war against the Barbarian; also that the Plataeans be set apart as inviolable and consecrate, that they might sacrifice to Zeus the Deliverer in behalf of Hellas.

3322 These propositions were ratified, and the Plataeans undertook to make funeral offerings annually for the Hellenes who had fallen in battle and lay buried there. And this they do yet unto this day, after the following manner. On the sixteenth of the month Maimacterion (which is the Boeotian Alalcomenius), they celebrate a procession. 3 This is led forth at break of day by a trumpeter sounding the signal for battle; waggons follow filled with myrtle-wreaths, then comes a black bull, then free-born youths carrying libations of wine and milk in jars, and pitchers of oil and myrrh (no slave may put hand to any part of that ministration, because the men thus honoured died for freedom); 4 and following all, the chief magistrate of Plataea, who may not at other times touch iron or put on any other raiment than white, at this time is robed in a purple tunic, carries on high a water-jar from the city’s archive chamber, and proceeds, sword in hand, through the midst of the city to the graves; 5 there he takes water from the sacred spring, washes off with his own hands the gravestones, and anoints them with myrrh; then he slaughters the bull at the funeral pyre, and, with prayers to Zeus and Hermes Terrestrial, summons the brave men who died for Hellas to come to the banquet and its copious draughts of blood; next he mixes a mixer of wine, drinks, and then pours a libation from it, saying these words: “I drink to the men who died for the freedom of the Hellenes.” These rites, I say, are observed by the Plataeans down to this very day.

22 1 After the Athenians had returned to their own city, Aristides saw that they desired to receive the more popular form of government. He thought the people worthy of consideration because of its sturdy valour, and he saw also that it was no longer easy to be forced out of its desires, since it was powerful in arms, and greatly elated by its victories. So he introduced a decree that the administration of the city be the privilege of all classes, and that the archons be chosen from all the Athenians.

2 Themistocles once declared to the people that he had devised a certain measure which could not be revealed to them, though it would be helpful and salutary for the city, and they ordered that Aristides alone should hear what it was and pass judgment on it. So Themistocles told Aristides that his purpose was to burn the naval station of the confederate Hellenes, for that in this way the Athenians would be greatest, and lords of all. Then Aristides came before the people and said of the deed which Themistocles purposed to do, that none other could be more advantageous, and none more unjust. On hearing this, the Athenians ordained that Themistocles cease from his purpose. So fond of justice was the people, and so loyal and true to the people was Aristides.

23 1 When he was sent out as general along with Cimon to prosecute the war, and saw that Pausanias and the other Spartan commanders were offensive and severe to the allies, he made his own intercourse with them gentle and humane, and induced Cimon to be on easy terms with them and to take an actual part in their campaigns, so that, before the Lacedaemonians were aware, not by means of hoplites or ships or horsemen, but by tact and diplomacy he had stripped them of the leadership. 2 For, well disposed as the Hellenes were towards the Athenians on account of the justice of Aristides and the reasonableness of Cimon, they were made to long for their supremacy still more by the rapacity of Pausanias and his severity. The commanders of the allies ever met with angry harshness at the hands of Pausanias, and the common men he punished with stripes, or by compelling them to stand all day long with an iron anchor on their shoulders. 3 No one could get bedding or fodder or go down to a spring for water before the Spartans, nay, their servants armed with goads would drive away such as approached. On these grounds Aristides once had it in mind to chide and admonish him, but Pausanias scowled, said he was busy, and would not listen.

3334 Subsequently the captains and generals of the Hellenes, and especially the Chians, Samians, and Lesbians, came to Aristides and tried to persuade him to assume the leadership and bring over to his support the allies, who had long wanted to be rid of the Spartans and to range themselves anew on the side of the Athenians. He replied that he saw the urgency and the justice of what they proposed, but that to establish Athenian confidence in them some overt act was needed, the doing of which would make it impossible for the multitude to change their allegiance back again. 5 So Uliades the Samian and Antagoras the Chian conspired together, and ran down the trireme of Pausanias off Byzantium, closing in on both sides of it as it was putting out before the line. When Pausanias saw what they had done, he sprang up and wrathfully threatened to show the world in a little while that these men had run down not so much his ship as their own native cities; but they bade him be gone, and be grateful to that force which fought in his favour at Plataea; it was because the Hellenes still stood in awe of this, they said, that they did not punish him as he deserved. And finally they went off and joined the Athenians.

6 Then indeed was the lofty wisdom of the Spartans made manifest in a wonderful way. When they saw that their commanders were corrupted by the great powers entrusted to them, they voluntarily abandoned the leadership and ceased sending out generals for the war, choosing rather to have their citizens discreet and true to their ancestral customs than to have the sway over all Hellas.

24 1 The Hellenes used to pay a sort of contribution for the war even while the Lacedaemonians had the leadership, but now they wished to be assessed equably city by city. So they asked the Athenians for Aristides, and commissioned him to inspect their several territories and revenues, and then to fix the assessments according to each member’s worth and ability to pay. 2 And yet, though he became master of such power, and though after a fashion Hellas put all her property in his sole hands, poor as he was when he went forth on this mission, he came back from it poorer still, and he made his assessments of money not only with purity and justice, but also to the grateful satisfaction and convenience of all concerned. Indeed, as men of old hymned the praises of the age of Cronus — the golden age, so did the allies of the Athenians praise the tariff of Aristides, calling it a kind of blessed happening for Hellas, especially as, after a short time, it was doubled and then again trebled. 3 For the tax which Aristides laid amounted to four hundred and sixty talents only; but Pericles must have added almost a third to this, since Thucydides says that when the war began the Athenians had a revenue of six hundred talents from their allies. And after the death of Pericles the demagogues enlarged it little by little, and at last brought the sum total up to thirteen hundred talents, not so much because the war, by reason of its length and vicissitudes, became extravagantly expensive, as because they themselves led the people off into the distribution of public moneys for spectacular entertainments, and for the erection of images and sanctuaries.

4 So then Aristides had a great and admirable name for his adjustment of the revenues. But Themistocles is said to have ridiculed him, claiming that the praise he got therefor was not fit for a man, but rather for a mere money-wallet. He came off second best, however, in this retort upon the plain speech of Aristides, who had remarked, when Themistocles once declared to him the opinion that the greatest excellence in a general was the anticipation of the plans of his enemies: “That is indeed needful, Themistocles, but the honourable thing, and that which makes the real general, is his mastery over his fingers.”

25 1 Aristides did, indeed, bind the Hellenes by an oath, and took oath himself for the Athenians, 334 to mark his imprecations casting iron ingots into the sea; but afterwards, when circumstances, forsooth, compelled a more strenuous sway, he bade the Athenians lay the perjury to his own charge, and turn events to their own advantage. 2 And in general, as Theophrastus tells us, while the man was strictly just in his private relations to his fellow-citizens, in public matters he often acted in accordance with the policy which his country had adopted, feeling that this required much actual injustice. For instance, he says that when the question of removing the moneys of the confederacy from Delos to Athens, contrary to the compacts, was being debated, and even the Samians proposed it, Aristides declared that it was unjust, but advantageous. 3 And yet, although he at last established his city in its sway over so many men, he himself abode by his poverty, and continued to be no less content with the reputation he got from being a poor man, than with that based on his trophies of victory. This is clear from the following story.

Callias the Torch-bearer was a kinsman of his. This man was prosecuted by his enemies on a capital charge, and after they had brought only moderate accusations against him within the scope of their indictment, they went outside of it and appealed to the judges as follows: 4 “You know Aristides the son of Lysimachus,” they said, “how he is admired in Hellas; what do you suppose his domestic circumstances are when you see him entering the public assembly in such a scanty cloak as that? Is it not likely that a man who shivers in public goes hungry at home, and is straitened for the other necessaries of life? Callias, however, who is the richest man of Athens (and his cousin at that), allows him to suffer want with his wife and children, though he has often had service of the man, and many times reaped advantage from his influence with you.” 5 But Callias, seeing that his judges were very turbulent at this charge, and bitterly disposed toward him, summoned Aristides and demanded his testimony before the judges that though often proffered aid from him and importuned to accept it, he had refused it, with the answer that it more became him to be proud of his poverty than Callias of his wealth; for many were to be seen who use wealth well or ill, but it was not easy to find a man who endured poverty with a noble spirit; and those only should be ashamed of poverty who could not be otherwise than poor. 6 When Aristides had borne this witness for Callias, there was no one of his hearers who did not go home preferring to be poor with Aristides rather than to be rich with Callias. This, at any rate, is the story told by Aeschines the Socratic. And Plato maintains that of all those who had great names and reputations at Athens, this man alone was worthy of regard. Themistocles, he says, and Cimon, and Pericles, filled the city with porches and moneys and no end of nonsense; but Aristides squared his politics with virtue.

7 There are also strong proofs of his reasonableness to be seen in his treatment of Themistocles. This man he had found to be his foe during almost all his public service, and it was through this man that he was ostracized; but when Themistocles was in the same plight, and was under accusation before the city, Aristides remembered no evil; nay, though Alcmeon and Cimon and many others denounced and persecuted the man, Aristides alone did and said no meanness, nor did he take any advantage of his enemy’s misfortune, just as formerly he did not grudge him his prosperity.

26 1 As touching the death of Aristides, some say he died in Pontus, on an expedition in the public service; others at Athens, of old age, honoured and admired by his countrymen. But Craterus the Macedonian tells something like this about the death of the man. After the exile of Themistocles, he says, the people waxed wanton, as it were, and produced a great crop of sycophants, who hounded down the noblest and most influential men, 335 and subjected them to the malice of the multitude, now exalted with its prosperity and power. 2 Among these he says that Aristides also was convicted of bribery, on prosecution of Diophantus of the deme Amphitropé, for having taken money from the Ionians when he was regulating the tributes; and, further, that being unable to pay the judgment, which was fifty minas, he sailed away and died somewhere in Ionia. But Craterus furnishes no documentary proof of this, — no judgment of the court, no decree of indictment, — although he is wont to record such things with all due fulness, and to adduce his authorities.

3 All the rest, as I may venture to say, — all who rehearse the shortcomings of the people in dealing with their leaders, — compile and descant upon the exile of Themistocles, the imprisonment of Miltiades, the fine of Pericles, the death of Paches in the court room, — he slew himself on the rostrum when he saw that he was convicted, — and many such a case, and they put into the list the ostracism of Aristides, but of such a condemnation as this for bribery they make no mention whatsoever.

27 1 Moreover, his tomb is pointed out at Phalerum, and they say the city constructed it for him, since he did not leave even enough to pay for his funeral. And they tell how his daughters were married from the prytaneium at the public cost, the city bestowing the dowry for the marriage and voting outright three thousand drachmas to each daughter, while to Lysimachus his son, the people gave one hundred minas in silver, as many acres of vineyard land, and besides this a pension of four drachmas per diem, — 2 all in a bill which was brought in by Alcibiades. And further, Lysimachus left a daughter, Polycrité, according to Callisthenes, and the people voted for her a public maintenance, in the style of their Olympic victors. Again, Demetrius the Phalerean, Hieronymus the Rhodian, Aristoxenus the Musician, and Aristotle (provided the book “On Nobility of Birth” is to be ranked among the genuine works of Aristotle) relate that Myrto, the granddaughter of Aristides, lived in wedlock with Socrates the Sage. He had another woman to wife, but took this one up because her poverty kept her a widow, and she lacked the necessaries of life. 3 To these, however, Panaetius, in his work on Socrates, has made sufficient reply.

And the Phalerean says, in his “Socrates,” that he remembers a grandson of Aristides, Lysimachus, a very poor man, who made his own living by means of a sort of dream-interpreting tablet, his seat being near the so called Iaccheium. To this man’s mother and to her sister, Demetrius persuaded the people to give, by formal decree, a pension of three obols per diem; though afterwards, in his capacity of sole legislator, he himself, as he says, assigned a drachma instead of three obols to each of the women.

4 It is not to be wondered at that the people took such thought for families in the city, since on learning that the granddaughter of Aristogeiton was living humbly in Lemnos, unmarried because of her poverty, they brought her back to Athens, consorted her with a well-born man, and gave her the estate in Potamus for her dowry. For such humanity and benevolence, of which the city still gives illustrious examples even in my own day, she is justly admired and lauded.

Cato the Elder

1 1 The family of Marcus Cato, it is said, was of Tusculan origin, though he lived, previous to his career as soldier and statesman, on an inherited estate in the country of the Sabines. His ancestors commonly passed for men of no note whatever, but Cato himself extols his father, Marcus, as a brave man and good soldier. He also says that his grandfather, Cato, often won prizes for soldierly valour, and received from the state treasury, because of his bravery, the price of five horses which had been killed under him in battle. 2 The Romans used to call men who had no family distinction, but were coming into public notice through their own achievements, “new men,” and such they called Cato. But he himself used to say that as far as office and distinction went, he was indeed new, but having regard to ancestral deeds of valour, he was oldest of the old. His third name was not Cato at first, but Priscus. Afterwards he got the surname of Cato for his great abilities. The Romans call a man who is wise and prudent, catus.

3 As for his outward appearance, he had reddish hair, and keen grey eyes, as the author of the well-known epigram ill-naturedly gives us to understand: —

Red-haired, snapper and biter, his grey eyes flashing defiance,

Porcius, come to the shades, back will be thrust by their Queen.

His bodily habit, since he was addicted from the very first to labour with his own hands, a temperate mode of life, and military duties, was very serviceable, and disposed alike to vigour and health. 4 His discourse, — a second body, as it were, and, for the use of a man who would live neither obscurely nor idly, an instrument with which to perform not only necessary, but also high and noble services, — this he developed and perfected in the villages and towns about Rome, where he served as advocate for all who needed him, and got the reputation of being, first a zealous pleader, and then a capable orator. Thenceforth the weight and dignity of his character revealed themselves more and more to those who had dealings with him; they saw that he was bound to be a man of great affairs, and have a leading place in the state. 5 For he not only gave his services in legal contests without fee of any sort, as it would seem, but did not appear to cherish even the repute won in such contests as his chief ambition. Nay, he was far more desirous of high repute in battles and campaigns against the enemy, and while he was yet a mere stripling, had his breast covered with honourable wounds. 6 He says himself that he made his first campaign when he was seventeen years old, at the time when Hannibal was consuming Italy with the flames of his successes.

In battle, he showed himself effective of hand, sure and steadfast of foot, and of a fierce countenance. With threatening speech and harsh cries he would advance upon the foe, for he rightly thought, and tried to show others, that often-times such action terrifies the enemy more than the sword. 7 On the march, he carried his own armour on foot, while a single attendant followed in charge of his camp utensils. With this man, it is said, he was never wroth, and never scolded him when he served up a meal, nay, he actually took hold himself and assisted in most of such preparations, provided he was free from his military duties. Water was what he drank on his campaigns, except that once in a while, in a raging thirst, he would call for vinegar, or, when his strength was failing, would add a little wine.

2 1 Near his fields was the cottage which had once belonged to Manius Curius, a hero of three triumphs. To this he would often go, and the sight of the small farm and the mean dwelling led him to think of their former owner, who, though he had become the greatest of the Romans, had subdued the most warlike nations, and driven Pyrrhus out of Italy, nevertheless tilled this little patch of ground with his own hands and occupied this cottage, after three triumphs. 2 Here it was that the ambassadors of the Samnites once found him seated at his hearth cooking turnips, and offered him much gold; but he dismissed them, saying that a man whom such a meal satisfied had no need of gold, and for his part he thought that a more honourable thing than the possession of gold was the conquest of its possessors. Cato would go away with his mind full of these things, and on viewing again his own house and lands and servants and mode of life, would increase the labours of his hands and lop off his extravagancies.

3 When Fabius Maximus took the city of Tarentum, it chanced that Cato, who was then a mere stripling, served under him, and being lodged with a certain Nearchus, of the sect of the Pythagoreans, he was eager to know of his doctrines. When he heard this man holding forth as follows, in language which Plato also uses, condemning pleasure as “the greatest incentive to evil,” and the body as “the chief detriment to the soul, from which she can release and purify herself only by such reasonings as most do wean and divorce her from bodily sensations,” he fell still more in love with simplicity and restraint. 4 Further than this, it is said, he did not learn Greek till late in life, and was quite well on in years when he took to reading Greek books; then he profited in oratory somewhat from Thucydides, but most from Demosthenes. However, his writings are moderately embellished with Greek sentiments and stories, and many literal translations from the Greek have found a place among his maxims and proverbs.

3 1 There was at Rome a certain man of the highest birth and greatest influence, who had the power to discern excellence in the bud, and the grace to cultivate it and bring it into general esteem. This man was Valerius Flaccus. He had a farm next to that of Cato, and learned from Cato’s servants of their master’s laborious and frugal way of living. He was amazed to hear them tell how Cato, early in the morning, went on foot to the market-place and pleaded the cases of all who wished his aid; 2 then came back to his farm, where, clad in a working blouse if it was winter, and stripped to the waist if it was summer, he wrought with his servants, then sat down with them to eat of the same bread and drink of the same wine. They told Valerius many other instances of Cato’s fairness and moderation, quoting also sundry pithy sayings of his, until at last Valerius gave command that Cato be invited to dine with him.a 3 After this, discovering by converse with him that his nature was gentle and polite, and needed, like a growing tree, only cultivation and room to expand, Valerius urged and at last persuaded him to engage in public life at Rome. Accordingly, taking up his abode in the city, his own efforts as an advocate at once won him admiring friends, and the favour of Valerius brought him great honour and influence, so that he was made military tribune first, and then quaestor. 4 After this, being now launched on an eminent and brilliant career, he shared the highest honours with Valerius, becoming consul with him, and afterwards censor.

Of the elder statesmen, he attached himself most closely to Fabius Maximus, who was of the highest reputation and had the greatest influence, but this was more by way of setting before himself the character and life of the man as the fairest examples he could follow. 5 In the same spirit he did not hesitate to oppose the great Scipio, a youthful rival of Fabius, and thought to be envious of him. When he was sent out with Scipio as quaestor for the war in Africa, he saw that the man indulged in his wonted extravagance, and lavished money without stint on his soldiery. 6 He therefore made bold to tell him that the matter of expense was not the greatest evil to be complained of, but the fact that he was corrupting the native simplicity of his soldiers, who resorted to wanton pleasures when their pay exceeded their actual needs. Scipio replied that he had no use for a parsimonious quaestor when the winds were bearing him under full sail to the war; he owed the city an account of his achievements, not of its moneys. 7 Cato therefore left Sicily, and joined Fabius in denouncing before the Senate Scipio’s waste of enormous moneys, and his boyish addiction to palaestras and theatres, as though he were not commander of an army, but master of a festival. As a result of these attacks, tribunes were sent to bring Scipio back to Rome, if the charges against him should turn out to be true. 8 Well then, Scipio convinced the tribunes that victory in war depended on the preparations made for it; showed that he could be agreeable in his intercourse with his friends when he had leisure for it, but was never led by his sociability to neglect matters of large and serious import; and sailed off for his war in Africa.

4 1 The influence which Cato’s oratory won for him waxed great, and men called him a Roman Demosthenes; but his manner of life was even more talked about and noised abroad. For his oratorical ability only set before young men a goal which many already were striving eagerly to attain; but a man who wrought with his own hands, as his fathers did, and was contented with a cold breakfast, a frugal dinner, simple raiment, and a humble dwelling, — one who thought more of not wanting the superfluities of life than of possessing them, — such a man was rare. 2 The commonwealth had now grown too large to keep its primitive integrity; the sway over many realms and peoples had brought a large admixture of customs, and the adoption of examples set in modes of life of every sort. It was natural, therefore, that men should admire Cato, when they saw that, whereas other men were broken down by toils and enervated by pleasures, 3 he was victor over both, and this too, not only while he was still young and ambitious, but even in his hoary age, after consulship and triumph. Then, like some victorious athlete, he persisted in the regimen of his training, and kept his mind unaltered to the last.

He tells us that he never wore clothing worth more than a hundred drachmas; that he drank, even when he was praetor or consul, the same wine as his slaves; that as for fish and meats, he would buy thirty asses’ worth for his dinner from the public stalls, and even this for the city’s sake, that he might not live on bread alone, but strengthen his body for military service; 4 that he once fell heir to an embroidered Babylonian robe, but sold it at once; that not a single one of his cottages had plastered walls;b that he never paid more than fifteen hundred drachmas for a slave, since he did not want them to be delicately beautiful, but sturdy workers, such as grooms and herdsmen, and these he thought it his duty to sell when they got oldish, instead of feeding them when they were useless; and that in general, he thought nothing cheap that one could do without, but that what one did not need, even if it cost but a penny, was dear; also that he bought lands where crops were raised and cattle herded, not those where lawns were sprinkled and paths swept.

5 1 These things were ascribed by some to the man’s parsimony; but others condoned them in the belief that he lived in this contracted way only to correct and moderate the extravagance of others. However, for my part, I regard his treatment of his slaves like beasts of burden, using them to the uttermost, and then, when they were old, driving them off and selling them, as the mark of a very mean nature, which recognizes no tie between man and man but that of necessity. 2 And yet we know that kindness has a wider scope than justice. Law and justice we naturally apply to men alone; but when it comes to beneficence and charity, these often flow in streams from the gentle heart, like water from a copious spring, even down to dumb beasts. A kindly man will take good care of his horses even when they are worn out with age, and of his dogs, too, not only in their puppyhood, but when their old age needs nursing.

3 While the Athenians were building the Parthenon, they turned loose for free and unrestricted pasturage such mules as were seen to be most persistently laborious. One of these, they say, came back to the works of its own accord, trotted along by the side of its fellows under the yoke, which were dragging the waggons up to the Acropolis, and even led the way for them, as though exhorting and inciting them on. The Athenians passed a decree that the animal be maintained at the public cost as long as it lived. 4 Then there were the mares of Cimon, with which he won three victories at Olympia; their graves are near the tombs of his family. Dogs also that have been close and constant companions of men, have often been buried with honour. Xanthippus, of olden time, gave the dog which swam along by the side of his trireme to Salamis, when the people were abandoning their city, honourable burial on the promontory which is called to this day Cynossema, or Dog’s Mound.

5 We should not treat living creatures like shoes or pots and pans, casting them aside when they are bruised and worn out with service, but, if for no other reason, for the sake of practice in kindness to our fellow men, we should accustom ourselves to mildness and gentleness in our dealings with other creatures. I certainly would not sell even an ox that had worked for me, just because he was old, much less an elderly man, removing him for his habitual place and customary life, as it were from his native land, for a paltry price, useless as he is to those who sell him and as he will be to those who buy him.c 6 But Cato, exulting as it were in such things, says that he left in Spain even the horse which had carried him through his consular campaign, that he might not tax the city with the cost of its transportation. Whether, now, these things should be set down to greatness of spirit or littleness of mind, is an open question.

6 1 But in other matters, his self-restraint was beyond measure admirable. For instance, when he was in command of an army, he took for himself and his retinue not more than three Attic bushels of wheat a month, and for his beasts of burden, less than a bushel and a half of barley a day. 2 He received Sardinia as his province, and whereas his predecessors were wont to charge the public treasury with their pavilions, couches, and apparel, while they oppressed the province with the cost of their large retinues of servants and friends, and of their lavish and elaborate banquets, his simple economy stood out in an incredible contrast. He made no demands whatever upon the public treasury, and made his circuit of the cities on foot, followed by a single public officer, who carried his robe and chalice for sacrifices. 3 And yet, though in such matters he showed himself mild and sparing to those under his authority, in other ways he displayed a dignity and severity which fully corresponded, for in the administration of justice he was inexorable, and in carrying out the edicts of the government was direct and masterful, so that the Roman power never inspired its subjects with greater fear or affection.

7 1 Much the same traits are revealed in the man’s oratory. It was at once graceful and powerful, pleasant and compelling, facetious and severe, sententious and belligerent. So Plato says of Socrates that from the outside he impressed his associates as rude, uncouth, and wanton; but within he was full of earnestness, and of matters that moved his hearers to tears and wrung their hearts. 2 Wherefore I know not what they can mean who say that Cato’s oratory most resembled that of Lysias. However, such questions must be decided by those who are more capable than I am of discerning the traits of Roman oratory, and I shall now record a few of his famous sayings, believing that men’s characters are revealed much more by their speech than, as some think, by their looks.

8 1 He once wished to dissuade the Roman people from insisting unseasonably upon a distribution of corn, and began his speech with these words: “It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.” Again, inveighing against the prevalent extravagance, he said: “It is a hard matter to save a city in which a fish sells for more than an ox.” 2 Again, he said the Romans were like sheep; for as these are not to be persuaded one by one, but all in a body blindly follow their leaders, “so ye,” he said, “though as individuals ye would not deign to follow the counsels of certain men, when ye are got together ye suffer yourself to be led by them.” Discoursing on the power of women, he said: “All other men rule their wives; we rule all other men, and our wives rule us.” 3 This, however, is a translation from the sayings of Themistocles. He, finding himself much under his son’s orders through the lad’s mother, said: “Wife, the Athenians rule the Hellenes, I rule the Athenians, thou rulest me, and thy son thee. Therefore let him make sparing use of that authority which makes him, child though he is, the most powerful of the Hellenes.”

4 The Roman people, Cato said, fixed the market value not only of dyes, but also of behaviour. “For,” said he, “as dyers most affect that dye which they see pleases you, so your young men learn and practice that which wins your praise.” 5 And he exhorted them, in case it was through virtue and temperance that they had become great, to make no change for the worse; but if it was through intemperance and vice, to change for the better; these had already made them great enough. Of those who were eager to hold high office frequently, he said that like men who did not know the road, they sought to be ever attended on their way by lictors, lest they go astray. 6 He censured his fellow citizens for choosing the same men over and over again to high office. “You will be thought,” said he, “not to deem your offices worth much, or else not to deem many men worthy of your offices.” Of one of his enemies who had the name of leading a disgraceful and disreputable life, he said: “This man’s mother holds the wish that he may survive her to be no pious prayer, but a malignant curse.” 7 Pointing to a man who had sold his ancestral fields lying near the sea, he pretended to admire him, as stronger than the sea. “This man,” said he, “has drunk down with ease what the sea found it hard to wash away.”

When King Eumenes paid a visit to Rome, the Senate received him with extravagant honours, and the chief men of the city strove who should be most about him. But Cato clearly looked upon him with suspicion and alarm. 8 “Surely,” some one said to him, “he is an excellent man, and a friend of Rome.” “Granted,” said Cato, “but the animal known as king is by nature carnivorous.” He said further that not one of the kings whom men so lauded was worthy of comparison with Epaminondas, or Pericles, or Themistocles, or Manius Curius, or with Hamilcar, surnamed Barcas. 9 His enemies hated him, he used to say, because he rose every day before it was light and, neglecting his own private matters, devoted his time to the public interests. He also used to say that he preferred to do right and get no thanks, rather than to do ill and get no punishment; and that he had pardon for everybody’s mistakes except his own.

9 1 The Romans once chose three ambassadors to Bithynia, of whom one was gouty, another had had his head trepanned, and the third was deemed a fool. Cato made merry over this, and said that the Romans were sending out an embassy which had neither feet, nor head, nor heart. 2 His aid was once solicited by Scipio, at the instance of Polybius, in behalf of the exiles from Achaia, and after a long debate upon the question in the Senate, where some favoured and some opposed their return home, Cato rose and said: “Here we sit all day, as if we had naught else to do, debating whether some poor old Greeks shall be buried here or in Achaia.” 3 The Senate voted that the men be allowed to return, and a few days afterwards Polybius tried to get admission to that body again, with a proposal that the exiles be restored to their former honours in Achaia, and asked Cato’s opinion on the matter. Cato smiled and said that Polybius, as if he were another Odysseus, wanted to go back into the cave of the Cyclops for a cap and belt which he had left there.

4 Wise men, he said, profited more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise. He said he liked to see blushes on a young man’s face rather than pallor, and that he had no use for a soldier who plied his hands on the march, and his feet in battle, and whose snore was louder than his war-cry. 5 Railing at the fat knight, he said, “Where can such a body be of service to the state, when everything between its gullet and its groins is devoted to belly?” A certain epicure wished to enjoy his society, but he excused himself, saying that he could not live with a man whose palate was more sensitive than his heart. As for the lover, he said his soul dwelt in the body of another. 6 And as for repentance, he said he had indulged in it himself but thrice in his whole life: once when he entrusted a secret to his wife; once when he paid ship’s fare to a place instead of walking thither; and once when he remained intestate a whole day. To an old man who was steeped in iniquity he said: “Man, old age has disgraces enough of its own; do not add to them the shame of vice.” 7 To a tribune of the people who had been accused of using poison, and who was trying to force the passage of a useless bill, he said: “Young man, I know not which is worse, to drink your mixtures, or to enact your bills.” And when he was reviled by a man who led a life of shameless debauchery, he said: “I fight an unequal battle with you: you listen to abuse calmly, and utter it glibly; while for me it is unpleasant to utter it, and unusual to hear it.”

Such, then, is the nature of his famous sayings.

10 1 Having been elected consul with Valerius Flaccus, his intimate friend, the province which the Romans call Hither Spain was allotted to his charge. Here, while he was subduing some of the tribes, and winning over others by diplomacy, a great host of Barbarians fell upon him, and threatened to drive him disgracefully out of the province. He therefore begged the neighbouring Celtiberians to become his allies. 2 On their demanding two hundred talents pay for such assistance, all his officers thought it intolerable that Romans should agree to pay Barbarians for assistance. But Cato said there was nothing terrible in it; should they be victorious, they could pay the price with the spoils taken from the enemy, not out of their own purse, whereas, should they be vanquished, there would be nobody left either to pay or to ask the price. In this battle he was completely victorious, and the rest of his campaign was a brilliant success. 3 Polybius indeed says that in a single day the walls of all the cities on this side the river Baetis — and they were very many, and full of warlike men — were torn down at his command. And Cato himself says that he took more cities than he spent days in Spain, nor is this a mere boast, since, in fact, there were four hundred of them.

4 His soldiers got large booty in this campaign, and he gave each one of them a pound of silver besides, saying that it was better to have many Romans go home with silver in their pocketsd than a few with gold. But in his own case, he says that no part of the booty fell to him, except what he ate and drank. “Not that I find fault,” he says, “with those who seek to profit by such a case, but I prefer to strive in bravery with the bravest, rather than in wealth with the richest, and in greed for money with the greediest.” And he strove to keep not only himself, but also his associates, free from all taint of gain. He had five attendants with him in the field. One of these, whose name was Paccus, bought three boys for his own account from among the public prisoners, but finding that Cato was aware of the transaction, or ever he had come into his presence, went and hanged himself. Cato sold the boys, and restored the money to the public treasury.

11 While Cato still tarried in Spain, Scipio the Great, who was his enemy, and wished to obstruct the current of his successes and take away from him the administration of affairs in Spain, got himself appointed his successor in command of that province. Then he set out with all the speed possible, and brought Cato’s command to an end. But Cato took five cohorts of men-at arms and five hundred horsemen as escort on his way home, and on the march subdued the tribe of the Lacetanians, and put to death six hundred deserters whom they delivered up to him. 2 Scipio was enraged at this proceeding, but Cato, treating him with mock humility, said that only then would Rome be at her greatest, when her men of high birth refused to yield the palm of virtue to men of lower rank, and when plebeians like himself contended in virtue with their superiors in birth and reputation. However, in spite of Scipio’s displeasure, the Senate voted that no change whatever be made in what Cato had ordered and arranged, and so the administration of Scipio was marked by inactivity and idleness, and detracted from his own, rather than from Cato’s reputation. 3 Cato, on the other hand, celebrated a triumph. Most men who strive more for reputation than for virtue, when once they have attained the highest honours of consulship and triumphs, straightway adjust their future lives to the enjoyment of a pleasurable ease, and give up their public careers. But Cato did not thus remit and dismiss his virtue, nay, rather, like men first taking up the public service and all athirst for honour and reputation, he girt his loins anew, and held himself ever ready to serve his friends and fellow-citizens, either in the forum or in the field.

12 1 And so it was that he assisted Tiberius Sempronius the consul in subduing the regions in Thrace and on the Danube, acting as his ambassador; and as legionary tribune under Manius Acilius, he marched into Greece against Antiochus the Great, who gave the Romans more to fear than any man after Hannibal. For he won back almost all of Seleucus Nicator’s former dominions in Asia, reduced to subjection many warlike nations of Barbarians, and was eager to engage the Romans, whom he deemed the only worthy foemen left for him. 2 So he crossed into Greece with an army, making the freeing of the Greeks a specious ground for war. This they did not need at all, since they had recently been made free and independent of Philip and the Macedonians by grace of the Romans. Greece was at once a stormy sea of hopes and fears, being corrupted by her demagogues with expectations of royal bounty. 3 Accordingly, Manius sent envoys to the several cities. Most of those which were unsettled in their allegiance Titus Flamininus restrained without ado, and quieted down, as I have written in his Life, but Corinth, Patrae, and Aegium were brought over to Rome by Cato.

4 He also spent much time at Athens. And we are told that a certain speech of his is extant, which he addressed to the Athenian people in Greek, declaring that he admired the virtues of the ancient Athenians, and was glad to behold a city so beautiful and grand as theirs. But this is not true. On the contrary, he dealt with Athenians through an interpreter. He could have spoken to them directly, but he always clung to his native ways, and mocked at those who were lost in admiration of anything that was Greek. 5 For instance, he poked fun at Postumius Albinus, who wrote a history in Greek, and asked the indulgence of his readers. Cato said they might have shown him indulgence had he undertaken his task in consequence of a compulsory vote of the Amphictyonic Assembly. Moreover, he says the Athenians were astonished at the speed and pungency of his discourse. For what he himself set forth with brevity, the interpreter would repeat to them at great length and with many words; and on the whole he thought the words of the Greeks were born on their lips, but those of the Romans in their hearts.

13 1 Now Antiochus had blocked up the narrow pass of Thermopylae with his army, adding trenches and walls to the natural defences of the place, and sat there, thinking he had locked the war out of Greece. And the Romans did indeed despair utterly of forcing a direct passage. But Cato, calling to mind the famous compass and circuit of the pass which the Persians had once made, took a considerable force and set out under cover of darkness. 2 They climbed the heights, but their guide, who was a prisoner of war, lost the way, and wandered about in impracticable and precipitous places until he had filled the soldiers with dreadful dejection and fear. Cato, seeing their peril, bade the rest remain quietly where they were, 3 while he himself, with a certain Lucius Manlius, an expert mountain-climber, made his way along, with great toil and hazard, in the dense darkness of a moonless night, his vision much impeded and obscured by wild olive trees and rocky peaks, until at last they came upon a path. This, they thought, led down to the enemy’s camp. So they put marks and signs on some conspicuous cliffs which towered over Mount Callidromus, 4 and then made their way back again to the main body. This too they conducted to the marks and signs, struck into the path indicated by these, and started forward. But when they had gone on a little way, the path failed them, and a ravine yawned to receive them. Once more dejection and fear were rife. They did not know and could not see that they were right upon the enemy whom they sought. But presently gleams of daylight came, here and there a man thought he heard voices, and soon they actually saw a Greek outpost entrenched at the foot of the cliffs. 5 So then Cato halted his forces there, and summoned the men of Firmume to a private conference. These soldiers he had always found trusty and zealous in his service. When they had run up and stood grouped about him, he said: “I must take one of the enemy’s men alive, and learn from him who they are that form this advance guard, what their number is, and with what disposition and array their main body awaits us. 6 But the task demands the swift and bold leap of lions fearlessly rushing all unarmed upon the timorous beasts on which they prey.” So spake Cato, and the Firmians instantly started, just as they were, rushed down the mountain-side, and ran upon the enemy’s sentinels. Falling upon them unexpectedly, they threw them all into confusion and scattered them in flight; one of them they seized, arms and all, and delivered him over to Cato. 7 From the captive Cato learned that the main force of the enemy was encamped in the pass with the king himself, and that the detachment guarding the pass over the mountains was composed of six hundred picked Aetolians. Despising their small numbers and their carelessness, he led his troops against them at once, with bray of trumpet and battle-cry, being himself first to draw his sword. But when the enemy saw his men pouring down upon them from the cliffs, they fled to the main army, and filled them all with confusion.

14 1 Meanwhile Manius also, down below, threw his whole force forward into the pass and stormed the enemy’s fortifications. Antiochus, being hit in the mouth with a stone which knocked his teeth out, wheeled his horse about for very anguish. Then his army gave way everywhere before the Roman onset. 2 Although flight for them meant impracticable roads and helpless wanderings, while deep marshes and steep cliffs threatened those who slipped and fell, still, they poured along through the pass into these, crowding one another on in their fear of the enemy’s deadly weapons, and so destroyed themselves.

Cato, who was ever rather generous, it would seem, in his own praises, and did not hesitate to follow up his great achievements with boastings equally great, is very pompous in his account of this exploit. 3 He says that those who saw him at that time pursuing the enemy and hewing them down, felt convinced that Cato owed less to Rome than Rome to Cato; also that the consul Manius himself, flushed with victory, threw his arms about him, still flushed with his own victory, and embraced him for a long time, crying out for joy that neither he himself nor the whole Roman people could fittingly requite Cato for his benefactions. 4 Immediately after the battle he was sent to Rome as the messenger of his own triumphs. He had a fair passage to Brundisium, crossed the peninsula from there to Tarentum in a single day, travelled thence four days more, and on the fifth day after landing reached Rome, where he was the first to announce the victory. He filled the city full of joy and sacrifices, and the people with the proud feeling that it was able to master every land and sea.

15 1 These are perhaps the most remarkable features of Cato’s military career. In political life, he seems to have regarded the impeachment and conviction of malefactors as a department worthy of his most zealous efforts. For he brought many prosecutions himself, assisted others in bringing theirs, and even instigated some to begin prosecutions, as for instance Petillius against Scipio. 2 That great man, however, trampled the accusations against him under foot, as the splendour of his house and his own inherent loftiness of spirit prompted him to do, and Cato, unable to secure his capital conviction, dropped the case. But he so co-operated with the accusers of Lucius, Scipio’s brother, as to have him condemned to pay a large fine to the state. This debt Lucius was unable to meet, and was therefore liable to imprisonment. Indeed, it was only at the intercession of the tribunes that he was at last set free.

3 We are also told that a certain young man, who had got a verdict of civil outlawry against an enemy of his dead father, was passing through the forum on the conclusion of the case, and met Cato, who greeted him and said: “These are the sacrifices we must bring to the spirits of our parents; not lambs and kids, but the condemnations and tears of their enemies.” However, he himself did not go unscathed, but wherever in his political career he gave his enemies the slightest handle, he was all the while suffering prosecutions and running risk of condemnation. 4 It is said that he was defendant in nearly fifty cases, and in the last one when he was eighty-six years of age. It was in the course of this that he uttered the memorable saying: “It is hard for one who has lived among men of one generation, to make his defence before those of another.” And even with this case he did not put an end to his forensic contests, but four years later, at the age of ninety, he impeached Servius Galba. 5 Indeed, he may be said, like Nestor, to have been vigorous and active among three generations. For after many political struggles with Scipio the Great, as told above, he lived to be contemporary with Scipio the Younger, who was the Elder’s grandson by adoption, and the son of that Paulus Aemilius who subdued Perseus and the Macedonians.

16 1 Ten years after his consulship, Cato stood for the censorship. This office towered, as it were, above every other civic honour, and was, in a way, the culmination of a political career. The variety of its powers was great, including that of examining into the lives and manners of the citizens. Its creators thought that no one should be left to his own devices and desires, without inspection and review, either in his marriage, or in the begetting of his children, or in the ordering of his daily life, or in the entertainment of his friends. 2 Nay, rather, thinking that these things revealed a man’s real character more than did his public and political career, they set men in office to watch, admonish, and chastise, that no one should turn aside to wantonness and forsake his native and customary mode of life. They chose to this office one of the so called patricians, and one of the plebeians. These officers were called censors, and they had authority to degrade a knight, or to expel a senator who led an unbridled and disorderly life. 3 They also revised the assessments of property, and arranged the citizens in lists according to their social and political classes. There were other great powers also connected with the office.

Therefore, when Cato stood for it, nearly all the best known and most influential men of the senatorial party united to oppose him. The men of noble parentage among them were moved by jealousy, thinking that nobility of birth would be trampled in the mire if men of ignoble origin forced their way up to the summits of honour and power; 4 while those who were conscious of base practices and of a departure from ancestral customs, feared the severity of the man, which was sure to be harsh and inexorable in the exercise of power. Therefore, after due consultation and preparation, they put up in opposition to Cato seven candidates for the office, who sought the favour of the multitude with promises of mild conduct in office, supposing, forsooth, that it wanted to be ruled with a lax and indulgent hand. 5 Cato, on the contrary, showed no complaisance whatever, but plainly threatened wrong-doers in his speeches, and loudly cried that the city had need of a great purification. He adjured the people, if they were wise, not to choose the most agreeable physician, but the one who was most in earnest. He himself, he said, was such a physician, and so was Valerius Flaccus, of the patricians. With him as colleague, and him alone, he thought he could cut and sear to some purpose the hydra-like luxury and effeminacy of the time. As for the rest of the candidates, he saw that they were all trying to force their way into the office in order to administer it badly, since they feared those who would administer it well. 6 And so truly great was the Roman people, and so worthy of great leaders, that they did not fear Cato’s rigour and haughty independence, but rejected rather those agreeable candidates who, it was believed, would do every thing to please them, and elected Flaccus to the office along with Cato. To Cato they gave ear, not as to one soliciting office, but as to one already in office and issuing his decrees.

17 1 As censor, then, Cato made Lucius Valerius Flaccus, his colleague and friend, chief senator. He also expelled many members of the Senate, including Lucius Quintius. This man had been consul seven years before, and, a thing which gave him more reputation than the consulship even, was brother of the Titus Flamininus who conquered King Philip. 2 The reason for his expulsion was the following. There was a youth who, ever since his boyhood, had been the favourite of Lucius. This youth Lucius kept ever about him, and took with him on his campaigns in greater honour and power than any one of his nearest friends and kinsmen had. He was once administering the affairs of his consular province, and at a certain banquet this youth, as was his wont, reclined at his side, and began to pay his flatteries to a man who, in his cups, was too easily led about. “I love you so much,” he said, “that once, when there was a gladiatorial show at home, a thing which I had never seen, I rushed away from it to join you, although my heart was set on seeing a man slaughtered.” 3 “Well, for that matter,” said Lucius, “don’t lie there with any grudge against me, for I will cure it.” Thereupon he commanded that one of the men who were lying under sentence of death be brought to the banquet, and that a lictor with an axe stand by his side. Then he asked his beloved if he wished to see the man smitten. The youth said he did, and Lucius ordered the man’s head to be cut off.

4 This is the version which most writers give of the affair, and so Cicero has represented Cato himself as telling the story in his dialogue “On Old Age.” But Livy says the victim was a Gallic deserter, and that Lucius did not have the man slain by a lictor, but smote him with his own hand, and that this is the version of the story in a speech of Cato’s.

5 On the expulsion of Lucius from the Senate by Cato, his brother was greatly indignant, and appealed to the people, urging that Cato state his reasons for the expulsion. Cato did so, narrating the incident of the banquet. Lucius attempted to make denial, but when Cato challenged him to a formal trial of the case with a wager of money upon it, he declined. 6 Then the justice of his punishment was recognized. But once when a spectacle was given in the theatre, he passed along by the senatorial seats, and took his place as far away from them as he could. Then the people took pity upon him and shouted till they had forced him to change his seat, thus rectifying, as far as was possible, and alleviating the situation.

7 Cato expelled another senator who was thought to have good prospects for the consulship, namely, Manilius, because he embraced his wife in open day before the eyes of his daughter. For his own part, he said, he never embraced his wife unless it thundered loudly; and it was a pleasantry of his to remark that he was a happy man when it thundered.

18 1 Cato was rather bitterly censured for his treatment of Lucius, the brother of Scipio, whom, though he had achieved the honour of a triumph, he expelled from the equestrian order. He was thought to have done this as an insult to the memory of Scipio Africanus. But he was most obnoxious to the majority of his enemies because he lopped off extravagance in living. This could not be done away with outright, since most of the people were already infected and corrupted by it, and so he took a roundabout way. 2 He had all apparel, equipages, jewellery, furniture and plate, the value of which in any case exceeded fifteen hundred drachmas, assessed at ten times its worth, wishing by means of larger assessments to make the owners’ taxes also larger. Then he laid a tax of three on every thousand asses thus assessed, in order that such property holders, burdened by their charges, and seeing that people of equal wealth who led modest and simple lives paid less into the public treasury, might desist from their extravagance. 3 As a result, both classes were incensed against them, but those who endured the taxes for the sake of their luxury, and those no less who put away their luxury because of the taxes. For most men think themselves robbed of their wealth if they are prevented from displaying it, and that display of it is made in the superfluities, not in the necessaries of life. This, we are told, is what most astonished Ariston the philosopher, namely, that those possessed of the superfluities of life should be counted happy, rather than those well provided with life’s necessary and useful things. 4 Scopas the Thessalian, when one of his friends asked for something of his which was of no great service to him, with the remark that he asked for nothing that was necessary and useful, replied: “And yet my wealth and happiness are based on just such useless and superfluous things.” Thus the desire for wealth is no natural adjunct of the soul, but is imposed upon it by the false opinions of the outside world.

19 1 However, Cato paid not the slightest heed to his accusers, but grew still more strict. He cut off the pipes by which people conveyed part of the public water into their private houses and gardens;f he upset and demolished all buildings that encroached on public land; he reduced the cost of public works to the lowest, and forced the rent of public lands to the highest possible figure. 2 All these things brought much odium upon him. Titus Flamininus headed a party against him which induced the Senate to annul as useless the outlays and payments which he had authorised for temples and public works, and incited the boldest of the tribunes to call him to account before the people and fine him two talents. The Senate also strongly opposed the erection of the basilica which he built at the public cost below the council-house in the Forum, and which was called the Basilica Porcia.

3 Still, it appears that the people approved of his censorship to an amazing extent. At any rate, after erecting a statue to his honour in the temple of Health, they commemorated in the inscription upon it, not the military commands nor the triumph of Cato, but, as the inscription may be translated, the fact “that when the Roman state was tottering to its fall, he was made censor, and by helpful guidance, wise restraints, and sound teachings, restored it again.” 4 And yet, before this time he used to laugh at those who delighted in such honours, saying that, although they knew it not, their pride was based simply on the work of statuaries and painters, whereas his own images, of the most exquisite workmanship, were borne about in the hearts of his fellow citizens. And to those who expressed their amazement that many men of no fame had statues, while he had none, he used to say: “I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.” 5 In short, he thought a good citizen should not even allow himself to be praised, unless such praise was beneficial to the commonwealth.

And yet of all men he has heaped most praises upon himself. He tells us that men of self-indulgent lives, when rebuked for it, used to say; “We ought not to be blamed; we are no Catos.” Also that those who imitated some of his practices and did it clumsily, were called “left-handed Catos.” 6 Also that the Senate looked to him in the most dangerous crises as seafarers to their helmsman, and often, if he was not present, postponed its most serious business. These boasts of his are confirmed, it is true, by other witnesses, for he had great authority in the city, alike for his life, his eloquence, and his age.

20 1 He was also a good father, a considerate husband, and a household manager of no mean talent, nor did he give only a fitful attention to this, as a matter of little or no importance. Therefore I think I ought to give suitable instances of his conduct in these relations. He married a wife who was of gentler birth than she was rich, thinking that, although the rich and high-born may be alike given to pride, still, women of high birth have such a horror of what is disgraceful that they are more obedient to their husbands in all that is honourable. 2 He used to say that the man who struck his wife or child, laid violent hands on the holiest of holy things. Also that he thought it more praiseworthy to be a good husband than a good senator, nay, there was nothing else to admire in Socrates of old except that he was always kind and gentle in his intercourse with a shrewish wife and stupid sons. After the birth of his son, no business could be so urgent, unless it had a public character, as to prevent him from being present when his wife bathed and swaddled the babe. 3 For the mother nursed it herself, and often gave suck also to the infants of her slaves, that so they might come to cherish a brotherly affection for her son. As soon as the boy showed signs of understanding, his father took him under his own charge and taught him to read, although he had an accomplished slave, Chilo by name, who was a school-teacher, and taught many boys. 4 Still, Cato thought it not right, as he tells us himself, that his son should be scolded by a slave, or have his ears tweaked when he was slow to learn, still less that he should be indebted to his slave for such a priceless thing as education. He was therefore himself not only the boys’ reading-teacher, but his tutor in law, and his athletic trainer, and he taught his son not merely to hurl the javelin and fight in armour and ride the horse, but also to box, to endure heat and cold, and to swim lustily through the eddies and billows of the Tiber. 5 His History of Rome, as he tells us himself, he wrote out with his own hand and in large characters, that his son might have in his own home an aid to acquaintance with his country’s ancient traditions. He declares that his son’s presence put him on his guard against indecencies of speech as much as that of the so called vestal Virgins, and that he never bathed with him. This, indeed, would seem to have been a general custom with the Romans, for even fathers-in law avoided bathing with their sons-in law, because they were ashamed to uncover their nakedness. 6 Afterwards, however, when they had learned from the Greeks their freedom in going naked, they in their turn infected the Greeks with the practice even when women were present.

So Cato wrought at the fair task of moulding and fashioning his son to virtue, finding his zeal blameless, and his spirit answering to his good natural parts. But since his body was rather too delicate to endure much hardship, he relaxed somewhat in his favour the excessive rigidity and austerity of his own mode of life. 7 But his son, although thus delicate, made a sturdy soldier, and fought brilliantly under Paulus Aemilius in the battle against Perseus. On that occasion his sword either was smitten from his hand or slipped from his moist grasp. Distressed at this mishap, he turned to some of his companions for aid, and supported by them rushed again into the thick of the enemy. After a long and furious struggle, he succeeded in clearing the place, and found the sword at last among the many heaps of arms and dead bodies where friends and foes alike lay piled upon one another. 8 Paulus, his commander, admired the young man’s exploit, and there is still extant a letter written by Cato himself to his son, in which he heaps extravagant praise upon him for this honourable zeal in recovering his sword. The young man afterwards married Tertia, a daughter of Paulus and a sister of the younger Scipio, and his admission into such a family was due no less to himself than to his father. Thus Cato’s careful attention to the education of his son bore worthy fruit.

21 1 He owned many domestics, and usually bought those prisoners of war who were young and still capable of being reared and trained like whelps or colts. Not one of his slaves ever entered another man’s house unless sent thither by Cato or his wife, and when such an one was asked what Cato was doing, he always answered that he did not know. 2 A slave of his was expected either to be busy about the house, or to be asleep, and he was very partial to the sleepy ones. He thought these gentler than the wakeful ones, and that those who had enjoyed the gift of sleep were better for any kind of service than those who lacked it. In the belief that his slaves were led into most mischief by their sexual passions, he stipulated that the males should consort with the females at a fixed price, but should never approach any other woman.

3 At the outset, when he was still poor and in military service, he found no fault at all with what was served up to him, declaring that it was shameful for a man to quarrel with a domestic over food and drink. But afterwards, when his circumstances were improved and he used to entertain his friends and colleagues at table, no sooner was the dinner over than he would flog those slaves who had been remiss at all in preparing or serving it. 4 He was always contriving that his slaves should have feuds and dissensions among themselves; harmony among them made him suspicious and fearful of them. He had those who were suspected of some capital offence brought to trial before all their fellow servants, and, if convicted, put to death.

5 However, as he applied himself more strenuously to money-getting, he came to regard agriculture as more entertaining than profitable, and invested his capital in business that was safe and sure. He bought ponds, hot springs, districts given over to fullers, all of which brought him in large profits, and “could not,” to use his own phrase, “be ruined by Jupiter.” 6 He used to loan money also in the most disreputable of all ways, namely, on ships, and his method was as follows. He required his borrowers to form a large company, and when there were fifty partners and as many ships for his security, he took one share in the company himself, and was represented by Quintio, a freedman of his, who accompanied his clients in all their ventures. In this way his entire security was not imperilled, but only a small part of it, and his profits were large.  He used to lend money also to those of his slaves who wished it, and they would buy boys with it, and after training and teaching them for a year, at Cato’s expense, would sell them again. Many of these boys Cato would retain for himself, reckoning to the credit of the slave the highest price bid for his boy. 8 He tried to incite his son also to such economies, by saying that it was not the part of a man, but of a widow woman, to lessen his substance. But that surely was too vehement a speech of Cato’s, when he went so far as to say that a man was to be admired and glorified like a god if the final inventory of his property showed that he had added to it more than he had inherited.

22 1 When he was now well on in years, there came as ambassadors from Athens to Rome, Carneades the Academic, and Diogenes the Stoic philosopher, to beg the reversal of a certain decision against the Athenian people, which imposed upon them a fine of five hundred talents. The people of Oropus had brought the suit, the Athenians had let the case go by default, and the Sicyonians had pronounced judgment against them. 2 Upon the arrival of these philosophers, the most studious of the city’s youth hastened to wait upon them, and became their devoted and admiring listeners. The charm of Carneades especially, which had boundless power, and a fame not inferior to its power, won large and sympathetic audiences, and filled the city, like a rushing mighty wind, with the noise of his praises. 3 Report spread far and wide that a Greek of amazing talent, who disarmed all opposition by the magic of his eloquence, had infused a tremendous passion into the youth of the city, in consequence of which they forsook their other pleasures and pursuits and were “possessed” about philosophy. The other Romans were pleased at this, and glad to see their young men lay hold of Greek culture and consort with such admirable men. 4 But Cato, at the very outset, when this zeal for discussion came pouring into the city, was distressed, fearing lest the young men, by giving this direction to their ambition, should come to love a reputation based on mere words more than one achieved by martial deeds. And when the fame of the visiting philosophers rose yet higher in the city, and their first speeches before the Senate were interpreted, at his own instance and request, by so conspicuous a man as Gaius Acilius, Cato determined, on some decent pretext or other, to rid and purge the city of them all. 5 So he rose in the Senate and censured the magistrates for keeping in such long suspense an embassy composed of men who could easily secure anything they wished, so persuasive were they. “We ought,” he said, “to make up our minds one way or another, and vote on what the embassy proposes, in order that these men may return to their schools and lecture to the sons of Greece, while the youth of Rome give ear to their laws and magistrates, as heretofore.”

23 1 This he did, not, as some think, out of personal hostility to Carneades, but because he was wholly averse to philosophy, and made mock of all Greek culture and training, out of patriotic zeal. He says, for instance, that Socrates was a mighty prattler, who attempted, as best he could, to be his country’s tyrant, by abolishing its customs, and by enticing his fellow citizens into opinions contrary to the laws. 2 He made fun of the school of Isocrates, declaring that his pupils kept on studying with him till they were old men, as if they were to practise their arts and plead their cases before Minos in Hades. And seeking to prejudice his son against Greek culture, he indulges in an utterance all too rash for his years, declaring, in the tone of a prophet or a seer, that Rome would lose her empire when she had become infected with Greek letters.g 3 But time has certainly shown the emptiness of this ill-boding speech of his, for while the city was at the zenith of its empire, she made every form of Greek learning and culture her own.

It was not only Greek philosophers that he hated, but he was also suspicious of Greeks who practised medicine at Rome. He had heard, it would seem, of Hippocrates’ reply when the Great King of Persia consulted him, with the promise of a fee of many talents, namely, that he would never put his skill at the service of Barbarians who were enemies of Greece. He said all Greek physicians had taken a similar oath, 4 and urged his son to beware of them all. He himself, he said, had written a book of recipes, which he followed in the treatment and regimen of any who were sick in his family. He never required his patients to fast, but fed them on greens, on bits of duck, pigeon, or hare. Such a diet, he said, was light and good for sick people, except that it often causes dreams. By following such treatment and regimen he said he had good health himself, and kept his family in good health.

24 1 Such presumption on his part seems not to have gone unpunished, for he lost his wife and his son. He himself was well confirmed in bodily health and vigour, and long withstood the assaults of age. Even when an old man he was prone to indulge his sexual appetite, and at last married a wife when he was long past the marrying age. This was the way it came about. After the death of his wife, he married his son to the daughter of Aemilius Paulus, the sister of Scipio, but he himself, in his widowhood, took solace with a slave girl who secretly visited his bed. 2 Of course, in a small house with a married woman in it, the matter was discovered, and once, when the girl seemed to flaunt her way rather too boldly to the chamber, the old man could not help noticing that his son, although he said nothing, looked very sour, and turned away. Perceiving that the thing displeased his children, Cato did not upbraid or blame them at all, but as he was going down in his usual way to the forum with his clients, called out with a loud voice to a certain Salonius, who had been one of his under-secretaries, and was now in his train, asking him if he had found a good husband for his young daughter. 3 The man said he had not, and would not do so without first consulting his patron. “Well then,” said Cato, “I have found a suitable son-in law for you, unless indeed his age should be displeasing; in other ways no fault can be found with him, but he is a very old man.” Salonius at once bade him take the matter in charge and give the maid to the man of his choice, since she was a dependant of his and in need of his kind services. Then Cato, without any more ado, said that he asked the damsel to wife for himself. 4 At first, as was natural, the proposal amazed the man, who counted Cato far past marriage, and himself far beneath alliance with a house of consular dignity and triumphal honours; but when he saw that Cato was in earnest, he gladly accepted his proposal, and as soon as they reached the forum the banns were published.

While the marriage was in hand, Cato’s son, accompanied by his friends, asked his father if it was because he had any complaint to make against him that he was now foisting a step-mother upon him. 5 “Heaven forbid! my son,” cried Cato, “all your conduct towards me has been admirable, and I have no fault to find with you; but I desire to bless myself and my country with more such sons.” However, they say that this sentiment was uttered long before by Peisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, who gave his grown up sons a step-mother in the person of Timonassa of Argolis, by whom he is said to have had Iophon and Thessalus. 6 Of this second marriage a son was born to Cato, who was named Salonius, after his mother’s father. But his elder son died in the praetorship. Cato often speaks of him in his books as a brave and worthy man, and is said to have borne his loss with all the equanimity of a philosopher, remitting not a whit because of it his ardour in the public service. 7 For he was not, like Lucius Lucullus and Metellus Pius in after times, too enfeebled by old age to serve the people, regarding the service of the state as a burdensome duty; nor did he, like Scipio Africanus before him, because of envious attacks upon his reputation, turn his back upon the people and make leisure his end and aim for the rest of his life; 8 but rather, as someone persuaded Dionysius to regard his sovereignty as his fairest winding-sheet, so he held public service to be the fairest privilege of old age. For recreation and amusement, when he had leisure therefor, he resorted to the writing of books and to farming.

25 1 He composed speeches, then, on all sorts of subjects, and histories, and as for farming, he followed it in earnest when he was young and poor, — indeed, he says he then had only two ways of getting money, farming and frugality, — but in later life he was only a theoretical and fancy farmer. He also composed a book on farming, in which he actually gave recipes for making cakes and preserving fruit, so ambitious was he to be superior and peculiar in everything. 2 The dinners, too, which he gave in the country, were quite plentiful. He always asked in congenial country neighbours, and made merry with them, and not only did those of his own age find in him an agreeable and much desired companion, but also the young. For he was a man of large experience, who had read and heard much that was well worth repeating. 3 He held the table to be the very best promoter of friendship, and at his own, the conversation turned much to the praise of honourable and worthy citizens, greatly to the neglect of those who were worthless and base. About such Cato suffered no table-talk, either by way of praise or blame.

26 1 The last of his public services is supposed to have been the destruction of Carthage. It was Scipio the Younger who actually brought the task to completion, but it was largely in consequence of the advice and counsel of Cato that the Romans undertook the war. It was on this wise. Cato was sent on an embassy to the Carthaginians and Masinissa the Numidian, who were at war with one another, to inquire into the grounds of their quarrel. Masinissa had been a friend of the Roman people from the first, and the Carthaginians had entered into treaty relations with Rome after the defeat which the elder Scipio had given them. The treaty deprived them of their empire, and imposed a grievous money tribute upon them. 2 Cato, however, found the city by no means in a poor and lowly state, as the Romans supposed, but rather teeming with vigorous fighting men, overflowing with enormous wealth, filled with arms of every sort and with military supplies, and not a little puffed up by all this. He therefore thought it no time for the Romans to be ordering and arranging the affairs of Masinissa and the Numidians, but that unless they should repress a city which had always been their malignant foe, now that its power was so incredibly grown, they would be involved again in dangers as great as before. 3 Accordingly, he returned with speed to Rome, and advised the Senate that the former calamitous defeats of the Carthaginians had diminished not so much their power as their foolhardiness, and were likely to render them in the end not weaker, but more expert in war; their present contest with Numidia was but a prelude to a contest with Rome, while peace and treaty were mere names wherewith to cover their postponement of war till a fit occasion offered.

27 1 In addition to this, it is said that Cato contrived to drop a Libyan fig in the Senate, as he shook out the folds of his toga, and then, as the senators admired its size and beauty, said that the country where it grew was only three days’ sail from Rome. And in one thing he was even more savage, namely, in adding to his vote on any question whatsoever these words: “In my opinion, Carthage must be destroyed.”h Publius Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, when called upon for his vote, always ended his speech with this declaration: “In my opinion, Carthage must be spared.” 2 He saw, probably, that the Roman people, in its wantonness, was already guilty of many excesses, in the pride of its prosperity, spurned the control of the Senate, and forcibly dragged the whole state with it, whithersoever its mad desires inclined it. He wished, therefore, that the fear of Carthage should abide, to curb the boldness of the multitude like a bridle, believing her not strong enough to conquer Rome, nor yet weak enough to be despised. 3 But this was precisely what Cato dreaded, when the Roman people was inebriated and staggering with its power, to have a city which had always been great, and was now but sobered and chastened by its calamities, for ever threatening them. Such external threats to their sovereignty ought to be done away with altogether, he thought, that they might be free to devise a cure for their domestic failings.

4 In this way Cato is said to have brought to pass the third and last war against Carthage, but it had no sooner begun than he died, having first prophesied of the man who was destined to end it. This man was then young, but as tribune in the army, he was giving proofs of judgment and daring in his engagements with the enemy. Tidings of this came to Rome, and Cato is said to have cried on hearing them: —

“Only he has wits, but the rest are fluttering shadows.”

5 This utterance of Cato’s, Scipio speedily confirmed by his deeds. Cato left one son by his second wife, whose surname, as we have already remarked, was Salonius; and one grandson by the son who died before him. Salonius died in the praetorship, but the son whom he left, Marcus, came to be consul. This Marcus was the grandfather of Cato the philosopher, who was the best and most illustrious man of his time.

Comparison of Aristides and Cato

353 1 1 Now that I have recorded the most noteworthy things in the careers of these men also, if one compare the entire life of the one with that of the other, it will not be easy to mark the difference between them, obscured as it is by many great resemblances. And even if, in our comparison, we analyse each life, as we would a poem or a picture, we shall find that the rise to political power and repute in consequence of innate excellence and strength, rather than of inherited advantages, is common to both. 2 But in the case of Aristides, Athens was not yet great when he rose to eminence, and the leaders and generals with whom he dealt were men of moderate and uniform fortunes. The highest assessment of property in those days was five hundred bushels of grain, the second three hundred, the third and last two hundred. 3 Whereas Cato, coming from a little town and from ways of life deemed rustic, plunged headlong into the boundless sea of Roman politics when they were no longer conducted by such men as Curius, Fabricius, and Atilius, nor welcomed as magistrates and leaders poor men who had mounted the rostrum after working with their own hands at the plough and the mattock, but were wont to have regard rather for great families and their wealth, largesses, and solicitation, while those who sought office, such was now the power and arrogance of the people, were wantonly handled. 4 It was not the same thing to have Themistocles for a rival, who was of no illustrious family and had only moderate possessions (he is said to have been worth three, or, at most, five talents when he entered public life), as it was to compete for pre-eminence with such men as Scipio Africanus, Servius Galba, and Quintius Flamininus, having no other advantage than a tongue which spoke boldly for the right.

2 1 Besides, at Marathon, and again at Plataea, Aristides was only one of ten generals, while Cato was elected one of two consuls out of many competitors, and one of two censors over the heads of seven of the foremost and most illustrious Romans, who stood for the office with him. Furthermore, Aristides was not the foremost man in any one of his victories, but Miltiades has the chief honour of Marathon, Themistocles of Salamis, and at Plataea, Herodotus says it was Pausanias who won that fairest of all victories, 2 while even for second honours Aristides has such rivals as Sophanes, Ameinias, Callimachus, and Cynaegeirus, who displayed the greatest valour in those actions. Cato, on the other hand, was not only chief in the plans and actions of the Spanish war during his own consulate, but also at Thermopylae, when he was but a tribune in the army and another was consul, he got the glory of the victory, opening up great mountain passes for the Romans to rush through upon Antiochus, and swinging the war round into the king’s rear, when he had eyes only for what was in front of him. 3 That victory was manifestly the work of Cato, and it not only drove Asia out of Hellas, but made it afterwards accessible to Scipio.

It is true that both were always victorious in war, but in politics Aristides got a fall, being driven into a minority and ostracised by Themistocles. Cato, on the contrary, though he had for his antagonists almost all the greatest and ablest men in Rome, and though he kept on wrestling with them up to his old age, never lost his footing. 4 He was involved in countless civil processes, both as plaintiff and defendant; as plaintiff, he often won his case, as defendant, he never lost it, thanks to that bulwark and efficacious weapon of his life, his eloquence. To this, more justly than to fortune and the guardian genius of the man, we may ascribe the fact that he was never visited with disgrace. 354 That was a great tribute which was paid Aristotle the philosopher by Antipater, when he wrote concerning him, after his death, that in addition to all his other gifts, the man had also the gift of persuasion.

3 1 Man has no higher capacity than that for conducting cities and states, as is generally admitted. But the ability to conduct a household enters in no small degree into this higher political capacity, as most believe. For the city is but an organised sum of households, and has public vigour only as its citizens prosper in their private lives. When Lycurgus banished both silver and gold from Sparta, 2 and introduced there a coinage of iron that had been ruined by fire, he did not set his fellow citizens free from the duty of domestic economy. He merely removed the swollen and feverish wantonness of wealth, and so provided that all alike might have an abundance of the necessary and useful things of life. He did this because, better than any other ancient legislator, he foresaw that the helpless, homeless, and poverty-stricken citizen was a greater menace to the commonwealth than one who was rich and ostentatious. 3 Cato, then, was no whit less efficient in the conduct of his household than in that of the city. He not only increased his own substance, but became a recognized teacher of domestic economy and agriculture for others, and compiled many useful precepts on these subjects. Aristides, on the other hand, was so poor as to bring even his righteousness into disrepute, as ruining a household, reducing a man to beggary, and profiting everybody rather than its possess or. 4 And yet Hesiod has much to say by way of exhorting us to righteousness allied with domestic economy, and abuses idleness as a source of injustice; Homer also says well: —

“Labour I never liked,

Nor household thrift, which breeds good children.

But ships equipped with oars were ever my delight,

Battles and polished javelins and arrows,”

implying that the men who neglect their households are the very ones to live by injustice. 5 Oil, as physicians tell us, is very beneficial when used externally applied, though very injurious when used internally. He is not helpful to others, while heedless of himself and his family. Indeed, the poverty of Aristides would seem to have been a blemish on his political career, if, as most writers state, he had not foresight enough to leave his poor daughters a marriage portion, or even the cost of his own burial. 6 And so it fell out that the family of Cato furnished Rome with praetors and consuls down to the fourth generation, for his grandsons, and their sons after them, filled the highest offices of state. Whereas, though Aristides was foremost of the Greeks, the abject poverty of his descendants forced some to ply a fortune-teller’s trade, and others, for very want, to solicit the public bounty, while it robbed them all of every ambition to excel, or even to be worthy of their great ancestor.

4 1 Possibly this point invites discussion. Poverty is never dishonourable in itself, but only when it is a mark of sloth, intemperance, extravagance, or thoughtlessness. When, on the other hand, it is the handmaid of a sober, industrious, righteous, and brave man, who devotes all his powers to the service of the people, it is the sign of a lofty spirit that harbours no mean thoughts. 2 It is impossible for a man to do great things when his thoughts are busy with little things; nor can he aid the many who are in need when he himself is in need of many things. A great equipment for public service consists, not in wealth, but in contented independence, which requires no private superfluities, and so puts no hindrance in the way of serving the commonwealth. God alone is absolutely free from wants; but that is the most perfect and god-like quality in human excellence which reduces man’s wants to their lowest terms. 3553 For as a body which is well tempered and vigorous needs no superfluous food or raiment, so a healthy individual or family life can be conducted with the simplest outlays. A man should make his gains tally with his needs. He who heaps up much substance and uses little of it, is not contented and independent. If he does not need it, he is a fool for providing what he does not crave; and if he craves it, he makes himself wretched by parsimoniously curtailing his enjoyment of it.

Indeed, I would fain ask Cato himself this question: 4 “If wealth is a thing to be enjoyed, why do you plume yourself on being satisfied with little when possessed of much?” But if it be a fine thing, as indeed it is, to eat ordinary bread, and to drink such wine as labourers and servants drink, and not to want purple robes nor even plastered houses, then Aristides and Epaminondas and Manius Curius and Gaius Fabricius were perfectly right in turning their backs on the gaining of what they scorned to use. 5 Surely it was not worth while for a man who, like Cato, esteemed turnips a delectable dish and cooked them himself, while his wife was kneading bread, to babble so much about a paltry copper, and write on the occupation in which one might soonest get rich. Great is the simple life, and great its independence, but only because it frees a man from the anxious desire of superfluous things. 6 Hence it was that Aristides, as we are told, remarked at the trial of Callias that only those who were poor in spite of themselves should be ashamed of their poverty; those who, like himself, chose poverty, should glory in it. And surely it were ridiculous to suppose that the poverty of Aristides was due to his sloth, when, without doing anything disgraceful, but merely by stripping a single Barbarian, or seizing a single tent, he might have made himself rich. So much on this head.

5 1 The military campaigns of Cato made no great addition to the Roman empire, which was great already; but those of Aristides include the fairest, most brilliant, and most important actions of the Greeks, namely, Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. And certainly Antiochus is not worthy to be compared with Xerxes, nor the demolition of the walls of the Spanish cities with the destruction of so many myriads of Barbarians both by land and sea. 2 On these occasions Aristides was inferior to no one in actual service, but he left the glory and the laurels, as he did wealth and substance, to those who wanted them more, because he was superior to all these things also.

For my own part, I do not blame Cato for his constant boasting, and for rating himself above everybody else, although he does say, in one of his speeches, that self-praise and self-depreciation are alike absurd. But I regard the man who is often lauding himself as less complete in excellence than one who does not even want others to do so. 3 Freedom from ambition is no slight requisite for the gentleness which should mark a statesman; and, on the contrary, ambition is harsh, and the greatest fomenter of envy. From this spirit Aristides was wholly free, whereas Cato was very full of it. For example, Aristides co operated with Themistocles in his greatest achievements, and as one might say, stood guard over him while he was in command, and thereby saved Athens; 4 while Cato, by his opposition to Scipio, almost vitiated and ruined that wonderful campaign of his against the Carthaginians, in which he overthrew the invincible Hannibal, and finally, by perpetually inventing all sorts of suspicions and calumnies against him, drove him out of Rome, and brought down on his brother’s head a most shameful condemnation for embezzlement.

6 1 Once more, that temperance which Cato always decked out with the fairest praises, Aristides maintained and practised in unsullied purity; whereas Cato, by marrying unworthily and unseasonably, fell under no slight or insignificant censure in this regard. 356 It was surely quite indecent that a man of his years should bring home as stepmother to his grown up son and that son’s bride, a girl whose father was his assistant and served the public for hire. Whether he did this merely for his own pleasure, or in anger, to punish his son for objecting to his mistress, both what he did and what led him to do it were disgraceful. 2 And the sarcastic reason for it which he gave his son was not a true one. For had he wished to beget more sons as good, he should have planned at the outset to marry a woman of family, instead of contenting himself, as long as he could do so secretly, with the society of a low concubine, and when he was discovered, making a man his father-in law whom he could most easily persuade, rather than one whose alliance would bring him most honour.

Philopoemen

1 1 Cleander was a man of the highest lineage and greatest influence among the citizens of Mantineia, but he met with reverses and was exiled from his native city. He then betook himself to Megalopolis, chiefly because of Craugis, the father of Philopoemen, a man in every way illustrious, and attached to him by ties of personal friendship. 2 As long as Craugis lived, Cleander’s wants were all supplied, and when Craugis died, Cleander, wishing to requite him for his hospitality, undertook the rearing of his orphan son, just as Homer says that Achilles was reared by Phoenix, so that the boy’s character took on from the very outset a noble and kingly mould and growth. But as soon as Philopoemen had ceased to be a boy, Ecdemus and Megalophanes, of Megalopolis, were put in charge of him. They had been comrades of Arcesilaüs at the Academy, and beyond all men of their day had brought philosophy to bear upon political action and affairs of state.a 3 They freed their own native city from tyranny, by secretly procuring men to kill Aristodemus; they joined with Aratus in expelling Nicocles the tyrant of Sicyon; and at the request of the people of Cyrene, whose city was full of confusion and political distemper, they sallied thither, introduced law and order, and arranged matters in the city most happily. 4 They themselves, however, counted the education of Philopoemen also among their many achievements, believing that their philosophical teachings had made him a common benefit to Greece. For since he was the child, as it were, of her late old age and succeeded to the virtues of her ancient commanders, Greece loved him surpassingly, and as his reputation grew, increased his power. And a certain Roman, in praising him, called him the last of the Greeks, implying that Greece produced no great man after him, nor one worthy of her.

2 1 In looks he was not, as some suppose, ill-favoured; for a statue of him is still to be seen at Delphi; and the mistake of his Megarian hostess was due, as we are told, to a certain indifference and simplicity on his part. This woman, learning that the general of the Achaeans was coming to her house, in great confusion set about preparing supper; besides, her husband chanced to be away from home. 2 Just then Philopoemen came in, wearing a simple soldier’s cloak, and the woman, thinking him to be one of his servants who had been sent on in advance, invited him to help her in her housework. So Philopoemen at once threw off his cloak and fell to splitting wood. Then his host came in, and seeing him thus employed, said: “What does this mean, Philopoemen?” “What else,” said Philopoemen in broad Doric, “than that I am paying a penalty for my ill looks?” 3 And once Titus Flamininus, making fun of certain parts of his figure, said: “Philopoemen, what fine arms and legs thou hast; but belly thou hast not”; for Philopoemen was quite slender at the waist. This piece of fun, however, was aimed the rather at his resources. For though he had excellent men-at arms and horsemen, he was often at a loss for money. However, these stories are told of Philopoemen in the schools of philosophy.

3 1 But the love of distinction which marked his character was not altogether free from contentiousness nor devoid of anger; and although he desired to pattern himself most of all after Epaminondas, it was the energy, sagacity, and indifference to money in Epaminondas which he strenuously imitated, while his proneness to anger and contentiousness made him unable to maintain that great leader’s mildness, gravity, and urbanity in political disputes, so that he was thought to be endowed with military rather than with civic virtues. 2 For from his very boyhood he was fond of a soldier’s life, and readily learned the lessons which were useful for this, such as those in heavy-armed fighting and horsemanship. He was also thought to be a good wrestler, but when some of his friends and directors urged him to take up athletics, he asked them if athletics would not be injurious to his military training. 3 They told him (and it was the truth) that the habit of body and mode of life for athlete and soldier were totally different, and particularly that their diet and training were not the same, since the one required much sleep, continuous surfeit of food, and fixed periods of activity and repose, in order to preserve or improve their condition, which the slightest influence or the least departure from routine is apt to change for the worse; whereas the soldier ought to be conversant with all sorts of irregularity and all sorts of inequality, and above all should accustom himself to endure lack of food easily, 4 and as easily lack of sleep. On hearing this, Philopoemen not only shunned athletics himself and derided them, but also in later times as a commander banished from the army all forms of them, with every possible mark of reproach and dishonour, on the ground that they rendered useless for the inevitable struggle of battle men who would otherwise be most serviceable.

4 1 And when, set free from teachers and tutors, he took part in the incursions into Spartan territory which his fellow-citizens made for the sake of booty and plunder, he accustomed himself to march first as they went out, but last as they came back. And when he had leisure, he would give his body hard exercise in hunting, thus rendering it agile and at the same time sturdy, or in cultivating the soil. 2 For he had a fine farm twenty furlongs from the city. To this he would go every day after dinner or after supper, and would throw himself down upon an ordinary pallet-bed, like anyone of his labourers, to sleep for the night. Then, early in the morning, he would rise and go to work along with his vine-dressers or his herdsmen, after which he would go back again to the city and busy himself about public matters with his friends or with the magistrates.

3 As for what he got from his campaigning, he used to spend it on horses, or armour, or the ransoming of captives; but his own property he sought to increase by agriculture, which is the justest way to make money. Nor did he practise agriculture merely as a side issue, but he held that the man who purposed to keep his hands from the property of others ought by all means to have property of his own. He also listened to the discourses and applied himself to the writings of philosophers — not all of them, but those whom he thought helpful to him in his progress towards virtue. 4 And as for the poems of Homer, whatever in them was thought by him to rouse and stimulate the activities of the soul which made for valour, to this he would apply himself. Among other writings, however, he was most of all devoted to the “Tactics” of Evangelus, and was familiar with the histories of Alexander, thinking that literature was conducive to action, unless it were prosecuted merely to while away the time and afford themes for fruitless small talk. 5 Indeed, he would ignore the charts and diagrams for the illustration of tactical principles, and get his proofs and make his studies on the ground itself. The ways in which places slope to meet one another, and level plains come to an abrupt end, and all the vicissitudes and shapes of a phalanx when it is elongated and contracted again in the vicinity of ravines or ditches or narrow defiles, these he would investigate by himself as he wandered about, and discuss them with his companions. 6 For it would seem that he brought more zeal than was necessary to the study of military science, setting his affections on war as affording a most manifold basis for the practice of virtue, and despising as unsuccessful men those who left it to others.

5 1 He was now thirty years of age, when Cleomenes, King of the Lacedaemonians, suddenly attacked Megalopolis by night, forced the guard, made his way into the city, and occupied the market-place. Philopoemen came to the help of the citizens, but had not force enough to drive the enemy out, although he fought with vigour and daring. He did, however, steal the citizens out of the city, as it were, by attacking their pursuers and drawing Cleomenes against himself, so that with the greatest difficulty he got away last of all, after losing his horse and receiving a wound. 2 Moreover, when Cleomenes sent to them at Messene, whither they had gone, and offered to give them back their city with its valuables and their territory, Philopoemen, seeing that the citizens would be glad to accept the offer and were eager to go back home, opposed and dissuaded them from it, showing them that Cleomenes was not so much offering to restore their city as he was trying to win over to himself its citizens, that so he might have the city also more securely in his possession; for he would not be able, Philopoemen said, to remain there and guard empty houses and walls, but the solitude would force him to abandon these also. By this speech Philopoemen diverted the citizens from their purpose, but furnished Cleomenes with an excuse for devastating and demolishing the greater part of the city and marching off loaded with booty.

6 1 Soon, however, Antigonus the king marched with the Achaeans to give aid against Cleomenes, and finding that his enemy was occupying the heights and passes about Sellasia, he drew up his forces near by with the purpose of attacking him and forcing a passage. Philopoemen was stationed among the Macedonian cavalry with his own fellow-citizens, and had as a support the Illyrians, a large body of good fighters, who closed up the line of battle. 2 They had been ordered to lie quietly in reserve until, from the other wing, a signal should be made by the king with a scarlet coat stretched upon a spear. But the Illyrians, at the command of their officers, tried to force back the Lacedaemonians, while the Achaeans, as they had been ordered to do, kept quietly waiting at their post. Therefore Eucleidas, the brother of Cleomenes, who noticed the gap thus made in the enemies’ line, quickly sent round the most agile of his light-armed troops, with orders to attack the Illyrians in the rear and rout them, now that they had lost touch with the cavalry.

3 These orders were carried out, and the light-armed troops were driving the Illyrians before them in confusion, when Philopoemen perceived that it would be no great task to attack the light-armed troops, and that the occasion prompted this step. At first he pointed this out to the king’s officers. Then, when they were not to be persuaded by him, but looked down upon him as a madman (since his reputation was not yet great enough to justify his being entrusted with so important a manoeuvre), he took matters into his own hands, formed his fellow-citizens into a wedge, and charged upon the enemy. 4 At first the light-armed troops were thrown into confusion, then put to rout with great slaughter. And now Philopoemen, wishing to encourage still further the king’s troops and bring them swiftly upon the enemy thus thrown into disorder, quitted his horse, and with grievous difficulty forced his way along on foot, in his horseman’s breastplate and heavy equipment, towards ground that was irregular and full of water-courses and ravines. Here he had both his thighs pierced through by a thonged javelin. The wound was not fatal, though severe, and the head of the weapon came out on the other side. 5 At first, then, he was held fast as by a fetter, and was altogether helpless; for the fastening of the thong made it difficult to draw the weapon back through the wound. But since those about him hesitated to attempt this, and since, now that the battle was at its hottest, the ardour of his ambition made him impatient to join in the struggle, by moving his legs backward and forward he broke the shaft of the weapon in two in the middle, and then ordered each fragment to be drawn out separately. 6 Thus set free, he drew his sword and made his way through the front ranks against the enemy, thereby greatly animating the combatants and inspiring them with a desire to emulate his valour. After his victory, therefore, Antigonus put the Macedonians to the question, and asked them why, without his orders, they had brought the cavalry into action. 7 They defended themselves by saying that they had been forced against their will to attack the enemy, because a young man of Megalopolis had first led a charge against them. At this, Antigonus gave a laugh and said: “Well, then, that young man behaved like a great commander.”

7 1 This naturally brought Philopoemen into high repute. Antigonus was eager that he should take service under him, and offered him command and pay. These Philopoemen declined, chiefly because he well knew that it was naturally unpleasant and hard for him to be under another man’s orders. Not wishing, however, to be inactive and idle, for the sake of training and practice in war he sailed to Crete in search of military service. 2 In Crete he practised himself for a long time among men who were not only warlike and versed in many kinds of warfare, but also still moderate and restrained in their ways of living, and he came back to the Achaeans with such distinction that they at once made him commander of their cavalry. 3 But he found that the horsemen whom he was to command used worthless animals acquired at random, whenever a campaign was to be undertaken; that they shirked most campaigns themselves, and sent others out in their places; that they were all characterized by a shocking lack of experience, together with its resultant cowardice; and that their commanders always overlooked these things because the knights had the greatest power and influence among the Achaeans and the chief voice in the assignment of rewards and punishments. 4 Philopoemen, however, did not yield or give way to them. He went round to the different cities and roused the spirit of ambition in each young man individually, punished those who needed compulsion, introduced drills, parades, and competitive contests in places where there would be large bodies of spectators and thus in a short time inspired them all with an astonishing vigour and zeal, 5 and, what is of the greatest importance in tactics, rendered them agile and swift in wheeling and deploying by squadrons, and in wheeling and turning by single trooper, making the dexterity shown by the whole mass in its evolutions to be like that of a single person moved by an impulse from within.

6 Moreover, in the fierce battle which they fought at the river Larissus against Aetolians and Eleians, the commander of the Eleian cavalry, Damophantus, rode out from the ranks and charged upon Philopoemen. But Philopoemen received his onset, was first to drive home a spear-thrust, and threw Damophantus to the ground. 7 Their leader fallen, the enemy at once took to flight, and Philopoemen was in high renown, as one who yielded to none of the young men in personal prowess, and to none of the elder men in sagacity, but both in fighting and in commanding was most capable.

8 1 The commonwealth of the Achaeans was first raised to dignity and power by Aratus, who consolidated it when it was feeble and disrupted, and inaugurated an Hellenic and humane form of government. Then, just as in running waters, after a few small particles have begun to take a fixed position, others presently are swept against the first, adhere and cling to them, and thus form a fixed and solid mass by mutual support, 2 so the Achaeans, at a time when Greece was weak and easily dissolved and drifting along by individual cities, first united themselves together, and then, by receiving into their number some of the cities round about which they had aided and assisted in shaking off their tyrants, and by uniting others with themselves in a harmonious civil polity, they purposed to form the Peloponnesus into a single political body and one power. 3 As long, however, as Aratus lived, they were dependent for the most part on Macedonian armies, paying court to Ptolemy, and then again to Antigonus and Philip, all of whom busied themselves in the affairs of Greece. But when Philopoemen was advanced to leadership among them, they were at last capable of contending alone with their most powerful neighbours, and ceased to rely upon foreign protectors. 4 Aratus, indeed, who was thought to be too sluggish for warlike contests, accomplished most of his undertakings by conference, urbanity, and royal friendships, as I have written in his Life; whereas Philopoemen, who was a good warrior and effective with his weapons, besides proving himself fortunate and successful in his very first battles, increased not only the power but also the courage of the Achaeans, who were accustomed to be victorious under him and to win success in most of their contests.

9 1 In the first place, however, he changed the faulty practice of the Achaeans in drawing up and arming their soldiers. For they used bucklers which were easily carried because they were so light, and yet were too narrow to protect the body; and spears which were much shorter than the Macedonian pike. For this reason they were effective in fighting at a long distance, because they were so lightly armed, but when they came to close quarters with the enemy they were at a disadvantage. 2 Moreover, a division of line and formation into cohorts was not customary with them, and since they employed a solid phalanx without either levelled line of spears or wall of interlocking shields such as the Macedonian phalanx presented, they were easily dislodged and scattered. Philopoemen showed them all this, and persuaded them to adopt long pike and heavy shield instead of spear and buckler, to protect their bodies with helmets and breastplates and greaves, and to practise stationary and steadfast fighting instead of the nimble movements of light-armed troops. 3 After he had persuaded those of military age to arm themselves in this manner, in the first place he inspired them with confidence that they had thus become invincible, and then made most excellent reforms in their luxurious and extravagant ways of living. For it was not possible to remove altogether their empty and idle emulation from a people long addicted to it. They were fond of costly apparel, the coverings of their couches were dyed purple, and they vied with one another in banquets and table array. 4 But he made a beginning by diverting their love of show from what was unnecessary to what was serviceable and honourable, and speedily persuaded and incited them all to check their daily expenditures upon bodily wants, and to find their chief adornment in military and warlike equipments. 5 And so one might have seen the workshops filled with goblets and Therycleian plate which were being broken up, with breastplates being gilded, with shields and bridles being silvered over, while in the places of exercise colts were being broken in and young men were learning the use of heavy armour, and in the hands of women there were helmets and plumes for dyeing, and horsemen’s tunics or soldiers’ cloaks for embroidering. 6 The sight of all this increased men’s courage, called forth their energies, and made them venturesome and ready to incur dangers. 7 For extravagance in other objects of display induces luxury and implants effeminacy in those who use them, since something like a pricking and tickling of the senses breaks down serious purpose; but when it is seen in the trappings of war it strengthens and exalts the spirit, just as Homer represented Achilles, when his new armour was laid down near him, as exulting at the sight and all on fire to get to work with it.

After he had thus arrayed and adorned the young men, Philopoemen exercised and drilled them, and they eagerly and emulously obeyed his instructions. 8 For the new order of battle pleased them wonderfully, since it seemed to secure a close array that could not be broken; and the armour which they used became light and manageable for them, since they wore or grasped it with delight because of its beauty and splendour, and wished to get into action with it and fight a decisive battle with their enemies as soon as possible.

10 1 At this time the Achaeans were carrying on war with Machanidas the tyrant of Sparta, who, relying upon his large and strong forces, was scheming to get control of the whole Peloponnesus. Accordingly, when word came that the tyrant had invaded the territory of Mantineia, Philopoemen quickly led his army out against him. They drew up in battle array near the city, both parties having many mercenaries and almost all their citizen soldiery. 2 When battle was joined, Machanidas with his mercenaries routed the javelineers and Tarentines who had been stationed in front of the Achaean line, and then, instead of advancing directly against the main body of the enemy and breaking up their close array, he dashed off in pursuit of the fugitives, and so passed by the phalanx of the Achaeans, which remained drawn up in position. 3 Then Philopoemen, although so great a disaster had occurred at the outset and his cause was thought to be utterly lost and ruined, professed to ignore and make light of it, and seeing what a great mistake the enemy had made by going off in pursuit, thus breaking away from his phalanx and leaving a vacant space there, did not oppose or resist their chase after the fugitives, 4 but let them pass him by and make a great gap. Then he led straight against the Lacedaemonian heavy-armed, seeing that their phalanx had been left exposed, and fell upon them in a flank attack, while their commander was away and they were not expecting to fight; for they thought they were victorious and getting the upper hand altogether, since they saw Machanidas pursuing. 5 After Philopoemen had routed these with great slaughter (more than four thousand of them are said to have fallen), he set out against Machanidas, who was returning with his mercenaries from the pursuit. But a broad and deep ditch stretched between them, along which the two leaders rode opposite each other, one wishing to get across and escape, the other to prevent this. 6 The spectacle was not that of two commanders fighting, but that of a powerful hunter attacking a wild beast that has been forced to turn at bay, and Philopoemen was the hunter. And now the tyrant’s horse, which was vigorous and high-spirited and felt the bloody spurs in his sides, essayed to make the leap across, and striking against edge of the ditch with his breast, was struggling with his fore-feet to extricate himself. 7 At this point Simmias and Polyaenus, who were always at Philopoemen’s side when he was fighting and protected him with their shields, rode up both at the same time and levelled their spears at the horse. But Philopoemen was before them in attacking Machanidas, and seeing that the tyrant’s horse was lifting its head up in front of its rider’s body, he gave his own horse a little swerve to one side, and then, clasping his spear firmly in the middle, pushed it home with all his weight and overturned his enemy. 8 This is the attitude in which he is represented by a bronze statue set up at Delphi by the Achaeans, who admired especially both his deed of prowess and his generalship on that day.

11 1 Moreover, we are told that at the celebration of the Nemean games, when he was general of the Achaeans for the second time and had recently won his victory at Mantineia, but was at leisure the while on account of the festival, Philopoemen in the first place displayed before the assembled Greeks his phalanx, with its splendid array, and performing its tactical evolutions, as it was wont to do, with speed and vigour. 2 Then, while the minstrels were contending for the prize, he came into the theatre with his young men. They wore their soldiers’ cloaks and their purple tunics, were all in the prime of their strength and of the same age, and showed not only great respect for their commander, but also that high spirit which young men have after many honourable contests. And just as they made their entrance it chanced that Pylades the minstrel was chanting the opening verse of the Persians of Timotheus —

“Glorious the crown of freedom which he fashioneth for Hellas”

;

3 whereupon, as the splendid voice of the singer fitly sustained the majesty of the poet’s words, all the spectators turned their eyes upon Philopoemen and gave him glad applause; for in their hopes the Greeks were recovering their ancient dignity, and in their courage they were making the nearest approach to the high spirit of their fathers.

12 1 But when it came to perils and battles, just as young horses long for their accustomed riders and if they have others on their backs, are shy and wild, so the Achaean army, when someone other than Philopoemen was commander-in chief, would be out of heart, would keep looking eagerly for him, and if he but came in sight, would at once be alert and efficient because of the courage he inspired. For they perceived that he was the one general whom their enemies were unable to face, and whose name and fame they feared, as was evident from what they did. 2 For Philip the king of Macedon, thinking that if Philopoemen could be got out of the way the Achaeans would again submit abjectly to his sway, secretly sent men to Argos who were to assassinate him; but the plot became known, and Philip was utterly condemned and hated among the Greeks. 3 Again, the Boeotians were besieging Megara and had hopes of its speedy capture, when suddenly a report reached their ears (and it was a false report) that Philopoemen was coming to the aid of the besieged and was close at hand; so they abandoned their scaling-ladders, which were already planted against the walls of the city, and fled away. 4 And once again, when Nabis, who succeeded Machanidas as tyrant of Sparta, suddenly seized Messene, it chanced that Philopoemen was out of office and had no force under his command; but since Lysippus, the commander-in chief of the Achaeans, could not be persuaded by him to go to the rescue of the Messenians, because, as he said, the city was utterly lost now that the enemy were inside, Philopoemen himself went to their rescue, taking with him his fellow-citizens of Megalopolis, who did not wait for any law or commission, but followed the man whom nature had made superior as though he were always in command. 5 And when Nabis heard that Philopoemen was also close at hand, he did not wait for him to come up, although he was encamped in the city, but stole out by an opposite gate and led his forces off as fast as he could, thinking that he would be fortunate if he should escape; and he did escape, and Messene was set free.

13 1 All these things, then, made for the honour of Philopoemen; but his going away to Crete again at the request of the Gortynians, who wanted him to be their general in their war, brought calumny upon him, and it was said that when his native city was at war with Nabis, he was away, either to avoid fighting or to show kindness out of all season to others. And yet so continuously were the Megalopolitans under hostile attack all that time that they lived upon their walls and planted their grain in the streets, since their fields were ravaged and the enemy were encamped almost in their gates. 2 Philopoemen, however, was waging war in Crete all that while, and serving as general across the sea, and so afforded his enemies a chance to accuse him of running away from the war at home. But there were some who said that since the Achaeans chose other men as their generals and Philopoemen was without public office, he merely put the leisure which belonged to him at the service of the Gortynians when they asked him to be their leader. 3 For he was averse to inactivity, and wished to keep his skill as a commander in war, like any other possession, all the while in use and exercise. And he made this evident by what he once said about King Ptolemy. When certain persons were extolling that monarch because he carefully drilled his army day by day, and carefully and laboriously exercised himself in arms, “And yet who,” said Philopoemen, “can admire a king of his years for always practising but never performing anything?”

4 The Megalopolitans, nevertheless, were displeased at this absence, and looking upon it in the light of a betrayal, undertook to make him an exile; but the Achaeans prevented this by sending to Megalopolis Aristaenus, their commander-in chief, who, although politically at variance with Philopoemen, would not suffer sentence of condemnation to be passed upon him. 5 In consequence of this displeasure, Philopoemen was ignored by his fellow-citizens, and therefore induced many of their outlying villages to secede from them, instructing them to say that they did not belong to the city and were not under their rule; and when they made this plea, he openly supported them in their contention and helped them to raise a faction against the city in the assembly of the Achaeans. This, however, was at a later time.

6 In Crete he waged war in the service of the Gortynians; not the straightforward and honourable warfare of a Peloponnesian and Arcadian, but one in which he adopted the Cretan practices, and turning their tricks and wiles and stolen marches and ambuscades against themselves, speedily showed them that they were children opposing foolish and vain mischievousness to genuine military experience.

14 1 Having thus won admiration, and having come back to Peloponnesus with a brilliant reputation from his exploits in Crete, he found that Philip had been defeated and subdued by Titus Flamininus, and that the Achaeans and the Romans were waging war upon Nabis. He was at once chosen general against Nabis, and by hazarding the issue on a naval battle would seem to have fared as Epaminondas once did, since he fought on the sea in a manner which fell far short of his great reputation. 2 Epaminondas, however, as some say, was reluctant to give his fellow-citizens a taste of the advantages accruing from naval superiority, in order that they might not surprise him by becoming, instead of “steadfast hoplites,” to use Plato’s words, degenerate mariners; and therefore he purposely came back from Asia and the islands without achieving anything. 3 Philopoemen, on the other hand, was persuaded that his skill in handling land forces would suffice to give him success in fighting also on the sea, and therefore learned to his cost how large a part of superior excellence consists in practice, and how much additional power it gives to men who have accustomed themselves to all methods of fighting. For not only was he worsted in the sea-fight, owing to his lack of experience, but he actually launched an old but famous ship after forty years of disuse, and manned her, the result being that her seams took in water and her crew came into peril of their lives.

4 Understanding that in consequence of this disaster his enemies despised him, thinking that he had altogether given up activity on the sea, and that they were insolently besieging Gythium, he promptly sailed against them when they did not expect it and were careless because of their victory. He landed his soldiers by night and led them to the attack, set fire to the enemy’s tents, burned down his camp, and slew many of his men. 5 A few days afterward, as he was marching through a rough country, Nabis came suddenly upon him and threw the Achaeans into a fright; they despaired of saving themselves from a position which was difficult and already commanded by the enemy. But Philopoemen waited a little while, surveyed the nature of the ground, and then demonstrated that skill in drawing up an army is the crowning feature in the art of war. For by changing his order of battle a little and adapting it to the present exigency, with no confusion and no trouble he evaded the difficulty, and charging upon the enemy put them to utter rout. 6 Then, observing that they were not fleeing towards the city, but scattering themselves hither and thither through the region (which was woody, entirely surrounded by hills, and impracticable for cavalry owing to water-courses and ravines), he checked his pursuit and encamped while it was still light. But judging that the enemy after their flight would steal back to the city by ones and twos under cover of the night, he placed large numbers of his Achaeans armed with swords in ambush among the water-courses and hills about the city. 7 Here very many of the followers of Nabis met their death; for since they did not make their return in a body, but as the chances of flight disposed them severally, they fell into the hands of their enemies and were caught like birds about the city.

15 1 In consequence of this exploit Philopoemen was beloved by the Greeks and conspicuously honoured by them in their theatres, thus giving secret umbrage to Titus Flamininus, who was an ambitious man. For as Roman consul he thought himself more worthy of the Achaeans’ admiration than a man of Arcadia, and he considered that his benefactions far exceeded those of Philopoemen, since by a single proclamation he had set free all those parts of Greece which had been subject to Philip and the Macedonians.

2 After this Flamininus made peace with Nabis, and Nabis was treacherously put to death by the Aetolians. Sparta was therefore in a state of confusion, and Philopoemen, seizing his opportunity, fell upon the city with an armed force, and partly by compulsion, partly by persuasion, brought it over to his purposes and made it a member of the Achaean league. 3 This achievement brought him an amazing repute among the Achaeans, since through his efforts they had acquired a city of so great dignity and power (and indeed it was no slight matter that Sparta had become a member of the Achaean league); moreover, Philopoemen carried with him the principal men among the Spartans, who hoped to have in him a guardian of their liberties. 4 Therefore, after they had confiscated the house and property of Nabis and obtained thereby a hundred and twenty talents, they voted to make a present of the money to Philopoemen, and to send an embassy to Megalopolis on the matter. Here, indeed, it became perfectly clear that Philopoemen not only seemed to be, but actually was, a most excellent man. For, to begin with, no Spartan was willing to confer with a man of his character about the acceptance of a gift, but they were all so reluctant and afraid to do it that they entrusted the business to a guest-friend of his, Timolaüs. 5 And in the second place, Timolaüs himself, when he came to Megalopolis, having been entertained at the house of Philopoemen, and having learned thoroughly how dignified he was in his converse with others, how simple his ways of living, and how his character was nowhere to be approached and much less easy to be overcome by bribes, held his peace about the gift of money, and after giving some other excuse for his visit to him, went back home. And when he was sent a second time on the same errand, he did as before. 6 On his third visit, however, he at last got so far as to acquaint Philopoemen with the earnest desire of his city. Then Philopoemen, who was pleased by what he heard, went in person to Sparta, and counselled the people there not to try to bribe good men who were their friends, and by whose virtues they could profit without payment of money, but rather to buy up and corrupt the bad men who were ruining the city by their factious conduct in the assembly, to the end that such might have their mouths stopped in consequence of their venality, and so be less annoying to their fellow-citizens; for it was better, he said, to take away freedom of speech from their enemies rather than from their friends. Such was his splendid spirit in matters of money.

16 1 Soon, however, Diophanes, the general of the Achaean league, hearing that the Lacedaemonians were once more agitating for a change, determined to punish them, and the Lacedaemonians determining upon war, were throwing the Peloponnesus into confusion. Here Philopoemen tried to mollify Diophanes and put a stop to his wrath, showing him what the occasion demanded, and that since King Antiochus and the Romans were hovering about in Greece with armies so great, it behoved the general of the league to pay attention to them, and not to stir up domestic troubles, but even to be somewhat oblivious to the transgressions of his colleagues. 2 Diophanes, however, paid no heed to this advice, but invaded Laconia along with Titus Flamininus, and marched directly upon the city of Sparta. Incensed at this, Philopoemen ventured upon an act which was not lawful, nor even exactly just, but great and prompted by a great spirit. He went on past them into Sparta, and, private man though he was, shut out therefrom both the general of the Achaean league and the Roman consul, put an end to the disorders in the city, and brought the Lacedaemonians back again into the league, as they were at the outset.

3 At a later time, however, when he had some ground for accusation against the Lacedaemonians, as general of the league Philopoemen brought back its exiles to the city, and put to death eighty Spartans, according to Polybius, or according to Aristocrates, three hundred and fifty. 4 He also tore down the walls of the city, and cutting off a large part of its territory, annexed it to Megalopolis; moreover, in the case of those who had been made citizens of Sparta by the tyrants, he removed them all into Achaia, with the exception of three thousand who would not obey him and were unwilling to go away from Sparta. These he sold into slavery, and then, as if in mockery of their fate, erected a portico in Megalopolis with the money which they brought. 5 And now, glutting his anger at the Lacedaemonians and unworthily trampling upon them in their misery, he treated their constitution in the most cruel and most lawless fashion. For he took away and abolished the system of training which Lycurgus had instituted, and compelled their boys and their young men to adopt the Achaean in place of their hereditary discipline, being convinced that while they were under the laws of Lycurgus they would never be humble.

6 For the time being, then, owing to their great calamities, the Spartans suffered Philopoemen to cut away, as it were, the sinews of their city, and became tractable and submissive; but a while afterwards, having obtained permission from the Romans, they abandoned the Achaean polity, and resumed and re-established that which had come down from their fathers, so far as was possible after their many misfortunes and great degeneration.

17 1 When the Romans went to war with Antiochus in Greece, Philopoemen was without command, and seeing that Antiochus himself was sitting idly down in Chalcis and spending his time in a courtship and marriage which were not suited to his years, while his Syrian troops, in great disorder and without leaders, were wandering about among the cities and living luxuriously, he was distressed because he was not general of the Achaeans at that time, and kept saying that he begrudged the Romans their victory. “For if I had been general,” he said, “I would have cut off all these fellows in their taverns.” 2 But soon the Romans, after conquering Antiochus, applied themselves more closely to the affairs of Greece. They encompassed the Achaean league with their power, since the popular leaders gradually inclined to their support; their strength, under the guidance of the heavenly powers, grew great in all directions; and the consummation was near to which the fortunes of Greece must come in their allotted revolution. Here Philopoemen, like a good helmsman contending against a high sea, was in some points compelled to give in and yield to the times; but in most he continued his opposition, and tried to draw to the support of freedom the men who were powerful in speech or action.

3 Aristaenus the Megalopolitan was a man of the greatest influence among the Achaeans, but he always paid court to the Romans and thought that the Achaeans ought not to oppose or displease them in any way. As this man was once speaking in the assembly, we are told that Philopoemen listened to him a while in silent indignation, but at last, overcome by anger, said to him: “My man, why art thou eager to behold the fated end of Greece?” 4 Again, Manius, the Roman consul, after his victory over Antiochus, asked the Achaeans to permit the exiles from Sparta to go back home, and Titus Flamininus joined Manius in making this request. But Philopoemen successfully opposed the request, not out of hostility to the exiles, but from a desire that they should owe this favour to himself and the Achaeans, and not to Flamininus and the Romans; indeed, as general for the following year he restored the exiles to their city. To such a degree did his lofty spirit lead him to strive and contend against men in power.

18 1 But being now seventy years of age, and for the eighth time general of the Achaeans, he hoped not only to pass that year of office without war, but also that affairs would permit him to spend the rest of his life in peace and quiet. For as our diseases seem to lose their virulence as our bodily strength declines, so among the Greek cities the spirit of contention lapsed as their power waned. 2 Nevertheless, some divine displeasure threw him down, like an all but victorious runner, at the very goal of his life. For it is recorded that at some conference, when others present were lavishing praise upon one who was reputed to be a redoubtable general, Philopoemen contemptuously said: “Yet why should any account be made of this man, who has been taken alive by his enemies?” 3 And a few days afterwards Deinocrates the Messenian, a man who had a private quarrel with Philopoemen and was obnoxious to everybody else because of his baseness and unbridled life, induced Messene to revolt from the Achaean league, and was reported about to seize the village called Colonis. Philopoemen at the time lay sick of a fever at Argos, but on learning these facts, he hastened to Megalopolis in a single day, a journey of more than four hundred furlongs. 4 From there he at once set out for the rescue, taking with him the horsemen. These were the city’s most prominent men, but altogether young, and serving as volunteers under Philopoemen out of good will and admiration for him. They rode off towards Messene and encountered Deinocrates, who came to meet them at Evander’s hill. 5 Him they put to flight; but the five hundred men who were guarding the open country of Messene suddenly attacked them, and when those who had before been worsted saw this, they collected together along the hills. Then Philopoemen, fearing that he would be enveloped, and trying to spare his horsemen, withdrew over difficult ground, bringing up the rear himself and frequently riding out against the enemy, and trying to draw their attacks entirely upon himself. They did not venture, however, to return his attacks, but merely shouted and threatened his flanks. 6 Withdrawing from the line frequently, then, to spare his young men, and sending them one by one into safety, before he was aware of it he was left alone among numerous enemies. Even then no one ventured to come to close quarters with him, but he was pelted with missiles from a distance and forced upon rocky and precipitous places, so that he had difficulty in managing his horse and kept tearing him with the spur. 7 His age, owing to his generous exercise, was not burdensome, and in no way impeded his escape; but at that time his body was enfeebled by sickness and worn out with a long journey, so that he was heavy and stiff, and at length his horse stumbled and threw him to the ground. His fall was a heavy one and his head was hurt, and he lay for a long time speechless, so that his enemies thought him dead and tried to turn his body over and strip it of its armour. 8 But when he raised his head and opened his eyes, they threw themselves in a throng upon him, tied his hands behind his back, and led him away, treating with great insolence and contumely a man who could never have dreamed that he would suffer such a fate at the hands of Deinocrates.

19 1 The people of Messene, wonderfully elated at the news, gathered in throngs at the gates. But when they saw Philopoemen dragged along in a manner unworthy of his fame and of his former exploits and trophies, most of them were struck with pity and felt sympathy for him, so that they actually shed tears and spoke with bitterness of the inconstancy and vanity of human greatness. 2 And so, little by little, many were led to say humanely that they ought to remember his former benefactions, and especially how he had restored to them their freedom by expelling the tyrant Nabis. But there were a few who, to gratify Deinocrates, urged that the captive should be tortured and put to death as a stern and implacable enemy, and one more than ever to be feared by Deinocrates himself in case he made his escape after having been taken prisoner and loaded by insults by him. 3 However, they carried Philopoemen into the Thesaurus, as it was called, a subterranean chamber which admitted neither air nor light from outside and had no door, but was closed by dragging a huge stone in front of it. Here they placed him, and after planting the stone against it, set a guard of armed men round about.

4 Meanwhile the horsemen of the Achaeans recovered themselves after their flight, and when Philopoemen was nowhere to be seen, but was thought to be dead, they stood for a long time calling aloud upon their leader and reproaching one another for having won an unlawful and shameful safety by abandoning to the enemy their general, who had been prodigal of his life for their sakes. 5 Then they went forward in a body, and by diligent effort learned of his capture, and sent word of it to the cities of the Achaeans. The Achaeans felt that they had suffered a great calamity, and determined to send an embassy and demand Philopoemen from the Messenians, while they themselves prepared an expedition against the city.

20 1 The Achaeans, then, were thus engaged. But Deinocrates, who feared that delay was the one thing most likely to save Philopoemen, and wished to forestall the efforts of the Achaeans, when night came on and the multitude of Messene had dispersed, opened the prison and sent in a public official with poison, ordering him to give it to Philopoemen and to stand by his side until he had drunk it. 2 Now, Philopoemen was lying down wrapped with his soldier’s cloak, not sleeping, but overwhelmed with trouble and grief. When, however, he saw a light and a man standing by him holding the cup of poison, he pulled himself together as much as his weakness permitted and sat up. Then taking the cup he asked the man if he had heard anything about the horsemen, and particularly about Lycortas, 3 and on being told by him that the greater part of them had escaped, he nodded his head, and with a kindly look at the man said to him: “That is good news, if we have not wholly lost.” Without another word and even without a sigh he drained the cup and laid himself down again. He did not give the poison much to do, but breathed his last speedily, so weak was he.

21 1 Accordingly, when the report of his death reached the Achaeans, their cities were filled with general dejection and grief, and the men of military age, together with the members of the council, assembled at Megalopolis. With no delay whatsoever they proceeded to take revenge. They chose Lycortas general, invaded Messenia, and ravaged the country, until the Messenians with one consent received them into their city. 2 Deinocrates anticipated their vengeance by making away with himself, but all the others who had voted to put Philopoemen to death they slew, and as for those who would have had him tortured also, these Lycortas seized and held for a more excruciating death. Then they burned Philopoemen’s body, collected his ashes in an urn, and set out for home, not in loose or promiscuous order, but with a blending of triumphal procession and funeral rites. 3 For their heads were wreathed with garlands while their eyes were full of tears, and they led their foes along with them in chains. The urn itself, almost hidden from sight by a multitude of fillets and wreaths, was borne by Polybius, the son of the Achaean general, and about him were the chief men of the Achaeans. The soldiers followed after, in full armour themselves, and with their horses decorated; they were neither dejected in view of their great affliction nor exultant over their victory. 4 Moreover, the people from the cities and villages on the way came to meet them, as if receiving Philopoemen on his return from an expedition; they laid their hands upon his urn, and accompanied him to Megalopolis. And so when they had been joined by the old men and by the women and children, a lamentation at once spread through the entire army and into the city, which longed for the presence of Philopoemen and was grievously cast down at his death, feeling that with him it had lost its supremacy among the Achaeans.

5 He was buried, then, as was fitting, with conspicuous honours, and at his tomb the captive Messenians were stoned to death. Many statues of him were erected and many honours decreed him by the cities. All these a Roman, in the disastrous days of Greece following the fall of Corinth, attempted to have removed, and he attacked the memory of Philopoemen himself, accusing him, as if still alive, of having been a malevolent enemy of the Romans. 6 After the proposal had been discussed and Polybius had spoken in opposition to Philopoemen’s detractor, neither Mummius nor the members of the commission would consent that the honours paid to an illustrious man should be obliterated, although he had made no little opposition to Flamininus and Manius. These judges distinguished, as it would appear, between virtue and necessity, between honour and advantage. They rightly and fitly considered that benefactors ought always to receive reward and gratitude from their beneficiaries, and good men honour from the good.

So much concerning Philopoemen.

Flamininus

1 1 In parallel with Philopoemen we shall put Titus Quintius Flamininus. What his outward appearance was may be seen by those who wish it from the bronze statue of him at Rome. It stands by the side of the great Apollo from Carthage, opposite the Circus, and has upon it an inscription in Greek characters. As to his disposition, he is said to have been quick to show anger as well as to confer favours, though not in like extent. 2 For he was gentle in his punishments and not persistent, whereas in his favours he was unremitting, always well disposed towards his beneficiaries as though they were his benefactors, and eager to protect at all times and preserve those who had ever met with kindness at his hands, as though they were his choicest possessions. But since he was covetous of honour and fame, he desired that his nobles and greatest achievements should be the result of his own efforts, and he took more pleasure in those who wanted to receive kindness than in those who were able to bestow it, considering that the former were objects upon which he could exercise his virtue, while the latter were his rivals, so to speak, in the struggle for fame.

3 From his earliest years he was trained in the arts of war, since at that time Rome was carrying on many great contests and her young men from the very outset were taught by service as soldiers how to command soldiers. To begin with, then, he served as military tribune in the war against Hannibal under Marcellus the consul. 4 Marcellus fell into an ambush and lost his life, but Titus was appointed governor of the country about Tarentum and of Tarentum itself, now captured for the second time. Here he won a good name, no less for his administration of justice than for his conduct in the field. For this reason he was also chosen director-in chief of the colonists sent out to the two cities of Narnia and Cosa.

2 1 This success more than anything else so exalted his ambition that he ignored the intervening offices which young men generally sought, the offices of tribune, praetor, and aedile, and thought himself worthy at once of a consulship; so he became a candidate for that office, with the eager support of his colonists. But the tribunes Fulvius and Manius opposed his course, and said that it was a monstrous thing for a young man to force his way into the highest office contrary to the laws, before he had been initiated, as it were, into the first rites and mysteries of government. 2 The senate, however, referred the matter to the votes of the people, and the people elected him consul along with Sextus Aelius, although he was not yet thirty years old. The lot assigned him to the war with Philip and the Macedonians, and it was a marvellous piece of good fortune for the Romans that he was thus designated for a field of activity where the people did not require a leader relying entirely upon war and violence, but rather to be won over by persuasion and friendly intercourse. 3 For the realm of Macedonia afforded Philip a sufficiently strong force for actual battle, but in a war of long duration his phalanx was dependent for its vigour, its support, its places of refuge, and in a word for its entire effectiveness, upon the states of Greece, and unless these were detached from Philip, the war with him would not be a matter of a single battle. 4 Greece, however, had not yet been brought into much contact with the Romans, and now for the first time was drawn into political relations with them. Unless, therefore, the Roman commander had been a man of native goodness who relied upon argument more than upon war, and unless he had been persuasive when he asked an audience and kind when he granted one, ever laying the greatest stress upon what was right and just, Greece would not so easily have been satisfied with a foreign supremacy instead of those to which she had been accustomed. However, this will be made clear in the story of his achievements.

3 1 Titus learned that the generals who had preceded him in this field, first Sulpicius, and then Publius Villius, had invaded Macedonia late in the season, had prosecuted the war slowly, and had wasted time in manoeuvring for position or in long range skirmishes with Philip to secure roads and provisions. 2 These men had squandered the year of their consulship at home in the honours and political activities of their office, and afterwards had set out on their campaigns. But Titus did not think it right to imitate them and thus add a year to his term of office, acting as magistrate during one, and as general for a second. On the contrary, he was ambitious to prosecute the war at the same time that he served as consul, and therefore renounced his honours and special privileges in the city, 3 and after asking the senate that his brother Lucius might accompany him on his expedition as naval commander, he took with him as the main part of his force those of Scipio’s soldiers who were still in full vigour of body and spirit after conquering Hasdrubal in Spain and Hannibal himself in Africa (they were three thousand in number), and crossed safely into Epirus. He found Publius Villius encamped with his forces over against Philip, who for a long time now had been guarding the narrow passes along the river Apsus. 4 Publius was making no progress, owing to the strength of his adversary’s position, and Titus therefore took over his army, sent Publius home, and began an examination of the ground. It has no less natural strength than the Vale of Tempe, but is without the beautiful trees, green woods, agreeable haunts, and pleasant meadows which there abound. 5 Great and lofty mountains on either side slope down and form a single very large and deep ravine, and through this the Apsus dashes with a volume and speed which make it the equal of the Peneius. Its water covers all the rest of the ground at the foot of the mountains, but leaves a cut, precipitous and narrow, for a path along past its current; this path would not be easy for an army to traverse at any time, and when guarded, it would be utterly impossible.

4 1 There were some, therefore, who tried to have Titus lead his forces by a roundabout way through Dassaretis towards Lycus, a safe and easy road. But he was afraid that if he went far away from the sea and got into regions that were poorly tilled and barren, while Philip avoided battle, lack of provisions would compel him to come back again to the sea with his task undone, like the general who had preceded him. He therefore determined to attack with all his might, and force his passage through the heights. 2 But Philip was occupying the mountains with his phalanx, and on the flanks of the Romans javelins and arrows came flying from all directions against them. Sharp encounters took place, men were wounded and men fell dead on both sides, and no end of the war was in sight. But at last some herdsmen of the vicinity came to Titus and told him of a roundabout path which the enemy was neglecting to guard; over this they promised to lead his army and bring it, in three days at the farthest, to a position on the heights. 3 As surety and voucher for their good faith they brought Charops the son of Machatas, a leading man in Epirus, who was well-disposed to the Romans and was secretly co-operating with them through fear of Philip. In him Titus put confidence, and sent out a military tribune with four thousand foot-soldiers and three hundred horsemen. They were conducted by the herdsmen, who were in bonds. By day they rested under cover of caves or woody places, and they travelled in the night, by the light of the moon, which was at the full.

4 After sending off this detachment, Titus kept his army quiet for two days, except so far as he drew off the enemy’s attention by skirmishes; but when the day came on which the enveloping party were expected to show themselves on the heights, at daybreak he put all his heavy-armed and all his light-armed troops in motion. Dividing his forces into three parts, he himself led his cohorts in column formation up into the narrowest part of the ravine along the stream, pelted with missiles by the Macedonians and engaging at close quarters with those who confronted him at each difficult spot; 5 the other divisions, one on either side, strove to keep pace with him, and grappled eagerly with the difficulties presented by the rough ground. Meanwhile the sun rose, and a smoke — not clearly defined, but resembling a mountain mist — lifted itself and came into view from afar. The enemy did not notice it, for it was behind them, where the heights were already occupied, and the Romans were of doubtful mind about it, but as they struggled and laboured on, they let their wishes determine their hopes. 6 But when the smoke increased in size and darkened the air, and ascending in great volume was clearly seen to be a fire-signal from their friends, then the Romans below raised great shouts of triumph and dashed upon their foes and crowded them together into the roughest places, while the Romans behind the enemy sent down answering shouts from the heights.

5 1 At once, then, the enemy fled precipitately, but not more than two thousand of them fell; for the difficulties of the ground made pursuit impossible. However, the Romans made spoil of their money, tents, and slaves, mastered the pass, and traversed all parts of Epirus, but in such an orderly mention and with so great restraint that, although they were far from their fleet and the sea, and although their monthly rations of grain had not been measured out to them and they could buy little, they nevertheless refrained from plundering the country, which offered abundant booty. 2 For Titus had learned that Philip, in passing through Thessaly like a fugitive, was driving the inhabitants from their cities into the mountains, burning down the cities, and allowing his soldiers to plunder the wealth which was too abundant or too heavy to be carried away, thus in a manner ceding the country already to the Romans. Titus was therefore ambitious, and exhorted his soldiers accordingly to spare the country in marching through it, and to treat it as though it had been handed over to them and were their own. 3 And indeed the results showed them at once the advantages of this orderly conduct. For as soon as they reached Thessaly the cities came over to them, the Greeks south of Thermopylae were all eagerness and excitement to find Titus, and the Achaeans, renouncing their alliance with Philip, voted to join the Romans in making war upon him. 4 The Opuntians, moreover, although the Aetolians, who were at that time fighting most zealously on the side of the Romans, asked permission to take Opus in charge and protect the city, would not grant the request, but sent for Titus and gave themselves with the fullest confidence into his hands.

Now, we are told that Pyrrhus, when for the first time he beheld from a look-out place the army of the Romans in full array, had said that he saw nothing barbaric in the Barbarians’ line of battle; and so those who for the first time met Titus were compelled to speak in a similar strain. 5 For they had heard the Macedonians say that a commander of a barbarian host was coming against them, who subdued and enslaved everywhere by force of arms; and then, when they met a man who was young in years, humane in aspect, a Greek in voice and language, and a lover of genuine honour, they were wonderfully charmed, and when they returned to their cities they filled them with kindly feelings towards him and the belief that in him they had a champion of their liberties. 6 After this Titus had a meeting with Philip (who seemed disposed to make terms), and proffered him peace and friendship on condition that he allowed the Greeks to be independent and withdraw his garrisons from their cities; but this proffer Philip would not accept. Then at last it became clear even to the partisans of Philip that the Romans were come to wage war, not upon the Greeks, but upon the Macedonians in behalf of the Greeks.

6 1 Accordingly, the other parts of Greece came over to the side of Titus without any trouble; but as he was entering Boeotia without hostile demonstrations, the leading men of Thebes came to meet him. They were in sympathy with the Macedonian cause through the efforts of Brachyllas, but welcomed Titus and showed him honour, professing to be on friendly terms with both parties. 2 Titus met and greeted them kindly, and then proceeded quietly on his journey, sometimes asking questions for his own information and sometimes discoursing at length, and purposely diverting them until his soldiers should come up from their march. 3 Then he led them forward and entered the city along with the Thebans, who were not at all pleased thereat, but hesitated to oppose him, since a goodly number of soldiers were in his following. Titus, however, just as though the city were not in his power, came before their assembly and tried to persuade them to side with the Romans, and Attalus the king seconded them in his appeals and exhortations to the Thebans. But Attalus, as it would appear, in his eagerness to play the orator for Titus, went beyond his aged strength, and in the very midst of his speech, being seized with a vertigo or an apoplexy, suddenly fainted and fell, and shortly afterwards was conveyed by his fleet to Asia, where he died. The Boeotians allied themselves with the Romans.

7 1 Philip now sent an embassy to Rome, and Titus therefore dispatched thither his own representatives, who were to induce the senate to vote him an extension of command in case the war continued, or, if it did not, the power to make peace. For he was covetous of honour, and was greatly afraid that he would be robbed of his glory if another general were sent to carry on the war. 2 His friends managed matters so successfully for him that Philip failed to get what he wanted and the command in the war was continued to Titus. On receiving the decree of the senate, he was lifted up in his hopes and at once hastened into Thessaly to prosecute the war against Philip. He had over twenty-six thousand soldiers, of whom six thousand infantry and four hundred cavalry were furnished by the Aetolians. Philip’s army also was of about the same size.

3 The two armies advanced against each other until they came into the neighbourhood of Scotussa, and there they proposed to decide the issue by battle. Their mutual proximity did not inspire them with fear, as might have been expected; on the contrary, they were filled with ardour and ambition. For the Romans hoped to conquer the Macedonians, whose reputation for prowess and strength Alexander had raised to a very high pitch among them; and the Macedonians, who considered the Romans superior to the Persians, hoped, in case they prevailed over them, to prove Philip a more brilliant commander than Alexander. 4 Accordingly, Titus exhorted his soldiers to show themselves brave men and full of spirit, assured that they were going to contend against the bravest of antagonists in that fairest of all theatres, Greece; and Philip, too, began a speech of exhortation to his soldiers, as is the custom before a battle. But, either by chance or from ignorance due to an inopportune haste, he had ascended for this purpose a lofty mound outside his camp, beneath which many men lay buried in a common grave, and a dreadful dejection fell upon his listeners in view of the omen, so that he was deeply troubled and refrained from battle that day.

8 1 Towards morning on the following day, after a mild and damp night, the clouds turned to mist, the whole plain was filled with profound darkness, a dense air came down from the heights into the space between the two camps, and as soon as day advanced all the ground was hidden from view. The parties sent out on either side for purposes of ambush and reconnaissance encountered one another in a very short time and went to fighting near what are called the Cynoscephalae, or Dog’s Heads. These are the sharp tops of hills lying close together alongside one another, and got their name from a resemblance in their shape. 2 As was natural on a field so difficult, each party sending out aid from their camps to those who from time to time were getting the worst of it and retreating, until at last, when the air cleared up and they could see what was going on, they engaged with all their forces.

With his right wing, then, Philip had the advantage, since from higher ground he threw his entire phalanx upon the Romans, who could not withstand the weight of its interlocking shields and the sharpness of its projecting pikes; 3 but his left wing was broken up and scattered along the hills, and Titus, despairing of his defeated wing, rode swiftly along to the other, and with it fell upon the Macedonians. These were unable to hold their phalanx together and maintain the depth of its formation (which was the main source of their strength), being prevented by the roughness and irregularity of the ground, while for fighting man to man they had armour which was too cumbersome and heavy. 4 For the phalanx is like an animal of invincible strength as long as it is one body and can keep its shields locked together in a single formation; but when it has been broken up into its parts, each of its fighting men loses also his individual force, as well because of the manner in which he is armed as because his strength lies in the mutual support of the parts of the whole body rather than in himself. This wing of the Macedonians being routed, some of the Romans pursued the fugitives, while others dashed out upon the flank of the enemy who were still fighting and cut them down, so that very soon their victorious wing also faced about, threw away their weapons, and fled. 5 The result was that no fewer than eight thousand Macedonians were slain, and five thousand were taken prisoners. Philip, however, got safely away, and for this the Aetolians were to blame, who fell to sacking and plundering the enemy’s camp while the Romans were still pursuing, so that when the Romans came back to it they found nothing there.

9 1 This, to begin with, gave rise to mutual quarrels and recriminations; but afterwards the Aetolians vexed Titus more and more by ascribing the victory to themselves and prepossessing the minds of the Greeks with the fame of it, so that they were mentioned first in the writings and songs of poets and historians who celebrated the event. 2 Of these the one most in vogue was the following epigram in elegiac verses: —

“Unwept and without graves are we, O traveller, who on this ridge of Thessaly lie dead, in number thirty thousand, subdued by the sword of the Aetolians, and of the Latins whom Titus led from spacious Italy, Emathia’s great bane. And the bold spirit that Philip had displayed was gone; it showed itself more agile than swift deer.”

3 This poem was composed by Alcaeus in mockery of Philip, and its author exaggerated the number of the slain; however, being recited in many places and by many persons, it gave more annoyance to Titus than to Philip. For Philip simply made fun of Alcaeus with an answering elegiac distich: —

“Leafless and without bark, O traveller, on this ridge

A cross is planted for Alcaeus, and it towers in the sun”

4 but Titus was ambitious to stand well with the Greeks, and such things irritated him beyond measure. For this reason he conducted the rest of his business by himself, and made very little account of the Aetolians. They on their part were displeased at this, and when Titus received an embassy from the Macedonian king with proposals for an agreement, they went round to the other cities vociferously charging him with selling peace to Philip, when it was in his power to eradicate the war entirely and destroy a power by which the Greek world had first been enslaved. 5 While the Aetolians were making these charges and trying to make trouble among the Roman allies, Philip himself removed all grounds for suspicion by coming to terms and putting himself and his realm in the hands of Titus and the Romans. And in this manner Titus put an end to the war; he returned to Philip his kingdom of Macedonia, but ordained that he should keep aloof from Greece, exacted from him an indemnity of a thousand talents, took away all his ships except ten, and taking one of his sons, Demetrius, to serve as hostage, sent him off to Rome, thus providing in the best manner for the present and anticipating the future.

6 For Hannibal the African, a most inveterate enemy of Rome and an exile from his native country, had already at that time come to the court of King Antiochus, and was trying to incite him to further achievements while fortune gave his power successful course. Antiochus himself also, in consequence of the magnitude of his achievements, by which he had won the title of Great, was already fixing his eyes on universal dominion, and had a particular hostility to the Romans. 7 Therefore, had not Titus, in view of all this, made favourable terms of peace, and had the war with Antiochus in Greece found the war with Philip still in progress there, and had a common cause brought these two greatest and most powerful kings of the time into alliance against Rome, that city would have undergone fresh struggles and dangers not inferior to those which marked her war with Hannibal. 8 But as it was, by interposing an opportune peace between the two wars, and by cutting short the existing war before the threatening war began, Titus took away the last hope from Philip, and the first from Antiochus.

10 1 And now the ten commissioners, who had been sent to Titus by the senate, advised him to give the rest of the Greeks their freedom, but to retain Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias under garrisons, as a safeguard against Antiochus. Thereupon the Aetolians stirred up the cities with the most vociferous denunciations, ordering Titus to strike off the shackles of Greece (for that is what Philip was wont to call these three cities), 2 and asking the Greeks whether they were glad to have a fetter now which was smoother than the one they had worn before, but heavier; and whether they admired Titus as a benefactor because he had unshackled the foot of Greece and put a collar round her neck. Titus was troubled and distressed at this, and by labouring with the commission finally persuaded it to free these cities also from their garrisons, in order that his gift to the Greeks might be whole and entire.

3 Accordingly, at the Isthmian games, where a great throng of people were sitting in the stadium and watching the athletic contests (since, indeed, after many years Greece had at last ceased from wars waged in hopes of freedom, and was now holding festival in time of assured peace), the trumpet signalled a general silence, 4 and the herald, coming forward into the midst of the spectators, made proclamation that the Roman senate and Titus Quintius Flamininus proconsular general, having conquered King Philip and the Macedonians, restored to freedom, without garrisons and without imposts, and to the enjoyment of their ancient laws, the Corinthians, the Locrians, the Phocians, the Euboeans, the Achaeans of Phthiotis, the Magnesians, the Thessalians, and the Perrhaebians. At first, then, the proclamation was by no means generally or distinctly heard, but there was a confused and tumultuous movement in the stadium of people who wondered what had been said, and asked one another questions about it, and called out to have the proclamation made again; 5 but when silence had been restored, and the herald in tones that were louder than before and reached the ears of all, had recited the proclamation, a shout of joy arose, so incredibly loud that it reached the sea. The whole audience rose to their feet, and no heed was paid to the contending athletes, but all were eager to spring forward and greet and hail the saviour and champion of Greece.

6 And that which is often said of the volume and power of the human voice was then apparent to the eye. For ravens which chanced to be flying overhead fell down into the stadium. The cause of this was the rupture of the air; for when the voice is borne aloft loud and strong, the air is rent asunder by it and will not support flying creatures, but lets them fall, as if they were over a vacuum, unless, indeed, they are transfixed by a sort of blow, as of a weapon, and fall down dead. It is possible, too, that in such cases there is a whirling motion of the air, which becomes like a waterspout at sea with a refluent flow of the surges caused by their very volume.

11 Be that as it may, had not Titus, now that the spectacle was given up, at once foreseen the rush and press of the throng and taken himself away, it would seem that he could hardly have survived the concourse of so many people about him at once and from all sides. But when they were tired of shouting about his tent, and night was already come, then, with greetings and embraces for any friends and fellow citizens whom they saw, they betook themselves to banqueting and carousing with one another. 2 And here, their pleasure naturally increasing, they were moved to reason and discourse about Greece, saying that although she had waged many wars for the sake of her freedom, she had not yet obtained a more secure or more delightful exercise of it than now, when others had striven in her behalf, and she herself, almost without a drop of blood or a pang of grief, had borne away the fairest and most enviable of prizes. Verily, they would say, valour and wisdom are rare things among men, but the rarest of all blessings is the just man. 3 For men like Agesilaüs, or Lysander, or Nicias, or Alcibiades could indeed conduct wars well, and understood how to be victorious commanders in battles by land and sea, but they would not use their successes so as to win legitimate favour and promote the right. Indeed, if one excepts the action at Marathon, the sea-fight at Salamis, Plataea, Thermopylae, and the achievements of Cimon at the Eurymedon and about Cyprus, Greece has fought all her battles to bring servitude upon herself, and every one of her trophies stands as a memorial of her own calamity and disgrace, since she owed her overthrow chiefly to the baseness and contentiousness of her leaders. 4 Whereas men of another race, who were thought to have only slight sparks and insignificant traces of a common remote ancestry, from whom it was astonishing that any helpful word or purpose should be vouchsafed to Greece — these men underwent the greatest perils and hardships in order to rescue Greece and set her free from cruel despots and tyrants.

12 1 So ran the thoughts of the Greeks; and the acts of Titus were consonant with his proclamations. For at once he sent Lentulus to Asia to set Bargylia free, and Stertinius to Thrace to deliver the cities and islands there from Philip’s garrisons. Moreover, Publius Villius sailed to have a conference with Antiochus concerning the freedom of the Greeks who were under his sway. 2 Titus himself also paid a visit to Chalcis, and then sailed from there to Magnesia, removing their garrisons and restoring to the peoples their constitutions. He was also appointed master of ceremonies for the Nemeian games at Argos, where he conducted the festival in the best possible manner, and once more publicly proclaimed freedom to the Greeks. 3 Then he visited the different cities, establishing among them law and order, abundant justice, concord, and mutual friendliness. He quieted their factions and restored their exiles, and plumed himself on his persuading and reconciling the Greeks more than on his conquest of the Macedonians, so that their freedom presently seemed to them the least of his benefactions.

4 Xenocrates the philosopher, as the story runs, was once being haled away to prison by the tax-collectors for not having paid the alien’s tax, but was rescued out of their hands by Lycurgus the orator, who also visited the officials with punishment for their impudence. Xenocrates afterwards met the sons of Lycurgus, and said: “My boys, I am making a noble return to your father for his kindness towards me; for all the world is praising him for what he did.” In the case of Titus and the Romans, however, gratitude for their benefactions to the Greeks brought them, not merely praises, but also confidence among all men and power, and justly too. 5 For men not only received the officers appointed by them, but actually sent for them and invited them and put themselves in their hands. And this was true not only of people and cities, nay, even kings who had been wronged by other kings fled for refuge into the hands of Roman officials, so that in a short time — and perhaps there was also divine guidance in this — everything became subject to them. But Titus himself took most pride in his liberation of Greece. 6 For in dedicating at Delphi some silver bucklers and his own long shield, he provided them with this inscription: —

“O ye sons of Zeus, whose joy is in swift horsemanship. O ye Tyndaridae, princes of Sparta, Titus, a descendant of Aeneas, has brought you a most excellent gift, he who for the sons of the Greeks wrought freedom.”

7 He also dedicated a golden wreath to Apollo, and it bore this inscription: —

“This will fitly lie on thine ambrosial locks, O son of Leto, this wreath with sheen of gold; it is the gift of the great leader of the children of Aeneas. Therefore, O Far-darter, bestow upon the god-like Titus the glory due to his prowess.”

8 It follows, then, that the city of Corinth has twice now been the scene of the same benefaction to the Greeks; for it was in Corinth that Titus at this time, and at Corinth that Nero again in our own times — in both cases at the Isthmian games — made the Greeks free and self-governing, Titus by voice of herald, but Nero in a public address which he delivered in person, on a tribunal in the market-place amidst the multitude. This, however, came at a later time.

13 1 Titus now began a most honourable and righteous war, the war against Nabis, the most pernicious and lawless tyrant of Sparta, but in the end he disappointed the hopes of Greece. For though it was in his power to capture the tyrant, he refused to do so, and made peace with him, thus leaving Sparta to the fate of an unworthy servitude. He was led to this step either by his fear that a protraction of the war would bring another general from Rome to succeed him and rob him of his glory, or by his jealous displeasure at the honours paid to Philopoemen. 2 For in all other matters Philopoemen was a most capable man among the Greeks, and in that war particularly he displayed astonishing deeds of ability and daring, so that he was extolled by the Achaeans as much as Titus, and equally honoured in their theatres. This annoyed Titus, who thought it out of keeping that a man of Arcadia, who had held command in small border wars, should receive just as much admiration from the Achaeans as a Roman consul, who was waging war in behalf of Greece. 3 However, Titus himself had this to say in defence of his course, namely, that he put an end to the war when he saw that the destruction of the tyrant would involve the rest of the Spartans also in serious disaster.

The Achaeans voted Titus many honours, none of which seemed commensurate with his benefactions except one gift, and this caused him as much satisfaction as all the rest put together. 4 And this was the gift: The Romans who were unhappily taken prisoners in the war with Hannibal had been sold about hither and thither, and were serving as slaves. In Greece there were as many as twelve hundred of them. The change in their lot made them pitiful objects always, but then even more than ever, naturally, when they fell in with sons, or brothers, or familiar friends, as the case might be, slaves with freemen and captives with victors. 5 These men Titus would not take away from their owners, although he was distressed at their condition, but the Achaeans ransomed them all at five minas the man, collected them together, and made a present of them to Titus just as he was about to embark, so that he sailed for home with a glad heart; his noble deeds had brought him a noble recompense, and one befitting a great man who loved his fellow citizens. 6 This appears to have furnished his triumph with its most glorious feature. For these men shaved their heads and wore felt caps, as it is customary for slaves to do when they are set free, and in this habit followed the triumphal car of Titus.

14 1 But a more beautiful show was made by the spoils of war which were displayed in the procession — Greek helmets and Macedonian bucklers and pikes. Besides, the amount of money exhibited was large. Tuditanusa records that there were carried in the procession three thousand seven hundred and thirteen pounds of gold bullion, forty-three thousand two hundred and seventy pounds of silver, 2 and fourteen thousand five hundred and fourteen gold coins bearing Philip’s effigy. And apart from this money Philip owed his fine of a thousand talents. This fine, however, the Romans were afterwards persuaded to remit to Philip, and this was chiefly due to the efforts of Titus; they also made Philip their ally, and sent back his son whom they held as hostage.

15 1 Presently, however, Antiochus crossed into Greece with many ships and a large army, and began to stir the cities into faction and revolt. The Aetolians made common cause with him, a people who had long been most inimically disposed towards the Romans, and they suggested to him, as a pretext that would account for the war, that he should offer the Greeks their freedom. The Greeks did not want to be set free, for they were free already; 2 but for the lack of a more appropriate ground for his action the Aetolians taught Antiochus to make use of that fairest of all names. The Romans, greatly alarmed by reports of defection among the Greeks and of the power of Antiochus, sent out Manius Acillius as consular general for the war, but made Titus his lieutenant to please the Greeks. The mere sight of him confirmed some of these in their loyalty to Rome, while to others, who were beginning to be infected with disloyalty, he administered a timely medicine, as it were, in the shape of good will towards himself, and thus checked their malady and prevented them from going wrong. 3 A few, however, escaped his influence, having been already won over beforehand and totally corrupted by the Aetolians, but even these, in spite of his vexation and anger, were spared by him after the battle. For Antiochus was defeated at Thermopylae and put to flight, and at once sailed back to Asia; while Manius the consul went against some of the Aetolians himself and besieged them, leaving others to King Philip to destroy. 4 And so it came about that the Dolopians and Magnesians here, the Athamanians and Aperantians there, were harried and plundered by the Macedonians, while Manius himself, after sacking Heracleia, was engaged in the siege of Naupactus, which the Aetolians held. Then Titus, out of pity for the Greeks, sailed across from Peloponnesus to the consul. At first he chided Manius because, although the victory was his own, he was permitting Philip to carry off the prizes of the war, and to gratify his anger was wasting time in the siege of a single city, while the Macedonians were subduing many nations and kingdoms. 5 Then, when the besieged citizens caught sight of him from their walls and called aloud upon him and stretched out their hands to him imploringly, he turned away, burst into tears, and left the place, without saying anything more at the time; afterwards, however, he had an interview with Manius, put an end to his wrath, and induced him to grant the Aetolians a truce, and time in which to send an embassy to Rome with a plea for moderate terms.

16 1 But the hardest toils and struggles fell to Titus when he interceded with Manius in behalf of the Chalcidians. They had incurred the consul’s wrath because of the marriage which Antiochus had made in their city after the war had already begun, a marriage which was not only unseasonable, but unsuitable for the king’s years, since he was an elderly man and had fallen in love with a girl (the girl was a daughter of Cleoptolemus, and is said to have been most beautiful among maidens). 2 This marriage induced the Chalcidians to take the king’s side most zealously and allow their city to be his base of operations for the war. Antiochus, therefore, fleeing with all speed after the battle at Thermopylae, came to Chalcis, and taking with him his girl-wife, his treasure, and his friends, sailed back to Asia; but Manius immediately marched against Chalcis in a rage. He was accompanied, however, by Titus, who tried to mollify and intercede with him and at last won him over and calmed him down by entreaties addressed both to him and the other Romans in authority.

3 Having been thus saved by Titus, the Chalcidians dedicated to him the largest and most beautiful of the votive offerings in their city, and on them such inscriptions as these are still to be seen: “This gymnasium is dedicated by the people to Titus and Heracles,” and again in another place, “This Delphinium is dedicated by the people to Titus and Apollo.” 4 Moreover, even down to our own day a priest of Titus is duly elected and appointed, and after sacrifice and libations in his honour, a set hymn of praise to him is sung: it is too long to be quoted entire, and so I will give only the closing words of the song:

“And the Roman faith we revere, which we have solemnly vowed to cherish; sing, then, ye maidens, to great Zeus, to Rome, to Titus, and to the Roman faith: hail, Paean Apollo! hail, Titus our saviour!”

17 1 He also received from the rest of the Greeks fitting honours, and these were made sincere by the astonishing good will which his equitable nature called forth. For even if the conduct of affairs or the spirit of rivalry brought him into collision with any of them, as, for instance, with Philopoemen, and again with Diophanes the general of the Achaeans, his resentment was not heavy, nor did it carry him into violent acts, but when it had vented itself in the outspoken language of free public debate, there was an end of it. 2 However, he was never bitter, although many imputed hastiness and levity to his nature, and in general he was a most agreeable companion and able to say a graceful thing with force. For instance, when he was trying to dissuade the Achaeans from appropriating the island of Zacynthos, he said it would be dangerous for them, like a tortoise, to stick their head out of its Peloponnesian shell. Again, when he held his first conference with Philip concerning a truce and peace, and Philip remarked that Titus had come with many attendants while he himself had come alone, Titus answered, “Yes, thou hast made thyself alone by slaying thy friends and kindred.” 3 Again, when Deinocrates the Messenian, who had taken too much wine at a drinking-party in Rome, and after putting on a woman’s robe had executed a dance, on the following day asked Titus to assist him in his plan to separate Messene from the Achaean league, Titus said he would consider the matter; “But I am amazed,” said he, “that when thou hast matters of so great moment in hand, thou canst dance and sing at a drinking-party.” 4 And once more, when an embassy from Antiochus was recounting to the Achaeans the vast multitude of the king’s forces and enumerating them all by their various appellations, Titus said that once, when he was dining with a friend, he criticized the multitude of meats that were served, wondering where he had obtained so varied a supply; whereupon his host told him they were all swine’s flesh, and differed only in the way they were cooked and dressed. 5 “And so in your case,” said he, “men of Achaia, do not be astonished when you hear of the Spear-bearers and Lance-bearers and Foot-companions in the army of Antiochus; for they are all Syrians and differ only in the way they are armed.”

18 1 After his achievements in Greece and the war with Antiochus, Titus was appointed censor. This is the highest office at Rome, and in a manner the culmination of a political career. Titus had as colleague in this office a son of the Marcellus who had been five times consul, and the two censors ejected from the senate four men of lesser note, and received into citizenship all who offered themselves for enrolment, provided they were born of free parents. To this step they were forced by the tribune Terentius Culeo, who wanted to spite the nobility and so persuaded the people to vote the measure.

2 The two men of his time who were most notable and had the greatest influence in the city, Scipio Africanus and Marcus Cato, were at variance with one another. Of these, Titus appointed Scipio to be Dean of the Senate, believing him to be its best and foremost man; but with Cato he came into hostile relations, owing to the following unfortunate circumstances. Titus had a brother, Lucius, who was unlike him in all other ways, and especially in his shameful addiction to pleasure and his utter contempt of decency. 3 This brother had as a companion a young boy whom he loved, and took him about and kept him always in his train, whether he was commanding an army or administering a province. At some drinking party, then, this boy was playing the coquet with Lucius, and said he loved him so ardently that he had come away from a show of gladiators in order to be with him, although he had never in all his life seen a man killed; and he had done so, he said, because he cared more for his lover’s pleasure than for his own. Lucius was delighted at this, and said: “Don’t worry about that! I will give thee thy heart’s desire.” 4 Then ordering a man who had been condemned to death to be brought forth from his prison, and sending for a lictor, he commanded him to strike off the man’s head there in the banquet-hall. Valerius Antias, however, says it was not a lover, but a mistress whom Lucius thus sought to gratify. And Livy says that in a speech of Cato himself it is written that a Gaulish deserter had come to the door with his wife and children, and that Lucius admitted him into the banquet-hall and slew him with his own hand to gratify his lover. 5 This feature, however, was probably introduced by Cato to strengthen the force of his denunciation; for that it was not a deserter, but a prisoner, who was put to death, and one who had been condemned to die, is the testimony of many others, and especially of Cicero the orator in his treatise “On Old Age,” where he puts the story in the mouth of Cato himself.

19 1 In view of this, when Cato became censor and was purging the senate of its unworthy members, he expelled from it Lucius Flamininus, although he was a man of consular dignity, and although his brother Titus was thought to be involved in his disgrace. Therefore the two brothers came before the people in lowly garb and bathed in tears, and made what seemed a reasonable request of their fellow citizens, namely, that Cato should state the reasons which had led him to visit a noble house with a disgrace so great. 2 Without any hesitation, then, Cato came forward, and standing with his colleague before Titus, asked him if he knew about the banquet. Titus said he seems, whereupon Cato related the incident and formally challenged Lucius to say whether any part of the story told was not true. But Lucius was dumb, and the people therefore saw that he had been justly disgraced, and gave Cato a splendid escort away from the rostra. 3 Titus, however, was so affected by the misfortune of his brother that he leagued himself with those who had long hated Cato, and after getting the upper hand in the senate, revoked and annulled all the public rentals and leases and contracts which Cato had made, besides bringing many heavy indictments against him. That he acted the part of a good man or a good citizen I cannot affirm, in thus cherishing an incurable hatred against a lawful magistrate and a most excellent citizen on account of a man who, though a kinsman, was nevertheless unworthy and had suffered only what he deserved. 4 However, as the Roman people was once enjoying a spectacle in the theatre, and the senate, according to custom, had seats of honour in the foremost rows, Lucius was seen sitting somewhere in the rear among the poor and lowly, and excited men’s pity. The multitude could not bear the sight, but kept shouting to him to change his place, until he did change his place, and was received among their own number by the men of consular rank.

20 1 Now, the native ambition of Titus, as long as it had sufficient material to gratify it in the wars which I have mentioned, met with praise, as, for instance, when he served a second time as military tribune after having been consul, though there was no necessity for it; but after he had ceased to hold office and was well on in years, he met the rather with censure, because, although the portion of life which still remained to him did not admit of great activity, he was unable to restrain his passion for glory and his youthful ardour. 2 For by some such fierce impulse, as it would seem, he was led to his treatment of Hannibal, which made him odious to most people. Hannibal had secretly fled from his native Carthage and spent some time at the court of Antiochus; but when Antiochus, after the battle in Phrygia, had gladly accepted terms of peace, Hannibal took to flight once more, and after many wanderings, finally settled down at the court of Prusias in Bithynia. No one at Rome was ignorant of this, but all ignored him on account of his weakness and old age, regarding him as a castaway of Fortune. 3 Titus, however, who had been sent by the senate as ambassador to the court of Prusias on some other business, and saw that Hannibal was staying there, was incensed that he should be alive, and although Prusias made many fervent intercessions in behalf of a man who was a suppliant and a familiar friend, would not relent. There was an ancient oracle, as it would appear, concerning Hannibal’s death, and it ran as follows: —

“Libyssan earth shall cover the form of Hannibal.”

Hannibal thought this referred to Libya and a burial at Carthage, and believed that he would end his days there; 4 but there is a sandy tract in Bithynia on the sea-shore, and on its border a large village called Libyssa. Near this village Hannibal was living. But he had always distrusted the weakness of Prusias and feared the Romans, and therefore even before this time his house had been provided with seven underground exits leading from his own chamber. These ran in different directions beneath the surface of the ground, but all had secret issues far away. 5 Accordingly, when he now heard of the behest of Titus, he set out to make his escape by way of the underground passages, but encountered guards of the king, and therefore determined to take his own life. Some say that he wound his cloak about his neck and then ordered a servant to plant his knee in the small of his back, pull the rope towards him with all his might until it was twisted tight, and so to choke and kill him; some, too, say that he drank bull’s blood in imitation of Themistocles and Midas; but Livy says that he had poison which he ordered to be mixed, and took the cup with these words: “Let us now put an end to the great anxiety of the Romans, who have thought it too long and hard a task to wait for the death of a hated old man. Nevertheless, Titus will not bear away an enviable victory, nor one worthy of his forefathers, who sent secret information to Pyrrhus, when he was at war with them and a victor over them, of the poisoning that was going to be attempted.”

21 1 Such are the accounts of the death of Hannibal. When the story of it was brought to the senate, many of them thought the conduct of Titus odious, officious, and cruel; for he had killed Hannibal when he was like a bird permitted to live a tame and harmless life because too old to fly and without a tail, and there had been no necessity for his doing this, but he did it to win fame, that his name might be associated with the death of Hannibal. 2 Men also pointed to the clemency and magnanimity of Scipio Africanus and admired it all the more, since after defeating a Hannibal who had not been conquered before and was filling Africa with fear, he neither drove him from the country nor demanded his surrender by his fellow citizens, nay, he actually gave him a kindly greeting when he held conference with him before the battle, and after the battle, in making terms of peace, he did not insult or trample upon the fortunes of his foe. 3 Moreover, we are told that the two men met again at Ephesus, and in the first place, that when, as they were walking about together, Hannibal took the side which more properly belonged to Scipio as the superior, Scipio suffered it and walked about without paying any heed to it; and again, that when they fell to discussing generals and Hannibal declared Alexander to have been the mightiest of generals, and next to him Pyrrhus, and third himself, Scipio asked with a quiet smile, “And what wouldst thou have said if I had not conquered thee?” 4 To which Hannibal replied, “In that case, Scipio, I should not have counted myself third, but first of generals.”

Such conduct on the part of Scipio most people admired, and they blamed Titus for having laid violent hands on one whom another had slain. But some there were who praised what he had done and thought that Hannibal, as long as he was alive, was a consuming fire which needed only to be fanned; 5 for when he was in his prime, they said, it was not his body nor his arm that had been formidable to the Romans, but his ability and experience coupled with his ingrained bitterness and hostility, and from these naught is subtracted by old age, but the natural characteristics remain unchanged: whereas fortune does not remain the same, but changes sides, and summons with hope to fresh undertakings those whom hatred makes perpetual foes. 6 And subsequent events were perhaps still more a justification of Titus; for Aristonicus, the son of a harpist’s daughter, used his reputed connexion with Eumenes to fill all Asia with wars and rebellions, and Mithridates, notwithstanding his defeats by Sulla and Fimbria and his great losses in armies and generals, rose once more to be a formidable antagonist of Lucullus by land and sea.

7 However, not even Hannibal was reduced to a lower level than Caius Marius. For Hannibal had a king as his friend, and his days as usual were occupied with ships and horses and the care of soldiers; whereas Marius in his misfortunes was a laughing-stock to the Romans as he wandered about and begged his way in Africa, though after a little while he was in Rome with his axes at their necks and his rods at their backs, and they were humbly begging his mercy. So true is it that nothing in the present is either small or great in view of what may happen in the future, but change, like life, can only end with death. 8 For this reason some say that Titus did not take this step on his own account, but that he was sent as ambassador with Lucius Scipio, and their embassy had no other object than the death of Hannibal.

We do not find that Titus was active after this, either as statesman or soldier, and his end was a peaceful one. It is therefore time to think of our comparison.

Comparison of Philopoemen and Titus

1 1 Accordingly, in the magnitude of their benefactions to the Greeks, neither Philopoemen nor any one of the Greeks who were better men than Philopoemen is worthy of comparison with Titus. For they were Greeks and waged their wars against Greeks; whereas Titus was not a Greek and waged war in behalf of Greeks; and at a time when Philopoemen was unable to defend his own countrymen from the attacks of their enemies, and had gone off into Crete, at that very time Titus won a victory over Philip in the heart of Greece and set her peoples and all her cities free. 2 And if we examine into the battles which each fought, we shall find that the Greeks slain by Philopoemen as general of the Achaeans were more in number than the Macedonians slain by Titus as helper of the Greeks.

And then as to their errors, in the one they were due to ambition, in the other to a spirit of contention. For Titus preserved Philip’s royal dignity and showed favour to the Aetolians; whereas the anger of Philopoemen led him to rob his native city of its supremacy over the surrounding villages. 3 And further, the one was always constant towards his beneficiaries, while the other, to indulge his wrath, was ever ready to cancel a kindness. For instance, though he had once been a benefactor of Sparta, he afterwards tore down her walls, reduced her territory, and finally altered and destroyed her very constitution. And it would appear that he threw away his life in a fit of anger and contentiousness, by hastening to attack Messene before occasion offered and more quickly than was feasible; for he did not, like Titus, conduct all his military operations with deliberation and a due regard for safety.

2 1 But surely the multitude of his wars and trophies put the military experience of Philopoemen on a firmer basis. For the campaign of Titus against Philip was decided by two conflicts, whereas Philopoemen was successful in countless battles and left no room for the claim that his victories were due to fortune rather than to skill. And besides, Titus, in his quest of fame, availed himself of the culminating power of Rome; whereas Philopoemen flourished when Greece was all in declension. Therefore the success of Philopoemen was his own work, while that of Titus was the result of a community of effort; for the latter was commander of good soldiers, while the former, as commander, had to make his soldiers good. 2 And surely the fact that Philopoemen’s conflicts were with Greeks furnished a proof of his valour which was convincing even though unfortunate: for where other things are equal, they prevail who surpass in valour. And so it was that although he carried on war with the most warlike of the Greeks, namely, the Cretans and Lacedaemonians, he surpassed the first in wiles, though they were most crafty, and the second in daring, though they were most brave.

3 In addition to this it may be said that Titus won his victories by using what lay ready to his hand, since he availed himself of styles of armour and formation which had come down to him, whereas Philopoemen won his successes by making contributions and changes of his own in these matters, so that in the one case what was most essential for victory did not exist and had to be discovered, while in the other it lay ready for service. In the way of personal prowess, moreover, Philopoemen performed much that was great, but Titus nothing at all; nay, an Aetolian named Archedemus mocked at him because, when he himself had drawn his sword and was running at full speed against the Macedonians who were holding together and fighting, Titus was standing with his hands stretched up towards heaven and praying for help.

3 1 And further, Titus was either a commander or an ambassador when he did all his noble deeds, whereas Philopoemen showed himself no less active and effective for the Achaeans when he was a private citizen than when he was their general. For it was as a private citizen that he expelled Nabis from Messene and set the Messenians free, and as a private citizen that he shut the gates of Sparta against the coming of Diophanes the general and Titus, so saved the Lacedaemonians.  Having this natural gift of leadership, he not only knew how to use it in accordance with the laws, but also how to dominate the laws for the common good; he did not think it necessary to be appointed commander by the people, but took them under his command when occasion required it, considering that he who took wise counsel in their behalf, rather than he who had been elected by them, was their real general.

3 Nobly generous, then, was the clemency and humanity which Titus showed to the Greeks, but more nobly generous was the firmness and love of freedom with which Philopoemen opposed the Romans; for it is easier to confer favours on suppliants than it is to vex with opposition those who are more powerful. But since, after this examination, the difference between the two men is hard to define, I leave it to my reader to say whether, if we award to the Greek the crown for military experience and generalship, and to the Roman that for justice and goodness of heart, we shall not make a fair decision.

Pyrrhus

1 1 Historians tell us that the first king of the Thesprotians and Molossians after the flood was Phaethon, one of those who came into Epeirus with Pelasgus; but some say that Deucalion and Pyrrha established the sanctuary at Dodona and dwelt there among the Molossians. 2 In after time, however, Neoptolemus the son of Achilles, bringing a people with him, got possession of the country for himself, and left a line of kings descending from him. These were called after him Pyrrhidae; for he had the surname of Pyrrhus in his boyhood, and of his legitimate children by Lanassa, the daughter of Cleodaeus the son of Hyllus, one was named by him Pyrrhus. Consequently Achilles also obtained divine honours in Epeirus, under the native name of Aspetus. 3 But the kings who followed in this line soon lapsed into barbarism and became quite obscure, both in their power and in their lives, and it was Tharrhypas, historians say, who first introduced Greek customs and letters and regulated his cities by humane laws, thereby acquiring for himself a name. Alcetas was a son of Tharrhypas, Arybas of Alcetas, and of Arybas and Troas, Aeacides. 3 He married Phthia, the daughter of Menon the Thessalian, a man who won high repute at the time of the Lamian war and acquired the highest authority among the confederates after Leosthenes. Phthia bore to Aeacides two daughters, Deïdameia and Troas, and a son, Pyrrhus.

2 1 But factions arose among the Molossians, and expelling Aeacides they brought into power the sons of Neoptolemus. The friends of Aeacides were then seized and put to death, but Pyrrhus, who was still a babe and was sought for by the enemy, was stolen away by Androcleides and Angelus, who took to flight. However, they were obliged to take along with them a few servants, and women for the nursing of the child, and on this account their flight was laborious and slow and they were overtaken. 2 They therefore entrusted the child to Androcleion, Hippias, and Neander, sturdy and trusty young men, with orders to fly with all their might and make for Megara, a Macedonian town; while they themselves, partly by entreaties and partly by fighting, stayed the course of the pursuers until late in the evening. 3 After these had at last been driven back, they hastened to join the men who were carrying Pyrrhus. The sun had already set and they were near their hoped-for refuge, when suddenly they found themselves cut off from it by the river which flowed past the city. This had a forbidding and savage look, and when they tried to cross it, proved altogether impassable. For its current was greatly swollen and violent from rains that had fallen, and the darkness made everything more formidable. 4 Accordingly, they gave up trying to cross unaided, since they were carrying the child and the women who cared for the child; and perceiving some of the people of the country standing on the further bank, they besought their help in crossing, and showed them Pyrrhus, with loud cries and supplications. But the people on the other side could not hear them for the turbulence and splashing of the stream, and so there was delay, 5 one party shouting what the other could not understand, until some one bethought himself of a better way. He stripped off a piece of bark from a tree and wrote thereon with a buckle-pin a message telling their need and the fortune of the child; then he wrapped the bark about a stone, which he used to give force to his cast, and threw it to the other side. Some say, however, that it was a javelin about which he wrapped the bark, and that he shot it across. 6 Accordingly, when those on the other side had read the message and saw that no time was to be lost, they cut down trees, lashed them together, and made their way across. As chance would have it, the first of them to make his way across was named Achilles; he took Pyrrhus in his arms, and the rest of the fugitives were conveyed across by others in one way or another.

3 1 Having thus outstripped their pursuers and reached a place of safety, the fugitives betook themselves to Glaucias the king of the Illyrians; and finding him sitting at home with his wife, they put the little child down on the floor before them. Then the king began to reflect. He was in fear of Cassander, who was an enemy of Aeacides, and held his peace a long time as he took counsel with himself. 2 Meanwhile Pyrrhus, of his own accord, crept across the floor, clutched the king’s robe, and pulled himself on to his feet at the knees of Glaucias, who was moved at first to laughter, then to pity, as he saw the child clinging to his knees and weeping like a formal suppliant. Some say, however, that the child did not supplicate Glaucias, but caught hold of an altar of the gods and stood there with his arms thrown round it, and that Glaucias thought this a sign from Heaven. 3 Therefore he at once put Pyrrhus in the arms of his wife, bidding her rear him along with their children; and a little while after, when the child’s enemies demanded his surrender, and Cassander offered two hundred talents for him, Glaucias would not give him up, but after he had reached the age of twelve years, actually conducted him back into Epeirus with an armed force and set him upon the throne there.

4 In the aspect of his countenance Pyrrhus had more of the terror than of the majesty of kingly power. He had not many teeth, but his upper jaw was one continuous bone, on which the usual intervals between the teeth were indicated by slight depressions. People of a splenetic habit believed that he cured their ailment; he would sacrifice a white cock, and, while the patient lay flat upon his back, would press gently with his right foot against the spleen. Nor was any one so obscure or poor as not to get this healing service from him if he asked it. 5 The king would also accept the cock after he had sacrificed it, and this honorarium was most pleasing to him. It is said, further, that the great toe of his right foot had a divine virtue, so that after the rest of his body had been consumed, this was found to be untouched and unharmed by the fire. These things, however, belong to a later period.

4 1 When he had reached the age of seventeen years and was thought to be firmly seated on his throne, it came to pass that he went on a journey, when one of the sons of Glaucias, with whom he had been reared, was married. Once more, then, the Molossians banded together, drove out his friends, plundered his property, and put themselves under Neoptolemus. 2 Pyrrhus, thus stripped of his realm and rendered destitute of all things, joined himself to Demetrius the son of Antigonus, who had his sister Deïdameia to wife. She, while she was still a girl, had been nominally given in marriage to Alexander, Roxana’s son; but their affairs miscarried, and when she was of age Demetrius married her. 3 In the great battle which all the kings fought at Ipsus Pyrrhus was present, and took part with Demetrius, though still a stripling. He routed the enemy opposed to him, and made a brilliant display of valour among the combatants. Moreover, though Demetrius lost the day, Pyrrhus did not abandon him, but kept guard over his cities in Greece which were entrusted to him, and when Demetrius made peace with Ptolemy, sailed to Egypt as hostage for him. 4 Here, both in hunting and in bodily exercises, he gave Ptolemy proof of his prowess and endurance, and seeing that among the wives of Ptolemy it was Berenicé who had the greatest influence and was foremost in virtue and understanding, he paid especial court to her. He was adept at turning to his own advantage the favour of his superiors, just as he was inclined to look down upon his inferiors, and since he was orderly and restrained in his ways of living, he was selected from among many young princes as a husband for Antigone, one of the daughters of Berenicé, whom she had by Philip before her marriage with Ptolemy.

5 1 After this marriage he was held in still greater esteem, and since Antigone was an excellent wife to him, he brought it to pass that he was sent into Epeirus with money and an army to regain his kingdom. Most people there were glad to see him come, owing to their hatred of Neoptolemus, who was a stern and arbitrary ruler. However, fearing lest Neoptolemus should have recourse to one of the other kings, he came to terms and made friendship with him on the basis of a joint exercise of the royal power. 2 But as time went on there were people who secretly exasperated them against one another and filled them with mutual suspicions. The chief ground, however, for action on the part of Pyrrhus is said to have its origin as follows.

It was customary for the kings, after sacrificing to Zeus Areius at Passaro, a place in the Molossian land, to exchange solemn oaths with the Epeirots, the kings swearing to rule according to the laws, and the people to maintain the kingdom according to the laws. 3 Accordingly, this was now done; both the kings were present, and associated with one another, together with their friends, and many gifts were interchanged. Here Gelon, a man devoted to Neoptolemus, greeted Pyrrhus in a friendly manner and made him a present of two yoke of oxen for ploughing. Pyrrhus was asked for these by Myrtilus, his cup-bearer; and when Pyrrhus would not give them to him, but gave them to another, Myrtilus was deeply resentful. 4 This did not escape the notice of Gelon, who therefore invited Myrtilus to supper, and even, as some say, enjoyed his youthful beauty as they drank; then he reasoned with him and urged him to become an adherent of Neoptolemus and to destroy Pyrrhus by poison. Myrtilus accepted the proposal, pretending to approve of it and to be persuaded, but informed Pyrrhus. He also, by the king’s orders, presented Alexicrates, the king’s chief cup-bearer, to Gelon, assuring him that he would take part in their enterprise; for Pyrrhus wished to have several persons who could testify to the intended crime. 5 Thus Gelon was thoroughly deceived, and Neoptolemus as well, and as thoroughly, who, supposing that the plot was duly progressing, could not keep it to himself, but in his joy would talk about it to his friends. Once, in particular, after a revel at the house of his sister Cadmeia, he fell to prattling about the matter, supposing that no one would hear the conversation but themselves; for no one else was near except Phaenarete, the wife of Samon, a man who managed the flocks and herds of Neoptolemus, and Phaenarete was lying on a couch with her face to the wall and seemed to be asleep. 6 But she heard everything, and next day went unobserved to Antigone the wife of Pyrrhus, and told her all that she had heard Neoptolemus say to his sister. When Pyrrhus learned of it, he kept quiet for a time, but on a day of sacrifice invited Neoptolemus to supper and killed him. 7 For he was aware that the chief men among the Epeirots were devoted to himself and were eager to see him rid himself of Neoptolemus; also that they wished him not to content himself with having a small share of the kingdom, but to follow his natural bent and attempt greater things, and, now that some suspicion had added its weight to other motives for the deed, to anticipate Neoptolemus by taking him off first.

6 1 And now, in honour of Berenicé and Ptolemy, he gave the name of Ptolemy to his infant son by Antigone, and called the city which he had built on the peninsula of Epeirus, Berenicis. After this, he began to revolve many large projects in his mind; but his hopes were fixed first and more especially on undertakings close at hand, and he found a way to take direct part in Macedonian affairs, on grounds something like the following.

2 Of Cassander’s sons, the elder, Antipater, killed his mother Thessalonicé and drove away his brother Alexander. Alexander sent to Demetrius begging for help, and also called upon Pyrrhus. Demetrius was delayed by matters that he had in hand; but Pyrrhus came, and demanded as a reward for his alliance Stymphaea and Parauaea in Macedonia, and, of the countries won by the allies, Ambracia, Acarnania, and Amphilochia. 3 The youthful Alexander gave way to his demands, and Pyrrhus took possession of these countries and held them for himself with garrisons; he also proceeded to strip from Antipater the remaining parts of his kingdom and turn them over to Alexander. Now Lysimachus the king, who was eager to give aid to Antipater, was fully occupied himself and could not come in person; but knowing that Pyrrhus was desirous to do Ptolemy every favour and refuse him nothing, he sent a forged letter to him which stated that Ptolemy urged him to give up his expedition on payment of three hundred talents from Antipater. 4 As soon as Pyrrhus opened the letter he perceived the fraud of Lysimachus; for the letter did not have the customary address, “The father, to the son, health and happiness,” but instead, “King Ptolemy, to King Pyrrhus, health and happiness.” Pyrrhus reviled Lysimachus for the fraud, but nevertheless made the desired peace, and they all met to ratify it with sacrificial oaths. 5 However, after a bull, a boar, and a ram had been brought up for sacrifice, of its own accord the ram fell down dead. The rest of the spectators were moved to laughter, but Theodotus the seer prevented Pyrrhus from taking the oath by declaring that Heaven thus betokened in advance the death of one of the three kings. In this way, then, Pyrrhus was led to renounce the peace.

7 1 Thus Alexander’s affairs were already settled with the help of Pyrrhus, but nevertheless Demetrius came to him; and as soon as he arrived it was plain that he was not wanted, and he inspired only fear; and after they had been together a few days their mutual distrust led them to plot against each other. But Demetrius, taking advantage of his opportunity, got beforehand with the young prince and slew him, and was proclaimed king of Macedonia. 2 Now, even before this there had been differences between him and Pyrrhus, and Pyrrhus had overrun Thessaly; and greed for power, the natural disease of dynasties, made them formidable and suspicious neighbours, and all the more after the death of Deïdameia. And now that both of them had occupied part of Macedonia, they came into collision, and their quarrel was furnished with stronger grounds. 3 Demetrius therefore made an expedition against the Aetolians and conquered them, and then, leaving Pantauchus there with a large force, he himself moved against Pyrrhus, and Pyrrhus, when he heard of it, against him. Owing to a mistake in the way, however, they passed by one another, and Demetrius, throwing his forces into Epeirus, plundered the country, while Pyrrhus, encountering Pantauchus, joined battle with him. 4 There was a sharp and terrible conflict between the soldiers who engaged, and especially also between the leaders. For Pantauchus, who was confessedly the best of the generals of Demetrius for bravery, dexterity, and vigour of body, and had both courage and a lofty spirit, challenged Pyrrhus to a hand-to hand combat; and Pyrrhus, who yielded to none of the kings in daring and prowess, and wished that the glory of Achilles should belong to him by right of valour rather than of blood alone, advanced through the foremost fighters to confront Pantauchus. 5 At first they hurled their spears, then, coming to close quarters, they plied their swords with might and skill. Pyrrhus got one wound, but gave Pantauchus two, one in the thigh, and one along the neck, and put him to flight and overthrew him; he did not kill him, however, for his friends haled him away. Then the Epeirots, exalted by the victory of their king and admiring his valour, overwhelmed and cut to pieces the phalanx of the Macedonians, pursued them as they fled, slew many of them, and took five thousand of them alive.

8 1 This conflict did not fill the Macedonians with wrath and hate towards Pyrrhus for their losses, rather it led those who beheld his exploits and engaged him in the battle to esteem him highly and admire his bravery and talk much about him. For they likened his aspect and his swiftness and all his motions to those of the great Alexander, and thought they saw in him shadows, as it were, and intimations of that leader’s impetuosity and might in conflicts. The other kings, they said, represented Alexander with their purple robes, their body-guards, the inclination of their necks, and their louder tones in conversation; but Pyrrhus, and Pyrrhus alone, in arms and action.

2 Of his knowledge and ability in the field of military tactics and leadership one may get proofs from the writings on these subjects which he left. It is said also that Antigonus, when asked who was the best general, “Pyrrhus, if he lives to be old.” This verdict of Antigonus applied only to his contemporaries. Hannibal, however, declared that the foremost of all generals in experience and ability was Pyrrhus, that Scipio was second, and he himself third, as I have written in my life of Scipio. 3 And in a word, Pyrrhus would seem to have been always and continually studying and meditating upon this one subject, regarding it as the most kingly branch of learning; the rest he regarded as mere accomplishments and held them in no esteem. For instance, we are told that when he was asked at a drinking-party whether he thought Python or Caphisias the better flute-player, he replied that Polysperchona was a good general, implying that it became a king to investigate and understand such matters only.

4 He was also kind towards his familiar friends, and mild in temper, but eager and impetuous in returning favours. At any rate, when Aeropus died, he was distressed beyond measure, declaring that Aeropus had indeed only suffered what was common to humanity, but that he blamed and reviled himself because he had always delayed and moved slowly in the matter and so had not returned his friend’s favour. For the debts due to one’s creditors can be paid back to their heirs; but if the favours received from friends are not returned while those friends can be sensible of the act, it is an affliction to a just and good man. 5 Again, in Ambracia there was a fellow who denounced and reviled him, and people thought that Pyrrhus ought to banish him. “Let him remain here,” said Pyrrhus, “and speak ill of us among a few, rather than carry his slanders round to all mankind.” And again, some young fellows indulged in abuse of him over their cups, and were brought to task for it. Pyrrhus asked them if they had said such things, and when one of them replied, “We did, O King; and we should have said still more than this if we had had more wine.” Pyrrhus laughed and dismissed them.

9 1 In order to enlarge his interests and power he married several wives after the death of Antigone. He took to wife, namely, a daughter of Autoleon, king of the Paeonians; Bircenna, the daughter of Bardyllis the Illyrian; and Lanassa, the daughter of Agathocles of Syracuse, who brought him as her dowry the city of Corcyra, which had been captured by Agathocles. By Antigone he had a son Ptolemy, Alexander by Lanassa, and Helenus, his youngest son, by Bircenna. 2 He brought them all up to be brave in arms and fiery, and he whetted them for this from their very birth. It is said, for instance, that when he was asked by one of them, who was still a boy, to whom he should leave his kingdom, he replied: “To that one of you who keeps his sword the sharpest.” This, however, meant nothing less than the famous curse of Oedipus in the tragedy; that “with whetted sword,” and not by lot, the brothers should “divide the house.” So savage and ferocious is the nature of rapacity.

10 1 After this battle Pyrrhus returned to his home rejoicing in the splendour which his fame and lofty spirit had brought him; and when he was given the surname of “Eagle” by the Epeirots, “Through you,” he said, “am I an eagle; why, pray, should I not be? It is by your arms that I am borne aloft as by swift pinions.” But a little while later, learning that Demetrius was dangerously sick, he suddenly threw an army into Macedonia, intending merely to overrun and plunder some parts of it. 2 Yet he came within a little of mastering the whole country and getting the kingdom without a battle; for he marched on as far as Edessa without opposition from anyone, and many actually joined his forces and shared his expedition. And now Demetrius himself was roused by the peril to act beyond his strength, while his friends and commanders in a short time collected many soldiers and set out with zeal and vigour against Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus, however, had come more for plunder than anything else, and would not stand his ground, but fled, losing a part of his army on the march, under the attacks of the Macedonians.

3 However, because Demetrius had easily and speedily driven Pyrrhus out of the country, he did not leave him to his own devices, but now that he had determined to undertake a great enterprise and to recover his father’s realm with a hundred thousand soldiers and five hundred ships, he did not wish to have collisions with Pyrrhus, nor yet to leave behind in him an enterprising and troublesome neighbour for the Macedonians. He wished, rather, since he had no time to wage war against Pyrrhus, to come to terms and make peace with him, and then turn his arms against the other kings. 4 But after an agreement had been made between them for these reasons, the purpose of Demetrius became apparent, as well as the magnitude of his preparations, and the kings, in alarm, kept sending to Pyrrhus messengers and letters, expressing their amazement that he should let slip his own opportunity for making war and wait for Demetrius to seize his; and that when he was able to drive Demetrius out of Macedonia, since he was now much occupied and disturbed, he should await the time when his adversary, at his leisure and after he had become great, could wage a decisive struggle with him for the sanctuaries and tombs of the Molossian land, an adversary who had just robbed him of Corcyra, and his wife besides. 5 For Lanassa, who found fault with Pyrrhus for being more devoted to his barbarian wives than to her, had retired to Corcyra, whither, since she desired a royal marriage, she invited Demetrius, understanding that he, of all the kings, was most readily disposed to marry wives. So Demetrius sailed thither, married Lanassa, and left a garrison in the city.

11 Such letters the kings kept sending to Pyrrhus, and at the same time on their own part they assailed Demetrius while he was still waiting to complete his preparations. Ptolemy sailed up with a great fleet and tried to bring the Greek cities to revolt, while Lysimachus invaded upper Macedonia from Thrace and ravaged the country. So Pyrrhus, taking the field at the same time with these, marched against Beroea, expecting, as proved to be the case, that Demetrius would go to confront Lysimachus, and thus leave the lower country unprotected. 2 That night Pyrrhus dreamed that he was called by Alexander the Great, and that when he answered the call he found the king lying on a couch, but met with kindly speech and friendly treatment from him, and received a promise of his ready aid and help. “And how, O King,” Pyrrhus ventured to ask, “when thou art sick, canst thou give me aid and help?” “My name itself will give it,” said the king, and mounting a Nisaean horse he led the way.

3 This vision gave Pyrrhus great assurance, and leading his army with all speed through the intervening districts he took possession of Beroea; then, stationing the greater part of his forces there, he proceeded to subdue the rest of the country through his generals. When Demetrius heard of this, and became aware of a pernicious uproar in his camp on the part of the Macedonians, he was afraid to led them farther on, lest on coming into the neighbourhood of a Macedonian king of great renown they should go over to him. 4 Therefore he turned back and led them against Pyrrhus, with the idea that he was a foreigner and hated by the Macedonians. But after he had pitched his camp over against Pyrrhus, many Beroeans came thither with loud praises of Pyrrhus; they said he was invincible in arms and a brilliant hero, and treated his captives with mildness and humanity. There were some also whom Pyrrhus himself sent into the camp; they pretended to be Macedonians, and said that now was the favourable time to rid themselves of Demetrius and his severity, by going over to Pyrrhus, a man who was gracious to the common folk and fond of his soldiers. 5 In consequence of this, the greater part of the army was all excitement, and went about looking for Pyrrhus; for it chanced that he had taken off his helmet, and he was not recognised until he bethought himself and put it on again, when its towering crest and its goat’s horns made him known to all. Some of the Macedonians therefore ran to him and asked him for his watchword, and others put garlands of oaken boughs around their heads because they saw the soldiers about him garlanded. 6 And presently even to Demetrius himself certain persons ventured to say that if he quietly withdrew and renounced his undertakings men would think that he had taken wise counsel. He saw that this advice tallied with the agitation in the camp, and was frightened, and secretly stole away, after putting on a broad-brimmed hat and a simple soldier’s cloak. So Pyrrhus came up, took the camp without a blow, and was proclaimed king of Macedonia.

12 1 But now Lysimachus made his appearance, claimed that the overthrow of Demetrius had been the joint work of both, and demanded a division of the kingdom. So Pyrrhus, who did not yet feel entire confidence in the Macedonians, but was still doubtful about them, accepted the proposition of Lysimachus, and they divided the cities and the territory with one another. 2 This availed for the present, and prevented war between them, but shortly afterward they perceived that the distribution which they had made did not put an end to their enmity, but gave occasion for complaints and quarrels. For how men to whose rapacity neither sea nor mountain nor uninhabitable desert sets a limit, men to whose inordinate desires the boundaries which separate Europe and Asia put no stop, can remain content with what they have and do one another no wrong when they are in close touch, 3 it is impossible to say. Nay, they are perpetually at war, because plots and jealousies are parts of their natures, and they treat the two words, war and peace, like current coins, using whichever happens to be for their advantage, regardless of justice; for surely they are better men when they wage war openly than when they give the names of justice and friendship to the times of inactivity and leisure which interrupt their work of injustice. 4 And Pyrrhus made this plain; for, setting himself to hinder the growing power of Demetrius, and trying to prevent its recovery, so to speak, from a serious illness, he went to the help of the Greeks and entered Athens. Here he went up to the acropolis and sacrificed to the goddess, then came down again on the same day, and told the people he was well pleased with the confidence and goodwill which they had shown him, but that in future, if they were wise, they would not admit any one of the kings into their city nor open their gates to him. 5 After this, he actually made peace with Demetrius, but in a little while, when Demetrius had set out for Asia, he once more took the advice of Lysimachus and tried to bring Thessaly to revolt, besides waging war upon the garrisons of Demetrius in the Greek cities. For he found that the Macedonians were better disposed when they were on a campaign than when they were unoccupied, and he himself was by nature entirely averse to keeping quiet.

But at last, after Demetrius had been wholly overthrown in Syria, Lysimachus, who now felt himself secure, and had nothing on his hands, at once set out against Pyrrhus. 6 Pyrrhus was in camp at Edessa, where Lysimachus fell upon his provision trains and mastered them, thus bringing him to straits; then, by letters and conferences he corrupted the leading Macedonians, upbraiding them because they had chosen as lord and master a man who was a foreigner, whose ancestors had always been subject to Macedonia, and were thrusting the friends and familiars of Alexander out of the country. 7 After many had thus been won over, Pyrrhus took alarm and departed with his Epeirots and allied forces, thus losing Macedonia precisely as he got it. Whence we see that kings have no reason to find fault with popular bodies for changing sides as suits their interests; for in doing this they are but imitating the kings themselves, who are their teachers in unfaithfulness and treachery, and think him most advantaged who least observes justice.

13 1 At this time, then, when Pyrrhus had been driven back into Epeirus and had given up Macedonia, Fortune put it into his power to enjoy what he had without molestation, to live in peace, and to reign over his own people. But he thought it tedious to the point of nausea if he were not inflicting mischief on others or suffering it at others’ hands, and like Achilles could not endure idleness,

“but ate his heart away

Remaining there, and pined for war-cry and battle.”

Filled with such desires, then, he found ground for fresh undertakings in the following circumstances. 2 The Romans were at war with the people of Tarentum, who, being able neither to carry on the war, nor yet, owing to the rashness and villainy of their popular leaders, to put an end to it, wished to make Pyrrhus their leader and summon him to the war, believing him to be most at leisure of all the kings, and a most formidable general. Of the elderly and sensible citizens, some who were directly opposed to this plan were overborne by the clamour and violence of the war party, and others, seeing this, absented themselves from the assembly. 3 But there was a certain worthy man, Meton by name, who, when the day on which the decree was to be ratified was at hand and the people were taking their seats in the assembly, took a withered garland and a torch, after the way of revellers, and came dancing in behind a flute-girl who led the way for him. Then, as will happen in a throng of free people not given to decorum, some clapped their hands at sight of him, and others laughed, but none tried to stop him; nay, they bade the woman play on her flute and called upon Meton to come forward and give them a song; and it was expected that he would do so. 4 But when silence had been made, he said: “Men of Tarentum, ye do well not to frown upon those who wish to sport and revel, while they can. And if ye are wise, ye will also get some enjoyment still out of your freedom, assured that ye will have other business and a different life and diet when Pyrrhus has come into the city.” These words brought conviction to most of the Tarentines, and a murmur of applause ran through the assembly. 5 But those who were afraid that if peace were made they would be given up to the Romans, reviled the people for tamely submitting to such shameless treatment from a drunken reveller, and banding together they cast Meton out.

And so the decree was ratified, and the people sent ambassadors to Pyrrhus, not only from their own number, but also from the Italian Greeks. These brought gifts to Pyrrhus, and told him they wanted a leader of reputation and prudence, 6 and that he would find there large forces gathered from Lucania, Messapia, Samnium, and Tarentum, amounting to twenty thousand horse and three hundred and fifty thousand foot all told. This not only exalted Pyrrhus himself, but also inspired the Epeirots with eagerness to undertake the expedition.

14 1 Now, there was a certain Cineas, a man of Thessaly, with a reputation for great wisdom, who had been a pupil of Demosthenes the orator, and was quite the only public speaker of his day who was thought to remind his hearers, as a statue might, of that great orator’s power and ability. Associating himself with Pyrrhus, and sent by him as ambassador to the cities, he confirmed the saying of Euripides, to wit, “all can be won by eloquence

That even the sword of warring enemies might gain.”

2 At any rate, Pyrrhus used to say that more cities had been won for him by the eloquence of Cineas than by his own arms; and he continued to hold Cineas in especial honour and to demand his services. It was this Cineas, then, who, seeing that Pyrrhus was eagerly preparing an expedition at this time to Italy, and finding him at leisure for the moment, drew him into the following discourse. “The Romans, O Pyrrhus, are said to be good fighters, and to be rulers of many warlike nations; if, then, Heaven should permit us to conquer these men, how should we use our victory?” 3 And Pyrrhus said: “Thy question, O Cineas, really needs no answer; the Romans once conquered, there is neither barbarian nor Greek city there which is a match for us, but we shall at once possess all Italy, the great size and richness and importance of which no man should know better than thyself.” After a little pause, then, Cineas said: “And after taking Italy, O King, what are we to do?” 4 And Pyrrhus, not yet perceiving his intention, replied: “Sicily is near, and holds out her hands to us, an island abounding in wealth and men, and very easy to capture, for all is faction there, her cities have no government, and demagogues are rampant now that Agathocles is gone.” “What thou sayest,” replied Cineas, “is probably true; but will our expedition stop with the taking of Sicily?” 5 “Heaven grant us,” said Pyrrhus, “victory and success so far; and we will make these contests but the preliminaries of great enterprises. For who could keep his hands off Libya, or Carthage, when that city got within his reach, a city which Agathocles, slipping stealthily out of Syracuse and crossing the sea with a few ships, narrowly missed taking? And when we have become masters here, no one of the enemies who now treat us with scorn will offer further resistance; there is no need of saying that.” 6 “None whatever,” said Cineas, “for it is plain that with so great a power we shall be able to recover Macedonia and rule Greece securely. But when we have got everything subject to us, what are we going to do?” Then Pyrrhus smiled upon him and said: “We shall be much at ease, and we’ll drink bumpers, my good man, every day, and we’ll gladden one another’s hearts with confidential talks.” 7 And now that Cineas had brought Pyrrhus to this point in the argument, he said: “Then what stands in our way now if we want to drink bumpers and while away the time with one another? Surely this privilege is ours already, and we have at hand, without taking any trouble, those things to which we hope to attain by bloodshed and great toils and perils, after doing much harm to others and suffering much ourselves.”

8 By this reasoning of Cineas Pyrrhus was more troubled than he was converted; he saw plainly what great happiness he was leaving behind him, but was unable to renounce his hopes of what he eagerly desired.

15 1 First, then, he sent Cineas to Tarentum with three thousand soldiers; next, after numerous cavalry-transports, decked vessels, and passage-boats of every sort had been brought over from Tarentum, he put on board of them twenty elephants and three thousand horse, twenty thousand foot, two thousand archers, and five hundred slingers. When all was ready, he put out and set sail; but when he was half way across the Ionian sea he was swept away by a north wind that burst forth out of all season. 2 In spite of its violence he himself, through the bravery and ardour of his seamen and captains, held out and made the land, though with great toil and danger; but the rest of the fleet was thrown into confusion and the ships were scattered. Some of them missed Italy and were driven off into the Libyan and Sicilian sea; others, unable to round the Iapygian promontory, were overtaken by night, and a heavy and violent sea, which drove them upon harbourless and uncertain shores, and destroyed them all except the royal galley. 3 She, as long as the waves drove upon her side, held her own, and was saved by her great size and strength from the blows of the water; but soon the wind veered round and met her from the shore, and the ship was in danger of being crushed by the heavy surges if she stood prow on against them. However, to allow her again to be tossed about by an angry open sea and by blasts of wind that came from all directions, was thought to be more fearful than their present straits. Pyrrhus therefore sprang up and threw himself into the sea, 4 and his friends and bodyguards were at once emulously eager to help him. But night and the billows with their heavy crashing and violent recoil made assistance difficult, so that it was not until day had already come and the wind was dying away that he succeeded in gaining the shore, in body altogether powerless, but with boldness and strength of spirit still making head against this distress. 5 The Messapians, among whom he had been cast forth, ran together with eager offers to assist as well as they could, and at the same time some of his ships that had escaped the storm came up; in these there were but a few horsemen all told, less than two thousand footmen, and two elephants.

16 1 With these Pyrrhus set out for Tarentum, where Cineas, on learning of his approach, led out his soldiers to meet him. Entering the city, he did nothing that was against the wishes of the Tarentines, nor did he put any compulsion upon them, until his ships came back in safety from the sea and the greater part of his forces were assembled. 2 Then, however, seeing that the multitude were incapable, unless under strong constraint, of either saving themselves or saving others, but were inclined to let him do their fighting for them while they remained at home in the enjoyment of their baths and social festivities, he closed up the gymnasia and the public walks, where, as they strolled about, they fought out their country’s battles in talk; he also put a stop to the drinking-bouts, revels, and festivals, as unseasonable, called the men to arms, and was stern and inexorable in his enrolment of them for military service. Many therefore left the city, since they were not accustomed to being under orders, and called it servitude not to live as they pleased.

3 And now word was brought to Pyrrhus that Laevinus the Roman consul was coming against him with a large army and plundering Lucania as he came. Pyrrhus had not yet been joined by his allies, but thinking it an intolerable thing to hold back and suffer his enemies to advance any nearer, he took the field with his forces, having first sent a herald to the Romans with the enquiry whether it was their pleasure, before waging war, to receive satisfaction from the Italian Greeks, employing him as arbiter and mediator. 4 But Laevinus made answer that the Romans neither chose Pyrrhus as a mediator nor feared him as a foe. Pyrrhus therefore went forward and pitched his camp in the plain between the cities of Pandosia and Heracleia. When he learned that the Romans were near and lay encamped on the further side of the river Siris, he rode up to the river to get a view of them; and when he had observed their discipline, the appointment of their watches, their order, and the general arrangement of their camp, he was amazed, 5 and said to the friend that was nearest him: “The discipline of these Barbarians is not barbarous; but the result will show us what it amounts to.” He was now less confident of the issue, and determined to wait for his allies; but he stationed a guard on the bank of the river to check the Romans if, in the meantime, they should attempt to cross it. 6 The Romans, however, anxious to anticipate the coming of the forces which Pyrrhus had decided to await, attempted the passage, their infantry crossing the river by a ford, and their cavalry dashing through the water at many points, so that the Greeks on guard, fearing that they would be surrounded, withdrew. When Pyrrhus saw this, he was greatly disturbed, and charging his infantry officers to form in line of battle at once and stand under arms, he himself rode out with his three thousand horsemen, hoping to come upon the Romans while they were still crossing, and to find them scattered and in disorder. 7 But when he saw a multitude of shields gleaming on the bank of the river and the cavalry advancing upon him in good order, he formed his men in close array and led them to the attack. He was conspicuous at once for the beauty and splendour of his richly ornamented armour, and showed by his deeds that his valour did not belie his fame; and this most of all because, while actively participating in the fight and vigorously repelling his assailants, he did not become confused in his calculations nor lose his presence of mind, 8 but directed the battle as if he were surveying it from a distance, darting hither and thither himself and bringing aid to those whom he thought to be overwhelmed.

Here Leonnatus the Macedonian, observing that an Italian was intent upon Pyrrhus, and was riding out against him and following him in every movement from place to place, said: “Seest thou, O King, that Barbarian yonder, riding the black horse with white feet? He looks like a man who has some great and terrible design in mind. 9 For he keeps his eyes fixed upon thee, and is intent to reach thee with all his might and main, and pays no heed to anybody else. So be on thy guard against the man.” To him Pyrrhus made reply: “What is fated, O Leonnatus, it is impossible to escape; but with impunity neither he nor any other Italian shall come to close quarters with me.” While they were still conversing thus, the Italian levelled his spear, wheeled his horse, and charged upon Pyrrhus. 10 Then at the same instant the Barbarian’s spear smote the king’s horse, and his own horse was smitten by the spear of Leonnatus. Both horses fell, but while Pyrrhus was seized and rescued by his friends, the Italian, fighting to the last, was killed. He was a Frentanian, by race, captain of a troop of horse, Oplax by name.

17 1 This taught Pyrrhus to be more on his guard; and seeing that his cavalry were giving way, he called up his phalanx and put it in array, while he himself, after giving his cloak and armour to one of his companions, Megacles, and hiding himself after a fashion behind his men, charged with them upon the Romans. But they received and engaged him, and for a long time the issue of the battle remained undecided; it is said that there were seven turns of fortune, as each side either fled back or pursued. 2 And indeed the exchange of armour which the king had made, although it was opportune for the safety of his person, came near overthrowing his cause and losing him the victory. For many of the enemy assailed Megacles and the foremost of them, Dexoüs by name, smote him and laid him low, and then, snatching away his helmet and cloak, rode up to Laevinus, displaying them, and shouting as he did so that he had killed Pyrrhus. 3 Accordingly, as the spoils were carried along the ranks and displayed, there was joy and shouting among the Romans, and among the Greeks consternation and dejection, until Pyrrhus, learning what was the matter, rode along his line with his face bare, stretching out his hand to the combatants and giving them to know him by his voice. At last, when the Romans were more than ever crowded back by the elephants, and their horses, before they got near the animals, were terrified and ran away with their riders, Pyrrhus brought his Thessalian cavalry upon them while they were in confusion and routed them with great slaughter.

4 Dionysius states that nearly fifteen thousand of the Romans fell, but Hieronymus says only seven thousand; on the side of Pyrrhus, thirteen thousand fell, according to Dionysius, but according to Hieronymus less than four thousand. These, however, were his best troops; and besides, Pyrrhus lost the friends and generals whom he always used and trusted most. 5 However, he took the camp of the Romans after they had abandoned it, and won over to his side some of their allied cities; he also wasted much territory, and advanced until he was within three hundred furlongs’ distance from Rome. And now, after the battle, there came to him many of the Lucanians and Samnites. These he censured for being late, but it was clear that he was pleased and proud because with his own troops and the Tarentines alone he had conquered the great force of the Romans.

18 1 The Romans did not depose Laevinus from his consular office; and yet we are told that Caius Fabricius declared that it was not the Epeirots who had conquered the Romans, but Pyrrhus who had conquered Laevinus, Fabricius being of the opinion that the Roman defeat was not due to their army, but to its general; but they lost no time in filing up their depleted legions and raising others, used fearless and vehement language about the war, and thus filled Pyrrhus with consternation. 2 He decided, therefore, to send to them first and find out whether they were disposed to come to terms, for he regarded the capture of their city and their complete conquest as a large task and one that was beyond his present force, whereas a friendly settlement with them after a victory would greatly enhance his reputation. Accordingly, Cineas was sent to Rome, where he had conferences with the men in authority, and sent their wives and children gifts in the name of the king. 3 No one, however, would accept the gifts, but all replied, men and women alike, that if a peace were publicly concluded they also, on their part, would show goodwill and kindness to the king. Moreover, though Cineas made many and alluring proposals to the senate, not one of them was received there with alacrity or pleasure, although Pyrrhus offered to restore without a ransom their men who had been captured in battle, and promised to assist them in the subjugation of Italy, and in return for these favours asked only 5 friendship for himself, immunity for the Tarentines, and nothing else. Nevertheless, most of the senators were plainly inclined towards peace, since they had been defeated in one great battle, and expected another with a larger army, now that the Italian Greeks had joined Pyrrhus. At this point Appius Claudius, a man of distinction, but one whom old age and blindness had forced to give up all public activities, now that the message from the king had come and a report was rife that the senate was going to vote for the proposed cessation of hostilities, could not restrain himself, but ordered his attendants to take him up and had himself carried on a litter through the forum to the senate-house. 6 When he had reached the door, his sons and sons-in law took him up in their arms and brought him inside, and the senators, out of regard for the man, kept respectful silence.

19 1 Then Appius raised himself up where he was and said: “Up to this time, O Romans, I have regarded the misfortune to my eyes as an affliction, but it now distresses me that I am not deaf as well as blind, that I might not hear the shameful resolutions and decrees of years which bring low the glory of Rome. For what becomes of the words that ye are ever reiterating to all the world, namely, that if the great Alexander of renown had come to Italy and had come into conflict with us, when we were young men, and with our fathers, when they were in their prime, he would not now be celebrated as invincible, but would either have fled, or, perhaps, have fallen there, and so have left Rome more glorious still? 2 Surely ye are proving that this was boasting and empty bluster, since ye are afraid of Chaonians and Molossians, who were ever the prey of the Macedonians, and ye tremble before Pyrrhus, who has ever been a minister and servitor to one at least of Alexander’s bodyguards, and now comes wandering over Italy, not so much to help the Greeks who dwell here, as to escape his enemies at home, promising to win for us the supremacy here with that army which could not avail to preserve for him a small portion of Macedonia. 3 Do not suppose that ye will rid yourself of this fellow by making him your friend; nay, ye will bring against you others, and they will despise you as men whom anybody can easily subdue, if Pyrrhus goes away without having been punished for his insults, but actually rewarded for them in having enabled Tarentines and Samnites to mock at Romans.”

After Appius had thus spoken, his hearers were seized with eagerness to prosecute the war, and Cineas was sent back with the reply that Pyrrhus must first depart out of Italy, 4 and then, if he wished, the Romans would talk about friendship and alliance; but as long as he was there in arms, they would fight him with all their might, even though he should rout in battle ten thousand men like Laevinus. It is said, too, that Cineas, while he was on this mission, made it his earnest business at the same time to observe the life and manners of the Romans, and to understand the excellences of their form of government; 5 he also conversed with their best men, and had many things to tell Pyrrhus, among which was the declaration that the senate impressed him as a council of many kings, and that, as for the people, he was afraid it might prove to be a Lernaean hydra for them to fight against, since the consul already had twice as many soldiers collected as those who faced their enemies before, and there were many times as many Romans still who were capable of bearing arms.

20 1 After this, an embassy came from the Romans to treat about the prisoners that had been taken. The embassy was headed by Caius Fabricius, who, as Cineas reported, was held in highest esteem at Rome as an honourable man and good soldier, but was inordinately poor. To this man, then, Pyrrhus privately showed kindness and tried to induce him to accept gold, not for any base purpose, indeed, but calling it a mark of friendship and hospitality. 2 But Fabricius rejected the gold, and for that day Pyrrhus let him alone; on the following day, however, wishing to frighten a man who had not yet seen an elephant, he ordered the largest of these animals to be stationed behind a hanging in front of which they stood conversing together. This was done; and at a given signal the hanging was drawn aside, and the animal raised his trunk, held it over the head of Fabricius, and emitted a harsh and frightful cry. 3 But Fabricius calmly turned and said with a smile to Pyrrhus: “Your gold made no impression on me yesterday, neither does your beast to day.”b Again, at supper, where all sorts of topics were discussed, and particularly that of Greece and her philosophers, Cineas happened somehow to mention Epicurus, and set forth the doctrines of that school concerning the gods, civil government, and the highest good, explaining that they made pleasure the highest good, but would have nothing to do with civil government on the ground that it was injurious and the ruin of felicity, and that they removed the Deity as far as possible from feelings of kindness or anger or concern for us, into a life that knew no care and was filled with ease and comfort. 4 But before Cineas was done, Fabricius cried out and said: “O Hercules, may Pyrrhus and the Samnites cherish these doctrines, as long as they are at war with us.”

Thus Pyrrhus was led to admire the high spirit and character of the man, and was all the more eager to have friendship with this city instead of waging war against it; he even privately invited him, in case he brought about the settlement, to follow his fortunes and share his life as the first and foremost of all his companions and generals. But Fabricius, as we are told, said quietly to him: “Nay, O King, this would not be to thy advantage; for the very men who now admire and honour thee, if they should become acquainted with me, would prefer to have me as their king rather than thee.” 5 Such a man was Fabricius. And Pyrrhus did not receive the speech with anger or like a tyrant, but actually reported to his friends the magnanimity of Fabricius, and entrusted his prisoners of war to him alone, on condition that, in case the senate should not vote for the peace, they should be sent back again to him, though they might first greet their relatives and celebrate the festival of Saturn. And they were so sent back after the festival, the senate having voted a penalty of death for any that stayed behind.

21 1 After this, and when Fabricius had assumed the consulship, a man came into his camp with a letter for him. The letter had been written by the physician of Pyrrhus, who promised that he would take the king off by poison, provided that the Romans would agree to reward him for putting an end to the war without further hazard on their part. But Fabricius, who was indignant at the iniquity of the man, and had disposed his colleague to feel likewise, sent a letter to Pyrrhus with all speed urging him to be on his guard against the plot. 2 The letter ran as follows: “Caius Fabricius and Quintus Aemilius, consuls of Rome, to King Pyrrhus, health and happiness. It would appear that thou art a good judge neither of friends nor of enemies. Thou wilt see, when thou hast read the letter which we send, that the men with whom thou art at war are honourable and just, but that those whom thou trustest are unjust and base. 3 And indeed we do not give thee this information out of regard for thee, but in order that thy ruin may not bring infamy upon us, and that men may not say of us that we brought the war to an end by treachery because we were unable to do so by valour.” When Pyrrhus had read this letter and got proof of the plot against his life, he punished the physician, and as a requital to Fabricius and the Romans made them a present of his prisoners of war, and once more sent Cineas to negotiate a peace for him. 4 But the Romans would not consent to receive the men for nothing, either as a favour from an enemy, or as a reward for not committing iniquity against him, and therefore released for Pyrrhus an equal number of Tarentines and Samnites whom they had taken; on the subject of friendship and peace, however, they declared they would allow nothing to be said until Pyrrhus had taken his arms and his army out of Italy and sailed back to Epeirus on the ships that brought him.

5 Consequently, Pyrrhus found himself obliged to fight another battle, and after recuperating his army he marched to the city of Asculum, where he engaged the Romans. Here, however, he was forced into regions where his cavalry could not operate, and upon a river with swift current and wooded banks, so that his elephants could not charge and engage the enemy’s phalanx. Therefore, after many had been wounded and slain, for the time being the struggle was ended by the coming of night. 6 But on the next day, designing to fight the battle on level ground, and to bring his elephants to bear upon the ranks of the enemy, Pyrrhus occupied betimes the unfavourable parts of the field with a detachment of his troops; then he put great numbers of slingers and led his forces to the attack in dense array and with a mighty impetus. So the Romans, having no opportunity for sidelong shifts and counter-movements, as on the previous day, were obliged to engage on level ground and front to front; and being anxious to repulse the enemy’s men-at arms before their elephants came up, they fought fiercely with their swords against the Macedonian spears, reckless of their lives and thinking only of wounding and slaying, while caring naught for what they suffered. 7 After a long time, however, as we are told, they began to be driven back at the point where Pyrrhus himself was pressing hard upon his opponents; but the greatest havoc was wrought by the furious strength of the elephants, since the valour of the Romans was of no avail in fighting them, but they felt that they must yield before them as before an onrushing billow or a crashing earthquake, and not stand their ground only to die in vain, or suffer all that is most grievous without doing any good at all.

8 After a short flight the Romans reached their camp, with a loss of six thousand men, according to Hieronymus, who also says that on the side of Pyrrhus, according to the king’s own commentaries, thirty-five hundred and five were killed. 9 Dionysius, however, makes no mention of two battles at Asculum, nor of an admitted defeat of the Romans, but says that the two armies fought once for all until sunset and then at last separated; Pyrrhus, he says, was wounded in the arm by a javelin, and also had his baggage plundered by the Daunians; and there fell, on the side of Pyrrhus and on that of the Romans, over fifteen thousand men.

The two armies separated; and we are told that Pyrrhus said to one who was congratulating him on his victory, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.” 10 For he had lost a great part of the forces with which he came, and all his friends and generals except a few; moreover, he had no others whom he could summon from home, and he saw that his allies in Italy were becoming indifferent, while the army of the Romans, as if from a fountain gushing forth indoors, was easily and speedily filled up again, and they did not lose courage in defeat, nay, their wrath gave them all the more vigour and determination for the war.

22 1 But while he was involved in such perplexities, new hopes once more inspired him, and projects which divided his purposes. For at one and the same time there came to him from Sicily men who offered to put into his hands the cities of Agrigentum, Syracuse, and Leontini, and begged him to help them to drive out the Carthaginians and rid the island of its tyrants; and from Greece, men with tidings that Ptolemy Ceraunus with his army had perished at the hands of the Gauls, and that now was the time of all times for him to be in Macedonia, where they wanted a king. 2 Pyrrhus rated Fortune soundly because occasions for two great undertakings had come to him at one time, and thinking that the presence of both meant the loss of one, he wavered in his calculations for a long time. Then Sicily appeared to offer opportunities for greater achievements, since Libya was felt to be near, and he turned in this direction, 3 and forthwith sent out Cineas to hold preliminary conferences with the cities, as was his wont, while he himself threw a garrison into Tarentum. The Tarentines were much displeased at this, and demanded that he either apply himself to the task for which he had come, namely to help them in their war with Rome, or else abandon their territory and leave them their city as he had found it. To this demand he made no very gracious reply, but ordering them to keep quiet and await his convenience, he sailed off.

4 On reaching Sicily, his hopes were at once realized securely; the cities readily gave themselves up to him, and wherever force and conflict were necessary nothing held out against him at first, but advancing with thirty thousand foot, twenty-five hundred horse, and two hundred ships, he put the Phoenicians to rout and subdued the territory under their control. Then he determined to storm the walls of Eryx, which was the strongest of their fortresses and had numerous defenders. 5 So when his army was ready, he put on his armour, went out to battle, and made a vow to Heracles that he would institute games and a sacrifice in his honour, if the god would render him in the sight of the Sicilian Greeks an antagonist worthy of his lineage and resources; then he ordered the trumpets to sound, scattered the Barbarians with his missiles, brought up his scaling-ladders, and was the first to mount the wall. 6 Many were the foes against whom he strove; some of them he pushed from the wall on either side and hurled them to the ground, but most he laid dead in heaps about him with the strokes of his sword. He himself suffered no harm, but was a terrible sight for his enemies to look upon, and proved that Homer was right and fully justified in saying that valour, alone of the virtues, often displays transports due to divine possession and frenzy. After the capture of the city, he sacrificed to the god in magnificent fashion and furnished spectacles of all sorts of contests.

23 1 The Barbarians about Messana, called Mamertines, were giving much annoyance to the Greeks, and had even laid some of them under contribution. They were numerous and warlike, and therefore had been given a name which, in the Latin tongue, signifies martial. Pyrrhus seized their collectors of tribute and put them to death, then conquered the people themselves in battle and destroyed many of their strongholds. 2 Moreover, when the Carthaginians were inclined to come to terms and were willing to pay him money and sent him ships in case friendly relations were established, he replied to them (his heart being set on greater things) that there could be no settlement or friendship between himself and them unless they abandoned all Sicily and made the Libyan Sea a boundary between themselves and the Greeks. 3 But now, lifted up by his good fortune and by the strength of his resources, and pursuing the hopes with which he had sailed from home in the beginning, he set his heart upon Libya first; and since many of the ships that he had were insufficiently manned, he began to collect oarsmen, not dealing with the cities in an acceptable or gentle manner, but in a lordly way, angrily putting compulsion and penalties upon them. He had not behaved in this way at the very beginning, but had even gone beyond others in trying to win men’s hearts by gracious intercourse with them, by trusting everybody, and by doing nobody any harm. But now he ceased to be a popular leader and became a tyrant, and added to his name for severity a name for ingratitude and faithlessness.

4 Nevertheless the Sicilians put up with these things as necessary, although they were exasperated; but then came his dealings with Thoenon and Sosistratus. These were leading men in Syracuse, and had been first to persuade Pyrrhus to come into Sicily. Moreover, after he had come, they immediately put their city into his hands and assisted him in most of what he had accomplished in Sicily. And yet he was willing neither to take them with him nor to leave them behind, and held them in suspicion. Sosistratus took the alarm and withdrew; 5 but Thoenon was accused by Pyrrhus of complicity with Sosistratus and put to death. With this, the situation of Pyrrhus was suddenly and entirely changed. A terrible hatred arose against him in the cities, some of which joined the Carthaginians, while others called in the Mamertines. And now, as he saw everywhere secessions and revolutionary designs and a strong faction opposed to him, he received letters from the Samnites and Tarentines, who had been excluded from all their territories, could with difficulty maintain the war even in their cities, and begged for his assistance. 6 This gave him a fair pretext for his sailing away, without its being called a flight or despair of his cause in the island; but in truth it was because he could not master Sicily, which was like a storm-tossed ship, but desired to get out of her, that he once more threw himself into Italy. And it is said that at the time of his departure looked back at the island and said to those about him: “My friends, what a wrestling ground for Carthaginians and Romans we are leaving behind us!” And this conjecture of his was soon afterwards confirmed.

24 1 But the Barbarians combined against him as he was setting sail. With the Carthaginians he fought a sea-fight in the strait and lost many of his ships, but escaped with the rest to Italy; and here the Mamertines, more than ten thousand of whom had crossed in advance of him, though they were afraid to match forces with him, yet threw his whole army into confusion by setting upon him and assailing him in difficult regions. Two of his elephants fell, and great numbers of his rearguard were slain. 2 Accordingly, riding up in person from the van, he sought to ward off the enemy, and ran great risks in contending with men who were trained to fight and were inspired with high courage. And when he was wounded on the head with a sword and withdrew a little from the combatants, the enemy were all the more elated. One of them ran forth far in advance of the rest, a man who was huge in body and resplendent in armour, and in a bold voice challenged Pyrrhus to come out, if he were still alive. 3 This angered Pyrrhus, and wheeling round in spite of his guards, he pushed his way through them — full of wrath, smeared with blood, and with a countenance terrible to look upon, and before the Barbarian could strike dealt him such a blow on his head with his sword that, what with the might of his arm and the excellent temper of his steel, it cleaved its way down through, so that at one instant the parts of the sundered body fell to either side. 4 This checked the Barbarians from any further advance, for they were amazed and confounded at Pyrrhus, and thought him some superior being. So he accomplished the rest of his march unmolested and came to Tarentum, bringing twenty thousand foot and three thousand horse. Then, adding to his force the best troops of the Tarentines, he forthwith led them against the Romans, who were encamped in the country of the Samnites.

25 1 But the power of the Samnites had been shattered, and their spirits were broken, in consequence of many defeats at the hands of the Romans. They also cherished considerable resentment against Pyrrhus because of his expedition to Sicily; hence not many of them came to join him. Pyrrhus, however, divided his army into two parts, sent one of them into Lucania to attack the other consul, that he might not come to the help of his colleague, 2 and led the other part himself against Manius Curius, who was safely encamped near the city of Beneventum and was awaiting assistance from Lucania; in part also it was because his soothsayers had dissuaded him with unfavourable omens and sacrifices that he kept quiet. Pyrrhus, accordingly, hastening to attack this consul before the other one came up, took his best men and his most warlike elephants and set out by night against his camp. 3 But since he took a long circuit through a densely wooded country, his lights did not hold out, and his soldiers lost their way and straggled. This caused delay, so that the night passed, and at daybreak he was in full view of the enemy as he advanced upon them from the heights, and caused much tumult and agitation among them.

Manius, however, since the sacrifices were propitious and the crisis forced action upon him, led his forces out and attacked the foremost of the enemy, and after routing these, put their whole army to flight, so that many of them fell and some of their elephants were left behind and captured. 4 This victory brought Manius down into the plain to give battle; here, after an engagement in the open, he routed the enemy at some points, but at one was overwhelmed by the elephants and driven back upon his camp, where he was obliged to call upon the guards, who were standing on the parapets in great numbers, all in arms, and full of fresh vigour. 5 Down they came from their strong places, and hurling their javelins at the elephants compelled them to wheel about and run back through the ranks of their own men, thus causing disorder and confusion there. This gave the victory to the Romans, and at the same time the advantage also in the struggle for supremacy. For having acquired high courage and power and a reputation for invincibility from their valour in these struggles, they at once got control of Italy, and soon afterwards of Sicily.

26 1 Thus Pyrrhus was excluded from his hopes of Italy and Sicily, after squandering six years’ time in his wars there, and after being worsted in his undertakings, but he kept his brave spirit unconquered in the midst of his defeats; and men believed that in military experience, personal prowess, and daring, he was by far the first of the kings of his time, but that what he won by his exploits he lost by indulging in vain hopes, since through passionate desire for what he had not he always failed to establish securely what he had. 2 For this reason Antigonus used to liken him to a player with dice who makes many fine throws but does not understand how to use them when they are made.

He returned to Epeirus with eight thousand foot and five hundred horse, and since he had no money he sought for a war by which he could maintain his army. Some Gauls joined him, and he thereupon made an incursion into Macedonia, where Antigonus the son of Demetrius was reigning, designing to strip and plunder the country. 3 But after he had taken a great number of cities and two thousand Macedonian soldiers had come over to him, he began to hope for greater things, and set out to attack Antigonus, and falling upon him in a narrow pass, threw his whole army into confusion. The Gauls who formed the rearguard of Antigonus, a numerous body, made a sturdy resistance; but after a fierce battle most these were cut to pieces, while those who had charge of the elephants were hemmed in and surrendered themselves and all their animals. 4 Then Pyrrhus, thus greatly strengthened, and consulting his good fortune rather than his judgment, advanced upon the phalanx of the Macedonians, which was filled with confusion and fear because of their previous defeat. For this reason they refrained from engagement or battle with him, whereupon Pyrrhus, stretching out his right hand and calling upon the generals and captains, brought over to him all the infantry of Antigonus in a body. 5 So Antigonus took to flight with a few of his horsemen, and occupied some of the seaboard cities; while Pyrrhus, thinking that amid so many successes his achievement against the Gauls conduced most to his glory, dedicated the most beautiful and splendid of his spoils in the temple of Athena Itonis, with the following elegiac inscription:

“These shields, now suspended here as a gift to Athena Itonis, Pyrrhus the Molossian took from valiant Gauls, after defeating the entire army of Antigonus; which is no great wonder; for now, as well as in olden time, the Aeacidae are brave spearmen.”

6 After the battle, however, he at once proceeded to occupy the cities. And after getting Aegae into his power, besides other severities exercised upon its inhabitants he left as a garrison in the city some of the Gauls who were making the campaign with him. But the Gauls, a race insatiable of wealth, set themselves to digging up the tombs of the kings who had been buried there; the treasure they plundered, the bones they insolently cast to the four winds. 7 This outrage Pyrrhus treated with lightness and indifference, as it was thought; he either postponed punishment because he had some business on hand, or remitted it altogether because he was afraid to chastise the Barbarians; and on this account he was censured by the Macedonians. Moreover, before his affairs were securely and firmly established, his thoughts swung again towards new hopes. He railed at Antigonus and called him a shameless man for not laying aside the purple and wearing a common robe; and when Cleonymus the Spartan came and invited him to come to Lacedaemon, he readily listened to him.

8 Now, Cleonymus was of royal lineage, but because he was thought to be of a violent and arbitrary temper, he enjoyed neither goodwill nor confidence at home, but Areus was king there. This was one general ground of complaint which he had against his fellow citizens, and it was of long standing. Besides, Cleonymus in his later years had married Chilonis the daughter of Leotychides, a beautiful woman of royal lineage; but she had fallen desperately in love with Acrotatus the son of Areus, a young man in the flower of his age, and thus rendered his marriage distressing to Cleonymus, since he loved her, at the same time disgraceful; for every Spartan was well aware that the husband was despised by his wife. 9 Thus his domestic vexations added themselves to his political disappointment, and in indignation and wrath he brought Pyrrhus against Sparta. Pyrrhus had twenty-five thousand foot and two thousand horse, besides twenty-four elephants, so that the magnitude of his preparations made it clear at once that he was not aiming to acquire Sparta for Cleonymus, but the Peloponnesus for himself. And yet his professions were all to the contrary, and particularly those which he made to the Lacedaemonian ambassadors themselves when they met him at Megalopolis. 10 He told them he had come to set free the cities which were subject to Antigonus, yes, and that he was going to send his younger sons to Sparta, if nothing prevented, to be brought up in the Lacedaemonian customs, that so they might presently have the advantage over all other princes. With these fictions he beguiled those who came to meet him on his march, but as soon as he reached Laconian territory he began to ravage and plunder it. 11 And when the Spartan ambassadors upbraided him for making war upon them without previous declaration, he said: “Yet we know that you Spartans also do not tell others beforehand what you are going to do.” Whereupon one of those who were present, Mandrocleidas by name, said to him in the broad Spartan dialect: “If thou art a god, we shall suffer no harm at thy hands; for we have done thee no wrong; but if a man, another will be found who is even stronger than thou.”

27 1 After this, he marched down against the city of Sparta. Cleonymus urged him to make the assault as soon as he arrived, but Pyrrhus was afraid, as we are told, that his soldiers would plunder the city if they fell upon it at night, and therefore restrained them, saying that they would accomplish just as much by day. For there were but few men in the city, and they were unprepared, owing to the suddenness of the peril; and Areus was not at home, but in Crete, whither he was bringing military aid for the Gortynians. And this, indeed, more than anything else, proved the salvation of the city, which its weakness and lack of defenders caused to be despised. 2 For Pyrrhus, thinking that no one would give him battle, bivouacked for the night, and the friends and Helot slaves of Cleonymus adorned and furnished his house in the expectation that Pyrrhus would take supper there with its owner.

When night had come, the Lacedaemonians at first took counsel to send their women off to Crete, but the women were opposed to this; and Archidamia came with a sword in her hand to the senators and upbraided them in behalf of the women for thinking it meet that they should live after Sparta had perished. 3 Next, it was decided to run a trench parallel with the camp of the enemy, and at either end of it to set their waggons, sinking them to the wheel-hubs in the ground, in order that, thus firmly planted, they might impede the advance of the elephants. When they began to carry out this project, there came to them the women and maidens, some of them in their robes, with tunics girt close, and others in their tunics only, to help the elderly men in the work. 4 The men who were going to do the fighting the women ordered to keep quiet, and assuming their share of the task they completed with their own hands a third of the trench. The width of the trench was six cubits, its depth four, and its length eight hundred feet, according to Phylarchus; according to Hieronymus, less than this. 5 When day came and the enemy were putting themselves in motion, these women handed the young men their armour, put the trench in their charge, and told them to guard and defend it, assured that it was sweet to conquer before the eyes of their fatherland, and glorious to die in the arms of their mothers and wives, after a fall that was worthy of Sparta. As for Chilonis, she withdrew from the rest, and kept a halter about her neck, that she might not come into the power of Cleonymus if the city were taken.

28 1 Pyrrhus himself, then, with his men-at arms, tried to force his way directly against the many shields of the Spartans which confronted him, and over a trench which was impassable and afforded his soldiers no firm footing owing to the freshly turned earth. But his son Ptolemy, with two thousand Gauls and picked Chaonians, went round the trench and tried to force a passage where the waggons were. These, however, being so deeply planted in the earth and so close together, made not only his onset, but also the counter-efforts of the Lacedaemonians, a difficult matter. 2 The Gauls pulled the wheels up and were dragging the waggons down into the river; but the young Acrotatus saw the danger, and running through the city with three hundred men got round behind Ptolemy without being seen by him, owing to some depressions in the ground, and at last fell upon his rear ranks and forced them to turn about and fight with him. And now the Barbarians crowded one another into the trench and fell among the waggons, and finally, after great slaughter, were successfully driven back. 3 The elderly men and the host of women watched the brilliant exploit of Acrotatus. And when he went back again through the city to his allotted post, covered with blood and triumphant, elated with his victory, the Spartan women thought that he had become taller and most beautiful than ever, and envied Chilonis her lover. Moreover, some of the elderly men accompanied him on his way, crying: “Go, Acrotatus, and take to thyself Chilonis; only, see that thou begettest brave sons for Sparta.”

4 A fierce battle was also waged where Pyrrhus himself led, and many Spartans made a splendid fight, but particularly Phyllius, who surpassed all in the tenacity of his resistance and the numbers of the on-rushing enemy whom he slew; and when he perceived that his powers were failing from the multitude of the wounds he had received, he made way for one of his comrades in the line, and fell inside the ranks, that his dead body might not come into the hands of the enemy.

29 1 Night put an end to the battle; and Pyrrhus, as he slept, had the following vision. He dreamed that Sparta was smitten with thunderbolts from his hand and was all ablaze, and that he was filled with joy. His joy waked him from his sleep, and he commanded his officers to get the army ready for action, and narrated the dream to his friends, convinced that he was going to take the city by storm. 2 Most of them, then, were fully persuaded that he was right, but Lysimachus was not pleased with the vision; he said he was afraid lest, as places smitten by thunderbolts are kept free from the tread of men, the deity might be indicating in advance to Pyrrhus also that the city was not to be entered by him. But Pyrrhus declared that this was nonsense intended for the crowd, and great folly, and calling upon his hearers to take their arms in their hands and act upon the belief that

“One is the best of all omens, to fight in defence of Pyrrhus,”

rose up, and at day-break led forth his army.

3 But the Lacedaemonians defended themselves with an alacrity and bravery beyond their strength; the women, too, were at hand, proffering missiles, distributing food and drink to those who needed them, and taking up the wounded. The Macedonians tried to fill up the trench, collecting and throwing into it great quantities of materials, beneath which the arms and dead bodies were hidden away. 4 And when the Lacedaemonians tried to put a stop to this, Pyrrhus was seen forcing his way on horseback past the trench and the waggons into the city. But the men stationed at this point raised a shout, and there was a concourse and shrieking of the women, and just as Pyrrhus was riding through the waggons and attacking the men in front of him, his horse was wounded in the belly by a Cretan javelin and leaped to one side, and in his death agony threw Pyrrhus upon steep and slippery ground. 5 His companions were thrown into confusion around him, and the Spartans, running upon them and making good use of their missiles, drove them all off. After this, Pyrrhus brought the fighting to a stop at other points also, thinking that the Spartans would make some concessions, now that almost all of them were wounded and many had fallen. But now the good fortune of the city, either because she was satisfied with the bravery of its men, or because she would show forth the great power which she herself has in desperate crises, brought to their aid from Corinth, 6 when the hopes of the Spartans were already sorry, Ameinias the Phocian, one of the generals of Antigonus, with mercenary troops; and no sooner had he been received into the city than Areus the Spartan king came from Crete, bringing with him two thousand soldiers. So the women at once dispersed to their homes, since they no longer thought it meet to busy themselves with the work of war, and the men, after dismissing from their ranks those of unmilitary age whom necessity had brought there, arrayed themselves for battle.

30 1 Pyrrhus, too, was more than ever possessed by a fierce ambition to become master of the city, now that reinforcements had come to it; but since he could accomplish nothing, and met with fresh losses, he went away, and fell to ravaging the country, purposing to spend the winter there. But Fate was not to be escaped. For at Argos there was a feud between Aristeas and Aristippus; and since Aristippus was thought to enjoy the friendship of Antigonus, Aristeas hastened to invite Pyrrhus into Argos. 2 Pyrrhus was away entertaining one hope after another, and since he made one success but the starting point for a new one, while he was determined to make good each disaster by a fresh undertaking, he suffered neither defeat nor victory to put a limit to his troubling himself and troubling others. At once, therefore, he broke camp and set out for Argos. But Areus, by setting frequent ambushes and occupying the most difficult points on the march, kept cutting off the Gauls and Molossians who brought up the rear for Pyrrhus.

3 Now, it had been foretold to Pyrrhus by his seer, in consequence of sacrifices where no liver could be found, that he was to lose one of his kindred; but here, unhappily, owing to the agitation and tumult among his rear-guard, he forgot himself, and ordered his son Ptolemy with his comrades to go to the rescue, while he himself drew his army more quickly out of the narrow pass and led them forward. 4 A fierce battle raged where Ptolemy was, and while a band of picked Spartans under the command of Evalcus engaged the soldiers who were fighting in front of him, a man of stout arm and swift foot, Oryssus by name, of Aptera in Crete, ran up on one side of the prince as he was fighting spiritedly, smote him, and laid him low. 5 Upon Ptolemy’s fall and the rout of his company, the Spartans pursued, carrying all before them, and before they were aware of it had dashed out into the plain and were cut off by the infantry of Pyrrhus. Against this band of Spartans Pyrrhus, who had just heard of the death of his son and was in anguish, turned his Molossian horsemen. He himself charged at their head, and sated himself with Spartan blood. He had always shown himself invincible and terrible in arms, but now his daring and might surpassed all previous displays. 6 When he set his horse upon Evalcus, the Spartan stepped aside and had almost cut off with his sword the bridle-hand of Pyrrhus; as it was he hit the rein and severed it. Pyrrhus transfixed the Spartan with a thrust of his spear, and at the same instant fell off his horse, and fighting on foot, at once proceeded to slay all the picked band which was fighting over the body of Evalcus. This great additional loss to Sparta when the war was already at an end was due to the ambition of the commanders.

31 1 So Pyrrhus, after accomplishing as it were an expiation for his son and celebrating his obsequies with a brilliant contest, having also vented much of his grief in his fury against the enemy, led his army on towards Argos. And when he learned that Antigonus was already posted on the heights commanding the plain, he pitched his camp near Nauplia. On the following day he sent a herald to Antigonus, calling him a robber, and challenging him to come down into the plain and fight with him for the kingdom. 2 But Antigonus replied that in conducting a campaign he relied more on opportunities than upon arms, and that many roads to death lay open to Pyrrhus if he was tired of life. And now to both kings came ambassadors from Argos, entreating them to go away and allow the city to be neutral, but well-disposed towards both. Antigonus, accordingly, consented, and gave his son to the Argives as a hostage; Pyrrhus also agreed to go away, but since he gave no pledge, he remained under suspicion.

3 Moreover, Pyrrhus himself had a significant portent; for the heads of his sacrificed cattle, though they already lay apart from the bodies, were seen to put out their tongues and lick up their own gore. And besides this, in the city of Argos the priestess of Apollo Lyceius ran forth from the temple crying that she saw the city full of corpses and slaughter, and that the eagle which visited the scene of combat presently vanished away.

32 1 At dead of night Pyrrhus came up to the walls of the city, and finding that the gate called Diamperes had been thrown open for them by Aristeas, was undiscovered long enough for his Gauls to enter the city and take possession of the market-place. But the gate would not admit his elephants, and therefore the towers had to be taken off their backs and put on again when the animals were inside, in darkness and confusion. This caused delay, and the Argives, taking the alarm, ran up to Aspis and other strong places of the city, and sending to Antigonus called upon him for help. 2 Antigonus marched up close to the city, and lying in wait there himself, sent his generals and his son inside with a considerable relief-force. Areus also came, with a thousand Cretans and Spartans (the most lightly armed). All these troops united in an assault upon the Gauls and threw them into great confusion. And Pyrrhus, who now entered the city with shouts and cries by way of Cylarabis, noticed that the Gauls did not answer his men with any vigour or courage, and therefore conjectured that their response was that of men confounded and in distress. 3 Accordingly, he led on faster, pushing along the horsemen in front of him, who were making their way with difficulty among the water-conduits, of which the city is full, and were in peril of their lives from them. And now, in this night-battle, there was great uncertainty as to what commands were given and how the commands were carried out; men straggled and lost their way among the narrow streets, and generalship was of no avail owing to the darkness, confused shouting, and confined spaces; both parties therefore were unable to accomplish anything and waited for the day.

4 But when at last it began to grow light, the sight of the Aspis filled with armed enemies greatly disturbed Pyrrhus; moreover, among the numerous votive-offerings in the market-place he caught sight of a wolf and bull in bronze, represented as closing with one another in battle, and he was dumbfounded, for he called to mind an ancient oracle which declared that it was fated for him to die when he saw a wolf fighting with a bull. 5 Now, the Argives say that these figures were set up in their market-place as memorials of an ancient event. Namely, when Danaüs first landed in the country, near Pyramia in the district of Thyreatis, and was on his way to Argos, he saw a wolf fighting with a bull; and conceiving that he himself was represented by the wolf (since both were strangers and were attacking the natives), he watched the battle to its end, and when the wolf had prevailed, paid his vows to Apollo Lyceius (the wolf-god), attacked the city, and was victorious, after Gelanor, who was at that time king of Argos, had been driven out by a faction. This, then, was the significance of the dedication.

33 1 Dejected at this sight, as well as because none of his hopes were being realized, Pyrrhus proposed to retreat; but fearing the narrowness of the gates he sent to his son Helenus, who had been left outside the city with the greater part of the forces, ordering him to tear down part of the wall and succour those who rushed out through the breach, in case the enemy molested them. 2 Owing to the haste and tumult, however, the messenger brought no clear orders, but actually made a mistake, and the young prince, taking the rest of the elephants and the best of his soldiers, marched through the gate into the city to help his father. But Pyrrhus was already on the retreat. 3 And as long as the market-place afforded him room for withdrawing and fighting, he would turn and repel his assailants; but after he had been driven out of the market-place into the narrow street which led up to the gate, and encountered those who were rushing to his aid from the opposite direction, some of these could not hear him when he called out to them to withdraw, and those who did, even though they were very ready to obey him, were kept from doing so by those who were pouring in behind them from the gate. 4 For the largest of the elephants had fallen athwart the gateway and lay there roaring, in the way of those who would have turned back; and another elephant, one of those which had gone on into the city, Nicon by name, seeking to recover his rider, who had fallen from his back in consequence of wounds, and dashing in the face of those who were trying to get out, crowded friends and foes alike together in a promiscuous throng, 5 until, having found the body of his master, he took it up with his proboscis, laid it across his two tusks, and turned back as if crazed, overthrowing and killing those who came in his way. Thus crushed and matted together not a man of them could act at all for himself, but the whole multitude, bolted together, as it were, into one body, kept rolling and swaying this way and that. 6 Little fighting could be done against those of the enemy who were continually being caught up into their ranks or attacking them from the rear, and they wrought most harm to themselves. For when a man had drawn his sword or poised his spear, he could not recover or sheathe his weapon again, but it would pass through those who stood in its way, and so they died from one another’s blows.

34 1 But Pyrrhus, seeing the stormy sea that surged about him, took off the coronal with which his helmet was distinguished, and gave it to one of his companions; then, relying on his horse, he plunged in among the enemy who were pursuing him. Here he was wounded by a spear which pierced his breastplate — not a mortal, nor even a severe wound — and turned upon the man who had struck him, who was an Argive, not of illustrious birth, but the son of a poor old woman. 2 His mother, like the rest of the women, was at this moment watching the battle from the house-top, and when she saw that her son was engaged in conflict with Pyrrhus, she was filled with distress in view of the danger to him, and lifting up a tile with both her hands threw it at Pyrrhus. It fell upon his head below his helmet and crushed the vertebrae at the base of his neck, so that his sight was blurred and his hands dropped the reins. Then he sank down from his horse and fell near the tomb of Licymnius, unrecognised by most who saw him. 3 But a certain Zopyrus, who was serving under Antigonus, and two or three others, ran up to him, saw who he was, and dragged him into a door-way just as he was beginning to recover from the blow. And when Zopyrus drew an Illyrian short-sword with which to cut off his head, Pyrrhus gave him a terrible look, so that Zopyrus was frightened; his hands trembled, and yet he essayed the deed; but being full of alarm and confusion his blow did not fall true, but along the mouth and chin, so that it was only slowly and with difficulty that he severed the head. 4 Presently what had happened was known to many, and Alcyoneus, running to the spot, asked for the head as if he would see whose it was. But when he had got it he rode away to his father, and cast it down before him as he sat among his friends. Antigonus, however, when he saw and recognised the head, drove his son away, smiting him with his staff and calling him impious and barbarous; then, covering his face with his cloak he burst into tears, calling to mind Antigonus his grandfather and Demetrius his father, who were examples in his own family of a reversal of fortune.

5 The head and body of Pyrrhus, then, Antigonus caused to be adorned for burial and burned; and when Alcyoneus found Helenus in an abject state and wearing a paltry cloak, and spoke to him kindly and brought him into the presence of his father, Antigonus was pleased with his conduct, and said: “This is better, my son, than what thou didst before; but not even now hast thou done well in allowing this clothing to remain, which is a disgrace the rather to us who are held to be the victors.” 6 Then, after showing kindness to Helenus and adorning his person, he sent him back to Epeirus, and he dealt mildly with the friends of Pyrrhus when he became master of their camp and of their whole force.

Marius

1 1 Of a third name for Caius Marius we are ignorant, as we are in the case of Quintus Sertorius the subduer of Spain, and of Lucius Mummius the captor of Corinth; for Mummius received the surname of Achaïcus from his great exploit, as Scipio received that of Africanus, and Metellus that of Macedonicus. 2 From this circumstance particularly Poseidonius thinks to confute those who hold that the third name is the Roman proper name, as, for instance, Camillus, Marcellus, or Cato; for if that were so, he says, then those with only two names would have had no proper name at all. But it escapes his notice that his own line of reasoning, if extended to women, robs them of their proper names; for no woman is given the first name, which Poseidonius thinks was the proper name among the Romans. 3 Moreover, of the other two names, one was common to the whole family, as in the case of the Pompeii, the Manlii, or the Cornelii (just as a Greek might speak of the Heracleidae or the Pelopidae), and the other was a cognomen or epithet, given with reference to their natures or their actions, or to their bodily appearances or defects, Macrinus, for example, or Torquatus, or Sulla (like the Greek Mnemon, Grypus, or Callinicus). However, in these matters the irregularity of custom furnishes many topics for discussion.

2 1 As for the personal appearance of Marius, we have seen a marble statue of him at Ravenna in Gaul,a and it very well portrays the harshness and bitterness of character which were ascribed to him. For since he was naturally virile and fond of war, and since he received a training in military rather than in civil life, his temper was fierce when he came to exercise authority. 2 Moreover, we are told that he never studied Greek literature, and never used the Greek language for any matter of real importance, thinking it ridiculous to study a literature the teachers of which were the subject of another people; and when, after his second triumph and at the consecration of some temple, he furnished the public with Greek spectacles, though he came into the theatre, he merely sat down, and at once went away. 3 Accordingly, just as Plato was wont to say often to Xenocrates the philosopher, who had the reputation of being rather morose in his disposition, “My good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces,” so if Marius could have been persuaded to sacrifice to the Greek Muses and Graces, he would not have put the ugliest possible crown upon a most illustrious career in field and forum, nor have been driven by the blasts of passion, ill-timed ambition, and insatiable greed upon the shore of a most cruel and savage old age. However, his actual career shall at once bring this into clear view.

3 1 Born of parents who were altogether obscure — poor people who lived by the labour of their own hands (Marius was his father’s name, Fulcinia that of his mother), it was not till late that he saw the city or got a taste of city ways. In the meantime he lived at Cirrhaeaton, a village in the territory of Arpinum, in a manner that was quite rude when compared with the polished life of a city, but temperate, and in harmony with the rearing which the ancient Romans gave their children. 2 His first service as a soldier was in a campaign against the Celtiberians, when Scipio Africanus was besieging Numantia, and he attracted the notice of his general by excelling the other young men in bravery, and by his very cheerful acceptance of the changed regimen which Scipio introduced into his army when it was spoiled by luxury and extravagance. It is said, too, that he encountered and laid low an enemy in the sight of his general. 3 Therefore he was advanced by his commander to many honours; and once, when the talk after supper had to do with generals, and one of the company (either because he really wished to know or merely sought to please) asked Scipio where the Roman people would find any such chieftain and leader to follow him, Scipio, gently tapping Marius on the shoulder as he reclined next him, said: “Here, perhaps.” So gifted by nature were both men; the one in showing himself great while still a young man, and the other in discerning the end from the beginning.

4 1 So, then, Marius, filled with high hopes, we are told, by this speech of Scipio in particular, as if it were a divine utterance in prophecy, set out upon a political career, and was made tribune of the people with the assistance of Caecilius Metellus, of whose house he had always been an hereditary adherent. 2 While serving as tribune he introduced a law concerning the mode of voting, which, as it was thought, would lessen the power of the nobles in judicial cases; whereupon Cotta the consul opposed him and persuaded the senate to contest the law, and to summon Marius before it to explain his procedure. The senate voted to do this, and Marius appeared before it. He did not, however, behave like a young man who had just entered political life without any brilliant services behind him, but assumed at once the assurance which his subsequent achievements gave him, and threatened to hale Cotta off to prison unless he had the vote rescinded. 3 Cotta then turned to Metellus and asked him to express his opinion, and Metellus, rising in his place, concurred with the consul; but Marius called in the officer and ordered him to conduct Metellus himself to prison. Metellus appealed to the other tribunes, but none of them came to his support, so the senate gave way and rescinded its vote. Marius therefore came forth in triumph to the people and got them to ratify his law. Men now thought him superior to fear, unmoved by respect of persons, and a formidable champion of the people in opposition to the senate. 4 However, this opinion was quickly modified by another political procedure of his. For when a law was introduced providing for the distribution of grain to the citizens, he opposed it most strenuously and carried the day, thereby winning for himself an equal place in the esteem of both parties as a man who favoured neither at the expense of the general good.

5 1 After his tribuneship, he became a candidate for the higher aedileship. For there are two classes of aediles, one taking its name of “curule” from the chair with curving feet on which the magistrates sit in the exercise of their functions, the other, and the inferior, being called “plebeian.” When the superior aediles have been elected, the people cast a second vote for the others. 2 Accordingly, when it was clear that Marius was losing his election to the higher office, he immediately changed his tactics and applied for the other. But men thought him bold and obstinate, and he was defeated; nevertheless, although he had met with two failures in one day, a thing which had never happened to any candidate before, he did not lower his assurance in the least, but not long afterwards became a candidate for the praetorship and nearly missed defeat; he was returned last of all, and prosecuted for bribery.

3 Suspicion was chiefly aroused by the sight of a servant of Cassius Sabaco inside the palings among the voters; for Sabaco was an especial friend of Marius. Sabaco was therefore summoned before the court, and testified that the heat had made him so thirsty that he had called for cold water, and that his servant had come in to him with a cup, and had then gone away after his master had drunk. 4 Sabaco, however, was expelled from the senate by the censors of the next year, and it was thought that he deserved this punishment, either because he had given false testimony, or because of his intemperance. But Caius Herennius also was brought in as a witness against Marius, and pleaded that it was contrary to established usage for patrons (the Roman term for our representatives at law) to bear witness against clients, and that the law relieved them of this necessity; and not only the parents of Marius but Marius himself had originally been clients of the house of the Herennii. 5 The jurors accepted this plea in avoidance of testimony, but Marius himself contradicted Herennius, declaring that as soon as he had been elected to his magistracy he had ceased to be a client; which was not altogether true. For it is not every magistracy that frees its occupants (as well as their posterity) from their relations to a patron, but only that to which the law assigns the curule chair. However, although during the first days of the trial Marius fared badly and found the jurors severe towards him, on the last day, contrary to all expectation, there was a tie vote and he was acquitted.

6 1 Well, then, for his praetorship Marius got only moderate commendation. After his praetorship, however, the province of Farther Spain was allotted to him, and here he is said to have cleared away the robbers, although the province was still uncivilized in its customs and in a savage state, and robbery was at that time still considered a most honourable occupation by the Spaniards. But when he returned to political life, he had neither wealth nor eloquence, with which the magnates of the time used to influence the people. 2 Still, the very intensity of his assurance, his indefatigable labours, and his plain and simple way of living, won him a certain popularity among his fellow citizens, and his honours brought him increasing influence, so that he married into the illustrious family of the Caesars and became the husband of Julia, who was the aunt of that Caesar who in after times became greatest among the Romans, and in some degree, because of his relationship, made Marius his example, as I have stated in his Life.

3 There is testimony both to the temperance of Marius, and also to his fortitude, of which his behaviour under a surgical operation is a proof. He was afflicted in both legs, as it would appear, with varicose veins, and as he disliked the deformity, he resolved to put himself into the physician’s hands. Refusing to be bound, he presented to him one leg, and then, without a motion or a groan, but with a steadfast countenance and in silence, endured incredible pain under the knife. When, however, the physician was proceeding to treat the other leg, Marius would suffer him no further, declaring that he saw the cure to be not worth the pain.b

7 1 When Caecilius Metellus the consul was appointed commander-in chief for the war against Jugurtha, he took Marius with him to Africa in the capacity of legate. Here, in essaying great exploits and brilliant struggles, Marius was not careful, like the rest, to enhance the glory of Metellus and conduct himself in his interests; and deeming that he had not so much been called by Metellus to the office of legate as he was being introduced by Fortune into a most favourable opportunity as well as a most spacious theatre for exploits, he made a display of every sort of bravery. 2 And though the war brought many hardships, he neither shunned any great labour, nor disdained any that were small, but surpassed the officers of his own rank in giving good counsel and foreseeing what was advantageous, and vied with the common soldiers in frugality and endurance, thereby winning much goodwill among them. 3 For as a general thing it would seem that every man finds solace for his labours in seeing another voluntarily share those labours; this seems to take away the element of compulsion; and it is a most agreeable spectacle for a Roman soldier when he sees a general eating common bread in public, or sleeping on a simple pallet, or taking a hand in the construction of some trench or palisade. For they have not so much admiration for those leaders who share honour and riches with them as for those who take part in their toils and dangers, but have more affection for those who are willing to join in their toils than for those who permit them to lead an easy life.

4 By doing all these things and thereby winning the hearts of the soldiers, Marius soon filled Africa, and soon filled Rome, with his name and fame, and men in the camp wrote to those at home that there would be no end or cessation of the war against the Barbarian unless they chose Caius Marius consul.

8 1 At all this Metellus was evidently displeased. But it was the affair of Turpillius that most vexed him. This Turpillius was an hereditary guest-friend of Metellus, and at this time was serving in the army as chief of engineers. But he was put in charge of Vaga, a large city, and because he relied for safety on his doing the inhabitants no wrong, but rather treating them with kindness and humanity, he unawares came into the power of the enemy; for they admitted Jugurtha into their city. Still, they did Turpillius no harm, but obtained his release and sent him away safe and sound. 2 Accordingly, a charge of treachery was brought against him; and Marius, who was a member of the council which tried the case, was himself bitter, and exasperated most of the others against the accused, so that Metellus was reluctantly forced to pass sentence of death upon him. After a short time, however, the charge was found to be false, and almost everybody sympathized with Metellus in his grief; but Marius, full of joy and claiming the condemnation as his own work, was not ashamed to go about saying that he had fastened upon the path of Metellus a daemon who would avenge the murder of a guest-friend.

3 In consequence of this there was open enmity between the two men; and we are told that on one occasion when Marius was present Metellus said to him as if in mockery: “Dost thou purpose to leave us, my good Sir, and sail for home, and stand for the consulship? Pray will it not satisfy thee to be fellow-consul with this my son?” Now the son of Metellus was at this time a mere stripling. 4 However, Marius was eager to be dismissed, and so, after making many postponements, and when only twelve days remained before the election of consuls, Metellus dismissed him. Marius accomplished the long journey from the camp to Utica and the sea in two days and one night, and offered sacrifice before he sailed. And the seer is said to have told him that the Deity revealed for Marius successes that were of incredible magnitude and beyond his every expectation. 5 Elated by this prophecy he put out to sea. In three days he crossed the sea with a favouring wind, and was at once welcomed gladly by the populace, and after being introduced to the assembly by one of the tribunes, he first made many slanderous charges against Metellus, and then asked for the consulship, promising that he would either kill Jugurtha or take him alive.

9 1 He was triumphantly elected, and at once began to levy troops. Contrary to law and custom he enlisted many a poor and insignificant man, although former commanders had not accepted such persons, but bestowed arms, just as they would any other honour, only on those whose property assessment made them worthy to receive these, each soldier being supposed to put his substance in pledge to the state. 2 It was not this, however, that brought most odium upon Marius, but the boldly insolent and arrogant speeches with which he vexed the nobles, crying out that he had carried off the consulship as spoil from the effeminacy of the rich and well-born, and that he had wounds upon his own person with which to vaunt himself before the people, not monuments of the dead nor likenesses of other men. 3 Often, too, he would mention by name the generals in Africa who had been unsuccessful, now Bestia, and now Albinus, men of illustrious houses indeed, but unfortunate themselves, and unwarlike, who had met with disaster through lack of experience; and he would ask his audience if they did not think that the ancestors of these men would have much preferred to leave descendants like himself, since they themselves had been made illustrious, not by their noble birth, but by their valour and noble deeds. 4 Such talk was not mere empty boasting, nor was his desire to make himself hated by the nobility without purpose; indeed the people, who were delighted to have the senate insulted and always measured the greatness of a man’s spirit by the boastfulness of his speech, encouraged him, and incited him not to spare men of high repute if he wished to please the multitude.

10 1 When he had crossed to Africa, Metellus, now become a victim of jealousy, and vexed because, after he had brought the war to an end and had nothing further to do except to seize the person of Jugurtha, Marius was coming to enjoy the crown and the triumph, — a man whose ingratitude towards his benefactor had raised him to power, — would not consent to meet him, but privately left the country while Rutilius, who had become his legate, handed over the army to Marius. 2 And in the end a retribution fell upon Marius; for Sulla robbed him of the glory of his success, as Marius had robbed Metellus. How this came to pass, I will narrate briefly, since the details are given more at length in my Life of Sulla.

Bocchus, the king of the Barbarians in the interior, was a son-in law of Jugurtha, and apparently gave him little or no assistance in his war, alleging his faithlessness as an excuse, and fearing the growth of his power. 3 But when Jugurtha in his flight and wandering felt compelled to make him his last hope and sought haven with him, Bocchus received him, more out of regard for his position as a suppliant than from goodwill, and kept him in his hands. So far as his open acts were concerned, Bocchus entreated Marius in behalf of his father-in law, writing that he would not give him up and assuming a bold tone; but secretly he planned to betray him, and sent for Lucius Sulla, who was quaestor for Marius and had been of some service to Bocchus during the campaign. 4 But when Sulla had come to him in all confidence, the Barbarian experienced a change of heart and felt repentant, and for many days wavered in his plans, deliberating whether to surrender Jugurtha or to hold Sulla also a prisoner. Finally however, he decided upon his first plan of treachery, and put Jugurtha alive into the hands of Sulla.

5 This was the first seed of that bitter and incurable hatred between Marius and Sulla, which nearly brought Rome to ruin. For many wished Sulla to have the glory of the affair because they hated Marius, and Sulla himself had a seal-ring made, which he used to wear, on which was engraved the surrender of Jugurtha to him by Bocchus. 6 By constantly using this ring Sulla provoked Marius, who was an ambitious man, loath to share his glory with another, and quarrelsome. And the enemies of Marius gave Sulla most encouragement, by attributing the first and greatest successes of the war to Metellus, but the last, and the termination of it, to Sulla, so that the people might cease admiring Marius and giving him their chief allegiance.

11 Soon, however, all this envy and hatred and slander of Marius was removed and dissipated by the peril which threatened Italy from the west, as soon as the state felt the need of a great general and looked about for a helmsman whom she might employ to save her from so great a deluge of war. Then the people would have nothing to do with anyone of high birth or of a wealthy house who offered himself at the consular elections, but proclaimed Marius consul in spite of his absence from the city. 2 For no sooner had word been brought to the people of the capture of Jugurtha than the reports about the Teutones and Cimbri fell upon their ears. What these reports said about the numbers and strength of the invading hosts was disbelieved at first, but afterwards it was found to be short of the truth. For three hundred thousand armed fighting men were advancing, and much larger hordes of women and children were said to accompany them, in quest of land to support so vast a multitude, and of cities in which to settle and live, just as the Gauls before them, as they learned, had wrested the best part of Italy from the Tyrrhenians and now occupied it. 3 They themselves, indeed, had not had intercourse with other peoples, and had traversed a great stretch of country, so that it could not be ascertained what people it was nor whence they had set out, thus to descend upon Gaul and Italy like a cloud. The most prevalent conjecture was that they were some of the German peoples which extended as far as the northern ocean, a conjecture based on their great stature, their light-blue eyes, and the fact that the Germans call robbers Cimbri.

4 But there are some who say that Gaul was wide and large enough to reach from the outer sea and the subarctic regionsc to the Maeotic Lake on the east, where it bordered on Pontic Scythia, and that from that point on Gauls and Scythians were mingled. These mixed Gauls and Scythians had left their home and moved westward, not in a single march, nor even continuously, but with each recurring spring they had gone forward, fighting their way, and in the course of time had crossed the continent. 5 Therefore, while they had many different names for different detachments, they called their whole army by the general name of Galloscythians.

Others, however, say that the Cimmerians who were first known to the ancient Greeks were not a large part of the entire people, but merely a body of exiles or a faction which was driven away by the Scythians and passed from the Maeotic Lake into Asia under the lead of Lygdamis; whereas the largest and most warlike part of the people dwelt at the confines of the earth along the outer sea, occupying a land that is shaded, wooded, and wholly sunless by reason of the height and thickness of the trees, 6 which reach inland as far as the Hercynii; and as regards the heavens, they are under that portion of them where the pole gets a great elevation by reason of the declination of the parallels, and appears to have a position not far removed from the spectator’s zenith, and a day and a night divide the year into two equal parts; which was of advantage to Homer in his story of Odysseus consulting the shades of the dead. 7 From these regions, then, these Barbarians sallied forth against Italy, being called at first Cimmerians, and then, not inappropriately, Cimbri. But all this is based on conjecture rather than on sure historical evidence.

8 Their numbers, however, are given by many writers as not less, but more, than the figure mentioned above. Moreover, their courage and daring made them irresistible, and when they engaged in battle they came on with the swiftness and force of fire, so that no one could withstand their onset, but all who came in their way became their prey and booty, and even many large Roman armies, with their commanders, who had been stationed to protect Transalpine Gaul, were destroyed ingloriously; 9 indeed, by their feeble resistance they were mainly instrumental in drawing the on-rushing Barbarians down upon Rome. For when the invaders had conquered those who opposed them, and had got abundance of booty, they determined not to settle themselves anywhere until they had destroyed Rome and ravaged Italy.

12 1 Learning of these things from many quarters, the Romans summoned Marius to the command. And he was appointed consul for the second time, although the law forbade that a man in his absence and before the lapse of a specified time should be elected again; still, the people would not listen to those who opposed the election. For they considered that this would not be the first time that the law had given way before the demands of the general good, and that the present occasion demanded it no less imperatively than when they had made Scipio consul contrary to the laws, although at that time they were not fearful of losing their own city, but desirous of destroying that of the Carthaginians. 2 This course was adopted, Marius came across the sea from Africa with his army, and on the very Calends of January, which with the Romans is the first day of the year, assumed the consulship and celebrated his triumph, exhibiting to the Romans Jugurtha in chains. This was a sight which they had despaired of beholding, nor could any one have expected, while Jugurtha was alive, to conquer the enemy; so versatile was he in adapting himself to the turns of fortune, and so great craft did he combine with his courage. 3 But we are told that when he had been led in triumph he lost his reason; and that when, after the triumph, he was cast into prison, where some tore his tunic from his body, and others were so eager to snatch away his golden ear-ring that they tore off with it the lobe of his ear, and when he had been thrust down naked into the dungeon pit, in utter bewilderment and with a grin on his lips he said: “Hercules! How cold this Roman bath is!” 4 But the wretch, after struggling with hunger for six days and up to the last moment clinging to the desire of life, paid the penalty which his crimes deserved.

In the triumphal procession there were carried, we are told, three thousand and seven pounds of gold, of uncoined silver five thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, and in coined money two hundred and eighty-seven thousand drachmas.

5 After the procession was over, Marius called the senate into session on the Capitol, and made his entry, either through inadvertence or with a vulgar display of his good fortune, in his triumphal robes; but perceiving quickly that the senators were offended at this, he rose and went out, changed to the usual robe with purple border, and then came back.

13 1 Setting out on the expedition, he laboured to perfect his army as it went along, practising the men in all kinds of running and in long marches, and compelling them to carry their own baggage and to prepare their own food. Hence, in after times, men who were fond of toil and did whatever was enjoined upon them contentedly and without a murmur, were called Marian mules. Some, however, think that this name had a different origin. 2 Namely, when Scipio was besieging Numantia, he wished to inspect not only the arms and the horses, but also the mules and the waggons, that every man might have them in readiness and good order. Marius, accordingly, brought out for inspection both a horse that had been most excellently taken care of by him, and a mule that for health, docility, and strength far surpassed all the rest. The commanding officer was naturally well pleased with the beasts of Marius and often spoke about them, so that in time those who wanted to bestow facetious praise on a persevering, patient, laborious man would call him a Marian mule.

14 1 And now, as it would seem, a great piece of good fortune befell Marius. For the Barbarians had a reflux, as it were, in their course, and streamed first into Spain. This gave Marius time to exercise the bodies of his men, to raise their spirits to a sturdier courage, and, what was the most important of all, to let them find out what sort of a man he was. 2 For his sternness in the exercise of authority and his inflexibility in the infliction of punishment appeared to them, when they became accustomed to obedience and good behaviour, salutary as well as just, and they regarded the fierceness of his temper, the harshness of his voice, and that ferocity of his countenance which gradually became familiar, as fearful to their enemies rather than to themselves. 3 But it was above all things the uprightness of his judicial decisions that pleased the soldiers; and of this the following illustration is given.

Caius Lusius, a nephew of his, had a command under him in the army. In other respects he was a man of good reputation, but he had a weakness for beautiful youths. This officer was enamoured of one of the young men who served under him, by name Trebonius, and had on made unsuccessful attempts to seduce him. 4 But finally, at night, he sent a servant with a summons for Trebonius. The young man came, since he could not refuse to obey a summons, but when he had been introduced into the tent and Caius attempted violence upon him, he drew his sword and slew him. Marius was not with the army when this happened; but on his return he brought Trebonius to trial. 5 Here there were many accusers, but not a single advocate, wherefore Trebonius himself courageously took the stand and told all about the matter, bringing witnesses to show that he had often refused the solicitations of Lusius and that in spite of large offers he had never prostituted himself to anyone. Then Marius, filled with delight and admiration, ordered the customary crown for brave exploits to be brought, and with his own hands placed it on the head of Trebonius, declaring that at a time which called for noble examples he had displayed the most noble conduct.

6 Tidings of this were brought to Rome and helped in no small degree to secure for Marius his third consulship; at the same time, too, the Barbarians were expected in the spring, and the Romans were unwilling to risk battle with them under any other general. However, the Barbarians did not come as soon as they were expected, and once more the period of Marius’s consulship expired. 7 As the consular elections were at hand, and as his colleague in the office had died, Marius left Manius Aquillius in charge of the forces and came himself to Rome. Here many men of great merit were candidates for the consulship, but Lucius Saturninus, who had more influence with the people than any other tribune, was won over by the flattering attentions of Marius, and in his harangues urged the people to elect Marius consul. Marius affected to decline the office and declared that he did not want it, but Saturninus called him a traitor to his country for refusing to command her armies at a time of so great peril. 8 Now, it was clear that Saturninus was playing his part at the instigation of Marius, and playing it badly, too, but the multitude, seeing that occasion required the ability as well as the good fortune of Marius, voted for his fourth consulship, and made Catulus Lutatius his colleague, a man who was esteemed by the nobility and not disliked by the common people.

15 1 Learning that the enemy were near, Marius rapidly crossed the Alps, and built a fortified camp along the river Rhone. Into this he brought together an abundance of stores, that he might never be forced by lack of provisions to give battle contrary to his better judgment. 2 The conveyance of what was needful for his army, which had previously been a long and costly process where it was by sea, he rendered easy and speedy. That is, the mouths of the Rhone, encountering the sea, took up great quantities of mud and sand packed close with clay by the action of the billows, and made the entrance of the river difficult, laborious, and slow for vessels carrying supplies. 3 So Marius brought his army to the place, since the men had nothing else to do, and ran a great canal. Into this he diverted a great part of the river and brought it round to a suitable place on the coast, a deep bay where large ships could float, and where the water could flow out smoothly and without waves to the sea. This canal, indeed, still bears the name of Marius.

4 The Barbarians divided themselves into two bands, and it fell to the lot of the Cimbri to proceed through Noricum in the interior of the country against Catulus, and of a passage there, while the Teutones and Ambrones were to march through Liguria along the sea-coast against Marius. 5 On the part of the Cimbri there was considerable delay and loss of time, but the Teutones and Ambrones set out at once, passed through the intervening country, and made their appearance before Marius. Their numbers were limitless, they were hideous in their aspect, and their speech and cries were unlike those of other peoples. They covered a large part of the plain, and after pitching their camp challenged Marius to battle.

16 1 Marius, however, paid no heed to them, but kept his soldiers inside their fortifications, bitterly rebuking those who would have made a display of their courage, and calling those whose high spirit made them wish to rush forth and give battle traitors to their country. For it was not, he said, triumphs or trophies that should now be the object of their ambition, but how they might ward off so great a cloud and thunder-bolt of war and secure the safety of Italy. 2 This was his language in private to his officers and equals; but he would station his soldiers on the fortifications by detachments, bidding them to observe the enemy, and in this way accustomed them not to fear their shape or dread their cries, which were altogether strange and ferocious; and to make themselves acquainted with their equipment and movements, thus in the course of time rendering what was only apparently formidable familiar to their minds from observation. For he considered that their novelty falsely imparts to terrifying objects many qualities which they do not possess, but that with familiarity even those things which are really dreadful lose their power to affright. 3 And so in the case of his soldiers, not only did the daily sight of the enemy lessen somewhat their amazement at them, but also, when they heard the threats and the intolerable boasting of the Barbarians, their anger rose and warmed and set on fire their spirits; for the enemy were ravaging and plundering all the country round, and besides, often attacked the Roman fortifications with great temerity and shamelessness, so that indignant speeches of his soldiers reached the ears of Marius. 4 “What cowardice, pray, has Marius discovered in us that he keeps out of battle like women under lock and key? Come, let us act like freemen and ask him if he is waiting for other soldiers to fight in defence of Italy, and will use us as workmen all the time, whenever there is need of digging ditches and clearing out mud and diverting a river or two.d 5 For it was to this end, as it would seem, that he exercised us in those many toils, and these are the achievements of his consulships which he will exhibit to his fellow-citizens on his return to Rome. Or does he fear the fate of Carbo and Caepio, whom the enemy defeated? But they were far behind Marius in reputation and excellence, and led an army that was far inferior to his. Surely it is better to do something, even if we perish as they did, rather than to sit here and enjoy the spectacle of our allies being plundered.”

17 1 Marius was delighted to hear of such expressions, and tried to calm the soldiers down by telling them that he did not distrust them, but in consequence of certain oracles was awaiting a fit time and place for his victory. And indeed he used to carry about ceremoniously in a litter a certain Syrian woman, named Martha, who was said to have the gift of prophecy, and he would make sacrifices at her bidding. She had previously been rejected by the senate when she wished to appear before them with reference to these matters and predicted future events. 2 Then she got audience of the women and gave them proofs of her skill, and particularly the wife of Marius, at whose feet she sat when some gladiators were fighting and successfully foretold which one was going to be victorious. In consequence of this she was sent to Marius by his wife, and was admired by him. As a general thing she was carried along with the army in a litter, but she attended the sacrifices clothed in a double purple robe that was fastened with a clasp, and carrying a spear that was wreathed with fillets and chaplets. 3 Such a performance as this caused many to doubt whether Marius, in exhibiting the woman, really believed in her, or was pretending to do so and merely acted a part with her.

The affair of the vultures, however, which Alexander of Myndus relates, is certainly wonderful. Two vultures were always seen hovering about the armies of Marius before their victories, and accompanied them on their journeys, being recognized by bronze rings on their necks; for the soldiers had caught them, put these rings on, and let them go again; and after this, on recognizing the birds, the soldiers greeted them, and they were glad to see them when they set out upon a march, feeling sure in such cases that they would be successful.

4 Many signs also appeared, most of which were of the ordinary kind; but from Ameria and Tuder, cities of Italy, it was reported that at night there had been seen in the heavens flaming spears, and shields which at first moved in different directions, and then clashed together, assuming the formations and movements of men in battle, and finally some of them would give way, while others pressed on in pursuit, and all streamed away to the westward. 5 Moreover, about this time Bataces, the priest of the Great Mother, came from Pessinus announcing that the goddess had declared to him from her shrine that the Romans were going to be victorious and triumphant in war. The senate gave credence to the story and voted that a temple should be built for the goddess in commemoration of the victory; but when Bataces came before the assembly and desired to tell the story, Aulus Pompeius, a tribune of the people, prevented him, calling him an impostor, and driving him with insults from the rostra. 6 And lo, this did more than anything else to gain credence for the man’s story. For hardly had Aulus gone back to his house after the assembly was dissolved, when he broke out with so violent a fever that he died within a week, and everybody knew and talked about it.

18 1 But the Teutones, since Marius kept quiet, attempted to take his camp by storm; many missiles, however, were hurled against them from the fortifications, and they lost some of their men. They therefore decided to march forward, expecting to cross the Alps without molestation. So they packed up their baggage and began to march past the camp of the Romans. Then, indeed, the immensity of their numbers was made specially evident by the length of their line and the time required for their passage; for it is said they were six days in passing the fortifications of Marius, although they moved continuously. 2 And they marched close to the camp, inquiring whether the Romans had any messages for their wives; “for,” said they, “we shall soon be with them.” But when the Barbarians had passed by and were going on their way, Marius also broke camp and followed close upon them, always halting near by and at their very side, but strongly fortifying his camps and keeping strong positions in his front, so that he could pass the night in safety. 3 Thus the two armies went on until came to the place called Aquae Sextiae, from which they had to march only a short distance and they would be in the Alps. For this reason, indeed, Marius made preparations to give battle here, and he occupied for his camp a position that was strong, but poorly supplied with water, wishing, as they say, by this circumstance also to incite his soldiers to fight. 4 At any rate, when many of them were dissatisfied and said they would be thirsty there, he pointed to a river that ran near the barbarian fortifications, and told them they could get water there, but the price of it was blood. “Why, then,” they said, “dost thou not lead at once against the enemy, while our blood is still moist?” To which Marius calmly replied: “We must first make our camp strong.”

19 1 His soldiers, accordingly, though reluctant, obeyed; but the throng of camp-servants, who had no water either for themselves or their beasts, went down in a body to the river, some taking hatchets, some axes, and some also swords and lances along with their water-jars, determined to get water even if they had to fight for it. With these only a few of the enemy at first engaged, since the main body were taking their meal after bathing, and some were still bathing. For streams of warm water burst from the ground in this place, and at these the Romans surprised a number of the Barbarians, who were enjoying themselves and making merry in this wonderfully pleasant place. 2 Their cries brought more of the Barbarians to the spot, and Marius had difficulty in longer restraining his soldiers, since they had fears now for their servants. Besides, the most warlike division of the enemy, by whom at an earlier time the Romans under Manlius and Caepio had been defeated (they were called Ambrones and of themselves numbered more than thirty thousand), had sprung up from their meal and were running to get their arms. 3 However, though their bodies were surfeited and weighed down with food and their spirits excited and disordered with strong wine, they did not rush on in a disorderly or frantic course, nor raise an inarticulate battle-cry, but rhythmically clashing their arms and leaping to the sound they would frequently shout out all together their tribal name Ambrones, either to encourage one another, or to terrify their enemies in advance by the declaration. 4 The first of the Italians to go down against them were the Ligurians, and when they had heard and understood what the Barbarians were shouting, they themselves shouted back the word, claiming it as their own ancestral appellation; for the Ligurians call themselves Ambrones by descent. Often, then, did the shout echo and reecho from either side before they came to close quarters; and since the hosts back of each party took up the cry by turns and strove each to outdo the other first in the magnitude of their shout, their cries roused and fired the spirit of the combatants.

5 Well, then, the Ambrones became separated by the stream; for they did not all succeed in getting across and forming an array, but upon the foremost of them the Ligurians at once fell with a rush, and the fighting was hand-to hand. Then the Romans came to the aid of the Ligurians, and charging down from the heights upon the Barbarians overwhelmed and turned them back. 6 Most of the Ambrones were cut down there in the stream where they were all crowded together, and the river was filled with their blood and their dead bodies; the rest, after the Romans had crossed, did not dare to face about, and the Romans kept slaying them until they came in their flight to their camp and waggons. 7 Here the women met them, swords and axes in their hands, and with hideous shrieks of rage tried to drive back fugitives and pursuers alike, the fugitives as traitors, and the pursuers as foes; they mixed themselves up with the combatants, with bare hands tore away the shields of the Romans or grasped their swords, and endured wounds and mutilations, their fierce spirits unvanquished to the end. So, then, as we are told, the battle at the river was brought on by accident rather than by the intention of the commander.

20 1 After destroying many of the Ambrones the Romans withdrew and night came on; but in spite of so great a success the army did not indulge in paeans of victory, or drinking in the tents, or friendly converse over suppers, or that sweetest of delights for men who have fought and won a battle, gentle sleep, but that night more than any other was spent in fears and commotions. 2 For their camp was still without palisade or wall, and there were still left many myriads of the Barbarians who had met with no defeat. These had been joined by all the Ambrones who survived the battle, and there was lamentation among them all night long, not like the wailings and groanings of men, but howlings and bellowings with a strain of the wild beast in them, mingled with threats and cries of grief, went up from this vast multitude and echoed among the surrounding hills and over the river valley. 3 The whole plain was filled with an awful din, the Romans with fear, and even Marius himself with consternation as he awaited some disorderly and confused night-battle. However, the Barbarians made no attack either during that night or the following day, but spent the time in marshalling their forces and making preparations.

4 Meanwhile, since the position of the Barbarians was commanded by sloping glens and ravines that were shaded by trees, Marius sent Claudius Marcellus thither with three thousand men-at arms, under orders to lie concealed in ambush until the battle was on, and then to show themselves in the enemy’s rear. The rest of his soldiers, who had taken supper in good season and then got a night’s sleep, he led out at day-break and drew up in front of the camp, and sent out his cavalry into the plain. 5 The Teutones, seeing this, could not wait for the Romans to come down and fight with them on equal terms, but quickly and wrathfully armed themselves and charged up the hill. But Marius, sending his officers to all parts of the line, exhorted the soldiers to stand firmly in their lines, and when the enemy had got within reach to hurl their javelins, then take to their swords and crowd the Barbarians back with their shields; 6 for since the enemy were on precarious ground their blows would have no force and the locking of their shields no strength, but the unevenness of the ground would keep them turning and tossing about. This was the advice he gave his men, and they saw that he was first to act accordingly; for he was in better training than any of them, and in daring far surpassed them all.

21 1 Accordingly, the Romans awaited the enemy’s onset, then closed with them and checked their upward rush, and at last, crowding them back little by little, forced them into the plain. Here, while the Barbarians in front were at last forming in line on level ground, there was shouting and commotion in their rear. For Marcellus had watched his opportunity, and when the cries of battle were borne up over the hills he put his men upon the run and fell with loud shouts upon the enemy’s rear, where he cut down the hindmost of them. 2 Those in the rear forced along those who were in front of them, and quickly plunged the whole army into confusion, and under this double attack they could not hold out long, but broke ranks and fled. The Romans pursued them and either slew or took alive over a hundred thousand of them, besides making themselves masters of the tents, waggons, and property, all of which, with the exception of what was pilfered, was given to Marius by vote of the soldiers. And though the gift that he received was so splendid, it was thought to be wholly unworthy of his services in the campaign, where the danger that threatened had been so great.

3 There are some writers, however, who give a different account of the division of the spoils, and also of the number of the slain. Nevertheless, it is said that the people of Massalia fenced their vineyards round with the bones of the fallen, and that the soil, after the bodies had wasted away in it and the rains had fallen all winter upon it, grew so rich and became so full to its depths of the putrefied matter that sank into it, that it produced an exceeding great harvest in after years, and confirmed the saying of Archilochus that “fields are fattened” by such a process. 4 And it is said that extraordinary rains generally dash down after great battles, whether it is that some divine power drenches and hallows the ground with purifying waters from Heaven, or that the blood and putrefying matter send up a moist and heavy vapour which condenses the air, this being easily moved and readily changed to the highest degree by the slightest cause.

22 1 After the battle, Marius collected such of the arms and spoils of the Barbarians as were handsome, entire, and fitted to make a show in his triumphal procession; all the rest he heaped up on a huge pyre and set on foot a magnificent sacrifice. 2 The soldiers had taken their stand about the pyre in arms, with chaplets on their heads, and Marius himself, having put on his purple-bordered robe and girt it about him, as the custom was, had taken a lighted torch, held it up towards heaven with both hands, and was just about to set fire to the pyre, when some friends were seen riding swiftly towards him, and there was deep silence and expectancy on the part of all. 3 But when the horsemen were near, they leaped to the ground and greeted Marius, bringing him the glad news that he had been elected consul for the fifth time, and giving him letters to that effect. This great cause for rejoicing having been added to the celebration of their victory, the soldiers, transported with delight, sent forth a universal shout, accompanied by the clash and clatter of their arms, and after his officers had crowned Marius afresh with wreaths of bay, he set fire to the pyre and completed the sacrifice.

23 1 However, that power which permits no great successes to bring a pure and unmixed enjoyment, but diversifies human life with a blending of evil and of good — be it Fortune, or Nemesis, or Inevitable Necessity, within a few days brought to Marius tidings of his colleague Catulus, which, like a cloud in a calm and serene sky, involved Rome in another tempest of fear. 2 For Catulus, who was facing the Cimbri, gave up trying to guard the passes of the Alps, lest he should be weakened by the necessity of dividing his forces into many parts, and at once descended into the plains of Italy. Here he put the river Atiso between himself and the enemy, built strong fortifications on both banks of it to prevent their crossing, and threw a bridge across the stream, that he might be able to go to the help of the people on the other side in case the Barbarians made their way through the passes and attacked the fortresses. 3 But these Barbarians were so contemptuous and bold in following their enemies that, more by way of displaying their strength and daring than because it was necessary at all, they endured the snow-storms without any clothing, made their way through ice and deep snow to the summits, and from there, putting their broad shields under them and then letting themselves go, slid down the smooth and deeply fissured cliffs. 4 After they had encamped near the stream and examined the passage, they began to dam it up, tearing away the neighbouring hills, like the giants of old, carrying into the river whole trees with their roots, fragments of cliffs, and mounds of earth, and crowding the current out of its course; they also sent whirling down the stream against the piles of the bridge heavy masses which made the bridge quiver with their blows, until at last the greater part of the Roman soldiers played the coward, abandoned their main camp, and began to retreat.

5 And now Catulus, like a consummately good commander, showed that he had less regard for his own reputation than for that of his countrymen. For finding that he could not persuade his soldiers to remain, and seeing that they were making off in terror, he ordered his standard to be taken up, ran to the foremost of the retiring troops, and put himself at their head, wishing that the disgrace should attach to himself and not to his country, and that his soldiers, in making their retreat, should not appear to be running away, but following their general. The Barbarian attacked and captured the fortress on the further side of the Atiso, and they so much admired the Romans there, who showed themselves bravest of men and fought worthily of their country, that they let them go on parole, making them take oath upon the bronze bull. This was subsequently captured, after the battle, and was carried, we are told, to the house of Catulus as the chief prize of the victory. But the country was now destitute of defenders, and the Barbarians inundated and ravaged it.

24 1 In view of these things Marius was summoned to Rome. When he had arrived there, it was the general expectation that he would celebrate the triumph which the senate had readily voted him. But he refused to do so, either because he did not wish to deprive his soldiers and comrades-in arms of their due honours, or because he would encourage the multitude in view of the present crisis by entrusting the glory of his first success to the fortune of the state, in the hope that it would be returned to him enhanced by a second. 2 Having said what was suitable to the occasion, he set out to join Catulus, whom he tried to encourage, while at the same time he summoned his own soldiers from Gaul. When these had come, he crossed the Po and tried to keep the Barbarians out of the part of Italy lying this side of the river. But the Barbarians declined battle, alleging that they were waiting for their brethren the Teutones and wondered why they were so long in coming; this was either because they were really ignorant of their destruction, or because they wished to have the appearance of disbelieving it. 3 For they terribly mishandled those who brought tidings of it, and sent to Marius demanding territory for themselves and their brethren and enough cities for them to dwell in. When Marius asked their ambassadors whom they meant by their brethren, they said they meant the Teutones. At this, all the other Romans who heard them burst out laughing, and Marius scoffingly said: “Then don’t trouble yourself about your brethren, for they have land, and they will have it forever — land which we have given them.” 4 The ambassadors understood his sarcasm and fell to abusing him, declaring that he should be punished for it, by the Cimbri at once, and by the Teutones when they came. “Verily,” said Marius, “they are here, and it will not be right for you to go away before you have embraced your brethren.” Saying this, he ordered the kings of the Teutones to be produced in fetters; for they had been captured among the Alps, where they were fugitives, by the Sequani.

25 1 When these things had been reported to the Cimbri, they once more advanced against Marius, who kept quiet and carefully guarded his camp. And it is said that it was in preparation for this battle that Marius introduced an innovation in the structure of the javelin. Up to this time, it seems, that part of the shaft which was let into the iron head was fastened there by two iron nails; but now, leaving one of these as it was, Marius removed the other, and put in its place a wooden pin that could easily be broken. 2 His design was that the javelin, after striking the enemy’s shield, should not stand straight out, but that the wooden peg should break, thus allowing the shaft to bend in the iron head and trail along the ground, being held fast by the twist at the point of the weapon.

And now Boeorix the king of the Cimbri, with a small retinue, rode up towards the camp and challenged Marius to set a day and a place and come out and fight for the ownership of the country. 3 Marius replied that the Romans never allowed their enemies to give them advice about fighting, but that he would nevertheless gratify the Cimbri in this matter. Accordingly, they decided that the day should be the third following, and the place the plain of Vercellae, which was suitable for the operations of the Roman cavalry, and would give the Cimbri room to deploy their numbers.

4 When, therefore, the appointed time had come, the Romans drew up their forces for battle. Catulus had twenty thousand three hundred soldiers, while those of Marius amounted to thirty-two thousand, which were divided between both wings and had Catulus between them in the centre, as Sulla, who fought in this battle, has stated. 5 He says also that Marius hoped that the two lines would engage at their extremities chiefly and on the wings, in order that his soldiers might have the whole credit for the victory and that Catulus might not participate in the struggle nor even engage the enemy (since the centre, as is usual in battle-fronts of great extent, would be folded back); and therefore arranged the forces in this manner. 6 And we are told that Catulus himself also made a similar statement in defence of his conduct in the battle, and accused Marius of great malice in his treatment of him.

As for the Cimbri, their foot-soldiers advanced slowly from their defences, with a depth equal to their front, for each side of their formation had an extent of thirty furlongs; 7 and their horsemen, fifteen thousand strong, rode out in splendid style, with helmets made to resemble the maws of frightful wild beasts or the heads of strange animals, which, with their towering crests of feathers, made their wearers appear taller than they really were; they were also equipped with breastplates of iron, and carried gleaming white shields. For hurling, each man had two lances; and at close quarters they used large, heavy swords.

26 1 At this time, however, they did not charge directly upon the Romans, but swerved to the right and tried to draw them along gradually until they got them between themselves and their infantry, which was drawn up on their left. The Roman commanders perceived the crafty design, but did not succeed in holding their soldiers back; for one of them shouted that the enemy was taking to flight, and then all set out to pursue them. 2 Meanwhile the infantry of the Barbarians came on to the attack like a vast sea in motion. Then Marius, after washing his hands, lifted them to heaven and vowed a hecatomb to the gods; Catulus also in like manner lifted his hands and vowed that he would consecrate the fortune of that day. It is said, too, that Marius offered sacrifice, and that when the victims had been shown to him, he cried with a loud voice: “Mine is the victory.”

3 After the attack had begun, however, an experience befell Marius which signified the divine displeasure, according to Sulla. For an immense cloud of dust was raised, as was to be expected, and the two armies were hidden from one another by it, so that Marius, when he first led his forces to the attack, missed the enemy, passed by their lines of battle, and moved aimlessly up and down the plain for some time. Meanwhile, as chance would have it, the Barbarians engaged fiercely with Catulus, and he and his soldiers, among whom Sulla says he himself was posted, bore the brunt of the struggle. 4 The Romans were favoured in the struggle, Sulla says, by the heat, and by the sun, which shone in the faces of the Cimbri. For the Barbarians were well able to endure cold, and had been brought up in shady and chilly regions, as I have said. They were therefore undone by the heat; they sweated profusely, breathed with difficulty, and were forced to hold their shields before their faces. For the battle was fought after the summer solstice, which falls, by Roman reckoning, three days before the new moon of the month now called August, but then Sextilis. 5 Moreover, the dust, by hiding the enemy, helped to encourage the Romans. For they could not see from afar the great numbers of the foe, but each one of them fell at a run upon the man just over against him, and fought him hand to hand, without having been terrified by the sight of the rest of the host. And their bodies were so inured to toil and so thoroughly trained that not a Roman was observed to sweat or pant, in spite of the great heat and the run with which they came to the encounter. This is what Catulus is said to have written in extolling his soldiers.

27 1 The greatest number and the best fighters of the enemy were cut to pieces on the spot; for to prevent their ranks from being broken, those who fought in front were bound fast to one another with long chains which were passed through their belts. The fugitives, however, were driven back to their entrenchments, where the Romans beheld a most tragic spectacle. 2 The women, in black garments, stood at the waggons and slew the fugitives — their husbands or brothers or fathers, then strangled their little children and cast them beneath the wheels of the waggons or the feet of the cattle, and then cut their own throats. It is said that one woman hung dangling from the tip of a waggon-pole, with her children tied to either ankle; 3 while the men, for lack of trees, fastened themselves by the neck to the horns of the cattle, or to their legs, then plied the goad, and were dragged or trampled to death as the cattle dashed away. Nevertheless, in spite of such self-destruction, more than sixty thousand were taken prisoners; and those who fell were said to have been twice that number.

4 Now, the enemy’s property became the booty of the soldiers of Marius, but the spoils of battle, the standards, and the trumpets, were brought, we are told, to the camp of Catulus; and Catulus relied chiefly upon this as a proof that the victory was won by his men. Furthermore, a dispute for the honour of the victory arose among the soldiers, as was natural, and the members of an embassy from Parma were chosen to act as arbitrators. These men the soldiers of Catulus conducted among the dead bodies of the enemy, which were clearly seen to have been pierced by their javelins; for these could be known by the name of Catulus which had been cut into the shaft. 5 However, the entire success was attributed to Marius, both on account of his former victory and of his superior rank. Above all, the people hailed him as the third founder of Rome, that peril which he had averted from the city was not less than that of the Gallic invasion; and all of them, as they made merry at home with their wives and children, would bring ceremonial offerings of food and libations of wine to Marius as well as to the gods, and they were insistent that he alone should celebrate both triumphs. 6 Marius, however, would not do this, but celebrated his triumph with Catulus, wishing to show himself a man of moderation after a course of so great good fortune. Perhaps, too, he was afraid of the soldiers, who were drawn up and ready, in case Catulus were deprived of his honour, to prevent Marius also from celebrating a triumph.

28 1 Thus, then, his fifth consulship was coming to an end; but he was as eager for a sixth as another would have been for his first. He tried to win over the people by obsequious attentions, and yielded to the multitude in order to gain its favour, thus doing violence, not only to the dignity and majesty of his high office, but also to his own nature, since he wished to be a compliant man of the people when he was naturally at farthest remove from this. 2 In confronting a political crisis or the tumultuous throng, we are told, his ambition made him most timorous, and that undaunted firmness which he showed in battle forsook him when he faced the popular assemblies, so that he was disconcerted by the most ordinary praise or blame. And yet we are told that when he had bestowed citizenship upon as many as a thousand men of Camerinum for conspicuous bravery in the war, the act was held to be illegal and was impeached by some; to whom he replied that the clash of arms had prevented his hearing the voice of the law. 3 However, he appeared to be in greater fear and terror of the shouting in the popular assemblies. At any rate, while in war he had authority and power because his services were needed, yet in civil life his leadership was more abridged, and he therefore had recourse to the goodwill and favour of the multitude, not caring to be the best man if only he could be the greatest. 4 The consequence was that he came into collision with all the aristocrats. It was Metellus, however, whom he especially feared, a man who had experienced his ingratitude, and one whose genuine excellence made him the natural enemy of those who tried to insinuate themselves by devious methods into popular favour and sought to control the masses by pleasing them. Accordingly, he schemed to banish Metellus from the city. 5 For this purpose he allied himself with Saturninus and Glaucia, men of the greatest effrontery, who had a rabble of needy and noisy fellows at their beck and call, and with their assistance would introduce laws. He also stirred up the soldiery, got them to mingle with the citizens in the assemblies, and thus controlled a faction which could overpower Metellus. Then, according to Rutilius, who is generally a lover of truth and an honest man, but had a private quarrel with Marius, he actually got his sixth consulship by paying down large sums of money among the tribes, and by buying votes made Metellus lose his election to the office, and obtained as his colleague in the consulship Valerius Flaccus, who was more a servant than a colleague. 6 And yet the people had never bestowed so many consulships upon any other man except Corvinus Valerius. In the case of Corvinus, however, forty-five years are said to have elapsed between his first and his last consulship; where Marius, after his first consulship, ran through the other five without a break.

29 1 In this last consulship particularly did Marius make himself hated, because he took part with Saturninus in many of his misdeeds. One of these was the murder of Nonius, whom Saturninus slew because he was a rival candidate for the tribuneship. Then, as tribune, Saturninus introduced his agrarian law, to which was added a clause providing that the senators should come forward and take oath that they would abide by whatsoever the people might vote and make no opposition to it. 2 In the senate Marius made pretence of opposing this part of the law, and declared that he would not take the oath, and that he thought no other sensible man would; for even if the law were not a bad one, it was an insult to the senate that it should be compelled to make such concessions, instead of making them under persuasion and of its own free will. He said this, however, not because it was his real mind, but that he might catch Metellus in the toils of a fatal trick. 3 For he himself regarded lying as part of a man’s excellence and ability, made no account of his agreements with the senators, and did not intend to keep them; whereas he knew that Metellus was a steadfast man, who thought with Pindar that “truth is the foundation of great excellence,” and he therefore wished to bind him beforehand by a statement to the senate that he would not take the oath, and then have his refusal to do so plunge him into a hatred on the part of the people that could never be removed. And this was what came to pass.

4 For Metellus declared that he would not take the oath, and the senate broke up for a while; but after a few days Saturninus summoned the senators to the rostra and tried to force them to take the oath. When Marius came forward there was silence, and the eyes of all were fastened upon him. Then, bidding a long farewell to all his boastful and insincere expressions in the senate, he said his throat was not broad enough to pronounce an opinion once for all upon so important a matter, but that he would take the oath, and obey the law, if it was a law; adding this bit of sophistry as a cloak for his shame. 5 The people, then, delighted at his taking the oath, clapped their hands in applause, but the nobles were terribly dejected and hated Marius for his change of front. Accordingly, all the senators took the oath in order, through fear of the people, until the turn of Metellus came; but Metellus, although his friends earnestly entreated him to take the oath and not subject himself to the irreparable punishments which Saturninus proposed for those who should refuse, would not swerve from his purpose or take the oath, 6 but, adhering to his principles and prepared to suffer any evil rather than do a shameful deed, he left the forum, saying to those about him that to do a wrong thing was mean, and to do the right thing when there was no danger was any man’s way, but that to act honourably when it involved dangers was peculiarly the part of a good and true man. 7 Upon this, Saturninus got a vote passed that the consuls should proclaim Metellus interdicted from fire, water, and shelter; and the meanest part of the populace supported them and was ready to put the man to death. The best citizens, however, sympathised with Metellus and crowded hastily about him, but he would not allow a faction to be raised on his account, and departed from the city, following the dictates of prudence. 8 “For,” said he, “either matters will mend and the people will change their minds and I shall return at their invitation, or, if matters remain as they are, it is best that I should be away.” But what great goodwill and esteem Metellus enjoyed during his exile, and how he spent his time in philosophical studies at Rhodes, will be better told in his Life.

30 1 And now Marius, who was forced, in return for this assistance, to look on quietly while Saturninus ran to extremes of daring and power, brought about unawares a mischief that was not to be cured, but made its way by arms and slaughter directly towards tyranny and subversion of the government. And since he stood in awe of the nobles, while he courted the favour of the multitude, he was led to commit an act of the utmost meanness and duplicity. 2 For when the leading men had come to him by night and were trying to incite him against Saturninus, without their knowledge he introduced Saturninus into the house by another door; then, pretending to both parties that he had a diarrhoea, he would run backwards and forwards in the house, now to the nobles and now to Saturninus, trying to irritate and bring them into collision. 3 However, when the senate and the knights began to combine and give utterance to their indignation, he led his soldiers into the forum, forced the insurgents to take refuge on the Capitol, and compelled them to surrender for lack of water. For he cut off the water-conduits; whereupon they gave up the struggle, called Marius, and surrendered themselves on what was called the public faith. 4 Marius did all he could to save the men, but it was of no avail, and when they came down into the forum they were put to death. This affair made Marius obnoxious alike to the nobles and to the people, and when the time for electing censors came he did not present himself as a candidate, although everyone expected that he would, but allowed other and inferior men to be elected, for fear that he would be defeated. However, he tried to put a good face upon his conduct by saying that he was unwilling to incur the hatred of many citizens by a severe examination into their lives and manners.

31 1 When a decree was introduced recalling Metellus from exile, Marius opposed it strongly both by word and deed, but finding his efforts vain, at last desisted; and after the people had adopted the measure with alacrity, unable to endure the sight of Metellus returning, he set sail for Cappadocia and Galatia, ostensibly to make the sacrifices which he had vowed to the Mother of the Gods, but really having another reason for his journey which the people did not suspect. 2 He had, that is, no natural aptitude for peace or civil life, but had reached his eminence by arms. And now, thinking that his influence and reputation were gradually fading away because of his inactivity and quietude, he sought occasions for new enterprises. For he hoped that if he stirred up the kings of Asia and incited Mithridates to action, who was expected to make war upon Rome, he would at once be chosen to lead the Roman armies against him, and would fill the city with new triumphs, and his own house with Pontic spoils and royal wealth. 3 For this reason, though Mithridates treated him with all deference and respect, he would not bend or yield, but said: “O King, either strive to be stronger than Rome, or do her bidding without a word.” This speech startled the king, who had often heard the Roman speech, but then for the first time in all its boldness.

32 1 On returning to Rome, he built a house for himself near the forum, either, as he himself said, because he was unwilling that those who paid their respects to him should have the trouble of coming a long distance, or because he thought that distance was the reason why he did not have larger crowds at his door than others. The reason, however, was not of this nature; it was rather his inferiority to others in the graces of intercourse and in political helpfulness, which caused him to be neglected, like an instrument of war in time of peace. 2 Of all those who eclipsed him in popular esteem he was most vexed and annoyed by Sulla, whose rise to power was due to the jealousy which the nobles felt towards Marius, and who was making his quarrels with Marius the basis of his political activity. And when Bocchus the Numidian, who had been designated an ally of the Romans, set up trophy-bearing Victories on the Capitol, and by their side gilded figures representing Jugurtha surrendered by him to Sulla, Marius was transported with rage and fury to see Sulla thus appropriating to himself the glory of his achievements, and was making preparations to tear down the votive offerings. 3 But Sulla too was furious, and civil dissension was just on the point of breaking out, when it was stopped by the Social War, which suddenly burst upon the city. That is, the most warlike and most numerous of the Italian peoples combined against Rome, and came within a little of destroying her supremacy, since they were not only strong in arms and men, but also had generals whose daring and ability were amazing and made them a match for the Romans.

33 1 This war, which was varied in its events and most changeful in its fortunes, added much to Sulla’s reputation and power, but took away as much from Marius. For he was slow in making his attacks, and always given to hesitation and delay, whether it was that old age had quenched his wonted energy and fire (for he was now past his sixty-sixth year), or that, as he himself said, a feeling of shame led him to go beyond his powers in trying to endure the hardships of the campaign when his nerves were diseased and his body unfit for work. 2 However, even then he won a great victory in which he slew six thousand of the enemy; and he never allowed them to get a grip upon him, but even when he was hemmed about with trenches bided his time, and was not unduly irritated by their insults and challenges. We are told that Publius Silo, who had the greatest authority and power among the enemy, once said to him, “If thou art a great general, Marius, come down and fight it out with us”; to which Marius answer, “Nay, but do thou, if thou art a great general, force me to fight it out with you against my will.” 3 And at another time, when the enemy had given him an opportunity to attack them, but the Romans had played the coward, and both sides had withdrawn, he called an assembly of his soldiers and said to them: “I do not know whether to call the enemy or you the greater cowards; for they were not able to see your backs, nor you their napes.” At last, however, he gave up his command, on the ground that his infirmities made him quite incapable of exercising it.

34 1 But when the Italians had at last made their submission, and many persons at Rome were suing for the command in the Mithridatic war, with the aid of the popular leaders, contrary to all expectation the tribune Sulpicius, a most audacious man, brought Marius forward and proposed to make him pro-consul in command against Mithridates. The people were divided in opinion, some preferring Marius, and others called for Sulla and bidding Marius go to the warm baths at Baiae and look out for his health, since he was worn out with old age and rheums, as he himself said. 2 For at Baiae, near Cape Misenum, Marius owned an expensive house, which had appointments more luxurious and effeminate than became a man who had taken active part in so many wars and campaigns. This house, we are told, Cornelia bought for seventy-five thousand drachmas and not long afterwards Lucius Lucullus purchased it for two million five hundred thousand. So quickly did lavish expenditure spring up, and so great an increase in luxury did life in the city take on. 3 Marius, however, showing a spirit of keen emulation that might have characterized a youth, shook off old age and infirmity and went down daily into the Campus Martius, where he exercised himself with the young men and showed that he was still agile in arms and capable of feats of horsemanship, although his bulk was not well set up in his old age, but ran to corpulence and weight.

4 Some, then, were pleased to have him thus engaged, and would go down into the Campus and witness his emulation in competitive contests; but the better part were moved to pity at the sight of his greed and ambition, because, though he had risen from poverty to the greatest wealth and from obscurity to the highest place, he knew not how to set bounds to his good fortune, and was not content to be admired and enjoy quietly what he had, but as if in need of all things, and after winning triumphs and fame, 5 was setting out, with all his years upon him, for Cappadocia and the Euxine sea, to fight it out with Archelaüs and Neoptolemus, the satraps of Mithridates. And the justification for this which Marius offered was thought to be altogether silly; he said, namely, that he wished to take part personally in the campaign in order to give his son a military training.

35 1 These things brought to a head the secret disease from which the state had long been suffering, and Marius found a most suitable instrument for the destruction of the commonwealth in the audacity of Sulpicius, who was in all things an admirer and an imitator of Saturninus, except that he charged him with timidity and hesitation in his political measures. 2 Sulpicius himself was not a man of hesitation, but kept six hundred of the Knights about him as a body-guard, which he called his anti-senate; he also made an attack with armed men upon the consuls as they were holding an assembly, and when one of them fled from the forum, Sulpicius seized his son and butchered him; Sulla, however, the other consul, as he was being pursued past the house of Marius, did what no one would have expected and burst into the house. His pursuers ran past the house and therefore missed him, and it is said that Marius himself sent him off safely by another door so that he came in haste to his camp. 3 But Sulla himself, in his Memoirs, says he did not fly for refuge to the house of Marius, but withdrew thither in order to consult with Marius about the step which Sulpicius was trying to force him to take (by surrounding him with drawn swords and driving him to the house of Marius), and that finally he went from there to the forum and rescinded the consular decree for the suspension of public business, as Sulpicius and his party demanded. 4 When this had been done, Sulpicius, who was now master of the situation, got the command conferred upon Marius by vote of the people; and Marius, who was making his preparations for departure, sent out two military tribunes to take over the command of Sulla’s army. Sulla, however, called upon his soldiers (who were no fewer than thirty-five thousand legionaries) to resent this, and led them forth against Rome. His soldiers also fell upon the tribunes whom Marius had sent and slew them.

5 Marius, too, put to death many of Sulla’s friends in Rome, and proclaimed freedom to the slaves if they would fight on his side. It is said, however, that only three of them joined his ranks, and after a feeble resistance to Sulla’s entry into the city he was speedily driven out and took to flight. As soon as he had made his escape from the city his companions were scattered, and since it was dark, he took refuge at one of his farmsteads, called Solonium. 6 He also sent his son to get provisions from the estate of his father-in law, Mucius, which was not far off, while he himself went down to the coast at Ostia, where a friend of his, Numerius, had provided a vessel for him. Then, without waiting for his son, but taking his step-son Granius with him, he set sail. The younger Marius reached the estate of Mucius, but as he was getting supplies and packing them up, day overtook him and he did not altogether escape the vigilance of his enemies; for some horsemen came riding towards the place, moved by suspicion. 7 When the overseer of the farm saw them coming, he hid Marius in a waggon loaded with beans, yoked up his oxen, and met the horsemen as he was driving the waggon to the city. In this way young Marius was conveyed to the house of his wife, where he got what he wanted, and then by night came to the sea, boarded a ship that was bound for Africa, and crossed over.

36 1 The elder Marius, after putting to sea, was borne by a favouring wind along the coast of Italy; but since he was afraid of one Geminius, who was a powerful man in Terracina and an enemy of his, he told his sailors to keep clear of Terracina. The sailors were willing enough to do as he wished, but the wind veered round and blew towards the shore, bringing in a heavy surge, and it was thought that the vessel would not hold out against the beating of the waves; besides, Marius was in a wretched plight from sea-sickness, and therefore they made their way, though with difficulty, to the coast near Circeii. 2 Then, as the storm was increasing and their provisions were failing, they landed from the vessel and wandered about. They had no definite object in view, but, as is usual in cases of great perplexity, sought always to escape the present evil as the most grievous, and fixed their hopes on the unknown future. For the land was their enemy, and the sea an enemy as well; they were afraid they might fall in with men, and they were afraid they might not fall in with men because they had no provisions. 3 However, late in the day they came upon a few herdsmen; these had nothing to give them in their need, but they recognized Marius and bade him go away as fast as he could; for a little while before numerous horsemen had been seen riding about there in search of him. 4 Thus at his wits’ end, and, what was worst of all, his companions fainting with hunger, he turned aside for the while from the road, plunged into a deep forest, and there spent the night in great distress. But the next day, compelled by want, and wishing to make use of his strength before it failed him altogether, he wandered along the shore, trying to encourage his companions, and begging them not to give up the struggle before his last hope could be realized, for which he was still reserving himself in reliance on ancient prophecies. 5 When, that is, he was quite young and living in the country, he had caught in his cloak a falling eagle’s nest, which had seven young ones in it; at sight of this, his parents were amazed, and made enquiries of the seers, who told them that their son would be most illustrious of men, and was destined to receive the highest command and power seven times.

6 Some say that this really happened to Marius; but others say that those who heard the story from him at this time and during the rest of his flight, believed, and recorded it, though it was wholly fabulous. For, they say, an eagle does not lay more than two eggs at one time, and Musaeus also was wrong when, speaking of the eagle, he says:

“Three indeed she layeth, and two hatcheth, but one only doth she feed.”

However, that Marius, during his flight and in his extremest difficulties, often said that he should attain to a seventh consulship, is generally admitted.

37 1 But presently, when they were about twenty furlongs distant from Minturnae, an Italian city, they saw from afar a troop of horsemen riding towards them, and also, as it chanced, two merchant vessels sailing along. Accordingly, with all the speed and strength they had, they ran down to the sea, threw themselves into the water, and began to swim to the ships. Granius and his party reached one of the ships and crossed over to the opposite island, 2 Aenaria by name;e 2 Marius himself, who was heavy and unwieldy, two slaves with toil and difficulty held above water and put into the other ship, the horsemen being now at hand and calling out from the shore to the sailors either to bring the vessel to shore or to throw Marius overboard and sail whither they pleased. But since Marius supplicated them with tears in his eyes, the masters of the vessel, after changing their minds often in a short time, nevertheless replied to the horsemen that they would not surrender Marius. 3 The horsemen rode away in a rage, and the sailors, changing their plan again, put in towards the shore; and after casting anchor at the mouth of the Liris, where the river expands into a lake, they advised Marius to leave the vessel, take some food ashore with him, and recruit his strength after his hardships until a good wind for sailing should arise; this usually arose, they said, when the wind from the sea died away and a tolerably strong breeze blew from the marshes. Marius was persuaded to follow their advice; so the sailors carried him ashore, and he lay down in some grass, without the slightest thought of what was to come. 4 Then the sailors at once boarded their vessel, hoisted anchor, and took to flight, feeling that it was neither honourable for them to surrender Marius nor safe to rescue him. Thus, forsaken of all men, he lay a long time speechless on the shore, but recovered himself at last and tried to walk along, the lack of any path making his progress laborious. 5 He made his way through deep marshes and ditches full of mud and water, until he came to the hut of an old man who got his living from the water. At his feet Marius fell down and besought him to save and help a man who, in case he escaped his present perils, would recompense him beyond all his hopes. Then the man, who either knew Marius from of old or saw that in his face which won the regard due to superior rank, told him that if he merely wanted to rest, the cabin would suffice, but that if he wandering about trying to escape pursuers, he could be hidden in a place that was more quiet. 6 Marius begged that this might be done, and the man took him to the marsh, bade him crouch down in a hollow place by the side of the river, and threw over him a mass of reeds and other material which was light enough to cover without injuring him.

38 1 Not much time had elapsed, however, when a din and tumult at the hut fell upon the ears of Marius. For Geminius had sent a number of men from Terracina in pursuit of him, some of whom had chanced to come to the old man’s hut, and were frightening and berating him for having received and hidden an enemy of Rome. 2 Marius therefore rose from his hiding-place, stripped off his clothes, and threw himself into the thick and muddy water of the marsh. Here he could not elude the men who were in search of him, led him naked to Minturnae, and handed him over to the magistrates there. Now, word had already been sent to every city that Marius was to be pursued by the authorities and killed by his captors. 3 But nevertheless, the magistrates decided to deliberate on the matter first; so they put Marius for safe-keeping in the house of a woman named Fannia, who was thought to be hostile to him on account of an ancient grievance.

Fannia, that is, had been married to Titinnius; but she had separated herself from him and demanded back her dowry, which was considerable. Her husband, however, had accused her of adultery; and Marius, who was serving in his sixth consulship, had presided over the trial. 4 When the case was pleaded, and it appeared that Fannia had been a dissolute woman, and that her husband had known this and yet had taken her to wife and lived with her a long time, Marius was disgusted with both of them, and decreed that the husband should pay back his wife’s dowry, while at the same time he imposed upon the woman, as a mark of infamy, a fine of four coppers.

5 However, at the time of which I speak, Fannia did not act like a woman who had been wronged, but when she saw Marius, she put far from her all resentment, cared for him as well as she could, and tried to encourage him. Marius commended her, and said he was of good courage; for an excellent sign had been given him. And this sign was as follows.

When, as he was led along, he had come to the house of Fannia, the door flew open and an ass ran out, in order to get a drink at a spring that flowed hard by; 6 with a saucy and exultant look at Marius the animal at first stopped in front of him, and then, giving a magnificent bray, went frisking past him triumphantly. From this Marius drew an omen and concluded that the Deity was indicating a way of escape for him by sea rather than by land; for the ass made no account of its dry fodder, but turned from that to the water.

After explaining this to Fannia, Marius lay down to rest alone, after ordering the door of the apartment to be closed.

39 1 Upon deliberation, the magistrates and councillors of Minturnae decided not to delay, but to put Marius to death. No one of the citizens, however, would undertake the task, so a horseman, either a Gaul or a Cimbrian (for the story is told both ways), took a sword and went into the room where Marius was. 2 Now, that part of the room where Marius happened to be lying had not a very good light, but was gloomy, and we are told that to the soldier the eyes of Marius seemed to shoot out a strong flame, and that a loud voice issued from the shadows saying, “Man, does thou dare to slay Caius Marius?” At once, then, the Barbarian fled from the room, threw his sword down on the ground, and dashed out of doors, with this one cry: “I cannot kill Caius Marius.” 3 Consternation reigned, of course, and then came pity, a change of heart, and self-reproach for having come to so unlawful and ungrateful a decision against a man who had been the saviour of Italy, and who ought in all decency to be helped. “So, then,” the talk ran, “let him go where he will as an exile, to suffer elsewhere his allotted fate. And let us pray that the gods may not visit us with their displeasure for casting Marius out of our city in poverty and rags.” Moved by such considerations, they rushed into his room in a body, surrounded him, and began to lead him forth to the sea. 4 But although this one and that one were eager to do him some service and all made what haste they could, still there was delay. For the grove of Marica, as it was called, which was held in veneration, and from which nothing was permitted to be carried out that had ever been carried in, lay between them and the sea as they were going, and if they went round it they must needs lose time. At last, however, one of the older men cried out and said that no path could forbid men’s steps and passage if it were the path of safety for Marius. And the speaker himself was the first to take some of the things that were being carried to the ship and pass through the holy place.

40 1 Everything was speedily provided through such readiness as this, and a certain Belaeus furnished a ship for Marius. Belaeus afterwards had a painting made representing these scenes, and dedicated it in the temple at the spot where Marius embarked and put to sea. Favoured by the wind he was borne along by chance to the island of Aenaria, where he found Granius and the rest of his friends, and set sail with them for Africa. 2 But their supply of fresh water failed, and they were compelled to touch at Erycina in Sicily. In this neighbourhood, as it chanced, the Roman quaestor was on the watch, and almost captured Marius himself as he landed; he did kill about sixteen of his men who came ashore for water. Marius therefore put out to sea with all speed and crossed to the island of Meninx, where he first learned that his son had come off safely with Cethegus, and that they were on their way to Iampsas the king of Numidia, intending to ask his aid. 3 At this news Marius was a little refreshed, and made bold to push on from the island to the neighbourhood of Carthage.

The Roman governor of Africa at this time was Sextilius, a man who had received neither good nor ill at the hands of Marius, but whom, as it was expected, pity alone would move to give him aid. Hardly, however, had Marius landed with a few companions, when an official met him, stood directly in front of him, and said: “Sextilius the governor forbids thee, Marius, to set foot in Africa; and if thou disobeyest, he declares that he will uphold the decrees of the senate and treat thee as an enemy of Rome.” 4 When he heard this, Marius was rendered speechless by grief and indignation, and for a long time kept quiet, looking sternly at the official. Then, when asked by him what he had to say, and what answer he would make to the governor, he answered with a deep groan: “Tell him, then, that thou hast seen Caius Marius a fugitive, seated amid the ruins of Carthage.” And it was not inaptly that he compared the fate of that city with his own reversal of fortune.

5 Meanwhile Iampsas the king of Numidia, hesitating which course to take, did indeed treat the younger Marius and his party with respect, but always had some excuse for detaining them when they wished to go away, and clearly had no good end in view in thus postponing their departure. However, something occurred which, though not at all extraordinary, led to their escape. The younger Marius, that is, being a handsome fellow, one of the concubines of the king was pained to see him treated unworthily, and this feeling of compassion ripened into love. 6 At first, then, Marius repelled the woman’s advances; but when he saw that there was no other way of escape for him and his friends, and that her behaviour was based on a genuine affection, he accepted her favours, whereupon she helped him in getting off, and he ran away with his friends and made his escape to his father. After father and son had embraced one another, they walked along the sea-shore, and there they saw some scorpions fighting, which the elder Marius regarded as a bad omen. 7 At once, therefore, they boarded a fishing-boat and crossed over to the island of Cercina, which was not far distant from the mainland;f and scarcely had they put out from land when horsemen sent by the king were seen riding towards the spot whence they had sailed. It would seem that Marius never escaped a greater peril than this.

41 1 But in Rome, Sulla was heard of as waging war with the generals of Mithridates in Boeotia, and the consuls quarrelled and were resorting to arms. A battle took place, Octavius won the day, cast out Cinna, who was trying to be too arbitrary in his rule, and put Cornelius Merula in his place as consul; whereupon Cinna assembled a force from the other parts of Italy and made war anew upon Octavius and his colleague. 2 When Marius heard of these things, he thought best to sail thither as fast as he could; so taking with him from Africa some Moorish horsemen, and some Italians who had wandered thither, the number of both together not exceeding a thousand, he put to sea. Putting in at Telamon in Tyrrhenia, and landing there, he proclaimed freedom to the slaves; he also won over the neighbourhood, who came flocking down to the sea attracted by his fame, and in a few days had assembled a large force and manned forty ships.

3 And now, knowing that Octavius was a most excellent man and wished to rule in the justest way, but that Cinna was distrusted by Sulla and was making war upon the established constitution, he determined to join Cinna with his forces. Accordingly he sent to Cinna and offered to obey him in everything as consul. Cinna accepted his offer, named him pro-consul, and sent him the fasces and other insignia of the office. 4 Marius, however, declared that these decorations were not suited to his fortunes, and in mean attire, his hair uncut since the day of his flight, being now over seventy years of age, came with slow steps to meet the consul. For he wished that men should pity him; but with his appeal for compassion there was mingled the look that was natural to him and now more terrifying than ever, and through his downcast mien there flashed a spirit which had been, not humbled, but made savage by his reverses.

42 1 After greeting Cinna and presenting himself to Cinna’s soldiers, he at once began his work and greatly changed the posture of affairs. In the first place, by cutting off the grain-ships with his fleet and plundering the merchants, he made himself master of the city’s supplies; next, he sailed to the maritime cities and took them; and finally, he seized Ostia itself, which was treacherously surrendered to him, plundering the property there and killing most of its inhabitants, and by throwing a bridge across the river completely cut off the enemy from such stores as might come by sea. 2 Then he set out and marched with his army towards the city, and occupied the hill called Janiculum. Octavius damaged his own cause, not so much through lack of skill, as by a too scrupulous observance of the laws, wherein he unwisely neglected the needs of the hour. For though many urged him to call the slaves to arms under promise of freedom, he said he would not make bondmen members of the state from which he was trying to exclude Marius in obedience to the laws. 3 Moreover, when Metellus (son of the Metellus who had commanded in Africa and had been banished through the intrigues of Marius) came to Rome, it was thought that he was far superior to Octavius as a general, and the soldiers forsook Octavius and came to him, entreating him to take the command and save the city; for they would make a good fight, they said, and win the victory if they got a tried and efficient leader. Metellus, however, was indignant at them and bade them go back to the consul; whereupon they went off to the enemy. Metellus also left the city, despairing of its safety.

4 But Octavius was persuaded by certain Chaldaeans, sacrificers, and interpreters of the Sibylline books to remain in the city, on the assurance that matters would turn out well. For it would seem that this man, although he was in other ways the most sensible man in Rome, and most careful to maintain the dignity of the consular office free from undue influence in accordance with the customs of the country and its laws, which he regarded as unchangeable ordinances, had a weakness in this direction, since he spent more time with charlatans and seers than with men who were statesmen and soldiers. 5 This man, then, before Marius entered the city, was dragged down from the rostra by men who had been sent on before, and butchered; and we are told that a Chaldaean chart was found in his bosom after he had been slain. Now, it seems very unaccountable that, of two most illustrious commanders, Marius should succeed by regarding divinations, but Octavius should be ruined.

43 1 Matters being at this pass, the senate met and sent a deputation to Cinna and Marius, begging them to enter the city and spare the citizens. Cinna, accordingly, as consul, seated on his chair of office, received the embassy and gave them a kindly answer; but Marius, standing by the consul’s chair without speaking a word, made it clear all the while, by the heaviness of his countenance and the gloominess of his look, that he would at once fill the city with slaughter. 2 After the conference was over they moved on towards the city. Cinna entered it with a body-guard, but Marius halted at the gates and angrily dissembled, saying that he was an exile and was excluded from the country by the law, and if his presence there was desired, the vote which cast him out must be rescinded by another vote, since, indeed, he was a law-abiding man and was returning to a free city. 3 So the people were summoned to the forum; and before three or four of the tribes had cast their votes, he threw aside his feigning and all that petty talk about being an exile, and entered the city, having as his body-guard a picked band of the slaves who had flocked to his standard, to whom he had given the name of Bardyaei. These fellows killed many of the citizens at a word of command from him, many, too, at a mere nod; and at last, when Ancharius, a man of senatorial and praetorial dignity, met Marius and got no salutation from him, they struck him down with their swords before the face of their master. 4 After this, whenever anybody else greeted Marius and got no salutation or greeting in return, this of itself was a signal for the man’s slaughter in the very street, so that even the friends of Marius, to a man, were full of anguish and horror whenever they drew near to greet him. So many were slain that at last Cinna’s appetite for murder was dulled and sated; but Marius, whose anger increased day by day and thirsted for blood, kept on killing all whom he held in any suspicion whatsoever. 5 Every road and every city was filled with men pursuing and hunting down those who sought to escape or had hidden themselves. Moreover, the trust men placed in the ties of hospitality and friendship were found to be no security against the strokes of Fortune; for few there were, all told, who did not betray to the murderers those who had taken refuge with them. 6 All the more worthy of praise and admiration, then, was the behaviour of the slaves of Cornutus. They concealed their master in his house; then they hung up by the neck one of the many dead bodies that lay about, put a gold ring on its finger, and showed it to the guards of Marius, after which they decked it out as if it were their master’s body and gave it burial. Nobody suspected the ruse, and thus Cornutus escaped notice and was conveyed by his slaves into Gaul.

44 1 Marcus Antonius also, the orator, found a faithful friend, but it did not save him. For this friend, who was a poor plebeian and had received into his house a leading man of Rome, whom he wished to entertain as well as he could, sent a slave to a neighbouring innkeeper to get some wine. As the slave tasted the wine more carefully than usual and ordered some of better quality, the innkeeper asked him what was the reason that he did not buy the new and ordinary wine as usual, instead of wanting some that was choice and expensive. 2 The slave, in his great simplicity, conscious that he was dealing with an old acquaintance, told him that his master was entertaining Marcus Antonius, who was concealed at his house. As soon as the slave had gone home, the innkeeper, who was an impious and pestilent fellow, hastened in person to find Marius, who was already at supper, and on being introduced, promised to betray Antonius to him. 3 When Marius heard this, as we are told, a loud cry burst from his lips and he clapped his hands for joy; he actually came near springing from his seat and hurrying to the place himself, but his friends restrained him; so he sent Annius and some soldiers with him, ordering them to bring him the head of Antonius with all speed. Accordingly, when they were come to the house, Annius stopped at the door, while the soldiers climbed the stairs and entered the room. But when they beheld Antonius, every man began to urge and push forward a companion to do the murder instead of himself. 4 So indescribable, however, as it would seem, was the grace and charm of his words, that when Antonius began to speak and pray for his life, not a soldier had the hardihood to lay hands on him or even to look him in the face, but they all bent their heads down and wept. Perceiving that there was some delay, Annius went upstairs, and saw that Antonius was pleading and that the soldiers were abashed and enchanted by his words; so he cursed his men, and running up to Antonius, with his own hands cut off his head.

5 Again, the friends of Catulus Lutatius, who had been a colleague of Marius in the consulship, and with him had celebrated a triumph over the Cimbri, interceded with him and begged Marius to spare his life; but the only answer they could get was: “He must die.” Catulus therefore shut himself up in a room, lighted up a great quantity of charcoal, and was suffocated.

6 But headless trunks thrown into the streets and trampled under foot excited no pity, though everybody trembled and shuddered at the sight. The people were most distressed however, by the wanton licence of the Bardyaei, as they were called, who butchered fathers of families in their houses, outraged their children, violated their wives, and could not be checked in their career of rapine and murder until Cinna and Sertorius, after taking counsel together, fell upon them as they were asleep in their camp, and transfixed them all with javelins.

45 1 Meanwhile, as if a change of wind were coming on, messengers arrived from all quarters with reports that Sulla had finished the war with Mithridates, had recovered the provinces, and was sailing for home with a large force. This gave a brief stay and a slight cessation to the city’s unspeakable evils, since men supposed that the war was all but upon them. Accordingly, Marius was elected consul for the seventh time, and assuming office on the Calends of January, which is the first day of the year, he had a certain Sextus Lucinus thrown down the Tarpeian rock. This was thought to be a most significant portent of the evils that were once more to fall upon the partisans of Marius and upon the city.

2 But Marius himself, now worn out with toils, deluged, as it were, with anxieties, and wearied, could not sustain his spirits, which shook within him as he again faced the overpowering thought of a new war, of fresh struggles, of terrors known by experience to be dreadful, and of utter weariness. He reflected, too, that it was not Octavius or Merula in command of a promiscuous throng and a seditious rabble against whom he was now to run the hazard of war, but that the famous Sulla was coming against him, the man who had once ejected him from the country, and had now shut Mithridates up to the shores of the Euxine Sea. 3 Tortured by such reflections, and bringing into review his long wandering, his flights, and his perils, as he was driven over land and sea, he fell into a state of dreadful despair, and was a prey to nightly terrors and harassing dreams, wherein he would ever seem to hear a voice saying: —

“Dreadful, indeed, is the lions’ lair, even though it be empty.”

And since above all things he dreaded the sleepless nights, he gave himself up to drinking-bouts and drunkenness at unseasonable hours and in a manner unsuited to his years, trying thus to induce sleep as a way of escape from his anxious thoughts. 4 And finally, when one came with tidings from the sea, fresh terrors fell upon him, partly because he feared the future, and partly because he was wearied to satiety by the present, so that it needed only a slight impulse to throw him into a pleurisy, as Poseidonius the philosopher relates, who says that he went in personally and conversed with Marius on the subjects of his embassy after Marius had fallen ill. 5 But a certain Caius Piso, an historian, relates that Marius, while walking about with his friends after supper, fell to talking about the events of his life, beginning with his earliest days, and after recounting his frequent reversals of fortune, from good to bad and from bad to good, said that it was not the part of a man of sense to trust himself to Fortune any longer; and after this utterance bade his friends farewell, kept his bed for seven days consecutively, and so died. 6 Some, however, say that his ambitious nature was completely revealed during his illness by his being swept into a strange delusion. He thought that he had the command in the Mithridatic war, and then, just as he used to do in his actual struggles, he would indulge in all sorts of attitudes and gestures, accompanying them with shrill cries and frequent calls to battle. 7 So fierce and inexorable was the passion for directing that war which had been instilled into him by his envy and lust of power. And therefore, though he had lived to be seventy years old, and was the first man to be elected consul for the seventh time, and was possessed of a house and wealth which would have sufficed for many kingdoms at once, he lamented his fortune, in that he was dying before he had satisfied and completed his desires.

46 1 Plato, however, when he was now at the point of death, lauded his guardian genius and Fortune because, to begin with, he had been born a man and not an irrational animal; again, because he was a Greek and not a Barbarian; and still again, because his birth had fallen in the times of Socrates.  And indeed they say that Antipater of Tarsus, when he was in like manner near his end and was enumerating the blessings of his life, did not forget to mention his prosperous voyage from home to Athens, just as though he thought that every gift of a benevolent Fortune called for great gratitude, and kept it to the last in his memory, which is the most secure storehouse of blessings for a man. 3 Unmindful and thoughtless persons, on the contrary, let all that happens to them slip away as time goes on; therefore, since they do not hold or keep anything, they are always empty of blessings, but full of hopes, and are looking away to the future while they neglect the present. 4 And yet the future may be prevented by Fortune, while the present cannot be taken away; nevertheless these men cast aside the present gift of Fortune as something alien to them, while they dream of the future and its uncertainties. And this is natural. For they assemble and heap together the external blessings of life before reason and education have enabled them to build any foundation and basement for these things, and therefore they cannot satisfy the insatiable appetite of their soul.

5 So, then, Marius died, seventeen days after entering upon his seventh consulship. And immediately Rome was filled with great rejoicing and a confident hope that she was rid of a grievous tyranny; but in a few days the people perceived that they had got a new and vigorous master in exchange for the old one; such bitterness and cruelty did the younger Marius display, putting to death the best and most esteemed citizens. 6 He got the reputation of being bold and fond of danger in fighting his enemies, and in the beginning was called a son of Mars; but his deeds soon showed what he really was, and he was called instead a son of Venus. And finally he was shut up in Praeneste by Sulla, and after many vain attempts to save his life, when the city was captured and he could not escape, he slew himself.

Lysander

433 1 1 The treasury of the Acanthians at Delphi bears this inscription: “Brasidas and the Acanthians, with spoil from the Athenians.” For this reason many think that the marble figure standing within the edifice, by the door, is a statue of Brasidas. But it really represents Lysander, with his hair very long, after the ancient custom, and growing a generous beard. 2 For it is not true, as some state, that because the Argives, after their great defeat, shaved their heads for sorrow, the Spartans, in contrary fashion, let their hair grow long in exultation over their victory; nor was it because the Bacchiadae, when they fled from Corinth to Lacedaemon, looked mean and unsightly from having shaved their heads, that the Spartans, on their part, became eager to wear their hair long; but this custom also goes back to Lycurgus. 434 And he is reported to have said that a fine head of hair makes the handsome more comely to look upon, and the ugly more terrible.

2 1 The father of Lysander, Aristocleitus, is said to have been of the lineage of the Heracleidae, though not of the royal family. But Lysander was reared in poverty, and showed himself as much as any man conformable to the customs of his people; of a manly spirit, too, and superior to every pleasure, excepting only that which their good deeds bring to those who are successful and honoured. To this pleasure it is no disgrace for the youth in Sparta to succumb. 2 Indeed, from the very first they wish their boys to be sensitive towards public opinion, distressed by censure, and exalted by praise; and he who is insensible and stolid in these matters, is looked down upon as without ambition for excellence, and a cumberer of the ground. Ambition, then, and the spirit of emulation, were firmly implanted in him by his Laconian training, and no great fault should be found with his natural disposition on this account. 3 But he seems to have been naturally subservient to men of power and influence, beyond what was usual in a Spartan, and content to endure an arrogant authority for the sake of gaining his ends, a trait which some hold to be no small part of political ability. And Aristotle, when he sets forth that great natures, like those of Socrates and Plato and Heracles, have a tendency to melancholy, writes also that Lysander, not immediately, but when well on in years, was a prey to melancholy.

4 But what is most peculiar in him is that, though he bore poverty well, and though he was never mastered nor even corrupted by money, yet he filled his country full of wealth and the love of wealth, and made her cease to be admired for not admiring wealth, importing as he did an abundance of gold and silver after the war with Athens, although he kept not a single drachma for himself. 5 And when Dionysius the tyrant sent his daughters some costly tunics of Sicilian make, he would not receive them, saying he was afraid they would make his daughters look more ugly. But a little later, when he was sent as ambassador to the same tyrant from the same city, and was presented by him with two robes, and ordered to choose which of them he would, and carry it to his daughter, he said that she could choose better herself, and went off with both of them.

3 1 The Peloponnesian war had now been carried on for a long time, and after their disaster in Sicily it was expected that the Athenians would straightway lose their control of the sea, and presently give up the struggle altogether. But Alcibiades, returning from exile and taking the command, wrought a great change, and made his countrymen again a match for their enemies by sea. 2 The Lacedaemonians, accordingly, were frightened again, and summoning up fresh zeal for the war, which required, as they thought, an able leader and a more powerful armament, sent out Lysander to take command upon the sea. When he came to Ephesus, he found the city well disposed to him and very zealous in the Spartan cause, although it was then in a low state of prosperity and in danger of becoming utterly barbarized by the admixture of Persian customs, since it was enveloped by Lydia, and the King’s generals made it their headquarters. 3 He therefore pitched his camp there, and ordered the merchant vessels from every quarter to land their cargoes there, and made preparations for the building of triremes. Thus he revived the traffic of their harbours, and the business of their market, and filled their houses and workshops with profits, so that from that time on, and through his efforts, the city had hopes of achieving the stateliness and grandeur which it now enjoys.

4 1 When he learned that Cyrus, the King’s son, was come to Sardis, 435 he went up to confer with him and to accuse Tissaphernes, who, though he was commissioned to aid the Lacedaemonians and drive the Athenians from the sea, was thought to be remiss in his duty, through the efforts of Alcibiades, showing lack of zeal, and destroying the efficiency of the fleet by the meagre subsidies which he gave. 2 Now Cyrus was well pleased that Tissaphernes, who was a base man and privately at feud with him, should be accused and maligned. By this means, then, as well as by his behaviour in general, Lysander made himself agreeable, and by the submissive deference of his conversation, above all else, he won the heart of the young prince, and roused him to prosecute the war with vigour. 3 At a banquet which Cyrus gave him as he was about to depart, the prince begged him not to reject the tokens of his friendliness, but to ask plainly for whatever he desired, since nothing whatsoever would be refused him. “Since, then,” said Lysander in reply, “thou art so very kind, I beg and entreat thee, Cyrus, to add an obol to the pay of my sailors, that they may get four obols instead of three.” 4 Cyrus, accordingly, delighted with his public spirit, gave him ten thousand darics, out of which he added the obol to the pay of his seamen, and, by the renown thus won, soon emptied the ships of his enemies. For most of their seamen came over to those who offered higher pay, and those who remained were listless and mutinous, and gave daily trouble to their officers. 5 However, although he had thus injured and weakened his enemies, Lysander shrank from a naval battle, through fear of Alcibiades, who was energetic, had a greater number of ships, and in all his battles by land and sea up to that time had come off victorious.

5 1 But after this, Alcibiades sailed away from Samos to Phocaea, leaving Antiochus, his pilot, in command of the fleet; and Antiochus, as if in bold mockery of Lysander, put in to the harbour of Ephesus with two triremes, and rowed ostentatiously past his ships, as they lay drawn up on shore, with noise and laughter. Lysander was incensed, and launching at first only a few of his triremes, pursued him; then seeing that the Athenians were coming to the rescue, he manned others, and at last the action became general. 2 Lysander was victorious, too, captured fifteen triremes, and set up a trophy. Thereupon the people of Athens, flying into a passion, deposed Alcibiades from his command and finding himself slighted and abused by the soldiers at Samos, he left the camp and sailed off to the Chersonese. This battle, then, although actually not a great one, was made memorable by its bearing on the fortunes of Alcibiades.

3 Lysander now summoned from their various cities to Ephesus men whom he saw to be most eminent for confidence and daring, and sowed in their minds the seeds of the revolutionary decadarchies afterwards instituted by him, urging and inciting them to form political clubs in their several cities, and apply themselves to public affairs, assuring them that as soon as the Athenian empire was destroyed, they could rid themselves of their democracies and become themselves supreme in power. 4 Moreover, by actual benefits he gave them all a confidence in this future, promoting those who were already his friends and allies to large enterprises and honours and commands, and taking a share himself in their injustice and wickedness in order to gratify their rapacity. Therefore all attached themselves to him, expecting to attain all their highest ambitions if only he remained in power. 5 Therefore, too, they neither looked kindly upon Callicratidas at the first, when he came to succeed Lysander in the admiralty, nor afterwards, when he had shown by manifest proofs that he was the justest and noblest of men, 436 were they pleased with the manner of his leadership, which had a certain Doric simplicity and sincerity. They did, indeed, admire his virtue, as they would the beauty of a hero’s statue; but they yearned for the zealous support of Lysander, and missed the interest which he took in the welfare of his partisans, so that when he sailed away they were dejected and shed tears.

6 1 Lysander made these men yet more disaffected towards Callicratidas. He also sent back to Sardis what remained of the money which Cyrus had given him for the navy, bidding Callicratidas ask for it himself, if he wished, and see to the maintenance of his soldiers. 2 And finally, as he sailed away, he called Callicratides to witness that the fleet which he handed over to him was in command of the sea. But he, wishing to prove the emptiness and vanity of this ambitious boast, said: “In that case, keep Samos on the left, sail to Miletus, and there hand the triremes over to me; surely we need not fear to sail past the enemy at Samos if we are masters of the sea.” 3 To this Lysander answered that Callicratidas, and not he, was in command of the ships, and sailed off to Peloponnesus, leaving Callicratidas in great perplexity. For neither had he brought money from home with him, nor could he bear to lay the cities under forced contribution when they were already in an evil plight. 4 The only course left, therefore, was to go to the doors of the King’s generals, as Lysander had done, and ask for money. For this he was of all men least fitted by nature, being of a free and lofty spirit, and one who thought any and every defeat of Greeks at the hands of Greeks more becoming to them than visits of flattery to the houses of Barbarians, who had much gold, but nothing else worth while.

5 Constrained, however, by his necessities, he went up into Lydia, proceeded at once to the house of Cyrus, and ordered word to be sent in that Callicratidas the admiral was come and wished to confer with him. And when one of the door-keepers said to him: “But Cyrus is not at leisure now, Stranger, for he is at his wine”; Callicratidas replied with the utmost simplicity: “No matter, I will stand here and wait till he has had his wine.” 6 This time, then, he merely withdrew, after being taken for a rustic fellow and laughed at by the Barbarians. But when he was come a second time to the door and was refused admittance, he was indignant, and set off for Ephesus, invoking many evils upon those who first submitted to the mockery of the Barbarians and taught them to be insolent because of their wealth, 7 and swearing roundly to the bystanders that as soon as he got back to Sparta, he would do all he could to reconcile the Greeks with one another, in order that they might themselves strike fear into the Barbarians, and cease soliciting their power against each other.

7 1 But Callicratidas, after cherishing purposes worthy of Lacedaemon, and showing himself worthy to compete with the most eminent of the Greeks by reason of his righteousness, magnanimity, and valour, not long afterwards lost the sea-fight at Arginusae, and vanished from among men. Then, their cause declining, the allies sent an embassy to Sparta and asked that Lysander be made admiral, declaring that they would grapple much more vigorously with the situation if he were their commander. 2 Cyrus also sent to make the same request. Now the Lacedaemonians had a law forbidding that the same man should be admiral twice, and yet they wished to gratify their allies; they therefore invested a certain Aracus with the title of admiral, and sent out Lysander as vice-admiral, nominally, but really with supreme power. So he came out, as most of those who had political power and influence in the cities had long desired, for they expected to become still stronger by his aid when the popular governments had been utterly overthrown; 3 but to those who loved simplicity and nobility 437 in the character of their leaders, Lysander, compared with Callicratidas, seemed to be unscrupulous and subtle, a man who tricked out most of what he did in war with the varied hues of deceit, extolling justice if it was at the same time profitable, but if not, adopting the advantageous as the honourable course, and not considering truth as inherently better than falsehood, but bounding his estimate of either by the needs of the hour. 4 Those who demanded that the descendants of Heracles should not wage war by deceit he held up to ridicule, saying that “where the lions’ skin will not reach, it must be patched out with the fox’s.”

8 1 Of such a sort were his dealings with Miletus, according to the record. For when his friends and allies, whom he had promised to aid in overthrowing the democracy and expelling their opponents, changed their minds and became reconciled to their foes, openly he pretended to be pleased and to join in the reconciliation; but in secret he reviled and abused them, and incited them to fresh attacks upon the multitude. 2 And when he perceived that the uprising was begun, he quickly came up and entered the city, where he angrily rebuked the first conspirators whom he met, and set upon them roughly, as though he were going to punish them, but ordered the rest of the people to be of good cheer and to fear no further evil now that he was with them. 3 But in this he was playing a shifty part, wishing the leading men of the popular party not to fly, but to remain in the city and be slain. And this was what actually happened; for all who put their trust in him were slaughtered.

Furthermore, there is a saying of Lysander’s, recorded by Androcleides,a which makes him guilty of the greatest recklessness in the matter of oaths. 4 It was his policy, according to this authority, “to cheat boys with knuckle-bones, but men with oaths,” thus imitating Polycrates of Samos; not a proper attitude in a general towards a tyrant, nor yet a Laconian trait to treat the gods as one’s enemies are treated, nay, more outrageously still; since he who overreaches his enemy by means of an oath, confesses that he fears that enemy, but despises God.

9 1 Well, then, Cyrus summoned Lysander to Sardis, and gave him this, and promised him that, ardently protesting, to gratify him, that he would actually squander his own fortune, if his father gave him nothing for the Spartans; and if all else failed, he said he would cut up the throne on which he sat when giving audience, a throne covered with gold and silver. 2 And finally, as he was going up into Media to wait upon his father, he assigned to Lysander the tribute of the cities, and entrusted his own government to him; and embracing him in farewell, and begging him not to fight the Athenians at sea until he was come back, and promising to come back with many ships from Phoenicia and Cilicia, he set out to go up to the King.

Then Lysander, who could neither fight a naval battle on equal terms, nor remain idle with the large fleet at his disposal, put out to sea and reduced some of the islands, and touching at Aegina and Salamis, overran them. 3 Then he landed in Attica and saluted Agis, who came down in person from Deceleia to meet him, and displayed to the land forces there the strength of his fleet, with the mien of one who sailed where he pleased and was master of the sea. But on learning that the Athenians were pursuing him, he fled by another route through the islands to Asia.

4 Finding the Hellespont unguarded, he himself attacked Lampsacus from the sea with his ships, while Thorax, co operating with the land forces, assaulted the walls. He took the city by storm, and gave it up to his soldiers to plunder. Meanwhile the Athenian fleet of a hundred and eighty triremes had just arrived at Elaeus in the Chersonese, 438 and learning that Lampsacus had fallen, they straightway put in at Sestos. 5 There they took in provisions, and then sailed along to Aegospotami, over against their enemies, who were still in station at Lampsacus. The Athenians were under the command of several generals, among whom was Philocles, the man who had recently persuaded the people to pass a decree that their prisoners of war should have the right thumb cut off, that they might not be able to wield a spear, though they might ply an oar.

10 1 For the time being, then, all rested, expecting that on the morrow the fleets would engage. But Lysander was planning otherwise, and ordered his seamen and pilots, as though there would be a struggle at daybreak, to go on board their triremes in the early morning, and take their seats in order and in silence, awaiting the word of command, and that the land forces also, in the same manner, remain quietly in their ranks by the sea. 2 When the sun rose, however, and the Athenians sailed up with all their ships in line and challenged to battle, although he had his ships drawn up in line to meet them and fully manned before it was light, he did not put out from his position, but sending despatch-boats to the foremost of his ships, ordered them to keep quiet and remain in line, not getting into confusion nor sailing out to meet the enemy. 3 And so about midday when the Athenians sailed back, he did not allow his men to leave their ships until two or three triremes, which he sent to reconnoitre, came back, after seeing that the enemy had disembarked. On the following day this was done again, and on the third, and at last on the fourth, so that the Athenians became very bold and contemptuous, believing that their enemies were huddling together in fear.

4 At this juncture, Alcibiades, who was living in his own fortress on the Chersonese, rode up to the Athenian army and censured the generals, first for having pitched their camp in a bad and even dangerous place on an open beach where there was no roadstead; and second, for the mistake of getting their provisions from distant Sestos, when they ought to sail round the coast 5 a little way to the harbour and city of Sestos, where they would be at a longer remove from their enemies, who lay watching them with an army commanded by a single man, the fear of whom led it to obey his every order promptly. These were the lessons he gave them, but they would not receive them, and Tydeus actually gave him an insolent answer, saying that he was not general now, but others.

11 Alcibiades, accordingly, suspecting that some treachery was afoot among them, went away. But on the fifth day, when the Athenians had sailed over to the enemy and back again, as was now their wont, very carelessly and contemptuously, Lysander, as he sent out his reconnoitring ships, ordered their commanders, as soon as they saw that the Athenians had disembarked, to put about and row back with all speed, and when they were half way across, to hoist a brazen shield at the prow, as a signal for the onset. 2 And he himself sailed round and earnestly exhorted the pilots and trierarchs to keep all their crews at their post, sailors and soldiers alike, and as soon as the signal was given, to row with ardour and vigour against the enemy. When, therefore, the shield was hoisted on the lookout ships, and the trumpet on the admiral’s ship signalled the attack, the ships sailed forth, and the land forces ran their fastest along the shore to seize the promontory. 3 The distance between the two continents at this point is fifteen furlongs, and such was the zealous ardour of the rowers that it was quickly consumed. Conon, the Athenian general, who was the first to see from the land the onset of the fleet, suddenly shouted orders to embark, and deeply stirred by the threatening disaster, called upon some, besought others, and forced others to man the triremes. 4394 But his eager efforts were of no avail, since the men were scattered. For just as soon as they had disembarked, since they expected no trouble, some went to market, some walked about the country, some lay down to sleep in their tents, and some began to get their suppers ready, being as far as possible removed from any thought of what was to happen, through the inexperience of their commanders. 5 The shouts and splashing oars of the oncoming enemy were already heard, when Conon, with eight ships, sailed stealthily away, and making his escape, proceeded to Cyprus, to Evagoras; but the Peloponnesians fell upon the rest of the ships, some of which they took entirely empty, and others they disabled while their crews were still getting aboard. And the men, coming up unarmed and in straggling fashion, perished at their ships, or if they fled by land, their enemies, who had disembarked, slew them. 6 Lysander took three thousand men prisoners, together with their generals, and captured the whole fleet, excepting the Paralus and the ships that had made their escape with Conon. So after plundering his enemy’s camp and taking their ships in tow, he sailed back to Lampsacus, to the sound of pipes and hymns of victory. He had wrought a work of the greatest magnitude with the least toil and effort, and had brought to a close in a single hour a war which, in length, and the incredible variety of its incidents and fortunes, surpassed all its predecessors. 7 Its struggles and issues had assumed ten thousand changing shapes, and it had cost Hellas more generals than all her previous wars together, and yet it was brought to a close by the prudence and ability of one man. Therefore some actually thought the result due to divine intervention.

12 1 There were some who declared that the Dioscuri appeared as twin stars on either side of Lysander’s ship just as he was sailing out of the harbour against the enemy, and shone out over the rudder-sweeps. And some say also that the falling of the stone was a portent of this disaster; for according to the common belief, a stone of vast size had fallen from heaven at Aegospotami, and it is shown to this day by the dwellers in the Chersonese, who hold it in reverence. 2 Anaxagoras is said to have predicted that if the heavenly bodies should be loosened by some slip or shake, one of them might be torn away, and might plunge and fall down to earth; and he said that none of the stars was in its original position; for being of stone, and heavy, their shining light is caused by friction with the revolving aether, and they are forced along in fixed orbits by the whirling impulse which gave them their circular motion, and this was what prevented them from falling to our earth in the first place, when cold and heavy bodies were separated from universal matter.

3 But there is a more plausible opinion than this, and its advocates hold that shooting stars are not a flow or emanation of aetherial fire, which the lower air quenches at the very moment of its kindling, nor are they an ignition and blazing up of a quantity of lower air which has made its escape into the upper regions; but they are plunging and falling heavenly bodies, carried out of their course by some relaxation in the tension of their circular most, and falling, not upon the inhabited region of the earth, but for the most part outside of it and into the great sea; and this is the reason why they are not noticed.

4 But Daïmachus, in his treatise “On Religion,” supports the view of Anaxagoras. He says that before the stone fell, seventy-five days continually, there was seen in the heavens a fiery body of vast size, as if it had been a flaming cloud, not resting in one place, but moving along with intricate and irregular motions, so that fiery fragments, broken from it by its plunging and erratic course, were carried in all directions and flashed fire, just as shooting stars do. 5 But when it had fallen in that part of the earth, and the inhabitants, after recovering from their fear and amazement, were assembled about it, no action of fire was seen, nor even so much as a trace thereof, but a stone lying there, of large size, it is true, 440 but one which bore almost no proportion at all to the fiery mass seen in the heavens. Well, then, that Daïmachus must needs have indulgent readers, is clear; 6 but if his story is true, he refutes utterly those who affirm that a rock, which winds and tempests had torn from some mountain top, was caught up and borne along like a spinning top, and that at the point where the whirling impetus given to it first relaxed and ceased, there it plunged and fell. 7 Unless, indeed, what was seen in the heavens for many days was really fire, the quenching and extinction of which produced a change in the air resulting in unusually violent winds and agitations, and these brought about the plunge of the stone. However, the minute discussion of this subject belongs to another kind of writing.

13 1 Lysander, after the three thousand Athenians whom he had taken prisoners had been condemned to death by the special council of allies, calling Philocles, their general, asked him what punishment should be visited upon him for having given his fellow-citizens such counsel regarding Greeks.  But he, not one whit softened by his misfortunes, bade him not play the prosecutor in a case where there was no judge, but to inflict, as victor, the punishment he would have suffered if vanquished. Then, after bathing and putting on a rich robe, he went first to the slaughter and showed his countrymen the way, as Theophrastus writes. After this, Lysander sailed to the various cities, and ordered all the Athenians whom he met to go back to Athens, for he would spare none, he said, but would slaughter any whom he caught outside the city. 3 He took this course, and drove them all into the city together, because he wished that scarcity of food and a mighty famine should speedily afflict the city, in order that they might not hinder him by holding out against his siege with plenty of provisions. He also suppressed the democratic, and the other forms of government, and left one Lacedaemonian harmost in each city, and ten rulers chosen from the political clubs which he had organized throughout the cities. 4 This he did alike in the cities which had been hostile, and in those which had become his allies, and sailed along in leisurely fashion, in a manner establishing for himself the supremacy over Hellas. For in his appointments of the rulers he had regard neither to birth nor wealth, but put control of affairs into the hands of his comrades and partisans, and made them masters of rewards and punishments. He also took part himself in many massacres, and assisted in driving out the enemies of his friends. Thus he gave the Greeks no worthy specimen of Lacedaemonian rule, nay,  even the comic poet Theopompus was thought absurd in likening the Lacedaemonians to tavern-women, because they gave the Greeks a very pleasant sip of freedom, and then dashed the wine with vinegar; for from the very first the taste was harsh and bitter, since Lysander not only would not suffer the people to be masters of their affairs, but actually put the cities into the hands of the boldest and most contentious of the oligarchs.

14 1 After he had spent some little time in this business, and had sent messengers to Lacedaemon to report that he was sailing up with two hundred ships, he made a junction in Attica with the forces of Agis and Pausanias, the kings, believing that he would speedily capture the city. But since the Athenians held out against them, he took his ships and crossed again to Asia. Here he suppressed the governments of all the remaining cities in like manner, and set up decadarchies, many citizens being slain in each city, and many banished; he also drove out all the Samians, and handed their cities over to the men whom they had banished. 2 Moreover, when he had taken Sestos out of the hands of the Athenians, he would not permit the Sestians to dwell there, but gave the city and its territory to be divided among men who had been pilots and boatswains under him. And this was the first step of his which was resisted by the Lacedaemonians, who restored Sestians again to their country. 3 But there were other measures of Lysander upon 441 which all the Greeks looked with pleasure, when, for instance, the Aeginetans, after a long time, received back their own city, and when the Melians and Scionaeans were restored to their homes by him, after the Athenians had been driven out and had delivered back the cities.

And now, when he learned that the people of Athens were in a wretched plight from famine, he sailed into the Piraeus, and reduced the city, which was compelled to make terms on the basis of his commands. 4 It is true that one hears it said by Lacedaemonians that Lysander wrote to the ephors thus: “Athens is taken”; and that the ephors wrote back to Lysander: “ ‘Taken’ were enough”; but this actual story was invented for its neatness’ sake. The actual decree of the ephors ran thus: “This is what the Lacedaemonian authorities have decided: tear down the Piraeus and the long walls; quit all the cities and keep to your own land; if you do these things, and restore your causes, you shall have peace, if you want it. 5 As regards the number of your ships, whatsoever shall be decided there, this do.” This edict was accepted by the Athenians, on the advice of Theramenes the son of Hagnon, who, they say, being asked at this time by Cleomenes, one of the young orators, if he dared to act and speak the contrary to Themistocles, by surrendering those walls to the Lacedaemonians which that statesman had erected in defiance of the Lacedaemonians, replied: 6 “But I am doing nothing, young man, that is contrary to Themistocles; for the same walls which he erected for the safety of the citizens, we shall tear down for their safety. And if walls made cities prosperous, then Sparta must be in the worst plight of all, since she has none.”

15 1 Lysander, accordingly, when he had taken possession of all the ships of the Athenians except twelve, and of their walls, on the sixteenth of the month Munychion, the same on which they conquered the Barbarian in the sea-fight at Salamis, took measures at once to change their form of government. 2 And when the Athenians opposed him bitterly in this, he sent word to the people that he had caught the city violating the terms of its surrender; for its walls were still standing, although the days were past within which they should have been pulled down; he should therefore present their case anew for the decision of the authorities, since they had broken their agreements. And some say that in very truth a proposition to sell the Athenians into slavery was actually made in the assembly of the allies, and that at this time Erianthus the Theban also made a motion that the city be razed to the ground, and the country about it left for sheep to graze. 3 Afterwards, however, when the leaders were gathered at a banquet, and a certain Phocian sang the first chorus in the “Electra” of Euripides, which begins with

“O thou daughter of Agamemnon,

I am come, Electra, to thy rustic court,”

all were moved to compassion, and felt it to be a cruel deed to abolish and destroy a city which was so famous, and produced such poets.

4 So then, after the Athenians had yielded in all points, Lysander sent for many flute-girls from the city, and assembled all those who were already in the camp, and then tore down the walls, and burned up the triremes, to the sound of the flute, while the allies crowned themselves with garlands and made merry together, counting that day as the beginning of their freedom. 5 Then, without delay, he also made changes in the form of government, establishing thirty rulers in the city and ten in Piraeus. Further, he put a garrison into the acropolis, and made Callibius, a Spartan, its harmost. He it was who once lifted his staff to smite Autolycus, the athlete, whom Xenophon makes the chief character in his “Symposium”; and when Autolycus seized him by the legs and threw him down, Lysander did not side with Callibius in his vexation, but actually joined in censuring him, 442 saying that he did not understand how to govern freemen. But the Thirty, to gratify Callibius, soon afterwards put Autolycus to death.

16 1 Lysander, after settling these matters, sailed for Thrace himself, but what remained of the public moneys, together with all the gifts and crowns which he had himself received, — many people, as was natural, offering presents to a man who had the greatest power, and who was, in a manner, master of Hellas, — he sent off to Lacedaemon by Gylippus, who had held command in Sicily. But Gylippus, as it is said, ripped open the sacks at the bottom, and after taking a large amount of silver from each, sewed them up again, not knowing that there was a writing in each indicating the sum it held. 2 And when he came to Sparta, he hid what he had stolen under the tiles of his house, but delivered the sacks to the ephors, and showed the seals upon them. When, however, the ephors opened the sacks and counted the money, its amount did not agree with the written lists, and the thing perplexed them, until a servant of Gylippus made the truth known to them by his riddle of many owls sleeping under the tiling. For most of the coinage of the time, as it seems, bore the forgery of an owl, owing to the supremacy of Athens.

17 1 Gylippus, then, after adding a deed so disgraceful and ignoble as this to his previous great and brilliant achievements, removed himself from Lacedaemon. And the wisest of the Spartans, being led by this instance in particular to fear the power of money, which they said was corrupting influential as well as ordinary citizens, reproached Lysander, and fervently besought the ephors to purify the city of all the silver and the gold, as imported curses. The ephors deliberated on the matter. 2 And it was Sciraphidas, according to Theopompus, or Phlogidas, according to Ephorus, who declared that they ought not to receive gold and silver coinage into the city, but to use that of the country. Now this was of iron, and was dipped in vinegar as soon as it came from the fire, that it might not be worked over, but be made brittle and intractable by the dipping. Besides, it was very heavy and troublesome to carry, and a great quantity and weight of it had but little value. 3 Probably, too, all the ancient money was of this sort, some peoples using iron spits for coins, and some bronze; whence it comes that even to this day many small pieces of money retain the name of “oboli,” or spits, and six “oboli” make a “drachma,” or handful, since that was as many as the hand could grasp.

4 But since Lysander’s friends opposed this measure, and insisted that the money remain in the city, it was resolved that money of this sort could be introduced for public use, but that if any private person should be found in possession of it, he should be punished with death; just as though Lycurgus had feared the coin, and not the covetousness which the coin produced. And this vice was not removed by allowing no private person to possess money, so much as it was encouraged by allowing the city to possess money, its use thereby acquiring dignity and honour. 5 Surely it was not possible for those who saw money publicly honoured, to despise it privately as of no service; or to consider as worthless for the individual’s private use that which was publicly held in such repute and esteem. Moreover, it takes far less time for public practices to affect the customs of private life, than it does for individual lapses and failings to corrupt entire cities. 6 For it is natural that the parts should rather be perverted along with the whole, when that deteriorates; but the diseases which flow from a part into the whole find many correctives and aids in the parts which remain sound. 443 And so these magistrates merely set the fear of the law to guard the houses of the citizens, that money might have no entrance there, but did not keep their spirits undaunted by the power of money and insensible to it; they rather inspired them all with an emulous desire for wealth as a great and noble object of pursuit. On this point, however, we have censured the Lacedaemonians in another treatise.

18 1 Out of the spoils, Lysander set up at Delphi bronze statues of himself and each of his admirals, as well as golden stars of the Dioscuri, which disappeared before the battle of Leuctra. And in the treasury of Brasidas and the Acanthians there was stored a trireme two cubits long, made of gold and ivory, which Cyrus sent Lysander as a prize for his victory. 2 Moreover, Anaxandrides the Delphian writes that a deposit of Lysander’s was also stored there, consisting of a talent of silver, and fifty-two minas, and eleven staters besides; a statement that is inconsistent with the generally accepted accounts of his poverty. At any rate, Lysander was at this time more powerful than any Greek before him had been, and was thought to cherish a pretentious pride that was greater even than his power. 3 For he was the first Greek, as Duris writes, to whom the cities erected altars and made sacrifices as to a god, the first also to whom songs of triumph were sung. One of these is handed down, and begins as follows: —

“The general of sacred Hellas

who came from wide-spaced Sparta

will we sing, O! io! Paean.”

4 The Samians, too, voted that their festival of Hera should be called Lysandreia. And the poet Choerilus was always kept in his retinue, to adorn his achievements with verse; while with Antilochus, who composed some verses in his honour, he was so pleased that he filled his cap with silver and gave it to him. And when Antimachus of Colophon and a certain Niceratus of Heracleia competed one another at the Lysandreia in poems celebrating his achievements, he awarded the crown to Niceratus, and Antimachus, in vexation, suppressed his poem. 5 But Plato, who was then a young man, and admired Antimachus for his poetry, tried to cheer and console him in his chagrin at this defeat, telling him that it is the ignorant who suffer from their ignorance, just as the blind do from their blindness. However, when Aristonoüs the harper, who had been six times victor at the Pythian games, told Lysander in a patronizing way that if he should be victorious again, he would have himself proclaimed under Lysander’s name, “That is,” Lysander replied, “as my slave?”

19 1 Now to the leading men, and to his equals, the ambition of Lysander was annoying merely. But since, owing to the court that was paid to him, great haughtiness and severity crept into his character along with his ambition, there was no such moderation as would become a popular leader either in his rewards or punishments, but the prizes he awarded to his friends and allies were irresponsible lordships over cities, and absolute sovereignties, while the sole punishment that could satisfy his wrath was the death of his enemy; not even exile was allowed. 2 Nay, at a later time, fearing lest the active popular leaders of Miletus should go into exile, and desiring to bring from their retreats those also who were in hiding, he made oath that he would do them no harm; but when the first put faith in him and the second came forth, he delivered them all over to the oligarchs for slaughter, being no less than eight hundred of both classes. 3 In the other cities also untold numbers of the popular party were slain, since he killed not only for his own private reasons, but also gratified by his murders the hatred and cupidity of his many friends everywhere, and shared the bloody work with them. Wherefore Eteocles the Lacedaemonian won great approval when he said that Hellas could not have borne two Lysanders. 444 Now this same utterance was made by Archestratus concerning Alcibiades also, as Theophrastus tells us. 4 But in his case it was insolence, and wanton self-will, that gave most offence; whereas Lysander’s power was made dreadful and oppressive by the cruelty of his disposition.

The Lacedaemonians paid little heed to the rest of his accusers, but when Pharnabazus, who was outraged by Lysander’s pillaging and wasting his territory, sent men to Sparta to denounce him, the ephors were incensed, and when they found Thorax, one of Lysander’s friends and fellow-generals, with money in his private possession, they put him to death, and sent a dispatch-scroll to Lysander, ordering him home.

5 The dispatch-scroll is of the following character. When the ephors send out an admiral or a general, they make two round pieces of wood exactly alike in length and thickness, so that each corresponds to the other in its dimensions, and keep one themselves, while they give the other to their envoy. These pieces of wood they call “scytalae.” 6 Whenever, then, they wish to send some secret and important message, they make a scroll of parchment long and narrow, like a leathern strap, and wind it round their “scytale,” leaving no vacant space thereon, but covering its surface all round with the parchment. After doing this, they write what they wish on the parchment, just as it lies wrapped about the “scytale”; and when they have written their message, they take the parchment off, and send it, without the piece of wood, to the commander. 7 He, when he has received it, cannot other get any meaning of it, — since the letters have no connection, but are disarranged, — unless he takes his own “scytale” and winds the strip of parchment about it, so that, when its spiral course is restored perfectly, and that which follows is joined to that which precedes, he reads around the staff, and so discovers the continuity of the message. And the parchment, like the staff, is called “scytale,” as the thing measured bears the name of the measure.

20 1 But Lysander, when the dispatch-scroll reached him at the Hellespont, was much disturbed, and since he feared the denunciations of Pharnabazus above all others, he hastened to hold a conference with him, hoping to compose their quarrel. At this conference he begged Pharnabazus to write another letter about him to the magistrates, stating that he had not been wronged at all, and had no complaints to make. 2 But in thus “playing the Cretan against a Cretan,” as the saying is, he misjudged his opponent. For Pharnabazus, after promising to do all that he desired, openly wrote such a letter as Lysander demanded, but secretly kept another by him ready written. And when it came to putting on the seals, he exchanged the documents, which looked exactly alike, and gave him the letter which had been secretly written. 3 Accordingly, when Lysander arrived at Sparta and went, as the custom is, into the senate-house, he gave the ephors the letter of Pharnabazus, convinced that the greatest of the complaints against him was thus removed; for Pharnabazus was in high favour with the Lacedaemonians, because he had been, of all the King’s generals, most ready to help them in the war. 4 But when the ephors, after reading the letter, showed it to him, and he understood that

“Odysseus, then, is not the only man of guile,”

for the time being he was mightily confounded and went away. But a few days afterwards, on meeting the magistrates, he said that he was obliged to go up to the temple of Ammon and sacrifice to the god the sacrifice which he had vowed before his battles. 5 Now some say that when he was besieging the city of Aphytae in Thrace, Ammon really stood by him in his sleep; wherefore he raised the siege, declaring that the god had commanded it, and ordered the Aphytaeans to sacrifice to Ammon, and was eager to make a journey into Libya and propitiate the god. 6 But the majority believed that he made the god a pretext, 445 and really feared the ephors, and was impatient of the yoke at home, and unable to endure being under authority, and therefore longed to wander and travel about somewhat, like a horse which comes back from unrestricted pasture in the meadows to his stall, and is put once more to his accustomed work. Ephorus, it is true, assigns another reason for this absence abroad, which I shall mention by and by.

21 1 After he had with great difficulty procured his release by the ephors, he set sail. But the kings, when he had gone abroad, became aware that by means of the societies which he had formed, he had the cities entirely in his power and was master of Hellas; they therefore took measures for deposing his friends everywhere and restoring the management of affairs to the people. 2 However, fresh disturbances broke out in connection with these changes, and first of all the Athenians from Phyle attacked the Thirty and overpowered them. Lysander therefore came home in haste, and persuaded the Lacedaemonians to aid the oligarchies and chastise the democracies. Accordingly, they sent to the Thirty, first of all, a hundred talents for the war, and Lysander himself as general. 3 But the kings were jealous of him, and feared to let him capture Athens a second time; they therefore determined that one of them should go out with the army. And Pausanias did go out, ostensibly in behalf of the tyrants against the people, but really to put a stop to the war, in order that Lysander might not again become master of Athens through the efforts of his friends. This object, then, he easily accomplished, and by reconciling the Athenians and putting a stop to their discord, he robbed Lysander of his ambitious hopes. 4 A short time afterwards, however, when the Athenians revolted again, he himself was censured for taking the curb of the oligarchy out of the mouth of the people, and letting them grow bold and insolent again; while Lysander won fresh repute as a man who exercised his command in downright fashion, not for the gratification of others, nor yet to win applause, but for the good of Sparta.

22 1 He was harsh of speech also, and terrifying to his opponents. For instance, when the Argives were disputing about boundaries, and thought they made a juster plea than the Lacedaemonians, he pointed to his sword, and said to them: “He who is master of this discourses best about boundaries.” And when a Megarian, in some conference with him, grew bold in speech, he said: “Thy words, Stranger, lack a city.” 2 And when the Boeotians tried to play a double game with him, he asked them whether he should march through their territory with spears upright, or levelled. And once when the Corinthians had revolted, a hare was seen leaping across the moat; whereupon he said: “Are ye not ashamed to fear enemies who are so lazy that hares sleep on their walls?”

3 When Agis the king died, leaving a brother, Agesilaüs, and a reputed son, Leotychides, Lysander, who had been a lover of Agesilaüs, persuaded him to lay claim to the kingdom, on the ground that he was a genuine descendant of Heracles. For Leotychides was accused of being a son of Alcibiades, who had secret commerce with Timaea, the wife of Agis, while he was living in exile at export. 4 Now Agis, as they tell us, being convinced by a computation of time that his wife had not conceived by him, ignored Leotychides, and manifestly repudiated him up to the last. But when he was carried sick to Heraea and was about to die, he yielded to the entreaties of the young man himself and of his friends, and declared in the hearing of many that Leotychides was his own son, and after begging those who were present to bear witness of this to the Lacedaemonians, died. 4465 Accordingly, they did so bear witness in favour of Leotychides. Moreover, Agesilaüs, who was otherwise illustrious, and had Lysander as a champion, was injured in his claim by Diopeithes, a man in high repute for his interpretation of oracles, who published the following prophecy with reference to the lameness of Agesilaüs: —

“Bethink thee now, O Sparta, although thou art very proud,

Lest from thee, sound of foot, there spring a maimed royalty;

For long will unexpected toils oppress thee,

And onward rolling billows of man-destroying war.”

6 Many, therefore, out of deference to the oracle, inclined to Leotychides, but Lysander declared that Diopeithes did not interpret the prophecy correctly; for it did not mean that the god would be displeased if one who was lame should rule the Lacedaemonians, but the kingdom would be maimed if bastards and ill-born men should be kings in a line with the posterity of Heracles. By such arguments, and because he had very great influence, he prevailed, and Agesilaüs became king.

23 1 At once, then, Lysander tried to rouse and incite him to make an expedition into Asia, suggesting hopes that he would put down the Persians and become a very great man. He also wrote letters to his friends in Asia, bidding them ask Agesilaüs of the Lacedaemonians as general for their war against the Barbarians. 2 They obeyed, and sent ambassadors to Lacedaemon with the request, and thus an honour not inferior to that of being made king was obtained for Agesilaüs through the efforts of Lysander. But with ambitious natures, which are otherwise not ill qualified for command, jealousy of their equals in reputation is no slight obstacle to the performance of noble deeds; for they make those their rivals in the path of virtue, whom they might have as helpers. 3 Agesilaüs did indeed take Lysander with him among his thirty counsellors, intending to treat him with special favour as his chief friend; but when they were come into Asia, the people there, who were not acquainted with him, conferred with him but rarely and briefly, whereas Lysander, in consequence of their large intercourse with him in former times, had them always at his door and in his train, those who were his friends coming out of deference, and those whom he suspected, out of fear. 4 And just as in tragedies it naturally happens that an actor who takes the part of some messenger or servant is in high repute and plays leading rôles, while the one who bears the crown and sceptre is not even listened to when he speaks, so in this case the whole honour of the government was associated with the counsellor, and there was left for the king only the empty name of power.  It is true, perhaps, that there should have been some gentle handling of this excessive ambition, and that Lysander should have been reduced to the second place; but entirely to cast off and insult, for fame’s sake, a benefactor and a friend, was not worthy of the character of Agesilaüs.

In the first place, then, he did not give him opportunities for achievement, nor even assign him to a command; and secondly, those in whose behalf he perceived that Lysander was earnestly exerting himself, these he always sent away with less reward than an ordinary suitor, or wholly unsuccessful, thus quietly undoing and chilling his influence. 6 So when Lysander missed all his aims, and saw that his interested efforts for his friends were an obstacle to their success, he not only ceased to give them his own aid, but begged them not to wait upon him nor pay him their court, but to confer with the king, and with such as had more power to benefit those who showed them honour than was his at present. 7 Most of those who heard this refrained from troubling him about their affairs, but did not cease paying him their court, nay rather, 447 by waiting upon him in the public walks and places of exercise, they gave Agesilaüs even more annoyance than before, because he envied him the honour. Therefore, though he offered most of the Spartans commands in the field and governments of cities, he appointed Lysander his carver of meats. And presently, as if by way of insult to the Ionians, he said: “Let them be off, and pay their court now to my carver of meats.” 8 Accordingly, Lysander determined to have a conference with him, at which a brief and laconic dialogue passed between them. “Verily, though knowest well, Agesilaüs, how to abase friends.” To which Agesilaüs: “Yes, if they would be greater than I; but those who increase my power should also share in it.” 9 “Well, perhaps thy words, Agesilaüs, are fairer than my deeds; but I beg thee, even because of the strangers who have their eyes upon us, to give me a post under thy command where thou believest that I shall be least annoying to thyself, and more serviceable than now.”

24 1 Upon this, he was sent as ambassador to the Hellespont; and though he was angry with Agesilaüs, he did not neglect to do his duty, but induced Spithridates the Persian, a high-minded man with forces at his command, to revolt from Pharnabazus, with whom he was at odds, and brought him to Agesilaüs. 2 The king made no further use of Lysander, however, in the war, and when his time had expired, he sailed back to Sparta without honour, not only enraged at Agesilaüs, but hating the whole form of government more than ever, and resolved to put into execution at once, and without delay, the plans for a revolutionary change which he is thought to have devised and concocted some time before.

3 They were as follows. Of the Heracleidae who united with the Dorians and came down into Peloponnesus, there was a numerous and glorious stock flourishing in Sparta; however, not every family belonging to it participated in the royal succession, but the kings were chosen from two houses only, and were called Eurypontidae and Agiadae. The rest had no special privileges in the government because of their high birth, but the honours which result from superior excellence lay open to all who had power and ability. 4 Now Lysander belonged to one of these families, and when he had risen to great fame for his deeds, and had acquired many friends and great power, he was vexed to see the city increased in power by his efforts, but ruled by others who were of no better birth than himself. He therefore planned to take the government away from the two houses, and restore it to all the Heracleidae in common, 5 or, as some say, not to the Heracleidae, but to the Spartans in general, in order that its high prerogatives might not belong to those only who were descended from Heracles, but to those who, like Heracles, were selected for superior excellence, since it was this which raised him to divine honours. And he hoped that when the kingdom was awarded on this principle, no Spartan would be chosen before himself.

25 1 In the first place, then, he undertook and made preparations to persuade the citizens by his own efforts, and committed to memory a speech written by Cleon, the Halicarnassian, for the purpose. In the second place, seeing that the novelty and magnitude of his innovation demanded a more audacious support, he brought stage machinery to bear upon the citizens, as it were, 2 by collecting and arranging responses and oracles of Apollo; convinced that Cleon’s clever rhetoric would not help him at all unless he should first terrify and subdue his countrymen by vague religious fear and superstitious terror, and then bring them under the influence of his argument. 3 Well, then, Ephorus tells us that after an attempt to corrupt the Pythian priestess, and after a second failure to persuade the priestesses of Dodona by means of Pherecles, he went up to the temple of Ammon and had a conference with the god’s interpreters there, at which he offered them much money, but that they took this ill, and sent certain messengers to Sparta to denounce him; and further, that when Lysander was acquitted of their charges, the Libyans said, as they went away, “But we will pass better judgments than yours, 448 O Spartans, when ye come to dwell with us in Libya”; for they knew that there was a certain ancient oracle bidding the Lacedaemonians to settle in Libya. 4 But since the whole plot and concoction was no insignificant one, nor yet carelessly undertaken, but made many important assumptions, like a mathematical demonstration, and proceeded to its conclusion through premises which were difficult and hard to obtain, we shall follow, in our description of it, the account of one who was both a historian and a philosopher.

26 1 There was a woman in Pontus who declared that she was with child by Apollo. Many disbelieved her, as was natural, but many also lent an ear to her, so that when she gave birth to a male child, many notable persons took an interest in its care and rearing. For some reason or other, the name given to the boy was Silenus. Lysander took these circumstances for his foundation, and supplied the rest of his cunning fabric himself, making use of not a few, nor yet insignificant, champions of the tale, 2 who brought the story of the boy’s birth into credit without exciting suspicion. They also brought back another response from Delphi, and caused it to be circulated in Sparta, which declared that sundry very ancient oracles were kept in secret writings by the priests there, and that it was not possible to get these, nor even lawful to read them, unless someone born of Apollo should come after a long lapse of time, give the keepers an intelligible token of his birth, and obtain the tablets containing the oracles. 3 The way thus being prepared, Silenus was to come and demand the oracles as Apollo’s son, and the priests who were in the secret were to insist on precise answers to all their questions about his birth, and finally, persuaded, forsooth, that he was the son of Apollo, were to show him the writing. Then Silenus, in the presence of many witnesses, was to read aloud the prophecies, especially the one relating to the kingdom, for the sake of which the whole scheme had been invented, and which declared that it was more for the honour and interest of the Spartans to choose their kings from the best citizens.

4 But when at last Silenus was grown to be a youth, and was ready for the business, Lysander’s play was ruined for him by the cowardice of one of his actors, or co workers, who, just as he came to the point, lost his courage and drew back. However, all this was actually found out, not while Lysander was alive, but after his death.

27 1 And he died before Agesilaüs returned from Asia, after he had plunged, or rather had plunged Hellas, into the Boeotian war. For it is stated in both ways; and some hold him responsible for the war, others the Thebans, and others both together. It is charged against the Thebans that they cast away the sacrifices at Aulis, and that, because Androcleides and Amphitheus had been bribed with the King’s money to stir up a war in Greece against the Lacedaemonians, they set upon the Phocians and ravaged their country. 2 It is said, on the other hand, that Lysander was angry with the Thebans because they alone laid claim to a tenth part of the spoils of the war, while the rest of the allies held their peace; and because they were indignant about the money which he sent to Sparta; but above all, because they first put the Athenians in the way of freeing themselves from the thirty tyrants whom he had set up, whose terrorizing power the Lacedaemonians had increased by decreeing that fugitives from Athenians might be brought back from every place of refuge, and that all who impeded their return should be declared enemies of Sparta. 3 In reply to this the Thebans issued counter decrees, akin in spirit to the beneficent deeds of Heracles and Dionysus, to the effect that every house and city in Boeotia should be open to such Athenians as needed succour; and that whosoever did not help a fugitive under arrest, should be fined a talent; 449 and that if any one should carry arms through Boeotia against the tyrants in Athens, no Theban would either see him or hear about it. 4 And they did not merely vote such Hellenic and humane decrees, without at the same time making their deeds correspond to their edicts; but Thrasybulus and those who with him occupied Phyle, set out from Thebes to do so, and the Thebans not only provided them with arms and money, but also with secrecy and a base of operations. Such, then, were the grounds of complaint which Lysander had against the Thebans.

28 1 And since he was now of an altogether harsh disposition, owing to the melancholy which persisted into his old age, he stirred up the ephors, and persuaded them to fit out an expedition against the Thebans; and assuming the command, he set out on the campaign. Afterwards the ephors sent out Pausanias the king also with an army. 2 Now it was the plan that Pausanias should make a circuit by the way of Mount Cithaeron, and then invade Boeotia, while Lysander marched through Phocis to meet him, with a large force. He took the city of Orchomenus, which came over to him of its own accord, and assaulted and plundered Lebadeia. Then he sent a letter to Pausanias, bidding him move from Plataea and join forces with him at Haliartus, and promising that he himself would be before the walls of Haliartus at break of day. This letter was brought to Thebes by some scouts, into whose hands its bearer fell. 3 The Thebans therefore entrusted their city to a force of Athenians which had come to their aid, while they themselves set out early in the night, and succeeded in reaching Haliartus a little before Lysander, and a considerable part of them entered the city. Lysander at first decided to post his army on a hill and wait for Pausanias; then, as the day advanced, being unable to remain inactive, he took his arms, encouraged his allies, and led them along the road in column towards the wall of the city. 4 But those of the Thebans who had remained outside, taking the city on their left, advanced upon the rear of their enemy, at the spring called Cissusa. Here, as the story goes, his nurses bathed the infant Dionysus after his birth; for the water has the colour and sparkle of wine, is clear, and very pleasant to the taste. And not far away the Cretan storax-shrub grows in profusion, which the Haliartans regard as a proof that Rhadamanthus once dwelt there; and they show his tomb, which they call Alea. 5 And near by is also the memorial of Alcmene; for she was buried there, as they say, having lived with Rhadamanthus after the death of Amphitryon.

But the Thebans inside the city, drawn up in battle array with the Haliartans, kept quiet for some time; when, however, they saw Lysander with his foremost troops approaching the wall, they suddenly threw open the gate and fell upon them, and killed Lysander himself with his soothsayer, and a few of the rest; for the greater part of them fled swiftly back to the main body. 6 And when the Thebans made no halt, but pressed hard upon them, the whole force turned to the hills in flight, and a thousand of them were slain. Three hundred of the Thebans also lost their lives by pursuing their enemies into rough and dangerous places. These had been accused of favouring the Spartan cause, and in their eagerness to clear themselves of this charge in the eyes of their fellow-citizens, they exposed themselves needlessly in the pursuit, and so threw away their lives.

29 1 Tidings of the disaster were brought to Pausanias while he was on the march from Plataea to Thespiae, and putting his army in battle array, he came to Haliartus. Thrasybulus also came from Thebes, leading his Athenians. But when Pausanias was minded to ask for the bodies of the dead under a truce, the elders of the Spartans could not brook it, and were angry among themselves, and coming to the king, 450 they protested that the body of Lysander must not be taken up under cover of a truce, but by force of arms, in open battle for it; and that if they conquered, then they would give him burial, but if they were vanquished, it would be a glorious thing to lie dead with their general. 2 Such were the words of the elders; but Pausanias saw that it would be a difficult matter to conquer the Thebans, flushed as they were with victory, and that the body of Lysander lay near the walls, so that its recovery would be difficult without a truce, even if they were victorious; he therefore sent a herald, and after making a truce, led his forces back. 3 And as soon as they had come beyond the boundary of Boeotia with Lysander’s body, they buried it in the friendly soil of their allies, the Panopeans, where his monument now stands, by the road leading from Delphi to Chaeroneia.

Here the army bivouacked; and it is said that a certain Phocian, recounting the action to another who was not in it, said that the enemy fell upon them just after Lysander had crossed the Hoplites. 4 Then a Spartan, who was a friend of Lysander, asked in amazement what he meant by Hoplites, for he did not know the name. “Indeed it was there,” said the Phocian, “that the enemy slew the foremost of us; for the stream that flows past the city is called Hoplites.” On hearing this, the Spartan burst into tears, and said that man could not escape his destiny. 5 For Lysander, as it appears, had received an oracle running thus: —

“Be on thy guard, I bid thee, against a sounding Hoplites,

And an earth born dragon craftily coming behind thee.”

Some, however, say that the Hoplites does not flow before Haliartus, but is a winter torrent near Coroneia, which joins the Philarus and then flows past that city; in former times it was called Hoplias, but now Isomantus. 6 Moreover, the man of Haliartus who killed Lysander, Neochorus by name, had a dragon as emblem on his shield, and to this, it was supposed, the oracle referred. And it is said that the Thebans also, during the Peloponnesian war, received an oracle at the sanctuary of Ismenus which indicated beforehand not only the battle at Delium, but also this battle at Haliartus, thirty years later. 7 It ran as follows: —

“When thou huntest the wolf with the spear, watch closely the border,

Orchalides, too, the hill which foxes never abandon.”

Now by “border,” the god meant the region about Delium, where Boeotia is conterminous with Attica; and by Orchalides, the hill which is now called Alopecus, or Fox-hill, in the parts of Haliartus which stretch towards Mount Helicon.

30 1 Now that Lysander had met with such an end, at the outset the Spartans were so indignant about it that they summoned the king to trial for his life; but he evaded it, and fled to Tegea, where he spent the end of his days as a suppliant in the sanctuary of Athena. 2 For the poverty of Lysander, which was discovered at his death, made his excellence more apparent to all, since from the vast wealth and power in his hands, and from the great homage paid him by cities and the Great King, he had not, even in the slightest degree, sought to amass money for the aggrandizement of his family. This is the testimony of Theopompus, who is more to be trusted when he praises than when he blames; for he takes more pleasure in blaming than in praising. 3 But after some time had passed, according to Ephorus, some dispute arose at Sparta with her allies, and it became necessary to inspect the writings which Lysander had kept by him; for which purpose Agesilaüs went to his house. And when he found the book containing the speech on the constitution, which argued that the kingship ought to be taken from the Eurypontidae and Agiadae and made accessible to all Spartans alike, and that the choice should be made from the best of these, 4 he was eager to produce the speech before his countrymen, and show them what the real character of Lysander’s citizenship had been. 451 But Lacratidas, a prudent man, and at that time the principal ephor, held Agesilaüs back, saying that they ought not to dig Lysander up again, but rather to bury the speech along with him, since it was composed with such a subtle persuasiveness.

5 However, they paid him many honours at his death. In particular, they imposed a fine upon the men who had engaged to marry his daughters, and then, after Lysander’s death, had renounced the engagement. The reason given for the fine was that the men had paid court to Lysander while they thought him rich, but when his poverty showed them that he was just a good man, they forsook him. For there was, as it appears, a penalty at Sparta not only for not marrying at all, and for a late marriage, but also a bad marriage; and to this last they subjected those especially who sought alliance with the rich, instead of with the good and with their own associates. Such, then, are the accounts we have found given of Lysander.

Sulla

1 1 Lucius Cornelius Sulla belonged to a patrician, or noble, family, and one of his ancestors, Rufinus, is said to have been consul, although he was not so conspicuous for this honour as for the dishonour which he incurred. For he was found to be possessed of more than ten pounds of silver plate, contrary to the law, and was for this reason expelled from the senate. His posterity became at once obscure, and continued so, nor did Sulla himself enjoy a wealthy parentage. 2 When he was a youth, he lived in lodgings, at a low price, and this was afterwards thrust in his teeth when men thought him unduly prosperous. For instance, we are told that when he was putting on boastful airs after his campaign in Libya, a certain nobleman said to him: “How canst thou be an honest man, when thy father left thee nothing, and yet thou art so rich?” 3 For although the Romans of that time no longer retained their ancient purity and uprightness of life, but had degenerated, and yielded to the appetite for luxury and extravagance, they nevertheless held in equal opprobrium those who lost an inherited wealth and those who forsook an ancestral poverty. 4 And afterwards, when he had at last become absolute in power, and was putting many to death, a freedman, who was thought to be concealing one of the proscribed, and was therefore to be thrown down the Tarpeian rock, cast it in his teeth that they had long lived together in one lodging house, himself renting the upper rooms at two thousand sesterces, and Sulla the lower rooms at three thousand. The difference in their fortunes, therefore, was only a thousand sesterces, which are equivalent to two hundred and fifty Attic drachmas. Such, then, is the account we find of Sulla’s earlier fortune.

2 1 His personal appearance, in general, is given by his statues;a but the gleam of his gray eyes, which was terribly sharp and powerful, was rendered even more fearful by the complexion of his face. This was covered with coarse blotches of red, interspersed with white. For this reason, they say, his surname was given him because of his complexion, and it was in allusion to this that a scurrilous jester at Athens made the verse: —

“Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled o’er with meal.”

The so called bust of Sulla
in the Munich Glyptothek.

Photo © Jona Lendering 2007, by kind permission.

2 Nor is it out of place to mention such testimonies in the case of a man said to have been by nature so fond of raillery, that when he was still young and obscure he spent much time with actors and buffoons and shared their dissolute life; and when he had made himself supreme master, he would daily assemble the most reckless stage and theatre folk to drink and bandy jests with them, although men thought that he disgraced his years, and although he not only dishonoured his high office, but neglected much that required attention. 3 For when Sulla was once at table, he refused to be serious at all, but, although at other times he was a man of business and wore an austere look, he underwent a complete change as soon as he betook himself to good-fellowship and drinking, so that comic singers and dancers found him anything but ferocious, and ready to listen and yield to every request. It was this laxity, as it seems, which produced in him a diseased propensity to amorous indulgence and an unrestrained voluptuousness, from which he did not refrain even in his old age, 4 but continued his youthful love for Metrobius, an actor. He also had the following experience. He began by loving a common but wealthy woman, Nicopolis by name, and such was the charm of his intimacy and youthful grace that in the end he was beloved by her, and was left her heir when she died. He also inherited the property of his step-mother, who loved him as her own son. By these means he became moderately well off.

3 1 Having been appointed quaestor to Marius in his first consulship, he sailed with him to Libya, to make war upon Jugurtha. He was put in charge of the camp, and won great credit for himself, especially by improving a favourable opportunity and making a friend of Bocchus, the king of Numidia. For he hospitably entertained ambassadors of the king, who had escaped from Numidian robbers, and sent them on their way with gifts and a safe escort. 2 Now Bocchus had for a long time hated and feared his son-in law, Jugurtha, who had been defeated and had fled to him for safety, and was then plotting against him. He therefore invited Sulla to come to him, wishing to have the seizure and surrender of Jugurtha effected through Sulla rather than through himself. Sulla imparted the matter to Marius, and taking with him a few soldiers, underwent the greatest peril; he put faith in a Barbarian, and one who was faithless towards his own relations, and to secure his surrender of another, placed himself in his hands. 3 However, Bocchus, now that he had both in his power, and had laid himself under the necessity of proving false to one or the other, although he vacillated long, finally decided upon his original betrayal, and handed Jugurtha over to Sulla. It is true that the one who celebrated a triumph for this was Marius, but those who envied him attributed the glory of the success to Sulla, and this secretly annoyed Marius. 4 And indeed Sulla himself was naturally vainglorious, and now that he had for the first time emerged from his lowly and obscure condition and become of some account among his countrymen, and was enjoying a taste of honour, he was arrogant enough to have a representation of his exploit engraved on a seal-ring which he wore, and continued to use it ever after. The device was, Bocchus delivering, and Sulla receiving, Jugurtha.

4 1 Of course this distressed Marius; but since he considered Sulla to be beneath his envy, he used him in his campaigns, during his second consulship as legate, or lieutenant, and during his third as military tribune, and through his agency performed many successful services. For instance, as legate, Sulla captured Copillus, chieftain of the Tectosages; and as tribune, he persuaded the great and populous nation of the Marsi to become friends and allies of Rome. 2 But perceiving that Marius was vexed with him for these successes, and that he was no longer glad to give him opportunities for action, but opposed his advancement, he attached himself to Catulus, the colleague of Marius in the consulship, a worthy man, but too sluggish for arduous contests. By him he was entrusted with the leading and most important enterprises, and rose to power and fame. 3 He not only subdued in war a large part of the Barbarians of the Alps, but when provisions ran low, he undertook the task of furnishing them, and made them so abundant that the soldiers of Catulus lived in plenty, and had some to spare for those of Marius. At this, as Sulla himself says, Marius was greatly distressed. 4 So slight and puerile were the first foundations and occasions of that hatred between them, which afterwards led them through civil bloodshed and irreparable discords to tyranny and the confusion of the whole state. This proved that Euripides was a wise man, and acquainted with the distempers of civil government, when he exhorted men to beware of ambition as a deity most injurious and fatal to its votaries.

5 1 Sulla now thought that the reputation which he had won in war was sufficient to justify political activities, and therefore at once exchanged military service for public life, offered himself as a candidate for the city praetorship, and was defeated. The responsibility for his defeat, however, he lays upon the populace. They knew, he says, about his friendship with Bocchus, and expected that if he should be made aedile before his praetorship, he would treat them to splendid hunting scenes and combats of Libyan wild beasts, and therefore appointed others to the praetorship, in order to force him into the aedileship. 2 But subsequent events would seem to show that Sulla does not confess the real reason for his failure. For in the following year he obtained the praetorship, partly because he was subservient to the people, and partly because he used money to win their support. And so it happened that, during his praetorship, when he angrily told Caesar that he would use his own authority against him, Caesar laughed and said: “You do well to consider the office your own, for you bought it.”

3 After his praetorship, he was sent out to Cappadocia, ostensibly to reinstate Ariobarzanes, but really to check the restless activities of Mithridates, who was adding to his dominion and power fully as much as he had inherited. Accordingly, he took out with him no large force of his own, but made use of the allies, whom he found eager to serve him, and, after slaying many of the Cappadocians themselves, and yet more of the Armenians who came to their aid, he drove out Gordius, and made Ariobarzanes king again.

4 As he lingered on the banks of the Euphrates, he received a visit from Orobazus, a Parthian, who came as an ambassador from king Arsaces, although up to this time the two nations had held no intercourse with one another. This also is thought to have been part of Sulla’s great good fortune, that he should be the first Roman with whom the Parthians held conference when they wanted alliance and friendship. On this occasion, too, it is said that he ordered three chairs to be set, one for Ariobarzanes, one for Orobazus, and one for himself, and that he sat between them both and gave them audience. 5 For this the king of Parthia afterwards put Orobazus to death; and while some people commended Sulla for the airs which he assumed with the Barbarians, others accused him of vulgarity and ill-timed arrogance. It is also recorded that a certain man in the retinue of Orobazus, a Chaldaean, after looking Sulla intently in the face, and studying carefully the movements of his mind and body, 6 and investigating his nature according to the principles of his peculiar art, declared that this man must of necessity become the greatest in the world, and that even now the wonder was that he consented not to be first of all men. When Sulla came back to Rome, however, Censorinus brought suit against him for bribery, alleging that he had collected large sums of money illegally from a friendly and allied kingdom. However, Censorinus did not put in an appearance at the trial, but dropped his impeachment.

6 1 Moreover, Sulla’s quarrel with Marius broke out afresh on being supplied with fresh material by the ambition of Bocchus, who, desiring to please the people at Rome, and at the same time to gratify Sulla, dedicated on the Capitol some images bearing trophies, and beside them gilded figures representing Jugurtha being surrendered by Bocchus to Sulla. 2 Thereupon Marius was very angry, and tried to have the figures taken down, but others were minded to aid Sulla in opposing this, and the city was all but in flames with their dispute, when the Social war, which had long been smouldering, blazed up against the city and put a stop for the time being to the quarrel. In this war, which proved of the greatest moment and most varied fortunes, and brought innumerable mischiefs and the gravest perils upon the Romans, Marius was unable to render any great service, and proved that military excellence requires a man’s highest strength and vigour. Sulla, on the other hand, did much that was memorable, and achieved the reputation of a great leader among his fellow-citizens, that of the greatest of leaders among his friends, and that of the most fortunate even among his enemies. 3 But he did not feel about this as Timotheus the son of Conon did, who, when his adversaries ascribed his successes to Fortune, and had him represented in a painting as lying asleep, while Fortune cast her net about the cities, was rudely angry with those who had done this, because, as he thought, they were robbing him of the glory due to his exploits, and said to the people once, on returning from a campaign in which he was thought to have been successful: “In this campaign, at least, men of Athens, Fortune has no share.” 4 Upon Timotheus, then, who had shown himself so covetous of honour, the deity is said to have requited his youthful petulance, so from that time on he did nothing brilliant, but miscarried in all his undertakings, gave offence to the people, and was finally banished from the city; whereas Sulla not only accepted with pleasure such felicitations and admiration, but actually joined in magnifying the aid of Heaven in what he did, and gave the credit of it to Fortune, either out of boastfulness, or because he had such a belief in the divine agency. 5 For in his Memoirs he writes that, of the undertakings which men thought well-advised, those upon which he had boldly ventured, not after deliberation, but on the spur of the moment, turned out for the better. And further, from what he says about his being well endowed by nature for Fortune rather than for war, he seems to attribute more to Fortune than to his own excellence, and to make himself entirely the creature of this deity, since he accounts even his concord with Metellus, a man equal in rank, and a relative by marriage, a piece of divine felicity; for whereas he expected much annoyance from him as a colleague in office, he found him most obliging. 6 And still further, in the dedication of his Memoirs to Lucullus, he advises him to deem nothing so secure as what the divine power enjoins upon him in his dreams. And he relates that when he was dispatched with an army to the Social war, a great chasm in the earth opened near Laverna, from which a great quantity of fire burst forth and a bright flame towered up towards the heavens; 7 whereupon the soothsayers declared that a brave man, of rare courage and surpassing appearance, was to take the government in hand and free the city from its present troubles. And Sulla says that he himself was this man, for his golden head of hair gave him a singular appearance, and as for bravery, he was not ashamed to testify in his own behalf, after such great and noble deeds as he had performed. So much, then, regarding his attitude towards the divine powers.

In others he seems to have been of very uneven character, and at variance with himself; he robbed much, but gave more; bestowed his honours unexpectedly, as unexpectedly his insults; fawned on those he needed, but gave himself airs towards those who needed him; so that one cannot tell whether he was more inclined by nature to disdain or flattery. 8 For as regards the irregularity of his punishments, cudgelling to death as he did on any chance grounds, and again gently submitting to the greatest wrongs; readily open to reconciliation after the most irreparable injuries, but visiting small and insignificant offences with death and confiscation of goods; here one might decide that he was naturally of a stern and revengeful temper, but relaxed his severity out of calculating regard for his interests. 9 In this very Social war, for example, when his soldiers with clubs did to death a legate, a man of praetorian dignity, Albinus by name, he passed over without punishment this flagrant crime, and solemnly sent the word about that he would find his men more ready and willing for the war on account of this transgression, since they would try to atone for it by their bravery. To those who censured the crime he paid no heed, but purposing already to put down the power of Marius and, now that the Social war was thought to be at an end, to get himself appointed general against Mithridates, he treated the soldiers under him with deference.

10 When he returned to the city, he was appointed consul with Quintus Pompeius, in the fiftieth year of his age, and made a most illustrious marriage with Caecilia, the daughter of Metellus, the Pontifex Maximus. On the theme of this marriage many verses were sung in ridicule of him by the common people, and many of the leading men were indignant at it, deeming him, as Livy says, unworthy of the woman although they had judged him worthy of the consulship. 11 And this was not the only woman whom he married, but first, when he was still a stripling, he took Ilia to wife, and she bore him a daughter; than Aelia, after her; and thirdly, Cloelia, whom he divorced for barrenness, honourably, and with words of praise, to which he added gifts. But since he married Metella only a few days afterwards, he was thought to have accused Cloelia unfairly. 12 To Metella, however, he always showed great deference in all things, so that the Roman people, when it longed for the restoration of the exiled partisans of Marius, and Sulla refused it, in its need called upon Metella for aid. It was thought also that when he took the city of Athens, he treated its people more harshly because they had scurrilously abused Metella from the walls. But this was later.

7 1 At the time of which I speak, deeming the consulship a slight matter in comparison with things to come, his thoughts soared to the Mithridatic war. But here he found a rival in Marius, who was possessed by ambition and a mad desire for fame, those never ageing passions. He was now unwieldy in body, and in the recent campaigns had given up service on account of his age, and yet set his heart upon foreign wars beyond the seas. 2 And when Sulla had set out for his camp on unfinished business, he himself kept at home and contrived that most fatal sedition, which wrought Rome more harm than all her wars together had done, as indeed the heavenly powers foreshowed to them. For fire broke forth of its own accord from the staves which supported the ensigns, and was with difficulty extinguished; and three ravens brought their young forth into the street and devoured them, and then carried the remains back again into their nest; 3 and after mice had gnawed consecrated gold in a temple, the keepers caught one of them, a female, in a trap, and in the very trap she brought forth five young ones and ate up three of them. But most important of all, out of a cloudless and clear air there rang out the voice of a trumpet, prolonging a shrill and dismal note, so that all were amazed and terrified at its loudness. The Tuscan wise men declared that the prodigy foretokened a change of conditions and the advent of a new age. 4 For according to them there are eight ages in all, differing from one another in the lives and customs of men, and to each of these God has appointed a definite number of times and seasons, which is completed by the circuit of a great year. And whenever this circuit has run out, and another begins, some wonderful sign is sent from earth or heaven, so that it is at once clear to those who have studied such subjects and are versed in them, that men of other habits and modes of life have come into the world, who are either more or less of concern to the gods than their predecessors were. 5 All things, they say, undergo great changes, as one again succeeds another, and especially the art of divination; at one period it rises in esteem and is successful in its predictions, because manifest and genuine signs are sent forth from the Deity; and again, in another age, it is in small repute, being off-hand, for the most part, and seeking to grasp the future by means of faint and blind senses. Such, at any rate, was the tale told by the wisest of the Tuscans, who were thought to know much more about it than the rest. 6 Moreover, while the senate was busied with the soothsayers about these prodigies, and holding its session in the temple of Bellona, a sparrow came flying in, before the eyes of all, with a grasshopper in its mouth, a part of which it threw down and left there, and then went away with the other part. From this the diviners apprehended a quarrelsome dissension between the landed proprietors and the populace of the city and forum; for the latter is vociferous like a grasshopper, while the former haunt the fields (like the sparrow).

8 1 Marius now made alliance with Sulpicius who was a tribune of the people, a man second to none in prime villainies, so that the question was not whom else he surpassed in wickedness, but in what he surpassed his own wickedness. For the combination of cruelty, effrontery, and rapacity in him was regardless of shame and of all evil, since he sold the Roman citizenship to freedmen and aliens at public sale, and counted out the price on a money-table which stood in the forum. 2 Moreover, he maintained three thousand swordsmen, and had about him a body of young men of the equestrian order who were ready for everything, and whom he called his anti-senate. Further, though he got a law passed that no senator should incur a debt of more than two thousand drachmas, he himself left behind him after death a debt of three millions. This man was now let loose upon the people by Marius, and after confounding all things by force and the sword, he proposed certain vicious laws, and particularly one offering to Marius the command in the Mithridatic war. 3 To prevent voting on these, the consuls decreed suspension of public business, as they were holding an assembly near the temple of Castor and Pollux, and, amongst many others, slew also the young son of Pompeius the consul in the forum; but Pompeius made his escape unnoticed. Sulla, however, after having been pursued into the house of Marius, was forced to come forth and rescind the decree for suspension of public business; 4 and it was because he did this that Sulpicius, although he deposed Pompeius, did not take the consulship away from Sulla, but merely transferred the expedition against Mithridates to the command of Marius. He also sent military tribunes at once to Nola, who were to take over the army there and conduct it to Marius.

9 1 But Sulla succeeded in making his escape and reaching the camp first, and his soldiers, when they learned what had happened, stoned the tribunes to death; in return for which, Marius and his partisans in the city went to slaying the friends of Sulla and plundering their property. Then there were removals and flights, some passing continually from camp to city, and others from city to camp. 2 The senate was not its own master, but was governed by the dictates of Marius and Sulpicius, and when it learned that Sulla was marching against the city, it sent two of the praetors, Brutus and Servilius, to forbid his advance. These men addressed Sulla with too much boldness, whereupon his soldiers would have gladly torn them to pieces, but contented themselves with breaking their fasces, stripping them of their senatorial togas, insulting them in many ways, and then sending them back to the city. Here a terrible dejection was produced by the mere sight of them, stripped of their praetorial insignia, and by their announcement that the sedition could no longer be checked, but must run its course.

3 Marius and his partisans, then, busied themselves with preparations; while Sulla, at the head of six full legions, moved with his colleague from Nola, his army, as he saw, being eager to march at once against the city, although he himself wavered in his own mind, and feared the danger. But after he had offered a sacrifice, Postumius the soothsayer learned what the omens were, and stretching out both hands to Sulla, begged that he might be bound and kept a prisoner until the battle, assuring him that he was willing to undergo the extremest penalty if all things did not speedily come to a good issue for him. 4 It is said, also, that to Sulla himself there appeared in his dreams a goddess whom the Romans learned to worship from the Cappadocians, whether she is Luna, or Minerva, or Bellona. This goddess, as Sulla fancied, stood by his side and put into his hand a thunder-bolt, and naming his enemies one by one, bade him smite them with it; and they were all smitten, and fell, and vanished away. Encouraged by the vision, he told it to his colleague, and at break of day led on towards Rome.

5 When he had reached Pictae, he was met by a deputation from the city, which begged him not to advance to an immediate attack, since the senate had voted that he should have all his rights; he therefore agreed to encamp there, and ordered his officers to measure out the ground, as was usual, for the camp, so that the deputation returned to the city believing that he would do so. But no sooner were they gone than he sent forward Lucius Basillus and Caius Mummius, who seized for him the city-gate and the walls on the Esquiline hill; then he himself followed hard after them with all speed. 6 Basillus and his men burst into the city and were forcing their way along, when the unarmed multitude pelted them with stones and tiles from the roofs of the houses, stopped their further progress, and crowded them back to the wall. But by this time Sulla was at hand, and seeing what was going on, shouted orders to set fire to the houses, and seizing a blazing torch, led the way himself, and ordered his archers to use their fire-bolts and shoot them up at the roofs. This he did not from any calm calculation, 7 but in a passion, and having surrendered to his anger the command over his actions, since he thought only of his enemies, and without any regard or even pity for friends and kindred and relations, made his entry by the aid of fire, which made no distinction between the guilty and the innocent. Meanwhile Marius, who had been driven back to the temple of Tellus, made a proclamation calling the slaves to his support under promise of freedom; but the enemy coming on, he was overpowered and fled from the city.

10 1 Sulla now called together the senate, and had a sentence of death passed on Marius himself and a few others, among whom was Sulpicius the tribune of the people. But Sulpicius was killed, after he had been betrayed by a servant, to whom Sulla first gave his freedom, and then had him thrown down the Tarpeian rock; moreover, he set a price on the head of Marius, an act both ungrateful and impolitic, since it was in his house that he had found refuge and surrendered himself a little before this, and had been let off safe. 2 And yet had Marius at that time not let Sulla go, but given him up to death at the hands of Sulpicius, he might have been absolute master in Rome; nevertheless he spared his life, and when after a few days he had given him the same opportunity, he did not obtain like mercy. By these proceedings Sulla won the secret dislike of the senate; but the people’s hatred and indignation was made manifest to him by their acts. 3 For instance, they ignominiously rejected Nonius his nephew, and Servius, who were his candidates for offices, and appointed others, whose preferment they thought would be most vexing to him. But he pretended to be pleased at this, saying that the people, in doing as it pleased, enjoyed a freedom which was due to him, and out of deference to the hatred of the multitude allowed Lucius Cinna, a man of the opposite faction, to be invested with the consulship, after binding him by solemn oaths to be favourable to his policies. 4 And Cinna went up to the Capitol with a stone in his hand and took the oaths, and then, after praying that if he did not maintain his goodwill towards Sulla, he might be cast out of the city, as the stone from his hand, he threw the stone upon the ground in the sight of many people. But as soon as he had entered upon his office, he tried to subvert the existing order of things, and had an impeachment prepared against Sulla, and appointed Virginius, a tribune of the people, to be his accuser. But Sulla, ignoring alike accuser and court, set out against Mithridates.

11 And it is said that about the time when Sulla was moving his armament from Italy, Mithridates, who was staying at Pergamum, was visited with many other portents from Heaven, and that a Victory with a crown in her hand, which the Pergamenians were lowering towards him by machinery of some sort, was broken to pieces just as she was about to touch his head, and the crown went tumbling from her hand to the ground in the midst of the theatre, and was shattered, whereat the people shuddered, and Mithridates was greatly dejected, although at that time his affairs were prospering beyond his hopes. 2 For he himself had wrested Asia from the Romans, and Bithynia and Cappadocia from their kings, and was now set down in Pergamum, dispensing riches, principalities, and sovereignties to his friends; and of his sons, one was in Pontus and Bosporus, holding without any opposition the ancient realm as far as the deserts beyond Lake Maeotis, while Ariarathes was overrunning Thrace and Macedonia with a large army, and trying to win them over; 3 his generals, too, with forces under them, were subduing other regions, and the greatest of them, Archelaüs, who with his fleet controlled the entire sea, was subjugating the Cyclades, and all the other islands which lie to the east of Cape Malea, and was in possession of Euboea itself, while from his head-quarters at Athens he was bringing into revolt from Rome the peoples of Greece as far as Thessaly, although he met with slight reverses at Chaeroneia. 4 For here he was confronted by Bruttius Sura, who was a lieutenant of Sentius the praetor of Macedonia, and a man of superior courage and prudence. This man, as Archelaüs came rushing like a torrent through Boeotia, opposed him most fiercely, and after thrice giving him battle at Chaeroneia, repulsed him, and drove him back to the sea. 5 But when Lucius Lucullus ordered him to give place to Sulla, who was coming, and to leave the conduct of the war to him, as the senate had voted, he at once abandoned Boeotia and marched back to Sentius, although his efforts were proving successful beyond hope, and although the nobility of his bearing was making Greece well-disposed towards a change of allegiance. However, these were the most brilliant achievements of Bruttius.

12 1 As for Sulla, he at once received deputations and invitations from the other cities, but Athens was compelled by the tyrant Aristion to side with Mithridates. Against this city, therefore, Sulla led up all his forces, and investing the Piraeus, laid siege to it, bringing to bear upon it every sort of siege-engine, and making all sorts of assaults upon it. 2 And yet if he had been patient a little while, he might have captured the upper city without hazard, since it lacked the necessities of life and was already reduced by famine to the last extremity. But since he was eager to get back to Rome, and feared the spirit of revolution there, he ran many risks, fought many battles, and made great outlays that he might hasten on the war, in which, not to speak of his other munitions, the operation of the siege-engines called for ten thousand pairs of mules, which were employed daily for this service. 3 And when timber began to fail, owing to the destruction of many of the works, which broke down of their own weight, and to the burning of those which were continually smitten by the enemy’s fire-bolts, he laid hands upon the sacred groves, and ravaged the Academy, which was the most wooded of the city’s suburbs, as well as the Lyceum. And since he needed much money also for the war, he diverted to his uses the sacred treasures of Hellas, partly from Epidaurus, and partly from Olympia, sending for the most beautiful and most precious of the offerings there. 4 He wrote also to the Amphictyons at Delphi that it was better to have the treasures of the god sent to him; for he would either keep them more safely, or, if he spent them, would restore as much. And he sent Caphis, the Phocian, one of his friends, with the letter, bidding him receive each article by weight. Caphis came to Delphi, but was loth to touch the sacred objects, and shed many tears, in the presence of the Amphictyons, over the necessity of it. 5 And when some of them declared they heard the sound of the god’s lyre in the inner sanctuary, Caphis, either because he believed them, or because he wished to strike Sulla with superstitious fear, sent word to him about it. But Sulla wrote back jocosely, expressing his amazement that Caphis did not understand that singing was done in joy, not anger; his orders were therefore to take boldly, assured that the god was willing and glad to give.

6 Accordingly, the rest of the treasures were sent away without the knowledge of the most, certainly, of the Greeks; but the silver jar, the only one of the royal gifts which still remained, was too large and heavy for any beast of burden to carry, and the Amphictyons were compelled to cut it into pieces. As they did so, they called to mind now Titus Flamininus and Manius Acilius, and now Aemilius Paulus, of whom one had driven Antiochus out of Greece, and the others had subdued in war the kings of Macedonia; these had not only spared the sanctuaries of the Greeks, but had even made additional gifts to them, and greatly increased their honour and dignity. 7 But these were lawful commanders of men who were self-restrained and had learned to serve their leaders without a murmur, and they were themselves kingly in spirit and simple in their personal expenses, and indulged in moderate and specified public expenditures, deeming it more disgraceful to flatter their soldiers than to fear their enemies; 8 the generals of this later time, however, who won their primacy by force, not merit, and who needed their armies for service against one another, rather than against the public enemy, were compelled to merge the general in the demagogue, and then, by purchasing the services of their soldiers with lavish sums to be spent on luxurious living, they unwittingly made their whole country a thing for sale, and themselves slaves of the basest men for the sake of ruling over the better. This was what drove out Marius, and then brought him back again against Sulla; this made Cinna the assassin of Octavius, and Fimbria of Flaccus. 9 And it was Sulla who, more than any one else, paved the way for these horrors, by making lavish expenditures upon the soldiers under his own command that he might corrupt and win over those whom others commanded, so that in making traitors of the rest, and profligates of his own soldiers, he had need of much money, and especially for this siege.

13 1 For he was possessed by some dreadful and inexorable passion for the capture of Athens, either because he was fighting with a sort of ardour against the shadow of the city’s former glory, or because he was provoked to anger by the scurrilous abuse which had been showered from the walls upon himself and Metella by the tyrant Aristion, who always danced in mockery as he scoffed. This man’s spirit was compounded of licentiousness and cruelty; 2 he had made himself a sink for the worst of the diseases and passions of Mithridates; and in these her last days he had fixed himself, like a fatal malady, upon a city which had previously passed safely through countless wars, and many usurpations and seditions. This man, although at the time a bushel of wheat sold in the city for a thousand drachmas, and although men made food for themselves of the fever-few which grew on the acropolis, 3 and boiled down shoes and leather oil-flasks to eat, was himself continually indulging in drinking-bouts and revels by daylight, was dancing in armour and making jokes to deride the enemy, while he suffered the sacred lamp of the goddess to go out for lack of oil; and when the chief priestess begged him for a twelfth of a bushel of wheat, he sent her so much pepper; and when the senators and priests came to him in suppliant array, and entreated him to take pity on the city and come to terms with Sulla, he scattered them with a volley of arrows. 4 But after a long time, at last, with much ado, he sent out two or three of his fellow-revellers to treat for peace, to whom Sulla, when they made no demands which could save the city, but talked in lofty strains about Theseus and Eumolpus and the Persian wars, said: “Be off, my dear Sirs, and take these speeches with you; for I was not sent to Athens by the Romans to learn its history, but to subdue its rebels.”

14 1 But at this juncture, as it is said, certain soldiers in the Cerameicus overheard some old men talking with one another, and abusing the tyrant because he did not guard the approaches to the wall at the Heptachalcum, at which point alone it was possible and easy for the enemy to get over. When this was reported to Sulla, 2 he did not make light of it, but went thither by night, and after seeing that the place could be taken, set himself to the work. And Sulla himself says, in his Memoirs, that Marcus Ateius was the first man to mount the wall, and that when an enemy confronted him, he gave him a downward cut on the helmet with his sword, and shattered the weapon; he did not, however, yield ground, but remained and held his own. At any rate, the city was taken at this point, as the oldest Athenians used to testify. 3 And Sulla himself, after he had thrown down and levelled with the ground the wall between the Piraïc and the Sacred Gate, led his army into the city at midnight. The sight of him was made terrible by blasts of many trumpets and bugles, and by the cries and yells of the soldiery now let loose by him for plunder and slaughter, and rushing through the narrow streets with drawn swords. There was therefore no counting of the slain, but their numbers are to this day determined only by the space that was covered with blood. 4 For without mention of those who were killed in the rest of the city, the blood that was shed in the market-place covered all the Cerameicus inside the Dipylon gate; nay, many say that it flowed through the gate and deluged the suburb. But although those who were thus slain were so many, there were yet more who slew themselves, out of yearning pity for their native city, which they thought was going to be destroyed. For this conviction made the best of them give up in despair and fear to survive, since they expected no humanity or moderation in Sulla. 5 However, partly at the instance of the exiles Meidias and Calliphon, who threw themselves at his feet in supplication, and partly because all the Roman senators who were in his following interceded for the city, being himself also by this time sated with vengeance, after some words in praise of the ancient Athenians, he said that he forgave a few for the sake of many, the living for the sake of the dead.

6 He took Athens, as he says himself in his Memoirs, on the Calends of March, a day which corresponds very nearly with the first of the month Anthesterion. In this month, as it happens, the Athenians perform many rites commemorating the destruction and devastation caused by the flood, believing that the ancient deluge occurred at about this time. 7 On the capture of the town, the tyrant took refuge in the acropolis, and was besieged there by Curio, who was appointed to this task. He held out for a considerable time, but was driven by the pangs of thirst to give himself up. And the Deity at once gave a manifest token in the matter; for at the very hour of the day when Curio brought his prisoner down, clouds gathered in an open sky, and a quantity of rain fell and filled the acropolis with water. Not long after, Sulla took the Piraeus also, and burnt most of it, including the arsenal of Philo, a marvellous work.

15 1 Meanwhile Taxiles, the general of Mithridates, had come down from Thrace and Macedonia with a hundred thousand footmen, ten thousand horse, and ninety scythe-bearing four-horse chariots, and summoned Archelaüs to join him. Archelaüs still lay with his fleet at Munychia, and was neither willing to quit the sea, nor eager to join battle with the Romans, but planned to protract the war and cut off their supplies. 2 But Sulla understood the situation much better than Archelaüs did, and therefore transferred his forces into Boeotia, away from regions that were far from fertile, and unable to maintain a population even in time of peace. Most people thought that he had erred in his calculations, because he had abandoned Attica, which was a rough country and ill-suited for cavalry movements, and thrown himself into the plains and open districts of Boeotia, although he saw that the strength of the Barbarians consisted in chariots and cavalry. 3 But in flying from scarcity and famine, as has been said, he was compelled to pursue the danger arising from battle. And furthermore, he was anxious about Hortensius, a bold and capable general, who was leading a force from Thessaly to Sulla while the Barbarians were closely watching for him in the passes. For these reasons Sulla transferred his army into Boeotia. But Hortensius was rescued by Caphis, a countryman of mine, and conducted by different routes, of which the Barbarians were ignorant, past Parnassus to a spot just below Tithora. This was not so large a city then as it is now, 4 but a fortress surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs, into which those of the Phocians who in ancient times fled before the advance of Xerxes betook themselves and were saved. Having encamped there, Hortensius repulsed the enemy by day, and at night descended to Patronis by difficult paths and made a junction with Sulla, who came to meet him with his army.

16 1 When they had thus united their forces, they occupied a hill which rose out of the midst of the plains of Elatea, a fertile hill, thickly grown with trees, and supplied with water at its base. Philoboetus is its name, and its situation and natural advantages are most highly praised by Sulla. As they lay encamped here, they appeared to the enemy altogether few in numbers; for they were not more than fifteen hundred horse, and less than fifteen thousand foot. 2 Wherefore the rest of his generals overpowered the objections of Archelaüs and drew up for battle, filling the plain with their horses, chariots, shields, and bucklers.

The air could not contain the shouts and clamour of so many nations forming in array. At the same time also the pomp and ostentation of their costly equipment was not without its effect and use in exciting terror; indeed, the flashing of their armour, which was magnificently embellished with gold and silver, 3 and the rich colours of their Median and Scythian vests, intermingled with bronze and flashing steel, presented a flaming and fearful sight as they surged to and fro, so that the Romans huddled together behind their trenches, and Sulla, unable by any reasoning to remove their fear, and unwilling to force them into a fight from which they wanted to run away, had to sit still and endure as best he could the sight of the Barbarians insulting him with boasts and laughter. This, however, was of service to him above all else. 4 For owing to their contempt of him, his opponents lapsed into great disorder, since even at their best they were not obedient to their generals, owing to the great number in command. Few of them therefore consented to remain within their entrenchments, but the largest part of the throng was lured away by plunder and pillage, and was scattered about the country many days march from their camp. They are said to have destroyed the city of Panope, and to have sacked Lebadeia and despoiled its oracle, although none of their generals ordered them to do so.

5 But Sulla, though chafing and fretting while cities were destroyed before his eyes, would not suffer his soldiers to be idle, but led them out and forced them to dig ditches and divert the Cephisus from its channel, giving no man a respite, and showing himself an inexorable chastiser of those who were remiss, in order that they might be worn out at their tasks and induced by their hardships to welcome danger. And so it fell out. 6 For on the third day of their drudgery, as Sulla passed by, they begged and clamoured to be led against the enemy. But Sulla said their words showed not a willingness to fight, but an unwillingness to labour; if, however, they were really disposed to fight, then he bade them take their arms and go at once yonder, pointing them to what had formerly been the acropolis of Parapotamii. 7 At this time, however, the city had been destroyed, and only a rocky and precipitous crest remained, separated from Mount Hedylium by the breadth of the river Assus, which then falls into the Cephisus at the very base of the mountain, becomes impetuous in its flow after the confluence, and makes the citadel a strong place for a camp. For this reason, and because he saw the Chalcaspides, or Bronze-shields, of the enemy pushing their way towards it, Sulla wished to occupy the place first; and he did occupy it, now that he found his soldiers eager for action. 8 And when Archelaüs, repulsed from this site, set out against Chaeroneia, and the Chaeroneians in Sulla’s army besought him not to abandon their city to its fate, he sent out Gabinius, one of his tribunes, with one legion, and let the Chaeroneians also go, who wished, but were unable, to get into the city before Gabinius. So efficient was he, and more eager to bring succour than those who begged that succour should be given. Juba, however, says it was not Gabinius, but Ericius, who was thus sent. At any rate, so narrowly did my native city escape its peril.

17 1 From Lebadeia and the cave of Trophonius favourable utterances and oracles announcing victory were now sent out to the Romans. Of these the inhabitants of the country have more to say; but Sulla himself has written in the tenth book of his Memoirs, how Quintus Titius, a prominent man among the Romans doing business in Greece, came to him immediately after he had won his victory at Chaeroneia, with tidings that Trophonius predicted for him a second battle and victory in that neighbourhood within a short time. 2 And after him, a legionary soldier, Salvenius by name, brought him from the god a statement of the issue which affairs in Italy were going to have. But both agreed about the source of their oracle; for they said they had beheld one who in beauty and majesty was like unto Olympian Jove.

3 Sulla now crossed the Assus, and after advancing to the foot of Mount Hedylium, encamped over against Archelaüs, who had thrown up strong entrenchments between Mounts Acontium and Hedylium, at the so called Assian plain. The spot in which he encamped, moreover, is to this day called Archelaüs, after him. After one day’s respite, Sulla left Murena behind with one legion and two cohorts, to obstruct the enemy if they attempted to draw up their forces, while he himself held sacrifices on the banks of the Cephisus, 4 and, when the rites were over, moved on towards Chaeroneia, to pick up the forces stationed there, and to reconnoitre Thurium, as it is called, which had been already occupied by the enemy. This is a conical-shaped hill with a craggy peak (we call it Orthopagus), and at its foot is the river Molus and a temple of Apollo Thurius. The god got this surname from Thuro, the mother of Chaeron, who was founder of Chaeroneia, according to tradition. 5 But some say that the cow which was given by Apollo to Cadmus as his guide, appeared there, and that the place was named as it is from her, “thor” being the Phoenician word for cow.

As Sulla drew near to Chaeroneia, the tribune who had been stationed in the city, with his men in full armour, came to meet him, carrying a wreath of laurel. 6 After Sulla had accepted this, greeted the soldiers, and animated them for the coming danger, two men of Chaeroneia accosted him, Homoloïchus and Anaxidamus, and engaged to cut off the troops in possession of Thurium if he would give them a few soldiers; for there was a path out of sight of the Barbarians, leading from the so called Petrachus along past the Museum to that part of Thurium which was over their heads, and by taking this path it would not be difficult, they said, to fall upon them and either stone them to death from above, or force them into the plain. 7 After Gabinius had borne testimony to the men’s courage and fidelity, Sulla ordered them to make the attempt, while he himself proceeded to form his line of battle, and to dispose his cavalry on either wing, taking command of the right himself, and assigning the left to Murena. His lieutenants, Galba and Hortensius, with cohorts of reserves, stationed themselves on the heights in the rear, to guard against attacks on the flanks. For the enemy were observed to be making their wing flexible and light for evolution with large bodies of horse and light infantry, purposing to extend it and envelop the Romans.

18 1 Meanwhile the Chaeroneians, over whom Ericius had been placed in command by Sulla, made their way unnoticed around Thurium and then showed themselves suddenly, producing great confusion and rout among the Barbarians, and slaughter at one another’s hands for the most part. For they did not hold their ground, but rushed down the steeps, falling upon their own spears and crowding one another down the precipices, while their enemies pressed upon them from above and smote their exposed bodies, so that three thousand of them fell on Thurium. 2 Of the fugitives, some were met by Murena, who had already formed his array, and were cut off and slain; others pushed their way towards the camp of their friends, and falling pell-mell upon their lines, filled the greater part of them with terror and confusion, and inflicted a delay upon their generals which was especially harmful to them. For Sulla promptly charged upon them while they were in confusion, and by abridging the space between the armies with the speed of his approach, robbed the scythe-bearing chariots of their efficiency. 3 For these are of most avail after a long course, which gives them velocity and impetus for breaking through an opposing line but short starts are ineffectual and feeble, as in the case of missiles which do not get full propulsion. And this proved to be true now in the case of Barbarians. The first of their chariots were driven along feebly and engaged sluggishly, so that the Romans, after repulsing them, clapped their hands and laughed and called for more, as they are wont to do at the races in the circus. 4 Thereupon the infantry forces engaged, the Barbarians holding their pikes before them at full length, and endeavouring, by locking their shields together, to keep their line of battle intact; while the Romans threw down their javelins, drew their swords, and sought to dash the pikes aside, that they might get at their enemies as soon as possible, in the fury that possessed them. 5 For they saw drawn up in front of the enemy fifteen thousand slaves, whom the king’s generals had set free by proclamation in the cities and enrolled among the men-at arms. And a certain Roman centurion is reported to have said that it was only at the Saturnalia, so far as he knew, that slaves participated in the general license. 6 These men, however, owing to the depth and density of their array, and the unnatural courage with which they held their ground, were only slowly repulsed by the Roman men-at arms; but at last the fiery bolts and the javelins which the Romans in the rear ranks plied unsparingly, threw them into confusion and drove them back.

19 1 Archelaüs now extended his right wing to envelop Sulla’s line, whereupon Hortensius sent his cohorts against him on a quick run, intending to attack his flank. But Archelaüs wheeled swiftly against him his two thousand horsemen, and Hortensius, forced aside by superior numbers, was keeping close to the hills, separating himself little by little from the main line, and getting surrounded by the enemy. 2 When Sulla learned of this, he came swiftly to his aid from the right wing, which was not yet engaged. But Archelaüs, guessing the truth from the dust raised by Sulla’s troops, gave Hortensius the go-by, and wheeling, set off for the right wing whence Sulla had come, thinking to surprise it without a commander. At the same time Murena also was attacked by Taxiles with his Bronze-shields, so that when shouts were borne to his ears from both places, and reëchoed by the surrounding hills, Sulla halted, and was at a loss to know in which of the two directions he ought to betake himself. 3 But having decided to resume his own post, he sent Hortensius with four cohorts to help Murena, while he himself, bidding the fifth cohort to follow, hastened to the right wing. This of itself had already engaged Archelaüs on equal terms, but when Sulla appeared, they drove the enemy back at all points, obtained the mastery, and pursued them to the river and Mount Acontium in a headlong flight. 4 Sulla, however, did not neglect Murena in his peril, but set out to aid the forces in that quarter; he saw, however, that they were victorious, and then joined in the pursuit. Many of the Barbarians, then, were slain in the plain, but most were cut to pieces as they rushed for their entrenchments, so that only ten thousand out of so many myriads made their escape into Chalcis. But Sulla says he missed only fourteen of his soldiers, and that afterwards, towards evening, two of these came in. 5 He therefore inscribed upon his trophies the names of Mars, Victory and Venus, in the belief that his success in the war was due no less to good fortune than to military skill and strength. This trophy of the battle in the plain stands on the spot where the troops of Archelaüs first gave way, by the brook Molus, but there is another planted on the crest of Thurium, to commemorate the envelopment of the Barbarians there, and it indicates in Greek letters that Homoloïchus and Anaxidamus were the heroes of the exploit. 6 The festival in honour of this victory was celebrated by Sulla in Thebes, where he prepared a stage near the fountain of Oedipus. But the judges were Greeks invited from the other cities, since towards the Thebans he was irreconcilably hostile. He also took away half of their territory and consecrated it to Pythian Apollo and Olympian Zeus, giving orders that from its revenues the moneys should be paid back to the gods which he had taken from them.

20 1 After this, learning that Flaccus, a man of the opposite faction, had been chosen consul and was crossing the Ionian sea with an army, ostensibly against Mithridates, but really against himself, he set out towards Thessaly in order to meet him. But when he was come to the city of Meliteia, tidings reached him from many quarters that the regions behind him were ravaged again by an army of the king which was no smaller than the former. 2 For Dorylaüs, having put in at Chalcis with a large fleet, on which he brought eighty thousand of the best trained and disciplined men in the army of Mithridates, at once burst into Boeotia and occupied the country. He was eager to entice Sulla to battle, disregarding the protests of Archelaüs, and giving it out that in the previous battle so many myriads had not perished without treachery. 3 Sulla, however, turning swiftly back, showed Dorylaüs that Archelaüs was a man of prudence and best acquainted with the Roman valour, so that after a slight skirmish with Sulla near Tilphossium, he was first of those who thought it expedient not to decide the issue by a battle, but rather to wear out the war by dint of time and treasure. Nevertheless, Archelaüs was much encouraged by the nature of the country about Orchomenus, where they were encamped, since it was most favourable as a battle-field for an army superior in cavalry. 4 For of all the plains of Boeotia this is the largest and fairest, and beginning from the city of Orchomenus, it spreads out smooth and treeless as far as the marshes in which the river Melas loses itself. This rises close under the city of Orchomenus, and is the only Greek river that is copious and navigable at its sources; moreover, it increases towards the time of the summer solstice, like the Nile, and produces plants like those which grow there, only stunted and without fruit. 5 Its course is short, however, and the greater part of it disappears at once in blind and marshy lakes, while a small portion of it unites with the Cephisus, somewhere near the place in which the stagnant water is reputed to produce the famous reed for flutes.

21 1 When the two armies had encamped near each other, Archelaüs lay still, but Sulla proceeded to dig trenches on either side, in order that, if possible, he might cut the enemy off from the solid ground which was favourable for the cavalry, and force them into the marshes. The enemy, however, would not suffer this, but when their generals sent them forth, charged impetuously and at full speed, so that not only Sulla’s labourers were dispersed, but also the greater part of the corps drawn up to protect them was thrown into confusion and fled. 2 Then Sulla threw himself from his horse, seized an ensign, and pushed his way through the fugitives against the enemy, crying: “For me, O Romans, an honourable death here; but you, when men ask you where you betrayed your commander, remember to tell them, at Orchomenus.” The fugitives rallied at these words, and two of the cohorts on his right wing came to his aid; these he led against the enemy and routed them. 3 Then he fell back a little distance, and after giving his men breakfast, again proceeded to fence the enemy’s entrenchments off with his ditches. But they attacked him again in better order than before, Diogenes, the step-son of Archelaüs, fought gallantly on their right wing, and fell gloriously, and their archers, being hard pressed by the Romans, so that they had no room to draw their bows, took their arrows by handfuls, struck with them as with swords, at close quarters, and tried to beat back their foes, but were finally shut up in their entrenchments, and had a miserable night of it with their slain and wounded. Next day Sulla again led his soldiers up to the enemy’s fortifications and continued trenching them off, 4 and when the greater part of them came out to give him battle, he engaged with them and routed them, and such was their panic that no resistance was made, and he took their camp by storm. The marshes were filled with their blood, and the lake with their dead bodies, so that even to this day many bows, helmets, fragments of steel breastplates, and swords of barbarian make are found embedded in the mud, although almost two hundred years have passed since this battle. Such, then, are the accounts given of the actions at Chaeroneia and Orchomenus.

22 1 Now since Cinna and Carbo at Rome were treating the most eminent men with injustice and violence, many of these had fled from their tyranny and were repairing to Sulla’s camp as to a harbour of refuge, and in a little time he had about him the semblance of a senate. Metella, also, who had with difficulty stolen herself and her children away, came with tidings that his house and his villas had been burned by his enemies, and with entreaties that he would come to the help of his partisans at home. 2 But while he was in doubt what to do, and could neither consent to neglect his country when she was outraged, nor see his way clear to go away and leave unfinished so great a task as the war with Mithridates, there came to him a merchant of Delos, named Archelaüs, who secretly brought from Archelaüs the king’s general certain vague hopes and propositions. The matter was so welcome to Sulla that he was eager to have a personal conference with Archelaüs; 3 and they had a meeting on the sea-coast near Delium, where the temple of Apollo is. Archelaüs began the conference by urging Sulla to abandon Asia and Pontus and sail for the war in Rome, on condition of receiving money, triremes, and as large a force as he wished from the king. Sulla rejoined by bidding him take no further thought for Mithridates, but assume the crown himself in his stead, becoming an ally of the Romans, and surrendering to them his ships. 4 And when Archelaüs expressed his abhorrence of such treason, Sulla said: “So then, thou, Archelaüs who art a Cappadocian, and a slave of a barbarian king, or, if thou wilt, his friend, wilt not consent to a disgraceful deed for such great rewards; but to me, who am a Roman commander, and Sulla, thou darest to propose treachery? as if thou wert not that Archelaüs who fled from Chaeroneia with a few survivors out of one hundred and twenty thousand men, and who lay hid two days in the marshes of Orchomenus, and who left Boeotia impassable for the multitude of dead bodies!” 5 Upon this, Archelaüs changed his tone, and as a humble suppliant besought him to desist from the war and be reconciled with Mithridates. Sulla granted the request, and terms of agreement were made as follows: Mithridates was to renounce Asia and Paphlagonia, restore Bithynia to Nicomedes and Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes, pay down to the Romans two thousand talents, and give them seventy bronze-armoured ships with their proper equipment; Sulla, on his part, was to confirm Mithridates in the rest of his dominions, and get him voted an ally of the Romans.

23 1 When these agreements had been made, Sulla turned back and proceeded by way of Thessaly and Macedonia towards the Hellespont, having Archelaüs with him, and in honour. And when Archelaüs fell dangerously ill at Larissa, Sulla stopped his march, and cared for him as if he had been one of his own commanding officers. 2 This raised the suspicion that the action at Chaeroneia had not been fairly fought, as well as the fact that Sulla released the other friends of Mithridates whom he had taken captive, but put to death Aristion the tyrant alone, by poison, who was at enmity with Archelaüs; the strongest ground for the suspicion, however, was his gift to the Cappadocian of about two thousand acresb of land in Euboea, and his bestowing upon him the title of friend and ally of the Romans. At any rate, on these points Sulla defends himself in his Memoirs.

3 At this time also ambassadors from Mithridates arrived, and when they declared that he accepted the other terms, but demanded that Paphlagonia be not taken away from him, and that as to the ships no agreement whatsoever should be made, Sulla flew into a passion and said: “What say ye? Mithridates maintains his claim to Paphlagonia, and refuses to give the ships, when I thought he would prostrate himself humbly before me if I should leave him but that right hand of his, with which he took the lives of so many Romans? 4 However, he will quickly talk in another strain after I have crossed into Asia; now he sits in Pergamum and directs a war which he has not seen.” The ambassadors, accordingly, were frightened, and held their peace; but Archelaüs entreated Sulla, and tried to soften his anger, laying hold of his right hand and weeping. And finally he obtained Sulla’s consent to send him in person to Mithridates; for he said that he would have the peace ratified on Sulla’s terms, or, if he could not persuade the king, would kill himself. 5 Upon these assurances Sulla sent him away, and then himself invaded the country of the Maedi, and after ravaging most of it, turned back again into Macedonia, and received Archelaüs at Philippi. Archelaüs brought him word that all was well, but that Mithridates insisted on a conference with him. 6 Fimbria was chiefly responsible for this, who, after killing Flaccus, the consul of the opposite faction, and overpowering the generals of Mithridates, was marching against the king himself. For this terrified Mithridates, and he chose rather to seek the friendship of Sulla.

24 1 They met, accordingly, at Dardanus, in the Troad, Mithridates having two hundred ships there, equipped with oars, twenty thousand men-at arms from his infantry force, six thousand horse, and a throng of scythe-bearing chariots; Sulla, on the other hand, having four cohorts and two hundred horse. When Mithridates came towards him and put out his hand, Sulla asked him if he would put a stop to the war on the terms which Archelaüs had made, and as the king was silent, Sulla said: “But surely it is the part of suppliants to speak first, while victors need only to be silent.” 2 Then Mithridates began a defense of himself, and tried to shift the blame for the war partly upon the gods, partly upon the Romans themselves. But Sulla cut him short, saying that he had long ago heard from others, but now knew of himself, that Mithridates was a very powerful orator, since he had not been at a loss for plausible arguments to defend such baseness and injustice as his. 3 Then he reproached him bitterly and denounced him for what he had done, and asked him again if he would keep the agreements made through Archelaüs. And when he said that he would, then Sulla greeted him with an embrace and a kiss, and later, bringing to him Ariobarzanes and Nicomedes the kings, he reconciled him with them. Mithridates, accordingly, after handing over to Sulla seventy ships and five hundred archers, sailed away to Pontus.

4 But Sulla perceived that his soldiers were incensed at the peace which he had made; they thought it a terrible thing to see the most hostile of kings, who had caused one hundred and fifty thousand of the Romans in Asia to be massacred in a single day to go sailing off with wealth and spoils from Asia, which he had for four years continued to plunder and levy taxes on. He therefore defended himself to them by saying that he would not have been able to carry on war with Mithridates and Fimbria too, if they had both joined forces against him.

25 1 Then he set out from thence against Fimbria, who was encamped near Thyateira, and halting his army near by, began to fortify his camp. But the soldiers of Fimbria came forth from their camp without any armour on, and welcomed Sulla’s soldiers, and joined them eagerly in their labours, and when Fimbria saw this change in their allegiance, fearing that Sulla was irreconcileable, he laid violent hands on himself in the camp.

2 Sulla now laid a public fine upon Asia of twenty thousand talents, and utterly ruined individual families by the insolent outrages of the soldiers quartered on them. For orders were given that the host should give his guest four tetradrachms a day, and furnish him, and as many friends as he might wish to invite, with a supper; and that a military tribune should receive fifty drachmas a day, and two suits of clothing, one to wear when he was at home, and another when he went abroad.

26 1 Having put to sea with all his ships from Ephesus, on the third day he came to anchor in Piraeus. He was now initiated into the mysteries, and seized for himself the library of Apellicon the Teian, in which were most of the treatises of Aristotle and Theophrastus, at that time not yet well known to the public. But it is said that after the library was carried to Rome, Tyrannio the grammarian arranged most of the works in it, and that Andronicus the Rhodian was furnished by him with copies of them, and published them, and drew up the lists now current. 2 The old Peripatetics were evidently of themselves accomplished and learned men, but they seem to have had neither a large nor an exact acquaintance with the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus, because the estate of Neleus of Scepsis, to whom Theophrastus bequeathed his books, came into the hands of careless and illiterate people.

3 While Sulla was tarrying at Athens, his feet were attacked by numbness and a feeling of heaviness, which Strabo says is premonitory gout. He therefore crossed the straits to Aedepsus and used the hot waters there, taking a holiday at the same time, and passing his time pleasantly with the theatrical artists. Once, as he was walking along the seashore, certain fishermen brought him some very fine fish. Being delighted with their gift, and learning that they were from Halae, “What!” said he, “is any man of Halae still alive?” 4 For when he was pursuing the enemy after his victory at Orchomenus, he had destroyed three cities of Boeotia together, Anthedon, Larymna, and Halae. The men were speechless with terror, but Sulla smiled and bade them depart in peace, since they had brought with them no mean or despicable intercessors. The men of Halae say that this gave them courage to go back again in a body to their city.

27 1 And now Sulla, having passed through Thessaly and Macedonia down to the sea, was preparing to cross from Dyrrhachium to Brundisium with twelve hundred ships. Near by is Apollonia, and in its vicinity is the Nymphaeum, a sacred precinct, which sends forth in various places from its green dell and meadows, streams of perpetually flowing fire. 2 Here, they say, a satyr was caught asleep, such an one as sculptors and painters represent, and brought to Sulla, where he was asked through many interpreters who he was. And when at last he uttered nothing intelligible, but with difficulty emitted a hoarse cry that was something between the neighing of a horse and the bleating of a goat, Sulla was horrified, and ordered him out of his sight.

3 When Sulla was about to transport his soldiers, and was in fear lest, when they had reached Italy, they should disperse to their several cities, in the first place, they took an oath of their own accord to stand by him, and to do no damage to Italy without his orders; and then, seeing that he needed much money, they made a free-will offering and contribution, each man according to his abundance. Sulla, however, would not accept their offering, but after thanking them and rousing their courage, crossed over to confront, as he himself says, fifteen hostile commanders with four hundred and fifty cohorts. But the Deity gave him most unmistakeable foretokens of his successes. 4 For after he had sacrificed at once where he landed at Tarentum, the victim’s liver was seen to have an impression of a wreath of laurel, with two fillets hanging from it. And a little while before he crossed over from Greece, there were seen on Mount Tifatum in Campania, in the day time, two great he-goats fighting together, and doing everything that men do when they fight a battle. But it proved to be an apparition, and gradually rising from earth it dispersed itself generally in the air, like vague phantoms, and then vanished from sight. 5 And not long after, in this very place, when Marius the younger and Norbanus the consul led large forces up against him, Sulla, without either giving out an order of battle or forming his own army in companies, but taking advantage of a vigorous general alacrity and a transport of courage in them, routed the enemy and shut up Norbanus in the city of Capua, after slaying seven thousand of his men. 6 It was on account of this success, he says, that his soldiers did not disperse into their several cities, but held together and despised their opponents, though these were many times more numerous. He says, moreover, that at Silvium, a servant of Pontius met him, in an inspired state, declaring that he brought him from Bellona triumph in war and victory, but that if he did not hasten, the Capitol would be burnt; and this actually happened, he says, on the day which the man foretold, namely, the sixth day of Quintilis, which we now call July. 7 And still further, at Fidentia, when Marcus Lucullus, one of Sulla’s commanders, with sixteen cohorts confronted fifty cohorts of the enemy, although he had confidence in the readiness of his soldiers, still, as most of them were without arms, he hesitated to attack. But while he was waiting and deliberating, from the neighbouring plain, which was a meadow, a gentle breeze brought a quantity of flowers and scattered them down on his army; they settled of their own accord and enveloped the shields and helmets of the soldiers, so that to the enemy these appeared to be crowned with garlands. 8 This circumstance made them more eager for the fray, and they joined battle, won the victory, killed eighteen thousand of the enemy, and took their camp. This Lucullus was a brother of the Lucullus who afterwards subdued Mithridates and Tigranes.

28 1 But Sulla, seeing that his enemies still surrounded him on all sides with many armies and large forces, had recourse to craft as well as force, and invited Scipio, the other consul, to make terms of peace. 2 He accepted the proposal, and several meetings and conferences were held; but Sulla continually interposed some pretext for gaining time, and gradually corrupted Scipio’s soldiers by means of his own, who were practised in deceit and every kind of jugglery, like their general himself. For they entered the camp of their enemies, mingled freely with them, and gradually won them over to Sulla’s cause, some at once with money, others with promises, and others still with persuasive flatteries. 3 And finally, when Sulla drew near with twenty cohorts, his men greeted those of Scipio, who answered their greetings and went over to them. Scipio, who was left alone, was taken in his tent, but dismissed; while Sulla, who had used his twenty cohorts as decoy-birds to catch the forty cohorts of the enemy, led them all back to his camp. It was on this occasion, too, that Carbo is said to have remarked that in making war upon the fox and the lion in Sulla, he was more annoyed by the fox.

4 After this, at Signia, Marius, with eighty-five cohorts, challenged Sulla to battle. Now Sulla was very eager to have the issue settled on that day; for he had seen a vision in his dreams, as follows. He thought he saw the elder Marius, who was long since dead, advising his son Marius to beware of the ensuing day, since it would bring him a great calamity. For this reason, then, Sulla was eager to fight a battle, and was trying to get Dolabella, who was encamped at some distance, to join him. 5 But the enemy beset the roads and hemmed Sulla in, and his soldiers were worn out with fighting to open a passage. Much rain also came upon them while they were at work and added to their distress. The tribunes therefore came to Sulla and begged him to defer the battle, showing him the soldiers prostrated with weariness and resting on their shields, which they had laid upon the ground. 6 Sulla yielded reluctantly, and gave orders to pitch a camp, but just as his men were beginning to dig a trench and throw up the rampart before it, Marius attacked them confidently, riding ahead of his lines, and hoping to scatter his enemies while they were in disorder and confusion. There the Deity fulfilled the words which Sulla had heard in his dreams. For Sulla’s rage imparted itself to his soldiers, and leaving off their work, they planted their javelins in the trench, drew their swords, and with a general shout came to close quarters with their enemies. 7 These did not hold their ground long, but took to flight, and were slain in great numbers. Marius fled to Praeneste, but found the gate already closed. A rope was thrown down to him, however, and after fastening this around his waist, he was hoisted to the top of the wall. But there are some who say, and Fenestella is one of these, that Marius knew nothing of the battle, but was forced by loss of sleep and weariness to cast himself upon the ground in a shady place when the signal for battle was given, and there gave way to sleep, and was then roused with difficulty when the rout took place. 8 In this battle Sulla says he lost only twenty-three men, but killed twenty thousand of the enemy, and took eight thousand prisoners. His other plans were carried out with like success by his generals, Pompey, Crassus, Metellus, and Servilius. For with few or no reverses these annihilated large forces of the enemy, so that Carbo, the chief supporter of the opposite faction, ran away from his own army by night, and sailed off to Libya.

29 1 In Sulla’s last struggle, however, Telesinus the Samnite, like a third wrestler who sits by to contend with a weary victor, came near tripping and throwing him at the gates of Rome. For he had collected a large force, and was hastening, together with Lamponius the Lucanian, to Praeneste, in order to relieve Marius from the siege. 2 But when he learned that Sulla to his front, and Pompey to his rear, were hurrying up against him, since he was being hemmed in before and behind, valiant and highly experienced soldier that he was, he broke camp by night, and marched with all his army against Rome itself. And he came within a little of breaking into the city in its unguarded state; indeed, he was only nine furlongs from the Colline gate when he bivouacked against it, highly encouraged and elated with hopes at the thought of having outgeneralled so many great commanders. 3 And when, at day-break, the noblest youth of the city rode out against him, he overwhelmed many of them, including Appius Claudius, a man of high birth and character. There was a tumult in the city, naturally, and shrieking of women, and running hither and thither, as though the city were taken by storm, when Balbus, sent forward by Sulla, was first seen riding up at full speed with seven hundred horsemen. He paused just long enough to let the sweat of the horses dry off, and then quickly bridled them again and attacked the enemy.

4 At this juncture, Sulla also made his appearance, and ordering his vanguard to take food at once, proceeded to form them in order of battle. Dolabella and Torquatus earnestly besought him to wait a while, and not to hazard the supreme issue with his men fatigued and spent; for they were to contend not with Carbo and Marius, but with Samnites and Lucanians, the most inveterate enemies of Rome, and the most warlike of peoples. But he put them by, and commanded the trumpets to sound the charge, though it was now getting on towards four o’clock in the afternoon. 5 In the struggle which followed, and no other was so fierce, the right wing, where Crassus was posted, was brilliantly successful; but the left was hard pressed and in a sorry plight, when Sulla came to its assistance, mounted on a white horse that was mettlesome and very swift. By this horse two of the enemy recognised him, and poised their spears for the cast. Sulla himself, now, did not notice this, but his groom did, and with a cut of the lash succeeded in sending Sulla’s horse along so that the spear-heads just grazed its tail and fixed themselves in the ground. 6 There is also a story that Sulla had a little golden image of Apollo from Delphi which he always carried in his bosom when he was in battle, but that on this occasion he took it out and kissed it affectionately, saying: “O Pythian Apollo, now that thou hast in so many struggles raised the fortunate Cornelius Sulla to glory and greatness, can it be that thou hast brought him to the gates of his native city only to cast him down there, to perish most shamefully with his fellow-countrymen?” 7 Thus invoking the god, they say, he entreated some of his men, threatened others, and laid hands on others still; but at last his left wing was completely shattered, and with the fugitives he sought refuge in his camp, after losing many friends and acquaintances. 8 Not a few also of those who had come out of the city to see the battle were trodden under foot and killed, so that it was thought that all was over with the city, and that the siege of Marius in Praeneste was all but raised; indeed many of the fugitives made their way thither and urged Lucretius Ofella, who had been appointed to conduct the siege, to break camp with all speed, since Sulla had fallen, and Rome was in the hands of the enemy.

30 1 But when the night was now far advanced, messengers came to the camp of Sulla from Crassus, to fetch supper for him and his soldiers; for after conquering the enemy, he had pursued them into Antemnae, and was encamped before that city. When, therefore, Sulla learned this, and also that the greater part of the enemy had been destroyed, he came to Antemnae at break of day. There three thousand of the inhabitants sent a deputation to him to sue for mercy, and he promised them safety if they would do some mischief to the rest of his enemies before coming to him. 2 So they, trusting to his promise, attacked the rest of the people in the city, and many were slain by one another’s hands. However, the survivors of both parties alike, to the number of six thousand, were collected by Sulla in the circus at Rome, and then the senate was summoned by him to meet in the temple of Bellona, and at one and the same moment he himself began to speak in the senate, and those assigned to the task began to cut to pieces the six thousand in the circus. 3 The shrieks of such a multitude, who were being massacred in a narrow space, filled the air, of course, and the senators were dumbfounded; but Sulla, with the calm and unmoved countenance with which he had begun to speak, ordered them to listen to his words and not concern themselves with what was going on outside, for it was only that some criminals were being admonished, by his orders.

4 This gave even the dullest Roman to understand that, in the matter of tyranny, there had been an exchange, but not a deliverance. Marius the elder, at any rate, had been naturally harsh at the outset, and power had intensified, not altered, his disposition; but Sulla had used his good fortune moderately, at first, and like a statesman, and had led men to expect in him a leader who was attached to the aristocracy, and at the same time helpful to the common people. 5 Furthermore, from his youth up he had been of a merry temper, and easily moved to tears of pity. Naturally, therefore, his conduct fixed a stigma upon offices of great power, which were thought to work a change in men’s previous characters, and render them capricious, vain, and cruel. However, whether this is a change and reversal of nature, brought about by fortune, or rather a revelation, when a man is in authority, of underlying baseness, were matter for determination in some other treatise.

31 1 Sulla now busied himself with slaughter, and murders without number or limit filled the city. Many, too, were killed to gratify private hatreds, although they had no relations with Sulla, but he gave his consent in order to gratify his adherents. At last one of the younger men, Caius Metellus, made bold to ask Sulla in the senate what end there was to be of these evils, and how far he would proceed before they might expect such doings to cease. 2 “We do not ask thee,” he said, “to free from punishment those whom thou hast determined to slay, but to free from suspense those whom thou hast determined to save.” And when Sulla answered that he did not yet know whom he would spare, “Well, then,” said Metellus in reply, “let us know whom thou intendest to punish.” This Sulla said he would do. 3 Some, however, say that it was not Metellus, but Fufidius, one of Sulla’s fawning creatures, who made this last speech to him. Be that as it may, Sulla at once proscribed eighty persons, without communicating with any magistrate; and in spite of the general indignation, after a single day’s interval, he proscribed two hundred and twenty others, and then on the third day, as many more. 4 Referring to these measures in a public harangue, he said that he was proscribing as many as he could remember, and those who now escaped his memory, he would proscribe at a future time. He also proscribed any one who harboured and saved a proscribed person, making death the punishment for such humanity, without exception of brother, son, or parents, but offering any one who slew a proscribed person two talents as a reward for this murderous deed, even though a slave should slay his master, or a son his father. And what seemed the greatest injustice of all, he took away the civil rights from the sons and grandsons of those who had been proscribed, and confiscated the property of all. 5 Moreover, proscriptions were made not only in Rome, but also in every city of Italy, and neither temple of God, nor hearth of hospitality, nor paternal home was free from the stain of bloodshed, but husbands were butchered in the embraces of their wedded wives, and sons in the arms of their mothers. Those who fell victims to political resentment and private hatred were as nothing compared with those who were butchered for the sake of their property, nay, even the executioners were prompted to say that his great house killed this man, his garden that man, his warm baths another. 6 Quintus Aurelius, a quiet and inoffensive man, who thought his only share in the general calamity was to condole with others in their misfortunes, came into the forum and read the list of the proscribed, and finding his own name there, said, “Ah! woe is me! my Alban estate is prosecuting me.” And he had not gone far before he was dispatched by some one who had hunted him down.

32 1 Meanwhile Marius the younger, at the point of being captured, slew himself; and Sulla, coming to Praeneste, at first gave each man there a separate trial before he executed him, but afterwards, since time failed him, gathered them all together in one place — there were twelve thousand of them — and gave orders to slaughter them, his host alone receiving immunity. But this man, with a noble spirit, told Sulla that he would never owe his safety to the slayer of his country, and joining his countrymen of his own accord, was cut down with them. 2 But that which Lucius Catiline did was thought to be most monstrous of all. This man, namely, had killed his brother before the civil struggle was decided, and now asked Sulla to proscribe the man, as one still living; and he was proscribed. Then Catiline, returning this favour of Sulla’s, killed a certain Marcus Marius, one of the opposite faction, and brought his head to Sulla as he was sitting in the forum, and then going to the lustral water of Apollo which was near, washed the blood off his hands.

33 1 But besides his massacres, the rest of Sulla’s proceedings also gave offence. For he proclaimed himself dictator, reviving this particular office after a lapse of a hundred and twenty years. Moreover, an act was passed granting him immunity for all his past acts, and for the future, power of life and death, of confiscation, of colonization, of founding or demolishing cities, and of taking away or bestowing kingdoms at his pleasure. 2 He conducted the sales of confiscated estates in such arrogant and imperious fashion, from the tribunal where he sat, that his gifts excited more odium than his robberies. He bestowed on handsome women, musicians, comic actors, and the lowest of freedmen, the territories of nations and the revenues of cities, and women were married against their will to some of his favourites. 3 In the case of Pompey the Great, at least, wishing to establish relationship with him, he ordered him to divorce the wife he had, and then gave him in marriage Aemilia, daughter of Scaurus and his own wife Metella, whom he tore away from Manius Glabrio when she was with child by him; and the young woman died in childbirth at the house of Pompey. 4 Lucretius Ofella, who had reduced Marius by siege, gave himself out as a candidate for the consulship, and Sulla at first tried to stop him; but when Ofella came down into the forum with a large and eager following, he sent one of the centurions in his retinue and slew him, himself sitting on a tribunal in the temple of Castor and beholding the murder from above. The people in the forum seized the centurion and brought him before the tribunal, but Sulla bade them cease their clamour, and said that he himself had ordered this deed, and commanded them to let the centurion go.

34 1 His triumph, however, which was imposing from the costliness and rarity of the royal spoils, had a greater ornament in the noble spectacle of the exiles. For the most distinguished and influential of the citizens, crowned with garlands, followed in the procession, calling Sulla their saviour and father, since indeed it was through him that they were returning to their native city and bringing with them their wives and children. 2 And when at last the whole spectacle was over, he gave an account of his achievements in a speech to the people, enumerating the instances of his good fortune with no less emphasis than his deeds of valour, and finally, in view of these, he ordered that he receive the surname of Fortunate (for this is what the word “Felix” most nearly means).

An inscription of Sulla’s in the Tuscan town of Chiusi, the ancient Clusium:

[L(ucio)] CORNELIO L[uci] [F(ilio)]
SVLLAE FEELIC[i]c
DIC[tatori]

“To Lucius Cornelius (the son of Lucius)
Sulla Felix,
the Dictator.”

But he himself, in writing to the Greeks on official business, styled himself Epaphroditus, or Favourite of Venus, and on his trophies in our country his name is thus inscribed: Lucius Cornelius Sulla Epaphroditus. 3 Besides this, when Metella bore him twin children, he named the male child Faustus, and the female Fausta; for the Romans call what is auspicious and joyful, “faustum.” And to such an extent did he put more confidence in his good fortunes than in his achievements, that, although he had slain great numbers of the citizens, and introduced great innovations and changes in the government of the city, he laid down his office of dictator, and put the consular elections in the hands of the people; and when they were held, he did not go near them himself, but walked up and down the forum like a private man, exposing his person freely to all who wished to call him to account. 4 Contrary to his wishes, a certain bold enemy of his was likely to be chosen consul, Marcus Lepidus, not through his own efforts, but owing to the success which Pompey had in soliciting votes for him from the people. 5 And so, when Sulla saw Pompey going away from the polls delighted with his victory, he called him to him, and said: “What a fine victory this is of thine, young man, to elect Lepidus in preference to Catulus, the most unstable instead of the best of men! Now, surely, it is high time for thee to be watchful, after strengthening thine adversary against thyself.” And in saying this, Sulla was something of a prophet; for Lepidus speedily waxed insolent and went to war with Pompey and his party.

35 1 On consecrating the tenth of all his substance to Hercules, Sulla feasted the people sumptuously, and his provision for them was so much beyond what was needed that great quantities of meats were daily cast into the river, and wine was drunk that was forty years old and upwards. 2 In the midst of the feasting, which lasted many days, Metella lay sick and dying. And since the priests forbade Sulla to go near her, or to have his house polluted by her funeral, he sent her a bill of divorce, and ordered her to be carried to another house while she was still living. In doing this, he observed the strict letter of the law, out of superstition; but the law limiting the expense of the funeral, which law he had himself introduced, he transgressed, and spared no outlays. 3 He transgressed also his own ordinances limiting the cost of banquets, when he tried to assuage his sorrow by drinking parties and convivial banquets, where extravagance and ribaldry prevailed.

A few months afterwards there was a gladiatorial spectacle,d and since the places for men and women in the theatre were not yet separated, but still promiscuous, it chanced that there was sitting near Sulla a woman of great beauty and splendid birth; 4 she was a daughter of Messala, a sister of Hortensius the orator, and her name was Valeria, and so it happened that she had recently been divorced from her husband. As she passed along behind Sulla, she rested her hand upon him, plucked off a bit of nap from his mantle, and then proceeded to her own place. When Sulla looked at her in astonishment, she said: “It’s nothing of importance, Dictator, but I too wish to partake a little in thy felicity.” 5 Sulla was not displeased at hearing this, nay, it was at once clear that his fancy was tickled, for he secretly sent and asked her name, and inquired about her family and history. Then followed mutual glances, continual turnings of the face to gaze, interchanges of smiles, and at last a formal compact of marriage. All this was perhaps blameless on her part, but Sulla, even though she was ever so chaste and reputable, did not marry her from any chaste and worthy motive; he was led away, like a young man, by looks and languishing airs, through which the most disgraceful and shameless passions are naturally excited.

36 1 However, even though he had such a wife at home, he consorted with actresses, harpists, and theatrical people, drinking with them on couches all day long. For these were the men who had most influence with him now: Roscius the comedian, Sorex the archmime, and Metrobius the impersonator of women, for whom, though past his prime, he continued up to the last to be passionately fond, and made no denial of it. 2 By this mode of life he aggravated a disease which was insignificant in its beginnings, and for a long time he knew not that his bowels were ulcerated. This disease corrupted his whole flesh also, and converted it into worms, so that although many were employed day and night in removing them, what they took away was as nothing compared with the increase upon him, but all his clothing, baths, hand-basins, and food, were infected with that flux of corruption, so violent was its discharge. 3 Therefore he immersed himself many times a day in water to cleanse and scour his person. But it was of no use; for the change gained upon him rapidly, and the swarm of vermin defied all purification.

We are told that in very ancient times, Acastus the son of Pelias was thus eaten of worms and died, and in later times, Alcman the lyric poet, Pherecydes the theologian, Callisthenes of Olynthus, who was kept closely imprisoned, as also Mucius the jurist; 4 and if mention is to be made of men who no excellence to commend them, but were notorious for other reasons, it is said that the runaway slave who headed the servile war in Sicily, Eunus by name, was taken to Rome after his capture, and died there of this disease.

37 1 Sulla not only foresaw his own death, but may be said to have written about it also. For he stopped writing the twenty-second book of his Memoirs two days before he died, and he there says that the Chaldaeans foretold him that, after an honourable life, he was to end his days at the height of his good fortunes. 2 He says also that his son, who had died a little while before Metella, appeared to him in his dreams, clad in mean attire, and besought his father to pursue an end to anxious thoughts, and come with him to his mother Metella, there to live in peace and quietness with her. However, he did not cease to transact the public business. 3 For instance, ten days before he died, he reconciled the opposing factions in Dicaearchia, and prescribed a code of laws for their conduct of the city’s government; and one day before he died, on learning that the magistrate there, Granius, refused to pay a debt he owed the public treasury, in expectation of his death, he summoned him to his room, stationed his servants about him, and ordered them to strangle him; but with the strain which he put upon his voice and body, he ruptured his abscess and lost a great quantity of blood. 4 In consequence of this his strength failed, and after a night of wretchedness, he died, leaving two young children by Metella. For it was after his death that Valeria gave birth to a daughter, who was called Postuma, this being the name which the Romans give to children who are born after their father’s death.

38 1 Many now joined themselves eagerly to Lepidus, purposing to deprive Sulla’s body of the usual burial honours; but Pompey, although offended at Sulla (for he alone, of all his friends, was not mentioned in his will), diverted some from their purpose by his kindly influence and entreaties, and others by his threats, and then conveyed the body to Rome, and secured for it an honourable as well as a safe interment. 2 And it is said that the women contributed such a vast quantity of spices for it, that, apart from what was carried on two hundred and ten litters, a large image of Sulla himself, and another image of a lictor, was moulded out of costly frankincense and cinnamon. The day was cloudy in the morning, and the expectation was that it would rain, but at last, at the ninth hour, the corpse was placed upon the funeral pyre. 3 Then a strong wind smote the pyre, and roused a mighty flame, and there was just time to collect the bones for burial, while the pyre was smouldering and the fire was going out, when a heavy rain began to fall, which continued till night. Therefore his good fortune would seem to have lasted to the very end, and taken part in his funeral rites. 4 At any rate, his monument stands in the Campus Martius, and the inscription on it, they say, is one which he wrote for it himself, and the substance of it is, that no friend ever surpassed him in kindness, and no enemy in mischief.

Comparison of Lysander and Sulla

476 1 1 And now since we have completed this Life also, let us come at once to the Comparison. In this respect, then, they were alike, namely, that both were founders of their own greatness; but it was a peculiar virtue in Lysander that he obtained all his high offices with the consent of his fellow-citizens, and when affairs were in a sound condition; he did not force anything from them against their will, nor did he acquire any power which was contrary to the laws.

2 “But in a time of sedition, the base man too is in honour,”

476 and so in Rome at that time, since the people was corrupt and their government in a distempered state, men of various origin rose to power. And it was no wonder that Sulla held sway, when such men as Glaucia and Saturninus drove such men as Metellus from the city, when sons of consuls were butchered in assemblies, when silver and gold purchased arms and men to wield them, and laws were enacted with fire and sword in defiance of all opposition. 3 Now I do not blame the man who, in such a state of affairs, forced his way to supreme power; but I cannot regard his becoming first man, with when the city was in such an evil plight, as a proof that he was also the best man. Whereas Lysander, since Sparta was at the height of good government and sobriety when she sent him forth upon the greatest commands and undertakings, was virtually decided to be first of her first men, and best of her best. 4 Lysander, therefore, though he often surrendered his power into the hands of his fellow-citizens, as often received it back again, since the honour accorded to virtue continued to rank highest in the state; but Sulla, when he had once been chosen leader of an army, remained in arms for ten years together, making himself now consul, and now dictator, but always being an usurper.

2 1 It is true, indeed, that Lysander attempted, as I have said, to change the form of government, but it was by mild and more legal methods than Sulla’s; by persuasion, namely, not by force of arms, nor by subverting everything at once, as Sulla did, but by amending merely the appointment of the kings. And it seemed but natural justice, in a way, that the best of the best should rule in a city which had the leadership in Hellas by virtue of his excellence, and not of his noble birth. 2 For just as a hunter looks for a dog, and not the whelp of a certain bitch, and a horseman for a horse, and not the foal of a certain mare (for what if the foal should prove to be a mule?), so the statesman makes an utter mistake if he enquires, not what sort of a man the ruler is, but from whom he is descended. And indeed the Spartans themselves deposed some of their kings, for the reason that they were not kingly men, but insignificant nobodies. And if vice, even in one of ancient family, is dishonourable, then it must be virtue itself, and not good birth, that makes virtue honourable.

3 Moreover, the acts of injustice which one wrought, were in behalf of his friends; while the other’s extended to his friends. For it is generally agreed that Lysander committed the most of his transgressions for the sake of his comrades, and that most of his massacres were perpetrated to maintain their power and sovereignty; 4 but Sulla cut down the number of Pompey’s soldiers out of jealousy, and tried to take away from Dolabella the naval command which he had given him, and when Lucretius Ofella sued for the consulship as a reward for many great services, ordered him to be slain before his eyes, causing all men to regard him with fear and horror because of his murdering his dearest friends.

3 1 Still further, in their pursuit of riches and pleasures we discover that the purpose of one was more befitting a commander, that of the other more characteristic of a tyrant. Lysander appears to have perpetrated no act of wantonness or youthful folly while he enjoyed such great authority and power, nay, if ever man did, he avoided the praise and reproach of the proverb: “Lions at home, but foxes abroad”; so sober, Spartan, and restrained was the way of life which he everywhere manifested. 2 But Sulla allowed neither the poverty of his youth to set bounds to his desires, nor the years of his old age, but continued to introduce marriage and sumptuary laws for the citizens, while he himself was living in lewdness and adultery, as Sallust says. In these courses he so beggared and emptied the city of her wealth that he sold to allied and friendly cities their freedom and independence for money, although he was daily confiscating and selling at public auction the wealthiest and greatest estates. 3 Nay, there was no measuring what he lavishly squandered and threw away upon his flatterers. 477 For what calculation or economy could be expected in his convivial associations and delights, when, on a public occasion, with the people standing about, at the sale of a large property, he ordered the crier to knock it down to one of his friends at a nominal price, and when another bidder raised the price and the crier announced the advance, he flew into a rage, saying: “It is a dreadful wrong, my dear citizens, and a piece of usurpation, that I cannot dispose of my own spoils as I wish.” 4 But Lysander sent home for public use even the presents which had been given to him along with the rest of his spoils. Not that I commend what he did; for he, perhaps, by his acquisition of money for Sparta, injured her more than Sulla injured Rome by robbing her of it; but I offer this as a proof of the man’s indifference to riches. 5 Moreover, each had a peculiar experience with his own city. Sulla, who knew no restraint in his extravagance, tried to bring the citizens into ways of sobriety; while Lysander filled his city with the passions to which he himself was a stranger. The former erred, therefore, in falling below the standard of his own laws; the latter, in causing the citizens to fall below his own standard, since he taught Sparta to want what he himself had learned not to want. Such was their influence as statesmen.

4 1 But as regards contests in war, achievements in generalship, number of trophies, and magnitude of dangers encountered, Sulla is beyond compare. Lysander, it is true, won two victories in as many naval battles; and I will add to his exploits his siege of Athens, which was really not a great affair, although the reputation of it was brilliant. 2 What occurred in Boeotia and at Haliartus, was due, perhaps, to a certain evil fortune; but it looks as though he was injudicious in not waiting for the large forces of the king, which had all but arrived from Plataea, instead of allowing his resentment and ambition to lead him into an inopportune assault upon the walls, with the result that an inconsiderable and random body of men sallied out and overwhelmed him. For he received his death wound, not as Cleombrotus did, at Leuctra, standing firm against the enemy’s onsets, nor as Cyrus did, or Epaminondas, rallying his men and assuring the victory to them; 3 these all died the death of kings and generals. But Lysander threw away his life ingloriously, like a common targeteer or skirmisher, and bore witness to the wisdom of the ancient Spartans in avoiding assaults on walled cities, where not only an ordinary man, but even a child or a woman may chance to smite and slay the mightiest warrior, as Achilles, they say, was slain by Paris at the gates.

4 In Sulla’s case, at any rate, it is no easy matter even to enumerate the pitched battles which he won and the myriads of enemies whom he slew; Rome itself he captured twice, and he took the Piraeus of Athens, not by famine, as Lysander did, but by a series of great battles, after he had driven Archelaüs from the land to the sea. It is important, too, that we consider the character of their antagonists. For I think it was the merest child’s play to win a sea-fight against Antiochus, Alcibiades’ pilot, or to outwit Philocles, the Athenian demagogue,

“Inglorious foe, whose only weapon is a sharpened tongue”

;

such men as these Mithridates would not have deigned to compare with his groom, nor Marius with his lictor. 5 But of the dynasts, consuls, generals, and demagogues who lifted themselves against Sulla, to pass by the rest, who among the Romans was more formidable than Marius? who among the kings was more powerful than Mithridates? who among the Italians was more warlike than Lamponius and Telesinus? And yet Sulla banished the first of these, subdued the second, and slew the others.

5 1 But what is of more weight, in my opinion, than any thing yet mentioned, 478 Lysander achieved all his successes with the co operation of the authorities at home; whereas Sulla, though he was overpowered by a hostile faction, and an exile, at a time when his wife was being driven from home, his house being demolished, and his friends being slain, when he himself, too, was confronting countless myriads of enemies in Boeotia and risking his life for his country, set up his trophy of victory; 2 and not even when Mithridates offered him an alliance and forces to wield against his enemies at Rome, would he make any concession whatsoever, or show him kindness even; nay, he would not so much as greet him or give him his hand, until he heard him say personally that he would relinquish Asia, hand over his ships, and restore Bithynia and Cappadocia to their rightful kings. 3 No act of Sulla’s whatsoever appears more honourable than this, or due to a loftier spirit, because he set the public interests before his own, and, like dogs of noble breed, did not relax his bite or let go his hold until his adversary had yielded, and then only did he set out to avenge his own private wrongs. 4 And besides all this, their treatment of Athens is of some weight in a comparison of their characters. Sulla, after taking the city, although it had fought against him to support the power and supremacy of Mithridates, restored to her freedom and independence; whereas Lysander, although she had fallen from such a great supremacy and empire, showed her no pity, but took away her democratic form of government, and appointed most savage and lawless men to be her tyrants.

5 We may now consider whether we shall err very much from the truth in pronouncing our verdict that Sulla won the more successes, while Lysander had the fewer failings; and in giving to the one the preëminence in self-control and moderation, to the other, in generalship and valour.

Cimon

478 1 1 Peripoltas the seer, who conducted King Opheltas with his subjects from Thessaly into Boeotia, left a posterity there which was in high repute for many generations. The greater part of them settled in Chaeroneia, which was the first city they won from the Barbarians. Now the most of this posterity were naturally men of war and courage, and so were consumed away in the Persian invasions and the contests with the Gauls, because they did not spare themselves. 2 There remained, however, an orphan boy, Damon by name, Peripoltas by surname, who far surpassed his fellows in beauty of body and in vigour of spirit, though otherwise he was untrained and of a harsh disposition.

With this Damon, just passed out of boy’s estate, the Roman commander of a cohort that was wintering in Chaeroneia fell enamoured, and since he could not win him over by solicitations and presents, 479 he was plainly bent on violence, seeing that our native city was at that time in sorry plight, and neglected because of her smallness and poverty. 3 Violence was just what Damon feared, and since the solicitation itself had enraged him, he plotted against the man, and enlisted against him sundry companions, — a few only, that they might escape notice. There were sixteen of them in all, who smeared their faces with soot one night, heated themselves with wine, and at daybreak fell upon the Roman while he was sacrificing in the market-place, slew him, together with many of his followers, and departed the city. 4 During the commotion which followed, the council of Chaeroneia met and condemned the murderers to death, and this was the defence which the city afterwards made to its Roman rulers. But in the evening, while the magistrates were dining together, as the custom is, Damon and his men burst into the town-hall, slew them, and again fled the city.

5 Now about that time it chanced that Lucius Lucullus passed that way, on some errand, with an army. Halting on his march and investigating matters while they were still fresh in mind, he found that the city was in no wise to blame, but rather had itself also suffered wrong. So he took his garrison of soldiers and led them away with him. 6 Then Damon, who was ravaging the country with predatory forays and threatening the city, was induced by embassies and conciliatory decrees of the citizens to return, and was appointed gymnasiarch. But soon, as he was anointing himself in the vapour-bath, he was slain. And because for a long while thereafter certain phantoms appeared in the place, and groans were heard there, as our Fathers tell us, the door of the vapour-bath was walled up, and to this present time the neighbours think it the source of alarming sights and sounds. 7 Descendants of Damon’s family (and some are still living, especially near Stiris in Phocis, Aeolians in speech) are called “Asbolomeni,” or “Besooted,” because Damon smeared himself with soot before he went forth to do his deed of murder.

2 1 But the Orchomenians, who were neighbours and rivals of the Chaeroneians, hired a Roman informer to cite the city by name, as though it were an individual person, and prosecute it for the murder of the Roman soldiers who had been slain by Damon. 2 The trial was held before the praetor of Macedonia (the Romans were not yet sending praetors to Greece), and the city’s advocates invoked the testimony of Lucullus. Lucullus, when the praetor wrote to him, testified to the truth of the matter, and so the city escaped capital condemnation. Accordingly, the people who at that time were saved by him erected a marble statue of Lucullus in the market-place beside that of Dionysus. And we, though many generations removed from him, think that his favour extends even down to us who are now living; 3 and since we believe that a portrait which reveals character and disposition is far more beautiful than one which merely copies form and feature, we shall incorporate this man’s deeds into our parallel lives, and we shall rehearse them truly. The mere mention of them is sufficient favour to show him; and as a return for his truthful testimony he himself surely would not deign to accept a false and garbled narrative of his career.

4 We demand of those who would paint fair and graceful features that, in case of any slight imperfection therein, they shall neither wholly omit it nor yet emphasise it, because the one course makes the portrait ugly and the other unlike its original. In like manner, since it is difficult, nay rather perhaps impossible, to represent a man’s life as stainless and pure, 480 in its fair chapters we must round out the truth into fullest semblance; 5 but those transgressions and follies by which, owing to passion, perhaps, or political compulsion, a man’s career is sullied, we must regard rather as shortcomings in some particular excellence than as the vile products of positive baseness, and we must not all too zealously delineate them in our history, and superfluously too, but treat them as though we were tenderly defending human nature for producing no character which is absolutely good and indisputably set towards virtue.

3 1 On looking about for some one to compare with Lucullus, we decided that it must be Cimon. Both were men of war, and of brilliant exploits against the Barbarians, and yet they were mild and beneficent statesmen, in that they gave their countries unusual respite from civil strifes, though each one of them set up martial trophies and won victories that were famous. 2 No Hellene before Cimon and no Roman before Lucullus carried his wars into such remote lands, if we leave out of our account the exploits of Heracles and Dionysus, and whatever credible deeds of Perseus against the Aethiopians or Medes and Armenians, or of Jason, have been brought down in the memory of man from those early times to our own. 3 Common also in a way to both their careers was the incompleteness of their campaigns. Each crushed, but neither gave the death blow to his antagonist. But more than all else, the lavish ease which marked their entertainments and hospitalities, as well as the ardour and laxity of their way of living, was conspicuous alike in both. Possibly we may omit still other resemblances, but it will not be hard to gather them directly from our story.

4 1 Cimon was the son of Miltiades by Hegesipyle, a woman of Thracian stock, daughter of King Olorus, as it is stated in the poems of Archelaüs and Melanthius addressed to Cimon himself. That explains how it was that the father of Thucydides the historian — and Thucydides was connected with the family of Cimon — was also an Olorus, who referred his name back to that of the common ancestor, and also how it was that Thucydides had gold mines in Thrace. 2 And it is said that Thucydides died in Skapte Hylé, a place in Thrace, having been murdered there; but his remains were brought to Attica, and his monument is shown among those of Cimon’s family, hard by the tomb of Elpinicé, Cimon’s sister. However, Thucydides belonged to the deme of Halimus, the family of Miltiades to that of Laciadae.

3 Now Miltiades, who had been condemned to pay a fine of fifty talents and confined till payment should be made, died in prison, and Cimon, thus left a mere stripling with his sister who was a young girl and unmarried, was of no account in the city at first. He had the bad name of being dissolute and bibulous, and of taking after his grandfather Cimon, who, they say, because of his simplicity, was dubbed Coalemus, or Booby. 4 And Stesimbrotus the Thracian, who was of about Cimon’s time, says that he acquired no literary education, nor any other liberal and distinctively Hellenic accomplishment; that he lacked entirely the Attic cleverness and fluency of speech; that in his outward bearing there was much nobility and truthfulness; that the fashion of the man’s spirit was rather Peloponnesian,

“Plain, unadorned, in a great crisis brave and true,”

as Euripides says of Heracles, a citation which we may add to what Stesimbrotus wrote.

5 While he was still a youth he was accused of improper intercourse with his sister. And indeed in other cases too they say that Elpinicé was not very decorous, but that she had improper relations also with Polygnotus the painter, and that it was for this reason that, in the Peisianacteum, as it was then called, but now the Painted Colonnade, when he was painting the Trojan women, 481 he made the features of Laodicé a portrait of Elpinicé. 6 Now Polygnotus was not a mere artisan, and did not paint the stoa for a contract price, but gratis, out of zeal for the welfare of the city, as the historians relate, and as Melanthius the poet testifies after this fashion: —

“He at his own lavish outlay the gods’ great fanes, and the market

Named Cecropia, adorned; demigods’ valour his theme.”

7 Still, there are some who say that Elpinicé did not live with Cimon in secret intercourse, but openly rather, as his wedded wife, because, on account of her poverty, she could not get a husband worthy of her high lineage; but that when Callias, a wealthy Athenian, fell in love with her, and offered to pay into the state treasury the fine which had been imposed upon her father, she consented herself, and Cimon freely gave Elpinicé to Callias to wife.

8 However, it is perfectly apparent that Cimon was given to the love of women. Asteria, of a Salaminian family, and a certain Mnestra are mentioned by the poet Melanthius, in a sportive elegy addressed to Cimon, as wooed and won by him. 9 And it is clear that he was even too passionately attached to his lawful wife, Isodicé, the daughter of Euryptolemus and grand-daughter of Megacles, and that he was too sorely afflicted at her death, if we may judge from the elegy addressed to him for the mitigation of his grief. This was composed by the naturalist Archelaüs, as Panaetius the philosopher thinks, and his conjecture is chronologically possible.

5 1 All other traits of Cimon’s character were admirable and noble. Neither in daring was he inferior to Miltiades, nor in sagacity to Themistocles, and it is admitted that while not one whit behind them in the good qualities of a soldier, he was inconceivably their superior in those of a statesman, even when he was still young and untried in war. 2 When the Medes made their invasion, and Themistocles was trying to persuade the people to give up their city, abandon their country, make a stand with their fleet off Salamis, and fight the issue at sea, most men were terrified at the boldness of the scheme; but lo, Cimon was first to act, and with a gay mien led a procession of his companions through the Cerameicus up to the Acropolis, to dedicate to the goddess there the horse’s bridle which he carried in his hands, signifying thus that what the city needed then was not knightly prowess but sea-fighters. 3 After he had dedicated his bridle, he took one of the shields which were hung up about the temple, addressed his prayers to the goddess, and went down to the sea, whereat many were first made to take heart.

He was also of no mean presence, as Ion the poet says, but tall and stately, with an abundant and curly head of hair. And since he displayed brilliant and heroic qualities in the actual struggle at Salamis, he soon acquired reputation and good will in the city. Many thronged to him and besought him to purpose and perform at once what would be worthy of Marathon. 4 So when he entered politics the people gladly welcomed him, and promoted him, since they were full to surfeit of Themistocles, to the highest honours and offices in the city, for he was engaging and attractive to the common folk by reason of his gentleness and artlessness. But it was Aristides, son of Lysimachus, who more than any one else furthered his career, for he saw the fine features of his character, and made him, as it were, a foil to the cleverness and daring of Themistocles.

6 1 After the flight of the Medes from Hellas, Cimon was sent out as a commander, before the Athenians had obtained their empire of the sea, and while they were still under the leadership of Pausanias and the Lacedaemonians. During this campaign, the citizen-soldiers he furnished on expeditions were always admirably disciplined and far more zealous than any others; 4822 and again, while Pausanias was holding treasonable conference with the Barbarians, writing letters to the King, treating the allies with harsh arrogance, and displaying much wantonness of power and silly pretension, Cimon received with mildness those who brought their wrongs to him, treated them humanely, and so, before men were aware of it, secured the leadership of Hellas, not by force of arms, but by virtue of his address and character. 3 For most of the allies, because they could not endure the severity of and disdain of Pausanias, attached themselves to Cimon and Aristides, who had no sooner won this following than they sent also to the Ephors and told them, since Sparta had lost her prestige and Hellas was in confusion, to recall Pausanias.

4 It is said that a maiden of Byzantium, of excellent parentage, Cleonicé by name, was summoned by Pausanias for a purpose that would disgrace her. Her parents, influenced by constraint and fear, abandoned their daughter to her fate, and she, after requesting the attendants to remove the light, in darkness and silence at length drew near the couch on which Pausanias was asleep, but accidentally stumbled against the lamp-holder and upset it. 5 Pausanias, startled by the noise, drew the dagger which lay at his side, with the idea that some enemy was upon him, and smote and felled the maiden. After her death in consequence of the blow, she gave Pausanias no peace, but kept coming into his sleep by night in phantom form, wrathfully uttering this verse: —

“Draw thou nigh to thy doom; ‘tis evil for men to be wanton.”

At this outrage the allies were beyond measure incensed, and joined Cimon in forcing Pausanias to give up the city. 6 Driven from Byzantium, and still harassed by the phantom, as the story goes, he had recourse to the ghost-oracle of Heracleia, and summoning up the spirit of Cleonicé, besought her to forgo her wrath. She came into his presence and said that he would soon cease from his troubles and on coming to Sparta, thus darkly intimating, as it seems, his impending death. At any rate, this tale is told by many.

7 1 But Cimon, now that the allies had attached themselves to him, took command of them and sailed to Thrace, for he heard that men of rank among the Persians and kinsmen of the King held possession of Eïon, a city on the banks of the Strymon, and were harassing the Hellenes in that vicinity. 2 First he defeated the Persians themselves in battle and shut them up in the city; then he expelled from their homes above the Strymon the Thracians from whom the Persians had been getting provisions, put the whole country under guard, and brought the besieged to such straits that Butes, the King’s general, gave up the struggle, set fire to the city, and destroyed with it his family, his treasures, and himself. 3 And so it was that though Cimon took the city, he gained no other memorable advantage thereby, since most of its treasures had been burned up with the Barbarians; but the surrounding territory was very fertile and fair, and this he turned over to the Athenians for occupation. Wherefore the people permitted him to dedicate the stone Hermae, on the first of which is the inscription: —

4 “Valorous-hearted as well were they who at Eïon fighting,

Facing the sons of the Medes, Strymon’s current beside,

Fiery famine arrayed, and gore-flecked Ares, against them,

Thus first finding for foes that grim exit, — despair;”

and on the second: —

“Unto their leaders reward by Athenians thus hath been given;

Benefits won such return, valorous deeds of the brave.

All the more strong at the sight will the men of the future be eager,

Fighting for commonwealth, war’s dread strife to maintain;”

4835 and on the third: —

“With the Atridae of old, from this our city, Menestheus

Led his men to the plain Trojan called and divine.

He, once Homer asserted, among well-armoured Achaeans,

Marshaller was of the fight, best of them all who had come.

Thus there is naught unseemly in giving that name to Athenians;

Marshallers they both of war and of the vigour of men.”

8 1 Although these inscriptions nowhere mentioned Cimon by name, his contemporaries held them to be a surpassing honour for him. Neither Themistocles nor Miltiades achieved any such, nay, when the latter asked for a crown of olive merely, Sophanes the Deceleian rose up in the midst of the assembly and protested. His speech was ungracious, but it pleased the people of that day. “When,” said he, “thou hast fought out alone a victory over the Barbarians, then demand to be honoured alone.” 2 Why, then, were the people so excessively pleased with the achievement of Cimon? Perhaps it was because when the others were their generals they were trying to repel their enemies and so avert disaster; but when he led them they were enabled to ravage the land of their enemies with incursions of their own, and acquired fresh territories for settlement, not only Eïon itself, but also Amphipolis.

3 They settled Scyros too, which Cimon seized for the following reason. Dolopians were living on the island, but they were poor tillers of the soil. So they practised piracy on the high sea from of old, and finally did not withhold their hands even from those who put into their ports and had dealings with them, but robbed some Thessalian merchants who had cast anchor at Ctesium, and threw them into prison. 4 When these men had escaped from bondage and won their suit against the city at the Amphictyonic assembly, the people of Scyros were not willing to make restitution, but called on those who actually held the plunder to give it back. 5 The robbers, in terror, sent a letter to Cimon, urging him to come with his fleet to seize the city, and they would give it up to him. In this manner Cimon got possession of the island, drove out the Dolopians, and made the Aegean a free sea.

On learning that the ancient Theseus, son of Aegeus, had fled in exile from Athens to Scyros, but had been treacherously put to death there, through fear, by Lycomedes the king, Cimon eagerly sought to discover his grave. 6 For the Athenians had once received an oracle bidding them bring back the bones of Theseus to the city and honour him as became a hero, but they knew not where he lay buried, since the Scyrians would not admit the truth of the story, nor permit any search to be made. Now, however, Cimon set to work with great ardour, discovered at last the hallowed spot, had the bones bestowed in his own trireme, and with general pomp and show brought them back to the hero’s own country after an absence of about four hundred years. This was the chief reason why the people took kindly to him.

7 But they also cherished in kindly remembrance of him that decision of his in the tragic contests which became so famous. When Sophocles, still a young man, entered the lists with his first plays, Apsephion the Archon, seeing that the spirit of rivalry and partisanship ran high among the spectators, did not appoint the judges of the contest as usual by lot, but when Cimon and his fellow-generals advanced into the theatre and made the customary libation to the god, he would not suffer them to depart, but forced them to take the oath and sit as judges, being ten in all, one from each tribe. 8 So, then, the contest, even because of the unusual dignity of the judges, was more animated than ever before. But Sophocles came off victorious, and it is said that Aeschylus, in great distress and indignation thereat, lingered only a little while at Athens, and then went off in anger to Sicily. There he died also, and is buried near Gela.a

484 9 1 Ion says that, coming from Chios to Athens as a mere stripling, he was once a fellow-guest with Cimon at a dinner given by Laomedon, and that over the wine the hero was invited to sing, and did sing very agreeably, and was praised by the guests as a cleverer man than Themistocles. That hero, they said, declared that he had not learned to sing, nor even to play the lyre, but knew how to make a city great and rich. 2 Next, Ion says, as was natural over the cups, the conversation turned to the exploits of Cimon, and as his greatest deeds were being recounted, the hero himself dwelt at length on one particular stratagem which he thought his shrewdest. Once, he said, when the Athenians and their allies had taken many barbarian prisoners at Sestos and Byzantium and turned them over to him for distribution, he put into one lot the persons of their captives, and into another the rich adornments of their bodies, and his distribution was blamed as unequal. 3 But he bade the allies choose one of the lots, and the Athenians would be content with whichever one they left. So, on the advice of Herophytus the Samian to choose Persian wealth rather than Persians, the allies took the rich adornments for themselves, and left the prisoners for the Athenians. At the time Cimon came off with the reputation of being a ridiculous distributer, since the allies had their gold anklets and armlets and collars and jackets and purple robes to display, while the Athenians got only naked bodies ill-trained for labour. 4 But a little while later, the friends and kinsmen of the captives came down from Phrygia and Lydia and ransomed every one of them at a great price, so that Cimon had four months’ pay and rations for his fleet, and besides that, much gold from the ransoms was left over for the city.

10 1 And since he was already wealthy, Cimon lavished the revenues from his campaign, which he was thought to have won with honour from the enemy, to his still greater honour, on his fellow-citizens. He took away the fences from his fields, that strangers and needy citizens might have it in their power to take fearlessly of the fruits of the land; and every day he gave a dinner at his house, — simple, it is true, but sufficient for many, to which any poor man who wished came in, and so received a maintenance which cost him no effort and left him free to devote himself solely to public affairs. 2 But Aristotle says that it was not for all Athenians, but only for his own demesmen, the Laciadae, that he provided a free dinner. He was constantly attended by young comrades in fine attire, each one of whom, whenever an elderly citizen in needy array came up, was ready to exchange raiment with him. The practice made a deep impression. 3 These same followers also carried with them a generous sum of money, and going up to poor men of finer quality in the market-place, they would quietly thrust small change into their hands. To such generosity as this Cratinus seems to have referred in his Archilochi, with the words: —

4 “Yes, I too hoped, Metrobius, I, the public scribe,

Along with man divine, the rarest host that lives,

In every way the best of all Hellenic men,

With Cimon, feasting out in joy a sleek old age,

To while away the remnant of my life. But he

Has gone before and left me.”

5 And again, Gorgias the Leontine says that Cimon made money that he might spend it, and spent it that he might be honoured for it. And Critias, one of the thirty tyrants, prays in his elegies that he may have “the wealth of the Scopadae, the great-mindedness of Cimon, and the victories of Arcesilaus of Lacedaemon.”

And yet we know that Lichas the Spartan became famous among the Hellenes for no other reason than that he entertained the strangers at the boys’ gymnastic festival; 485 but the generosity of Cimon surpassed even the hospitality and philanthropy of the Athenians of olden time. 6 For they — and their city is justly very proud of it — spread abroad among the Hellenes the sowing of grain and the lustral uses of spring waters, and taught mankind who knew it not the art of kindling fire. But he made his home in the city a general public residence for his fellow citizens, and on his estates in the country allowed even the stranger to take and use the choicest of the ripened fruits, with all the fair things which the seasons bring. Thus, in a certain fashion, he restored to human life the fabled communism of the age of Cronus, — the golden age. 7 Those who slanderously said that this was flattery of the rabble and demagogic art in him, were refuted by the man’s political policy, which was aristocratic and Laconian. He actually opposed Themistocles when he exalted the democracy unduly, as Aristides also did. Later on he took hostile issue with Ephialtes, who, to please the people, tried to dethrone the Council of the Areiopagus; 8 and though he saw all the rest except Aristides and Ephialtes filling their purses with the gains from their public services, he remained unbought and unapproached by bribes, devoting all his powers to the state, without recompense and in all purity, through to the end.

It is told, indeed, that one Rhoesaces, a Barbarian who had deserted from the King, came to Athens with large moneys, and being set upon fiercely by the public informers, fled for refuge to Cimon, and deposited at his door two platters, one filled with silver, the other with golden Darics. Cimon, when he saw them, smiled, and asked the man 9 whether he preferred to have Cimon as his hireling or his friend, and on his replying, “As my friend,” “Well then,” said Cimon, “take this money with thee and go thy way, for I shall have the use of it when I want it if I am thy friend.”

11 The allies continued to pay their assessments, but did not furnish men and ships according to allotment, since they were soon weary of military service, and had no need of war, but a great desire to till their land and live at their ease. The Barbarians were gone and did not harass them, so they neither manned their ships nor sent out soldiers. The rest of the Athenian generals tried to force them to do this, and by prosecuting the delinquents and punishing them, rendered their empire burdensome and vexatious. 2 But Cimon took just the opposite course when he was general, and brought no compulsion to bear on a single Hellene, but accepted money from those who did not wish to go out on service, and ships without crews, and so suffered the allies, caught with the bait of their own ease, to stay at home and become tillers of the soil and unwarlike merchants instead of warriors, and all through their foolish love of comfort. On the other hand, he made great numbers of the Athenians man their ships, one crew relieving another, and imposed on them the toil of his expeditions, and so in a little while, by means of the very wages which they got from the allies, made them lords of their own paymasters. 3 For those who did no military service became used to fearing and flattering those who were continually voyaging, and for ever under arms and training, and practising, and so, before they knew it, they were tributary subjects instead of allies.

12 1 And surely there was no one who humbled the Great King himself, and reduced his haughty spirit, more than Cimon. For he did not let him go quietly away from Hellas, but followed right at his heels, as it were, and before the Barbarians had come to a halt and taken breath, he sacked and overthrew here, or subverted and annexed to the Hellenes there, until Asia from Ionia to Pamphylia was entirely cleared of Persian arms. 2 Learning that the generals of the King were lurking about Pamphylia 486 with a great army and many ships, and wishing to make them afraid to enter at all the sea to the west of the Chelidonian isles, he set sail from Cnidus and Triopium with two hundred triremes. These vessels had been from the very beginning very well constructed for speed and manoeuvring by Themistocles; but Cimon now made them broader, and put bridges between their decks, in order that with their numerous hoplites they might be more effective in their onsets. 3 Putting in at Phaselis, which was a Hellenic city, but refused to admit his armament or even to abandon the King’s cause, he ravaged its territory and assaulted its walls. But the Chians, who formed part of his fleet and were of old on friendly terms with the people of Phaselis, laboured to soften Cimon’s hostility, and at the same time, by shooting arrows over the walls with little documents attached, they conveyed messages of their success to the men of Phaselis. 4 So finally Cimon made friends with them on condition that they should pay ten talents and join him in his expedition against the Barbarians.

Now Ephorus says that Tithraustes was commander of the royal fleet, and Pherendates of the infantry; but Callisthenes says that it was Ariomandes, the son of Gobryas, who, as commander-in chief of all the forces, lay at anchor with the fleet off the mouth of the Eurymedon, and that he was not at all eager to fight with the Hellenes, but was waiting for eighty Phoenician ships to sail up from Cyprus. 5 Wishing to anticipate their arrival, Cimon put out to sea, prepared to force the fighting if his enemy should decline an engagement. At first the enemy put into the river, that they might not be forced to fight; but when the Athenians bore down on them there, they sailed out to meet them. They had six hundred ships, according to Phanodemus; three hundred and fifty, according to Ephorus. Whatever the number, nothing was achieved by them on the water which was worthy of such a force, 6 but they straightway put about and made shore, where the foremost of them abandoned their ships and fled for refuge to the infantry which was drawn up near by; those who were overtaken were destroyed with their ships. Whereby also it is plain that the Barbarian ships which went into action were very numerous indeed, since, though many, of course, made their escape and many were destroyed, still two hundred were captured by the Athenians.

13 1 When the enemy’s land forces marched threateningly down to the sea, Cimon thought it a vast undertaking to force a landing and lead his weary Hellenes against an unwearied and many times more numerous foe. But he saw that his men were exalted by the impetus and pride of their victory, and eager to come to close quarters with the Barbarians, so he landed his hoplites still hot with the struggle of the sea-fight, and they advanced to the attack with shouts and on the run. 2 The Persians stood firm and received the onset nobly, and a mighty battle ensued, wherein there fell brave men of Athens who were foremost in public office and eminent. But after a long struggle the Athenians routed the Barbarians with slaughter, and then captured them and their camp, which was full of all sorts of treasure.

3 But Cimon, though like a powerful athlete he had brought down two contests in one day, and though he had surpassed the victory of Salamis with an infantry battle, and that of Plataea with a naval battle, still went on competing with his own victories. Hearing that the eighty Phoenician triremes which were too late for the battle had put in at Hydrus, he sailed thither with all speed, while their commanders as yet knew nothing definite about the major force, but were still in distrustful suspense. 4 For this reason they were all the more panic-stricken at his attack, and lost all their ships. Most of their crews were destroyed with the ships. This exploit so humbled the purpose of the King 487 that he made the terms of that notorious peace, by which he was to keep away from the Hellenic sea-coast as far as a horse could travel in a day, and was not to sail west of the Cyanean and Chelidonian isles with armoured ships of war.

5 And yet Callisthenes denies that the Barbarian made any such terms, but says he really acted as he did through the fear which that victory inspired, and kept so far aloof from Hellas that Pericles with fifty, and Ephialtes with only thirty, ships sailed beyond the Chelidonian isles without encountering any navy of the Barbarians. 6 But in the decrees collected by Craterus there is a copy of the treaty in its due place, as though it had actually been made. And they say that the Athenians also built the altar of Peace to commemorate this event, and paid distinguished honours to Callias as their ambassador.

By the sale of the captured spoils the people was enabled to meet various financial demands, and especially it constructed the southern wall of the Acropolis with the generous resources obtained from that expedition. 7 And it is said that, though the building of the long walls, called “legs,” was completed afterwards, yet their first foundations, where the work was obstructed by swamps and marshes, were stayed up securely by Cimon, who dumped vast quantities of rubble and heavy stones into the swamps, meeting the expenses himself. 8 He was the first to beautify the city with the so called “liberal” and elegant resorts which were so excessively popular a little later, by planting the market-place with plane trees, and by converting the Academy from a waterless and arid spot into a well watered grove, which he provided with clear running-tracks and shady walks.

14 1 Now there were certain Persians who would not abandon the Chersonese, but called in Thracians from the North to help them, despising Cimon, who had sailed out from Athens with only a few triremes all told. But he sallied out against them with his four ships and captured their thirteen, drove out the Persians, overwhelmed the Thracians, and turned the whole Chersonese over to his city for settlement. 2 And after this, when the Thasians were in revolt from Athens, he defeated them in a sea-fight, captured thirty-three of their ships, besieged and took their city, acquired their gold mines on the opposite mainland for Athens, and took possession of the territory which the Thasians controlled there.

From this base he had a good opportunity, as it was thought, to invade Macedonia and cut off a great part of it, and because he would not consent to do it, he was accused of having been bribed to this position by King Alexander, and was actually prosecuted, his enemies forming a coalition against him. 3 In making his defence before his judges he said he was no proxenus of rich Ionians and Thessalians, as others were, to be courted and paid for their services, but rather of Lacedaemonians, whose temperate simplicity he lovingly imitated, counting no wealth above it, but embellishing the city with the wealth which he got from the enemy. 4 In mentioning this famous trial Stesimbrotus says that Elpinicé came with a plea for Cimon to the house of Pericles, since he was the most ardent accuser, and that he smiled and said, “Too old, too old, Elpinicé, to meddle with such business.” But at the trial he was very gentle with Cimon, and took the floor only once in accusation of him, as though it were a mere formality.

15 1 Well then, Cimon was acquitted at this trial. And during the remainder of his political career, when he was at home, he mastered and constrained the people in its onsets upon the nobles, and in its efforts to wrest all office and power to itself; but when he sailed away again on military service, 488 the populace got completely beyond control. They confounded the established political order of things and the ancestral practices which they had formerly observed, 2 and under the lead of Ephialtes they robbed the Council of the Areiopagus of all but a few of the cases in its jurisdiction. They made themselves masters of the courts of justice, and plunged the city into unmitigated democracy, Pericles being now a man of power and espousing the cause of the populace. And so when Cimon came back home, and in his indignation at the insults heaped upon the reverend council, tried to recall again its jurisdiction and to revive the aristocracy of the times of Cleisthenes, they banded together to denounce him, and tried to inflame the people against him, renewing the old slanders about his sister and accusing him of being a Spartan sympathiser. 3 It was to these calumnies that the famous and popular verses of Eupolis about Cimon had reference: —

“He was not base, but fond of wine and full of sloth,

And oft he ‘ld sleep in Lacedaemon, far from home,

And leave his Elpinicé sleeping all alone.”

But if, though full of sloth and given to tippling, he yet took so many cities and won so many victories, it is clear that had he been sober and mindful of his business, no Hellene either before or after him would have surpassed his exploits.

16 1 It is true indeed that he was at first a philo-Laconian. He actually named one of his twin sons Lacedaemonius, and the other Eleius, — the sons whom a woman of Cleitor bare him, as Stesimbrotus relates, wherefore Pericles often reproached them with their maternal lineage. But Diodorus the Topographer says that these, as well as the third of Cimon’s sons, Thessalus, were born of Isodicé, the daughter of Euryptolemus, the son of Megacles. 2 And he was looked upon with favour by the Lacedaemonians, who soon were at enmity with Themistocles, and therefore preferred that Cimon, young as he was, should have the more weight and power in Athens. The Athenians were glad to see this at first, since they reaped no slight advantage from the good will which the Spartans showed him. 3 While their empire was first growing, and they were busy making alliances, they were not displeased that honour and favour should be shown to Cimon. He was the foremost Hellenic statesman, dealing generally with the allies and acceptably with the Lacedaemonians. But afterwards, when they became more powerful, and saw that Cimon was strongly attached to the Spartans, they were displeased thereat. For on every occasion he was prone to exalt Lacedaemon to the Athenians, especially when he had occasion to chide or incite them. Then, as Stesimbrotus tells us, he would say: “But the Lacedaemonians are not of such a sort.” 4 In this way he awakened the envy and hatred of his fellow-citizens.

At any rate, the strongest charge against him arose as follows. When Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, was in the fourth year of his reign at Sparta, a greater earthquake than any before reported rent the land of the Lacedaemonians into many chasms, shook Taÿgetus so that sundry peaks were torn away, and demolished the entire city with the exception of five houses. The rest were thrown down by the earthquake.

5 It is said that while the young men and youths were exercising together in the interior of the colonnade, just a little before the earthquake, a hare made its appearance, and the youths, all anointed as they were, in sport dashed out and gave chase to it, but the young men remained behind, on whom the gymnasium fell, and all perished together. Their tomb, even down to the present day, they call Seismatias.

6 Archidamus at once comprehended from the danger at hand that which was sure to follow, 489 and as he saw the citizens trying to save the choicest valuables out of their houses, ordered the trumpet to give the signal of an enemy’s attack, in order that they might flock to him at once under arms. This was all that saved Sparta at that crisis. For the Helots hurriedly gathered from all the country round about with intent to despatch the surviving Spartans. 7 But finding them arrayed in arms, they withdrew to their cities and waged open war, persuading many Perioeci also so to do. The Messenians besides joined in this attack upon the Spartans.

Accordingly, the Lacedaemonians sent Pericleidas to Athens with request for aid, and Aristophanes introduces him into comedy as “sitting at the altars, pale of face, in purple cloak, soliciting an army.” 8 But Ephialtes opposed the project, and besought the Athenians not to succour or restore a city which was their rival, but to let haughty Sparta lie to be trodden under foot of men. Whereupon, as Critias says, Cimon made his country’s increase of less account than Sparta’s interest, and persuaded the people to go forth to her aid with many hoplites. And Ion actually mentions the phrase by which, more than by anything else, Cimon prevailed upon the Athenians, exhorting them “not to suffer Hellas to be crippled, nor their city to be robbed of its yoke-fellow.”

17 1 After he had given aid to the Lacedaemonians, he was going back home with his forces through the Isthmus of Corinth, when Lachartus upbraided him for having introduced his army before he had conferred with the citizens. “People who knock at doors,” said he, “do not go in before the owner bids them”; to which Cimon replied, “And yet you Corinthians, O Lachartus, did not so much as knock at the gates of Cleonae and Megara, but hewed them down and forced your way in under arms, demanding that everything be opened up to the stronger.” Such was his boldness of speech to the Corinthian in an emergency, and he passed on through with his forces.

2 Once more the Lacedaemonians summoned the Athenians to come to their aid against the Messenians and Helots in Ithomé, and the Athenians went, but their dashing boldness awakened fear, and they were singled out from all the allies and sent off as dangerous conspirators. They came back home in a rage, and at once took open measures of hostility against the Laconizers, and above all against Cimon. Laying hold of a trifling pretext, they ostracised him for ten years. That was the period decreed in all cases of ostracism.

3 It was during this period that the Lacedaemonians, after freeing the Delphians from the Phocians, encamped at Tanagra on their march back home. Here the Athenians confronted them, bent on fighting their issue out, and here Cimon came in arms, to join his own Oeneïd tribe, eager to share with his fellow-citizens in repelling the Lacedaemonians. 4 But the Council of the Five Hundred learned of this and was filled with fear, since Cimon’s foes accused him of wishing to throw the ranks into confusion, and then lead the Lacedaemonians in an attack upon the city; so they forbade the generals to receive the man. As he went away he besought Euthippus of Anaphlystus and his other comrades, all who were specially charged with laconizing, to fight sturdily against the enemy, and by their deeds of valour to dissipate the charge which their countrymen laid at their door. 5 They took his armour and set it in the midst of their company, supported one another ardently in the fight, and fell, to the number of one hundred, leaving behind them among the Athenians a great and yearning sense of their loss, and sorrow for the unjust charges made against them. For this reason the Athenians did not long abide by their displeasure against Cimon, partly because, as was natural, they remembered his benefits, and partly because the turn of events favoured his cause. 4906 For they were defeated at Tanagra in a great battle, and expected that in the following spring-time an armed force of Peloponnesians would come against them, and so they recalled Cimon from his exile. The decree which provided for his return was formally proposed by Pericles. To such a degree in those days were dissensions based on political differences of opinion, while personal feelings were moderate, and easily recalled into conformity with the public weal. Even ambition, that master passion, paid deference to the country’s welfare.

18 1 Well then, as soon as Cimon returned from exile he stopped the war and reconciled the rival cities. After peace was made, since he saw that the Athenians were unable to keep quiet, but wished to be on the move and to wax great by means of military expeditions; also because he wished that they should not exasperate the Hellenes generally, nor by hovering around the islands and the Peloponnesus with a large fleet bring down upon the city charges of intestine war, and initial complaints from the allies, he manned two hundred triremes. 2 His design was to make another expedition with them against Egypt and Cyprus. He wished to keep the Athenians in constant training by their struggles with Barbarians, and to give them the legitimate benefits of importing into Hellas the wealth taken from their natural foes.

All things were now ready and the soldiery on the point of embarking, when Cimon had a dream. 3 He thought an angry bitch was baying at him, and that mingled with its baying it uttered a human voice, saying: —

“Go thy way, for a friend shalt thou be both to me and my puppies.”

The vision being hard of interpretation, Astyphilus of Posidonia, an inspired man and an intimate of Cimon’s, told him that it signified his death. He analysed the vision thus: a dog is a foe of the man at whom it bays; to a foe, one cannot be a friend any better than by dying; the mixture of speech indicates that the enemy is the Mede, for the army of the Medes is a mixture of Hellenes and Barbarians. 4 After this vision, when Cimon had sacrificed to Dionysus and the seer was cutting up the victim, swarms of ants took the blood as it congealed, brought it little by little to Cimon, and enveloped his great toe therewith, he being unconscious of their work for some time. Just about at the time when he noticed what they were doing, the ministrant came and showed him the liver of his victim without a head.

But since he could not get out of the expedition, he set sail, and after detailing sixty of his ships to go to Egypt, with the rest he made again for Cyprus. 5 After defeating at sea the royal armament of Phoenician and Cilician ships, he won over the cities round about, and then lay threatening the royal enterprise in Egypt, and not in any trifling fashion, — nay, he had in mind the dissolution of the King’s entire supremacy, and all the more because he learned that the reputation and power of Themistocles were great among the Barbarians, who had promised the King that when the Hellenic war was set on foot he would take command of it. 6 At any rate, it is said that it was most of all due to Themistocles’ despair of his Hellenic undertakings, since he could not eclipse the good fortune and valour of Cimon, that he took his own life.

But Cimon, while he was projecting vast conflicts and holding his naval forces in the vicinity of Cyprus, sent men to the shrine of Ammon to get oracular answer from the god to some secret question.  No one knows what they were sent to ask, nor did the god vouchsafe them any response, but as soon as the enquirers drew nigh, he bade them depart, saying that Cimon himself was already with him. On hearing this, the enquirers went down to the sea-coast, and when they reached the camp of the Hellenes, which was at that time on the confines of Egypt, they learned that Cimon was dead, and on counting the days back to the utterance of the oracle, they found that it was their commander’s death which had been darkly intimated, since he was already with the gods.

491 19 1 He died while besieging Citium, of sickness, as most say. But some say it was of a wound which he got while fighting the Barbarians. As he was dying he bade those about him to sail away at once and to conceal his death. And so it came to pass that neither the enemy nor the allies understood what had happened, and the force was brought back in safety “under the command of Cimon,” as Phanodemus says, “who had been dead for thirty days.”

2 After his death no further brilliant exploit against the Barbarians was performed by any general of the Hellenes, who were swayed by demagogues and partisans of civil war, with none to hold a mediating hand between them, till they actually clashed together in war. This afforded the cause of the King a respite, but brought to pass an indescribable destruction of Hellenic power. 3 It was not until long afterwards that Agesilaüs carried his arms into Asia and prosecuted a brief war against the King’s generals along the sea-coast. And even he could perform no great and brilliant deeds, but was overwhelmed in his turn by a flood of Hellenic disorders and seditions and swept away from a second empire. So he withdrew, leaving in the midst of allied and friendly cities the tax-gatherers of the Persians, not one of whose scribes, nay, nor so much as a horse, had been seen within four hundred furlongs of the sea, as long as Cimon was general.

4 That his remains were brought home to Attica, there is testimony in the funeral monuments to this day called Cimonian. But the people of Citium also pay honours to a certain tomb of Cimon, as Nausicrates the rhetorician says, because in a time of pestilence and famine the god enjoined upon them not to neglect Cimon, but to revere and honour him as a superior being. Such was the Greek leader.

Lucullus

1 1 In the case of Lucullus, his grandfather was a man of consular rank, and his uncle on his mother’s side was Metellus, surnamed Numidicus. But as for his parents, his father was convicted of peculation, and his mother, Caecilia, had the bad name of a dissolute woman. Lucullus himself, while he was still a mere youth, before he had entered public life or stood for any office, made it his first business to impeach his father’s accuser, Servilius the Augur, whom he found wronging the commonwealth. 2 The Romans thought this a brilliant stroke, and the case was in everybody’s mouth, like a great deed of prowess. Indeed, they thought the business of impeachment, on general principles and without special provocation, no ignoble thing, but were very desirous to see their young men fastening themselves on malefactors like high-bred whelps on wild beasts. However, the case stirred up great animosity, so that sundry persons were actually wounded and slain, and Servilius was acquitted.

3 Lucullus was trained to speak fluently both Latin and Greek, so that Sulla, in writing his own memoirs, dedicated them to him, as a man who would set in order and duly arrange the history of the times better than himself. For the style of Lucullus was not only businesslike and ready; the same was true of many another man’s in the Forum. There,

“Like smitten tunny, through the billowy sea it dashed,”

although outside the Forum it was

“Withered, inelegant, and dead.”

4 But Lucullus, from his youth up, was devoted to the genial and so called “liberal” culture then in vogue, wherein the Beautiful was sought. And when he came to be well on in years, he suffered his mind to find complete leisure and repose, as it were after many struggles, in philosophy, encouraging the contemplative side of his nature, and giving timely halt and check, after his difference with Pompey, to the play of his ambition. 5 Now, as to his love of literature, this also is reported, in addition to what has already been said: when he was a young man, proceeding from jest to earnest in a conversation with Hortensius, the orator, and Sisenna, the historian, he agreed, on their suggestion of a poem and a history, both in Greek and Latin, that he would treat the Marsic war in whichever of these forms the lot should prescribe. And it would seem that the lot prescribed a Greek history, for there is extant a Greek history of the Marsic war.

6 Of his affection for his brother Marcus there are many proofs, but the Romans dwell most upon the first. Although, namely, he was older than his brother, he was unwilling to hold office alone, but waited until his brother was of the proper age, and thus gained the favour of the people to such an extent that, although in absence from the city, he was elected aedile along with his brother.

2 1 Though he was but a young man in the Marsic war, he gave many proofs of courage and understanding. It was, however, more owing to constancy and mildness that Sulla attached him to himself and employed him from first to last on business of the highest importance. Such, for instance, was the management of the mint. 2 Most of the money used in Peloponnesus during the Mithridatic war was coined by him, and was called Lucullean after him. It remained current for a long time, since the wants of the soldiery during the war gave it rapid circulation. Afterwards, at Athens, Sulla found himself master on land, but cut off from supplies by sea, owing to the superior naval force of the enemy. He therefore despatched Lucullus to Egypt and Libya, with orders to fetch ships from there. 3 Winter was then at its worst, but he sailed forth with three Greek brigantines and as many small Rhodian galleys, exposing himself not only to the high sea, but to numerous hostile ships which were cruising about everywhere in full mastery of it. However, he put in at Crete and won it over to his side. He also made Cyrené, and finding it in confusion in consequence of successive tyrannies and wars, he restored it to order, and fixed its constitution, reminding the city of a certain oracular utterance which the great Plato had once vouchsafed to them. 4 They asked him, it would seem, to write laws for them, and to mould their people into some form of sound government, whereupon he said that it was hard to be a lawgiver for the Cyreneans when they were having such good fortune. In fact, nothing is more ungovernable than a man reputed to be prosperous; and, on the other hand, nothing is more receptive of authority than a man who is humbled by misfortune. This was what made the Cyreneans at that time so submissive to Lucullus as their lawgiver.

5 From thence he set sail for Egypt, but was attacked by pirates, and lost most of his vessels. He himself, however, escaped in safety, and entered the port of Alexandria in splendid style. The entire Egyptian fleet came to meet him, as it was wont to do when a king put into port, in resplendent array, and the youthful Ptolemy, besides showing him other astonishing marks of kindness, gave him lodging and sustenance in the royal palace, whither no foreign commander had ever been brought before. 6 The allowance which the king made for his expenses was not the same as others had received, but four times as much, and yet he accepted nothing beyond what was actually necessary, and took no gift, although he was offered the worth of eighty talents.a It is also said that he neither went up to Memphis, nor sought out any other of the famous wonders of Egypt; this he held to be the privilege of a leisurely and luxurious sight-seer, not of one who, like himself, had left his commander-in chief encamped under the open sky alongside the battlements of the enemy.

3 1 Ptolemy abandoned his alliance with Rome, out of fear for the outcome of the war, but furnished Lucullus with ships to convoy him as far as Cyprus, embraced him graciously at parting, and offered him a costly emerald set in gold. At first Lucullus declined to accept it, but when the king showed him that the engraving on it was a likeness of himself, he was afraid to reject it, lest he be thought to have sailed away at utter enmity with the king, and so have some plot laid against him on the voyage. 2 As he sailed along, he collected a multitude of ships from the maritime cities, omitting all those engaged in piracy, and came at last to Cyprus. Learning there that the enemy lay at anchor off the headlands and were watching for his coming, he hauled all his vessels up on land, and wrote letters to the cities requesting winter quarters and provisions, as though he would await the fine season there. 3 Then, when the wind served, he suddenly launched his ships and put out to sea, and by sailing in the day time with his sails reefed and low, but in the night time under full canvas, he came safely to Rhodes. The Rhodians furnished him with more ships, and he induced the people of Cos and Cnidus to forsake the royal cause and join him in an expedition against Samos. Without any aid he also drove the royal forces out of Chios, and set the Colophonians free from their tyrant, Epigonus, whom he arrested.

4 It happened about this time that Mithridates abandoned Pergamum and shut himself up in Pitané. Since Fimbria held him in close siege there by land, he looked to make his escape by sea, and collected and summoned his fleets from every quarter for this purpose, renouncing all engagements in the field with a man so bold and victorious as Fimbria. 5 This design Fimbria perceived, and being without any fleet of his own, sent to Lucullus, beseeching him to come with his, and assist in capturing the most hostile and warlike of kings, that the great prize which they had sought with so many toils and struggles might not escape the Romans, now that Mithridates was in their grip and fast in the meshes of their net. If he should be captured, Fimbria said, no one would get more of the glory than the man who stood in the way of his flight and seized him as he was running off. 6 “Driven from the land by me, and excluded from the sea by you, he will crown us both with success, and the much heralded exploits of Sulla at Orchomenus and Chaeroneia will cease to interest the Romans.” And there was nothing absurd in the proposition. It is clear to everyone that if Lucullus, who was close at hand, had then listened to Fimbria, brought his ships thither, and closed up the harbour with his fleet, the war would have been at an end, and the world freed from infinite mischief. 7 But, whether he ranked the honourable treatment of Sulla above every consideration of private or public advantage, or whether he regarded Fimbria as a wretch whose ambition for command had recently led him to murder a man who was his friend and superior officer, or whether it was by some mysterious dispensation of fortune that he chose to spare Mithridates, and so reserved him for his own antagonist, — for whatever reason, he would not listen to the proposal, but suffered Mithridates to sail off and mock at Fimbria’s forces, 8 while he himself, to begin with, defeated the king’s ships which showed themselves off Lectum in the Troad. And again, catching sight of Neoptolemus lying in wait for him at Tenedos with a still larger armament, he sailed out against him in advance of the rest, on board of a Rhodian galley which was commanded by Damagoras, a man well disposed to the Romans, and of the largest experience as a sea-fighter. 9 Neoptolemus dashed out to meet him, and ordered his steersman to ram the enemy. Damagoras, however, fearing the weight of the royal ship and her rugged bronze armour, did not venture to engage head on, but put swiftly about and ordered his men to back water, thus receiving his enemy astern, where his vessel was depressed. The blow was harmless, since it fell upon the submerged parts of the ship. 10 At this point, his friends coming up, Lucullus gave orders to turn the ship about, and, after performing many praiseworthy feats, put the enemy to flight and gave close chase to Neoptolemus.

4 1 From thence he joined Sulla at the Chersonesus, where he was about to cross the strait into Asia; he rendered his passage safe, and assisted in transporting his troops. After peace had been made, Mithridates sailed away into the Euxine, and Sulla laid a contribution of twenty thousand talents upon Asia. Lucullus was commissioned to collect this money and re-coin it, and the cities of Asia felt it to be no slight assuagement of Sulla’s severity when Lucullus showed himself not only honest and just, but even mild in the performance of a task so oppressive and disagreeable. 2 The Mitylenaeans too, who had revolted outright, he wished to be reasonable, and to submit to a moderate penalty for having espoused the cause of Marius. But when he saw that they were possessed by an evil spirit, he sailed against them, conquered them in battle, and shut them up within their walls. After instituting a siege of their city, he sailed away in open day to Elaea, but returned by stealth, and lay quietly in ambush near the city. 3 When the Mitylenaeans sallied forth in disorder and with the confident expectation of plundering his deserted camp, he fell upon them, took a great number of them alive, and slew five hundred of those who offered resistance. He also carried off six thousand slaves, besides countless other booty.

4 But in the boundless and manifold evils which Sulla and Marius were bringing upon the people of Italy at that time, he had no share whatever, for, as some kindly fortune would have it, he was detained at his business in Asia. However, Sulla accorded no less favour to Lucullus than to his other friends. His memoirs, as I have said, Sulla dedicated to Lucullus in token of affection, and in his will appointed him guardian of his son, thereby passing Pompey by. And this seems to have been the first ground for estrangement and jealousy between these two men; both were young, and burning for distinction.

5 1 Shortly after the death of Sulla, Lucullus was made consul along with Marcus Cotta, about the hundred and seventy-sixth Olympiad. Many were now trying to stir up anew the Mithridatic war, which Marcus said had not come to an end, but merely to a pause. Therefore when the province of Cisalpine Gaul was allotted to Lucullus, he was displeased, since it offered no opportunity for great exploits. 2 But what most of all embittered him was the reputation which Pompey was winning in Spain. If the war in Spain should happen to come to an end, Pompey was more likely than anyone else to be at once chosen general against Mithridates. Therefore when Pompey wrote home requesting money, and declaring that if they did not send it, he would abandon Spain and Sertorius and bring his forces back to Italy, Lucullus moved heaven and earth to have the money sent, and to prevent Pompey from coming back, on any pretext whatsoever, while he was consul. 3 He knew that all Rome would be in Pompey’s hands if he were there with so large an army. For the man who at that time controlled the course of political affairs by virtue of doing and saying everything to court the favour of the people, Cethegus, hated Lucullus, who loathed his manner of life, full as it was of disgraceful amours and wanton trespasses. Against this man Lucullus waged open war. 4 But Lucius Quintus, another popular leader, who opposed the institutions of Sulla and sought to confound the established order of things, he turned from his purpose by much private remonstrance and public admonition, and allayed his ambition, thus treating in as wise and wholesome a manner as was possible the beginnings of a great distemper.

6 1 At this time there came tidings of the death of Octavius, the governor of Cilicia. There were many eager applicants for the province, and they paid court to Cethegus as the man best able to further their designs. Of Cilicia itself Lucullus made little account, but in the belief that, if he should get this province, which was near Cappadocia, no one else would be sent to conduct the war against Mithridates, he strained every nerve to keep the province from being assigned to another. 2 Finally, contrary to his natural bent, he was driven by the necessities of the case to adopt a course which was neither dignified nor praiseworthy, it is true, but conducive to his end.

There was a certain woman then in Rome, Praecia by name, whose fame for beauty and wit filled the city. In other respects she was no whit better than an ordinary courtesan, but she used her associates and companions to further the political ambitions of her friends, and so added to her other charms the reputation of being a true comrade, and one who could bring things to pass. She thus acquired the greatest influence. 3 And when Cethegus also, then at the zenith of his fame and in control of the city, joined her train and became her lover, political power passed entirely into her hands. No public measure passed unless Cethegus favoured it, and Cethegus did nothing except with Praecia’s approval. This woman, then, Lucullus won over by gifts and flatteries, and it was doubtless a great boon for a woman so forward and ostentatious to be seen sharing the ambitions of Lucullus. Straightway he had Cethegus singing his praises and suing for Cilicia in his behalf. 4 But as soon as he had obtained this province, there was no further need of his soliciting the aid of Praecia, or of Cethegus, for that matter, but all were unanimous and prompt in putting into his hands the Mithridatic war, assured that no one else could better bring it to a triumphant close. Pompey was still engaged in his war with Sertorius, Metellus had now retired from active service by reason of his age, and these were the only men who could be regarded as rivals of Lucullus in any dispute about this command. 5 Cotta, however, his colleague in the consulship, after fervent entreaties to the Senate, was sent with some ships to guard the Propontis, and to protect Bithynia.

7 1 With a legion which he had raised himself in Italy, Lucullus crossed into Asia, and there assumed command of the rest of the Roman forces. All these had long been spoiled by habits of luxury and greed, and the Fimbrians, as they were called, had become unmanageable, through long lack of discipline. 2 These were the men who, in collusion with Fimbrius, had slain Flaccus, their consul and general, and had delivered Fimbrius himself over to Sulla. They were self-willed and lawless, but good fighters, hardy, and experienced in war. However, in a short time Lucullus pruned off their insolent boldness, and reformed the rest. Then for the first time, as it would seen, they made the acquaintance of a genuine commander and leader, whereas before this they had always been cajoled into doing their duty, like crowds at the hustings.

3 On the enemy’s side, matters stood as follows. Mithridates, boastful and pompous at the outset, like most of the Sophists, had first opposed the Romans with forces which were really unsubstantial, though brilliant and ostentatious to look upon. With these he had made a ridiculous fiasco and learned a salutary lesson. When therefore, he thought to go to war the second time, he organized his forces into a genuinely effective armament. 4 He did away with Barbarous hordes from every clime, and all their discordant and threatening cries; he provided no more armour inlaid with gold and set with precious stones, for he saw that these made rich booty for the victors, but gave no strength whatever to their wearers; instead, he had swords forged in the Roman fashion, and heavy shields welded; he collected horses that were well trained rather than richly caparisoned, and a hundred and twenty thousand footmen drilled in the Roman phalanx formation, and sixteen thousand horsemen, not counting the scythe-bearing, four-horse chariots, which were a hundred in number: 5 and further, he put in readiness ships which were not tricked out with gilded canopies, or baths for concubines, and luxurious apartments for women, but which were rather loaded down with armour and missiles and munitions of war. Then he burst into Bithynia, and not only did the cities there receive him again with gladness, but all Asia suffered a relapse into its former distempered condition, afflicted, as it was, past bearing by Roman money-lenders and tax-gatherers. 6 These were afterwards driven off by Lucullus, — harpies that they were, snatching the people’s food; but then he merely tried, by admonishing them, to make them more moderate in their demands, and laboured to stop the uprisings of the towns, hardly one of which was in a quiet state.

8 1 While Lucullus was thus occupied, Cotta, thinking that his own golden opportunity had come, was getting ready to give battle to Mithridates. And when tidings came from many sources that Lucullus was coming up, and was already encamped in Phrygia, thinking that a triumph was all but in his grasp, and desiring that Lucullus have no share in it, he hastened to engage the king. 2 But he was defeated by sea and land, lost sixty vessels, crews and all, and four thousand foot-soldiers, while he himself was shut up in Chalcedon and besieged there, looking for relief at the hands of Lucullus.

3 Now there were some who urged Lucullus to ignore Cotta and march on the kingdom of Mithridates, assured of capturing it in its defenceless condition. This was the reasoning of the soldiers especially, who were indignant that Cotta, by his evil counsels, should not only be the undoing of himself and his army, but also block their own way to a victory which they could have won without a battle. 4 But Lucullus, in a harangue which he made them, said that he would rather save one Roman from the enemy than take all that enemy’s possessions. And when Archelaüs, who had held command for Mithridates in Boeotia, and then had abandoned his cause, and was now in the Roman army, stoutly maintained that if Lucullus were once seen in Pontus, he would master everything at once, Lucullus declared that he was at least as courageous as the hunter; he would not give the wild beasts the slip and stalk their empty lairs. 5 With these words, he led his army against Mithridates, having thirty thousand foot-soldiers, and twenty-five hundred horsemen. But when he had come within sight of the enemy and seen with amazement their multitude, he desired to refrain from battle and draw out the time. But Marius, whom Sertorius had sent to Mithridates from Spain with an army, came out to meet him, and challenged him to combat, and so he put his forces in array to fight the issue out. 6 But presently, as they were on the point of joining battle, with no apparent change of weather, but all on a sudden, the sky burst asunder, and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape, it was most like a wine-jar, and in colour, like molten silver. Both sides were astonished at the sight, and separated. 7 This marvel, as they say, occurred in Phrygia, at a place called Otryae.

But Lucullus, feeling sure that no human provision or wealth could maintain, for any length of time, and in the face of an enemy, so many thousands of men as Mithridates had, ordered one of the captives to be brought to him, and asked him first, how many men shared his mess, and then, how much food he had left in his tent. 8 When the man had answered these questions, he ordered him to be removed, and questioned a second and a third in like manner. Then, comparing the amount of food provided with the number of men to be fed, he concluded that within three or four days the enemy’s provisions would fail them. All the more, therefore, did he trust to time, and collected into his camp a great abundance of provisions, that so, himself in the midst of plenty, he might watch for his enemy’s distress.

9 1 But in the meantime, Mithridates planned a blow at Cyzicus, which had suffered terribly in the battle near Chalcedon, having lost three thousand men and ten ships. Accordingly, wishing to evade the notice of Lucullus, he set out immediately after the evening meal, taking advantage of a dark and rainy night, and succeeded in planting his forces over against the city, on the slopes of the mountain range of Adrasteia, by day-break. 2 Lucullus got wind of his departure and pursued him, but was well satisfied not to fall upon the enemy while his own troops were in disorder from their march, and stationed his army near the village called Thracia, in a spot best suited to command the roads and regions from which, and over which, the army of Mithridates must get its necessary supplies. Seeing clearly, therefore, what the issue must be, he did not conceal it from his soldiers, but as soon as they had completed the labour of fortifying their camp, called them together, and boastfully told them that within a few days he would give them their victory, and that without any bloodshed.

3 Mithridates was besieging Cyzicus both by land and sea, having encompassed it with ten camps on the land side, and having blockaded with his ships by sea the narrow strait which parts the city from the mainland. Although the citizens viewed their peril with a high courage, and were resolved to sustain every hardship for the sake of the Romans, still, they knew not where Lucullus was, and were disturbed because they heard nothing of him. 4 And yet his camp was in plain sight, only they were deceived by their enemies. These pointed the Romans out to them, lying encamped on the heights, and said: “Do you see those forces? It is an army of Armenians and Medes which Tigranes has sent to assist Mithridates.” They were therefore terrified to see such hosts encompassing them, and had no hopes that any way of succour remained, even if Lucullus should come.

5 However, in the first place, Demonax was sent in to them by Archelaüs, and told them that Lucullus was arrived. They disbelieved him, and thought he had invented his story merely to mitigate their anxieties, but then a boy came to them, who had escaped from his captivity with the enemy. On their asking him where he thought Lucullus was, he laughed at them, supposing them to be jesting. But when he saw that they were in earnest, he pointed out the Roman camp to them, and their courage was revived. 6 Again, Lucullus drew out on shore the largest of the sizable craft which plied the lake Dascylitis, carried it across to the sea on a waggon, and embarked upon it as many soldiers as it would hold, who crossed by night unobserved, and got safely into the city.

10 1 It would seem also that Heaven, in admiration of their bravery, emboldened the men of Cyzicus by many manifest signs, and especially by the following. The festival of Persephone was at hand, and the people, in lack of a black heifer for the sacrifice, fashioned one of dough, and brought it to the altar. Now the sacred heifer reared for the goddess was pasturing, like the other herds of the Cyzicenes, on the opposite side of the strait, but on that day she left her herd, swam over alone to the city, and presented herself for the sacrifice. 2 And again, the goddess appeared in a dream to Aristagoras, the town-clerk, saying: “Lo, here am I, and I bring the Libyan fifer against the Pontic trumpeter. Bid the citizens therefore be of good cheer.” While the Cyzicenes were lost in wonder at the saying, at day-break the sea began to toss under a boisterous wind, and the siege-engines of the king along the walls, the wonderful works of Niconides the Thessalian, by their creaking and cracking showed clearly what was about to happen; 3 then a south wind burst forth with incredible fury, shattered the other engines in a short space of time, and threw down with a great shock the wooden tower a hundred cubits high. It is related, too, that the goddess Athena appeared to many of the inhabitants of Ilium in their sleep, dripping with sweat, showing part of her peplus torn away, and saying that she was just come from assisting the Cyzicenes. And the people of Ilium used to show a stelé which had on it certain decrees and inscriptions relating to this matter.

11 Mithridates, as long as his generals deceived him into ignorance of the famine in his army, was vexed that the Cyzicenes should successfully withstand his siege. But his eager ambition quickly ebbed away when he perceived the straits in which his soldiers were involved, and their actual cannibalism. For Lucullus was not carrying on the war in any theatrical way, nor for mere display, but, as the saying is, was “kicking in the belly,” and devising every means for cutting off food. 2 Accordingly, while Lucullus was laying siege to some outpost or other, Mithridates eagerly took advantage of the opportunity, and sent away into Bithynia almost all his horsemen, together with the beasts of burden, and those of his foot-soldiers who were disabled. On learning of this, Lucullus returned to his camp while it was still night, and early in the morning, in spite of a storm, took ten cohorts of infantry and his cavalry, and started in pursuit, although snow was falling and his hardships were extreme. Many of his soldiers were overcome with the cold and had to be left behind, but with the rest he overtook the enemy at the river Rhyndacus 3 and inflicted such a defeat upon them that the very women came forth from Apollonia and carried off their baggage and stripped their slain. Six thousand horses and fifteen thousand men were captured, besides an untold number of beasts of burden. All these followed in the train of Lucullus as he marched back past the camp of the enemy. 4 Sallust says, to my amazement, that camels were then seen by the Romans for the first time. He must have thought that the soldiers of Scipio who conquered Antiochus before this, and those who had lately fought Archelaüs at Orchomenus and Chaeroneia, were unacquainted with the camel.

5 Mithridates was now resolved upon the speediest possible flight, but with a view to drawing Lucullus away, and holding him back from pursuit, he dispatched his admiral, Aristonicus, to the Grecian sea. Aristonicus was just on the point of sailing when he was betrayed into the hands of Lucullus, together with ten thousand pieces of gold which he was carrying for the corruption of some portion of the Roman army. Upon this, Mithridates fled to the sea, and his generals of infantry began to lead the army away. 6 But Lucullus fell upon them at the river Granicus, captured a vast number of them, and slew twenty thousand. It is said that out of the whole horde of camp-followers and fighting men, not much less than three hundred thousand perished in the campaign.

12 1 Lucullus, in the first place, entered Cyzicus in triumph, and enjoyed the pleasant welcome which was his due; then he proceeded to the Hellespont, and began to equip a fleet. On visiting the Troad, he pitched his tent in the sacred precinct of Aphrodite, and in the night, after he had fallen asleep, he thought he saw the goddess standing over him and saying: —

“Why dost thou sleep, great lion? the fawns are near for thy taking.”

2 Rising up from sleep and calling his friends, he narrated to them his vision, while it was yet night. And lo, there came certain men from Ilium, with tidings that thirteen of the king’s galleys had been seen off the harbour of the Achaeans, making for Lemnos. Accordingly, Lucullus put to sea at once, captured these, slew their commander, Isodorus, and then sailed in pursuit of the other captains, whom these were seeking to join. 3 They chanced to be lying at anchor close to shore, and drawing their vessels all up on land, they fought from their decks, and sorely galled the crews of Lucullus. These had no chance to sail round their enemies, nor to make onset upon them, since their own ships were afloat, while those of their enemies were planted upon the land and securely fixed. 4 However, Lucullus at last succeeded in disembarking the best of his soldiers where the island afforded some sort of access. These fell upon the enemy from the rear, slew some of them, and forced the rest to cut their stern cables and fly from the shore, their vessels thus falling foul of one another, and receiving the impact of the ships of Lucullus. 5 Many of the enemy perished, of course, and among the captives there was brought in Marius, the general sent from Sertorius. He had but one eye, and the soldiers had received strict orders from Lucullus, as soon as they set sail, to kill no one-eyed man. Lucullus wished Marius to die under the most shameful insults.

13 1 These things done, Lucullus hastened in pursuit of Mithridates himself. For he expected to find him still in Bithynia under the watch and war of Voconius, whom he had dispatched with a fleet to Nicomedeia that he might intercept the king’s flight. 2 But Voconius was behindhand, owing to his initiation into, and celebration of, the mysteries in Samothrace, and Mithridates put to sea with his armament, eager to reach Pontus before Lucullus turned and set upon him. He was overtaken, however, by a great storm, which destroyed some of his vessels and disabled others. The whole coast for many days was covered with the wrecks dashed upon it by the billows. 3 As for the king himself, the merchantman on which he was sailing was too large to be readily beached when the sea ran so high and the waves were so baffling, nor would it answer to its helm, and it was now too heavy and full of water to gain an offing; accordingly, he abandoned it for a light brigantine belonging to some pirates, and, entrusting his person to their hands, contrary to expectation and after great hazard, got safely to Heracleia in Pontus. 4 And so it happened that the boastful speech of Lucullus to the Senate brought no divine retribution down upon him. When, namely, that body was ready to vote three thousand talents to provide a fleet for this war, Lucullus blocked the measure by writing a letter, in which he made the haughty boast that without any such costly array, but only with the ships of the allies, he would drive Mithridates from the sea. And this success he gained with the assistance of Heaven. For it is said that it was owing to the wrath of Artemis of Priapus that the tempest fell upon the men of Pontus, who had plundered her shrine and pulled down her image.

14 1 Though many now advised Lucullus to suspend the war, he paid no heed to them, but threw his army into the king’s country by way of Bithynia and Galatia. At first he lacked the necessary supplies, so that thirty thousand Galatians followed in his train, each carrying a bushel of grain upon his shoulders; but as he advanced and mastered everything, he found himself in the midst of such plenty that an ox sold in his camp for a drachma, and a man-slave for four, while other booty had no value at all. Some abandoned it, and some destroyed it. There was no sale for anything to anybody when all had such abundance.

2 But when Lucullus merely wasted and ravaged the country with cavalry incursions, which penetrated the Themiscyra and the plains of the river Thermodon, his soldiers found fault with him because he brought all the cities over to him by peaceable measures; he had not taken a single one by storm, they said, nor given them a chance to enrich themselves by plunder. 3 “Nay,” they said, “at this very moment we are leaving Amisus, a rich and prosperous city, which it would be no great matter to take, if its siege were pressed, and are following our general into the desert of the Tibareni and the Chaldaeans to fight with Mithridates.” But these grievances, not dreaming that they would bring the soldiers to such acts of madness as they afterwards performed, Lucullus overlooked and ignored. 4 He was, however, more ready to defend himself against those who denounced his slowness in lingering there a long while, subduing worthless little villages and cities, and allowing Mithridates to recruit himself. “That,” he said, “is the very thing I want, and I am sitting here to get it. I want the man to become powerful again, and to get together a force with which it is worth our while to fight, in order that he may stand his ground, and not fly when we approach. 5 Do you not see that he has a vast and trackless desert behind him? The Caucasus, too, is near, with its many hills and dells, which are sufficient to hide away in safety ten thousand kings who decline to fight. And it is only a few days’ journey from Cabira into Armenia and over Armenia there sits enthroned Tigranes, King of Kings, with forces which enable him to cut the Parthians off from Asia, transplant Greek cities into Media, sway Syria and Palestine, put to death the successors of Seleucus, and carry off their wives and daughters into captivity. 6 This king is a kinsman of Mithridates, his son-in law. He will not be content to receive him as a suppliant, but will make war against us. If we strive, therefore, to eject Mithridates from his kingdom, we shall run the risk of drawing Tigranes down upon us. He has long wanted an excuse for coming against us, and could not get a better one than that of being compelled to aid a man who is his kinsman and a king. Why, then, should we bring this to pass, and teach Mithridates, when he does not know it, with what allies he must carry on war against us? Why help to drive him, against his wish and as a last resource, into the arms of Tigranes, instead of giving him time to equip himself from his own resources and get fresh courage? Then we shall fight with Colchians and Tibareni and Cappadocians, whom we have often overcome, rather than with Medes and Armenians.”

15 1 Influenced by such considerations as these, Lucullus lingered about Amisus, without pushing the siege vigorously. When winter was over, he left Murena in charge of the siege, and marched against Mithridates, who had taken his stand at Cabira, and intended to await the Roman onset there. A force of forty thousand footmen had been collected by him, and four thousand horsemen; on the latter he placed his chief reliance. 2 Crossing the river Lycus and advancing into the plain, he offered the Romans battle. A cavalry fight ensued, and the Romans took to flight. Pomponius, a man of some note, having been wounded, was taken prisoner and led into the presence of Mithridates, suffering greatly from his wounds. When the king asked him if he would become his friend provided he spared his life, Pomponius answered: “Yes, indeed, if you come to terms with the Romans; otherwise I must remain your enemy.” Mithridates was struck with admiration for him, and did him no harm.

3 Lucullus was now afraid of the plains, since the enemy was superior in cavalry, and yet hesitated to go forward into the hill country, which was remote, woody, and impassable. But it chanced that certain Greeks, who had taken refuge in a sort of cave, were captured, and the elder of them, Artemidorus, promised to serve Lucullus as a guide, and set him in a place which was safe for his camp, and which had a fortress overlooking Cabira. 4 Lucullus put confidence in this promise, and as soon as it was night, lit his camp fires and set out. He passed safely through the narrow defiles and took possession of the desired place, and at daybreak was seen above the enemy, stationing his men in positions which gave him access to the enemy if he wished to fight, and safety from their assaults if he wished to keep quiet.

5 Now neither commander had any intention of hazarding an engagement at once. But we are told that while some of the king’s men were chasing a stag, the Romans cut them off and confronted them, whereupon a skirmish followed, with fresh accessions continually to either side. At last, the king’s men were victorious. Then the Romans in their camp, beholding the flight of their comrades, were in distress, and ran in throngs to Lucullus, begging him to lead them, and demanding the signal for battle. 6 But he, wishing them to learn how important, in a dangerous struggle with the enemy, the visible presence of a prudent general is, bade them keep quiet. Then he went down into the plain by himself, and confronting the foremost of the fugitives, bade them stop, and turn back with him. 7 They obeyed, and the rest also wheeled about and formed in battle array, and a short time routed the enemy and drove them to their camp. When he came back, however, Lucullus inflicted the customary disgrace upon the fugitives. He bade them dig a twelve-foot ditch, working in ungirt blouses, while the rest of the soldiers stood by and watched them.

16 1 In the camp of Mithridates there was a Dandarian prince named Olthacus (the Dandarians are a tribe of barbarians dwelling about Lake Maeotis), a man conspicuous as a soldier for qualities of strength and boldness, of a most excellent judgment, and withal affable in address and of insinuating manners. This man was always in emulous rivalry for the precedence with a fellow prince of his tribe, and so was led to undertake a great exploit for Mithridates, namely, the murder of Lucullus. 2 The king approved of his design, and purposely inflicted upon him sundry marks of disgrace, whereupon, pretending to be enraged, he galloped off to Lucullus, who gladly welcomed him, since there was much talk of him in the camp. After a short probation, Lucullus was so pleased with his shrewdness and zeal, that he made him a table companion, and at last a member of his council.

3 Now when the Dandarian thought his opportunity had come, he ordered his slaves to lead his horse outside the camp, while he himself, at mid-day, when the soldiers were lying around enjoying their rest, went to the general’s tent. He thought no one would deny entrance to a man who was an intimate of the general, and said he brought him certain messages of great importance. 4 And he would have entered without let or hindrance, had not sleep, the destroyer of many generals, saved Lucullus. For it chanced that he was asleep, and Menedemus, one of his chamberlains, who stood at the tent-door, told Olthacus that he had come at an inopportune time, since Lucullus had just betaken himself to rest after his long watching and many hardships. 5 Olthacus did not retire at the bidding of Menedemus, but declared that even in spite of him he would go in, since he wished to confer with the general on urgent business of great importance. Then Menedemus got angry, declared that nothing was more urgent than the preservation of Lucullus, and pushed the man away with both hands. 6 Then Olthacus, in fear, left the camp, took horse, and rode off to the camp of Mithridates, without effecting his purpose. So true is it that in active life, as well as in sickness, it is the critical moment which gives the scales their saving or their fatal inclination.

17 1 After this, Sornatius was sent with ten cohorts to get supplies of grain. Being pursued by Menander, one of the generals of Mithridates, he faced about, joined battle, and routed the enemy with great slaughter. And again, when Adrian was sent out with a force to procure an abundance of grain for the soldiers, Mithridates did not look on idly, but dispatched Menemachus and Myron, at the head of a large body of cavalry and footmen. 2 All these, it is said, except two, were cut to pieces by the Romans. Mithridates tried to conceal the extent of the disaster, pretending that it was a slight matter, and due to the inexperience of his generals. But when Adrian marched pompously past his camp, convoying many waggons laden with grain and booty, a great despair fell upon the king, and confusion and helpless fear upon his soldiers. 3 They decided, therefore, to remain where they were no longer. But when the king’s servants tried to send away their own baggage first, and to hinder the rest from going, the soldiers at once got angry, pushed and forced their way to the exits of the camp, and there plundered the baggage and slew the men in charge of it. There it was that Dorylaüs, the general, with nothing else about him but his purple robe, lost his life for that, and Hermaeus, the priest, was trampled to death at the gates.

4 Mithridates himself, with no attendant or groom to assist him, fled away from the camp in the midst of the throng, not even provided with one of the royal horses; but at last the eunuch Ptolemaeus, who was mounted, spied him as he was borne along in the torrent of the rout, leaped down from his horse, and gave it to the king. 5 Presently the Romans, who were forcing the pursuit, were hard upon him, and it was for no lack of speed that they did not take him. Indeed, they were very near doing so, but greed, and petty soldier’s avarice, snatched from them the quarry which they had so long pursued in many struggles and great dangers, and robbed Lucullus of the victor’s prize. 6 For the horse which carried the king was just within reach of his pursuers, when one of the mules which carried the royal gold came between him and them, either of his own accord, or because the king purposely sent him into the path of pursuit. The soldiers fell to plundering and collecting the gold, fought with one another over it, and so were left behind in the chase. 7 Nor was this the only fruit of their greed which Lucullus reaped. He had given orders that Callistratus, who was in charge of the king’s private papers, should be brought alive to him, but his conductors, finding that he had five hundred pieces of gold in his girdle, slew him. However, Lucullus allowed such soldiers as these to plunder the enemy’s camp.

18 1 In capturing Cabira and most of the other strongholds, he found great treasures, and many prisons, in which many Greeks and many kinsfolk of the king were confined. As they had long been given up for dead, it was not so much a rescue as it was a resurrection and a sort of second birth, for which they were indebted to the favour of Lucullus. 2 Nyssa, a sister of Mithridates, was also captured; and her capture was her salvation. But the sisters and wives of the king who were thought to be at farthest remove from danger and quietly hidden away in Pharnacia, perished pitifully, since Mithridates paused long enough in his flight to send Bacchides, a eunuch, to compass their death. Among many other women, there were two sisters of the king, Roxana and Statira, about forty years old and unmarried; and two of his wives, of Ionian families, Berenicé from Chios, and Monimé, a Milesian. 3 The latter was most talked of among the Greeks, to the effect that though the king tempted her virtue and sent her fifteen thousand pieces of gold, she resisted his advances, until he entered into a marriage contract with her, sent her a diadem, and greeted her with the title of Queen. But her marriage had been an unhappy one, and she bewailed that beauty which had procured her a master instead of a husband, and a guard of Barbarians instead of home and family, dwelling as she did far, far away from Greece, where the blessings for which she had hoped existed only in her dreams, while she was bereft of the real blessings to which she had been wonted.

4 And now Bacchides came and ordered them all to die, in whatever manner each might deem easiest and most painless. Monimé snatched the diadem from her head, fastened it round her neck, and hanged herself. But her halter quickly broke in two. “O cursed bauble,” she cried, “couldst thou not serve me even in this office?” Then she spat upon it, hurled it from her, and offered her throat to Bacchides. 5 But Berenicé, taking a cup of poison, shared it with her mother, who stood at her side and begged for some. Together they drank it off, and the force of the poison sufficed for the weaker body, but it did not carry off Berenicé, who had not drunk enough. As she was long in dying, and Bacchides was in a hurry, she was strangled. 4 It is said also that of the unmarried sisters, one drank off her poison with many abusive imprecations on her brother; but that Statira did so without uttering a single reproachful or ungenerous word. She rather commended her brother because, when his own life was at hazard, he had not neglected them, but had taken measures to have them die in freedom and under no insults. Of course these things gave pain to Lucullus, who was naturally of a gentle and humane disposition.

19 1 Lucullus pushed on in pursuit as far as Talaura, whence, four days before, Mithridates had succeeded in escaping to Tigranes, in Armenia; then he turned aside. After subduing the Chaldaeans and the Tibareni, he occupied Lesser Armenia, reducing its fortresses and cities, and then sent Appius to Tigranes with a demand for Mithridates. 2 He himself, however, came to Amisus, which was still holding out against the siege. Its success in this was due to Callimachus, its commander, who, by his acquaintance with mechanical contrivances and his power to employ every resource which the siege of a city demands, had given the Romans the greatest annoyance. For this he afterwards paid the penalty. But at this time, he was simply out-generalled by Lucullus, who made a sudden attack at just that time of day when Callimachus was accustomed to draw his soldiers off from the ramparts and give them a rest. When the Romans had got possession of a small part of the wall, Callimachus abandoned the city, first setting fire to it with his own hands, either because he begrudged the visitors their booty, or because his own escape was thus facilitated. 3 For no one paid any attention to those who were sailing away, but when the flames increased mightily and enveloped the walls, the soldiers made ready to plunder the houses. Lucullus, out of pity for the perishing city, tried to bring aid from outside against the fire, and gave orders to extinguish the flames, but no one paid any heed to his commands. The soldiers all clamoured for the booty, and shouted, and clashed their shields and spears together, until he was forced to let them have their way, hoping that he could at least save the city itself from the flames. But the soldiers did just the opposite. 4 Ransacking everything by torch-light and carrying lights about everywhere, they destroyed most of the houses themselves. When Lucullus entered the city at daybreak, he burst into tears, and said to his friends that he had often already deemed Sulla happy, and on that day more than ever he admired the man’s good fortune, in that when he wished to save Athens, he had the power to do so. 5 “But upon me,” he said, “who have been so eager to imitate his example, Heaven has devolved the reputation of Mummius.”

However, as far as circumstances allowed, he endeavoured to restore the city. The fire, indeed, had been quenched by showers which fell providentially just as the city was captured, and most of what the soldiers had destroyed he rebuilt himself before his departure. He also received into the city those of the Amisenes who had fled, and settled there any other Greeks who so desired, and added to the city’s domain a tract of a hundred and twenty stadia. 6 The city was a colony of Athens, founded in that period when her power was at its height and she controlled the sea. And this was the reason why many who wished to excuse the tyranny of Aristion at Athens sailed to Amisus, settled there, and became citizens. In flying from evils at home, they got the benefit of greater evils abroad. But those of them who survived were well clothed by Lucullus, and sent back home, with a present of two hundred drachmas apiece. 7 Tyrannio the grammarian was also taken prisoner at this time. Murena asked to have him as his own prize, and on getting him, formally gave him his liberty, therein making an illiberal use of the gift which he had received. For Lucullus did not think it meet that a man so esteemed for his learning should first become a slave, and then be set at liberty. To give him a nominal liberty was to rob him of the liberty to which he was born. But this was not the only case in which Murena was found to be far inferior to his commander in nobility of conduct.

20 1 Lucullus now turned his attention to the cities in Asia, in order that, while he was at leisure from military enterprises, he might do something for the furtherance of justice and law. Through long lack of these, unspeakable and incredible misfortunes were rife in the province. Its people were plundered and reduced to slavery by the tax-gatherers and money-lenders. Families were forced to sell their comely sons and virgin daughters, and cities their votive offerings, pictures, and sacred statues. 2 At last men had to surrender to their creditors and serve them as slaves, but what preceded this was far worse, — tortures of rope, barrier, and horse; standing under the open sky in the blazing sun of summer, and in winter, being thrust into mud or ice. Slavery seemed, by comparison, to be disburdenment and peace. 3 Such were the evils which Lucullus found in the cities, and in a short time he freed the oppressed from all of them.

In the first place, he ordered that the monthly rate of interest should be reckoned at one per cent., and no more; in the second place, he cut off all interest that exceeded the principal; third, and most important of all, he ordained that the lender should receive not more than the fourth part of his debtor’s income, and any lender who added interest to principal was deprived of the whole.b 4 Thus, in less than four years’ time, the debts were all paid, and the properties restored to their owners unencumbered. This public debt had its origin in the twenty thousand talents which Sulla had laid upon Asia as a contribution, and twice this amount had been paid back to the money-lenders. Yet now, by reckoning usurious interest, they had brought the total debt up to a hundred and twenty thousand talents. 5 These men, accordingly, considered themselves outraged, and raised a clamour against Lucullus at Rome. They also bribed some of the tribunes to proceed against him, being men of great influence, who had got many of the active politicians into their debt. Lucullus, however, was not only beloved by the peoples whom he had benefited, nay, other provinces also longed to have him set over them, and felicitated those whose good fortune it was to have such a governor.

21 1 Appius Clodius, who had been sent to Tigranes (Clodius was a brother of her who was then the wife of Lucullus), was at first conducted by the royal guides through the upper country by a route needlessly circuitous and long. But when a freedman of his, who was a Syrian, told him of the direct route, he left the long one which was being trickily imposed upon him, bade his Barbarian guides a long farewell, and within a few days crossed the Euphrates and came to Antioch by Daphne. 2 Then, being ordered to await Tigranes there (the king was still engaged in subduing some cities of Phoenicia), he gained over many of the princes who paid but a hollow obedience to the Armenian. One of these was Zarbienus, king of Gordyene. He also promised many of the enslaved cities, when they sent to confer with him secretly, the assistance of Lucullus, although for the present he bade them keep quiet.

3 Now the sway of the Armenians was intolerably grievous to the Greeks. Above all else, the spirit of the king himself had become pompous and haughty in the midst of his great prosperity. All the things which men most covet and admire, he not only had in his possession, but actually thought that they existed for his sake. 4 For though he had started on his career with small and insignificant expectations, he had subdued many nations, humbled the Parthian power as no man before him had done, and filled Mesopotamia with Greeks whom he removed in great numbers from Cilicia and from Cappadocia, and settled anew. He also removed from their wonted haunts the nomadic Arabians, and brought them to an adjacent settlement, that he might employ them in trade and commerce. 5 Many were the kings who waited upon him, and four, whom he always had about him like attendants or body-guards, would run on foot by their master’s side when he rode out, clad in short blouses, and when he sat transacting business, would stand by with their arms crossed. This attitude was thought to be the plainest confession of servitude, as if they had sold their freedom and offered their persons to their master disposed for suffering rather than for service.

6 Appius, however, was not frightened or astonished at all this pomp and show, but as soon as he obtained an audience, told the king plainly that he was come to take back Mithridates, as an ornament due to the triumph of Lucullus, or else to declare war against Tigranes. Although Tigranes made every effort to listen to this speech with a cheerful countenance and a forced smile, he could not hide from the bystanders his discomfiture at the bold words of the young man. It must have been five and twenty years since he had listened to a free speech. That was the length of his reign, or rather, of his wanton tyranny. 7 However, he replied to Appius that he would not surrender Mithridates, and that if the Romans began war, he would defend himself. He was vexed with Lucullus for addressing him in his letter with the title of King only, and not King of Kings, and accordingly, in his reply, would not address Lucullus as Imperator. But he sent splendid gifts to Appius, and when he would not take them, added more besides. Appius finally accepted a single bowl from among them, not wishing his rejection of the king’s offers to seem prompted by any personal enmity, but sent back the rest, and marched off with all speed to join the Imperator.

22 1 Up to this time Tigranes had not deigned to see Mithridates, nor speak to him, though the man was allied to him by marriage, and had been expelled from such a great kingdom. Instead, he had kept him at the farthest remove possible, in disgrace and contumely, and had suffered him to be held a sort of prisoner in marshy and sickly regions. Now, however, he summoned him to his palace with marks of esteem and friendship. 2 There, in secret conference, they strove to allay their mutual suspicions at the expense of their friends, by laying the blame upon them. One of these was Metrodorus of Scepsis, a man of agreeable speech and wide learning, who enjoyed the friendship of Mithridates in such a high degree that he was called the king’s father. 3 This man, as it seems, had once been sent as an ambassador from Mithridates to Tigranes, with a request for aid against the Romans. On this occasion Tigranes asked him: “But what is your own advice to me, Metrodorus, in this matter?” Whereupon Metrodorus, either with an eye to the interests of Tigranes, or because he did not wish Mithridates to be saved, said that as an ambassador he urged consent, but as an adviser he forbade it. Tigranes disclosed this to Mithridates, not supposing, when he told him, that he would punish Metrodorus past all healing. 4 But Metrodorus was at once put out of the way.c Then Tigranes repented of what he had done, although he was not entirely to blame for the death of Metrodorus. He merely gave an impulse, as it were, to the hatred which Mithridates already had for the man. For had long been secretly hostile to him, as was seen from his private papers when they were captured, in which there were directions that Metrodorus, as well as others, be put to death. Accordingly, Tigranes gave the body of Metrodorus a splendid burial, sparing no expense upon the man when dead, although he had betrayed him when alive.

5 Amphicrates, the rhetorician, also lost his life at the court of Tigranes, if, for the sake of Athens, we may make some mention of him too. It is said that when he was exiled from his native city, he went to Seleucia on the Tigris, and that when the citizens asked him to give lectures there, he treated their invitation with contempt, arrogantly remarking that a stewpan could not hold a dolphin. Removing hence, he attached himself to Cleopatra, the daughter of Mithridates and wife of Tigranes, but speedily fell into disfavour, and, being excluded from intercourse with Greeks, starved himself to death. He also received honourable burial at the hands of Cleopatra, and his body lies at Sapha, as a place in those parts is called.

23 1 Lucullus, after filling Asia full of law and order, and full of peace, did not neglect the things which minister to pleasure and win favour, but during his stay at Ephesus gratified the cities with processions and triumphal festivals and contests of athletes and gladiators. And the cities, in response, celebrated festivals which they called Lucullea, to do honour to the man, and bestowed upon him what is sweeter than honour, their genuine good-will. 2 But when Appius came, and it was plain that war must be waged against Tigranes, he went back into Pontus, put himself at the head of his soldiers, and laid siege to Sinopé, or rather, to the Cilicians who were occupying that city for the king. These slew many of the Sinopians, fired the city, and set out to fly by night. 3 But Lucullus saw what was going on, made his way into the city, and slew eight thousand of the Cilicians who were still there. Then he restored to the citizens their private property, and ministered to the needs of the city, more especially on account of the following vision. He thought in his sleep that a form stood by his side and said: “Go forward a little, Lucullus; for Autolycus is come, and wishes to meet you.” 4 On rising from sleep, he was unable to conjecture what the vision meant; but he took the city on that day, and as he pursued the Cilicians who were sailing away, he saw a statue lying on the beach, which the Cilicians had not succeeded in getting on board with them. It was the work of Sthenis, and one of his masterpieces. Well then, some one told Lucullus that it was the statue of Autolycus, the founder of Sinopé.

5 Now Autolycus is said to have been one of those who made an expedition with Heracles from Thessaly against the Amazons, a son of Deïmachus. On his voyage of return, in company with Demoleon and Phlogius, he lost his ship, which was wrecked at the place called Pedalium, in the Chersonesus; but he himself escaped, with his arms and his companions, and coming to Sinopé, took the city away from the Syrians. 6 These Syrians who were in possession of the city were descended, as it is said, from Syrus, the son of Apollo, and Sinopé, the daughter of Asopis.

On hearing this, Lucullus called to mind the advice of Sulla, in his memoirs, which was to think nothing so trustworthy and sure as that which is signified by dreams.

7 Being informed now that Mithridates and Tigranes were on the point of entering Lycaonia and Cilicia, with the pursue of invading Asia before war was actually declared, he was amazed that the Armenian, if he cherished the design of attacking the Romans, had not made use of Mithridates for this war when he was at the zenith of his power, nor joined forces with him when he was strong, but had allowed him to be crushed and ruined, and now began a war which offered only faint hopes of success, prostrating himself to the level of those who were unable to stand erect.

24 1 But when Machares also, the son of Mithridates, who held the Bosporus, sent Lucullus a crown valued at a thousand pieces of gold, begging to be included in the list of Rome’s friends and allies, Lucullus decided at once that the first war was finished. He therefore left Sornatius there as guardian of Pontus, with six thousand soldiers, 2 while he himself, with twelve thousand footmen and less than three thousand horse, set out for the second war. He seemed to be making a reckless attack, and one which admitted of no saving calculation, upon warlike nations, countless thousands of horsemen, and a boundless region surrounded by deep rivers and mountains covered with perpetual snow. 3 His soldiers, therefore, who were none too well disciplined in any case, followed him reluctantly and rebelliously, while the popular tribunes at Rome raised an outcry against him, and accused him of seeking one war after another, although the city had no need of them, that he might be in perpetual command and never lay down his arms or cease enriching himself from the public dangers. 4 And, in time, these men accomplished their purpose. But Lucullus advanced by forced marches to the Euphrates. Here he found the stream swollen and turbid from the winter storms, and was vexed to think of the delay and trouble which it would cost him to collect boats and build rafts. But at evening the stream began to subside, went on diminishing through the night, and at daybreak the river was running between lofty banks. 5 The natives, observing that sundry small islands in the channel had become visible, and that the current near them was quiet, made obeisance to Lucullus, saying that this had seldom happened before, and that the river had voluntarily made itself tame and gentle for Lucullus, and offered him an easy and speedy passage.

6 Accordingly, he took advantage of his opportunity and put his troops across, and a favourable sign accompanied his crossing. Heifers pasture there which are sacred to Persia Artemis, a goddess whom the Barbarians on the further side of the Euphrates hold in the highest honour. These heifers are used only for sacrifice, and at other times are left to roam about the country at large, with brands upon them in the shape of the torch of the goddess. Nor is it a slight or easy matter to catch any of them when they are wanted. 7 One of these heifers, after the army had crossed the Euphrates, came to a certain rock which is deemed sacred to the goddess, and stood upon it, and lowering its head without any compulsion from the usual rope, offered itself to Lucullus for sacrifice. 8 He also sacrificed a bull to the Euphrates, in acknowledgment of his safe passage. Then, after encamping there during that day, on the next and the succeeding days he advanced through Sophené. He wrought no harm to the inhabitants, who came to met him and received his army gladly. Nay, when his soldiers wanted to take a certain fortress which was thought to contain much wealth, “Yonder lies the fortress which we must rather bring low,” said he, pointing to the Taurus in the distance; “these nearer things are reserved for the victors.” Then he went on by forced marches, crossed the Tigris, and entered Armenia.

25 1 Since the first messenger who told Tigranes that Lucullus was coming had his head cut off for his pains, no one else would tell him anything, and so he sat in ignorance while the fires of war were already blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him and said that Lucullus would be a great general if he ventured to withstand Tigranes at Ephesus, and did not fly incontinently from Asia at the mere sight of so many myriads of men. 2 Which only proves that it is not every man who can bear much unmixed wine, nor is it any ordinary understanding that does not lose its reckoning in the midst of great prosperity. The first of his friends who ventured to tell him the truth was Mithrobarzanes, and he, too, got no very excellent reward for his boldness of speech. He was sent at once against Lucullus with three thousand horsemen and a large force of infantry, under orders to bring the general alive, but to trample his men under foot.

3 Now, part of the army of Lucullus was already preparing to go into camp, and the rest was still coming up, when his scouts told him that the Barbarian was advancing to the attack. Fearing lest the enemy attack his men when they were separated and in disorder, and so throw them into confusion, he himself fell to arranging the encampment, and Sextilius, the legate, was sent at the head of sixteen hundred horsemen and about as many light and heavy infantry, 4 with orders to get near the enemy and wait there until he learned that the main body was safely encamped. Well then, this was what Sextilius wished to do, but he was forced into an engagement by Mithrobarzanes, who boldly charged upon him. A battle ensued, in which Mithrobarzanes fell fighting, and the rest of his forces took to flight and were cut to pieces, all except a few.

5 Upon this, Tigranes abandoned Tigranocerta, that great city which he had built, withdrew to the Taurus, and there began collecting his forces from every quarter. Lucullus, however, gave him no time for preparation, but sent out Murena to harass and cut off the forces gathering to join Tigranes, and Sextilius again to hold in check a large body of Arabs which was drawing near the king. 6 At one and the same time Sextilius fell upon the Arabs as they were going into camp, and slew most of them; and Murena, following hard upon Tigranes, seized his opportunity and attacked the king as he was passing through a rough and narrow defile with his army in long column. Tigranes himself fled, abandoning all his baggage, many of the Armenians were slain, and more were captured.

26 1 Thus successful in his campaign, Lucullus struck camp and proceeded to Tigranocerta, which city he invested and began to besiege. There were in the city many Greeks who had been transplanted, like others, from Cilicia, and many Barbarians who had suffered the same fate as the Greeks, — Adiabeni, Assyrians, Gordyeni and Cappadocians, whose native cities Tigranes had demolished, and brought their inhabitants to dwell there under compulsion. 2 The city was also full of wealth and votive offerings, since every private person and every prince vied with the king in contributing to its increase and adornment. Therefore Lucullus pressed the siege of the city with vigour, in the belief that Tigranes would not endure it, but contrary to his better judgment and in anger would descend into the plains to offer battle; and his belief was justified. 3 Mithridates, indeed, both by messengers and letters, strongly urged the king not to join battle, but to cut off the enemy’s supplies with his cavalry; Taxiles also, who came from Mithridates and joined the forces of Tigranes, earnestly begged the king to remain on the defensive and avoid the invincible arms of the Romans. And at first Tigranes gave considerate hearing to this advice. 4 But when the Armenians and Gordyeni joined him with all their hosts, and the kings of the Medes and Adiabeni came up with all their hosts, and many Arabs arrived from the sea of Babylonia, and many Albanians from the Caspian sea, together with Iberians who were neighbours to the Albanians; and when not a few of the peoples about the river Araxes, who are not subject to kings, had been induced by favours and gifts to come and join him; and when the banquets of the king, and his councils as well, were full of hopes and boldness and barbaric threats, — then Taxiles ran the risk of being put to death when he opposed the plan of fighting, and Mithridates was thought to be diverting the king from a great success out of mere envy. 5 Wherefore Tigranes would not even wait for him, lest he share in the glory, but advanced with all his army, bitterly lamenting to his friends, as it is said, that he was going to contend with Lucullus alone, not with all the Roman generals put together.

And his boldness was not altogether that of a mad man, nor without good reason, when he saw so many nations and kings in his following, with phalanxes of heavy infantry and myriads of horsemen. 6 For he was in command of twenty thousand bowmen and slingers, and fifty-five thousand horsemen, of whom seventeen thousand were clad in mail, as Lucullus said in his letter to the Senate; also of one hundred and fifty thousand heavy infantry, some of whom were drawn up in cohorts, and some in phalanxes; also of road-makers, bridge-builders, clearers of rivers, foresters, and ministers to the other needs of an army, to the number of thirty-five thousand. These latter, being drawn up in array behind the fighting men, increased the apparent strength of the army.

27 1 When Tigranes had crossed the Taurus, deployed with all his forces, and looked down upon the Roman army investing Tigranocerta, the throng of Barbarians in the city greeted his appearance with shouts and din, and standing on the walls, threateningly pointed out the Armenians to the Romans. 2 When Lucullus held a council of war, some of his officers advised him to give up the siege and lead his army against Tigranes; others urged him not to leave so many enemies in his rear, and not to remit the siege. Whereupon, remarking that each counsel by itself was bad, but both together were good, he divided his army. Murena, with six thousand footmen, he left behind in charge of the siege; while he himself, with twenty-four cohorts, comprising no more than ten thousand heavy infantry, and all the horsemen, slingers, and archers, to the number of about a thousand, set out against the enemy.

3 When he had encamped along the river in a great plain, he appeared utterly insignificant to Tigranes, and supplied the king’s flatterers with ground for amusement. Some mocked at the Romans, and others, in pleasantry, cast lots for their spoil, while each of the generals and kings came forward and begged that the task of conquering them might be entrusted to himself alone, and that the king would sit by as a spectator. 4 Then Tigranes, not wishing to be left behind entirely in this play of wit and scoffing, uttered that famous saying: “If they are come as ambassadors, they are too many; if as soldiers, too few.”d And for the while they continued their sarcasms and jests. But at daybreak Lucullus led out his forces under arms. Now, the Barbarian army lay to the east of the river. But as the stream takes a turn to the west at the point where it was easiest to ford, and as Lucullus led his troops to the attack in that direction first, and with speed, he seemed to Tigranes to be retreating. 5 So he called Taxiles and said, with a laugh, “Don’t you see that the invincible Roman hoplites are taking to flight?” “O King,” said Taxiles, “I could wish that some marvellous thing might fall to your good fortune; but when these men are merely on a march, they do not put on shining raiment, nor have they shields polished and their helmets uncovered, as now that they have stripped the leathern coverings from their armour. Nay, this splendour means that they are going to fight, and are now advancing upon their enemies.” 6 While Taxiles was yet speaking, the first eagle came in sight, as Lucullus wheeled towards the river, and the cohorts were seen forming in maniples with a view to crossing. Then at last, as though coming out of a drunken stupor, Tigranes cried out two or three times, “Are the men coming against us?” And so, with much tumult and confusion, his multitude formed in battle array, the king himself occupying the centre, and assigning the left wing to the king of the Adiabeni, the right to the king of the Medes. In front of this wing also the greater part of the mail-clad horsemen were drawn up.

7 As Lucullus was about to cross the river, some of his officers advised him to beware of the day, which was one of the unlucky days — the Romans call them “black days”. For on that day Caepio and his army perished in a battle with the Cimbri. But Lucullus answered with these memorable words: “Verily, I will make this day, too, a lucky one for the Romans.” Now the day was the sixth of October.

28 1 Saying this, and bidding his men be of good courage, he crossed the river, and led the way in person against the enemy. He wore a steel breastplate of glittering scales, and a tasselled cloak, and at once let his sword flash forth from its scabbard, indicating that they must forthwith come to close quarters with men who fought with long range missiles, and eliminate, by the rapidity of their onset, the space in which archery would be effective. 2 But when he saw that the mail-clad horsemen, on whom the greatest reliance was placed, were stationed at the foot of a considerable hill which was crowned by a broad and level space, and that the approach to this was a matter of only four stadia, and neither rough nor steep, he ordered his Thracian and Gallic horsemen to attack the enemy in the flank, and to parry their long spears with their own short swords. 3 (Now the sole resource of the mail-clad horsemen is their long spear, and they have none other whatsoever, either in defending themselves or attacking their enemies, owing to the weight and rigidity of their armour; in this they are, as it were, immured.) Then he himself, with two cohorts, hastened eagerly towards the hill, his soldiers following with all their might, because they saw him ahead of them in armour, enduring all the fatigue of a foot-soldier, and pressing his way along. Arrived at the top, and standing in the most conspicuous spot, he cried with a loud voice, “The day is ours, the day is ours, my fellow soldiers!” 4 With these words, he led his men against the mail-clad horsemen, ordering them not to hurl their javelins yet, but taking each his own man, to smite the enemy’s legs and thighs, which are the only parts of these mail-clad horsemen left exposed. However, there was no need of this mode of fighting, for the enemy did not await the Romans, but, with loud cries and in most disgraceful flight, they hurled themselves and their horses, with all their weight, upon the ranks of their own infantry, before it had so much as begun to fight, and so all those tens of thousands were defeated without the infliction of a wound or the sight of blood. 5 But the great slaughter began at once when they fled, or rather tried to fly, for they were prevented from really doing so by the closeness and depth of their own ranks. Tigranes rode away at the very outset with a few attendants, and took to flight. Seeing his son also in the same plight, he took off the diadem from his head and, in tears, gave it to him, bidding him save himself as best he could by another route. 6 The young man, however, did not venture to assume the diadem, but gave it to his most trusted slave for safe keeping. This slave happened to be captured, and was brought to Lucullus, and thus even the diadem of Tigranes became a part of the booty. It is said that more than a hundred thousand of the enemy’s infantry perished, while of the cavalry only a few, all told, made their escape. Of the Romans, on the other hand, only a hundred were wounded, and only five killed.

7 Antiochus the philosopher makes mention of this battle in his treatise “Concerning Gods,” and says that the sun never looked down on such another. And Strabo, another philosopher, in his “Historical Commentaries,”e says that the Romans themselves were ashamed, and laughed one another to scorn for requiring arms against such slaves. Livy also has remarked that the Romans were never in such inferior numbers when they faced an enemy; for the victors were hardly even a twentieth part of the vanquished, but less than this. 8 The Roman generals who were most capable and most experienced in war, praised Lucullus especially for this, that he out-generalled two kings who were most distinguished and powerful by two most opposite tactics, speed and slowness. For he used up Mithridates, at the height of his power, by long delays; but crushed Tigranes by the speed of his operations, being one of the few generals of all time to use delay for greater achievement, and boldness for greater safety.

29 1 This was the reason why Mithridates made no haste to be at the battle. He thought Lucullus would carry on the war with his wonted caution and indirectness, and so marched slowly to join Tigranes. At first he met a few Armenians hurrying back over the road in panic fear, and conjectured what had happened; then presently, when he had learned of the defeat from more unarmed and wounded fugitives whom he met, he sought to find Tigranes. 2 And though he found him destitute of all things and humiliated, he did not return his insolent behaviour, but got down from his horse and wept with him over their common sufferings. Then he gave him his own royal equipage, and tried to fill him with courage for the future. And so these kings began again to assemble fresh forces.

But in the city of Tigranocerta, the Greeks had risen up against the Barbarians and were ready to hand the city over to Lucullus; so he assaulted and took it. 3 The royal treasures in the city he took into his own charge, but the city itself he turned over to his soldiers for plunder, and it contained eight thousand talents in money, together with the usual valuables. Besides this, he gave to each man eight hundred drachmas from the general spoils. 4 On learning that many dramatic artists had been captured in the city, whom Tigranes had collected there from all quarters for the formal dedication of the theatre which he had built, Lucullus employed them for the contests and spectacles with which he celebrated his victories. The Greeks he sent to their native cities, giving them also the means wherewith to make the journey, and likewise the Barbarians who had been compelled to settle there. Thus it came to pass that the dissolution of one city was the restoration of many others, by reason of their recovering their own inhabitants, and they all loved Lucullus as their benefactor and founder.

5 And whatever else he did also prospered, in a way worthy of the man, who was ambitious of the praise that is consequent upon righteousness and humanity, rather than of that which follows military successes. For the latter, the army also was in no slight degree, but fortune in the highest degree, responsible; but the former were the manifestations of a gentle and disciplined spirit, and in the exercise of these qualities Lucullus now, without appeal to arms, subdued the Barbarians. The kings of the Arabs came to him, with proffers of their possessions, and the Sopheni joined his cause. 6 The Gordyeni were so affected by his kindness that they were ready to abandon their cities and follow him with their wives and children, in voluntary service. The reason for this was as follows. Zarbienus, the king of the Gordyeni, as has been said, secretly stipulated with Lucullus, through Appius, for an alliance, being oppressed by the tyranny of Tigranes. He was informed against, however, and put to death, and his wife and children perished with him, before the Romans entered Armenia. 7 Lucullus was not unmindful of all this, but on entering the country of the Gordyeni, appointed funeral rites in honour of Zarbienus, and after adorning a pyre with royal raiment and gold and with the spoils taken from Tigranes, set fire to it with his own hand, and joined the friends and kindred of the man in pouring libations upon it, calling him a comrade of his and an ally of the Romans. 8 He also ordered that a monument be erected to his memory at great cost; for many treasures were found in the palace of Zarbienus, including gold and silver, and three million bushels of grain were stored up there, so that the soldiers were plentifully supplied, and Lucullus was admired for not taking a single drachma from the public treasury, but making the war pay for itself.

30 1 Here he received an embassy from the king of the Parthians also, inviting him into friendly alliance. This was agreeable to Lucullus, and in his turn he sent ambassadors to the Parthian, but they discovered that he was playing a double game, and secretly asking for Mesopotamia as reward for an alliance with Tigranes. 2 Accordingly, when Lucullus was apprised of this, he determined to ignore Tigranes and Mithridates as exhausted antagonists, and to make trial of the Parthian power by marching against them, thinking it a glorious thing, in a single impetuous onset of war, to throw, like an athlete, three kings in succession, and to make his way, unvanquished and victorious, through three of the greatest empires under the sun.

3 Accordingly he sent orders to Sornatius and his fellow commanders in Pontus to bring the army there to him, as he intended to proceed eastward from Gordyené. These officers had already found their soldiers unmanageable and disobedient, but now they discovered that they were utterly beyond control, being unable to move them by any manner of persuasion or compulsion. Nay, they roundly swore that they would not even stay where they were, but would go off and leave Pontus undefended. 4 When news of this was brought to Lucullus, it demoralised his soldiers there also. Their wealth and luxurious life had already made them averse to military service and desirous of leisure, and when they heard of the bold words of their comrades in Pontus, they called them brave men, and said their example must be followed in Gordyené, for their many achievements entitled them to respite from toil and freedom from danger.

31 1 Such speeches, and even worse than these, coming to the ears of Lucullus, he gave up his expedition against the Parthians, and marched once more against Tigranes, it being now the height of summer. And yet, after crossing the Taurus, he was discouraged to find the plains still covered with unripe grain, so much later are the seasons there, owing to the coolness of the atmosphere. 2 However, he descended from the mountains, routed the Armenians who twice or thrice ventured to attack him, and then plundered their villages without fear, and, by taking away the grain which had been stored up for Tigranes, reduced his enemy to the straits which he had been fearing for himself. Then he challenged them to battle by encompassing their camp with a moat, and by ravaging their territory before their eyes; but this did not move them, so often had they been defeated. He therefore broke camp and marched against Artaxata, the royal residence of Tigranes, where were his wives and young children, thinking that Tigranes would not give these up without fighting.

3 It is said that Hannibal the Carthaginian, after Antiochus had been conquered by the Romans, left him and went to Artaxas the Armenian, to whom he gave many excellent suggestions and instructions. For instance, observing that a section of the country which had the greatest natural advantages and attractions was lying idle and neglected, he drew up a plan for a city there, and then brought Artaxas to the place and showed him its possibilities, and urged him to undertake the building. 4 The king was delighted, and begged Hannibal to superintend the work himself, whereupon a very great and beautiful city arose there, which was named after the king, and proclaimed the capital of Armenia.

When Lucullus marched against this city, Tigranes could not suffer it quietly, but put himself at the head of his forces, and on the fourth day encamped over against the Romans, keeping the river Arsania between himself and them, which they must of necessity cross on their way to Artaxata. 5 Thereupon Lucullus sacrificed to the gods, in full assurance that the victory was already his, and then crossed the river with twelve cohorts in the van, and the rest disposed so as to prevent the enemy from closing in upon his flanks. For large bodies of horsemen and picked soldiers confronted him, and these were covered by Mardian mounted archers and Iberian lancers, on whom Tigranes relied beyond any other mercenaries, deeming them the most warlike. 6 However, they did not shine in action, but after a slight skirmish with the Roman cavalry, gave way before the advancing infantry, scattered to right and left in flight, and drew after them the cavalry in pursuit. On the dispersion of these troops, Tigranes rode out at the head of his cavalry, and when Lucullus saw their splendour and their numbers he was afraid. 7 He therefore recalled his cavalry from their pursuit of the flying enemy, and taking the lead of his troops in person, set upon the Atropateni, who were stationed opposite him with the magnates of the king’s following, and before coming to close quarters, sent them off in panic flight. Of three kings who together confronted the Romans, Mithridates of Pontus seems to have fled most disgracefully, for he could not endure even their shouting. 8 The pursuit was long and lasted through the whole night, and the Romans were worn out, not only with killing their enemies, but also with taking prisoners and getting all sorts of booty. Livy says that in the former battle a greater number of the enemy, but in this more men of high station were slain and taken prisoners.

32 1 Elated and emboldened by this victory, Lucullus purposed to advance further into the interior and subdue the Barbarian realm utterly. But, contrary to what might have been expected at the time of the autumnal equinox, severe winter weather was encountered, which generally covered the ground with snow, and even when the sky was clear produced hoar frost and ice, owing to which the horses could not well drink of the rivers, so excessive was the cold, nor could they easily cross them, since the ice broke, and cut the horses’ sinews with its jagged edges. 2 Most of the country was thickly shaded, full of narrow defiles, and marshy, so that it kept the soldiers continually wet; they were covered with snow while they marched, and spent the night uncomfortably in damp places. Accordingly, they had not followed Lucullus for many days after the battle when they began to object. At first they sent their tribunes to him with entreaties to desist, then they held more tumultuous assemblies, and shouted in their tents at night, which seems to have been characteristic of a mutinous army. 3 And yet Lucullus plied them with entreaties, calling upon them to possess their souls in patience until they had taken and destroyed the Armenian Carthage, the work of their most hated foe, meaning Hannibal. But since he could not persuade them, he led them back, and crossing the Taurus by another pass, descended into the country called Mygdonia, which is fertile and open to the sun, and contains a large and populous city, called Nisibis by the Barbarians, Antioch in Mygdonia by the Greeks. 4 The nominal defender of this city, by virtue of his rank, was Gouras, a brother of Tigranes; but its actual defender, by virtue of his experience and skill as an engineer, was Callimachus, the man who gave Lucullus most trouble at Amisus also. But Lucullus established his camp before it, laid siege to it in every way, and in a short time took the city by storm. 5 To Gouras, who surrendered himself into his hands, he gave kind treatment; but to Callimachus, who promised to reveal secret stores of great treasure, he would not hearken. Instead, he ordered him to be brought in chains, that he might be punished for destroying Amisus by fire, and thereby robbing Lucullus of the object of his ambition, which was to show kindness to the Greeks.

33 1 Up to this point, one might say that fortune had followed Lucullus and fought on his side; but from now on, as though a favouring breeze had failed him, he had to force every issue, and met with obstacles everywhere. He still displayed the bravery and patience of a good leader, but his undertakings brought him no new fame or favour; indeed, so ill-starred and devious was his course, that he came near losing that which he had already won. 2 And he himself was not least to blame for this. He was not disposed to court the favour of the common soldier, and thought that everything that was done to please one’s command only dishonoured and undermined one’s authority. Worst of all, not even with men of power and of equal rank with himself could he readily co-operate; he despised them all, and thought them of no account as compared with himself. 3 These bad qualities Lucullus is said to have had, but no more than these. He was tall and handsome, a powerful speaker, and equally able in the forum and the field.

Well, then, Sallust says that his soldiers were ill-disposed towards him at the very beginning of the war, before Cyzicus, and again before Amisus, because they were compelled to spend two successive winters in camp. 4 The winters that followed also vexed them. They spent them either in the enemy’s country, or among the allies, encamped under open sky. Not once did Lucullus take his army into a city that was Greek and friendly. In their disaffection, they received the greatest support from the popular leaders at Rome. These envied Lucullus and denounced him for protracting the war through love of power and love of wealth. They said he all but had in his own sole power Cilicia, Asia, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Pontus, Armenia, and the regions extending to the Phasis, and that now he had actually plundered the palaces of Tigranes, as if he had been sent, not to subdue the kings, but to strip them. 5 These were the words, they say, of Lucius Quintus, one of the praetors, to whom most of all the people listened when they passed a vote to send men who should succeed Lucullus in the command of his province. They voted also that many of the soldiers under him should be released from military service.

34 1 To these factors in the case, so unfavourable in themselves, there was added another, which most of all vitiated the undertakings of Lucullus. This was Publius Clodius, a man of wanton violence, and full of all arrogance and boldness. He was a brother of the wife of Lucullus, a woman of the most dissolute ways, whom he was actually accused of debauching. 2 At this time he was in service with Lucullus, and did not get all the honour which he thought his due. He thought a foremost place his due, and when many were preferred before him because of his evil character, he worked secretly upon the soldiers who had been commanded by Fimbria, and tried to incite them against Lucullus, disseminating among them speeches well adapted to men who were neither unwilling nor unaccustomed to have their favour courted. These were the men whom Fimbria had once persuaded to kill the consul Flaccus, and choose himself for their general. 3 They therefore gladly listened to Clodius also, and called him the soldier’s friend. For he pretended to be incensed in their behalf, if there was to be no end of their countless wars and toils, but they were rather to wear out their lives in fighting with every nation and wandering over every land, receiving no suitable reward for such service, but convoying the waggons and camels of Lucullus laden with golden beakers set with precious stones, 4 while the soldiers of Pompey, citizens now, were snugly ensconced with wives and children in the possession of fertile lands and prosperous cities, — not for having driven Mithridates and Tigranes into uninhabitable deserts, nor for having demolished the royal palaces of Asia, but for having fought with wretched exiles in Spain and runaway slaves in Italy. “Why, then,” he would cry, “if our campaigns are never to come to an end, do we not reserve what is left of our bodies, and our lives, for a general in whose eyes the wealth of his soldiers is his fairest honour?”

5 For such reasons as these the army of Lucullus was demoralised, and refused to follow him either against Tigranes, or against Mithridates, who had come back into Pontus from Armenia, and was trying to restore his power there. They made the winter their excuse for lingering in Gordyené, expecting every moment that Pompey, or some other commander, would be sent out to succeed Lucullus.

35 1 But when tidings came that Mithridates had defeated Fabius, and was on the march against Sornatius and Triarius, they were struck with shame and followed Lucullus. But Triarius, who was ambitious to snatch the victory, which he thought assured, before Lucullus, who was near, should come up, was defeated in a great battle. It is said that over seven thousand Romans fell, among whom were a hundred and fifty centurions, and twenty-four tribunes; and their camp was captured by Mithridates. 2 But Lucullus, coming up a few days afterward, hid Triarius from the search of his infuriated soldiers. Then, since Mithridates was unwilling to give fight but lay waiting for Tigranes, who was coming down with a large force, he determined to anticipate the junction of their armies, and march back to meet Tigranes in battle. 3 But while he was on the way thither, the Fimbrian soldiers mutinied and left their ranks, declaring that they were discharged from service by decree of the people, and that Lucullus no longer had the right to command them, since the provinces had been assigned to others. Accordingly, there was no expedient, however much beneath his dignity, to which Lucullus did not force himself to resort, — entreating the soldiers man by man, going about from tent to tent in humility and tears, and actually taking some of the men by the hand in supplication. 4 But they rejected his advances, and threw their empty purses down before him, bidding him to fight the enemy alone, since he alone knew how to get rich from them. However, at the request of the other soldiers, the Fimbrians were constrained to agree to remain during the summer; but if, in the meantime, no enemy should come down to fight them, they were to be dismissed. Lucullus was obliged to content himself with these terms, or else to be deserted and give up the country to the Barbarians. 5 He therefore simply held his soldiers together, without forcing them any more, or leading them out to battle. Their remaining with him was all he could expect, and he looked on helplessly while Tigranes ravaged Cappadocia and might have resumed his insolent ways, — a monarch whom he had reported by letter to the Senate as completely subdued. Besides, the commissioners were now with him, who had been sent out to regulate the affairs of Pontus, on the supposition that it was a secure Roman possession. 6 And lo, when they came, they saw that Lucullus was not even his own master, but was mocked and insulted by his soldiers. These went so far in their outrageous treatment of their general, that, at the close of the summer, they donned their armour, drew their swords, and challenged to battle an enemy who was nowhere near, but had already withdrawn. Then they shouted their war cries, brandished their weapons in the air, and departed from the camp, calling men to witness that the time had expired during which they had agreed to remain with Lucullus.

7 The rest of the soldiers Pompey summoned by letter, for he had already been appointed to conduct the war against Mithridates and Tigranes, because he won the favour of the people and flattered their leaders. But the Senate and the nobility considered Lucullus a wronged man. He had been superseded, they said, not in a war, but in a triumph, and had been forced to relinquish and turn over to others, not his campaign, but the prizes of victory in his campaign.

36 1 But to those who were on the spot, what happened there seemed still greater matter for wrath and indignation. For Lucullus was not allowed to bestow reward and or punishments for what had been done in the war, nor would Pompey even suffer any one to visit him, or to pay any heed to the edicts and regulations which he made in concert with the ten commissioners, but prevented it by issuing counter-edicts, and by the terror which his presence with a larger force inspired. 2 Nevertheless, their friends decided to bring the two men together, and so they met in a certain village of Galatia. They greeted one another amicably, and each congratulated the other on his victories. Lucullus was the elder man, but Pompey’s prestige was the greater, because he had conducted more campaigns, and celebrated two triumphs. Fasces wreathed with laurel were carried before both commanders in token of their victories, 3 and since Pompey had made a long march through waterless and arid regions, the laurel which wreathed his fasces was withered. When the lictors of Lucullus noticed this, they considerately gave Pompey’s lictors some of their own laurel, which was fresh and green. This circumstance was interpreted as a good omen by the friends of Pompey; for, in fact, the exploits of Lucullus did adorn the command of Pompey. 4 However, their conference resulted in no equitable agreement, but they left it still more estranged from one another. Pompey also annulled the ordinances of Lucullus, and took away all but sixteen hundred of his soldiers. These he left to share his triumph, but even these did not follow him very cheerfully. 5 To such a marvellous degree was Lucullus either unqualified or unfortunate as regards the first and highest of all requisites in a leader. Had this power of gaining the affection of his soldiers been added to his other gifts, which were so many and so great, — courage, diligence, wisdom, and justice, — the Roman empire would not have been bounded by the Euphrates, 6 but by the outer confines of Asia, and the Hyrcanian sea; for all the other nations had already been subdued by Tigranes, and in the time of Lucullus the Parthian power was not so great as it proved to be in the time of Crassus, nor was it so well united, nay rather, owing to intestine and neighbouring wars, it had not even strength enough to repel the wanton attacks of the Armenians.

Now my own opinion is that the harm Lucullus did his country through his influence upon others, was greater than the good he did her himself. 7 For his trophies in Armenia, standing on the borders of Parthia, and Tigranocerta, and Nisibis, and the vast wealth brought to Rome from these cities, and the display in his triumph of the captured diadem of Tigranes, incited Crassus to his attack upon Asia; he thought that the Barbarians were spoil and booty, and nothing else. It was not long, however, before he encountered the Parthian arrows, and proved that Lucullus had won his victories, not through the folly and cowardice of his enemies, but through his own daring and ability. This, however, is later history.

37 1 Now when Lucullus had returned to Rome, he found, in the first place, that his brother Marcus was under prosecution by Gaius Memmius for his acts as quaestor under the administration of Sulla. Marcus, indeed, was acquitted, but Memmius then turned his attack upon Lucullus, and strove to excite the people against him. He charged him with diverting much property to his own uses, and with needlessly protracting the war, and finally persuaded the people not to grant him a triumph. 2 Lucullus strove mightily against this decision, and the foremost and most influential men mingled with the tribes, and by much entreaty and exertion at last persuaded the people to allow him to celebrate a triumph; not, however, like some, a triumph which was startling and tumultuous from the length of the procession and the multitude of objects displayed. Instead, he decorated the circus of Flaminius with the arms of the enemy, which were very numerous, and with the royal engines of war; and this was a great spectacle in itself, and far from contemptible.  But in the procession, a few of the mail-clad horsemen and ten of the scythe-bearing chariots moved along, together with sixty of the king’s friends and generals. A hundred and ten bronze-beaked ships of war were also carried along,f a golden statue of Mithridates himself, six feet in height, a wonderful shield adorned with precious stones, twenty litters of silver vessels, and thirty-two litters of gold beakers, armour, and money. 4 All this was carried by men. Then there were eight mules which bore golden couches, fifty-six bearing ingots of silver, and a hundred and seven more bearing something less than two million seven hundred thousand pieces of silver coin.g There were also tablets with records of the sums of money already paid by Lucius to Pompey for the war against the pirates, and to the keepers of the public treasury, as well as of the fact that each of his soldiers had received nine hundred and fifty drachmas. To crown all, Lucullus gave a magnificent feast to the city, and to the surrounding villages called Vici.

38 1 After his divorce from Clodia, who was a licentious and base woman, he married Servilia, a sister of Cato, but this, too, was an unfortunate marriage. For it lacked none of the evils which Clodia had brought in her train except one, namely, the scandal about her brothers. In all other respects Servilia was equally vile and abandoned, and yet Lucullus forced himself to tolerate her, out of regard for Cato. At last, however, he put her away.

2 The Senate had conceived wondrous hopes that in him it would find an opposer of the tyranny of Pompey and a champion of the aristocracy, with all the advantage of great glory and influence; but he quitted and abandoned public affairs, either because he saw that they were already beyond proper control and diseased, or, as some say, because he had his fill of glory, and felt that the unfortunate issue of his many struggles and toils entitled him to fall back upon a life of ease and luxury. 3 Some commend him for making such a change, and thereby escaping the unhappy lot of Marius, who, after his Cimbrian victories and the large and fair successes which were so famous, was unwilling to relax his efforts and enjoy the honours won, but with an insatiate desire for glory and power, old man that he was, fought with young men in the conduct of the state, and so drove headlong into terrible deeds, and sufferings still more terrible still. Cicero, say these, would have had a better old age if he had taken in sail after the affair of Catiline, and Scipio, too, if he had given himself pause after adding Numantia to Carthage; 4 for a political cycle, too, has a sort of natural termination, and political no less than athletic contests are absurd, after the full vigour of life has departed. Crassus and Pompey, on the other hand, ridiculed Lucullus for giving himself up to pleasure and extravagance, as if a luxurious life were not even more unsuitable to men of his years than political and military activities.

39 1 And it is true that in the life of Lucullus, as in an ancient comedy, one reads in the first part of political measures and military commands, and in the latter part of drinking bouts, and banquets, and what might pass for revel-routs, and torch-races, and all manner of frivolity. 2 For I must count as frivolity his costly edifices, his ambulatories and baths, and still more his paintings and statues (not to speak of his devotion to these arts), which he collected at enormous outlays, pouring out into such channels the vast and splendid wealth which he accumulated from his campaigns. Even now, when luxury has increased so much, the gardens of Lucullus are counted among the most costly of the imperial gardens. 3 As for his works on the sea-shore and in the vicinity of Neapolis, where he suspended hills over vast tunnels, girdled his residences with zones of sea and with streams for the breeding of fish, and built dwellings in the sea, — when Tubero the Stoic saw them, he called him Xerxes in a toga. 4 He had also country establishments near Tusculum, with observatories, and extensive open banqueting halls and cloisters. Pompey once visited these, and chided Lucullus because he had arranged his country seat in the best possible way for summer, but had made it uninhabitable in winter. Whereupon Lucullus burst out laughing and said: “Do you suppose, then, that I have less sense than cranes and storks, and do not change residences according to the seasons?” 5 A praetor was once making ambitious plans for a public spectacle, and asked of him some purple cloaks for the adornment of a chorus. Lucullus replied that he would investigate, and if he had any, would give them to him. The next day he asked the praetor how many he wanted, and on his replying that a hundred would suffice, bade him take twice that number. The poet Flaccus alluded to this when he said that he did not regard a house as wealthy in which the treasures that were overlooked and unobserved were not more than those which met the eye.

40 1 The daily repasts of Lucullus were such as the newly rich affect. Not only with his dyed coverlets, and beakers set with precious stones, and choruses and dramatic recitations, but also with his arrays of all sorts of meats and daintily prepared dishes, did he make himself the envy of the vulgar. 2 A saying of Pompey’s, when he was ill, was certainly very popular. His physicians had prescribed a thrush for him to eat, and his servants said that a thrush could not be found anywhere in the summer season except where Lucullus kept them fattening. Pompey, however, would not suffer them to get one from there, but bade them prepare something else that was easily to be had, remarking as he did so to his physician, “What! must a Pompey have died if a Lucullus were not luxurious?” 3 And Cato, who was a friend of his, and a relation by marriage, was nevertheless much offended by his life and habits. Once when a youthful senator had delivered a tedious and lengthy discourse, all out of season, on frugality and temperance, Cato rose and said; “Stop there! you get wealth like Crassus, you live like Lucullus, but you talk like Cato.” Some, however, while they say that these words were actually uttered, do not say that they were spoken by Cato.

41 1 Moreover, that Lucullus took not only pleasure but pride in this way of living, is clear from the anecdotes recorded of him. It is said, for instance, that he entertained for many successive days some Greeks who had come up to Rome, and that they, with genuinely Greek scruples, were at last ashamed to accept his invitation, on the ground that he was incurring so much expense every day on their account; 2 whereupon Lucullus said to them with a smile, “Some of this expense, my Grecian friends, is indeed on your account; most of it, however, is on account of Lucullus.” And once, when he was dining alone, and a modest repast of one course had been prepared for him, he was angry, and summoned the servant who had the matter in charge. The servant said that he did not suppose, since there were no guests, that he wanted anything very costly. “What sayest thou?” said the master, “dost thou not know that to day Lucullus dines with Lucullus?” 3 While this matter was much talked of in the city, as was natural, Cicero and Pompey came up to him as he was idling in the forum. Cicero was one of his most intimate friends, and although the matter of the command of the army had led to some coolness between him and Pompey, still they were accustomed to frequent and friendly intercourse and conversation with one another. 4 Accordingly, Cicero saluted him, and asked how he was disposed towards receiving a petition. “Most excellently well,” said Lucullus, and invited them to make their petition. “We desire,” said Cicero, “to dine with you to day just as you would have dined by yourself.” Lucullus demurred to this, and begged the privilege of selecting a later day, but they refused to allow it, nor would they suffer him to confer with his servants, that he might not order any thing more provided than what was provided for himself. 5 Thus much, however, and no more, they did allow him at his request, namely, to tell one of his servants in their presence that he would dine that day in the Apollo. Now this was the name of one of his costly apartments, and he thus outwitted the men without their knowing it. For each of his dining-rooms, as it seems, had a fixed allowance for the dinner served there, as well as its own special apparatus and equipment, so that his slaves, on hearing where he wished to dine, knew just how much the dinner was to cost, and what were to be its decorations and arrangements. Now the usual cost of a dinner in the Apollo was fifty thousand drachmas, and that was the sum laid out on the present occasion. 6 Pompey was amazed at the speed with which the banquet was prepared, notwithstanding it had cost so much. In these ways, then, Lucullus used his wealth wantonly, as though it were in very truth a Barbarian prisoner-of war.

42 1 But what he did in the establishment of a library deserves warm praise. He got together many books, and they were well written, and his use of them was more honourable to him than his acquisition of them. His libraries were thrown open to all, and the cloisters surrounding them, and the study-rooms, were accessible without restriction to the Greeks, who constantly repaired thither as to an hostelry of the Muses, and spent the day with one another, in glad escape from their other occupations. 2 Lucullus himself also often spent his leisure hours there with them, walking about in the cloisters with their scholars, and he would assist their statesmen in whatever they desired. And in general his house was a home and prytaneium for the Greeks who came to Rome. He was fond of all philosophy, and well-disposed and friendly towards every school, but from the first he cherished a particular and zealous love for the Academy, 3 not the New Academy, so called, although that school at the time had a vigorous representative of the doctrines of Carneades in Philo, but the Old Academy, which at that time was headed by a persuasive man and powerful speaker in the person of Antiochus of Ascalon. This man Lucullus hastened to make his friend and companion, and arrayed him against the disciples of Philo, of whom Cicero also was one. 4 Indeed, Cicero wrote a noble treatise on the doctrines of this sect, in which he has put the argument in support of “apprehension” into the mouth of Lucullus, and carried the opposing argument himself. The book is entitled “Lucullus.”

Lucullus and Cicero were, as I have said, ardent friends, and members of the same political party, for Lucullus had not withdrawn himself entirely from political life, 5 although he lost no time in leaving to Crassus and Cato the ambitious struggle for the chief place and the greatest power, since he saw that it involved both peril and ignominy. For those who looked with suspicion upon the power of Pompey, made Crassus and Cato the champions of the senatorial party when Lucullus declined the leadership. But Lucullus would still go to the forum in support of his friends, and also to the Senate, whenever there was need of combating some ambitious scheme of Pompey’s. 6 Thus, the dispositions which Pompey made after his conquest of the kings, Lucullus made null and void, and his proposal for a generous distribution of lands to his soldiers, Lucullus, with the co-operation of Cato, prevented from being granted. Pompey therefore took refuge in an alliance, or rather a conspiracy, with Crassus and Caesar, and by filling the city with his armed soldiery and expelling from the forum the partisans of Cato and Lucullus, got his measures ratified.

7 As these proceedings were resented by the nobles, the partisans of Pompey produced a certain Vettius, whom, as they declared, they had caught plotting against the life of Pompey. So the man was examined in the Senate, where he accused sundry persons, but before the people he named Lucullus as the man who had engaged him to kill Pompey. 8 However, no one believed his story, nay, it was at once clear that the fellow had been put forward by the partisans of Pompey to make false and malicious charges, and the fraud was made all the plainer when, a few days afterwards, his dead body was cast out of the prison. It was said, indeed, that he had died a natural death, but he bore the marks of throttling and violence, and the opinion was that he had been taken off by the very men who had engaged his services.

43 1 Of course this induced Lucullus to withdraw even more from public life. And when Cicero was banished from the city, and Cato was sent out to Cyprus, he retired altogether. Even before his death, it is said that his understanding was affected and gradually faded away. But Cornelius Nepos says that Lucullus lost his mind not from old age, nor yet from disease, but that he was disabled by drugs administered to him by one of his freedmen, Callisthenes; 2 that the drugs were given him by Callisthenes in order to win more of his love, in the belief that they had such a power, but they drove him from his senses and overwhelmed his reason, so that even while he was still alive, his brother managed his property. However, when he died, the people grieved just as much as if his death had come at the culmination of his military and political services, and flocked together, and tried to compel the young nobles who had carried the body into the forum to bury it in the Campus Martius, where Sulla also had been buried. 3 But no one had expected this, and preparations for it were not easy, and so his brother, by prayers and supplications, succeeded in persuading them to suffer to take place on the estate at Tusculum, where preparations for it had been made. Nor did he himself long survive Lucullus, but, as in age and reputation he came a little behind him, so did he also in the time of his death, having been a most affectionate brother.

Comparison of Cimon and Lucullus

521 1 1 One might deem Lucullus especially happy in his end, from the fact that he died before that constitutional change had come, which fate was already contriving by means of the civil wars. His country was in a distempered state when he laid down his life, but still she was free. 2 And in this respect, more than any other, he is like Cimon. For Cimon also died before Greece was confounded, and while she was at the acme of her power. He died, however, in the field, and at the head of an army, not exhausted or of a wandering mind, nor yet making feastings and revellings the crowning prize for arms and campaigns and trophies. Plato banters the followers of Orpheus for declaring that for those who have lived rightly, there is laid up in Hades a treasure of everlasting intoxication. 3 Leisure, no doubt, and quiet, and the pursuit of pleasantly speculative learning, furnish a most fitting solace for a man of years who has retired from wars and politics. But to divert fair achievements to pleasure as their final end, and then to sport and wanton at the head of Aphrodite’s train, as a sequel to wars and fightings, was not worthy of the noble Academy, nor yet of one who would follow Xenocrates, but rather of one who leaned towards Epicurus. 4 And this is the more astonishing, because contrariwise, Cimon seems to have been of ill repute and unrestrained in his youth, while Lucullus was disciplined and sober. Better, surely, is the man in whom the change is for the better; for it argues a more wholesome nature when its evil withers and its good ripens.

And further, though both alike were wealthy, they did not make a like use of their wealth. 5 There is no comparing the south wall of the Acropolis, which was completed with the moneys brought home by Cimon, with the palaces and sea-washed Belvideres at Neapolis, which Lucullus built out of the spoils of the Barbarians. Nor can the table of Cimon be likened to that of Lucullus; the one was democratic and charitable, the other sumptuous and oriental. 6 The one, at slight outlay, gave daily sustenance to many; the other, at large cost, was prepared for a few luxurious livers. It may be said, indeed, that the difference in state was due to the difference in time. For it is at least possible that Cimon also, if he had retired after his active campaigns to an old age which knew neither war nor politics, might have led an even more ostentatious and pleasure-loving life. He was fond of wine and given to display, and his relations with women, as I have said before, were scandalous. 7 But success in strenuous achievement, affording as it does a higher pleasure, gives public-spirited and ambitious natures no time to indulge the baser appetites, which are forgotten. At any rate, if Lucullus also had ended his days in active military command, not even the most carping and censorious spirit, I think, could have brought accusation against him. Thus much concerning their manner of life.

2 1 In war, it is plain that both were good fighters, both on land and sea. But just as those athletes who win crowns in wrestling and the pancratium on a single day are called, by custom, “Victors-extraordinary,” so Cimon, who in a single day crowned Greece with the trophies of a land and sea victory, may justly have a certain pre-eminence among generals. And further, it was his country which conferred imperial power upon Lucullus, 2 whereas Cimon conferred it upon his. The one added his foreign conquests to a country which already ruled her allies; the other found his country obeying others, and gave her command over her allies and victory over her foreign foes, 522 by defeating the Persians and driving them from the sea, and by persuading the Lacedaemonians voluntarily to relinquish the command. 3 Granted that it is the most important task of a leader to secure prompt obedience through goodwill, Lucullus was despised by his own soldiers, while Cimon was admired by the allies. His soldiers deserted the one; the allies came over to the other. The one came back home abandoned by those whom he commanded when he set out; the other was sent out with allies to do the commands of others, but before he sailed home he himself gave commands to those allies, having successfully secured for his city three of the most difficult objects at once, namely, peace with the enemy, leadership of the allies, and concord with the Lacedaemonians.

4 Again, both attempted to subvert great empires and to subdue all Asia, and both left their work unfinished: Cimon through ill fortune pure and simple, for he died at the head of his army and at the height of his success; but Lucullus one cannot altogether acquit of blame, whether he was ignorant of, or would not attend to the grievances and complaints among his soldiery, in consequence of which he became so bitterly hated. 5 Or perhaps this has its counterpart in the life of Cimon, for he was brought to trial by his fellow citizens and finally ostracised, in order that for ten years, as Plato says, they might not hear his voice. For aristocratic natures are little in accord with the multitude, and seldom please it, but by so often using force to rectify its aberrations, they vex and annoy it, just as physicians’ bandages vex and annoy, although they bring the dislocated members into their natural position. Perhaps, then, both come off about alike on this count.

3 1 But Lucullus was much the greater in war. He was the first Roman to cross the Taurus with an army; he passed the Tigris and captured and burned the royal cities of Asia, — Tigranocerta, Cabira, Sinopé, and Nisibis, before the eyes of their kings; 2 he made his own the regions to the north as far as the Phasis, to the east as far as Media, and to the south as far as the Red Sea, through the assistance of the Arabian kings; he annihilated the forces of the hostile kings, and failed only in the capture of their persons, since like wild beasts they fled away into deserts and trackless and impenetrable forests. 3 Strong proof of his superiority is seen in this, that the Persians, since they had suffered no great harm at the hands of Cimon, straightway arrayed themselves against the Greeks, and overwhelmed and destroyed that large force of theirs in Egypt; whereas, after Lucullus, Tigranes and Mithridates availed nothing: the latter, already weak and disabled by his first struggles, did not once dare to show Pompey his forces outside their camp, but fled away to the Bosporus, and there put an end to his life; 4 as for Tigranes, he hastened to throw himself, while unrobed and unarmed, at the feet of Pompey, and taking the diadem off his head, laid it there upon the ground, flattering Pompey thus not with his own exploits, but with those for which Lucullus had celebrated a triumph. At any rate, he was as much delighted to get back the insignia of his royalty as though he had been robbed of them before. Greater therefore is the general, as is the athlete, who hands over his antagonist to his successor in a weaker plight.

5 Moreover, and still further, Cimon made his onsets when the power of the king had been broken, and the pride of the Persians humbled by great defeats and incessant routs at the hands of Themistocles, Pausanias, and Leotychides, and easily conquered the bodies of men whose spirits had been defeated beforehand and lay prone. 523 But when Tigranes encountered Lucullus, he had known no defeat in many battles, and was in exultant mood. 6 In point of numbers also, those who were overpowered by Cimon are not worthy of comparison with those who united against Lucullus. Therefore, one who takes everything into consideration finds it hard to reach a decision. Heaven seems to have been kindly disposed to both, directing the one as to what he must perform, and the other as to what he must avoid. Both, therefore, may be said to have received the vote of the gods as noble and god-like natures.

Nicias

523 1 1 I think that Nicias is a suitable parallel to Crassus, and the Sicilian to the Parthian disaster. I must therefore at once, and in all modesty, entreat my readers not to imagine for an instant that, in my narration of what Thucydides has inimitably set forth, surpassing even himself in pathos, vividness, and variety, I am so disposed as was Timaeus. 2 He, confidently hoping to excel Thucydides in skill, and to make Philistus seem altogether tedious and clumsy, pushes his history along through the conflicts and sea-fights and harangues which those writers had already handled with the greatest success, showing himself, in rivalry with them, not even so much as

“By Lydian car a footman slowly plodding,”

to use Pindar’s comparison, nay rather, a perfect example of senile learning and youthful conceit, and, in the words of Diphilus,

“Obese, stuffed to the full with Sicilian grease.”

3 Indeed, he often lapses unawares into the manner of Xenarchus, as, for instance, when he says he thinks it was a bad omen for the Athenians that Nicias, whose name was derived from victory, declined at first to head their expedition; also that, by the mutilation of the “Hermae,” Heaven indicated to them in advance that by the hands of Hermocrates the son of Hermon they were to suffer most of their reverses during the war; and, further, that it was fitting that Heracles should aid the Syracusans, for the sake of their goddess Cora, who delivered Cerberus into his hands, but should be angry with the Athenians, because they were trying to succour the Egestaeans, although they were descendants of the Trojans, whose city he had once destroyed because of wrong done him by Laomedon their king.

4 As for Timaeus, he may possibly have been moved to write thus in the exercise of the same critical taste which led him to correct the language of Philistus and abuse Plato and Aristotle; but as for me, I feel that jealous rivalry with other writers in matters of diction is altogether undignified and pedantic, and if it be practised toward what is beyond all imitation, utterly silly. 5 At all events, those deeds which Thucydides and Philistus have set forth, — since I cannot entirely pass them by, indicating as they do the nature of my hero and the disposition which lay hidden beneath his great many sufferings, — I have run over briefly, and with no unnecessary detail, in order to escape the reputation of utter carelessness and sloth; but those details which have escaped most writers, and which others have mentioned casually, or which are found on ancient votive offerings or in public decrees, these I have tried to collect, not massing together useless material of research, but handing on such as furthers the appreciation of character and temperament.

2 1 Accordingly, I may say of Nicias, in the first place, what Aristotle wrote, namely, that the three best citizens of Athens, — men of hereditary good will and friendship for the people, — were Nicias the son of Niceratus, Thucydides the son of Melesias, and Theramenes the son of Hagnon. However, this was true of the last in lesser degree than of the other two, because he has been flouted for inferior parentage as an alien from Ceos; and on account of his not being steadfast, but ever trying to court both sides in his political career, was nicknamed “Cothurnus.” 2 Of the other two, Thucydides was the older man, and as head of the aristocratic party, — the party of the “Good and True,” — often opposed Pericles in his efforts to win the favour of the people. Nicias was a younger man. He was held in some repute even while Pericles was still living, so that he was not only associated with him as general, but frequently had independent command himself; after Pericles was dead, Nicias was at once put forth into the position of leader, especially by the party of the rich and notable. These made him their champion to face the disgusting boldness of Cleon.

3 And yet, for that matter, the common people also held him in favour and aided his ambitions. For although Cleon had great influence with them, “by coddling them, and giving frequent jobs for pay,” yet the very men whose favour he thus sought to gain were aware of his rapacity and fierce effrontery, and for the most part preferred Nicias as their champion. The dignity of Nicias was not of the harsh, offensive sort, but was blended with much circumspection, and won control of the people from the very fact that he was thought to be afraid of them. 4 Timid as he was by nature, and distrustful of success, in war he managed to succeed in hiding his cowardice under a cloak of good fortune, for he was uniformly successful as a general; while in political life his nervousness, and the ease with which he could be put into confusion by accusers, actually tended to make him popular, and gave him in high degree that power which comes from the favour of the people, because they fear men who scorn them, but exalt men who fear them. The multitude can have no greater honour shown them by their superiors than not to be despised.

3 1 Now Pericles led the city by virtue of his native excellence and powerful eloquence, and had no need to assume any persuasive mannerisms with the multitude; but Nicias, since he lacked such powers, but had excessive wealth, sought by means of this to win the leadership of the people. 2 And since he despaired of his ability to vie successfully with the versatile buffoonery by which Cleon catered to the pleasure of the Athenians, he tried to captivate the people by choral and gymnastic exhibitions, and other like prodigalities, outdoing in the costliness and elegance of these all his predecessors and contemporaries. 3 Of his dedicatory offerings there remain standing in my day not only the Palladium on the acropolis, — the one which has lost its gilding, — but also the temple surmounted by choregic tripods, in the precinct of Dionysus. For he was often victorious with choruses, and was never defeated. A story is told how, in one of his choral exhibitions, a house servant of his appeared in the costume of Dionysus, very fair to see, and very tall, the down of youth still upon his face. The Athenians were delighted at the sight, and applauded for a long time. At last Nicias rose and said he deemed it an unholy thing that one who had been acclaimed as a god should be a slave, and gave the youth his freedom.

[and if you need it, here’s help in using the map,
including my own symbols & added information.]

4 It is matter of record also how splendid and worthy of the god his lavish outlays at Delos were. The choirs which cities used to send thither to sing the praises of the god were wont to put in at the island in haphazard fashion. The throng of worshippers would meet them at the ship and bid them sing, not with the decorum due, but as they were hastily and tumultuously disembarking, and while they were actually donning their chaplets and vestments. 5 But when Nicias conducted the festal embassy, he landed first on the neighbouring island of Rheneia, with his choir, sacrificial victims, and other equipment. Then, with the bridge of boats which he had brought along with him from Athens, where it had been made to measure and signally adorned with gildings and dyed stuffs and garlands and tapestries, he spanned during the night the strait between Rheneia and Delos, which is not wide. At break of day he led his festal procession in honour of the god, and his choir arrayed in lavish splendour and singing as it marched, across the bridge to land. 6 After the sacrifices and the choral contests and the banquets were over, he erected the famous bronze palm-tree as a thank offering to the god, and consecrated to his service a tract of land which he bought at the price of ten thousand drachmas, the revenues from which the Delians were to expend in sacrificial banquets, at which many blessings should be invoked upon Nicias from gods. This stipulation he actually had graven on the stone which he left in Delos to be as it were the sentry over his benefaction. The palm-tree, however, was torn away by the wind and fell against the colossal statue of the god which the Naxians erected, and overturned it.

4 1 In this course it is clear that there was much ostentatious publicity, looking towards increase of reputation and gratification of ambition; and yet, to judge from the rest of the man’s bent and character, one might feel sure that such means of winning the favour and control of the people were rather a corollary to his reverent piety. For he was one of those who are excessively terrified at heavenly portents, and was “addicted to divination,” as Thucydides says. 2 And in one of the dialogues of Pasiphon it is recorded that he sacrificed every day to the gods, and that he kept a diviner at his house, ostensibly for the constant enquiries which he made about public affairs, whereas most of his enquiries were really made about his own private matters, and especially about his silver mines; for he had large interests in the mining district of Laurium, and they were exceedingly profitable, although worked at great risks. He maintained a multitude of slaves in these mines, and the most of his substance was in silver. 3 For this reason he had a large retinue of people who wanted his money, and who got it too; for he gave to those who could work him harm no less than to those who deserved his favours, and in general his cowardice was a source of revenue to the base, as his liberality was to the good.

Witness to this can be had from the comic poets. 4 Telecleides composed the following verses on a certain public informer: —

“So then Charicles gave a mina that he might not tell of him

How he was his mother’s first-born, — and her purse-born child at that.

Minas four he got from Nicias, son of rich Niceratus;

But the reason why he gave them, though I know it very well,

I’ll not tell; the man’s my friend, and I think him wise and true.”

5 And the personage who is held up to ridicule by Eupolis, in his “Maricas,” fetches in a sort of lazy pauper, and says: —

(Maricas)”How long a time now since you were with Nicias?”

(Pauper)”I have not seen him, — saving just now on the Square.”

(Maricas)”The man admits he actually did see Nicias!

Yet what possessed him thus to see him if he was not treacherous?”

(Chorus?) “Ye heard, ye heard, my comrades, O!

Our Nicias was taken in the very act!”

(Pauper)”What! you? O crazy-witted folk!

You catch a man so good in sin of any sort?”

6 And the Cleon of Aristophanes blusteringly says: —

“I’ll bellow down the orators, and Nicias I’ll rattle.”

And Phrynichus plainly hints at his lack of courage and his panic-stricken air in these verses: —

“He was a right good citizen, and I know it well;

He wouldn’t cringe and creep as Nicias always does.”

5 1 Since he was disposed to be thus cautious of public informers, he would neither dine with a fellow citizen, nor indulge in general interchange of views or familiar social intercourse; indeed, he had no leisure for such pastimes, but when he was general, he remained at the War Department till night, and when he was councillor, he was first to reach and last to leave the council. And even if he had no public business to transact, he was inaccessible and hard to come at, keeping close at home with his doors bolted. 2 His friends used to accost those who were in waiting at his door and beg them to be indulgent with Nicias, for he was even then engaged upon sundry urgent matters of public business.

The man who most aided him in playing this rôle, and helped him to assume his costume of pompous dignity, was Hiero. He had been reared in the household of Nicias, and thoroughly instructed by him in letters and literature. He pretended to be the son of Dionysius, surnamed Chalcus, whose poems are indeed extant, and who, as leader of the colonizing expedition to Italy, founded Thurii. 3 This Hiero it was who managed for Nicias his secret dealings with the seers, and who was forever putting forth among the people moving tales about the life of severe hardships which his patron led for the sake of the city. “Why!” said he, “even when he takes his bath and when he eats his dinner, some public business or other is sure to confront him; he neglects his private interests in his anxiety for the common good, and scarcely gets to sleep till others wake. 4 That’s the reason why he is physically all run down, and is not affable or pleasant to his friends, nay, he has actually lost these too, in addition to his substance, and all in the service of the city. Other public men not only win friends but enrich themselves through their influence as public speakers, and then fare sumptuously, and make a plaything of the service of the city.” In point of fact, such was the life of Nicias that he could say of himself what Agamemnon did: —

“Sooth, as master of my life

My pomp I have, and to the populace I’m a slave.”

6 1 He saw that the people, upon occasion, served their own turn with experienced men of eloquence or surpassing ability, but ever looked with suspicious and cautious eyes upon such powers, and tried to abate the pride and reputation to which they gave rise. This was manifest in their fining Pericles, and ostracising Damon, and discrediting, as most of them did, Antiphon the Rhamnusian, and finally, above all, in the fate of Paches, the captor of Lesbos, 2 who, while he was giving the official account of his generalship, drew his sword in the very court-room and slew himself. Nicias therefore tried to evade commands which were likely to be laborious and long, and whenever he did serve as general made safety his chief aim, and so was successful for the most part, as was natural. He did not, however, ascribe his achievements to any wisdom or ability or valour of his own, but rather credited them to fortune, and took modest refuge in the divine ordering of events, relinquishing thereby part of his reputation through fear of envy.

3 Events bore witness to his wisdom, for in the many great reverses which the city suffered at that period he had absolutely no share. It was under the leadership of Calliades and Xenophon that his countrymen met defeat at the hands of the Chalcidians in Thrace; the Aetolian disaster occurred when Demosthenes was in command; Hippocrates was general when a thousand citizens were sacrificed at Delium; and for the plague Pericles incurred the most blame, because he shut up the throng from the country in the city on account of the war, and the plague was the result of their change of abode and their unwonted manner of living. 4 For all these things Nicias was free from blame, while as general he captured Cythera, an island favourably situated for the command of Laconia and inhabited by Lacedaemonians; he captured also many places in Thrace which had revolted, and brought them back to their allegiance; having shut up the Megarians in their city he straightway seized the island of Minoa, and shortly after, from this base of operations, got possession of Nisaea; he also made a descent upon the territory of Corinth, defeated the Corinthians in battle and slew many of them, including Lycophron their general.

5 Here it befell him, when his dead were taken up for burial, that two of his men were left unnoticed on the field. As soon as he was made aware of this, he halted his armament and sent a herald back to the enemy asking leave to take up his dead. And yet by usage and unwritten law the side which secured the right to take up its dead by a truce, was thought to renounce all claims to victory, and for those who so obtained this right, the erection of a trophy of victory was unlawful, since they are victors who possess the field; but petitioners do not possess the field, since they cannot take what they want. 6 Notwithstanding this, Nicias endured rather to abandon the honour and reputation of his victory than to leave unburied two of his fellow citizens.

He also ravaged the coasts of Laconia, routed the Lacedaemonians who opposed him, captured Thyrea, which the Aeginetans held, and took his prisoners off alive to Athens.

7 1 After Demosthenes had fortified Pylos, the Peloponnesians came up against it by land and sea, a battle was fought, and about four hundred Spartans were shut off on the island of Sphacteria. Then the Athenians considered that their capture would be a great achievement, as was true. But the siege was difficult and toilsome, since the region afforded little fresh water. Even in summer the shipping of the necessary supplies round Peloponnesus was a long and expensive process, while in winter it was sure to be perilous if not altogether impossible. The Athenians were therefore in bad humour, and repented them of having repulsed an embassy of the Lacedaemonians which had come to treat with them for a truce and peace. 2 They had repulsed it because Cleon, chiefly on account of Nicias, was opposed to it. For he hated Nicias, and when he saw him zealously coöperating with the Lacedaemonians, persuaded the people to reject the truce. So when the siege grew longer and longer, and they learned that their forces were in terrible straits, they were angry with Cleon.

3 He, however, laid all the blame on Nicias, and denounced him, saying that it was through cowardice and weakness that he was letting the men on the island slip through his hands, whereas, had he himself been general instead of Nicias, they would not have held out so long. Thereupon it occurred to the Athenians to say: “It’s not too late! Why don’t you sail yourself and fetch the men?” Nicias too rose in the assembly and resigned his command of the expedition to Pylos in favour of Cleon, bidding him take as large a force as he wished, and not to vent his boldness in mere words which brought no peril with them, but to perform some deed for the city which would be worth its notice. 4 At first Cleon tried to draw back, confused by the unexpectedness of this offer; but the Athenians kept up the same cries of encouragement, and Nicias kept taunting him, until, his ambition excited and on fire, he undertook the command, and, besides, declared in so many words that within twenty days after sailing he would either slay the men on the island or bring them alive to Athens. The Athenians were moved to hearty laughter at this rather than to belief in it, for they were already in the way of treating his mad vanity as a joke, and a pleasant one too.

5 It is said, for instance, that once when the assembly was in session, the people sat out on the Pnyx a long while waiting for him to address them, and that late in the day he came in all garlanded for dinner and asked them to adjourn the assembly to the morrow. “I’m busy to day,” he said, “I’m going to entertain some guests, and have already sacrificed to the gods.” The Athenians burst out laughing, then rose up and dissolved the assembly.

8 1 However, this time he had good fortune, served as general most successfully along with Demosthenes, and within the time which he had specified brought home as prisoners of war, their arms surrendered, all the Spartans on Sphacteria who had not fallen in battle. This success of Cleon’s brought great discredit on Nicias. He was thought not merely to have cast away his shield, but to have done something far more disgraceful and base in voluntarily throwing up his command out of cowardice, and in abandoning to his enemy the opportunity so great a success, — actually voting himself out of office. 2 For this, Aristophanes again scoffs at him in his “Birds,” in words like these: —

“And lo! by Zeus! we can no longer doze about, —

We have no time, — nor shilly-shally-niciasize;”

and in his “Farmers,” where he writes: —

“I want to go a-farming.”

“Pray who hinders you?”

“You people do. Come! Let me give a thousand drachms

If you’ll release me from my offices.”

“ ‘Tis done!

Yours make two thousand, counting those that Nicias gave.”

3 And besides, he wrought no little harm to the city in allowing Cleon to have such an access of reputation and influence that he launched out into offensive pride and ungovernable boldness and inflicted many mischiefs on the city, the bitter fruits of which he himself reaped most abundantly. Worst of all, Cleon stripped the bema of its decorum, setting the fashion of yelling when he harangued the people, of throwing back his robe, slapping his thigh, and running about while speaking. He thus imbued the managers of the city’s policies with that levity and contempt for propriety which soon after confounded the whole state.

9 1 Just about that time Alcibiades was beginning to be a power at Athens. For a popular leader he was not so unmixed an evil as Cleon. The soil of Egypt, it is said, by reason of its very excellence, produces alike

“Drugs of which many are good, intermixed, but many are deadly.”

In like manner the nature of Alcibiades, setting as it did with full and strong currents towards both good and evil, furnished cause and beginning for serious innovations. 2 And so it came to pass that even after Nicias was rid of Cleon, he did not get opportunity to lull the city into perfect rest and calm, but, when he had actually set the state fairly in the path of safety, was hurled from it by an impetuous onset of Alcibiades’ ambition, and plunged again into war.

This was the way it came about. The men most hostile to the peace of Hellas were Cleon and Brasidas. Of these, war covered up the baseness of the one and adorned the excellence of the other; that is to say, it gave the one opportunities for great iniquities, the other for great achievements. 3 After these men had both fallen in one and the same battle before Amphipolis, Nicias found at once that the Spartans had long been eager for peace, and that the Athenians were no longer in good heart for the war; that both were, so to speak, unstrung, and glad to let their arms drop to their sides. He therefore strove to unite the two cities in friendship, and to free the rest of the Hellenes from ills, as well as to give himself a season of rest, and so to make secure for all coming time the name which he had for success. 4 The men who were well-to do, and the elderly men, and most of the farmers, he found inclined to peace from the first; and after he had talked privately with many of the rest, taught them his views, and blunted the edge of their desire for war, then he at once held out hopes to the Spartans, and urgently invited them to seek for peace. They had confidence in him, not only because of his usual fairness towards them, but especially because he had shown kind attentions to those of their men who had been captured at Pylos and kept in prison at Athens, had treated them humanely, and so eased their misfortune. 5 The two parties had before this made a sort of stay of mutual hostilities for a year, and during this time they had held conferences with one another, and tasted again the sweets of security and leisure and intercourse with friends at home and abroad, so that they yearned for that old life which was undefiled by war, and listened gladly when choirs sang such strains as

“Let my spear lie unused for the spider to cover with webs”

and gladly called to mind the saying, “In peace the sleeper is waked not by the trumpet, but by the cock.” 6 Accordingly, they heaped abuse on those who said that the war was fated to last thrice nine years, and then, in this spirit, debated the whole issue, and made peace. Most men held it to be a manifest release from ills, and Nicias was in every mouth. They said he was a man beloved of God, and that Heaven had bestowed on him, for his reverent piety, the privilege of giving his name to the greatest and fairest of blessings. 7 They really thought that the peace was the work of Nicias, as the war had been that of Pericles. The one, on slight occasion, was thought to have plunged the Hellenes into great calamities; the other had persuaded them to forget the greatest injuries and become friends. Therefore, to this day, men call that peace “The Peace of Nicias.”

10 1 The articles of peace required that the strongholds and cities and prisoners of war which each party had taken from the other should be restored, and since that party was to make restoration first on whom the lot fell, the lot was secretly bought up by Nicias, so that the Lacedaemonians were the first to make restoration. 2 This is the testimony of Theophrastus. But when the Corinthians and Boeotians, who were vexed at the course things were taking, seemed likely, by their accusations and complaints, to revive the war, Nicias persuaded the Athenians and Lacedaemonians to make the general peace secure by the mighty bond of a mutual alliance, whereby they should become more formidable to all seceders and better assured of each other.

3 Such being the course of events, Alcibiades, who was naturally indisposed to be quiet, and who was incensed at the Lacedaemonians because they scornfully ignored him in their fond attachment to Nicias, promptly opposed and obstructed the general peace. At the outset he made no headway; but a little while after, seeing that the Athenians were not so well pleased as before with the Lacedaemonians, but thought they had wronged them in making a separate alliance with the Boeotians, and in not restoring Panactum with its walls intact, nor Amphipolis at all, he laid great stress on these grounds of complaint, and tried to incense the people over each one of them. 4 Finally he managed to have an embassy sent from Argos to Athens, and tried to effect a separate alliance between these two cities. Ambassadors came at once from Sparta with full powers to treat all issues, and at their preliminary audience with the council were declared by that body to come with nothing but just proposals. But Alcibiades was afraid they would bring the assembly over to their views with the same arguments which had won the council. He therefore circumvented them by deceitfully swearing that he would coöperate with them fully in the assembly if they would only not claim nor even admit that they had come with full powers to treat all issues; for thus, he declared, they would most surely attain their desires. 5 After they were persuaded by him, and had put themselves out of the guiding hands of Nicias and into his, he introduced them to the assembly, and asked them first whether they had come with full powers to treat all issues. On their saying “No” to this, he surprised them by changing front and calling on the members of the council who were present to bear witness to what they had said before that body. He then urged the people not to follow, much less trust, men who were so manifestly liars, and who said now “Yes” and now “No” to the same question. 6 The ambassadors were overwhelmed with confusion, naturally, and Nicias was unable to say a word, — struck dumb with amazement and anguish. Therefore the people were at once eager to call in the Argive embassy and make the alliance it desired, but there came a slight earthquake shock just then, luckily for Nicias, and the assembly was dissolved. On the following day, when the people had assembled again, by dint of great effort and much talking Nicias succeeded, with difficulty, in persuading them to refrain from the proposed arrangement with Argos, and to send him on an embassy to the Lacedaemonians, assuring them that everything would thus turn out well.

7 But when he came to Sparta, though in other ways he was honoured by them as a true man and one who had been zealous in their behalf, still, he accomplished nothing that he purposed, but was beaten by the party there which had Boeotian sympathies, and so came back home, not merely with loss of reputation and under harsh abuse, but actually in bodily fear of the Athenians. They were vexed and indignant because they had been persuaded by him to restore so many eminent prisoners of war; for the men who had been brought to the city from Pylos belonged to the leading families of Sparta, and the most influential men there were their friends and kinsmen. 8 However, the Athenians took no very harsh measures in their anger against Nicias, but elected Alcibiades general, made an alliance with the Mantineans and Eleans, who had seceded from the Lacedaemonians, as well as with the Argives, sent freebooters to Pylos to ravage Laconia, and thus plunged again into war.

11 At last the feud between Nicias and Alcibiades became so intense that recourse was had to the process of ostracism. This the people used to institute from time to time when they wished to remove for ten years, by the ostrakon ballot, any one man who was an object of suspicion generally because of his great reputation, or of jealousy because of his great wealth. Both the rivals were thus involved in much confusion and peril, since one or the other must in any event succumb to the ostracism. 2 In the case of Alcibiades, men loathed his manner of life and dreaded his boldness, as will be shown more at length in his biography; and in the case of Nicias, his wealth made him an object of jealousy. Above all else, his way of life, which was not genial nor popular but unsocial and aristocratic, seemed alien and foreign: and since he often opposed the people’s desires and tried to force them against their wishes into the way of their advantage, he was burdensome to them. 3 To tell the simple truth, it was a struggle between the young men who wanted war and the elderly men who wanted peace; one party proposed to ostracise Nicias, the other Alcibiades.

“But in a time of sedition, the base man too is in honour,”

and so in this case also the people divided into two factions, and thereby made room for the most aggressive and mischievous men. Among these was Hyperbolus of the deme Perithoedae, a man whose boldness was not due to any influence that he possessed, but who came to influence by virtue of his boldness, and became, by reason of the very credit which he had in the city, a discredit to the city. 4 This fellow at that time thought himself beyond the reach of ostracism, since, indeed, he was a likelier candidate for the stocks; but he expected that when one of the rivals had been banished he might himself become a match for the one who was left, and so it was plain that he was pleased at their feud, and that he was inciting the people against both of them. Accordingly, when Nicias and Alcibiades became aware of his baseness, they took secret counsel with one another, united and harmonized their factions, and carried the day, so that neither of them was ostracised, but Hyperbolus instead.

5 For the time being this delighted and amused the people, but afterwards they were vexed to think that the ordinance of ostracism had been degraded by its application to so unworthy a man. They thought that even chastisement had its dignity, or rather, they regarded the ostracism as a chastisement in the cases of Thucydides and Aristides and such men, but in the case of Hyperbolus as an honour, and as good ground for boasting on his part, since for his baseness he had met with the same fate as the best men. 6 And so Plato the comic poet somewhere said of him: —

“Indeed he suffered worthy fate for men of old

Albeit a fate too good for him and for his brands.

For such as him the ostrakon was ne’er devised.”

And in the end no one was ever ostracised after Hyperbolus, but he was the last, as Hippocrates of Cholargus, a kinsman of the famous tyrant Peisistratus, was the first to be so banished.

7 Verily fortune is an uncertain thing, and incalculable. Had Nicias run the risk with Alcibiades of being ostracised, he had either carried the day, expelled his rival, and then dwelt safely in the city; or, defeated, he had himself gone forth from the city before his last misfortunes, and had preserved the reputation of being a most excellent general.

I am well aware that Theophrastus says that Hyperbolus was ostracised when Phaeax, and not Nicias, was striving against Alcibiades, but most writers state the case as I have done.

Thayer’s Note: What follows may be very unclear to the reader not already familiar with the story of the Athenian expedition to Sicily: Plutarch is writing biography after all, not history; and told us right at the beginning, besides, that he would tiptoe around what had already been covered by Thucydides. So a coherent and nicely readable account of the expedition may be useful here; you’ll find one in F. M. Crawford, Rulers of the South, Vol. I, p , drawn from the primary sources (including this Life of Nicias).

12 1 It was Nicias, then, who, when an embassy came from Egesta and Leontini seeking to persuade the Athenians to undertake an expedition against Sicily, opposed the measure, only to be defeated by the ambitious purposes of Alcibiades. Before the assembly had met at all, Alcibiades had already corrupted the multitude and got them into his power by means of his sanguine promises, so that the youth in their training-schools and the old men in their work-shops and lounging-places would sit in clusters drawing maps of Sicily, charts of the sea about it, and plans of the harbours and districts of the island which look towards Libya. 2 For they did not regard Sicily itself as the prize of the war, but rather as a mere base of operations, purposing therefrom to wage a contest with the Carthaginians and get possession of both Libya and of all the sea this side the Pillars of Heracles.

Since, therefore, their hearts were fixed on this, Nicias, in his opposition to them, had few men, and these of no influence, to contend on his side. For the well-to do citizens feared accusations of trying to escape their contributions for the support of the navy, and so, despite their better judgement, held their peace. 3 But Nicias did not faint nor grow weary. Even after the Athenians had actually voted for the war and elected him general first, and after him Alcibiades and Lamachus, in a second session of the assembly he rose and tried to divert them from their purpose by the most solemn adjurations, and at last accused Alcibiades of satisfying his own private greed and ambition in thus forcing the city into grievous perils beyond the seas. 4 Still, he made no headway, nay, he was held all the more essential to the enterprise because of the experience from which he spoke. There would be great security, his hearers thought, against the daring of Alcibiades and the roughness of Lamachus, if his well known caution were blended with their qualities. And so he succeeded only in confirming the previous vote. For Demostratus, the popular leader who was most active in spurring the Athenians on to the war, rose and declared that he would stop the mouth of Nicias from uttering vain excuses; so he introduced a decree to the effect that the generals have full and independent powers in counsel and in action, both at home and at the seat of war, and persuaded the people to vote it.

13 1 And yet the priesthood also is said to have offered much opposition to the expedition. But Alcibiades had other diviners in his private service, and from sundry oracles reputed ancient he cited one saying that great fame would be won by the Athenians in Sicily. To his delight also certain envoys who had been sent to the shrine of Ammon came back with an oracle declaring that the Athenians would capture all the Syracusans; but utterances of opposite import the envoys concealed, for fear of using words of ill omen. 2 For no signs could deter the people from the expedition, were they never so obvious and clear, such as, for instance, the mutilation of the “Hermae.” These statues were all disfigured in a single night, except one, called the Hermes of Andocides, a dedication of the Aegeïd tribe, standing in front of what was at that time the house of Andocides.a Then there was the affair of the altar of the Twelve Gods. An unknown man leaped upon it all of a sudden, bestrode it, and then mutilated himself with a stone.

3 At Delphi, moreover, there stood a Palladium, made of gold and set upon a bronze palm tree, a dedication of the city of Athens from the spoils of her valour in the Persian war. Ravens alighted on this image and pecked it for many days together; they also bit off the fruit of the palm-tree, which was of gold, and cast it down to the ground. 4 The Athenians, it is true, said that this whole story was an invention of the Delphians, at the instigation of the Syracusans; but at any rate when a certain oracle bade them bring the priestess of Athena from Clazomenae, they sent and fetched the woman, and lo! her name was Peace. And this, as it seemed, was the advice which the divinity would give the city at that time, namely, to keep the peace.

5 It was either because he feared such signs as these, or because, from mere human calculation, he was alarmed about the expedition, that the astrologer Meton, who had been given a certain station of command, pretended to be mad and set his house on fire. Some, however, tell the story in this way: Meton made no pretence of madness, but burned his house down in the night, and then came forward publicly in great dejection and begged his fellow citizens, in view of the great calamity which had befallen him, to release from the expedition his son, who was about to sail for Sicily in command of a trireme. 6 To Socrates the wise man also, his divine guide, making use of the customary tokens for his enlightenment, indicated plainly that the expedition would make for the ruin of the city. Socrates let this be known to his intimate friends, and the story had a wide circulation.

7 Not a few also were somewhat disconcerted by the character of the days in the midst of which they dispatched their armament. The women were celebrating at that time the festival of Adonis, and in many places throughout the city little images of the god were laid our for burial, and funeral rites were held about them, with wailing cries of women, so that those who cared anything for such matters were distressed, and feared lest that powerful armament, with all the splendour and vigour which were so manifest in it, should speedily wither away and come to naught.

14 1 Now, that Nicias should oppose the voting of the expedition, and should not be so buoyed up by vain hopes nor so crazed by the magnitude of his command as to change his real opinion, — this marked him as a man of honesty and discretion. But when he availed naught either in his efforts to divert the people from the war or in his desire to be relieved of his command, — the people as it were picking him up bodily and setting him over their forces as general, — 2 then it was no longer a time for the exceeding caution and hesitation which he displayed, gazing back homewards from his ship like a child, and many times resuming and dwelling on the thought that the people had not yielded to his reasonings, till he took the edge from the zeal of his colleagues in command and lost the fittest time for action. He ought rather at once to have engaged the enemy at close quarters and put fortune to the test in struggles for the mastery. 3 Instead of this, while Lamachus urged that they sail direct to Syracuse and give battle close to the city, and Alcibiades that they rob the Syracusans of their allied cities first and then proceed against them, Nicias proposed and urged in opposition that they make their way quietly by sea along the coasts of Sicily, circumnavigate the island, make a display of their troops and triremes, and then sail back of Athens, after having first culled out a small part of their force to give the Egestaeans a taste of succor. In this way he soon relaxed the resolution and depressed the spirits of his men.

4 After a little while the Athenians summoned Alcibiades home to stand his trial, and then Nicias, who nominally had still a colleague in the command, but really wielded sole power, made no end of sitting idle, or cruising aimlessly about, or taking deliberate counsel, until the vigorous hopes of his men grew old and feeble, and the consternation and fear with which the first sight of his forces had filled his enemies slowly subsided.

5 While Alcibiades was yet with the fleet, sixty ships sailed for Syracuse, of which fifty lay out in the offing, drawn up so as to command the harbour, while ten rowed in to reconnoitre. These made formal proclamation by voice of herald that the people of Leontini should return to their homes. They also captured a ship of the enemy with tablets on board in which the Syracusans had recorded lists of their citizens by tribes. These lists had been deposited at some distance from the city, in the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus, but had been sent for at that time with a view to determining and enrolling those who had come to military age. 6 Now when these had been captured by the Athenians and brought to their generals, and the number of names was seen, the soothsayers were in distress lest in this circumstance lie the fulfilment of what was predicted by the oracle which said: “The Athenians shall take all the Syracusans.” However, they say that it was in another circumstance altogether that this prophecy was fulfilled for the Athenians, namely, at the time when Callippus the Athenian slew Dion and got possession of Syracuse.

15 1 A little while after this Alcibiades sailed away from Sicily, and then Nicias took the entire command. Lamachus was, it is true, a sturdy and honourable man, one who put forth his might without stint in battle, but so poor and petty that in every campaign where he served as general he would charge up to the Athenian people certain trifling moneys for his own clothes and boots. 2 Nicias, on the contrary, was a man of great dignity and importance, especially because of his wealth and reputation. It is said that once at the War Department, when his fellow commanders were deliberating on some matter of general moment, he bade Sophocles the poet state his opinion first, as being the senior general on the Board. Thereupon Sophocles said: “I am the oldest man, but you are the senior general.”

3 So also in the present case he brought Lamachus under his orders, although more of a general than himself, and, always using his forces in a cautious and hesitating manner, he first gave the enemy courage by cruising around Sicily as far as possible from them, and then, by attacking the diminutive little city of Hybla, and going off without taking it, he won their utter contempt. 4 Finally, he went back to Catana without effecting anything at all except the overthrow of Hyccara, a barbarian fastness. From this place it is said that Laïs the courtesan was sold as a prisoner of war, being still a girl, and brought into Peloponnesus.

16 1 The summer was now spent when Nicias learned that the Syracusans had plucked up courage and were going to take the initiative and come out against him. Their horsemen already had the insolence to ride up to the Athenian camp and ask its occupants whether they had come to share the homes of the Catanians or to restore the Leontines to their old homes. At last, therefore, and reluctantly, Nicias set out to sail against Syracuse. 2 Wishing to establish his forces there deliberately and without fear of interruption from the enemy, he secretly sent on a man of Catana with a message for the Syracusans: if they wished to find the camp and equipment of the Athenians abandoned of defenders, they must come in full force to Catana on a given day, for that the friends of the Syracusans in the city, where the Athenians spent most of their time, had determined, on perceiving their approach, to seize the gates and set fire to the Athenian fleet; the conspirators were already many and awaited their coming.

3 This was the best generalship that Nicias displayed in Sicily. He brought his enemy out of their city in full force, thereby almost emptying it of defenders, while he himself put out to sea from Catana, got control of the enemy’s harbours, and seized a spot for his camp where he was confident that he would suffer least injury from that arm of the service in which he was inferior, the cavalry, and meet no hindrance in fighting with that arm whereon he most relied. 4 When the Syracusans hurried back from Catana and drew up in order of battle before their own city, Nicias led his Athenians swiftly against them and carried the day. He did not slay many of the enemy, it is true, for their horsemen prevented his pursuit; he had to content himself with cutting to pieces and destroying the bridges over the river, and thus gave Hermocrates occasion to say, as he sought to encourage the Syracusans, that Nicias was ridiculous in manoeuvring so as not to give battle, as though it was not for battle that he had crossed the seas. 5 However, he did infuse fear and mighty consternation into the Syracusans, so that in place of their fifteen generals then in office they elected three others, to whom the people pledged themselves under oath that they would surely suffer them to command with full and independent powers.

6 The Olympieum was hard by, and the Athenians set out to seize it, inasmuch as it contained many offerings of gold and silver. But Nicias purposely delayed operations until it was too late, and allowed a garrison from Syracuse to enter in, because he thought that if his soldiers plundered the temple’s treasures the commonwealth would get no advantage from it, and he himself would incur the blame for the sacrilege. 7 Of his victory, which was so noised about, he made no use whatever, but after a few days had elapsed withdrew again to Naxos, and there spent the winter, making large outlays on his vast armament, but effecting little in his negotiations with the few Sicels who thought of coming over to his side. The Syracusans therefore plucked up courage again, marched out to Catana, ravaged the fields, and burnt what had been the Athenian camp.

8 These things all men laid to the charge of Nicias, since, as they said, by his excessive calculation and hesitation and caution he let the proper time for action go by for ever. When he was once in action no one could find fault with the man, for after he had set out to do a thing he was vigorous and effective; but in venturing out to do it he was hesitating and timid.

17 1 At any rate, when he moved his armament back to Syracuse, he showed such generalship, and made his approach with such speed and safety, that he put in at Thapsus with his fleet and landed his men unobserved, seized Epipolae before the enemy could prevent, defeated the picked companies which came to its rescue, killing three hundred men, and even routed the cavalry of the enemy, which was thought to be invincible.

2 But what most of all filled the Sicilians with terror and the Hellenes with incredulity was that in a short time he carried a wall around Syracuse, a city fully as large as Athens, although the unevenness of the territory about it, its proximity to the sea and its adjacent marshes, made the task of surrounding it with such a wall very difficult. 3 But he came within an ace of bringing this great task to completion, — a man who had not even sound health for such concerns, but was sick of a disease in the kidneys. To this it is only fair to ascribe the fact that part of the work was unfinished. I can but admire the watchful care of the general and the noble valour of his soldiers in what they did accomplish. 4 Euripides, after their defeat and destruction, composed an epitaph for them, in which he said: —

“These men at Syracuse eight times were triumphant as victors;

Heroes they were while the gods favoured both causes alike.”

5 And not eight times only, nay, more than that you will find that the Syracusans were beaten by them, until the gods, as the poet says, or fortune, became hostile to the Athenians at the very pinnacle of their power.

18 1 Now in most actions Nicias took part, despite his bodily infirmity. But once, when his weakness was extreme, he was lying in bed within the walls, attended by a very few servants, while Lamachus with the soldiery was fighting the Syracusans. These were trying to run a wall from their city out to that which the Athenians were building, to intersect it and prevent its completion. 2 The Athenians prevailed, and hurried off in pursuit with more or less disorder, so that Lamachus was isolated, and then had to face some Syracusan horsemen who made an onset upon him. Foremost of these was Callicrates, a man skilled in war and of a high courage. Lamachus accepted his challenge to single combat, fought him, got a mortal blow from him, but gave him back the like, and fell and died along with him. 3 The Syracusans got possession of the body of Lamachus, with its armour, and carried it off. Then they made a dash upon the Athenian walls where Nicias was, with none to succour him. He nevertheless, necessity compelling him, rose from his bed, saw his peril, and ordered his attendants to bring fire and set it to all the timbers that lay scattered in front of the walls for the construction of siege-engines, and to the engines themselves. This brought the Syracusans to a halt, and saved Nicias as well as the walls and stores of the Athenians. For when the Syracusans saw a great flame rising between them and the walls, they withdrew.

4 Thus it came to pass that Nicias was left sole general; but he was in great hopes. Cities were inclining to take his side, and ships full of grain came to his camp from every quarter. Everybody hastens to join a successful cause. Besides, sundry proposals for a treaty were already coming to him from those Syracusans who despaired of their city. 5 At this time, too, Gylippus, who was sailing from Sparta to their aid, when he heard on his voyage how they were walled up and in sore distress, held on his way, it is true, but with the belief that Sicily was as good as taken, and that he could only save the cities of the Italian Greeks, if haply even that. For the opinion gained ground and strength that the Athenians were all powerful, and had a general who was invincible by reason of his judgement and good fortune.

6 And Nicias himself, contrary to his nature, was straightway so emboldened by the present momentum of his good fortune, and, most of all, by the secret messengers sent to him from the Syracusans, was so fixed in his belief that the city was just on the point of surrendering conditionally, that he made no sort of account of Gylippus at his approach. He did not even set an adequate watch against him. Wherefore, finding himself completely overlooked and despised, the man sailed stealthily through the straits, made a landing at the farthest point from Syracuse, and collected a large force, the Syracusans not being so much as aware of his presence, nor even expecting him. 7 On the contrary, they had actually called an assembly to discuss the agreements to be made with Nicias, and some were already on their way to it, thinking that the terms of peace should be made before their city was completely walled up. For that part of the work which remained to be done was quite small, and all the material required for it lay strewn along the line.

19 1 But in this nick of time and crisis of their peril Gongylus came to them from Corinth with a single trireme. All flocking to meet him, as was natural, he told them that Gylippus would come speedily, and the other ships of war were sailing to their aid. 2 Ere yet they could put implicit faith in what Gongylus told them, there came a messenger from Gylippus bidding them come out to meet him. Then they plucked up heart and donned their arms. No sooner had Gylippus come up than he led his men in battle array against the Athenians. But when Nicias arrayed his men too over against him, Gylippus halted under arms, and sent a herald with the message that he offered the Athenians safe conduct if they would depart from Sicily.

3 Nicias deigned no answer to this; but some of his soldiers mocked, and asked the herald if the presence of a single Spartan cloak and staff had made the prospects of the Syracusans on a sudden so secure that they could afford to deride the Athenians, who had restored to the Lacedaemonians, out of prison and fetters, three hundred men far sturdier and Gylippus, and longer haired. 4 Timaeus says that the Sicilians also made no account of Gylippus, later on, indeed, because they learned to know his base greed and penuriousness; but as soon as they set eyes upon him they jeered at his cloak and his long hair. Then, however, Timaeus himself says that as soon as Gylippus showed himself, for all the world like an owl among birds, many flocked to him, with ready offers of military service. This latter statement has more truth in it than his first, for in the staff and cloak of Gylippus men beheld the symbols of the majesty of Sparta, and rallied round them. 5 Moreover, that the whole achievement of deliverance was his, is the testimony not only of Thucydides, but also of Philistus, who was a Syracusan, and an eye-witness of the events thereof.

Well, then, in the first battle the Athenians were victors and slew some few of the Syracusans, and also Gongylus the Corinthian; but on the day following Gylippus showed what a great thing experience is. Although he had the same infantry and the same cavalry and the same localities to deal with, he did not do it in the same way as before, but changed his tactics, and thereby conquered the Athenians. 6 And as they fled to their camp, he halted his Syracusans in their pursuit, and with the very stones and timbers which his enemies had brought up for their own use, he carried on the cross wall until it intersected the besiegers’ wall of enclosure, so that their superior strength in the field really availed them naught.

After this the Syracusans plucked up heart and went to manning their ships, while their own horsemen and those of their allies would ride above and cut off many of their besiegers. 7 Gylippus also went out in person to the cities of Sicily and roused up and united them all into vigorous and obedient concert with him. Nicias therefore fell back again upon those views of the undertaking which he had held at the outset, and, fully aware of the reversal which it had suffered, became dejected, and wrote a despatch to the Athenians urging them to send out another armament, or else to recall the one already in Sicily, begging them also in any case to relieve him of his command because of his disease.

20 1 Even before this the Athenians had made preparations to send another force to Sicily, but the leading men among them felt some jealousy of the preliminary good fortune of Nicias, and so had induced many delays. Now, however, they were all eagerness to send aid. It was therefore determined that Demosthenes should sail with a large armament in the spring, and while it was yet winter Eurymedon preceded him with a smaller fleet, bringing money, and announcing the selection of colleagues for Nicias from among the members of the expedition there, — to wit, Euthydemus and Menander.

2 But in the meantime Nicias was suddenly attacked by land and sea. With his fleet, though vanquished at first, he yet succeeded in repulsing the enemy, and sank many of their ships; but he was not prompt enough in sending aid to his garrison at Plemmyrium, and so Gylippus, who had fallen upon it suddenly, captured it. Large naval stores and moneys were in deposit there, all of which Gylippus secured, besides killing many men and taking many prisoners. 3 What was most important of all, he robbed Nicias of his easy importation of supplies. These had been safely and speedily brought in past Plemmyrium as long as the Athenians held that post; but now that they had been driven from it, the process was a difficult one, and involved fighting with the enemy who lay at anchor there. And besides all this, the Syracusans felt that their fleet had been defeated, not through any superior strength in their enemy, but by reason of their own disorderly pursuit of that enemy. Accordingly, they were making more vigorous preparations to try the issue again.

4 But Nicias did not want a sea fight. He said it would be great folly, when so large an armament was sailing to their aid and hurrying up fresh troops under Demosthenes, to fight the issue out with inferior forces, and those wretchedly supplied. Menander and Euthydemus, however, who had just been appointed to their offices, were moved by an ambitious rivalry with both the other generals; they longed to anticipate Demosthenes in some brilliant exploit, and to eclipse Nicias. 5 They therefore made much of their city’s reputation. This, they declared again and again, would be altogether ruined and dissipated if they should show fear when the Syracusans sailed out to attack them; and so they forced a decision to give battle by sea. But they were simply out-manoeuvred by Ariston, the Corinthian captain, in the matter of the noon-day meal, as Thucydides relates, and then worsted in action, with the loss of many men. And so a great despair encompassed Nicias; he had met with disaster while in sole command, and was now again brought to grief by his colleagues.

21 1 But at this juncture Demosthenes hove in sight off the harbours, most resplendent in his array, and most terrifying to the enemy. He brought five thousand hoplites on seventy-three ships of war, besides javelineers and archers and slingers to no less a number than three thousand. What with the gleam of his arms and the insignia of his triremes and the multitude of his coxwains and pipers, he made a spectacular display, and one which smote the enemy with dismay. 2 Again, then, as was natural, fear reigned among the Syracusans. They saw before them no final release from their perils, but only useless toils and vain self-destruction.

But the joy of Nicias at the presence of this fresh force was not long lived. Nay, at the very first council of war, when Demosthenes urged an immediate attack upon the enemy, a settlement of the whole struggle by the speediest hazard, and either the capture of Syracuse or else a return home, he was in fearful amaze at such aggressive daring, and begged that nothing be done rashly or foolishly. 3 Delay, he said, was sure to work against the enemy; they no longer had money to spend, and their allies would not longer stand by them; let them only be really distressed by the straits they were in, and they would soon come to him again for terms, as they had done before. For not a few of the men of Syracuse were in secret communication with Nicias. They urged him to bide his time, on the ground that even now they were worn out by the war and weary of Gylippus, and that if their necessities should but increase a little, they would give over altogether. 4 At some of these matters Nicias could only hint darkly, of others he was unwilling to speak in public, and so he made the generals think he was cowardly. It was the same old story over again with him, they would say, — delays, postponements, and hairsplitting distinctions; he had already forfeited the golden moment by not attacking the enemy at once, but rather going stale and winning their contempt. So they sided with Demosthenes, and Nicias, with great reluctance, was forced to yield.

5 Therefore, Demosthenes, with the infantry, made a night attack upon Epipolae. He took some of the enemy by surprise, and slew them; others, who tried to make a stand, he routed. Victorious, he did not halt, but pressed on farther, until he fell in with the Boeotians. These were the first of the enemy to form in battle array, and dashing upon the Athenians with spears at rest and with loud shouts, they repulsed them and slew many of them there. 6 Through the whole army of attack there was at once panic and confusion. The part that was still pressing on victoriously was presently choked up with the part that fled, and the part that was yet coming up to the attack was beaten back by the panic-stricken and fell foul of itself, supposing that the fugitives were pursuers, and treating friends as foes. 7 Their huddling together in fear and ignorance, and the deceitfulness of their vision, plunged the Athenians into terrible perplexities and disasters. For the night was one which afforded neither absolute darkness nor a steady light. The moon was low on the horizon, and was partially obscured by the numerous armed figures moving to and fro in her light, and so she naturally made even friends mutually suspicious through fear of foes, by not distinguishing their forms clearly. 8 Besides, it somehow happened that the Athenians had the moon at their backs, so that they cast their shadows on their own men in front of them, and thus obscured their number and the brilliancy of their weapons; while in the case of the enemy, the reflection of the moon upon their shields made them seem far more numerous than they really were, and more resplendent to the eye.

9 Finally, when the Athenians gave ground, the enemy attacked them on all sides and put them to flight. Some of them died at the hands of their pursuers, others by one another’s hands, and others still by plunging down the cliffs. The scattered and wandering fugitives, when day came, were overtaken and cut to pieces by the enemy’s horsemen. The dead amounted in all to two thousand; and of the survivors, few saved their armour with their lives.

22 1 Nicias, accordingly, was overcome by this disaster, though it did not take him wholly by surprise, and he accused Demosthenes of rashness. Demosthenes defended himself on this score, and then urged that they sail away as soon as they could. No other force would come to their aid, he declared, 2 and with the one they had they could not finally master the enemy, since, even if they were victorious in battle, they would be forced to change their base and abandon their present position; this was always, as they heard, a grievous and unwholesome spot for encampment, and now particularly, as they saw, it was actual deadly on account of the season of the year. For it was the beginning of autumn; many were sick already, and all were in low spirits.

But Nicias could not bear to hear of sailing off in flight, not because he had no fear of the Syracusans, but because he was more afraid of the Athenians with their prosecutions and denunciations. 3 Nothing dreadful, he would say, was to be expected where they were, and even if the worst should come, he chose rather to die at the hands of his enemies than at the hands of his fellow citizens. In this he was not like-minded with Leon of Byzantium, who, at a later time, said to his fellow citizens: “I would rather be put to death by you than with you.” However, regarding the exact spot to which they should remove their camp, Nicias said they would deliberate at their leisure. 4 Thereupon Demosthenes, who had not been successful in his previous plan, ceased trying to carry his point, and so led the rest of the generals to believe that Nicias must have confident expectations from his correspondents in the city in making such a sturdy fight against the proposed retreat; they therefore sided with him. However, a fresh army came to the aid of the Syracusans, and sickness kept spreading among the Athenians, so that at last Nicias also decided in favour of a change of base, and ordered the soldiers to hold themselves in readiness to sail away.

23 1 But just as everything was prepared for this and none of the enemy were on the watch, since they did not expect the move at all, there came an eclipse of the moon by night.b This was a great terror to Nicias and all those who were ignorant or superstitious enough to quake at such a sight. The obscuration of the sun towards the end of the month was already understood, even by the common folk, as caused somehow or other by the moon; 2 but what it was that the moon encountered, and how, being at the full, she should on a sudden lose her light and emit all sorts of colours, this was no easy thing to comprehend. Men thought it uncanny, — a sign sent from God in advance of divers great calamities.

The first man to put in writing the clearest and boldest of all doctrines about the changing phases of the moon was Anaxagoras. But he was no ancient authority, nor was his doctrine in high repute. It was still under seal of secrecy, and made its way slowly among a few only, who received it with a certain caution rather than with implicit confidence. 3 Men could not abide the natural philosophers and “visionaries,” as they were then called, for that they reduced the divine agency down to irrational causes, blind forces, and necessary incidents. Even Protagoras had to go into exile, Anaxagoras was with difficulty rescued from imprisonment by Pericles, and Socrates, though he had nothing whatever to do with such matters, nevertheless lost his life because of philosophy. 4 It was not until later times that the radiant repute of Plato, because of the life the man led, and because he subjected the compulsions of the physical world to divine and more sovereign principles, took away the obloquy of such doctrines as these, and gave their science free course among all men. At any rate, his friend Dion, although the moon suffered an eclipse at the time when he was about to set out from Zacynthus on his voyage against Dionysius, was in no wise disturbed, but put to sea, landed at Syracuse, and drove out the tyrant.

5 However, it was the lot of Nicias at this time to be without even a soothsayer who was expert. The one who had been his associate, and who used to set him free from most of his superstition, Stilbides, had died a short time before. For indeed the sign from Heaven, as Philochorus observed, was not an obnoxious one to fugitives, but rather very propitious; concealment is just what deeds of fear need, whereas light is an enemy to them. 6 And besides, men were wont to be on their guard against portents of sun and moon for three days only, as Autocleides has remarked in his “Exegetics”; but Nicias persuaded the Athenians to wait for another full period of the moon, as if, forsooth, he did not see that the planet was restored to purity and splendour just as soon as she had passed beyond the region which was darkened and obscured by the earth.

24 1 Abandoning almost everything else, Nicias lay there sacrificing and divining until the enemy came up against him. With their land forces they laid siege to his walls and camp, and with their fleet they took possession of the harbour round about. Not only the men of Syracuse in their triremes, but even the striplings, on board of fishing smacks and skiffs, sailed up from every side with challenges and insults for the Athenians. 2 To one of these, a boy of noble parentage, Heracleides by name, who had driven his boat well on before the rest, an Attic ship gave chase, and was like to capture him. But the boy’s uncle, Pollichus, concerned for his safety, rowed out to his defence with the ten triremes which were under his orders, and then the other commanders, fearing in turn for the safety of Pollichus, likewise put out for the scene of action. A fierce sea fight was thus brought on, in which the Syracusans were victorious, and slew Eurymedon along with many others.

3 Accordingly the Athenians could no longer endure to remain there, but cried out loudly upon their generals and bade them withdraw by land; for the Syracusans, immediately after their victory, had blocked up and shut off the mouth of the harbour. But Nicias could not consent to this. He said it would be a terrible thing to abandon so many transports, and triremes almost two hundred in number. 4 So he embarked the best of his infantry and the most efficient of his javelineers to man a hundred and ten triremes; the rest lacked oars. Then he stationed the remainder of his army along the shore of the harbour, abandoning his main camp and the walls which connected it with the Heracleum. And so it was that the Syracusans, who had so long been unable to offer their customary sacrifice to Heracles, offered it then, priests and generals going up to the temple for this purpose while their triremes were a manning.

25 1 Presently their diviners announced to the Syracusans that the sacrifices indicated a splendid victory for them if only they did not begin the fighting, but acted on the defensive. Heracles also, they said, always won the day because he acted on the defensive and suffered himself to be attacked first. Thus encouraged, they put out from shore.

This proved the greatest and hottest sea fight they had yet made, and roused as many tumultuous emotions in those who were mere spectators as in those who did the fighting, because the whole action was in plain sight, and took on shifts and turns which were varied, unexpected, and sudden. Their own equipment wrought the Athenians no less harm than did that of their enemy; for they fought against light and nimble ships, which bore down upon them from different directions at once, 2 while their own were heavy and clumsy and all crowded together. Besides, they were bombarded with stones, whose blow is just as effective however they light; whereas they could only reply with javelins and arrows, whose proper cast was disturbed by the tossing water, so that they did not all fly head on to their mark. This method of fighting was taught the Syracusans by Ariston the Corinthian captain, who fought zealously while the battle lasted, only to fall just as the Syracusans were victorious.

3 The Athenians suffered such great rout and loss that they were cut off from flight by sea. Even by land they saw that their salvation was a difficult matter, so that they neither tried to hinder the enemy from towing away their ships under their very eyes, nor did they ask the privilege of taking up their dead. These, sooth, could go unburied; the survivors were confronted with a more pitiful sight in the abandonment of their sick and wounded, and thought themselves more wretched still than their dead, since they were sure to come with more sorrows than they to the same end after all.

26 1 They purposed to set out during the night, and Gylippus, who saw that the Syracusans were given over to sacrificial revels because of their victory and their festival of Heracles, despaired of persuading or compelling them to rise up from their pleasures at once and attack their enemy as he departed. But Hermocrates, all on his own account, concocted a trick to put upon Nicias, 2 and sent certain companions to him with assurances that they were come from those men who before this had often held secret conferences with him. They advised Nicias not to set out during the night, inasmuch as Syracusans had laid snares for him and preoccupied the ways of escape. Nicias was completely outgeneralled by this trick, and so ended by suffering in very truth at the hands of his enemies what their lies had made him fear. 3 For the Syracusans set forth at break of day, occupied the difficult points in the roads, fortified the river fords, cut away the bridges, and posted their cavalry in the smooth open spaces, so that no spot was left where the Athenians could go forward without fighting.

They waited therefore all that day and the following night, and then set out, for all the world as though they were quitting their native city and not an enemy’s country, with wailings and lamentations at their lack of the necessaries of life and their enforced abandonment of helpless friends and comrades. And yet they regarded these present sorrows as lighter than those which they must expect to come. 4 Many were the fearful scenes in the camp, but the most pitiful sight of all was Nicias himself, undone by his sickness, and reduced, as he little deserved, to a scanty diet, and to the smallest supply of those personal comforts whereof he stood so much in need because of his disease. And yet, all his weakness, he persisted in doing what many of the strong could barely endure, and all saw plainly that it was not for his own sake or for any mere love of life that he was faithful to his tasks, but that for their sakes he would not give up hope. 5 The rest, for very fear and distress, had recourse to lamentations and tears; but whenever he was driven to this pass, it was plainly because he was contrasting the shameful dishonour to which his expedition had now come with the great and glorious successes which he had hoped to achieve.

6 Besides, it was not merely the sight of him now, but also the memory of the arguments and exhortations with which he had once tried to prevent the sailing of the expedition, that led men to think him all the more unworthy to suffer such hardships now; and they had no courage to hope for aid from the gods when they reflected that a man so devout as he, and one who had performed so many great and splendid religious services, now met with no seemlier fortune than the basest and most obscure man in his army.

27 1 However, it was this very Nicias who tried, both by words and looks and kindly manner, to show himself superior to his dreadful lot. And during all the march which he conducted for eight successive days, though suffering from the missiles of the enemy, he yet succeeded in keeping his own forces from defeat, until Demosthenes and his detachment of the army were captured. these fell behind as they fought their way along, and were surrounded on the homestead of Polyzelus. 2 Demosthenes himself drew his sword and gave himself a thrust; he did not, however, succeed in killing himself, since the enemy quickly closed in upon him and seized him.

When the Syracusans rode up and told Nicias of this disaster, he first sent horsemen to make certain that the force of Demosthenes was really taken, and then proposed to Gylippus a truce permitting the Athenians to depart from Sicily after giving hostages to the Syracusans for all the moneys which they had expended on the war. 3 But they would not entertain the proposal. Nay, with insolent rage they reviled and insulted him, and kept pelting him with missiles, destitute as he was of all the necessaries of life. However, through that night and the following day he managed to hold out, and finally came, under constant fire, to the river Asinarus. There some of his men were crowded along by the enemy and thrust into the stream, 4 while others, in advance of pursuit, were impelled by thirst to cast themselves in, and an exceeding great and savage carnage raged in the river itself, men being butchered as they drank. At last Nicias fell down at the feet of Gylippus and cried: “Have pity, Gylippus, now that you are victorious, not on me at all, though my great successes have brought me name and fame, but on the rest of these Athenians. Remember that the fortunes of war are common to all, and that the Athenians, when they were in good fortune, used it with moderation and gentleness toward you.”

5 So spake Nicias, and Gylippus felt some compunction, both at the sight of him, and at what he said. For he knew that the Lacedaemonians had been well treated by him when the peace was made, and, besides, he thought it would kept his own fame if he should bring home alive the generals who had opposed him. Therefore he raised Nicias up, gave him words of cheer, and issued command to take the rest of his men alive. But the command made its way slowly along, so that the spared were far fewer than the slain. And yet many were stolen and hidden away by the soldiery.

6 The public prisoners were collected together, the fairest and tallest trees along the river bank were hung with the captured suits of armour, and then the victors crowned themselves with wreaths, adorned their own horses splendidly while they sheared and cropped the horses of their conquered foes, and so marched into the city. They had brought to successful end a struggle which was the most brilliant ever made by Hellenes against Hellenes, and had won the completest of victories by the most overwhelming and impetuous display of zeal and valour.

28 1 At a general assembly of the Syracusans and their allies, Eurycles, the popular leader, brought in a motion, first, that the day on which they had taken Nicias be made a holy day, with sacrifices and abstention from labour, and that the festival be called Asinaria, from the river Asinarus (the day was the twenty-sixth of the month Carneius, which the Athenians call Metageitnion); 2 and second, that the serving men of the Athenians and their immediate allies be sold into slavery, while the freemen and the Sicilian Hellenes who had joined them be cast into the stone quarries for watch and ward, — all except the generals, who should be put to death.

These propositions were adopted by the Syracusans. When Hermocrates protested that there was something better than victory, to wit, a noble use of victory, he was met with a tumult of disapproval; and when Gylippus demanded the Athenian generals as his prize, that he might take them alive to the Lacedaemonians, the Syracusans, now grown insolent with their good fortune, abused him roundly. 3 They were the more ready to do this because, all through the war, they had found it hard to put up with his harshness and the Laconian style with which he exercised his authority. Timaeus says, moreover, that they denounced his exceeding penuriousness and avarice, — an inherited infirmity, it would seem, since his father, Cleandridas, was convicted of taking bribes and had to flee his country. And Gylippus himself, for abstracting thirty talents from the thousand which Lysander had sent to Sparta, and hiding them in the roof of his house, — as an informer was prompt to show, — was banished in the deepest disgrace. But this has been told with more detail in my Life of Lysander.

4 Timaeus denies that Demosthenes and Nicias were put to death by the orders of the Syracusans, as Philistus and Thucydides state; but rather, Hermocrates sent word to them of the decision of the assembly while it was yet in session, and with the connivance of one of their guards they took their own lives. Their bodies, however, he says, were cast out at the prison door, and lay there in plain sight of all who craved the spectacle. 5 And I learn that down to this day there is shown among the treasures of a temple in Syracuse a shield which is said to have been the shield of Nicias. It is a welded mosaic of gold and purple interwoven with rare skill.

29 1 Most of the Athenians perished in the stone quarries of disease and evil fare, their daily rations being a pint of barley meal and a half-pint of water; but not a few were stolen away and sold into slavery, or succeeded in passing themselves off for serving men. These, when they were sold, were branded in the forehead with the mark of a horse, — yes, there were some freemen who actually suffered this indignity in addition to their servitude.

2 But even these were helped by their restrained and decorous bearing; some were speedily set free, and some remained with their masters in positions of honour. Some also were saved for the sake of Euripides. For the Sicilians, it would seem, more than any other Hellenes outside the home land, had a yearning fondness for his poetry. They were forever learning by heart the little specimens and morsels of it which visitors brought them from time to time, and imparting them to one another with fond delight. 3 In the present case, at any rate, they say that many Athenians who reached home in safety greeted Euripides with affectionate hearts, and recounted to him, some that they had been set free from slavery for rehearsing what they remembered of his works; and some that when they were roaming about after the final battle they had received food and drink for singing some of his choral hymns. Surely, then, one need not wonder at the story that the Caunians, when a vessel of theirs would have put in at the harbour of Syracuse to escape pursuit by pirates, were not admitted at first, but kept outside, until, on being asked if they knew any songs of Euripides, they declared that they did indeed, and were for this reason suffered to bring their vessel safely in.

30 1 The Athenians, they say, put no faith in the first tidings of the calamity, most of all because of the messenger who brought them. A certain stranger, as it would seem, landed at the Piraeus, took a seat in a barber’s shop, and began to discourse of what had happened as if the Athenians already knew all about it. The barber, on hearing this, before others learned of it, ran at the top of his speed to the upper city, accosted the archons, and at once set the story going in the market place. 2 Consternation and confusion reigned, naturally, and the archons convened an assembly and brought the man before it. But, on being asked from whom he had learned the matter, he was unable to give any clear answer, and so it was decided that he was a story-maker, and was trying to throw the city into an uproar. He was therefore fastened to the wheel and racked a long time, until messengers came with the actual facts of the whole disaster. So hard was it for the Athenians to believe that Nicias had suffered the fate which he had often foretold to them.

Crassus

1 1 Marcus Crassus was the son of a man who had been censor and had enjoyed a triumph; but he was reared in a small house with two brothers. His brothers were married while their parents were still alive, and all shared the same table, which seems to have been the chief reason why Crassus was temperate and moderate in his manner of life. When one of his brothers died, Crassus took the widow to wife, and had his children by her, and in these relations also he lived as well-ordered a life as any Roman. 2 And yet when he was further on in years, he was accused of criminal intimacy with Licinia, one of the vestal virgins, and Licinia was formally prosecuted by a certain Plotius. Now Licinia was the owner of a pleasant villa in the suburbs which Crassus wished to get at a low price, and it was for this reason that he was forever hovering about the woman and paying his court to her, until he fell under the abominable suspicion. And in a way it was his avarice that absolved him from the charge of corrupting the vestal, and he was acquitted by the judges. But he did not let Licinia go until he had acquired her property.

2 1 The Romans, it is true, say that the many virtues of Crassus were obscured by his sole vice of avarice; and it is likely that the one vice which became stronger than all the others in him weakened the rest. The chief proofs of his avarice are found in the way he got his property and in the amount of it. 2 For at the outset he was possessed of not more than three hundred talents; then during his consulship he sacrificed the tenth of his goods to Hercules, feasted the people, gave every Roman out of his own means enough to live on for three months, and still, when he made a private inventory of his property before his Parthian expedition, he found that it had a value of seventy-one hundred talents. 3 The greatest part of this, if one must tell the scandalous truth, he got together out of fire and war, making the public calamities his greatest source of revenue.

For when Sulla took the city and sold the property of those whom he had put to death, considering it and calling it spoil of war, and wishing to defile with his crime as many and as influential men as he could, Crassus was never tired of accepting or of buying it. 4 And besides this, observing how natural and familiar at Rome were such fatalities as the conflagration and collapse of buildings, owing to their being too massive and close together, he proceeded to buy slaves who were architects and builders. Then, when he had over five hundred of these, he would buy houses that were afire, and houses which adjoined those that were afire, and these their owners would let go at a trifling price owing to their fear and uncertainty. In this way the largest part of Rome came into his possession. 5 But though he owned so many artisans, he built no house for himself other than the one in which he lived; indeed, he used to say that men who were fond of building were their own undoers, and needed no other foes. And though he owned numberless silver mines, and highly valuable tracts of land with the labourers upon them, nevertheless one might regard all this as nothing compared with the value of his slaves; 6 so many and so capable were the slaves he possessed, — readers, amanuenses, silversmiths, stewards, table-servants; and he himself directed their education, and took part in it himself as a teacher, and, in a word, he thought that the chief duty of the master was to care for his slaves as the living implements of household management.

7 And in this Crassus was right, if, as he used to say, he held that anything else was to be done for him by his slaves, but his slaves were to be governed by their master. For household management, as we see, is a branch of finance in so far as it deals with lifeless things; but a branch of politics when it deals with men. He was not right, however, in thinking, and in saying too, that no one was rich who could not support an army out of his substance; 8 for “war has no fixed rations,” as King Archidamus said, and therefore the wealth requisite for war cannot be determined. Far different was the opinion of Marius, who said, after distributing to each of his veterans fourteen acres of land and discovering that they desired more, “May no Roman ever think that land too small which suffices to maintain him.”

3 1 However, Crassus was generous with strangers, for his house was open to all; and he used to lend money to his friends without interest, but he would demand it back from the borrower relentlessly when the time had expired, and so the gratuity of the loan was more burdensome than heavy interest. When he entertained at table, his invited guests were for the most part plebeians and men of the people, and the simplicity of the repast was combined with a neatness and good cheer which gave more pleasure than lavish expenditure.

2 As for his literary pursuits, he cultivated chiefly the art of speaking which was of general service, and after making himself one of the most powerful speakers at Rome, his care and application enabled him to surpass those who were most gifted by nature. For there was no case, they say, however trifling and even contemptible it might be, which he undertook without preparation, but often, when Pompey and Caesar and Cicero were unwilling to plead, he would perform all the duties of an advocate. And on this account he became more popular than they, being esteemed a careful man, and one who was ready with his help. 3 He pleased people also by the kindly and unaffected manner with which he clasped their hands and addressed them. For he never met a Roman so obscure and lowly that he did not return his greeting and call him by name. It is said also that he was well versed in history, and was something of a philosopher withal, attaching himself to the doctrines of Aristotle, in which he had Alexander as a teacher. This man gave proof of contentedness and meekness by his intimacy with Crassus; 4 for it is not easy to say whether he was poorer before or after his relations with his pupil. At any rate he was the only one of the friends of Crassus who always accompanied him when he went abroad, and then he would receive a cloak for the journey, which would be reclaimed on his return. But this was later on.

4 1 When Cinna and Marius got the upper hand, it was at once apparent that they would re-enter the city not for the good of their country, but for the downright destruction and ruin of the nobles; those who were caught were slain, and among them were the father and brother of Crassus. Crassus himself, being very young, escaped the immediate peril, but perceiving that he was surrounded on all sides by the huntsmen of the tyrants, he took with him three friends and ten servants and fled with exceeding speed into Spain, where he had been before, while his father was praetor there, and had made friends. 2 But finding all men filled with fear and trembling at the cruelty of Marius as though he were close upon them, he had not the courage to present himself to any one. Instead, he plunged into some fields along the sea-shore belonging to Vibius Paciacus. In these there was a spacious cave, where he hid himself. However, since his provisions were now running low, and wishing to sound the man, he sent a slave to Vibius. 3 But Vibius, on hearing the message, was delighted that Crassus had escaped, and after learning the number of his party and the place of their concealment, did not indeed come in person to see them, but brought the overseer of the property near the place, and ordered him to bring a complete meal there every day, put it near the cliff, and then go away without a word; he was not to meddle in the matter nor investigate it, and was threatened with death if he did meddle, and promised his freedom if he co-operated faithfully.

4 The cave is not far away from the sea, and the cliffs which enclose it leave a small and indistinct path leading inside; but when one has entered, it opens out to a wonderful height, and at the sides has recesses of great circumference opening into one another. 5 There is no lack of water or of light, but a spring of purest flow issues from the base of the cliff, and natural fissures in the rock, where its edges join, admit the light from outside, so that in the day-time the place is bright. The air inside is dry and pure, owing to the thickness of the rock, which deflects all moisture and dripping water into the spring.

5 1 Here Crassus lived, and day by day the man came with the provisions. He himself did not see the party of the cave, nor even know who they were, but he was seen by them, since they knew and were on the watch for the time of his coming. Now, the meals were abundant, and so prepared as to gratify the taste and not merely satisfy hunger. 2 For Vibius had made up his mind to pay Crassus every sort of friendly attention, and it even occurred to him to consider the youth of his guest, that he was quite a young man, and that some provision must be made for the enjoyments appropriate to his years; the mere supply of his wants he regarded as the work of one who rendered help under compulsion rather than with ready zeal. So he took with him two comely female slaves and went down towards the sea. When he came to the place of the cave, he showed them the path up to it, and bade them go inside and fear nothing. 3 When Crassus saw them approaching, he was afraid that the place had been discovered and was now known. He asked them, accordingly, who they were and what they wanted. They answered, as instructed, that they were in search of a master who was hidden there. Then Crassus understood the kindly joke which Vibius was playing upon him, and received the girls; 4 and they lived with him the rest of the time, carrying the necessary messages to Vibius. Fenestella says that he saw one of these slaves himself, when she was now an old woman, and often heard her mention this episode and rehearse its details with zest.

6 1 Thus Crassus passed eight months in concealment; but as soon as he heard of Cinna’s death, he disclosed himself. Many flocked to his standard, out of whom he selected twenty-five hundred men, and went about visiting the cities. One of these, Malaca, he plundered, as many writers testify, but they say that he himself denied the charge and quarrelled with those who affirmed it. 2 After this he collected sailing vessels, crossed into Africa, and joined Metellus Pius, an illustrious man, who had got together a considerable army. However, he remained there no long time, but after dissension with Metellus set out and joined Sulla, with whom he stood in a position of special honour. But when Sulla crossed into Italy, he wished all the young men with him to take active part in the campaign, and assigned different ones to different undertakings. Crassus, being sent out to raise a force among the Marsi, asked for an escort, since his road would take him past the enemy. 3 But Sulla was wroth, and said to him vehemently: “I give thee as an escort, they father, thy brother, thy friends, and thy kinsmen, who were illegally and unjustly put to death, and whose murderers I am pursuing.” Thus rebuked and incited, Crassus set out at once, and forcing his way vigorously through the enemy, raised a considerable force, and showed himself an eager partisan of Sulla in his struggles.

4 Out of these activities first arose, as they say, his ambitious rivalry with Pompey for distinction. For although Pompey was the younger man, and the son of a father who had been in ill repute at Rome and hated most bitterly by his fellow-citizens, still, in the events of this time his talents shone forth conspicuously, and he was seen to be great, so that Sulla paid him honours not very often accorded to men who were older and of equal rank with himself, rising at his approach, uncovering his head, and saluting him as Imperator. 5 All this inflamed and goaded Crassus, although it was not without good reason that Sulla thus made less of him.

For he was lacking in experience, and his achievements were robbed of their favour by the innate curses of avarice and meanness which beset him. For instance, when he captured the Umbrian city of Tuder, it was believed that he appropriated to himself most of the spoil, and charges to this effect were laid before Sulla. 6 But in the struggle near Rome, which was the last and greatest of all, while Sulla was defeated and his army repulsed and shattered, Crassus was victorious with the right wing, pursued the enemy till nightfall, and then sent to Sulla informing him of his success and asking supper for his soldiers. However, during the proscriptions and public confiscations which ensued, he got a bad name again, by purchasing great estates at a low price, and asking donations. 7 It is said that in Bruttium he actually proscribed a man without Sulla’s orders, merely to get his property, and that for this reason Sulla, who disapproved of his conduct, never employed him again on public business. And yet Crassus was most expert in winning over all men by his flatteries; on the other hand, he himself was an easy prey to flattery from anybody. And this too is said to have been a peculiarity of his, that, most avaricious as he was himself, he particularly hated and abused those who were like him.

7 1 Now it vexed him that Pompey was successful in his campaigns, and was called Magnus (that is, Great) by his fellow-citizens. And once when some one said: “Pompeius Magnus is coming,” Crassus fell to laughing and asked: “How great is he?” 2 Renouncing, therefore, all efforts to equal Pompey in military achievements, he plunged into politics, and by his zealous labours, his favours as advocate and money-lender, and his co-operation in all the solicitations and examinations which candidates for office had to make and undergo, he acquired an influence and a repute equal to that which Pompey possessed from his many and great expeditions. 3 And the experience of each man was peculiar. For Pompey’s name and power were greater in the city when he was away from it, owing to his campaigns; but when he was at home, he was often less powerful than Crassus, because the pomp and circumstance of his life led him to shun crowds, retire from the forum, and render aid to a few only of those who asked it of him, and then with no great zest, that he might keep his influence the more unimpaired for use in his own behalf. 4 But Crassus was continually ready with his services, was ever at hand and easy of access, and always took an active part in the enterprises of the hour, and so by the universal kindness of his behaviour won the day over his rival’s haughty bearing. But in dignity of person, persuasiveness of speech, and winning grace of feature, both were said to be alike gifted.

5 However, this eager rivalry did not carry Crassus away into anything like hatred or malice; he was merely vexed that Pompey and Caesar should be honoured above himself, but he did not associate this ambition of his with enmity or malevolence. It is true that once when Caesar had been captured by pirates in Asia and was held a close prisoner by them, he exclaimed: “O Crassus, how great a pleasure wilt thou taste when thou hearest of my capture!” 6 But afterwards, at least, they were on friendly terms with one another, and once when Caesar was on the point of setting out for Spain as praetor, and had no money, and his creditors descended upon him and began to attach his outfit, Crassus did not leave him in the lurch, but freed him from embarrassment by making himself his surety for eight hundred and thirty talents. 7 And when all Rome was divided into three powerful parties, that of Pompey, that of Caesar, and that of Crassus (for Cato’s reputation was greater than his power, and men admired him more than they followed him), it was the thoughtful and conservative part of the city which attached itself to Pompey, the violent and volatile part which supported the hopes of Caesar, 8 while Crassus took a middle ground and drew from both. He made very many changes in his political views, and was neither a steadfast friend nor an implacable enemy, but readily abandoned both his favours and his resentments at the dictates of his interests, so that, frequently, within a short space of time, the same men and the same measures found in him both an advocate and an opponent. 9 And he had great influence, both from the favours which he bestowed and the fear which he inspired, but more from the fear. At any rate, Sicinnius, who gave the greatest annoyance to the magistrates and popular leaders of his day, when asked why Crassus was the only one whom he let alone and did not worry, said that the man had hay on his horn. Now the Romans used to coil hay about the horn of an ox that gored, so that those who encountered it might be on their guard.

8 1 The insurrection of the gladiators and their devastation of Italy, which is generally called the war of Spartacus, had its origin as follows. A certain Lentulus Batiatus had a school of gladiators at Capua, most of whom were Gauls and Thracians. Through no misconduct of theirs, but owing to the injustice of their owner, they were kept in close confinement and reserved for gladiatorial combats. 2 Two hundred of these planned to make their escape, and when information was laid against them, those who got wind of it and succeeded in getting away, seventy-eight in number, seized cleavers and spits from some kitchen and sallied out. On the road they fell in with waggons conveying gladiators’ weapons to another city; these they plundered and armed themselves. Then they took up a strong position and elected three leaders. The first of these was Spartacus, a Thracian of Nomadic stock,a possessed not only of great courage and strength, but also in sagacity and culture superior to his fortune, and more Hellenic than Thracian. 3 It is said that when he was first brought to Rome to be sold, a serpent was seen coiled about his face as he slept, and his wife, who was of the same tribe as Spartacus, a prophetess, and subject to visitations of the Dionysiac frenzy, declared it the sign of a great and formidable power which would attend him to a fortunate issue. This woman shared in his escape and was then living with him.

9 1 To begin with, the gladiators repulsed the soldiers who came against them from Capua, and getting hold of many arms of real warfare, they gladly took these in exchange for their own, casting away their gladiatorial weapons as dishonourable and barbarous. Then Clodius the praetor was sent out from Rome against them with three thousand soldiers, and laid siege to them on a hill which had but one ascent, and that a narrow and difficult one, which Clodius closely watched; 2 everywhere else there were smooth and precipitous cliffs. But the top of the hill was covered with a wild vine of abundant growth, from which the besieged cut off the serviceable branches, and wove these into strong ladders of such strength and length that when they were fastened at the top they reached along the face of the cliff to the plain below. On these they descended safely, all but one man, who remained above to attend to the arms. When the rest had got down, he began to drop the arms, and after he had thrown them all down, got away himself also last of all in safety. 3 Of all this the Romans were ignorant, and therefore their enemy surrounded them, threw them into consternation by the suddenness of the attack, put them to flight, and took their camp. They were also joined by many of the herdsmen and shepherds of the region, sturdy men and swift of foot, some of whom they armed fully, and employed others as scouts and light infantry.

4 In the second place, Publius Varinus, the praetor, was sent out against them, whose lieutenant, a certain Furius, with two thousand soldiers, they first engaged and routed; then Spartacus narrowly watched the movements of Cossinius, who had been sent out with a large force to advise and assist Varinus in the command, and came near seizing him as he was bathing near Salinae. 5 Cossinius barely escaped with much difficulty, and Spartacus at once seized his baggage, pressed hard upon him in pursuit, and took his camp with great slaughter. Cossinius also fell. By defeating the praetor himself in many battles, and finally capturing his lictors and the very horse he rode, Spartacus was soon great and formidable; but he took a proper view of the situation, and since he could not expect to overcome the Roman power, began to lead his army toward the Alps, thinking it necessary for them to cross the mountains and go to their respective homes, some to Thrace, and some to Gaul. 6 But his men were now strong in numbers and full of confidence, and would not listen to him, but went ravaging over Italy.

It was now no longer the indignity and disgrace of the revolt that harassed the senate, but they were constrained by their fear and peril to send both consuls into the field, as they would to a war of the utmost difficulty and magnitude. 7 Gellius, one of the consuls, fell suddenly upon the Germans, who were so insolent and bold as to separate themselves from the main body of Spartacus, and cut them all to pieces; but when Lentulus, the other consul, had surrounded the enemy with large forces, Spartacus rushed upon them, joined battle, defeated the legates of Lentulus, and seized all their baggage. Then, as he was forcing his way towards the Alps, he was met by Cassius, the governor of Cisalpine Gaul, with an army of ten thousand men, and in the battle that ensued, Cassius was defeated, lost many men, and escaped himself with difficulty.

10 1 On learning of this, the Senate angrily ordered the consuls to keep quiet, and chose Crassus to conduct the war, and many of the nobles were induced by his reputation and their friendship for him to serve under him. Crassus himself, accordingly, took position on the borders of Picenum, expecting to receive the attack of Spartacus, who was hastening thither; and he sent Mummius, his legate, with two legions, by a circuitous route, with orders to follow the enemy, but not to join battle nor even to skirmish with them. 2 Mummius, however, at the first promising opportunity, gave battle and was defeated; many of his men were slain, and many of them threw away their arms and fled for their lives. Crassus gave Mummius himself a rough reception, and when he armed his soldiers anew, made them give pledges that they would keep their arms. Five hundred of them, moreover, who had shown the greatest cowardice and been first to fly, he divided into fifty decades, and put to death one from each decade, on whom the lot fell, thus reviving, after the lapse of many years, an ancient mode of punishing the soldiers. 3 For disgrace also attaches to this manner of death, and many horrible and repulsive features attend the punishment, which the whole army witnesses.

When he had thus disciplined his men, he led them against the enemy. But Spartacus avoided him, and retired through Lucania to the sea. At the Straits, he chanced upon some Cilician pirate craft, and determined to seize Sicily. By throwing two thousand men into the island, he thought to kindle anew the servile war there, which had not long been extinguished, and needed only a little additional fuel. 4 But the Cilicians, after coming to terms with him and receiving his gifts, deceived him and sailed away. So Spartacus marched back again from the sea and established his army in the peninsula of Rhegium. Crassus now came up, and observing that the nature of the place suggested what must be done, he determined to build a wall across the isthmus, thereby at once keeping his soldiers from idleness, and his enemies from provisions. 5 Now the task was a huge one and difficult, but he accomplished and finished it, contrary to all expectation, in a short, running a ditch from sea to sea through the neck of land three hundred furlongs in length and fifteen feet in width and depth alike. Above the ditch he also built a wall of astonishing height and strength. 6 All this work Spartacus neglected and despised at first; but soon his provisions began to fail, and when he wanted to sally forth from the peninsula, he saw that he was walled in, and that there was nothing more to be had there. He therefore waited for a snowy night and a wintry storm, when he filled up a small portion of the ditch with earth and timber and the boughs of trees, and so threw a third part of his force across.

11 Crassus was now in fear lest some impulse to march upon Rome should seize Spartacus, but took heart when he saw that many of the gladiator’s men had seceded after a quarrel with him, and were encamped by themselves on a Lucanian lake. This lake, they say, changes from time to time in the character of its water, becoming sweet, and then again bitter and undrinkable. Upon this detachment Crassus fell, and drove them away from the lake, but he was robbed of the slaughter and pursuit of the fugitives by the sudden appearance of Spartacus, who checked their flight.

2 Before this Crassus had written to the senate that they must summon Lucullus from Thrace and Pompey from Spain, but he was sorry now that he had done so, and was eager to bring the war to an end before those generals came. He knew that the success would be ascribed to the one who came up with assistance, and not to himself. Accordingly, in the first place, he determined to attack those of the enemy who had seceded from the rest and were campaigning on their own account (they were commanded by Caius Canicius and Castus), and with this in view, sent out six thousand men to preoccupy a certain eminence, bidding them keep their attempt a secret. 3 And they did try to elude observation by covering up their helmets, but they were seen by two women who were sacrificing for the enemy, and would have been in peril of their lives had not Crassus quickly made his appearance and given battle, the most stubbornly contested of all; for although he slew twelve thousand three hundred men in it, he found only two who were wounded in the back. The rest all died standing in the ranks and fighting the Romans.

4 After the defeat of this detachment, Spartacus retired to the mountains of Petelia, followed closely by Quintus, one of the officers of Crassus, and by Scrophas, the quaestor, who hung upon the enemy’s rear. But when Spartacus faced about, there was a great rout of the Romans, and they barely managed to drag the quaestor, who had been wounded, away into safety. This success was the ruin of Spartacus, for it filled his slaves with over-confidence. 5 They would no longer consent to avoid battle, and would not even obey their leaders, but surrounded them as soon as they began to march, with arms in their hands, and forced them to lead back through Lucania against the Romans, the very thing which Crassus also most desired. For Pompey’s approach was already announced, and there were not a few who publicly proclaimed that the victory in this war belonged to him; he had only to come and fight and put an end to the war. Crassus, therefore, pressed on to finish the struggle himself, and having encamped near the enemy, began to dig a trench. Into this the slaves leaped and began to fight with those who were working there, 6 and since fresh men from both sides kept coming to help their comrades, Spartacus saw the necessity that was upon him, and drew up his whole army in order of battle.

In the first place, when his horse was brought to him, he drew his sword, and saying that if he won the day he would have many fine horses of the enemy’s, but if he lost it he did not want any, he slew his horse. Then pushing his way towards Crassus himself through many flying weapons and wounded men, he did not indeed reach him, but slew two centurions who fell upon him together. 7 Finally, after his companions had taken to flight, he stood alone, surrounded by a multitude of foes, and was still defending himself when he was cut down. But although Crassus had been fortunate, had shown most excellent generalship, and had exposed his person to danger, nevertheless, his success did not fail to enhance the reputation of Pompey. For the fugitives from the battle encountered that general and were cut to pieces, so he could write to the senate that in open battle, indeed, Crassus had conquered the slaves, but that he himself had extirpated the war. 8 Pompey, accordingly, for his victories over Sertorius and in Spain, celebrated a splendid triumph; but Crassus, for all his self-approval, did not venture to ask for the major triumph, and it was thought ignoble and mean in him to celebrate even the minor triumph on foot, called the ovation, for a servile war. How the minor triumph differs from the major, and why it is named as it is, has been told in my life of Marcellus.

12 1 After this, Pompey was at once asked to stand for the consulship, and Crassus, although he had hopes of becoming his colleague, did not hesitate to ask Pompey’s assistance. Pompey received his request gladly (for he was desirous of having Crassus, in some way or other, always in debt to him for some favour), and eagerly promoted his candidature, and finally said in a speech to the assembly that he should be no less grateful to them for the colleague than for the office which he desired. 2 However, when once they had assumed office, they did not remain on this friendly basis, but differed on almost every measure, and by their contentiousness rendered their consulship barren politically and without achievement, except that Crassus made a great sacrifice in honour of Hercules, feasted the people at ten thousand tables, and made them an allowance of grain for three months. 3 And when at last their term of office was closing, and they were addressing the assembly, a certain man, not a noble, but a Roman knight, rustic and rude in his way of life, Onatius Aurelius, mounted the rostra and recounted to the audience a vision that had come to him in his sleep. “Jupiter,” he said, “appeared to me and bade me declare in public that you should not suffer your consuls to lay down their office until they become friends.” 4 When the man said this and the people urged a reconciliation, Pompey, for his part, stood motionless, but Crassus took the initiative, clasped him by the hand, and said: “Fellow-citizens, I think there is nothing humiliating or unworthy in my taking the first step towards good-will and friendship with Pompey, to whom you gave the title of ‘Great’ before he had grown a beard, and voted him a triumph before he was a senator.”

13 1 Such, then, were the memorable things in the consulship of Crassus, but his censorship passed without any results or achievements whatever. He neither made a revision of the senate, nor a scrutiny of the knights, nor a census of the people, although he had Lutatius Catulus, the gentlest of the Romans, for his colleague. But they say that when Crassus embarked upon the dangerous and violent policy of making Egypt tributary to Rome, Catulus opposed him vigorously, whereupon, being at variance, both voluntarily laid down their office.

2 In the affair of Catiline, which was very serious, and almost subversive of Rome, some suspicion attached itself to Crassus, and a man publicly named him as one of the conspirators, but nobody believed him. 3 Nevertheless, Cicero, in one of his orations, plainly inculpated Crassus and Caesar. This oration, it is true, was not published until after both were dead; but in the treatise upon his consulship, Cicero says that Crassus came to him by night with a letter which gave details of the affair of Catiline, and felt that he was at last establishing the fact of a conspiracy. 4 And Crassus, accordingly, always hated Cicero for this, but was kept from doing him any open injury by his son. For Publius Crassus, being given to literature and learning, was attached to Cicero, so much so that he put on mourning when Cicero did at the time of his trial, and prevailed upon the other young men to do the same. And finally he persuaded his father to become Cicero’s friend.

14 1 Now when Caesar came back from his province and prepared to seek the consulship, he saw that Pompey and Crassus were once more at odds with each other. He therefore did not wish to make one of them an enemy by asking the aid of the other, nor did he have any hope of success if neither of them helped him. 2 Accordingly, he tried to reconcile them by persistently showing them that their mutual ruin would only increase the power of such men as Cicero, Catulus, and Cato, men whose influence would be nothing if Crassus and Pompey would only unite their friends and adherents, and with one might and one purpose direct the affairs of the city. He persuaded them, reconciled them, and won them both to his support, and constituted with that triumvirate an irresistible power, with which he overthrew the senate and the people, not by making his partners greater, the one through the other, but by making himself greatest of all through them. 3 For owing to the support of both he was at once triumphantly elected consul. And during his consulship they voted him armies to command, and put Gaul into his hands, and so, as it were, established him in an acropolis, thinking to share the rest with one another at their leisure if they secured to him his allotted province.

4 Now Pompey did all this from an unbounded love of power; but to that ancient infirmity of Crassus, his avarice, there was now added a fresh and ardent passion, in view of the glorious exploits of Caesar, for trophies and triumphs. In these alone he thought himself inferior to Caesar, but superior in everything else. And his passion gave him no rest nor peace until it ended in an inglorious death and public calamities. 5 For when Caesar came down to the city of Luca from Gaul, many Romans came thither to meet him, and among them Pompey and Crassus. These held private conferences with Caesar, and the three determined to carry matters with a higher hand, and to make themselves sole masters of the state. Caesar was to remain in his command, while Pompey and Crassus were to take other provinces and armies. 6 But the only way to secure this end was by soliciting a second consulship. Since Pompey and Crassus were candidates for this, Caesar was to co-operate with them by writing letters to his friends and by sending many of his soldiers home to support them at the elections.

15 1 With this understanding, Crassus and Pompey returned to Rome, and were at once objects of suspicion; report was rife through the whole city that their meeting with Caesar had been for no good purpose. In the senate, also, when Marcellinus and Domitius asked Pompey if he was going to be a candidate for the consulship, he replied that perhaps he was, and perhaps he was not; and when asked the question again, he said he should solicit the votes of the good citizens, but not those of the bad. 2 Since his answers were thought to have been made in pride and arrogance, Crassus said, more modestly, when the question was put to him, that if it was for the interest of the city, he would be a candidate for the office, but otherwise he would desist. For this reason divers persons were emboldened to sue for the consulship, one of whom was Domitius. When, however, Pompey and Crassus openly announced their candidature, the rest took fright and withdrew from the contest; but Cato encouraged Domitius, who was a kinsman and friend of his, to proceed, urging and inciting him to cling to his hopes, assured that he would do battle for the common freedom. For it was not the consulate, he said, which Crassus and Pompey wanted, but a tyranny, nor did their course of action mean simply a canvass for office, but rather a seizure of provinces and armies.

3 With such words and such sentiments Cato all but forced Domitius to go down into the forum as a candidate, and many joined their party. Many, too, voiced their amazement thus: “Why, pray, should these men want a second consulship? And why once more together? Why not have other colleagues? Surely there are many men among us who are not unworthy to be colleagues of Pompey and Crassus!” 4 Alarmed at this, the partizans of Crassus and Pompey abstained from no disorder or violence, however extreme, and capped the climax by waylaying Domitius, as he was coming down into the forum before day-break with his followers, killing his torch-bearer, and wounding many, among whom was Cato. 5 After routing their opponents and shutting them up at home, they had themselves proclaimed consuls, and a short time afterwards they once more surrounded the rostra with armed men, cast Cato out of the forum, slew several who made resistance, and then had another five years added to the proconsulship of Caesar in Gaul, and the provinces of Syria and both Spains voted to themselves. When the lot was cast, Syria fell to Crassus, and the Spains to Pompey.

16 1 Now the lot fell out to the satisfaction of everybody. For most of the people wished Pompey to be not far away from the city; Pompey, who was passionately fond of his wife, intended to spend most of his time there; and as for Crassus, as soon as the lot fell out, he showed his joy that he regarded no piece of good fortune in his whole life as more radiant than the one which had now come to him. Among strangers and in public he could scarcely hold his peace, while to his intimates he made many empty and youthful boasts which ill became his years and his disposition, for he had been anything but boastful or bombastic before this. 2 But now, being altogether exalted and out of his senses, he would not consider Syria nor even Parthia as the boundaries of his success, but thought to make the campaigns of Lucullus against Tigranes and those of Pompey against Mithridates seem mere child’s play, and flew on the wings of his hopes as far as Bactria and India and the Outer Sea.

3 And yet in the decree which was passed regarding his mission there was no mention of a Parthian war. But everybody knew that Crassus was all eagerness for this, and Caesar wrote to him from Gaul approving of his project, and inciting him on to the war. And when Ateius, one of the tribunes of the people, threatened to oppose his leaving the city, and a large party arose which was displeased that anyone should go out to wage war on men who had done the state no wrong, but were in treaty relations with it, then Crassus, in fear, begged Pompey to come to his aid and to join in escorting him out of the city. 4 For great was Pompey’s reputation with the crowd. And now, when the multitude drawn up to resist the passage of Crassus, and to abuse him, saw Pompey’s beaming countenance in front of him, they were mollified, and gave way before them in silence. But Ateius, on meeting Crassus, at first tried to stop him with words, and protested against his advance; then he bade his attendant seize the person of Crassus and detain him. 5 And when the other tribunes would not permit this, the attendant released Crassus, but Ateius ran on ahead to the city gate, placed there a blazing brazier, and when Crassus came up, cast incense and libations upon it, and invoked curses which were dreadful and terrifying in themselves, and were reinforced by sundry strange and dreadful gods whom he summoned and called by name. The Romans say that these mysterious and ancient curses have such power that no one involved in them ever escapes, and misfortune falls also upon the one who utters them, wherefore they are not employed at random nor by many. And accordingly at this time they found fault with Ateius because it was for the city’s sake that he was angered at Crassus, and yet he had involved the city in curses which awakened much superstitious terror.

17 1 But Crassus came to Brundisium. And though the sea was still rough with wintry storms, he would not wait, but put out, and so lost a great number of his vessels. With what was left of his forces, however, he hurried on by land through Galatia. And finding that King Deiotarus, who was now a very old man, was founding a new city, he rallied him, saying: 2 “O King, you are beginning to build at the twelfth hour.” The Galatian laughed and said: “But you yourself, Imperator, as I see, are not marching very early in the day against the Parthians.” Now Crassus was sixty years old and over, and looked older than his years. On his arrival, things went at first as he had hoped, for he easily bridged the Euphrates and led his army across in safety, and took possession of many cities in Mesopotamia which came over to him of their own accord. 3 But at one of them, of which Apollonius was tyrant, a hundred of his soldiers were slain, whereupon he led up his forces against it, mastered it, plundered its property, and sold its inhabitants into slavery. The city was called Zenodotia by the Greeks. For its capture he allowed his soldiers to salute him as Imperator, thereby incurring much disgrace and showing himself of a paltry spirit and without good hope for the greater struggles that lay before him, since he was so delighted with a trifling acquisition. 4 After furnishing the cities which had come over to his side with garrisons, which amounted in all to seven thousand men-at arms and a thousand horsemen, he himself withdrew to take up winter quarters in Syria, and to await there his son, who was coming from Caesar in Gaul, decorated with the insignia of his deeds of valour, and leading a thousand picked horsemen.

This was thought to be the first blunder which Crassus committed, — after the expedition itself, which was the greatest of all his blunders, — because, when he should have advanced and come into touch with Babylon and Seleucia, cities always hostile to the Parthians, he gave his enemies time for preparation. 5 Then, again, fault was found with him because his sojourn in Syria was devoted to mercenary rather than to military purposes. For he made no estimate of the number of his troops, and instituted no athletic contests for them, but reckoned up the revenues of cities, and spent many days weighing exactly the treasures of the goddess in Hierapolis, and prescribed quotas of soldiers for districts and dynasts to furnish, only to remit the prescription when money was offered him, thereby losing their respect and winning their contempt. 6 And the first warning sign came to him from this very goddess, whom some call Venus, others Juno, while others regard her as the natural cause which supplies from moisture the beginnings and seeds of everything, and points out to mankind the source of all blessings. For as they were leaving her temple, first the youthful Crassus stumbled and fell at the gate, and then his father fell over him.

18 1 No sooner had he begun to assemble his forces from their winter quarters than envoys came to him from Arsaces with a wonderfully brief message. They said that if the army had been sent out by the Roman people, it meant war without truce and without treaty; but if it was against the wishes of his country, as they were informed, and for his own private gain that Crassus had come up in arms against the Parthians and occupied their territory, then Arsaces would act with moderation, would take pity on the old age of Crassus, and release to the Romans the men whom he had under watch and ward rather than watching over him. 2 To this Crassus boastfully replied that he would give his answer in Seleucia, whereupon the eldest of the envoys, Vagises, burst out laughing and said, pointing to the palm of his upturned hand: “O Crassus, hair will grow there before thou shalt see Seleucia.”

The embassy, accordingly, rode away to King Hyrodes, to tell him there must be war. But from the cities of Mesopotamia in which the Romans had garrisons, certain men made their escape at great hazard and brought tidings of serious import. 3 They had been eyewitnesses both of the numbers of the enemy and of their mode of warfare when they attacked their cities, and, as is usual, they exaggerated all the terrors of their report. “When the men pursued,” they declared, “there was no escaping them, and when they fled, there was no taking them; and strange missiles are the precursors of their appearance, which pierce through every obstacle before one sees who sent them; and as for the armour of their mail-clad horsemen, some of it is made to force its way through everything, and some of it to give way to nothing.” 4 When the soldiers heard this, their courage ebbed away. For they had been fully persuaded that the Parthians were not different at all from the Armenians or even the Cappadocians, whom Lucullus had robbed and plundered till he was weary of it, and they had thought that the most difficult part of the war would be the long journey and the pursuit of men who would not come to close quarters; but now, contrary to their hopes, they were led to expect a struggle and great peril. Therefore some of the officers thought that Crassus ought to call a halt and reconsider the whole undertaking. Among these was Cassius, the quaestor. 5 The seers, also, quietly let it become known that the omens for Crassus which came from their sacrifices were always bad and inauspicious. But Crassus paid no heed to them, nor to those who advised anything else except to press forward.

19 1 And most of all, Artabazes the king of Armenia gave him courage, for he came to his camp with six thousand horsemen. These were said to be the king’s guards and couriers; but he promised ten thousand mail-clad horsemen besides, and thirty thousand footmen, to be maintained at his own cost. 2 And he tried to persuade Crassus to invade Parthia by way of Armenia, for thus he would not only lead his forces along in the midst of plenty, which the king himself would provide, but would also proceed with safety, confronting the cavalry of the Parthians, in which lay their sole strength, with many mountains, and continuous crests, and regions where the horse could not well serve. Crassus was tolerably well pleased with the king’s zeal and with the splendid reinforcements which he offered, but said he should march through Mesopotamia, where he had left many brave Romans. 3 Upon this, the Armenian rode away.

Now, as Crassus was taking his army across the Euphrates at Zeugma, many extraordinary peals of thunder crashed about them, and many flashes of lightning also darted in their faces, and a wind, half mist and half hurricane, fell upon their raft, breaking it up and shattering it in many places. 4 The place where he was intending to encamp was also smitten by two thunderbolts. And one of the general’s horses, richly caparisoned, violently dragged its groom along with it into the river and disappeared beneath the waves. It is said also that the first eagle which was raised aloft, faced about of its own accord. 5 Besides all this, it happened that when their rations were distributed to the soldiers after the crossing of the river, lentils and salt came first, which are held by the Romans to be tokens of mourning, and are set out as offerings to the dead. Moreover, Crassus himself, while haranguing his men, let fall a phrase which terribly confounded them. He said, namely, that he should destroy the bridge over the river, that not one of them might return. And although he ought, as soon as he perceived the strangeness of his expression, to have recalled it and made his meaning clear to his timorous hearers, he was too obstinate to do so. 6 And finally, when he was making the customary sacrifice of purification for the army, and the seer placed the viscera in his hands, he let them fall to the ground; then, seeing that the bystanders were beyond measure distressed at the occurrence, he smiled and said: “Such is old age; but no weapon, you may be sure, shall fall from its hands.”

20 1 After this, he marched along the river with seven legions of men-at arms, nearly four thousand horsemen, and about as many light-armed troops. Some of his scouts now came back from their explorations, and reported that the country was destitute of men, but that they had come upon the tracks of many horses which had apparently wheeled about and fled from pursuit. Wherefore Crassus himself was all the more confident, and his soldiers went so far as to despise the Parthians utterly, believing that they would not come to close quarters. 2 But, nevertheless, Cassius once more had a conference with Crassus, and advised him above all things to recuperate his forces in one of the garrisoned cities, until he should get some sure information about the enemy; but if not this, then to advance to Seleucia along the river. For in this way the transports would keep them abundantly supplied with provisions by putting in at their successive encampments, and, by having the river to prevent their being surrounded, they would always fight their enemies on even terms and face to face.

21 1 While Crassus was still investigating and considering these matters, there came an Arab chieftain, Ariamnes by name, a crafty and treacherous man, and one who proved to be, of all the mischiefs which fortune combined for the destruction of the Romans, the greatest and most consummate. 2 Some of the soldiers who had served under Pompey in these parts knew that the fellow had profited by the kindness of that commander and was thought to be a friend of Rome; but now, with the knowledge of the royal generals, he tried to work his way into the confidence of Crassus, to see if he could turn him aside as far as possible from the river and the foothills, and bring him down into a boundless plain where he could be surrounded. For nothing was farther from the thoughts of the Parthians than to attack the Romans in front. 3 Accordingly, coming to Crassus, the Barbarian (and he was a plausible talker, too) lauded Pompey as his benefactor, and complimented Crassus on his forces. But then he criticised him for wasting time in delays and preparations, as if it was arms that he needed, and not hands and the swiftest of feet to follow after men who had for some time been trying to snatch up their most valuable goods and slaves and fly with them into Scythia or Hyrcania. 4 “And yet,” said he, “if you intend to fight, you ought to hasten on before all the king’s forces are concentrated and he has regained his courage; since, for the time being, Surena and Sillaces have been thrown forward to sustain your pursuit, but the king is nowhere to be seen.”

5 Now this was all false. For Hyrodes had promptly divided his forces into two parts and was himself devastating Armenia to punish Artavasdes, while he despatched Surena to meet the Romans. And this was not because he despised them, as some say, for he could not consistently disdain Crassus as an antagonist, a man who was foremost of the Romans, and wage war on Artavasdes, attacking and taking the villages of Armenia; on the contrary, it seems that he was in great fear of the danger which threatened, and therefore held himself in reserve and watched closely the coming event, while he sent Surena forward to make trial of the enemy in battle and to distract them. 6 Nor was Surena an ordinary man at all, but in wealth, birth, and consideration, he stood next the king, while in valour and ability he was the foremost Parthian of his time, besides having no equal in stature and personal beauty. He used to travel on private business with a baggage train of a thousand camels, and was followed by two hundred waggons for his concubines, while a thousand mail-clad horsemen and a still greater number of light-armed cavalry served as his escort; and had altogether, as horsemen, vassals, and slaves, no fewer than ten thousand men. 7 Moreover, he enjoyed the ancient and hereditary privilege of being first to set the crown upon the head of the Parthian king; and when this very Hyrodes was driven out of Parthia, he restored him to his throne, and captured for him Seleucia the Great, having been the first to mount its walls, and having routed with his own hand his opponents. And though at this time he was not yet thirty years of age, he had the highest reputation for prudence and sagacity, and it was especially by means of these qualities that he also brought Crassus to ruin, who, at first by reason of his boldness and conceit, and then in consequence of his fears and calamities, was an easy victim of deceits.

22 1 At this time, accordingly, after the Barbarian had persuaded Crassus, he drew him away from the river and led him through the midst of the plains, by a way that was suitable and easy at first, but soon became troublesome when deep sand succeeded, and plains which had no trees, no water, and no limit anywhere which the eye could reach, so that not only did thirst and the difficulties of the march exhaust the men, but also whatever met their gaze filled them with an obstinate dejection. 2 For they saw no plant, no stream, no projection of sloping hill, and no growing grass, but only sea-like billows of innumerable desert sand-heaps enveloping the army. This of itself was enough to induce suspicion of treachery, and soon messengers came from Artavasdes the Armenian declaring that he was involved in a great war with Hyrodes, who had attacked him with an overwhelming force, and could not therefore send Crassus aid, 3 but advised him above all things to turn his course thither, join the Armenians, and fight the issue out with Hyrodes; but if not this, then to march and encamp always where mountains were near and cavalry could not operate. Crassus sent no reply in writing, but answered at once in rage and perversity that for the present he had no time to waste on the Armenians, but that at another time he would come and punish Artavasdes for his treachery.

4 But Cassius was once more greatly displeased, and though he stopped advising Crassus, who was angry with him, he did privately abuse the Barbarian. “Basest of men,” he said, “what evil spirit brought you to us? With what drugs and jugglery did you persuade Crassus to pour his army into a yawning and abysmal desert and follow a route more fit for a robber chief of Nomads than for a Roman imperator?” 5 But the Barbarian, who was a subtle fellow, tried to encourage them with all servility, and as he ran along by the side of the soldiers and gave them his help, he would laughingly banter them and say: “Is it through Campania that you think you are marching, yearning for its fountains and streams and shades and baths (to be sure!) and taverns? But remember that you are traversing the border land between Assyria and Arabia.” 6 Thus the Barbarian played the tutor with the Romans, and rode away before his deceit had become manifest, not, however, without the knowledge of Crassus, nay, he actually persuaded him that he was going to work in his interests and confound the counsels of his enemies.

23 1 It is said that on that day Crassus did not make his appearance in a purple robe, as is the custom with Roman generals, but in a black one, and that he changed it as soon as he noticed his mistake; also that some of the standard-bearers had great difficulty in raising their standards, which seemed to be imbedded, as it were, in the earth. 2 Crassus made light of these things and hurried on the march, compelling the men-at arms to keep up with the cavalry, until a few of those who had been sent out as scouts came riding up and announced that the rest of their number had been slain by the enemy, that they themselves had with difficulty escaped, and that their foes were coming up to fight with a large force and great confidence. 3 All were greatly disturbed, of course, but Crassus was altogether frightened out of his senses, and began to draw up his forces in haste and with no great consistency. At first, as Cassius recommended, he extended the line of his men-at arms as far as possible along the plain, with little depth, to prevent the enemy from surrounding them, and divided all his cavalry between the two wings. Then he changed his mind and concentrated his men, forming them in a hollow square of four fronts, with twelve cohorts on each side. 4 With each cohort he placed a squadron of horse, that no part of the line might lack cavalry support, but that the whole body might advance to the attack with equal protection everywhere. He gave one of the wings to Cassius, and one to the young Crassus, and took his own position in the centre.

Advancing in this formation, they came to a stream called Balissus, which was not large, to be sure, nor plentiful, but by this time the soldiers were delighted to see it in the midst of the drought and heat and after their previous toilsome march without water. 5 Most of the officers, accordingly, thought they ought to bivouac and spend the night there, and after learning as much as they could of the number and disposition of the enemy, to advance against them at day-break. But Crassus was carried away by the eagerness of his son and the cavalry with him, who urged him to advance and give battle, and he therefore ordered that the men who needed it should eat and drink as they stood in the ranks. 6 And before they were all well done with this, he led them on, not slowly, nor halting from time to time, as is usual on the way to battle, but with a quick and sustained pace until the enemy came in sight, who, to the surprise of the Romans, appeared to be neither numerous nor formidable. For Surena had veiled his main force behind his advance guard, and concealed the gleam of their armour by ordering them to cover themselves with robes and skins. But when they were near the Romans and the signal was raised by their commander, first of all they filled the plain with the sound of a deep and terrifying roar. 7 For the Parthians do not incite themselves to battle with horns or trumpets, but they have hollow drums of distended hide, covered with bronze bells, and on these they beat all at once in many quarters, and the instruments give forth a low and dismal tone, a blend of wild beast’s roar and harsh thunder peal. They had rightly judged that, of all the senses, hearing is the one most apt to confound the soul, soonest rouses its emotions, and most effectively unseats the judgment.

24 1 While the Romans were in consternation at this din, suddenly their enemies dropped the coverings of their armour, and were seen to be themselves blazing in helmets and breastplates, their Margianian steel glittering keen and bright, and their horses clad in plates of bronze and steel. 2 Surena himself, however, was the tallest and fairest of them all, although his effeminate beauty did not well correspond to his reputation for valour, but he was dressed more in the Median fashion, with painted face and parted hair, while the rest of the Parthians still wore their hair long and bunched over their foreheads, in Scythian fashion, to make themselves look formidable. 3 And at first they purposed to charge upon the Romans with their long spears, and throw their front ranks into confusion; but when they saw the depth of their formation, where shield was locked with shield, and the firmness and composure of the men, they drew back, and while seeming to break their ranks and disperse, they surrounded the hollow square in which their enemy stood before he was aware of the manoeuvre. 4 And when Crassus ordered his light-armed troops to make a charge, they did not advance far, but encountering a multitude of arrows, abandoned their undertaking and ran back for shelter among the men-at arms, among whom they caused the beginning of disorder and fear, for these now saw the velocity and force of the arrows, which fractured armour, and tore their way through every covering alike, whether hard or soft.

5 But the Parthians now stood at long intervals from one another and began to shoot their arrows from all sides at once, not with any accurate aim (for the dense formation of the Romans would not suffer an archer to miss even if he wished it), but making vigorous and powerful shots from bows which were large and mighty and curved so as to discharge their missiles with great force. 6 At once, then, the plight of the Romans was a grievous one; for if they kept their ranks, they were wounded in great numbers, and if they tried to come to close quarters with the enemy, they were just as far from effecting anything and suffered just as much. For the Parthians shot as they fled, and next to the Scythians, they do this most effectively; and it is a very clever thing to seek safety while still fighting, and to take away the shame of flight.

25 1 Now as long as they had hopes that the enemy would exhaust their missiles and desist from battle or fight at close quarters, the Romans held out; but when they perceived that many camels laden with arrows were at hand, from which the Parthians who first encircled them took a fresh supply, then Crassus, seeing no end to this, began to lose heart, and sent messengers to his son with orders to force an engagement with the enemy before he was surrounded; for it was his wing especially which the enemy were attacking and surrounding with their cavalry, in the hope of getting in his rear. 2 Accordingly, the young man took thirteen hundred horsemen, of whom a thousand had come from Caesar, five hundred archers, and eight cohorts of the men-at arms who were nearest him, and led them all to the charge. But the Parthians who were trying to envelop him, either because, as some say, they encountered marshes, or because they were manoeuvring to attack Publius as far as possible from his father, wheeled about and made off. 3 Then Publius, shouting that the men did not stand their ground, rode after them, and with him Censorinus and Megabacchus, the latter distinguished for his courage and strength, Censorinus a man of senatorial dignity and a powerful speaker, and both of them comrades of Publius and nearly of the same age. The cavalry followed after Publius, and even the infantry kept pace with them in the zeal and joy which their hopes inspired; for they thought they were victorious and in pursuit of the enemy, until, after they had gone forward a long distance, they perceived the ruse. For the seeming fugitives wheeled about and were joined at the same time by others more numerous still. 4 Then the Romans halted, supposing that the enemy would come to close quarters with them, since they were so few in number. But the Parthians stationed their mail-clad horsemen in front of the Romans, and then with the rest of their cavalry in loose array rode round them, tearing up the surface of the ground, and raising from the depths great heaps of sand which fell in limitless showers of dust, so that the Romans could neither see clearly nor speak plainly, 5 but, being crowded into a narrow compass and falling upon one another, were shot, and died no easy nor even speedy death. For, in the agonies of convulsive pain, and writhing about the arrows, they would break them off in their wounds, and then in trying to pull out by force the barbed heads which had pierced their veins and sinews, they tore and disfigured themselves the more.

6 Thus many died, and the survivors also were incapacitated for fighting. And when Publius urged them to charge the enemy’s mail-clad horsemen, they showed him that their hands were riveted to their shields and their feet nailed through and through to the ground, so that they were helpless either for flight or for self-defence. 7 Publius himself, accordingly, cheered on his cavalry, made a vigorous charge with them, and closed with the enemy. But his struggle was an unequal one both offensively and defensively, for his thrusting was done with small and feeble spears against breastplates of raw hide and steel, whereas the thrusts of the enemy were made with pikes against the lightly equipped and unprotected bodies of the Gauls, since it was upon these that Publius chiefly relied, and with these he did indeed work wonders. 8 For they laid hold of the long spears of the Parthians, and grappling with the men, pushed them from their horses, hard as it was to move them owing to the weight of their armour; and many of the Gauls forsook their own horses, and crawling under those of the enemy, stabbed them in the belly. These would rear up in their anguish, and die trampling on riders and foemen indiscriminately mingled. 9 But the Gauls were distressed above all things by the heat and their thirst, to both of which they were unused; and most of their horses had perished by being driven against the long spears. They were therefore compelled to retire upon the men-at arms, taking with them Publius, who was severely wounded. And seeing a sandy hillock near by, they all retired to it, and fastened their horses in the centre; then locking their shields together on the outside, they thought they could more easily defend themselves against the Barbarians. 10 But it turned out just the other way. For on level ground, the front ranks do, to some extent, afford relief to those who are behind them. But here, where the inequality of the ground raised one man above another, and lifted every man who was behind another into greater prominence, there was no such thing as escape, but they were all alike hit with arrows, bewailing their inglorious and ineffectual death.

11 Now there were with Publius two Greeks, of those who dwelt near by in Carrhae, Hieronymus and Nicomachus. These joined in trying to persuade him to slip away with them and make their escape to Ichnae, a city which had espoused the Roman cause and was not far off. But Publius, declaring that no death could have such terrors for him as to make him desert those who were perishing on his account, ordered them to save their own lives, bade them farewell, and dismissed them. Then he himself, being unable to use his hand, which had been pierced through with an arrow, presented his side to his shield-bearer and ordered him to strike home with his sword. 12 In like manner also Censorinus is said to have died; but Megabacchus took his own life, and so did the other most notable men. The survivors fought on until the Parthians mounted the hill and transfixed them with their long spears, and they say that not more than five hundred were taken alive. Then the Parthians cut off the head of Publius, and rode off at once to attack Crassus.

26 1 His situation was as follows. After ordering his son to charge the Parthians and receiving tidings that the enemy were routed to a great distance and hotly pursued, and after noticing also that his own immediate opponents were no longer pressing him so hard (since most of them had streamed away to where Publius was), he recovered a little courage, and drawing his troops together, posted them for safety on sloping ground, in immediate expectation that his son would return from the pursuit. 2 Of the messengers sent by Publius to his father, when he began to be in danger, the first fell in with the Barbarians and were slain; the next made their way through with difficulty and reported that Publius was lost unless he received speedy and abundant aid from his father. 3 And now Crassus was a prey to many conflicting emotions, and no longer looked at anything with calm judgement. His fear for the whole army drove him to refuse, and at the same time his yearning love for his son impelled him to grant assistance; but at last he began to move his forces forward.

At this point, however, the enemy came up with clamour and battle cries which made them more fearful than ever, and again many of their drums began bellowing about the Romans, who awaited the beginning of a second battle. 4 Besides, those of the enemy who carried the head of Publius fixed high upon a spear, rode close up and displayed it, scornfully asking after his parents and family, for surely, they said, it was not meet that Crassus, most base and cowardly of men, should be the father of a son so noble and of such splendid valour. This spectacle shattered and unstrung the spirits of the Romans more than all the rest of their terrible experiences, and they were all filled, not with a passion for revenge, as was to have been expected, but with shuddering and trembling. 5 And yet Crassus, as they say, showed more brilliant qualities in that awful hour than ever before, for he went up and down the ranks crying: “Mine, O Romans, is this sorrow, and mine alone; but the great fortune and glory of Rome abide unbroken and unconquered in you, who are alive and safe. And now if ye have any pity for me, thus bereft of the noblest of sons, show it by your wrath against the enemy. Rob them of their joy; avenge their cruelty; be not cast down at what had happened, for it must needs be that those who aim at great deeds should also suffer greatly. 6 It was not without bloody losses that even Lucullus overthrew Tigranes, or Scipio Antiochus; and our fathers of old lost a thousand ships off Sicily, and in Italy many imperators and generals, not one of whom, by his defeat, prevented them from afterwards mastering his conquerors. For it was not by good fortune merely that the Roman state reached its present plenitude of power, but by the patient endurance and valour of those who faced dangers in its behalf.”

27 1 Even as he spoke such words of encouragement, Crassus saw that not many of his men listened with any eagerness, but when he also bade them raise the battle cry, he discovered how despondent his army was, so weak, feeble, and uneven was the shout they made, while that which came from the Barbarians was clear and bold. Then, as the enemy got to work, their light cavalry rode round on the flanks of the Romans and shot them with arrows, while the mail-clad horsemen in front, plying their long spears, kept driving them together into a narrow space, except those who, to escape death from the arrows, made bold to rush desperately upon their foes. 2 These did little damage, but met with a speedy death from great and fatal wounds, since the spear which the Parthians thrust into the horses was heavy with steel, and often had impetus enough to pierce through two men at once. After fighting in this manner till night came on, the Parthians withdrew, saying that they would grant Crassus one night in which to bewail his son, unless, with a better regard for his own interests, he should consent to go to Arsaces instead of being carried there.

3 The Parthians, then, bivouacked near by, and were in high hopes; but it was a grievous night for the Romans. They took no steps to bury their dead nor to care for their wounded and dying, but every man was lamenting his own fate. Escape seemed impossible, whether they waited there for day to come, or plunged by night into a limitless plain. And their wounded caused them much perplexity: they were sure to impede flight if they were carried away, and if they were left behind, their cries would herald to the enemy the retreat of their companions. 4 Although the soldiers held Crassus to blame for all their ills, still they yearned to see his face and hear his voice. But he was lying on the ground by himself, enveloped in darkness, to the multitude an illustration of the ways of fortune, but to the wise an example of foolish ambition, which would not let him rest satisfied to be first and greatest among many myriads of men, but made him think, because he was judged inferior to two men only, that he lacked everything.

5 At this time, then, Octavius the legate and Cassius tried to rouse him up and encourage him. But since he was in utter despair, they called together on their own authority the centurions and captains, and when they had decided, upon deliberation, not to remain where they were, they put the army in motion without trumpet signal, and in silence at first. Then the sick and wounded perceived that their comrades were abandoning them, and dreadful disorder and confusion, accompanied by groans and shouts, filled the camp. 6 And after this, as they tried to advance, disorder and panic seized upon them, for they felt sure that the enemy was coming against them. Frequently they would change their course, frequently they would form in order of battle, some of the wounded who followed them had to be taken up, and others to be laid down, and so all were delayed, except three hundred horsemen under Ignatius, who reached Carrhae about midnight. 7 Ignatius hailed the sentinels on the walls in the Roman tongue, and when they answered, ordered them to tell Coponius, their commander, that there had been a great battle between Crassus and the Parthians. Then, without another word, and without even telling who he was, he rode off to Zeugma. He saved himself and his men, but got a bad name for deserting his general. 8 However, the message shouted to Coponius at that time was of some advantage to Crassus. For Coponius, concluding that the haste and brevity of the message argued a bearer of no good news, ordered his men to arm forthwith, and as soon as he learned that Crassus was on the march, he went out to meet him, relieved him, and escorted his army into the city.

28 1 During the night the Parthians, although they were aware of the flight of the Romans, did not pursue; but as soon as day came, they attacked and slaughtered those who had been left behind in the Roman camp, to the number of four thousand, and then rode about and seized many who were wandering in the plain. 2 Four cohorts together, also, which Vargontinus the legate had suffered to get detached from the main body while it was still dark, and which had lost their way, were surrounded on a sort of hill, and cut to pieces as they fought, all except twenty men. The Parthians, admiring these men, who tried to push their way through them with drawn swords, made way for them and suffered them to pass through and march deliberately to Carrhae.

A false report now reached Surena that Crassus, along with the men of highest rank, had made his escape, and that the fugitives who had streamed into Carrhae were a mixed rabble unworthy of his notice.  Supposing, therefore, that he had lost the fruits of his victory, but being still in doubt and wishing to learn the truth, in order that he might either wait there and lay siege to Crassus in the city, or else let Carrhae alone and pursue him, he sent one of his attendants who could speak both languages up to the walls, with orders to call out in the Roman tongue for Crassus himself or Cassius, saying that Surena wished to have a conference with them. 4 The interpreter gave this message, and when it was reported to Crassus, he accepted the invitation. A little while afterwards there came from the Barbarians some Arabs, who knew Crassus and Cassius well by sight, having been in their camp before the battle. When these men saw Crassus on the wall, they said that Surena proposed a truce, and offered them safe conduct if they would be friends of the king and leave Mesopotamia; for this he saw was more advantageous to both parties than any resort to extreme measures. 5 Cassius accepted the proposal, and asked that time and place be fixed for a conference between Surena and Crassus. The men said that this should be done, and rode away.

29 1 Now Surena was delighted that the men were where he could besiege them, and when day came, he led his Parthians up against the city. With many insults they ordered the Romans, if they wished to obtain a truce, to deliver Crassus and Cassius into their hands in fetters. 2 The Romans were distressed to find themselves deceived, and telling Crassus to abandon his distant and vain hopes of aid from the Armenians, prepared for flight, of which none of the men of Carrhae were to know beforehand. But Andromachus, the most faithless of men, learned of it, for Crassus not only confided the secret to him, but made him the guide for the journey. Accordingly, everything was known to the Parthians, for Andromachus reported to them all the details. 3 But since it is not the custom, and so not easy, for the Parthians to fight by night, and since Crassus set out by night, Andromachus, by leading the fugitives now by one route and now by another, contrived that the pursuers should not be left far behind, and finally he diverted the march into deep marshes and regions full of ditches, thus making it difficult and circuitous for those who still followed him. 4 For there were some who conjectured that the twisting and turning of Andromachus boded no good, and therefore did not follow him. Crassus, indeed, went back again to Carrhae, and when his guides, who were Arabs, urged him to wait there until the moon had passed the Scorpion, he said that he feared the Archer even more than the Scorpion, and rode off into Syria with five hundred horsemen. 5 And others, too, employing trusty guides, reached a hill country called Sinnaca, and established themselves in safety before day came. These were about five thousand men, and they were led by Octavius, a brave man.

But day found Crassus a prey to the wiles of Andromachus in the difficult places and the marsh. 6 There were with him four cohorts of men-at arms, a few horsemen all told, and five lictors. With these he got back into the road, with great difficulty, when the enemy at once pressed upon him, and since he was about twelve furlongs short of a junction with Octavius, he took refuge on another hill, not so difficult for cavalry nor yet so strong a position, but one that lay below Sinnaca and was connected with it by a long ridge running through the midst of the plain. His danger was therefore to be seen by Octavius. 7 And Octavius ran first with a few men to bring him aid from the higher ground; then the rest of his men, reproaching themselves with cowardice, plunged forward, and falling upon the enemy and sweeping them from the hill, enveloped Crassus round about, and covered him with their shields, boldly declaring that no Parthian missile should smite their imperator until they had all died fighting in his defence.

30 1 And now Surena, observing that his Parthians were already less impetuous in their attacks, and that if night should come on and the Romans should reach the hills, it would be altogether impossible to capture them, brought a stratagem to bear on Crassus. Some of his Roman captives were first released, who, while in his camp, had heard the Barbarians saying to one another, as they had been ordered to do, that the king did not wish the war between him and the Romans to be waged relentlessly, but preferred to regain their friendship by doing them the favour of treating Crassus kindly. 2 Then the Barbarians ceased fighting, and Surena with his chief officers rode quietly up the hill, unstrung his bow, held out his right hand, and invited Crassus to come to terms, saying: “I have put your valour and power to the test against the wishes of the king, who now of his own accord shows you the mildness and friendliness of his feelings by offering to make a truce with you if you will withdraw, and by affording you the means of safety.”

3 When Surena said this, the rest of the Romans eagerly accepted his proposal and were full of joy, but Crassus, whose every discomfiture at the hands of the Barbarians had been due to fraud, and who thought the suddenness of their change a strange thing, would not reply, but took the matter into consideration. 4 His soldiers, however, cried out and urged him to accept, then fell to abusing and reviling him for putting them forward to fight men with whom he himself had not the courage to confer even when they came unarmed. At first he tried entreaties and arguments. If they would hold out for what was left of the day, during the night they could reach the mountains and rough country; and he showed them the road thither, and exhorted them not to abandon hope when safety was so near. 5 But when they grew angry with him, and clashed their arms together, and threatened him, then he was terrified and began to go towards Surena. As he went, however, he turned and said: “Octavius and Petronius and ye other Roman commanders here present, ye see that I go because I must, and ye are eyewitnesses of the shameful violence I suffer; but tell the world, if ye get safely home, that Crassus perished because he was deceived by his enemies, and not because he was delivered up to them by his countrymen.”

31 1 Octavius, however, and those about him, did not remain, but went down from the hill with Crassus; the lictors, who were following him, Crassus drove back. The first of the Barbarians to meet him were two half-breed Greeks,b who leaped from their horses and made obeisance to him; then addressing him in the Greek tongue, they urged him to send a party forward to assure themselves that Surena and those about him were advancing to the conference without armour and without weapons. 2 Crassus replied that if he had the least concern for his life, he would not have come into their hands; but nevertheless he sent two Roscii, brothers, to enquire on what terms and in what numbers they should hold their meeting. These men were promptly seized and detained by Surena, while he himself with his chief officers advanced on horseback, saying: “What is this? the Roman imperator on foot, while we are mounted?” Then he ordered a horse to be brought for Crassus. 3 And when Crassus answered that neither of them was at fault, since each was following the custom of his country in this meeting, Surena said that from that moment there was a truce and peace between King Hyrodes and the Romans, but it was necessary to go forward to the river Euphrates and there have the contracts put in writing; “for you Romans at least,” said he, “are not very mindful of agreements,” and he held out his right hand to Crassus. Then when Crassus proposed to send for a horse, Surena said there was no need of it, “for the king offers you this one.” 4 At the same time a horse with gold-studded bridle stood at Crassus’s side, and the grooms lifted Crassus up and mounted him, and then ran along by him, quickening his horse’s pace with blows. Octavius was first to seize the bridle, and after him Petronius, one of the legionary tribunes; then the rest of the Romans in the party surrounded the horse, trying to stop him, and dragging away those who crowded in upon Crassus on either side. 5 Scuffling followed, and a tumult, then blows. Octavius drew his sword and slew the groom of one of the Barbarians, but another smote Octavius down from behind. Petronius had no offensive weapons, but when he was struck on the breastplate, leaped down from his horse unwounded. Crassus was killed by a Parthian named Pomaxathres.

6 Some, however, say that it was not this man, but another, who killed Crassus, and that this man cut off the head and right hand of Crassus as he lay upon the ground. These details, however, are matters of conjecture rather than of knowledge. For of the Romans who were present there and fighting about Crassus, some were slain, and others fled back to the hill. 7 Thither the Parthians came and said that as for Crassus, he had met with his deserts, but that Surena ordered the rest of the Romans to come down without fear. Thereupon some of them went down and delivered themselves up, but the rest scattered during the night, and of these a very few made their escape; the rest of them were hunted down by the Arabs, captured, and cut to pieces. In the whole campaign, twenty thousand are said to have been killed, and ten thousand to have been taken alive.

32 1 Surena now took the head and hand of Crassus and sent them to Hyrodes in Armenia, but he himself sent word by messengers to Seleucia that he was bringing Crassus there alive, and prepared a laughable sort of procession which he insultingly called a triumph. 2 That one of his captives who bore the greatest likeness to Crassus, Caius Paccianus, put on a woman’s royal robe, and under instructions to answer to the name of Crassus and the title of Imperator when so addressed, was conducted along on horseback. Before him rode trumpeters and a few lictors borne on camels; from the fasces of the lictors purses were suspended, and to their axes were fastened Roman heads newly cut off; 3 behind these followed courtezans of Seleucia, musicians, who sang many scurrilous and ridiculous songs about the effeminacy and cowardice of Crassus; and these things were for all to see.

But before the assembled senate of Seleucia, Surena brought licentious books of the “Milesiaca” of Aristides, and in this matter, at least, there was no falsehood on his part, for the books were found in the baggage of Roscius, and gave Surena occasion to heap much insulting ridicule upon the Romans, since they could not, even when going to war, let such subjects and writings alone. 4 The people of Seleucia, however, appreciated the wisdom of Aesop when they saw Surena with a wallet of obscenities from the “Milesiaca” in front of him, but trailing behind him a Parthian Sybaris in so many waggon-loads of concubines. After a fashion his train was a counterpart to the fabled echidnae and scytalae among serpents, by showing its conspicuous and forward portions fearful and savage, with spears, archery, and horse, 5 but trailing off in the rear of the line into dances, cymbals, lutes, and nocturnal revels with women. Roscius was certainly culpable, but it was shameless in the Parthians to find fault with the “Milesiaca,” when many of the royal line of their Arsacidae were sprung from Milesian and Ionian courtezans.

33 1 While this was going on, it happened that Hyrodes was at last reconciled with Artavasdes the Armenian, and agreed to receive the latter’s sister as wife for his son Pacorus, and there were reciprocal banquets and drinking bouts, at which many Greek compositions were introduced. 2 For Hyrodes was well acquainted both with the Greek language and literature, and Artavasdes actually composed tragedies, and wrote orations and histories, some of which are preserved. Now when the head of Crassus was brought to the king’s door, the tables had been removed, and a tragic actor, Jason by name, of Tralles, was singing that part of the “Bacchae” of Euripides where Agave is about to appear. While he was receiving his applause, Sillaces stood at the door of the banqueting-hall, and after a low obeisance, cast the head of Crassus into the centre of the company. 3 The Parthians lifted it up with clapping of hands and shouts of joy, and at the king’s bidding his servants gave Sillaces a seat at the banquet. Then Jason handed his costume of Pentheus to one of the chorus, seized the head of Crassus, and assuming the role of the frenzied Agave, sang these verses through as if inspired:

“We bring from the mountain

A tendril fresh-cut to the palace,

A wonderful prey.”

4 This delighted everybody; but when the following dialogue with the chorus was chanted:

(Chorus)

(Agave)”Who slew him?”

“Mine is the honour,”

Pomaxathres, who happened to be one of the banqueters, sprang up and laid hold of the head, feeling that it was more appropriate for him to say this than for Jason. The king was delighted, and bestowed on Pomaxathres the customary gifts, while to Jason he gave a talent. With such a farce as this the expedition of Crassus is said to have closed, just like a tragedy.

5 However, worthy punishment overtook both Hyrodes for his cruelty and Surena for his treachery. For not long after this Hyrodes became jealous of the reputation of Surena, and put him to death; and after Hyrodes had lost his son Pacorus, who was defeated in battle by the Romans, and had fallen into a disease which resulted in dropsy, his son Phraates plotted against his life and gave him aconite. And when the disease absorbed the poison so that it was thrown off with it and the patient thereby relieved, Phraates took the shortest path and strangled his father.

Comparison of Nicias and Crassus

565 1 1 In comparing the men, first, the wealth of Nicias was acquired in a more blameless manner than that of Crassus. For although it is true that the working of mines cannot be highly regarded, since most of it is carried on by employing malefactors or Barbarians, some of whom are kept in chains and done to death in damp and unwholesome places, still, when compared with the public confiscations of Sulla and the making of contracts where fire is raging, it will appear in the most favourable light. 2 For Crassus openly utilized these opportunities as men do agriculture and money-lending. And as for the practices which he denied when on trial, namely, taking bribes for his voice in the senate, wronging the allies, circumventing weak women with his flatteries, and aiding base men to cloak their iniquities, no such charges, even though false, were ever made against Nicias; nay, he was rather laughed at for spending his money lavishly on informers out of cowardice, a practice unbecoming, perhaps, in a Pericles and an Aristides, but necessary for him, since he was not well stocked with courage. 3 And for this practice Lycurgus the orator, in later times, boldly took to himself credit before the people, when accused of buying up one of these informers; “I am glad indeed,” he said, that after such a long political career among you, I have been detected in giving rather than receiving money.”

4 As for their outlays of money, Nicias was more public spirited in his noble ambition to make offerings to the gods and provide the people with gymnastic exhibitions and trained choruses; and yet his whole estate, together with his expenditures, was not a tithe of what Crassus expended when he feasted so many myriads of men at once, and then furnished them with food afterwards. I am therefore amazed that anyone should fail to perceive that vice is a sort of inequality and incongruity of character, when he sees men amassing money shamefully and squandering it uselessly.

2 1 So much regarding their wealth. And now in their political careers, no chicanery nor injustice, no violence nor harshness attaches to Nicias, but he was deceived the rather by Alcibiades, and made his appeals to the people with too much caution. Whereas Crassus is accused of much ungenerous faithlessness in his vacillations between friends and enemies; and as for violence, he himself could not deny that when he stood for the consulship, he hired men to lay hands on Cato and Domitius. 2 And in the assembly which voted on the allotment of the provinces, many were wounded and four killed; and Crassus himself (a fact which escaped us in the narrative of his life), when Lucius Annalius, a senator, was speaking in opposition, smote him in the face with his fist and drove him bleeding from the forum.

3 But if Crassus was violent and tyrannical in these matters, Nicias went to the other extreme. His timidity and cowardice in the public service, and his subservience to the basest men, deserve the severest censure. Crassus, indeed, showed a certain loftiness and largeness of spirit in this regard, for he contended not with men like Cleon and Hyperbolus, far from it, but against the brilliant Caesar, and against Pompey with his three triumphs; and he did not shrink from their path, but made himself a match for each in power, and in the dignity of his censorial office actually surpassed Pompey. 4 For in the supreme struggles of a political career one must not adopt a course which awakens no envy, but one which dazzles men, throwing envy into the shade by the greatness of one’s power. But if, like Nicias, you set your heart above all else on security and quiet, and fear Alcibiades on the bema, and the Lacedaemonians at Pylos, and Perdiccas in Thrace, then there is ample room in the city where you can sit at leisure, removed from all activity, and “weaving for yourself,” as sundry Sophists say, “a crown of tranquillity.” 5 His love of peace, indeed, had something godlike about it, and his putting a stop to the war was a political achievement most truly Hellenic in its scope. And because Nicias did this, Crassus is not worthy of comparison with him, nor would he have been even though in his ardour he had made the Caspian Sea or the Indian Ocean a boundary of the Roman empire.

3 1 When, however, a man wields superior power in a city which is open to the appeals of virtue, he should not give a footing to the base, nor command to those who are no commanders at all, nor confidence to those who deserve no confidence. But this is just what Nicias did when, of his own motion, he set Cleon in command of the army, a man who was nothing more to the city than a shameless brawler from the bema. 2 I do not, indeed, commend Crassus, in the war with Spartacus, for pressing forward into action with greater speed than safety, although it was natural for a man of his ambition to fear that Pompey would come and rob him of his glory, just as Mummius had robbed Metellus of Corinth; but the conduct of Nicias was altogether strange and terrible. For it was not while it afforded him good hopes of success, or even of ease, that he renounced his ambition to hold the command in favour of his enemy, but when he saw that his generalship involved him in great peril, then he was content to betray the common good at the price of his own safety. 3 And yet Themistocles, during the Persian wars, to prevent a worthless and senseless man from ruining the city as one of its generals, bought him off from the office; and Cato stood for the tribuneship when he saw that it would involve him in the greatest toil and danger in behalf of the city. 4 Nicias, on the other hand, kept himself in the command against Minoa, and Cythera, and the wretched Melians, but when it was necessary to fight the Lacedaemonians, stripped off his general’s cloak, handed over to the inexperience and rashness of Cleon ships, men, arms, and a command requiring the utmost experience, and so betrayed not only his own reputation, but the security and safety of his own country. 5 Wherefore he was afterwards forced, against his wish and inclination, to wage war on Syracuse, for it was thought to be no calculation of what was expedient, but merely his love of ease and lack of spirit which made him use all his efforts to rob the city of Sicily.

There is, however, this proof of his great reasonableness, namely, that although he was always averse to war and avoided military command, the Athenians ceased not to elect him to it, believing him to be their most experienced and best general. 6 Whereas Crassus, though he was all the while eager for military command, did not succeed in getting it except in the servile war, and then of necessity, because Pompey and Metellus and both the Luculli were away. And yet by that time he had acquired the greatest honour and influence in the city. But it would seem that even his best friends thought him, in the words of the comic poet, “The bravest warrior everywhere but in the field.” 7 And yet this did not prevent the Romans from being overwhelmed by his ambitious love of command. For the Athenians sent Nicias out to the war against his will; but the Romans were led out by Crassus against theirs. It was owing to Crassus that his city, but to his city that Nicias, suffered misfortune.

4 1 However, in this there is more ground for praising Nicias than for blaming Crassus. The former brought into play the experience and calculation of a wise leader, and did not share the deceitful hopes of his fellow-citizens, but insisted that it was beyond his power to take Sicily; whereas Crassus made the mistake of entering upon the Parthian war as a very easy undertaking. 2 And yet his aims were high; while Caesar was subduing the West, — Gaul and Germany and Britain, — he insisted on marching against the East and India, and on completing the reduction of Asia which had been begun by Pompey and Lucullus. Now these were men of good intentions and honourably disposed towards all, and yet they elected the same course as Crassus, and adopted the same principles. 3 For Pompey met with opposition from the senate when his province was allotted to him, and when Caesar routed three hundred thousand Germans, Cato moved in the senate that he should be delivered up to those whom he had vanquished, and so bring upon his own head the punishment for his breach of faith; but the people turned contemptuously from Cato, sacrificed to the gods for fifteen days in honour of Caesar’s victory, and were full of joy. 4 What, then, would have been their feelings, and for how many days would they have sacrificed to the gods, if Crassus had written to them from Babylon that he was victorious, and had then overrun Media, Persia, Hyrcania, Susa, and Bactria, and declared them Roman provinces? “For if wrong must be done,” as Euripides says, when men cannot keep quiet, and know not how to enjoy contentedly the blessings which they already have, 5 not in beating up fugitive Aeginetans, who have forsaken their own, and hidden themselves away like birds in another territory, but let a high price be demanded for the wrongdoing, and let not justice be thrown to the winds lightly, nor on the first best terms, as if it were some trifling or insignificant thing. Those who have praise for Alexander’s expedition, but blame for that of Crassus, unfairly judge of a beginning by its end.

5 1 As to the actual conduct of their expeditions, Nicias has not a little to his credit, for he conquered his enemies in many battles, and barely missed taking Syracuse, and not all his failures were due to himself, but they might be ascribed to his disease and to the jealousy of his fellow-citizens at home; but Crassus made so many blunders that he gave fortune no chance to favour him. We may not therefore wonder that his imbecility succumbed to the power of the Parthians, but rather that it prevailed over the usual good fortune of the Romans.

2 Since one of them was wholly given over to divination, and the other wholly neglected it, and both alike perished, it is hard to draw a safe conclusion from the premises; but failure from caution, going hand in hand with ancient and prevalent opinion, is more reasonable than lawlessness and obstinacy.

In his end, however, Crassus was the less worthy of reproach. He did not surrender himself, nor was he bound, nor yet beguiled, but yielded to the entreaties of his friends, and fell a prey to the perfidy of his enemies; whereas Nicias was led by the hope of a shameful and inglorious safety to put himself into the hands of his enemies, thereby making his death a greater disgrace for him.

Eumenes

583 1 1 Eumenes of Cardia, according to Duris, was the son of a man whom poverty drove to be a waggoner, in the Thracian Chersonesus, but received a liberal education in literature and athletics. While he was still a boy, Duris says further, Philip, who was sojourning in the place and had an hour of leisure, came to see the young men and boys of Cardia exercising in the pancratium and in wrestling, among whom Eumenes had such success and gave such proofs of intelligence and bravery that he pleased Philip and was taken into his following. 2 But in my opinion those historians tell a more probable story who say that a tie of guest-friendship with his father led Philip to give advancement to Eumenes. After Philip’s death Eumenes was thought to be inferior to none of Alexander’s followers in sagacity and fidelity, and though he had only the title of chief secretary, he was held in as much honour as the king’s principal friends and intimates, so that on the Indian expedition he was actually sent out as general with a force under his own orders, and received the command in the cavalry which Perdiccas had held, when Perdiccas, after Hephaestion’s death, was advanced to that officer’s position. 3 Therefore when Neoptolemus, the commander of the Shield-bearers, after Alexander’s death, said that he had followed the king with shield and spear, but Eumenes with pen and paper, the Macedonians laughed him to scorn; they knew that, besides his other honours, Eumenes had been deemed worthy by the king of relationship in marriage. For Barsiné the daughter of Artabazus, the first woman whom Alexander knew in Asia, and by whom he had a son, Heracles, had two sisters; of these Alexander gave one, Apama, to Ptolemy, and the other, also called Barsiné, to Eumenes. This was at the time when he distributed the other Persian women as consorts among his companions.

2 1 However, Eumenes was often in collision with Alexander, and he got himself into danger through Hephaestion. In the first place, for instance, when Hephaestion assigned to Euius the flute-player the quarters which his servants had already taken up for Eumenes, Eumenes, accompanied by Mentor, came in a passion to Alexander and cried out that it was best for him to throw away his arms and be a flute-player or a tragic actor. The immediate result was that Alexander shared his indignation and heaped abuse upon Hephaestion. Soon, however, he changed his mind and was angry with Eumenes, feeling that he had indulged in insolence towards himself more than in bold words against Hephaestion.

2 Again, when Alexander was sending out Nearchus with a fleet to explore the outer sea, he asked money of his friends, since the royal treasury was empty. Eumenes was asked for three hundred talents, but gave only a hundred, and said that even these had been slowly and with difficulty collected for him by his stewards. Alexander made no reproaches, nor did he take the money, but ordered his servants secretly to set fire to the tent of Eumenes, wishing to take its owner in a manifest lie when the treasure was carried out of it. 3 But before that could be done the tent was consumed, and the destruction of his papers made Alexander repent him of his orders. Still, the gold and silver that was melted down by the fire was found to be more than a thousand talents’ worth. Alexander took none of it, however, but actually wrote to his satraps and generals everywhere to send copies of the documents that had been destroyed, and ordered Eumenes to take them all in charge.

4 And still again, Eumenes had a quarrel with Hephaestion about a certain gift, and much abusive language passed between them. At the time, indeed, Eumenes was no less in favour than before; but a little while afterwards Hephaestion died, and the king, in his bitter sorrow, dealt harshly and was severe with all who, as he thought, had been jealous of his favourite while he lived and now rejoiced at his death. Eumenes, in particular, he suspected of such feelings, and often reproached him for his former quarrels with Hephaestion and his abusive language towards him. 5 But Eumenes, who was wily and persuasive, tried to make what threatened his ruin conduce to his salvation. He sought refuge, namely, in Alexander’s ardent gratitude towards Hephaestion, suggesting honours which were most likely to adorn the memory of the deceased, and contributing money for the construction of his tomb lavishly and readily.

3 1 When Alexander was dead and a quarrel had arisen between the Macedonian men-at war and his principal officers, or companions, Eumenes sided with the latter in his opinions, but in what he said he was a kind of common friend to both and held himself aloof from the quarrel, on the ground that it was no business of his, since he was a stranger, to meddle in disputes of Macedonians. Moreover, when the rest of the principal officers had withdrawn from Babylon, he remained behind in the city and mollified many of the men-at war and made them more disposed towards a settlement of the quarrel. 2 And when the officers, having conferred with one another, brought their first tumultuous proceedings to an end, and were distributing satrapies and commands, Eumenes received Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, and the southern coast of the Euxine sea as far as Trapezus. It is true that at the time this territory was not subject to the Macedonians, for Ariarathes held royal sway over it; but Leonnatus and Antigonus, with a great army, were to conduct Eumenes thither and declare him satrap of the country.

3 Now, Antigonus paid no heed to the edicts of Perdiccas, being already lifted up in his ambitions and scorning all his associates; but Leonnatus came down from the interior into Phrygia in order to undertake the expedition in behalf of Eumenes. Here, however, Hecataeus the tyrant of Cardia joined him and besought him to go rather to the assistance of Antipater and the Macedonians besieged in Lamia. Leonnatus therefore determined to cross over to Greece, invited Eumenes to go with him, and tried to reconcile him with Hecataeus. 4 For they had a hereditary distrust of one another arising from political differences; and frequently Eumenes had been known to denounce Hecataeus when a tyrant and to exhort Alexander to restore its freedom to Cardia. Therefore at this time also Eumenes declined to go on the expedition against the Greeks, saying he was afraid that Antipater, who had long hated him, would kill him to please Hecataeus. Then Leonnatus took him into his confidence and revealed to him all his purposes. 5 Assistance to Antipater, namely, was what he alleged as a pretext for his expedition, but he really meant, as soon as he had crossed into Europe, to lay claim to Macedonia; and he showed certain letters from Cleopatra in which she invited him to come to Pella and promised to marry him. But Eumenes, either because he was afraid of Antipater, or because he despaired of Leonnatus as a capricious man full of uncertain and rash impulses, took his own equipment and decamped by night. And he had three hundred horsemen, two hundred armed camp-followers, and in gold what would amount to five thousand talents of money. 6 With this equipment he fled to Perdiccas, and by telling him of the designs of Leonnatus at once enjoyed great influence with him and was made a member of his council. Moreover, a little while after he was conducted into Cappadocia with an army which Perdiccas commanded in person. There Ariarathes was taken prisoner, the country was brought into subjection, and Eumenes was proclaimed satrap. 7 He entrusted the cities of the country to his own friends, appointed commanders of garrisons, left behind him such judges and administrators as he wished, Perdiccas not at all interfering in these matters, and then marched away with Perdiccas, desiring to pay court to that general, and not wishing to be separated from the kings.

4 1 However, Perdiccas felt confident of carrying out his projects by himself, and thought that the country they had left behind them needed an efficient and faithful guardian, and therefore sent Eumenes back from Cilicia, ostensibly to his own satrapy, but really to reduce to obedience the adjacent country of Armenia, which had been thrown into confusion by Neoptolemus. 2 Accordingly, although Neoptolemus was a victim of ostentation and empty pride, Eumenes tried to constrain him by personal intercourse; then, finding that the Macedonian men-at war were conceited and bold, he raised a force of cavalry as a counterpoise to them by offering the natives of the country who were able to serve as horsemen immunity from contributions and tributes, 3 and by distributing horses that he had bought among those of his followers in whom he placed most confidence; the spirits of these men, too, he incited by honours and gifts, and developed their bodies by exercise and discipline; so that a part of the Macedonians were amazed, a part emboldened, when they saw that in a short time he had assembled about him no fewer than sixty-three hundred horsemen.

5 1 And when Craterus and Antipater, after overpowering the Greeks, were crossing into Asia to overthrow the power of Perdiccas, and were reported to be planning an invasion of Cappadocia, Perdiccas, who was himself heading an expedition against Ptolemy, appointed Eumenes commander of the forces in Armenia and Cappadocia with plenary powers. 2 He also sent letters on the subject, in which he commanded Alcetas and Neoptolemus to look to Eumenes for orders, and Eumenes to manage matters as he thought best. Alcetas, then, flatly refused to serve in the campaign, on the ground that the Macedonians under him were ashamed to fight Antipater, and were so well disposed to Craterus that they were ready to receive him with open arms. Neoptolemus, however, plotting treachery against Eumenes, was detected, and when he was summoned would not obey, but drew up his forces in battle array. 3 Here first did Eumenes reap the fruit of his forethought and preparation; for when his infantry had already been defeated, he routed Neoptolemus with his cavalry, and captured his baggage, and when the men-at war of Neoptolemus were scattered in pursuit of their enemies, charged upon them with his entire body of horse and compelled them to lay down their arms and make oath with him to serve under him.

4 Neoptolemus, then, collected a few of his men from the rout and fled to Craterus and Antipater. But they had already sent an embassy to Eumenes inviting him to come over to their side; he would enjoy possession of his present satrapies, would receive additional troops and territory from them, would become a friend to Antipater instead of an enemy, and would not become an enemy to Craterus instead of a friend. 5 On hearing this proposition Eumenes replied that he had been Antipater’s enemy from of old and could not now become his friend, when he saw him treating his friends as enemies, but that he was ready to reconcile Craterus with Perdiccas and bring the two together on just and equal terms; if, however, either undertook to overreach the other he would give aid to the injured party as long as he had breath, and would rather lose his life than his honour.

6 1 Craterus and Antipater, then, after getting this answer, were taking deliberate counsel about the whole situation, when Neoptolemus came to them after his flight, told them about the battle he had lost, and urged them to come to his aid, both of them if possible, but at any rate Craterus; for the Macedonians longed for him exceedingly, and if they should only see his cap and hear his voice, they would come to him with a rush, arms and all. 2 And indeed the name of Craterus was really great among them, and after the death of Alexander most of them had longed for him as their commander. They remembered that he had many times incurred the strong displeasure of Alexander himself in their behalf, by opposing his gradually increasing desire to adopt Persian customs, and by defending the manners of their country, which, thanks to the spread of luxury and pomp, were already being treated with contempt.

3 At the time of which I speak, then, Craterus sent Antipater into Cilicia, while he himself with a large part of the forces advanced with Neoptolemus against Eumenes. He thought that he should fall upon him when he was off his guard, and when, after their recent victory, his soldiers were in revelry and disorder. Now, that Eumenes should learn beforehand of his approach and get himself ready for it in advance, one might consider a mark of sober generalship, though not of superlative ability; 4 but that he should keep his enemies from getting any knowledge that would work him harm, and, besides this, that he should hurl his soldiers upon Craterus before they knew with whom they were fighting, and conceal from them the name of the opposing general, seems to me to have been an exploit peculiar to this commander. He gave out word, then, that Neoptolemus was once more coming against him, with Pigres, and that they had a force of Paphlagonian and Cappadocian cavalry. One night he was planning to decamp and then fell asleep and had a strange vision. 5 He dreamed, namely, that he saw two Alexanders ready to give each other battle, each at the head of a phalanx; then Athena came to help the one, and Demeter the other, and after a fierce struggle the one who had Athena for a helper was beaten, and Demeter, culling ears of grain, wove them into a wreath for the victor.

6 At once, then, he conjectured that the vision was in his favour, since he was fighting for a country that was most fertile and had at that time an abundance of fine young grain in the ear; for the land had everywhere been sown and bespoke a time of peace, now that its plains were covered with a luxuriant growth; and he was all the more strengthened in his belief when he learned that the enemy’s watchword was “Athena and Alexander.” Accordingly, he too gave out a watchword, namely, “Demeter and Alexander,” and ordered all his men to crown themselves and wreathe their arms with ears of grain. 7 But though he often felt an impulse to speak out and tell his principal officers who it was against whom their struggle was to be, and not to keep hidden away in his own breast alone a secret so important, nevertheless he abode by his first resolution and made his judgment surety for the peril.

7 1 However, he arrayed against Craterus not a single Macedonian, but two troops of foreign horse commanded by Pharnabazus the son of Artabazus and Phoenix of Tenedos, who had strict orders to charge at full speed when the enemy came into view and engage them at close quarters, without giving them a chance to withdraw or say anything, and without receiving any herald they might send. For he had strong fears that his Macedonians, if they recognized Craterus, would go over to him. 2 He himself, with a division of his best horsemen, three hundred in number, rode along to the right wing, where he purposed to attack Neoptolemus. When the forces of Eumenes had crossed the intervening hill and were seen coming on to the attack with a swift and impetuous dash, Craterus was dumbfounded and heaped much abuse upon Neoptolemus for having deceived him about the Macedonians changing sides; but he exhorted his officers to act like brave men, and he charged upon the enemy.

3 The first collision was severe, the spears were quickly shattered, and the fighting was done with the swords. Here Craterus did not disgrace Alexander, but slew many foes, and frequently routed the opposing arrays. At last, however, he was wounded by a Thracian who attacked him from the side, and fell from his horse. 4 As he lay prostrate there all his enemies rode past him, not knowing who he was, except Gorgias, one of the officers of Eumenes; he recognized him, dismounted from his horse, and stood guard over his body, for he was now in an evil plight and struggling with death. In the meantime Neoptolemus also was engaged with Eumenes. They had long hated one another with a deadly hatred, but in two onsets neither had caught sight of the other; in the third, however, they recognized each other, and at once drew their swords and with loud cries rode to the attack. 5 Their horses dashed together with the violence of colliding triremes, and dropping the reins they clutched one another with their hands, each trying to tear off the other’s helmet and strip the breastplate from his shoulders. While they were struggling, their horses ran from under them and they fell to the ground, where they closed with one another and wrestled for the mastery. 6 Then Eumenes, as Neoptolemus sought to rise first, gave him an undercut in the ham, and himself got to his feet before his adversary did; but Neoptolemus, supporting himself on one knee, and wounded in the other, defended himself vigorously from underneath. He could not, however, inflict fatal wounds, but was himself wounded in the neck, fell to the ground, and lay there prostrate. 7 His sword, however, he still retained, and while Eumenes, transported with rage and ancient hatred, was stripping off his armour and reviling him, Neoptolemus surprised him with a wound under the breastplate, where it reaches the groin. But the blow gave Eumenes more fright than harm, since lack of strength made it feeble.

After stripping the dead body, weak as he was from wounds received in legs and arms, Eumenes nevertheless had himself put upon his horse and hastened to the other wing, supposing that the enemy were still resisting. 8 But when he learned of the fate of Craterus and had ridden up to where he lay, and saw that he was still alive and conscious, he dismounted, wept bitterly, clasped his hand, and had many words of abuse for Neoptolemus, and many words of pity for Craterus in his evil fortune, and for himself in the necessity which had brought him into a conflict with a friend and comrade, where he must do or suffer this harm.

8 1 This battle was won by Eumenes about ten days after the former. It lifted his reputation high, and he was thought to have accomplished his task alike with wisdom and bravery; but it got him much envy and hatred as well among his allies as among his enemies. They felt that he, an alien and a stranger, had used the arms and might of the Macedonians for slaying the foremost and most approved of them. 2 Now, if Perdiccas could have learned in time of the death of Craterus, no one else would have had chief place among Macedonians; but as it was, he was slain in a mutiny of his soldiers in Egypt two days before the report of the battle came to his camp, and his Macedonians, in a rage, at once condemned Eumenes to death. Moreover, Antigonus was appointed to conduct the war against him, in conjunction with Antipater.

3 When Eumenes fell in with the royal herds of horse that were pasturing about Mount Ida, he took as many horses as he wanted and sent a written statement of the number to the overseers, at this, we are told, Antipater laughed and said that he admired Eumenes for his forethought, since he evidently expected to give an account of the royal properties to them, or to receive one from them. 4 Because he was superior in cavalry, Eumenes wished to give battle in the plains of Lydia about Sardis, and at the same time he was ambitious to make a display of his forces before Cleopatra; but at the request of that princess, who was afraid to give Antipater any cause for complaint, he marched away into upper Phrygia and wintered at Celaenae. Here Alcetas, Polemon, and Docimus strove emulously with him for the chief command, whereupon he said: “This bears out the saying, ‘Of perdition no account is made.’ “ 5 Moreover, having promised to give his soldiers their pay within three days, he sold them the homesteads and castles about the country, which were full of slaves and flocks. Then every captain in the phalanx or commander of mercenaries who had bought a place was supplied by Eumenes with implements and engines of war and took it by siege; and thus every soldier received the pay that was due him, in a distribution of the captured properties. 6 In consequence of this, Eumenes was again in high favour; and once when letters were found in his camp which the leaders of the enemy had caused to be scattered there, wherein they offered a hundred talents and honours to any one who should kill Eumenes, his Macedonians were highly incensed and made a decree that a thousand of the leading soldiers should serve him continually as a body-guard, watching over him when he went abroad and spending the night at his door. 7 These carried out the decree, and were delighted to receive from Eumenes such honours as kings bestow upon their friends. For he was empowered to distribute purple caps and military cloaks, and this was a special gift of royalty among Macedonians.

9 1 Now, prosperity lifts even men of inferior natures to higher thoughts, so that they appear to be invested with a certain greatness and majesty as they look down from their lofty state; but the truly magnanimous and constant soul reveals itself rather in its behaviour under disasters and misfortunes. 2 And so it was with Eumenes. For, to begin with, he was defeated by Antigonus at Orcynii in Cappadocia through treachery, and yet, though in flight, he did not suffer the traitor to make his escape out of the rout to the enemy, but seized and hanged him. Then, taking the opposite route in his flight to that of his pursuers, he changed his course before they knew it, and, passing along by them, came to the place where the battle had been fought. Here he encamped, collected the bodies of the dead, and burned them on pyres made from the doors of the neighbouring villages, which he had split into billets. He burned the bodies of the officers on one pyre, those of the common soldiers on another, heaped great mounds of earth over the ashes, and departed, so that even Antigonus, when he came up later, admired his boldness and constancy.

3 Again, when he came upon the baggage of Antigonus, and could easily have captured many freemen, many slaves, and wealth amassed from so many wars and plunderings, he was afraid that his men, if loaded down with booty and spoils, would become too heavy for flight, and too luxurious to endure wanderings and lapse of time. In lapse of time, however, he placed his chief hopes for ending the war, feeling that he could thus cause Antigonus to turn back. 4 But since it was quite a difficult matter to deflect his Macedonians from good things which were within their reach, he ordered them to refresh themselves and bait their horses before advancing upon the enemy. He himself, however, sent a secret message to Menander, who was in charge of the enemy’s baggage, implying that he was concerned for him as an old time friend and comrade, and advising him to be on his guard and withdraw as quickly as possible from his low-lying and accessible position to the foot-hills near by, which could not be reached by cavalry or surrounded. 5 Menander speedily comprehended his peril and decamped, and then Eumenes openly sent out scouts and ordered his soldiers to arm themselves and bridle their horses, as he was going to lead them against the enemy. But when the scouts brought word that Menander was altogether safe from capture now that he had taken refuge in a difficult region, Eumenes pretended to be vexed, and led his forces away. 6 And it is said that when Menander bore witness of these things to Antigonus, and the Macedonians began to praise Eumenes and felt more kindly towards him, because, when it was in his power to enslave their children and outrage their wives, he had spared them and let them go, Antigonus said: “Nay, my good men, that fellow did not let them go out of regard for you, but because he was afraid to put such fetters on himself in his flight.”

10 1 After this, as he wandered about and sought to elude his enemies, Eumenes persuaded most of his soldiers to leave him, either out of regard for them, or because he was unwilling to trail after him a body of men too small to give battle, and too large to escape the enemy’s notice. Moreover, after he had taken refuge in Nora, a stronghold on the confines of Lycaonia and Cappadocia, with five hundred horsemen and two hundred men-at war, even there again, whatsoever friends asked to be dismissed because they could not endure the asperities of the place and the constraint in diet, all these he sent away, after bestowing upon them tokens of affection and kindness. 2 And when Antigonus came up and invited him to a conference before the siege began, he replied that the friends of Antigonus and officers to succeeded Antigonus in command were many, whereas those in whose behalf he was fighting had no one left to command them after him; and he bade Antigonus to send hostages if he wanted to have a conference with him. Moreover, when Antigonus demanded to be addressed by him as a superior, Eumenes replied: “I regard no man as my superior so long as I am master of my sword.” 3 Nevertheless, after Antigonus had sent his nephew Ptolemy into the fortress, as Eumenes had demanded, Eumenes went down to meet him, and they embraced one another with greetings of friendship and affection, since they had formerly been close associates and intimate companions. A long conference was held, in which Eumenes made no mention of his own safety or peace, but actually demanded that he should be confirmed in the possession of his satrapies, and that what was his by gift should be restored to him. At this the bystanders were amazed, and they admired his lofty spirit and confidence. 4 But meanwhile many of the Macedonians came running together in their eagerness to see what sort of man Eumenes was; for no one else had been so much talked about in the army since the death of Craterus. Then Antigonus, afraid that Eumenes might suffer some violence, first loudly forbade the soldiers to approach, and pelted with stones those who were hurrying up, but finally threw his arms about Eumenes and, keeping off the throng with his bodyguards, with much ado removed him to a place of safety.

11 After this, Antigonus built a wall round Nora, left troops to guard it, and retired; Eumenes, however, although closely besieged in a stronghold which had grain, water in abundance, and salt, but no other edible, not even a relish to go with the grain, nevertheless, with what he had, managed to render the life of his associates cheerful, inviting them all by turns to his own table, and seasoning the meal thus shared with conversation which had charm and friendliness. 2 For he had a pleasant face, not like that of a war-worn veteran, but delicate and youthful, and all his body had, as it were, artistic proportions, with limbs of astonishing symmetry; and though he was not a powerful speaker, still he was insinuating and persuasive, as one may gather from his letters.

3 But most of all detrimental to his forces thus besieged was their narrow quarters, since their movements were confined to small houses and a place only two furlongs in circumference, so that neither men nor horses could get exercise before eating or being fed. Therefore, wishing to remove the weakness and languor with which their inactivity afflicted them, and, more than that, to have them somehow or other in training for flight, if opportunity should offer, 4 he assigned the men a house, the largest in the place, fourteen cubits long,a as a place to walk, ordering them little by little to increase their pace. And as for the horses, he had them all girt round the neck with great straps fastened to the roof, and raised them partly up into the air by means of pulleys, so, while with their hind legs they rested firmly upon the ground, they just touched it with the tips of their fore hoofs. 5 Then, while they were thus suspended, the grooms would stand at their sides and stir them up with shouts and strokes of the goad; and the horses, full of rage and fury, would dance and leap about on their hind legs, while with their swinging fore feet they would strike the ground and try to get a footing there, thus exerting their whole bodies and covering themselves with sweat and foam, — no bad exercise either for speed or strength. Then their barley would be thrown to them boiled, that they might the sooner dispatch and the better digest it.

12 1 But presently, as the siege dragged along, Antigonus learned that Antipater had died in Macedonia, and that matters were in confusion owing to the dissension between Cassander and Polysperchon.b He therefore cherished no longer an inferior hope, but embraced the whole empire in his scheme, and desired to have Eumenes as friend and helper in his undertakings. Accordingly, he sent Hieronymus to make a treaty with Eumenes, and proposed an oath for him to take. 2 This oath Eumenes corrected and then submitted it to the Macedonians who were besieging him, requesting them to decide which was the juster form. Antigonus, namely, for form’s sake, had mentioned the kings at the beginning of the oath, and then had made the rest of it refer to himself; but Eumenes wrote at the head of the oath the names of Olympias and the kings, and proposed to swear fealty, not to Antigonus alone, but also to Olympias and the kings, and to have the same enemies and friends as they. This was thought to be more just, and the Macedonians accordingly administered this oath of Eumenes, raised the siege, and sent to Antigonus, that he too, on his part, might take the oath to Eumenes.

3 Meanwhile, however, Eumenes gave back all the Cappadocian hostages whom he was holding in Nora, and received from those who came for them horses, beasts of burden, and tents. He also collected all the soldiers who had become scattered by his flight and were now wandering about the country, so that he had a force of almost a thousand horsemen. With these he set out in flight, being rightly in fear of Antigonus. For Antigonus not only ordered his Macedonians to wall him in again and besiege him, but also wrote back bitter reproaches to them for accepting the correction of the oath.

13 1 While Eumenes was in flight, letters were brought to him from those in Macedonia who feared the growing power of Antigonus. Olympias invited him to come and take charge of Alexander’s little son and rear him, feeling that plots were laid against his life; Polysperchon and Philip the king ordered him, as commander of the forces in Cappadocia, to wage war upon Antigonus, to take five hundred talents of the treasure at Quinda in reparation of his own losses, and to use as much of it as he wished for the war. 2 They had also written concerning these matters to Antigenes and Teutamus, the commanders of the Silver-shields. These men, on receiving their letters, ostensibly treated Eumenes with friendliness, but were plainly full of envy and contentiousness, disdaining to be second to him. Eumenes therefore allayed their envy by not taking the money, alleging that he had no need of it; 3 while upon their love of contention and love of command, seeing that they were as unable to lead as they were unwilling to follow, he brought superstition to bear.

He said, namely, that Alexander had appeared to him in a dream, had shown him a tent arrayed in royal fashion with a throne standing in it, and had then said that if they held their councils and transacted their business there, he himself would be present and would assist them in every plan and enterprise which they undertook in his name. Eumenes easily convinced Antigenes and Teutamus that this was true. They were unwilling to go to him, and he himself thought it undignified to be seen at the doors of others. 4 So they erected a royal tent, and a throne in it which they dedicated to Alexander, and there they met for deliberation on matters of highest importance.

And now, as they advanced into the interior of the country, Peucestas, who was a friend of Eumenes, met them with the other satraps, and they joined their forces, so that the number of their men and the splendour of their equipment raised the spirits of the Macedonians. But the leaders themselves had been made unmanageable by their exercise of power, and effeminate by their mode of life, after the death of Alexander, 5 and they brought into collision spirits that were tyrannical and fed on barbaric arrogance, so that they were harsh towards one another and hard to reconcile. Moreover, by flattering the Macedonian soldiery extravagantly and lavishing money upon them for banquets and sacrifices, in a short time they made the camp a hostelry of festal prodigality, and the army a mob to be cajoled into the election of its generals, as in a democracy. 6 Eumenes, however, perceiving that, while they despised one another, they feared him and were on the watch for an opportunity to kill him, pretended to be in need of money, and got together many talents by borrowing from those who hated him most, in order that they might put confidence in him and refrain from killing him out of regard for the money they had lent him. The consequence was that the wealth of others was his body-guard, and that, whereas men generally preserve their lives by giving, he alone won safety by receiving.

14 1 The Macedonians, however, while there was no danger, continued to take gifts from their corrupters, and hung about the doors of these men, who now had body-guards and wanted to be generals. But when Antigonus encamped near them with a large force and the situation called aloud for a real general, not only did the common soldiers attach themselves to Eumenes, but also those who were great only when peace and luxury prevailed, every man of them, gave in to him and consented without a murmur to hold post which he gave them. 2 And, indeed, when Antigonus tried to cross the river Pasitigris, none of the other commanders who were watching his movements was even aware of it, but Eumenes, and he alone, withstood him, joined battle with him, slew many of his men and filled the stream with dead bodies, and took four thousand prisoners. But most of all in connection with the sickness that befell him did the Macedonians make it clear that they considered the others able to feast them splendidly and hold high festival, but him alone capable of wielding command and waging war, 3 For Peucestas, having feasted them splendidly in Persis, and having given every man a victim for sacrifice, was expecting to be chief in command; and a few days afterwards, as the soldiers were marching against the enemy, it chanced that Eumenes, in consequence of a dangerous illness, was being carried along in a litter outside the ranks, where it was quiet and his sleep would not be broken. But after they had advanced a little way, suddenly the enemy were seen passing over some hills and descending into the plain. 4 The gleams of their golden armour in the sun flashed down from the heights as they marched along in close formation, and on the backs of the elephants the towers and purple trappings were seen, which was their array when going into battle. Accordingly, the foremost Macedonians halted in their march and called with loud cries for Eumenes, declaring that they would not go forward unless he was in command of them; and grounding their arms they passed word to one another to wait, and to their leaders to keep still, and without Eumenes not to give battle or run any hazard even with the enemy. 5 When Eumenes heard of this, he quickened the pace of his bearers to a run and came to them, and lifting the curtains of his litter on either side, stretched forth his hand in delight. And when the soldiers saw him, they hailed him at once in their Macedonian speech, caught up their shields, beat upon them with their spears, and raised their battle-cry, challenging the enemy to fight in the assurance that their leader was at hand.

15 1 Now Antigonus, hearing from his prisoners that Eumenes was sick and in such wretched plight as to be borne along in a litter, thought it no great task to crush the other commanders if Eumenes was sick. He therefore hastened to lead his army to battle. 2 But when, as the enemy were forming in battle order, he had ridden past their lines and observed their shape and disposition, he was amazed, and paused for some time; then the litter was seen as it was carried from one wing to the other. At this, Antigonus gave a loud laugh, as was his wont, and after saying to his friends, “This litter, it would seem, is what is arrayed against us,” immediately retired with his forces and pitched his camp.

3 But the Macedonians opposed to him, after getting a little respite, once more acted like a capricious mob, and, mocking at their leaders, distributed themselves in winter quarters over almost the whole of Gabene, so that the rear was separated from the van by almost a thousand furlongs. When Antigonus became aware of this, he set out suddenly against them, taking this time a road that was difficult and without water, but direct and short, hoping that, in case he fell upon them when they were scattered about in their winter quarters, it would no longer be easy for the mass of them to join their generals. But after he had entered an uninhabited country, dire winds and severe frosts gave trouble to his army and impeded their march. 4 The only help, therefore, was to burn many fires, and this was what revealed his presence to the enemy. For the Barbarians living on the mountains which overlooked the uninhabited tract, amazed at the number of fires, sent messengers on dromedaries to Peucestas. And he, when he heard the news, being himself quite out of his mind with fear and seeing that the other officers were in a like state, set out to fly, after rousing up those of their soldiers especially who were quartered along the route. 5 But Eumenes tried to put a stop to their confusion and panic fear, by promising so to check the speed of the enemy that they would come up three days later than they were expected. And when his hearers were persuaded, he sent round messengers with orders that the forces in winter quarters and elsewhere should assemble with all speed; at the same time, too, he himself rode for with the other commanders, took possession of a place which could be seen at a distance by such as traversed the desert, measured it off, and ordered many fires to be made at intervals, as in an encampment. 6 This was done, and when Antigonus saw these fires on the mountains, he was distressed and disheartened, supposing that his enemies had long been aware of his approach and were coming to meet him. In order, therefore, that he might not be forced to fight, when his men were worn and weary from their march, against those who had spent a comfortable winter and were ready for the conflict, he forsook the direct road and led his army through villages and cities, taking time to refresh it. 7 But when no one tried to obstruct his progress, the thing which usually happens when enemies are facing one another, and when the people round about said they had seen no army, but that the place was full of lighted fires, Antigonus perceived that he had been outgeneraled by Eumenes, and in deep resentment led his forces forward to try the issue in open battle.

16 1 But meanwhile most of the forces with Eumenes had assembled, and, admiring his sagacity, demanded that he should be sole commander. At this, Antigenes and Teutamus, the leaders of the Silver-shields, were filled with vexation and jealousy, so that they plotted against the life of Eumenes, and, assembling most of the satraps and generals, deliberated when and how they might put him out of the way. 2 They were unanimous in the decision to make every use of him in the ensuing battle, and after the battle to kill him at once. But Eudamus, the master of the elephants, and Phaedimus, secretly brought word to Eumenes of this decision; not that they were moved by any goodwill or kindness, but because they were anxious not to lose the money they had lent him. These men Eumenes commended, and then went off to his tent, where he said to his friends that he was living in a great herd of wild beasts. Then he made his will, and tore up and destroyed his papers; he did not wish that after his death, in consequence of the secrets contained in these documents, accusations and calumnies should be brought against his correspondents. 3 After this business had been finished, he deliberated whether to give over the victory to the enemy, or to take flight through Media and Armenia and invade Cappadocia. He came to no decision while his friends were with him, but after considering many expedients with a mind which was as versatile as his fortunes were changeable, he proceeded to draw up his forces, urging on the Greeks and the Barbarians, and himself exhorted by the phalanx and the Silver-shields to be of good courage, since, as they felt sure, the enemy would not withstand their attack. 4 And indeed they were the oldest soldiers of Philip and Alexander, war’s athletes as it were, without a defeat or a fall up to that time, many of them now seventy years old, and not a man younger than sixty. And so, when they charged upon the forces of Antigonus, they shouted; “It is against your fathers that ye sin, ye miscreants;” and falling upon them in a rage they crushed their whole phalanx at once, not a man withstanding them, and most of their opponents being cut to pieces at close quarters.

5 At this point, then, Antigonus was defeated overwhelmingly, but with his cavalry he got the upper hand; for Peucestas fought in a way that was altogether lax and ignoble, and Antigonus captured all the baggage. He was a man who kept cool in the presence of danger, and he was aided by the ground. 6 For the plain where they fought was vast, and its soil was neither deep nor trodden hard, but sandy and full of a dry and saline substance, which, loosened up by the trampling of so many horses and men during the battle, issued forth in a dust like lime, and this made the air all white and obscured the vision. Therefore it was easy for Antigonus to capture the enemy’s baggage unobserved.

17 1 After the battle was over, Teutamus at once sent an embassy to treat for the baggage. And when Antigonus promised not only to give this back to the Silver-shields but also to treat them kindly in other ways, the Silver-shields formed a dire design to put the man alive into the hands of his enemies. 2 So, to begin with, they drew near him, without awakening his suspicions, and kept him in ward, some making complaints about their baggage, others bidding him to be of good courage, since he was victorious, and others still denouncing their former commanders. Then they fell upon him, snatched their sword away from him, and tied his hands fast with his girdle. And when Nicanor had been sent by Antigonus to receive him and he was being led along through the Macedonians, he begged for leave to speak to them, not with a view to supplication or entreaty, but in order to set forth what was for their advantage.

3 Silence was made, and standing on an eminence he stretched forth his hands, bound as they were, and said: “What trophy, O ye basest of Macedonians, could Antigonus have so much desired to set up over your defeat, as this which ye yourselves are now erecting by delivering up your general as a prisoner? It is not a dreadful thing, then, that in the hour of your victory ye should acknowledge yourselves defeated for the sake of your baggage, implying that victory lies in your possessions and not in your arms, but ye must also send your leader as a ransom for that baggage. 4 As for me, then, ye lead me away undefeated, a victor over my enemies, a victim of my fellow-soldiers; but as for you, by Zeus the god of armies and by the gods who hallow oaths, I bid you slay me here with your own hands. Even should I be slain yonder, it will be wholly your work. Nor will Antigonus find any fault; for he wants a dead and not a living Eumenes. And if ye would spare your own hands, one of mine, if released, will suffice to do the business. 5 And if ye cannot trust me with a sword, cast me under the feet of your elephants, all bound as I am. If ye do this, I will absolve you from your guilt towards me, holding that ye have shown yourselves most just and righteous in your dealings with your own general.”

18 1 As Eumenes said this, the rest of the throng was overwhelmed with sorrow, and some wept, but the Silver-shields shouted to lead him along and pay no attention to his babbling; for it was not so dreadful a thing, they said, that a pest from the Chersonesus should come to grief for having harassed Macedonians with infinite wars, as that the best of the soldiers of Philip and Alexander, after all their toils, should in their old age be robbed of their rewards and get their support from others, and that their wives should be spending the third night now in the arms of their enemies. At the same time they led him along at a quickened pace.

2 But Antigonus, fearing their multitude (since no one had been left behind in the camp), sent out ten of his strongest elephants and a great number of Median and Parthian spearmen to drive away the throng. He himself could not endure to see Eumenes, by reason of their former intimate friendship, and when those who had received him asked how they should guard his person, he said: “Just as ye would an elephant or a lion.” 3 But after a little while he became compassionate and ordered the keepers to remove the prisoner’s heavy fetters and admit one of his personal servants to anoint him, and permitted any one of his friends who wished to spend the day with him and bring what he needed. Then he deliberated many days what to do with him, and considered various arguments and suggestions, Demetrius his son and Nearchus the Cretan being eager to save the life of Eumenes, while the rest, almost all of them, were insistent in urging that he be put to death.

4 We are told, also, that Eumenes asked his keeper, Onomarchus, why in the world Antigonus, now that he had got a hated enemy in his hands, neither killed him speedily nor generously set him free; and when Onomarchus insolently told him it was not now, but on the field of battle, that he should have faced death boldly, “Yea, by Zeus,” said Eumenes, “then, too, I did do; ask the men who fought with me; I know that none I met was a better man.” “Well, then, “ said Onomarchus, “since now thou hast found thy better, why canst thou not bide his time?”

19 1 When, then, Antigonus had decided to kill Eumenes, he gave orders to deprive him of food. And so, after two or three days of fasting, the prisoner began to draw nigh his end. But camp was suddenly broken and a man was sent to dispatch him. His body, however, was delivered to his friends by Antigonus, who permitted them to burn it and collect the ashes and place them in a silver urn, that they might be returned to his wife and children.

2 Eumenes thus slain, on no other man than Antigonus did Heaven devolve the punishment of the soldiers and commanders who betrayed him, but he himself, regarding the Silver-shields as impious and bestial men, put them into the violence of Sibyrtius the governor of Arachosia, ordering him to wear them out and destroy them in every possible way, that not a man of them might ever return to Macedonia or behold the Grecian sea.

Sertorius

1 1 It is perhaps not to be wondered at, since fortune is ever changing her course and time is infinite, that the same incidents should occur many times, spontaneously. For, if the multitude of elements is unlimited, fortune has in the abundance of her material an ample provider of coincidences; and if, on the other hand, there is a limited number of elements from which events are interwoven, the same things must happen many times, being brought to pass by the same agencies. 2 Now, there are some who delight to collect, from reading and hearsay, such accidental happenings as look like works of calculation and forethought. They note, for example, that there were two celebrated persons called Attis, one a Syrian, the other an Arcadian, and that both were killed by a wild boar; that there were two Actaeons, one of whom was torn in pieces by his dogs, the other by his lovers; that there were two Scipios, by one of whom the Carthaginians were conquered in an earlier war, and by the other, in a later war, were destroyed root and branch; 3 that Ilium was taken by Heracles on account of the horses of Laomedon, by Agamemnon by means of what is called the wooden horse, and a third time by Charidemus, because a horse fell in the gateway and prevented the Ilians from closing the gate quickly enough; that there are two cities which have the same name as the most fragrant plants, Ios and Smyrna, in one of which the poet Homer is said to have been born, and in the other to have died. 4 I will therefore make this addition to their collection. The most warlike of generals, and those who achieved most by a mixture of craft and ability, have been one-eyed men, — Philip, Antigonus, Hannibal, and the subject of this Life, Sertorius; of whom one might say that he was more continent with women than Philip, more faithful to his friends than Antigonus, 5 more merciful towards his enemies than Hannibal, and inferior to none of them in understanding, though in fortune to them all. Fortune he ever found harder to deal with than his open foes, and yet he made himself equal to the experience of Metellus, the daring of Pompey, the fortune of Sulla, and the power in Rome, though he was an exile and a stranger in command of Barbarians.

6 With him we may best compare, among the Greeks, Eumenes of Cardia. Both were born to command and given to wars of stratagem; both were exiled from their own countries, commanded foreign soldiers, and in their deaths experienced a fortune that was harsh and unjust; for both were the victims of plots, and were slain by the very men with whom they were conquering their foes.

2 1 Quintus Sertorius belonged to a family of some prominence in Nussa, a city of the Sabines. Having lost his father, he was properly reared by a widowed mother, of whom he appears to have been excessively fond. His mother’s name, we are told, was Rhea. As a result of his training he was sufficiently versed in judicial procedure, and acquired some influence also at Rome from his eloquence, although a mere youth; but his brilliant successes in war turned his ambition in this direction.

3 1 To begin with, when the Cimbri and Teutones invaded Gaul, he served under Caepio, and after the Romans had been defeated and put to flight, though he had lost his horse and had been wounded in the body, he made his way across the Rhone, swimming, shield and breastplate and all, against a strongly adverse current; so sturdy was his body and so inured to hardships by training. 2 In the next place, when the same enemies were coming up with many myriads of men and dreadful threats, so that for a Roman even to hold his post at such a time and obey his general was a great matter, while Marius was in command, Sertorius undertook to spy out the enemy. So, putting on a Celtic dress and acquiring the commonest expressions of that language for such conversation as might be necessary, he mingled with the Barbarians; and after seeing or hearing what was of importance, he came back to Marius. 3 At the time, then, he received a prize for valour; and since, during the rest of the campaign, he performed many deeds which showed both judgement and daring, he was advanced by his general to positions of honour and trust. After the war with the Cimbri and Teutones, he was sent out as military tribune by Didius the praetor to Spain, and spent the winter in Castulo, a city of the Celtiberians. 4 Here the soldiers shook off all discipline in the midst of plenty, and were drunk most of the time, so that the Barbarians came to despise them, and one night sent for aid from their neighbours, the Oritanians, and falling upon the Romans in their quarters began to kill them. But Sertorius with a few others slipped out, and assembled the soldiers who were making their escape, and surrounded the city. He found the gate by which the Barbarians had stolen in, but did not repeat their mistake; instead, he set a guard there, and then, taking possession of all quarters of the city, slew all the men who were of age to bear arms. 5 Then, when the slaughter was ended, he ordered all his soldiers to lay aside their own armour and clothing, to array themselves in those of the Barbarians, and then to follow him to the city from which the men came who had fallen upon them in the night. Having thus deceived the Barbarians by means of the armour which they saw, he found the gate of the city open, and caught a multitude of men who supposed they were coming forth to meet a successful party of friends and fellow citizens. Therefore most of the inhabitants were slaughtered by the Romans at the gate; the rest surrendered and were sold into slavery.

4 1 In consequence of this exploit the name of Sertorius was noised abroad in Spain; and as soon as he returned to Rome he was appointed quaestor of Cisalpine Gaul, and at a critical time. For the Marsic war was threatening, and he was ordered to levy troops and procure arms; to which task he brought such earnestness and celerity, as compared with the slowness and indolence of the other young men, that he got the reputation of a man whose life would be one of great achievement. 2 However, he did not remit the activities of a daring soldier after he had advanced to the dignity of a commander, but displayed astonishing deeds of prowess and exposed his person unsparingly in battle, in consequence of which he got a blow that cost him one of his eyes. But on this he actually prided himself at all times. Others, he said, could not always carry about with them the evidences of their brave deeds, but must lay aside their necklaces, spears, and wreaths; in his own case, on the contrary, the marks of his bravery remained with him, and when men saw what he had lost, they saw at the same time a proof of his valour. 3 The people also paid him fitting honours. For, when he came into the theatre, they received him with clapping of hands and shouts of welcome, testimonials which even those who were far advanced in years and honours could not easily obtain. Notwithstanding this, when he stood for the tribuneship, Sulla formed a party against him, and he lost the election; for which reason, apparently, he became an opponent of Sulla. 4 And so when Marius was overwhelmed by Sulla and went into exile, and Sulla had set out to wage war against Mithridates, and one of the consuls, Octavius, adhered to the party of Sulla, while the other, Cinna, who aimed at a revolution, tried to revive the drooping faction of Marius, Sertorius attached himself to Cinna, especially as he saw that Octavius was rather sluggish himself and distrustful of the friends of Marius. 5 A great battle was fought in the forum between the consuls, in which Octavius was victorious, and Cinna and Sertorius took to flight, after losing almost ten thousand men; and then, winning over to their side most of the troops still scattered about Italy, they soon made themselves able to cope with Octavius.

5 1 And when Marius sailed home from Libya and was proposing to serve under Cinna as a private citizen under a consul, the rest thought that his offer should be accepted, but Sertorius declared against it, either because he thought that Cinna would pay less attention to him when a man of greater military experience was at hand, or because he was afraid of the harshness of Marius, and feared that he would throw everything into confusion by a passion which knew no limits, and exceed the bounds of justice in the hour of victory. 2 Accordingly, he said that little remained for them to do, now that they were already victorious, and that if they received Marius he would appropriate to himself all the glory and the power, since he found it hard to share authority and was not to be trusted. Cinna replied that these considerations of Sertorius were sound, but that for his part he had perplexing scruples about rejecting Marius after having himself invited him to join their cause. To this Sertorius answered: 3 “Indeed, I for my part thought that Marius was come of his own accord into Italy, and so I was trying to discover what was advantageous in the matter; but in thy case it was not well to deliberate at all after the arrival of one whom thou thyself didst ask to come; nay, thou shouldst have received and employed him, since a pledge leaves room for no discussion.” So Cinna sent for Marius, the army was divided into three parts, and the three men held command.

4 When the war had been brought to an end, Cinna and Marius were filled with insolence and all bitterness, and made the evils of war appear as gold to the Romans; Sertorius alone, as we are told, neither killed any one to gratify his anger, nor waxed insolent with victory, but actually rebuked Marius, and by private interviews and entreaties made Cinna more moderate. 5 And finally, there were the slaves whom Marius had used as allies during the war and as body-guards of his tyranny. They had thus become powerful and rich, partly by the permission and under the orders of Marius, and partly through their lawless and violent treatment of their masters, whom they would slay, and then lie with their masters’ wives, and outrage their masters’ children. Such a state of things Sertorius felt to be unendurable, and therefore when the slaves were all encamped together he had them shot down with javelins, and they were as many as four thousand in number.

6 1 But presently Marius died; and shortly afterwards Cinna was murdered; and the younger Marius, against the wishes of Sertorius and contrary to the laws, assumed the consulship; and such men as Carbo, Norbanus, and Scipio were unsuccessfully opposing Sulla’s advance upon Rome; and the cause of the popular party was being ruined and lost, partly through the cowardice and weakness of its generals, and partly by treachery; 2 and there was no reason why Sertorius should remain to see matters go from bad to worse owing to the inferior judgement of those who had superior power. And finally, Sulla encamped near Scipio made friendly overtures, assuming that peace was to be made, and proceeded to corrupt his army. Sertorius warned Scipio of this plainly, but could not persuade him. At last, therefore, altogether despairing of the city, he set out for Spain, in order that, in case he should succeed in firmly establishing his power there, he might afford a refuge to those of his friends who were worsted at Rome.

3 After encountering grievous storms in mountainous regions, he was asked by the Barbarians to pay them tribute and purchase his passage. His companions were indignant, and considered it a terrible thing for a Roman pro-consul to render tribute to pestilent Barbarians; but Sertorius made light of what they thought a disgrace, and with the remark that he was purchasing time, than which nothing is more precious to a man bent on great achievements, he pacified the Barbarians with money, and then hastened on and took possession of Spain. 4 He found its peoples strong in numbers and in fighting men, and since the rapacity and insolence of the Roman officials sent thither from time to time had made them hostile to the empire in all its aspects, he tried to win them over, the chiefs by his personal intercourse with them, the masses by a remission of taxes. His greatest popularity, however, was won by ridding them of the necessity for furnishing quarters for soldiers; for he compelled his soldiers to build their winter-quarters in the suburbs of the cities, and he himself was first to pitch his tent there. 5 However, he did not rely wholly on the goodwill of the Barbarians, but he armed all the Roman settlers of the country who were of military age, and by undertaking the construction of all sorts of engines of war and the building of triremes, kept the cities well in hand, being mild in the affairs of peace, but showing himself formidable by the preparations which he made against his enemies.

7 1 When he learned that Sulla was master of Rome, and that the party of Marius and Carbo was on the way to ruin, he expected that an army with a commander would come at once to fight the issue out with him. He therefore sent Julius Salinator with six thousand men-at arms to bar the passage of the Pyrenees. And not long afterwards Caius Annius was sent out by Sulla, and seeing that Julius could not be assailed, he knew not what to do, and sat idly down at the base of the mountains. 2 But a certain Calpurnius, surnamed Lanarius, treacherously killed Julius, whose soldiers abandoned the heights of the Pyrenees; whereupon Annius crossed over and advanced with a large force, routing all opposition. Sertorius, not being able to cope with him, took refuge with three thousand men in New Carthage; there he embarked his forces, crossed the sea, and landed in the country of the Maurusii, in Africa. 3 But while his soldiers were getting water and were off their guard, the Barbarians fell upon them, and after losing many men, Sertorius sailed back again to Spain. From this shore too he was repulsed, but after being joined by some Cilician piratical vessels he attacked the island of Pityussa, overpowered the guard which Annius had set there, and effected a landing. After a short time, however, Annius came with numerous ships and five thousand men-at arms, and with him Sertorius attempted to fight a decisive naval battle, although the vessels which he had were light and built for speed rather than for fighting. 4 But the sea ran high with a strong west wind, and the greater part of the vessels of Sertorius, owing to their lightness, were driven aslant upon the rocky shore, while he himself, with a few ships, excluded from the open sea by the storm, and from the land by the enemy, was tossed about for ten days in a battle with adverse waves and fierce surges, and with difficulty held his own.

8 1 But the wind subsided and he was borne along to certain scattered and waterless islands, where he spent the night; then, setting out from there, and passing through the strait of Cadiz, he kept the outer coast of Spain on the right and landed a little above the mouths of the river Baetis, which empties into the Atlantic sea and has given its name to the adjacent parts of Spain.

2 Here he fell in with some sailors who had recently come back from the Atlantic Islands. These are two in number, separated by a very narrow strait; they are ten thousand furlongs distant from Africa, and are called the Islands of the Blest. They enjoy moderate rains at long intervals, and winds which for the most part are soft and precipitate dews, so that the islands not only have a rich soil which is excellent for plowing and planting, but also produce a natural fruit that is plentiful and wholesome enough to feed, without toil or trouble, a leisured folk. 3 Moreover, an air that is salubrious, owing to the climate and the moderate changes in the seasons, prevails on the islands. For the north and east winds which blow out from our part of the world plunge into fathomless space, and, owing to the distance, dissipate themselves and lose their power before they reach the islands; while the south and west winds that envelope the islands sometimes bring in their train soft and intermittent showers, but for the most part cool them with moist breezes and gently nourish the soil. Therefore a firm belief has made its way, even to the Barbarians, that here is the Elysian Field and the abode of the blessed, of which Homer sang.

9 1 When Sertorius heard this tale, he was seized with an amazing desire to dwell in the islands and live in quiet, freed from tyranny and wars that would never end. The Cilicians, however, who did not want peace or leisure, but wealth and spoils, when they were aware of his desire, sailed away to Africa, to restore Ascalis the son of Iphtha to the throne of Maurusia. 2 Nevertheless Sertorius did not despair, but resolved to go to the aid of those who were fighting against Ascalis, in order that his followers might get some fresh ground for hope and occasion for new enterprise, and so might remain together in spite of their difficulties. The Maurusians were glad to have him come, and he set himself to work, defeated Ascalis in battle, and laid siege to him. 3 Moreover, when Sulla sent out Paccianus with an army to give aid to Ascalis, Sertorius joined battle with Paccianus and slew him, won over his soldiers after their defeat, and forced to a surrender the city of Tingis,a into which Ascalis and his brethren had fled for refuge.

In this city the Libyans say that Antaeus is buried; and Sertorius had his tomb dug open, the great size of which made him disbelieve the Barbarians. But when he came upon the body and found it to be sixty cubits long, as they tell us, he was dumbfounded,b and after performing a sacrifice filled up the tomb again, and joined in magnifying its traditions and honours. 4 Now, the people of Tingis have a myth that after the death of Antaeus, his wife, Tinga, consorted with Heracles, and that Sophax was the fruit of this union, who became king of the country and named a city which he founded after his mother; also that Sophax had a son, Diodorus, to whom many of the Libyan peoples became subject, since he had a Greek army composed of the Olbians and Mycenaeans who were settled in those parts by Heracles. 5 But this tale must be ascribed to a desire to gratify Juba, of all kings the most devoted to historical enquiry; for his ancestors are said to have been descendants of Sophax and Diodorus.

Sertorius, then, having made himself master of the whole country, did no wrong to those who were his suppliants and put their trust in him, but restored to them both property and cities and government, receiving only what was right and fair in free gifts from them.

10 1 As he was deliberating whither to turn his efforts next, the Lusitanians sent ambassadors and invited him to be their leader. They were altogether lacking in a commander of great reputation and experience as they faced the terror of the Roman arms, and they entrusted themselves to him, and to him alone, when they learned about his character from those who had been with him. 2 And it is said that Sertorius was no easy victim either of pleasure or of fear, but that he was naturally unterrified in the face of danger, and bore prosperity with moderation; in straightforward fighting he was as bold as any commander of his time, while in all military activities demanding stealth and the power to seize an advantage in securing strong positions or in crossing rivers, where speed, deceit, and, if necessary, falsehood are required, he was an expert of the highest ability. 3 Moreover, while he showed himself generous in rewarding deeds of valour, he used moderation in punishing transgressions. And yet, in the last part of his life, the savage and vindictive treatment which he bestowed upon his hostages would seem to show that his mildness was not natural to him, but was worn as a garment, from calculation, as necessity required. 4 In my opinion, however, a virtue that is sincere and based upon reason can never by any fortune be converted into its opposite, although it is true that excellent principles and natures, when impaired by great and undeserved calamities, may possibly change their character as the guiding genius changes. And this, I think, was the case with Sertorius when fortune at last began to forsake him; as his cause grew hopeless he became harsh toward those who did him wrong.

11 However, at the time of which I speak he set out from Africa on the invitation of the Lusitanians. These he proceeded to organize at once, acting as their general with full powers, and he brought the neighbouring parts of Spain into subjection. Most of the people joined him of their own accord, owing chiefly to his mildness and efficiency; but sometimes he also betook himself to cunning devices of his own for deceiving and charming them. The chief one of these, certainly, was the device of the doe, which was as follows.

2 Spanus, a plebeian who lived in the country, came upon a doe which had newly yeaned and was trying to escape the hunters. The mother he could not overtake, but the fawn — and he was struck with its unusual colour, for it was entirely white — he pursued and caught. And since, as it chanced, Sertorius had taken up his quarters in that region, and gladly received everything in the way of game or produce that was brought him as a gift, and made kindly returns to those who did him such favours, Spanus brought the fawn and gave it to him. 3 Sertorius accepted it, and at the moment felt only the ordinary pleasure in a gift; but in time, after he had made the animal so tame and gentle that it obeyed his call, accompanied him on his walks, and did not mind the crowds and all the uproar of camp life, he gradually tried to give the doe a religious importance by declaring that she was a gift of Diana, and solemnly alleged that she revealed many hidden things to him, knowing that the Barbarians were naturally an easy prey to superstition. 4 He also added such devices as these. Whenever he had secret intelligence that the enemy had made an incursion into the territory which he commanded, or were trying to bring a city to revolt from him, he would pretend that the doe had conversed with him in his dreams, bidding him hold his forces in readiness. Again, when he got tidings of some victory won by his generals, he would hide the messenger, and bring forth the doe wearing garlands for the receipt of glad tidings, exhorting his men to be of good cheer and to sacrifice to the gods, assured that they were to learn of some good fortune.

12 1 By these devices he made the people tractable, and so found them more serviceable for all his plans; they believed that they were led, not by the mortal wisdom of a foreigner, but by a god. At the same time events also brought witness to this belief by reason of the extraordinary growth of the power of Sertorius. 2 For with the twenty-six hundred men whom he called Romans, and a motley band of seven hundred Libyans who crossed over into Lusitania with him, to whom he added four thousand Lusitanian targeteers and seven hundred horsemen, he waged war with four Roman generals, under whom were a hundred and twenty thousand footmen, six thousand horsemen, two thousand bowmen and slingers, and an untold number of cities, while he himself had at first only twenty all told. 3 But nevertheless, from so weak and slender a beginning, he not only subdued great nations and took many cities, but was also victorious over the generals sent against him: Cotta he defeated in a sea-fight in the straits near Mellaria;c Fufidius, the governor of Baetica, he routed on the banks of the Baetis with the slaughter of two thousand Roman soldiers; Lucius Domitius, who was pro-consul of the other Spain, was defeated at the hands of his quaestor; 4 Thoranius, another of the commanders sent out by Metellus with an army, he slew; and on Metellus himself, the greatest Roman of the time and held in highest repute, he inflicted many defeats and reduced him to so great straits that Lucius Manlius came from Gallia Narbonensis to help him, and Pompey the Great was hurriedly dispatched from Rome with an army.

5 For Metellus was at his wits’ end. He was carrying on war with a man of daring who evaded every kind of open fighting, and who made all manner of shifts and changes, owing to the light equipment and agility of his Iberian soldiers; whereas he himself had been trained in regular contests of heavy-armed troops, and was wont to command a ponderous and immobile phalanx, which, for repelling and overpowering an enemy at close quarters, was most excellently trained, but for climbing mountains, for dealing with the incessant pursuits and flights of men as light as the winds, and for enduring hunger and a life without fire or tent, as their enemies did, it was worthless.

13 1 Besides this, Metellus was now getting on in years, and was somewhat inclined also, by this time, to an easy and luxurious mode of life after his many and great contests; whereas his opponent, Sertorius, was full of mature vigour, and had a body which was wonderfully constituted for strength, speed, and plain living. 2 For in excessive drinking he would not indulge even in his hours of ease, and he was wont to endure great toils, long marches, and continuous wakefulness, content with meagre and indifferent food; moreover, since he was also wandering about or hunting when he had leisure for it, he obtained an acquaintance with every way of escape for a fugitive, or of surrounding an enemy under pursuit, in places both accessible and inaccessible. The result was, therefore, that Metellus, by being kept from fighting, suffered all the harm which visits men who are defeated; while Sertorius, by flying, had the advantages of men who pursue. 3 For he would cut off his opponent’s supply of water and prevent his foraging; if the Romans advanced, he would get out of their way, and if they settled down in camp, he would harass them; if they besieged a place, he would come up and put them under siege in their turn by depriving them of supplies. At last the Roman soldiers were in despair, and when Sertorius challenged Metellus to single combat, they cried aloud and bade him fight, general with general, and Roman with Roman, and when he declined, they mocked at him. 4 But Metellus laughed at all this, and he was right; for a general, as Theophrastus says, should die the death of a general, not that of a common targeteer. Then, seeing that the Langobritae were giving no slight assistance to Sertorius, and that their city could easily be taken for lack of water (since they had but one well in the city, and the streams in the suburbs and along the walls would be in the power of any besieger), Metellus came out against the city, intending to complete the siege in two days, since there was no water there. On this account, too, he had given orders to his soldiers to take along provisions of only five days. 5 But Sertorius quickly came to the rescue and ordered two thousand skins to be filled with water, offering for each skin a considerable sum of money. Many Iberians and many Maurusians volunteered for the work, and after selecting men who were both sturdy and swift of foot, he sent them by a route through the mountains, with orders that when they had delivered the skins to the people in the city, they should secretly convey away the unserviceable mass of the population, in order that the water might suffice for the actual defenders of the city. When Metellus learned that this had been done, he was annoyed, since his soldiers had already consumed their provisions, and sent out Aquinus, at the head of six thousand men, to forage. But Sertorius learned of this and set an ambush of three thousand men in the road by which Aquinus was to return. These sallied forth from a shady ravine and attacked Aquinus in the rear, while Sertorius himself assailed him in front, routed him, slew some of his men, and took some of them prisoners. Aquinus, after losing both his armour and his horse, got back to Metellus, who then retired disgracefully, much flouted by the Iberians.

14 1 In consequence of these successes Sertorius was admired and loved by the Barbarians, and especially because by introducing Roman arms and formations and signals he did away with their frenzied and furious displays of courage, and converted their forces into an army, instead of a huge band of robbers. 2 Still further, he used gold and silver without stint for the decoration of their helmets and the ornamentation of their shields, and by teaching them to wear flowered cloaks and tunics, and furnishing them with the means to do this, and sharing their love of beautiful array, he won the hearts of all. But most of all were they captivated by what he did with their boys. Those of the highest birth, namely, he collected together from various peoples, at Osca, a large city, and set over them teachers of Greek and Roman learning; thus in reality he made hostages of them, while ostensibly he was educating them, with the assurance that when they became men he would give them a share in administration and authority. 3 So the fathers were wonderfully pleased to see their sons, in purple-bordered togas, very decorously going to their schools, and Sertorius paying their fees for them, holding frequent examinations, distributing prizes to the deserving, and presenting them with the golden necklaces which the Romans call “bullae”. 4 It was the custom among the Iberians for those who were stationed about their leader to die with him if he fell, and the Barbarians in those parts call this a “consecration.” Now, the other commanders had few such shield-bearers and companions, but Sertorius was attended by many thousands of men who had thus consecrated themselves to death. 5 And we are told that when his army had been defeated at a certain city and the enemy were pressing upon them, the Iberians, careless of themselves, rescued Sertorius, and taking him on their shoulders one after another, carried him to the walls, and only when their leader was in safety, did they betake themselves to flight, each man for himself.

15 1 And not only were the Iberians eager to serve under him, but also the soldiers who came from Italy. At any rate, when Perpenna Vento, who belonged to the same party as Sertorius, came to Spain with much money and a large force, and was determined to wage war on his own account against Metellus, his soldiers were displeased, and there was much talk in the camp about Sertorius, to the annoyance of Perpenna, who was puffed up over his high birth and his wealth. 2 However, when word came that Pompey was crossing the Pyrenees, the soldiers caught up their arms and snatched up their standards and made an outcry against Perpenna, ordering him to lead them to Sertorius, and threatening, if he did not, to abandon him and go by themselves to a man who was able to save himself and save those under him. So Perpenna yielded and led them off, and joined Sertorius with fifty-three cohorts.

16 1 Sertorius, then, since all the peoples within the river Ebro were unitedly taking up his cause, had an army of great numbers, for men were all the whole coming to him in streams from every quarter; but he was troubled by their barbaric lack of discipline and their overconfidence, since they called loudly upon him to attack the enemy and were impatient at his delay, and he therefore tried to pacify them by arguments. 2 But when he saw that they were impatient and inclined to force their wishes upon him unseasonably, he let them take their way and permitted them to have an engagement with the enemy in which he hoped that they would not be altogether crushed, but would be severely handled, and so made more obedient for the future. Matters turning out as he expected, he came to their aid, gave them refuge in their flight, and brought them safely back to their camp. 3 And now he wished to take away their dejection. So after a few days he called a general assembly and introduced before it two horses, one utterly weak and already quite old, the other large-sized and strong, with a tail that was astonishing for the thickness and beauty of its hair. By the side of the feeble horse stood a man who was tall and robust, and by the side of the powerful horse another man, small and of a contemptible appearance. At a signal given them, the strong man seized the tail of his horse with both hands and tried to pull it towards him with all his might, as though he would tear it off; but the weak man began to pluck out the hairs in the tail of the strong horse one by one. 4 The strong man gave himself no end of trouble to no purpose, made the spectators laugh a good deal, and then gave up his attempt; but the weak man, in a trice and with no trouble, stripped his horse’s tail of its hair. Then Sertorius rose up and said: “Ye see, men of my allies, that perseverance is more efficacious than violence, and that many things which cannot be mastered when they stand together yield when one masters them little by little. 5 For irresistible is the force of continuity, by virtue of which advancing Time subdues and captures every power; and Time is a kindly ally for all who act as diligent attendants upon opportunity, but a most bitter enemy for all who urge matters on unseasonably.” By contriving from time to time such exhortations for the Barbarians, Sertorius taught them to watch for their opportunities.

17 1 But of all his military exploits that which he performed in dealing with the people called Characitani is admired as much as any. They are a people beyond the river Tagonius, and they do not dwell in cities or villages, but on a large and lofty hill containing caves and hollows in the cliffs which look towards the north. The whole country at the base of the hill abounds in white clay and a soil that is porous and crumbly; it is not firm enough to bear the tread of man, and spreads far about if only slightly stirred, like unslaked lime or ashes. 2 These Barbarians, then, whenever they were afraid of war, would hide themselves in their caves, take all their plunder in with them, and keep quiet, for they could not be taken by force; and at the time of which I speak, when Sertorius had retired before Metellus and encamped at the base of their hill, they thought scornfully of him as a vanquished man, and he, either out of anger, or because he did not wish to be thought a fugitive, at break of day rode up to the place and inspected it. 3 There was no attacking it anywhere, but as he was wandering about to no purpose and indulging in empty threats, he saw that dust from the soil which I have described was being carried up against the Barbarians in great quantities by the wind. For the caves, as I have said, faced the north, and the wind which blows from that quarter (some call it Caecias) is the most prevalent and the strongest of the winds in that country, being a confluent of winds from watery plains and snow-covered mountains; and at this time particularly, which was the height of summer, it was strong, was fed by the melting snows of northern regions, and blew most delightfully with continual refreshment for man and beast all day. 4 So, reflecting on these things and getting information about them from the natives of the country, Sertorius ordered his soldiers to take some of the loose and ashy soil that I have described, carry it directly opposite the hill, and make a heap of it there. This the Barbarians conjectured to be a mound raised for assaulting them, and jeered at their enemy. 5 On that day, then, the soldiers of Sertorius worked until night, and were then led back to camp. But when the next day came, at first a gentle breeze arose, stirring up the lightest portions of the gathered soil and scattering them like chaff; then, when Caecias was blowing strong with the mounting of the sun and covering the hills with dust, the soldiers came and stirred up the mound of earth to the bottom and broke up the lumps, while some actually drove their horses back and forth through it, throwing up the loosened earth and giving it to the wind to carry. 6 Then the wind caught up all the earth thus broken and stirred and threw it up against the dwellings of the Barbarians, which opened so as to admit Caecias. And the Barbarians, since their caves had no other inlet for air than that against which the wind was dashing, were quickly blinded, and quickly choked, too, as they tried of inhale an air that was harsh and mingled with great quantities of dust. 7 Therefore, after holding out with difficulty for two days, on the third day they surrendered, thereby adding not so much to the power as to the fame of Sertorius, since by his skill he had subdued what could not be taken by arms.

18 1 Well, then, as long as he carried on the war with Metellus as his antagonist, he was thought to be successful for the most part because, owing to great age and natural slowness, Metellus could not cope with a man who was bold and headed a force composed of robbers rather than soldiers; but when Pompey also crossed the Pyrenees and became his antagonist, and each of them had offered and accepted every test of a general’s powers, and Sertorius had the advantage in counter-planning and watchfulness, then indeed it was noised abroad as far as Rome that he was the ablest general of his time in the conduct of a war. 2 For the fame of Pompey was by no means inconsiderable, nay, at this time his reputation was in most vigorous flower in consequence of the valiant deeds which he performed in the cause of Sulla, deeds for which he was given the surname of “Magnus” (that is, Great) by Sulla, and received the honours of a triumph while he was still beardless. Therefore, too, many of the cities which were subject to Sertorius turned their eyes towards Pompey and felt inclined to change their allegiance; they ceased to do this, however, after the disaster at Lauron, which happened contrary to all expectation.

3 For Sertorius was besieging that city, and Pompey came to its assistance with all his forces. Now there was a hill which was thought to afford a good command of the city, and this hill Sertorius strove to seize in advance, while Pompey sought to prevent him. But Sertorius got there first, whereupon Pompey, taking position with his army, was delighted with the way things had turned out, believing that Sertorius was caught between the city and his adversary’s forces; he also sent a messenger in to the people of Lauron bidding them be of good cheer and take seats along their walls for the spectacle of Sertorius undergoing siege. 4 When Sertorius heard of this, he gave a laugh, and said that to Sulla’s pupil (for thus he was wont to style Pompey in jest) he himself would give a lesson, namely, that a general must look behind him rather than in front of him. As he said this, he pointed out to his beleaguered troops six thousand men-at arms whom he had left behind at their former camp, from which he had sallied forth to seize the hill; these, in case Pompey moved against the occupants of the hill, were to fall upon his rear. 5 Pompey also became aware of this all too late, and did not venture to attack Sertorius for fear of being surrounded, but he was ashamed to go away and leave the people of the city in their peril, and so was compelled to sit there quietly and see them ruined; for the Barbarians gave up all hope and surrendered to Sertorius. 6 Sertorius spared their lives and let them all go, but he burned down their city, not because he was angry or cruel, for he appears to have given way to passion less than any other general, but to put to shame and confusion the admirers of Pompey, in order that it might be said among the Barbarians that though he was near at hand and all but warming himself at the flames of an allied city, he did not come to its relief.

19 1 It is true that Sertorius suffered several defeats, and yet he always kept himself and his own forces undefeated, and got his crushing blows where other generals than he were in command; and from the way in which he repaired his defeats he was more admired than the victorious generals opposed to him, as, for instance, in the battle on the Sucro against Pompey, and, again, in the battle near Turia against both Pompey and Metellus. 2 Now, the battle on the Sucro is said to have been precipitated by Pompey, in order that Metellus might not share in the victory. Sertorius, too, wished to fight the issue out with Pompey before Metellus came up, and therefore drew out his forces when evening was already at hand, and began the engagement, thinking that, since his enemies were strangers and unacquainted with the region, darkness would be a hindrance to them either in flight or in pursuit. 3 When the fighting was at close quarters, it happened that Sertorius was not himself engaged with Pompey at first, but with Afranius, who commanded Pompey’s left, while Sertorius himself was stationed on the right. Hearing, however, that those of his men who were engaged with Pompey were yielding before his onset and being worsted, he put his right wing in command of other generals, and hastened himself to the help of the wing that was suffering defeat. 4 Those of his men who were already in retreat he rallied, those who were still keeping their ranks he encouraged, then charged anew upon Pompey, who was pursuing, and put his men to a great rout, in which Pompey also came near to being killed, was actually wounded, and had a marvellous escape. For the Libyans with Sertorius, after getting Pompey’s horse, which had golden decorations and was covered with costly trappings, were so busy distributing the booty and quarrelling with one another over it, that they soon neglected the pursuit. 5 Afranius, however, as soon as Sertorius had gone off to the other wing with aid and succour, routed his opponents and drove them headlong into their camp; and dashing in with the fugitives, it being now dark, he began to plunder, knowing nothing of Pompey’s flight and having no power to keep his soldiers from their pillaging. But meanwhile Sertorius came back from his victory on the other wing, and falling upon the straggling and confused soldiers of Afranius, slew great numbers of them. 6 In the morning, moreover, he armed his troops and came out for battle; then, learning that Metellus was near, he broke up his array and decamped, saying: “But as for this boy, if that old woman had not come up, I should have given him a sound beating and sent him back to Rome.”

20 1 He was now greatly disheartened because that doe of his was nowhere to be found; for he was thus deprived of a wonderful contrivance for influencing the Barbarians, who at this time particularly stood in need of encouragement. Soon, however, some men who were roaming about at night on other errands came upon the doe, recognized her by her colour, and caught her. 2 When Sertorius heard of it he promised to give the men a large sum of money if they would tell no one of the capture, and after concealing the doe and allowing several days to pass, he came forth with a glad countenance and proceeded to the tribunal, telling the leaders of the Barbarians that the deity was foretelling him in his dreams some great good fortune. Then he ascended the tribunal and began to deal with the applicants. 3 And now the doe was released by her keepers at a point close by, spied Sertorius, and bounded joyfully towards the tribunal, and standing by his side put her head in his lap and licked his hand, as she had been wont to do before. Sertorius returned her caresses appropriately and even shed a few tears, whereupon the bystanders were struck with amazement at first, and then, convinced that Sertorius was a marvellous man and dear to the gods, escorted him with shouts and clapping of hands to his home, and were full of confidence and good hopes.

21 1 In the plains of Saguntum, after he had reduced his enemies to the greatest straits, he was forced to give them battle when they came out for plunder and forage. Both sides fought splendidly. Memmius, the most capable of Pompey’s generals, fell in the thickest of the battle, and Sertorius was carrying all before him, and, with great slaughter of the enemy who still held together, was forcing his way towards Metellus himself. 2 Then Metellus, who was holding his ground with a vigour that belied his years, and fighting gloriously, was struck by a spear. All the Romans who saw or heard of this were seized with shame at the thought of deserting their commander, and at the same time were filled with rage against the enemy. So, after they had covered Metellus with their shields and carried him out of danger, they stoutly drove the Iberians back. 3 Victory had now changed sides, and therefore Sertorius, contriving a safe retreat for his men and devising the quiet assembly of another force for himself, took refuge in a strong city among the mountains, and there began to repair the walls and strengthen the gates, although his purpose was anything rather than to stand a siege. 4 But he completely deceived his enemies; for they sat down to invest him and expected to take the place without difficulty, and thus suffered the Barbarians who were in flight to escape, and took no heed of the force that was being collected anew for Sertorius. And collected it was, after Sertorius had sent officers to the cities, with orders that as soon as they had a large body of troops, they should send a messenger to him. 5 Then, when the cities sent their messengers, he cut his way through the enemy with no trouble and effected a junction with his new troops; and so once more he advanced upon the enemy with large reinforcements and began to cut off their land supplies by means of ambuscades, flank movements, and swift marches in every direction, and their maritime supplies by besetting the coast with piratical craft; so that the Roman generals were compelled to separate, Metellus retiring into Gaul, and Pompey spending the winter among the Vaccaei. Here he suffered much from lack of supplies, and wrote to the senate that he would bring his army home unless they sent him money, since he had already exhausted his own resources in the war for the defence of Italy. 6 Indeed, this story was prevalent in Rome, that Sertorius would come back to Italy before Pompey did. To such straits were the first and ablest generals of the time reduced by the skill of Sertorius.

22 1 And Metellus also made it clear that he was afraid of Sertorius and considered him a great leader. For he made proclamation that to any Roman who should kill Sertorius he would give a hundred talents of silver and twenty thousand acres of land, and to any exile, freedom to return to Rome; implying his despair of openly defeating the man by this attempt to purchase his betrayal. 2 Moreover, after a victory which he once won over Sertorius he was so elated and delighted with his success that his soldiers saluted him as Imperator and the cities celebrated his visits to them with altars and sacrifices. Nay, it is said that he suffered wreaths to be bound upon his head and accepted invitations to stately banquets, at which he wore a triumphal robe as he drank his wine, while Victories, made to move by machinery, descended and distributed golden trophies and wreaths, and choirs of boys and women sang hymns of victory in his praise. 3 For this it was natural that men should laugh at him, since, while calling Sertorius a runaway slave of Sulla and a remnant of the routed party of Carbo, he was so puffed up with pride and overjoyed merely because he had won an advantage over Sertorius and Sertorius had retired before him.

But the magnanimity of Sertorius showed itself, firstly, in his giving the name of senate to the senators who fled from Rome and joined his cause, appointing quaestors and praetors from their number, 4 and making all such arrangements in accordance with the customs of his country; and, secondly, in his using the arms, wealth, and cities of the Iberians without even pretending to yield to the Iberians themselves a portion of the supreme power, but selecting Roman generals and commanders over them, feeling that he was recovering freedom for the Romans, and not strengthening the inhabitants against the Romans. 5 For he was a man who loved his country and had a strong desire to return home from exile. And yet in his misfortunes he played a brave man’s part and would not humble himself at all before his enemies; while as a victor he would send to Metellus and Pompey expressing his readiness to lay down his arms and lead the life of a private citizen if he could get the privilege of returning home, since, as he said, he preferred to live in Rome as her meanest citizen rather than to live in exile from his country and be called supreme ruler of all the rest of the world together.

6 We are told that his desire for his native country was due in large measure to his attachment to his mother, by whom he was reared after his father’s death, and to whom he was entirely devoted. When his friends in Spain were inviting him to take the leadership there, he learned of the death of his mother, and almost died of grief. For seven days he lay prostrate in his tent without giving out a watchword or being seen by any of his friends, and it was only with difficulty that his fellow-generals and the men of like rank with him who surrounded his tent could force him to come forth and meet the soldiers and take part in their enterprises, which were moving on well. 7 Therefore many people were led to think that he was a man of gentle temper and naturally disposed to a quiet life, but was practically forced against his wishes into the career of a soldier, where, not achieving safety, but being driven by his enemies to have recourse to arms, he encompassed himself with war as a necessary protection to his person.

23 1 His negotiations with Mithridates also gave proof of his magnanimity. For Mithridates, after the fall which Sulla gave him, rose up, as it were, for another wrestling bout and tried once more to get the province of Asia into his power. At this time, too, the fame of Sertorius was already great and was travelling every whither, and sailors from the west had filled the kingdom of Pontus full of the tales about him, like so many foreign wares. 2 Mithridates was therefore eager to send an embassy to him, and was incited thereto most of all by the foolish exaggerations of his flatterers. These likened Sertorius to Hannibal and Mithridates to Pyrrhus, and declared that the Romans, attacked on both sides, could not hold out against two such natures and forces combined, when the ablest of generals was in alliance with the greatest of kings. 3 So Mithridates sent envoys to Iberia carrying letters and oral propositions to Sertorius, the purport of which was that Mithridates for his part promised to furnish money and ships for the war, but demanded that Sertorius confirm him in the possession of the whole of Asia, which he had yielded to the Romans by virtue of the treaties made with Sulla. 4 Sertorius assembled a council, which he called a senate, and here the rest urged him to accept the king’s proposals and be well content with them; for they were asked to grant a name and an empty title to what was not in their possession, and would receive therefor that of which they stood most in need. He said he had no objection to Mithridates taking Bithynia and Cappadocia, countries used to kings and of no concern whatever to the Romans; 5 but a province which Mithridates had taken away and held when it belonged in the justest manner to the Romans, from which he had been driven by Fimbria in war, and which he had renounced by treaty with Sulla, — this province Sertorius said he would not suffer to become the king’s again; for the Roman state must be increased by his exercise of power, and he must not exercise power at the expense of the state. For to a man of noble spirit victory is to be desired if it comes with honour, but with shame not even life itself.

24 1 When this was reported to Mithridates he acted like one amazed; and we are told that he said to his friends: “What terms, pray, will Sertorius impose when he is seated on the Palatine, if now, after he has been driven forth to the Atlantic sea, he sets bounds to our kingdom and threatens us with war if we try to get Asia?” 2 However, a treaty was actually made and ratified with oaths. Mithridates was to have Cappadocia and Bithynia, Sertorius sending him a general and soldiers, while Sertorius was to receive from Mithridates three thousand talents and forty ships. 3 Accordingly, a general was sent to Asia by Sertorius, one of the senators who had taken refuge with him, Marcus Marius. He was assisted by Mithridates in the capture of certain cities of Asia, and when he entered them with fasces and axes, Mithridates would follow him in person, voluntarily assuming second rank and the position of a vassal. 4 Marius gave some of the cities their freedom, and wrote to others announcing their exemption from taxation by grace of Sertorius, so that Asia, which was once more harassed by the revenue-farmers and oppressed by the rapacity and arrogance of the soldiers quartered there, was all of a flutter with new hopes and yearned for the expected change of supremacy.

25 1 But in Spain, as soon as the senators and men of equal rank about Sertorius felt confident that they were a match for their enemies and dismissed their fears, they were seized with envy and foolish jealousy of their leader. They were encouraged in these feelings by Perpenna, whose high birth filled him with vain aspirations for the chief command, and he would hold malevolent discourses in secret among his associates: 2 “What evil genius, pray, has seized us and is hurrying us from bad to worse? We would not consent to remain at home and do the bidding of Sulla when he was lord of all the earth and sea together, but we came to this land of destruction with the idea of living like freemen, and are now voluntarily slaves in the body-guard of Sertorius the exile, being a senate, a name jeered at by all who hear it, and submitting to no lesser insults, injunctions, and toils than Iberians and Lusitanians.” 3 Most of his hearers, their minds infected with such sentiments as these, did not, indeed, openly desert Sertorius, because they were in fear of his power; but they secretly tried to vitiate his enterprises, and abused the Barbarians with severe punishments and exactions, on the plea that Sertorius thus ordered. Consequently there were revolts and disturbances among the cities. 4 And those who were sent to assuage and cure these disorders brought more wars to pass before they returned, and increased the existing insubordination, so that Sertorius laid aside his former clemency and mildness and wrought injustice upon the sons of the Iberians who were being educated at Osca, killing some, and selling others into slavery.

26 1 Perpenna, accordingly, having now more accomplices in his attempt upon Sertorius, brought into their number Manlius also, one of those in high command. This Manlius was enamoured of a beautiful boy, and as a mark of his affection for him told him of the conspiracy, bidding him neglect his other lovers and devote himself to him alone, since within a few days he was to be a great personage. But the boy carried the tale to another one of his lovers, Aufidius, to whom he was more devoted. 2 And Aufidius, on hearing the story, was astounded; for though he himself was a party to the conspiracy against Sertorius, he did not know that Manlius was. But since the boy mentioned by name Perpenna, Gracinus, and sundry others of those whom Aufidius knew to be among the conspirators, Aufidius was confounded, and after making light of the story to the boy and exhorting him to despise Manlius as an empty braggart, he himself went to Perpenna, told him of the sharpness of the crisis and of their peril, and urged him to attempt the deed. 3 The conspirators were persuaded, and after providing a man to act as the bearer of letters, they introduced him to Sertorius. His letters made known a victory of one of the generals serving under Sertorius, and a great slaughter of the enemy. At this Sertorius was overjoyed and offered a sacrifice of glad tidings, during which Perpenna proposed a banquet for him and his friends who were present (and these were of the conspiracy), and after much entreaty persuaded him to come.

4 Now, the suppers at which Sertorius was present were always marked by restraint and decorum, since he would not consent to see or hear anything that was disgraceful, but held his associates to the practice of indulging only in mirth and merriment that was decorous and restrained. On this occasion, however, when the drinking was well under way, the guests, seeking occasion for a quarrel, openly indulged in dissolute language, and pretending to be drunk, committed many indecencies, with the hope of angering Sertorius. 5 But he, either because he was vexed at their disorderly conduct, or because he had become aware of their purpose from the boldness of their talk and their unwonted contempt for his wishes, changed his posture on the couch and threw himself upon his back, as though he neither heard nor regarded them. But when Perpenna, after taking a cup of wine in his hands, dropped it as he was drinking and made a clatter with it, which was their signal, Antonius, who reclined above Sertorius on the couch, smote him with his sword. 6 Sertorius turned at the blow and would have risen with his assailant, but Antonius fell upon his chest and seized both his hands, so that he could make no defence even, and died from the blows of many.

27 1 Well, then, most of the Iberians immediately went away, sent ambassadors to Pompey and Metellus, and delivered themselves up to them; but taking under his command those who remained, Perpenna attempted to do something. After using the materials provided by Sertorius just enough to cut a sorry figure and make it clear that he was fitted by nature neither to command nor to obey, he attacked Pompey; 2 and having been quickly crushed by him and taken prisoner, he did not even endure this extreme misfortune as a leader should, but, being in possession of the papers of Sertorius, he promised to show Pompey autograph letters from men of consular rank and of the highest influence in Rome, in which they invited Sertorius to come to Italy, assuring him that there were many there who desired eagerly to stir up a revolution and change the constitution. 3 Pompey, then, did not act in this emergency like a young man, but like one whose understanding was right well matured and disciplined, and so freed Rome from revolutionary terrors. For he got together those letters and all the papers of Sertorius and burned them, without reading them himself or suffer anyone else to do so; and Perpenna himself he speedily put to death, through fear that seditions and disturbances might arise if the names of the correspondents of Sertorius were communicated to anybody.

4 Of Perpenna’s fellow conspirators, some were brought to Pompey and put to death, others fled to Africa and fell victims to the spears of the Maurusians. Not one escaped, except Aufidius, the rival of Manlius; he, either because men did not notice him or because they did not heed him, came to old age in a barbarian village, a poor and hated man.

Comparison of Eumenes and Sertorius

595 1 1 Such are the memorable things in the careers of Eumenes and Sertorius which have come down to us. And now, as we compare the men, we find this common to both, that although they were strangers, aliens, and exiles, they were continually in command of all sorts of peoples and of armies that were large and warlike; but it was peculiar to Sertorius that he held a command which was given him by all his confederates because of his reputation, and to Eumenes that many contended with him for the leadership, and yet he took the highest place in consequence of his achievements. Furthermore, the one was followed by those who wished to be under a just command; while the other was obeyed by those who were incapable of command and sought their own advantage. 2 For the one, a Roman, commanded Iberians and Lusitanians, who had long been in subjection to Rome; the other, a Chersonesian, commanded Macedonians, who at that time were holding the whole world in subjection. Besides, Sertorius rose to leadership when a career in senate and field had brought him admiration; but Eumenes when his post as secretary had brought him contempt. Eumenes, therefore, not only had fewer advantages at the outset, but also greater hindrances as he advanced in his career. 3 For there were many who directly opposed him and secretly plotted against him; whereas Sertorius was openly opposed by no one, and secretly only in the latter part of his career, when a few of his confederates rose up against him. For this reason Sertorius could put an end to his peril by a victory over his enemies; while Eumenes, in consequence of his victories, was in peril at the hands of those who envied him.

2 1 In their capacities as commanders, then, they were very much alike; but in their general dispositions Eumenes was fond of war and fond of strife, while Sertorius was a lover of peace and tranquillity. For the one, though it was in his power to live in safety and with honour if he kept out of the way of the leading Macedonians, was continually fighting them at the risk of his life; whereas the other, though he craved no participation in affairs, had to wage war for his very life against those who would not suffer him to be at peace. 2 For if Eumenes had stood aside from the struggles for the primacy and been satisfied with the second place, Antigonus would gladly have given him that; whereas Sertorius could not get permission from Pompey to live, even though in retirement. Therefore the one was ever waging war of his own accord for the sake of power; while the other held power against his wishes because war was waged upon him. 3 Now, that man is fond of war who sets greed above safety; but that man is warlike who by war wins safety.

And further, the one met his death when he had no anticipation of it, the other when he was expecting the end. In the one case, death resulted from the man’s goodness of heart, since he appeared to trust his friends; in the other, from weakness, since he wished to fly, but was arrested. 4 Moreover, death brought no stain upon the life of Sertorius, since he suffered at the hands of confederates what none of his enemies could inflict upon him; 596 Eumenes, however, who was unable to fly before being taken prisoner, but was willing to live after being taken prisoner, neither took good precautions against death, nor faced it well, but by supplicating and entreating the foe who was known to have power over his body also, he made him lord and master of his spirit also.

Agesilaus

596 1 1 Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamas, after an illustrious reign over the Lacedaemonians, left behind him a son, Agis, by Lampido, a woman of honourable family; and a much younger son, Agesilaüs, by Eupolia, the daughter of Melesippidas. The kingdom belonged to Agis by law, and it was thought that Agesilaüs would pass his life in a private station. He was therefore given the so called “agoge,” or course of public training in Sparta, which, although austere in its mode of life and full of hardships, educated the youth to obedience. 2 For this reason it was, we are told, that Simonides gave Sparta the epithet of “man-subduing,” since more than in any other state her customs made her citizens obedient to the laws and tractable, like horses that are broken in while yet they are colts. From this compulsory training the law exempts the heirs-apparent to the throne. 3 But Agesilaüs was singular in this also, that he had been educated to obey before he came to command. For this reason he was much more in harmony with his subjects than any of the kings; to the commanding and kingly traits which were his by nature there had been added by his public training those of popularity and kindness.

2 1 While he was among the so called “bands” of boys who were reared together, he had as his lover Lysander, who was smitten particularly with his native decorum. For although he was contentious and high-spirited beyond his fellows, wishing to be first in all things, and having a vehemence and fury which none could contend with or overwhelm, on the other hand he had such a readiness to obey and such gentleness, that he did whatever was enjoined upon him, not at all from a sense of fear, but always from a sense of honour, and was more distressed by censure than he was oppressed by hardships. 2 As for his deformity, the beauty of his person in its youthful prime covered this from sight, while the ease and gaiety with which he bore such a misfortune, being first to jest and joke about himself, went far towards rectifying it. Indeed, his lameness brought his ambition into clearer light, since it led him to decline no hardship and no enterprise whatever. We have no likeness of him (for he himself would not consent to one, and even when he lay dying forbade the making of “either statue or picture” of his person), but he is said to have been a little man of unimposing presence. 3 And yet his gaiety and good spirits in every crisis, and his raillery, which was never offensive or harsh either in word or look made him more lovable, down to his old age, than the young and beautiful. But according to Theophrastus, Archidamus was fined by the ephors for marrying a little woman, 597”For she will bear us,” they said, “not kings, but kinglets.”

3 1 It was during the reign of Agis that Alcibiades came from Sicily as an exile to Sparta, and he had not been long in the city when he incurred the charge of illicit intercourse with Timaea, the wife of the king. The child, too, that was born of her, Agis refused to recognize as his own, declaring that Alcibiades was its father. Duris says that Timaea was not very much disturbed at this, but in whispers to her Helot maids at home actually called the child Alcibiades, not Leotychides; 2 moreover, that Alcibiades himself also declared that he had not approached Timaea out of wanton passion, but because he was ambitious to have the Spartans reigned over by his descendants. On this account Alcibiades withdrew from Sparta, being in fear of Agis; and the boy was always an object of suspicion to Agis, and was not honoured by him as legitimate. But when the king lay sick, the supplications and tears of Leotychides prevailed upon him to declare him his son in the presence of many witnesses.

3 Notwithstanding this, after the death of Agis, Lysander, who by this time had subdued the Athenians at sea and was a man of the greatest influence in Sparta, tried to advance Agesilaüs to the throne, on the plea that Leotychides was a bastard and had no claim upon it. Many of the other citizens also, owing to the excellence of Agesilaüs and the fact that he had been reared with them under the common restraints of the public training, warmly espoused the plan of Lysander and co-operated with him. But there was a diviner in Sparta, named Diopeithes, who was well supplied with ancient prophecies, and was thought to be eminently wise in religious matters. 4 This man declared it contrary to the will of Heaven that a lame man should be king of Sparta, and cited at the trial of the case the following oracle: —

“Bethink thee now, O Sparta, though thou art very glorious, lest from thee, sound of foot, there spring a maimed royalty; for long will unexpected toils oppress thee, and onward-rolling billows of man-destroying war.”

5 To this Lysander answered that, in case the Spartans stood in great fear of the oracle, they must be on their guard against Leotychides; for it mattered not to the god that one who halted in his gait should be king, but if one who was not lawfully begotten, nor even a descendant of Heracles, should be king, this was what the god meant by “maimed royalty.” And Agesilaüs declared that Poseidon also had borne witness to the bastardy of Leotychides, for he had cast Agis forth from his bed-chamber by an earthquake, and after this more than ten months elapsed before Leotychides was born.

4 1 In this way, and for these reasons, Agesilaüs was appointed king, and straightway enjoyed possession of the estates of Agis as well as his throne, after expelling Leotychides as a bastard. But seeing that his kinsmen on his mother’s side, though worthy folk, were excessively poor, he distributed among them half of his estates, thereby making his inheritance yield him good-will and reputation instead of envy and hatred. As for Xenophon’s statement that by obeying his country in everything he won very great power, so that he did what he pleased, the case is as follows. 2 At that time the ephors and the senators had the greatest power in the state, of whom the former hold office for a year only, while the senators enjoy their dignity for life, their offices having been instituted to restrain the power of the kings, as I have said in my Life of Lycurgus. Therefore from the outset, and from generation to generation, the kings were traditionally at feud and variance with them. 3 But Agesilaüs took the opposite course. Instead of colliding and fighting with them, he courted their favour, winning their support before setting out on any undertaking; and whenever he was invited to meet them, hastening to them on the run. If ever the ephors visited him when he was seated in his royal chair and administering justice, he rose in their honour; 598 and as men were from time to time made members of the senate, he would send each one a cloak and an ox as a mark of honour. 4 Consequently, while he was thought to be honouring and exalting the dignity of their office, he was unawares increasing his own influence and adding to the power of the king a greatness which was conceded out of good-will towards him.

5 1 In his dealings with the rest of the citizens he was less blame-worthy as an enemy than as a friend; for he would not injure his enemies without just cause, but joined his friends even in their unjust practices. And whereas he was ashamed not to honour his enemies when they did well, he could not bring himself to censure his friends when they did amiss, but actually prided himself on aiding them and sharing in their misdeeds. For he thought no aid disgraceful that was given to a friend. 2 But if, on the other hand, his adversaries stumbled and fell, he was first to sympathize with them and give them zealous aid if they desired it, and so won the hearts and the allegiance of all. The ephors, accordingly, seeing this, and fearing his power, laid a fine upon him, alleging as a reason that he made the citizens his own, who should be the common property of the state.

3 Natural philosophers are of the opinion that, if strife and discord should be banished from the universe, the heavenly bodies would stand still, and all generation and motion would cease in consequence of the general harmony. And so the Spartan lawgiver seems to have introduced the spirit of ambition and contention into his civil polity as an incentive to virtue, desiring that good citizens should always be somewhat at variance and in conflict with one another, and deeming that complaisance which weakly yields without debate, which knows no effort and no struggle, to be wrongly called concord. 4 And some think that Homer also was clearly of this mind; for he would not have represented Agamemnon as pleased when Odysseus and Achilles were carried away into abuse of one another with “frightful words,” if he had not thought the general interests likely to profit by the mutual rivalry and quarrelling of the chieftains. This principle, however, must not be accepted without some reservations; for excessive rivalries are injurious to states, and productive of great perils.

6 1 Agesilaüs had but recently come to the throne, when tidings were brought from Asia that the Persian king was preparing a great armament with which to drive the Lacedaemonians from the sea. Now, Lysander was eager to be sent again into Asia, and to aid his friends there. These he had left governors and masters of the cities, but owing to their unjust and violent conduct of affairs, they were being driven out by the citizens, and even put to death. He therefore persuaded Agesilaüs to undertake the expedition and make war in behalf of Hellas, proceeding to the farthest point across the sea, and thus anticipating the preparations of the Barbarian. 2 At the same time he wrote to his friends in Asia urging them to send messengers to Sparta and demand Agesilaüs as their commander. Accordingly, Agesilaüs went before the assembly of the people and agreed to undertake the war if they would grant him thirty Spartans as captains and counsellors, a select corps of two thousand enfranchised Helots, and a force of allies amounting to six thousand. 3 They readily voted everything, owing to the co-operation of Lysander, and sent Agesilaüs forth at once with the thirty Spartans. Of these Lysander was first and foremost, not only because of his own reputation and influence, but also because of the friendship of Agesilaüs, in whose eyes his procuring him this command was a greater boon than his raising him to the throne.

4 While his forces were assembling at Geraestus, Agesilaüs himself went to Aulis with his friends and spent the night. As he slept, he thought a voice came to him, saying: 599”King of the Lacedaemonians, thou art surely aware that no one has ever been appointed general of all Hellas together except Agamemnon, in former times, and now thyself, after him. And since thou commandest the same hosts that he did, and wagest war on the same foes, and settest out for the war from the same place, it is meet that thou shouldst sacrifice also to the goddess the sacrifice which he made there before he set sail.” 5 Almost at once Agesilaüs remembered the sacrifice of his own daughter which Agamemnon had there made in obedience to the soothsayers. He was not disturbed, however, but after rising up and imparting his vision to his friends, declared that he would honour the goddess with a sacrifice in which she could fitly take pleasure, being a goddess, and would not imitate the cruel insensibility of his predecessor. So he caused a hind to be wreathed with chaplets, and ordered his own seer to perform the sacrifice, instead of the one customarily appointed to this office by the Boeotians. 6 Accordingly, when the Boeotian magistrates heard of this, they were moved to anger, and sent their officers, forbidding Agesilaüs to sacrifice contrary to the laws and customs of the Boeotians. These officers not only delivered their message, but also snatched the thigh-pieces of the victim from the altar. Agesilaüs therefore sailed away in great distress of mind; he was not only highly incensed at the Thebans, but also full of ill-boding on account of the omen. He was convinced that his undertakings would be incomplete, and that his expedition would have no fitting issue.

7 1 As soon as he came to Ephesus, the great dignity and influence which Lysander enjoyed were burdensome and grievous to him. The doors of Lysander were always beset with a throng, and all followed in his train and paid him court, as though Agesilaüs had the command in name and outward appearance, to comply with the law, while in fact Lysander was master of all, had all power, and did everything. 2 In fact, none of the generals sent out to Asia ever had more power or inspired more fear than he; none other conferred greater favours on his friends, or inflicted such great injuries upon his enemies. All this was still fresh in men’s minds, and besides, when they saw the simple, plain, and familiar manners of Agesilaüs, while Lysander retained the same vehemence and harshness, and the same brevity of speech as before, they yielded to the latter’s influence altogether, and attached themselves to him alone. 3 As a consequence of this, in the first place, the rest of the Spartans were displeased to find themselves assistants of Lysander rather than counsellors of the king; and, in the second place, Agesilaüs himself, though he was not an envious man, nor displeased that others should be honoured, but exceedingly ambitious and high-spirited, began to fear that brilliant success which he might achieve in his undertakings would be attributed to Lysander, owing to popular opinion. He went to work, therefore, in this way.

4 To begin with, he resisted the counsels of Lysander, and whatever enterprises were most earnestly favoured by him, these he ignored and neglected, and did other things in their stead; again, of those who came to solicit favours from him, he sent away empty-handed all who put their chief confidence in Lysander; and in judicial cases likewise, all those against whom Lysander inveighed were sure to come off victory, while, on the contrary, those whom he was manifestly eager to help had hard work even to escape being fined. 5 These things happened, not casually, but as if of set purpose, and uniformly. At last Lysander perceived the reason, and did not hide it from his friends, but told them to go and pay their court to the king, and to those more influential with him than himself.

8 1 Accordingly, since his words and acts seemed contrived to bring odium upon the king, Agesilaüs, wishing to despite him still more, appointed him his carver of meats, and once said, we are told, in the hearing of many: “Now then, let these suppliants go off to my carver of meats and pay their court to him.” 2 Lysander, then, deeply pained, said to him: “I see, Agesilaüs, that thou knowest very well how to humble thy friends.” 600”Yes indeed,” said the king, “those who wish to be more powerful than I am.” Then Lysander said: “Well, perhaps these words of thine are fairer than my deeds. Give me, however, some post and place where I shall be of service to thee, without vexing thee.” 3 Upon this he was sent to the Hellespont, and brought over to Agesilaüs from the country of Pharnabazus, Spithridates, a Persian, with much money and two hundred horsemen. He did not, however, lay aside his wrath, but continued his resentment, and from this time on planned how he might wrest the kingdom from the two royal families, and make all Spartans once more eligible to it. And it was thought that he would have brought about a great disturbance in consequence of this quarrel, had not death overtaken him on his expedition into Boeotia. 4 Thus ambitious natures in a commonwealth, if they do not observe due bounds, work greater harm than good. Even though Lysander was troublesome, as he was, in gratifying his ambition unseasonably, still, Agesilaüs must surely have known another and more blameless way of correcting a man of high repute and ambition when he erred. As it was, it seems to have been due to the same passion that the one would not recognize the authority of his superior, nor the other endure the being ignored by his friend and comrade.

9 1 At first Tisaphernes was afraid of Agesilaüs, and made a treaty in which he promised him to make the Greek cities free and independent of the King. Afterwards, however, when he was convinced that he had a sufficient force, he declared war, and Agesilaüs gladly accepted it. 2 For he had great expectations from his expedition, and he thought it would be a disgraceful thing if, whereas Xenophon and his Ten Thousand had penetrated to the sea, and vanquished the King just as often as they themselves desired, he, in command of the Lacedaemonians, who had the supremacy on sea and land, should perform no deed worthy of remembrance in the eyes of the Hellenes. At once, then, requiting the perjury of Tisaphernes with a righteous deception, he gave out word that he was going to lead his troops against Caria; but when Barbarian had assembled his forces there, he set out and made an incursion into Phrygia. 3 He captured many cities and made himself master of boundless treasure, thus shewing plainly to his friends that the violation of a treaty is contempt for the gods, but that in outwitting one’s enemies there is not only justice, but also great glory, and profit mixed with pleasure. However, since he was inferior in cavalry and his sacrifices were unpropitious, he retired to Ephesus and began to get together a force of horsemen, commanding the well-to do, in case they did not wish to perform military service themselves, to furnish instead every man a horse and rider. 4 There were many who chose this course, and so it came to pass that Agesilaüs quickly had a large force of warlike horsemen instead of worthless men-at arms. For those who did not wish to do military service hired those who did, and those who did not wish to serve as horsemen hired those who did. Indeed, Agesilaüs thought Agamemnon had done well in accepting a good mare and freeing a cowardly rich man from military service. 5 And once when, by his orders, his prisoners of war were stripped of their clothing and offered for sale by the venders of booty, their clothing found many purchasers, but their naked bodies, which were utterly white and delicate, owing to their effeminate habits, were ridiculed useless and worthless. Then Agesilaüs, noticing, said: “These are the men with whom you fight, and these the things for which you fight.”

10 1 When the season again favoured an incursion into the enemy’s country, Agesilaüs gave out that he would march into Lydia, and this time he was not trying to deceive Tisaphernes. That satrap, however, utterly deluded himself, in that he disbelieved Agesilaüs because of his former trick, and thought that now, at any rate, the king would attack Caria, 601 although it was ill-suited for cavalry, and he was far inferior in that arm of the service. 2 But Agesilaüs, as he had given out that he would do, marched into the plain of Sardis, and then Tisaphernes was forced to hasten thither from Caria with aid and relief; and riding through the plain with his cavalry, he cut off many straggling plunderers there. Agesilaüs, accordingly, reflecting that the enemy’s infantry had not yet come up, while his own forces were complete, made haste to give battle. 3 He mingled his light-armed infantry with his horsemen, and ordered them to charge at full speed and assault the enemy, while he himself at once led up his men-at arms. The Barbarians were put to flight, and the Greeks, following close upon them, took their camp and slew many of them. As a result of this battle, the Greeks could not only harry the country of the King without fear, but had the satisfaction of seeing due punishment inflicted upon Tisaphernes, an abominable man, and most hateful to the Greek race. 4 For the King at once sent Tithraustes after him, who cut off his head, and asked Agesilaüs to make terms and sail back home, offering him money at the hands of his envoys. But Agesilaüs answered that it was for his city to make peace, and that for his own part, he took more pleasure in enriching his soldiers than in getting rich himself; moreover, the Greeks, he said, thought it honourable to take, not gifts, but spoils, from their enemies. 5 Nevertheless, desiring to gratify Tithraustes, because he had punished Tisaphernes, that common enemy of the Greeks, he led his army back into Phrygia, taking thirty talents from the viceroy to cover the expenses of the march.

On the road he received a dispatch-roll from the magistrates at home, which bade him assume control of the navy as well as of the army. This was an honour which no one ever received but Agesilaüs. And he was confessedly the greatest and most illustrious man of his time, as Theopompus also has somewhere said, although he prided himself more on his virtues than on his high command. 6 But in putting Peisander in charge of the navy at this time, he was thought to have made a mistake; for there were older and more competent men to be had, and yet he gave the admiralty to him, not out of regard for the public good, but in recognition of the claims of relationship and to gratify his wife, who was a sister of Peisander.

11 As for himself, he stationed his army in the province of Pharnabazus, where he not only lived in universal plenty, but also accumulated much money. He also advanced to the confines of Paphlagonia and brought Cotys, the king of the Paphlagonians, into alliance with him, for his virtues, and the confidence which he inspired, inclined the king to desire his friendship. 2 Spithridates also, from the time when he abandoned Pharnabazus and came to Agesilaüs, always accompanied him in his journeys and expeditions. Spithridates had a son, a very beautiful boy, named Megabates, of whom Agesilaüs was ardently enamoured, and a beautiful daughter also, a maiden of marriageable age. This daughter Agesilaüs persuaded Cotys to marry, 3 and then receiving from him a thousand horsemen and two thousand targeteers, he retired again into Phrygia, and harassed the country of Pharnabazus, who did not stand his ground nor trust in his defences, but always kept most of his valued and precious things with him, and withdrew or fled from one part of the country to another, having no abiding place. At last Spithridates, who had narrowly watched him, in conjunction with Herippidas the Spartan, seized his camp and made himself master of all his treasures. 4 Here, however, Herippidas, who had too sharp an eye to the booty that was stolen, and forced the Barbarians to restore it, watching over and enquiring into everything, exasperated Spithridates, so that he marched off at once to Sardis with the Paphlagonians.

602 This is said to have annoyed Agesilaüs beyond all else. For he was pained at the loss of a gallant man in Spithridates, and with him of a considerable force, and was ashamed to labour under the charge of pettiness and illiberality, from which he was always ambitious to keep not only himself, but also his country, pure and free. 5 And apart from these manifest reasons, he was irritated beyond measure by his love for the boy, which was now instilled into his heart, although when the boy was present he would summon all his resolution and strive mightily to battle against his desires. Indeed, when Megabates once came up and offered to embrace and kiss him he declined his caresses. 6 The boy was mortified at this, and desisted, and afterwards kept his distance when addressing him, whereupon Agesilaüs, distressed now and repentant for having avoided his kiss, pretended to wonder what ailed Megabates that he did not greet him with a kiss. “It is thy fault,” the king’s companions said; “thou didst not accept, but didst decline the fair one’s kiss in feature and trembling; yet even now he might be persuaded to come within range of thy lips; but see that thou dost not again play the coward.” 7 Then, after some time spent in silent reflection, Agesilaüs said: “There is no harm in your persuading him; for I think I would more gladly fight that battle of the kiss over again than possess all the gold I have ever seen.” Of such a mind was he while Megabates was with him, though when the boy was gone, he was so on fire with love for him that it were hard to say whether, had the boy come back into his presence, he would have had the strength to refuse his kisses.

12 1 After this, Pharnabazus desired to have a conference with him, and Apollophanes of Cyzicus, who was a guest-friend of both, brought the two together. Agesilaüs, with his friends, came first to the appointed place, and throwing himself down in a shady place where the grass was deep, there awaited Pharnabazus. 2 And when Pharnabazus came, although soft cushions and broidered rugs had been spread for him, he was ashamed to see Agesilaüs reclining as he was, and threw himself down likewise, without further ceremony, on the grassy ground, although he was clad in raiment of wonderful delicacy and dyes. After mutual salutations, Pharnabazus had plenty of just complaints to make, since, although he had rendered the Lacedaemonians many great services in their war against the Athenians, his territory was now being ravaged by them. 3 But Agesilaüs, seeing the Spartans with him bowed to the earth with shame and at a loss for words (for they saw that Pharnabazus was a wronged man), said: “We, O Pharnabazus, during our former friendship with the King, treated what belongs to him in a friendly way, and now that we have become his enemies, we treat it in a hostile way. Accordingly, seeing that thou also desirest to be one of the King’s chattels, we naturally injure him through thee. 4 But from the day when thou shalt deem thyself worthy to be called a friend and ally of the Greeks instead of a slave of the King, consider this army, these arms and ships, and all of us, to be guardians of thy possessions and of thy liberty, without which nothing in the land is honourable or even worthy to be desired.” 5 Upon this, Pharnabazus declared to him his purposes. “As for me, indeed,” he said, “if the King shall send out another general in my stead, I will be on your side; but if he entrusts me with the command, I will spare no efforts to punish and injure you in his behalf.” On hearing this, Agesilaüs was delighted, and said, as he seized his hand and rose up with him, “O Pharnabazus, I would that such a man as thou might be our friend rather than our enemy.”

13 1 As Pharnabazus and his friends were going away, his son, who was left behind, ran up to Agesilaüs and said with a smile: “I make thee my guest-friend, Agesilaüs,” 603 and offered him a javelin which he held in his hand. Agesilaüs accepted it, and being delighted with the fair looks and kindly bearing of the boy, looked round upon his companions to see if any one of them had anything that would do for a return-gift to a fair and gallant friend; 2 and seeing that the horse of Idaeus, his secretary, had a decorated head-gear, he quickly took this off and gave it to the youth. Nor afterwards did he cease to remember him, but when, as time went on, the youth was robbed of his home by his brothers and driven into exile in Peloponnesus, he paid him much attention. 3 He even gave him some assistance in his love affairs. For the Persian was enamoured of an Athenian boy, an athlete, who, owing to his stature and strength, was in danger of being ruled out of the lists at Olympia. He therefore had recourse to Agesilaüs with entreaties to help the boy, and Agesilaüs, wishing to gratify him in this matter also, with very great difficulty and with much trouble effected his desires.

Indeed, although in other matters he was exact and law-abiding, in matters of friendship he thought that rigid justice was a mere pretext. 4 At any rate, there is in circulation a letter of his to Hidrieus the Carian, which runs as follows: “As for Nicias, if he is innocent, acquit him; if he is guilty, acquit him for my sake; but in any case acquit him.” Such, then, was Agesilaüs in most cases where the interests of his friends were concerned; but sometimes he used a critical situation rather for his own advantage. Of this he gave an instance when, as he was decamping in some haste and confusion, he left his favourite behind him sick. The sick one besought him loudly as he was departing, but he merely turned and said that it was hard to be compassionate and at the same time prudent. This story is related by Hieronymus the philosopher.

14 1 Agesilaüs had now been nearly two years in the field, and much was said about him in the interior parts of Asia, and a wonderful opinion of his self-restraint, of his simplicity of life, and of his moderation, everywhere prevailed. For when he made a journey, he would take up his quarters in the most sacred precincts by himself, thus making the gods overseers and witnesses of those acts which few men are permitted to see us perform; and among so many thousands of soldiers, one could hardly find a meaner couch than that of Agesilaüs; 2 while to heat and cold he was as indifferent as if nature had given him alone the power to adapt himself to the seasons as God has tempered them. And it was most pleasing to the Greeks who dwelt in Asia to see the Persian viceroys and generals, who had long been insufferably cruel, and had revelled in wealth and luxury, now fearful and obsequious before a man who went about in a paltry cloak, and at one brief and laconic speech from him conforming themselves to his ways and changing their dress and mien, insomuch that many were moved to cite the words of Timotheus: —

“Ares is Lord; of gold Greece has no fear.”

15 1 Asia being now unsettled and in many quarters inclined to revolt, Agesilaüs set the cities there in order, and restored to their governments, without killing or banishing any one, the proper form. Then he determined to go farther afield, to transfer the war from the Greek sea, to fight for the person of the King and the wealth of Ecbatana and Susa, and above all things to rob that monarch of the power to sit at leisure on his throne, playing the umpire for the Greeks in their wars, and corrupting their popular leaders. 2 But at this point Epicydidas the Spartan came to him with tidings that Sparta was involved in a great war with other Greeks, and that the ephors called upon him and ordered him to come to the aid of his countrymen.

“O barbarous ills devised by Greeks!”

How else can one speak of that jealousy which now leagued and arrayed the Greeks against one another? They laid violent hands on Fortune in her lofty flight, and turned the weapons which threatened the Barbarians, and War, which had at last been banished from Greece, 604 back again upon themselves. 3 I certainly cannot agree with Demaratus the Corinthian, who said that those Greeks had missed a great pleasure who did not behold Alexander seated on the throne of Dareius, nay, I think that such might well have shed tears when they reflected that this triumph was left for Alexander and Macedonians by those who now squandered the lives of Greek generals on the fields of Leuctra, Coroneia, and Corinth, and in Arcadia.

4 Agesilaüs, however, never performed a nobler or a greater deed than in returning home as he now did, nor was there ever a fairer example of righteous obedience to authority. For Hannibal, though he was already in an evil plight and on the point of being driven out of Italy, could with the greatest difficulty bring himself to obey his summons to the war at home; and Alexander actually went so far as to jest when he heard of Antipater’s battle with Agis, saying: “It would seem, my men, that while we were conquering Dareius here, there has been a battle of mice there in Arcadia.” 5 Why, then, should we not call Sparta happy in the honour paid to her by Agesilaüs, and in his deference to her laws? No sooner had the dispatch-roll come to him than he renounced and abandoned the great good fortune and power already in his grasp, and the great hopes which beckoned him on, and at once sailed off, “with task all unfulfilled,” leaving behind a great yearning for him among his allies, and giving the strongest confutation to the saying of Erasistratus the son of Phaeax, who declared that the Lacedaemonians were better men in public life, but the Athenians in private. 6 For while approving himself a most excellent king and general, he shewed himself a still better and more agreeable friend and companion to those who enjoyed his intimacy. Persian coins were stamped with the figure of an archer, and Agesilaüs said, as he was breaking camp, that the King was driving him out of Asia with ten thousand “archers”; for so much money had been sent to Athens and Thebes and distributed among the popular leaders there, and as a consequence those peoples made war upon the Spartans.

16 1 And when he had crossed the Hellespont and was marching through Thrace, he made no requests of any of the Barbarians, but sent envoys to each people asking whether he should traverse their country as a friend or as a foe. All the rest, accordingly, received him as a friend and assisted him on his way, as they were severally able; but the people called Trallians, to whom even Xerxes gave gifts, as we are told, demanded of Agesilaüs as a price for his passage a hundred talents of silver and as many women. 2 But he answered them with scorn, asking why, then, they did not come at once to get their price; and marched forward, and finding them drawn up for battle, engaged them, and slew many of them. He sent his usual enquiry forward to the king of the Macedonians also, who answered that he would deliberate upon it. “Let him deliberate, then,” said Agesilaüs, “but we will march on.” In amazement therefore at his boldness, and in fear, the Macedonian king gave orders to let him pass as a friend. 3 Since the Thessalians were in alliance with his enemies, he ravaged their country. But to the city of Larissa he sent Xenocles and Scythes, hoping to secure its friendship. His ambassadors, however, were arrested and kept in close custody, whereupon the rest of his command were indignant, and thought that Agesilaüs ought to encamp about Larissa and lay siege to it. But he declared that the capture of all Thessaly would not compensate him for the loss of either one of his men, and made terms with the enemy in order to get them back. 4 And perhaps we need not wonder at such conduct in Agesilaüs, since when he learned that a great battle had been fought near Corinth, and that men of the highest repute had suddenly been taken off, and that although few Spartans altogether had been killed, the loss of their enemies was very heavy, he was not seen to be rejoiced or elated, but fetched a deep groan and said: “Alas for Hellas, which has by her own hands destroyed so many brave men! Had they lived, they could have conquered in battle all the Barbarians in the world.” 6055 However, when the Pharsalians annoyed him and harassed his army, he ordered five hundred horsemen which he led in person to attack them, routed them, and set up a trophy at the foot of mount Narthacium. This victory gave him special pleasure, because with horsemen of his own mustering and training, and with no other force, he had conquered those whose chief pride was placed in their cavalry.

17 1 Here Diphridas, an ephor from Sparta, met him, with orders to invade Boeotia immediately. Therefore, although he was purposing to do this later with a larger armament, he thought it did not behoove him to disobey the magistrates, but said to those who were with him that the day was near for which they had come from Asia. He also sent for two divisions of the army at Corinth. 2 Then the Lacedaemonians at home, wishing to do him honour, made proclamation that any young man who wished might enlist in aid of the king. All enlisted eagerly, and the magistrates chose out the most mature and vigorous of them to the number of fifty, and sent them off.

Agesilaüs now marched through the pass of Thermopylae, traversed Phocis, which was friendly to Sparta, entered Boeotia, and encamped near Chaeroneia. Here a partial eclipse of the sun occurred, and at the same time news came to him of the death of Peisander, who was defeated in a naval battle off Cnidus by Pharnabazus and Conon. 3 Agesilaüs was naturally much distressed at these tidings, both because of the man thus lost, and of the city which had lost him; but nevertheless, that his soldiers might not be visited with dejection and fear as they were going into battle, he ordered the messengers from the sea to reverse their tidings and say that the Spartans were victorious in the naval battle. He himself also came forth publicly with a garland on his head, offered sacrifices for glad tidings, and sent portions of the sacrificial victims to his friends.

18 1 After advancing as far as Coroneia and coming within sight of the enemy, he drew up his army in battle array, giving the left wing to the Orchomenians, while he himself led forward the right. On the other side, the Thebans held the right wing themselves, and the Argives the left. Xenophon says that this battle was unlike any ever fought, and he was present himself and fought on the side of Agesilaüs, having crossed over with him from Asia. 2 The first impact, it is true, did not meet with much resistance, nor was it long contested, but the Thebans speedily routed the Orchomenians, as Agesilaüs did the Argives. Both parties, however, on hearing that their left wings were overwhelmed and in flight, turned back. Then, although the victory might have been his without peril if he had been willing to refrain from attacking the Thebans in front and to smite them in the rear after they had passed by, Agesilaüs was carried away by passion and the ardour of battle and advanced directly upon them, wishing to bear them down by sheer force. 3 But they received him with a vigour that matched his own, and a battle ensued which was fierce at all points in the line, but fiercest where the king himself stood surrounded by his fifty volunteers, whose opportune and emulous valour seems to have saved his life. For they fought with the utmost fury and exposed their lives in his behalf, and though they were not able to keep him from being wounded, but many blows of spears and swords pierced his armour and reached his person, they did succeed in dragging him off alive, and standing in close array in front of him, they slew many foes, while many of their own number fell. 4 But since it proved too hard a task to break the Theban front, they were forced to do what at the outset they were loth to do. They opened their ranks and let the enemy pass through, and then, when these had got clear, and were already marching in looser array, the Spartans followed on the run and smote them on the flanks. They could not, however, put them to rout, but the Thebans withdrew the end of Mount Helicon, greatly elated over the battle, in which, as they reasoned, their own contingent had been undefeated.

606 19 1 But Agesilaüs, although he was weakened by many wounds, would not retire to his tent until he had first been carried to his troops and seen that the dead were collected within the encampment. Moreover, he ordered that all of the enemy who had taken refuge in the sanctuary should be dismissed. 2 For the temple of Athena Itonia was near at hand, and a trophy stood in front of it, which the Boeotians had long ago erected, when, under the command of Sparto, they had defeated the Athenians there and slain Tolmides their general. Early next morning, Agesilaüs, wishing to try the Thebans and see whether they would give him battle, ordered his soldiers to wreath their heads and his pipers to play their pipes, while a trophy was set up and adorned in token of their victory. 3 And when the enemy sent to him and asked permission to take up their dead, he made a truce with them, and having thus assured to himself the victory, proceeded to Delphi, where the Pythian games were in progress. There he celebrated the customary procession in honour of the god, and offered up the tenth of the spoils which he had brought from Asia, amounting to a hundred talents.

4 Then he went back home, where his life and conduct brought him at once the affection and admiration of his fellow-citizens. For, unlike most of their generals, he came back from foreign parts unchanged and unaffected by alien customs; he showed no dislike towards home fashions, nor was he restive under them, but honoured and loved what he found there just as much as those did who had never crossed the Eurotas; he made no change in his table, 5 or his baths, or the attendance on his wife, or the decoration of his armour, or the furniture of his house, nay, he actually let its doors remain although they were very old, — one might say they were the very doors which Aristodemus had set up. His daughter’s “kannathron,” as Xenophon tells us, was no more elaborate than that of any other maid (“kannathra” is the name they give to the wooden figures of griffins or goat-stags in which their young girls are carried at the sacred processions). 6 Xenophon, it is true, has not recorded the name of the daughter of Agesilaüs, and Dicaearchus expressed great indignation that neither her name nor that of the mother of Epaminondas was known to us; but we have found in the Lacedaemonian records that the wife of Agesilaüs was named Cleora, and his daughters Eupolia and Proauga. And one can see his spear also, which is still preserved at Sparta, and which is not at all different from that of other men.

20 1 However, on seeing that some of the citizens esteemed themselves highly and were greatly lifted up because they bred racing horses, he persuaded his sister Cynisca to enter a chariot in the contests at Olympia, wishing to shew the Greeks that the victory there was not a mark of any great excellence, but simply of wealth and lavish outlay. 2 Also, having Xenophon the philosopher in his following, and making much of him, he ordered him to send for his sons and rear them at Sparta, that they might learn that fairest of all lessons, how to obey and how to command. Again, finding after Lysander’s death that a large society was in existence, which that commander, immediately after returning from Asia, had formed against him, Agesilaüs set out to prove what manner of citizen Lysander had been while alive. 3 So, after reading a speech which Lysander had left behind him in book form, — a speech which Cleon of Halicarnassus had composed, but which Lysander had intended to adopt and pronounce before the people in advocacy of a revolution and change in the form of government, — Agesilaüs wished to publish it. But one of the senators, who had read the speech and feared its ability and power, advised the king not to dig Lysander up again, but rather to bury the speech with him, to which advice Agesilaüs listened and held his peace. 4 And as for those who were in opposition to him, he would do them no open injury, but would exert himself to send some of them away from time to time as generals and commanders, 607 and would shew them up if they proved base and grasping in their exercise of authority; then, contrariwise, when they were brought to trial, he would come to their aid and exert himself in their behalf, and so would make them friends instead of enemies, and bring them over to his side, so that no one was left to oppose him.

5 For Agesipolis, the other king, since he was the son of an exile, in years a mere stripling, and by nature gentle and quiet, took little part in affairs of state. And yet he too was brought under the sway of Agesilaüs. For the Spartan kings eat together in the same “phiditium,” or public mess, whenever they are at home. 6 Accordingly, knowing that Agesipolis was prone to love affairs, just as he was himself, Agesilaüs would always introduce some discourse about the boys who were of an age to love. He would even lead the young king’s fancy toward the object of his own affections, and share with him in wooing and loving, these Spartan loves having nothing shameful in them, but being attended rather with great modesty, high ambition, and an ardent desire for excellence, as I have written in my life of Lycurgus.

21 1 Having thus obtained very great influence in the city, he effected the appointment of Teleutias, his half-brother on his mother’s side, as admiral. Then he led an army to Corinth, and himself, by land, captured the long walls, while Teleutias, with his fleet, seized the enemy’s ships and dockyards. Then coming suddenly upon the Argives who at that time held Corinth, and were celebrating the Isthmian games, he drove them away just as they had sacrificed to the god, and made them abandon all their equipment for the festival. 2 At this, the exiles from Corinth who were in his army begged him to hold the games. This, however, he would not do, but remained at hand while they held the games from beginning to end, and afforded them security. Afterwards, when he had departed, the Isthmian games were held afresh by the Argives, and some contestants won their victories a second time, while some were entered in the lists as victors in the first contests, but as vanquished in the second. 3 In this matter Agesilaüs declared that the Argives had brought down upon themselves the charge of great cowardice, since they regarded the conduct of the games as so great and august a privilege, and yet had not the courage to fight for it. He himself thought that moderation ought to be observed in all these matters, and sought to improve the local choirs and games. These he always attended, full of ambitious ardour, and was absent from no contest in which either boys or girls competed. Those things, however, for which he saw the rest of the world filled with admiration, he appeared not even to recognize. 4 Once upon a time Callippides the tragic actor, who had a name and fame among the Greeks and was eagerly courted by all, first met him and addressed him, then pompously thrust himself into his company of attendants, showing plainly that he expected the king to make him some friendly overtures, and finally said: “Dost thou not recognize me, O King?” The king fixed his eyes upon him and said: “Yea, art thou not Callippides the buffoon?” For this is how the Lacedaemonians describe actors. 5 And again, when he was invited to hear the man who imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying: “I have heard the bird herself.” Again, Menecrates the physician, who, for his successes in certain desperate cases, had received the surname of Zeus, and had the bad taste to employ the appellation, actually dared to write the king a letter beginning thus: “Menecrates Zeus, to King Agesilaüs, greeting.” To this Agesilaüs replied: “King Agesilaüs, to Menecrates, health and sanity.”

22 1 While he was lingering in the territory of Corinth, he seized the Heraeum, and as he was watching his soldiers carry off the prisoners and booty, messengers came from Thebes to treat for peace. But he had always hated that city, and thinking this an advantageous time also for insulting it, pretended neither to see nor hear its ambassadors when they presented themselves. 2 But his pride soon had a fall; for the Thebans had not yet departed when messengers came to him with tidings that the Spartan division had been cut to pieces by Iphicrates. This was the greatest disaster that had happened to the Spartans in a long time; for they lost many brave men, and those men were overwhelmed by targeteers and mercenaries, though they were men-at arms and Lacedaemonians.

6083 At once, then, Agesilaüs sprang up to go to their assistance, but when he learned that it was all over with them, he came back again to the Heraeum, and ordering the Boeotians then to come before him, gave them an audience. But they returned his insolence by making no mention of peace, but simply asking safe conduct into Corinth. Agesilaüs was wroth at this, and said: “If you wish to see your friends when they are elated at their successes, you can do so to morrow in all safety.” 4 And taking them along with him on the next day, he ravaged the territory of the Corinthians, and advanced to the very gates of the city. After he had thus proved that the Corinthians did not dare to resist him, he dismissed the embassy. Then he himself, picking up the survivors of the division that had been cut to pieces, led them back to Sparta, always breaking camp before it was day, and pitching the next camp after it was dark, in order that the hateful and malicious Arcadians might not exult over them.

5 After this, to gratify the Achaeans, he crossed over with them on an expedition into Acarnania, where he drove away much booty and conquered the Acarnanians in battle. But when the Achaeans asked him to spend the winter there in order to prevent the enemy from sowing their fields, he said he would do the opposite of this; for the enemy would dread the war more if their land was sown when summer came. And this proved true; for when a second expedition against them was announced, they came to terms with the Achaeans.

23 1 When Conon and Pharnabazus with the Great King’s fleet were masters of the sea and were ravaging the coasts of Laconia, and after the walls of Athens had been rebuilt with the money which Pharnabazus furnished, the Lacedaemonians decided to make peace with the king of Persia. To that end, they sent Antalcidas to Tiribazus, and in the most shameful and lawless fashion handed over to the King the Greeks resident in Asia, in whose behalf Agesilaüs had waged war. 2 Agesilaüs, therefore, could have no part at all in this infamy. Antalcidas was his enemy, and put forth all his efforts to make the peace because he saw that the war enhanced to the utmost the reputation and power of Agesilaüs. Notwithstanding this, to one who remarked that the Lacedaemonians were favouring the Medes, Agesilaüs replied that the Medes were the rather favouring the Lacedaemonians. 3 Moreover, by threatening with war the Greeks who were unwilling to accept the peace, he forced them all to abide by the terms which the Persian dictated, more especially on account of the Thebans, his object being to make them weaker by leaving Boeotia independent of Thebes. This he made clear by his subsequent behaviour. For when Phoebidas committed the foul deed of seizing the Cadmeia in a time of perfect peace, and all the Greeks were indignant and the Spartans displeased at the act, 4 and when especially those who were at variance with Agesilaüs angrily asked Phoebidas by whose command he had done this thing, thereby turning suspicion upon Agesilaüs, he did not scruple to come to the help of Phoebidas, and to say openly that they must consider whether the act was serviceable or not; for that which was advantageous to Sparta might well be done independently, even if no one ordered it. 5 And yet in his discourse he was always declaring that justice was the first of the virtues; for valour was of no use unless justice attended it, and if all men should be just, there would be no need of valour. And to those who said, “This is the pleasure of the Great King,” he would say, “How is he greater than I unless he is also more just?”, rightly and nobly thinking that justice must be the royal measure wherewith relative greatness is measured. 6 And when, after the peace was concluded, 609 the Great King sent him a letter proposing guest-friendship, he would not accept it, saying that public friendship was enough, and that while that lasted there would be no need of a private one. Yet in his acts he no longer observed these opinions, but was often carried away by ambition and contentiousness, and particularly in his treatment of the Thebans. 7 For he not only rescued Phoebidas from punishment, but actually persuaded Sparta to assume responsibility for his iniquity and occupy the Cadmeia on its own account, besides putting the administration of Thebes into the hands of Archias and Leontidas, by whose aid Phoebidas had entered and seized the acropolis.

24 1 Of course this gave rise at once to a suspicion that while Phoebidas had done the deed, Agesilaüs had counselled it; and his subsequent acts brought the charge into general belief. For when the Thebans expelled the Spartan garrison and liberated their city, he charged them with the murder of Archias and Leontidas, who were really tyrants, though polemarchs in name, and levied war upon them. 2 And Cleombrotus, who was king now that Agesilaüs was dead, was sent into Boeotia with an army; for Agesilaüs, who had now borne arms for forty years, and was therefore exempt by law from military service, declined this command. He was ashamed, after having recently made war upon the Phliasians in behalf of their exiles, to be seen now harrying the Thebans in the interests of their tyrants.

3 Now, there was a certain Lacedaemonian named Sphodrias, of the party opposed to Agesilaüs, who had been appointed harmost at Thespiae. He lacked neither boldness nor ambition, but always abounded in hopes rather than in good judgement. This man, coveting a great name, and considering that Phoebidas had made himself famous far and near by his bold deed at Thebes, was persuaded that it would be a far more honourable and brilliant exploit for him to seize the Peiraeus on his own account and rob the Athenians of access to the sea, attacking them unexpectedly by land. 4 It is said, too, that the scheme was devised by Pelopidas and Melo, chief magistrates at Thebes. They privily sent men to him who pretended to be Spartan sympathizers, and they, by praising and exalting Sphodrias as the only man worthy to undertake so great a task, urged and incited him into an act which was no less lawless and unjust than the seizure of the Cadmeia, though it was essayed without courage or good fortune. 5 For full daylight overtook him while he was yet in the Thriasian plain, although he had hoped to attack the Peiraeus by night. It is said also that his soldiers saw a light streaming from certain sanctuaries at Eleusis, and were filled with shuddering fear. Their commander himself lost all his courage, since concealment was no longer possible, and after ravaging the country a little, retired disgracefully and ingloriously to Thespiae. 6 Hereupon men were sent from Athens to Sparta to denounce Sphodrias. They found, however, that the magistrates there had no need of their denunciation, but had already indicted Sphodrias on a capital charge. This charge he determined not to meet, fearing the wrath of his countrymen, who were ashamed in the presence of the Athenians, and wished to be thought wronged with them, that they might not be thought wrongdoers with Sphodrias.

25 1 Now Sphodrias had a son, Cleonymus, who was still a boy and fair to look upon, and of whom Archidamus, the son of King Agesilaüs, was enamoured. In this crisis Archidamus naturally sympathized with his favourite because of the peril in which his father stood, but he was unable to aid and assist him openly, since Sphodrias was one of opponents of Agesilaüs. 2 But when Cleonymus came to him in tears and begged him 610 to mollify Agesilaüs, from whom he and his father had most to fear, for three or four days he was restrained by awe and fear from saying anything to Agesilaüs as he followed him about; but finally, when the trial was near at hand, he plucked up courage to tell him that Cleonymus had begged him to intercede for his father. 3 Now Agesilaüs, although he knew of the love of Archidamus, had not put a stop to it, since Cleonymus, from his early boyhood, had given signal promise of becoming an earnest and worthy man. At this time, however, he did not permit his son to expect any advantage or kindness in answer to his prayer; he merely said, as he went away, that he would consider what was the honourable and fitting course in the matter. 4 Archidamus was therefore mortified, and ceased to visit Cleonymus, although before this he had done so many times a day. As a consequence, the friends of Sphodrias also were more in despair of his case, until Etymocles, one of the friends of Agesilaüs, conferred with them and disclosed the mind of the king, namely, that he blamed to the utmost what Sphodrias had done, but yet thought him a brave man, and saw that the city needed just such soldiers. 5 For this was the way in which Agesilaüs always spoke about the trial, in his desire to gratify his son, so that Cleonymus was at once aware of the zealous efforts of Archidamus in his behalf, and the friends of Sphodrias had courage at last to come to his help. It is a fact also that Agesilaüs was excessively fond of his children, and a story is told of his joining in their childish play. Once, when they were very small, he bestrode a stick, and was playing horse with them in the house, and when he was spied doing this by one of his friends, he entreated him not to tell any one, until he himself should be a father of children.

26 1 But after Sphodrias was acquitted, and the Athenians, on learning of it, were inclined to go to war, Agesilaüs was very harshly criticized. It was thought that, to gratify an absurd and childish desire, he had opposed the course of justice in a trial, and made the city accessory to great crimes against the Greeks. 2 Besides, when he saw that his colleague Cleombrotus was little inclined to make war upon the Thebans, he waived the exemption by law which he had formerly claimed in the matter of the expedition, and presently led an incursion into Boeotia himself, where he inflicted damage upon the Thebans, and in his turn met with reverses, so that one day when he was wounded, Antalcidas said to him: “Indeed, this is a fine tuition-fee which thou art getting from the Thebans, for teaching them how to fight when they did not wish to do it, and did not even know how.” 3 For the Thebans are said to have been really more warlike at this time than ever before, owing to the many expeditions which the Lacedaemonians made against them, by which they were virtually schooled in arms. And Lycurgus of old, in one of his three so called “rhetras,” forbade his people to make frequent expeditions against the same foes, in order that those foes might not learn how to make war.

Moreover, the allies of the Lacedaemonians were offended at Agesilaüs, because, as they said, it was not upon any public ground of complaint, but by reason of some passionate resentment of his own, that he sought to destroy the Thebans. 4 Accordingly, they said they had no wish to be dragged hither and thither to destruction every year, they themselves so many, and the Lacedaemonians, with whom they followed, so few. It was at this time, we are told, that Agesilaüs, wishing to refute their argument from numbers, devised the following scheme. He ordered all the allies to sit down by themselves promiscuously, the Lacedaemonians apart by themselves. 5 Then his herald called upon the potters to stand up first, and after them the smiths, next, the carpenters in their turn, and the builders, and so on through all the handicrafts. In response, almost all the allies rose up, but not a man of the Lacedaemonians; 611 for they were forbidden to learn or practise a manual art. Then Agesilaüs said with a laugh: “You see, O men, how many more soldiers than you we are sending out.”

27 1 But in Megara, when he was leading his army back from Thebes, as he was going up to the senate-house in the acropolis, he was seized with a cramp and violent pain in his sound leg, which then swelled up, appeared to be congested, and showed signs of excessive inflammation. 2 As soon as a certain Syracusan physician had opened a vein below the ankle, the pains relaxed, but much blood flowed and could not be checked, so that Agesilaüs was very faint from its loss, and in dire peril of his life. At last, however, the flow of blood was stopped, and Agesilaüs was carried to Sparta, where he remained for a long time in a weak condition and unable to take the field.

3 During this time the Spartans met with many reverses both by land and sea, the greatest of which was at Tegyra, where for the first time they were overpowered by the Thebans in a pitched battle. There was, accordingly, a general sentiment in favour of a general peace, and ambassadors from all Hellas came together at Sparta to settle its terms. 4 One of these ambassadors was Epaminondas, a man of repute for culture and philosophy, although he had not yet given proof of capacity as a general. This man, seeing all the rest cringing before Agesilaüs, alone had the courage of his convictions, and made a speech, not in behalf of Thebes, his native city, but of all Greece in common, declaring that war had made Sparta great at the expense of the sufferings of all the other states, and urging that peace be made on terms of equality and justice, for it would endure only when all parties to it were made equal.

28 1 Agesilaüs, accordingly, seeing that the Greeks all listened to Epaminondas with the greatest attention and admiration, asked him whether he considered it justice and equality that the cities of Boeotia should be independent of Thebes. Then when Epaminondas promptly and boldly asked him in reply whether he too thought it justice for the cities of Laconia to be independent of Sparta, Agesilaüs sprang from his seat and wrathfully bade him say plainly whether he intended to make the cities of Boeotia independent. 2 And when Epaminondas answered again in this way by asking whether he intended to make the cities of Laconia independent, Agesilaüs became violent and was glad of the pretext for at once erasing the name of the Thebans from the treaty of peace and declaring war upon them. The rest of the Greeks, however, he ordered to depart, now that they were reconciled with each other, leaving differences which could be healed to the terms of peace, and those which could not, to war, since it was a hard task to settle and remove all their disputes.

3 At this time Cleombrotus was in Phocis with an army. The ephors therefore immediately sent him orders to lead his forces against Thebes. They also sent round a summons for an assembly of their allies, who were without zeal for the war and thought it a great burden, but were not yet bold enough to oppose or disobey the Lacedaemonians. 4 And although many baleful signs appeared, as I have written in my Life of Epaminondas, and though Prothoüs the Laconian made opposition to the expedition, Agesilaüs would not give in, but brought the war to pass. He thought that since all Hellas was on their side, and the Thebans had been excluded from the treaty, it was a favourable time for the Spartans to take vengeance on them. 5 But the time chosen for it proves that this expedition was made from anger more than from careful calculation. 612 For the treaty of peace was made at Lacedaemon on the fourteenth of the month Scirophorion, and on the fifth of Hecatombaeon the Lacedaemonians were defeated at Leuctra, — an interval of twenty days. In that battle a thousand Lacedaemonians fell, besides Cleombrotus the king, and around him the mightiest of the Spartans. 6 Among these, they say, was Cleonymus, the beautiful son of Sphodrias, who was thrice struck down in front of his king, as many times rose again to his feet, and died there, fighting the Thebans.

29 1 Now that the Lacedaemonians had met with an unexpected reverse, and the Thebans with an unlooked-for success surpassing that of any other Hellenes at strife with Hellenes, the high conduct of the defeated city was no less to be envied and admired than that of the victorious city. 2 Xenophon says that in the case of noble men, there is much that is worth recording even in what they say and do at their wine and in their sports, and he is right; and it is no less, but even more, worth while to observe carefully the decorum with which noble men speak and act in the middle of adversity. The city was holding a festival and was full of strangers; for the “gymnopaediae” were in progress and choirs of boys were competing with one another in the theatre; then came the messengers of calamity from Leuctra. 3 But the ephors, although it was at once apparent that their cause was ruined and their supremacy lost, would not allow a choral performance to be omitted, nor the fashion of the festival to be changed by the city, but after sending the names of the slain warriors to the homes of the kindred, they themselves conducted the spectacle and the choral contests to a close. 4 On the next morning also, now that everyone knew who had survived the battle and who had been slain, the fathers and kindred and friends of the slain went down into the market-place and greeted one another with bright faces, full of pride and exultation; while the friends of the survivors, as if in mourning, tarried at home with the women, and if one of them was obliged to appear in public, his garb and speech and looks betokened his humiliation and abasement. 5 And a still greater difference was to be seen (or heard about) in the women; she who expected her son back from the battle alive was dejected and silent, but the mothers of those reported to have fallen immediately frequented the temples, and visited one another with an air of gladness and pride.

30 1 The greater number, however, when their allies were falling away from them and it was expected that Epaminondas, in all the pride of a conqueror, would invade Peloponnesus, fell to thinking of the oracles, in view of the lameness of Agesilaüs, and were full of dejection and consternation in respect to the divine powers, believing that their city was in an evil plight because they had dethroned the sound-footed king and chosen instead a lame and halting one, — the very thing which the deity was trying to teach them carefully to avoid. 2 And yet otherwise he had such power and valour and fame that they not only continued to employ him as king and general in matters pertaining to war, but also as physician and arbiter in their civil perplexities. For instance, upon those who had shewn cowardice in the battle, whom they themselves call “tresantes,” or run-aways, they hesitated to inflict the disabilities required by the laws, since the men were numerous and powerful, for fear that they might stir up a revolution. 3 For such men are not only debarred from every office, but intermarriage with any of them is a disgrace, and any one who meets them may strike them if he pleases. Moreover, they are obliged to go about unkempt and squalid, wearing cloaks that are patched with dyed stuffs, half of their beards shaven, and half left to grow. 4 It was a serious matter, therefore, to allow many such men in the city, when she lacked not a few soldiers. So they chose Agesilaüs as a law-giver for the occasion. And he, without adding or subtracting from or changing the laws in any way, came into the assembly of the Lacedaemonians 613 and said that the laws must be allowed to sleep for that day, but from that day on must be in sovereign force. By this means he at once saved the laws for the city and the men from infamy. 5 Then, wishing to remove the discouragement and dejection which prevailed among the young men, he made an incursion into Arcadia, and though he studiously avoided joining battle with the enemy, he took a small town of the Mantineans and overran their territory, and thus lightened and gladdened the expectations of his city, which felt that its case was not wholly desperate.

31 1 After this, Epaminondas entered Laconia with his allies, having no fewer than forty thousand men-at arms. Many light armed and unarmed troops also followed him for the sake of plunder, so that a horde of seventy thousand, all told, made this incursion into Laconia. 2 For a period of no less than six hundred years the Dorians had been living in Lacedaemon, and this was the first time in all that period that enemies had been seen in the country; before this, none had ventured there. But now they burst into an unravaged and inviolate land, and burned and plundered as far as the river and the city, and no one came out against them. 3 For Agesilaüs would not suffer the Lacedaemonians to fight against such a “billowy torrent of war,” to use the words of Theopompus, but surrounded the central and most commanding parts of the city with his men-at arms, while he endured the boastful threats of the Thebans, who called upon him by name and bade him come out and fight for his country, since he had caused her misfortunes by lighting up the flames of war. 4 But this was not the worst. Agesilaüs was still more harassed by the tumults and shrieks and running about throughout the city, where the elder men were enraged at the state of affairs, and the women were unable to keep quiet, but were utterly beside themselves when they heard the shouts and saw the fires of the enemy. 5 He was also distressed at the thought of what his fame would be, because he had taken command of the city when she was greatest and most powerful, and now saw her reputation lowered, and her proud boast made empty, which boast he himself also had often made, saying that no Spartan woman had ever seen the smoke of an enemy’s fires. It is said also that Antalcidas, when an Athenian was disputing with him over the valour of the two peoples and said, “Yet we have often driven you away from the Cephisus,” replied: “But we have never driven you away from the Eurotas.” 6 And a similar retort was made by a Spartan of lesser note to the Argive who said, “Many of you lie buried in the lands of Argos”; the Spartan answered: “But not a man of you in the lands of Laconia.”

32 1 Now, however, they say that Antalcidas, who was an ephor, secretly sent his children away to Cythera, so full of fear was he. But Agesilaüs, when the enemy tried to cross the Eurotas and force their way to the city, abandoned the rest of it and drew up his forces in front of its central and lofty precincts. 2 Now, the Eurotas at this time was flowing at its fullest and deepest, since snows had fallen, and its current, even more from its coldness than its violence, was very troublesome to the Thebans. As Epaminondas was fording it at the head of his phalanx, certain ones pointed him out to Agesilaüs, and he, we are told, after fixing his gaze upon him and watching him for a long time, said but these words: “O adventurous man!” 3 Epaminondas was ambitious to join battle in the city and set up a trophy of victory there, but since he could neither force nor tempt Agesilaüs out of his positions, he withdrew and began to ravage the country. Meanwhile, about two hundred of the Lacedaemonians who had long been disaffected and mutinous banded together and seized the Issorium, 614 where the temple of Artemis stands, a well-walled and inaccessible spot. 4 The Lacedaemonians wished to make a dash upon them at once, but Agesilaüs, fearing their insurrection, ordered the rest to keep quiet, while he himself, wearing his cloak and attended by a single servant, went towards them, crying out that they had misunderstood his orders; for he had not commanded them to assemble in that place, nor in a body, but some yonder (pointing to another spot), and some in another part of the city. 5 They were delighted to hear this, supposing that their design was undiscovered, and, breaking up, went off to the places which he ordered them to occupy. Then Agesilaüs at once summoned other troops and took possession of the Issorium, after which he arrested about fifteen of the conspirators who had been gathered there, and put them to death in the night. 6 He was also informed of another and a larger conspiracy of Spartans, who met secretly in a house and there plotted revolution. It was impracticable either to bring these men to trial in a time of so much confusion, or to overlook their plots. Accordingly, Agesilaüs conferred with the ephors, and then put these men also to death without process of law, although no Spartan had ever before met with such a death. 7 At this time, also, many of the provincials and Helots who had been enrolled in the army ran away from the city and joined the enemy, and this caused very deep discouragement. Agesilaüs therefore instructed his servants to go every morning before it was light to the barracks and take the arms of the deserters and hide them, that their numbers might not be known.

8 As for the reason why the Thebans withdrew from Laconia, most writers say that it was because winter storms came on and the Arcadians began to melt away and disband; others, because they had remained there three entire months and thoroughly ravaged most of the country; but Theopompus says that when the Theban chief magistrates had already determined to take their army back, Phrixus, a Spartan, came to them, bringing ten talents from Agesilaüs to pay for their withdrawal, so that they were only doing what they had long ago decided to do, and had their expenses paid by their enemies besides.

33 1 This story may be true, although I know not how all other writers could be ignorant of it, while Theopompus alone heard it but, at any rate, all agree that the salvation of Sparta at this time was due to Agesilaüs, because he renounced his inherent passions of contentiousness and ambition, and adopted a policy of safety. 2 He could not, however, restore the power and reputation of his city after its fall, for it was like a human body that is sound, indeed, but has followed all the while too strict and severe a regimen; a single error turned the scale and brought down the entire prosperity of the city. Nor was this strange. For to a civil polity best arranged for peace and virtue and unanimity they had attached empires and sovereignties won by force, not one of which Lycurgus thought needful for a city that was to live in happiness; and therefore they fell.

3 Agesilaüs himself now declined military service on account of his years, but Archidamus his son, with assistance which came from the tyrant of Sicily, conquered the Arcadians in the so called “tearless battle,” where not one of his own men fell, and he slew great numbers of the enemy. This victory, more than anything else, showed the weakness of the city. 4 For up to this time they were wont to think the conquest of their enemies so customary and natural a thing for them to achieve, that no sacrifice for victory was offered in the city to the gods, beyond that of a cock, neither did the winners of the contest exult, nor those who heard of their victory show great joy. Nay, even after the battle at Mantinea, which Thucydides has described, the one who first announced the victory 615 had no other reward for his glad tidings than a piece of meat sent by the magistrates from the public mess. 5 But now, at the news of the Arcadian victory and at the approach of Archidamus, no one could restrain himself, but first his father went to meet him, weeping for joy, and after him the chief magistrates, while the elderly men and the women went down in a throng to the river, lifting their hands to heaven and blessing the gods, as if Sparta had wiped away her unmerited disgraces and now saw the light shine bright again as of old; for before this, we are told, her men could not so much as look their wives in the face, out of shame at their disasters.

34 1 But when Messene was built by Epaminondas, and its former citizens flocked into it from all quarters, the Spartans had not the courage to contest the issue nor the ability to hinder it, but cherished the deepest resentment against Agesilaüs, because a country which was not of less extent than their own, which stood first among Hellenic lands for its fertility, the possession and fruits of which they had enjoyed for so long a time, had been lost by them during his reign. 2 For this reason, too, Agesilaüs would not accept the peace which was proffered by the Thebans. He was not willing to give up to them formally the country which was actually in their power, and persisted in his opposition. As a consequence, he not only did not recover Messenia, but almost lost Sparta besides, after being outgeneralled. 3 For when the Mantineans changed their allegiance, revolted from Thebes, and called in the Lacedaemonians to help them, Epaminondas, learning that Agesilaüs had marched out from Sparta with his forces and was approaching, set out by night from Tegea, without the knowledge of the Mantineans, and led his army against Sparta itself. He passed by Agesilaüs, and came within a little of suddenly seizing the city in a defenceless state. 4 But Euthynus, a Thespian, as Callisthenes says, or, according to Xenophon, a certain Cretan, brought word to Agesilaüs, who quickly sent on a horseman to warn the people in Sparta, and not long after he himself also entered the city. Soon after his arrival the Thebans were crossing the Eurotas and attacking the city, while Agesilaüs defended it right vigorously and in a manner not to be expected of his years. 5 For he did not think, as on a former occasion, that the crisis demanded safe and cautious measures, but rather deeds of desperate daring. In these he had never put confidence before, nor had he employed them, but then it was only by their aid that he repelled the danger, snatching the city out of the grasp of Epaminondas, erecting a trophy of victory, and showing their wives and children that the Lacedaemonians were making the fairest of all returns to their country for its rearing of them. 6 Archidamus, too, fought among the foremost, conspicuous for his impetuous courage and for his agility, running swiftly through the narrow streets to the endangered points in the battle, and everywhere pressing hard upon the enemy with his few followers. But I think that Isidas, the son of Phoebidas, must have been a strange and marvellous sight, not only to his fellow-citizens, but also to his enemies. 7 He was of conspicuous beauty and stature, and at an age when the human flower has the greatest charm, as the boy merges into the man. Naked as he was, without either defensive armour or clothing, — for he had just anointed his body with oil, — he took a spear in one hand, and a sword in the other, leaped forth from his house, and after pushing his way through the midst of the combatants, ranged up and down among the enemy, smiting and laying low all who encountered him. 8 And no man gave him a wound, whether it was that a god shielded him on account of his valour, or that the enemy thought him taller and mightier than a mere man could be. For this exploit it is said that the ephors put a garland on his head, and then fined him a thousand drachmas, because he had dared to hazard his life in battle without armour.

35 1 A few days afterwards a battle was fought near Mantinea, in which Epaminondas had already routed the van of the Lacedaemonians, 616 and was still eagerly pressing on in pursuit of them, when Anticrates, a Spartan, faced him and smote him with a spear, as Dioscorides tells the story; but the Lacedaemonians to this day call the descendants of Anticrates “machaeriones,” or swordsmen, because he used a sword for the blow. 2 For the Lacedaemonians were filled with such admiring love for him because of the fear in which they held Epaminondas while living, that they voted honours and gifts to Anticrates himself, and to his posterity exemption from taxes, an immunity which in my own day also is enjoyed by Callicrates, one of the descendants of Anticrates.

After the battle and the death of Epaminondas, when the Greeks concluded peace among themselves, Agesilaüs and his partisans tried to exclude the Messenians from the oath of ratification, on the ground that they had no city. 3 And when all the rest admitted the Messenians and accepted their oaths, the Lacedaemonians held aloof from the peace, and they alone remained at war in the hope of recovering Messenia. Agesilaüs was therefore deemed a headstrong and stubborn man, and insatiable of war, since he did all in his power to undermine and postpone the general peace, and again since his lack of resources compelled him to lay burdens on his friends in the city and to take loans and contributions from them. 4 And yet it was his duty to put an end to their evils, now that opportunity offered, and not, after having lost Sparta’s whole empire, vast as it was, with its cities and its supremacy on land and sea, then to carry on a petty struggle for the goods and revenues of Messene.

36 1 He lost still more reputation by offering to take a command under Tachos the Egyptian. For it was thought unworthy that man who had been judged noblest and best in Hellas, and who had filled the world with his fame, should furnish a rebel against the Great King, a mere Barbarian, with his person, his name, and his fame, and take money for him, rendering the service of a hired captain of mercenaries. 2 For even if, now that he was past eighty years of age and his whole body was disfigured with wounds, he had taken up again his noble and conspicuous leadership in behalf of the freedom of the Hellenes, his ambition would not have been altogether blameless, as men thought. For honourable action has its fitting time and season; nay, rather, it is the observance of due bounds that constitutes an utter difference between honourable and base actions. 3 Agesilaüs, however, paid no heed to these considerations, nor did he think any public service beneath his dignity; it was more unworthy of him, in his opinion, to live an idle life in the city, and to sit down and wait for death. Therefore he collected mercenaries with the money which Tachos sent him, embarked them on transports, and put to sea, accompanied by thirty Spartan counsellors, as formerly.

4 As soon as he landed in Egypt, the chief captains and governors of the king came down to meet him and pay him honour. There was great eagerness and expectation on the part of the other Egyptians also, owing to the name and fame of Agesilaüs, and all ran together to behold him. 5 But when they saw no brilliant array whatever, but an old man lying in some grass by the sea, his body small and contemptible, covered with a cloak that was coarse and mean, they were moved to laughter and jesting, saying that here was an illustration of the fable, “a mountain is in travail, and then a mouse is born.” 6 They were still more surprised, too, at his eccentricity. When all manner of hospitable gifts were brought to him, he accepted the flour, the calves, and the geese, but rejected the sweetmeats, the pastries, and the perfumes, and when he was urged and besought to take them, ordered them to be carried and given to his Helots.a 617 He was pleased, however, as Theophrastus tells us, with the papyrus used in chaplets, because the chaplets were so neat and simple, and when he left Egypt, asked and received some from the king.

37 1 But now, on joining Tachos, who was making preparations for his expedition, he was not, as he expected, appointed commander of all the forces, but only of the mercenaries, while Chabrias the Athenian had charge of the fleet, and Tachos himself was commander-in chief. 2 This was the first thing that vexed Agesilaüs; then, though he was indignant at the vain pretensions of the king in other matters, he was compelled to endure them. He even sailed with him against the Phoenicians, forcing himself into a subservience which was beneath his dignity and contrary to his nature, until he found his opportunity.

3 For Nectanabis, who was a cousin of Tachos and had a part of the forces under his command, revolted from him, and having been proclaimed king by the Egyptians, sent to Agesilaüs asking for his aid and assistance. He made the same appeal to Chabrias also, promising large gifts to both. 4 When Tachos learned of this and resorted to entreaties for their allegiance, Chabrias tried to persuade and encourage Agesilaüs to continue with him in the friendship of Tachos. But Agesilaüs said: “You, Chabrias, who came here on your own account, can decide your own case; but I was given by my country to the Egyptians as a general. It would therefore be dishonourable for me to make war on those to whom I was sent as an ally, unless my country gives me a new command to do so.” 5 After these words, he sent men to Sparta who were to denounce Tachos, and commend Nectanabis. Tachos and Nectanabis also sent and besought the support of the Lacedaemonians, the former on the ground that he had long been their ally and friend, the latter on the plea that he would be well disposed to their city and more eager to promote her interests. The Lacedaemonians, accordingly, after hearing the messengers, made public answer to the Egyptians that Agesilaüs would attend to these matters; but to Agesilaüs they wrote privately bidding him see to it that the interests of Sparta should not suffer. 6 So Agesilaüs took his mercenaries and went over from Tachos to Nectanabis, making the interests of his country serve as a veil for a strange and unnatural proceeding, since when this pretext was removed, the most fitting name for his act was treachery. But the Lacedaemonians assign the chief place in their ideas of honour to the interests of their country, and neither learn nor understand any other justice than that which they think will enhance the glory of Sparta.

38 1 Tachos, accordingly, thus deserted by his mercenaries, took to flight. But in Mendes another rival rose up against Nectanabis and was proclaimed king, and after collecting a hundred thousand men advanced against him. Then Nectanabis sought to encourage Agesilaüs by saying that although the enemy were numerous, they were a mixed rabble of artisans whose inexperience in war made them contemptible. 2 “Indeed,” said Agesilaüs, “it is not their numbers that I fear, but the inexperience and ignorance of which you speak, which it is hard to overcome by stratagems. For stratagems array unexpected difficulties against men who try to defend themselves against them, if they suspect and await them; but he who does not await nor even suspect any stratagem gives no hold to the opponent who is trying to outwit him, just as, in a wrestling bout, he who does not stir gives no advantage to his antagonist.” 3 After this, the Mendesian also sent and tried to win over Agesilaüs. Nectanabis was therefore alarmed, and when Agesilaüs urged him to fight the issue out as speedily as possible, and not to wage a war of delays against men who were inexperienced in fighting, but were numerous enough to surround him and hedge him in and anticipate and get the start of him in many ways, he grew still more suspicious and fearful of him, and retired into a city which was well fortified and had a large compass. 6184 Agesilaüs was incensed at this lack of confidence, and full of indignation, but since he was ashamed to change sides again and finally go back home without accomplishing any thing, he accompanied Nectanabis and entered the city with him.

39 1 But when the enemy came up and began to surround the city with a trench, then the Egyptian changed his mind, grew fearful of the siege, and wished to give battle, for which the Greeks also were very eager, since there were no provisions in the place. Agesilaüs, however, would not permit it, but opposed it, and was therefore maligned by the Egyptians even more bitterly than before, and called a betrayer of the king. But he bore their calumnies more patiently now, and sought to find the fitting moment for his stratagem.

2 This was as follows. The enemy were digging a deep trench outside the city, in order to shut its occupants up completely. Accordingly, when the trench had been carried almost around the city, and its ends were near one another, after waiting for evening to come and ordering the Greeks to arm themselves, Agesilaüs went to the Egyptian and said: “Now is the time, young man, for us to save ourselves, and I would not speak of it until it came, for fear of vitiating it. The enemy have now worked out our safety with their own hands. 3 They have dug their trench so far that the part which is finished hinders them from attacking us in great numbers, and the space between the ends gives us room to fight them on fair and equal terms. Come, then, be eager to shew yourself a brave man; follow with us as we charge, and save yourself and your army too. 4 For the enemy in our front will not withstand us, and the rest will not harm us because of the trench.” Nectanabis, then, was filled with admiration for the sagacity of Agesilaüs, and putting himself in the centre of the Greek array, charged forwards and easily routed his opponents. And now that Agesilaüs had won back the confidence of Nectanabis, he brought the same stratagem to bear again upon the enemy, like a trick in wrestling. 5 By sometimes pretending to retreat and fly, and sometimes attacking on the flanks, he drove their whole multitude into a tract which had a deep canal of water on either side. The space between these he occupied and stopped up with the head of his column, and so made his numbers equal to those of the enemy who could fight with him, since they were unable to surround and enclose him. Therefore after a short resistance they were routed; many were slain, and the fugitives were dispersed and melted away.

40 1 After this, the Egyptian succeeded in establishing himself firmly and securely in power, and showed his friendliness and affection by begging Agesilaüs to remain and spend the winter with him. But Agesilaüs was eager to return to the war at home, knowing that his city needed money and was hiring mercenaries. He was therefore dismissed with great honour and ceremony, taking with him, besides other honours and gifts, two hundred and thirty talents of silver for the war at home. 2 But since it was now winter, he kept close to shore with his ships, and was borne along the coast of Libya to an uninhabited spot called the Harbour of Menelaüs. Here he died, at the age of eighty-four years. He had been king of Sparta forty-one years, and for more than thirty of these he was the greatest and most influential of all Hellenes, having been looked upon as leader and king of almost all Hellas, down to the battle of Leuctra.

3 It was Spartan custom, when men of ordinary rank died in a foreign country, to give their bodies funeral rites and burial there, but to carry the bodies of their kings home. So the Spartans who were with Agesilaüs enclosed his dead body in melted wax, since they had no honey, and carried it back to Lacedaemon. 619 The kingdom devolved upon Archidamus his son, and remained in his family down to Agis, who was slain by Leonidas for attempting to restore the ancient constitution, being the fifth in descent from Agesilaüs.

Pompey

1 1 Towards Pompey the Roman people must have had, from the very beginning, the feeling which the Prometheus of Aeschylus has towards Heracles, when, having been saved by him, he says: —

“I hate the sire, but dearly love this child of his.”

For never have the Romans manifested so strong and fierce a hatred towards a general as they did towards Strabo, the father of Pompey; while he lived, indeed, they feared his talent as a soldier, for he was a very warlike man, 2 but when he was killed by a thunderbolt, and his body was on its way to the funeral pyre, they dragged it from its bier and heaped insults upon it. On the other hand, no Roman ever enjoyed a heartier goodwill on the part of his countrymen, or one which began sooner, or reached a greater height in his prosperity, or remained more constant in his adversity, than Pompey did. 3 And whereas there was one sole reason for the hatred felt towards Strabo, namely, his insatiable desire for money, there were many reasons for the love bestowed on Pompey; his modest and temperate way of living, his training in the arts of war, his persuasive speech, his trustworthy character, and his tact in meeting people, so that no man asked a favour with less offence, or bestowed one with a better mien. For, in addition to his other graces, he had the art of giving without arrogance, and of receiving without loss of dignity.

2 1 At the outset, too, he had a countenance which helped him in no small degree to win the favour of the people, and which pleaded for him before he spoke. For even his boyish loveliness had a gentle dignity about it, and in the prime and flower of his youthful beauty there was at once manifest the majesty and kingliness of his nature. His hair was inclined to lift itself slightly from his forehead, and this, with a graceful contour of face about the eyes, produced a resemblance, more talked about than actually apparent, to the portrait statues of King Alexander. 2 Wherefore, since many also applied the name to him in his earlier years, Pompey did not decline it, so that presently some called him Alexander in derision. Hence, too, Lucius Philippus, a man of consular rank, when pleading in his behalf, said that he was discovering nothing strange if, being Philip, he loved Alexander.

We are told that Flora the courtesan, when she was now quite old, always took delight in telling about her former intimacy with Pompey, saying that she never left his embraces without bearing the marks of his teeth. 3 Furthermore, Flora would tell how Geminius, one of Pompey’s companions, fell in love with her and annoyed her greatly by his attentions; and when she declared that she could not consent to his wishes because of Pompey, Geminius laid the matter before Pompey. Pompey, accordingly, turned her over to Geminius, but never afterwards had any thing at all to do with her himself, although he was thought to be enamoured of her; and she herself did not take this treatment as a mere courtesan would, but was sick for a long time with grief and longing. 4 And yet Flora is said to have flowered into such beauty, and to have been so famous for it, that when Caecilius Metellus was decorating the temple of Castor and Pollux with paintings and statues, he gave her portrait also a place among his dedications. Moreover, Pompey also treated the wife of Demetrius his freedman (who had the greatest influence with him and left an estate of four thousand talents) with a lack of courtesy and generosity unusual in him, fearing lest men should think him conquered by her beauty, which was irresistible and far-famed. 5 But though he was so extremely cautious in such matters and on his guard, still he could not escape the censures of his enemies on this head, but was accused of illicit relations with married women, to gratify whom, it was said, he neglected and betrayed many public interests.

As regards his simplicity and indifference in matters pertaining to the table, a story is told as follows. 6 Once when he was sick and loathed his food, a physician prescribed a thrush for him. But when, on inquiry, his servants could not find one for sale (for it was past the season for them), and someone said they could be found at Lucullus’s, where they were kept the year round, “What then,” said he, “if Lucullus were not luxurious must Pompey have died?” and paying no regard to the physician he took something that could easily be procured. This, however, was at a later time.

3 1 While he was still quite a stripling and was on a campaign with his father, who was arrayed against Cinna, he had a certain Lucius Terentius as tentmate and companion. This man was bribed by Cinna, and was himself to kill Pompey, while others were to set fire to the tent of the commander. 2 But Pompey got information of the plot while he was at supper. He was not at all disturbed, but after drinking more freely even than usual and treating Terentius with kindness, as soon as he retired to rest stole out of the tent unperceived, set a guard about his father, and quietly awaited the event. Terentius, when he thought the proper time was come, arose, and approaching the couch of Pompey with drawn sword, stabbed the bed-clothing many times, supposing him to be lying there. 3 After this there was a great commotion, owing to the hatred felt towards the general, and a rush to revolt on the part of the soldiers, who tore down their tents and seized their arms. The general did not venture forth for fear of the tumult, but Pompey went up and down among the soldiers beseeching them with tears, and finally threw himself on his face in front of the gate of the camp and lay there in the way, weeping and bidding those who were going out to trample on him. As a consequence, everyone drew back out of shame, and all except eight hundred changed their minds and were reconciled to their general.

4 1 As soon as Strabo was dead, Pompey, as his heir, was put on trial for theft of public property. And although Pompey discovered that most of the thefts were committed by Alexander, one of his father’s freedmen, and proved it to the magistrates, still he himself was accused of having in his possession hunting nets and books from the booty of Asculum. Now, he did receive these things from his father when he took Asculum, but he lost them when Cinna’s guards, on that general’s return to Rome, broke into his house and ransacked it. 2 He had many preliminary bouts in the case with his accuser, and since in these he showed an acumen and poise beyond his years, he won great reputation and favour, insomuch that Antistius, the praetor and judge in the case, took a great liking to him and offered him his own daughter in marriage, and conferred with his friends about the matter. 3 Pompey accepted the offer and a secret agreement was made between them, but nevertheless the people got wind of the matter, owing to the pains which Antistius took to favour Pompey. And finally, when Antistius pronounced the verdict of the judges in acquittal, the people, as if upon a signal given, broke out in the ancient and customary marriage acclamation, “Talasio.”

4 The origin of the custom is said to have been this. At the time when the daughters of the Sabines, who had come to Rome to see a spectacle of games, were haled away by the most distinguished Romans to be their wives, certain hirelings and herdsmen of the meaner sort seized a fair and stately maiden and were carrying her off. In order, therefore, that no one of their betters, on meeting them, might rob them of their prize, they shouted with one voice as they ran, “For Talasius,” Talasius being a well-known and popular personage. Consequently, those who heard the name clapped their hands and shouted it themselves, as if rejoicing with the others and approving what they did. 5 From this circumstance, they say, — and indeed the marriage proved a happy one for Talasius, — this acclamation is used in mirthful greeting of the newly wedded. This is the most credible of the stories told about Talasius. But be it true or not, a few days afterwards Pompey married Antistia.

5 1 Then he betook himself to Cinna’s camp, but because of some calumnious accusation grew fearful and quickly withdrew unnoticed. On his disappearance, there went a rumour through the camp which said that Cinna had slain the young man, and in consequence of this those who had long hated Cinna and felt oppressed by him made an onslaught upon him. Cinna, as he fled, having been seized by one of the centurions who pursued him with drawn sword, clasped him by the knees and held out his seal-ring, which was of great price. 2 But the centurion, with great insolence, said: “Indeed, I am not come to seal a surety, but to punish a lawless and wicked tyrant,” and slew him. When Cinna had come to such an end, Carbo, a tyrant more capricious than he, received and exercised the chief authority. But Sulla was approaching, to the great delight of most men, who were led by their present evils to hand even a change of masters no slight good. To such a pass had her calamities brought the city that, in despair of freedom, she sought a more tolerable servitude.

6 1 At this time, then, Pompey was tarrying in the Italian province of Picenum, partly because he had estates there, but most because he had a liking for its cities, which were dutifully and kindly disposed towards him as his father’s son. And when he saw the best and most prominent citizens forsaking their homes and hastening to the camp of Sulla as to a haven of refuge, he himself would not deign to go to him as a fugitive, nor empty-handed, near with requests for help, but only after conferring some favour first, in a way that would gain him honour, and with an armed force. 2 Wherefore he tried to rouse up the people of Picenum and made test of their allegiance. They readily listened to him and paid no heed to the emissaries of Carbo. Indeed, when a certain Vedius remarked that Pompey had run away from pedagogues to be a demagogue among them, they were so incensed that they fell upon Vedius at once and killed him.

3 After this, Pompey, who was only twenty-three years old, and who had not been appointed general by anybody whomsoever, conferred the command upon himself, and setting up a tribunal in the market-place of Auximum, a large city,a issued an edict ordering the chief men there, two brothers named Ventidius, who were acting against him in Carbo’s interest, to leave the city. Then he proceeded to levy soldiers, and after appointing centurions and commanders for them all in due form, made a circuit of the other cities, doing the same thing. 4 All the partisans of Carbo withdrew and gave place to him, and the rest gladly offered their services to him, so that in a short time he had mustered three complete legions, and provided them with food, baggage-waggons, carriages, and other needful equipment. Then he led his forces towards Sulla, not in haste, nor even with a desire to escape observation, but tarrying on the march as he harried the enemy, and endeavouring to detach from Carbo’s interest all that part of Italy through which he passed.

7 1 There came up against him, accordingly, three hostile generals at once, Carinas, Cloelius, and Brutus, not all in front of him, nor from any one direction, but encompassing him round with three armies, in order to annihilate him. Pompey, however, was not alarmed, but collected all his forces into one body and hastened to attack one of the hostile armies, that of Brutus, putting his cavalry, among whom he himself rode, in the van. 2 And when from the enemy’s side also the Celtic horsemen rode out against him, he promptly closed with the foremost and sturdiest of them, smote him with his spear, and brought him down. Then the rest turned and fled and threw their infantry also into confusion, so that there was a general rout. After this the opposing generals fell out with one another and retired, as each best could, and the cities came over to Pompey’s side, arguing that fear had scattered his enemies. 3 Next, Scipio the consul came up against him, but before the lines of battle were within reach of each other’s javelins, Scipio’s soldiers saluted Pompey’s and came over to their side, and Scipio took to flight. Finally, when Carbo himself sent many troops of cavalry against him by the river Arsis, he met their onset vigorously, routed them, and in his pursuit forced them all upon difficult ground impracticable for horse; there, seeing no hope of escape, they surrendered themselves to him, with their armour and horses.

8 1 Sulla had not yet learned of these results, but at the first tidings and reports about Pompey had feared for his safety, thus engaged with so many and such able generals of the enemy, and was hastening to his assistance. But when Pompey learned that he was near, he ordered his officers to have the forces fully armed and in complete array, that they might present a very fine and brilliant appearance to the imperator; for he expected great honours from him, and he received even greater. 2 For when Sulla saw him advancing with an admirable army of young and vigorous soldiers elated and in high spirits because of their successes, he alighted from off his horse, and after being saluted, as was his due, with the title of Imperator, he saluted Pompey in return as Imperator. And yet no one could have expected that a young man, and one who was not yet a senator, would receive from Sulla this title, to win which Sulla was at war with such men as Scipio and Marius. 3 And the rest of his behaviour to Pompey was consonant with his first tokens of friendliness; he would rise to his feet when Pompey approached, and uncover his head before him, things which he was rarely seen to do for any one else, although there were many about him who were of high rank.

4 Pompey, however, was not made vain by these things, but when Sulla would have sent him forthwith into Gaul, where, as it was thought, Metellus was doing nothing worthy of the armament at his disposal, he said it was not right for him to take the command away from a man of great reputation who was his senior, but that if Metellus wished and bade him do so, he was ready to assist him in carrying on the war. 5 And when Metellus accepted the proposal and wrote him to come, he hurried into Gaul, and not only performed wonderful exploits himself, but also fanned into fresh heat and flame the bold and warlike spirit of Metellus which old age was now quenching, just as molten and glowing bronze, when poured round that which is cold and rigid, is said to soften it more than fire does, and to melt it also down. 6 However, just as athletes who have won the primacy among men and borne away glorious prizes everywhere, make no account of their boyish victories and even leave them unrecorded, so it is with the deeds which Pompey performed at this time; they were extraordinary in themselves, but were buried away by the multitude and magnitude of his later wars and contests, and I am afraid to revive them, lest by lingering too long upon his first essays, I should leave myself no room for those achievements and experiences of the man which were greatest, and most illustrative of his character.

9 1 So, then, when Sulla had made himself master of Italy and had been proclaimed dictator, he sought to reward the rest of his officers and generals by making them rich and advancing them to office and gratifying without reserve or stint their several requests; but since he admired Pompey for his high qualities and thought him a great help in his administration of affairs, he was anxious to attach him to himself by some sort of a marriage alliance. 2 His wife Metella shared his wishes, and together they persuaded Pompey to divorce Antistia and marry Aemilia, the step-daughter of Sulla, whom Metella had borne to Scaurus, and who was living with a husband already and was with child by him at this time.

This marriage was therefore characteristic of a tyranny, and befitted the needs of Sulla rather than the nature and habits of Pompey, Aemilia being given to him in marriage when she was with child by another man, 3 and Antistia being driven away from him in dishonour, and in piteous plight too, since she had lately been deprived of her father because of her husband (for Antistius had been killed in the senate-house because he was thought to be a partisan of Sulla for Pompey’s sake), and her mother, on beholding these indignities, had taken her own life. This calamity was added to the tragedy of that second marriage, and it was not the only one, indeed, since Aemilia had scarcely entered Pompey’s house before she succumbed to the pains of childbirth.

10 1 After this, word was brought to Sulla that Perpenna was making himself master of Sicily and furnishing a refuge in that island for the survivors of the opposite faction, that Carbo was hovering in those waters with a fleet, that Domitius had forced an entry into Africa, and that many other exiled men of note were thronging to those parts, all, in fact, who had succeeded in escaping his proscriptions. Against these men Pompey was sent with a large force. 2 Perpenna at once abandoned Sicily to him, and he recovered the cities there. They had been harshly used by Perpenna, but Pompey treated them all with kindness except the Mamertines in Messana. These declined his tribunal and jurisdiction on the plea that they were forbidden by an ancient law of the Romans, at which Pompey said: “Cease quoting laws to us that have swords girt about us!” 3 Moreover, he was thought to have treated Carbo in his misfortunes with an unnatural insolence. For if it was necessary, as perhaps it was, to put the man to death, this ought to have been done as soon as he was seized, and the deed would have been his who ordered it. But as it was, Pompey caused a Roman who had thrice been consul to be brought in fetters and set before the tribunal where he himself was sitting, and examined him closely there, to the distress and vexation of the audience. Then he ordered him to be led away and put to death. 4 They say, moreover, that after Carbo had been led away to execution, when he saw the sword already drawn, he begged that a short respite and a convenient place might be afforded him, since his bowels distressed him. Furthermore, Caius Oppius, the friend of Caesar, says that Pompey treated Quintus Valerius also with unnatural cruelty. For, understanding that Valerius was a man of rare scholarship and learning, when he was brought to him, Oppius says, Pompey took him aside, walked up and down with him, asked and learned what he wished from him, and then ordered his attendants to lead him away and put him to death at once.

5 But when Oppius discourses about the enemies or friends of Caesar, one must be very cautious about believing him. Pompey was compelled to punish those enemies of Sulla who were most eminent, and whose capture was notorious; but as to the rest, he suffered as many as possible to escape detection, and even helped to send some out of the country. 6 Again, when he had made up his mind to chastise the city of Himera because it had sided with the enemy, Sthenis, the popular leader there, requested audience of him, and told him that he would commit an injustice if he should let the real culprit go and destroy those who had done no wrong. And when Pompey asked him whom he meant by the real culprit, Sthenis said he meant himself, since he had persuaded his friends among the citizens, and forced his enemies, into their course. 7 Pompey, then, admiring the man’s frank speech and noble spirit, pardoned him first, and then all the rest. And again, on hearing that his soldiers were disorderly in their journeys, he put a seal upon their swords, and whosoever broke the seal was punished.

11 While he was thus engaged in settling the affairs of Sicily, he received a decree of the senate and a letter of Sulla ordering him to sail to Africa and wage war with all his might against Domitius. For Domitius had assembled there a much larger force than that with which Marius, no long time ago, had crossed from Africa into Italy and confounded the Roman state, making himself tyrant instead of exile. 2 Accordingly, after making all his preparations with great speed, Pompey left Memmius, his sister’s husband, as governor of Sicily, while he himself put out to sea with a hundred and twenty galleys, and eight hundred transports conveying provisions, ammunition, money, and engines of war. No sooner had he landed with part of his ships at Utica, and with part at Carthage, than seven thousand of the enemy deserted and came over to him; and his own army contained six complete legions.

3 Here, we are told, a ludicrous thing happened to him. Some soldiers, it would seem, stumbled upon a treasure and got considerable amounts of money. When the matter became public, the rest of the army all fancied that the place was full of money which the Carthaginians had hidden away in some time of calamity. 4 Accordingly, Pompey could do nothing with his soldiers for many days because they were hunting treasures, but he went about laughing at the spectacle of so many myriads of men digging and stirring up the ground. At last they grew weary of the search and bade Pompey lead them where he pleased, assuring him that they had been sufficiently punished for their folly.

12 1 Domitius now drew up his army against Pompey, with a ravine in front of him which was rough and difficult to cross; but a violent storm of wind and rain began in the morning and continued to rage, so that he gave up the idea of fighting that day and ordered a retreat. But Pompey, taking advantage of this opportunity, advanced swiftly to the attack, and crossed the ravine. 2 The enemy met his attack in a disorderly and tumultuous fashion, not all of them indeed, nor with any uniformity; besides, the wind veered round and drove the rain into their faces. However, the Romans also were troubled by the storm, since they could not see one another clearly, and Pompey himself narrowly escaped death by not being recognized, when a soldier demanded the countersign from him and he gave it rather slowly.

3 Nevertheless, they routed the enemy with great slaughter (it is said that out of twenty thousand only three thousand escaped), and hailed Pompey as Imperator. And when he said he would not accept the honour as long as the camp of the enemy was intact, but that if they thought him worthy of the appellation, they must first destroy that, his soldiers immediately made an assault upon the ramparts; and Pompey fought without his helmet, for fear of a peril like the one he had just escaped. 4 The camp was soon taken, and Domitius was slain. Then some of the cities submitted at once to Pompey, and others were taken by storm. King Iarbas also, the confederate of Domitius, was captured, and his kingdom given to Hiempsal. Taking advantage of the good fortune and momentum of his army, Pompey now invaded Numidia. He marched through the country for many days, 5 conquered all who came in his way, and made potent and terrible again the Barbarians’ fear of the Romans, which had reached a low ebb. Nay, he declared that even the wild beasts in African lairs must not be left without experience of the courage and strength of the Romans, and therefore spent a few days in hunting lions and elephants. It took him only forty days all told, they say, to bring his enemies to naught, get Africa into his power, and adjust the relations of its kings, though he was but twenty-four years of age.

13 1 On his return to Utica, a letter from Sulla was brought to him, in which he was commanded to send home the rest of his army, but to remain there himself with one legion, awaiting the arrival of the general who was to succeed him. Pompey himself gave no sign of the deep distress which these orders caused him, but his soldiers made their indignation manifest. When Pompey asked them to go home before him, they began to revile Sulla, declared they would not forsake their general, and insisted that he should not trust the tyrant. 2 At first, then, Pompey tried what words could do to appease and mollify them; but when he was unable to persuade them, he came down from his tribunal and withdrew to his tent in tears. Then his soldiers seized him and set him again upon his tribunal, and a great part of the day was consumed in this way, they urging him to remain and keep his command, and he begging them to obey and not to raise a sedition. At last, when their clamours and entreaties increased, he swore with an oath that he would kill himself if they used force with him, and even then they would hardly stop.

3 Sulla’s first tidings of the affair were that Pompey was in revolt, and he told his friends that it was evidently his fate, now that he was an old man, to have his contests with boys. This he said because Marius also, who was quite a young man, had given him very great trouble and involved him in the most extreme perils. 4 But when he learned the truth, and perceived that everybody was sallying forth to welcome Pompey and accompany him home with marks of goodwill, he was eager to outdo them. So he went out and met him, and after giving him the warmest welcome, saluted him in a loud voice as “Magnus,” or The Great, and ordered those who were by to give him this surname. 5 Others, however, say that this title was first given him in Africa by the whole army, but received authority and weight when thus confirmed by Sulla. Pompey himself, however, was last of all to use it, and it was only after a long time, when he was sent as pro-consul to Spain against Sertorius, that he began to subscribe himself in his letters and ordinances “Pompeius Magnus”; for the name had become familiar and was no longer invidious.

6 And herein we may fittingly respect and admire the ancient Romans; they did not bestow such titles and surnames as a reward for successes in war and military command alone, but also adorned with them the high qualities and achievements of their statesmen. 7 At any rate, in two such cases the people bestowed the title of “Maximus,” which signifies the Greatest: upon Valerius, for reconciling them with the senate when it was at variance with them; and upon Fabius Rullus, because he expelled from the senate certain descendants of freedmen who had been enrolled in it on account of their wealth.

14 1 After this, Pompey asked for a triumph, but Sulla opposed his request. The law, he said, permitted only a consul or a praetor to celebrate a triumph, but no one else. Therefore the first Scipio, after conquering the Carthaginians in Spain in far greater conflicts, did not ask for a triumph; for he was not consul, nor even praetor. 2 And if Pompey, who had scarcely grown a beard as yet, and who was too young to be a senator, should ride into the city in a triumph, it would not only make Sulla’s government altogether odious, but also Pompey’s honour. This was what Sulla said to Pompey, declaring that he would not allow his request, but would oppose him and thwart his ambition if he refused to listen to him.

3 Pompey, however, was not cowed, but bade Sulla reflect that more worshipped the rising than the setting sun, intimating that his own power was on the increase, while that of Sulla was on the wane and fading away. Sulla did not hear the words distinctly, but seeing, from their looks and gestures, that those who did hear them were amazed, he asked what it was that had been said. When he learned what it was, he was astounded at the boldness of Pompey, and cried out twice in succession: “Let him triumph!” 4 Further, when many showed displeasure and indignation at his project, Pompey, we are told, was all the more desirous of annoying them, and tried to ride into the city on a chariot drawn by four elephants; for he had brought many from Africa which he had captured from its kings. But the gate of the city was too narrow, and he therefore gave up the attempt and changed over to his horses. 5 Moreover, when his soldiers, who had not got as much as they expected, were inclined to raise a tumult and impede the triumph, he said he did not care at all, but would rather give up his triumph than truckle to them. Then Servilius, a man of distinction, and one who had been most opposed to Pompey’s triumph, said he now saw that Pompey was really great, and worthy of the honour. 6 And it is clear that he might also have been easily made a senator at that time, had he wished it; but he was not eager for this, as they say, since he was in the chase for reputation of a surprising sort. And indeed it would have been nothing wonderful for Pompey to be a senator before he was of age for it; but it was a dazzling honour for him to celebrate a triumph before he was a senator. And this contributed not a little to win him the favour of the multitude; for the people were delighted to have him still classed among the knights after a triumph.

15 1 Sulla, however, was annoyed at seeing to what a height of reputation and power Pompey was advancing, but being ashamed to obstruct his career, he kept quiet. Only, when in spite of him and against his wishes Pompey made Lepidus consul, by canvassing for him and making the people zealously support him through their goodwill towards himself, seeing Pompey going off through the forum with a throng, Sulla said: 2 “I see, young man, that you rejoice in your victory; and surely it was a generous and noble thing for Lepidus, the worst of men, to be proclaimed consul by a larger vote than Catulus, the best of men, because you influenced the people to take this course. Now, however, it is time for you to be wide awake and watchful of your interests; you have made your adversary stronger than yourself.” But Sulla showed most clearly that he was not well-disposed to Pompey by the will which he wrote. 3 For whereas he bequeathed gifts to other friends, and made some of them guardians of his son, he omitted all mention of Pompey. And yet Pompey bore this with great composure, and loyally, insomuch that when Lepidus and sundry others tried to prevent the body of Sulla from being buried in the Campus Martius, or even from receiving public burial honours, he came to the rescue, and gave to the interment alike honour and security.

16 1 Soon after the death of Sulla, his prophecies were fulfilled, and Lepidus tried to assume Sulla’s powers. He took no circuitous route and used no pretence, but appeared at once in arms, stirring up anew and gathering about himself the remnants of faction, long enfeebled, which had escaped the hand of Sulla. His colleague, Catulus, to whom the incorrupt and sounder element in the senate and people attached themselves, was the great Roman of the time in the estimate set upon his wisdom and justice, 2 but was thought better adapted for political than military leadership. The situation itself, therefore, demanded Pompey, who was not long in deciding what course to take. He took the side of the nobility, and was appointed commander of an army against Lepidus, who had already stirred up a large part of Italy and was employing Brutus to hold Cisalpine Gaul with an army.

3 Other opponents against whom Pompey came were easily mastered by him, but at Mutina, in Gaul, he lay a long while besieging Brutus. Meanwhile, Lepidus had made a hasty rush upon Rome, and sitting down before it, was demanding a second consulship, and terrifying the citizens with a vast throng of followers. 4 But their fear was dissipated by a letter brought from Pompey, announcing that he had brought the war to a close without a battle. For Brutus, whether he himself betrayed his army, or whether his army changed sides and betrayed him, put himself in the hands of Pompey, and receiving an escort of horsemen, retired to a little town upon the Po. Here, after a single day had passed, he was slain by Geminius, who was sent by Pompey to do the deed. 5 And Pompey was much blamed for this. For as soon as the army of Brutus changed sides, he wrote to the senate that Brutus had surrendered to him of his own accord; then he sent another letter denouncing the man after he had been put to death. The Brutus who, with Cassius, killed Caesar, was a son of this Brutus, a man who was like his father neither in his wars nor in his death, as is written in his Life. 6 As for Lepidus, moreover, as soon as he was expelled from Italy, he made his way over to Sardinia. There he fell sick and died of despondency, which was due, as we are told, not to the loss of his cause, but to his coming accidentally upon a writing from which he discovered that his wife was an adulteress.

17 1 But a general quite unlike Lepidus, namely Sertorius, was in possession of Spain, and was threatening the Romans like a formidable cloud. As if for a final disease of the state, the civil wars had poured all their venom into this man. He had already slain many of the inferior commanders, and was now engaged with Metellus Pius, 2 an illustrious man and a good soldier, but, as men thought, too slow by reason of his years in following up the opportunities of war, and outdistanced when events swept along at high speed. For Sertorius attacked him recklessly and in robber fashion, and by his ambuscades and flanking movements confounded a man who was practised in regular contests only, and commanded immobile and heavy-armed troops. 3 Pompey, therefore, who kept his army under his command, tried to get himself sent out to reinforce Metellus, and although Catulus ordered him to disband his soldiers, he would not do so, but remained under arms near the city, ever making some excuse or other, until the senate gave him the command, on motion of Lucius Philippus. 4 On this occasion, too, they say that a certain senator asked with amazement if Philippus thought it necessary to send Pompey out as pro-consul. “No indeed!” said Philippus, “but as pro-consuls,” implying that both the consuls of that year were good for nothing.

18 1 When Pompey arrived in Spain, the reputation of a new commander produced the usual results; he transformed the men of Metellus with fresh hopes, and those nations which were not very firmly leagued with Sertorius began to be restless and change sides. Thereupon Sertorius disseminated haughty speeches against Pompey, and scoffingly said he should have needed but a cane and whip for this boy, were he not in fear of that old woman, meaning Metellus. 2 In fact, however, he kept very close watch on Pompey, and was afraid of him, and therefore conducted his campaign with more caution. For Metellus, contrary to all expectation, had become luxurious in his way of living and had given himself up completely to his pleasures; in fact, there had been all at once a great change in him towards pomp and extravagance, so that this circumstance also brought Pompey an astonishing goodwill, and enhanced his reputation, since he always maintained that simplicity in his habits which cost him no great effort; for he was naturally temperate and orderly in his desires.

3 The war had many phases, but what most vexed Pompey was the capture of Lauron by Sertorius. For when he supposed that his enemy was surrounded, and had made some boasts about it, all of a sudden it turned out that he was himself completely enveloped. He was therefore afraid to stir, and had to look on while the city was burned before his eyes. However, near Valentia he conquered Herennius and Perpenna, men of military experience among the refugees with Sertorius, and generals under him, and slew more than ten thousand of their men.

19 1 Elated by his achievement and full of pride, he made all haste to attack Sertorius himself, that Metellus might not share in the victory. By the river Sucro, though it was now late in the day, they joined battle, both fearing the arrival of Metellus; the one wished to fight alone, the other wished to have only one antagonist. 2 Well, then, the struggle had a doubtful issue, for one wing on each side was victorious; but of the generals, Sertorius bore away the more honour, for he put to flight the enemy in front of his position. But Pompey, who was on horseback, was attacked by a tall man who fought on foot; when they came to close quarters and were at grips, the strokes fell upon each other’s hands, but not with like result, for Pompey was merely wounded, whereas he lopped off the hand of his opponent. 3 Then, when more foes rushed upon him together, his troops being now routed, he made his escape, contrary to all expectation, by abandoning to the enemy his horse, which had golden head-gear and ornamented trappings of great value. They fought with one another over the division of these spoils, and so were left behind in the pursuit. 4 At break of day, however, both generals drew up their forces again to make the victory assured, but on the approach of Metellus, Sertorius retired and his army dispersed. His men were accustomed to scatter in this way, and then to come together again, so that often Sertorius wandered about alone, and often took the field again with an army of a hundred and fifty thousand men, like a winter torrent suddenly swollen.

5 Pompey, then, when he went to meet Metellus after the battle and they were near each other, ordered his lictors to lower their fasces, out of deference to Metellus as his superior in rank. But Metellus would not allow this, and in all other ways was considerate of him, not assuming any superiority as a man of consular rank and the elder, except that when they shared the same camp the watchword was given out to all from the tent of Metellus; but for the most part they encamped apart. 6 For their versatile enemy used to cut off their communications and separate them, and showed great skill in appearing in many places within a short time, and in drawing them from one contest into another. And finally, by cutting off their supplies, plundering the country, and getting control of the sea, he drove both of them out of that part of Spain which was under him, and forced them to take refuge in other provinces for lack of provisions.

20 1 When Pompey had exhausted most of his private resources and spent them on the war, he asked money of the senate, threatening to come back to Italy with his army if they did not send it. Lucullus was consul at this time, and was not on good terms with Pompey, but since he was soliciting the conduct of the Mithridatic war for himself, made great efforts to have the money sent, for fear of furthering Pompey’s desire to let Sertorius go, and march against Mithridates, an antagonist whose subjection, as it was thought, would bring great glory and involve little difficulty. 2 But in the meantime Sertorius was treacherously killed by his friends, and Perpenna, the ringleader among them, attempted to carry on his work. He had indeed the same forces and equipment, but lacked equal judgement in the use of them. Accordingly, Pompey took the field against him at once, and perceiving that he had no fixed plan of campaign, sent out ten cohorts as a decoy for him, giving them orders to scatter at random over the plain. 3 Perpenna attacked these cohorts, and was engaged in their pursuit, when Pompey appeared in force, joined battle, and won a complete victory. Most of Perpenna’s officers perished in the battle, but Perpenna himself was brought before Pompey, who ordered him to be put to death. In this he did not show ingratitude, nor that he was unmindful of what had happened in Sicily, as some allege against him, but exercised great forethought and salutary judgement for the commonwealth. 4 For Perpenna, who had come into possession of the papers of Sertorius, offered to produce letters from the chief men at Rome, who had desired to subvert the existing order and change the form of government, and had therefore invited Sertorius into Italy. Pompey, therefore, fearing that this might stir up greater wars than those now ended, put Perpenna to death and burned the letters without even reading them.

21 1 After this, he remained in Spain long enough to quell the greatest disorders and compose and settle such affairs as were in the most inflammatory state; then he led his army back to Italy, where, as chance would have it, he found the servile war at its height. For this reason, too, Crassus, who had the command in that war, precipitated the battle at great hazard, and was successful, killing twelve thousand three hundred of the enemy. 2 Even in this success, however, fortune somehow or other included Pompey, since five thousand fugitives from the battle fell in his way, all of whom he slew, and then stole a march on Crassus by writing to the senate that Crassus had conquered the gladiators in a pitched battle, but that he himself had extirpated the war entirely. And it was agreeable to the Romans to hear this said and to repeat it, so kindly did they feel towards him; while as for Spain and Sertorius, there was no one who would have said, even in jest, that the entire work of their subjugation was performed by any one else than Pompey.

3 Nevertheless, mingled with the great honour shown the man and the great expectations cherished of him, there was also considerable suspicion and fear; men said he would not disband his army, but would make his way by force of arms and absolute power straight to the polity of Sulla. Wherefore those who ran out and greeted him on his way, out of their goodwill, were no more numerous than those who did it out of fear. 4 But Pompey soon removed this suspicion also by declaring that he would disband his army after his triumph. Then there remained but one accusation for envious tongues to make, namely, that he devoted himself more to the people than to the senate, and had determined to restore the authority of the tribunate, which Sulla had overthrown, and to court the favour of the many; which was true. 5 For there was nothing on which the Roman people had more frantically set their affections, or for which they had a greater yearning, than to behold that office again. Pompey therefore regarded it as a great good fortune that he had the opportunity for this political measure, since he could have found no other favour with which to repay the goodwill of his fellow-citizens, if another had anticipated him in this.

22 1 Accordingly, a second triumph was decreed him, and the consulship. It was not on this account, however, that men thought him admirable and great, nay, they considered this circumstance a proof of his splendid distinction, that Crassus, the richest statesman of his time, the ablest speaker, and the greatest man, who looked down on Pompey himself and everybody else, had not the courage to sue for the consulship until he had asked the support of Pompey. 2 Pompey, moreover, was delighted, since he had long wanted an opportunity of doing him some service and kindness, and therefore granted his request readily and solicited the people in his behalf, announcing that he should be no less grateful to them for such a colleague than for the consulship. 3 Notwithstanding, again they had been elected consuls, they differed on all points, and were constantly in collision. In the senate, Crassus had more weight; but among the people the power of Pompey was great. For he gave them back their tribunate, and suffered the courts of justice to be transferred again to the knights by law. But the most agreeable of all spectacles was that which he afforded the people when he appeared in person and solicited his discharge from military service.

4 It is customary for a Roman knight, when he has served for the time fixed by law, to lead his horse into the forum before the two men who are called censors, and after enumerating all the generals and imperators under whom he has served, and rendering an account of his service in the field, to receive his discharge. Honours and penalties are also awarded, according to the career of each.

5 At this time, then, the censors Gellius and Lentulus were sitting in state, and the knights were passing in review before them, when Pompey was seen coming down the descent into the forum, but leading his horse with his own hand. When he was near and could be plainly seen, he ordered his lictors to make way for him, and led his horse up to the tribunal. 6 The people were astonished and kept perfect silence, and the magistrates were awed and delighted at the sight. Then the senior censor put the question: “Pompeius Magnus, I ask thee whether thou hast performed all the military services required by law?” Then Pompey said with a loud voice: “I have performed them all, and all under myself as imperator.” On hearing this, the people gave a loud shout, and it was no longer possible to check their cries of joy, but the censors rose up and accompanied Pompey to his home, thus gratifying the citizens, who followed with applause.

23 1 When Pompey’s term of office was now about to expire, and his differences with Crassus were increasing, a certain Caius Aurelius, who, though belonging to the equestrian order, had never meddled in public affairs, ascended the rostra at an assembly of the people, and came forward to say that Jupiter had appeared to him in his sleep, bidding him tell the consuls not to lay down their office before they had become friends. 2 After these words had been said, Pompey stood motionless, but Crassus took the initiative, clasped his hand and greeted him, and then said: “I think I do nothing ignoble or mean, my fellow-citizens, in yielding first to Pompey, whom you were pleased to call Magnus when he was still beardless, and to whom you decreed two triumphs before he was a senator.” Upon this, they were reconciled, and afterwards laid down their office.

3 Now, Crassus continued the manner of life which he had chosen at the outset; but Pompey ceased his frequent appearances as an advocate, gradually forsook the forum, rarely shewed himself in public, and when he did, it was always with a retinue of followers. In fact, it was no longer easy to meet him or even to see him without a throng around him, but he took the greatest pleasure in making his appearance attended by large crowds, encompassing his presence thus with majesty and pomp, and thinking that he must keep his dignity free from contact and familiar association with the multitude. 4 For life in the robes of peace has a dangerous tendency to diminish the reputation of those whom war has made great and ill suited for democratic equality. Such men claim that precedence in the city also which they have in the field, while those who achieve less distinction in the field feel it to be intolerable if in the city at any rate they have no advantage. Therefore when the people find a man active in the forum who has shone in camps and triumphs, they depress and humiliate him, but when he renounces and withdraws from such activity, they leave his military reputation and power untouched by their envy. How true, this is, events themselves soon showed.

24 1 The power of the pirates had its seat in Cilicia at first, and at the outset it was venturesome and elusive; but it took on confidence and boldness during the Mithridatic war, because it lent itself to the king’s service. 2 Then, while the Romans were embroiled in civil wars at the gates of Rome, the sea was left unguarded, and gradually drew and enticed them on until they no longer attacked navigators only, but also laid waste islands and maritime cities. And presently men whose wealth gave them power, and those whose lineage was illustrious, and those who laid claim to superior intelligence, began to embark on piratical craft and share their enterprises, feeling that the occupation brought them a certain reputation and distinction. 3 There were also fortified roadsteads and signal-stations for piratical craft in many places, and fleets put in here which were not merely furnished for their peculiar work with sturdy crews, skilful pilots, and light and speedy ships; nay, more annoying than the fear which they inspired was the odious extravagance of their equipment, with their gilded sails, and purple awnings, and silvered oars, as if they rioted in their iniquity and plumed themselves upon it. 4 Their flutes and stringed instruments and drinking bouts along every coast, their seizures of persons in high command, and their ransomings of captured cities, were a disgrace to the Roman supremacy. For, you see, the ships of the pirates numbered more than a thousand, and the cities captured by them four hundred. 5 Besides, they attacked and plundered places of refuge and sanctuaries hitherto inviolate, such as those of Claros, Didyma, and Samothrace; the temple of Chthonian Earth at Hermione; that of Asclepius in Epidaurus; those of Poseidon at the Isthmus, at Taenarum, and at Calauria; those of Apollo at Actium and Leucas; and those of Hera at Samos, at Argos, and at Lacinium. They also offered strange sacrifices of their own at Olympus, and celebrated there certain secret rites, among which those of Mithras continue to the present time, having been first instituted by them.

6 But they heaped most insults upon the Romans, even going up from the sea along their roads and plundering there, and sacking the neighbouring villas. Once, too, they seized two praetors, Sextilius and Bellinus, in their purple-edged robes, and carried them away, together with their attendants and lictors. They also captured a daughter of Antonius, a man who had celebrated a triumph, as she was going into the country, and exacted a large ransom for her. But their crowning insolence was this. 7 Whenever a captive cried out that he was a Roman and gave his name, they would pretend to be frightened out of their senses, and would smite their thighs, and fall down before him entreating him to pardon them; and he would be convinced of their sincerity, seeing them so humbly suppliant. Then some would put Roman boots on his feet, and others would throw a toga round him, in order, forsooth, that there might be no mistake about him again. 8 And after thus mocking the man for a long time and getting their fill of amusement from him, at last they would let down a ladder in mid ocean and bid him disembark and go on his way rejoicing; and if he did not wish to go, they would push him overboard themselves and drown him.

25 1 This power extended its operations over the whole of our Mediterranean Sea, making it unnavigable and closed to all commerce. This was what most of all inclined the Romans, who were hard put to it to get provisions and expected a great scarcity, to send out Pompey with a commission to take the sea away from the pirates. 2 Gabinius, one of Pompey’s intimates, drew up a law which gave him, not an admiralty, but an out-and out monarchy and irresponsible power over all men. For the law gave him dominion over the sea this side of the pillars of Hercules, over all the mainland to the distance of four hundred furlongs from the sea. These limits included almost all places in the Roman world, and the greatest nations and most powerful kings were comprised within them. 3 Besides this, he was empowered to choose fifteen legates from the senate for the several principalities, and to take from the public treasuries and the tax-collectors as much money as he wished, and to have two hundred ships, with full power over the number and levying of soldiers and oarsmen.

When these provisions of the law were read in the assembly, the people received them with excessive pleasure, but the chief and most influential men of the senate thought that such unlimited and absolute power, while it was beyond the reach of envy, was yet a thing to be feared. 4 Therefore they all opposed the law, with the exception of Caesar; he advocated the law, not because he cared in the least for Pompey, but because from the outset he sought to ingratiate himself with the people and win their support. The rest vehemently attacked Pompey. And when one of the consuls told him that if he emulated Romulus he would not escape the fate of Romulus, he was near being torn in pieces by the multitude. 5 Moreover, when Catulus came forward to speak against the law the people had regard enough for him to be quiet for some time; but after he had spoken at length in Pompey’s praise and without any disparagement of him, and then counselled the people to spare such a man and not expose him to successive wars and perils, asking, “Whom else will you have if you lose him?” all with one accord replied, “Thyself.” 6 Catulus, accordingly, since he could not persuade them, retired; but when Roscius came forward to speak, no one would listen to him. He therefore made signs with his fingers that they should not choose Pompey alone to this command, but give him a colleague. At this, we are told, the people were incensed and gave forth such a shout that a raven flying over the forum was stunned by it and fell down into the throng. 7 From this it appears that such falling of birds is not due to a rupture and division of the air wherein a great vacuum is produced, but that they are struck by the blow of the voice, which raises a surge and billow in the air when it is born aloft loud and strong.b

26 1 For the time being, then, the assembly was dissolved; but when the day came for the vote upon the law, Pompey withdrew privately into the country. On hearing, however, that the law had been passed, he entered the city by night, feeling that he was sure to awaken envy if the people thronged to meet him. But when day came, he appeared in public and offered sacrifice, and at an assembly held for him he managed to get many other things besides those already voted, and almost doubled his armament. 2 For five hundred ships were manned for him, and a hundred and twenty thousand men-at arms and five thousand horsemen were raised. Twenty-four men who had held command or served as praetors were chosen from the senate by him, and he had two quaestors. And since the prices of provisions immediately fell, the people were moved to say in their joy that the very name of Pompey had put an end to the war.

3 However, he divided the waters and the adjacent coasts of the Mediterranean Sea into thirteen districts, and assigned to each a certain number of ships with a commander, and with his forces thus scattered in all quarters he encompassed whole fleets of piratical ships that fell in his way, and straightway hunted them down and brought them into port; others succeeded in dispersing and escaping, and sought their hive, as it were, hurrying from all quarters into Cilicia. Against these Pompey intended to proceed in person with his sixty best ships. 4 He did not, however, sail against them until he had entirely cleared of their pirates the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Libyan Sea, and the sea about Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, in forty days all told. This was owing to his own tireless energy and the zeal of his lieutenants.

27 1 But the consul Piso at Rome, out of wrath and envy, was interfering with Pompey’s equipment and discharging his crews; Pompey therefore sent his fleet round to Brundisium, while he himself went up by way of Tuscany to Rome. On learning of this, the citizens all streamed out into the road, just as if they had not escorted him forth only a few days before. 2 What caused their joy was the unhoped for rapidity of the change, the market being now filled to overflowing with provisions. As a consequence Piso came near being deprived of his consulship, and Gabinius had the requisite law already written out. But Pompey prevented this, as well as other hostile acts, and after arranging everything else in a reasonable manner and getting what he wanted, went down to Brundisium and set sail. 3 But though his immediate business was urgent and he sailed past other cities in his haste, still, he could not pass Athens by, but went up into the city, sacrificed to the gods, and addressed the people. Just as he was leaving the city, he read two inscriptions, each of a single verse, addressed to him, one inside the gate: —

“As thou knowest thou art mortal, in so far thou art a god;”

and the other outside: —

“We awaited, we saluted, we have seen, and now conduct thee forth.”

4 Some of the pirate bands that were still rowing at large begged for mercy, and since he treated them humanely, and after seizing their ships and persons did them no further harm, the rest became hopeful of mercy too, and made their escape from the other commanders, betook themselves to Pompey with their wives and children, and surrendered to him. All these he spared, and it was chiefly by their aid that he tracked down, seized, and punished those who were still lurking in concealment because conscious of unpardonable crimes.

28 1 But the most numerous and powerful had bestowed their families and treasures and useless folk in forts and strong citadels near the Taurus mountains, while they themselves manned their ships and awaited Pompey’s attack near the promontory of Coracesium in Cilicia; here they were defeated in a battle and then besieged. At last, however, they sent suppliant messages and surrendered themselves, together with the cities and islands of which they were in control; these they had fortified, making them hard to get at and difficult to take by storm. 2 The war was therefore brought to an end and all piracy driven from the sea in less than three months, and besides many other ships, Pompey received in surrender ninety which had brazen beaks. The men themselves, who were more than twenty thousand in number, he did not once think of putting to death; and yet to let them go and suffer them to disperse or band together again, poor, warlike, and numerous as they were, he thought was not well. 3 Reflecting, therefore, that by nature man neither is nor becomes a wild or an unsocial creature, but is transformed by the unnatural practice of vice, whereas he may be softened by new customs and a change of place and life; also that even wild beasts put off their fierce and savage ways when they partake of a gentler mode of life, he determined to transfer the men from the sea to land, and let them have a taste of gentle life by being accustomed to dwell in cities and to till the ground. 4 Some of them, therefore, were received and incorporated into the small and half-deserted cities of Cilicia, which acquired additional territory; and after restoring the city of Soli, which had lately been devastated by Tigranes, the king of Armenia, Pompey settled many there. To most of them, however, he gave as residence Dyme in Achaea, which was then bereft of men and had much good land.

29 1 Well, then, his maligners found fault with these measures, and even his best friends were not pleased with his treatment of Metellus in Crete. Metellus, a kinsman of the Metellus who was a colleague of Pompey in Spain, had been sent as general to Crete before Pompey was chosen to his command; for Crete was a kind of second source for pirates, next to Cilicia. Metellus hemmed in many of them and was killing and destroying them. 2 But those who still survived and were besieged sent suppliant messages to Pompey and invited him into the island, allegingc that it was a part of his government, and that all parts of it were within the limit to be measured from the sea. Pompey accepted the invitation and wrote to Metellus putting a stop to his war. He also wrote the cities not to pay any attention to Metellus, and sent them one of his own officers as general, namely, Lucius Octavius, 3 who entered the strongholds of the besieged pirates and fought on their side, thus making Pompey not only odious and oppressive, but actually ridiculous, since he lent his name to godless miscreants, and threw around them the mantle of his reputation to serve like a charm against evil, through envy and jealousy of Metellus. 4 For not even Achilles played the part of a man, men said, but that of a youth wholly crazed and frantic in his quest of glory, when he made a sign to the rest which prevented them from smiting Hector,

“Lest some one else win honour by the blow, and he come only second”

;

5 whereas Pompey actually fought in behalf of the common enemy and saved their lives, that he might rob of his triumph a general who had toiled hard to win it. Metellus, however, would not give in, but captured the pirates and punished them, and then sent Octavius away after insulting and abusing him before the army.

30 1 When word was brought to Rome that the war against the pirates was at an end, and that Pompey, now at leisure, was visiting the cities, Manlius, one of the popular tribunes, proposed a law giving Pompey all the country and forces which Lucullus commanded, with the addition, too, of Bithynia, which Glabrio had, and the commission to wage war upon Mithridates and Tigranes, the kings, retaining also his naval force and his dominion over the sea as he had originally received them. 2 But this meant the placing of the Roman supremacy entirely in the hands of one man; for the only provinces which were held to be excluded from his sway by the former law, namely, Phrygia, Lycaonia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Upper Colchis, and Armenia, these were now added to it, together with the military forces which Lucullus had used in his conquest of Mithridates and Tigranes. 3 But though Lucullus was thus robbed of the glory of his achievements, and was receiving a successor who would enjoy his triumph rather than prosecute the war, this was of less concern to the aristocratic party, although they did think that the man was unjustly and thanklessly treated; they were, however, displeased at the power given to Pompey, which they regarded as establishing a tyranny, and privately exhorted and encouraged one another to attack the law, and not to surrender their freedom. But when the time came, 4 their hearts failed them through fear of the people, and all held their peace except Catulus; he denounced the law at great length and the tribune who proposed it, and when none of the people would listen to him, he called out in loud tones from the rostra urging the senate again and again to seek out a mountain, as their forefathers had done, or a lofty rock, whither they might fly for refuge and preserve their freedom. 5 But still the law was passed by all the tribes, as we are told, and Pompey, in his absence, was proclaimed master of almost all the powers which Sulla had exercised after subduing the city in armed warfare. Pompey himself, however, on receiving his letters and learning what had been decreed, while his friends surrounded him with their congratulations, frowned, we are told, smote his thigh, and said, in the tone of one who was already oppressed and burdened with command: 6 “Alas for my endless tasks! How much better it were to be an unknown man, if I am never to cease from military service, and cannot lay aside this load of envy and spend my time in the country with my wife!” As he said this, even his intimate friends could not abide his dissimulation; they knew that his enmity towards Lucullus gave fuel to his innate ambition and love of power, and made him all the more delighted.

31 1 And certainly his actions soon unmasked him. For he sent out edicts in all directions calling the soldiers to his standard, and summoned the subject potentates and kings into his presence. Moreover, as he traversed the country, he left nothing undisturbed that Lucullus had done, but remitted punishments in many cases, and took away rewards, and did everything, in a word, with an eager desire to shew the admirers of that general that he was wholly without power. 2 Lucullus expostulated through his friends, and it was decided that they should have a meeting; they met, therefore, in Galatia. And since both were very great and very successful generals, their lictors had their rods alike wreathed with laurel when they met; but Lucullus was advancing from green and shady regions, while Pompey chanced to have made a long march through a parched and treeless country. 3 Accordingly, when the lictors of Lucullus saw that Pompey’s laurels were withered and altogether faded, they took some of their own, which were fresh, and with them wreathed and decorated his rods. This was held to be a sign that Pompey was coming to rob Lucullus of the fruits of his victories and of his glory. 4 Now, Lucullus had been consul before Pompey, and was older than he; but Pompey’s two triumphs gave him a greater dignity. At first, however, their interview was conducted with all possible civility and friendliness, each magnifying the other’s exploits and congratulating him on his successes; but in the conferences which followed they could come to no fair or reasonable agreement, nay, they actually abused each other, Pompey charging Lucullus with love of money, and Lucullus charging Pompey with love of power, and they were with difficulty separated by their friends.

5 Furthermore, Lucullus, remaining in Galatia, assigned parts of the conquered territory and made other gifts to whom he pleased; while Pompey, encamped at a little distance from him, tried to prevent any attention to his commands, and took away all his soldiers from him, except sixteen hundred, whose mutinous spirit made them, as he thought, useless to himself and hostile to Lucullus. 6 Besides this, he would belittle the achievements of Lucullus, declaring that he had waged war against mimic and shadowy kings only, while to himself there was now left the struggle against a real military force, and one disciplined by defeat, since Mithridates had now betaken himself to shields, swords, and horses. To this Lucullus retorted that Pompey was going forth to fight an image and shadow of war, following his custom of alighting, like a lazy carrion-bird, on bodies that others had killed, and tearing to pieces the scattered remnants of wars. 7 For it was in this way that he had appropriated to himself the victories over Sertorius, Lepidus, and the followers of Spartacus, although they had actually been won by Metellus, Catulus, and Crassus. Therefore it was no wonder that he was trying to usurp the glory of the Pontic and Armenian wars, a man who contrived to thrust himself in some way or other into the honour of a triumph for defeating runaway slaves.

32 1 After this, Lucullus withdrew from those parts, and Pompey, having distributed his whole fleet so as to guard the sea between Phoenicia and the Bosporus, himself marched against Mithridates, who had a fighting force of thirty thousand foot and two thousand horse, but did not dare to offer battle. 2 To begin with, the king was strongly encamped on a mountain which was difficult of assault, but abandoned it, supposing it had no water. Pompey took possession of this very mountain, and judging by the nature of the vegetation and by the channels in the slopes that the place had springs, ordered his men to sink wells everywhere. At once, then, his camp was abundantly supplied with water, and men wondered that in all the time of his encampment Mithridates had been ignorant of this possibility. 3 Next, he invested the king’s camp and walled him in. But after enduring a siege of forty-five days, Mithridates succeeded in stealing off with his most effective troops; the sick and unserviceable he killed. Then, however, Pompey overtook him near the Euphrates river, and encamped close by; and fearing lest the king should get the advantage of him by crossing the Euphrates, he put his army in battle array and led it against him at midnight. 4 At this time Mithridates is said to have seen a vision in his sleep, revealing what should come to pass. He dreamed that he was sailing the Pontic Sea with a fair wind, and was already in sight of the Bosporus, and was greeting pleasantly his fellow-voyagers, as a man would do in his joy over a manifest and sure deliverance; but suddenly he saw himself bereft of all his companions and tossed about on a small piece of wreckage. As he dreamed of such distress, his friends came to his couch and roused him with the news that Pompey was advancing to the attack. 5 He was therefore compelled to give battle in defence of his camp, and his generals led out their troops and put them in array. But when Pompey perceived their preparations to met him, he hesitated to hazard matters in the dark, and thought it necessary merely to surround them, in order to prevent their escape, and then to attack them when it was day, since they were superior in numbers. But his oldest officers, by their entreaties and exhortations, prevailed upon him to attack at once; for it was not wholly dark, but the moon, which was setting, made it still possible to distinguish persons clearly enough; indeed, it was this circumstance that brought most harm to the king’s troops. 6 For the Romans came to the attack with the moon at their backs, and since her light was close to the horizon, the shadows made by their bodies were thrown far in advance and fell upon the enemy, who were thus unable to estimate correctly the distance between themselves and their foes, but supposing that they were already at close quarters, they hurled their javelins to no purpose and hit nobody. 7 The Romans, seeing this, charged upon them with loud cries, and when the enemy no longer ventured to stand their ground, but fled in panic fear, they cut them down, so that many more than ten thousand of them were slain, and their camp was captured.

Mithridates himself, however, at the outset, cut and charged his way through the Romans with eight hundred horsemen; but the rest were soon dispersed and he was left with three companions. 8 One of these was Hypsicrateia, a concubine, who always displayed a right manly spirit and extravagant daring (for which reason the king was wont to call her Hypsicrates), and at this time, mounted and accoutred like a Persian, she was neither exhausted by the long journeys, nor did she weary of caring for the king’s person and for his horse, until they came to a place called Sinora, which was full of the king’s money and treasures. 9 Thence Mithridates took costly raiment and distributed it to those who had flocked to him in his flight. He also gave each of his friends a deadly poison to carry with them, that no one of them might fall into the hands of the enemy against his will. From thence he set out towards Armenia on his way to Tigranes; but that monarch forbade his coming and proclaimed a reward of a hundred talents for his person; he therefore passed by the sources of the Euphrates and continued his flight through Colchis.

33 1 Pompey then invaded Armenia on the invitation of young Tigranes, who was now in revolt from his father, and who met Pompey near the river Araxes, which takes its rise in the same regions as the Euphrates, but turns towards the east and empties into the Caspian Sea. 2 These two, then, marched forward together, receiving the submission of the cities as they passed; King Tigranes, however, who had recently been crushed by Lucullus, but now learned that Pompey was rather mild and gentle in his disposition, received a Roman garrison into his palace, and taking with him his friends and kindred, set out of his own accord to surrender himself. 3 When he rode up to the Roman camp, two of Pompey’s lictors came to him and bade him dismount from his horse and go on foot; for no man mounted on horseback had ever been seen in a Roman camp. Tigranes, accordingly, not only obeyed them in this, but also unloosed his sword and gave it to them; and finally, when he came into the presence of Pompey himself, he took off his royal tiara and made as if to lay it at his feet, and what was most humiliating of all, would have thrown himself down and clasped his knees in supplication. 4 But before he could do this, Pompey caught him by the hand and drew him forward, and after giving him a seat near himself, and putting his son on the other side, told him that he must lay the rest of his losses to Lucullus, who had robbed him of Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, Galatia, and Sophene; but that what he had kept up to the present time he should continue to hold if he paid six thousand talents to the Romans as a penalty for his wrongdoing; and that his son should be king of Sophene. 5 With these terms Tigranes was well pleased, and when the Romans hailed him as King, he was overjoyed, and promised to give each soldier half a mina of silver, to each centurion ten minas, and to each tribune a talent. But his son was dissatisfied, and when he was invited to supper, said that he was not dependent on Pompey for such honours, for he himself could find another Roman to bestow them. Upon this, he was put in chains and reserved for the triumph. 6 Not long after this, Phraates the Parthian sent a demand for the young man, and a proposition that the Euphrates be adopted as a boundary between his empire and that of the Romans. Pompey replied that as for Tigranes, he belonged to his father more than to his father-in law; and as for a boundary, the just one would be adopted.

34 1 Then leaving Afranius in charge of Armenia, Pompey himself proceeded against Mithridates, and of necessity passed through the peoples dwelling about the Caucasus mountains. The greatest of these peoples are the Albanians and the Iberians, of whom the Iberians extend to the Moschian mountains and the Euxine Sea, while the Albanians lie to the eastward as far as the Caspian Sea. 2 These latter at first granted Pompey’s request for a free passage; but when winter had overtaken his army in their country and it was occupied in celebrating the Roman festival of the Saturnalia, they mustered no less than forty thousand men and made an attack upon it. To do this, they crossed the river Cyrnus, which rises in the Iberian mountains, and receiving the Araxes as it issues from Armenia, empties itself by twelve mouths into the Caspian. 3 Others say that the Araxes makes no junction with this stream, but takes a course of its own, and empties itself close by into the same sea. Although Pompey could have opposed the enemy’s passage of the river, he suffered them to cross undisturbed; then he attacked them, routed them, and slew great numbers of them. 4 When, however, their king sent envoys and begged for mercy, Pompey condoned his wrongdoing and made a treaty with him; then he marched against the Iberians, who were not less numerous than the others and more warlike, and had a strong desire to gratify Mithridates by repulsing Pompey. 5 For the Iberians had not been subject either to the Medes or the Persians, and they escaped the Macedonian dominion also, since Alexander departed from Hyrcania in haste. Notwithstanding, Pompey routed this people also in a great battle, in which nine thousand of them were slain and more than ten thousand taken prisoners; then he invaded Colchis, where, at the river Phasis, Servilius met him, at the head of the fleet with which he was guarding the Euxine.

35 1 Now, the pursuit of Mithridates, who had thrown himself among the peoples about the Bosporus and the Maeotic Sea, was attended with great difficulties; besides, word was brought to Pompey that the Albanians had again revolted. Turning back against these in resentment and wrath, he crossed the Cyrnus again with great difficulty and hazard, since the Barbarians had fenced off its banks with long stretches of palisades; 2 then, since he must make a long march through a waterless and difficult country, he ordered ten thousand skins to be filled with water, and with this provision advanced upon the enemy. He found them drawn up on the river Abas, sixty thousand foot and twelve thousand horse, but wretchedly armed, and clad for the most part in the skins of wild beasts. They were led by a brother of the king, named Cosis, 3 who as soon as the fighting was at close quarters, rushed upon Pompey himself and smote him with a javelin on the fold of his breastplate; but Pompey ran him through the body and killed him.

In this battle it is said that there were also Amazons fighting on the side of the Barbarians, and that they came down from the mountains about the river Thermodon. For when the Romans were despoiling the Barbarians after the battle, they came upon Amazonian shields and buskins; but no body of a woman was seen. 4 The Amazons inhabit the parts of the Caucasus mountains that reach down to the Hyrcanian Sea, and they do not border on the Albani, but Gelae and Leges dwell between. With these peoples, who meet them by the river Thermodon, they consort for two months every year; then they go away and live by themselves.

36 1 After the battle, Pompey set out to march to the Hyrcanian and Caspian Sea, but was turned back by a multitude of deadly reptiles when he was only three days march distant, and withdrew into Lesser Armenia. 2 Here the kings of the Elymaeans and the Medes sent ambassadors to him, and he wrote them a friendly answer; but against the Parthian king, who had burst into Gordyene and was plundering the subjects of Tigranes, he sent an armed force under Afranius, which drove him out of the country and pursued him as far as the district of Arbela.

Of all the concubines of Mithridates that were brought to Pompey, he used not one, but restored them all to their parents and kindred; for most of them were daughters and wives of officials and princes. 3 But Stratonice, who was held in highest esteem by the king and had the custody of the richest of his fortresses, was, it would seem, the daughter of a humble harpist, an old man, and poor besides; but she made such a swift conquest of Mithridates as she once played for him at his wine, that he took her with him to his bed, but sent the old man away in great displeasure at not getting so much as a kindly greeting. 4 In the morning, however, when the old man rose and saw in his house tables loaded with gold and silver beakers, a large retinue of servants, and a horse standing before his door caparisoned like those of the king’s friends, he thought the thing a mockery and a joke, and tried to run out of doors. 5 But the servants laid hold of him and told him that the king had bestowed on him the large estate of a rich man who had recently died, and that these things were only small foretastes and specimens of the goods and chattels still remaining. In this way he was with difficulty persuaded, and putting on his purple robes and leaping upon his horse, he rode though the city, crying: “All this is mine.” 6 To those who laughed at him he said that what he was doing was no wonder; the wonder was that he did not throw stones at those who met him, for he was mad with joy. Of such a stock and lineage was Stratonice. But she surrendered this stronghold to Pompey, and brought him many gifts, of which he accepted only those which were likely to adorn the temples at Rome and add splendour to his triumph; the rest he bade Stratonice keep and welcome. 7 In like manner, too, when the king of the Iberians sent him a couch, a table, and a throne, all of gold, and begged him to accept them, he delivered these also to the quaestors, for the public treasury.

37 1 In the fortress of Caenum Pompey found also private documents belonging to Mithridates, and read them with no little satisfaction, since they shed much light upon the king’s character. For there were memoranda among them from which it was discovered that, besides many others, he had poisoned to death his son Ariarathes, and also Alcaeus of Sardis, because he had surpassed him in driving race-horses. 2 Among the writings were also interpretations of dreams, some of which he himself had dreamed, and others, some of his wives. There were also letters from Monime to him, of a lascivious nature, and answering letters from him to her. Moreover, Theophanes says there was found here an address of Rutilius, which incited the king to the massacre of the Romans in Asia. 3 But most people rightly conjecture that this was a malicious invention on the part of Theophanes, perhaps because he hated Rutilius, who was wholly unlike himself, but probably also to please Pompey, whose father had been represented as an utter wretch by Rutilius in his histories.

38 1 From Caenum Pompey went to Amisus, where his ambition led him into obnoxious courses. For whereas he had roundly abused Lucullus because, while his enemy was still alive, he would issue edicts and distribute gifts and honour, — things which victors are wont to do only when a war has been brought to an end and finished, — yet he himself, while Mithridates was supreme in Bosporus and had collected a formidable force, just as though the whole struggle was ended, 2 took the same course, regulating the provinces and distributing gifts; for many leaders and princes and twelve barbarian kings had come to him. Wherefore, to gratify these other kings, he would not deign, in answering a letter from the king of Parthia, to address him as King of Kings, which was his usual title. Moreover, a great and eager passion possessed him to recover Syria, and march through Arabia to the Red Sea, in order that he might bring his victorious career into touch with the Ocean which surrounds the world on all sides; 3 for in Africa he had been the first to carry his conquests as far as the Outer Sea, and again in Spain he had made the Atlantic Ocean the boundary of the Roman dominion, and thirdly, in his recent pursuit of the Albani, he had narrowly missed reaching the Hyrcanian Sea. In order, therefore, that he might connect the circuit of his military expeditions with the Red Sea, he put his army in motion. And, besides, he saw that it was difficult to hunt Mithridates down with an armed force, and that he was harder to deal with when he fled than when he gave battle.

39 1 Wherefore, remarking that he would leave behind him for this fugitive a mightier enemy than himself, to wit, famine, he stationed ships to keep guard against the merchants sailing to Bosporus; and death was the penalty for such as were caught. Then taking the great mass of his army, he set out on his march, and when he came upon the still unburied bodies of those who, led by Triarius, had fallen in an unsuccessful combat with Mithridates, he gave them all an honourable and splendid burial. 2 After his legate Afranius had subdued for him the Arabians about Amanus, he himself went down into Syria, and since this country had no legitimate kings, he declared it to be a province and possession of the Roman people; he also subdued Judaea, and made a prisoner of Aristobulus the king. Some cities he built up, others he set free, chastising their tyrants. 3 But most of his time he spent in judicial business, settling the disputes of cities and kings, and for those to which he himself could not attend, sending his friends. Thus when the Armenians and Parthians referred to him the decision of a territorial quarrel, he sent them three arbiters and judges. 4 For great was the name of his power, and not less that of his virtue and clemency. This enabled him to hide away most of the transgressions of his friends and intimates, since he was not fitted by nature to restrain or chastise evil doers; but he was so helpful himself to those who had dealings with him that they were content to endure the rapacity and severity of his friends.

40 1 The one who had most influence with him was Demetrius, a freedman, a young man of some intelligence otherwise, but who abused his good fortune. The following story is told about him. Cato the philosopher, when he was still a young man, but had already great reputation and lofty purposes, went up to Antioch, at a time when Pompey was not there, wishing to inspect the city. 2 Cato himself, the story goes, marched on foot, as always, but the friends who journeyed with him were on horseback. When he beheld before the gate of the city a throng of men in white raiment, and drawn up along the road the youths on one side, and the boys on the other, he was vexed, supposing this to be done out of deference and honour to himself, who desired nothing of the kind. 3 However, he ordered his friends to dismount and walk with him; but when they drew near, the master of all these ceremonies met them, with a wreath on his head and a wand in his hand, and asked them where they had left Demetrius, and when he would come. The friends of Cato, accordingly, burst out laughing, but Cato said, “O the wretched city!” and passed on without any further answer.

4 However, Pompey himself made this Demetrius less odious to the rest by enduring his caprices without vexation. For instance, it is said that many times at his entertainments, when Pompey was awaiting and receiving his other guests, that fellow would be already reclining at table in great state, with the hood of his toga drawn down behind his ears. 5 Before his return to Italy, he had purchased the pleasantest suburbs of Rome and the most beautiful places of entertainment, and very costly gardens were called “Demetrian” after him; and yet Pompey himself, up to the time of his third triumph, had a simple and modest house. After that, it is true, when he was erecting the famous and beautiful  theatre which bears his name, he built close by it, like a small boat towed behind a ship, a more splendid house than the one he had before. But even this was not large enough to excite envy, so that when he who succeeded Pompey as its owner entered it, he was amazed, and inquired where Pompey the Great used to sup. At any rate, so the story runs.

41 1 The king of the Arabians about Petra had hitherto made no account of the Roman power, but now he was thoroughly alarmed and wrote that he had determined to obey and perform all commands. Pompey, therefore, wishing to confirm him in his purpose, marched towards Petra, an expedition which was not a little censured by most of his followers. 2 For they thought it an evasion of the pursuit of Mithridates, and demanded that he should rather turn against that inveterate enemy, who was again kindling the flames of war and preparing, as it was reported, to march an army through Scythia and Paeonia against Italy. Pompey, however, thinking it easier to crush the king’s forces when he made war than to seize his person when he was in flight, was not willing to wear out his own strength in a vain pursuit, and therefore sought other employment in the interval of the war and thus protracted the time.

3 But fortune resolved the difficulty. For when he was come within a short distance of Petra, and had already pitched his camp for that day and was exercising himself on horseback near by, dispatch-bearers rode up from Pontus bringing good tidings. Such messengers are known at once by the tips of their spears, which are wreathed with laurel. As soon as the soldiers saw these couriers they ran in throngs to Pompey. 4 At first he was disposed to finish his exercise, but at their shouts and entreaties he dismounted from his horse, took the dispatches, and led the way into the camp. There was no regular tribunal, nor had there been time to erect the military substitute, which the soldiers make with their own hands by digging up large clods of earth and heaping them one upon another; but in the eager haste of the moment they piled up the pack-saddles of the beasts of burden and made an eminence of them. 5 Pompey ascended this and announced to his soldiers that Mithridates was dead, having made away with himself because his son Pharnaces had come into possession of all the power there, acting, as he wrote, in behalf of himself and the Romans.

42 1 Upon this the army, filled with joy, as was natural, gave itself up to sacrifices and entertainments, feeling that in the person of Mithridates ten thousand enemies had died. Then Pompey, having brought his achievements and expeditions to such an unexpectedly easy completion, straightway withdrew from Arabia, 2 and passing rapidly through the intervening provinces, came to Amisus. Here he found many gifts that had been brought from Pharnaces, and many dead bodies of the royal family, and the corpse of Mithridates himself, which was not easy to recognize by the face (for the embalmers had neglected to remove the brain), but those who cared to see the body recognized it by the scars. 3 Pompey himself could not bring himself to look upon the body, but to propitiate the divine jealousy sent it away to Sinope. He was amazed at the size and splendour of the arms and raiment which Mithridates used to wear; although the sword-belt, which cost four hundred talents, was stolen by Publius and sold to Ariarathes, and the tiara was secretly given by Caius, the foster brother of Mithridates, to Faustus the son of Sulla, at his request; it was a piece of wonderful workmanship. All this escaped the knowledge of Pompey at the time, but Pharnaces afterwards learned of it and punished the thieves.

4 After arranging and settling affairs in those parts, Pompey proceeded on his journey, and now with greater pomp and ceremony. For instance, when he came to Mitylene, he gave the city its freedom, for the sake of Theophanes, and witnessed the traditional contest of the poets there, who now took as their sole theme his own exploits. And being pleased with the theatre, he had sketches and plans of it made for him, that he might build one like it in Rome, only larger and more splendid. 5 And when he was in Rhodes, he heard all the sophists there, and made each of them a present of a talent. Poseidonius has actually described the discourse which he held before him, against Hermagoras the rhetorician, on Investigation in General. At Athens, too, he not only treated the philosophers with like munificence, 6 but also gave fifty talents to the city towards its restoration. He therefore hoped to set foot in Italy with a reputation more brilliant than that of any other man, and that his family would be as eager to see him as he was to see them. But that divine agency which always takes pains to mingle with the great and splendid gifts of fortune a certain portion of evil, had long been secretly at work preparing to make his return a very bitter one. 7 For Mucia his wife had played the wanton during his absence. While Pompey was far away, he had treated the report of it with contempt; but when he was nearer Italy and, as it would seem, had examined the charge more at his leisure, he sent her a bill of divorce, although he neither wrote at that time, nor afterwards declared, the grounds on which he put her away; but the reason is stated in Cicero’s letters.

43 1 All sorts of stories about Pompey kept travelling to Rome before him, and there was much commotion there, where it was thought that he would straightway lead his army against the city, and that a monarchy would be securely established. Crassus took his children and his money and secretly withdrew, whether it was that he was really afraid, or rather, as seemed likely, because he wished to give credibility to the calumny and make the envious hatred of Pompey more severe. 2 Pompey, accordingly, as soon as he set foot in Italy, held an assembly of his soldiers, and after he had said what fitted the occasion, and had expressed his gratitude and affection for them, he bade them disperse to their several cities and seek their homes, remembering to come together again for the celebration of his triumph. When the army had been thus disbanded and all the world had learned about it, a wonderful thing happened. 3 When the cities saw Pompey the Great journeying along unarmed and with only a few intimate friends, as though returning from an ordinary sojourn abroad, the people streamed forth to show their good will, and escorting him on his way with a larger force, brought him with them back to Rome, where, had he purposed any revolutionary changes at that time, he had no need of the army that he had disbanded.

44 1 Now, since the law did not permit a commander to enter the city before his triumph, Pompey sent a request to the senate that they should put off the consular elections, asking them to grant him this favour in order that he might personally assist Piso in his candidacy. 2 But Cato opposed the request, and Pompey did not get what he wished. However, Pompey admired Cato’s boldness of speech and the firmness which he alone publicly displayed in defence of law and justice, and therefore set his heart on winning him over in some way or other; and since Cato had two nieces, Pompey wished to take one of them to wife himself, and to marry the other to his son. 3 But Cato saw through the design, which he thought aimed at corrupting him and in a manner bribing him by means of a marriage alliance, although his sister and his wife were displeased that he should reject Pompey the Great as a family connection. In the meantime, however, wishing to have Afranius made consul, Pompey spent money lavishly on his behalf among the tribes, and the people went down to Pompey’s gardens to get it. 4 As a consequence, the matter became notorious and Pompey was in ill repute; the office of consul was highest of all, and he himself had therefore received it as a reward for his successes, and yet he was making this office a thing to be bought by those who were unable to win it by merit. “In these reproaches, however,” said Cato to the women, “we must have taken our share, if we had become allied to Pompey.” And when they heard this, they agreed that his estimate of the fit and proper was better than theirs.

45 1 His triumph had such a magnitude that, although it was distributed over two days, still the time would not suffice, but much of what had been prepared could not find a place in the spectacle, enough to dignify and adorn another triumphal procession. Inscriptions borne in advance of the procession indicated the nations over which he triumphed. 2 These were: Pontus, Armenia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Media, Colchis, Iberia, Albania, Syria, Cilicia, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and Palestine, Judaea, Arabia, and all the power of the pirates by sea and land which had been overthrown. Among these peoples no less than a thousand strongholds had been captured, according to the inscriptions, and cities not much under nine hundred in number, besides eight hundred piratical ships, while thirty-nine cities had been founded. 3 In addition to all this the inscriptions set forth that whereas the public revenues from taxes had been fifty million drachmas, they were receiving from the additions which Pompey had made to the city’s power eighty-five million, and that he was bringing into the public treasury in coined money and vessels of gold and silver twenty thousand talents, apart from the money which had been given to his soldiers, of whom the one whose share was the smallest had received fifteen hundred drachmas. 4 The captives led in triumph, besides the chief pirates, were the son of Tigranes the Armenian with his wife and daughter, Zosime, a wife of King Tigranes himself, Aristobulus, king of the Jews, a sister and five children of Mithridates, Scythian women, and hostages given by the Iberians, by the Albanians, and by the king of Commagene; there were also very many trophies, equal in number to all the battles in which Pompey had been victorious either in person or in the persons of his lieutenants. 5 But that which most enhanced his glory and had never been the lot of any Roman before, was that he celebrated his third triumph over the third continent. For others before him had celebrated three triumphs; but he celebrated his first over Libya, his second over Europe, and this his last over Asia, so that he seemed in a way to have included the whole world in his three triumphs.

46 1 His age at this time, as those insist who compare him in all points to Alexander and force the parallel, was less than thirty-four years, though in fact he was nearly forty. How happy would it have been for him if he had ended his life at this point, up to which he enjoyed the good fortune of Alexander! For succeeding time brought him only success that made him odious, and failure that was irreparable. 2 That political power which he had won by his own legitimate efforts, this he used in the interests of others illegally, thus weakening his own reputation in proportion as he strengthened them, so that before he was aware of it he was ruined by the very vigour and magnitude of his own power. And just as the strongest parts of a city’s defences, when they are captured by an enemy, impart to him their own inherent strength, so it was by Pompey’s power and influence that Caesar was raised up against the city, and Caesar overthrew and cast down the very man by whose aid he had waxed strong against the rest. And this was the way it came about.

3 When Lucullus came back from Asia, where he had been outrageously treated by Pompey, the senate at once gave him a splendid reception, and after Pompey’s arrival, wishing to obstruct the leader’s reputation, it urged Lucullus all the more to take part in public life. In other matters Lucullus was already dulled and chilled past all efficiency, having given himself over to the pleasures of ease and the enjoyment of his wealth; but he sprang at once upon Pompey and by a vigorous attack won a victory over him in the matter of those ordinances of his own which Pompey had annulled, and carried the day in the senate with the support of Cato. 4 Thus worsted and hard pressed, Pompey was forced to fly for refuge to popular tribunes and attach himself to young adventurers. Among these the boldest and vilest was Clodius, who took him up and threw him down under the feet of the people, and keeping him ignobly rolled about in the dust of the forum, and dragging him to and fro there, he used him for the confirmation of what was said and proposed to gratify and flatter the people. 5 He even went so far as to ask a reward for his services from Pompey, as if he were helping him instead of disgracing him, and this reward he subsequently got in the betrayal of Cicero, who was Pompey’s friend and had done him more political favours than any one else. For when Cicero was in danger of condemnation and begged his aid, Pompey would not even see him, but shut his front door upon those who came in Cicero’s behalf, and slipped away by another. Cicero, therefore, fearing the result of his trial, withdrew secretly from Rome.

47 1 At this time Caesar had returned from his province and had inaugurated a policy which brought him the greatest favour for the present and power for the future, but proved most injurious to Pompey and the city. He was a candidate for his first consulship, and seeing that, while Crassus and Pompey were at variance, if he attached himself to the one he would make an enemy of the other, he sought to reconcile them with one another, — a thing which was honourable in itself and conducive to the public good, but he undertook it for an unworthy reason and with all the cleverness of an intriguer. 2 For those opposing forces which, as in a vessel, prevented the city from rocking to and fro, were united into one, thereby giving to faction an irresistible momentum that overpowered and overthrew everything. At all events, Cato, when men said that the state had been overturned by the quarrel which afterwards arose between Caesar and Pompey, declared that they wrongly laid the blame on what had merely happened last; 3 for it was not their discord nor yet their enmity, but their concord and harmony which was the first and greatest evil to befall the city. Caesar was, indeed, chosen consul; but he at once paid his court to the indigent and pauper classes by proposing measures for the founding of cities and the distribution of lands, thereby lowering the dignity of his office and making the consulate a kind of tribunate. 4 And when he was opposed by his colleague Bibulus, and Cato stood ready to support Bibulus with all his might, Caesar brought Pompey on the rostra before the people, and asked him in so many words whether he approved the proposed laws: and when Pompey said he did, “Then,” said Caesar, “in case any resistance should be made to the law, will you come to the aid of the people?” 5 “Yes, indeed,” said Pompey, “I will come, bringing, against those who threaten swords, both sword and buckler.” Never up to that day had Pompey said or done anything more vulgar and arrogant, as it was thought, so that even his friends apologized for him and said the words must have escaped him on the spur of the moment. However, by his subsequent acts he made it clear that he had now wholly given himself up to do Caesar’s bidding. 6 For to everybody’s surprise he married Julia, the daughter of Caesar, although she was betrothed to Caepio and was going to be married to him within a few days; and to appease the wrath of Caepio, Pompey promised him his own daughter in marriage, although she was already engaged to Faustus the son of Sulla. Caesar himself married Calpurnia, the daughter of Piso.

48 1 After this, Pompey filled the city with soldiers and carried everything with a high hand. As Bibulus the consul was going down into the forum with Lucullus and Cato, the crowd fell upon him and broke the fasces of his lictors, and somebody threw a basket of ordure all over the head of Bibulus himself, and two of the tribunes who were escorting him were wounded. 2 When they had thus cleared the forum of their opponents, they passed the law concerning the distribution of lands; and the people, caught by this bait, became tame at once in their hands, and ready to support any project, not meddling at all, but silently voting for what was proposed to them. 3 Accordingly, Pompey got those enactments of his ratified which Lucullus contested; Caesar received the two Gauls and Illyricum for five years, together with four complete legions; and it was decided that the consuls for the ensuing year should be Piso, the father-in law of Caesar, and Gabinius, who was the most extravagant of Pompey’s flatterers.

4 While this was going on, Bibulus shut himself up in his house and for the eight months remaining of his consulship did not appear in public, but issued edicts which were full of accusations and slanders against Pompey and Caesar; Cato, as though inspired and possessed by a spirit of prophecy, foretold in the senate what the future would bring to the city and to Pompey; while Lucullus renounced the struggle and led a life of ease, on the plea that he was past the age for political affairs; whereat Pompey remarked that for an old man luxurious living was more unseasonable than political activity. 5 However, Pompey himself also soon gave way weakly to his passion for his young wife, devoted himself for the most part to her, spent his time with her in villas and gardens, and neglected what was going on in the forum, so that even Clodius, who was then a tribune of the people, despised him and engaged in the most daring measures. 6 For after he had driven Cicero into banishment, and sent Cato off to Cyprus under pretence of giving him military command, and Caesar was gone off to Gaul, and when he saw that the people were devoted to him because all his political measures were undertaken to please them, he straightway attempted to repeal some of the arrangements which Pompey had made; he took away his prisoner, Tigranes, and kept him about his own person; and he prosecuted some of his friends, making a test of the power of Pompey by his proceedings against them. 7 And finally, when Pompey appeared at a public trial, Clodius, having at his beck and call a rabble of the lewdest and most arrogant ruffians, stationed himself in a conspicuous place and put to them such questions as these: “Who is a licentious imperator?” “What man seeks for a man?” “Who scratches his head with one finger?” And they, like a chorus trained in responsive song, as he shook his toga, would answer each question by shouting out “Pompey.”

49 1 Of course this also was annoying to Pompey, who was not accustomed to vilification and was inexperienced in this sort of warfare; but he was more distressed when he perceived that the senate was delighted to see him insulted and paying a penalty for his betrayal of Cicero. 2 When, however, it had come to blows and even wounds in the forum, and a servant of Clodius, stealing along through the crowd of bystanders towards Pompey, was found to have a sword in his hand, Pompey made this his excuse, although he was also afraid of the insolent abuse of Clodius, and came no more into the forum as long as Clodius was tribune, but kept himself continually at home, where he was ever debating with his friends how he might appease the anger of the senate and the nobility against him. 3 To Culleo, however, who urged him to divorce Julia and exchange the friendship of Caesar for that of the senate, he would not listen, but he yielded to the arguments of those who thought he ought to bring Cicero back, who was the greatest enemy of Clodius and most beloved in the senate, and he escorted Cicero’s brother, who was a petitioner for his return, with a large force into the forum, where, though some were wounded and some killed, he nevertheless got the better of Clodius. 4 And when Cicero returned to the city by virtue of the law then passed, he immediately reconciled Pompey to the senate, and by his advocacy of the corn law he in a manner once more made Pompey master of all the land and sea in Roman possession. For under his direction were placed harbours, trading-places, distributions of crops, — in a word, navigation and agriculture. 5 Clodius alleged that the law had not been proposed on account of the scarcity of grain, but the scarcity of grain had arisen in order that the law might be proposed, a law whereby the power of Pompey, which was withering away, as it were, in consequence of his failing spirits, might be rekindled again and recovered in a new office. But others declare that this was a device of the consul Spinther, whose aim was to confine Pompey in a higher office, in order that he himself might be sent out to aid King Ptolemy. 6 However, Canidius, as tribune of the people, brought in a law providing that Pompey, without an army, and with two lictors only, should go out as a mediator between the king and the people of Alexandria. Pompey was thought to regard the law with no disfavour, but the senate rejected it, on the plausible pretence that it feared for his safety. Besides, writings were to be found scattered about the forum and near the senate-house, stating that it was Ptolemy’s wish to have Pompey given to him as a commander instead of Spinther. 7 And Timagenes actually says that Ptolemy left home without sufficient reason and under no necessity, and that his abandonment of Egypt was owing to the persuasions of Theophanes, who was aiming to give Pompey profitable occupation in the holding of a new command. But this is not made credible by the baseness of Theophanes as much as it is made incredible by the nature of Pompey, in which ambition was not of such a mean and base order.

50 1 Having thus been set over the administration and management of the grain trade, Pompey sent out his agents and friends in various directions, while he himself sailed to Sicily, Sardinia and Africa, and collected grain. When he was about to set sail with it, there was a violent storm at sea, and the ship-captains hesitated to put out; but he led the way on board and ordered them to weigh anchor, crying with a loud voice: “To sail is necessary; to live is not.” 2 By this exercise of zeal and courage attended by good fortune, he filled the sea with ships and the markets with grain, so that the excess of what he had provided sufficed also for foreign peoples, and there was an abundant overflow, as from a spring, for all.

51 1 Meanwhile, his Gallic wars raised Caesar to greatness; and though he was thought to be very far removed from Rome, and to be occupied with Belgae, Suevi, and Britanni, he secretly and cleverly contrived to thwart Pompey’s designs in the heart of the city and in the most important matters. 2 For he himself, with his military force clothing him as the body does soul, was carefully training it, not against the Barbarians merely, nay, he used its combats with these only to give it exercise, as if in hunting and the chase, — and was making it invincible and terrible; but all the while he was sending back to Rome gold and silver and the other spoils and the rest of the wealth which came to him in abundance from his numerous wars, and by tempting people with his bribes, and contributing to the expenses of aediles, praetors, consuls, and their wives, he was winning many to his side. 3 Therefore when he crossed the Alps and spent the winter in Luca, a great crowd of ordinary men and women gathered there in eager haste to see him, while two hundred men of senatorial rank, among whom were Pompey and Crassus, and a hundred and twenty fasces of proconsuls and praetors were seen at Caesar’s door. 4 Accordingly, he filled all the rest with hopes and loaded them with money, and sent them away; but between himself, Pompey, and Crassus the following compact was made: these two were to stand for the consulship, and Caesar was to assist their candidacy by sending large numbers of his soldiers home to vote for them; as soon as they were elected, they were to secure for themselves commands of provinces and armies, and to confirm Caesar’s present provinces to him for another term of five years. 5 When all this was publicly known, it gave displeasure to the chief men of the state, and Marcellinus rose in the assembly and asked Pompey and Crassus whether they were going to be candidates for the consulship. As the majority of the people bade them answer, Pompey did so first, and said that perhaps he would be a candidate, and perhaps he would not; but Crassus gave a more politic answer, for he said he would take whichever course he thought would be for the advantage of the commonwealth. 6 And when Marcellinus persisted in his attack upon Pompey and was thought to be making a strong speech, Pompey remarked that Marcellinus was of all men most unjust, since he was not grateful to him for making him eloquent instead of speechless, and full to vomiting instead of famished.

52 1 However, though all the rest declined to be candidates for the consulship, Cato encouraged and persuaded Lucius Domitius not to desist, for the struggle with the tyrants, he said, was not for office, but for liberty. But Pompey and his partisans, seeing the firmness of Cato, and fearing lest, having all the senate with him, he should draw away and pervert the sound-minded among the people, would not suffer Domitius to go down into the forum, 2 but sent armed men and slew the link-bearer who was leading his company, and put the rest to flight; Cato was the last to retire, after being wounded in the right arm while he was fighting to defend Domitius.

By such a path they made their way into the office they sought, nor even then did they behave more decently. But first of all, while the people were casting their votes for the election of Cato to the praetorship, Pompey dissolved the assembly, alleging an inauspicious omen, and after corrupting the tribes with money, they proclaimed Vatinius praetor instead of Cato. 3 Then, by means of Trebonius, a tribune, they introduced laws which, according to the agreement, continued his provinces to Caesar for a second term of five years, gave Crassus Syria and the expedition against the Parthians, and to Pompey himself the whole of Africa, both Spains, and four legions; of these he lent two to Caesar, at his request, for the war in Gaul. 4 But although Crassus went out to his province at the expiration of his consulship, Pompey opened his theatre and held gymnastic and musical contests at its dedication, and furnished combats of wild beasts in which five hundred lions were killed, and above all, an elephant fight, a most terrifying spectacle.

53 1 All this won him admiration and affection; but on the other hand he incurred a corresponding displeasure, because he handed over his provinces and his armies to legates who were his friends, while he himself spent his time with his wife among the pleasure-places of Italy, going from one to another, either because he loved her, or because she loved him so that he could not bear to leave her; for this reason too is given. 2 Indeed, the fondness of the young woman for her husband was notorious, although the mature age of Pompey did not invite such devotion. The reason for it, however, seems to have lain in the chaste restraint of her husband, who knew only his wedded wife, and in the dignity of his manners, which were not severe, but full of grace, and especially attractive to women, as even Flora the courtesan may be allowed to testify. 3 It once happened that at an election of aediles people came to blows, and many were killed in the vicinity of Pompey and he was covered with their blood, so that he changed his garments. His servants carried these garments to his house with much confusion and haste, and his young wife, who chanced to be with child, at sight of the blood-stained toga, fainted away and with difficulty regained her senses, and in consequence of the shock and her sufferings, miscarried. 4 Thus it came to pass that even those who found most fault with Pompey’s friendship for Caesar could not blame him for the love he bore his wife. However, she conceived again and gave birth to a female child, but died from the pains of travail, and the child survived her only a few days. Pompey made preparations to bury her body at his Alban villa, but the people took it by force and carried it down to the Campus Martius for burial, more out of pity for the young woman than as a favour to Pompey and Caesar. 5 But of these two, it was thought that the people gave a larger share of the honour to Caesar, who was absent, than to Pompey, who was present. For the city became at once a tossing sea, and everywhere surging tumult and discordant speeches prevailed, since the marriage alliance which had hitherto veiled rather than restrained the ambition of the two men was now at an end. 6 After a short time, too, tidings came that Crassus had lost his life in Parthia, and so what had been a great hindrance to the breaking out of civil war was removed; for through fear of him both Pompey and Caesar had somehow or other continued to treat one another fairly. But when fortune had removed the third champion who waited to compete with the victor in their struggle, at once the comic poet’s words were apt, and

“each wrestler against the other

Anoints himself with oil and smears his hands with dust.”

7 So slight a thing is fortune when compared with human nature; for she cannot satisfy its desires, since all that extent of empire and magnitude of wide-stretching domain could not suffice for two men. They had heard and read that the gods “divided the universe into three parts, and each got his share of power,” and yet they did not think the Roman dominion enough for themselves, who were but two.

54 1 Still, Pompey once said in addressing the people that he had received every office earlier than he had expected, and had laid it down more quickly than others had expected. And in truth his disbanding of the armies was a perpetual witness to the truth of his words. But at this time he thought that Caesar was not going to dismiss his forces, and therefore sought to make himself strong against him by means of magistracies in the city. Beyond this, however, he attempted no revolutionary changes, nor did he wish to be thought to distrust Caesar, but rather to neglect and despise him. 2 But when he saw that the magistracies were not bestowed according to his wishes, because the citizens were bribed, he suffered an anarchy to rise in the city; and forthwith there was prevalent much talk in favour of a dictator, which Lucilius the popular tribune first ventured to make public, when he advised the people to elect Pompey dictator. But Cato attacked him, and Lucilius came near losing his tribunate, and many of Pompey’s friends came forward in defence of him, declaring that he neither asked nor desired that office. 3 And when Cato applauded Pompey and urged him to devote himself to the cause of law and order, for the time being he did so, out of shame, and Domitius and Messala were installed in the consulship; but afterwards an anarchy arose again, and more people now agitated the question of a dictatorship more boldly. Therefore Cato and his party, fearing lest they should be overborne, determined to allow Pompey a certain legalized office, and so to divert him from the unmixed tyranny of a dictatorship. 4 Consequently, Bibulus, who was an enemy of Pompey, was first to propose in the senate that Pompey be chosen sole consul; for thus, he said, the city would either be set free from the prevailing disorder, or would become the slave of its strongest man. The proposal seemed strange, considering the man who made it; but Cato rose, leading everybody to think that he was going to speak against it, and when silence was made, said that he himself would not have introduced the proposed measure, but that since it had been introduced by another, he urged its adoption, because he preferred any government whatever to no government at all, and thought that no one would govern better than Pompey in a time of such disorder. 5 The senate accepted the measure, and decreed that Pompey, if elected consul, should govern alone, but that if he himself desired a colleague, he might choose whom he thought fit after two months had fully expired. Having in this way been made consul and so declared by Sulpicius, the Interrex, Pompey addressed himself in a friendly manner to Cato, acknowledging that he was much indebted to him, and inviting him to give advice in a private capacity on the conduct of the government. 6 But Cato would not admit that Pompey was indebted to him, declaring that none of his words had been spoken in the interests of Pompey, but in the interests of the city; and that he would give him advice in a private capacity if he were invited, and in case he should not be invited, would publicly make known his opinion. Such, indeed, was Cato in everything.

55 1 Pompey now entered the city, and married Cornelia, a daughter of Metellus Scipio. She was not a virgin, but had lately been left a widow by Publius, the son of Crassus, whose virgin bride she had been before his death in Parthia. The young woman had many charms apart from her youthful beauty. She was well versed in literature, in playing the lyre, and in geometry, and had been accustomed to listen to philosophical discourses with profit. 2 In addition to this, she had a nature which was free from that unpleasant officiousness which such accomplishments are apt to impart to young women; and her father’s lineage and reputation were above reproach. Nevertheless, the marriage was displeasing to some on account of the disparity in years; for Cornelia’s youth made her a fitter match for a son of Pompey. 3 Those, too, who were more critical, considered that Pompey was neglectful of the unhappy condition of the city, which had chosen him as her physician and put herself in his sole charge; whereas he was decking himself with garlands and celebrating nuptials, though he ought to have regarded his very consulship as a calamity, since it would not have been given him in such an illegal manner had his country been prosperous. 4 Moreover, although he presided over the suits for corruption and bribery, and introduced laws for the conduct of the trials, and in all other cases acted as arbiter with dignity and fairness, making the court-rooms safe, orderly, and quiet by his presence there with an armed force, still, when Scipio, his father-in law, was put on trial, he summoned the three hundred and sixty jurors to his house and solicited their support, and the prosecutor abandoned the case when he saw Scipio conducted from the forum by the jurors. Once more, therefore, Pompey was in ill repute, 5 and this was still further increased because, although he had put a stop by law to encomiums on persons under trial, he himself came into court to pronounce an encomium on Plancus. Cato, who happened to be one of the jurors, clapped his hands to his ears and said it was not right for him, contrary to the law, to listen to encomiums. 6 Cato was therefore set aside before he could cast his vote, but Plancus was convicted by the other votes, to the disgrace of Pompey. For, a few days afterwards, Hypsaeus, a man of consular dignity, who was under prosecution, lay in wait for Pompey as he was returning from his bath for supper, clasped his knees, and supplicated his favour; but Pompey passed along contemptuously, telling him that, except for spoiling his supper, he was accomplishing nothing. In this way he got the reputation of being partial, and was blamed for it. 7 Everything else, however, he succeeded in bringing into good order, and chose his father-in law as his colleague for the remaining five months of the year. It was also decreed that he should retain his provinces for another four years, and receive a thousand talents yearly, out of which he was to feed and maintain his soldiers.

56 1 But the friends of Caesar took occasion from this to demand that some consideration be shewn for Caesar also, who was waging so many contests in behalf of the Roman supremacy; they said he deserved either another consulship, or the prolongation of his command, so that no one else might succeed to his labours and rob him of the glory of them, but that the one who had performed them might himself continue in power and enjoy his honours undisturbed. 2 A debate arose on these matters, during which Pompey, giving the impression that it was goodwill towards Caesar that led him to deprecate the odium in which Caesar stood, said he had letters from Caesar wherein he expressed a wish to have a successor and be relieved of his command; he thought it right, however, that he should be permitted to stand for the consulship even in his absence. 3 Opposition to this was made by Cato and his party, who urged that Caesar must lay down his arms and become a private citizen before he could obtain any favour from his fellow-citizens; and since Pompey made no contention, but as it were accepted defeat, there was more suspicion about his sentiments towards Caesar. He also sent and asked back the troops which he had lent him, making the Parthian war his pretext for doing so. And although Caesar knew the real reasons for asking back the soldiers, he sent them home with generous gifts.

57 1 After this Pompey had a dangerous illness at Naples, but recovered from it, and on the advice of Praxagoras the Neapolitans offered sacrifices of thanksgiving for his preservation. Their example was followed by the neighbouring peoples, and so the thing made its way throughout all Italy, and every city, small and great, held festival for many days. 2 No place could contain those who came to greet him from all quarters, but roads and villages and ports were filled with sacrificing and feasting throngs. Many also with garlands on their heads and lighted torches in their hands welcomed and escorted him on his way, pelting him with flowers, so that his progress and return to Rome was a most beautiful and splendid sight. 3 And yet this is said to have done more than anything else to bring about the war. For while the public rejoicing was great, a spirit of arrogance came upon Pompey, which went beyond the calculations based upon facts, and, throwing to the winds that caution which had thus far always given security to his successful achievements, he indulged himself in unlimited confidence and contempt for Caesar’s power, feeling that he would need neither an armed force to oppose him nor any irksome labour of preparation, but that he would pull him down much more easily than he had raised him up. 4 Besides this, Appius came, bringing from Gaul the troops which Pompey had lent Caesar. He said much to belittle Caesar’s achievements there, and gave out scandalous stories about Caesar. He also said that Pompey knew not his own power and reputation if he surrounded himself with other troops against Caesar, for he could put down Caesar with Caesar’s own soldiers as soon as he appeared on the scene, so great was their hatred of Caesar and their warm affection for Pompey. 5 In this way, then, Pompey was elated, and his confidence filled him with so great a contempt for his adversary that he mocked at those who were afraid of the war; and when some said that if Caesar should march upon the city, they did not see any forces with which to defend it from him, with a smiling countenance and calm mien he bade him be in no concern; “For,” said he, “in whatever part of Italy I stamp upon the ground, there will spring up armies of foot and horse.”

58 1 And now, too, Caesar devoted himself to public affairs with greater vigour. He no longer kept himself far away from Italy, was always sending his soldiers back to the city to take part in the elections, and by means of his money was secretly working upon many of the magistrates and corrupting them. Among these was Paulus the consul, who was won over by a bribe of fifteen hundred talents; and Curio the popular tribune, whom Caesar set free from innumerable debts; and Mark Antony, whose friendship for Curio had involved him in Curio’s obligations. 2 It was said, indeed, that one of Caesar’s centurions who had come back to Rome and was standing near the senate-house, when he heard that the senate would not give Caesar a prolongation of his term of office, struck his hand upon his sword: “But this will give it.” And Caesar’s intrigues and preparations had this purpose.

3 And yet the requests and demands which Curio made in behalf of Caesar seemed to be very popular in their character. For he demanded one of two things: either that Pompey also should be required to give up his soldiery, or else that Caesar’s should not be taken away from him; for whether they became private persons on just and equal terms, or remained a match for each other with their present forces, they would make no disturbance; but he who weakened one of them doubled the power of which he stood in fear. 4 To this Marcellus the consul replied by calling Caesar a robber, and urging that he be voted a public enemy unless he should lay down his arms; nevertheless, Curio, aided by Antony and Piso, prevailed so far as to have the opinion of the senate taken. He therefore moved that those should withdraw to one side who wished that Caesar only should lay down his arms and that Pompey should remain in command; and the majority withdrew. 5 But when he moved again that all those should withdraw who wished both to lay down their arms and neither to remain in command, only twenty-two favoured Pompey, while all the rest sided with Curio. Curio, therefore, felt that he had won the day, and with a joyful countenance rushed before the people, who clapped their hands in welcome and pelted him with garlands and flowers. Pompey was not present in the senate, since commanders of armies cannot enter the city; 6 Marcellus, however, rose and declared that he would not sit there listening to speeches, but since he saw ten legions already looming up in their march over the Alps, he himself also would send forth a man who would oppose them in defence of his country.

59 1 Upon this, the city went into mourning, as in the presence of a public calamity; and Marcellus, followed by the senate, marched through the forum to meet Pompey, and standing before him said: “I bid thee, Pompey, to defend thy country, to employ the forces now in readiness, and to levy others.” Lentulus also said the same, being one of the consuls elected for the coming year. 2 But when Pompey began to levy recruits, some refused to obey the summons, and a few came together reluctantly and without zest, but the greater part cried out for a settlement of the controversy. For Antony, in defiance of the senate, had read before the people a letter of Caesar containing propositions which were attractive to the multitude. He asked, namely, that both Pompey and he should give up their provinces, disband their armies, put themselves in the hands of the people, and render an account of what they had done. 3 But Lentulus, who was by this time consul, would not call the senate together; Cicero, however, who was just returned from Cilicia, tried to effect a settlement of the dispute on these terms, namely, that Caesar should renounce Gaul and dismiss the rest of his forces, but should retain two legions and Illyricum, and wait for his second consulship. 4 And when Pompey was dissatisfied with this, the friends of Caesar conceded that he should dismiss one of the two legions; but since Lentulus still opposed, and Cato cried out that Pompey was blundering again in allowing himself to be deceived, the settlement came to naught.

60 1 And now word was brought that Caesar had seized Ariminum, a large city of Italy, and was marching directly upon Rome with all his forces. But this was false. For he was marching with no more than three hundred horsemen and five thousand men-at arms; the rest of his forces were beyond the Alps, and he did not wait for them, since he wished to fall upon his enemies suddenly, when they were in confusion and did not expect him, rather than to give them time and fight them after they were prepared. 2 And so, when he was come to the river Rubicon, which was the boundary of the province allotted to him, he stood in silence and delayed to cross, reasoning with himself, of course, upon the magnitude of his adventure. Then, like one who casts himself from a precipice into a yawning abyss, he closed the eyes of reason and put a veil between them and his peril, and calling out in Greek to the bystanders these words only, “Let the die be cast,” he set his army across.

3 As soon as the report of this came flying to Rome and the city was filled with tumult, consternation, and a fear that was beyond compare, the senate at once went in a body and in all haste to Pompey, and the magistrates came too. And when Tullus asked Pompey about an army and a military force, and Pompey, after some delay, said timidly that he had in readiness the soldiers who had come from Caesar, 4 and thought that he could speedily assemble also those who had been previously levied, thirty thousand in number, Tullus cried aloud, “Thou hast deceived us, Pompey!” and advised sending envoys to Caesar; and a certain Favonius, a man otherwise of no bad character, but who often thought that his insolent presumption was an imitation of Cato’s boldness of speech, ordered Pompey to stamp upon the ground and call up the forces which he used to promise. But Pompey bore this ill-timed raillery with meekness; 5 and when Cato reminded him of what he had said to him at the outset about Caesar, he replied that what Cato had said was more prophetic, but what he himself had done was more friendly.

61 1 Cato now advised that Pompey should be elected general with unlimited powers, adding that the very men who caused great mischief must also put an end to it. Then he set out at once for Sicily, the province which had fallen to his lot, and the other senators likewise departed for the provinces which had severally been allotted to them. But since nearly all Italy was in commotion, the course of things was perplexing. 2 For those who dwelt outside the city came rushing in hurried flight from all quarters into Rome, and those who dwelt in Rome were rushing out of it and abandoning the city, where, in such tempestuous confusion, the better element was weak, and the insubordinate element strong and hard for the magistrates to manage. For it was impossible to check the reigning fear, nor would any one suffer Pompey to follow the dictates of his own judgement, but whatever feeling each one had, whether fear, or distress, or perplexity, he promptly infected Pompey’s mind with this. 3 Therefore opposite counsels prevailed in the same day, and it was impossible for Pompey to get any true information about the enemy, since many reported to him whatever they happened to hear, and then were vexed if he did not believe them. Under these circumstances he issued an edict in which he recognized a state of civil war, ordered all the senators to follow him, declared that he would regard as a partisan of Caesar any one who remained behind, and late in the evening left the city. 4 The consuls also fled, without even making the sacrifices customary before a war. But even amid the actual terrors of the hour Pompey was a man to be envied for the universal good will felt towards him, because, though many blamed his generalship, there was no one who hated the general. Indeed, one would have found that those who fled the city for the sake of liberty were not so numerous as those who did so because they were unable to forsake Pompey.

62 1 A few days after this, Caesar entered and took possession of Rome. He treated everybody with kindness and calmed their fears, except that when Metellus, one of the tribunes, attempted to prevent him from taking money out of the public treasury, he threatened to kill him, and added to the threat a still harsher speech, namely, that it was easier for him to execute it than to utter it. 2 Having thus driven away Metellus, he took what he wanted, and then set out in pursuit of Pompey, being anxious to drive him out of Italy before his forces came back from Spain. But Pompey, having taken possession of Brundisium, where he found plenty of transports, immediately embarked the consuls, and with them thirty cohorts of soldiers, sent them before him to Dyrrachium; Scipio his father-in law, however, and Gnaeus his son, he sent to study to raise a fleet. 3 He himself, after barricading the gates and manning the walls with his lightest-armed soldiers, ordered the Brundisians to remain quietly in their houses, and then dug up all the ground inside the city into trenches, and filled the streets with sunken stakes, all except two, by which he himself finally went down to the sea. 4 Then on the third day, when he had already embarked the rest of his host at his leisure, he suddenly raised a signal for those who were still guarding the walls to run swiftly down to the sea, took them on board, and sent them across to Dyrrachium. Caesar, however, when he saw the walls deserted, perceived that Pompey had fled, and in his pursuit of him came near getting entangled in the ditches and stakes; but since the Brundisians told him about them, he avoided the city, and making a circuit round it, found that all the transports had put out to sea except two, which had only a few soldiers aboard.

63 1 Other people, now, count this sailing away of Pompey among his best stratagems, but Caesar himself was astonished that when he was in possession of a strong city and expected his forces from Spain and was master of the sea, he gave up and abandoned Italy. Cicero also blames him for imitating the generalship of Themistocles rather than that of Pericles, although he was situated like Pericles, and not like Themistocles. 2 Moreover, Caesar had shown by what he did that he greatly feared a protraction of the war. For after capturing Numerius, a friend of Pompey, he sent him to Brundisium with a request for a reconciliation on equal terms. But Numerius sailed away with Pompey. Then Caesar, who in sixty days had become master of all Italy without bloodshed, wished to pursue Pompey at once, but since he had no transports, he turned back and marched into Spain, desiring to win over to himself the forces there.

64 1 In the meantime a great force was gathered by Pompey. His navy was simply irresistible, since he had five hundred ships of war, while the number of his light galleys and fast cruisers was immense; his cavalry numbered seven thousand, the flower of Rome and Italy, preëminent in lineage, wealth, and courage; and his infantry, which was a mixed multitude and in need of training, he exercised at Beroea, not sitting idly by, but taking part in their exercises himself, as if he had been in the flower of his age. 2 And indeed it was a great incentive to confidence when they saw Pompey the Great, who was now sixty years of age less two, but who nevertheless competed in full armour as a foot-soldier, and then again, as a horseman, drew his sword without trouble while his horse was at a gallop and put it back in its sheath with ease; while in hurling the javelin he not only displayed accuracy, but also vigour in the length of his cast, which many of the young men could not surpass. 3 There kept coming to him also kings of nations and potentates, and of the leading men from that there were enough about him to form a full senate. Labienus also came, having deserted Caesar, though he had been his friend and had served under him in Gaul; and Brutus, a son of the Brutus who had been put to death by Pompey in Gaul, a man of lofty spirit, who had never spoken to Pompey nor even saluted him before, because he held him to be the murderer of his father, but now he put himself under his command, believing him to be a deliverer of Rome. 4 Cicero, too, although he had advocated other measures in his writings and his speeches in the senate, nevertheless was ashamed not to be of the number of those who risked all for their country. There came also Tidius Sextius, a man of extreme old age and lame of one leg, into Macedonia. The rest laughed and jeered at him, but when Pompey saw him, he rose and ran to meet him, counting it a great testimony that men past the years and past the power of service should choose danger with him in preference to their safety.

65 1 When their senate convened and a decree was passed, on motion of Cato, that no Roman should be killed except on a field of battle, and that no city subject to Rome should be plundered, the party of Pompey was held in still greater favour. For those even who took no part in the war, either because they dwelt too far away, or were too weak to be regarded, attached themselves to it in their wishes at least, and, as far as their words went, fought with it in behalf of the right, considering him a foe to gods and men who did not wish Pompey to be victorious.

2 However, it is also true that Caesar showed himself merciful as a conqueror; after defeating and capturing the forces of Pompey in Spain, he sent away their commanders, and took the soldiers into his service. Then he re-crossed the Alps, marched rapidly through Italy, and came to Brundisium shortly after the winter solstice. 3 Crossing the sea there, he himself put in at Oricum, but he dispatched Vibullius, the friend of Pompey, who was his prisoner of war, to Pompey, with a proposition that they should hold a conference, disband all their armies within three days, and after renewing their friendship under oath, return to Italy. 4 This Pompey thought to be another snare, and marching swiftly down to the sea, he took possession of the posts, regions, and sites which offered strong positions for land forces, as well as of the naval stations and landing-places which were favourable for those who came by sea, so that every wind that blew brought Pompey grain, or troops, or money; while Caesar, on the other hand, reduced to straits by sea and land, was forced to seek a battle, attacking Pompey’s defences and challenging him to come out all the while. 5 In these skirmishes Caesar was for the most part victorious and carried the day; but once he narrowly escaped being utterly crushed and losing his army, for Pompey made a brilliant fight and at last routed Caesar’s whole force and killed two thousand of them. He did not, however, force his way into their camp with the fugitives, either because he could not, or because he feared to do so, and this led Caesar to say to his friends: “To day victory would have been with the enemy if they had had a victor in command.”

66 1 At this success the followers of Pompey were so elated that they were eager to have the issue decided by a battle. Pompey, however, although he wrote to distant kings and generals and cities in the tone of a victor, feared the risk of such a battle, thinking that by imposing delays and distresses upon them he would finally subdue men who were invincible in arms and had been accustomed to conquer together now for a long time, 2 but who for the other duties of a campaign, such as long marches, changes of position, the digging of trenches, and the building of walls, were incapacitated by old age, and therefore eager to come to close quarters and fight hand to hand without delay. Notwithstanding their over-confidence, Pompey had hitherto somehow or other succeeded in inducing his followers to kept quiet; but when after the battle Caesar was compelled by his lack of supplies to break camp and march through Athamania into Thessaly, their spirits could no longer be restrained, 3 but, crying out that Caesar was in flight, some of them were for following in pursuit of him, others for crossing over into Italy, and others were sending their attendants and friends to Rome in order to pre-occupy houses near the forum, purposing at once to become candidates for office. Many, too, of their own accord sailed to Cornelia in Lesbos with the glad tidings that the war was at an end; for Pompey had sent her there for safety.

4 A senate having been assembled, Afranius gave it as his opinion that they should make sure of Italy, for Italy was the greatest prize of the war, and would at once put also into the hands of her masters Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Spain, and all Gaul; and since his native land, which was of the greatest concern to Pompey, stretched out suppliant hands to him close by, it was not right to allow her to be enslaved and insulated by servants and flatterers of tyrants. 5 Pompey himself, however, thought it neither well for his own reputation to run away a second time from Caesar and to be pursued by him, when fortune made him the pursuer, nor right before Heaven to abandon Scipio and the men of consular rank in Thessaly and Hellas, who would at once come into the power of Caesar together with their moneys and large forces; but that he cared most for Rome who fought for her at the farthest remove, in order that she might neither suffer nor hear about any evil, but quietly await her master.

67 1 Having decided the matter in this way, Pompey set out in pursuit of Caesar, determined to avoid a battle, but to keep him under siege and harass him with lack of supplies by following those upon him. He had reasons for thinking this the best course, and besides, a saying current among the cavalry reached his ears, to the effect that as soon as they had routed Caesar they must put down Pompey himself also. 2 And some say this was also the reason why Pompey called upon Cato for no service of any importance, but even when marching against Caesar left him at the coast in charge of the baggage, fearing lest, if Caesar should be taken off, he himself also might be forced by Cato to lay down his command at once. While he was thus quietly following the enemy he was loudly denounced, and charges were rife that he was directing his campaign, not against Caesar, but against his country and the senate, in order that he might always be in office and never cease to have for his attendants and guards men who claimed to rule the world. 3 Domitius Ahenobarbus, too, by calling him Agamemnon, and King of Kings, made him odious. And Favonius was no less displeasing to him than those who used a bolder speech, when he bawled out his untimely jest: “O men, this year, also, shall we eat no figs of Tusculum?” And Lucius Afranius, who lay under a charge of treachery for having lost his forces in Spain, on seeing Pompey now avoiding a battle with Caesar, said he was astonished that his accusers did not go forth and fight this trafficker in provinces.

4 With these and many similar speeches they forced Pompey from his settled purpose, — a man who was a slave to fame and loath to disappoint his friends, — and dragged him into following after their own hopes and impulses, abandoning his best laid plans, a thing which even in the master of a ship, to say nothing of a general in sole command of so many nations and armies, would have been unbecoming. 5 Pompey himself approved of those physicians who never gratify the morbid desires of their patients, and yet he yielded to the diseased passion of his followers, for fear of offending if he tried to heal and save them. For how can one say that those men were sound and well, some of whom were already going about among the soldiers and canvassing for consulships and praetorships, while Spinther, Domitius, and Scipio were quarrelling, scheming, and conspiring over the pontificate of Caesar, 6 just as though Tigranes the Armenian were encamped over against them, or the king of the Nabataeans, and not that Caesar, and that army, who had taken by storm a thousand cities, subdued more than three hundred nations, and fought unvanquished with Germans and Gauls in more battles than one could number, taking a hundred times ten thousand prisoners, and slaying as many, after routing them on the battle-field.

68 1 But notwithstanding, by their importunities and agitations, after they had gone down into the plain of Pharsalia, they forced Pompey to hold a council of war, where Labienus, the commander of the cavalry, rose first and took an oath that he would not come back unless he routed the enemy; than all likewise swore the same oath. 2 That night Pompey dreamed that as he entered his theatre the people clapped their hands, and that he decorated a temple of Venus Victrix with many spoils. On some accounts he was encouraged, but on others depressed, by the dream; he feared lest the race of Caesar, which went back to Venus, was to receive glory and splendour through him; and certain panic tumults which went rushing through the camp roused him from sleep. 3 Furthermore, during the morning watch a great light shone out above the camp of Caesar, which was perfectly quiet, and a flaming torch rose from it and darted down upon the camp of Pompey; Caesar himself says he saw this as he was visiting the watches. At break of day, Caesar was about to decamp and move to Scotussa, and his soldiers were taking down their tents and sending on ahead the beasts of burden and servants, when the scouts came in with a report that they saw many shields moving to and fro in the enemy’s camp, and that there was a noisy movement there of men coming out to battle. 4 After these, others came announcing that the foremost ranks were already forming in battle array. Caesar, therefore, after saying that the expected day had come, on which they would fight against men, and not against want and hunger, quickly ordered the purple tunic to be hung in front of his tent, that being the Roman signal for battle. 5 His soldiers, on seeing this, left their tents with shouts of joy, and hurried to arms. And when their officers led them to the proper place, each man, as if in a chorus, not tumultuously, but with the quiet ease which training gives, fell into line.

69 1 Pompey himself, with the right wing, intended to oppose Antony; in the centre he stationed Scipio, his father-in law, over against Lucius Calvinus; his left wing was commanded by Lucius Domitius, and was supported by the main body of the cavalry. 2 For almost all the horsemen had crowded to this point, in order to overpower Caesar and cut to pieces the tenth legion; for this was generally said to fight better than any other, and in its ranks Caesar usually stood when he fought a battle. But Caesar, observing that the left wing of the enemy was enclosed by such a large body of horsemen, and alarmed at their brilliant array, sent for six cohorts from his reserves and stationed them behind the tenth legion, 3 with orders to kept quiet and out of the enemy’s sight; but whenever the cavalry charged, they were to run out through the front ranks, and were not to hurl their javelins, as the best soldiers usually did in their eagerness to draw their swords, but to strike upwards with them and wound the faces and eyes of the enemy; for these blooming and handsome war-dancers (he said) would not stand their ground for fear of having their youthful beauty marred, nor would they face the steel when it was right at their eyes. Caesar, then, was thus engaged.

4 But Pompey, who was surveying on horseback the battle array, when he saw that his antagonists were standing quietly in their ranks and awaiting the moment of attack, while the greater part of his own army was not at rest, but tossing about in waves of tumult, owing to its inexperience, was afraid that his array would be completely broken up at the beginning of the battle, and therefore ordered his front ranks to stand with their spears advanced, to remain fixed in their places, and so to receive the enemy’s onset. 5 Now, Caesar finds fault with these tactics; he says that Pompey thereby robbed the blows of his weapons of that impetus which a rapid charge would have given them; and as for that rushing counter-charge, which more than any thing else fills most soldiers with impetuous enthusiasm as they close with their enemies, and combines with their shouts and running to increase their courage, Pompey deprived his men of this, and so rooted them to the spot where they stood, and chilled their spirits. And yet Caesar’s forces numbered twenty-two thousand, while those of Pompey were a little more than twice as many.

70 1 And now at last the signal was given on both sides and the trumpet began to call to the conflict, and of that great host every man sought to do his part; but a few Romans, the noblest, and some Greeks, men who were present without taking part in the battle, now that the dreadful crisis was near, began to reflect upon the pass to which contentiousness and greed had brought the sovereign Roman state. 2 For with kindred arms, fraternal ranks, and common standards, the strong manhood and might of a single city in such numbers was turning its own hand against itself, showing how blind and frenzied a thing human nature is when passion reigns. For had they now been willing quietly to govern and enjoy what they had conquered, the greatest and best part of earth and sea was subject to them, and if they still desired to gratify their thirst for trophies and triumphs, they might have had their fill of wars with Parthians or Germans. 3 Besides, a great task still remained in the subjugation of Scythia and India, and here their greed would have had no inglorious excuse in the civilization of barbarous peoples. And what Scythian horse or Parthian archery or Indian wealth could have checked seventy thousand Romans coming up in arms under the leadership of Pompey and Caesar, whose names those nations had heard of long before that of Rome, so remote and various and savage were the peoples which they had attacked and conquered. 4 But now they were about to join battle with one another, nor were they moved even by a compassion for their own glory to spare their country, men who up to that day had been called invincible! For the family alliance which had been made between them, and the charms of Julia, and her marriage, were now seen to have been from the first suspicious and deceptive pledges of a partnership based on self-interest; there was no real friendship in it.

71 1 So, then, when the Pharsalian plain was filled with men and horses and arms and the signals for battle had been lifted on both sides, the first to rush out from Caesar’s lines was Caius Crassianus, a centurion in command of one hundred and twenty men, who was thus redeeming a great promise made to Caesar. 2 For he had been the first man whom Caesar saw as he issued from the camp, and addressing him, he had asked him what be thought about the battle. The centurion stretched forth his right hand and cried with a loud voice: “Thou wilt win a splendid victory, O Caesar; and I shall have thy praise to day, whether I live or die.” Mindful now of these words of his, he rushed forward, carrying many along with him, and threw himself into the midst of the enemy. 3 The combatants at once took to their swords and many were slain, and as the centurion was forcing his way along and cutting down the men in the front ranks, one of them confronted him and drove his sword in at his mouth with such force that its point went through to the nape of his neck.

After Crassianus had fallen, the battle was evenly contested at this point; Pompey, however, did not lead up his right wing swiftly, but kept looking anxiously towards the other parts of the field, and awaited the action of his cavalry on the left, thus losing time. 4 These at last deployed their squadrons with a view to envelop Caesar, and to hurl back upon their supporting lines the horsemen whom he had stationed in front, only a few in number. But Caesar gave a signal, his cavalry retired, and the cohorts drawn up to oppose the enveloping movement ran out, three thousand men, and confronted their enemies, and standing close by the horses, as they had been directed, they thrust their javelins upwards, aiming at the faces of the riders. 5 These, since they were without experience in every kind of fighting, and did not expect or even know anything about such a kind as this, had neither courage nor endurance to meet the blows which were aimed at their mouths and eyes, but wheeling about and putting their hands before their faces, they ingloriously took to flight. Then Caesar’s soldiers, suffering these to make their escape, advanced upon the enemy’s infantry, attacking at just that point where the wing, left unprotected by the flight of the cavalry, could be surrounded and enclosed. 6 And since this body attacked them on the flank, while at the same time the tenth legion fell upon their front, the enemy did not stand their ground nor even hold together, for they saw that while they were expecting to surround the enemy, they were themselves being surrounded.

72 1 After his infantry was thus routed, and when, from the cloud of dust which he saw, Pompey conjectured the fate of his cavalry, what thoughts passed through his mind it were difficult to say; but he was most like a man bereft of sense and crazed, who had utterly forgotten that he was Pompey the Great, and without a word to any one, he walked slowly off to his camp, exemplifying those verses of Homer:

2 But Zeus the father, throned on high, in Ajax stirred up fear;

He stood confounded, and behind him cast his shield of seven ox-hides,

And trembled as he peered around upon the throng.

In such a state of mind he went to his tent and sat down speechless, until many pursuers burst into the camp with the fugitives; then he merely ejaculated; “What! even to my quarters?” and without another word rose up, took clothing suitable to his present fortune, 3 and made his escape. The rest of his legions also fled, and there was a great slaughter in the camp of tent-guards and servants; but only six thousand soldiers fell, according to Asinius Pollio, who fought in that battle on the side of Caesar.

4 When Caesar’s troops captured the camp, they beheld the vanity and folly of the enemy. For every tent was wreathed with myrtle boughs and decked out with flowered couches and tables loaded with beakers; bowls of wine were also laid out, and preparation and adornment were those of men who had sacrificed and were holding festival rather than of men who were arming themselves for battle. With such infatuated hopes and such a store of foolish confidence did they go forth to war.

73 1 But Pompey, when he had gone a little distance from the camp, gave his horse the rein, and with only a few followers, since no one pursued him, went quietly away, indulging in such reflections as a man would naturally make who for four and thirty years had been accustomed to conquer and get the mastery in everything, and who now for the first time, in his old age, got experience of defeat and flight; he thought how in a single hour he had lost the power and glory gained in so many wars and conflicts, 2 he who a little while ago was guarded by such an array of infantry and horse, but was now going away so insignificant and humbled as to escape the notice of the enemies who were in search of him. After passing by Larissa, he came to the Vale of Tempe, and there, being thirsty, he threw himself down on his face and drank of the river; then, rising up again, he went on his way through Tempe, and at last came down to the sea. 3 There he rested for the remainder of the night in a fisherman’s hut. At early dawn he went aboard a river-boat, taking with him such of his followers as were freemen, but bidding his servants to go back to Caesar and to have no fear. Then he coasted along until he saw a merchant-ship of goodly size about to put to sea, the master of which was a Roman who, though not intimately acquainted with Pompey, nevertheless knew him by sight; his name was Peticius. 4 This man, as it happened, had dreamed the night before that Pompey, not as he had often seen him, but humble and downcast, was addressing him. He was just telling this dream to his shipmates, as men who are at leisure are wont to make much of such matters, 5 when suddenly one of the sailors told him that he saw a river-boat rowing out from the shore, and some men in it waving their garments and stretching out their hands towards them. Peticius, accordingly, turned his attention in that direction, and at once recognised Pompey, as he had seen him in his dream; then, smiting his head, he ordered the sailors to bring the little boat alongside, and stretching out his hand, hailed Pompey, already comprehending from his garb the change of fortune which the man had suffered. 6 Wherefore, without waiting for argument or entreaty, he took Pompey on board, and also all whom Pompey wished to have with him (these were the two Lentuli and Favonius), and set sail; and shortly after, seeing Deiotarus the king hurrying out from shore, they took him on board also. Now, when it was time for supper and the master of the ship had much such provision for them as he could, Favonius, seeing that Pompey, for lack of servants, was beginning to take off his own shoes, ran to him and took off his shoes for him, and helped him to anoint himself. 7 And from that time on he continued to give Pompey such ministry and service as slaves give their masters, even down to the washing of his feet and the preparation of his meals, so that any one who beheld the courtesy and the unfeigned simplicity of that service might have exclaimed:

“Ah, yes! to generous souls how noble every task!”

74 1 And so, after coasting along towards Amphipolis, he crossed over to Mitylene, desiring to take on board Cornelia and his son. And when he had reached the shore of the island, he sent a messenger to the city, not such a one as Cornelia was expecting in view of the joyful messages and letters she had received, for she was hoping that the war was ended at Dyrrachium, and that the only task left for Pompey was the pursuit of Caesar. 2 The messenger, finding her in this mood, could not bring himself to salute her, but indicated to her the most and greatest of his misfortunes by his tears rather than by his speech, and merely bade her hasten if she had any wish to see Pompey with one ship only, and that not his own. When she heard this, she cast herself upon the ground and lay there a long time bereft of sense and speech. At last, however, and with difficulty, she regained her senses, and perceiving that the occasion was not one for tears and lamentations, she ran out through the city to the sea. 3 Pompey met her and caught her in his arms as she tottered and was falling. “I see thee,” she cried, “husband, not by thy fortune, but by mine, reduced to one small vessel, thou who before thy marriage with Cornelia didst sail this sea with five hundred ships. Why hast thou come to see me, and why didst thou not leave to her cruel destiny one who has infected thee also with an evil fortune so great? What a happy woman I had been if I had died before hearing that Publius, whose virgin bride I was, was slain among the Parthians! And how wise if, even after his death, as I essayed to do, I had put an end to my own life! But I was spared, it seems, to bring ruin also upon Pompey the Great.”

75 1 So spake Cornelia, as we are told, and Pompey answered, saying: “It is true, Cornelia, thou hast known but one fortune to be mine, the better one, and this has perhaps deceived thee too, as well as me, in that it remained with me longer than is customary. But this reverse also we must bear, since we are mortals, and we must still put fortune to the test. For I can have some hope of rising again from this low estate to my former high estate, since I fell from that to this.”

2 His wife, accordingly, sent for her goods and servants from the city; and though the Mitylenaeans gave Pompey a welcome and invited him to enter their city, he would not consent to do so, but bade them also to submit to the conqueror, and to be of good heart, for Caesar was humane and merciful. 3 He himself, however, turning to Cratippus the philosopher, who had come down from the city to see him, complained and argued briefly with him about Providence, Cratippus yielding somewhat to his reasoning and trying to lead him on to better hopes, that he might not give him pain by arguing against him at such a time. 4 For when Pompey raised questions about Providence, Cratippus might have answered that the state now required a monarchy because it was so badly administered; and he might have asked Pompey: “How, O Pompey, and by what evidence, can we be persuaded that thou wouldst have made a better use of fortune than Caesar, hadst thou got the mastery?” But this matter of the divine ordering of events must be left without further discussion.

76 1 After taking on board his wife and his friends, Pompey went on his way, putting in at harbours only when he was compelled to get food or water there. The first city that he entered was Attaleia in Pamphylia; there some triremes from Cilicia met him, soldiers were assembled for him, and he was surrounded by senators, sixty of them. 2 On hearing, too, that his fleet still held together, and that Cato had taken many soldiers aboard and was crossing the sea to Africa, he lamented to his friends, blaming himself for having been forced to do battle with his land forces, while he made no use of his navy, which was indisputably superior, and had not even stationed it at a point where, if defeated on land, he might have had this powerful force close at hand by sea to make him a match for his enemy. 3 And, in truth, Pompey made no greater mistake, and Caesar showed no abler generalship, than in removing the battle so far from naval assistance. However, since he was compelled to decide and act as best he could under the circumstances, he sent messengers round to the cities; to some also he sailed about in person, asking for money and manning ships. But fearing the quickness and speed of his enemy, who might come upon him and seize him before he was prepared, he began to look about for a temporary refuge and retreat. 4 Accordingly, as he deliberated with his followers, there appeared to be no province to which they could safely fly, and as for the kingdoms, he himself expressed the opinion that the Parthian was best able for the present to receive and protect them in their weak condition, and later on to strengthen them and send them forth with a large force; 5 of the rest, some turned their thoughts to Africa and Juba. But Theophanes the Lesbian thought it a crazy thing for Pompey to decide against Egypt, which was only three days’ sail away, and Ptolemy, who was a mere youth and indebted to Pompey for friendship and kindness shown his father, and put himself in the power of Parthians, a most treacherous race; to refuse to take the second place under a Roman who had been connected with him by marriage, and to be second to none other, nay, to refuse even to make trial of that Roman’s moderation, 6 but instead to make Arsaces his lord and master, a thing which even Crassus could not be made to do while he lived; and to carry a young wife, of the family of Scipio, among Barbarians who measure their power by their insolence and licentiousness, where, even if she suffer no harm, but is only thought to have suffered harm, her fate is a terrible one, since she has come into the power of those who are able to do her harm. This consideration alone, as we are told, diverted Pompey from journeying to the Euphrates, if indeed it was longer any calculation of Pompey’s, and not rather an evil genius, that was guiding him on this last journey.

77 1 So when it was decided that he should fly to Egypt, he set sail from Cyprus on a Seleucian trireme with his wife (of the rest, some sailed along with him in ships of war like his own, and others in merchant vessels), and crossed the sea in safety; but on learning that Ptolemy was posted at Pelusium with an army, making war upon his sister, he put in there, and sent on a messenger to announce his arrival to the king and to ask his aid. 2 Now, Ptolemy was quite young; but Potheinus, who managed all his affairs, assembled a council of the most influential men (and those were most influential whom he wished to be so), and bade each one give his opinion. It was certainly a dreadful thing that the fate of Pompey the Great was to be decided by Potheinus the eunuch, and Theodotus of Chios, who was a hired teacher of rhetoric, and Achillas the Egyptian; for these were the chief counsellors of the king among the chamberlains and tutors also gathered there. 3 And it was such a tribunal’s verdict which Pompey, tossing at anchor some distance of the shore, was waiting for, a man who would not deign to be under obligations to Caesar for his life.

The opinions of the other counsellors were so far divergent that some advised to drive Pompey away, and others to invite him in and receive him. 4 But Theodotus, making a display of his powerful speech and rhetorical art, set forth that neither course was safe for them, but that if they received Pompey, they would have Caesar for an enemy and Pompey for a master; while if they rejected him, Pompey would blame them for casting him off, and Caesar for making him continue his pursuit; the best course, therefore, was to send for the man and put him to death, for by doing so they would gratify Caesar and have nothing to fear from Pompey. To this he smilingly added, we are told, “A dead man does not bite.”

78 1 Having determined upon this plan, they entrusted the execution of it to Achillas. So he took with him a certain Septimius, who had once been a tribune of Pompey’s, and Salvius besides, a centurion, with three or four servants, and put out towards the ship of Pompey. Now, all the most distinguished of Pompey’s fellow-voyagers had come aboard of her to see what was going on. 2 Accordingly, when they saw a reception that was not royal, nor splendid, nor in accordance with the hopes of Theophanes, but a few men sailing up in a single fishing-boat, they viewed this lack of respect with suspicion, and advised Pompey to have his ship rowed back into the open sea, while they were beyond reach of missiles. But meanwhile the boat drew near, and first Septimius rose up and addressed Pompey in the Roman tongue as Imperator. 3 Then Achillas saluted him in Greek, and invited him to come aboard the boat, telling him that the shallows were extensive, and that the sea, which had a sandy bottom, was not deep enough to float a trireme. At the same time some of the royal ships were seen to be taking their crews aboard, and men-at arms were occupying the shore, so that there seemed to be no escape even if they changed their minds; and besides, this very lack of confidence might give the murderers an excuse for their crime. 4 Accordingly, after embracing Cornelia, who was bewailing his approaching death, he ordered two centurions to go into the boat before him, besides Philip, one of his freedmen, and a servant named Scythes, and while Achillas was already stretching out his hand to him from the boat, turned towards his wife and son and repeated the verses of Sophocles: —

Whatever man upon a tyrant takes his way,

His slave he is, even though a freeman when he goes.

79 1 After these last words to his friends, he went into the boat. And since it was a long distance from the trireme to the land, and none of his companions in the boat had any friendly word for him, turning his eyes upon Septimius he said: “Surely I am not mistaken, and you are an old comrade of mine!” 2 Septimius nodded merely, without saying anything to him or showing any friendliness. So then, as there was profound silence again, Pompey took a little roll containing a speech written by him in Greek, which he had prepared for his use in addressing Ptolemy, and began to read in it. 3 Then, as they drew near the shore, Cornelia, together with his friends, stood on the trireme watching with great anxiety for the outcome, and began to take heart when she saw many of the king’s people assembling at the landing as if to give him an honourable welcome. But at this point, while Pompey was clasping the hand of Philip that he might rise to his feet more easily, Septimius, from behind, ran him through the body with his sword, then Salvius next, and than Achillas, drew their daggers and stabbed him. 4 And Pompey, drawing his toga down over his face with both hands, without an act or a word that was unworthy of himself, but with a groan merely, submitted to their blows, being sixty years of age less one, and ending his life only one day after his birth-day.

80 1 When the people on the ships beheld the murder, they uttered a wailing cry that could be heard as far as the shore, and weighing anchor quickly, took to flight. And a strong wind came to their aid as they ran out to sea, so that the Egyptians, though desirous of pursuing, turned back. But they cut off Pompey’s head, and threw the rest of his body unclothed out of the boat, and left it for those who craved so pitiful a sight. 2 Philip, however, stayed by the body, until such had taken their fill of gazing; then he washed it in sea-water, wrapped it in a tunic of his own, and since he had no other supply, sought along the coast until he found the remnants of a small fishing-boat, old stuff, indeed, but sufficient to furnish a funeral pyre that would answer for an unclothed corpse, and that too not entire. 3 As he was gathering the wood and building the pyre, there came up a Roman who was now an old man, but who in his youth had served his first campaigns with Pompey, and said: “Who art thou, my man, that thinkest to give burial rites to Pompey the Great?” And when Philip said that he was his freedman, the man said: “But thou shalt not have this honour all to thyself; let me too share in a pious privilege thus offered, that I may not altogether regret my sojourn in a foreign land, if in requital for many hardships I find this happiness at least, to touch with my hands and array for burial the greatest of Roman imperators.” Such were the obsequies of Pompey. 4 And on the following day Lucius Lentulus, as he came sailing from Cyprus and coasted along the shore not knowing what had happened, saw a funeral pyre and Philip standing besides it, and before he had been seen himself exclaimed: “Who, pray, rests here at the end of his allotted days?” Then, after a slight pause and with a groan he said: “But perhaps it is thou, Pompey the Great!” And after a little he went ashore, was seized, and put to death.

5 This was the end of Pompey. But not long afterwards Caesar came to Egypt, and found it filled with this great deed of abomination. From the man who brought him Pompey’s head he turned away with loathing, as from an assassin; and on receiving Pompey’s seal-ring, he burst into tears; the device was a lion holding a sword in his paws. But Achillas and Potheinus he put to death. The king himself, moreover, was defeated in battle along the river, and disappeared. 6 Theodotus the sophist, however, escaped the vengeance of Caesar; for he fled out of Egypt and wandered about in wretchedness and hated of all men. But Marcus Brutus, after he had slain Caesar and come into power, discovered him in Asia, and put him to death with every possible torture. The remains of Pompey were taken to Cornelia, who gave them burial at his Alban villa.

Comparison of Agesilaus and Pompey

662 1 1 Now that their lives lie spread before us, let us briefly run over the points in which the two men differed, and bring these together side by side. They are as follows. In the first place, it was in the justest manner that Pompey came to fame and power, setting out on his career independently, and rendering many great services to Sulla when Sulla was freeing Italy from her tyrants; 2 Agesilaüs, on the contrary, appeared to get his kingdom by sinning against both gods and men, since he brought Leotychides under condemnation for bastardy, although his brother had recognised him as his legitimate son, and made light of the oracle concerning his lameness. In the second place, Pompey not only continued to hold Sulla in honour while he lived, but also after his death gave his body funeral obsequies in despite of Lepidus, and bestowed upon his son Faustus his own daughter in marriage; whereas Agesilaüs cast out Lysander on the merest pretext, and heaped insult upon him. 3 And yet Sulla got no less from Pompey than he gave him, while in the case of Agesilaüs, it was Lysander who made him king of Sparta and general of all Greece. And, thirdly, Pompey’s transgressions of right and justice in his political life were due to his family connections, for he joined in most of the wrongdoings of Caesar and Scipio because they were his relations by marriage; 4 but Agesilaüs snatched Sphodrias from the death which hung over him for wronging the Athenians, merely to gratify the love of his son, and when Phoebidas treacherously broke the peace with Thebes, he evidently made the crime itself a reason for zealously supporting him. In a word, whatever harm Pompey was accused of bringing upon the Romans out of deference to his friends or through ignorance, Agesilaüs brought as much upon the Lacedaemonians out of obstinacy and resentment when he kindled the Boeotian war.

2 1 Moreover, if we must assign to any ill-fortune of the two men the disasters which overtook them, that of Pompey could not have been anticipated by the Romans; but Agesilaüs would not permit the Lacedaemonians to guard against the “lame sovereignty,” although they had heard and knew beforehand about it. For even if Leotychides had been ten thousand times convicted of being bastard and alien, the family of the Eurypontidae could easily have furnished Sparta with a king who was of legitimate birth and sound of limb, had not Lysander darkened the meaning of the oracle in the interests of Agesilaüs.

2 On the other hand, when we consider the remedy which Agesilaüs applied to the perplexity of the state in dealing with those who had played the coward, after the disaster at Leuctra, when he urged that the laws should slumber for that day, there was never another political device like it, nor can we find anything in Pompey’s career to compare with it; on the contrary, he did not even think it incumbent upon him to abide by the laws which he himself had made, if he might only display the greatness of his power to his friends. But Agesilaüs, when he confronted the necessity of abrogating the laws in order to save his fellow-citizens, devised a way by which the citizens should not be harmed by the laws, nor the laws be abrogated to avoid such harm. 3 Further, I attribute also to political virtue in Agesilaüs that inimitable act of his in abandoning his career in Asia on receipt of the dispatch-roll. For he did not, like Pompey, help the commonwealth only as he made himself great, 663 but with an eye to the welfare of his country he renounced such great fame and power as no man won before or since his day, except Alexander.

3 1 And now from another point of view, that of their campaigns and achievements in war, the trophies of Pompey were so many, the forces led by him so vast, and the pitched battles in which he was victorious so innumerable, that not even Xenophon, I think, would compare the victories of Agesilaüs, although that historian, by reason of his other excellent qualities, is specially privileged, as it were, to say and write whatever he pleases about the man. 2 I think also that in merciful behaviour towards their enemies the two men were different. For Agesilaüs was so bent on enslaving Thebes and depopulating Messenia, Thebes the mother-city of his royal line, and Messenia a sister colony to his country, that he nearly lost Sparta, and did lose her supremacy in Greece; whereas Pompey gave cities to such of the pirates as changed their mode of life, and when it was in his power to lead Tigranes the king of Armenia in his triumphal procession, made him an ally instead, saying that he thought more of future time than of a single day.

3 If, however, it is the greatest and most far-reaching decisions and acts in war that are to determine preëminence in the virtues of leadership, then the Lacedaemonian leaves the Roman far behind. For, in the first place, he did not desert nor abandon his city, though the enemy attacked with an army of seventy thousand men, while he had only a few men-at arms, and these had recently been vanquished at Leuctra; 4 but Pompey, after Caesar had occupied a single city of Italy with only fifty-three hundred men, hurried away from Rome in a panic, either yielding ignobly to so few, or conjecturing falsely that there were more; and after conveying with him his own wife and children, he left those of the other citizens defenceless and took to flight, when he ought either to have conquered in a battle for his country, or to have accepted terms from his conqueror, who was a fellow-citizen and a relation by marriage. 5 But as it was, to the man for whom he thought it a terrible thing to prolong a term of military command or vote a consulship, to this man he gave the power of capturing the city and saying to Metellus that he considered him and all the rest of the citizens as his prisoners of war.

4 1 Furthermore, the chief task of a good general is to force his enemies to give battle when he is superior to them, but not to be forced himself to do this when his forces are inferior, and by so doing Agesilaüs always kept himself unconquered; whereas in Pompey’s case, Caesar escaped injury at his hands when he was inferior to him, and forced him to stake the whole issue on a battle with his land forces, wherein Caesar was superior, thus defeating him and becoming at once master of treasures, provisions, and the sea, — advantages which would have brought his ruin without a battle had they remained in his enemy’s control. 2 And that which is urged as an excuse for this failure is really a very severe accusation against a general like him. For that a youthful commander should be frightened by tumults and outcries into cowardly weakness and abandon his safest plans, is natural and pardonable; but that Pompey the Great, whose camp the Romans called their country, and his tent their senate, while they gave the name of traitors and rebels to the consuls and praetors and other magistrates at Rome, — 3 that he who was known to be under no one’s command, but to have served all his campaigns most successfully as imperator, should be almost forced by the scoffs of Favonius and Domitius, and by the fear of being called Agamemnon, to put to the hazard the supremacy and freedom of Rome, who could tolerate this? If he had regard only for the immediate infamy involved, then he ought to have made a stand at the first and to have fought to the finish the fight for Rome, instead of calling the flight which he then made a Themistoclean stratagem and afterwards counting it a disgraceful thing to delay before fighting in Thessaly. 6644 For surely Heaven had not appointed that Pharsalian plain to be the stadium and theatre of their struggle for the supremacy, nor was he summoned by voice of herald to go down thither and do battle or leave to another the victor’s wreath; nay, there were many plains, ten thousand cities, and a whole earth which his great resources by sea afforded him had he wished to imitate Maximus, or Marius, or Lucullus, or Agesilaüs himself, 5 who withstood no less tumults in Sparta when its citizens wished to fight with the Thebans in defence of their land, and in Egypt endured many calumnies and accusations and suspicions on the part of the king when he urged him to keep quiet; but he followed his own best counsels as he wished, and  not only saved the Egyptians against their wills, and by his sole efforts ever kept Sparta upright in the midst of so great a convulsion, but actually set up a trophy in the city for a victory over the Thebans, which victory he put his countrymen in the way of winning later, by keeping them then from the destruction into which they would have forced their way. Wherefore Agesilaüs was afterwards commended by those whom he had forced to take the path of safety, while Pompey, whom others had led into error, found accusers in the very ones to whom he had yielded. 7 And yet some say that he was deceived by his father-in law Scipio, who wished to appropriate to his own uses the greater part of the treasure which he had brought from Asia, and therefore hid it away, and then hastened on the battle, on the plea that there was no longer any money. But even if this were true, a general ought not to suffer himself to be so easily deceived, nor afterwards to put his greatest interests at hazard. In these matters, then, such is the way in which we regard each of the men.

5 1 And as to their voyages to Egypt, one went thither of necessity and in flight; the other for no honourable reason, nor of necessity, but for money, that what he got for serving the Barbarians as commander might enable him to make war upon the Greeks. Then again, as to the charges which we bring against the Egyptians for their treatment of Pompey, these the Egyptians lay at the door of Agesilaüs for his treatment of them. For Pompey trusted them and was wronged by them; while Agesilaüs was trusted by them and yet forsook them and went over to the enemies of those whom he had sailed to assist.

Alexander

1 1 It is the life of Alexander the king, and of Caesar, who overthrew Pompey, that I am writing in this book, and the multitude of the deeds to be treated is so great that I shall make no other preface than to entreat my readers, in case I do not tell of all the famous actions of these men, nor even speak exhaustively at all in each particular case, but in epitome for the most part, not to complain. 2 For it is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives; and in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice, 665 nay, a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles when thousands fall, or the greatest armaments, or sieges of cities. 3 Accordingly, just as painters get the likenesses in their portraits from the face and the expression of the eyes, wherein the character shows itself, but make very little account of the other parts of the body, so I must be permitted to devote myself rather to the signs of the soul in men, and by means of these to portray the life of each, leaving to others the description of their great contests.

2 1 As for the lineage of Alexander, on his father’s side he was a descendant of Heracles through Caranus, and on his mother’s side a descendant of Aeacus through Neoptolemus; this is accepted without any question. 2 And we are told that Philip, after being initiated into the mysteries of Samothrace at the same time with Olympias, he himself being still a youth and she an orphan child, fell in love with her and betrothed himself to her at once with the consent of her brother, Arymbas. 3 Well, then, the night before that on which the marriage was consummated, the bride dreamed that there was a peal of thunder and that a thunder-bolt fell upon her womb, and that thereby much fire was kindled, which broke into flames that travelled all about, and then was extinguished. 4 At a later time, too, after the marriage, Philip dreamed that he was putting a seal upon his wife’s womb; and the device of the seal, as he thought, was the figure of a lion. 5 The other seers, now, were led by the vision to suspect that Philip needed to put a closer watch upon his marriage relations; but Aristander of Telmessus said that the woman was pregnant, since no seal was put upon what was empty, and pregnant of a son whose nature would be bold and lion-like. 6 Moreover, a serpent was once seen lying stretched out by the side of Olympias as she slept, and we are told that this, more than anything else, dulled the ardour of Philip’s attentions to his wife, so that he no longer came often to sleep by her side, either because he feared that some spells and enchantments might be practised upon him by her, or because he shrank for her embraces in the conviction that she was the partner of a superior being.

7 But concerning these matters there is another story to this effect: all the women of these parts were addicted to the Orphic rites and the orgies of Dionysus from very ancient times (being called Klodones and Mimallones) and imitated in many ways the practices of the Edonian women and the Thracian women about Mount Haemus, 8 from whom, as it would seem, the word “threskeuein” came to be applied to the celebration of extravagant and superstitious ceremonies. 9 Now Olympias, who affected these divine possessions more zealously than other women, and carried out these divine inspirations in wilder fashion, used to provide the revelling companies with great tame serpents, which would often lift their heads from out the ivy and the mystic winnowing-baskets, or coil themselves about the wands and garlands of the women, thus terrifying the men.

3 1 However, after his vision, as we are told, Philip sent Chaeron of Megalopolis to Delphi, by whom an oracle was brought to him from Apollo, who bade him sacrifice to Ammon and hold that god in greatest reverence, 2 but told him he was to lose that one of his eyes which he had applied to the chink in the door when he espied the god, in the form of a serpent, sharing the couch of his wife. 3 Moreover, Olympias, as Eratosthenes says, when she sent Alexander forth upon his great expedition, told him, and him alone, the secret of his begetting, and bade him have purposes worthy of his birth. 4 Others, on the contrary, say that she repudiated the idea, and said: “Alexander must cease slandering me to Hera.”

5 Be that as it may, Alexander was born early in the month Hecatombaeon, the Macedonian name for which is Loüs, on the sixth day of the month, and on this day the temple of Ephesian Artemis was burnt. 6 It was apropos of this that Hegesias the Magnesian made an utterance frigid enough to have extinguished that great conflagration. He said, namely, it was no wonder that the temple of Artemis was burned down, since the goddess was busy bringing Alexander into the world. 6667 But all the Magi who were then at Ephesus, looking upon the temple’s disaster as a sign of further disaster, ran about beating their faces and crying aloud that woe and great calamity for Asia had that day been born. 8 To Philip, however, who had just taken Potidaea, there came three messages at the same time: the first that Parmenio had conquered the Illyrians in a great battle, the second that his race-horse had won a victory at the Olympic games, while a third announced the birth of Alexander. 9 These things delighted him, of course, and the seers raised his hopes still higher by declaring that the son whose birth coincided with three victories would be always victorious.

4 1 The outward appearance of Alexander is best represented by the statues of him which Lysippus made, and it was by this artist alone that Alexander himself thought it fit that he should be modelled. 2 For those peculiarities which many of his successors and friends afterwards tried to imitate, namely, the poise of the neck, which was bent slightly to the left, and the melting glance of his eyes, this artist has accurately observed. 3 Apelles, however, in painting him as wielder of the thunder-bolt, did not reproduce his complexion, but made it too dark and swarthy. Whereas he was of a fair colour, as they say, and his fairness passed into ruddiness on his breast particularly, and in his face. 4 Moreover, that a very pleasant odour exhaled from his skin and that there was a fragrance about his mouth and all his flesh, so that his garments were filled with it, this we have read in the Memoirs of Aristoxenus.

5 Now, the cause of this, perhaps, was the temperament of his body, which was a very warm and fiery one; for fragrance is generated, as Theophrastus thinks, where moist humours are acted upon by heat. 6 Wherefore the dry and parched regions of the world produce the most and best spices; for the sun draws away the moisture which, like material of corruption, abounds in vegetable bodies. 7 And in Alexander’s case, it was the heat of his body, as it would seem, which made him prone to drink, and choleric.

8 But while he was still a boy his self-restraint showed itself in the fact that, although he was impetuous and violent in other matters, the pleasures of the body had little hold upon him, and he indulged in them with great moderation, while his ambition kept his spirit serious and lofty in advance of his years. 9 For it was neither every kind of fame nor fame from every source that he courted, as Philip did, who plumed himself like a sophist on the power of his oratory, and took care to have the victories of his chariots at Olympia engraved upon his coins; 10 nay, when those about him inquired whether he would be willing to contend in the foot-race at the Olympic games, since he was swift of foot, “Yes,” said he, “if I could have kings as my contestants.” 11 And in general, too, Alexander appears to have been averse to the whole race of athletes; at any rate, though he instituted very many contests, not only for tragic poets and players on the flute and players on the lyre, but also for rhapsodists, as well as for hunting of every sort and for fighting with staves, he took no interest in offering prizes either for boxing or for the pancratium.

5 1 He once entertained the envoys from the Persian king who came during Philip’s absence, and associated with them freely. He won upon them by his friendliness, and by asking no childish or trivial questions, 2 but by enquiring about the length of the roads and the character of the journey into the interior, about the king himself, what sort of a warrior he was, and what the prowess and might of the Persians. 3 The envoys were therefore astonished and regarded the much-talked of ability of Philip as nothing compared with his son’s eager disposition to do great things. 4 At all events, as often as tidings were brought that Philip had either taken a famous city or been victorious in some celebrated battle, Alexander was not very glad to hear them, but would say to his comrades: “Boys, my father will anticipate everything; and for me he will leave no great or brilliant achievement to be displayed to the world with your aid.” 6675 For since he did not covet pleasure, nor even wealth, but excellence and fame, he considered that the more he should receive from his father the fewer would be the successes won by himself. 6 Therefore, considering that increase in prosperity meant the squandering upon his father of opportunities for achievement, he preferred to receive from him a realm which afforded, not wealth nor luxury and enjoyment, but struggles and wars and ambitions.

7 In the work of caring for him, then, many persons, as was natural, were appointed to be his nurturers, tutors, and teachers, but over them all stood Leonidas, a man of stern temperament and a kinsman of Olympias. Although he did not himself shun the title of tutor, since the office afforded an honourable and brilliant occupation, yet by other people, owing to his dignity and his relationship, he was called Alexander’s foster-father and preceptor. 8 The man, however, who assumed the character and the title of tutor was Lysimachus, a native of Acarnania, who had no general refinement, but because he called himself Phoenix, Alexander Achilles, and Philip Peleus, was highly regarded and held a second place.

6 1 Once upon a time Philoneicus the Thessalian brought Bucephalas, offering to sell him to Philip for thirteen talents, and they went down into the plain to try the horse, who appeared to be savage and altogether intractable, neither allowing any one to mount him, nor heeding the voice of any of Philip’s attendants, but rearing up against all of them. 2 Then Philip was vexed and ordered the horse to be led away, believing him to be altogether wild and unbroken; but Alexander, who was near by, said: “What a horse they are losing, because, for lack of skill and courage, they cannot manage him!” 3 At first, then, Philip held his peace; but as Alexander many times let fall such words and showed great distress, he said: “Dost thou find fault with thine elders in the belief that thou knowest more than they do or art better able to manage a horse?”  “This horse, at any rate,” said Alexander, “I could manage better than others have.” “And if thou shouldst not, what penalty wilt thou undergo for thy rashness?” “Indeed,” said Alexander, “I will forfeit the price of the horse.” 5 There was laughter at this, and then an agreement between father and son as to the forfeiture, and at once Alexander ran to the horse, took hold of his bridle-rein, and turned him towards the sun; for he had noticed, as it would seem, that the horse was greatly disturbed by the sight of his own shadow falling in front of him and dancing about. 6 And after he had calmed the horse a little in this way, and had stroked him with his hand, when he saw that he was full of spirit and courage, he quietly cast aside his mantle and with a light spring safely bestrode him. 7 Then, with a little pressure of the reins on the bit, and without striking him or tearing his mouth, he held him in hand; but when he saw that the horse was rid of the fear that had beset him, and was impatient for the course, he gave him his head, and at last urged him on with sterner tone and thrust of foot. 8 Philip and his company were speechless with anxiety at first; but when Alexander made the turn in proper fashion and came back to them proud and exultant, all the rest broke into loud cries, but his father, as we are told, actually shed tears of joy, and when Alexander had dismounted, kissed him, saying: “My son, seek thee out a kingdom equal to thyself; Macedonia has not room for thee.”

7 1 And since Philip saw that his son’s nature was unyielding and that he resisted compulsion, but was easily led by reasoning into the path of duty, he himself tried to persuade rather than to command him; 2 and because he would not wholly entrust the direction and training of the boy to the ordinary teachers of poetry and the formal studies, feeling that it was a matter of too great importance, and, in the words of Sophocles,

“A task for many bits and rudder-sweeps as well,”

668 he sent for the most famous and learned of philosophers, Aristotle, and paid him a noble and appropriate tuition-fee. 3 The city of Stageira, that is, of which Aristotle was a native, and which he had himself destroyed, he peopled again, and restored to it those of its citizens who were in exile or slavery.

4 Well, then, as a place where master and pupil could labour and study, he assigned them the precinct of the nymphs near Mieza, where to this day the visitor is shown the stone seats and shady walks of Aristotle. 5 It would appear, moreover, that Alexander not only received from his master his ethical and political doctrines, but also participated in those secret and more profound teachings which philosophers designate by the special terms “acroamatic” and “epoptic,” and do not impart to many. 6 For after he had already crossed into Asia, and when he learned that certain treatises on these recondite matters had been published in books by Aristotle, he wrote him a letter on behalf of philosophy, and put it in plain language. And this is a copy of the letter. “Alexander, to Aristotle, greeting. 7 Thou hast not done well to publish thy acroamatic doctrines; for in what shall I surpass other men if those doctrines wherein I have been trained are to be all men’s common property? But I had rather excel in my acquaintance with the best things than in my power. Farewell.” 8 Accordingly, in defending himself, Aristotle encourages this ambition of Alexander by saying that the doctrines of which he spoke were both published and not published; 9 for in truth his treatise on metaphysics is of no use for those who would either teach or learn the science, but is written as a memorandum for those already trained therein.

8 1 Moreover, in my opinion Alexander’s love of the art of healing was inculcated in him by Aristotle preeminently. For he was not only fond of the theory of medicine, but actually came to the aid of his friends when they were sick, and prescribed for them certain treatments and regimens, as one can gather from his letters. 2 He was also by nature a lover of learning and a lover of reading. And since he thought and called the Iliad a viaticum of the military art, he took with him Aristotle’s recension of the poem, called the Iliad of the Casket, and always kept it lying with his dagger under his pillow, as Onesicritus informs us; 3 and when he could find no other books in the interior of Asia, he ordered Harpalus to send him some. So Harpalus sent him the books of Philistus, a great many of the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, and the dithyrambic poems of Telestes and Philoxenus. 4 Aristotle he admired at the first, and loved him, as he himself used to say, more than he did his father, for that the one had given him life, but the other had taught him a noble life; later, however, he held him in more or less of suspicion, not to the extent of doing him any harm, but his kindly attentions lacked their former ardour and affection towards him, and this was proof of estrangement. 5 However, that eager yearning for philosophy which was imbedded in his nature and which ever grew with his growth, did not subside from his soul, as is testified by the honour in which he held Anaxarchus, by his gift of fifty talents to Xenocrates, and by the attentions which he so lavishly bestowed upon Dandamis and Calanus.

9 1 While Philip was making an expedition against Byzantium, Alexander, though only sixteen years of age, was left behind as regent in Macedonia and keeper of the royal seal, and during this time he subdued the rebellious Maedi, and after taking their city, drove out the Barbarians, settled there a mixed population, and named the city Alexandropolis. 2 He was also present at Chaeroneia and took part in the battle against the Greeks, and he is said to have been the first to break the ranks of the Sacred Band of the Thebans. 6693 And even down to our own day there was shown an ancient oak by the Cephisus, called Alexander’s oak, near which at that time he pitched his tent; and the general sepulchre of the Macedonians is not far away.

4 In consequence of these exploits, then, as was natural, Philip was excessively fond of his son, so that he even rejoiced to hear the Macedonians call Alexander their king, but Philip their general. 5 However, the disorders in his household, due to the fact that his marriages and amours carried into the kingdom the infection, as it were, which reigned in the women’s apartments, produced many grounds of offence and great quarrels between father and son, and these the bad temper of Olympias, who was a jealous and sullen woman, made still greater, since she spurred Alexander on. 6 The most open quarrel was brought on by Attalus at the marriage of Cleopatra, a maiden whom Philip was taking to wife, having fallen in love with the girl when he was past the age for it. 7 Attalus, now, was the girl’s uncle, and being in his cups, he called upon the Macedonians to ask of the gods that from Philip and Cleopatra there might be born a legitimate successor to the kingdom. 8 At this Alexander was exasperated, and with the words, “But what of me, base wretch? Dost thou take me for a bastard?” threw a cup at him. 9 Then Philip rose up against him with drawn sword, but, fortunately for both, his anger and his wine made him trip and fall. 10 Then Alexander, mocking over him, said: “Look now, men! here is one who was preparing to cross from Europe into Asia; and he is upset in trying to cross from couch to couch.” 11 After this drunken broil Alexander took Olympias and established her in Epirus, while he himself tarried in Illyria.

12 Meanwhile Demaratus the Corinthian, who was a guest-friend of the house and a man of frank speech, came to see Philip. 13 After the first greetings and welcomes were over, Philip asked him how the Greeks were agreeing with one another, and Demaratus replied: “It is surely very fitting, Philip, that thou shouldst be concerned about Greece, when thou hast filled thine own house with such great dissension and calamities.” 14 Thus brought to his senses, Philip sent and fetched Alexander home, having persuaded him to come through the agency of Demaratus.

10 1 But when Pixodarus, the satrap of Caria, trying by means of a tie of relationship to steal into a military alliance with Philip, wished to give his eldest daughter in marriage to Arrhidaeus the son of Philip, and sent Aristocritus to Macedonia on this errand, once more slanderous stories kept coming to Alexander from his friends and his mother, who said that Philip, by means of a brilliant marriage and a great connexion, was trying to settle the kingdom upon Arrhidaeus. 2 Greatly disturbed by these stories, Alexander sent Thessalus, the tragic actor, to Caria, to argue with Pixodarus that he ought to ignore the bastard brother, who was also a fool, and make Alexander his connection by marriage. And this plan was vastly more pleasing to Pixodarus than the former. 3 But Philip, becoming aware of this, went to Alexander’s chamber, taking with him one of Alexander’s friends and companions, Philotas the son of Parmenio, and upbraided his son severely, and bitterly reviled him as ignoble and unworthy of his high estate, in that he desired to become the son-in law of a man who was a Carian and a slave to a barbarian king. 4 And as for Thessalus, Philip wrote to the Corinthians that they should send him back to Macedonia in chains. 5 Moreover, of the other companions of Alexander, he banished from Macedonia Harpalus and Nearchus, as well as Erigyius and Ptolemy, men whom Alexander afterwards recalled and had in the highest honours.

6 And so when Pausanias, who had been outrageously dealt with at the instance of Attalus and Cleopatra and could get no justice at Philip’s hands, slew Philip, most of the blame devolved upon Olympias, on the ground that she had added her exhortations to the young man’s anger and incited him to the deed; but a certain amount of accusation attached itself to Alexander also. 6707 For it is said that when Pausanias, after the outrage that he had suffered, met Alexander, and bewailed his fate, Alexander recited to him the iambic verse of the “Medeia”: —

“The giver of the bride, the bridegroom, and the bride.”

8 However, he did seek out the participants in the plot and punished them, and was angry with Olympias for her savage treatment of Cleopatra during his absence.

11 Thus it was that at the age of twenty years Alexander received the kingdom, which was exposed to great jealousies, dire hatreds, and dangers on every hand. 2 For the neighbouring tribes of Barbarians would not tolerate their servitude, and longed for their hereditary kingdoms; and as for Greece, although Philip had conquered her in the field, he had not had time enough to make her tame under his yoke, but had merely disturbed and changed the condition of affairs there, and then left them in a great surge and commotion, owing to the strangeness of the situation. 3 The Macedonian counsellors of Alexander had fears of the crisis, and thought he should give up the Greek states altogether and use no more compulsion there, and that he should call the revolting Barbarians back to their allegiance by mild measures and try to arrest the first symptoms of their revolutions; 4 but he himself set out from opposite principles to win security and safety for his realm by boldness and a lofty spirit, assured that, were he seen to abate his dignity even but a little, all his enemies would set upon him. 5 Accordingly, he put a speedy stop to the disturbances and wars among the Barbarians by overrunning their territories with an army as far as to the river Danube, where he fought a great battle with Syrmus, the king of the Triballi, and defeated him; 6 and on learning that the Thebans had revolted and that the Athenians were in sympathy with them, he immediately led his forces through the pass of Thermopylae, declaring that since Demosthenes had called him a boy while he was among the Illyrians and Triballians, and a stripling when he had reached Thessaly, he wished to show him that before the walls of Athens he was a man.

7 Arrived before Thebes, and wishing to give her still a chance to repent of what she had done, he merely demanded the surrender of Phoenix and Prothytes, and proclaimed an amnesty for those who came over to his side. 8 But the Thebans made a counter-demand that he should surrender to them Philotas and Antipater, and made a counter-proclamation that all who wished to help in setting Greece free should range themselves with them; and so Alexander set his Macedonians to the work of war. 9 On the part of the Thebans, then, the struggle was carried on with a spirit and valour beyond their powers, since they were arrayed against an enemy who was many times more numerous than they; 10 but when the Macedonian garrison also, leaving the citadel of the Cadmeia, fell upon them in the rear, most of them were surrounded, and fell in the battle itself, and their city was taken, plundered, and razed to the ground. 11 This was done, in the main, because Alexander expected that the Greeks would be terrified by so great a disaster and cower down in quiet, but apart from this, he also plumed himself on gratifying the complaints of his allies; for the Phocians and Plataeans had denounced the Thebans. 12 So after separating out the priests, all who were guest-friends of the Macedonians, the descendants of Pindar, and those who had voted against the revolt, he sold the rest into slavery, and they proved to be more than thirty thousand; those who had been slain were more than six thousand.

12 1 Among the many and grievous calamities which thus possessed the city, some Thracians broke into the house of Timocleia, a woman of high repute and chastity, and while the rest were plundering her property, their leader shamefully violated her, and then asked her if she had gold or silver concealed anywhere. 2 She admitted that she had, and after leading him by himself into the garden and showing him a well, 671 told him that when the city was taken she had with her own hands cast in there her most valuable possessions. 3 Then, as the Thracian was bending over and inspecting the place, she came behind him and pushed him in, cast many stones upon him, and killed him. 4 And when the Thracians led her, with hands bound, to Alexander, she showed by her mien and gait that she was a person of great dignity and lofty spirit, so calmly and fearlessly did she follow her conductors; 5 and when the king asked her who she was, she replied that she was a sister of Theagenes, who drew up the forces which fought Philip in behalf of the liberty of the Greeks, and fell in command at Chaeroneia. 6 Amazed, therefore, at her reply and at what she had done, Alexander bade her depart in freedom with her children.a

13 1 Furthermore, he was reconciled with the Athenians, although they showed exceeding sorrow at the misfortunes of Thebes; for although they had begun the festival of the mysteries, they gave it up in consequence of their grief, and upon the Thebans who sought refuge in their city they bestowed every kindness. 2 But notwithstanding this, whether his rage was now sated, as a lion’s might be, or whether he wished to offset a deed of the most sullen savagery with one that was merciful, he not only remitted all his charges against the city, but even bade it give good heed to its affairs, since, if anything should happen to him, it would have the rule over Greece. 3 In later times, moreover, as we are told, the calamity of the Thebans often gave him remorse, and made him milder towards many people. 4 And certainly the murder of Cleitus, which he committed in his cups, and the cowardly refusal of his Macedonians to follow him against the Indians, whereby they as it were robbed his expedition and his glory of their consummation, he was wont to attribute to the vengeful wrath of Dionysus. 5 And there was not a Theban of those that survived who afterwards came to him with any request and did not get what he wanted from him. Thus much concerning Thebes.

14 1 And now a general assembly of the Greeks was held at the Isthmus, where a vote was passed to make an expedition against Persia with Alexander, and he was proclaimed their leader. 2 Thereupon many statesmen and philosophers came to him with their congratulations, and he expected that Diogenes of Sinope also, who was tarrying in Corinth, would do likewise. 3 But since that philosopher took not the slightest notice of Alexander, and continued to enjoy his leisure in the suburb Craneion, Alexander went in person to see him; and he found him lying in the sun. 4 Diogenes raised himself up a little when he saw so many persons coming towards him, and fixed his eyes upon Alexander. And when that monarch addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, “Yes,” said Diogenes, “stand a little out of my sun.” 5 It is said that Alexander was so struck by this, and admired so much the haughtiness and grandeur of the man who had nothing but scorn for him, that he said to his followers, who were laughing and jesting about the philosopher as they went away, “But verily, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”

6 And now, wishing to consult the god concerning the expedition against Asia, he went to Delphi; and since he chanced to come on one of the inauspicious days, when it is not lawful to deliver oracles, in the first place he sent a summons to the prophetess. 7 And when she refused to perform her office and cited the law in her excuse, he went up himself and tried to drag her to the temple, whereupon, as if overcome by his ardour, she said: “Thou art invincible, my son!” On hearing this, Alexander said he desired no further prophecy, but had from her the oracle which he wanted.

8 Moreover, when he set out upon his expedition, it appears that there were many signs from heaven, and, among them, the image of Orpheus at Leibethra (it was made of cypress-wood) sweated profusely at about that time. 9 Most people feared the sign, but Aristander bade Alexander be of good cheer, assured that he was to perform deeds worthy of song and story, 672 which would cost poets and musicians much toil and sweat to celebrate.

15 1 As to the number of his forces, those who put it at the smallest figure mention thirty thousand foot and four thousand horse; those who put it at the highest, forty-three thousand foot and five thousand horse. 2 To provision these forces, Aristobulus says he had not more than seventy talents; Duris speaks of maintenance for only thirty days; and Onesicritus says he owed two hundred talents besides. 3 But although he set out with such meagre and narrow resources, he would not set foot upon his ship until he had enquired into the circumstances of his companions and allotted to one a farm, to another a village, and to another the revenue from some hamlet or harbour. 4 And when at last nearly all of the crown property had been expended or allotted, Perdiccas said to him: “But for thyself, O king, what art thou leaving?” And when the king answered, “My hopes,” “In these, then,” said Perdiccas, “we also will share who make the expedition with thee.” 5 Then he declined the possessions which had been allotted to him, and some of the other friends of Alexander did likewise. 6 But upon those who wanted and would accept his favours Alexander bestowed them readily, and most of what he possessed in Macedonia was used up in these distributions. 7 Such was the ardour and such the equipment with which he crossed the Hellespont.

Then, going up to Ilium, he sacrificed to Athena and poured libations to the heroes. 8 Furthermore, the gravestone of Achilles he anointed with oil, ran a race by it with his companions, naked, as is the custom, and then crowned it with garlands, pronouncing the hero happy in having, while he lived, a faithful friend, and after death, a great herald of his fame. 9 As he was going about and viewing the sights of the city, someone asked him if he wished to see the lyre of Paris. “For that lyre,” said Alexander, “I care very little; but I would gladly see that of Achilles, to which he used to sing the glorious deeds of brave men.”

16 1 Meanwhile the generals of Dareius had assembled a large force and set it in array at the crossing of the river Granicus, so that it was practically necessary to fight, as it were at the gates of Asia, for entrance and dominion there. 2 But most of the Macedonian officers were afraid of the depth of the river, and of the roughness and unevenness of the farther banks, up which they would have to climb while fighting. Some, too, thought they ought to observe carefully the customary practice in regard to the month (in the month of Daesius the kings of Macedonia were not wont to take the field with an army). This objection Alexander removed by bidding them call the month a second Artemisius; 3 and when Parmenio, on the ground that it was too late in the day, objected to their risking the passage, he declared that the Hellespont would blush for shame, if, after having crossed that strait, he should be afraid of the Granicus, and plunged into the stream with thirteen troops of horsemen. 4 And since he was charging against hostile missiles and precipitous positions covered with infantry and cavalry, and through a stream that swept men off their feet and surged about them, he seemed to be acting like a frenzied and foolish commander rather than a wise one. 5 However, he persisted in his attempt to cross, gained the opposite banks with difficulty and much ado, though they were moist and slippery with mud, and was at once compelled to fight pell-mell and engage his assailants man by man, before his troops who were crossing could form into any order. 6 For the enemy pressed upon them with loud shouts, and matching horse with horse, plied their lances, and their swords when their lances were shattered. 7 Many rushed upon Alexander, for he was conspicuous by his buckler and by his helmet’s crest, on either side of which was fixed a plume of wonderful size and whiteness. But although a javelin pierced the joint of his breastplate, he was not wounded; 6738 and when Rhoesaces and Spithridates, two Persian commanders, made at him together, he avoided the one, and smote Rhoesaces, who wore a breastplate, with his spear; and when this weapon snapped in two with the blow, he took to his sword. 9 Then, while he was thus engaged with Rhoesaces, Spithridates rode up from one side, raised himself up on his horse, and with all his might came down with a barbarian battle-axe upon Alexander’s head. 10 Alexander’s crest was broken off, together with one of its plumes, and his helmet could barely and with difficulty resist the blow, so that the edge of the battle-axe touched the topmost hair of his head. 11 But while Spithridates was raising his arm again for another stroke, Cleitus, “Black Cleitus,” got the start of him and ran him through the body with his spear. At the same time Rhoesaces also fell, smitten by Alexander’s sword.

12 While Alexander’s cavalry were making such a dangerous and furious fight, the Macedonian phalanx crossed the river and the infantry forces on both sides engaged. 13 The enemy, however, did not resist vigorously, nor for a long time, but fled in a rout, all except the Greek mercenaries. These made a stand at a certain eminence, and asked that Alexander should promise them quarter. 14 But he, influenced by anger more than by reason, charged foremost upon them and lost his horse, which was smitten through the ribs with a sword (it was not Bucephalas, but another); and most of the Macedonians who were slain or wounded fought or fell there, since they came to close quarters with men who knew how to fight and were desperate.

15 Of the Barbarians, we are told, twenty thousand footmen fell, and twenty-five hundred horsemen. But on Alexander’s side, Aristobulus says there were thirty-four dead in all, of whom nine were footmen. 16 Of these, then, Alexander ordered statues to be set up in bronze, and Lysippus wrought them. 17 Moreover, desiring to make the Greeks partners in his victory, he sent to the Athenians in particular three hundred of the captured shields, and upon the rest of the spoils in general he ordered a most ambitious inscription to be wrought: 18 “Alexander the son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians from the Barbarians who dwell in Asia.” 19 But the drinking vessels and the purple robes and whatever things of this nature he took from the Persians, all these, except a few, he sent to his mother.

17 1 This contest at once made a great change in the situation to Alexander’s advantage, so that he received the submission even of Sardis, the bulwark of the barbarian dominion on the sea-coast, and added the rest of the country to his conquests. 2 Halicarnassus alone withstood him, and Miletus, which cities he took by storm and subdued all the territories about them. Then he was in doubt as to his future course. 3 Many times he was eager to encounter Dareius and put the whole issue to hazard, and many times he would make up his mind to practice himself first, as it were, and strengthen himself by acquiring the regions along the sea with their resources, and then to go up against that monarch. 4 Now, there is in Lycia, near the city of Xanthus, a spring, which at this time, as we are told, was of its own motion upheaved from its depths, and overflowed, and cast forth a bronze tablet bearing the prints of ancient letters, in which it was made known that the empire of the Persians would one day be destroyed by the Greeks and come to an end. 5 Encouraged by this prophecy, Alexander hastened to clear up the sea-coast as far as Cilicia and Phoenicia. 6 His rapid passage along the coasts of Pamphylia has afforded many historians material for bombastic and terrifying description. They imply that by some great and heaven-sent good fortune the sea retired to make way for Alexander, although at other times it always came rolling in with violence from the main, and scarcely ever revealed to sight the small rocks which lie close up under the precipitous and riven sides of the mountain. 7 And Menander, in one of his comedies, evidently refers jestingly to this marvel: —

“How Alexander-like, indeed, this is; and if I seek some one,

674 Spontaneous he’ll present himself; and if I clearly must

Pass through some place by sea, this will lie open to my steps.”

8 Alexander himself, however, made no such prodigy out of it in his letters, but says that he marched by way of the so called Ladder, and passed through it, setting out from Phaselis. 9 This was the reason for his spending several days in that city, during which he noticed that a statue of Theodectas, a deceased citizen of Phaselis, had been erected in the market-place. Once, therefore, after supper and in his cups, he led a band of revellers to the statue and crowned it with many of their garlands, thus in pleasantry returning no ungraceful honour for the past association with the man which he owed to Aristotle and philosophy.

18 1 After this, he overpowered such of the Pisidians as had offered him resistance, and subdued Phrygia; 2 and after he had taken the city of Gordium, reputed to have been the home of the ancient Midas, he saw the much-talked of waggon bound fast to its yoke with the bark of the cornel-tree, and heard a story confidently told about it by the Barbarians, to the effect that whosoever loosed the fastening was destined to become king of the whole world. 3 Well, then, most writers say that since the fastenings had their ends concealed, and were intertwined many times in crooked coils, Alexander was at a loss how to proceed, and finally loosened the knot by cutting it through with his sword, and that when it was thus smitten many ends were to be seen. 4 But Aristobulus says that he undid it very easily, by simply taking out the so called “hestor,” or pin, of the waggon-pole, by which the yoke-fastening was held together, and then drawing away the yoke.

5 Setting out from there, he subdued Paphlagonia and Cappadocia, and on hearing of the death of Memnon, one of the commanders of Dareius on the sea-board, who was thought likely to give Alexander abundant trouble and infinite annoyance, he was all the more encouraged for his expedition into the interior. 6 Moreover, Dareius was already coming down to the coast from Susa, exalted in spirit by the magnitude of his forces (for he was leading an army of six hundred thousand men), and also encouraged by a certain dream, which the Magi interpreted in a way to please him rather than as the probabilities demanded. 7 For he dreamed that the Macedonian phalanx was all on fire, and that Alexander, attired in a robe which he himself formerly used to wear when he was a royal courier, was waiting upon him, after which service he passed into the temple of Belus and disappeared. 8 By this means, as it would seem, it was suggested to Dareius from Heaven that the exploits of the Macedonians would be conspicuous and brilliant, that Alexander would be master of Asia, just as Dareius became its master when he was made king instead of royal courier, and would speedily end his life with glory.

19 1 Dareius was still more encouraged by Alexander’s long delay in Cilicia, which he attributed to cowardice. 2 The delay was due, however, to a sickness, which assailed him in consequence of fatigues, according to some, but according to others, because he took a bath in the river Cydnus, whose waters were icy cold. 3 Be that as it may, none of the other physicians had the courage to administer remedies, but thinking that the danger was too great to be overcome by any remedy whatever, they were afraid of the charges which would be made against them by the Macedonians in consequence of their failure;  but Philip the Acarnanian, who saw that the king was in an evil plight, put confidence in his friendship, and thinking it a shameful thing not to share his peril by exhausting the resources of art in trying to help him even at great risk, prepared a medicine and persuaded him to drink it boldly, if he was anxious to regain his strength for the war. 5 Meanwhile, however, Parmenio sent a letter to Alexander from the camp, urging him to be on his guard against Philip, for the reason that he had been persuaded by Dareius, 675 with the promise of large gifts and a marriage with his daughter, to kill Alexander. Alexander read the letter and placed it under his pillow, without showing it to any one of his friends. 6 When the time appointed was at hand, and Philip came in with the king’s companions, carrying the medicine in a cup, Alexander handed him the letter, while he himself took the medicine from him with readiness and no sign of suspicion. 7 It was an amazing sight, then, and one worthy of the stage, — the one reading the letter, the other drinking the medicine, and then both together turning their eyes upon one another, but not with the same expression; for Alexander, by his glad and open countenance, showed his good will towards Philip and his trust in him, 8 while Philip was beside himself at the calumny, now lifting up his hands towards heaven and calling upon the gods to witness his innocence, and now falling upon the couch on which Alexander lay and beseeching him to be of good courage and obey his physician. 9 For at first the medicine mastered the patient, and as it were drove back and buried deep his bodily powers, so that his voice failed, he fell into a swoon, and became almost wholly unconscious. 10 However, he was speedily restored to his senses by Philip, and when he had recovered strength he showed himself to the Macedonians, who refused to be comforted until they had seen Alexander.

20 1 Now, there was in the army of Dareius a certain Macedonian who had fled from his country, Amyntas by name, and he was well acquainted with the nature of Alexander. 2 This man, when he saw that Dareius was eager to attack Alexander within the narrow passes of the mountains, begged him to remain where he was, that he might fight a decisive battle with his vast forces against inferior numbers in plains that were broad and spacious. 3 And when Dareius replied that he was afraid the enemy would run away before he could get at them, and Alexander thus escape him, “Indeed,” said Amyntas, “on this point, O king, thou mayest be without fear; for he will march against thee, nay, at this very moment, probably, he is on the march.” 4 Dareius would not listen to these words of Amyntas, but broke camp and marched into Cilicia, and at the same time Alexander marched into Syria against him. 5 But having missed one another in the night, they both turned back again, Alexander rejoicing in his good fortune, and eager to meet his enemy in the passes, while Dareius was as eager to extricate his forces from the passes and regain his former camping-ground. 6 For he already saw that he had done wrong to throw himself into places which were rendered unfit for cavalry by sea and mountains and a river running through the middle (the Pinarus), which were broken up in many parts, and favoured the small numbers of his enemy. 7 And not only was the place for the battle a gift of Fortune to Alexander, but his generalship was better than the provisions of Fortune for his victory. 8 For since he was so vastly inferior in numbers to the Barbarians, he gave them no opportunity to encircle him, but leading his right wing in person, extended it past the enemy’s left, got on their flank, and routed the Barbarians who were opposed to him fighting among the foremost, 9 so that he got a sword-wound in the thigh. Chares says this wound was given him by Dareius, with whom he had a hand-to hand combat, but Alexander, in a letter to Antipater about the battle, did not say who it was that gave him the wound; he wrote that he had been wounded in the thigh with a dagger, but that no serious harm resulted from the wound.

10 Although he won a brilliant victory and destroyed more than a hundred and ten thousand of his enemies, he did not capture Dareius, who got a start of four or five furlongs in his flight; but he did take the king’s chariot, and his bow, before he came back from the pursuit. 11 He found his Macedonians carrying off the wealth from the camp of the Barbarians, and the wealth was of surpassing abundance, although its owners had come to the battle in light marching order and had left most of their baggage in Damascus; 676 he found, too, that his men had picked out for him the tent of Dareius, which was full to overflowing with gorgeous servitors and furniture, and many treasures. 12 Straightway, then, Alexander put off his armour and went to the bath, saying: “Let us go and wash off the sweat of the battle in the bath of Dareius.” “No, indeed,” said one of his companions, “but rather in that of Alexander; for the property of the conquered must belong to the conqueror, and be called his.” 13 And when he saw the basins and pitchers and tubs and caskets, all of gold, and curiously wrought, while the apartment was marvellously fragrant with spices and unguents, and when he passed from this into a tent which was worthy of admiration for its size and height, and for the adornment of the couch and tables and banquet prepared for him, he turned his eyes upon his companions and said: “This, as it would seem, is to be a king.”

21 1 As he was betaking himself to supper, someone told him that among the prisoners were the mother, wife, and two unmarried daughters of Dareius, and that at sight of his chariot and bow they beat their breasts and lamented, believing that he was dead. 2 Accordingly, after a considerable pause, more affected by their affliction than by his own success, he sent Leonnatus, with orders to tell them that Dareius was not dead, and that they need have no fear of Alexander; for it was Dareius upon whom he was waging war for supremacy, but they should have everything which they used to think their due when Dareius was undisputed king. 3 If this message was thought by the women to be mild and kindly, still more did the actions of Alexander prove to be humane. 4 For he gave them permission to bury whom they pleased of the Persians, and to use for this purpose raiment and adornment from the spoils, and he abated not one jot of their honourable maintenance, nay, they enjoyed even larger allowances than before. 5 But the most honourable and most princely favour which these noble and chaste women received from him in their captivity was that they neither heard, nor suspected, nor awaited anything that could disgrace them, but lived, as though guarded in sacred and inviolable virgins’ chambers instead of in an enemy’s camp, apart from the speech and sight of men. 6 And yet it is said that the wife of Dareius was far the most comely of all royal women, just as Dareius himself also was handsomest and tallest of men, and the daughters resembled their parents.

7 But Alexander, as it would seem, considering the mastery of himself a more kingly thing than the conquest of his enemies, neither laid hands upon these women, nor did he know any other before marriage, except Barsiné. 8 This woman, Memnon’s widow, was taken prisoner at Damascus. 9 And since she had received a Greek education, and was of an agreeable disposition, and since her father, Artabazus, was son of a king’s daughter, Alexander determined (at Parmenio’s instigation, as Aristobulus says) to attach himself to a woman of such high birth and beauty. 10 But as for the other captive women, seeing that they were surpassingly stately and beautiful, he merely said jestingly that Persian women were torments to the eyes. 11 And displaying in rivalry with their fair looks the beauty of his own sobriety and self-control, he passed them by as though they were lifeless images for display.

22 1 Moreover, when Philoxenus, the commander of his forces on the sea-board, wrote that there was with him a certain Theodorus, of Tarentum, who had two boys of surpassing beauty to sell, and enquired whether Alexander would buy them, Alexander was incensed, and cried out many times to his friends, asking them what shameful thing Philoxenus had ever seen in him that he should spend his time in making such disgraceful proposals. 2 And on Philoxenus himself he heaped so much reproach in a letter, 677 bidding him send Theodorus to perdition, merchandize and all. 3 He severely rebuked Hagnon also for writing to him that he wanted to buy Crobylus, whose beauty was famous in Corinth, as a present for him. 4 Furthermore, on learning that Damon and Timotheus, two Macedonian soldiers under Parmenio’s command, had ruined the wives of certain mercenaries, he wrote to Parmenio ordering him, in case the men were convicted, to punish them and put them to death as wild beasts born for the destruction of mankind. 5 In this letter he also wrote expressly concerning himself: “As for me, indeed, it will be found not only that I have not seen the wife of Dareius or desired to see her, but that I have not even allowed people to speak to me of her beauty.” 6 And he used to say that sleep and sexual intercourse, more than any thing else, made him conscious that he was mortal, implying that both weariness and pleasure arise from one and the same natural weakness.

7 He had also the most complete mastery over his appetite, and showed this both in many other ways, and especially by what he said to Ada, whom he honoured with the title of Mother and made queen of Caria. 8 When, namely, in the kindness of her heart, she used to send him day by day many viands and sweetmeats, and finally offered him bakers and cooks reputed to be very skilful, he said he wanted none of them, 9 for he had better cooks which had been given him by his tutor, Leonidas; for his breakfast, namely, a night march, and for his supper, a light breakfast. 10 “And this same Leonidas,” he said, “used to come and open my chests of bedding and clothing, to see that my mother did not hide there for me some luxury or superfluity.”b

23 1 To the use of wine also he was less addicted than was generally believed. The belief arose from the time which he would spend over each cup, talking than in drinking, always holding some long discourse, and this too when he had abundant leisure. 2 For in the stress of affairs he was not to be detained, as other commanders were, either by wine, or sleep, or any sport, or amour, or spectacle. This is proved by his life, which, though altogether brief, he filled to overflowing with the greatest exploits. 3 In his times of leisure, however, after rising and sacrificing to the gods, he immediately took breakfast sitting; then, he would spend the day in hunting, or administering justice, or arranging his military affairs, or reading. 4 If he were making a march which was not very urgent, he would practise, as he went along, either archery or mounting and dismounting from a chariot that was under way. Often, too, for diversion, he would hunt foxes or birds, as may be gathered from his journals. 5 After he had taken quarters for the night, and while he was enjoying bath or anointing, he would enquire of his chief cooks and bakers whether the arrangements for his supper were duly made. 6 When it was late and already dark, he would begin his supper, reclining on a couch, and marvellous was his care and circumspection at table, in order that everything might be served impartially and without stint; but over the wine, as I have said, he would sit long, for conversation’s sake. 7 And although in other ways he was of all princes most agreeable in his intercourse, and endowed with every grace, at this time his boastfulness would make him unpleasant and very like a common soldier. Not only was he himself carried away into blustering, but he suffered himself to be ridden by his flatterers. There were a great annoyance to the finer spirits in the company, who desired neither to vie with the flatterers, nor yet to fall behind them in praising Alexander. The one course they thought disgraceful, the other had its perils. 8 After the drinking was over, he would take a bath and sleep, frequently until midday; 678 and sometimes he would actually spend the entire day in sleep.

9 In the matter of delicacies, too, he himself, at all events, was master of his appetite, so that often, when the rarest fruits or fish were brought to him from the sea-coast, he would distribute them to each of his companions until he was the only one for whom nothing remained. 10 His suppers, however, were always magnificent, and the outlay upon them increased with his successes until it reached the sum of ten thousand drachmas. There it stood, and that was the prescribed limit of expenditure for those who entertained Alexander.

24 1 After the battle at Issus, he sent to Damascus and seized the money and baggage of the Persians together with their wives and children. 2 And most of all did the Thessalian horsemen enrich themselves, for they had shown themselves surpassingly brave in the battle, and Alexander sent them on this expedition purposely, wishing to have them enrich themselves. But the rest of the army also was filled with wealth. 3 Then for the first time the Macedonians got a taste of gold and silver and women and barbaric luxury of life, and now that they had struck the trail, they were like dogs in their eagerness to pursue and track down the wealth of the Persians.

678 4 However, Alexander determined first to make himself master of the sea-coasts. As for Cyprus, then, its kings came at once and put the island in his hands, together with Phoenicia, with the exception of Tyre. 5 But Tyre he besieged for seven months, with moles, and engines-of war, and two hundred triremes by sea. During this siege he had a dream in which he saw Heracles stretching out his hand to him from the wall and calling him. 6 And many of the Tyrians dreamed that Apollo told them he was going away to Alexander, since he was displeased at what was going on in the city. 7 Whereupon, as if the god had been a common deserter caught in the act of going over to the enemy, they encircled his colossal figure with cords and nailed it down to its pedestal, calling him an Alexandrist. 8 In another dream, too, Alexander thought he saw a satyr who mocked him at a distance, and eluded his grasp when he tried to catch him, but finally, after much coaxing and chasing, surrendered. 9 The seers, dividing the word “satyros” into two parts, said to him, plausibly enough, “Tyre is to be thine.” And a spring is pointed out, near which Alexander dreamed he saw the satyr.

10 While the siege of the city was in progress, he made an expedition against the Arabians who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Mount Antilibanus. On this expedition he risked his life to save his tutor, Lysimachus, who insisted on following him, declaring himself to be neither older nor weaker than Phoenix. 11 But when the force drew near the mountains, they abandoned their horses and proceeded on foot, and most of them got far on in advance. Alexander himself, however, would not consent to abandon the worn and weary Lysimachus, since evening was already coming on and the enemy were near, but sought to encourage him and carry him along. Before he was aware of it, therefore, he was separated from the army with a few followers, and had to spend a night of darkness and intense cold in a region that was rough and difficult. 12 In this plight, he saw far off a number of scattered fires which the enemy were burning. So, since he was confident in his own agility, and was ever wont to cheer the Macedonians in their perplexities by sharing their toils, he ran to the nearest camp-fire. 13 Two Barbarians who were sitting at the fire he despatched with his dagger, and snatching up a fire-brand, brought it to his own party. 14 These kindled a great fire and at once frightened some of the enemy into flight, routed others who came up against them, and spent the night without further peril. Such, then, is the account we have from Chares.

25 1 The siege of the city had the following issue. While Alexander was giving the greater part of his forces a rest from the many struggles which they had undergone, and was leading up only a few men to attack the walls, 679 in order that the enemy might have no respite, Aristander the seer made a sacrifice, and after taking the omens, declared very confidently to the bystanders that the city would certainly be captured during that month. 2 His words produced laughter and jesting, since it was then the last day of the month, and the king, seeing that he was perplexed, and being always eager to support his prophecies, gave orders to reckon that day, not as the thirtieth of the month, but as the twenty-eighth; and then, after the trumpet had sounded the signal, he attacked the walls with greater vigour than he had at first intended. 3 The assault became fierce, and even those troops which had been left in camp could not restrain themselves, but ran in throngs to help the assailants, and the Tyrians gave up the fight. So Alexander took the city on that day.

4 After this, as he was giving siege to Gaza, the principal city of Syria, a clod of earth, which had been dropped from on high by a bird, struck him on the shoulder. The bird alighted on one of the battering-engines, and was at once caught in the network of sinews which were used to give a twist to the ropes. 5 And the omen was fulfilled as Aristander predicted; for though Alexander was wounded in the shoulder, he took the city. 6 Moreover, as he was dispatching great quantities of the spoils home to Olympias and Cleopatra and his friends, he sent also to Leonidas his tutor five hundred talents’ weight of frankincense and a hundred of myrrh, in remembrance of the hope which that teacher had inspired his boyhood. 7 It would seem, namely, that Leonidas, as Alexander was one day sacrificing and taking incense with both hands to throw upon the altar-fire, said to him:— “Alexander, when thou hast conquered the spice-bearing regions thou canst be thus lavish with thine incense; now, however, use sparingly what thou hast.” 8 Accordingly, Alexander now wrote him: “I have sent thee myrrh and frankincense in abundance, that thou mayest stop dealing parsimoniously with the gods.”

26 1 When a small coffer was brought to him, which those in charge of the baggage and wealth of Dareius thought the most precious thing there, he asked his friends what valuable object they thought would most fittingly be deposited in it. 2 And when many answered and there were many opinions, Alexander himself said he was going to deposit the Iliad there for safe keeping. This is attested by many trustworthy authorities. 3 And if what the Alexandrians tell us on the authority of Heracleides is true, then it would seem that Homer was no idle or unprofitable companion for him in his expedition. 4 They say, namely, that after his conquest of Egypt he wished to found a large and populous Greek city which should bear his name, and by the advice of his architects was on the point of measuring off and enclosing a certain site for it. 5 Then, in the night, as he lay asleep, he saw a wonderful vision. A man with very hoary locks and of a venerable aspect appeared to stand by his side and recite these verses: —

“Now, there is an island in the much-dashing sea,

In front of Egypt; Pharos is what men call it.”

6 Accordingly, he rose up at once and went to Pharos, which at that time was still an island, a little above the Canobic mouth of the Nile, but now it has been joined to the mainland by a causeway. 7 And when he saw a site of surpassing natural advantages (for it is a strip of land like enough to a broad isthmus, extending between a great lagoon and a stretch of sea which terminates in a large harbour), he said he saw now that Homer was not only admirable in other ways, but also a very wise architect, and ordered the plan of the city to be drawn in conformity with this site. 8 There was no chalk at hand, so they took barley-meal and marked out with it on the dark soil a rounded area, to whose inner arc straight lines extended so as to produce the figure of a chlamys, or military cloak, the lines beginning from the skirts (as one may say), and narrowing the breadth of the area uniformly. 6809 The king was delighted with the design; but suddenly birds from the river and the lagoon, infinite in number and of every sort and size, settled down upon the place like clouds and devoured every particle of the barley-meal, so that even Alexander was greatly disturbed at the omen.

10 However, the seers exhorted him to be of good cheer, since the city here founded by him would have most abundant and helpful resources and be a nursing mother for men of every nation, and so he ordered those in charge of the work to proceed with it, while he himself set out for the temple of Ammon. 11 The journey thither was long, full of toils and hardships, and had two perils. One is the dearth of water, which leaves the traveller destitute of it for many days; the other arises when a fierce south wind smites men travelling in sand of boundless depth, 2 as is said to have been the case with the army of Cambyses, long ago; the wind raised great billows of sand all over the plain and buried up fifty thousand men, to their utter destruction. 13 Almost all of Alexander’s followers took all these things into consideration, but it was difficult to turn him aside from any course so ever when he had once set out upon it. 14 For Fortune, by yielding to his onsets, was making his purpose obstinate, and the high spirit which he carried into his undertakings rendered his ambition finally invincible, so that it subdued not only enemies, but even times and places.

27 1 At all events, during the journey which he made at this time, the assistance rendered him by Heaven in his perplexities met with more credence than the oracles which he afterwards received, nay, in a way, the oracles obtained credence in consequence of such assistance. 2 For, to begin with, much rain from heaven and persistent showers removed all fear of thirst, quenched the dryness of the sand, so that it became moist and compact, and made the air purer and good to breathe. 3 Again, when the marks for the guides became confused, and the travellers were separated and wandered about in ignorance of the route, ravens appeared and assumed direction of their march, flying swiftly on in front of them when they followed, and waiting for them when they marched slowly and lagged behind. 4 Moreover, what was most astonishing of all, Callisthenes tells us that the birds by their cries called back those who straggled away in the night, and cawed until they had set them in the track of the march.

5 When Alexander had passed through the desert and was come to the place of the oracle, the prophet of Ammon gave him salutation from the god as from a father; whereupon Alexander asked him whether any of the murderers of his father had escaped him. 6 To this the prophet answered by bidding him be guarded in his speech, since his was not a mortal father. Alexander therefore changed the form of his question, and asked whether the murderers of Philip had all been punished; and then, regarding his own empire, he asked whether it was given to him to become lord and master of all mankind. 7 The god gave answer that this was given to him, and that Philip was fully avenged. Then Alexander made splendid offerings to the god and gave his priests large gifts of money.

8 This is what most writers state regarding the oracular responses; but Alexander himself, in a letter to his mother, says that he received certain secret responses, which he would tell to her, and to her alone, on his return. 9 And some say that the prophet, wishing to show his friendliness by addressing him with “O paidion,” or O my son, in his foreign pronunciation ended the words with “s” instead of “n,” and said, “O paidios,” and that Alexander was pleased at the slip in pronunciation, and a story became current that the god had addressed him with “O pai Dios,” or O son of Zeus. 10 We are told, also, that he listened to the teachings of Psammon the philosopher in Egypt, and accepted most readily this utterance of his, namely, that all mankind are under the kingship of God, since in every case that which gets the mastery and rules is divine. 68111 Still more philosophical, however, was his own opinion and utterance on this head, namely that although God was indeed a common father of all mankind, still, He made peculiarly His own the noblest and best of them.

28 1 In general, he bore himself haughtily towards the Barbarians, and like one fully persuaded of his divine birth and parentage, but with the Greeks it was within limits and somewhat rarely that he assumed his own divinity. 2 However, in writing to the Athenians concerning Samos, he said: “I cannot have given you that free and illustrious city; for ye received it from him who was then your master and was called my father,” meaning Philip. 3 At a later time, however, when he had been hit by an arrow and was suffering great pain, he said: “This, my friends, that flows here, is blood, and not

‘Ichor, such as flows from the veins of the blessed gods.’ “

4 Once, too, there came a great peal of thunder, and all were terrified at it; whereupon Anaxarchus the sophist who was present said to Alexander: “Couldst thou, the son of Zeus, thunder like that?” At this, Alexander laughed and said: “Nay, I do not wish to cause fear in my friends, as thou wouldst have me do, thou who despisest my suppers because, as thou sayest, thou seest the tables furnished with fish, and not with satraps’ heads.” 5 For, in fact, we are told that Anaxarchus, on seeing a present of small fish which the king had sent to Hephaestion, had uttered the speech above mentioned, as though he were disparaging and ridiculing those who undergo great toils and dangers in the pursuit of eminence and power, since in the way of enjoyments and pleasures they have little or nothing more than other men. 6 From what has been said, then, it is clear that Alexander himself was not foolishly affected or puffed up by the belief in his divinity, but used it for the subjugation of others.

29 1 When he had returned from Egypt into Phoenicia, he honoured the gods with sacrifices and solemn processions, and held contests of dithyrambic choruses and tragedies which were made brilliant, not only by their furnishings, but also by the competitors who exhibited them. 2 For the kings of Cyprus were the choregi, or exhibitors, just like, at Athens, those chosen by lot from the tribes, and they competed against each other with amazing ambition. 3 Most eager of all was the contention between Nicocreon of Salamis and Pasicrates of Soli. For the lot assigned to these exhibitors the most celebrated actors, to Pasicrates Athenodorus, and to Nicocreon Thessalus, in whose success Alexander himself was interested. 4 He did not reveal this interest, however, until, by the votes of the judges, Athenodorus had been proclaimed victor. But then, as it would appear, on leaving the theatre, he said that he approved the decision of the judges, but would gladly have given up a part of his kingdom rather than to have seen Thessalus vanquished. 5 And yet, when Athenodorus, who had been fined by the Athenians for not keeping his engagement in the dramatic contest of their Dionysiac festival, asked the king to write a letter to them in his behalf, though he would not do this, he sent them the amount of the fine from his own purse. 6 Furthermore, when Lycon of Scarpheia, who was acting successfully before Alexander, inserted into the comedy a verse containing a request for ten talents, Alexander laughed and gave them to him.

7 When Dareius sent to him a letter and friends, begging him to accept ten thousand talents as ransom for the captives, to hold all the territory this side of the Euphrates, to take one of his daughters in marriage, and on these terms to be his ally and friend, Alexander imparted the matter to his companions. 8 “If I were Alexander,” said Parmenio, “I would accept these terms.” “And so indeed would I,” said Alexander, “were I Parmenio.” 9 But to Dareius he wrote: “Come to me, and thou shalt receive every courtesy; but otherwise I shall march at once against thee.”

30 1 Soon, however, he repented him of this answer, when the wife of Dareius died in childbirth, 682 and it was evident that he was distressed at this loss of opportunity to show great kindness. Accordingly, he gave the woman a sumptuous burial. 2 One of the eunuchs of the bed-chamber who had been captured with the women, Teireos by name, ran away from the camp, made his way on horseback to Dareius, and told him of the death of his wife. 3 Then the king, beating upon his head and bursting into lamentation, said: “Alas for the evil genius of the Persians, if the sister and wife of their king must not only become a captive in her life, but also in her death be deprived of royal burial.” 4 “Nay, O King,” answered the chamberlain, “as regards her receiving every fitting honour, thou hast no charge to make against the evil genius of the Persians. 5 For neither did my mistress Stateira, while she lived, or thy mother or thy children, lack any of their former great blessings except the light of thy countenance, which Lord Oromazdes will cause to shine again with lustre; nor after her death was she deprived of any funeral adornment, nay, she was honoured with the tears of enemies. 6 For Alexander is as gentle after victory as he is terrible in battle.”

7 When Dareius heard this, his agitation and grief swept him into absurd suspicions, and leading the eunuch away into a more secluded part of his tent, he said: 8 “If thou also, together with the fortune of the Persians, dost not side with the Macedonians, and if I, Dareius, am still thy lord and master, tell me, as thou reverest the great light of Mithras and the right hand of thy king, is it not the least of Stateira’s misfortunes that I am now lamenting? While she was alive did I not suffer more painful evils? And would not my wretched fortune have been more compatible with my honour if I had met with an angry and savage enemy? 9 For what intercourse that is proper can a young man have with an enemy’s wife when it leads to such marks of honour?” 10 While the king was still speaking, Teireos threw himself down at his feet and besought him to hold his peace, and neither to wrong Alexander, nor shame his dead sister and wife, nor rob himself of the greatest consolation for his disasters, namely, the belief that he had been conquered by a man who was superior to human nature; nay, he should even admire Alexander for having shown greater self-restraint in dealing with Persian women than valour against Persian men. 11 Then, while the eunuch was confirming his testimony with the most solemn oaths, and discoursing on the general self-mastery and magnanimity of Alexander, Dareius went out to his companions, and lifting his hands towards heaven, prayed: 12 “O ye gods of my race and kingdom, above all things else grant that I may leave the fortune of Persia reëstablished in the prosperity wherein I found it, in order that my victory may enable me to requite Alexander for the favours which I received at his hands when I had lost my dearest possessions; 13 but if, then, a fated time has now come, due to divine jealousy and the vicissitudes of things, and the sway of the Persians must cease, grant that no other man may sit upon the throne of Cyrus but Alexander.” 14 That these things were thus done and said is the testimony of most historians.

31 1 But to return to Alexander, when he had subdued all the country on this side of the Euphrates, he marched against Dareius, who was coming down to meet him with a million men. 2 On this march one of his companions told him, as a matter worth laughing at, that the camp-followers, in sport, had divided themselves into two bands, and set a general and commander over each of them, one of whom they called Alexander, and the other Dareius; 3 and that they had begun by pelting one another with clods of earth, then had fought with their fists, and finally, heated with the desire of battle, had taken to stones and sticks, being now many and hard to quell. 6834 When he heard this, Alexander ordered the leaders themselves to fight in single combat; to the one called Alexander he himself gave armour, and to the one called Dareius, Philotas. The army were spectators of the combat, counting the issue as in some measure an omen of the future. 5 After a strenuous battle, the one called Alexander was victorious, and received as a reward twelve villages and the right to wear Persian dress. This, at any rate, is what we are told by Eratosthenes.

6 Now, the great battle against Dareius was not fought at Arbela, as most writers state, but at Gaugamela. 7 The word signifies, we are told, “camel’s house,” since one of the ancient kings of the country, after escaping from his enemies on a swift camel, gave the animal a home here, assigning certain villages and revenues for its maintenance. 8 It so happened that in the month Boëdromion the moon suffered an eclipse, about the beginning of the Mysteries at Athens, and on the eleventh night after the eclipse, the armies being now in sight of one another, Dareius kept his forces under arms, and held a review of them by torch-light; 9 but Alexander, while his Macedonians slept, himself passed the night in front of his tent with his seer Aristander, celebrating certain mysterious sacred rites and sacrificing to the god Fear. 10 Meanwhile the older of his companions, and particularly Parmenio, when they saw the plain between the Niphates and the Gordyaean mountains all lighted up with the barbarian fires, while an indistinguishably mingled and tumultuous sound of voices arose from their camp as if from a vast ocean, 11 were astonished at their multitude and argued with one another that it was a great and grievous task to repel such a tide of war by engaging in broad day-light. They therefore waited upon the king when he had finished his sacrifices, and tried to persuade him to attack the enemy by night, and so to cover up with darkness the most fearful aspect of the coming struggle. 12 But he gave them the celebrated answer, “I will not steal my victory”; whereupon some thought that he had made a vainglorious reply, and was jesting in the presence of so great a peril. Others, however, thought that he had confidence in the present situation and estimated the future correctly, not offering Dareius in case of defeat an excuse to pluck up courage for another attempt, by laying the blame this time upon darkness and night, as he had before upon mountains, defiles, and sea. For Dareius would not give up the war for lack of arms or men when he could draw from so great a host and so vast a territory, but only when he had lost courage and hope, under the conviction brought by a downright defeat in broad day-light.

32 1 After the men were gone, Alexander lay down in his tent, and is said to have passed the rest of the night in a deeper sleep than usual, so that when his officers came to him in the early morning they were amazed, and on their own authority issued orders that the soldiers should first take breakfast. 2 Then, since the occasion was urgent, Parmenio entered the tent, and standing by his couch called Alexander twice or thrice by name; and when he had thus roused him, he asked him how he could possibly sleep as if he were victorious, instead of being about to fight the greatest of all his battles. 3 Then Alexander said with a smile: “What, pray? Dost thou not think that we are already victorious, now that we are relieved from wandering about in a vast and desolate country in pursuit of a Dareius who avoids a battle?” 4 And not only before the battle, but also in the very thick of the struggle did he show himself great, and firm in his confident calculations. 5 For in the battle the left wing under Parmenio was thrown back and in distress, when the Bactrian cavalry fell upon the Macedonians with great impetuosity and violence, and when Mazaeus sent horsemen round outside the line of battle to attack those who were guarding the Macedonian baggage. 6846 Therefore, too, Parmenio, much disturbed by both occurrences, sent messengers to Alexander telling him that camp and baggage were gone, unless he speedily sent strong reinforcements from front to rear. 7 Now, it chanced that at that instant Alexander was about to give the signal for the onset to those under his command; but when he heard Parmenio’s message, he declared that Parmenio was beside himself and had lost the use of his reason, and had forgotten in his distress that victors add the baggage of the enemy to their own, and that those who are vanquished must not think about their wealth or their slaves, but only how they may fight gloriously and die with honour.

8 After sending this message to Parmenio, he put on his helmet, but the rest of his armour he had on as he came from his tent, namely, a vest of Sicilian make girt about him, and over this a breastplate of two-ply linen from the spoils taken at Issus. 9 His helmet was of iron, but gleamed like polished silver, a work of Theophilus; and there was fitted to this a gorget, likewise of iron, set with precious stones. 10 He had a sword, too, of astonishing temper and lightness, a gift from the king of the Citieans, and he had trained himself to use a sword for the most part in his battles. 11 He wore a belt also, which was too elaborate for the rest of his armour; for it was a work of Helicon the ancient, and a mark of honour from the city of Rhodes, which had given it to him; this also he was wont to wear in his battles. 12 As long, then, as he was riding about and marshalling some part of his phalanx, or exhorting or instructing or reviewing his men, he spared Bucephalas, who was now past his prime, and used another horse; but whenever he was going into action, Bucephalas would be led up, and he would mount him and at once begin the attack.

33 1 On this occasion, he made a very long speech to the Thessalians and the other Greeks, and when he saw that they encouraged him with shouts to lead them against the Barbarians, he shifted his lance into his left hand, and with his right appealed to the gods, as Callisthenes tells us, praying them, if he was really sprung from Zeus, to defend and strengthen the Greeks. 2 Aristander the seer, too, wearing a white mantle and having a crown of gold upon his head, rode along the ranks pointing out to them an eagle which soared above the head of Alexander and directed his flight straight against the enemy, 3 at which sight great courage filled the beholders, and after mutual encouragement and exhortation the cavalry charged at full speed upon the enemy and the phalanx rolled on after them like a flood. 4 But before the foremost ranks were engaged the Barbarians gave way, and were hotly pursued, Alexander driving the conquered foe towards the centre of their array, where Dareius was. 5 For from afar he was seen by Alexander through the deep ranks of the royal squadron of horse drawn up in front of him, towering conspicuous, a fine-looking man and tall, standing on a lofty chariot, fenced about by a numerous and brilliant array of horsemen, who were densely massed around the chariot and drawn up to receive the enemy. 6 But when they saw Alexander close at hand and terrible, and driving those who fled before him upon those who held their ground, they were smitten with fear and scattered, for the most part. 7 The bravest and noblest of them, however, slain in front of their king and falling in heaps upon one another, obstructed the Macedonians in their pursuit, weaving and twining themselves in their last agonies about riders and horses.

8 But Dareius, now that all the terrors of the struggle were before his eyes, and now that the forces drawn up to protect him were crowded back upon him, since it was not an easy matter to turn his chariot about and drive it away, seeing that the wheels were obstructed and entangled in the great numbers of the fallen, while the horses, surrounded and hidden away by the multitude of dead bodies, were rearing up and frightening the charioteer, 685 forsook his chariot and his armour, mounted a mare which, as they say, had newly foaled, and took to flight. 9 However, it is thought that he would not then have made his escape, had not fresh horsemen come from Parmenio summoning Alexander to his aid, on the ground that a large force of the enemy still held together there and would not give ground. 10 For there is general complaint that in that battle Parmenio was sluggish and inefficient, either because old age was now impairing somewhat his courage, or because he was made envious and resentful by the arrogance and pomp, to use the words of Callisthenes, of Alexander’s power. 11 At the time, then, although he was annoyed by the summons, the king did not tell his soldiers the truth about it, but on the ground that it was dark and he would therefore remit further slaughter, sounded a recall; and as he rode towards the endangered portion of his army, he heard by the way that the enemy had been utterly defeated and was in flight.

685 34 1 The battle having had this issue, the empire of the Persians was thought to be utterly dissolved, and Alexander, proclaimed king of Asia, made magnificent sacrifices to the gods and rewarded his friends with wealth, estates, and provinces. 2 And being desirous of honour among the Greeks, he wrote them that all their tyrannies were abolished and they might live under their own laws; moreover, he wrote the Plataeans especially that he would rebuild their city, because their ancestors had furnished their territory to the Greeks for the struggle in behalf of their freedom. 3 He sent also to the people of Croton in Italy a portion of the spoils, honouring the zeal and valour of their athlete Phaÿllus, who, in the Median wars, when the rest of the Greeks in Italy refused to help their brother Greeks, fitted out a ship at his own cost and sailed with it to Salamis, that he might have some share in the peril there. 4 So considerate was Alexander towards every form of valour, and such a friend and guardian of noble deeds.

35 1 As he traversed all Babylonia, which at once submitted to him, he was most of all amazed at the chasm from which fire continually streamed forth as from a spring, and at the stream of naphtha, so abundant as to form a lake, not far from the chasm. 2 This naphtha is in other ways like asphaltum, but is so sensitive to fire that, before the flame touches it, it is kindled by the very radiance about the flame and often sets fire also to the intervening air. 3 To show its nature and power, the Barbarians sprinkled the street leading to Alexander’s quarters with small quantities of the liquid; then, standing at the farther end of the street, they applied their torches to the moistened spots; for it was now getting dark. 4 The first spots at once caught fire, and without an appreciable interval of time, but with the speed of thought, the flame darted to the other end, and the street was one continuous fire. 5 Now, there was a certain Athenophanes, an Athenian, one of those who were accustomed to minister to the person of the king when he bathed and anointed himself, and to furnish suitable diversion for his thoughts. 6 This man, one time when there was standing by Alexander in the bath-room a youth who had a ridiculously plain countenance, but was a graceful singer 7 (his name was Stephanus), said, “Wilt thou, O King, that we make a trial of the liquid upon Stephanus? For if it should lay hold of him and not be extinguished, I would certainly say that its power was invincible and terrible.” 8 The youth also, strangely enough, offered himself for the experiment, and as soon as he touched the liquid and began to anoint himself with it, his body broke out into so great a flame and was so wholly possessed by fire that Alexander fell into extreme perplexity and fear; 9 and had it not been by chance that many were standing by holding vessels of water for the bath, the youth would have been consumed before aid reached him. 686 Even as it was, they had great difficulty in putting out the fire, for it covered the boy’s whole body, and after they had done so, he was in a sorry plight.

10 It is natural, then, that some who wish to bring fable into conformity with truth should say that this naphtha is the drug which Medeia used, when, in the tragedies, she anoints the crown and the robe. 11 For it was not from these objects themselves, they say, nor of its own accord, that the fire shot up, but a flame was placed near them, which was then so swiftly drawn into conjunction with them that the sense could not take cognisance of it. 12 For the rays and emanations of fire which come from a distance impart to some bodies merely light and warmth; but in those which are dry and porous, or which have sufficiently rich moisture, they collect themselves together, break into fierce flame, and transform the material. 13 There has been much discussion about the origin of . . . . or whether rather the liquid substance that feeds the flame flows out from a soil which is rich and productive of fire. 14 For the soil of Babylonia is very fiery, so that grains of barley often leap out of the ground and bound away, as if its inflammation made the ground throb; and the inhabitants, during the hot season, sleep on skins filled with water. 15 Harpalus, moreover, when he was left as overseer of the country and was eager to adorn the royal gardens and walks with Hellenic plants, succeeded with all except ivy; this the soil would not support, but always killed it. The plant could not endure the temper of the soil, for the soil was fiery, while the plant was fond of coolness. 16 However, if such digressions are kept within bounds, perhaps my impatient readers will find less fault with them.

36 1 On making himself master of Susa, Alexander came into possession of forty thousand talents of coined money in the palace, and of untold furniture and wealth besides. 2 Among this they say was found five thousand talents’ weight of purple from Hermione, which, although it had been stored there for a hundred and ninety years, still kept its colours fresh and lively. 3 The reason for this, they say, is that honey was used in the purple dyes, and white olive oil in the white dyes; for these substances, after the like space of time, are seen to have a brilliancy that is pure and lustrous. 4 Moreover, Deinon says that the Persian kings had water also brought from the Nile and the Danube and stored up among their treasures, as a sort of confirmation of the greatness of their empire and the universality of their sway.

37 1 Persis was difficult of access, owing to the roughness of the country, and was guarded by the noblest of the Persians (for Dareius had taken to flight); but Alexander found a guide to conduct him thither by a circuit of no great extent. The man spoke two languages, since his father was a Lycian and his mother a Persian; 2 and it was he, they say, whom the Pythian priestess had in mind when she prophesied, Alexander being yet a boy, that a “lycus,” or wolf, would be Alexander’s guide on his march against the Persians. 3 In this country, then, as it turned out, there was a great slaughter of the prisoners taken; for Alexander himself writes that he gave orders to have the inhabitants butchered, thinking that this would be to his advantage; and they say that as much coined money was found there as at Susa, 4 and that it took ten thousand pairs of mules and five thousand camels to carry away the other furniture and wealth there.

5 On beholding a great statue of Xerxes which had been carelessly overthrown by a throng that forced its way into the palace, Alexander stopped before it, and accosting it as if it had been alive, said: “Shall I pass on and leave thee lying there, because of thine expedition against the Hellenes, or, because of thy magnanimity and virtue in other ways, shall I set thee up again?” But finally, after communing with himself a long time in silence, he passed on. 6 Wishing to refresh his soldiers (for it was winter time), he spent four months in that place. 6877 And it is said that when he took his seat for the first time under the golden canopy on the royal throne, Demaratus the Corinthian, a well-meaning man and a friend of Alexander’s, as he had been of Alexander’s father, burst into tears, as old men will, and declared that those Hellenes were deprived of great pleasure who had died before seeing Alexander seated on the throne of Dareius.

38 1 After this, as he was about to march forth against Dareius, it chanced that he consented to take part in a merry drinking bout of his companions, at which women also came to meet their lovers and shared in their wine and revelry. 2 The most famous among these women was Thaïs, an Athenian, the mistress of Ptolemy, who was afterwards king. She, partly in graceful praise of Alexander, and partly to make sport for him, as the drinking went on, was moved to utter a speech which befitted the character of her native country, but was too lofty for one of her kind. 3 She said, namely, that for all her hardships in wandering over Asia she was being requited that day by thus revelling luxuriously in the splendid palace of the Persians; 4 but it would be a still greater pleasure to go in revel rout and set fire to the house of the Xerxes who burned Athens, she herself kindling the fire under the eyes of Alexander, in order that a tradition might prevail among men that the women in the train of Alexander inflicted a greater punishment upon the Persians in behalf of Hellas than all her famous commanders by sea and land. 5 As soon as she had thus spoken, tumultuous applause arose, and the companions of the king eagerly urged him on, so that he yielded to their desires, and leaping to his feet, with a garland on his head and a torch in his hand, led them the way. 6 The company followed with shouts and revelry and surrounded the palace, while the rest of the Macedonians who learned about it ran thither with torches and were full of joy. 7 For they hoped that the burning and destruction of the palace was the act of one who had fixed his thoughts on home, and did not intend to dwell among Barbarians. 8 This is the way the deed was done, according to some writers; but others say it was premeditated. However, it is agreed that Alexander speedily repented and gave orders to put out the fire.

39 1 Alexander was naturally munificent, and became still more so as his wealth increased. His gifts, too, were accompanied by a kindly spirit, with which alone, to tell the truth, a giver confers a favour. 2 I will mention a few instances. Ariston, the captain of the Paeonians, having slain an enemy, brought his head and showed it to Alexander, saying: “In my country, O King, such a gift as this is rewarded with a golden beaker.” “Yes,” said Alexander with a laugh, “an empty one; but I will pledge thy health with one which is full of pure wine.” 3 Again, a common Macedonian was driving a mule laden with some of the royal gold, and when the beast gave out, took the load on his own shoulders and tried to carry it. The king, then, seeing the man in great distress and learning the facts of the case, said, as the man was about to lay his burden down, “Don’t give out, but finish your journey by taking this load to your own tent.” 4 Furthermore, he was generally more displeased with those who would not take his gifts than with those who asked for them. And so he wrote to Phocion in a letter that he would not treat him as a friend in future if he rejected his favours. 5 Again, to Serapion, one of the youths who played at ball with him, he used to give nothing because he asked for nothing. Accordingly, whenever Serapion had the ball, he would throw it to others, until the king said: “Won’t you give it to me?” “No,” said Serapion, “because you don’t ask for it,” whereat the king burst out laughing and made him many presents. 6 With Proteas, however, a clever wag and boon companion, he appeared to be angry; but when the man’s friends begged his forgiveness, as did Proteas himself with tears, the king said he was his friend again, whereat Proteas said: “In that case, O King, give me something to prove it first.” Accordingly, the king ordered that five talents should be given him. 6887 What lofty airs his friends and bodyguards were wont to display over the wealth bestowed by him, is plain from a letter which Olympias wrote to him. She says: “I beg thee to find other ways of conferring favours on those thou lovest and holdest in honour; as it is, thou makest them all the equals of kings and providest them with an abundance of friends, whilst thyself thou strippest bare.” 8 Olympias often wrote him in like vein, but Alexander kept her writings secret, except once when Hephaestion, as was his wont, read with him a letter which had been opened; the king did not prevent him, but took the ring from his own finger and applied its seal to the lips of Hephaestion. 9 Again, though the son of Mazaeus, the most influential man at the court of Dareius, already had a province, Alexander gave him a second and a larger one. He, however, declined it, saying: “O King, formerly there was one Dareius, but now thou has made many Alexanders.” 10 To Parmenio, moreover, Alexander gave the house of Bagoas at Susa, in which it is said that there was found apparel worth a thousand talents. 11 Again, he wrote to Antipater bidding him keep guards about his person, since plots were being laid against him. 12 To his mother, also, he sent many presents, but would not suffer her to meddle in affairs nor interfere in his campaigns; and when she chided him for this, he bore her harshness patiently. 13 Once, however, after reading a long letter which Antipater had written in denunciation of her, he said Antipater knew not that one tear of a mother effaced ten thousand letters.

40 1 He saw that his favourites had grown altogether luxurious, and were vulgar in the extravagance of their ways of living. For instance, Hagnon the Teian used to wear silver nails in his boots; Leonnatus had dust for his gymnastic exercises brought to him on many camels from Egypt; Philotas had hunting-nets a hundred furlongs long; when they took their exercise and their baths, more of them actually used myrrh than olive oil, and they had in their train rubbers and chamberlains. Alexander therefore chided them in gentle and reasonable fashion. 2 He was amazed, he said, that after they had undergone so many and so great contests they did not remember that those who conquer by toil sleep more sweetly than those who are conquered by their toil, and did not see, from a comparison of their own lives with those of the Persians, that it is a very servile thing to be luxurious, but a very royal thing to toil. 3 “And yet,” said he, “how can a man take care of his own horse or furbish up his spear and helmet, if he is unaccustomed to using his hands on his own dear person? Know ye not,” said he, “that the end and object of conquest is to avoid doing the same thing as the conquered?” 4 Accordingly, he exerted himself yet more strenuously in military and hunting expeditions, suffering distress and risking his life, so that a Spartan ambassador who came up with him as he was bringing down a great lion, said: “Nobly, indeed, Alexander, hast thou struggled with the lion to see which should be king.” 5 This hunting-scene Craterus dedicated at Delphi, with bronze figures of the lion, the dogs, the king engaged with the lion, and himself coming to his assistance; some of the figures were moulded by Lysippus, and some by Leochares.

41 1 Alexander, then, in exercising himself and at the same time inciting others to deeds of valour, was wont to court danger; but his friends, whose wealth and magnificence now gave them a desire to live in luxury and idleness, were impatient of his long wanderings and military expeditions, and gradually went so far as to abuse him and speak ill of him. 2 He, however, was very mildly disposed at first toward this treatment of himself, and used to say that it was the lot of a king to confer favours and be ill-spoken of therefor. 3 And yet in the most trifling attentions which he paid his familiar friends there were marks of great good-will and esteem. 4 I will instance a few of these.

He found fault with Peucestas by letter because, after being bitten by a bear, he wrote about it to the rest of his friends but did not tell him. 689”Now, however,” said he, “write me how you are, and tell me whether any of your fellow-huntsmen left you in the lurch, that I may punish them.” 5 To Hephaestion, who was absent on some business, he wrote that while they were diverting themselves with hunting an ichneumon, Craterus encountered the lance of Perdiccas and was wounded in the thighs. 6 After Peucestas had safely recovered from an illness, Alexander wrote to the physician, Alexippus, expressing his thanks. While Craterus was sick, Alexander had a vision in his sleep, whereupon he offered certain sacrifices himself for the recovery of his friend, and bade him also sacrifice. 7 He wrote also to Pausanias, the physician, who wished to administer hellebore to Craterus, partly expressing distress, and partly advising him how to use the medicine. 8 Those who first brought word to him that Harpalus had absconded, namely, Ephialtes and Cissus, he put in fetters, on the ground that they were falsely accusing the man. 9 When he was sending home his aged and infirm soldiers, Eurylochus of Aegae got himself enrolled among the sick, and then, when it was discovered that he had nothing the matter with him, confessed that he was in love with Telesippa, and was bent on following along with her on her journey to the sea-board. 10 Alexander asked of what parentage the girl was, and on hearing that she was a free-born courtezan, said: “I will help you, O Eurylochus, in your amour; but see to it that we try to persuade Telesippa either by arguments or gifts, since she is free-born.”

42 1 And it is astonishing that he had time to write so many letters for his friends. For instance, he wrote one giving orders to seek out a slave of Seleucus who had run away into Cilicia; and one in commendation of Peucestas for arresting Nicon, a servant of Craterus; and one to Megabyzus about an attendant who had taken refuge in a sanctuary, bidding him, if possible, entice the slave outside the sanctuary and then arrest him, but not to lay hands upon him in the sanctuary. 2 It is said, too, that at first, when he was trying capital cases, he would put his hand over one of his ears while the accuser was speaking, that he might keep it free and unprejudiced for the accused. 3 But afterwards the multitude of accusations which he heard rendered him harsh, and led him to believe the false because so many were true. 4 And particularly when he was maligned he lost discretion and was cruel and inexorable, since he loved his reputation more than his life or his kingdom.

5 Now, however, he marched out against Dareius, expecting to fight another battle; but when he heard that Dareius had been seized by Bessus, he sent his Thessalians home, after distributing among them a largess of two thousand talents over and above their pay. 6 In consequence of the pursuit of Dareius, which was long and arduous (for in eleven days he rode thirty-three hundred furlongs), most of his horsemen gave out, and chiefly for lack of water. 7 At this point some Macedonians met him who were carrying water from the river in skins upon their mules. And when they beheld Alexander, it being now midday, in a wretched plight from thirst, they quickly filled a helmet and brought it to him. To his enquiry for whom they were carrying the water, they replied: 8 “For our own sons; but if thou livest, we can get other sons, even if we lose these.” 9 On hearing this he took the helmet into his hands, but when he looked around and saw the horsemen about him all stretching out their heads and gazing at the water, he handed it back without drinking any, but with praises for the men who had brought it; “For,” said he, “if I should drink of it alone, these horsemen of mine will be out of heart.” 10 But they beheld his self-control and loftiness of spirit, and began to goad their horses on, declaring that they would not regard themselves as weary, or thirsty, or as mortals at all, so long as they had such a king.

69043 So, then, all were alike ready and willing; but only sixty, they say, were with Alexander when he burst into the camp of the enemy. 2 There, indeed, they rode over much gold and silver that was thrown away, passed by many waggons full of women and children which were coursing hither and thither without their drivers, and pursued those who were foremost in flight, thinking that Dareius was among them. 3 But at last they found him lying in a waggon, his body all full of javelins, at the point of death. Nevertheless, he asked for something to drink, and when he had drunk some cold water which Polystratus gave him, he said to him: 4 “My man, this is the extremity of my ill-fortune, that I receive good at thy hands and am not able to return it; but Alexander will requite thee for thy good offices, and the gods will reward Alexander for his kindness to my mother, wife, and children; to him, through thee, I give this right hand.” With these words he took the hand of Polystratus and then expired. 5 When Alexander came up, he was manifestly distressed by what had happened, and unfastening his own cloak threw it upon the body and covered it. 6 And when, at a later time, he found Bessus, he had him rent asunder. Two straight trees were bent together and a part of his body fastened to each; then when each was released and sprang vigorously back, the part of the body that was attached to it followed after. 7 Now, however, he sent the body of Dareius, laid out in royal state, to his mother, and admitted his brother, Exathres, into the number of his companions.

690 44 1 He himself, however, with the flower of his army, marched on into Hyrcania. Here he saw a gulf of the open sea which appeared to be as large as the Euxine, but was sweeter than the Mediterranean. He could get no clear information about it, but conjectured that in all probability it was a stagnant overflow from the Palus Maeotis. 2 And yet naturalists were well aware of the truth, and many years before Alexander’s expedition they had set forth that this was the most northerly of four gulfs which stretch inland from the outer sea, and was called indifferently the Hyrcanian or Caspian Sea.

3 Here some Barbarians unexpectedly fell in with those who were leading Alexander’s horse, Bucephalas, and captured him. 4 Alexander was angry beyond measure, and sent a herald threatening to put them all to the sword, together with their wives and children, if they did not send him back his horse. 5 But when they came with the horse and also put their cities into his hands, he treated them all kindly, and gave a ransom for his horse to those who had captured him.

45 1 From thence he marched into Parthia, where, during a respite from fighting, he first put on the barbaric dress, either from a desire to adapt himself to the native customs, believing that community of race and custom goes far towards softening the hearts of men; or else this was an attempt to introduce the obeisance among the Macedonians, by accustoming little by little to put up with changes and alterations in his mode of life. 2 However, he did not adopt the famous Median fashion of dress, which was along barbaric and strange, nor did he assume trousers, or sleeved vest, or tiara, but carefully devised a fashion which was midway between the Persian and the Median, more modest than the one and more stately than the other. 3 At first he wore this only in intercourse with the Barbarians and with his companions at home, then people generally saw him riding forth or giving audience in this attire. 4 The sight was offensive to the Macedonians, but they admired his other high qualities and thought they ought to yield to him in some things which made for his pleasure or his fame. 5 For, in addition to all his other hardships, he had recently been shot by an arrow in the leg below the knee, so that splinters of the larger bone came out; and at another time he was smitten in the neck with a stone 691 so severely that his eye-sight was clouded and remained so for some time. 6 Nevertheless, he did not cease exposing himself to dangers without stint, nay, he actually crossed the river Orexartes (which he himself supposed to be the Tanaïs), put the Scythians to rout, and pursued them for a hundred furlongs, although he was suffering all the while from a diarrhoea.

46 1 Here the queen of the Amazons came to see him, as most writers say, among whom are Cleitarchus, Polycleitus, Onesicritus, Antigenes, and Ister; 2 but Aristobulus, Chares the royal usher, Ptolemy, Anticleides, Philo the Theban, and Philip of Theangela, besides Hecataeus of Eretria, Philip the Chalcidian, and Duris of Samos, say that this is a fiction. 3 And it would seem that Alexander’s testimony is in favour of their statement. For in a letter to Antipater which gives all the details minutely he says that the Scythian king offered him his daughter in marriage, but he makes no mention of the Amazon. 4 And the story is told that many years afterwards Onesicritus was reading aloud to Lysimachus, who was now king, the fourth book of his history, in which was the tale of the Amazon, at which Lysimachus smiled gently and said: “And where was I at the time?” 5 However, our belief or disbelief of this story will neither increase nor diminish our admiration for Alexander.

47 1 Fearing that his Macedonians might tire of the rest of his expedition, he left the greater part of them in quarters, and while he had the best of them with him in Hyrcania, twenty thousand foot and three thousand horse, he addressed them, saying that at present they were seen by the Barbarians as in a dream, but that if they should merely throw Asia into confusion and then leave it they would be attacked by them as if they were women. 2 However, he said, he allowed those who wished it to go away, calling them to witness that while he was winning the inhabited world for the Macedonians he had been left behind with his friends and those who were willing to continue the expedition. 3 This is almost word for word what he wrote in his letter to Antipater, and he adds that after he had thus spoken all his hearers cried out to him to lead them to whatever part of the world he wished. 4 After these had met his test of their loyalty, it was no longer a hard matter for the main body to be led along too, nay, they readily followed after.

5 Under these circumstances, too, he adapted his own mode of life still more to the customs of the country, and tried to bring these into closer agreement with Macedonian customs, thinking that by a mixture and community of practice which produced good will, rather than by force, his authority would be kept secure while he was far away. 6 For this reason, too, he chose out thirty thousand boys and gave orders that they should learn the Greek language and be trained to use Macedonian weapons, appointing many instructors for this work. 7 His marriage to Roxana, whom he saw in her youthful beauty taking part in a dance at a banquet, was a love affair, and yet it was thought to harmonize well with the matters which he had in hand. 8 For the Barbarians were encouraged by the partnership into which the marriage brought them, and they were beyond measure fond of Alexander, because, most temperate of all men that he was in these matters, he would not consent to approach even the only woman who ever mastered his affections, without the sanction of law.

9 Moreover, when he saw that among his chiefest friends Hephaestion approved his course and joined him in changing his mode of life, while Craterus clung fast to his native ways, he employed the former in his business with the Barbarians, the latter in that with the Greeks and Macedonians. 10 And in general he showed most affection for Hephaestion, but most esteem for Craterus, thinking, and constantly saying, that Hephaestion was a friend of Alexander, but Craterus a friend of the king. 11 For this reason, too, the men cherished a secret grudge against one another and often came into open collision. And once, on the Indian expedition, they actually drew their swords and closed with one another, and as the friends of each were coming to his aid, Alexander rode up and abused Hephaestion publicly, calling him a fool and a madman 692 for not knowing that without Alexander’s favour he was nothing; and in private he also sharply reproved Craterus. 12 Then he brought them together and reconciled them, taking an oath by Ammon and the rest of the gods that he loved them most of all men; but that if he heard of their quarreling again, he would kill them both, or at least the one who began the quarrel. Wherefore after this they neither did nor said anything to harm one another, not even in jest.

48 1 Now, Philotas, the son of Parmenio, had a high position among the Macedonians; for he was held to be valiant and able to endure hardship, and, after Alexander himself, no one was so fond of giving and so fond of his comrades. 2 At any rate, we are told that when one of his intimates asked him for some money, he ordered his steward to give it him, and when the steward said he had none to give, “What meanest thou?” cried Philotas, “hast thou not even plate or clothing?” 3 However, he displayed a pride of spirit, an abundance of wealth, and a care of the person and mode of life which were too offensive for a private man, and at this time particularly his imitation of majesty and loftiness was not successful at all, but clumsy, spurious, and devoid of grace, so that he incurred suspicion and envy, and even Parmenio once said to him: 4 “My son, pray be less of a personage.” Moreover, for a very long time accusations against himself had been brought to Alexander himself. For when Dareius had been defeated in Cilicia and the wealth of Damascus had been taken, among the many prisoners brought into the camp there was found a young woman, born in Pydna, and comely to look upon; her name was Antigone. 5 This woman Philotas got; and as a young man will often talk freely in vaunting and martial strain to his mistress and in his cups, he used to tell her that the greatest achievements were performed by himself and his father, and would call Alexander a stripling who through their efforts enjoyed the title of ruler. 6 These words the woman would report to one of her acquaintances, and he, as was natural, to somebody else, until the story came round to Craterus, who took the girl and brought her secretly to Alexander. 7 He, on hearing the story, ordered her to continue her meetings with Philotas and to come and report to him whatever she learned from her lover.

692 49 1 Now, Philotas was ignorant of the plot thus laid against him, and in his frequent interviews with Antigone would utter many angry and boastful speeches and many improper words against the king. 2 But Alexander, although strong testimony against Philotas came to his ears, endured in silence and restrained himself, either because he had confidence in Parmenio’s good will towards him, or because he feared the reputation and power of father and son. 3 Meanwhile, however, a Macedonian named Limnus, from Chalaestra, conspired against Alexander’s life, and invited Nicomachus, one of the young men, whose lover he was, to take part with him in the undertaking. 4 Nicomachus would not accept the invitation, but told his brother Cebalinus of the attempt, and he, going to Philotas, ordered him to conduct them into the presence of Alexander, on the ground that there were matters of great importance about which they must see him. 5 But Philotas, for whatever reason (and the reason is not known), would not conduct them in, alleging that the king was engaged on other matters of more importance. And he refused their request twice. 6 They now became suspicious of Philotas and applied to someone else, by whom they were brought before Alexander. In the first place they told him about the plot of Limnus, and then threw out veiled insinuations against Philotas, on the ground that he had neglected their petitions on two occasions. 7 This greatly incensed Alexander; and when he found that Limnus had defended himself against arrest and had therefore been killed by the man sent to fetch him, he was still more disturbed in mind, thinking that the proof of the plot had escaped him. 6938 And since he felt bitter towards Philotas he drew to himself those who had long hated the man, and they now said openly that the king took things too easily when he supposed that Limnus, a man of Chalaestra, had set his hand to a deed of so great daring on his own account; 9 nay, they said, he was only an assistant, or rather an instrument sent forth by a higher power, and enquiry into the plot should be made in those quarters where there was most interest in having it concealed. 10 After the king had once given ear to such speeches and suspicions, the enemies of Philotas brought up countless accusations against him. 11 Consequently he was arrested and put to the question, the companions of the king standing by at the torture, while Alexander himself listened behind a stretch of tapestry. 12 Here, as we are told, on hearing Philotas beset Hephaestion with abject cries and supplications, he said: “So faint-hearted thou art, Philotas, and so unmanly, couldst thou have set hand to so great an undertaking?” 13 After Philotas had been put to death, Alexander sent at once into Media and dispatched Parmenio also, a man whose achievements with Philip had been many, and who was the only one of Alexander’s older friends, or the principal one, to urge his crossing into Asia, and who, of the three sons that were his, had seen two killed on the expedition before this, and was now put to death along with the third.

14 These actions made Alexander an object of fear to many of his friends, and particularly to Antipater, who sent secretly to the Aetolians and entered into an alliance with them. 15 For the Aetolians also were in fear of Alexander, because they had destroyed the city of the Oeniadae, and because Alexander, on learning of it, had said that it would not be the sons of the Oeniadae, but he himself who would punish the Aetolians.

50 1 Not long afterwards came the affair of Cleitus, which those who simply learn the immediate circumstances will think more savage than that of Philotas; 2 if we take into consideration, however, alike the cause and the time, we find that it did not happen of set purpose, but through some misfortune of the king, whose anger and intoxication furnished occasion for the evil genius of Cleitus. It happened on this wise. 3 Some people came bringing Greek fruit to the king from the sea-board. He admired its perfection and beauty and called Cleitus, wishing to show it to him and share it with him. 4 It chanced that Cleitus was sacrificing, but he gave up the sacrifice and came; and three of the sheep on which libations had already been poured came following after him. 5 When the king learned of this circumstance, he imparted it to his soothsayers, Aristander and Cleomantis the Lacedaemonian. Then, on their telling him that the omen was bad, he ordered them to sacrifice in all haste for the safety of Cleitus. 6 For he himself, two days before this, had seen a strange vision in his sleep; he thought he saw Cleitus sitting with the sons of Parmenio in black robes, and all were dead. 7 However, Cleitus did not finish his sacrifice, but came at once to the supper of the king, who had sacrificed to the Dioscuri. 8 After boisterous drinking was under way, verses were sung which had been composed by a certain Pranichus, or, as some say, Pierio, to shame and ridicule the generals who had lately been defeated by the Barbarians. 9 The older guests were annoyed at this and railed at both the poet and the singer, but Alexander and those about him listened with delight and bade the singer go on. Then Cleitus, who was already drunk and naturally of a harsh temper and wilful, was more than ever vexed, and insisted that it was not well done, when among Barbarians and enemies, to insult Macedonians who were far better men than those who laughed at them, even though they had met with misfortune. 10 And when Alexander declared that Cleitus was pleading his own cause when he gave cowardice the name of misfortune, Cleitus sprang to his feet and said: 11 “It was this cowardice of mine, however, that saved thy life, god-born as thou art, when thou wast already turning thy back upon the spear of Spithridates; 694 and it is by the blood of Macedonians, and by these wounds, that thou art become so great as to disown Philip and make thyself son to Ammon.”

51 1 Thoroughly incensed, then, Alexander said: “Base fellow, dost thou think to speak thus of me at all times, and to raise faction among Macedonians, with impunity?” 2 “Nay,” said Cleitus, “not even now do we enjoy impunity, since such are the rewards we get for our toils; and we pronounce those happy who are already dead, and did not live to see us Macedonians thrashed with Median rods, or begging Persians in order to get audience with our king.” 3 So spake Cleitus in all boldness, and those about Alexander sprang up to confront him and reviled him, while the elder men tried to quell the tumult. 4 Then Alexander, turning to Xenodochus of Cardia and Artemus of Colophon, said: “Do not the Greeks appear to you to walk about among Macedonians like demi-gods among wild beasts?” 5 Cleitus, however, would not yield, but called on Alexander to speak out freely what he wished to say, or else not to invite to supper men who were free and spoke their minds, but to live with Barbarians and slaves, who would do obeisance to his white tunic and Persian girdle. Then Alexander, no longer able to restrain his anger, threw one of the apples that lay on the table at Cleitus and hit him, and began looking about for his sword. 6 But one of his body-guards, Aristophanes, conveyed it away before he could lay his hands on it, and the rest surrounded him and begged him to desist, whereupon he sprang to his feet and called out in Macedonian speech a summons to his corps of guards (and this was a sign of great disturbance), and ordered the trumpeter to sound, and smote him with his fist because he hesitated and was unwilling to do so. 7 This man, then, was afterwards held in high esteem on the ground that it was due to him more than to any one else that the camp was not thrown into commotion. 8 But Cleitus would not give in, and with much ado his friends pushed him out of the banquet-hall.

He tried to come in again, however, by another door, very boldly and contemptuously reciting these iambics from the “Andromache” of Euripides:

“Alas! in Hellas what an evil government!”

9 And so, at last, Alexander seized a spear from one of his guards, met Cleitus as he was drawing aside the curtain before the door, and ran him through. 10 No sooner had Cleitus fallen with a roar and a groan than the king’s anger departed from him. 11 And when he was come to himself and beheld his friends standing speechless, he drew the spear from the dead body and would have dashed it into his own throat, had not his body-guards prevented this by seizing his hands and carrying him by force to his chamber.

52 1 Here he spent the night and the following day in bitter lamentations, and at last lay speechless, worn out with his cries and wailing, heaving deep groans. Then his friends, alarmed at his silence, forced their way in. 2 To what the others said he would pay no attention, but when Aristander the seer reminded him of the vision he had seen concerning Cleitus, and of the omen, assuring him that all this had long ago been decreed by fate, he seemed to be less obdurate. 3 Therefore they brought in to him Callisthenes the philosopher, who was a relative of Aristotle, and Anaxarchus of Abdera. Of these, Callisthenes tried by considerate and gentle methods to alleviate the king’s suffering, employing insinuation and circumlocution so as to avoid giving pain; but Anaxarchus, who had always taken a path of his own in philosophy, 4 and had acquired a reputation for despising and slighting his associates, shouted out as soon as he came in: 5 “Here is Alexander, to whom the whole world is now looking; but he lies on the floor weeping like a slave, in fear of the law and the censure of men, unto whom he himself should be a law and a measure of justice, 695 since he has conquered the right to rule and mastery, instead of submitting like a slave to the mastery of a vain opinion. 6 Knowest thou not,” said he, “that Zeus had Justice and Law seated beside him, in order that everything that is done by the master of the world may be lawful and just?” 7 By using some such arguments as these Anaxarchus succeeded in lightening the suffering of the king, it is true, but rendered his disposition in many ways more vainglorious and lawless; he also made himself wonderfully liked by the king, and brought the intercourse of Callisthenes with him, which had always been unpleasant because of the man’s austerity, into additional disfavour.

8 It is said that once at supper the conversation turned upon seasons and weather, and that Callisthenes, who held with those who maintain that it is more cold and wintry there than in Greece, was stoutly opposed by Anaxarchus, whereupon he said: 9 “You surely must admit that it is colder here than there; for there you used to go about in winter in a cloak merely, but here you recline at table with three rugs thrown over you.” Of course this also added to the irritation of Anaxarchus.

53 1 Moreover, the other sophists and flatterers in the train of Alexander were annoyed to see Callisthenes eagerly courted by the young men on account of his eloquence, and no less pleasing to the older men on account of his mode of life, which was well-ordered, dignified, and independent, and confirmed the reason given for his sojourn abroad, namely, that he had gone to Alexander from an ardent desire to restore his fellow-citizens to their homes and re-people his native city. 2 And besides being envied on account of his reputation, he also at times by his own conduct furnished material for his detractors, rejecting invitations for the most part, and when he did go into company, by his gravity and silence making it appear that he disapproved or disliked what was going on, so that even Alexander said in allusion to him: —

“I hate a wise man even to himself unwise.”

3 It is said, moreover, that once when a large company had been invited to the king’s supper, Callisthenes was bidden, when the cup came to him, to speak in praise of the Macedonians, and was so successful on the theme that the guests rose up to applaud him and threw their garlands at him; 4 whereupon Alexander said that, in the language of Euripides, when a man has for his words

“A noble subject, it is easy to speak well;”

“but show us the power of your eloquence,” said he, “by a denunciation of the Macedonians, that they may become even better by learning their faults.” 5 And so Callisthenes began his palinode, and spoke long and boldly in denunciation of the Macedonians, and after showing that faction among the Greeks was the cause of the increase of Philip’s power, added:

“But in a time of sedition, the base man too is in honour.”

6 This gave the Macedonians a stern and bitter hatred of him, and Alexander declared that Callisthenes had given a proof, not of his eloquence, but of his ill-will towards the Macedonians.

54 1 This, then, according to Hermippus, is the story which Stroebus, the slave who read aloud for Callisthenes, told to Aristotle, and he says that when Callisthenes was aware of the alienation of the king, twice or thrice, as he was going away from him, he recited the verse:

“Dead also is Patroclus, a man far braver than thou art.”

2 What Aristotle said, then, would seem to have been no idle verdict, namely, that Callisthenes showed great ability as a speaker, but lacked common sense. 3 But in the matter of the obeisance, at least, by refusing sturdily and like a philosopher to perform the act, and by standing forth alone and rehearsing in public the reasons for the indignation which all the oldest and best of the Macedonians cherished in secret, he delivered the Greeks from a great disgrace, and Alexander from a greater, 696 by leading him not to insist upon the obeisance; but he destroyed himself, because he was thought to use force rather than persuasion with the king.

4 Chares of Mitylene says that once at a banquet Alexander, after drinking, handed the cup to one of his friends, and he, on receiving it, rose up so as to face the household shrine, and when he had drunk, first made obeisance to Alexander, then kissed him, and then resumed his place upon the couch. 5 As all the guests were doing this in turn, Callisthenes took the cup, the king not paying attention, but conversing with Hephaestion, and after he had drunk went towards the king to kiss him; 6 but Demetrius, surnamed Pheido, cried: “O King, do not accept his kiss, for he alone has not done thee obeisance.” So also declined the kiss, at which Callisthenes exclaimed in a loud voice: “Well, then, I’ll go away the poorer by a kiss.”

55 1 The king having been thus alienated, in the first place, Hephaestion found credence for his story that Callisthenes had promised him to make obeisance to the king and then had been false to his agreement. 2 Again, men like Lysimachus and Hagnon persisted in saying that the sophist went about with lofty thoughts as if bent on abolishing a tyranny, and that the young men flocked to him and followed him about as if he were the only freeman among so many tens of thousands. 3 For this reason also, when the conspiracy of Hermolaüs and his associates against Alexander was discovered, it was thought that the accusations of his detractors had an air of probability. 4 They said, namely, that when Hermolaüs put the question to him how he might become a most illustrious man, Callisthenes said: “By killing the most illustrious;” and that in inciting Hermolaüs to the deed he bade him have no fear of the golden couch, but remember that he was approaching a man who was subject to sickness and wounds. 5 And yet not one of the accomplices of Hermolaüs, even in the last extremity, denounced Callisthenes. 6 Nay, even Alexander himself, in the letters which he wrote at once to Craterus, Attalus, and Alcetas, says that the youths confessed under torture that they had made this attempt of themselves, and that no one else was privy to it. 7 But in a letter written later to Antipater, wherein he accuses Callisthenes also of the crime, he says: “The youths were stoned to death by the Macedonians, but the sophist I will punish, together with those who sent him to me and those who harbour in their cities men who conspire against my life;” and in these words, at least, he directly reveals a hostility to Aristotle, 8 in whose house Callisthenes, on account of his relationship, had been reared, being a son of Hero, who was a niece of Aristotle. 9 As to the death of Callisthenes, some say that he was hanged by Alexander’s orders, others that he was bound hand and foot and died of sickness, and Chares says that after his arrest he was kept in fetters seven months, that he might be tried before a full council when Aristotle was present, but that about the time when Alexander was wounded in India, he died from obesity and the disease of lice.

56 1 This, however, belongs to a later time. Meanwhile Demaratus the Corinthian, who was now well on in years, was eagerly desirous of going up to Alexander; and when he had seen him, he said that those Greeks were deprived of a great pleasure who had died before seeing Alexander seated on the throne of Dareius. 2 However, he did not long enjoy the king’s good will towards him, but died from debility. His obsequies were magnificent, and the army raised in his memory a mound of great circumference and eighty cubits in height. His ashes were carried down to the sea-board on a four-horse chariot splendidly adorned.

57 1 Alexander was now about to cross the mountains into India, and since he saw that his army was by this time cumbered with much booty and hard to move, at break of day, after the baggage-waggons had been loaded, 697 he burned first those which belonged to himself and his companions, and then gave orders to set fire to those of the Macedonians. 2 And the planning of the thing turned out to be a larger and more formidable matter than its execution. For it gave annoyance to a few only of the soldiers, while the most of them, with rapturous shouts and war-cries, shared their necessaries with those who were in need of them, and what was superfluous they burned and destroyed with their own hands, thus filling Alexander with zeal and eagerness. 3 Besides, he was already greatly feared, and inexorable in the chastisement of a transgressor. For instance, when a certain Menander, one of his companions, who had been put in command of a garrison, refused to remain there, he put him to death; and Orsodates, a Barbarian who had revolted from him, he shot down with his own hand.

4 When a sheep yeaned a lamb which had upon its head what looked like a tiara in form and colour, with testicles on either side of it, Alexander was filled with loathing at the portent, and had himself purified by the Babylonians, whom he was accustomed to take along with him for such purposes; and in conversation with his friends he said that he was not disturbed for his own sake, but for theirs, fearing lest after his death Heaven might devolve his power upon an ignoble and impotent man. 5 However, a better portent occurred and put an end to his dejection. The Macedonian, namely, who was set over those in charge of the royal equipage, Proxenus by name, as he was digging a place for the king’s tent along the river Oxus, uncovered a spring of liquid which was oily and fatty; 6 but when the top of it was drawn off, there flowed at once a pure and clear oil, which appeared to differ from olive oil neither in odour nor in flavour, and in smoothness and lustre was altogether the same, and that too though the country produced no olive trees. 7 It is said, indeed, that Oxus itself also has a very soft water, which gives sleekness to the skin of those who bathe in it. 8 However, that Alexander was marvellously pleased is clear from what he writes to Antipater, where he speaks of this as one of the greatest omens vouchsafed to him from Heaven. 9 The seers, however, held that the omen foreshadowed an expedition which would be glorious, but difficult and toilsome; for oil, they said, was given to men by Heaven as an aid to toil.

58 1 And so it proved; for he encountered many perils in the battles which he fought, and received very severe wounds; but the greatest losses which his army suffered were caused by lack of necessary provisions and severity of weather. 2 Still, he was eager to overcome fortune by boldness and force by valour, and thought nothing invincible for the courageous, and nothing secure for the cowardly. 3 It is said that when he was besieging the citadel of Sisimithres, which was steep and inaccessible, so that his soldiers were disheartened, he asked Oxyartes what sort of a man Sisimithres himself was in point of spirit. 4 And when Oxyartes replied that he was most cowardly of men, “Thy words mean,” said Alexander, “that we can take the citadel, since he who commands it is a weak thing.” And indeed he did take the citadel by frightening Sisimithres. 5 Again, after attacking another citadel equally precipitous, he was urging on the younger Macedonians, and addressing one who bore the name of Alexander, said: “It behooves thee, at least, to be a brave man, even for thy name’s sake.” And when the young man, fighting gloriously, fell, the king was pained beyond measure. 6 And at another time, when his Macedonians hesitated to advance upon the citadel called Nysa because there was a deep river in front of it, Alexander, halting on the bank, cried: “Most miserable man that I am, why, pray, have I not learned to swim?” and at once, carrying his shield, he would have tried to cross. 7 And when, after he had put a stop to the fighting, ambassadors came from the beleaguered cities to beg for terms, they were amazed, to begin with, to see him in full armour and without an attendant; and besides, when a cushion was brought to him for his use, he ordered the eldest of the ambassadors, Acuphis by name, to take it for his seat. 6988 Acuphis, accordingly, astonished at his magnanimity and courtesy, asked what he wished them to do in order to be his friends. 9 “Thy countrymen,” said Alexander, “must make thee their ruler, and send me a hundred of their best men.” At this Acuphis laughed, and said: “Nay, O King, I shall rule better if I send to thee the worst men rather than the best.”

59 1 Taxiles, we are told, had a realm in India as large as Egypt, with good pasturage, too, and in the highest degree productive of beautiful fruits. He was also a wise man in his way, and after he had greeted Alexander, said: 2 “Why must we war and fight with one another, Alexander, if thou art not come to rob us of water or of necessary sustenance, the only things for which men of sense are obliged to fight obstinately? 3 As for other wealth and possessions, so called, if I am thy superior therein, I am ready to confer favours; but if thine inferior, I will not object to thanking you for favours conferred.” 4 At this Alexander was delighted, and clasping the king’s hand, said: “Canst thou think, pray, that after such words of kindness our interview is to end without a battle? Nay, thou shalt not get the better of me; for I will contend against thee and fight to the last with my favours, that thou mayest not surpass me in generosity.” 5 So, after receiving many gifts and giving many more, at last he lavished upon him a thousand talents in coined money. This conduct greatly vexed Alexander’s friends, but it made many of the Barbarians look upon him more kindly.

6 The best fighters among the Indians, however, were mercenaries, and they used to go about to the different cities and defend them sturdily, and wrought much harm to Alexander’s cause. Therefore, after he had made a truce with them in a certain city and allowed them to depart, he fell upon them as they marched and slew them all. 7 And this act adheres like a stain to his military career; in all other instances he waged war according to usage and like a king. 8 The philosophers, too, no less than the mercenaries, gave him trouble, by abusing those of the native princes who attached themselves to his cause, and by inciting the free peoples to revolt. He therefore took many of these also and hanged them.

60 1 Of his campaign against Porus he himself has given an account in his letters. He says, namely, that the river Hydaspes flowed between the two camps, and that Porus stationed his elephants on the opposite bank and kept continual watch of the crossing. 2 He himself, accordingly, day by day caused a great din and tumult to be made in his camp, and thereby accustomed the Barbarians not to be alarmed. 3 Then, on a dark and stormy night, he took a part of his infantry and the best of his horsemen, and after proceeding along the river to a distance from where the enemy lay, crossed over to a small island. 4 Here rain fell in torrents, and many tornadoes and thunder-bolts dashed down upon his men; but nevertheless, although he saw that many of them were being burned to death by the thunder-bolts, he set out from the islet and made for the opposite banks. 5 But the Hydaspes, made violent by the storm and dashing high against its bank, made a great breach in it, and a large part of the stream was setting in that direction; and the shore between the two currents gave his men no sure footing, since it was broken and slippery. 6 And here it was that he is said to have cried: “O Athenians, can ye possibly believe what perils I am undergoing to win glory in your eyes?” 7 This, however, is the story of Onesicritus; Alexander himself says that they left their rafts and crossed the breach with their armour on, wading breast-high in water, and that after he had crossed he led his horsemen twenty furlongs in advance of his infantry, calculating that, in case the enemy attacked with their cavalry, he would be far superior to them, and in case they moved up their men-at arms, 699 his infantry would join him in good season. And one of these suppositions came to pass. 8 For after routing a thousand of the enemy’s horsemen and sixty of their chariots which engaged him, he captured all the chariots, and slew four hundred of the horsemen. 9 And now Porus, thus led to believe that Alexander himself had crossed the river, advanced upon him with all his forces, except the part he left behind to impede the crossing of the remaining Macedonians. 10 But Alexander, fearing the elephants and the great numbers of the enemy, himself assaulted their left wing, and ordered Coenus to attack their right. 11 Both wings having been routed, the vanquished troops retired in every case upon the elephants in the centre, and were there crowded together with them, and from this point on the battle was waged at close quarters, and it was not until the eighth hour that the enemy gave up. Such then, is the account of the battle which the victor himself has given in his letters.

12 Most historians agree that Porus was four cubits and a span high, and that the size and majesty of his body made his elephant seem as fitting a mount for him as a horse for the horseman. And yet his elephant was of the largest size; 13 and it showed remarkable intelligence and solicitude for the king, bravely defending him and beating back his assailants while he was still in full vigour, and when it perceived that its master was worn out with a multitude of missiles and wounds, fearing he should fall off, it knelt softly on the ground, and with its proboscis gently took each spear and drew it out of his body. 14 Porus was taken prisoner, and when Alexander asked him how he would be treated, said: “Like a king”; and to another question from Alexander whether he had anything else to say, replied: 15 “All things are included in my ‘like a king.’ “ Accordingly, Alexander not only permitted him to govern his former kingdom, giving him the title of satrap, but also added to it the territory of the independent peoples whom he subdued, in which there are said to have been fifteen nations, five thousand cities of considerable size, and a great multitude of villages. 16 He subdued other territory also thrice as large as this and appointed Philip, one of his companions, satrap over it.

61 1 After the battle with Porus, too, Bucephalas died, — not at once, but some time afterwards, — as most writers say, from wounds for which he was under treatment, but according to Onesicritus, from old age, having become quite worn out; for he was thirty years old when he died. 2 His death grieved Alexander mightily, who felt that he had lost nothing less than a comrade and a friend; he also built a city in his memory on the banks of the Hydaspes and called it Bucephalia. 3 It is said, too, that when he lost a dog also, named Peritas, which had been reared by him and was loved by him, he founded a city and gave it the dog’s name. Sotion says he heard this from Potamon the Lesbian.

699 62 1 As for the Macedonians, however, their struggle with Porus blunted their courage and stayed their further advance into India. 2 For having had all they could do to repulse an enemy who mustered only twenty thousand infantry and two thousand horse, they violently opposed Alexander when he insisted on crossing the river Ganges also, the width of which, as they learned, was thirty-two furlongs, its depth a hundred fathoms, while its banks on the further side were covered with multitudes of men-at arms and horsemen and elephants. 3 For they were told that the kings of the Ganderites and Praesii were awaiting them with eighty thousand horsemen, two hundred thousand footmen, eight thousand chariots, and six thousand fighting elephants. 4 And there was no boasting in these reports. For Androcottus, who reigned there not long afterwards, made a present to Seleucus of five hundred elephants, and with an army of six hundred thousand men overran and subdued all India.

5 At first, then, Alexander shut himself up in his tent from displeasure and wrath and lay there, 700 feeling no gratitude for what he had already achieved unless he should cross the Ganges, nay, counting retreat a confession of defeat. 6 But his friends gave him fitting consolation, and his soldiers crowded about his door and besought him with loud cries and wailing, until at last he relented and began to break camp, resorting to many deceitful and fallacious devices for the enhancement of his fame. 7 For instance, he had armour prepared that was larger than usual, and mangers for horses that were higher, and bits that were heavier than those in common use, and left them scattered up and down. Moreover, he erected altars for the gods, 8 which down to the present time are revered by the kings of the Praesii when they cross the river, and on them they offer sacrifices in the Hellenic manner. 9 Androcottus, when he was a stripling, saw Alexander himself, and we are told that he often said in later times that Alexander narrowly missed making himself master of the country, since its king was hated and despised on account of his baseness and low birth.

63 1 From thence, being eager to behold the ocean, and having built many passage-boats equipped with oars, and many rafts, he was conveyed down the rivers in a leisurely course. 2 And yet his voyage was not made without effort nor even without war, but he would land and assault the cities on his route and subdue everything. However, in attacking the people called Malli, who are said to have been the most warlike of the Indians, he came within a little of being cut down. 3 For after dispersing the inhabitants from the walls with missiles, he was the first to mount upon the wall by a scaling ladder, and since the ladder was broken to pieces and he was exposed to the missiles of the Barbarians who stood along the wall below, almost alone as he was, he crouched and threw himself into the midst of the enemy, and by good fortune alighted on his feet. 4 Then, as he brandished his arms, the Barbarians thought that a shape of gleaming fire played in front of his person. 5 Therefore at first they scattered and fled; but when they saw that he was accompanied by only two of his guards, they ran upon him, and some tried to wound him by thrusting their swords and spears through his armour as he defended himself, 6 while one, standing a little further off, shot an arrow at him with such accuracy and force that it cut its way through his breastplate and fastened itself in his ribs at the breast. 7 Such was the force of the blow that Alexander recoiled and sank to his knees, whereupon his assailant ran at him with drawn scimitar, while Peucestas and Limnaeus defended him. 8 Both of them were wounded, and Limnaeus was killed; but Peucestas held out, and at last Alexander killed the Barbarian. 9 But he himself received many wounds, and at last was smitten on the neck with a cudgel, and leaned against the wall, his eyes still fixed upon his foes. 10 At this instant the Macedonians flocked about him, caught him up, already unconscious of what was going on about him, and carried him to his tent. 11 And straightway a report that he was dead prevailed in the camp; but when with much difficulty and pains they had sawn off the shaft of the arrow, which was of wood, and had thus succeeded at last in removing the king’s breastplate, they came to the excision of the arrow-head, which was buried in one of the ribs. 12 We are told, moreover, that it was three fingers broad and four long. Its removal, therefore, threw the king into swoons and brought him to death’s door, but nevertheless he recovered. 13 And after he was out of danger, though he was still weak and kept himself for a long time under regimen and treatment, perceiving from their tumult at his door that his Macedonians were yearning to see him, he took his cloak and went out to them. 14 And after sacrificing to the gods he went on board ship again and dropped down the river, subduing much territory and great cities as he went.

64 1 He captured ten of the Gymnosophists who had done most to get Sabbas to revolt, and had made the most trouble for the Macedonians. These philosophers were reputed to be clever and concise in answering questions, and Alexander therefore put difficult questions to them, declaring that he would put to death him who first made an incorrect answer, 701 and then the rest, in an order determined in like manner; and he commanded one of them, the oldest, to be the judge in the contest. 2 The first one, accordingly, being asked which, in his opinion, were more numerous, the living or the dead, said that the living were, since the dead no longer existed. 3 The second, being asked whether the earth or the sea produced larger animals, said the earth did, since the sea was but a part of the earth. 4 The third, being asked what animal was the most cunning, said: “That which up to this time man has not discovered.” 5 The fourth, when asked why he had induced Sabbas to revolt, replied: “Because I wished him either to live nobly or to die nobly.” 6 The fifth, being asked which, in his opinion, was older, day or night, replied: “Day, by one day”; 7 and he added, upon the king expressing amazement, that hard questions must have hard answers. 8 Passing on, then, to the sixth, Alexander asked how a man could be most loved; “If,” said the philosopher, “he is most powerful, and yet does not inspire fear.” 9 Of the three remaining, he who was asked how one might become a god instead of man, replied: “By doing something which a man cannot do”; 10 the one who was asked which was the stronger, life or death, answered: “Life, since it supports so many ills.” 11 And the last, asked how long it were well for a man to live, answered: “Until he does not regard death as better than life.” 12 So, then, turning to the judge, Alexander bade him give his opinion. The judge declared that they had answered one worse than another. “Well, then,” said Alexander, “thou shalt die first for giving such a verdict.” “That cannot be, O King,” said the judge, “unless thou falsely saidst that thou wouldst put to death first him who answered worst.”

65 1 These philosophers, then, he dismissed with gifts; but to those who were in the highest repute and lived quietly by themselves he sent Onesicritus, asking them to pay him a visit. 2 Now, Onesicritus was a philosopher of the school of Diogenes the Cynic. And he tells us that Calanus very harshly and insolently bade him strip off his tunic and listen naked to what he had to say, otherwise he would not converse with him, not even if he came from Zeus; 3 but he says that Dandamis was gentler, and that after hearing fully about Socrates, Pythagoras, and Diogenes, he remarked that the men appeared to him to have been of good natural parts but to have passed their lives in too much awe of the laws. 4 Others, however, say that the only words uttered by Dandamis were these “Why did Alexander make such a long journey hither?” 5 Calanus, nevertheless, was persuaded by Taxiles to pay a visit to Alexander. His real name was Sphines, but because he greeted those whom he met with “Cale,” the Indian word of salutation, the Greeks called him Calanus. 6 It was Calanus, as we are told, who laid before Alexander the famous illustration of government. It was this. He threw down upon the ground a dry and shrivelled hide, and set his foot upon the outer edge of it; the hide was pressed down in one place, but rose up in others. 7 He went all round the hide and showed that this was the result wherever he pressed the edge down, and then at last he stood in the middle of it, and lo! it was all held down firm and still.  The similitude was designed to show that Alexander ought to put most constraint upon the middle of his empire and not wander far away from it.

701 66 1 His descent of the rivers to the sea consumed seven months’ time. And after emerging with his fleet into the ocean, he sailed out to an island to which he himself gave the name of Scillustis, others that of Psiltucis. 2 Here he landed and sacrificed to the gods, and studied the nature of the sea and of all the sea-coast that was accessible. Then, after praying that no man after him might pass beyond the bounds of his expedition, he turned to go back. 702 3 His fleet he ordered to go round by sea, keeping India on the right; Nearchus was appointed admiral of the fleet, Onesicritus its chief-pilot. 4 But he himself proceeded by land through the country of the Oreites, where he was reduced to the direst straits and lost a multitude of men, so that not even the fourth part of his fighting force was brought back from India. 5 And yet his infantry had once numbered a hundred and twenty thousand, and his cavalry fifteen thousand. 6 But grievous diseases, wretched food, parching heats, and, worst of all, famine destroyed them, since they traversed an untilled country of men who dragged out a miserable existence, who possessed but few sheep and those of a miserable sort, since the sea-fish which they ate made their flesh unsavoury and rank. 7 It was with difficulty, then, that Alexander passed through this country in sixty days; but as soon as he reached Gedrosia he had all things in abundance, for the nearest satraps and princes had provided them.

67 1 Accordingly, after refreshing his forces here, he set out and marched for seven days through Carmania in a revelling rout. 2 He himself was conveyed slowly along by eight horses, while he feasted day and night continuously with his companions on a dais built upon a lofty and conspicuous scaffolding of oblong shape; 3 and waggons without number followed, some with purple and embroidered canopies, others protected from the sun by boughs of trees which were kept fresh and green, conveying the rest of his friends and commanders, who were all garlanded and drinking. 4 Not a shield was to be seen, not a helmet, not a spear, but along the whole march with cups and drinking-horns and flagons the soldiers kept dipping wine from huge casks and mixing-bowls and pledging one another, some as they marched along, others lying down; 5 while pipes and flutes, stringed instruments and song, with revelling cries of women, filled every place with abundant music. 6 Then, upon this disordered and straggling procession there followed also the sports of bacchanalian license, as though Bacchus himself were present and conducting the revel. 7 Moreover, when he came to the royal palace of Gedrosia, he once more gave his army time for rest and held high festival. 8 We are told, too, that he was once viewing some contests in singing and dancing, being well heated with wine, and that his favourite, Bagoas, won the prize for song and dance, and then, all in his festal array, passed through the theatre and took his seat by Alexander’s side; at sight of which the Macedonians clapped their hands and loudly bade the king kiss the victor, until at last he threw his arms about him and kissed him tenderly.

68 1 Here Nearchus came up to meet him, and Alexander was so delighted to hear of his voyage that he eagerly desired to sail down the Euphrates himself with a large fleet, and then, after circumnavigating Arabia and Africa, to enter the Mediterranean by way of the pillars of Heracles. 2 And vessels of every sort were built for him at Thapsacus, and sailors and pilots were assembled from all parts. 3 But the increasing difficulties of his march back, his wound among the Malli, and the losses in his army, which were reported to be heavy, led men to doubt his safe return, inclined subject peoples to revolt, and bred great injustice, rapacity, and insolence in the generals and satraps whom he had appointed. In a word, restlessness and a desire for change spread everywhere. 4 For even against Antipater, Olympias and Cleopatra had raised a faction, Olympias taking Epirus, and Cleopatra Macedonia. 5 When he heard of this, Alexander said that his mother had made the better choice; for the Macedonians would not submit to be reigned over by a woman.

6 For these reasons he sent Nearchus back to the sea, determined to fill all the regions along the sea with wars, 703 while he himself, marching down from Upper Asia, chastised those of his commanders who had done wrong. 7 One of the sons of Abuletes, Oxyartes, he slew with his own hand, running him through with a spear; and when Abuletes failed to furnish him with the necessary provisions, but brought him instead three thousand talents in coin, Alexander ordered the money to be thrown to his horses. And when they would not touch it, “Of what use to us, then,” he cried, “is the provision you have made?” and threw Abuletes into prison.

69 1 In Persia, to begin with, he distributed the money among the women, just as their kings were accustomed, as often as they came into Persia, to give each one a gold piece. 2 And this reason, it is said, some of their kings did not come often into Persia, and Ochus not even once, being so penurious as to expatriate himself. 3 In the second place, having discovered that the tomb of Cyrus had been rifled, he put to death the perpetrator of the deed, although the culprit was a prominent Macedonian native of Pella, by name Polymachus. 4 After reading the inscription upon this tomb, he ordered it to be repeated below in Greek letters. It ran thus: “O man, whosoever thou art and whencesoever thou comest, for I know that thou wilt come, I am Cyrus, and I won for the Persians their empire. Do not, therefore, begrudge me this little earth which covers my body.” 5 These words, then, deeply affected Alexander, who was reminded of the uncertainty and mutability of life.

6 In Persia, too, Calanus, who had suffered for a little while from intestinal disorder, asked that a funeral pyre might be prepared for him. 7 To this he came on horseback, and after offering prayers, sprinkling himself, and casting some of his hair upon the pyre, he ascended it, greeting the Macedonians who were present, and exhorting them to make that day one of pleasure and revelry with the king, whom, he declared, he should soon see in Babylon. 8 After thus speaking, he lay down and covered his head, nor did he move as the fire approached him, but continued to lie in the same posture as at first, and so sacrificed himself acceptably, as the wise men of his country had done from of old. 9 The same thing was done many years afterwards by another Indian who was in the following of Caesar, at Athens; and the “Indian’s Tomb” is shown there to this day.

70 1 But Alexander, after returning from the funeral pyre and assembling many of his friends and officers for supper, proposed a contest in drinking neat wine, the victor to be crowned. 2 Well, then, the one who drank the most, Promachus, got as far as four pitchers; he took the prize, a crown of a talent’s worth, but lived only three days afterwards. And of the rest, according to Chares, forty-one died of what they drank, a violent chill having set in after their debauch.

3 At Susa he brought to pass the marriage of his companions, took to wife himself the daughter of Dareius, Stateira, assigned the noblest women to his noblest men, and gave a general wedding feast for those of his Macedonians who had already contracted other marriages. At this feast, we are told, nine thousand guests reclined at supper, to each of whom a golden cup for the libations was given. All the other appointments too, were amazingly splendid, and the host paid himself the debts which his guests owed, the whole outlay amounting to nine thousand eight hundred and seventy talents. 4 Now Antigenes, the One-eyed, had got himself enrolled as a debtor fraudulently and, on producing somebody who affirmed that he had made a loan to him at the bank, the money was paid over; then his fraud was discovered, and the king, in anger, drove him from his court and deprived him of his command. 7045 Antigenes, however, was a splendid soldier, and while he was still a young man and Philip was besieging Perinthus, though a bolt from a catapult smote him in the eye, he would not consent to have the bolt taken out nor give up fighting until he had repelled the enemy and shut them up within their walls. 6 Accordingly, he could not endure with any complacency the disgrace that now fell upon him, but was evidently going to make away with himself from grief and despondency. So the king, fearing this, put away his wrath and ordered him to keep the money.

71 1 The thirty thousand boys whom he had left behind him under institution and training were now so vigorous in their bodies and so comely in their looks, and showed besides such admirable dexterity and agility in their exercises, that Alexander himself was delighted; his Macedonians, however, were filled with dejection and fear, thinking that their king would now pay less regard to them. 2 Therefore when he also sent the weak and maimed among them down to the sea-board, they said it was insult and abuse, after using men up in every kind of service, now to put them away in disgrace and cast them back upon their native cities and their parents, no longer the men they were when he took them. 3 Accordingly, they bade him send them all away and hold all his Macedonians of no account, since he had these young war-dancers, with whom he could go on and conquer the world. 4 At these words of theirs Alexander was displeased, and heaped much abuse upon them in his anger, and drove them away, and committed his watches to Persians, and out of these constituted his body-guards and attendants. 5 When the Macedonians saw him escorted by these, while they themselves were excluded from him and treated with contumely, they were humbled; and when they reasoned the matter out they found that they had been almost mad with jealousy and rage. 6 So finally, after coming to their senses, they went to his tent, without their arms and wearing their tunics only, and with loud cries and lamentations put themselves at his mercy, bidding him deal with them as base and thankless men. 7 But Alexander would not see them, although his heart was softening. And the men would not desist, but for two days and nights persisted in standing thus before his door, weeping and calling upon their master. 8 So on the third day he came forth, and when he saw their piteous and humble plight, wept for some time; then, after chiding them gently and speaking kindly to them, he dismissed those who were past service with magnificent gifts, and wrote to Antipater that at all the public contests and in the theatres they should have the foremost seats and wear garlands. 9 He also ordained that the orphan children of those who had lost their lives in his service should receive their father’s pay.

72 1 When he came to Ecbatana in Media and had transacted the business that was urgent, he was once more much occupied with theatres and festivals, since three thousand artists had come to him from Greece. 2 But during this time it chanced that Hephaestion had a fever; and since, young man and soldier that he was, he could not submit to a strict regimen, as soon as Glaucus, his physician, had gone off to the theatre, he sat down to breakfast, ate a boiled fowl, drank a huge cooler of wine, fell sick, and in a little while died. 3 Alexander’s grief at this loss knew no bounds. He immediately ordered that the manes and tails of all horses and mules should be shorn in token of mourning, and took away the battlements of the cities round about; he also crucified the wretched physician, and put a stop to the sound of flutes and every kind of music in the camp for a long time, until an oracular response from Ammon came bidding him honour Hephaestion as a hero and sacrifice to him. 4 Moreover, making war a solace for his grief, he went forth to hunt and track down men, as it were, and overwhelmed the nation of the Cossaeans, slaughtering them all from the youth upwards. This was called an offering to the shade of Hephaestion. 7055 Upon a tomb and obsequies for his friend, and upon their embellishments, he purposed to spend ten thousand talents, and wished that the ingenuity and novelty of the construction should surpass the expense. He therefore longed for Stasicratesa above all other artists, because in his innovations there was always promise of great magnificence, boldness, and ostentation. 6 This man, indeed, had said to him at a former interview that of all mountains the Thracian Athos could most readily be given the form and shape of a man; 7 if, therefore, Alexander should so order, he would make out of Mount Athos a most enduring and most conspicuous statue of the king, which in its left hand should hold a city of ten thousand inhabitants, and with its right should pour forth a river running with generous current into the sea. 8 This project, it is true, Alexander had declined; but now he was busy devising and contriving with his artists projects far more strange and expensive than this.

73 1 As he was on his way to enter Babylon, Nearchus (who had joined him again after sailing through the ocean into the Euphrates) told the king that certain Chaldaeans had met him and advised that Alexander should keep away from Babylon. 2 Alexander paid no heed to this, but continued on his march; and when he was arrived at the walls, he saw many ravens flying about and clawing one another, and some of them fell dead at his feet. 3 Again, being informed that Apollodorus the commandant of Babylon had sacrificed to learn Alexander’s fate, Alexander called Pythagoras the seer. 4 Pythagoras did not deny the fact, whereupon Alexander asked him what was the character of the sacrifice. And when the seer told that the victim’s liver had no lobe, “Ah me!” said Alexander, “a forcible omen!” 5 and did Pythagoras no harm. He was sorry, too, that he had not obeyed Nearchus, and passed most of his time outside of Babylon, either living in his tent, or sailing about on the Euphrates. 6 And he was troubled by many omens. For instance, the largest and handsomest lion in his menagerie was attacked by a tame ass and kicked to death. 7 Again, he once took off his clothes for exercise and was playing ball, and when it was time to dress again, the young men who were playing with him beheld a man seated on the king’s throne, in silence, wearing the royal diadem and robes. 8 When the man was asked who he was, he was speechless for a long time; but at last he came to his senses and said that his name was Dionysius, and that he was a native of Messenia; in consequence of some charge brought against him, he said, he had been brought thither from the sea-board, and for a long time had been in chains; 9 but just now the god Serapis had come to him and loosed his chains and brought him to this spot, bidding him put on the robe and diadem and sit on the throne and hold his peace.

74 1 On hearing of this, Alexander put the man out of the way, as the seers directed; but he began to be low-spirited, and was distrustful now of the favour of Heaven and suspicious of his friends. 2 He was particularly afraid of Antipater and of his sons, one of whom, Iolas, was his chief cupbearer; the other, Cassander, had only recently come to Babylon, and when he saw some Barbarians doing obeisance to Alexander, since he had been reared as a Greek and had never seen such a sight as this before, he laughed boisterously. 3 But Alexander was enraged, and clutching him fiercely by the hair with both hands dashed his head against the wall. 4 And at another time, when Cassander would have said something in opposition to those who were bringing charges against Antipater, Alexander interrupted him, saying: “What meanest thou? Would men come so long a journey if they had not been wronged and were making false charges?” 5 And when Cassander declared that this very fact of their coming a long distance away from the proofs showed that they were making false charges, Alexander burst out laughing and said: 706”These are the famous sophisms of Aristotle’s disciples for either side of the question; but ye shall rue the day if it appear that ye have done these men even a slight wrong.” 6 And in general, as we are told, Cassander’s spirit was deeply penetrated and imbued with a dreadful fear of Alexander, so that many years afterwards, when he was now king of Macedonia and master of Greece, as he was walking about and surveying the statues at Delphi, the sight of an image of Alexander smote him suddenly with a shuddering and trembling from which he could scarcely recover, and made his head swim.

75 1 Alexander, then, since he had now become sensitive to indications of the divine will and perturbed and apprehensive in his mind, converted every unusual and strange occurrence, were it never so insignificant, into a prodigy and portent; and sacrificers, purifiers, and diviners filled his palace. 2 So, you see, while it is a dire thing to be incredulous towards indications of the divine will and to have contempt for them, superstition is likewise a dire thing, which, after the manner of water ever seeking the lower levels, filled with folly the Alexander who was now become a prey to his fears. 3 Notwithstanding, in consequence of oracular responses regarding Hephaestion which were brought him, he laid aside his grief and betook himself once more to sacrifices and drinking-bouts. 4 He gave a splendid entertainment to Nearchus, and then, although he had taken his customary bath before going to bed, at the request of Medius he went to hold high revel with him; 5 and here, after drinking all the next day, he began to have a fever. This did not come upon him after he had quaffed a “bowl of Heracles,” nor after he had been seized with a sudden pain in the back as though smitten with a spear; these particulars certain writers felt obliged to give, and so, as it were, invented in tragic fashion a moving finale for a great action. 6 But Aristobulus says that he had a raging fever, and that when he got very thirsty he drank wine, whereupon he became delirious, and died on the thirtieth day of the month Daesius.

76 1 Moreover, in the court “Journals” there are recorded the following particulars regarding his sickness. On the eighteenth of the month Daesius he slept in the bathing-room because he had a fever. 2 On the following day, after his bath, he removed into his bed-chamber, and spent the day at dice with Medius. Then, when it was late, he took a bath, performed his sacrifices to the gods, ate a little, and had a fever through the night. 3 On the twentieth, after bathing again, he performed his customary sacrifice; and lying in the bathing-room he devoted himself to Nearchus, listening to his story of his voyage and of the great sea. 4 The twenty-first he spent in the same way and was still more inflamed, and during the night he was in a grievous plight, and all the following day his fever was very high. 5 So he had his bed removed and lay by the side of the great bath, where he conversed with his officers about the vacant posts in the army, and how they might be filled with experienced men. 6 On the twenty-fourth his fever was violent and he had to be carried forth to perform his sacrifices; moreover, he ordered his principal officers to tarry in the court of the palace, and the commanders of divisions and companies to spend the night outside. 7 He was carried to the palace on the other side of the river on the twenty-fifth, and got a little sleep, but his fever did not abate. And when his commanders came to his bedside, he was speechless, as he was also on the twenty-sixth; 8 therefore the Macedonians made up their minds that he was dead, and came with loud shouts to the doors of the palace, and threatened his companions until all opposition was broken down; and when the doors had been thrown open to them, without cloak or armour, one by one, they all filed slowly past his couch. 9 During this day, too, Python and Seleucus were sent to the temple of Serapis to enquire whether they should bring Alexander thither; and the god gave answer that they should leave him where he was. And on the twenty-eighth, towards evening, he died.

77 1 Most of this account is word for word as written in the “Journals.” 2 And as for suspicions of poisoning, no one had any immediately, 707 but five years afterwards, as we are told, upon information given, Olympias put many men to death, and scattered abroad the ashes of Iolas, alleging that he had administered the poison. 3 But those who affirm that Aristotle counselled Antipater to do the deed, and that it was entirely through his agency that the poison was provided, mention one Hagnothemis as their authority, who professed to have heard the story from Antigonus the king; 4 and the poison was water, icy cold, from a certain cliff in Nonacris; this they gathered up like a delicate dew and stored it in an ass’s hoof; for no other vessel would hold the water, but would all be eaten through by it, owing to its coldness and pungency. 5 Most writers, however, think that the story of the poisoning is altogether a fabrication; and it is no slight evidence in their favour that during the dissensions of Alexander’s commanders, which lasted many days, his body, although it lay without special care in places that were moist and stifling, showed no sign of such a destructive influence, but remained pure and fresh.

6 Now, Roxana was with child, and on this account was held in honour among the Macedonians; but she was jealous of Stateira, and therefore deceived her by a forged letter into coming where she was, and when she had got her there, slew her, together with her sister, threw their bodies into the well, and filled the well with earth, Perdiccas being privy to the deed and partner in it. 7 For it was he who was at once in the greatest authority, dragging Arrhidaeus around after him to safe-guard, as it were, the royal power. Arrhidaeus was Philip’s son by an obscure and common woman named Philinna, and was deficient in intellect owing to bodily disease. 8 This, however, did not come upon him in the course of nature or of its own accord, indeed, it is said that as a boy he displayed an exceedingly gifted and noble disposition: but after Olympias gave him drugs which injured his body and ruined his mind.

Caesar

1 1 The wife of Caesar was Cornelia, the daughter of the Cinna who had once held the sole power at Rome, and when Sulla became master of affairs, he could not, either by promises or threats, induce Caesar to put her away, and therefore confiscated her dowry. 2 Now, the reason for Caesar’s hatred of Sulla was Caesar’s relationship to Marius. For Julia, a sister of Caesar’s father, was the wife of Marius the Elder, and the mother of Marius the Younger, who was therefore Caesar’s cousin. 3 Moreover, Caesar was not satisfied to be overlooked at first by Sulla, who was busy with a multitude of proscriptions, but he came before the people as candidate for the priesthood, although he was not yet much more than a stripling. 4 To this candidacy Sulla secretly opposed himself, and took measures to make Caesar fail in it, and when he was deliberating about putting him to death and some said there was no reason for killing a mere boy like him, he declared that they had no sense if they did not see in this boy many Mariuses. 5 When this speech was reported to Caesar, he hid himself for some time, wandering about in the country of the Sabines. 6 Then, as he was changing his abode by night on account of sickness, he fell in with soldiers of Sulla who were searching those regions and arresting the men in hiding there. 7 Caesar gave their leader, Cornelius, two talents to set him free, and at once went down to the sea and sailed to King Nicomedes in Bithynia. 8 With him he tarried a short time, and then, on his voyage back, was captured, near the island Pharmacusa, by pirates, who already at that time controlled the sea with large armaments and countless small vessels.

2 1 To begin with, then, when the pirates demanded twenty talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them fifty. 2 In the next place, after he had sent various followers to various cities to procure the money and was left with one friend and two attendants among Cilicians, most murderous of men, he held them in such disdain that whenever he lay down to sleep he would send and order them to stop talking. 3 For eight and thirty days, as if the men were not his watchers, but his royal body-guard, he shared in their sports and exercises with great unconcern. 4 He also wrote poems and sundry speeches which he read aloud to them, and those who did not admire these he would call to their faces illiterate Barbarians, and often laughingly threatened to hang them all. The pirates were delighted at this, and attributed his boldness of speech to a certain simplicity and boyish mirth. 5 But after his ransom had come from Miletus and he had paid it and was set free, he immediately manned vessels and put to sea from the harbour of Miletus against the robbers. He caught them, too, still lying at anchor off the island, and got most of them into his power. 6 Their money he made his booty, but the men themselves he lodged in the prison at Pergamum, and then went in person to Junius, the governor of Asia, on the ground that it belonged to him, as praetor of the province, to punish the captives. 7 But since the praetor cast longing eyes on their money, which was no small sum, and kept saying that he would consider the case of the captives at his leisure, Caesar left him to his own devices, went to Pergamum, took the robbers out of prison, and crucified them all, just as he had often warned them on the island that he would do, when they thought he was joking.

3 1 After this, Sulla’s power being now on the wane, and Caesar’s friends at home inviting him to return, Caesar sailed to Rhodes to study under Apollonius the son of Molon, an illustrious rhetorician with the reputation of a worthy character, of whom Cicero also was a pupil. 2 It is said, too, that Caesar had the greatest natural talent for political oratory, and cultivated his talent most ambitiously, so that he had an undisputed second rank; 3 the first rank, however, he renounced, because he devoted his efforts to being first as a statesman and commander rather, and did not achieve that effectiveness in oratory to which his natural talent directed him, in consequence of his campaigns and of his political activities, by means of which he acquired the supremacy. 4 And so it was that, at a later time, in his reply to Cicero’s “Cato,” he himself deprecated comparison between the diction of a soldier and the eloquence of an orator who was gifted by nature and had plenty of leisure to pursue his studies.

4 1 After his return to Rome he impeached Dolabella for maladministration of his province, and many of the cities of Greece supplied him with testimony. 2 Dolabella, it is true, was acquitted, but Caesar, in return for the zealous efforts of the Greeks in his behalf, served as their advocate when they prosecuted Publius Antonius for corruption before Marcus Lucullus, the praetor of Macedonia. 3 And he was so effective that Antonius appealed to the tribunes at Rome, alleging that he could not have a fair trial in Greece against Greeks. 4 At Rome, moreover, Caesar won a great and brilliant popularity by his eloquence as an advocate, and much good will from the common people for the friendliness of his manners in intercourse with them, since he was ingratiating beyond his years. 5 He had also a large and gradually increasing political influence in consequence of his lavish hospitality and the general splendour of his mode of life. 6 At first his enemies thought this influence would quickly vanish when his expenditures ceased, and therefore suffered it to thrive among the common people; 7 but later on when it had become great and hard to subvert, and aimed directly at a complete revolution in the state, they perceived that no beginnings should be considered too small to be quickly made great by continuance, after contempt of them has left them unobstructed. 8 At all events, the man who is thought to have been the first to see beneath the surface of Caesar’s public policy and to fear it, as one might fear the smiling surface of the sea, and who comprehended the powerful character hidden beneath his kindly and cheerful exterior, namely Cicero, said that in most of Caesar’s political plans and projects he saw a tyrannical purpose; 9 “On the other hand,” said he, “when I look at his hair, which is arranged with so much nicety, and see him scratching his head with one finger, I cannot think that this man would ever conceive of so great a crime as the overthrow of the Roman constitution.” This, it is true, belongs to a later period.

5 1 The first proof of the people’s good will towards him he received when he competed against Caius Popilius for a military tribuneship and was elected over him; 2 a second and more conspicuous proof he received when, as nephew of Julia the deceased wife of Marius, he pronounced a splendid encomium upon her in the forum, and in her funeral procession ventured to display images of Marius, which were then seen for the first time since the administration of Sulla, because Marius and his friends had been pronounced public enemies. 3 When, namely, some cried out against Caesar for this procedure, the people answered them with loud shouts, received Caesar with applause, and admired him for bringing back after so long a time, as it were from Hades, the honours of Marius into the city. 4 Now, in the case of elderly women, it was ancient Roman usage to pronounce funeral orations over them; but it was not customary in the case of young women, and Caesar was the first to do so when his own wife died. 5 This also brought him much favour, and worked upon the sympathies of the multitude, so that they were fond of him, as a man who was gentle and full of feeling.

6 After the funeral of his wife, he went out to Spain as quaestor under Vetus, one of the praetors, whom he never ceased to hold in high esteem, and whose son, in turn, when he himself was praetor, he made his quaestor. 7 After he had served in this office, he married for his third wife Pompeia, having already by Cornelia a daughter who was afterwards married to Pompey the Great. 8 He was unsparing in his outlays of money, and was thought to be purchasing a transient and short-lived fame at a great price, though in reality he was buying things of the highest value at a small price. We are told, accordingly, that before he entered upon any public office he was thirteen hundred talents in debt. 9 Again, being appointed curator of the Appian Way, he expended upon it vast sums of his own money; and again, during his aedileship, he furnished three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators, and by lavish provision besides for theatrical performances, processions, and public banquets, he washed away all memory of the ambitious efforts of his predecessors in the office. By these means he put the people in such a humour that every man of them was seeking out new offices and new honours with which to requite him.

6 1 There were two parties in the city, that of Sulla, which had been all powerful since his day, and that of Marius, which at that time was in an altogether lowly state, being cowed and scattered. This party Caesar wished to revive and attach to himself, and therefore, when the ambitious efforts of his aedileship were at their height, he had images of of Marius secretly made, together with trophy-bearing Victories, and these he ordered to be carried by night and set up on the Capitol. 2 At day-break those who beheld all these objects glittering with gold and fashioned with the most exquisite art (and they bore inscriptions setting forth the Cimbrian successes of Marius) were amazed at the daring of the man who had set them up (for it was evident who had done it), and the report of it quickly spreading brought everybody together for the sight. 3 But some cried out that Caesar was scheming to usurp sole power in the state when he thus revived honours which had been buried by laws and decrees, and that this proceeding was a test of the people, whose feelings towards him he had previously softened, to see whether they had been made docile by his ambitious displays and would permit him to amuse himself with such innovations. 4 The partisans of Marius, however, encouraged one another and showed themselves on a sudden in amazing numbers, and filled the Capitol with their applause. 5 Many, too, were moved to tears of joy when they beheld the features of Marius, and Caesar was highly extolled by them, and regarded as above all others worthy of his kinship with Marius. 6 But when the senate met to discuss these matters, Catulus Lutatius, a man of the highest repute at that time in Rome, rose up and denounced Caesar, uttering the memorable words: “No longer, indeed, by sapping and mining, Caesar, but with engines of war art thou capturing the government.” 7 Caesar, however, defended himself against this charge and convinced the senate, whereupon his admirers were still more elated and exhorted him not to lower his pretensions for any man, since the people would be glad to have him triumph over all opposition and be the first man in the state.

7 1 At this time, too, Metellus, the pontifex maximus, or high priest, died, and though Isauricus and Catulus were candidates for the priesthood, which was an object of great ambition, and though they were most illustrious men and of the greatest influence in the senate Caesar would not give way to them, but presented himself to the people as a rival candidate. 2 The favour of the electors appeared to be about equally divided, and therefore Catulus, who, as the worthier of Caesar’s competitors, dreaded more the uncertainty of the issue, sent and tried to induce Caesar to desist from his ambitious project, offering him large sums of money. But Caesar declared that he would carry the contest through even though he had to borrow still larger sums.

3 The day for the election came, and as Caesar’s mother accompanied him to the door in tears, he kissed her and said: “Mother, to day thou shalt see thy son either pontifex maximus or an exile.” 4 The contest was sharp, but when the vote was taken Caesar prevailed, and thereby made the senate and nobles afraid that he would lead the people on to every extreme of recklessness. 5 Therefore Piso and Catulus blamed Cicero for having spared Caesar when, in the affair of Catiline, he gave his enemies a hold upon him. 6 Catiline, namely, had purposed not only to subvert the constitution, but to destroy the whole government and throw everything into confusion. He himself, however, was expelled from the city, having been overwhelmed by proofs of lesser iniquities before his most far reaching plans were discovered; but he left Lentulus and Cethegus behind him in the city to promote the conspiracy in his place. 7 Now, whether or not Caesar secretly gave these men any countenance and help, is uncertain; but after they had been overwhelmingly convicted in the senate, and Cicero the consul asked each senator to give his opinion on the manner of their punishment, the rest, down to Caesar, urged that they be put to death, 8 but Caesar rose in his place and delivered a long and studied speech against this. He pleaded that to put to death without legal trial men of high rank and brilliant lineage was not, in his opinion, traditional or just, except under extremest necessity; 9 but that if they should be bound and kept in custody, in such cities of Italy as Cicero himself might elect, until the war against Catiline had been brought to a successful end, the senate could afterwards, in a time of peace and at their leisure, vote upon the case of each one of them.

8 1 This opinion seemed so humane, and the speech in support of it was made with such power, that not only those who rose to speak after Caesar sided with him, but many also of those who had preceded him took back the opinions which they had expressed and went over to his, until the question came round to Cato and Catulus. 2 These warmly opposed Caesar’s proposal, and Cato even helped to raise suspicion against Caesar by what he said. As a result, the men were handed over to the executioner, and many of the young men who at that time formed a body-guard for Cicero ran together with drawn swords and threatened Caesar as he was leaving the senate. 3 But Curio, as we are told, threw his toga round Caesar and got him away, while Cicero himself, when the young men looked to him for a sign, shook his head, either through fear of the people, or because he thought the murder would be wholly contrary to law and justice.

4 Now, if this is true, I do not see why Cicero did not mention it in the treatise on his consulship; however, he was afterwards blamed for not having improved that best of all opportunities for removing Caesar. Instead, he showed a cowardly fear of the people, who were extravagantly attached to Caesar; 5 in fact, a few days afterward, when Caesar came into the senate and tried to defend himself in the matters wherein suspicion had been fixed upon him, and met with a tumult of disapproval, the people, seeing that the session of the senate was lasting a longer time than usual, came up with loud cries and surrounded the senate-house, demanding Caesar, and ordering the senate to let him go. 6 It was for this reason, too, that Cato, fearing above all things a revolutionary movement set on foot by the poorer classes, who were setting the whole multitude on fire with the hopes which they fixed upon Caesar, persuaded the senate to assign them a monthly allowance of grain, 7 in consequence of which an annual outlay of seven million five hundred thousand drachmas was added to the other expenditures of the state. However, the great fear which prevailed at the time was manifestly quenched by this measure, and the greatest part of Caesar’s power was broken down and dissipated in the nick of time, since he was praetor elect, and would be more formidable on account of his office.

9 1 However, there were no disturbances in consequence of Caesar’s praetorship, but an unpleasant incident happened in his family. 2 Publius Clodius was a man of patrician birth, and conspicuous for wealth and eloquence, but in insolence and effrontery he surpassed all the notorious scoundrels of his time. 3 This man was in love with Pompeia the wife of Caesar, and she was not unwilling. But close watch was kept upon the women’s apartments, and Aurelia, Caesar’s mother, a woman of discretion, would never let the young wife out of her sight, and made it difficult and dangerous for the lovers to have an interview.

4 Now, the Romans have a goddess whom they call Bona, corresponding to the Greek Gynaeceia. The Phrygians claim this goddess as their own, and say that she was the mother of King Midas; the Romans say she was a Dryad nymph and the wife of Faunus; the Greeks that she was the unnameable one among the mothers of Dionysus. 5 And this is the reason why the women cover their booths with vine-branches when they celebrate her festival, and why a sacred serpent is enthroned beside the goddess in conformity with the myth. 6 It is not lawful for a man to attend the sacred ceremonies, nor even to be in the house when they are celebrated; but the women, apart by themselves, are said to perform many rites during their sacred service which are Orphic in their character. 7 Accordingly, when the time for the festival is at hand, the consul or praetor at whose house it is to be held goes away, and every male with him, while his wife takes possession of the premises and puts them in due array. 8 The most important rites are celebrated by night, when mirth attends the revels, and much music, too, is heard.

10 1 At the time of which I speak, Pompeia was celebrating this festival, and Clodius, who was still beardless and on this account thought to pass unnoticed, assumed the dress and implements of a lute-girl and went to the house, looking like a young woman. 2 He found the door open, and was brought in safely by the maid-servant there, who was in the secret; but after she had run on ahead to tell Pompeia and some time had elapsed, Clodius had not the patience to wait where he had been left, and so, as he was wandering about in the house (a large one) and trying to avoid the lights, an attendant of Aurelia came upon him and asked him to play with her, as one woman would another, and when he refused, she dragged him forward and asked who he was and whence he came. 3 Clodius answered that he was waiting for Pompeia’s Abra (this was the very name by which the maid was called), and his voice betrayed him. The attendant of Aurelia at once sprang away with a scream to the lights and the throng, crying out that she had caught a man. The women were panic-stricken, and Aurelia put a stop to the mystic rites of the goddess and covered up the emblems. Then she ordered the doors to be closed and went about the house with torches, searching for Clodius. 4 He was found where he had taken refuge, in the chamber of the girl who had let him into the house; and when they saw who he was, the women drove him out of doors. 5 Then at once, and in the night, they went off and told the matter to their husbands, and when day came a report spread through the city that Clodius had committed sacrilege and owed satisfaction, not only to those whom he had insulted, but also to the city and to the gods. 6 Accordingly, one of the tribunes of the people indicted Clodius for sacrilege, and the most influential senators leagued themselves together and bore witness against him that, among other shocking abominations, he had committed adultery with his sister, who was the wife of Lucullus. 7 But against the eager efforts of these men the people arrayed themselves in defence of Clodius, and were of great assistance to him with the jurors in the case, who were terror-stricken and afraid of the multitude. 8 Caesar divorced Pompeia at once, but when he was summoned to testify at the trial, he said he knew nothing about the matters with which Clodius was charged. 9 His statement appeared strange, and the prosecutor therefore asked, “Why, then, didst thou divorce thy wife?” “Because,” said Caesar, “I thought my wife ought not even to be under suspicion.”

10 Some say that Caesar made this deposition honestly; but according to others it was made to gratify the people, who were determined to rescue Clodius. 11 At any rate, Clodius was acquitted of the charge, the majority of the jurors giving their verdicts in illegible writing, in order that they might neither risk their lives with the populace by condemning him, nor get a bad name among the nobility by acquitting him.

11 Immediately after his praetorship Caesar received Spain as his province, and since he found it hard to arrange matters with his creditors, who obstructed his departure and were clamorous, he had recourse to Crassus, the richest of the Romans, who had need of Caesar’s vigour and fire for his political campaign against Pompey. 2 And it was only after Crassus had met the demands of the most importunate and inexorable of these creditors and given surety for eight hundred and thirty talents, that Caesar could go out to his province.

3 We are told that, as he was crossing the Alps and passing by a barbarian village which had very few inhabitants and was a sorry sight, his companions asked with mirth and laughter, “Can it be that here too there are ambitious strifes for office, struggles for primacy, and mutual jealousies of powerful men?” 4 Whereupon Caesar said to them in all seriousness, “I would rather be first here than second at Rome.” 5 In like manner we are told again that, in Spain, when he was at leisure and was reading from the history of Alexander, he was lost in thought for a long time, and then burst into tears. 6 His friends were astonished, and asked the reason for his tears. “Do you not think,” said he, “it is matter for sorrow that while Alexander, at my age, was already king of so many peoples, I have as yet achieved no brilliant success?”

12 1 At any rate, as soon as he reached Spain he set himself to work, and in a few days raised ten cohorts in addition to the twenty which were there before. Then he led his army against the Callaici and Lusitani, overpowered them, and marched on as far as the outer sea, subduing their tribes which before were not obedient to Rome. 2 After bringing the war to a successful close, he was equally happy in adjusting the problems of peace, by establishing concord between the cities, and particularly by healing the dissensions between debtors and creditors. 3 For he ordained that the creditor should annually take two thirds of his debtor’s income, and that the owner of the property should use the rest, and so on until the debt was cancelled. 4 In high repute for this administration he retired from the province; he had become wealthy himself, had enriched his soldiers from their campaigns, and had been saluted by them as Imperator.

13 1 Now, since those who sued for the privilege of a triumph must remain outside the city, while those who were candidates for the consulship must be present in the city, Caesar was in a great dilemma, and because he had reached home at the very time for the consular elections, he sent a request to the senate that he might be permitted to offer himself for the consulship in absentiâ, through the agency of his friends. 2 But since Cato began by insisting upon the law in opposition to Caesar’s request, and then, when he saw that many senators had been won over by Caesar’s attentions, staved the matter off by consuming the day in speaking, Caesar decided to give up the triumph and try for the consulship. 3 So as soon as he entered the city he assumed a policy which deceived everyone except Cato. This policy was to reconcile Pompey and Crassus, the most influential men in the city. 4 These men Caesar brought together in friendship after their quarrel, and by concentrating their united strength upon himself, succeeded, before men were aware of it, and by an act which could be called one of kindness, in changing the form of government. 5 For it was not, as most men supposed, the quarrel between Caesar and Pompey that brought on the civil wars, but rather their friendship, since they worked together for the overthrow of the aristocracy in the first place, and then, when this had been accomplished, they quarrelled with one another. 6 And Cato, who often foretold what was to come of their alliance, got the reputation of a morose and troublesome fellow at the time, but afterwards that of a wise, though unfortunate, counsellor.

14 1 Caesar, however, encompassed and protected by the friendship of Crassus and Pompey, entered the canvass for the consulship; 2 and as soon as he had been triumphantly elected, along with Calpurnius Bibulus, and had entered upon his office, he proposed laws which were becoming, not for a consul, but for a most radical tribune of the people; for to gratify the multitude he introduced sundry allotments and distributions of land. 3 In the senate the opposition of men of the better sort gave him the pretext which he had long desired, and crying with loud adjurations that he was driven forth into the popular assembly against his wishes, and was compelled to court its favour by the insolence and obstinacy of the senate, he hastened before it, 4 and stationing Crassus on one side of him and Pompey on the other, he asked them if they approved his laws. They declared that they did approve them, whereupon he urged them to give him their aid against those who threatened to oppose him with swords. 5 They promised him such aid, and Pompey actually added that he would come up against swords with sword and buckler too. 6 At this impulsive and mad speech, unworthy of the high esteem in which Pompey stood and unbecoming to the respect which was due to the senate, the nobility were distressed but the populace were delighted.

7 Moreover, Caesar tried to avail himself still more of the influence of Pompey. He had a daughter, Julia, who was betrothed to Servilius Caepio. This daughter he betrothed to Pompey, and said he would give Pompey’s daughter in marriage to Servilius, although she too was not unbetrothed, but had been promised to Faustus, the son of Sulla. 8 And a little while afterwards Caesar took Calpurnia to wife, a daughter of Piso, and got Piso made consul for the coming year, although here too Cato vehemently protested, and cried out that it was intolerable to have the supreme power prostituted by marriage alliances and to see men helping one another to powers and armies and provinces by means of women.

9 As for Caesar’s colleague, Bibulus, since he availed nothing by obstructing Caesar’s laws, but often ran the risk with Cato of being killed in the forum, he shut himself up at home for the remainder of his term of office. 10 Pompey, however, immediately after his marriage, filled the forum with armed men and helped the people to enact Caesar’s laws and give him as his consular province Gaul on both sides of the Alps for five years, together with Illyricum and four legions. 11 Cato, of course, tried to speak against these measures, but Caesar had him led off to prison, supposing that he would appeal to the popular tribunes; 12 but when Cato walked off without a word and Caesar saw not only that the most influential men were displeased, but also that the populace, out of respect for Cato’s virtue, were following him in silence and with downcast looks, he himself secretly asked one of the tribunes to take Cato out of arrest.

13 Of the other senators, only a very few used to go with Caesar to the senate; the rest, in displeasure, stayed away. 14 Considius, a very aged senator, once told Caesar that his colleagues did not come together because they were afraid of the armed soldiers. “Why, then,” said Caesar, “dost thou too not stay at home out of the same fear?” 15 To this Considius replied: “Because my old age makes me fearless; for the short span of life that is still left me does not require much anxious thought.” 16 But the most disgraceful public measure of the time was thought to be the election to the tribuneship, during Caesar’s consulate, of the notorious Clodius, who had trespassed upon his rights as a husband, and upon the secret nocturnal vigils. 17 He was elected, however, for the overthrow of Cicero; and Caesar did not go forth upon his campaign until, with the help of Clodius, he had raised a successful faction against Cicero and driven him out of Italy.

15 1 Such, then, is said to have been the course of Caesar’s life before his Gallic campaigns. 2 But the period of the wars which he afterwards fought, and of the campaigns by which he subjugated Gaul, as if he had made another beginning and entered upon a different path of life and one of new achievements, proved him to be inferior as soldier and commander to no one soever of those who have won most admiration for leadership and shown themselves greatest therein. 3 Nay, if one compare him with such men as Fabius and Scipio and Metellus, and with the men of his own time or a little before him, like Sulla, Marius, the two Luculli, or even Pompey himself, whose fame for every sort of military excellence was at this time flowering out and reaching to the skies, 4 Caesar will be found to surpass them all in his achievements. One he surpassed in the difficulty of the regions where he waged his wars; another in the great extent of country which he acquired; 5 another in the multitude and might of the enemies over whom he was victorious; another in the savage manners and perfidious dispositions of the people whom he conciliated; another in his reasonableness and mildness towards his captives; another still in the gifts and favours which he bestowed upon his soldiers; and all in the fact that he fought the most battles and killed the most enemies. For although it was not full ten years that he waged war in Gaul, he took by storm more than eight hundred cities, subdued three hundred nations, and fought pitched battles at different times with three million men, of whom he slew one million in hand to hand fighting and took as many more prisoners.

16 1 His soldiers showed such good will and zeal in his service that those who in their previous campaigns had been in no way superior to others were invincible and irresistible in confronting every danger to enhance Caesar’s fame. 2 Such a man, for instance, was Acilius, who, in the sea-fight at Massalia, boarded a hostile ship and had his right hand cut off with a sword, but clung with the other hand to his shield, and dashing it into the faces of his foes, routed them all and got possession of the vessel. 3 Such a man, again, was Cassius Scaeva, who, in the battle at Dyrrhachium, had his eye struck out with an arrow, his shoulder transfixed with one javelin and his thigh with another, and received on his shield the blows of one hundred and thirty missiles. 4 In this plight, he called the enemy to him as though he would surrender. Two of them, accordingly, coming up, he lopped off the shoulder of one with his sword, smote the other in the face and put him to flight, and came off safely himself with the aid of his comrades. 5 Again, in Britain, when the enemy had fallen upon the foremost centurions, who had plunged into a watery marsh, a soldier, while Caesar in person was watching the battle, dashed into the midst of the fight, displayed many conspicuous deeds of daring, and rescued the centurions, after the Barbarians had been routed. 6 Then he himself, making his way with difficulty after all the rest, plunged into the muddy current, and at last, without his shield, partly swimming and partly wading, got across. 7 Caesar and his company were amazed and came to meet the soldier with cries of joy; but he, in great dejection, and with a burst of tears, cast himself at Caesar’s feet, begging pardon for the loss of his shield. 8 Again, in Africa, Scipio captured a ship of Caesar’s in which Granius Petro, who had been appointed quaestor, was sailing. Of the rest of the passengers Scipio made booty, but told the quaestor that he offered him his life. 9 Granius, however, remarking that it was the custom with Caesar’s soldiers not to receive but to offer mercy, killed himself with a blow of his sword.

17 1 Such spirit and ambition Caesar himself created and cultivated in his men, in the first place, because he showed, by his unsparing bestowal of rewards and honours, that he was not amassing wealth from his wars for his own luxury or for any life of ease, but that he treasured it up carefully as a common prize for deeds of valour, and had no greater share in the wealth than he offered to the deserving among his soldiers; and in the second place, by willingly undergoing every danger and refusing no toil. 2 Now, at his love of danger his men were not astonished, knowing his ambition; but that he should undergo toils beyond his body’s apparent powers of endurance amazed them, because he was of a spare habit, had a soft and white skin, suffered from distemper in the head, and was subject to epileptic fits, a trouble which first attacked him, we are told, in Corduba. 3 Nevertheless, he did not make his feeble health an excuse for soft living, but rather his military service a cure for his feeble health, since by wearisome journeys, simple diet, continuously sleeping in the open air, and enduring hardships, he fought off his trouble and kept his body strong against its attacks. 4 Most of his sleep, at least, he got in cars or litters, making his rest conduce to action, and in the day-time he would have himself conveyed to garrisons, cities, or camps, one slave who was accustomed to write from dictation as he travelled sitting by his side, and one soldier standing behind him with a sword. 5 And he drove so rapidly that, on his first journey from Rome to Gaul, he reached the Rhone in seven days.

6 Horsemanship, moreover, had been easy for him from boyhood; for he was wont to put his hands behind his back and, holding them closely there, to ride his horse at full speed. 7 And in the Gallic campaigns he practised dictating letters on horseback and keeping two scribes at once busy, or, as Oppius says, even more. 8 We are told, moreover, that Caesar was the first to devise intercourse with his friends by letter, since he could not wait for personal interviews on urgent matters owing to the multitude of his occupations and the great size of the city. 9 Of his indifference in regard to his diet the following circumstance also is brought in proof. When the host who was entertaining him in Mediolanum, Valerius Leo, served up asparagus dressed with myrrh instead of olive oil, Caesar ate of it without ado, and rebuked his friends when they showed displeasure. 10 “Surely,” said he, “it were enough not to eat what you don’t like; but he who finds fault with ill-breeding like this is ill-bred himself.” 11 Once, too, upon a journey, he and his followers were driven by a storm into a poor man’s hut, and when he found that it consisted of one room only, and that one barely able to accommodate a single person, he said to his friends that honours must be yielded to the strongest, but necessities to the weakest, and bade Oppius lie down there, while he himself with the rest of his company slept in the porch.

18 1 But to resume, the first of his Gallic wars was against the Helvetii and Tigurini, who had set fire to their twelve cities and four hundred villages and were advancing through that part of Gaul which was subject to the Romans, as once the Cimbri and Teutones had done. To these they were thought to be not inferior in courage and of equal numbers, being three hundred thousand in all, of whom one hundred and ninety thousand were fighting men. 2 The Tigurini were crushed at the river Arar, not by Caesar himself, but by Labienus, his deputy; the Helvetii, however, unexpectedly attacked Caesar himself on the march, as he was leading his forces towards a friendly city, but he succeeded in reaching a strong place of refuge. 3 Here, after he had collected and arrayed his forces, a horse was brought to him. “This horse,” said he, “I will use for the pursuit after my victory; but now let us go against the enemy,” and accordingly led the charge on foot. 4 After a long and hard struggle he routed the enemy’s fighting men, but had the most trouble at their rampart of waggons, where not only did the men themselves make a stand and fight, but also their wives and children defended themselves to the death and were cut to pieces with the men. The battle was hardly over by midnight. 5 To the noble work of victory Caesar added a nobler still, that of settling those of the Barbarians who had escaped alive from the battle (there were more than one hundred thousand of them), and compelling them to resume the territory which they had abandoned and the cities which they had destroyed. 6 He did this because he feared that if the territory became vacant the Germans would cross the Rhine and occupy it.

19 1 His second war, directly in defence of the Gauls, was against the Germans, although previously, in Rome, he had made their king Ariovistus an ally. 2 But they were intolerable neighbours of Caesar’s subjects, and if an opportunity presented itself it was thought that they would not remain quietly in their present homes, but would encroach upon and occupy Gaul. 3 Seeing that his officers were inclined to be afraid, and particularly all the young men of high rank who had come out intending to make the campaign with Caesar an opportunity for high living and money-making, he called them together and bade them be off, since they were so unmanly and effeminate, and not force themselves to face danger; 4 as for himself, he said he would take the tenth legion alone and march against the Barbarians; the enemy would be no better fighters than the Cimbri, and he himself was no worse a general than Marius. 5 Upon this the tenth legion sent a deputation to him, expressing their gratitude, while the other legions reviled their own commanders, and all the army, now full of impetuous eagerness, followed Caesar on a march of many days, and at last encamped within two hundred furlongs of the enemy.

6 Now, the very approach of Caesar somewhat shattered the purpose of Ariovistus. 7 For he did not expect that the Romans would attack the Germans, whose onset he thought they could not withstand, and he was amazed at the boldness of Caesar; besides, he saw that his own army was disturbed. 8 Still more, too, was the spirit of the Germans blunted by the prophecies of their holy women, who used to foretell the future by observing the eddies in the rivers and by finding signs in the whirlings and splashings of the waters, and now forbade joining battle before a new moon gave its light. 9 When Caesar learned this, and saw that the Germans kept quiet, he decided that it was a good plan to engage them while they were out of heart, rather than to sit still and wait for their time. 10 So, by attacking their entrenchments and the hills on which they were encamped, he irritated them and incited them to come down in anger and fight the issue out. 11 They were signally routed, and Caesar pursued them a distance of four hundred furlongs, as far as the Rhine, and filled all the intervening plain with dead bodies and spoils. 12 Ariovistus, with a few followers, succeeded in crossing the Rhine; his dead are said to have been eighty thousand in number.

20 1 After this achievement, Caesar left his forces among the Sequani to spend the winter, while he himself, desirous of giving attention to matters at Rome, came down to Gaul along the Po, which was a part of the province assigned to him; for the river called Rubicon separates the rest of Italy from Cisalpine Gaul. 2 Here he fixed his quarters and carried on his political schemes. Many came to see him, and he gave each one what he wanted, and sent all away in actual possession of some of his favours and hoping for more. 3 And during all the rest of the time of his campaigns in Gaul, unnoticed by Pompey, he was alternately subduing the enemy with the arms of the citizens, or capturing and subduing the citizens with the money which he got from the enemy.

4 But when he heard that the Belgae, who were the most powerful of the Gauls and occupied the third part of all their country, had revolted, and had assembled unknown myriads of armed men, he turned back at once and marched thither with great speed. 5 He fell upon the enemy as they were plundering the Gauls that were in alliance with Rome, and so routed and destroyed the least scattered and most numerous of them, after a disgraceful struggle on their part, that the Romans could cross lakes and deep rivers for the multitude of dead bodies in them. 6 All the rebels who dwelt along the ocean submitted without a battle; against the Nervii, however, the most savage and warlike of the people in these parts, Caesar led his forces. 7 The Nervii, who dwelt in dense woods, and had placed their families and possessions in a recess of the forest at farthest remove from the enemy, at a time when Caesar was fortifying a camp and did not expect the battle, fell upon him suddenly, sixty thousand strong. They routed his cavalry, and surrounded the seventh and twelfth legions and slew all their centurions, 8 and had not Caesar snatched a shield, made his way through the combatants in front of him, and hurled himself upon the Barbarians; and had not the tenth legion, at sight of his peril, run down from the heights and cut the ranks of the enemy to pieces, not a Roman, it is thought, would have survived. 9 As it was, however, owing to Caesar’s daring, they fought beyond their powers, as the saying is, and even then did not rout the Nervii, but cut them down as they defended themselves; 10 for out of sixty thousand only five hundred are said to have come off alive, and only three of their senators out of four hundred.

21 1 The Roman senate, on learning of these successes, decreed sacrifices to the gods and cessation from business, with festival, for fifteen days, a greater number than for any victory before. 2 For the danger was seen to have been great when so many nations at once had broken out in revolt, and because Caesar was the victor, the good will of the multitude towards him made his victory more splendid. 3 Caesar himself, after settling matters in Gaul, again spent the winter in the regions along the Po, carrying out his plans at Rome. 4 For not only did the candidates for office there enjoy his assistance, and win their elections by corrupting the people with money from him, and do everything which was likely to enhance his power, 5 but also most of the men of highest rank and greatest influence came to see him at Luca, including Pompey, Crassus, Appius the governor of Sardinia, and Nepos the proconsul of Spain, so that there were a hundred and twenty lictors in the place and more than two hundred senators.

6 They held a council and settled matters on the following basis. Pompey and Crassus were to be elected consuls for the ensuing year, and Caesar was to have money voted him, besides another five years in his provincial command. 7 This seemed very strange to men of understanding. For those who were getting so much money from Caesar urged the senate to give him money as if he had none, nay rather, they forced it to do so, though it groaned over its own decrees. 8 Cato, indeed, was not there, for he had purposely been sent out of the way on a mission to Cyprus, and Favonius, who was an ardent follower of Cato, finding himself unable to accomplish anything by his opposition, bounded out of doors and clamoured to the populace. 9 But no one gave heed to him, for some were in awe of Pompey and Crassus, and most wanted to please Caesar, lived in hopes of his favours, and so kept quiet.

22 1 On returning to his forces in Gaul, Caesar found a considerable war in the country, since two great German nations had just crossed the Rhine to possess the land, one called the Usipes, the other the Tenteritae. 2 Concerning the battle which was fought with them Caesar says in his “Commentaries” that the Barbarians, while treating with him under a truce, attacked on their march and there routed his five thousand cavalry with their eight hundred, since his men were taken off their guard; 3 that they then sent other envoys to him who tried to deceive him again, but he held them fast and led his army against the Barbarians, considering that good faith towards such faithless breakers of truces was folly. 4 But Tanusius says that when the senate voted sacrifices of rejoicing over the victory, Cato pronounced the opinion that they ought to deliver up Caesar to the Barbarians, thus purging away the violation of the truce in behalf of the city, and turning the curse therefor on the guilty man.

5 Of those who had crossed the Rhine into Gaul four hundred thousand were cut to pieces, and the few who succeeded in making their way back were received by the Sugambri, a German nation. 6 This action Caesar made a ground of complaint against the Sugambri, and besides, he coveted the fame of being the first man to cross the Rhine with an army. He therefore began to bridge the river, although it was very broad, and at this point in its course especially swollen, rough, and impetuous, and with the trunks and branches of trees which it bore down stream kept smiting and tearing away the supports of his bridge. 7 But Caesar caught up these trunks and branches with bulwarks of great timbers planted across the stream, and having thus bridled and yoked the dashing current, he brought his bridge — sight beyond all credence — to completion in ten days.

23 1 He now threw his forces across the river. No one ventured to oppose him, but even the Suevi, who were the foremost nation of the Germans, bestowed themselves and their belongings in deep and woody defiles. Caesar ravaged the country of the enemy with fire, gave encouragement to the constant friends of Rome, and then retired again into Gaul, having spent eighteen days in Germany.

2 His expedition against the Britanni was celebrated for its daring. For he was the first to launch a fleet upon the western ocean and to sail through the Atlantic sea carrying an army to wage war. 3 The island was of incredible magnitude, and furnished much matter of dispute to multitudes of writers, some of whom averred that its name and story had been fabricated, since it never had existed and did not then exist;a and in his attempt to occupy it he carried the Roman supremacy beyond the confines of the inhabited world. 4 After twice crossing to the island from the opposite coast of Gaul and in many battles damaging the enemy rather than enriching his own men — for there was nothing worth taking from men who lived in poverty and wretchedness — he brought the war to an end which was not to his liking, it is true; still, he took hostages from the king, imposed tributes, and then sailed away from the island.

5 In Gaul he found letters which were about to be sent across to him. They were from his friends in Rome, and advised him of his daughter’s death; she died in child-birth at Pompey’s house. 6 Great was the grief of Pompey, and great the grief of Caesar, and their friends were greatly troubled too; they felt that the relationship which alone kept the distempered state in harmony and concord was now dissolved. For the babe also died presently, after surviving its mother a few days. 7 Now Julia, in spite of the tribunes, was carried by the people to the Campus Martius, where her funeral rites were held, and where she lies buried.

24 1 Caesar’s forces were now so large that he was forced to distribute them in many winter-quarters, while he himself, as his custom was, turned his steps towards Italy. Then all Gaul once more broke out in revolt, and great armies went about attacking the entrenchments and trying to destroy the winter-quarters of the Romans. 2 The most numerous and powerful of the rebels, under Abriorix, utterly destroyed Titurius and Cotta, together with their army, 3 while the legion under Cicero was surrounded and besieged by sixty thousand of them, and narrowly escaped having its camp taken by storm, although all were wounded and went beyond their powers in the ardour of their defence.

4 When tidings of these things reached Caesar, who was far on his journey, he turned back quickly, got seven thousand men in all, and hurried on to extricate Cicero from the siege. 5 But the besiegers became aware of his approach, and went to meet him with the purpose of cutting his forces off at once, despising their small numbers. 6 Caesar deceived them by avoiding battle continually, and when he had found a place suitable for one who was fighting against many with few, fortified a camp, where he kept his men altogether from fighting and forced them to increase the height of their ramparts and the defences of their gates as though they were afraid. 7 His strategy thus led the enemy to despise him, until at last, when their boldness led them to attack in scattered bands, he sallied out, routed them, and destroyed many of them.

25 1 The numerous revolts of the Gauls in those parts were quieted by this success, as well as by the fact that Caesar himself, during the winter, went about in all directions and kept close watch on the disturbers of the peace. For there had come from Italy three legions to replace the men that he had lost, 2 Pompey having lent two of those under his command, and one having been newly levied in Gaul about the Po. 3 But in remoter regions the germs of the greatest and most dangerous of the wars waged in those parts began to show themselves. They had for a long time been secretly sown and cultivated by the most influential men among the most warlike tribes, and derived strength from large bodies of young men assembled from all sides in arms, from great riches brought together, from strong cities, and from countries which were hard to invade. 4 At that season of winter, too, frozen rivers, forests buried in snow, plains converted into lakes by winter torrents, in some parts paths obliterated by deep snow, and in others the great uncertainty of a march through swamps and streams diverted from their courses, all seemed to make it wholly impossible for Caesar to oppose the plans of the rebels. 5 Accordingly, many tribes had revolted, but the head and front of the revolt were the Arverni and Carnuntini, and Vergentorix was chosen to have the entire authority in the war. His father the Gauls had put to death because they thought he was aiming at a tyranny.

26 1 This leader, then, after dividing his forces into many parts and putting many officers in command of them, was winning over all the country round about as far as the water-shed of the Arar. He purposed, now that there was a coalition at Rome against Caesar, at once to rouse all Gaul to war. 2 If he had done this a little later, when Caesar was involved in the civil war, Italy would have been a prey to terrors no less acute than those aroused by the Cimbri of old. 3 But as it was, the man endowed by nature to make the best use of all the arts of war, and particularly of its crucial moments, namely Caesar, as soon as he learned of the revolt, set out and marched by the same roads over which he had previously come, and by the vigour and speed of his passage in so severe a winter showed the Barbarians that an unconquered and invincible army was coming against them. 4 For where it was incredible that one of his messengers or letter-carriers could make his way in a long time, there he was seen with his whole army, at once ravaging their lands and destroying their strongholds, subduing cities, 5 and receiving those who came over to his side, until the nation of the Aedui also entered the war against him. These up to this time had called themselves brethren of the Romans and had been conspicuously honoured, but now, by joining the rebels, they caused great dejection in Caesar’s army. 6 In consequence of this Caesar removed from these parts and passed across the territory of the Lingones, wishing to reach the country of the Sequani, who were friends, and stood as a bulwark between Italy and the rest of Gaul. 7 There the enemy fell upon him and surrounded him with many tens of thousands, so that he essayed to fight a decisive battle. In the main he got the best of the struggle, and after a long time and much slaughter overpowered the Barbarians; but it appears that at first he met with some reverse, and the Arverni show a short-sword hanging in a temple, which they say was captured from Caesar. 8 When Caesar himself saw it, at a later time, he smiled, and though his friends urged him to have it taken down, he would not permit it, considering it sacred.

27 1 However, the most of the Barbarians who escaped at that time took refuge with their king in the city of Alesia. 2 And while Caesar was besieging this city, which was thought to be impregnable by reason of the great size of its walls and the number of their defenders, there fell upon him from outside the city a peril too great for words to depict. 3 For all that was mightiest among the nations of Gaul assembled and came in arms to Alesia, three hundred thousand strong; 4 and the number of fighting men inside the city was not less than a hundred and seventy thousand. Thus Caesar, caught between so large hostile forces and besieged there, was compelled to build two walls for his protection, one looking towards the city, and the other towards those who had come up to relieve it; he felt that if the two forces should unite his cause was wholly lost.

5 For many reasons, then, and naturally, Caesar’s peril at Alesia was famous, since it produced more deeds of skill and daring than any of his other struggles; but one must be amazed above all that he engaged and conquered so many tens of thousands outside the city without the knowledge of those inside, nay more, without the knowledge even of the Romans who were guarding the wall that faced the city. 6 For these did not learn of the victory until the wailing of the men in Alesia and the lamentations of the women were heard, as they beheld in the quarters of the enemy many shields adorned with gold and silver, many corselets smeared with blood, and also drinking cups and tents of Gallic fashion carried by the Romans into their camp. 7 So quickly did so great a force, like a phantom or a dream, disperse and vanish out of sight, the greater part of them having fallen in the battle. 8 Those who held Alesia, too, after giving themselves and Caesar no small trouble, finally surrendered.  And the leader of the whole war, Vergentorix, after putting on his most beautiful armour and decorating his horse, rode out through the gate. 10 He made a circuit around Caesar, who remained seated, and then leaped down from his horse, stripped off his suit of armour, and seating himself at Caesar’s feet remained motionless, until he was delivered up to be kept in custody for the triumph.

28 1 Now, Caesar had long ago decided to put down Pompey, just as, of course, Pompey also had decided to put Caesar down. For now that Crassus, who was only waiting for the issue of their struggle to engage the victor, had perished among the Parthians, it remained for him who would be greatest to put down him who was, and for him who was greatest, if he would not be put down, to take off in time the man he feared. 2 This fear had only recently come upon Pompey, who till then despised Caesar, feeling that it was no hard task to put down again the man whom he himself had raised on high. 3 But Caesar had from the outset formed this design, and like an athlete had removed himself to a great distance from his antagonists, and by exercising himself in the Gallic wars had practised his troops and increased his fame, lifting himself by his achievements to a height where he could vie with the successes of Pompey. 4 He laid hold of pretexts which were furnished partly by Pompey himself, and partly by the times and the evil state of government at Rome, by reason of which candidates for office set up counting-tables in public and shamelessly bribed the multitudes, while the people went down into the forum under pay, contending in behalf of their paymaster, not with votes, but with bows and arrows, swords, and slings. 5 Often, too, they would defile the rostra with blood and corpses before they separated, leaving the city to anarchy like a ship drifting about without a steersman, so that men of understanding were content if matters issued in nothing worse for them than monarchy, after such madness and so great a tempest. 6 And there were many who actually dared to say in public that nothing but monarchy could now cure the diseases of the state, and that this remedy ought to be adopted when offered by the gentlest of physicians, hinting at Pompey. 7 And when even Pompey, although in words he affected to decline the honour, in fact did more than any one else to effect his appointment as dictator, Cato saw through his design and persuaded the senate to appoint him sole consul, solacing him with a more legal monarchy that he might not force his way to the dictatorship. 8 They also voted him additional time in which to hold his provinces; and he had two, Spain, and all Africa, which he managed by sending legates thither and maintaining armies there, for which he received from the public treasury a thousand talents annually.

29 1 Consequently, Caesar canvassed by proxy for a consulship, and likewise for an extension of time in which to hold his own provinces. At first, then, Pompey held his peace, while Marcellus and Lentulus opposed these plans; they hated Caesar on other grounds, and went beyond all bounds in their efforts to bring dishonour and abuse upon him. 2 For instance, the inhabitants of Novum Comum, a colony recently established by Caesar in Gaul, were deprived of citizenship by them; and Marcellus, while he was consul, beat with rods a senator of Novum Comum who had come to Rome, telling him besides that he put these marks upon him to prove that he was not a Roman, and bade him go back and show them to Caesar. 3 But after the consulship of Marcellus, Caesar having now sent his Gallic wealth for all those in public life to draw from in copious streams, and having freed Curio the tribune from many debts, and having given Paulus the consul fifteen hundred talents, out of which he adorned the forum with the Basilica, a famous monument, erected in place of the Fulvia, — 4 under these circumstances Pompey took fright at the coalition, and openly now, by his own efforts and those of his friends, tried to have a successor appointed to Caesar in his government, and sent a demand to him for the return of the soldiers whom he had lent him for his Gallic contests. Caesar sent the soldiers back, after making a present to each man of two hundred and fifty drachmas. 5 But the officers who brought these men to Pompey spread abroad among the multitude stories regarding Caesar which were neither reasonable nor true, and ruined Pompey himself with vain hopes. They told him that Caesar’s army yearned for him, and that while he was with difficulty controlling affairs in the city owing to the disease of envy which festered in the body politic, the forces in Gaul were ready to serve him, and had but to cross into Italy when they would at once be on his side; so obnoxious to them had Caesar become by reason of the multitude of his campaigns, and so suspicious of him were they made by their fear of a monarchy. 6 All this fed Pompey’s vanity, and he neglected to provide himself with soldiers, as though he had no fears; while with speeches and resolutions of the senate he was carrying the day against Caesar, as he supposed, although he was merely getting measures rejected about which Caesar cared naught. Nay, we are told that one of the centurions sent to Rome by Caesar, as he stood in front of the senate house and learned that the senate would not give Caesar an extension of his term of command, slapped the handle of his sword and said: “But this will give it.”

30 1 However, the demands which came from Caesar certainly had a striking resemblance of fairness. He demanded, namely, that if he himself laid down his arms, Pompey should do the same, and that both, thus become private men, should find what favour they could with their fellow citizens; arguing that if they took away his forces from him, but confirmed Pompey in the possession of his, they would be accusing one of seeking a tyranny and making the other a tyrant. 2 When Curio laid these proposals before the people in behalf of Caesar, he was loudly applauded, and some actually cast garlands of flowers upon him as if he were a victorious athlete. 3 Antony, too, who was a tribune, brought before the people a letter of Caesar’s on these matters which he had received, and read it aloud, in defiance of the consuls. 4 But in the senate, Scipio, the father-in law of Pompey, introduced a motion that if by a fixed day Caesar did not lay down his arms he should be declared a public enemy. 5 And when the consuls put the question whether Pompey should dismiss his soldiers, and again whether Caesar should, very few senators voted for the first, and all but a few for the second; but when Antony again demanded that both should give up their commands, all with one accord assented. 6 Scipio, however, made violent opposition, and Lentulus the consul cried out that against a robber there was need of arms, not votes; whereupon the senate broke up, and the senators put on the garb of mourning in view of the dissension.

31 1 But presently letters came from Caesar in which he appeared to take a more moderate position, for he agreed to surrender everything else, but demanded that Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum together with two legions should be given him until he stood for his second consulship. Cicero the orator, too, who had just returned from Cilicia and was busy with a reconciliation, tried to mollify Pompey, who yielded everything else, but insisted on taking away Caesar’s soldiers. 2 Cicero also tried to persuade the friends of Caesar to compromise and come to a settlement on the basis of the provinces mentioned and only six thousand soldiers, and Pompey was ready to yield and grant so many. Lentulus the consul, however, would not let him, but actually heaped insults upon Antony and Curio and drove them disgracefully from the senate, 3 thus himself contriving for Caesar the most specious of his pretexts, and the one by means of which he most of all incited his soldiers, showing them men of repute and high office who had fled the city on hired carts and in the garb of slaves. For thus they had arrayed themselves in their fear and stolen out of Rome.

32 1 Now, Caesar had with him not more than three hundred horsemen and five thousand legionaries; for the rest of his army had been left beyond the Alps, and was to be brought up by those whom he had sent for the purpose. 2 He saw, however, that the beginning of his enterprise and its initial step did not require a large force at present, but must take advantage of the golden moment by showing amazing boldness and speed, since he could strike terror into his enemies by an unexpected blow more easily than he could overwhelm them by an attack in full force. 3 He therefore ordered his centurions and other officers, taking their swords only, and without the rest of their arms, to occupy Ariminum, a large city of Gaul, avoiding commotion and bloodshed as far as possible; and he entrusted this force to Hortensius.

4 He himself spent the day in public, attending and watching the exercises of gladiators; but a little before evening he bathed and dressed and went into the banqueting hall. Here he held brief converse with those who had been invited to supper, and just as it was getting dark and went away, after addressing courteously most of his guests and bidding them await his return. To a few of his friends, however, he had previously given directions to follow him, not all by the same route, but some by one way and some by another. 5 He himself mounted one of his hired carts and drove at first along another road, then turned towards Ariminum. When he came to the river which separates Cisalpine Gaul from the rest of Italy (it is called the Rubicon), and began to reflect, now that he drew nearer to the fearful step and was agitated by the magnitude of his ventures, he checked his speed. 6 Then, halting in his course, he communed with himself a long time in silence as his resolution wavered back and forth, and his purpose then suffered change after change. 7 For a long time, too, he discussed his perplexities with his friends who were present, among whom was Asinius Pollio, estimating the great evils for all mankind which would follow their passage of the river, and the wide fame of it which they would leave to posterity. 8 But finally, with a sort of passion, as if abandoning calculation and casting himself upon the future, and uttering the phrase with which men usually prelude their plunge into desperate and daring fortunes, “Let the die be cast,” he hastened to cross the river; and going at full speed now for the rest of the time, before daybreak he dashed into Ariminum and took possession of it. 9 It is said, moreover, that on the night before he crossed the river he had an unnatural dream; he thought, namely, that he was having incestuous intercourse with his own mother.

33 1 After the seizure of Ariminum, as if the war had opened with broad gates to cover the whole earth and sea alike, and the laws of the state were confounded along with the boundaries of the province, one would not have thought that men and women, as at other times, were hurrying through Italy in consternation, but that the very cities had risen up in flight and were rushing one through another; 2 while Rome herself, deluged as it were by the inhabitants of the surrounding towns who were fleeing from their homes, neither readily obeying a magistrate nor listening to the voice of reason, in the surges of a mighty sea narrowly escaped being overturned by her own internal agitations. 3 For conflicting emotions and violent disturbances prevailed everywhere. Those who rejoiced did not keep quiet, but in many places, as was natural in a great city, encountered those who were in fear and distress, and being filled with confidence as to the future came into strife with them; 4 while Pompey himself, who was terror-stricken, was assailed on every side, being taken to task by some for having strengthened Caesar against himself and the supreme power of the state, and denounced by others for having permitted Lentulus to insult Caesar when he was ready to yield and was offering reasonable terms of settlement. 5 Favonius bade him stamp on the ground; for once, in a boastful speech to the senate, he told them to take no trouble or anxious thought about preparations for the war, since when it came he had but to stamp upon the earth to fill Italy with armies.

6 However, even then Pompey’s forces were more numerous than Caesar’s; but no one would suffer him to exercise his own judgment; and so, under the influence of many false and terrifying reports, believing that the war was already close at hand and prevailed everywhere, he gave way, was swept along with the universal tide, issued an edict declaring a state of anarchy, and forsook the city, commanding the senate to follow, and forbidding any one to remain who preferred country and freedom to tyranny.

34 1 Accordingly, the consuls fled, without even making the sacrifices usual before departure; most of the senators also fled, after seizing, in a sort of robbery, whatever came to hand of their own possessions, as though it were the property of others. 2 Some, too, who before this had vehemently espoused the cause of Caesar, were now frightened out of their wits, and were carried along, when there was no need of it, by the sweep of the great tide. 3 But most pitiful was the sight of the city, now that so great a tempest was bearing down upon her, carried along like a ship abandoned of her helmsmen to dash against whatever lay in her path. 4 Still, although their removal was so pitiful a thing, for the sake of Pompey men considered exile to be their country, and abandoned Rome with the feeling that it was Caesar’s camp. 5 For even Labienus, one of Caesar’s greatest friends, who had been his legate and had fought most zealously with him in all his Gallic wars, now ran away from him and came to Pompey.

But Caesar sent to Labienus his money and his baggage; 6 against Domitius, however, who was holding Corfinium with thirty cohorts under his command, he marched, and pitched his camp near by. Domitius, despairing of his enterprise, asked his physician, who was a slave, for a poison; and taking what was given him, drank it, intending to die. 7 But after a little, hearing that Caesar showed most wonderful clemency towards his prisoners, he bewailed his fate, and blamed the rashness of his purpose. 8 Then his physician bade him be of good cheer, since what he had drunk was a sleeping-potion and not deadly; whereupon Domitius rose up overjoyed and went to Caesar, the pledge of whose right hand he received, only to desert him and go back to Pompey. 9 When tidings of these things came to Rome, men were made more cheerful, and some of the fugitives turned back.

35 1 Caesar took over the troops of Domitius, as well as all the other levies of Pompey which he surprised in the various cities. Then, since his forces were already numerous and formidable, he marched against Pompey himself. 2 Pompey, however, did not await his approach, but fled to Brundisium, sent the consuls before him with an army to Dyrrhachium, and shortly afterwards, as Caesar drew near, sailed off himself, as shall be set forth circumstantially in his Life. 3 Caesar wished to pursue him at once, but was destitute of ships; so he turned back to Rome, having in sixty days and without bloodshed become master of all Italy.

4 He found the city more tranquil than he was expecting, and many senators in it. With these, therefore, he conferred in a gentle and affable manner, inviting them even to send a deputation to Pompey proposing suitable terms of agreement. 5 But no one would listen to him, either because they feared Pompey, whom they had abandoned, or because they thought that Caesar did not mean what he said, but was indulging in specious talk. 6 When the tribune Metellus tried to prevent Caesar’s taking money from the reserve funds of the state, and cited certain laws, Caesar said that arms and laws had not the same season. 7 “But if thou art displeased at what is going on, for the present get out of the way, since war has no use for free speech; when, however, I have come to terms and laid down my arms, then thou shalt come before the people with thy harangues. 8 And in saying this I waive my own just rights; for thou art mine, thou and all of the faction hostile to me whom I have caught.” 9 After this speech to Metellus, Caesar walked towards the door of the treasury, and when the keys were not to be found, he sent for smiths and ordered them to break in the door. 10 Metellus once more opposed him, and was commended by some for so doing; but Caesar, raising his voice, threatened to kill him if he did not cease his troublesome interference. “And thou surely knowest, young man,” said he, “that it is more unpleasant for me to say this than to do it.” 11 Then Metellus, in consequence of this speech, went off in a fright, and henceforth everything was speedily and easily furnished to Caesar for the war.

36 1 So he made an expedition into Spain, having resolved first to drive out from there Afranius and Varro, Pompey’s legates, and bring their forces there and the provinces into his power, and then to march against Pompey, leaving not an enemy in his rear. 2 And though his life was often in peril from ambuscades, and his army most of all from hunger, he did not cease from pursuing, challenging, and besieging the men until he had made himself by main force master of their camps and their forces. The leaders, however, made their escape to Pompey.

37 1 When Caesar came back to Rome, Piso, his father-in law, urged him to send a deputation to Pompey with proposals for a settlement; but Isauricus, to please Caesar, opposed the project. 2 So, having been made dictator by the senate, he brought home exiles, restored to civic rights the children of those who had suffered in the time of Sulla, relieved the burdens of the debtor-class by a certain adjustment of interest, took in hand a few other public measures of like character, and within eleven days abdicated the sole power, had himself declared consul with Servilius Isauricus, and entered upon his campaign.

3 The rest of his forces he passed by in a forced march, and with six hundred picked horsemen and five legions, at the time of the winter solstice, in the early part of January (this month answers nearly to the Athenian Poseideon), put to sea, 4 and after crossing the Ionian gulf took Oricum and Apollonia, and sent his transports back again to Brundisium for the soldiers who had been belated on their march. 5 These, as long as they were on the road, since they were now past their physical prime and worn out with their multitudinous wars, murmured against Caesar. 6 “Whither, pray, and to what end will this man bring us, hurrying us about and treating us like tireless and lifeless things? Even a sword gets tired out with smiting, and shield and breastplate are spared a little after so long a time of service. 7 Will not even our wounds, then, convince Caesar that he commands mortal men, and that we are mortal in the endurance of pain and suffering? Surely the wintry season and the occasion of a storm at sea not even a god can constrain; yet this man takes risks as though he were not pursuing, but flying from, enemies.” 8 With such words as these they marched in a leisurely way to Brundisium. But when they got there and found that Caesar had put to sea, they quickly changed their tone and reviled themselves as traitors to the Imperator; they reviled their officers, too, for not having quickened their march. 3 Then, sitting on the cliffs, they looked off towards the open sea and Epirus, watching for the ships which were to carry them across to their commander.

38 1 At Apollonia, since the force which he had with him was not a match for the enemy and the delay of his troops on the other side caused him perplexity and distress, Caesar conceived the dangerous plan of embarking in a twelve-oared boat, without any one’s knowledge, and going over to Brundisium, though the sea was encompassed by such large armaments of the enemy. 2 At night, accordingly, after disguising himself in the dress of a slave, he went on board, threw himself down as one of no account, and kept quiet. 3 While the river Aoüs was carrying the boat down towards the sea, the early morning breeze, which at that time usually made the mouth of the river calm by driving back the waves, was quelled by a strong wind which blew from the sea during the night; 4 the river therefore chafed against the inflow of the sea and the opposition of its billows, and was rough, being beaten back with a great din and violent eddies, so that it was impossible for the master of the boat to force his way along. He therefore ordered the sailors to come about in order to retrace his course. 5 But Caesar, perceiving this, disclosed himself, took the master of the boat by the hand, who was terrified at sight of him, and said: “Come, good man, be bold and fear naught; thou carryest Caesar and Caesar’s fortune in thy boat.” 6 The sailors forgot the storm, and laying to their oars, tried with all alacrity to force their way down the river. But since it was impossible, after taking much water and running great hazard at the mouth of the river, Caesar very reluctantly suffered the captain to put about. 7 When he came back, his soldiers met him in throngs, finding much fault and sore displeased with him because he did not believe that even with them alone he was able to conquer, but was troubled, and risked his life for the sake of the absent as though distrusting those who were present.

39 1 After this, Antony put in from Brundisium with his forces, and Caesar was emboldened to challenge Pompey to battle. Pompey was well posted and drew ample supplies both from land and sea; while Caesar had no great abundance at first, and afterwards was actually hard pressed for want of provisions. 2 But his soldiers dug up a certain root, mixed it with milk, and ate it. Once, too, they made loaves of it, and running up to the enemy’s outposts, threw the loaves inside or tossed them to one another, adding by way of comment that as long as the earth produced such roots, they would not stop besieging Pompey. 3 Pompey, however, would not allow either the loaves or these words to reach the main body of his army. For his soldiers were dejected, fearing the ferocity and hardiness of their enemies, who were like wild beasts in their eyes.

4 There were constant skirmishings about the fortifications of Pompey, and in all of them Caesar got the better except one, where there was a great rout of his men and he was in design of losing his camp. 5 For when Pompey attacked not one of Caesar’s men stood his ground, but the moats were filled with the slain, and others were falling at their own ramparts and walls, whither they had been driven in headlong flight. 6 And though Caesar met the fugitives and tried to turn them back, he availed nothing, nay, when he tried to lay hold of the standards the bearers threw them away, so that the enemy captured thirty-two of them. Caesar himself, too, narrowly escaped being killed. 7 For as a tall and sturdy man was running away past him, he laid his hand upon him and bade him stay and face about upon the enemy; and the fellow, full of panic at the threatening danger, raised his sword to smite Caesar, but before he could do so Caesar’s shield-bearer lopped off his arm at the shoulder. 8 So completely had Caesar given up his cause for lost that, when Pompey, either from excessive caution or by some chance, did not follow up his great success, but withdrew after he had shut up the fugitives within their entrenchments, Caesar said to his friends as he left them: “To day victory had been with the enemy, if they had had a victor in command.” 9 Then going by himself to his tent and lying down, he spent that most distressful of all nights in vain reflections, convinced that he had shown bad generalship. For while a fertile country lay waiting for him, and the prosperous cities of Macedonia and Thessaly, he had neglected to carry the war thither, and had posted himself here by the sea, which his enemies controlled with their fleets, being thus held in siege by lack of provisions rather than besieging with his arms. 10 Thus his despondent thoughts of the difficulty and perplexity of his situation kept him tossing upon his couch, and in the morning he broke camp, resolved to lead his army into Macedonia against Scipio; 11 for he would either draw Pompey after him to a place where he would give battle without drawing his supplies as he now did from the sea, or Scipio would be left alone and he would overwhelm him.

40 1 This emboldened the soldiers of Pompey and the leaders by whom he was surrounded to keep close to Caesar, whom they thought defeated and in flight. 2 For Pompey himself was cautious about hazarding a battle for so great a stake, and since he was most excellently provided with everything necessary for a long war, he thought it best to wear out and quench the vigour of the enemy, which must be short-lived. 3 For the best fighting men in Caesar’s army had experience, it is true, and a daring which was irresistible in combat; but what with their long marches and frequent encampments and siege-warfare and night-watches, they were beginning to give out by reason of age, and were too unwieldy for labour, having lost their ardour from weakness. 4 At that time, too, a kind of pestilential disease, occasioned by the strangeness of their diet, was said to be prevalent in Caesar’s army. And what was most important of all, since Caesar was neither strong in funds or well supplied with provisions, it was thought that within a short time his army would break up of itself.

41 1 For these reasons Pompey did not wish to fight, but Cato was the only one to commend his course, and this from a desire to spare the lives of his fellow citizens; for when he saw even those of the enemy who had fallen in battle, to the number of a thousand, he burst into tears, muffled up his head, and went away. 2 All the rest, however, reviled Pompey for trying to avoid a battle, and sought to goad him on by calling him Agamemnon and King of Kings, implying that he did not wish to lay aside his sole authority, but plumed himself on having so many commanders dependent on him and coming constantly to his tent. 3 And Favonius, affecting Cato’s boldness of speech, complained like a mad man because that year also they would be unable to enjoy the figs of Tusculum because of Pompey’s love of command. 4 Afranius, too, who had lately come from Spain, where he had shown bad generalship, when accused of betraying his army for a bribe, asked why they did not fight with the merchant who had bought the provinces for him. 5 Driven on by all these importunities, Pompey reluctantly sought a battle and pursued Caesar.

6 Caesar accomplished most of his march with difficulty, since no one would sell him provisions, and everybody despised him on account of his recent defeat; 7 but after he had taken Gomphi, a city of Thessaly, he not only provided food for his soldiers, but also relieved them of their disease unexpectedly. 8 For they fell in with plenty of wine, and after drinking freely of it, and then revelling and rioting on their march, by means of their drunkenness they drove away and got rid of their trouble, since they brought their bodies into a different habit.

42 1 But when both armies entered the plain of Pharsalus and encamped there, Pompey’s mind reverted again to its former reasoning, and besides, there befell him unlucky appearances and a vision in his sleep. He dreamed, namely, that he saw himself in his theatre applauded by the Romans, . . . 2 Those about him, however, were so confident, and so hopefully anticipated the victory, that Domitius and Spinther and Scipio disputed earnestly with one another over Caesar’s office of Pontifex Maximus, and many sent agents to Rome to hire and take possession of houses suitable for praetors and consuls, assuming that they would immediately hold these offices after the war. 3 And most of all were his cavalry impatient for the battle, since they had a splendid array of shining armour, well-fed horses, and handsome persons, and were in high spirits too on account of their numbers, which were seven thousand to Caesar’s one thousand. 4 The numbers of the infantry also were unequal, since forty-five thousand were arrayed against twenty-two thousand.

43 1 Caesar called his soldiers together, and after telling them that Corfinius was near with two legions for him, and that fifteen cohorts besides under Calenus were stationed at Athens and Megara, asked them whether they wished to wait for these troops, or to hazard the issue by themselves. 2 Then the soldiers besought him with loud cries not to wait for the troops, but rather to contrive and manoeuvre to come to close quarters with the enemy as soon as possible. 3 As he was holding a lustration and review of his forces and had sacrificed the first victim, the seer at once told him that within three days there would be a decisive battle with the enemy. 4 And when Caesar asked him whether he also saw in the victims any favourable signs of the issue, “Thou thyself,” said the seer, “canst better answer this question for thyself. For the gods indicate a great change and revolution of the present status to the opposite. Therefore, if thou thinkest thyself well off as matters stand, expect the worse fortune; if badly off, the better.” 5 Moreover, one night before the battle, as Caesar was making the round of his sentries about midnight, a fiery torch was seen in the heavens, which seemed to be carried over his camp, blazing out brightly, and then to fall into Pompey’s. 6 And during the morning watch it was noticed that there was actually a panic confusion among the enemy. 7 However, Caesar did not expect to fight on that day, but began to break camp for a march to Scotussa.

44 1 But just as the tents had been struck, his scouts rode up to him with tidings that the enemy were coming down into the plain for battle. At this he was overjoyed, and after prayers and vows to the gods, drew up his legionaries in three divisions. 2 Over the centre he put Domitius Calvinus, while of the wings Antony had one and he himself the right, where he intended to fight with the tenth legion. 3 But seeing that the enemy’s cavalry were arraying themselves over against this point, and fearing their brilliant appearance and their numbers, he ordered six cohorts from the furthermost lines to come round to him unobserved, and stationed them behind his right wing, teaching them what they were to do when the enemy’s horsemen attacked. 4 Pompey had one of his wings himself, and Domitius the left, while Scipio, Pompey’s father-in law, commanded the centre. 5 But his horsemen all crowded to the left wing, intending to encircle the enemy’s right and make a complete rout about the commander himself; 6 for they thought that no legionary array, however deep, could resist them, but that when so many horsemen made an onset together the enemy would be utterly broken and crushed.

7 When both sides were about to sound the charge, Pompey ordered his legionaries to stand with arms at the ready and await in close array the onset of the enemy until they were within javelin cast. 8 But Caesar says that here too Pompey made a mistake, not knowing that the initial clash with all the impetus of running adds force to the bows and fires the courage, which everything then conspires to fan. 9 As Caesar himself was about to move his lines of legionaries, and was already going forward into action, he saw first one of his centurions, a man experienced in war and faithful to him, encouraging his men and challenging them to vie with him in prowess. 10 Him Caesar addressed by name and said: “Caius Crassinius, what are our hopes, and how does our confidence stand?” Then Crassinius, stretching forth his right hand, said with a loud voice: “We shall win a glorious victory, O Caesar, and thou shalt praise me to day, whether I am alive or dead.” 11 So saying, he plunged foremost into the enemy at full speed, carrying along with him the one hundred and twenty soldiers under his command. 12 But after cutting his way through the first rank, and while he was forging onwards with great slaughter, he was beaten back by the thrust of a sword through his mouth, and the point of the sword actually came out at the back of his neck.

45 1 When the infantry had thus clashed together in the centre and were fighting, Pompey’s cavalry rode proudly up from the wing and deployed their squadrons to envelope the enemy’s right; 2 and before they could attack, the cohorts ran out from where Caesar was posted, not hurling their javelins, as usual, nor yet stabbing the thighs and legs of their enemies with them, but aiming them at their eyes and wounding their faces. 3 They had been instructed to do this by Caesar, who expected that men little conversant with wars or wounds, but young, and pluming themselves on their youthful beauty, would dread such wounds especially, and would not stand their ground, fearing not only their present danger, but also their future disfigurement. 4 And this was what actually came to pass; for they could not endure the upward thrust of the javelins, nor did they even venture to look the weapon in the face, but turned their heads away and covered them up to spare their faces. 5 And finally, having thus thrown themselves into confusion, they turned and fled most shamefully, thereby ruining everything. 6 For the conquerors of the horsemen at once encircled the infantry, fell upon their rear, and began to cut them to pieces.

7 When Pompey, on the other wing, saw his horsemen scattered in flight, he was no longer the same man, nor remembered that he was Pompey the Great, but more like one whom Heaven has robbed of his wits than anything else, he went off without a word to his tent, sat down there, and awaited what was to come, until his forces were all routed and the enemy were assailing his ramparts and fighting with their defenders. 8 Then he came to his senses, as it were, and with this one ejaculation, as they say, “What, even to my quarters?” took off his fighting and general’s dress, put on one suitable for a fugitive, and stole away. 9 What his subsequent fortunes were, and how he delivered himself into the hands of the Egyptians and was murdered, I shall tell in his Life.

46 1 But Caesar, when he reached Pompey’s ramparts and saw those of the enemy who were already lying dead there and those who were still falling, said with a groan: “They would have it so; they brought me to such a pass that if I, Caius Caesar, after waging successfully the greatest wars, had dismissed my forces, I should have been condemned in their courts.” 2 Asinius Pollio says that these words, which Caesar afterwards wrote down in Greek, were uttered by him in Latin at the time; 3 he also says that most of the slain were servants who were killed at the taking of the camp, and that not more than six thousand soldiers fell. 4 Most of those who were taken alive Caesar incorporated in his legions, and to many men of prominence he granted immunity. One of these was Brutus, who afterwards slew him. Caesar was distressed, we are told, when Brutus was not to be found, but when he was brought into his presence safe and sound, was pleased beyond measure.

47 1 There were many portents of the victory, but the most remarkable one on record is that which was seen at Tralles. 2 In that city’s temple of Victory there stood a statue of Caesar, and the ground around it was naturally firm, and was paved with hard stone; yet from this it is said that a palm-tree shot up at the base of the statue. 3 Moreover, at Patavium, Caius Cornelius, a man in repute as a seer, a fellow citizen and acquaintance of Livy the historian, chanced that day to be sitting in the place of augury. 4 And to begin with, according to Livy, he discerned the time of the battle, and said to those present that even then the event was in progress and the men were going into action. 5 And when he looked again and observed the signs, he sprang up in a rapture crying: “Thou art victorious, O Caesar!” 6 The bystanders being amazed, he took the chaplet from his head and declared with an oath that he would not put it on again until the event had borne witness to his art. At any rate, Livy insists that this was so.

48 1 Caesar gave the Thessalians their freedom, to commemorate his victory, and then pursued Pompey; when he reached Asia he made the Cnidians also free, to please Theopompus the collector of fables, and for all the inhabitants of Asia remitted a third of their taxes. 2 Arriving at Alexandria just after Pompey’s death, he turned away in horror from Theodotus as he presented the head of Pompey, but he accepted Pompey’s seal-ring, and shed tears over it. 3 Moreover, all the companions and intimates of Pompey who had been captured by the king as they wandered over the country, he treated with kindness and attached them to himself. 4 And to his friends in Rome he wrote that this was the greatest and sweetest pleasure that he derived from his victory, namely, from time to time to save the lives of fellow citizens who had fought against him.

5 As for the war in Egypt, some say that it was not necessary, but due to Caesar’s passion for Cleopatra, and that it was inglorious and full of peril for him. But others blame the king’s party for it, and especially the eunuch Potheinus, who had most influence at court, and had recently killed Pompey; he had also driven Cleopatra from the country, and was now secretly plotting against Caesar. 6 On this account they say that from this time on Caesar passed whole nights at drinking parties in order to protect himself. But in his open acts also Potheinus was unbearable, since he said and did many things that were invidious and insulting to Caesar. 7 For instance, when the soldiers had the oldest and worst grain measured out to them, he bade them put up with it and be content, since they were eating what belonged to others; and at the state suppers he used wooden and earthen dishes, on the ground that Caesar had taken all the gold and silver ware in payment of a debt. 8 For the father of the present king owed Caesar seventeen million five hundred thousand drachmas, of which Caesar had formerly remitted a part to his children, but now demanded payment of ten millions for the support of his army. 9 When, however, Potheinus bade him go away now and attend to his great affairs, assuring him that later he would get his money with thanks, Caesar replied that he had no need whatever of Egyptians as advisers, and secretly sent for Cleopatra from the country.

49 1 So Cleopatra, taking only Apollodorus the Sicilian from among her friends, embarked in a little skiff and landed at the palace when it was already getting dark; 2 and as it was impossible to escape notice otherwise, she stretched herself at full length inside a bed-sack, while Apollodorus tied the bed-sack up with a cord and carried it indoors to Caesar. 3 It was by this device of Cleopatra’s, it is said, that Caesar was first captivated, for she showed herself to be a bold coquette, and succumbing to the charm of further intercourse with her, he reconciled her to her brother on the basis of a joint share with him in the royal power. 4 Then, as everybody was feasting to celebrate the reconciliation, a slave of Caesar’s, his barber, who left nothing unscrutinized, owing to a timidity in which he had no equal, but kept his ears open and was here, there, and everywhere, perceived that Achillas the general and Potheinus the eunuch were hatching a plot against Caesar. 5 After Caesar had found them out, he set a guard about the banqueting-hall, and put Potheinus to death; Achillas, however, escaped to his camp, and raised about Caesar a war grievous and difficult for one who was defending himself with so few followers against so large a city and army. 6 In this war, to begin with, Caesar encountered the peril of being shut off from water, since the canals were dammed up by the enemy; in the second place, when the enemy tried to cut off his fleet, he was forced to repel the danger by using fire, and this spread from the dockyards and destroyed the great library; 7 and thirdly, when a battle arose at Pharos, he sprang from the mole into a small boat and tried to go to the aid of his men in their struggle, but the Egyptians sailed up against him from every side, so that he threw himself into the sea and with great difficulty escaped by swimming. 8 At this time, too, it is said that he was holding many papers in his hand and would not let them go, though missiles were flying at him and he was immersed in the sea, but held them above water with one hand and swam with the other; his little boat had been sunk at the outset. 9 But finally, after the king had gone away to the enemy, he marched against him and conquered him in a battle where many fell and the king himself disappeared. 10 Then, leaving Cleopatra on the throne of Egypt (a little later she had a son by him whom the Alexandrians called Caesarion), he set out for Syria.

50 1 On leaving that country and traversing Asia, he learned that Domitius had been defeated by Pharnaces the son of Mithridates and had fled from Pontus with a few followers; also that Pharnaces, using his victory without stint, and occupying Bithynia and Cappadocia, was aiming to secure the country called Lesser Armenia, and was rousing to revolt all the princes and tetrarchs there. 2 At once, therefore, Caesar marched against him with three legions, fought a great battle with him near the city of Zela, drove him in flight out of Pontus, and annihilated his army. 3 In announcing the swiftness and fierceness of this battle to one of his friends at Rome, Amantius, Caesar wrote three words: “Came, saw, conquered.” 4 In Latin, however, the words have the same inflectional ending, and so a brevity which is most impressive.

51 1 After this, he crossed to Italy and went up to Rome, at the close of the year for which he had a second time been chosen dictator, though that office had never before been for a whole year; then for the following year he was proclaimed consul. 2 Men spoke of him because, after his soldiers had mutinied and killed two men of praetorian rank, Galba and Cosconius, he censured them only so far as to call them “citizens” when he addressed them, instead of “soldiers,” and then gave each man a thousand drachmas and much allotted land in Italy. 3 He was also calumniated for the madness of Dolabella, the greed of Amantius, the drunkenness of Antony, and for the fact that Corfinius built over and refurnished the house of Pompey on the ground that it was not good enough for him. 4 For at all these things the Romans were displeased. But owing to the political situation, though Caesar was not ignorant of these things and did not like them, he was compelled to make use of such assistants.

52 1 After the battle at Pharsalus, Cato and Scipio made their escape to Africa, and there, with the aid of King Juba, collected considerable forces. Caesar therefore resolved to make an expedition against them. 2 So, about the time of the winter solstice, he crossed into Sicily, and wishing to cut off at once in the minds of his officers all hope of delaying there and wasting time, he pitched his own tent on the sea-beach. When a favouring wind arose, he embarked and put to sea with three thousand infantry and a few horsemen. 3 Then, after landing these unobserved, he put to sea again, being full of fears for the larger part of his force, and meeting them after they were already at sea, he conducted all into camp.

4 On learning that the enemy were emboldened by an ancient oracle to the effect that it was always the prerogative of the family of the Scipios to conquer in Africa, he either flouted in pleasantry the Scipio who commanded the enemy, 5 or else tried in good earnest to appropriate to himself the omen, it is hard to say which. He had under him, namely, a man who otherwise was a contemptible nobody, but belonged to the family of the Africani, and was called Scipio Sallustio.b This man Caesar put in the forefront of his battles as if commander of the army, being compelled to attack the enemy frequently and to force the fighting. 6 For there was neither sufficient food for his men nor fodder for his beasts of burden, nay, they were forced to feed their horses on sea-weed, which they washed free of its salt and mixed with a little grass to sweeten it. 7 For the Numidians showed themselves everywhere in great numbers and speedy, and controlled the country. Indeed, while Caesar’s horsemen were once off duty (a Libyan was showing them how he could dance and play the flute at the same time in an astonishing manner, and they had committed their horses to the slaves and were sitting delighted on the ground), the enemy suddenly surrounded and attacked them, killed some of them, and followed hard upon the heels of the rest as they were driven headlong into camp. 8 And if Caesar himself, and with him Asinius Pollio, had not come from the ramparts to their aid and checked their flight, the war would have been at an end. 9 On one occasion, too, in another battle, the enemy got the advantage in the encounter, and here it is said that Caesar seized by the neck the fugitive standard-bearer, faced him about, and said: “Yonder is the enemy.”

53 1 However, Scipio was encouraged by these advantages to hazard a decisive battle: so, leaving Afranius and Juba encamped separately at a short distance apart, he himself began fortifying a camp beyond a lake near the city of Thapsus, that it might serve the whole army as a place from which to sally out to the battle, and as a place of refuge. 2 But while he was busy with the project, Caesar made his way with inconceivable speed through woody regions which afforded unknown access to the spot, outflanked some of the enemy, and attacked others in front. 3 Then, after routing these, he took advantage of the favourable instant and of the impetus of fortune, and thereby captured the camp of Afranius at the first onset, and at the first onset sacked the camp of the Numidians, from which Juba fled. 4 Thus in a brief portion of one day he made himself master of three camps and slew fifty thousand of the enemy, without losing as many as fifty of his own men.

5 This is the account which some give of the battle; others, however, say that Caesar himself was not in the action, but that, as he was marshalling and arraying his army, his usual sickness laid hold of him, and he, 6 at once aware that it was beginning, before his already wavering senses were altogether confounded and overpowered by the malady, was carried to a neighbouring tower, where he stayed quietly during the battle. 7 Of the men of consular and praetorial rank who escaped from the battle, some slew themselves at the moment of their capture, and others were put to death by Caesar after capture.

54 1 Being eager to take Cato alive, Caesar hastened towards Utica, for Cato was guarding that city, and took no part in the battle. 2 But he learned that Cato had made away with himself, and he was clearly annoyed, though for what reason is uncertain. At any rate, he said: “Cato, I begrudge thee thy death; for thou didst begrudge me the preservation of thy life.” 3 Now, the treatise which Caesar afterwards wrote against Cato when he was dead, does not seem to prove that he was in a gentle or reconcilable mood. For how could he have spared Cato alive, when he poured out against him after death so great a cup of wrath? 4 And yet from his considerate treatment of Cicero and Brutus and thousands more who had fought against him, it is inferred that even this treatise was not composed out of hatred, but from political ambition, for reasons which follow. 5 Cicero had written an encomium on Cato which he entitled “Cato”; and the discourse was eagerly read by many, as was natural, since it was composed by the ablest of orators on the noblest of themes. 6 This annoyed Caesar, who thought that Cicero’s praise of the dead Cato was a denunciation of Caesar himself. Accordingly, he wrote a treatise in which he got together countless charges against Cato; and the work is entitled “Anti-Cato.” Both treatises have many eager readers, as well on account of Caesar as of Cato.

55 1 But to resume, when Caesar came back to Rome from Africa, to begin with, he made a boastful speech to the people concerning his victory, asserting that he had subdued a country large enough to furnish annually for the public treasury two hundred thousand Attic bushels of grain, and three million pounds of olive oil. 2 Next, he celebrated triumphs, an Egyptian, a Pontic, and an African, the last not for his victory over Scipio, but ostensibly over Juba the king. 3 On this occasion, too, Juba, a son of the king, a mere infant, was carried along in the triumphal procession, the most fortunate captive ever taken, since from being a Barbarian and a Numidian, he came to be enrolled among the most learned historians of Hellas. 4 After the triumphs, Caesar gave his soldiers large gifts and entertained the people with banquets and spectacles, feasting them all at one time on twenty thousand dining-couches, and furnishing spectacles of gladiatorial and naval combats in honour of his daughter Julia, long since dead.

5 After the spectacles, a census of the people was taken, and instead of the three hundred and twenty thousand of the preceding lists there were enrolled only one hundred and fifty thousand. 6 So great was the calamity which the civil wars had wrought, and so large a portion of the people of Rome had they consumed away, to say nothing of the misfortunes that possessed the rest of Italy and the provinces.

56 1 After these matters had been finished and he had been declared consul for the fourth time, Caesar made an expedition into Spain against the sons of Pompey. These were still young, but had collected an army of amazing numbers and displayed a boldness which justified their claims to leadership, so that they beset Caesar with the greatest peril. 2 The great battle was joined near the city of Munda, and here Caesar, seeing his own men hard pressed and making a feeble resistance, asked in a loud voice as he ran through the armed ranks whether they felt no shame to take him and put him in the hands of boys. 3 With difficulty and after much strenuous effort he repulsed the enemy and slew over thirty thousand of them, but he lost one thousand of his own men, and those the very best. 4 As he was going away after the battle he said to his friends that he had often striven for victory, but now first for his life. 5 He fought this victorious battle on the day of the festival of Bacchus, on which day also it is said that Pompey the Great had gone forth to the war; a period of four years intervened. 6 As for Pompey’s sons, the younger made his escape, but after a few days the head of the elder was brought in by Deidius.

7 This was the last war that Caesar waged; and the triumph that was celebrated for it vexed the Romans as nothing else had done. 8 For it commemorated no victory over foreign commanders or barbarian kings, but the utter annihilation of the sons and the family of the mightiest of the Romans, who had fallen upon misfortune; 9 and it was not meet for Caesar to celebrate a triumph for the calamities of his country, priding himself upon actions which had no defence before gods or men except that they had been done under necessity, and that too although previously he had sent neither messenger nor letters to announce to the people a victory in the civil wars, but had scrupulously put from him the fame arising therefrom.

57 1 However, the Romans gave way before the good fortune of the man and accepted the bit, and regarding the monarchy as a respite from the evils of the civil wars, they appointed him dictator for life. This was confessedly a tyranny, since the monarchy, besides the element of irresponsibility, now took on that of permanence. 2 It was Cicero who proposed the first honours for him in the senate, and their magnitude was, after all, not too great for a man; but others added excessive honours and vied with one another in proposing them, thus rendering Caesar odious and obnoxious even to the mildest citizens because of the pretension and extravagance of what was decreed for him. 3 It is thought, too, that the enemies of Caesar no less than his flatterers helped to force these measures through, in order that they might have as many pretexts as possible against him and might be thought to have the best reasons for attempting his life. 4 For in all other ways, at least, after the civil wars were over, he showed himself blameless; and certainly it is thought not inappropriate that the temple of Clemency was decreed as a thank-offering in view of his mildness. 5 For he pardoned many of those who had fought against him, and to some he even gave honours and offices besides, as to Brutus and Cassius, both of whom were now praetors. 6 The statues of Pompey, which had been thrown down, he would not suffer to remain so, but set them up again, at which Cicero said that in setting up Pompey’s statues Caesar firmly fixed his own. 7 When his friends thought it best that he should have a body-guard, and many of them volunteered for this service, he would not consent, saying that it was better to die once for all than to be always expecting death. 8 And in the effort to surround himself with men’s good will as the fairest and at the same time the securest protection, he again courted the people with banquets and distributions of grain, and his soldiers with newly planted colonies, the most conspicuous of which were Carthage and Corinth. The earlier capture of both these cities, as well as their present restoration, chanced to fall at one and the same time.

58 1 As for the nobles, to some of them he promised consulships and praetorships in the future, others he appeased with sundry other powers and honours, and in all he implanted hopes, since he ardently desired to rule over willing subjects. 2 Therefore, when Maximus the consul died, he appointed Caninius Revilius consul for the one day still remaining of the term of office. 3 To him, as we are told, many were going with congratulations and offers of escort, whereupon Cicero said: “Let us make haste, or else the man’s consulship will have expired.”

4 Caesar’s many successes, however, did not divert his natural spirit of enterprise and ambition to the enjoyment of what he had laboriously achieved, but served as fuel and incentive for future achievements, and begat in him plans for greater deeds and a passion for fresh glory, as though he had used up what he already had. 5 What he felt was therefore nothing else than emulation of himself, as if he had been another man, and a sort of rivalry between what he had done and what he purposed to do. 6 For he planned and prepared to make an expedition against the Parthians; and after subduing these and marching around the Euxine by way of Hyrcania, the Caspian sea, and the Caucasus, to invade Scythia; 7 and after overrunning the countries bordering on Germany and Germany itself, to come back by way of Gaul to Italy, and so to complete this circuit of his empire, which would then be bounded on all sides by the ocean. 8 During this expedition, moreover, he intended to dig through the isthmus of Corinth, and had already put Anienus in charge of this work; he intended also to divert the Tiber just below the city into a deep channel, give it a bend towards Circeium, and make it empty into the sea at Terracina, thus contriving for merchantmen a safe as well as an easy passage to Rome; 9 and besides this, to convert marshes about Pomentinum and Setia into a plain which many thousands of men could cultivate; and further, 10 to build moles which should barricade the sea where it was nearest to Rome, to clear away the hidden dangers on the shore of Ostia, and then construct harbours and roadsteads sufficient for the great fleets that would visit them. And all these things were in preparation.

59 1 The adjustment of the calendar, however, and the correction of the irregularity in the computation of time, were not only studied scientifically by him, but also brought to completion, and proved to be of the highest utility. 2 For not only in very ancient times was the relation of the lunar to the solar year in great confusion among the Romans, so that the sacrificial feasts and festivals, diverging gradually, at last fell in opposite seasons of the year,  but also at this time people generally had no way of computing the actual solar year; the priests alone knew the proper time, and would suddenly and to everybody’s surprise insert the intercalary month called Mercedonius. 4 Numa the king is said to have been the first to intercalate this month, thus devising a slight and short-lived remedy for the error in regard to the sidereal and solar cycles, as I have told in his Life. 5 But Caesar laid the problem before the best philosophers and mathematicians, and out of the methods of correction which were already at hand compounded one of his own which was more accurate than any. This the Romans use down to the present time, and are thought to be less in error than other peoples as regards the inequality between the lunar and solar years. 6 However, even this furnished occasion for blame to those who envied Caesar and disliked his power. At any rate, Cicero the orator, we are told, when some one remarked that Lyra would rise on the morrow, said: “Yes, by decree,” implying that men were compelled to accept even this dispensation.

60 1 But the most open and deadly hatred towards him was produced by his passion for the royal power. For the multitude this was a first cause of hatred, and for those who had long smothered their hate, a most specious pretext for it. 2 And yet those who were advocating this honour for Caesar actually spread abroad among the people a report that from the Sibylline books it appeared that Parthia could be taken if the Romans went up against it with a king, but otherwise could not be assailed; 3 and as Caesar was coming down from Alba into the city they ventured to hail him as king. But at this the people were confounded, and Caesar, disturbed in mind, said that his name was not King, but Caesar, and seeing that his words produced an universal silence, he passed on with no very cheerful or contented looks. 4 Moreover, after sundry extravagant honours had been voted him in the senate, it chanced that he was sitting above the rostra, and as the praetors and consuls drew near, with the whole senate following them, he did not rise to receive them, but as if he were dealing with mere private persons, replied that his honours needed curtailment rather than enlargement. 5 This vexed not only the senate, but also the people, who felt that in the persons of the senators the state was insulted, and in a terrible dejection they went away at once, all who were not obliged to remain, 6 so that Caesar too, when he was aware of his mistake, immediately turned to go home, and drawing back his toga from his neck, cried in loud tones to his friends that he was ready to offer his throat to any one who wished to kill him. But afterwards he made his disease an excuse for his behaviour, 7 saying that the senses of those who are thus afflicted do not usually remain steady when they address a multitude standing, but are speedily shaken and whirled about, bringing on giddiness and insensibility. 8 However, what he said was not true; on the contrary, he was very desirous of rising to receive the senate; but one of his friends, as they say, or rather one of his flatterers, Cornelius Balbus, restrained him, saying: “Remember that thou art Caesar, and permit thyself to be courted as a superior.”

61 1 There was added to these causes of offence his insult to the tribunes. It was, namely, the festival of the Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. 2 At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. 3 And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped to an easy delivery, and the barren to pregnancy. 4 These ceremonies Caesar was witnessing, seated upon the rostra on a golden throne, arrayed in triumphal attire. 5 And Antony was one of the runners in the sacred race; for he was consul. Accordingly, after he had dashed into the forum and the crowd had made way for him, he carried a diadem, round which a wreath of laurel was tied, and held it out to Caesar. Then there was applause, not loud, but slight and preconcerted. 6 But when Caesar pushed away the diadem, all the people applauded; and when Antony offered it again, few, and when Caesar declined it again, all, applauded. 7 The experiment having thus failed, Caesar rose from his seat, after ordering the wreath to be carried up to the Capitol; 8 but then his statues were seen to have been decked with royal diadems. So two of the tribunes, Flavius and Maryllus, went up to them and pulled off the diadems, and after discovering those who had first hailed Caesar as king, led them off to prison. 9 Moreover, the people followed the tribunes with applause and called them Brutuses, because Brutus was the man who put an end to the royal succession and brought the power into the hands of the senate and people instead of a sole ruler. 10 At this, Caesar was greatly vexed, and deprived Maryllus and Flavius of their office, while in his denunciation of them, although he at the same time insulted the people, he called them repeatedly Brutes and Cymaeans.

62 1 Under these circumstances the multitude turned their thoughts towards Marcus Brutus, who was thought to be a descendant of the elder Brutus on his father’s side, on his mother’s side belonged to the Servilii, another illustrious house, and was a son-in law and nephew of Cato. 2 The desires which Brutus felt to attempt of his own accord the abolition of the monarchy were blunted by the favours and honours that he had received from Caesar. 3 For not only had his life been spared at Pharsalus after Pompey’s flight, and the lives of many of his friends at his entreaty, but also he had great credit with Caesar. 4 He had received the most honourable of the praetorships for the current year, and was to be consul three years later, having been preferred to Cassius, who was a rival candidate. 5 For Caesar, as we are told, said that Cassius urged the juster claims to the office, but that for his own part he could not pass Brutus by. 6 Once, too, when certain persons were actually accusing Brutus to him, the conspiracy being already on foot, Caesar would not heed them, but laying his hand upon his body said to the accusers: “Brutus will wait for this shrivelled skin,” implying that Brutus was worthy to rule because of his virtue, but that for the sake of ruling he would not become a thankless villain. 7 Those, however, who were eager for the change, and fixed their eyes on Brutus alone, or on him first, did not venture to talk with him directly, but by night they covered his praetorial tribune and chair with writings, most of which were of this sort: “Thou art asleep, Brutus,” or, “Thou art not Brutus.” 8 When Cassius perceived that the ambition of Brutus was somewhat stirred by these things, he was more urgent with him than before, and pricked him on, having himself also some private grounds for hating Caesar; these I have mentioned in the Life of Brutus. 9 Moreover, Caesar actually suspected him, so that he once said to his friends: “What, think ye, doth Cassius want? I like him not over much, for he is much too pale.” 10 And again, we are told that when Antony and Dolabella were accused to him of plotting revolution, Caesar said: “I am not much in fear of these fat, long-haired fellows, but rather of those pale, thin ones,” meaning Brutus and Cassius.

63 1 But destiny, it would seem, is not so much unexpected as it is unavoidable, since they say that amazing signs and apparitions were seen. 2 Now, as for lights in the heavens, crashing sounds borne all about by night, and birds of omen coming down into the forum, it is perhaps not worth while to mention these precursors of so great an event; 3 but Strabo the philosopher says that multitudes of men all on fire were seen rushing up, and a soldier’s slave threw from his hand a copious flame and seemed to the spectators to be burning, but when the flame ceased the man was uninjured; 4 he says, moreover, that when Caesar himself was sacrificing, the heart of the victim was not to be found, and the prodigy caused fear, since in the course of nature, certainly, an animal without a heart could not exist. 5 The following story, too, is told by many. A certain seer warned Caesar to be on his guard against a great peril on the day of the month of March which the Romans call the Ides; 6 and when the day had come and Caesar was on his way to the senate-house, he greeted the seer with a jest and said: “Well, the Ides of March are come,” and the seer said to him softly: “Ay, they are come, but they are not gone.” 7 Moreover, on the day before, when Marcus Lepidus was entertaining him at supper, Caesar chanced to be signing letters, as his custom was, while reclining at table, and the discourse turned suddenly upon the question what sort of death was the best; before any one could answer Caesar cried out: “That which is unexpected.” 8 After this, while he was sleeping as usual by the side of his wife, all the windows and doors of the chamber flew open at once, and Caesar, confounded by the noise and the light of the moon shining down upon him, noticed that Calpurnia was in a deep slumber, but was uttering indistinct words and inarticulate groans in her sleep; 9 for she dreamed, as it proved, that she was holding her murdered husband in her arms and bewailing him.

Some, however, say that this was not the vision which the woman had; but that there was attached to Caesar’s house to give it adornment and distinction, by vote of the senate, a gable-ornament, as Livy says, and it was this which Calpurnia in her dreams saw torn down, and therefore, as she thought, wailed and wept. 10 At all events, when day came, she begged Caesar, if it was possible, not to go out, but to postpone the meeting of the senate; if, however, he had no concern at all for her dreams, she besought him to inquire by other modes of divination and by sacrifices concerning the future. 11 And Caesar also, as it would appear, was in some suspicion and fear. For never before had he perceived in Calpurnia any womanish superstition, but now he saw that she was in great distress. 12 And when the seers also, after many sacrifices, told him that the omens were unfavourable, he resolved to send Antony and dismiss the senate.

64 1 But at this juncture Decimus Brutus, surnamed Albinus, who was so trusted by Caesar that he was entered in his will as his second heir, but was partner in the conspiracy of the other Brutus and Cassius, 2 fearing that if Caesar should elude that day, their undertaking would become known, ridiculed the seers and chided Caesar for laying himself open to malicious charges on the part of the senators, who would think themselves mocked at; 3 for they had met at his bidding, and were ready and willing to vote as one man that he should be declared king of the provinces outside of Italy, and might wear a diadem when he went anywhere else by land or sea; 4 but if some one should tell them at their session to be gone now, but to come back again when Calpurnia should have better dreams, what speeches would be made by his enemies, or who would listen to his friends when they tried to show that this was not slavery and tyranny? 5 But if he was fully resolved (Albinus said) to regard the day as inauspicious, it was better that he should go in person and address the senate, and then postpone its business. 6 While saying these things Brutus took Caesar by the hand and began to lead him along. And he had gone but a little way from his door when a slave belonging to some one else, eager to get at Caesar, but unable to do so for the press of numbers about him, forced his way into the house, gave himself into the hands of Calpurnia, and bade her keep him secure until Caesar came back, since he had important matters to report to him.

65 1 Furthermore, Artemidorus, a Cnidian by birth, a teacher of Greek philosophy, and on this account brought into intimacy with some of the followers of Brutus, so that he also knew most of what they were doing, came bringing to Caesar in a small roll the disclosures which he was going to make; 2 but seeing that Caesar took all such rolls and handed them to his attendants, he came quite near, and said: “Read this, Caesar, by thyself, and speedily; for it contains matters of importance and of concern to thee.” 3 Accordingly, Caesar took the roll and would have read it, but was prevented by the multitude of people who engaged his attention, although he set out to do so many times, and holding in his hand and retaining that roll alone, he passed on into the senate. 4 Some, however, say that another person gave him this roll, and that Artemidorus did not get to him at all, but was crowded away all along the route.

66 1 So far, perhaps, these things may have happened of their own accord; the place, however, which was the scene of that struggle and murder, and in which the senate was then assembled, since it contained a statue of Pompey and had been dedicated by Pompey as an additional ornament to his theatre, made it wholly clear that it was the work of some heavenly power which was calling and guiding the action thither. 2 Indeed, it is also said that Cassius, turning his eyes toward the statue of Pompey before the attack began, invoked it silently, although he was much addicted to the doctrines of Epicurus; 3 but the crisis, as it would seem, when the dreadful attempt was now close at hand, replaced his former cool calculations with divinely inspired emotion.

4 Well, then, Antony, who was a friend of Caesar’s and a robust man, was detained outside by Brutus Albinus, who purposely engaged him in a lengthy conversation; 5 but Caesar went in, and the senate rose in his honour. Some of the partisans of Brutus took their places round the back of Caesar’s chair, while others went to meet him, as though they would support the petition which Tullius Cimber presented to Caesar in behalf of his exiled brother, and they joined their entreaties to his and accompanied Caesar up to his chair. 6 But when, after taking his seat, Caesar continued to repulse their petitions, and, as they pressed upon him with greater importunity, began to show anger towards one and another of them, Tullius seized his toga with both hands and pulled it down from his neck. This was the signal for the assault. 7 It was Casca who gave him the first blow with his dagger, in the neck, not a mortal wound, nor even a deep one, for which he was too much confused, as was natural at the beginning of a deed of great daring; so that Caesar turned about, grasped the knife, and held it fast.  At almost the same instant both cried out, the smitten man in Latin: “Accursed Casca, what does thou?” and the smiter, in Greek, to his brother: “Brother, help!”

9 So the affair began, and those who were not privy to the plot were filled with consternation and horror at what was going on; they dared not fly, nor go to Caesar’s help, nay, nor even utter a word. 10 But those who had prepared themselves for the murder bared each of them his dagger, and Caesar, hemmed in on all sides, whichever way he turned confronting blows of weapons aimed at his face and eyes, driven hither and thither like a wild beast, was entangled in the hands of all; 11 for all had to take part in the sacrifice and taste of the slaughter. Therefore Brutus also gave him one blow in the groin. 12 And it is said by some writers that although Caesar defended himself against the rest and darted this way and that and cried aloud, when he saw that Brutus had drawn his dagger, he pulled his toga down over his head and sank, either by chance or because pushed there by his murderers, against the pedestal on which the statue of Pompey stood. 13 And the pedestal was drenched with his blood, so that one might have thought that Pompey himself was presiding over this vengeance upon his enemy, who now lay prostrate at his feet, quivering from a multitude of wounds. 14 For it is said that he received twenty-three; and many of the conspirators were wounded by one another, as they struggled to plant all those blows in one body.

67 1 Caesar thus done to death, the senators, although Brutus came forward as if to say something about what had been done, would not wait to hear him, but burst out of doors and fled, thus filling the people with confusion and helpless fear, so that some of them closed their houses, while others left their counters and places of business and ran, first to the place to see what had happened, then away from the place when they had seen. 2 Antony and Lepidus, the chief friends of Caesar, stole away and took refuge in the houses of others. 3 But Brutus and his partisans, just as they were, still warm from the slaughter, displaying their daggers bare, went all in a body out of the senate-house and marched to the Capitol, not like fugitives, but with glad faces and full of confidence, summoning the multitude to freedom, and welcoming into their ranks the most distinguished of those who met them. 4 Some also joined their number and went up with them as though they had shared in the deed, and laid claim to the glory of it, of whom were Caius Octavius and Lentulus Spinther. 5 These men, then, paid the penalty for their imposture later, when they were put to death by Antony and the young Caesar, without even enjoying the fame for the sake of which they died, owing to the disbelief of their fellow men. 6 For even those who punished them did not exact a penalty for what they did, but for what they wished they had done.

7 On the next day Brutus came down and held a discourse, and the people listened to what was said without either expressing resentment at what had been done or appearing to approve of it; they showed, however, by their deep silence, that while they pitied Caesar, they respected Brutus. 8 The senate, too, trying to make a general amnesty and reconciliation, voted to give Caesar divine honours and not to disturb even the most insignificant measure which he had adopted when in power; 9 while to Brutus and his partisans it distributed provinces and gave suitable honours, so that everybody thought that matters were decided and settled in the best possible manner.

68 1 But when the will of Caesar was opened and it was found that he had given every Roman citizen a considerable gift, and when the multitude saw his body carried through the forum all disfigured with its wounds, they no longer kept themselves within the restraints of order and discipline, but after heaping round the body benches, railings, and tables from the forum they set fire to them and burned it there; 2 then, lifting blazing brands on high, they ran to the houses of the murderers with intent to burn them down, while others went every whither through the city seeking to seize the men themselves and tear them to pieces. Not one of these came in their way, but all were well barricaded. 3 There was a certain Cinna, however, one of the friends of Caesar, who chanced, as they say, to have seen during the previous night a strange vision. He dreamed, that is, that he was invited to supper by Caesar, and that when he excused himself, Caesar led him along by the hand, although he did not wish to go, but resisted. 4 Now, when he heard that they were burning the body of Caesar in the forum, he rose up and went thither out of respect, although he had misgivings arising from his vision, and was at the same time in a fever. 5 At sight of him, one of the multitude told his name to another who asked him what it was, and he to another, and at once word ran through the whole throng that this man was one of the murderers of Caesar. 6 For there was among the conspirators a man who bore this same name of Cinna, and assuming this man was he, the crowd rushed upon him and tore him in pieces among them. 7 This more than anything else made Brutus and Cassius afraid, and not many days afterwards they withdrew from the city. What they did and suffered before they died, has been told in the Life of Brutus.

69 1 At the time of his death Caesar was fully fifty-six years old, but he had survived Pompey not much more than four years, while of the power and dominion which he had sought all his life at so great risks, and barely achieved at last, of this he had reaped no fruit but the name of it only, and a glory which had awakened envy on the part of his fellow citizens. 2 However, the great guardian-genius of the man, whose help he had enjoyed through life, followed upon him even after death as an avenger of his murder, driving and tracking down his slayers over every land and sea until not one of them was left, but even those who in any way soever either put hand to the deed or took part in the plot were punished.

3 Among events of man’s ordering, the most amazing was that which befell Cassius; for after his defeat at Philippi he slew himself with that very dagger which he had used against Caesar; 4 and among events of divine ordering, there was the great comet, which showed itself in great splendour for seven nights after Caesar’s murder, and then disappeared; also, the obscuration of the sun’s rays. 5 For during all that year its orb rose pale and without radiance, while the heat that came down from it was slight and ineffectual, so that the air in its circulation was dark and heavy owing to the feebleness of the warmth that penetrated it, and the fruits, imperfect and half ripe, withered away and shrivelled up on account of the coldness of the atmosphere. 6 But more than anything else the phantom that appeared to Brutus showed that the murder of Caesar was not pleasing to the gods; and it was on this wise. 7 As he was about to take his army across from Abydos to the other continent, he was lying down at night, as his custom was, in his tent, not sleeping, but thinking of the future; 8 for it is said that of all generals Brutus was least given to sleep, and that he naturally remained awake a longer time than anybody else. 9 And now he thought he heard a noise at the door, and looking towards the light of the lamp, which was slowly going out, he saw a fearful vision of a man of unnatural size and harsh aspect. 10 At first he was terrified, but when he saw that the visitor neither did nor said anything, but stood in silence by his couch, he asked him who he was. 11 Then the phantom answered him: “I am thy evil genius, Brutus, and thou shalt see me at Philippi.” At the time, then, Brutus said courageously: “I shall see thee;” and the heavenly visitor at once went away. 12 Subsequently, however, when arrayed against Antony and Caesar at Philippi, in the first battle he conquered the enemy in his front, routed and scattered them, and sacked the camp of Caesar; 13 but as he was about to fight the second battle, the same phantom visited him again at night, and though it said nothing to him, Brutus understood his fate, and plunged headlong into danger. 14 He did not fall in battle, however, but after the rout retired to a crest of ground, put his naked sword to his breast (while a certain friend, as they say, helped to drive the blow home), and so died.

Phocion

742 1 1 Demades the orator, who was powerful at Athens because he conducted affairs so as to please Antipater and the Macedonians, and was forced to propose and favour many measures which were at variance with the dignity and character of the city, used to say that he was excusable because he was in command of a shipwrecked state. This may have been too hardy an utterance for the orator, but it would seem to be true when transferred to the administration of Phocion. 2 Demades, indeed, was himself but wreckage of the state, since his life and administration were so outrageous that Antipater said of him, when he was now grown old, that he was like a victim when the sacrifice was over — nothing left but tongue and guts. But the fame of Phocion’s virtue, which may be said to have found an antagonist in a grievous and violent time, the fortunes of Greece rendered obscure and dim. 3 Surely we must not follow Sophocles in making virtue weak, as when he says: —

“Indeed, O King, what reason nature may have given

Abides not with the unfortunate, but goes astray”

;

yet thus much power must be granted to Fortune in her conflicts with good men: instead of the honour and gratitude which are their due, she brings base censure and calumny upon some, and so weakens the world’s confidence in their virtue.

2 1 And yet it is commonly held that a people is more apt to wreak its insolence upon good men when it is prosperous, being then lifted up by grandeur and power; but the reverse is often the case. For calamities make men’s dispositions bitter, irritable, and prone to wrath, so that no one can say anything to please or soften them, but they are annoyed by every speech or word that has vigour. He who censures them for their transgressions is thought to abuse them for their misfortunes, and he who is outspoken with them, to despise them. 2 And just as honey irritates wounded and ulcerated parts of the body,a so often words of truth and soberness sting and exasperate those who are in an evil plight, unless uttered with kindness and complaisance; and therefore, doubtless, the poet calls that which is pleasant “menoeikes,” on the ground that it yields to that part of the soul which experiences pleasure, and does not fight with it or resist it. 3 An eye which is inflamed dwells most gratefully on colours which are dark and lustreless, but shuns those which are radiant and bright; and so a city that has fallen on unfavourable fortunes is made by its weakness too sensitive and delicate to endure frank speaking, and that at a time when it needs it most of all, since the situation allows no chance of retrieving the mistakes that have been made. Therefore the conduct of affairs in such a city is altogether dangerous; for she brings to ruin with herself the man who speaks but to win her favour, and she brings to ruin before herself the man who will not court her favour.

4 Now, the sun, as mathematicians tell us, has neither the same motion as the heavens, nor one that is directly opposite and contrary, but takes a slanting course with a slight inclination, and describes a winding spiral of soft and gentle curves, thus preserving all things and giving them the best temperature. And so in the administration of a city, the course which is too straight, and opposed in all things to the popular desires, is harsh and cruel, just as, on the other hand, it is highly dangerous to tolerate or yield perforce to the mistakes of the populace. 5 But that wise guidance and government of men which yields to them in return for their obedience and grants them what will please them, and then demands from them in payment what will advantage the state, — and men will give docile and profitable service in many ways, provided they are not treated despotically and harshly all the time, — conduces to safety, although it is laborious and difficult and must have that mixture of austerity and reasonableness which is so hard to attain. But if the mixture be attained, that is the most concordant and musical blending of all rhythms and all harmonies; and this is the way, we are told in which God regulates the universe, not using compulsion, but making persuasion and reason introduce that which must be.

3 1 These principles found an illustration in Cato the Younger also. For his manners were not winning, nor pleasing to the populace, nor was he eminent in his public career for popularity. Indeed, Cicero says it was because he acted as if he lived in Plato’s commonwealth, and not among the dregs of Romulus, that he was defeated when he stood for the consulship; but I think he fared just as fruits do which make their appearance out of season. 2 For, as we look upon these with delight and admiration, but do not use them, so the old-fashioned character of Cato, which, after a long lapse of time, made its appearance among lives that were corrupted and customs that were debased, enjoyed great repute and fame, but was not suited to the needs of men because of the weight and grandeur of his virtue, which were out of all proportion to the immediate times. 3 For his native city was not already prostrate, like that of Phocion, but struggling with great tempest and surge, and though he could only serve her by putting hand to sails and ropes and by supporting men of greater influence, but was repulsed from rudder-sweeps and pilotage, he nevertheless gave Fortune a hard contest. She did, indeed, seize and overthrow the commonwealth by means of other men, but with difficulty, slowly, after a long time, and when it had almost won the day through Cato and the virtue of Cato. 4 And with this virtue we compare that of Phocion, though not for their general resemblances, but on the ground that both were good men and devoted to the state. For there is surely a difference between the bravery of one man and that of another, as, for instance, between that of Alcibiades and that of Epaminondas; between the wisdom of one man and that of another, as, between that of Themistocles and that of Aristides; between the justice of one man and that of another, as, between that of Numa and that of Agesilaüs. 5 But the virtues of these men, even down to their ultimate and minute differences, show that their natures had one and the same stamp, shape, and general hand; they were an equal blend, so to speak, of severity and kindness, of caution and bravery, of solicitude for others and fearlessness for themselves, of the careful avoidance of baseness and, in like degree, the eager pursuit of justice. Therefore we shall need a very subtle instrument of reasoning, as it were, for the discovery and determination of their differences.

4 1 That Cato’s lineage, then, was illustrious, is generally admitted, as will be said later; but Phocion’s, as I judge, was not altogether ignoble or lowly. For had he been the son of a pestle-maker, as Idomeneus says, then Glaucippus the son of Hypereides, in the speech wherein he collected countless evil things to say against him, would not have omitted his mean birth; nor would Phocion have lived on so high a plane or enjoyed so sound an education as to have been a pupil of Plato when he was still a stripling, and later a pupil of Xenocrates, in the Academy, and to have cultivated the noblest behaviour from the very beginning. 2 For hardly any Athenian ever saw Phocion in laughter or in tears, or making use of a public bath, as Duris tells us, or holding his hand outside his cloak, — when he wore a cloak. Since in the country, at least, and on his campaigns, he always walked without shoes or outer garment, unless the cold was excessive and hard to bear, so that presently his soldiers used to say in jest that it was a sign of severe winter when Phocion wore a cloak.

5 1 Though his nature was most gentle and most kind, his countenance made him seem forbidding and sullen, so that hardly any one of those who were not on intimate terms cared to converse with him alone. Therefore, when Chares once made the Athenians laugh by speaking of Phocion’s frowning brows, “No harm,” said Phocion, “has come to you from this brow of mine; but these men’s laughter has cost the city many a tear.” 2 And in like manner Phocion’s language, also, was salutary in its excellent inventions and happy conceits, although it had a brevity which was rather imperious, severe, and unpleasant. For, as Zeno used to say that a philosopher should immerse his words in meaning before he utters them, so Phocion’s language had most meaning in fewest words. And this is probably what Polyeuctus the Sphettian had in mind when he said that Demosthenes was a most excellent orator, but Phocion a most powerful speaker. 3 For, as a valuable coin has greatest worth in smallest bulk, so effective speech would seem to indicate much with few words. Indeed, it is said that once upon a time, when the theatre was filling up with people, Phocion himself was walking about behind the scenes lost in thought, and that when one of his friends remarked: “You seem to be considering, Phocion,” he replied: “Yes, indeed, I am considering whether I can shorten the speech which I am to deliver to the Athenians.” 4 And Demosthenes, who held the other orators in great contempt, when Phocion rose to speak, was wont to say quietly to his friends: “Here comes the pruning-knife of my speeches.” But perhaps this must be referred to Phocion’s character; since a word or a nod merely from a good man is of more convincing weight than any number of elaborate periods.

6 1 When he was a young man, Phocion attached himself to Chabrias the general as a close follower, profiting much thereby in military experience, and sometimes also rectifying that general’s temperament, which was uneven and violent. For though Chabrias was sluggish and hard to move at other times, in actual battle his spirit was excited and all on fire, and he would rush on with the boldest at too great a hazard, just as, without doubt, he actually threw away his life at Chios by being the first to drive his trireme to shore and trying to force a landing. 2 So then Phocion, who showed himself at once safe and active, would put ardour into Chabrias when he delayed, and again would take away the unseasonable intensity of his efforts. Wherefore Chabrias, who was a good-natured and worthy man, made much of him and advanced him to enterprises and commands, making him known to the Greeks, and employing him in most affairs of moment. Especially in the sea-fight off Naxos he conferred no little name and fame upon Phocion; for he gave him command of the left wing, and here the battle raged hotly and the issue was speedily decided. 3 Accordingly, as this was the first sea-fight which the Athenians had fought with the Greeks on their own account since the capture of their city, and as it had succeeded, they made exceeding much of Chabrias, and came to look upon Phocion as a man fit for command. They won the victory during the celebration of the great mysteries; and therefore Chabrias used to furnish the Athenians with wine for the festival every year on the sixteenth of the month Boëdromion.

7 1 Afterwards, we are told, when Chabrias sent him to get their contributions from the islanders and offered him twenty ships, Phocion said that if he was sent to wage war, he needed a larger force, but if to confer with allies, one ship was enough; and after sailing out with his own trireme and discussing matters with the cities and dealing with the magistrates considerately and in a straightforward manner, he returned with many ships, which the allies sent off with money for the Athenians. 2 And not only while Chabrias was alive did Phocion continue to show him attention and honour, but also after his death he took good care of his relatives, and especially of his son Ctesippus, whom he wished to make a good man; and although he saw that the youth was capricious and intractable, he nevertheless persisted in correcting and covering up his disgraceful conduct. Once, however, we are told, when the young man was troublesome to him on an expedition, and plied him with unseasonable questions and advice, like one making corrections and sharing in the command, he cried: “O Chabrias, Chabrias, surely I make thee a large return for thy friendship in enduring thy son.”

3 He saw that the public men of his day had distributed among themselves as if by lot the work of the general and the orator. Some of them merely spoke before the people and introduced measures, — men like Eubulus, Aristophon, Demosthenes, Lycurgus, and Hypereides; while such men as Diopeithes, Menestheus, Leosthenes, and Chabrias advanced themselves by holding the office of general and waging war. He therefore wished to resume and restore the public service rendered by Pericles, Aristides, and Solon, which was equally apportioned in both fields of action. For each of those men showed himself to be, in the words of Archilochus,

“As well a squire of Enyalius god of war,

As versed in the lovely Muses’ gifts.”

He also saw that the goddess Athena was a goddess of war as well as of statecraft, and was so addressed.

8 1 Having taken this stand, his civil policies were always in favour of peace and quiet; and yet he held the office of general more frequently than any man, and I speak not only of the men of his own time, but also of those who came before him. He did not seek the office or canvass for it; nor, on the other hand, did he flee or run away when his city called him. It is generally admitted, indeed, that he held the office of general forty-five times, although he was not even once present at the election, but was always absent when the people summoned and chose him. 2 Therefore men of little understanding are amazed at the conduct of the Athenian people. For Phocion opposed them more than anybody else, and never said or did anything to win their favour; and yet, just as kings are supposed to listen to their flatterers after dinner has begun, so the Athenians made use of their most elegant and sprightly leaders by way of diversion, but when they wanted a commander they were always sober and serious, and called upon the severest and most sensible citizen, one who alone, or more than the rest, arrayed himself against their desires and impulses. 3 Indeed, when an oracle from Delphi was read out in the assembly, declaring that when the rest of the Athenians were of like mind, one man had a mind at variance with the city, Phocion came forward and bade them seek no further, since he himself was the man in question; for there was no one but he who disliked everything they did. And when, as he was once delivering an opinion to the people, he met with their approval, and saw that all alike accepted his argument, he turned to his friends and said: “Can it possibly be that I am making a bad argument without knowing it?’

9 1 The Athenians were once asking contributions for a public sacrifice, and the rest were contributing, but Phocion, after being many times asked to give, said: “Ask from these rich men; for I should be ashamed to make a contribution to you here before I have paid my debt to this man here,” pointing to Callicles the money-lender. And once when his audience would not cease shouting and crying him down, he told them this fable. 2 “A coward was going forth to war, but when some ravens croaked, he laid down his arms and kept quiet; then he picked them up and was going forth again, and when the ravens croaked once more, he stopped, and said at last: ‘You may croak with all your might, but you shall not get a taste of me.’ “ And at another time, when the Athenians urged him to lead forth against the enemy, and called him an unmanly coward because he did not wish to do so, he said: “Ye cannot make me bold, nor can I make you cowards. However, we know one another.” 3 And again, in a time of peril, when the people were behaving very harshly towards him and demanding that he render up accounts of his generalship, “My good friends,” said he, “make sure of your safety first.” Again, when they had been humble and timorous during a war, but then, after peace had been made, were getting bold and denouncing Phocion on the ground that he had robbed them of the victory, “Ye are fortunate,” said he, “in having a general who knows you; since otherwise ye had long ago perished.” 4 Once, too, when the people were unwilling to adjudicate with the Boeotians a question of territory, but wanted to go to war about it, he counselled them to fight with words, in which they were superior, and not with arms, in which they were inferior. Again, when he was speaking and they would not heed or even consent to hear him, he said: “Ye can force me to act against my wishes, but ye shall not compel me to speak against my judgement.” 5 And when Demosthenes, one of the orators in opposition to him, said to him, “The Athenians will kill thee, Phocion, should they go crazy,” he replied: “But they will kill thee, should they come to their senses.” Again, when he saw Polyeuctus the Sphettian, on a hot day, counselling the Athenians to go to war with Philip, and then, from much panting and sweating, since he was really very corpulent, frequently gulping down water, Phocion said: “It is meet that ye should be persuaded by this man to go to war; for what do ye think he would do under breastplate and shield, when the enemy were near, if, in making you a premeditated speech, he is danger of choking to death?” 6 At another time Lycurgus heaped much abuse upon him in the assembly, and above all because, when Alexander demanded ten of the citizens of Athens, Phocion counselled their surrender; Phocion, however, merely said: “I have given this people much good and profitable counsel, but they will not listen to me.”

10 1 There was a certain Archibiades, nicknamed Laconistes, because, in imitation of the Spartans, he let his beard grow to an extravagant size, always wore a short cloak, and had a scowl on his face. Phocion was once stormily interrupted in the council, and called upon this man for testimony and support in what he said. But when the man rose up and gave such counsel as was pleasing to the Athenians, Phocion seized him by the beard and said: “O Archibiades, why, then, didst thou not shave thyself?” 2 Again, when Aristogeiton the public informer, who was always warlike in the assemblies and tried to urge the people on to action, came to the place of muster leaning on his staff and with both legs bandaged, Phocion spied him from the tribunal when he was afar off, and cried out: “Put down Aristogeiton, too, as lame and worthless.” So that one might wonder how and why a man so harsh and stern got the surname of The Good.

3 But though it is difficult, it is not impossible, I think, for the same man, like the same wine, to be at once pleasant and austere; just as others, on the contrary, appear to be sweet, but are most unpleasant to those who use them, and most injurious. And yet we are told that Hypereides once said to the people: “Do not ask, men of Athens, merely whether I am bitter, but whether I am paid for being bitter,” as if the multitude were led by their avarice to fear and attack those only who are troublesome and vexatious, and not rather all who use their power to gratify their insolence or envy or wrath or contentiousness. 4 Phocion, then, wrought no injury to any one of his fellow citizens out of enmity, nor did he regard any one of them as his enemy; but he was harsh, obstinate, and inexorable only so far as was necessary to struggle successfully against those who opposed his efforts in behalf of his country, and in other relations of life showed himself well-disposed to all, accessible, and humane, so that he even gave aid to his adversaries when they were in trouble or in danger of being brought to account. 5 When his friends chided him for pleading the cause of some worthless man, he said that good men needed no aid. Again, when Aristogeiton the public informer, who was under condemnation, sent and asked him to come to him, he obeyed the summons and set out for the prison; and when his friends sought to prevent him, he said: “Let me go, my good men; for where could one take greater pleasure in meeting Aristogeiton?”

11 And certainly the allies and the islanders regarded envoys from Athens under the conduct of any other general as enemies, barricading their gates, obstructing their harbours, and bringing into their cities from the country their herds, slaves, women and children but whenever Phocion was the leader, they went far out to meet him in their own ships, wearing garlands and rejoicing, and conducted him to their homes themselves.

12 1 When Philip was stealing into Euboea and bringing a force across from Macedonia and making the cities his own by means of tyrants, and when Plutarch the Eretrian called upon the Athenians and begged them to rescue the island from its occupation by the Macedonian, Phocion was sent out as general with a small force, in the belief that the people of the island would rally readily to his aid. 2 But he found the whole island full of traitors, disaffected, and honeycombed with bribery, and was therefore in a position of great peril. So he took possession of a crest of ground which was separated by a deep ravine from the plains above Tamynae, and on this assembled and held together the best fighting men of his force. 3 To the disorderly and worthless triflers who ran away from the camp and made their way home he bade his officers give no heed, for in the camp their lack of discipline would make them useless and harmful to the fighting men, while at home their accusing consciences would make them less liable to cry down their commander, and would keep them entirely from malicious accusations.

13 1 When the enemy came up against him, he ordered his men to remain quietly under arms until he should have finished sacrificing, and then waited a considerable time, either because the omens were bad, or because he wished to draw the enemy nearer. Therefore, to begin with, Plutarch, who thought that Phocion’s delay was due to cowardice, sallied forth with his mercenaries. Next, the horsemen, catching sight of Plutarch, could not restrain themselves, but rode at once into the enemy, hurrying out of the camp in a disorderly and scattered fashion. 2 The foremost of them were conquered, and then all of them dispersed and Plutarch took to flight, while some of the enemy gained the ramparts and tried to cut them away and destroy them, supposing themselves to be entirely victorious. But at this point the sacrifices were completed, and the Athenians, bursting out of their camp, routed their assailants and slew most of them as they fled among the entrenchments. Then Phocion ordered his phalanx to halt for the reception and support of the troops which had been scattered in the previous fight, while he himself with his picked men fell upon the main body of the enemy. 3 A fierce battle ensued, in which all the Athenians fought with spirit and gallantry; but Thallus the son of Cineas and Glaucus the son of Polymedes, whose post was at their general’s side, bore away the palm. However, Cleophanes also did most valuable service in that battle. For, by calling back the cavalry from their flight and exhorting them with loud cries to succour their general in his peril, he made them turn back and confirm the victory of the men-at arms.

4 After this, Phocion expelled Plutarch from Eretria, took possession of Zaretra, a fortress most advantageously situated where the island is reduced to its narrowest width by the sea, which hems it in on both sides, and released all the Greeks whom he had taken prisoners. For he was afraid that the orators at Athens might drive the people, in some fit of anger, to treat them with cruelty.

14 1 After these things had been accomplished, Phocion sailed back home, and then the allies speedily felt the absence of his probity and justice, and speedily did the Athenians recognize the experience and vigour which had been shown by him. For his successor in command, Molossus, conducted the war in such a way as actually to fall alive into the hands of the enemy. 2 And now Philip, cherishing great anticipations, went to the Hellespont with all his forces, expecting to get the Chersonesus, and at the same time Perinthus and Byzantium, into his power. The Athenians were eager to give aid to their allies, but their orators strove successfully to have Chares sent out as commander, and he, after sailing thither, did nothing worthy of the force under his orders, nor would the cities even receive his armament into their harbours. On the contrary, he was held in suspicion by all of them, and wandered about exacting money from the allies and despised by the enemy, so that the people of Athens, instigated by their orators, were incensed at him, and repented of having sent aid to the Byzantians. 3 Then Phocion rose in the assembly and declared that they must not be angry at their allies who showed distrust, but at their generals who were distrusted; “For these,” said he, “make you to be feared even by those who can be saved only by your help.”

Accordingly, moved by his words, the people changed their minds again and ordered him to take another force and go himself to the help of their allies on the Hellespont; a commission which contributed more than anything else to the salvation of Byzantium. 4 For already Phocion was held in high repute there; and when Leon also, a man who was first among the Byzantians for virtue, and had been a familiar companion of Phocion in the Academy, went surety for him with the city, they would not suffer him to go into the camp outside the city, as he wished, but threw open their gates and received the Athenians into close companionship with themselves. This mark of confidence caused the Athenians to be not only discreet and blameless in their general conduct, but also most spirited in the struggles for the city’s defence. 5 In this way Philip was expelled from the Hellespont at this time and brought into contempt, although men had thought there was no fighting or contending with him at all; moreover, Phocion captured some of his ships and recovered cities which he had garrisoned. He also landed in many parts of Philip’s territory and plundered and overran it, until he was wounded by those who rallied to its defence, and sailed back home.

15 1 The people of Megara once made a secret appeal to Athens for help, and Phocion, fearing that the Boeotians might get early knowledge of the appeal and anticipate Athens in sending help, called an assembly early in the morning and announced to the Athenians the message received from Megara. Then, as soon as the requisite decree had been passed, he ordered the trumpeter to give the signal and led them, under arms, directly from the assembly. 2 The Megarians received him eagerly, and he enclosed Nisaea with a wall, built two long walls down to the sea-port from Megara, and thus united the city with the sea, so that she need now pay little heed to enemies on land and could be in close connection with Athens by sea.

16 1 Presently the relations between Athens and Philip were altogether hostile, and, in Phocion’s absence, other generals were chosen to conduct the war. But when Phocion returned with his fleet from the islands, to begin with, he tried to persuade the people, since Philip was peaceably inclined and greatly feared the peril of war, to accept the terms of settlement which he offered. 2 And when one of those who haunted the law-courts in the capacity of public informer opposed him, and said, “Canst thou dare, O Phocion, to divert the Athenians from war when they are already under arms?” “I can,” said he, “and that, too, though I know that while there is war thou wilt be under my orders, but when peace has been made I shall be under thine.” When, however, he could not prevail, but Demosthenes carried the day and was urging the Athenians to join battle with Philip as far from Attica as possible, “My good Sir,” said Phocion, “let us not ask where we can fight, but how we shall be victorious. 3 For in that case the war will be at a long remove; but wherever men are defeated every terror is close at hand.” But when the defeat came, and the turbulent and revolutionary spirits in the city dragged Charidemus to the tribunal and demanded that he be made general, the best citizens were filled with fear; and with the aid of the council of the Areiopagus in the assembly, by dint of entreaties and tears, they persuaded them at last to entrust the city to the guidance of Phocion.

4 In general, Phocion thought that the policy and kindly overtures of Philip should be accepted by the Athenians; but when Demades brought in a motion that the city would participate with the Greeks in the common peace and in the congress, Phocion would not favour it before they found out what demands Philip was going to make upon the Greeks. 5 His opinion did not prevail, owing to the crisis, and yet as soon as he saw that the Athenians were repenting of their course, because they were required to furnish Philip with triremes and horsemen, “This is what I feared,” said he, “when I opposed your action; but since you agreed upon it, you must not repine or be dejected, remembering that our ancestors also were sometimes in command, and sometimes under command, but by doing well in both these positions saved both their city and the Greeks.” 6 And on the death of Philip, he was opposed to the people’s offering sacrifices of glad tidings; for it was an ignoble thing, he said, to rejoice thereat, and the force which had been arrayed against them at Chaeroneia was diminished by only one person.

17 1 Again, when Demosthenes was heaping abuse upon Alexander, who was already advancing against Thebes, Phocion said: “ ‘Rash one, why dost thou seek to provoke a man who is savage,’ and is reaching out after greater glory? canst thou wish, when so great a conflagration is near, to fan the city into flame? But I, who am bearing the burdens of command with this object in view, will not suffer these fellow citizens of mine to perish even if that is their desire.” 2 And when Thebes had been destroyed and Alexander was demanding the surrender of Demosthenes, Lycurgus, Hypereides, Charidemus, and others, and the assembly turned their eyes upon Phocion and called upon him many times by name, he rose up, and drawing to his side one of his friends, whom he always cherished, trusted, and loved most of all, he said: “These men have brought the city to such a pass that I, for my part, even if this Nicocles should be demanded, would urge you to give him up. 3 For if I might die myself in behalf of you all, I should deem it a piece of good fortune for me. And I feel pity,” said he, “men of Athens, for those also who have fled hither from Thebes; but it is enough that the Greeks should have the fate of Thebes to mourn. Therefore it is better to supplicate and try to persuade the victors for both you and them, and not to fight.”

4 Well, then, we are told that when Alexander got the first decree which the Athenians passed, he cast it from him and ran with averted face from the envoys; the second, however, he accepted, because it was brought by Phocion, and because he heard from the older Macedonians that Philip also used to admire this man. And he not only consented to meet Phocion and hear his petition, but actually listened to his counsels. And Phocion counselled him, if he sought quiet, to make an end of the war; but if glory, to transfer the war, and turn his arms away from Greece against Barbarians. 5 And by saying many things that suited well with Alexander’s nature and desires he so far changed and softened his feelings that he advised the Athenians to give close attention to their affairs, since, if anything should happen to him, the leadership of Greece would properly fall to them. In private, too, he made Phocion his friend and guest, and showed him greater honour than most of his constant associates enjoyed. 6 At any rate, Duris writes that after Alexander had become great and conquered Dareius, he dropped from his letters the word of salutation, “chairein,” except whenever he was writing to Phocion; him alone, like Antipater, he used to address with the word “chairein.” This is testimony of Chares also.

18 1 The story about the money, indeed, is generally admitted, namely, that Alexander sent him a present of a hundred talents. When this was brought to Athens, Phocion asked the bearers why in the world, when there were so many Athenians, Alexander offered such a sum to him alone. They joined, “Because Alexander judges that thou alone art a man of honour and worth.” “In that case,” said Phocion, “let him suffer me to be and be thought such always.” 2 But when the messengers accompanied him to his home and saw there a great simplicity, — his wife kneading bread, while Phocion with his own hands drew water from the well and washed his feet, — they were indignant, and pressed the money upon him still more urgently, declaring it an intolerable thing that he, though a friend of the king, should live in such poverty. Phocion, accordingly, seeing a poor old man walking the street in a dirty cloak, asked them if they considered him inferior to this man. “Heaven forbid!” they cried. 3 “And yet this man,” said Phocion, “has less to live upon than I, and finds it sufficient. And, in a word,” said he, “if I make no use of this great sum of money, it will do me no good to have it; or, if I use it, I shall bring myself, and the king as well, under the calumnies of the citizens.” So the treasure went back again from Athens, after it had showed the Greeks that the man who did not want so great a sum was richer than the man who offered it. 4 Alexander was vexed and wrote back to Phocion that he could not regard as his friends those who wanted nothing of him. But not even then would Phocion take the money; he did, however, ask for the release of Echecratides the sophist, Athenodorus of Imbros, and two men of Rhodes, Demaratus and Sparton, who had been arrested upon sundry charges and imprisoned in Sardis. 5 These men, then, Alexander set free at once, and at a later time, when he sent Craterus back into Macedonia, he ordered him to turn over to Phocion the revenues from whichever one of four cities in Asia he might select, — either Cius, Gergithus, Mylasa, or Elaea, — insisting still more strongly than before that he would be angry if Phocion did not take them. But Phocion would not take them, and very soon Alexander died. And even to the present day Phocion’s house is pointed out in Melité, adorned with bronze disks, but otherwise plain and simple.

19 1 As for his wives, nothing is told us about the first, except that she was a sister of Cephisodotus the sculptor; but the reputation which the second had among the Athenians for sobriety and simplicity was not less than that of Phocion for probity. 2 And once when the Athenians were witnessing an exhibition of new tragedies, the actor who was to take the part of the queen asked the choregus to furnish him with a great number of attendant women in expensive array; and when he could not get them, he was indignant, and kept the audience waiting by his refusal to come out. But the choregus, Melanthius, pushed him before the spectators, crying: “Dost thou not see that Phocion’s wife always goes out with one maid-servant? Thy vanity will be the undoing of our women-folk.” 3 His words were plainly heard by the audience, and were received with tumultuous applause. And this very wife, when an Ionian woman who was her guest displayed ornaments of gold and precious stones worked into collars and necklaces, said: “My ornament is Phocion, who is now for the twentieth year a general of Athens.”

20 1 When Phocus his son wished to compete at the Panathenaic festival as a vaulting rider of horses, Phocion permitted it, not because he was ambitious for the victory, but in order that care and training of the body might make his son a better man; for in general the youth was fond of wine and irregular in his habits. The youth was victorious, and many asked him to their houses for the victor’s banquet; but Phocion declined the other invitations and granted the coveted honour to one host only. 2 And when he went to the banquet and saw the general magnificence of the preparations, and particularly the foot-basins of spiced wine that were brought to the guests as they entered, he called his son and said: “Phocus, do not let thy companion ruin thy victory.” Moreover, wishing to remove the young man entirely from that style of living, he took him off to Sparta and put him among the youths who were following the course of discipline called “agoge.” 3 This vexed the Athenians, who thought that Phocion despised and looked down upon the native customs. And once Demades said to him: “Phocion, why shouldn’t we try to persuade the Athenians to adopt the Spartan polity? For if thou sayest the word, I am ready to introduce and support the requisite law.” But Phocion replied: “Indeed it would very well become thee, and wearing such a mantle as thine, to recommend to the Athenians the public mess-halls of the Spartans, and to extol Lycurgus.”

21 1 When also wrote asking the Athenians to send him triremes, and the orators opposed the request, and the council bade Phocion speak upon the matter, “I tell you, then,” he said, “either to be superior in arms or to be friends with those who are superior.” To Pytheas, who at that time was just beginning to address the Athenians, but was already loquacious and bold, Phocion said “Hold thy peace, though who art but a newly bought slave of the people!” 2 And when Harpalus, who had run away from Alexander out of Asia with great sums of money, landed in Attica, and those who were wont to make merchandise of their influence as orators came running to him at breakneck speed, to these men he dropped and scattered small morsels of his wealth by way of bait; but he sent to Phocion and offered him seven hundred talents, and everything else that he had, and put himself with all his possessions at the sole disposition of Phocion. 3 But Phocion answered sharply that Harpalus would rue it if he did not cease trying to corrupt the city, and for the time being the traitor was abashed and desisted from his efforts. After a little, however, when the Athenians were deliberating upon his case, he found that those who had taken money from him were changing sides and denouncing him, that they might not be discovered; while Phocion, who would take nothing, was now giving some consideration to the safety of Harpalus as well as to the public interests. 4 Again, therefore, he was led to pay court to Phocion, but after all his efforts to bribe him found that he was impregnable on all sides like a fortress. Of Charicles, however, Phocion’s son-in law, Harpalus made an intimate associate and friend, trusting him in everything and using him in everything, and thus covered him with infamy.

22 1 For instance, on the death of Pythonicé the courtesan, who was the passionately loved mistress of Harpalus and had borne him a daughter, Harpalus resolved to build her a very expensive monument, and committed the care of the work to Charicles. 2 This service was an ignoble one in itself, but it acquired additional disgrace from the completed tomb. For this is still to be seen in Hermus, on the road from Athens to Eleusis, and its has nothing worthy of the large sum of thirty talents which Charicles is said to have charged Harpalus for the work. And yet after the death of Harpalus himself, his daughter was taken up by Charicles and Phocion and educated with every care. 3 However, when Charicles was brought to trial for his dealings with Harpalus, and begged Phocion to help him and go with him into the court-room, Phocion refused, saying: “I made thee my son-in law, Charicles, for none but just purposes.”

Asclepiades the son of Hipparchus was the first one to bring to the Athenians the tidings that Alexander was dead. Thereupon Demades urged them to pay no heed to the report, since, had it been true, the whole earth would long ago have been filled with the stench of the body. But Phocion, who saw that the people were bent on revolution, tried to dissuade and restrain them. 4 And when many of them sprang towards the bema, and shouted that the tidings brought by Asclepiades were true and that Alexander was dead, “Well, then,” said Phocion, “if he is dead to day, he will be dead to morrow and the day after. Therefore we can deliberate in quiet, and with greater safety.”

23 1 Leosthenes, who had plunged the city into the Lamian war much to Phocion’s displeasure, once asked him derisively what good he had done the city during the many years in which he had been general. “No slight good,” said Phocion, “in that its citizens are buried in their own sepulchres.” 2 Again, when Leosthenes was talking very boldly and boastfully in the assembly, Phocion said: “Thy speeches, young man, are like cypress-trees, which are large and towering, but bear no fruit.” And when Hypereides confronted him with the question, “When, then, O Phocion, wilt thou counsel the Athenians to go to war?” “Whenever,” said Phocion, “I see the young men willing to hold their places in the ranks, the rich to make contributions, and the orators to keep their thievish hands away from the public moneys.”

3 When many were admiring the force got together by Leosthenes, and were asking Phocion what he thought of the city’s preparations, “They are good,” said he, “for the short course; but it is the long course which I fear in the war, since the city has no other moneys, or ships, or men-at arms.” 4 And events justified his fear. For at first Leosthenes achieved brilliant successes, conquering the Boeotians in battle, and driving Antipater into Lamia. Then, too, they say that the city came to cherish high hopes, and was continuously holding festivals and making sacrifices of glad tidings. Phocion, however, when men thought to convict him of error and asked him if he would not have been glad to have performed these exploits, replied: “By all means; but I am glad to have given the advice I did.” And again, when glad tidings came in quick succession by letter and messenger from the camp, “When, pray,” said he, “will our victories cease?”

24 1 But Leosthenes was killed, and then those who feared that Phocion, if he were sent out as general, would put a stop to the war, arranged with a certain obscure person to rise in the assembly and say that he was a friend and intimate associate of Phocion, and therefore advised the people to spare him and keep him in reserve, since they had none other like him, and to send out Antiphilus to the army. This course was approved by the Athenians, whereupon Phocion came forward and said that he had never been intimately associated with the person, nor in any way familiar or acquainted with him; 2 “But now,” said he, “from this very day I make thee a friend and close companion, for thou hast counselled what was for my advantage.”

Again, when the Athenians were bent on making an expedition against the Boeotians, at first he opposed it; and when his friends told him that he would be put to death by the Athenians if he offended them, “That will be unjust,” said he, “if I act for their advantage; but if I play them false, it will be just.” 3 Afterwards, however, seeing that they would not desist, but continued their clamour, he ordered the herald to make proclamation that every man in Athens under sixty years of age should take provisions for five days and follow him at once from the assembly. Thereupon a great tumult arose, the elderly men leaping to their feet and shouting their dissent. “It is no hardship,” said Phocion, “for I who am to be your general am in my eightieth year.” For the time being this checked them and changed their purpose.

25 1 However, when their sea-coast was being devastated by Micion, who landed at Rhamnus with a horde of Macedonians and mercenaries and overran the adjacent territory, Phocion led the Athenians out against him. And as they marched, men would run up to their general from all sides and show him what to do. He was advised to seize a hill there, to send his horsemen around thither, or to make his attack upon the enemy there. “O Heracles,” said Phocion, “how many generals I see, and how few soldiers!” 2 Again, after he had drawn up his men-at arms, one of them went out far in advance of the rest, and then was stricken with fear when an enemy advanced to meet him, and went back again to his post. “Shame on thee, young man,” said Phocion, “for having abandoned two posts, the one which was given thee by thy general, and the one which thou didst give thyself.” However, he attacked the enemy, routed them utterly, and slew Micion himself together with many others. 3 The Greek army in Thessaly, also, although Leonnatus and his Macedonians from Asia had joined Antipater, was victorious in battle, and Leonnatus fell; the Greek men-at arms were led by Antiphilus, their cavalry by Menon the Thessalian.

26 1 But a short time afterwards Craterus crossed from Asia with a large force, and there was another pitched battle at Crannon. Here the Greeks were defeated. Their defeat was not severe, nor did many of them fall, but owing to their lack of obedience to their commanders, who were young and soft-hearted, and because at the same time Antipater made tempting overtures to their several cities, their army melted away and most shamefully abandoned the cause of freedom. 2 At once, therefore, Antipater led his forces against Athens, and Demosthenes and Hypereides left the city. Demades, however, though he was unable to pay any portion of the fines which had been imposed upon him by the city (he had been seven times convicted of introducing illegal measures, had lost his civic rights, and was therefore debarred from speaking in the assembly), obtained immunity at this time, and brought in a bill for sending to Antipater ambassadors plenipotentiary to treat for peace. 3 But the people were fearful, and called upon Phocion, declaring that he was the only man whom they could trust. “But if I had been trusted,” said he, “when I gave you counsel, we should not now be deliberating on such matters.” And when the bill had thus been passed, he was sent off to Antipater, who was encamped in the Cadmeia, and was making preparations to march into Attica at once. And this was the first request that Phocion made, namely, that Antipater should remain where he was and make the treaty. 4 And when Craterus declared that it was not fair in Phocion to try to persuade them to remain in the territory of their friends and allies and ravage it, when they had it in their power to get booty from that of their enemies, Antipater took him by the hand and said: “We must grant Phocion this favour.” But as for the other terms of the peace, he ordered the Athenians to leave them to the careers, just as, at Lamia, he had been ordered to do by Leosthenes.

27 1 Accordingly, Phocion returned to Athens with these demands, and the Athenians acceded to them, under the necessity that was upon them. Then Phocion went once more to Thebes, with the other ambassadors, to whom the Athenians had added Xenocrates the philosopher. For so high an estimate was set upon the virtue of Xenocrates, and so great was his reputation and fame in the eyes of all, that it was supposed the human heart could harbour no insolence or cruelty or wrath which the mere sight of the man would not infuse with reverence and a desire to do him honour. 2 But the result in this case was the opposite, owing to a certain ruthlessness and hatred of goodness in Antipater. For, in fact, he would not salute Xenocrates, although he greeted the other ambassadors; at which Xenocrates is said to have remarked: “Antipater does well to feel shame before me alone of his ruthless designs against our city.” And again, when the philosopher began to speak, Antipater would not listen to him, but angrily contradicted him and forced him into silence. 3 But when Phocion had made his plea, Antipater replied that the Athenians could be his friends and allies on condition that they delivered up Demosthenes and Hypereides, reverted to their earlier constitution with its basis of property qualification, received a garrison into Munychia, and, in addition, paid the costs of the war and a fine.

4 The rest of the ambassadors were satisfied with these terms and considered them humane, with the exception of Xenocrates, who said that Antipater dealt with them moderately if he held them to be slaves, but severely if he held them to be freemen. Phocion, however, besought Antipater to spare them the garrison, to which Antipater, as we are told, replied: “O Phocion, we wish to gratify thee in all things, except those which will ruin thee and us.” 5 But some tell a different story, and say that Antipater asked whether, in case he indulged the Athenians in the matter of the garrison, Phocion would go surety that his city would abide by the peace and stir up no trouble; and that when Phocion was silent and delayed his answer, Callimedon, surnamed Carabus, an arrogant man and a hater of democracy, sprang to his feet and cried: “But even if the fellow should prate such nonsense, Antipater, wilt thou trust him and give up what thou has planned to do?”

28 1 Thus the Athenians were obliged to receive a Macedonian garrison, which was under the command of Menyllus, an equitable man and a friend of Phocion. But the measure was held to be an arrogant one, and rather a display of power which delighted in insolence than an occupation due to stress of circumstance. And it came at a time which added not a little to the distress of the people. For the garrison was introduced on the twentieth of the month Boëdromion, while the celebration of the mysteries was in progress, on the day when the god Iacchus is conducted from the city to Eleusis, so that the disturbance of the sacred rite led most men to reflect upon the attitude of the heavenly powers in earlier times and at the present day. 2 For of old the mystic shapes and voices were vouchsafed to them in the midst of their most glorious successes, and brought consternation and affright upon their enemies; but now, while the same sacred ceremonies were in progress, the gods looked down with indifference upon the most grievous woes of Hellas, and the profanation of the season which had been most sweet and holy in their eyes made it for the future give its name to their greatest evils. Indeed, a few years before this the Athenians had received an oracle from Dodona bidding them “guard the summits of Artemis,” that strangers might not seize them; 3 and now, during the days of the festival, when the fillets with which they entwine the mystic chests were dyed, instead of purple they showed a sallow and deathly colour, and, what was more significant still, all the articles for common use which were dyed with the fillets took the natural hue. Moreover, as a mystic initiate was washing a pig in the harbour of Cantharus, a great fish seized the man and devoured the lower parts of his body as far as the belly, by which Heaven clearly indicated to them in advance that they would be deprived of the lower parts of the city which adjoined the sea, but would retain the upper city.

4 Now, the garrison, owing to the influence of Menyllus, did no harm to the inhabitants; but the citizens who were deprived of their franchise because of their poverty numbered more than twelve thousand, and those of them who remained at home appeared to be suffering grievous and undeserved wrongs, while those who on this account forsook the city and migrated to Thrace, where Antipater furnished them with land and a city, were like men driven from a captured city.

29 1 Moreover, the death of Demosthenes in Calauria, and that of Hypereides at Cleonae, about which I have written elsewhere, made the Athenians yearn almost passionately for Philip and Alexander. At a later time, after Antigonus had been slain, and those who slew him began to oppress and vex the people, a peasant in Phrygia who was digging on his farm was asked by someone what he was doing, and answered: “I am looking for Antigonus.” 2 So now many were moved to speak, as they called to mind how the greatness and generosity of those illustrious kings made their wrath easy to appease; whereas Antipater, although he tried to conceal his power under the mask of a common man of mean attire and simple mode of life, was really a more burdensome tyrant and master to those who were in trouble. 3 But nevertheless Phocion successfully pleaded with Antipater for the exemption of many from exile, and for those who went into exile he obtained the privilege of residing in Peloponnesus, instead of being driven out of Hellas beyond the Ceraunian mountains and the promontory of Taenarum like other men in banishment. Of this number was Hagnonides the public informer. 4 Furthermore, by managing the affairs of the city with mildness and according to the laws, he kept the men of education and culture always in office, while the busybodies and innovators, who withered into insignificance from the very fact that they held no office and raised no uproars, were taught by him to be fond of home and to delight in tilling the soil. When he saw that Xenocrates paid the resident alien tax, he offered to enrol him as a citizen; but the philosopher refused, saying that he could not take part in an administration for the prevention of which he had served on an embassy.

30 1 When Menyllus offered Phocion a gift of money, he replied that neither was Menyllus better than Alexander, nor was there any stronger reason why the man who would not accept it then should take it now. Menyllus, however, begged him to take the money for his son Phocus at least, whereupon Phocion said: “For Phocus, should he be converted to sobriety of life, his patrimony will be enough; but as he is now, nothing is sufficient.” Again, when Antipater desired him to do something that was not seemly, he gave him a sharper answer, saying: “Antipater cannot have from me the service of friend and flatterer at once.” 2 And Antipater himself once said, as we are told, that he had two friends at Athens, Phocion and Demades; one he could never persuade to take anything, the other he could never satisfy with his gifts. And verily Phocion displayed as a virtue the poverty in which, though he had been so many times a general of Athens and had enjoyed the friendship of kings, he had come to old age; whereas Demades made a great parade of his wealth, even though he was violating the laws to do so. 3 For instance, there was a law of Athens at this time forbidding a choregus to have a foreigner in his chorus, under penalty of a thousand drachmas; but Demades presented a chorus of a hundred members all of whom were foreigners, and at the same time brought into the theatre his fine of a thousand drachmas for each one of them. Again, when he was bringing home a wife for his son Demeas, he said to him: “When I married thy mother, my son, not even a neighbour noticed it; but to thy nuptials kings and potentates are contributing.”

4 When the Athenians importuned Phocion to go and persuade Antipater to remove the garrison, whether it was because he despaired of persuading him, or because he saw that the people were more sensible and conducted public affairs with more decorum when they were thus under the influence of fear, he continually rejected that mission; he did, however, persuade Antipater not to exact the moneys due from the city, but to delay, and postpone their payment. 5 The people, accordingly, transferred their importunities to Demades. He readily undertook the mission, and taking his son with him set out for Macedonia. He arrived there, as some heavenly power, doubtless, would have it, precisely at the time when Antipater was afflicted with sickness, and when Cassander, who had assumed control of affairs, had found a letter which Demades had written to Antigonus in Asia, beseeching him to present himself suddenly in Greece and Macedonia, which hung by an old and rotten thread, as he facetiously called Antipater. 6 When, therefore, Cassander saw Demades after his arrival, he arrested him, and first slaughtered his son, whom he had brought so near that the folds of his father’s robe caught the blood of his murder and were filled with it, and then, after heaping much insult and abuse upon him for his ingratitude and treachery, slew the father too.

31 1 And when Antipater died, after appointing Polysperchonb general-in chief, and Cassander chiliarch, Cassander at once became rebellious, promptly took the government into his own hands, and sent Nicanor with all speed to relieve Menyllus from the command of the garrison at Athens, bidding him take over Munychia before Antipater’s death became known. 2 This was done, and when, after a few days, the Athenians learned that Antipater was dead, they blamed Phocion severely, alleging that he had known about it before and had held his peace as a favour to Nicanor. Phocion, however, paid no heed to these charges, but by interviews and discussions with Nicanor rendered him in general mild and gracious to the Athenians, and, in particular, persuaded him to undertake sundry expensive exhibitions as director of games.

32 1 In the meantime, too, Polysperchon, who had the king in his own personal charge and was seeking to thwart the schemes of Cassander, sent a letter to the citizens of Athens, announcing that the king restored to them their democracy and ordered that all Athenians sacred take part in the administration of the city according to their earlier polity. 2 This was a plot against Phocion. For Polysperchon was scheming (as he plainly showed a little later) to dispose the city in his own interests, and had no hope of succeeding unless Phocion was banished; he was sure, however, that Phocion would be banished if the disfranchised citizens overwhelmed the administration, and the tribunal was again at the mercy of demagogues and public informers.

3 Since the Athenians were somewhat stirred by these communications, Nicanor wished to address them, and after a council had been convened in Peiraeus, he came before it, relying upon Phocion for the safety of his person. But Dercyllus, the Athenian general in command of the district, made an attempt to arrest him, whereupon Nicanor, who became aware of the attempt in time, dashed away, and was clearly about to inflict speedy punishment upon the city. Phocion, however, when assailed for letting Nicanor go and not detaining him, said that he had confidence in Nicanor and expected no evil at his hands; but in any case, he would rather be found suffering wrong than doing wrong. 4 Now, such an utterance as this might seem honourable and noble in one who had regard to his own interests alone; but he who endangers his country’s safety, and that, too, when he is her commanding general, transgresses, I suspect, a larger and more venerable obligation of justice towards his fellow citizens. For it cannot even be said that it was the fear of plunging the city into war which made Phocion refrain from seizing Nicanor, but that he sought to excuse himself on other grounds by protestations of good faith and justice, in order that Nicanor might respect these obligations and keep the peace and do the Athenians no wrong; 5 nay, it would seem that he really had too strong a confidence in Nicanor. For though many gave warning against that officer and accused him of hostile designs against the Peiraeus, in that he was sending mercenaries across to Salamis, and tampering with some of the residents in Peiraeus, Phocion would not give heed to the story nor believe it at all. Indeed, even after Philomelus of Lamptrae brought in a decree that all Athenians should stand under arms and await orders from Phocion their general, he paid no attention to the matter, until Nicanor led his troops forth from Munychia and began to run trenches around the Peiraeus.

33 1 In this state of affairs, Phocion, who now wished to lead the Athenians forth to battle, was stormed at and held in derision, and also the son of Polysperchon came with an armed force. His ostensible design was to bring aid to the citizens against Nicanor, but he really wished to seize the city, if he could, now that she was ruinously divided against herself. 2 For the exiles who had burst into the country with him were at once in the city, strangers and disfranchised citizens ran in to join them, and a motley and turbulent assembly was gathered together, in which Phocion was deposed from his command and other generals were chosen. And had not Alexander been seen in close conference with Nicanor near the walls, and had not their interview, which was often repeated, rendered the Athenians suspicious, the city would not have escaped its peril. 3 Moreover, Hagnonides the orator at once assailed Phocion and denounced him as a traitor, whereupon Callimedon and Charicles took fright and left the city, while Phocion, and with him those of his friends who remained faithful, set out to go to Polysperchon. There went forth with them also, out of regard for Phocion, Solon of Plataea and Deinarchus of Corinth, who were reputed to be intimate friends of Polysperchon. 4 But Deinarchus fell sick, and the party therefore tarried many days in Elateia, during which time the people of Athens, in accordance with a decree brought in by Archestratus and supported by Hagnonides, sent an embassy to denounce Phocion. Both the parties fell in with Polysperchon at the same time, as he was marching with the king near Pharygae, a village of Phocis lying at the foot of Mount Acrurium, which is now called Galata.

5 Here, then, Polysperchon, after setting up the golden canopy and seating beneath it the king and his friends, as soon as Deinarchus came forward, ordered him to be seized, tortured, and put to death, and there gave audience to the Athenians. But they raised a tumultuous shouting with their denunciations of one another in the council, and at last Hagnonides came forward and said: “Throw us all into one cage and send us back to Athens to render an account.” 6 At this, the king burst out laughing; but the Macedonians and foreigners who were gathered about the council, having nothing else to do, were eager to listen, and nodded to the ambassadors to make their denunciation there. But there was no fairness in the conduct of the case, since, when Phocion tried to speak, he was frequently interrupted by Polysperchon, and at last, smiting the ground with his staff, he retired and held his peace. 7 Moreover, when Hegemon said that Polysperchon could bear witness to his good will towards the people, and Polysperchon replied in wrath, “Cease telling lies against me in the presence of the king,” the king sprang to his feet and would have smitten Hegemon with a spear. But Polysperchon quickly threw his arms about the king, and thus the council was dissolved.

34 1 A guard was now placed about Phocion and his associates, and at sight of this all of his friends who were standing at some remove covered up their faces and sought safety in flight. Phocion and his party, however, were taken back to Athens by Cleitus, ostensibly to be tried, but really under sentence of death. 2 And besides, the manner of their return to the city was shameful, for they were carried on waggons through the Cerameicus to the theatre. For thither Cleitus brought them and there he kept them, until the magistrates had made up an assembly, from which they excluded neither slave, foreigner, nor disfranchised person, but allowed all alike, both men and women, free access of the theatre and tribunal. 3 After the letter of the king had been read aloud, in which he said that according to his judgement the men were traitors, but that their fellow citizens, who were freemen and self-governing, should pronounce sentence upon them, Cleitus led the men in. Then the best of the citizens, at sight of Phocion, covered their faces, bent their heads, and wept. One of them, however, rose up and had the courage to say that, since the king had put a case of such importance into the hands of the people, it were well that slaves and foreigners should leave the assembly. 4 This the multitude would not tolerate, but cried out to stone the oligarchs and haters of the people. Therefore no one else undertook to speak in behalf of Phocion, but he himself, with great difficulty, at last made himself heard, saying: “Do ye wish to put us to death unjustly or justly?” And when some answered, “Justly,” he said: “And how will ye determine this without hearing me?” 5 But they were not a whit more willing to hear him, and therefore, drawing nearer, he said: “I admit my own guilt, and I assign death as the penalty for my political conduct; but these men with me, men of Athens, are not guilty at all, and why will ye put them to death?” “Because they are thy friends,” answered many, whereat Phocion retired and held his peace. But Hagnonides read aloud an edict which he had prepared, in accordance with which the people were to vote by show of hands whether they thought the men to be guilty, and the men, if the show of hands were against them, were to be put to death.

35 1 After the edict had been read aloud, some demanded an additional clause providing that Phocion should be tortured before he was put to death, and insisted that the rack should be brought in and the executioners summoned. But Hagnonides, who saw that Cleitus was displeased at this, and considered the measure abominable and barbarous, said: “Whenever we catch that rascally Callimedon, men of Athens, we will put him to the torture; but I cannot make any such motion in the case of Phocion.” 2 Here some decent fellow called out in response: “Right thou art; for if we should torture Phocion, what would be left for us to do to thee?” So the form of the edict was approved, and when the show of hands was taken, no one keeping his seat, but all rising to their feet, and most of them wreathing themselves with garlands, they condemned the men to death. Now, there were with Phocion, Nicocles, Thudippus, Hegemon, and Pythocles; and Demetrius of Phalerum, Callimedon, Charicles, and sundry others, were condemned to death in absentiâ.

36 1 When, accordingly, the assembly had been dissolved and the men were being led to the prison, the rest of them, as their friends and relatives clung about them, walked about lamenting and shedding tears; but the countenance of Phocion was the same as it used to be when he was escorted from the assembly as general, and when men saw it, they were amazed at the man’s calmness and at his grandeur of spirit. 2 His enemies, however, however, ran along by his side and reviled him; and one of them actually came up and spat in his face. At this, as we are told, Phocion looked towards the magistrates and said: “Will not someone stop this fellow’s unseemly behaviour?” Again, when Thudippus, on entering the prison and seeing the executioner bruising the hemlock, grew angry and bewailed his hard fate, declaring it not fitting that he should perish with Phocion, “Is it no satisfaction to thee, then,” said Phocion, “that thou art put to death in company with Phocion?” 3 And when one of his friends asked him if he had any message for his son Phocus, “Certainly,” said he; “my message is that he cherish no resentment against the Athenians.” Again, when Nicocles, his most faithful friend, begged the privilege of drinking the drug first, “O Nicocles,” he said, “thy request is grievous to me and painful; but since I have never in all my life denied thee any other favour, I grant thee this one also.” 4 But when all the rest had drunk of it, the drug ran short, and the executioner refused to bruise another portion unless he were paid twelve drachmas, which was the price of the weight required. However, after a delay of some length, Phocion called one of his friends, and, asking if a man could not even die at Athens without paying for the privilege, bade him give the executioner his money.

37 1 It was the nineteenth day of the month Munychion, and the horsemen conducting the procession in honour of Zeus were passing by the prison. Some of them took off their garlands, and others gazed at the door of the prison with tears in their eyes. And it was thought by all those whose souls were not wholly savage and debauched by rage and jealousy, that an impious thing had been done in not waiting over that day, and so keeping the city pure from a public execution when it was holding festival. 2 However, his enemies, as if their triumph were incomplete, got a decree passed that the body of Phocion should be carried beyond the boundary of the country, and that no Athenian should light a fire for his obsequies. Therefore no friend of his ventured to touch his body, but a certain Conopion, who was wont to perform such services for hire, carried the body beyond Eleusis, took fire from the Megarian territory, and burned it. 3 The wife of Phocion, however, who was present with her maidservants, heaped up a cenotaph on the spot and poured libations upon it; then, putting the bones in her bosom and carrying them by night to her dwelling, she buried them by the hearth, saying: “To thee, dear Hearth, I entrust these remains of a noble man; but do thou restore them to the sepulchre of his fathers, when the Athenians shall have come to their senses.”

38 1 And indeed, after a short time had passed, and when the course of events was teaching them what a patron and guardian of moderation and justice the people had lost, they set up a statue of him in bronze, and gave his bones a public burial. Moreover, as regards his accusers, the people themselves condemned Hagnonides and put him to death; while Epicurus and Demophilus, who had run away from the city, were found out by Phocion’s son and visited with his vengeance.

2 This son of Phocion, we are told, turned out to be a man of no worth in general, and once, being enamoured of a girl who was kept in a brothel, chanced to hear Theodosius the Atheist discourse in the Lyceium as follows: “If there is no disgrace in ransoming a man beloved, the same is true of a woman loved; what is true of a comrade, is true also of a mistress.” Accordingly, his passion leading him to think the argument sound, he ransomed his mistress.

But Phocion’s fate reminded the Greeks anew of that of Socrates; they felt that the sin and misfortune of Athens were alike in both cases.

Cato the Younger

1 1 Cato’s family got its first lustre and fame from his great-grandfather Cato (a man whose virtue gained him the greatest reputation and influence among the Romans, as has been written in his Life), but the death of both parents left him an orphan, together with his brother Caepio and his sister Porcia. Cato had also a half-sister, Servilia, the daughter of his mother. All these children were brought up in the home of Livius Drusus, their uncle on the mother’s side, who at that time was a leader in the conduct of public affairs; for he was a most powerful speaker, in general a man of the greatest discretion, and yielded to no Roman in dignity of purpose.

2 We are told that from his very childhood Cato displayed, in speech, countenance, and in his childish sports, a nature that was inflexible, imperturbable, and altogether steadfast. He set out to accomplish his purposes with a vigour beyond his years, and while he was harsh and repellent to those who would flatter him, he was still more masterful towards those who tried to frighten him. It was altogether difficult to make him laugh, although once in a while he relaxed his features so far as to smile; and he was not quickly nor easily moved to anger, though once angered he was inexorable.

3 When, accordingly, he came to study, he was sluggish of comprehension and slow, but what he comprehended he held fast in his memory. And this is generally the way of nature: those who are well endowed are more apt to recall things to mind, but those retain things in their memory who acquire them with toil and trouble; for everything they learn becomes branded, as it were, upon their minds. 4 It would appear, too, that Cato’s reluctance to be persuaded made his learning anything more laborious. For, to learn is simply to allow something to be done to you, and to be quickly persuaded is natural for those who are less able to offer resistance. Therefore young men are more easily persuaded than old men, and sick folk, than those who are well, and, in a word, where the power to raise objections is weakest, the act of submission is easiest. 5 However, we are told that Cato was obedient to his tutor, and did everything that was enjoined upon him, although in each case he demanded the reason and wanted to know the why and wherefore. And, indeed, his tutor was a man of culture, and more ready to reason with a pupil than to thrash him. His name was Sarpedon.

2 1 While Cato was still a boy, the Italian allies of the Romans were making efforts to obtain Roman citizenship. One of their number, Pompaedius Silo, a man of experience in war and of the highest position, was a friend of Drusus, and lodged at his house for several days. During this time he became familiar with the children, and said to them once: “Come, beg your uncle to help us in our struggle for citizenship.” 2 Caepio, accordingly, consented with a smile, but Cato made no reply and gazed fixedly and fiercely upon the strangers. Then Pompaedius said: “But thou, young man, what sayest thou to us? Canst thou not take the part of the strangers with thy uncle, like thy brother?” 3 And when Cato said not a word, but by his silence and the look on his face seemed to refuse the request, Pompaedius lifted him up through a window, as if he would cast him out, and ordered him to consent, or he would throw him down, at the same time making the tone of his voice harsher, and frequently shaking the boy as he held his body out at the window. 4 But when Cato had endured this treatment for a long time without showing fright or fear, Pompaedius put him down, saying quietly to his friends: “What a piece of good fortune it is for Italy that he is a boy; for if he were a man, I do not think we could get a single vote among the people.”

5 At another time a relation of his who was celebrating a birthday, invited Cato and other boys to supper, and the company were diverting themselves at play in a separate part of the house, older and younger together, their play being actions at law, accusations, and the conducting of the condemned persons to prison. 6 Accordingly, one of those thus condemned, a boy of comely looks, was led off by an older boy and shut into a chamber, where he called upon Cato for help. Then Cato, when he understood what was going on, quickly came to the door, pushed aside the boys who stood before it and tried to stop him, led forth the prisoner, and went off home with him in a passion, followed by other boys also.

3 1 He was so celebrated that, when Sulla was preparing for exhibition the sacred equestrian game for boys which is called “Troja,” and, after assembling the boys of good birth, appointed two leaders for them, the boys accepted one of them for his mother’s sake (he was a son of Metella, Sulla’s wife), but would not tolerate the other (who was a nephew of Pompey, named Sextus), and refused to rehearse under him or obey him; and when Sulla asked them whom they would have, they all cried “Cato,” and Sextus himself gave way and yielded the honour to a confessed superior.

2 Now, Sulla was friendly to Cato and his brother on their father’s account, and sometimes actually asked them to see him and conversed with them, a kindness which he showed to very few, by reason of the weight and majesty of his authority and power. So Sarpedon, thinking that this conduced greatly to the honour and safety of his charge, was continually bringing Cato to wait upon Sulla at his house, which, at that time, looked exactly like an Inferno, owing to the multitude of those who were brought thither and put to torture. 3 Now, Cato was in his fourteenth year; and when he saw heads of men reputed to be eminent carried forth, and heard the smothered groans of the bystanders, he asked his tutor why no one slew this man. “Because, my child,” said the tutor, “men fear him more than they hate him.” “Why, then,” said Cato, “didst thou not give me a sword, that I might slay him and set my country free from slavery?” 4 When Sarpedon heard this speech, and saw also the look on the boy’s face, which was full of rage and fury, he was so frightened that in future he kept him under close watch and ward, lest he should venture on some rash deed.

5 When he was still a little boy, and was asked whom he loved most, he answered, “My brother”; and to the question whom he loved next, likewise, “My brother”; and so a third time, until, after many such answers from him, his questioner desisted. And when he came to maturity, he maintained all the more firmly this affection for his brother. Indeed, when he was twenty years old, without Caepio he would not take supper, or make a journey, or go out into the forum. 6 But when his brother used perfume, Cato would decline it; and in his habits generally he was severe and strict. At any rate, when Caepio was admired and praised for his discretion and moderation, he would admit that he had those qualities when tested by reference to most men; “But when,” he would say, “I compare my life with that of Cato, I seem to myself no better than Sippius,” — mentioning one of those who were celebrated for luxury and effeminacy.

4 1 After Cato had been made priest of Apollo, he took a house apart, accepted his share of the patrimony, which amounted to a hundred and twenty talents, and began to live yet more simply than before. He made a close companion of Antipater the Tyrian, a Stoic philosopher, and devoted himself especially to ethical and political doctrines. He was possessed, as it were, with a kind of inspiration for the pursuit of every virtue; but, above all, that form of goodness which consists in rigid justice that will not bend to clemency or favour, was his great delight. 2 He practised also the kind of speaking which is effective with a multitude, deeming it right that in political philosophy, as in a great city, a certain warlike element should also be maintained. However, he did not perform his exercises in company with others, nor did any one ever hear him rehearsing a speech. Indeed, to one of his companions who said, “Men find fault with thee, Cato, for thy silence,” he replied: “Only let them not blame my life. I will begin to speak when I am not going to say what were better off unsaid.”

5 1 The Basilica Porcia, as it was called, had been dedicated by the elder Cato while he was censor. Here, then, the tribunes of the people were accustomed to transact their business; and as one of the pillars was thought to be in the way of their seats, they determined to take it down or move it to another place. This brought Cato for the first time, and against his wishes, into the forum; he opposed the tribunes, and was admired for the proof of eloquence and high character which he gave. 2 For his speech had nothing about it that was juvenile or affected, but was straightforward, full of matter, and harsh. However, a charm that captivated the ear was diffused over the harshness of his sentiments, and the mingling of his character with them gave their austerity a smiling graciousness that won men’s hearts. His voice was sufficiently loud and penetrating to reach the ears of so large a multitude, and it had a strength and tension which could not be broken or worn out; for he often spoke all day without getting tired.

3 At this time, then, after winning his case, he went back again to his silence and his discipline. He built up his body by vigorous exercises, accustoming himself to endure both heat and snow with uncovered head, and to journey on foot at all seasons, without a vehicle. Those of his friends who went abroad with him used horses, and Cato would often join each of them in turn and converse with him, although he walked and they rode. In sickness, he had wonderful patience, as well as self-control; for instance, if he had an ague, he would pass the day alone by himself, admitting no visitor, until he was conscious of lasting relief and the departure of the disease.

6 1 At suppers, he would throw dice for the choice of portions; and if he lost, and his friends bade him choose first, he would say it was not right, since Venus was unwilling. At first, also, he would drink once after supper and then leave the table; but as time went on he would allow himself to drink very generously, so that he often tarried at his wine till early morning. 2 His friends used to say that the cause of this was his civic and public activities; he was occupied with these all day, and so prevented from literary pursuits, wherefore he would hold intercourse with the philosophers at night and over the cups. For this reason, too, when a certain Memmius remarked in company that Cato spent his entire nights in drinking, Cicero answered him by saying: “Thou shouldst add that he spends his entire days in throwing dice.”

3 And, in general, Cato thought he ought to take a course directly opposed to the life and practices of the time, feeling that these were bad and in need of great change. For instance, when he saw that a purple which was excessively red and vivid was much in vogue, he himself would wear out the dark shade. Again, he would often go out into the streets after breakfast without shoes or tunic. He was not hunting for notoriety by this strange practice, but accustoming himself to be ashamed only of what was really shameful, and to ignore men’s low opinion of other things. 4 When an inheritance worth a hundred talents fell to him from his cousin Cato, he turned it into money, and allowed any friend who needed it to have the use of it without interest. And some of his friends actually pledged to the public treasury both lands and slaves which he offered for this purpose himself, and made good his offer.

7 1 When he thought that he was old enough to marry, — and up to that time he had consorted with no woman, — he engaged himself to Lepida, who had formerly been betrothed to Metellus Scipio, but was now free, since Scipio had rejected her and the betrothal had been broken. However, before the marriage Scipio changed his mind again, and by dint of every effort got the maid. 2 Cato was greatly exasperated and inflamed by this, and attempted to go to law about it; but his friends prevented this, and so, in his rage and youthful fervour, he betook himself to iambic verse, and heaped much scornful abuse upon Scipio, adopting the bitter tone of Archilochus, but avoiding his license and puerility. 3 And he married Atilia, a daughter of Serranus. She was the first woman with whom he consorted, but not the only one, as was true of Laelius, the friend of Scipio Africanus; Laelius, indeed, was more fortunate, since in the course of his long life he knew but one woman, the wife of his youth.

8 1 When the servile war was in progress, which was called the war of Spartacus, Gellius was commander, while Cato took part in his campaign as a volunteer, for the sake of his brother; for his brother Caepio was a military tribune. Here he had not the opportunity to employ as much as he wished his zeal and discipline in virtue, because the war was not well conducted; but notwithstanding, amidst the great effeminacy and luxury of those who took part in that campaign, he displayed such good discipline, self-control, courage in all emergencies, and sagacity, that men thought him not one whit inferior to the elder Cato. 2 Moreover, Gellius assigned to him prizes of valour and distinguished honours; but Cato would not take them nor allow them, declaring that he had done nothing worthy of honours. And so, in consequence of this, he was thought to be a strange creature. For instance, a law was passed forbidding candidates for office to be attended by nomenclators, and in his canvass for the military tribuneship he was the only one who obeyed the law. He made it his business to salute and address without help from others those who met him on his rounds, but he did not avoid giving offence even to those who praised his course; for the more clearly they saw the rectitude of his practice, the more distressed were they at the difficulty of imitating it.

9 1 Appointed military tribune, he was sent to Macedonia, to serve under Rubrius the praetor. At this time, we are told, his wife being full of grief and in tears, one of Cato’s friends, Munatius, said to her: “Take heart, Atilia; I will watch over thy husband.” “Certainly he will,” cried Cato, and after they had gone a day’s journey on their way, immediately after supper, he said: “Come, Munatius, see that you keep your promise to Atilia, and forsake me neither by day nor by night.” 2 Then he gave orders that two couches be placed in the same chamber for them, and thus Munatius always slept — and that was the joke — watched over by Cato.

He had in his following fifteen slaves, two freedmen, and four friends. These rode on horses, while he himself always went a-foot; and yet he would join each of them in turn and converse with them. And when he reached the camp, where there were several legions, and was appointed to the command of one of them by the general, he thought it a trifling and useless task to make a display of his own virtue, which was that of a single man, but was ambitious above all things to make the men under his command like unto himself. 3 He did not, however, divest his power of the element which inspires fear, but called in the aid of reason; with its help he persuaded and taught his men about everything, while rewards and punishments followed their acts. Consequently, it were hard to say whether he made his men more peaceful or more warlike, more zealous or more just; to such a degree did they show themselves terrible to their enemies but gentle to their allies, without courage to do wrong but ambitious to win praise. 4 Moreover, that to which Cato gave least thought was his in greatest measure, namely, esteem, favour, surpassing honour, and kindness, from his soldiers. For he willingly shared the tasks which he imposed upon others, and in his dress, way of living, and conduct on the march, made himself more like a soldier than a commander, while in character, dignity of purpose, and eloquence, he surpassed all those who bore the titles of Imperator and General. In this way, without knowing it, he produced in his men at the same time the feeling of good will towards himself. 5 For a genuine desire to attain virtue arises only in consequence of perfect good will and respect for him who displays virtue; those, on the other hand, who praise good men without loving them may revere their reputation, but they do not admire their virtue or imitate it.

10 1 On learning that Athenodorus, surnamed Cordylion, who had a large acquaintance with the Stoic philosophy, was living at Pergamum, being now in his old age and having most sturdily resisted all intimacies and friendships with governors and kings, Cato thought it would be useless to send messengers or write letters to him. Instead of this, since he had a furlough of two months allowed him by law, he sailed to Asia to visit the man, relying upon his own good qualities to make him successful in the chase. 2 He held converse with the philosopher, conquered his objections, drew him from his fixed purpose, and took him back to camp with him. He was overjoyed and in high spirits, feeling that he had made a most noble capture, and one more illustrious than the nations and kingdoms which Pompey and Lucullus at that time were subduing with their marching armies.

11 While Cato was still in military service, his brother, who was on his way to Asia, fell sick at Aenus in Thrace, and a letter came at once to Cato advising him of this. A heavy storm was raging at sea and no ship of sufficient size was at hand, but nevertheless, taking only two friends and three servants with him in a small trading-vessel, he put to sea from Thessalonica. 2 He narrowly escaped drowning, and by some unaccountable good fortune came safe to land, but Caepio had just died. In bearing this affliction Cato was thought to have shown more passion than philosophy, considering not only his lamentations, his embracings of the dead, and the heaviness of his grief, but also his expenditure upon the burial, and the pains that he took to have incense and costly raiment burned with the body, and a monument of polished Thasian marble costing eight talents constructed in the market-place of Aenus. 3 For some people cavilled at these things as inconsistent with Cato’s usual freedom from ostentation, not observing how much tenderness and affection was mingled with the man’s inflexibility and firmness against pleasures, fears, and shameless entreaties. For the funeral rites, moreover, both cities and dynasts sent him many things for the honour of the dead, from none of whom would he accept money; he did, however, take incense and ornaments, and paid the value of them to the senders. 4 Furthermore, when the inheritance fell to him and Caepio’s young daughter, nothing that he had expended for the funeral was asked back by him in the distribution of the property. And although such was his conduct then and afterwards, there was one who wrote that he passed the ashes of the dead through a sieve, in search of the gold that had been melted down. So confidently did the writer attribute, not only to his sword, but also to his pen, freedom from accountability and punishment.

12 1 With the time of Cato’s military service came to an end, he was sent on his way, not with blessings, as is common, nor yet with praises, but with tears and insatiable embraces, the soldiers casting their mantles down for him to walk upon, and kissing his hands, things which the Romans of that day rarely did, and only to a few of their imperators. 2 But before applying himself to public affairs he desired to travel about in a study of Asia, and to see with his own eyes the customs and lives and military strength of each province; at the same time he wished to gratify Deiotarus the Galatian, who had been a guest-friend of his father, and now solicited a visit from him. He therefore arranged his journey as follows. At daybreak, he would send forward his baker and his cook to the place where he intended to lodge. 3 These would enter the city with great decorum and little stir, and if Cato had no family friend or acquaintance there, they would prepare a reception for him at an inn, without troubling anybody; or, in case there was no inn, they would apply to the magistrates for hospitality, and gladly accept what was given. 4 But frequently they were distrusted and neglected, because they raised no tumult and made no threats in their dealings with the magistrates. In such a case Cato would find their work not done when he arrived, and he himself would be more despised than his servants when men saw him, would awaken suspicion, as he sat upon the baggage without saying a word, that he was a man of low condition and very timid. 5 However, he would then call the magistrates to him and say: “Ye miserable wretches, lay aside this inhospitality. Not all men who come to you will be Catos. Blunt by your kind attentions the power of those who only want an excuse for taking by force what they do not get with men’s consent.”

13 1 In Syria, too, as we are told, he had a laughable experience. As he was walking into Antioch, he saw at the gates outside a multitude of people drawn up on either side of the road, among whom stood, in one group, young men with military cloaks, and in another, boys with gala robes, while some had white raiment and crowns, being priests or magistrates. Cato, accordingly, thinking that this could only be some honourable reception which the city was preparing for him, was angry with his servants who had been sent on in advance, because they had not prevented it; but he ordered his friends to dismount, and went forward on foot with them. 2 When, however, they were near the gate, he who was arranging all these ceremonies and marshalling the crowd, a man now well on in years, holding a wand and a crown in his hand, advanced to meet Cato, and without even greeting him asked where they had left Demetrius and when he would be there. Now, Demetrius had once been a slave of Pompey, but at this time, when all mankind, so to speak, had their eyes fixed upon Pompey, he was courted beyond his deserts, since he had great influence with Pompey. 3 Cato’s friends accordingly, were seized with such a fit of laughter that they could not recover themselves even when they were walking through the crowd; but Cato was greatly disturbed at the time, and said: “O the unhappy city!” and not a word besides. In after times, however, he was wont to laugh at the incident himself also, both when he told it and when he called it to mind.

14 1 However, Pompey himself put to shame the men who were thus neglectful of Cato through ignorance. For when Cato came to Ephesus and was proceeding to pay his respects to Pompey as an older man, one who was greatly superior in reputation, and then in command of the greatest forces, Pompey caught sight of him and would not wait, nor would he suffer Cato to come to him as he sat, but sprang up as though to honour a superior, went to meet him, and gave him his hand. 2 He also passed many encomiums upon his virtue even while he was present and receiving marks of kindness and affection, and still more after he had withdrawn. Therefore all men, being put of shame and now directing their attention to Cato, admired him for the traits which before had brought him scorn, and made a study of his mildness and magnanimity. And indeed it was no secret that Pompey’s attentions to him were due to self-interest rather than to friendship; men knew that Pompey admired him when he was present, but was glad to have him go away. 3 For all the other young men who came to him were retained by Pompey, who showed an eager longing for their companionship; of Cato, on the contrary, he made no such request, but, as if he must render account of his command while Cato was there, he was glad to send him away. And yet Cato was almost the only person among those bound for Rome to whom Pompey commended his wife and children, although it is true that they were relatives of his.

As a consequence of all this, the cities regularly vied with one another in showing Cato honour, and there were suppers and invitations, at which times he would urge his friends to keep close watch upon him, lest he should unawares confirm the saying of Curio. 4 For Curio, annoyed at the severity of Cato, who was his intimate friend, had asked him whether he was desirous of seeing Asia after his term of service in the army. “Certainly I am,” said Cato. “That’s right,” said Curio, “for you will come back from there a more agreeable man and more tame,” — that is about the meaning of the word he used.

15 1 But Deiotarus the Galatian sent for Cato, being now an old man, and desiring to commend to his protection his children and his family. When Cato arrived, however, Deiotarus offered him gifts of every sort, and by tempting and entreating him in every way so exasperated him that, although he had arrived late in the day and merely spent the night, on the next day about the third hour he set off. 2 However, after proceeding a day’s journey, he found at Pessinus more gifts again awaiting him than those he had left behind him, and a letter from the Galatian begging him, if he did not desire to take them himself, at least to permit his friends to do so, since they were in every way worthy to receive benefits on his account, and Cato’s private means would not reach so far. 3 But not even to these solicitations did Cato yield, although he saw that some of his friends were beginning to weaken and were disposed to blame him; nay, he declared that every taking of gifts could find plenty of excuse, but that his friends should share in what he had acquired honourably and justly. Then he sent his gifts back to Deiotarus.

4 As he was about to set sail for Brundisium, his friends thought that the ashes of Caepio should be put aboard another vessel; but declared that he would rather part with his life than with those ashes, and put to sea. And verily we are told that, as chance would have it, he had a very dangerous passage, although the rest made the journey with little trouble.

16 1 After his return to Rome, he spent most of his time at home in the company of Athenodorus, or in the forum assisting his friends. And though the office of quaestor was open to him, he would not become a candidate for it until he had read the laws relating to the quaestorship, learned all the details of the office from those who had had experience in it, and formed a general idea of its power and scope. 2 Therefore, as soon as he had been instated in the office, he made a great change in the assistants and clerks connected with the treasury. These were fully conversant with the public accounts and the laws relative thereto, and so, when they received as their superior officers young men whose inexperience and ignorance made it really needful that others should teach and tutor them, they would not surrender any power to such superiors, but were superiors themselves. 3 Now, however, Cato applied himself with energy to the business, not having merely the name and honour of a superior official, but also intelligence and rational judgement. He thought it best to treat the clerks as assistants, which they really were, sometimes convicting them of their evil practices, and sometimes teaching them if they erred from inexperience. But they were bold fellows, and tried to ingratiate themselves with the other quaestors, while they waged war upon Cato. Therefore the chief among them, whom he found guilty of a breach of trust in the matter of an inheritance, was expelled from the treasury by him and a second was brought to trial for fraud. 4 This person Catulus Lutatius the censor came forward to defend, but most of all from his virtue, being thought to surpass all Romans in justice and discretion; he also commended Cato’s way of living and was intimate with him. Accordingly, when Catulus had lost his case on its merits and began to beg openly for the acquittal of his client, Cato tried to stop him from doing this. 5 And when Catulus was all the more importunate, Cato said: “It would be a shameful thing, Catulus, if thou, who art the censor, and shouldst scrutinize our lives, wert put out of court by our bailiffs.” When Cato had uttered these words, Catulus fixed his eyes upon him as if he would make reply; he said nothing, however, but either from anger or from shame went off in silence, much perplexed. 6 However, the man was not convicted, but when the votes for condemnation exceeded those for acquittal by a single ballot, and one Marcus Lollius, a colleague of Cato, was kept by sickness from attending the trial, Catulus sent to him and begged him to help the man. So Lollius was brought in a litter after the trial and cast the vote that acquitted. Notwithstanding this, Cato would not employ the clerk, or give him his pay, or in any way take the vote of Lollius into the reckoning.

17 1 By thus humbling the clerks and making them submissive, and by managing the business as he himself desired, in a little while he brought the quaestorship into greater respect than the senate, so that all men said and thought that Cato had invested the quaestorship with the dignity of the consulship. 2 For, in the first place, when he found that many persons were owing debts of long standing to the public treasury and the treasury to many persons, he made an end at the same time of the state being wronged and wronging others; from its debtors he rigorously and inexorably demanded payment, and to its creditors he promptly and readily made payment, so that the people were filled with respect as they saw men making payments who thought to defraud the state, and men receiving payment which they had ceased to expect. 3 In the next place, though many used improper methods to get writings filed with the quaestors, and though previous quaestors had been accustomed to receive false decrees at the request of those whom they wished to please, nothing of this sort could be done now without Cato finding it out. Indeed, on one occasion when he was doubtful whether a certain decree had actually passed the senate, though many testified to the fact, he would not believe them, nor would he file the decree away until the consuls had come and taken oath to its validity. 4 Again, there were many persons whom the famous Sulla had rewarded for killing men under proscription, at the rate of twelve thousand drachmas. All men hated them as accursed and polluted wretches, but no one had the courage to punish them. Cato, however, called each one of these to account for having public money in his possession by unjust means, and made him give it up, at the same time rebuking him with passionate eloquence for his illegal and unholy act. 5 After this experience they were at once charged with murder, were brought before their judges condemned beforehand, one might say, and were punished. At this all men were delighted, and thought that with their deaths the tyranny of that former time was extinguished, and that Sulla himself was punished before men’s eyes.

18 1 Moreover, the multitude were captivated by his continuous and unwearied attention to his duties. For no one of his colleagues came up to the treasury earlier than Cato, and none left it later. Besides, no session of assembly or senate would he fail to attend, since he feared and kept close watch on those who were ready to gratify people by voting remissions of debts and taxes, or promiscuous gifts. 2 And so by exhibiting a treasury which was inaccessible to public informers and free from their taint, but full of money, he taught men that a state can be rich without wronging its citizens. At first some of his colleagues thought him obnoxious and troublesome, but afterwards they were well pleased with him, since he took upon his own shoulders exclusively the burden of the hatreds arising from refusal to give away the public moneys or to make unjust decisions, and furnished them with a defence against people who tried to force requests upon them. They would say, namely, “It is impossible; Cato will not consent.”

3 On the last day of his term of office, after he had been escorted to his house by almost the whole body of citizens, he heard that many friends of Marcellus and men of influence had closely beset him in the treasury, and were trying to force him to register some remission of moneys due. Now, Marcellus had been a friend of Cato from boyhood, and when associated with him had been a most excellent magistrate. When acting by himself, however, he was led by a feeling of deference to be complaisant towards suppliants, and was inclined to grant every favour. 4 At once, then, Cato turned back, and when he found that Marcellus had been forced to register the remission, he asked for the tablets and erased the entry, while Marcellus himself stood by and said nothing. After this had been done, Cato conducted Marcellus away from the treasury and brought him to his house, and Marcellus had no word of blame for him either then or afterwards, but continued his intimate friendship up to the end.

5 However, not even after he had laid down the quaestorship did Cato leave the treasury destitute of his watchful care, but slaves of his were there every day copying the transactions, and he himself paid five talents for books containing accounts of the public business from the times of Sulla down to his own quaestorship, and always had them in hand.

19 1 He used to be the first to reach the senate and the last to leave it; and often, while the other senators were slowly assembling, he would sit and read quietly, holding his toga in front of the book. He never left the city when the senate was in session. But afterwards, when Pompey and his friends saw that he could never be prevailed upon or forced from his position in any unjust measures which they had at heart, they would contrive to draw him away by sundry legal advocacies for friends, or arbitrations, or business matters. Accordingly, Cato quickly perceived their design and refused all such applications, and made it a rule to have no other business on hand while the senate was in session. 2 For it was neither for the sake of reputation, nor to gain riches, nor accidentally and by chance, like some others, that he threw himself into the management of civic affairs, but he chose a public career as the proper task for a good man, and thought that he ought to be more attentive to the common interests than the bee to its honey. And so he was careful to have the affairs of the provinces and decrees and trials and the most important measures sent to him by his connections and friends in every place.

3 At one time he opposed Clodius the demagogue, who was raising agitation and confusion as a prelude to great changes, and was calumniating to the people priests and priestesses, among whom Fabia, a sister of Cicero’s wife Terentia, was in danger of conviction. But Cato put Clodius to such shame that he was forced to steal away from the city; and when Cicero thanked him, Cato told him he ought to be thankful to the city, since it was for her sake that all his public work was done. 4 In consequence of this he was held in high repute, so that an orator, at a trial where the testimony of a single witness was introduced, told the jurors that it was not right to give heed to a single witness, not even if he were Cato; and many already, when speaking of matters that were strange and incredible, would say, as though using a proverb, “This is not to be believed even though Cato says it.” 5 Again, when a corrupt and extravagant man was expatiating in the senate on frugality and self-restraint, Amnaeus sprang to his feet and said: “Who can endure it, my man, when you sup like Lucullus, build like Crassus, and yet harangue us like Cato?” And other men also who were degraded and licentious in their lives, but lofty and severe in their speech, were mockingly called Catos.a

20 1 Though many invited him to become a tribune of the people he did not think it right to expend the force of a great and powerful magistracy, any more than that of a strong medicine, on matters that did not require it. And at the same time, being at leisure from his public duties, he took books and philosophers with him and set out for Lucania, where he owned lands affording no mean sojourn. 2 Then, meeting on the road many beasts of burden with baggage and attendants, and learning that Metellus Nepos was on his way back to Rome prepared to sue for the tribuneship, he stopped without a word, and after waiting a little while ordered his company to turn back. His friends were amazed at this, whereupon he said: “Do ye not know that even of himself Metellus is to be feared by reason of his infatuation? And now that he comes by the advice of Pompey he will fall upon the state like a thunderbolt and throw everything into confusion. 3 It is no time, then, for a leisurely sojourn in the country, but we must overpower the man, or die honourably in a struggle for our liberties.” Nevertheless, on the advice of his friends, he went first to his estates and tarried there a short time, and then returned to the city. It was evening when he arrived, and as soon as day dawned he went down into the forum to sue for a tribuneship, that he might array himself against Metellus. For the strength of that office is negative rather than positive; and if all the tribunes save one should vote for a measure, the power lies with the one who will not give his consent or permission.

21 1 At first, then, Cato had only a few of his friends about him; but when his purpose became known, in a little while all the men of worth and note flocked to him with exhortations and encouragements. They felt that he was not receiving a favour, but conferring the greatest favour on his country, and the most reputable of his fellow citizens; for he had often refused the office when he could have had it without trouble, and now sued for it at his peril that he might contend for the liberties of the state. 2 It is said, moreover, that he was in peril from the many who crowded upon him in their zeal and affection, and could hardly make his way for the crowd into the forum. He was declared tribune with others (including Metellus), and seeing that the consular elections were attended with bribery, he berated the people; and in concluding his speech he swore that he would prosecute the briber, whoever he might be, making an exception only of Silanus because of their relationship. For Silanus was the husband of Cato’s sister Servilia. 3 For this reason he let Silanus alone, but he prosecuted Lucius Murena on the charge of having secured his election to the consulship with Silanus by bribery. Now, there was a law by which the defendant could set a man to watch the prosecutor, in order that there might be no secret about the material which he was collecting and preparing for the prosecution. Accordingly, the man appointed by Murena to watch Cato would follow him about and keep him under observation. When, however, he saw that Cato was doing nothing insidiously or unjustly, 4 but was honourably and considerately following a straightforward and righteous course in the prosecution, he had such admiration for Cato’s lofty spirit and noble character that he would come up to him in the forum or go to his house and ask him whether he intended that day to attend to any matters connected with the prosecution; and if Cato said no, the man would take his word and go away.

5 When the trial was held, Cicero, who was consul at that time and one of Murena’s advocates, took advantage of Cato’s fondness for the Stoics to rail and jest at length about those philosophers and what were called their “paradoxes,” thus making the jurors laugh. Cato, accordingly, as we are told, said with a smile to the bystander: “My friends, what a droll fellow our consul is!” 6 And after Murena had been acquitted, he did not feel towards Cato as a base or senseless man might have done; for during his consulship he asked his advice in the most important matters, and in other ways constantly showed him honour and trust. And Cato himself was responsible for this; on the tribunal and in the senate he was severe and terrible in his defence of justice, but afterwards his manner towards all men was benevolent and kindly.

22 1 Before he entered upon his tribuneship, and during the consulship of Cicero, he maintained the authority of the magistrate in many conflicts, and above all in the measures relating to Catiline, which proved the most important and most glorious of all, he brought matters to a successful issue. Catiline himself, namely, who was trying to bring about a complete and destructive change in the Roman state, and was stirring up alike seditions and wars, was convicted by Cicero and fled the city; 2 but Lentulus and Cethegus and many others with them took over the conspiracy, and, charging Catiline with cowardice and pettiness in his designs, were themselves planning to destroy the city utterly with fire, and to subvert the empire with revolts of nations and foreign wars. 3 But their schemes were discovered, and Cicero brought the matter before the senate for deliberation. The first speaker, Silanus, expressed the opinion that the men ought to suffer the extremest fate, and those who followed him in turn were of the same mind, until it came to Caesar. 4 Caesar now rose, and since he was a powerful speaker and wished to increase every change and commotion in the state as so much stuff for his own designs, rather than to allow them to be quenched, he urged many persuasive and humane arguments. He would not hear of the men being put to death without a trial, but favoured their being kept in close custody, 5 and he wrought such a change in the opinions of the senate, which was in fear of the people, that even Silanus recanted and said that he too had not meant death, but imprisonment; for to a Roman this was the “extremest” of all evils.

23 1 After such a change as this had been wrought and all the senators had hastened to adopt the milder and more humane penalty, Cato rose to give his opinion, and launched at once into a passionate and angry speech, abusing Silanus for his change of opinion, and assailing Caesar. Caesar, he said, under a popular pretext and with humane words, was trying to subvert the state; 2 he was seeking to frighten the senate in a case where he himself had much to fear; and he might be well content if he should come off guiltless of what had been done and free from suspicion, since he was so openly and recklessly trying to rescue the common enemies, while for his country, which had been on the brink of ruin, and was so good and great, he confessed that he had no pity; and yet for men who ought not to have lived or been born even, he was shedding tears and lamenting, although by their deaths they would free the state from great slaughter and perils.

3 This is the only speech of Cato which has been preserved, we are told, and its preservation was due to Cicero the consul, who had previously given to those clerks who excelled in rapid writing instruction in the use of signs, which, in small and short figures, comprised the force of many letters; these clerks he had then distributed in various parts of the senate-house. For up to that time the Romans did not employ or even possess what are called shorthand writers, but then for the first time, we are told, the first steps toward the practice were taken. Be that as it may, Cato carried the day and changed the opinions of the senators, so that they condemned the men to death.

24 1 Now, since we must not pass over even the slight tokens of character when we are delineating as it were a likeness of the soul, the story goes that on this occasion, when Caesar was eagerly engaged in a great struggle with Cato and the attention of the senate was fixed upon the two men, a little note was brought in from outside to Caesar. Cato tried to fix suspicion upon the matter and alleged that it had something to do with the conspiracy, and bade him read the writing aloud. Then Caesar handed the note to Cato, who stood near him. 2 But when Cato had read the note, which was an unchaste letter from his sister Servilia to Caesar, with whom she was passionately and guiltily in love, he threw it to Caesar, saying, “Take it, thou sot,” and then resumed his speech.

3 But as regards the women of his household Cato appears to have been wholly unfortunate. For this sister was in ill repute for her relations with Caesar; and the conduct of the other Servilia, also a sister of Cato, was still more unseemly. She was the wife of Lucullus, a man of the highest repute in Rome, and had borne him a child, and yet she was banished from his house for unchastity. And what was most disgraceful of all, even Cato’s wife Atilia was not free from such transgressions, but although he had two children by her, he was forced to put her away because of her unseemly behaviour.

25 1 Then he married a daughter of Philippus, Marcia, a woman of reputed excellence, about whom there was the most abundant talk; and this part of Cato’s life, like a drama, has given rise to dispute and is hard to explain. However, the case was as follows, according to Thrasea, who refers to the authority of Munatius, Cato’s companion and intimate associate. 2 Among the many lovers and admirers of Cato there were some who were more conspicuous and illustrious than others. One of these was Quintus Hortensius, a man of splendid reputation and excellent character. This man, then, desiring to be more than a mere associate and companion of Cato, and in some way or other to bring his whole family and line into community of kinship with him, attempted to persuade Cato, whose daughter Porcia was the wife of Bibulus and had borne him two sons, to give her in turn to him as noble soil for the production of children. 3 According to the opinion of men, he argued, such a course was absurd, but according to the law of nature it was honourable and good for the state that a woman in the prime of youth and beauty should neither quench her productive power and lie idle, nor yet, by bearing more offspring than enough, burden and impoverish a husband who does not want them. Moreover, community in heirs among worthy men would make virtue abundant and widely diffused in their families, and the state would be closely cemented together by family alliances. And if Bibulus were wholly devoted to his wife, Hortensius said he would give her back after she had borne him a child, and he would thus be more closely connected both with Bibulus himself and with Cato by a community of children.

4 Cato replied that he loved Hortensius and thought highly of a community of relationship with him, but considered it absurd for him to propose marriage with a daughter who had been given to another. Then Hortensius changed his tactics, threw off the mask, and boldly asked for the wife of Cato himself, since she was still young enough to bear children, and Cato had heirs enough. 5 And it cannot be said that he did this because he knew that Cato neglected Marcia, for she was at that time with child by him, as we are told. However, seeing the earnestness and eager desire of Hortensius, Cato would not refuse, but said that Philippus also, Marcia’s father, must approve of this step. Accordingly, Philippus was consulted and expressed his consent, but he would not give Marcia in marriage until Cato himself was present and joined in giving the bride away. This incident occurred at a later time, it is true, but since I had taken up the topic of the women of Cato’s household I decided to anticipate it.

26 1 Lentulus and his associates were executed, and Caesar, in view of the charges and accusations made against him to the senate, took refuge with the people and was stirring up and attaching to himself the numerous diseased and corrupted elements in the commonwealth. Cato was therefore alarmed and persuaded the senate to conciliate the poor and landless multitude by including them in the distribution of grain, the annual expenditure for which was twelve hundred and fifty talents. By this act of humanity and kindness the threatening danger was most successfully dissipated. 2 Then Metellus, who hastened to take up the duties of his tribuneship, began to hold tumultuous assemblies of the people, and proposed a law that Pompey the Great should hasten with his forces to Italy and undertake the preservation of the city, on the ground that it was imperilled by Catiline. Now, this was a specious proposition; but the end and aim of the law was to put matters in the hands of Pompey and hand over to him the supreme power. 3 The senate met, and Cato did not, as was his custom, attack Metellus with vehemence, but gave him much fitting and moderate advice, and finally, resorting to entreaties, actually praised the family of Metellus for having always been aristocratic in sympathy. Metellus was therefore all the more emboldened, and, despising Cato as a yielding and timorous opponent, broke out in extravagant threats and bold speeches, intending to carry everything through in spite of the senate. 4 So, then, Cato changed his looks and voice and words, and concluded a vehement speech with the declaration that while he lived Pompey should not enter the city with an armed force. The senate was thus led to feel that neither man was in his right mind or using safe arguments, but that the policy of Metellus was madness, which, through excess of wickedness, was leading on to the destruction and confusion of all things, while that of Cato was a wild ebullition of virtue contending in behalf of right and justice.

27 1 When the people were about to vote on the law, in favour of Metellus there were armed strangers and gladiators and servants drawn up in the forum, and that part of the people which longed for Pompey in their hope of a change was present in large numbers, and there was strong support also from Caesar, who was at that time praetor. 2 In the case of Cato, however, the foremost citizens shared in his displeasure and sense of wrong more than they did in his struggle to resist, and great dejection and fear reigned in his household, so that some of his friends took no food and watched all night with one another in futile discussions on his behalf, while his wife and sisters wailed and wept. 3 He himself, however, conversed fearlessly and confidently with all and comforted them, and after taking supper as usual and passing the night, was roused from a deep sleep by one of his colleagues, Minucius Thermus; and they went down into the forum, only few persons accompanying them, but many meeting them and exhorting them to be on their guard. 4 Accordingly, when Cato paused in the forum and saw the temple of Castor and Pollux surrounded by armed men and its steps guarded by gladiators, and Metellus himself sitting at the top with Caesar, he turned to his friends and said: “What a bold man, and what a coward, to levy such an army against a single unarmed and defenceless person!” At the same time he walked straight on with Thermus. 5 Those who were occupying the steps made way for them, but would allow no one else to pass, except that Cato with difficulty drew Munatius along by the hand and brought him up; and walking straight onwards he threw himself just as he was into a seat between Metellus and Caesar, thus cutting off their communication. 6 Caesar and Metellus were disconcerted, but the better citizens, seeing and admiring the countenance, lofty bearing, and courage of Cato, came nearer, and with shouts urged one another to stay and band themselves together and not betray their liberty and the man who was striving to defend it.

28 1 And now the clerk produced the law, but Cato would not suffer him to read it; and when Metellus took it and began to read it, Cato snatched the document away from him. Then Metellus, who knew the law by heart, began to recite it, but Thermus clapped a hand upon his mouth and shut off his speech. 2 At last, seeing that the men were making a struggle which he could not resist, and that the people were giving way and turning towards the better course, Metellus ordered men-at arms, who were standing at a distance, to come running up with terrifying shouts. This was done, and all the people dispersed, leaving Cato standing his ground alone and pelted with sticks and stones from above. Here Murena, who had been denounced and brought to trial by him, came to his relief, 3 and holding his toga before him, crying to those who were pelting him to stop, and finally persuading Cato himself and folding him in his arms, he led him away into the temple of Castor and Pollux.

When, however, Metellus saw the space about the tribunal empty and his opponents in flight through the forum, being altogether persuaded that he had won the day, he ordered his armed men to go away again, and coming forward himself in orderly fashion attempted to have the law enacted. 4 But his opponents, quickly recovering from their rout, advanced again upon him with loud and confident shouts, so that his partisans were overwhelmed with confusion and terror. They supposed that their enemies had provided themselves with arms from some place or other in order to assail them, and not a man stood his ground, but all fled away from the tribunal. 5 So, then, when these had dispersed, and when Cato had come forward with commendation and encouragement for the people, the majority of them stood prepared to put down Metellus by any and every means, and the senate in full session announced anew that it would assist Cato and fight to the end against the law, convinced that it would introduce sedition and civil war into Rome.

29 1 Metellus himself was still unyielding and bold, but since he saw that his followers were completely terrified before Cato and thought him utterly invincible, he suddenly rushed off into the forum, assembled the people, and made a long and invidious speech against Cato; then, crying out that he was fleeing from Cato’s tyranny and the conspiracy against Pompey, for which the city would speedily repent in that it was dishonouring so great a man, he set out at once for Asia, intending to lay these accusations before Pompey. 2 Accordingly, Cato was in high repute for having relieved the tribunate of a great burden, and for having in a manner overthrown the power of Pompey in the person of Metellus. But he won still more esteem by not allowing the senate to carry out its purpose of degrading Metellus and deposing him from his office, which course Cato opposed, and brought the senate over to his views. For the multitude considered it a token of humanity and moderation not to trample on his enemy or insult him after prevailing completely over him, and prudent men thought it right and advantageous not to irritate Pompey.

3 After this, Lucullus, having come back from his expedition, the consummation and glory of which Pompey was thought to have taken away from him, was in danger of losing his triumph, since Caius Memmius raised a successful faction against him among the people and brought legal accusations against him, more to gratify Pompey than out of private enmity. But Cato, being related to Lucullus, who had his sister Servilia to wife, and thinking the attempt a shameful one, opposed Memmius, and thereby exposed himself to many slanderous accusations. 4 Finally, however, though he was on the point of being ejected from his office on the ground that he exercised tyrannical power, he so far prevailed as to compel Memmius himself to desist from his accusations and shun the contest. Lucullus, accordingly, celebrated his triumph, and therefore clung still more closely to the friendship of Cato, finding in him a great bulwark of defence against the power of Pompey.

30 1 And now Pompey returned with great prestige from his expedition, and since the splendour and warmth of his reception led him to believe that he could get whatever he wanted from his fellow citizens, he sent forward a demand that the senate postpone the consular elections, in order that he might be present in person and assist Piso in making his canvass. 2 The majority of the senators were inclined to yield. Cato, however, who did not regard the postponement as the chief matter at issue, but wished to cut short the attempt and the expectations of Pompey, opposed the measure and changed the opinions of the senators, so that they rejected it. This disturbed Pompey not a little, and considering that Cato would be a great stumbling-block in his way unless he were made a friend, he sent for Munatius, Cato’s companion, and asked the elder of Cato’s two marriageable nieces to wife for himself, and the younger for his son. 3 Some say, however, that it was not for Cato’s nieces, but for his daughters, that the suit was made. When Munatius brought this proposal to Cato and his wife and sisters, the women were overjoyed at thought of the alliance, in view of the greatness and high repute of Pompey; Cato, however, without pause or deliberation, but stung to the quick, said at once: 4 “Go, Munatius, go, and tell Pompey that Cato is not to be captured by way of the women’s apartments, although he highly prizes Pompey’s good will, and if Pompey does justice will grant him a friendship more to be relied upon than any marriage connection; but he will not give hostages for the glory of Pompey to the detriment of his country.”

At these words the women were vexed, and Cato’s friends blamed his answer as both rude and overbearing. 5 Afterwards, however, in trying to secure the consulship for one of his friends, Pompey sent money to the tribes, and the bribery was notorious, since the sums for it were counted out in his gardens. Accordingly, when Cato told the women that he must of necessity have shared in the disgrace of such transactions, they admitted that he had taken better counsel in rejecting the alliance. 6 However, if we are to judge by the results, it would seem that Cato was wholly wrong in not accepting the marriage connection, instead of allowing Pompey to turn to Caesar and contract a marriage which united the power of the two men, nearly overthrew the Roman state, and destroyed the constitution. None of these things perhaps would have happened, had not Cato been so afraid of the slight transgressions of Pompey as to allow him to commit the greatest of all, and add his power to that of another.

31 1 These things, however, were still in the future. Meanwhile Lucullus got into a contention with Pompey over the arrangements in Pontus (each of them, namely, demanded that his own proceedings should be confirmed), Cato came to the aid of Lucullus, who was manifestly wronged, and Pompey, worsted in the senate and seeking popular favour, invited the soldiery to a distribution of land. 2 But when Cato opposed him in this measure also, and frustrated the law, then Pompey attached himself to Clodius, at that time the boldest of the popular leaders, and won Caesar to his support, a result for which Cato himself was in a way responsible. For Caesar, on returning from his praetorship in Spain, desired to be a candidate for the consulship, and at the same time asked for a triumph. 3 But since by law candidates for a magistracy must be present in the city, while those who are going to celebrate a triumph must remain outside the walls, he asked permission from the senate to solicit the office by means of others. Many were willing to grant the request, but Cato opposed it; and when he saw that the senators were ready to gratify Caesar, he consumed the whole day in speaking and thus frustrated their desires. 4 Accordingly, Caesar gave up his triumph, entered the city, and at once attached himself to Pompey and sought the consulship. After he had been elected consul, he gave his daughter Julia in marriage to Pompey, and now that the two were united with one another against the state, the one would bring in laws offering allotment and distribution of land to the poor, and the other would be at hand with support for the laws. 5 But the party of Lucullus and Cicero, ranging themselves with Bibulus, the other consul, opposed the measures, and above all Cato, who now suspected that the friendly alliance between Caesar and Pompey had been made for no just purpose, be declared that he was afraid, not of the distribution of land, but of the reward which would be paid for this to those who were enticing the people with such favours.

32 1 By these utterances he brought the senate to unanimity, and many men outside the senate supported him out of displeasure at the strange conduct of Caesar; for whatever political schemes the boldest and most arrogant tribunes were wont to practise to win the favour of the multitude, these Caesar used with the support of consular power, in disgraceful and humiliating attempts to ingratiate himself with the people. 2 Accordingly, the opponents of Cato were alarmed and had recourse to violence. To begin with, upon Bibulus himself, as he was going down into the forum, a basket of ordure was scattered; then the crowd fell upon his lictors and broke their fasces; and finally missiles flew and many persons were wounded. All the other senators fled from the forum at a run, but Cato went off last of all at a walk, turning about and protesting to the citizens. 3 Accordingly, not only was the law for the distribution of lands passed, but also a clause was added requiring the whole senate to swear solemnly that it would uphold the law, and give its aid in case any one should act contrary to it, and heavy penalties were pronounced against such as would not take the oath. All took the oath, therefore, under compulsion, bearing in mind the fate of Metellus of old, whom the people suffered to be banished from Italy because he would not swear to a similar law. 4 For this reason, also, did the women of Cato’s family earnestly and with tears beseech him to yield and take the oath, earnestly, too, did his friends and intimates. But the one who was most successful in persuading and inducing him to take the oath was Cicero the orator, who advised and showed him that it was possibly even a wrong thing to think himself alone in duty bound to disobey the general will; and that his desperate conduct, where it was impossible to make any change in what had been done, was altogether senseless and mad; 5 moreover, it would be the greatest of evils if he should abandon the city in behalf of which all his efforts had been made, hand her over to her enemies, and so, apparently with pleasure, get rid of his struggles in her defence; for even if Cato did not need Rome, still, Rome needed Cato, and so did all his friends; and among these Cicero said that he himself was foremost, since he was the object of the plots of Clodius, who was openly attacking him by means of the tribuneship. 6 By these and similar arguments and entreaties, we are told, both at home and in the forum, Cato was softened and at last prevailed upon. He came forward to take the oath last of all, except Favonius, one of his friends and intimates.

33 1 Elated by this success, Caesar introduced another law, which provided that almost the whole of Campania be divided among the poor and needy. No one spoke against the law except Cato, and him Caesar ordered to be dragged from the rostra to prison. Cato did not any the more remit his bold utterances, but as he walked along discoursed about the law and advised the people to put a stop to such legislation. 2 Moreover, the senate followed him with downcast looks, as well as the best part of the people in silence, though they looked annoyed and troubled, so that Caesar could not fail to see that they were displeased; but he was obstinate, and expected that Cato would resort to appeal or entreaty, and therefore had him led along. However, when it was clear that Cato did not so much as think of doing anything of the sort, Caesar was overcome by the shame and infamy of his course, and by his own secret persuasions induced one of the tribunes of the people to rescue Cato. 3 Nevertheless, by these laws and by other favours Caesar’s party so cajoled the people as to get a vote passed giving to Caesar the government of Illyria and all Gaul, with an army of four legions, for five years, although Cato warned the people that they themselves by their own votes were establishing a tyrant in their citadel. They also unlawfully transferred Publius Clodius from patrician to plebeian rank and got him elected tribune of the people, a man who, 4 in order to secure Cicero’s banishment as his reward, was using all his political influence for the gratification of the people. For consuls, too, they secured the election of Calpurnius Piso, who was Caesar’s father-in law, and Aulus Gabinius, a man from the lap of Pompey, as those say who knew his ways of life.

34 1 But also they had in this way usurped the power, and although one part of the citizens was made submissive to them by gratitude and the other part by fear, nevertheless they were afraid of Cato. For even when they did prevail against him, it was with difficulty and toil and not without the shame of exposure that they forced their measures through at last, and this was annoying and vexatious to them. 2 Clodius, too, could not even hope to overthrow Cicero while Cato was at Rome, but since he was scheming for this above all else, when he had come into office he sent for Cato and made proposals to him. He said that he regarded Cato as the purest man of all the Romans, and that he was ready to prove this by his acts. Therefore, though many were soliciting the commission to Cyprus and the court of Ptolemy and begging to be sent upon it, he thought Cato alone worthy of it, and therefore gladly offered him this favour. 3 But Cato cried out that the thing was a snare and an insult, not a favour, whereupon Clodius haughtily and contemptuously replied: “Well, then, if you don’t think it a favour, you shall make the voyage as a punishment,” and going at once before the people he got an edict passed sending Cato on the mission. Moreover, when Cato set out, Clodius gave him neither ship, soldier, nor assistant, except two clerks, of whom one was a thief and a rascal, and the other a client of Clodius. 4 And as if he had put a slight task upon him in the mission to Cyprus and Ptolemy, Clodius enjoined upon him besides the restoration of the exiles of Byzantium, being desirous that Cato should be out of his way as long as possible while he was tribune.

35 1 Subjected to such constraint as this, Cato advised Cicero, whose enemies were trying to banish him, not to raise a faction or plunge the city into war and bloodshed, but to yield to the necessities of the times, and so to become again a saviour of his country. He also sent Canidius, one of his friends, to Cyprus in advance, and tried to persuade Ptolemy to yield his kingdom without fighting, promising that his future life should not be without wealth and honour, since the Romans would give him a priesthood of the goddess in Paphos. 2 He himself, however, tarried at Rhodes, making his preparations and awaiting his answers.

Meanwhile Ptolemy the king of Egypt, who had quarrelled with the citizens of Alexandria and forsaken the city in wrath, and was now on his way to Rome in the hope that Pompey and Caesar would restore him again with an armed force, wished to have an interview with Cato, and sent a messenger to him, expecting that Cato would come to him. 3 But Cato, as it chanced, was taking a course of medicine at the time, and bade Ptolemy come to him if he wished to see him. And when Ptolemy had come, Cato neither went to meet him nor rose from his seat, but greeted him as he would any ordinary visitor and bade him be seated. At first Ptolemy was confounded by the reception itself, and was amazed at the contrast between the haughtiness and severity of Cato’s manners and the plainness and simplicity of his outfit. 4 But after he had begun to converse with Cato about his own situation, words of great wisdom and boldness fell upon his ears. For Cato censured his course, and showed him what great happiness he had forsaken, and to how much servility and hardship he was subjecting himself in dealing with the corruption and rapacity of the chief men at Rome, whom Egypt could scarcely glut if it were all turned into money. Cato also advised him to sail back and be reconciled with his people, holding himself ready also to sail with him and help him effect the reconciliation. 5 Then the king, as if brought to his senses by Cato’s words after a fit of madness or delirium, and recognizing the sincerity and sagacity of the speaker, determined to adopt his counsels; but he was turned back to his first purpose by his friends. However, as soon as he reached Rome and was approaching the door of a magistrate, he groaned over his own evil resolve, convinced that he had slighted, not the words of a good man, but the prophetic warning of a god.

36 1 But the Ptolemy in Cyprus, fortunately for Cato, poisoned himself to death. And since the king was said to have left much treasure, Cato determined, while sailing himself to Byzantium, to send his nephew Brutus to Cyprus, since he did not altogether trust Canidius. Then, after reconciling the exiles and citizens of Byzantium and leaving the city in concord, he sailed to Cyprus. 2 Now, there were many furnishings of a princely sort, such as beakers, tables, precious stones, and purple vestments, which had to be sold and turned into money. So Cato, wishing to treat everything with the greatest exactness, and to force everything up to a high price, and to attend to everything himself, and to use to utmost calculation, would not trust even those who were accustomed to the market, but, suspecting all alike, assistants, criers, buyers, and friends, and at last talking privately himself with the purchasers and encouraging each one to bid, he thus succeeded in selling most of the merchandize. 3 For this reason he gave offence to most of his friends, who thought that he distrusted them, and Munatius, the most intimate of them all, he threw into a rage that was well nigh incurable. Hence Caesar also, when he wrote a discourse against Cato, dwelt most bitterly on this part of his denunciation.

37 1 Munatius, however, states that his anger arose, not from Cato’s distrust of him, but from his inconsiderate conduct towards him, and from a certain jealousy which Munatius himself felt towards Canidius. For Munatius himself also published a treatise about Cato, which Thrasea chiefly followed. 2 Munatius says that he came to Cyprus after the others, and found that no provision had been made for his entertainment; he says, too, that on going to Cato’s door he was repulsed, because Cato had some engagement inside with Canidius. He says, further, that his measured protest met with no measured reply, for Cato told him that excessive affection, according to Theophrastus, was likely to become a ground for hatred in many cases. “And so thou too,” said Cato, “by reason of thine especial affection for me, art vexed to think thyself less honoured than is meet. 3 Canidius I employ more than others both because I have made trial of him, and because I trust him; he came at the very first, and shows himself to be incorrupt.” This private conversation, however, between himself and Cato, Munatius says was reported by Cato to Canidius, and that therefore, when he heard of it, he would no longer go to Cato’s table, or visit him, or share his counsels, when he was invited. Further, Munatius says, when Cato threatened to take security from him, as the Romans do in the case of those who refuse to obey orders, he paid no attention to the threat, but sailed away, and for a long time continued to be angry with Cato. 4 Then, Munatius says, Marcia, who was still living with Cato, spoke with her husband about the matter; and when it chanced that both men were invited to supper by Barca, Cato, who came late and after the others had taken their places, asked where he should recline; and when Barca told him to recline where he pleased, Cato looked about the room and said: “I will take my place by Munatius.” So he went round and reclined by his side, but made no further show of friendship during the supper. 5 Marcia, however, made a second request in the matter, Munatius says, and Cato wrote to him, saying that he wished to confer with him about something. So Munatius went to Cato’s house early in the morning, and was detained there by Marcia until all the other visitors had gone away. Then Cato came in, threw both arms about him, kissed him, and lavished kindness upon him. Such incidents, now, in my opinion, quite as much as deeds of greatness and publicity, shed considerable light upon the perception and manifestation of character, and I have therefore recounted them at greater length.

38 1 Cato got together nearly seven thousand talents of silver, and fearing the long voyage home, he had many coffers provided, each of which would hold two talents and five hundred drachmas, and attached to each of them a long rope, to the end of which a huge piece of cork was fastened. This, he thought, in case the vessel were wrecked, would hold to its deep mooring and indicate the place where the treasure lay. 2 Well, then, the money, except a very little, was safely transported; but although he had the accounts of all his administration of the estate carefully written out in two books, neither of these was preserved. One of them a freedman of his, Philargyrus by name, had in charge, but after putting to sea from Cenchreae he was capsized and lost it, together with his cargo; the other Cato himself had safely carried as far as Corcyra, where he pitched his tent in the market-place. 3 But because it was so cold the sailors built many fires during the night, the tents caught fire, and the book disappeared. It is true that the royal stewards who were at hand were ready to stop the mouths of Cato’s enemies and traducers, but nevertheless the matter gave him annoyance. For it was not as a proof of his own integrity, but as an example to others of scrupulous exactness that he was eager to produce his accounts, and he was therefore vexed.

39 1 The Romans did not fail to hear of his arrival with his ships, and all the magistrates and priests, the whole senate, and a large part of the people went to the river to meet him, so that both banks of the stream were hidden from view, and his voyage up to the city had all the show and splendour of a triumph. 2 Yet some thought it ungracious and stubborn that, although the consuls and praetors were at hand, he neither landed to greet them, nor checked his course, but on a royal galley of six banks of oars swept past the bank where they stood, and did not stop until he had brought his fleet to anchor in the dock-yard. 3 However, when the treasure was carried through the forum, the people were amazed at the great amount of it, and the senate in special session voted, together with the appropriate praises, that an extraordinary praetorship should be given to Cato, and that when he witnessed the spectacles he might wear a purple-bordered robe. These honours, now, Cato declined, but he persuaded the senate to bestow freedom upon Nicias, the steward of the royal household, after bearing witness to his care and fidelity. 4 Philippus, the father of Marcia, was consul at the time, and the dignity and power of his office devolved in a manner upon Cato; the colleague of Philippus, also, bestowed no less honour upon Cato for his virtue than Philippus did because of his relationship to him.

40 1 But Cicero had now come back from the exile into which he was driven by Clodius, and, relying on his great influence in the senate, had forcibly taken away and destroyed, in the absence of Clodius, the records of his tribuneship which Clodius had deposited on the Capitol. When the senate was convened to consider the matter, and Clodius made his denunciation, Cicero made a speech in which he said that, since Clodius had been made tribune illegally, all that had been done or recorded during his tribunate ought to be void and invalid. 2 Cato contradicted Cicero while he was speaking, and finally rose and said that, although he was wholly of the opinion that there was nothing sound or good in the administration of Clodius, still, if everything which Clodius had done while tribune were to be rescinded, then all his own proceedings in Cyprus would be rescinded, and his mission there had not been legal, since an illegal magistrate had obtained it for him; but it had not been illegal, he maintained, for Clodius to be elected tribune after a transfer from patrician to plebeian rank which the law allowed, and if he had been a bad magistrate, like others, it was fitting to call to an account the man who had done wrong, and not to vitiate the office which had suffered from his wrong doing. In consequence of this speech Cicero was angry with Cato, and for a long time ceased friendly intercourse with him; afterwards, however, they were reconciled.

41 1 After this, Pompey and Crassus had a meeting with Caesar, who had come across the Alps, in which they laid a plan to canvass jointly for a second consulship, and, after they were established in the office, to get a vote passed giving to Caesar another term in his command, of the same duration as the first, and to themselves the largest provinces, money and military forces. This was a conspiracy for the division of the supreme power and the abolition of the constitution. 2 And although many honourable men were getting ready to canvass for the consulship at that time, they were all deterred by seeing Pompey and Crassus announce themselves as candidates, excepting only Lucius Domitius, the husband of Cato’s sister Porcia. Him Cato persuaded not to withdraw from the canvass or give way, since the struggle was not for office, but for the liberty of the Romans. 3 And indeed it was currently said among those citizens who still retained their good sense, that the consular power must not be suffered to become altogether overweening and oppressive by the union of the influence of Pompey and Crassus, but that one or the other of these men must be deprived of it. So they joined the party of Domitius, inciting and encouraging him to persist in his opposition; for many, they said, who now held their peace through fear, would help him when it came to voting.

4 This was precisely what the partisans of Pompey feared, and so they set an ambush for Domitius as he was going down at early morning by torchlight into the Campus Martius. First of all the torch-bearer who stood in front of Domitius was smitten, fell, and died; and after him the rest of the party were presently wounded, and all took to flight except Cato and Domitius. 5 For Cato held Domitius back, although he himself had received a wound in the arm, and exhorted him to stand his ground, and not to abandon, while they had breath, the struggle in behalf of liberty which they were waging against the tyrants, who showed plainly how they would use the consular power by making their way to it through such crimes.

42 1 But Domitius would not face the peril, and fled to his house for refuge, whereupon Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls. Cato, however, would not give up the fight, but came forward himself as candidate for a praetorship, wishing to have a vantage-point for his struggles against the men, and not to be a private citizen when he was opposing magistrates. But Pompey and Crassus feared this also, feeling that Cato would make the praetorship a match for the consulship. 2 In the first place, therefore, they suddenly, and without the knowledge of the majority, got the senate together, and had a vote passed that the praetors elect should enter upon their office at once, without waiting for the time prescribed by law to elapse, during which time those who had bribed the people were liable to prosecution. In the next place, now that by this vote they had freed bribery from responsibility, they brought forward henchmen and friends of their own as candidates for the praetorship, themselves offering money for votes, and themselves standing when the votes were cast. 3 But even to these measures the virtue and fame of Cato were superior, whence shame made most of the people think it a terrible thing to sell Cato by their votes, when the city might well buy him into the praetorship; and therefore the first tribe called upon voted for him. Then on a sudden Pompey lyingly declared that he heard thunder, and most shamefully dissolved the assembly, since it was customary to regard such things as inauspicious, and not to ratify anything after a sign from heaven had been given. 4 Then they resorted again to extensive bribery, ejected the best citizens from the Campus Martius, and so by force got Vatinius elected praetor instead of Cato. Then, indeed, it is said, those who had thus illegally and wrongfully cast their votes went off home at once like runaways, while the rest of the citizens, who were banding together and expressing their indignation, were formed into an assembly there by a tribune, and were addressed by Cato. As if inspired from heaven he foretold to the citizens all that would happen to their city, 5 and tried to set them against Pompey and Crassus, who, he said, were privy to such a course and engaged in such a policy as made them afraid of Cato, lest, as praetor, he should get the better of them. And finally, when he went away home, he was escorted on his way by a greater throng than accompanied all the elected praetors together.

43 1 And now Caius Trebonius proposed a law for the assignment of provinces to the consuls, whereby one of them was to have Spain and Africa under him, the other Syria and Egypt, and both were to wage war on whom they pleased, and attack and subdue them with land and sea forces. The rest of the opposition were weary of their efforts to prevent such things, and forbore even to speak against the measure; but Cato mounted the rostra before the vote was taken, expressed a wish to speak, with difficulty gained permission, and spoke for two hours. 2 After he had consumed this time in long arguments, expositions, and prophecies, he was not allowed to speak any longer, but an official went up to him as he sought to continue, and pulled him down from the rostra. But even from where he stood below the rostra he kept shouting, and found men to listen to him and share his indignation. So the official once more laid hands on him, led him away, and put him out of the forum. 3 Then, the instant that he was released, he turned back and strove to reach the rostra, shouting, and commanding the citizens to help him. This was repeated several times, until Trebonius, in a passion, ordered him to be led to prison; but a crowd followed listening to what he said as he went along, so that Trebonius took fright and let him go.

4 In this manner Cato consumed that day; but during the days that followed his adversaries intimidated some of the citizens, won over others by bribes and favours, with armed men prevented one of the tribunes, Aquillius, from leaving the senate-chamber, cast Cato himself out of the forum when he cried out that there had been thunder, and after a few of the citizens had been wounded and some actually slain, forced the passage of the law. Consequently, many banded together and wrathfully pelted the statues of Pompey. But Cato came up and stopped this. 5 However, when once more a law was introduced concerning Caesar’s provinces and armies, Cato no longer addressed himself to the people, but to Pompey himself, solemnly assuring and warning him that he was now, without knowing it, taking Caesar upon his own shoulders, and that when he began to feel the burden and to be overcome by it, he would neither have the power to put it away nor the strength to bear it longer, 6 and would therefore precipitate himself, burden and all, upon the city; then he would call to mind the exhortations of Cato, and see that they had sought no less the interests of Pompey than honour and justice. Pompey heard these counsels repeatedly, but ignored and put them by; he did not believe that Caesar would change, because he trusted in his own good fortune and power.

44 1 For the next year Cato was elected praetor, but it was thought that he did not add so much majesty and dignity to the office by a good administration as he took away from it by disgracing it. For he would often go forth to his tribunal without shoes or tunic, and in such attire would preside over capital cases involving prominent men. Some say, too, that he said after the mid-day meal and when he had drunk wine, he would transact public business; but this is untruthfully said. 2 However, seeing that the people were corrupted by the gifts which they received from men who were fond of office and plied the bribery of the masses as they would an ordinary business, he wished to eradicate altogether this disease from the state, and therefore persuaded the senate to make a decree that magistrates elect, in case they had no accuser, should be compelled of themselves to come before a sworn court and submit accounts of their election. 3 At this the candidates for offices were sorely displeased, and still more sorely the hireling multitude. Early in the morning, therefore, when Cato had gone forth to his tribunal, crowds assailed him with shouts, abuse, and missiles, so that everybody fled from the tribunal, and Cato himself was pushed away from it and borne along by the throng, and with difficulty succeeded in laying hold of the rostra. 4 There, rising to his feet, by the firmness and boldness of his demeanour he at once prevailed over the din, stopped the shouting, and after saying what was fitting and being listened to quietly, brought the disturbance completely to an end. When the senate was praising him for this, he said: “But I cannot praise you for leaving an imperilled praetor in the lurch and not coming to his aid.”

5 Now, all the candidates for office were at a loss what to do; each one was afraid to use bribes himself, but was afraid of losing his office if another used them. They decided, therefore, to come together and deposit severally one hundred and twenty-five thousand drachmas in money, and that all should then sue for their offices in fair and just ways; the one who transgressed and practised bribery forfeiting his money. 6 Having made this agreement, they chose Cato as their depositary, umpire, and witness, and bringing their money, offered to deposit it with him; they even drew up their agreement in his presence. Cato took pledges for their money, but would not accept the money itself. When the day appointed for the election came, Cato took his stand by the side of the presiding tribune, and after watching the vote, declared that one of the depositors was playing false, and ordered him to pay his money over to the others. 7 But these, after admiring and praising Cato’s uprightness, cancelled the penalty, feeling that they already had sufficient satisfaction from the wrong-doer. In the rest of the citizens, however, this conduct of Cato caused more vexation and odium than anything else; they felt that he was investing himself with the powers of senate, courts and magistrates.

For no virtue, by the fame and credit which it gives, creates more envy than justice, because both power and credit follow it chiefly among the common folk. 8 These do not merely honour the just, as they do the brave, but they actually love the just, and put confidence and trust in them. As for the brave and wise, however, they fear the one and distrust the other; and besides, they think that these excel by a natural gift rather than by their own volition, considering bravery to be a certain intensity, and wisdom a certain vigour, of soul, whereas any one who wishes can be just forthwith, and the greatest disgrace is visited upon injustice, as being inexcusable baseness.

45 1 For this reason all the great men were hostile to Cato, feeling that they were put to shame by him; and Pompey, who considered Cato’s high repute as a dissolution of his own power, was always egging certain persons on to abuse him, among whom was Clodius the demagogue especially, who had again drifted into Pompey’s following. He loudly denounced Cato for having appropriated much treasure from Cyprus, and for being hostile to Pompey because he had declined to marry his daughter. 2 But Cato declared that, without taking a single horse or soldier, he had got together from Cyprus more treasure for the city than Pompey had brought back from all his wars and triumphs after stirring up the habitable world; and that he never chose Pompey for a marriage connection, not because he thought him unworthy of it, but because he saw the difference in their political tenets. 3 “I, for my part,” said Cato, “when a province was offered me after my praetorship, declined it, but this Pompey took provinces, some of which he holds himself, and some he offers to others; and now he has actually lent Caesar a body of six thousand legionaries for use in Gaul. This force neither did Caesar ask from you, nor did Pompey give it with your consent, but armies of this great size and arms and horses are now the mutual gifts of private persons. 4 And though he has the titles of general and imperator, he had handed over to others his armies and provinces, while he himself takes up his post near the city, managing factions at the elections as though he were directing games, and contriving disturbances, from which, as we clearly see, by way of anarchy, he is seeking to win for himself a monarchy.”

46 1 With such words did Cato defend himself against Pompey. But Marcus Favonius was a companion and ardent disciple of his, just as Apollodorus of Phalerum is said to have been of Socrates in olden time. Favonius was impulsive, and easily moved by argument, which did not affect him moderately or mildly, but like unmixed wine, and to the point of frenzy. 2 He was being defeated in a candidacy for the aedileship, but Cato, who was present, noticed that the voting tablets were all inscribed in one hand; and having exposed the foul play, at the time he stopped the election by an appeal to the tribunes. Afterwards, when Favonius had been appointed aedile, Cato both discharge the other duties of the office and managed the spectacles in the theatre. He gave to the actors crowns, not of gold, 3 but of wild olive, as was done at Olympia, and inexpensive gifts, — to the Greeks, beets, lettuce, radishes, and pears; and to the Romans, jars of wine, pork, figs, melons, and faggots of wood. At the practical simplicity of these gifts some laughed, but others conceived respect for Cato when they saw his severe and solemn manner gradually relaxing to pleasant good-humour. 4 And at last Favonius, plunging into the crowd and taking a seat among the spectators, applauded Cato and called to him in a loud voice to give presents to the successful performers and to honour them, and helped him to exhort the spectators, as though he had delegated his powers to Cato. Now, in the other theatre, Curio, the colleague of Favonius, was managing things with a lavish hand; but the people left him and went over to the other place, and readily shared in a sport where Favonius was playing the part of a private citizen and Cato that of master of the games. 5 But Cato did all this in disparagement of the usual practice, and with an effort to show that in sport one must adopt a sportive manner and conduct matters with unostentatious gladness rather than with elaborate and costly preparations, where one bestows upon trifling things great care and effort.

47 1 But presently Scipio, Hypsaeus, and Milo sought the consulship. They not only used those illegal means which were now a familiar feature in political life, namely, the giving of gifts and bribes, but were openly pressing on, by the use of arms and murder, into civil war, with daring and madness. Some therefore demanded that Pompey should preside over the elections. Cato opposed this at first, saying that the laws ought not to derive their security from Pompey, but Pompey from the laws. 2 However, when there had been no regular government for a long time, and three armies were occupying the forum daily, and the evil had well-nigh become past checking, he decided that matters ought to be put in the hands of Pompey by the voluntary gift of the senate, before the extreme necessity for it came, and that by employing the most moderate of unconstitutional measures as a healing remedy for the conservation of the greatest interests, they should themselves introduce the monarchy, rather than allow faction to issue in monarchy. 3 Accordingly, Bibulus, a kinsman of Cato, moved in the senate that Pompey should be chosen sole consul; for either matters would be rectified by his settlement of them, or the state would be in subjection to its most powerful citizen. Then Cato rose up and, to everyone’s surprise, approved the measure, advising any government as better than no government at all, and saying that he expected Pompey would handle the present situation in the best manner possible, and would guard the state when it was entrusted to him.

48 1 After Pompey had in this way been appointed consul, he begged Cato to come to him in the suburbs. And when Cato was come, Pompey gave him a friendly welcome with salutations and hand-clasps, acknowledged his obligations to him, and invited him to be his counsellor and associate in the government. 2 But Cato replied that he had neither spoken as he did at first out of enmity to Pompey, nor as he afterwards did to win his favour, but in every case in the interests of the state; in private, therefore, upon his invitation, he would be his counsellor, but in public, even without his invitation, he would certainly say what he thought was best. 3 And he did this, as he said he would. In the first place, for instance, when Pompey was proposing to fix by law fresh penalties and heavy punishments for those who had already bribed the people, Cato urged him to ignore the past and give his attention to the future; for, he said, it would not be easy to fix the point at which the investigation of past transgressions should stop, and if penalties should be fixed subsequent to the crimes, those would be outrageously dealt with who were punished in conformity with a law which they were not transgressing when they committed their crime. 4 In the second place, when many prominent men were on trial, some of whom were friends and relations of Pompey, Cato saw that Pompey was giving in and yielding in many cases, and therefore rebuked him sharply and tried to spur him on. Moreover, though Pompey himself had made illegal the customary panegyrics upon men under trial, he wrote a panegyric upon Munatius Plancus and handed it in at his trial; but Cato (who chanced to be one of the jurors) stopped his ears with his hands and prevented the reading of the testimony. 5 Plancus got him removed from the jury after the speeches were over, and was convicted none the less. And altogether Cato was a perplexing and unmanageable quantity for defendants; they neither wished to allow him to be a juror in their cases nor had the courage to challenge him. For not a few of them were convicted because their attempted rejection of Cato made it appear that they had no confidence in the justice of their cases; and some were bitterly assailed by their revilers for not accepting Cato as juror when he was proposed.

49 1 But Caesar, though he devoted himself to his armies in Gaul and was busy with arms, nevertheless employed gifts, money, and above all friends, to increase his power in the city. Presently, therefore, the admonitions of Cato roused Pompey from the great incredulity which he had indulged in up to this time, so that he had forebodings of his peril. However, he was still given to hesitation and spiritless delay in checking or attacking the threatening evil, and therefore Cato determined to stand for the consulship, that he might at once deprive Caesar of his armed forces, or convict him of hostile designs. 2 But his competitors were both acceptable men, and Sulpicius had actually derived much benefit from Cato’s repute and power in the city, and was therefore thought to be acting in an improper and even thankless manner. But Cato had no fault to find with him. “Pray, what wonder is it,” said he, “if a man will not surrender to another what he regards as the greatest of all good things?” 3 However, by persuading the senate to pass a decree that candidates for office should canvass the people in person, and not solicit nor confer with the citizens through the agency of another going about in their behalf, Cato still more exasperated the common folk, in that he deprived them, not only of getting money, but also of bestowing favour, and so made them at once poor and without honour. 4 And besides this, he was not persuasive himself in canvassings for himself, but wished to preserve in his manners the dignity of his life, rather than to acquire that of the consulship by making the customary salutations; neither would he permit his friends to do the things by which the multitude is courted and captivated. He therefore failed to obtain the office.

50 1 Though the matter brought, not only to the unsuccessful candidates themselves, but also to their friends and relatives, dejection and sorrow tinged with considerable shame for many days, Cato bore so easily what had happened that he anointed himself and practised ball in the Campus Martius, and after the mid-day meal, again, as was his wont, went down into the forum without shoes or tunic and walked about there with his intimates. 2 But Cicero finds fault with him because, when affairs demanded a man like him for office, he would not exert himself nor try to win the people by kindly intercourse with them, but for the future also ceased to make any effort and gave up the contest, although he had renewed his candidacy for the praetorship. 3 Cato replied, accordingly, that he had lost the praetorship, not because the majority wished it to be so, but because they were constrained or corrupted; whereas, since there had been no foul play in the consular elections, he saw clearly that he had given offence to the people by his manners. These, he said, no man of sense would change to please others, nor, keeping them unchanged, would he again suffer a like disaster.

51 1 After Caesar had fallen upon warlike nations and at great hazards conquered them, and when it was believed that he had attacked the Germans even during a truce and slain three hundred thousand of them, there was a general demand at Rome that the people should offer sacrifices of good tidings, but Cato urged them to surrender Caesar to those whom he had wronged, and not to turn upon themselves, or allow to fall upon their city, the pollution of his crime. 2 “However,” said he, “let us also sacrifice to the gods, because they do not turn the punishment for the general’s folly and madness upon his soldiers, but spare the city.” After this, Caesar wrote a letter and sent it to the senate; and when it was read, with its abundant insults and denunciations of Cato, 3 Cato rose to his feet and showed, not in anger or contentiousness, but as if from calculation and due preparation, that the accusations against him bore the marks of abuse and scoffing, and were childishness and vulgarity on Caesar’s part. Then, assailing Caesar’s plans from the outset and revealing clearly all his purpose, as if he were his fellow conspirator and partner and not his enemy, he declared that it was not the sons of Germans or Celts whom they must fear, 4 but Caesar himself, if they were in their right minds, and so moved and incited his hearers that the friends of Caesar were sorry that by having the letter read in the senate they had given Cato an opportunity for just arguments and true denunciations. However, nothing was done, but it was merely said that it was well to give Caesar a successor. 5 And when Caesar’s friends demanded that Pompey also, as well as Caesar, should lay down his arms and give up his provinces, or else that Caesar should not do so either, “Now,” shouted Cato, “those things are come to pass which I foretold to you, and the man is at last resorting to open compulsion, using the forces which he got by deceiving and cheating the state.” Outside the senate-house, however, Cato could accomplish nothing, since the people wished all along that Caesar should have the chief power; and although Cato had the senate under his influence, it was afraid of the people.

52 1 But when Ariminum was occupied and Caesar was reported to be marching against the city with an army, then all eyes were turned upon Cato, both those of the common people and those of Pompey as well; they realised that he alone had from the outset foreseen, and first openly foretold, the designs of Caesar. 2 Cato therefore said: “Nay, men, if any of you had heeded what I was ever foretelling and advising, ye would now neither be fearing a single man nor putting your hopes in a single man.” Pompey acknowledged that Cato had spoken more like a prophet, while he himself had acted too much like a friend. Cato then advised the senate to put affairs into the hands of Pompey alone; for the same men who caused great evils, he said, should put a stop to them. 3 Pompey, however, who had no forces in readiness, and saw that those which he was then enrolling were without zeal, forsook Rome; and Cato, who had determined to follow him and share his exile, sent his younger son to Munatius in Bruttium for safe keeping, but kept his elder son with himself. And since his household and his daughters needed someone to look after them, he took to wife again Marcia, now a widow with great wealth; for Hortensius, on his death, had left her his heir. 4 It was with reference to this that Caesar heaped most abuse upon Cato, charging him with avarice and with trafficking in marriage. “For why,” said Caesar, “should Cato give up his wife if he wanted her, or why, if he did not want her, should he take her back again? Unless it was true that the woman was at the first set as a bait for Hortensius, and lent by Cato when she was young that he might take her back when she was rich.” To these charges, however, the well-known verses of Euripides apply very well: —

“First, then, the things not to be named; for in that class

I reckon, Heracles, all cowardice in thee;”

5 for to charge Cato with a sordid love of gain is like reproaching Heracles with cowardice. But whether on other grounds, perhaps, the marriage was improper, were matter for investigation. For no sooner had Cato espoused Marcia than he committed to her care his household and his daughters, and set out himself in pursuit of Pompey.

53 1 But from that day, as we are told, Cato neither cut his hair nor trimmed his beard nor put on a garland, but maintained the same mien of sorrow, dejection, and heaviness of spirit in view of the calamities of his country, alike in victory and in defeat, until the end. At that time, however, having had Sicily allotted to him as a province, he crossed over to Syracuse, and on learning that Asinius Pollio had come to Messana with a force from the enemy, he sent and demanded a reason for his coming. 2 But having been asked by Pollio in turn a reason for the convulsion in the state, and hearing that Pompey had abandoned Italy altogether, and was encamped at Dyrrhachium, he remarked that there was much inconsistency and obscurity in the divine government, since Pompey had been invincible while his course was neither sound nor just, but now, when he wished to save his country and was fighting in defence of liberty, he had been deserted by his good fortune. 3 As for Asinius, indeed, Cato said he was able to drive him out of Sicily; but since another and a larger force was coming to his aid, he did not wish to ruin the island by involving it in war, and therefore, after advising the Syracusans to seek safety by joining the victorious party, he sailed away.

After he had come to Pompey, he was ever of one mind, namely, to protract the war; for he looked with hope to a settlement of the controversy, and did not wish that the state should be worsted in a struggle and suffer at its own hands the extreme of disaster, in having its fate decided by the sword. 4 Other measures, too, akin to this, he persuaded Pompey and his council to adopt, namely, not to plunder a city that was subject to Rome, and not to put a Roman to death except on the field of battle. This brought to the party of Pompey a good repute, and induced many to join it; they were delighted with his reasonableness and mildness.

54 1 When Cato was dispatched to Asia, that he might help those who were collecting transports and soldiers there, he took with him Servilia his sister and her young child by Lucullus. For Servilia had followed Cato, now that she was a widow, and had put an end to much of the evil report about her dissolute conduct by submitting to Cato’s guardianship and sharing his wanderings and his ways of life of her own accord. 2 But Caesar did not spare abuse of Cato even on the score of his relations with Servilia.

Now, in other ways, as it would seem, Pompey’s commanders in Asia had no need of Cato, and therefore, after persuading Rhodes into allegiance, he left Servilia and her child there, and returned to Pompey, who now had a splendid naval and military force assembled. 3 Here, indeed, and most clearly, Pompey was thought to have made his opinion of Cato manifest. For he determined to put the command of his fleet into the hands of Cato, and there were no less than five hundred fighting ships, besides Liburnian craft, look-out ships, and open boats in great numbers. 4 But he soon perceived, or was shown by his friends, that the one chief object of Cato’s public services was the liberty of his country, and that if he should be made master of so large a force, the very day of Caesar’s defeat would find Cato demanding that Pompey also lay down his arms and obey the laws. Pompey therefore changed his mind, although he had already conferred with Cato about the matter, and appointed Bibulus admiral. 5 Notwithstanding, he did not find that in consequence of this the zeal of Cato was blunted; nay, it is even said that when Pompey himself was trying to incite his forces to a battle before Dyrrhachium, and bidding each of the other commanders to say something to inspire the men, the soldiers listened to them sluggishly and in silence; but that when Cato, after all the other speakers, had rehearsed with genuine emotion all the appropriate sentiments to be drawn from philosophy concerning freedom, virtue, death and fame, 6 and finally passed into an invocation of the gods as eye-witnesses of their struggle in behalf of their country, there was such a shouting and so great a stir among all the soldiers thus aroused that all the commanders were full of hope as they hastened to confront the peril. They overcame and routed their enemies, but were robbed of a complete and perfect victory by the good genius of Caesar, which took advantage of Pompey’s caution and distrust of his good fortune. 7 These details, however, have been given in the Life of Pompey. But while all the rest were rejoicing and magnifying their achievement, Cato was weeping for his country, and bewailing the love of power that had brought such misfortune and destruction, as he saw that many brave citizens had fallen by one another’s hands.

55 1 When Pompey, in pursuit of Caesar, was breaking camp to march into Thessaly, he left behind him at Dyrrhachium a great quantity of arms and stores, and many kindred and friends, and over all these he appointed Cato commander and guardian, with fifteen cohorts of soldiers, because he both trusted and feared him. For in case of defeat, he thought that Cato would be his surest support, but in case of a victory, that he would not, if present, permit him to manage matters as he chose. 2 Many prominent men were also ignored by Pompey and left behind at Dyrrhachium with Cato.

When the defeat at Pharsalus came, Cato resolved that, if Pompey were dead, he would take over to Italy those who were still with him, but would himself live in exile as far as possible from the tyranny of Caesar; if, on the contrary, Pompey were alive, he would by all means keep his forces intact for him. 3 Accordingly, having crossed over to Corcyra, where the fleet was, he offered to give up the command to Cicero, who was of consular rank, while he himself had been only a praetor. But Cicero would not accept the command, and set out for Italy. Then Cato, seeing that the younger Pompey was led by his obstinacy and unseasonable pride into a desire to punish all those who were about to sail away, and was going to lay violent hands on Cicero first of all, admonished him in private and calmed him down, thus manifestly saving Cicero from death and procuring immunity for the rest.

56 1 Conjecturing, now, that Pompey the Great would make his escape into Egypt or Libya, and being eager to join him, Cato put to sea with all his company and sailed away, after first giving those who had no eagerness for the expedition leave to depart and remain behind. After reaching Libya, and while sailing along its coast, he fell in with Sextus, the younger son of Pompey, who told him of his father’s death in Egypt. 2 All, of course, were deeply distressed, but no one, now that Pompey was gone, would even listen to any other commander while Cato was at hand. For this reason also Cato, who had compassion on men who were brave and had given proof of fidelity, and was ashamed to leave them helpless and destitute in a foreign land, undertook the command, and went along the coast to Cyrene, the people of which received him kindly, although a few days before they had closed their gates against Labienus. 3 There he learned that Scipio, the father-in law of Pompey, had been well received by Juba the king, and that Attius Varus, who had been appointed governor of Libya by Pompey, was with them at the head of an army. Cato therefore set out thither by land in the winter season, having got together a great number of asses to carry water, and driving along with him many cattle. Besides, he took with him chariots, and the people called Psylli. These cure the bites of serpents by sucking out the venom, and charm and deaden the serpents themselves by means of incantations. 4 Though the march lasted for seven days consecutively, Cato led at the head of his force, without using either horse or beast of burden. Moreover, he used to sup in a sitting posture from the day when he learned of the defeat at Pharsalus; yes, this token of sorrow he added to others, and would not lie down except when sleeping. After finishing the winter in Libya, he led forth his army; and it numbered nearly ten thousand.

57 1 But matters were in a bad way with Scipio and Varus. Their dissension and quarrelling led them to pay court to Juba in efforts to win his favour, and the king was unendurable for the severity of his temper and for the arrogance which his wealth and power gave him. When he was going to have an interview with Cato for the first time, he placed his own seat between that of Scipio and that of Cato. 2 Cato, however, when he saw the arrangement, took up his own seat and moved it over to the other side, thus placing Scipio in the middle, although Scipio was an enemy, and had published a book which contained abuse of Cato. And yet there are those who give Cato no credit for this, although they censure him because, in Sicily, as he was walking about with Philostratus, he placed him in the middle, to show his respect for philosophy. But at the time of which I speak, Cato actually put a check upon Juba, who had all but made Scipio and Varus his satraps, and reconciled the two Romans. 3 And though all thought it meet that he should have the command, especially Scipio and Varus, who resigned and tendered to him the leadership, he refused to break the laws to support which they were waging war with one who broke them, nor, when a pro-consul was present, would he put himself, who was only a pro-praetor, above him. For Scipio had been made pro-consul, and the greater part of the army were emboldened by his name; they thought that they would be successful if a Scipio had command in Africa.

58 1 When Scipio, however, after assuming the command, straightway desired to gratify Juba by putting all the people of Utica to death and demolishing their city, on the ground that it favoured the cause of Caesar, Cato would not suffer it, but by adjurations and loud outcries in the council, and by invoking the gods, with difficulty rescued the people from this cruelty; 2 and partly at the request of the people, and partly at the instance of Scipio, he undertook to watch over the city, that it might not, either willingly or unwillingly, attach itself to Caesar. For the place was in every way advantageous for those who held it, and fully capable of defence; and it was still further strengthened by Cato. For he brought in a great abundance of grain, and perfected the walls by building towers and by running formidable trenches and palisades in front of the city. 3 To the men of Utica who were of military age he assigned the palisades for quarters, and made them give up their arms to him; the rest he kept together in the city, taking great pains that they should not be wronged or suffer harm at the hands of the Romans. Moreover, he sent out great quantities of arms and stores and grain to the Romans in their camp, and, in a word, made the city a store-house for the war. 4 But as for the advice which he had given Pompey before and now gave Scipio, namely, not to give battle to a man who was versed in war and of formidable ability, but to trust to time, which withers away all the vigour which is the strength of tyranny, — this advice Scipio, out of obstinate self-will, despised. And once he wrote to Cato reproaching him with cowardice, seeing that he was not only well content to sit quietly in a walled city himself, but would not even allow others to carry out their plans with boldness as opportunity offered. 5 To this Cato wrote in reply that he was ready to take the legionaries and the horsemen whom he himself had brought to Libya and cross the sea with them to Italy, thus forcing Caesar to change his plan of campaign, and turning him away from Scipio and Varus against himself. When Scipio mocked at this also, it was very clear that Cato was distressed at having declined the command, being convinced that Scipio would neither conduct the war well, nor, in case he should have unexpected good fortune, behave with moderation towards his fellow citizens in the hour of victory. 6 Therefore Cato made up his mind, and said to his intimate friends, that there were no good hopes for the war owing to the inexperience and rashness of the commanders; but that if, then, by any good fortune, Caesar should be overthrown, he himself would not remain in Rome, but would fly from the harshness and cruelty of Scipio, who was even then making extravagant and dreadful threats against many.

7 But his fears were realized more fully than he expected; for late one evening there came a messenger from the camp who had been three days on the road, announcing that there had been a great battle at Thapsus, that their cause was utterly ruined, that Caesar was in possession of their camps, that Scipio and Juba had escaped with a few followers, and that the rest of his force had perished.

59 1 These things coming suddenly upon the city, the people, as was natural at night and in time of war, were almost beside themselves at such tidings, and could with difficulty keep themselves within the walls. But Cato came forth, and for the present, whenever he met people running about and shouting, would lay hold of them one by one, and with encouraging words would take away the excessive wildness and confusion of their fear, saying that perhaps the defeat was not so bad as reported, but had been magnified in the telling, and thus he allayed the tumult; 2 but as soon as it was day, he issued proclamation that the three hundred who made up his senate (they were Romans, and were doing business in Libya as merchants and money-lenders) should assemble in the temple of Jupiter, as well as all the senators from Rome who were present, with their children. And while they were still coming together, he advanced quietly and with a composed countenance, and as if nothing unusual had happened, with a book in his hands from which he was reading. This was a register of his military engines, arms, grain, and men-at arms. 3 After they had come together, beginning with the three hundred and commending at great length their zeal and fidelity, which they had manifested by making themselves most helpful with their means and persons and advice, he exhorted them not to ruin their good prospects by trying to procure for themselves severally some separate flight or escape. For if they should hold together, he said, Caesar would despise them less as foes, and show them more mercy as suppliants. 4 Moreover, he urged them to deliberate upon their future course, declaring that he would have no fault to find with either decision which they might make. If they should turn their allegiance to the fortunate side, he would attribute their change to necessity; but if they should face the threatening evil and accept danger in defence of liberty, he would not only praise them, but would admire their valour and make himself their leader and fellow combatant, 5 until they had fully tested the ultimate fortunes of their country; and this country was not Utica, nor Adrumetum, but Rome, and had many times by her greatness recovered from more grievous disasters. Besides, he said, many things favoured their salvation and security, and chiefly the fact that they were waging war against a man who was drawn in many opposing directions by the exigencies of the times. For Spain had gone over to the younger Pompey, 6 and Rome herself had not yet altogether accepted the bit to which she was so unaccustomed, but was impatient of her lot and ready to rise up unitedly at any change in the situation. Nor, he assured them, was danger a thing to be shunned, but they must learn a lesson from their enemy, who spared not his life in perpetrating the greatest wrongs, while in their own case, so different from his, the uncertainties of war would end in a most happy life, if they were successful, or in a most glorious death, if they failed. 7 However, it was for them to deliberate by themselves, he said, and in return for their former bravery and zeal he joined them in praying that what they decided might be for their advantage.

60 1 When Cato had thus spoken, there were some whom his words merely restored to confidence, but the majority, in view of his fearlessness, nobility, and generosity, almost forgot their present troubles in the conviction that he alone was an invincible leader and superior to every fortune, and they begged him to use their lives and property and arms as he himself judged best; for it was better to die as his willing followers than to save their lives by betraying such virtues as his.

2 And now someone proposed that they should pass a vote giving freedom to the slaves, and the majority approved; but Cato said he would not do this, since it was not lawful or right; if, however, the masters of their own accord gave up their slaves, those slaves who were of military age should be accepted. Many promises to do this were made, and after ordering a list to be made of all who were willing, Cato withdrew.  After a little while there came to him letters from Juba and Scipio. Juba, who was hidden on a mountain with a few men, asked what Cato had decided to do; for if he abandoned Utica, Juba would wait for him, and if he underwent a siege, Juba would come to his aid with an army. Scipio, who was stationed with his fleet off a certain headland not far from Utica, awaited Cato’s decision in the same way.

61 1 Accordingly, Cato decided to detain the bearers of the letters until he felt sure of the attitude of the three hundred. For the Romans of senatorial rank were eager in his cause, and after promptly manumitting their slaves, were arming them; but as for the three hundred, since they were men engaged in navigation and money-lending and had the greater part of their property in slaves, the words of Cato did not long abide in their minds, but lapsed away. 2 For just as porous bodies readily receive heat and as readily yield it up again and grow cold when the fire is removed, in like manner these men, when they saw Cato, were filled with warmth and kindled into flame; but, when they came to think matters over by themselves, their fear of Caesar drove away their regard for Cato and for honour. “Who, pray, are we,” they said, “and who is he whose commands we are refusing to obey? 3 Is he not Caesar, upon whom the whole power of Rome has devolved? And not one of us is a Scipio, or a Pompey, or a Cato. But at a time when all men are led by fear to think more humbly than they ought to think, at such a time shall we fight in defence of the liberty of Rome, and wage war in Utica against a man before whom Cato, with Pompey the Great, fled and gave up Italy? And shall we give our slaves freedom in opposition to Caesar, we who ourselves have only as much freedom as he may wish to give us? Nay, before it is too late, poor wretches, let us know ourselves, crave the conqueror’s grace, and send men to entreat him.”

4 This was the course which the more moderate of the three hundred advised; but the majority of them were laying a plot against the men of senatorial rank, in the hope that by seizing these they might mitigate Caesar’s wrath against themselves.

62 1 Cato suspected their change of heart, but would not tax them with it. However, he wrote to Scipio and Juba advising them to keep away from Utica, because the three hundred were not to be trusted, and sent away the letter-bearers. And now the horsemen who had escaped from the battle, in numbers quite considerable, rode up to Utica and sent three of their number to Cato. These men, however, did not bring the same proposition from the whole body. 2 For one party among them was bent on going off to Juba, another wanted to join Cato, while a third was prevented by fear from entering Utica. On hearing their views, Cato ordered Marcus Rubrius to attend to the three hundred; he was to accept quietly the lists of those who gave freedom to their slaves, and was to use no compulsion. But Cato himself took the men of senatorial rank and went forth outside of Utica. 3 Here he conferred with the leaders of the horsemen, entreating them not to abandon so great a number of Roman senators, and not to choose Juba as their commander instead of Cato, but to save others as well as save themselves by coming into a city which could not be taken by storm, and had grain and other requisite provision for very many years. 4 In these entreaties the senators also joined, and with tears; whereupon the leaders of the horsemen discussed the matter with the horsemen, while Cato sat down on a mound with the senators and awaited the answers.

63 1 At this juncture Rubrius came up, wrathfully denouncing the three hundred for great disorder and tumult, inasmuch as they were falling away and throwing the city into confusion. Thereupon the other Romans altogether despaired of their case and burst into tears and lamentations; but Cato tried to encourage them, and sent to the three hundred bidding them await his coming. 2 And now the spokesmen of the horsemen came with immoderate demands. They said they neither wanted Juba for a paymaster, nor feared Caesar if Cato were their leader, but that to be shut up with the people of Utica, a fickle Phoenician folk, was a fearful thing; for even though they were quiet now, whenever Caesar came up against them they would play the traitor and aid him in his attacks. 3 If, therefore, any one wanted their aid in war and their presence, he must first drive out or destroy all the people of Utica, and then invite the horsemen into a city that was free from Barbarians and enemies. This proposal Cato regarded excessively barbarous and cruel, but he returned a mild answer, saying that he would advise with the three hundred.

4 So he went back into the city, where he found the men no longer manufacturing pretexts or evasions out of regard for him, but downright angry that any one should try to force them to war with Caesar when they were neither able nor willing. And some of them actually muttered that the men of senatorial rank ought to be detained in the city while Caesar was approaching. 5 But this Cato let pass, as though he had not heard it (and indeed he was somewhat deaf); when, however, men came to him with tidings that the horsemen were going away, he was afraid that the three hundred might become altogether desperate in their hostility to the senators, and therefore rose up and set out on foot with his friends; and when he perceived that the horsemen had already gone on, he took a horse and hastened after them. 6 The horsemen were glad when they saw him riding up, and greeted him, and exhorted him to save himself with them. Then, it is said, Cato actually burst into tears as he begged with outstretched hands in behalf of the senators, even trying to turn back the horses of some of the horsemen and laying hold of their arms, until he prevailed upon them to remain there that day at least, and to make the flight of the senators safe.

64 1 Accordingly, when he came to the city with them, stationed some of them at the gates, and committed the citadel to others to guard, the three hundred were afraid they might be punished for their change of allegiance, and sending to Cato they begged him by all means to come to them. But the senators crowded about him and would not let him go, declaring that they would not give up their saviour and guardian to treacherous and faithless men. 2 For by that time all the inhabitants of Utica alike most clearly perceived and fondly admired the virtuous qualities of Cato, convinced that nothing deceitful or spurious entered into what he did.

But for a long time the man had determined to destroy himself, and he was undergoing dreadful toils and suffering anxiety and pain in behalf of others, that he might put them all in the way of safety before he took his leave of life. 3 Indeed, there was no secret about his resolution to die, although he said nothing about it. Accordingly, after comforting the senators, he obeyed the call of the three hundred. He came alone to them, and they thanked him, and begged him in all other ways to trust and make use of them, but if they were not Catos and could not carry the large thoughts of Cato, to have pity on their weakness; 4 and now that they had determined to send to Caesar and pray for his mercy, for Cato first of all they would make their prayers; and if they could not prevail with Caesar, they would not accept the grace which he might offer to them, but as long as they had breath would fight for Cato.

In reply to this, after praising their good will, Cato said that to secure their own safety they ought to send to Caesar with all speed, but they must make no prayer for him; 5 prayer belonged to the conquered, and the craving of grace to those who had done wrong; but for his part he had not only been unvanquished all his life, but was actually a victor now as far as he chose to be, and a conqueror of Caesar in all that was honourable and just; Caesar was the one who was vanquished and taken; for the hostile acts against his country which he had long denied, were now detected and proven.

65 1 After this discourse to the three hundred, he withdrew; and on learning that Caesar with all his army was already on the march, “Aha!” he said, “he thinks we are men!” Then turning to the senators he bade them not delay, but save themselves while the horsemen were still there. He also closed the other gates of the city, and stationing himself at the one leading to the sea, he assigned transports to those under his command, and tried to keep things in order, stopping deeds of wrong, quelling tumults, and supplying stores to those who were destitute. 2 And when Marcus Octavius with two legions encamped near by and sent to Cato demanding that he come to terms with him about the command in the province, Cato would make no reply to him, but said to his friends: “Can we then wonder that our cause is lost, when we see that the love of command abides with us though we are standing on the brink of destruction?”

3 At this juncture, hearing that the horsemen, as they went away, were already plundering the people of Utica as though their property was booty, he ran to them as fast as he could; from the first whom he met he took away their plunder, but the rest, every man of them, made haste to lay down or throw away what they had, and all felt so ashamed that they went off in silence and with downcast looks. Then Cato, after calling the people of Utica together into the city, begged them not to embitter Caesar against the three hundred, but to unite with one another in securing safety for all. 4 Next, he betook himself again to the sea and superintended the embarcation there, embracing and escorting on their way all the friends and acquaintances whom he could persuade to go. His son, however, he could not persuade to take ship, nor did he think it his duty to try to turn the young man from his purpose of clinging to his father. But there was one Statyllius, a man who was young in years, but minded to be strong in purpose and to imitate Cato’s calmness. 5 This man Cato insisted should take ship; for he was a notorious hater of Caesar. But when Statyllius would not consent, Cato turned his eyes upon Apollonides the Stoic and Demetrius the Peripatetic, saying: “It is your task to reduce this man’s swollen pride and restore him to conformity with his best interests.” He himself, however, continued to assist the rest in getting off, and to supply the needy with ways and means, and was thus engaged all through the night and the greater part of the following day.

66 1 Lucius Caesar, a kinsman of the great Caesar, was about to go on an embassy to him in behalf of the three hundred, and requested Cato to suggest to him a convincing speech which he might employ in the case; “for,” said he, “in thine own behalf it were well for me to fall down at Caesar’s knees and clasp his hands.” But Cato would not suffer him to do this. 2 “For if,” said he, “I were willing to be saved by grace of Caesar, I ought to go to him in person and see him alone; but I am unwilling to be under obligations to the tyrant for his illegal acts. And he acts illegally in saving, as if their master, those over whom he has no right at all to be the lord. However, if it is thy wish, let us consider jointly how thou mayest obtain mercy for the three hundred.” 3 After his conference with Lucius on this matter, he presented his son and his companions to him as he was going away; and after escorting him on his way and bidding him farewell, he came back home, called together his son and his friends, and discoursed with them on many subjects. In particular, he forbade the young man to engage in political matters; for to do so worthily of a Cato was no longer possible, as things were going, and to do so otherwise would be disgraceful. And presently, towards evening, he betook himself to the bath.

4 But while he was bathing he bethought himself of Statyllius, and called out in loud tones, saying: “Apollonides, didst thou send off Statyllius? And didst though bring him down from that lofty purpose of his? And has the man set sail without even bidding me good-bye?” “By no means,” said Apollonides; “although we reasoned much with him; but he is lofty and unbending, and says he will remain and do whatever thou doest.” At this, we are told, Cato smiled, and said: “Well, we shall see about that presently.”

67 1 After his bath, he took supper with a large company, sitting at table, as was his wont after Pharsalus; indeed, he lay down only when he slept; and there were at supper with him all his companions, and the magistrates of Utica. After supper, there was much literary and genial discourse over the wine, and one philosophical tenet after another made the rounds, until there came up the enquiry into what were called the “paradoxes” of the Stoics, namely, that the good man alone is free, and that the bad are all slaves. 2 Here, as was to be expected, the Peripatetic made objections, whereupon Cato broke in with vehemence, and in loud and harsh tones maintained his argument at greatest length and with astonishing earnestness, so that everyone perceived that he had made up his mind to put an end to his life and free himself from his present troubles. Therefore, as all were dejected and silent after his discourse, Cato tried to revive their spirits and remove their suspicions by once more putting questions and expressing anxiety about what was going on, implying that he feared for those who were going away by sea, and feared, too, for those whose path lay through a barbarous and waterless desert.

68 1 Thus the supper came to an end, and after walking about with his friends as he usually did after supper, he gave the officers of the watch the proper orders, and then retired to his chamber, but not until he had embraced his son and each of his friends with more than his wonted kindness, and thus awakened anew their suspicions of what was to come. 2 After entering his chamber and lying down, he took up Plato’s dialogue “On the Soul,” and when he had gone through the greater part of the treatise, he looked up above his head, and not seeing his sword hanging there (for his son had taken it away while Cato was still at supper), called a servant and asked him who had taken the weapon. The servant made no answer, and Cato returned to his book; and a little while after, as if in no haste or hurry, but merely looking for his sword, he bade the servant fetch it. 3 But as there was some delay, and no one brought the weapon, he finished reading his book, and this time called his servants one by one and in louder tones demanded his sword. One of them he smote on the mouth with his fist, and bruised his own hand, angrily crying now in loud tones that his son and his servants were betraying him into the hands of the enemy without arms. At last his son ran in weeping, together with his friends, and after embracing him, betook himself to lamentations and entreaties. 4 But Cato, rising to his feet, took on a solemn look, and said: “When and where, without my knowledge, have I been adjudged a madman, that no one instructs or tries to convert me in matters wherein I am thought to have made bad decisions, but I am prevented from using my own judgement, and have my arms taken from me? Why, generous boy, dost thou not also tie thy father’s hands behind his back, that Caesar may find me unable to defend myself when he comes? 5 Surely, to kill myself I have no need of a sword, when I have only to hold my breath a little while, or dash my head against the wall, and death will come.”

69 1 As Cato said these words the young man went out sobbing, and all the rest also, except Demetrius and Apollonides. These alone remained, and with these Cato began to talk, now in gentler tones. “I suppose,” said he, “that ye also have decided to detain in life by force a man as old as I am, and to sit by him in silence and keep watch of him: or are ye come with the plea that it is neither shameful nor dreadful for Cato, when he has no other way of salvation, to await salvation at the hands of his enemy? 2 Why, then, do ye not speak persuasively and convert me to this doctrine, that we may cast away those good old opinions and arguments which have been part of our very lives, be made wiser through Caesar’s efforts, and therefore be more grateful to him? And yet I, certainly, have come to no resolve about myself; but when I have come to a resolve, I must be master of the course which I decide to take. 3 And I shall come to a resolve with your aid, as I might say, since I shall reach it with the aid of those doctrines which ye also adopt as philosophers. So go away with good courage, and bid my son not to try force with his father when he cannot persuade him.”

70 1 Without making any reply to this, but bursting into tears, Demetrius and Apollonides slowly withdrew. Then the sword was sent in, carried by a little child, and Cato took it, drew it from his sheath, and examined it. And when he saw that its point was keen and its edge still sharp, he said: “Now I am my own master.” Then he laid down the sword and resumed his book, and he is said to have read it through twice. 2 Afterwards he fell into so deep a sleep that those outside the chamber heard him. But about midnight he called two of his freedmen, Cleanthes the physician, and Butas, who was his chief agent in public matters. Butas he sent down to the sea, to find out whether all had set sail successfully, and bring him word; while to the physician he gave his hand to bandage, since it was inflamed by the blow that he had given the slave. 3 This made everybody more cheerful, since they thought he had a mind to live. In a little while Butas came with tidings that all had set sail except Crassus, who was detained by some business or other, and he too was on the point of embarking; Butas reported also that a heavy storm and a high wind prevailed at sea. On hearing this, Cato groaned with pity for those in peril on the sea, and sent Butas down again, to find out whether anyone had been driven back by the storm and wanted any necessaries, and to report to him.

4 And now the birds were already beginning to sing, when he fell asleep again for a little while. And when Butas came and told him that harbours were very quiet, he ordered him to close the door, throwing himself down upon his couch as if he were going to rest there for what still remained of the night. 5 But when Butas had gone out, Cato drew his sword from its sheath and stabbed himself below the breast. His thrust, however, was somewhat feeble, owing to the inflammation in his hand, and so he did not at once dispatch himself, but in his death struggle fell from the couch and made a loud noise by overturning a geometrical abacusb that stood near. His servants heard the noise and cried out, and his son at once ran in, together with his friends. 6 They saw that he was smeared with blood, and that most of his bowels were protruding, but that he still had his eyes open and was alive; and they were terribly shocked. But the physician went to him and tried to replace his bowels, which remained uninjured, and to sew up the wound.c Accordingly, when Cato recovered and became aware of this, he pushed the physician away, tore his bowels with his hands, rent the wound still more, and so died.

71 1 Before one would have thought that all in the house could learn of the event, the three hundred were at the door, and a little later the people of Utica had assembled. With one voice they called Cato their saviour and benefactor, the only man who was free, the only one unvanquished. 2 And this they continued to do even when word was brought that Caesar was approaching. But neither fear of the conqueror, nor a desire to flatter him, nor their mutual strife and dissension, could blunt their desire to honour Cato. They decked his body in splendid fashion, gave it an illustrious escort, and buried it near the sea, where a statue of him now stands, sword in hand. Then they turned their thoughts to their own salvation and that of their city.

72 1 When Caesar learned from people who came to him that Cato was remaining in Utica and not trying to escape, but that he was sending off the rest, while he himself, his companions, and his son, were fearlessly going up and down, he thought it difficult to discern the purpose of the man, but since he made the greatest account of him, he came on with his army in all haste. 2 When, however, he heard of his death, he said thus much only, as we are told: “O Cato, I begrudge thee thy death; for thou didst begrudge me the sparing of thy life.” For, in reality, if Cato could have consented to have his life spared by Caesar, he would not be thought to have defiled his own fair fame, but rather to have adorned that of Caesar. However, what would have happened is uncertain; though the milder course is to be conjectured on the part of Caesar.

73 1 When Cato died, he was forty-eight years old. His son received no harm at the hands of Caesar, but he was of an easy disposition, as we are told, and in his relations with women not blameless. In Cappadocia he enjoyed the hospitality of Marphadates, one of the royal family, who had a comely wife; and since young Cato spent more time with them than was seemly, 2 he was satirized in such writings as these: —

“On the morrow Cato journeys, — after a good round thirty days;”

and,

“Marphadates and Porcius, two friends with but a single Soul.”

For the wife of Marphadates was named Psyche (soul). And again:

“Nobly born, illustrious, our Cato hath a royal Soul.”

3 But all such ill-report was blotted out and removed by the manner of his death. For he fought at Philippi against Caesar and Antony, in behalf of liberty; and when his line of battle was giving way, he deigned not either to fly or to hide himself, but challenged the enemy, displayed himself in front of them, cheered on those who held their ground with him, and so fell, after amazing his foes by his valour.

4 And still more true is it that the daughter of Cato was deficient neither in prudence nor courage. She was the wife of the Brutus who slew Caesar, was privy to the conspiracy itself, and gave up her life in a manner worthy of her noble birth and her lofty character, as is told in the Life of Brutus. Statyllius, too, who declared that he would follow Cato’s example, was prevented at the time by the philosophers from destroying himself, as he wished to do, but afterwards gave most faithful and efficient service to Brutus, and died at Philippi.

Agis

795 1 1 Not without rhyme or reason is the supposition of some writers that the tale about Ixion — how it was the cloud that he embraced instead of Hera and begat from thence the Centaurs — has an application to lovers of glory. For such men, consorting with glory, which we may call an image of virtue, produce nothing that is genuine and of true lineage, but much that is bastard and monstrous, being swept now along one course and now along another in their attempts to satisfy desire and passion. The herdsmen of Sophocles say, in speaking of their flock: —

“Of these, indeed, though masters, we are yet the slaves,

And to them we must listen even though they’re dumb.”

2 And this, in truth, is the experience of public men who act in conformity with the desires and impulses of multitudes, making themselves attendants and slaves in order that they may be called popular leaders and rulers. For just as a ship’s lookout, who sees what lies ahead before the ship’s captain does, nevertheless turns to him for orders and does what he ordains, so the public man whose eyes are fixed on glory is a servant of the multitude, although he has the name of ruler.

2 1 The man, indeed, whose goodness is complete and perfect will have no need at all of glory, except so far as glory gives him access to achievement by reason of the confidence men have in him; but a man who is still young and is fond of honours may be allowed to plume and exalt himself somewhat even upon glory, provided that glory is the outcome of noble deeds. For virtues, which are incipient and budding in the young, are confirmed in their proper development, as Theophrastus says, by the praises of men, and complete their growth under the incentive of pride. 2 But excess is everywhere harmful, and in the case of men who cherish political ambitions, it is deadly; for it sweeps them away into manifest folly and madness as they grasp after great power, when they refuse to regard what is honourable as glorious, but consider that what is glorious is good. Therefore, what Phocion said to Antipater, who demanded from him some dishonourable service, “Thou canst not have Phocion as thy friend and at the same time thy flatterer,” this, or something akin to this, must be said to the multitude: 3 “Ye cannot have the same man as your ruler and your slave.” Since in this case also one certainly can apply the fable of the serpent whose tail rebelled against its head and demanded the right 796 to lead in turn instead of always following; so it took the lead, and by the folly of its progress got itself into mischief and lacerated the head, which was compelled, contrary to nature, to follow a part that had neither eyes nor ears. 4 This, as we see, has been the experience of many of the men whose whole political activity is directed towards the winning of popular favour; they made themselves dependent on the multitude, which is borne about at random, and then could neither recover themselves nor put a stop to the progress of disorder.

These remarks upon the glory which comes from the favour of the multitude I have been led to make because I was reminded of its great influence by the fortunes of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus. They were men of most generous natures, and had a most generous rearing, and adopted most generous political principles; and yet they were ruined, I will not say by an immoderate desire for glory, but rather by a fear of losing it. 5 For after they had enjoyed great kindness from their fellow citizens, they were ashamed to leave it unpaid, like a debt of money; and so they were forever striving by the excellence of their political services to surpass the honours conferred upon them, and were honoured all the more in consequence of their grateful political services. In this way, after kindling an equal ardour in themselves towards the people and in the people towards themselves, they engaged in enterprises wherein, though they knew it not, it was no longer honourable for them to persist, and already disgraceful for them to stop.

6 As to this matter, however, my reader will judge for himself from my narrative; and I shall compare with the Gracchi a pair of popular leaders in Sparta, Agis and Cleomenes the kings. For these also tried to exalt the people, just as the Gracchi did, and tried to restore an honourable and just civil polity which had lapsed for a long time; and like the Gracchi they incurred the hatred of the nobles, who were unwilling to relax their wonted greed. It is true that the Spartans were not brothers; still, they adopted political courses which were kindred and brother to one another. The occasion was as follows.

3 1 When once the love of silver and gold had crept into the city, closely followed by greed and parsimony in the acquisition of wealth and by luxury, effeminacy, and extravagance in the use and enjoyment of it, Sparta fell away from most of her noble traits, and continued in a low estate that was unworthy of her down to the times when Agis and Leonidas were kings. 2 Agis was of the Eurypontid royal house, a son of Eudamidas, and the sixth in descent from the Agesilaüs who crossed into Asia and became the most powerful Greek of his time. For Agesilaüs had a son Archidamus, who was slain by the Messapians at Mandurium in Italy; Archidamus had an elder son Agis, and a younger son Eudamidas, who, after Agis was slain by Antipater at Megalopolis leaving no issue, became king; Eudamidas was succeeded by Archidamus, Archidamus by another Eudamidas, and Eudamidas by Agis, subject of this Life. 3 Leonidas, on the other hand, the son of Cleonymus, was of the other royal house, the Agiad, and was eighth in descent from the Pausanias who defeated Mardonius at Plataea. For Pausanias had a son Pleistoanax, and Pleistoanax a son Pausanias, upon whose exile and flight from Sparta to Tegea his elder son Agesipolis became king; Agesipolis, dying without issue, was succeeded by a younger brother Cleombrotus, 4 and Cleombrotus, in turn, had two sons, Agesipolis and Cleomenes, of whom Agesipolis reigned only a short time and left no sons, while Cleomenes, who became king after him, lived to lose his elder son Acrotatus, but left behind him a younger son Cleonymus; Cleonymus, however, did not come to the throne, but Areus, who was a grandson of Cleomenes and son of Acrotatus; Areus fell in battle at Corinth, and his son Acrotatus came to the throne; 7975 Acrotatus also was defeated and slain at Megalopolis, by the tyrant Aristodemus, leaving his wife with child; and after she had given birth to a son, Leonidas the son of Cleonymus was made the child’s guardian. But the young king died before reaching manhood, and the kingship therefore devolved upon Leonidas, who was altogether unacceptable to the people. 6 For although the destruction of the constitution had already led to a general decline in manners, there was in Leonidas a very marked departure from the traditions of his country, since for a long time he had frequented oriental courts and had been a servile follower of Seleucus, and now sought to transfer the pride and pomp which prevailed abroad into Hellenic relations and a constitutional government, where they were out of place.

4 1 Agis, on the contrary, far surpassed in native excellence and in loftiness of spirit not only Leonidas, but almost all the kings who had followed the great Agesilaüs. Therefore, even before he had reached his twentieth year, and although he had been reared amid the wealth and luxury of women, namely, his mother Agesistrata and his grandmother Archidamia (who were the richest people in Sparta), he at once set his face against pleasures. He put away from his person the adornments which were thought to befit the grace of his figure, laid aside and avoided every extravagance, prided himself on his short Spartan cloak, observed sedulously the Spartan customs in his meals and baths and general ways of living, and declared that he did not want the royal power at all unless by means of it he could restore the ancient laws and discipline.

5 1 And here I may say that the Lacedaemonian state began to suffer distemper and corruption soon after its subversion of the Athenian supremacy filled it with gold and silver. However, since the number of families instituted by Lycurgus was still preserved in the transmission of estates, and father left to son his inheritance, to some extent the continuance of this order and equality sustained the state in spite of its errors in other respects. 2 But when a certain powerful man came to be ephor who was headstrong and of a violent temper, Epitadeus by name, he had a quarrel with his son, and introduced a law permitting a man during his lifetime to give his estate and allotment to any one he wished, or in his will and testament so to leave it. 3 This man, then, satisfied a private grudge of his own in introducing the law; but his fellow citizens welcomed the law out of greed, made it valid, and so destroyed the most excellent of institutions. For the men of power and influence at once began to acquire estates without scruple, ejecting the rightful heirs from their inheritances; and speedily the wealth of the state streamed into the hands of a few men, and poverty became the general rule, bringing in its train lack of leisure for noble pursuits and occupations unworthy of freemen, along with envy and hatred towards the men of property. 4 Thus there were left of the old Spartan families not more than seven hundred, and of these there were perhaps a hundred who possessed land and allotment; while the ordinary throng, without resources and without civic rights, lived in enforced idleness, showing no zeal or energy in warding off foreign wars, but ever watching for some opportunity to subvert and change affairs at home.

6 1 Agis, therefore, thinking it a noble achievement, as it was, to equalize and restore to full numbers the body of citizens, began to sound the inclinations of people. The young men, as he found, quickly and beyond his expectations gave ear to him, and stripped themselves for the contest in behalf of virtue, like him casting aside their old ways of living as worn-out garments in order to attain liberty. 2 But most of the older men, since they were now far gone in corruption, feared and shuddered at the name of Lycurgus as if they had run away from their master and were being led back to him, 798 and they upbraided Agis for bewailing the present state of affairs and yearning after the ancient dignity of Sparta. Lysander, however, the son of Libys, Mandrocleidas the son of Ecphanes, as well as Agesilaüs, approved of the king’s aspirations and supported him in them. 3 Lysander was in the highest repute among the citizens, and Mandrocleidas was the ablest Greek of his time in setting schemes on foot, and his sagacity and craft were mingled with daring; Agesilaüs, who was the king’s uncle on his mother’s side, and a powerful orator, though otherwise effeminate and avaricious, was openly urged on and encouraged by his son Hippomedon, who had won fair fame in many wars, and had great influence because he stood in favour with the young men. 4 But what really induced Agesilaüs to take part in the king’s enterprise was the multitude of his debts, of which he hoped to rid himself by changing the constitution. As soon, then, as Agis had won over Agesilaüs, he straightway sought with the aid of his uncle to persuade his mother, who was a sister of Agesilaüs, and owing to the multitude of her retainers, friends, and debtors, had great influence in the state and took a large part in public affairs.

7 1 When she heard her son’s plea, she was at first amazed, and tried to stop the young man from attempting what she thought was neither possible nor profitable; but Agesilaüs tried to show her that the king’s project would be feasible and its accomplishment advantageous, and the king himself besought his mother to contribute her wealth for the advancement of his ambition and glory. For in the matter of property, he said, he could not equal the other kings 2 (since the servants and slaves of the satraps and overseers of Ptolemy and Seleucus had larger possessions than all the kings of Sparta put together); but if in self-restraint, simplicity, and magnanimity he should surpass their luxury, and thereby establish equality and community of possession among the citizens, he would win the name and fame of a really great king. The women, lifted up by the young man’s high ambition, were so changed in their purposes, and possessed, as it were, by so great an inspiration to take the noble course, 3 that they joined in urging and hastening on the projects of Agis, sent for their friends among the men and invited them to help, and held conference with the women besides, since they were well aware that the men of Sparta were always obedient to their wives, and allowed them to meddle in public affairs more than they themselves were allowed to meddle in domestic concerns.

Now, at this time the greater part of the wealth of Sparta was in the hands of the women, and this made the work of Agis a grievous and difficult one. 4 For the women were opposed to it, not only because they would be stripped of the luxury which, in the general lack of higher culture, made their lives seem happy, but also because they saw that the honour and influence which they enjoyed in consequence of their wealth would be cut off. 5 So they had recourse to Leonidas, and besought him, since he was an older man, to withstand Agis and hinder what he was trying to accomplish. Leonidas, accordingly, was desirous of aiding the rich, but he feared the people, who were eager for a revolution. He therefore made no open opposition to Agis, but secretly sought to damage his undertaking and bring it to nought by slandering him to the chief magistrates, declaring that he was purchasing a tyranny by offering to the poor the property of the rich, and by distribution of land and remission of debts was buying a large body-guard for himself, not many citizens for Sparta.

8 1 However, Agis procured Lysander’s election as ephor, and at once employed him to introduce a bill into the senate, the chief provisions of which were that debtors should be relieved of their debts, and that the land should be divided up, that which lay between the water-course at Pellene and Taÿgetus, Malea, and Sellasia, into forty-five hundred lots, and that which lay outside this into fifteen thousand; 7992 that this larger land should be apportioned among those of the provincials who were capable of bearing arms, and the smaller among the genuine Spartans; that the number of these Spartans should be filled up from the provincials and foreigners who had received the rearing of freemen and were, besides, of vigorous bodies and in the prime of life; and that these should be formed into fifteen public messes by four hundreds and two hundreds, and should practise the mode of life which the ancient Spartans had followed.

9 1 The “rhetra” was introduced in the senate, and the senators were divided in opinion. Lysander therefore called together a general assembly and discussed the matter himself with the citizens, and Mandrocleidas and Agesilaüs begged them not to suffer the insolent opposition of a few to blind them to the prostration of Sparta’s dignity, but to call to mind the earlier oracles which bade them beware of the love of riches as a fatal thing for Sparta, as well as the oracles which had lately been brought to them from Pasiphaë.

2 Now there was a temple of Pasiphaë at Thalamae, and her oracle there was held in honour. Some say that Pasiphaë was one of the daughters of Atlas, and the mother of Ammon by Zeus, and some that Cassandra the daughter of Priam died at Thalamae, and was called Pasiphaë because she declared her oracles to all. Phylarchus, however, says that she was a daughter of Amyclas, Daphne by name, and that, fleeing the embraces of Apollo, she was changed into the tree of like name, after which she was honoured by the god with the gift of prophetic power. 3 Be this as it may, it was now said that the oracles brought from this goddess ordained that all Spartans should be on an equality according to the original law made by Lycurgus. And finally, King Agis came forward and after a brief discourse said that he offered very large contributions to the constitutions which he was trying to establish; for in the first place he put into the common stock his own estate, which included extensive tillage and pasture, and apart from this six hundred talents in money; and, besides, his mother and his grandmother did likewise, together with their relatives and friends, and they were the wealthiest among the Spartans.

10 1 The people, accordingly, were filled with amazement at the magnanimity of the young man, and were delighted, feeling that after a lapse of nearly two hundred years a king had appeared who was worthy of Sparta; but Leonidas, now more than ever, strove in opposition. For he reasoned that he would be compelled to do as Agis had done, and that he would not get the same gratitude for it among the citizens, but that if all the rich alike made their property a part of the common fund, the honour for it would be given to him alone who had led the way. He therefore asked Agis if he thought that Lycurgus had shown himself a just and worthy man, 2 and when Agis said that he did, “When, then,” said Leonidas, “did Lycurgus either grant abolition of debts or admit foreigners into citizenship — a man who held that the state was in no healthy way at all if it did not practise expulsion of foreigners?”

But Agis replied that he was not astonished to find Leonidas, who had been reared in foreign lands and had children by an oriental marriage, ignorant that Lycurgus had banished from the state debts and loans along with coined money, 3 and that foreigners in the cities were held by him in less displeasure than men to whom the Spartan practices and ways of living were not congenial; these, indeed, he sought to drive away, not because he was hostile to their persons, but because he feared lest their lives and manners should contaminate the citizens, and breed in them a love of luxury, effeminacy, and greed; for certainly Terpander and Thales and Pherecydes were foreigners, and yet, because the teachings of their songs and philosophy always accorded with those of Lycurgus, they were held in surpassing honour at Sparta. 4 “Thou praisest Ecprepes,” said Agis, “who, as ephor, cut out with an adze two of the nine lute-strings of Phrynis the musician,a and likewise the magistrates in the time of Timotheus, who did the same thing in their turn, 800 but thou blamest me for trying to remove luxury, extravagance, and ostentation from Sparta, as if those magistrates also were not on the watch to prevent the pompous and superfluous in music from making such advances as our lives and manners have come to, whose excess and discord has made the city dissonant and out of tune with itself.”

11 After this, the common people took sides with Agis, but the men of wealth entreated Leonidas not to abandon them. And by prayers and arguments with senators, whose power lay in their privilege of presenting all measures to the people, they so far prevailed that by a single vote the proposed rhetra was rejected. 2 Lysander, however, who was still ephor, set on foot an indictment of Leonidas by virtue of an ancient law which forbade any descendant of Heracles to beget children by a foreign woman, and ordained that anyone who left Sparta to settle among foreigners should be put to death. After instructing others to spread these charges against Leonidas, he himself, with his colleagues, proceeded to observe the traditional sign from heaven.

3 This is observed as follows. Every ninth year the ephors select a clear and moonless night, and in silent session watch the face of the heavens. If, then, a star shoots across the sky, they decide that their kings have transgressed in their dealings with the gods, and suspend them from their office, until an oracle from Delphi or Olympia comes to the succour of the kings thus found guilty.

4 This sign Lysander now declared had been given him, and indicted Leonidas, and produced witnesses showing that he was the father of two children by a woman of Asia who had been given him to wife by one of the lieutenants of Seleucus; and that owing to the woman’s dislike and hatred of him he had come back home against his own wishes, where he had assumed the royal dignity, to which there was then no direct successor. 5 Besides bringing this indictment, Lysander tried to persuade Cleombrotus to lay claim to the royal dignity. Cleombrotus was a son-in law of Leonidas, and one of the royal line. Leonidas, accordingly, took fright, and fled as a suppliant to the temple of Athena of the Brazen House. His daughter also forsook Cleombrotus and became a suppliant with her father. When Leonidas was summoned to the trial and did not appear, he was deposed, and Cleombrotus was made king in his place.

12 1 At this point, Lysander’s term expired and he went out of office. The new board of ephors encouraged Leonidas to leave his suppliant’s asylum, and brought an indictment against Lysander and Mandrocleidas for violating the law in proposing an abolition of debts and a distribution of land. 2 Thus put in legal peril, Lysander and Mandrocleidas persuaded the two kings to act together and disregard the edicts of the ephors; for that board of magistrates, they said, derived its power from dissension between the two kings, by giving their vote to the king who offered the better advice, whenever the other was at variance with the public good; but when the two kings were in accord, their power was indissoluble, and it would be unlawful for the ephors to contend against them, although when the kings were in contention with one another it was the privilege of the ephors to act as arbiters between them, but not to interfere when they were of one mind. 3 Persuaded by these arguments, both the kings went with their friends into the market place, removed the ephors from their seats, and appointed others in their stead, one of whom was Agesilaüs. Then they armed a large body of young men and set free all who were in prison, thus striking fear into their opponents, who thought they would put many of them to death. 4 No one, however, lost his life at their hands; on the contrary, when Agis learned that Agesilaüs had plotted to make away with Leonidas as he was trying to withdraw to Tegea, and had sent men to assault him on the road, he sent out another company of trusted followers who took Leonidas under their protection and brought him safely to Tegea.

801 13 1 Thus the enterprise of the kings was making good progress and no one tried to oppose or hinder them, when one man, Agesilaüs, upset and ruined everything. He allowed a most shameful disease of avarice to wreck a most noble and most truly Spartan plan. 2 For since he was an exceedingly large owner of valuable land, but owed huge sums of money, being unable to pay his debts and unwilling to give up his lands, he persuaded Agis that if both his projects should be carried through at the same time the resulting convulsion in the state would be great; but that if the men of property should first be won over by a remission of their debts, they would afterwards accept the distribution of land contentedly and quietly. 3 This was also the opinion of Lysander, who was deceived in like manner by Agesilaüs. So they caused mortgages (the Spartans call them “klaria,” or allotment pledges) to be brought into the market-place, heaped them altogether, and set fire to them. As the flames rose, the men of wealth and the lenders of money went away with heavy hearts; but Agesilaüs, as if in mockery of them, declared that his eyes had never seen a brighter or purer flame than that.

4 And now the multitude demanded also that the land should at once be divided, and the kings gave orders that this should be done; but Agesilaüs would always interpose some obstacle or make some excuse, and so consumed time until it became the duty of Agis to head a military expedition, when the Achaeans, who were their allies, sent for aid from Sparta. For the Aetolians were expected to invade Peloponnesus by way of Megara; and Aratus, the general of the Achaeans, in an effort to prevent this, was assembling a force and wrote a letter to the ephors.

14 1 These at once sent out Agis, who was exalted in spirit by the ambition and ardour of the soldiers under him. For being young men for the most part and poor, and having now immunity from their debts and absolution, and expecting that they would receive allotments of land if they returned from the expedition, their devotion to Agis was astonishing. 2 And they were a spectacle to the cities as they marched through the Peloponnesus without doing any injury, without rudeness, and almost without noise, so that the other Greeks were amazed and asked themselves what must have been the discipline of a Spartan army under the command of the great Agesilaüs, or the famous Lysander, or Leonidas of old, since towards a stripling who was almost the youngest of the whole army so great reverence and fear were felt by his soldiers. 3 And indeed the young man himself, owing to his simplicity, his love of hardships, and the pride he took in clothing and arming himself with no more splendour than a common soldier, won the admiration and devotion of the multitudes; for to the rich, certainly, his innovating ways were not pleasing, owing to a fear that they might prove a disturbing force and set a bad example among the common people everywhere.

15 1 Aratus, when Agis joined him near Corinth, was still deliberating whether or not to meet the enemy in open battle. Here Agis displayed great ardour, and courage which was sane and calculating. For he declared that in his opinion it was best to fight a decisive battle and not to abandon the gate of the Peloponnesus and suffer the enemy to pass inside: “However,” he said, “I will do as seems best to Aratus, for Aratus is an older man, and is general of the Achaeans; I did not come hither to be their leader or to give them orders, but to give them aid and share their expedition.”

2 Baton of Sinopé, however, says that Agis himself was unwilling to give battle although Aratus urged it; but Baton has not read what Aratus wrote about this matter, urging in self-defence that he thought it better, now that the husbandmen had gathered in almost all their crops, to suffer the enemy to pass by, instead of risking everything in battle.

3 When, therefore, Aratus decided not to give battle, and dismissed his allies with praises for their proffered aid, Agis, who had won universal admiration, 802 led his forces back to Sparta, where there was already much commotion and a revolution.

16 1 For Agesilaüs, who was one of the ephors, being now freed from what had kept him in restraint before, shrank from no injustice that brought him money, nay, contrary to the customary arrangement of the calendar, and when the time for it had not yet come, he inserted a thirteenth month and exacted taxes for it. Moreover, in fear of the victims of his injustice and hated by all men, he kept an armed bodyguard, and would go down to his magistracy under their protection. 2 And as for the kings, he wished men to think that he utterly despised the one, and held Agis in some slight honour more because of his near relationship than because he was king. He also spread reports that he was going to be ephor again.

For this reason his enemies lost no time in taking the great hazard, and banding together, openly brought home Leonidas from Tegea to exercise the royal power. Even the common people were glad to see this done, for they were incensed at their deception in the promised division of the land. 3 Agesilaüs, accordingly, was taken out of the country and saved by his son Hippomedon, who entreated his fellow-citizens, and was beloved of all because of his valour; and as for the kings, Agis fled for refuge to the temple of Athena of the Brazen House, while Cleombrotus went as a suppliant to the sanctuary of Poseidon; for Leonidas was thought to be more bitter against him, and in fact he left Agis unmolested and went up against Cleombrotus with soldiers. And when he arrived he denounced Cleombrotus angrily because, though a son-in law, he had plotted against him, robbed him of the royal power, and helped in driving him from the country.

17 1 Cleombrotus, on his part, had naught to say for himself, but sat perplexed and speechless; Chilonis, however, the daughter of Leonidas, who before this had felt herself wronged in the wrongs done to her father, and when Cleombrotus was made king had left him and ministered to her father in his misfortunes, — sharing his suppliant life while he was in the city, and in his exile continually grieving for him and cherishing bitter thoughts of Cleombrotus — at this time changed back again with the changed fortunes of the men, and was seen sitting as a suppliant with her husband, her arms thrown about him, and a little child clinging to her on either side. 2 All beholders were moved to wonder and tears at the fidelity and devotion of the woman, who, touching her robes and her hair, alike unkempt, said: “This garb, my father, and this appearance, are not due to my pity for Cleombrotus; nay, ever since thy sorrows and thine exile grief has been my steadfast mate and companion. Must I, then, now that thou art king in Sparta and victorious over thine enemies, continue to live in this sad state, or put on the splendid attire of royalty, after seeing the husband of my youth slain at thy hands? 3 That husband, unless he persuades and wins thee over by the tears of his wife and children, will pay a more grievous penalty for his evil designs than thou desirest, for he shall see me, his most beloved one, dead, before he is. For with what assurance could I live and face the other women, I, whose prayers awakened no pity in either husband or father? Nay, both as wife and as daughter I was born to share only the misfortune and dishonour of the men nearest and dearest to me. 4 As for my husband, even if he had some plausible excuse for his course, I robbed him of it at that time by taking thy part and testifying to what he had done; but thou makest his crime an easy one to defend by showing men that royal power is a thing so great and so worth fighting for that for its sake it is right to slay a son-in law and ignore a child.”

18 1 Uttering such supplications Chilonis rested her face upon the head of Cleombrotus and turned her eyes, all melted and marred with grief, upon the bystanders. 803 Then Leonidas, after conference with his friends, bade Cleombrotus leave his asylum and go into exile, but begged his daughter to remain, and not to abandon him, since he loved her so much, and had made her a free gift of her husband’s life. 2 He could not persuade her, however, but when her husband rose to go she put one of her children in his arms, took up the other one herself, and went forth in his company after an obeisance to the altar of the god; so that if Cleombrotus had not been wholly corrupted by vain ambition, he would have considered that exile was a greater blessing for him than the kingdom, because it restored to him his wife.

After removing Cleombrotus from his asylum, Leonidas expelled the officiating ephors from their office, appointed others in their place, and at once began to lay plots against the life of Agis. 3 To begin with, he tried to persuade Agis to leave his asylum and share the royal power with him, because, being a young man and ambitious, he had been one of those who Agesilaüs had completely deceived. But Agis continued to be suspicious and would not leave his asylum. So Leonidas himself stopped trying to cheat and play tricks upon him, but Amphares, Damochares, and Arcesilaüs did not. They were wont to go up to the temple and converse with Agis; and once they actually took him in charge and brought him down from the temple for a bath, and after he had bathed, restored him again to the temple. 4 They were all comrades of his, but Amphares had also borrowed recently some costly vestures and beakers from Agesistrata, and therefore plotted to destroy the king and the women, that he might not have to return what he had borrowed. And he, certainly, more than anyone else, as we are told, followed the counsels of Leonidas and embittered the ephors, of whom he was one, against Agis.

19 1 Now Agis spent most of his time in the sanctuary, but was wont to go down from time to time to his bath. There, then, they determined to seize him, when he was outside the sanctuary. So they waited till he had finished his bath, and then came to meet him with friendly greetings, and walked along with him, conversing and jesting with him after the manner of youthful comrades. 2 But at a certain point the road branched off towards the prison, and when they were come to that place, Amphares, by virtue of his office, laid hands on Agis and said: “I shall lead thee, Agis, to the ephors, to answer for thy measures of state”; and Damochares, who was tall and robust, threw his cloak about the king’s neck and dragged him along. 3 Others pushed him along from behind, as had been agreed, and since he had no helper but was without a friend, they thrust him into the prison. At once Leonidas was at hand with a large band of mercenaries and surrounded the prison, while the ephors went in to Agis. After sending for those of the senators who were of the same mind as themselves, as though the king were to have a trial, the ephors ordered Agis to defend his conduct of affairs. 4 The young king laughed at their dissimulation, whereupon Amphares threatened that he would rue the day and be punished for his temerity; but another ephor, as though plainly offering Agis a way of escape from the charges against him, asked him if he had done what he did under compulsion from Lysander and Agesilaüs. 5 And when Agis answered that he had suffered compulsion from no one, but that in admiration and imitation of Lycurgus he had adopted the same public policy as his, the same ephor asked again if he repented of what he had done. But the young king declared that he had no repentance for what he had most excellently planned, and would not have, even if he saw that he was to suffer the extremest penalty. So they condemned him to death, and ordered the officers to lead him into the “Dechas,” as it was called. 6 This is a chamber of the prison in which they strangle those who are under sentence of death. But Damochares, when he saw that the officers did not dare to lay hands on Agis, and likewise that even the mercenaries who were there shrank from the deed and were loth to do it, feeling as they did that 804 it was contrary to the laws of God and man to lay hands upon the person of a king, heaped threats and abuse upon them and himself dragged Agis into the chamber of death. 7 For already many people were aware of the arrest, and there was a noisy throng at the door and many torches, and the mother and grandmother of Agis were there, with cries and prayers that the king of the Spartans should have a hearing and a trial before the citizens. For this reason especially the ephors hastened on the king’s execution, believing that he would be taken out of their hands in the night if the concourse should increase.

20 1 Agis, then, on his way to the halter, saw one of the officers shedding tears of sympathy for him. “My man,” said he, “cease weeping; for even though I am put to death in this lawless and unjust manner, I have the better of my murderers.” And saying these words, he offered his neck to the noose without hesitation. 2 But Amphares went to the door of the prison, where Agesistrata fell at his feet in an appeal to his friendship and intimacy. Amphares lifted her up and assured her that Agis was not to suffer violence or death; and he bade her, if she wished, go in to her son. And when Agesistrata begged that her mother might go in with her, Amphares said there was nothing to prevent. 3 So he admitted both the women, and after ordered the door of the prison to be locked again, delivered Archidamia first to the executioners. She was now a very aged woman, and had lived all her days in very high repute among her countrywomen. After she had been put to death, Amphares ordered Agesistrata to enter the chamber of execution. 4 So she went in, and when she saw her son lying dead upon the ground, and her mother’s dead body still hanging in the noose, with her own hands she helped the officers to take her down, laid her body out by the side of Agis, and composed and covered it. Then, embracing her son and kissing his face, she said: “My son, it was thy too great regard for others, and thy gentleness and humanity, which has brought thee to ruin, us as well.” 5 Then Amphares, who stood at the door and saw and heard what she did and said, came in and said angrily to her: “If, then, thou hast been of the same mind as thy son, thou shalt suffer the same fate.” And Agesistrata, as she rose to present her neck to the noose, said: “My only prayer is that this may bring good to Sparta.”

21 1 When tidings of the sad event had been carried to the city and the three bodies were carried forth for burial, the fear felt by the citizens was not so strong as to prevent them from manifesting sorrow over what had been done, and hatred for Leonidas and Amphares. It was thought that nothing more dreadful or heinous had been done in Sparta since the Dorians had dwelt in Peloponnesus. 2 For against a king of the Lacedaemonians, as it seems, not even their enemies would willingly raise their hands if they met him in battle, but they would spare him, out of fear and reverence for his dignity. And for this reason, although there had been many conflicts between Lacedaemonians and other Greeks, only one Spartan king had been slain up to the time of Philip of Macedon, namely, Cleombrotus, who was smitten by a spear at Leuctra. The Messenians, however, say that Theopompus also fell in battle, at the hands of Aristomenes; but the Lacedaemonians deny this, and say that their king was only wounded. 3 This matter may be disputed; but Agis was certainly the first king of Sparta to be put to death by the ephors. And yet he had chosen a line of conduct that was noble and worthy of Sparta, and was of an age in which men are usually pardoned for their errors, and his friends could with more justice blame him than his enemies, because he spared the life of Leonidas, and, most mild and gentle man that he was, put faith in his other foes.

Cleomenes

805 1 1 Upon the death of Agis his brother Archidamus at once took to flight, and thus escaped arrest at the hands of Leonidas; but his wife, who had an infant son, was taken from her home by Leonidas and compelled to marry his son Cleomenes. Cleomenes was too young for marriage, but Leonidas was unwilling to have Agiatis marry anyone else. For she was heir to the great estate of her father Gylippus, in youthful beauty she far surpassed the other women of Greece, and she had an excellent disposition. 2 Therefore she begged most earnestly, we are told, that she should not be forced into this marriage, but after she was united to Cleomenes, though she hated Leonidas, to the young man himself she was a good and affectionate wife. And he, as soon as Agiatis was his, became passionately fond of her, and in a way sympathized with her devotion to the memory of Agis, so that he would often ask her about the career of Agis, and listen attentively as she told of the plans and purposes which Agis had formed.

3 And, besides, Cleomenes was aspiring and magnanimous, and no less prone by nature than Agis to self-restraint and simplicity. He had not, however, the scrupulous and gentle nature for which Agis was remarkable, and his natural courage was always goading him on, as it were, and fiercely impelling him towards that which in any case appeared to be the honourable course. He thought it a most excellent thing to rule over willing subjects, but a good thing also to subdue such subjects as were disobedient, and force them towards the better goal.

2 1 Of course, then, the condition of the city was not pleasing to him. The citizens had been lulled to sleep by idleness and pleasure; the king was willing to let all public business go, provided that no one thwarted his desire for luxurious living in the midst of his wealth; the public interests were neglected, while every man was eagerly intent upon his own private gain; and as for practice in arms, self-restraint of the young, hardiness, and equality, it was even dangerous to speak of these now that Agis was dead and gone.

2 It is said also that Cleomenes studied philosophy when he was still a stripling, after Sphaerus of Borysthenis had made a voyage to Sparta and busied himself sedulously there with the youth and young men. Sphaerus had become one of the leading disciples of Zeno of Citium, and it would appear that he admired the manly nature of Cleomenes and increased the fires of his high ambition. 3 For Leonidas of old, as we are told, when asked what manner of poet he thought Tyrtaeus to be, replied; “A good one to inflame the souls of young men.” And indeed they were filled with divine inspiration by his poems, and in battle were prodigal of their lives. However, for great and impetuous natures the Stoic doctrines are somewhat misleading and dangerous, although when they permeate a deep and gentle character, they redound most to its proper good.

3 1 But at the death of Leonidas Cleomenes came to the throne, and saw that the citizens were by that time altogether degenerate. The rich neglected the common interests for their own private pleasure and aggrandizement; the common people, because of their wretched state at home, had lost all readiness for war and all ambition to maintain the ancient Spartan discipline; and he himself, Cleomenes, was king only in name, 2 while the whole power was in the hands of the ephors. He therefore at once determined to stir up and change the existing order of things, and as he had a friend, Xenares, who had been his lover (or inspirer, as the Spartans say), he would make trial of his sentiments by inquiring in detail what sort of a king Agis had been, and in what way and with what assistants he had entered upon the course of action so fatal to him. At first Xenares was quite glad to recall those matters, 806 and rehearsed the events at length and in detail; 3 but when it was apparent that Cleomenes took an unusual interest in the story, and was profoundly stirred by the innovations of Agis, and wished to hear about him over and over again, Xenares rebuked him angrily, calling him unsound in mind, and finally stopped visiting and conversing with him. To no one, however, did he tell the reason of their variance, but merely said that Cleomenes understood it.

4 And so Cleomenes, finding Xenares averse, and thinking that everybody else was of like mind with him, began to arrange his project all by himself. And because he thought that he could better bring about his reforms in time of war than in the midst of peace, he embroiled the state with the Achaeans, who were themselves giving grounds for complaint. For Aratus, the most powerful man among the Achaeans, was from the outset desirous of bringing all the Peloponnesians into one confederation, and this was the end pursued by him during his many generalships and his long political activity, since he was of the opinion that in this way alone would they be safe from the attacks of their enemies without. 5 Nearly all the other Peloponnesians adopted his views, but the Lacedaemonians, the Eleians, and the Arcadians who sided with the Lacedaemonians, held aloof. Therefore, as soon as Leonidas was dead, Aratus began to harass the Arcadians, and ravaged the territories of those especially who were adjacent to Achaea. His object was to put the Lacedaemonians to the test, and he despised Cleomenes as a young and inexperienced man.

4 1 Upon this, the ephors began operations by sending Cleomenes to occupy the precinct of Athena at Belbina. This commands an entrance into Laconia, and was at that time a subject of litigation with the Megalopolitans. After Cleomenes had occupied and fortified this place, Aratus made no public protest, but led out his forces one night and tried to surprise Tegea and Orchomenus. 2 Those who were to betray these places to him, however, played the coward, and Aratus withdrew, thinking that his attempt had escaped notice. But Cleomenes wrote him an ironical letter, inquiring, as from a friend, whither he had marched out in the night. Aratus wrote back that hearing of Cleomenes’ intention to fortify Belbina he had gone down there to prevent it. Whereupon Cleomenes sent back word again that he believed this story to be true; “but those torches and ladders,” said he, “if it is all one to thee, tell me for what purpose thou hadst them with thee.” 3 Aratus burst out laughing at the jest, and inquired what manner of youth this was. Whereupon Damocrates, the Lacedaemonian exile, replied: “If thou hast designs upon the Lacedaemonians, see that thou hastenest, before this young cock grows his spurs.”

After this, when Cleomenes with a few horsemen and three hundred foot-soldiers was making an expedition in Arcadia, the ephors, fearing the issue of the war, ordered him to come back home. 4 After he had returned, however, Aratus seized Caphyae, and the ephors sent Cleomenes forth again. He seized Methydrium and overran the territory of Argolis, whereupon the Achaeans marched out with twenty thousand foot-soldiers and a thousand horsemen under Aristomachus as general. Cleomenes met them at Pallantium and offered battle, but Aratus, in fear of this boldness, would not suffer his general to hazard the issue, and retired. 5 For this he was reproached by the Achaeans, and jeered at and despised by the Lacedaemonians, who were less than five thousand strong. Cleomenes was therefore greatly lifted up in spirit and began to show a bold front to the citizens; and he would often remind them of one of their ancient kings who said, and not idly either, “The Lacedaemonians are wont to ask, not how many, but where, their enemies are.”

5 1 After this, he went to the aid of the Eleians, upon whom the Achaeans were making war, and falling upon the Achaeans near Mt. Lycaeum, as they were withdrawing, 807 he put their entire army to panic flight, slew great numbers of them, and took many prisoners, so that even Aratus was widely reported among the Greeks to be dead. But Aratus, making the best use of his opportunity, immediately after this defeat marched to Mantineia, and to everybody’s surprise captured and held the city. 2 At this the Lacedaemonians were altogether disheartened and opposed any further expedition on the part of Cleomenes. He therefore determined to summon from Messene the brother of Agis, Archidamus, who was the rightful king from the other royal house, thinking that the power of the ephors would be diminished if the royal power were restored to its full strength so as to counterbalance it. 3 But those who had formerly murdered Agis comprehended this design, and fearing that they would pay the penalty for their crime if Archidamus were restored, they did indeed receive him when he came secretly into the city, and assisted in his restoration, but immediately put him to death. Cleomenes may have been opposed to this, as Phylarchus thinks, or perhaps he was persuaded by his friends to abandon the hapless man to his murders. For the greater part of the blame attached itself to them, since they were thought to have constrained Cleomenes.

6 1 However, having determined to attempt at once his reforms in the state, Cleomenes bribed the ephors to send him on an expedition. He also won the favour of large numbers of the citizens with the help of his mother Cratesicleia, who assisted him liberally in providing ways and means, and shared his ambitions. It is even said that although she had no desire to marry again, for the sake of her son she took a husband who was foremost among the citizens in reputation and influence. 2 So Cleomenes led forth his forces and occupied Leuctra, a stronghold of Megalopolis. The Achaeans, under the command of Aratus, came swiftly to the aid of their allies against him, and Cleomenes, after drawing up his forces against the very walls of the city, was worsted at one point. 3 But Aratus would not permit the Achaeans to cross a certain deep ravine, and brought his pursuit to a stop. Lydiadas the Megalopolitan, however, chafing at this, dashed on with the horsemen under his command, and pursuing the enemy into a place full of vines, ditches, and walls, had his ranks broken and thrown into disorder thereby, and began to fall into difficulties. Cleomenes, observing this, sent against him his Tarentines and Cretans, at whose hands Lydiadas, defending himself sturdily, fell. At this the Lacedaemonians took courage and with a shout fell upon the Achaeans and routed their entire army. 4 Great numbers of them were slain, and their bodies Cleomenes restored at the enemy’s request; but the body of Lydiadas he asked to have brought to him, arrayed it in a purple robe and put a crown upon the head, and then sent it back to the gates of Megalopolis. This was the Lydiadas who renounced the tyranny, gave back the citizens their freedom, and attached the city to the Achaean league.

7 1 After this, Cleomenes, being now greatly elated, and persuaded that if he could keep the control of things entirely in his own hands during the war with the Achaeans, he would easily obtain the mastery, began to instruct his mother’s husband, Megistonoüs, that they must needs get rid of the ephors, put the property of the citizens into a common stock, and rouse and incite the Spartans, thus put upon their old footing of equality, to assume the supremacy in Greece. Megistonoüs was convinced, and enlisted in the cause two or three of his friends besides.

2 Now, it came to pass about that time that one of the ephors, who was sleeping in the precinct of Pasiphaë, had an astonishing dream. He dreamed that in the place where the ephors were wont to sit for the prosecution of business, one chair only stood, but the other four had been taken away; and that in his amazement at this a voice came to him from the temple saying that this was for the better for Sparta. 3 This dream the ephor related 808 to Cleomenes, who at first was much disturbed, and thought that the other had some suspicion of his design and was making trial of him; but when he was convinced that the relater spoke the truth, his courage revived. So taking all the citizens who, as he suspected, would be most opposed to his designs, he seized Heraea and Alsaea, two cities belonging to the Achaean league, introduced supplies of food into Orchomenus, and encamped by Mantineia, 4 from whence he made long marches up and down the land, and utterly wore out the Lacedaemonians, so that it was at their own request that he left most of them in Arcadia, while with his mercenaries he himself set out for Sparta. On the march he imparted his design to those whom he believed to be most favourably disposed to him, and went forward slowly, that he might fall upon the ephors while they were at supper.

8 1 When the city was close at hand, he sent Eurycleidas to the mess-table of the ephors, ostensibly to carry some message of the king from the army; but Therycion, Phoebis, and two of the Helots, who had been bred up along with Cleomenes (they call them “mothakes”), followed after with a few soldiers. These men, while Eurycleidas was still making his report to the ephors, ran in upon them with drawn swords and smote them. 2 The first of them, Agylaeus, on receiving the blow, fell and lay still as though dead; but afterwards he quietly pulled himself together, dragged himself out of the room, and crept unobserved into a little building which was a temple of Fear. Usually it was closed, but at this time it chanced to be open. Into this building he betook himself and locked the door. But the other four were slain, and also about ten of those who came to their aid. For the people who kept quiet were not killed, nor were those who wished to leave the city prevented. And even Agylaeus was spared when he came out of the temple next day.

9 1 Now, the Lacedaemonians have temples of Death, Laughter, and that sort of thing, as well as of Fear. And they pay honours to Fear, not as they do to the powers which they try to avert because they think them baleful, but because they believe that fear is the chief support of their civil polity. 2 For this reason, too, when the ephors enter upon their office, as Aristotle says, they issue a proclamation commanding all men to shave their moustaches, and to obey the laws, that these may not be severe upon them. They insist upon the shaving of the moustache, I think, in order that they may accustom the young men to obedience in the most trifling matters. 3 And the men of old, in my opinion, did not regard bravery as a lack of fear, but as fear of reproach and dread of disgrace. For the men who feel most dread of the laws have most courage in facing their enemies; and those shun death least who most fear ill fame. 4 Therefore it has been well said:

“. . . for where dread is, there also is reverence.”

And Homer says:

“Revered art thou by me, dear father-in law, and dreaded too;”

and

“Without a word, in dread of their leaders.”

For by the multitude reverence is most apt to be felt towards those whom they also fear. For this reason, too, the Lacedaemonians erected a temple to Fear alongside the mess-hall of the ephors, after they had endowed this magistracy with almost absolute powers.

10 1 And now to resume; Cleomenes, when day came, published a list of eighty citizens who must go into exile, and removed all the ephoral chairs except one; in this he purposed to sit himself for the transaction of public business. Then he called a general assembly and made a defence of his proceedings. He said that Lycurgus had blended the powers of senate and kings, and that for a long time the state was administered in this way and had no need of other officials. 2 But later, when the Messenian war proved to be long, the kings, since their campaigns abroad left them no time to administer justice themselves, chose out some of their friends and left them behind to serve the citizens in their stead. 809 These were called ephors, or guardians, and as a matter of fact they continued at first to be assistants of the kings, but then gradually diverted the power into their own hands, and so, ere men were aware, established a magistracy of their own. 3 As proof of this, Cleomenes cited the fact that down to that day, when the ephors summoned a king to appear before them, he refused to go at the first summons, and at the second, but at the third rose up and went with them; and he said that the one who first added weight to this office, and extended its powers, Asteropus, was ephor many generations later. As long, then, he said, as the ephors kept within bounds, it had been better to bear with them; but when with their assumed power they subverted the ancient form of government to such an extent as to drive away some kings, put others to death without a trial, and threaten such as desired to behold again in Sparta her fairest and most divinely appointed constitution, it was not to be endured. 4 If, then, it had been possible without bloodshed to rid Sparta of her imported curses, namely luxury and extravagance, and debts and usury, and those elder evils than these, namely, poverty and wealth, he would have thought himself the most fortunate king in the world to have cured the disease of his country like a wise physician, without pain; but as it was, he said, in support of the necessity that had been laid upon him, he could cite Lycurgus, who, though he was neither king nor magistrate, but a private person attempting to act as king, proceeded with an armed retinue into the market-place, so that Charillus the king took fright and fled for refuge to an altar. 5 That king, however, Cleomenes said, since he was an excellent man and a lover of his country, speedily concurred in the measures of Lycurgus and accepted the change of constitution; still, as a matter of fact Lycurgus by his own acts bore witness to the difficulty of changing a constitution without violence and fear. To these, Cleomenes said, he had himself resorted with the greatest moderation, for he had but put out of the way the men who were opposed to the salvation of Sparta. 6 For all the rest, he said, the whole land should be common property, debtors should be set free from their debts, and foreigners should be examined and rated, in order that the strongest of them might be made Spartan citizens and help to preserve the state by their arms. “In this way,” he said, “we shall cease to behold Sparta the booty of Aetolians and Illyrians through lack of men to defend her.”

11 After this, to begin with, Cleomenes himself placed his property in the common stock, as did Megistonoüs his step-father and every one of his friends besides; next, all the rest of the citizens did the same, and the land was parcelled out. Cleomenes also assigned a portion of land to each man who had been exiled by him, and promised to bring them all home after matters had become quiet. 2 Then he filled up the body of citizens with the most promising of the free provincials, and thus raised a body of four thousand men-at arms, whom he taught to use a long pike, held in both hands, instead of a short spear, and to carry their shields by a strap instead of by a fixed handle. Next he devoted himself to the training of the young men and to the “agoge,” or ancient discipline, most of the details of which Sphaerus, who was then in Sparta, helped him in arranging. And quickly was the proper system of bodily training and public messes resumed, a few out of necessity, but most with a willing spirit, subjecting themselves to the old Spartan regime with all its simplicity. 3 And yet, desiring to give the name of absolute power a less offensive sound, he associated with himself in royal power his brother Eucleidas. And this was the only time when the Spartans had two kings from the same house.

12 1 Learning that Aratus and the Achaeans believed that this revolution had jeopardized his position, and therefore did not think that he would venture forth outside of Sparta, or leave the city while it was still in the suspense of so great an agitation, he thought it a fine and helpful thing to make a display of the ready zeal of his army to his enemies. 2 Accordingly, he invaded the territory of Megalopolis, collected large booty, and devastated the country far and wide. 810 And finally arresting a company of actors who were passing through the country from Messené, he built a theatre in the enemy’s territory, instituted a contest for a prize of forty minae, and sat spectator for a whole day; not that he felt the need of a spectacle, but in exultant mockery, as it were, of his enemies, and to show to the world by his contempt for them that he held complete control of affairs, with something, as it were, to spare. 3 For at other times, the Spartan alone of Greek or Macedonian armies had no players in attendance, no jugglers, no dancing-girls, no harpists, but was free from every kind of licence, scurrility, and general festivity; while for the most part the young men practised themselves and the elder men taught them, and for amusement, when their work was over, they had recourse to their wonted pleasantries and the interchange of Spartan witticisms. Of what great advantage this sort of amusement is, I have told in my Life of Lycurgus.

13 1 In all these matters Cleomenes was himself a teacher. His own manner of life was simple, plain, and no more pretentious than that of the common man, and it was a pattern of self-restraint for all. This gave him a great advantage in his dealings with the other Greeks. For when men had to do with the other kings, they were not so much awed by their wealth and extravagance as they were filled with loathing for their haughtiness and pomp as they gave offensive and harsh answers to their auditors; 2 but when men came to Cleomenes, who was a real as well as a titled king, and then saw no profusion of purple robes or shawls about him, and no array of couches and litters; when they saw, too, that he did not make the work of his petitioners grievous and slow by employing a throng of messengers and door-keepers or by requiring written memorials, but came in person, just as he happened to be dressed, to answer the salutations of his visitors, conversing at length with those who needed his services and devoting time cheerfully and kindly to them, they were charmed and completely won over, and declared that he alone was a descendant of Heracles.

3 His usual supper was held in a room which had only three couches, and was very circumscribed and Spartan; but if he was entertaining ambassadors or guest-friends, two more couches would be brought in, and the servants would make the table a trifle more brilliant, not with sauces or sweetmeats, but with more generous dishes and a kindlier wine. And indeed he censured one of his friends, when he heard that in entertaining guest-friends he had set before them the black soup and barley-bread of the public mess-tables; “for,” said he, “in these matters and before foreigners we must not be too strictly Spartan.” 4 After the table had been removed, a tripod would be brought in on which were a bronze mixer full of wine, two silver bowls holding a pint apiece, and drinking cups of silver, few all told, from which he who wished might drink; but no one had a cup forced upon him. Music there was none, nor was any such addition desired; for Cleomenes entertained the company himself by his conversation, now asking questions, now telling stories, and his discourse was not unpleasantly serious, but had a sportiveness that charmed and was free from rudeness. 5 For the hunt which all the other kings made for men, ensnaring them with gifts and bribes and corrupting them, Cleomenes considered unskilful and unjust. In his eyes it was the noblest method, and one most fit for a king, to win over his visitors and attach them to himself by an intercourse and conversation which awakened pleasure and confidence. For he felt that a hireling differed from a friend in nothing except that the one was captured by a man’s character and conversation, the other by a man’s money.

14 1 To begin with, then, the Mantineians invited him to help them, 811 and after he had made his way into the city by night, they expelled the Achaean garrison and put themselves in his hands. Cleomenes restored to them their laws and constitution, and on the same day marched away to Tegea. Then, shortly afterwards, he fetched a compass through Arcadia and marched down upon the Achaean city of Pherae. His desire was either to fight a battle with the Achaeans, or to bring Aratus into disrepute for running away and abandoning the country to him. For although Hyperbatas was general at that time, Aratus had the entire power in the Achaean league. 2 Moreover, after the Achaeans had marched out with all their forces and pitched their camp at Dymae, near the Hecatombaeum, Cleomenes came up against them. He did not think it well, however, to pitch his own camp between the city of Dymae, which was hostile, and the army of the Achaeans, and therefore boldly challenged the Achaeans and forced them to engage. He was completely victorious, routed their phalanx, slew many of them in the battle, and took many prisoners also. Then he went up against Langon, drove out the Achaean garrison, and restored the city to the Eleians.

15 1 The Achaeans having been thus utterly overwhelmed, Aratus, who was wont to be their general every other year, refused the office and declined to listen to their invitations and prayers; thus unwisely, when the ship of state was in a heavy storm, handing over the helm to another and abandoning the post of authority. Cleomenes, on the other hand, at the first was thought to impose moderate terms upon the Achaean embassy, but afterwards he sent other envoys and bade them hand over to him the leadership among the Greeks, assuring them that on other points he would not quarrel with them, but would at once restore to them their captives and their strongholds. 2 The Achaeans were willing to settle matters on these terms, and invited Cleomenes to come to Lerna, where they were about to hold their assembly. But it fell out that Cleomenes, who had made a strenuous march and then too soon had drunk water, brought up a great quantity of blood and lost his speech. For this reason he sent back to the Achaeans the most prominent men among their captives, but postponed the conference and went back home to Sparta.

16 1 This ruined the cause of Greece, at a time when she was still able in some way or other to recover from her grievous plight and escape Macedonian greed and insolence. For Aratus (whether it was through distrust and fear of Cleomenes, or because he envied the king his unlooked for success, and thought it a terrible thing after three and thirty years of leadership to have his own fame and power stripped from him by an upstart of a young man, 2 and the authority taken over in a cause which he himself had built up and controlled for so long a time), in the first place tried to force the Achaeans aside and hinder their purpose; but when they paid no heed to him in their consternation at the daring spirit of Cleomenes, but actually saw justice in the demands of the Lacedaemonians, who were seeking to restore the Peloponnesus to its ancient status, 3 Aratus took a step which would have been unmeet for any Greek to take, but was most shameful for him and most unworthy of his career as soldier and statesman. For he invited Antigonus into Greece and filled the Peloponnesus with Macedonians, whom he himself had driven out of Peloponnesus when, as a young man, he delivered Acrocorinthus from their power — he who had incurred the suspicion and hostility of all the reigning kings, and of this very Antigonus had said countless evil things in the commentaries which he left behind him. 4 And still, though he had incurred many hardships and dangers in behalf of Athens, as he says himself, in order that the city might be set free from its garrison of Macedonians, he afterwards brought these Macedonians, under arms, into his own country and into his own home; aye, even into the apartments of his women; 812 but he would not consent that the man who was a descendant of Heracles and king of Sparta, and was seeking to bring back its ancient polity, now like a decadent melody, back again to that restrained and Dorian law and life which Lycurgus had instituted, should be entitled leader of Sicyon and Tritaea. 5 Instead of this, to avoid the Spartan barley-bread and short-cloak, and the most dreadful of the evils for which he denounced Cleomenes, namely, abolition of wealth and restoration of poverty, he cast himself and all Achaea down before a diadem, a purple robe, Macedonians, and oriental behests. And that he might not be thought to obey Cleomenes, he offered sacrifices to Antigonus and sang paeans himself, with a garland on his head, in praise of a man who was far gone with consumption.

6 I write this, however, not with any desire to denounce Aratus, for in many ways he was a true Greek and a great one, but out of pity for the weakness of human nature, which, even in characters so notably disposed towards excellence, cannot produce a nobility that is free from blame.

17 1 When the Achaeans came to Argos again for the conference, and Cleomenes had come down from Tegea, everyone had a strong hope that they would come to an agreement. But Aratus, since the most important questions between him and Antigonus had already been settled, and because he was afraid that Cleomenes would carry all his points by either winning over or constraining the multitude, demanded that Cleomenes, after receiving three hundred hostages, should come into the city alone for his conference with them, or else should come with his army as far as the gymnasium outside the city called Cyllarabium, and treat with them there. 2 When Cleomenes heard this, he declared that he had been wronged; for he ought to have been told of this when the conference was first proposed, and not be distrusted and driven away now, when he had come to their very doors. Then, after writing a letter to the Achaeans on the matter, most of which was denunciation of Aratus, and after Aratus on his part had abused him at great length to the multitude, Cleomenes broke camp with all speed and sent a herald to declare war upon the Achaeans, not to Argos, but to Aegium, in order, as Aratus says, that he might anticipate their preparations for defence.

3 Now, there had been agitation among the Achaeans, and their cities were eager for revolt, the common people expecting division of land and abolition of debts, and the leading men in many cases being dissatisfied with Aratus, and some of them also enraged at him for bringing Macedonians into Peloponnesus. Therefore Cleomenes, encouraged by these conditions, invaded Achaea. First, he took Pellené by a sudden assault, and drove out the Achaean garrison; next, he brought over to his cause Pheneus and Pentelium. 4 Presently the Achaeans, who were afraid that some treachery was afoot in Corinth and Sicyon, sent their horsemen and their mercenaries out of Argos to keep watch over those cities, while they themselves went down to Argos and began celebrating the Nemean games. So Cleomenes, expecting, as was the case, that while the throng was holding festival and the city was full of spectators, his unexpected approach would be more apt to cause confusion, led his army by night up to the wall, 5 occupied the region about the Aspis overlooking the theatre, a region which was rugged and hard to come at, and so terrified the inhabitants that not a man of them thought of defence, but they accepted a garrison and gave twenty citizens as hostages, agreeing to become allies of the Lacedaemonians, and to give Cleomenes the chief command.

18 1 This greatly increased the reputation and power of Cleomenes. For the ancient kings of Sparta, in spite of numerous efforts, were not able to secure the abiding allegiance of Argos; and the most formidable of generals, Pyrrhus, although he fought his way into the city, could not hold it, but was slain there, and a great part of his army perished with him. 8132 Therefore men admired the swiftness and intelligence of Cleomenes; and those who before this had mocked at him for imitating, as they said, Solon and Lycurgus in the abolition of debts and the equalization of property, were now altogether convinced that this imitation was the cause of the change in the Spartans. 3 For these were formerly in so low a state and so unable to help themselves, that Aetolians invaded Laconia and took away fifty thousand slaves. It was at this time, we are told, that one of the elder Spartans remarked that the enemy had helped Sparta by lightening her burden. 4 But now only a little time had elapsed, and they had as yet barely resumed their native customs and re-entered the track of their famous discipline, when, as if before the very eyes of Lycurgus and with his co-operation, they gave abundant proof of their valour and obedience to authority, by recovering the leadership of Hellas for Sparta and making all Peloponnesus their own again.

19 1 Thus Argos was taken by Cleomenes, and immediately afterwards Cleonae and Phlius came over to him. When this happened, Aratus was at Corinth, holding a judicial examination of those who were reputed to favour the Spartan cause. The unexpected tidings threw him into consternation, and perceiving that the city was leaning towards Cleomenes and wished to be rid of the Achaeans, he summoned the citizens into the council-hall, and then slipped away unnoticed to the city gate. There his horse was brought to him, and mounting it he fled to Sicyon. 2 The Corinthians were so eager to get to Cleomenes at Argos that, as Aratus says, all their horses were ruined. Aratus says also that Cleomenes upbraided the Corinthians for not seizing him, but letting him escape; however, Megistonoüs came to him, he says, bringing from Cleomenes a request for the surrender of Acrocorinthus (which was held by an Achaean garrison) and an offer of a large sum of money for it; to which he replied that he did not control affairs, but rather affairs controlled him. This is what Aratus writes.

3 But Cleomenes, marching up from Argos and taking over Troezen, Epidaurus, and Hermioné, came to Corinth. Its citadel he blockaded, since the Achaeans would not abandon it, and after summoning the friends and stewards of Aratus, ordered them to take the house and property of Aratus into their charge and management. 4 Then he sent Tritymallus the Messenian once more to Aratus, proposing that Acrocorinthus should be garrisoned by Achaeans and Lacedaemonians together, and promising Aratus personally double the stipend which he was receiving from King Ptolemy. Aratus, however, would not listen to the proposition, but sent his son to Antigonus along with the other hostages, and persuaded the Achaeans to vote the surrender of Acrocorinthus to Antigonus. Therefore Cleomenes invaded the territory of Sicyon and ravaged it, and accepted the property of Aratus when the Corinthians voted it to him as a gift.

20 1 When Antigonus with a large force was crossing the mountain range of Geraneia, Cleomenes thought it more advisable to fortify thoroughly, not the Isthmus, but the Oneian range of hills, and to wear out the Macedonians by a war of posts and positions, rather than to engage in formal battle with their disciplined phalanx. He carried out this plan, and thereby threw Antigonus into straits. 2 For he had not a sufficient store of provisions, and it was no easy matter to force his passage while Cleomenes sat entrenched. Moreover, when he attempted to slip past his enemy in the night by way of Lechaeum, he was driven out and lost some of his soldiers. 814 Therefore Cleomenes was altogether encouraged, and his men, elated by their victory, betook themselves to supper; but Antigonus was dejected, since he was shut up by necessity to difficult plans. 3 For he was planning to march off to the promontory of the Heraeum, and from there to put his army across to Sicyon in transports — an undertaking requiring much time and extraordinary preparations. But when it was already towards evening, there came to him from Argos by sea some friends of Aratus, who summoned him to the city, on the ground that the Argives were ready to revolt from Cleomenes. The author of the revolt was Aristotle; and the multitude were easy to persuade, being incensed because Cleomenes had not brought about the abolition of debts which they expected. 4 Accordingly, Aratus took fifteen hundred soldiers from Antigonus and sailed to Epidaurus. Aristotle, however, did not await his coming, but at the head of the citizens made an attack upon the garrison of the citadel; and Timoxenus came to his aid from Sicyon with the Achaean army.

21 1 It was about midnight when Cleomenes heard of these things, and summoning Megistonoüs, he angrily ordered him to go at once to Argos for assistance; for it was Megistonoüs who had given him most assurances of the fidelity of the Argives, and had thereby prevented him from expelling the suspected citizens. After sending off Megistonoüs, then, with two thousand soldiers, he himself kept watch upon Antigonus and tried to encourage the Corinthians, telling them that there was no great trouble at Argos, but only a slight disturbance made by a few men. 2 However, when Megistonoüs, who had made his way into Argos, was slain in battle, and the garrison held out with difficulty and kept sending frequent messengers to Cleomenes, he was afraid that if the enemy made themselves masters of Argos and shut up the passes, they might ravage at will the Laconian territory and lay siege to Sparta, which he had left without defenders. 3 He therefore led his army away from Corinth. This city was at once lost to him, for Antigonus entered it and set a garrison there; but Cleomenes, on reaching Argos, made an attempt to scale the walls, and with this in view drew his forces together from their march, and cutting his way through the tunnels running under the Aspis, or citadel, he made the ascent and effected a junction with his garrison inside, which was still holding out against the Achaeans. He actually got possession of some portions of the city by using scaling-ladders, and cleared the streets of the enemy by bringing his Cretan archers into action. 4 But when he saw Antigonus with his phalanx descending from the heights into the plain, and his horsemen already streaming into the city, he gave up trying to master it; and gathering all his troops about him he made his way safely down from the citadel and withdrew along past the city wall. He had made the greatest possible conquests in the briefest possible time, and had come within a little of making himself master of all Peloponnesus by a single march through it, but had quickly lost everything again. For some of his allies left him at once, and others after a little while handed their cities over to Antigonus.

22 1 Such was the result of his expedition, and he was leading his army home, when, as it was already evening and he was near Tegea, messengers from Sparta came with tidings of a fresh and even greater calamity, the death of his wife. It was because of her that even in his most successful campaigns he could not endure to the end, but would continually be coming home to Sparta, out of love for Agiatis and in supreme devotion to her. 2 Of course, then, he was smitten with grief, as was natural for a young man who had lost a most beautiful and most sensible wife, but he did not allow his suffering to shame or betray the loftiness of his thought or the greatness of his spirit. He maintained his usual speech, dress, and bearing, 815 gave the customary orders to his captains, and took thought for the safety of Tegea. 3 Next morning he returned to Sparta, and after duly mourning his loss with his mother and children at home, he at once engaged in the measures which he planned for the public good.

Now, Ptolemy the king of Egypt promised him aid and assistance, but demanded his mother and his children as hostages. For a long time, therefore, he was ashamed to tell his mother, and though he often went to her and was at the very point of letting her know, he held his peace, so that she on her part became suspicious and enquired of his friends whether there was not something which he wished to impart to her but hesitated to do so. 4 Finally, when Cleomenes plucked up courage to speak of the matter, his mother burst into a hearty laugh and said: “Was this the thing which thou wast often of a mind to tell me but lost thy courage? Make haste, put me on board a vessel, and send this frail body wheresoever though thinkest it will be of most use to Sparta, before old age destroys it sitting idly here.”

5 Accordingly, when all things were ready, they came to Taenarus by land, while the army escorted escort them under arms. And as Cratesicleia was about to embark, she drew Cleomenes aside by himself into the temple of Poseidon, and after embracing and kissing him in his anguish and deep trouble, said: 6 “Come, O king of the Lacedaemonians, when we go forth let no one see us weeping or doing anything unworthy of Sparta. For this lies in our power, and this alone; but as for the issues of fortune, we shall have what the Deity may grant.” After saying this, she composed her countenance and proceeded to the ship with her little grandson, and bade the captain put to sea with all speed. 7 And when she was come to Egypt, and learned that Ptolemy was entertaining embassies and proposals from Antigonus, and heard that although the Achaeans invited Cleomenes to make terms with them, he was afraid on her account to end the war without the consent of Ptolemy, she sent word to him that he must do what was fitting and advantageous for Sparta, and not, because of one old woman and a little boy, be ever in fear of Ptolemy. Such, then, as we are told, was the bearing of Cratesicleia in her misfortunes.

23 1 After Antigonus had taken Tegea by siege, and had surprised Orchomenus and Mantineia, Cleomenes, now reduced to the narrow confines of Laconia, set free those of the Helots who could pay down five Attic minas (thereby raising a sum of five hundred talents), armed two thousand of them in Macedonian fashion as an offset to the White Shields of Antigonus, and planned an undertaking which was great and entirely unexpected. 2 Megalopolis was at that time of itself fully as large and strong as Sparta, and could have assistance from the Achaeans and from Antigonus; for Antigonus was encamped near by, and it was thought that the Megalopolitans were chiefly responsible for his being called in by the Achaeans. 3 This city Cleomenes planned to snatch away (for nothing else could better describe the speed and unexpectedness of his famous achievement), and ordering his men to take five days’ rations, he led them forth to Sellasia, as though he would ravage the territory of Argos. But from there he descended into the territory of Megalopolis, and after giving his men their supper at the Rhoeteium, he marched at once by way of Helicus against the city itself. 4 When he was not far away he dispatched Panteus with two divisions of Lacedaemonians, ordering him to seize a portion of the wall between two towers which he had learned was the most unprotected part of the walls of Megalopolis, while he himself with the rest of his army followed slowly after. Panteus found not only that particular spot, but also a great part of the wall, undefended, and at once tore down some portions of it, undermining others, and slaying all the defenders whom he encountered. 816 Cleomenes promptly joined him, and before the Megalopolitans were aware of it, he was inside the city with his army.

24 1 At last the disaster became clear to the citizens, and some of them at once fled the city, taking with them what property they could lay their hands on, while others banded together under arms, resisting and assaulting the enemy. These they were not strong enough to eject from the city, but they afforded a safe escape to the citizens who wished to flee, so that not more than a thousand persons were taken in the place; all the rest, together with their wives and children, succeeded in escaping to Messene. 2 Moreover, the greater part of those who tried to save the city by fighting got off alive; but a few of them, all told, were captured, among whom were Lysandridas and Thearidas, men of the greatest reputation and influence in Megalopolis. Therefore the soldiers had no sooner seized them than they brought them to Cleomenes. Then Lysandridas, when he saw Cleomenes from afar, cried out with a loud voice and said: “It is in thy power now, O king of the Lacedaemonians, to display an action fairer and more worthy of a king than any that has preceded it, and thereby win men’s highest esteem.” 3 But Cleomenes, conjecturing what the speaker wished, said: “What meanest thou, Lysandridas? Thou surely canst not bid me give your city back again to you.” To which Lysandridas replied: “Indeed, that is just what I mean, and I advise thee in thine own interests not to destroy so great a city, but to fill it with friends and allies who are trusty and true by giving back to the Megalopolitans their native city and becoming the preserver of so large a people.” 4 Accordingly, after a short silence, Cleomenes said: “It is difficult to believe that all this will happen, but with us let what makes for good repute always carry the day, rather than what brings gain.” And with these words he sent the two men off to Messene attended by a herald from himself, offering to give back their city to the Megalopolitans on condition that they renounce the Achaean cause and be his friends and allies.

5 However, although Cleomenes made this benevolent and humane offer, Philopoemen would not allow the Megalopolitans to break their pledges to the Achaeans, but denounced Cleomenes on the ground that he sought, not so much to give their city back to its citizens, as rather to get the citizens with their city; then he drove Thearidas and Lysandridas out of Messene. This was that Philopoemen who afterwards became the leader of the Achaeans and won the greatest fame among the Greeks, as I have written in his own Life.

25 1 When tidings of these things were brought to Cleomenes, although he had taken strict care that the city should be inviolate and unharmed, so that no one took even the least thing without being detected, he was now so incensed and embittered that he plundered it, and sent its statues and pictures off to Sparta; then, after completely demolishing most and the largest portions of the city, he marched back towards home, being in fear of Antigonus and the Achaeans. 2 But these did nothing. For they were holding a general assembly at Aegium; and here Aratus, after mounting the bema, wept for a long time, holding his mantle before his face; and when his audience was amazed and bade him speak, he told them that Megalopolis had been destroyed by Cleomenes. Then the assembly at once broke up, the Achaeans being filled with consternation at the swiftness and magnitude of the calamity. 3 Antigonus at first attempted to give aid, but afterwards, since his forces came up to him but slowly from their winter quarters, he ordered them to remain where they were, while he himself proceeded to Argos, having only a few soldiers with him.

And this was the reason why the next attempt of Cleomenes, which was thought to be a deed of extravagant and frantic daring, was really made with great forethought, as Polybius says. 4 For Cleomenes knew that the Macedonians were dispersed among the cities in their winter quarters, 817 and that Antigonus had only a few mercenaries with him at Argos, where he was spending the winter with his friends. Cleomenes therefore invaded the territory of Argos, calculating that Antigonus would either be shamed into fighting and would be overpowered, or, in case he did not venture to fight, would incur odium among the Argives. 5 And this was what actually came to pass. For while Cleomenes was wasting the country and robbing it of all that was there, the Argives, in distress, kept thronging the doors of the king and calling upon him with loud voices either to fight or yield the leadership to his betters. But Antigonus, as became a prudent general, considering that disgrace lay in taking unreasonable risks and throwing away his security, rather than in being abused by the outside rabble, would not go forth from the city, but stood by his previous plans. So Cleomenes came up to the very walls of the city with his army, wrought insolent havoc, and then withdrew unmolested.

26 1 A little later, however, hearing that Antigonus had advanced to Tegea with intent to invade Laconia from that city, Cleomenes quickly took his soldiers, marched past the enemy by a different route, and at daybreak appeared suddenly before the city of Argos, ravaging the plain and destroying the grain, not cutting this down, as usual, with sickles and knives, but beating it down with great pieces of wood fashioned like spear-shafts. These his soldiers plied as if in sport, while passing by, and with no effort at all they would crush and ruin all the crop. 2 When, however, they were come to the Cyllarabis and attempted to set the gymnasium on fire, Cleomenes stopped them, feeling that his work at Megalopolis had been done to satisfy his anger rather than his honour.

As for Antigonus, in the first place he went back at once to Argos, and then occupied the hills and all the passes with outposts. But Cleomenes pretended to despise and ignore all this, and sent heralds to the king demanding the keys to the Heraeum, that he might offer sacrifice to the goddess before he went away. 3 Then, after this jest and mockery, and after sacrificing to the goddess under the walls of the temple, which was closed, he led his army off to Phlius. From thence, after expelling the garrison of Oligyrtus, he marched past Orchomenus, not only infusing high spirits and courage into its citizens, but also leading his enemies to think him a man capable of leadership and worthy to wield great power. 4 For he drew his resources from but a single city, and yet waged war against the Macedonian power, all the Peloponnesians, and the treasures of a king together, and not only kept Laconia inviolate, but actually ravaged his enemies’ territory and took cities of great size; and men thought this a proof of no ordinary ability and largeness of purpose.

27 1 But he who first declared that money is the sinews of affairs would seem to have spoken with special reference to the affairs of war. And Demades, when the Athenians once ordered that their triremes should be launched and manned, but had no money, said: “Dough must be moistened before it is kneaded.” It is said also that Archidamus of old, towards the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when the allies ordered their contributions for the war to be fixed, said: “War has no fixed rations.” 2 And indeed, just as athletes who have taken a full course of training, in time bear down and overpower those who are merely graceful and skilful, so also did Antigonus, who engaged in the war with large resources, wear out and prostrate Cleomenes, who could only meagrely and with difficulty provide pay for his mercenaries and sustenance for his citizen-soldiers. 3 And yet in all other respects, certainly, time was on the side of Cleomenes; for affairs at home demanded the presence of Antigonus. During his absence Barbarians had been overrunning and devastating Macedonia, 818 and at this particular time a large army of Illyrians from the interior had burst in, and in consequence of their ravages the Macedonians summoned Antigonus home. Their letters came within a little of reaching him before the decisive battle. If they had so reached him, he would at once have gone away and left the Achaeans to their own devices. 4 But Fortune, who decides the most important affairs by a narrow margin, favoured him with so slight a preponderance in the scale of opportunity and power, that no sooner had the battle at Sellasia been fought, where Cleomenes lost his army and his city, than the messengers summoning Antigonus arrived. And this more than anything else made the misfortune of Cleomenes to be greatly pitied. 5 For if he could have held out only two days, and continued his defensive tactics, he would not have needed to fight a battle, but the Macedonians would have gone away and he could have made his own terms with the Achaeans. But now, as I said before, his lack of resources forced him to stake the whole issue on a battle where, as Polybius says, he could oppose only twenty thousand men to thirty thousand.

28 1 He showed himself an admirable general in the hour of peril, his fellow countrymen gave him spirited support, and even his mercenaries fought in a praiseworthy manner, but he was overwhelmed by the superior character of his enemies’ armour and the weight of their heavy-armed phalanx. Phylarchus, however, says that there was treachery also, and that this was chiefly what ruined Cleomenes. 2 For Antigonus ordered his Illyrians and Acarnanians to go round by a secret way and envelope the other wing, which Eucleidas, the brother of Cleomenes, commanded, and then led out the rest of his forces to battle; and when Cleomenes, from his post of observation, could nowhere see the arms of the Illyrians and Acarnanians, he was afraid that Antigonus was using them for some such purpose. 3 He therefore called Damoteles, the commander of the secret service contingent, and ordered him to observe and find out how matters stood in the rear and on the flanks of his array. But Damoteles (who had previously been bribed, as we are told, by Antigonus) told him to have no concern about flanks and rear, for all was well there, but to give his attention to those who assailed him in front, and repulse them. So Cleomenes, putting faith in what he was told, 4 and by the sweeping onset of his Spartans drove back the phalanx of the Macedonians for about five furlongs, and followed after them victoriously. Then, after Eucleidas with the other wing had been encircled, he came to a stop, and seeing their peril, said; “I have lost thee, my dearest brother, I have lost thee, thou noble heart, thou great example to Spartan boys, thou theme for a song to Spartan wives!” 5 After Eucleidas and his forces had in this way been cut to pieces, and the enemy, after their victory there, were coming on against the other wing, Cleomenes, seeing that his soldiers were in disorder and no longer had courage to stand their ground, took measures for his own safety. Many of his mercenaries fell, as we are told, and all the Spartans, six thousand in number, except two hundred.

29 1 When Cleomenes came to the city, he advised the citizens who met him to receive Antigonus; as for himself, he said he would do whatever promised to be best for Sparta, whether it called for his life or death. Then, seeing the women running up to those who had escaped with him, relieving them of their arms, and bringing drink to them, he went into his own house. 2 Here his concubine, a free woman of Megalopolis whom he had taken to himself after the death of his wife, came to him, as was her wont upon his return from the field, and wished to minister to him; but he would neither drink, though he was faint with thirst, nor sit down, though he was worn out. 819 Instead, all in armour as he was, he put his arm aslant against one of the pillars of the house, dropped his face upon his forearm, 3 and after resting himself in this way for a short time, and running over in his thoughts all possible plans, he set out with his friends for Gythium. There he went on board of vessels provided for this very purpose and put to sea.

30 1 Antigonus marched up and took the city without resistance. He treated the Lacedaemonians humanely, and did not insult or mock the dignity of Sparta, but restored her laws and constitution, sacrificed to the gods, and went away on the third day. For he learned that there was a great war in Macedonia and that the Barbarians were ravaging the country. Moreover, his disease was already in full possession of him, having developed into a quick consumption and an acute catarrh. 2 He did not, however, give up, but had strength left for his conflicts at home, so that he won a very great victory, slew a prodigious number of the Barbarians, and died gloriously, having broken a blood-vessel (as it is likely, and as Phylarchus says) by the very shout that he raised on the field of battle. And in the schools of philosophy one used to hear the story that after his victory he shouted for joy, “O happy day!” and then brought up a quantity of blood, fell into a high fever, and so died. So much concerning Antigonus.

31 1 As for Cleomenes, he sailed from Cythera to Aegialia, another island, and put in there. As he was about to cross from thence to Cyrene, one of his friends, Therycion by name, a man who brought a large spirit to the conduct of affairs and was always somewhat lofty in his speech and grandiloquent, came to him privately and said: “The noblest death, O King, a death in battle, we have put away from us; 2 and yet all men heard us declare that Antigonus should not pass the king of Sparta except over his dead body. But a death that is second in virtue and glory is now still in our power. Whither do we unreasoningly sail, fleeing an evil that is near and pursuing one that is afar off? For if it is not shameful that the descendants of Heracles should be in subjection to the successors of Philip and Alexander, we shall spare ourselves a long voyage by surrendering to Antigonus, who is likely to surpass Ptolemy as much as Macedonians surpass Egyptians. 3 But if we cannot consent to be ruled by those who have conquered us in arms, why should we make him our master who has not defeated us, thus showing ourselves inferior to two instead of one by running away from Antigonus and joining the flatterers of Ptolemy? Or, shall we say that it is on thy mother’s account that we come to Egypt? Surely thou wilt make a noble spectacle for her, and one to awaken envy, when she displays her son to the wives of Ptolemy, a captive instead of a king, and a runaway. 4 Let us rather, while we are still masters of our own swords and can gaze upon the land of Laconia, here rid ourselves of Fortune’s yoke, and make our peace with those who at Sellasia died in defence of Sparta, instead of sitting idly down in Egypt and asking every now and then whom Antigonus has left as satrap of Lacedaemon.”

Such were the words of Therycion, and to them Cleomenes replied: “It is the easiest possible step thou urgest, wretched man, and one that any man might take, this dying; and dost thou think thyself brave when thou art making a flight more shameful than the one preceding it? 5 Better men than we have given in to their enemies before this, having been betrayed by Fortune or overwhelmed by numbers. But he who in the face of toils and hardships, or of the censorious judgments of men, gives up the fight, is vanquished by his own weakness. For a self-inflicted death ought to be, not flight from action, but an action in itself. For it is shameful to die, as well as to live, for one’s self alone. 820 And yet it is to this that thou now invitest me in thine eagerness to be rid of present troubles, though beyond that thou wilt effect nothing that is honourable or useful. 6 I, however, think it right that neither thou nor I should abandon our hopes for our country; when these abandon us, death will be very easy if we wish it.”

To this Therycion made no reply, but as soon as he got an opportunity to leave Cleomenes, he turned aside along the sea-beach and slew himself.

32 1 But Cleomenes, putting to sea from Aegialia, landed in Libya, and travelled through the King’s country to Alexandria. After coming into the presence of Ptolemy, at first he met with only ordinary and moderate kindness from him; but when he had given proof of his sentiments and shown himself to be a man of good sense, and when, in his daily intercourse, his Laconian simplicity retained the charm which a free spirit imparts, while he in no wise brought shame upon his noble birth or suffered the blows of Fortune to bow him down, but showed himself more winning than those whose conversation sought only to please and flatter, 2 then Ptolemy was filled with great respect for him, and deeply repented that he had neglected such a man and abandoned him to Antigonus, who had thereby won great glory and power. Ptolemy therefore sought to regain Cleomenes by honours and kindnesses, and kept encouraging him with assurances that he would send him back to Greece with ships and treasure and restore him to his kingdom. 3 He also gave him an annual pension of twenty-four talents. With this money Cleomenes maintained himself and his friends in a simple and modest manner, and spent the greater part in good offices and contributions to the refugees from Greece who were in Egypt.

33 1 Well, then, the elder Ptolemy died before sending Cleomenes off as he had promised; and since the court at once plunged into excessive wantonness and drunkenness, and women wielded the power, the affairs of Cleomenes were neglected. 2 For the king himself was so corrupted in spirit by wine and women that, in his soberest and most serious moments, he would celebrate religious rites and act the mountebank in his palace, timbrel in hand, while the most important affairs of the government were managed by Agathocleia, the mistress of the king, and Oenanthe her mother, who was a bawd. 3 But in spite of this, at the outset Cleomenes seemed to be of some use. For Ptolemy was afraid of his brother Magas, believing that Magas had a strong following among the soldiers owing to his mother’s influence, and he therefore took Cleomenes into his following and gave him a place in his privy council, all the while plotting to kill his brother. But Cleomenes, although all other counsellors urged the king to take this step, alone advised against it, saying that it were better, were it possible, to get the king more brothers to increase the security and stability of his affairs. 4 And when Sosibius, who had the most influence among the king’s ministers, declared that they could not be sure of the mercenaries as long as Magas was alive, Cleomenes bade him have no concern on that point at least; for more than three thousand of the mercenaries were Peloponnesians and attached to himself, and if he but gave them a nod they would readily come to his side in arms. 5 At the time this speech won for Cleomenes no little faith in his good will and belief in his strength; but afterwards, when Ptolemy’s weakness intensified his cowardice, and, as is wont to happen where there is no sound judgment, his best course seemed to him to lie in fearing everybody and distrusting all men, it led the courtiers to be afraid of Cleomenes, on the ground that he had a strong following among the mercenaries; 6 and many of them were heard to say: “There goes the lion up and down among these sheep.” 821 And such, in fact, he clearly was among the courtiers, eyeing with quiet contempt and closely watching what was going on.

34 1 For ships, therefore, and an army, he gave up asking; but on learning that Antigonus was dead and that the Achaeans were involved in a war with the Aetolians, and that affairs yearned and called for him now that Peloponnesus was rent asunder and in confusion, he demanded to be sent away with his friends merely; but he could persuade no one. 2 The king would not give him a hearing, but was absorbed with women and Dionysiac routs and revels; and Sosibius, the prime minister and chief counsellor, thought that if Cleomenes remained against his will he might be hard to manage, indeed, and an object of fear, but that if he were sent away he would make some bold attempt, being a man of large undertakings, and one who had been an eye-witness of the distempers of the realm.  For not even gifts would soften him, but just as the sacred bull Apis, though living in plenty and believed to be having a luxurious time, feels a desire for the life that was his by nature, for coursings without restraint, and leaps and bounds, and is manifestly disgusted with his treatment at the hands of the priests, so Cleomenes took no pleasure in his life of ease and luxury,

— “but kept pining away in his dear heart,”

like Achilles,

“As he lingered there, and kept yearning for war-cry and battle.”

35 1 While matters stood thus with him, Nicagoras the Messenian came to Alexandria, a man who hated Cleomenes, but pretended to be a friend. He had at one time sold Cleomenes a fine estate, and owing to the constant demands of war upon the king, as it would seem, had not received the money for it. And so now, when Cleomenes, who chanced to be taking a walk along the quay, saw Nicagoras landing from his vessel, he greeted him heartily and asked what errand brought him to Egypt. 2 Nicagoras returned his greeting in a friendly manner, and said that he was bringing horses for the king, some fine ones for use in war. At this, Cleomenes gave a laugh and said: “I could wish that thou hadst rather brought sambuca-girls and catamites; for these now most interest the king.” At the time Nicagoras merely smiled; but a few days later he reminded Cleomenes of the estate, and asked that now at any rate he might get the money for it, saying that he would not have troubled him about the matter if he had not met with a considerable loss in the disposition of his cargo; 3 and when Cleomenes declared that he had nothing left of the moneys that had been given him, Nicagoras was vexed, and reported to Sosibius the pleasantry of Cleomenes. Sosibius was glad to get even this matter, but he desired to have some larger accusation with which to exasperate the king, and therefore persuaded Nicagoras to write and leave behind him a letter accusing Cleomenes of planning, in case he got triremes and soldiers from Ptolemy, to seize Cyrene. 4 So Nicagoras wrote a letter to this effect and sailed away; and Sosibius, after four days had passed, brought the letter to Ptolemy, pretending that he had just received it, and so exasperated the young man that it was decided to remove Cleomenes into a large house, and while treating him in other ways just as before, to prevent his egress.

36 1 Even this usage was grievous to Cleomenes, but his hopes for the future received a greater shock from the following incident. Ptolemy the son of Chrysermus, a friend of King Ptolemy, had all the while been on friendly terms with Cleomenes, and they were quite intimate and outspoken with one another. 2 This Ptolemy, then, now that Cleomenes begged a visit from him, came and conversed in a reasonable way with him, seeking to remove his suspicions and excusing the conduct of the king; but when he was leaving the house and did not perceive that Cleomenes was following on behind him as far as the doors, he bitterly reproached the guards 822 for the careless and easy watch they kept upon a great wild beast that was so hard to keep.  Cleomenes heard this with his own ears, and without Ptolemy’s being aware of his presence went back and told his friends. At once, then, they all abandoned the hopes they had been cherishing and wrathfully determined to avenge themselves on Ptolemy for his injustice and insolence, and die in a manner worthy of Sparta, instead of waiting like sacrificial victims to be first fattened and then smitten down. 4 For it was an intolerable thing that Cleomenes, after scorning to come to terms with Antigonus, a man who fought well and wrought much, should sit idly down and await the leisure of a begging-priest of a king, who, as soon as he could lay aside his timbrel and stop his dancing, would slay him.

37 1 Such being their resolve, and Ptolemy, as chance would have it, making a visit to Canopus, in the first place word was sent about that Cleomenes had been set free by the king; and next, in view of a custom which the king had of sending presents and a banquet to those who were going to be released from imprisonment, the friends of Cleomenes in the city prepared and sent in to him an abundance of such things, thus completely deceiving the guard, who thought the king had sent them. 2 For Cleomenes made a sacrifice and gave the guards a bountiful share of his provisions, and then took his place at table with garlands on his head and feasted with his friends. We are told, too, that he set out upon his enterprise sooner than he had intended, because he learned that a slave who was privy to it had passed the night outside in company with a mistress. So fearing that his plans would be revealed, when noon came and he perceived that his guards were sleeping off their wine, he put on his tunic, opened the seam over his right shoulder, and with drawn sword sprang forth, accompanied by his friends, who were likewise arrayed, thirteen in number. 3 Hippitas, who was lame, joined in making the first onset with all his soul, but when he saw that he was a hindrance to the progress of his companions, he bade them kill him, and not ruin the enterprise by waiting for a useless fellow. As it chanced, however, an Alexandrian was leading a horse past the doors, so they seized the animal, put Hippitas on its back, and then rushed at full speed through the narrow streets of the city, summoning the throng to win their freedom. 4 These had enough courage, as it would seem, to admire and praise the daring of Cleomenes, but not a man was bold enough to follow and help him.

Well, then, as Ptolemy the son of Chrysermus was coming out of the palace, three of them straightway fell upon him and slew him; and as another Ptolemy, who had the city in his charge, was driving towards them in a chariot, they rushed to meet him, scattered his servants and mercenaries, dragged him from his chariot, and slew him. 5 Then they proceeded to the citadel, purposing to break open the prison and avail themselves of the multitude of prisoners. But the guards were too quick for them and barred the way securely, so that Cleomenes, baffled in this attempt also, roamed up and down through the city, not a man joining with him but everybody filled with fear and flying from him. 6 So, then, he desisted from his attempt, and saying to his friends, “It is no wonder, after all, that women rule over men who run away from freedom,” he called upon them all to die in a manner worthy of their king and their past achievements. So Hippitas first, at his own request, was smitten down by one of the younger men, then each of the others calmly and cheerfully slew himself, except Panteus, the man who led the way in the capture of Megalopolis. 7 He had once been the king’s favourite, because in his youth he was most fair, and in his young manhood most amenable to the Spartan discipline; and now his orders were to wait until the king and the rest of the band were dead, and then to die himself. 823 At last all the rest lay prostrate on the ground, and Panteus, going up to each one in turn and pricking him with his sword, sought to discover whether any spark of life remained. When he pricked Cleomenes in the ankle and saw that his face twitched, he kissed him, and then sat down by his side; at last the end came, and after embracing the king’s dead body, he slew himself upon it.

38 1 Such, then, was the end of Cleomenes, who had been for sixteen years king of Sparta, and had shown himself the man whom I have described. The report of his death spread over the entire city, and Cratesicleia, although she was a woman of noble spirit, lost her composure in view of the magnitude of her misfortunes, and throwing her arms about the children of Cleomenes, wailed and lamented. 2 But the elder of the two boys, forestalling all prevention, sprang away and threw himself headlong from the roof; he was badly injured, but did not die, and was taken up crying out resentfully because he was not permitted to end his life.

But Ptolemy, when he learned of these things, gave orders that the body of Cleomenes should be flayed and hung up, and that his children, his mother, and the women that were with her, should be killed.  Among these women was the wife of Panteus, most noble and beautiful to look upon. The pair were still but lately married, and their misfortunes came upon them in the hey-day of their love. Her parents, indeed, would not permit her to sail away with Panteus immediately, although she wished to do so, but shut her up and kept her under constraint; 4 a little later, however, she procured herself a horse and a small sum of money, ran away by night, made all speed to Taenarum, and there embarked upon a ship bound for Egypt. She was conveyed to her husband, and with him bore their life in a strange life without complaint and chiefly. She it was who now took the hand of Cratesicleia as she was led forth by the soldiers, held up her robe for her, and bade her be of good courage. And Cratesicleia herself was not one whit dismayed at death, but asked one favour only, that she might die before the children died. 5 However, when they were come to the place of execution, first the children were slain before her eyes, and then Cratesicleia herself was slain, making but this one cry at sorrows so great: “O children, whither are ye gone?” Then the wife of Panteus, girding up her robe, vigorous and stately woman that she was, ministered to each of the dying women calmly and without a word, and laid them out for burial as well as she could. 6 And finally, after all were cared for, she arrayed herself, let down her robes from about her neck, and suffering no one besides the executioner to come near or look upon her, bravely met her end, and had no need of anyone to array or cover up her body after death. Thus her decorum of spirit attended her in death, and she maintained to the end that watchful care of her body which she had set over it in life.

39 1 So, then, Sparta, bringing her women’s tragedy into emulous competition with that of her men, showed the world that in the last extremity Virtue cannot be outraged by Fortune. And a few days afterwards those who were keeping watch upon the body of Cleomenes where it hung, saw a serpent of great size coiling itself about the head and hiding away the face so that no ravening bird of prey could light upon it. 2 In consequence of this, the king was seized with superstitious fear, and thus gave the women occasion for various rites of purification, since they felt that a man had been taken off who was of a superior nature and beloved of the gods. And the Alexandrians actually worshipped him, coming frequently to the spot and addressing Cleomenes as a hero and a child of the gods; but at last the wiser men among them put a stop to this 3 by explaining that, 824 as putrefying oxen breed bees, and horses wasps, and as beetles are generated in asses which are in the like condition of decay, so human bodies, when the juices about the marrow collect together and coagulate, produce serpents. And it was because they observed this that the ancients associated the serpent more than any other animal with heroes.

Tiberius

1 1 Now that we have duly finished the first part of our story, we have to contemplate fates no less tragic than those of Agis and Cleomenes in the lives of the Roman couple, Tiberius and Caius, which we set in parallel. They were sons of Tiberius Gracchus, who, although he had been censor at Rome, twice consul, and had celebrated two triumphs, derived his more illustrious dignity from his virtue. 2 Therefore, after the death of the Scipio who conquered Hannibal, although Tiberius had not been his friend, but actually at variance with him, he was judged worthy to take Scipio’s daughter Cornelia in marriage. We are told, moreover, that he once caught a pair of serpents on his bed, and that the soothsayers, after considering the prodigy, forbade him to kill both serpents or to let both go, but to decide the fate of one or the other of them, declaring also that the male serpent, if killed, would bring death to Tiberius, and the female, to Cornelia. 3 Tiberius, accordingly, who loved his wife, and thought that since she was still young and he was older it was more fitting that he should die, killed the male serpent, but let the female go. A short time afterwards, as the story goes, he died, leaving Cornelia with twelve children by him.

4 Cornelia took charge of the children and of the estate, and showed herself so discreet, so good a mother, and so magnanimous, that Tiberius was thought to have been made no bad decision when he elected to die instead of such a woman. For when Ptolemy the king offered to share his crown with her and sought her hand in marriage, she refused him, and remained a widow. 5 In this state she lost most of her children, but three survived; one daughter, who married Scipio the younger, and two sons, Tiberius and Caius, whose lives I now relate. These sons Cornelia reared with such scrupulous care that although confessedly no other Romans were so well endowed by nature, they were thought to owe their virtues more to education than to nature.

2 1 Now, just as, in spite of the likeness between Castor and Pollux as they are represented in sculpture and painting, there is a certain difference of shape between the boxer and the runner, so in the case of these young Romans, along with their strong resemblance to one another in bravery and self-command, as well as in liberality, eloquence, and magnanimity, in their actions and political careers great unlikenesses blossomed out, as it were, and came to light. Therefore I think it not amiss to set these forth before going further.

2 In the first place, then, as regards cast of features and look and bearing, Tiberius was gentle and sedate, while Caius was high-strung and vehement, so that even when haranguing the people the one stood composedly in one spot, while the other was the first Roman to walk about upon the rostra and pull his toga off his shoulder as he spoke. So Cleon the Athenian is said to have been the first of the popular orators to strip away his mantle and smite his thigh. 3 In the second place, the speech of Caius was awe-inspiring and passionate to exaggeration, while that of Tiberius was more agreeable and more conducive to pity. The style also of Tiberius was pure and elaborated to a nicety, while that of Caius was persuasive and ornate. So also as regards their table and mode of life, Tiberius was simple and plain, while Caius, although temperate and austere as compared with others, in contrast with his brother was ostentatious and fastidious. 4 Hence men like Drusus found fault with him because he bought silver dolphins at twelve hundred and fifty drachmas the pound. Again, their tempers were no less different than their speech. Tiberius was reasonable and gentle, while Caius was harsh and fiery, so that against his better judgment he was often carried away by anger as he spoke, raising his voice to a high pitch and uttering abuse and losing the thread of his discourse. 5 Wherefore, to guard against such digressions, he employed an intelligent servant, Licinius, who stood behind him when he was speaking, with a sounding instrument for giving the tones of the voice their pitches. Whenever this servant noticed that the voice of Caius was getting harsh and broken with anger, he would give out a soft key-note, on hearing which Caius was at once remit the vehemence of his passion and of his speech, grow gentle, and show himself easy to recall.a

3 1 The differences between them, then, were of this nature; but as regards bravery in the face of the enemy, just dealings with subject peoples, scrupulous fidelity in public office, and restraint in pleasurable indulgence, they were exactly alike. Tiberius, however, was nine years older than his brother; and this set a different period for the political activity of each, and more than anything else vitiated their undertakings. They did not rise to eminence at the same time, and so did not combine their powers into one. Such an united power would have proved irresistibly great. We must therefore give an account of each by himself, and of the elder first.

4 1 Tiberius, then, as soon as he got past boyhood, was so widely known as to be thought worthy of a place among the priests called augurs; and this was due to his virtues rather than to his excellent birth, as was clearly shown by Appius Claudius. For Appius, who had been consul and censor, had been made Dean of the Roman senate by virtue of his dignity, and in loftiness of spirit far surpassed his contemporaries, at a banquet of the augurs addressed Tiberius with words of friendship, and asked him to become the husband of his daughter. 2 Tiberius gladly accepted the invitation, and the betrothal was thus arranged, and when Appius returned home, from the doorway where he stood he called his wife, and cried in a loud voice: “Antistia, I have betrothed our Claudia.” And Antistia, in amazement, said: “Why so eager, or why so fast? If thou hadst only found Tiberius Gracchus for betrothal to her!” 3 I am aware that some refer this story to Tiberius the father of the Gracchi and Scipio Africanus Major, but the majority of writers tell it as I do, and Polybius says that after the death of Scipio Africanus the relatives of Cornelia chose out Tiberius in preference to all others and gave her to him, as one who had been left by her father unaffianced and unbetrothed.

4 The younger Tiberius, accordingly, serving in Africa under the younger Scipio, who had married his sister, and sharing his commander’s tent, soon learned to understand that commander’s nature (which produced many great incentives towards the emulation of virtue and its imitation in action), and soon led all the young men in discipline and bravery; 5 yes, he was first to scale the enemies’ wall, as Fannius says, who writes also that he himself scaled the wall with Tiberius and shared in that exploit. While he remained with the army Tiberius was the object of much good will, and on leaving it he was greatly missed.

5 1 After this campaign he was elected quaestor, and had the fortune to serve in a war against Numantia under the consul Caius Mancinus, who was not bad as a man, but most unfortunate of the Romans as a general. Therefore in the midst of unexpected misfortunes and adverse circumstances not only did the sagacity and bravery of Tiberius shine forth all the more, but also — and this was astonishing — the great respect and honour in which he held his commander, who, under the pressure of disasters, forgot even that he was a general. For after he had been defeated in great battles, he attempted to abandon his camp and withdraw his forces by night; but the Numantines became aware of his attempt and promptly seized his camp. Then they fell upon his men as they fled, slew those who were in the rear, encompassed his whole army, and crowded them into regions that were full of difficulties and afforded no escape. Mancinus, despairing of forcing his way to safety, sent heralds to the enemy proposing a truce and terms of peace; 3 but the enemy declared that they had confidence in no Roman save only Tiberius, and ordered that he should be sent to them. They had this feeling towards the young man not only on his own account (for he was held in very high esteem by the Numantine soldiery), but also because they remembered his father Tiberius, who waged war against the Spaniards, and subdued many of them, but made a peace with the Numantines, to the observance of which with integrity and justice he always held the Roman people. 4 So Tiberius was sent and held conference with the enemy, and after getting them to accept some conditions, and himself accepting others, effected a truce, and thereby manifestly saved the lives of twenty thousand Roman citizens, besides attendants and camp followers.

6 1 However, all the property captured in the camp was retained by the Numantines and treated as plunder. Among this were also the ledgers of Tiberius, containing written accounts of his official expenses as quaestor. These he was very anxious to recover, and so, when the army was already well on its way, turned back towards the city, attended by three or four companions. 2 After summoning forth the magistrates of Numantia, he asked them to bring him his tablets, that he might not give his enemies opportunity to malign him by not being able to give an account of his administration. The Numantines, accordingly, delighted at the chance to do him a favour, invited him to enter the city; and as he stood deliberating the matter, they drew near and clasped his hands, and fervently entreated him no longer to regard them as enemies, but to treat and trust them as friends. 3 Tiberius, accordingly, decided to do this, both because he set great store by his tablets, and because he feared to exasperate the Numantines by showing them distrust. After he had entered the city, in the first place the Numantines set out a meal for him, and entreated him by all means to sit down and eat something in their company; next, they gave him back his tablets, and urged him to take whatever he wanted of the rest of his property. He took nothing, however, except the frankincense which he was wont to use in the public sacrifices, and after bidding them farewell with every expression of friendship, departed.

7 1 When he came back to Rome, the whole transaction was blamed and denounced as a terrible disgrace to the city, although the relatives and friends of the soldiers, who formed a large part of the people, came flocking to Tiberius, imputing the disgrace in what had happened to his commander, but insisting that it was due to Tiberius that the lives of so many citizens had been saved. 2 Those, however, who were displeased at what had been done urged for imitation the example of their ancestors, who flung to the enemy unarmed the generals themselves who had been satisfied to be let go by the Samnites, and in like manner cast forth those who had taken hand and share in the treaty, as for instance the quaestors and military tribunes, turning upon their heads the guilt of perjury and violation of the pact. 3 In the present affair, indeed, more than at any other time, the people showed their good will and affection towards Tiberius. For they voted to deliver up the consul unarmed and in bonds to the Numantines, but spared all the other officers for the sake of Tiberius. It would seem, too, that Scipio, who was then the greatest and most influential man at Rome, helped to save them; but none the less he was blamed for not saving Mancinus, and for not insisting that the treaty with the Numantines, which had been made through the agency of his kinsman and friend Tiberius, should be kept inviolate. 4 It would appear that the disagreement between the two men arose chiefly through the ambition of Tiberius and from the friends and sophists who urged him on. But this disagreement certainly resulted in no mischief past remedy. And in my opinion Tiberius would never have met with his great misfortunes if Scipio Africanus had been present at Rome during his political activity. But as it was, Scipio was already at Numantia and waging war there when Tiberius began to agitate his agrarian laws. The occasion of this was as follows.

8 1 Of the territory which the Romans won in war from their neighbours, a part they sold, and a part they made common land, and assigned it for occupation to the poor and indigent among the citizens, on payment of a small rent into the public treasury. 2 And when the rich began to offer larger rents and drove out the poor, a law was enacted forbidding the holding by one person of more than five hundred acres of land. For a short time this enactment gave a check to the rapacity of the rich, and was of assistance to the poor, who remained in their places on the land which they had rented and occupied the allotment which each had held from the outset. 3 But later on the neighbouring rich men, by means of fictitious personages, transferred these rentals to themselves, and finally held most of the land openly in their own names. Then the poor, who had been ejected from their land, no longer showed themselves eager for military service, and neglected the bringing up of children, so that soon all Italy was conscious of a dearth of freemen, and was filled with gangs of foreign slaves, by whose aid the rich cultivated their estates, from which they had driven away the free citizens. 4 An attempt was therefore made to rectify this evil, and by Caius Laelius the comrade of Scipio; but the men of influence opposed his measures, and he, fearing the disturbance which might ensue, desisted, and received the surname of Wise or Prudent (for the Latin word “sapiens” would seem to have either meaning). Tiberius, however, on being elected tribune of the people, took the matter directly in hand. He was incited to this step, as most writers say, by Diophanes the rhetorician and Blossius the philosopher. 5 Diophanes was an exile from Mitylene, but Blossius was a native Italian from Cumae, had been an intimate friend of Antipater of Tarsus at Rome, and had been honoured by him with the dedication of philosophical treatises. But some put part of the blame upon Cornelia the mother of Tiberius, who often reproached her sons because the Romans still called her the mother-in law of Scipio, but not yet the mother of the Gracchi. 6 Others again say that a certain Spurius Postumius was to blame. He was of the same age as Tiberius, and a rival of his in reputation as an advocate; and when Tiberius came back from his campaign and found that his rival had far outstripped him in reputation and influence and was an object of public admiration, he determined, as it would seem, to outdo him by engaging in a bold political measure which would arouse great expectations among the people. 7 But his brother Caius, in a certain pamphlet, has written that as Tiberius was passing through Tuscany on his way to Numantia, and observed the dearth of inhabitants in the country, and that those who tilled its soil or tended its flocks there were barbarian slaves, he then first conceived the public policy which was the cause of countless ills to the two brothers. However, the energy and ambition of Tiberius were most of all kindled by the people themselves, who posted writings on porticoes, house-walls, and monuments, calling upon him to recover for the poor the public land.

9 1 He did not, however, draw up his law by himself, but took counsel with the citizens who were foremost in virtue and reputation, among whom were Crassus the pontifex maximus, Mucius Scaevola the jurist, who was then consul, and Appius Claudius, his father-in law. 2 And it is thought that a law dealing with injustice and rapacity so great was never drawn up in milder and gentler terms. For men who ought to have been punished for their disobedience and to have surrendered with payment of a fine the land which they were illegally enjoying, these men it merely ordered to abandon their unjust acquisitions upon being paid the value, and to admit into ownership of them such citizens as needed assistance. 3 But although the rectification of the wrong was so considerate, the people were satisfied to let bygones be bygones if they could be secure from such wrong in the future; the men of wealth and substance, however, were led by their greed to hate the law, and by their wrath and contentiousness to hate the law-giver, and tried to dissuade the people by alleging that Tiberius was introducing a re-distribution of land for the confusion of the body politic, and was stirring up a general revolution.

4 But they accomplished nothing; for Tiberius, striving to support a measure which was honourable and just with an eloquence that would have adorned even a meaner cause, was formidable and invincible, whenever, with the people crowding around the rostra, he took his stand there and pleaded for the poor. “The wild beasts that roam over Italy,” he would say, “have every one of them a cave or lair to lurk in; 5 but the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy the common air and light, indeed, but nothing else; houseless and homeless they wander about with their wives and children. And it is with lying lips that their imperators exhort the soldiers in their battles to defend sepulchres and shrines from the enemy; for not a man of them has an hereditary altar, not one of all these many Romans an ancestral tomb, but they fight and die to support others in wealth and luxury, and though they are styled masters of the world, they have not a single clod of earth that is their own.”

10 1 Such words as these, the product of a lofty spirit and genuine feeling, and falling upon the ears of a people profoundly moved and fully aroused to the speaker’s support, no adversary of Tiberius could successfully withstand. Abandoning therefore all counter-pleading, they addressed themselves to Marcus Octavius, one of the popular tribunes, a young man of sober character, discreet, and an intimate companion of Tiberius. 2 On this account Octavius at first tried to hold himself aloof, out of regard for Tiberius; but he was forced from his position, as it were, by the prayers and supplications of many influential men, so he set himself in opposition to Tiberius and staved off the passage of the law. Now, the decisive power is in the hands of any tribune who interposes his veto; for the wishes of the majority avail not if one tribune is in opposition. 3 Incensed at this procedure, Tiberius withdrew his considerate law, and introduced this time one which was more agreeable to the multitude and more severe against the wrongdoers, since it simply ordered them to vacate without compensation the land which they had acquired in violation of the earlier laws.

4 Almost every day, therefore, there were forensic contests between Tiberius and Octavius, in which, as we are told, although both strove together with the utmost earnestness and rivalry, neither abused the other or let fall a single word about the other which anger made unseemly. For not only “in Bacchic revelries,” as it appears, but also in the exercise of rivalry and wrath, a noble nature and a sound training restrain and regulate the mind. 5 Moreover, when Tiberius observed that Octavius himself was amenable to the law as a large holder of the public land, he begged him to remit his opposition, promising to pay him the value of the land out of his own means, although these were not splendid. But Octavius would not consent to this, and therefore Tiberius issued an edict forbidding all the other magistrates to transact any public business until such time as the vote should be cast either for or against his law. 6 He also put his private seal upon the temple of Saturn, in order that the quaestors might not take any money from its treasury or pay any into it, and he made proclamation that a penalty would be imposed upon such praetors as disobeyed, so that all magistrates grew fearful and ceased performing their several functions. 7 Thereupon the men of property put on the garb of mourning and went about the forum in pitiful and lowly guise; but in secret they plotted against the life of Tiberius and tried to raise a band of assassins to take him off, so that Tiberius on his part — and everybody knew it — wore a concealed short-sword such as brigands use (the name for it is “dolo”).

11 When the appointed day was come and Tiberius was summoning the people to the vote, the voting urns were stolen away by the party of the rich, and great confusion arose. However, the supporters of Tiberius were numerous enough to force the issue, and were banding together for this purpose, when Manlius and Fulvius, men of consular dignity, fell down before Tiberius, clasped his hands, and with tears besought him to desist. 2 Tiberius, conscious that the future was now all but desperate, and moved by respect for the men, asked them what they would have him do. They replied that they were not competent to advise in so grave a crisis, and urged him with entreaties to submit the case to the senate. To this Tiberius consented.

But the senate in its session accomplished nothing, owing to the prevailing influence of the wealthy class in it, and therefore Tiberius resorted to a measure which was illegal and unseemly, the ejection of Octavius from his office; but he was unable in any other way to bring his law to the vote. 3 In the first place, however, he begged Octavius in public, addressing him with kindly words and clasping his hands, to give in and gratify the people, who demanded only their just rights, and would receive only a trifling return for great toils and perils. But Octavius rejected the petition, and therefore Tiberius, after premising that, since they were colleagues in office with equal powers and differed on weighty measures, it was impossible for them to complete their term of office without open war, said he saw only one remedy for this, and that was for one or the other of them to give up his office. 4 Indeed, he urged Octavius to put to the people a vote on his own case first, promising to retire at once to private life if this should be the will of the citizens. But Octavius was unwilling, and therefore Tiberius declared that he would put the case of Octavius unless Octavius should change his mind upon reflection.

12 1 With this understanding, he dissolved the assembly for that day; but on the following day, after the people had come together, he mounted the rostra and once more attempted to persuade Octavius. When, however, Octavius was not to be persuaded, Tiberius introduced a law depriving him of his tribuneship, and summoned the citizens to cast their votes upon it at once. 2 Now, there were five and thirty tribes, and when seventeen of them had cast their votes, and the addition of one more would make it necessary for Octavius to become a private citizen, Tiberius called a halt in the voting, and again entreated Octavius, embracing him and kissing him in the sight of the people, and fervently begging him not to allow himself to be dishonoured, and not to attach to a friend responsibility for a measure so grievous and severe.

3 On hearing these entreaties, we are told, Octavius was not altogether untouched or unmoved; his eyes filled with tears and he stood silent for a long time. But when he turned his gaze towards the men of wealth and substance who were standing in a body together, his awe of them, as it would seem, and his fear of ill repute among them, led him to take every risk with boldness and bid Tiberius do what he pleased. 4 And so the law was passed, and Tiberius ordered one of his freedmen to drag Octavius from the rostra; for Tiberius used his freedmen as officers, and this made the sight of Octavius dragged along with contumely a more pitiful one. 5 Moreover, people made a rush at him, and though the men of wealth ran in a body to his assistance and spread out their hands against the crowd, it was with difficulty that Octavius was snatched away and safely rescued from the crowd; and a trusty servant of his who stood in front of his master and protected him, had his eyes torn out, against the protest of Tiberius, who, when he perceived what has going on, ran down with great haste to appease the tumult.

13 1 After this the agrarian law was passed, and three men were chosen for the survey and distribution of the public land, Tiberius himself, Appius Claudius his father-in law, and Caius Gracchus his brother, who was not at Rome, but was serving under Scipio in the expedition against Numantia. 2 These measures were carried out by Tiberius quietly and without opposition, and, besides, he procured the election of a tribune in the place of Octavius. The new tribune was not a man of rank or note, but a certain Mucius, a client of Tiberius. The aristocrats, however, who were vexed at these proceedings and feared the growing power of Tiberius, heaped insult upon him in the senate. When he asked for the customary tent at public expense, for his use when dividing up the public land, 3 they would not give it, although other men had often obtained one for less important purposes; and they fixed his daily allowance for expenses at nine obols. These things were done on motion of Publius Nasica, who surrendered completely to his hatred of Tiberius. For he was a very large holder of public land, and bitterly resented his being forced to give it up.

4 But the people were all the more inflamed; and when a friend of Tiberius died suddenly and his body broke out all over with evil spots, they ran in throngs to the man’s funeral, crying out that he had been poisoned to death, and they carried the bier themselves, and stood by at the last ceremonies. And their suspicions of poison were thought to be not without reason. 5 For the dead body burst open and a great quantity of corrupt humours gushed forth, so that the flame of the funeral pyre was extinguished. And when fresh fire was brought, again the body would not burn, until it was carried to another place, where, after much trouble, the fire at last took hold of it. Upon this, Tiberius, that he might exasperate the multitude still more, put on a garb of mourning, brought his children before the assembly, and begged the people to care for them and their mother, saying that he despaired of his own life.

14 1 And now Attalus Philometor died, and Eudemus of Pergamum brought to Rome the king’s last will and testament, by which the Roman people was made his heir. At once Tiberius courted popular favour by bringing in a bill which provided that the money of King Attalus, when brought to Rome, should be given to the citizens who received a parcel of the public land, to aid them in stocking and tilling their farms. 2 And as regarded the cities which were included in the kingdom of Attalus, he said it did not belong to the senate to deliberate about them, but he himself would submit a pertinent resolution to the people. By this proceeding he gave more offence than ever to the senate; and Pompeius, rising to speak there, said that he was a neighbour of Tiberius, and therefore knew that Eudemus of Pergamum had presented Tiberius with a royal diadem and purple robe, believing that he was going to be king in Rome. 3 Moreover, Quintus Metellus upbraided Tiberius with the reminder that whenever his father, during his censorship, was returning home after a supper, the citizens put out their lights, for fear they might be thought to be indulging immoderately in entertainments and drinking bouts, whereas Tiberius himself was lighted on his way at night by the neediest and most reckless of the populace. 4 Titus Annius, too, a man of no high character or sobriety, but held to be invincible in arguments carried on by question and answer, challenged Tiberius to a judicial wager, solemnly asserting that he had branded with infamy his colleague, who was sacred and inviolable by law. As many senators applauded this speech, Tiberius dashed out of the senate-house, called the people together, and ordered Annius to be brought before them, with the intention of denouncing him. 5 But Annius, who was far inferior to Tiberius in both eloquence and in reputation, had recourse to his own particular art, and called upon Tiberius to answer a few questions before the argument began. Tiberius assented to this and silence was made, whereupon Annius said: “If thou wish to heap insult upon me and degrade me, and I invoke the aid of one of thy colleagues in office, and he mount the rostra to speak in my defence, and thou fly into a passion, come, wilt thou deprive that colleague of his office?” 6 At this question, we are told, Tiberius was so disconcerted that, although he was of all men most ready in speech and most vehement in courage, he held his peace.

15 1 For the present, then, he dissolved the assembly; but perceiving that the course he had taken with regard to Octavius was very displeasing, not only to the nobles, but also to the multitude (for it was thought that the high and honourable dignity of the tribunate, so carefully guarded up to that time, had been insulted and destroyed), he made a lengthy speech before the people, a few of the arguments of which it will not be out of place to lay before the reader, that he may get a conception of the man’s subtlety and persuasiveness. 2 A tribune, he said, was sacred and inviolable, because he was consecrated to the people and was a champion of the people. “If, then,” said Tiberius, “he should change about, wrong the people, maim its power, and rob it of the privilege of voting, he has by his own acts deprived himself of his honourable office by not fulfilling the conditions on which he received it; 3 for otherwise there would be no interference with a tribune even though he should try to demolish the Capitol or set fire to the naval arsenal. If a tribune does these things, he is a bad tribune; but if he annuls the power of the people, he is no tribune at all. Is it not, then, a monstrous thing that a tribune should have power to hale a consul to prison, while the people cannot deprive a tribune of his power when he employs it against the very ones who bestowed it? For consul and tribune alike are elected by the people. 4 And surely the kingly office, besides comprehending in itself every civil function, is also consecrated to the Deity by the performance of the most solemn religious rites; and yet Tarquin was expelled by the city for his wrong-doing, and because of one man’s insolence the power which had founded Rome and descended from father to son was overthrown. Again, what institution at Rome is so holy and venerable as that of the virgins who tend and watch the undying fire? And yet if one of these breaks her vows, she is buried alive; for when they sin against the gods, they do not preserve that inviolable character which is given them for their service to the gods. 5 Therefore it is not just that a tribune who writings the people should retain that inviolable character which is given him for service to the people, since he is destroying the very power which is the source of his own power. And surely, if it is right for him to be made tribune by a majority of the votes of the tribes, it must be even more right for him to be deprived of his tribuneship by a unanimous vote. 6 And again, nothing is so sacred and inviolate as objects consecrated to the gods; and yet no one had hindered the people from using such objects, or moving them, or changing their position in such manner as may be desired. It is therefore permissible for the people to transfer the tribunate also, as a consecrated thing, from one man to another. And that the office is not inviolable or irremovable is plain from the fact that many times men holding it resign it under oath of disability, and of their own accord beg to be relieved of it.”

16 1 Such were the chief points in the justification of his course which Tiberius made. And now his friends, observing the threats and the hostile combination against him, thought that he ought to be made tribune again for the following year. Once more, therefore, Tiberius sought to win the favour of the multitude by fresh laws, reducing the time of military service, granting appeal to the people from the verdicts of the judges, adding to the judges, who at that time were composed of senators only, an equal number from the equestrian order, 2 and in every way at length trying to maim the power of the senate from motives of anger and contentiousness rather than from calculations of justice and the public good. And when, as the voting was going on, the friends of Tiberius perceived that their opponents were getting the better of the contest, since all the people were not present, in the first place they resorted to abuse of his fellow tribunes, and so protracted the time; next, they dismissed the assembly, and ordered that it should convene on the following day. 3 Then Tiberius, going down into the forum, at first supplicated the citizens in a humble manner and with tears in his eyes; next, he declared he was afraid that his enemies would break into his house by night and kill him, and thereby so wrought upon his hearers that great numbers of them took up their station about his house and spent the night there on guard.

17 1 At break of day there came to the house the man who brought the birds with which auspices are taken, and threw food before them. But the birds would not come out of the cage, with the exception of one, though the keeper shook the cage right hard; and even the one that came out would not touch the food, but raised its left wing, stretched out its leg, and then ran back into the cage. This reminded Tiberius of an omen that had happened earlier. 2 He had a helmet which he wore in battle, exceptionally adorned and splendid; into this serpents crawled unnoticed, laid eggs there and hatched them out. For this reason Tiberius was all the more disturbed by the signs from the birds. But nevertheless he set out, on learning that the people were assembled on the Capitol; 3 and before he got out of the house, he stumbled against the threshold. The blow was so severe that the nail of his great toe was broken and the blood ran out through his shoe. He had gone but a little way when ravens were seen fighting on the roof of a house to his left hand; and though there were many people, as was natural, passing by, a stone dislodged by one of the ravens fell at the foot of Tiberius himself. This caused even the boldest of his followers to pause; 4 but Blossius of Cumae, who was present, said it would be a shame and a great disgrace if Tiberius, a son of Gracchus, a grandson of Scipio Africanus, and a champion of the Roman people, for fear of a raven should refuse to obey the summons of his fellow citizens; such shameful conduct, moreover, would not be made a mere matter of ridicule by his enemies, but they would decry him to the people as one who was at last giving himself the airs of a tyrant. 5 At the same time also many of his friends on the Capitol came running to Tiberius with urgent appeals to hasten thither, since matters there were going well. And in fact things turned out splendidly for Tiberius at first; as soon as he came into view the crowd raised a friendly shout, and as he came up the hill they gave him a cordial welcome and ranged themselves about him, that no stranger might approach.

18 1 But after Mucius began once more to summon the tribes to the vote, none of the customary forms could be observed because of the disturbance that arose on the outskirt of the throng, where there was crowding back and forth between the friends of Tiberius and their opponents, who were striving to force their way in and mingle with the rest. Moreover, at this juncture Fulvius Flaccus, a senator, posted himself in a conspicuous place, and since it was impossible to make his voice heard so far, indicated with his hand that he wished to tell Tiberius something meant for his ear alone. 2 Tiberius ordered the crowd to part for Flavius, who made his way up to him with difficulty, and told him that at a session of the senate the party of the rich, since they could not prevail upon the consul to do so, were purposing to kill Tiberius themselves, and for this purpose had under arms a multitude of their friends and slaves.

19 1 Tiberius, accordingly, reported this to those who stood about him, and they at once girded up their togas, and breaking in pieces the spear-shafts with which the officers keep back the crowd, distributed the fragments among themselves, that they might defend themselves against their assailants. 2 Those who were farther off, however, wondered at what was going on and asked what it meant. Whereupon Tiberius put his hand to his head, making this visible sign that his life was in danger, since the questioners could not hear his voice. But his opponents, on seeing this, ran to the senate and told that body that Tiberius was asking for a crown; and that his putting his hand to his head was a sign having that meaning. 3 All the senators, of course, were greatly disturbed, and Nasica demanded that the consul should come to the rescue of the state and put down the tyrant. The consul replied with mildness that he would resort to no violence and would put no citizen to death without a trial; if, however, the people, under persuasion or compulsion from Tiberius, should vote anything that was unlawful, he would not regard this vote as binding. Thereupon Nasica sprang to his feet and said: “Since, then, the chief magistrate betrays the state, do ye who wish to succour the laws follow me.” 4 With these words he covered his head with the skirt of his toga and set out for the Capitol. All the senators who followed him wrapped their togas about their left arms and pushed aside those who stood in their path, no man opposing them, in view of their dignity, but all taking to flight and trampling upon one another.

5 Now, the attendants of the senators carried clubs and staves which they had brought from home; but the senators themselves seized the fragments and legs of the benches that were shattered by the crowd in its flight, and went up against Tiberius, at the same time smiting those who were drawn up to protect him. Of these there was a rout and a slaughter, and as Tiberius himself turned to fly, someone laid hold of his garments. 6 So he let his toga go and fled in his tunic. But he stumbled and fell to the ground among some bodies that lay in front of him. As he strove to rise to his feet, he received his first blow, as everybody admits, from Publius Satyreius, one of his colleagues, who smote him on the head with the leg of a bench; to the second blow claim was made by Lucius Rufus, who plumed himself upon it as upon some noble deed. And of the rest more than three hundred were slain by blows from sticks and stones, but not one by the sword.

20 1 This is said to have been the first sedition at Rome, since the abolition of royal power, to end in bloodshed and the death of citizens; the rest though neither trifling nor raised for trifling objects, were settled by mutual concessions, the nobles yielding from fear of the multitude, and the people out of respect for the senate. And it was thought that even on this occasion Tiberius would have given way without difficulty had persuasion been brought to bear upon him, and would have yielded still more easily if his assailants had not resorted to wounds and bloodshed; 2 for his adherents numbered not more than three thousand. But the combination against him would seem to have arisen from the hatred and anger of the rich rather than from the pretexts which they alleged; and there is strong proof of this in their lawless and savage treatment of his dead body. For they would not listen to his brother’s request that he might take up the body and bury it by night, but threw it into the river along with the other dead. 3 Nor was this all; they banished some of his friends without a trial and others they arrested and put to death. Among these Diophanes the rhetorician also perished. A certain Caius Villius they shut up in a cage, and then put in vipers and serpents, and in this way killed him. Blossius of Cumae was brought before the consuls, and when he was asked about what had passed, he admitted that he had done everything at the bidding of Tiberius. 4 Then Nasica said to him, “What, then, if Tiberius had ordered thee to set fire to the Capitol?” Blossius at first replied that Tiberius would not have given such an order; but when the same question was put to him often and by many persons, he said: “If such a man as Tiberius had ordered such a thing, it would also have been right for me to do it; for Tiberius would not have given such an order if it had not been for the interest of the people.” Well, then, Blossius was acquitted, and afterwards went to Aristonicus in Asia, and when the cause of Aristonicus was lost, slew himself.

21 1 But the senate, trying to conciliate the people now that matters had gone too far, no longer opposed the distribution of the public land, and proposed that the people should elect a commissioner in place of Tiberius. So they took a ballot and elected Publius Crassus, who was a relative of Gracchus; for his daughter Licinia was the wife of Caius Gracchus. 2 And yet Cornelius Nepos says that it was not the daughter of Crassus, but of the Brutus who triumphed over the Lusitanians, whom Caius married; the majority of writers, however, state the matter as I have done. Moreover, since the people felt bitterly over the death of Tiberius and were clearly awaiting an opportunity for revenge, and since Nasica was already threatened with prosecutions, the senate, fearing for his safety, voted to send him to Asia, although it had no need of him there. 3 For when people met Nasica, they did not try to hide their hatred of him, but grew savage and cried out upon him wherever he chanced to be, calling him an accursed man and a tyrant, who had defiled with the murder of an inviolable and sacred person the holiest and most awe-inspiring of the city’s sanctuaries. And so Nasica stealthily left Italy, although he was bound there by the most important and sacred functions; for he was pontifex maximus.b He roamed and wandered about in foreign lands ignominiously, and after a short time ended his life at Pergamum. 4 Now, it is no wonder that the people so much hated Nasica, when even Scipio Africanus, than whom no one would seem to have been more justly or more deeply loved by the Romans, came within a little of forfeiting the popular favour because, to begin with, at Numantia, when he learned of the death of Tiberius, he recited in a loud voice the verse of Homer: —

“So perish also all others who on such wickedness venture,”

5 and because, in the second place, when Caius and Fulvius asked him in an assembly of the people what he thought about the death of Tiberius, he made a reply which showed his dislike of the measures advocated by him. Consequently the people began to interrupt him as he was speaking, a thing which they had never done before, and Scipio himself was thereby led on to abuse the people. Of these matters I have written circumstantially in my Life of Scipio.

Caius Gracchus

1 1 Caius Gracchus, at first, either because he feared his enemies, or because he wished to bring odium upon them, withdrew from the forum and lived quietly by himself, like one who was humbled for the present and for the future intended to live the same inactive life, so that some were actually led to denounce him for disliking and repudiating his brother’s political measures. 2 And he was also quite a stripling, for he was nine years younger than his brother, and Tiberius was not yet thirty when he died. But as time went on he gradually showed a disposition that was averse to idleness, effeminacy, wine-bibbing, and money-making; and by preparing his oratory to waft him as on swift pinions to public life, he made it clear that he was not going to remain quiet; 3 and in defending Vettius, a friend of his who was under prosecution, he had the people about him inspired and frantic with sympathetic delight, and made the other orators appear to be no better than children. Once more, therefore, the nobles began to be alarmed, and there was much talk among them about not permitting Caius to be made tribune.

4 By accident, however, it happened that the lot fell on him to go to Sardinia as quaestor for Orestes the consul. This gave pleasure to his enemies, and did not annoy Caius. For he was fond of war, and quite as well trained for military service as for pleading in the courts. Moreover, he still shrank from public life and the rostra, but was unable to resist the calls to this career which came from the people and his friends. He was therefore altogether satisfied with this opportunity of leaving the city. 5 And yet a strong opinion prevails that he was a demagogue pure and simple, and far more eager than Tiberius to win the favour of the multitude. But this is not the truth; nay, it would appear that he was led by a certain necessity rather than by his own choice to engage in public matters. 6 And Cicero the orator also relates that Caius declined all office and had chosen to live a quiet life, but that his brother appeared to him in a dream and addressed him, saying: “Why, pray, dost thou hesitate, Caius? There is no escape; one life is fated for us both, and one death as champions of the people.”

2 1 After reaching Sardinia, then, Caius gave proof of every excellence, and far surpassed all the other young men in conflicts with the enemy, in just dealing with the subject peoples, and in the good will and respect which he showed towards his commander, while in self-restraint, frugality, and industry, he excelled even his elders. 2 The winter in Sardinia proved to be rigorous and unhealthy, and the Roman commander made a requisition upon the cities of clothing for his soldiers, whereupon the cities sent to Rome and begged to be relieved from the exaction. 3 The senate granted their petition and ordered the commander to get clothing for his soldiers in some other way. The commander was at a loss what to do, and the soldiers were suffering; so Caius made a circuit of the cities and induced them of their own free will to send clothing and other assistance owing to the Romans. This was reported to Rome, where it was thought to be a prelude to a struggle for popular favour, and gave fresh concern to the senate. So, to begin with, when ambassadors of King Micipsa came from Africa, and announced that out of regard for Caius Gracchus the king had sent grain to the Roman commander in Sardinia, the senators were displeased and turned them away. In the second place, they passed a decree that fresh troops should be sent to relieve the soldiers in Sardinia, but that Orestes should remain, with the idea that Caius also would remain with him by virtue of his office. 4 But Caius, when this came to his ears, straightaway sailed off in a passion, and his unexpected appearance in Rome not only was censured by his enemies, but also made the people think it strange that he, quaestor as he was, had left his post before his commander. However, when he was denounced before the censors, he begged leave to speak, and wrought such a change in the opinions of his hearers that he left the court with the reputation of having been most grossly wronged. 5 For he said that he had served in the army twelve years, although other men were required to serve there only ten, and that he had continued to serve as quaestor under his commander for more than two years, although the law permitted him to come back after a year. He was the only man in the army, he said, who had entered the campaign with a full purse and left it with an empty one; the rest had drunk up the wine which they took into Sardinia, and had come back to Rome with their wine-jars full of gold and silver.

3 1 After this, other fresh charges and indictments were brought against him, on the ground that he had caused the allies to revolt and had been privy to the conspiracy at Fregellae, information of which was brought to Rome. But he cleared himself of all suspicion, and having established his entire innocence, immediately began a canvass for the tribuneship. All the men of note, without exception, were opposed to him, but so great a throng poured into the city from the country and took part in the elections that many could not be housed, and since the Campus Martius could not accommodate the multitude, they gave in their voices from the house-tops and tilings. 2 So far, however, did the nobility prevail against the people and disappoint the hopes of Caius that he was not returned first, as he expected, but fourth. But after entering upon his office he was at once first of all the tribunes, since he had an incomparable power in oratory, and his affliction gave him great boldness of speech in bewailing the fate of his brother. 3 For to this subject he would bring the people round on every pretext, reminding them of what had happened in the case of Tiberius, and contrasting the conduct of their ancestors, who went to war with the people of Falerii on behalf of Genucius, a tribune whom they had insulted, and condemned Caius Veturius to death because he was the only man who would not make way for a tribune passing through the forum. “But before your eyes,” he said, “these men beat Tiberius to death with clubs, and his dead body was dragged from the Capitol through the midst of the city to be thrown into the Tiber; 4 moreover, those of his friends who were caught were put to death without trial. And yet it is ancient usage among us that if anyone who is arraigned on a capital charge does not answer to his summons, a trumpeter shall go to the door of this man’s house in the morning and summon him forth by sound of trumpet, and until this has been done the judges shall not vote on his case. So careful and guarded were the men of old in capital cases.”

4 1 Having first stirred up the people with such words as these (and he had a very loud voice, and was most vigorous in his speaking), he introduced two laws, one providing that if the people had deprived any magistrate of his office, such magistrate should not be allowed to hold office a second time; and another providing that if any magistrate had banished a citizen without trial, such magistrate should be liable to public prosecution. 2 Of these laws, one had the direct effect of branding with infamy Marcus Octavius, who had been deposed from the tribunate by Tiberius; and by the other Popillius was affected, for as praetor he had banished the friends of Tiberius. Popillius, indeed, without standing his trial, fled out of Italy; but the other law was withdrawn by Caius himself, who said that he spared Octavius at the request of his mother Cornelia. 3 The people were pleased at this and gave their consent, honouring Cornelia no less on account of her sons than because of her father; indeed, in after times they erected a bronze statue of her, bearing the inscription: “Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi.” There are on record also many things which Caius said about her in the coarse style of forensic speech, when he was attacking one of his enemies: “What,” said he, “dost thou abuse Cornelia, who gave birth to Tiberius?” 4 And since the one who had uttered the abuse was charged with effeminate practices, “With what effrontery,” said Caius, “canst thou compare thyself with Cornelia? Hast thou borne such children as she did? And verily all Rome knows that she refrained from commerce with men longer than thou hast, though thou art a man.” Such was the bitterness of his language, and many similar examples can be taken from his writings.

5 1 Of the laws which he proposed by way of gratifying the people and overthrowing the senate, one was agrarian, and divided the public land among the poor citizens; another was military, and ordained that clothing should be furnished to the soldiers at the public cost, that nothing should be deducted from their pay to meet this charge, and that no one under seventeen should be enrolled as a soldier; another concerned the allies, and gave the Italians equal suffrage rights with Roman citizens; 2 another related to the supplies of grain, and lowered the market price to the poor; and another dealt with the appointment of judges. This last law most of all curtailed the power of the senators; for they alone could serve as judges in criminal cases, and this privilege made them formidable both to the common people and to the equestrian order. The law of Gracchus, however, added to the membership of the senate, which was three hundred, three hundred men from the equestrian order, and made service as judges a prerogative of the whole six hundred. 3 In his efforts to carry this law Caius is said to have shown remarkable earnestness in many ways, and especially in this, that whereas all popular orators before him had turned their faces towards the senate and that part of the forum called the “comitium,” he now set a new example by turning towards the other part of the forum as he harangued the people, and continued to do this from that time on, thus by a slight deviation and change of attitude stirring up a great question, and to a certain extent changing the constitution from an aristocratic to a democratic form; for his implication was that speakers ought to address themselves to the people, and not to the senate.

A photograph is additionally enlightening. Here we see the Roman Forum, in its present state of course, with the ruins of buildings and monuments up to the 6 c A.D. — but in the time of the Gracchi, most of the space you see was open terrain, as is made clear in this same biography (.). Now the senate house, or Curia, is the large pedimented brick building in the center of this photo, and the comitium is the small paved area in front of it, to the left from where we stand, immediately next to the bushes at the door of the Curia: a speaker who faces the senate from the comitium thus faces into a sort of corner and turns his back on the people. (The Curia you now see only dates to the 3 c A.D., but merely replaced the republican building in the exact same place, without affecting the topography at all.)

6 1 The people not only adopted this law, but also entrusted to its author the selection of the judges who were to come from the equestrian order, so that he found himself invested with something like monarchical power, and even the senate consented to follow his counsel. But when he counselled them, it was always in support of measures befitting their body; 2 as, for instance, the very equitable and honourable decree concerning the grain which Fabius the pro-praetor sent to the city from Spain. Caius induced the Senate to sell the grain and send the money back to the cities of Spain, and further, to censure Fabius for making his government of the province intolerably burdensome to its inhabitants. This decree brought Caius great reputation as well as popularity in the provinces.

3 He also introduced bills for sending out colonies, for constructing roads, and for establishing public granaries, making himself director and manager of all these undertakings, and showing no weariness in the execution of all these different and great enterprises; nay, he actually carried out each one of them with an astonishing speed and power of application, as if it were his sole business, so that even those who greatly hated and feared him were struck with amazement at the powers of achievement and accomplishment which marked all that he did. 4 And as for the multitude, they were astonished at the very sight, when they beheld him closely attended by a throng of contractors, artificers, ambassadors, magistrates, soldiers, and literary men, with all of whom he was on easy terms, preserving his dignity while showing kindliness, and rendering properly to every man the courtesy which was due from him, whereby he set in the light of malignant slanderers those who stigmatised him as threatening or utterly arrogant or violent. Thus he was a more skilful popular leader in his private intercourse with men and in his business transactions than in his speeches from the rostra.

7 1 But he busied himself most earnestly with the construction of roads, laying stress upon utility, as well as upon that which conduced to grace and beauty. For his roads were carried straight through the country without deviation, and had pavements of quarried stone, and substructures of tight-rammed masses of sand. Depressions were filled up, all intersecting torrents or ravines were bridged over, and both sides of the roads were of equal and corresponding height, so that the work had everywhere an even and beautiful appearance. 2 In addition to all this, he measured off every road by miles (the Roman mile falls a little short of eight furlongs) and planted stone pillars in the ground to mark the distances. Other stones, too, he placed at smaller intervals from one another on both sides of the road, in order that equestrians might be able to mount their horses from them and have no need of assistance.

8 1 Since the people extolled him for all these services and were ready to show him any token whatsoever of their good will, he said to them once in a public harangue that he was going to ask a favour of them, which, if granted, he should value supremely, but if it were refused, he should find no fault with them. This utterance was thought to be a request for a consulship, and led everybody to expect that he would sue for a consulship and a tribuneship at the same time. 2 But when the consular elections were at hand and everybody was on the tip-toe of expectation, he was seen leading Caius Fannius down into the Campus Martius and joining in the canvass for him along with his friends. This turned the tide strongly in favour of Fannius. So Fannius was elected consul, and Caius tribune for the second time, though he was not a candidate and did not canvass for the office; but the people were eager to have it so.

3 However, he soon saw that the senate was hostile to him out and out, and that the good will of Fannius towards him had lost his edge, and therefore again began to attach the multitude to himself by other laws, proposing to send colonies to Tarentum and Capua, and inviting the Latins to a participation in the Roman franchise. But the senate, fearing that Gracchus would become altogether invincible, made a new and unusual attempt to divert the people from him; they vied with him, that is, in courting the favour of the people, and granted their wishes contrary to the best wishes of the state. 4 For one of the colleagues of Caius was Livius Drusus, a man who was not inferior to any Roman either in birth or rearing, while in character, eloquence, and wealth he could vie with those who were most honoured and influential in consequence of these advantages. To this man, accordingly, the nobles had recourse, and invited him to attack Caius and league himself with them against him, not resorting to violence or coming into collision with the people, but administering his office to please them and making them concessions where it would have been honourable to incur their hatred.

9 1 Livius, accordingly, put his influence as tribune at the service of the senate to this end, and drew up laws which aimed at what was neither honourable nor advantageous; nay, he had the emulous eagerness of the rival demagogues of comedy to achieve one thing, namely, to surpass Caius in pleasing and gratifying the people. In this way the senate showed most plainly that it was not displeased with the public measures of Caius, but rather was desirous by all means to humble or destroy the man himself. 2 For when Caius proposed to found two colonies, and these composed of the most respectable citizens, they accused him of truckling to the people; but when Livius proposed to found twelve, and to send out to each of them three thousand of the needy citizens, they supported him. With Caius, because he distributed public land among the poor for which every man of them was required to pay a rental into the public treasury, they were angry, alleging that he was seeking thereby to win favour with the multitude; but Livius met with their approval when he proposed to relieve the tenants even from this rental. 3 And further, when Caius proposed to bestow upon the Latins equal rights of suffrage, he gave offence; but when Livius brought in a bill forbidding that any Latin should be chastised with rods even during military service, he had the senate’s support. And indeed Livius himself, in his public harangues, always said that he introduced these measures on the authority of the senate, which desired to help the common people; 4 and this in fact was the only advantage which resulted from his political measures. For the people became more amicably disposed towards the senate; and whereas before this they had suspected and hated the nobles, Livius softened and dissipated their remembrance of past grievances and their bitter feelings by alleging that it was the sanction of the nobles which had induced him to enter upon his course of conciliating the people and gratifying the wishes of the many.

10 1 But the strongest proof that Livius was well disposed towards the people and honest, lay in the fact that he never appeared to propose anything for himself or in his own interests. For he moved to send out other men as managers of his colonies, and would have no hand in the expenditure of moneys, whereas Caius had assigned to himself most of such functions and the most important of them. 2 And now Rubrius, one of his colleagues in the tribuneship, brought in a bill for the founding of a colony on the site of Carthage, which had been destroyed by Scipio, and Caius, upon whom the lot fell, sailed off to Africa as superintendent of the foundation. In his absence, therefore, Livius made all the more headway against him, stealing into the good graces of the people and attaching them to himself, particularly by his calumniations of Fulvius. 3 This Fulvius was a friend of Caius, and had been chosen a commissioner with him for the distribution of the public land; but he was a turbulent fellow, and was hated outright by the senators. Other men also suspected him of stirring up trouble with the allies and of secretly inciting the Italians to revolt. These things were said against him without proof or investigation, but Fulvius himself brought them into greater credence by a policy which was unsound and revolutionary. 4 This more than anything else was the undoing of Caius, who came in for a share of the hatred against Fulvius. And when Scipio Africanus died without apparent cause, and certain marks of violence and blows were to be in evidence all over his dead body, as I have written in his Life, most of the consequent calumny fell upon Fulvius, who was Scipio’s enemy, and had abused him that day from the rostra, but suspicion also attached itself to Caius. 5 And a deed so monstrous, and perpetrated upon a man who was the foremost and greatest Roman, went unpunished, nay, was not even so much as probed; for the multitude were opposed to any judicial enquiry and thwarted it, because they feared that Caius might be implicated in the charge if the murder were investigated. However, this had happened at an earlier time.

11 In Africa, moreover, in connection with the planting of a colony on the site of Carthage, to which colony Caius gave the name Junonia (that is to say, in Greek, Heraea), there are said to have been many prohibitory signs from the gods. For the leading standard was caught by a gust of wind, and though the bearer clung to it with all his might, it was broken into pieces; the sacrificial victims lying on the altars were scattered by a hurricane and dispersed beyond the boundary-marks in the plan of the city, and the boundary-marks themselves were set upon by wolves, who tore them up and carried them a long way off. 2 Notwithstanding this, Caius settled and arranged everything in seventy days all told, and then returned to Rome, because he learned that Fulvius was being hard pressed by Drusus, and because matters there required his presence. For Lucius Opimius, a man of oligarchical principles and influential in the senate, who had previously failed in a candidacy for the consulship (when Caius had brought forward Fannius and supported his canvass for the office), 3 now had the aid and assistance of many, and it was expected that he would be consul, and that as consul he would try to pursue down Caius, whose influence was already somewhat on the wane, and with whose peculiar measures the people had become sated, because the leaders who courted their favour were many and the senate readily yielded to them.

12 1 On returning to Rome, in the first place Caius changed his residence from the Palatine hill to the region adjoining the forum, which he thought more democratic, since most of the poor and lowly had come to live there; in the next place, he promulgated the rest of his laws, intending to get the people’s vote upon them. But when a throng came together from all parts of Italy for his support, the senate prevailed upon the consul Fannius to drive out of the city all who were not Romans. 2 Accordingly, a strange and unusual proclamation was made, to the effect that none of the allies and friends of Rome should appear in the city during those day; whereupon Caius published a counter edict in which he denounced the consul, and promised the allies his support, in case they should remain there. He did not, however, give them his support, but when he saw one of his comrades and guest-friends dragged off by the lictors of Fannius, he passed by without giving him any help, either because he feared to give a proof that his power was already on the decline, or because he was unwilling, as he said, by his own acts to afford his enemies the occasions which they sought for a conflict at close quarters.

3 Moreover, it chanced that he had incurred the anger of his colleagues in office, and for the following reason. The people were going to enjoy an exhibition of gladiators in the forum, and most of the magistrates had constructed seats for the show round about, and were offering them for hire. Caius ordered them to take down these seats, in order that the poor might be able to enjoy the spectacle from those places without paying hire. 4 But since no one paid any attention to his command, he waited till the night before the spectacle, and then, taking all the workmen whom he had under his orders in public contracts, he pulled down the seats, and when day came he had the place all clear for the people. For this proceeding the populace thought him a man, but his colleagues were annoyed and thought him reckless and violent. It was believed also that this conduct cost him his election to the tribunate for the third time, since, although he got a majority of the votes, his colleagues were unjust and fraudulent in their proclamation and returns. This, however, was disputed. 5 But he took his failure overmuch to heart, and what is more, it is said, with more boldness than was fitting, that they were laughing with sardonic laughter, and were not aware of the great darkness that enveloped them in consequence of his public measures.

13 1 The enemies of Caius also effected the election of Opimius as consul, and then proceeded to revoke many of the laws which Caius had secured and to meddle with the organization of the colony at Carthage. This was by way of irritating Caius, that he might furnish ground for resentment, and so be got rid of. At first he endured all this patiently, but at last, under the instigations of his friends, and especially of Fulvius, he set out to gather a fresh body of partisans for opposition to the consul. 2 Here, we are told, his mother also took active part in his seditious measures, by secretly hiring from foreign parts and sending to Rome men who were ostensibly reapers; for to this matter there are said to have been obscure allusions in her letters to her son. Others, however, say that Cornelia was very much displeased with these activities of her son.

3 Be that as it may, on the day when Opimius and his supporters were going to annul the laws, the Capitol had been occupied by both factions since earliest morning, and after the consul had offered sacrifice, one of his servants, Quintus Antyllius, as he was carrying from one place to another the entrails of the victims, said to the partisans of Fulvius: “Make way for honest citizens, ye rascals!” Some say, too, that along with this speech Antyllius bared his arm and waved it with an insulting gesture. 4 At any rate he was killed at once and on the spot, stabbed with large writing styles said to have been made for just such a purpose. The multitude were completely confused by the murder, but it produced an opposite state of mind in the leaders of the two factions. Caius was distressed, and upbraided his followers for having given their enemies ground for accusing them which had long been desired; but Opimius, as though he had got something for which he was waiting, was elated, and urged the people on to vengeance.

14 1 A shower of rain fell just then, and the assembly was dissolved; but early next morning the consul called the senate together indoors and proceeded to transact business, while others placed the body of Antyllius without covering upon a bier, and carried it, as they had agreed to do, through the forum and past the senate-house, with wailings and lamentations. Opimius knew what was going on, but pretended to be surprised, so that even the senators went out into the forum. 2 After the bier had been set down in the midst of the throng, the senators began to inveigh against what they called a heinous and monstrous crime, but the people were moved to hatred and abuse of the oligarchs, who, they said, after murdering Tiberius Gracchus on the Capitol with their own hands, tribune that he was, had actually flung away his dead body besides; whereas Antyllius, a mere servant, 3 who perhaps had suffered more than he deserved, but was himself chiefly to blame for it, had been laid out in the forum, and was surrounded by the Roman senate, which shed tears and shared in the obsequies of a hireling fellow, to the end that sole remaining champion of the people might be done away with. Then the senators went back into the senate-house, where they formally enjoined upon the consul Opimius to save the city as best he could, and to put down the tyrants.

4 The consul therefore ordered the senators to take up arms, and every member of the equestrian order was notified to bring next morning two servants fully armed; Fulvius, on the other hand, made counter preparations and got together a rabble, but Caius, as he left the forum, stopped in front of his father’s statue, gazed at it for a long time without uttering a word, then burst into tears, and with a groan departed. 5 Many of those who saw this were moved to pity Caius; they reproached themselves for abandoning and betraying him, and went to his house, and spent the night at his door, though not in the same manner as those who were guarding Fulvius. For these passed the whole time in noise and shouting, drinking, and boasting of what they would do, Fulvius himself being the first to get drunk, and saying and doing much that was unseemly for a man of his years; 6 but the followers of Caius, feeling that they faced a public calamity, kept quiet and were full of concern for the future, and passed the night sleeping and keeping watch by turns.

15 1 When day came, Fulvius was with difficulty roused from his drunken sleep by his partisans, who armed themselves with the spoils of war about his house, which he had taken after a victory over the Gauls during his consulship, and with much threatening and shouting went to seize the Aventine hill. Caius, on the other hand, was unwilling to arm himself, but went forth in his toga, as though on his way to the forum, with only a short dagger on his person. 2 As he was going out at the door, his wife threw herself in his way, and with one arm round her husband and the other round their little son, said: “Not to the rostra, O Caius, do I now send thee forth, as formerly, to served as tribune and law-giver, nor yet to a glorious war, where, shouldst thou die (and all men must die), thou wouldst at all events leave me an honoured sorrow; but thou art exposing thyself to the murderers of Tiberius, and thou doest well to go unarmed, that thou mayest suffer rather than inflict wrong; but thy death will do the state no good. The worst has at last prevailed; 3 by violence and the sword men’s controversies are now decided. If thy brother had only fallen at Numantia, his dead body would have been given back to us by terms of truce; but as it is, perhaps I too shall have to supplicate some river or sea to reveal to me at last thy body in its keeping. Why, pray, should men longer put faith in laws or gods, after the murder of Tiberius?” 4 While Licinia was thus lamenting, Caius gently freed himself from her embrace and went away without a word, accompanied by his friends. Licinia eagerly sought to clutch his robe, but sank to the ground and lay there a long time speechless, until her servants lifted her up unconscious and carried her away to the house of her brother Crassus.

16 1 When all were assembled together, Fulvius, yielding to the advice of Caius, sent the younger of his sons with a herald’s wand into the forum. The young man was very fair to look upon; and now, in a decorous attitude, modestly, and with tears in his eyes, he addressed conciliatory words to the consul and the senate. 2 Most of his audience, then, were not disinclined to accept his terms of peace; but Opimius declared that the petitioners ought not to try to persuade the senate by word of messenger; they should rather come down and surrender themselves for trial, like citizens amenable to the laws, and then beg for mercy; he also told the young man plainly to come back again on these terms or not come back at all. 3 Caius, accordingly, as we are told, was willing to come and try to persuade the senate; but no one else agreed with him, and so Fulvius sent his son again to plead in their behalf a before. But Opimius, who was eager to join battle, at once seized the youth and put him under guard, and then advanced on the party of Fulvius with numerous men-at arms and Cretan archers. 4 And it was the archers who, by discharging their arrows and wounding their opponents, were most instrumental in throwing them into confusion. After the route had taken place, Fulvius fled refuge into an unused bath, where he was shortly discovered and slain, together with his elder son. Caius, however, was not seen to take any part in the battle, but in great displeasure at what was happening he withdrew into the temple of Diana. There he was minded to make away with himself, but was prevented by his most trusty companions, Pomponius and Licinius; for they were at hand, and took away his sword, and urged him to flight again. 5 Then, indeed, as we are told, he sank upon his knees, and with hands outstretched towards the goddess prayed that the Roman people, in requital for their great ingratitude and treachery, might never cease to be in servitude; for most of them were manifestly changing sides, now that proclamation of immunity had been made.

17 1 So then, as Caius fled, his foes pressed hard upon him and were overtaking him at the wooden bridge over the Tiber, but his two friends bade him go on, while they themselves withstood his pursuers, and, fighting there at the head of the bridge, would suffer no man to pass, until they were killed. 2 Caius had with him in his flight a single servant, by name Philocrates; and though all the spectators, as at a race, urged Caius on to greater speed, not a man came to his aid, or even consented to furnish him with a horse when he asked for one, for his pursuers were pressing close upon him. He barely succeeded in escaping into a sacred grove of the Furies, and there fell by the hand of Philocrates, who then slew himself upon his master. 3 According to some writers, however, both were taken alive by the enemy, and because the servant had thrown his arms about his master, no one was able to strike the master until the slave had first been dispatched by the blows of many. Someone cut off the head of Caius, we are told, and was carrying it along, but was robbed of it by a certain friend of Opimius, Septimuleius; for proclamation had been made at the beginning of the battle that an equal weight of gold would be paid the men who brought the head of Caius or Fulvius. 4 So Septimuleius stuck the head of Caius on a spear and brought it to Opimius, and when it was placed in a balance it weighed seventeen pounds and two thirds, since Septimuleius, besides showing himself to be a scoundrel, had also perpetrated a fraud; for he had taken out the brain and poured melted lead in its place. But those who brought the head of Fulvius were of the obscurer sort, and therefore got nothing. 5 The bodies of Caius and Fulvius and of the other slain were thrown into the Tiber, and they numbered three thousand; their property was sold and the proceeds paid into the public treasury. Moreover, their wives were forbidden to go into mourning, and Licinia, the wife of Caius, was also deprived of her marriage portion.a Most cruel of all, however, was the treatment of the younger son of Fulvius, who had neither lifted a hand against the nobles nor been present at the fighting, but had come to effect a truce before the battle and had been arrested; after the battle he was slain. 6 However, what vexed the people more than this or anything else was the erection of a temple of Concord by Opimius; for it was felt that he was priding himself and exulting and in a manner celebrating a triumph in view of all this slaughter of citizens. Therefore at night, beneath the inscription on the temple, somebody carved this verse:— “A work of mad discord produces a temple of Concord.”

18 1 And yet this Opimius, who was the first consul to exercise the power of a dictator, and put to death without trial, besides three thousand other citizens, Caius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus, of whom one had been consul and had celebrated a triumph, while the other was the foremost man of his generation in virtue and reputation — this Opimius could not keep his hands from fraud, but when he was sent as ambassador to Jugurtha the Numidian was bribed by him, and after being convicted most shamefully of corruption, he spent his old age in infamy, hated and abused by the people, 2 a people which was humble and cowed at the time when the Gracchi fell, but soon afterwards showed how much it missed them and longed for them. For it had statues of the brothers made and set up in a conspicuous place, consecrated the places where they were slain, and brought thither offerings of all the first-fruits of the season, nay, more, many sacrificed and fell down before their statues every day, as though they were visiting the shrines of gods.

19 1 And further, Cornelia is reported to have borne all her misfortunes in a noble and magnanimous spirit, and to have said of the sacred places where her sons had been slain that they were tombs worthy of the dead which occupied them. She resided on the promontory called Misenum, and made no change in her customary way of living. 2 She had many friends, and kept a good table that she might show hospitality, for she always had Greeks and other literary men about her, and all the reigning kings interchanged gifts with her. She was indeed very agreeable to her visitors and associates when she discoursed to them about the life and habits of her father Africanus, but most admirable when she spoke of her sons without grief or tears, and narrated their achievements and their fate to all enquirers as if she were speaking of men of the early days of Rome. 3 Some were therefore led to think that old age or the greatness of her sorrows had impaired her mind and made her insensible to her misfortunes, whereas, really, such persons themselves were insensible how much help in the banishment of grief mankind derives from a noble nature and from honourable birth and rearing, as well as of the fact that while fortune often prevails over virtue when it endeavours to ward off evils, she cannot rob virtue of the power to endure those evils with calm assurance.

Comparison of Agis and Cleomenes and the Gracchi

1 1 Now that I have brought this story of the Gracchi also to an end, it remains for me to take a survey of all four lives in parallel. As for the Gracchi, then, not even those who utterly revile and hate them on other grounds have ventured to deny that of all Romans they were best equipped by nature for the practice of virtue, and enjoyed a rearing and training which were preëminent; 2 but Agis and Cleomenes would appear to have had even sturdier natural gifts than theirs, in so far as, though they did not receive a correct training, and were reared in those customs and ways of living by which their elders had long ago been corrupted, they nevertheless made themselves leaders in simplicity and self-restraint. 3 And further, the Gracchi, at a time when Rome had her greatest and most splendid repute and an ardour for noble deeds, were prevented by a sense of shame from abandoning what was like an inheritance of virtue from ancestors near and remote; Agis and Cleomenes, on the other hand, though they were sons of fathers who had adopted opposite principles to theirs, and found their country in a wretched plight and full of distempers, did not suffer these things to blunt the edge of their zeal for what was noble. 4 Moreover, the chief proof that the Gracchi scorned wealth and were superior to money lies in the fact that they kept themselves clear from unrighteous gains during their official and political life; whereas Agis would have been incensed to receive praise for not taking anything that was another’s, since he freely gave to his fellow citizens his own property, which amounted to six hundred talents in ready money alone, to say nothing of other valuables. How great a baseness, then, would unlawful gain have been held to be by one in whose eyes even the lawful possession of more than another was rapacity?

2 1 Again, the enterprise and boldness of their attempted reforms were certainly very different in magnitude. For in their political activities Caius had in view the construction of roads and the founding of cities, and the boldest of all the projects of the Romans were, in the case of Tiberius the recovery of the public lands, and in that of Caius the reconstitution of the courts of justice by the addition of three hundred men from the equestrian order; 2 whereas Agis and Cleomenes in their reforms, considering that the application of trifling and partial remedies and excisions to the disorders of the state was nothing more than cutting off a Hydra’s heads (as Plato says), tried to introduce into the constitution a change which was able to transform and get rid of all evils at once; 3 though perhaps it is more in accordance with the truth to say that they banished the change which had wrought all sorts of evils, by bringing back the state to its proper form and establishing it therein. Besides, this can also be said, that the policies of the Gracchi were opposed by the greatest Romans, whereas those which Agis instituted and Cleomenes consummated were based upon the fairest and most imposing precedents, namely, the ancient rhetras or unwritten laws concerning simplicity of life and equality of property, for which Lycurgus was voucher to them, and the Pythian Apollo to Lycurgus. 4 But the most important consideration is that through the political activity of the Gracchi Rome made no advance in greatness, whereas, in consequence of the achievements of Cleomenes, within a short time Greece beheld Sparta mistress of the Peloponnesus and carrying on a struggle for the supremacy with those who then had the greatest power, the object of which struggle was to set Greece free from Illyrian and Gaulish troops and array her once more under descendants of Heracles.

3 1 I think, too, that the way in which the men died makes manifest a difference in their high excellence. For the Gracchi fought against their fellow citizens, and then died as they sought to make their escape; but in the case of the Greeks, Agis would not kill a single citizen, and therefore died what one might almost call a voluntary death, and Cleomenes, after setting out to avenge himself for insults and wrongs, found the occasion unfavourable and with a good courage slew himself. 2 But again, when we take the opposite view of their relative merits, Agis displayed no deed worthy of a great commander, but was cut off untimely, and with the many honourable victories won by Cleomenes we can compare the capture of the wall at Carthage by Tiberius, which was no trifling deed, and his truce at Numantia, by which twenty thousand Roman soldiers who had no other hope of salvation were spared; and Caius, too, manifested great bravery in military service at home, and great bravery in Sardinia, so that the brothers might have vied successfully with the foremost Roman generals, had they not been cut off untimely.

4 1 In their civic activities, however, Agis would seem to have taken hold of things with too little spirit; he was baffled by Agesilaüs, and broke his promise to the citizens about the re-distribution of lands, and in a word abandoned and left unfinished the designs which he had deliberately formed and announced, owing to a lack of courage due to his youth. Cleomenes, on the contrary, undertook his change of the constitution with too much rashness and violence, killing the ephors in unlawful fashion, when it would have been easier to win them over to his views or remove them by superiority in arms, just as he removed many others from the city. 2 For a resort to the knife, except under extremest necessity, is not the mark either of a good physician or statesman, but in both cases shows a lack of skill, and in the case of the statesman there is added both injustice and cruelty. Neither of the Gracchi, however, initiated civil slaughter, and Caius, we are told, would not resort to self-defence even when his life was threatened, but though he was a most brilliant soldier in the field, he showed himself most inactive in civil strife. 3 For he went forth from his house unarmed and withdrew when the battle began, and in a word was seen to be more intent upon not doing any harm to others than upon not suffering harm himself. Therefore we must hold that the flight of the brothers was not a mark of cowardice, but of caution. For they were obliged either to yield to their assailants, or, in case they held their ground, to defend themselves actively against harm.

5 1 Again, the greatest of the accusations against Tiberius is that he deposed his colleague from the tribuneship and canvassed for a second tribuneship himself; and as for Caius, the murder of Antyllius was unjustly and falsely attributed to him, for it happened contrary to his wishes and much to his displeasure. But Cleomenes, not to mention again his slaughter of the ephors, set free all the slaves, 2 and was king by himself in point of fact, though nominally with another, after he had chosen his brother Eucleidas, a man from the same house, as his colleague; and he persuaded Archidamus, who belonged to the other house and should have been his colleague on the throne, to come back to Sparta from Messene, and upon his death, by not following up the murder, he fixed upon himself the blame for his taking off. 3 And yet Lycurgus, whom he professed to imitate, voluntarily surrendered the royal power to Charillus his brother’s son, and because he feared lest, if the young man should die by another’s hand, some blame might attach to himself, he wandered a long time in foreign parts, and would not come back until a son had been born to Charillus who should succeed to his office. However, with Lycurgus no other Greek is worthy to be compared; but that the political measures of Cleomenes were marked by greater innovations and illegalities than those of the Gracchi, is evident. 4 And indeed those who are inclined to criticize their characters accuse the two Greeks of having been from the outset over fond of power and strife, and the two Romans of having been by nature immoderately ambitious, though their detractors could bring no other charge against them; nay, it was agreed that they were caught up by the fury of the contest with their opponents and by a passion contrary to their own natural bent, as by blasts of wind, and so let the state drive into extremest danger. 5 For what could be more just and honourable than their original design? And they would have succeeded in it, had not the party of the rich, by their violent and partisan attempts to abrogate the agrarian law, involved both of them in fierce struggles, Tiberius through fear for his own life, and Caius in an effort to avenge his brother, who had been slain without justice or senatorial decree and without the concurrence even of a magistrate.

6 From what has been said, then, my reader will perceive for himself the difference between these men; but if I am to express my opinion of them individually, I should say that Tiberius led them all in exemplary virtues, that the youthful Agis committed the fewest errors, and that in achievement and courage Caius fell far short of Cleomenes.

Demosthenes

846 1 1 The author of the encomium upon Alcibiades for his victory in the chariot-race at Olympia, whether he was Euripides, as the prevailing report has it, or some other, says, Sosius, that the first requisite to man’s happiness is birth in “a famous city”; but in my opinion, for a man who would enjoy true happiness, which depends for the most part on character and disposition, it is no disadvantage to belong to an obscure and mean city, any more than it is to be born of a mother who is of little stature and without beauty. 2 For it were laughable to suppose that Iulis, which is a little part of the small island of Ceos, and Aegina, which a certain Athenian was urgent to have removed as an eye-sore of the Piraeus, should breed good actors and poets, but should never be able to produce a man who is just, independent, wise, and magnanimous. 3 The arts, indeed, since their object is to bring business or fame, naturally pine away in obscure and mean cities; but virtue, like a strong and hardy plant, takes root in any place, if she finds there a generous nature and a spirit that shuns no labour. 4 Wherefore we also, if we fail to live and think as we ought, will justly attribute this, not to the smallness of our native city, but to ourselves.

2 1 However, when one has undertaken to compose a history based upon readings which are not readily accessible or even found at home, but in foreign countries, for the most part, and scattered about among different owners, for him it is really necessary, first and above all things, that he should live in a city which is famous, friendly to the liberal arts, and populous, in order that he may have all sorts of books in plenty, and may by hearsay and enquiry come into possession of all those details which elude writers and are preserved with more conspicuous fidelity in the memories of men. 2 He will thus be prevented from publishing a work which is deficient in many, and even in essential things. But as for me, I live in a small city, and I prefer to dwell there that it may not become smaller still; and during the time when I was in Rome and various parts of Italy I had no leisure to practise myself in the Roman language, owing to my public duties and the number of my pupils in philosophy. It was therefore late and when I was well on in years that I began to study Roman literature. And here my experience was an astonishing thing, but true. 3 For it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things, as that from things I somehow had an experience which enabled me to follow the meaning of words. 4 But to appreciate the beauty and quickness of the Roman style, the figures of speech, the rhythm, and the other embellishments of the language, while I think it a graceful accomplishment and one not without its pleasures, still, the careful practice necessary for attaining this is not easy for one like me, but appropriate for those who have more leisure and whose remaining years still suffice for such pursuits.

847 3 1 Therefore, in this fifth book of my Parallel Lives, where I write about Demosthenes and Cicero, I shall examine their actions and their political careers to see how their natures and dispositions compare with one another, but I shall make no critical comparison of their speeches, nor try to show which was the more agreeable or the more powerful orator. 2 “For useless,” as Ion says, “is a dolphin’s might upon dry ground,” a maxim which Caecilius, who goes to excess in everything, forgot when he boldly ventured to put forth a comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero. But really it is possible that, if the “Know thyself” of the oracle were an easy thing for every man, it would not be held to be a divine injunction.

3 In the case of Demosthenes and Cicero, then, it would seem that the Deity originally fashioned them on the same plan, implanting in their natures many similarities, such as their love of distinction, their love of freedom in their political activities, and their lack of courage for wars and dangers, and uniting in them also many similarities of fortune. 4 For in my opinion two other orators could not be found who, from small and obscure beginnings, became great and powerful; who came into conflict with kings and tyrants; who lost each a daughter; who were banished from their native cities and returned with honour; and who, after taking to flight again and being captured by their enemies, ended their lives as soon as their countrymen ceased to be free. 5 So that, if there should be a competition between nature and fortune, as between artists, it would be difficult to decide whether the one made the men more alike in their characters, or the other in the circumstances of their lives. But I must speak of the more ancient first.

4 1 Demosthenes, the father of Demosthenes, belonged to the better class of citizens, as Theopompus tells us, and was surnamed Cutler, because he had a large factory and slaves who were skilled workmen in this business. 2 But as for what Aeschines the orator says of the mother of Demosthenes, namely, that she was a daughter of one Gylon, who was banished from the city on a charge of treason, and of a barbarian woman, I cannot say whether he speaks truly, or is uttering slander and lies. 3 However, at the age of seven, Demosthenes was left by his father in affluence, since the total value of his estate fell little short of fifteen talents; but he was wronged by his guardians, who appropriated some of his property to their own uses and neglected the rest, so that even his teachers were deprived of their pay. 4 It was for this reason, as it seems, that he did not pursue the studies which were suitable and proper for a well-born boy, and also because of his bodily weakness and fragility, since his mother would not permit him to work hard in the palaestra, and his tutors would not force him to do so. 5 For from the first he was lean and sickly, and his opprobrious surname of Batalus is said to have been given him by the boys in mockery of his physique. 6 Now Batalus, as some say, was an effeminate flute-player, and Antiphanes wrote a farce in which he held him up to ridicule for this. But some speak of Batalus as a poet who wrote voluptuous verses and drinking songs. 7 And it appears that one of the parts of the body which it is not decent to name was at that time called Batalus by the Athenians. 8 But the name of Argas (for they tell us that Demosthenes had this nickname also) was given him either with reference to his manners, which were harsh and savage, the snake being called “argas” by some of the poets; or with reference to his way of speaking, which was distressing to his hearers, Argas being the name of a composer of vile and disagreeable songs. So much on this head.

5 1 The origin of his eager desire to be an orator, they tell us, was as follows. Callistratus the orator was going to make a plea in court 848 on the question of Oropus, and the trial was eagerly awaited, not only because of the ability of the orator, who was then at the very height of his reputation, but also because of the circumstances of the case, which was notorious. 2 Accordingly, when Demosthenes heard the teachers and tutors agreeing among themselves to be present at the trial, with great importunity he persuaded his own tutor to take him to the hearing. 3 This tutor, having an acquaintance with the public officials who opened the courts, succeeded in procuring a place where the boy could sit unseen and listen to what was said. 4 Callistratus won his case and was extravagantly admired, and Demosthenes conceived a desire to emulate his fame, seeing him escorted on his way by the multitude and congratulated by all; but he had a more wondering appreciation of the power of his oratory, which was naturally adapted to subdue and master all opposition. 5 Wherefore, bidding farewell to his other studies and to the usual pursuits of boyhood, he practised himself laboriously in declamation, with the idea that he too was to be an orator. 6 He also employed Isaeus as his guide to art of speaking, although Isocrates was lecturing at the time; either, as some say, because he was an orphan and unable to pay Isocrates his stipulated fee of ten minas, or because he preferred the style of Isaeus for its effectiveness and adaptability in actual use. 7 But Hermippus says that he once came upon some anonymous memoirs in which it was recorded that Demosthenes was a pupil of Plato and got most help from him in his rhetorical studies. He also quotes Ctesibius as saying that from Callias the Syracusan and certain others Demosthenes secretly obtained the rhetorical systems of Isocrates and Alcidamas and mastered them.

6 1 However this may be, when Demosthenes came of age he began to bring suits against his guardians and to write speeches attacking them. They devised many evasions and new trials, but Demosthenes, after practising himself in these exercises, as Thucydides says, not without toil and danger, won his cause, although he was able to recover not even a small fraction of his patrimony. However, he acquired sufficient practice and confidence in speaking, and got a taste of the distinction and power that go with forensic contests, and therefore essayed to come forward and engage in public matters. 2 And just as Laomedon the Orchomenian — so we are told — practised long-distance running by the advice of his physicians, to ward off some disease of the spleen, and then, after restoring his health in this way, entered the great games and became one of the best runners of the long course, so Demosthenes, after applying himself to oratory in the first place for the sake of recovering his private property, by this means acquired ability and power in speaking, and at last in public business, as it were in the great games, won the first place among the citizens who strove with one another on the bema.

3 And yet when he first addressed the people he was interrupted by their clamours and laughed at for his inexperience, since his discourse seemed to them confused by long periods and too harshly and immoderately tortured by formal arguments. 4 He had also, as it would appear, a certain weakness of voice and indistinctness of speech and shortness of breath which disturbed the sense of what he said by disjoining his sentences. 5 And finally, when he had forsaken the assembly and was wandering about dejectedly in the Piraeus, Eunomus the Thriasian, who was already a very old man, caught sight of him and upbraided him because, although he had a style of speaking which was most like that of Pericles, he was throwing himself away out of weakness and lack of courage, neither facing the multitude with boldness, nor preparing his body for these forensic contests, but suffering it to wither away in slothful neglect.

7 1 At another time, too, they say, when he had been rebuffed by the people and was going off homewards disconcerted 849 and in great distress, Satyrus the actor, who was a familiar acquaintance of his, followed after and went indoors with him. 2 Demosthenes lamented to him that although he was the most laborious of all the orators and had almost used up the vigour of his body in this calling, he had no favour with the people, but debauchees, sailors, and illiterate fellows were listened to and held the bema, while he himself was ignored. 3 “You are right, Demosthenes, “ said Satyrus, “but I will quickly remedy the cause of all this, if you will consent to recite off-hand for me some narrative speech from Euripides or Sophocles.” 4 Demosthenes did so, whereupon Satyrus, taking up the same speech after him, gave it such a form and recited it with such appropriate sentiment and disposition that it appeared to Demosthenes to be quite another. 5 Persuaded, now, how much of ornament and grace action lends to oratory, he considered it of little or no use for a man to practise declaiming if he neglected the delivery and disposition of his words. 6 After this, at all, he built a subterranean study, which, in fact, was preserved in our time, and into this he would descend every day without exception in order to form his action and cultivate his voice, and he would often remain there even for two or three months together, shaving one side of his head in order that shame might keep him from going abroad even though he greatly wished to do so.

8 1 Nor was this all, but he would make his interviews, conversations, and business with those outside, the foundation and starting point for eager toil. For as soon as he parted from his associates, he would go down into his study, and there would go over his transactions with them in due order, and the arguments used in defence of each course. 2 And still further, whatever speeches he chanced to hear delivered he would take up by himself and reduce to propositions and periods, and he would introduce all sorts of corrections and changes of expression into the speeches made by others against himself, or, contrariwise, by himself against others. 3 Consequently it was thought that he was not a man of good natural parts, but that his ability and power were the product of toil. And there would seem to be strong proof of this in the fact that Demosthenes was rarely heard to speak on the spur of the moment, but though the people often called upon him by name as he sat in the assembly, he would not come forward unless he had given thought to the question and was prepared to speak upon it. 4 For this, many of the popular leaders used to rail at him, and Pytheas, in particular, once told him scoffingly that his arguments smelt of lamp-wicks. To him, then, Demosthenes made a sharp answer. 5 “Indeed,” said he, “thy lamp and mine, O Pytheas, are not privy to the same pursuits.” To the rest, however, he made no denial at all, but confessed that his speeches were neither altogether unwritten, nor yet fully written out. 6 Moreover, he used to declare that he who rehearsed his speeches was a true man of the people: for such preparation was a mark of deference to the people, whereas heedlessness of what the multitude will think of his speech marks a man of oligarchical spirit, and one who relies on force rather than on persuasion. 7 Another circumstance, too, is made a proof of his lack of courage for an emergency, namely, that when he was interrupted by the clamours of the people, Demades often rose and spoke off-hand in his support, but he never rendered such a service to Demades.

9 1 How, then, some one might say, could Aeschines call him a man of the most astonishing boldness in his speeches? And how was it that, when Python of Byzantium was inveighing with much boldness and a great torrent of words against the Athenians, Demosthenes alone rose up and spoke against him? Or how did it happen that, when Lamachus the Myrinaean had written an encomium on Kings Philip and Alexander, in which many injurious things were said of Thebes and Olynthus, and while he was reading it aloud at Olympia, 850 Demosthenes came forward and rehearsed with historical proofs all the benefits which the peoples of Thebes and Chalcidice had conferred upon Greece, and, on the other hand, all the evils of which the flatterers of the Macedonians had been the cause, and thereby so turned the minds of the audience that the sophist was terrified at the outcry against him and slunk away from the festival assemblage?

2 But although Demosthenes, as it would appear, did not regard the other characteristics of Pericles as suitable for himself, he admired and sought to imitate the formality of his speech and bearing, as well as his refusal to speak suddenly or on every subject that might present itself, as if his greatness was due to these things; but he by no means sought the reputation which is won in a sudden emergency, nor did he often of his own free will stake his influence upon chance. 3 However, those orations which were spoken off-hand by him had more courage and boldness than those which he wrote out, if we are to put any confidence in Eratosthenes, Demetrius the Phalerian, and the comic poets. 4 Of these, Eratosthenes says that often in his speeches Demosthenes was like one frenzied, and the Phalerean says that once, as if under inspiration, he swore the famous metrical oath to the people: —

“By earth, by springs, by rivers, and by streams.”

5 Of the comic poets, one calls him a “rhopoperperethras,” or trumpery-braggart, and another, ridiculing his use of the antithesis, says this: —

(First slave) “My master, as he took, retook.”

(Second slave (?)) “Demosthenes would have been delighted to take over this phrase.”

6 Unless, indeed, this, too, was a jest of Antiphanes upon the speech of Demosthenes concerning Halonnesus, in which the orator counselled the Athenians not to take the island from Philip, but to retake it.

10 1 Still, all men used to agree that Demades, in the exercise of his natural gifts, was invincible, and that when he spoke on the spur of the moment he surpassed the studied preparations of Demosthenes. 2 And Ariston the Chian records an opinion which Theophrastus also passed upon the two orators. When he was asked, namely, what sort of an orator he thought Demosthenes was, he replied: “Worthy of the city”; and what Demades, “Too good for the city.” 3 And the same philosopher tells us that Polyeuctus the Sphettian, one of the political leaders of that time at Athens, declared that Demosthenes was the greatest orator, but Phocion the most influential speaker; since he expressed most sense in fewest words. 4 Indeed, we are told that even Demosthenes himself, whenever Phocion mounted the bema to reply to him, would say to his intimates: “Here comes the chopper of my speeches.” 5 Now, it is not clear whether Demosthenes had this feeling towards Phocion because of his oratory, or because of his life and reputation, believing that a single word or nod from a man who is trusted has more power than very many long periods.

11 For his bodily deficiencies he adopted the exercises which I shall describe, as Demetrius the Phalerian tells us, who says he heard about them from Demosthenes himself, now grown old. The indistinctness and lisping in his speech he used to correct and drive away by taking pebbles in his mouth and then reciting speeches. His voice he used to exercise by discoursing while running or going up steep places, and by reciting speeches or verses at a single breath. Moreover, he had in his house a large looking-glass, and in front of this he used to stand and go through his exercises in declamation.

2 A story is told of a man coming to him and begging his services as an advocate, and telling at great length how he had been assaulted and beaten by some one. “But certainly,” said Demosthenes, “you got none of the hurts which you describe.” Then the man raised his voice and shouted: “I, Demosthenes, no hurts?” “Now, indeed,” said Demosthenes, “I hear the voice of one who is wronged and hurt.” 3 So important in winning credence did he consider the tone and action of the speaker. Accordingly, his own action in speaking was astonishingly pleasing to most men, 851 but men of refinement, like Demetrius the Phalerian, thought his manner low, ignoble, and weak. 4 And Hermippus tells us that Aesion, when asked his opinion of the ancient orators as compared with those of his own time, said that one would have listened with admiration when the older orators discoursed to the people decorously and in the grand manner, but that the speeches, of Demosthenes, when read aloud, were far superior in point of arrangement and power. 5 Now, it is needless to remark that his written speeches have much in them that is harsh and bitter; but in his extempore rejoinders he was also humorous. For instance, when Demades said “Demosthenes teach me! As well might the sow teach Athena.” “It was this Athena,” said Demosthenes, “that was lately found laying the harlot in Collytus.” 6 And to the thief nicknamed Brazen, who attempted to make fun of him for his late hours and his writing at night, “I know,” he said, “that I annoy you with my lighted lamp. But you, men of Athens, must not wonder at the thefts that are committed, when we have thieves of brass, but house-walls of clay.” 7 However, though I have still more to say on this head, I shall stop here; the other traits of his character, and his disposition, should be surveyed in connection with his achievements as a statesman.

12 1 Well, then, he set out to engage in public matters after the Phocian war had broken out, as he himself says, and as it is possible to gather from his Philippic harangues. 2 Some of these were made after the Phocian war was already ended, and the earliest of them touch upon affairs which were closely connected with it. 3 And it is clear that when he prepared himself to speak in the prosecution of Meidias he was thirty-two years old, but had as yet no power or reputation in the conduct of the city’s affairs. 4 And his fears on this score were the chief reason, in my opinion, why he compromised his case against the man he hated for a sum of money:

“For he was not at all a sweet-tempered man or of gentle mood,”

but vehement and violent in his requitals. 5 However, seeing that it was no mean task and one beyond his power to overthrow a man like Meidias, who was well hedged about with wealth, oratory and friends, he yielded to those who interceded in his behalf. 6 For it does not seem to me that the three thousand drachmas of themselves could have dulled the bitter feelings of Demosthenes if he had expected or felt able to triumph over his adversary.

7 But when he had once taken as a noble basis for his political activity the defence of the Greeks against Philip, and was contending worthily here, he quickly won a reputation and was lifted into a conspicuous place by the boldness of his speeches, so that he was admired in Greece, and treated with deference by the Great King; Philip, too, made more account of him than of any other popular leader at Athens, and it was admitted even by those who hated him that they had to contend with a man of mark. 8 For both Aeschines and Hypereides say thus much for him while denouncing him.

13 1 Wherefore I do not know how it occurred to Theopompus to say that Demosthenes was unstable in his character and unable to remain true for any length of time to the same policies or the same men. 2 For it is apparent that after he had at the outset adopted a party and a line of policy in the conduct of the city’s affairs, he maintained this to the end, and not only did not change his position while he lived, but actually gave up his life that he might not change it. 3 For he was not like Demades, who apologised for his change of policy by saying that he often spoke at variance with himself, but never at variance with the interests of the city; nor like Melanopus, who, though opposed politically to Callistratus, 852 was often bought over by him, and then would say to the people: “The man is my enemy, it is true, but the interests of the city shall prevail”; 4 nor like Nicodemus the Messenian, who first attached himself to Cassander, and then again advocated the interests of Demetrius, but said that he was not contradicting himself, for it was always advantageous to listen to one’s masters. We cannot say such things of Demosthenes also, as of one who is turned from his course and veers to and fro either in word or deed — nay, he followed one unchangeable scale, as it were, and ever held to one key in politics. 5 And Panaetius the philosopher says that most of his speeches also are written in the conviction that good alone is to be chosen for its own sake, as, for instance, the speech “On the Crown,” the one “Against Aristocrates,” that “For the Immunities,” and the Philippics; 6 for in all these he does not try to lead his countrymen to do what is pleasantest or easiest or most profitable, but in many places thinks they ought to make their safety and preservation secondary to what is honourable and fitting, so that, if the loftiness of his principles and the nobility of his speeches had been accompanied by such bravery as becomes a warrior and by incorruptibility in all his dealings, he would have been worthy to be numbered, not with such orators as Moerocles, Polyeuctus, Hypereides, and their contemporaries, but high up with Cimon, Thucydides, and Pericles.

14 1 At any rate, Phocion, among his contemporaries, though he took the lead in a policy which is not to be commended, and though he had the reputation of favouring Macedonia, nevertheless, by reason of his bravery and integrity, was held to be in no wise inferior to Ephialtes and Aristides and Cimon. 2 Demosthenes, however, was not worthy of confidence when he bore arms, as Demetrius says, nor was he altogether inaccessible to bribes, but though he did not succumb to the gold which came from Philip and Macedonia, that which came down in streams from Susa and Ecbatana reached and overwhelmed him, and therefore while he was most capable of praising the virtues of earlier generations, he was not so good at imitating them. 3 For certainly the orators of his own day (though I leave Phocion out of the account) were surpassed by him even in his life and conversation. And it is manifest that beyond them all he reasoned boldly with the people, opposed himself to the desires of the multitude, and persistently attacked their faults, as may be gathered from his speeches. 4 And even Theopompus tells us that, when the Athenians nominated him to conduct a certain impeachment, and, on his refusal, raised a tumult against him, he rose and said: “Men of Athens, I will serve you as a counsellor, even though you do not wish it; but not as a false accuser, even though you wish it.” 5 Moreover, the measures which he took in the case of Antiphon were exceedingly aristocratic in their spirit. Antiphon had been acquitted by the assembly, but Demosthenes arrested him and brought him before the council of the Areiopagus, and making no account of the offence thus given to the people, convicted him of having promised Philip to set fire to the dockyards; and Antiphon was given up to justice by the council and suffered death. 6 He also accused the priestess Theoris of many misdemeanours, and particularly of teaching the slaves to practise deceit; and by fixing the penalty at death he brought about her execution.

15 1 It is said, too, that the speech which Apollodorus used in order to secure the conviction of Timotheus the general in an action for debt was written for him by Demosthenes, and likewise the speeches which Apollodorus used against Phormio and Stephanus, in which cases Demosthenes properly won discredit. 2 For Phormio contended against Apollodorus with a speech which Demosthenes had written for him, the orator thus simply selling to the disputants, as it were from one and the same cutlery-shop, the knives with which to wound each other. 3 Moreover, of his public orations, those against Androtion and Timocrates and Aristocrates were written for others to pronounce, before he had as yet entered public life; 853 for it appears that these speeches were produced when he was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age. But he himself delivered the speech against Aristogeiton, as well as the one “On the Immunities,” at the instance, as he himself says, of Ctesippus the son of Chabrias, but as some say, because he was wooing the mother of this young man. 4 However, he did not marry this woman, but had a certain woman of Samos to wife, as Demetrius the Magnesian tells us in his work “On Persons of the Same Name.” 5 Whether the speech denouncing the treacherous embassage of Aeschines was delivered or not, is uncertain; and yet Idomeneus says that Aeschines got off by only thirty votes. But this would seem to be untrue, if we are to judge by the written speeches of both orators “On the Crown.” 6 For neither of them speaks clearly and distinctly of that contention as one which came to trial. This question, however, will have to be decided by others.

16 1 The political attitude of Demosthenes was manifest even while peace still lasted, for he would let no act of the Macedonian pass uncensured, but on every occasion kept rousing and inflaming the Athenians against him. 2 Therefore Philip also made most account of him; and when Demosthenes came to Macedonia in an embassy of ten, Philip listened indeed to them all, but took most pains to answer his speech. 3 As regards all other marks of honour and kindly attention, however, Philip did not treat Demosthenes as well as the others, but courted rather the party of Aeschines and Philocrates. 4 And so when these lauded Philip as most powerful in speaking, most fair to look upon, and, indeed, as a most capable fellow-drinker, Demosthenes had to say in bitter raillery that the first encomium was appropriate for a sophist, the second for a woman, and the third for a sponge, but none of them for a king.

17 1 And when matters were inclining at last to war, since Philip was unable to keep quiet and the Athenians were being stirred up by Demosthenes, in the first place, he urged the Athenians to invade Euboea, which had been brought into subjection to Philip by its tyrants; and it was on his motion that they crossed over to the island and drove out the Macedonians. 2 In the second place, he came to the aid of the citizens of Byzantium and Perinthus when Macedonian was making war upon them, by persuading the Athenian people to remit their hatred and forget the wrongs committed by each of these cities in the Social War, and to send them a force, — the force which saved them. 3 Next, he went on an embassy to the Greek states, and by arguing with them and pricking them on brought almost all of them into a league against Philip, so that they raised a mercenary force of fifteen thousand foot and two thousand horse, apart from the citizen soldiery, and readily contributed money to pay them. 4 It was at this time, as Theophrastus says, when the allies were demanding that their contributions be fixed within limits, that Crobylus the popular leader said: “War has no fixed rations.”

5 Greece was now in suspense as it thought of the future, and its peoples and cities were leaguing themselves together, Euboeans, Achaeans, Corinthians, Megarians, Leucadians, and Corcyraeans. But the most important struggle still remained for Demosthenes in bringing the Thebans to join the alliance, for they had a territory bounding that of Attica and a force ready to take the field, and at that time were accounted the best soldiers in Greece. 6 But it was no easy matter, in view of the recent benefits with which Philip had cultivated their favour during the Phocian war, to make the Thebans change sides, and especially because in the petty quarrels brought on by their proximity to Athens the differences which made for war between the two cities were all the while stirred up anew.

854 18 1 Philip, however, elated by his good-fortune in the matter of Amphissa, surprised Elateia and occupied Phocis. This step drove the Athenians out of their senses: no one ventured to ascend the bema and no one knew what ought to be said, but perplexity and silence reigned in the assembly. Then it was that Demosthenes, and he alone, came forward and advised the people to cling to Thebes; and after giving them courage in other ways and buoying them up with hopes, as he was wont to do, he was sent with others as ambassador to Thebes. 2 Philip also, as Marsyas tells us, sent Amyntas and Clearchus of Macedonia, Daochus of Thessaly, and Thrasydaeus, to speak in opposition to the Athenians.

Well, then, the Thebans, in their calculations, were not blind to their own interests, but each of them had before his eyes the terrors of war, since their losses in the Phocian war were still fresh; however, the power of the orator, as Theopompus says, fanned up their courage and inflamed their honourable ambition and obscured all other considerations, so that, casting away fear and calculation and feelings of obligation, they were rapt away by his words into the path of honour. 3 And so great and glorious was the orator’s success seen to be that Philip at once sent an embassy and asked for peace, while Greece was confident and up in arms to aid Demosthenes for the future; and not only did the Athenian generals assist him and do what he ordered, but also the Boeotarchs. He managed at this time all the assemblies of the Thebans no less than those of the Athenians; he was beloved by both peoples and exercised supreme power, not illegally nor unworthily, as Theopompus declares, but rather with perfect propriety.

19 1 But it would seem that some divinely ordered fortune in the revolution of affairs, which was putting an end at this time to the freedom of the Greeks, opposed their efforts, and showed forth many signs of what was to come. Among these were the dire prophecies which the Pythian priestess made known, and an ancient oracle which was recited from the Sibylline books: —

“From the battle on Thermodon may I be far removed,

To behold it like an eagle in clouds and upper air.

Tears are for the conquered there, and for the conqueror, death.”

2 Now, the Thermodon, they say, is in my native territory, in Chaeroneia, being a little river which empties into the Cephisus. But I know of no river bearing this name at the present time; I conjecture, however, that the stream now called Haemon then bore the name of Thermodon. For it flows past the Heracleum, where the Greeks had their camp; and I judge that after the battle the river was filled with blood and corpses and therefore received its present name in exchange. 3 Duris, however, says that this Thermodon was not a river, but that some soldiers who were pitching a tent and digging a trench about it, found a small stone figure, an inscription upon which signified that it was Thermodon, carrying in its arms a wounded Amazon. They say also that in reference to this another oracle is recited as follows: —

“For the battle on Thermodon wait thou, all-black bird;

There thou shalt have in abundance the flesh of men.”

20 1 How this matter really stands, then, it is difficult to decide; but as for Demosthenes, he is said to have had complete confidence in the Greek forces, and to have been lifted into a state of glowing excitement by the strength and ardour of so many men eager to engage the enemy, so that he would not suffer his countrymen to give heed to oracles or listen to prophecies; nay, he even suspected the Pythian priestess of being in sympathy with Philip, reminding the Thebans of Epaminondas and the Athenians of Pericles, 855 and declaring that those great leaders regarded things of this kind as pretexts for cowardice, and therefore followed the dictates of reason. 2 Up to this point, then, he was a brave man; but in the battle he displayed no conduct that was honourable or consonant with his words, but forsook his post, cast away his arms, and ran away most disgracefully, nor was he ashamed to belie the inscription on his shield, as Pytheas said, whereon was written in letters of gold, “With good fortune.”

3 Immediately after his victory, then, Philip waxed insolent for joy, and going forth in revel rout to see the bodies of the slain, and being in his cups, recited the beginning of the decree introduced by Demosthenes, dividing it into feet and marking off the time: —

“Demosthenes, son of Demosthenes, of Paeania, thus moves;”

but when he got sober and realized the magnitude of the struggle in which he had been involved, he shuddered at the power and the ability of the orator who had forced him to hazard his empire and his life in the brief span of a single day. 4 And the family of this orator penetrated even to the Persian king, who sent letters to his satraps on the coast, bidding them to offer money to Demosthenes, and to pay more attention to him than to any other Greek, since he was able to distract and detain the Macedonian with the troubles which he raised in Greece. 5 These things, now, were discovered at a later time by Alexander, who found at Sardis certain letters of Demosthenes and documents of the King’s generals, which disclosed the amount of money they had given him.

21 1 At this time, however, when their disaster fell upon the Greeks, the orators of the opposing party assailed Demosthenes and prepared reckonings and indictments against him; 2 but the people not only absolved him from these, nay, they actually continued to honour him and invited him again, as a loyal man, to take part in public affairs. Consequently, when the bones of those who had fallen at Chaeroneia were brought home for burial, they assigned to him the honour of pronouncing the eulogy over the men; nor did they show a base or ignoble spirit under the calamity which had befallen them, as Theopompus writes in his inflated style, but by the special honour and respect which they paid to their counsellor they made it manifest that they did not repent of the counsels he had given them. 3 The oration, then, was pronounced by Demosthenes, but to the decrees which he proposed he would not put his own name, but rather those of his friends, one after the other, avoiding his own as inauspicious and unfortunate, until he once more took courage upon Philip’s death. 4 And Philip died, surviving success at Chaeroneia only a short time; and this, it would seem, was foretold by the last verse of the oracle: —

“Tears are for the conquered there, and for the conqueror, death.”

22 1 Now, Demosthenes had secret intelligence of Philip’s death, and by way of inspiring the Athenians with courage for the future, he came forth to the council with a glad countenance, declaring that he had had a dream which led him to expect some great blessing for Athens; and not long afterwards the messengers came with tidings of Philip’s death. 2 At once, then, the Athenians proceeded to make thank-offerings for glad tidings and voted a crown for Pausanias. 3 And Demosthenes came forth in public dressed in a splendid robe and wearing a garland on his head, although his daughter had died only six days before, as Aeschines says, who rails at him for this and denounces him as an unnatural father. And yet Aeschines himself was of a weak and ungenerous nature, if he considered mournings and lamentations as the signs of an affectionate spirit, but condemned the bearing of such losses serenely and without repining.

4 For my own part, I cannot say that it was honourable in the Athenians to crown themselves with garlands and offer sacrifices to the gods on the death of a king who, in the midst of his successes, had treated them so mildly and humanely in their reverses; for besides provoking the indignation of the gods, it was also an ignoble thing to honour him while he was alive and make him a citizen of Athens, 856 but when he had fallen by another’s hand to set no bounds for their joy, nay, to leap, as it were, upon the dead, and sing paeans of victory, as if they themselves had wrought a deed of valour. 5 However, for leaving his domestic misfortunes and tears and lamentations to the women and going about such business as he thought advantageous to the city, I commend Demosthenes, and I hold it to be the part of a statesmanlike and manly spirit to keep ever in view the good of the community, to find support for domestic sorrows and concerns in the public welfare, and to preserve one’s dignity far more than actors do when they take the parts of kings and tyrants; for these, as we see in the theatres, neither weep nor laugh according to their own inclinations, but as the subject of the action demands.

6 And apart from these considerations, if it is our duty not to allow the unfortunate to lie comfortless in his sorrow, but to address him with cheering words and turn his thoughts to pleasanter things (like those who tell people with sore eyes to withdraw their gaze from bright and hard colours and fix it upon those which are soft and green), how can a man obtain better consolation for his domestic griefs than by blending them with the general welfare of a prosperous country, thus making the better things obscure the worse? 7 These things, then I have been led to say on seeing that many have their hearts softened to effeminate pity by this discourse of Aeschines.

23 1 The cities of Greece, under the incitations of Demosthenes, now formed themselves into a league again. The Thebans, whom Demosthenes had helped to provide with arms, fell upon their Macedonian garrison and slew many of them; while the Athenians made preparations to go to war along with them. 2 Demosthenes reigned supreme in the assembly, and wrote letters to the King’s generals in Asia stirring them up to make war upon Alexander, whom he called a boy and a Margites. When, however, Alexander had settled the affairs of his own country and came in person with his forces into Boeotia, prone lay the courage of the Athenians, and Demosthenes was extinguished, while the Thebans, betrayed by their allies, fought by themselves and lost their city. 3 Then, in the midst of the great confusion which reigned at Athens, Demosthenes was chosen and sent with others as an ambassador to Alexander, but fearing the wrath of the king he turned back at Cithaeron and abandoned the embassy. 4 Then straightway Alexander sent to Athens a demand for the surrender to him of ten of their popular leaders, according to Idomeneus and Duris, but according to the most and most reputable writers, only eight, namely, Demosthenes, Polyeuctus, Ephialtes, Lycurgus, Moerocles, Demon, Callisthenes, and Charidemus.

5 It was on this occasion that Demosthenes told the Athenians the story of how the sheep surrendered their dogs to the wolves, comparing himself and his fellow-orators to dogs fighting in defence of the people, and called Alexander “the Macedonian arch-wolf.” 6 Moreover, he said further: “Just as grain-merchants sell their whole stock by means of a few kernels of wheat which they carry about with them in a bowl as a sample, so in surrendering us you unwittingly surrender also yourselves, all of you.” Such, then, is the account which Aristobulus of Cassandreia has given.

The Athenians were deliberating on this demand and were at a loss how to treat it, when Demades, for five talents which he had received from the men demanded, agreed to go on an embassy to the king and entreat him in their behalf; either because he relied on the friendship of Alexander, or because he expected to find him sated, like a lion glutted with slaughter. At any rate, Demades persuaded the king to let the men off, and reconciled him with the city.

857 24 1 So when Alexander went back to Macedonia, Demades and his associates were high in power, but Demosthenes acted a humble part. It is true that when Agis the Spartan was active in revolt Demosthenes once more made a feeble effort in his support, but then he cowered down, since the Athenians would not join in the uprising. Agis fell in battle, and the Lacedaemonians were crushed.

2 It was at this time that the indictment against Ctesiphon in the matter of the crown came up for trial. It had been prepared in the archonship of Chaerondas a little before the battle of Chaeroneia, but came on for trial ten years later in the archonship of Aristophon. It became the most celebrated of all public causes, not only on account of the fame of the orators, but also because of the noble conduct of the judges, who, though the prosecutors of Demosthenes were then at the height of power and acting in the interests of Macedonia, would not vote against him, but acquitted him so decisively that Aeschines did not get a fifth part of their ballots. 3 Consequently, Aeschines forsook the city at once, and spent the rest of his life as a teacher of rhetoric in Rhodes and Ionia.

25 1 Not long afterwards Harpalus came out of Asia to Athens. He had run away from Alexander, because he was conscious that his prodigality had led him into criminal practices, and because he was afraid of his master, who was now become harsh to his friends. 2 But after he had taken refuge with the Athenian people and put himself in their hands with his ships and his treasures, the other orators at once fixed their longing eyes upon his wealth, came to his aid, and tried to persuade the Athenians to receive and save the suppliant. 3 But Demosthenes, in the beginning, counselled them to drive Harpalus away, and to beware lest they plunge the city into war upon an unnecessary and unjust ground; a few days afterwards, however, while they were making an inventory of the treasure, Harpalus saw that Demosthenes was eyeing with pleasure a cup of barbarian make, with a keen appreciation of its fashion and of the ornamental work upon it. He therefore bade him poise it in his hand and see how heavy the gold was. 4 And when Demosthenes was amazed at its weight and asked how much it would amount to, Harpalus smiled and said, “For you it will amount to twenty talents;” and as soon as night was come he sent him the cup with the twenty talents. 5 Now, Harpalus was skilful in detecting the character of a man who had a passion for gold, by means of the look that spread over his face and the glances of his eyes. For Demosthenes could not resist, but was overcome by the bribe, and now that he had, as it were, admitted a garrison into his house, promptly went over to the side of Harpalus. Next day, after swathing his neck carefully in woollen bandages, he went forth into the assembly; and when he was urged to rise and speak, he made signs that his voice was ruined. 6 The wits, however, by way of raillery, declared that the orator had been seized overnight, not with an ordinary quinsy, but with a silver quinsy. And afterwards, when the whole people learned that he had been bribed, and would not permit him, when he wished it, to have a hearing and make his defence, but were angry and raised a tumult against him, someone rose and said jokingly: “Men of Athens, will you not listen to the man who holds the cup?”

7 At that time, then, they sent Harpalus away from the city, and fearing lest they should be called to account for the moneys which the orators had seized, they made a zealous search for it, and went round to their houses on the quest, except that of Callicles the son of Arrhenides. 8 For his house was the only one which they would not allow to be searched, since he was newly married and his bride was within, as Theopompus relates.

26 1 But Demosthenes put a bold face on the matter and introduced a bill providing that the case should be referred for investigation to the council of the Areiopagus, and that those should be brought to trial who were found guilty there. 2 He was himself, however, among the first condemned by the council, and came before the court for trial, where he was sentenced to a fine of fifty talents and delivered over to prison in default of payment. 858 But out of shame at the charge under which he lay, as he says, and owing to the weakness of his body, which could not endure confinement, he ran away, through the carelessness of some of his keepers and the connivance of others. 3 At any rate, we are told that when he was in flight at a short distance from the city, he learned that some of the citizens who were his enemies were in pursuit of him, and therefore wished to hide himself; and when they called upon him loudly by name, and came up near to him, and begged him to accept from them provision for his journey, declaring that they were bringing money from home for this very purpose, and were pursuing him only in order to get it to him; and when at the same time they exhorted him to be of good courage and not to be pained at what had happened, Demosthenes broke out all the more into cries of grief, saying: 4 “Surely I must be distressed to leave a city where my enemies are as generous as I can hardly find friends to be in another.”

5 And he bore his exile without fortitude, taking up his quarters in Aegina and Troezen for the most part, and looking off towards Attica with tears in his eyes, so that utterances of his are on record which are not generous or consonant with his spirited efforts as a statesman. 6 We are told, namely, that as he was leaving the city he lifted up his hands towards the acropolis and said: “O potent Guardian of the City, Athena, how, pray, canst thou take delight in those three most intractable beasts, the owl, the serpent, and the people?” 7 Moreover, when young men came to visit and converse, he would try deter them from public life, saying that if two roads had been presented to him in the beginning, one leading to the bema and the assembly, and the other straight to destruction, and if he could have known beforehand the evils attendant on a public career, namely, fears, hatreds, calumnies and contentions, he would have taken that road which led directly to death.

27 1 But while he was still undergoing the exile of which I have spoken, Alexander died, and the Greek states proceeded to form a league again, while Leosthenes was displaying deeds of valour and walling Antipater up in Lamia, where he held him in siege. 2 Accordingly, the orators Pytheas and Callimedon (called the Stag-beetle) fled from Athens and joined the party of Antipater, and travelling about with the regent’s friends and ambassadors tried to prevent the Greeks from revolting or attaching themselves to Athens; 3 but Demosthenes, joining himself to the ambassadors from Athens, used his utmost efforts in helping them to induce the cities to unite in attacking the Macedonians and expelling them from Greece. 4 And Phylarchus states that in Arcadia Pytheas and Demosthenes actually fell to abusing one another in an assembly, the one speaking in behalf of the Macedonians, the other in behalf of the Greeks. 5 Pytheas, we are told, said that just as we think that a house into which asses’ milk is brought must certainly have some evil in it, so also a city must of necessity be diseased into which an Athenian embassy comes; whereupon Demosthenes turned the illustration against him by saying that asses’ milk was given to restore health, and the Athenians came to bring salvation to the sick.

6 At this conduct the Athenian people were delighted, and voted that Demosthenes might return from exile. The decree was brought in by Demon of Paeania, who was a cousin of Demosthenes; and a trireme was sent to Aegina to fetch him home. 7 When he set out to go up to the city from Piraeus, not an archon or a priest was missing, and all the rest of the people also met him in a body and welcomed him eagerly, It was at this time, too, as Demetrius the Magnesian says, that he lifted his hands towards heaven and blessed himself for that day, since he was coming home from exile more honourably than Alcibiades did; for he had persuaded, not forced, his fellow-citizens to welcome him. 8 It is true that his pecuniary fine remained standing against him (for it was not lawful to remit an assessment by act of grace), 859 but they found a device to evade the law. It was their custom, namely, in the case of a sacrifice to Zeus the Saviour, to pay a sum of money to those who prepared and adorned the altar, and they now gave Demosthenes the contract to make these preparations for fifty talents, which was just the amount of his assessment.

28 1 However, he did not enjoy his native city for long after his return from exile, but the cause of Greece was speedily crushed, and in the month of Metageitnion the battle at Crannon took place, in that of Boëdromion the Macedonian garrison entered Munychia, and in that of Pyanepsion Demosthenes died, in the following manner.

2 When Antipater and Craterus were reported to be advancing upon Athens, Demosthenes and his associates succeeded in escaping by stealth from the city, and the people, on motion of Demades, passed sentence of death upon them. 3 Since they dispersed themselves to different places, Antipater sent his soldiers about to arrest them, under the command of Archias the so called Exile-hunter. This man was a native of Thurii, and the story goes that he was once a tragic actor; indeed, it is recorded that Polus of Aegina, the best actor of his time, was a pupil of his. But Hermippus states that Archias was one of the pupils of Lacritus the rhetorician; while Demetrius says that he belonged to the school of Anaximenes. 4 This Archias, then, finding that Hypereides the orator and Aristonicus of Marathon and Himeraeus the brother of Demetrius the Phalerean had taken refuge in the sanctuary of Aeacus at Aegina, haled them away and sent them to Antipater at Cleonae. There they were put to death, and Hypereides, it is said, also had his tongue cut out.

29 1 Moreover, on learning that Demosthenes had taken sanctuary in the temple of Poseidon at Calauria, Archias sailed across to the island in small boats, and after landing with Thracian spearmen tried to persuade the fugitive to leave the temple and go with him to Antipater, assuring him that he would suffer no harsh treatment. 2 But it chanced that Demosthenes, in his sleep the night before, had seen a strange vision. He dreamed, namely, that he was acting in a tragedy and contending with Archias for the prize, and that although he acquitted himself well and won the favour of the audience, his lack of stage decorations and costumes cost him the victory. 3 Therefore, after Archias had said many kindly things to him, Demosthenes, just as he sat, looked steadfastly at him and said: “O Archias, thou didst never convince me by thine acting, nor wilt thou now convince me by thy promises.” And when Archias began to threaten him angrily, “Now,” said he, “thou utterest the language of the Macedonian oracle; but a moment ago thou wert acting a part. Wait a little, then, that I may write a message to my family.” 4 With these words, he retired into the temple, and taking a scroll, as if about to write, he put his pen to his mouth and bit it, as he was wont to do when thinking what he should write, and kept it there some time, then covered and bent his head. 5 The spearman, then, who stood at the door, laughed at him for playing the coward, and called him weak and unmanly, but Archias came up and urged him to rise, and reïterating the same speeches as before, promised him a reconciliation with Antipater. 6 But Demosthenes, now conscious that the poison was affecting and overpowering him, uncovered his head; and fixing his eyes upon Archias, “Thou canst not be too soon now,” said he, “in playing the part of Creon in the tragedy and casting this body out without burial. But I, O beloved Poseidon, will depart from thy sanctuary while I am still alive; whereas Antipater and the Macedonians would not have left even thy temple undefiled.” 7 So speaking, and bidding someone support him, since he was now trembling and tottering, he had no sooner gone forth and passed by the altar than he fell, and with a groan gave up the ghost.

860 30 1 As for the poison, Ariston says he took it from the pen, as I have said; but a certain Pappus, from whom Hermippus took his story, says that when he had fallen by the side of the altar, there was found written in the scroll the beginning of a letter, “Demosthenes to Antipater,” and nothing more; 2 and that when men were amazed at the suddenness of his death the Thracians who had stood at the door told the story that he took the poison into his hand from a cloth and put it to his mouth and swallowed it; and they themselves, strange to say, had supposed that what he swallowed was gold; and that the little maid who served him, when inquiries were made by Archias, said that Demosthenes had long worn that cloth girdle as a safeguard against his enemies. 3 And even Eratosthenes himself says that Demosthenes kept the poison in a hollow bracelet, and that he wore this bracelet as an ornament upon his arm. 4 But the divergent stories of all the others who have written about the matter, and they are very many, need not be recounted; except that Demarches the relative of Demosthenes says that in his opinion it was not due to poison, but to the honour and kindly favour shown him by the gods, that he was rescued from the cruelty of the Macedonians by a speedy and painless death. 5 And he died on the sixteenth of the month Pyanepsion, the most gloomy day of the Thesmophoria, which the women observe by fasting in the temple of the goddess.

It was to this man, a little while after his death, that the Athenian people paid worthy honour by erecting his statue in bronze, and by decreeing that the eldest of his house should have public maintenance in the prytaneium. And this celebrated inscription was inscribed upon the pedestal of his statue: —

“If thy strength had only been equal to thy purposes, Demosthenes,

Never would the Greeks have been ruled by a Macedonian Ares.”

6 Of course those who say that Demosthenes himself composed these lines in Calauria, as he was about to put the poison to his lips, talk utter nonsense.

31 1 Now, a short time before I took up my abode in Athens, the following incident is said to have occurred. A soldier who had been called to an account by his commander, put what little gold he had into the hands of this statue of Demosthenes. 2 It stood with its fingers interlaced, and hard by grew a small plane-tree. Many of the leaves from this tree, whether the wind accidentally blew them thither, or whether the depositor himself took this way of concealing his treasure, lay clustering together about the gold and hid it for a long time. 3 At last, however, the man came back, found his treasure intact, and an account of the matter was spread abroad, whereupon the wits of the city took for a theme the incorruptibility of Demosthenes and vied with one another in their epigrams.

4 As for Demades, he had not long enjoyed his growing reputation when vengeance for Demosthenes brought him into Macedonia, whose people he had disgracefully flattered, only to be by them justly put to death. He had been obnoxious to them even before this, but now fell under a charge from which there was no escape. 5 A letter of his, namely, leaked out, in which he had urged Perdiccas to seize Macedonia and deliver the Greeks, who, he said, were fastened to it only by an old and rotten thread (meaning Antipater). 6 And when Deinarchus the Corinthian denounced him for this, Cassander flew into a rage and slew the son of Demades as he stood close by his father’s side, and then ordered that Demades should be likewise killed. Demades was now learning amid his extremest misfortunes that traitors sell themselves first, a truth of which Demosthenes had often assured him, but which he would not believe.

7 And so, Sosius, thou hast the promised Life of Demosthenes, drawn from such written or oral sources as I could find.

Cicero

1 1 It is said of Helvia, the mother of Cicero, that she was well born and lived an honourable life; but of his father nothing can be learned that does not go to an extreme. 2 For some say that he was born and reared in a fuller’s shop, while others trace the origin of his family to Tullus Attius, an illustrious king of the Volscians, who waged war upon the Romans with great ability. 3 However, the first member of the family who was surnamed Cicero seems to have been worthy of note, and for that reason his posterity did not reject the surname, but were fond of it, although many made it a matter of raillery. 4 For “cicer” is the Latin name for chick-pea, and this ancestor of Cicero, as it would seem, had a faint dent in the end of his nose like the cleft of a chick-pea, from which he acquired his surname. 5 Cicero himself, however, whose Life I now write, when he first entered public life and stood for office and his friends thought he ought to drop or change the name, is said to have replied with spirit that he would strive to make the name of Cicero more illustrious than such names as Scaurus or Catulus.a 6 Moreover, when he was quaestor in Sicily and was dedicating to the gods a piece of silver plate, he had his first two names inscribed thereon, the Marcus and the Tullius, but instead of the third, by way of jest, he ordered the artificer to engrave a chick-pea in due sequence. This, then, is what is told about his name.

2 1 It is said that Cicero was born, without travail or pain on the part of his mother, on the third day of the new Calends, the day on which at the present time the magistrates offer sacrifices and prayers for the health of the emperor. It would seem also that a phantom appeared to his nurse and foretold that her charge would be a great blessing to all the Romans. 2 And although these presages were thought to be mere dreams and idle fancies, he soon showed them to be true prophecy; for when he was of an age for taking lessons, his natural talent shone out clear and he won name and fame among the boys, so that their fathers used to visit the schools in order to see Cicero with their own eyes and observe the quickness and intelligence in his studies for which he was extolled, though the ruder ones among them were angry at their sons when they saw them walking with Cicero placed in their midst as a mark of honour. 3 And although he showed himself, as Plato thought a nature should do which was fond of learning and fond of wisdom, capable of welcoming all knowledge and incapable of slighting any kind of literature or training, he lent himself with somewhat greater ardour to the art of poetry. And a little poem which he wrote when a boy is still extant, called Pontius Glaucus, and composed in tetrameter verse. 4 Moreover, as he grew older and applied himself with greater versatility to such accomplishments, he got the name of being not only the best orator, but also the best poet among the Romans. 5 His fame for oratory abides to this day, although there have been great innovations in style; but his poetry, since many gifted poets have followed him, has altogether fallen into neglect and disrepute.

3 1 After he had finished the studies of boyhood, he attended the lectures of Philon the Academic, whom, above all the other disciples of Cleitomachus, the Romans admired for his eloquence and loved for his character. 2 At the same time he consorted with Mucius Scaevola, a statesman and leader of the senate, and was helped by him to an acquaintance with the law; and for a little while he also did military service under Sulla in the war against the Marsians. 3 Then, seeing that the commonwealth was hurrying into factions, and from factions into unlimited monarchy, he betook himself to a retired and contemplative life, associated with Greek scholars, and pursued his studies, until Sulla got the mastery and the state appeared to be somewhat settled.

4 About this time Chrysogonus, a freedman of Sulla’s, put up at public auction the estate of a man who, as it was said, had been put to death under proscription, and bought it in himself for two thousand drachmas. 5 Then Roscius, the son and heir of the deceased, was indignant and set forth clearly that the estate was worth two hundred and fifty talents, whereupon Sulla, enraged to have his actions called in question, indicted Roscius for the murder of his father, Chrysogonus having trumped up the evidence. No advocate would help Roscius, but all avoided him through their fear of Sulla’s cruelty, and so at last, in his destitution, the young man had recourse to Cicero. Cicero’s friends encouraged him to undertake the case, arguing that he would never again have a more brilliant or a more honourable opportunity to win fame. 6 Accordingly, he undertook the defence of Roscius, won his cause, and men admired him for it; but fearing Sulla, he made a journey to Greece, after spreading a report that his health needed attention. For in fact he was spare and lean, and owing to a weakness of the stomach could only with difficulty take a little light food late in the day; his voice, however, was full and strong, but harsh and unmodulated, and since, owing to the vehemence and passion of his oratory, it was always forced into the higher tones, it made men apprehensive for his health.

4 1 On coming to Athens he attended the lectures of Antiochus of Ascalon, and was charmed by his fluency and grace of diction, although he disapproved of his innovations in doctrine. 2 For Antiochus had already fallen away from what was called the New Academy and abandoned the sect of Carneades, either moved thereto by the clear evidence of the sense-perceptions, or, as some say, led by a feeling of ambitious opposition to the disciples of Cleitomachus and Philon to change his views and cultivate in most cases the doctrine of the Stoics. 3 But Cicero loved the systems which Antiochus discarded and devoted himself the rather to them, purposing, in case he was altogether driven out of a public career, to change his home to Athens, away from the forum and the business of the state, and spend his life in the quiet pursuit of philosophy.

4 But word was now brought to him that Sulla was dead, and since his body, strengthened by exercise, was taking on a vigorous habit, while his voice, acquiring modulation, had grown pleasant to the ear, and had been moderated into keeping with the habit of his body; and since, moreover, his friends at Rome earnestly besought him by letter and Antiochus strongly urged him to apply himself to public affairs, he once more sought to prepare for service therein his instrument, as it were, to wit his rhetorical style, and to rouse to action his political powers, diligently cultivating himself in declamation and taking lessons of the popular rhetoricians. With this end in view he made a voyage to Asia and Rhodes. 5 In Asia, he studied oratory with Xenocles of Adramyttium, Dionysius of Magnesia, and Menippus the Carian; in Rhodes, oratory with Apollonius the son of Milon, and philosophy with Poseidonius. 6 Apollonius, we are told, not understanding the Roman language, requested Cicero to declaim in Greek, with which request Cicero readily complied, thinking that in this way his faults could better be corrected. 7 After he had declaimed, his other hearers were astounded and vied with one another in their praises, but Apollonius was not greatly moved while listening to him, and when he had ceased sat for a long time lost in thought; then, since Cicero was distressed at this, he said: “Thee, indeed, O Cicero, I admire and commend; but Greece I pity for her sad fortune, since I see that even the only glories which were left to us, culture and eloquence, are through thee to belong also to the Romans.”

5 1 However, though Cicero, full of hope, was being borne on towards a political career, a certain oracle took the edge from his eager desire. When he inquired, namely, of the god at Delphi how he could become most illustrious, the Pythian priestess enjoined upon him to make his own nature, and not the opinion of the multitude, his guide in life. 2 And so during the first part of his time at Rome he conducted himself with caution, was reluctant to sue for office, and was therefore neglected, being called “Greek” and “Scholar,” those names which the low and ignorant classes at Rome were wont to give so readily. 3 But he was naturally ambitious and was urged on by his father and his friends, and so when he gave himself in earnest to the work of an advocate, he did not advance slowly to the primary, but his fame shot forth at once, and he far surpassed those who strove with him for distinction in the forum.

4 But it is said that he too, no less than Demosthenes, was weak in his delivery, and therefore sought with care to imitate now Roscius the comedian, and now Aesop the tragedian. 5 This Aesop, they tell us, was once acting in a theatre the part of Atreus planning to take vengeance on Thyestes, when one of the assistants suddenly ran across the scene, and the actor, losing control of himself in the intensity of his passion, smote him with his sceptre and laid him dead. 6 Now, Cicero’s delivery contributed not a little to his persuasive power. Moreover, of those orators who were given to loud shouting he used to say jestingly that they were led by their weakness to resort to clamour as cripples were to mount upon a horse. And his readiness to indulge in such jests and pleasantry was thought indeed to be a pleasant characteristic of a pleader; but he carried it to excess and so annoyed many and got the reputation of being malicious.

6 1 He was appointed quaestor at a time when grain was scarce, and had the province of Sicily allotted to him, where he annoyed people at first by compelling them to send grain to Rome. But afterwards they found him careful, just, and mild, and honoured him beyond any governor they had ever had. 2 Moreover, when large numbers of young men from Rome, of illustrious and noble families, were accused of lack of discipline and courage in the war and sent up for trial to the praetor of Sicily, Cicero pleaded their cause brilliantly and won the day. 3 While he was journeying to Rome, then, highly elated over these successes, he had a laughable experience, as he tells us. In Campania, namely, he fell in with an eminent man whom he deemed his friend, and asked him what the Romans were saying and thinking about his achievements, supposing that he had filled the whole city with the name and fame of them; 4 but his friend said: “Where, pray, have you been, Cicero, all this while?” At that time, then, as he tells us, he was altogether disheartened, seeing that the story of his doings had sunk into the city as into a bottomless sea, without any visible effect upon his reputation; but afterwards he reasoned with himself and abated much of his ambition, convinced that the fame towards which he was emulously struggling was a thing that knew no bounds and had no tangible limit. 5 However, his excessive delight in the praise of others and his too passionate desire for glory remained with him until the very end, and very often confounded his saner reasonings.

7 1 And now that he was engaging in public life with greater ardour, he considered it a shameful thing that while craftsmen, using vessels and instruments that are lifeless, know the name and place and capacity of every one of them, the statesman, on the contrary, whose instruments for carrying out public measures are men, should be indifferent and careless about knowing his fellow-citizens. 2 Wherefore he not only accustomed himself to remember their names, but also learned to know the quarter of the city in which every notable person dwelt, where he owned a country-place, what friends he had, and what neighbours; so that whatever road in Italy Cicero travelled, it was easy for him to name and point out the estates and villas of his friends.

3 His property, though sufficient to meet his expenses, was nevertheless small, and therefore men wondered that he would accept neither fees nor gift for his services as advocate, and above all when he undertook the prosecution of Verres. 4 This man, who had been praetor of Sicily, and whom the Sicilians prosecuted for many villainous acts, Cicero convicted, not by speaking, but, in a way, by actually not speaking. 5 For the praetors favoured Verres, and by many obstacles and delays had put off the case until the very last day, since it was clear that a day’s time would not be enough for the speeches of the advocates and so the trial would not be finished. But Cicero rose and said there was no need of speeches, and then brought up and examined his witnesses and bade the jurors cast their votes. 6 Nevertheless, many witty sayings of his in connection with this trial are on record. For instance, “verres” is the Roman word for a castrated porker; when, accordingly, a freedman named Caecilius, who was suspected of Jewish practices, wanted to thrust aside the Sicilian accusers and denounce Verres himself, Cicero said: “What has a Jew to do with a Verres?” 7 Moreover, Verres had a young son, who had the name of lending himself to base practices. Accordingly, when Cicero was reviled by Verres for effeminacy, “You ought,” said he, “to revile your sons at home.” 8 And again, the orator Hortensius did not venture to plead the cause of Verres directly, but was persuaded to appear for him at the assessment of the fine, and received an ivory sphinx as his reward; and when Cicero made some oblique reference to him and Hortensius declared that he had no skill in solving riddles, “And yet,” said Cicero, “thou hast the Sphinx at thy house.”

8 1 When Verres had thus been convicted, Cicero assessed his fine at seven hundred and fifty thousand denarii, and was therefore accused of having been bribed to make the fine a low one. 2 The Sicilians, however, were grateful to him, and when he was aedile brought him from their island all sorts of live stock and produce; from these he derived no personal profit, but used the generosity of the islanders only to lower the price of provisions.

3 He owned a pleasant country-seat at Arpinum, and had a farm near Naples and another near Pompeii, both small. His wife Terentia brought him besides a dowry of a hundred thousand denarii, and he received a bequest which amounted to ninety thousand. 4 From these he lived, in a generous and at the same time modest manner, with the Greek and Roman men of letters who were his associates. He rarely, if ever, came to table before sunset, not so much on account of business, as because his stomach kept him in poor health. 5 In other ways, too, he was exact and over-scrupulous in the care of his body, so that he actually took a set number of rubbings and walks. By carefully managing his health in this way he kept it free from sickness and able to meet the demands of many great struggles and toils. 6 The house which had been his father’s he made over to his brother, and dwelt himself near the Palatine hill, in order that those who came to pay their court to him might not have the trouble of a long walk. And men came to his house every day to pay him court, no fewer than came to Crassus for his wealth or to Pompey because of his influence with the soldiery, and these were the two greatest men among the Romans and the most admired. 7 Nay, Pompey actually paid court to Cicero, and Cicero’s political efforts contributed much towards Pompey’s power and fame.

9 1 Although many men of importance stood for the praetorship along with Cicero, he was appointed first of them all; and men thought that he managed the cases which came before him with integrity and fairness. 2 It is said, too, that Licinius Macer, a man who had great power in the city on his own account and also enjoyed the help of Crassus, was tried before Cicero for fraud, and that, relying upon his influence and the efforts made in his behalf, he went off home while the jurors were still voting, hastily trimmed his hair and put on a white toga in the belief that he had been acquitted, and was going forth again to the forum; but Crassus met him at the house-door and told him that he had been convicted unanimously, whereupon he turned back, lay down upon his bed, and died. And the case brought Cicero the reputation of having been a scrupulous presiding officer. 3 Again, there was Vatinius, a man who had a harsh manner and one which showed contempt for the magistrates before whom he pleaded; his neck also was covered with swellings. As this man once stood at Cicero’s tribunal and made some request of him, Cicero did not grant it at once, but took a long time for deliberation, whereupon Vatinius said that he himself would not have stuck at the matter had he been praetor. At this Cicero turned upon him and said: “But I have not the neck that you have.”

4 Two or three days before his term of office expired, Manilius was brought before him on a charge of fraudulent accounting. This Manilius had the good will and eager support of the people, since it was thought that he was prosecuted on Pompey’s account, being a friend of his. 5 On his demanding several days in which to make his defence, Cicero granted him only one, and that the next; and the people were indignant because it was customary for the praetor to grant ten days at least to the accused. 6 And when the tribunes brought Cicero to the rostra and denounced him, he begged for a hearing, and then said that he had always treated defendants, so far as the laws allowed, with clemency and kindness, and thought it an unfortunate thing that Manilius should not have this advantage; wherefore, since only one day was left to his disposal as praetor, he had purposely set this day for the trial, and surely it was not the part of one who wished to help Manilius to defer it to another praetor’s term. 7 These words produced a wonderful change in the feelings of the people, and with many expressions of approval they begged Cicero to assume the defence of Manilius. This he willingly consented to do, chiefly for the sake of Pompey, who was absent, and once more mounting the rostra harangued the people anew, vigorously attacking the oligarchical party and those who were jealous of Pompey.

10 1 Yet he was advanced to the consulship no less by the aristocrats than by the common people, and in the interests of the city, both parties seconding his efforts for the following reasons. 2 The change which Sulla had made in the constitution at first appeared absurd, but now it seemed to the majority, owing to lapse of time and their familiarity with it, to afford at last a kind of settlement which was not to be despised. There were those, however, who sought to agitate and change the existing status for the sake of their own gain, and not for the best interests of the state, while Pompey was still carrying on war with the kings in Pontus and Armenia, and there was no power in Rome which was able to cope with the revolutionaries. 3 These had for their chief a man of bold, enterprising, and versatile character, Lucius Catiline, who, in addition to other great crimes, had once been accused of deflowering his own daughter and of killing his own brother; and fearing prosecution for this murder, he persuaded Sulla to put his brother’s name, as though he were still alive, in the list of those who were to be put to death under proscription. 4 Taking this man, then, as their leader, the miscreants gave various pledges to one another, one of which was the sacrifice of a man and the tasting of his flesh. Moreover, Catiline had corrupted a large part of the young men in the city, supplying them continually with amusements, banquets, and amours, and furnishing without stint the money to spend on these things. 5 Besides, all Etruria was roused to revolt, as well as most of Cisalpine Gaul. And Rome was most dangerously disposed towards change on account of the irregularity in the distribution of property, since men of the highest reputation and spirit had beggared themselves on shows, feasts, pursuit of office, and buildings, and riches had streamed into the coffers of low-born and mean men, so that matters needed only a slight impulse to disturb them, and it was in the power of any bold man to overthrow the commonwealth, which of itself was in a diseased condition.

11 However, Catiline wished to obtain first a strong base of operations, and therefore sued for the consulship; and he had bright hopes that he would share the consulship with Caius Antonius, a man who, of himself, would probably not take the lead either for good or for bad, but would add strength to another who took the lead. 2 Most of the better class of citizens were aware of this, and therefore put forward Cicero for the consulship, and as the people readily accepted him, Catiline was defeated, and Cicero and Caius Antonius were elected. 3 And yet Cicero was the only one of the candidates who was the son, not of a senator, but of a knight.

12 1 The schemes of Catiline were still to remain concealed from the multitude, but great preliminary struggles awaited the consulship of Cicero. 2 For, in the first place, those who were prevented from holding office by the laws of Sulla, and they were neither few nor weak, sued for offices and tried to win the favour of the people, making many charges against the tyranny of Sulla which were just and true, indeed, but disturbing the government at an improper and unseasonable time; and, in the second place, the tribunes were introducing laws to the same purpose, appointing a commission of ten men with unlimited powers, to whom was committed, as supreme masters of all Italy, of all Syria, and of all the territories which Pompey had lately added to the empire, the right to sell the public lands, to try whom they pleased, to send into exile, to settle cities, to take moneys from the public treasury, and to levy and maintain as many soldiers as they wanted. 3 Therefore many of the prominent men also were in favour of the law, and foremost among them Antonius the colleague of Cicero, who expected to be one of the ten. It was thought also that he knew about the conspiracy of Catiline and was not averse to it, owing to the magnitude of his debts; 4 and this was what gave most alarm to the nobles.

This alarm Cicero first sought to allay by getting the province of Macedonia voted to his colleague, while he himself declined the proffered province of Gaul; and by this favour he induced Antonius, like a hired actor, to play the second rôle to him in defence of their country. 5 Then, as soon as Antonius had been caught and was tractable, Cicero opposed himself with more courage to the innovators. Accordingly, he denounced the proposed law in the senate at great length, and so terrified the very promoters of it that they had no reply to make to him. 6 And when they made a second attempt and after full preparation summoned the consuls to appear before the people, Cicero had not the slightest fear, but bidding the senate follow him and leading the way, he not only got the law rejected, but also induced the tribunes to desist from the rest of their measures, so overpowered were they by his eloquence.

13 1 For this man beyond all others showed the Romans how great a charm eloquence adds to the right, and that justice is invincible if it is correctly put in words, and that it behooves the careful statesman always in his acts to choose the right instead of the agreeable, and in his words to take away all vexatious features from what is advantageous. 2 A proof of the charm of his discourse may be found in an incident of his consulship connected with the public spectacles. In earlier times, it seems, the men of the equestrian order were mingled with the multitudes in the theatres and saw the spectacles along with the people, seated as chance would have it; Marcus Otho was the first to separate in point of honour the knights from the rest of the citizens, which he did when he was praetor, and gave them a particular place of their own at the spectacles, which they still retain. 3 The people took this as a mark of dishonour to themselves, and when Otho appeared in the theatre they hissed him insultingly, while the knights received him with loud applause. The people renewed and increased their hisses, and then the knights their applause. 4 After this they turned upon one another with reviling words, and disorder reigned in the theatre. When Cicero heard of this he came and summoned the people to the temple of Bellona, where he rebuked and exhorted them, whereupon they went back again to the theatre and applauded Otho loudly, and vied with the knights in showing him honour and esteem.

14 1 But Catiline and his fellow-conspirators, who at first were cowed and terrified, began once more to take courage, and assembling themselves together exhorted one another to take matters in hand more boldly before Pompey came back, and he was said to be now returning with his army. 2 It was the old soldiers of Sulla, however, who were most of all urging Catiline on to action. These were to be found in all parts of Italy, but the greatest numbers and the most warlike of them had been scattered among the cities of Etruria, and were again dreaming of robbing and plundering the wealth that lay ready to hand. 3 These men, I say, with Manlius for a leader, one of the men who had served with distinction under Sulla, associated themselves with Catiline and came to Rome to take part in the consular elections. For Catiline was again a candidate for the consulship, and had determined to kill Cicero in the very tumult of the elections. 4 Moreover, even the heavenly powers seemed, by earthquakes and thunderbolts and apparitions, to foreshow what was coming to pass. And there were also human testimonies which were true, indeed, but not sufficient for the conviction of a man of reputation and great power like Catiline. 5 For this reason Cicero postponed the day of the elections, and summoning Catiline to the senate, examined him concerning what was reported. 6 But Catiline, thinking that there were many in the senate who were desirous of a revolution, and at the same time making a display of himself to the conspirators, gave Cicero the answer of a madman: “What dreadful thing, pray,” said he, “am I doing, if, when there are two bodies, one lean and wasted, but with a head, and the other headless, but strong and large, I myself become a head for this?” 7 Since this riddle of Catiline’s referred to the senate and the people, Cicero was all the more alarmed, and he wore a breastplate when all the nobles and many of the young men escorted him from his house to the Campus Martius. 8 Moreover, he purposely allowed the spectators to get a glimpse of his breastplate by loosing his tunic from his shoulders, thus showing them his peril. The people were incensed and rallied about him; and finally, when they voted, they rejected Catiline once more, and elected Silanus and Murena consuls.

15 1 Not long after this, when Catiline’s soldiers in Etruria were already assembling and forming into companies, and when the day set for their attack was near, there came to the house of Cicero at midnight men who were the leading and most powerful Romans, Marcus Crassus, Marcus Marcellus, and Scipio Metellus; and knocking at the door and summoning the doorkeeper, they bade him wake Cicero and tell him they were there. Their business was what I shall now relate. 2 After Crassus had dined, his doorkeeper handed him some letters which an unknown man had brought; they were addressed to different persons, and one, which had no signature, was for Crassus himself. 3 Crassus read this letter only, and since its contents told him that there was to be much bloodshed caused by Catiline, and advised him to escape secretly from the city, he did not open the rest, but came at once to Cicero, terrified by the danger, and seeking to free himself somewhat from charges that had been made against him on account of his friendship for Catiline.

4 Cicero, accordingly, after deliberation, convened the senate at break of day, and carrying the letters thither gave them to the persons to whom they had been sent, with orders to read them aloud. All the letters alike were found to tell of a plot. 5 And when also Quintus Arrius, a man of praetorian dignity, brought word of the soldiers who were being mustered into companies in Etruria, and Manlius was reported to be hovering about the cities there with a large force, in constant expectation of some news from Rome, the senate passed a decree that matters should be put in the hands of the consuls, who were to accept the charge and manage as best they knew how for the preservation of the city. Now, the senate is not wont to do this often, but only when it fears some great danger.

16 1 On receiving this power Cicero entrusted matters outside to Quintus Metellus, while he himself kept the city in hand and daily went forth attended by so large a bodyguard that a great part of the forum was occupied when he entered it with his escort. Thereupon Catiline, no longer able to endure the delay, resolved to hasten forth to Manlius and his army, and ordered Marcius and Cethegus to take their swords and go early in the morning to the house of Cicero on pretence of paying him their respects, and there to fall upon him and dispatch him. 2 This scheme Fulvia, a woman of high rank, made known to Cicero, coming to him by night and urging him to be on his guard against Cethegus and his companion. 3 The men came at break of day, and when they were prevented from entering, they were incensed and made an outcry at the door, which made them the more suspected. Then Cicero went forth and summoned the senate to the temple of Jupiter Stesius (or Stator, as the Romans say), which was situated at the beginning of the Via Sacra, as you go up to the Palatine hill. 4 Thither Catiline also came with the rest in order to make his defence; no senator, however, would sit with him, but all moved away from the bench where he was. 5 And when he began to speak he was interrupted by outcries, and at last Cicero rose and ordered him to depart from the city, saying that, since one of them did his work with words and the other with arms, the city-wall must needs lie between them. 6 Catiline, accordingly, left the city at once with three hundred armed followers, assumed the fasces and axes as though he were a magistrate, raised standards, and marched to join Manlius; and since about twenty thousand men altogether had been collected, he marched round to the various cities endeavouring to persuade them to revolt, so that there was now open war, and Antonius was sent off to fight it out.

17 1 The creatures of Catiline who had been left behind in the city were brought together and encouraged by Cornelius Lentulus, surnamed Sura, a man of illustrious birth, but one who had led a low life and for his licentiousness had formerly been expelled from the senate, though now he was serving as praetor for the second time, as is the custom with those who have recovered their senatorial dignity. 2 It is said too that he got his surname of Sura for the following reason. In Sulla’s time he was quaestor and lost and wasted large amounts of the public moneys. 3 Sulla was angry at this and demanded an accounting from him in the senate, whereupon Lentulus came forward with a very careless and contemptuous air and said that he would not give an account, but would offer his leg, as boys were accustomed to do when they were playing ball and made a miss. 4 On this account he was surnamed Sura, for “sura” is the Roman word for leg. At another time, too, he was under prosecution and had bribed some of the jurors, and when he was acquitted by only two votes, he said that what he had given to the second juror was wasted money, since it would have sufficed if he had been acquitted by one vote only.

5 Such was the nature of this man who had been stirred up by Catiline, and he was further corrupted by vain hopes held out to him by false prophets and jugglers. These recited forged oracles in verse purporting to come from the Sibylline books, which set forth that three Cornelii were fated to be monarchs in Rome, two of whom had already fulfilled their destiny, namely, Cinna and Sulla, and that now to him, the third and remaining Cornelius, the heavenly powers were come with a proffer of the monarchy, which he must by all means accept, and not ruin his opportunities by delay, like Catiline.

18 1 Accordingly, it was no trifling or insignificant plan which Lentulus was cherishing, nay, it was decided to kill all the senators and as many of the other citizens as they could, to burn down the city itself, and to spare no one except the children of Pompey; these they were to seize and hold in their own custody and keep as hostages for their reconciliation with Pompey; for already there was current a wide-spread and sure report of his coming back from his great expedition. 2 A night had also been fixed for the attempt, a night of the Saturnalia, and swords, tow, and brimstone had been carried to the house of Cethegus and hidden there. 3 Moreover, they had appointed a hundred men and assigned by lot as many quarters of Rome to each one severally, in order that within a short time many might play the incendiary and the city be everywhere in a blaze. Others, too, were to stop up the aqueducts and kill those who tried to bring water.

4 But while this was going on, there chanced to be staying at Rome two ambassadors of the Allobroges, a nation which at that time was in a particularly evil plight and felt oppressed by the Roman sway. 5 These men Lentulus and his partisans thought would be useful in stirring up Gaul to revolt, and therefore took them into the conspiracy. They also gave them letters to their senate, and letters to Catiline, making the senate promises of freedom and urging Catiline to set the slaves free and march upon Rome. 6 They also sent with them to Catiline a certain Titus of Croton, who was to carry the letters. 7 But the conspirators were unbalanced men who seldom met together without wine and women, while Cicero was following their schemes industriously, with sober judgement and surpassing sagacity; he also had many men outside of their conspiracy who kept watch upon their doings and helped him track them down, and he conferred secretly and confidentially with many who were supposed to belong to the conspiracy; he therefore came to know of their conference with the strangers, and, laying an ambush by night, he seized the man of Croton and his letters with the secret co-operation of the Allobroges.

19 1 At break of day, then, he assembled the senate in the temple of Concord, read the letters aloud, and examined the informers. Silanus Junius also said that certain ones had heard Cethegus declare that three consuls and four praetors were going to be taken off. Piso, too, a man of consular dignity, brought in other reports of a like nature. 2 Moreover, Caius Sulpicius, one of the praetors, on being sent to the house of Cethegus, found in it many missiles and weapons, and a huge quantity of swords and knives, all newly sharpened. 3 And finally, after the senate had voted immunity to the man of Croton on condition that he gave information, Lentulus was convicted, resigned his office (he was then praetor), and laying aside his purple-bordered toga in the senate, assumed in its place a garment suitable to his predicament. 4 He and his associates, therefore, were handed over to the praetors for custody without fetters.

It was now evening, and the people were waiting about the temple in throngs, when Cicero came forth and told his fellow-citizens what had been done. They then escorted him to the house of a friend and neighbour, since his own was occupied by the women, who were celebrating mysterious rites to a goddess whom the Romans call Bona Dea, and the Greeks, Gynaeceia. 5 Sacrifice is offered to her annually in the house of the consul by his wife or his mother, in the presence of the Vestal Virgins. Cicero, then, having gone into his friend’s house, began to deliberate with himself — and he had only very few companions — what he should do with the men. 6 For he shrank from inflicting the extreme penalty, and the one befitting such great crimes, and he hesitated to do it because of the kindliness of his nature, and at the same time that he might not appear to make an excessive use of his power and to trample ruthlessly upon men who were of the highest birth and had powerful friends in the city; and if he treated them with less severity, he was afraid of the peril into which they would bring the state. 7 For if they suffered any milder penalty than death, he was sure they would not be satisfied, but would break out into every extreme of boldness, having added fresh rage to their old villainy: and he himself would be thought unmanly and weak, especially as the multitude already thought him very far from courageous.

20 1 While Cicero was in this perplexity, a sign was given to the women who were sacrificing. The altar, it seems, although the fire was already thought to have gone out, sent forth from the ashes and burnt bark upon it a great bright blaze. 2 The rest of the women were terrified at this, but the sacred virgins bade Terentia the wife of Cicero go with all speed to her husband and tell him to carry out his resolutions in behalf of the country, since the goddess was giving him a great light on this path to safety and glory. 3 So Terentia, who was generally of no mild spirit nor without natural courage, but an ambitious woman, and, as Cicero himself tells us, more inclined to make herself a partner in his political perplexities than to share with him her domestic concerns, gave him this message and incited him against the conspirators; so likewise did Quintus, his brother, and Publius Nigidius, one of his philosophical companions, of whom he made the most and greatest use in his political undertakings.

4 On the following day the senate discussed the punishment of the conspirators, and Silanus, who was the first to be asked to give his opinion, said that they ought to be taken to prison and there suffer extremest punishment. 5 All the senators acceded to his opinion one after the other, until it came to Caius Caesar, who afterwards became dictator. 6 At this time, however, he was a young man still and at the very beginning of his rise to power, but in his public policy and his hopes he had already entered upon that road by which he changed the Roman state into a monarchy. His designs were still unnoticed by the rest, but to Cicero he had given many grounds for suspicion, and yet no hold which could lead to his conviction, although many were heard to say that he had come near being caught by Cicero, but had eluded him. 7 Some, however, say that Cicero purposely overlooked and neglected the information against him through fear of his friends and his power, since it was clear to every one that the other conspirators would be included in Caesar’s acquittal, rather than Caesar in their punishment.

21 1 When, then, it was Caesar’s turn to give his opinion, he rose and declared it to be against putting the conspirators to death, but in favor of confiscating their property and removing them to whatever cities of Italy Cicero might deem best, there to be put in fetters and closely guarded until Catiline should be defeated. 2 The proposal of Caesar was merciful and its author a very able speaker, and Cicero added no little weight to it. 3 For when he rose to speak himself, he handled the subject in both ways, now favouring the first proposal and now that of Caesar. All his friends, too, thinking that Caesar’s proposal was an advantageous one for Cicero, who would be less subject to censure if he did not put the conspirators to death, chose the second proposal rather, so that Silanus also changed his position and excused himself by saying that even his proposal had not meant death: for “extremest punishment,” in the case of a Roman senator, meant the prison. 4 Lutatius Catulus was the first to oppose the opinion which Caesar had given; then Cato followed him, helping by the vehemence of his speech to fix suspicion upon Caesar, and filled the senate with angry resolution, so that a decree of death was passed upon the conspirators. 5 As regarded the confiscation of their property, however, Caesar made opposition, deeming it wrong that the merciful part of his own proposal should be rejected and the one part that was most severe adopted. And when many of the senators insisted upon it, he invoked the aid of the tribunes, but they would not listen to his appeal; Cicero himself, however, yielded the point, and remitted that part of the vote which called for confiscation.

22 1 Then he went with the senate to fetch the conspirators. These were not all in the same place, but different praetors had different ones under guard. 2 And first he took Lentulus from the Palatine hill and led him along the Via Sacra and through the middle of the forum, the men of highest authority surrounding him as a body-guard, and the people shuddering at what was being done and passing along in silence, and especially the young men, as though they thought they were being initiated with fear and trembling into some ancient mysteries of an aristocratic regime. 3 When Cicero had passed through the forum and reached the prison, he delivered Lentulus to the public executioner with the order to put him to death. Then Cethegus in his turn, and so each one of the others, he brought down to the prison and had him executed. 4 And seeing that many members of the conspiracy were still assembled in the forum in ignorance of what had been done and waiting for night to come, with the idea that the men were still living and might be rescued, he cried to them with a loud voice and said: “They have lived.” For thus the Romans who wish to avoid words of ill omen indicate death.

5 It was now evening, and Cicero went up through the forum to his house, the citizens no longer escorting him on his way with silent decorum, but receiving him with cries and clapping of hands as he passed along, calling him the saviour and founder of his country. And many lights illuminated the streets, since people placed lamps and torches at their doors. 6 The women, too, displayed lights upon the house-tops in honour of the man, and that they might see him going up to his home in great state under escort of the noblest citizens. Most of these had brought to an end great wars and entered the city in triumph, and had added to the Roman dominion no small extent of land and sea; but they now walked along confessing to one another that to many of the commanders and generals of the time the Roman people were indebted for wealth and spoils and power, but for preservation and safety to Cicero alone, who had freed them from so peculiar and so great a peril. 7 For it was not his preventing their schemes and punishing the schemers which seemed so wonderful, but his quenching the greatest of all revolutions with the fewest possible evils, without sedition and commotion. 8 For most of those who had flocked to the standard of Catiline, as soon as they learned the fate of Lentulus and Cethegus, deserted him and went away; and Catiline, after a conflict with his remaining forces against Antonius, perished himself and his army with him.

23 1 However, there were those who were ready to abuse Cicero for what he had done, and to work him harm, and they had as leaders, among the magistrates-elect, Caesar as praetor, and Metellus and Bestia as tribunes. 2 When these assumed office, Cicero having still a few days of consular authority, they would not permit him to harangue the people, but placing their benches so as to command the rostra, would not suffer or allow him to speak; instead, they ordered him, if he wished, merely to pronounce the oath usual on giving up office, and then come down. Cicero accepted these terms and came forward to pronounce his oath; 3 and when he had obtained silence, he pronounced, not the usual oath, but one of his own and a new one, swearing that in very truth he had saved his country and maintained her supremacy. And all the people confirmed his oath for him. 4 At this Caesar and the tribunes were still more vexed and contrived fresh troubles for Cicero. Among other things, a law was introduced by them for calling Pompey home with his army, in order, forsooth, that he might put down the arbitrary power of Cicero. 5 But Cato, who was tribune at this time, was a great help to Cicero and to the whole state, and opposed the measures of the other tribunes with an authority equal to theirs and a greater good repute. 6 For he easily put a stop to their other projects, and so highly extolled the “arbitrary power” of Cicero in a speech to the people, that they voted him the greatest honours ever conferred and called him the father of his country. For he was the first, as it seems, to receive this title, after Cato had given it to him before the people.

24 1 So at this time Cicero had the greatest power in the state, but he made himself generally odious, not by any base action, but by continually praising and magnifying himself, which made him hateful to many. 2 For there could be no session either of senate or assembly or court of justice in which one was not obliged to hear Catiline and Lentulus endlessly talked about. 3 Nay, he even went so far as to fill his books and writings with these praises of himself; and he made his oratory, which was naturally very pleasant and had the greatest charm, irksome and tedious to his hearers, since this unpleasant practice clung to him like a fatality. 4 But nevertheless, although he cherished so strong an ambition, he was free from envying others, since he was most ungrudging in his encomiums upon his predecessors and contemporaries, as may be gathered from his writings. 5 There are also many sayings of his on record which prove this; for instance, he said of Aristotle that he was a river of liquid gold, and of the dialogues of Plato that Jupiter, were it his nature to use human speech, would thus discourse. 6 Theophrastus, too, he used to call his own special delight. And when he was asked which of the speeches of Demosthenes he thought the best, he replied, “the longest.” And yet some of those who pretend to be imitators of Demosthenes dwell much upon an expression which Cicero used in a letter to one of his friends, to the effect that in some parts of his speeches Demosthenes nods; but of the great and admirable praises which he often bestows upon him, and of the fact that those speeches of his own to which he devoted most labour, namely, the speeches against Antony, were entitled by him Philippics, they say nothing.

7 Moreover, of the men of his own time who were famous for eloquence or learning, there is not one whom he did not make more famous by what he said or wrote in favour of him. For Cratippus the Peripatetic he obtained the Roman citizenship from Caesar, now in power, and he also induced the council of the Areopagus to pass a decree requesting him to remain at Athens and discourse with the young men, and thus be an ornament to the city. 8 Furthermore, there are letters from Cicero to Herodes, and others to his son, in which he urges them to study philosophy with Cratippus. 8 But Gorgias the rhetorician he censured for leading the young man into pleasures and drinking parties, and banished him from his son’s society. This is almost the only one of his Greek letters (there is also a second, addressed to Pelops of Byzantium) which was written in a spirit of anger; and Gorgias he properly rebukes, if, as he was thought to be, he was worthless and intemperate; but towards Pelops he shows a mean and querulous spirit for having neglected to obtain for him certain honorary decrees from the Byzantines.

25 1 These complaints were characteristic of ambition, as well as the fact that he was often led on by the cleverness of his speech to disregard propriety. For instance, he once served as advocate for Munatius, who was no sooner acquitted than he prosecuted a friend of Cicero’s, Sabinus, whereupon, it is said, Cicero was so transported with anger as to say: “Was it, pray, on your own merits, Munatius, that you were acquitted, and not because I spread much darkness about the court when before there was light?” 2 And again, he gained great applause by an encomium on Marcus Crassus from the rostra, and then a few days afterwards as publicly reviled him, whereupon Crassus said: “What, did you not stand there yourself a day or two ago and praise me?” “Yea,” said Cicero, “exercising my eloquence by way of practice on a bad subject.” 3 Again, Crassus once said that no Crassus had lived in Rome to be older than sixty years, and then tried to deny it, exclaiming, “What could have led me to say this?” “You knew,” said Cicero, “that the Romans would be delighted to hear it, and by that means you tried to court their favour.” 4 And when Crassus expressed his satisfaction with the Stoics because they represented the good man as rich, “Consider,” said Cicero, “whether your satisfaction is not rather due to their declaration that all things belong to the wise.” Now, Crassus was accused of covetousness. 5 Again, one of the sons of Crassus who was thought to resemble a certain Axius, and on this account had brought his mother’s name into scandalous connection with that of Axius, once made a successful speech in the senate, and when Cicero was asked what he thought of him, he answered with the Greek words “Axios Krassou.”

26 1 When Crassus was about to set out for Syria, wishing that Cicero should be a friend rather than an enemy, he said to him in a friendly manner that he wished to dine with him; and Cicero readily received him into his house. 2 But a few days afterwards, when some friends interceded with him for Vatinius, saying that the man sought reconciliation and friendship (for he was an enemy), “It surely cannot be,” said Cicero, “that Vatinius also wishes to dine with me.” Such, then, was his treatment of Crassus. 3 Now, Vatinius himself had swellings on his neck, and once when he was pleading a case Cicero called him a tumid orator. Again, after hearing that Vatinius was dead, and then after a little learning for a surety that he was alive, “Wretchedly perish, then,” said Cicero, “the wretch who lied!” 4 And again, Caesar once got a decree passed that the land in Campania should be divided among his soldiers, and many of the senators were dissatisfied, and Lucius Gellius, who was about the oldest of them, declared that it should never be done while he was alive; whereupon Cicero said: “Let us wait, since Gellius does not ask for a long postponement.” 5 There was a certain Octavius, too, who was reputed to be of African descent; to this man, who said at a certain trial that he could not hear Cicero, the orator replied: “And yet your ear is not without a perforation.” 6 And when Metellus Nepos declared that Cicero had brought more men to death as a hostile witness than he had saved from it as an advocate, “Yes,” said Cicero, “I admit that my credibility is greater than my eloquence.” 7 Again, when a certain young man who was accused of having given his father poison in a cake put on bold airs and threatened to cover Cicero with abuse, “That,” said Cicero, “I would rather have from you than a cake.” 8 There was Publius Sextius,b too, who retained Cicero as an advocate in a case, along with others, and then wanted to do all the speaking himself, and would allow no one else a word; when it was clear that he was going to be acquitted by the jurors and the vote was already being given, “Use your opportunity to day, Sextius,” said Cicero, “for to morrow you are going to be a nobody.” 9 Publius Consta, too, who wanted to be a lawyer, but was ignorant and stupid, was once summoned by Cicero as witness in a case; and when he kept saying that he knew nothing, “Perhaps,” said Cicero, “you think you are being questioned on points of law.” Again, in a dispute with Cicero, Metellus Nepos asked repeatedly “Who is your father?” “In your case,” said Cicero, “your mother has made the answer to this question rather difficult.” 10 Now, the mother of Nepos was thought to be unchaste, and he himself a fickle sort of man. He once suddenly deserted his office of tribune and sailed off to join Pompey in Syria, and then came back from there with even less reason. 11 Moreover, after burying his teacher Philagrus with more than usual ceremony, he set upon his tomb a raven in stone; whereupon Cicero remarked: “In this you have acted more wisely than is your wont, for he taught you to fly rather than to speak.” 12 And again, when Marcus Appius prefaced his speech in a case by saying that his friend had begged him to exhibit diligence, eloquence, and fidelity, “And then,” said Cicero, “are you so hard-hearted as to exhibit none of those great qualities which your friend demanded?”

27 1 Now, this use of very biting jests against enemies or legal opponents seems to be part of the orator’s business; but his indiscriminate attacks for the sake of raising a laugh made many people hate Cicero. And I will give a few instances of this also. 2 Marcus Aquinius, who had two sons-in law in exile, he called Adrastus. 3 Again, Lucius Cotta, who held the office of censor, was very fond of wine, and Cicero, when canvassing for the consulship, was a-thirst, and as his friends stood about him while he drank, said: “You have good reason to fear that the censor will deal harshly with me — for drinking water.” 4 And when he met Voconius escorting three very ugly daughters, he cried out: —

“It was against the will of Phoebus that he begat children.”

5 Again, when Marcus Gellius, who was thought to be of servile birth, had read letters to the senate in a loud and clear voice, “Do not marvel,” said Cicero, “he too is one of those who have cried aloud for their freedom.” 6 And when Faustus, the son of the Sulla who was dictator at Rome and placarded many people for death, got into debt, squandered much of his substance, and placarded his household goods for sale, Cicero said he liked this placarding better than his father’s.

28 1 As a consequence of this he became odious to many; and besides, the partisans of Clodius combined against him on the following ground. Clodius was a man of noble birth, young in years, but bold and presumptuous in spirit. 2 This man, being in love with Pompeia, Caesar’s wife, got into his house secretly, by assuming the dress and guise of a lute-player; for the women of Rome were celebrating in Caesar’s house that mysterious rite which men were not allowed to witness, and no man was there; but being still a beardless youth Clodius hoped without being noticed to slip through to Pompeia along with the women. 3 But since he got in at night and the house was large, he lost his way in the passages; and as he was wandering about, a maid of Aurelia, Caesar’s mother, caught sight of him and asked him his name. Being thus compelled to speak, he said that he was looking for an attendant of Pompeia named Abra, whereupon the maid, perceiving that his voice was not that of a woman, raised a cry and called the women together. 4 These shut the doors, searched carefully all about, and found Clodius, who had taken refuge in the chamber of the girl with whom he came into the house. The affair having become noised abroad, Caesar divorced Pompeia and had an action for sacrilege brought against Clodius.

29 1 Now, Cicero was a friend of Clodius, and in the affair of Catiline had found him a most eager co-worker and guardian of his person; but when Clodius replied to the charge against him by insisting that he had not even been in Rome at the time, but had been staying in places at the farthest remove from there, Cicero testified against him, declaring that Clodius had come to his house and consulted him on certain matters; which was true. 2 However, it was thought that Cicero did not give his testimony for the truth’s sake, but by way of defence against the charges of his own wife Terentia. 3 For there was enmity between her and Clodius on account of his sister Clodia, whom Terentia thought to be desirous of marrying Cicero and to be contriving this with the aid of a certain Tullus; now, Tullus was a companion and an especial intimate of Cicero, and his constant visits and attentions to Clodia, who lived near by, made Terentia suspicious. 4 So, being a woman of harsh nature, and having sway over Cicero, she incited him to join in the attack upon Clodius and give testimony against him. Moreover, many men of the better class bore witness against Clodius for perjury, recklessness, bribery of the multitude, and debauching of women. And Lucullus actually produced female slaves who testified that Clodius had commerce with his youngest sister when she was living with Lucullus as his wife. 5 There was also a general belief that Clodius had intercourse with his other two sisters, of whom Tertia was the wife of Marcius Rex, and Clodia of Metellus Celer; the latter was called Quadrantia, because one of her lovers had put copper coins into a purse and sent them to her for silver, and the smallest copper coin was called “quadrans.” It was with regard to this sister in particular that Clodius was in evil repute. 6 However, since the people at this time set themselves against those who combined and testified against him, the jurors were frightened and surrounded themselves with a guard, and most of them cast their voting-tablets with the writing on them confused. But nevertheless those who were for acquittal appeared to be in the majority; and some bribery also was said to have been used. 7 This led Catulus to say, when he met the jurors, “It was indeed as a measure of safety that you asked for your guard; you were afraid that someone would take your money away from you.” 8 And Cicero, when Clodius told him that as a witness he had found no credit with the jurors, said: “Nay, twenty-five of the jurors gave me credit, for so many voted against you; and thirty of them gave you no credit, for they did not vote to acquit you until they had got your money.” 9 Caesar, however, when summoned as a witness, gave no testimony against Clodius, but said that he had put her away because Caesar’s wife must be free not only from shameful conduct, but even from shameful report.

30 1 But Clodius, having escaped his peril, and having been chosen tribune, at once began to attack Cicero, arraying and stirring up against him all things and all men alike. 2 He won the favour of the people by benevolent laws, got large provinces voted to each of the consuls (Macedonia to Piso, and Syria to Gabinius), brought many of the poorer class into organized political activity, and kept armed slaves about his person. 3 Now, of the three men who at that time had most power, Crassus was an out-and out foe of Cicero, Pompey was dallying with both, and Caesar was about to set out for Gaul with an army; into Caesar’s favour, therefore, Cicero insinuated himself (although Caesar was not a friend, but an object of suspicion owing to the affair of Catiline), and asked to accompany him on his campaign as legate. 4 But no sooner had Caesar granted the request than Clodius, seeing that Cicero was thus escaping his tribunicial power, pretended to be desirous of a reconciliation, and by laying the chief blame upon Terentia, and always speaking of Cicero in friendly terms and using kindly expressions about him, as one who bore him no hatred or even ill-will, but had moderate complaints to make of him in a friendly way, he altogether took away his fear, so that he declined the office of legate under Caesar and again applied himself to public matters. 5 But at this conduct Caesar was exasperated, and encouraged Clodius against Cicero, and completely alienated Pompey from him, while he himself testified before the people that he did not think it right or lawful that men should be put to death without a trial, as in the case of Lentulus, Cethegus, and their accomplices. 6 For such was the denunciation made against Cicero, and to this he was summoned to make answer. And so, being in peril of prosecution, he changed his attire, and with his hair untrimmed went about supplicating the people. 7 But Clodius met him everywhere in the streets, with a band of bold and insolent men about him, who made many unbridled jests upon Cicero’s change of attire, and often pelted him with mud and stones, and so interfered with his supplications to the people.

31 1 However, in the first place, nearly the whole body of knights changed their attire with Cicero, and as many as twenty thousand young men escorted him with their hair untrimmed and joined in his suppliant entreaties to the people; and besides, when the senate had met in order to pass a vote that the people should change their dress in token of public calamity, and the consuls had opposed it, and Clodius was in arms about the senate-house, not a few of the senators ran out, rending their garments and crying aloud. 2 But since this sight awakened neither pity nor any mercy, but Cicero was obliged either to go into exile or to appeal to force and the sword against Clodius, he begged for aid from Pompey, who had purposely got out of the way and was staying at his country seat in the Alban hills. First Cicero sent Piso, his son-in law, to entreat for him; then he went up thither himself also. 3 Pompey, however, on learning of his coming, could not endure to see him, for he felt a strong sense of shame towards the man who had made great struggles in his behalf and had often adopted a political course to please him; but since he was Caesar’s son-in law, at his request he proved false to his old obligations, slipped out by another door, and so ran away from the interview. 4 Thus betrayed by him and left desolate, Cicero fled for refuge to the consuls. Gabinius was always severe with him, but Piso dealt with him more gently, advising him to stand aside and yield to the impetuous assaults of Clodius, to submit to the change in the times, and to become once more a saviour of his country when she was involved in seditions and misfortunes through Clodius.

5 After getting such answer to his appeal, Cicero took counsel with his friends: Lucullus urged him to remain in the city, believing that he would prevail; but others advised him to go into exile, believing that the people would quickly long for him when they were sated with the folly and madness of Clodius. 6 This Cicero decided to do; so he took the statue of Minerva which had long stood in his house, and which he honoured exceedingly, carried it to the capitol, and dedicated it there with the inscription “To Minerva, Guardian of Rome”; then, accepting an escort from his friends, about midnight slipped out of the city, and set out on foot through Lucania, desiring to reach Sicily.

32 1 But as soon as it was known that he had fled, Clodius caused a vote of banishment to be passed upon him, and issued an edict that all men should refuse him fire and water and that no man should give him shelter within five hundred miles of Italy. 2 Now, most men paid not the slightest heed to this edict out of respect for Cicero, and escorted him on his way with every mark of kindness; but at Hipponium, a city of Lucania, which is now called Vibo, Vibius, a Sicilian, who had profited much from Cicero’s friendship and pity by being made prefect of engineers during his consulship, would not receive him in his house, but sent him word that he would assign him his country-place for residence; and Caius Vergilius, the praetor of Sicily, who had been on most intimate terms with Cicero, wrote him to keep away from Sicily. 3 Disheartened at this treatment, he set out for Brundisium, and from there tried to cross to Dyrrhachium with a fair breeze, but since he met a counter-wind at sea he came back the next day, and then set sail again. 4 It is said, too, that after he had put in at Dyrrhachium and was about to land, there was an earthquake accompanied by a violent convulsion of the sea. Wherefore the soothsayers conjectured that his exile would not be lasting, since these were signs of change. 5 But although many people visited him out of goodwill, and the Greek cities vied with one another in sending him deputations, still, he passed his time for the most part in dejection and great grief, looking off towards Italy like a disconsolate lover, while in his spirit he became very petty and mean by reason of his misfortune, and was more humbled than one would have expected in a man who had enjoyed so lofty a discipline as his. 6 And yet he often asked his friends not to call him an orator, but a philosopher, because he had chosen philosophy as an occupation, but used oratory merely as an instrument for attaining the needful ends of a political career. 7 But public opinion has great power to wash away reason, like a dye, from the soul of man, and by force of familiar association to impress the feelings of the vulgar on those who engage in political life, unless one is right well on his guard when he engages himself in things external, and is resolved to participate only in the things themselves, and not in the feelings attendant upon them.

33 1 As for Clodius, after driving Cicero away he burned down his villas, and burned down his house, and erected on its site a temple to Liberty; the rest of his property he offered for sale and had it proclaimed daily, but nobody would buy anything. 2 Being therefore formidable to the patricians, and dragging along with him the people, who indulged in great boldness and effrontery, he assailed Pompey, attacking fiercely some of the arrangements made by him on his expedition. 3 The disgrace which this brought upon Pompey led him to reproach himself for his abandonment of Cicero; and changing front he used every effort to effect Cicero’s return, and so did his friends. But since Clodius opposed himself to this, the senate decided to ratify no measure that came up in the mean time and to do no public business, unless Cicero should be permitted to return. 4 During the consulship of Lentulus, however, when the disorder went on increasing, so that tribunes were wounded in the forum and Quintus the brother of Cicero lay unnoticed for dead among the slain, the people began to change their minds, and Annius Milo, one of the tribunes, first ventured to prosecute Clodius for violence, and many joined themselves to Pompey both from the people and from the surrounding cities. 5 With these Pompey came forth, drove Clodius from the forum, and summoned the citizens to the vote. And it is said that the people never passed any vote with such unanimity. 6 The senate, too, vying with the people, wrote letters of thanks to all the cities which had ministered to Cicero during his exile, and decreed that his house and his villas, which Clodius had destroyed, should be restored at the public cost.

7 Thus Cicero came home in the sixteenth month after his exile; and so great was the joy of the cities and the eagerness of men to meet him that what was said by Cicero afterwards fell short of the truth. 8 He said, namely, that Italy had taken him on her shoulders and carried him into Rome. And there Crassus also, who was his enemy before his exile, now readily met him and was reconciled with him, to gratify his son Publius, as he said, who was an ardent admirer of Cicero.

34 1 After allowing only a short time to pass and watching for an opportunity when Clodius was absent from the city, Cicero went up with a great company to the capitol, and there tore away and destroyed the tablets of the tribunes, in which were the records of their administration. 2 When Clodius brought charges against him for this and Cicero argued that it was illegal for Clodius to pass from the ranks of the patricians into the tribunate, and that therefore none of his acts was valid, Cato was indignant and spoke against Cicero; not that he approved of Clodius, nay, he was actually displeased at his political course, but he set forth that it was a strange and violent measure for the senate to vote the abrogation of so many acts and decrees, among which were those for his own administration in Cyprus and Byzantium. 3 This led to an antagonism between him and Cicero which came to no open manifestation, but made their friendly treatment of one another less marked.

35 1 After this Clodius was killed by Milo; and Milo, being prosecuted for murder, engaged Cicero as his advocate. But the senate was afraid that at the trial of Milo, who was a man of repute and high spirit, there might be a disturbance in the city, and therefore intrusted the superintendence of this and the other trials to Pompey, who was to furnish security for the city and the courts of justice. 2 So Pompey, while it was still night, posted his soldiers on the heights so as to command the forum, and Milo, fearing that Cicero might be disturbed at the unusual sight and conduct his case less successfully, persuaded him to be brought in a litter to the forum and to wait there quietly until the jurors assembled and the court-room was filled. 3 Now Cicero, as it would seem, was not only without courage under arms, but also felt fear when he began to speak, and in many trials he hardly ceased quivering and trembling after his eloquence had become high and sustained. 4 When he was to plead for Licinius Murena in a case brought against him by Cato, and was ambitious to surpass Hortensius, who had made a successful plea, he took no rest at all during the night before, so that his lack of sleep and his great anxiety did him harm, and he was thought inferior to himself in his plea. 5 And so at this time, when he came out of his litter to plead Milo’s cause and saw Pompey stationed on the heights as in a camp, and arms flashing all around the forum, he was confounded and could scarcely begin his speech, for his body quivered and his voice faltered; whereas Milo showed the good courage of a brave man at the trial and had not deigned to let his hair go untrimmed or to change his attire to a dark one; and this seems most of all to have contributed to his condemnation. However, Cicero’s behaviour led men to think him devoted to his friends rather than cowardly.

36 1 He became also one of the priests whom the Romans call Augurs, in place of the younger Crassus, who had died among the Parthians. Then the lot gave him Cilicia as his province, with an army of twelve thousand men-at arms and twenty-six hundred horsemen, and he set sail, with instructions to keep Cappadocia friendly and obedient to King Ariobarzanes. 2 This he accomplished and arranged satisfactorily without war, and seeing that the Cilicians, in view of the Parthian disaster to the Romans and the uprising in Syria, were in an agitated state, he pacified them by his mild government. 3 Gifts he would not receive, not even when the kings offered them, and he relieved the provincials from the expense of entertainments; but he himself daily received men of pleasing accomplishments at banquets which were not expensive, although generous. 4 His house, too, had no door-keeper, nor did anyone ever see him lying a-bed, but early in the morning he would stand or walk in front of his chamber and receive those who came to pay him their respects. 5 It is said, moreover, that he never ordered any man to be chastised with rods or to have his raiment torn from him, and that he never inflicted angry abuse or contumelious punishments. He discovered that much of the public property had been embezzled, and by restoring it he made the cities well-to do, and men who made restitution he maintained in their civil rights without further penalties. 6 He engaged in war, too, and routed the robbers who made their homes on Mount Amanus; and for this he was actually saluted by his soldiers as Imperator. When Caelius the orator asked Cicero to send him panthers from Cilicia for a certain spectacle at Rome, Cicero, pluming himself upon his exploits, wrote to him that there were no panthers in Cilicia; for they had fled to Caria in indignation because they alone were warred upon, while everything else enjoyed peace. 7 On his voyage back from his province he first touched at Rhodes, and then gladly spent some time at Athens in fond remembrance of his old pursuits in that place. Then, after associating with men who were foremost for their learning, and after greeting his old-time friends and intimates, and after receiving from Greece the tokens of admiration that were his due, he returned to Rome, where a violent inflammation, as it were, was already forcing matters on towards the civil war.

37 1 Accordingly, when the senators were voting him a triumph, he said he would more gladly follow in Caesar’s triumphal procession if matters could be settled; and privately he gave much advice to Caesar by letter, and much to Pompey in person by way of personal entreaty, trying to mollify and pacify each of them. 2 But when things were past healing, and Caesar was advancing upon the city, and Pompey did not stay there, but abandoned the city in the company of many good men, Cicero did not take part in this flight, and was thought to be attaching himself to Caesar. And it is clear that his judgement drew him strongly in both directions and that he was in distress. 3 For he writes in his letters that he knew not which way he ought to turn, since Pompey had honourable and good grounds for going to war, while Caesar managed matters better and had more ability to save himself and his friends; he therefore knew from whom he should flee, but not to whom he should flee. 4 And when Trebatius, one of the companions of Caesar, wrote him a letter stating that Caesar thought he ought above all things to range himself on his side and share his hopes, but that if he declined to do this by reason of his age, he ought to go to Greece and take up a quiet life there out of the way of both, Cicero was amazed that Caesar himself did not write, and replied in a passion that he would do nothing unworthy of his political career. Such, then, is the purport of his letters.

38 1 But when Caesar set out for Spain, Cicero at once sailed to Pompey. The rest of Pompey’s followers were glad to see him, but when Cato saw him, he privately blamed him much for attaching himself to Pompey. In his own case, Cato said, it was not honourable to abandon the line of public policy which he had chosen from the beginning; but Cicero, though he was of more service to his country and his friends if he remained at home without taking sides and accommodated himself to the issue of events, without any reason and under no compulsion had made himself an enemy of Caesar, and had come thither to share in their great danger.

2 By these words the purpose of Cicero was upset, as well as by the fact that Pompey made no great use of him. But he was himself to blame for this, since he made no denial that he was sorry he had come, made light of Pompey’s preparations and showed a lurking displeasure at his plans, and did not refrain from jests and witty remarks about his comrades in arms; nay, although he himself always went about in the camp without a smile and scowling, still he made others laugh in spite of themselves. 3 And it will be well to give a few instances of this also. When Domitius, then, was advancing to a post of command a man who was no soldier, with the remark that he was gentle in his disposition and prudent, “Why, then,” said Cicero, “do you not keep him as a guardian of your children?” 4 And when certain ones were praising Theophanes the Lesbian, who was prefect of engineers in the camp, because he had given excellent consolation to the Rhodians on the loss of their fleet, “What a great blessing it is,” said Cicero, “to have a Greek as prefect!” 5 Again, when Caesar was successful for the most part and in a way was laying siege to them, Lentulus said he had heard that Caesar’s friends were gloomy, to which Cicero replied: “You mean that they are ill-disposed to Caesar.” 6 And when a certain Marcius, who had recently come from Italy, spoke of a report which prevailed in Rome that Pompey was besieged, “And then,” said Cicero, “did you sail off that you might see with your own eyes and believe?” 7 Again, after the defeat, when Nonnius said they ought to have good hopes, since seven eagles were left in the camp of Pompey, “Your advice would be good,” said Cicero, “if we were at war with jackdaws.” 8 And when Labienus, insisting on certain oracles, said that Pompey must prevail, “Yes,” said Cicero, “this is the generalship that has now cost us our camp.”

39 1 However, after the battle at Pharsalus, in which Cicero took no part because of illness, had been fought, and Pompey was in flight, Cato, who had a considerable army and a large fleet at Dyrrhachium, asked Cicero to take the command in accordance with custom and because of his superior consular rank. 2 But Cicero rejected the command and was altogether averse to sharing in the campaign, whereupon he came near being killed; for the young Pompey and his friends called him a traitor and drew their swords upon him, and that would have been the end of him had not Cato interposed and with difficulty rescued him and sent him away from the camp. 3 So Cicero put in at Brundisium and tarried there, waiting for Caesar, who was delayed by his affairs in Asia and Egypt. 4 But when word was brought that Caesar had landed at Tarentum and was coming round by land from there to Brundisium, Cicero hastened to meet him, being not altogether despondent, but feeling shame to test in the presence of many witnesses the temper of a man who was an enemy and victorious. 5 However, there was no need that he should do or say anything unworthy of himself. For Caesar, when he saw him approaching far in advance of the rest, got down and embraced him and journeyed on for many furlongs conversing with him alone. And after this he continued to show him honour and kindness, so that in his reply to the encomium upon Cato which Cicero wrote he praised Cicero’s eloquence and his life, as most of resembling that of Pericles and Theramenes. 6 Now, the discourse of Cicero was entitled “Cato,” and that of Caesar “Anti-Cato.”

It is said also that when Quintus Ligarius was under prosecution because he had been one of the enemies of Caesar, and Cicero was his advocate, Caesar said to his friends: “What is to prevent our hearing a speech from Cicero after all this while, since Ligarius has long been adjudged a villain and an enemy?” 7 But when Cicero had begun to speak and was moving his hearers beyond measure, and his speech, as it proceeded, showed varying pathos and amazing grace, Caesar’s face often changed colour and it was manifest that all the emotions of his soul were stirred; and at last, when the orator touched upon the struggles at Pharsalus, he was so greatly affected that his body shook and he dropped from his hand some of his documents. At any rate he acquitted Ligarius under compulsion.

40 1 After this, when the government had been changed to a monarchy, Cicero abstained from public affairs and devoted his time to those of the young men who wished to study philosophy, and mainly from his intimacy with these, since they were of the highest birth and standing, he was once more very influential in the state. 2 He made it his business also to compose and translate philosophical dialogues, and to render into Latin the several terms of dialectics and natural philosophy; for he it was, as they say, who first, or principally, provided Latin names for “phantasia,” “synkatathesis,” “epokhe,” and “katalepsis,” as well as for “atomon,” “ameres,” “kenon,” and many others like these, contriving partly by metaphors and partly by new and fitting terms to make them intelligible and familiar. 3 His facility in verse-making, too, he employed to divert himself. It is said, indeed, that when he applied himself to such work, he would make five hundred verses in a night.

During this time, then, he lived for the most part at his country-seat in Tusculum, and he used to write to his friends that he was living the life of Laertes, either jesting, as was his wont, or because his ambition filled him with a desire for public activity and made him dissatisfied with the turn things had taken. 4 He rarely went down to the city, and then only to pay court to Caesar, and he was foremost among those who advocated Caesar’s honours and were eager to be ever saying something new about him and his measures. Of this sort is what he said about the statues of Pompey. These Caesar ordered to be set up again after they had been thrown down and taken away; and they were set up again. 5 What Cicero said was that by this act of generosity Caesar did indeed set up the statues of Pompey, but firmly planted his own also.

41 1 He purposed, as we are told, to write a comprehensive history of his native country, combining with it many Greek details, and introducing there all the tales and myths which he had collected; but he was prevented by many public affairs which were contrary to his wishes, and by many private troubles, most of which seem to have been of his own choosing. 2 For in the first place he divorced his wife Terentia because he had been neglected by her during the war, so that he set out in lack of the necessary means for his journey, and even when he came back again to Italy did not find her considerate of him. 3 For she did not come to him herself, although he tarried a long time at Brundisium, and when her daughter, a young girl, made the long journey thither, she supplied her with no fitting escort and with no means; nay, she actually stripped and emptied Cicero’s house of all that it contained, besides incurring many large debts. These, indeed, are the most plausible reasons given for the divorce. 4 Terentia, however, denied that these were the reasons, and Cicero himself made her defence a telling one by marrying shortly afterwards a maiden. This he did, as Terentia asserted, out of love for her youthful beauty; but as Tiro, Cicero’s freedman, has written, to get means for the payment of his debts. 5 For the girl was very wealthy, and Cicero had been left her trustee and had charge of her property. So since he owed many tens of thousands he was persuaded by his friends and relatives to marry the girl, old as he was, and to get rid of his creditors by using her money. 6 But Antony, who spoke of the marriage in his replies to Cicero’s Philippics, says that he cast out of doors the wife with whom he had grown old, and at the same time makes witty jibes upon the stay-at home habits of Cicero, who was, he said, unfit for business or military service. 7 Not long after Cicero’s marriage his daughter died in child-birth at the house of Lentulus, to whom she had been married after the death of Piso, her former husband. 8 His friends came together from all quarters to comfort Cicero; but his grief at his misfortune was excessive, so that he actually divorced the wife he had wedded, because she was thought to be pleased at the death of Tullia.

42 1 Such, then, were Cicero’s domestic affairs. But in the design that was forming against Caesar he took no part, although he was one of the closest companions of Brutus and was thought to be distressed at the present and to long for the old state of affairs more than anybody else. 2 But the conspirators feared his natural disposition as being deficient in daring, and his time of life, in which courage fails the strongest natures. 3 And so, when the deed had been accomplished by the partisans of Brutus and Cassius, and the friends of Caesar were combining against the perpetrators of it, and it was feared that the city would again be plunged into civil wars, Antony, as consul, convened the senate and said a few words about concord, while Cicero, after a lengthy speech appropriate to the occasion, persuaded the senate to imitate the Athenians and decree an amnesty for the attack upon Caesar, and to assign provinces to Cassius and Brutus. But none of these things came to pass. 4 For when the people, who of themselves were strongly moved to pity, saw Caesar’s body carried through the forum, and when Antony showed them the garments drenched with blood and pierced everywhere with the swords, they went mad with rage and sought for the murderers in the forum, and ran to their houses with fire-brands in order to set them ablaze. 5 For this danger the conspirators were prepared beforehand and so escaped it, but expecting others many and great, they forsook the city.

43 1 At once, then, Antony was highly elated, and all men were fearful that he would make himself sole ruler, and Cicero most fearful of all. For Antony saw that Cicero’s power in the state was reviving, and knew that he was attached to Brutus and his party, and was therefore disturbed at his presence in the city. 2 And besides, they had previously been somewhat suspicious of one another because of the marked difference in their lives. 3 Fearing these things Cicero at first was inclined to sail to Syria with Dolabella, as his legate; but the consuls elect to succeed Antony, Hirtius and Pansa, who were good men and admirers of Cicero, begged him not to desert them, and undertook to put down Antony if Cicero would remain at Rome. So Cicero, who neither distrusted nor trusted them altogether, let Dolabella go without him, and after agreeing with Hirtius and Pansa to spend the summer at Athens, and to come back again when they had assumed office, set off by himself. 4 But there was some delay about his voyage, and, as is often the case, new and unexpected reports came from Rome, to the effect that Antony had undergone a wonderful change and was doing and administering everything to please the senate, and that matters needed only Cicero’s presence to assume the best possible complexion; he therefore blamed himself for his excessive caution and turned back again to Rome. 5 And in his first expectations he was not disappointed; for a great crowd of people, moved with joy and longing for him, poured forth to meet him, and almost a day’s time was consumed in the friendly greetings given him at the gates and as he entered the city. 6 On the following day, however, when Antony convened the senate and invited him to be present, Cicero did not come, but kept his bed, pretending to be indisposed from fatigue. The truth, however, seemed to be that he was afraid of a plot against him, in consequence of some suspicion and of information that had unexpectedly come to him on the road. 7 But Antony was indignant at the implication and sent soldiers with orders to bring Cicero or burn down his house; but since many opposed this course and entreated him to desist, he did so, after merely taking sureties. 8 And thenceforward they kept up this attitude, quietly ignoring one another and mutually on their guard, until the young Caesar came from Apollonia, assumed the inheritance of the elder Caesar, and engaged in a dispute with Antony concerning the twenty-five million drachmas which Antony was detaining from the estate.

44 1 After this, Philip, who had married the mother, and Marcellus, who had married the sister of the young Caesar, came with the young man to Cicero and made a compact that Cicero should give Caesar the influence derived from his eloquence and political position, both in the senate and before the people, and that Caesar should give Cicero the security to be derived from his wealth and his armed forces. For already the young man had about him many of the soldiers who had served under the elder Caesar. 2 It was thought, too, that there was a stronger reason why Cicero so readily accepted the young man’s friendship. 3 For it would appear that while Pompey and Caesar were still living Cicero dreamed that someone invited the sons of the senators to the capitol, on the ground that Jupiter was going to appoint one of their number ruler of Rome; and that the citizens eagerly ran and stationed themselves about the temple, while the youths, in their purple-bordered togas, seated themselves there in silence. 4 Suddenly the door of the temple opened, and one by one the youths rose and walked round past the god, who reviewed them all and sent them away sorrowing. But when this young Caesar advanced into his presence the god stretched out his hand and said: “O Romans, ye shall have an end of civil wars when this youth has become your ruler.” 5 By such a dream as this, they say, Cicero had impressed upon him the appearance of the youth, and retained it distinctly, but did not know him. The next day, however, as he was going down to the Campus Martius, the youths, who had just finished exercising there, were coming away, and the youth of his dream was seen by Cicero for the first time, and Cicero, amazed, inquired who his parents were. 6 Now, his father was Octavius, a man of no great prominence, but his mother was Attia, a daughter of Caesar’s sister. For this reason Caesar, who had no children of his own, willed his property and his family name to him. 7 After this, it is said, Cicero took pains to converse with the youth when they met, and the youth welcomed his kind attentions; and indeed it happened that he was born during Cicero’s consulship.

45 1 These, then, were the reasons that were mentioned; but it was Cicero’s hatred for Antony in the first place, and then his natural craving for honour, that attached him to the young Caesar, since he thought to add Caesar’s power to his own political influence. 2 And indeed the young man carried his court to him so far as actually to call him father. At this Brutus was very angry, and in his letters to Atticus attacked Cicero, saying that in paying court to Caesar through fear of Antony he was plainly not obtaining liberty for his country, but wooing a kind master for himself. 3 However, Brutus took up Cicero’s son who was studying philosophy at Athens, gave him a command, and achieved many successes through his instrumentality.

4 Cicero’s power in the city reached its greatest height at this time, and since he could do what he pleased, he raised a successful faction against Antony, drove him out of the city, and sent out the two consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, to wage war upon him, while he persuaded the senate to vote Caesar the lictors and insignia of a praetor, on the ground that he was fighting in defence of the country. But after Antony had been defeated, and, both consuls having died after the battle, the forces had united under Caesar, 5 the senate became afraid of a young man who had enjoyed such brilliant good fortune, and endeavoured by honours and gifts to call his troops away from him and to circumscribe his power, on the ground that there was no need of defensive armies now that Antony had taken to flight. Under these circumstances Caesar took alarm and secretly sent messages to Cicero begging and urging him to obtain the consulship for them both, but to manage affairs as he himself thought best, after assuming the office, and to direct in all things a youthful colleague who only craved name and fame. 6 And Caesar himself admitted afterwards that it was the fear of having his troops disbanded and the danger of finding himself left alone which led him to make use in an emergency of Cicero’s love of power, by inducing him to sue for the consulship with his co-operation and assistance in the canvass.

46 1 Here, indeed, more than at any other time, Cicero was led on and cheated, an old man by a young man. He assisted Caesar in his canvass and induced the senate to favour him. For this he was blamed by his friends at the time, and shortly afterwards he perceived that he had ruined himself and betrayed the liberty of the people. 2 For after the young man had waxed strong and obtained the consulship, he gave Cicero the go-by, and after making friends with Antony and Lepidus and uniting his forces with theirs, he divided the sovereignty with them, like any other piece of property. And a list was made out by them of men who must be put to death, more than two hundred in number. 3 The proscription of Cicero, however, caused most strife in their debates, Antony consenting to no terms unless Cicero should be the first man to be put to death, Lepidus siding with Antony, and Caesar holding out against them both. 4 They held secret meetings by themselves near the city of Bononia for three days, coming together in a place at some distance from the camps and surrounded by a river. 5 It is said that for the first two days Caesar kept up his struggle to save Cicero, but yielded on the third and gave him up. The terms of their mutual concessions were as follows. Caesar was to abandon Cicero, Lepidus his brother Paulus, and Antony Lucius Caesar, who was his uncle on the mother’s side. 6 So far did anger and fury lead them to renounce their human sentiments, or rather, they showed that no wild beast is more savage than man when his passion is supplemented by power.

47 1 While this was going on, Cicero was at his own country-seat in Tusculum, having his brother with him; but when they learned of the proscriptions they determined to remove to Astura, a place of Cicero’s on the sea-coast,c and from there to sail to Brutus in Macedonia; for already a report was current that he was in force there. 2 So they were carried along in litters, being worn out with grief; and on the way they would halt, and with their litters placed side by side would lament to one another. 3 But Quintus was the more dejected and began to reflect upon his destitute condition; for he said that he had taken nothing from home, nay, Cicero too had scanty provision for the journey; it was better, then, he said, that Cicero should press on in his flight, but that he himself should get what he wanted from home and then hasten after him. 4 This they decided to do, and after embracing one another and weeping aloud, they parted.

So then Quintus, not many days afterwards, was betrayed by his servants to those who were in search of him, and put to death, together with his son. But Cicero was brought to Astura, and finding a vessel there he embarked at once and coasted along as far as Circaeum, with the wind in his favour. 5 From there his pilots wished to set sail at once, but Cicero, whether it was that he feared the sea, or had not yet altogether given up his trust in Caesar, went ashore and travelled along on foot a hundred furlongs in the direction of Rome. 6 But again losing resolution and changing his mind, he went down to the sea at Astura. And there he spent the night in dreadful and desperate calculations; he actually made up his mind to enter Caesar’s house by stealth, to slay himself upon the hearth, and so to fasten upon Caesar an avenging daemon. 7 But a fear of tortures drove him from this course also; then, revolving in his mind many confused and contradictory purposes, he put himself in the hands of his servants to be taken by sea to Caieta, where he had lands and an agreeable retreat in summer time, when the breath of the Etesian winds is most pleasant.

8 The place has also a temple of Apollo, a little above the sea. From thence a flock of crows flew with loud clamour towards the vessel of Cicero as it was rowed towards land; and alighting on either end of the sail-yard, some cawed, and others pecked at the ends of the ropes, and everybody thought that the omen was bad. 9 Nevertheless Cicero landed, and going to his villa lay down to rest. Then most of the crows perched themselves about the window, cawing tumultuously, but one of them flew down upon the couch where Cicero lay with muffled head, and with its beak, little by little, tried to remove the garment from his face. 10 The servants, on seeing this, rebuked themselves for waiting to be spectators of their master’s murder, while wild beasts came to his help and cared for him in his undeserved misfortune, but they themselves did nothing in his defence. So partly by entreaty, and partly by force, they took him and carried him in his litter towards the sea.

48 1 But meantime his assassins came to the villa, Herennius a centurion, and Popillius a tribune, who had once been prosecuted for parricide and defended by Cicero; and they had helpers. 2 After they had broken in the door, which they found closed, Cicero was not to be seen, and the inmates said they knew not where he was. Then, we are told, a youth who had been liberally educated by Cicero, and who was a freedman of Cicero’s brother Quintus, Philologus by name, told the tribune that the litter was being carried through the wooded and shady walks towards the sea. 3 The tribune, accordingly, taking a few helpers with him, ran round towards the exit, but Herennius hastened on the run through the walks, and Cicero, perceiving him, ordered the servants to set the litter down where they were. 4 Then he himself, clasping his chin with his left hand, as was his wont, looked steadfastly at his slayers, his head all squalid and unkempt, and his face wasted with anxiety, so that most of those that stood by covered their faces while Herennius was slaying him. 5 For he stretched his neck forth from the litter and was slain, being then in his sixty-fourth year. 6 Herennius cut off his head, by Antony’s command, and his hands — the hands with which he wrote the Philippics. For Cicero himself entitled his speeches against Antony “Philippics,” and to this day the documents are called Philippics.

49 1 When Cicero’s extremities were brought to Rome, it chanced that Antony was conducting an election, but when he heard of their arrival and saw them, he cried out, “Now let our proscriptions have an end.” 2 Then he ordered the head and hands to be placed over the ships’ beaks on the rostra, a sight that made the Romans shudder; for they thought they saw there, not the face of Cicero, but an image of the soul of Antony. However, he showed at least one sentiment of fair dealing in the case when he handed over Philologus to Pomponia, the wife of Quintus. 3 And she, having got the man into her power, besides other dreadful punishments which she inflicted upon him, forced him to cut off his own flesh bit by bit and roast it, and then to eat it. 4 This, indeed, is what some of the historians say; but Cicero’s own freedman, Tiro, makes no mention at all of the treachery of Philologus.

5 I learn that Caesar, a long time after this, paid a visit to one of his daughter’s sons; and the boy, since he had in his hands a book of Cicero’s, was terrified and sought to hide it in his gown; but Caesar saw it, and took the book, and read a great part of it as he stood, and then gave it back to the youth, saying: “A learned man, my child, a learned man and a lover of his country.” 6 Moreover, as soon as he had finally defeated Antony, and when he was himself consul, he chose Cicero’s son as his colleague in the office, and it was in his consulship that the senate took down the statues of Antony, made void the other honours that had been paid him, and decreed besides that no Antony should have the name of Marcus. Thus the heavenly powers devolved upon the family of Cicero the final steps in the punishment of Antony.

Comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero

886 1 1 These, then, are the memorable incidents in the recorded careers of Demosthenes and Cicero which have come to our knowledge. 2 And though I have renounced the comparison of their oratorical styles, yet this, I think, ought not to be left unsaid, namely, that Demosthenes devoted to the rhetorical art all the powers of speech which he possessed by nature or acquired by practice, surpassing in force and effectiveness his rivals in forensic and judicial pleading, in pomp and majesty of utterance the professional declaimers, and in precision and skill the sophists; 3 Cicero, on the other hand, became widely learned and had a variety of interest in the pursuit of letters, and left behind him not a few philosophical treatises of his own conforming to the fashion of the Academy; indeed, even in the speeches which he wrote for the forum and the courts he clearly desires to display by the way a considerable acquaintance with letters.

4 It is possible, too, to get a glimpse of the character of each in his style of speaking. For that of Demosthenes, which had no prettiness or pleasantry, and was condensed with a view to power and earnestness, did not smell of lamp-wicks, as Pytheas scoffingly said, but of water-drinking and anxious thought, and of what men called the bitterness and sullenness of his disposition; whereas Cicero was often carried away by his love of jesting into scurrility, and when, to gain his ends in his cases, he treated matters worthy of serious attention with ironical mirth and pleasantry, he was careless of propriety. Thus, in his defence of Caelius, he said that his client, surrounded as he was by great luxury and extravagance, did nothing out of the way when indulging in pleasures; for not to enjoy what is in one’s possession was madness, he said, particularly when the most eminent philosophers assert that true happiness consists in pleasure. 5 And we are told that when Cato prosecuted Murena, Cicero, who was then consul, defended him, and because of Cato’s beliefs made much fun of the Stoic sect, in view of the absurdities of their so called paradoxes; and when loud laughter spread from the audience to the jurors, Cato, with a quiet smile, said to those who sat by: “What a funny man we have, my friends, for consul!” 6 And it would seem that Cicero was naturally prone to laughter and fond of jesting; his face, too, was smiling and peaceful. But in that of Demosthenes there was always a certain intense seriousness, and this look of thoughtfulness and anxiety he did not easily lay aside. For this reason his enemies, as he himself says, called him morose and ill-mannered.

2 1 Still further, then, in their writings it is possible to see that the one touches upon his praises cautiously and so as not to give offence, when there was need of this for some weightier end, while on other occasions he is careful and moderate; whereas Cicero’s immoderate boasting of himself in his speeches proves that he had an intemperate desire for fame, his cry being that arms must give place to the toga and the laurel of triumph to the tongue. And at last he praises not only his deeds and actions, but also his speeches, both those which he delivered himself and those which he committed to writing, as if he were impetuously vying with Isocrates and Anaximenes the sophists, instead of claiming the right to lead and instruct the Roman people,

“Steadfast, in heavy armour clad, destructive to foes.”

It is necessary, indeed, that a political leader should prevail by reason of his eloquence, but ignoble for him to admire and crave the fame that springs from his eloquence. Wherefore in this regard Demosthenes is more stately and magnificent, since he declares that his ability in speaking was a mere matter of experience, depending greatly upon the goodwill of his hearers, and considers illiberal and vulgar, as they are, those who are puffed up at such success.

3 1 It is true that in haranguing and guiding the people both had equal power, so that even those who controlled armies and camps had need of their services; Chares, Diopeithes and Leosthenes needed Demosthenes, and Pompey and the young Caesar needed Cicero, as Caesar himself says in his Memoirs addressed to Agrippa and Maecenas.  But what is thought and said most of all to reveal and rest the character of a man, namely power and authority, which rouses every passion and uncovers every baseness, this Demosthenes did not have, nor did he give any such proof of himself, since he held no conspicuous office, nor did he even command the force which was raised by him against Philip; 3 whereas Cicero was sent out as quaestor to Sicily, and as pro-consul to Cilicia and Cappadocia, at a time when the love of wealth was at its greatest height, and when those who were sent out as praetors and governors, feeling that theft was an ignoble thing, resorted to open plundering, so that the taking of property was not thought heinous, but he who did this in moderation was held in high esteem; and yet Cicero gave many proofs of his contempt for wealth, and many of his humanity and goodness. 4 And when in Rome itself he was appointed consul in name, but really received the power of a dictator and sole ruler against Catiline and his conspirators, he bore witness to the truth of Plato’s prophecy that states would then have respite from evil, when in one and the same person, by some happy fortune, great power and wisdom should be conjoined with justice.

5 Moreover, it is said to the reproach of Demosthenes that he made money by his eloquence, since he secretly wrote speeches for Phormio and Apollodorus, who were adversaries in the same case, and since he was accused in the matter of the Great King’s money, and condemned for taking that of Harpalus. 6 And if we should say that those who write these things (and these writers are not few) tell what is untrue, still, at least, that Demosthenes could not bring himself to look with indifference upon gifts which kings offered as marks of honour and favour, and that this was not to be expected of a man who lent money on bottomry, it is impossible to deny; 7 whereas, in the case of Cicero, that the Sicilians when he was quaestor, and the king of Cappadocia when he was pro-consul, and his friends in Rome when he was going into exile, offered him large sums and begged him to take them, only to meet with his refusal, has been said.

4 1 And surely in the matter of banishment, at least, for the one it was disgraceful, since he had been convicted of theft; but for the other it was a most honourable result, since he had rid his country of baleful men. 2 Therefore no account was made of the one when he went into exile; but for the other the senate changed its garb and put on mourning and could not be induced to discuss any business until Cicero’s return had been decreed. However, Cicero spent his exile idly, remaining quietly in Macedonia; but the exile of Demosthenes proved to be a great part of his service to the state. 3 For he took part in the struggles of the Greeks, as has been said, and drove out the Macedonian envoys in the various cities which he visited, and so showed himself to be a far better citizen than Themistocles or Alcibiades when they were having the same fortune; and furthermore, when he returned from exile, he again devoted himself to this same public service, and steadfastly continued waging war upon Antipater and the Macedonians. 4 Cicero, on the contrary, was reproached in the senate by Laelius for sitting silent when Caesar asked leave to stand for the consulship, which was contrary to law, since he was still a beardless youth. And Brutus also, in one of his letters, accused him of having reared up a tyranny greater and more severe than that which the writer himself had overthrown.

5 1 And after all, the one is to be pitied for the manner of his death — an old man ignobly carried up and down by servants, trying to escape death, hiding himself from those who were coming after him not much in advance of nature’s final summons, and then beheaded; 2 whereas in that of the other, even though it had a slight touch of supplication, we must admire the preparation of the poison and its place of custody, must admire, too, the use he made of it, because, since the god would not afford him asylum, he took refuge at a greater altar, as it were, made his escape from arms and mercenaries, and laughed to scorn the cruelty of Antipater.

Demetrius

888 1 1 Those who first assumed that the arts are like the bodily senses, seem to me to have perceived very clearly the power of making distinctions which both possess, by which power we are enabled to apprehend opposites, as well in one case as in the other. For the arts and the senses have this power in common; though in the use to which we put the distinctions made, they differ. 2 For our sense-perception has no greater facility in distinguishing white objects than black, or sweet things than bitter, or soft and yielding substances than hard and resisting ones, but its function is to receive impressions from all objects alike, and having received them, to report the resulting sensation to the understanding. The arts, on the other hand, which proceed by the use of reason to the selection and adoption of what is appropriate, and to the avoidance and rejection what is alien to themselves, contemplate the one class of objects with direct intent and by preference, and yet incidentally contemplate the other class also, and in order to avoid them. 3 For instance, the art of healing has incidentally studied the nature of disease, and the art of harmony the nature of discord, in order to produce their opposites; and the most consummate arts of all, namely, temperance, justice, and wisdom, since their function is to distinguish, not only what is good and just and expedient, 889 but also what is bad and unjust and disgraceful, have no praises for a guilelessness which plumes itself on its inexperience of evil, nay, they consider it to be foolishness, and ignorance of what ought especially to be known by men who would live aright. 4 Accordingly, the ancient Spartans would put compulsion on their helots at the festivals to drink much unmixed wine, and would then bring them into the public messes, in order to show their young men what it was like to be drunk. And though I do not think that the perverting of some to secure the setting right of others is very humane, or a good civil policy, 5 still, when men have led reckless lives, and have become conspicuous, in the exercise of power or in great undertakings, for badness, perhaps it will not be much amiss for me to introduce a pair or two of them into my biographies, though not that I may merely divert and amuse my readers by giving variety to my writing. 6 Ismenias the Theban used to exhibit both good and bad players to his pupils on the flute and say, you must play like this one,” or again, “you must not play like this one”; and Antigenidas used to think that young men would listen with more pleasure to good flute-players if they were given an experience of bad ones also. So, I think, we also shall be more eager to observe and imitate the better lives if we are not left without narratives of the blameworthy and the bad.

7 This book will therefore contain the Lives of Demetrius the City-besieger and Antony the Imperator, men who bore most ample testimony to the truth of Plato’s saying that great natures exhibit great vices also, as well as great virtues. Both alike were amorous, bibulous, warlike, munificent, extravagant, and domineering, and they had corresponding resemblances in their fortunes. 8 For not only were they all through their lives winning great successes, but meeting with great reverses; making innumerable conquests, but suffering innumerable losses; unexpectedly falling low, but unexpectedly recovering themselves again; but they also came to their end, the one in captivity to his enemies, and the other on the verge of this calamity.

2 1 To begin, then, Antigonus had two sons by Stratonicé the daughter of Corrhagus, one of whom he named Demetrius, after his brother, and the other Philip, after his father. This is what the majority of writers say. But some have it that Demetrius was not the son, but the nephew of Antigonus; for his own father died when the boy was quite young, and then his mother immediately married Antigonus, so that Demetrius was considered to be his son. 2 Well, then, Philip, who was a few years younger than Demetrius, died. Demetrius, the surviving son, had not the height of his father, though he was a tall man, but he had features of rare and astonishing beauty, so that no painter or sculptor ever achieved a likeness of him. They had at once grace and strength, dignity and beauty, and there was blended with their youthful eagerness a certain heroic look and a kingly majesty that were hard to imitate. 3 And in like manner his disposition also was fitted to inspire in men both fear and favour. For while he was a most agreeable companion, and most dainty of princes in the leisure devoted to drinking and luxurious ways of living, on the other hand he had a most energetic and eager persistency and efficiency in action. Wherefore he used to make Dionysus his pattern, more than any other deity, since this god was most terrible in waging war, and on the other hand most skilful, when war was over, in making peace minister to joy and pleasure.

3 1 Moreover, Demetrius was also exceedingly fond of his father; 890 and from his devotion to his mother it was apparent that he honoured his father also from genuine affection rather than out of deference to his power. On one occasion, when Antigonus was busy with an embassy, Demetrius came home from hunting; he went up to his father and kissed him, and then sat down by his side just as he was, javelins in hand. 2 Then Antigonus, as the ambassadors were now going away with their answers, called out to them in a loud voice and said: “O men, carry back this report also about us, that this is the way we feel towards one another,” implying that no slight vigour in the royal estate and proof of its power were to be seen in his harmonious and trustful relations with his son. 3 So utterly unsociable a thing, it seems, is empire, and so full of ill-will and distrust, that the oldest and greatest of the successors of Alexander could make it a thing to glory in that he was not afraid of his son, but allowed him near his person lance in hand. However, this house was almost the only one which kept itself pure from crimes of this nature for very many generations, or, to speak more definitely, Philip was the only one of the descendants of Antigonus who put a son to death.  But almost all the other lines afford many examples of men who killed their sons, and of many who killed their mothers and wives; and as for men killing their brothers, just as geometricians assume their postulates, so this crime came to be a common and recognized postulate in the plans of princes to secure their own safety.

4 1 In proof that in the beginning Demetrius was naturally humane and fond of his companions, the following illustration may be given. Mithridates the son of Ariobarzanes was a companion of his, and an intimate of the same age. He was one of the courtiers of Antigonus, and though he neither was nor was held to be a base fellow, still, in consequence of a dream, Antigonus conceived a suspicion of him. 2 Antigonus dreamed, namely, that he was traversing a large and fair field and sowing gold-dust. From this, to begin with, there sprang up a golden crop, but when he came back after a little while, he could see nothing but stubble. In his vexation and distress, he heard in his dream sundry voices saying that Mithridates had reaped the golden crop for himself and gone off to the Euxine Sea. 3 Antigonus was much disturbed by this vision, and after he had put his son under oath of silence, told it to him, adding that he had fully determined to destroy Mithridates and put him out of the way. On hearing this, Demetrius was exceedingly distressed, and when the young man, as was his wont, came to share his diversions with him, though he did not venture to open his lips on the matter or to warn him orally, because of his oath, he gradually drew him away from his friends, and when they were by themselves, with the sharp butt of his lance he wrote on the ground so that he could see it, “Fly, Mithridates.” 4 Mithridates understood, and ran away by night to Cappadocia. And soon the vision of Antigonus was accomplished for him by fate. For Mithridates made himself master of a large and fair territory, and founded the line of Pontic kings, which, in the eighth generation, was brought to an end by the Romans. This, then, is an illustration of the strong natural bent of Demetrius towards kindness and justice.

5 1 But just as among the elements of the universe, according to Empedocles, love and hate produce mutual dissension and war, particularly among those elements which touch or lie near one another, so the continuous wars which the successors of Alexander waged against one another were aggravated and more inflamed in some cases by the close proximity of interests and territories, as at this time in the case of Antigonus and Ptolemy. 2 Antigonus himself was tarrying in Phrygia, 891 and hearing there that Ptolemy had crossed over from Cyprus and was ravaging Syria and reducing or turning from their allegiance its cities, he sent against him his son Demetrius, who was only twenty-two years of age, and was then for the first time engaging with sole command in an expedition where great interests were at stake. But since he was young and inexperienced, and had for his adversary a man trained in the training-school of Alexander who had independently waged many great contests, he met with utter defeat near the city of Gaza, where eight thousand of his men were taken prisoners and five thousand were slain. 3 He lost also his tent, his money, and in a word, all his personal effects. But Ptolemy sent these back to him, together with his friends, accompanying them with the considerate and humane message that their warfare must not be waged for all things alike, but only for glory and dominion. Demetrius accepted the kindness, and prayed the gods that he might not long be indebted to Ptolemy for it, but might speedily make him a like return. 4 And he took his disaster, not like a stripling thwarted at the outset of an undertaking, but like a sensible general acquainted with reverses of fortune, and busied himself with the levying of men and the preparation of arms, while he kept the cities well in hand and practised his new recruits.

6 1 When Antigonus learned of the battle, he said that Ptolemy had conquered beardless youths, but must now fight with men; however, not wishing to humble or curtail the spirit of his son, he did not oppose his request that he might fight again on his own account, but suffered him to do it. And not long after, up came Cilles, a general of Ptolemy, with a splendid army, intending to drive Demetrius out of all Syria, and looking down upon him because of his previous defeat. 2 But Demetrius fell upon him suddenly and took him by surprise, put him to rout, and captured his camp, general and all; he also took seven thousand of his soldiers prisoners, and made himself master of vast treasures. However, he rejoiced to have won the day, not by reason of what he was going to have, but of what he could restore, and was delighted, not so much with the wealth and glory which his victory brought, as with the power it gave him to recompense the kindness and return the favour of Ptolemy. 3 And yet he did not do this on his own responsibility, but first wrote to his father about it. And when his father gave him permission and bade him dispose of everything as he liked, he sent back to Ptolemy both Cilles himself and his friends, after loading them with gifts. This reverse drove Ptolemy out of Syria, and brought Antigonus down from Celaenae; he rejoiced at the victory and yearned to get sight of the son who had won it.

7 1 After this, Demetrius was sent to bring into subjection the Arabs known as Nabataean, and incurred great peril by getting into regions which had no water; but he was neither terrified nor greatly disturbed, and his demeanour overawed the Barbarians, so that he took much booty and seven hundred camels from them and returned.

2 And now Seleucus, who had once been expelled from Babylonia by Antigonus, but had afterwards succeeded in recovering the realm and was now wielding the power there, went up with an army, designing to annex the tribes on the confines of India and the provinces about Mount Caucasus. Demetrius, accordingly, expecting that he would find Mesopotamia unprotected, suddenly crossed the Euphrates and invaded Babylonia before Seleucus could stop him. He expelled from one of its citadels (there were two of them) the garrison left there by Seleucus, got it into his power and established in it seven thousand of his own men. 3 But after ordering his soldiers to take and make booty of everything which they could carry or drive from the country, he returned to the sea-coast, leaving Seleucus more confirmed than before in his possession of the realm; for by ravaging the country Demetrius was thought to admit that it no longer belonged to his father. However, while Ptolemy was besieging Halicarnassus, Demetrius came swiftly to the aid of the city and rescued it.

8 1 The glory won by this noble deed inspired father and son 892 with a wonderful eagerness to give freedom to all Greece, which had been reduced to subjection by Cassander and Ptolemy. No nobler or juster war than this was waged by any one of the kings; for the vast wealth which they together had amassed by subduing the Barbarians, was now lavishly spent upon the Greeks, to win glory and honour. 2 As soon as father and son had determined to sail against Athens, one of his friends said to Antigonus that they must keep that city, if they took it, in their own hands, since it was a gangway to Greece. But Antigonus would not hear of it; he said that the goodwill of a people was a noble gangway which no waves could shake, and that Athens, the beacon-tower of the whole world, would speedily flash the glory of their deeds to all mankind. 3 So Demetrius sailed, with five thousand talents of money and a fleet of two hundred and fifty ships, against Athens, where Demetrius the Phalerean was administering the affairs of the city for Cassander and a garrison was set in Munychia. By virtue of forethought combined with good fortune, he appeared off Piraeus on the twenty-sixth of the month Thargelion. 4 Nobody knew beforehand of his approach, but as soon as his fleet was seen in the vicinity, everybody thought that the ships belonged to Ptolemy and prepared to receive them. At last, however, the generals discovered their mistake and came to the rescue, and there was confusion, as is natural when men are compelled to defend themselves against enemies who are making an unexpected landing. For Demetrius, finding the entrances to the harbours open and sailing through them, was presently inside and in view of all, and signalled from his ship a demand for quiet and silence. 5 When this was secured, he proclaimed by voice of herald at his side that he had been sent by his father on what he prayed might be a happy errand, to set Athens free, and to expel her garrison, and to restore to the people their laws and their ancient form of government.

9 1 On hearing this proclamation, most of the people at once threw their shields down in front of them, and with clapping of hands and loud cries urged Demetrius to land, hailing him as their saviour and benefactor. The party of Demetrius the Phalerean also thought they must by all means receive the conqueror, even though he should confirm none of his promises, but nevertheless sent ambassadors to supplicate his mercy. These Demetrius met in a friendly spirit, and sent back with them one of his father’s friends, Aristodemus of Miletus. 2 Now the Phalerean, owing to the change of government, was more afraid of his fellow-citizens than of the enemy. Demetrius, however, was not unmindful of him, but out of regard for the man’s good reputation and excellence, sent him and his friends under safe conduct to Thebes, as he desired. As for himself, he declared that, although he desired to see the city, he would not do so before he had completed his liberation by ridding it of its garrison; meanwhile, after running a trench and a palisade round Munychia, he sailed against Megara, where a garrison had been stationed by Cassander.

3 But on learning that Cratesipolis, who had been the wife of Polyperchon’sa son Alexander, was tarrying at Patrae, and would be very glad to make him a visit (and she was a famous beauty), he left his forces in the territory of Megara and set forth, taking a few light-armed attendants with him. And turning aside from these also, he pitched his tent apart, that the woman might pay her visit to him unobserved. 4 Some of his enemies learned of this, and made a sudden descent upon him. Then, in a fright, he donned a shabby cloak and ran for his life and got away, narrowly escaping a most shameful capture in consequence of his rash ardour. His tent, together with his belongings, was carried off by his enemies.

8935 Megara, however, was captured, and the soldiers would have plundered it had not the Athenians made strong intercession for its citizens; Demetrius also expelled its garrison and gave the city its freedom. While he was still engaged in this, he bethought himself of Stilpo the philosopher, who was famous for his election of a life of tranquillity. Accordingly, Demetrius summoned him and asked him whether any one had robbed him of anything. “No one,” said Stilpo, “for I saw nobody carrying away knowledge.” 6 But nearly all the servants in the city were stolen away, and when Demetrius once more tried to deal kindly with the philosopher, and finally, on going away, said: “Your city, Stilpo, I leave in freedom,” “Thou sayest truly,” replied Stilpo, “for thou hast not left a single one of our slaves.”

10 1 Coming back again to Munychia and encamping before it, he drove out the garrison and demolished the fortress, and this accomplished, at last, on the urgent invitation of the Athenians, he made his entry into the upper city, where he assembled the people and gave them back their ancient form of government. He also promised that they should receive from his father a hundred and fifty thousand bushels of grain, and enough ship timber to build a hundred triremes. 2 It was fourteen years since the Athenians had lost their democratic form of government, and during the period which followed the Lamian war and the battle at Crannon their government had been administered, nominally as an oligarchy, but really as a monarchy, owing to the great influence of the Phalerean. And now that Demetrius had shown himself great and splendid in his benefactions, the Athenians rendered him odious and obnoxious by the extravagance of the honours which they voted him. 3 For instance, they were the first people in the world to give Demetrius and Antigonus the title of King, although both had up to that time shrunk from using the word, and although this was the only royal prerogative still left to the descendants of Philip and Alexander which it was thought that others could assume or share; moreover, the Athenians were the only people to give them the appellation of Saviour-gods, and they put a stop to the ancient custom of designating the year with the name of the annual archon, and elected every year a priest of the Saviour-gods, whose name they prefixed to their public edicts and private contracts. 4 They also decreed that the figures of Demetrius and Antigonus should be woven into the sacred robe, along with those of the gods; and the spot where Demetrius first alighted from his chariot they consecrated and covered with an altar, which they styled the altar of Demetrius Alighter; they also created two new tribes, Demetrias and Antigonis; and they increased the number of the senators, which had been five hundred, to six hundred, since each of the tribes must furnish fifty senators.

11 But the most monstrous thing that came into the head of Stratocles (he it was who invented these elegant and clever bits of obsequiousness) was his motion that envoys sent by public decree and at public expense to Antigonus and Demetrius should be called sacred deputies, instead of ambassadors, like those who conducted to Delphi and Olympia the ancient sacrifices in behalf of the cities at the great Hellenic festivals. 2 In all other ways also Stratocles was an audacious fellow; he lived an abandoned life, and was thought to imitate the scurrility and buffoonery of the ancient Cleon in his familiarities with the people. He had taken up with a mistress named Phylacion; and one day when she had brought in the market-place for his supper some brains and neck-bones, “Aha!” he cried, “thou hast bought just such delicacies for me as we statesmen used to play ball with.” 3 Again, when the Athenians suffered their naval defeat near Amorgus, before the tidings of the disaster could reach the city he put a garland on his head and drove through the Cerameicus, and after announcing that the Athenians were victorious, moved a sacrifice of glad tidings and made a generous distribution of meat to the people by tribes. 894 Then, a little later, when the wrecks were brought home from the battle and people in their wrath called him out, he faced the tumult recklessly and said: “What harm have I done you, pray, if for two days ye have been happy?” Such was the effrontery of Stratocles.

12 1 But there are things hotter even than fire, as Aristophanes puts it. For some one else, outdoing Stratocles in servility, proposed that whenever Demetrius visited the city he should be received with the hospitable honours paid to Demeter and Dionysus, and that to the citizen who surpassed all others in the splendour and costliness of his reception, a sum of money should be granted from the public treasury for a dedicatory offering. 2 And finally, they changed the name of the month Mounychion to Demetrion, and that of the last day of a month, the “Old and New,” to Demetrias, and to the festival called Dionysia they gave the name of Demetria. Most of these innovations were marked with the divine displeasure. The sacred robe, for instance, in which they had decreed that the figures of Demetrius and Antigonus should be woven along with those of Zeus and Athena, as it was being carried in procession through the midst of the Cerameicus, was rent by a hurricane which smote it; 3 again, all round the altars of those Saviour-gods the soil teemed with hemlock, a plant which did not grow in many other parts of the country at all; and on the day for the celebration of the Dionysia, the sacred procession had to be omitted on account of severe cold weather that came out of season. And a heavy frost followed, which not only blasted all the vines and fig-trees with its cold, but also destroyed most of the grain in the blade. 4 Therefore Philippides, who was an enemy of Stratocles, assailed him in a comedy with these verses: —

“Through him it was that hoar-frost blasted all the vines,

Through his impiety the robe was rent in twain,

Because he gave the gods’ own honours unto men.

Such work undoes a people, not its comedy.”

5 Philippides was a friend of Lysimachus, and for his sake the king bestowed many favours on the Athenian people. Moreover, when he was about to undertake anything or make an expedition, he thought it a good omen to meet or catch sight of Philippides. And in general the character of Philippides gave him a good repute, since he was no busybody, and had none of the officious ways of a courtier. On one occasion Lysimachus wished to do him a kindness, and said: “Philippides, what have I that I can share with thee?” “O King,” said Philippides, “anything but one of thy state secrets.” Such a man, then, I purposely compare with Stratocles, the man of the stage with the man of the bema.

13 1 But there was one honour proposed for Demetrius which was more strange and monstrous than any other. Dromocleides the Sphettian moved, when the dedication of certain shields at Delphi was in question, that the Athenians should get an oracle from Demetrius. And I will transcribe his very words from the decree; they run thus: 2 “May it be for the best. Decreed by the people that the people elect one man from the Athenians, who shall go to the Saviour-god, and, after a sacrifice with good omens, shall enquire of the Saviour-god in what most speedy, decorous, and reverent manner the people may accomplish the restoration to their places of the dedicatory offerings; and that whatever answer he shall give, the people shall act according thereunto.” With such mockery of adulation they finally perverted the man’s mind, which even before was not wholly sound.

14 1 Furthermore, while he lingered in Athens at this time, Demetrius took to wife Eurydicé, a widow. She was a descendant of the ancient Miltiades, had married Ophelasb the ruler of Cyrené, and after his death had come back to Athens. 2 The Athenians, accordingly, took this marriage as a graceful compliment to their city; but in general Demetrius made a rather light matter of marriages, and had many wives at the same time, of whom Phila enjoyed the greatest esteem and honour, 895 both because of her father, Antipater, and because she had been the wife of Craterus, the one of all the successors of Alexander who left behind him the most goodwill among the Macedonians. This woman, as it would appear, his father had persuaded Demetrius to marry when he was quite young, although she was not of his age, but older; 3 and when his son was disinclined to the match, it is said that Antigonus whispered in his ear the verse of Euripides:

“What there is gain, ‘gainst nature’s dictates must one wed,”

substituting off-hand “must one wed” for the similar inflection “must one serve.” However, so slight was the respect which Demetrius paid to Phila and to the rest of his wives, that he consorted freely with many courtesans, as well as with many women of free birth, and as regards this indulgence he had the worst reputation of all the kings of his time.

15 1 And now his father summoned him to wage war against Ptolemy for the possession of Cyprus. He must needs obey the summons, but was loth to abandon the war for the liberation of Greece, which was a nobler and more glorious war, and therefore sent to Cleonides, the general of Ptolemy who was occupying Sicyon and Corinth with a garrison, and offered him money to set the cities free. 2 Cleonides, however, would not accept the bribe, and Demetrius therefore put to sea in haste, and taking additional forces, sailed against Cyprus. There he joined battle with Menelaüs, a brother of Ptolemy, and promptly defeated him; but Ptolemy himself appeared on the scene with a large land and naval force combined, and there were sundry interchanges of threats and boasts, Ptolemy ordering Demetrius to sail away before the entire force should assemble and crush him, and Demetrius offering to let Ptolemy go if he would agree to withdraw his garrisons from Sicyon and Corinth. 3 And not only Demetrius and Ptolemy themselves, but also all the other potentates, awaited with great expectancy the uncertain issue of the impending struggle; they felt that not Cyprus, nor yet Syria, but the absolute supremacy would at once be the prize of the victor.

16 1 Well, then, Ptolemy himself sailed to the attack with a hundred and fifty ships, and ordered Menelaüs to put out from Salamis with sixty ships, and when the struggle was fiercest, to assail the ships of Demetrius in the rear, and throw them into confusion. But to these sixty ships Demetrius opposed only ten ships (for that small number sufficed to block the narrow exit from the harbour), 2 while he himself, after first drawing out his land forces and encompassing the headlands that extended into the sea, put out to battle with a hundred and eighty ships. He made his onset with great impetus and force, and utterly routed Ptolemy. Ptolemy himself, after his defeat, fled swiftly with eight ships only (for that small number were left from his whole fleet); of the rest, some had been destroyed in the sea-fight, and seventy had been captured, crews and all), 3 but of the throng of attendants, friends, and women which lay in ships of burden close at hand, and further, of all Ptolemy’s arms, money, and engines of war, absolutely nothing escaped Demetrius, but he took everything and brought it safely to his camp. Among this booty was the celebrated Lamia, originally held in esteem for her artistic skill (she was thought to play the flute quite admirably), but afterwards becoming illustrious in the annals of love also. 4 At this time, at any rate, although she was past her prime and found Demetrius much younger than herself, she so mastered and swayed him by her charms that he was a lover for her alone, but a beloved for all other women.

After the sea-fight, Menelaüs also made no further resistance, but handed over Salamis to Demetrius, 896 together with his fleet, and his land forces, which comprised twelve hundred horsemen and twelve thousand men-at arms.

17 1 This victory, which was so fair and brilliant, Demetrius adorned still more by his humanity and kindness of heart. He gave the enemy’s dead a magnificent burial, and set his captives free; moreover, upon the Athenians he bestowed twelve hundred suits of armour from the spoils.

2 As his special messenger to carry word of the victory to his father, Demetrius sent Aristodemus of Miletus, the arch-flatterer among all his courtiers, and ready now, as it would seem, to crown the achievement with the grossest of his flatteries. For when he had crossed over from Cyprus, he would not suffer his vessel to come to land, but ordered the crew to cast anchor and remain quietly on board, all of them, 3 while he himself got into the ship’s small boat, landed alone, and proceeded towards Antigonus, who was anxiously awaiting news of the battle, and was disposed as men are apt to be disposed who are struggling for so high a stake. And now, indeed, when he heard that Aristodemus was coming, he was more disturbed than before, and, with difficulty keeping himself indoors, sent servants and friends, one after the other, to learn from Aristodemus what had happened. 4 Aristodemus, however, would make no answer to anybody, but step by step and with a solemn face drew near in perfect silence. Antigonus, therefore, thoroughly frightened, and no longer able to restrain himself, came to the door to meet Aristodemus, who was now escorted by a large throng which was hurrying to the palace. 5 Accordingly, when he had come near, he stretched out his hand and cried with a loud voice: “Hail, King Antigonus, we have conquered Ptolemy in a sea-fight, and now hold Cyprus, with twelve thousand eight hundred soldiers as prisoners of war.” To this Antigonus replied: “Hail to thee also, by Heaven! but for torturing us in this way, thou shalt undergo punishment; the reward for thy good tidings thou shalt be some time in getting.”

18 1 Upon this, the multitude for the first time saluted Antigonus and Demetrius as kings. Antigonus, accordingly, was immediately crowned by his friends, and Demetrius received a diadem from his father, with a letter in which he was addressed as King. The followers of Ptolemy in Egypt on their part also, when these things were reported to them, gave him the title of King, that they might not appear to lose spirit on account of their defeat. 2 And thus their emulation carried the practice among the other successors of Alexander. For Lysimachus began to wear a diadem, and Seleucus also in his interviews with the Greeks; with the Barbarians he had before this dealt as king. Cassander, however, although the others gave him the royal title in their letters and addresses, wrote his letters in his own untitled name, as he had been wont to do.

3 Now, this practice did not mean the addition of a name or a change of fashion merely, but it stirred the spirits of the men, lifted their thoughts high, and introduced into their lives and dealings with others pomposity and ostentation, just as tragic actors adapt to their costumes their gait, voice, posture at table, and manner of addressing others. 4 Consequently they became harsher in their judicial decisions also; they laid aside that dissemblance of power which formerly had often made them more lenient and gentle with their subjects. So great influence had a flatterer’s single word, and with so great a change did it fill the whole world.

19 1 Antigonus, elated by the achievements of Demetrius at Cyprus, at once made an expedition against Ptolemy; he himself led his forces by land, while Demetrius with a great fleet coöperated with him by sea. How the enterprise was to issue, Medius, a friend of Antigonus, was warned by a vision in his sleep. 8972 He dreamed, namely, that Antigonus himself, with his whole army, was competing in a race over the course and back; he ran vigorously and swiftly at first, then, little by little, his strength failed him; and at last, after he had made the turn, he became weak, breathed heavily, and with difficulty made the finish. And conformably to the vision, Antigonus himself encountered many difficulties by land, and since Demetrius also encountered a great storm and a heavy sea and was cast upon a rough coast which had no harbours, losing many of his ships, he returned without accomplishing anything.

3 Antigonus was at this time almost eighty years old, and his great size and weight, even more than his old age, made it difficult for him to conduct expeditions. He therefore made use of his son instead, whose good fortune and experience now enabled him to conduct the greatest affairs successfully, and whose luxuries, extravagances, and revelries gave his father no concern. For although in time of peace Demetrius plunged deep into these excesses and devoted his leisure to his pleasures without restraint and intemperately, yet in time of war he was as sober as those who were abstemious by nature. 4 And we are told that once, after Lamia was known of all men to be in complete control of Demetrius, he came home from abroad and greeted his father with a kiss, whereupon Antigonus said with a laugh, “One would think, my son, that thou wert kissing Lamia.” Again, on another occasion, when Demetrius had been at his revels for several days, and excused his absence by saying that he was troubled with a flux, “So I learned,” said Antigonus, “but was it Thasian or Chian wine that flowed?” 5 And again, learning that his son was sick, Antigonus was going to see him, and met a certain beauty at his door; he went in, however, sat down by his son, and felt his pulse. “The fever has left me now,” said Demetrius. “No doubt, my boy,” said Antigonus, “I met it just now at the door as it was going away.” 6 These failings of Demetrius were treated with such lenity by his father because the young man was so efficient otherwise. The Scythians, in the midst of their drinking and carousing, twang their bow-strings, as though summoning back their courage when it is dissolved in pleasure; but Demetrius, giving himself up completely, now to pleasure, and now to duty, and keeping the one completely separate from the other, was no less formidable in his preparations for war.

20 1 Nay, he was actually thought to be a better general in preparing than in employing a force, for he wished everything to be at hand in abundance for his needs, and could never be satisfied with the largeness of his undertakings in building ships and engines of war, or in gazing at them with great delight. For he had good natural parts and was given to speculation, and did not apply his ingenuity to things that would afford useless pleasure or diversion, like other kings who played on the flute, or painted, or chased metals. 2 Aeropus the Macedonian, for instance, used to spend his leisure time in making little tables or lamp-stands. And Attalus Philometor used to grow poisonous plants, not only henbane and hellebore, but also hemlock, aconite, and dorycnium, sowing and planting them himself in the royal gardens, and making it his business to know their juice and fruits, and to collect these at the proper season. And the kings of the Parthians used to take pride in notching and sharpening with their own hands the points of their missiles. 3 But with Demetrius, even the work of his hands was kingly, and his method had grandeur about it, since what he produced displayed loftiness of purpose and spirit combined with elegance and ingenuity, so that men thought it worthy, not only to be designed and paid for by a king, but actually to be wrought by his hand. For its magnitude terrified even his friends, and its beauty delighted even his enemies. And this has still more truth in it than elegance of diction. 4 His enemies would stand on shore 898 and admire his galleys of fifteen or sixteen banks of oars as they sailed along past, and his “city-takers”c were a spectacle to those whom he was besieging, as the actual facts testify. For Lysimachus, although he was the bitterest enemy Demetrius had among the kings, and had arrayed himself against him when he was besieging Soli in Cilicia, sent and asked Demetrius to show him his engines of war, and his ships in full career; and when Demetrius had shown them, Lysimachus expressed his admiration and went away. 5 The Rhodians also, after they had been for a long time besieged by Demetrius and had come to terms with him, asked him for some of his engines of war, that they might keep them as a reminder of his power as well as of their own bravery.

21 1 Now, he made war upon the Rhodians because they were allies of Ptolemy, and brought up against their walls his greatest “city-taker.” Its base was square, and each of its sides measured at the bottom forty-eight cubits. It rose to a height of sixty-six cubits, and tapered from base to summit. 2 Within, it was divided off into many storeys and chambers, and the side of it which faced the enemy had windows opening out of every storey, and out through these issued missiles of every sort; for it was full of men who fought in every style of fighting. Moreover, it did not totter or lean when it moved, but remained firm and erect on its base, advancing evenly with much noise and great impetus, and this astounded the minds and at the same time greatly charmed the eyes of those who beheld it.

3 For his use in this war there were brought to Demetrius from Cyprus two iron coats of mail, each of which weighed only forty pounds. Wishing to show their strength and power of resistance, Zoilus their maker gave orders that a catapult’s missile should be shot at one of them from a distance of twenty paces, and in the place where it struck the iron remained intact, although it did get a faint scratch, such as might be made by a graver. 4 This coat of mail Demetrius wore himself; the other was worn by Alcimus the Epeirot, the sturdiest and most warlike of all the men under him, and the only one whose suit of armour weighed a hundred pounds (the rest used suits of fifty pounds weight); he fell in battle at Rhodes near the theatre.

22 1 But the Rhodians on their part made a vigorous resistance, and Demetrius, although he was accomplishing nothing worthy of mention, nevertheless kept up the fight against them in a rage, because, when Phila his wife sent him letters, bedding, and clothing, the Rhodians had captured the vessel containing them, and had sent it, just as it was, to Ptolemy. In this they did not imitate the considerate kindness of the Athenians, who, having captured Philip’s letter-carriers when he was making war upon them, read all the other letters, indeed, but one of them, which was from Olympias, they would not open; instead, they sent it back to the king with its seal unbroken. 2 However, although Demetrius was exceedingly exasperated by this, when the Rhodians soon after gave him a chance to retaliate, he would not allow himself to do so. It happened, namely, that Protogenes the Caunian had been making a painting for them which illustrated the story of Ialysus, and this picture, nearly finished, had been captured by Demetrius in one of the suburbs of the city. The Rhodians sent a herald and begged Demetrius to spare and not destroy the work, whereupon he replied that he would rather burn the likenesses of his father than so great a labour of art. 3 For we are told that it took Protogenes seven years to complete the painting. And Apelles says he was so smitten with amazement on beholding the work that his voice actually failed him, and that when at last he had recovered it, he cried, “Great is the toil and astonishing the work,” remarking, however, that it had not the graces which made the fame of his own paintings touch the heavens. 4 This painting, then, crowded into the same place with the rest at Rome, the fire destroyed. 899 As for the Rhodians, they continued their strenuous resistance in the war until Demetrius, who wanted a pretext for abandoning it, was induced to make terms with them by a deputation of Athenians, on condition that the Rhodians should be allies of Antigonus and Demetrius, except in a war against Ptolemy.

23 1 And now the Athenians called upon Demetrius because Cassander was besieging their city. So Demetrius sailed to their help with three hundred and thirty ships and a great number of men-at arms, and not only drove Cassander out of Attica, but actually pursued him in his headlong flight as far as Thermopylae, and then took Heracleia, which joined him of its own accord, and six thousand Macedonians, who also came over to him. 2 On his return, he gave their freedom to the Greeks on this side of Thermopylae, made the Boeotians his allies, and captured Cenchreae; he also reduced Phyle and Panactum, fortresses of Attica in which Cassander had garrisons, and gave them back to the Athenians. And they, although before this they had used up and exhausted all the honours that could be bestowed upon him, nevertheless devised a way to show themselves then also the authors of new and fresh flatteries. 3 For instance, they assigned him the rear chamber of the Parthenon for his quarters; and there he lived, and there it was said that Athena received and entertained him, although he was no very orderly guest and did not occupy his quarters with the decorum due to a virgin. 4 And yet on one occasion when his father understood that his brother Philip was quartered in a house occupied by three young women, he said not a word to Philip himself, but in his presence said to the quartermaster whom he had summoned, “See here, wilt thou not remove my son from his narrow quarters?”

24 1 But Demetrius, who ought to have revered Athena, if for no other reason, at least because she was his elder sister (for this was what he liked to have her called), filled the acropolis with such wanton treatment of free-born youth and native Athenian women that the place was then thought to be particularly pure when he shared his dissolute life there with Chrysis and Lamia and Demo and Anticyra, the well-known prostitutes.

2 Now, to give all the particulars plainly would disgrace the fair fame of the city, but I may not pass over the modesty and virtue of Democles. He was still a young boy, and it did not escape the notice of Demetrius that he had a surname which indicated his comeliness; for he was called Democles the Beautiful. But he yielded to none of the many who sought to win him by prayers or gifts or threats, and finally, shunning the palaestras and the gymnasium, used to go for his bath to a private bathing-room. Here Demetrius, who had watched his opportunity, came upon him when he was alone. 3 And the boy, when he saw that he was quite alone and in dire straits, took off the lid of the cauldron and jumped into the boiling water, thus destroying himself, and suffering a fate that was unworthy of him, but showing a spirit that was worthy of his country and of his beauty. Not so Cleaenetus the son of Cleomedon, who, in order to obtain a letter from Demetrius to the people and therewith to secure the remission of a fine of fifty talents which had been imposed upon his father, not only disgraced himself, but also got the city into trouble. 4 For the people released Cleomedon from his sentence, but they passed an edict that no citizen should bring a letter from Demetrius before the assembly. However, when Demetrius heard of it and was beyond measure incensed thereat, they took fright again, and not only rescinded the decree, but actually put to death some of those who had introduced and spoken in favour of it, and drove others into exile; furthermore, they voted besides that it was the pleasure of the Athenian people that whatsoever King Demetrius should ordain in future, this should be held righteous towards the gods and just towards men. 9005 And when one of the better class of citizens declared that Stratocles was mad to introduce such a motion, Demochares of Leuconoë said: “He would indeed be mad not to be mad.” For Stratocles reaped much advantage from his flatteries. Demochares, however, was brought under accusation for this and sent into exile. So fared it with the Athenians, who imagined that because they were rid of their garrison they therefore had their freedom.

25 1 And now Demetrius proceeded into Peloponnesus, where not one of his enemies opposed him, but all abandoned their cities and fled. He received into allegiance Acte, as it is called, and Arcadia (except Mantineia), and freed Argos, Sicyon, and Corinth by paying their garrisons a hundred talents. 2 At Argos, then, where there was a celebration of the festival of Hera, he presided at the games and attended the solemn assemblies with the Greeks, and married Deïdameia, the daughter of Aeacides king of the Molossians, and the sister of Pyrrhus. As for the Sicyonians, he told them their city was in the wrong place, and persuaded them to change its site to that which it now has; moreover, with the site he also changed the name of the city, calling it Demetrias instead of Sicyon. 3 And at the Isthmus of Corinth, where a general assembly was held and throngs of people came together, he was proclaimed Commander-in chief of the Greeks, as Philip and Alexander had been proclaimed before him; and to these he considered himself in no slight measure superior, lifted up as he was by the good fortune and power which he then enjoyed. And certainly King Alexander never refused to bestow the royal title upon other hands, nor did he proclaim himself King of Kings, although many kings received their position and title from him; 4 whereas Demetrius used to rail and mock at those who gave the title of King to any one except his father and himself, and was well pleased to hear his revellers pledge Demetrius as King, but Seleucus as Master of the Elephants, Ptolemy as Admiral, Lysimachus as Treasurer, and Agathocles of Sicily as Lord of the Isles. 5 When this was reported to these kings, they all laughed at Demetrius, except Lysimachus; he was incensed that Demetrius considered him a eunuch (it was the general practice to have eunuchs for treasurers). 6 And of all the kings Lysimachus had most hatred for Demetrius. He was once reviling the man’s passion for Lamia, and said that this was the first time he had ever seen a harlot coming forward to play a great tragic part; Demetrius, however, declared that his own harlot was more chaste than the Penelope of Lysimachus.

26 1 But to resume the story, when Demetrius was getting ready to return to Athens, he wrote letters to the people saying that he wished to be initiated into the mysteries as soon as he arrived, and to pass through all the grades in the ceremony, from the lowest to the highest (the “epoptica”). Now, this was not lawful, and had not been done before, but the lesser rites were performed in the month Anthesterion, the great rites in Boëdromion; and the supreme rites (the “epoptica”) were celebrated after an interval of at least a year from the great rites. 2 And yet when the letter of Demetrius was read, no one ventured to oppose the proposition except Pythodorus the Torch-bearer, and he accomplished nothing; instead, on motion of Stratocles, it was voted to call the current month, which was Munychion, Anthesterion, and so to regard it, and the lesser rites at Agra were performed for Demetrius; afterwards Munychion was again changed and became Boëdromion instead of Anthesterion, Demetrius received the remaining rites of initiation, and at the same time was also admitted to the highest grade of “epoptos.” 3 Hence Philippides, in his abuse of Stratocles, wrote: —

“Who abridged the whole year into a single month,”

and with reference to the quartering of Demetrius in the Parthenon: —

“Who took the acropolis for a caravansery,

901 And introduced to its virgin goddess his courtesans.”

27 1 But among the many lawless and shocking things done by Demetrius in the city at this time, this is said to have given the Athenians most displeasure, namely, that after he had ordered them to procure speedily two hundred and fifty talents for his use, and after they had levied the money rigorously and inexorably, when he saw the sum that had been collected, he commanded that it should be given to Lamia and her fellow courtesans to buy soapd with. For the shame they felt was more intolerable to the people than their loss, and the words which accompanied it than the deed itself. 2 But some say that those who received this treatment were Thessalians, not Athenians. Apart from this incident, however, Lamia, when she was preparing a supper for the king, exacted money on her own account from many citizens. And the costliness of this supper gave it so wide a renown that it was described in full by Lynceus the Samian. Hence also a comic poet not inaptly called Lamia “a veritable City-taker.” And Demochares of Soli called Demetrius himself “Fable,” because he too, like Fable, had a Lamia.

3 And not only among the wives of Demetrius, but also among his friends, did the favour and affection which he bestowed on Lamia awaken envy and jealousy. At all events, some ambassadors from him once came to Lysimachus, and Lysimachus, in an hour of leisure, showed them on his thighs and shoulders deep scars of wounds made by a lion’s claws; he also told them about the battle he had fought against the beast, with which he had been caged by Alexander the king. Then they laughingly told him that their own king also carried, on his neck, the bites of a dreadful wild beast, — a Lamia. 4 And it was astonishing that while in the beginning he was displeased at Phila’s disparity in years, he was vanquished by Lamia, and loved her so long, although she was already past her prime. At all events, when Lamia was playing on the flute at a supper, and Demetrius asked Demo, surnamed Mania, what she thought of her, “O King,” said Mania, “I think her an old woman.” And at another time, when some sweetmeats were served up, and Demetrius said to Mania, “Dost thou see how many presents I get from Lamia?” “My mother,” said Mania, “will send thee more, if thou wilt make her also thy mistress.” 5 And there is on record also Lamia’s comment on the famous judgment of Bocchoris. There was, namely, a certain Egyptian who was in love with Thonis the courtesan, and was asked a great sum of money for her favours; then he dreamed that he enjoyed those favours, and ceased from his desires. 6 Thereupon Thonis brought an action against him for payment due, and Bocchoris, on hearing the case, ordered the man to bring into court in its coffer the sum total demanded of him, and to move it hither and thither with his hand, and the courtesan was to grasp its shadow, since the thing imagined is a shadow of the reality. This judgment Lamia thought to be unjust; for though the dream put an end to the young man’s passion, the shadow of the money did not set the courtesan free from her desire of it. So much, then, for Lamia.

28 1 But the fortunes and achievements of the man whose Life I am narrating, brings my narrative back, as it were, from the comic to the tragic stage. For all the other kings leagued themselves together against Antigonus and united their forces, and so Demetrius set forth from Greece, and finding his father eager beyond his years for the war, he was himself still more encouraged. 2 And yet it would seem that if Antigonus had made some trifling concessions and had slackened his excessive passion for dominion, he might have always retained the supremacy for himself and have left it to his son. But he was naturally stern and haughty, and was harsh in what he said no less than in what he did, and therefore exasperated and incited against himself many young and powerful men; 902 and their combination and partnership at this time he said he would scatter asunder with a single stone and a single shout, as if they were a flock of granivorous birds.

3 He took the field with more than seventy thousand infantry, ten thousand horse, and seventy-five elephants; while he adversaries had sixty-four thousand infantry, five hundred more horse than he, four hundred elephants, and a hundred and twenty chariots. After he had drawn near them, the cast of his expectations rather than of his purposes underwent a change. 4 For he was wont to be lofty and boastful as he engaged in his conflicts, making pompous speeches in a loud voice, and many times also by the utterance of a casual jest or joke when the enemy was close at hand he would show the firmness of his own spirit and his contempt for them; but now he was observed to be thoughtful and silent for the most part, and he presented his son to the army and pronounced him his successor. 5 But what more than anything else astonished everybody was his conversing alone in his tent with his son, although it was not his custom to have secret conferences even with him; instead, he made his own plans, followed his own counsels, and then gave his orders openly. At all events, we are told that Demetrius, when he was still a stripling, asked his father when they were going to break camp; and that Antigonus replied in anger: “Art thou in distress lest thou alone shouldst not hear the trumpet?”

29 1 At this time, moreover, bad omens also subdued their spirits. For Demetrius dreamed that Alexander, in brilliant array of armour, asked him what watchword they were going to give for the battle; and when he replied, “Zeus and Victory,” also said: “Then I will go away and join your adversaries; they surely will receive me.” 2 Moreover, Antigonus, when his phalanx was already forming and he was leaving his tent, stumbled and fell prone upon his face, injuring himself severely; but he rose to his feet, and stretching out his hands towards heaven prayed that the gods would grant him victory, or a painless death before his defeat.

3 After the armies had engaged, Demetrius, with the largest and best part of the cavalry, clashed with Antiochus, the son of Seleucus; he fought brilliantly and routed his enemy, but by pursuing him too fiercely and eagerly he threw away the victory. For he himself was not able to turn back and rejoin his infantry, since the enemy’s elephants were thrown in his way; and Seleucus, observing that his opponents’ phalanx was unprotected by cavalry, took measures accordingly. He did not actually charge upon them, but kept them in fear of a charge by continually riding around them, thus giving them an opportunity to come over to his side. And this was what actually came to pass. 4 For a large body of them, detached from the rest, came over to him of their own accord, and the rest were routed. Then, as throngs of his enemies bore down upon him and one of his followers said, “They are making at thee, O King,” “Who else, pray,” said Antigonus, “should be their mark? But Demetrius will come to my aid.” 5 This was his hope to the last, and to the last he kept watching eagerly for his son; then a whole cloud of javelins were let fly at him and he fell. The rest of his friends and attendants abandoned him, and one only remained by his dead body, Thorax of Larissa.

30 1 The battle having been decided in this manner, the victorious kings carved up the entire domain which had been subject to Antigonus and Demetrius, as if it had been a great carcass, and took each his portion, adding thus to the provinces which the victors already had, those of the vanquished kings. But Demetrius, with five thousand foot and four thousand horse, came in unbroken flight to Ephesus. Here everybody thought that his lack of resources would lead him to lay hands upon the temple; 9032 but he, fearing lest his soldiers might do this, departed speedily, and sailed for Greece, putting his chief remaining hopes in Athens. For he had left ships there, and moneys, and his wife Deïdameia, and thought that in his evil plight no refuge could be more secure than the goodwill of Athens. 3 Therefore when, as he drew near the Cyclades islands, an embassy from Athens met him with a request to keep away from the city, on the ground that the people had passed a vote to admit none of the kings, and informing him that Deïdameia had been sent to Megara with fitting escort and honour, his wrath drove him beyond all proper bounds, although he had borne his other misfortunes very easily, and in so great a reversal of his situation had shown himself neither mean-spirited nor ignoble. 4 But that the Athenians should disappoint his hopes and play him false, and that their apparent goodwill should prove on trial to be false and empty, was painful to him.

And verily the least cogent proof, as it would seem, of a people’s goodwill towards a king or potentate is an extravagant bestowal of honours; for the beauty of such honours lies in the purpose of those who bestow them, and fear robs them of their worth (for the same decrees may be passed out of fear and out of affection). 5 Therefore men of sense look first of all at their own acts and achievements, and then estimate the value of the statues, paintings, or deifications offered to them, putting faith in these as genuine honours, or refusing to do so on the ground that they are compulsory; since it is certainly true that a people will often, in the very act of conferring its honours, have most hatred for those who accept such honours immoderately, ostentatiously, and from unwilling givers.

31 1 Be that as it may, in this case Demetrius thought himself grievously wronged; but since he was unable to avenge himself, he sent a message to the Athenians in which he mildly expostulated with them, and asked that his ships be given back to him, among which was also the one having thirteen banks of oars. These he obtained, and then coasted along to the Isthmus, where he found his affairs in a very sorry state. For his garrisons were everywhere being expelled, and there was a general defection to his enemies. 2 He therefore left Pyrrhus in charge of Greece, while he himself put to sea and sailed to the Chersonesus. Here he ravaged the territory of Lysimachus, thereby enriching and holding together his own forces, which were beginning to recover their spirit and to show themselves formidable again. Nor did the other kings try to help Lysimachus; they thought that he was no less objectionable than Demetrius, and that because he had more power he was even more to be feared.

3 Not long afterwards, however, Seleucus sent and asked the hand of Stratonicé, the daughter of Demetrius and Phila, in marriage. He had already, by Apama the Persian, a son Antiochus; but he thought that his realms would suffice for more successors than one, and that he needed this alliance with Demetrius, since he saw that Lysimachus also was taking one of Ptolemy’s daughters for himself, and the other for Agathocles his son. 4 Now, to Demetrius, a marriage alliance with Seleucus was an unexpected piece of good fortune. So he took his daughter and sailed with his whole fleet to Syria. He was obliged to touch at several places along the coast, and made landings in Cilicia, which country had been allotted by the kings to Pleistarchus, after their battle with Antigonus, and was now held by him. Pleistarchus was a brother of Cassander. 5 He thought his territories outraged by these descents of Demetrius upon them, and besides, he wished to upbraid Seleucus for making an alliance with the common enemy independently of the other kings. So he went up to see him.

32 1 On learning of this, Demetrius set out from the sea-coast for the city of Quinda; and finding twelve hundred talents of its treasure still left, he packed them up, got them safely on board ship, and put to sea with all speed. 904 His wife Phila was already with him, and at Rhosus he was met by Seleucus. 2 Their intercourse was at once put on a royal footing, and knew neither guile nor suspicion. First, Seleucus entertained Demetrius at his tent in the camp, then Demetrius in his turn received Seleucus on board the ship with thirteen banks of oars. There were also amusements, long conferences with one another and whole days spent together, all without guards or arms; until at length Seleucus took Stratonicé and went up in great state to Antioch. 3 But Demetrius took possession of Cilicia, and sent Phila his wife to Cassander, who was her brother, that she might bring to naught the denunciations of Pleistarchus. In the meantime, Deïdameia came by sea from Greece to join Demetrius, and after being with him a short time, succumbed to some disease. Then, by the intervention of Seleucus, friendship was made between Demetrius and Ptolemy, and it was agreed that Demetrius should take to wife Ptolemaïs the daughter of Ptolemy.

4 So far all was courtesy on the part of Seleucus. But presently he asked Demetrius to cede Cilicia to him for a sum of money, and when Demetrius would not consent, angrily demanded Tyre and Sidon from him. It seemed a violent and outrageous proceeding that one who had possessed himself of the whole domain from India to the Syrian sea should be so needy still and so beggarly in spirit as for the sake of two cities to harass a man who was his relative by marriage and had suffered a reverse of fortune. 5 Moreover, he bore splendid testimony to the wisdom of Plato in urging the man who would be truly rich, not to make his possessions greater, but his inordinate desires fewer; since he who puts no end to his greed, this man is never rid of poverty and want.

33 1 Demetrius, however, was not cowed, but declared that not even if he should lose ten thousand battles like that at Ipsus would he consent to pay for the privilege of having Seleucus as a son-in law. Then he strengthened his cities with garrisons, while he himself, learning that Lachares had usurped sovereign power over the Athenians in consequence of their dissensions, thought to appear upon the scene and make an easy capture of the city. So he crossed the sea in safety with a great fleet, but as he was sailing along the coast of Attica he encountered a storm in which most of his ships were lost and a great number of men perished with them. 2 He himself, however, escaped alive, and began a petty war against the Athenians. But since he could accomplish nothing, he sent men to collect another fleet for him, while he himself passed on into Peloponnesus and laid siege to Messene. Here, in an attack upon the walls, he came near losing his life; for a missile from a catapult struck him in the face and passed through his jaw into his mouth. 3 But he recovered, and after restoring to their allegiance certain cities which had revolted from him, he invaded Attica again, got Eleusis and Rhamnus into his power, and ravaged the country. He also seized a ship laden with grain for Athens, and hung its supercargo and its master. All other ships were thus frightened into turning back, and famine became acute in the city, where, besides lack of food, there was dearth also of other things. At any rate, a bushel of salt sold there for forty drachmas, and a peck of wheat was worth three hundred. 4 A slight respite was afforded the Athenians by the appearance off Aegina of a hundred and fifty ships which Ptolemy sent to assist them. Then numerous ships came to Demetrius from Peloponnesus, and many from Cyprus, so that his entire assemblage numbered three hundred, in consequence of which the ships of Ptolemy put off to sea in flight, and Lachares the tyrant abandoned the city and ran away.

34 1 Then the Athenians, although they had decreed death to anyone who should so much as mention peace and reconciliation with Demetrius, 905 straightway threw open the nearest gates and sent ambassadors to him. They did not expect any kindly treatment from him, but were driven to the step by their destitution, 2 in which, among many other grievous things, the following also is said to have occurred. A father and a son were sitting in a room and had abandoned all hope. Then a dead mouse fell from the ceiling, and the two, when they saw it, sprang up and fought with one another for it. At this time also, we are told, the philosopher Epicurus sustained the lives of his associates with beans, which he counted out and distributed among them.

3 Such, then, was the plight of the city when Demetrius made his entry and ordered all the people to assemble in the theatre. He fenced the stage-buildings round with armed men, and encompassed the stage itself with his body-guards, while he himself, like the tragic actors, came down into view through one of the upper side-entrances. The Athenians were more than ever frightened now; but with the first words that he uttered Demetrius put an end to their fears. 4 For avoiding all harshness of tone and bitterness of speech, he merely chided them lightly and in a friendly manner, and then declared himself reconciled, gave them besides a hundred thousand bushels of grain, and established the magistrates who were most acceptable to the people. So Dromocleides the orator, seeing that the people, in their joy, were shouting all sorts of proposals, and were eager to outdo the customary eulogies of the public speakers on the bema, brought in a motion that Piraeus and Munychia should be handed over to Demetrius the king. 5 This was voted, and Demetrius on his own account put a garrison into the Museium also, that the people might not again shake off the yoke and give him further trouble.

35 1 And now that he was in possession of Athens, he at once laid plans against Sparta. Near Mantineia, where Archidamus the king confronted him, he conquered and routed his foe, and then invaded Laconia. And after he had fought a second pitched battle hard by Sparta itself, where he captured five hundred men and slew two hundred, it was thought that he as good as had the city in his power, although up to this time it had never been taken. 2 But with none of the kings does Fortune appear to have taken so great and sudden turns, and in the career of no other did she so many times show herself now small and now great, now resplendent and now abased, now insignificant and now all powerful. For this reason, too, we are told that in his worst reverses Demetrius would apostrophise Fortune in the words of Aeschylus: —

“My flame thou fannest, indeed, and thou seemest to quench me, too.”

3 And so at this time, when events so generously favoured the increase of his dominion and power, word was brought to him, first, that Lysimachus had deprived him of his cities in Asia, and next, that Ptolemy had taken Cyprus, with the exception of the single city of Salamis, and had shut up in Salamis under siege his children and his mother. 4 However, even Fortune, who, like the woman in Archilochus, “in one deceitful hand bore water, and in the other fire,” while by tidings so dreadful and terrifying she drew him away from Sparta, at once inspired him with other hopes of new and great achievements, and on this wise.

36 1 After Cassander’s death, the eldest of his sons, Philip, reigned for a short time over the Macedonians and then died, and the two remaining brothers quarrelled with one another over the succession. One of them, Antipater, murdered his mother, Thessalonicé, and the other, Alexander, summoned to his help Pyrrhus from Epeirus, and Demetrius from Peloponnesus. 2 Pyrrhus was first to answer the summons, and after cutting off a large part of Macedonia 906 as a reward for his assistance, was already a neighbour whom Alexander feared. But Demetrius, who, when he received Alexander’s letters, had set out with his forces to join him, inspired the young man with still more fear because of his high position and reputation, and he therefore met Demetrius at Dium, and gave him a friendly welcome, but declared that the situation no longer demanded his presence. 3 Owing to these circumstances, then, the men were suspicious of one another, and besides, as Demetrius was on his way to supper at the young man’s invitation, some one told him of a plot to kill him in the very midst of the drinking. Demetrius was not at all disturbed, but delayed his coming a little, and ordered his officers to have his troops under arms, and all the attendants and servants in his train (and they were far more numerous than the retinue of Alexander) to go with him into the banqueting-hall and to remain there until he rose from the table. 4 This frightened Alexander, and he did not venture to attempt anything. Demetrius also made the excuse that he was not in condition to take wine, and went away very soon. On the following day he busied himself with preparations for departure, telling Alexander that unexpected troubles had arisen, which demanded his attention, asking his pardon for leaving so quickly, and assuring him that he would pay him a longer visit at another time when his affairs permitted it. Alexander was therefore well pleased, convinced that Demetrius was leaving his territories, not in hostility, but of his own free will, and escorted him on his way as far as Thessaly. 5 But when they came to Larissa, once more invitations to entertainments passed between them, and each plotted against the life of the other. This, more than anything else, put Alexander into the power of Demetrius. For he hesitated to take measures of precaution, that he might not thereby teach Demetrius also to take counter-measures, and he was forestalled by meeting the doom he was himself devising (since he delayed measures to prevent the other from escaping out of his hands). And so, when Demetrius rose up from table before supper was over, Alexander, filled with fear, rose up also and followed close upon his heels towards the door. 6 Demetrius, then, on reaching the door where his own body-guards stood, said merely, “Smite any one who follows me,” and quietly went out himself; but Alexander was cut down by the guards, together with those of his friends who came to his aid. One of these, we are told, as he was smitten, said that Demetrius had got one day’s start of them.

37 1 That night, naturally, was full of tumult. But with the day the Macedonians, who were in confusion and afraid of the forces of Demetrius, found that no enemy came against them, but that Demetrius sent to them a request for an interview and for an opportunity to explain what had been done. They therefore took heart and promised to receive him in a friendly spirit. 2 When he came to them, there was no need of his making long speeches, but owing to their hatred of Antipater, who was a matricide, and to their lack of a better man, they proclaimed Demetrius king of the Macedonians, and at once went down with him into Macedonia. Furthermore, to the Macedonians at home the change was not unwelcome, for they ever remembered with hatred the crimes which Cassander had committed against the posterity of Alexander the Great. 3 And if there still remained any kindly memories of the elder Antipater’s moderation and justice, of these also Demetrius reaped the benefit, since he was the husband of Phila, Antipater’s daughter, and had a son by her to be his successor in the realm, a son who was already quite a youth, and was serving in the army under his father.

38 1 While Demetrius was enjoying a good fortune so illustrious as this, he had tidings concerning his children and his mother, namely, that they had been set free, and that Ptolemy had given them gifts and honours besides; he had tidings also concerning his daughter who was wedded to Seleucus, namely, that she was now the wife of Antiochus the son of Seleucus, and had the title of Queen of Upper Asia. 2 For it came to pass, as it would seem, 907 that Antiochus fell in love with Stratonicé, who was young, and was already mother of a little boy by Seleucus. Antiochus was distressed, and resorted to many means of fighting down his passion, but at last, condemning himself for his inordinate desires, for his incurable malady, and for the subjugation of his reason, he determined to seek a way of escape from life, and to destroy himself gradually by neglecting his person and abstaining from food, under pretence of having some disease. 3 But Erasistratus, his physician, perceived quite easily that he was in love, and wishing to discover who was the object of his passion (a matter not so easy to decide), he would spend day after day in the young man’s chamber, and if any of the beauties of the court came in, male or female, he would study the countenance of Antiochus, and watch those parts and movements of his person which nature has made to sympathize most with the inclinations of the soul. 4 Accordingly, when any one else came in, Antiochus showed no change; but whenever Stratonicé came to see him, as she often did, either alone, or with Seleucus, lo, those tell-tale signs of which Sappho sings were all there in him, — stammering speech, fiery flushes, darkened vision, sudden sweats, irregular palpitations of the heart, and finally, as his soul was taken by storm, helplessness, stupor, and pallor. 5 And besides all this, Erasistratus reasoned further that in all probability the king’s son, had he loved any other woman, would not have persisted to the death in refusing to speak about it. He thought it a difficult matter to explain the case fully to Seleucus, but nevertheless, relying on the father’s kindly feelings towards his son, he took the risk one day, and told him that love was the young man’s trouble, a love that could neither be satisfied nor cured. 6 The king was amazed, and asked why his son’s love could not be satisfied. “Because, indeed,” said Erasistratus, “he is in love with my wife.” “Then canst thou not, O Erasistratus,” said Seleucus, “since thou art my son’s friend, give him thy wife in addition to thy friendship, especially when thou seest that he is the only anchor of our storm-tossed house?” “Thou art his father,” said Erasistratus, “and yet thou wouldst not have done so if Antiochus had set his affections on Stratonicé.” 7 “My friend,” said Seleucus, “would that someone in heaven or on earth might speedily convert and turn his passion in this direction; since I would gladly let my kingdom also go, if I might keep Antiochus.” So spake Seleucus with deep emotion and many tears, whereupon Erasistratus clasped him by the hand and told him he had no need of Erasistratus; for as father, husband, and king, he was himself at the same time the best physician also for his household. 8 Consequently Seleucus called an assembly of the entire people and declared it to be his wish and purpose to make Antiochus king of all Upper Asia, and Stratonicé his queen, the two being husband and wife; he also declared it to be his opinion that his son, accustomed as he was to be submissive and obedient in all things, would not oppose his father in this marriage; 9 and that if his wife were reluctant to take this extraordinary step, he called upon his friends to teach and persuade her to regard as just and honourable whatever seemed good to the king and conducive to the general welfare. On this wise, then, we are told, Antiochus and Stratonicé became husband and wife.

39 1 As for Demetrius, after Macedonia he became master of Thessaly also. And now that he had most of Peloponnesus, and, on this side the Isthmus, Megara and Athens, he turned his arms against the Boeotians. These at first made friendly agreements with him on reasonable terms; afterwards, however, when Cleonymus the Spartan made his way into Thebes with an army, the Boeotians were lifted up in spirit, and since at the same time Pisis of Thespiae, who was their leading man at this time in reputation and influence, added his instigations to the step, they revolted. 2 But when Demetrius brought up his engines-of war against Thebes 908 and laid siege to the city, Cleonymus took fright and stole away, and the Boeotians, in terror, surrendered. Demetrius put garrisons in their cities, exacted large sums of money from them, and left as their overseer and governor Hieronymus the historian, thereby giving a reputation for clemency, and particularly by his treatment of Pisis. For after capturing him Demetrius did him no harm, but actually greeted him, showed him kindness, and appointed him polemarch in Thespiae. 3 Not long afterwards, however, Lysimachus was taken prisoner by Dromichaetes, and in view of this Demetrius set out with all speed for Thrace, thinking to occupy a region destitute of defenders. Thereupon the Boeotians revolted again, and at the same time word was brought that Lysimachus had been set free. Quickly, therefore, and in wrath, Demetrius turned back, and finding that the Boeotians had been defeated in battle by his son Antigonus, once more laid siege to Thebes.

40 1 But Pyrrhus now overran Thessaly and was seen as far south as Thermopylae; Demetrius therefore left Antigonus to conduct the siege of Thebes, and himself set out against this new foe. Pyrrhus, however, made a swift retreat, whereupon Demetrius stationed ten thousand men-at arms and a thousand horsemen in Thessaly and once more devoted himself to Thebes. Here he brought up against the city his famous City-taker, but this was so laboriously and slowly propelled, owing to its weight and great size, that in the space of two months it hardly advanced two furlongs. 2 Besides, the Boeotians made a stout resistance, and Demetrius many times, out of contumacy rather than from need, forced his soldiers to risk their lives in battle. Antigonus saw that they were falling in great numbers, and in great concern said “Why, my father, should we suffer these lives to be squandered without any necessity for it?” But Demetrius was incensed, and said: “Why, pray, art thou disturbed at this? Are rations due from thee to the dead?” 3 However, wishing not to be thought reckless of other lives only, but also to share the perils of battle, he was pierced through the neck by a catapult-bolt. And yet, sore wounded as he was, he did not give up, but took Thebes again. His entry into the city filled the citizens with acute fear; they thought they were to suffer the most dreadful punishments; but he put to death only thirteen of them, banished a few, and pardoned the rest. 4 And so it was the fate of Thebes, which had been occupied less than ten years, to be captured twice during this time.

Furthermore, the time for the Pythian games being now at hand, Demetrius ventured upon a most unheard of proceeding. Since, namely, the Aetolians occupied the passes about Delphi, he conducted the games and the festival in person at Athens, declaring it to be especially fitting that Apollo should be honoured there, since he was a patron deity of the Athenians and was said to have been the founder of their race.

41 1 From Athens Demetrius returned to Macedonia, and since he was himself not prone by nature to keep quiet, and since he saw that his followers were more devoted to him when they were on a campaign, but at home were turbulent and meddlesome, he made an expedition against the Aetolians. After ravaging the country, he left Pantauchus there with a large part of his forces, while he himself moved against Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus also moved against him, but they missed one another on the march. 2 Demetrius therefore plundered Epeirus, but Pyrrhus fell upon Pantauchus, and after a battle in which the two commanders came to close quarters and wounded each other, routed him, took five thousand of his men prisoners, and slew many of the rest. 3 This wrought the greatest harm to the cause of Demetrius. For Pyrrhus, who was not so much hated for what he had done as he was admired for making most of his conquests in person, acquired from this battle a great and splendid name among the Macedonians, 909 and many of them were moved to say that in him alone of all the kings could they see an image of the great Alexander’s daring; whereas the others, and particularly Demetrius, did but assume Alexander’s majesty and pomp, like actors on a stage. 4 And there was in truth much of the theatrical about Demetrius, who not only had an extravagant array of cloakings and head-gear — double-mitred broad-brimmed hats and purple robes shot with gold, but also equipped his feet with gold-embroidered shoes of the richest purple felt. And there was one cloak which was long in the weaving for him, a magnificent work, on which was represented the world and the heavenly bodies; 5 this was left behind half-finished when the reversal of his fortunes came, and no succeeding king of Macedonia ventured to use it, although not a few of them were given to pomp and luxury.

42 1 And not only by such displays did he vex his subjects, who were unused to them, but his luxurious ways of living were also offensive, and above all else the difficulty of getting access to him or conversing with him. For either he would give no audience at all, or he was stern and harsh with his auditors. For instance, he kept an embassy from the Athenians, for whose favour he was more solicitous than for that of any other Greeks, two years in waiting; and when a single envoy came to him from Sparta, he thought himself despised, and was incensed. 2 However, when he cried, “What meanest thou? Have the Spartans sent but one envoy?” he got the neat and laconic reply, “Yea, O king, to one man.” On one occasion, when he was thought to be riding abroad in a more affable mood than usual, and seemed to encounter his subjects without displeasure, there was a large concourse of people who presented him with written petitions. He received them all and folded them away in his cloak, whereupon the people were delighted and escorted him on his way; but when he came to the bridge over the Axius, he shook out the folds of his cloak and cast all the petitions into the river. 3 This was a great vexation to the Macedonians, who thought themselves insulted, not ruled, and they called to mind, or listened to those who called to mind, how reasonable Philip used to be in such matters, and how accessible. An old woman once assailed Demetrius as he was passing by, and demanded many times that he give her a hearing. “I have no time,” said Demetrius. “Then don’t be king,” screamed the old woman. 4 Demetrius was stung to the quick, and after thinking upon the matter, went back to his house, and postponing every thing else, for several days devoted himself entirely to those who wished audience of him, beginning with the old woman who had rebuked him.

5 And surely nothing befits a king as the work of justice. For “Ares is tyrant,” in the words of Timotheus, but “Law is king of all things,” according to Pindar; and Homer speaks of kings as receiving from Zeus for protection and safe-keeping, not city-takers nor bronze-beaked ships, but “ordinances of justice”; and he calls a disciple and “confidant” of Zeus, not the most warlike or unjust or murderous of kings, but the most just. 6 Demetrius, on the contrary, was delighted to receive a surname most unlike those given to the king of the gods; for Zeus is surnamed City-guardian, or City-protector; but Demetrius, City-besieger. Thus a power devoid of wisdom advances evil to the place of good, and makes injustice co dweller with fame.

43 1 But while Demetrius lay most dangerously sick at Pella, he almost lost Macedonia; for Pyrrhus swiftly overran it and advanced as far as Edessa. As soon, however, as Demetrius had somewhat recovered his strength he easily drove Pyrrhus out of the country, and then came to a kind of agreement with him, being unwilling that continual collisions and local conflicts with this opponent should defeat his set purpose. 9102 And his purpose was nothing less than the recovery of all the realm that had been subject to his father. Moreover, his preparations were fully commensurate with his hopes and undertakings. He had already gathered an army which numbered ninety-eight thousand foot, and besides, nearly twelve thousand horsemen. 3 At the same time, moreover, he had laid the keels for a fleet of five hundred ships, some of which were in Piraeus, some at Corinth, some at Chalcis, and some at Pella. And he would visit all these places in person, showing what was to be done and aiding in the plans, while all men wondered, not only at the multitude, but also at the magnitude of the works. 4 Up to this time no man had seen a ship of fifteen or sixteen banks of oars. At a later time, it is true, Ptolemy Philopator built one of forty banks of oars, which had a length of two hundred and eighty cubits, and a height, to the top of her stern, of forty-eight; she was manned by four hundred sailors, who did no rowing, and by four thousand rowers, and besides these she had room, on her gangways and decks, for nearly three thousand men-at arms. But this ship was merely for show; and since she differed little from a stationary edifice on land, being meant for exhibition and not for use, she was moved only with difficulty and danger. 5 However, in the ships of Demetrius their beauty did not mar their fighting qualities, nor did the magnificence of their equipment rob them of their usefulness, but they had a speed and effectiveness which was more remarkable than their great size.

44 1 Accordingly, while this great force, the like of which no man had possessed since Alexander, was getting under way against Asia, the three kings, Seleucus, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus, formed a league against Demetrius. Next, they sent a joint embassy to Pyrrhus, urging him to attack Macedonia, and not to regard a truce by which Demetrius had not given him the privilege of having no war made upon him, but had taken for himself the privilege of making war first on the enemy of his choice. Pyrrhus granted their requests, and a great war encompassed Demetrius before his preparations were completed. 2 For at one and the same time Ptolemy sailed to Greece with a great fleet and tried to bring it to revolt, while Lysimachus invaded Macedonia from Thrace, and Pyrrhus from the neighbouring Epeirus, and both plundered the land. But Demetrius left his son in charge of Greece, while he himself, hastening to the rescue of Macedonia, set out first against Lysimachus. But tidings came to him that Pyrrhus had taken Beroea. 3 The report quickly came to the ears of the Macedonians, and then Demetrius could no longer maintain discipline, but his camp was full of lamentations and tears, coupled with wrathful execrations against himself, and the soldiers would not hold together, but insisted on going away, ostensibly to their homes, but in reality to Lysimachus. 4 Demetrius therefore determined to put as much distance as possible between himself and Lysimachus, and to turn his arms against Pyrrhus; for Lysimachus as he thought, was a fellow-countryman and congenial to many of the Macedonians because of Alexander; while Pyrrhus was a new-comer and a foreigner, and would not be preferred by them before himself. In these calculations, however, he was greatly deceived. 5 For he drew nigh and pitched his camp by that of Pyrrhus; but his soldiers had always admired that leader’s brilliant exploits in arms, and from of old they had been wont to consider the man who was mightiest in arms as also the most kingly; besides this, they now learned that Pyrrhus treated his prisoners of war with mildness, and since they were seeking to be rid of Demetrius whether it took them to Pyrrhus or to another, they kept deserting him, at first secretly and in small companies. Then the whole camp was in open agitation and disorder, 6 and at last some of the soldiers ventured to go to Demetrius, bidding him to go away and save himself; 911 for the Macedonians, they said, were tired of waging war in support of his luxurious way of living. Demetrius thought this very moderate language compared with the harshness of the rest; so he went to his tent, and, as if he had been an actor and not a real king, put on a dark cloak in place of his stage-robes of royalty, and stole away unnoticed. 7 Most of the soldiers at once fell to pillaging and tearing down his tent, and fought with one another for the spoils; but Pyrrhus came up, mastered the camp without a blow, and took possession of it. And all Macedonia was divided between Pyrrhus and Lysimachus, after Demetrius had reigned over it securely for seven years.

45 1 When Demetrius thus lost his power and fled for refuge to Cassandreia, his wife Phila was full of grief and could not endure to see her husband, that most afflicted of kings, once more in private station and in exile; she gave up all hope, and in hatred of his fortune, which was more secure in adversity than in prosperity, she drank poison and died. But Demetrius, determined to cling still to what was left of his wrecked fortunes, went off to Greece, and tried to assemble his friends and generals who were there.

The Menelaüs of Sophocles applies this simile to his own fortunes: —

2 “But my fate on the swiftly turning wheel of God

Goes whirling round forever and ever changes shape,

Just as the moon’s appearance for two kindly nights

Could never be identical and show no change,

But out of darkness first she comes forth young and new,

With face that ever grows more beautiful and full,

And when she reaches largest and most generous phase,

Again she vanisheth away and comes to naught.”

3 This simile might be better used of the fortunes of Demetrius, now waxing and now waning, now full-orbed and now diminished, since even at this time, when his power seemed to fail altogether and suffer extinction, it shot forth new rays of light, and sundry accessions of strength little by little filled out the measure of his hopes. At first he went about visiting the cities in the garb of a private man and without the insignia of a king, and one who saw him thus at Thebes applied to him, not inaptly, the verses of Euripides: —

“Exchanging now the form of god for that of man,

He visits Dirce’s rivulets and Ismenus’ flood.”

46 1 But as soon as he had entered upon the path of hope, as upon a royal highway, and had gathered about himself a body and form of sovereignty, he restored to the Thebans their ancient form of government; the Athenians, however, revolted from him. They voted to elect archons as had been their custom of old, and took away from Diphilus, who had been appointed priest of the Saviour-gods, the privilege of giving his name to the current year; and when they saw that Demetrius had more strength than they expected, they summoned Pyrrhus to their aid from Macedonia. 2 Demetrius came up against them in a rage, and began a strenuous siege of the city. But the people sent to him Crates the philosopher, a man of great repute and influence, and Demetrius, partly because he was induced to grant the ambassador’s appeals in behalf of the Athenians, and partly because he was convinced when the philosopher showed him what would be an advantageous course, raised the siege, and after assembling all the ships he had, and putting on board eleven thousand soldiers, together with his cavalry, he sailed for Asia, to wrest Caria and Lydia from Lysimachus.

3 He was met at Miletus by Eurydicé, a sister of Phila, who brought with her one of her daughters by Ptolemy, Ptolemaïs, 912 who had been betrothed to Demetrius before this through the agency of Seleucus. Demetrius married her now, and Eurydicé gave the bride away. After the marriage Demetrius at once turned his arms against the cities, many of which attached themselves to him of their own accord, and many also he forced into submission. 4 He took Sardis also; and some of the generals of Lysimachus came over to him bringing money and troops. But when Agathocles, the son of Lysimachus, came against him with an army, Demetrius retired into Phrygia; he had determined, if once he could reach Armenia, to bring Media to revolt and attempt the upper provinces, which afforded an ejected commander many refuges and retreats. 5 Agathocles followed him, and though Demetrius had the advantage in their engagements, he was shut off from getting provisions and forage, and was in great straits; besides, his soldiers were suspicious that he was trying to make his way towards Armenia and Media. And not only did famine press them harder, but also some mistake was made in crossing the river Lycus, and a large number of men were carried away by the current and lost. But nevertheless they would have their pleasantries; and one of them wrote up in front of the tent of Demetrius the opening words of the “Oedipus,” slightly changed: —

“O child of blind and aged Antigonus, what are

These regions whither we are come?”

47 1 But at last sickness assailed them as well as famine, which is wont to happen when men have recourse to foods which they must eat to save their lives, and after losing no less than eight thousand men in all, Demetrius retraced his steps with the rest and came down to Tarsus. Here he would gladly have spared the country, which was then under Seleucus, and so have given its ruler no ground of complaint; 2 but this was impossible, for his soldiers were suffering extreme privations, and Agathocles had fortified the passes of the Taurus against him. He therefore wrote a very long letter to Seleucus, bewailing his own misfortunes, and then begging and beseeching him to take pity on a man who was allied to him by marriage, and had suffered enough to win sympathy even from his enemies.

Seleucus was somewhat softened by this appeal, and wrote to his generals in that province that they should furnish Demetrius himself with royal maintenance, and his troops with abundant supplies. 3 But Patrocles, a man in repute for wisdom, and a trusted friend of Seleucus, came to him and told him that the expense of maintaining the soldiers of Demetrius was a very small matter, but that it was unwise for him to allow Demetrius to remain in that country, since he had always been the most violent of the kings, and the most given to grand designs, and was now in a state of fortune where even naturally moderate men are led to commit deeds of daring and injustice. 4 Incited by this advice, Seleucus marched into Cilicia with a large force. Then Demetrius, filled with amazement and alarm at the sudden change of attitude in Seleucus, asked that above all things he might be permitted to acquire a petty empire among the independent Barbarians, in which he might end his days without further wanderings and flights; but if this might not be, he begged him to give his troops food for the winter there, and not to drive him forth, stripped and destitute of all things, and cast him into the hands of his enemies.

48 1 But Seleucus was suspicious of all this, and told Demetrius that he might, if he wished, spend two months in winter quarters in Cataonia, provided he gave the chief among his friends as hostages; and at the same time he fortified the passes into Syria against him. Then Demetrius, like a wild beast, hemmed in and attacked on all sides, was driven to defend himself; he overran the country, and when Seleucus attacked him, engaged with him and always had the advantage. 9132 Once in particular, when the scythe-bearing chariots were dashing down upon him, he avoided the charge, routed his assailants, drove away those who were fortifying the passes into Syria, and made himself master of them. And now he was completely lifted up in spirit, and seeing that his soldiers had recovered their courage, he made ready to fight to the finish with Seleucus for the supreme prizes. Seleucus himself was already in perplexity. 3 For he had refused the assistance offered by Lysimachus, whom he distrusted and feared; and by himself he hesitated to join battle with Demetrius, fearing the man’s desperation and the perpetual change which brought him from the extremest destitution to the greatest affluence.

However, a grievous sickness seized Demetrius at this juncture; it wrought terrible harm to his body, and utterly ruined his cause. For some of his soldiers went over to the enemy, and others dispersed. 4 But at last, after forty days, he recovered strength, and taking the soldiers that remained, set out, so far as his enemies could see or conjecture, for Cilicia; then, in the night and without signal by trumpet, he set out in the opposite direction, crossed the range of Amanus, and plundered the lower country as far as Cyrrhestica.

49 1 When Seleucus made his appearance there and encamped near by, Demetrius set his army in motion by night and advanced against him. Seleucus was ignorant of his approach for a long time, and lay sleeping. But when some deserters came and told him of his peril, he was astounded, and leaping up ordered the trumpets to be sounded, at the same time pulling on his boots and shouting to his companions that a terrible wild beast was upon them. But Demetrius, perceiving from the noise which his enemies made that they had been informed of his approach, drew off his troops with all speed. 2 When day came, however, Seleucus was pressing him hard, so he sent one of his officers to the other wing, and partially routed the enemy. But at this point Seleucus himself, quitting his horse, doffing his helmet, and taking a light shield, went to meet the mercenaries of Demetrius, showing them who he was, and exhorting them to come over to him, since they must for some time have been aware that his long forbearance had them in view, and not Demetrius. 3 Consequently they all welcomed him, hailed him as king, and went over to him.

Then Demetrius, perceiving that the last of many reversals of fortune was now come upon him, left the field and fled to the passes of Amanus, where he plunged into a dense forest along with sundry friends and followers, few all told, and waited for the night. He wished, if possible, to take the road to Caunus and make his way through to the sea, where he expected to find his fleet. 4 But when he learned that the party had not provisions enough even for the coming day, he tried to think of other plans. At this point, however, Sosigenes came up, a companion of his, with four hundred pieces of gold in his belt; so hoping that with this money they could make their way through to the sea, the party set out towards the passes, in the darkness of night. In the passes, however, the enemy were burning fires, so the fugitives despaired of this road and once more returned to their place in the forest — not all of them, for some had run away; nor was the remnant as willing as before. 5 And when one of them ventured to speak out boldly and say that Demetrius ought to surrender himself to Seleucus, Demetrius drew his sword and would have killed himself; but his friends encompassed him, and with encouraging words persuaded him to do as the man had said. So he sent to Seleucus and put himself at his disposal.

50 1 When Seleucus heard of it, he declared that it was not the good fortune of Demetrius that brought him safety, but his own, which, in addition to her other blessings, gave him an opportunity to show generosity and kindness. Then he called his overseers and bade them pitch a royal tent, 914 and to make all other arrangements and preparations for a magnificent reception and entertainment. 2 There was also with Seleucus a certain Apollonides, who had been an intimate friend of Demetrius; this man was at once sent to him by Seleucus, to give him cheerfulness and confidence by reminders that he was coming into the presence of a man who was a friend and relative. When this purpose of Seleucus became evident, first a few of his friends, then the greater part of them, went off hot foot to Demetrius, vying with one another in their efforts to reach him first; for it was expected that he would at once be a very great personage at the court of Seleucus.

3 But this behaviour of his friends turned the king’s pity into jealousy, and gave malicious and mischievous persons an opportunity to thwart and put an end to his generosity. They frightened him by their insinuations that without any delay, but at the first sight of Demetrius, there would be a great revolution in the camp. 4 And so it came to pass that at the very time when Apollonides had come to Demetrius with a joyful countenance, and while the other courtiers were coming up and telling him wonderful tales about Seleucus and his generosity, and when Demetrius, after all his disasters and misfortunes, even if he had once thought his surrender a disgraceful act, had now changed his mind as a result of his courage and hopefulness, up came Pausanias at the head of a thousand soldiers, foot and horse together. 5 With these he surrounded Demetrius on a sudden, and after sending off everybody else, conducted him, not into the presence of Seleucus, but away to the Syrian Chersonese. Here, for the rest of his life, a strong guard was set over him, a sufficient number of attendants came to him from Seleucus, while money and maintenance was provided for him which was not to be despised, nay, royal courses for riding and walking, and parks with wild game in them, were set apart for his use; 6 any friend also who shared his exile and wished to visit him could do so, and notwithstanding his captivity sundry people kept coming to him from Seleucus bringing kindly messages and exhorting him to be of good cheer, since as soon as Antiochus came with Stratonicé, he was to be set at liberty.

51 1 Demetrius, however, finding himself in this plight, sent word to his son and the friends and commanders who were at Athens and Corinth, bidding them put no trust in letters or seal purporting to be his, but to treat him as dead, and to preserve for Antigonus his cities and the rest of his power. 2 When Antigonus learned of his father’s capture, he was deeply distressed, put on mourning apparel, and wrote to the other kings and especially to Seleucus himself, supplicating him, and offering to surrender to him whatever was left of his own and his father’s possessions, and above everything volunteering to be a hostage himself for his father. Many cities also and many rulers joined in these supplications. 3 But Lysimachus did not; he sent to Seleucus the promise of a large sum of money if he killed Demetrius. But Seleucus, who had always had a feeling of aversion for Lysimachus, all the more for this proposal thought him abominable and barbarous, and continued to keep Demetrius under watch and ward for Antiochus his son and Stratonicé, that the favour of his release might come from them.

52 1 But Demetrius, who in the beginning bore up under the misfortune that had come upon him, and presently grew accustomed to it and endured his situation with a better grace, at first, in one way or another, exercised his body, resorting to hunting, so far as he could, or riding; then, little by little, he came to have the greatest indifference and aversion to these sports, took eagerly to drinking and dice, and spent most of his time at these. 2 This was either because he thought escape from the thoughts on his present condition which tormented him when he was sober, and tried to smother his reflections in drunkenness; or because he had convinced himself that this was the real life, which he had long desired and striven to attain, but had foolishly missed it through folly and empty ambition, thereby bringing many troubles upon himself, and many upon others; 915 he had sought in arms and fleets and armies to find the highest good, but now, to his surprise, had discovered it in idleness and leisure and repose. 3 For what other end than this can worthless kings seek to attain by their wars and perils? Wicked and foolish indeed are they, not only because they seek after luxury and pleasure instead of virtue and honour, but also because they do not even know how to enjoy real pleasure or true luxury.

So, then, Demetrius, after an imprisonment of three years in the Syrian Chersonese, through inactivity and surfeit of food and wine, fell sick and died, in the fifty-fifth year of his life. 4 Seleucus was in ill repute for this, and repented him bitterly for having cherished such suspicions against Demetrius, and for allowing himself to be outdone even by Dromichaetes, a barbarous Thracian, who had given Lysimachus, his captive, a treatment so humane and royal.

53 1 Moreover, there was something dramatic and theatrical even in the funeral ceremonies of Demetrius. For his son Antigonus, when he learned that his remains had been sent home, put to sea with his entire fleet and met them off the islands. They were given to him in a golden urn, and he placed them in the largest of his admiral’s ships. 2 Of the cities where the fleet touched in its passage, some brought garlands to adorn the urn, others sent men in funeral attire to assist in escorting it home and burying it. When the fleet put in at Corinth, the cinerary vase was conspicuous on the vessel’s poop, adorned with royal purple and a king’s diadem, and young men stood about it in arms as a bodyguard. Moreover, the most celebrated flute-player then living, Xenophantus, sat near, and with the most solemn melody upon his flute accompanied the rowers; 3 to this melody the oars kept perfect time, and their splashing, like funereal beatings of the breast, answered to the cadences of the flute-tones. But the most pity and lamentation among those who had come in throngs to the sea-shore was awakened by the sight of Antigonus himself, who was bowed down and in tears. After garlands and other honours had been bestowed upon the remains at Corinth, they were brought by Antigonus to Demetrias for burial, a city named after his father, who had settled it from the small villages about Iolcus.

4 The children left by Demetrius were these: Antigonus and Stratonicé, by Phila; two named Demetrius, one who was surnamed the Thin, by a woman of Illyria, and one who ruled Cyrené, by Ptolemaïs; and, by Deïdameia, Alexander, who lived and died in Egypt. It is said also that he had a son named Corrhagus, by Eurydicé. His line came down in a succession of kings to Perseus, the last, in whose reign the Romans subdued Macedonia.

And now that the Macedonian play has been performed, let us introduce the Roman.

Antony

1 1 Antony’s grandfather was the orator Antonius, who joined the party of Sulla and was put to death by Marius; his father was Antonius surnamed Creticus, a man of no great repute in public life, nor illustrious, but kindly and honest, and particularly a liberal giver, as one may see from a single instance. 2 He had not much property himself, and therefore was prevented by his wife from indulging his kindly feelings. When, accordingly, one of his intimates came to him with a request for money, money he had not, but he ordered a young slave to put water into a silver bowl and bring it to him, and when it was brought, he moistened his chin, as though about to shave. 3 The slave was then sent away on another errand improvised for the occasion, whereupon Antonius gave the bowl to his friend and bade him dispose of it. Later, when a careful search for it was made for it among the slaves, seeing that his wife was angry and proposed to put them to the torture one by one,a Antonius confessed what he had done, and by his entreaties gained her pardon.

2 1 His wife was Julia, of the house of the Caesars, and she could vie with the noblest and most discreet women of her time. By this mother her son Antony was reared, after the death of whose father she married Cornelius Lentulus, whom Cicero put to death for joining the conspiracy of Catiline. This would seem to have been the origin and ground of the violent hatred which Antony felt towards Cicero. 2 At any rate, Antony says that not even the dead body of Lentulus was given up to them until his mother had begged it from the wife of Cicero. This, however, is admittedly false; for no one of those who were punished at that time by Cicero was deprived of burial. 3 Antony gave brilliant promise in his youth, they say, until his intimate friendship with Curio fell upon him like a pest. For Curio himself was unrestrained in his pleasures, and in order to make Antony more manageable, engaged him in drinking bouts, and with women, and in immoderate and extravagant expenditures. This involved Antony in a heavy debt and one that was excessive for his years — a debt of two hundred and fifty talents. 4 For this whole sum Curio went surety, but his father heard of it and banished Antony from his house. Then Antony allied himself for a short time with Clodius, the most audacious and low-lived demagogue of his time, in the violent courses which were convulsing the state; but he soon became sated with that miscreant’s madness, and fearing the party which was forming against him, left Italy for Greece, where he spent some time in military exercises and the study of oratory. 5 He adopted what was called the Asiatic style of oratory, which was at the height of its popularity in those days and bore a strong resemblance to his own life, which was swashbuckling and boastful, full of empty exultation and distorted ambition.

3 1 When Gabinius, a man of consular dignity, was sailing for Syria, he tried to persuade Antony to join the expedition. Antony refused to go out with him in a private capacity, but on being appointed commander of the horse, accompanied him on the campaign. And first, having been sent against Aristobulus, who was bringing the Jews to a revolt, he was himself the first man to mount the highest of the fortifications, and drove Aristobulus from all of them; then he joined battle with him, routed his many times more numerous forces with his own small band, and slew all but a few of them. Aristobulus himself was captured, together with his son.

2 After this, Ptolemy tried to persuade Gabinius by a bribe of ten thousand talents to join him in an invasion of Egypt and recover the kingdom for him. But the greater part of the officers were opposed to the plan, and Gabinius himself felt a certain dread of the war, although he was completely captivated by the ten thousand talents. Antony, however, who was ambitious of great exploits and eager to gratify the request of Ptolemy, joined the king in persuading and inciting Gabinius to the expedition. 3 But more than the war the march to Pelusium was feared, since their route lay through deep sand, where there was no water, as far as the Ecregma and the Serbonian marshes. These the Egyptians call the blasts of Typhon, although they appear to be a residual arm of the Red Sea, helped by infiltration, where the isthmus between them and the Mediterranean is at its narrowest. 4 Antony was therefore sent with the cavalry, and he not only occupied the narrow pass, but actually took Pelusium, a large city, and got its garrison into his power, thus rendering its march safer for the main army and giving its general assured hope of victory. And even the enemy reaped advantage from Antony’s love of distinction. For Ptolemy, as soon as he entered Pelusium, was led by wrath and hatred to institute a massacre of the Egyptians; but Antony intervened and prevented him. 5 Moreover, in the ensuing battles and contests, which were many and great, he displayed many deeds of daring and sagacious leadership, the most conspicuous of which was his rendering the van of the army victorious by outflanking the enemy and enveloping them from the rear. For all this he received rewards of valour and fitting honours. Nor did the multitude fail to observe his humane treatment of the dead Archelaüs, 6 for after waging war upon him by necessity while he was living, although he had been a comrade and friend, when he had fallen, Antony found his body and gave it royal adornment and burial. Thus he left among the people of Alexandria a very high reputation, and was thought by the Romans on the expedition to be a most illustrious man.

4 1 He had also a noble dignity of form; and a shapely beard, a broad forehead, and an aquiline nose were thought to show the virile qualities peculiar to the portraits and statues of Hercules. Moreover, there was an ancient tradition that the Antonii were Heracleidae, being descendants of Anton, a son of Heracles. 2 And this tradition Antony thought that he confirmed, both by the shape of his body, as has been said, and by his attire. For whenever he was going to be seen by many people, he always wore his tunic girt up to his thigh, a large sword hung at his side, and a heavy cloak enveloped him. However, even what others thought offensive, namely, his jesting and boastfulness, his drinking-horn in evidence, his sitting by a comrade who was eating, or his standing to eat at a soldier’s table, — it is astonishing how much goodwill and affection for him all this produced in his soldiers. 3 And somehow even his conduct in the field of love was not without its charm, nay, it actually won for him the favour of many; for he assisted them in their love affairs, and submitted pleasantly to their jests upon his own amours.

Furthermore, his liberality, and his bestowal of favours upon friends and soldiers with no scant or sparing hand, laid a splendid foundation for his growing strength, and when he had become great, lifted his power to yet greater heights, although it was hindered by countless faults besides. One illustration of his lavish giving I will relate. 4 To one of his friends he ordered that two hundred and fifty thousand drachmas should be given (a sum which the Romans call “decies”). His steward was amazed, and in order to show Antony the magnitude of the sum, deposited the money in full view. Antony, passing by, asked what that was; and when his steward told him it was the gift which he had ordered, he divined the man’s malice and said: “I thought the decies was more; this is a trifle; therefore add as much more to it.”

5 1 This, however, was at a later time. But when matters at Rome came to a crisis, the aristocratic party attaching itself to Pompey, who was in the city, and the popular party summoning Caesar from Gaul, where he was in arms, then Curio, the friend of Antony, who had changed sides and was now favouring the cause of Caesar, brought Antony over to it. Curio had great influence with the multitude from his eloquence, and made lavish use of money supplied by Caesar, and so got Antony elected tribune of the people, and afterwards one of the priests, called augurs, who observe the flight of birds. 2 As soon as Antony entered upon his office he was of great assistance to those who were managing affairs in the interests of Caesar. In the first place, when Marcellus the consul proposed to put under Pompey’s control the soldiers already collected, and to give him power to levy others, Antony opposed him by introducing a decree that the forces already assembled should sail for Syria and give aid to Bibulus, who was carrying on war with the Parthians, and that the troops which Pompey was then levying should not belong to him. 3 In the second place, when the senate would not receive Caesar’s letters nor allow them to be read, Antony, whose office gave him power, read them himself, and thereby changed the opinion of many, who judged from Caesar’s letters that he was making only reasonable and just demands. 4 And finally, when two questions were before the senate, one, whether Pompey should dismiss his forces, and the other, whether Caesar should do so, and only a few were for having Pompey lay down his arms, and all but a few were for having Caesar do so, then Antony rose and asked whether it was the opinion of the senate that Pompey and Caesar alike should lay down their arms and dismiss their forces. This proposal all accepted with alacrity, and with shouts of praise for Antony they demanded that the question be put to a vote. But the consuls would not consent to this, and again the friends of Caesar put forward fresh demands which were thought to be reasonable. These Cato opposed, and Lentulus, in his capacity of consul, drove Antony from the senate. Antony went forth heaping many imprecations upon them, and putting on the dress of a slave, and hiring a car in company with Quintus Cassius, he set out to join Caesar. As soon as they came into Caesar’s presence they cried loudly that everything was now at loose ends in Rome, since even tribunes of the people had no freedom of speech, but everyone who raised his voice in behalf of justice was persecuted and ran risk of his life.

6 1 Upon this, Caesar took his army and invaded Italy. Therefore Cicero, in his “Philippics,” wrote that as Helen was the cause of the Trojan war, so Antony was the cause of the civil war. But this was manifestly false. 2 For Caius Caesar was not a pliable man, nor easily led by anger to act on impulse. Therefore, had he not long ago determined upon his course, he would not thus, on the spur of the moment, have made war upon his country, just because he saw that Antony, meanly clad, with Cassius, on a hired car, had come in flight to him; 3 nay, this merely afforded a cloak and a specious reason for war to a man who had long wanted a pretext for it. And that which led him to war against all mankind, as it had led Alexander before him, and Cyrus of old, was an insatiable love of power and a mad desire to be first and greatest; this he could not achieve if Pompey were not put down.

4 And so he came up against Rome and got it into his power, and drove Pompey out of Italy; and determining first to turn his efforts against the forces of Pompey which were in Spain, and afterwards, when he had got ready a fleet, to cross the sea against Pompey himself, he entrusted Rome to Lepidus, who was praetor, and Italy and the troops to Antony, who was tribune of the people. 5 Antony at once gained the favour of the soldiers by sharing their exercises, living with them for the most part, and making them presents as generously as he could; but to everybody else he was odious. For his easy disposition led him to neglect the wronged, he listened angrily to those who consulted him, and he was in ill repute for his relations with other men’s wives. 6 In a word, Caesar’s power, which proved to be anything rather than a tyranny so far as his own course was concerned, was brought into odium by his friends; and of these Antony, who had the greatest power and was thought to be the greatest transgressor, incurred the most blame.

7 1 However, when Caesar came back from Spain, he ignored the charges against Antony, and since in the war he found him energetic, brave, and a capable leader, he made no mistake. Caesar himself, then, after crossing the Ionian sea from Brundisium with a few soldiers, sent back his transports with orders to Gabinius and Antony to embark their forces and come with all speed into Macedonia. 2 But Gabinius was afraid to make the voyage, which was difficult in the winter time, and started to lead his army a long way round by land. Antony, therefore, fearing for Caesar, who was hemmed in among numerous enemies, beat off Libo, who was blockading the harbour of Brundisium, by surrounding his galleys with a great number of small skiffs, and then, embarking eight hundred horsemen and twenty thousand legionaries, put to sea. 3 Being discovered by the enemy and pursued, he escaped the danger from them, since a violent south wind brought a heavy swell and put their galleys in the trough of the sea; but he was carried with his own ships towards a precipitous and craggy shore, and had no hope of escape. 4 Suddenly, however, there blew from the bay a strong south-west wind, and the swell began to run from the land out to sea, so that he was able to reverse his course, and, as he sailed gallantly along, he saw the shore covered with wrecks. For there the wind had cast up the galleys which were in pursuit of him, and many of them had been destroyed. Antony took many prisoners and much booty, captured Lissus, and inspired Caesar with great confidence by arriving in the nick of time with so large a force.

8 1 The struggles which followed were many and continuous, and in all of them Antony distinguished himself. Twice, when Caesar’s men were in headlong flight, he met them, turned them back, forced them to stand and engage again their pursuers, and won the victory. Accordingly, next to Caesar, he was the man most talked about in the camp. 2 And Caesar showed plainly what opinion he had of him. For when he was about to fight the last and all-decisive battle at Pharsalus, he himself took the right wing, but he gave the command of the left to Antony, as the most capable officer under him. 3 And after the victory, when he had been proclaimed dictator, he himself pursued Pompey, but he chose Antony as his Master of Horse and sent him to Rome. This office is second in rank when the dictator is in the city; but when he is absent, it is the first and almost the only one. For only the tribuneship continues when a dictator has been chosen; all the other offices are abolished.

9 1 However, Dolabella, who was tribune at this time — a newcomer in politics who aimed at a new order of things, introduced a law for the abolition of debts, and tried to persuade Antony, who was his friend and always sought to please the multitude, to take common action with him in the measure. But Asinius and Trebellius advised Antony to the contrary, and, as chance would have it, a dire suspicion fell upon him that he was wronged as a husband by Dolabella. 2 Antony took the matter much to heart, drove his wife from his house (she was his cousin, being a daughter of the Caius Antonius who was Cicero’s colleague in the consulship), made common cause with Asinius and Trebellius, and waged war upon Dolabella. For Dolabella had occupied the forum in order to force the passage of his law; so Antony, after the senate had voted that arms must be employed against Dolabella, came up against him, joined battle, slew some of his men, and lost some of his own. 3 This course naturally made him odious to the multitude, and to men of worth and uprightness he was not acceptable because of his life in general, as Cicero says, nay, he was hated by them. They loathed his ill-timed drunkenness, his heavy expenditures, his debauches with women, his spending the days in sleep or in wandering about with crazed and aching head, the nights in revelry or at shows, or in attendance at the nuptial feasts of mimes and jesters. 4 We are told, at any rate, that he once feasted at the nuptials of Hippias the mime, drank all night, and then, early in the morning, when the people summoned him to the forum, came before them still surfeited with food and vomited into his toga, which one of his friends held at his service. Sergius the mime also was one of those who had the greatest influence with him, and Cytheris, a woman from the same school of acting, a great favourite, whom he took about with him in a litter on his visits to the cities, and her litter was followed by as many attendants as that of his mother. 5 Moreover, people were vexed at the sight of golden beakers borne about on his excursions from the city as in sacred processions, at the pitching of tents when he travelled, at the laying out of costly repasts near groves and rivers, at chariots drawn by lions, and at the use of honest men and women’s houses as quarters for harlots and psaltery-players. 6 For it was thought a monstrous thing that, while Caesar himself was lodging under the skies outside of Italy and clearing away the remnants of the war at great toil and peril, his adherents, by virtue of his efforts, should revel in luxury and mock at their fellow citizens.

10 1 These things are also thought to have augmented the discord, and to have incited the soldiery to deeds of violence and rapacity. For this reason, too, when Caesar came back, he pardoned Dolabella, and, on being chosen consul for the third time, selected Lepidus as his colleague, and not Antony. 2 The house of Pompey, when put up for sale, was bought by Antony; but when he was asked to pay the price for it, he was indignant. And he says himself that this was the reason why he did not go with Caesar on his African campaign, since he got no recompense for his private successes. However, it would seem that Caesar cured him of most of his prodigality and folly by not allowing his errors to pass unnoticed. 3 For Antony put away his reprehensible way of living, and turned his thoughts to marriage, taking to wife Fulvia, the widow of Clodius the demagogue. She was a woman who took no thought for spinning or housekeeping, nor would she deign to bear sway over a man of private station, but she wished to rule a ruler and command a commander. Therefore Cleopatra was indebted to Fulvia for teaching Antony to endure a woman’s sway, since she took him over quite tamed, and schooled at the outset to obey women.

4 However, Antony tried, by sportive ways and youthful sallies, to make even Fulvia more light-hearted. For instance, when many were going out to meet Caesar after his victory in Spain, Antony himself went forth. Then, on a sudden, a report burst upon Italy that Caesar was dead and his enemies advancing upon the country, and Antony turned back to Rome. He took the dress of a slave and came by night to his house, and on saying that he was the bearer of a letter to Fulvia from Antony, was admitted to her presence, his face all muffled. 5 Then Fulvia, in great distress, before taking the letter, asked whether Antony was still alive; and he, after handing her the letter without a word, as she began to open and read it, threw his arms about her and kissed her.

These few details, then, out of many, I have adduced by way of illustration.

11 When Caesar returned from Spain, all the principal men went many days’ journey to meet him, but it was Antony who was conspicuously honoured by him. For as he journeyed through Italy he had Antony in the same car with himself, but behind him Brutus Albinus, and Octavius,b his niece’s son, who was afterwards named Caesar and ruled Rome for a very long time. 2 Moreover, when Caesar had for the fifth time been appointed consul, he immediately chose Antony as his colleague. It was his purpose also to resign his own office and make it over to Dolabella; and he proposed this to the senate. But since Antony vehemently opposed the plan, heaped much abuse upon Dolabella, and received as much in return, for the time being Caesar desisted, being ashamed of their unseemly conduct. 3 And afterwards, when Caesar came before the people to proclaim Dolabella, Antony shouted that the omens were opposed. Caesar therefore yielded, and gave up Dolabella, who was much annoyed. And it would seem that Caesar abominated Dolabella also no less than he did Antony. For we are told that when a certain man was accusing both of them to him, he said he had no fear of those fat and long-haired fellows, but rather of those pale and thin ones, indicating Brutus and Cassius, by whom he was to be conspired against and slain.

12 1 And it was Antony who also unwittingly supplied the conspirators with their most specious pretext. For at the festival of the Lycaea, which the Romans call Lupercalia, Caesar, arrayed in a triumphal robe and seated in the forum upon the rostra, was viewing the runners to and fro. Now, the runners to and fro are many noble youths and many of the magistrates, anointed with oil, and with leathern thongs they strike in sport those whom they meet. 2 Antony was one of these runners, but he gave the ancient usages the go-by, and twining a wreath of laurel round a diadem, he ran with it to the rostra, where he was lifted on high by his fellow runners and put it on the head of Caesar, thus intimating that he ought to be king. When Caesar with affected modesty declined the diadem, the people were delighted and clapped their hands. 3 Again Antony tried to put the diadem on Caesar’s head, and again Caesar pushed it away. This contest went on for some time, a few of Antony’s friends applauding his efforts to force the diadem upon Caesar, but all the people applauding with loud cries when Caesar refused it. And this was strange, too, that while the people were willing to conduct themselves like the subjects of a king, they shunned the name of king as though it meant the abolition of their freedom. 4 At last Caesar rose from the rostra in displeasure, and pulling back the toga from his throat cried out that anyone who pleased might smite him there. The wreath, which had been hung upon one of his statues, certain tribunes of the people tore down. These men the people greeted with favouring cries and clapping of hands; but Caesar deprived them of their office.

13 1 This incident strengthened the party of Brutus and Cassius; and when they were taking count of the friends whom they could trust for their enterprise, they raised a question about Antony. The rest were for making him one of them, but Trebonius opposed it. For, he said, while people were going out to meet Caesar on his return from Spain, Antony had travelled with him and shared his tent, and he had sounded him quietly and cautiously; Antony had understood him, he said, but had not responded to his advances; Antony had not, however, reported the conversation to Caesar, but had faithfully kept silence about it. 2 Upon this, the conspirators again took counsel to kill Antony after they had slain Caesar; but Brutus prevented this, urging that the deed adventured in behalf of law and justice must be pure and free from injustice. But the conspirators were afraid of Antony’s strength, and of the consideration which his office gave him, and therefore appointed some of their number to look out for him, in order that, when Caesar entered the senate-chamber and their deed was about to be done, they might engage Antony outside in conversation about some urgent matter and detain him there.

This was done as planned, and Caesar fell in the senate-chamber. At once, then, Antony put on the dress of a slave and hid himself. But when he learned that the conspirators were laying hands upon nobody, but were merely assembled together on the Capitol, he persuaded them to come down by giving them his son as hostage; moreover, he himself entertained Cassius, and Lepidus entertained Brutus. 2 Besides, he called the senate together and spoke in favour of amnesty and a distribution of provinces among Brutus and Cassius and their partisans, and the senate ratified this proposal, and voted that no change should be made in what Caesar had done. So Antony went out of the senate the most illustrious of men; for he was thought to have put an end to civil war, and to have handled matters involving great difficulty and extraordinary confusion in a most prudent and statesmanlike manner.

3 From such considerations as these, however, he was soon shaken by the repute in which he stood with the multitude, and he had hopes that he would surely be first in the state if Brutus were overthrown. Now, it happened that when Caesar’s body was carried forth for burial, Antony pronounced the customary eulogy over it in the forum. And when he saw that the people were mightily swayed and charmed by his words, he mingled with his praises sorrow and indignation over the dreadful deed, and at the close of his speech shook on high the garments of the dead, all bloody and tattered by the swords as they were, 4 called those who had wrought such work villains and murderers, and inspired his hearers with such rage that they heaped together benches and tables and burned Caesar’s body in the forum, and then, snatching the blazing faggots from the pyre, ran to the houses of the assassins and assaulted them.

15 1 On account of these things Brutus and his associates left the city, the friends of Caesar united in support of Antony, and Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, putting confidence in Antony, took most of the treasure from Caesar’s house and put it in his charge; it amounted in all to four thousand talents. 2 Antony received also the papers of Caesar, in which were written memoranda of his decisions and decrees; and making insertions in these, he appointed many magistrates and many senators according to his own wishes. He also brought some men back from exile, and released others from prison, as though Caesar had decided upon all this. Wherefore the Romans in mockery called all such men Charonitae; for when put to the test they appealed to the memoranda of the dead. 3 And Antony managed everything else in autocratic fashion, being consul himself, and having his brothers in office at the same time, Caius as praetor, and Lucius as tribune of the people.

16 1 At this state of affairs the young Caesar came to Rome, a son of the dead Caesar’s niece, as has been said, who had been left heir to his property. He had been staying at Apollonia when Caesar was assassinated. The young man greeted Antony as his father’s friend, and reminded him of the moneys deposited with him. For he was under obligation to give every Roman seventy-five drachmas, according to the terms of Caesar’s will. 2 But Antony, at first despising him as a mere stripling, told him he was out of his sense, and that in his utter lack of good judgment and of friends he was taking up a crushing burden in the succession of Caesar. And when the young man refused to listen to this, and demanded the moneys, Antony kept saying and doing many things to insult him. For instance, he opposed him in his canvass for a tribuneship, and when he attempted to dedicate a golden chair in honour of his father by adoption, according to a decree of the senate, Antony threatened to hale him off to prison unless he stopped trying to win popular favour. 3 When, however, the young man made common cause with Cicero and all the other haters of Antony, and with their aid won the support of the senate, while he himself got the goodwill of the people and assembled the soldiers of Caesar from their colonies, then Antony was struck with fear and came to a conference with him on the Capitol, and they were reconciled.

Afterwards, as he lay asleep that night, Antony had a strange vision. He thought, namely, that his right hand was smitten by a thunder-bolt. 4 And after a few days a report fell upon his ears that the young Caesar was plotting against him. Caesar tried to make explanations, but did not succeed in convincing Antony. So once more their hatred was in full career, and both were hurrying about Italy trying to bring into the field by large pay that part of the soldiery which was already settled in their colonies, and to get the start of one another in winning the support of that part which was still arrayed in arms.

17 1 But Cicero, who was the most influential man in the city, and was trying to incite everybody against Antony, persuaded the senate to vote him a public enemy, to send to Caesar the fasces and other insignia of a praetor, and to dispatch Pansa and Hirtius to drive Antony out of Italy. These men were consuls at that time, and in an engagement with Antony near the city of Mutina, at which Octavius Caesar was present and fought on their side, they conquered the enemy, but fell themselves. 2 Many difficulties befell Antony in his flight, the greatest of which was famine. But it was his nature to rise to his highest level when in an evil plight, and he was most like a good and true man when he was unfortunate. For it is a common trait in those whom some difficulty has laid low, that they perceive plainly what virtue is, but all have not the strength amid reverses to imitate what they admire and shun what they hate, nay, some are then even more prone to yield to their habits through weakness, and to let their judgment be shattered. 3 Antony, however, was at this time an amazing example to his soldiers, after such a life of luxury and extravagance as he had led drinking foul water contentedly and eating wild fruits and roots. Bark was also eaten, we are told, and animals never tasted before were food for them as they crossed the Alps.

18 1 They were eager to fall in with the troops in those parts which Lepidus commanded, for he was thought to be a friend of Antony, and through him had reaped much advantage from Caesar’s friendship. But when Antony came and encamped near by, he met with no tokens of friendliness, and therefore determined upon a bold stroke. His hair was unkempt, and his beard had been allowed to grow long ever since his defeat, and putting on a dark garment he came up to the camp of Lepidus and began to speak. 2 Many of the soldiers were melted at his appearance and moved by his words, so that Lepidus was alarmed and ordered the trumpets to sound all at once in order to prevent Antony from being heard. But the soldiers felt all the more pity for Antony, and held a secret parley with him, sending Laelius and Clodius to him in the garb of women of the camp. These urged Antony to attack their camp boldly; for there were many, they said, who would welcome him and kill Lepidus, if he wished. 3 But Antony would not permit them to lay hands on Lepidus, and next day began to cross the river with his army. He himself was first to plunge in, and made his way towards the opposite bank, seeing already that many of the soldiers of Lepidus were stretching out their hands to him and tearing down their ramparts. After entering the camp and making himself master of everything, he treated Lepidus with the greatest kindness. Indeed, he embraced him and called him father; and though in fact he was in full control himself, still he did not cease to preserve for Lepidus the name and the honour of imperator. 4 This induced Munatius Plancus also to join him, who was encamped at no great distance with a considerable force. Thus raised again to great power, he crossed the Alps and led into Italy with him seventeen legions of infantry and ten thousand horse. And besides these, he left to guard Gaul six legions with Varius, one of his intimates and boon companions, who was surnamed Cotylon.

19 1 Now, Octavius Caesar no longer held with Cicero, because he saw that Cicero was devoted to liberty, and he sent his friends to Antony with an invitation to come to terms. So the three men came together on a small island in the midst of a river, and there held conference for three days. All other matters were easily agreed upon, and they divided up the whole empire among themselves as though it were an ancestral inheritance; but the dispute about the men who were to be put to death gave them the greatest trouble. Each demanded the privilege of slaying his enemies and saving his kinsmen. 2 But at last their wrath against those whom they hated led them to abandon both the honour due to their kinsmen and the goodwill due to their friends, and Caesar gave up Cicero to Antony, while Antony gave up to him Lucius Caesar, who was Antony’s uncle on the mother’s side. Lepidus also was permitted to put to death Paulus his brother; although some say that Lepidus gave up Paulus to Antony and Caesar, who demanded his death. 3 Nothing, in my opinion, could be more savage or cruel than this exchange. For by this barter of murder for murder they put to death those whom they surrendered just as truly as those whom they seized; but their injustice was greater towards their friends, whom they slew without so much as hating them.

20 1 To complete this reconciliation, then, the soldiers surrounded them and demanded that Caesar should also cement the friendship by a marriage, and should take to wife Clodia, a daughter of Antony’s wife Fulvia. After this also had been agreed upon, three hundred men were proscribed and put to death by them; 2 moreover, after Cicero had been butchered, Antony ordered his head to be cut off, and that right hand with which Cicero had written the speeches against him. When they were brought to him, he gazed upon them exultantly, laughing aloud for joy many times; then, when he was sated, he ordered them to be placed on the rostra in the forum, just as though he were putting insult upon the dead, and not rather making a display of his own insolence in good fortune and abuse of power. 3 His uncle, Lucius Caesar, being sought for and pursued, took refuge with his sister. She, when the executioners were at hand and trying to force their way into her chamber, stood in the doorway, spread out her arms, and cried repeatedly: “Ye shall not slay Lucius Caesar unless ye first slay me, the mother of your imperator.” By such behaviour, then, she got her brother out of the way and saved his life.

21 1 Now, for the most part, the government of the triumvirate was odious to the Romans; and Antony bore most of the blame, since he was older than Caesar, more powerful than Lepidus, and threw himself once more into his old life of pleasure and dissipation as soon as he had shaken off some of his troubles. 2 And to his general ill-repute there was added the great hatred caused by the house in which he dwelt. It had been that of Pompey the Great, a man no less admired for sobriety and for the orderly and democratic disposition of his life than because of his three triumphs. Men were distressed, therefore, to see the house closed for the most part against commanders, magistrates, and ambassadors, who were thrust with insolence from its doors, and filled instead with mimes, jugglers, and drunken flatterers, on whom were squandered the greater part of the moneys got in the most violent and cruel manner. 3 For the triumvirate not only sold the properties of those whom they slew, bringing false charges against their wives and kindred, while they set on foot every kind of taxation, but learning that there were deposits with the Vestal Virgins made by both strangers and citizens, they went and took them. 4 And since nothing was sufficient for Antony, Caesar demanded to share the moneys with him. They shared the army also, and both led their forces into Macedonia against Brutus and Cassius, entrusting Rome to Lepidus.

22 1 However, after they had crossed the sea, taken up war, and encamped near the enemy, Antony being opposed to Cassius, and Caesar to Brutus, no great achievements were performed by Caesar, but it was Antony who was everywhere victorious and successful. 2 In the first battle, at least, Caesar was overwhelmingly defeated by Brutus, lost his camp, and narrowly escaped his pursuers by secret flight; although he himself says in his Memoirs that he withdrew before the battle in consequence of a friend’s dream. 3 But Antony conquered Cassius; although some write that Antony was not present in the battle, but came up after the battle when his men were already in pursuit. Cassius, at his own request and command, was killed by Pindar, one of his trusty freedmen; Cassius was not aware that Brutus was victorious. 4 After a few days had intervened, a second battle was fought, and Brutus, being defeated, slew himself; but Antony won the greater credit for the victory, since, indeed, Caesar was sick. And as he stood beside the dead body of Brutus, Antony chided him a little for the death of his brother Caius, whom Brutus had executed in Macedonia to avenge Cicero, and declaring that Hortensius was more to blame than Brutus for his brother’s murder, he ordered Hortensius to be slaughtered on his brother’s tomb; but over Brutus he cast his own purple cloak, which was of great value, and ordered one of his own freedmen to see to the burial of the body. And learning afterwards that this fellow had not burned the purple cloak with the body of Brutus, and had purloined much of what had been devoted to the burial, he put him to death.

23 1 After this, Caesar repaired to Rome, since it was thought that he would not live long in consequence of his illness; but Antony, that he might levy money in all the eastern provinces, made his way into Greece with a large army; for since the triumvirate had promised every one of their soldiers five hundred drachmas, they required a more vigorous policy in raising money and collecting tributes. 2 Toward the Greeks, then, Antony conducted himself without rudeness or offence, at least in the beginning, nay, he indulged his fondness for amusement by listening to literary discussions and by witnessing games and religious rites. In his judicial decisions also he was reasonable, and delighted to be called a Philhellene, and still more to be addressed as Philathenian, and he gave the city very many gifts. 3 But when the Megarians wished to show him something fine to rival Athens, and thought that he ought to see their senate-house, he went up and took a view of it; and when they asked him what he thought of it, “It is small,” he said, “but rotten.” He also had measurements taken of the temple of Pythian Apollo, with the purpose of completing it; indeed, he promised as much to the senate.

24 1 But presently he left Lucius Censorinus in charge of Greece, and crossing over to Asia laid hands on the wealth that was there. Kings would often come to his doors, and wives of kings, vying with one another in their gifts and their beauty, would yield up their honour for his pleasure; and while at Rome Caesar was wearing himself out in civil strifes and wars, Antony himself was enjoying abundant peace and leisure, and was swept back by his passions into his wonted mode of life. 2 Lute-players like Anaxenor, flute-players like Xanthus, one Metrodorus, a dancer, and such other rabble of Asiatic performers, who surpassed in impudence and effrontery the pests from Italy, poured like a flood into his quarters and held sway there. It was past all endurance that everything was devoted to these extravagances. 3 For all Asia, like the famous city of Sophocles, “was filled alike with incense-offerings,

Alike with paeans, too, and voice of heavy groans.”

At any rate, when Antony made his entry into Ephesus, women arrayed like Bacchanals, and men and boys like Satyrs and Pans, led the way before him, and the city was full of ivy and thyrsus-wands and harps and pipes and flutes, the people hailing him as Dionysus Carnivorous and Savage. 4 For he took their property from well-born men and bestowed it on flatterers and scoundrels. From many, too, who were actually alive, men got their property by asking him for it on the plea that the owners were dead. The house of a man of Magnesia he gave to a cook, who, as we are told, had won reputation by a single supper. 5 But finally, when he was imposing a second contribution on the cities, Hybreas, speaking in behalf of Asia, plucked up courage to say this: “If thou canst take a contribution twice in one year, thou hast power also to make summer for us twice, and harvest-time twice.” These words were rhetorical, it is true, and agreeable to Antony’s taste; but the speaker added in plain and bold words that Asia had given him two hundred thousand talents; “If,” said he, “thou hast not received this money, demand it from those who took it; but if thou didst receive it, and hast it not, we are undone.” 6 This speech made a powerful impression upon Antony; for he was ignorant of most that was going on, not so much because he was of an easy disposition, as because he was simple enough to trust those about him.

For there was simplicity in his nature, and slowness of perception, though when he did perceive his errors he showed keen repentance, and made full acknowledgement to the very men who had been unfairly dealt with, and there was largeness both in his restitution to the wronged and in his punishment of the wrong-doers. Yet he was thought to exceed due bounds more in conferring favours than in inflicting punishments. 7 And his wantonness in mirth and jest carried its own remedy with it. For a man might pay back his jests and insolence, and he delighted in being laughed at no less than in laughing at others. And this vitiated most of his undertakings. For he could not believe that those who used bold speech in jest could flatter him in earnest, and so was easily captivated by their praises, 8 not knowing that some men would mingle bold speech, like a piquant sauce, with flattery, and thus would take away from flattery its cloying character. Such men would use their bold babbling over the cups to make their submissive yielding in matters of business seem to be the way, not of those who associate with a man merely to please him, but of those who are vanquished by superior wisdom.

25 1 Such, then, was the nature of Antony, where now as a crowning evil his love for Cleopatra supervened, roused and drove to frenzy many of the passions that were still hidden and quiescent in him, and dissipated and destroyed whatever good and saving qualities still offered resistance. And he was taken captive in this manner. As he was getting ready for the Parthian war, he sent to Cleopatra, ordering her to meet him in Cilicia in order to make answer to the charges made against her of raising and giving to Cassius much money for the war. 2 But Dellius, Antony’s messenger, when he saw how Cleopatra looked, and noticed her subtlety and cleverness in conversation, at once perceived that Antony would not so much as think of doing such a woman any harm, but that she would have the greatest influence with him. He therefore resorted to flattery and tried to induce the Egyptian to go to Cilicia “decked out in fine array” (as Homer would say), and not to be afraid of Antony, who was the most agreeable and humane of commanders. 3 She was persuaded by Dellius, and judging by the proofs which she had had before this of the effect of her beauty upon Caius Caesar and Gnaeus the son of Pompey, she had hopes that she would more easily bring Antony to her feet. For Caesar and Pompey had known her when she was still a girl and inexperienced in affairs, but she was going to visit Antony at the very time when women have the most brilliant beauty and are at the acme of intellectual power. 4 Therefore she provided herself with many gifts, much money, and such ornaments as high position and prosperous kingdom made it natural for her to take; but she went putting her greatest confidence in herself, and in the charms and sorceries of her own person.

26 1 Though she received many letters of summons both from Antony himself and from his friends, she so despised and laughed the man to scorn as to sail up the river Cydnus in a barge with gilded poop, its sails spread purple, its rowers urging it on with silver oars to the sound of the flute blended with pipes and lutes. 2 She herself reclined beneath a canopy spangled with gold, adorned like Venus in a painting, while boys like Loves in paintings stood on either side and fanned her. Likewise also the fairest of her serving-maidens, attired like Nereïds and Graces, were stationed, some at the rudder-sweeps, and others at the reefing-ropes. Wondrous odours from countless incense-offerings diffused themselves along the river-banks. 3 Of the inhabitants, some accompanied her on either bank of the river from its very mouth, while others went down from the city to behold the sight. The throng in the market-place gradually streamed away, until at last Antony himself, seated on his tribunal, was left alone. And a rumour spread on every hand that Venus was come to revel with Bacchus for the good of Asia.

Antony sent, therefore, and invited her to supper; but she thought it meet that he should rather come to her. 4 At once, then, wishing to display his complacency and friendly feelings, Antony obeyed and went. He found there a preparation that beggared description, but was most amazed at the multitude of lights. For, as we are told, so many of these were let down and displayed on all sides at once, and they were arranged and ordered with so many inclinations and adjustments to each other in the form of rectangles and circles, that few sights were so beautiful or so worthy to be seen as this.

27 1 On the following day Antony feasted her in his turn, and was ambitious to surpass her splendour and elegance, but in both regards he was left behind, and vanquished in these very points, and was first to rail at the meagreness and rusticity of his own arrangements. Cleopatra observed in the jests of Antony much of the soldier and the common man, and adopted this manner also towards him, without restraint now, and boldly. 2 For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. 3 There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians. 4 Nay, it is said that she knew the speech of many other peoples also, although the kings of Egypt before her had not even made an effort to learn the native language, and some actually gave up their Macedonian dialect.

28 1 Accordingly, she made such booty of Antony that, while Fulvia his wife was carrying on war at Rome with Caesar in defence of her husband’s interests, and while a Parthian army was hovering about Mesopotamia (over this country the generals of the king had appointed Labienus Parthian commander-in chief, and were about to invade Syria), he suffered her to hurry him off to Alexandria. There, indulging in the sports and diversions of a young man of leisure, he squandered and spent upon pleasures that which Antiphonc calls the most costly outlay, namely, time. 2 For they had an association called The Inimitable Livers, and every day they feasted one another, making their expenditures of incredible profusion. At any rate, Philotas, the physician of Amphissa, used to tell my grandfather, Lamprias, that he was in Alexandria at the time, studying his profession, and that having got well acquainted with one of the royal cooks, he was easily persuaded by him (young man that he was) to take a view of the extravagant preparations for a royal supper. 3 Accordingly, he was introduced into the kitchen, and when he saw all the other provisions in great abundance, and eight wild boars a-roasting, he expressed his amazement at what must be the number of guests. But the cook burst out laughing and said: “The guests are not many, only about twelve; but everything that is set before them must be at perfection, and this an instant of time reduces. For it might happen that Antony would ask for supper immediately, and after a little while, perhaps, would postpone it and call for a cup of wine, or engage in conversation with some one. 4 Wherefore,” he said, “not one, but many suppers are arranged; for the precise time is hard to hit.” This tale, then, Philotas used to tell; and he said also that as time went on he became one of the medical attendants of Antony’s oldest son, whom he had of Fulvia, and that he usually supped with him at his house in company with the rest of his comrades, when the young man did not sup with his father. 5 Accordingly, on one occasion, as a physician was making too bold and giving much annoyance to them as they supped, Philotas stopped his mouth with some such sophism as the: “To the patient who is somewhat feverish cold water must be given; but everyone who has a fever is somewhat feverish; therefore to everyone who has a fever cold water should be given.” The fellow was confounded and put to silence, whereat Antony’s son was delighted and said with a laugh: “All this I bestow upon thee, Philotas,” pointing to a table covered with a great many large beakers. 6 Philotas acknowledged his good intentions, but was far from supposing that a boy so young had the power to give away so much. After a little while, however, one of the slaves brought the beakers to him in a sack, and bade him put his seal upon it. And when Philotas protested and was afraid to take them, “You miserable man,” said the fellow, “why hesitate? Don’t you know that the giver is the son of Antony, and that he has the right to bestow so many golden vessels? 7 However, take my advice and exchange them all with us for money; since perchance the boy’s father might miss some of the vessels, which are of ancient workmanship and highly valued for their art.” Such details, then, my grandfather used to tell me, Philotas would recount at every opportunity.

29 1 But Cleopatra, distributing her flattery, not into the four forms of which Plato speaks, but into many, and ever contributing some fresh delight and charm to Antony’s hours of seriousness or mirth, kept him in constant tutelage, and released him neither night nor day. She played at dice with him, drank with him, hunted with him, and watched him as he exercised himself in arms; and when by night he would station himself at the doors or windows of the common folk and scoff at those within, she would go with him on his round of mad follies, wearing the garb of a serving maiden. 2 For Antony also would try to array himself like a servant. Therefore he always reaped a harvest of abuse, and often of blows, before coming back home; though most people suspected who he was. However, the Alexandrians took delight in their graceful and cultivated way; they liked him, and said that he used the tragic mask with the Romans, but the comic mask with them.

3 Now, to recount the greater part of his boyish pranks would be great nonsense. One instance will suffice. He was fishing once, and had bad luck, and was vexed at it because Cleopatra was there to see. He therefore ordered his fishermen to dive down and secretly fasten to his hook some fish that had been previously caught, and pulled up two or three of them. But the Egyptian saw through the trick, and pretending to admire her lover’s skill, told her friends about it, and invited them to be spectators of it the following day. 4 So great numbers of them got into the fishing boats, and when Antony had let down his line, she ordered one of her own attendants to get the start of him by swimming onto his hook and fastening on it a salted Pontic herring. Antony thought he had caught something, and pulled it up, whereupon there was great laughter, as was natural, and Cleopatra said: “Imperator, hand over thy fishing-rod to the fishermen of Pharos and Canopus; thy sport is the hunting of cities, realms, and continents.”

30 1 While Antony was indulging in such trifles and youthful follies, he was surprised by reports from two quarters: one from Rome, that Lucius his brother and Fulvia his wife had first quarrelled with one another, and then had waged war with Octavius Caesar, but had lost their cause and were in flight from Italy; and another, not a whit more agreeable than this, that Labienus at the head of the Parthians was subduing Asia from the Euphrates and Syria as far as Lydia and Ionia. 2 At last, then, like a man roused from sleep after a deep debauch, he set out to oppose the Parthians, and advanced as far as Phoenicia; but on receiving from Fulvia a letter full of lamentations, he turned his course towards Italy, at the head of two hundred ships. On the voyage, however, he picked up his friends who were in flight from Italy, and learned from them that Fulvia had been to blame for the war, being naturally a meddlesome and headstrong woman, and hoping to draw Antony away from Cleopatra in case there should be a disturbance in Italy. 3 It happened, too, that Fulvia, who was sailing to meet him, fell sick and died at Sicyon. Therefore there was even more opportunity for a reconciliation with Caesar. For when Antony reached Italy, and Caesar manifestly intended to make no charges against him, and Antony himself was ready to put upon Fulvia the blame for whatever was charged against himself, the friends of the two men would not permit any examination of the proffered excuse, 4 but reconciled them, and divided up the empire, making the Ionian sea a boundary, and assigning the East to Antony, and the West to Caesar; they also permitted Lepidus to have Africa, and arranged that, when they did not wish for the office themselves, the friends of each should have the consulship by turns.

31 1 These arrangements were thought to be fair, but they needed a stronger security, and this security Fortune offered. Octavia was a sister of Caesar, older than he, though not by the same mother; for she was the child of Ancharia, but he, by a later marriage, of Atia. Caesar was exceedingly fond of his sister, who was, as the saying is, a wonder of a woman. 2 Her husband, Caius Marcellus, had died a short time before, and she was a widow. Antony, too, now that Fulvia was gone, was held to be a widower, although he did not deny his relations with Cleopatra; he would not admit, however, that she was his wife, and in this matter his reason was still battling with his love for the Egyptian. Everybody tried to bring about this marriage. For they hoped that Octavia, who, besides her great beauty, had intelligence and dignity, when united to Antony and beloved by him, as such a woman naturally must be, would restore harmony and be their complete salvation. 3 Accordingly, when both men were agreed, they went up to Rome and celebrated Octavia’s marriage, although the law did not permit a woman to marry before her husband had been dead ten months. In this case, however, the senate passed a decree remitting the restriction in time.

32 1 Now, Sextus Pompeius was holding Sicily, was ravaging Italy, and, with his numerous piratical ships under the command of Menas the corsair and Menecrates, had made the sea unsafe for sailors. But he was thought to be kindly disposed to Antony, since he had given refuge to Antony’s mother when she fled from Rome with Fulvia, and so it was decided to make terms with him. 2 The men met at the promontory and mole of Misenum, near which Pompey’s fleet lay at anchor and the forces of Antony and Caesar were drawn up. After it had been agreed that Pompey should have Sardinia and Sicily, should keep the sea clear of robbers, and should send up to Rome a stipulated amount of grain, they invited one another to supper. 3 Lots were cast, and it was the lot of Pompey to entertain the others first. And when Antony asked him where the supper would be held, “There,” said he, pointing to his admiral’s ship with its six banks of oars, “for this is the ancestral house that is left to Pompey.” This he said by way of reproach to Antony, who was now occupying the house which had belonged to the elder Pompey. So he brought his ship to anchor, made a sort of bridge on which to cross to it from the headland, and gave his guests a hearty welcome on board. 4 When their good fellowship was at its height and the jokes about Antony and Cleopatra were in full career, Menas the pirate came up to Pompey and said, so that the others could not hear, “Shall I cut the ship’s cables and make thee master, not of Sicily and Sardinia, but of the whole Roman empire?” 5 Pompey, on hearing this, communed with himself a little while, and then said: “Menas, you ought to have done this without speaking to me about it beforehand; but now let us be satisfied with things as they are; for perjury is not my way.” Pompey, then, after being feasted in his turn by Antony and Caesar, sailed back to Sicily.

33 1 After this settlement, Antony sent Ventidius on ahead into Asia to oppose the further progress of the Parthians, while he himself, as a favour to Caesar, was appointed to the priesthood of the elder Caesar; everything else also of the most important political nature they transacted together and in a friendly spirit. But their competitive diversions gave Antony annoyance, because he always came off with less than Caesar. 2 Now, there was with him a seer from Egypt, one of those who cast nativities. This man, either as a favour to Cleopatra, or dealing truly with Antony, used frank language with him, saying that his fortune, though most great and splendid, was obscured by that of Caesar; and he advised Antony to put as much distance as possible between himself and that young man. “For thy guardian genius,” said he, “is afraid of his; and though it has a spirited and lofty mien when it is by itself, when his comes near, thine is cowed and humbled by it.” 3 And indeed events seemed to testify in favour of the Egyptian. For we are told that whenever, by way of diversion, lots were cast or dice thrown to decide matters in which they were engaged, Antony came off worsted. They would often match cocks, and often fighting quails, and Caesar’s would always be victorious.d

At all this Antony was annoyed, though he did not show it, and giving rather more heed now to the Egyptian, he departed from Italy, after putting his private affairs in the hands of Caesar; and he took Octavia with him as far as Greece (she had borne him a daughter). 4 It was while he was spending the winter at Athens that word was brought to him of the first successes of Ventidius, who had conquered the Parthians in battle and slain Labienus, as well as Pharnapates, the most capable general of King Hyrodes. To celebrate this victory Antony feasted the Greeks, and acted as gymnasiarch for the Athenians. He left at home the insignia of his command, and went forth carrying the wands of a gymnasiarch, in a Greek robe and white shoes, and he would take the young combatants by the neck and part them.

34 1 When he was about to go forth to the war, he took a wreath from the sacred olive-tree, and in obedience to a certain oracle, filled a vessel with water from the Clepsydra and carried it with him. In the meantime Pacorus, the king’s son, advanced again with a large army of Parthians against Syria; but Ventidius engaged and routed him in Cyrrhestica, and slew great numbers of his men. Pacorus fell among the first. 2 This exploit, which became one of the most celebrated, gave the Romans full satisfaction for the disaster under Crassus, and shut the Parthians up again within the bounds of Media and Mesopotamia, after they had been utterly defeated in three successive battles. Ventidius, however, decided not to pursue the Parthians further, because he feared the jealousy of Antony; but he attacked and subdued the peoples which had revolted from Rome, and besieged Antiochus of Commagené in the city of Samosata. 3 When Antiochus proposed to pay a thousand talents and obey the behests of Antony, Ventidius ordered him to send his proposal to Antony, who had now advanced into the neighbourhood, and would not permit Ventidius to make peace with Antiochus. He insisted that this one exploit at least should bear his own name, and that not all the successes should be due to Ventidius. 4 But the siege was protracted, and the besieged, since they despaired of coming to terms, betook themselves to a vigorous defence. Antony could therefore accomplish nothing, and feeling ashamed and repentant, was glad to make peace with Antiochus on his payment of three hundred talents. After settling some trivial matters in Syria, he returned to Athens, and sent Ventidius home, with becoming honours, to enjoy his triumph.

5 Ventidius is the only man up to the present time who ever celebrated a triumph over the Parthians. He was a man of lowly birth, but his friendship with Antony bore fruit for him in opportunities to perform great deeds. Of these opportunities he made the best use, and so confirmed what was generally said of Antony and Caesar, namely, that they were more successful in campaigns conducted by others than by themselves. 6 For Sossius, Antony’s general, effected much in Syria, and Canidius, who was left by Antony in Armenia, conquered that people, as well as the kings of the Iberians and Albanians, and advanced as far as the Caucasus. Consequently the name and fame of Antony’s power waxed great among the Barbarians.

35 1 But Antony himself, once more irritated against Caesar by certain calumnies, sailed with three hundred ships for Italy; and when the people of Brundisium would not receive his armament, he coasted along to Tarentum. Here he sent Octavia, who had sailed with him from Greece, at her own request, to her brother. She was with child, and had already borne Antony two daughters. 2 Octavia met Caesar on the way, and after winning over his friends Agrippa and Maecenas, urged him with many prayers and many entreaties not to permit her, after being a most happy, to become a most wretched woman. For now, she said, the eyes of all men were drawn to her as the wife of one imperator and the sister of another: 3 “But if,” she said, “the worse should prevail and there should be war between you, one of you, it is uncertain which, is destined to conquer, and one to be conquered, but my lot in either case will be one of misery.” Caesar was overcome by these words, and came in a peaceful manner to Tarentum. Then the inhabitants beheld a most noble spectacle — a large army on land inactive, and many ships lying quietly off shore, while the commanders and their friends met one another with friendly greetings. 4 Antony entertained Caesar first, who consented to it for his sister’s sake. And after it had been agreed that Caesar should give to Antony two legions for his Parthian war, and Antony to Caesar one hundred bronze-beaked galleys, Octavia, independently of this agreement, obtained twenty light sailing craft from her husband for her brother, and one thousand soldiers from her brother for her husband. 5 Thus they separated, and Caesar at once engaged in the war against Pompey, being ambitious to get Sicily, while Antony, after putting Octavia in Caesar’s charge, together with his children by her and Fulvia, crossed over into Asia.

36 1 But the dire evil which had been slumbering for a long time, namely, his passion for Cleopatra, which men thought had been charmed away and lulled to rest by better considerations, blazed up again with renewed power as he drew near to Syria. And finally, like the stubborn and unmanageable beast of the soul, of which Plato speaks, he spurned away all saving and noble counsels and sent Fonteius Capito to bring Cleopatra to Syria. 2 And when she was come, he made her a present of no slight or insignificant addition to her dominions, namely, Phoenicia, Coele Syria, Cyprus, and a large part of Cilicia; and still further, the balsam-producing part of Judaea, and all that part of Arabia Nabataea which slopes toward the outer sea. These gifts particularly annoyed the Romans. And yet he made presents to many private persons of tetrarchies and realms of great peoples, and he deprived many monarchs of their kingdoms, as, for instance, Antigonus the Jew, whom he brought forth and beheaded, though no other king before him had been so punished. 3 But the shamefulness of the honours conferred upon Cleopatra gave most offence. And he heightened the scandal by acknowledging his two children by her, and called one Alexander and the other Cleopatra, with the surname for the first of Sun, and for the other of Moon. However, since he was an adept at putting a good face upon shameful deeds, he used to say that the greatness of the Roman empire was made manifest, not by what the Romans received, but by what they bestowed; and that noble families were extended by the successive begettings of many kings. 4 In this way, at any rate, he said, his own progenitor was begotten by Heracles, who did not confine his succession to a single womb, nor stand in awe of laws like Solon’s for the regulation of conception, but gave free course to nature, and left behind him the beginnings and foundations of many families.

37 1 And now Phraates put Hyrodes his father to death and took possession of his kingdom, other Parthians ran away in great numbers, and particularly Monaeses, a man of distinction and power, who came in flight to Antony. Antony likened the fortunes of the fugitive to those of Themistocles, compared his own abundant resources and magnanimity to those of the Persian kings, and gave him three cities, Larissa, Arethusa, and Hierapolis, which used to be called Bambycé. 3 But when the Parthian king made an offer of friendship to Monaeses, Antony gladly sent Monaeses back to him, determined to receive Phraates with a prospect of peace, and demanding back the standards captured in the campaign of Crassus, together with such of his men as still survived. Antony himself, however, after sending Cleopatra back to Egypt, proceeded through Arabia and Armenia to the place where his forces were assembled, together with those of the allied kings. These kings were very many in number, but the greatest of them all was Artavasdes, king of Armenia, who furnished six thousand horse and seven thousand foot. Here Antony reviewed his army. There were, of the Romans themselves, sixty thousand foot-soldiers, together with the cavalry classed as Roman, namely, ten thousand Iberians and Celts; of the other nations there were thirty thousand, counting alike horsemen and light-armed troops.

4 And yet we are told that all this preparation and power, which terrified even the Indians beyond Bactria and made all Asia quiver, was made of no avail to Antony by reason of Cleopatra. For so eager was he to spend the winter with her that he began the war before the proper time, and managed everything confusedly. He was not master of his own faculties, but, as if he were under the influence of certain drugs or of magic rites, was ever looking eagerly towards her, and thinking more of his speedy return than of conquering the enemy.

38 1 In the first place, then, though he ought to have spent the winter in Armenia and to have given his army rest, worn out as it was by a march of eight thousand furlongs, and to have occupied Media at the opening of spring, before the Parthians had left their winter quarters, he could not hold out that length of time, but led his army on, taking Armenia on his left, and skirting Atropatené, which country he ravaged. 2 Secondly, his engines necessary for siege operations were carried along on three hundred waggons, and among them was a battering ram eighty feet long. Not one of these, if destroyed, could be replaced in time to be of use, because the upper country produced only wood of insufficient length and hardness. Nevertheless, in his haste, he left these behind him, on the ground that they retarded his speed, setting a considerable guard under the command of Statianus over the waggons, while he himself laid siege to Phraata, a large city, in which were the wives and children of the king of Media. 3 But the exigencies of the case at once proved what a mistake he had made in leaving behind him his engines, and coming to close quarters he began to build a mound against the city, which rose slowly and with much labour. In the meantime, however, Phraates came down with a great army, and when he heard that the waggons carrying the engines had been left behind, he sent a large number of his horsemen against them. By these Statianus was surrounded and slain himself, and ten thousand of his men were slain with him. Moreover, the Barbarians captured the engines and destroyed them. They also took a great number of prisoners, among whom was Polemon the king.

39 1 This calamity naturally distressed all the followers of Antony, for they had received an unexpected blow at the outset; besides, Artavasdes, the king of Armenia, despairing of the Roman cause, took his own forces and went off, although he had been the chief cause of the war. 2 And now the Parthians presented themselves to the besiegers in brilliant array, and threatened them insultingly. Antony, therefore, not wishing that the inactivity of his army should confirm and increase among them consternation and dejection, took ten legions and three praetorian cohorts of men-at arms, together with all his cavalry, and led them out to forage, thinking that in this way the enemy would best be drawn into a pitched battle. 3 After advancing a single day’s march, he saw that the Parthians were enveloping him and seeking to attack him on the march. He therefore displayed the signal for battle in his camp, and after taking down his tents, as though his purpose was not to fight but to withdraw, he marched along past the line of the Barbarians, which was crescent-shaped. But he had given orders that when the first ranks of the enemy should appear to be within reach of his legionaries, the cavalry should charge upon them. 4 To the Parthians in their parallel array, the discipline of the Romans seemed to beggar description, and they watched them marching past at equal distances from one another, without confusion, and in silence, brandishing their javelins. But when the signal was given, and the Roman horsemen wheeled about and rode down upon them with loud shouts, they did indeed receive their onset and repel them, although their foes were at once too close for them to use their arrows; when, however, the legionaries joined in the charge, with shouts and clashing of weapons, the horses of the Parthians took fright and gave way, and the Parthians fled without coming to close quarters.

5 Antony pressed hard upon them in pursuit, and had great hopes that he had finished the whole war, or the greater part of it, in that one battle. His infantry kept up the pursuit for fifty furlongs, and his cavalry for thrice that distance; and yet when he took count of those of the enemy who had fallen or had been captured, he found only thirty prisoners and eighty dead bodies. Despondency and despair therefore fell upon all; they thought it a terrible thing that when victorious they had killed so few, and when vanquished they were to be robbed of so many men as they had lost at the waggons. 6 On the following day they packed up and started on the road to Phraata and their camp. As they marched they met, first a few of the enemy, then more of them, and finally the whole body, which, as though unconquered and fresh, challenged and attacked them from every side; but at last, with difficulty and much labour, they got safely to their camp. 7 Then the Medes made a sally against their mound and put its defenders to flight. At this Antony was enraged, and visited those who had played the coward with what is called decimation. That is, he divided the whole number of them into tens, and put to death that one from each ten upon whom the lot fell. For the rest he ordered rations of barley instead of wheat.

40 1 The war was full of hardship for both sides, and its future course was still more to be dreaded. Antony expected a famine; for it was no longer possible to get provisions without having many men wounded and killed. Phraates, too, knew that his Parthians were able to do anything rather than to undergo hardships and encamp in the open during winter, and he was afraid that if the Romans persisted and remained, his men would desert him, since already the air was getting sharp after the summer equinox. He therefore contrived the following stratagem. 2 Those of the Parthians who were most acquainted with the Romans attacked them less vigorously in their forays for provisions and other encounters, allowing them to take some things, praising their valour, and declaring that they were capital fighting men and justly admired by their own king. 3 After this, they would ride up nearer, and quietly putting their horses alongside the Romans, would revile Antony because, when Phraates wished to come to terms and spare so many such excellent men, Antony would not give him an opportunity, but sat there awaiting those grievous and powerful enemies, famine and winter, which would make it difficult for them to escape even though the Parthians should escort them on their way. Many persons reported this to Antony, but though his hope inclined him to yield, he did not send heralds to the Parthians until he had inquired of the Barbarians who were showing such kindness whether what they said represented the mind of their king. 4 They assured him that it did, and urged him to have no fear or distrust, whereupon he sent some of his companions with a renewed demand for the return of the standards and the captives, that he might not be thought altogether satisfied with an escape in safety. But the Parthian told him not to urge this matter, and assured him of peace and safety as soon as he started to go away; whereupon, within a few days Antony packed up his baggage and broke camp. 5 But though he was persuasive in addressing a popular audience and was better endowed by nature than any man of his time for leading an army by force of eloquence, he could not prevail upon himself, for shame and dejection of spirits, to make the usual speech of encouragement to the army, but ordered Domitius Ahenobarbus to do it. Some of the soldiers were incensed at this, and felt that he had held them in contempt; but the majority of them were moved to the heart as they comprehended the reason. Therefore they thought they ought to show all the more respect and obedience to their commander.

41 1 As he was about to lead his army back by the road over which it had come, which ran through a level country without trees, a man of the Mardian race, who had great familiarity with the Parthian habits, and had already shown himself faithful to the Romans in the battle over the engines of war, came to Antony and urged him in his flight to keep close to the hills upon his right, and not to expose an encumbered army of legionaries to so large a force of mounted archers, in bare and extended tracts; 2 this was the very thing, he said, which Phraates had designed when he induced him by friendly conferences to raise the siege; he himself, he said, would conduct the army by a way that was shorter and furnished a greater abundance of provisions.

On hearing this, Antony took counsel with himself. He did not wish to have the appearance of distrusting the Parthians, now that a truce had been made, but since he approved of the shorter road and of having their march take them past inhabited villages, he asked the Mardian for a pledge of his good faith. 3 The Mardian offered to let himself be put in fetters until he should bring the army safely into Armenia, and he was put in fetters, and led them for two days without their encountering trouble. But on the third day, when Antony had put the Parthians entirely out of his thoughts, and was marching along in looser order because of his confidence, the Mardian noticed that a dike of the river had been recently torn away, and that the stream was flowing out in great volume towards the road over which their march must be made. 4 He comprehended that this was the work of the Parthians, throwing the river in their way to obstruct and delay the Roman march, and urged Antony to look out and be on his guard, as the enemy were near. And just as Antony was setting his legionaries in array and arranging to have his javelineers and slingers make a sally through them against the enemy, the Parthians came into view and began to ride around the army in order to envelop and throw it into confusion on all sides. 5 Whenever the Roman light-armed troops sallied out against them, the Parthians would inflict many wounds with their arrows, but sustain yet more from the leaden bullets and javelins of the Romans, and therefore withdraw. Then they would come up again, until the Celts, massing their horses together, made a charge upon them and scattered them, so that they showed themselves no more that day.

42 1 Having thus learned what he ought to do, Antony covered not only his rear, but also both his flanks, with numerous javelineers and slingers, led his army in the form of a hollow square, and gave orders to his horsemen to rout the enemy when they attacked, but after routing them not to pursue them further. Consequently the Parthians, during four successive days, suffered greater loss than they inflicted, became less eager, and made the winter an excuse for thoughts of going away.

2 On the fifth day, however, Flavius Gallus, an efficient and able soldier in high command, came to Antony and asked him for more light-armed troops from the rear, and for some of the horsemen from the van, confident that he would achieve a great success. Antony gave him the troops, and when the enemy attacked, Gallus beat them back, not withdrawing and leading them on towards the legionaries, as before, but resisting and engaging them more hazardously. 3 The leaders of the rear guard, seeing that he was being cut off from them, sent and called him back; but he would not listen to them. Then, they say, Titius the quaestor laid hold of his standards and tried to turn them back, abusing Gallus for throwing away the lives of so many brave men. But Gallus gave back the abuse and exhorted his men to stand firm, whereupon Titius withdrew. Then Gallus forced his way among the enemy in front of him, without noticing that great numbers of them were enveloping him in the rear. 4 But when missiles began to fall upon him from all sides, he sent and asked for help. Then the leaders of the legionaries, among whom was Canidius, a man of the greatest influence with Antony, are thought to have made no slight mistake. For when they ought to have wheeled their entire line against the enemy, they sent only a few men at a time to help Gallus, and again, when one detachment had been overcome, sent out others, and so, before they were aware of it, they came near plunging the whole army into defeat and flight. But Antony himself speedily came with his legionaries from the van to confront the fugitives, and the third legion speedily pushed its way through them against the enemy and checked his further pursuit.

43 1 There fell no fewer than three thousand, and there were carried to their tents five thousand wounded men, among whom was Gallus, who was pierced in front by four arrows. Gallus, indeed, did not recover from his wounds, but Antony went to see all the others and tried to encourage them, with tears of sympathy in his eyes. The wounded men, however, with cheerful faces, seized his hand and exhorted him to go away and take care of himself, and not to be distressed. They called him Imperator, and said that they were safe if only he were unharmed. 2 For, to put it briefly, no other imperator of that day appears to have assembled an army more conspicuous for prowess, endurance, or youthful vigour. Nay, the respect which his soldiers felt for him as their leader, their obedience and goodwill, and the degree to which all of them alike — men of good repute or men of no repute, commanders or private soldiers — preferred honour and favour from Antony to life and safety, left even the ancient Romans nothing to surpass. 3 And the reasons for this were many, as I have said before: his high birth, his eloquence, his simplicity of manners, his love of giving and the largeness of his giving, his complaisance in affairs of pleasure or social intercourse. And so at this time, by sharing in the toils and distresses of the unfortunate and bestowing upon them whatever they wanted, he made the sick and wounded more eager in his service than the well and strong.

44 1 The enemy, however, who had been already worn out and inclined to abandon their task, were so elated by their victory, and so despised the Romans, that they even bivouacked for the night near their camp, expecting very soon to be plundering the empty tents and the baggage of runaways. 2 At daybreak, too, they gathered for attack in far greater numbers, and there are said to have been no fewer than forty thousand horsemen, since their king had sent even those who were always arrayed about his person, assured that it was to manifest and assured success; for the king himself was never present at a battle. Then Antony, wishing to harangue his soldiers, called for a dark robe, that he might be more pitiful in their eyes. But his friends opposed him in this, and he therefore came forward in the purple robe of a general and made his harangue, praising those who had been victorious, and reproaching those who had fled. 3 The former exhorted him to be of good courage, offered themselves to him for decimation, if he wished, or for any other kind of punishment; only they begged him to cease being distressed and vexed. In reply, Antony lifted up his hands and prayed the gods that if, then, any retribution were to follow his former successes, it might fall upon him alone, and that the rest of the army might be granted victory and safety.

45 1 On the following day they went forward under better protection; and the Parthians met with a great surprise when they attacked them. For they thought they were riding up for plunder and booty, not battle, and when they encountered many missiles and saw that the Romans were fresh and vigorous and eager for the fray, they were once more tired of the struggle. 2 However, as the Romans were descending some steep hills, the Parthians attacked them and shot at them as they slowly moved along. Then the shield-bearers wheeled about, enclosing the lighter armed troops within their ranks, while they themselves dropped on one knee and held their shields out before them. The second rank held their shields out over the heads of the first, and the next rank likewise. The resulting appearance is very like that of a roof, affords a striking spectacle, and is the most effective of protections against arrows, which glide off from it. 3 The Parthians, however, thinking that the Romans dropping on one knee was a sign of fatigue and exhaustion, laid aside their bows, grasped their spears by the middle and came to close quarters. But the Romans, with a full battle cry, suddenly sprang up, and thrusting with their javelins slew the foremost of the Parthians and put all the rest to rout. This happened also on the following days as the Romans, little by little, proceeded on their way.

4 Famine also attacked the army, which could provide itself with little grain even by fighting, and was not well furnished with implements for grinding. These had been abandoned, for the most part, since some of the beasts of burden died, and the others had to carry the sick and wounded. It is said that one Attic choenix of wheat brought fifty drachmas; and loaves of barley bread were sold for their weight in silver. 5 Resorting, therefore, to vegetables and roots, they could find few to which they were accustomed, and were compelled to make trial of some never tasted before. Thus it was that they partook of an herb which produced madness, and then death. He who ate of it had no memory, and no thought of anything else than the one task of moving or turning every stone, as if he were accomplishing something of great importance. 6 The plain was full of men stooping to the ground and digging around the stones or removing them; and finally they would vomit bile and die, since the only remedy, wine, was not to be had. Many perished thus, and the Parthians would not desist, and Antony, as we are told, would often cry: “O the Ten Thousand!” thereby expressing his admiration of Xenophon’s army, which made an even longer march to the sea from Babylon, and fought with many times as many enemies, and yet came off safe.

46 1 And now the Parthians, unable to throw the army into confusion or break up its array, but many times already defeated and put to flight, began once more to mingle peaceably with the men who went out in search of fodder or grain, and pointing to their unstrung bows would say that they themselves were going back, and that this was the end of their retaliation, although a few Medes would still follow the Romans one or two days’ march, not molesting them at all, but merely protecting the more outlying villages. 2 To these words they added greetings and acts of friendliness, so that once more the Romans became full of courage, and Antony, when he heard about it, was more inclined to seek the plains, since the way through the mountains was said to be waterless. But as he was about to do this, there came a man to the camp from the enemy, Mithridates by name, a cousin of the Monaeses who had been with Antony and had received the three cities as a gift. Mithridates asked that someone should come to him who could speak the Parthian or Syrian language.e 3 So Alexander of Antioch came to him, being a close friend of Antony, whereupon Mithridates, after explaining who he was, and attributing to Monaeses the favour now to be shown, asked Alexander if he saw a range of lofty hills on beyond. Alexander said he did see them. “Under those hills,” said Mithridates, “the Parthians with all their forces are lying in ambush for you. 4 For the great plains adjoin these hills, and they expect that you will be beguiled by them into turning in that direction and leaving the road through the mountains. That road, it is true, involves thirst and hard labour, to which you are now accustomed; but if Antony proceeds by way of the plains, let him know that the fate of Crassus awaits him.”

47 1 After giving this information the man went away, and Antony, who was much troubled by what he now heard, called together his friends and his Mardian guide, who was himself of the same opinion as their visitor. For he knew that even were there no enemy the lack of roads through the plains would involve them in blind and grievous wanderings, and he showed them that the rough road through the mountains had no other annoyance than lack of water for a single day. 2 Accordingly, Antony took this route and led his army along by night, after ordering his men to carry water with them. The greater part of them, however, had no vessels, and therefore some actually filled their helmets with water and carried them, while others took it in skins.

But word was at once brought to the Parthians that Antony was advancing, and contrary to their custom they set out in pursuit while it was yet night. Just as the sun was rising they came up with the rear-guard of the Romans, which was foredone with sleeplessness and toil; for they had accomplished two hundred and forty furlongs in the night. Moreover, they did not expect that the enemy would come upon them so quickly, and were therefore disheartened. 3 Besides, their contest intensified their thirst; for they had to ward off the enemy and make their way forward at the same time. Those who marched in the van came to a river, the water of which was clear and cold, but had a salty taste and was poisonous. This water, as soon as one drank it, caused pains, accompanied by cramping of the bowels and an inflammation of one’s thirst. Of this too the Mardian had warned them, but none the less the soldiers forced aside those who tried to turn them back, and drank. 4 Antony went round and begged the men to hold out a little while; for not far ahead, he said, there was another river which was potable, and then the rest of the way was too rough for cavalry, so that the enemy must certainly turn back. At the same time, too, he called his men back from fighting and gave the signal for pitching the tents, that the soldiers might at least enjoy the shade a little.

48 1 Accordingly, the Romans went to pitching their tents, and the Parthians, as their custom was, at once began to withdraw. At this point Mithridates came again, and after Alexander had joined him he advised Antony to let the army rest only a little while, and then to get it under way and hasten to the river, assuring him that the Parthians would not cross it, but would continue the pursuit until they reached it. This message was carried to Antony by Alexander, who then brought out from Antony golden drinking-cups in great numbers, as well as bowls. Mithridates took as many of these as he could hide in his garments and rode off. 2 Then, while it was still day, they broke camp and proceeded on their march. The enemy did not molest them, but they themselves made that night of all other nights the most grievous and fearful for themselves. For those who had gold or silver were slain and robbed of it, and the goods were plundered from the beasts of burden; and finally the baggage-carriers of Antony were attacked, and beakers and costly tables were cut to pieces or distributed about.

3 And now, since there was great confusion and straggling throughout the whole army (for they thought that the enemy had fallen upon them and routed and dispersed them), Antony called one of the freedmen in his body-guard, Rhamnus by name, and made him take oath that, at the word of command, he would thrust his sword through him and cut off his head, that he might neither be taken alive by the enemy nor recognized when he was dead. 4 Antony’s friends burst into tears, but the Mardian tried to encourage him, declaring that the river was near: for a breeze blowing from it was moist, and a cooler air in their faces made their breathing pleasanter. He said also that the time during which they had been marching made his estimate of the distance conclusive; for little of the night was now left. 5 At the same time, too, others brought word that the tumult was a result of their own iniquitous and rapacious treatment of one another. Therefore, wishing to bring the throng into order after their wandering and distraction, Antony ordered the signal to be given for encampment.

49 1 Day was already dawning, and the army was beginning to assume a certain order and tranquillity, when the arrows of the Parthians fell upon the rear ranks, and the light-armed troops were ordered by signal to engage. The men-at arms, too, again covered each other over with their shields, as they had done before, and so withstood their assailants, who did not venture to come to close quarters. 2 The front ranks advanced little by little in this manner, and the river came in sight. On its bank Antony drew up his sick and disabled soldiers across first. And presently even those who were fighting had a chance to drink at their ease; for when the Parthians saw the river, they unstrung their bows and bade the Romans cross over with good courage, bestowing much praise also upon their valour. 3 So they crossed without being disturbed and recruited themselves, and then resumed their march, putting no confidence at all in the Parthians. And on the sixth day after their last battle with them they came to the river Araxes, which forms the boundary between Media and Armenia. Its depth and violence made it seem difficult of passage; and a report was rife that the enemy were lying in ambush there and would attack them as they tried to cross. 4 But after they were safely on the other side and had set foot in Armenia, as if they had just caught sight of that land from the sea, they saluted it and fell to weeping and embracing one another for joy. But as they advanced through the country, which was prosperous, and enjoyed all things in abundance after great scarcity, they fell sick with dropsies and dysenteries.

50 1 There Antony held a review of his troops and found that twenty thousand of the infantry and four thousand of the cavalry had perished, not all at the hands of the enemy, but more than half by disease. They had, indeed, marched twenty-seven days from Phraata, and had defeated the Parthians in eighteen battles, but their victories were not complete or lasting because the pursuits which they made were short and ineffectual. 2 And this more than all else made it plain that it was Artavasdes the Armenian who had robbed Antony of the power to bring that war to an end. For if the sixteen thousand horsemen who were led back from Media by him had been on hand, equipped as they were like the Parthians and accustomed to fighting with them, and if they, when the Romans routed the fighting enemy, had taken off the fugitives, it would not have been in the enemy’s power to recover themselves from defeat and to venture again so often. 3 Accordingly, all the army, in their anger, tried to incite Antony to take vengeance on the Armenian. But Antony, as a measure of prudence, neither reproached him with his treachery nor abated the friendliness and respect usually shown to him, being now weak in numbers and in want of supplies. 4 But afterwards, when he once more invaded Armenia, and by many invitations and promises induced Artavasdes to come to him, Antony seized him, and took him in chains down to Alexandria, where he celebrated a triumph. And herein particularly did he give offence to the Romans, since he bestowed the honourable and solemn rites of his native country upon the Egyptians for Cleopatra’s sake. This, however, took place at a later time.

51 1 But now, hastening on through much wintry weather, which was already at hand, and incessant snow-storms, he lost eight thousand men on the march. He himself, however, went down with a small company to the sea, and in a little place between Berytus and Sidon, called White Village, he waited for Cleopatra to come; and since she was slow in coming he was beside himself with distress, promptly resorting to drinking and intoxication, 2 although he could not hold out long at table, but in the midst of the drinking would often rise or spring up to look out, until she put into port, bringing an abundance of clothing and money for the soldiers. There are some, however, who say that he received the clothing from Cleopatra, but took the money from his own private funds, and distributed it as a gift from her.

52 1 And now the king of the Medes had a quarrel with Phraortes the Parthian; it arose, as they say, over the Roman spoils, but it made the Mede suspicious and fearful that his dominion would be taken away from him. For this reason he sent and invited Antony to come, promising to join him in the war with his own forces. 2 Antony, accordingly, was in high hopes. For the one thing which he thought had prevented his subjugation of the Parthians, namely, his lack of a large number of horsemen and archers on his expedition, this he now saw supplied for him, and he would be granting and not asking a favour. He therefore made preparations to go up again through Armenia, effect a junction with the Mede at the river Araxes, and then prosecute the war.

53 1 But at Rome Octavia was desirous of sailing to Antony, and Caesar gave her permission to do so, as the majority say, not as a favour to her, but in order that, in case she were neglected and treated with scorn, he might have plausible ground for war. When Octavia arrived at Athens, she received letters from Antony in which he bade her remain there and told her of his expedition. 2 Octavia, although she saw through the pretext and was distressed, nevertheless wrote Antony asking whither he would have the things sent which she was bringing to him. For she was bringing a great quantity of clothing for his soldiers, many beasts of burden, and money and gifts for the officers and friends about him; and besides this, two thousand picked soldiers equipped as praetorian cohorts with splendid armour. These things were announced to Antony by a certain Niger, a friend of his who had been sent from Octavia, and he added such praises of her as was fitting and deserved.

3 But Cleopatra perceived that Octavia was coming into a contest at close quarters with her, and feared lest, if she added to the dignity of her character and the power of Caesar her pleasurable society and her assiduous attentions to Antony, she would become invincible and get complete control over her husband. She therefore pretended to be passionately in love with Antony herself, and reduced her body by slender diet; she put on a look of rapture when Antony drew near, and one of faintness and melancholy when he went away. 4 She would contrive to be often seen in tears, and then would quickly wipe the tears away and try to hide them, as if she would not have Antony notice them. And she practised these arts while Antony was intending to go up from Syria to join the Mede. Her flatterers, too, were industrious in her behalf, and used to revile Antony as hard-hearted and unfeeling, and as the destroyer of a mistress who was devoted to him and him alone. 5 For Octavia, they said, had married him as a matter of public policy and for the sake of her brother, and enjoyed the name of wedded wife; but Cleopatra, who was queen of so many people, was called Antony’s beloved, and she did not shun this name nor disdain it, as long as she could see him and live with him; but if she were driven away from him she would not survive it. 6 At last, then, they so melted and enervated the man that he became fearful lest Cleopatra should throw away her life, and went back to Alexandria, putting off the Mede until the summer season, although Parthia was said to be suffering from internal dissensions. However, he went up and brought the king once more into friendly relations, and after betrothing to one of his sons by Cleopatra one of the king’s daughters who was still small, he returned, his thoughts being now directed towards the civil war.

54 1 As for Octavia, she was thought to have been treated with scorn, and when she came back from Athens Caesar ordered her to dwell in her own house. But she refused to leave the house of her husband, nay, she even entreated Caesar himself, unless on other grounds he had determined to make war upon Antony, to ignore Antony’s treatment of her, since it was an infamous thing even to have it said that the two greatest imperators in the world plunged the Romans into civil war, the one out of passion for, and the other out of resentment in behalf of, a woman. 2 These were her words, and she confirmed them by her deeds. For she dwelt in her husband’s house, just as if he were at home, and she cared for his children, not only those whom she herself, but also those whom Fulvia had borne him, in a noble and magnificent manner; she also received such friends of Antony as were sent to Rome in quest of office or on business, and helped them to obtain from Caesar what they wanted. Without meaning it, however, she was damaging Antony by this conduct of hers; for he was hated for wronging such a woman. 3 He was hated, too, for the distribution which he made to his children in Alexandria; it was seen to be theatrical and arrogant, and to evince hatred of Rome. For after filling the gymnasium with a throng and placing on a tribunal of silver two thrones of gold, one for himself and the other for Cleopatra, and other lower thrones for his sons, 4 in the first place he declared Cleopatra Queen of Egypt, Cyprus, Libya, and Coele Syria, and she was to share her throne with Caesarion. Caesarion was believed to be a son of the former Caesar, by whom Cleopatra was left pregnant. In the second place, he proclaimed his own sons by Cleopatra Kings of Kings, and to Alexander he allotted Armenia, Media and Parthia (when he should have subdued it), to Ptolemy Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia. 5 At the same time he also produced his sons, Alexander arrayed in Median garb, which included a tiara and upright head-dress, Ptolemy in boots, short cloak, and broad-brimmed hat surmounted by a diadem. For the latter was the dress of the kings who followed Alexander, the former that of Medes and Armenians. 6 And when the boys had embraced their parents, one was given a bodyguard of Armenians, the other of Macedonians. Cleopatra, indeed, both then and at other times when she appeared in public, assumed a robe sacred to Isis, and was addressed as the New Isis.

55 1 By reporting these things to the senate and by frequent denunciations before the people Caesar tried to inflame the multitude against Antony. Antony, too, kept sending counter-accusations against Caesar. The chief accusations which he made were, in the first place, that after taking Sicily away from Pompey, Caesar had not assigned a part of the island to him; in the second place, that after borrowing ships from him for the war he had kept them for himself; thirdly, that after ejecting his colleague Lepidus from office and degrading him, he was keeping for himself the army, the territory, and the revenues which had been assigned to Lepidus; 2 finally that he had distributed almost all Italy in allotments, to his own soldiers, and had left nothing for the soldiers of Antony. To these charges Caesar replied by saying that he had deposed Lepidus from office because he was abusing it, and as for what he had acquired in war, he would share it with Antony whenever Antony, on his part, should share Armenia with him; and Antony’s soldiers had no claim upon Italy, since they had Media and Persia, which countries they had added to the Roman dominion by their noble struggles under their imperator.

56 1 Antony heard of this while he was tarrying in Armenia; and at once he ordered Canidius to take sixteen legions and go down to the sea. But he himself took Cleopatra with him and came to Ephesus. It was there that his naval force was coming together from all quarters, eight hundred ships of war with merchant vessels, of which Cleopatra furnished two hundred, besides twenty thousand talents, and supplies for the whole army during the war. 2 But Antony, listening to the advice of Domitius and sundry others, ordered Cleopatra to sail to Egypt and there await the result of the war. Cleopatra, however, fearing that Octavia would again succeed in putting a stop to the war, persuaded Canidius by large bribes to plead her cause with Antony, and to say that it was neither just to drive away from the war a woman whose contributions to it were so large, 3 nor was it for the interest of Antony to dispirit the Egyptians, who formed a large part of his naval force; and besides, it was not easy to see how Cleopatra was inferior in intelligence to anyone of the princes who took part in the expedition, she who for a long time had governed so large a kingdom by herself, and by long association with Antony had learned to manage large affairs. These arguments (since it was destined that everything should come into Caesar’s hands) prevailed; and with united forces they sailed to Samos and there made merry. 4 For just as all the kings, dynasts, tetrarchs, nations, and cities between Syria, the Maeotic Lake, Armenia, and Illyria had been ordered to send or bring their equipment for the war, so all the dramatic artists were compelled to put in an appearance at Samos; and while almost all the world around was filled with groans and lamentations, a single island for many days resounded with flutes and stringed instruments; theatres there were filled, and choral bands were competing with one another. 5 Every city also sent an ox for the general sacrifice, and kings vied with one another in their mutual entertainments and gifts. And so men everywhere began to ask: “How will the conquerors celebrate their victories if their preparations for the war are marked by festivals so costly?”

57 1 When these festivities were over, Antony gave the dramatic artists Priene as a place for them to dwell, and sailed himself to Athens, where sports and theatres again engaged him. Cleopatra, too, jealous of Octavia’s honours in the city (for Octavia was especially beloved by the Athenians), tried by many splendid gifts to win the favour of the people. 2 So the people voted honours to her, and sent a deputation to her house carrying the vote, of whom Antony was one, for was he not a citizen of Athens? And standing in her presence he delivered a speech in behalf of the city. To Rome, however, he sent men who had orders to eject Octavia from his house. 3 And we are told that she left it taking all his children with her except his eldest son by Fulvia, who was with his father; she was in tears of distress that she herself also would be regarded as one of the causes of the war. But the Romans felt pity for Antony, not for her, and especially those who had seen Cleopatra and knew that neither in youthfulness nor beauty was she superior to Octavia.

58 1 When Caesar heard of the rapidity and extent of Antony’s preparations, he was much disturbed, lest he should be forced to settle the issue of the war during that summer. For he was lacking in many things, and people were vexed by the exactions of taxes. The citizens were generally compelled to pay one fourth of their income,f and the freedmen one eighth of their property, and both classes cried out against Caesar, and disturbances arising from these causes prevailed throughout all Italy. 2 Wherefore, among the greatest mistakes of Antony men reckon his postponement of the war. For it gave Caesar time to make preparations and put an end to the disturbances among the people. For while money was being exacted from them, they were angry, but when it had been exacted and they had paid it, they were calm. Moreover, Titius and Plancus, friends of Antony and men of consular rank, being abused by Cleopatra (for they had been most opposed to her accompanying the expedition) ran away to Caesar, and they gave him information about Antony’s will, the contents of which they knew. 3 This will was on deposit with the Vestal Virgins, and when Caesar asked for it, they would not give it to him; but if he wanted to take it, they told him to come and do so. So he went and took it; and to begin with, he read its contents through by himself; and marked certain reprehensible passages; then he assembled the senate and read it aloud to them, although most of them were displeased to hear him do so. 4 For they thought it a strange and grievous matter that a man should be called to account while alive for what he wished to have done after his death. Caesar laid most stress on the clause in the will relating to Antony’s burial. For it directed that Antony’s body, even if he should die in Rome, should be borne in state through the forum and then sent away to Cleopatra in Egypt. 5 Again, Calvisius, who was a companion of Caesar, brought forward against Antony the following charges also regarding his behaviour towards Cleopatra: he had bestowed upon her the libraries from Pergamum, in which there were two hundred thousand volumes; at a banquet where there were many guests he had stood up and rubbed her feet, in compliance with some agreement and compact which they had made; he had consented to have the Ephesians in his presence salute Cleopatra as mistress; 6 many times, while he was seated on his tribunal and dispensing justice to tetrarchs and kings, he would receive love-billets from her in tablets of onyx or crystal, and read them; and once when Furnius was speaking, a man of great worth and the ablest orator in Rome, Cleopatra was carried through the forum on a litter, and Antony, when he saw her, sprang up from his tribunal and forsook the trial, and hanging on to Cleopatra’s litter escorted her on her way.

59 1 However, most of the charges thus brought by Calvisius were thought to be falsehoods; but the friends of Antony went about in Rome beseeching the people in his behalf, and they sent one of their number, Geminius, with entreaties that Antony would not suffer himself to be voted out of his office and proclaimed an enemy of Rome. 2 But Geminius, after his voyage to Greece, was an object of suspicion to Cleopatra, who thought that he was acting in the interests of Octavia; he was always put upon with jokes at supper and insulted with places of no honour at table, but he endured all this and waited for an opportunity to confer with Antony. Once, however, at a supper, being bidden to tell the reasons for his coming, he replied that the rest of his communication required a sober head, but one thing he knew, whether he was drunk or sober, and that was all would be well if Cleopatra was sent off to Egypt. 3 At this, Antony was wroth, and Cleopatra said: “Thou has done well, Geminius, to confess the truth without being put to the torture.” Geminius, accordingly, after a few days, ran away to Rome. And Cleopatra’s flatterers drove away many of the other friends of Antony also who could not endure their drunken tricks and scurrilities. 4 Among these were Marcus Silanus and Dellius the historian. And Dellius says that he was also afraid of a plot against him by Cleopatra, of which Glaucus the physician had told him. For he had offended Cleopatra at supper by saying that while sour wine was served to them, Sarmentus, at Rome, was drinking Falernian. Now, Sarmentus was one of the youthful favourites of Caesar, such as the Romans call “deliciae.”

60 1 When Caesar had made sufficient preparations, a vote was passed to wage war against Cleopatra, and to take away from Antony the authority which he had surrendered to a woman. And Caesar said in addition that Antony had been drugged and was not even master of himself, and that the Romans were carrying on war with Mardion the eunuch, and Potheinus, and Iras, and the tire-woman of Cleopatra, and Charmion, by whom the principal affairs of the government were managed.

2 The following signs are said to have been given before the war. Pisaurum, a city colonized by Antony situated near the Adriatic, was swallowed by chasms in the earth. From one of the marble statues of Antony near Alba sweat oozed for many days, and though it was wiped away it did not cease. In Patrae, while Antony was staying there, the Heracleium was destroyed by lightning; and at Athens the Dionysus in the Battle of the Giants was dislodged by the winds and carried down into the theatre. 3 Now, Antony associated himself with Heracles in lineage, and with Dionysus in the mode of life which he adopted, as I have said, and he was called the New Dionysus. The same tempest fell upon the colossal figures of Eumenes and Attalus at Athens, on which the name of Antony had been inscribed, and prostrated them, and them alone out of many. Moreover the admiral’s ship of Cleopatra was called Antonius, and a dire sign was given with regard to it. Some swallows, namely, made their nest under its stern; but other swallows attacked these, drove them out and destroyed their nestlings.

61 1 When the forces came together for the war, Antony had no fewer than five hundred fighting ships, among which were many vessels of eight and ten banks of oars, arrayed in pompous and festal fashion; he also had one hundred thousand infantry soldiers and twelve thousand horsemen. Of subject kings who fought with him, there were Bocchus the king of Libya, Tarcondemus the king of Upper Cilicia, Archelaüs of Cappadocia, Philadelphus of Paphlagonia, Mithridates of Commagene, and Sadalas of Thrace. 2 These were with him, while from Pontus Polemon sent an army, and Malchus from Arabia, and Herod the Jew, besides Amyntas the king of Lycaonia and Galatia; the king of the Medes also sent an auxiliary force. Caesar had two hundred and fifty ships of war, eighty thousand infantry, and about as many horsemen as his enemies. 3 Antony’s authority extended over the country from the Euphrates and Armenia to the Ionian sea and Illyria; Caesar’s over the country reaching from Illyria to the Western Ocean and from the ocean back to the Tuscan and Sicilian seas. Of Libya, the part extending opposite to Italy, Gaul, and Iberia as far as the pillars of Hercules, belonged to Caesar; the part extending from Cyrene as far as Armenia, to Antony.

62 1 But to such an extent, now, was Antony an appendage of the woman that although he was far superior on land, he wished the decision to rest with his navy, to please Cleopatra, and that too when he saw that for lack of crews his trierarchs were haling together out of long-suffering Greece wayfarers, mule-drivers, harvesters, and ephebi, and that even then their ships were not fully manned, but most of them were deficient and sailed wretchedly. 2 Caesar’s fleet, on the other hand, was perfectly equipped, and consisted of ships which had not been built for a display of height or mass, but were easily steered, swift, and fully manned. This fleet Caesar kept assembled at Tarentum and Brundisium, and he sent to Antony a demand to waste no time, but to come with his forces; Caesar himself would furnish his armament with unobstructed roadsteads and harbours, and would withdraw with his land forces a day’s journey for a horseman from the sea-shore, until Antony should have safely landed and fixed his camp. 3 This boastful language Antony matched by challenging Caesar to single combat, although he was an older man than Caesar; and if Caesar declined this, Antony demanded that they should fight out the issue at Pharsalus, as Caesar and Pompey had once done. But while Antony was lying at anchor off Actium, where now Nicopolis stands, Caesar got the start of him by crossing the Ionian sea and occupying a place in Epirus called Toruné (that is, ladle); and when Antony and his friends were disturbed by this, since their infantry forces were belated, Cleopatra, jesting, said: “What is there dreadful in Caesar’s sitting at a ladle?”

63 1 But Antony, when the enemy sailed against him at daybreak, was afraid lest they should capture his ships while they had no fighting crews, and therefore armed the rowers and drew them up on the decks so as to make a show; then he grouped his ships at the mouth of the gulf near Actium, their ranks of oars on either side lifted and poised as for the stroke, and their prows towards the enemy, as if they were fully manned and prepared to fight. 2 Caesar, thus outwitted and deceived, withdrew. Antony was also thought to have shown great skill in enclosing the potable water within certain barriers and thus depriving the enemy of it, since the places round about afforded little, and that of bad quality. He also behaved with magnanimity towards Domitius, contrary to the judgment of Cleopatra. For when Domitius, who was already in a fever, got into a small boat and went over to Caesar, Antony, though deeply chagrined, nevertheless, sent off to him all his baggage, together with his friends and servants. 3 And Domitius, as if repenting when his faithlessness and treachery became known, straightway died.

There were also defections among the kings, and Amyntas and Deiotarus went over to Caesar. Besides, since his navy was unlucky in everything and always too late to be of assistance, Antony was again compelled to turn his attention to his land forces. Canidius also, the commander of the land forces, changed his mind in presence of the danger, and advised Antony to send Cleopatra away, to withdraw into Thrace or Macedonia, and there to decide the issue by a land battle. 4 For Dicomes the king of the Getae promised to come to their aid with a large force; and it would be no disgrace, Canidius urged, for them to give up the sea to Caesar, who had practised himself there in the Sicilian war; but it would be a strange thing for Antony, who was most experienced in land conflicts, not to avail himself of the strength and equipment of his numerous legionary soldiers, but to distribute his forces among ships and so fritter them away.

5 However, Cleopatra prevailed with her opinion that the war should be decided by the ships, although she was already contemplating flight, and was disposing her own forces, not where they would be helpful in winning the victory, but where they could most easily get away if the cause was lost. Moreover, there were two long walls extending down to the naval station from the camp, and between these Antony was wont to pass without suspecting any danger. 6 But a slave told Caesar that it was possible to seize Antony as he went down between the walls, and Caesar sent men to lie in ambush for him. These men came near accomplishing their purpose, but seized only the man who was advancing in front of Antony, since they sprang up too soon; Antony himself escaped with difficulty by running.

64 1 When it had been decided to deliver a sea battle, Antony burned all the Egyptian ships except sixty; but the largest and best, from those having three to those having ten banks of oars, he manned, putting on board twenty thousand heavy-armed soldiers and two thousand archers. It was on this occasion, we are told, that an infantry centurion, a man who had fought many a battle for Antony and was covered with scars, burst into laments as Antony was passing by, and said; 2 “Imperator, why dost thou distrust these wounds and this sword and put thy hopes in miserable logs of wood? Let Egyptians and Phoenicians do their fighting at sea, but give us land, on which we are accustomed to stand and either conquer our enemies or die.” To this Antony made no reply, but merely encouraged the man by a gesture and a look to be of good heart, and passed on. He had no good hopes himself, since, when the masters of his ships wished to leave their sails behind, he compelled them to put them on board and carry them, saying that not one fugitive of the enemy should be allowed to make his escape.

65 1 During that day, then, and the three following days the sea was tossed up by a strong wind and prevented the battle; but on the fifth, the weather becoming fine and the sea calm, they came to an engagement. Antony had the right wing, with Publicola, Coelius the left, and in the centre were Marcus Octavius and Marcus Insteius. 2 Caesar posted Agrippa on the left, and reserved the right wing for himself. Of the land forces, that of Antony was commanded by Canidius, that of Caesar by Taurus, who drew them up along the sea and remained quiet. As for the leaders themselves, Antony visited all his ships in a row-boat, exhorting the soldiers, owing to the weight of their ships, to fight without changing their position, as if they were on land; 3 he also ordered the masters of the ships to receive the attacks of the enemy as if their ships were lying quietly at anchor, and to maintain their position at the mouth of the gulf, which was narrow and difficult. Caesar, we are told, who had left his tent while it was still dark and was going round to visit his ships, was met by a man driving an ass. Caesar asked the man his name, and he, recognizing Caesar, replied: “My name is Prosper, and my ass’s name is Victor.” Therefore, when Caesar afterwards decided the place with the beaks of ships, he set up bronze figures of an ass and a man. 4 After surveying the rest of his line of battle, he was carried in a small boat to his right wing, and there was astonished to see the enemy lying motionless in the narrows; indeed, their ships had the appearance of riding at anchor. For a long time he was convinced that this was really the case, and kept his own ships at a distance of about eight furlongs from the enemy. But it was now the sixth hour, and since a wind was rising from the sea, the soldiers of Antony became impatient at the delay, and, relying on the height and size of their own ships as making them unassailable, they put their left wing in motion. 5 When Caesar saw this he was delighted, and ordered his right wing to row backwards, wishing to draw the enemy still farther out from the gulf and the narrows, and then to surround them with his own agile vessels and come to close quarters with ships which, owing to their great size and the smallness of their crews, were slow and ineffective.

66 1 Though the struggle was beginning to be at close range, the ships did not ram or crush one another at all, since Antony’s, owing to their weight, had no impetus, which chiefly gives effect to the blows of the beaks, while Caesar’s not only avoided dashing front to front against rough and hard bronze armour, but did not even venture to ram the enemy’s ships in the side. 2 For their beaks would easily have been broken off by impact against vessels constructed of huge square timbers fastened together with iron. The struggle was therefore like a land battle; or, to speak more truly, like the storming of a walled town. For three or four of Caesar’s vessels were engaged at the same time about one of Antony’s, and the crews fought with wicker shields and spears and punting-poles and fiery missiles; the soldiers of Antony also shot with catapults from wooden towers.

3 And now, as Agrippa was extending the left wing with a view to encircling the enemy, Publicola was forced to advance against him, and so was separated from the centre. The centre falling into confusion and engaging with Arruntius, although the sea-fight was still undecided and equally favourable to both sides, suddenly the sixty ships of Cleopatra were seen hoisting their sails for flight and making off through the midst of the combatants; for they had been posted in the rear of the large vessels, and threw them into confusion as they plunged through. 4 The enemy looked on with amazement, seeing that they took advantage of the wind and made for Peloponnesus. Here, indeed, Antony made it clear to all the world that he was swayed neither by the sentiments of a commander nor of a brave man, nor even by his own, but, as someone in pleasantry said that the soul of the lover dwells in another’s body, he was dragged along by the woman as if he had become incorporate with her and must go where she did. 5 For no sooner did he see her ship sailing off than he forgot everything else, betrayed and ran away from those who were fighting and dying in his cause, got into a five-oared galley, where Alexas the Syrian and Scellius were his only companions, and hastened after the woman who had already ruined him and would make his ruin still more complete.

67 1 Cleopatra recognized him and raised a signal on her ship; so Antony came up and was taken on board, but he neither saw nor was seen by her. Instead, he went forward alone to the prow and sat down by himself in silence, holding his head in both hands. 2 At this point, Liburnian ships were seen pursuing them from Caesar’s fleet; but Antony ordered the ship’s prow turned to face them, and so kept them off, except the ship of Eurycles the Laconian, who attacked vigorously, and brandished a spear on the deck as though he would cast it at Antony. And when Antony, standing at the prow, asked, “Who is this that pursues Antony?” the answer was, “I am Eurycles the son of Lachares, whom the fortune of Caesar enables to avenge the death of his father.” 3 Now, Lachares had been beheaded by Antony because he was involved in a charge of robbery. However, Eurycles did not hit Antony’s ship, but smote the other admiral’s ship (for there were two of them) with his bronze beak and whirled her round, and one of the other ships also, which contained costly equipment for household use. 4 When Eurycles was gone, Antony threw himself down again in the same posture and did not stir. He spent three days by himself at the prow, either because he was angry with Cleopatra, or ashamed to see her, and then put in at Taenarum. Here the women in Cleopatra’s company at first brought them into a parley, and then persuaded them to eat and sleep together.

5 Presently not a few of their heavy transport ships and some of their friends began to gather about them after the defeat, bringing word that the fleet was destroyed, but that, in their opinion, the land forces still held together. So Antony sent messengers to Canidius, ordering him to retire with his army as fast as he could through Macedonia into Asia; 6 he himself, however, since he purposed to cross from Taenarum to Libya, selected one of the transport ships which carried much coined money and very valuable royal utensils in silver and gold, and made a present of it to his friends, bidding them divide up the treasure and look out for their own safety. They refused his gift and were in tears, but he comforted them and besought them with great kindness and affection, and finally sent them away, 7 after writing to Theophilus, his steward in Corinth, that he should keep the men in safe hiding until they could make their peace with Caesar. This Theophilus was the father of Hipparchus, who had the greatest influence with Antony, was the first of Antony’s freedmen to go over to Caesar, and afterwards lived in Corinth.

68 1 This, then, was the situation of Antony. But at Actium his fleet held out for a long time against Caesar, and only after it had been most severely damaged by the high sea which rose against it did it reluctantly, and at the tenth hour, give up the struggle. There were not more than five thousand dead, but three hundred ships were captured, as Caesar himself has written. 2 Only a few were aware that Antony had fled, and to those who heard of it the story was at first an incredible one, that he had gone off and left nineteen legions of undefeated men-at arms and twelve thousand horsemen, as if he had not many times experienced both kinds of fortune and were not exercised by the reverses of countless wars and fightings. 3 His soldiers, too, had a great longing for him, and expected that he would presently make his appearance from some quarter or other; and they displayed so much fidelity and bravery that even after his flight had become evident they held together for seven days, paying no heed to the messages which Caesar sent them. But at last, after Canidius their general had run away by night and forsaken the camp, being now destitute of all things and betrayed by their commanders, they went over to the conqueror.

4 In consequence of this, Caesar sailed to Athens, and after making a settlement with the Greeks, he distributed the grain which remained over after the war among their cities; these were in a wretched plight, and had been stripped of money, slaves, and beasts of burden. At any rate, my great-grandfather Nicarchus used to tell how all his fellow-citizens were compelled to carry on their shoulders a stipulated measure of wheat down to the sea at Anticyra, and how their pace was quickened by the whip; 5 they had carried one load in this way, he said, the second was already measured out, and they were just about to set forth, when word was brought that Antony had been defeated, and this was the salvation of the city; for immediately the stewards and soldiers of Antony took to flight, and the citizens divided the grain among themselves.

69 1 After Antony had reached the coast of Libya and sent Cleopatra forward into Egypt from Paraetonium, he had the benefit of solitude without end, roaming and wandering about with two friends, one a Greek, Aristocrates a rhetorician, and the other a Roman, Lucilius, about whom I have told a story elsewhere. He was at Philippi, and in order that Brutus might make his escape, pretended to be Brutus and surrendered himself to his pursuers. His life was spared by Antony on this account, and he remained faithful to him and steadfast up to the last crucial times. 2 When the general to whom his forces in Libya had been entrusted brought about their defection, Antony tried to kill himself, but was prevented by his friends and brought to Alexandria. Here he found Cleopatra venturing upon a hazardous and great undertaking. The isthmus, namely, which separates the Red Sea from the Mediterranean Sea off Egypt and is considered to be the boundary between Asia and Libya, in the part where it is most constricted by the two seas and has the least width, measures three hundred furlongs. 3 Here Cleopatra undertook to raise her fleet out of water and drag the ships across, and after launching them in the Arabian Gulf with much money and a large force, to settle in parts outside of Egypt, thus escaping war and servitude. But since the Arabians about Petra burned the first ships that were drawn up, and Antony still thought that his land forces at Actium were holding together, she desisted, and guarded the approaches to the country. 4 And now Antony forsook the city and the society of his friends, and built for himself a dwelling in the sea at Pharos, by throwing a mole out into the water. Here he lived an exile from men, and declared that he was contentedly imitating the life of Timon, since, indeed, his experiences had been like Timon’s; for he himself also had been wronged and treated with ingratitude by his friends, and therefore hated and distrusted all mankind.

70 1 Now, Timon was an Athenian, and lived about the time of the Peloponnesian War, as may be gathered from the plays of Aristophanes and Plato. For he is represented in their comedies as peevish and misanthropical; but though he avoided and repelled all intercourse with men, he was glad to see Alcibiades, who was then young and headstrong, and showered kisses upon him. And when Apemantus was amazed at this and asked the reason for it, Timon said he loved the youth because he knew that he would be a cause of many ills to Athens. 2 This Apemantus alone of all men Timon would sometimes admit into his company, since Apemantus was like him and tried sometimes to imitate his mode of life; and once, at the festival of The Pitchers, the two were feasting by themselves, and Apemantus said: “Timon, what a fine symposium ours is!” “It would be,” said Timon, “if thou wert not here.” We are told also that once when the Athenians were holding an assembly, he ascended the bema, and the strangeness of the thing caused deep silence and great expectancy; then he said: 3 “I have a small building lot, men of Athens, and a fig-tree is growing in it, from which many of my fellow citizens have already hanged themselves. Accordingly, as I intend to build a house there, I wanted to give public notice to that effect, in order that all of you who desire to do so may hang yourselves before the fig-tree is cut down.” After he had died and been buried at Halae near the sea, the shore in front of the tomb slipped away, and the water surrounded it and made it completely inaccessible to man. 4 The inscription on the tomb was:

“Here, after snapping the thread of a wretched life, I lie.

Ye shall not learn my name, but my curses shall follow you.”

This inscription he is said to have composed himself, but that in general circulation is by Callimachus:

“Timon, hater of men, dwells here; so pass along;

Heap many curses on me, if thou wilt, only pass along.”

71 1 These are a few things out of many concerning Timon. As for Antony, Canidius in person brought him word of the loss of his forces at Actium, and he heard that Herod the Jew, with sundry legions and cohorts, had gone over to Caesar, and that the other dynasts in like manner were deserting him and nothing longer remained of his power outside of Egypt. 2 However, none of these things greatly disturbed him, but, as if he gladly laid aside his hopes, that so he might lay aside his anxieties also, he forsook that dwelling of his in the sea, which he called Timoneum, and after he had been received into the palace by Cleopatra, turned the city to the enjoyment of suppers and drinking-bouts and distributions of gifts, inscribing in the list of ephebi the son of Cleopatra and Caesar, 3 and bestowing upon Antyllus the son of Fulvia the toga virilis without purple hem, in celebration of which, for many days, banquets and revels and feastings occupied Alexandria. Cleopatra and Antony now dissolved their famous society of Inimitable Livers, and founded another, not at all inferior to that in daintiness and extravagant outlay, which they called the society of Partners in Death. For their friends enrolled themselves as those who would die together, and passed the time delightfully in a round of suppers. 4 Moreover, Cleopatra was getting together collections of all sorts of deadly poisons, and she tested the painless working of each of them by giving them to prisoners under sentence of death. But when she saw that the speedy poisons enhanced the sharpness of death by the pain they caused, while the milder poisons were not quick, she made trial of venomous animals, watching with her own eyes as they were set upon another. 5 She did this daily, tried them almost all; and she found that the bite of the asp alone induced a sleepy torpor and sinking, where there was no spasm or groan, but a gentle perspiration on the face, while the perceptive faculties were easily relaxed and dimmed, and resisted all attempts to rouse and restore them, as is the case with those who are soundly asleep.

72 1 At the same time they also sent an embassy to Caesar in Asia, Cleopatra asking the realm of Egypt for her children, and Antony requesting that he might live as a private person at Athens, if he could not do so in Egypt. But owing to their lack of friends and the distrust which they felt on account of desertions, Euphronius, the teacher of the children, was sent on the embassy. 2 For Alexas the Laodicean, who had been made known to Antony in Rome through Timagenes and had more influence with him than any other Greek, who had also been Cleopatra’s most effective instrument against Antony and had overthrown the considerations arising in his mind in favour of Octavia, had been sent to keep Herod the king from apostasy; 3 but after remaining there and betraying Antony he had the audacity to come into Caesar’s presence, relying on Herod. Herod, however, could not help him, but the traitor was at once confined and carried in fetters to his own country, where he was put to death by Caesar’s orders. Such was the penalty for his treachery which Alexas paid to Antony while Antony was yet alive.

73 1 Caesar would not listen to the proposals for Antony, but he sent back word to Cleopatra that she would receive all reasonable treatment if she either put Antony to death or cast him out. He also sent with the messengers one of his own freedmen, Thyrsus, a man of no mean parts, and one who would persuasively convey messages from a young general to a woman who was haughty and astonishingly proud in the matter of beauty. 2 This man had longer interviews with Cleopatra than the rest, and was conspicuously honoured by her, so that he roused suspicion in Antony, who seized him and gave him a flogging, and then sent him back to Caesar with a written message stating that Thyrsus, by his insolent and haughty airs, had irritated him, at a time when misfortunes made him easily irritated. “But if thou dost not like the thing,” he said, “thou has my freedman Hipparchus; hang him up and give him a flogging, and we shall be quits.” 3 After this, Cleopatra tried to dissipate his causes of complaint and his suspicions by paying extravagant court to him; her own birthday she kept modestly and in a manner becoming to her circumstances, but she celebrated his with an excess of all kinds of splendour and costliness, so that many of those who were bidden to the supper came poor and went away rich. Meanwhile Caesar was being called home by Agrippa, who frequently wrote him from Rome that matters there greatly needed his presence.

74 1 Accordingly, the war was suspended for the time being; but when the winter was over, Caesar again marched against his enemy through Syria, and his generals through Libya. When Pelusium was taken there was a rumour that Seleucus had given it up, and not without the consent of Cleopatra; but Cleopatra allowed Antony to put to death the wife and children of Seleucus, and she herself, now that she had a tomb and monument built surpassingly lofty and beautiful, which she had erected near the temple of Isis, 2 collected there the most valuable of the royal treasures, gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, ebony, ivory, and cinnamon; and besides all this she put there great quantities of torch-wood and tow, so that Caesar was anxious about the reason, and fearing lest the woman might become desperate and burn up and destroy this wealth, kept sending on to her vague hopes of kindly treatment from him, at the same time that he advanced with his army against the city. 3 But when Caesar had taken up position near the hippodrome, Antony sallied forth against him and fought brilliantly and routed his cavalry, and pursued them as far as their camp. Then, exalted by his victory, he went into the palace, kissed Cleopatra, all armed as he was, and presented to her the one of his soldiers who had fought most spiritedly. Cleopatra gave the man as a reward of valour a golden breastplate and a helmet. The man took them, of course, — and in the night deserted to Caesar.

75 1 And now Antony once more sent Caesar a challenge to single combat. But Caesar answered that Antony had many ways of dying. Then Antony, conscious that there was no better death for him than that by battle, determined to attack by land and sea at once. And at supper, we are told, he bade the slaves pour out for him and feast him more generously; 2 for it was uncertain, he said, whether they would be doing this on the morrow, or whether they would be serving other masters, while he himself would be lying dead, a mummy and a nothing. Then, seeing that his friends were weeping at these words, he declared that he would not lead them out to battle, since from it he sought an honourable death for himself rather than safety and victory.

3 During this night, it is said, about the middle of it, while the city was quiet and depressed through fear and expectation of what was coming, suddenly certain harmonious sounds from all sorts of instruments were heard, and the shouting of a throng, accompanied by cries of Bacchic revelry and satyric leapings, as if a troop of revellers, making a great tumult, were going forth from the city; 4 and their course seemed to lie about through the middle of the city toward the outer gate which faced the enemy, at which point the tumult became loudest and then dashed out. Those who sought the meaning of the sign were of the opinion that the god to whom Antony always most likened and attached himself was now deserting him.

76 1 At daybreak, Antony in person posted his infantry on the hills in front of the city, and watched his ships as they put out and attacked those of the enemy; and as he expected to see something great accomplished by them, he remained quiet. But the crews of his ships, as soon as they were near, saluted Caesar’s crews with their oars, and on their returning the salute changed sides, and so all the ships, now united into one fleet, sailed up towards the city prows on. 2 No sooner had Antony seen this than he was deserted by his cavalry, which went over to the enemy, and after being defeated with his infantry he retired into the city, crying out that he had been betrayed by Cleopatra to those with whom he waged war for her sake. But she, fearing his anger and his madness, fled for refuge into her tomb and let fall the drop-doors, which were made strong with bolts and bars; then she sent messengers to tell Antony that she was dead. 3 Antony believed that message, and saying to himself, “Why doest thou longer delay, Antony? Fortune has taken away thy sole remaining excuse for clinging to life,” he went into his chamber. Here, as he unfastened his breastplate and laid it aside, he said: “O Cleopatra, I am not grieved to be bereft of thee, for I shall straightway join thee; but I am grieved that such an imperator as I am has been found to be inferior to a woman in courage.”

4 Now, Antony had a trusty slave named Eros. Him Antony had long before engaged, in case of need, to kill him, and now demanded the fulfilment of his promise. So Eros drew his sword and held it up as though he would smite his master, but then turned his face away and slew himself. And as he fell at his master’s feet Antony said: “Well done, Eros! though thou wast not able to do it thyself, thou teachest me what I must do”; and running himself through the belly he dropped upon the couch. 5 But the wound did not bring a speedy death. Therefore, as the blood ceased flowing after he had lain down, he came to himself and besought the bystanders to give him the finishing stroke. But they fled from the chamber, and he lay writhing and crying out, until Diomedes the secretary came from Cleopatra with orders to bring him to her in the tomb.

77 1 Having learned, then, that Cleopatra was alive, Antony eagerly ordered his servants to raise him up, and he was carried in their arms to the doors of her tomb. Cleopatra, however, would not open the doors, but showed herself at a window, from which she let down ropes and cords. To these Antony was fastened, and she drew him up herself, with the aid of the two women whom alone she had admitted with her into the tomb. 2 Never, as those who were present tell us, was there a more piteous sight. Smeared with blood and struggling with death he was drawn up, stretching out his hands to her even as he dangled in the air. For the task was not an easy one for the women, and scarcely could Cleopatra, with clinging hands and strained face, pull up the rope, while those below called out encouragement to her and shared her agony. 3 And when she had thus got him in and laid him down, she rent her garments over him, beat and tore her breasts with her hands, wiped off some of his blood upon her face, and called him master, husband, and imperator; indeed, she almost forgot her own ills in her pity for his. But Antony stopped her lamentations and asked for a drink of wine, either because he was thirsty, or in the hope of a speedier release. 4 When he had drunk, he advised her to consult her own safety, if she could do it without disgrace, and among all the companions of Caesar to put most confidence in Proculeius, and not to lament him for his last reverses, but to count him happy for the good things that had been his, since he had become most illustrious of men, had won greatest power, and now had been not ignobly conquered, a Roman by a Roman.

78 1 Scarcely was he dead, when Proculeius came from Caesar. For after Antony had smitten himself and while he was being carried to Cleopatra, Dercetaeus, one of his body-guard, seized Antony’s sword, concealed it, and stole away with it; and running to Caesar, he was the first to tell him of Antony’s death, and showed him the sword all smeared with blood. 2 When Caesar heard these tidings, he retired within his tent and wept for a man who had been his relation by marriage, his colleague in office and command, and his partner in many undertakings and struggles. Then he took the letters which had passed between them, called in his friends, and read the letters aloud, showing how reasonably and justly he had written, and how rude and overbearing Antony had always been in his replies. 3 After this, he sent Proculeius, bidding him, if possible, above all things to get Cleopatra into his power alive; for he was fearful about the treasures in her funeral pyre, and he thought it would add greatly to the glory of his triumph if she were led in the procession. Into the hands of Proculeius, however, Cleopatra would not put herself; 4 but she conferred with him after he had come close to the tomb and stationed himself outside at a door which was on a level with the ground. The door was strongly fastened with bolts and bars, but allowed a passage for the voice. So they conversed, Cleopatra asking that her children might have the kingdom, and Proculeius bidding her be of good cheer and trust Caesar in everything.

79 1 After Proculeius had surveyed the place, he brought back word to Caesar, and Gallus was sent to have another interview with the queen; and coming up to the door he purposely prolonged the conversation. Meanwhile Proculeius applied a ladder and went in through the window by which the women had taken Antony inside. Then he went down at once to the very door at which Cleopatra was standing and listening to Gallus, and he had two servants with him. 2 One of the women imprisoned with Cleopatra cried out, “Wretched Cleopatra, thou art taken alive,” whereupon the queen turned about, saw Proculeius, and tried to stab herself; for she had at her girdle a dagger such as robbers wear. But Proculeius ran swiftly to her, threw both his arms about her, and said: “O Cleopatra, thou art wronging both thyself and Caesar, by trying to rob him of an opportunity to show great kindness, and by fixing upon the gentlest of commanders the stigma of faithlessness and implacability.” 3 At the same time he took away her weapon, and shook out her clothing, to see whether she was concealing any poison. And there was also sent from Caesar one of his freedmen, Epaphroditus, with injunctions to keep the queen alive by the strictest vigilance, but otherwise to make any concession that would promote her ease and pleasure.

80 1 And now Caesar himself drove into the city, and he was conversing with Areius the philosopher, to whom he had given his right hand, in order that Areius might at once be conspicuous among the citizens, and be admired because of the marked honour shown him by Caesar. After he had entered the gymnasium and ascended a tribunal there made for him, the people were beside themselves with fear and prostrated themselves before him, but he bade them rise up, and said that he acquitted the people of all blame, first, because of Alexander, their founder; second, because he admired the great size and beauty of the city; and third, to gratify his companion, Areius. 2 This honour Caesar bestowed upon Areius, and pardoned many other persons also at his request. Among these was Philostratus, a man more competent to speak extempore than any sophist that ever lived, but he improperly represented himself as belonging to the school of the Academy. Therefore Caesar, abominating his ways, would not listen to his entreaties. 3 So Philostratus, having a long white beard and wearing a dark robe, would follow behind Areius, ever declaiming this verse: —

“A wise man will a wise man save, if wise he be.”

When Caesar heard of this, he pardoned him, wishing rather to free Areius from odium than Philostratus from fear.

81 1 As for the children of Antony, Antyllus, his son by Fulvia, was betrayed by Theodorus his tutor and put to death; and after the soldiers had cut off his head, his tutor took away the exceeding precious stone which the boy wore about his neck and sewed it into his own girdle; and though he denied the deed, he was convicted of it and crucified. 2 Cleopatra’s children, together with their attendants, were kept under guard and had generous treatment. But Caesarion, who was said to be Cleopatra’s son by Julius Caesar, was sent by his mother, with much treasure, into India, by way of Ethiopia. There Rhodon, another tutor like Theodorus, persuaded him to go back, on the ground that Caesar invited him to take the kingdom. But while Caesar was deliberating on the matter, we are told that Areius said: —

“Not a good thing were a Caesar too many.”

82 1 As for Caesarion, then, he was afterwards put to death by Caesar, — after the death of Cleopatra; but as for Antony, though many generals and kings asked for his body that they might give it burial, Caesar would not take it away from Cleopatra, and it was buried by her hands in sumptuous and royal fashion, such things being granted her for the purpose as she desired. But in consequence of so much grief as well as pain (for her breasts were wounded and inflamed by the blows she gave them) a fever assailed her, and she welcomed it as an excuse for abstaining from food and so releasing herself from life without hindrance. 2 Moreover, there was a physician in her company of intimates, Olympus, to whom she told the truth, and she had his counsel and assistance in compassing her death, as Olympus himself testifies in a history of these events which he published. But Caesar was suspicious, and plied her with threats and fears regarding her children, by which she was laid low, as by engines of war, and surrendered her body for such care and nourishment as was desired.

83 1 After a few days Caesar himself came to talk with her and give her comfort. She was lying on a mean pallet-bed, clad only in her tunic, but sprang up as he entered and thew herself at his feet; her hair and face were in terrible disarray, her voice trembled, and her eyes were sunken. There were also visible many marks of the cruel blows upon her bosom; in a word, her body seemed to be no better off than her spirit. 2 Nevertheless, the charm for which she was famous and the boldness of her beauty were not altogether extinguished, but, although she was in such a sorry plight, they shone forth from within and made themselves manifest in the play of her features. After Caesar had bidden her to lie down and had seated himself near her, she began a sort of justification of her course, ascribing it to necessity and fear of Antony; but as Caesar opposed and refuted her on every point, she quickly changed her tone and sought to move his pity by prayers, as one who above all things clung to life. 3 And finally she gave him a list which she had of all her treasures; and when Seleucus, one of her stewards, showed conclusively that she was stealing away and hiding some of them, she sprang up, seized him by the hair, and showered blows upon his face. 4 And when Caesar, with a smile, stopped her, she said: “But is it not a monstrous thing, O Caesar, that when thou hast deigned to come to me and speak to me though I am in this wretched plight, my slaves denounce me for reserving some women’s adornments, — not for myself, indeed, unhappy woman that I am, — but that I may make trifling gifts to Octavia and thy Livia, and through their intercession find thee merciful and more gentle?” 5 Caesar was pleased with this speech, being altogether of the opinion that she desired to live. He told her, therefore, that he left these matters for her to manage, and that in all other ways he would give her more splendid treatment than she could possibly expect. Then he went off, supposing that he had deceived her, but the rather deceived by her.

84 1 Now, there was a young man of rank among Caesar’s companions, named Cornelius Dolabella. This man was not without a certain tenderness for Cleopatra; and so now, in response to her request, he secretly sent word to her that Caesar himself was preparing to march with his land forces through Syria, and had resolved to send off her and her children within three days. 2 After Cleopatra had heard this, in the first place, she begged Caesar that she might be permitted to pour libations for Antony; and when the request was granted, she had herself carried to the tomb, and embracing the urn which held his ashes, in company with the women usually about her, she said: “Dear Antony, I buried thee but lately with hands still free; now, however, I pour libations for thee as a captive, and so carefully guarded that I cannot either with blows or tears disfigure this body of mine, which is a slave’s body, and closely watched that it may grace the triumph over thee. 3 Do not expect other honours or libations; these are the last from Cleopatra the captive. For though in life nothing could part us from each other, in death we are likely to change places; thou, the Roman, lying buried here, while I, the hapless woman, lie in Italy, and get only so much of thy country as my portion. 4 But if indeed there is any might or power in the gods of that country (for the gods of this country have betrayed us), do not abandon thine own wife while she lives, nor permit a triumph to be celebrated over myself in my person, but hide and bury me here with thyself, since out of all my innumerable ills not one is so great and dreadful as this short time that I have lived apart from thee.”

85 1 After such lamentations, she wreathed and kissed the urn, and then ordered a bath to be prepared for herself. After her bath, she reclined at table and was making a sumptuous meal. And there came a man from the country carrying a basket; and when the guards asked him what he was bringing there, he opened the basket, took away the leaves, and showed them that the dish inside was full of figs. 2 The guards were amazed at the great size and beauty of the figs, whereupon the man smiled and asked them to take some; so they felt no mistrust and bade him take them in. After her meal, however, Cleopatra took a tablet which was already written upon and sealed, and sent it to Caesar, and then, sending away all the rest of the company except her two faithful women, she closed the doors.

3 But Caesar opened the tablet, and when he found there lamentations and supplications of one who begged that he would bury her with Antony, he quickly knew what had happened. At first he was minded to go himself and give aid; then he ordered messengers to go with all speed and investigate. But the mischief had been swift. For though his messengers came on the run and found the guards as yet aware of nothing, when they opened the doors they found Cleopatra lying dead upon a golden couch, arrayed in royal state. 4 And of her two women, the one called Iras was dying at her feet, while Charmion, already tottering and heavy-handed, was trying to arrange the diadem which encircled the queen’s brow. Then somebody said in anger: “A fine deed, this, Charmion!” “It is indeed most fine,” she said, “and befitting the descendant of so many kings.” Not a word more did she speak, but fell there by the side of the couch.

86 1 It is said that the asp was brought with those figs and leaves and lay hidden beneath them, for thus Cleopatra had given orders, that the reptile might fasten itself upon her body without her being aware of it. But when she took away some of the figs and saw it, she said: “There it is, you see,” and baring her arm she held it out for the bite. 2 But others say that the asp was kept carefully shut up in a water jar, and that while Cleopatra was stirring it up and irritating it with a golden distaff it sprang and fastened itself upon her arm. But the truth of the matter no one knows; for it was also said that she carried about poison in a hollow comb and kept the comb hidden in her hair; and yet neither spot nor other sign of poison broke out upon her body. 3 Moreover, not even was the reptile seen within the chamber, though people said they saw some traces of it near the sea, where the chamber looked out upon it with its windows. And some also say that Cleopatra’s arm was seen to have two slight and indistinct punctures; and this Caesar also seems to have believed. For in his triumph an image of Cleopatra herself with the asp clinging to her was carried in the procession.g These, then, are the various accounts of what happened.

4 But Caesar, although vexed at the death of the woman, admired her lofty spirit; and he gave orders that her body should be buried with that of Antony in splendid and regal fashion. Her women also received honourable interment by his orders. When Cleopatra died she was forty years of age save one, and had shared her power with Antony more than fourteen. 5 Antony was fifty-six years of age, according to some, according to others, fifty-three. Now, the statues of Antony were torn down, but those of Cleopatra were left standing, because Archibius, one of her friends, gave Caesar two thousand talents, in order that they might not suffer the same fate as Antony’s.

87 1 Antony left seven children by his three wives, of whom Antyllus, the eldest, was the only one who was put to death by Caesar; the rest were taken up by Octavia and reared with her own children. Cleopatra, the daughter of Cleopatra, Octavia gave in marriage to Juba, the most accomplished of kings, and Antony, the son of Fulvia, she raised so high that, while Agrippa held the first place in Caesar’s estimation, and the sons of Livia the second, Antony was thought to be and really was third. 2 By Marcellus Octavia had two daughters, and one son, Marcellus, whom Caesar made both his son and his son-in law, and he gave one of the daughters to Agrippa. But since Marcellus died very soon after his marriage and it was not easy for Caesar to select from among his other friends a son-in law whom he could trust, Octavia proposed that Agrippa should take Caesar’s daughter to wife, and put away her own. 3 First Caesar was persuaded by her, then Agrippa, whereupon she took back her own daughter and married her to young Antony, while Agrippa married Caesar’s daughter. Antony left two daughters by Octavia, of whom one was taken to wife by Domitius Ahenobarbus, and the other, Antonia, famous for her beauty and discretion, was married to Drusus, who was the son of Livia and the step-son of Caesar. From this marriage sprang Germanicus and Claudius; 4 of these, Claudius afterwards came to the throne, and of the children of Germanicus, Caius reigned with distinction,h but for a short time only, and was then put to death with his wife and child, and Agrippina, who had a son by Ahenobarbus, Lucius Domitius, became the wife of Claudius Caesar. And Claudius, having adopted Agrippina’s son, gave him the name of Nero Germanicus. This Nero came to the throne in my time. He killed his mother, and by his folly and madness came near subverting the Roman empire. He was the fifth in descent from Antony.

Comparison of Demetrius and Antony

956 1 1 Since, then, both these men experienced great reversals of fortune, let us first observe, with regard to their power and fame, that in the one case these were acquired for him by his father and inherited, since Antigonus became the strongest of Alexander’s successors, and before Demetrius came of age had attacked and mastered the greater part of Asia; 2 Antony, on the contrary, was the son of a man who, though otherwise gifted, was yet no warrior, and could leave him no great legacy of reputation; and yet Antony had the courage to seek the power of Caesar, to which his birth gave him no claim, and to all that Caesar had wrought out before him he made himself the rightful successor. And so great strength did he attain, in reliance upon his own resources alone, that, after forcing a division of the empire into two parts, he chose one, and took the more splendid one of the two; and though absent himself, through his assistants and lieutenant-generals he defeated the Parthians many times, and drove the barbarous tribes about the Caucasus as far as the Caspian Sea. 3 Moreover, even the things that brought him ill-repute bear witness to his greatness. For Antigonus was well pleased to have his son Demetrius marry Phila, the daughter of Antipater, in spite of her disparity in years, because he thought her a greater personage; whereas Antony’s marriage to Cleopatra was a disgrace to him, although she was a woman who surpassed in power and splendour all the royalties of her time except Arsaces. But he made himself so great that men thought him worthy of greater things than he desired.

2 1 As regards their resolution to win empire, this was blameless in the case of Demetrius, who sought to subdue and reign as king over men who were accustomed to subjection and kings; but in the case of Antony it was harsh and tyrannical, since he tried to enslave the Roman people when it had just escaped from the sole rule of Caesar. 2 Moreover, as regards the greatest and most brilliant of his achievements, namely, the war against Cassius and Brutus, it was to deprive his country and his fellow citizens of their liberty that the war was waged. But Demetrius, even before he felt the constraints of adversity, kept on liberating Greece and expelling their garrisons from her cities, unlike Antony, whose boast was that he had slain in Macedonia the men who had given liberty to Rome. 3 And besides, as regards their love of giving and the largeness of their gifts, one of the things for which Antony is lauded, Demetrius far surpassed in this, and bestowed more upon his enemies than Antony ever gave to his friends. It is true that for ordering the body of Brutus to be robed and buried Antony won a good name; but Demetrius gave obsequies to all his enemy’s dead, and sent his prisoners back to Ptolemy with money and gifts.

3 1 Both were insolent in prosperity, and abandoned themselves to luxury and enjoyment. But it cannot be said that Demetrius, for all his pleasures and amours, ever let slip the time for action, nay, it was only when his leisure was abundant that he introduced his pleasures; and his Lamia, like the creature of fable,a he made his pastime only when he was sportive or drowsy. 2 But when he got ready for war, his spear was not tipped with ivy, nor did his helmet smell of myrrh, nor did he go forth to his battles from the women’s chamber, sleek and blooming, but quieting down and stopping the revels and orgies of Bacchus, he became, in the words of Euripides, a “minister of unhallowed Ares,” and got not a single slip or fall because of his indolence or pleasures.

3 Antony, on the contrary, like Heracles in paintings where Omphalé is seen taking away his club and stripping off his lion’s skin, was often disarmed by Cleopatra, subdued by her spells, 957 and persuaded to drop from his hands great undertakings and necessary campaigns, only to roam about and play with her on the sea-shores by Canopus and Taphosiris. 4 And at last, like Paris, he ran away from the battle and sank upon her bosom; although, more truly stated, Paris ran away to Helen’s chamber after he had been defeated; but Antony ran away in chase of Cleopatra, and thereby threw away the victory.

4 1 Further, Demetrius, in making several marriages, did not do what was prohibited, but what had been made customary for the kings of Macedonia by Philip and Alexander; he did just what Lysimachus and Ptolemy did, and held all his wives in honour. Antony, on the contrary, in marrying two wives at once, in the first place did what no Roman had ever dared to do; and in the second place, he drove away his Roman and lawfully wedded wife, in order to gratify the foreigner, with whom he was living contrary to law. Hence marriage brought no harm to Demetrius, but to Antony the greatest of his evils.

2 On the other hand, the lascivious practices of Antony are marked by no such sacrilege as are those of Demetrius. For historians tell us that bitches are excluded from the entire acropolis, because these animals couple without the least concealment; but the very Parthenon itself saw Demetrius cohabiting with harlots and debauching many Athenian women. 3 And that vice which one would think least associated with such wanton enjoyments, namely, the vice of cruelty, this enters into Demetrius’ pursuit of pleasure, since he suffered, or rather compelled, the lamentable death of the most beautiful and the most chaste of Athenians, who thus sought to escape his shameful treatment. In a word, Antony wronged himself by his excesses, while Demetrius wronged others.

5 1 Again, towards his parents Demetrius was in all respects blameless; whereas Antony surrendered his mother’s brother for the privilege of killing Cicero, a deed in itself so abominable and cruel that Antony would hardly have been forgiven had Cicero’s death been the price of his uncle’s safety.

2 Further, as regards violations of oaths and treaties by both, in the seizure of Artabazus by the one, and the killing of Alexander by the other, for Antony there is the excuse which men admit to be valid, namely, that he had been deserted in Media by Artabazus and betrayed; but Demetrius, as many say, invented false accusations, upon which he acted, and denounced one who had been wronged by him; the murder was not retaliation for wrongs done to him.

And again, Demetrius was himself the author of his successes; Antony, on the contrary, won his greatest and fairest victories through his generals, on fields where he was not present.

6 1 But the downfall of both was due to themselves, though the manner of it differed. Demetrius was deserted by others, for the Macedonians went away from him; whereas Antony deserted others, for he ran away from those who were risking their lives for him. Demetrius may therefore be blamed for making his soldiers so hostile to him, and Antony for abandoning a goodwill and confidence which was so much in evidence.

2 As for their deaths, neither is to be commended, but that of Demetrius is the more to be censured. For he suffered himself to be taken prisoner, and was well content to add to his life three years of imprisonment. He was tamed, like a wild beast, by way of his belly and by wine. Whereas Antony took himself off, — in a cowardly, pitiful, and ignoble way, it is true, but at least before his enemy became master of his person.

Dion

958 If it be true, then, O Sossius Senecio, as Simonides says, that Ilium “is not wroth with the Corinthians” for coming up against her with the Achaeans, because the Trojans also had Glaucus, who sprang from Corinth, as a zealous ally, so it is likely that neither Romans nor Greeks will quarrel with the Academy, since they fare alike in this treatise containing the lives of Dion and Brutus, 2 for Dion was an immediate disciple of Plato, while Brutus was nourished on the doctrines of Plato. Both therefore set out from one training-school, as it were, to engage in the greatest struggles. 3 And we need not wonder that, in the performance of actions that were often kindred and alike, they bore witness to the doctrine of their teacher in virtue, that wisdom and justice must be united with power and good fortune if public careers are to take on beauty as well as grandeur. 4 For as Hippomachus the trainer used to declare that he could recognize his pupils from afar even though they were but carrying meat from the market-place, so it is natural that the principles of those who have been trained alike should permeate their actions, inducing in these a similar rhythm and harmony along with their propriety.

2 1 Moreover, the fortunes of the two men, which were the same in what befell them rather than in what they elected to do, make their lives alike. 2 For both were cut off untimely, without being able to achieve the objects to which they had determined to devote the fruits of their many and great struggles. 3 But the most wonderful thing of all was that Heaven gave to both an intimation of their approaching death, by the visible appearance to each alike of an ill-boding spectre. 4 And yet there are those who deny such things and say that no man in his right mind was ever visited by a spectre or an apparition from Heaven, but that little children and foolish women and men deranged by sickness, in some aberration of spirit or distemper of body, have indulged in empty and strange imaginings, because they had the evil genius of superstition in themselves. 5 But if Dion and Brutus, men of solid understanding and philosophic training and not easily cast down are overpowered by anything that happened to them, were so affected by a spectre that they actually told others about it, I do not know but we shall be compelled to accept that most extraordinary doctrine of the oldest times, that mean and malignant spirits, 6 in envy of good men and opposition to their noble deeds, try to confound and terrify them, causing their virtue to rock and totter, in order that they may not continue erect and inviolate in the path of honour and so attain a better portion after death than the spirits themselves. 7 But this subject must be reserved for discussion elsewhere, and in this, the twelfth book of my Parallel Lives, I shall begin with that of the elder man.

3 1 Dionysius the Elder, after assuming the reins of government, at once married the daughter of Hermocrates the Syracusan. 9592 But she, since the tyranny was not yet securely established, was terribly and outrageously abused in her person by the seditious Syracusans, and in consequence put an end to her own life. 3 Then Dionysius, after resuming the power and making himself strong again, married two wives at once, one from Locri, whose name was Doris, the other a native of the city, Aristomache, daughter of Hipparinus, who was a leading man in Syracuse, and had been a colleague of Dionysius when he was first chosen general with full powers for the war. 4 It is said that he married both wives on one day, and that no man ever knew with which of the two he first consorted, but that ever after he continued to devote himself alike to each; it was their custom to sup with him together, and they shared his bed at night by turns. 5 And yet the people of Syracuse wished that their countrywoman should be honoured above the stranger; but Doris had the good fortune to become a mother first, and by presenting Dionysius with his eldest son she atoned for her foreign birth. 6 Aristomache, on the contrary, was for a long time a barren wife, although Dionysius was desirous to have children by her; at any rate, he accused the mother of his Locrian wife of giving Aristomache drugs to prevent conception, and put her to death.

4 1 Now, Dion was a brother of Aristomache, and at first was honoured because of his sister; afterwards, however, he gave proof of his wisdom, and was presently beloved by the tyrant for his own sake. 2 In addition to all his other favours, Dionysius ordered his treasurers to give Dion whatever he asked, although they were to tell Dionysius on the same day what they had given. 3 But though Dion was even before of a lofty character, magnanimous, and manly, he advanced still more in these high qualities when, by some divine good fortune, Plato came to Sicily. 4 This was not of man’s devising, but some heavenly power, as it would seem, laying far in advance of the time a foundation for the liberty of Syracuse, and devising a subversion of tyranny, brought Plato from Italy to Syracuse and made Dion his disciple. 5 Dion was then quite young, but of all the companions of Plato 6 he was by far the quickest to learn and the readiest to answer the call of virtue, as Plato himself has written, and as events testify. For though he had been reared in habits of submission under a tyrant, and though he was fully accustomed to a life that was subservient and timorous, as well as to ostentatious service at court and vulgar luxury and a regimen that counts pleasures and excesses as the highest good, 7 nevertheless, as soon as he got a taste of a rational philosophy which led the way to virtue, his soul was speedily on fire; from his own ready obedience to the call of higher things, that the same arguments would have a like persuasive force with Dionysius, he earnestly set to work and at last brought it to pass that the tyrant, in a leisure hours, should meet Plato and hear him discourse.

5 1 At this meeting the general subject was human virtue, and most of the discussion turned upon manliness. And when Plato set forth that tyrants least of all men had this quality, and then, treating of justice, maintained that the life of the just was blessed, while that of the unjust was wretched, 2 the tyrant, as if convicted by his arguments, would not listen to them, and was vexed with the audience because they admired speaker and were charmed by his utterances. 3 At last he got exceedingly angry and asked the philosopher why he had come to Sicily. 4 And when Plato said that he was come to seek a virtuous man, the tyrant answered and said: “Well, by the gods, it appears that you have not yet found such an one.” 5 Dion thought that this was the end of his anger, 960 and as Plato was eager for it, sent him away upon a trireme, which was conveying Pollis the Spartan to Greece. 6 But Dionysius privily requested Pollis to kill Plato on the voyage, if it were in any way possible, but if not, at all events to sell him into slavery; for he would take no harm, but would be quite as happy, being a just man, even if he should become a slave. 7 Pollis, therefore, as we are told, carried Plato to Aegina and there sold him; for the Aeginetans were at war with the Athenians and had made a decree that any Athenian taken on the island should be put up for sale.

8 In spite of all this, Dion stood in no less honour and credit with Dionysius than before, but had the management of the most important embassies, as, for instance, when he was sent to Carthage and won great admiration. The tyrant also bore with his freedom of speech, and Dion was almost the only one who spoke his mind fearlessly, as, for example, when he rebuked Dionysius for what he said about Gelon. 9 The tyrant was ridiculing the government of Gelon, and when he said that Gelon himself, true to his name, became the laughing-stock (“gelos”) of Sicily, the rest of his hearers pretended to admire the joke, but Dion was disgusted and said: “Indeed, thou art now tyrant because men trusted thee for Gelon’s sake; but no man hereafter will be trusted for thy sake.” 10 For, as a matter of fact, Gelon seems to have made a city under absolute rule a very fair thing to look upon, but Dionysius a very shameful thing.

6 1 Dionysius had three children by his Locrian wife, and four by Aristomache, two of whom were daughters, Sophrosyne and Arete. Sophrosyne became the wife of his son Dionysius, and Arete of his brother Thearides, but after the death of Thearides, Arete became the wife of Dion, her uncle. 2 Now, when Dionysius was sick and seemed likely to die, Dion tried to confer with him in the interests of his children by Aristomache, but the physicians, who wished to ingratiate themselves with the heir apparent, would not permit it; 3 moreover, according to Timaeus, when the sick man asked for a sleeping potion, they gave him one that robbed him of his sense and made death follow sleep.

4 However, in the first conference held between the young Dionysius and his friends, Dion discoursed upon the needs of the situation in such a manner that his wisdom made all the rest appear children, and his boldness of speech made them seem mere slaves of tyranny, who were wont to give their counsels timorously and ignobly to gratify the young man. 5 But what most amazed them in their fear of the peril that threatened the realm from Carthage, was Dion’s promise that, if Dionysius wanted peace, he would sail at once to Africa and put a stop to the war on the best terms possible; but if war was the king’s desire, he himself would furnish him with fifty swift triremes for the war, and maintain them at his own costs.

7 1 Dionysius, then, was greatly astonished at his magnanimity and delighted with his ardour; 2 but the other courtiers, thinking themselves put out of countenance by Dion’s generosity and humbled by his power, began hostilities forthwith, and said everything they could to embitter the young king against him, accusing him of stealing into the position of tyrant by means of his power on the sea, and of using his ships to divert the power into the hands of the children of Aristomache, who were his nephews and nieces. 3 But the strongest and most apparent grounds for their envy and hatred of him lay in the difference between his way of life and theirs, and in his refusal to mingle with others. 4 For from the very outset they obtained converse and intimacy with a tyrant who was young and had been badly reared by means of pleasures and flatteries, and were ever contriving for him sundry amours, idle amusements with wine and women, and other unseemly pastimes. 9615 In this way the tyranny, being softened, like iron in the fire, appeared to its subjects to be kindly, and gradually remitted its excessive cruelty, though its edge was blunted not so much by any clemency in the sovereign as by his love of ease. 6 As a consequence, the laxity of the young king gained ground little by little, until at last those “adamantine bonds” with which the elder Dionysius said he had left the monarchy fastened, were melted and destroyed. 7 For it is said that the young king once kept up a drinking bout for ninety consecutive days from its beginning, and that during this time the court gave no access or admission to men or matters of consequence, but drunkenness and raillery and music and dancing and buffoonery held full sway.

8 1 Dion, then, as was natural, was obnoxious to these men, since he indulged in no pleasure or youthful folly, And so they tried to calumniate him by actually giving to his virtues plausible names of vices; for instance, they called his dignity haughtiness, and his boldness of speech self-will. Even when he admonished, he was thought to denounce, and when he would not share men’s sins, to despise. 2 And in very truth his character had naturally a certain majesty, together with a harshness that repelled intercourse and was hard to deal with. 3 For not only to a man who was young and whose ears had been corrupted by flattery was he an unpleasant and irksome associate, but many also who were intimate with him and who loved the simplicity and nobility of his disposition, were apt to find fault with the manner of his intercourse with men, on the ground that he dealt with those who sought his aid more rudely and harshly than was needful in public life. 4 On this head Plato also afterwards wrote to him, in a tone almost prophetic, that he should be on his guard against self-will, which was a “companion of solitude.” 5 However, at this time, though circumstances led men to think him of more value than any one else, and the only or the chief supporter and guardian of storm-tossed tyranny, he knew that it was not out of goodwill, but against the wishes of the tyrant and owing to his needs, that he was first and greatest.

9 1 Considering, then, that a reason for this lay in the tyrant’s want of education, he sought to engage him in liberal studies, and to give him a taste of such literature and science as formed the character, in order that he might cease to be afraid of virtue, and become accustomed to take delight in what was high and noble. 2 For by nature Dionysius did not belong to the worst class of tyrants, but his father, fearing that if he should get wisdom and associate with men of sense, he would plot against him and rob him of his power, used to keep him closely shut up at home, where, through lack of association with others and in ignorance of affairs, as we are told, he made little waggons and lampstands and wooden chairs and tables. 3 For the elder Dionysius was so distrustful and suspicious towards every body, and his fear led him to be so much on his guard, that he would not even have his hair cut with barbers’ scissors, but a hairdresser would come and singe his locks with a live coal. 4 Neither his brother nor his son could visit him in his apartment wearing any clothes they pleased, but every one had to take off his own apparel before entering and put on another, after the guards had seen him stripped. 5 And once, when his brother Leptines was describing to him the nature of a place, and drew the plan of it on the ground with a spear which he took from one of his body-guards, he was extremely angry with him, and had the man who gave him the spear put to death. 6 He used to say, too, that he was on his guard against his friends who were men of sense, because he knew that they would rather be tyrants than subjects of a tyrant. 7 And he slew Marsyas, one of those whom he had advanced to positions of high command, for having dreamed that he killed him, 962 declaring that this vision must have visited his sleep because in his waking hours he had purposed and planned such a deed. 8 Yes, the man who was angry with Plato because he would not pronounce him the most valiant man alive, had a spirit as timorous as this, and so full of all the evils induced by cowardice.

10 1 This tyrant’s son, as I have said, Dion saw to be dwarfed and deformed in character from his lack of education, and therefore exhorted him to apply himself to study, and to use every entreaty with the first of philosophers to come to Sicily, 2 and, when he came, to become his disciple, in order that his character might be regulated by the principles of virtue, and that he might be conformed to that divinest and most beautiful model of all being, in obedience to whose direction the universe issues from disorder into order; 3 in this way he would procure great happiness for himself, and great happiness for his people, and that obedience which they now rendered dejectedly and under the compulsion of his authority, this his moderation and justice would base upon goodwill and a filial spirit, and he would become a king instead of a tyrant. 4 For the “adamantine bonds” of sovereignty were not, as his father used to say, fear and force and a multitude of ships and numberless barbarian body-guards, but goodwill and ardour and favour engendered by virtue and justice; these, though they were more flexible than the bonds of severity and harshness, were stronger to maintain a lasting leadership. 5 And besides all this, it was mean and spiritless in a ruler, while his body was magnificently clothed and his habitation resplendent with luxurious furnishings, to be no more majestic in his intercourse and conversation than an ordinary man, and not to insist that the royal palace of his soul should be adorned in meet and royal fashion.

11 Since Dion frequently gave him such advice, and artfully mingled with it some of Plato’s doctrines, Dionysius was seized with a keen and even frenzied passion for the teachings and companionship of Plato. 2 At once, then, many letters began to come to Athens from Dionysius, and many injunctions from Dion, as well as others from the Pythagorean philosophers of Italy, all of whom urged Plato to come and get control of a youthful soul now tossed about on a sea of great authority and power, and steady it by his weighty reasonings. 3 Plato, accordingly, as he tells us himself, out of shame more than any thing else, lest men should think him nothing but theory and unwilling to take any action; and further, because he expected that by the purification of one man, who was, as it were, a controlling factor, he would cure all Sicily of her distempers, yielded to these requests.

4 But the enemies of Dion, afraid of the alteration in Dionysius, persuaded him to recall from exile Philistus, a man versed in letters and acquainted with the ways of tyrants, that they might have in him a counterpoise to Plato and philosophy. 5 For Philistus at the outset had most zealously assisted in establishing the tyranny, and for a long time was commander of the garrison that guarded the citadel. There was a story, too, that he was very intimate with the mother of the elder Dionysius, and that the tyrant was not wholly ignorant of the fact. 6 But when Leptines, who had two daughters by a woman whom he had corrupted when she was living with another man and then taken to wife, gave one of them to Philistus without so much as telling Dionysius, the tyrant was wroth, put the wife of Leptines into fetters and prison, and banished Philistus from Sicily. Philistus took refuge with some friends in Adria, and there, it would seem, in his leisure, composed the better part of his history. 7 For he did not return to Syracuse while the elder Dionysius was alive, but after his death, 963 as I have said, the envy which the other courtiers felt towards Dion brought about his recall; they thought him a more suitable man for their purposes, and a stauncher friend of the tyranny.

12 1 Philistus, then, as soon as he had returned, was in close touch with the tyranny; and there were others also who brought slanders and accusations against Dion to the tyrant, alleging that he had been in conference with Theodotes and Heracleides concerning a subversion of the government. 2 For Dion had hopes, as it seems likely, that by means of the visit of Plato he could mitigate the arrogance and excessive severity of the tyranny, and convert Dionysius into a fit and lawful ruler; 3 but if Dionysius should oppose his efforts and refuse to be softened, he had determined to depose him and restore the civil power to the Syracusan people; not that he approved of a democracy, but he thought it altogether better than a tyranny in lack of a sound and healthy aristocracy.

13 1 Such was the condition of affairs when Plato came to Sicily, and in the first instances he met with astonishing friendliness and honour. 2 For a royal chariot, magnificently adorned, awaited him as he left his trireme, and the tyrant offered a sacrifice of thanksgiving for the great blessing that had been bestowed upon his government. 3 Moreover, the modesty that characterized his banquets, the decorum of the courtiers, and the mildness of the tyrant himself in all his dealings with the public, inspired the citizens with marvellous hopes of his reformation. 4 There was also something like a general rush for letters and philosophy, and the palace was filled with dust, as they say, owing to the multitude of geometricians there. 5 After a few days had passed, there was one of the customary sacrifices of the country in the palace grounds; and when the herald, as was the custom, prayed that the tyranny might abide unshaken for many generations, it is said that Dionysius, who was standing near, cried: 6 “Stop cursing us!” This quite vexed Philistus and his party, who thought that time and familiarity would render Plato’s influence almost irresistible, if now, after a brief intimacy, he had so altered and transformed the sentiments of the youthful prince.

14 1 They therefore no longer abused Dion one by one and secretly, but all together and openly, saying that he was manifestly enchanting and bewitching Dionysius with Plato’s doctrines, in order that the tyrant might of his own accord relinquish and give up the power, which Dion would then assume and devolve upon the children of Aristomache, whose uncle he was. 2 And some pretended to be indignant that the Athenians, who in former times had sailed to Sicily with large land and sea forces, but had perished utterly without taking Syracuse, 3 should now, by means of one sophist, overthrow the tyranny of Dionysius, by persuading him to dismiss his ten thousand body-guards, and abandon his four hundred triremes and his ten thousand horsemen and his many times that number of men-at arms, in order to seek in Academic philosophy for a mysterious good, and make geometry his guide to happiness, surrendering the happiness that was based on dominion and wealth and luxury to Dion and Dion’s nephews and nieces.

4 As a consequence of all this, Dionysius became at first suspicious, and afterwards more openly angry and hostile, and just then a certain letter was secretly brought to him, which Dion had written to the Carthaginian officials, urging them, whenever they should treat with Dionysius for peace, not to hold their interview without including him, since he would help them to arrange everything securely. 5 This letter Dionysius read to Philistus, and after consulting with him, according to Timaeus, he beguiled Dion by a feigned reconciliation. 6 That is, after moderate protestations and a declaration that their quarrel was at an end, 964 he led him off alone beneath the acropolis down to the sea, and then showed him the letter and accused him of conspiring with the Carthaginians against him. 7 And when Dion wished to defend himself, he would not suffer it, but at once placed him, just as he was, on board a small boat, and commanded the sailors in it to set him ashore in Italy.

15 1 At this proceeding, which seemed to men a cruel one, the women in the household of the tyrant put on mourning, but the citizens of Syracuse were cheered by the expectation of a revolution and a speedy change in the government, since Dion’s treatment caused such a commotion and the rest of the courtiers distrusted the tyrant. 2 Dionysius saw this and was afraid, and sought to console the friends of Dion and the women by saying that he had not sent Dion into exile, but upon a journey, in order that his wrath at the man’s self-will when at home might not drive him to do him some worse wrong. 3 He also handed over two ships to the kinsmen of Dion and bade them to put on board whatever property and servants of Dion’s they pleased and convey them to him in Peloponnesus. 4 Now, Dion had great riches and an almost princely splendour of appointment in his way of living, and this his friends got together and conveyed to him. 5 Besides, many other things were sent to him from the women of the court and from his adherents, so that, as far as wealth and riches went, he was a brilliant figure among the Greeks, to whom the affluence of the exile gave some idea of the power of the tyrant.

16 1 As for Plato, Dionysius at once removed him to the acropolis, where he contrived to give him a guard of honour under pretence of hospitable kindness, in order that he might not accompany Dion and bear witness to his wrongs. 2 But after time and intercourse had accustomed Dionysius to tolerate his society and discourse, just as a wild beast learns to have dealings with men, he conceived a passion for him that was worthy of a tyrant, demanding that he alone should have his love returned by Plato and be admired beyond all others, and he was ready to entrust Plato with the administration of the tyranny if only he would not set his friendship for Dion above that which he had for him. 3 Now, this passion of his was a calamity for Plato, for the tyrant was mad with jealousy, as desperate lovers are, and in a short space of time would often be angry with him and as often beg to be reconciled; for he was extravagantly eager to hear his doctrines and share in his philosophical pursuits, but he dreaded the censure of those who tried to divert him from this course as likely to corrupt him.

4 At this juncture, however, a war broke out, and he sent Plato away, promising him that in the summer he would summon Dion home. 5 This promise, indeed, he immediately broke, but he kept sending to Dion the revenues from his property, and asked Plato to pardon his postponement of the time of Dion’s recall, because of the war; 6 as soon as peace was made he would summon Dion home, and he asked him to be quiet, and to attempt no revolution, and to say no evil of him to the Greeks.

17 1 This Plato tried to effect, and kept Dion with him in the Academy, where he turned his attention to philosophy. 2 Dion dwelt in the upper city of Athens with Callippus, one of his acquaintances, but for diversion he bought a country-place, and afterwards, when he sailed to Sicily, he gave this to Speusippus, 3 who was his most intimate friend at Athens. For Plato desired that Dion’s disposition should be tempered and sweetened by association with men of charming presence who indulged seasonably in graceful pleasantries. 4 And such a man was Speusippus; wherefore Timon, in his “Silli,” spoke of him as “good at a jest.” 5 And when Plato himself was called upon to furnish a chorus of boys, Dion had the chorus trained and defrayed all the expense of its maintenance, and Plato encouraged in him such an ambition to please the Athenians, 965 on the ground that it would procure goodwill for Dion rather than fame for himself.

6 Dion used to visit the other cities also, where he shared the leisure and festal enjoyments of the noblest and most statesmanlike men, manifesting in his conduct with them nothing that was rude or arrogant or effeminate, but rather great moderation, virtue, and manliness, and a becoming devotion to letters and philosophy. 7 This procured him the emulous goodwill of all men, and decrees of public honours from the cities. 8 The Lacedaemonians even made him a citizen of Sparta, without any regard for the anger of Dionysius, although at that time the tyrant was their zealous ally against the Thebans. 9 And it is related that Dion once went to pay a visit to Ptoeodorus the Megarian, upon his invitation. Now Ptoeodorus, it would seem, was one of the wealthy and influential men of the city; 10 and when, therefore, Dion saw a crowd of people at his door, and a press of business, which made him difficult of access and hard to come at, he turned to his friends, who were vexed and indignant at it, and said: “Why should we blame this man? For we ourselves used to do just so in Syracuse.”

18 1 But as time went on, Dionysius became jealous of Dion and afraid of his popularity among the Greeks. He therefore stopped sending him his revenues, and handed his estate over to his own private stewards. 2 However, with a desire to make head against the bad repute which he had also won among the philosophers on Plato’s account, he assembled at his court many men with a reputation for learning. 3 But he was ambitious to surpass them all in discussion, and was therefore driven to use inaptly what he had imperfectly learned from Plato. 4 So he yearned once more for that philosopher, and reproached himself for not having utilised his presence to learn all that he should have learned. 5 And since, like a tyrant, he was always extravagant in his desires and headstrong in all that he undertook, he set out at once to secure Plato, and, leaving no stone unturned, persuaded Archytas and his fellow Pythagoreans to become sureties for his agreements, and to summon Plato; for it was through Plato, in the first place, that he had entered into friendly relations with these philosophers. 6 So they sent Archedemus to Plato, and Dionysius also sent a trireme for him, and friends to entreat his return. 7 He also wrote to him himself in clear and express terms, saying that no mercy should be shown to Dion unless Plato were persuaded to come to Sicily; but if he were persuaded, every mercy. 8 Dion also received many injunctions from his wife and sister, that he should beg Plato to listen to Dionysius and not afford him an excuse for further severity. 9 Thus it was, then, that Plato, as he himself says, “came for the third time to the straits of Scylla,

That he might once more measure back his way to fell Charybdis.”

19 1 His arrival filled Dionysius with great joy, and the Sicilians again with great hope; they all prayed and laboured zealously that Plato might triumph over Philistus, and philosophy over tyranny. 2 The women also were very earnest in his behalf, 3 and Dionysius gave him a special token of his trust, which no one else had, in the privilege of coming into his presence without being searched. The tyrant offered him, too, presents of money, much money and many times, but Plato would not accept them. Whereupon Aristippus of Cyrene, who was present on one of these occasions, said that Dionysius was safely munificent; for he offered little to men like him, who wanted more, but much to Plato, who would take nothing.

4 After the first acts of kindness, however, Plato introduced the subject of Dion, 5 and then there were postponements at first on the part of Dionysius, and afterwards faultfindings and disagreements. These were unnoticed by outsiders, since Dionysius tried to conceal them, 966 and sought by the rest of his kind attentions and honourable treatment to draw Plato away from his goodwill towards Dion. And even Plato himself did not at first reveal the tyrant’s perfidy and falsehood, but bore with it and dissembled his resentment. 6 But while matters stood thus between them, and no one knew of it, as they supposed, Helicon of Cyzicus, one of Plato’s intimates, predicted an eclipse of the sun. This took place as he had predicted,a in consequence of which he was admired by the tyrant and presented with a talent of silver. 7 Thereupon Aristippus, jesting with the rest of the philosophers, said that he himself also could predict something strange. And when they besought him to tell what it was, “Well, then,” said he, “I predict that ere long Plato and Dionysius will become enemies.” 8 At last Dionysius sold the estate of Dion and appropriated the money, and removing Plato from his lodging in the palace garden, put him in charge of his mercenaries, who had long hated the philosopher and sought to kill him, on the ground that he was trying to persuade Dionysius to renounce the tyranny and live without a body-guard.

20 1 Now when Archytas and his fellow Pythagoreans learned that Plato was in such peril, they quickly sent a galley with an embassy, demanding him from Dionysius and declaring 2 that Plato had taken them for sureties of his safety when he sailed to Syracuse. Dionysius sought to disprove his enmity to Plato by giving banquets in his honour and making kind provisions for his journey, and went so far as to say something like this to him: “I suppose, Plato, thou wilt bring many dire accusations against me to the ears of your fellow philosophers.” 3 To this Plato answered with a smile: “Heaven forbid that there should be such a dearth of topics for discussion in the Academy that any one mention thee.” 4 Such, they say, was the dismissal of Plato; Plato’s own words, however, do not entirely agree with this account.

21 1 But Dion was vexed by all this, and shortly afterwards became altogether hostile when he learned how his wife had been treated, on which matter Plato also spoke covertly in a letter to Dionysius. 2 The case was as follows. After the expulsion of Dion, and when Dionysius was sending Plato back, he bade him learn from Dion confidentially 3 whether he would oppose his wife’s marrying another man; for there was a report, whether true or concocted by Dion’s enemies, that his marriage had not proved agreeable to him, and that he did not live harmoniously with his wife. 4 Accordingly, after Plato came to Athens and had conferred with Dion about everything, he wrote a letter to the tyrant which spoke of other matters in a way that was clear to anybody, but of this particular matter in language that could be understood by Dionysius alone, saying that he had talked with Dion about that business, and that Dion would evidently be exceedingly angry if Dionysius should carry it through. 5 Now, as long as there were many hopes of a reconciliation, the tyrant took no violent measures with his sister, but suffered her to continue living with Dion’s young son; 6 when, however, the estrangement was complete, and Plato, who had come to Sicily a second time, had been sent away in enmity, then he gave Arete in marriage, against her will, to Timocrates, one of his friends. And in this action, at least, he did not imitate the reasonableness of his father.

7 For the elder tyrant also, as it would appear, had a sister, Theste, whose husband, Polyxenus, had become his enemy. When, therefore, Polyxenus was moved by fear to run away and go into exile from Sicily, the tyrant sent for his sister and upbraided her because she had been privy to her husband’s flight and had not told her brother about it. 8 But she, without consternation, and, indeed, without fear, replied: “Dost thou think me, Dionysius, such a mean and cowardly wife that, had I known beforehand of my husband’s flight, I would not have sailed off with him and shared his fortunes? Indeed, I did not know about it; 967 since it would have been well for me to be called the wife of Polyxenus the exile, rather than the sister of Dionysius the tyrant.” 9 The tyrant is said to have admired Theste for this bold speech. And the Syracusans also admired the virtue of the woman, so that even after the dissolution of the tyranny she retained the honours and services paid to royalty, and when she died, the citizens, by public consent, attended her funeral. This is a digression, it is true, but not a useless one.

22 1 From this time on Dion turned his thoughts to war. With this Plato himself would have nothing to do, out of respect for his tie of hospitality with Dionysius, and because of his age. But Speusippus and the rest of his companions co-operated with Dion and besought him to free Sicily, which stretched out her arms to him and eagerly awaited his coming. 2 For when Plato was tarrying in Syracuse, Speusippus, as it would appear, mingled more with its people and learned to know their sentiments; 3 and though at first they were afraid of his boldness of speech, thinking it a trap set for them by the tyrant, yet in time they came to trust him. For all now spoke in the same strain, begging and exhorting Dion to come without ships, men-at arms, or horses; he was simply to come himself in a small boat, and lend the Sicilians his person and his name against Dionysius. 4 Encouraged by this information from Speusippus, Dion collected mercenaries secretly and by the agency of others, concealing his purpose. 5 He was assisted also by many statesmen and philosophers, such as Eudemus the Cyprian, on whose death Aristotle wrote his dialogue “On the Soul,” and Timonides the Leucadian. 6 Furthermore, they enlisted on his side Miltas the Thessalian also, who was a seer and had studied in the Academy. But of those who had been banished by the tyrant, and there were not less than a thousand of them, only twenty-five took part in the expedition; the rest played the coward and abandoned it. 7 The rendezvous was the island of Zacynthus, and here the soldiers were assembled. 8 They numbered fewer than eight hundred, but they were all well known in consequence of many great campaigns, their bodies were exceptionally well trained, while in experience and daring they had no equals in the world, and were capable of inciting and inflaming to share their prowess all the host which Dion expected to have in Sicily.

23 1 At first, indeed, when these men heard that their expedition was directed against Dionysius and Sicily, they were full of consternation and denounced the enterprise, declaring that Dion, in a mad frenzy of anger, or in despair, was plunging into desperate undertakings; they were also enraged at their own leaders and recruiting officers for not having told them at the very outset about the war. 2 But when Dion addressed them, setting forth in detail the unsound condition of the tyranny, and declaring that he was taking them, not as soldiers, but as commanders of the Syracusans and the rest of the Sicilians, who had long been ready for a revolt; and when, after Dion, Alcimenes, who was an Achaean of the highest birth and reputation and a member of the expedition, had argued with them, they were persuaded.

3 It was now midsummer, the Etesian winds prevailed at sea, and the moon was at the full. Dion had prepared a magnificent sacrifice to Apollo, and marched in solemn procession to the temple with his soldiers, who were arrayed in full armour. 4 After the sacrifice, he gave them a banquet in the stadium of the Zacynthians, where, as they reclined on their couches, they wondered at the splendour of the gold and silver beakers, and of the tables, for it passed the limits set by a private man’s fortune; they reasoned, too, 968 that a man who was already past his prime and was master of such great affluence, would not engage in hazardous enterprises unless he had solid hopes of success, and friends over there who offered him unbounded resources.

24 1 But after the libations and the customary prayers, the moon was eclipsed.b Now, to Dion this was nothing astonishing, for he knew that eclipses recurred at regular intervals, and that the shadow projected on the moon was caused by the interposition of earth between her and the sun. 2 But since the soldiers, who were greatly disturbed, needed some encouragement, Miltas the seer stood up amongst them and bade them be of good cheer, and expect the best results; for the divine powers indicated an eclipse of something that was now resplendent; 3 but nothing was more resplendent than the tyranny of Dionysius, and it was the radiance of this which they would extinguish as soon as they reached Sicily. 4 This interpretation, then, Miltas made public for all to know; but that of the bees, which were seen settling in swarms upon the swarms of Dion’s transports, he told privately to him and his friends, expressing a fear that his undertakings would thrive at the outset, but after a short season of flowering would wither away. 5 It is said that Dionysius also had many portentous signs from Heaven. 6 An eagle snatched a lance from one of his body-guards, carried it aloft, and then let it drop into the sea. 7 Furthermore, the water of the sea which washed the base of the acropolis was sweet and potable for a whole day, as all who tasted it could see. 8 Again, pigs were littered for him which were perfect in their other parts, but had no ears. 9 This the seers declared to be a sign of disobedience and rebellion, since, as they said, the citizens would no longer listen to the commands of the tyrant; the sweetness of the sea-water indicated for the Syracusans a change from grievous and oppressive times to comfortable circumstances; 10 an eagle, moreover, was servant of Zeus, and a spear, an emblem of authority and power, wherefore the prodigy showed that the greatest of the gods desired the dissolution of the tyranny. Such, at all events, is the account which Theopompus has given.

25 1 The soldiers of Dion filled two merchant-ships, and a third transport of small size, together with two thirty-oared galleys, accompanied these.  Moreover, besides the arms which his soldiers had, Dion carried two thousand shields, missiles and spears in great numbers, and a boundless store of provisions, that they might suffer no lack as they traversed the high sea. For they put themselves entirely at the mercy of winds and sea during their voyage, because they were afraid of the coast, and learned that Philistus was watching for them with a fleet at Iapygia. 3 After sailing with a light and gentle breeze for twelve days, on the thirteenth they reached Pachynus, a headland of Sicily. 4 Here Protus their pilot urged them to disembark with all speed, since, if they should be forced away from the shore, and should relinquish the headland which they had gained, they would be tossed about on the high sea for many days and nights, awaiting a south wind in the summer season. 5 But Dion, fearing to disembark near the enemy, and wishing to land farther along the coast, sailed past Pachynus. 6 Thereupon a boisterous wind from the north rushed down upon them, raised a great sea, and drove the ships away from Sicily, while flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, now that Arcturus was just rising,c conspired to pour down from the heavens against storm of furious rain. 7 The sailors were confounded by this and driven from their course, until on a sudden they saw that their ships were driving with the sea upon Cercina, off the coast of Africa, at a point where the island presented the roughest and most precipitous shore for their approach. 8 Accordingly, after a narrow escape from being cast ashore and dashed to pieces on the rocks, they plied their punting-poles and forced their way along with great difficulty, until the storm abated, when they learned from a vessel with which they spoke 969 that they were at what were called the Heads of the Great Syrtis. 9 And now they were disheartened by the calm in which they found themselves, and were drifting up and down, when a gentle southerly breeze was wafted to them from the land, although they were by no means expecting a south wind and could not believe in the change. 10 Little by little, however, the wind freshened and grew strong, so that they spread all the sail they had, and praying to the gods, fled over the sea from Africa towards Sicily. 11 For five days they ran swiftly on, and came to anchor at Minoa, a little town in that part of Sicily which the Carthaginians controlled. 12 Now, it chanced that Synalus, the Carthaginian commander, was in the place, and he was a guest-friend of Dion’s. But not knowing of Dion’s presence or of his expedition, he tried to prevent his soldiers from landing. 13 These, however, rushed on shore with their arms, and although they had killed no one, since Dion had forbidden it because of his friendship with the Carthaginian, they put their opponents to flight, dashed into the place with the fugitives, and captured it. 14 But as soon as the two commanders had met and greeted one another, Dion restored the city to Synalus, without doing it any harm, and Synalus entertained the soldiers and supplied Dion with what he wanted.

26 1 But what most of all encouraged them was the accidental absence of Dionysius from Syracuse; for it chanced that he had recently sailed with eighty ships to Italy. 2 Therefore, even though Dion urged his soldiers to recruit themselves here after their long hardships on the sea, they would not consent to it, so eager were they of themselves to seize their opportunity, but urged him to lead them towards Syracuse. 3 Accordingly, he deposited his superfluous arms and baggage there, asked Synalus to send them to him as opportunity offered, and marched against Syracuse. 4 As he was on his way thither, first he was joined by two hundred horsemen belonging to the Agrigentines who dwell about Ecnomum, and then by men of Gela.

5 But the report of his doings quickly flew to Syracuse, where Timocrates, who had married Dion’s wife, the sister of Dionysius, and who stood at the head of the tyrant’s friends now left in the city, speedily sent off a messenger to Dionysius with letters announcing the arrival of Dion. 6 He himself, moreover, took steps to prevent any disturbances or tumults in the city, where all were greatly excited, but as yet kept quiet owing to their distrust and fear. 7 But a strange misfortune befell the man who had been sent with the letters. After he had crossed to Italy and passed through the territory of Rhegium, and as he was hastening on the Dionysius at Caulonia, he met one of his acquaintances who was carrying an animal that had been recently sacrificed, and after accepting from him a portion of the flesh, went on his way with all speed. 8 But after travelling part of the night, he was compelled by weariness to take a little sleep, and lay down, just as he was, in a wood by the side of the road. 9 Then a wolf came to the spot, attracted by the scent, and seizing the flesh which had been fastened to the wallet in which the man had his letters, went off with it and the wallet too. 10 When the man awoke and perceived what had happened, he wandered about a long time in search of what he had lost, but could not find it, and therefore determined not to go to the tyrant without the letters, but to run away and disappear.d

27 1 Dionysius, therefore, was destined to learn of the war in Sicily late and from other sources; but meanwhile, as Dion proceeded on his march, he was joined by the Camarinaeans, and no small multitude of the rural Syracusans revolted and swelled his ranks. 2 Moreover, the Leontines and Campanians who were guarding Epipolae with Timocrates, 970 in consequence of a false report which Dion sent to them that he would attack their cities first, deserted Timocrates and went off to assist their own peoples. 3 When news of this was brought to Dion as he lay encamped near Acrae, he roused up his soldiers while it was still night and came to the river Anapus, which is ten furlongs distant from the city. 4 There he halted and sacrificed by the river, addressing his prayers to the rising sun, and on the instant the soothsayers declared that the gods promised him victory. When, too, the audience beheld Dion with a wreath on his head for the sacrifice, with one impulse they all crowned themselves with wreaths. 5 No fewer than five thousand men had joined him on the march, and though they were wretchedly armed with such weapons as came to hand, their enthusiasm made up for their lack of equipment, so that when Dion gave the word they advanced on the run, exhorting one another with joyful shouts to win their liberty.

28 1 As for the Syracusans in the city, the men of note and cultivation, in fresh apparel, went to met them at the gates, while the multitude set upon the tyrant’s friends and seized those called tale-bearers, wicked men whom the gods hated, who went up and down in the city busily mingling with the Syracusans and reporting to the tyrant the sentiments and utterances of every one. 2 These, then, were the first to suffer retribution, being beaten to death by those who came upon them; but Timocrates, unable to join the garrison of the acropolis, took horse and dashed out of the city, and as he fled, filled everything with fear and confusion, exaggerating the strength of Dion, that he might not be thought to have abandoned the city through fear of any trivial danger. 3 Meanwhile Dion drew near the city and was presently seen, leading the way himself in brilliant armour, with his brother Megacles on one side of him, and on the other, Callippus the Athenian, both crowned with garlands. 4 A hundred of his mercenaries followed Dion as a body-guard, and his officers led the rest in good order, the Syracusans looking on and welcoming as it were a sacred religious procession for the return of liberty and democracy into the city, after an absence of forty-eight years.

29 1 After Dion had entered the city by the Temenitid gate, he stopped the noise of the people by a blast of the trumpet, and made proclamation that Dion and Megacles, who were come to overthrow the tyranny, declared the Syracusans and the rest of the Sicilians free from the tyrant. 2 Then, wishing to harangue the people himself, he went up through the Achradina, while on either side of the street the Syracusans set out tables and sacrificial meats and mixing-bowls, and all, as he came to them, pelted him with flowers, and addressed him with vows and prayers as if he were a god. 3 Now, there stood below the acropolis and the Pentapyla a tall and conspicuous sun-dial, which Dionysius had set up. Mounted upon this, Dion harangued the citizens and exhorted them to assert their liberty. 4 And they, in their joy and affection, made Dion and Megacles generals with absolute powers, and besides, at their wish and entreaty, chose twenty colleagues to hold office with them, half of whom were of those who had come back from exile with Dion. 5 To the soothsayers, moreover, it seemed a most happy omen, that Dion, when he harangued the people, had put under his feet the ambitious monument of the tyrant; but because it was a sun-dial upon which he stood when he was elected general, they feared that his enterprise might undergo some speedy change of fortune. 6 After this, Dion captured Epipolae and set free the citizens who were imprisoned there; then he walled off the acropolis. 9717 On the seventh day Dionysius put in with his fleet and entered the acropolis, and waggons brought Dion the armour and weapons which he had left with Synalus. 8 These he distributed among the citizens as far as they would go, and all the rest equipped themselves as best they could and zealously offered their services as men-at arms.

30 1 At first, Dionysius sent envoys privately to Dion and tried to make terms with him; then, when Dion bade him confer publicly with the Syracusans, on the ground that they were a free people, the envoys brought generous propositions from the tyrant, who promised such moderate taxes and easy military service as people themselves should agree to vote. These offers were derided by the Syracusans, 2 and Dion made answer to the envoys that Dionysius was not to confer with them unless he renounced his sovereignty; but on his renouncing this, Dion would himself procure immunity for him, and any other reasonable privilege that was in his power, mindful of the close relationship between them. 3 These conditions Dionysius approved, and again sent envoys, bidding some of the Syracusans to come to the acropolis, where, both parties making concessions, he would confer with them concerning the common good. 4 Accordingly, men were sent to him whom Dion approved. And frequent reports came to the Syracusans from the citadel that Dionysius would renounce the tyranny, and would do this to please himself rather than Dion.

5 But this was a treacherous pretence on the part of the tyrant, and a piece of knavery directed against the Syracusans. For he kept in close custody the deputation that came to him from the city, and towards morning plied his mercenaries with strong wine and sent them on a dash against the siege-wall about the acropolis. 6 The attack was unexpected, and the Barbarians, with great boldness and loud tumult, began to tear down the cross-wall and attack the Syracusans, so that no one dared to stand on the defensive, except the mercenaries of Dion, who first noticed the disturbance and came to the rescue. 7 And even these knew not how to render aid, nor could they hear what was said to them, owing to the shouts and wild movements of the fugitive Syracusans, who mingled confusedly with them and broke through their ranks. But at last Dion, since no one could hear his orders, wishing to show by his example what should be done, charged foremost into the Barbarians. 8 Then there arose about him a fierce and dreadful battle, since he was recognized by the enemy as well as by his friends, and all rushed towards him at the same time with loud shouts. 9 He was now, by reason of his age, too unwieldy for such struggles, but he withstood and cut down his assailants with vigour and courage until he was wounded in the hand with a lance; besides, he breastplate hardly sufficed to resist the other missiles and hand-to hand thrusts, and he was smitten through his shield by many spears and lances, and when these were broken off he fell to the ground. 10 Then, after he had been snatched away by his soldiers, he put Timonides in command of these, while he himself, mounting a horse, rode about the city rallying the flying Syracusans, and bringing up a detachment of his mercenaries who were guarding Achradina, led them against the Barbarians, — fresh and eager reserves against a worn-out foe, and one that had already despaired of his cause. 11 For they had expected at their first onset to overrun and occupy the whole city, and now that they had unexpectedly encountered men who could smite and fight, they retired towards the acropolis. 12 But as they gave ground, the Greeks pressed all the harder upon them, so that they turned their backs and were driven into the shelter of the citadel; they had slain seventy-four of Dion’s men, and had lost many of their own number.

31 1 The victory was a brilliant one, and the Syracusans rewarded Dion’s mercenaries with a hundred minas, while the mercenaries honoured Dion with a wreath of gold. 9722 And now heralds came down from Dionysius bringing letters to Dion from the women of his family. There was also one addressed outside, 3 “To his father, from Hipparinus”; for this was the name of Dion’s son. Timaeus, it is true, says he was called Aretaeus, from his mother Arete; but on this point at least, in my opinion, Timonides is rather to be trusted, who was a friend and fellow-soldier of Dion’s. 4 Well, then, the rest of the letters were read aloud to the Syracusans, and contained many supplications and entreaties from the women; but that which purported to be from Dion’s son, the people would not allow to be opened in public. Dion, however, insisted upon it, and opened the letter. 5 It was from Dionysius, who nominally addressed himself to Dion, but really to the Syracusans; and it had the form of entreaty and justification, but was calculated to bring odium on Dion. 6 For there were reminders of his zealous services in behalf of the tyranny, and threats against the persons of his dearest ones, his sister, children, and wife; there were also dire injunctions coupled with lamentations, and, what affected him most of all, a demand that he should not abolish, but assume, the tyranny; that he should not give liberty to men who hated him and would never forget their wrongs, but take the power himself, and thereby assure his friends and kindred of their safety.

32 1 When all this had been read aloud, it did not occur to the Syracusans, as it should have done, to be astonished at the firmness and magnanimity of Dion, who was resisting in behalf of honour and justice such strong claims of relationship, 2 but they found occasion for suspecting and fearing him, on the ground that he was under a strong necessity of sparing Dionysius, and at once turned their eyes towards other leaders. And particularly, when they learned that Heracleides was putting in to the harbour, they were all excitement. 3 Now, Heracleides was one of the exiles, a man of military capacity and well known for the commands which he had held under the tyrants, but irresolute, fickle, and least to be relied upon as partner in an enterprise involving power and glory. 4 He had quarrelled with Dion in Peloponnesus, and had resolved to sail on his own account and with his own fleet against the tyrant; but when he reached Syracuse, with seven triremes and three transports, he found Dionysius once more beleaguered, and the Syracusans elated with victory. 5 At once, then, he sought to win the favour of the multitude, having a certain natural gift of persuading and moving a populace that seeks to be courted, and winning them over to his following all the more easily because they were repelled by the gravity of Dion. This they resented as severe and out of place in a public man, because their power had given them license and boldness, and they wished to be flattered by popular leaders before they were really a people.

33 1 So, to begin with, they held an assembly of their own calling, and chose Heracleides admiral. 2 But Dion came forward down protested that in giving this office to Heracleides, they had done away with that which they had before given to him, for he would no longer be general with absolute powers if another should have command of the navy. Then the Syracusans reluctantly revoked the appointment of Heracleides. 3 When this had been done, Dion summoned Heracleides to his house and gently reproached him, on the ground that he was not acting well or wisely in quarrelling with him for honours at a crisis where a slight impulse might ruin their cause. Then he himself called a fresh assembly and appointed Heracleides admiral, and persuaded the citizens to give him a body-guard, like his own. 4 In word and mien, now, Heracleides paid court to Dion, acknowledged his thanks to him, 973 and attended submissively upon him, performing his commands; but in secret he perverted and stirred up the multitude and the revolutionaries, and encompassed Dion with disturbances which reduced him to utter perplexity. 5 For if he advised to let Dionysius leave the citadel under a truce, he would be charged with sparing and preserving him; and for, wishing to give no offence, he simply continued the siege, it would be said that he was protracting the war, in order that he might the longer be in command and overawe the citizens.

34 1 Now, there was a certain Sosis, a man whose baseness and impudence gave him renown in Syracuse, where it was thought that abundance of liberty could only be shown by such license of speech as his. 2 This man, with hostile designs upon Dion, first rose in an assembly and roundly abused the Syracusans for not comprehending that they had merely exchanged a stupid and drunken tyrant for a watchful and sober master; 3 and having thus declared himself an open enemy of Dion, he left the assembly. Next, on the following day he was seen running through the city naked, his head and face covered with blood, as though he were trying to escape pursuit. 4 In this condition he dashed into the assembly and told the people there that he had been set upon by Dion’s mercenaries, and showed them his head and its wounds. He found many to share his resentment and take sides with him against Dion, who, they said, was committing dire acts of tyranny, if by murder and peril of life he sought to rob the citizens of their free speech. 5 However, although the assembly had become confused and tumultuous, Dion came forward and showed in his own defence that Sosis was a brother of one of the body-guards of Dionysius, and had been induced by him to raise confusion and faction among the citizens, since there was no safety for Dionysus except in their mutual distrust and dissension. 6 At the same time, too, the physicians examined the wound of Sosis and discovered that it had been made by razure rather than by a downright blow. 7 For the blows of a sword, by reason of its weight, make wounds that are deepest in the middle, but that of Sosis was shallow all along, and intermittent, as would be natural if he stopped his work on account of pain, and then began it again. 8 Besides, certain well known persons brought a razor to the assembly, and stated that as they were walking along the street, Sosis met them, all bloody, and declaring that he was running away from Dion’s mercenaries, by whom he had just been wounded; 9 at once, then, they ran after them, and found no one, but saw a razor lying under a hollow rock in the quarter from which Sosis had been seen to come.

35 1 Well, then, the case of Sosis was already desperate; but when, in addition to these proofs, his servants testified that while it was still night he had left the house alone and carrying the razor, Dion’s accusers withdrew, and the people, after condemning Sosis to death, were reconciled with Dion.

2 However, they were none the less suspicious of his mercenaries, and especially so, now that most of the struggles against the tyrant were carried on at sea, since Philistus had come from Iapygia with a large number of triremes to help Dionysius; and since the mercenaries were men-at arms, they thought them of no further use for the war, nay, they felt that even these troops were dependent for protection upon the citizens themselves, who were seamen, and derived their power from their fleet. 3 And they were still more elated by a successful engagement at sea, in which they defeated Philistus, and then treated him in a barbarous and savage fashion. 4 Ephorus, it is true, says that when his ship was captured, Philistus slew himself; but Timonides, 974 who was engaged with Dion in all the events of this war from the very first, in writing to Speusippus the philosopher, relates that Philistus was taken alive after his trireme had run aground, 5 and that the Syracusans, to begin with, stripped off his breast-plate and exposed his body, naked, to insult and abuse, although he was now an old man; then, that they cut off his head, and gave his body to the boys of the city, with orders to drag it through Achradina and throw it into the stone quarries. 6 And Timaeus, enlarging upon these indignities, says that the boys tied a rope to the lame leg of the dead Philistus and dragged his body through the city, while all the Syracusans mocked and jeered as they saw drawn about by the leg the man who had said to Dionysius that he must not run away from his tyranny on a swift horse, but wait until he was dragged from it by the leg. 7 And yet Philistus has stated explicitly that this was said to Dionysius, and not by himself.

36 1 But Timaeus, finding a fair excuse for his animosity in the zeal and fidelity which Philistus showed in behalf of the tyranny, gluts himself with the slanders against him. Now, those who were wronged by Philistus while he lived may perhaps be pardoned for carrying their resentment to the length of maltreating his unconscious body; 2 but those who in later times write histories of that period, and who were not harmed by his life, but avail themselves of his writings, owe it to his reputation not to reproach him, in insolent and scurrilous language, for calamities in which fortune may involve even the best of men. 3 However, Ephorus also is unsound in heaping praises upon Philistus; for, although he is most skilful in furnishing unjust deeds and base natures with specious motives, and in discovering decorous names for them, still, even he, with all his artifice, cannot extricate himself from the charge of having been the greatest lover of tyrants alive, and more than any one else always an emulous admirer of luxury, power, wealth, and marriage alliances of tyrants. 4 Verily, he who neither praises the conduct of Philistus, nor gloats insultingly over his misfortunes, takes the fittest course.

37 1 After the death of Philistus, Dionysius sent to Dion offering to surrender to him the acropolis, his munitions of war, and his mercenaries, with five months’ full pay for these, 2 and demanding for himself the privilege of retiring unmolested into Italy, and of enjoying during his residence there the revenues of Gyarta, a large and rich tract in the territory of Syracuse, extending from the sea to the interior of the island. 3 Dion, however, would not accept these terms, but bade him apply to the Syracusans, and these, hoping to take Dionysius alive, drove away his ambassadors. 4 Upon this, the tyrant handed over the citadel to Apollocrates, his eldest son, while he himself, after watching for a favourable wind and putting on board his ships the persons and property that he held most dear, eluded the vigilance of Heracleides the admiral, and sailed off.

5 Heracleides was now stormily denounced by the citizens, whereupon he induced Hippo, one of their leaders, to make proposals to the people for a distribution of land, urging that liberty was based on equality, and slavery on the poverty of those who had naught. 6 Supporting Hippo, and heading a faction which overwhelmed the opposition of Dion, Heracleides persuaded the Syracusans to vote this measure, to deprive the mercenaries of their pay, and to elect other generals, thus ridding themselves of the severities of Dion. 7 So the people, attempting, as it were, to stand at once upon their feet after their long sickness of tyranny, 975 and to act the part of independence out of season, stumbled in their undertakings, and yet hated Dion, who, like a physician, wished to subject the city to a strict and temperate regimen.

38 1 As they met in assembly to assign new commands, the time being midsummer, extraordinary peals of thunder and evil portents from the heavens occurred for fifteen days together, and dispersed the people, whose superstitious fears prevented them from appointing other generals. 2 And when, after waiting for settled fair weather, the popular leaders were proceeding to hold the elections, a draught-ox, who was quite accustomed to crowds, but now for some reason or other got angry at his driver and broke away from his yoke, 3 made a dash for the theatre, and at once dispersed and scattered the people in disorderly flight; then he ran, plunging and throwing everything into confusion, over as much of the rest of the city as the enemy afterwards occupied. 4 However, the Syracusans paid no heed to all this, but elected twenty-five generals, one of whom was Heracleides; they also sent secretly and without his knowledge to Dion’s mercenaries, and tried to get them to leave his service and come over to their side, promising them even an equality of civic rights. 5 They, however, would not listen to these proposals, but showing fidelity and zeal, took their weapons in their hands, put Dion in their midst, encompassed him round about, and tried to conduct him out of the city, doing violence to no one, but roundly reviling those whom they encountered for their base ingratitude. 6 Then the citizens, seeing that the mercenaries were few in number and did not offer to attack, despised them, and having become far more numerous than they, set upon them, thinking to overpower them easily before they got out of the city, and slay them all.

39 1 And now Dion, seeing that fortune compelled him either to fight against his fellow citizens or perish with his mercenaries, fervently besought the Syracusans, stretching out his hands to them, and pointing out to them the acropolis, which was full of enemies peering over the walls and watching what was going on below; 2 but since no entreaties could stay the onset of the multitudes, and the city, like a ship at sea, was at the mercy of the blasts of its demagogues, he ordered his mercenaries not to make a charge, but simply to run towards their assailants with loud cries and brandishing of weapons; which being done, not a Syracusan stood his ground, but all promptly took to flight along the streets, where none pursued them. For Dion immediately ordered his men to wheel about, and led them forth to Leontini.

3 But the leaders of the Syracusans, now that they were become a laughing-stock for the women, sought to redeem their disgrace, armed the citizens again, and pursued after Dion. 4 They came upon him as he was crossing a river, and their horsemen rode up for a skirmish; but when they saw that he no longer bore with their faults in a mild and paternal spirit, but was angrily wheeling his mercenaries about and putting them in battle array, they broke into a more disgraceful flight than before, and retired into the city, with the loss of a few men.

40 1 The Leontines received Dion with splendid honours, took his mercenaries into their service, and gave them civic rights; they also sent an embassy to the Syracusans with a demand that they should do the mercenaries justice. 2 The Syracusans, however, sent envoys to denounce Dion. But when all the confederates had assembled at Leontini and discussed the matter, it was decided that the Syracusans were in the wrong. 3 By this decision of their confederates, however, the Syracusans would not abide, being now insolent and full of pride because they were subject to no one, but had generals who were in slavish fear of the people.

41 1 After this, there put in at the city triremes from Dionysius, under the command of Nypsius the Neapolitan, 976 who brought food and money for the beleaguered garrison of the acropolis. 2 In a naval battle that ensued the Syracusans were indeed victorious, and captured four of the tyrant’s ships, but they were made wanton by their victory, and in their utter lack of discipline turned their rejoicing into drinking-bouts and mad carousals, and were so neglectful of their real interests that, when they thought themselves already in possession of the acropolis, they actually lost both it and their city besides. 3 For Nypsius, seeing no saving remnant in the city, but the multitude given over to music and revelry from dawn till midnight, and their generals delighted with this festivity and reluctant to use compulsion with men in their cups, 4 made the best use of his opportunity and attacked their siege-works, and having mastered these and broken them down, he let his Barbarians loose upon the city, bidding them treat those whom they encountered as they could and would. 5 Quickly, then, were the Syracusans aware of the mischief, but slowly and with difficulty did they rally to oppose it, so utterly distracted were they. 6 For it was a sack of the city that was now going on, its men being slain, its walls torn down, and its women and children dragged shrieking to the acropolis, while its generals gave up all for lost and were unable to employ the citizens against the enemy, who were everywhere inextricably mingled with them.

42 1 While the city was in this plight and the Achradina in imminent peril, all knew who was the only man left upon whom they could fasten their hopes, but no one spoke his name, because they were ashamed of their ingratitude and folly towards Dion. 2 However, now that necessity constrained them, some of the allies and horsemen cried out that Dion and his Peloponnesians should be summoned from Leontini. 3 As soon as this venture was made and the name heard, the Syracusans fell to shouting and weeping for joy; they prayed that Dion might appear upon the scene, and yearned for the sight of him, and called to mind his ardour and vigour in the presence of danger, remembering that he was not only undaunted himself, but made them also bold and fearless in engaging their enemies. 4 Immediately, therefore, they sent a delegation to him, Archonides and Telesides from the allies, and Hellanicus with four others from the horsemen. 5 These, sending their horses over the road at full gallop, came to Leontini just as the sun was setting. 6 Then, leaping from their horses and throwing themselves at the feet of Dion first of all, with streaming eyes they told him the calamities of the Syracusans. 7 Presently, too, some of the Leontines came up and many of the Peloponnesians gathered about Dion, conjecturing from the haste and suppliant address of the men that something quite extraordinary was the matter. 8 At once, then, Dion led his visitors to the place of assembly, the people eagerly gathered there, Archonides and Hellanicus with their companions came before them, reported to them briefly the great disaster, and called upon the mercenaries to put away their feelings of resentment and come to the aid of the Syracusans, since those who had wronged them had suffered a heavier punishment than those who had been wronged would have thought it right to exact.

43 1 When the messengers had made an end of speaking, there was a profound silence in the theatre; then Dion rose and began to speak, but copious tears checked his utterance; his mercenaries, however, sympathized with him and bade him take heart. 2 Accordingly, after he had recovered a little from his grief, he said: “Men of Peloponnesus and allies, I have brought you together here to deliberate upon your own course of action. 3 As for me, it is not meet that 977 I should consult my own interests now that Syracuse is perishing, but if I cannot save her, I shall return to seek a grave amid the blazing ruins of my native city. 4 But you, if you are willing even now, after all that has passed, to come to our help, who are the most foolish and the most unfortunate of men, pray restore the city of Syracuse and the work of your own hands. 5 If, however, in your displeasure at the Syracusans, you shall leave them to their fate, at least for your former bravery and zeal in my behalf may you obtain a worthy reward from the gods, and may you think of Dion as one who abandoned neither you when you were wronged, nor, afterwards, his fellow citizens when they were in distress.”

6 While he was still speaking, the mercenaries sprang to their feet with shouts and bade him lead them speedily to the city’s relief, while the Syracusan envoys embraced them passionately, invoking many blessings from the gods upon Dion, and many upon his mercenaries. 7 And when the tumult was allayed, Dion ordered his men to go to their quarters and make themselves ready, and, after taking supper, to come with their arms to that very place, for he was determined to go to the rescue by night.

44 1 But the soldiers of Dionysius at Syracuse, as long as it was day, did much mischief to the city; when night came, however, they retired to the acropolis, having lost some few of their number. 2 Upon this, the popular leaders of the Syracusans plucked up courage, and in the hope that the enemy would rest content with what they had done, exhorted the citizens once more to ignore Dion, and if he should come up with his mercenaries, not to admit them, nor yield precedence to them as superior in point of bravery, but to save their city and their liberty by their own efforts. 3 Accordingly, fresh messengers were sent to Dion, some from the generals forbidding his advance, but others from the horsemen and more reputable citizens urging him to hasten it. 4 For this reason he came marching on now slowly, and now at top speed. 5 As the night advanced the enemies of Dion took possession of the gates in order to shut him out, but Nypsius, 978 sending his mercenaries once more from the citadel in greater numbers and with more impetuosity than before, tore down at once the entire siege-wall, and overran and sacked the city. 6 And now there was a slaughter not only of men, but also of women and children; there was little haling away of prisoners, but a great destruction of all alike. 7 For since Dionysius now despaired of his cause and fiercely hated the Syracusans, he wished to make their city as it were a tomb for his falling tyranny. 8 So his soldiers, forestalling the succour which Dion was bringing, resorted to the speediest destruction and annihilation of everything by burning, setting fire to what was near them with the brands and torches in their hands, and scattering fiery arrows from their bows among the remoter parts. 9 As the Syracusans fled, some were overtaken and slain in the streets, and those who sought cover in their houses were driven out again by the fire, many buildings being now ablaze and falling upon those who were running about.

45 1 Owing to this disaster more than to any thing else, the city was thrown open to Dion by unanimous consent. For he was no longer marching in haste, since he had heard that the enemy had shut themselves up in the acropolis. 2 But as the day advanced, first, horsemen met him with tidings of the second capture of the city; next, even some of his opponents came with entreaties that he would hasten his march. 3 Moreover, as the mischief grew worse, Heracleides sent out his brother, and then Theodotes his uncle, begging Dion to help them, since no one now resisted the enemy, he himself was wounded, and the city was almost demolished and consumed by fire. 4 When these amazing messages reached Dion, he was still sixty furlongs distant from the city gates; but after telling his mercenaries of the city’s peril and exhorting them, he led his army towards the city, no longer in marching step, but on the run, while one messenger after another met him and begged him to hasten. 5 His mercenaries advancing with astonishing speed and ardour, he burst through the gates into what was called the Hecatompedon, 6 and at once sent his light-armed troops to charge upon the enemy, in order that the Syracusans might take courage at the sight; he also marshalled his men-at arms in person, together with those of the citizens who kept running up and forming with them, dividing his commands and forming companies in column, that he might make a more formidable attack from many points at once.

46 1 When he had made these preparations and had prayed to the gods, and was seen leading his forces through the city against the enemy, shouts of joy and loud battle-cries mingled with prayers and supplications were raised by the Syracusans, who called Dion their saviour and god, and his mercenaries their brethren and fellow citizens. 2 And no one was so fond of self or fond of life in that emergency as not to show himself more anxious about Dion alone than about all the rest, as he marched at their head to meet the danger, through blood and fire and the mass of dead bodies lying in the streets.

3 It was true, indeed, that the enemy presented a formidable appearance, for they had become altogether savage, and had drawn themselves up along the demolished siege-wall, which made the approach to them difficult and hard to force; but the peril from the fire disturbed the mercenaries of Dion more, and made their progress arduous. 4 For they were surrounded on all sides by glowing flames which were spreading among the houses; they trod upon blazing ruins and ran at the risk of their lives under falling fragments of great size; they made their way through clouds of dust and smoke; and yet they tried to keep together and not break their ranks. 5 Moreover, when they joined battle with the enemy, only a few on each side could fight at close quarters, so narrow and uneven was the place; but the Syracusans encouraged them with eager shouts, and Nypsius and his men were overpowered. 6 Most of them fled back into the acropolis, which was near, and so saved themselves; but those who were left outside and scattered hither and thither, were pursued and slain by the mercenaries. 7 No immediate enjoyment of their victory, however, and none of the glad congratulations befitting so great an achievement were possible for the Syracusans in that emergency; they turned their attention to their burning houses, and only by toiling all night did they succeed in putting out the fire.

47 1 When it was day, not one of the other popular leaders would remain in the city, but passed judgement on themselves by taking to flight; Heracleides and Theodotes, however, came of their own accord and surrendered themselves to Dion, acknowledging that they had done him wrong, and begging him to treat them better than they had treated him; 2 it was meet, they said, that Dion, who was their superior in every other virtue, should also show himself a better master of his anger than his ungrateful foes, who were now come confessing that in the very quality to which they had formerly disputed his claim, namely, virtue, they were his inferiors. 3 Though Heracleides and Theodotes thus besought Dion, his friends exhorted him not to spare such base and envious men, but to give Heracleides over to the mercy of his soldiers, and to rid the commonwealth of the hunt for mob-favour, which, no less than tyranny, was a raging distemper. 4 But Dion tried to soften their resentment, saying that while other generals trained themselves mostly for arms and war, he himself had studied for a long time in the Academy how to conquer anger, envy, and all contentiousness; 5 and it was no manifestation of such self-mastery, he said, when one was kind to friends and benefactors, but when one who had been wronged was merciful and mild towards the erring; 6 besides, he wished men to see 979 that he was superior to Heracleides, not so much in power and wisdom, as in goodness and justice; for therein lay real superiority; 7 whereas successes in war, even though they had to be shared with no man, must at least be shared with fortune. 8 Moreover, if envy led Heracleides to be faithless and base, surely anger must not drive Dion to sully his virtue; for although taking vengeance for a wrong was in the eyes of the law more just than the doing of the wrong unprovoked, by nature it sprang from one and the same weakness. 9 Furthermore, baseness in a man, even though it be a grievous thing, was not so altogether savage and obstinate that it could not be conquered by frequent benefactions and altered by a sense of gratitude.

48 1 After using such arguments as these, Dion set Heracleides and Theodotes free. 2 Then turning his attention to the siege-wall, he bade each one of the Syracusans to cut a stake and lay it down near the works, and setting his mercenaries to the task all night, while the Syracusans were resting, he succeeded in fencing off the acropolis, so that when day came the citizens and the enemy alike were amazed to see with what speed the work had been accomplished. 3 He also buried the dead Syracusans, ransomed those who had been taken prisoners, although they were fully two thousand in number, and then held an assembly. 4 Here Heracleides came forward with a motion that Dion should be chosen general with absolute powers by land and sea. 5 The aristocracy approved of this motion and urged the appointment; but the mob of sailors and day-labourers tumultuously opposed it, being vexed that Heracleides should lose his office of admiral, and considering him, even though good for nothing in other ways, at least altogether more of a man of the people than Dion and more under the control of the multitude. 6 This point Dion yielded to them, and restored the command by sea to Heracleides; but when they insisted upon the redistribution of land and houses, he opposed them and repealed their former decrees on this head, thereby winning their displeasure. 7 Wherefore Heracleides at once renewed his machinations, and, when he was stationed at Messana, artfully tried to exasperate against Dion the soldiers and sailors who had sailed thither with him, declaring that Dion intended to make himself tyrant; but he himself was all the while making secret compacts with Dionysius through the agency of Pharax the Spartan. 8 When this was suspected by the better class of Syracusans, there was dissension in the army, and therefore perplexity and want of provisions in Syracuse, 9 so that Dion was altogether at a loss what to do, and was blamed by his friends for having strengthened against himself a man so perverse and so corrupted by envy and baseness as Heracleides was.

49 1 Now, Pharax was encamped at Neapolis, in the territory of Agrigentum, and thither Dion led forth the Syracusans. Dion wished to settle the issue between them at a later opportunity, but Heracleides and his sailors kept crying out against him, saying that his wish was not to decide the war by a battle, but to have it last forever, that he might remain in power. 2 He was therefore forced into an engagement, and was worsted. Since, however, the defeat of his men was not severe, but due more to their own seditious disorders than to the enemy, Dion again prepared for battle and drew up his forces, persuading and encouraging them. 3 But in the evening word was brought to him that Heracleides with his fleet was sailing for Syracuse, determined to occupy the city and shut Dion and his army out of it. 4 Immediately, therefore, he took with him his most influential and zealous supporters and rode all night, and about nine o’clock next day was at the gates of the city, having covered seven hundred furlongs. 9805 But Heracleides, who, in spite of all his efforts, arrived too late with his ships, put out to sea again, and being without definite plans, fell in with Gaesylus the Spartan, who insisted that he was sailing from Sparta to take command of the Sicilians, as Gylippus had formerly done. 6 Heracleides, accordingly, gladly took up this man, attached him to himself like an amulet, as it were, against the influence of Dion, and showed him to his confederates; then, secretly sending a herald to Syracuse, he ordered the citizens to receive their Spartan commander. 7 Dion, however, made answer that the Syracusans had commanders enough, and that if their situation absolutely required a Spartan also, he himself was the man, since he had been made a citizen of Sparta. Thereupon Gaesylus gave up his pretensions to the command, and sailing to Dion, effected a reconciliation between him and Heracleides, who took oaths and made the most solemn pledges, in support of which Gaesylus himself swore that he would avenge Dion and punish Heracleides if he worked any more mischief.

50 1 After this the Syracusans discharged their fleet, since it was of no use, while it involved great outlays for the crews, and caused dissension among their commanders; they also laid siege to the citadel after they had finished building the wall that enclosed it. 2 No one came to the help of the besieged, provisions failed them, and the mercenaries became mutinous, so that the son of Dionysius gave up his cause for lost and made terms with Dion. The citadel he handed over to him together with the arms and other equipment there, while he himself, taking his mother and sisters and manning five triremes, sailed away to his father. 3 Dion allowed him to depart in safety, and no one who was then in Syracuse missed that sight, nay, they called upon the absent ones also, pitying them because they could not behold this day and the rising of the sun upon a free Syracuse. 4 For since, among the illustrations men give of the mutations of fortune, the expulsion of Dionysius is still to this day the strongest and plainest, what joy must we suppose those men themselves then felt, and how great a pride, who, with the fewest resources, overthrew the greatest tyranny that ever was!

51 1 After Apollocrates had sailed away, and when Dion was on his way to the acropolis, the women could not restrain themselves nor await his entrance, but ran out to the gates, Aristomache leading Dion’s son, while Arete followed after them with tears, and at a loss how to greet and address her husband now that she had lived with another man. 2 After Dion had greeted his sister first, and then his little son, Aristomache led Arete to him, and said: “We were unhappy, Dion, while thou wast in exile; 3 but now that thou art come and art victorious, thou hast taken away our sorrow from all of us, except from this woman alone, whom I was so unfortunate as to see forced to wed another while thou wast still alive. 4 Since, then, fortune has made thee our lord and master, how wilt thou judge of the compulsion laid upon her? Is it as her uncle or as her husband that she is to greet thee?” 5 So spake Aristomache, and Dion, bursting into tears, embraced his wife fondly, gave her his son, and bade her go to his own house; and there he himself also dwelt, after he had put the citadel in charge of the Syracusans.

52 1 And now that his enterprise had been so successful, he thought it not right to enjoy his present good fortune before distributing thanks to his friends, rewards to his allies, and particularly to his Athenian associates and to his mercenaries some mark of kindness and honour, his generosity leading him beyond his resources. 2 But as for himself, he lived with simplicity and moderation on what he had, and men wondered at him because, while his successes drew upon him the eyes not only of Sicily and Carthage, 981 but also of all Hellas, and while he was regarded by the people of that time as the greatest of living men, and was thought to be blessed with courage and good fortune beyond any other commander, 3 he was nevertheless so modest in his dress, his attendance, and his table, just as though he were messing with Plato in the Academy, and not living among captains of mercenaries and paid soldiers, who find in their daily feastings, and other enjoyments, a solace for their toils and perils. 4 Plato, indeed, wrote to him that the eyes of all the world were now fixed upon him alone, but Dion himself, as it would seem, kept his eyes fixed upon one spot in one city, namely, the Academy, and considered that his spectators and judges there admired neither great exploits nor boldness nor victories, but watched to see only whether he made a discreet and decorous use of his good fortune, and showed himself modest in his high estate. 5 Nevertheless, he made it a point not to remit or relax at all the gravity of his manners or his haughtiness in dealing with the people, although his situation called for a gracious demeanour, and although Plato, as I have said, wrote and warned him that self-will was “a companion of solitude.” 6 But he seems to have been of a temper naturally averse to graciousness, and, besides, he was ambitious to curb the Syracusans, who were given to excessive license and luxury.

53 1 For Heracleides once more set himself in opposition to him. To begin with, when he was invited by Dion to attend the council, he refused to come, saying that as a man in private station he would meet in assembly with the other citizens.  Next, he publicly denounced Dion for not demolishing the citadel, and for checking the people when they set out to open the tomb of Dionysius and cast out his dead body, and for sending to Corinth for counsellors and colleagues in the government, thereby showing contempt for his fellow citizens. 3 And in fact Dion did send for assistance to the Corinthians, hoping the more easily to establish the civil polity which he had in mind if they were at his side. 4 And he had it mind to put a curb upon unmixed democracy in Syracuse, regarding it as not a civil polity, but rather, in the words of Plato, a “bazaar of polities”; also to establish and set in order a mixture of democracy and royalty, somewhat after the Spartan and Cretan fashion, wherein an aristocracy should preside, and administer the most important affairs; for he saw that the Corinthians had a polity which leaned towards oligarchy, and that they transacted little public business in their assembly of the people.

5 Accordingly, since he expected that these measures would find their chief opponent in Heracleides, and since the man was in every way turbulent, fickle, and seditious, he now yielded to those who had long wished to kill him, but whom he had hitherto restrained; so they made their way into the house of Heracleides and slew him. 6 His death was keenly resented by the Syracusans; but nevertheless, when Dion gave him a splendid funeral, followed the body to its grave with his army, and then discoursed to them upon the matter, they came to see that it was impossible for the city to be free from tumults while Heracleides and Dion together concluded its affairs.

54 1 Now, there was a certain comrade of Dion’s named Callippus, an Athenian, who, as Plato says, had become intimately acquainted with him, not as a fellow pupil in philosophy, but in consequence of initiation into the mysteries and the recurrent comradeship which this brought. He took part in Dion’s expedition and was held in honour by him, so that he even entered Syracuse with him at the head of all his comrades, with a garland on his head, after winning glorious distinction in battle. 2 But now that the chief and noblest friends of Dion had been consumed away by the war, 982 and Heracleides was dead, he saw that the people of Syracuse were without a leader, and that he himself was very much in favour with Dion’s soldiers. 3 Therefore, showing himself the vilest of men, and altogether expecting that he would have Sicily as a reward for murdering his friend, and, as some say, having received twenty talents from the enemy to pay him for doing the murder, he bribed some of Dion’s mercenaries into a conspiracy against him, beginning his work in a most malicious and rascally manner. 4 For he was always reporting to Dion various speeches of his soldiers against him, either actually uttered or fabricated by himself, and in this way won his confidence, and was authorized to meet secretly with whom he would and talk with them against Dion, in order that no lurking malcontents might remain undiscovered. 5 By this means Callippus succeeded in quickly discovering and banding together the evil-minded and discontented citizens, and, whenever any one who had repulsed his overtures told Dion about them, Dion was not disturbed nor vexed, but assumed that Callippus was merely carrying out his injunctions.

55 1 As the plot was ripening, Dion saw an apparition of great size and portentous aspect. He was sitting later in the day in the vestibule of his house, alone and lost in thought, 2 when suddenly a noise was heard at the other end of the colonnade, and turning his gaze in that direction he saw (for it was not yet dark) a woman of lofty stature, in garb and countenance exactly like a tragic Fury, sweeping the house with a sort of broom. 3 He was terribly shocked, and, becoming apprehensive, summoned his friends, told them what he had seen, and begged them to remain and spend the night with him, being altogether beside himself, and fearing that if he were left alone the portent would appear to him again. This, indeed, did not occur a second time. 4 But a few days afterwards his son, who was hardly a boy any more, in a fit of angry displeasure caused by some trivial and childish grievance, threw himself headlong from the roof and was killed.

56 1 While Dion was thus heavily afflicted, Callippus was all the more intent upon his plot, and spread a report that Dion, being now childless, had made up his mind to send for Apollocrates, the son of Dionysius, and make him his successor, since he was his wife’s nephew and his sister’s grandson. 2 And presently both Dion and his wife and sister began to suspect what was going on, and information of the plot came to them from every quarter. 3 But Dion, as it would seem, being in distress at the fate of Heracleides, and suffering continual vexation and depression at the thought of the man’s murder, which he regarded as a stain upon his life and actions, declared that he was ready now to die many deaths and to suffer any one who wished to slay him, if it was going to be necessary for him to live on his guard, not only against his enemies, but also against his friends.

4 But Callippus, seeing that the women were investigating the matter carefully, and taking alarm, came to them with denials and in tears and offering to give them whatever pledge of fidelity they desired. 5 So they required him to swear the great oath. This was done in the following manner. The one who gives this pledge goes down into the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone, where, after certain sacred rites have been performed, he puts on the purple vestment of the goddess, takes a blazing torch in his hand, and recites the oath. 6 All this Callippus did, and recited the oath; but he made such a mockery of the gods as to wait for the festival of the goddess by whom he had sworn, the Coreia, and then to do the murder. And yet it is possible that he took no account of the day, since he knew that the goddess would have been utterly outraged even if at another time her mystic were slain by his mystagogue.

57 1 Many had conspired to do the deed, and as Dion was sitting with his friends in an apartment containing couches for entertainment, 983 some of the conspirators invested the house outside, while others stood at the doors and windows of the apartment. 2 The actual assassins, who were Zacynthians, came in unarmed and without their cloaks. Then at the same time those outside closed the doors and held them fast, while those inside fell upon Dion and tried to strangle and crush him. 3 They made no headway, however, and called for a sword; but no one ventured to open the door. For Dion’s companions inside were many in number; but each of them thought that by abandoning Dion to his fate he would save his own life, and so no one ventured to help him. 4 After some delay, Lycon the Syracusan handed through the window to one of the Zacynthians a shortsword, and with this they cut Dion’s throat as if he had been a victim at the altar; he had long since been overpowered and was quivering before the stroke. 5 At once, too, they cast his sister into prison, together with his wife, who was big with child. His wife had a most wretched confinement, and gave birth in the prison to a male child, which the women ventured to rear, with the consent of their guards, and all the more because Callippus was already involved in great trouble.

58 1 At the outset, indeed, after he had killed Dion, Callippus was a glorious personage, and had Syracuse in his power. He actually wrote a letter to the city of Athens, which, next to the gods, he ought to have held in awe and fear after setting his hands to so great a pollution. 2 But it appears to be truly said of that city that the good men whom she breeds are of the highest excellence, and the bad men of the most despicable baseness, just as her soil produces sweetest honey and deadliest hemlock. 3 However, Callippus did not long remain a scandal to fortune and the gods, as though they had no eyes for a man who won leadership and power by so great an impiety, but speedily paid a fitting penalty. 4 For on setting out to take Catana, he at once lost Syracuse; at which time, as they say, he remarked that he had lost a city and got a cheese-grater. 5 Then he attacked Messana and lost most of his soldiers, among whom were the murderers of Dion; and since no city in Sicily would receive him, but all hated and spurned him, he took possession of Rhegium. 6 But there, being in straitened circumstances and unable to support his mercenaries properly, he was put to death by Leptines and Polyperchon, who, as fortune would have it, used the shortsword with which Dion also was said to have been smitten. 7 And it was known by its size, which was short, after the Spartan fashion, and by the style of its workmanship, being delicately and cunningly wrought. Such, then, was the penalty which Callippus paid.

8 As for Aristomache and Arete, when they were released from prison, they were taken up by Hicetas the Syracusan, who had been one of Dion’s friends, and who was thought to be faithfully and honourably disposed towards them. 9 Afterwards, having been persuaded by the enemies of Dion, he got a ship ready for them, pretending that they were to be sent into Peloponnesus, and ordered the sailors, during the voyage, to cut their throats and cast them into the sea. Others, however, say that they were thrown overboard alive, and the little boy with them. 10 But Hicetas also met with a punishment worthy of his crimes. For he himself was captured by Timoleon and put to death, and the Syracusans, to avenge Dion, slew his two daughters also; of which things I have written at length in my Life of Timoleon.

Brutus

1 1 Marcus Brutus was a descendant of that Junius Brutus whose bronze statue, with a drawn sword in its hand, was erected by the ancient Romans on the Capitol among those of the kings, in token that he was most resolute in dethroning the Tarquins. 2 But that Brutus, like the tempered steel of swords, had a disposition which was hard by nature and not softened by letters, so that his wrath against the tyrants drove him upon the dreadful act of slaying his sons; 3 whereas this Brutus, of whom I now write, modified his disposition by means of the training and culture which philosophy gives, and stimulated a nature which was sedate and mild by active enterprises, and thus seems to have been most harmoniously attempered for the practice of virtue. 4 As a consequence, even those who hated him on account of his conspiracy against Caesar ascribed whatever was noble in the undertaking to Brutus, but laid the more distressing features of what was done to the charge of Cassius, who was a kinsman of Brutus, indeed, and his friend, but not so simple and sincere in his character. 5 Servilia, the mother of Brutus, traced her lineage back to Servilius Ahala, who, when Spurius Maelius was seditiously plotting to usurp absolute power, took a dagger under his arm, went into the forum, drew nigh the man, as if intending to confer privately with him, and when he inclined his head to listen, stabbed him to death.

6 This, at all events, is generally admitted; but as to the lineage of Brutus by his father’s side, those who display great hatred and malevolence towards him because of the murder of Caesar deny that it goes back to that Brutus who expelled the Tarquins, since no offspring was left to him when he had slain his sons. The ancestor of Brutus, they say, was a plebeian, son of a steward by the name of Brutus, and had only recently risen to office. 7 Poseidonius the philosopher, however, says that the two sons of Brutus who were of age perished according to the story, but that a third son was left, an infant, from whom the family descended. 8 He says, moreover, that there were certainly industrious men of this house in his own day, some of whom called attention to their likeness in form and features to the statue of Brutus. Thus much, then, on this head.

2 1 Servilia, the mother of Brutus, was a sister of Cato the philosopher, and Brutus had a higher esteem for him than for any other Roman, Cato being his uncle and afterwards becoming his father-in law. 2 There was practically no Greek philosopher with whom Brutus was unacquainted or unfamiliar, but he devoted himself particularly to the disciples of Plato. 3 To the New and Middle Academy, as they are called, he was not very partial, but clung to the Old. He was therefore always an admirer of Antiochus of Ascalon, whose brother Aristus he had made his friend and housemate, a man who in learning was inferior to many philosophers, but who in good sense and gentleness vied with the foremost. 4 Empylus also, who is often mentioned by Brutus himself in his letters, and also by his friends, as a housemate of his, was a rhetorician, and has left a brief but excellent account of the assassination of Caesar, entitled “Brutus.”

5 In Latin, now, Brutus was sufficiently trained for narrative or pleading; but in Greek he affected the brevity of the apophthegm and the Spartan, of which he sometimes gives a striking example in his letters. 6 For instance, when he had already embarked upon the war, he wrote to the Pergamenians: “I hear that ye have given money to Dolabella; if ye gave it willingly confess that ye have wronged me; if unwillingly, prove it by giving willingly to me.” 7 Again, to the Samians: “Your counsels are paltry, your subsidies slow; what, think ye, will be the end of this?” 8 And in another letter: “The Xanthians ignored my benefactions, and have made their country a grave for their madness; but the Patareans entrusted themselves to me, and now enjoy their freedom in all its fulness. It is in your power also to choose the decision of the Patareans or the fate of the Xanthians.” Such, then, is the style of his remarkable letters.

3 1 While he was still a youth, he made a journey to Cyprus with his uncle Cato, who was sent out against Ptolemy. 2 And when Ptolemy made away with himself, Cato, who was himself obliged to tarry a while in Rhodes, had already dispatched one of his friends, Canidius, to take charge of the king’s treasures; but fearing that he would not refrain from theft, he wrote to Brutus bidding him sail with all speed to Cyprus from Pamphylia, where he was recruiting his health after a severe sickness. 3 Brutus set sail, but very much against his will, both because he had regard for Canidius, whom he thought to have been ignominiously discarded by Cato, and because on general grounds he considered such painstaking attention to administrative matters to be illiberal and unworthy of himself as a young man addicted to letters. 4 However, he applied himself to this task also, and won Cato’s praise, and after converting the king’s property into money, took most of the treasure and set sail for Rome.

4 1 Here, when the state was rent by factions, Pompey and Caesar appealing to arms and the supreme power being confounded, Brutus was expected to choose the side of Caesar, since his father had been put to death a while before at the instigation of Pompey; 2 but thinking it his duty to put the public good above his own, and holding that Pompey’s grounds for going to war were better than Caesar’s, he attached himself to Pompey. 3 And yet before this he would not even speak to Pompey when he met him, considering it a great abomination to converse with the murderer of his father; now, however, looking upon him as his country’s ruler, he put himself under his orders, and set sail for Cilicia as legate with Sestius, to whom the province had been allotted. 4 But since there was nothing of importance for him to do there, and since Pompey and Caesar were now about to meet in a supreme struggle, he came of his own accord into Macedonia to share the danger. 5 It was then, they say, that Pompey was so filled with delight and admiration that he rose from his seat as Brutus approached, and in the sight of all embraced him as a superior. 6 During the campaign, for whatever part of the day he was not with Pompey, he busied himself with books and literature, not only the rest of the time, but even before the great battle. 7 It was the height of summer, the heat was great (since they had encamped in marshy regions), and they that carried the tent of Brutus were slow in coming. 8 But though he was thus all worn out, and though it was almost noon before he anointed himself and took a little food, nevertheless, while the rest were either sleeping or occupied with anxious thoughts about the future, he himself was busy until evening in making and writing out a compend of Polybius.

5 1 It is said, moreover, that Caesar also was concerned for his safety, and ordered his officers not to kill Brutus in the battle, but to spare him, and take him prisoner if he gave himself up voluntarily, and if he persisted in fighting against capture, to let him alone and do him no violence; and that Caesar did this out of regard for Servilia, the mother of Brutus. 2 For while he was still a young man, as it seems, Caesar had been intimate with Servilia, who was madly in love with him, and he had some grounds for believing that Brutus, who was born at about the time when her passion was in full blaze, was his own son. 3 It is said also that when the great conspiracy of Catiline, which came near overthrowing the city, had come to the ears of the senate, Cato and Caesar, who were of different opinions about the matter, were standing side by side, and just then a little note was handed to Caesar from outside, which he read quietly. But Cato cried out that Caesar was outrageously receiving letters of instruction from the enemy. 4 At this, a great tumult arose, and Caesar gave the missive, just as it was, to Cato. Cato found, when he read it, that it was a wanton bit of writing from his sister Servilia, and throwing it to Caesar with the words “Take it, thou sot,” turned again to the business under discussion. So notorious was Servilia’s passion for Caesar.

6 1 After the defeat at Pharsalus, when Pompey had made his escape to the sea and his camp was besieged, Brutus went out unnoticed by a gate leading to a place that was marshy and full of water and reeds, and made his way safely by night to Larissa. 2 From thence he wrote to Caesar, who was delighted at his safe escape, and bade him come to him, and not only pardoned him, but actually made him a highly honoured companion. 3 Now, since no one could tell whither Pompey was fleeing, and all were in great perplexity, Caesar took a long walk with Brutus alone, and sounded him on the subject. 4 Certain considerations advanced by Brutus made his opinion concerning Pompey’s flight seem the best, and Caesar therefore renounced all other courses and hastened towards Egypt. 5 But as for Pompey, he put in at Egypt, as Brutus conjectured, and there met his doom; as for Caesar, however, Brutus tried to soften him towards Cassius also. 6 He also served as advocate for the king of Africa, and though he lost the case, owing to the magnitude of the accusations against his client, still, by supplications and entreaties in his behalf he saved much of his kingdom for him. 7 And it is said that Caesar, when he first heard Brutus speak in public, said to his friends: “I know not what this young man wants, but all that he wants he wants very much.” 8 For the weight of his character, and the fact that no one found it easy to make him listen to appeals for favour, but that he accomplished his ends by reasoning and the adoption of noble principles, made his efforts, whithersoever directed, powerful and efficacious. 9 No flattery could induce him to grant an unjust petition, and that inability to withstand shameless importunity, which some call timidity,a he regarded as most disgraceful in a great man, and he was wont to say that those who were unable to refuse anything, in his opinion, must have been corrupted in their youth.

10 When Caesar was about to cross over into Africa against Cato and Scipio, he put Brutus in charge of Cisalpine Gaul, to the great good-fortune of the province; 11 for while the other provinces, owing to the insolence and rapacity of their governors, were plundered as though they had been conquered in war, to the people of his province Brutus meant relief and consolation even for their former misfortunes. 12 And he attached the gratitude of all to Caesar, so that, after Caesar’s return, and as he traversed it, he found the cities under Brutus a most pleasing sight, as well as Brutus himself, who enhanced his honour and was a delightful companion.

7 1 Now that there were several praetorships to be had, it was expected that the one of greatest dignity, that is, the praetorship of the city, would fall either to Brutus or to Cassius; and some say that the two men, who were already slightly at variance for other reasons, were still more estranged by this circumstance, although they were relatives, since Cassius was the husband of Junia, a sister of Brutus. 2 But others say that this rivalry was the work of Caesar, who secretly favoured the hopes of each until, thus induced and incited, they entered into competition with one another. 3 Brutus, however, made the contest supported only by his fair fame and his virtue, as against many brilliant and spirited exploits of Cassius in the Parthian war. 4 But Caesar, after hearing the claims of each, said, in council with his friends: “Cassius makes the juster plea, but Brutus must have the first praetorship.” 5 So Cassius was appointed to another praetorship, but he was not so grateful for what he got as he was angry over what he had lost.

6 And in all other ways, too, Brutus had as large a share in Caesar’s power as he wished. Indeed, had he wished it, he might have been first among Caesar’s friends and exercised the greatest power; 7 but the party of Cassius drew him away from such a course. Not that he was reconciled to Cassius himself as yet, after their struggle for honours, but he gave ear to the friends of Cassius, who urged him not to suffer himself to be charmed and softened by Caesar, but rather to flee the tyrant’s kindnesses and favours, for these were shown to him, not to reward his virtue, but to root out his vigour and his haughty spirit.

8 1 However, even Caesar was not wholly without suspicion, nor free from the effects of accusations against Brutus, but, while he feared his high spirit, his great repute, and his friends, he had faith in his character. 2 Once, when he was told that Antony and Dolabella were plotting revolution, he said it was not the fat and long-haired fellows that troubled him, but those pale and lean ones; meaning Brutus and Cassius. 3 And again, when certain ones were accusing Brutus to him, and urging him to be on his guard against him, he laid his hand upon his breast and said: “What? Think ye not that Brutus can wait for this poor flesh?” implying that no one besides Brutus was fit to succeed him in such great power. 4 And verily it appears that Brutus might have been first in the city with none to dispute him, could he have endured for a little while to be second to Caesar, suffering his power to wane and the fame of his successes to wither. 5 But Cassius, a man of violent temper, and rather a hater of Caesar on his own private account than a hater of tyranny on public grounds, fired him up and urged him on. 6 Brutus, it is said, objected to the rule, but Cassius hated the ruler, and among other charges which he brought against him was that of taking away some lions which Cassius had provided when he was about to be aedile; 7 the beasts had been left at Megara, and when the city was taken by Calenus, Caesar appropriated them. And the beasts are said to have brought great calamity upon the Megarians. For these, just as their city was captured, drew back the bolts and loosened the fetters that confined the animals, in order that they might obstruct the oncoming foe, but they rushed among the unarmed citizens themselves and preyed upon them as they ran hither and thither, so that even to the enemy the sight was a pitiful one.

9 1 In the case of Cassius, then, they say this was the chief reason for his plotting against Caesar; but it is not so. For from the outset there was in the nature of Cassius great hostility and bitterness towards the whole race of tyrants, as he showed when he was still a boy and went to the same school with Faustus the son of Sulla. 2 For when Faustus blustered among the boys and bragged about his father’s absolute power, Cassius sprang up and gave him a thrashing. 3 The guardians and relatives of Faustus wished to carry the matter into court, but Pompey forbade it, and after bringing the two boys together, questioned them both about the matter. 4 Then, as the story goes, Cassius said: “Come now, Faustus, have the courage to utter in this man’s presence that speech which angered me, and I will smash your face again.”

5 Such was Cassius; but Brutus was exhorted and incited to the undertaking by many arguments from his comrades, and by many utterances and writings from his fellow citizens. 6 For instance, on the statue of his ancestor, the Brutus who overthrew the power of the kings, there was written: “O that we had thee now, Brutus!” and “O that Brutus were alive!” 7 Besides, the praetorial tribunal of Brutus himself was daily found covered with such writings as these: “Brutus, art thou asleep?” and “Thou art not really Brutus.” 8 These things were brought about by the flatterers of Caesar, who, among other invidious honours which they invented for him, actually put crowns upon his statues by night, hoping to induce the multitude to address him as king instead of dictator. 9 But the contrary came to pass, as I have written fully in my Life of Caesar.

10 1 Moreover, when Cassius sought to induce his friends to conspire against Caesar, they all agreed to do so if Brutus took the lead, arguing that the undertaking demanded, not violence nor daring, but the reputation of a man like him, who should consecrate the victim, as it were, and ensure by the mere fact of his participation the justice of the sacrifice; 2 otherwise they would be more timid in doing the deed and more suspected after they had done it, since men would say that Brutus would not have declined the task if the purpose of it had been honourable. 3 After reflecting on this, Cassius made Brutus his first visit since the quarrel above mentioned, and when they were again on a friendly footing, asked him whether he had made up his mind to attend the meeting of the senate on the Calends of March; for it had come to his ears, he said, that Caesar’s friends would then move to have him made king. 4 When Brutus answered that he should not attend, “What, then,” said Cassius, “if we should be summoned?” “It would at once be my duty,” said Brutus, “not to hold my peace, but to defend my country and die in behalf of liberty.” 5 Then Cassius, elated, said: “But what Roman will consent to have thee die in such defence? 6 Dost thou not know thyself, Brutus? Or dost thou think that thy tribunal was covered with inscriptions by weavers and hucksters, and not by the foremost and most influential citizens? From their other praetors they demand gifts and spectacles and gladiatorial combats; but from thee, as a debt thou owest to thy lineage, the abolition of the tyranny; and they are ready and willing to suffer anything in thy behalf, if thou showest thyself to be what they expect and demand.” 7 After this, he embraced Brutus and kissed him, and thus reconciled they betook themselves to their friends.

11 There was a certain Caius Ligarius among the friends of Pompey, who had been denounced as such, but pardoned by Caesar. 2 This man, cherishing no gratitude for his pardon, but rather offended by the power which had put his life in jeopardy, was an enemy of Caesar, and one of the most familiar friends of Brutus. 3 Once, when this man was sick, Brutus came to see him, and said: “O Ligarius, what a time this is to be sick!” Ligarius at once raised himself on his elbow, clasped Brutus by the hand, and said: “Nay, Brutus, if thou hast a purpose worthy of thyself, I am well.”

12 1 After this, they secretly tested the sentiments of well known men in whom they had confidence, selecting not only from their intimates, but all whom they knew to be bold, brave, and contemptuous of death. 2 For this reason, too, they kept their plans a secret from Cicero, although he was foremost among them, not only for the confidence, but also for the good will which he inspired. They feared that the caution which time and old age had brought him, combined with his natural timidity, and further, his habit of calculating all the details of every enterprise so as to ensure the utmost safety, would blunt the edge of their ardour at a crisis which demanded speed. 3 Besides, Brutus also passed by, among his other friends, Statilius the Epicurean and Favonius the devoted follower of Cato. The reason was that some time before he had put them to a very similar test by the round-about method of a philosophical discussion, when Favonius had answered that civil war was worse than illegal monarchy; and Statilius had declared that it did not become a wise and sensible man to be thrown into turmoil and peril for the sake of feeble and foolish folk. 4 Labeo, however, who was present, argued against them both. At that time, on the ground that the question was rather difficult and hard to decide, Brutus held his peace, but afterwards imparted his purpose to Labeo, who readily concurred in it. 5 Then it was decided to bring over to their cause the other Brutus, surnamed Albinus; in other ways he was not an enterprising nor even a courageous man, but the large number of gladiators whom he was maintaining for the Roman spectacles made him powerful, and he had Caesar’s confidence. 6 When Cassius and Labeo discussed the matter with him, he would make no answer; but he had a private interview by himself with Brutus, and on learning that he was the leader of the enterprise, readily agreed to co-operate. 7 The most and best of the rest also were won over by the reputation in which Brutus stood. 8 And although they exchanged neither oaths nor sacred pledges, they all kept the undertaking so much to themselves and were so secret in carrying it out together that, although it was foretold by the gods in prophecies and oracles and sacrificial omens, no one would believe in it.

13 1 Now Brutus, since he had made the foremost men of Rome for dignity, family, and virtue, dependent on himself, and since he understood all the danger involved, in public tried to keep his thoughts to himself and under control; 2 but at home, and at night, he was not the same man. Sometimes, in spite of himself, his anxious thoughts would rouse him out of sleep, and sometimes, when he was more than ever immersed in calculation and beset with perplexities, his wife, who slept by his side, perceived that he was full of unwonted trouble, and was revolving in his mind some difficult and complicated plan.

3 Porcia, as has been said, was a daughter of Cato, and when Brutus, who was her cousin, took her to wife, she was not a virgin; she was, however, still very young, and had by her deceased husband a little son whose name was Bibulus. A small book containing memoirs of Brutus was written by him, and is still extant. 4 Porcia, being of an affectionate nature, fond of her husband, and full of sensible pride, did not try to question her husband about his secrets until she had put herself to the following test. 5 She took a little knife, such as barbers use to cut the finger nails, and after banishing all her attendants from her chamber, made a deep gash in her thigh, so that there was a copious flow of blood, and after a little while violent pains and chills and fever followed from the wound. 6 Seeing that Brutus was disturbed and greatly distressed, in the height of her anguish she spoke to him thus: 7 “Brutus, I am Cato’s daughter, and I was brought into thy house, not, like a mere concubine, to share thy bed and board merely, but to be a partner in thy joys, and a partner in thy troubles. 8 Thou, indeed, art faultless as a husband; but how can I show thee any grateful service if I am to share neither thy secret suffering nor the anxiety which craves a loyal confidant? 9 I know that woman’s nature is thought too weak to endure a secret; but good rearing and excellent companionship go far towards strengthening the character, 10 and it is my happy lot to be both the daughter of Cato and the wife of Brutus. Before this I put less confidence in these advantages, but now I know that I am superior even to pain.” 11 Thus having spoken, she showed him her wound and explained her test; whereupon Brutus, amazed, and lifting his hands to heaven, prayed that he might succeed in his undertaking and thus show himself a worthy husband of Porcia. Then he sought to restore his wife.

14 1 A meeting of the senate having been called, to which it was expected that Caesar would come, they determined to make their attempt there; for they could then gather together in numbers without exciting suspicion, and would have all the best and foremost men in one place, who, once the great deed was done, would straightway espouse the cause of liberty. 2 It was thought, too, that the place of meeting was providentially in their favour; for it was one of the porticoes around the theatre, containing a session-room in which stood a statue of Pompey. This statue the city had erected in his honour when he adorned that place with the porticoes and the theatre. 3 Hither, then, the senate was summoned about the middle of March (the Romans call the day the Ides of March), so that some heavenly power seemed to be conducting Caesar to Pompey’s vengeance.

4 When the day came, Brutus girt on a dagger, to the knowledge of his wife alone, and went forth, while the rest assembled at the house of Cassius and conducted his son, who was about to assume what was called the “toga virilis,” down to the forum. 5 Thence they all hastened to the portico of Pompey and waited there, expecting that Caesar would straightway come to the meeting of the senate. 6 There any one who knew what was about to happen would have been above all things astonished at the indifference and composure of the men on the brink of this terrible crisis. Many of them were praetors and therefore obliged to perform the duties of their office, wherein they not only listened calmly to those who had petitions to offer or quarrels to compose, as if they had ample time, but also took pains to give their verdicts in every case with accuracy and judgment. 7 And when a certain man who was unwilling to submit to the verdict of Brutus appealed to Caesar with loud cries and attestations, Brutus turned his gaze upon the bystanders and said: “Caesar does not prevent me from acting according to the laws, nor will he prevent me.”

15 1 And yet many things occurred to surprise and disturb them. First and foremost, though the day was advancing, Caesar delayed his coming, being detained at home by his wife because his omens were unpropitious, and prevented from going forth by the soothsayers. 2 In the second place, some one came up to Casca, one of the conspirators, took him by the hand, and said: “You hid the secret from us, Casca, but Brutus has told me everything.” 3 And when Casca was dumb with amazement, the man burst out laughing and said: “How did you get so rich on a sudden, my good fellow, as to stand for the aedileship?” So near did Casca come, in the mistake caused by the man’s ambiguity, to disclosing the secret. 4 Moreover, Brutus and Cassius were greeted more warmly than usual by Popilius Laenas, a senator, who then whispered quietly to them: “I join you in praying for the accomplishment of what you have in mind, and exhort you not to delay, for the matter is on men’s tongues.” Having said this, he went away, leaving them full of suspicion that their undertaking had become known.

5 At this juncture, too, a messenger from his house came running to Brutus with the tidings that his wife was dead. 6 For Porcia, being distressed about what was impending and unable to bear the weight of her anxiety, could with difficulty keep to herself at home, and at every noise or cry, like women in Bacchic frenzy, she would rush forth and ask every messenger who came in from the forum how Brutus was faring, and kept sending out others continually. 7 Finally, as the time grew long, her bodily powers could no longer endure the strain, but were relaxed and enfeebled as her perplexities threatened to drive her mad. She had not time to go to her chamber, but just as she was, sitting in the midst of her servants, she was overwhelmed with faintness and helpless stupor, her colour fled, and her speech was utterly stayed. 8 Her maids shrieked at the sight, and since the neighbours came running in a crowd to the door, a report went speedily forth and a story was spread abroad that she was dead. 9 However, she revived in a short time, came to herself, and was cared for by her women; but Brutus, though he was confounded, naturally, by the startling tale, nevertheless did not abandon his public duty, nor was he driven by his affliction to dwell on his private concerns.

16 1 And now word was brought that Caesar was coming, borne on a litter. For in consequence of the dejection caused by his omens, he had determined not to sanction any important business at that time, but to postpone it, under pretext of indisposition. 2 As he descended from his litter, Popilius Laenas, who, a little while before, had wished Brutus success in his enterprise, hurried up to him and conversed with him for some time, and Caesar stood and listened to him. 3 The conspirators (for so they shall be called) could not hear what he said, but judging from their suspicions that what he told Caesar was a revelation of their plot, they were disconcerted in their plans, and mutually agreed by looks which passed between them that they must not await arrest, but at once dispatch themselves. 4 Cassius and some others, indeed, had already grasped the handles of the daggers beneath their robes and were about to draw them, when Brutus observed from the mien of Laenas that he was asking eagerly for something and not denouncing anyone. Brutus said nothing, because many were about him who were not in the plot, but by the cheerfulness of his countenance gave courage to Cassius and his friends. 5 And after a little while Laenas kissed Caesar’s hand and withdrew. He had made it clear that it was in his own behalf and on something which closely concerned himself that he had consulted Caesar.

17 1 When the senate had preceded Caesar into the session-room, the rest of the conspirators stationed themselves about Caesar’s chair, as if they intended to have some conference with him, 2 and Cassius is said to have turned his face towards the statue of Pompey and to have invoked it, as if it had understanding; but Trebonius drew Antony into conversation at the door and kept him outside. 3 As Caesar entered, the senate rose in his honour, but as soon as he was seated the conspirators surrounded him in a body, putting forward Tullius Cimber of their number with a plea in behalf of his brother, who was in exile. The others all joined in his plea, and clasping Caesar’s hands, kissed his breast and his head. 4 At first, Caesar merely rejected their pleas, and then, when they would not desist, tried to free himself from them by force. At this, Tullius tore Caesar’s robe from his shoulders with both hands, and Casca, who stood behind him, drew his dagger and gave him the first stab, not a deep one, near the shoulder. 5 Caesar caught the handle of the dagger and cried out loudly in Latin: “Impious Casca, what doest thou?” Then Casca, addressing his brother in Greek, bade him come to his aid. 6 And now Caesar had received many blows and was looking about and seeking to force his way through his assailants, when he saw Brutus setting upon him with drawn dagger. At this, he dropped the hand of Casca which he had seized, covered his head with his robe, and resigned himself to the dagger-strokes. 7 The conspirators, crowding eagerly about the body, and plying their many daggers, wounded one another, so that Brutus also got a wound in the hand as he sought to take part in the murder, and all were covered with blood.

18 1 Caesar thus slain, Brutus went out into the middle of the session-room and tried to speak, and would have detained the senators there with encouraging words; but they fled in terror and confusion, and there was a tumultuous crowding at the door, although no one pressed upon them in pursuit. 2 It had been firmly decided not to kill any one else, but to summon all to the enjoyment of liberty. 3 All the rest of the conspirators, indeed, when they were discussing their enterprise, had been minded to kill Antony as well as Caesar, since he was a lawless man and in favour of a monarchy, and had acquired strength by familiar association with the soldiery; and particularly because to his natural arrogance and ambition he had added the dignity of the consulship, and was at that time a colleague of Caesar. 4 But Brutus opposed the plan, insisting in the first place on a just course, and besides, holding out a hope of a change of heart in Antony. 5 For he would not give up the belief that Antony, who was a man of good parts, ambitious, and a lover of fame, if once Caesar were out of the way, would assist his country in attaining her liberty, when their example had induced him to follow emulously the nobler course. 6 Thus Antony’s life was saved by Brutus; but in the fear which then reigned, he put on a plebeian dress and took to flight.

7 And now Brutus and his associates went up to the Capitol, their hands smeared with blood, and displaying their naked daggers they exhorted the citizens to assert their liberty. 8 At first, then, there were cries of terror, and the tumult was increased by wild hurryings to and fro which succeeded the disaster; 9 but since there were no further murders and no plundering of property, the senators and many of the common people took heart and went up to the men on the Capitol. 10 When the multitude was assembled there, Brutus made a speech calculated to win the people and befitting the occasion. 11 The audience applauding his words and crying down to him to come down from the Capitol, the conspirators took heart and went down into the forum. The rest of them followed along in one another’s company, but Brutus was surrounded by many eminent citizens, escorted with great honour down from the citadel, and placed on the rostra. 12 At sight of him the multitude, although it was a mixed rabble and prepared to raise a disturbance, was struck with awe, and awaited the issue in decorous silence. 13 Also when he came forward to speak, all paid quiet attention to his words; but that all were not pleased with what had been done was made manifest when Cinna began to speak and to denounce Caesar. The multitude broke into a rage and reviled Cinna so bitterly that the conspirators withdrew again to the Capitol. 14 There Brutus, who feared that they would be besieged, sent away the most eminent of those who had come up with them, not deeming it right that they should incur the danger too, since they had no share in the guilt.

19 1 However, on the following day the senate met in the temple of Tellus, and Antony, Plancus, and Cicero spoke in favour of amnesty and concord. It was then voted not only that the conspirators should have immunity, but also that the consuls should lay before the people a measure to pay them honours. After passing these votes, the senate broke up. 2 Then, when Antony had sent his son to the Capitol as a hostage, Brutus and his associates came down, and there were salutations and greetings for all without discrimination. 3 Cassius was taken home and entertained by Antony, Brutus by Lepidus, and the rest by their several comrades or friends. 4 Early next morning the senate assembled again. In the first place, they gave a vote of thanks to Antony for having stopped an incipient civil war; next, they passed a vote of commendation for the followers of Brutus who were present; and finally, they distributed the provinces. 5 It was voted that Brutus should have Crete, Cassius Africa, Trebonius Asia, Cimber Bithynia, and the other Brutus Cisalpine Gaul.

20 1 After this, the subjects of Caesar’s will and of his burial came up for discussion. Antony demanded that the will should be read publicly, and that the body should be carried forth to burial, not secretly, nor without honours, lest this also should exasperate the people. Cassius, indeed, vehemently opposed these measures, but Brutus yielded and agreed to them, thus making a second mistake, as was thought. 2 For by sparing Antony’s life as he had done he incurred the charge of raising up against the conspirators a bitter and formidable foe; and now, in allowing Caesar’s funeral rites to be conducted as Antony demanded, he committed a fatal error. 3 For, in the first place, when it was found that the will of Caesar gave to every Roman seventy-five drachmas, and left to the people his gardens beyond the Tiber, where now stands a temple of Fortune, an astonishing kindliness and yearning for Caesar seized the citizens; 4 and in the second place, after Caesar’s body had been brought to the forum, Antony pronounced the customary eulogy, and when he saw that the multitude were moved by his words, changed his tone to one of compassion, and taking the robe of Caesar, all bloody as it was, unfolded it to view, pointing out the many places in which it had been pierced and Caesar wounded. 5 All further orderly procedure was at an end, of course; some cried out to kill the murderers, and others, as formerly in the case of Clodius the demagogue, dragged from the shops the benches and tables, piled them upon one another, and thus erected a huge pyre; 6 on this they placed Caesar’s body, and in the midst of many sanctuaries, asylums, and holy places, burned it. 7 Moreover, when the fire blazed up, people rushed up from all sides, snatched up half-burnt brands, and ran round to the houses of Caesar’s slayers to set them on fire.

These men, indeed, having previously barricaded themselves well, repelled the danger; 8 but there was a certain Cinna, a poet, who had no share in the crime, but was actually a friend of Caesar’s. 9 This man dreamed that he was invited to supper by Caesar and declined to go, but that Caesar besought and constrained him, and finally took him by the hand and led him into a yawning and darksome place, whither he followed unwilling and bewildered. 10 After having this vision, he fell into a fever which lasted all night; but in the morning, nevertheless, when the funeral rites were held over Caesar’s body, he was ashamed not to be present, and went out into the crowd when it was already becoming savage. 11 He was seen, however, and being thought to be, not the Cinna that he really was, but the one who had recently reviled Caesar before the assembled people, he was torn in pieces.

21 1 This incident more than anything else, except, perhaps, Antony’s change of heart, frightened Brutus and his adherents, and they withdrew from the city. At first they spent some time in Antium, with the idea of returning to Rome when the people’s wrath had passed its climax and subsided. 2 This they thought would readily come to pass, since multitudes are fickle and impetuous, and, besides, they had the senate in their favour, which let those who tore Cinna to pieces go unpunished, and yet tried to seek out and arrest those who had assaulted the houses of the conspirators. 3 Already, too, the people were disturbed because Antony was assuming almost absolute power, and they longed for Brutus; it was also expected that he would be present in person and conduct the spectacles which it was his duty as praetor to furnish. 4 But Brutus learned that many of the veteran soldiers of Caesar who had received land and cities from their commander, were now plotting against his life and in small bands streaming into the city. He therefore had not the courage to come. The people, however, had their spectacles, in spite of his absence, and these were very lavishly and magnificently appointed. 5 For Brutus had purchased a great number of wild beasts, and now gave orders that not one should be sold or left behind, but that all should be used; and he himself went down to Naples and conferred with a very large number of actors; 6 and regarding Canutius, an actor who enjoyed great fame, he wrote to his friends that they should persuade him to go to Rome; for no Greek could properly be compelled to go. He wrote also to Cicero, begging him by all means to attend the spectacles.

22 1 Matters were at such a pass when a fresh turn was given to them by the arrival of the young Caesar. He was a son of Caesar’s niece, but had been formally adopted by him, and left his heir. 2 He was pursuing his studies at Apollonia when Caesar was killed, and had been awaiting him there after his determination to march at once against the Parthians. 3 As soon as he learned of Caesar’s fate, he came to Rome, and as a first step towards winning the favour of the people, assumed the name of Caesar and distributed to the citizens the money which had been left them by his will. Thus he deposed Antony from popular favour, and by a lavish use of money assembled and got together many of Caesar’s veteran soldiers. 4 When Cicero was led by his hatred of Antony to take the side of Octavius Caesar, Brutus rebuked him severely, writing that Cicero did not object to a despot as such, but only feared a despot who hated him, and that when he declared in his letters and speeches that Octavius was a worthy man, his policy meant the choice of a kindly slavery. “Our ancestors, however,” said he, “could not endure even gentle despots.” 5 As for himself, he had not as yet definitely decided, he said, either for war or for peace, but on one thing only was he determined, and that was not to be a slave; 6 and he was amazed, he said, that Cicero dreaded a civil war with all its perils, but was not afraid of a shameful and inglorious peace, and that, as a reward for driving Antony from the tyranny, he asked the privilege of making Octavius tyrant.

23 1 Thus, then, did Brutus express himself in his first letters to Cicero. But already one faction was forming about Octavius, and another about Antony, and the soldiers, as though for sale at auction, flocked to the highest bidder. Altogether despairing, therefore, of the state, Brutus determined to abandon Italy, and came by land through Lucania to Elea by the sea. 2 As Porcia was about to return thence to Rome, she tried to conceal her distress, but a certain painting betrayed her, in spite of her noble spirit hitherto. 3 Its subject was Greek, — Andromache bidding farewell to Hector; she was taking from his arms their little son, while her eyes were fixed upon her husband. 4 When Porcia saw this, the image of her own sorrow presented by it caused her to burst into tears, and she would visit it many times a day and weep before it. 5 And when Acilius, one of the friends of Brutus, recited the verses containing Andromache’s words to Hector,

“But, Hector, thou to me art father and honoured mother

And brother; my tender husband, too, art thou,”

Brutus smiled and said: 6 “But I, certainly, have no mind to address Porcia in the words of Hector,

‘Ply loom and distaff and give orders to thy maids,’

for though her body is not strong enough to perform such heroic tasks as men do, still, in spirit she is valiant in defence of her country, just as we are.” This story is told by Porcia’s son, Bibulus.

24 1 From thence Brutus put to sea and sailed for Athens. Here the people welcomed him eagerly and extolled him in public decrees. He dwelt with a certain guest-friend, attended the lectures of Theomnestus the Academic and Cratippus the Peripatetic, discussed philosophy with them, and was thought to be wholly given up to literary pursuits. 2 But without any one’s suspecting it, he was getting ready for war. For he sent Herostratus into Macedonia, desiring to win over the commanders of the armies there, and he united in his service all the young Romans who were studying at Athens. 3 One of these was Cicero’s son, on whom he bestows high praise, declaring that whether awake or asleep and dreaming, he was amazed to find him of such a noble spirit and such a hater of tyranny.

4 Afterwards he began to act openly, and having learned that Roman transports full of treasure were approaching from Asia, and that an accomplished and well-known man was in command of them, he went to meet him at Carystus. 5 After conferring with him and persuading him to hand over the transports, he prepared an entertainment of unusual splendour; for it was Brutus’s birthday. 6 Accordingly, when they were come to their wine, and were pledging “Victory to Brutus,” and “Liberty to the Romans,” wishing to animate them still more, Brutus called for a larger beaker, and then, when he had received it, without any ostensible reason, recited this verse: —

“But I am slain by baleful Fate and Leto’s son.”

7 And still further, in addition to this, historians tell us that when he was going out to fight his last battle at Philippi, the watchword which he gave out to his soldiers was “Apollo.” Therefore they concluded that when he recited that verse, it also was a presage of his calamity.

25 1 After this, Antistius gave him five hundred thousand drachmas from the moneys which he was personally taking to Italy, and all Pompey’s soldiers who were still wandering about Thessaly gladly flocked to his standard. He also took from Cinna five hundred horsemen that he was conducting to Dolabella in Asia. 2 Then sailing to Demetrias, whence great quantities of arms, which the elder Caesar had ordered to be made for his Parthian war, were being conducted to Antony, he took possession of them. 3 After Hortensius the praetor had delivered up Macedonia to him, and while all the surrounding kings and potentates were uniting on his side, word was brought that Caius, the brother of Antony, had crossed over from Italy and was marching directly to join the forces under Vatinius in Epidamnus and Apollonia. 4 Wishing, therefore, to anticipate his arrival and capture these forces, Brutus suddenly set out with the forces under him and marched through regions difficult of passage, in snow storms, and far in advance of his provision-train. Accordingly, when he had nearly reached Epidamnus, fatigue and cold gave him the distemper called “boulimia.” 5 This attacks more especially men and beasts toiling through snow; whether it is that the vital heat, being wholly shut up within the body by the cold that surrounds and thickens it, consumes its nourishment completely, or that a keen and subtle vapour arising from the melting snow pierces the body and destroy its heat as it issues forth. 6 For the sweat of the body seems to be produced by its heat, and this is extinguished by the cold which meets it at the surface. But I have discussed this matter more at length elsewhere.

26 1 Now, since Brutus was faint, and since not one of his soldiers had anything in the shape of food, his attendants were obliged to have recourse to their enemies, and going down to the gate of the city they asked the sentinels for bread. 2 These, when they heard of the mishap of Brutus, came to him themselves, bringing food and drink. Wherefore Brutus, when the city had surrendered to him, treated not only these men humanely, but also all the other citizens for their sake.

3 When Caius Antonius drew near Apollonia, he summoned the soldiers who were in the vicinity. These, however, went to Brutus, and Caius perceived also that the people of Apollonia favoured the cause of Brutus. He therefore left the city behind and set out for Buthrotum. 4 To begin with, he lost three cohorts on the march, which were cut to pieces by Brutus; next, when he tried to force the positions near Byllis which his opponents had earlier occupied, and joined battle, he was defeated by Cicero. For Brutus employed this young man as general, and won many successes through him. 5 When, however, he came upon Caius in marshy regions and with his forces widely scattered, Brutus would not permit his men to attack them, but rode about giving orders to spare them, in the belief that they would soon be his own. And this actually came to pass. For they surrendered themselves and their general, so that now Brutus had a large force about him. 6 For a long time, then, he held Caius in honour, and would not deprive him of the insignia of his command, although, as we are told, Cicero and many others besides wrote to him from Rome and urged him to put the man to death. 7 However, when Caius began to hold secret communications with the officers of Brutus, and incited a revolt, Brutus put him on board a ship and kept him under guard. 8 And when the soldiers who had been corrupted by Caius withdrew to Apollonia and invited Brutus to come to them there, he told them this was not a Roman custom, but that they must come themselves to their commander and seek to avert his wrath at their transgressions. And when they came and asked his pardon, he granted it.

27 1 But as he was about to cross into Asia, tidings came to him of the change that had taken place at Rome. For Octavius Caesar had been strengthened by the senate against Antony, and after ejecting his rival from Italy, was himself now an object of fear, soliciting the consulship illegally, and maintaining large armies, of which the city had no need. 2 But when he saw that even the senate was displeased at this and turned their eyes abroad to Brutus, confirming him in command of his provinces by their vote, he became afraid. 3 So he sent and invited Antony to become his friend, and then, stationing his forces about the city, secured the consulship, although he was still a mere youth, being in his twentieth year, as he himself has stated in his Commentaries. 4 Straightway, then, he brought indictments for murder against Brutus and his associates, accusing them of having slain the first magistrate of the city without a trial. He appointed Lucius Cornificius to be prosecutor of Brutus, and Marcus Agrippa of Cassius. Accordingly, their cases went by default, the jurors voting under compulsion. 5 And it is said that when the herald on the rostra pronounced the customary summons for Brutus to appear, the multitude groaned audibly, while the better classes bowed their heads in silence; and that Publius Silicius was seen to burst into tears, and was for this reason afterwards put on the list of the proscribed. 6 After this, the three men, Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, were reconciled with one another, distributed the provinces among themselves, and sentenced to death by proscription two hundred men. Among those put to death was Cicero.

28 1 Accordingly, when tidings of these events were brought to Macedonia, Brutus felt compelled to write to Hortensius commanding him to kill Caius Antonius, on the plea that he was thus avenging Cicero and Brutus Albinus, one of whom was his friend, and the other his kinsman. For this reason, at a later time, when Antony had captured Hortensius at the battle of Philippi, he slew him on the tomb of his brother. 2 Brutus, however, says that he felt more shame at the cause of Cicero’s death than grief at the event itself, and threw the blame upon his friends at Rome. He said their servitude was due to themselves rather than to their tyrants, and that they consented to be eyewitnesses of things of which they ought not even to hear.

3 He now crossed into Asia with his army, which was already a splendid one, and equipped a fleet in Bithynia and at Cyzicus, while he himself, proceeding by land, settled the affairs of the cities and gave audiences to the potentates of the country. He also sent to Cassius in Syria, recalling him from his expedition to Egypt; 4 for it was not to win empire for themselves, he said, but to give liberty to their country, that they were wandering about and collecting forces with which to overthrow the tyrants; 5 they must therefore keep their purpose carefully in mind and not get far removed from Italy, but rather hasten thither and give aid to their countrymen.

6 Cassius obeyed, and as he was returning, Brutus went to meet him. Their interview at Smyrna was the first that they had had since they parted at Piraeus and set out, the one for Syria, the other for Macedonia. 7 They therefore derived great pleasure and courage from the forces which each now had. For they had set out from Italy like the most wretched of exiles, without money, without arms, having not a ship equipped with oars, not a single soldier, not a city; but before very long they had met, having a fleet, an army of foot and horse, and money, which made them worthy antagonists in the struggle for supremacy at Rome.

29 1 Now, Cassius was desirous that Brutus and he should have equal honour, but Brutus forestalled this by coming to him generally, since he was an older man and unable to endure the same amount of hardship. 2 Cassius had the reputation of being an able soldier, but harsh in his anger, and with an authority largely based on fear, although with his familiars he was rather prone to laughter and fond of banter. 3 But the virtues of Brutus, as we are told, made him beloved by the multitude, adored by his friends, admired by the nobility, and not hated even by his enemies. For he was remarkably gentle and large-minded, free from all anger, pleasurable indulgence, and greed, and kept his purpose erect and unbending in defence of what was honourable and just. 4 And the strongest reason for the favour and fame which he achieved was the confidence felt in his principles. For no one had expected that Pompey the Great, if he overthrew Caesar, would insist on dismissing his forces in obedience to the laws, but all thought that he would continue to retain his power, appeasing the people by using the name of consulship or dictatorship or some other less obnoxious form of government. 5 And now it was thought that Cassius, vehement and passionate man that he was, and often swept from the path of justice by his passion for gain, was incurring the perils of wars and wanderings principally to establish some great power for himself, and not liberty for his countrymen. 6 For the men of a still earlier time than Pompey and Cassius, men like Cinna and Marius and Carbo, made their country the booty or prize round which they fought, and they all but confessed that they waged war to establish a tyranny. 7 But Brutus, we are told, was not accused even by his enemies of such a departure from his principles; nay, Antony at least, in the hearing of many, declared that in his opinion Brutus was the only conspirator against Caesar who was impelled by the splendour and by what seemed to him the nobility of the enterprise, whereas the rest banded together against the man because they envied and hated him. 8 Wherefore Brutus relied not so much on his armies as on his virtuous cause, as is clear from his letters. 9 When he was already nearing the perilous crisis, he wrote to Atticus that his cause had the fairest outlook that fortune could bestow, for he would either conquer and give liberty to the Roman people, or die and be freed from slavery; and that amid the general security and safety of their lot one thing only was uncertain, namely, whether they were to live as freemen or die. 10 He says also that Mark Antony was paying a fitting penalty for his folly, since, when it was in his power to be numbered with such men as Brutus and Cassius and Cato, he had given himself to Octavius as a mere appendage; 11 and that if he should not now be defeated with him, in a little while he would be fighting him. Herein, then, he seems to have been an excellent prophet.

30 1 At the time when they were in Smyrna, Brutus asked Cassius to give him a part of the large treasure which he had collected, since he had expended what he had himself in building a fleet large enough to give them control of all the Mediterranean. 2 The friends of Cassius, then, tried to dissuade him from giving anything to Brutus, arguing that it was not right that what he was keeping by his frugality and getting together at the price of men’s hatred should be taken by Brutus for the winning of popular favour and the gratification of his soldiers. However, Cassius gave him a third of the whole amount. 3 Then they parted again for their respective undertakings. Cassius took Rhodes, but managed matters there with undue rigour, and that too though he had replied to those who hailed him, when he entered the city, as their lord and king, “Neither lord nor king, but chastiser and slayer of your lord and king.” Brutus, on his part, demanded money and soldiers from the Lycians. 4 But Naucrates, the popular leader, persuaded the cities to revolt, and the inhabitants occupied certain commanding hills in order to prevent the passage of Brutus. Brutus, therefore, in the first place, sent horsemen against them while they were at breakfast, and these slew six hundred of them; 5 next, he took their strongholds and villages, but dismissed all his captives without ransom, in order that he might win the people over by kindness. 6 They were obstinate, however, feeding their anger upon their injuries, and despising his clemency and kindness, until he drove the most warlike of them into Xanthus and laid siege to the city. 7 They tried to escape by swimming under the surface of the river which flowed past the city. But they were caught in nets which were let down deep across the channel; the tops of these had bells attached to them which indicated at once when any one was entangled. 8 Then the Xanthians made a sally by night and set fire to some of the siege-engines, but they were perceived by the Romans and driven back to their walls; and when a brisk wind fanned the flames back towards the battlements and some of the adjoining houses took fire, Brutus, fearing for the safety of the city, ordered his men to assist in putting out the fire.

31 1 But the Lycians were suddenly possessed by a dreadful and indescribable impulse to madness, which can be likened best to a passion for death. 2 At any rate, all ages of them, freemen and slaves with their wives and children, shot missiles from the walls at the enemy who were helping them to combat the flames, and with their own hands brought up reeds and wood and all manner of combustibles, and so spread the fire over the city, feeding it with all sorts of material and increasing its strength and fury in every way. 3 When the flames had darted forth and encircled the city on all sides, and blazed out mightily, Brutus, distressed at what was going on, rode round outside the city in his eagerness to help, and with outstretched hands begged the Xanthians to spare and save their city. No one heeded him, however, but all sought in every way to destroy themselves, 4 men and women alike; nay, even the little children with shouts and shrieks either leaped into the fire, or threw themselves headlong from the walls, or cast themselves beneath their fathers’ swords, baring their throats and begging to be smitten. 5 After the city had been thus destroyed, a woman was seen dangling in a noose; she had a dead child fastened to her neck, and with a blazing torch was trying to set fire to her dwelling. 6 So tragic was the spectacle that Brutus could not bear to see it, and burst into tears on hearing of it; he also proclaimed a prize for any soldier who should succeed in saving the life of a Lycian. But there were only a hundred and fifty, we are told, who did not escape such preservation. 7 So then the Xanthians, after long lapse of time, as though fulfilling a period set by fate for their destruction, had the boldness to renew the calamity of their ancestors; for these too, in the time of the Persian wars, had likewise burned down their city and destroyed themselves.

32 1 When Brutus saw that the city of Patara was holding out strongly against him, he hesitated to attack it, and was in perplexity, fearing that it would be afflicted with the same madness; but as he held some of its women prisoners of war, he released them without ransom. 2 They were the wives and daughters of prominent men, and by rehearsing the praises of Brutus, calling him a man of the greatest moderation and justice, they persuaded them to yield and surrender their city. 3 Consequently all the rest of the Lycians came and entrusted themselves to him, and found that his goodness and kindness exceeded their hopes. 4 For whereas Cassius, about the same time, compelled the Rhodians individually to pay in to him all the gold and silver they possessed (thus accumulating about eight hundred talents), and fined the city as a whole five hundred talents more, Brutus exacted only a hundred and fifty talents from the Lycians, and, without doing them any other injury, set out with his army for Ionia.

33 1 Many were his memorable achievements in meting out rewards or punishments to those who deserved them, but I shall here describe only that in which both he himself and the chief men of Rome took especial pleasure. 2 When Pompey the Great, after he had been stripped of his great power by Caesar, put in as a fugitive at Pelusium in Egypt, the guardians of the boy king were holding a council with their friends, at which opinions differed. Some thought they should receive Pompey, others that they should repulse him from Egypt. 3 But a certain Theodotus, of Chios, who was attached to the king as a paid teacher of rhetoric, and was at this time deemed worthy of a place in the council for lack of better men, declared that both were wrong, both those who would admit and those who would reject Pompey; 4 for there was but one advantageous course in view of the circumstances, and that was to receive him and put him to death. 5 And he added, as he closed his speech, “A dead man does not bite.” The council adopted his opinion, and Pompey the Great lay dead, an example of the unexpected and incredible in human life, and it was the work of Theodotus and his clever rhetoric, as the sophist himself was wont to say with boasting. 6 A little while afterwards, however, when Caesar came, the other wretches paid the penalty for their crime and perished wretchedly; as for Theodotus, after borrowing from Fortune enough time for a wandering, destitute, and inglorious life, he did not escape the notice of Brutus, who at this time traversed Asia, but was brought to him and punished, and won more fame for his death than for his life.

34 1 Brutus now summoned Cassius to Sardis, and as he drew near, went to meet him with his friends; and the whole army, in full array, saluted them both as Imperators. 2 But, as is wont to be the case in great undertakings where there are many friends and commanders, mutual charges and accusations had passed between them, and therefore, immediately after their march and before they did anything else, they met in a room by themselves. The doors were locked, and, with no one by, they indulged in fault-finding first, then in rebukes and denunciations. 3 After this, they were swept along into passionate speeches and tears, and their friends, amazed at the harshness and intensity of their anger, feared so untoward a result; they were, however, forbidden to approach. 4 But Marcus Favonius, who had become a devotee of Cato, and was more impetuous and frenzied than reasonable in his pursuit of philosophy, tried to go in to them, and was prevented by their servants. 5 It was no easy matter, however, to stop Favonius when he sprang to do anything, for he was always vehement and rash. The fact that he was a Roman senator was of no importance in his eyes, and by the “cynical” boldness of his speech he often took away its offensiveness, and therefore men put up with his impertinence as a joke. 6 And so at this time he forced his way through the bystanders and entered the room, reciting in an affected voice the verses wherein Homer represents Nestor as saying: —

“But do ye harken to me, for ye both are younger than I am,”

and so forth. 7 At this Cassius burst out laughing; but Brutus drove Favonius out of the room, calling him a mere dog, and a counterfeit Cynic. However, at the time, this incident put an end to their quarrel, and they separated at once. 8 Furthermore, Cassius gave a supper, to which Brutus invited his friends. And as the guests were already taking their places at the feast, Favonius came, fresh from his bath. Brutus protested that he had come without an invitation, and ordered the servants to conduct him to the uppermost couch; but Favonius forced his way past them and reclined upon the central one.b And over the wine mirth and jest abounded, seasoned with wit and philosophy.

35 1 But on the following day Lucius Pella, a Roman who had been praetor and had enjoyed the confidence of Brutus, being denounced by the Sardians as an embezzler of the public moneys, was condemned by Brutus and disgraced; 2 and the matter vexed Cassius beyond measure. For a few days before, when two friends of his had been convicted of the same misdeeds, he had privately admonished them but publicly acquitted them, and continued to employ them. 3 He therefore found fault with Brutus on the ground that he was too observant of law and justice at a time which demanded a policy of kindness. 4 But Brutus bade him remember the Ides of March, on which they had slain Caesar, not because he was himself plundering everybody, but because he enabled others to do this; 5 since, if there is any good excuse for neglecting justice, it had been better for us to endure the friends of Caesar than to suffer our own to do wrong. 6 “For in the one case,” said he, “we should have had the reputation of cowardice merely; but now, in addition to our toils and perils, we are deemed unjust.” Such were the principles of Brutus.

36 1 When they were about to cross over from Asia, Brutus is said to have had a great sign. 2 He was naturally wakeful, and by practice and self-restraint had reduced his hours of sleep to few, never lying down by day, and by night only when he could transact no business nor converse with any one, since all had gone to rest. 3 At this time, however, when the war was begun and he had in his hands the conduct of a life and death struggle, and was anxiously forecasting the future, he would first doze a little in the evening after eating, and then would spend the rest of the night on urgent business. 4 But whenever he had fully met the demands of such business in shorter time, he would read a book until third watch, at which hour the centurions and tribunes usually came to him. 5 Once, accordingly, when he was about to take his army across from Asia, it was very late at night, his tent was dimly lighted, and all the camp was wrapped in silence. 6 Then, as he was meditating and reflecting, he thought he heard some one coming into the tent. He turned his eyes towards the entrance and beheld a strange and dreadful apparition, a monstrous and fearful shape standing silently by his side. 7 Plucking up courage to question it, “Who art thou,” said he, “of gods or men, and what is thine errand with me?” Then the phantom answered “I am thy evil genius, Brutus, and thou shalt see me at Philippi.” And Brutus, undisturbed, said: “I shall see thee.”

37 1 When the shape had disappeared, Brutus called his servants; but they declared that they had neither heard any words nor seen any apparition, and so he watched the night out. As soon as it was day, however, he sought out Cassius and told him of the apparition. 2 Cassius, who belonged to the school of Epicurus, and was in the habit of taking issue on such topics with Brutus, said: “This is our doctrine, Brutus, that we do not really feel or see everything, but perception by the senses is a pliant and deceitful thing, and besides, the intelligence is very keen to change and transform the thing perceived into any and every shape from one which has no real existence. 3 An impression on the senses is like wax, and the soul of man, in which the plastic material and the plastic power alike exist, can very easily shape and embellish it at pleasure. 4 This is clear from the transformations which occur in dreams, where slight initial material is transformed by the imagination into all sorts of emotions and shapes. 5 The imagination is by nature in perpetual motion, and this motion which it has is fancy, or thought. In thy case, too, the body is worn with hardships and this condition naturally excites and perverts the intelligence. 6 As for genii, it is incredible either that they exist, or, if they do exist, that they have the appearance or the speech of men, or a power that extends to us. For my part, I could wish it were so, in order that not only our men-at arms, and horses, and ships, which are so numerous, but also the assistance of the gods might give us courage, conducting as we do the fairest and holiest enterprises.” With such discourse did Cassius seek to calm Brutus.

7 Furthermore, as the soldiers were embarking, two eagles perched upon the foremost standards and were borne along with them, and they kept the army company, being fed by the soldiers, as far as Philippi. There, only one day before the battle, they flew away.

38 1 Most of the peoples encountered on the march Brutus had already brought into subjection; and now, whatever city or potentate had been omitted, they won them all over, and advanced as far as the Thasian sea. 2 There Norbanus and his army were encamped, at what were called The Narrows, and near Symbolum; but they surrounded him and compelled him to withdraw and abandon his positions. 3 They almost captured his forces, too, since Octavius was delayed by sickness; and they would have done so had not Antony come to his aid with such astonishing swiftness that Brutus could not believe it. 4 Octavius came, however, ten days later, and encamped over against Brutus, while Antony faced Cassius.

The plains between the armies the Romans call Campi Philippi, and Roman forces of such size had never before encountered one another. 5 In numbers the army of Brutus was much inferior to that of Octavius, but in the splendid decoration of its arms it presented a wonderful sight. 6 For most of their armour was covered with gold and silver, although in other matters he accustomed his officers to adopt a temperate and restricted regimen. 7 But he thought that the wealth which they held in their hands and wore upon their persons gave additional spirit to the more ambitious, and made the covetous even more warlike, since they clung to their armour as to so much treasure.

39 1 Octavius and Antony now made a lustration of their armies in their camps, and then distributed a little meal and five drachmas to every man for a sacrifice; 2 but Brutus and Cassius, despising their enemies’ poverty or parsimony, first made lustration of their armies in the open field, as the custom is, and then distributed great numbers of cattle for sacrifice among their cohorts, and fifty drachmas to every soldier, and thus, in the goodwill and zeal of their forces, they were at an advantage. 3 However, it was thought that Cassius had a baleful sign during the lustration; for the lictor brought him his wreath turned upside down. 4 And it is said that before this, also, in a procession at some festival, a golden victory belonging to Cassius, which was being borne along, fell to the ground, its bearer having slipped. 5 And besides, many carrion birds hovered over the camp daily, and swarms of bees were seen clustering at a certain place inside the camp; 6 this place the soothsayers shut off from the rest of the camp, in order to avert by their rites the superstitious fears which were gradually carrying even Cassius himself away from his Epicurean doctrines, and which had altogether subjugated his soldiers.

7 For these reasons Cassius was not eager to have the issue decided by battle at present, but thought it best to protract the war, since they were strong financially, although inferior in the number of their arms and men. 8 Brutus, however, even before this had been anxious to have the issue decided by the speediest of hazards, that he might either restore freedom to his country, or relieve mankind of calamitous expenditures and requisitions for military service. At this time, too, he saw that his horsemen were successful and victorious in the preliminary skirmishes, and was therefore lifted up in spirit. 9 Besides, sundry desertions to the enemy, and suspicions and assertions that others would follow, brought many of the friends of Cassius in the council over to the side of Brutus. 10 But one of the friends of Brutus, Atillius, opposed his wishes, and urged delay till winter at least was past. And when Brutus asked him how he thought he would be better off another year, “If in no other way,” said Atillius, “I shall have lived longer.” 11 At this answer Cassius was vexed, and the rest also were not a little annoyed by Atillius. So it was presently decided to give battle on the next day.

40 1 Brutus was full of hopefulness at supper, and after engaging in philosophical discussion, went to rest; but Cassius, as Messala tells us, supped in private with a few of his intimates, and was seen to be silent and pensive, contrary to his usual nature. 2 When supper was over, he grasped Messala’s hand warmly, and, speaking in Greek, as was his custom when he would show affection, said: 3 “I call thee to witness, Messala, that I am in the same plight as Pompey the Great, in that I am forced to hazard the fate of my country on the issue of a single battle. With good courage, however, let us fix our waiting eyes on fortune, of whom, even though our counsels be infirm, it is not right that we should be distrustful.” 4 With these last words to him, Messala says, Cassius embraced him; and he had already invited him to supper on the following day, which was his birthday.

5 As soon as it was day, a scarlet tunic, the signal for battle, was displayed before the camps of Brutus and Cassius, and they themselves came together into the space between their armies. 6 Here Cassius said: “May we be victorious, Brutus, and ever afterwards share a mutual prosperity; but since the most important of human affairs are most uncertain, and since, if the battle goes contrary to our wishes, we shall not easily see one another again, what is thy feeling about flight and death?” 7 And Brutus made answer: “When I was a young man, Cassius, and without experience of the world, I was led, I know not how, to speak too rashly for a philosopher. I blamed Cato for making away with himself, on the ground that it was impious and unmanly to yield to one’s evil genius, not accepting fearlessly whatever befalls, but running away. 8 In my present fortunes, however, I am become of a different mind; and if God does not decide the present issue in our favour, I do not ask once more to put fresh hopes and preparations to the test, but I will go hence with words of praise for Fortune; on the Ides of March I gave my own life to my country, and since then, for her sake, I have lived another life of liberty and glory.” 9 At these words Cassius smiled, and after embracing Brutus, said: “Thus minded, let us go against the enemy; for either we shall be victorious, or we shall not fear the victors.”

10 After this, they conferred together about the order of battle in the presence of their friends. And Brutus asked Cassius that he might have command of the right wing himself, although his years and experience made this post more appropriate for Cassius. 11 However, Cassius not only granted him this favour, but also ordered Messala with the most warlike of the legions to take position on the right. 12 Brutus at once led out his horsemen magnificently equipped, and with no less promptness put his infantry also in array.

41 1 The soldiers of Antony were engaged in running trenches from the marshes, at which they were encamped, into the plain, thus cutting off Cassius from access to the sea. 2 Octavius was quietly watching the course of events, — not being present in person, owing to sickness, but his forces for him; they had no expectation at all that their enemies would give battle, but thought they would merely sally out against the works and with light missiles and clamorous cries try to disturb the workers in the trenches. 3 So paying no attention to their opponents, they were amazed at the loud and confused outcries which came to them from the trenches. 4 At this point, while ticketsc with the watchword written upon them were being carried to his officers from Brutus, and while Brutus himself was riding along past the legions and encouraging them, few of his men succeeded in hearing the watchword as it was passed along, but most of them, without waiting for it, with one impulse and with one war-cry, rushed upon the enemy. 5 This disorder threw the legions out of line and touch with one another, and first that of Messala, then those that had been drawn up with it, went beyond the left wing of Octavius; 6 they had only a brief contact with its outermost lines, and slew only a few men, but outflanked it and burst into their camp. 7 And Octavius, as he himself tells us in his Commentaries, in consequence of a vision which visited one of his friends, Marcus Artorius, and ordered that Octavius should rise up from his bed and depart from the camp, barely succeeded in having himself carried forth, and was thought to have been slain. 8 For his litter, when empty, was pierced by the javelins and spears of his enemies. Those who were taken prisoners in the camp were slaughtered, and two thousand Lacedaemonians who had recently come as auxiliaries were cut to pieces along with them.

42 1 The legions of Brutus which had not outflanked the forces of Octavius, but engaged them in battle, easily routed them in their confusion and cut to pieces three legions at close quarters; then they dashed into their camp with the fugitives, borne on by the impetus of their victory and carrying Brutus with them. 2 But here the vanquished saw an opportunity of which the victors were not aware; for they charged upon the broken and exposed parts of their opponents’ line, from which the right wing had been drawn away in pursuit. The centre did not yield to them, but fought them vigorously; the left wing, however, owing to their disorder and ignorance of what had happened, they routed and pursued into their camp, which they sacked. Neither of the generals was with his men; 3 for Antony, we are told, turned aside from the attack at the outset and withdrew into the marsh, and was nowhere to be seen after he had forsaken his camp; indeed, sundry soldiers declared that they had slain him, showing Brutus their bloody swords and describing his youthful appearance. 4 But presently the centre drove back their opponents with great slaughter, and it appeared that Brutus was completely victorious, as Cassius was completely defeated. 5 And one thing alone brought ruin to their cause, namely, that Brutus thought Cassius victorious and did not go to his aid, while Cassius thought Brutus dead and did not wait for his aid; since Messala considers it a certain proof of the victory that he captured three eagles and many standards from the enemy, while they took nothing.

6 As Brutus was returning from his victory, the camp of Caesar having been already destroyed, he was amazed not to see the tent of Cassius towering above the others, as usual, nor the other tents in their wonted place; for most of them had been demolished at once when the enemy burst in. 7 But the sharper sighted among his companions told him they could see many helmets gleaming, and many silver breastplates moving about in the camp of Cassius; 8 they did not think that either the number or the armour was that of the garrison left behind; however, they said, there were not so many dead bodies visible there as might have been expected if so many legions had been overwhelmed. 9 This was what first made Brutus aware of the calamity; and leaving a guard in the captured camp of the enemy, he called his men back from the pursuit and united his forces with the purpose of assisting Cassius.

43 1 With Cassius matters had gone as follows. He had been disturbed to see the first sally of the troops of Brutus, which was made without watchword or command, and when, being victorious, they rushed at once after booty and spoil, with no thought for the envelopment of the enemy, he was vexed at the way things were going. 2 Besides, exercising his command with hesitation and delay rather than with readiness and decision, he was enveloped by the enemy’s right wing. His horsemen at once broke away in flight towards the sea, and seeing his infantry also giving ground, he tried to rally them. 3 He snatched the standard from a standard-bearer who was in flight, and planted it in the ground before him, although not even his body-guard were inclined to hold together any more. 4 Thus, then, under compulsion, he withdrew with a few followers to a hill overlooking the plain. But he himself could see nothing, or next to nothing, of the sacking of his camp, for his vision was weak; the horsemen about him, however, saw a great troop riding up which Brutus had sent. 5 But Cassius conjectured that they were enemies, and in pursuit of him. Nevertheless, he sent out one of those who were with him, Titinius, to reconnoitre. 6 The horsemen spied this man as he came towards them, and when they saw that he was a trusted friend of Cassius, his intimates, shouting for joy, leaped from their horses and embraced him warmly, while the rest rode round him with shouts and clashing of arms, thus, in their boundless joy, working the greatest mischief.

7 For Cassius thought that Titinius was actually taken by the enemy, and with the words “My love of life has brought me to the pass of seeing a friend seized by the enemy,” he withdrew into an empty tent, forcing along with him one of his freedmen, Pindarus, whom, after the disaster which befell Crassus, he used to keep in readiness for this emergency. 8 From the Parthians, indeed, he had made his escape; but now, drawing his robes up over his face and laying bare his neck, he offered it to the sword. For his head was found severed from his body. Pindarus, however, no man saw after the bloody deed, and therefore some have thought that he slew his master unbidden. 9 A little later it became evident who the horsemen were, and Titinius, whom they had crowned with garlands, came up to report to Cassius. But when the lamentable cries of his distressed and weeping friends made known to him the grievous fate of his general and his error, he drew his sword, reproached himself bitterly for his slowness, and slew himself.

44 1 When Brutus learned of the defeat of Cassius, he rode towards him, but heard of his death when he was already near his camp. 2 He mourned over the body, and called Cassius “the last of the Romans,” implying that such an exalted spirit could no longer arise in the city. Then he decked the body for burial and sent it to Thasos, in order that the funeral rites might not disturb the camp. 3 He himself, however, assembled the soldiers of Cassius and comforted them; and seeing that they were deprived of all the necessaries of life, he promised them two thousand drachmas the man, to make good what they had lost. 4 They were encouraged by his words and amazed at the largeness of his gift; and they sent him on his way with shouts, exalting him as the only one of the four commanders who had not been defeated in the battle. 5 And the results bore witness that his confidence in a victory in the battle was well grounded; for with a few legions he routed all those opposed to him. 6 And if he had employed them all in fighting, and if the most of them had not passed by the enemy and set upon the enemy’s possessions, it would seem that his victory must have been complete.

45 1 There fell on his side eight thousand men, including the camp servants whom Brutus called Briges; but the enemy, in the opinion of Messala, lost more than twice as many. 2 They were therefore the more dejected of the two, until an attendant of Cassius, named Demetrius, came to Antony in the evening, bringing the robes and the sword which he had taken at once from the dead body. This encouraged them so much that at break of day they led their forces out arrayed for battle. 3 But both the camps over which Brutus had command were in dangerous straits. His own was filled with prisoners of war and required a heavy guard; while that of Cassius was dissatisfied with the change of commanders, and besides, as vanquished men, they were full of hatred and jealousy towards those who had been victorious. Brutus therefore decided to put his army in array, but to refrain from battle. 4 Moreover, the multitude of slaves among his captives were found suspiciously moving about among the men-at arms, and he ordered them to be put to death; of the freemen, however, he released some, declaring that they had more truly been captured by his enemies, in whose hands they were prisoners and slaves, while with him they were freemen and citizens; 5 and when he saw that his friends and officers were implacably hostile to them, he saved their lives by hiding them and helping them to escape. 6 Among the prisoners there was a certain Volumnius, an actor, and Saculio, a buffoon, to whom Brutus paid no attention; but the friends of Brutus brought them forward and denounced them for not refraining even now from insolent and mocking speeches to them. 7 Brutus had nothing to say, being concerned about other matters, but Messala Corvinus gave his opinion that they should be publicly flogged and then sent back naked to the enemy’s generals, in order to let these know what sort of boon companions they required on their campaigns. At this some of the bystanders burst out laughing, 8 but Publius Casca, the one who first smote Caesar, said: “It is not meet for us to celebrate the funeral rites of Cassius with jests and mirth; and thou, Brutus, wilt show what esteem thou hast for the memory of that general according as thou punishest or shieldest those who will abuse and revile him.” 9 To this Brutus, in high dudgeon, said: “Why, then, do ye enquire of me, Casca, instead of doing what seems best to you?” This answer was taken to be a condemnation of the poor wretches, and they were led off and put to death.

46 1 After this, he gave the soldiers their promised rewards, and after gently chiding them for not getting the watchword and for rushing upon the enemy without command and in great disorder, he promised that if they now fought well, he would turn over to them two cities for plunder and booty, Thessalonica and Lacedaemon. 2 This is the only accusation in the life of Brutus against which no defence can be made, even though Antony and Octavius practised far greater cruelty than this in rewarding their soldiers, and drove her ancient inhabitants out of almost the whole of Italy, in order that their followers might get land and cities to which they had no right. 3 But in their minds conquest and dominion were the end and object of the war; whereas Brutus had such a reputation for virtue with the multitude that he was not permitted either to conquer or to gain safety except with honour and justice, especially now that Cassius was dead, who was accused of leading Brutus with him into some acts of violence. 4 But just as sailors, when their rudder has been shattered, try to fit and fasten other timbers in its place, striving to meet their needs, not well, indeed, but as best they can, so Brutus, not having in his great army and dangerous plight a general who was equal to the emergency, was forced to employ such as he had, and to do and say many things which they approved. 5 And so he decided to do whatever they thought would make the soldiers of Cassius better men. For these were very intractable; their lack of a leader made them bold in camp, while their defeat made them afraid to face the enemy.

47 1 But Octavius and Antony were no better off; they were scantily provisioned, and the low site of their camp made them expect a grievous winter. 2 For they were huddled together on the edge of marshes, and the autumn rains which fell after the battle kept filling their tents with mud and water that froze at once, so cold was the weather. 3 Moreover, while they were in this plight, word came to them of the disaster that had befallen them at sea. For a large force which was being brought from Italy by command of Octavius was attacked by the ships of Brutus and destroyed, and the small remnant of them that escaped their enemies were driven by hunger to subsist on the sails and tackle of their ships. 4 On hearing of this, they were eager to have the issue decided by battle before Brutus learned what great good fortune had come to him. 5 But by some chance, rather than by the fault of his naval commanders, Brutus was ignorant of their success until twenty days afterwards. 6 Otherwise he would not have proceeded to a second battle, since his army was supplied with provisions for a long time, and he was posted in an advantageous position, so that his camp did not suffer from wintry weather, and on the side towards the enemy was almost impregnable, while his secure mastery of the sea and the victory of the land forces under his own command had put him in high hopes and spirits.

7 But since, as it would seem, the government of Rome could no longer be a democracy, and a monarchy was necessary, Heaven, wishing to remove from the scene the only man who stood in the way of him who was able to be sole master, cut off from Brutus the knowledge of that good fortune, although it very nearly reached him in time; 8 for only one day before the battle which he was about to fight, late in the day, a certain Clodius deserted from the enemy, and brought word that Octavius had learned of the destruction of his fleet and was therefore eager for a decisive struggle. 9 The man found no credence for his story, nor did he even come into the presence of Brutus, but was altogether despised; it was thought that either he had heard an idle tale, or was bringing false tidings in order to win favour.

48 1 On that night, they say, the phantom visited Brutus again, manifesting the same appearance as before, but went away without a word. 2 Publius Volumnius, however, a philosopher, and a companion of Brutus in all his campaigns, makes no mention of this omen, but says that the foremost standard was covered with bees; 3 and that of its own accord the arm of one of the officers sweated oil of roses, and though they often rubbed and wiped it off, it was of no avail. 4 He says also that just before the battle itself two eagles fought a pitched battle with one another in the space between the camps, and as all were gazing at them, while an incredible silence reigned over the plain, the eagle towards Brutus gave up the fight and fled. 5 And the story of the Ethiopian is well known, who, as the gate of the camp was thrown open, met the standard-bearer, and was cut to pieces by the soldiers, who thought his appearance ominous.

49 1 After Brutus had led out his forces in battle array and stationed them over against the enemy, he waited a long time; for as he was reviewing his troops he became suspicious of some of them, and heard them accused of treachery; 2 he saw, too, that his horsemen were not very eager to begin the battle, but always waited to see what the infantry did. 3 Then, of a sudden, a man who was a good soldier and had been conspicuously honoured for his bravery by Brutus, rode out of the ranks and went over to the enemy; his name was Camulatus. 4 The sight of this gave Brutus great distress; and partly from anger, partly because he was afraid of greater treachery and desertion, he led at once against the enemy, at about three o’clock in the afternoon. 5 With the part under his own immediate command he was victorious, and advanced, pressing hard upon the retreating left wing of the enemy; his cavalry, too, dashed forward along with the infantry and fell upon a disordered foe; 6 the other wing, however, which was extended by its commanders to prevent their being surrounded by the enemy, to whom they were inferior in numbers, was thus weakened in the centre and could not hold out against their opponents, but fled first. 7 After cutting their way through this wing, the enemy at once enveloped Brutus. He himself displayed all the valour possible in a soldier and commander, contending with judgment and personal prowess for victory in the terrible crisis; but that which was an advantage for him in the former battle was a detriment to him now. 8 For in the former battle the conquered wing of the enemy had been at once destroyed, but when the soldiers of Cassius were routed, only few of them were slain, and those who then escaped, rendered fearful now by their former defeat, filled the greater part of his army with dejection and confusion. 9 Here Marcus the son of Cato also, fighting among the bravest and noblest young men, was overpowered, but would not yield nor fly, but plying his sword, and declaring that he was Marcus Cato and Marcus Cato’s son, fell dead upon the many enemies whom he had slain. 10 The bravest of the rest fell also, risking their lives in defence of Brutus.

50 1 Now, there was a certain Lucilius, a brave man, among the comrades of Brutus. This man, seeing some barbarian horsemen ignoring all others in their pursuit and riding impetuously after Brutus, determined at the risk of his life to stop them. 2 So falling behind a little, he told them that he was Brutus. The Barbarians believed him because he asked them to conduct him to Antony, pretending to be afraid of Octavius but to have no fear of Antony. 3 They were delighted with their unexpected prize, and thinking themselves amazingly fortunate, led Lucilius along in the darkness which had now fallen, after sending ahead some messengers to Antony. 4 Antony himself was pleased, of course, and set out to meet the escort, and all the rest also who learned that Brutus was being brought in alive flocked together, some thinking him to be pitied for his misfortune, others that he was unworthy of his fame in thus allowing his love of life to make him a prey of Barbarians. 5 When they were near, however, Antony paused, at a loss to know how to receive Brutus; but Lucilius, as he was brought forward, said with great boldness: “Marcus Brutus, O Antony, no foe has taken or can take; may fortune not so far prevail over virtue! 6 Nay, he will be found living, or possibly even lying dead as becomes him. It is by cheating these soldiers of thine that I am come, and I am ready to suffer for it any fatal penalty.” 7 When Lucilius had thus spoken and all were in amazement, Antony turned to his conductors and said: “I suppose, my fellow soldiers, you are vexed at your mistake and think that you have been flouted; 8 but be assured that you have taken a better prey than that you sought. For you sought an enemy, but you come bringing me a friend. Since, by the gods, I know not how I could have treated Brutus, had he come into my hands alive; but such men as this I would have my friends rather than my enemies.” 9 With these words he embraced Lucilius, and for the time being put him in charge of one of his friends, but ever afterwards found in him a sure and trusty helper.

51 1 But Brutus, after crossing a brook which ran among trees and had precipitous banks, would go no further, since it was already dark, but sat down in a hollow place with a great rock in front of it, having a few officers and friends about him. First, he turned his eyes to the heavens, which were studded with stars, and recited two verses, one of which Volumnius has recorded: —

O Zeus, do not forget the author of these ills!”

2 the other Volumnius says he has forgotten. Then, after a little, he called the name of each of his comrades who had fallen in the battle to defend him, groaning most heavily at the mention of Flavius and Labeo. Labeo was his legate, and Flavius his chief of engineers. 3 At this point, someone who was thirsty himself and saw that Brutus was thirsty too, took a helmet and ran down to the river. Then a noise fell upon their ears from the opposite direction, and Volumnius went forth to reconnoitre, and with him Dardanus his shield-bearer. 4 After a little while, however, they returned, and asked about the water to drink. Whereupon, with a very expressive smile, Brutus said to Volumnius: “It is drunk up; but another draught shall be fetched for you.” Then the same man who had brought the first was sent for more, but he ran the risk of being captured by the enemy, was wounded, and with difficulty came off safe. 5 Now, since Brutus conjectured that not many of his men had been killed in the battle, Statyllius promised him that after cutting his way through the enemy (there was no other way) he would reconnoitre the camp, raise a blazing torch if he found things there in safety, and then come back to him. 6 Accordingly, the blazing torch was raised, since Statyllius succeeded in reaching the camp; but after a long time had passed and he did not return, Brutus said: “If Statyllius is alive, he will come back.” But it so happened that he fell in with the enemy on his way back, and was slain.

52 1 As the night advanced, Brutus turned, just as he sat, towards his servant Cleitus, and talked with him. And when Cleitus wept and made no answer, Brutus next drew Dardanus his shield-bearer and had some private conversation with him. 2 Finally, he spoke to Volumnius himself in Greek, reminding him of their student life, and begged him to grasp his sword with him and help him drive home the blow. 3 And when Volumnius refused, and the rest likewise, and some one said they must not tarry but fly, Brutus rose and said: “By all means must we fly; not with our feet, however, but with our hands.” 4 Then, after clasping each by the hand, with a very cheerful countenance he said he rejoiced with exceeding joy that not one of his friends had proved false to him, and as for Fortune, he blamed her only for his country’s sake; 5 himself he regarded as more to be envied than his conquerors, not yesterday and the day before merely, but even now, since he was leaving behind him a reputation for virtue, which those who surpassed in arms or wealth would not do; since the world would believe that base and unjust men who put to death the good and just were unfit to rule. 6 Then, after earnestly entreating them to save themselves, he withdrew a little way in the company of two or three friends, among whom was Strato, who had been his intimate since they studied rhetoric together. 7 This man he placed nearest to himself, and then, grasping with both hands the hilt of his naked sword, he fell upon it and died. 8 Some, however, say that it was not Brutus himself, but Strato, who at his very urgent request, and with averted eyes, held the sword in front of him, upon which he fell with such force that it passed quite through his breast and brought him instant death.

53 1 As for this Strato Messala, the comrade of Brutus, after a reconciliation with Octavius, once found occasion to introduce him to his new master, and said, with a burst of tears: “This is the man, O Caesar, who did the last kind office for my dear Brutus.” 2 Accordingly, Strato was kindly received by Octavius, who, in his subsequent labours, and especially at the battle of Actium, found him, as well as other Greeks, a brave partisan. 3 And it is said that Messala himself was once praised by Octavius because, though at Philippi he had been most hostile to him and Antony for the sake of Brutus, at Actium he had been a most zealous adherent of his; whereupon Messala said: “Indeed, O Caesar, I have ever been on the better and juster side.”

4 When Antony found Brutus lying dead, he ordered the body to be wrapped in the most costly of his own robes and afterwards, on hearing that the robe had been stolen, put the thief to death. The ashes of Brutus he sent home to his mother Servilia. 5 As for Porcia, the wife of Brutus, Nicolaüs the philosopher, as well as Valerius Maximus, relates that she now desired to die, but was opposed by all her friends, who kept strict watch upon her; whereupon she snatched up live coals from the fire, swallowed them, kept her mouth fast closed, and thus made away with herself. 6 And yet there is extant a letter of Brutus to his friends in which he chides them with regard to Porcia and laments her fate, because she was neglected by them and therefore driven by illness to prefer death to life. 7 It would seem, then, that Nicolaüs was mistaken in the time of her death, since her distemper, her love for Brutus, and the manner of her death, are also indicated in the letter, if, indeed, it is a genuine one.

Comparison of Dion and Brutus

1 1 We see, therefore, that both men had many noble traits, and especially that they rose to the greatest heights from the most inconsiderable beginnings; but this is most to the credit of Dion. 2 For he had no one to dispute his eminence, as Brutus had in Cassius, a man whose virtue and fame did not inspire confidence in like degree, but who, by reason of his boldness, ability, and efficiency, contributed no less than Brutus did to the war; 3 indeed, some attribute to him the origin of the whole enterprise, declaring that he took the lead in the plot against Caesar when Brutus was passive. 4 Dion, however, appears to have acquired by his own efforts, not only arms and vessels and a military force, but also friends and co workers for his enterprise. 5 However, Dion did not, like Brutus, win wealth and power from the course of the war itself, nay, he contributed his own wealth for the war, expending in behalf of the liberty of his countrymen those resources which supported him in his exile. 10106 And further, it was not safe for Brutus and Cassius to keep quiet after their banishment from Rome, but since they were condemned to death and pursued, it was of necessity that they resorted to war; and in committing their persons to the protection of their arms they incurred danger in their own behalf rather than in behalf of their countryman; 7 whereas Dion was living with greater confidence and pleasure in his banishment than the tyrant who banished him, and yet of his own accord he hazarded a peril so great in order to save Sicily.

2 1 And verily it was not a like thing for Syracuse to be rid of Dionysius and Rome of Caesar. For Dionysius was even an avowed tyrant, and filled Sicily with countless ills; 2 whereas the rule of Caesar, although during its establishment it gave no little trouble to its opponents, still, after they had been overpowered and had accepted it, they saw that it was a tyranny only in name and appearance, and no cruel or tyrannical act was authorized by it; nay, it was plain that the ills of the state required a monarchy, and that Caesar, like a most gentle physician, had been assigned to them by Heaven itself. 3 Therefore the Roman people felt at once a yearning for Caesar, and in consequence became harsh and implacable towards his murders; whereas Dion, for letting Dionysius escape from Syracuse, and for not demolishing the tomb of the former tyrant, was held most culpable by his countrymen.

3 1 Next, as regards their actual military achievements, Dion was a consummate general; where he himself made the plans, he achieved the best results, and where failure was due to others, he restored and bettered the situation. 2 Brutus, on the other hand, as it seems, was unwise in entering upon the last supreme struggle, and when he was defeated, could not find a way to restore his cause, but gave up and abandoned his hopes, not even facing adverse fortune with as much resolution as Pompey, 3 and that too although on land he had much ground for confidence left in his troops, and with his fleet was secure master of all the sea.

4 Moreover, the gravest charge which is brought against Brutus, namely, that although his life was spared by the kindness of Caesar, together with the lives of all the fellow captives for whom he wished to intercede, and although Caesar held him a friend and honoured him above many, he struck down his preserver with his own hand, — this charge no one can bring against Dion. 5 On the contrary, while he was a courtier and friend of Dionysius, he tried to set the state in order and help in preserving it; but when he had been banished from his country, wronged as a husband, and deprived of his property, he openly resorted to a war that was lawful and just. 6 Or does this argument reverse itself at once? For that which redounds to the praise of both men is their hostility to tyrants and hatred of their baseness, and this is disinterested and sincere in the case of Brutus, since without any private grievance against Caesar he risked his life for the common liberty; 7 whereas, had not Dion himself been mistreated, he would not have gone to war. And this is made manifest by the letters of Plato, from which it is clear that Dion did not revolt, but was cast out from the tyranny, and therefore overthrew Dionysius. 8 Still further, it was the public good that made Brutus a friend even to Pompey, who was his foe, and an enemy to Caesar, since he determined both hatred and friendship by justice alone; 9 Dion, on the other hand, gave Dionysius much support in order to win his favour, when he was secure in his confidence, and when he was discredited by him, it was to gratify anger that he went to war. 10 Therefore Dion was not trusted even by all his friends, who felt that after removing Dionysius he might secure the government for himself, enticing his countrymen along by some milder name than that of tyranny; 11 but the enemies of Brutus were wont to say that of all the conspirators against Caesar he alone had one aim from first to last, namely the restoration to the Romans of their ancient form of government.

4 1 However, apart from these considerations, the struggle against Dionysius was surely unlike that against Caesar. 2 For Dionysius must have been despised by every one of his associates, devoted as he was to wine, dice, and women; 3 but to plan the overthrow of Caesar, and not to fear the ability, power, and good fortune of the man whose very man robbed the kings of Parthia and India of their sleep, betokened an extraordinary spirit, and one which fear could never induce to remit its lofty purposes. 4 Therefore Dion had only to be seen in Sicily, and many thousands joined him in attacking Dionysius; whereas the fame of Caesar, even after he had fallen, supported his friends, and his name raised the helpless boy who adopted it to be at once the foremost Roman, and he wore it as a charm against the power and hatred of Antony.

5 But should it be objected that Dion cast out the tyrant only after great struggles, while Brutus slew Caesar unarmed and unguarded, this very circumstance was a result of the highest ability and generalship, namely, that a man enveloped in such great power should be taken unarmed and unguarded. 6 For not on a sudden, nor alone, or with a few helpers only, did he fall upon him and slay him, nay, his plan was long in forming, and his attack was made with many helpers, not one of whom proved false to him. For either he chose out at once the best men, or his choice of them before others, and his confidence in them, made them good. 7 But Dion either chose unwisely and entrusted himself to bad men, or else treated the men of his choice so as to turn them from good to bad, neither of which mistakes a prudent man ought to make. 8 And in fact Plato censures him for choosing such friends as proved his ruin.

5 1 Further, no one arose to avenge Dion’s death; but in the case of Brutus, Antony, an enemy, gave him illustrious burial, and Octavius, an enemy, actually took care to preserve his honours. 2 For a bronze statue of him stood in Mediolanum in Cisalpine Gaul. This statue, at a later time, Octavius noticed as he passed by, for it was a good likeness and an artistic piece of work; then stopping, after a little, in the hearing of many he summoned the magistrates and declared that he had caught their city violating its treaty and harbouring an enemy of his. 3 At first, then, as was natural, they denied it, and looked at one another in perplexity, not knowing what he meant. Then Octavius, turning to the statue and knitting his brows, said: “Well, is not this an enemy of mine who stands here?” At this, the magistrates were still more dumbfounded and held their peace. 4 But Octavius, with a smile, praised the Gauls because they were true to their friends even in adversity, and gave orders that the statue should remain where it was.

SEPARATE LIVES

Artaxerxes

11 The first Artaxerxes, preëminent among the kings of Persia for gentleness and magnanimity, was surnamed Longimanus, because his right hand was longer than his left, and was the son of Xerxes; the second Artaxerxes, the subject of this Life, was surnamed Memor,a or Mindful, and was the grandson of the first by his daughter Parysatis. For Dareius and Parysatis had four sons — an eldest, Artaxerxes, and next to him Cyrus, and after these Ostanes and Oxathres. 2 Cyrus took his name from Cyrus of old, who, as they say, was named from the sun; for “Cyrus” is the Persian word for sun. Artaxerxes was at first called Arsicas; although Deinon gives the name as Oarses. But it is unlikely that Ctesias, even if he has put into his work a perfect farrago of extravagant and incredible tales, should be ignorant of the name of the king at whose court he lived as physician to the king’s wife and mother and children.

2 1 Now Cyrus, from his very earliest years, was high-strung and impetuous, but Artaxerxes seemed gentler in everything and naturally milder in his impulses. His wife, a beautiful and excellent woman, he married in compliance with his parents’ bidding, and kept her in defiance of them; for after the king had put her brother to death, he wished to kill her also. 2 But Arsicas, throwing himself at his mother’s feet and supplicating her with many tears, at last obtained her promise that his wife should neither be killed nor separated from him. But the mother had more love for Cyrus, and wished that he should succeed to the throne. Therefore when his father was now lying sick, Cyrus was summoned home from the sea-coast, and went up in full hope that by his mother’s efforts he had been designated as successor to the kingdom. 3 For Parysatis had a specious argument (the same that Xerxes the Elder employed on the advice of Demaratus), to the effect that she had borne Arsicas to Dareius when he was in private station, but Cyrus when he was a king. However, she could not prevail, but the elder son was declared king, under the new name of Artaxerxes, while Cyrus remained satrap of Lydia and commander of the forces in the maritime provinces.

3 1 A little while after the death of Dareius, the new king made an expedition to Pasargadae, that he might receive the royal initiation at the hands of the Persian priests. Here there is a sanctuary of a warlike goddess whom one might conjecture to be Athena. 2 Into this sanctuary the candidate for initiation must pass, and after laying aside his own proper robe, must put on that which Cyrus the Elder used to wear before he became king; then he must eat of a cake of figs, chew some turpentine-wood, and drink a cup of sour milk. Whatever else is done besides this is unknown to outsiders. 3 As Artaxerxes was about to perform these rites, Tissaphernes brought to him a certain priest who had conducted Cyrus through the customary discipline for boys, had taught him the wisdom of the Magi, and was thought to be more distressed than any one in Persia because his pupil had not been declared king. 4 For this reason, too, his accusation against Cyrus won credence. And he accused him of planning to lie in wait for taking in the sanctuary until he should put off his garment, and then to fall upon him and kill him. Some say that Cyrus was arrested in consequence of this false charge, others that he actually made his way into the sanctuary and hid himself there, and was delivered into custody by the priest. 5 But now, as he was about to be put to death, his mother clasped him in her arms, twined her tresses about him, pressed his neck against her own, and by much lamentation and entreaty prevailed upon the king to spare him, and sent him back to the sea-coast. Here he was not satisfied with the office assigned to him, nor mindful of his release, but only of his arrest; and his anger made him more eager than before to secure the kingdom.

4 1 Some say that he revolted from the king because his allowance did not suffice for his daily meals, which is absurd. For had no other resource been his, still, his mother was resource enough, who gave freely from her own wealth all that he wished to take and use. And that he had wealth is proved by the mercenary troops that were maintained for him in many places by his friends and connections, as Xenophon tells us. For he did not bring these together into one body, since he was still trying to conceal his preparations, but in one place and another, and on many pretexts, he kept recruiting-agents. 2 And as for the king’s suspicions, his mother, who was at court, tried to remove them, and Cyrus himself would always write in a submissive vein, sometimes asking favours from him, and sometimes making countercharges against Tissaphernes, as if his eager contention were against him.

3 There was, too, a certain dilatoriness in the nature of the king, which most people took for clemency. Moreover, in the beginning he appeared to be altogether emulous of the gentleness of the Artaxerxes whose name he bore, showing himself very agreeable in intercourse, and bestowing greater honours and favours than were really deserved, while from all his punishments he took away the element of insult or vindictive pleasure, and in his acceptance and bestowal of favours appeared no less gracious and kindly to the givers than to the recipients. 4 For there was no gift so small that he did not accept it with alacrity; indeed, when a certain Omisus brought him a single pomegranate of surpassing size, he said: “By Mithra, this man would speedily make a city great instead of small were he entrusted with it.”

5 1 Once when he was on a journey and various people were presenting him with various things, a labouring man, who could find nothing else at the moment, ran to the river, and, taking some water in his hands, offered it to him; at which Artaxerxes was so pleased that he sent him a goblet of gold and a thousand darics. To Eucleidas the Lacedaemonian, who would often say bold and impudent things to him, he sent this word by his officer of the guard: “It is in thy power to say what thou pleasest, but it is in mine both to say and to do.” 2 Again, when he was hunting once and Teribazus pointed out that the king’s coat was rent, he asked him what was to be done. And when Teribazus replied, “Put on another for thyself, but give this one to me,” the king did so, saying, “I give this to thee, Teribazus, but I forbid thee to wear it.” Teribazus gave no heed to this command (being not a bad man, but rather light-headed and witless), and at once put on the king’s coat, and decked himself with golden necklaces and women’s ornaments of royal splendour. Everybody was indignant at this (for it was a forbidden thing); but the king merely laughed, and said: “I permit thee to wear the trinkets as a woman, and the robe as a madman.” 3 Again, no one shared the table of a Persian king except his mother or his wedded wife, the wife sitting below him, the mother above him; but Artaxerxes invited to the same table with him his brothers Ostanes and Oxathres, although they were his juniors. But what gratified the Persians most of all was the sight of his wife Stateira’s carriage, which always appeared with its curtains up, and thus permitted the women of the people to approach and greet the queen. This made her beloved of the common folk.

6 1 Nevertheless, restless and factious men thought that affairs demanded Cyrus, a man who had a brilliant spirit, surpassing skill in war, and great love for his friends; and that the magnitude of the empire required a king of lofty purpose and ambition. Accordingly, Cyrus relied quite as much upon the people of the interior as upon those of his own province and command, when he began the war.  He also wrote to the Lacedaemonians, inviting them to aid him and send him men, and promising that he would give to those who came, if they were footmen, horses; if they were horsemen, chariots and pairs; if they had farms, he would give them villages; if they had villages, cities; and the pay of the soldiers should not be counted, but measured out. 3 Moreover, along with much high-sounding talk about himself, he said he carried a sturdier heart than his brother, was more of a philosopher, better versed in the wisdom of the Magi, and could drink and carry more wine than he. His brother, he said, was too effeminate and cowardly either to sit his horse in a hunt, or his throne in a time of peril. 4 The Lacedaemonians, accordingly, sent a dispatch-roll to Clearchus ordering him to give Cyrus every assistance. So Cyrus marched up against the king with a large force of Barbarians and nearly thirteen thousand Greek mercenaries, alleging one pretext after another for his expedition. But the real object of it was not long concealed, for Tissaphernes went in person to the king and informed him of it. Then there was a great commotion at the court, Parysatis being most blamed for the war, and her friends undergoing suspicion and accusation. 5 And above all was she vexed by Stateira, who was greatly distressed at the war, and kept crying: “Where now are those pledges of thine? And where are the entreaties by which thou didst rescue the man who had plotted against the life of his brother, only to involve us in war and calamity?” Therefore Parysatis hated Stateira, and being naturally of a harsh temper and savage in her wrath and resentment, she plotted to kill her. 6 Deinon says that her plot was carried out during the war. Ctesias, however, says that it was accomplished afterwards, and neither is it likely that he was ignorant of the time since he was at the scene of action, nor had he any occasion, in his narrative of the deed, to change the time of it on purpose, however often his story turns aside from the truth into fable and romance. I shall therefore give the event the place which he has assigned to it.

7 1 As Cyrus proceeded on his march, rumours and reports kept coming to his ears that the king had decided not to give battle at once, and was not desirous of coming to close quarters with him, but rather of waiting in Persia until his forces should assemble there from all parts. For he had run a trench, ten fathoms in width and as many in depth, four hundred furlongs through the plain; and yet he allowed Cyrus to cross this and to come within a short distance of Babylon itself. 2 And it was Teribazus, as we are told, who first plucked up courage to tell the king that he ought not to shun a battle, nor to retire from Media and Babylon, as well as Susa, and hide himself in Persia, when he had a force many times as numerous as that of the enemy, and countless satraps and generals who surpassed Cyrus in wisdom and military skill. The king therefore determined to fight the issue out as soon as possible.

3 So, to begin with, by his sudden appearance with an army of nine hundred thousand men in brilliant array, he so terrified and confounded the enemy, who were marching along in loose order and without arms because of their boldness and contempt for the king, that Cyrus could with difficulty bring them into battle array amid much tumult and shouting; and again, by leading his forces up slowly and in silence, he filled the Greeks with amazement at his good discipline, since they had expected in so vast a host random shouting, and leaping, with great confusion and dissipation of their lines. 4 Besides this, he did well to draw up in front of his own line, and over against the Greeks, the mightiest of his scythe-bearing chariots, in order that by the force of their charge they might cut to pieces the ranks of the Greeks before they had come to close quarters.

8 1 Now, since many writers have reported to us this battle, and since Xenophon brings it all before our eyes, and by the vigour of his description makes his reader always a participant in the emotions and perils of the struggle, as though it belonged, not to the past, but to the present, it would be folly to describe it again, except so far as he has passed over things worthy of mention. 2 The place, then, where the armies were drawn up, is called Cunaxa, and it is five hundred furlongs distant from Babylon. And we are told that Cyrus, before the battle, when Clearchus besought him to remain behind the combatants and not risk his life, replied: “What sayest thou, Clearchus? Dost thou bid me, who am reaching out for a kingdom, to be unworthy of a kingdom?” 3 It was a great mistake for Cyrus to plunge headlong into the midst of the fray, instead of trying to avoid its dangers; but it was no less a mistake, nay, even a greater one, for Clearchus to refuse to array his Greeks over against the king, and to keep his right wing close to the river, that he might not be surrounded. For if he sought safety above everything else and made it his chief object to avoid losses, it had been best for him to stay at home. 4 But he had marched ten thousand furlongs up from the sea-coast under arms, with no compulsion upon him, but in order that he might place Cyrus upon the royal throne; and then, in looking about for a place and position which would enable him, not to save his leader and employer, but to fight safely and as he pleased, he was like one who, through fear of instant peril, had cast aside the plans made for general success and abandoned the object of the expedition. 5 For had the Greeks charged upon the forces arrayed about the king, not a man of them would have stood his ground; and had these been routed and the king either slain or put to flight, Cyrus would have won by his victory, not only safety, but a kingdom. This is clear from the course of the action. Therefore the caution of Clearchus rather than the temerity of Cyrus must be held responsible for the ruin of Cyrus and his cause. 6 For if the king himself had sought out a place to array the Greeks in which their attack would be least injurious to him, he could have found no other than that which was most remote from himself and his immediate following, since he himself did not know that his forces had been defeated there, and Cyrus could take no advantage at all of the victory of Clearchus, because he was cut down too soon. And yet Cyrus well knew what was for the best, and ordered Clearchus to take his position accordingly in the centre. 7 But Clearchus, after telling Cyrus he would see to it that the best was done, ruined everything.

9 1 For the Greeks were victorious to their hearts’ content over the Barbarians, and went forward a very great distance in pursuit of them; but Cyrus, riding a horse that was high-bred, but fierce and hard to guide (his name was Pasacas, as Ctesias tells us), was met in full course by Artagerses, commander of the Cadusians, who cried with a loud voice: 2 “O thou who disgracest the name of Cyrus, that noblest name among the Persians, thou most unjust and senseless of men, thou art come with evil Greeks on an evil journey after the good things of the Persians, and thou hopest to slay thine own brother and thy master, who hath a million servants that are better men than thou. And thou shalt at once have proof of this; for thou shalt lose thine own head here before thou hast seen the face of the king.” 3 With these words he hurled his spear at Cyrus. But the breastplate of Cyrus stoutly resisted, and its wearer was not wounded, though he reeled under the shock of the mighty blow. Then, as Artagerses turned his horse away, Cyrus hurled his spear and hit him, and drove its head through his neck past the collar-bone.

4 Thus Artagerses died at the hands of Cyrus, as nearly all writers are agreed in saying; but as regards the death of Cyrus himself, since Xenophon makes simple and brief mention of it, because he was not present himself when it happened, there is no objection perhaps to my recounting, first what Deinon says about it, and then what Ctesias says.

10 1 Accordingly, Deinon says that after Artagerses had fallen, Cyrus charged furiously into those drawn up in front of the king, and wounded the king’s horse, and that the king fell to the ground; but Teribazus quickly mounted him upon another horse, saying, “O king, remember this day, for it deserves not to be forgotten”; whereupon Cyrus again plunged in and dismounted Artaxerxes. 2 But at his third assault, the king, being enraged, and saying to those who were with him that death was better, rode out against Cyrus, who was rashly and impetuously rushing upon the missiles of his opponents. The king himself hit him with a spear, and he was hit by the attendants of the king. 3 Thus Cyrus fell, as some say, by a wound at the hands of the king, but as sundry others have it, from the blow of a Carian, who was rewarded by the king for this exploit with the privilege of always carrying a golden cock upon his spear in front of the line during an expedition; for the Persians call the Carians themselves cocks, because of the crests with which they adorn their helmets.

11 But the narrative of Ctesias, to give it in a much-abbreviated form, is something as follows. After he had slain Artagerses, Cyrus rode against the king himself, and the king against him, both without a word. But Ariaeus, the friend of Cyrus, was beforehand in hurling his spear at the king, though he did not wound him. And the king, casting his spear at Cyrus, did not hit him, but struck and killed Satiphernes, a trusted friend of Cyrus and a man of noble birth. 2 But Cyrus threw his spear at the king and wounded him in the breast through the cuirass, so that the weapon sank in two fingers deep, and the king fell from his horse with the blow. Amid the ensuing confusion and flight of his immediate followers, the king rose to his feet, and with a few companions among whom also was Ctesias, took possession of a certain hill near by and remained there quietly; but Cyrus, enveloped by his enemies, was borne on a long distance by his spirited horse, and since it was now dark, his enemies did not recognize him and his friends could not find him. 3 But lifted up by his victory, and full of impetuosity and confidence, he rode on through his foes, crying out, “Clear the way, ye beggars!” Thus he cried out many times, in Persian, and they cleared the way, and made him their obeisance. But the turban of Cyrus fell from his head, and a young Persian, Mithridates by name, running to his side, smote him with his spear in the temple, near the eye, not knowing who he was. 4 Much blood gushed from the wound, and Cyrus, stunned and giddy, fell to the ground. His horse escaped and wandered about the field, but the horse’s saddle-cloth, which had slipped off, was captured by the attendant of the man who had struck Cyrus, and it was soaked with blood. Then, as Cyrus was slowly and with difficulty recovering from the blow, a few eunuchs who were at hand tried to put him upon another horse and bring him to a place of safety. 5 But since he was unable to ride and desired to go on his own feet, they supported him and led him along. His head was heavy and he reeled to and fro, but he thought he was victorious because he heard the fugitives saluting Cyrus as king and begging him to spare them. Meanwhile some Caunians — low and poverty-stricken men who followed the king’s army to do menial service — chanced to join the party about Cyrus, supposing them to be friends. 6 But when at last they perceived that the tunics over their breastplates were of a purple colour, whereas all the king’s people wore white ones, they knew that they were enemies. Accordingly, one of them, not knowing who Cyrus was, ventured to smite him from behind with his spear. The vein in the ham of Cyrus was ruptured and he fell, and at the same time struck his wounded temple against a stone, and so died. Such is the story of Ctesias, in which, as with a blunt sword, he is long in killing Cyrus, but kills him at last.

12 1 When Cyrus was now dead, Artasyras, the king’s eye, chanced to pass by on horseback, and recognizing the eunuchs as they lamented, he asked the trustiest of them, “Who is this man, Pariscas, by whom thou sittest mourning?” And Pariscas answered: “O Artasyras, dost thou not see Cyrus dead?” Astonished at this, then, Artasyras bade the eunuch be of good courage and guard the dead body, 2 but he himself went in hot haste to Artaxerxes (who had already given up his cause for lost, and besides was physically in a wretched plight from thirst and from his wound), and joyfully told him that with his own eyes he had seen Cyrus dead. At first the king promptly set out to go in person to the place, and ordered Artasyras to conduct him thither; but since there was much talk about the Greeks, and it was feared that they were pursuing and conquering and making themselves masters everywhere, he decided to send a larger company to see where Cyrus lay. So thirty men were sent, with torches. 3 Meanwhile, since the king was almost dead with thirst, Satibarzanes the eunuch ran about in quest of a drink for him; for the place had no water, and the camp was far away. At last, then, he came upon one of those low Caunians, who had vile and polluted water in a wretched skin, about two quarts in all: this he took, brought it to the king, and gave it to him. After the king had drunk it all off, the eunuch asked him if he was not altogether disgusted with the drink. 4 But the king swore by the gods that he had never drunk wine, or the lightest and purest water, with so much pleasure. “Therefore,” said the king, “if I should be unable to find and reward the man who gave thee this drink, I pray the gods to make him rich and happy.”

13 1 And now the thirty messengers came riding up with joy and exultation in their faces, announcing to the king his unexpected good fortune. Presently, too, he was encouraged by the number of men who flocked back to him and formed in battle array, and so he came down from the hill under the light of many torches. 2 And after he had halted at the dead body of Cyrus, and its right hand and head had been cut off (in accordance with a law of the Persians), he ordered the head to be brought to him; and grasping it by the hair, which was long and bushy, he showed it to those who were still wavering and disposed to fly. These were amazed, and made obeisance to the king, so that very soon seventy thousand men were about him and marched back with him to their camp. 3 He had marched out to the battle, as Ctesias says, with four hundred thousand men. But Deinon and Xenophon say that the army which fought under him was much larger. As to the number of his dead, Ctesias says that it was reported to Artaxerxes as nine thousand, but that he himself thought the slain no fewer than twenty thousand. This matter, then, is in dispute. But it is certainly a glaring falsehood on the part of Ctesias to say that he was sent to the Greeks along with Phalinus the Zacynthian and certain others. 4 For Xenophon knew that Ctesias was in attendance upon the king, since he makes mention of him and had evidently read his works; if, then, Ctesias had come to the Greeks and served as an interpreter in so momentous a colloquy, Xenophon would not have left him nameless and named only Phalinus the Zacynthian. The truth is that Ctesias, being prodigiously ambitious, as it would seem, and none the less partial to Sparta and to Clearchus, always allows considerable space in his narrative for himself, and there he will say many fine things about Clearchus and Sparta.

14 1 After the battle, the king sent the largest and most beautiful gifts to the son of that Artagerses who fell at the hands of Cyrus; he also gave generous rewards to Ctesias and others, and when he had found out the Caunian who had given him the skin of water, he raised him from obscurity and poverty to honour and wealth. There was much watchful care also in his punishment of those who had gone wrong. 2 For example, in the case of Arbaces, a Mede, who had run away to Cyrus during the battle, and, when Cyrus fell, had changed back again, the king pronounced him guilty, not of treachery, nor even of malice, but of cowardice and weakness, and ordered him to take a naked harlot astride his neck and carry her about in the market-place for a whole day. And in the case of another man, who, besides going over to the enemy, had lyingly boasted that he had slain two of them, the king ordered that his tongue should be pierced with three needles. 3 Moreover, believing, and wishing all men to think, and say, that he had killed Cyrus with his own hand, he sent gifts to Mithridates, the one who first hit Cyrus, and ordered the bearers of the gifts to say: “This is thy reward from the king because thou didst find and bring to him the trappings of the horse of Cyrus.” Again, when the Carian, from whom Cyrus received the blow in the ham which brought him down, asked that he also should receive a gift, the king ordered its bearers to say: “The king gives thee these things as a second prize for good tidings; for Artasyras came first, and after him thou didst come, with tidings of the death of Cyrus.” 4 Now, Mithridates went away without a word, although he was vexed; but the wretched Carian, in his folly, gave way to a common feeling. That is, he was corrupted, it would seem, by the good things which he had, and led by them to aspire at once to things beyond his reach, so that he would not deign to take the gifts as a reward for good tidings, but was indignant, calling men to witness and crying in loud tones that it was he himself, and no one else, who had killed Cyrus, and that he was unjustly robbed of his glory. When the king heard of this, he was vehemently angry and gave orders that the man should be beheaded. 5 Whereupon the king’s mother, who was present, said to him: “O King, do not let this accursed Carian off so easily, but leave him to me, and he shall receive the fitting reward for his daring words.” So the king consigned the man to Parysatis, who ordered the executioners to take him and rack him on the wheel for ten days, then to gouge out his eyes, and finally to drop molten brass into his ears until he died.

15 1 Mithridates also came to a miserable end a little while after, of that same folly. For being invited to a banquet at which eunuchs of the king and of the queen-mother were present, he came decked out with raiment and gold which he had received from the king. 2 And when the company were at their cups, the chief eunuch of Parysatis said to him: “Mithridates, how beautiful this raiment is which the king gave thee, and how beautiful the collars and bracelets! Costly, too, is thy scimitar. Verily the king has made thee happy in the admiring eyes of all men.” Then Mithridates, now flushed with wine, replied: “Sparamizes, what do these things amount to? Surely my services to the king on that day were worthy of greater and more beautiful gifts.” 3 Here Sparamizes smiled at him and said: “There’s no grudging them to thee, Mithridates; but since, according to the Greek maxim, there is truth in wine, what great or brilliant exploit was it, my good fellow, to find a horse’s trappings that had slipped off, and bring them to the king?” In saying this, Sparamizes was not ignorant of the truth, but he wished to unveil Mithridates to the company, and therefore slyly stirred up his vanity when wine had made him talkative and robbed him of self-control. 4 Accordingly, Mithridates threw away constraint and said: “Ye may talk as ye please about horse-trappings and such nonsense; but I declare to you explicitly that Cyrus was slain by this hand of mine; for I did not, like Artagerses, make a futile and an idle cast of spear, but I narrowly missed his eye, struck him in the temple, pierced it, and brought the man down; and it was of that wound that he died.” 5 The rest of the company, who already saw the end of Mithridates and his hapless fate, bowed their faces towards the ground; and their host said: “My good Mithridates, let us eat and drink now, revering the good genius of the king, and let us waive discourse that is too weighty for us.”

16 1 Afterwards the eunuch told the matter to Parysatis, and she to the king; and the king was incensed, as being openly convicted of falsehood, and likely to forfeit the fairest and most pleasing feature of his victory. For he wished that all Barbarians and all Greeks should be fully persuaded that when he and his brother had charged and grappled with each other, he had given and received a blow, being only wounded himself, but killing his brother. He therefore gave orders that Mithridates should be put to death by the torture of the boats.

2 Now, this torture of the boats is as follows. Two boats are taken, which are so made as to fit over one another closely; in one of these the victim is laid, flat upon his back; then the other is laid over the first and carefully adjusted, so that the victim’s head, hands, and feet are left projecting, while the rest of his body is completely covered up. Then they give him food to eat, and if he refuse it, they force him to take it by pricking his eyes. After he has eaten, they give him a mixture of milk and honey to drink, pouring it into his mouth, and also deluge his face with it. 3 Then they keep his eyes always turned towards the sun, and a swarm of flies settles down upon his face and hides it completely. And since inside the boats he does what must needs be done when men eat and drink, worms and maggots seethe up from the corruption and rottenness of the excrement, devouring his body, and eating their way into his vitals. 4 For when at last the man is clearly dead and the upper boat has been removed, his flesh is seen to have been consumed away, while about his entrails swarms of such animals as I have mentioned are clinging fast and eating. In this way Mithridates was slowly consumed for seventeen days, and at last died.

17 1 And now there was one mark left for the vengeance of Parysatis — the man who had cut off the head and right hand of Cyrus, Masabates, an eunuch of the king. Against this man, then, since he himself gave her no chance to get at him, Parysatis concocted a plot of the following sort. 2 She was in general an ingenious woman, and greatly addicted to playing at dice. For this reason she frequently played at dice with the king before the war, and after the war was over and she had been reconciled with him, she did not try to avoid his friendly overtures, but actually joined in his diversions, and took part in his amours by her coöperation and presence, and, in a word, left very little of the king for Stateira’s use and society. For she hated Stateira above all others, and wished to have the chief influence herself. 3 So, one day, finding Artaxerxes trying to amuse himself in a vacant hour, she challenged him to play at dice for a thousand darics, allowed him to win the game, and paid the money down. Then, pretending to be chagrined at her loss and to seek revenge, she challenged the king to play a second game, with an eunuch for the stake, and the king consented. 4 They agreed that both might reserve five of their most trusty eunuchs, but that from the rest the loser must give whichever one the winner might select, and on these conditions played their game. Parysatis took the matter much to heart and was in great earnest with her playing, and since the dice also fell in her favour, she won the game, and selected Masabates; for he was not among those who had been excepted. 5 And before the king suspected her design, she put the eunuch in the hands of the executioners, who were ordered to flay him alive, to set up his body slantwise on three stakes, and to nail up his skin to a fourth. This was done, and when the king was bitterly incensed at her, she said to him, with a mocking laugh: “What a blessed simpleton thou art, to be incensed on account of a wretched old eunuch, when I, who have diced away a thousand darics, accept my loss without a word.” 6 So the king, although sorry that he had been deceived, kept quiet in the matter, but Stateira openly opposed Parysatis in other things, and above all was angry with her because, for the sake of Cyrus, she was cruelly and lawlessly putting to death eunuchs and others who were faithful to the king.

18 1 Now, when Clearchus and his fellow-generals had been completely deceived by Tissaphernes, and, contrary to solemn oaths, had been seized and sent up to the king in chains, Ctesias tells us that he was asked by Clearchus to provide him with a comb. Clearchus got the comb and dressed his hair, and being pleased at the service rendered, gave Ctesias his ring as a token of friendship which he might show to his kindred and friends in Sparta; and the device in the seal was a group of dancing Caryatides. 2 Moreover, as Ctesias says, the provisions sent to Clearchus were seized by the soldiers in captivity with him, who consumed them freely and gave only a small part of them to Clearchus. This hardship also Ctesias says he remedied, by getting more provisions sent to Clearchus, and a separate supply given to the soldiers; and these services he says he rendered and performed to please Parysatis, and at her suggestion. 3 He says further that a flitch of bacon was sent to Clearchus every day to supplement his rations, and that Clearchus earnestly advised him that he ought to bury a small knife in the meat and send it to him thus hidden away, and not allow his fate to be determined by the cruelty of the king; but he was afraid, and would not consent to do this. The king, Ctesias says, at the solicitation of his mother, agreed and swore not to kill Clearchus; but he was won back again by Stateira, and put all the generals to death except Menon. 4 It was because of this, Ctesias says, that Parysatis plotted against the life of Stateira and prepared the poison for her. But it is an unlikely story, and one that gives an absurd motive for her course, to say that Parysatis thus risked and wrought a dreadful deed because of Clearchus, and dared to kill the king’s lawful wife, who was the mother by him of children reared for the throne. 5 Nay, it is quite evident that he adds this sensational detail out of regard for the memory of Clearchus. For he says that after the generals had been put to death, the rest of them were torn by dogs and birds, but that in the case of Clearchus, a blast of wind carried a great mass of earth and heaped it in a mound which covered his body; upon this some dates fell here and there, and in a short time a wonderful grove of trees sprang up and overshadowed the place, so that even the king was sorely repentant, believing that in Clearchus he had killed a man whom the gods loved.

19 1 Parysatis, accordingly, who from the outset had a lurking hatred and jealousy of Stateira, saw that her own influence with the king was based on feelings of respect and honour, while that of Stateira was grounded fast and strong in love and confidence; she therefore plotted against her life and played for what she thought the highest stake. 2 She had a trusted maidservant named Gigis, who had most influence with her and assisted her in preparing the poison, according to Deinon, although Ctesias says she was merely privy to the deed, and that against her will. The poison was actually given by a man named Belitaras, according to Ctesias; Deinon gives his name as Melantas. After a period of dissension and suspicion, the two women had begun again to meet and eat with one another, although their mutual fear and caution led them to partake of the same dishes served by the same hands. 3 Now, there is a little Persian bird which has no excrement, but is all full of fat inside; and the creature is thought to live upon air and dew; the name of it is “rhyntaces.” It was a bird of this species, according to Ctesias, that Parysatis cut in two with a little knife smeared with poison on one side, thus wiping the poison off upon one part only of the bird; the undefiled and wholesome part she then put into her own mouth and ate, but gave to Stateira the poisoned part. 4 Deinon, however, says it was not Parysatis, but Melantas who cut the bird with the knife and placed the flesh that was poisoned before Stateira. Be that as it may, the woman died, in convulsions and great suffering, and she comprehended the evil that had befallen her, and brought the king to suspect his mother, whose fierce and implacable nature he knew. 5 The king, therefore, at once set out upon the inquest, arrested the servants and table-attendants of his mother, and put them on the rack. Gigis, however, Parysatis kept for a long time at home with her, and would not give her up at the king’s command. But after a while Gigis herself begged to be dismissed to her own home by night. The king learned of this, set an ambush for her, seized her, and condemned her to death. 6 Now, the legal mode of death for poisoners in Persia is as follows. There is a broad stone, and on this the head of the culprit is placed; and then with another stone they smite and pound until they crush the face and head to pulp. It was in this manner, then, that Gigis died; but Parysatis was not further rebuked or harmed by Artaxerxes, except that he sent her off to Babylon, in accordance with her wish, saying that as long as she lived he himself would not see Babylon. Such was the state of the king’s domestic affairs.

20 1 Now, the king was no less eager to capture the Greeks who had come up with Cyrus than he had been to conquer Cyrus and preserve his throne. Nevertheless, he could not capture them, but though they had lost Cyrus their leader and their own commanders, they rescued themselves from his very palace, as one might say, thus proving clearly to the world that the empire of the Persians and their king abounded in gold and luxury and women, but in all else was an empty vaunt. 2 Therefore all Greece took heart and despised the Barbarians, and the Lacedaemonians in particular thought it strange if now at least they could not rescue the Greeks that dwelt in Asia from servitude, and put a stop to their outrageous treatment at the hands of the Persians. The war they waged was at first conducted by Thimbron, and then by Dercyllidas, but since they accomplished nothing worthy of note, they at last put the conduct of the war in the hands of their king, Agesilaüs. 3 He crossed over to Asia with a fleet, went to work at once, won great fame, defeated Tissaphernes in a pitched battle, and set the Greek cities in revolt. This being the case, Artaxerxes considered how he must carry on the war with Agesilaüs, and sent Timocrates the Rhodian into Greece with a great sum of money, bidding him use it for the corruption of the most influential men in the cities there, and for stirring up the Greeks to make war upon Sparta. 4 Timocrates did as he was bidden, the most important cities conspired together against Sparta, Peloponnesus was in a turmoil, and the Spartan magistrates summoned Agesilaüs home from Asia. It was at this time, as we are told, and as he was going home, that Agesilaüs said to his friends: “The king has driven me out of Asia with thirty thousand archers”; for the Persian coin has the figure of an archer stamped upon it.

21 1 The king also expelled the Lacedaemonians from the sea, employing Conon the Athenian as his commander along with Pharnabazus. For Conon passed the time at Cyprus, after the sea-fight at Aegospotami, not satisfied with mere safety, but awaiting a reversal in the course of affairs, as he would a change of wind at sea. 2 And seeing that his own plans needed a military force, and the king’s force needed a sagacious leader, he wrote a letter to king explaining his purposes. This letter he ordered the bearer, if possible, to give the king by the hand of Zeno the Cretan or Polycritus the Mendaean (Zeno was a teacher of dancing, and Polycritus was a physician); but if these were not at court, by the hand of Ctesias the physician. 3 And it is said that Ctesias, on receiving the letter, added to the suggestions which Conon made to the king a request to send Ctesias also to him, as likely to be of service in matters on the sea-coast. Ctesias, however, says that the king of his own accord conferred upon him this new duty.

4 But after Artaxerxes, by the sea-fight which Pharnabazus and Conon won for him off Cnidus, had stripped the Lacedaemonians of their power on the sea, he brought the whole of Greece into dependence upon him, so that he dictated to the Greeks the celebrated peace called the Peace of Antalcidas. 5 Now Antalcidas was a Spartan, son of Leon, and acting in the interests of the king he induced the Lacedaemonians to surrender to the king all the Greek cities of Asia, and all the islands adjacent to Asia, to possess them on payment of tribute; and peace was thus established among the Greeks, if the mockery and betrayal of Greece can be called peace, a peace than which no war ever brought a more inglorious consummation to the defeated.

22 1 For this reason Artaxerxes, although he always held other Spartans in abomination, and considered them, as Deinon tells us, the most shameless of all mankind, showed great affection for Antalcidas when he came up to Persia. On one occasion he actually took a wreath of flowers, dipped it in the most costly ointment, and sent it to Antalcidas after supper; and all men wondered at the kindness. 2 But Antalcidas was a fit person, as it would seem, to be exquisitely treated and to receive such a wreath, now that he had danced away among the Persians the fair fame of Leonidas and Callicratidas. For Agesilaüs, as it would appear, when someone said to him: “Alas for Greece, now that the Spartans are medizing,” replied, “Are not the Medes the rather spartanizing?” However, the wittiness of the speech could not remove the shame of the deed, and the Spartans lost their supremacy in the disastrous battle of Leuctra, though the glory of Sparta had been lost before that by this treaty.

3 So long, then, as Sparta kept the first place in Greece, Artaxerxes treated Antalcidas as his guest and called him his friend; but after the Spartans had been defeated at Leuctra, they fell so low as to beg for money, and sent Agesilaüs to Egypt, while Antalcidas went up to Artaxerxes to ask him to supply the wants of the Lacedaemonians. 4 The king, however, so neglected and slighted and rejected him that, when he came back home, being railed at by his enemies, and being in fear of the ephors, he starved himself to death.

Ismenias the Theban also, and Pelopidas, who had just been victorious in the battle of Leuctra, went up to the king. Pelopidas did nothing to disgrace himself; but Ismenias, when ordered to make the obeisance to the king, threw his ring down on the ground in front of him, and then stooped and picked it up, thus giving men to think that he was making the obeisance. 5 With Timagoras the Athenian, however, who sent to him by his secretary, Beluris, a secret message in writing, the king was so pleased that he gave him ten thousand darics, and eighty milch cows to follow in his train because he was sick and required cow’s milk; and besides, he sent him a couch, with bedding for it, and servants to make the bed (on the ground that the Greeks had not learned the art of making beds), and bearers to carry him down to the sea-coast, enfeebled as he was. 6 Moreover, during his presence at court, he used to send him a most splendid supper, so that Ostanes, the brother of the king, said “Timagoras, remember this table; it is no slight return which thou must make for such an array.” Now this was a reproach for his treachery rather than a reminder of the king’s favour. At any rate, for his venality, Timagoras was condemned to death by the Athenians.

23 1 But there was one thing by which Artaxerxes gladdened the hearts of the Greeks, in return for all the evils which he wrought them, and that was his putting Tissaphernes to death, their most hated and malicious enemy. And he put him to death in consequence of accusations against him which were seconded by Parysatis. For the king did not long persist in his wrath against his mother, but was reconciled with her and summoned her to court, since he saw that she had intellect and a lofty spirit worthy of a queen, and since there was no longer any ground for their suspecting and injuring one another if they were together. 2 After this she consulted the king’s pleasure in all things, and by approving of everything that he did, acquired influence with him and achieved all her ends. She perceived that the king was desperately in love with one of his two daughters, Atossa, and that, chiefly on his mother’s account, he was trying to conceal and restrain his passion, although some say that he had already had secret intercourse with the girl. 3 When, accordingly, Parysatis became suspicious of the matter, she showed the girl more affection than before, and would speak to Artaxerxes in praise of her beauty and her despair, saying that she was truly royal and magnificent. At last, then, she persuaded the king to marry the girl and proclaim her his lawful wife, ignoring the opinions and laws of the Greeks, and regarding himself as appointed by Heaven to be a law upon the Persians and an arbitrator of good and evil. 4 Some, however, say, and among them is Heracleides of Cymé, that Artaxerxes married, not one of his daughters only, but also a second, Amestris, of whom we shall speak a little later. Atossa, however, was so beloved by her father as his consort, that when her body was covered with leprosy he was not offended at this in the least, 5 but offered prayers to Hera in her behalf, making his obeisance and clutching the earth before this goddess as he did before no other; while his satraps and friends, at his command, sent the goddess so many gifts that the sixteen furlongs between her sanctuary and the royal palace were filled with gold and silver and purple and horses.

24 1 In the war which Pharnabazus and Iphicrates conducted for him against Egypt he was unsuccessful, owing to the dissensions of these commanders; against the Cadusians, therefore, he made an expedition in person, with three hundred thousand footmen and ten thousand horse. But the country which he penetrated was rough and hard to traverse, abounded in mists, and produced no grains, although its pears and apples and other such tree-fruits supported warlike and courageous population. 2 Unawares, therefore, he became involved in great distress and peril. For no food was to be got in the country or imported from outside, and they could only butcher their beasts of burden, so that an ass’s head was scarcely to be bought for sixty drachmas. Moreover, the royal banquets were abandoned; and of their horses only a few were left, the rest having been consumed for food.

Here it was that Teribazus, a man whose bravery often set him in a leading place, but whose levity as often cast him down, so that at this time he was in disgrace and overlooked, saved the king and his army. 3 For the Cadusians had two kings, and each of them encamped separately. So Teribazus, after an interview with Artaxerxes in which he told him what he purposed to do, went himself to one of the Cadusian kings, and sent his son secretly to the other. Each envoy, then, deceived his man, telling him that the other king was sending an embassy to Artaxerxes to secure friendship and alliance for himself alone: he should, therefore, if he were wise, have an interview with Artaxerxes before the other did, and he himself would help him all he could. 4 Both kings were persuaded by this argument, and each thinking that he was anticipating the other, one sent his envoys along with Teribazus, and the other with the son of Teribazus. But matters were delayed, and suspicions and calumnies against Teribazus came to the ears of Artaxerxes he himself also was ill at ease, and repented him of having put confidence in Teribazus, and gave occasion to his rivals to malign him. 5 But at last Teribazus came, and his son came too, both bringing their Cadusian envoys, and a peace was ratified with both kings; whereupon Teribazus, now a great and splendid personage, set out for home with the king. And the king now made it plain that cowardice and effeminacy are not always due to luxury and extravagance, as most people suppose, but to a base and ignoble nature under the sway of evil doctrines. 6 For neither gold nor robe of state nor the twelve thousand talents’ worth of adornment which always enveloped the person of the king prevented him from undergoing toils and hardships like an ordinary soldier; nay, with his quiver girt upon him and his shield on his arm he marched in person at the head of his troops, over precipitous mountain roads, abandoning his horse, so that the rest of the army had wings given them and felt their burdens lightened when they saw his ardour and vigour; for he made daily marches of two hundred furlongs and more.

25 1 At length he came down to a royal halting-place which had admirable parks in elaborate cultivation, although the region round about was bare and treeless; and since it was cold, he gave permission to his soldiers to cut the trees of the park for wood, sparing neither pine nor cypress. 2 And when they hesitated and were inclined to spare the trees on account of their great size and beauty, he took an axe himself and cut down the largest and most beautiful tree. After this the men provided themselves with wood, and making many fires, passed the night in comfort. Nevertheless, he lost many and brave men, and almost all his horses before he reached home. 3 And now, thinking that his subjects despised him because of the disastrous failure of his expedition, he was suspicious of his chief men; many of these he put to death in anger, and more out of fear. For it is cowardly fear in a tyrant that leads to most bloodshed; but bold confidence makes him gracious and mild and unsuspicious. So also among wild beasts, those that are refractory and hardest to tame are timorous and fearful, whereas the nobler sorts are led by their courage to put more confidence in men, and do not reject friendly advances.

26 1 But Artaxerxes, being now advanced in years, perceived that his sons were forming rival parties among his friends and chief men with reference to the royal succession. For the conservatives thought it right that, as he himself had received the royal power by virtue of seniority, in like manner he should leave it to Dareius. But his youngest son, Ochus, who was of an impetuous and violent disposition, not only had many adherents among the courtiers, but hoped for most success in winning over his father through the aid of Atossa. 2 For he sought to gain Atossa’s favour by promising that she should be his wife and share the throne with him after the death of his father. And there was a report that even while his father was alive Ochus had secret relations with Atossa. But Artaxerxes was ignorant of this; and wishing to shatter at once the hopes of Ochus, that he might not venture upon the same course as Cyrus and so involve the kingdom anew in wars and contests, he proclaimed Dareius, then fifty years of age, his successor to the throne, and gave him permission to wear the upright “kitanis,” as the tiara was called. 3 Now, there was a custom among the Persians that the one appointed to the royal succession should ask a boon, and that the one who appointed him should give whatever was asked, if it was within his power. Accordingly, Dareius asked for Aspasia, who had been the special favourite of Cyrus, and was then a concubine of the king. She was a native of Phocaea, in Ionia, born of free parents, and fittingly educated. 4 Once when Cyrus was at supper she was led in to him along with other women. The rest of the women took the seats given them, and when Cyrus proceeded to sport and dally and jest with them, showed no displeasure at his friendly advances. But Aspasia stood by her couch in silence, and would not obey when Cyrus called her; and when his chamberlains would have her led to him, she said: “Verily, whosoever lays his hands upon me shall rue the day.” The guests therefore thought her a graceless and rude creature. 5 But Cyrus was delighted, and laughed, and said to the man who had brought the women: “Dost thou not see at once that this is the only free and unperverted woman thou hast brought me?” From this time on he was devoted to her, and loved her above all women, and called her The Wise. She was taken prisoner when Cyrus fell in the battle at Cunaxa and his camp was plundered.

27 1 This was the woman for whom Dareius asked, and he gave offence thereby to his father; for the Barbarian folk are terribly jealous in all that pertains to the pleasures of love, so that it is death for a man, not only to come up and touch one of the royal concubines, but even in journeying to go along past the waggons on which they are conveyed. 2 And yet there was Atossa, whom the king passionately loved and had made his wife contrary to the law, and he kept three hundred and sixty concubines also, who were of surpassing beauty. However, since he had been asked for Aspasia, he said that she was a free woman, and bade his son take her if she was willing, but not to constrain her against her wishes. So Aspasia was summoned, and contrary to the hopes of the king, chose Dareius. And the king gave her to Dareius under constraint of the custom that prevailed, but a little while after he had given her, he took her away again. 3 That is, he appointed her a priestess of the Artemis of Ecbatana, who bears the name of Anaïtis, in order that she might remain chaste for the rest of her life, thinking that in this way he would inflict a punishment upon his son which was not grievous, but actually quite within bounds and tinctured with pleasantry. The resentment of Dareius, however, knew no bounds, either because he was deeply stirred by his passion for Aspasia, or because he thought that he had been insulted and mocked by his father.

4 And now Teribazus, who became aware of the prince’s feelings, sought to embitter him still more, finding in his grievance a counterpart of his own, which was as follows. The king had several daughters, and promised to give Apama in marriage to Pharnabazus, Rhodogune to Orontes, and Amestris to Teribazus. He kept his promise to the other two, but broke his word to Teribazus and married Amestris himself, betrothing in her stead to Teribazus his youngest daughter, Atossa. 5 But soon he fell enamoured of Atossa also and married her, as has been said, and then Teribazus became a downright foe to him. Teribazus was at no time of a stable disposition, but uneven and precipitate. And so, when he would be at one time in highest favour, and at another would find himself in disgrace and spurned aside, he could not bear either change of fortune with equanimity, but if he was held in honour his vanity made him offensive, and when he fell from favour he was not humble or quiet, but harsh and ferocious.

28 1 Accordingly, it was adding fire to fire when Teribazus attached himself to the young prince and was forever telling him that the tiara standing upright on the head was of no use to those who did not seek by their own efforts to stand upright in affairs of state, and that he was very foolish if, when his brother was insinuating himself into affairs of state by way of the harem, and his father was of a nature so fickle and insecure, he could suppose that the succession to the throne was securely his. 2 Surely he whom regard for a Greek courtesan had led to violate the inviolable custom of the Persians, could not be trusted to abide by his agreements in the most important matters. Moreover, he said it was not the same thing for Ochus not to get the kingdom and for Dareius to be deprived of it; for no one would hinder Ochus from living happily in private station, but Dareius had been declared king, and must needs be king or not live at all.

Now, perhaps it is generally true, as Sophocles says, that —

3 “Swiftly doth persuasion upon evil conduct make its way”

for smooth and downward sloping is the passage to what a man desires, and most men desire the bad through inexperience and ignorance of the good. However, it was the greatness of the empire and the fear which Dareius felt towards Ochus that paved the way for Teribazus although, since Aspasia had been taken away, the Cyprus-born goddess of love was not altogether without influence in the case.

29 1 Accordingly, Dareius put himself in the hands of Teribazus; and presently, when many were in the conspiracy, an eunuch made known to the king the plot and the manner of it, having accurate knowledge that the conspirators had resolved to enter the king’s chamber by night and kill him in his bed. When Artaxerxes heard the eunuch’s story, he thought it a grave matter to neglect the information and ignore so great a peril, and a graver still to believe it without any proof. 2 He therefore acted on this wise. He charged the eunuch to attend closely upon the conspirators; meanwhile he himself cut away the wall of his chamber behind the bed, put a doorway there, and covered the door with a hanging. Then, when the appointed hour was at hand and the eunuch told him the exact time, he kept his bed and did not rise from it until he saw the faces of his assailants and recognised each man clearly. 3 But when he saw them advancing upon him with drawn swords, he quickly drew aside the hanging, retired into the inner chamber, closed the door with a slam, and raised a cry. The murderers, accordingly, having been seen by the king, and having accomplished nothing, fled back through the door by which they had come, and told Teribazus and his friends to be off since their plot was known. 4 The rest, then, were dispersed and fled; but Teribazus slew many of the king’s guards as they sought to arrest him, and at last was smitten by a spear at long range, and fell. Dareius, together with his children, was brought to the king, who consigned him to the royal judges for trial. The king was not present in person at the trial, but others brought in the indictment. However, the king ordered clerks to take down in writing the opinion of each judge and bring them all to him. 5 All the judges were of one opinion and condemned Dareius to death, whereupon the servants of the king seized him and led him away into a chamber near by, whither the executioner was summoned. The executioner came, with a sharp knife in his hand, wherewith the heads of condemned persons are cut off; but when he saw Dareius, he was confounded, and retired towards the door with averted gaze, declaring that he could not and would not take the life of a king. 6 But since the judges outside the door plied him with threats and commands, he turned back, and with one hand clutching Dareius by the hair, dragged him to the ground, and cut off his head with the knife.

Some say, however, that the trial was held in the presence of the king, and that Dareius, when he was overwhelmed by the proofs, fell upon his face and begged and sued for mercy; 7 but Artaxerxes rose up in anger, drew his scimitar, and smote him till he had killed him; then, going forth into court, he made obeisance to the sun and said: “Depart in joy and peace, ye Persians, and say to all whom ye meet that those who have contrived impious and unlawful things have been punished by great Orosmasdes.”

30 1 Such, then, was the end of the conspiracy. And now Ochus was sanguine in the hopes with which Atossa inspired him, but he was still afraid of Ariaspes, the only legitimate son of the king remaining, and also of Arsames among the illegitimate sons. For Ariaspes, not because he was older than Ochus, but because he was mild and straightforward and humane, was deemed by the Persians worthy to be their king; Arsames, however, was thought to have wisdom, and the fact that he was especially dear to his father was not unknown to Ochus. 2 Accordingly, he plotted against the lives of both, and being at once wily and bloody-minded, he brought the cruelty of his nature into play against Arsames, but his villainy and craft against Ariaspes. For he secretly sent to Ariaspes eunuchs and friends of the king, who constantly brought him word of sundry threatening and terrifying utterances implying that his father had determined to put him to a cruel and shameful death. 3 Since they pretended that these daily reports of theirs were secrets of state, and declared, now that the king was delaying in the matter, and now that he was on the point of acting, they so terrified the prince, and filled his mind with so great trepidation, confusion, and despair, that he drank a deadly poison which he had prepared, and thus rid himself of life. 4 When the king was informed of the manner of his death, he bewailed his son. He also suspected what had caused his death, but being unable by reason of his age to search out and convict the guilty one, he was still more well-affectioned towards Arsames, and clearly made him his chief support and confidant. Wherefore Ochus would not postpone his design, but set Arpates, a son of Teribazus, to the task and by his hand slew the prince. 5 Now Artaxerxes, by reason of his age, was already hovering between life and death; and when the sad fate of Arsames came to his ears, he could not hold out even a little while, but straightway expired of grief and despair. He had lived ninety-four years, and had been king sixty-two, and had the reputation of being gentle and fond of his subjects; though this was chiefly due to his son Ochus, who surpassed all men in cruelty and blood-guiltiness.

Aratus

1 1 There is an ancient proverb, Polycrates, which the philosopher Chrysippus puts not as it really is, but as he thought better: —

“Who will praise a father, except happy sons?”

But Dionysodorus of Troezen corrects him, and restores the true form thus:

“Who will praise a father, except unhappy sons?”

2 And he says that the proverb stops the mouths of those who, being worthless in themselves, take refuge in the virtues of certain ancestors and are forever praising them. But surely for a man in whom, to use Pindar’s words, “the noble spirit naturally displayes itself as inherited from sires,” and who, like thee, patterns his life after the fairest examples in his family line, — for such men it will be good fortune to be reminded of their noblest progenitors, ever and anon hearing the story of them, or telling it themselves. 3 For it is not that they lack noble qualities of their own and make their reputation dependent on their praises of others, nay rather, they associate their own careers with the careers of their great ancestors, whom they hail both as founders of their line and as directors of their lives. And therefore, now that I have written the life of Aratus, who was thy countryman and forefather, and to whom thou thyself art no discredit in either reputation or influence, I send it to thee, not as though thou hadst not been at pains from the beginning to have the most precise knowledge of thy great ancestor’s career, 4 but in order that thy sons Polycrates and Pythocles may be reared, now by hearing and now by reading, after examples found in their own family line — examples which it well becomes them to imitate. For it is the lover of himself, and not the lover of goodness, who thinks himself always superior to others.

2 1 The city of Sicyon, as soon as it had fallen away from its pure Doric form of aristocracy (which was now like a harmony dissolved) and had become a prey to factions and the ambitious schemes of demagogues, was without cease distempered and agitated, and kept changing one tyrant for another, until, after the murder of Cleon, Timocleides and Cleinias were chosen chief magistrates, men of the highest repute and influence among the citizens. 2 But no sooner did the government appear to be somewhat settled than Timocleides died, and Abantidas the son of Paseas, attempting to make himself tyrant, slew Cleinias, and, of the friends and kinsmen of Cleinias, banished some and killed others. He tried to kill also the son of Cleinias, Aratus, left fatherless at the age of seven. 3 But in the confusion which prevailed about the house the boy made his escape with the fugitives, and wandering about in the city, full of fear and helpless, by chance got unnoticed into the house of a woman who was a sister of Abantidas, but had married Prophantus the brother of Cleinias. Her name was Soso. This woman, who was of a noble nature, and thought it a divine dispensation that the boy had taken refuge with her, hid him in the house, and at night sent him secretly off to Argos.

3 1 Thus was Aratus stolen away from the peril that threatened him, and at once that vehement and glowing hatred of tyrants for which he was noted became a part of his nature and grew with his growth. He was reared in liberal fashion among the guests and friends of his father’s house at Argos, and since he saw that his bodily growth promised high health and stature, he devoted himself to the exercises of the palaestra, going so far as to win wreaths of victory in contesting the pentathlum. 2 And indeed even his statues have plainly an athletic look, and the sagacity and majesty of his countenance do not altogether disown the athlete’s full diet and wielding of the mattock. Wherefore his cultivation of oratory was perhaps less intense than became a man in public life; and yet he is said to have been a more ornate speaker than some think who judge from the Commentaries which he left; these were a bye-work, and were composed in haste, off-hand, and in the words that first occurred to him in the heat of contest.

3 Some time after the escape of Aratus, Abantidas was slain by Deinias and Aristotle the logician. The tyrant was wont to attend all their public disputations in the market-place and to take part in them; they encouraged him in this practice, laid a plot, and took his life. Paseas also, the father of Abantidas, after assuming the supreme power, was treacherously slain by Nicocles, who then proclaimed himself tyrant. 4 This man is said to have borne a very close resemblance to Periander the son of Cypselus, just as Orontes the Persian did to Alcmaeon the son of Amphiaraüs, and as the Spartan youth mentioned by Myrtilus did to Hector. Myrtilus tells us that when the throng of spectators became aware of this resemblance, the youth was trampled underfoot.

4 1 Nicocles was tyrant of the city for four months, during which he wrought the city much harm, and narrowly escaped losing it to the Aetolians when they plotted to seize it. By this time Aratus, now a young man, was held in marked esteem on account of his high birth, and of his spirit. This was showing itself to be not insignificant nor yet unenterprising, but earnest, and tempered with a judgement safe beyond his years. 2 Wherefore the exiles from Sicyon had their minds fixed most of all upon him, and Nicocles was not neglectful of what was going on, but kept secret watch and ward over his undertakings, not because he feared any deed of so great daring and hazard as that in which Aratus finally engaged, but because he suspected that Aratus was in communication with the kings who had been on terms of friendship and hospitality with his father. 3 And in truth Aratus had attempted to travel along that path. But since Antigonus neglected his promises and prolonged the time, and since the hopes derived from Egypt and Ptolemy were a long way off, he resolved to overthrow that tyrant by his own efforts.

5 1 The first to whom he imparted his design were Aristomachus and Ecdelus. Of these, the one was an exile from Sicyon, and Ecdelus was an Arcadian of Megalopolis, a student of philosophy and a man of action, who had been an intimate friend of Arcesilaüs the Academic at Athens. 2 These men eagerly adopted his proposals, and he then began conversations with the other exiles. A few of these took part in the enterprise because they were ashamed to disappoint the hope placed in them, but the majority actually tried to stop Aratus, on the ground that his inexperience made him over-bold.

3 While he was planning to seize some post in the territory of Sicyon from which he might sally forth and make war upon the tyrant, there came to Argos a man of Sicyon who had run away from prison. He was a brother of Xenocles, one of the exiles; and when he had been brought to Aratus by Xenocles, he told him that the part of the city’s wall over which he had climbed to safety was almost level with the ground on the inside, where it had been attached to steep and rocky places, and that on the outside it was not at all too high for scaling-ladders. 4 When Aratus had heard this, he sent with Xenocles two servants of his own, Seuthas and Technon, to make an examination of the wall; for he was resolved, if he could, to hazard the whole enterprise on one secret and swift attempt, rather than in a long war and in open contests to match his private resources against those of a tyrant. 5 So when Xenocles and his party came back with measurements of the wall which they had taken, and with a report that the place was by nature not impassable nor even difficult (although they declared that it was hard to get to it undetected owing to a certain gardener’s dogs, which were little beasts, but extraordinarily fierce and savage), Aratus at once undertook the business.

6 1 Now the laying in of arms was nothing unusual, since almost everybody at that time indulged in robberies and predatory forays; and as for scaling-ladders, Euphranor the engineer made them openly, since his trade screened him from suspicion; and he too was one of the exiles. 2 As for men, each of the friends of Aratus in Argos furnished him with ten out of the few they had, and he himself equipped thirty of his own servants with arms. Through Xenophilus, the foremost of the robber captains, he also hired a few soldiers, to whom it was given out that a foray was to be made into the territory of Sicyon to seize the horses of Antigonus. And most of them were sent on ahead in small bands to the tower of Polygnotus, with orders to wait there. 3 Aratus also sent on in advance Caphisias, lightly armed, with four companions; their orders were to come to the gardener’s when it was dark, pretending to be travellers, and after taking up quarters there for the night, to shut up him and his dogs; for there was no other way to get past them. The scaling-ladders, which could be taken apart, were packed in boxes, and thus concealed were sent on ahead in waggons.

4 In the meantime some spies of Nicocles appeared in Argos and were reported to be secretly going about and watching the movements of Aratus. As soon as it was day, therefore, Aratus left his house and showed himself openly in the market-place, conversing with his friends; then he anointed himself in the gymnasium, took with him from the palaestra some of the young men who were wont to drink and make holiday with him, and went back home; and after a little one of his servants was seen carrying garlands through the market-place, another buying lights, and another talking with the women that regularly furnished music of harp and flute at banquets. 5 When the spies saw all this, they were completely deceived, and with loud laughter said to one another: “Nothing, you see, is more timorous than a tyrant, since even Nicocles, though master of so great a city and so large a force, is in fear of a stripling who squanders on pleasures and mid-day banquets his means of subsistence in exile.”

7 1 The spies, then, thus misled, left the city; but Aratus, immediately after the morning meal, sallied forth, joined his soldiers at the tower of Polygnotus, and led them on to Nemea. Here he disclosed his design, to most of them then for the first time, and made them exhortations and promises. 2 Then, after giving out as watchword “Apollo Victorious,” he led them forward against Sicyon, quickening or retarding his progress according to the revolution of the moon, so as to enjoy her light while on the march, and as soon as she was setting to be at the garden near the wall. 3 There Caphisias came to meet him; he had not secured the dogs (for they had bounded off before he could do this), but had locked up the gardener. Most of his men were disheartened at this and urged Aratus to retire; but he tried to encourage them, promising to lead them back if the dogs should prove too troublesome for them. 4 At the same time he sent forward the men who carried the scaling-ladders, under the command of Ecdelus and Mnasitheus, while he himself followed after them slowly, the dogs already barking vigorously and running along by the side of Ecdelus and his party. However, they reached the wall and planted their ladders against it without mishap. 5 But as the first men were mounting the ladders, the officer who was to set the morning-watch began making his rounds with a bell, and there were many lights and the noise of the sentries coming up. The invaders, however, crouched down just where they were on the ladders, and so escaped the notice of this party without any trouble; but since another watch was coming up to meet the first, they incurred the greatest danger. 6 However, they escaped the notice of this guard also as it passed by, and then the leaders, Mnasitheus and Ecdelus, at once mounted to the top, and after occupying the approaches to the wall on either side, sent Technon to Aratus, urging him to hasten up.

8 1 Now it was no great distance from the garden to the wall, and to the tower, in which a huge dog was on the watch, a hunter. The dog himself did not notice their approach, either because he was naturally sluggish, or because during the day he had become tired out. But when the gardener’s whelps challenged him from below, he began to growl in response, faintly and indistinctly at first, then bayed out more loudly as they passed by. 2 Presently the whole place resounded with barking, so that the watchman opposite called with a loud cry to the huntsman asking why his dog was baying so savagely and whether some mischief was not afoot. The huntsman answered him from the tower that there was nothing to fear, but that his dog had been excited by the lights of the sentries and the din of the bell. 3 This more than anything else gave heart to the soldiers of Aratus. They thought that the huntsman was privy to their design and was trying to conceal it, and that there were many others also in the city who would assist them. However, when the rest of the company essayed the wall, their peril was grievous and protracted, since the ladders shook unless they mounted one by one and slowly; moreover, time was pressing, since cocks were already crowing, and directly the people who brought produce from the country to the market-place would be coming up. 4 Therefore Aratus also mounted the wall in haste, after forty in all had mounted before him; and when he had been joined by a few more of those below, he went up against the tyrant’s house and the praetorium, where the mercenary soldiers passed the night. And after falling upon these suddenly and capturing them all, but killing none, he straightway sent messages to his friends summoning them all from their homes, and they ran together from all quarters. 5 Day was now breaking, and the theatre was thronged with people who still were in suspense because of the uncertain rumour that prevailed and in utter ignorance of what was afoot, until the herald came forward and made proclamation that Aratus the son of Cleinias invited the citizens to secure their freedom.

9 1 Then, convinced that what they had long expected was come, they rushed in a body to the residence of the tyrant, carrying firebrands. A great flame arose as the house caught fire, and it was visible as far as Corinth, so that the people of Corinth were astonished and were on the point of sallying forth to help. Nicocles, then, slipped out unnoticed by way of certain underground passages, and ran away from the city, 2 and the soldiers, after extinguishing the fire with the aid of the Sicyonians, plundered his house. Nor did Aratus prevent this, but put the rest of the wealth of the tyrants at disposition of the citizens. And not a man was killed or even wounded at all, either among the assailants or their enemies, but fortune preserved the enterprise free from the taint of civil bloodshed.

3 Aratus restored eighty exiles who had been banished by Nicocles, and those also who had fled the city during the reign of former tyrants, to the number of five hundred. These had long been wanderers, yes, for close to fifty years. And now that they had come back, most of them in poverty, they laid claim to the property which they had formerly held, and by going to their farms and houses threw Aratus into great perplexity. For he saw that the city was plotted against by outsiders and eyed with jealousy by Antigonus because it had regained its freedom, while it was full of internal disturbances and faction.

4 Wherefore, as things stood, he thought it best to attach the city promptly to the Achaean League; and so, though the people of Sicyon were Dorians, they voluntarily assumed the name and civil polity of the Achaeans, who at that time had neither brilliant repute nor great strength. For most of them lived in small cities, owned land that was neither fertile nor extensive, and were neighbours to a sea that had no harbours and for the most part washed a precipitous and rocky shore. 5 But this people more than any other showed the world that Greek prowess was invincible, whenever it enjoyed good order, harmonious discipline, and a sensible leader. For though they had taken almost no part in the ancient glories of Greece, 6 and at this time, though counted all together, had not the power of a single considerable city, still, owing to their good counsels and their concord, and because they were able, in place of envying, to obey and follow the one who was pre-eminent among them for virtue, they not only preserved their own freedom in the midst of so great cities and powers and tyrannies, but also were continually saving and setting free very many of the other Greeks.

10 1 Aratus was by natural bent a statesman, high-minded, more exact in his public than in his private relations, a bitter hater of tyrants, and ever making a regard for the public weal determine his enmity or his friendship. 2 Wherefore he seems to have proved not so much a strict friend, as a considerate and mild enemy, changing his ground in either direction according to the exigencies of the state, loving concord between nations, community of cities, and unanimity of council and assembly, beyond all other blessings. It was manifest that he resorted to open warfare and strife without courage and with little confidence, but that in stealing advantages and secretly managing cities and tyrants he was most proficient. 3 Therefore, though he won many unexpected successes where he showed courage, he seems to have lost no fewer favourable opportunities through over-caution. For not only in the case of certain wild beasts, as it would seem, is the vision strong by night but wholly blinded in the day-time (since the humour in their eyes is too dry and delicate to bear contact with the light), but there is also in some men a cleverness and sagacity which is prone to be confounded in transactions that are carried out under the open sky and proclaimed abroad by public criers, but when confronting hidden and secret enterprises recovers its courage. 4 Such unevenness a lack of philosophy may cause in men of good natural parts; they produce virtue without scientific knowledge, and it is like spontaneous and uncultivated fruit. This can be proved by examples.

11 Aratus, now, after uniting himself and his city with the Achaeans, served in the cavalry, and was beloved by his commanders on account of his ready obedience. For although he had made great contributions to the commonwealth in his own reputation and the power of his native city, he gave his services like those of any ordinary person to the one who from time to time was general of the Achaeans, whether he was a man of Dyme or of Tritaea, or of a meaner city. 2 And there came to him also a gift of money from the king of Egypt, five-and twenty talents. These Aratus accepted, but gave them at once to his fellow-citizens, who were in want of money, especially for the ransoming of such as had been taken prisoners.

12 1 But the exiles were not to be dissuaded from molesting those who were in possession of their property, and the city was in danger of an upheaval. Aratus saw that his only hope was in the generosity of Ptolemy, and therefore determined to sail to Egypt and beg the king to furnish him with money for the settlement of these disputes. 2 So he put to sea from Mothone above Malea, intending to make the shortest passage. But the steersman could not make head against a strong wind and high waves that came in from the open sea, and being carried out of his course got with difficulty to Adria, which was a hostile place. For it was in the power of Antigonus, and held a garrison of his. Aratus anticipated arrest by landing, and forsaking the ship withdrew a long way from the sea, having with him one of his friends, Timanthes. 3 They threw themselves into a place that was thickly covered with woods, and had a grievous night of it. A little later the commander of the garrison came to the ship in search of Aratus, and was deceived by his servants, who had been instructed to say that he had run away at once and had sailed off to Euboea. The ship, however, with its cargo and the servants of Aratus, was declared a prize of war and detained.

4 After a few days, while still in this helpless plight, Aratus met with a rare piece of good fortune, for a Roman ship put in at the place where he was staying, sometimes on a lookout-place, and sometimes hiding himself. The ship was bound for Syria, but after going on board Aratus persuaded the master of the vessel to convey him as far as Caria. Thither he was conveyed, encountering fresh perils by sea and perils as great as before. 5 From Caria, after a long time, he made his way across to Egypt, and found the king both naturally well disposed towards him, and much gratified because Aratus had sent him drawings and paintings from Greece. In these matters Aratus had a refined judgement, and was continually collecting and acquiring works of artistic skill and excellence, especially those of Pamphilus and Melanthus. These he would send to Ptolemy.

13 1 For the fame of Sicyon’s refined and beautiful paintings was still in full bloom, and they alone were thought to have a beauty that was indestructible. Therefore even the great Apelles, when he was already admired, came to Sicyon and gave a talent that he might be admitted into the society of its artists, desiring to share their fame rather than their art. Hence it was that Aratus, although he at once destroyed the other portraits of the tyrants when he had given the city its freedom, deliberated a long time about that of Aristratus (who flourished in the time of Philip of Macedon). 2 For it was the work of Melanthus and all his pupils, and Aristratus was painted standing by a chariot in which was a Victory; Apelles also had a hand in the painting, as we are told by Polemon the Topographer. And the work was a marvellous one, so that Aratus was moved by the artistic skill therein; but afterwards, such was his hatred of the tyrants, that he ordered it to be removed and destroyed. 3 Accordingly, the painter Nealces, who was a friend of Aratus, interceded with him for the picture, as we are told, and with tears, and when he could not persuade him, said that war should be waged against the tyrants, but not against the treasures of the tyrants. “Let us therefore leave the chariot and the Victory, but Aristratus himself I will undertake to remove from the picture.” Aratus therefore yielded, and Nealces erased the figure of Aristratus, and in its place painted a palm-tree merely, not daring to introduce anything else. We are told, however, that the feet of the erased figure of Aristratus were left by an oversight beneath the chariot.

4 In consequence of this love of art Aratus was already beloved by the king, and in personal intercourse grew yet more upon him, and received for his city a gift of a hundred and fifty talents. Forty of these Aratus took with him at once and sailed to Peloponnesus; the rest the king divided into instalments, and sent them to him afterwards one by one.

14 1 Now it was a great achievement to procure so large a sum of money for his fellow-citizens; other generals and leaders of the people had taken but a fraction of this sum from kings in payment for wronging, enslaving, and betraying to them their native cities. But it was a far greater achievement by means of this money to have effected a harmonious adjustment of the disputes between rich and poor, and safety and security for the entire people. Moreover, we must admire the moderation of the man in the exercise of so great power. 2 For when he was appointed independent arbiter, with absolute powers for settling the money affairs of the exiles, he would not accept the office alone, but associated with himself fifteen of his fellow-citizens, by whose aid, after much toil and great trouble, he established peace and friendship among his fellow-citizens. For these services not only did the entire body of citizens bestow fitting public honours upon him, but the exiles also on their own account erected a bronze statue of him, and inscribed thereon the following elegiac verses: —

3 “The counsels, valorous deeds, and prowess in behalf of Hellas, which this man has displayed, are known as far as the Pillars of Heracles; but we who achieved our return through thee, Aratus, for thy virtue and justice, have erected to the Saviour Gods this statue of our saviour, because to thy native city thou has brought a sacred and heavenly reign of law.”

15 1 These successful achievements placed Aratus beyond the jealousy of his fellow-citizens, owing to the gratitude which he inspired; but Antigonus, the king, was annoyed by the policy of Aratus, and wished either to bring him over into complete friendship with himself or to alienate him from Ptolemy. He therefore showed him many kindnesses which were not at all welcome, and especially this, that as he was sacrificing to the gods at Corinth, he sent portions of the victims to Aratus at Sicyon. 2 And at the banquet which followed, where many guests were present, he said, so that all could hear: “I thought this Sicyonian youth was merely free-spirited and a lover of his fellow-citizens; but he would seem to be a capable judge also of the lives and actions of kings. For formerly he was inclined to overlook us, fixing his hopes elsewhere, and he admired the wealth of Egypt, hearing tales of its elephants, and fleets, and palaces; but now that he has been behind the scenes and seen that everything in Egypt is play-acting and painted scenery, he has come over entirely to us. 3 Therefore I both welcome the young man myself, having determined to make every possible use of him, and I would ask you to consider him a friend.” These words were seized upon by the envious and malevolent, who vied with one another in writing to Ptolemy many grievous charges against Aratus, so that the king sent an envoy and upbraided him. So great malice and envy attend upon the friendships of kings and tyrants, for which men strive and at which they aim with ardent passion.

16 1 Aratus now, having been chosen general of the Achaean League for the first time, ravaged the opposite territories of Locris and Calydonia, and went to the assistance of the Boeotians with an army of ten thousand men. He came too late, however, for the battle at Chaeroneia, in which the Boeotians were defeated by the Aetolians, with the loss of Aboeocritus, their Boeotarch, and a thousand men. 2 A year later, being general again, he set on foot the enterprise for the recovery of Acrocorinthus, not in the interests of Sicyonians or Achaeans merely, but purposing to drive from that stronghold what held all Hellas in a common subjection, — the Macedonian garrison. 3 Chares the Athenian, having been successful in a battle with the king’s generals, wrote to the people of Athens that he had won a battle which was “sister to that at Marathon”; and this enterprise of Aratus may be rightly called a sister of those of Pelopidas the Theban and Thrasybulus the Athenian, in which they slew tyrants, except that it surpassed them in being undertaken, not against Greeks, but against a foreign and alien power. 4 For the Isthmus of Corinth, forming a barrier between the seas, brings together the two regions, and thus unites our continent; and when Acrocorinthus, which is a lofty hill springing up at this centre of Greece, is held by a garrison, it hinders and cuts off all the country south of the Isthmus from intercourse, transits, and the carrying on of military expeditions by land and sea, and makes him who controls the place with a garrison sole lord of Greece. 5 Therefore it is thought that the younger Philip of Macedon uttered no jest, but the truth, whenever he called the city of Corinth “the fetters of Greece.”

17 1 Accordingly, the place was always an object of great contention among kings and dynasts, but the eagerness of Antigonus to secure it fell nothing short of the most frenzied passion, and he was wholly absorbed in schemes to take it by stratagem from its possessors, since an open attempt upon it was hopeless. 2 For when Alexander, in whose hands the place was, had died of poison given him (it is said) in obedience to Antigonus, and his wife Nicaea had succeeded to his power and was guarding the citadel, Antigonus at once sent his son Demetrius to her in furtherance of his schemes, and by inspiring her with pleasant hopes of a royal marriage and of wedded life with a young man who would be no disagreeable company for an elderly woman, 3 he captured her, using his son for all the world like a bait for her. The citadel, however, she did not give up, but kept it under strong guard. Pretending, therefore, indifference to this, Antigonus celebrated the nuptials of the pair in Corinth, exhibiting spectacles and giving banquets every day, as one whom pleasure and kindliness led to think chiefly of mirth and ease. 4 But when the crucial moment came, and as Amoebeus was about to sing in the theatre, he escorted Nicaea in person to the spectacle. She was borne in a litter which had royal trappings, plumed herself on her new honour, and had not the remotest suspicion of what was to happen. Then, arrived at the diverging street that led up to the citadel, Antigonus gave orders that Nicaea should be borne on into the theatre, while he himself, bidding adieu to Amoebeus, and adieu to the nuptials, went up to Acrocorinthus with a speed that belied his years; and, finding the gate locked, he beat upon it with his staff and ordered it to be opened. And the guards within, stupefied, opened it. 5 Thus master of the place, he could not contain himself for joy, but drank and disported himself in the streets, and with music-girls in his train and garlands on his head, old man that he was and acquainted with so great vicissitudes of fortune, revelled through the market-place, greeting and clasping hands with all who met him. Thus we see that neither grief nor fear transports and agitates the soul as much as joy that comes unexpectedly.

18 1 Antigonus, then, having got Acrocorinthus into his power, as I have said, kept it under guard, putting men there whom he most trusted, and making Persaeus the philosopher their commander. Now Aratus, even while Alexander was still living, had set his hand to the enterprise, but an alliance was made between the Achaeans and Alexander, and he therefore desisted. 2 At the time of which I speak, however, a new and fresh basis for the enterprise was found by him in the following circumstances.

There were in Corinth four brothers, Syrians by race, one of whom, Diocles by name, was serving as a mercenary soldier in the citadel. The other three, after stealing some gold plate of the king’s, came to Aegias, a banker in Sicyon with whom Aratus did business. A portion of the gold they disposed of to him at once, but the remainder was being quietly exchanged by one of them, Erginus, in frequent visits. 3 Erginus thus became well acquainted with Aegias, and having been led by him into conversation about the garrison in the citadel, said that as he was going up to see his brother he had noticed in the face of the cliff a slanting fissure leading to where the wall of the citadel was at its lowest. Thereupon Aegias fell to jesting with him, and said: “Do you, then, best of men, thus for the sake of a little gold plate rifle the king’s treasures, when it is in your power to sell a single hour’s work for large sums of money? Don’t you know that burglars as well as traitors, if they are caught, have only one death to die?” 4 Erginus burst out laughing, and as a first step agreed to make trial of Diocles (saying that he had no confidence at all in his other brothers), and a few days afterwards came back and bargained to conduct Aratus to the wall at a spot where it was not more than fifteen feet in height, and to aid in the rest of the enterprise together with Diocles.

19 1 Aratus on his part agreed to give the men sixty talents if he was successful, and in case he failed, and he as well as they got off safely, to give each of them a house and a talent. Then, since the sixty talents had to be deposited with Aegias for Erginus, and Aratus neither had them himself nor was willing by borrowing them to give anyone else a suspicion of his undertaking, he took most of his plate and his wife’s golden ornaments and deposited them with Aegias as security for his money. 2 For he was so exalted in spirit and had so great a passion for noble deeds that, knowing as he did that Phocion and Epaminondas were reputed to have been the justest and best of Greeks because they spurned great gifts and would not betray their honour for money, he elected to expend his own substance secretly, as an advance, on an enterprise in which he alone was risking his life for the whole body of citizens, who did not even know what was going on. 3 For who will not admire the magnanimity of the man, and yearn even now to lend a helping hand, who purchased at so high a price so great a danger, and pledged what he thought the most precious of his possessions in order that he might be introduced by night among his enemies and contend for his life, receiving as his security from his countrymen the hope of a noble action, and nothing else?

20 1 Now the enterprise was dangerous in itself, but was made more dangerous still by a mistake which occurred at the very beginning through ignorance. For Technon, the servant of Aratus, had been sent to inspect the wall with Diocles, and had not yet met Diocles face to face, but thought he would know how he looked because Erginus had described him as curly-haired, of a swarthy complexion, and without a beard. 2 Having come, therefore, to the place appointed, he was waiting for Erginus to come there with Diocles, just outside the city, near what was called the Ornis. As he was waiting, however, the oldest brother of Erginus and Diocles, named Dionysius, who was not privy to the enterprise and took no part in it, but resembled Diocles, chanced to come up. So Technon, moved by the similarity in the marks of his outward appearance, asked him if he was connected at all with Erginus; 3 and on his saying that he was a brother, Technon was altogether convinced that he was talking with Diocles, and without inquiring his name, or waiting for any other proof whatever, gave him his hand and began chatting with him and asking him questions about what had been agreed upon with Erginus. Dionysius took cunning advantage of his mistake, assented to all that he said, and turning his back toward the city led him along in unsuspicious conversation. 4 But just as he was near the city, and was at the very point of seizing Technon, by a second chance Erginus met them. Erginus comprehended the trick and the danger, motioned Technon to fly, and both of them ran off and got safely to Aratus. Aratus, however, would not give up hope, but at once sent Erginus to bribe Dionysius and beg him to hold his tongue. 5 Erginus not only did this, but actually brought Dionysius with him to Aratus. And now that Dionysius was there they would not let him go, but bound him and kept him indoors under lock and key, while they themselves prepared for their attack.

21 1 When all things were ready, Aratus ordered the rest of his forces to pass the night under arms, and taking with him four hundred picked men, few of whom knew what was on foot themselves, led them towards the gate of Corinth near by the temple of Hera. It was midsummer, the moon was at its full, and the night was cloudless and clear, so that they feared lest the gleam of their arms in the moonlight should disclose them to the sentinels. 2 But just as the foremost of them were near the wall, clouds ran up from the sea and enveloped the city itself and the region outside, which thus became dark. Then the rest of them sat down and took off their shoes, since men make little noise and do not slip if they are barefooted when they climb ladders; but Erginus, taking with him seven young men equipped as travellers, got unnoticed to the gate. 3 Here they slew the gate-keeper and the sentries who were with him. At the same time the ladders were clapped to the wall, and after getting a hundred men of in all haste, Aratus ordered the rest to follow as fast as they could; then he pulled his ladders up after him and marched through the city with his hundred men against the citadel, being already full of joy at his escape from detection and confident of success.

4 A little farther on they encountered a watch of four men with a light; they were not seen by them, being still in the shade of the moon, but saw them coming up in the opposite direction. So they drew back a little for shelter beneath some walls and buildings, and set an ambush for the men. Three of them they killed in their attack, but the fourth, with a sword-wound in his head, took to flight, crying out that the enemy were in the city. 5 And presently the trumpets were sounding, the city was in an uproar over what was happening, many lights were flashing, some in the city below and some in the citadel above, and a confused shouting broke forth on all hands.

22 1 Meanwhile Aratus was struggling up the steep with all his might, slowly and laboriously at first, unable to keep to the path and wandering from it, since it was everywhere sunk in the shadows of the jutting cliffs and had many twists and turns before it came out at the wall of the citadel. Then, marvellous to relate, the moon is said to have parted the clouds and shone out, making the most difficult part of the road plain, until he got to the wall at the spot desired; there the clouds came together again and everything was hidden in darkness.

2 But the soldiers of Aratus whom he had left at the gate outside near the temple of Hera, three hundred in number, when once they had burst into the city and found it full of lights and manifold tumult, were unable to discover the path which their comrades had taken or follow in their steps. So they crouched down and huddled themselves together in a shaded flank of the cliff, and there remained in great distress and impatience. 3 For Aratus and his party were now assailed with missiles from the citadel and were fighting, the shouts of the combatants came down the slopes, and cries echoed round about which the reverberations from the hills rendered confused and of uncertain origin. Then, as they were at a loss which way to turn, Archelaüs, the commander of the king’s forces, having many soldiers with him, made up the ascent amid shouts and the blare of trumpets to attack Aratus and his party, and thus passed by the three hundred. 4 These, rising up from ambush as it were, fell upon him, slew the first whom they attacked, put the rest, together with Archelaüs, to panic flight, and pursued them until they were scattered and dispersed about the city. And just as this victory had been won, Erginus came from the party fighting on the heights, with tidings that Aratus was engaged with the enemy, that these were defending themselves vigorously, that a great struggle was going on at the very wall, and there was need of speedy help. 5 The three hundred at once ordered him to lead the way; and as they took to the ascent their cries signalled their coming and encouraged their friends; the light of the full moon also made their arms appear more numerous to the enemy than they really were, owing to the length of their line of march, and the echoes of the night gave the impression that the shouts proceeded from many times the number there really were. 6 At last, with a united onset, they repulsed the enemy, mastered the citadel, and held its garrison in their power. Day was now breaking, the sun at once shone out upon their success, and the rest of the forces of Aratus came up from Sicyon, the Corinthians readily receiving them by the gates and helping them to seize the king’s soldiers.

23 1 When everything appeared to be safe Aratus came down from the citadel into the theatre whither an immense multitude streamed with an eager desire to see him and hear what he would say to the Corinthians. 2 After stationing his Achaeans at both the side-entrances, he himself advanced from the back-scene into the orchestra, with his breastplate still on and his countenance altered by toil and loss of sleep, so that the exultation and joy of his spirit were overpowered by the weariness of his body. 3 Since the multitude, when he came forward to address them, were profuse in their friendly expressions, taking his spear in his right hand and slightly inclining his knee and his body, he supported himself upon it and stood thus for a long time silently receiving their applause and acclamations, their praises of his valour and their congratulations on his success. 4 But when they had ceased and quiet had ensued, he summoned his strength and in behalf of the Achaeans made a speech which befitted their exploit, and persuaded the Corinthians to join the Achaean League. He also gave them back the keys to their gates, of which they then became possessed for the first time since the time of Philip of Macedon. Of the officers of Antigonus, he dismissed Archelaüs, who had been taken prisoner, but Theophrastus, who would not quit his post, he slew; 5 as for Persaeus, on the capture of the citadel he made his escape to Cenchreae. And at a later time, as we are told, when he was leading a life of leisure, and someone remarked that in his opinion the wise man only could be a good general, “Indeed,” he replied, “there was a time when I too particularly liked this doctrine of Zeno’s; but now, since the lesson I got from the young man of Sicyon, I am of another mind.” This story of Persaeus is told by many writers.

24 1 As for Aratus, he at once made himself master of the temple of Hera and the harbour of Lechaeum; he also seized five-and twenty of the king’s ships, and sold five hundred horses and four hundred Syrians; Acrocorinthus, too, was garrisoned by the Achaeans with four hundred men-at arms, and fifty dogs with as many keepers were maintained in the citadel.

2 Now the Romans, in their admiration of Philopoemen, call him “the last of the Greeks,” implying that no great man arose among the Greeks after him; but I should say that this capture of Acrocorinthus was the very last and latest achievement of the Greeks, and that it rivalled their best, not only in daring, but also in happy results, as events at once showed. 3 For Megara seceded from Antigonus and attached herself to Aratus; Troezen and Epidaurus were enrolled in the Achaean League; and Aratus, making a distant expedition for the first time, invaded Attica, and crossing the strait plundered Salamis, his Achaean forces, as though released from prison, obeying his every wish. But the freemen among his prisoners he sent back to the Athenians without ransom, thus laying a foundation for their revolt from Antigonus. 4 He also made Ptolemy an ally of the Achaeans, with the leadership in war on land and sea. And he was so influential among the Achaeans that, since it was not permissible every year, they chose him general every other year, though, in fact, his wisdom made him their leader all the time. For they saw that he put first and foremost, not wealth, not fame, not friendship with kings, not his own native city’s advantage, but only the growth in power of the Achaean League. 5 For he considered that the Greek states which were weak would be preserved by mutual support when once they had been bound as it were by the common interest, and that just as the members of the body have a common life and breath because they cleave together in a common growth, but when they are drawn apart and become separate they wither away and decay, in like manner the several states are ruined by those who dissever their common bonds, but are augmented by mutual support, when they become parts of a great whole and enjoy a common foresight.

25 1 And so, whence he saw that the best of the neighbouring peoples were autonomous, and was distressed at the servitude of the Argives, he plotted to kill Aristomachus the tyrant of Argos, being ambitious to restore its freedom to the city as a reward for the rearing it had given him, as well as to attach it to the Achaean League. 2 Accordingly, men were found to dare the deed, of whom Aeschylus and Charimenes the seer were the chief. They had no swords, however, the tyrant having prohibited the possession of them under heavy penalties. Aratus, therefore, ordered small daggers to be made for them in Corinth and sewed them up in pack-saddles; these he put upon beasts of burden carrying ordinary wares and sent them into Argos. 3 But Charimenes the seer took on a partner in the enterprise, at which Aeschylus and his friends were incensed and proceeded to act on their own account, ignoring Charimenes. When Charimenes was aware of this, he was angry and informed against the men just as they were setting out to attack the tyrant; most of them, however, succeeded in escaping from the market-place and fled to Corinth.

4 Nevertheless, after a little while Aristomachus was killed by slaves, and Aristippus, a more pernicious tyrant than he, soon succeeded in seizing the power. Aratus at once took all the Achaeans of military age who were at hand and went swiftly to the aid of the city, supposing that he would be welcomed by the Argives. But since most of them were by this time habituated to slavery and willing to endure it, so that not a man came over to his side, he retired, after involving the Achaeans in the charge of having gone to war in time of peace. 5 They were prosecuted on this charge before the Mantineans, and in the absence of Aratus, Aristippus as plaintiff won his case and was awarded damages to the amount of thirty minas. 6 Aratus himself the tyrant both hated and feared, and so laid plots to kill him with the assistance of Antigonus the king; and almost everywhere there were men who undertook this deed for them and watched for an opportunity.

7 But there is no safeguard for a ruler like a sincere and steadfast goodwill on the part of the ruled. For when both the common people and the leading men are afraid, not of their leader, but for their leader, he sees with many eyes, hears with many ears, and so perceives betimes what is going on. Therefore I wish to stop my story at this point, in order to describe the life that Aristippus led. This was laid upon him by his office of tyrant, so envied of men, and by the pride and pomp of monarchy, which men celebrate and call blessed.

26 1 For though he had Antigonus as ally, and kept many guards to protect his person, and had left no single enemy alive in the city, yet he would order his spearmen and guards to bivouac outside in the colonnade; and as for his servants, as soon as supper was over he would drive them all out. 2 Then he would lock the doors of the inner house, and betake himself with his mistress to a little upper room, which was closed by a trap-door; on this door he would place his couch and sleep, as one in his state of mind would naturally sleep, by fits and starts and in great fear. 3 The ladder the mother of his mistress would take away and lock up in another room, and in the morning would put it in place again and call the wonderful tyrant, who would come down like a creeping thing out of its hole. Aratus, on the other hand, not by force of arms, but legally and in consequence of his virtues, had invested himself with an enduring power, and yet went about in ordinary tunic and cloak; he declared himself a public foe of any and every tyrant; and he left behind him a posterity of the highest repute among the Greeks down to this day. 4 But of the men who seize citadels, maintain spearmen, and depend upon arms and gates and trap-doors for the safety of their persons, only a few, like timorous hares, have escaped a violent death; while not one of them has left a house, or a family, or a tomb to keep his memory in honour.

27 1 Against Aristippus, then, and in trying to seize Argos, Aratus made many open and secret attempts in vain. Once he set up scaling-ladders, at great hazard got upon the wall with a few followers, and killed the sentries that defended the place. 2 The day came and the tyrant attacked him from all sides, while the Argives, as though it were not a battle to secure their liberties, but a contest in the Nemean games of which they were the judges, sat as just and impartial spectators of what was going on, without lifting a finger. Aratus, fighting sturdily, had his thigh transfixed by a spear-thrust, yet held his ground, though harassed by his enemies. 3 And if through the night also he had maintained the struggle, he would not have failed in his attempt; for the tyrant was already bent on flight and had sent on many of his goods to the sea. As it was, however, no one told Aratus of this, and since water was failing him and he could not use his strength by reason of his wound, he led his soldiers away.

28 1 Then, since he despaired of success in this way, he openly invaded the territory of Argos with his army and ravaged it; and in a fierce battle with Aristippus at the river Chares, he was accused of abandoning the struggle and throwing away the victory. For although the rest of his forces admittedly had the upper hand and had gone far on ahead in pursuit, he himself, not so much because he was ousted from his position by his opponents, as out of mistrust of success and in utter fear, withdrew in disorder to his camp. 2 But when the rest of his army came back from the pursuit and were indignant because, though they had routed the enemy and slain far more of them than they had lost of their own number, they had suffered the vanquished to erect a trophy over the victors, Aratus was ashamed and determined again to fight out the question of the trophy, and on the next day but one put his army once more in battle array. 3 However, on perceiving that the forces of the tyrant were more numerous than before and more courageous in their resistance, he would not venture a decisive battle, but withdrew after being allowed to take up his dead under a truce. Nevertheless, by his skill in dealing with men and public affairs, and by the favour in which he stood, he retrieved this failure, brought Cleonae into the Achaean League, and celebrated the Nemean games in that city, on the ground that it had an ancient and more fitting claim upon them. 4 But the games were also celebrated at Argos, and then for the first time the privilege of asylum and safe-conduct which had been granted to contestants in the games was violated, since the Achaeans treated as enemies and sold into slavery all contestants in the games at Argos whom they caught travelling through their territory. So fierce and implacable was Aratus in his hatred of tyrants.

29 1 A little while after this, Aratus heard that Aristippus was plotting against Cleonae, but feared to attack it while his enemy was posted at Corinth; he therefore assembled an army by public proclamation. And after ordering his troops to carry provisions for several days, he marched down to Cenchreae, by this stratagem inviting Aristippus to attack Cleonae in the belief that his enemy was not at hand; and this was actually what happened. For the tyrant set out at once from Argos with his forces. But 2 Aratus, returning from Cenchreae to Corinth as soon as it was dark, and posting guards along all the roads, led his Achaeans towards Cleonae, and they followed him in such good order and with such swiftness and alacrity that not only while they were on the march, but also when they had got into Cleonae, before the night was over, and had arrayed themselves for battle, Aristippus knew nothing at all of it. 3 Then, at daybreak, the gates were thrown open, the trumpet gave its loud signal, and dashing at a run and with shouts upon the enemy Aratus routed them at once, and kept on pursuing where he most suspected that Aristippus was in flight, the country having many diverging routes. 4 The pursuit continued as far as Mycenae, where the tyrant was overtaken and slain by a certain Cretan named Tragiscus, as Deinias relates; and besides him there fell over fifteen hundred. But although Aratus had won so brilliant a success, and had lost not a single one of his own soldiers, he nevertheless did not take Argos nor set it free, since Agias and the younger Aristomachus burst into the city with troops of the king and took control of affairs.

5 This success, then, refuted much of the calumny heaped upon Aratus, as well as the scoffing and abusive stories of the flatterers of the tyrants, who would recount, to please their masters, how the general of the Achaeans always had cramps in the bowels when a battle was imminent, and how torpor and dizziness would seize him as soon as the trumpeter stood by to give the signal, and how, after he had drawn up his forces and passed the watchword along, he would ask his lieutenants and captains whether there was any further need of his presence (since the die was already cast), and then go off to await the issue anxiously at a distance. 6 For these stories were so prevalent that even in the schools of philosophy, when the query arises whether palpitation of the heart and change of colour and looseness of the bowels, in the presence of seeming peril, are the mark of cowardice, or of some faulty temperament and chilliness in the body, Aratus is always mentioned by name as one who was a good general, but always had these symptoms when a contest was impending.

30 1 Having thus made away with Aristippus, Aratus at once began to plot against Lydiades, who was tyrant in his native city of Megalopolis. This Lydiades was neither of mean birth nor naturally lacking in high ambition, nor, like most sole rulers, had he been driven by licence and rapacity into this iniquity, but he had been fired with a love of glory while still young, and had thoughtlessly associated with his high spirit the false and empty doctrines current concerning tyranny, to the effect that it was a wonderful and blessed thing. And now that he had made himself tyrant, he was quickly sated with the burdens which devolve upon the sole ruler. 2 Therefore, at once envying the successes of Aratus and fearing his plots, he adopted a new and most admirable plan, first, to free himself from hatred and fear and guards and spearmen, and second, to become a benefactor of his native city. So he sent for Aratus, resigned his power, and made his city a member of the Achaean League. Wherefore the Achaeans exalted him and chose him general.

3 Lydiades was at once ambitious to surpass Aratus in reputation, and not only did many other things which were thought unnecessary, but also proclaimed an expedition against the Lacedaemonians. Aratus opposed him, but was thought to do so out of jealousy; and Lydiades was chosen general for the second time, though Aratus openly worked against him and was eager to have the office given to someone else. 4 For Aratus himself, as I have said, held the office every other year. Accordingly, until he was general for the third time, Lydiades continued to be held in favour, and held the office every other year in alternation with Aratus; but after displaying an open enmity to him and frequently denouncing him before the Achaeans, he was cast aside and ignored, since it was apparent that he was contending, with a fictitious character, against a genuine and unadulterated virtue. 5 And just as the cuckoo, in the fable of Aesop, when he asks the little birds why they fly away from him, is told by them that he will one day be a hawk, so it would seem that since Lydiades had once been a tyrant he was never free from a suspicion, which did injustice to his real nature, that he would change again.

31 1 In the Aetolian war also Aratus won a good repute. For when the Achaeans were bent on an engagement with the Aetolians in front of Megara, and Agis the king of the Lacedaemonians was come up with an army and joined in urging the Achaeans on to battle, Aratus opposed this counsel, and in spite of much vilification and much scoffing abuse for weakness and cowardice would not abandon, because of any seeming disgrace, which he judged to be for the general advantage, but allowed the enemy to cross the Geraneian range without a battle and pass on into Peloponnesus. 2 When, however, after thus passing on, they suddenly seized Pellene, he was no longer the same man, nor would he wait at all in order that his forces might assemble and come together from all quarters, but at once set out with those he had against the enemy, whom the disorder and wantonness attendant upon their success had wholly weakened. 3 For as soon as they had entered the city, the common soldiers had scattered themselves among the houses, jostling and fighting with one another over the booty, while the leaders and captains were going about and seizing the wives and daughters of the Pellenians, on whose heads they put their own helmets, that no one else might seize them, but that helmet might show to whom each woman belonged. But while they were in this situation and thus engaged, word was suddenly brought to them that Aratus had attacked. Dismay fell upon them, as was natural amid such disorder, and before all had learned of the danger the foremost of them, engaging with the Achaeans at the gates and in the suburbs, were already conquered and in full flight, and being driven in headlong rout, they filled with dismay those who were collecting together and coming to their aid.

32 1 In the midst of this confusion, one of the captive women, daughter of Epigethes, a man of distinction, and herself conspicuous for beauty and stateliness of person, chanced to be sitting in the sanctuary of Artemis, where she had been placed by the captain of a picked corps, who had seized her for his prize and set his three-crested helmet upon her head. But suddenly she ran forth to view the tumult, 2 and as she stood in front of the gate of the sanctuary and looked down upon the combatants from on high, with the three-crested helmet on her head, she seemed to the citizens themselves a vision of more than human majesty, while the enemy thought they saw an apparition from heaven and were struck with amazement and terror, so that not a man of them thought of defending himself.

But the Pellenians themselves tell us that the image of the goddess usually stands untouched, and that when it is removed by the priestess and carried forth from the temple, no man looks upon it, but all turn their gaze away; for not only to mankind is it a grievous and terrible sight, but trees also, past which it may be carried, become barren and cast their fruit. 3 This image, then, he says, the priestess carried forth from the temple at this time, and by ever turning it in the faces of the Aetolians robbed them of their senses and took away their reason. Aratus, however, in his Commentaries, makes no mention of such a thing, but says that after routing the Aetolians and bursting into the city with them as they fled, he drove them out by main force, and slew seven hundred of them. The action was extolled as among the greatest exploits, and Timanthes the painter made a picture of the battle which in its composition vividly portrayed the event.

33 1 Notwithstanding, since many peoples and dynasts were combining against the Achaeans, Aratus at once sought to make friends of the Aetolians, and with the assistance of Pantaleon, their most influential man, not only made peace, but also an alliance between them and the Achaeans.

2 But in his eagerness to set Athens free he incurred the bitter reproaches of the Achaeans, because, though they had made a truce and suspended hostilities with the Macedonians, he attempted to seize the Peiraeus. He himself, however, in the Commentaries which he left, lays the blame for this attempt upon Erginus, with whose aid he had effected the capture of Acrocorinthus. 3 He says that Erginus attacked the Peiraeus on his own private account, and that when his scaling-ladder broke and the enemy were pursuing him, he kept calling upon Aratus by name, as if Aratus were there, and thus deceived and made his escape from them. But this defence does not seem to be convincing. For Erginus was a private man and a Syrian, and there is no likelihood that he would have conceived of so great an undertaking if he had not been under the guidance of Aratus and obtained from him the force and the fitting time for the attack. 4 And Aratus himself also made this plain, since he assaulted the Peiraeus, not twice or thrice, but many times, like a desperate lover, and would not desist in spite of his failures, but was roused to fresh courage by the very narrowness of the slight margin by which he was disappointed of his hopes. And once he actually put his leg out of joint as he fled through the Thriasian plain; and while he was under treatment for this, the knife was often used upon him, and for a long time was carried in a litter upon his campaigns.

34 1 When Antigonus died and Demetrius succeeded to the throne, Aratus was all the more bent upon getting Athens, and wholly despised the Macedonians. And so, after he had been overcome in a battle at Phylacia by Bithys the general of Demetrius, and reports were rife, one that he had been captured, and another that he was dead, 2 Diogenes, the guardian of the Peiraeus, sent a letter to Corinth ordering the Achaeans to quit the city, since Aratus had been killed; but when the letter arrived at Corinth, Aratus chanced to be there in person, and so the messengers of Diogenes, after furnishing much diversion and laughter, went away. Moreover, the king himself sent a ship from Macedonia, on which Aratus was to be brought to him in chains. 3 And the Athenians, carrying their flattery of the Macedonians to the highest pitch of levity, crowned themselves with garlands as soon as they heard that Aratus was dead. Therefore he was wroth, and at once made an expedition against them, and advanced as far as the Academy; then he listened to their entreaties and did them no harm.

So the Athenians came to recognize the excellence of his character, and when, upon the death of Demetrius, they set out to regain their freedom, they called upon him. 4 Then Aratus, although another was at that time general of the Achaeans, and he himself was confined to his bed by a long sickness, nevertheless was carried in a litter to help the city in its time of need, and joined in persuading Diogenes, the commander of the garrison, to give up the Peiraeus, Munychia, Salamis, and Sunium to the Athenians for a hundred and fifty talents, twenty of which Aratus contributed himself. 5 Moreover, Aegina and Hermione at once came over to the Achaeans, and the greater part of Arcadia joined their league. And since the Macedonians were busy with certain neighbouring and adjacent wars, and the Aetolians were in alliance with the Achaeans, the power of the Achaean League was greatly increased.

35 1 And now Aratus, seeking to effect his long-standing purpose, and impatient of the tyranny so near the Achaeans in Argos, sent messengers and tried to persuade Aristomachus to give his city freedom and attach it to the Achaean League, urging him to imitate Lydiades and be general of so great a nation with praise and honour, rather than tyrant of a single city with peril and hatred. 2 Aristomachus consented, and told Aratus to send him fifty talents, in order that he might disband and send away the soldiers under him, and the money was being provided. Upon this, Lydiades, who was still general and had an ambition that the Achaeans should regard this transaction as his own work, denounced Aratus to Aristomachus as a man who had always been an implacable enemy of tyrants, and after persuading Aristomachus to entrust the matter to himself, brought him before the Achaean council. 3 Then the members of the council put into clearest light their goodwill towards Aratus and their confidence in him. For when he angrily opposed the project, they drove Aristomachus away; but when he had been won over again, and came before them in person, and began to argue for the project, they speedily and readily adopted all his proposals, admitted Argos and Phlius into the league, and a year later actually chose Aristomachus general.

4 Aristomachus, then, being in high favour with the Achaeans, and wishing to invade Laconia, summoned Aratus from Athens. Aratus wrote him a letter in which he tried to dissuade him from the expedition, and expressed unwillingness to involve the Achaeans in hostilities with Cleomenes, who was daring and growing marvellously in power; but, since Aristomachus was altogether insistent, Aratus obeyed orders and accompanied the expedition in person. 5 It was at this time that he prevented Aristomachus from joining battle when Cleomenes came upon them at Pallantium, and was denounced therefore by Lydiades, with whom he came into contest and competition for the office of general, winning the vote and being chosen general for the twelfth time.

36 1 In the campaign of this year he was defeated by Cleomenes near Mount Lycaeum, and took to flight; and, since he lost his way in the night, he was thought to be dead, and once more a story to this effect had wide currency among the Greeks. But he escaped alive and rallied his soldiers, and then was not content to come off safely, 2 but making the best use of his opportunity, when no one expected or had any idea of what was to happen, he suddenly made an assault upon Mantineia, which was in alliance with Cleomenes; and having taken the city, he set a garrison there, and made its alien residents full citizens, thus acquiring single-handed for the conquered Achaeans what they could not easily have obtained as conquerors.

3 And again, when the Lacedaemonians made an expedition against Megalopolis, he went to the aid of the city, but was loth to give Cleomenes a chance for the hand-to hand fighting which he desired, and resisted the importunities of the Megalopolitans. For he was never at any time well fitted by nature for set battles, and at this time in particular he was inferior in numbers, and was matched against a man who was young and daring, while his own courage was past its prime, and his ambition chastened. He also thought that the glory which his adversary was trying to acquire by his daring and did not possess, had already been acquired by himself and must be preserved by his caution.

37 1 Nevertheless, his light infantry once made a sally, drove the Spartans as far as to their camp, and were scattered about among the tents. Aratus, however, would not even then lead up his men, but putting a ravine between himself and the enemy, halted there, and would not suffer his men-at arms to cross it. Then Lydiades, distressed at what was going on, and loading Aratus with reproaches, called his horsemen to him and exhorted them to go to the help of the pursuers, and not to let the victory slip out of their hands nor leave in the lurch a commander who was fighting in behalf of his native city. 2 Many brave men gathering at his call, he was emboldened to charge upon the right wing of the enemy, which he routed and pursued. But his ardour and ambition robbed him of discretion, and he was drawn on into places that were intricate and full of planted trees and broad trenches. Here Cleomenes attacked him and he fell, after a brilliant and most honourable combat at the gates of his native city. 3 The rest of his men fled to their main line, threw the men-at arms into confusion, and thus infected the whole army with their defeat. Aratus was severely blamed for this, being thought to have betrayed Lydiades; and when the Achaeans left the field in anger, they forced him to accompany them to Aegium. Here they held an assembly, and voted not to give him money and not to maintain mercenaries for him; if he wanted to wage war, he must provide the means himself.

38 1 Smarting under this insult, he resolved to give up his seal at once, and resign the office of general, but upon reflection he held on for the present, and after leading the Achaeans forth to Orchomenus, fought a battle there with Megistonoüs, the stepfather of Cleomenes, in which he got the upper hand, killing three hundred of the enemy and taking Megistonoüs prisoner. 2 But when, accustomed as he was to be general every other year, his turn came round again and he was invited to take the office, he formally declined, and Timoxenus was chosen general. Now the grounds usually given for this refusal of Aratus, namely, his anger at the people, were not thought to be convincing, and the real reason for it was the situation of the Achaeans. For the invasions of Cleomenes were no longer quiet and restrained, as formerly, nor was he fettered by the civil authorities, 3 but after he had killed the ephors, divided up the land, advanced many resident aliens to the citizenship, and thus got an irresponsible power, he immediately pressed the Achaeans hard, and demanded the supreme leadership for himself. And therefore men blame Aratus, because, when the ship of state was driving in a great surge and storm, he forsook the pilot’s helm and left it to another, although it had been well, even if the people were unwilling, to remain at their head and save them; 4 and if he despaired of the government and power of the Achaeans, he ought to have yielded to Cleomenes, and not to have made Peloponnesus quite barbarous again under Macedonian garrisons, nor to have filled Acrocorinthus with Illyrian and Gallic arms, nor, in the case of men whom he was always defeating in the fields of war and statesmanship and abusing in the pages of his Commentaries, to have made these men lords over the cities under the endearing name of allies. 5 And if Cleomenes was, as must be granted, lawless and arbitrary, still, Heracleidae were his ancestors, and Sparta was his native land, the meanest citizen of which was more worthy than the foremost Macedonian to be made their leader by those who had any regard for Greek nobility of birth. And yet Cleomenes asked the Achaeans for the office with the promise that he would confer many benefits upon their cities in return for that honour and its title, 6 whereas Antigonus, although he was proclaimed leader with full powers by land and sea, would not accept the office until Acrocorinthus had been promised him as the pay for his leadership. In this he acted just like Aesop’s hunter. For he would not mount the Achaeans, although they prayed him to do so and presented their backs to him by way of embassies and decrees, until they consented to wear the bit and bridle of the garrison they received and the hostages they gave. 7 And yet Aratus says everything that he can say in explaining the necessity that was upon him. Polybius, however, says that for a long time, and before the necessity arose, Aratus mistrusted the daring temper of Cleomenes and made secret overtures to Antigonus, besides putting the Megalopolitans forward to beg the Achaeans to call in Antigonus. For the Megalopolitans were most oppressed by the war, since Cleomenes was continually plundering their territory. 8 A similar account of these matters is given by Phylarchus also, in whom, but for the testimony of Polybius, one should not put entire credence. For goodwill makes his every mention of Cleomenes ecstatic, and as if he were pleading in a court of law, he is for ever accusing Aratus in his history, and defending Cleomenes.

39 1 So, then, the Achaeans lost Mantineia, which was taken again by Cleomenes, and after being defeated in a great battle at Hecatombaeum they were so dismayed that they sent at once and invited Cleomenes to come to Argos and assume the leadership. 2 But Aratus, when he learned that Cleomenes was on the way and at Lerna with his forces, feared the issue, and sent an embassy to demand that he should come with three hundred men only, as to friends and allies, and that if he was distrustful, he should accept hostages. Cleomenes declared that he was insulted and mocked by this demand, and retired with his army, after writing a letter to the Achaeans which was full of bitter accusations against Aratus. 3 Aratus also wrote letters against Cleomenes; and their mutual abuse and defamation reached the point of maligning one another’s marriages and wives.

As a result of this, Cleomenes sent a herald to declare war against the Achaeans, and almost succeeded in seizing the city of Sicyon with the help of traitors; he turned aside, however, when close at hand, and assaulted and took the city of Pellene, from which the Achaean commander fled. And not long afterwards he took Pheneus also and Penteleium. 4 Then Argos went over to his side, and Phlius received a garrison which he sent. In a word, not one of their acquisitions longer held firm to the Achaeans, but a vast confusion suddenly encompassed Aratus. He saw Peloponnesus shaking, and its cities everywhere stirred to revolt by restless agitators.

40 1 For there was no quiet anywhere, and no contentment with present conditions, but even among the Sicyonians and Corinthians themselves there were many who were known to have been in conference with Cleomenes, men whom a desire for private domination had long ago led into secret hostility towards the common interests. 2 For the punishment of these men Aratus was clothed with absolute power, and seizing those in Sicyon who were thus corrupted he put them to death; but when he tried to seek out and chastise those in Corinth, he roused the resentment of the populace there, which was already disaffected and ill at ease under the Achaean administration. So they assembled hastily in the temple of Apollo and sent for Aratus, determined to kill him or seize him, and then to revolt. 3 He came, accordingly, leading his horse after him, as though he had no distrust or suspicion, and when many sprang up and abused and denounced him, with a composed countenance and gentle word he bade them sit down and not stand there shouting in disorderly fashion, but to admit also those who were outside at the door; and as he spoke, he withdrew slowly, as if he would hand his horse over to somebody. 4 Having thus slipped out of the crowd, he conversed calmly with the Corinthians who met him, bidding them go to the temple of Apollo, and so, before his enemies were aware of it, came nigh the citadel. Then he leaped upon his horse, and after giving orders to Cleopater the commander of the garrison in the citadel to guard it with a strong hand, he rode off to Sicyon, followed by only thirty of his soldiers; the rest deserted him and dispersed.

5 After a little while the Corinthians learned of his flight and pursued him, but did not overtake him. Then they sent for Cleomenes and delivered their city into his hands, although he thought that he had gained by what they gave him far less than he had lost by their letting Aratus get away. Cleomenes, accordingly, after the accession to him of the inhabitants of Acte, as the district is called, who placed their cities in his hands, proceeded to run a wall and palisade about Acrocorinthus.

41 1 But a few of the Achaeans came together with Aratus at Sicyon; and in an assembly there held he was chosen general with full powers. And now he surrounded himself with a guard from among his own citizens. For three-and thirty years he had directed public affairs among the Achaeans, and had enjoyed more power and reputation than any other Greek; but now, abandoned by his allies and helplessly crushed, he was like one drifting about in great surge and peril on the wreck of his native city. 2 For the Aetolians refused him their aid when he asked for it, and the Athenians, whom gratitude made eager to help him, were prevented by Eurycleides and Micion. As for the house and property belonging to Aratus in Corinth, Cleomenes would not touch them at all, nor permit anyone else to do so, but sent for the friends and stewards of Aratus and ordered them to administer and watch over everything as though they were to render an account to Aratus. 3 Moreover, he privately sent Tripylus to Aratus, and afterwards Megistonoüs, his stepfather, promising to give him, besides many other things, a yearly pension of twelve talents, thus doubling the amount which Aratus received annually from Ptolemy; for he sent six talents each year to Aratus. Cleomenes demanded, however, that he should be proclaimed leader of the Achaeans, and together with them should have the keeping of Acrocorinthus. 4 Aratus made answer that he did not control affairs, but rather was controlled by them; whereupon Cleomenes, thinking himself mocked, at once invaded the territory of Sicyon, ravaged and laid it waste, and encamped before the city three months. All this while Aratus held out patiently, and debated with himself whether he should accept Antigonus as an ally on condition of handing over to him Acrocorinthus! for on any other terms Antigonus was unwilling to give him help.

42 1 Accordingly, the Achaeans came together at Aegium and invited Aratus thither. But there was danger in his trying to get there, since Cleomenes was encamped before Sicyon. Besides, the citizens tried to detain him, beseeching him not to go and refusing to let him expose himself while the enemy were near; and presently the women and children were clinging to him and tearfully embracing him as a common father and preserver. 2 Nevertheless, after encouraging and comforting them, he rode out to the sea, accompanied by ten friends and by his son, who was now a young man. Vessels were lying at anchor off the shore, and upon these the party were conveyed to Aegium, where the assembly was sitting. Here it was voted to call in Antigonus and hand over to him Acrocorinthus. 3 Aratus even sent his son to Antigonus with the other hostages. At this the Corinthians were indignant; they plundered his property and made a present of his house to Cleomenes.

43 1 And now, as Antigonus was approaching with his forces (he was followed by twenty thousand Macedonian footmen and thirteen hundred horse), Aratus, in company with his High Councillors, went by sea to meet him at Pegae, eluding the enemy. He had no very great confidence in Antigonus, and put no trust in the Macedonians. For he knew that his own rise to power had been a consequence of the harm he had done to them, and that he had found the first and the chief basis for his conduct of affairs in his hatred towards the former Antigonus. 2 But seeing how inexorable was the necessity laid upon him in the demands of the hour, to which those we call rulers are slaves, he went on towards the dread ordeal. But Antigonus, when he was told that Aratus was coming to him, gave the rest of the party an ordinary and moderate welcome; Aratus, however, he received at this first meeting with superlative honour, and afterwards, finding him to be a man of worth and wisdom, drew him in closer intimacy to himself.

3 For Aratus was not only helpful in large undertakings, but also more acceptable than anyone else as a companion in the king’s leisure hours. Therefore, although Antigonus was young, as soon as he perceived that Aratus was naturally well fitted to be a king’s friend, he continually treated him with greater intimacy than anyone else, whether of the Achaeans, or of the Macedonians in his following; 4 and thus the omen proved true which the god had given to Aratus in his sacrificial victims. For it is related that as he was sacrificing a little while before this, a liver was found which had two gall-bladders enclosed in a single coil of fat; whereupon the seer had declared that Aratus would soon enter into close friendship with what he most hated and fought against. At the time, then, Aratus paid no heed to the utterance, since in general he put little faith in victims and divinations, and trusted rather to his reasoning powers. 5 Later, however, when the war was going on well, Antigonus gave a feast in Corinth, at which he had many guests, and made Aratus recline just above himself. After a little while the king called for a coverlet, and asked Aratus if he too did not think it cold; and when Aratus replied that he was very chilly, the king ordered him to come nearer; so that the rug which the servants brought was thrown over both of them together. Then, indeed, Aratus called to mind his sacrificial victims and burst out laughing, and told the king about the omen and the seer’s prediction. But this took place at a later time.

44 1 At Pegae Antigonus and Aratus exchanged oaths of fidelity, and straightway marched against the enemy at Corinth. And there were conflicts about the city, Cleomenes being well fortified, and the Corinthians defending themselves with ardour. Meanwhile, however, Aristotle the Argive, who was a friend of Aratus, sent secretly to him and promised to bring his city to revolt from Cleomenes if Aratus would come thither with soldiers. 2 So Aratus, after informing Antigonus, took fifteen hundred men and sailed from the Isthmus to Epidaurus with all speed. But the Argives, revolting prematurely, attacked the garrison of Cleomenes and shut them up in the citadel, and Cleomenes, learning of this, and fearing that if his enemies got possession of Argos they would cut him off from a safe return home, abandoned Acrocorinthus while it was still night and went to their aid. 3 He succeeded in getting into Argos first, routing some of the enemy on the way; but shortly afterwards Aratus came up, and Antigonus showed himself with his forces, and Cleomenes therefore retreated to Mantineia. Upon this the cities all came over to the Achaeans again, Acrocorinthus was handed over to Antigonus, and Aratus, having been chosen general by the Argives, persuaded them to make a present to Antigonus of the property of the tyrants and of the traitors. 4 As for Aristomachus, he was tortured at Cenchreae and then thrown into the sea; for which deed, more than any other, Aratus was reproached, on the ground that he had allowed a man to be lawlessly put to death who was not wicked, but had coöperated with him, and at his persuasion had renounced his power and attached his city to the Achaean League.

45 1 Presently, too, men began to blame Aratus for whatever else was done, as, for instance, that the Achaeans made a present to Antigonus of the city of Corinth, as if it had been an ordinary village; that they allowed the king to plunder Orchomenus and put a Macedonian garrison in it; that they decreed not to write or send an embassy to any other king against the wishes of Antigonus; 2 that they were forced to furnish supplies and pay for the Macedonian troops; and that they celebrated sacrifices, processions, and games in honour of Antigonus, the fellow-citizens of Aratus leading the way and receiving Antigonus into their city, where he was the guest of Aratus. For all these things men blamed Aratus, not knowing that, since he had entrusted the reins to the king and was dragged along in the wake of the king’s power, he was no longer master of anything except his tongue, which it was dangerous for him to use with freedom. 3 At any rate Aratus was plainly annoyed at many acts of the king, and especially at his treatment of the statues in Argos; for those of the tyrants, which had been cast down, Antigonus set up again, while those of the captors of Acrocorinthus, which were standing, he threw down, that of Aratus only excepted; and though Aratus made many appeals to him in the matter, he could not persuade him. 4 It was thought also that the treatment of Mantineia by the Achaeans was not in accord with the Greek spirit. For after mastering that city with the aid of Antigonus, they put to death the leading and most noted citizens, and of the rest, some they sold into slavery, while others they sent off into Macedonia in chains, and made slaves of their wives and children, dividing a third of the money thus raised among themselves, and giving the remaining two-thirds to the Macedonians.  It is true that this came under the law of reprisal; for though it is a terrible thing to treat men of the same race and blood in this way, out of anger, still “in dire stress even cruelty is sweet,” as Simonides says, when men, as it were, give satisfaction and healing care to a mind that is in anguish and inflamed. But the subsequent treatment of the city by Aratus was neither necessary nor honourable, and cannot be excused. 6 For after the Achaeans had received the city from Antigonus as a present and had decided to colonize it, Aratus himself was chosen to be the founder of the new settlement, and being then general, got a decree passed that the city should no longer be called Mantineia, but Antigoneia, and this is its name down to the present time. And so it was due to Aratus that the name of “lovely Mantineia” was altogether extinguished, and the city continues to bear the name of him who destroyed and slew its former citizens.

46 1 After this, Cleomenes, having been defeated in a great battle at Sellasia, forsook Sparta and sailed off to Egypt, and Antigonus, after having accorded to Aratus fair and kindly treatment in every way, led his army back to Macedonia. There, being now a sick man, he sent Philip, his successor in the kingdom, who was still a stripling, into the Peloponnesus, and urged him to attach himself to Aratus above all others, and through him to deal with the cities and make the acquaintance of the Achaeans.  And indeed Aratus did take the prince in hand, and managed matters so as to send him back to Macedonia full of great goodwill towards his patron and of ardour and ambition for the conduct of Hellenic affairs.

47 1 But upon the death of Antigonus the Aetolians, despising the Achaeans on account of their slothful ways (for now that they were accustomed to save themselves by other men’s prowess and had taken shelter behind the Macedonian arms, they were living in great inactivity and lack of discipline), proceeded to interfere in the affairs of Peloponnesus; and after plundering the territories of Patrae and Dyme on their way, they invaded Messenia and ravaged it. 2 At this Aratus was incensed, and seeing that Timoxenus, who at that time was general of the Achaeans, was hesitant and dilatory, since his term of office was just about to expire, he himself, having been chosen to succeed Timoxenus, anticipated his term of office by five days for the sake of giving aid to the Messenians. And having assembled the Achaeans, who were physically and mentally unfit for war, he met with defeat at Caphyae. 3 Then, being thought to have conducted the campaign with too much ardour, his purposes were once more blunted and he gave up the cause and his hopes for lost, so that oftentimes, when the Aetolians gave him an advantage, he neglected it, and suffered them to revel, as it were, in Peloponnesus, with great boldness and wantonness. 4 Once more, therefore, the Achaeans stretched out their hands imploringly to Macedonia, and brought Philip down to take part in Hellenic affairs, above all things because his goodwill towards Aratus and his confidence in him led them to hope that they would find him easy-tempered in all things and manageable.

48 1 And now for the first time Apelles, Megaleas, and sundry other courtiers made false charges against Aratus to which the king listened, and joining in the canvass made by those of the opposite faction, he favoured the election of Eperatus as general of the Achaeans. 2 But Eperatus was altogether despised by the Achaeans, and as long as Aratus gave little heed to public matters nothing went well. Philip therefore perceived that he had been entirely wrong. So he reversed his course, went back to Aratus, and was wholly his; and since the progress of events now brought him increased power and reputation, he depended altogether upon Aratus, convinced that his repute and strength were due to him. 3 And all the world thought that Aratus was a good guardian and tutor for a kingdom no less than for a democracy; for his principles and character were manifest, like colour in a fabric, in the actions of the king. For instance, the moderation of the young prince in dealing with the offending Lacedaemonians, his engaging behaviour towards the Cretans, by means of which he won the whole island to obedience in a few days, and the astonishingly vigorous conduct of his campaign against the Aetolians, all added to the reputation of Philip for taking good advice, and to that of Aratus for giving it. 4 For this reason, too, the royal courtiers were all the more envious of him, and since they could accomplish nothing by their secret calumnies, they took to abusing and insulting him openly at their banquets, with great wantonness and scurrility; and once they actually pursued and threw stones at him as he was going to his tent after supper. At this Philip was enraged, and for the nonce fined them twenty talents; afterwards, however, regarding them as a noxious and confusing element in his affairs, he put them to death.

49 1 But soon, as the king’s fortune flowed smoothly on, he was lifted up by his success, and developed many inordinate desires; his inherent badness, too, forcing aside the unnatural restraints of his assumed deportment and making its way to the light, little by little laid bare and revealed his true character. In the first place he inflicted a private wrong upon the younger Aratus by corrupting his wife, and was for a long time undetected, since he was a housemate and a guest of the family; in the second place, he began to show hostility towards the civil polities of the Greeks, and it was presently clear that he was trying to shake off Aratus. 2 First grounds of suspicion were afforded by his conduct at Messene. For there was factional strife in the city, and Aratus was tardy in coming to its aid, and Philip, who got to the city a day before Aratus, at once goaded on the two parties against one another. In private he asked the generals of the Messenians if they had not laws to enforce against the common people, and again in private he asked the leaders of the common people if they had not hands to lift against the tyrants. 3 Upon this the officials plucked up courage and tried to lay hands upon the leaders of the people, and they, coming to the attack at the head of their followers, slew the officials and nearly two hundred citizens besides.

50 1 After this outrageous deed of Philip’s, and while he was striving more than ever to set the Messenians by the ears, Aratus reached the city. He showed clearly that he was indignant himself, and would not check his son when he bitterly reproached and reviled Philip. Now, it would seem that the young man was a lover of Philip; and so at this time he told Philip, among other things, that he no longer thought him fair to look upon, after so foul a deed, but the most repulsive of men. 2 Philip made no answer to him, although it was expected that he would, since in his anger he had many times cried out savagely while the young man was speaking, but as though he meekly submitted to what had been said and was a person of moderation and not above the ordinary citizen, he gave the elder Aratus his hand, led him forth from the theatre, and brought him to the Ithomatas, in order to sacrifice to Zeus and take a view of the place. 3 For it is quite as well walled in as Acrocorinthus, and with a garrison in it is difficult of access and a hard place for its neighbours to take by force. Thither Philip went up, and offered sacrifice, and when the seer brought him the entrails of the ox, he took them in both hands and showed them to Aratus and Demetrius of Pharos, leaning towards each one in turn and asking them what indications they saw in the omens; was he to be master of the citadel, or to give it back to the Messenians? 4 Demetrius, with a laugh, replied: “If thou hast the spirit of a seer, thou wilt give up the place; but if that of a king, thou wilt hold the ox by both its horns,” speaking darkly of Peloponnesus, which, if Philip added the Ithomatas to Acrocorinthus, would be altogether subject and submissive to him. 5 Aratus held his peace for a long time, but upon Philip’s asking him to express his opinion, said: “There are many lofty hills in Crete, O Philip, and many towering citadels in Boeotia and Phocis; in Acarnania, too, I suppose, as well inland as on its shores, there are many places which show an amazing strength; but not one of these dost thou occupy, and yet all these peoples gladly do thy bidding. 6 For it is robbers that cling to crags and cliffs, but for a king there is no stronger or more secure defence than trust and gratitude. Relying upon these, young as thou art, thou hast already made thyself leader here, and master there.” While he was yet speaking, Philip handed the entrails to the seer, and drawing Aratus to him by the hand, said: “Come hither, then, and let us take the same road,” implying that he had been constrained by him and made to give up the city.

51 1 But Aratus presently began to withdraw from the court and little by little to retire from his intimacy with Philip. When the king was about to cross into Epeirus and asked him to join the expedition, he refused and remained at home, fearing that he would be covered with ignominy by the king’s proceedings. 2 Philip lost his fleet most shamefully at the hands of the Romans, and after utter failure in his undertakings, came back into Peloponnesus. Here he tried once more to hoodwink the Messenians, and after being detected in this, wronged them openly and ravaged their territory. Then Aratus was altogether estranged and filled with distrust of the king, being now aware also of the crime committed against his domestic life. At this he was sorely vexed himself, but kept it hidden from his son, 3 who could only know that he had been shamefully abused, seeing that he was not able to avenge himself. For Philip would seem to have undergone a very great and inexplicable change, in that from a gentle prince and chaste youth he became a lascivious man and a pernicious tyrant. In fact, however, this was not a change of nature, but a showing forth, in time of security, of a baseness which his fears had long led him to conceal.

52 1 For that the feelings which he had cherished from the beginning towards Aratus had an admixture of shame and fear, was made plain by what he did to him at the last. For he desired to kill Aratus, and thought he could not be a free man while Aratus lived, much less a tyrant or a king. In a violent way, however, he made no attempt upon him, but ordered Taurion, one of his officers and friends, to do this in a secret way, preferably by poison, when the king was absent. 2 So Taurion made an intimate companion of Aratus, and gave him poison, not of a sharp and violent sort, but one of those which first induce gentle heats in the body, and a dull cough, and then little by little bring on consumption. The thing was not hidden from Aratus, but since it was no use for him to convict the criminal, he calmly and silently drank his cup of suffering to the dregs, as if his sickness had been of a common and familiar type. 3 However, when one of his intimate companions who was with him in his chamber saw him spit blood, and expressed surprise, “Such, my dear Cephalo,” said Aratus, “are the wages of royal friendship.”

53 1 And so he died, at Aegium, while general for the seventeenth time, and the Achaeans were very desirous that he should have burial there and memorials befitting his life. But the Sicyonians regarded it as a calamity that he should not be buried in their city, and persuaded the Achaeans to surrender his body to them. 2 They had, however, an ancient law that no one should be buried inside the city walls, and the law was supported by strong feelings of superstition. So they sent to Delphi to get advice in the matter from the Pythian priestess, and she gave them the following oracular answer: —

“Would’st thou, O Sicyon, pay Aratus lasting honour for the lives he saved,

And join in pious funeral rites for thy departed lord?

Know that the place which vexes or is vexed by him

Is sacrilegious, be it in earth or sky or sea.”

3 When the oracle was brought to them the Achaeans were all delighted, the Sicyonians, in particular, changing their mourning into festival, at once put on garlands and white raiment and brought the body of Aratus from Aegium into their city, amid hymns of praise and choral dances; and choosing out a commanding place, they buried him there, calling him founder and saviour of the city. 4 And the place is called to this day Arateium, and yearly sacrifices are made to Aratus there, one on the day when he freed the city from its tyranny — the fifth day of the month Daesius (which the Athenians call Anthesterion), which sacrifice has the name Soteria, and one on the day of the month when, according to the records, he was born. The first of these sacrifices was performed by the priest of Zeus the Saviour; the second by the priest of Aratus, who wore a headband, not pure white but purple and white, 5 and hymns with accompaniment of lyre were sung by the artists of Dionysus, and the gymnasiarch took part in the procession, at the head of the boys and young men of military age; then followed the councillors wearing garlands, and all other citizens who desired. Of these ceremonial rites the Sicyonians still preserve slight traces, celebrated on the same days of the year, but most of them, owing to the passage of time, and the pressure of other matters, have lapsed.

54 1 Such was the life and such the nature of the elder Aratus, as history tells us; and as for his son, he was deprived of his reason by Philip, who had an abominable nature and added savage cruelty to his wanton exercise of power. He gave the young man poisons which did not kill, but crazed, and thus made him a prey to strange and dreadful impulses, under which he grasped at absurd activities, and experiences not only shameful but destructive, so that death came to him, although he was young and in the flower of his life, not as a calamity, but as release from evils, and salvation. 2 For this unholy deed, however, Philip paid ample penalties to Zeus, the guardian of hospitality and friendship, as long as he lived. For after being subdued by the Romans and putting his fortunes in their hands, he was stripped of most of his dominions, surrendered all his ships but five, agreed to pay a thousand talents besides, gave up his son to serve as a hostage, and only out of pity obtained Macedonia and its tributaries. But he was for ever putting to death the noblest of his subjects and his nearest kin, and thus filled his whole kingdom with horror and hatred of him. 3 One piece of good fortune only was his, amid so many ills, and that was a son of surpassing excellence; but this son he killed, out of envy and jealousy of the honour paid him by the Romans, and left his kingdom to his other son, Perseus, who was not legitimate, as we are told, but supposititious, the child of a sempstress, Gnathaenion. This king graced the triumph of Aemilius, and with him ended the royal line of the Antigonids; whereas the descendants of Aratus were living at Sicyon and Pellene in my time.

Galba

1 1 Iphicrates the Athenian used to think that the mercenary soldier might well be fond of wealth and fond of pleasure, in order that his quest for the means to gratify his desires might lead him to fight with greater recklessness; but most people think that a body of soldiers, just like a natural body in full vigour, ought to have no initiative of its own, but should follow that of its commander. 2 Wherefore Paulus Aemilius, as we are told, finding that the army which he had taken over in Macedonia was infected with loquacity and meddlesomeness, as though they were all generals, gave out word that each man was to have his hand ready and his sword sharp, but that he himself would look out for the rest. Moreover, Plato sees that a good commander or general can do nothing unless his army is amenable and loyal; and he thinks that the quality of obedience, like the quality characteristic of a king, requires a noble nature and a philosophic training, which, above all things, blends harmoniously the qualities of gentleness and humanity with those of high courage and aggressiveness. Many dire events, and particularly those which befell the Romans after the death of Nero, bear witness to this, and show plainly that an empire has nothing more fearful to show than a military force given over to untrained and unreasoning impulses. 4 Demades, indeed, after Alexander had died, likened the Macedonian army to the blinded Cyclops, observing the many random and disorderly movements that it made; but the Roman Empire was a prey to convulsions and disasters like those caused by the Titans of mythology, being torn into many fragments, and again in many places collapsing upon itself, not so much through the ambition of those who were proclaimed emperors, as through the greed and licence of the soldiery, which drove out one commander with another as nail drives out nail. 5 And yet the Pheraean who ruled Thessaly for ten months and was then promptly killed, was called the tragedy-tyrant by Dionysius, with scornful reference to the quickness of the change. But the house of the Caesars, the Palatium, in a shorter time than this received four emperors, the soldiery ushering one in and another out, as in play. But the suffering people had one consolation at least in the fact that they needed no other punishment of the authors of their sufferings, but saw them slain by one another’s hands, and first and most righteously of all, the man who ensnared the soldiery and taught them to expect from the deposition of a Caesar all the good things which he promised them, thus defiling a most noble deed by the pay he offered for it, and turning the revolt from Nero into treachery.

2 1 It was Nymphidius Sabinus, prefect of the court guard along with Tigellinus, as I have already stated, who, when Nero’s case was altogether desperate, and it was clear that he was going to run away to Egypt, persuaded the soldiery, as though Nero were no longer there but had already fled, to proclaim Galba emperor, 2 and promise as largess seventy-five thousand drachmas for those in service outside of Rome, a sum which it was impossible to raise without inflicting ten thousand times more evils upon the world than those inflicted by Nero. 3 This promise was at once the death of Nero, and soon afterwards of Galba: the one the soldiers abandoned to his fate in order to get their reward, the other they killed because they did not get it. Then, in trying to find someone who would give them as high a price, they destroyed themselves in a succession of revolts and treacheries before their expectations were satisfied. Now, the accurate and circumstantial narration of these events belongs to formal history; but it is my duty also not to omit such incidents as are worthy of mention in the deeds and fates of the Caesars.

3 1 That Sulpicius Galba was the richest private person who ever came to the imperial throne, is generally admitted; moreover, his connection with the noble house of the Servii gave him great prestige, although he prided himself more on his relationship to Catulus, who was the foremost man in his time in virtue and reputation, even if he gladly left to others the exercise of greater power. 2 Galba was also somehow related to Livia, the wife of Augustus Caesar, and therefore, at the instance of Livia, he was made consul by the emperor. We are told also that he commanded an army in Germany with distinction, and that when he was pro-consul of Africa, he won such praise as few have done. But his simple and contented way of living, the sparing hand with which he dealt out money, always avoiding excess, were counted unto him, when he became emperor, as parsimony, so that the reputation which he bore for moderation and self-restraint was an insipid sort of thing. 3 By Nero he was sent out as governor of Spain, before Nero had yet learned to be afraid of citizens who were held in high esteem. Galba, however, was thought to be of a gentle nature, and his great age gave an added confidence that he would always act with caution.

4 1 But when, as the nefarious agents of Nero savagely and cruelly harried the provinces, Galba could help the people in no other way than by making it plain that he shared in their distress and sense of wrong, this somehow brought relief and comfort to those who were being condemned in court and sold into slavery. And when verses were made about Nero, and men circulated and sang them freely, he did not put a stop to it nor share in the displeasure of Nero’s agents; wherefore he was still more beloved by the inhabitants. 2 For he was by this time well known to them, since it was in the eighth year of his governorship that Junius Vindex, a general in Gaul, revolted against Nero. It is said, indeed, that even before the open rebellion Galba received letters from Vindex, and that he neither put any trust in them nor gave accusing information about them, although other provincial governors sent to Nero the letters written to them, and thus did all they could to ruin the enterprise of Vindex; and yet they afterwards took part in it, and thus confessed that they had been false to themselves no less than to Vindex. 3 But after Vindex had openly declared war, he wrote to Galba inviting him to assume the imperial power, and thus to serve what was a vigorous body in need of a head, meaning the Gallic provinces, which already had a hundred thousand men under arms, and could arm other thousands besides. Then Galba took counsel with his friends. Some of these thought it best for him to wait and see what movement Rome would set on foot in response to the revolution; 4 but Titus Vinius, the captain of the praetorian guard, said to them: “O Galba, what counsels are these? For to ask whether we shall remain faithful to Nero means that we are already unfaithful. Assuming, then, that Nero is an enemy, we surely must not reject the friendship of Vindex; or else we must at once denounce him and make war upon him because he wishes the Romans to have thee as their ruler rather than Nero as their tyrant.”

5 1 After this, Galba issued an edict appointing a day on which he would grant individual admissions to all who desired them, and gossip and rumour flying all abroad brought together a multitude of men who were eager for the revolution. 2 At any rate, no sooner was Galba seen upon the tribunal than all with one voice hailed him as emperor. However, he did not at once accept this appellation, but after denouncing Nero, and bewailing the most illustrious of the men who had been put to death by him, promised to devote his best powers to the service of his country, taking as his title, not Caesar, nor Emperor, but General of the Roman Senate and People.

3 Now, that Vindex acted wisely and well in calling upon Galba to be emperor, was convincingly proved by Nero. For though he pretended to despise Vindex and to regard matters in Gaul as of no moment, as soon as he learned what Galba had done — Nero had just taken his bath and was at breakfast — he overturned his table. 4 However, after the Senate had voted Galba an enemy, Nero, with a desire to jest and put on a bold countenance with his friends, said that an excellent idea had occurred to him in his need of money: the property of the Gauls would not fall to him as spoil of war until after they should be subdued; but Galba’s estate was ready to be used and sold at once, now that Galba had been declared a public enemy. 5 So he ordered the property of Galba to be sold, and Galba, when he heard of it, put up at public sale all that Nero owned in Spain, and found many readier buyers.

6 1 Many were now falling away from Nero, and almost all of them attached themselves to Galba; only Clodius Macer in Africa, and Verginius Rufus in Gaul (where he commanded the German forces), acted on their own account, though each took a different course. 2 Clodius, whose cruelty and greed had led him into robberies and murders, was clearly in a strait where he could neither retain nor give up his command; while Verginius, who commanded the strongest legions and was often saluted by them as emperor and strongly urged to take the title, declared that he would neither assume the imperial power himself, nor allow it to be given to anyone else whom the senate did not elect. 3 These things greatly disturbed Galba at first; but presently the armies of Verginius and Vindex in a manner forced their leaders, like charioteers who had lost control of the reins, into the crash of a great battle, and Vindex, after the loss of twenty thousand Gauls, died by his own hand, and a report was current that all the soldiers desired Verginius, in view of the great victory he had won, to assume the imperial power, or they would go back again to Nero. 4 Then indeed Galba was all alarm, and wrote to Verginius inviting him to join in efforts for the preservation alike of the empire and the freedom of the Romans. But after this he retired with his friends to Clunia, a city in Spain,a and spent his time in repenting of what he had done and in longing for his habitual and wonted freedom from care, rather than in taking any of the steps now made necessary.

7 1 It was now summer, and shortly before sunset there came from Rome a freedman named Icelus, who had made the journey in seven days. Having learned that Galba was reposing by himself, he went in hot haste to his chamber, opened the door in spite of the chamberlains, entered, 2 and announced that Nero was still alive, but in hiding, that the army first, and then the senate and the people, had proclaimed Galba emperor, and that a little while afterwards it was reported that Nero was dead; Icelus himself, however, as he said, had not believed the report, but had gone and seen the dead body where it lay, and then had set out on his journey. 3 This announcement highly elated Galba, and there came running to his door a multitude of men who had gained complete confidence as the result of Icelus’ report. And yet the messenger’s speed was incredible. But two days afterwards Titus Vinius with others came from the camp and reported in detail the decrees of the senate. Vinius, accordingly, was advanced to a position of honour, and as for the freedman, he was allowed to wear the gold ring, received the name of Marcianus instead of Icelus, and had the chief influence among the freedmen.

8 1 But at Rome Nymphidius Sabinus was forcing the entire control of affairs into his own hands, not slowly and little by little, but all at once. He thought that Galba was an old man and would hardly have the strength to be carried to Rome on a litter, by reason of his age, for he was in his seventy-third year; moreover, he knew that the soldiery in the city had long been well disposed towards him and were now devoted to him alone, regarding him as their benefactor because of the large gifts which he promised, but Galba as their debtor. 2 Straightway, therefore, he ordered his colleague Tigellinus to lay down his sword, gave receptions at which he banqueted men who had been consuls or in high command (although he still affixed the name of Galba to his invitations), and instigated many of the soldiers to declare that a deputation ought to be sent to Galba demanding that Nymphidius be made prefect for life without a colleague.

3 Moreover, the senate did much to enhance his honour and power, giving him the title of benefactor, assembling daily at his door, and allowing him the privilege of initiating and confirming all their decrees. This raised him to a still higher pitch of boldness, so that within a short time those who paid court to him were filled, not only with jealousy, but also with fear. 4 When the consuls provided public servants to carry the decrees of the senate to the emperor, and gave to these the diplomas, as they were called, sealed with their official seal (in order that the magistrates of the various cities, recognising this, might expedite the supply of fresh vehicles for the journey of the couriers), he was vexed beyond all bounds because the decrees had not been sent under his seal and in charge of his soldiers, nay, it is said that he actually thought of proceeding against the consuls, but put away his wrath when they excused themselves and begged for forgiveness. 5 Again, in his desire to gratify the people, he would not prevent them from beating to death any follower of Nero who fell into their hands. Accordingly, they cast Spiculus the gladiator under statues of Nero that were being dragged about in the forum, and killed him; Aponius, one of Nero’s informers, they threw to the ground and dragged waggons laden with stone over him; and many others, some of whom had done no wrong, they tore in pieces, so that Mauricus, who was justly deemed one of the best men in Rome, told the senate that he was afraid they would soon be searching for a Nero.

9 1 Thus coming in his hopes nearer and nearer to his goal, Nymphidius was not averse to having it said that he was the son of the Caius Caesar who succeeded Tiberius. For Caius, as it would appear, while still a young man, had been intimate with the mother of Nymphidius, a woman of comely appearance and a daughter of Callistus, Caesar’s freedman, by a hired sempstress. 2 But this intimacy, as it would seem, was later than the birth of Nymphidius, and it was believed that he was a son of Martianus, the gladiator (with whom Nymphidia fell in love on account of his fame), and his resemblance to Martianus was thought to favour this connection. 3 But although he certainly admitted that Nymphidia was his mother, he took to himself sole credit for the overthrow of Nero, and thinking himself insufficiently rewarded for this by the honours and wealth which he enjoyed, and by the company of Sporus, Nero’s favourite (whom he had sent for at once, while Nero’s body was yet burning on its pyre, and treated as his consort, and addressed by the name of Poppaea), he aspired to the succession of the empire. 4 Some secret steps to this end he himself took at Rome through the agency of his friends, and certain women and men of senatorial rank secretly assisted him, and one of his friends, Gellianus, he sent to Spain to keep an eye upon matters there.

10 1 But everything went well with Galba after the death of Nero. Verginius Rufus, it is true, who was still hesitating, gave him anxiety. For besides commanding a large and most efficient army, Verginius had the added prestige of his victory over Vindex and his subjugation of all Gaul, which was a large part of the Roman Empire and had been in the throes of revolt. Galba therefore feared that Verginius might listen to those who invited him to take the supreme power. 2 For no man’s name was greater than that of Verginius, and no man had a reputation equal to his, since he had exercised the greatest influence in ridding the Roman state alike of a grievous tyrant and of Gallic wars. But in the present crisis he was true to his original resolves and maintained the senate’s right to choose the emperor. And yet when Nero’s death was known for certain, the mass of his soldiery were insistent again with Verginius, and one of the military tribunes in his tent drew his sword and ordered Verginius to choose between imperial power and the steel. 3 But after Fabius Valens, commander of a legion, had led off in taking the oath of allegiance to Galba, and letters had come from Rome telling of the senate’s decrees, he succeeded at last, though with the greatest difficulty, in persuading his soldiers to declare Galba emperor; and when Galba sent Flaccus Hordeonius to succeed him, Verginius received that officer, handed over his army to him, and went himself to meet Galba as he advanced, and turned back in his company without receiving any clear mark either of his anger or esteem. 4 This was due, in the one case, to Galba himself, who had a wholesome respect for Verginius, and in the other to Galba’s friends, especially Titus Vinius. Vinius was jealous of Verginius, and thought to block his career; but without knowing it he was aiding the man’s good genius, which was now removing him from all the wars and miseries which encompassed the other leaders, and bringing him into a calm haven of life, and an old age full of peace and quiet.

11 At Narbo, a city of Gaul, Galba was met by the deputies from the senate, who greeted him and begged him to gratify speedily the eager desire of the people to see him. In his general interviews and meetings with them he was kind and unassuming, and when he entertained them, though there was an abundance of royal furniture and service at his command, which Nymphidius had sent him from Nero’s palace, he used none of it, but only what was his own, thus winning a good repute, and showing himself a man of large mind who was superior to vulgarity. 2 Vinius, however, by declaring to him that this dignified, simple, and unassuming course was merely a flattery of the people and a refinement of delicacy which thought itself unworthy of great things, soon persuaded him to make use of Nero’s riches, and in his receptions not to shrink from a regal wealth of outlay. And in general the aged man let it be seen little by little that he was going to be under the direction of Vinius.

12 1 Now Vinius was to the last degree and beyond all compare a slave of money, and was also addicted to loose conduct with women. For when he was still a young man and was serving his first campaign, under Calvisius Sabinus, he brought his commander’s wife, an unchaste woman, by night into the camp in the garb of a soldier, and had commerce with her in the general’s quarters (the Romans call them “principia”). 2 For this offence Caius Caesar put him in prison; but on the death of the emperor he had the good fortune to be released. While he was at supper with Claudius Caesar, he purloined a drinking-cup, and Caesar, learning of it, invited him to supper again the next day, and when he came, ordered the attendants to set before him no silver plate at all, but only earthenware. 3 This misdeed, it is true, owing to the comic turn which Caesar’s moderation took, was thought worthy of laughter, not of anger; but what he did when he had Galba under his control and was most influential with him in financial matters, was partly a cause and partly a pretext for tragic events and great calamities.

13 1 For Nymphidius, as soon as Gellianus had come back to him, whom he had sent to be a sort of spy upon Galba, heard that Cornelius Laco had been appointed prefect of the praetorian guard, and that Vinius was all powerful with Galba, while Gellianus had never stood near him or seen him in private, but had been looked upon with suspicion and distrust by everyone. Nymphidius was therefore much disturbed, 2 and calling together the officers of the army, told them that Galba was a well-meaning and moderate old man, but did not follow his own counsels in the least, and was badly directed by Vinius and Laco. Therefore, before these men had succeeded in secretly acquiring the power which Tigellinus had held, a deputation should be sent to the emperor from the camp, to inform him that if he would put away from his company of friends only these two men, he would be more acceptable and welcome to all on his arrival. 3 But this speech of Nymphidius did not convince his hearers; nay, they thought it a strange and unnatural thing to dictate to an aged emperor, as if he had been a youth just tasting power, what friends he was to have or not to have. Nymphidius therefore took another course, and wrote to Galba messages intended to alarm him — now, that there was much hidden distemper and unrest in the city, now, that Clodius Macer was holding back the grain supplies in Africa; again, that the legions in Germany were mutinous, and that like news came concerning the forces in Syria and Judaea. 4 But since Galba gave no heed to him whatever and put no confidence in his reports, he determined not to wait before making his attempt. And yet Clodius Celsus of Antioch, a man of good sense, who was well-disposed and faithful to him, tried to dissuade him, saying that in his opinion not a single precinct in Rome would give Nymphidius the title of Caesar. But many ridiculed Galba, and especially Mithridates of Pontus, who scoffed about his bald head and wrinkled face, and said that now the Romans thought him a great personage, but when they saw him they would regard all the days in which he had borne the title of Caesar a disgrace to them.

14 1 It was decided, therefore, to bring Nymphidius into the camp about midnight and proclaim him emperor. But when it was evening, the leading military tribune, Antonius Honoratus, calling together the soldiers under his command, reviled himself, and reviled them for changing about so often in so short a time, not according to any plan or choice of better things, but because some evil spirit drove them from one treachery to another. 2 In the first instance, he said, they had an excuse in the crimes of Nero; but now, if they were to betray Galba, what charge of murdering his mother or slaying his wife could they bring against him, or what feelings of shame that their emperor should appear in public as musician or tragic actor? “Nay, not even with these provocations would we consent to abandon a Nero, but we had to be persuaded by Nymphidius that Nero had first abandoned us and fled to Egypt. 3 Shall we, then, sacrifice Galba after Nero, and choosing the son of Nymphidia as our Caesar, shall we slay the scion of the house of Livia, as we have slain the son of Agrippina? Or, shall we inflict punishment on Nymphidius for his evil deeds, and thereby show ourselves avengers of Nero, but true and faithful guardians of Galba?”

So spoke the tribune, and all his soldiers took his side, and visiting their fellow-soldiers, exhorted them to maintain their fidelity to the emperor; and they brought over the greater part of them. 4 But now loud shouts arose, and Nymphidius, either because he was convinced, as some say, that the soldiers were already calling him, or because he was anxious to win over betimes the element that was still unruly and mutinous, came up in a glare of lights, carrying in his hand a speech written out for him by Cingonius Varro; this he had got by heart to deliver to the soldiers. 5 But when he saw the gate of the camp closed and a great number of men under arms along the walls, he was struck with fear; and drawing near, he asked what they meant, and by whose command they were under arms. One cry came to him from the lips of all, and this was that they acknowledged Galba as emperor, whereupon he also, as he joined them, shouted in approval, and bade his followers do the same. 6 But after the soldiers at the gate had permitted him to enter with a few followers, a lance was hurled at him. This weapon was received in the shield which Septimius interposed, but others assailed him, with drawn swords, whereupon he fled, was pursued, and was cut down in a soldier’s hut. His dead body was dragged forth, surrounded with a paling, and exposed to public view all day.

15 1 Such was the violent end of Nymphidius, and when Galba learned of it, he ordered such of his fellow-conspirators as had not at once taken their own lives to be put to death. Among these was Cingonius, who wrote the speech for Nymphidius, and Mithridates of Pontus. But it was held to be illegal and despotic, even though just, to put to death without a trial men who were not without distinction. For everyone expected a different mode of government, being thoroughly deceived, as is usual, by assurances made in the beginning. 2 And people took it still more amiss when Petronius Turpilianus, a man of consular dignity who was faithful to Nero, was ordered to take his own life. For in having Macer taken off in Africa at the hands of Trebonius, and Fonteius in Germany at the hands of Valens, Galba could excuse himself with the fear they inspired as commanders of armed forces. But there was no reason why Turpilianus, a helpless old man and unarmed, should not have a chance to defend himself, if the emperor was really going to observe that moderation in his dealings which he promised.

3 Such, then, was the censure to which these acts exposed Galba. Moreover, when, in his approach to the city, he was distant from it about five-and twenty furlongs, he fell in with a disorderly and tumultuous crowd of seamen, who beset his way and encompassed him on all sides. These were men whom Nero had formed into a legion and given the title of soldiers. 4 And now they were there to enforce their just rights as soldiers, and would not suffer the emperor to be seen or heard by those who came to meet him, but with tumultuous shouts demanded standards for their legion and regular quarters. When Galba put off their demand and told them to renew it at another time, they declared that the postponement was merely a way of refusing their demands, and were incensed, and followed along with unremitted shouts. Some actually drew their swords, and then Galba ordered his horsemen to charge upon them. Not a man of them stood his ground, but some were done to death at once in the route, and others as they fled, nor was it a happy and auspicious omen that Galba should enter the city through so much slaughter and so many dead bodies. But whereas many had before this despised him and looked upon him as a weak old man, now all regarded him with shuddering fear.

16 1 And now, in his desire to display a great change from Nero’s immoderate and extravagant manner of living, he was thought to fall short of what was fitting. For example, after Canus had played on the flute for him at a banquet (now Canus was a performer of high repute), he was loud in his praises and ordered his purse to be brought to him; and taking from it a few gold pieces, he gave them to Canus, with the remark that the gift was made from his own, and not from the public moneys. 2 Again, he ordered that the gifts which Nero had made to people of the theatre and palaestra should be demanded back again with strictness, all but the tenth part; and then, when he got only slight and grudging returns (for most of the recipients had squandered their largess, being men of a loose and improvident way of living), he had a search made for such as had bought or received anything whatsoever from them, and tried to exact from these. 3 The business had no limits, but was far extended and affected many; it gave the emperor himself a bad name, and brought envy and hatred upon Vinius as having made the emperor ungenerous and sordid with everybody else, while he himself used money lavishly, taking everything that was offered and selling freely. 4 For Hesiod bids men to

“Drink without stint at the beginning and end of the cask,”

and so Vinius, seeing that Galba was old and feeble, sated himself with the good fortune which he thought was just beginning and at the same time was soon to end.

17 1 But the aged emperor suffered injustice not only when Vinius, as at first, administered affairs badly, but also when he brought into odium or prevented wise measures set on foot by Galba himself; as, for instance, in the matter of punishing the adherents of Nero. 2 For Galba set out to kill the bad ones, among whom were Helius and Polycleitus and Petinus and Patrobius. And the people applauded the act, and shouted, as the culprits were dragged through the forum to their doom, that it was a goodly procession indeed, and acceptable to the gods, but that gods and men alike demanded justice on the tutor and teacher of the tyrant, namely, Tigellinus. That worthy minister, however, had won the protection of Vinius betimes, by means of large advances. 3 Again, Turpilianus, who was hated merely because he would not betray nor show hatred to Nero in spite of all that emperor’s crimes, but apart from this had participated in no one serious offence, was put to death; whereas the man who had made Nero worthy of death, and betrayed and forsook him when he had come to that pass, was left alive — a great object-lesson to show that Vinius could do anything and fulfill any expectation for those who gave him enough. 4 For there was no spectacle on which the Roman people had so set their hearts as that of Tigellinus dragged away to punishment, and in all the theatres and circuses they would not cease demanding him, until they were quelled by an edict of the emperor in which he declared that Tigellinus was wasting away with consumption and had not much longer to live, and advised them not to exasperate the government or force it to be tyrannical. 5 Then, in mockery of the dissatisfied people, Tigellinus offered sacrifices for his preservation and prepared a splendid feast; and Vinius, rising from beside the emperor, afterwards went to a drinking-bout in Tigellinus’ house, leading his daughter, who was a widow. Tigellinus pledged her health with a gift of twenty-five myriads of money, and ordered the governess of his concubines to take the necklace from her own neck and put it about hers. The necklace was said to be worth fifteen myriads.

18 1 After this, even the reasonable measures of the emperor fell under censure, as, for instance, his treatment of the Gauls who had conspired with Vindex. For they were thought to have obtained their remission of tribute and their civil rights, not through the kindness of the emperor, but by purchase from Vinius. 2 Such were the reasons, then, why most of the people hated the government; but the soldiers, though they had not received their promised largess, were led on at first by the hope that Galba would give them, if not the whole of it, at least as much as Nero had given. When, however, Galba heard that they were complaining, he spoke out as became a great emperor, and declared that it was his custom to enroll soldiers, not to buy them; whereupon they began to cherish a dire and savage hatred towards him. For they thought that he was not only defrauding them himself, but laying down the law and giving instructions for succeeding emperors.

3 But the agitation at Rome was still smouldering, and at the same time a certain respect for Galba’s presence blunted and delayed the spirit of revolution, and the absence of any manifest occasion for a change repressed and kept under cover, somehow or other, the resentment of the soldiers. But the army which had formerly served under Verginius, and was now serving under Flaccus in Germany, thinking themselves deserving of great rewards on account of the battle they had fought against Vindex, and getting nothing, could not be appeased by their officers. 4 Of Flaccus himself, who was physically incapacitated by an acute gout, and inexperienced in the conduct of affairs, they made no account whatever. And once at a spectacle, when the military tribunes and centurions, after the Roman custom, invoked health and happiness upon the emperor Galba, the mass of the soldiery raised a storm of dissent at first, and then, when the officers persisted in their invocation, cried out in response, “If he deserves it.”

19 1 The legions also that were under the command of Tigellinus frequently behaved with similar insolence, and letters on the subject were sent to Galba by his agents. So the emperor, fearing that it was not only his old age but also his childlessness that brought him into contempt, planned to adopt some young man of illustrious family and appoint him his successor. 2 Marcus Otho, now, was a man of good lineage, but from his very childhood corrupted by luxury and the pursuit of pleasure as few Romans were. And as Homer often calls Paris “the husband of fair-haired Helen,” giving him a dignity borrowed from his wife, since he had no other title to fame, so Otho was celebrated at Rome for his marriage with Poppaea. With Poppaea Nero was enamoured while she was the wife of Crispinus, but since he respected his own wife still and feared his mother, he put Otho up to soliciting her favours for him. 3 For because of Otho’s prodigality Nero made an intimate friend of him, and was well pleased to be rallied by him often for parsimony and meanness. Thus, we are told that Nero once anointed himself with costly ointment and sprinkled a little of it upon Otho; whereupon Otho, entertaining the emperor in his turn on the following day, suddenly brought into play gold and silver pipes on all sides of the room, out of which ointment gushed freely, like so much water. 4 But as for Poppaea, Otho corrupted her with hopes of Nero’s favour and seduced her first himself, and persuaded her to leave her husband. However, after she had come to live with him as his wife, he was not content to have only a share in her favours, and was loth to give Nero a share, while Poppaea herself, as we are told, was not displeased at the rivalry between them. 5 For it is said that she would shut out Nero although Otho was not at home; whether it was that she sought to keep his pleasure in her from cloying, or whether, as some say, she recoiled from a marriage with the emperor, but was not averse to having him as a lover, out of mere wantonness. Otho, accordingly, came into peril of his life; and it was strange that although his own wife and sister were put to death by Nero on account of his marriage with Poppaea, Otho himself was spared.

20 1 But Otho had the good will of Seneca, by whose advice and persuasion Nero sent him out as governor of Lusitania to the shores of the western ocean. Here he made himself acceptable and pleasing to his subjects, although he knew that his office had been given him to disguise and mitigate his banishment. 2 When Galba revolted, Otho was the first of the provincial governors to go over to him, and bringing all the gold and silver that he had in the shape of drinking-cups and tables, he gave it to him for conversion into coin, presenting him also with those of his servants who were qualified to give suitable service for the table of an emperor. In other ways he was trusted by Galba, and when put to the test was thought to be inferior to none as a man of affairs; and during the entire journey of the emperor he would travel in the same carriage with him for many days together. 3 Moreover, amid the intimacies of the common journey he paid court to Vinius, both in person and by means of gifts, and, above all else, by yielding to him the first place, he got his aid in holding securely the place of influence next to him. But in avoiding envy he was superior to Vinius, for he gave his petitioners every aid without any reward, and showed himself easy of access and kindly to all men. But it was the soldiers whom he was most ready to help, and he advanced many of them to places of command, sometimes asking the appointment from the emperor, and sometimes getting the support of Vinius, and of the freedmen Icelus and Asiaticus; for these were the most influential men at court. And as often as he entertained Galba, he would compliment the cohort on duty for the day by giving each man a gold piece, thus showing honour to the emperor, as it was thought, while really scheming for the support and favour of the soldiery.

21 1 So, then, while Galba was deliberating upon a successor, Vinius suggested Otho. And yet not even this was done for nothing, but as a return for the marriage of his daughter. For it had been agreed that Otho should marry her when he had been adopted by Galba and declared his successor. But Galba always showed clearly that he placed the public good before his private interests, and in the present case that he aimed to adopt, not the man who was most agreeable to himself, but the one who would be most serviceable to the Romans. 2 And it does not seem that he would have chosen Otho merely as the heir of his own private fortune, since he knew that he was unrestrained and extravagant and immersed in debts amounting to five millions. Wherefore, after listening to Vinius calmly and without a word, he postponed his decision. But he appointed himself and Vinius consuls for following year, and it was expected that on their accession to office he would declare his successor. And the soldiery would have been glad that Otho, rather than anyone else, should be so declared.

22 1 But while the emperor was hesitating and deliberating, he was overtaken by the disorders which broke out among the troops in Germany. For the soldiers in all parts of the empire had a common hatred of Galba because he had not given them their usual largess, but those in Germany made special excuses for themselves out of the fact that Verginius Rufus had been cast off in dishonour; that the Gauls who had fought against them were getting rewards, 2 while all those who had not joined Vindex were being punished; and that to Vindex alone Galba showed gratitude by honouring him when he was dead and giving him the distinction of public obsequies, on the ground that Vindex had proclaimed him emperor of the Romans. 3 Such arguments as these were already circulating openly in the camp, when the first day of the first month came, which the Romans call the Calends of January. On this day Flaccus assembled the soldiers that they might take the customary oath of allegiance to the emperor; but they overturned and pulled down all the statues of Galba which they could find, and after swearing allegiance to the senate and people of Rome, went to their quarters. 4 Then their officers began to fear that their lawless spirit might issue in revolt, and one of them made this speech: “What is wrong with us, my fellow soldiers? We are neither supporting the present emperor nor setting up another. It is as though we were averse, not to Galba, but to all rule and obedience. 5 Flaccus Hordeonius, indeed, who is nothing but a shadow and image of Galba, we must ignore, but there is Vitellius, who is only a day’s march distant from us, and commands the forces in the other Germany. His father was censor, thrice consul, and in a manner the colleague of Claudius Caesar, and Vitellius himself, in the poverty with which some reproach him, affords a splendid proof of probity and magnanimity. Come, let us choose him, and so show the world that we know how to select an emperor better than Iberians and Lusitanians.”

6 While some of the soldiers were already for adopting this proposal and others for rejecting it, one standard-bearer stole away and brought tidings of the matter by night to Vitellius, as he was entertaining many guests. The news spread swiftly to the troops, and first Fabius Valens, commander of a legion, rode up next day with a large body of horsemen and saluted Vitellius as emperor. 7 Hitherto Vitellius had seemed to decline and avoid the office, fearing the magnitude of it; but on this day, as they say, being fortified with wine and a midday meal, he came out to the soldiers and accepted the title of Germanicus which they conferred upon him, though he rejected that of Caesar. 8 And straightway the army with Flaccus also, casting aside those fine and democratic oaths of theirs to support the senate, took oath that they would obey the orders of Vitellius the emperor.

23 1 Thus was Vitellius proclaimed emperor in Germany; and when Galba learned of the revolution there he no longer deferred his act of adoption. Knowing that some of his friends favoured the selection of Dolabella, and most of them that of Otho, neither of whom was approved by himself, he suddenly, and without any previous notice of his intention, sent for Piso (whose parents, Crassus and Scribonia, had been put to death by Nero), 2 a young man in whose predisposition to every virtue the traits of gravity and decorum were most conspicuous; then he went down to the camp to declare him Caesar and heir to the throne. And yet as soon as he set out, great signs from heaven accompanied him on his way, and after he had begun to pronounce and read his address to the soldiers, there were many peals of thunder and flashes of lightning, and much darkness and rain pervaded both the camp and the city, so that it was plain that the act of adoption was inauspicious and was not favoured or approved by the heavenly powers. 3 The soldiers also were secretly disloyal and sullen, since not even then was their largess given to them.

As for Piso, those who were present at the scene and observed his voice and countenance were amazed to see him receive so great a favour without great emotion, though not without appreciation; whereas in the outward aspect of Otho there were many clear signs of the bitterness and anger with which he took the disappointment of his hopes. He had been the first to be thought worthy of the prize, and had come very near attaining it, and his not attaining it was regarded by him as a sign of ill-will and hatred on Galba’s part towards him. 4 Wherefore he was not without apprehension for the future, and fearing Piso, blaming Galba, and angry with Vinius, he went away full of various passions. For the soothsayer and Chaldaeans who were always about him would not suffer him to abandon his hopes or give up altogether, particularly Ptolemaeus, who dwelt much upon his frequent prediction that Nero would not kill Otho, but would die first himself, and that Otho would survive him and be emperor of the Romans (for now that he could point to the first part of the prediction as true, he thought that Otho should not despair of the second part). Above all, Otho was encouraged by those who secretly shared his resentment and chagrin on the ground that he had been thanklessly treated. Moreover, most of the adherents of Tigellinus and Nymphidius, men who had once been in high honour, but were now cast aside and of no account, treacherously went over to Otho, shared his resentment, and spurred him on to action.

24 1 Among these were Veturius and Barbius, the one an “optio,” the other a “tesserarius” (these are the Roman names for scout and messenger). In company with these Onomastus, a freedman of Otho’s, went round corrupting the soldiers, some with money, and others with fair promises. The soldiers were already disaffected and wanted only a pretext for treachery. For four days would not have sufficed to change the allegiance of a loyal army, and only so many days intervened between the act of adoption and the murder, since on the sixth day after the adoption (the Romans call it the eighteenth before the Calends of February), Galba and Piso were slain.

2 On that day, shortly after dawn, Galba was sacrificing in the Palatium in the presence of his friends; and as soon as Umbricius, the officiating priest, had taken the entrails of the victim in his hands and inspected them, he declared not ambiguously, but in so many words, that there were signs of a great commotion, and that peril mixed with treachery hung over the emperor’s head. Thus the god all but delivered Otho over to arrest. 3 For Otho was standing behind Galba, and noted what was said and pointed out by Umbricius. But as he stood there in confusion and with a countenance changing to all sorts of colours through fear, Onomastus his freedman came up and told him that the builders were come and were waiting for him at his house. Now, this was a token that the time was at hand when Otho was to meet the soldiers. 4 With the remark, then, that he had bought an old house and wished to show its defects to the vendors, he went away, and passing through what was called the house of Tiberius, went down into the forum, to where a gilded column stood, at which all the roads that intersect Italy terminate.

25 1 Here, as we are told, the soldiers who first welcomed him and saluted him as emperor were no more than twenty-three. Therefore, although he was not sunken in spirit to match the weakness and effeminacy of his body, but was bold and adventurous in presence of danger, he began to be afraid. 2 The soldiers who were there, however, would not suffer him to desist, but surrounding his litter with their swords drawn, ordered it to be taken up, while Otho urged the bearers to hasten, saying to himself many times that he was a lost man. For he was overheard by some of the bystanders, and they were astonished rather than disturbed, owing to the small number of those who had ventured upon the deed. But as he was thus borne through the forum, he was met by as many more soldiers, and others again kept joining the party by threes and fours. 3 Then all crowded around the litter, saluting Otho as emperor and brandishing their drawn swords. At the camp, Martialis, the military tribune in charge of the watch at the time, who was not privy to the plot, as they say, but was confounded by their unexpected appearance and terrified, permitted them to enter. And after Otho was inside the camp, no one opposed him. For those who were ignorant of what was going on, scattered about as they were by ones and twos, were designedly enveloped by those who knew and were privy to the plot, and so gave in their adherence, at first through fear, and then under persuasion.

4 News of this was carried at once to Galba in the Palatium and the priest was still standing there with the entrails in his hands, so that even men who were altogether indifferent and sceptical about such matters were confounded and filled with wonder at the divine portent. And now a motley crowd came streaming out from the forum; Vinius and Laco and some of the freedmen stood at Galba’s side brandishing their naked swords; Piso went out and held conference with the guards on duty in the court; 5 and Marius Celsus, a man of worth, was sent off to secure the allegiance of the Illyrian legion encamped in what was called the Vipsanian portico.

26 1 And now, as Galba purposed to go forth, and Vinius would not permit it, while Celsus and Laco urged it and vehemently chided Vinius, a rumour spread insistently that Otho had been slain in the camp; and after a little, Julius Atticus, a soldier of distinction among the guards, was seen rushing up with his sword drawn, and crying out that he had slain the enemy of Caesar; and forcing his way through the crowd about Galba, he showed him his sword all stained with blood. 2 Then Galba fixed his eyes upon him and said, “Who gave thee thy orders?” Whereupon the man replied that it was his fidelity and the oath that he had sworn, at which the multitude cried out that he had done well, and gave him their applause. Then Galba got into his litter and was carried forth, wishing to sacrifice to Jupiter and show himself to the citizens. But when he was come into the forum, there met him, like a change of wind, a report that Otho was master of the army. 3 Then, as might be expected in so great a crowd, some cried out to him to turn back, others to go forward; some bade him to be of good courage, others urged him to be cautious; and so, while his litter was swept hither and thither, as in a surging sea, and often threatened to capsize, there came into view, first horsemen, and then men-at arms, charging through the basilica of Paulus, and with one voice loudly ordering all private citizens out of their way. 4 The multitude, accordingly, took to their heels, not scattering in flight, but seeking the porticoes and eminences of the forum, as if to get a view of the spectacle. Hostilities began with the overthrow of a statue of Galba by Attilius Vergilio, and then the soldiers hurled javelins at the litter; and since they failed to strike it, they advanced upon it with their swords drawn. No one opposed them or tried to defend the emperor, except one man, and he was the only one, among all the thousands there on whom the sun looked down, who was worthy of the Roman empire. 5 This was Sempronius Densus, a centurion, and though he had received no special favours from Galba, yet in defence of honour and the law he took his stand in front of the litter. And first, lifting up the switch with which centurions punish soldiers deserving of stripes, he cried out to the assailants and ordered them to spare the emperor. Then, as they came to close quarters with him, he drew his sword, and fought them off a long time, until he fell with a wound in the groin.

27 1 The litter was upset at the place called Lacus Curtius, and there Galba tumbled out and lay in his corselet, while the soldiers ran up and struck at him. But he merely presented his neck to their swords, saying: “Do your work, if this is better for the Roman people.” 2 So, then, after receiving many wounds in his legs and arms, he was slain, as most writers state, by a certain Camurius, of the fifteenth legion. Some, however, ascribe his death to Terentius, others to Lecanius, and others still to Fabius Fabulus, who, they say, cut off Galba’s head and was carrying it wrapped in his cloak, since its baldness made it difficult to grasp; 3 then, since his companions would not suffer him to hide his deed of valour, but insisted on his displaying it to all eyes, he impaled on his spear and thrust on high the head of an aged man, who had been a temperate ruler, a high priest, and a consul, and ran with it, like a bacchanal, whirling about often, and brandishing the spear all dripping with blood.

But Otho, as they say, when the head was brought to him, cried out: “This is nothing, fellow-soldiers; show me the head of Piso.” 4 And after a little it was brought to him; for the young man had been wounded and tried to escape, and a certain Murcus ran him down and slew him at the troop of Vesta. Vinius also was slain, and he admitted himself a party to the conspiracy against Galba by crying out that he was put to death contrary to the wishes of Otho. However, they cut off his head, and Laco’s too, and brought them to Otho, of whom they demanded largess. 5 And as Archilochus says that,

“Only seven lay dead on the ground, where we trod their bodies under foot. But we who slew are a thousand,”

so in this case, many who had no part in the murder smeared their hands and swords with blood and showed them to Otho, as they presented him with written petitions for largess. At any rate, a hundred and twenty were afterwards discovered by means of these petitions, all of whom were sought out and put to death by Vitellius. 6 Marius Celsus also came into the camp. There many denounced him for trying to persuade the soldiers to defend Galba, and the majority clamoured for his death, but Otho did not wish it; however, since he was afraid to oppose them, he said he would not put Celsus to death so quickly, since there were matters about which he must first question him. He therefore ordered that he be fettered and kept under guard, and handed over to those in whom he put most trust.

28 1 A senate was now convened. And as if they were now other men, or had other gods to swear by, they united in swearing an oath to support Otho — an oath which he himself had sworn in support of Galba, but had not kept. Moreover, they gave him the titles of Caesar and Augustus, while the dead bodies, all headless in their consular robes, were still strewn over the forum. 2 And as for the heads, when they had no further use for them, that of Vinius they sold to his daughter for twenty-five hundred drachmas; that of Piso was given to his wife Verania in answer to her prayers; and that of Galba was bestowed upon the servants of Patrobius. 3 They took it, and after heaping all manner of insult and outrage upon it, cast it into a place called Sessorium, where those under condemnation of the emperors were put to death. The body of Galba was taken up by Priscus Helvidius, with the permission of Otho; and it was buried at night by Argivus, a freedman.

29 1 Such were the fortunes of Galba, a man surpassed by few Romans in lineage and wealth, and both in wealth and lineage the foremost of his time. During the reigns of five emperors he lived with honour and high repute, so that it was by his high repute, rather than by his military power, that he overthrew Nero. 2 For of his partners in the task, some were by all men deemed unworthy of the imperial dignity, and others deemed themselves unworthy. But to Galba the imperial title was offered and by him it was accepted; and by simply lending his name to the bold measures of Vindex, he gave to his revolt (as his rebellious agitation was called) the character of a civil war, because it had acquired a man who was worthy to rule. 3 Wherefore, in the belief that he was not seizing the conduct of affairs for himself, but rather giving himself for the conduct of affairs, he set out with the idea of commanding the petted creatures of Tigellinus and Nymphidius as Scipio and Fabricius and Camillus used to command the Romans of their time. 4 But being gradually weighed down by his years, in arms and camps, indeed, he was an “imperator” of a severe and ancient type; but just as Nero put himself in the hands of his most insatiate favourites, so Galba put himself in the hands of Vinius and Laco and their freedmen, and they made merchandise of everything, so that he left behind him no one who wished him still in power, but very many who were moved to pity at his death.

Otho

1 1 At daybreak the new emperor went forth to the Capitol and sacrificed; then, having ordered Marius Celsus to be brought to him, he greeted that officer, conversed with him kindly, and urged him to forget the cause of his imprisonment rather than to remember his release. Celsus replied in a manner that was neither ignoble nor ungrateful, saying that the very charge made against him afforded proof of his character, for the charge was that he had been loyal to Galba, from whom he had received no special favours. Both speakers were admired by those who were present, and the soldiery gave their approval. 2 In the senate Otho spoke at length in a kindly strain and like a popular leader. For part of the time during which he himself was to have been consul, he assigned the office to Verginius Rufus, and all those who had been designated as future consuls by Nero or Galba he confirmed in their appointment. To the priesthoods he promoted those who were preëminent in age or reputation. 3 Moreover, to all the men of senatorial rank who had been exiled under Nero and restored under Galba, he restored whatever portions of each man’s property he found to be unsold. Wherefore the citizens of highest birth and greatest influence, who before this had felt a shuddering fear that it was not a man, but some genius of retribution or avenging spirit, that had suddenly fallen upon the state, became more cheerful in their hopes for a government which wore a face so smiling.

2 1 But nothing so gladdened all Romans alike, and won their allegiance to the new emperor so much, as his treatment of Tigellinus. Men were not aware that Tigellinus was already punished by his very fear of that punishment which the city was demanding as a debt due to the public, 2 and also by incurable bodily diseases; and besides, there were those unhallowed and unspeakable grovellings of his among the vilest harlots, for which his lustful nature still panted, clutching after them as his life painfully ebbed away; these were looked upon by reasonable men as extremest punishment and an equivalent of many deaths. Nevertheless it vexed the common people that he should see the light of day after so many good men had been robbed of that light by him. 3 Accordingly, Otho sent a messenger to fetch him from his country estate at Sinuessa; for he was staying there, where vessels lay at anchor, that he might fly to more distant parts. He tried to bribe the messenger with a large sum of money to let him go, but failing in this, he made him gifts nevertheless, and begged him to wait till he had shaved; and taking the razor he cut his own throat.

3 1 And now that the emperor had given the people this most righteous gratification, he did not remember his own private grievances against any man soever, and in his desire to please the multitude did not refuse at first to be hailed in the theatres by the name of Nero, and when statues of Nero were produced in public, he did not prevent it. 2 Moreover, Cluvius Rufus tells us that “diplomas,” such as couriers are provided with, were sent to Spain, in which the cognomen of Nero was added to the name of Otho. However, perceiving that the men of highest birth and greatest influence were displeased at this, Otho gave up the practice.

But while he was placing his government on this basis, the paid soldiers began to make themselves troublesome by urging him not to trust the influential citizens, but to be on his guard against them and restrict their power. It is uncertain whether their goodwill led them to be really apprehensive for him, or whether they used this pretext for raising disturbance and war. 3 And so, when the emperor sent Crispinus to bring back the seventeenth legion from Ostia, and while that officer was still getting his baggage together at night and loading the arms upon the waggons, the boldest of the soldiers all began to cry out that Crispinus was come on no good errand, and that the senate was attempting to bring about a revolution, and that the transportation of the arms was an act of hostility, not of service, to the emperor. 4 The notion prevailed with great numbers and exasperated them; some attacked the waggons, others killed two centurions who opposed them, as well as Crispinus himself; and then the whole body, putting themselves in array and exhorting one another to go to the help of the emperor, marched to Rome. Here, learning that eighty senators were at supper with Otho, they rushed to the palace, declaring that now was a good time to take off all the emperor’s enemies at one stroke. 5 Accordingly, the city was in a great commotion, expecting to be plundered at once; in the palace there were runnings to and fro; and a dire perplexity fell upon Otho. For while he had fears about the safety of his guests, he himself was an object of fear to them, and he saw that they kept their eyes fixed upon him in speechless terror, some of them having even brought their wives with them to the supper. 6 But he sent the prefects of the guard with orders to explain matters to the soldiers and appease them, while at the same time he dismissed his guests by another door; and they barely succeeded in making their escape as the soldiers, forcing their way through the guards into the great hall, asked what was become of the enemies of Caesar. 7 In this crisis, then, Otho stood up on his couch, and after many exhortations, and entreaties, and not without plentiful tears, at last succeeded in sending them away; but on the following day, after making a gift of twelve hundred and fifty drachmas to every man, he went into the camp. 8 There he commended the great body of the soldiers for their goodwill and zeal in his service, but said that there were a few of them who were intriguing to no good purpose, thereby bringing his moderation and their fidelity into disrepute, and he demanded that they share his resentment against these and assist him in punishing them. All his hearers approving of this and bidding him to do as he wished, he took two men only, at whose punishment no one was likely to be distressed, and went away.

4 1 Those who were already fond of Otho and put confidence in him admired this change in his behaviour, but others thought it a policy forced upon him by the situation, wherein he courted popular favour because of the war. For already there were sure tidings that Vitellius had assumed the dignity and power of emperor; and swift couriers were continually coming with accounts of ever new accessions to him, although others made it clear that the armies in Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Mysia, with their leaders, adhered to Otho. 2 And quickly there came also friendly letters from Mucianus and Vespasian, who were at the head of large forces, the one in Syria, the other in Judaea. Otho was elated by these, and wrote to Vitellius advising him not to have more than a soldier’s ambitions, in which case he should be rewarded with a large sum of money, and a city, where he could live in the utmost ease and pleasure and be undisturbed. 3 Vitellius also wrote to Otho in reply, at first in a somewhat dissembling manner; but afterwards both got excited and wrote one another abusive letters filled with shameful insults; not that either brought false charges, but it was foolish and ridiculous for one to storm the other with reproaches applicable to both. For as regards prodigality, effeminacy, inexperience in war, and multiplicity of debts incurred in a previous state of poverty, it were hard to say which of them had the advantage.

4 There were many reports of signs and apparitions, most of which were of uncertain and dubious origin; but everybody saw that a Victory standing in a chariot on the Capitol had dropped the reins from her hands, as if she had not power to hold them, and that the statue of Caius Caesar on the island in the Tiber, without the occurrence of earthquake or wind, had turned from west to east, 5 which is said to have happened during the time when Vespasian was at last openly trying to seize the supreme power. The behaviour of the Tiber, too, was regarded by most people as a baleful sign. It was a time, to be sure, when rivers are at their fullest, but the Tiber had never before risen so high, nor caused so great ruin and destruction. It overflowed its banks and submerged a great part of the city, and especially the grain-market, so that dire scarcity of food prevailed for many days altogether.

5 1 And now, when word was brought to Rome that Caecina and Valens, who were in command with Vitellius, were in possession of the Alps, Dolabella, a man of noble family, was suspected by the praetorian soldiers of revolutionary designs. Otho therefore sent him away (through fear of him or of someone else) to the town of Aquinum, with words of encouragement. And in his selection of the men in authority what were to accompany him on his expedition he included also Lucius, the brother of Vitellius, without either increasing or diminishing his honours. 2 He also took strong measures for the safety of the wife and mother of Vitellius, that they might have no fear for themselves. Moreover, he appointed Flavius Sabinus, a brother of Vespasian, prefect of the city, either because in this way also he could honour the memory of Nero (for Nero had bestowed the office upon Sabinus, but Galba had deprived him of it), or rather because, by advancing Sabinus, he could show how he favoured and trusted Vespasian.

3 Well, then, Otho himself tarried behind at Brixillum, a town of Italy on the river Po,a but sent his forces on under the command of Marius Celsus and Suetonius Paulinus, besides Gallus and Spurina. These were men of distinction, but were unable to conduct the campaign according to their own plans and wishes, owing to the disorderly and arrogant spirit of their soldiers. 4 For these would not deign to obey other officers, since, as they said, they had made the emperor their commander. It is true that the enemy’s troops also were not altogether in condition, nor under the control of their officers, but fierce and haughty, and for the same reason. Nevertheless, they were certainly experienced in fighting, and being accustomed to hard labour, they did not shun it; 5 whereas Otho’s men were soft, owing to their lack of employment and their unwarlike mode of life, having spent most of their time at spectacles and festivals and plays, and they wished to cloak their weakness with insolence and boasting, disdaining to perform the services laid upon them because they were above the work, not because they were unable to do it. When Spurina tried to force them into obedience, he came near being killed by them. 6 They spared him no abuse nor insolence, declaring that he was betraying and ruining the opportunities and the cause of Caesar. Nay, some of them who were drunk came at night to his tent and demanded money for a journey, for they must go, they said, to Caesar, in order to denounce their commander.

6 1 But Spurina and the emperor’s cause were helped for the time by the abuse which his soldiers received at Placentia.b For when the troops of Vitellius assaulted walls, they railed at the soldiers of Otho who manned the ramparts, calling them actors, dancers, spectators at Pythian and Olympian games, men who had never known or seen a campaign or fighting, and thought highly of themselves because they had cut off the head of a defenceless old man (meaning Galba), but would not openly enter a conflict and battle of men. 2 Otho’s soldiers were so disturbed by these reproaches, and so inflamed, that they threw themselves at the feet of Spurina, begging him to use them and command them, and pleading excuse from no danger or toil. And so, when a fierce assault was made upon the walls and many siege-engines were brought to bear upon them, Spurina’s men prevailed, repulsed their opponents with great slaughter, and held safe a city which was famous and more flourishing than any in Italy.

3 In other ways, too, the generals of Vitellius were more vexatious than those of Otho in their dealings with both cities and private persons. One of them, Caecina, had neither the speech nor the outward appearance of a Roman citizen, but was offensive and strange, a man of huge stature, who wore Gaulish trousers and long sleeves, and conversed by signs even with Roman officials. 4 His wife, too, accompanied him, with an escort of picked horsemen; she rode a horse, and was conspicuously adorned. Fabius Valens, the other general, was so rapacious that neither what he plundered from the enemy nor what he stole or received as gifts from the allies could satisfy him. Indeed, it was thought that this rapacity of his had delayed his march, so that he was too late for the battle at Placentia. 5 But some blame Caecina, who, they say, was eager to win the victory himself before Valens came, and so not only made other minor mistakes, but also joined battle inopportunely and without much spirit, thereby almost ruining their whole enterprise.

7 1 For when Caecina, repulsed from Placentia, had set out to attack Cremona, another large and prosperous city, first Annius Gallus, who was coming to the help of Spurina at Placentia, hearing upon the march that Placentia was safe, but that Cremona was in peril, changed his course and led his army to Cremona, where he encamped near the enemy; then his colleagues came one by one to his aid. 2 Caecina now placed a large body of men-at arms in ambush where the ground was rough and woody, and then ordered his horsemen to ride towards the enemy, and if they were attacked, to withdraw little by little and retreat, until they had in this way drawn their pursuers into the ambush. But deserters brought word of all this to Celsus, who rode out with good horsemen to meet the enemy, followed up his pursuit with caution, surrounded the men in ambush, and threw them into confusion. Then he summoned his men-at arms from the camp. 3 And apparently, if these had come up in time to the support of the cavalry, not a man of the enemy would have been left alive, but the whole army with Caecina would have been crushed and slain. As it was, however, Paulinus came to their aid too slowly and too late, and incurred the charge of sullying his reputation as a commander through excessive caution. 4 But most of the soldiers actually accused him of treachery, and tried to incense Otho against him, loudly boasting that they had been victorious, but that their victory was made incomplete by the cowardice of their commanders. Otho did not believe them, and yet wished to avoid the appearance of disbelieving them. He therefore sent to the armies his brother Titianus, and Proculus, the prefect of the guards; of these two men Proculus had the entire authority in reality, and Titianus only in appearance. 5 Celsus and Paulinus, too, enjoyed the empty title of friends and counsellors, but had no power or influence in the conduct of affairs. There were disturbances also among the enemy, and especially among the troops of Valens; for when these were told about the battle at the ambuscade, they were enraged because they were not present and had given no aid where so many men had lost their lives. They actually began to stone Valens, but he finally succeeded in pacifying them, and then broke camp and joined Caecina.

8 1 Otho now came to the camp at Bedriacum (a little village near Cremona)c and held a council of war. Proculus and Titianus were of the opinion that he ought to fight a decisive battle while his armies were flushed with their recent victory, and not sit there dulling the efficiency of his troops and waiting for Vitellius to come in person from Gaul. 2 Paulinus, on the contrary, said that the enemy already had all the resources with which they would give battle, and lacked nothing, whereas, in the case of Otho, a force as large as the one he already had might be expected from Mysia and Pannonia, if he would only wait for his own best opportunity and conduct the campaign to suit that of the enemy. 3 For his men were now confident of success in spite of their inferior numbers, and he would not find them less keen after they had received reinforcements, nay, their superiority would lead them to fight all the better. And besides, delay was to their advantage, since they had everything in abundance, while to the enemy time would bring a scarcity of supplies, since they were occupying a hostile country. 4 So Paulinus argued, and Marius Celsus voted with him. Annius Gallus was not present, being under treatment for a fall from his horse, but Otho asked his advice by letter, and his counsel was not to hasten the battle, but to await the forces from Mysia, which were already on the march. Nevertheless, Otho would not listen to these counsels, and the day was carried by those who urged immediate battle.

9 1 Various other reasons for this are given by various writers; but manifestly the praetorian soldiers, as they were called, who served as the emperor’s guards, since they were now getting a more generous taste of real military service and longed for their accustomed life of diversion in Rome in which festivals abounded and war was unknown, could not be restrained, but were eager for the battle, feeling sure that at the very first onset they would overwhelm their opponents. 2 Moreover, it would seem that Otho himself could not longer bear up against the uncertainty of the issue, nor endure (so effeminate was he and so unused to command) his own thoughts of the dire peril confronting him; but worn out by his anxieties, he veiled his eyes, like one about to leap from a precipice, and hastened to commit his cause to fortune. 3 And this is the account given by Secundus the rhetorician, who was Otho’s secretary. But others would tell us that both armies were strongly inclined to confer; and above all, if they could agree, to elect as emperor the best of the commanders who were with them, but if not, to convene the senate and commit to it the choice of an emperor. 4 And since neither of the men who then had the title of emperor enjoyed high repute, it is not unlikely that the real soldiers, those who knew what hardship was and had sense, should be led to reflect that it would be a dreadful and most hateful thing if the evils which the citizens had once to their sorrow inflicted upon one another and suffered because of Sulla and Marius, and again because of Caesar and Pompey, should now be endured again only to make the imperial power a means for providing for the gluttony and drunkenness of Vitellius or for the luxury and licentiousness of Otho. 5 It is suspected, then, that Celsus was aware of these feelings, and therefore tried to interpose delay, hoping that the issue would thus be decided without hardship and battle, and that Otho, fearing this, hastened on the battle.

10 1 Otho himself returned to Brixillum, and in this too he made a mistake, not only because he took away from the combatants the respect and ambition which his presence and oversight inspired, but also because, by leading away as his bodyguard of foot and horse the men who were most vigorous and eager to please him, he cut away, as it were, the head and front of his army.

2 During this time there was also a conflict at the river Po, where Caecina tried to build a bridge across the stream, and Otho’s soldiers attacked him and tried to prevent it. Not succeeding, Otho’s men loaded their vessels with torchwood full of sulphur and pitch, and began to cross the river; but a blast of wind suddenly smote the material which they had prepared for use against the enemy, and fanned it afire. 3 First smoke arose from it, then bright flames, so that the crews were confounded and leaped overboard into the river, upsetting their boats, and putting themselves at the mercy of a jeering enemy. Moreover, the Germans attacked Otho’s gladiators at an island in the river, overpowered them and slew not a few of them.

11 These disasters threw Otho’s soldiers at Bedriacum into a rage for battle, and Proculus therefore led them forth out of Bedriacum, and after a march of fifty furlongs pitched his camp, but in a manner so ignorant and ridiculous that his men were troubled by lack of water, although it was the spring of the year and the plains around abounded in running streams and rivers that never dried up. 2 On the following day he proposed to make a march of no less than a hundred furlongs and attack the enemy, but Paulinus objected, and thought they ought to wait and not tire themselves beforehand, nor join battle immediately after a march with men who had armed and arrayed themselves at their leisure, while they themselves were advancing so great a distance with all their beasts of burden and camp-followers. 3 While the generals were disputing about the matter, there came from Otho a Numidian courier with a letter which ordered them not to wait or delay, but to march at once against the enemy. Accordingly, they decamped and moved forward, and Caecina, who was much disturbed on learning of their approach, hastily abandoned his operations at the river and came to his camp. 4 There most of the soldiers had already armed themselves, and Valens was giving out the watchword to them, and while the legions were taking up their positions, the best of the cavalry were sent out in advance.

12 1 And now, for some reason, it was believed and rumoured among Otho’s vanguard that the generals of Vitellius would come over to their side. Accordingly, when these drew near, Otho’s men greeted them in a friendly fashion and called them fellow-soldiers. The enemy, however, returned the salutation in no kindly spirit, but with anger and hostile cries, so that those who had greeted them were dejected, and were suspected of treachery by the others on their side. 2 This was the first thing that threw Otho’s men into confusion, and at a time when the enemy were close at hand. And besides, nothing else was done properly, since the baggage-train wandered about among the fighting men and caused great disorder. Moreover, the line of battle was often broken by the nature of the ground, which was full of trenches and pits, and in avoiding or going around these the men were compelled to engage their opponents promiscuously and in many detachments. 3 Only two legions (to use the Roman word), that of Vitellius called “Rapax” (or Devourer) and that of Otho called “Adiutrix” (or Helper), got out into a treeless and extended plain, engaged in full formation, and fought a regular battle for a long time. Otho’s men were sturdy and brave, but were now for the first time getting a taste of war and fighting; those of Vitellius, on the other hand, had seen many battles and were used to them, but they were now old and past their prime.

4 So Otho’s men charged upon them, drove them back, and captured their eagle, killing nearly all who stood in the first rank; but the others, impelled by shame and anger, fell upon their foes, slew Orfidius, the commander of the legion, and seized many of their standards. Against Otho’s gladiators, too, who were supposed to have experience and courage in close fighting, Alfenus Varus led up the troops called Batavians. 5 They are the best cavalry of the Germans, and come from an island made by the Rhine. A few of the gladiators withstood these, but most of them fled towards the river, where they encountered cohorts of the enemy in battle array, and in defending themselves against these, were cut off to a man. 6 But the praetorian soldiers fought more shamefully than any others. They did not even wait for their opponents to come to close quarters, but fled through the ranks of their still unvanquished comrades, filling them with fear and confusion. Notwithstanding all this, many of Otho’s men conquered those who opposed them, forced their way through the victorious enemy, and regained their camp.

13 1 But as for their generals, neither Proculus nor Paulinus ventured to enter the camp with them, but turned aside through fear of the soldiers, who were already laying the blame for their defeat upon their commanders. But Annius Gallus received into the town the soldiers who gathered there out of the battle, and tried to encourage them. The battle had been nearly equal, he said, and in many parts of it they had overcome their enemies. 2 Marius Celsus, moreover, assembled the officers and urged them to consult the public good. In view of so great a calamity, he said, and the slaughter of so many citizens, not even Otho himself, if he were a good man, would wish to make further trial of his fortune, since even Cato and Scipio, by refusing to yield to a victorious Caesar after Pharsalus, had incurred the charge of needlessly squandering the lives of many brave men in Africa, although their struggle was in behalf of Roman freedom. 3 For in general all men alike are subject to the decrees of fortune, but of one thing she cannot rob a good man, and that is the privilege, in case of adversity, of taking reasonable measures to correct the situation that confronts him.

By this speech Celsus won over the officers. And after they had sounded the soldiers and found them desirous of peace, and when Titianus urged that an embassy be sent in the interest of concord, Celsus and Gallus decided to go and confer with Caecina and Valens. 4 But as they were on the way they were met by some centurions of the enemy, who said that their army was already in motion and was on its way to Bedriacum, and that they themselves had been sent out by their generals to treat for concord. Accordingly, Celsus commended them, and bade them turn back with him and go to meet Caecina. But when they were near the army of Caecina, Celsus ran risk of his life. For it chanced that the horsemen who had formerly been worsted by him at the ambush were riding on in advance. 5 So when they saw Celsus coming up, they forthwith raised a shout and dashed against him. But the centurions stood in front of him and kept them off; the other officers also shouted to the horsemen to spare Celsus, and Caecina, hearing their cries, rode up and speedily brought his horsemen to order. Then he greeted Celsus in a friendly manner and went on with him to Bedriacum. 6 But meanwhile Titianus had repented of having sent the embassy, and after ordering the more resolute of the soldiers back again upon the walls, he exhorted the rest to go to their support. However, when Caecina rode up on his horse and stretched out his hand to them, not a man resisted further, but some greeted his soldiers from the walls, while others, throwing open the gates, went forth and mingled with the advancing troops. 7 There were no hostilities, on the part of Otho’s men, but only friendly salutations and greetings, and all took oath to support Vitellius and went over to his side.

14 1 This is the account which most of the participants give of the battle, although they themselves confess that they were ignorant of its details, owing to the disorder and the unequal fortunes of the several groups. At a later time, when I was travelling through the plain, Mestrius Florus, one of the men of consular rank who were at that time with Otho (by constraint, and not of their own will),d pointed out to me an ancient temple, and told me how, as he came up to it after the battle, he saw a heap of dead bodies so high that those on top of it touched the gable of the temple. 2 The reason for this he said he could neither discover himself nor learn from anyone else. It is natural, indeed, that in civil wars, when a rout takes place, more men should be killed, because no quarter is given (there being no use for prisoners); but why the dead bodies should be collected and heaped up in such a manner is not easy to determine.

15 1 To Otho there came at first, as is usual in such catastrophes, an indistinct rumour of the result; but presently some of his soldiers who had been wounded came with direct tidings of the battle. Here one cannot so much wonder that his friends would not let him give up all for lost, and exhorted him to be of good cheer; but the feelings of his soldiers towards him passed all belief. 2 Not a man of them left him, or went over to the victorious side, or was seen to despair of the emperor’s cause and seek his own safety, but all alike came to his door, called upon him as emperor, became his humble suppliants when he appeared before them, seized his hands with cries and prayers, fell down before him, wept, begged him not to abandon them, and not to betray them to their enemies, but to use their lives and persons in his service as long as they had breath. Such were their united supplications. 3 And one obscure soldier held up his sword, and with the words “Know, O Caesar, that all of us stand in this fashion at thy side,” slew himself.

None of these things, however, broke Otho down, but looking all around with a countenance composed and cheerful, he said: “This day, my fellow-soldiers, I deem more blessed than that on which ye first made me emperor, since I see you so devoted to me and am judged worthy of so high honour at your hands. 4 But do not rob me of a great blessedness — that of dying nobly in behalf of fellow-citizens so many and so good. If I was worthy to be Roman emperor, I ought to give my life freely for my country. I know that the victory of our adversaries is neither decisive nor assured. I have word that our forces from Mysia are already approaching the Adriatic, and are only a few days distant from us. 5 Asia, Syria, Egypt, and the armies fighting against the Jews, are on our side; the senate, too, is with us, as well as the wives and children of our adversaries. Still, it is not to defend Italy against Hannibal, or Pyrrhus, or the Cimbri, that our war is waged, but both parties are waging war against Romans, and we sin against our country whether we conquer or are conquered. For the victor’s gain is our country’s loss. 6 Believe me when I insist that I can die more honourably than I can reign. For I do not see how my victory can be of so great advantage to the Romans as my offering up my life to secure peace and concord, and to prevent Italy from beholding such a day again.”

16 1 So he spake, and after resisting firmly those who tried to oppose and dissuade him, he ordered his friends to depart, as well as the men of senatorial rank who were present; to those who were absent he sent the same command, and wrote to the cities urging them to escort the travellers on their way with honour and in safety. 2 Then he sent for his nephew Cocceius, who was still a youth, and bade him be of good cheer and not fear Vitellius, whose mother and wife and children he had kept safe and cared for as though they were his own. He had desired, he said, to make him his son, but had put off the adoption, in order that the youth might share his power after he had prevailed, and not perish with him after he had failed. “And now, my boy,” he said, “this is my last charge to thee; do not altogether forget, and do not too well remember, that thou hadst a Caesar for an uncle.”

3 This done, after a little he heard tumult and shouting at his door. For as the men of senatorial rank were departing, the soldiers threatened to kill them if they did not remain, instead of forsaking their emperor. Once more, then, he went forth, since he feared for the men’s safety. He was no longer gentle and suppliant, however, but stern of countenance, and looking angrily round upon the most turbulent of the soldiers, he made them go away submissively and in fear.

17 1 It was now evening, and being thirsty, he drank a little water. He had two swords, and after examining the blade of each for a long time, he laid one of them aside, but put the other under his arm, and then called his servants. These he addressed kindly, and distributed money to them, more to one and less to another, not as though lavish with what was no longer to be his, but with strict regard to moderation and the claims of merit. 2 After sending the servants away, he betook himself to rest for the remainder of the night, and slept so soundly that his chamberlains heard his heavy breathing. Just before dawn he called a freedman with whom he had arranged for the departure of the senators, and bade him learn how they fared. And when he was told that all of them had what was needful for their journey, “Go thou, then,” he said to the freedman, “and show thyself to the soldiers, unless thou wishest them to put thee to a miserable death for helping me to die.” 3 Then, when the man had gone out, with both hands he held his sword upright beneath him, and fell upon it, giving but a single groan as he felt the pang. The servants outside heard his groan and raised a wailing cry, and at once the whole camp and the city were filled with lamentation. The soldiers, with loud cries, burst in at the door, and then bewailed their emperor, full of anguish, and reviling themselves because they had not watched over him and prevented him from dying in their behalf. 4 Not one of his followers went away, although the enemy were near, but after attiring the body and preparing a funeral pyre for it, they escorted it thither with military honours, and full of exultation were those who won the privilege of carrying the bier. Of the rest, some embraced the emperor’s body and kissed his wound, others grasped his hands, and others still made him their obeisance at a distance. There were some, too, who first put their torches to the pyre and then slew themselves, not, so far as could be known, because they were either indebted to the dead for favours, or fearful of punishment at the hands of the victor. 5 Nay, it would seem that no king or tyrant was ever possessed by so dire and frenzied a passion for ruling as was that of these soldiers for being ruled and commanded by Otho; not even after his death did their yearnings for him leave them, nay, it abode with them until it finally changed into an incurable hatred for Vitellius.

18 1 Well, then, the rest of the story is now in place. They buried the remains of Otho, and made a tomb for them which neither by the great size of its mound nor by the boastfulness of its inscription could awaken jealousy. I saw it when I was at Brixillum. It is a modest memorial and the inscription on it, in translation, runs thus: “To the memory of Marcus Otho.”

2 Otho died at the age of thirty-seven years, but he had ruled only three months, and when he was gone, those who applauded his death were no fewer or less illustrious than those who blamed his life. For though he lived no more decently than Nero, he died more nobly.

3 As for his soldiers, when Pollio, their remaining prefect, ordered them to swear allegiance at once to Vitellius, they were incensed; and when they learned that some of the senators were still there, they let all of them go except Verginius Rufus, and him they annoyed by going to his house in military array and inviting him again, and even urging him, to assume the imperial power, or to go on an embassy in their behalf. 4 But Verginius thought it would be madness for him to accept the imperial dignity now, when they were defeated, after refusing it before, when they were victorious, and as for going on an embassy to the Germans, he feared to do so, since they felt that he had often done them violence beyond all reason; and so he stole away unobserved by another door. When the soldiers learned of this, they consented to take the oaths, and joined the forces of Caecina, thus obtaining pardon.

MORALIA

Translated by by Frank Cole Babbitt and William W. Goodwin

Plutarch’s works are usually divided into two parts, with the first being the Parallel Lives and the second being the Moralia or ‘Moral Writings’. This latter group is a varied collection of literary criticism, declamations, ethical essays, polemics, political writings and conversation. The Moralia was composed first, while the composition of the Parallel Lives occupied much of the last two decades of Plutarch’s life. Though offering a broad range of subjects, these essays all ultimately aim towards the moral education of their readers.  One of the central themes of the Moralia is the idea of a dualistic opposition between the good and evil principles in the world. Unfortunately, later Neo-Platonic philosophers disagreed with Plutarch’s theory, causing some of the more serious philosophical publications to be lost.

Of particular note are the essays On Fraternal Affection, a discourse on honour and affection of siblings toward each other, On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great, an important adjunct to the Life of the great king and On the Worship of Isis and Osiris, a crucial source of information on Egyptian religious rites.  A particularly controversial work is On the Malice of Herodotus, in which Plutarch criticises the historian of prejudice and misrepresentation. Plutarch makes some trenchant points, identifying various errors by the historian, but the essay was most likely a rhetorical exercise, in which Plutarch attempts to use his skills to attack a well-known and established writer.

The extant treatises and essays of the Moralia provide an intriguing portrait of Plutarch as a pragmatic philosopher, whose aim is to make his fellow men more virtuous and therefore happier in their lives.

A second century BC bust of Herodotus, who serves as one of the many subjects of Plutarch’s ‘Moralia’

CONTENTS

Please note: the Moralia is presented in the traditional order arraged by Stephanus in the edition of 1572, divided into 14 books.

BOOK I

On the education of children

How the young man should study poetry

On listening to lectures

How to tell a flatterer from a friend

How a man may become aware of his progress in virtue

BOOK II

How to profit by one’s enemies

On having many friends

On Fortune

Virtue and Vice

Letter of condolence to Apollonius

Advice about keeping well

Advice to bride and groom

Dinner of the seven wise men

Superstition

BOOK III

Sayings of kings and commanders

Sayings of Spartans

The ancient customs of the Spartans

Sayings of Spartan women

Bravery of women

BOOK IV

Roman questions

Greek questions

Greek and Roman parallel stories

On the fortune of the Romans

On the fortune or the virtue of Alexander

Were the Athenians more famous in war or in wisdom?

BOOK V

Isis and Osiris

The E at Delphi

Oracles at Delphi no longer given in verse

The obsolescence of oracles

BOOK VI

Can virtue be taught?

On moral virtue

On the control of anger

On tranquillity of mind

On brotherly love   -   De fraterno amore

On affection for offspring

Whether vice is sufficient to cause unhappiness

Whether affections of the soul are worse than those of the body

On talkativeness

On being a busybody

BOOK VII

On love of wealth

On compliancy

On envy and hate

On praising oneself inoffensively

On the delays of divine vengeance

On fate

On the sign of Socrates

On exile

Consolation to his wife

BOOK VIII

Table talk

BOOK IX

Dialogue on love

BOOK X

Love stories

A philosopher ought to converse especially with men in power

To an uneducated ruler

Whether an old man should engage in public affairs

Precepts of statecraft

On monarchy, democracy and oligarchy

That we ought not to borrow

Lives of the ten orators

Comparison between Aristophanes and Menander

BOOK XI

On the malice of Herodotus

On the opinions of the philosophers

Causes of natural phenomena

BOOK XII

On the face which appears in the orb of the moon

On the principle of cold

Whether fire or water is more useful

Whether land or sea animals are cleverer

Beasts are rational

On the eating of flesh

BOOK XIII

Platonic questions

On the birth of the spirit in Timaeus

Summary of the birth of the spirit

On Stoic self-contradictions

The Stoics speak more paradoxically than the poets

Against the Stoics, on common conceptions

BOOK XIV

That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible

Reply to Colotes, in defence of other philosophers  - Adversus Colotem

Is “live unknown” a wise precept?

On music

BOOK I

On the education of children

1 1 1 Let us consider what may be said of the education of free-born children, and what advantages they should enjoy to give them a sound character when they grow up.

2 1 It is perhaps better to begin with their parentage first; and I should advise those desirous of becoming fathers of notable offspring to abstain from random cohabitation with women; I mean with such women as courtesans and concubines. For those who are not well-born, whether on the father’s or the mother’s side, have an indelible disgrace in their low birth, which accompanies them throughout their lives, and offers to anyone desiring to use it a ready subject of reproach and insult. Wise was the poet who declares:

The home’s foundation being wrongly laid,

The offspring needs must be unfortunate.

A goodly treasure, then, is honourable birth, and such a man may speak his mind freely, a thing which should be held of the highest account by those who wish to have issue lawfully begotten. In the nature of things, the spirits of those whose blood is base or counterfeit are constantly being brought down and humbled, and quite rightly does the poet declare:

A man, though bold, is made a slave whene’er

He learns his mother’s or his sire’s disgrace.

Children of distinguished parents are, of course, correspondingly full of exultation and pride. At all events, they say that Cleophantus, the son of Themistocles, often declared to many persons, that whatever he desired was always agreed to by the Athenian people; for whatever he wished his mother also wished; whatever his mother wished Themistocles also wished; and whatever Themistocles wished all the Athenians wished. It is very proper also to bestow a word of praise on the Spartans for the noble spirit they showed in fining their king, Archidamus, because he had permitted himself to take to wife a woman short of stature, the reason they gave being that he proposed to supply them not with kings but with kinglets.

3 1 In this connexion we should speak of a matter which has not been overlooked by our predecessors. What is this? It is that husbands who approach their wives for the sake of issue should do so only when they have either not taken any wine at all, or at any rate, a very moderate portion. For children whose fathers have chanced to beget them in drunkenness are wont to be fond of wine, and to be given to excessive drinking. 2 Wherefore Diogenes, observing an emotional and crack-brained youth, said, “Young man, your father must have been drunk when he begot you!” So much for my views on the subject of birth. We must now speak of education.

4 1 As a general statement, the same assertion may be made in regard to moral excellence that we are in the habit of making in regard to the arts and sciences, namely, that there must be a concurrence of three things in order to produce perfectly right action, and these are: nature, reason, and habit. By reason I mean the act of learning, and by habit constant practice. The first beginnings come from nature, advancement from learning, the practical use from continued repetition, band the culmination from all combined; but so far as any one of these is wanting, the moral excellence must, to this extent, be crippled. For nature without learning is a blind thing, and learning without nature is an imperfect thing, and practice without both is an ineffective thing. Just as in farming, first of all the soil must be good, secondly, the husbandman skilful, and thirdly, the seed sound, so, after the same manner, nature is like to the soil, the teacher to the farmer, and the verbal counsels and precepts like to the seed. I should strenuously insist that all three qualities met together and formed a perfect union in the souls of those men who are celebrated among all mankind, — Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and all who have attained an ever-living fame.

Now it is a fortunate thing and a token of divine love if ever a heavenly power has bestowed all these qualities on any one man; but if anybody imagines that those not endowed with natural gifts, who yet have the chance to learn and to apply themselves in the right way to the attaining of virtue, cannot repair the want of their nature and advance so far as in them lies, let him know that he is in great, or rather total, error. For indifference ruins a good natural endowment, but instruction amends a poor one; easy things escape the careless, but difficult things are conquered by careful application. One may understand how effective and how productive a thing is application and hard work, if he only direct his attention to many effects that are daily observed. For drops of water make hollows in rocks, steel and bronze are worn away by the touch of hands, and rims of chariot-wheels once bent by dint of labour, cannot, no matter what be done, recover their original lines. The bent staves which actors use it is impossible to straighten; indeed the unnatural shape has, through labour, come to predominate over the natural. And are these the only things which clearly show the potency of diligence? No, but myriads upon myriads. A piece of land is good by nature, but without care it grows waste, and the better it is by nature, so much the more is it spoiled by neglect if it be not worked. Another piece is forbidding and rougher than land should be, but, if it be tilled, straightway it produces noble crops. What trees if they are neglected do not grow crooked and prove unfruitful? Yet if they receive right culture, they become fruitful, and bring their fruit to maturity. What bodily strength is not impaired and finally ruined by neglect and luxury and ill condition? On the other hand, what weak physique does not show a very great improvement in strength if men exercise and train themselves? What horses if they are well broken when young do not become obedient to their riders, whereas if they are left unbroken they turn out stubborn and restive? Why wonder at other instances, seeing as we do that many of the wildest animals are made tame and used to their labours? Well did the Thessalian say, when asked who were the most pacific of the Thessalians, “Those who are just returning from war.” But why discuss the matter at length? For character is habit long continued, 3 and if one were to call the virtues of character the virtues of habit, he would not seem to go far astray. I will cite but one more example on this point and then I shall desist from discussing it further. Lycurgus, the lawgiver of the Spartans, took two puppies of the same litter, and reared them in quite different ways, so that from the one he produced a mischievous and greedy cur, and from the other a dog able to follow a scent and to hunt. And then at a time when the Spartans were gathered together, he said: “Men of Sparta, of a truth habit and training and teaching and guidance in living are a great influence toward engendering excellence, and I will make this evident to you at once.” Thereupon producing the two dogs, he let them loose, putting down directly in front of them a dish of food and a hare. The one dog rushed after the hare, and the other made for the dish. While the Spartans were as yet unable to make out what import he gave to this, and with what intent he was exhibiting the dogs, he said, “These dogs are both of the same litter, but they have received a different bringing-up, with the result that the one has turned out a glutton and the other a hunter.” In regard to habits and manner of life let this suffice.

5 1 Next in order comes the subject of feeding. Mothers ought, I should say, themselves to feed their infants and nurse them themselves. For they will feed them with a livelier affection and greater care, as loving them inwardly, and, according to the proverb, to their finger-tips. But the good-will of foster-mothers and nursemaids is insincere and forced, since they love for pay. Nature too makes clear the fact that mothers should themselves nurse and feed what they have brought into the world, since it is for this purpose that she has provided for every animal which gives birth to young a source of food in its milk. Wise also is her forethought; for she has fashioned women’s breasts double, so, if any be twins, they may have a double source of nutrition. Yet apart from all this, mothers would come to be more kindly disposed towards their children, and more inclined to show them affection. Not unnaturally either, I swear; for this fellowship in feeding is a bond that knits kindliness together. Yes, even the brute beasts, when dragged away from their companions in feeding, evidently miss them. So, as I have said, mothers must endeavour, if possible, to nurse their children themselves; but if they are unable to do this, either because of bodily weakness (for such a thing can happen) or because they are in haste to bear more children, yet foster-mothers and nursemaids are not to be selected at random, but as good ones as possible must be chosen; and, first of all, in character they must be Greek. For just as it is necessary, immediately after birth, to begin to mould the limbs of the children’s bodies in order that these may grow straight and without deformity, so, in the same fashion, it is fitting from the beginning to regulate the characters of children. For youth is impressionable and plastic, and while such minds are still tender lessons are infused deeply into them; but anything which has become hard is with difficulty softened. For just as seals leave their impression in soft wax, so are lessons impressed upon the minds of children while they are young. And, as it seems to me, Plato, that remarkable man, quite properly advises nurses, even in telling stories to children, not to choose at random, lest haply their minds be filled at the outset with foolishness and corruption. Phocylides, too, the poet, appears to give admirable advice in saying:

Should teach while still a child

The tale of noble deeds.

6 1 Now there is another point which should not be omitted, that in choosing the younger slaves, who are to be the servants and companions of young masters, those should be sought out who are, first and foremost, sound in character, 4 who are Greeks as well, and distinct of speech, so that the children may not be contaminated by barbarians and persons of low character, and so take on some of their commonness. The proverb-makers say, and quite to the point, “If you dwell with a lame man, you will learn to limp.”

7 1 When now they attain to an age to be put under the charge of attendants, then especially great care must be taken in the appointment of these, so as not to entrust one’s children inadvertently to slaves taken in war or to barbarians or to those who are unstable. Nowadays, the common practice of many persons is more than ridiculous; for some of their trustworthy slaves they appoint to manage their farms, bothers they make masters of their ships, others their factors, others they make house-stewards, and some even money-lenders; but any slave whom they find to be a wine-bibber and a glutton, and useless for any kind of business, to him they bring their sons and put them in his charge. But the good attendant ought to be a man of such nature as was Phoenix, the attendant of Achilles.

I come now to a point which is more important and weighty than anything I have said so far. Teachers must be sought for the children who are free from scandal in their lives, who are unimpeachable in their manners, and in experience the very best that may be found. For to receive a proper education is the source and root of all goodness. As husbandmen place stakes beside the young plants, so do competent teachers with all care set their precepts and exhortations beside the young, in order that their characters may grow to be upright. Nowadays there are some fathers who deserve utter contempt, who, before examining those who are going to teach, either because of ignorance, or sometimes because of inexperience, hand over their children to untried and untrustworthy men. This is not so ridiculous if their action is due to inexperience, but there is another case which is absurd to the last degree. What is this? Why, sometimes even with knowledge and with information from others, who tell them of the inexperience and even of the depravity of certain teachers, they nevertheless entrust their children to them; some yield to the flatteries of those who would please them, and there are those who do it as a favour to insistent friends. Their action resembles that of a person, who, if he were afflicted with bodily disease, should reject that man who by his knowledge might be able to save his life, and, as a favour to a friend, should prefer one who by his inexperience might cause his death; or again that of a person who should dismiss a most excellent shipmaster, and accept the very worst because of a friend’s insistence. Heaven help us! Does a man who bears the name of father think more of gratifying those who ask favours than he thinks of the education of his children? And did not Socrates of old often say very fittingly, that if it were in any way possible one should go up to the loftiest part of the city and cry aloud, “Men, whither is your course taking you, who give all possible attention to the acquiring of money but give small thought to your sons to whom ye are to leave it?” To this I should like to add that such fathers act nearly as one would act who should give thought to his shoe but pay no regard to his foot. Many fathers, however, go so far in their devotion to money as well as in animosity toward their children, that in order to avoid paying a larger fee, they select as teachers for their children men who are not worth any wage at all — looking for ignorance, which is cheap enough. Wherefore Aristippus not inelegantly, in fact very cleverly, rebuked a father who was devoid both of mind and sense. For when a man asked him what fee he should require for teaching his child, Aristippus replied, “A thousand drachmas”; but when the other exclaimed, “Great Heavens! what an excessive demand! I can buy a slave for a thousand,” 5 Aristippus retorted, “Then you will have two slaves, your son and the one you buy.” And, in general, is it not absurd for people to accustom children to take their food with their right hand, and, if one puts out his left, to rebuke him, and yet to take no forethought that they shall hear right and proper words of instruction?

Now I will tell what happens to these admirable fathers when they have badly brought up and badly educated their sons. When their sons are enrolled in the ranks of men, and disdain the sane and orderly life, and throw themselves headlong into disorderly and slavish pleasures, then, when it is of no use, the fathers regret that they have been false to their duty in the education of their sons, being now distressed at their wrongdoing. For some of them take up with flatterers and parasites, abominable men of obscure origin, corrupters and spoilers of youth, and others buy the freedom of courtesans and prostitutes, proud and sumptuous in expense; still others give themselves up to the pleasures of the table, while others come to wreck in dice and revels, and some finally take to the wilder forms of evil-doing, such as adultery and bacchanalian routs, ready to pay with life itself for a single pleasure. But if these men had become conversant with the higher education, they perhaps would not have allowed themselves to be dominated by such practices, and they would at least have become acquainted with the precept of Diogenes, who with coarseness of speech, but with substantial truth, advises and says, “Go into any brothel to learn that there is no difference between what costs money and what costs nothing.”

8 1 Briefly, then, I say (an oracle one might properly call it, rather than advice) that, to sum up, the beginning, the middle, and end in all these matters is good education and proper training; and it is this, I say, which leads on and helps towards moral excellence and towards happiness. And, in comparison with this, all other advantages are human, and trivial, and not worth our serious concern. Good birth is a fine thing, but it is an advantage which must be credited to one’s ancestors. Wealth is held in esteem, but it is a chattel of fortune, since oftentimes she takes it away from those who possess it, and brings and presents it to those who do not expect it. Besides, great wealth is the very mark for those who aim their shafts at the purse — rascally slaves and blackmailers; and above all, even the vilest may possess it. Repute, moreover, is imposing, but unstable. Beauty is highly prized, but short-lived. Health is a valued possession, but inconstant. Strength is much admired, but it falls an easy prey to disease and old age. And, in general, if anybody prides himself wholly upon the strength of his body, let him know that he is sadly mistaken in judgement. For how small is man’s strength compared with the power of other living creatures! I mean, for instance, elephants and bulls and lions. But learning, of all things in this world, is alone immortal and divine. Two elements in man’s nature are supreme over all — mind and reason. The mind exercises control over reason, and reason is servant of the mind, unassailable by disease, unimpaired by old age. For the mind alone grows young with increase of years, and time, which takes away all things else, but adds wisdom to old age. War, again, like a torrent, sweeps everything away and carries everything along in its current, but learning alone it cannot take away. It seems to me that Stilpo, the philosopher of Megara, made an answer worth recording, at the time when Demetrius, having reduced the people of that city to slavery and razed its buildings, asked him whether perchance he had lost anything; but Stilpo replied: “No, indeed, for war cannot make spoil of virtue.” 6 In full accord and harmony with these appears the reply of Socrates. For he, when someone (I think it was Gorgias) asked him what notion he had regarding the great king, and whether he thought him happy, said, “I do not know how he stands in the matter of righteousness and learning,” — his thought being that happiness depends upon these and not upon accidental advantages.

9 1 Just as I advise people to make nothing of more immediate importance than the education of their children, so again I say they ought to cling to the uncorrupted and sound education, and to withdraw their sons as far away as possible from the nonsense of ostentatious public discourse. For to please the multitude is to displease the wise. And Euripides bears witness to my words when he says:

I have no gift to reason with a crowd;

I’m wiser with my friends and fewer folk.

And this is just; since those the wise hold cheap

Are better tuned to speak before a crowd.

I observe that those who practise speaking in a way to catch the favour of the vulgar herd also turn out in general to be incontinent in their lives and fond of pleasure. And this surely is to be expected; for if, in providing pleasure for others, they disregard what is honourable, they would be slow to place that which is upright and sound above the gratification of their own pleasures and luxurious tastes, and slow to pursue the temperate course instead of the agreeable. Moreover, why should children [be taught such a way of speaking]? For it is a good thing not to say or do anything at random, and according to the proverb, “Good things are hard.” Speeches made offhand display a large measure of readiness and facility, being characteristic of persons who know not what should be the beginning or where the end. But, apart from all other errors, those who speak on the impulse of the moment fall into a dreadful disregard of limit and into loquacity. Reflexion on the other hand prevents a discourse from exceeding the due limits of proportion. Pericles, “as the story has been handed down for us to hear,” though called upon by the people, oftentimes did not heed their summons, saying that he was unprepared. In like manner also Demosthenes, who was an ardent follower of Pericles’ political policy, when the Athenians called upon him to give his counsel, resisted, saying, “I have not prepared myself.” This, perhaps, is an unauthentic and fictitious tradition; but in his speech against Meidias he presents clearly the helpfulness of reflection. At any rate he says, “Men of Athens, I say I have given much thought to this matter, and I could not deny that I have also rehearsed my speech to the best of my ability; for I should be a miserable wretch, if, in view of his past and present treatment of me, I had paid no attention to what I was going to say to you about it.” But I, for my part, would not assert that readiness of speech is to be utterly rejected, or again that it should not be used in its proper place, but that it is to be used like a drug, with caution. Indeed until one arrives at man’s estate I do not think it right that he should speak at all offhand, but when he shall have firmly established his powers, then, if the occasion invite, it is fitting for him to exercise some freedom in his speech. For just as those who have been in fetters for a long time, even if later they be set free, yet, because of the long-continued habituation to their bonds, are not able to walk freely, and are not sure on their feet, so is it with those who for a long time have kept their speech under close restraint: if ever it becomes necessary to speak offhand, they nevertheless keep to the same type of expression as before. But to allow those who are still young to speak extempore stands responsible for the worst sort of rambling talk. 7 They tell the story of a wretched painter, who, exhibiting to Apelles a painting, said, “This I have only this moment painted.” Whereupon Apelles replied, “Even should you not say so, yet I know that it was painted hastily, and I only wonder that you have not painted more of like sort.”

I advise then (for I return now to my original theme) that, as one should always be careful to avoid the theatrical and melodramatic style, so, on the other hand, one should exercise the same caution to avoid triviality and vulgarity in style; for a turgid diction is unfitted for a man in public life, and a barren style is too unimpressive; but as the body ought to be not merely healthy but also sturdy, so also speech should be not merely free from fault but vigorous too. For the cautious is merely commended, but the audacious is admired as well. It so happens that I entertain the same opinion also in regard to mental disposition. For a man should not be bold, on the one hand, or, on the other, pusillanimous and cowering, since the one resolves itself into impudence, and the other into servility. Always to pursue the middle course in everything is artistic and in good taste.

While I am still dwelling upon my own opinion in regard to education, I desire to say that in the first place a discourse composed of a series of short sentences I regard as no small proof of lack of culture; in the second place I think that in practice such discourse soon palls, and in every case it causes impatience; for monotony is in everything tiresome and repellent, but variety is agreeable, as it is in everything else, as, for example, in entertainments that appeal to the eye or the ear.

10 1 Now the free-born child should not be allowed to go without some knowledge, both through hearing and observation, of every branch also of what is called general education; yet these he should learn only incidentally, just to get a taste of them, as it were (for perfection in everything is impossible), but philosophy he should honour above all else. I can perhaps make my opinion clear by means of a figure: for example, it is a fine thing to voyage about and view many cities, but profitable to dwell only in the best one. And it was a clever saying of Bion, the philosopher, that, just as the suitors, not being able to approach Penelope, consorted with her maid-servants, so also do those who are not able to attain to philosophy wear themselves to a shadow over the other kinds of education which have no value. Wherefore it is necessary to make philosophy as it were the head and front of all education. For as regards the care of the body men have discovered two sciences, the medical and the gymnastic, of which the one implants health, the other sturdiness, in the body; but for the illnesses and affections of the mind philosophy alone is the remedy. For through philosophy and in company with philosophy it is possible to attain knowledge of what is honourable and what is shameful, what is just and what is unjust, what, in brief, is to be chosen and what to be avoided, how a man must bear himself in his relations with the gods, with his parents, with his elders, with the laws, with strangers, with those in authority, with friends, with women, with children, with servants; that one ought to reverence the gods, to honour one’s parents, to respect one’s elders, to be obedient to the laws, to yield to those in authority, to love one’s friends, to be chaste with women, to be affectionate with children, and not to be overbearing with slaves; and, most important of all, not to be overjoyful at success or overmuch distressed at misfortune, nor to be dissolute in pleasures, nor impulsive and brutish in temper. These things I regard as pre-eminent among all the advantages which accrue from philosophy. For to have a generous heart in prosperity shows a man, to excite no envy withal shows a disciplined nature; to rule pleasure by reason marks the wise man, and not every man can master his passion. But I regard as perfect, so far as men can be, those who are able to combine and mingle political capacity with philosophy; 8 and I am inclined to think that these are secure in the possession of two things which are of the greatest good: a life useful to the world in their public position, and the calm and untroubled life in their pursuit of philosophy. For there are three forms of life, of which the first is the practical life, the second the contemplative life, and the third the life of enjoyment. The last, which is dissolute and enslaved to pleasure, is bestial and mean, but the contemplative life, which falls short in practice, is not useful, while the practical life which has no portion in philosophy, is without culture or taste. One must try, then, as well as one can, both to take part in public life, band to lay hold of philosophy so far as the opportunity is granted. Such was the life of Pericles as a public man, such was Archytas of Tarentum, such was Dion of Syracuse, such was Epaminondas of Thebes, of whom the next to the last was the associate of Plato.

In regard to education I do not know why it is necessary to take the time to say more; but in addition to the foregoing, it is useful, or rather it is necessary, not to be indifferent about acquiring the works of earlier writers, but to make a collection of these, like a set of tools in farming. For the corresponding tool of education is the use of books, and by their means it has come to pass that we are able to study knowledge at its source.

11 It is not proper, either, to overlook the exercise of the body, but we should send the children to the trainer’s and cultivate adequately this side of education with all diligence, not merely for the sake of gracefulness of body but also with an eye to strength; for sturdiness of body in childhood is the foundation of a hale old age. Just as in fair weather, then, one ought to prepare for storm, so also in youth one should store up discipline and self-restraint as a provision for old age. But the amount of bodily exercise should be so limited as not to be a drain on the children and make them too tired to study; for, according to Plato, sleep and weariness are the enemies of learning. But why do I introduce this subject here? Just because I am anxious to say that which is of greater importance than all the rest: it is for the contests of war that boys must be practised, by exercising themselves in throwing the javelin, shooting with the bow, and in hunting. “For the goods of the vanquished” in battle “are prizes offered to the victors.” War has no place for a bodily condition produced by an indoor life, and a slenderly built soldier accustomed to military exercises forces his way through the masses of fleshy athletes.

But perchance someone may say, “What is this? You, who have promised to give directions in regard to the education of free-born children, are now evidently disregarding the education of the poor children of the common people, and you acknowledge that you are offering your suggestions to the rich only.” To these it is not difficult to make reply. My dearest wish would be that my scheme of education should be generally useful; but if some, being needy in their private circumstances, shall be unable to avail themselves of my directions, let them lay the blame therefor upon fortune and not upon him who gives this counsel. Even the poor must endeavour, as well as they can, to provide the best education for their children, but, if that be impossible, then they must avail themselves of that which is within their means. I have burdened the discussion with this minor matter so as to connect therewith in due order the other topics which tend toward the right education of the young.

12 1 This also I assert, that children ought to be led to honourable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows or ill-treatment, for it surely is agreed that these are fitting rather for slaves than for the free-born; for so they grow numb and shudder at their tasks, partly from the pain of the blows, partly from the degradation. Praise and reproof are more helpful for the free-born than any sort of ill-usage, 9 since the praise incites them toward what is honourable, and reproof keeps them from what is disgraceful.

But rebukes and praises should be used alternately and in a variety of ways; it is well to choose some time when the children are full of confidence to put them to shame by rebuke, and then in turn to cheer them up by praises, and to imitate the nurses, who, when they have made their babies cry, in turn offer them the breast for comfort. Moreover in praising them it is essential not to excite and puff them up, for they are made conceited and spoiled by excess of praise.

13 1 In my time I have seen fathers in whom excessive affection had become the cause of no affection. What is it that I mean to say, in order that by the example I give I may make my argument more luminous? It is this: in their eagerness that their children may the sooner rank first in everything, they lay upon them unreasonable tasks, which the children find themselves unable to perform, and so come to grief; besides, being depressed by their unfortunate experiences, they do not respond to the instruction which they receive. For, just as plants are nourished by moderate applications of water, but are drowned by many in succession, in the same fashion the mind is made to grow by properly adapted tasks, but is submerged by those which are excessive. Children must be given some breathing-space from continued tasks, for we must bear in mind that our whole life is divided between relaxation and application. For this reason there have been created not only waking hours but also sleep, not only war but also peace, not only storm but also fair weather, not only periods of vigorous activity but also holidays. In short, rest gives relish to labour. We may observe that this holds true not merely in the case of living creatures, but also in the case of inanimate things, for we unstring bows and lyres that we may be able to tighten them again. The body, generally speaking, is maintained by hunger and its satisfaction, and the mind by relaxation and labour.

It is right to rebuke some fathers who, after entrusting their sons to attendants and masters, do not themselves take cognizance at all of their instruction by means of their own eyes or their own ears. Herein they most fail in their duty; for they ought themselves every few days to test their children, and not rest their hopes upon the disposition of a hired person; for even those persons will devote more attention to the children if they know they must from time to time render an account. And in this connexion there is point as well as wit in the remark of the groom who said that nothing makes the horse so fat as the king’s eye.

Above all, the memory of children should be trained and exercised; for this is, as it were, a storehouse of learning; and it is for this reason that the mythologists have made Memory the mother of the Muses, thereby intimating by an allegory that there is nothing in the world like memory for creating and fostering. This, then, is to be trained in either case, whether one’s children be naturally gifted with a good memory, or, on the contrary, forgetful. For we shall thus strengthen nature’s generous endowment, and thus fill out her deficiency; and while the first class of children will excel others, the second class will excel their former selves. The saying of Hesiod is admirably put:

If even small upon the small you place

And do this oft, the whole will soon be great.

Nor should parents forget that those branches of instruction which involve memory make no small contribution, not merely to education, but also to the practical activities of life; for the memory of past activities serves as a pattern of good counsel for the future.

14 1 Moreover, one’s sons are to be kept from foul language; for, according to Democritus, “A word is a deed’s shadow.” 10 Then, too, proper measures must be taken to ensure that they shall be tactful and courteous in their address; for nothing is so deservedly disliked as tactless characters. Besides, children may avoid getting themselves disliked by their associates if they do not prove totally unyielding in discussions. For it is a fine thing to understand, not only how to gain the victory, but also how to submit to defeat, in cases where victory is injurious; for there is really such a thing as a “Cadmean victory.” As a witness of this I may quote Euripides the wise, who says:

When of two speakers one is growing wroth,

Wise is he that yields in argument.

We must now lay down some rules of conduct which the young should follow no less but even more than those previously given. These are: To practise the simple life, to hold the tongue in check, to conquer anger, to control the hands. We must consider the importance of each of these; and they will be more intelligible if based on examples.

So, to begin with the last, some men by putting their hands to wrongful gains have upset the good repute of their earlier lives. Witness the case of Gylippus, the Spartan, who was forced into exile because he had secretly unsewed the bags of money.

Again, an unruffled temper is certainly the mark of a wise man. Thus Socrates once, when a bold and impudent youth had kicked him, observed that the bystanders were so indignant and so violently moved as to wish to foul up the offender; but he only said: “If an ass had kicked me, should you have thought it proper to kick him in return?” That youth, however, did not by any means get off scot-free, but as everybody jeered at him, and nicknamed him “Kicker,” he ended by hanging himself.

And when Aristophanes brought out the Clouds, and heaped all manner of abuse upon Socrates in every possible way, one of those who had been present said to Socrates, “Are you not indignant, Socrates, that he used you as he did in the play?” “No indeed,” he replied; “when they break a jest upon me in the theatre I feel as if I were at a big party of good friends.” What Archytas of Tarentum and Plato did will be seen to be closely akin to this. For Archytas, on his return from the war (where he had been general) found his land gone to waste. He summoned his overseer and said, “You should be sorry for this, if I were not in too great a temper.” And Plato, provoked at a gluttonous and impudent slave, called his sister’s son, Speusippus, and said as he withdrew, “Beat this fellow, for I am too much provoked.” But it may be urged that such actions are difficult and hard to imitate. I know that myself. But the effort must be made, by employing the actions of such men as standards as far as possible, to abate a great part of our unbridled and furious temper; for in other respects also we are not comparable with them either in experience or magnanimous. Yet we, no less than they, feeling ourselves to be the high priests of God’s mysteries and torch-bearers of wisdom, do attempt, so far as lies in our power, to imitate and to get a little taste of such conduct for ourselves.

The control of the tongue, then, still remains to be discussed of the topics I suggested. If anybody has the notion that this is a slight and insignificant matter, he is very far from the truth. For timely silence is a wise thing, and better than any speech. And this is the reason, as it appears to me, why the men of olden time established the rites of initiation into the mysteries, that we, by becoming accustomed to keep silence there, may transfer that fear which we learned from the divine secrets to the safe keeping of the secrets of men. For, again, nobody was ever sorry because he kept silent, but hundreds because they talked. Again, the word unspoken cannot possibly be recalled. I have heard of countless men who have fallen into the greatest misfortunes through intemperate speech. 11 Of these I shall mention one or two as typical and omit the rest. When Ptolemy Philadelphus married his sister Arsinoë, Sotades said,

‘Tis wrong for you to try to spur that mare,

and thereafter he rotted in prison for many years; and so suffered condign punishment for his untimely talking, and to make other men laugh he sorrowed a long time himself. A story to match and couple with this, and much more dreadful, is what the sophist Theocritus said and suffered. Alexander had bidden the Greeks to make ready crimson robes so that on his return he might offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving for his victory in the war against the barbarians, and all the states had to pay a poll-tax in money, when Theocritus remarked, “Before this I used to be in doubt, but now I know for a certainty that this is Homer’s ‘Crimson Death.’ “ And thereby he made an enemy of Alexander. And Antigonus, king of the Macedonians, who was blind of one eye, he drove to immoderate anger by reproaching him with his disfigurement. For Antigonus sent his chief cook, Eutropion, who had been an officer in his army, to Theocritus, and insisted that Theocritus should come to him and engage in discussion. When Eutropion delivered his message to Theocritus, coming several times for the purpose, the latter said, “I know very well that you want to serve me up raw to your Cyclops,” twitting the one for being disfigured and the other for being now a cook. “Then you shall not keep your head on,” said Eutropion, “but you shall pay the penalty for this reckless talk and madness of yours.” He thereupon reported the remark to the king, who sent and had Theocritus put to death.

But besides all this, we should, as a most sacred duty, accustom children to speak the truth. For lying is fit for slaves only, and deserves to be hated of all men, and even in decent slaves it is not to be condoned.

15 1 So far I have felt no doubt or even hesitation in saying what I have said about the decorous conduct and modest behaviour of the young; but in regard to the topic now to be introduced I am of two opinions and two minds, and I incline now this way, now that, as though on a balance, being unable to settle down on either side; and a feeling of great reluctance possesses me, whether to introduce or to avoid the subject. Still I must venture to speak of it. What is it then? It is the question whether boys’ admirers are to be permitted to associate with them and pass their time with them, or whether, on the contrary, they should be kept away and driven off from associations with the youth. For when I have regard to those uncompromising fathers, harsh and surly in their manner, who think the society of admirers an intolerable outrage to their sons, I feel cautious about standing as its sponsor and advocate. But again, when I think of Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines, Cebes, and that whole band of men who sanctioned affection between men, and thus guided the youth onward to learning, leadership, and virtuous conduct, I am of a different mind again, and am inclined to emulate their example. Euripides gives testimony in their favour when he says:

Among mankind another love exists,

That of an upright, chaste, and noble soul.

Nor may we omit the remark of Plato wherein jest and seriousness are combined. For he says that those who have acquitted themselves nobly ought to have the right to kiss any fair one they please. Now we ought indeed to drive away those whose desire is for mere outward beauty, but to admit without reserve those who are lovers of the soul. And while the sort of love prevailing at Thebes and in Elis is to be avoided, as well as the so-called kidnapping in Crete, 12 that which is found at Athens and in Lacedaemon is to be emulated.

16 1 In this matter each man may be allowed such opinion as accords with his own convinces. But now that I have spoken of the orderly and decorous behaviour of children, I shall next pass to the period of adolescence, and say a very few words about it. I have often expressed my utter disapprobation of men who have been responsible for the introduction of depraved habits. For, while it is true that they have put attendants and teachers in charge of their children, they nevertheless have allowed the impetuosity of youth to range unrestrained, when they ought, on the contrary, to have exercised greater caution and watchfulness over them when they were young men than when they were children. For who is not aware that the faults of children are trivial and altogether corrigible — heedlessness, perhaps, towards their attendants, or deceiving and refusing to mind their teachers? But the iniquities of early manhood are often monstrous and wicked — unlimited gluttony, theft of parents’ money, gambling, revels, drinking-bouts, love affairs with young girls, and corruption of married women. The impulses of young men should therefore be kept fettered and restrained by careful supervision. For life’s prime is prodigal in its pleasures, restive, and in need of a curb, so that parents who do not take hold of the reins with firm hand at this period of life, are manifestly, by their folly, giving to their sons licence for wrongdoing. Wise fathers ought, therefore, especially during this time, to be vigilant and alert, and to bring the young men to reason by instruction, by threats, by entreaties, by pointing out examples of men who through love of pleasure have become involved in misfortunes, and of those who, through their steadfastness, have gained for themselves approval and good repute. For these two things — hope of reward and fear of punishment — are, as it were, the elements of virtue. For the one renders men more eager for honourable pursuits while the other makes them averse to base actions.

17 1 It should be the general rule to keep the young away from any association with base men; for they carry away something of their badness. This duty Pythagoras also has enjoined in the form of allegories which I shall now quote and explain. For they contribute no small influence towards the acquisition of virtue. For example:

“Do not taste of black-tails;” that, “Do not spend your time with men of black character, because of their malevolence.”

“Do not step over the beam of a balance”; that is, one should give greatest heed to justice and not transgress it.

“Do not sit on a peck measure”; as much as to say that we should avoid idleness and have forethought for providing our daily bread.

“Do not give your hand to everybody”; instead of, “Do not make friends too readily.”

“Do not wear a tight ring”; means that one should live his life unhampered, and not subject it to any bond.

“Do not poke a fire with steel”; instead of, “Do not provoke an angry man.” Indeed, it is wrong to do so, and we should yield to men who are in a temper.

“Do not eat your heart”; as much as to say, “Do not injure your soul by wasting it with worries.”

“Abstain from beans”; means that a man should keep out of politics, for beans were used in earlier times for voting upon the removal of magistrates from office.

“Do not put food into a slop-pail”; signifies that it is not fitting to put clever speech into a base mind. For speech is the food of thought, and baseness in men makes it unclean.

“Do not turn back on reaching the boundaries”; that is, when people are about to die and see the boundary of their life close at hand, they should bear all this with serenity and not be faint-hearted.

I return to the subject suggested at the beginning of the chapter. As I said there, the young should be kept away from every sort of base men, and most of all from flatterers. 13 Let me repeat here what I say over and over again to many fathers: There is no class of persons more pernicious than flatterers, nor any that more surely and quickly gives youth a nasty tumble. They utterly ruin both fathers and sons, bringing to sorrow the old age of those and the youth of these, and dangling pleasure as an irresistible lure to get their advice taken. To sons who are to inherit wealth fathers commend sobriety, flatterers drinking to excess; fathers commend self-restraint, flatterers profligacy; fathers frugality, flatterers extravagance; fathers industry, flatterers indolence, saying, “A life is but a moment. We must live, not merely exist. Why should we give a thought to your father’s threats? He’s an old twaddler with one foot already in the grave, and before long we’ll take his coffin on our shoulders and carry him out.” Another of them posts a drab in the young man’s path, or prostitutes a married woman for him, and spoils and wastes the father’s provision for old age. Detestable is their whole tribe, pretenders of friendship, without a vestige of honest speech, flatterers of the rich but despisers of the poor, addressing themselves with instinctive art to the young, grinning broadly when their patrons laugh, spurious claimants to any spirit, and bastard members of human life, subsisting at the beck and nod of the wealthy; free-born by freak of fortune, but slaves by choice. Whenever they are not treated with insult, they feel themselves insulted because then they do not fulfil the purpose for which they are kept. So if any father is concerned for the good upbringing of his children, he must drive away these detestable creatures, and quite as much must he drive away schoolmates who show depravity, for these also are capable of corrupting the most likely natures.

18 1 Now all these rules concern honour and good profit, but what follows concerns human nature. Take the fathers again: I do not think they should be utterly harsh and austere in their nature, but they should in many cases concede some shortcomings to the younger person, and remind themselves that they once were young. As physicians, by mixing bitter drugs with sweet syrups, have found that the agreeable taste gains access for what is beneficial, so fathers should combine the abruptness of their rebukes with mildness, and at one time grant some licence to the desires of their children, and slacken the reins a little, and then at another time draw them tight again. Most desirable is it that they should bear misdeeds with serenity, but if that be impossible, yet, if they be on occasion angered, they should quickly cool down. For it is better that a father should be quick-tempered than sullen, since a hostile and irreconcilable spirit is no small proof of animosity towards one’s children. It is a good thing also to pretend not to know of some shortcomings, and to turn the old man’s dull eye and dull ear to what they do, and seeing, not to see, and, hearing, not to hear, sometimes, what goes on. Our friends’ shortcomings we bear with: why should it be surprising that we bear with our children’s? Though our slaves often suffer from a headache in the morning, we do not force them to confess a debauch. “You were niggardly once; well, now be liberal. You were indignant once; well, pardon now. He tricked you once with the help of a slave; restrain your anger. He once took away a yoke of cattle from the field, he once came home with breath reeking from yesterday’s debauch; ignore it. Or smelling of perfume; do not say a word.” In this fashion is restive youth gradually broken to harness.

19 1 An effort should be made to yoke in marriage those who cannot resist their desires, and who are deaf to admonitions. For marriage is the most secure bond for youth. One should, however, betroth to his sons women who are not greatly above them either in birth or wealth. The maxim “Keep to your own place” is wise, since those who take to wife women far above themselves unwittingly become not the husbands of their wives, 14 but the slaves of their wives’ dowries.

20 1 I will add but little more and then conclude my suggestions. Fathers ought above all, by not misbehaving and by doing as they ought to do, to make themselves a manifest example to their children, so that the latter, by looking at their fathers’ lives as at a mirror, may be deterred from disgraceful deeds and words. For those who are themselves involved in the same errors as those for which they rebuke their erring sons, unwittingly accuse themselves in their sons’ name. If the life they lead is wholly bad, they are not free to admonish even their slaves, let alone their sons. Besides, they are likely to become counsellors and instructors to their sons in their wrongdoing. For, wherever old men are lacking in decency, young men too are sure to be most shameless.

We must endeavour, therefore, to employ every proper device for the discipline of our children, emulating the example of Eurydice, who, although she was an Illyrian and an utter barbarian, yet late in life took up education in the interest of her children’s studies. The inscription which she dedicated to the Muses sufficiently attests her love for her children:

Eurydice of Hierapolis

Made to the Muses this her offering

When she had gained her soul’s desire to learn.

Mother of young and lusty sons was she,

And by her diligence attained to learn

Letters, wherein lies buried all our lore.

Now to put into effect all the suggestions which I have given is the province of prayer, perhaps, or exhortation. And even to follow zealously the majority of them demands good fortune and much careful attention, but to accomplish this lies within the capability of man.

How the young man should study poetry

1 It may be allowed to be a question fit for the determination of those concerning whom Cato said, Their palates are more sensitive than their hearts, whether that saying of Philoxenus the poet be true or no, The most savory flesh is that which is no flesh, and fish that is no fish. Yet this to me, Marcus Sedatus, is out of question, that those precepts of philosophy which seem not to be delivered with a designed gravity, such as becomes philosophers, take most with persons that are very young, and meet with a more ready acceptance and compliance from them. Whence it is that they do not only read through Esop’s fables and the fictions of poets and the Abaris of Heraclides and Ariston’s Lyco; but they also read such doctrines as relate to the souls of men, if something fabulous be mixed with them, with an excess of pleasure that borders on enthusiasm. Wherefore we are not only to govern their appetites in the delights of eating and drinking, but also (and much more) to inure them to a like temperance in reading and hearing, that, while they make use of pleasure as a sauce, they may pursue that which is wholesome and profitable in those things which they read. For neither can a city be secure if but one gate be left open to receive the enemy, though all the rest be shut; nor a young man safe, though he be sufficiently fortified against the assaults of all other pleasures, whilst he is without any guard against those of the ear. Yea, the nearer the commerce is betwixt the delights of that sense and those of the mind and reason, by so much the more, when he lies open on that side, is he apt to be debauched and corrupted thereby. Seeing therefore we cannot (and perhaps would not if we could) debar young men of the size of my Soclarus and thy Cleander altogether from the reading of poets, yet let us keep the stricter guard upon them, as those who need a guide to direct them in their reading more than in their walks. Upon which consideration, I find myself disposed to send thee at present in writing that discourse concerning Poetry which I had lately an occasion to deliver by word of mouth; that, when thou hast read it over thyself, thou mayst also make such use of it, if thou judgest it may be serviceable to that purpose, as those which are engaged to drink hard do of amethysts (or preservatives against drunkenness), — that is, that thou mayst communicate it to Cleander, to prepossess him therewith; seeing he is naturally endowed with a brisk, piercing, and daring wit, and therefore more prone to be inveigled by that sort of study.

They say of the fish called polypus that

His head in one respect is very good,
But in another very naughty food;

because, though it be very luscious to eat, yet it is thought to disturb the fancy with frightful and confused dreams. And the like observation may be made concerning poetry, that it affords sweet and withal wholesome nourishment to the minds of young men, but yet it contains likewise no less matter of disturbance and emotion to them that want a right conduct in the study thereof. For of it also, as well as of Egypt, may it be said that (to those who will use it)

Its over-fertile and luxuriant field
Medicines and poisons intermixt doth yield;

for therein

Love with soft passions and rich language drest
Oft steals the heart out of th’ ingenuous breast.

And indeed such only are endangered thereby, for the charms of that art ordinarily affect not those that are downright sots and naturally incapable of learning. Wherefore, when Simonides was asked why of all men he could not deceive the Thessalians, his answer was, Because they are not so well bred as to be capable of being cajoled by me. And Gorgias used to call tragical poems cheats, wherein he that did cheat was juster than he that did not cheat, and he that was cheated was wiser than he that was not cheated.

It deserves therefore our consideration, whether we shall put young men into Epicurus’s boat, — wherein, having their ears stopped with wax, as those of the men of Ithaca were, they shall be obliged to sail by and not so much as touch at poetry, — or rather keep a guard on them, so as to oblige their judgments by principles of right reason to use it aright, and preserve them from being seduced to their hurt by that which affords them so much delight. For neither did Lycurgus, the valiant son of Dryas (as Homer  calls him) act like a man of sound reason in the course which he took to reform his people that were much inclined to drunkenness, by travelling up and down to destroy all the vines in the country; whereas he should have ordered that every vine should have a well of water near it, that (as Plato saith) the drunken deity might be reduced to temperance by a sober one. For water mixed with wine takes away the hurtful spirits, while it leaves the useful ones in it. Neither should we cut down or destroy the Muses’ vine, poetry; but where we perceive it luxuriates and grows wild through an ungoverned appetite of applause, there ought we to prune away or keep under the fabulous and theatrical branches thereof; and where we find any of the Graces linked to any of the Muses, — that is, where the lusciousness and tempting charms of language are not altogether barren and unprofitable, — there let us bring in philosophy to incorporate with it.

For as, where the mandrake grows near the vine and so communicates something of its force thereto, the wine that is made of its grapes makes the sleep of those that drink it more refreshing; so doth the tempering poetry with the principles of philosophy and allaying their roughness with its fictions render the study of them more easy and the relish of them more grateful to young learners. Wherefore those that would give their minds to philosophical studies are not obliged to avoid poetry altogether, but rather to prepare themselves for philosophy by poems, accustoming themselves to search for and embrace that which may profit in that which pleaseth them, and rejecting and discarding that wherein they find nothing of this nature. For this discrimination is the first step to learning; and when this is attained, then, according to what Sophocles saith, —

To have begun well what we do intend
Gives hope and prospect of as good an end.

2 Let us therefore in the first place possess those whom we initiate in the study of poetry with this notion (as one which they ought always to have at hand), that

‘Tis frequently the poet’s guise
To intermingle truth with lies; —

which they do sometimes with and sometimes against their wills. They do it with their wills, because they find strict truth too rigid to comply with that sweetness and gracefulness of expression, which most are taken with, so readily as fiction doth. For real truth, though it disgust never so much, must be told as it is, without alteration; but that which is feigned in a discourse can easily yield and shift its garb from the distasteful to that which is more pleasing. And indeed, neither the measures nor the tropes nor the grandeur of words nor the aptness of metaphors nor the harmony of the composition gives such a degree of elegance and gracefulness to a poem as a well-ordered and artificial fiction doth. But as in pictures the colors are more delightful to the eye than the lines, because those give them a nearer resemblance to the persons they were made for, and render them the more apt to deceive the beholder; so in poems we are more apt to be smitten and fall in love with a probable fiction than with the greatest accuracy that can be observed in measures and phrases, where there is nothing fabulous or fictitious joined with it. Wherefore Socrates, being induced by some dreams to attempt something in poetry, and finding himself unapt, by reason that he had all his lifetime been the champion of severe truth, to hammer out of his own invention a likely fiction, made choice of Esop’s fables to turn into verse; as judging nothing to be true poetry that had in it nothing of falsehood. For though we have known some sacrifices performed without pipes and dances, yet we own no poetry which is utterly destitute of fable and fiction. Whence the verses of Empedocles and Parmenides, the Theriaca of Nicander, and the sentences of Theognis, are rather to be accounted speeches than poems, which, that they might not walk contemptibly on foot, have borrowed from poetry the chariot of verse, to convey them the more creditably through the world. Whensoever therefore any thing is spoken in poems by any noted and eminently famous man, concerning Gods or Daemons or virtue, that is absurd or harsh, he that takes such sayings for truths is thereby misled in his apprehension and corrupted with an erroneous opinion. But he that constantly keeps in his mind and maintains as his principle that the witchcraft of poetry consists in fiction, he that can at all turns accost it in this language, —

Riddle of art! like which no sphinx beguiles;
Whose face on one side frowns while th’ other smiles!
Why cheat’st thou, with pretence to make us wise,
And bid’st sage precepts in a fool’s disguise? —

such a one, I say, will take no harm by it, nor admit from it any absurd thing into his belief. But when he meets in poetry with expressions of Neptune’s rending the earth to pieces and discovering the infernal regions,  he will be able to check his fears of the reality of any such accident; and he will rebuke himself for his anger against Apollo for the chief commander of the Greeks, —

Whom at a banquet, whiles he sings his praise
And speaks him fair, yet treacherously he slays.

Yea, he will repress his tears for Achilles and Agamemnon, while they are represented as mourning after their death, and stretching forth their limber and feeble hands to express their desire to live again. And if at any time the charms of poetry transport him into any disquieting passions, he will quickly say to himself, as Homer very elegantly (considering the propension of women to listen after fables) says in his Necyia, or relation of the state of the dead, —

But from the dark dominions speed thy way,
And climb the steep ascent to upper day;
To thy chaste bride the wondrous story tell,
The woes, the horrors, and the laws of hell.

Such things as I have touched upon are those which the poets willingly feign. But more there are which they do not feign, but believing them themselves as their own proper judgments, they put fictitious colors upon them to ingratiate them to us. As when Homer says of Jupiter, —

Jove lifts the golden balances, that show
The fates of mortal men, and things below.
Here each contending hero’s lot he tries,
And weighs with equal hand their destinies.
Low sinks the scale surcharged with Hector’s fate;
Heavy with death it sinks, and hell receives the weight.

To this fable Aeschylus hath accommodated a whole tragedy which he calls Psychostasia, wherein he introduceth Thetis and Aurora standing by Jupiter’s balances, and deprecating each of them the death of her son engaged in a duel. Now there is no man but sees that this fable is a creature of the poet’s fancy, designed to delight or scare the reader. But this other passage, —

Great Jove is made the treasurer of wars;

and this other also, —

When a God means a noble house to raze,
He frames one rather than he’ll want a cause:

these passages, I say, express the judgment and belief of poets who thereby discover and suggest to us the ignorant or mistaken apprehensions they had of the Deities. Moreover, almost every one knows nowadays, that the porten tous fancies and contrivances of stories concerning the state of the dead are accommodated to popular apprehensions, — that the spectres and phantasms of burning rivers and horrid regions and terrible tortures expressed by frightful names are all mixed with fable and fiction, as poison with food; and that neither Homer nor Pindar nor Sophocles ever believed themselves when they wrote at this rate: —

There endless floods of shady darkness stream
From the vast caves, where mother Night doth teem;

and,

There ghosts o’er the vast ocean’s waves did glide,
By the Leucadian promontory’s side;

and,

There from th’ unfathomed gulf th’ infernal lake
Through narrow straits recurring tides doth make.

And yet, as many of them as deplore death as a lamentable thing, or the want of burial after death as a calamitous condition, are wont to break out into expressions of this nature: —

O pass not by, my friend; nor leave me here
Without a grave, and on that grave a tear;

and,

Then to the ghosts the mournful soul did fly,
Sore grieved in midst of youth and strength to die;

and again,

‘Tis sweet to see the light. O spare me then,
Till I arrive at th’ usual age of men:
Nor force my unfledged soul from hence, to know
The doleful state of dismal shades below.

These, I say, are the speeches of men persuaded of these things, as being possessed by erroneous opinions; and therefore they touch us the more nearly and torment us inwardly, because we ourselves are full of the same impotent passion from which they were uttered. To fortify us therefore against expressions of this nature, let this principle continually ring in our ears, that poetry is not at all solicitous to keep to the strict measure of truth. And indeed, as to what that truth in these matters is, even those men themselves who make it their only study to learn and search it out confess that they can hardly discover any certain footsteps to guide them in that enquiry. Let us therefore have these verses of Empedocles, in this case, at hand: —

No sight of man’s so clear, no ear so quick,
No mind so piercing, that’s not here to seek;

as also those of Xenophanes: —

The truth about the Gods and world, no man
E’er was or shall be that determine can;

and lastly, that passage concerning Socrates, in Plato, where he by the solemnity of an oath disclaims all knowledge of those things. For those who perceive that the searching into such matters makes the heads of philosophers themselves giddy cannot but be the less inclined to regard what poets say concerning them.

3 And we shall fix our young man yet the more if, when we enter him in the poets, we first describe poetry to him, and tell him that it is an imitating art and doth in many respects correspond to painting; not only acquainting him with that common saying, that poetry is vocal painting and painting silent poetry, but teaching him, moreover, that when we see a lizard or an ape or the face of a Thersites in a picture, we are surprised with pleasure and wonder at it, not because of any beauty in the things, but for the likeness of the draught. For it is repugnant to the nature of that which is itself foul to be at the same time fair; and therefore it is the imitation — be the thing imitated beautiful or ugly — that, in case it do express it to the life, is commended; and on the contrary, if the imitation make a foul thing to appear fair, it is dispraised because it observes not decency and likeness. Now some painters there are that paint uncomely actions; as Timotheus drew Medea killing her children; Theon, Orestes murdering his mother; and Parrhasius, Ulysses counterfeiting madness; yea, Chaerephanes expressed in picture the unchaste converse of women with men. Now in such cases a young man is to be familiarly acquainted with this notion, that, when men praise such pictures, they praise not the actions represented but only the painter’s art, which doth so lively express what was designed in them. Wherefore, in like manner, seeing poetry many times describes by imitation foul actions and unseemly passions and manners, the young student must not in such descriptions (although performed never so artificially and commendably) believe all that is said as true or embrace it as good, but give its due commendation so far only as it suits the subject treated of. For as, when we hear the grunting of hogs and the shrieking of pulleys and the rustling of wind and the roaring of seas, we are, it may be, disturbed and displeased, and yet when we hear any one imitating these or the like noises handsomely (as Parmenio did that of an hog, and Theodorus that of a pulley), we are well pleased; and as we avoid (as an unpleasing spectacle) the sight of sick persons and of a lazar full of ulcers, and yet are delighted to be spectators of the Philoctetes of Aristophon and the Jocasta of Silanion, wherein such wasting and dying persons are well acted; so must the young scholar, when he reads in a poem of Thersites the buffoon or Sisyphus the whoremaster or Batrachus the bawd speaking or doing any thing, so praise the artificial managery of the poet, adapting the expressions to the persons, as withal to look on the discourses and actions so expressed as odious and abominable. For the goodness of things themselves differs much from the goodness of the imitation of them; the goodness of the latter consisting only in propriety and aptness to represent the former. Whence to foul actions foul expressions are most suitable and proper. As the shoes of Demonides the cripple (which, when he had lost them, he wished might suit the feet of him that stole them) were but unhandsome shoes, but yet fit for the man they were made for; so we may say of such expressions as these: —

‘Tis worth the while an unjust act to own,
When it sets him that does it on a throne;
Get the repute of Just for a disguise,
And in it do all things whence gain may rise;
A talent dowry! Could I close my eyes
In sleep, or live, if thee I should despise?
And should I not in hell tormented be,
Could I be guilty of profaning thee?

These, it is true, are wicked as well as false speeches, but yet are decent enough in the mouth of an Eteocles, an lxion, and an old griping usurer. If therefore we mind our children that the poets write not such things as praising and approving them, but do really account them base and vicious and therefore accommodate such speeches to base and vicious persons, they will never be damnified by them from the esteem they have of the poets in whom they meet with them. But, on the contrary, the suspicions insinuated into them of the persons will render the words and actions ascribed to them suspected for evil, because proceeding from such evil men. And of this nature is Homer’s representation of Paris, when he describes him running out of the battle into Helen’s bed. For in that he attributes no such indecent act to any other, but only to that incontinent and adulterous person, he evidently declares that he intends that relation to import a disgrace and reproach to such intemperance.

4 In such passages therefore we are carefully to observe whether or not the poet himself do anywhere give any intimation that he dislikes the things he makes such persons say; which, in the prologue to his Thais Menander does, in these words: —

Therefore, my Muse, describe me now a whore,
Fair, bold, and furnished with a nimble tongue;
One that ne’er scruples to do lovers wrong;
That always craves, and denied shuts her door;
That truly loves no man, yet, for her ends,
Affection true to every man pretends.

But Homer of all the poets does it best. For he doth beforehand, as it were, bespeak dislike of the evil things and approbation of the good things he utters. Of the latter take these instances: —

He readily did the occasion take,
And sweet and comfortable words he spake;
By him he stood, and with soft speeches quelled
The wrath which in his heated bosom swelled.

And for the former, he so performs it as in a manner solemnly to forbid us to use or heed such speeches as those he mentions, as being foolish and wicked. For example, being to tell us how uncivilly Agamemnon treated the priest, he premises these words of his own, —

Not so Atrides: he with kingly pride
Repulsed the sacred sire, and thus replied;

intimating the insolency and unbecomingness of his answer. And when he attributes this passionate speech to Achilles, —

O monster, mix’d of insolence and fear,
Thou dog in forehead, and in heart a deer!

he accompanies it with this censure, —

Nor yet the rage his boiling breast forsook,
Which thus redoubling on Atrides broke;

for it was unlikely that speaking in such anger he should observe any rules of decency.

And he passeth like censures on actions. As on Achilles’s foul usage of Hector’s carcass, —

Gloomy he said, and (horrible to view)
Before the bier the bleeding Hector threw.

And in like manner he doth very decently shut up relations of things said or done, by adding some sentence wherein he declares his judgment of them. As when he personates some of the Gods saying, on the occasion of the adultery of Mars and Venus discovered by Vulcan’s artifice, —

See the swift God o’ertaken by the lame!
Thus ill acts prosper not, but end in shame.

And thus concerning Hecter’s insolent boasting he says, —

With such big words his mind proud Hector eased,
But venerable Juno he displeased.

And when he speaks of Pandarus’s shooting, he adds, —

He heard, and madly at the motion pleased,
His polish’d bow with hasty rashness seized.

Now these verbal intimations of the minds and judgments of poets are not difficult to be understood by any one that will heedfully observe them. But besides these, they give us other hints from actions. As Euripides is reported, when some blamed him for bringing such an impious and flagitious villain as Ixion upon the stage, to have given this answer: But yet I brought him not off till I had fastened him to a torturing wheel. This same way of teaching by mute actions is to be found in Homer also, affording us useful contemplations upon those very fables which are usually most disliked in him. These some men offer force to, that they may reduce them to allegories (which the ancients called πόνοιαι), and tell us that Venus committing adultery with Mars, discovered by the Sun, is to be understood thus: that when the star called Venus is in conjunction with that which hath the name of Mars, bastardly births are produced, and by the Sun’s rising and discovering them they are not concealed. So will they have Juno’s dressing herself so accurately to tempt Jupiter, and her making use of the girdle of Venus to inflame his love, to be nothing else but the purification of that part of the air which draweth nearest to the nature of fire. As if we were not told the meaning of those fables far better by the poet himself. For he teacheth us in that of Venus, if we heed it, that light music and wanton songs and discourses which suggest to men obscene fancies debauch their manners, and incline them to an unmanly way of living in luxury and wantonness, of continually haunting the company of women, and of being

Given to fashions, that their garb may please,
Hot baths, and couches where they loll at ease.

And therefore also he brings in Ulysses directing the musician thus, —

Leave this, and sing the horse, out of whose womb
The gallant knights that conquered Troy did come;

evidently teaching us that poets and musicians ought to receive the arguments of their songs from sober and understanding men. And in the other fable of Juno he excellently shows that the conversation of women with men. and the favors they receive from them procured by sorcery, witchcraft, or other unlawful arts, are not only short, unstable, and soon cloying, but also in the issue easily turned to loathing and displeasure, when once the pleasure is over. For so Jupiter there threatens Juno, when he tells her, —

Hear this, remember, and our fury dread,
Nor pull the unwilling vengeance on thy head;
Lest arts and blandishments successless prove
Thy soft deceits and well dissembled love.

For the fiction and representation of evil acts, when it withal acquaints us with the shame and damage befalling the doers, hurts not but rather profits him that reads them. For which end philosophers make use of examples for our instruction and correction out of historical collections; and poets do the very same thing, but with this difference, that they invent fabulous examples themselves. There was one Melanthius, who (whether in jest or earnest he said it, it matters not much) affirmed that the city of Athens owed its preservation to the dissensions and factions that were among the orators, giving withal this reason for his assertion, that thereby they were kept from inclining all of them to one side, so that by means of the differences among those statesmen there were always some that drew the saw the right way for the defeating of destructive counsels. And thus it is too in the contradictions among poets, which, by lessening the credit of what they say, render them the less powerful to do mischief; and therefore, when comparing one saying with another we discover their contrariety, we ought to adhere to the better side. As in these instances: —

The Gods, my son, deceive poor men oft-times.
Ans. ‘Tis easy, sir, on God to lay our crimes.

‘Tis comfort to thee to be rich, is’t not!
Ans. No, sir, ‘tis bad to be a wealthy sot.

Die rather than such toilsome pains to take.
Ans. To call God’s service toil’s a foul mistake.

Such contrarieties as these are easily solved, if (as I said) we teach youth to judge aright and to give the better saying preference. But if we chance to meet with any absurd passages without any others at their heels to confute them, we are then to overthrow them with such others as elsewhere are to be found in the author. Nor must we be offended with the poet or grieved at him, but only at the speeches themselves, which he utters either according to the vulgar manner of speaking or, it may be, but in drollery. So, when thou readest in Homer of Gods thrown out of heaven headlong one by another, or Gods wounded by men and quarrelling and brawling with each other, thou mayest readily, if thou wilt, say to him, —

Sure thy invention here was sorely out,
Or thou hadst said far better things, no doubt;

yea, and thou dost so elsewhere, and according as thou thinkest, to wit, in these passages of thine: —

The Gods, removed from all that men doth grieve,
A quiet and contented life do live.
Herein the immortal Gods for ever blest
Feel endless joys and undisturbed rest.
The Gods, who have themselves no cause to grieve,
For wretched man a web of sorrow weave.

For these argue sound and true opinions of the Gods; but those other were only feigned to raise passions in men. Again, when Euripides speaks at this rate, —

The Gods are better than we men by far,
And yet by them we oft deceived are, —

we may do well to quote him elsewhere against himself, where he says better, —

If Gods do wrong, surely no Gods there are.

So also, when Pindar saith bitterly and keenly,

No law forbids us any thing to do,
Whereby a mischief may befall a foe,

tell him: But, Pindar, thou thyself sayest elsewhere.

The pleasure which injurious acts attends
Always in bitter consequences ends.

And when Sophocles speaks thus,

Sweet is the gain, wherein to lie and cheat
Adds the repute of wit to what we get,

tell him: But we have heard thee say far otherwise,

When the account’s cast up, the gain’s but poor
Which by a lying tongue augments the store.

And as to what he saith of riches, to wit:

Wealth, where it minds to go, meets with no stay;
For where it finds not, it can make a way;
Many fair offers doth the poor let go,
And lose his prize because his purse is low;
The fair tongue makes, where wealth can purchase it,
The foul face beautiful, the fool a wit: —

here the reader may set in opposition divers other sayings of the same author. For example,

From honor poverty doth not debar,
Where poor men virtuous and deserving are.
Whate’er fools think, a man is ne’er the worse
If he be wise, though with an empty purse.
The comfort which he gets who wealth enjoys,
The vexing care by which ‘tis kept destroys.

And Menander also somewhere magnifies a voluptuous life, and inflames the minds of vain persons with these amorous strains,

The glorious sun no living thing doth see,
But what’s a slave to love as well as we.

But yet elsewhere, on the other side, he fastens on us and pulls us back to the love of virtue, and checks the rage of lust, when he says thus,

The life that is dishonorably spent,
Be it ne’er so pleasant, yields no true content.

For these lines are contrary to the former, as they are also better and more profitable; so that by comparing them considerately one cannot but either be inclined to the better side, or at least flag in the belief of the worse.

But now, supposing that any of the poets themselves afford no such correcting passages to solve what they have said amiss, it will then be advisable to confront them with the contrary sayings of other famous men, and therewith to sway the scales of our judgment to the better side. As, when Alexis tempts to debauchery in these verses,

The wise man knows what of all things is best,
Whilst choosing pleasure he slights all the rest.
He thinks life’s joys complete in these three sorts,
To drink and eat, and follow wanton sports;
And what besides seems to pretend to pleasure,
If it betide him, counts it over measure,

we must remember that Socrates said the contrary, to wit: Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live. And against the man that wrote in this manner,

He that designs to encounter with a knave,
An equal stock of knavery must have,

seeing he herein advises us to follow other vicious examples, that of Diogenes may well be returned, who being asked by what means a man might revenge himself upon his enemy, answered, By becoming himself a good and honest man. And the same Diogenes may be quoted also against Sophocles, who, writing thus of the sacred mysteries, caused great grief and despair to multitudes of men:

Most happy they whose eyes are blest to see
The mysteries which here contained be,
Before they die! For only they have joy
In th’ other world; the rest all ills annoy.

This passage being read to Diogenes, What then! says he, shall the condition of Pataecion, the notorious robber, after death be better than that of Epaminondas, merely for his being initiated in these mysteries? In like manner, when one Timotheus on the theatre, in the praise of the Goddess Diana, called her furious, raging, possessed, mad, Cinesias presently cried out to him aloud, May thy daughter, Timotheus, be such a Goddess! And witty also was that of Bion to Theognis, who said, —

One can not say nor do, if poor he be;
His tongue is bound to th’ peace, as well as he.

How comes it to pass then, said he, Theognis, that thou thyself being so poor pratest and gratest our ears in this manner?

5 Nor are we to omit in our reading those hints which, from some other words or phrases bordering on those that offend us, may help to rectify our apprehensions. But as physicians use cantharides, believing that, though their bodies be deadly poison, yet their feet and wings are medicinal and can even kill the poison of the flies themselves, so must we deal with poems. If any noun or verb near at hand may assist to the correction of any such saying, and preserve us from putting a bad construction upon it, we should take hold of it and employ it to assist a more favorable interpretation. As some do in reference to those verses of Homer, —

Sorrows and tears most commonly are seen
To be the Gods’ rewards to wretched men: —
The Gods, who have no cause themselves to grieve,
For wretched man a web of sorrow weave.

For, they say, he says not of men simply, or of all men, that the Gods weave for them the fatal web of a sorrowful life; but he affirms it only of foolish and imprudent men, whom, because their vices make them such, he therefore calls wretched and miserable.

6 Another way whereby those passages which are suspicious in poets may be transferred to a better sense may be taken from the common use of words, which a young man ought indeed to be more exercised in than in the use of strange and obscure terms. For it will be a point of philology which it will not be unpleasant to him to understand, that when he meets with [Editor: illegible character]ιγεδανή in a poet, that word signifies an evil death; for the Macedonians use the word δάνος to signify death. So the Aeolians call victory gotten by patient endurance of hardships ϰαμμονίη; and the Dryopians call daemons πόποι.

But of all things it is most necessary, and no less profitable if we design to receive profit and not hurt from the poets, that we understand how they make use of the names of Gods, as also of the terms of Evil and Good; and what they mean by Fortune and Fate; and whether these words be always taken by them in one and the same sense or rather in various senses, as also many other words are. For so the word οϰος sometimes signifies a material house, as, Into the high-roofed house; and sometimes estate, as, My house is devoured. So the word βίοτος sometimes signifies life, and sometimes wealth. And λύειν is sometimes taken for being uneasy and disquieted in mind, as in

[Editor: illegible character]ς αθ’ δ’ λύουσ’ πεβήσατο, τείρετο δ’ ανς,

and elsewhere for boasting and rejoicing, as in

Ἢ λύεις, [Editor: illegible character]τι Ἶρον νίκησας τν λήτην.

In like manner οάζειν signifies either to move, as in Euripides when he saith,

Κῆτος οάζον κ τλαντικῆς λός, —

or to sit, as in Sophocles when he writes thus,

Τίνας πό’ δρας τάσδε μοι οάζετε,
Ἱκτηρίοις κλάδοισιν ξεστεμμένοι.

It is elegant also when they adapt to the present matter, as grammarians teach, the use of words which are commonly of another signification. As here: —

Νῆ’ λίγην ανεῖν, μεγάη δ’ ν ορτία θέσθαι.

For here ανεῖν signifies to praise (instead of παινε[Editor: illegible character]ν), and to praise is used for to refuse. So in conversation it is common with us to say, ϰαλς χει, it is well (i.e., No, I thank you), and to bid any thing fare well (χαίϱειν); by which forms of speech we refuse a thing which we do not want, or receive it not, but still with a civil compliment. So also some say that Proserpina is called παινή in the notion of παϱαιτητή, to be deprecated, because death is by all men shunned.

And the like distinction of words we ought to observe also in things more weighty and serious. To begin with the Gods, we should teach our youth that poets, when they use the names of Gods, sometimes mean properly the Divine Beings so called, but otherwhiles understand by those names certain powers of which the Gods are the donors and authors, they having first led us into the use of them by their own practice. As when Archilochus prays,

King Vulcan, hear thy suppliant, and grant
That which thou’rt wont to give and I to want,

it is plain that he means the God himself whom he invokes. But when elsewhere he bewails the drowning of his sister’s husband, who had not obtained lawful burial, and says,

Had Vulcan his fair limbs to ashes turned,
I for his loss had with less passion mourned,

he gives the name of Vulcan to the fire and not to the Deity. Again, Euripides, when he says,

No; by great Jove I swear, enthroned on high, And bloody Mars,

means the Gods themselves who bare those names. But when Sophocles saith,

Blind Mars doth mortal men’s affairs confound,
As the swine’s snout doth quite deface the ground,

we are to understand the word Mars to denote not the God so called, but war. And by the same word we are to understand also weapons made of hardened brass, in those verses of Homer,

These are the gallant men whose noble blood
Keen Mars did shed near swift Scamander’s flood.

Wherefore, in conformity to the instances given, we must conceive and bear in mind that by the names of Jupiter also sometimes they mean the God himself, sometimes Fortune, and oftentimes also Fate. For when they say, —

Great Jupiter, who from the lofty hill
Of Ida govern’st all the world at will;
That wrath which hurled to Pluto’s gloomy realm
The souls of mighty chiefs: —
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove;
For who (but who himself too fondly loves)
Dares lay his wisdom in the scale with Jove’s? —

they understand Jupiter himself. But when they ascribe the event of all things done to Jupiter as the cause, saying of him, —

Many brave souls to hell Achilles sent,
And Jove’s design accomplished in th’ event, —

they mean by Jove no more but Fate. For the poet doth not conceive that God contrives mischief against mankind, but he soundly declares the mere necessity of the things themselves, to wit, that prosperity and victory are destined by Fate to cities and armies and commanders who govern themselves with sobriety, but if they give way to passions and commit errors, thereby dividing and crumbling themselves into factions, as those of whom the poet speaks did, they do unhandsome actions, and thereby create great disturbances, such as are attended with sad consequences.

For to all unadvised acts, in fine,
The Fates unhappy issues do assign.

But when Hesiod brings in Prometheus thus counselling his brother Epimetheus,

Brother, if Jove to thee a present make,
Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take,

he useth the name of Jove to express Fortune; for he calls the good things which come by her (such as riches, and marriages, and empires, and indeed all external things the enjoyment whereof is unprofitable to them who know not how to use them well) the gifts of Jove. And therefore he adviseth Epimetheus (an ill man, and a fool withal) to stand in fear of and to guard himself from prosperity, as that which would be hurtful and destructive to him.

Again, where he saith,

Reproach thou not a man for being poor;
His poverty’s God’s gift, as is thy store,

he calls that which befalls men by Fortune God’s gift, and intimates that it is an unworthy thing to reproach any man for that poverty which he falls into by Fortune, whereas poverty is then only a matter of disgrace and reproach when it is attendant on sloth and idleness, or wantonness and prodigality. For, before the name of Fortune was used, they knew there was a powerful cause, which moved irregularly and unlimitedly and with such a force that no human reason could avoid it; and this cause they called by the names of Gods. So we are wont to call divers things and qualities and discourses, and even men themselves, divine. And thus may we rectify many such sayings concerning Jupiter as would otherwise seem very absurd. As these, for instance: —

Before Jove’s door two fatal hogsheads, filled
With human fortunes, good and bad luck yield: —
Of violated oaths Jove took no care,
But spitefully both parties crushed by war: —
To Greeks and Trojans both this was the rise
Of mischief, suitable to Jove’s device.

These passages we are to interpret as spoken concerning Fortune or Fate, of the causality of both which no account can be given by us, nor do their effects fall under our power. But where any thing is said of Jupiter that is suitable, rational, and probable, there we are to conceive that the names of that God is used properly. As in these instances: —

Through others’ ranks he conquering did range,
But shunned with Ajax any blows t’ exchange;
But Jove’s displeasure on him he had brought,
Had he with one so much his better fought.
For though great matters are Jove’s special care,
Small things t’ inferior daemons trusted are.

And other words there are which the poets remove and translate from their proper sense by accommodation to various things, which deserve also our serious notice. Such a one, for instance, is ϱετή, virtue. For because virtue does not only render men prudent, just, and good, both in their words and deeds, but also oftentimes purchaseth to them honor and power, therefore they call likewise these by that name. So we are wont to call both the olive-tree and the fruit λαία, and the oak-tree and its acorn φηγός, communicating the name of the one to the other. Therefore, when our young man reads in the poets such passages as these, —

This law th’ immortal Gods to us have set,
That none arrive at virtue but by sweat;
The adverse troops then did the Grecians stout
By their mere virtue profligate and rout;
If now the Fates determined have our death,
To virtue we’ll consign our parting breath; —

let him presently conceive that these things are spoken of that most excellent and divine habit in us which we understand to be no other than right reason, or the highest attainment of the reasonable nature, and most agreeable to the constitution thereof. And again, when he reads this,

Of virtue Jupiter to one gives more,
And lessens, when he lifts, another’s store;

and this,

Virtue and honor upon wealth attend;

let him not sit down in an astonishing admiration of rich men, as if they were enabled by their wealth to purchase virtue, nor let him imagine that it is in the power of Fortune to increase or lessen his own wisdom; but let him conceive that the poet by virtue meant either glory or power or prosperity or something of like import. For poets use the same ambiguity also in the word χαχότης, evil, which sometimes in them properly signifies a wicked and malicious disposition of mind, as in that of Hesiod,

Evil is soon acquired; for everywhere
There’s plenty on’t and t’all men’s dwellings near;

and sometimes some evil accident or misfortune, as when Homer says,

Sore evils, when they haunt us in our prime,
Hasten old age on us before our time.

So also in the word εδαιμονία, he would be sorely deceived who should imagine that, wheresoever he meets with it in poets, it means (as it does in philosophy) a perfect habitual enjoyment of all good things or the leading a life every way agreeable to Nature, and that they do not withal by the abuse of such words call rich men happy or blessed, and power or glory felicity. For, though Homer rightly useth terms of that nature in this passage, —

Though of such great estates I am possest,
Yet with true inward joy I am not blest;

and Menander in this, —

So great’s th’ estate I am endowed withal:
All say I’m rich, but none me happy call; —

yet Euripides discourseth more confusedly and perplexedly when he writes after this manner, —

May I ne’er live that grievous blessed life; —
But tell me, man, why valuest thou so high
Th’ unjust beatitude of tyranny?

except, as I said, we allow him the use of these words in a metaphorical and abusive sense. But enough hath been spoken of these matters.

7 Nevertheless, this principle is not once only but often to be inculcated and pressed on young men, that poetry, when it undertakes a fictitious argument by way of imitation, though it make use of such ornament and illustration as suit the actions and manners treated of, yet disclaims not all likelihood of truth, seeing the force of imitation, in order to the persuading of men, lies in probability. Wherefore such imitation as does not altogether shake hands with truth carries along with it certain signs of virtue and vice mixed together in the actions which it doth represent. And of this nature is Homer’s poetry, which totally bids adieu to Stoicism, the principles whereof will not admit any vice to come near where virtue is, nor virtue to have any thing to do where any vice lodgeth, but affirms that he that is not a wise man can do nothing well, and he that is so can do nothing amiss. Thus they determine in the schools. But in human actions and the affairs of common life the judgment of Euripides is verified, that

Virtue and vice ne’er separately exist,
But in the same acts with each other twist.

Next, it is to be observed that poetry, waiving the truth of things, does most labor to beautify its fictions with variety and multiplicity of contrivance. For variety bestows upon fable all that is pathetical, unusual, and surprising, and thereby makes it more taking and graceful; whereas what is void of variety is unsuitable to the nature of fable, and so raiseth no passions at all. Upon which design of variety it is, that the poets never represent the same persons always victorious or prosperous or acting with the same constant tenor of virtue; — yea, even the Gods themselves, when they engage in human actions, are not represented as free from passions and errors; — lest, for the want of some difficulties and cross passages, their poems should be destitute of that briskness which is requisite to move and astonish the minds of men.

8 These things therefore so standing, we should, when we enter a young man into the study of the poets, endeavor to free his mind from that degree of esteem of the good and great personages in them described as may incline him to think them to be mirrors of wisdom and justice, the chief of princes, and the exemplary measures of all virtue and goodness. For he will receive much prejudice, if he shall approve and admire all that comes from such persons as great, if he dislike nothing in them himself, nor will endure to hear others blame them, though for such words and actions as the following passages import: —

Oh! would to all the immortal powers above,
Apollo, Pallas, and almighty Jove!
That not one Trojan might be left alive,
And not a Greek of all the race survive.
Might only we the vast destruction shun,
And only we destroy the accursed town!
Her breast all gore, with lamentable cries,
The bleeding innocent Cassandra dies,
Murdered by Clytemnestra’s faithless hand:
Lie with thy father’s whore, my mother said,
That she th’ old man may loathe; and I obeyed:
Of all the Gods, O father Jove, there’s none
Thus given to mischief but thyself alone.

Our young man is to be taught not to commend such things as these, no, nor to show the nimbleness of his wit or subtlety in maintaining an argument by finding out plausible colors and pretences to varnish over a bad matter. But we should teach him rather to judge that poetry is an imitation of the manners and lives of such men as are not perfectly pure and unblamable, but such as are tinctured with passions, misled by false opinions, and muffled with ignorance; though oftentimes they may, by the help of a good natural temper, change them for better qualities. For the young man’s mind, being thus prepared and disposed, will receive no damage by such passages when he meets with them in poems, but will on the one side be elevated with rapture at those things which are well said or done, and on the other, will not entertain but dislike those which are of a contrary character. But he that admires and is transported with every thing, as having his judgment enslaved by the esteem he hath for the names of heroes, will be unawares wheedled into many evil things, and be guilty of the same folly with those who imitate the crookedness of Plato or the lisping of Aristotle. Neither must he carry himself timorously herein, nor, like a superstitious person in a temple, tremblingly adore all he meets with; but use himself to such confidence as may enable him openly to pronounce, This was ill or incongruously said, and, That was bravely and gallantly spoken. For example, Achilles in Homer, being offended at the spinning out that war by delays, wherein he was desirous by feats of arms to purchase to himself glory, calls the soldiers together when there was an epidemical disease among them. But having himself some smattering skill in physic, and perceiving after the ninth day, which useth to be decretory in such cases, that the disease was no usual one nor proceeding from ordinary causes, when he stands up to speak, he waives applying himself to the soldiers, and addresseth himself as a councillor to the general, thus: —

Why leave we not the fatal Trojan shore,
And measure back the seas we cross’d before?

And he spake well, and with due moderation and decorum. But when the soothsayer Chalcas had told him that he feared the wrath of the most potent among the Grecians, after an oath that while he lived no man should lay violent hands on him, he adds, but not with like wisdom and moderation,

Not e’en the chief by whom our hosts are led,
The king of kings, shall touch that sacred head;

in which speech he declares his low opinion or rather his contempt of his chief commander. And then, being farther provoked, he drew his weapon with a design to kill him, which attempt was neither good nor expedient. And therefore by and by he repented his rashness, —

He said, observant of the blue-eyed maid;
Then in the sheath returned the shining blade;

wherein again he did rightly and worthily, in that, though he could not altogether quell his passion, yet he restrained and reduced it under the command of reason, before it brake forth into such an irreparable act of mischief. Again, even Agamemnon himself talks in that assembly ridiculously, but carries himself more gravely and more like a prince in the matter of Chryseis. For whereas Achilles, when his Briseis was taken away from him,

In sullenness withdraws from all his friends,
And in his tent his time lamenting spends;

Agamemnon himself hands into the ship, delivers to her friends, and so sends from him, the woman concerning whom a little before he declared that he loved her better than his wife; and in that action did nothing unbecoming or savoring of fond affection. Also Phoenix, when his father bitterly cursed him for having to do with one that was his own harlot, says,

Him in my rage I purposed to have killed,
But that my hand some God in kindness held;
And minded me that Greeks would taunting say,
Lo, here’s the man that did his father slay.

It is true that Aristarchus was afraid to permit these verses to stand in the poet, and therefore censured them to be expunged. But they were inserted by Homer very aptly to the occasion of Phoenix’s instructing Achilles what a pernicious thing anger is, and what foul acts men do by its instigation, while they are capable neither of making use of their own reason nor of hearing the counsel of others. To which end he also introduceth Meleager at first highly offended with his citizens, and afterwards pacified; justly therein reprehending disordered passions, and praising it as a good and profitable thing not to yield to them, but to resist and overcome them, and to repent when one hath been overcome by them.

Now in these instances the difference is manifest. But where a like clear judgment cannot be passed, there we are to settle the young man’s mind thus, by way of distinction. If Nausicaa, having cast her eyes upon Ulysses, a stranger, and feeling the same passion for him as Calypso had before, did (as one that was ripe for a husband) out of wantonness talk with her maidens at this foolish rate, —

O Heaven! in my connubial hour decree
This man my spouse, or such a spouse as he!

she is blameworthy for her impudence and incontinence. But if; perceiving the man’s breeding by his discourse, and admiring the prudence of his addresses, she rather wisheth to have such a one for a husband than a merchant or a dancing gallant of her fellow-citizens, she is to be commended. And when Ulysses is represented as rejoicing at Penelope’s jocular conversation with her wooers, and at their presenting her with rich garments and other ornaments,

Because she cunningly the fools cajoled,
And bartered light words for their heavy gold;

if that joy were occasioned by greediness and covetousness, he discovers himself to be a more sordid prostituter of his own wife than Poliager is wont to be represented on the stage to have been, of whom it is said, —

Happy man he, whose wife, like Capricorn,
Stores him with riches from a golden horn!

But if through foresight he thought thereby to get them the more within his power, as being lulled asleep in security for the future by the hopes she gave them at present, this rejoicing, joined with confidence in his wife, was rational. Again, when he is brought in numbering the goods which the Phaeacians had set on shore together with himself and departed; if indeed, being himself left in such a solitude, so ignorant where he was, and having no security there for his own person, he is yet solicitous for his goods, lest

The sly Phaeacians, when they stole to sea,
Had stolen some part of what they brought away;

the covetousness of the man deserved in truth to be pitied, or rather abhorred. But if, as some say in his defence, being doubtful whether or no the place where he was landed were Ithaca, he made use of the just tale of his goods to infer thence the honesty of the Phaeacians, — because it was not likely they would expose him in a strange place and leave him there with his goods by him untouched, so as to get nothing by their dishonesty, — then he makes use of a very fit test for this purpose, and deserves commendation for his wisdom in that action. Some also there are who find fault with that passage of the putting him on shore when he was asleep, if it really so happened, and they tell us that the people of Tuscany have still a traditional story among them concerning Ulysses, that he was naturally sleepy, and therefore a man whom many men could not freely converse with. But if his sleep was but feigned, and he made use of this pretence only of a natural infirmity, by counterfeiting a nap, to hide the strait he was in at that time in his thoughts, betwixt the shame of sending away the Phaeacians without giving them a friendly collation and hospitable gifts, and the fear he had of being discovered to his enemies by the treating such a company of men together, they then approve it.

Now, by showing young men these things, we shall preserve them from being carried away to any corruption in their manners, and dispose them to the election and imitation of those that are good, as being before instructed readily to disapprove those and commend these. But this ought with the most care to be done in the reading of tragedies wherein probable and subtle speeches are made use of in the most foul and wicked actions. For that is not always true which Sophocles saith, that

From naughty acts good words can ne’er proceed.

For even he himself is wont to apply pleasant reasonings and plausible arguments to those manners and actions which are wicked or unbecoming. And in another of his fellow-tragedians, we may see even Phaedra herself represented as justifying her unlawful affection for Hippolytus by accusing Theseus of ill-carriage towards her. And in his Troades, he allows Helen the same liberty of speech against Hecuba, whom she judgeth to be more worthy of punishment than herself for her adultery, because she was the mother of Paris that tempted her thereto. A young man therefore must not be accustomed to think any thing of that nature handsomely or wittily spoken, nor to be pleased with such colorable inventions; but rather more to abhor such words as tend to the defence of wanton acts than the very acts themselves.

9 And lastly, it will be useful likewise to enquire into the cause why each thing is said. For so Cato, when he was a boy, though he was wont to be very observant of all his master’s commands, yet withal used to ask the cause or reason why he so commanded. But poets are not to be obeyed as pedagogues and lawgivers are, except they have reason to back what they say. And that they will not want, when they speak well; and if they speak ill, what they say will appear vain and frivolous. But nowadays most young men very briskly demand the reason of such trivial speeches as these, and enquire in what sense they are spoken:

It bodes ill luck, when vessels you set up,
To place the ladle on the mixing-cup.
Who from his chariot to another’s leaps,
Seldom his seat without a combat keeps.

But to those of greater moment they give credence without examination, as to those that follow:

The boldest men are daunted oftentimes,
When they’re reproached with their parents’ crimes:
When any man is crushed by adverse fate,
His spirit should be low as his estate.

And yet such speeches relate to manners, and disquiet men’s lives by begetting in them evil opinions and unworthy sentiments, except they have learned to return answer to each of them thus: “Wherefore is it necessary that a man who is crushed by adverse fate should have a dejected spirit? Yea, why rather should he not struggle against Fortune, and raise himself above the pressures of his low circumstances? Why, if I myself be a good and wise son of an evil and foolish father, does it not rather become me to bear myself confidently upon the account of my own virtue, than to be dejected and dispirited because of my father’s defects?” For he that can encounter such speeches and oppose them after this manner, not yielding himself up to be overset with the blast of every saying, but approving that speech of Heraclitus, that

Whate’er is said, though void of sense and wit,
The size of a fool’s intellect doth fit,

will reject many such things as falsely and idly spoken.

10 These things therefore may be of use to preserve us from the hurt we might get by the study of poems. Now, as on a vine the fruit oftentimes lies shadowed and hidden under its large leaves and luxuriant branches, so in the poet’s phrases and fictions that encompass them there are also many profitable and useful things concealed from the view of young men. This, however, ought not to be suffered; nor should we be led away from things themselves thus, but rather adhere to such of them as tend to the promoting of virtue and the well forming of our manners. It will not be altogether useless therefore, to treat briefly in the next place of passages of that nature. Wherein I intend to touch only at some particulars, leaving all longer discourses, and the trimming up and furnishing them with a multitude of instances, to those who write more for show and ostentation.

First, therefore, let our young man be taught to understand good and bad manners and persons, and from thence apply his mind to the words and deeds which the poet decently assigns to either of them. For example, Achilles, though in some wrath, speaks to Agamemnon thus decently:

Nor, when we take a Trojan town, can I
With thee in spoils and splendid prizes vie;

whereas Thersites to the same person speaks reproachfully in this manner: —

‘Tis thine whate’er the warrior’s breast inflames,
The golden spoil, and thine the lovely dames.
With all the wealth our wars and blood bestow,
Thy tents are crowded and thy chests o’erflow.

Again, Achilles thus: —

Whene’er, by Jove’s decree, our conquering powers
Shall humble to the dust Troy’s lofty towers;

but Thersites thus: —

Whom I or some Greek else as captive bring.

Again, Diomedes, when Agamemnon taking a view of the army spoke reproachfully to him,

To his hard words forbore to make reply,
For the respect he bare to majesty;

whereas Stenelus, a man of small note, replies on him thus: —

Sir, when you know the truth, what need to lie?
For with our fathers we for valor vie.

Now the observation of such difference will teach the young man the decency of a modest and moderate temper, and the unbecoming nauseousness of the contrary vices of boasting and cracking of a man’s own worth. And it is worth while also to take notice of the demeanor of Agamemnon in the same passage. For he passeth by Sthenelus unspoken to; but perceiving Ulysses to be offended, he neglects not him, but applies himself to answer him: —

Struck with his generous wrath, the king replies.

For to have apologized to every one had been too servile and misbecoming the dignity of his person; whereas equally to have neglected every one had been an act of insolence and imprudence. And very handsome it is that Diomedes, though in the heat of the battle he answers the king only with silence, yet after the battle was over useth more liberty towards him, speaking thus: —

You called me coward, sir, before the Greeks.

It is expedient also to take notice of the different carriage of a wise man and of a soothsayer popularly courting the multitude. For Chalcas very unseasonably makes no scruple to traduce the king before the people, as having been the cause of the pestilence that was befallen them. But Nestor, intending to bring in a discourse concerning the reconciling Achilles to him, that he might not seem to charge Agamemnon before the multitude with the miscarriage his passion had occasioned, only adviseth him thus: —

But thou, O king, to council call the old. . . .
Wise weighty counsels aid a state distress’d,
And such a monarch as can choose the best;

which done, accordingly after supper he sends his ambassadors. Now this speech of Nestor tended to the rectifying of what he had before done amiss; but that of Chalcas, only to accuse and disparage him.

There is likewise consideration to be had of the different manners of nations, such as these. The Trojans enter into battle with loud outcries and great fierceness; but in the army of the Greeks,

Sedate and silent move the numerous bands;
No sound, no whisper, but the chief’s commands;
Those only heard, with awe the rest obey.

For when soldiers are about to engage an enemy, the awe they stand in of their officers is an argument both of courage and obedience. For which purpose Plato teacheth us that we ought to inure ourselves to fear blame and disgrace more than labor and danger. And Cato was wont to say that he liked men that were apt to blush better than those that looked pale.

Moreover, there is a particular character to be noted of the men who undertake for any action. For Dolon thus promiseth: —

I’ll pass through all their host in a disguise
To their flag-ship, where she at anchor lies.

But Diomedes promiseth nothing, but only tells them he shall fear the less if they send a companion with him; whereby is intimated, that discreet foresight is Grecian and civil, but rash confidence is barbarous and evil; and the former is therefore to be imitated, and the latter to be avoided.

It is a matter too of no unprofitable consideration, how the minds of the Trojans and of Hector too were affected when he and Ajax were about to engage in a single combat. For Aeschylus, when, upon one of the fighters at fisticuffs in the Isthmian games receiving a blow on the face, there was made a great outcry among the people, said: “What a thing is practice! See how the lookers-on only cry out, but the man that received the stroke is silent.” But when the poet tells us, that the Greeks rejoiced when they saw Ajax in his glistering armor, but

The Trojans’ knees for very fear did quake,
And even Hector’s heart began to ache;

who is there that wonders not at this difference, — when the heart of him that was to run the risk of the combat only beats inwardly, as if he were to undertake a mere wrestling or running match, but the very bodies of the spectators tremble and shake, out of the kindness and fear which they had for their king?

In the same poet also we may observe the difference betwixt the humor of a coward and a valiant man. For Thersites

Against Achilles a great malice had,
And wise Ulysses he did hate as bad;

but Ajax is always represented as friendly to Achilles; and particularly he speaks thus to Hector concerning him: —

Hector! approach my arm, and singly know
What strength thou hast, and what the Grecian foe.
Achilles shuns the fight; yet some there are
Not void of soul, and not unskill’d in war:

wherein he insinuates the high commendation of that valiant man. And in what follows, he speaks like handsome things of his fellow-soldiers in general, thus: —

Whole troops of heroes Greece has yet to boast,
And sends thee one, a sample of her host;

wherein he doth not boast himself to be the only or the best champion, but one of those, among many others, who were fit to undertake that combat.

What hath been said is sufficient upon the point of dissimilitudes; except we think fit to add this, that many of the Trojans came into the enemy’s power alive, but none of the Grecians; and that many of the Trojans supplicated to their enemies, — as (for instance) Adrastus, the sons of Antimachus, Lycaon, — and even Hector himself entreats Achilles for a sepulture; but not one of these doth so, as judging it barbarous to supplicate to a foe in the field, and more Greek-like either to conquer or die.

11 But as, in the same plant, the bee feeds on the flower, the goat on the bud, the hog on the root, and other living creatures on the seed and the fruit; so in reading of poems, one man singleth out the historical part, another dwells upon the elegancy and fit disposal of words, as Aristophanes says of Euripides, —

His gallant language runs so smooth and round,
That I am ravisht with th’ harmonious sound;

but others, to whom this part of my discourse is directed, mind only such things as are useful to the bettering of manners. And such we are to put in mind that it is an absurd thing, that those who delight in fables should not let any thing slip them of the vain and extravagant stories they find in poets, and that those who affect language should pass by nothing that is elegantly and floridly expressed; and that only the lovers of honor and virtue, who apply themselves to the study of poems not for delight but for instruction’s sake, should slightly and negligently observe what is spoken in them relating to valor, temperance, or justice. Of this nature is the following: —

And stand we deedless, O eternal shame!
Till Hector’s arm involve the ships in flame?
Haste, let us join, and combat side by side.

For to see a man of the greatest wisdom in danger of being totally cut off with all those that take part with him, and yet affected less with fear of death than of shame and dishonor, must needs excite in a young man a passionate affection for virtue. And this,

Joyed was the Goddess, for she much did prize
A man that was alike both just and wise,

teacheth us to infer that the Deity delights not in a rich or a proper or a strong man, but in one that is furnished with wisdom and justice. Again, when the same Goddess (Minerva) saith that the reason why she did not desert or neglect Ulysses was that he was

Gentle, of ready wit, of prudent mind,

she therein tells us that, of all things pertaining to us, nothing is dear to the Gods and divine but our virtue, seeing like naturally delights in like.

And seeing, moreover, that it both seemeth and really is a great thing to be able to moderate a man’s anger, but a greater by far to guard a man’s self beforehand by prudence, that he fall not into it nor be surprised by it, therefore also such passages as tend that way are not slightly to be represented to the readers; for example, that Achilles himself — who was a man of no great forbearance, nor inclined to such meekness — yet warns Priam to be calm and not to provoke him, thus,

Move me no more (Achilles thus replies,
While kindling anger sparkled in his eyes),
Nor seek by tears my steady soul to bend:
To yield thy Hector I myself intend:
Cease; lest, neglectful of high Jove’s command,
I show thee, king, thou tread’st on hostile land;

and that he himself first washeth and decently covereth the body of Hector and then puts it into a chariot, to prevent his father’s seeing it so unworthily mangled as it was, —

Lest the unhappy sire,
Provoked to passion, once more rouse to ire
The stern Pelides; and nor sacred age,
Nor Jove’s command, should check the rising rage.

For it is a piece of admirable prudence for a man so prone to anger, as being by nature hasty and furious, to understand himself so well as to set a guard upon his own inclinations, and by avoiding provocations to keep his passion at due distance by the use of reason, lest he should be unawares surprised by it. And after the same manner must the man that is apt to be drunken forearm himself against that vice; and he that is given to wantonness, against lust, as Agesilaus refused to receive a kiss from a beautiful person addressing to him, and Cyrus would not so much as endure to see Panthea. Whereas, on the contrary, those that are not virtuously bred are wont to gather fuel to inflame their passions, and voluntarily to abandon themselves to those temptations to which of themselves they are endangered. But Ulysses does not only restrain his own anger, but (perceiving by the discourse of his son Telemachus, that through indignation conceived against such evil men he was greatly provoked) he blunts his passion too beforehand, and composeth him to calmness and patience, thus: —

There, if base scorn insult my reverend age,
Bear it, my son! repress thy rising rage.
If outraged, cease that outrage to repel;
Bear it, my son! howe’er thy heart rebel.

For as men are not wont to put bridles on their horses when they are running in full speed, but bring them bridled beforehand to the race; so do they use to preoccupy and predispose the minds of those persons with rational considerations to enable them to encounter passion, whom they perceive to be too mettlesome and unmanageable upon the sight of provoking objects.

Furthermore, the young man is not altogether to neglect names themselves when he meets with them; though he is not obliged to give much heed to such idle descants as those of Cleanthes, who, while he professeth himself an interpreter, plays the trifler, as in these passages of Homer: Ζεῦ πάτεϱ Ἴδηθεν μεδέων, and Ζεῦ να Δωδωναῖε.  For he will needs read the last two of these words joined into one, and make them ναδωδωναῖε; for that the air evaporated from the earth by exhalation (νάδοσις) is so called. Yea, and Chrysippus too, though he does not so trifle, yet is very jejune, while he hunts after improbable etymologies. As when he will need force the words εϱύοπα Κϱονίδην to import Jupiter’s excellent faculty in speaking and powerfulness to persuade thereby.

But such things as these are fitter to be left to the examination of grammarians; and we are rather to insist upon such passages as are both profitable and persuasive. Such, for instance, as these: —

My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to the embattled plains!
How skill’d he was in each obliging art;
The mildest manners, and the gentlest heart.

For while the author tells us that fortitude may be taught, and that an obliging and graceful way of conversing with others is to be gotten by art and the use of reason, he exhorts us not to neglect the improvement of ourselves, but by observing our teachers’ instructions to learn a becoming carriage, as knowing that clownishness and cowardice argue ill-breeding and ignorance. And very suitable to what hath been said is that which is said of Jupiter and Neptune: —

Gods of one source, of one ethereal race,
Alike divine, and heaven their native place;
But Jove the greater; first born of the skies,
And more than men or Gods supremely wise.

For the poet therein pronounceth wisdom to be the most divine and royal quality of all; as placing therein the greatest excellency of Jupiter himself, and judging all virtues else to be necessarily consequent thereunto. We are also to accustom a young man attentively to hear such things as these: —

Urge him with truth to frame his fair replies:
And sure he will, for wisdom never lies:
The praise of wisdom, in thy youth obtain’d,
An act so rash, Antilochus, has stain’d:
Say, is it just, my friend, that Hector’s ear
From such a warrior such a speech should hear?
I deemed thee once the wisest of thy kind,
But ill this insult suits a prudent mind.

These speeches teach us that it is beneath wise men to lie or to deal otherwise than fairly, even in games, or to blame other men without just cause. And when the poet attributes Pindarus’s violation of the truce to his folly, he withal declares his judgment that a wise man will not be guilty of an unjust action. The like may we also infer concerning continence, taking our ground for it from these passages: —

For him Antaea burn’d with lawless flame,
And strove to tempt him from the paths of fame:
In vain she tempted the relentless youth,
Endued with wisdom, sacred fear, and truth:
At first, with worthy shame and decent pride,
The royal dame his lawless suit denied!
For virtue’s image yet possessed her mind:

in which speeches the poet assigns wisdom to be the cause of continence. And when in exhortations made to encourage soldiers to fight, he speaks in this manner: —

What mean you, Lycians? Stand! O stand, for shame!
Yet each reflect who prizes fame or breath,
On endless infamy, on instant death;
For, lo! the fated time, the appointed shore;
Hark! the gates burst, the brazen barriers roar!

he seems to intimate that continent men are valiant men; because they fear the shame of base actions, and can trample on pleasures and stand their ground in the greatest hazards. Whence Timotheus, in the play called Persae, takes occasion handsomely to exhort the Grecians thus: —

Brave soldiers of just shame in awe should stand;
For the blushing face oft helps the fighting hand.

And Aeschylus also makes it a point of wisdom not to be blown up with pride when a man is honored, nor to be moved or elevated with the acclamations of a multitude, writing thus of Amphiaraus: —

His shield no emblem bears; his generous soul
Wishes to be, not to appear, the best;
While the deep furrows of his noble mind
Harvests of wise and prudent counsel bear.

For it is the part of a wise man to value himself upon the consciousness of his own true worth and excellency.

Whereas, therefore, all inward perfections are reducible to wisdom, it appears that all sorts of virtue and learning are included in it$.

12 Again, boys may be instructed, by reading the poets as they ought, to draw something that is useful and profitable even from those passages that are most suspected as wicked and absurd; as the bee is taught by Nature to gather the sweetest and most pleasant honey from the harshest flowers and sharpest thorns. It does indeed at the first blush cast a shrewd suspicion on Agamemnon of taking a bribe, when Homer tells us that he discharged that rich man from the wars who presented him with his fleet mare Aethe: —

Whom rich Echepolus, more rich than brave,
To ‘scape the wars, to Agamemnon gave
(Aethe her name), at home to end his days;
Base wealth preferring to eternal praise.

Yet, as saith Aristotle, it was well done of him to prefer a good beast before such a man. For, the truth is, a dog or ass is of more value than a timorous and cowardly man that wallows in wealth and luxury. Again, Thetis seems to do indecently, when she exhorts her son to follow his pleasures and minds him of companying with women. But even here, on the other side, the continency of Achilles is worthy to be considered; who, though he dearly loved Briseis — newly returned to him too, — yet, when he knew his life to be near its end, does not hasten to the fruition of pleasures, nor, when he mourns for his friend Patroclus, does he (as most men are wont) shut himself up from all business and neglect his duty, but only bars himself from recreations for his sorrow’s sake, while yet he gives himself up to action and military employments. And Archilochus is not praiseworthy either, who, in the midst of his mourning for his sister’s husband drowned in the sea, contrives to dispel his grief by drinking and merriment. And yet he gives this plausible reason to justify that practice of his,

To drink and dance, rather than mourn, I choose;
Nor wrong I him, whom mourning can’t reduce.

For, if he judged himself to do nothing amiss when he followed sports and banquets, sure, we shall not do worse, if in whatever circumstances we follow the study of philosophy, or manage public affairs, or go to the market or to the Academy, or follow our husbandry. Wherefore those corrections also are not to be rejected which Cleanthes and Antisthenes have made use of. For Antisthenes, seeing the Athenians all in a tumult in the theatre, and justly, upon the pronunciation of this verse, —

Except what men think base, there’s nothing ill,

presently subjoined this corrective,

What’s base is base, — believe men what they will.

And Cleanthes, hearing this passage concerning wealth:

Great is th’ advantage that great wealth attends,
For oft with it we purchase health and friends;

presently altered it thus:

Great disadvantage oft attends on wealth;
We purchase whores with’t and destroy our health.

And Zeno corrected that of Sophocles,

The man that in a tyrant’s palace dwells
His liberty for’s entertainment sells,

after this manner:

No: if he came in free, he cannot lose
His liberty, though in a tyrant’s house;

meaning by a free man one that is undaunted and magnanimous, and one of a spirit too great to stoop beneath itself. And why may not we also, by some such acclamations as those, call off young men to the better side, by using some things spoken by poets after the same manner? For example, it is said,

‘Tis all that in this life one can require,
To hit the mark he aims at in desire.

To which we may reply thus:

‘Tis false; except one level his desire
At what’s expedient, and no more require.

For it is an unhappy thing and not to be wished, for a man to obtain and be master of what he desires if it be inexpedient. Again this saying,

Thou, Agamemnon, must thyself prepare
Of joy and grief by turns to take thy share:
Thy father, Atreus, sure, ne’er thee begat,
To be an unchanged favorite of Fate:

we may thus invert:

Thy father, Atreus, never thee begat,
To be an unchanged favorite of Fate:
Therefore, if moderate thy fortunes are,
Thou shouldst rejoice always, and grief forbear.

Again it is said,

Alas! this ill comes from the powers divine,
That oft we see what’s good, yet it decline.

Yea, rather, say we, it is a brutish and irrational and wretched fault of ours, that when we understand better things, we are carried away to the pursuit of those which are worse, through our intemperance and effeminacy. Again, one says,

‘Tis not the teacher’s speech but practice moves.

Yea, rather, say we, both the speech and practice, — or the practice by the means of speech, — as the horse is managed with the bridle, and the ship with the helm. For virtue hath no instrument so suitable and agreeable to human nature to work on men withal, as that of rational discourse. Again, we meet with this character of some person:

A. Is he more prone to male or female loves?
B. He’s flexible both ways, where beauty moves.

But it had been better said thus:

He’s flexible to both, where virtue moves.

For it is no commendation of a man’s dexterity to be tossed up and down as pleasure and beauty move him, but an argument rather of a weak and unstable disposition. Once more, this speech,

Religion damps the courage of our minds,
And ev’n wise men to cowardice inclines,

is by no means to be allowed; but rather the contrary,

Religion truly fortifies men’s minds,
And a wise man to valiant acts inclines,

and gives not occasion of fear to any but weak and foolish persons and such as are ungrateful to the Deity, who are apt to look on that divine power and principle which is the cause of all good with suspicion and jealousy, as being hurtful unto them. And so much for that which I call correction of poets’ sayings.

13 There is yet another way of improving poems, taught us well by Chrysippus; which is, by accommodation of any saying, to transfer that which is useful and serviceable in it to divers things of the same kind. For whereas Hesiod saith,

If but a cow be lost, the common fame
Upon the next ill neighbor lays the blame;

the same may be applied to a man’s dog or ass or any other beast of his which is liable to the like mischance. Again, Euripides saith,

How can that man be called a slave, who slights
Ev’n death itself, which servile spirits frights?

the like whereof may be said of hard labor or painful sickness. For as physicians, finding by experience the force of any medicine in the cure of some one disease, make use of it by accommodation, proportionably to every other disease of affinity thereto, so are we to deal with such speeches as are of a common import and apt to communicate their value to other things; we must not confine them to that one thing only to which they were at first adapted, but transfer them to all other of like nature, and accustom young men by many parallel instances to see the communicableness of them, and exercise the promptness of their wits in such applications. So that when Menander says,

Happy is he who wealth and wisdom hath,

they may be able to judge that the same is fitly applicable to glory and authority and eloquence also. And the reproof which Ulysses gives Achilles, when he found him sitting in Scyrus in the apartment of the young ladies,

Thou, who from noblest Greeks deriv’st thy race,
Dost thou with spinning wool thy birth disgrace?

may be as well given to the prodigal, to him that undertakes any dishonest way of living, yea, to the slothful and unlearned person, thus:

Thou, who from noblest Greeks deriv’st thy race,
Dost thou with fuddling thy great birth disgrace?

or dost thou spend thy time in dicing, or quail-striking,  or deal in adulterate wares or griping usury, not minding any thing that is great and worthy thy noble extraction? So when they read,

For Wealth, the God most serve, I little care,
Since the worst men his favors often wear,

they may be able to infer, therefore, as little regard is to be had to glory and bodily beauty and princely robes and priestly garlands, all which also we see to be the enjoyments of very bad men. Again, when they read this passage,

A coward father propagates his vice,
And gets a son heir to his cowardice,

they may in truth apply the same to intemperance, to superstition, to envy, and all other diseases of men’s minds. Again, whereas it is handsomely said of Homer,

Unhappy Paris, fairest to behold!

and

Hector, of noble form,

for herein he shows that a man who hath no greater excellency than that of beauty to commend him deserves to have it mentioned with contempt and ignominy, — such expressions we should make use of in like cases to repress the insolence of such as bear themselves high upon the account of such things as are of no real value, and to teach young men to look upon such compellations as “O thou richest of men,” and “O thou that excellest in feasting, in multitudes of attendants, in herds of cattle, yea, and in eloquent speaking itself,” to be (as they are indeed) expressions that import reproach and infamy. For, in truth, a man that designs to excel ought to endeavor it in those things that are in themselves most excellent, and to become chief in the chiefest, and great in the greatest things. Whereas glory that ariseth from things in themselves small and inconsiderable is inglorious and contemptible. To mind us whereof we shall never be at a loss for instances, if, in reading Homer especially, we observe how he applieth the expressions that import praise or disgrace; wherein we have clear proof that he makes small account of the good things either of the body or Fortune. And first of all, in meetings and salutations, men do not call others fair or rich or strong, but use such terms of commendation as these:

Son of Laertes, from great Jove deriving
Thy pedigree, and skilled in wise contriving;
Hector, thou son of Priam, whose advice
With wisest Jove’s men count of equal price;
Achilles, son of Peleus, whom all story
Shall mention as the Grecians’ greatest glory;
Divine Patroclus, for thy worth thou art,
Of all the friends I have, lodged next my heart.

And moreover, when they speak disgracefully of any person, they touch not at bodily defects, but direct all their reproaches to vicious actions; as for instance:

A dogged-looking, drunken beast thou art,
And in thy bosom hast a deer’s faint heart;
Ajax, at brawling valiant still,
Whose tongue is used to speaking ill;
A tongue so loose hung, and so vain withal,
Idomeneus, becomes thee not at all;
Ajax, thy tongue doth oft offend;
For of thy boasting there’s no end.

Lastly, when Ulysses reproacheth Thersites, he objecteth not to him his lameness nor his baldness nor his hunched back, but the vicious quality of indiscreet babbling. On the other side, when Juno means to express a dalliance or motherly fondness to her son Vulcan, she courts him with an epithet taken from his halting, thus,

Rouse thee, my limping son!

In this instance, Homer does (as it were) deride those who are ashamed of their lameness or blindness, as not thinking any thing a disgrace that is not in itself disgraceful, nor any person liable to a reproach for that which is not imputable to himself but to Fortune. These two great advantages may be made by those who frequently study poets; — the learning moderation, to keep them from unseasonable and foolish reproaching others with their misfortunes, when they themselves enjoy a constant current of prosperity; and magnanimity, that under variety of accidents they be not dejected nor disturbed, but meekly bear the being scoffed at, reproached, and drolled upon. Especially, let them have that saying of Philemon ready at hand in such cases:

That spirit’s well in tune, whose sweet repose
No railer’s tongue can ever discompose.

And yet, if one that so rails do himself deserve reprehension, thou mayst take occasion to retort upon him his own vices and inordinate passions; as when Adrastus in the tragedy is assaulted thus by Alcmaeon,

Thy sister’s one that did her husband kill,

he returns him this answer,

But thou thyself thy mother’s blood did spill.

For as they who scourge a man’s garments do not touch the body, so those that turn other men’s evil fortunes or mean births to matter of reproach do only with vanity and folly enough lash their external circumstances, but touch not their internal part, the soul, nor those things which truly need correction and reproof.

14 Moreover, as we have above taught you to abate and lessen the credit of evil and hurtful poems by setting in opposition to them the famous speeches and sentences of such worthy men as have managed public affairs, so will it be useful to us, where we find any things in them of civil and profitable import, to improve and strengthen them by testimonies and proofs taken from philosophers, withal giving these the credit of being the first inventors of them. For this is both just and profitable to be done, seeing by this means such sayings receive an additional strength and esteem, when it appears that what is spoken on the stage or sung to the harp or occurs in a scholar’s lesson is agreeable to the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, and that the sentences of Chilo and Bias tend to the same issue with those that are found in the authors which children read. Therefore must we industriously show them that these poetical sentences,

Not these, O daughter, are thy proper cares,
Thee milder arts befit, and softer wars;
Sweet smiles are thine, and kind endearing charms;
To Mars and Pallas leave the deeds of arms;
Jove’s angry with thee, when thy unmanaged rage
With those that overmatch thee doth engage;

differ not in substance but bear plainly the same sense with that philosophical sentence, Know thyself. And these,

Fools, who by wrong seek to augment their store,
And know not how much half than all is more;
Of counsel giv’n to mischievous intents,
The man that gives it most of all repents;

are of near kin to what we find in the determination of Plato, in his books entitled Gorgias and Concerning the Commonwealth, to wit, that it is worse to do than to suffer injury, and that a man more endamageth himself when he hurts another, than he would be damnified if he were the sufferer. And that of Aeschylus,

Cheer up, friend; sorrows, when they highest climb,
What they exceed in measure want in time,

we must inform them, is but the same famous sentence which is so much admired in Epicurus, that great griefs are but short, and those that are of long continuance are but small. The former clause whereof is that which Aeschylus here saith expressly, and the latter but the consequent of that. For if a great and intense sorrow do not last, then that which doth last is not great nor hard to be borne. And those words of Thespis,

Seest not how Jove, — because he cannot lie
Nor vaunt nor laugh at impious drollery,
And pleasure’s charms are things to him unknown, —
Among the Gods wears the imperial crown?

wherein differ they from what Plato says, that the divine nature is seated far from both joy and grief? And that saying of Bacchylides,

Virtue alone doth lasting honor gain,
But men of wretched souls oft wealth attain;

and those of Euripides much of the same import,

Hence temperance in my esteem excels,
Because it constantly with good men dwells;
How much soe’er to honor thou aspire,
And strive by riches virtue to acquire,
Still shall thy lot to good men wretched seem;

do they not evidently confirm to us what the philosophers say of riches and other external good things, that without virtue they are fruitless and unprofitable enjoyments?

Now thus to accommodate and reconcile poetry to the doctrines of philosophy strips it of its fabulous and personated parts, and makes those things which it delivers usefully to acquire also the reputation of gravity; and over and above, it inclines the soul of a young man to receive the impressions of philosophical precepts. For he will hereby be enabled to come to them not altogether destitute of some sort of relish of them, not as to things that he has heard nothing of before, nor with an head confusedly full of the false notions which he hath sucked in from the daily tattle of his mother and nurse, — yea, sometimes too of his father and pedant, — who have been wont to speak of rich men as the happy men and mention them always with honor, and to express themselves concerning death and pain with horror, and to look on virtue without riches and glory as a thing of nought and not to be desired. Whence it comes to pass, that when such youths first do hear things of a quite contrary nature from philosophers, they are surprised with a kind of amazement, trouble, and stupid astonishment, which makes them afraid to entertain or endure them, except they be dealt with as those who come out of very great darkness into the light of the bright sun, that is, be first accustomed for a while to behold those doctrines in fabulous authors, as in a kind of false light, which hath but a moderate brightness and is easy to be looked on and borne without disturbance to the weak sight. For having before heard or read from poets such things as these are, —

Mourn at one’s birth, as th’ inlet t’ all that grieves;
But joy at death, as that which man relieves;
Of worldly things a mortal needs but twain;
The spring supplies his drink, the earth his grain:
O tyranny, to barbarous nations dear!
This in all human happiness is chief,
To know as little as we can of grief;

they are the less disturbed and offended when they hear from philosophers that no man ought to be much concerned about death; that the riches of nature are defined and limited; that the happiness of man’s life doth not consist in the abundance of wealth or vastness of employments or height of authority and power, but in freedom from sorrow, in moderation of passions, and in such a temper of mind as measures all things by the use of Nature.

Wherefore, upon all these accounts, as well as for all the reasons before mentioned, youth stands in need of good government to manage it in the reading of poetry, that being free from all prejudicate opinions, and rather instructed beforehand in conformity thereunto, it may with more calmness, friendliness, and familiarity pass from thence to the study of philosophy.

On listening to lectures

1 1 The discourse which I gave on the subject of listening to lecture I have written out and sent to you, my dear Nicander, so that you may know how rightly to listen to the voice of persuasion, now that you are no longer subject to authority, having assumed the garb of a man. Now absence of control, which some of the young men, for want of education, think to be freedom, establishes the sway of a set of masters, harsher than the teachers and attendants of childhood, in the form of the desires, which are now, as it were, unchained. And just as Herodotus says that women put off their modesty along with their undergarments, so some of our young men, as soon as they lay aside the garb of childhood, lay aside also their sense of modesty and fear, and, undoing the habit that invests them, straightway become full of unruliness. But you have often heard that to follow God and to obey reason are the same thing, and so I ask you to believe that in persons of good sense the passing from childhood to manhood is not a casting off of control, but a recasting of the controlling agent, since instead of some hired person or slave purchased with money they now take as the divine guide of their life reason, whose followers alone may deservedly be considered free. For they alone, having learned to wish for what they ought, live as they wish; but in untrained and irrational impulses and actions there is something ignoble, and changing one’s mind many times involves but little freedom of will.

2 1 We may find a comparison in the case of newly naturalized citizens; those among them who were alien born and perfect strangers find fault with many of the things that are done, and are discontented; whereas those who come from the class of resident aliens, having been brought up under our laws and grown to be well acquainted with them, have no difficulty in accepting what devolves upon them and are content. And so you, who have been brought up for a long time in contact with philosophy, and have from the beginning been accustomed to philosophic reasoning as an ingredient in every portion of early instruction and information, ought to feel like an old friend and familiar when you come to philosophy, which alone can array young men in the manly and truly perfect adornment that comes from reason.

I think you may not find unwelcome some preliminary remarks about the sense of hearing, 38 which Theophrastus asserts is the most emotional of all the senses. For nothing which can be seen or tasted or touched brings on such distractions, confusions, and excitements, as take possession of the soul when certain crashing, clashing, and roaring noises assail the hearing. Yet this sense is more rational than emotional. For while many places and parts of the body make way for vice to enter through them and fasten itself upon the soul, virtue’s only hold upon the young is afforded by the ears, if they be uncontaminated and kept from the outset unspoiled by flattery and untouched by vile words. For this reason Xenocrates advised putting ear-protectors on children rather than on athletes, on the ground that the latter have only their ears disfigured by the blows they receive, while the former have their characters disfigured by the words they hear; not that he would thus court heedlessness or deafness, but he advises vigilance against vile words, until such time as other words, of good sort, fostered in the character by philosophy, should, like watchmen, have taken under their charge the post chiefly exposed to influence and persuasion. And Bias of old, on receiving orders to send to Amasis the portion of the sacrificial animal which was at the same time the best and the worst, cut out the tongue and sent it to him, on the ground that speech contains both injuries and benefits in the largest measure. Most people in bestowing an affectionate kiss on little children not only take hold of children by the ears but bid the children to do the same by them, thus insinuating in a playful way that they must love most those who confer benefit through the ears. For surely the fact is plain, that the young man who is debarred from hearing all instruction and gets no taste of speech not only remains wholly unfruitful and makes no growth towards virtue, but may also be perverted towards vice, and the product of his mind, like that of a fallow and untilled piece of ground, will be a plentiful crop of wild oats. For if the impulses towards pleasure and the feelings of suspicion towards hard work d(which are not of external origin nor imported products of the spoken word, but indigenous sources, as it were, of pestilent emotions and disorders without number) be allowed to continue unconstrained along their natural channels, and if they be not either removed or diverted another way through the agency of goodly discourse, thus putting the natural endowments in a fit condition, there is not one of the wild beasts but would be found more civilized than man.

3 1 Therefore, since listening to lectures is attended by great benefit, but by no less danger, to the young, I think it is a good thing to discuss the matter continually both with oneself and with another person. The reason for so doing is because we observe that a poor use is made of this by the great majority of persons, who practise speaking before they have acquired the habit of listening. They think that there must be study and practice in discourse, but as for hearing, benefit will come however it be used. It is true that, in the case of persons playing ball, learning to throw and learning to catch take place at the same time; but in the use of discourse its proper reception comes before its delivery, just as conception and pregnancy come before parturition. It is said that when fowls labour and bring forth wind-eggs, these result from some imperfect and infertile residue from conception; and if young men have not the power to listen, for the habit of getting some profit through listening, the speech brought forth by them is windy indeed, and

Void of repute and unheeded beneath the clouds it is scattered.

For although they can incline and turn vessels properly to receive any liquid which is being poured into them, in order that there may actually be a filling and not a spilling, they never learn to apply themselves to a speaker and to accord attention to his lecture so that none of its good points may escape them. But here is the most ridiculous thing in the world: 39 if they chance upon somebody who is giving an account of a dinner or a procession or a dream or a wordy brawl which he has had with another man, they listen in silence, and importune him to continue; yet if anybody draws them to one side and tries to impart something useful, or to advise them of some duty, or to admonish them when in the wrong, or to mollify them when incensed, they have no patience with him; but, eager to get the better of him if they can, they fight against what he says, or else they beat a hasty retreat in search of other foolish talk, filling their ears like worthless and rotten vessels with anything rather than the things they need. As skilful horse-trainers give us horses with a good mouth for the bit, so too skilful educators give us children with a good ear for speech, by teaching them to hear much and speak little. Indeed, Spintharus declared in commendation of Epameinondas that it was not easy to find a man who knew more and spoke less. And it is a common saying that nature has given to each of us two ears and one tongue, because we ought to do less talking than listening.

4 1 In all cases, then, silence is a safe adornment for the young man, and especially so, when in listening to another he does not get excited or bawl out every minute, but even if the remarks be none too agreeable, puts up with them, and waits for the speaker to pause, and, when the pause comes, does not at once interpose his objection, but, as Aeschines puts it, allows an interval to elapse, in case the speaker may desire to add something to what he has said, or to alter or unsay anything. But those who instantly interrupt with contradictions, neither hearing nor being heard, but talking while others talk, behave in an unseemly manner; whereas the man who has the habit of listening with restraint and respect, takes in and masters a useful discourse, and more readily sees through and detects a useless or false one, showing himself thus to be a lover of truth and not a lover of disputation, nor froward and contentious. Wherefore it is sometimes said not unaptly that it is even more necessary to take the wind of self-opinion and conceit out of the young, than to deflate wine-skins, if you wish to fill them with something useful; otherwise, being full of bombast and inflation, they have no room to receive it.

5 1 Now the presence of envy, attended by malice and hostility, is not a good thing for any undertaking, but it stands in the way of all that is honourable; and it is the very worst associate and counsellor for one that would listen to a lecture, inasmuch as it makes what is profitable to be vexatious, unpleasing, and unacceptable, because envious persons are pleased with anything rather than with the good points of a discourse. Now the man that is stung by the wealth, or repute, or beauty possessed by another, is merely envious; for he is depressed by the good fortune of others; but one who feels discontentment at an excellent discourse is vexed by what is for his own good. For just as light is a good thing for those who can see, so is discourse for those who can hear, if they be willing to receive it.

Now while envy in other matters is engendered by certain untrained and evil dispositions of a man, the envy that is directed against a speaker is the offspring of an unseasonable desire for repute and a dishonest ambition, and it does not suffer the person in such a mood even to pay attention to what is being said, but it confuses and distracts his mind which at one moment is engaged in reviewing its own condition to see whether it be inferior to that of the speaker, then anon it turns to dwell on the other persons present to see whether they are showing any pleasure or admiration; it is disconcerted by their approval, and irritated at the audience if they find the speaker acceptable; disregards and dismisses the part of the discourse already delivered because the memory of it is painful, but for what still remains trembles with anxiety lest that part prove better than the part already delivered; eager that the speakers may most quickly have done when they are speaking most excellently; 40 and when the lecture is over, it does not ponder upon any point of the discussion, but proceeds to count as votes the comments and attitudes of those present; if any approve, fleeing and recoiling from these as though frantic; if disapprove or distort the things said, hastening to join their company; and if it be impossible to distort, then it falls to making comparisons with others who could have spoken better and more forcibly to the same purport — until by spoiling and maltreating the lecture it has succeeded in making the whole thing useless and unprofitable to itself.

6 1 Therefore a man must let his desire to hear make truce with his desire for repute, and listen cheerfully and affably as though he were a guest at some dinner or ceremonial banquet, commending the speaker’s ability in those parts wherein he achieves a success, and favourably accepting the goodwill, if nothing else, of the speaker who propounds his opinions and tries to persuade others by the reasons which have persuaded himself. Where he is successful we must reflect that the success is not due to chance or accident, but to care, diligence, and study, and herein we should try to imitate him in a spirit of admiration and emulation; but where there are mistakes, we should direct our intelligence to these, to determine the reasons and origin of the error. For as Xenophon asserts that good householders derive benefit both from their friends and from their enemies, so in the same way do speakers, not only when they succeed, but also when they fail, render a service to hearers who are alert and attentive. For poverty of thought, emptiness of phrase, an offensive bearing, fluttering excitement combined with a vulgar delight at commendation, and the like, are more apparent to us in others when we are listening than in ourselves when we are speakers. Wherefore we ought to transfer our scrutiny from the speaker to ourselves, and examine whether we unconsciously commit such mistakes. For it is the easiest thing in the world to find fault with one’s neighbour, and also a useless and inane proceeding unless it be applied in some way to correcting or avoiding similar faults. And everyone ought to be ready ever to repeat to himself, as he observes the faults of others, the utterance of Plato, “Am I not possibly like them?” For as we see our own eyes brightly reflected in the eyes of those near us, so we must get a picture of our own discourses in the discourses of others, that we may not too rashly disdain others, and may give more careful attention to ourselves in the matter of speaking. To this end the process of comparison is useful, if, when we have come away from the lecture and are by ourselves, we take some topic that seems to have been ineffectually or inadequately treated, and try our hand at the same thing, and address ourselves to supplying a deficiency here, or amending there, to saying the same thing in other words, or attempting to treat the subject in a wholly new way; and this is what Plato actually did for the discourse of Lysias. For to offer objections against a discourse which has been delivered is not difficult, but very easy; but to set up a better against it is a very laborious task. As the Spartan said, on hearing that Philip had razed the city of Olynthus to the ground, “Yes, but even he could not possibly set up such another.” Whenever, therefore, in discoursing thus upon a given subject, we find that we do not much excel those who have already spoken, we abate much of our disdain, and our presumption and self-esteem are very speedily cut short by being put to the test in such comparisons.

7 1 Now admiration, which is the antithesis of disdain, obviously betokens a kindlier and gentler nature, but even this requires certainly no little caution, perhaps even more. 41 For while it is true that disdainful and self-confident persons are less apt to get benefit from the speakers, yet the enthusiastic and ingenuous are more apt to get harm; and they cause no one to question the saying of Heracleitus, that “A fool is wont to be agog at every word that’s said.” In praising a speaker we must be generous, but in believing his words cautious; as touching the style and the delivery of the performers, we should observe with a kindly and simple mind; but as for the utility and the truth of what they say, we must play the keen and heartless critics, that the speakers may feel no hatred, yet their words may do no harm. For we unwittingly receive into our minds a great many false and vicious doctrines by feeling goodwill and confidence towards the speakers. Upon a time the Spartan officials, after approving the proposal made by a man whose life had not been good, appointed another man of good repute in his life and character to present it, thus quite rightly and for the good of the State trying to accustom the people to being influenced more by the behaviour than by the speech of their counsellors. But in a philosophic discussion we must set aside the repute of the speaker, and examine what he says quite apart. For as in war so also in lectures there is plenty of empty show. For example, a speaker’s grey hair, his formality, he serious brow, his self-assertion, and above all the clamour and shouting of the audience as he brings them to their feet, combine to disconcert the young and inexperienced listener, who is, as it were, swept away by the current. The speaker’s style also has a spice of deception when it is pleasing and copious, and is applied to the subject with dignity and artfulness. For as most of the mistakes of persons singing to the flute escape the audience, so an exuberant and impressive style flashed upon the listener blinds him to the matter set forth. It seems to have been Melanthius, who being asked about Diogenes’ tragedy, said he could not get a sight of it, there were so many words in the way; and the discussions and exercises of most popular lecturers not only use words to conceal their thoughts, but they so sweeten their voice by certain harmonious modulations and softenings and rhythmic cadences, as to ravish away and transport their hearers. It is an empty pleasure they give, and an even more empty renown they acquire, so that the remark of Dionysius fits their case exactly. For he, as it appears, at some performance promised to a harp-player of great repute certain large gifts, but afterwards gave him nothing, on the ground that he had already discharged his obligation. “For,” said he, “all the time that you were giving pleasure to us with your singing, you were enjoying the pleasure of your hopes.” And this is just the meed that such lectures have for those who deliver them; for the speakers are admired in as far as they are entertaining, and afterwards, no sooner has the pleasure of listening passed away, than their repute deserts them, and so the time of their hearers and the life of the speakers is simply wasted.

8 1 One ought therefore to strip off the superfluity and inanity from the style, and to seek after the fruit itself, imitating not women that make garlands, but the bees. For those women, culling flower-clusters and sweet-scented leaves, intertwine and plait them, and produce something that is pleasant enough, but short-lived and fruitless; whereas the bees in their flight frequently pass through meadows of violets, roses, and hyacinths, and come to rest upon the exceeding rough and pungent thyme, and on this they settle close,

Making the yellow honey their care,

and when they have got something of use, they fly away home to their own special work. In such wise, then, the sincere and single-minded student ought to regard 42 flowery and dainty language and theatrical and spectacular subject matter as the pasturage of drones who practise the popular lecture; these he should leave alone and use all diligence to sound the deep meaning of the words and the intention of the speaker, drawing from it what is useful and profitable, and remembering that he has not come to a theatre or music-hall, but to a school and classroom with the purpose of amending his life by what is there said. Hence it follows that in making his examination and forming his judgement of the lecture he should begin with himself and his own state of mind, endeavouring to estimate whether any one of his emotions has become less intense, whether any one of his troubles weighs less heavily upon him, whether his confidence and his high purpose have become firmly rooted, whether he has acquired enthusiasm for virtue and goodness. As a matter of course, when he rises to leave the barber’s shop, he stands by the mirror and feels his head, examining the cut of his hair and the difference made by its trimming; so on his way home from a lecture or an academic exercise, it would be a shame not to direct his gaze forthwith upon himself and to note carefully his own spirit, whether it has put from it any of its encumbrances and superfluities, and has become lighter and more cheerful. “For,” as Ariston says, “neither a bath nor a discourse is of any use unless it removes impurity.”

9 1 Let the young man, then, find pleasure when he finds profit from a discourse; but he should not hold that the pleasure derived from the lecture is an end in itself, nor would I have him hum a merry note or show a jovial face as he leaves the philosopher’s school, any more than he should seek to be sprinkled with perfume when he needs a fomentation and a hot poultice; but he should feel grateful if by pungent discourse someone has cleansed his mind teeming with fogginess and dulness, as a beehive is cleared by smoke. For even though it is quite right for a speaker not to be altogether neglectful of pleasantness and persuasion in his style, yet the young man should make least concern of this, at any rate at first. Afterwards no doubt he may have an eye to that; for just as those who drink, dafter they have quenched their thirst, begin then to observe the ornamentation of the drinking-cups and to turn them about, so the young man, when he is well replenished with doctrines and has some respite, may be allowed to inspect the style to see whether it contains anything elegant and exquisite. But he who at the very outset does not stick to the subject matter, but insists that the style shall be pure Attic and severely plain, is like the man who is unwilling to swallow an antidote for a poison unless the cup be of the finest Attic ware, or unwilling to put on an overcoat in winter unless the wool be from Attic sheep, but must needs sit still and inactive, with a delicate thin jacket of Lysias’s language cast over him. Indeed, this sort of unhealthiness has produced much barrenness of mind and of good sense, much foolery and bibble-babble in the schools, since younger men do not keep in view the life, the actions, and the public conduct of a man who follows philosophy, but rate as matters for commendation points of style and phrasing, and a fine delivery, while as for what is being delivered, whether it be useful or useless, whether essential or empty and superfluous, they neither understand nor wish to inquire.

10 1 This leads up to the matter of proposing problems. Now the person who comes to a dinner is bound to eat what is set before him and not to ask for anything else or to be critical; so he who comes to a feast of reason, if it be on a specified subject, must feel bound to listen to the speaker in silence. For those persons who lead the speaker to digress to other topics, and interject questions, and raise new difficulties, are not pleasant or agreeable company at a lecture; they get no benefit from it, and they confuse both the speaker and his speech. However, when the speaker requests his hearers to ask questions or to propose problems, one should always manifestly propose some problem which is useful and essential. Now Odysseus among the suitors is derided for

43 Asking for morsels of food and not for swords or for cauldrons,

for they regard it just as much a sign of magnanimity to ask for something great as to give it. But there is more reason for ridiculing a hearer who diverts the speaker to petty and frivolous problems, such as some of the young men are in the habit of proposing when they are only fooling and withal showing off their skill in logic and mathematics; take, for example, the question about the division of indeterminate propositions or “What is movement as determined by the bounding side or by the diagonal?” To such persons we may retort with the remark of Philotimus to the man who was dying of consumption. When he had addressed the physician, asking him for something to cure a sore finger, Philotimus, perceiving his condition from his colour and respiration, said, “My dear sir, your concern is not about a sore finger.” And so for you, young man, it is not the time to be inquiring about such questions, but how you may be rid of self-opinion and pretension, love affairs and nonsense, and settle down to a modest and wholesome mode of living.

11 It is quite necessary that in formulating questions the questioner should accommodate himself to the proficiency or natural capacity of the speaker, to those matters “in which he is at his best”; not forcibly to divert one who is more concerned with the ethical side of philosophy, by plying him with questions in natural science or mathematics, or to drag the man who poses as an authority on natural science into passing judgement on the hypothetical propositions of logic or solutions of quibbles like the Liar Problem. For just as one who should go about to split wood with a key, or to open his door with an axe, would not be thought to offer an indignity to those instruments but to deprive himself of the proper use and function of each, so those persons who ask of a speaker something for which he is not apt by nature or by practice, and do not gather and take what he has to offer, not only suffer harm thereby, but also incur the name and blame of malice and hostility as well.

12 1 A man must also guard against proposing many problems or proposing them often himself. For this is, in a way, the mark of a man who is taking occasion to show himself off. But to listen good-naturedly when another advances them, marks the considerate gentleman and the scholar. The only exception is in case some matter of his own is troublesome and urgent, some emotion requiring repression, or a disorder requiring relief. For perhaps it may not even be “better to conceal ignorance,” as Heracleitus puts it, but to set it forth in public, and cure it. And if some fit of temper, or attack of superstition, or an intense disagreement with members of our own household, or a mad desire born of love,

Stirring the heart-strings never stirred before,

brings confusion to our thoughts, we must not run away to other kinds of discourse to escape being taken to task, but we must listen to the discussion of these very matters both at the formal exercises, and after the exercises, when we approach the men privately and question them further. But save us from the contrary course, followed by the majority, who are delighted with the philosophers and admire them when they are discoursing about other people; but if the philosopher leaves the other people alone, and addresses himself frankly and freely to them, and sets them in mind of matters that much concern them, they are annoyed and think him officious. For, as a rule, they imagine that they ought to listen to the philosophers in the schools as they listen to the tragedians in the theatres; but in matters out of school they think the philosophers are no better men than themselves. Now there is some reason that they should feel thus towards the popular lecturers; for when these get up from the speaker’s chair, and put away their books and lecture notes, it is apparent that in the real pursuits of life they are small men and rank lower than the average; but towards philosophers of the real sort it is not right that they have such a feeling, not realizing that seriousness and jest in them, nod, or smile, or frown, 44 and, above all, what they say to each person apart, may yield a return which is profitable for those who have acquired the habit of patient attention.

13 1 The proprieties in regard to bestowing commendation also require some caution and moderation, for the reason that neither deficiency nor excess therein befits the free man. An offensive and tiresome listener is the man who is not to be touched or moved by anything that is said, full of festering presumption and ingrained self-assertion, as though convinced that he could say something better than what is being said, who neither moves his brow nor utters a single word to bear witness that he is glad to listen, but by means of silence and an affected gravity and pose, seeks to gain a reputation for poise and profundity; as though commendation were money, he feels that he is robbing himself of every bit that he bestows on another. For there are many who take that saying of Pythagoras wrongly and out of harmony with his meaning. He declared that he had gained this advantage from philosophy, to wonder at nothing; but these men think that their advantage gained is to commend nothing, to show respect for nothing, holding that immunity from wonder lies in disdain, and seeking to attain to dignity by means of contempt. Now it is true that philosophic reasoning, through knowledge and acquaintance with the cause in every case, does away with the wonder and amazement that spring from blindness and ignorance, but at the same time it does not destroy our serenity, moderation, or human interest. For to persons who are truly and consistently good it is the highest credit to bestow credit upon someone deserving of credit, and the most conspicuous honour to honour such a man, since this argues a superabundant and generous store of repute; whereas those who are niggardly in their commendation of others give the impression of being pinched and starving for their own.

On the other hand, however, the opposite type of person, light-minded and flighty, who uses no judgement, but hangs intent on every word and syllable with an ejaculation ready on his lips, is frequently no satisfaction to the disputants themselves, and is always a painful affliction for the audience, startling them as he does and exciting them to join him contrary to their judgement, as though they for shame could not help being dragged into the applause. He gets no benefit from the lecture because for him it has been made full of confusion and fluttering excitement by his continual applaudings, and he departs with the name of being one of three things: a dissembler, a flatterer, or a boor in all that relates to discourse.

Now a man sitting as a judge in court is bound to listen without regard either to enmity or favour, but in sober judgement with regard to justice; but at scholarly lectures no law and no oath prohibits us from receiving the lecturer with goodwill. Indeed, the ancients gave Hermes a place beside the Graces from a feeling that discourse demands, above all, graciousness and friendliness. For it is not possible for a speaker to be a failure so abject and complete that he does not afford something meriting commendation, an original thought, a reminiscence from others, the very subject and purpose of his discourse, or at least the style and arrangement of his remarks,

Just as amid urchin’s foot and the rough rest-harrow

Flowering snowdrops grow, delicate in their bloom.

For when some have declaimed a panegyric upon vomiting or fever, nay I vow, even upon a kitchen-pot, not without a certain amount of plausibility, how could it be that a discourse delivered by a man who in some sort bears the repute and name of philosopher, should not offer, at some point, to benevolent and humane hearers some respite and opportunity for commendation? We know, at any rate, that all persons in the bloom of youth do somehow or other, as Plato says, act as a stimulus upon the man inclined to love; the fair ones he names “children of the gods,” 45 the dark “manly,” while the hook-nosed he endearingly terms “kingly,” the snub-nosed “fetching,” the sallow “honey-hued,” and so welcomes and likes them all; for love, like ivy, is clever in attaching itself to any support. Much more, then, will the scholar and diligent hearer always be ready to discover some cause for which he may openly bestow on every speaker some commendation not inappropriate. So Plato, although he cannot commend Lysias’s speech for invention, and although he condemns its arrangement as disorderly, nevertheless commends the style, and that “each word was clearly and roundly turned.” One might find fault with Archilochus for his subject matter, Parmenides for his versification, Phocylides as commonplace, Euripides for his loquacity, and Sophocles for his unevenness; and it is equally true of the orators that one of them has no power to portray character, another is slow to rouse emotion, another is lacking in grace; yet it is a fact that each one of them is commended for the special faculty with which Nature has taught him to move us and draw us on. It follows, then, that there is ample and abundant opportunity for hearers to show friendliness toward those who are speaking. For some it is quite enough, even if we do not attest this by voice, that we vouchsafe to them a gentleness of glance, a serenity of countenance, and a disposition kindly and free from annoyance.

Finally, the following matters, even with speakers who make a complete failure, are, as it were, general and common requirements at every lecture: to sit upright without any lounging or sprawling, to look directly at the speaker, to maintain a pose of active attention, and a sedateness of countenance free from any expression, not merely of arrogance or displeasure, but even of other thoughts and preoccupations. Now in every piece of work, beauty is achieved through the congruence of numerous factors, so to speak, brought into union under the rule of a certain due proportion and harmony, whereas ugliness is ready to spring into being if only a single chance element be omitted or added out of place. And so in the particular case of a lecture, not only frowning, a sour face, a roving glance, twisting the body about, and crossing the legs, are unbecoming, but even nodding, whispering to another, smiling, sleepy yawns, bowing down the head, and all like actions, are culpable and need to be carefully avoided.

14 1 There are others who think that the speaker has a function to perform, and the hearer none. They think it only right that the speaker shall come with his discourse carefully thought out and prepared, while they, without consideration or thought of their obligations, rush in and take their seats exactly as though they had come to dinner, to have a good time while others toil. And yet even a well-bred guest at dinner has a function to perform, much more a hearer; for he is a participant in the discourse and a fellow-worker with the speaker, and he ought not rigorously to examine the speaker’s little slips, applying his criticism to every word and action, while he himself, without being subject to any criticism, acts unhandsomely and commits many gross improprieties in the matter of listening. On the contrary, just as in playing ball it is necessary for the catcher to adapt his movements to those of the thrower and to be actively in accord with him, so with discourses, there is a certain accord between the speaker and the hearer, if each is heedful of his obligation.

15 1 Then also the terms used in commendations must not be indiscriminate. For Epicurus himself is displeasing when he says of his friends’ letters that they give rise to hullabaloos. And those persons who nowadays introduce into our lecture-rooms outlandish expressions, who are wont to exclaim over a lecture “Divine,” and “Inspired,” and “Unapproachable,” as though it were no longer enough to say “Hear, Hear!” and “Good!” and “Right!” as Plato and Socrates and Hypereides and their friends used to do to show their commendation, behave in a most unseemly manner, and traduce the speakers, as though these desired such high-flown and excessive commendations. 46 Exceedingly displeasing also are those who use an oath in testifying to their approval of the speakers as though in a law court. No less so are those who fail to respect the quality of persons, and cry aloud to a philosopher “Smart!” or to an aged man “Clever!” or “Flowery!”, thus transferring to the philosophers the expressions of those who make a sport and an opportunity to show off out of their scholastic exercises, and applying meretricious commendation to sober discourse, as though they should put on an athlete’s head a crown of lilies or roses instead of laurel or wild olive! Once when Euripides the poet was going over for the members of his chorus a lyric passage set to music one of them burst out laughing; whereat Euripides remarked, “If you were not so stupid and ignorant, you would not have laughed while I was singing in most solemn measure.” And so, as I think, one who is a philosopher and statesman might repress the exuberance of a graceless hearer by saying, “You seem to me to be an ill-bred fool; else, while I am giving instruction or admonition, or discoursing upon the gods or the State or its government, you would not be whistling and dancing a jig to my words.” Just consider what it really means, if, when a philosopher is speaking, the people outside, by reason of the clamour and shouting of those within, are unable to make out whether the applause is for some flute-player, or harper, or dancer.

16 1 Moreover, admonitions and rebukes must be listened to neither with stolid indifference nor with unseemly emotion. For those who can submit to being reproved by philosophers so light-heartedly and heedlessly as to laugh when being taken to task and to commend those who take them to task, as parasites do when abused by those at whose expense they live, are utterly froward and bold, and they give no good or genuine proof of manliness by their shameless behaviour. As for a pleasant scoff, wittily delivered and in pure fun, if a man know how to take it cheerfully and without offence, his conduct argues no ignoble or uncultured mind, but one altogether generous and Spartan. On the other hand, to hear a reprehension or admonition to reform character, delivered in words that penetrate like a biting drug, and not to be humbled at hearing it, not to run into a sweating and dizziness, not to burn with shame in the soul, but, on the contrary to listen unmoved, grinning, dissembling in the face of it all, is a notable sign of an illiberal nature in the young, dead to all modesty because of an habitual and continued acquaintance with wrongdoing, with a soul like hard and calloused flesh, upon which no lash can leave a weal.

Such is the behaviour of those who belong to this class. But young men of the opposite temperament, if they ever hear a single word directed against themselves, run away without looking back, and try to desert philosophy; and, although the sense of modesty which Nature has bestowed upon them is an admirable beginning for their salvation, they lose it through effeminacy and weakness, since they display no firmness under reproof, nor do they accept corrections with the proper spirit, but they turn away their ears toward the agreeable and gentle converse of sundry flatterers or voluble talkers, who enchant them with useless and unprofitable but nevertheless pleasant utterances. Just as one who runs away from the physician after an operation, and will not submit to be bandaged, sustains all the pain of the treatment, but waits not for its benefits: so when the word has cut and wounded a man’s foolishness, if he give it no chance to heal and quiet the wound, he comes away from philosophy with a smart and pain but with no benefit. For not only the wound of Telephus, as Euripides says,

Is soothed by fine-rasped filings from the spear,

47 but the smart from philosophy which sinks deep in young men of good parts is healed by the very words which inflicted the hurt. For this reason he who is taken to task must feel and suffer some smart, yet he should not be crushed or dispirited, but, as though at a solemn rite of novitiate which consecrates him to philosophy, he should submit to the initial purifications and commotions, in the expectation that something delectable and splendid will follow upon his present distress and perturbation. Indeed, even if the reproof seems to be given unjustly, it is an admirable thing to endure it with continued patience while the man is speaking; and when he has come to the end, to go to him with an explanation, band beg him to reserve for some real misconduct the frankness and earnestness that he has employed in the present instance.

17 1 Moreover, just as in learning to read and write, or in taking up music or physical training, the first lessons are attended with much confusion, hard work, and uncertainty, but later, as the learner makes progress, by slow degrees, just as in his relations with human beings, a full familiarity is engendered and knowledge which renders everything attractive, feasible, and easy, both to say and to do, so also is it with philosophy, which undoubtedly has something knotty and unfamiliar in its terms and subject matter at the outset; yet one ought not to take fright at its beginnings, and to abandon it in timorous and craven fashion; rather should he examine each point, and persist and stick to the task of getting on, while awaiting that familiarity which makes every noble thing a pleasure. For come it will without long delay, bringing with it abundant light for the subject of study; it will inspire also a passionate love for virtue; and anyone who could endure to pass the rest of his life without this passion, because he has exiled himself from philosophy for want of true manliness, brands himself either as a very presumptuous man or else a coward.

It is quite possible that the subject of philosophy contains some matter which is difficult for young and inexperienced students to apprehend at the outset. But, at the same time, they must hold themselves responsible for most of the uncertainty and misunderstanding in which they find themselves involved, since quite opposite characters come to fall into the same error. Some, because of a feeling of shame and a desire to spare the speaker, hesitate to ask questions and to get the argument firmly fixed in their minds, nodding their heads in assent as though they comprehended it; others, led by an unseasonable ambition and inane rivalry with their fellow students, to show off their acuteness and their ability to learn easily, avow that they have the meaning before they have grasped it, and so do not grasp it at all. Then the result is that those modest and silent persons, after leaving the lecture, distress themselves over their difficulties, and finally, driven by necessity, with even greater shame this time, they trouble the lecturers with questions which they should have asked before, and try to catch up; but with the ambitious and self-confident young men, the result is that they are all the time trying to cover up and conceal the ignorance that abides with them.

18 1 Let us therefore put from us all such foolishness and pretension, and, as we go onward to the task of learning, let us take pains thoroughly to comprehend all profitable discourses; let us submit with patience to the laughter of those reputed to be clever, as did Cleanthes and Xenocrates, who, although they seemed to be slower than their schoolmates, yet did not try to escape learning or give it up in despair, but were the first to make jokes at themselves by comparing themselves to narrow-necked bottles and bronze tablets, as much as to say that they found great difficulty in taking in what was said, yet they kept it safely and securely. For not only is one bound, as Phocylides says,

Many a time to be cheated of hope when he seeks to be noble,

but he is bound also many a time to be laughed at and to be in disrepute, and to put up with joking and buffoonery as he struggles with might and main against his ignorance and overthrows it.

On the other hand, however, we certainly must not neglect the mistake that leads to the opposite extreme, which some persons are led to commit by laziness, thus making themselves unpleasant and irksome. 48 For when they are by themselves they are not willing to give themselves any trouble, but they give trouble to the speaker by repeatedly asking questions about the same things, like unfledged nestlings always agape toward the mouth of another, and desirous of receiving everything ready prepared and predigested. There is another class, who, eager to be thought astute and attentive out of due place, wear out the speakers and loquacity and officiousness, by continually propounding some extraneous and unessential difficulty and asking for demonstrations of matters that need no demonstration, and so, as Sophocles puts it,

Much time it takes to go a little way,

not only for themselves but for the rest of the company too. For holding back the speaker on every possible occasion by their inane and superfluous questions, as in a company of persons travelling together, they impede the regular course of the lecture, which has to put up with halts and delays. Now such persons are, according to Hieronymus, like cowardly and persistent puppies which, at home, bite at the skins of wild animals, and tear off what bits they can, but never touch the animals themselves. But after those lazy persons whom we have mentioned, let us urge them that, when their intelligence has comprehended the main points, they put the rest together by their own efforts, and use their memory as a guide in thinking for themselves, and, taking the discourse of another as a germ and seed, develop and expand it. For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth. Imagine, then, that a man should need to get fire from a neighbour, and, upon finding a big bright fire there, should stay there continually warming himself; just so it is if a man comes to another to share the benefit of a discourse, and does not think it necessary to kindle from it some illumination for himself and some thinking of his own, but, delighting in the discourse, sits enchanted; he gets, as it were, a bright and ruddy glow in the form of opinion imparted to him by what is said, but the mouldiness and darkness of his inner mind he has not dissipated nor banished by the warm glow of philosophy.

Finally, if there be need of any other instruction in regard to listening to a lecture, it is that it is necessary to keep in mind what has here been said, and to cultivate independent thinking along with our learning, so that we may acquire a habit of mind that is not sophistic or bent on acquiring mere information, but one that is deeply ingrained and philosophic, as we may do if we believe that right listening is the beginning of right living.

How to tell a flatterer from a friend

1 Plato is of opinion that it is very pardonable in a man to acknowledge that he has any extraordinary passion for himself; and yet the humor is attended with this ill consequent, besides several others, that it renders us incapable of making a right judgment of ourselves. For our affections usually blind our discerning faculties, unless we have learned to raise them above the sordid level of things congenial and familiar to us, to those which are truly noble and excellent in themselves. And hence it is that we are so frequently exposed to the attempts of a parasite, under the disguise and vizard of a friend. For self-love, that grand flatterer within, willingly entertains another from without, who will but soothe up and second the man in the good opinions he has conceived of himself. For he who deservedly lies under the character of one that loves to be flattered is doubtless sufficiently fond of himself: and through abundance of complaisance to his own person, not only wishes but thinks himself master of all those perfections which may recommend him to others. And though indeed it be laudable enough to covet such accomplishments, yet is it altogether unsafe for any man to fancy them inherent in him.

Now, if truth be a ray of the divinity, as Plato says it is, and the source of all the good that derives upon either Gods or men, then certainly the flatterer must be looked upon as a public enemy to all the Gods, and especially to Apollo; for he always acts counter to that celebrated oracle of his, Know thyself, endeavoring to make every man his own cheat, by keeping him ignorant of the good and ill qualities that are in him; whereupon the good never arrive at perfection, and the ill grow incorrigible.

2 Did flattery, indeed, as most other misfortunes do, generally or altogether wait on the debauched and ignoble part of mankind, the mischief were of less consequence, and might admit of an easier prevention. But, as worms breed most in sweet and tender woods, so usually the most obliging, the most brave and generous tempers readiliest receive and longest entertain the flattering insect that hangs and grows upon them. And since, to use Simonides’s expression, it is not for persons of a narrow fortune, but for gentlemen of estates, to keep a good stable of horses; so never saw we flattery the attendant of the poor, the inglorious and inconsiderable plebeian, but of the grandees of the world, the distemper and bane of great families and affairs, the plague in kings’ chambers, and the ruin of their kingdoms. Therefore it is a business of no small importance, and one which requires no ordinary circumspection, so to be able to know a flatterer in every shape he assumes, that the counterfeit resemblance some time or other bring not true friendship itself into suspicion and disrepute. For parasites, — like lice, which desert a dying man, whose palled and vapid blood can feed them no longer, — never intermix in dry and insipid business where there is nothing to be got; but prey upon a noble quarry, the ministers of state and potentates of the earth, and afterwards lousily shirk off, if the greatness of their fortune chance to leave them. But it will not be wisdom in us to stay till such fatal junctures, and then try the experiment, which will not only be useless but dangerous and hurtful; for it is a deplorable thing for a man to find himself then destitute of friends, when he most wants them, and has no opportunity either of exchanging his false and faithless friend for a fast and honest one. And therefore we should rather try our friend, as we do our money, whether or not he be passable and current, before we need him. For it is not enough to discover the cheat to our cost, but we must so understand the flatterer, that he put no cheat upon us; otherwise we should act like those who must needs take poison to know its strength, and foolishly hazard their lives to inform their judgment. And as we cannot approve of this carelessness, so neither can we of that too scrupulous humor of those who, taking the measures of true friendship only from the bare honesty and usefulness of the man, immediately suspect a pleasant and easy conversation for a cheat. For a friend is not a dull tasteless thing, nor does the decorum of friendship consist in sourness and austerity of temper, but its very port and gravity is soft and amiable, —

Where Love and all the Graces do reside.

For it is not only a comfort to the afflicted,

To enjoy the courtesy of his kindest friend,

as Euripides speaks; but friendship extends itself to both fortunes, as well brightens and adorns prosperity as allays the sorrows that attend adversity. And as Evenus used to say that fire makes the best sauce, so friendship, wherewith God has seasoned the circumstances of our mortality, gives a relish to every condition, renders them all easy, sweet, and agreeable enough. And indeed, did not the laws of friendship admit of a little pleasantry and good humor, why should the parasite insinuate himself under that disguise? And yet he, as counterfeit gold imitates the brightness and lustre of the true, always puts on the easiness and freedom of a friend, is always pleasant and obliging, and ready to comply with the humor of his company. And therefore it is no way reasonable either, to look upon every just character that is given us as a piece of flattery; for certainly a due and seasonable commendation is as much the duty of one friend to another as a pertinent and serious reprehension; nay indeed, a sour querulous temper is perfectly repugnant to the laws of friendship and conversation; whereas a man takes a chiding patiently from a friend who is as ready to praise his virtues as to animadvert upon his vices, willingly persuading himself that mere necessity obliged him to reprimand, whom kindness had first moved to commend.

3 Why then, some may say, it is infinitely difficult at this rate to distinguish a flatterer from a friend, since there is no apparent difference either betwixt the satisfaction they create or the praises they bestow. Nay, it is observable, that a parasite is frequently more obsequious and obliging than a friend himself. Well, the way then to discover the disparity? Why, I will tell you; if you would learn the character of a true subtle flatterer, who nicks his point secundum artem, you must not, with the vulgar, mistake those sordid smell-feasts and poor trencherslaves for your men, who begin to prate as soon as they have washed their hands in order to dinner, as one says of them, and ere they are well warmed with a good cut of the first dish and a glass of wine, betray the narrow soul that acts them by the nauseous and fulsome buffoonery they vent at table. For sure it needed no great sagacity to detect the flattery of Melanthius, the parasite of Alexander of Pherae, who, being asked how his master was murdered, made answer, With a thrust which went in at his side, but into my belly. Nor must we, again, confine our notions of flatterers to those sharping fellows who ply about rich men’s tables, whom neither fire nor sword nor porter can keep from supper; nor yet to such as were those female parasites of Cyprus, who going into Syria were nick-named Steps, because they cringed so to the great ladies of that country that they mounted their chariots on their backs.

4 Well, but after all, who is this flatterer then, whom we ought so industriously to avoid?

I answer: He who neither professes nor seems to flatter; who never haunts your kitchen, is never observed to watch the dial that he may nick your supper-time; who won’t drink to excess, but will keep his brains about him; who is prying and inquisitive, would mix in your business, and wind himself into your secrets: in short, he who acts the friend, not with the air of a comedian or a satirist, but with the port and gravity of a tragedian. For, as Plato says, It is the height of injustice to appear just and be really a knave . So are we to look upon those flatterers as most dangerous who walk not barefaced but in disguise, who make no sport but mind their business; for these often personate the true and sincere friend so exactly, that it is enough to make him fall under the like suspicion of a cheat, unless we be extremely curious in remarking the difference betwixt them. It is storied of Gobryas (one of the Persian nobility, who joined with Darius against the Magi), that he pursued one of them into a dark room, and there fell upon him; during the scuffle Darius came in and drew upon the enemy, but durst not push at him, lest perhaps he might wound his confederate Gobryas with the thrust; whereupon Gobryas bade him, rather than fail, run both through together . But since we can by no means admit of that vulgar saying, Let my friend perish, so my enemy perish with him, but had rather still endeavor at the discovery of a parasite from a friend, notwithstanding the nearness of the resemblance, we ought to use our utmost care, lest at any time we indifferently reject the good with the bad, or unadvisedly retain the bad with the good, the friend and flatterer together. For as those wild grains which usually grow up with wheat, and are of the same figure and bigness with it, are not easily winnowed from it, — for they either cannot pass through the holes of the sieve, if narrow, or pass together with the wheat, if larger, — so is it infinitely difficult to distinguish flattery from friendship, because the one so exquisitely mixes with all the passions, humors, interests, and inclinations of the other.

5 Now because the enjoyment of a friend is attended with the greatest satisfaction incident to humanity, therefore the flatterer always endeavors to entrap us by rendering his conversation highly pleasant and agreeable. Again, because all acts of kindness and mutual beneficence are the constant attendants upon true friendship (on which account we usually say, A friend is more necessary than fire or water), therefore the flatterer is ready upon every occasion to obtrude his service upon you, and will with an indefatigable bustle and zeal seek to oblige you if he can.

In the next place, the parasite observes that all true friendship takes its origin from a concurrence of like humors and inclinations, and that the same passions, the same aversions and desires, are the first cement of a true and lasting friendship. He therefore composes his nature, like unformed matter, striving to fit and adapt it by imitation to the person on whom he designs, that it may be pliant and yielding to any impression that he shall think fit to stamp upon it; and, in fine, he so neatly resembles the original, that one would swear, —

Sure thou the very Achilles art, and not his son.

But the most exquisite fineness of a flatterer consists in his imitation of that freedom of discourse which friends particularly use in mutually reprehending each other. For finding that men usually take it for what it really is, the natural language of friendship, as peculiar to it as certain notes or voices are to certain animals, and that, on the contrary, a shy sheepish reservedness looks both rude and unfriendly, he lets not even this proper character of a friend escape his imitation. But as skilful cooks use to correct luscious meats with sharp and poignant sauce, that they may not be so apt to overcharge the stomach; so he seasons his flattery now and then with a little smartness and severity, lest the fulsomeness of repeated dissimulation should pall and cloy the company. And yet his reprehensions always carry something in them that looks not true and genuine; he seems to do it, but with a kind of a sneering and grinning countenance at the best; and though his reproofs may possibly tickle the ear, yet they never strike effectually upon the heart. On these accounts then it is as difficult to discern a flatterer from a friend, as to know those animals again which always wear the livery of the last thing they touch upon. And therefore, since he puts so easily upon us under the disguise and appearance of a friend, it will be our business at present to unmask the hypocrite, and show him in other men’s shapes and colors, as Plato speaks, since he has none properly his own.

6 Well then, let us enquire regularly into this affair. We have already asserted, that friendship generally takes its rise from a conformity of tempers and dispositions, whereby different persons come to have the same taste of the like humors, customs, studies, exercises, and employs, as these following verses import: —

Old men with old, and boys with boys agree;
And women’s clack with women’s company.
Men that are crazy, full of sores and pain,
Love to diseased persons to complain.
And they who labor under adverse fate,
Tell their sad stories to th’ unfortunate.

The flatterer then, observing how congenial it is to our natures to delight in the conversation of those who are, as it were, the counterpart of ourselves, makes his first approaches to our affections at this avenue, where he gradually advances (like one making towards a wild beast in a pasture, with a design to tame and bring it to hand) by accommodating himself to the same studies, business, and color of life with the person upon whom he designs, till at last the latter gives him an opportunity to catch him, and becomes tractable by the man who strokes him. All this while the flatterer falls foul upon those courses of life, persons, and things he perceives his cully to disapprove, and again as extravagantly commends those he is pleased to honor with his approbation, still persuading him that his choice and dislike are the results of a solid and discerning judgment and not of passion.

7 Well, then, by what signs or tokens shall we be able to know this counterfeit copy of ourselves from a true and genuine likeness?

In the first place, we must accurately remark upon the whole tenor of his life and conversation, whether or not the resemblance he pretends to the original be of any continuance, natural and easy, and all of a piece; whether he square his actions according to any one steady and uniform model, as becomes an ingenuous lover of conversation and friendship, which is all of one thread, and still like itself; for this is a true friend indeed. But the flatterer, who has no principles in him, and leads not a life properly his own, but forms and moulds it according to the various humors and caprices of those he designs to bubble, is never one and the same man, but a mere dapple or trimmer, who changes shapes with his company, like water that always turns and winds itself into the figure of the channel through which it flows. Apes, it seems, are usually caught by their antic mimicry of the motions and gesticulations of men; and yet the men themselves are trepanned by the same craft of imitation in a flatterer, who adapts himself to their several humors, fencing and wrestling with one, singing and dancing with another. If he is in chase of a spark that delights in a pack of dogs, he follows him at the heels, hollowing almost like Phaedra,

O what a pleasure ‘tis, ye Gods, to wind
The shrill-mouthed horn and chase the dappled hind;

and yet the hunter himself is the game he designs for the toils. If he be in pursuit of some bookish young gentleman, then he is always a poring, he nourishes his reverend beard down to his heels, wears a tattered cloak, affects the careless indifference of a philosopher, and can now discourse of nothing under Plato’s triangles and rectangles. If he chance to fall into the acquaintance of a drunken, idle debauchee who has got an estate,

Then sly Ulysses throws away his rags,

puts off his long robe, mows down his fruitless crop of beard, drinks briskly, laughs modishly on the walks, and drolls handsomely upon the philosophical fops of the town. And thus, they say, it happened at Syracuse; for when Plato first arrived there and Dionysius was wonderfully hot upon the study of philosophy, all the areas in the king’s palace were full of nothing but dust and sand, by reason of the great concourse of geometricians who came to draw their figures and demonstrate there. But no sooner was Plato in disgrace at court, and Dionysius finally fallen from philosophy to wine and women, trifles and intemperance, than learning fell into a general disrepute, and the whole body of the people, as if bewitched by some Circe or other, became universally stupid, idle, and infatuated . Besides this, I appeal to the practices of men notorious for flattery and popularity to back my observation. Witness he who topped them all, Alcibiades, who, when he dwelt at Athens, was as arch and witty as any Athenian of them all, kept his stable of horses, played the good fellow, and was universally obliging; and yet the same man at Sparta shaved close to the skin, wore his cloak, and never bathed but in cold water. When he sojourned in Thrace, he drank and fought like a Thracian; and again, in Tissaphernes’s company in Asia, he acted the part of a soft, arrogant, and voluptuous Asiatic. And thus, by an easy compliance with the humors and customs of the people amongst whom he conversed, he made himself master of their affections and interests . So did not the brave Epaminondas nor Agesilaus, who, though they had to do with great variety of men and manners, and cities of vastly different politics, were still the same men, and everywhere, through the whole circle of their conversation, maintained a port and character worthy of themselves. And so was Plato the same man at Syracuse that he was in the Academy, the same in Dionysius’s court that he was in Dion’s.

8 But he who will take the pains to act the dissembler himself, by interchangeably decrying and extolling the same things, discourses, and ways of living, will easily perceive that the opinions of a flatterer are as mutable and inconstant as the colors of a polypus, that he is never consonant to himself nor properly his own man; that all his passions, his love and hatred, his joy and sorrow, are borrowed and counterfeit; and that, in a word, like a mirror, he only receives and represents the several faces or images of other men’s affections and humors. Do but discommend one of your acquaintance a little in his company, and he will tell you it is a wonder you never found him out all this while, for his part he never fancied him in his life. Change but your style and commend him, he presently swears you oblige him in it, gives you a thousand thanks for the gentleman’s sake, and believes your character of him to be just. Tell him you have thoughts of altering your course of life, as for instance, to retire from all public employs to privacy and ease; he immediately wishes that he had retreated long ago from the hurry and drudgery of business and the odium that attends it. Seem but again inclinable to an active life; Why now, says he, you speak like yourself; leisure and ease are sweet, it is true, but withal mean and inglorious. When you have thus trepanned him, it would be proper to cashier him with some such reply as this: —

How now, my friend! What, quite another man!

I abhor a fellow who servilely complies with whatsoever I propose, and keeps pace with me in all my motions, — my shadow can do that better than yourself, — but my friend must deal plainly and impartially, and assist me faithfully with his judgment. And thus you see one way of discerning a flatterer from a friend.

9 Another difference observable betwixt them in the resemblance they bear to each other is, that a true friend will not rashly commend nor imitate every thing, but only what really deserves it; for, as Sophocles says,

He shares with him his loves, but not his hates,

and will scorn to bear any part with him in any base and dishonorable actions, unless, as people sometimes catch blear eyes, he may chance insensibly to contract some ill habit or other by the very contagion of familiarity and conversation. Thus they say Plato’s acquaintance learned his stoop, Aristotle’s his lisp, and Alexander’s the inclination of his neck and the rapidity of his speech. For some persons, ere they are aware, get a touch of the humors and infirmities of those with whom they converse. But now as a true friend endeavors only to copy the fairest originals, so, on the contrary, the flatterer, like the chameleon, which puts on all colors but the innocent white, being unable to reach those strokes of virtue which are worth his imitation, takes care that no failure or imperfection escape him. As unskilful painters, when they cannot hit the features and air of a face, content themselves with the faint resemblance in a wrinkle, a wart, or a scar, so he takes up with his friend’s intemperance, superstition, cholericness, severity to his servants, distrust of his relations and domestics or the like. For, besides that a natural propensity to evil inclines him always to follow the worst examples, he imagines his assuming other men’s vices will best secure him from the suspicion of being disaffected towards them; for their fidelity is often suspected who seem dissatisfied with faults and wish a reformation. Which very thing lost Dion in the good opinion of Dionysius, Samius in Philip’s, Cleomenes in Ptolemy’s, and at last proved the occasion of their ruin. And therefore the flatterer pretends not only to the good humor of a companion, but to the faithfulness of a friend too, and would be thought to have so great a respect for you that he cannot be disgusted at the very worst of your actions, being indeed of the same make and constitution with yourself. Hence you shall have him pretend a share in the most common casualties that befall another, nay, in complaisance, feign even diseases themselves. In company of those who are thick of hearing, he is presently half deaf, and with the dim-sighted can see no more than they do. So the parasites about Dionysius at an entertainment, to humor his blindness, stumbled one upon another and jostled the dishes off his table.

But there are others who refine upon the former by a pretended fellow-suffering in the more private concernments of life, whereby they wriggle themselves deeper into the affections of those they flatter; as, if they find a man unhappily married, or distrustful of his children or domestics, they spare not their own family, but immediately entertain you with some lamentable story of the hard fortune they have met with in their children, their wife, their servants, or relations. For, by the parallel circumstances they pretend to, they seem more passionately concerned for the misfortunes of their friends, who, as if they had already received some pawn and assurance of their fidelity, blab forth those secrets which they cannot afterwards handsomely retract, and dare not betray the least distrust of their new confidant for the future. I myself knew a man who turned his wife out of doors because a gentleman of his acquaintance divorced his, though the latter lady smelt the intrigue afterwards by the messages the flatterer sent to his wife after the pretended divorce and the private visits he was observed to make her. So little did he understand the flatterer who took these following verses for the description of a crab rather than his: —

The shapeless thing’s all over paunch and gut:
Who can the monster’s mighty hunger glut?
It crawls on teeth, and with a watchful eye
Does into every secret corner pry.

For this is the true portraiture of those sharpers, who, as Eupolis speaks, sponge upon their acquaintance for a dinner.

10 But we will reserve these remarks for a more proper place. In the mean time I must not omit the other artifice observable in his imitation, which is this: that if at any time he counterfeit the good qualities of his friend, he immediately yields him the pre-eminence; whereas there is no competition, no emulation or envy amongst true friends, but whether they are equally accomplished or not, they bear the same even unconcerned temper of mind towards each other. But the flatterer, remembering that he is but to act another’s part, pretends only to such strokes as fall short of the original, and is willing to confess himself outdone in any thing but his vices, wherein alone he claims the precedency to himself; as, if the man he is to wheedle be difficult and morose, he is quite overrun with choler; if something superstitious, he is a perfect enthusiast; if a little in love, for his part he is most desperately smitten. I laughed heartily at such a passage, says one; But I had like to have died with laughter, says the other. But now in speaking of any laudable qualities, he inverts his style; as, I can run fast enough, says he, but you perfectly fly. I can sit an horse tolerably well, but alas! what’s that to this Hippocentaur for good horsemanship? I have a tolerable good genius for poetry, and am none of the worst versifiers of the age;

But thunder is the language of you Gods, not mine.

And thus at the same time he obliges his friend both in approving of his abilities by his owning of them, and in confessing him incomparable in his way by himself coming short of his example. These then are the distinguishing characters of a friend and flatterer, as far as concerns the counterfeit resemblance betwixt them.

11 But because, as we have before observed, it is common to them both to please (for a good man is no less taken with the company of his friends than an ill one is with a flatterer’s), let us discriminate them here too. And the way will be to have an eye to the end to which they direct the satisfaction they create, which may be thus illustrated. Your perfumed oils have a fine odoriferous scent, and so, it may be, have some medicines too; but with this difference, that the former are prepared barely for the gratification of the sense, whilst the other, besides their odor, purge, heal, and fatten. Again, the colors used by painters are certainly very florid and the mixture agreeable; and yet so it is in some medicinal compositions too. Wherein then lies the difference? Why, in the end or use for which they are designed, the one purely for pleasure the other for profit. In like manner the civilities of one friend to another, besides the main point of their honesty and mutual advantage, are always attended with an overplus of delight and satisfaction. Nay, they can now and then indulge themselves the liberty of an innocent diversion, a collation, or a glass of wine, and, believe me, can be as cheerful and jocund as the best; all which they use only as sauce, to give a relish to the more serious and weighty concernments of life. To which purpose was that of the poet,

With pleasing chat they did delight each other;

as likewise this too,

Nothing could part our pleasure or our love.

But the whole business and design of a flatterer is continually to entertain the company with some pastime or other, a little jest, a story well told, or a comical action; and, in a word, he thinks he can never overact the diverting part of conversation. Whereas the true friend, proposing no other end to himself than the bare discharge of his duty, is sometimes pleasant, and as often, it may be, disagreeable, neither solicitously coveting the one, nor industriously avoiding the other, if he judge it the more seasonable and expedient. For as a physician, if need require, will throw in a little saffron or spikenard to qualify his patient’s dose, and will now and then bathe him and feed him up curiously, and yet again another time will prescribe him castor,

Or poley, which the strongest scent doth yield
Of all the physic plants which clothe the field,

or perhaps will oblige him to drink an infusion of hellebore, — proposing neither the deliciousness of the one nor the nauseousness of the other as his scope and design, but only conducting him by these different methods to one and the same end, the recovery of his health, — in like manner the real friend sometimes leads his man gently on to virtue by kindness, by pleasing and extolling him, as he in Homer,

Dear Teucer, thou who art in high command,
Thus draw the bow with thy unerring hand;

and as another speaking of Ulysses,

How can I doubt, while great Ulysses stands
To lend his counsel and assist our hands?

and again, when he sees correction requisite, he will check him severely, as,

Whither, O Menelaus, wouldst thou run,
And tempt a fate which prudence bids thee shun?

and perhaps he is forced another time to second his words with actions, as Menedemus reclaimed his friend Asclepiades’s son, a dissolute and debauched young gentleman, by shutting his doors upon him and not vouchsafing to speak to him. And Arcesilaus forbade Battus his school for having abused Cleanthes in a comedy of his, but after he had made satisfaction and an acknowledgment of his fault, took him into favor again. For we ought to grieve and afflict our friend with design merely of serving him, not of making a rupture betwixt us, and must apply our reprehensions only as pungent and acute medicines, with no other intent than the recovery of the patient. And therefore a friend — like a skilful musician who, to tune his instrument, winds up one string and lets down another — grants some things and refuses others according as their honesty or usefulness prompt him, whereby he often pleases, but is sure always to profit; whereas the parasite, who is continually upon the same humoring string, knows not how to let fall a cross word or commit a disobliging action, but servilely complies with all your desires, and is always in the tune you ask for. And therefore, as Xenophon reports of Agesilaus that he took some delight in being praised by those who would upon occasion dispraise him too, so ought we to judge that only he rejoices and pleases us really as a friend, who will, when need requires, thwart and contradict us; we must suspect their conversation who aim at nothing but our gratification, without the least intermixture of reprehension; and indeed we ought to have ready upon such occasions that repartee of a Lacedaemonian who, hearing King Charillus highly extolled for an excellent person, asked, How he could be so good a man, who was never severe to an ill one?

12 They tell us that gad-flies creep into the ears of bulls, and ticks into those of dogs. But I am sure the parasite lays so close siege and sticks so fast to the ears of the ambitious with the repeated praises of their worth, that it is no easy matter to shake him off again. And therefore it highly concerns them to have their apprehensions awake and upon the guard, critically to remark whether the high characters such men lavish out are intended for the person or the thing they would be thought to commend. And we may indeed suppose them more peculiarly designed for the things themselves, if they bestow them on persons absent rather than present; if they covet and aspire after the same qualities themselves which they magnify in others; if they admire the same perfections in the rest of mankind as well as in us, and are never found to falter and belie, either in word or action, the sentiments they have owned. And, what is the surest criterion in this case, we are to examine whether or no we are not really troubled at or ashamed of the commission of those very things for which they applaud us, and could not wish that we had said or acted the quite contrary; for our own consciences, which are above the reach of passion and will not be put upon by all the sly artifices of flattery, will witness against us and spurn at an undeserved commendation. But I know not how it comes to pass, that several persons had rather be pitied than comforted in adversity; and when they have committed a fault, look upon those as enemies and informers who endeavor to chide and lecture them into a sense of their guilt, but caress and embrace them as friends who soothe them up in their vices. Indeed they who continue their applauses to so inconsiderable a thing as a single action, a wise saying, or a smart jest, do only a little present mischief; but they who from single acts proceed to debauch even the habits of the mind with their immoderate praises are like those treacherous servants who, not content to rob the common heap in the granary, filch even that which was chosen and reserved for seed. For, whilst they entitle vice to the name of virtue, they corrupt that prolific principle of action, the genius and disposition of the soul, and poison the fountain whence the whole stream of life derives. Thucydides observes, that in the time of war and sedition the names of good and evil are wont to be confounded according to men’s judgment of circumstances; as, fool-hardiness is called a generous espousal of a friend’s quarrel, a provident delay is nicknamed cowardice, modesty a mere pretext for unmanliness, a prudent slow inspection into things downright laziness. In like manner, if you observe it, a flatterer terms a profuse man liberal, a timorous man wary, a mad fellow quick and prompt, a stingy miser frugal, an amorous youngster kind and good-natured, a passionate proud fool stout, and a mean-spirited slave courteous and observing. As Plato somewhere remarks, that a lover who is always a flatterer of his beloved object styles a flat nose lovely and graceful, an hawk nose princely, the black manly, and the fair the offspring of the Gods; and observes particularly that the appellation of honey-pale is nothing but the daub of a gallant who is willing to set off his mistress’s pale complexion. Now indeed an ugly fellow bantered into an opinion that he is handsome, or a little man magnified into tall and portly, cannot lie long under the mistake nor receive any great injury by the cheat; but when vice is extolled by the name of virtue, so that a man is induced to sin not only without regret but with joy and triumph, and is hardened beyond the modesty of a blush for his enormities, this sort of flattery, I say, has been fatal even to whole kingdoms. It was this that ruined Sicily, by styling the tyranny of Dionysius and Phalaris nothing but justice and a hatred of villanous practices. It was this that overthrew Egypt, by palliating the king’s effeminacy, his yellings, his enthusiastic rants, and his beating of drums, with the more plausible names of true religion and the worship of the Gods. It was this that had very nigh ruined the stanch Roman temper, by extenuating the voluptuousness, the luxury, the sumptuous shows, and public profuseness of Antony, into the softer terms of humanity, good nature, and the generosity of a gentleman who knew how to use the greatness of his fortune. What but the charms of flattery made Ptolemy turn piper and fiddler? What else put on Nero’s buskins and brought him on the stage? Have we not known several princes, if they sung a tolerable treble, termed Apollos; when they drank stoutly, styled Bacchuses; and upon wrestling, fencing, or the like, immediately dubbed by the name of Hercules, and hurried on by those empty titles to the commission of those acts which were infinitely beneath the dignity of their character?

13 And therefore it will be then more especially our concern to look about us when a flatterer is upon the strain of praising; which he is sensible enough of, and accordingly avoids all occasion of suspicion when he attacks us on that side. If indeed he meets with a tawdry fop, or a dull country clown in a leathern jacket, he plays upon him with all the liberty imaginable; as Struthias by way of flattery insulted and triumphed over the sottishness of Bias, when he told him that he had out drunk King Alexander himself, and that he was ready to die of laughter at his encounter with the Cyprian. But if he chance to fall upon an apprehensive man, who can presently smoke a design, especially if he thinks he has an eye upon him and stands upon his guard, he does not immediately assault him with an open panegyric, but first fetches a compass, and softly winds about him, till he has in some measure tamed the untractable creature and brought it to his hand. For he either tells him what high characters he has heard of him abroad (introducing, as the rhetoricians do, some third person), how upon the exchange the other day he happily overheard some strangers and persons of great gravity and worth, who spake extreme honorably of him and professed themselves much his admirers; or else he forges some frivolous and false accusation of him, and then coming in all haste, as if he had heard it really reported, asks him seriously, if he can call to mind where he said or did such a thing. And immediately upon his denial of the matter of fact, which he has reason enough to expect, he takes occasion to fall upon the subject of his commendation; I wondered indeed, says he, to hear that you should calumniate your friend, who never used to speak ill of your enemies; that you should endeavor to rob another man of his estate, who so generously spend your own.

14 Others again, like painters who enhance the lustre and beauty of a curious piece by the shades which surround it, slyly extol and encourage men in their vices by deriding and railing at their contrary virtues. Thus, in the company of the debauched, the covetous, and the extortioner, they run down temperance and modesty as mere rusticity; and justice and contentment with our present condition argue nothing in their phrase but a dastardly spirit and an impotence to action. If they fall into the acquaintance of lubbers who love laziness and ease, they stick not to explode the necessary administration of public affairs as a troublesome intermeddling in other men’s business, and a desire to bear office as an useless empty thirst after a name. To wheedle in with an orator, they scout a philosopher; and who so gracious as they with the jilts of the town, by laughing at wives who are faithful to their husbands’ beds as impotent and country-bred? And, what is the most egregious stratagem of all the rest, the flatterer shall traduce himself rather than want a fair opportunity to commend another; as wrestlers put their body in a low posture, that they may the better worst their adversaries. I am a very coward at sea, says he, impatient of any fatigue, and cannot digest the least ill language; but my good friend here fears no colors, can endure all hardness, is an admirable good man, bears all things with great patience and evenness of temper. If he meets with one who abounds in his own sense and affects to appear rigid and singular in his judgment, and, as an argument of the rectitude and steadiness thereof, is always telling you of that of Homer,

Let not your praise or dispraise lavish be,
Good Diomedes, when you speak of me,

he applies a new engine to move this great weight. To such a one he imparts some of his private concerns, as being willing to advise with the ablest counsel: he has indeed a more intimate acquaintance with others, but he was forced to trouble him at present: for to whom should we poor witless men have recourse (says he) when we stand in need of advice? Or whom else should we trust? And as soon as he has delivered his opinion, whether it be to the purpose or not, he takes his leave of him with a seeming satisfaction, as if he had received an answer from an oracle. Again, if he perceives a man pretends to be master of a style, he presently presents him with something of his own composing, requesting him to peruse and correct it. Thus Mithridates could no sooner set up for a physician, than some of his acquaintance desired to be cut and cauterized by him, — a piece of flattery that extended beyond the fallacy of bare words, — they imagining that he must needs take it as an argument of their great opinion of his skill, that they durst trust themselves in his hands.

For things divine take many shapes.

Now to discover the cheat which these insinuations of our own worth might put upon us (a thing that requires no ordinary circumspection), the best way will be to give him a very absurd advice, and to animadvert as impertinently as may be upon his works when he submits them to your censure. For if he makes no reply, but grants and approves of all you assert, and applauds every period with the eulogy of Very right! Incomparably well! — then you have trepanned him, and it is plain that, though

He counsel asked, he played another game,
To swell you with the opinion of a name.

15 But to proceed. As some have defined painting to be mute poetry, so there is a sort of silent flattery which has its peculiar commendation. For as hunters are then surest of their game when they pass under the disguise of travellers, shepherds or husbandmen, and seem not at all intent upon their sport; so the eulogies of a parasite never take more effectually than when he seems least of all to commend you. For he who rises up to a rich man when he comes in company, or who, having begun a motion in the Senate, suddenly breaks off and gives some leading man the liberty of speaking his sense first in the point, such a man’s silence more effectually shows the deference he pays the other’s judgment than if he had avowedly proclaimed it. And hereupon you shall have them always placed in the boxes at the play-house, and perched upon the highest seats at other public entertainments; not that they think them suitable to their quality, but merely for the opportunity of gratifying great men by giving them place. Hence it is likewise, that they open first in all solemn and public assemblies, only that they may give place to another as an abler speaker, and they retract their opinion immediately, if any person of authority, riches, or quality contradict them. So that you may perceive all their concessions, cringes, and respects to be but mere courtship and complaisance, by this easy observation, that they are usually paid to riches, honor, or the like, rather than to age, art, virtue, or other personal endowments.

Thus dealt not Apelles with Megabyzus (one of the Persian nobility), who pretending once to talk I know not what about lines, shades, and other things peculiar to his art, the painter could not but take him up, telling him that his apprentices yonder, who were grinding colors, gazed strangely upon him, admiring his gold and purple ornaments, while he held his tongue, but now could not choose but titter to hear him offer at a discourse upon an argument so much out of his sphere. And when Croesus asked Solon his opinion of felicity, he told him flatly, that he looked upon Tellus, an honest though obscure Athenian, and Biton and Cleobis, as happier than he . But the flatterer will have kings, governors, and men of estates, not only the most signally happy, but the most eminently knowing, the most virtuous, and the most prudent of mankind.

16 And now some cannot endure to hear the Stoics, who centre all true riches, generosity, nobility, and royalty itself in the person of a wise man; but with the flatterer it is the man of money that is both orator and poet, and, if he pleases, painter and fiddler too, a good wrestler, an excellent footman, or any thing, for they never stand with him for the victory in those engagements; as Crisson, who had the honor to run with Alexander, let him designedly win the race, which the king being told of afterwards was highly disgusted at him. And therefore I like the observation of Carneades, who used to say that young princes and noblemen never arrived to a tolerable perfection in any thing they learned, except riding; for their preceptors spoil them at school by extolling all their performances, and their wrestling-masters by always taking the foil; whereas the horse, who knows no distinction betwixt a private man and a magistrate, betwixt the rich and the poor, will certainly throw his rider if he knows not how to sit him, let him be of what quality he pleases. And therefore it was but impertinently said of Bion upon this subject, that he who could praise his ground into a good crop were to blame if he bestowed any other tillage upon it. ‘Tis granted: nor is it improper to commend a man, if you do him any real kindness thereby. But here is the disparity: that a field cannot be made worse by any commendations bestowed upon it, whereas a man immoderately praised is puffed up, burst, and ruined by it.

17 Thus much then for the point of praising; proceed we in the next place to treat of freedom in their reprehensions. And indeed, it were but reasonable that, — as Patroclus put on Achilles’s armor and led his war-horse out into the field, yet durst not for all that venture to wield his spear, — so, though the flatterer wear all the other badges and ensigns of a friend, he should not dare to counterfeit the plain frankness of his discourse, as being “a great, massy, and substantial weapon,” peculiar to him.

But because, to avoid that scandal and offence which their drunken bouts, their little jests, and ludicrous babling humor might otherwise create, they sometimes put on the face of gravity, and flatter under the vizard of a frown, dropping in now and then a word of correction and reproof, let us examine this cheat too amongst the rest.

And indeed I can compare that trifling insignificant liberty of speech to which he pretends to nothing better than that sham Hercules which Menander introduces in one of his comedies, with a light hollow club upon his shoulder; for, as women’s pillows, which seem sufficiently stuffed to bear up their heads, yield and sink under their weight, so this counterfeit freedom in a flatterer’s conversation swells big and promises fair, that when it shrinks and contracts itself it may draw those in with it who lay any stress upon its outward appearance. Whereas the genuine and friendly reprehension fixes upon real criminals, causing them grief and trouble indeed, but only what is wholesome and salutary; like honey that corrodes but yet cleanses the ulcerous parts of the body, and is otherwise both pleasant and profitable. But of this in its proper place. We shall discourse at present of the flatterer who affects a morose, angry, and inexorable behavior towards all but those upon whom he designs, is peevish and difficult towards his servants, animadverts severely upon the failures of his relations and domestics, neither admires nor respects a stranger but superciliously contemns him, pardons no man, but by stories and complaints exasperates one against another, thinking by these means to acquire the character of an irreconcilable enemy to all manner of vice, that he may be thought one who would not spare his favorites themselves upon occasion, and would neither act nor speak any thing out of a mean and dastardly complaisance.

And if at any time he undertakes his friend, he feigns himself a mere stranger to his real and considerable crimes; but if he catch him in some petty trifling peccadillo, there he takes his occasion to rant him terribly and thunder him severely off; as, if he see any of his goods out of order, if his house be not very convenient, if his beard be not shaven or his clothes unfashionable, if his dog or his horse be not well looked after. But if he slight his parents, neglect his children, treat his wife scornfully, his friends and acquaintance disrespectfully, and squander away his estate, here he dares not open his mouth, and it is the safest way to hold his tongue. Just as if the master of a wrestling-school should indulge his young champion scholar in drinking and wenching, and yet rattle him about his oil-cruise and body-brush; or as if a schoolmaster should severely reprove a boy for some little fault in his pen or writing-book, but take no notice of the barbarisms and solecisms in his language. For the parasite is like him who hearing a ridiculous impertinent orator finds no fault with his discourse but delivery, blaming him only for having hurt his throat with drinking cold water; or like one who, being to peruse and correct some pitiful scribble, falls foul only upon the coarseness of the paper and the blots and negligence of the transcriber. Thus the parasites about Ptolemy, when he pretended to learning, would wrangle with him till midnight about the propriety of an expression, a verse, or a story; but not a word all this while of his cruelty, insults, superstition, and oppressions of the people. Just as if a chirurgeon should pare a man’s nails or cut his hair, to cure him of a fistula, wen, or other carnous excrescence.

18 But there are others behind, who outdo all the subtlety of the former, such as can claw and please, even whilst they seem to reprehend. Thus when Alexander had bestowed some considerable reward upon a jester, Agis the Argive, through mere envy and vexation, cried out upon it as a most absurd action; which the king overhearing, he turned him about in great indignation at the insolence, saying, What’s that you prate, sirrah? Why truly, replied the man, I must confess, I am not a little troubled to observe, that all you great men who are descended from Jupiter take a strange delight in flatterers and buffoons; for as Hercules had his Cercopians and Bacchus his Silenuses about him, so I see your majesty is pleased to have a regard for such pleasant fellows too. And one time when Tiberius Caesar was present at the senate, there stood up a certain fawning counsellor, asserting that all free-born subjects ought to have the liberty of speaking their sense freely, and should not dissemble or conceal any thing that they might conceive beneficial to the public; who, having thus awakened the attention of his audience, silence being made, and Tiberius impatient to hear the sequel of the man’s discourse, pursued it in this manner: I must tell you of a fault, Caesar, said he, for which we universally blame you, though no man yet has taken the confidence to speak it openly. You neglect yourself, endanger your sacred person by your too much labor and care, night and day, for the public. And he having harangued several things to the same effect, it is reported that Cassius Severus the orator subjoined: This man’s freedom of speech will ruin him.

19 Such artifices as these, I confess, are not very pernicious, but there remains one of a most dangerous consequence to weak men; and that is when a flatterer fastens those vices upon them which are directly contrary to those they are really guilty of. As Himerius, an Athenian parasite, upbraided one of the most miserable and stingy misers of the whole town with carelessness and prodigality, telling him he was afraid he should live to see the day when both he and his children should go a begging. Or, on the contrary, when they object niggardliness and parsimony to one that is lavish and profuse, as Titus Petronius did to Nero. Or when they advise arbitrary and tyrannical princes to lay aside their too much moderation and their unprofitable and unseasonable clemency . And like to these are they who shall pretend to be afraid of a half-witted idiot, as of some notable shrewd fellow; and shall tax an ill-natured censorious man, if at any time he speak honorably of a person of worth, of being too lavish in his commendations. You are always, say they, praising men that deserve it not; for who is he, or what remarkable thing did he ever say or do? But they have yet a more signal opportunity of exercising their talent, when they meet with any difference betwixt lovers or friends; for if they see brothers quarrel, or children despise their parents, or husbands jealous of their wives, they neither admonish them nor blame them for it, but inflame the difference. You don’t understand yourself, say they; you are the occasion of all this clutter by your own soft and submissive behavior. If there chance to have happened some little love-skirmish betwixt a miss and her gallant, then the flatterer interposes boldly and adds fresh fuel to the expiring flame, taking the gentleman to task, and telling him how many things he has done which looked a little hard, were not kind, and deserved a chiding.

Ungrateful man! can you forget her charms,
And former soft embraces in her arms?

Thus Antony’s friends persuaded him, when he was smitten with his beloved Cleopatra, that she doted on him, still calling him haughty and hard-hearted man. She, said they, has stripped herself of the glories of a crown and former grandeur, and now languishes with the love of you, attending the motion of your camp in the poor sordid figure of a concubine.

But you have steeled your heart, and can unmoved
Behold her grief, whom once you so much loved.

Now he was strangely pleased to hear of his little unkindness to his mistress, and was more taken with such a chiding than with the highest character they could have given him; but was not sensible that, under the color of a friendly admonition, they really corrupted and debauched him. For such a rebuke as this is just like the bites of a lecherous woman, for it only tickles and provokes, and pleases even whilst it pains you. And as pure wine taken singly is an excellent antidote against hemlock, but if mixed with it renders the poison incurable, because the heat of the wine quickens its circulation to the heart; so some rascally fellows, knowing very well that the liberty of reproving a friend is a quality very hardly compatible with flattery, and, as I may say, the best remedy against it, mix them both together, and flatter you under the very color and pretext of reprimanding you.

Upon the whole thereof, Bias seems not to have answered him very pertinently, who asked him which he thought was the most hurtful animal, when he replied, Of wild creatures a tyrant, and of tame ones a flatterer. For he might have answered more accurately, that some flatterers indeed are tame creatures, those shirks who ply about your bath and your table; but they whose calumnies, malignity, and inquisitive meddling humor, like so many gins and snares, reach the ladies’ very closets and bed-chambers, are wild, savage, and untractable.

20 Now one way of arming ourselves against these assaults will be always to remember that, — since our souls are made up of two different parts, the one sincere, honest, and reasonable, the other brutish, false, and governed by passion, — the friend always adapts his advice and admonitions to the improvement of the better part (like a good physician, who preserves and advances an healthful constitution where he finds it), whilst the flatterer claws and tickles the irrational part of the man only, debauching it from the rules of right reason by the repeated suggestion of soft and sensual delights. For as there are some sorts of meat which assimilate neither with the blood nor with the spirits, and invigorate neither the nerves nor the marrow, but only provoke lust, swell the paunch, and breed putrid flabby flesh; so he who shall give himself the labor to observe will find that the discourses of a flatterer contribute nothing to the improvement of our prudence and understanding, but either only entertain us with the pleasure of some love-intrigue, or make us indiscreetly angry or envious, or blow us up into an empty troublesome opinion of ourselves, or increase our sorrows by pretending to share in them; or else they exasperate any inbred naughtiness that is in us, or our illiberality or distrustfulness, making them harsh, timorous, and jealous, with idle malicious stories, hints, and conjectures of his own. For he always fastens upon and pampers some distemper of the mind, growing, like a botch or bile, upon its inflamed or putrid part only. Are you angry? Revenge yourself, says he. Covet you any thing? Have it. Are you afraid? Fly. Suspect you this or that? Believe it.

But if we find it something difficult to discover him in these attempts upon our passions, because they often violently overpower all the forces of our reason to the contrary, we may then trace him in other instances of his knavery; for he always acts consonant to himself. As, if you are afraid of a surfeit and thereupon are in suspense about your bath and diet, a friend indeed will advise you to act cautiously and take care of your health; but the flatterer persuades you to the bath, bids you feed freely and not starve yourself with mortification. If he observes you want briskness and spirit for action, as being unwilling to undergo the fatigue of a journey or a voyage, he will tell you presently, there is no haste; the business may be well enough deferred, or else transacted by proxy. If at any time you have promised to lend or give a friend a sum of money, and upon second thoughts gladly would, and yet are ashamed to retract your word, the flatterer puts his advice in the worse scale, and inclines the balance to the saving side, and strips you of your squeamish modesty, telling you that you ought not to be so prodigal, who live at great expense and have others to relieve besides him. And therefore, unless we be mere strangers to ourselves, — to our own covetousness, shamelessness, or timidity, — the flatterer cannot easily escape our discovery; for he is the great patron of these disorderly passions, endeavoring always to wind us up to excesses of this kind. But enough of this.

21 Let us in the next place discourse of the useful and kind offices which the flatterer seems cheerfully ready upon every occasion to perform, thereby rendering the disparity betwixt him and the true friend extremely perplexed and intricate.

For the temper of a friend, like the language of truth, is (as Euripides says) sincere, natural, without paint or varnish; but that of a flatterer, as it is corrupt and diseased in itself, so stands in need of many curious and exquisite remedies to correct it. And therefore you shall have friends upon an accidental rencounter, without either giving or receiving a formal salute, content themselves to speak their mutual kindness and familiarity in a nod and a smile; but the flatterer pursues you, runs to meet you, and extends his hand long before he comes at you; and if you chance but to see and salute him first, he swears you must excuse his rudeness, and will produce you witness that he did not see you, if you please. Thus again, a friend dwells not upon every trifling punctilio, is not ceremonious and punctual in the transacting of business, is not inquisitive, and does not intrude into every piece of service; but the parasite is all obedience, all perpetual indefatigable industry, admits no rival in his services, but will wait your commands, which if you lay not upon him, he seems mightily afflicted, the unhappiest man in the world!

22 Now these observations are argument enough to convince a man of any tolerable sense, that the friendship such men pretend to is not really virtuous and chaste, but rather a sort of impudent whorish love that obtrudes its embraces upon you.

But, to be more particular, let us first examine the disparity betwixt their promises. For our forefathers well observed, that the offers of a friend run in such terms as these:

If I can serve you, sir, if your request
Be feasible by me, I’ll do my best;

but the flatterer’s thus:

Command me freely what you will, I’ll do it.

For the comedians introduce such brave promises as these:

Come, sir, let me but fight that fellow there;
I’ll beat him soft as sponge or jellies are.

Besides, no real friend will assist in the execution of a design, unless, being first advised with, he approve of it as either honest or useful. Whereas the flatterer, though permitted to consult and give his opinion about an undertaking, not only out of a paltry desire to comply with and gratify his friend at any rate, but lest he should be looked upon as disaffected to the business, servilely closes with and advances his proposal, how unreasonable soever. For there are few rich men or princes of this mind:

Give me a friend, though a poor beggar he,
Or meaner than the meanest beggar be,
If he his thoughts but freely will impart,
And boldly speak the language of his heart;

for they, like actors in a tragedy, must have a chorus of their friends to join with them in the concert, or else the claps of the pit to encourage them. Whereupon Merope in the tragedy speaks thus:

Make choice of those for friends, who never knew
The arts of wheedling and betraying you;
But those poor rascals never entertain,
Who please you only with design to gain.

But alas! they invert the counsel, and abominate those who deal freely with them and advise them obstinately for the best, whilst pitiful cringing cheats and impostors are admitted not only into their houses, but into their affections and the nearest concernments of their life. You shall have some of them indeed more plain and simple than the rest, who confess themselves unworthy to consult about such weighty affairs, but are ready to serve you in the executive part of a design. But the more subtle hypocrite comes in at the consult, knits his brows, declares his consent by the gravity of a look or a nod, but speaks never a word, unless perchance, when the great man delivers his opinion, he cries, Lord! sir, you prevented me; I was just going to say so. For, as the mathematicians tell us that surfaces and lines, which are incorporeal and creatures of the understanding only, are neither bended nor moved nor extended of themselves, but are so affected together with the bodies whose extremities they are; so you shall observe the flatterer attends only the motion of another’s sense, opinion, or passion, without any principle of action in himself. So that the disparity betwixt them thus far is easily discernible.

And yet more easily in the manner they perform their good offices. For the kindness of a friend, like an animate creature, have their most proper virtues deep within, without any parade or pageantry on the outside. Nay, many times, as a faithful physician cures his patient when he least knows of it, so a true friend, either present or absent, as occasion serves, is solicitous about your concerns, when perhaps you know nothing of it. Such was the excellent Arcesilaus, as in his other actions, so particularly in his kindness to Apelles, native of Chios, whom finding extremely indigent in his sickness, he repeated his visit to him with twenty drachms in his pocket; and sitting by his bedside, You have got nothing here, said he, but Empedocles’s elements, fire, water, earth, and the surrounding air; neither, methinks, do you lie easily. And with that, stirring up his pillow, he put the money privately under his head; which when the good old woman his nurse found and in great wonder acquainted Apelles with, Aye, says he, smiling a little, this is a piece of Arcesilaus’s thievery. And the saying that children resemble their parents is found true also in philosophy. For when Cephisocrates was impeached of high treason, and Lacydes, an intimate acquaintance of Arcesilaus, with several others of his friends, stood by him at his trial, the counsel for the state desired that the prisoner’s ring, wherein lay the principal evidence against him, might be produced in court; which Cephisocrates hearing dropped it softly off his finger, and Lacydes observing it set his foot upon it and buried it in the ground. Whereupon being acquitted, and going afterwards to pay his respects and thanks to his judges, one of them (who, it seems, had taken notice of the passages) told him that his thanks were owing to Lacydes, and so related the whole story, when yet Lacydes had never mentioned it.

Thus I am varily persuaded the Gods confer several benefits upon us which we are not sensible of, upon no other motive in the world than the mere pleasure and satisfaction they take in acts of kindness and beneficence.

But on the contrary, the seemingly good offices of a flatterer have nothing of that sincerity and integrity, that simplicity and ingenuousness, which recommend a kindness, but are always attended with bustle and noise, hurry, sweat and contracting the brow, to enhance your opinion of the great pains he has taken for you; like a picture drawn in gaudy colors, with folded torn garments, and full of angles and wrinkles, to make us believe it an elaborate piece and done to the life.

Besides, the flatterer is so extremely troublesome in recounting the weary steps he has taken, the cares he has had upon him, the persons he has been forced to disoblige, with a thousand other inconveniencies he has labored under upon your account, that you will be apt to say, The business was never worth all this din and clutter about it.

For a kindness once upbraided loses its grace, turns a burden, and becomes intolerable. But the flatterer not only reproaches us with his services already past, but at the very instant of their performance; whereas, if a friend be obliged to speak of any civility done another, he modestly mentions it indeed, but attributes nothing to himself. Thus, when the Lacedaemonians supplied the people of Smyrna in great scarcity of provisions, and they gratefully resented and extolled the kindness; Why, replied the Spartans, it was no such great matter, we only robbed ourselves and our cattle of a dinner. For a favor thus bestowed is not only free and ingenuous, but more acceptable to the receiver, because he imagines his benefactor conferred it on him without any great prejudice to himself.

23 But the temper of a flatterer is discernible from that of a friend not only in the easiness of his promises and the troublesome impertinence that attends his good offices, but more signally in this, that the one is ready to promote any base and unworthy action, the other those only which are fair and honest. The one labors to please, the other to profit you. For a friend must not, as Gorgias would have him, beg another’s assistance in a just undertaking, and then think to compensate the civility by contributing to several that are unjust.

In wisdom, not in folly, should they join.

And if, after all, he cannot prevail upon him, he may disengage himself with the reply of Phocion to Antipater; Sir, I cannot be both your friend and your flatterer, — that is, Your friend and not your friend at the same time . For we ought to be assistant to him in his honest endeavors indeed, but not in his knaveries; in his counsels, not in his tricks; in appearing as evidence for him, but not in a cheat; and must bear a share in his misfortunes, but not in his acts of injustice. For if a man ought not to be as much as conscious of any unworthiness in his friend, how much less will it become him to partake in it? Therefore, as the Lacedaemonians, defeated and treating of articles of peace with Antipater, prayed him to command them any thing, howsoever grievous and burthensome to the subject, provided it were not base and dishonorable; so a friend, if you want his assistance in a chargeable, dangerous, and laborious enterprise, embarks in the design cheerfully and without reserve; but if such as will not stand with his reputation and honor, he fairly desires to be excused. Whereas, on the contrary, if you offer to put a flatterer upon a difficult or hazardous employment, he shuffles you off and begs your pardon. For but sound him, as you rap a vessel to try whether it be whole or cracked, full or empty; and he shams you off with the noise of some paltry, frivolous excuses. But engage him in any mean, sordid, and inglorious service, abuse him, kick him, trample on him, he bears all patiently and knows no affront. For as the ape, who cannot keep the house like a dog or bear a burden like an horse or plough like an ox, serves to be abused, to play the buffoon, and to make sport; so the parasite, who can neither plead your cause nor be your counsel nor espouse your quarrel, as being averse from all painful and good offices, denies you in nothing that may contribute to your pleasure, turns pander to your lust, pimps for a whore, provides you an handsome entertainment, looks that your bill be reasonable, and sneaks to your miss; but he shall treat your relations with disrespect and impudently turn your wife out of doors, if you commission him. So that you may easily discover him in this particular. For put him upon the most base and dirty actions; he will not spare his own pains, provided he can but gratify you.

24 There remains yet another way to discover him by his inclinations towards your intimates and familiars. For there is nothing more agreeable to a true and cordial acquaintance than to love and to be beloved with many; and therefore he always sedulously endeavors to gain his friend the affections and esteem of other men. For being of opinion that all things ought to be in common amongst friends, he thinks nothing ought to be more so than they themselves. But the faithless, the adulterate friend of base alloy, who is conscious to himself of the disservice he does true friendship by that false coin of it which he puts upon us, is naturally full of emulation  and envy, even towards those of his own profession, endeavoring to outdo them in their common talent of babbling and buffoonry, whilst he reveres and cringes to his betters, whom he dares no more vie with than a footman with a Lydian chariot, or lead (to use Simonides’s expression) with refined gold. Therefore this light and empty counterfeit, finding he wants weight when put into the balance against a solid and substantial friend, endeavors to remove him as far as he can, like him who, having painted a cock extremely ill, commanded his servant to take the original out of sight; and if he cannot compass his design, then he proceeds to compliment and ceremony, pretending outwardly to admire him as a person far beyond himself, whilst by secret calumnies he blackens and undermines him. And if these chance to have galled and fretted him only and have not thoroughly done their work, then he betakes himself to the advice of Medius, that arch parasite and enemy to the Macedonian nobility, and chief of all that numerous train which Alexander entertained in his court. This man taught his disciples to slander boldly and push home their calumnies; for, though the wound might probably be cured and skinned over again, yet the teeth of slander would be sure to leave a scar behind them. By these scars, or (to speak more properly) gangrenes and cancers of false accusations, fell the brave Callisthenes, Parmenio, and Philotas ; whilst Alexander himself became an easy prey to an Agnon, Bagoas, Agesias, and Demetrius, who tricked him up like a barbarian statue, and paid the mortal the adoration due to a God. So great a charm is flattery, and, as it seems, the greatest with those we think the greatest men; for the exalted thoughts they entertain of themselves, and the desire of a universal concurrence in the same opinion from others, both add courage to the flatterer and credit to his impostures. Hills and mountains indeed are not easily taken by stratagem or ambuscade; but a weak mind, swollen big and lofty by fortune, birth, or the like, lies naked to the assaults of every mean and petty aggressor.

25 And therefore we repeat here what we advised at our entrance into this discourse, that we cashier every vain opinion of ourselves and all self-love. For their inbred flattery only disposes and prepares us to a more favorable reception of that from without. For, if we did but square our actions according to the famous oracular precept of knowing ourselves, rate things according to their true intrinsic value, and withal, reflecting upon our own nature and education, consider what gross imperfections and failures mix with our words, actions, and affections, we should not lie so open to the attempts of every flatterer who designs upon us. For even Alexander himself, being reminded of his mortality by two things especially, the necessity of sleep and the use of women , began to stagger in the opinion they had made him conceive of his godhead. And did we in like manner but take an impartial survey of those troubles, lapses, and infirmities incident to our nature, we should find we stood in no need of a friend to praise and extol our virtues, but of one rather that would chide and reprimand us for our vices. For first, there are but few who will venture to deal thus roundly and impartially with their friends, and fewer yet who know the art of it, men generally mistaking railing and ill language for a decent and friendly reproof. And then a chiding, like any other physic, if ill-timed, racks and torments you to no purpose, and works in a manner the same effect with pain that flattery does with pleasure. For an unseasonable reprehension may be equally mischievous with an unseasonable commendation, and force your friend to throw himself upon the flatterer; like water which, leaving the too precipitous and rugged hills, rolls down upon the humble valleys below. And therefore we ought to qualify and allay the sharpness of our reproofs with a due temper of candor and moderation, — as we would soften light which is too powerful for a distempered eye, — lest our friends, being plagued and ranted upon every trivial occasion, should at last fly to the flatterer’s shade for their ease and quiet. For all vice, Philopappus, is to be corrected by an intermediate virtue, and not by its contrary extreme, as some do who, to shake off that sheepish bashfulness which hangs upon their natures, learn to be impudent; to lay aside their country breeding, endeavor to be comical; to avoid the imputation of softness and cowardice, turn bullies; out of an abhorrence of superstition, commence atheists; and rather than be reputed fools, play the knave; forcing their inclinations, like a crooked stick, to the opposite extreme, for want of skill to set them straight.

But it is highly rude to endeavor to avoid the suspicion of flattery by only being insignificantly troublesome, and it argues an ungenteel, unconversable temper in a man to show his just abhorrency of mean and servile ends in his friendship only by a sour and disagreeable behavior; like the freedman in the comedy, who would needs persuade himself that his railing accusation fell within the limits of that freedom in discourse which every one had right to with his equals. Since therefore it is absurd to incur the suspicion of a flatterer by an over-obliging and obsequious humor, and as absurd, on the other hand, in endeavoring to decline it by an immoderate latitude in our apprehensions, to lose the enjoyments and salutary admonitions of a friendly conversation, and since the measures of what is just and proper in this, as in other things, are to be taken from decency and moderation; the nature of the argument seems to require me to conclude it with a discourse upon this subject.

26 Now seeing this liberty of animadverting on other men’s failures is liable to so many exceptions, let us in the first place carefully purge it from all mixture of self-love and interest, lest any private motive, injury, grudge, or dissatisfaction of our own should seem to incite us to the undertaking. For such a chiding as this would not pass for an effect of kindness but of passion, and looks more like complaint than an admonition; for the latter has always something in it that sounds kind and yet awful, whereas the other betrays only a selfish and narrow disposition. And therefore we usually honor and revere our monitor, but contemn and recriminate upon a querulous accuser. As Agamemnon could by no means digest the moderate censures of Achilles, yet bore well enough with the severer reprimand of Ulysses,

O were thy sway the curse of meaner powers,
And thou the shame of any host but ours!

being satisfied of his wisdom and good intentions; for he rated him purely upon the account of the public, the other upon his own. And Achilles himself, though of a rough and untractable disposition and ready enough to find faults where there were none, yet heard Patroclus patiently when he ranted him thus:

Unpitying man! no Peleus caused thy birth,
Nor did the tender Thetis bring thee forth;
But rocks, hard as thy heart, and th’ angry sea
Clubbed to produce a monstrous man like thee.

For as Hyperides the orator desired the Athenians to consider not only whether his reflections were sharp, but also whether his sharpness was disinterested and incorrupt; so the reproofs of a friend, if they proceed from a sincere and disinterested affection, create veneration, awe, and confusion in the criminal to whom they are addressed. And if he once perceive that his friend, waiving all offences against himself, chides him purely for those committed against others, he can never hold out against the force of so powerful a rebuke; for the sweet and obliging temper of his monitor gives a keener edge to his admonitions. And therefore it has been wisely said, that especially in heats and differences with our friends we ought to have a peculiar regard to their honor and interest. Nor is it a less argument of friendship, for a man who is laid aside and out of favor himself to turn advocate in behalf of another equally despised and neglected; as Plato being in disgrace with Dionysius begged audience of him, which he readily granting in expectation of being entertained with an account of his grievances, Plato addressed himself to him after this manner: Sir, said he, if you were informed there were a certain ruffian come over into your island of Sicily with design to attempt upon your majesty’s person, but for want of an opportunity could not execute the villany, would you suffer him to go off unpunished? No, by no means, Plato, replied the king; for we ought to detest and revenge not only the overt acts but the malicious intentions of our enemies. Well then, on the other hand, said Plato, if there should come a person to court out of pure kindness and ambition to serve your majesty, and you would not give him an opportunity of expressing it, were it reasonable to dismiss him with scorn and disrespect? Whom do you mean, said Dionysius? Why, Aeschines, replied Plato, as honest and excellent a person as any in the school of Socrates, and of a very edifying conversation; who, having exposed himself to the difficulties of a tedious voyage that he might enjoy the happiness of a philosophical converse with your majesty, has met with nothing but contempt in return to the kindness he intended. This friendly and generous temper of mind so strangely affected Dionysius, that he hugged and embraced Plato, and treated Aeschines with a great deal of honor and magnificence.

27 In the next place, let us free our discourse from all contumelious language, all laughter, mockery, and scurrility, which spoil the relish of our reprehensions. For, as when a chirurgeon makes an incision in the flesh he uses decent neatness and dexterity in the operation, without the affected and superfluous gesticulations of a quack or mountebank, so the lancing the sores of a friend may admit indeed of a little humor and urbanity, but that so qualified that it spoil not the seriousness and gravity requisite to the work. For boldness, insolence, and ill language destroy its force and efficacy. And therefore the fiddler reparteed handsomely enough upon Philip, when he undertook to dispute with him about the touch upon his instrument: God forbid that your majesty should be so unhappy as to understand a fiddle better than I do. But Epicharmus was too blunt upon Hiero, who invited him to supper a little after he had put some of his acquaintance to death, when he replied, Aye, but you could not invite me the other day to the sacrifice of my friends. And so was Antiphon too rude in his reflection upon Dionysius, when, on occasion of a discourse about the best sort of bronze, he told him that was the best in his opinion of which the Athenians made statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. For these scurrilous abusive jests are most certainly disagreeable and pain to no purpose, being but the product of an intemperate wit, and betraying the enmity and ill-nature of him who takes the liberty to use them; and whosoever allows himself in them does but wantonly sport about the brink of that pit which one day will swallow him up. For Antiphon was afterward executed under Dionysius; and Timagenes was in disgrace with Angustus Caesar, not for any extravagant freedom in his discourse, but only because he had taken up a foolish custom of never talking seriously but always scurrilously at every entertainment and walk where the emperor desired his company, —

Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim;

alleging the pleasantness of his humor as the cause of his favor at court.

Thus you shall meet with several smart and satirical reflections in a comedy; but the mixture of jest and fool in the play, like ill sauce to good meat, abates their poignancy and renders them insignificant; so that, upon the whole, the poet acquires only the character of a saucy and foul-mouthed buffoon, and the auditors lose that advantage which they might otherwise reap from remarks of that nature.

We may do well therefore to reserve our jollity and mirth for more suitable occasions, but we must by all means be serious and candid in our admonitions; which, if they be upon important points, must be so animated with our gestures, passion, and eagerness of voice, as to give them weight and credit and so awaken a tender concern in the persons to whom they are addressed.

We are again to time our reproofs as seasonably as we can; for a mistake in the opportunities, as it is of ill consequence in all other things, is so peculiarly in our reprehensions. And therefore, I presume, it is manifest, we ought not to fall foul upon men in their drink. For first, he who broaches any sour disagreeable discourse amidst the pleasantry and good humor of friends casts a cloud over the serenity of the company, and acts counter to the God Lysius, who, as Pindar words it, unties the band of all our cares. Besides, such unseasonable remonstrances are not without danger; for wine is apt to warm men into passion, and make them quarrel at the freedom you take. And in short, it is no argument of any brave and generous, but rather of an unmanly temper, not to dare to speak one’s sense when men are sober, but to keep barking like a cowardly cur at table. And therefore we need not enlarge any further upon this topic.

28 But because several persons neither will nor dare take their friends to task whilst they thrive and flourish in the world, looking upon prosperity as a state above the reach of a rebuke, but pour forth their invectives like a river that has overflown its banks, insulting and trampling upon them, when Fortune has already laid them at their feet, out of a sort of satisfaction to see their former state and grandeur reduced to the same level of fortune with themselves; it may not be improper to discourse a little upon this argument, and make some reply to that question of Euripides, —

What need is there of friends when Fortune smiles?

I answer, to lower those lofty and extravagant thoughts which are usually incident to that condition; for wisdom in conjunction with prosperity is a rare talent and the lot of but few. Therefore most men stand in need of a borrowed prudence, to depress the tumors that attend an exuberant felicity; but when the turn of Fortune itself has abated the swelling, a man’s very circumstances are sufficient of themselves to read him a lecture of repentance, so that all other grave and austere corrections are then superfluous and impertinent; and it is on the contrary more proper in such traverses of Fortune to enjoy the company of a compassionate friend, who will administer some comfort to the afflicted and buoy him up under the pressure of his affairs. So Xenophon relates that the presence of Clearchus, a person of a courteous and obliging aspect, gave new life and courage to his soldiers in the heat of a battle or any other difficult rencounter. But he who chides and upbraids a man in distress, like him who applies a medicine for clearing the sight to a distempered and inflamed eye, neither works a cure nor allays the pain, but only adds anger to his sorrows and exasperates the patient. A man in health indeed will digest a friendly lecture for his wenching, drinking, idleness, continual recreations and bathing, or unseasonable eating; but for a sick man to be told that all this comes of his intemperance, voluptuousness, high feeding, or whoring, is utterly insupportable and worse than the disease itself. O impertinent man! will such a one say, the physicians prescribe me castor and scammony, and I am just making my last will and testament, and do you lie railing and preaching to me lectures of philosophy? And thus men in adversity stand more in need of our humanity and relief than of sharp and sententious reprimands. For neither will a nurse immediately scold at her child that is fallen, but first help him up, wash him, and put him in order again, and then chide and whip him. They tell us a story to this purpose of Demetrius Phalereus, that, when he dwelt an exile at Thebes in mean beggarly circumstances, he was once extremely concerned to observe the philosopher Crates making towards him, expecting to be treated by him with all the roughness of a cynical behavior. But when Crates had addressed himself courteously to him, and discoursed him upon the point of exile, endeavoring to convince him that it had nothing miserable or uneasy in it, but on the contrary rather rescued him from the nice and hazardous management of public affairs, — advising him withal to repose his confidence in himself and his own conscience, — Demetrius was so taken and encouraged by his discourse, that he is reported to have said to his friends, Cursed be those employs which robbed me so long of the acquaintance of such an excellent person. For

Soft, friendly words revive th’ afflicted soul;
But sharp rebukes are only for a fool.

And this is the way of generous and ingenuous friends. But they who servilely admire you in prosperity, — like old fractures and sprains, which (as Demosthenes speaks) always ache and pain us when some fresh disease has befallen the body, — stick close to you in the revolution of your fortune, and rejoice and enjoy the change. Whereas, if a man must needs have a remembrancer of a calamity which his own indiscretion hath pulled upon him, it is enough you put him in mind that he owes it not to your advice, for you often dissuaded him from the undertaking.

29 Well then, you say, when is a keen reprehension allowable, and when may we chide a friend severely indeed? I answer, when some important occasion requires it, as the stopping him in the career of his voluptuousness, anger, or insolence, the repressing his covetous humor or any other foolish habit. Thus dealt Solon with Croesus, puffed up and debauched with the uncertain greatness of his fortune, when he bade him look to the end . Thus Socrates humbled Alcibiades, forced him into unfeigned tears, and turned his heart, when he argued the case with him. Such, again, were the remonstrances and admonitions of Cyrus to Cyaxares, and of Plato to Dion, who, when the lustre and greatness of his achievements had fixed all men’s eyes upon him, wished him to beware of arrogance and self-conceit, as the readiest way to make all men abandon him. And Speusippus wrote to him, not to pride himself in the little applauses of women and children, but to take care to adorn Sicily with religion, justice, and wholesome laws, that he might render the Academy great and illustrious. So did not Euctus and Eulaeus, two of Perseus’s favorites; who fawned upon and complied with him as obsequiously as any courtier of them all during the success of his arms, but after his defeat at Pydna by the Romans inveighed bitterly against him, reminding him of his past faults, till the man out of mere anger and vexation stabbed them both on the spot. And so much concerning the timing our reproofs in general.

30 Now there are several other accidental occasions administered by our friends themselves, which a person heartily solicitous for their interest will lay hold of. Thus some have taken an opportunity of censuring them freely from a question they have asked, from the relation of a story, or the praise or dispraise of the same actions in other men which they themselves have committed.

Thus, they tell us, Demaratus coming from Corinth into Macedonia when Philip and his queen and son were at odds, and being after a gracious reception asked by the king what good understanding there was among the Grecians, replied, as being an old friend and acquaintance of his, Aye, by all means, sir, it highly becomes your majesty to enquire about the concord betwixt the Athenians and Peloponnesians, when you suffer your own family to be the scene of so much discord and contention. And as pert was that of Diogenes, who, entering Philip’s camp as he was going to make war upon the Grecians, was seized upon and brought before the king, who not knowing him asked him if he was a spy. Why, yes truly, said he, I am a spy upon your folly and imprudence, who without any necessity upon you are come hither to expose your kingdoms and your life to the uncertain decision of the cast of a die. This may perhaps seem a little too biting and satirical.

31 Another seasonable opportunity of reproving your friend for his vices is when some third person has already mortified him upon the same account. For a courteous and obliging man will dexterously silence his accuser, and then take him privately to task himself, advising him — if for no other reason, yet to abate the insolence of his enemies — to manage himself more prudently for the future. For how could they open their mouths against you, what could they have to reproach you with, if you would but reform such and such vices which render you obnoxious to their censure? And by this means the offence that was given lies at his door who roughly upbraided him; whilst the advantage he reaps is attributed to the person who candidly advised him. But there are some who have got yet a genteeler way of chiding, and that is, by chastising others for faults which they know their friends really stand guilty of. As my master Ammonius, perceiving once at his afternoon lecture that some of his scholars had dined more plentifully than became the moderation of students, immediately commanded one of his freedmen to take his own son and whip him. For what? says he. The youngster, forsooth, must needs have vinegar sauce to his meat; and with that casting his eye upon us, he gave us to understand that we likewise were concerned in the reprehension.

32 Again, we must be cautious how we rebuke a friend in company, always remembering the repartee made upon Plato on that account. For Socrates having fallen one day very severely upon an acquaintance of his at table, Plato could not forbear to take him up, saying, Had it not been more proper, sir, to have spoken these things in private? To which Socrates instantly replied, And had it not been more proper for you to have told me so in private too? And they say, Pythagoras one time ranted a friend of his so terribly before company, that the poor young man went and hanged himself; from which time the philosopher would never chide any man in the presence of another. For the discovery and cure of a vice, like that of a scandalous disease, ought to be in secret, and not like a public show transacted upon the theatre; for it is no way the part of a friend, but a mere cheat and trick, for one man to recommend himself to the standers-by and seek for reputation from the failures of another, like mountebank chirurgeons, who perform their operations on a stage to gain the greater practice. But besides the disgrace that attends a reproof of this nature (a thing that will never work any cure), we are likewise to consider that vice is naturally obstinate and loves to dispute its ground. For what Euripides says is true not only of love,

The more ‘tis checked, the more it presses on,

but of any other imperfection. If you lay a man open publicly for it and tell all, you are so far from reforming him that you force him to brave it out. And therefore, as Plato advises that old men who would teach the younger fry reverence should learn to revere them first, so certainly modestly to reprimand is the way to meet with a modest return. For he who warily attacks the criminal works upon his good nature by his own, and so insensibly undermines his vices. And therefore it would be much more proper to observe the rule in Homer

To whisper softly in the ear,
Lest standers-by should chance to hear.

But above all, we ought not to discover the imperfections of an husband before his wife, nor of a father before his children, nor of a lover in company of his mistress, nor of masters in presence of their scholars, or the like; for it touches a man to the quick to be rebuked before those whom he would have think honorably of him. And I verily believe that it was not so much the heat of the wine as the sting of too public a reprehension, that enraged Alexander against Clitus . And Aristomenes, Ptolemy’s preceptor, lost himself by awaking the king, who had dropped asleep one time at an audience of foreign embassadors; for the court parasites immediately took this occasion to express their pretendedly deep resentments of the disgrace done his majesty, suggesting that, if indeed the cares of the government had brought a little seasonable drowsiness upon him, he might have been told of it in private, but should not have had rude hands laid upon his person before so great an assembly; which so affected the king, that he presently sent the poor man a draught of poison, and made him drink it up. And Aristophanes says, Cleon blamed him for railing at Athens before strangers, whereby he incensed the Athenians against him. And therefore they who aim at the interest and reformation of their friends rather than ostentation and popularity, ought amongst other things to beware of exposing them too publicly.

Again, what Thucydides makes the Corinthians say of themselves, that they were persons every way qualified for the reprehension of other men, ought to be the character of every one who sets up for a monitor. For, as Lysander replied upon a certain Megarian, who in a council of allies and confederates had spoken boldly in behalf of Greece, This style of yours, sir, needs a state to back it ; so he who takes upon him the liberty of a censor must be a man of a regular conversation himself, — one like Plato, whose life was a continued lecture to Speusippus, or Xenocrates, who, casting his eye one time upon the dissolute Polemon at a disputation, reformed him with the very awfulness of his looks. Whereas the remonstrance of a lewd whiffling fellow will certainly meet with no better entertainment than that of the old proverbial repartee,

Physician, heal thyself.

33 But because several accidental emergencies in conversation will now and then invite a man, though bad enough himself, to correct others, the most dexterous way of doing it will be to involve ourselves in the same guilt with those we reprehend; as in this passage of Homer,

Fie, what’s the matter, Diomede, that we
Have now forgot our former gallantry?

and in this other,

We are not worth one single Hector all.

Thus Socrates would handsomely twit the young men with their ignorance by professing his own, pretending for his part he had need with them to study morality and make more accurate enquiries into the truth of things. For a confession of the same guilt, and a seeming endeavor to reform ourselves as well as our friends, gives credit to the reprimand and recommends it to their affections. But he who gravely magnifies himself, whilst he imperiously detracts from others, as being a man forsooth of no imperfections, unless his age or a celebrated reputation indeed commands our attention, is only impertinent and troublesome to no purpose. And therefore it was not without reason that Phoenix, checking Achilles for his intemperate anger, confessed his own unhappiness in that particular, how he had like once to have slain his own father through a transport of passion had not the scandalous name of parricide held his hands; that the hero might not imagine he took that liberty with him because he had never offended in the like kind himself. For such inoffensive reproofs leave a deeper impress behind them, when they seem the result of sympathy rather than contempt.

But because a mind subject to the disorders of passion, like an inflamed eye that cannot bear a great and glaring light, is impatient of a rebuke, without some temperament to qualify and allay its poignancy, therefore the best remedy in this case will be to dash it with a little praise, as in the following:

Think, and subdue! on dastards dead to fame
I waste no anger, for they feel no shame;
But you, the pride, the flower of all our host,
My heart weeps blood to see your glory lost!
Where, Pandarus, are all thy honors now,
Thy winged arrows and unerring bow,
Thy matchless skill, thy yet unrivall’d fame,
And boasted glory of the Lycian name!

And such rebukes as these are also most effectual in reclaiming those that are ready to fall into gross enormities:

O where are Oedipus and all his riddles now?

and

Is this the speech of daring Hercules?

For a mixture of both together not only abates and takes off from that roughness and command which a blunt reprehension seems to carry along with it, but raises in a man a generous emulation of himself, whilst the remembrance of his past virtues shames him out of his present vices and makes him propose his former actions for his future example. But if you compare him with other men, as with his fellow-citizens, his contemporaries, or relations, then vice, which loves to dispute the victory, renders him uneasy and impatient under the comparison, and will be apt to make him grumble, and in an huff bid you be gone then to his betters and not trouble him any longer. And therefore we ought not to fall upon other men’s commendations before him whom we take the liberty to rebuke, unless indeed they be his parents; as Agamemnon in Homer, —

Ah! how unlike his sire is Tydeus’ son!

and Ulysses in the tragedy called the Scyrians, speaking to Achilles, —

Dost thou, who sprang from a brave Grecian race
By spinning thy great ancestors disgrace?

34 It is in the next place very improper for a man immediately to retort or recriminate upon his monitor; for this is the way to occasion heats and animosities betwixt them, and will speak him rather impatient of any reproof at all than desirous to recompensate the kindness of one with another. And therefore it is better to take his chiding patiently for the present; and if he chance afterwards to commit a fault worth your remarking upon, you have then an opportunity of repaying him in his own coin. For being reminded, without the least intimation of a former pique or dissatisfaction, that he himself did not use to overlook the slips of his friend, he will receive the remonstrance favorably at your hands, as being the return of kindness rather than of anger and resentment.

35 Moreover, as Thucydides says that he is a wise man who will not venture to incur odium except for matters of the highest concernment , so, when we do undertake the ungrateful office of censor, it ought to be only upon weighty and important occasions. For he who is peevish and angry at everybody and upon every trivial fault, acting rather with the imperious pedantry of a schoolmaster than the discretion of a friend, blunts the edge of his reprehensions in matters of an higher nature, by squandering, like an unskilful physician, that keen and bitter but necessary and sovereign remedy of his reproofs upon many slight distempers that require not so exquisite a cure. And therefore a wise man will industriously avoid the character of being a person who is always chiding and delights in finding faults. Besides that, whosoever is of that little humor that animadverts upon every trifling peccadillo only affords his friend a fairer occasion of being even with him one time or another for his grosser immoralities. As Philotimus the physician, visiting a patient of his who was troubled with an inflammation in his liver, but showed him his forefinger, told him: Sir, your distemper is not a whitlow. In like manner we may take occasion now and then to reply upon a man who carps at trifles in another, — his diversions, pleasantries, or a glass of wine, — Let the gentleman rather, sir, turn off his whore and leave off his dicing; for otherwise he is an admirable person. For he who is dispensed with in smaller matters more willingly gives his friend the liberty of reprimanding him for greater. But there is neither child nor brother nor servant himself able to endure a man of a busy inquisitive humor, who brawls perpetually, and is sour and unpleasant upon every inconsiderable occasion.

36 But since a weak and foolish friend, as Euripides says of old age, has its strong as well as its feeble part, we ought to observe both, and cheerfully extol the one before we fall foul upon the other. For as we first soften iron in the fire and then dip it in water, to harden it into a due consistence; so, after we have warmed and mollified our friend by a just commendation of his virtues, we may then safely temper him with a moderate reprehension of his vices. We may then say, Are these actions comparable to the other? Do you not perceive the advantages of a virtuous life? This is what we who are your friends require of you. These are properly your own actions, for which nature designed you; but for the other,

Let them for ever from you banished be,
To desert mountains or the raging sea.

For as a prudent physician had rather recover his patient with sleep and good diet than with castor and scammony, so a candid friend, a good father or schoolmaster, will choose to reform men’s manners by commendations rather than reproofs. For nothing in the world renders our corrections so inoffensive and withal so useful as to address ourselves to the delinquent in a kind, affectionate manner. And therefore we ought not to deal roughly with him upon his denial of the matter of fact, nor hinder him from making his just vindication; but we should rather handsomely help him out in his apology and mollify the matter. As Hector to his brother Paris,

Unhappy man, by passion overruled;

suggesting that he did not quit the field, in his encounter with Menelaus, out of cowardice, but mere anger and indignation. And Nestor speaks thus to Agamemnon:

You only yielded to the great impulse.

For to tell a man that he did such a thing through ignorance or inadvertency is, in my opinion, a much more genteel expression than bluntly to say, “You have dealt unjustly or acted basely by me.” And to advise a man not to quarrel with his brother is more civil than to say, “Don’t you envy and malign him.” And “Keep not company with that woman who debauches you” is softer language than “Don’t you debauch her.”

And thus you see with what caution and moderation we must reprehend our friends in reclaiming them from vices to which they are already subjected; whilst the prevention of them doth require a clear contrary method. For when we are to divert them from the commission of a crime, or to check a violent and headstrong passion, or to push on and excite a phlegmatic lazy humor to great things, we may then ascribe their failings to as dishonorable causes as we please.

Thus Ulysses, when he would awaken the courage of Achilles, in one of the tragedies of Sophocles, tells him, that it was not the business of a supper that put him in such a fret, as he pretended, but because he was now arrived within sight of the walls of Troy. And when Achilles, in a great chafe at the affront, swore he would sail back again with his squadron and leave him to himself, Ulysses came upon him again with this rejoinder:

Come, sir, ‘tis not for this you’d sail away;
But Hector’s near, it is not safe to stay.

And thus, by representing to the bold and valiant the danger of being reputed a coward, to the temperate and sober that of being thought a debauchee, and to the liberal and magnificent the chance of being called stingy and sordid, we spur them on to brave actions and divert them from base and ignominious ones.

Indeed, when a thing is once done and past remedy, we ought to qualify and attemperate our reproofs, and commiserate rather than reprimand. But if it be a business of pure prevention, of stopping a friend in the career of his irregularities, our applications must be vehement, inexorable, and indefatigable; for this is the proper season for a man to show himself a true monitor and a friend indeed. But we see that even enemies reprove each other for faults already committed. As Diogenes said pertinently enough to this purpose, that he who would act wisely ought to be surrounded either with good friends or flagrant enemies; for the one always teach us well, and the other as constantly accuse us if we do ill.

But certainly it is much more eligible to forbear the commission of a fault by hearkening to the good advice of our friends, than afterwards to repent of it by reason of the obloquy of our enemies. And therefore, if for no other reason, we ought to apply our reprehensions with a great deal of art and dexterity, because they are the most sovereign physic that a friend can prescribe, and require not only a due mixture of ingredients in the preparation of them but a seasonable juncture for the patient to take them in.

37 But because, as it has been before observed, reproofs usually carry something of trouble and vexation along with them, we must imitate skilful physicians, who, when they have made an incision in the flesh, leave it not open to the smart and torment that attends it, but chafe and foment it to assuage the pain. So he who would admonish dexterously must not immediately give a man over to the sting and anguish of his reprehensions, but endeavor to skin over the sore with a more mild and diverting converse; like stone-cutters, who, when they have made a fracture in their statues, polish and brighten them afterwards. But if we leave them in pain with their wounds and resentments, and (as it were) with the scars of our reproofs yet green upon them, they will hardly be brought to admit of any lenitive we shall offer for the future. And therefore they who will take upon them to admonish their friends ought especially to observe this main point, not to leave them immediately upon it, nor abruptly break off the conference with disobliging and bitter expressions.

How a man may become aware of his progress in virtue

In the study of music or grammar, I am sure, such a conclusion would be very absurd; for the scholar could never be certain that he had made any improvement in those sciences, if all the while he is a learning he did not exhaust by little and little his former ignorance about them, but remained during the whole progress of his application under the same degree of unskilfulness as at first setting out.

The like may be said of those that are under the hands of a physician. According to this assertion, if the patient take physic which does not recruit his strength or give him ease by abating the severity of the distemper, it is absolutely impossible that he should discern any alteration in himself, before the contrary habit is perfectly and in the highest degree induced, and his body thoroughly sound and well. As in these instances you cannot say the persons have advanced any thing, so long as they perceive no sensible change in themselves by the abatement of the contrary weight, and do not find that their minds are elevated, as it were, in the opposite scale; just so, in truth, is it with those that profess philosophy. They cannot be assured of any progress or improvement, if the soul do not gradually advance and purge off the rest of its former imperfections, but still lie under the like equal pressure and grievance of pure, absolute, unmixed evil, till it have attained the state of perfect, supreme good; for the truth of it is, a wise man cannot in a moment of time change from the lowest degree of vice imaginable to the most heroic perfection of virtue, if he only make a brisk attempt to throw off vice all at once, and do not constantly and resolutely endeavor by little and little to lighten the burthen and dispossess the evil habit of it.

You know very well how much trouble those give themselves who maintain this assertion, and what strange questions they raise with regard to it, — for instance, why a wise virtuous man should never perceive how he became such, but should either be quite ignorant, or at least doubt, that ever by little and little, now adding something, now subtracting and removing others, he advanced to the aggregate perfection of virtue. Now if (as they affirm) the change from bad to good were either so quick and sudden, as that he that was extremely vicious in the morning may become eminently virtuous at night, or that any one going to bed wicked might chance to rise a virtuous man next morning, and, having all the former day’s errors and imperfections absolutely removed out of his mind, might say to them, as it is in the poet,

Vain dreams! farewell, like spectres haste away,
At the new light of virtue’s glorious day;

do you think that any one in the world could be ignorant of so extraordinary a conversion, and perfectly shut his eyes upon the beams of virtue and wisdom so fully and manifestly breaking in upon his soul? In my opinion, if any person should have Caeneus’s foolish wish, and be changed (as it is reported he was) from one sex to the other, it is more probable that such a one should be altogether ignorant of the metamorphosis, than that any should, from a lazy, unthinking, debauched fellow, commence a wise, prudent, and valiant hero, and from a sottish bestiality advance to the perfection of divine life, and yet know nothing at all of the change.

2 It is very good advice, Measure the stone by your rule, and not your rule by the stone. But the Stoics have not observed it; for they, not applying principles to things, but forcing things which have no foundation of agreement in nature to agree to their principles, have filled philosophy with a number of difficulties. One of the hardest to be solved is this, that all men whatsoever (except him who is absolutely perfect) are equally vicious. Hence is that enigma, called progress or proficiency, which, though it has puzzled the learned to solve, is in my opinion very foolish; for it represents those that have advanced a little, and are partly free from inordinate passions and distempers of mind, to be as unhappy as those that are guilty of the most heinous enormities. And indeed the assertion is so absurd, that their own actions are enough to confute it; for while they maintain in their schools that Aristides and Phalaris are equally unjust, that Brasidas and Dolon are equal cowards, and that Plato and Meletus are equally senseless, still in all affairs of life they seem to reject and avoid the latter of these, as too harsh and severe to be softened into compliance, but credit and quote the former in all their writings, as persons of extraordinary worth and esteem. This is what the Stoics assert.

3 But we, who can better agree with Plato in this point, finding by observation that in all kinds of evils, especially that of a weak and unmanaged disposition of mind, there are several degrees of more and less (for herein one advance differs from another, that the miserable darkness which the soul lies under begins more sensibly to abate, when reason by little and little illuminates and purges the soul), may be bold to affirm that the change from bad to good is very easily and manifestly discernible; not as if one were drawn out of a pit on a sudden, and could give no account of the degrees of the ascent, but so plain that the several steps and advances may be computed.

The first argument that comes in my mind is this, by way of simile; pray examine it. You know the art of navigation; when the seamen hoist sail for the main ocean, they give judgment of their voyage by observing together the space of time and the force of the wind that driveth them, and compute that, in all probability, in so many months, with such a gale, they have gone forward to such or such a place. Just so it is in the study of philosophy; one may, if he mind it, give a probable conjecture of a scholar’s proceedings. He that is always at his business, constantly upon the road, never makes any steps or halts, nor meets with obstacles and lets in the way, but under the conduct of right reason travels smoothly, securely, and quietly along, may be assured that he has one true sign of a proficient. This of the poet,

Add many lesser numbers in account,
Your total will to a vast sum amount,

not only holds true as to the increase of money, but also may serve as a rule to the knowledge of the advance of every thing else, especially of proficiency in virtue. Reason, besides its ordinary influence, requires the constancy of application and address which is necessary and usual in all other affairs. Whereas, on the contrary, the irregular proceedings and inconsistent silly assertions of some philosophers do not only lay rubs in the way, and break the measures of a virtuous improvement, but seem to give great advantage to vice, during their lingering and idling upon their journey, to tempt them into by-paths, or over persuade them to return whence they set out.

Astronomers tell us that planets, after they have finished their progressive motion, for some small time acquiesce and become stationary, as they term it. Now in the study of philosophy it is not so; there is no point of rest or acquiescence during the whole procedure, for the nature of progress is to be always advancing, more or less. The scales in which our actions are, as it were, weighed cannot at all stand in equilibrio, but our soul is continually either raised by the addition of good, or cast with the counterpoise of evil.

Therefore, as the oracle told the Cirrhaeans that they ought to fight continually, day and night; so you and every wise man ought to be perpetually upon your guard, and if you can be assured that you maintain a constant combat with vice, that you are always at enmity with it and never so much as come to terms, or receive any diversions, applications, or avocations, as so many heralds from the enemies’ camp, in order to a treaty with it; then you may, with a great deal of confidence and alacrity, go on with the management of your warlike expedition, and very reasonably at last expect a conquest, and enjoy a crown of righteousness for your reward.

4 It is another very good argument to prove that by labor and exercise you have shaken off all stupidity and sluggishness of temper, and that you are arrived at a perfection of virtue, if for the future your resolutions be more firm and your application more intense than they were when you first set out. This appears true, if you but observe its contrary; for it is a very bad sign if, after a small time spent in trial, you find many and repeated intermissions, or your affections yielding or cool in the pursuit. This may be illustrated by what is observable in the growth of a cane. At first it appears above ground with a full and pleasing sprout, which by little and little, taper-wise, by a continued and equal distribution of matter, rises to a very great height. Towards the root you may observe that there are formed certain steps and joints, which are at a considerable distance from one another, because (there) the juice is plentiful and strong. But toward the top the nutrimentive particles vibrate and palpitate, as if they were quite spent with the length of their journey, and thereupon, you see, they form themselves many small, weak, and tender joints, as so many supports and breathing-places. So it happens with those that study philosophy: at first setting out they take long steps and make great advances; but if, after some attempts, they perceive not in themselves any alteration for the better, but meet with frequent checks and avocations the further they go, ordinarily they faint, make any excuses to be off from their engagement, despond of ever going through with it, and thereupon proceed no farther. But, on the contrary, he that is winged with desire flies at the proposed advantage, and by a stout and vigorous pursuit cuts off all pretences of delay from crowding in upon him or hindering his journey.

In love, it is a sign the passion is predominant, if the lover be not only pleased in the enjoyment of the beloved object (for that’s ordinary), but also troubled and grieved at the absence of it. After a manner not unlike this, many youngsters (as I’ve observed) stand affected at the study of philosophy. At first, they buckle to their work with the greatest concern and emulation imaginable; but as soon as ever they are diverted, either by business or any little pretences, the heat of their affection immediately flies off, and they sit down ignorant and very well content. But

He that perceives the pleasing sting of love,
Whose poignant joy his trembling heart doth move,

will not only show that he is a proficient by his virtuous demeanor and agreeableness in all company and discourse; but if he be called from his business, you may perceive him all on fire, in pain, and uneasy in whatsoever he does, whether alone or in company, and so concerned that he is unmindful of his best friends till he is restored to the quest of his beloved philosophy. All of us ought to imitate such a noble example in all our studies. We must not be affected with good discourse only while we are in place, as we are with rich fragrant perfumes (which we never mind, but while we are a smelling to them); but if by chance marriage, an estate, love, or a campaign take us from our business, we must still hunger and thirst after virtue; and the more our proficiency is advanced, by so much the more ought our desire to know what we have not attained disquiet and excite us to the further pursuit and knowledge of it.

5 The grave account which Hesiod gives of proficiency is, in my judgment, either the very same, or comes very near to this which I have now set down. Proficiency is (says he) when all difficulties are removed, all unevenness smoothed and cleared, and the way made easy and passable. It must be smoothed by frequent exercise, cleared by beams of divine light that guide the way to true philosophy, nothing at all of the clouds of doubt, error, or inconstancy in good resolutions remaining, which are as usually incident to learners in their first attempts upon philosophy, as distraction and solicitudes are to those who, sailing from a known land, cannot yet discover the place whither they are bound. Thus I have known impatient sophisters skip over common and ordinary notions, before they have learned or attained better, and lose themselves in the middle of their journey in so troublesome a maze, that they would be willing to return (if they could) to their primitive state of quiet, inactive ignorance. Sextius, a nobleman of Rome, may serve for an instance of this. He quitted all offices and places of honor, that he might more freely and undisturbedly apply himself to the study of philosophy. At first he met with many difficulties; and finding himself unable to encounter or conquer them, out of very despair and despondency, he had thoughts of throwing himself out of a little boat into the river Tiber. Parallel to this is a merry story told of Diogenes of Sinope; when he first put on his gown, it happened to be at a time when the Athenians celebrated a festival with extraordinary banquets, night-drinking, sports, and pageantry usual at great solemnities. The philosopher, as he lay in the holidays in the corner of the street, muffled up in his clothes, to try if he could take a nap, had some running thoughts in his head, which checked the resolutions he had taken as to a philosophical life, and troubled him extremely. He reasoned with himself, that there was no necessity for his entering into so troublesome and singular a way of living, that he thereby deprived himself of all the sweets and pleasures of life, and the like. While he was thinking thus with himself, he espied (as the story goes) a mouse venturing toward him, and now and then nibbling at a mouldy crust that he had in his pouch. This sight (which is much) turned his thoughts, and made him vexed and troubled at himself as much on the other side. What (says he) is the matter with thee, Diogenes? Thou seest this tiny mouse lives well, and is very glad of thy scraps; but thou, who must needs be a person of quality, forsooth, art extremely sorry and out of humor, because thou dost not feast upon down-beds, and canst not have the genteel privilege at this merry time to be drunk as well as others.

Another rational argument of gradual proficiency is when avocations are not frequent upon us, and when they happen, very short; while the substantial rules and precepts of wisdom, as if they had been violently driven out, presently return upon our minds, and dispossess all empty trouble and disconsolate thoughts.

6 And because scholars do not only fancy to themselves difficulties big enough to divert their weak resolutions, but also often meet with serious persuasions from their friends to leave their studies, and because sometimes such smart jests and drolls are put upon them as have often discouraged, frequently quite converted, the endeavors of some; it may seem to you a very good argument of a proficient, if you find yourself indifferent and unconcerned in that point. As, for example, not to be cut to the heart and repine, when you are told that such and such persons by name, your equals once, live splendidly at court, have married great fortunes, or have appeared publicly at the head of a great many freeholders, that are ready to vote for them for some great office or representative’s place. He that is neither discomposed nor very much affected by such news as this is manifestly in the right, and has philosophy by the surer handle. For it is impossible we should leave admiring things which most men esteem, if the habit of virtue were not deeply rooted in us. To avoid passionately what every one cries down may be in some persons the effect of anger and ignorance; but utterly to despise what is admired abroad is a certain sign of true and solid wisdom and resolution. With what satisfaction and complacency many persons advanced to such a height of virtue compare themselves with others, and break out in these verses of Solon!

We will not change Virtue’s immortal crown
For a whole mine of gold.
Gold is uncertain; but what we possess
Is still our own, and never can be less.

None can deny but that it was very great in Diogenes to compare his shifting from the city of Corinth to Athens, and from Thebes to Corinth, to the king of Persia’s taking his progress in the spring to Susa, in winter to Babylon, and to Media in summer. Nor was it an argument of a much less spirit in Agesilaus, who, hearing this same king of Persia styled the Great, presently asked, In what is he greater than I, if he be not juster than I am? Aristotle himself had exactly such notions in the like case; for, writing to Antipater about his scholar Alexander, he says of him, that he ought not to value himself in this respect, that he was advanced above others; for whoever had a true notion of God was really as great as he. And Zeno too deserves to be mentioned, who, hearing Theophrastus commended above any of the philosophers for his number of scholars, put it off thus: His choir is indeed larger than mine, but mine has the sweeter voices.

7 From all these instances you may collect this great truth, that whenever you do, by setting the comforts of virtue and the difficulties and errors of study one against the other, perceive that you have utterly expelled all emulation , jealousy, and every thing else that uses to disturb or discourage young men, you may then assuredly conclude with yourself that you have made very laudable progress.

Another argument of proficiency in virtue is the alteration of your very style of writing, and of your way of managing any argument or discourse. Most of those that nowadays design for scholars (in ordinary speaking) do prosecute almost none but popular studies; to furnish out discourse, and make themselves, as the phrase is, plausible men; some few of them there are who, like silly larks, are taken with the glaring light of natural philosophy, and, measuring themselves by their own levity and conceit, think they are able presently to attain the height of that science. Others like young whelps (‘tis Plato’s simile) love to snap and bite at one another, only to gratify a contentious, sceptical, and sophistical humor, which they at first got by bad tuition and ill-managed studies. Some again, as soon as ever they are initiated in the principles of logic, presently commence sophisters. Others spend their whole time in collecting sentences and historical narrations. These (as Anacharsis said of the Grecians, that he saw no occasion they had for money, but only to count and tell it over) have nothing at all to do, but go about singing and repeating what they have collected into commonplace books, without any other benefit or satisfaction from their labors. To these you may apply that of Antiphanes, which one ingeniously turned to Plato’s scholars. This Antiphanes said merrily, that in a certain city the cold was so intense that words were congealed as soon as spoken, but that after some time they thawed and became audible, so that the words spoken in winter were articulated next summer. Even so, the many excellent precepts of Plato, which he instilled into the tender ears of his scholars, were scarce perceived and distinguished by many of them, till they grew men and attained the warm vigorous summer of their age.

Such a cool disposition to virtue and philosophy, as that philosopher said was in Plato’s scholars when young, often lasts in the most of us (as was hinted before) till our judgments grow to a solid firmness and maturity, and we begin to value those precepts that are able to beget a composure and greatness of mind, and diligently to trace and follow those discourses and precepts whose tracks (as it is in Aesop’s fables) rather look inward than outward, to ourselves rather than others. Sophocles said of himself, that in writing his tragedies he first of all abated and pricked the tumor of Aeschylus’s invention, then corrected the harshness and over artifice of his composition, and, last of all, changed his very style and elocution, the thing which is most considerably persuasive, and which most of all conduces to good manners. Even so, young students, when they pass from the fulness and luxuriancy of panegyric and declamation to that more solid part of philosophy that regulates manners and smooths all rugged and disorderly passions, then begin really to attain true and solid proficiency.

8 Hereupon let me advise you this, — whenever you read the writings or hear the orations of the philosophers, attend always things more than words, and be not taken with what is curious and of a delicate thread and contexture, more than that which is strong, nervous, and beneficial. So also, in perusing poems or histories, be sure that nothing escape you that is appositely said, in relation to the cultivating of manners or the calming turbulent, immoderate passions; but always give it a note, and make it surely your own. Simonides said that a student in philosophy should be like a bee. That laborious creature, when it is amongst flowers, makes it its business industriously to extract the yellow honey out of them all; while others care and seek for nothing else except the smell and the color. So, while some others employ their time in reading the poets only for diversion, or for the wit and fancy which usually adorn their works, you (my dear friend) like a bee amongst a swarm of drones, observe and collect what is sweet, palatable, and worthy your pains, and seem already, by your constant custom and application, to have attained a perfect knowledge of what is eminently good and proper.

As to those that peruse the works of Plato and Xenophon only for the style’s sake, and do cull out what is elegant and Attic, as the cream and flower of those authors, pray what do they do but as it were admire the fragrancy and flavor of medicinal drugs, yet, at the same time, neither understand nor enquire after their healing and purgative qualities? Whereas, those that have advanced to a higher degree of perfection can extract benefit, not only from philosophical discourses, but also from every thing they see or do, and thence draw something that may be proper and fit for their purpose. I will give you some examples of Aeschylus and other very eminent men, which may be very pat to this purpose. Aeschylus chanced to be a spectator at the Isthmian games, where some were engaged at sword play; seeing one of the combatants wounded, and observing that the theatre immediately made a great shouting and hollowing upon it, he jogged one Ion, an inhabitant of the island Chios, who sat next to him, and whispered him thus, Do you see what exercise can do? He that is wounded holds his peace, and the spectators cry out.

Brasidas, the Lacedaemonian captain, by chance caught a mouse among some dry figs; and, being bit by her, let her go, with this exclamation, By Hercules! there is no creature so little or so weak, that it cannot preserve its life if it dares but defend it.

Diogenes may serve for a thousand instances; when he saw a boy drink out of the palm of his hand, he threw away his dish, which he used to carry always with him in his wallet. Thus sedulity and application have a singular virtue to make us knowing and able to extract motives to virtue from every thing that we meet with.

Nor is it a difficult matter to attain such a temper of mind, if the candidates for virtue intermix discourse and reading with their actions; not only “exercising themselves amidst dangers” (as Thucydides said to some), but also engaging pleasures, disputing hard questions, examining precedents, pleading causes, and so (to try themselves thoroughly) undertaking some magistracy or public office, giving thereby demonstration of their opinions and resolution, or rather establishing their resolution by exercise. Whereas, those that are not bred to it, but like novices spy out and catch at any thing that is curious in books, and pragmatically run away with it either to the Exchange, the College, or some club or tavern, deserve no more the name of philosophers, than those quacks that only truck off vile drugs and potions merit the character and value of physicians. Those sophisters seem to me not unlike the bird mentioned in Homer, and to have something of its quality. Whatsoever they catch abroad they presently bring home with them, and cram it into their unfledged chicks, their illiterate scholars, starving their own empty crops the while, as the poet has it; for they neither digest nor convert what they take into true nourishment.

9 It is then indispensably our duty so to manage our discourse, that it may be beneficial both to ourselves and others, we not incurring the censure of being thought vain-glorious or arrogant by any; to be always readier to hear than to teach; and, especially, so to abate and moderate all vehemency and passionate quarrelling about trivial questions, as that we may cease to attend and manage disputations with the same indifferency as you may have seen some exercise hurlbats and cudgelling, — that is, so as to leave the stage with more satisfaction for having had a true hit or coming off conqueror, than for having either learned ourselves or taught our antagonist any manner of skill by the engagement.

An evenness and mildness of temper in all such affairs, which never will suffer us to enter the lists with vehemency and passion, nor to be hot and concerned in settling an argument, nor to scold and give bad words when we have vanquished our adversary, nor to be very much dejected if we chance to be quite baffled, is (I think) a true sign of a great proficient in virtue. Aristippus was a great example of this; for when in a set disputation he was baffled by the sophistry and forehead of an impudent, wild, and ignorant disputant, and observed him to be flushed and high with the conquest; Well! says the philosopher, I am certain, I shall sleep quieter to-night than my antagonist.

Not only upon the close and event of our philosophical contests, but even in the midst of disputation, we may (privately) take an estimate of this good quality in us, which is a sign of a true proficient; for example, if, upon a greater appearance of auditors than was expected, we be not afraid nor in confusion; if, at the thinness of the congregation, when there are but a few to hear us, we be not dejected and troubled; and lastly, if, when we are to speak before a numerous or honorable assembly, we do not, for want of fitting preparation, miss the opportunity for ever.

It is reported that two as famous orators as ever were, Demosthenes and Alcibiades, were somewhat weak and faulty in this point. The timorousness of the former is known to every school-boy ; and as for Alcibiades, though he was (as must be confessed) as sagacious and happy in his thoughts as any man whatever, yet, for want of a little assurance in speaking a thing, he very often miserably lost himself in his pleadings; for he would falter and make pauses in the very middle of his orations, purely for want of a single word or some neat expression, that he had in his papers but could not presently remember . To give you another instance of the prince of poets, Homer; he was so blinded with an over-confidence of his abilities in poetry, that he has slipped a false quantity, and left it on record, in the very first verse of his Iliads.

Seeing then the learnedest men and greatest artists have failed and may fail for want of caution or confidence, it ought more nearly to concern those that earnestly follow virtue, not to slip the least opportunity of improvement, either by company or otherwise; and not overmuch to regard the throng or applause of the theatre, when they do exercise or make any solemn harangue.

10 Nor is it enough that one take care of all his discourses and orations; but he ought also to observe that the whole tenor of his actions be guided by profit rather than vain pomp, and by truth rather than ostentation. For if a passionate lover who has placed his affection upon any beloved object seeks no witnesses to attest its sincerity, but has such an eager desire when alone and in private, that, like a covered flame, it burns more vigorously and insensibly for being shut up; much more ought a moralist and a philosopher who has attained both the habit and exercise of virtue sit down self-contented, and applaud himself in private, neither needing nor desiring encomiasts or auditors from abroad.

There is an humor in some of the poets, of an old peevish housekeeper, that calls to his maid aloud: Do you see, Dionysia (that is his maid’s name), I am now pleased, and have laid by all choler and passion. Just such like is the practice of some, who, as soon as they have done any thing which is obliging and civil, presently blaze it abroad, and turn their own heralds. Such men show plainly that they look beyond themselves for satisfaction; that they are desirous of praise and applause; and that they never were admitted near spectators of virtue, never saw her in her noble, royal dress, but only had some transient sight of her in a dream or an empty airy phantasm; and indeed, that they expose their actions to the public, as painters do their pictures, to be gazed at and admired by the gaping multitude.

Another sign of a proficient in virtue is, when the proficient has given any thing to his friend or done any kindness for any one, if he keeps it to himself and does not blab it to anybody ; and (which is more) if he hath voted right against a majority of biassed suffragans, withstood the dishonest attempts of some rich and powerful man, generously rejected bribes when offered, abstained from inordinate drinking when athirst and alone, or at night, when none sees or knows what he does, lastly, if he hath conquered the briskest attempts of love (as is said of Agesilaus); if (I say) he contain himself from speaking of such actions, and do not in company boast of his performances. This I affirm, — such a one as can prove and try himself by himself, and be fully satisfied in the verdict of his conscience, as of an unexceptionable witness and spectator of what is right and good, shows plainly that his reason looks inward and is well rooted within him, and that the man (as Democritus said) is accustomed to take satisfaction from himself.

To borrow a simile from husbandmen and those that are concerned in the business of the fields, they are always best pleased to see those ears of corn which decline and by reason of their fulness bend downwards to the earth, but look upon those as empty, deceitful, and insignificant, which, because they have nothing in them, grow bolt upright and appear above the rest. So it is amongst students in philosophy; those that are most empty-headed, and have least firmness and solidity, have always the greatest share of confidence, formality, and stiffness in their address, look biggest, walk with the most state, and top upon and condemn others, with the highest arrogance and severity of any living. But when once their brains begin to fill and become well poised with solid notions, they look down into themselves, and quite lay aside that insolent and arrogant humor, which is proper only to youngsters. Give me leave to illustrate this by one simile more. When you pour water into bottles or any other vessels, upon its being instilled into them, the air that was in them before presently flies out and gives place to the more substantial body . Even so it is with those that have had many good precepts instilled into them, and their minds replenished with solid truths. They presently find that all empty vanity flies off; that the imposthume of pride breaks; that they do not value themselves for beard and gown only, but bend their actions and endeavors to the bettering of their rational faculties; and, lastly, that when they reprove they begin at home, turning the edge of their satire and invective upon themselves, even when at the same time they are civil and complaisant to all others beside. It is indeed an argument of a generous and truly brave disposition in a scholar, not to assume the name and character of one, and, as some use to do, to put the philosopher amongst his titles; but if any out of respect chance to give him that compellation, to be surprised, blush, and with a modest smile answer him in that of the poet,

You compliment your friend; he whom you so commend
Must needs be more than man, — far more than I pretend.

Aeschylus says of a young woman that, if ever she have played the wanton, you may discover it in her eyes, and read her affections in amorous glances which she cannot conceal; so a young scholar, if he be once entered in the mysteries and have tasted the sweets of philosophy, cannot possibly suppress the passion and concern for it; as Sappho says, his tongue falters when he would speak its praise; his heart is warm with affection;

A secret flame does run through every part.

You would admire and love the assurance and composedness of his looks, the affectionateness of his eyes, and especially the winning decency and agreeableness of his words and expressions.

Those that are to be initiated in the ceremonies of the Gods run to their temples at first with a great deal of noise, clamor, and rudeness; but as soon as the solemnity is seen and over, they attend with a profound silence and religious fear. So it is with the candidates in philosophy; you may perceive a throng, noise, and pother about the school-doors, by reason that several press thither eagerly, rudely, and violently for reputation, more than learning; but when you are once in, and manifestly see the great light, as if some royal shrine were opened unto you, you are presently possessed with a quite different notion of things; are struck with silence and admiration, and begin, with humility and a reverend composure, to comply with and follow the divine oracle. That which Menedemus said in another case is very apposite to this sort of men. Those that went to the school of Athens were first of all (sofoi) wise, next (filosofoi) lovers of wisdom, then orators, and at last, in course of time, plain common men; for the longer they applied themselves to study and philosophy, so much the more all vanity, pride, and pedantry abated in them, and the nearer they came to plain, downright, honest men.

11 Again, as it is with those that are indisposed and out of order, — some, if a tooth or finger do but ache, presently run to a physician; others send for one to their houses, if they find themselves but the least feverish and desire his advice and assistance; but those that are either melancholical, or but any ways crazed in their heads, cannot endure so much as the looks of a physician, but either keep out of sight when he comes or command him to be gone, being altogether insensible of their condition, — so, in persons that commit any heinous crime or fall into any error, I look upon those as perfectly incurable, who take it ill to be admonished of their fault and look upon reproof and admonition as the greatest rudeness and incivility in the world, whereas those that can quietly hearken and submit to the advice of friends and superiors deserve a more favorable opinion, and may be thought to be of a much better disposition. But the greatest character of hopeful men, and such as may be probably excellent proficients in time, belongs to those who, upon a commission of a fault, immediately apply themselves to such as will reprove and correct them; who plainly disclose their grief and open their malady; who do not rejoice in concealing their distemper, and are not content to have their troubles unknown; lastly, who make a full confession of what they have done amiss, and desire the help of a friend to examine and direct them for the future. Diogenes, I am sure, was of this opinion. He said, that whosoever would be certainly and constantly in the right must get either a virtuous good friend or an incensed ill-natured enemy to his monitor; the one by gentle admonition to reprove and persuade him, the other to work upon him by severity, and awe him into a virtuous course of life.

There is a sort of men in the world, that are so vain and foolish as to take a pride in being the first discoverers of their own imperfections; if they have but a rent or spot in their clothes, or have got a torn pair of shoes on, they are the most forward of any to tell it in company; and (which is more) they are very apt, out of a silly, empty, arrogant humor, to make themselves the subject of their drollery, if they are of a dwarfish stature or any way deformed; yet (which is strange) these very men, at the very same time, endeavor to excuse and palliate the internal imperfections of the mind and the more ugly deformities of the soul, as envy, evil-custom, detraction, voluptuousness, &c., and will not suffer any one either to see or probe them. These are, as it were, so many sore places, and they cannot endure to have them touched and meddled with. Such men as these (I may be bold to say) have very few signs of proficiency, or rather none at all.

Now, on the contrary, he that examines his own failings with the greatest severity, that impartially blames or corrects himself as often as he does amiss, or (which is almost as commendable) grows firmer and better by present advice, as well as more able and ready to endure a reprimand for the future, seems to me truly and sincerely to have rejected and forsaken vice.

It is certainly our duty to avoid all appearance of evil, and to be ashamed to give occasion even to be reputed vicious; yet evil reports are so inconsiderable to a wise man, that, if he have a greater aversion to the nature of evil than to the infamy that attends it, he will not fear what is said of him abroad, nor what calumnies are raised, if so be he be made the better by them. It was handsomely said of Diogenes, when he saw a young spark coming out of a tavern, who at the sight of him drew back: Do not retire, says he, for the more you go backward, the more you will be in the tavern. Even so every vicious person, the more he denies and palliates vice, the more aggravates and confirms it, and with surer footing goes farther into wickedness; like some persons of ordinary rank and quality, who, while they assume above themselves, and out of arrogance would be thought rich, are made really poor and necessitous, by pretending to be otherwise.

Hippocrates, a man of wonderful skill in physic, was very ingenuous in this point, and fit to be imitated by the greatest proficients in philosophy. He confessed publicly, that he had mistaken the nature of the sutures in the skull, and has left an acknowledgment of his ignorance upon record, under his own hand; for he thought it very unworthy a man of his profession not to discover where he was in the wrong, seeing others might suffer and err by his authority. And, indeed, it had been very unreasonable, if he, whose business and concern it was to save others and to set them right, should not have had the courage to cure himself, and to discover his weakness and imperfections in his own faculty.

Pyrrhon and Bion (two eminent philosophers) have given rules of proficiency; but they seem rather signs of a complete habit of virtue, than a progressive disposition to it. Bion told his friend, that they then might be assured of their proficiency, when they could endure a reproof from anybody with the same indifferency and unconcernedness as they could hear the highest encomiums, even such a one as this of the poet:

Sir,
Some heavenly flame inspires your breast;
Live great, rejoice, and be for ever blest.

The other, to wit, Pyrrhon, being at sea and in great danger, by reason of a tempest that arose, took particular notice (as the story goes) of a hog that was on board, which all the while very unconcernedly fed upon some corn which lay scattered about; he showed it to his companions, and told them that they ought to acquire by reading and philosophy such an apathy and unconcernedness in all accidents and dangers as they saw that poor creature naturally have.

12 The opinion which is said to be Zeno’s may deserve our consideration. He said that any one might give a guess at his proficiency from the observation of his dreams, if when asleep he fancied nothing that was immodest, nor seemed to consent to any wicked actions or dishonest intentions, but found his fancy and passions of his mind undisturbed, in a constant calm, as it were, always serene, and enlightened with the beams of divine reason. This very notion was hinted by Plato (as I interpret his words), where he is describing and delineating the soul which is tyrannical in its nature, and showing what manner of operations its fantasy and irrational appetite exert. When a man is asleep, he says, a vicious person designs the satisfying incestuous lust, has a longing for all sorts of meat indifferently, whether allowed or prohibited, and satisfies his appetite and desire in all manner of intemperance which is loose and unregarded, which, in the day-time, either the laws shame him out of, or fear to offend restrains

As now those brute beasts that are accustomed to labor will not, if the reins be let loose, either turn aside or offer to leave the track or stumble in it, so it is with the brutal faculty of the mind; when it is once made tame and manageable by the strength of reason, then it is unwilling carelessly to transgress or saucily to disobey its sovereign’s commands or to comply with any inordinate lusts, either in sleep or sickness; but it carefully observes and maintains its dictates to which it is accustomed, and by frequent exercise advances to perfect strength and intention of virtue.

We find even in our own nature the strange effects of custom. Man is naturally able, by much exercise and the use of a stoical apathy, to bring the body and all its members into subjection, so that not one organ shall perform its operation, — the eyes shall not burst out with tears upon the sight of a lamentable object, the heart shall not palpitate upon the apprehension of fear, and the passions shall not be roused at the sight of any beautiful person, whether man or woman. Now it is much more probable that the faculties of the sense may be so brought in subjection by undergoing such exercise as we speak of, that all its imaginations and motions may be smoothed and made agreeable to right reason, even when we are asleep and keep not sentry. It is reported of Stilpo the philosopher, that he thought he saw Neptune in his sleep, and that he seemed very much displeased with him, because he had not (as was usual with his priests) sacrificed an ox in honor of him. Not in the least daunted at the apparition, he thus boldly accosted it: Neptune! what’s this business you here complain of? You come hither like a child, and are angry with me, because I did not borrow money and run in debt to please you, and fill the city with costly odors, but privately sacrificed to you in my own house such ordinary victims as I could get. At this confident reply, Neptune smiled, and (as the story goes) reached him his hand, as an assurance of his good-will to him, and told him that for his sake he would send the Megarians abundance of fish that season.

In the main we may conclude thus much, that those that have clear and pleasant dreams, and are not troubled with any frightful, strange, vicious, or irregular apparitions in their sleep, may assure themselves that they have some indications and dawnings of proficiency; whereas, on the contrary, those dreams which are mixed with any pain, fear, cowardly aversions from good, childish exultation, or silly grief, so that they are both frightful and unaccountable, are like the breaking waves or the billows of the sea; for the soul, not having attained a perfect evenness of temper, but being under the formation of laws and precepts from whose guidance and discovery it is free in time of sleep, is then slacked from its usual intenseness, and laid open to all passions whatever.

Whether this temper we speak of be an argument of proficiency, or an indication of some other habit which has taken deep root in the soul, grown strong and immovable by all the power of reason, I leave to you to consider and determine.

13 Seeing then an absolute apathy or freedom from all passions whatsoever is a great and divine perfection, and, withal, considering that progress seems to consist in a certain remission and moderation of those very passions we carry about us, it unavoidably follows, that if we will observe our passions, with relation to one another and also to themselves, we may easily find out their differences. For example, first, we may observe from the passions compared with themselves whether our desires be now more moderate than they used to be, fear and anger less and more calm, and whether or no we are more able to quench the heat and flame of our passions than we used to be.

Secondly, by comparing them with one another, we may observe whether we now have a greater share of shame than of fear, whether emulation be without any mixture of envy, whether we have greater desire of glory than of riches, whether we offend (as the musicians term it) in the Dorian or base or in the Lydian or treble notes, — that is, whether we are more inured to abstinence and hardship than otherwise, — whether we are unwilling rather than forward to appear in public, and, lastly, whether we are undue admirers of the persons or performances of others, or despisers both of them and what they can do.

As it is a good sign of recovery of a sick person if the distemper lie in the less principal parts of the body; so in proficiency, if vicious habits be changed into more tolerable passions, it is a symptom that they are going off and ready to be quenched. Phrynis the musician, to his seven strings adding two more, was asked by the magistrates, whether he had rather they should cut the upper or lower of them, the base or treble. Now it is our business to cut off (as it were) both what is above and below, if we would attain to the true medium and equality; for proficiency in the first place remits the excess, and sweetens the harmony of the evil affections, which is (according to Sophocles)

The madman’s greatest pleasure and disease.

14 We have already said that we ought to transfer our judgment to action, and not to suffer our words to remain bare and naked words, but to reduce them to deeds; and that this is the chiefest sign of a proficient. Now another manifest indication is a desire of those things we commend, and a readiness to perform those things which we admire, but whatsoever we discommend, neither to will or endure it. It is probable that all the Athenians highly extolled the courage and valor of Miltiades. But Themistocles (who professed that the trophies of Miltiades broke his sleep, and often forced him out of his bed) did not only praise and admire what he had done, but was manifestly struck with a zeal and emulation of his performances . Therefore we may be assured that we have profited little, while we think it a vanity to admire those that have done well, and cannot possibly be raised to an imitation of them.

To love the person of any man is not sufficient, except it have a mixture of emulation; no more is that love of virtue ardent and exciting, which does not put us forward, and create in our breasts (instead of envy to them) a zealous affection for all good men, and a desire of equal perfection with them. For it is not enough (as Alcibiades was wont to say) that the heart should be turned upside down by hearing the discourses of a philosopher, and that the tears should gush from the eyes; but he that is a proficient indeed, comparing himself with the designs and actions of a good perfect man, is pricked at the same with the consciousness of his own weakness, and transported with hope and desire, and big with irresistible assurance; and indeed such a one is (as Simonides says) like a little sucking foal running by the mother’s side, and desires to be incorporated into the very same nature with a good man. For this is an especial sign of true proficiency, to love and affect their way of life whose actions we emulate, and, upon account of an honorable opinion we always entertain for them, to do as they do. But whosoever he is that entertains a contentious or malicious design against his betters, let him be assured that he is possessed with a greedy desire of honor or greatness, but has neither a true respect nor admiration for virtue.

15 When therefore we once begin so to love good men, as not only (according to Plato) to esteem the wise man himself happy, and him who hears his discourses sharer in his felicity, but also to admire and love his habit, gait, look, and very smile, so as to wish ourselves to be that very person, then we may be assured that we have made very good proficiency.

This assurance will be advanced, if we do not only admire good men in prosperity, but like lovers, who are taken ever with the lisping and pale looks of their mistresses (as Araspes is said to have been smitten with the tears and dejected looks of a mournful and afflicted Panthea), have an affection for virtue in its most mournful dress, so as not at all to dread the banishment of Aristides, the imprisonment of Anaxagoras, the poverty of Socrates, nor the hard fate of Phocion, but to embrace and respect their virtues, even under such injustice, and upon thoughts of it, to repeat this verse of Euripides, —

How do all fortunes decently become
A generous, well-tuned soul!

This is certain, if any one addresses himself to virtue with this resolution, not to be dejected at the appearance of difficulty, but heartily admires and prosecutes its divine perfection, none of the evil we have spoken of can divert his good intentions. To what I have said I may add this, that when we go upon any business, undertake any office, or chance upon any affair whatever, we must set before our eyes some excellent person, either alive or dead; and consider with ourselves what Plato for the purpose would have done in this affair, what Epaminondas would have said, how Lycurgus or Agesilaus would have behaved themselves, that, addressing ourselves and adorning our minds at these mirrors, we may correct every disagreeing word and irregular passion. It is commonly said, that those that have got by heart the names of the Idaei Dactyli make use of them as charms to drive away fear, if they can but confidently repeat them one by one; so the consideration and remembrance of good men, being present and entertained in our minds, do preserve our proficiency in all affections and doubts regular and immovable; wherefore you may judge that this is also a token of a proficient in virtue.

16 You may observe further, that not to be in a confusion, not to blush, not to hide or correct your clothes or any thing about you, at the unexpected appearance of an honorable and wise person, but to have an assurance as if you were often conversant with such, is almost a perfect demonstration of a very intelligent person.

It is reported of Alexander, that one night seeing a messenger joyfully running towards him and stretching out his hand, as if he had something to deliver to him, he said to the apparition, Friend, what news do you bring me? Is Homer risen from the dead? That admirable monarch thought that nothing was wanting to his great exploits but such a herald as Homer.

Consider this, if a young man thrive in the world, it is customary for him to desire nothing more than to be seen in the company of virtuous and good men, to show them his whole furniture, his table, his wife and children, his study, his diary or collections; and he is so pleased with himself, that he wishes his father or tutor were alive, that they might see him in so good a way of living; and he could heartily pray that they were alive, to be spectators of his life and actions. But, on the contrary, those that have neglected their business, or lost themselves in the world, cannot endure the sight or company of their relations without a great deal of fear and confusion.

17 Join this, if you please, to what we said before; for it is no small sign, if the proficient thus esteem every little fault a great one, and studiously observe and avoid all. For, as those persons who despair of ever being rich make little account of small expenses, thinking that little added to a little will never make any great sum, but when they come once to have got a competency, and hope to be at last very rich, it advances their desires, so it happens in the affairs of virtue; — he that does not quiet his mind by saying with himself, “What matters it what comes after? if for the present it be so and so, yet better days will come,” but who attends every thing, and is not careless if the least vice pass uncondemned, but is troubled and concerned at it, such a one makes it appear that he has attained something that is pure, which he brightens by use and will not suffer to corrupt. For a preconceived opinion that nothing we have is valuable (according to Aeschylus) makes us careless and indifferent about every thing.

If any one be to make a dry wall or an ordinary hedge, it matters not much if he makes use of ordinary wood or common stone, any old gravestones, or the like; so wicked persons, who confusedly mix and blend all their designs and actions in one heap, care not what materials they put together. But the proficients in virtue, who have already laid the golden solid foundation of a virtuous life, as of a sacred and royal building, take especial care of the whole work, examine and model every part of it according to the rule of reason, believing that it was well said by Polycletus, that the hardest work remained for them to do whose nails must touch the clay; — that is, to lay the top stone is the great business and masterpiece of the work. The last stroke gives beauty and perfection to the whole piece.

BOOK II

How to profit by one’s enemies

1 1 I observe, my dear Cornelius Pulcher, that you have chosen the mildest form of official administration, in which you are as helpful as possible to the public interests while at the same time you show yourself to be very amiable in private to those who have audience with you. Now it may be possible to find a country, in which, as it is recorded of Crete, there are no wild animals, but a government which has not had to bear with envy or jealous rivalry or contention — emotions most productive of enmity — has not hitherto existed. For our very friendships, if nothing else, involve us in enmities. This is what the wise Chilon had in mind, when he asked the man who boasted that he had no enemy whether he had no friend either. Therefore it seems to me to be the duty of a statesman not only to have thoroughly investigated the subject of enemies in general, but also in his reading of Xenophon to have given more than passing attention to the remark that it is a trait of the man of sense “to derive profit even from his enemies.” Some thoughts, therefore, on this subject, which I recently had occasion to express, I have put together in practically the same words, and now send them to you, with the omission, so far as possible, of matter contained in my Advice to Statesmen, since I observe that you often have that book close at hand.

2 1 Primitive men were quite content if they could escape being injured by strange and fierce animals, and this was the aim and end of their struggles against the wild beasts; but their successors, by learning, as they did, how to make use of them, now profit by them through using their flesh for food, their hair for clothing, their gall and colostrum as medicine, and their skins as armour, so that there is good reason to fear that, if the supply of wild beasts should fail man, his life would become bestial, helpless, and uncivilized. Since, then, it is enough for most people if they can avoid suffering ill-treatment at the hands of their enemies, and since Xenophon asserts that men of sense will even derive profit from those who are at variance with them, we must not refuse him credence, but rather try to discover the system and the art through which this admirable advantage is to be gained by those who find it impossible to live without an enemy.

The farmer cannot domesticate every tree, nor can the huntsman tame every beast; and so they have sought to derive profit from these in ways to meet their other needs: the farmer from the trees that bear no fruit and the huntsman from the wild animals. The water of the sea is unfit to drink and tastes vile; yet fish thrive in it, and it is a medium for the dispatch and conveyance of travellers everywhere. The Satyr, at his first sight of fire, wished to kiss and embrace it, but Prometheus said,

You, goat, will mourn your vanished beard,

for fire burns him who touches it, yet it furnishes light and heat, and is an instrument of every craft for those who have learned to use it. So look at your enemy, and see whether, in spite of his being in most respects harmful and difficult to manage, he does not in some way or other afford you means of getting hold of him and of using him as you can use no one else, and so can be of profit to you. 87 Many of the circumstances of life are unkindly and hateful and repellent to those who have to meet them; yet you observe that some have employed their attacks of bodily illness for quiet resting, and trials which have fallen to the lot of many have but strengthened and trained them. Some, too, have made banishment and loss of property a means of leisure and philosophic study, as did Diogenes and Crates. And Zeno, on learning that the ship which bore his venture had been wrecked, exclaimed, “A real kindness, O Fortune, that thou, too, dost join in driving us to the philosopher’s cloak!” For just as those animals which have the strongest and soundest stomachs can eat and digest snakes and scorpions, band there are some even that derive nourishment from stones and shells (for they transmute such things by reason of the vigour and heat of their spirit), while fastidious and sickly persons are nauseated if they partake of bread and wine, so fools spoil even their friendships, while wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities.

3 1 In the first place, then, it seems to me that the most harmful element in enmity may be made most profitable to those who give heed. What is this? Your enemy, wide awake, is constantly lying in wait to take advantage of your actions, and seeking to gain some hold on you, and keeping a constant patrol about your life; and not only does his sight, like the sight of Lynceus, penetrate the oak-tree and stones and tiles, but your enemy, through every friend and servant and acquaintance as well, so far as possible, plays the detective on your actions and digs his way into your plans and searches them through and through. Oftentimes we do not learn, until too late, of the illness or the deaths of our friends, so careless are we and neglectful; but our curiosity about our enemies all but prompts us to pry into their dreams; sickness, debts, and conjugal disagreements are more likely to be unknown to the very persons affected than to their enemy. Especially does he try to get hold of their failings and ferret them out. And just as vultures are drawn to the smell of decomposed bodies, but have no power to discover those that are clean and healthy, so the infirmities, meannesses, and untoward experiences of life rouse the energies of the enemy, and it is such things as these that the malevolent pounce upon and seize and tear to pieces. Is this then profitable? Assuredly it is, to have to live circumspectly, to give heed to one’s self, and not to do or say anything carelessly or inconsiderately, but always to keep one’s life unassailable as though under an exact regimen. For the circumspection which thus represses the emotions and keeps the reasoning power within bounds gives practice and purpose in living a life that is fair and free from reproach. For just as states which are chastened by border warfare and continual campaigning become well content with good order and a sound government, so persons who have been compelled on account of enmities to practise soberness of living, to guard against indolence and contemptuousness, and to let some good purpose prompt each act, are insensibly led by force of habit to make no mistakes, and are made orderly in their behaviour, even if reason co-operate but slightly. For when men keep always ready in mind the thought that

Priam and Priam’s sons would in truth have cause for rejoicing,

it causes them to face about and turn aside and abandon such things as give their enemies occasion for rejoicing and derision. Furthermore, we observe that the Dionysiac artists often play their parts in the theatres in a listless, dispirited, and inaccurate way when they are by themselves; but when there is rivalry and competition with another company, then they apply not only themselves but their instruments more attentively, picking their strings and tuning them and playing their flutes in more exact harmony. So the man who knows that his enemy is his competitor in life and repute is more heedful of himself, 88 and more circumspect about his action, and brings his life into a more thorough harmony. For it is a peculiar mark of vice, that we feel more ashamed of our faults before our enemies than before our friends. This is the ground of Nasica’s remark, when some expressed their belief that the power of the Romans was now secure, inasmuch as the Carthaginians had been annihilated and the Achaeans reduced to subjection. “Nay,” he said, “now is our position really dangerous, since we have left for ourselves none to make us either afraid or ashamed.”

4 1 Moreover, as a supplement to this take the declaration of Diogenes, which is thoroughly philosophic and statesmanlike: “How shall I defend myself against my enemy?” “By proving yourself good and honourable.” Men are much distressed when they see their enemies’ horses winning renown or their dogs gaining approval. At the sight of a well-tilled field or a flourishing garden they groan. What, think you, would be their state of mind if you were to show yourself to be an honest, sensible man and a useful citizen, of high repute in speech, clean in actions, orderly in living,

Reaping the deep-sown furrow of your mind

From which all goodly counsels spring?

Pindar says,

The vanquished are bound

In the fetters of silence profound,

not absolutely or universally, however, but only those who realize that they are outdone by their enemies in diligence, goodness, magnanimity, kindly deeds, and good works. These are the things which, as Demosthenes puts it, “retard the tongue, stop the mouth, constrict the throat, and leave one with nothing to say.”

Be thou unlike the base; this thou canst do.

If you wish to distress the man who hates you, do not revile him as lewd, effeminate, licentious, vulgar, or illiberal, but be a man yourself, show self-control, be truthful, and treat with kindness and justice those who have to deal with you. And if you are led into reviling, remove yourself as far as possible from the things for which you revile him. Enter within the portals of your own soul, look about to see if there be any rottenness there, lest some vice lurking somewhere within whisper to you the words of the tragedian:

Wouldst thou heal others, full of sores thyself?

If you call your enemy uneducated, strive to intensify in yourself the love of learning and industry; if you call him a coward, rouse even more your self-reliance and manliness; if you call him unchaste and licentious, obliterate from your soul whatever trace of devotion to pleasure may be lurking there unperceived. For there is nothing more disgraceful or painful than evil-speaking that recoils upon its author. So reflected light appears to be the more troublesome in cases of weak eyesight, and the same is true of censures that by the truth are brought back upon the very persons who are responsible for them. For as surely the north-east wind brings the clouds, so surely does a bad life bring revilings upon itself.

5 1 As often as Plato found himself in the company of persons whose conduct was unseemly, he was wont to say to himself, “Is it possible that I am like them?” But if the man who reviles another’s life will at once carefully inspect his own, and readjust it by directing and turning it aside into the opposite course, he will have gained something useful from this reviling, which, otherwise, not only gives the impression of being useless and inane, but is so in fact.

Now most people laugh if a man who is bald or hump-backed reviles and jeers at others for being in such case; for it is altogether ridiculous to indulge in reviling and jeering at anything that affords to another the opportunity for a caustic retort. For example, Leo of Byzantium, being reviled by a humpback for the weakness of his eyes, said, “You reproach me with that which can happen to any man, while you bear on your back the mark of God’s wrath!” Do not therefore ever revile an adulterer when you yourself are given to unnatural lust, nor a profligate when you yourself are stingy.

Own kin are you of her who slew her spouse

are the words of Alcmeon to Adrastus. What then does Adrastus say? He reproaches the speaker with a shameful deed which is not another’s but all his own:

89 But you yourself slew her who gave you birth.

Domitius remarked to Crassus, “Did you not weep at the death of a lamprey which was being kept for you in a fish-pond?” And the other replied, “Did you not bury three wives and not shed a tear?” The man who is going to indulge in reviling need not be smart and loud-voiced and aggressive, but he must be irreproachable and unimpeachable. For upon nobody does the divine power seem so to enjoin the precept, “Know thyself,” as upon him who purposes to censure another, so that such persons may not, by saying what they want to say, have to hear what they do not want to hear. For a person of this type, as Sophocles puts it,

By babbling thoughtless talk is wont to hear

Against his will the words he willing speaks.

6 1 There may be, then, so much that is profitable and useful in reviling one’s enemy; but no less profit lies in the alternative of being reviled oneself and ill spoken of by one’s enemies. Hence Antisthenes was quite right in saying that, as a matter of self-preservation, men have need of true friends or else of ardent enemies; for the first by admonition, and the second by reviling, turn them from error. But since friendship’s voice has nowadays become thin and weak when it comes to frank speaking, while its flattery is voluble and its admonition mute, we have to depend upon our enemies to hear the truth. For as Telephus, unable to find a suitable physician, subjected his wound to his enemy’s spear, so those who are cut off from benevolent admonition must submit with patience to the remarks of a malevolent enemy if he exposes and reprehends their vice, and they must give consideration to the facts only, and not to what is in the mind of the detractor. Another parallel is the case of the man who, with intent to kill the Thessalian Prometheus, smote with his sword a tumour which Prometheus had, and opened it so that the man’s life was saved, and he obtained relief from his tumour through its bursting; so oftentimes reviling launched upon a man by the prompting of anger or enmity cures some evil in his soul which either was not recognized or was disregarded by him. But most persons on being reviled do not stop to think whether the reproach is applicable to themselves, but they try to think what other form of reproach is applicable to the reviler, and, just as wrestlers do not wipe the dust from off their own bodies, so these persons do not wipe off the revilings from themselves, but they besmear one another, and in consequence get besmirched and begrimed by each other as they grapple together. But it is most imperative that the man who is ill spoken of by an enemy should rid himself of the attribute in question, than that he should get rid of a stain on his clothes to which his attention has been called; and if anybody mentions things which are not really attributes of ours, we should nevertheless seek to learn the cause which has given rise to such slanderous assertions, and we must exercise vigilance, for fear that we unwittingly commit some error either approximating or resembling the one mentioned. For example, an unwarranted suspicion of unmanliness was aroused against Lacydes, king of the Argives, by a certain arrangement of his hair and a mincing gait, and Pompey suffered in the same way on account of his habit of scratching his head with one finger, although he was very far removed from effeminacy and licentiousness. Crassus incurred the charge of being too intimate with one of the Vestal virgins, when he only wanted to buy from her a piece of good land, and for this reason had many private interviews with her and paid her much attention. Again, Postumia’s ready laughter and overbold talk in men’s company put her under unjust suspicion, that she was tried for unchastity. She was found innocent of the charge, but in dismissing her the Pontifex Maximus, Spurius Minucius, reminded her that the language she used should have no less dignity than her life. And again Pausanias inflicted on Themistocles, who was doing nothing wrong, the suspicion of treason by treating him as a friend, and by writing and sending messages to him continually.

7 1 Whenever, then, anything untrue has been said, you must not despise and disregard it just because it is false, but rather consider what word or act of yours, which of your pursuits or associations, 90 has given colour to the calumny, and then be studiously careful to avoid it. For if others by becoming involved in undesired situations thereby learn a useful lesson — just as Merope says that

Inconstant Fortune took from me,

To pay her fee, the dearest that I had,

But she for that hath made me wise —

what is to hinder a man from taking his enemy as his teacher without fee, and profiting thereby, and thus learning, to some extent, the things of which he was unaware? For there are many things which an enemy is quicker to perceive than a friend (for Love is blind regarding the loved one, as Plato says), and inherent in hatred, along with curiosity, is the inability to hold one’s tongue. Hiero was reviled by one of his enemies for his offensive breath; so when he went home he said to his wife, “What do you mean? Even you never told me of this.” But she being virtuous and innocent said, “I supposed that all men smelt so.” Thus it is that things which are perceptible, material, and evident to all the world, may sooner be learned from our enemies than from our friends and close associates.

8 1 But, quite apart from this, control over the tongue, which is no small part of virtue, is something which it is impossible to keep always in subjection and obedience to the reasoning faculties, unless a man by training, practice, and industry has mastered the worst of his emotions, such as anger, for example. For the “voice that slips out unintended,” and the

Word that has ‘scaped the lips’ prison,

and

Some of the sayings that flit forth of themselves,

are all incident to temperaments that are quite untrained, and are unsteady and fluctuating, so to speak, owing to weakness of will, headstrong opinions, and a reckless way of living. Just for a word, the lightest thing in the world, is ordained, according to the divine Plato, heaviest punishment, coming from both gods and men. But silence cannot under any circumstances be called to an accounting (it is more than a preventive of thirst, as Hippocrates says of it), and in the midst of reviling it is dignified and Socratic, or rather Heraclean, if it be true that Heracles

Not so much as to a fly gave heed to words of hatred.

Indeed, there is nothing more dignified and noble than to maintain a calm demeanour when an enemy reviles one,

Passing by a man’s scoffs

Just as swimmers swim past a precipitous rock,

but far more important is the practice. If you once acquire the habit of bearing an enemy’s abuse in silence, you will very easily bear up under a wife’s attack when she rails at you, and without discomposure will patiently hear the most bitter utterances of a friend or a brother; and when you meet with blows or missiles at the hands of a father or mother, you will show no sign of passion or wrath. For instance, Socrates bore with Xanthippe, who was irascible and acrimonious, for he thought that he should have no difficulty in getting along with other people if he accustomed himself to bear patiently with her; but it is much better to secure this training from the scurrilous, angry, scoffing, and abusive attacks of enemies and outsiders, and thus accustom the temper to be unruffled and not even impatient in the midst of reviling.

9 1 In this manner, then, it is possible for us to display the qualities of gentleness and forbearance in connexion with our enmities, and also straightforwardness, magnanimity, and goodness better than in our friendships. For it is not so honourable to do a good turn to a friend as it is disgraceful not to do it when he is in need; but even to forgo taking vengeance on an enemy when he offers a good opportunity is a handsome thing to do. But in case a man shows compassion for an enemy in affliction, and gives a helping hand to him when he has come to be in need, and displays some concern and zeal in behalf of his children and his household affairs when they come to want, I say that whosoever does not feel affection for such a man because of his kindliness, or does not commend his goodness,

Hath a black heart

91 Forged from adamant or else from steel.

When Caesar gave orders that the statues in honour of Pompey, which had been thrown down, should be restored, Cicero said to him, “You have restored Pompey’s statues, but you have made your own secure.” Wherefore there must be no scanting of commendation or due honour in the case of an enemy who has justly gained a fair repute. For such an attitude wins greater commendation for those who bestow it, and inspires confidence, when later a man makes a complaint that he does so, not because he hates the person, but because he disapproves of the action. But best of all, and most advantageous, is the fact that a man is farthest removed from envying the good fortune of his friends or the success of his relatives, if he has acquired the habit of commending his enemies, and feeling no pang and cherishing no grudge when they prosper. And yet what other process of training produces greater benefit to our souls or a better disposition, than does that which takes from us all our jealousy and our proneness to envy? Just as many of the things which are necessary in war, but bad under other conditions, when they once acquire the sanction of custom and law, cannot easily be abolished by the people even though the people are being injured by them, so enmity introduces envy along with hatred, and leaves as a residue jealousy, joy over others’ misfortunes, and vindictiveness. Moreover, knavery, deceit, and intrigue, which seem not bad or unjust when employed against an enemy, if once they find a lodgement, acquire a permanent tenure, and are hard to eject. The next thing is that men of themselves employ these against their friends through force of habit, unless they are on their guard against using them against their enemies. If then Pythagoras was right when, in trying to accustom men to refrain from cruelty and rapacity in connexion with dumb animals, he used to intercede with fowlers, and buy up catches of fish and direct that they be released, and forbid the killing of any domesticated animal, it is surely a grander achievement by far, din disagreements and contentions with human beings, for a man to be a noble, honest, and ingenuous enemy, and to repress and put down his base, ignoble, and knavish propensities, so that in his dealings with his friends he may be always steadfast and may keep himself from wrongdoing. Scaurus was an enemy of Domitius and his accuser before the law. Now a servant of Domitius came to Scaurus before the trial, claiming to have information on some matters that had escaped Scaurus’s knowledge, but Scaurus would not let him speak, and caused the man to be arrested and taken back to his master. When Cato was prosecuting Murena for corrupt political practices and was getting together his evidence, there followed him, in accordance with the usage of the time, men who watched what was being done. Very often they would ask him if he was intending that day to gather evidence or to do any work on the case, and if he said “No,” they believed him and went away. In these facts may be found the greatest proof of Cato’s repute; but it is a greater thing, and indeed the noblest, that, if we acquire the habit of practising honesty in dealing even with our enemies, we shall never deal dishonestly and knavishly with our intimate associates and friends.

10 1 But since

On every lark a crest must grow,

as Simonides puts it, and since all human nature bears its crop of contention, jealousy, and envy,

Boon comrade of rattle-brained men,

as Pindar says, a man would profit in no moderate degree by venting these emotions upon his enemies, and turning the course of such discharges, so to speak, as far away from his associates and relatives. This fact, as it seems, a statesman, Demus by name, apprehended: when he found himself on the winning side in a civic strife in Chios, he advised his party associates not to banish all their opponents, but to leave some of them behind, 92”in order,” he said, “that we may not begin to quarrel with our friends, through being completely rid of our enemies.” So also in our own case, if our emotions of this sort are expended upon our enemies, they will cause less annoyance to our friends. For “a potter” must not “envy potter,” nor “a minstrel a minstrel,” as Hesiod puts it, nor must there be any feeling of rivalry against a neighbour or relative or brother who is “winning his way towards riches” and meeting with prosperity. But if there is no other way of getting rid of strifes, and contentions, accustom yourself to feel the sting of resentment when your enemies enjoy health and happiness, and whet your contentiousness to a sharp jagged edge on these. Just as skilled gardeners believe that they improve their roses and violets by planting beside them garlic and onions (since whatever pungency and malodorousness there is in what the plants feed on is all drawn off into the vegetables), thus also your enemy, by taking up and diverting to himself your malice and jealousy, will render you more kindly and less disagreeable to your friends in their prosperity. For this reason it is with our enemies that we must also engage in rivalry for repute or office or honest money-getting, not only feeling the sting of resentment if they get the advantage of us, but also watching carefully every means by which they get the advantage, and trying to surpass them in painstaking, diligence, self-control, and self-criticism: after the manner of Themistocles, who said that Miltiades’ victory at Marathon would not let him sleep. For he who thinks that it is by mere good luck that his enemy surpasses him in public offices, in pleading cases, in state administration, or in his standing with friends and leading men, and who from activity and emulation sinks down into a state of utter jealousy and discouragement, has abiding with him an envy that is inert and ineffectual. If, however, a man is not blind in regard to the object of his hatred, but makes himself an honest observer of the other’s life, character, words, and deeds, he will discover that most of the successes which excite the envy of others come to those who have won them as the result of painstaking, forethought, and fair conduct, and so, bending all his energies in this direction, he will put into practice his own ambitions and high aspirations, and will eradicate his listlessness and indolence.

11 But even if our enemies by flattery, knavery, bribery, or hireling service appear to reap their reward in the form of dishonourable and sordid influence at court or in the government, they will not be a source of annoyance but rather of joy to us when we compare our own freedom, the simplicity of our life, and its immunity from scurrilous attack. For “all the gold on earth and beneath the earth is not worth so much as virtue,” as Plato says, and we must always keep ready in mind the sentiment of Solon:

But we will not take in exchange
All of their wealth for our virtue,

nor yet the acclamations of spectators who have dined at our expense, nor honours such as front seats among eunuchs and concubines, and royal governorships; for nothing enviable or noble ever springs from dishonour. But since “love is blind regarding the loved one,” as Plato says, and it is rather our enemies who by their unseemly conduct afford us an opportunity to view our own, neither our joy at their failures nor our sorrow at their successes ought to go without being employed to some purpose, but we should take into account both their failures and successes in studying how by guarding against the former we may be better than they, and by imitating the latter no worse.

On having many friends

93 1 1   Meno, the Thessalian, who felt that he had had a good training in debating, and, to quote Empedocles’ familiar expression, was

Haunting the lofty heights of wisdom,

was asked by Socrates what virtue is; and when he replied impulsively and promptly that there is a virtue appropriate to a child and to an old man, to a grown man and to a woman, to a public official and to a private citizen, to a master and to a servant, Socrates exclaimed, “A fine answer! for when asked for one virtue you have stirred up a whole swarm of virtues,” inferring, not badly, that it was because the man knew not a single virtue that he was naming so many. And might not we also be subject to ridicule because we, who are not yet in secure possession of one friendship, are afraid that we may unwittingly become involved in a multitude of friendships? We hardly differ at all from a man who, being maimed or blind, is afraid that he may become a Briareus of the hundred hands or an Argus all-seeing. And yet we commend above measure the youth in Menander’s play who says that any man counts it a marvellous good thing

If he but have the shadow of a friend.

2 1   One thing which stands out among many others, as particularly antagonistic to our acquisition of friendship, is the craving for numerous friends, which is like that of licentious women, for because of our frequent intimacies with many different persons we cannot keep our hold on our earlier associates, who are neglected and drift away. A better comparison, perhaps, is the nursling of Hypsipyle, who seated himself in the meadow, and

One after another caught up

Handfuls of flowers with joyful heart,

But with childhood’s yearning unsated.

So it is with all of us: because anything new attracts us but soon palls on us, it is always the recent and freshly blooming friend that allures us and makes us change our minds, even while we are busy with many beginnings of friendship and intimacy at the same time, which go but little further, since, in our longing for the person we pursue, we pass over the one already within our grasp.

In the first place, then, let us begin at the hearth-stone, as the saying is, with the story of men’s lives which history has left us regarding steadfast friends, and let us take as witness and counsellor in our discussion the long and distant ages in which are mentioned, as paired in the bond of friendship, Theseus and Peirithoüs, Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes and Pylades, Phintias and Damon, Epameinondas and Pelopidas. For friendship is a creature that seeks a companion; it is not like cattle and crows that flock and herd together, and to look upon one’s friend as another self and to call him “brother” as though to suggest “th’other,” is nothing but a way of using duality as a measure of friendship. It is impossible to acquire either many slaves or many friends with little coin. What then is the coin of friendship? It is goodwill and graciousness combined with virtue, than which nature has nothing more rare. It follows, then, that a strong mutual friendship with many persons is impossible, but, just as rivers whose waters are divided among branches and channels flow weak and thin, so affection, naturally strong in a soul, if portioned out among many persons become utterly enfeebled. This is the reason why, in the case of animals, love for their young is more strongly implanted by nature in those that give birth to but one at a time; 94 and Homer’s name for a beloved son is “the only one, child of our eld,” that is to say, born to parents who neither have nor can ever have another child.

3 1   We do not maintain that our friend should be “the only one,” but along with others let there be some “child of our eld” and “late-begotten,” as it were, who has consumed with us in the course of time the proverbial bushel of salt, not as is the fashion nowadays, by which many get the name of friend by drinking a single glass together, or by spending a night under the same roof, and so pick up a friendship from inn, gymnasium, or market-place.

In the houses of rich men and rulers, the people see a noisy throng of visitors offering their greetings and shaking hands and playing the part of armed retainers, and they think that those who have so many friends must be happy. Yet they can see a far greater number of flies in those persons’ kitchens. But the flies do not stay on after the good food is gone, nor the retainers after their patron’s usefulness is gone. But true friendship seeks after three things above all else: virtue as a good thing, intimacy as a pleasant thing, and usefulness as a necessary thing, for a man ought to use judgement before accepting a friend, and to enjoy being with him and to use him when in need of him, and all these things stand in the way of one’s having many friends; but most in the way is the first (which is the most important) — the approval through judgement. Therefore we must, in the first place, consider whether it is possible in a brief period of time to test dancers who are to dance together, or rowers who are to pull together, or servants who are to be guardians of property or attendants of children, let alone the testing of a multitude of friends who are to strip for a general contest with every kind of fortune, each one of whom

Puts his successes with the common store,

And shares in bad luck, too, without distress.

For no ship is launched upon the sea to meet so many storms, nor do men, when they erect protecting walls for strongholds, and dams and moles for harbours, anticipate perils so numerous and so great as those from which friendship, rightly and surely tried, promises a refuge and protection. But when some thrust their friendship upon us without being tried, and are found to be like bad coins when put to the test,

Those who are bereft rejoice,

And those who have them pray for some escape.

But here is the difficulty — that it is not easy to escape or to put aside an unsatisfactory friendship; but as harmful and disquieting food can neither be retained without causing pain and injury, nor ejected in the form in which it was taken in, but only as a disgusting and repulsive mess, so an unprincipled friend either causes pain and intense discomfort by his continued association, or else with accompanying enmity and hostility is forcibly ejected like bile.

4 1   We ought therefore not to accept readily chance acquaintances, or attach ourselves to them, nor ought we to make friends of those who seek after us, but rather we should seek after those who are worthy of friendship. For one should by no means take what can easily be taken. In fact we step over or thrust aside bramble and brier, which seize hold upon us, and make our way onward to the olive and the vine. Thus it is always an excellent thing not to make an intimate acquaintance of the man who is ready with his embraces, but rather, of our own motion, to embrace those of whom we approve as worthy of our attention and useful to us.

5 1   Just as Zeuxis, when some persons charged him with painting slowly, retorted by saying, “Yes, it takes me a long time, for it is to last long,” so it is necessary to preserve friendship and intimacy by adopting them only after spending a long time in passing judgement upon them. Is it, then, true that while it is not easy to pass judgement on a large number of friends, yet it is easy to associate with a large number at the same time, or is this also impossible? Now it is a fact that the enjoyment of friendship lies in its intimacy, and the pleasantest part of it is found in association and daily companionship:

Never in life again shall we take counsel together

Sitting apart from our comrades.

95 And in regard to Odysseus, Menelaus says:

Else there were nothing

Which could have parted us twain in the midst of our love and enjoyment;

No, not till Death’s dark cloud had wrapped its shadow around us.

Now what is commonly called having a multitude of friends apparently produces the opposite result. For friendship draws persons together and unites them and keeps them united in a close fellowship by means of continual association and mutual acts of kindness —

Just as the fig-juice fastens the white milk firmly and binds it,

as Empedocles puts it (for such is the unity and consolidation that true friendship desires to effect); but, on the other hand, having a multitude of friends causes disunion, separation, and divergence, since, by calling one hither and thither, and transferring one’s attention now to this person, now to that, it does not permit any blending or close attachment of goodwill to take place in the intimacy which moulds itself about friendship and takes enduring form. This at once suggests also the inequality there must be and embarrassment about rendering services, since the very useful elements in friendship are rendered practically useless by having many friends. For

In divers men solicitude excites conduct diverse.

For neither do our natures tend in the same direction as our impulses, nor do we, day in and day out, meet with the same sort of fortune; and the occasions which prompt our various actions, like the winds, help some friends on their way, and are adverse to others.

6 1   But if all our friends want the same things at the same time, it is hard to satisfy all, in either their counsels, their public life, their ambitions, or their dispensing of hospitality. And if at one and the same time they chance to be occupied in diverse activities and experiences, and call upon us at the same instant, one to join him on a voyage to foreign parts, another to help him in defending a suit, another to sit with him as judge, another to help him in managing his buying and selling, another to help him celebrate his wedding, another to mourn with him at a funeral,

The city is with burning incense filled;

Full too of joyous hymns and doleful groans

is the possession of a host of friends. It is impossible to be with them all, and unnatural to be with none, and yet to do a service to one alone, and thus to offend many, is a source of vexation:

For fond affection does not brook neglect.

Yet people are more tolerant of acts of negligence and remissness on the part of their friends, and they accept from them without anger such excuses as “I forgot,” “I didn’t know.” But the man who says, “I did not appear with you when your case was in court, for I was appearing with another friend,” and “I did not come and see you when you had fever, for I was busy helping so-and so to entertain some friends,” thus alleging, as the reason for his inattention, his attention to others, does not absolve himself from blame, but only aggravates the trouble by arousing jealousy. But most people, apparently, look at the possession of a host of friends merely from the point of view of what such friendships are able to bestow, and overlook what these demand in return, forgetting that he who accepts the services of many for his needs must in turn render like service to many in their need. Therefore, just as Briareus in purveying for fifty bellies with an hundred hands had no advantage over us who manage one stomach with what two hands provide, so in making use of many friends is involved also serving many, and sharing in their anxieties, preoccupations, and troubles. For no credence is to be given to Euripides when he says:

In the friendship which mortals with each other form

Moderation should rule, and it never should reach

To the souls’ inmost marrow; and easy to loose

Should the spells ever be that are laid on the mind

So to thrust them aside or to draw them close,

thus easing off one’s friendship or hauling it close according to exigencies, like the sheet of a ship’s sail. But let us, my dear Euripides, turn the application of this advice to our enmities, and advise the use of “moderation” in our disagreements, “not reaching the souls’ inmost marrow,” and that hatred, anger, complainings, and suspicions be “easy to loose,” 96 and commend rather to us the Pythagorean maxim, “not to clasp hands with many”; that is, not to make many friends nor to welcome a common and indiscriminate friendship, or even a friendship with one person, if the coming of any friendship into one’s life brings with it many afflictions, wherein refusal to share the other’s anxieties, burdens, toils, and dangers is altogether intolerable for free-born and generous persons.

There is truth in the remark of the wise Chilon, who, in answer to the man who boasted of having no enemy, said, “The chances are that you have no friend either.” For enmities follow close upon friendships, and are interwoven with them, inasmuch as 7 bit is impossible for a friend not to share his friend’s wrongs or disrepute or disfavour; for a man’s enemies at once look with suspicion and hatred upon his friend, and oftentimes his other friends are envious and jealous, and try to get him away. As the oracle given to Timesias about his colony prophesied:

Soon shall your swarms of honey-bees turn out to be hornets,

so, in like manner, men who seek for a swarm of friends unwittingly run afoul of hornet’s nests of enemies.

Besides, the resentment of an enemy and the gratitude of a friend do not weigh equally in the balance. See what treatment Alexander meted out to the friends and family of Philotas and Parmenio, Dionysius those of Dion, Nero those of Plautus, and Tiberius those of Sejanus, torturing and killing them. For as the golden crown and the robe of Creon’s daughter did not help Creon, but, as he suddenly ran to her and clasped her in his arms, the fire, fastening upon him, burned him up and destroyed him as well as his daughter, so some persons without deriving any benefit from their friends’ good fortunes, perish with them in their misfortunes. This is the experience especially of men of culture and refinement, as Theseus, for example, shared with Peirithoüs his punishment and imprisonment,

Yoked fast in duty’s bonds not forged by man,

and Thucydides asserts that in the pestilence those who had the highest claim to virtue perished with their friends who were ill; for they did not spare themselves in going, as they did, to visit those who had claims on their friendship.

8 1   For these reasons it is not a fit thing to be thus unsparing of our virtue, uniting and intertwining it now with one and now with another, but rather only with those who are qualified to keep up the same participation, that is to say, those who are able, in a like manner, to love and participate. For herein plainly is the greatest obstacle of all to having a multitude of friends, in that friendship comes into being through likeness. Indeed, if even the brute beasts are made to mate with others unlike themselves only by forcible compulsion, and crouch aside, and show resentment as they try to escape from each other, while with animals of their own race and kind they consort with mutual satisfaction, and welcome the participation with a ready goodwill, how then is it possible for friendship to be engendered in differing characters, unlike feelings, and lives which hold to other principles? It is true that the harmony produced on harp and lyre gets its consonance through tones of dissonant pitch, a likeness being somehow engendered between the higher and the lower notes; but in our friendship’s consonance and harmony there must be no element unlike, uneven, or unequal, but all must be alike to engender agreement in words, counsels, opinions, and feelings, and it must be as if one soul were apportioned among two or more bodies.

9 1   What man is there, then, so indefatigable, so changeable, so universally adaptable, that he can assimilate and accommodate himself to many persons, without deriding the advice of Theognis when he says:

Copy this trait of the cuttle-fish, which changes its colour

So as to seem to the eye like to the rock where it clings?

However, the changes in the cuttle-fish have no depth, but are wholly on the surface, which, owing to its closeness or looseness of texture, takes up the emanations from objects which come near to it; whereas friendships seek to effect a thorough-going likeness in characters, feelings, language, pursuits, and dispositions. Such varied adaptation were the task of a Proteus, not fortunate and not at all scrupulous, who by magic can change himself often on the very instant from one character to another, reading books with the scholarly, rolling in the dust with wrestlers, following the hunt with sportsmen, getting drunk with topers, and taking part in the canvass of politicians, possessing no firmly founded character of his own. And as the natural philosophers say of the formless and colourless substance band material which is the underlying basis of everything and of itself turns into everything, that it is now in a state of combustion, now liquefied, at another time aeriform, and then again solid, so the possession of a multitude of friends will necessarily have, as its underlying basis, a soul that is very impressionable, versatile, pliant, and readily changeable. But friendship seeks for a fixed and steadfast character which does not shift about, but continues in one place and in one intimacy. For this reason a steadfast friend is something rare and hard to find.

On Fortune

97) Man’s ways are chance and not sagacity.

Is it true that man’s ways are not justice either, or equality, or self-control, or decorum, but was it the result of chance and because of chance that Aristeides persevered in his poverty when he could have made himself master of great wealth, and that Scipio, having captured Carthage, neither took nor saw any of the spoil? Was it the result of chance and because of chance that Philocrates, having received money from Philip, “proceeded to spend it on trulls and trout,” and was it due to chance that Lasthenes and Euthycrates lost Olynthus, “measuring happiness by their bellies and the most shameless deeds”? Was it the result of chance that Alexander, the son of Philip, forbore to touch the captive women himself and punished those who offered them insult, and, on the other hand, was it because the Alexander who was the son of Priam yielded to the dictates of an evil genius or of chance that he lay with the wife of his host, and by her abduction filled two of our three continents with war and woes? For if these things happen because of chance, what is to hinder our saying that cats, goats, and apes because of chance are given over to greediness, lustfulness, and mischievous tricks?

2 1   If self-control, justice, and bravery exist, how is it possible to reason that intelligence does not exist; and if intelligence exists, must not sagacity exist also? For self-control is a kind of intelligence, they say, and justice requires the presence of intelligence. Or rather, that particular sagacity and intelligence which render men virtuous in the midst of pleasures we call continence and self-control, in perils and labours we call it perseverance and fortitude, in private dealings and in public life we call it equity and justice. Wherefore, if we impute the works of sagacity to chance, let the works of justice and of self-control be also ascribed to chance, and, by Heaven, let thieving, stealing purses, and licentious living all be ascribed to chance, and let us abandon all our reasoning processes and resign ourselves to chance, to be driven and carried, as dust or rubbish by a violent wind, hither and thither. If, then, sagacity does not exist, it is a fair inference that there can be no sagacious planning about what is to be done, and no consideration of searching for what is to the best advantage, but Sophocles indulged in idle talk when he said:

98 Whatever is pursued

May be achieved; neglected it escapes;

and so too in another place where he tries to distinguish different classes of actions:

What can be taught I learn; what can be found

I seek; but God I ask to answer prayer.

For what is there which can be found out or learned by mankind if the issue of all things is determined by chance? And what deliberative assembly of a State can there be which is not abolished, or advisory council of a king which is not dissolved, if all things are under the dominion of chance, which we reproach for being blind because we, like blind men, stumble against it? How can we help doing so when we pluck out sagacity, as it were our own eyes, and take as our guide in life a blind leader?

3 1   Yet, suppose someone among us should say that the act of seeing is chance and not vision nor the use of “light-bringing orbs,” as Plato calls the eyes, and that the act of hearing is chance and not a faculty apperceptive of a vibration in the air which is carried onward through ear and brain. If such were the case, it were well for us, as it appears, to beware of trusting our senses! But, as a matter of fact, Nature has conferred upon us sight, hearing, taste, smell, and our other members and their faculties to be ministers of sagacity and intelligence, and

Mind has sight and mind has hearing; all the rest is deaf and blind.

Precisely as would be our case if the sun did not exist, and we, for all the other stars, should be passing our life in a continual night, as Heracleitus affirms, so man, for all his senses, had he not mind and reason, would not differ at all in his life from the brutes. But as it is, we excel them and have power over them, not from chance or accidentally, but the cause thereof is Prometheus, or, in other words, the power to think and reason,

Which gives the foal of horse and ass, and get

Of bull, to serve us, and assume our tasks,

as Aeschylus puts it. Certainly, in so far as chance and nature’s endowment at birth are concerned, the great majority of brute animals are better off than man. For some are armed with horns, or teeth, or stings, and Empedocles says,

But as for hedgehogs

Growing upon their backs sharp darts of spines stand bristling,

and still others are shod and clad with scales or hair, with claws or horny hoofs. Man alone, as Plato says, “naked, unarmed, with feet unshod, and with no bed to lie in,” has been abandoned by Nature.

Yet by one gift all this she mitigates,

the gift of reasoning, diligence, and forethought.

Slight, of a truth, is the strength of man; and yet

By his mind’s resourcefulness

Doth he subjugate the monsters

Of the deep, and the purposes

Of the denizens of earth and air.

Horses are the lightest and swiftest of foot, yet they run for man. The dog is pugnacious and spirited, yet it watches over man. Fish is most savoury, and the pig very fat, yet for man they are nourishing and appetizing food. What is bigger than an elephant or more terrible to behold? But even this creature has been made the plaything of man, and a spectacle at public gatherings, and it learns to posture and dance and kneel. Such presentations are not without their use; indeed, they serve a purpose fin that we may learn to what heights man’s intelligence raises him, above what it places him, and how he is master of all things, and in every way superior.

No, we are not invincible either in boxing or wrestling,

Nor are we swift in the race.

Indeed, in all these matters we are not so fortunate as the animals; yet we make use of experience, memory, wisdom, and skill, as Anaxagoras says, which are ours, and ours only, and we take their honey, and milk them, and carry and lead them at will, taking entire control over them. In all this, therefore, there is no element of chance at all, but solely and wholly sagacity and forethought.

4 1 99 Moreover, under the head of “man’s ways” would fall, no doubt, the activities of carpenters, copper-smiths, builders, and statuaries, wherein we see nothing brought to a successful conclusion accidentally or as it chances. That chance may sometimes contribute slightly to their success, but that the arts through themselves bring to perfection the most and greatest of their works, in plainly suggested by this poet:

Into the highway come, all craftsmen folk,

Who worship Labour, stern-eyed child of Zeus,

With sacred baskets placed about.

For the arts have Labour, that is Athena, and not Chance as their coadjutor. Of just one artist, however, it is related that in painting a horse he had succeeded in nearly every respect in the drawing and colours, but the frothy appearance of the foam from champing the bit, and the rush of the foam-flecked breath, he had tried again and again to paint, but without success, and each time had wiped it out, until finally, in a rage, he threw his sponge, just as it was, full of pigments, at the canvas, and this, as it struck, transferred its contents in some amazing manner to the canvas, and effected the desired result. This is the only recorded instance of a technical achievement due to chance. Rulers, weights, measures, and numbers are everywhere in use, so that the random and haphazard may find no place in any production. Indeed, the arts are said to be minor forms of intelligence, or rather offshoots of intelligence, and detached fragments of it interspersed amid life’s common necessities, as it is said in the allegory regarding fire, that it was divided into portions by Prometheus and scattered some here and some there. For thus, when intelligence is finely broken and divided, small portions and fragments of it have gone to their several stations.

5 1   It is therefore amazing how, if the arts have no need of chance to accomplish their own ends, the greatest and most perfect art of all, the consummation of the high repute and esteem to which man can attain, can count for nothing! But in the tightening and loosening of strings there is involved a certain sagacity, which men call music, and also in the preparation of food, to which we give the name of cookery, and in the cleaning of clothes, which we call fulling; and we teach our children to put on their shoes and clothes, and to take their meat with the right hand and hold their bread in the left, on the assumption that even these things do not come by chance, but require oversight and attention. But can it be that those things which are most important and most essential for happiness do not call for intelligence, nor have any part in the processes of reason and forethought? But nobody wets clay with water and leaves it, assuming that by chance and accidentally there will be bricks, nor after providing himself with wool and leather does he sit down with a prayer to Chance that they turn into a cloak and shoes for him; and when a man has amassed much gold and silver and a multitude of slaves, and has surrounded himself with spacious suites of rooms, and, in addition, has furnished them with costly couches and tables, does he imagine that these things, without the presence of intelligence in himself, will be happiness and a blissful life, free from grief and secure from change?

Somebody asked Iphicrates the general, as though undertaking to expose him, who he was, since he was “neither a man-at arms, nor archer, nor targeteer”; and he answered, “I am the man who commands and makes use of all these.” 6 Intelligence is not gold or silver or repute or wealth or health or strength or beauty. What then is it? It is the something which is able to make good use of all these, and something through whose agency each of these is made pleasant, noteworthy, and profitable. Without it they are unserviceable, fruitless, and harmful, and they burden and disgrace their possessor. It is surely excellent advice that Hesiod’s Prometheus gives to Epimetheus:

Never to welcome

Any gifts from Zeus of Olympus, but always return them,

100 meaning the gifts of chance and external advantages; as if he were advising him not to play the flute if ignorant of music, nor to read if illiterate, nor to ride if unused to horses, thus advising him not to hold public office if a fool, nor to be rich if miserly, nor to marry if ruled by a woman. For not only is it true, as Demosthenes has said, that “undeserved success becomes a source of misconception for fools,” but undeserved good fortune also becomes a source of misery for the unthinking.

Virtue and Vice

1 1 100 Clothes are supposed to make a man warm, not of course by warming him themselves in the sense of adding their warmth to him, because each garment by itself is cold, and for this reason very often persons who feel hot and feverish keep changing from one set of clothes to another; but the warmth which a man gives off from his own person the clothing, closely applied to the body, confines and enwraps, and does not allow it, when thus imprisoned in the body, to be dissipated again. Now the same condition existing in human affairs deceives most people, who think that, if they surround themselves with vast houses, and get together a mass of slaves and money, they shall live pleasantly. But a pleasant and happy life comes not from external things, but, on the contrary, man draws on his own character as a source from which to add the element of pleasure and joy to the things which surround him.

Bright with a blazing fire a house looks far more cheerful,

and wealth is pleasanter, and repute and power more resplendent, if with them goes the gladness which springs from the heart; and so too men bear poverty, exile, and old age lightly and gently in proportion to the serenity and mildness of their character.

2 1   As perfumes make coarse and ragged garments fragrant, but the body of Anchises gave off a noisome exudation,

Damping the linen robe adown his back,

so every occupation and manner of life, if attended by virtue, is untroubled and delightful, while, on the other hand, any admixture of vice renders those things which to others seem splendid, precious, in imposing, only troublesome, sickening, and unwelcome to their possessors.

This man is happy deemed ‘mid public throng,

But when he opes his door he’s thrice a wretch;

His wife controls, commands, and always fights.

Yet it is not difficult for any man to get rid of a bad wife if he be a real man and not a slave; but against his own vice it is not possible to draw up a writing of divorcement and forthwith to be rid of troubles and to be at peace, having arranged to be by himself. No, his vice, a settled tenant of his very vitals always, both at night and by day,

Burns, but without e’er a brand, and consigns to an eld all untimely.

For in travelling vice is a troublesome companion because of arrogance, at dinner an expensive companion owing to gluttony, and a distressing bedfellow, since by anxieties, cares and jealousies it drives out and destroys sleep. For what slumber there may be is sleep and repose for the body only, but for the soul terrors, dreams, and agitations, because of superstition.

When grief o’ertakes me as I close my eyes,

I’m murdered by my dreams.

says one man. In such a state do envy, fear, temper, and licentiousness put a man. For by day vice, looking outside of itself and conforming its attitude to others, 101 is abashed and veils its emotions, and does not give itself up completely to its impulses, but oftentimes resists them and struggles against them; but in the hours of slumber, when it has escaped from opinion and law, and got away as far as possible from feeling fear or shame, it sets every desire stirring, and awakens its depravity and licentiousness. It “attempts incest,” as Plato says, partakes of forbidden meats, abstains from nothing which it wishes to do, but revels in lawlessness so far as it can, with images and visions which end in no pleasure or accomplishment of desire, but have only the power to stir to fierce activity the emotional and morbid propensities.

3 1   Where, then, is the pleasure in vice, if in no part of it is to be found freedom from care and grief, or contentment or tranquillity or calm? For a well-balanced and healthy condition of the body gives room for engendering the pleasures of the flesh; but in the soul lasting joy and gladness cannot possibly be engendered, unless it provide itself first with cheerfulness, fearlessness, and courageousness as a basis to rest upon, or as a calm tranquillity that no billows disturb; otherwise, even though some hope or delectation lure us with a smile, anxiety suddenly breaks forth, like a hidden rock appearing in fair weather, and the soul is overwhelmed and confounded.

4 1 c Heap up gold, amass silver, build stately promenades, fill your house with slaves and the city with your debtors; unless you lay level the emotions of your soul, put a stop to your insatiate desires, and quit yourself of fears and anxieties, you are but decanting wine for a man in a fever, offering honey to a bilious man, and preparing tid-bits and dainties for sufferers from colic or dysentery, who cannot retain them or be strengthened by them, but are only brought nearer to death thereby. Does not your observation of sick persons teach you that they dislike and reject and decline the finest and costliest viands which their attendants offer and try to force upon them; and then later, when their whole condition has changed, and good breathing, wholesome blood, and normal temperature have returned to their bodies, they get up and have joy and satisfaction in eating plain bread with cheese and cress? It is such a condition that reason creates in the soul. You will be contented with your lot if you learn what the honourable and good is. You will be luxurious in poverty, and live like a king, and you will find no less satisfaction in the care-free life of a private citizen than in the life connected with high military or civic office. If you become a philosopher, you will live not unpleasantly, but you will learn to subsist pleasantly anywhere and with any resources. Wealth will give you gladness for the good you will do to many, poverty for your freedom from many cares, repute for the honours you will enjoy, and obscurity for the certainty that you shall not be envied.

Letter of condolence to Apollonius

101 f Even before this time, Apollonius, I felt for you in your sorrow and trouble, when I heard of the untimely passing from life of your son, who was very dear to us all — a youth who was altogether decorous and modest, and unusually observant of the demands of religion and justice both toward the gods and towards his parents and friends. 102 In those days, close upon the time of his death, to visit you and urge you to bear your present lot as a mortal man should have been unsuitable, when you were prostrated in both body and soul by the unexpected calamity; and, besides, I could not help sharing in your feeling. For even the best of physicians do not at once apply the remedy of medicines against acute attacks of suppurating humours, but allow the painfulness of the inflammation, without the application of external medicaments, to attain some assuagement of itself.

2 1 Now since time, which is wont to assuage all things, has intervened since the calamity, and your present condition seems to demand the aid of your friends, I have conceived it to be proper to communicate to you some words that can give comfort, for the mitigation of grief and the termination of mournful and vain lamentations. For

Words are physicians for an ailing mind,

When at the fitting time one soothes the heart.

Since, according to the wise Euripides,

For divers ills are remedies diverse:

The kindly speech of friends for one in grief,

And admonitions when one plays the fool.

Indeed, though there are many emotions that affect the soul, yet grief, from its nature, is the most cruel of all. They say:

To many there doth come because of grief

Insanity and ills incurable,

And some for grief have ended their own life.

3 1 The pain and pang felt at the death of a son has in itself good cause to awaken grief, which is only natural, and over it we have no control. For I, for my part, cannot concur with those who extol that harsh and callous indifference, which is both impossible and unprofitable. For this will rob us of the kindly feeling which comes from mutual affection and which above all else we must conserve. But to be carried beyond all bounds and to help in exaggerating our griefs I say is contrary to nature, and results from our depraved ideas. Therefore this also must be dismissed as injurious and depraved and most unbecoming to right-minded men, but a moderate indulgence is not to be disapproved. “Pray that we be not ill,” says Crantor of the Academy, “but if we be ill, pray that sensation be left us, whether one of our members be cut off or torn out.” For this insensibility to pain is attained by man only at a great price; for in the former case, we may suppose, it is the body which has been brutalized into such insensibility, but in the latter case the soul.

4 1 Reason therefore requires that men of understanding should be neither indifferent in such calamities nor extravagantly affected; for the one course is unfeeling and brutal, the other lax and effeminate. Sensible is he who keeps within appropriate bounds and is able to bear judiciously both the agreeable and the grievous in his lot, and who has made up his mind beforehand to conform uncomplainingly and obediently to the dispensation of things; just as in a democracy there is an allotment of offices, and he who draws the lot holds office, while he who fails to do so must bear his fortune without taking offence. For those who cannot do this would be Funable sensibly and soberly to abide good fortune either.

Among the felicitous utterances the following piece of advice is to the point:

Let no success be so unusual

That it excite in you too great a pride,

Nor abject be in turn, if ill betide;

But ever be the same; preserve unchanged

Your nature, like to gold when tried by fire.

It is the mark of educated and disciplined men to keep the same habit of mind toward seeming prosperity, 103 and nobly to maintain a becoming attitude toward adversity. For it is the take of rational prudence, either to be on guard against evil as it approaches, or, if it have already happened, to rectify it or to minimize it or to provide oneself with a virile and noble patience to endure it. For wisdom deals also with the good, in a fourfold way — either acquiring a store of goods, or conserving them, or adding to them, or using them judiciously. These are the laws of wisdom and of the other virtues, and they must be followed for better fortune or for worse. For

No man exists who’s blest in everything,

and truly

What thou must do cannot be made “must not.”

5 1 For as there are in plants at one time seasons of fruitage and at another time seasons of unfruitfulness, and in animals at one time fecundity and at another time barrenness, and on the sea both fair weather and storm, so also in life many diverse circumstances occur which bring about a reversal of human fortunes. As one contemplates these reversals he might say not inappropriately:

Not for good and no ill came thy life from thy sire,

Agamemnon, but joy

Thou shalt find interwoven with grief;

For a mortal man thou art. Though against thy desire

Yet the plans of the gods will so have it.

and the words of Menander:

If you alone, young master, at your birth

Had gained the right to do whate’er you would

Through your life, and ever be in luck,

And if some god agreed to this with you,

Then you have right to feel aggrieved. He has

Deceived and strangely treated you. But if

Upon the selfsame terms as we, you drew

The primal breath of universal life

D(To speak you somewhat in the tragic style),

You must endure this better, and use sense,

To sum up all I say, you are a man,

Than which no thing that lives can swifter be

Exalted high and straight brought low again.

And rightly so; for though of puny frame,

He yet doth handle many vast affairs,

And, falling, ruins great prosperity.

But you, young master, have not forfeited

Surpassing good, and these your present ills

But moderate are; so bear without excess

What Fortune may hereafter bring to you.

But, in spite of this condition of affairs, some persons, through their foolishness, are so silly and conceited, that, when only a little exalted, either because of abundance of money, or importance of office, or petty political preferments, or because of position and repute, they threaten and insult those in lower station, not bearing in mind the uncertainty and inconstancy of fortune, nor yet the fact that the lofty is easily brought low and the humble in turn is exalted, transposed by the swift-moving changes of fortune. Therefore to try to find any constancy in what is in constant is a trait of people who do not rightly reason about the circumstances of life. For

The wheel goes round, and of the rim now one

And now another part is at the top.

6 1 Reason is the best remedy for the cure of grief, reason and the preparedness through reason for all the changes of life. For one ought to realize that, not merely that he himself is mortal by nature, but also that he is allotted to a life that is mortal and to conditions which readily reverse themselves. 104 For men’s bodies are indeed mortal, lasting but a day, and mortal is all they experience and suffer, and, in a word, everything in life; and all this

May not be escaped nor avoided by mortals

at all, but

The depths of unseen Tartarus hold you fast by hard-forged necessities,

as Pindar says. Whence Demetrius of Phalerum was quite right when, in reference to a saying of Euripides:

Wealth is inconstant, lasting but a day,

and also:

Small things may cause an overthrow; one day

Puts down the mighty and exalts the low,

he said that it was almost all admirably put, but it would have been better if he had said not “one day,” but “one second of time.”

Alike the cycle of earth’s fruitful plants

And mortal men. For some life grows apace,

While others perish and are gathered home.

And elsewhere Pindar says:

Somebody? Nobody? Which is which?

A dream of a shadow is man.

Very vividly and skilfully did he use this extravagance of expression in making clear the life of mankind. For what is feebler than a shadow? And a dream of it! — that is something which defies any clear description. In similar strain Crantor, endeavouring to comfort Hippocles upon the death of his children, says: “All our ancient philosophy states this and urges it upon us; and though there be therein other things which we do not accept, yet at any rate the statement that life is oftentimes toilsome and hard is only too true. For even if it is not so by nature, yet through our own selves it has reached this state of corruption. From a distant time, yes from the beginning, this uncertain fortune has attended us to no good end, and even at our birth there is conjoined with us a portion of evil in everything. For the very seed of life, since it is mortal, participates in this causation, and from this there steal upon us defectiveness of soul, diseases of body, loss of friends by death, and the common portion of mortals.”

For what reason have we turned our thoughts in this direction? It is that we may know that misfortune is nothing novel for man, but that we all have had the same experience of it. For Theophrastus says: “Fortune is heedless, and she has a wonderful power to take away the fruits of our labours and to overturn our seeming tranquillity, and for doing this she has no fixed season.” These matters, and others like them, it is easy for each man to reason out for himself, and to learn them from wise men of old besides; of whom the first is the divine Homer, who said:

Nothing more wretched than man doth the earth support on its bosom,

Never, he says to himself, shall he suffer from evil hereafter,

Never, so long as the gods give him strength and his knees are still nimble;

Then when the blessed gods bring upon him grievous affliction,

Still he endures his misfortune, reluctant but steadfast in spirit.

And:

Such is the mood of the men who here on the earth are abiding,

E’en as the day which the father of men and of gods brings upon them.

And in another place:

Great-hearted son of Tydeus, why do you ask of my fathers?

As is the race of the leaves, such too is that of all mortals.

Some of the leaves doth the winds scatter earthward, and others the forest

Budding puts forth in profusion, and springtime is coming upon us.

Thus is man’s race: one enters on life, and another’s life ceases.

That he has admirably made use of this image of human life is clear from what he says in another place, in these words:

To fight for the sake of mortals

Wretched, who like to the leaves, at the one time all ardent

Come to their fitting perfection, and eat of the fruit of their acres;

Then again helpless they perish, nor is there aught that can help them.

105 Pausanias, king of the Lacedaemonians, who persistently boasted of his own exploits, mockingly urged the lyric poet Simonides to rehearse for him some wise saying, whereupon the poet, being fully cognizant of his conceit, advised him to remember that he was only human.

Philip, the king of the Macedonians, happened to have three pieces of good news reported to him all at once: the first, that he was victor at the Olympic games in the race of the four-horse chariots; the second, that Parmenio, his general, had vanquished the Dardanians in battle, and the third, that Olympias had borne him a male child; whereupon, stretching out his hands toward the heavens, he said: “O God, offset all this by some moderate misfortune!” For he well knew that in cases of great prosperity fortune is wont to be jealous.

While Theramenes, who afterwards became one of the Thirty Tyrants at Athens, was dining with several others, the house, in which they were, collapsed, and he was the only one to escape death; but as he was being congratulated by everybody, he raised his voice and exclaimed in a loud tone, “O Fortune, for what occasion are you reserving me?” And not long afterward he came to his end by torture at the hands of his fellow tyrants.

7 1 The Poet is regarded as extraordinarily successful in bestowing consolation, where he represents Achilles as speaking to Priam, who has come to ransom Hector, as follows:

Come then and rest on a seat; let us suffer our sorrows to slumber

Quietly now in our bosoms, in spite of our woeful afflictions;

Nothing is ever accomplished by yielding to chill lamentation.

Thus, then, the gods have spun the fate of unhappy mortals,

Ever to live in distress, but themselves are free from all trouble.

Fixed on Zeus’ floor two massive urns stand for ever,

Filled with gifts of all ills that he gives, and another of blessings;

He on whom Zeus, god of thunder, bestows their contents commingled

Sometimes meets with the good, and again he meets only with evil.

Him upon whom he bestows what is baneful he makes wholly wretched;

Ravenous hunger drives him o’er the earth’s goodly bosom,

Hither and thither he goes, unhonoured of gods or of mortals.

Hesiod, who, although he proclaimed himself the disciple of the Muses, is nevertheless second to Homer in reputation as well as in time, also confines the evils in a great urn and represents Pandora as opening it and scattering the host of them over the whole land and sea. His words are as follows:

Then with her hands did the woman, uplifting the urn’s massive cover,

Let them go as they would; and on men she brought woeful afflictions.

Hope alone where it was, with its place of abode yet undamaged,

Under the rim of the urn still tarried; nor into the open

Winged its way forth; for before it escaped she had put on the cover.

More are the woes unnumbered among men now freely ranging.

Full is the land now of evils, and full of them too is the ocean:

Illnesses come upon men in the daytime, and others at night-time;

Hither and thither they go, of themselves bringing evils to mortals;

Silent they go, since the wisdom of Zeus has deprived them of voices.

8 1 Closely allied with this are the following words of the Poet spoken with reference to those whose grief over such calamities is excessive:

If only tears were remedy for ills,

And he who weeps obtained surcease of woe,

Then we should purchase tears by giving gold.

But as it is, events that come to pass,

My master, do not mind nor heed these things,

But, whether you shed tears or not, pursue

The even tenor of their way. What then

Do we accomplish by our weeping? Naught.

106 But as the trees have fruit, grief has these tears.

And Dictys, who is trying to console Danaë in her excessive grief, says:

Think you that Hades minds your moans at all,

And will send back your child if you groan?

Desist. By viewing close your neighbour’s ills

You might be more composed, — if you reflect

How many mortals have to toil in bonds,

How many reft of children face old age,

And others still who from a prosperous reign

Sink down to nothing. This you ought to heed.

For he bids her to think of the lot of those who are equally unfortunate or even more unfortunate than herself, with the idea that her grief will be lightened.

9 1 In this connexion might be adduced the utterance of Socrates which suggests that if we were all to bring our misfortunes into a common store, so that each person should receive an equal share in the distribution, the majority would be glad to take up their own and depart.

The poet Antimachus, also, employed a similar method. For after the death of his wife, Lyde, whom he loved very dearly, he composed, as a consolation for his grief, the elegy called Lyde, In which he enumerated the misfortunes of the heroes, and thus made his own grief less by means of others’ ills. So it is clear that he who tries to console a person in grief, and demonstrates that the calamity is one which is common to many, and less than the calamities which have befallen others, changes the opinion of the one in grief and gives him a similar conviction — that his calamity is really less than he supposed it to be.

10 1 Aeschylus seems admirably to rebuke those who think that death is an evil. He says:

Men are not right in hating Death, which is

The greatest succour from our many ills.

In imitation of Aeschylus some one else has said:

O Death, healing physician, come.

For it is indeed true that

A harbour from all distress is Hades.

For it is a magnificent thing to be able to say with undaunted conviction:

What man who recks not death can be a slave?

and

With Hades’ help shadows I do not fear.

For what is there cruel or so very distressing in being dead? It may be that the phenomenon of death, from being too familiar and natural to us, seems somehow, under changed circumstances, to be painful, though I know not why. For what wonder if the separable be separated, if the combustible be consumed, and the corruptible be corrupted? For at what time is death not existent in our very selves? As Heracleitus says: “Living and dead are potentially the same thing, and so too waking and sleeping, and young and old; for the latter revert to the former, and the former in turn to the latter.” For as one is able from the same clay to model figures of living things and to obliterate them, and again to model and obliterate, and alternately to repeat these operations without ceasing, so Nature, using the same material, a long time ago raised up our forefathers, and then in close succession to them created our fathers, and then ourselves, and later will create others and still others in a never-ending cycle; and the stream of generation, thus flowing onward perpetually, will never stop, and so likewise its counterpart, flowing in the opposite direction — which is the stream of destruction, whether it be designated by the poets as Acheron or as Cocytus. The same agency which at the first showed us the light of the sun brings also the darkness of Hades. May not the air surrounding us serve to symbolize this, causing as it does day and night alternately, which bring us life and death, and sleep and waking? Wherefore it is said that life is a debt to destiny, the idea being that the loan which our forefathers contracted is to be repaid by us. 107 This debt we ought to discharge cheerfully and without bemoaning whenever the lender asks for payment; for in this way we should show ourselves to be most honourable men.

11 I imagine also that it was because Nature saw the indefiniteness and the brevity of life that she caused the time allowed us before death to be kept from us. And it is better so; for if we knew this beforehand, some persons would be utterly wasted by griefs before their time, and would be dead long before they died. Observe too the painfulness of life, and the exhaustion caused by many cares; if we should wish to enumerate all these, we should to readily condemn life, and we should confirm the opinion which now prevails in the minds of some that it is better to be dead than to live. Simonides at any rate says:

Petty indeed is men’s strength;

All their strivings are vain;

Toil upon toil in a life of no length.

Death hovers over them all,

Death which is foreordained,

Equal the share by the brave is attained

In death with the base.

And Pindar says:

A pair of miseries with each good

The deathless gods mete out to mortal man.

The foolish cannot bear them as they should.

And Sophocles says:

Mourn you a mortal if he’s passed away,

Not knowing if the future brings him gain?

And Euripides says:

Know you the nature of this mortal world?

CI wot not. For whence could you? But hear me,

By all mankind is owed a debt to death,

And not a single man can be assured

If he shall live throughout the coming day.

For Fortune’s movements are inscrutable.

Since, then, the life of men is such as these poets say it is, surely it is more fitting to felicitate those who have been released from their servitude in it than to pity them and bewail them, as the majority do through ignorance.

12 1 Socrates said that death resembles either a very deep sleep or a long and distant journey, or, thirdly, a sort of destruction and extinction of both the body and the soul, but that by no one of these possibilities is it an evil. Each of these conceptions he pursued further, and the first one first. For if death is a sleep, and there is nothing evil in the state of those who sleep, it is evident that there is likewise nothing evil in the state of those who are dead. Nay, what need is there even to state that the deepest sleep is indeed the sweetest? For the fact is of itself patent to all men, and Homer bears witness by saying regarding it:

Slumber the deepest and sweetest, and nearest to death in its semblance.

In another place also he says:

Here she chanced to encounter the brother of Death, which is Slumber,

and

Slumber and Death, the twin brothers,

thereby indicating this similarity in appearance, for twins show most similarity. And again somewhere he says that death is a “brazen sleep,” in allusion to our insensibility in it. And not inelegantly did the man seem to put the case who called “sleep the Lesser Mysteries of death”; for sleep is really a preparatory rite for death. Very wise was the remark of the cynic Diogenes, who, when he had sunk into slumber and was about to depart this life, was roused by his physician, who inquired if anything distressed him, “Nothing,” he said, “for the one brother merely forestalls the other.”

13 1 If death indeed resembles a journey, even so it is not an evil. On the contrary, it may even be a good. For to pass one’s time unenslaved by the flesh and its emotions, by which the mind is distracted and tainted with human folly, would be a blessed piece of good fortune. 108”For the body,” says Plato, “in countless ways leaves us no leisure because of its necessary care and feeding. Moreover, if any diseases invade it, they hinder our pursuit of reality, and it fills us with lusts and desires and fears and all manner of fancies and folly, so that, as the saying goes, because of it we really have no opportunity to think seriously of anything. It is a fact that wars and strifes and battles are brought about by nothing else except the body and its desires; for all wars are waged for the acquisition of property, and property we are forced to acquire because of the body, since we are slaves in its service; and the result is that, because of these things, we have no leisure for study. And the worst of all is, that even if we do gain some leisure from the demands of the body, and turn to the consideration of some subject, yet at every point in our investigation the body forces itself in, and causes tumult and confusion, and disconcerts us, so that on account of it we are unable to discern the truth. Nay, the fact has been thoroughly demonstrated to us that, if we are ever going to have any pure knowledge, we must divest ourselves of the body, and with the soul itself observe the realities. And, as it appears, we shall possess what we desire and what we profess to long for — and that is wisdom — only, as our reasoning shows, after we are dead, but not while we are alive. For if it is impossible in company with the body to have any pure knowledge, then one of two things is true: either it is not possible to attain knowledge anywhere, or else only after death. For then the soul will be quite by itself, separate from the body, but before that time never. And so, while we live, we shall, as it appears, be nearest to knowledge if, as far as possible, we have no association or communion with the body, except such as absolute necessity requires, and if we do not taint ourselves with its nature, but keep ourselves pure of it until such time as God himself shall release us. And thus, being rid of the irrationality of the body, we shall, in all likelihood, be in the company of others in like state, and we shall behold with our own eyes the pure and absolute, which is the truth; since for the impure to touch the pure may well be against the divine ordinance.”

So, even if it be likely that death transports us into another place, it is not an evil; for it may possibly prove to be a good, as Plato has shown. Wherefore very wonderful were the words which Socrates uttered before his judges, to this effect: “To be afraid of death, Sirs, is nothing else than to seem to be wise when one is not; for it is to seem to know what one does not know. For in regard to death nobody knows even whether it happens to be for mankind the greatest of all good things, yet they fear it as if they knew well that it is the greatest of evils.” From this view it seems that the poet does not dissent who says:

Let none fear death, which is release from toils,

 — ay, and from the greatest of evils as well.

14 1 It is said that the Deity also bears witness to this. For tradition tells us that many for their righteousness have gained this gift from the gods. Most of these I shall pass over, having regard to due proportion in my composition; but I shall mention the most conspicuous, whose story is on the lips of all men.

First I shall relate for you the tale of Cleobis and Biton, the Argive youths. They say that their mother was priestess of Hera, and when the time had come for her to go up to the temple, and the mules that always drew her wagon were late in arriving, and the hour was pressing, these young men put themselves to the wagon and drew their mother to the temple; and she, overjoyed at the devotion of her sons, prayed that the best boon that man can receive be given them by the goddess. They then lay down to sleep and never arose again, the goddess granting them death as a reward for their devotion.

109 Of Agamedes and Trophonius, Pindar says that after building the temple at Delphi they asked Apollo for a reward, and he promised to make payment on the seventh day, bidding them in the meantime to eat, drink, and be merry. They did what was commanded, and on the evening of the seventh day lay down to sleep and their life came to an end.

It is said that Pindar himself enjoined upon the deputies of the Boeotians who were sent to consult the god that they should inquire, “What is the best thing for mankind?” and the prophetic priestess made answer, that he himself could not be ignorant of it if the story which had been written about Trophonius and Agamedes were his; but if he desired to learn it by experience, it should be made manifest to him within a short time. As a result of this inquiry Pindar inferred that he should expect death, and after a short time his end came.

They say that the following incident happened to the Italian Euthynoüs. He was the son of Elysius, of Terina,b a man foremost among the people there in virtue, wealth, and repute, and Euthynoüs came to his end suddenly from some unknown cause. Now it occurred to Elysius, as it might have occurred to anybody else, that his son had perhaps died of poisoning; for he was his only heir to a large property and estate. Being in perplexity as to how he might put his suspicions to the test, he visited a place where the spirits of the dead are conjured up, and having offered the preliminary sacrifice prescribed by custom, he lay down to sleep in the place, and had this vision. It seemed that his own father came to him, and that on seeing his father he related to him what had happened touching his son, and begged and besought his help to discover the man who was responsible for his son’s death. And his father said, “It is for this that I am come. Take from this person here what he brings for you, and from this you will learn about everything over which you are now grieving.” The person whom he indicated was a young man who followed him, resembling his son Euthynoüs and close to him in years and stature. So Elysius asked who he was; and he said, “I am the ghost of your son,” and with these words he handed him a paper. This Elysius opened and saw written there these three lines:

Verily somehow the minds of men in ignorance wander;

Dead now Euthynoüs lies; destiny has so decreed.

Not for himself was it good that he live, nor yet for his parents.

Such, you observe, is the purport of the tales recorded in ancient writers.

15 1 If, however, death is really a complete destruction and dissolution of both body and soul (for this was the third of Socrates’ conjectures), even so it is not an evil. For, according to him, there ensues a sort of insensibility and a liberation from all pain and anxiety. For just as no good can attach to us in such a state, so also can no evil; for just as the good, from its nature, can exist only in the case of that which is and has substantiality, so it is also with the evil. But in the case of that which is not, but has been removed from the sphere of being, neither of them can have any real existence. Now those who have died return to the same state in which they were before birth; therefore, as nothing was either good or evil for us before birth, even so will it be with us after death. And just as all events before our lifetime were nothing to us, even so will all events subsequent to our lifetime be nothing to us. For in reality

No suffering affects the dead,

since

Not to be born I count the same as death.

For the condition after the end of life is the same as that before birth. But do you imagine that there is a difference between not being born at all, and being born and then passing away? Surely not, unless you assume also that there is a difference in a house or a garment of ours after its destruction, as compared with the time when it had not yet been fashioned. 110 If there is no difference in the case of death, either, as compared with the condition before birth. Arcesilaus puts the matter neatly: “This that we call an evil, death, is the only one of the supposed evils which, when present, has never caused anybody any pain, but causes pain when it is not present but merely expected.” As a matter of fact, many people, because of their utter fatuity and their false opinion regarding death, die in their effort to keep from dying. Excellently does Epicharmus put it:

To be and not to be hath been his fate;

once more

Gone is he whence he came, earth back to earth,

The soul on high. What here is evil? Naught.

Cresphontes in some play of Euripides, speaking of Heracles, says:

For if he dwells beneath the depths of earth

‘Mid lifeless shades, his vigour would be naught.

This you might rewrite and say,

For if he dwells beneath the depths of earth

‘Mid lifeless shades, his dolour would be naught.

Noble also is the Spartan song:

Here now are we; before us others throve, and others still straightway,

But we shall never live to see their day;

and again:

Those who have died and who counted no honour the living or dying,

Only to consummate both nobly were honour for them.

Excellently does Euripides say of those who patiently endure long illnesses:

I hate the men who would prolong their lives

By foods and drinks and charms of magic art,

Perverting nature’s course to keep off death;

They ought, when they no longer serve the land,

To quit this life, and clear the way for youth.

And Merope stirs the theatres by expressing manly sentiments when she speaks the following words:

Not mine the only children who have died,

Nor I the only woman robbed of spouse;

Others as well as I have drunk life’s dregs.

With this the following might be appropriately combined:

Where now are all those things magnificent —

Great Croesus, lord of Lydia? Xerxes, too,

Who yoked the sullen neck of Hellespont?

Gone all to Hades and Oblivion’s house,

and their wealth perished with their bodies.

16 1 “True,” it may be said, “but an untimely death moves most people to mourning and lamentation.” Yet, even for this, words of consolation are so readily found that they have been perceived by even uninspired poets, and comfort has been had from them. Observe what one of the Poets says on this subject to a man who is grieving for an untimely death:

Then if you knew that, had he lived this life,

Which he did not live, Fate had favoured him,

His death was not well timed; but, if again

This life had brought some ill incurable,

Then Death perhaps were kindlier than you.

Since, then, it is uncertain whether or not it was profitable for him that he rested from his labours, forsaking this life and released from greater ills, we ought not to bear it so grievously as though we had lost all that we thought we should gain from him. Not ill considered, evidently, is the comfort which Amphiaraus in the poem offers to the mother of Archemorus, who is greatly affected because her son came to his end in his infancy long before his time. For he says:

There is no man that does not suffer ill;

Man buries children, and begets yet more,

And dies himself. Men are distressed at this,

Committing earth to earth. But Fate decrees

111 That life be garnered like the ripened grain,

That one shall live and one shall pass from life.

What need to grieve at this, which Nature says

Must be the constant cycle of all life?

In what must be there’s naught that man need dread.

17 1 In general everyone ought to hold the conviction, if he seriously reviews the facts both by himself and in the company of another, that not the longest life is the best, but the most efficient. For it is not the man who has played the lyre the most, or made the most speeches, or piloted the most ships, who is commended, but he who has done these things excellently. Excellence is not to be ascribed to length of time, but to worth and timely fitness. For these have come to be regarded as tokens of good fortune and of divine favour. It is for this reason, at any rate, that the poets have traditionally represented those of the heroes who were pre-eminent and sprung from the gods as quitting this life before old age, like him

Who to the heart of great Zeus and Apollo was held to be dearest,

Loved with exceeding great love; but of eld he reached not the threshold.

For we everywhere observe that it is a happy use of opportunity, rather than a happy old age, that wins the highest place. For of trees and plants the best are those that in a brief time produce the most crops of fruit, and the best of animals are those from which in no long time we have the greatest service toward our livelihood. The terms “long” and “short” obviously appear to lose their difference if we fix our gaze on eternity. For a thousand or ten thousand years, according to Simonides, are but a vague second of time, or rather the smallest fraction of a second. Take the case of those creatures which they relate exist on the shores of the Black Sea, and have an existence of only one day, being born in the morning, reaching the prime of life at mid-day, and toward evening growing old and ending their existence; would there not be in those creatures this same feeling which prevails in us, if each of them had within him a human soul and power to reason, and would not the same relative conditions obviously obtain there, so that those who departed this life before mid-day would cause lamentation and tears, while those who lived through the day would be accounted altogether happy? The measure of life is its excellence, not its length in years.

18 1 We must regard as vain and foolish such exclamations as these: “But he ought not to have been snatched away while young!” For who may say what ought to be? Many other things, of which one may say “they ought not to have been done,” have been done, and are done, and will be done over and over again. For we have come into this world, not to make laws for its governance, but to obey the commandments of the gods who preside over the universe, and the decrees of Fate or Providence.

19 1 But do those who mourn for the untimely dead, mourn on their own account or on account of the departed? If on their own account, because they have been cut off from some gratification or profit or comfort in old age, which they might have expected from the dead, then is their excuse for grieving wholly selfish; for it will be plain that they mourn, not for them, but for their services. But if they mourn on account of the dead, then if they will fix their attention on the fact that the dead are in no evil state, they will rid themselves of grief by following that wise and ancient admonition to magnify the good and to minimize and lessen the evil. If, then, mourning is a good, we ought to enlarge and magnify it in every way. But if, as the truth is, we admit it to be an evil, we ought to minimize and reduce it, and as far as possible to efface it.

That this is easy is plainly to be seen from the following sort of consolation. They say that one of the ancient philosophers visited Arsinoë, the queen, who was mourning for her son, 112 and made use of this story, saying that at the time Zeus was distributing to the deities their honours, Mourning did not happen to be present, but arrived after the distribution had been made. But when she said it was only right that some honour be given to her also, Zeus, being perplexed, since all the honours had been used up, finally gave her that honour which is paid in the case of those who have died — tears and griefs. Just as the other deities, therefore, are fond of those by whom they are honoured, so also is Mourning. “Therefore, Madame, if you treat her with disrespect, she will not come near you; but if she is strictly honoured by you with the honours which were conceded to her, namely griefs and lamentations, she will love you and affectionately will be ever with you, provided only she be constantly honoured by you.” Admirably, it appears, he succeeded, by this story, in convincing the woman and in alleviating her mourning and lamentations.

20 1 In general one might say to the man who mourns, “Shall you at some time cease to take this to heart, or shall you feel that you must grieve always every day of your life? For if you purpose to remain always in this extreme state of affliction, you will bring complete wretchedness and the most bitter misery upon yourself by the ignobleness and cowardice of your soul. But if you intend some time to change your attitude, why do you not change it at once and extricate yourself from this misfortune? Give attention now to those arguments by the use of which, as time goes on, your release shall be accomplished, and relieve yourself now of your sad condition. For in the case of bodily afflictions the quickest way of relief is the better. Therefore concede now to reason and education what you surely will later concede to time, and release yourself from your troubles.”

21 1 “But I cannot,” he says, “for I never expected or looked for this experience.” But you ought to have looked for it, and to have previously pronounced judgement on human affairs for their uncertainty and fatuity, and then you would not now have been taken off your guard as by enemies suddenly come upon you. Admirably does Theseus in Euripides appear to have prepared himself for such crises, for they say:

But I have learned this from a certain sage,

And on these cares and troubles set my mind,

And on myself laid exile from my land

And early deaths and other forms of ills,

That if I suffer aught my fancy saw,

It should not, coming newly, hurt the more.

But the more ignoble and untutored sometimes cannot even recall themselves to the consideration of anything seemly and profitable, but go out of their way to find extremes of wretchedness, even to punishing their innocent body and to forcing the unafflicted, as Achaeus says, to join in their grief.

22 1 Wherefore very excellently Plato appears to advise us “in” such “misfortunes to maintain a calm demeanour, since neither the evil nor the good in them is at all plain, and since no advance is made by the man who takes things much to heart. For grief stands in the way of sane counsel about an event and prevents one from arranging his affairs with relation to what has befallen, as a player does at a throw of the dice, in whatever way reason may convince him would be best. We ought not, therefore, when we have fallen to act like children and hold on to the injured place and scream, but we should accustom our soul speedily to concern itself with curing the injury and raising up the fallen, and we should put away lamentation by remedial art.”

They say that the lawgiver of the Lycians ordered his citizens, whenever they mourned, to clothe themselves first in woman’s garments and then to mourn, wishing to make it clear that mourning is womanish 113 and unbecoming to decorous men who lay claim to the education of the free-born. Yes, mourning is verily feminine, and weak, and ignoble, since women are more given to it than men, and barbarians more than Greeks, and inferior men more than better men; and of the barbarians themselves, not the most noble, Celts and Galatians, and all who by nature are filled with a more manly spirit, but rather, if such there are, the Egyptians and Syrians and Lydians and all those who are like them. For it is recorded that some of these go down into pits and remain there for several days, not desiring even to behold the light of the sun since the deceased also is bereft of it. At any rate the tragic poet Ion, who was not without knowledge of the foolishness of these peoples, has represented a woman as saying:

The nurse of lusty children I have come,

To supplicate you, from the mourning pits.

And some of the barbarians even cut off parts of their bodies, their noses and ears, and mutilate other portions of their bodies also, thinking to gratify the dead by abandoning that moderation of feeling which Nature enjoins in such cases.

23 1 But I dare say that, in answer to this, some may assert their belief that there need not be mourning for every death, but only for untimely deaths, because of the failure of the dead to gain what are commonly held to be the advantages of life, which as marriage, education, manhood, citizenship, or public affairs (for these are the considerations, they say, which most cause grief to those who suffer misfortune through untimely deaths, since they are robbed of their hope out of due time); but they do not realize that the untimely death shows no disparity if it be considered with reference to the common lot of man. For just as when it has been decided to migrate to a new fatherland, and the journey is compulsory for all, and none by entreaty can escape it, some go on ahead and others follow after, but all come to the same place; in the same manner, of all who are journeying toward Destiny those who come more tardily have no advantage over those who arrive earlier. If it be true that untimely death is an evil, the most untimely would be that of infants and children, and still more that of the newly born. But such deaths we bear easily and cheerfully, but the deaths of those who have already lived some time with distress and mourning because of our fanciful notion, born of vain hopes, since we have come to feel quite assured of the continued tarrying with us of persons who have lived so long. But if the years of man’s life were but twenty, we should feel that he who passed away at fifteen had not died untimely, but that he had already attained an adequate measure of age, while the man who had completed the prescribed period of twenty years, or who had come close to the count of twenty years, we should assuredly deem happy as having lived through a most blessed and perfect life. But if the length of life were two hundred years, we should certainly feel that he who came to his end at one hundred was cut off untimely, and we should betake ourselves to wailing and lamentation.

24 1 It is evident, therefore, that even the death which we call untimely readily admits of consolation, both for these reasons and for those previously given. For in fact Troilus shed fewer tears than did Priam; and if Priam had died earlier, while his kingdom and his great prosperity were at their height, he would not have used such sad words as he did in conversation with his own son Hector, when he advised him to withdraw from the battle with Achilles; he says:

“Come then within the walled city, my son, so to save from destruction

All of the men and the women of Troy, nor afford a great triumph

Unto the offspring of Peleus, and forfeit the years of your lifetime.

114 Also for me have compassion, ill-starred, while yet I have feeling;

Hapless I am; on the threshold of eld will the Father, descended from Cronus,

Make me to perish in pitiful doom, after visions of evils,

Sons being slain and our daughters as well being dragged to be captives,

Chambers of treasure all wantonly plundered and poor little children

Dashed to the earth in the terrible strife by the merciless foeman,

Wives of my sons being dragged by the ravishing hands of Achaeans.

Me, last of all, at the very front doors shall the dogs tear to pieces,

Ravening, eager for blood, when a foeman wielding his weapon,

Keen-edged of bronze, by a stroke or a throw, takes the life from my body.

Yet when the dogs bring defilement on hair and on beard that is hoary,

And on the body as well of an old man slain by the foeman,

This is the saddest of sights ever seen by us unhappy mortals.”

Thus did the old man speak, and his hoary locks plucked by the handful,

Tearing his hair from his head, but he moved not the spirit of Hector.

Since you have, then, so very many examples regarding this matter, bear in mind the fact that death relieves not a few persons from great and grievous ills which, if they had lived on, they would surely have experienced. But, out of regard for the due proportions of my argument, I omit these, contenting myself with what has been said touching the wrongfulness of being carried away beyond natural and moderate bounds to futile mourning and ignoble lamentation.

25 1 Crantor says that not being to blame for one’s unhappy state is no small alleviation for misfortunes; but I should say that it surpasses all others as a remedy for the cure of grief. But affection and love for the departed does not consist in distressing ourselves, but in benefiting the beloved one; and a benefit for those who have been taken away is the honour paid to them through keeping their memory green. For no good man, after he is dead, is deserving of lamentations, but of hymns and songs of joy; not of mourning, but of an honourable memory; not of sorrowing tears, but of offerings of sacrifice, — if the departed one is now a partaker in some life more divine, relieved of servitude to the body, and of these everlasting cares and misfortunes which those who have received a mortal life as their portion are constrained to undergo until such time as they shall complete their allotted earthly existence, which Nature has not given us for eternity; but she has distributed to us severally the apportioned amount in accordance with the laws of fate.

26 1 Wherefore, over those who die men of good sense ought not to be carried away by sorrow beyond the natural and moderate limit of grief, which so affects the soul, into useless and barbarian mourning, and they ought not to wait for that outcome which has already been the lot of many in the past, the result of which is that they terminate their own lives in misery because they have put off their mourning, and gain nothing but a forlorn burial in their garments of sorrow, as their woes and the ills born of their unreasonableness follow them to the grave, so that one might utter over them the verse of Homer:

While they were weeping and wailing black darkness descended upon them.

We should therefore often hold converse with ourselves after this fashion and say: “What? Shall we some day cease grieving, or shall we consort with unceasing misery to the very end of our life?” For to regard our mourning as unending is the mark of the most extreme foolishness, especially when we observe how those who have been in the deepest grief and greatest mourning often become most cheerful under the influence of time, and at the very tombs where they gave violent expression to their grief by wailing and beating their breasts, they arrange most elaborate banquets with musicians and all the other forms of diversion. It is accordingly the mark of a madman thus to assume that he shall keep his mourning permanently. 115 If, however, men should reason that mourning will come to an end after some particular event, they might go on and reason that it will come to an end when time, forsooth, has produced some effect; for not even God can undo what has been done. So, then, that which in the present instance has come to pass contrary to our expectation and contrary to our opinion has only demonstrated what is wont, through the very course of events, to happen in the case of many men. What then? Are we unable, through reason, to learn this fact and draw the conclusion, that

Full is the earth now of evils, and full of them too is the ocean.

and also this:

Such woes of woes for mortal men,

And round about the Fates throng close;

There is no vacant pathway for the air?

27 1 Not merely now, but long ago, as Crantor says, the lot of man has been bewailed by many wise men, who have felt that life is a punishment and that for man to be born at all is the greatest calamity. Aristotle says that Silenus when he was captured declared this to Midas. It is better to quote the very words of the philosopher. He says, in the work which is entitled Eudemus, or Of the Soul, the following:

“ ‘Wherefore, O best and blessedest of all, in addition to believing that those who have ended this life are blessed and happy, we also think that to say anything false or slanderous against them is impious, from our feeling that it is directed against those who have already become our betters and superiors. And this is such an old and ancient belief with us that no one knows at all either the beginning of the time or the name of the person who first promulgated it, but it continues to be a fixed belief for all time. And in addition to this you observe how the saying, which is on the lips of all men, has been passed from mouth to mouth for many years.’ ‘What is this?’ said he. And the other, again taking up the discourse, said: ‘That not to be born is the best of all, and that to be dead is better than to live. And the proof that this is so has been given to many men by the deity. So, for example, they say that Silenus, after the hunt in which Midas of yore had captured him, when Midas questioned and inquired of him what is the best thing for mankind and what is the most preferable of all things, was at first unwilling to tell, but maintained a stubborn silence. But when at last, by employing every device, Midas induced him to say something to him, Silenus, forced to speak, said: “Ephemeral offspring of a travailing genius and of harsh fortune, why do you force me to speak what it were better for you men not to know? For a life spent in ignorance of one’s own woes is most free from grief. But for men it is utterly impossible that they should obtain the best thing of all, or even have any share in its nature (for the best thing for all men and women is not to be born); however, the next best thing to this, and the first of those to which man can attain, but nevertheless only the second best, is, after being born, to die as quickly as possible.” It is evident, therefore, that he made this declaration with the conviction that existence after death is better than that in life.’ “

One might cite thousands and thousands of examples under this same head, but there is no need to be prolix.

28 1 We ought not, therefore, to lament those who die young on the ground that they have been deprived of those things which in a long life are accounted good; for this is uncertain, as we have often said — whether the things of which they have been deprived are good or evil; for the evils are much the more numerous. And whereas we acquire the good things only with difficulty and at the expense of many anxieties, the evils we acquire very easily. For they say that the latter are compact and conjoined, and are brought together by many influences, while the good things are disjoined, and hardly manage to unite towards the very end of life. We therefore resemble men who have forgotten, 116 not merely, as Euripides says, that

Mortals are not the owners of their wealth,

but also that they do not own a single one of human possessions. Wherefore we must say in regard to all things that

We keep and care for that which is the gods’,

And when they will they take it back again.

We ought not, therefore, to bear it with bad grace if the gods make demand upon us for what they have loaned us for a short time. For even the bankers, as we are in the habit of saying frequently, when demand is made upon them for the return of deposits, do not chafe at the repayment, if they be honourable men. To those who do not make repayment with good grace one might fairly say, “Have you forgotten that you accepted this on condition that you should return it?’ Quite parallel is the lot of all mortals. For we hold our life, as it were, on deposit from the gods, who have compelled us to accept the account, and there is no fixed time for its return, just as with the bankers and their deposits, but it is uncertain when the depositor will demand payment. If a man, therefore, is exceedingly indignant, either when he himself is about to die, or when his children have died, must he not manifestly have forgotten that he is but human and the father of children who are mortal? For it is not characteristic of a man of sense to be unaware of the fact that man is a mortal creature, and that he is born to die. At any rate, if Niobe of the fable had had this conception ready at hand, that even the woman who,

Laden with the happy burden

Of sweet life and growing children,

Looks upon the pleasant sunlight,

must die, she would not have been so resentful as to wish to abandon life on account of the magnitude of her misfortune, and to implore the gods that she herself might be hurried to the most awful perdition.

There are two of the inscriptions at Delphi which are most indispensable to living. These are: “Know thyself” and “Avoid extremes,” for on these two commandments hang all the rest. These two are in harmony and agreement with each other, and the one seems to be made as clear as possible through the other. For in self-knowledge is included the avoidance of extremes, and in the latter is included self-knowledge. Therefore Ion speaks of the former as follows:

Not much to say is “Know thyself”; to do

This, Zeus alone of gods doth understand.

And, of the other, Pindar says:

The wise have lauded with exceeding praise the words “Avoid extremes.”

29 1 If, then, one keeps these in mind as god-given injunctions, he will be able easily to adapt them to all the circumstances of life, and to bear with such circumstances intelligently, by being heedful of his own nature, and heedful, in whatever may befall him, not to go beyond the limit of propriety, either in being elated to boastfulness or in being humbled and cast down to wailings and lamentations, through weakness of the spirit and the fear of death which is implanted in us as a result of our ignorance of what is wont to happen in life in accordance with the decree of necessity or destiny. Excellent is the advice which the Pythagoreans gave, saying:

Whatsoe’er woes by the gods’ dispensation all mortals must suffer,

What be the fate you must bear, you should bear it and not be indignant.

And the tragic poet Aeschylus says:

It is the mark of just and knowing men

In woes to feel no anger at the gods;

and Euripides:

Of mortals he who yields to fate we think

Is wise and knows the ways of Providence;

and in another place he says:

Of mortals he who bears his lot aright

117 To me seems noblest and of soundest sense.

30 1 Most people grumble about everything, and have a feeling that everything which happens to them contrary to their expectations is brought about through the spite of Fortune and the divine powers. Therefore they wail at everything, and groan, and curse their luck. To them one might say in retort:

God is no bane to you; ‘tis you yourself,

you and your foolish and distorted notions due to your lack of education. It is because of this fallacious and deluded notion that men cry out against any sort of death. If a man die while on a journey, they groan over him and say:

Wretched his fate; not for him shall his father or much revered mother

Close his dear eyelids in death.

But if he die in his own land with his parents at his bedside, they deplore his being snatched from their arms and leaving them the memory of the painful sight. If he die in silence without uttering a word about anything, they say amid their tears:

No, not a word did you say to me, which for the weight of its meaning

Ever might dwell in my mind.

But if he talked a little at the time of his death, they keep his words always before their mind as a sort of kindling for their grief. If he die suddenly, they deplore his death, saying, “He was snatched away”; but if he lingered long, they complain that he wasted away and suffered before he died. Any pretext is sufficient to arouse grief and lamentations. This movement the poets initiated, and especially the first of them, Homer, who says:

E’en as a father laments as the pyre of his dead son he kindles,

Wedded not long; by his death he brought woe to his unhappy parents.

Not to be told is the mourning and grief that he caused for his parents.

And yet so far it is not evident that the father is justified in bewailing thus. But note this next line:

Only and darlingest son, who is heir to his many possessions.

31 1 For who knows but that God, having a fatherly care for the human race, and foreseeing future events, early removes some persons from life untimely? Wherefore we must believe that they undergo nothing that should be avoided. (For

In what must be, there’s naught that men need dread,

nor in any of those events which come to pass in accordance with the postulates or the logical deductions of reason), both because the great majority of deaths forestall other and greater troubles and because it were better for some not to be born even, for others to die at the very moment of birth, for others after they have gone on in life a little way, and for still others while they are in their full vigour. Toward all such deaths we should maintain a cheerful frame of mind, since we know that we cannot escape destiny. It is the mark of educated men to take it for granted that those who seem to have been deprived of life untimely have but forestalled us for a brief time; for the longest life is short and momentary in comparison with eternity. And we know, too, that many who have protracted their period of mourning have, after no long time, followed their lamented friends, without having gained any advantage from their mourning, but only useless torment by their misery.

Since the time of sojourn in life is very brief, we ought not, in unkempt grief and utterly wretched mourning, to ruin our lives by racking ourselves with mental anguish and bodily torments, but to turn to the better and more human course, by striving earnestly to converse with men who will not, for flattery, grieve with us and arouse our sorrows, 118 but will endeavour to dispel our griefs through noble and dignified consolation. We should hearken to Homer and keep in mind those lines of his which Hector spoke to Andromache, endeavouring, in his turn, to comfort her:

Dearest, you seem much excited; be not overtroubled in spirit;

No man beyond what is fated shall send me in death unto Hades.

For not a man among mortals, I say, has escaped what is destined,

Neither the base nor the noble, when once he has entered life’s pathway.

Of this destiny the poet elsewhere says:

When from his mother he came, in the thread of his life Fate entwined it.

32 1 Keeping these things before our mind, we shall rid ourselves of the useless and vain extremes of mourning, since the time remaining of our life is altogether short. We must therefore be chary of it, so that we may live it in cheerfulness of spirit and without the disturbance of mournful griefs, by giving up the outward signs of sorrow and by bethinking ourselves of the care of our bodies and the welfare of those who live with us. It is a good thing also to call to mind the arguments which most likely we have sometimes employed with relatives or friends who found themselves in similar calamities, when we tried to comfort them and to persuade them to bear the usual happenings of life in the usual way and a man’s lot like a man; and it is a good thing, too, not to put ourselves in the position of being able to help others to find relief from grief, but ourselves to have no profit in recalling the means through which we must cure the soul’s distress— “by healing remedies of reason” — since we should postpone anything else rather than the putting aside of grief. And yet one poet says that the man who in any matter “puts off till to-morrow” is “wrestling with destruction” — a proverb which is repeated among all men. Much more, I think, is this true of the man who puts over to a future time the experiences which his soul finds so troublesome and so hard to face.

33 1 It is a good thing, too, to contemplate those men who nobly and high-mindedly and calmly have been resigned to the deaths which have befallen their sons — Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, Demosthenes of Athens, Dion of Syracuse, King Antigonus, and very many others among men both of earlier times and of our own day.

Of these, Anaxagoras, according to the traditional story, was talking about natural philosophy in conversation with his friends, when he heard from one of the messengers, who were sent to bring him the news, of the end which had befallen his son. He stopped for a moment and then said to those present, “I knew that I had begotten a son who was mortal.”

Pericles, who was called “the Olympian” because of his surpassing power of reasoning and of understanding, learned that both his sons, Paralus and Xanthippus, had passed from life. Protagoras describes his conduct in these words: “His sons were comely youths, but though they died within seven days of each other, he bore their deaths without repining. For he continued to hold to that serenity from which day by day he added greatly to his credit of being blest by Fortune and untroubled by sorrow, and to his high repute with the people at large. For each and every man, as he beheld Pericles bearing his sorrows so stoutly, felt that he was high-minded and manful and his own superior, being only too well aware of what would be his own helplessness under such circumstances. For Pericles, immediately after the tidings about this two sons, none the less placed the garland upon his head, according to the time-honoured custom at Athens, and, clad in garb of white, harangued the people, ‘taking lead in good counsel,’ and inspiriting the Athenians to war.”

Xenophon, the follower of Socrates, was once offering sacrifice when he learned from the messengers who had come from the field of battle that his son Gryllus had met his death while fighting. 119 He took the garland from his head and questioned them as to how he had died. When the messengers reported that he died nobly, displaying the greatest valour and after slaying many of the enemy, Xenophon was completely silent for a few moments while mastering his emotion by the power of reason, and then, replacing the garland, he completed the sacrifice, remarking to the messengers, “I prayed to the gods, not that my son should be immortal or even long of life (for it is not clear whether it be of advantage so), but that he should be brave and patriotic; and so it has come to pass.”

Dion of Syracuse was sitting in consultation with his friends, when there arose in the house a commotion and a great screaming, and upon inquiring the cause and hearing what had happened — that his son had fallen from the roof and been killed — he was not at all disconcerted, but commanded the corpse to be given over to the women for the usual preparation for burial, and he himself did not leave off the discussion in which he was engaged.

His example, they say, Demosthenes the orator emulated when he lost his only and much-loved daughter, of whom Aeschines, thinking to reproach Demosthenes, speaks as follows: “On the seventh day after his daughter’s death, before he had mourned for her or performed the customary rites, putting on a garland and resuming his white apparel, he offered a sacrifice in public and violated all custom, when he had lost, poor wretch, his only daughter, who was the first child to address him as father.” So then Aeschines, purposing, after the manner of the political speaker, to reproach him, rehearsed these facts, being quite unaware that thereby he was really commending Demosthenes, who put aside his grief, and displayed his patriotism in preference to his feelings for his kindred.

Antigonus the king, on learning of the death of his son Alcyoneus, which had occurred in the line of battle, gazed proudly upon the messengers who had brought news of the calamity, and after waiting for a moment, said, bowing his head, “Not so very early, Alcyoneus, have you departed this life, since you always rushed so recklessly against the enemy without a thought either of your own safety or of my counsels.”

The whole world wonders at these men and admires them for their nobility of mind, but others have not the ability to imitate them in practice because of that weakness of spirit which results from lack of education. But although there are so many examples, which have been handed down to us through both Greek and Roman history, of men who have behaved nobly and honourably at the deaths of their relatives, yet what has been said will suffice to induce you to put aside mourning, which is the most distressing of all things, and also the fruitless pain, which serves no purpose, involved in mourning.

34 1 The fact that those who excel in virtues pass on to their fate while young, as though beloved of the gods, I have already called to your attention in an earlier part of my letter, and I shall endeavour at this time to touch upon it very briefly, merely adding my testimony to that which has been so well said by Menander:

Whom the gods love dies young.

But perhaps, my dearest Apollonius, you would say in retort that your young son had been placed under the special care of Apollo and the Fates, and that it should have been you who, on departing this life, received the last offices from him, after he had come to full manhood; for this, you say, is in accordance with nature. Yes, in accordance with your nature, no doubt, and mine, and that of mankind in general, but not in accordance with the Providence which presides over all or with the universal dispensation. But for that boy, now among the blessed, it was not in accordance with nature that he should tarry beyond the time allotted to him for life on this earth, but that, after fulfilling this term with due obedience, he should set forth to meet his fate, which was already (to use his own words) summoning him to himself. “But he died untimely.” Yes, but for this very reason his lot is happier, and he is spared many evils; for Euripides says:

120 Life bears the name of life, being but toil.

But he, in the most blooming period of his years, has departed early, a perfect youth, envied and admired by all who knew him. He was fond of his father and mother and his relatives and friends, or, to put it in a word, he loved his fellow men; he respected the elderly among his friends as fathers, he was affectionate towards his companions and familiar friends, he honoured his teachers, and was most kind toward strangers and citizens, gentle with all and beloved of all, both because of his charm of appearance and because of his affable kindliness.

Ah well, but he, bearing with him the fair and fitting fame of your righteousness and his own conjoined, has departed early to eternity from out this mortal life, as from an evening party, before falling into any such grossness of conduct as is wont to be the concomitant of a long old age. And if the account of the ancient poets and philosophers is true, as it most likely is, and so there is for those of the departed who have been righteous a certain honour and preferment, as is said, and a place set apart in which their souls pass their existence, then you ought to be of good hope for your dear departed son that he will be reckoned among their number and will be with them.

35 1 These are the words of the melic poet Pindar regarding the righteous in the other world:

For them doth the strength of the sun shine below,

While night all the earth doth overstrow.

In meadows of roses their suburbs lie,

Roses all tinged with a crimson dye.

They are shaded by trees that incense bear,

And trees with golden fruit so far.

Some with horses and sports of might,

Others in music and draughts delight.

Happiness there grows ever apace,

Perfumes are wafted o’er the loved place,

As the incense they strew where the gods’s altars are

And the fire that consumes it is seen from afar.

And a little farther on, in another lament for the dead, speaking of the soul, he says:

In happy fate they all

Were freed by death from labour’s thrall,

Man’s body follows at the beck of death

O’ermastering. Alive is left

The image of the stature that he gained,

Since this alone is from the gods obtained.

It sleeps while limbs move to and fro,

But, while we sleep, in dreams doth show

The choice we cannot disregard

Between the pleasant and the hard.

36 1 The divine Plato has said a good deal in his treatise On the Soul about its immortality, and not a little also in the Republic and Meno and Gorgias, and here and there in his other dialogues. What is said in the dialogue On the Soul I will copy, with comments, and send you separately, as you desired. But for the present occasion these words, which were spoken to Callicles the Athenian, the friend and discipline of Gorgias the orator, are timely and profitable. They say that Socrates, according to Plato’s account, says:

“Listen to a very beautiful story, which you, I imagine, will regard as a myth, but which I regard as a story; for what I am going to say I shall relate as true. As Homer tells the tale, Zeus, Poseidon, and Pluto divided the kingdom when they received it from their father. Now this was the custom regarding men even in the time of Cronus, and it has persisted among the gods to this day — that the man who has passed through life justly and in holiness shall, at his death, depart to the Islands of the Blest and dwell in all happiness beyond the reach of evil, while he who has lived an unjust and godless life shall go to the prison-house of justice and punishment, 121 which they call Tartarus. The judges of these men, in the time of Cronus and in the early days of Zeus’ dominion, were living, and judged the living, giving judgement on the day when the men were about to die. As time went on, for some reason the cases were not decided well. Accordingly Pluto and the supervisors in the Islands of the Blest went to Zeus and said to him that there kept coming to them at both places inadmissible persons. ‘Very well,’ said Zeus, ‘then I shall put a stop to this proceeding. The judgements are now rendered poorly; for,’ said he, ‘those who are judged are judged with a covering on them, since they are judged while alive, and so,’ he continued, ‘a good many perhaps who have base souls are clad with beautiful bodies and ancestry and riches, and, when the judgement takes place, many come to testify for them that they have lived righteously. So not only are the judges disconcerted by these things, but at the same time they themselves sit in judgement with a covering on them, having before their own souls, like a veil, their eyes and ears and their whole body. All these things come between, both their own covering and that of those who are being judged. In the first place, then, all their foreknowledge of death must be ended; for now they have foreknowledge of it. So Prometheus has been told to put an end to this. Secondly, they must be judged divested of all these things; for they must be judged after they have died. The judge also must be naked, and dead, that he may view with his very soul the very soul of every man instantly after he has died, and intimated from all his kin, having left behind on earth all earthly adornments, so that his judgement may be just. I, therefore, realizing this situation sooner than you, have made my own sons judges, two from Asia — Minos and Rhadamanthys — and one from Europe — Aeacus. These, then, as soon as they have died, shall sit in judgement in the meadow at the parting of the ways whence the two roads lead, the one to the Islands of the Blest and the other to Tartarus. The people of Asia shall Rhadamanthys judge, while Aeacus shall judge the people of Europe; and to Minos I shall give the prerogative of pronouncing final judgement in case the other two be in any doubt, in order that the decision in regard to the route which men must take shall be as just as possible.’ This, Callicles, is what I have heard, and believe to be true; and from these words I draw the following inference — that death is, as it seems to me, nothing else than the severing of two things, soul and body, from each other.”

37 1 Having collected and put together these extracts, my dearest Apollonius, with great diligence, I have completed this letter of condolence to you, which is most needful to enable you to put aside your present grief and to put an end to mourning, which is the most distressing of all things. In it is included also for your son, Apollonius, a youth so very dear to the gods, a fitting tribute, which is much coveted by the sanctified — a tribute due to his honourable memory and to his fair fame, which will endure for time eternal. You will do well, therefore, to be persuaded by reason, and, as a favour to your dear departed son, to turn from your unprofitable distress and desolation, which affect both body and soul, and to go back to your accustomed and natural course of life. Forasmuch as your son, while he was living among us, was sorry to see either you or his mother downcast, even so, now that he is with the gods and is feasting with them, he would not be well satisfied with your present course of life. Resume, therefore, the spirit of a brave-hearted and high-minded man who loves his offspring, 122 and set free from all this wretchedness both yourself, the mother of the youth, and your relatives and friends, as you may do by pursuing a more tranquil form of life, which will be most gratifying both to your son and to all of us who are concerned for you, as we rightly should be.

Advice about keeping well

122 1 1 Moschion. So, Zeuxippus, yesterday you drove away Glaucus, the physician, when he wished to join in your philosophical discussions.

Zeuxippus. No, my dear Moschion, I did not drive him away, nor did he wish to join in philosophical discussion, but I avoided him and feared giving an opening to a man fond of contention. In medicine the man is, as Homer puts it,

Worth many others together,

but he is not kindly disposed towards philosophy, and there is always a certain harshness and ill-nature inherent in his remarks. And just then he was coming at us full tilt, crying out, even before he came near us, that it was no small or suitable task, amounting in fact to a confusion of all bounds, which had been boldly assumed by us in discussing a healthful manner of living. For he asserted that the subjects of philosophy and medicine are as “far remote” from each other as “are the boundaries of” any “Mysians and Phrygians”; and thereupon, as he had at the tip of his tongue some statements of ours, which, though not very carefully formulated, are certainly not without utility, he proceeded to tear them to pieces.

Moschion. Well, in this and in other matters, Zeuxippus, I should be very glad to be your attentive listener.

Zeuxippus. That is because you, Moschion, have a natural gift for philosophy, and you feel incensed at the philosopher who does not take an interest in medicine, and you are indignant that such a man should imagine it more becoming for him, in the eyes of mankind, to profess some knowledge of geometry, logical discussion, and music, than to desire to seek out and know

All that of evil and good may have chanced to betide in the dwelling

which is his own body. And yet you will see a larger number of spectators in the theatres where money to pay for admission is distributed to those who gather together, as at Athens; and of the liberal arts medicine is inferior to none in elegance, distinction, and the satisfaction which it yields, and it gives to its students admission to something of very great importance — the preservation of their life and health. Consequently, the charge of trespass ought not to lie against philosophers if they discuss matters of health, but rather they should be blamed if they do not consider it their duty to abolish all boundary-lines altogether, and to make a single field, as it were, of all honourable studies, and therein to cultivate them in common, thus aiming in their discussion at both the pleasant and the essential.

Moschion. Well, Zeuxippus, let us say no more about Glaucus, who is so self-important that he wants to be a law unto himself, needing no help from philosophy; but do you tell us in detail the whole discussion; For, if you prefer, just those statements which you first referred to as not altogether carefully formulated, which you say Glaucus seized upon.

2 1 Zeuxippus. Well, our companion asserted that he had heard somebody say that keeping the hands always warm, and never allowing them to get cold, is in no small measure conducive to health, 123 and, conversely, the chilling of the extremities, by concentrating the warmth of the interior of the body, creates, as it were, a habit or a predisposition towards feverishness; and for a man to divert the substances in his body toward the surface, and to conduct and distribute them, along with the warmth, to all parts of his body, is healthful. If therefore we happen to be doing something with our hands and using them, the motion itself brings the warmth to these parts, and keeps it there; but when not engaged in such activities we must by no means allow the cold to find lodgement in our extremities.

3 1 This, then, was one of the things ridiculed. The second, I think, concerned the food which you people serve to the sick. For he urged that we should partake of it and taste it from time to time, and get ourselves used to it in time of health, and not abhor and detest such a regimen, like little children, but gradually make it familiar and congenial to our appetites, so that in sickness we may not be disaffected over our fare as if it were so much medicine, and may not show impatience at receiving something simple, unappetising, and savourless. For this reason, too, omitting the bath now and then before going to a meal is not a thing to be avoided, nor drinking only water when wine is at hand, nor drinking anything lukewarm in the summer-time when there is snow on the table; and while dismissing once for all time the ostentatious and studied abstinence from such things and the bragging over it, we should silently, by our own selves, habituate the appetite to be obedient to expediency with all serenity, and long beforehand we must rid our soul of its squeamishness in times of sickness about such trifles, and its lamentation thereat, as it deplores how it has been driven away from great and fond pleasures to an ignoble and humiliating way of living.

Well has it been said, “Choose the life that is best, and constant habit will make it pleasant,” and, in particular, it is profitable for a man, experimenting with each several department of life and especially with those which have to do with the practices which affect the body, to inculcate a fixed habit during periods of stoutest health, so thus to make these things agreeable, familiar, and congenial to his nature, bearing in mind how some men feel and act in times of sickness, being angry and fretful when hot water and gruel, or plain bread, is served to them, calling these things abominable and unpleasant, and abominable and hard-hearted also those who would force such things upon them. A bath has proved to be the death of many men who at the outset had not much the matter with them, save only that they could not and would not bear to taste food unless they had first had their bath; of whom Titus the Emperor was one, as those who attended him in his illness affirm.

4 1 Something, moreover, was said to this effect, that, while the less expensive things are always more healthful for the body, we ought especially to guard against excess Ein eating and drinking, and against all self-indulgence when we have immediately on hand some festival or a visit from friends, or when we are expecting an entertainment of some king or high official with its unavoidable social engagements; and thus we should, as it were, in fair weather make our body trim and buoyant against the oncoming wind and wave. It is indeed a hard task, in the midst of company and good cheer, to keep to moderation and one’s habits and at the same time to avoid the extreme disagreeableness which makes one appear offensive and tiresome to the whole company. Therefore, to avoid adding fire to fire (as the proverb has it), and gorging to gorging, and strong drink to strong drink, we ought with all seriousness to imitate the polite joke of Philip. It was in this wise: A man had invited Philip to dinner in the country, assuming that he had but a few with him, but when later the host saw Philip bringing a great company, no great preparations having been made, he was much perturbed. Philip, becoming aware of the situation, sent word privately to each of his friends to “leave room for cake.” 124 They, following the advice, and looking for more to come, ate sparingly of what was before them, and so the dinner was ample for all. In this manner, then, we ought to prepared ourselves in anticipation of our imperative round of social engagements by keeping room in the body for elaborate dishes and pastry, and, I dare to say it, for indulgence in strong drink also, by bringing to these things an appetite fresh and willing.

5 1 If, however, such imperative occasions suddenly confront us when we are overloaded and in no condition for taking part — if, for instance, we receive an invitation from a high official, or guests appear, so that we are constrained by a false sense of shame to join company with men who are in fit condition and to drink with them — then especially, in order to combat “shame which works mischief for men” (or rather I would call it shamefacedness), we should summon to our defence the words which Creon speaks in the tragedy:

‘Twere better, friend, to gain your hatred now

Than be soft-hearted and lament anon.

For to be so afraid of being thought ill-bred as to plunge oneself into a pleurisy or brain-fever is proof that one is in very truth ill-bred, possessed of neither sense nor the reason which knows how to consort with men without the wine-glass and the savour of food. For a request to be excused, if characterized by cleverness and wit, is no less agreeable than joining in the round of gaiety; and if a man provides a banquet in the same spirit in which he provides a burnt-offering which it is forbidden to taste, and personally abstains when the wine-cup and the table are before him, at the same time volunteering cheerfully some playful allusion to himself, he will create a pleasanter impression than the man who gets drunk and gormandizes for company. Of the men of earlier times he mentioned Alexander, who, after a prolonged debauch, was ashamed to say no to the challenges of Medius, and abandoned himself to a fresh round of hard drinking, which cost him his life; and of the men of our time he mentioned Regulus the prize-fighter. For when Titus Caesar called him to the bath at daybreak, he came and bathed with him, took but one drink, they say, and died immediately from a stroke of apoplexy.

These are the teachings which Glaucus in derision quoted aggressively to us as pedantic. The rest he was not eager to hear, nor we to tell him. But I beg that you will examine each of the several statements.

6 1 First there is Socrates, who, in urging us to be on our guard against such things to eat as persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, and such things to drink as persuade us to drink when we are not thirsty, did not absolutely forbid the use of these things; but he was instructing us to use them only if we needed them, and to make the pleasure in them serve our necessity, just as our statesmen do who turn to military uses their funds for amusements. For that which is pleasant, in so far as it is a nutritive element, is congenial to our nature, and it is by remaining still hungry that we ought to get enjoyment from the necessary or the pleasant foods; but we should not stir up in ourselves a second and separate set of appetites after we have appeased the usual ones. And here is another consideration. Just as Socrates found dancing a not unpleasant exercise, so the man for whom pastry and sweets serve as a meal and as food suffers less injury. But when a man has satisfied the moderate demands of his nature, and has had his fill, he ought to exercise the very greatest vigilance against helping himself to such things. And in such matters, while we should be on guard against love of pleasure and gluttony, yet we should be no less on guard against vulgarity and love of notoriety. For these latter often help to persuade people to eat something when they are not hungry, and to drink when they are not thirsty, by suggesting utterly sordid and cheap conceits — that it is absurd not to take advantage of the presence of some rare and expensive thing, as, for example, sow’s udder, Italian mushrooms, Samian cake, or snow in Egypt. For things of this sort do indeed often induce people to use what is renowned and rare, since they are led on by empty repute as by an attractive savour, 125 and compel their body to do its share, although it feels no need, so that they may have a tale to tell to others, and may be envied for their enjoyment of things so hard to obtain and so uncommon. Quite similar is their behaviour toward notorious women. There are times when they repose in quiet with their own wives who are both lovely and loving, but when they have paid money to a Phryne or a Laïs, although their body is in sorry state and is inclined to shirk its task, they rouse it forthwith to action, and call in licentiousness to minister to pleasure, all because of empty repute. In fact, Phryne herself, in her advancing years, said that she got a better price for her remnants because of her repute.

7 1 It is a great marvel if we get off unscathed, when we concede to the body only as much of pleasures as Nature in her need finds a place for, but still more so when we battle with it vigorously to thwart its appetites, and keep putting them off, and finally consent to some negotiation with such as will not be denied, or, as Plato says, “yield when the body bites and strains.” But when the case is reversed, and the desires descend from the mind to the body and force it to be subservient to the mind’s emotions, and to join in their excitements, there is no way to prevent their leaving as a residue the most violent and serious injuries as the aftermath of feeble and evanescent pleasures. Least of all ought the body to be stirred to pleasures by the mind’s desire, since such an origin is unnatural. Just as tickling the arm-pits so affects the mind as to produce laughter which is not natural, or even mild or happy, but convulsive and harsh, so whatsoever pleasures the body achieves through being prodded and disturbed by the mind are deranging and disturbing and foreign to Nature. Whenever, then, someone of those rare and notorious means of enjoyment is afforded us, we ought to take more pride in abstinence not in enjoyment, remembering that just as Simonides used to say that he had never been sorry having kept silent, but many a time for having spoken, so we have never been sorry either for having put a dainty to one side, or for having drunk water instead of Falernian wine, but the opposite; not only ought Nature not to be forced, but if anything of this sort is offered her even when she has need of it, the appetite ought to be often diverted from it towards the plain and familiar food for the sake of habituation and training.

If one must needs do wrong,

are the words of the Theban, who is not correct in saying,

far best it were

To do it for a kingdom’s sake.

But we can improve on this by saying that if we must needs seek repute in such matters as food and drink, “far best it were” by continence for the sake of health. Nevertheless stinginess and greediness constrain some persons, who repress and reduce their desires in their own homes, to stuff themselves and enjoy themselves with expensive things at others’ houses as though they were engaged in ruthless foraging in an enemy’s country; then they go away much indisposed, and for the next day they have an attack of indigestion to pay for their insatiable appetite. So Crates, thinking that luxury and extravagance were as much to blame as anything for the growth of civil discords and the rule of despots in states, humorously advised:

Do not, by always making our fare more ample than lentils,

Throw us all into discord.

And let everybody exhort himself “not to make his fare always more ample than lentils,” and by all means not to proceed beyond cress and olives to croquettes and fish, and by overeating throw “his body into discord,” that is to say, into derangements and diarrhoeas. For the inexpensive things keep the appetite to its natural limits of moderation, 126 but the arts of the chefs and their trained helpers, and, in the words of the comic poet,

These knavish dainties and these complex foods,

are constantly advancing and enlarging the bounds of enjoyment, and altering our ideas of what is good for us. I do not know how it is that, while we loathe and detest women who contrive philters and magic to use upon their husbands, we entrust our food and provisions to hirelings and slaves to be all but bewitched and drugged. If the saying of Arcesilaus addressed to the adulterous and licentious appears too bitter, to the effect that ‘it makes no difference whether a man practises lewdness in the front parlour or in the back hall,’ yet it is not without its application to our subject. For in very truth, what difference does it make whether a man employ aphrodisiacs to stir and excite licentiousness for the purposes of pleasure, or whether he stimulate his taste by odours and sauces to require, like the itch, continual scratchings and ticklings?

8 1 At some other time, then, it may be that we shall have to speak against pleasures, and show what an intrinsic beauty and dignity belongs to continence; but the present discourse is on the side of many pleasures and great. For diseases do not take from us and spoil for us so many of our enterprises or hopes or travels or pastimes as they do of our pleasures. Hence contempt for health is least profitable for those who make pleasure their chief aim. For infirmities allow many persons to be philosophers, or actually even generals or kings, but the pleasures and enjoyments of the body in some cases do not come to life at all in time of disease, and those that come to life yield but a brief part of what they properly should, and even that is not pure, but contaminated with much that is foreign, and marked, as it were, by the beatings of surge and storm. For it is not true that

In well-gorged bodies Love resides,

but rather in serenity and calmness of the flesh does love find its end in pleasure, as also do eating and drinking; and health affords to pleasures, as calm weather to the halcyons, a safe and lovely nesting and hatching of their young. Prodicus seems to have put the matter very neatly in saying that fire is the best of sauces; but one might more truly speak of health as being the most divine and agreeable sauce. For boiled, baked, or fried foods afford no proper pleasure or even gratification to those who are suffering from disease, debauch, or nausea, while a clean and unspoiled appetite makes everything, to a sound body, pleasant and “eagerly craved,” as Homer has said, — that is, agreeable.

9 1 As Demades used to say that the Athenians, who were for making war in season and out of season, never voted for peace save when wearing black, so we never give a thought to a plain and restrained way of living except when using enemas and poultices. But when we find ourselves in this plight we try hard to stifle the thought of our wrongdoings, setting ourselves against their remembrance, and, as is the way of most people who object to this or that air or this or that locality as insalubrious when they say that they dread travelling, we exclude our intemperance and self-indulgence from the cause of our illness. Nay, we should recall how Lysimachus among the Getae was constrained by thirst to surrender himself and the army with him as prisoners of war, and afterwards as he drank cold water exclaimed, “My God, for what a brief pleasure have I thrown away great prosperity!” And in the same way we ought in our attacks of illness to remember that for a cold drink, an ill-timed bath, or a social party, we have spoiled many of our pleasures and have ruined many an honourable enterprise and delightful recreation. For the sting caused by such reflections keeps the memory raw, so that, like a scar that remains when the body is in health, it makes us more circumspect about our way of living. 127 For the healthy body will not, to any immoderate extent, breed desires that are vehement, intractable, unwonted, and hard to dispossess; nay, we can boldly and confidently oppose the appetites which would fain go beyond all bounds and assault our enjoyments, knowing that their whining and whimpering is a trivial and childish manifestation, and that later, when the table is removed, they will cease repining and make no complaint nor feel themselves aggrieved, but, on the contrary, untainted and cheerful rather than dulled and nauseated by over-indulgence, await the morrow. The remark which Timotheus made, the day after he had dined with Plato at the Academy on the simple fare of the scholar, is in point here: “Those who dine with Plato,” he said, “get on pleasantly the next day also.” And it is reported that Alexander said when he discharged the chefs of Ada that he had better ones always to take with him — his night marches for breakfast, and for dinner his frugal breakfast.

10 1 I am not unaware that men contract fevers because of fatigue and extremes of heat and cold; but just as the scents of flowers are weak by themselves, whereas, when they are mixed with oil, they acquire strength and intensity, so a great mass of food to start with provides substance and body, as it were, for the causes and sources of disease that come from the outside. Without such material none of these things would cause any trouble, but they would readily fade away and be dissipated, if clear blood and an unpolluted spirit are at hand to meet the disturbance; but in a mass of superfluous food a sort of turbulent sediment, as it were, is stirred up, which makes everything foul and hard to manage and hard to get rid of. Therefore we must not act like those much admired (!) ship-masters who for greed take on a big cargo, and thenceforth are continually engaged in baling out the sea-water. So we must not stuff and overload our body, and afterwards employ purgatives and injections, but rather keep it all the time trim, so that, if ever it suffer depression, it shall, owing to its buoyancy, bob up again like a cork.

11 We ought to take special precautions in the case of premonitory symptoms and sensations. For what Hesiod has said of the illnesses that go hither and thither assailing mankind is not true of all, that

Silent they go, since the wisdom of Zeus has deprived them of voices,

but most of them have as their harbingers, forerunners, and heralds, attacks of indigestion and lassitude. “Feelings of heaviness or of fatigue,” says Hippocrates, “when due to no external cause, indicate disease,” since, presumably, the spirit about the nerves is subjected to tension and pressure owing to fullness within the body. Nevertheless, some men, although their body itself all but resists and would fain drag them to their beds and their rest, are led by gluttony and self-indulgence to rush off to the baths and eagerly to join in the drinking-bouts, as if they were laying in provisions for a siege and were fearful lest fever seize them before they have had luncheon. Others, less gross than these, are not indeed caught in this folly, but very stupidly, just because they are ashamed to admit having a headache or indigestion, and to keep their clothes on all day, when a crowd on their way to the gymnasium invite them to come along, they get up and go, strip with the others, and go through the same exercises as do those who are in sound health. But as for the majority, Hope, backed by a proverb which well accords with incontinence and weakness of purpose, persuades and induces them to get up and go recklessly to their accustomed haunts, thinking to expel and dispel wine with wine, and headache with headache. Against this hope should be set Cato’s caution which that grand old man phrased in this way: 128”Make the great small, and abolish the small altogether”; also the thought that it is better to submit patiently to fasting and resting with nothing to show for it, rather than to take any chances by rushing pell-mell to a bath or dinner. For if there is anything the matter with us, failure to take proper precaution and to put a check on ourselves will do us harm; and if nothing is the matter, it will do no harm for the body to be subjected to some restrictions and cleared of some of its encumbrances. But that childish person who is afraid to let his friends and servants discover that he is in a state of discomfort from excessive eating or drinking, will, if he is ashamed to admit having indigestion to day, to morrow admit having diarrhoea or fever or gripes.

The shame of want makes want a shame to bear,

but much more is it a shame to bear indigestion, overloading, and overfullness in a body which is dragged to the bath like a rotten and leaky boat into the sea. For just exactly as some persons, when they are voyaging and a storm is raging, are ashamed to tarry on shore, and so they put out to sea, and then are in most shameful case, shrieking and sea-sick, so those who regard it as ignoble, amidst suspicious premonitory symptoms of their body, to spend one day in bed, and not to take their meals at table, keep to their bed most shamefully for many days, under purging and poulticing, servile and attentive to physicians, asking for wine or cold water, and suffering themselves to do and to utter many extravagant and ignoble things because of their distress and fear.

Moreover, it is well that those who because of pleasures fail in self-control, and give way to their desires or are carried away by them, should be instructed and reminded that pleasures derive most of their satisfaction from the body; 12 and as the Spartans give to the cook vinegar and salt only, bidding him seek whatever else he needs in the slaughtered animal itself, so in the body are the best of sauces for whatever is served, if so be that it is served to a body which is healthy and clean. For everything of this sort is “sweet” or “costly” irrespectively of the user and by itself, but Nature decrees that it becomes “pleasant” only in and in connexion with the person that is pleased and is in harmony with Nature; but in those who are captious or suffering from a debauch, or are in a bad way, all things lose their intrinsic agreeableness and freshness. Therefore there is no need to look to see whether the fish be fresh, the bread white, the bath warm, or the girl shapely, but a man should look to himself to see whether he be not nauseated, feculent, stale, or in any way upset. Otherwise, just as drunken revellers who force their way into a house of mourning provide no cheerfulness or pleasure, but only cause weeping and wailing, so in a body that is in a bad condition and out of harmony with Nature, the pleasures of love, elaborate food, baths and wine, when combined with such elements in the body as are unsettled and tainted, set up phlegm and bile and bring on an upset, besides being unduly exciting, while they yield no pleasure to speak of, nor any enjoyment like what we expected.

13 1 The very exact mode of living, “exact to a hair’s breadth,” to use the popular expression, puts the body in a timorous and precarious state, and abridges the self-respect of the soul itself, so that it comes to look askance at every activity, and to no less a degree at spending any time or participating at all in pleasures or labours, and goes at no undertaking with readiness and confidence. FA man ought to handle his body like the sail of a ship, and neither lower and reduce it much when no cloud is in sight, nor be slack and careless in managing it when he comes to suspect something is wrong, but he should rather ease the body off and lighten its load, as has already been said, and not wait for indigestions and diarrhoeas, nor heightened temperatures nor fits of drowsiness. And yet some people wait until a fever is already at their doors 129 and then, being as excited as if a message or a summons to court had come, just manage to restrict themselves; whereas they ought, while these things are still afar off, to be cautious

Before the storm, as though along the strand

The North wind blew.

14 1 For it is absurd to give careful heed to the croaking of ravens, the clucking of hens, and “swine in their wild excitement over bedding,” as Democritus put it, making signs of winds and rains out of these, and at the same time not to forestall nor take precaution against the stirrings, the ups and downs, and the premonitory symptoms in the body, and not to hold these to be signs of a storm that is going to take place in one’s self, and is just about to break. Wherefore not merely in the matter of food and exercise do we need to keep watch of our body, to see whether, contrary to its habits, it takes to these reluctantly and without zest, or at another time is thirsty and hungry in an unnatural way, but also, in the matter of sleep, to beware of lack of continuity and of evenness, marked by irregularities and sharp interruptions, and to beware also of the abnormal in dreams, which, if so be that our visions are improper or unwonted, argues an over-abundance or concretion of humours, or a disturbance of spirit within us. And also the emotions of the soul have often given warning that the body is perilously near disease. For instance, irrational discouragements and fears take possession of people often times from no apparent cause, and suddenly extinguish their hopes; in temper they become irascible, sharp, and pained at trifles, and they are tearful and dismayed whenever bad vapours and bitter exhalations encounter and unite with the “rotations of the soul,” as Plato has it. Therefore those to whom such things happen have need to consider and to remember that, if the cause is not one which concerns the spirit, it is one which concerns the body, and that it needs reducing or toning down.

15 1 It is very profitable when visiting sick friends to inquire of them the causes of their illness, not by talking pedantically and officiously about stoppages, irruptions, and trite generalities, and incidentally displaying some acquaintance with medical terminology and literature, but by listening in no perfunctory way to these homely and common details of over-eating, exposure to the sun, fatigue, sleeplessness, and especially the manner of living which the man was following when he fell sick of the fever. Then, like Plato, who, on his way home, was accustomed to say on the subject of others’ faults, “Am not I too possibly like them?” a man ought to correct in himself the faults he observes in his neighbours, and be watchful and mindful not to become involved in the same difficulties, and be himself compelled to take to his bed, and there give voice to his yearnings for precious health, but rather, when another is undergoing this experience, he will impress upon himself how valuable a thing is health, and that he ought to try to preserve this by giving heed to himself, and by being frugal. It is not a bad thing, either, to take a look at our own way of living; for if we have been engaged in a bout of drinking and eating, or in hardships and other irregularities, and the body presents no suspicious or premonitory symptoms, nevertheless we ought to be watchful of ourselves and forestall any trouble by means of rest and quiet when fresh from the pleasures of love, or when fatigued; also by drinking water after the free use of wine and after social gaiety, and especially, after indulging in a heavy diet of meat or multifarious foods, to eat lightly, and leave no mass of superfluous residue in the body. For these very things are of themselves the causes of many diseases, and they add material and potency to the other causes. Wherefore it has been very well said, “Eating not unto satiety, labouring not unto weariness, and observance of chastity, are the most healthful things.” 130 For incontinence, by undermining especially the powers by which the food is assimilated, causes further superfluity and overcrowding.

16 1 Let us now take up each topic anew once more; and in the first place, on the subject of exercises suitable for scholars, we beg to remark that one might follow the example of the man who, by saying that he had nothing to write for people dwelling by the sea on the subject of ships, showed clearly that they were in use; and so in the same way one might say that he was not writing for scholars on the subject of exercise. For it is wonderful what an exercise is the daily use of the voice in speaking aloud, conducing, not only to health, but also to strength — not the strength of the wrestler which lays on flesh and makes the exterior solid like the walls of a building, but a strength which engenders an all-pervasive vigour and a real energy in the most vital and dominant parts. That breathing gives strength the athletic trainers make clear in telling the athletes to brace themselves against the rubbing and stop their breath meantime, and keep tense the portions of the body that are being kneaded and massaged. Now the voice is a movement of the breath, and if it be given vigour, not in the throat, but, as it were, at its source in the lungs, it increases the warmth, tones down the blood, clears out every vein, opens every artery, and does not permit of any concretion or solidifying of superfluous fluid like a sediment to take place in the containing organs which take over and digest the food. For this reason we ought especially to make ourselves habituated and used to this exercise by continual speaking, or, if there be any suspicion that our body is not quite up to the mark or is somewhat fatigued, then by reading aloud or declaiming. For reading stands in the same relation to discussion as riding in a carriage to active exercise, and as though upon the vehicle of another’s words it moves softly, and carries the voice gently this way and that. But discussion adds contention and vehemence, as the mind joins in the encounter along with the body. We must, however, be cautious about passionate and convulsive vociferations. For spasmodic expulsion and straining of the breath produces ruptures and sprains.

After reading or discussion, before going to walk, one should make use of rubbing with oil in a warm room to render the flesh supple, extending the massage so far as practicable to the inward parts, and gently equalizing the vital spirit and diffusing it into the extremities. Let the limits of the amount of this rubbing be what is agreeable to the senses and not discomforting. For the man who thus composes the inward disquiet and tension in his vital spirit manages the superfluous in his body without discomfort, and if unfavourable weather or some engagement prevent his going to walk, it does not matter, for Nature has received her proper due. Wherefore neither travelling nor stopping at an inn ought to be made an excuse for silence, nor even if everybody there deride one. For where it is not disgraceful to eat it is certainly not disgraceful to take exercise; nay, it is more disgraceful to feel timid and embarrassed before sailors, muleteers, and innkeepers, who do not deride the man who plays ball and goes through the movements of sparring alone, but the man who speaks, even though in his exercises he instruct, question, learn, and use his memory. Socrates said that for a man’s movements in dancing a room that would accommodate seven persons at dinner was large enough to take exercise in, but for a man who takes his exercise through singing or speaking every place affords him adequate room for this exercise both when standing up and when lying down. But we must observe this one caution — not to strain our voices too hard when we are conscious of a fullness, venery, or fatigue. 131 This is the experience of many of the public speakers and sophists, some of whom are led on by repute and ambition, others on account of emoluments or political rivalries, to competition in excess of what is best for them. Our Niger, when he was giving public lectures in Galatia, happened to swallow a fish bone. But, as another sophist from abroad had made his appearance and was lecturing, Niger, dreading to give the impression that he had yielded to his rival, still lectured although the bone was sticking in his throat; unable to bear the distress from the great and stubborn inflammation that arose, he submitted to a deep incision from the outside, and through the opening the bone was removed; but the place grew sore and purulent and caused his death. But comment on these matters may well be postponed to a later occasion.

17 1 To take a cold bath after exercising is ostentatious and juvenile rather than healthful. For the power of resistance to external influences and the hardiness which it seems to create in the body really produces a more evil effect on the inward parts by stopping up the pores, causing the fluids to collect together, and condensing the exudations which are always wanting to be released and dispersed. Besides, those who insist upon taking cold baths have to make a further change into that exact and strictly ordered way of living which we are trying to avoid, and they have to be always taking heed not to transgress this, since every shortcoming is at once bitterly brought to book. On the other hand, warm baths have much to offer by way of excuse. For they do not detract so much from vigour and strength as they help towards health by rendering the food yielding and soft for the digestion, and by providing for the painless dispersion of whatever escapes digestion, at least if it do not remain altogether crude and high up, and soothing any latent feelings of fatigue. However, when Nature affords us a sense of a moderate and comfortable condition in our body, the bath had better be left alone. A gentle rubbing with oil beside a fire is better, if the body require warming, for it can take for itself the requisite amount of such warmth; but the sun permits use of its warmth at neither higher nor lower temperature than is determined by the temperature of the air. So much will suffice in regard to exercise.

18 1 Coming now to the subject of food, if there be anything helpful in my earlier suggestions as to how we may beguile and pacify our appetites, we must give some further advice regarding what comes next; but if it be difficult to manage a belly that has been set free, as it were from bondage, and to wrangle with it when it has no ears to hear, as Cato used to say, we must contrive by means of the character of our food to make the quantity less burdensome; and of the solid and very nourishing foods, things, for example, like meat and cheese, dried figs and boiled eggs, one may partake if he helps himself cautiously (for it is hard work to decline all the time), but should stick to the thin and light things, such as most of the garden stuff, birds, and such fish as have not much fat. For it is possible by partaking of these things both to gratify the appetites and not oppress the body. Especially to be feared are indigestions arising from meats; for they are depressing at the outset, and a pernicious residue from them remains behind. It is best to accustom the body not to require meat in addition to other food. For the earth yields in abundance many things not only for nourishment but also for comfort and enjoyment, some of which it grants to our use just as they are with no trouble on our part, while others we may make savoury by all sorts of combination and preparation. 132 But since custom has become a sort of unnatural second nature, our use of meat should not be for the satisfaction of appetite, as is the case with wolves or lions; but while we may put it in as a sort of prop and support of our diet, we should use other foods and relishes which for the body are more in accord with nature and less dulling to the reasoning faculty, which, as it were, is kindled from plain and light substances.

19 1 Of the liquids milk ought not to be used as a beverage but as a food possessing solid and nourishing power. With regard to wine we ought to talk as does Euripides with regard to Love:

Mayest thou be mine, but moderate be,

I pray, yet ne’er abandon me.

For wine is the most beneficial of beverages, the pleasantest of medicines, and the least cloying of appetizing things, provided that there is a happy combination of it with the occasion as well as with water. Water, not only the water that is mixed with the wine, but that which is drunk by itself in the interim between the draughts of the mixture, makes the mixture more innocent. One ought to accustom oneself, therefore, in the course of the daily routine to partake of two or three glasses of water, thus both making the potency of the wine milder, and making the drinking of water habitual with the body, so that, whenever it comes to be in need of water, it may not feel strange towards the drink, and refuse it. For the fact is that some people feel most impelled towards wine when the drink which they most need is water. For after being exposed to the sun, and again when chilled, and after speaking more earnestly and thinking more intently than usual, and, in general, after exertions and strivings, they think they ought to drink wine, feeling that Nature requires for the body some comfort and change after labours. But Nature does not require comfort, if comfort is only a name for self-indulgence, but she does require a change, a change which puts the body in a state midway between pleasure and pain. Therefore in such circumstances there should not only be some reduction in food, but wine should be either altogether eliminated or else partaken of between times very diluted and practically engulfed by the drinking of water. For wine, being truculent and keen, intensifies the disturbances of the body, and exacerbates and irritates the contused parts, which are in need of the comfort and alleviation that water best supplies. For if, in spite of the fact that we are not thirsty, we drink hot water after undergoing exertion, strain, or heat, we are sensible of a relaxing and soothing effect within us; for the aqueous fluid is mild and does not quicken the pulse, whereas that of wine has great impetuosity and a potency that is not kindly or humanely disposed toward recent affections. As for the acerbities and bitterness which some say fasting engenders in the body, if anybody fears them, or if, childlike, he thinks it a dreadful thing not to have a meal served before the fever which he suspects is coming, the drinking of water is a very fitting middle course. In fact we frequently make to Dionysus himself offerings which include no wine, thus habituating ourselves quite properly not to be always looking for strong drink. Minos, too, because of grief, abolished the flute and garland from the sacrifice. Yet we know that a grieving soul is not affected either by garlands or by flute. But no one’s body is so strong that wine, thrust upon it when it is disturbed and feverish, does it no harm.

20 1 The Lydians, they say, in a time of famine, alternately spent one day in regaling themselves with food, and the next in jollity and games of chance. But in the case of a scholarly and cultivated man, on an occasion which requires a later dinner than usual, a mathematical problem on hand, 133 or some pamphlet or musical instrument, will not permit him to be harried by his belly; on the contrary, he will steadily turn away and transfer his thoughts from the table to these other things, and scare away his appetites, like Harpies, by means of the Muses. Does not the Scythian, while he is drinking, ofttimes put his hand to his bow, and twang the string, thus summoning back his senses which are being unstrung by the liquor; and shall a Greek man be afraid of those who deride him when by letters and books he endeavours quietly to ease and relax an unfeeling and inexorable desire? When the young men described by Menander were, as they were drinking, insidiously beset by the pimp, who introduced some handsome and high-priced concubines, each one of them (as he says),

Bent down his head and munched his own dessert,

being on his guard and afraid to look at them. But scholars have many fair and pleasant outlooks and diversions, if so be they can in no other way keep under control the canine and bestial element in their appetites when at table. The utterances of athletic trainers and the talk of teachers of gymnastics, who assert on every occasion that scholarly conversation at dinner spoils the food and makes the head heavy, Care to be feared only when we propose to solve the Indian problem or to discuss determinants during dinner. The leaf-bud at the top of the date-palm is sweet, but they say that it brings on a violent headache; and an exercise in logic is by no means a “sweet morsel” to top off a dinner, but, on the contrary, it is quite likely to bring on a headache, and is extremely fatiguing as well. But if they will not allow us to start any other inquiry or scholarly discussion, or to read while at dinner any of those things which, besides being beautiful and useful, contain also the element of pleasurable allurement and sweetness, we shall bid them not to bother us, but to take themselves off, and in the training grounds and buildings to engage in such talk with the athletes, whom they have torn from their books, and by accustoming them to spend the whole day in jesting and scurrility, have, as the clever Ariston said, made them as glossy and blockish as the pillars in a gymnasium. But as for ourselves, we shall follow the advice of the physicians who recommend always to let some time intervene between dinner and sleep, and not, after jumbling our victuals into our body and oppressing our spirit, to hinder our digestion at once with the food that is still unassimilated and fermenting, but rather to provide for it some respite and relaxation; just as those who think it is the right thing to keep their bodies moving after dinner Edo not do this by means of foot-races and strenuous boxing and wrestling, but by gentle walking and decorous dancing, so we shall hold that we ought not to distract our minds after dinner either with business or cares or pseudo-learned disputations, which have as their goal an ostentatious or stirring rivalry. But many of the problems of natural science are light and enticing, and there are many stories which contain ethical considerations and the “soul’s satisfaction,” as Homer has phrased this, and nothing repellent. The spending of time over questions of history and poetry some persons, not unpleasingly, have called a second repast for men of scholarship and culture. There are also inoffensive stories and fables, and it is less onerous to exchange opinions about a flute and a lyre than to listen to the sound of the lyre and the flute itself. The length of time for this is such as the digestion needs to assert itself and gain the upper hand over the food as it is gradually absorbed and begins to agree with us.

21 1 Aristotle holds that walking about on the part of those who have just dined revives the bodily warmth, while sleep, if they go to sleep at once, smothers it; but others hold that quiet improves the digestive faculties, while movement disturbs the processes of assimilation; 134 and this has persuaded some to walk about immediately after dinner, and others to remain quiet. In view of the two opinions a man might appear properly to attain both results who after dinner keeps his body warm and quiet, and does not let his mind sink at once into sleep and idleness, but, as has been previously suggested, lightly diverts and enlivens his spirits by talking himself and listening to another on one of the numerous topics which are agreeable and not acrimonious or depressing.

22 1 The use of emetics and cathartics, abominable “comforts for an overloaded stomach,” ought never, except under the stress of great necessity, to be inaugurated, Bas is the way of most people, who fill up their bodies for the sake of emptying them, and then empty them for the sake of filling them up again, thus transgressing against nature, and are vexed no less at their fullness than at their emptiness — or, better, they are utterly depressed over their fullness, as being a hindrance to enjoyment, but set about bringing on emptiness with the idea of making room always for pleasures. The harmfulness in all this is manifest; for both procedures give rise to disorders and convulsive movements in the body. What is peculiarly bad in the use of an emetic is that it increases and fosters an insatiate greediness. For the feelings of hunger become rough and turbulent, like rivers that are interrupted in their course, and they gulp the food down violently, always ravening and resembling not appetites that need victuals, but inflammations that need medicines and poultices. For this reason the pleasures that lay hold upon such persons are swift in their action and imperfect, and attended by much palpitation and agitation while being experienced, and these are succeeded by distensions and sharp pains in the passages, and retention of gases, which cannot wait for the natural movements, but stay in the upper part of the body as in water-logged ships which require the jettisoning of their cargo, not merely of their surplus. The violent disturbances lower down in the bowels resulting from medication, by decomposing and liquefying the existing contents, increase rather than relieve the overcrowding. Just imagine that anybody, feeling much troubled at the crowd of Greeks living in his city, should fill up the city with Arab and Scythian immigrants! Yet it is just this radical mistake that some people make in connexion with the expulsion of the surplus of habitual and familiar foods, when they introduce into the body from the outside Cnidian berries, scammony, or other incongruous and drastic agents, which have more need of being purged away than power of purging our nature. It is best, therefore, by moderate and temperate living to make the body constantly self-sufficient and well adjusted as regards filling the stomach and emptying it.

If ever absolute necessity befall us, vomiting should be induced without medication and a great ado, and without causing any disturbance beyond merely avoiding indigestion by at once allowing the excess to be peacefully ejected. Just as linen cleansed with lye and washing powders wears out faster than that washed in plenty of water, so vomitings with drugs maltreat and ruin the body. If the bowels are getting sluggish, there is no medicine like some sorts of food that afford a mild stimulus to the inclinations and gently dissolve the cause of trouble. Experience with these is familiar to all, and their use is not attended by discomfort. But if it will not yield to these, the drinking of water for several days, or fasting, or an enema, should be tried next rather than disturbing and pernicious dosing to which most people hurriedly resort, after the manner of licentious women who employ drugs and instruments to produce abortion for the sake of the enjoyment of conceiving again.

23 1 But we need say no more about this class of persons. However, to speak once again of those too exact persons who interject set periods of fasting according to a fixed schedule, 135 they are wrong in teaching their nature to feel a need of restraint when not in need of it, and in making necessary the unnecessary retrenchment at a time which makes demand for what is customarily required. It is better to apply such discipline to the body with a certain freedom, and, if there be no premonitory or suspicious symptoms, to keep, as has been already suggested, our general mode of life responsive to changes so as to meet whatever may befall it, and not to let it be enslaved or bound to one formula of life, which has trained itself to be guided by certain seasons, or numbers, or schedules. For it is not safe, nor easy, nor befitting a citizen or a man, but like the life of an oyster or the trunk of a tree — this immutability and forced compliance in the matter of food and abstinence, movement and rest; it is fitting only for men who have reduced and restricted themselves to a retired, idle, solitary, friendless, and inglorious life, far removed from the duties of citizenship. No,” said he, “it fits not with my opinion.” 24 1 For health is not to be purchased by idleness and inactivity, which are the greatest evils attendant on sickness, and the man who thinks to conserve his health by uselessness and ease does not differ from him who guards his eyes by not seeing, and his voice by not speaking. For a man in good health could not devote himself to any better object than to numerous humane activities. Least of all is it to be assumed that laziness is healthful, if it destroys what health aims at; and it is not true either that inactive people are more healthy. For Xenocrates did not keep in better health than Phocion, nor Theophrastus than Demetrius, and the running away from every activity that smacked of ambition did not help Epicurus and his followers at all to attain their much-talked of condition of perfect bodily health. But we ought, by attention to other details, to preserve the natural constitution of our bodies, recognizing that every life has room for both disease and health.

However, our friend said that to men in public life should be given advice opposite to that which Plato used to give to the young men. For the philosopher, as he took his leave after the exercise, was in the habit of saying, “Be sure, my boys, that you store up the lesson of this hour of leisure for some good end.” But we would advise those who take part in the government to employ their active labours for good and necessary ends, and not subject their bodies to stress on account of small and paltry matters, as is the way of most people, who make themselves miserable over incidental things, and wear themselves out with loss of sleep, going to this place and that place, and running about, all for no useful or decent purpose, but only from a spirit of insolence, envy, or rivalry against others, or in the pursuit of unprofitable and empty repute. It was in special reference to such people, as I think, that Democritus said, that, if the body were to enter suit against the soul for cruel and abusive treatment, the soul would not be acquitted. Perhaps, too, there is some truth in what Theophrastus said, in his metaphorical statement, that the soul pays a high rental to the body. At any rate, that body reaps the fruit of more evils from the soul than the soul from the body, inasmuch as the soul uses the body unreasonably, and the body does not get the care that it deserves. For whenever the soul is occupied with its own emotions, strivings, and concerns, it is prodigal of the body. FI do not know what possessed Jason to say: “We must do wrong in small ways for the sake of doing right in large ways.” But we, with good reason, would advise the man in public life to be indifferent to small things, and to take his ease and give himself plenty of rest while attending to them, if, when he comes to honourable and important activities, he wishes to have his body not worn by drudging, nor dull, nor on the point of giving out, 136 but refreshed by quiet, like a ship in the dock; so that when the soul again points the way to needful activities, it

May run like weanling colt beside its dam.

25 1 Therefore, when circumstances afford us opportunity, we should give ourselves a chance to recuperate, and to this end we should not grudge to our body either sleep or luncheon or ease, which is the mean between indulgence and discomfort, nor observe the sort of limit that most people observe whereby they wear out the body, like steel that is being tempered, by the changes to which they subject it; whenever the body has been strained and oppressed by much hard work, it is once more softened and relaxed immoderately in pleasures, and again, as the next step, while it is still flaccid and relaxed from venery and wine, it is coerced into going to the Forum or to Court or into some business requiring fervent and intense application. Heracleitus, suffering from dropsy, bade his physician to “bring on a drought to follow the wet spell”; but most people are completely in error, inasmuch as, when they are in the midst of exertions, labours, and deprivations, they are most inclined to surrender their bodies to pleasures to be made languid and relaxed, and then, after their pleasures, bending them, as it were, into place, and stretching them tight again. For Nature does not require any such form of compensation in the case of the body. But, on the other hand, in the soul the licentious and unmannerly element, immediately after undergoing hardships, is carried away, as sailors are, by wantonness to pleasures and enjoyments, and, after the pleasures, it is again coerced to tasks and business; and the result is that it does not allow Nature to attain the composure and calm which she needs most, but deranges and disturbs her because of this irregularity. But people who have sense are least given to proffering pleasures to the body when it is busied with labours. For they have absolutely no need, nor even recollection, of such things, inasmuch as they are keeping their thoughts intent on the good to be accomplished by their activity; and by the joy or earnestness in their souls they completely dwarf their other desires. There is a jocose remark attributed to Epameinondas in regard to a good man who fell ill and died about the time of the battle of Leuctra: “Great Heavens! How did he find time to die when there was so much going on?” This may be repeated with truth in the case of a man who has in hand some public activity or philosophic meditation: “What time has this man now for indigestion or drunkenness or carnal desires?” But when such men find themselves again at leisure following upon their activities, they compose and rest their bodies, guarding against unnecessary pleasures, on the ground that they are inimical to Nature.

26 1 I have heard that the Tiberius Caesar once said that a man over sixty who holds out his hand to a physician is ridiculous. To me that seems a pretty strong statement, but this does seem to be true, that each person ought neither to be unacquainted with the peculiarities of his own pulse (for there are many individual diversities), nor ignorant of any idiosyncrasy which his body has in regard to temperature and dryness, and what things in actual practice have proved to be beneficial or detrimental to it. For the man has no perception regarding himself, and is but a blind and deaf tenant in his own body, who gets his knowledge of these matters from another, and must inquire of his physician whether his health is better in summer or winter, whether he can more easily tolerate liquid or solid foods, and whether his pulse is naturally fast or slow. For it is useful and easy for us to know things of this sort, since we have daily experience and association with them.

In regard to food and drink it is expedient to note what kinds are wholesome rather than what are pleasant, and to be better acquainted with those that are good in the stomach rather than in the mouth, 137 and those that do not disturb the digestion rather than those that greatly tickle the palate. For to inquire of a physician what is hard or easy for oneself to digest, and what is constipating or laxative, is no less disgraceful than to inquire what is sweet and what is bitter and what is sour. But nowadays people correct the chefs, being expert at detecting what dish has in it more sweetening or salt or sourness than is proper; but they do not themselves know what, when taken into their own bodies, will be light and painless and beneficial. Therefore, a mistake is not often made in seasoning a soup at their houses, but by their vile and pernicious seasoning of themselves every day they provide a plentiful business for the physicians. Now such persons do not regard the sweetest soup as the best, but they mix in also bitter and pungent flavourings; on the other hand, they inject into the body numerous cloying pleasures, partly from ignorance, and partly because they do not remember that to whatever is healthful and beneficial nature adds a pleasure which causes neither pain nor repentance. But we must keep in mind both those things that are congenial and suitable to the body, and, conversely, as changes attendant on the season occur and different circumstances arise, we should, in full knowledge of the facts, suitably adjust our mode of living to each.

27 1 Now as to various difficulties, due to observance of petty detail and to lack of freedom, which most men encounter — men who are engaged in the toilsome business of harvesting and caring for their crops and by sleepless nights and running hither and thither bring to light the latent infirmities of their bodies — there is no good reason to fear that such will be experienced by scholars and men in public life, with reference to whom our discussion has taken its present form; but these must guard against another and more subtle kind of pettiness that inheres in letters and learning, an influence which compels them to be unsparing and careless of their body, so that they oftentimes, when the body is ready to succumb, will not surrender, but will force the mortal to be partner with the immortal, and the earth-born with the celestial, in rivalry and achievement. Then later, to quote the words of the ox to his fellow-servant the camel, who was unwilling to lighten his burden: “Well, before long you will be carrying me as well as all this load” (as actually resulted when the ox fell dead). And this is just what happens to the mind: if it is unwilling to relax a little and give up to the body in distress and need, a little later a fever or a vertigo attacks it, and it is compelled to give up its books and discussions and studies, and share with the body its sickness and weariness. Plato was right, therefore, in advising that there should be no movement of the body without the mind or of the mind without the body, but that we should preserve, as it were, the even balance of a well-matched team; when the body shares most in the work and weariness of the mind we should repay it by giving it the most care and attention, and we should feel that of the good gifts which fair and lovely Health bestows the fairest is the unhampered opportunity to get and to use virtue both in words and in deeds.

Advice to bride and groom

138 From Plutarch to Pollianus and Eurydice, health and prosperity.

Following close upon the time-honoured rites which the priestess of Demeter applied to you when you were retiring together to the bridal chamber, a discourse which equally touches both of you and swells the nuptial song will, I think, have a useful effect which will also accord with convention.

In music they used to call one of the conventional themes for the flute the “Horse Rampant,” a strain which, as it seems, aroused an ardent desire in horses and imparted it to them at the time of mating. Of the many admirable themes contained in philosophy, that which deals with marriage deserves no less serious attention than any other, for by means of it philosophy weaves a spell over those who are entering together into a lifelong partnership, and renders them gentle and amiable toward each other. I have therefore drawn up a compendium of what you, who have been brought up in the atmosphere of philosophy, have often heard, putting it in the form of brief comparisons that it may be more easily remembered, and I am sending it as a gift for you both to possess in common; and at the same time I pray that the Muses may lend their presence and co operation to Aphrodite, and may feel that it is no more fitting for them to provide a lyre or lute well attuned than it is to provide that the harmony which concerns marriage and the household shall be well attuned through reason, concord, and philosophy. Indeed, the ancients gave Hermes a place at the side of Aphrodite, in the conviction that pleasure in marriage stands especially in need of reason; and they also assigned a place there to Persuasion and the Graces, so that married people should succeed in attaining their mutual desires by persuasion and not by fighting and quarrelling.

1 1 Solon directed that the bride should nibble a quince before getting into bed, intimating, presumably, that the delight from lips and speech should be harmonious and pleasant at the outset.

2 1 In Boeotia, after veiling the bride, they put on her head a chaplet of asparagus; for this plant yields the finest flavoured fruit from the roughest thorns, and so the bride will provide for him who does not run away or feel annoyed at her first display of peevishness and unpleasantness a docile and sweet life together. e Those who do not patiently put up with the early girlish disagreements are on a par with those who on account of the sourness of green grapes abandon the ripe clusters to others. Again, many of the newly married women because of their first experiences get annoyed at their husbands, and find themselves in like predicament with those who patiently submit to the bees’ stings, but abandon the honeycomb.

3 1 In the beginning, especially, married people ought to be on their guard against disagreements and clashes, for they see that such household vessels as are made of sections joined together are at the outset easily pulled apart by any fortuitous cause, but after a time, when their joints have become set, they can hardly be separated by fire and steel.

4 1 Just as fire catches readily in chaff, fibre, and hares’ fur, but goes out rather quickly, unless it gets hold of some other thing that can retain it and feed it, so the keen love between newly married people that blazes up fiercely as the result of physical attractiveness must not be regarded as enduring or constant, unless, by being centred about character and by gaining a hold upon the rational faculties, it attains a state of vitality.

5 1 139 Fishing with poison is a quick way to catch fish and an easy method of taking them, but it makes the fish inedible and bad. In the same way women who artfully employ love-potions and magic spells upon their husbands, and gain the mastery over them through pleasure, find themselves consorts of dull-witted, degenerate fools. The men bewitched by Circe were of no service to her, nor did she make the least use of them after they had been changed into swine and asses, while for Odysseus, who had sense and showed discretion in her company, she had an exceeding great love.

6 1 Women who prefer to have power over fools rather than to hearken to sensible men, are like persons who prefer to guide the blind on the road rather than to follow persons possessed of knowledge and sight.

7 1 Women will not believe that Pasiphaë, the consort of a king, fell in love with a bull, in spite of the fact that they see some of their sex who feel bored by uncompromising and virtuous men, and take more pleasure in consorting with those who, like dogs and he-goats, are a combination of licentiousness and sensuality.

8 1 Men who through weakness or effeminacy are unable to vault upon their horses teach the horses to kneel of themselves and crouch down. In like manner, some who have won wives of noble birth or wealth, instead of making themselves better, try to humble their wives, with the idea that they shall have more authority over their wives if these are reduced to a state of humility. But, as one pays heed to the size of his horse in using the rein, so in using the rein on his wife he ought to pay heed to her position.

9 1 Whenever the moon is at a distance from the sun we see her conspicuous and brilliant, but she disappears and hides herself when she comes near him. Contrariwise a virtuous woman ought to be most visible in her husband’s company, and to stay in the house and hide herself when he is away.

10 1 Herodotus was not right in saying that a woman lays aside her modesty along with her undergarment. On the contrary, a virtuous woman puts on modesty in its stead, and husband and wife bring into their mutual relations the greatest modesty as a token of the greatest love.

11 Whenever two notes are sounded in accord the tune is carried by the bass; and in like manner every activity in a virtuous household is carried on by both parties in agreement, but discloses the husband’s leadership and preferences.

12 1 The Sun won a victory over the North Wind. For the wind tried by force to rob a man of his cloak, and blew briskly against him, but the man only drew his garment closer, and held it more tightly together. But when the heat of the sun succeeded the wind, the man began to get warm, and later very hot, and ended by stripping off his shirt as well as his cloak. This is the way most women act. When their husbands try forcibly to remove their luxury and extravagance they keep up a continual fight and are very cross; but if they are convinced with the help of reason, they peaceably put aside these things and practise moderation.

13 1 Cato expelled from the Senate a man who kissed his own wife in the presence of his daughter. This perhaps was a little severe. But if it is a disgrace (as it is) for man and wife to caress and kiss and embrace in the presence of others, is it not more of a disgrace to air their recriminations and disagreements before others, and, granting that his intimacies and pleasures with his wife should be carried on in secret, to indulge in admonition, fault-finding, and plain speaking in the open and without reserve?

14 1 Just as a mirror, although embellished with gold and precious stones, is good for nothing unless it shows a true likeness, so there is no advantage in a rich wife unless she makes her life true to her husband’s and her character in accord with his. If the mirror gives back a gloomy image of a glad man, or a cheerful and grinning image of a troubled and gloomy man, it is a failure and worthless. So too a wife is worthless and lacking in sense of fitness who puts on a gloomy face when her husband is bent on being sportive and gay, and again, when he is serious, is sportive and mirthful. The one smacks of disagreeableness, the other of indifference. 140 Just as lines and surfaces, in mathematical parlance, have no motion of their own but only in conjunction with the bodies to which they belong, so the wife ought to have no feeling of her own, but she should join with her husband in seriousness and sportiveness and in soberness and laughter.

15 1 Men who do not like to see their wives eat in their company are thus teaching them to stuff themselves when alone. So those who are not cheerful in the company of their wives, nor join with them in sportiveness and laughter, are thus teaching them to seek their own pleasures apart from their husbands.

16 1 The lawful wives of the Persian kings sit beside them at dinner, and eat with them. But when the kings wish to be merry and get drunk, they send their wives away, and send for their music-girls and concubines. In so far they are right in what they do, because they do not concede any share in their licentiousness and debauchery to their wedded wives. If therefore a man in private life, who is incontinent and dissolute in regard to his pleasures, commit some peccadillo with a paramour or a maidservant, his wedded wife ought not to be indignant or angry, but she should reason that it is respect for her which leads him to share his debauchery, licentiousness, and wantonness with another woman.

17 1 Kings fond of the arts make many persons incline to be artists, those fond of letters make many want to be scholars, and those fond of sport make many take up athletics. In like manner a man fond of his personal appearance makes a wife all paint and powder; one fond of pleasure makes her meretricious and licentious, while a husband who loves what is good and honourable makes a wife discreet and well-behaved.

18 1 A young Spartan woman, in answer to an inquiry as to whether she had already made advances to her husband, said, “No, but he has made them to me.” This behaviour, I take it, is characteristic of the true mistress of the household, on the one hand not to avoid or to feel annoyed at such actions on the part of her husband if he begins them, and on the other not to take the initiative herself; for the one course is meretricious and froward, the other disdainful and unamiable.

19 1 A wife ought not to make friends of her own, but to enjoy her husband’s friends in common with him. The gods are the first and most important friends. Wherefore it is becoming for a wife to worship and to know only the gods that her husband believes in, and to shut the front door tight upon all queer rituals and outlandish superstitions. For with no god do stealthy and secret rites performed by a woman find any favour.

20 1 Plato asserts that the state is prosperous and happy in which the people hear “mine” and “not mine” most rarely uttered, the reason being that the citizens, so far as in them lies, treat all things of real importance as common property. Much more should such expressions be eliminated from the married state; save that, as physicians tell us that blows on the left side of the body record the sensation on the right side, so, in the same way, it is a lovely thing for the wife to sympathize with her husband’s concerns and the husband with the wife’s, so that, as ropes, by being intertwined, get strength from each other, thus, by the due contribution of goodwill in corresponding measure by each member, the copartnership may be preserved through the joint action of both. For Nature unites us through the commingling of our bodies, fin order that, by taking and blending together a portion derived from each member of a pair, the offspring which she produces may be common to both, so that neither can define or distinguish his own or the other’s part therein. Such a copartnership in property as well is especially befitting married people, who should pour all their resources into a common fund, and combine them, and each should not regard one part as his own and another part as the other’s, but all as his own and nothing as the other’s. As we call a mixture “wine,” although the larger of the component parts is water, so the property and the estate ought to be said to belong to the husband even though the wife contribute the larger share.

21 1 Helen was fond of wealth and Paris of pleasure; Odysseus was sensible and Penelope virtuous. Therefore the marriage of the latter pair was happy and enviable, 141 while that of the former created an “Iliad of woes” for Greeks and barbarians.

22 1 The Roman, on being admonished by his friends because he had put away a virtuous, wealthy, and lovely wife, reached out his shoe and said, “Yes, this is beautiful to look at, and new, but nobody knows where it pinches me.” A wife, then, ought not to rely on her dowry or birth or beauty, but on things in which she gains the greatest hold on her husband, namely conversation, character, and comradeship, which she must render not perverse or vexatious day by day, but accommodating, inoffensive, and agreeable. For, as physicians have more fear of fevers that originate from obscure causes and gradual accretion than of those which may be accounted for by manifest and weighty reasons, so it is the petty, continual, daily clashes between man and wife, unnoticed by the great majority, that disrupt and mar married life.

23 1 King Philip was enamoured of a Thessalian woman who was accused of using magic charms upon him. Olympias accordingly made haste to get the woman into her power. But when the latter had come into the queen’s presence and was seen to be beautiful in appearance, and her conversation with the queen was not lacking in good-breeding or cleverness, Olympias exclaimed, “Away with these slanders! You have your magic charms in yourself.” And so a wedded and lawful wife becomes an irresistible thing if she makes everything, dowry, birth, magic charms, and even the magic girdle itself, to be inherent in herself, and by character and virtue succeeds in winning her husband’s love.

24 1 On another occasion, when a young man of the court had married a beautiful woman of bad reputation, Olympias said, “That fellow has no brains; else he would not have married on sight.” Marriages ought not to be made by trusting the eyes only, or the fingers either, as is the case with some who take a wife after counting up how much she brings with her, but without deciding what kind of a helpmate she will be.

25 1 Socrates used to urge the ill-favoured among the mirror-gazing youth to make good their defect by virtue, and the handsome not to disgrace their face and figure by vice. So too it is an admirable thing for the mistress of the household, whenever she holds her mirror in her hands, to talk with herself — for the ill-favoured woman to say to herself, “What if I am not virtuous?” and the beautiful one, “What if I am virtuous as well?” For if the ill-favoured woman is loved for her character, that is something of which she can be very proud, far more than if she were loved for her beauty.

26 1 The Sicilian despot sent clothing and jewellery of the costly kind to the daughters of Lysander; but Lysander would not accept them, saying, “These adornments will disgrace my daughters far more than they will adorn them.” But Sophocles, before Lysander, had said this:

Adornment! No, you wretch! Naught that adorns

‘Twould seem to be — your crazy mind’s desire.

For, as Crates used to say, “adornment is that which adorns,” and that adorns or decorates a woman which makes her more decorous. It is not gold or precious stones or scarlet that makes her such, but whatever invests her with that something which betokens dignity, good behaviour, and modesty.

27 1 Those who offer sacrifice to Hera, the Protectress of Wedlock, do not consecrate the bitter gall with the other parts of the offering, but remove it and cast it beside the altar — an intimation on the part of him who established this custom that bitterness and anger ought never to find a place in married life. For the acerbity of the mistress, like that of wine, ought to be salutary and pleasant, not bitter like that of aloes, nor suggestive of a dose of medicine.

28 1 Plato advised Xenocrates, who was somewhat churlish in character but otherwise a good and honourable man, to sacrifice to the Graces. It is my opinion that the virtuous woman has especial need of graces in her relations with her husband, in order that, as Metrodorus used to put it, 142 “she may live pleasantly with him and not be cross all the time because she is virtuous.” The thrifty woman must not neglect cleanliness, nor the loving wife cheerfulness; for asperity makes a wife’s correct behaviour disagreeable, just as untidiness has a similar effect upon plain living.

29 1 The woman who is afraid to laugh and jest a bit with her husband, lest possibly she appear bold and wanton, is no different from one who will not use oil on her head lest she be thought to use perfume, or from one who will not even wash her face lest she be thought to use rouge. But we observe both poets and public speakers, such as try to avoid vulgarity, narrowness, and affectation in their diction, employing all artistry to move and stir the hearer by means of their subject matter, their handling of it, and their portrayal of characters. So too the mistress of the household, just because she avoids and deprecates everything extravagant, meretricious and ostentatious (and she does well to do so), ought all the more, in the graces of her character and daily life, to employ all artistry upon her husband, habituating him to what is honourable and at the same time pleasant. However, if a woman is naturally uncompromising, arbitrary, and unpleasant, the husband must be consider, and do as Phocion did when Antipater prescribed for him a dishonourable and unbecoming course of action. Phocion said, “You cannot use me as a friend and flatterer both,” and so the husband must reason about his virtuous and uncompromising wife, “I cannot have the society of the same woman both as wife and as paramour.”

30 1 The women of Egypt, by inherited custom, were not allowed to wear shoes, so that they should stay at home all day; and most women, if you take from them gold-embroidered shoes, bracelets, anklets, purple, and pearls, stay indoors.

31 1 Theano, in putting her cloak about her, exposed her arm. Somebody exclaimed, “A lovely arm.” “But not for the public,” said she. Not only the arm of the virtuous woman, but her speech as well, ought to be not for the public, and she ought to be modest and guarded about saying anything in the hearing of outsiders, since it is an exposure of herself; for in her talk can be seen her feelings, character, and disposition.

32 1 Pheidias made the Aphrodite of the Eleans with one foot on a tortoise, to typify for womankind keeping at home and keeping silence. For a woman ought to do her talking either to her husband or through her husband, and she should not feel aggrieved if, like the flute-player, she makes a more impressive sound through a tongue not her own.

33 1 Rich men and princes by conferring honours on philosophers adorn both themselves and the philosophers; but, on the other hand, philosophers by paying court to the rich do not enhance the repute of the rich but lower their own. So is it with women also; if they subordinate themselves to their husbands, they are commended, but if they want to have control, they cut a sorrier figure than the subjects of their control. And control ought to be exercised by the man over the woman, not as the owner has control over a piece of property, but, as the soul colonists the body, by entering into her feelings and being knit to her through goodwill. As, therefore, it is possible to exercise care over the body without being a slave to its pleasures and desires, so it is possible to govern a wife, and at the same time to delight and gratify her.

34 1 Philosophers say of bodies that some are composed of separate elements, as a fleet or an army, others of elements joined together, as a house or a ship, and still others form together an intimate union, as is the case with every living creature. In about the same way, the marriage of a couple in love with each other is an intimate union; that of those who marry for dowry or children is of persons joined together; and that of those who merely sleep in the same bed is of separate persons who may be regarded as cohabiting, but not really living together. As the mixing of liquids, according to what men of science say, extends throughout their entire content, 143 so also in the case of married people there ought to be a mutual amalgamation of their bodies, property, friends, and relations. In fact, the purpose of the Roman law-giver who prohibited the giving and receiving of presents between man and wife was, not to prevent their sharing in anything, but that they should feel that they shared all things in common.

35 1 In Leptis, a city of Africa, it is an inherited custom for the bride, on the day after her marriage, to send to the mother of the bridegroom and ask for a pot. The latter does not give it, and also declares that she has none, her purpose being that the bride may from the outset realize the stepmother’s attitude in her mother-in law, and, in the event of some harsher incident later on, may not feel indignant or resentful. A wife ought to take cognizance of this hostility, and try to cure the cause of it, which is the mother’s jealousy of the bride as the object of her son’s affection. The one way at once cure this trouble is to create an affection for herself personally on the part of her husband, and at the same time not to divert or lessen his affection for his mother.

36 1 Mothers appear to have a greater love for their sons because of a feeling that their sons are able to help them, and fathers for their daughters because of a feeling that the daughters have need of their help. Perhaps, also, because of the honour accorded by man and wife to each other, the one wishes openly to show that he feels greater esteem and affection for the attributes which are more characteristic of the other. And herein there may perhaps be a divergence, but, on the other hand, it is a nice thing if the wife, in the deference she shows, is observed to incline rather toward her husband’s parents than her own, and, if she is distressed over anything, to refer it to them without the knowledge of her own parents. For seeming confidence begets confidence, and love, love.

37 1 The generals issued orders to the Greeks in Cyrus’s army, that if the enemy advanced shouting they should receive them with silence, but, on the other hand, if the enemy kept silent, they should charge against them with a shout. Women who have sense keep quiet while their husbands in their fits of anger vociferate, but when their husbands are silent they talk to them and mollify them by words of comfort.

38 1 Euripides is right in censuring those who employ the lyre as an accompaniment to wine. For music ought rather to be invoked on occasions of anger and grief rather than to be made an added attraction for those who are engaged in their pleasures. So you two must regard those persons in error who for the sake of pleasure occupy the same bed, but when they get into some angry disagreement repose apart; they ought, instead, at that time especially to invoke Aphrodite, who is the best physician for such disorders. Such no doubt is the teaching of the poet when he represents Hera as saying,

I will settle their uncomposed quarrels,

Sending them back to their bed to a union of loving enjoyment.

39 1 At all times and in all places a wife ought to try to avoid any clash with her husband, and a husband with his wife, but they ought to be especially on their guard against doing this in the privacy of their bedchamber. The woman in travail and pain kept saying to those who were trying to make her go to bed, “How can the bed cure this ailment which I contracted in bed?” But the disagreements, recriminations, and angry passions which the bed generates are not easily settled in another place and at another time.

40 1 Hermione seems to speak the truth when she says,

Bad women’s visits brought about my fall.

This, however, does not come about so simply, but only when marital disagreements and jealousies open not only a wife’s doors but also her hearing to such women. So, at such a time especially, a woman who has sense ought to stop her ears, and be on her guard against whispered insinuations, so that fire may not be added to fire, and she ought to have ready in mind the saying of Philip. For it is told that when he was being incited by his friends against the Greeks on the ground that they were being well treated, but were speaking ill of him, he said, 144 “What would happen, then, if we were to treat them ill?” So when these back-biters say, “Your husband treats grievously his loving and virtuous wife.” “Yes, what would happen, then, if I were to begin to hate him and wrong him?”

41 1 A man whose slave had run away, on catching sight of the fugitive some time later, ran after him; but when the slave got ahead of him by taking refuge in a treadmill, the master said, “Where else could I have wished to find you rather than here?” So then let the woman who, on account of jealousy, is entering a writ of divorce, and is in a high dudgeon, say to herself, “Where else would my rival like better to see me, what would she rather have me do, than feel aggrieved with my husband and quarrel with him and abandon my very home and chamber?”

42 1 The Athenians observe three sacred ploughings: the first at Scirum in commemoration of the most ancient of sowings; the second in Raria, and the third near the base of the Acropolis, the so called Buzygius (the ox-yoking). But most sacred of all such sowings is the marital sowing and ploughing for the procreation of children. It is a beautiful epithet which Sophocles applied to Aphrodite when he called her “bountiful-bearing Cytherea.” Therefore man and wife ought especially to indulge in this with circumspection, keeping themselves pure from all unholy and unlawful intercourse with others, and not sowing seed from which they are unwilling to have any offspring, and from which if any issue does result, they are ashamed of it, and try to conceal it.

43 1 When the orator Gorgias read to the Greeks at Olympia a speech about concord, Melanthius said, “This fellow is giving us advice about concord, and yet in his own household he has not prevailed upon himself, his wife, and maidservant, three persons only, to live in concord.” For there was, apparently, some love on Gorgias’s part and jealousy on the wife’s part towards the girl. A man therefore ought to have his household well harmonized who is going to harmonize State, Forum, and friends. For it is much more likely that the sins of women rather than sins against women will go unnoticed by most people.

44 1 They say that the cat is excited to frenzy by the odour of perfumes. Now if it happened that women were similarly made furious and frantic by perfumes, it would be a dreadful thing for their husbands not to abstain from perfume, but for the sake of their own brief pleasure to permit their wives to suffer in this way. Now inasmuch as women are affected in this way, not by their husband’s using perfume, but by their having connexion with other women, it is unfair to pain and disturb them so much for the sake of a trivial pleasure, and not to follow with wives the practice observed in approaching bees (because these insects are thought to be irritable and bellicose towards men who have been with women) — to be pure and clean from all connexion with others when they approach their wives.

45 1 Those who have to go near elephants do not put on bright clothes, nor do those who go near bulls put on red; for the animals are made especially furious by these colours; and tigers, they say, when surrounded by the noise of beaten drums go completely mad and tear themselves to pieces. Since, then, this is also the case with men, that some cannot well endure the sight of scarlet and purple clothes, while others are annoyed by cymbals and drums, what terrible hardship is it for women to refrain from such things, and not disquiet or irritate their husbands, but live with them in constant gentleness?

46 1 A woman once said to Philip, who was trying to force her to come to him against her will, “Let me go. All women are the same when the lights are out.” This is well said as an answer to adulterous and licentious men, but the wedded wife ought especially when the light is out not to be the same as ordinary women, but, when her body is invisible, her virtue, her exclusive devotion to her husband, her constancy, and her affection, ought to be most in evidence.

47 1 Plato used to advise the elderly men more especially to have the sense of shame before the young, so that the young may be respectful toward them; for where the old men are without sense of shame, he felt, no respect or deference is engendered for the young. The husband ought to bear this in mind, and show no greater respect for anybody than for his wife, 145 seeing that their chamber is bound to be for her a school of orderly behaviour or of wantonness. The man who enjoys the very pleasures from which he tries to dissuade his wife is in no wise different from him who bids her fight to the death against the enemies to whom he has himself surrendered.

48 1 In regard to love of finery, I beg, Eurydice, that you will read and try to remember what was written to Aristylla by Timoxena; and as for you, Pollianus, you must not think that your wife will refrain from immoderate display and extravagance if she sees that you do not despise these things in others, but, on the contrary, find delight in gilded drinking-cups, pictured walls, trappings for mules, and showy neckbands for horses. For it is impossible to expel extravagance from the wife’s part of the house when it has free range amid the men’s rooms.

Besides, Pollianus, you already possess sufficient maturity to study philosophy, and I beg that you will beautify your character with the aid of discourses which are attended by logical demonstration and mature deliberation, seeking the company and instruction of teachers who will help you. And for your wife you must collect from every source what is useful, as do the bees, and carrying it within your own self impart it to her, and then discuss it with her, and make the best of these doctrines her favourite and familiar themes. For to her

Thou art a father and precious-loved mother,

Yea, and a brother as well.

No less ennobling is it for a man among other things hear his wife say, “My dear husband,

Nay, but thou art to me

guide, philosopher, and teacher in all that is most lovely and divine.” Studies of this sort, in the first place, divert women from all untoward conduct; for a woman studying geometry will be ashamed to be a dancer, and she will not swallow any beliefs in magic charms while she is under the charm of Plato’s or Xenophon’s words. And if anybody professes power to pull down the moon from the sky, she will laugh at the ignorance and stupidity of women who believe these things, inasmuch as she herself is not unschooled in astronomy, and has read in the books about Aglaonice, the daughter of Hegetor of Thessaly, and how she, through being thoroughly acquainted with the periods of the full moon when it is subject to eclipse, and, knowing beforehand the time when the moon was due to be overtaken by the earth’s shadow, imposed upon the women, and made them all believe that she was drawing down the moon.

It is said that no woman ever produced a child without the co operation of a man, yet there are misshapen, fleshlike, uterine growths originating in some infection, which develop of themselves and acquire firmness and solidity, and are commonly called “moles.” Great care must be taken that this sort of thing does not take place in women’s minds. For if they do not receive the seed of good doctrines and share with their husbands in intellectual advancement, they, left to themselves, conceive many untoward ideas and low designs and emotions.

And as for you, Eurydice, I beg that you will try to be conversant with the sayings of the wise and good, and always have at your tongue’s end those sentiments which you used to cull in your girlhood’s days when you were with us, so that you may give joy to your husband, and may be admired by other women, adorned, as you will be, without price, with rare and precious jewels. For you cannot acquire and put upon you this rich woman’s pearls or that foreign woman’s silks without buying them at a high price, but the ornaments of Theano, Cleobulina, Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, Timocleia, the sister of Theagenes, Claudia of old, Cornelia, daughter of Scipio, and of all other women who have been admired and renowned, you may wear about you without price, and, adorning yourself with these, you may live a life of distinction and happiness.

If Sappho thought that her beautiful compositions in verse 146 justified her in writing to a certain rich woman,

Dead in the tomb shalt thou lie,

Nor shall there be thought of thee there,

For in the roses of Pierian fields

Thou hast no share,

why shall it not be even more allowable for you to entertain high and splendid thoughts of yourself, if you have a share not only in the roses but also in the fruits which the Muses bring and graciously bestow upon those who admire education and philosophy?

Dinner of the seven wise men

(146 b) It seems fairly certain, Nicarchus, that the lapse of time will bring about much obscurity and complete uncertainty regarding actual events, if at the present time, in the case of events so fresh and recent, false accounts that have been concocted obtain credence. For, in the first place, the dinner was not a dinner of the Seven alone, as you and your friends have been told, but of more than twice that number, including myself; for I was on intimate terms with Periander by virtue of my profession, and I was also the host of Thales, for he stayed at my house by command of Periander. In the second place, your informant, whoever he was, did not report the conversation correctly; apparently he was not one of those at the dinner. However, since there is nothing that demands my attention just now, and old age is too untrustworthy to warrant postponing the narration, I will begin at the beginning, and tell you, without any omissions, the story which you all seem eager to hear.

2 1 Periander had arranged for the entertainment, not in the city but in the dining-hall in the vicinity of Lechaeum, close by the shrine of Aphrodite, in whose honour the sacrifice was offered that day. For Periander, ever since his mother’s love-affair which  had led to her self-destruction, had offered no sacrifice to Aphrodite, but now, for the first time, owing to certain dreams of Melissa’s, he had set about honouring and conciliating the goddess.

For each of the invited guests a carriage and pair, fashionably caparisoned, was brought to the door; for it was summer-time, and the whole length of the street even to the water’s edge was one mass of dust and confusion by reason of the great crowd of vehicles and people. Thales, however, when he saw the equipage at the door, smiled and dismissed it. And so we set out on foot, leaving the road and going through the fields in a leisurely fashion, and with us two was Neiloxenus of Naucratis, an able man, who had been on terms of intimacy with Solon and Thales and their group in Egypt. He, as it happened, had been sent a second time on a mission to Bias, the reason for which he did not know, save only that he suspected that he was bringing for Bias a second problem sealed up in a packet. His instructions were, that if Bias should give up trying to solve it, he should show the packet to the wisest among the Greeks.

“It is a piece of good fortune for me,” said Neiloxenus, “to have found you all together here, and, as you see, I am bringing the packet with me to the dinner”; and at the same time he showed it to us.

Thales began to laugh, and said, “If it is anything bad, go to Priene again! For Bias will have a solution for this, just as he had his own solution of the first problem.”

“What,” said I, “was the first problem?”

“The king,” said he, “sent to Bias an animal for sacrifice, with instructions to take out and send back to him the worst and best portion of the meat. And our friend’s neat and clever solution was, to take out the tongue and send it to him, with the result that he is now manifestly in high repute and esteem.”

147”Not for this alone,” said Neiloxenus, “but he does not try to avoid, as the rest of you do, being a friend of kings and being called such. In your case, for instance, the king finds much to admire in you, and in particular he was immensely pleased with your method of measuring the pyramid, because, without making any ado or asking for any instrument, you simply set your walking-stick upright at the edge of the shadow which the pyramid cast, and, two triangles being formed by the intercepting of the sun’s rays, you demonstrated that the height of the pyramid bore the same relation to the length of the stick as the one shadow to the other. But, as I said, you have been unjustly accused of having an animosity against kings, and certain offensive pronouncements of yours regarding despots have been reported to him. For example, he was told that, when you were asked by Molpagoras the Ionian what was the most paradoxical thing you had ever seen, you replied, ‘A despot that lived to be old.’ And again he was told that on a certain convivial occasion there was a discussion about animals, and you maintained that of the wild animals the worst was the despot, and of the tame the flatterer. Now kings, although they would make out that they are altogether different from despots, do not take kindly to such remarks.”

“But the fact is,” said Thales, “that Pittacus is responsible for that statement, which was once made in jest with reference to Myrsilus. But, as for myself, I should be amazed to see,” he continued, “not a despot but a pilot that lived to be old. However, so far as concerns transferring this from the one to the other, my feeling is exactly that of the young man who threw a stone at his dog, but hit his stepmother, whereupon he exclaimed, ‘Not so bad after all!’ This is the reason why I regarded Solon as very wise in refusing to accept the position of despot. And as for your friend Pittacus, if he had never addressed himself to the task of ruling single-handed, he would not have said that ‘it is hard to be good.’ But Periander, apparently, in spite of his being afflicted with despotism as with an inherited disease, is making fair progress towards recovery by keeping wholesome company — at least up to the present time — and by bringing about conferences with men of sense, and by refusing to entertain the suggestions offered by my fellow-citizen Thrasybulus about lopping off the topmost. Indeed, a despot who desires to rule slaves rather than men is not unlike a farmer who is willing to gather in a harvest of darnel and rest-harrow rather than of wheat and barley. For the exercise of dominion possesses one advantage to set against its many disadvantages, and this is the honour and glory of it, if rulers rule over good men by being better than they, and are thought to surpass their subjects in greatness. But rulers that are content with safety without honour ought to rule over a lot of sheep, horses, and cattle, and not over men. But enough of this,” he continued, “for our visitor here has precipitated us into a conversation that is quite inappropriate, since he has not been careful to bring up topics and questions suitable for persons on their way to dinner. Do you not honestly believe that, as some preparation is necessary on the part of the man who is to be host, there should also be some preparation on the part of him who is to be a guest at dinner? People in Sybaris, as it appears, have their invitations to women presented a year in advance so as to afford them plenty of time to provide themselves with clothes and jewellery to wear when they come to dinner; but I am of the opinion that the generous preparation on the part of the man who is to be the right kind of guest at dinner requires even a longer time, inasmuch as it is more difficult to discover the fitting adornment for character than the superfluous and useless adornment for the body. In fact, the man of sense who comes to dinner does not betake himself there just to fill himself up as though he were a sort of pot, but to take some part, be it serious or humorous, and to listen and to talk regarding this or that topic as the occasion suggests it to the company, if their association together is to be pleasant. Now an unsavoury dish can be declined, and, if the wine be poor, one may find refuge with the water-sprites; but a guest at dinner who gives the others a headache, and is churlish and uncivil, ruins and spoils the enjoyment of any wines and viands or of any girl’s music; nor is there any ready means by which one can spew out this sort of unsavouriness, 148 but with some persons their mutual dislike lasts for their entire lifetime — stale dregs, as it were, of some insult or fit of temper which was called into being over wine. Wherefore Chilon showed most excellent judgement when he received his invitation yesterday,  in not agreeing to come until he had learned the name of every person invited. For he said that men must put up with an inconsiderate companion on shipboard or under the same tent, if necessity compels them to travel or to serve in the army, but that to trust to luck regarding the people one is to be associated with at table is not the mark of a man of sense. Now the skeleton which in Egypt they are wont, with fair reason, to bring in and expose at their parties, urging the guests to remember that what it is now, they soon shall be, although it is an ungracious and unseasonable companion to be introduced at a merry-making, yet has a certain timeliness, even if it does not incline the guests to drinking and enjoyment, but rather to a mutual friendliness and affection, and if it urges upon them that life, which is short in point of time, should not be made long by evil conduct.

3 1 Engaging in such discourse as this along the way, we arrived at the house. Thales did not care to bathe, for we had already had a rub-down. So he visited and inspected the race-tracks, the training-quarters of the athletes, and the beautifully kept park along the shore; not that he was ever greatly impressed by anything of the sort, but so that he should not seem to show disdain or contempt for Periander’s ambitious designs. As for the other guests, each one, after enjoying a rub-down or a bath, was conducted by the servants to the dining-room through the open colonnade.

Anacharsis was seated in the colonnade, and in front of him stood a girl who was parting his hair with her hands. This girl ran to Thales in a most open-hearted way, whereupon he kissed her  and said laughingly, “Go on and make our visitor beautiful, so that we may not find him terrifying and savage in his looks, when he is, in reality, most civilized.”

When I inquired about the girl and asked who she was, he replied, “Have you not heard of the wise and far-famed Eumetis? Really, though, that is only her father’s name for her, and most people call her Cleobulina after her father.”

“I am sure,” said Neiloxenus, “that when you speak so highly of the maiden you must have reference to the cleverness and skill that she shows in her riddles; for it is a fact that some of her conundrums have even found their way to Egypt.”

“No indeed,” said Thales, “for these she uses like dice as a means of occasional amusement, and risks an encounter with all comers. But she is also possessed of wonderful sense, a statesman’s mind, and an amiable character, and she has influence with her father so that his government of the citizens has become milder and more popular.”

“Yes, said Neiloxenus, “that must be apparent to anybody who observes her simplicity and lack of affectation. But what is the reason for her loving attentions to Anacharsis?”

“Because,” replied Thales, “he is a man of sound sense and great learning, and he has generously and readily imparted to her the system of diet and purging which the Scythians employ in treating their sick. And I venture to think that at this very moment, while she is bestowing this affectionate attention on the man, she is gaining some knowledge through further conversation with him.”

We were already near the dining-room when Alexidemus of Miletus met us. He was a son of the despot Thrasybulus, but born out of wedlock. He was coming out in a state of great agitation, angrily talking to himself, but saying nothing that was intelligible to us. When he saw Thales he recovered himself a little, stopped, and exclaimed, “What an insult! To think that Periander should behave so toward us! Why, he would not hear of my going away when I was bent on going, but begged me to stay over for the dinner; and then when I came he assigned to me an ignominious place, setting Aeolians, and men from the islands, and what not, above Thrasybulus. For it is plain that in my person he wishes to offer insult to Thrasybulus, who delegated me to come, and to put him low down to show that he purposely ignores him.”

149”So then,” said Thales, “as the Egyptians say of the stars, when they gain or lose altitude in their courses, that they are growing better or worse than they were before, do you fear that obscuration and degradation affecting you because of your place at table will be brought about in a similar way? And you will be contemptible when compared with the Spartan who in a chorus was put by the director in the very last place, whereupon he exclaimed, ‘Good! You have found out how this may be made a place of honour.’ When we have taken our places,” continued Thales, “we ought not to try to discover who has been placed above us, but rather how we may be thoroughly agreeable to those placed with us, by trying at once to discover in them something that may serve to initiate and keep up friendship, Band, better yet, by harbouring no discontent but an open satisfaction in being placed next to such persons as  these. For, in every case, a man that objects to his place at table is objecting to his neighbour rather than to his host, and he makes himself hateful to both.”

“All this,” said Alexidemus, “is merely talk that means nothing. As a matter of fact, I observe that all you wise men too make it your aim in life to have honour shown you”; and with that he passed by us and departed.

Thales, in answer to our look of astonishment at the man’s extraordinary conduct, said, “A crazy fellow, and uncouth by nature; as an instance, when he was still a boy, some especially fine perfume was brought to Thrasybulus, and this the youngster emptied into a big wine-cooler, and on top of it poured strong wine, and drank it off, thus creating enmity instead of friendship for Thrasybulus.”

Just then a servant made his way to us and said, “Periander bids you, and Thales too, to take your friend here with you and inspect something which has just now been brought to him, to determine whether its birth is of no import whatever, or whether it is a sign and portent; at any rate, he himself seemed to be greatly agitated, feeling that it was a pollution and blot upon his solemn festival.” With these words he conducted us to one of the rooms off the garden. Here as a youth, a herdsman apparently, beardless as yet, and not bad-looking withal, unfolded a piece of leather, and showed us a newly-born creature which he asserted was the offspring of a mare. Its upper parts as far as the neck and arms were of human form, and the sound of its crying was just like that of newly-born infants, but the rest of its body was that of a horse. Neiloxenus merely exclaimed, “God save us,” and turned his face away;  but Thales fixed his gaze upon the youth for a long time, and then, with a smile (for he was in the habit of joking with me about my profession), said, “No doubt, Diocles, you are minded to set in operation your ritual of atonement, and to trouble the gods who deliver us from evil, since you must feel that something terrible and momentous has befallen?”

“Why not?” said I, “since this thing is a sign of strife and discord, Thales, and I fear that it may go so far as to affect even marriage and offspring, because, even before we have made full atonement for the first fault that moved the goddess to wrath, she plainly shows us, as you see, that there is a second.”

To all this Thales made no answer, but withdrew, laughing all the while. Periander met us at the door, and inquired about what we had seen; whereupon Thales left me and took his hand, saying, “Whatever Diocles bids you do you will carry out at your own convenience, but my recommendation to you is that you should not employ such young men as keepers of horses, or else that you should provide wives for them.”

It seemed to me that Periander, on hearing his words, was mightily pleased, for he burst out laughing and embraced Thales most affectionately. “I think, Diocles,” said Thales, “that the sign has already had its fulfilment, for you see what a bad thing has happened to us in that Alexidemus would not dine with us!”

4 1 When we had entered the dining-room, Thales, in a louder voice than usual, said, “Where is the place at table to which the man objected?” And when its position was pointed out to him he made his way to it, and placed himself and us there, at the same time remarking, “Why, I would have given money to share the same table with Ardalus.” This Ardalus was from Troezene, a flute-player and a priest of the Ardalian Muses, 150 whose worship his forefather, Ardalus of Troezene, had established.

Aesop too, as it happened, having been sent by Croesus only a short time before on a mission both to Periander and to the god at Delphi, was present at the dinner, seated on a low chair next to Solon, who occupied the place just above. Aesop said: “A Lydian mule caught sight of his own image reflected in a river, and, suddenly struck with admiration at the beauty and great size of his body, tossed his mane and started to run like a horse, but then, recalling that his sire was an ass, he soon stopped his running, and gave up his pride and animation.”

Whereupon Chilon, dropping into Laconian dialect, remarked, “It’s slow ye are, and ye’re running on like the mule.”

Just then Melissa came in took her place on the couch next to Periander, but Eumetis sat during the dinner. Then Thales, addressing himself to me (my place was just above that of Bias), said, “Diocles, why do you not tell Bias at once that our guest from Naucratis has again come to him with a king’s problems, so that he may hear them stated while he is sober and circumspect?”

“Hear that!” said Bias; “this man has been trying for a long time to terrify me with such adjurations; but I know that Dionysus, besides being clever in other ways, is called the ‘solver’ by virtue of wisdom, so I have no fears that if I become filled with his spirit I shall compete with less courage.”

In such repartee as this did those men indulge while dining; but to me, as I was noticing that the dinner was plainer than usual, there came the thought that the entertainment and invitation of wise and good men involves no expense, but rather curtails expense, since it does away with over-elaborate viands and imported perfumes and sweetmeats and the serving of costly wines, all of which were in fairly free use every day with Periander in his royal position and wealth and circumstance. But on this occasion he tried to make an impression on the men by simplicity and restraint in expenditure. Nor was this limited to these other matters, but he also made his wife put aside and out of sight her usual elaborate attire, and present herself inexpensively and modestly attired.

5 1 After the tables had been cleared away, and garlands distributed by Melissa, and we had poured libations, and the flute-girl, after playing a brief accompaniment for our libations, had withdrawn, then Ardalus, addressing Anacharsis, inquired if there were flute-girls among the Scythians.

He answered on the spur of the moment, “No, nor grape-vines either.”

When Ardalus again said, “But the Scythians must have gods,” he replied, “Certainly, they have gods who understand the language of men; they are not like the Greeks, who, although they think they converse better than the Scythians, yet believe that the gods have more pleasure in listening to the sound produced by bits of bone and wood.”

Thereupon Aesop said, “I would have you know, my friend, that the modern flute-makers have given up the use of bones from fawns, and use bones from asses, asserting that the latter have a better sound. This fact underlies the riddle which Cleobulina made in regard to the Phrygian flute:

Full on my ear with a horn-bearing shin did a dead donkey smite me.

So we may well be astonished that the ass, which otherwise is most gross and unmelodious, yet provides us with a bone which is most fine and melodious.”

“That, without question,” said Neiloxenus, “is the reason for the complaint which the people of Busiris make against us of Naucratis; for we are already using asses’ bones for our flutes. But for them even to hear a trumpet is a sin, because they think it sounds like the bray of an ass; and you know, of course, that an ass is treated with contumely by the Egyptians on account of Typhon.”

6 1 There was a pause in the conversation, and Periander, noticing that Neiloxenus wanted to begin his remarks, but was hesitating, said, 151”I am inclined to commend both states and rulers that take up the business of strangers first and of their own citizens afterwards; and now it seems to me that we should for a few minutes put a check on our own words, which are, as it were, in their own land where they are well known, and grant audience, as in a legislative sitting, to the royal communication from Egypt, which our excellent friend Neiloxenus has  come to bring to Bias, and which Bias wishes to consider with all of us together.”

“Indeed,” said Bias, “in what place or company would a man more readily take the risk, if he must, of answering such questions, especially since the king has given instructions to begin with me, and after that the matter is to come round to all the rest of you?”

As he said this Neiloxenus offered him the packet, but Bias bade him by all means to open it and read it aloud. The contents of the letter were to this effect:

“Amasis, king of the Egyptians, to Bias, wisest of the Greeks.

“The king of the Ethiopians is engaged in a contest in wisdom against me. Repeatedly vanquished in all else, he has crowned his efforts by framing an extraordinary and awful demand, bidding me to drink up the ocean. My reward, if I find a solution, is to have many villages and cities of his, and if I do not, I am to withdraw from the towns lying about Elephantine. I beg therefore that you will consider the question, and send back Neiloxenus without delay. And whatever is right for your friends or citizens to receive from us shall meet with no let or hindrance on my part.”

After this had been read Bias did not wait long, but, after a few minutes of abstraction and a few words with Cleobulus, whose place was near his, he said, “What is this, my friend from Naucratis? Do you mean to say that Amasis, who is king of so many people and possessed of such an excellent great country, will be willing, for the consideration of some insignificant and miserable villages, to drink up the ocean?”

Neiloxenus answered with a laugh, “Assume that he is willing, and consider what is possible for him to do.”

“Well, then,” said Bias, “let him tell the Ethiopian to stop the rivers which are now emptying into the ocean depths, while he himself is engaged in drinking up the ocean that now is; for this is the ocean with which the demand is concerned, and not the one which is to be.”

As soon as Bias had said these words, Neiloxenus, for very joy, hastened to embrace and kiss him. The rest of the company also commended the answer, and expressed their satisfaction with it, and then Chilon said with a laugh, “My friend, before the ocean disappears entirely in consequence of being drunk up, I beg that you sail back to your home in Naucratis and take word to Amasis not to be trying to find out how to make way with so much bitter brine, but rather how to render his government potable and sweet to his subjects; for in these matters Bias is most adept and a most competent instructor, and if Amasis will only learn them from him, he will have no further need of his golden foot-tub to impress the Egyptians, but they will all show regard and affection for him if he is good, even though he be shown to be in his birth ten thousand times more lowly than at present.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Periander, “it surely is right and proper that we all contribute an offering of this sort to the king, ‘each man in his turn,’ as Homer has said. For to him these extra items would be more valuable than the burden of his mission, and as profitable for ourselves as anything could be.”

7 1 Chilon thereupon said that it was only right that Solon should take the lead in speaking on this subject, not merely because he was most advanced in years and was occupying the place of honour, but because he held the greatest and most perfect position as a ruler by getting the Athenians to accept his laws. Thereupon Neiloxenus quietly remarked to me, “It is certain, Diocles, that a good many things come to be believed quite contrary to fact, and most people take delight in fabricating out of their own minds unwarranted tales about wise men, and in readily accepting such tales from others. Such, for instance, was the report, which was brought to us in Egypt, in regard to Chilon, to the effect that he had broken off his friendship and his hospitable relations with Solon 152 because Solon asserted that laws are subject to revision.”

“The story is ridiculous,” said I; “for in such case Chilon ought first to renounce Lycurgus and all his laws, for Lycurgus revised completely the Spartan connect.”

Solon then, after a moment’s delay, said, “In my opinion either a king, or a despot, would best gain repute if out of a monarchy he should organize a democracy for his people.”

Next Bias said, “If he should be the very first to conform to his country’s laws.”

Following him Thales said that he accounted it happiness for a ruler to reach old age and die a natural death.

Fourth, Anacharsis said, “If only he have sound sense.”

Fifth, Cleobulus, “If he trust none of his associates.”

Sixth, Pittacus, “If the ruler should manage to make his subjects fear, not him, but for him.”

Chilon followed by saying that a ruler’s thoughts should never be the thoughts of a mortal, but of an immortal always.

When these sentiments had been expressed, we insisted that Periander himself should also say something. And he, not very cheerful, but with a hard set face, said, “Well, I may add my view, that the opinions expressed, taken as a whole, practically divorce any man possessed of sense from being a ruler.”

Whereupon Aesop, as though taking us to task, said, “You ought, then, to have carried out this discussion by yourselves, and not, while professing to be counsellors and friends, to have made yourselves complainants against rulers.”

Solon then, laying his hand on Aesop’s head and smiling the while, said, “Don’t you think that anyone could make a ruler more moderate and a despot more reasonable if he could persuade them that it is better not to rule than to rule?”

“Who,” he replied, “would believe you in this matter in preference to the god who said, according to the oracle referring to you,

Blessed the city that hears the command of one herald only?”

“Yet it is a fact,” said Solon, “that even now the Athenians hearken to one herald and ruler only, and that one, the law, under their democratic constitution. You are clever in understanding ravens and jackdaws, but you have no true ear for the voice of equality, but think that, according to the god, the city which hearkens to one man fares the best, whereas in a social gathering you regard it as a virtue to have everybody talk and on every sort of subject.”

“Yes,” said Aesop, “that is because you have not yet written a law that slaves shall not get drunk, which would be a similar law to fit this case, as at Athens you wrote a law that slaves shall not have any love-affair and shall not rub down like athletes.”

Solon laughed at this and Cleodorus the physician said, “Nevertheless rubbing down dry is similar to talking when soaked with wine in that it is most agreeable.”

And Chilon, interrupting, said, “The more reason then for refraining from it.”

“I could swear,” said Aesop, speaking again, “that Thales appeared to bid a man to grow old as fast as possible.”

8 1 Periander at this burst out laughing, and said, “We are fittingly punished, Aesop, for becoming involved in other subjects before introducing all of those from Amasis, to which we gave precedence. I beg, Neiloxenus, that you will look at the rest of  the letter and take advantage of the fact that the men are all here together.”

“Well, in truth,” said Neiloxenus, “the demand of the Ethiopian can hardly be called anything but a ‘depressing cryptic dispatch,’ to borrow a phrase from Archilochus, but your friend Amasis is more civilized and cultivated in proposing such questions; for he bade the king name the oldest thing, the most beautiful, the greatest, the wisest, the most common, and besides these, as I can attest, to name also the most helpful thing and the most harmful, and strongest and the easiest.”

“Did the Ethiopian king give an answer and a solution for each of these questions?”

“Yes, in his way,” said Neiloxenus, “but you must judge for yourselves when you hear his answers. For my king holds it to be a very important matter 153 not to be caught impugning the answers falsely; and likewise, if the respondent is making any slip in these, he would not have this pass unquestioned. I will read the answers of the Ethiopian as he gave them:

(a) ‘What is the oldest thing?’ ‘Time.’

(b) ‘What is the greatest?’ ‘The universe.’

(c) ‘What is the wisest?’ ‘Truth.’

(d) ‘What is the most beautiful?’ ‘Light.’

(e) ‘What is most common?’ ‘Death.’

(f) ‘What is most helpful?’ ‘God.’

(g) ‘What is most harmful?’ ‘An evil spirit.’

(h) ‘What is strongest?’ ‘Fortune.’

(i) ‘What is easiest?’ ‘Pleasure.’

9 1 After this second reading, there was silence for a time, and then Thales asked Neiloxenus if Amasis had approved the answers. When Neiloxenus replied that Amasis had accepted some, but was much dissatisfied with others, Thales said, “As a matter of fact there is not a thing in them that cannot be impugned, but they all contain gross errors and evidences of ignorance. For instance, in the very first one, how can time be the oldest thing if a part of it is past, a part present, and a part future? For the time which is to come would clearly be younger than events and persons that now are. And to hold that truth is wisdom seems to me no different from declaring that light is the eye. If he thought the light beautiful, as it really is, how did he come to overlook the sun itself? Among the others the answer about gods and evil spirits evinces boldness and daring, but the one about Fortune contains much bad logic; Cfor Fortune would not be so fickle about abiding with one if it were the mightiest and strongest thing in existence. Nor is death, in fact, the most common thing; for it does not affect the living. But, to avoid giving the impression of merely passing judgement upon the statements of others, let us compare answers of our own with his. And I offer myself as the first, if Neiloxenus so desires, to be questioned on each topic; and taking the questions in the order given, I will repeat them, together with my answers:

(a) ‘What is the oldest thing?’ ‘God,’ : said Thales, “for God is something that has no beginning.’

(b) ‘What is the greatest?’ ‘Space; for while the universe contains within it all else, this contains the universe.’

(c) ‘What is the most beautiful?’ ‘The Universe; for everything that is ordered as it should be is a part of it.’

(d) ‘What is the wisest?’ ‘Time; for it has discovered some things already, and shall discover all the rest.’

(e) ‘What is most common?’ ‘Hope; for those who have nothing else have that ever with them.’

(f) ‘What is most helpful?’ ‘Virtue; for it makes everything else helpful by putting it to a good use.’

(g) ‘What is most harmful?’ ‘Vice; for it harms the greatest number of things by its presence.’

(h) ‘What is strongest?’ ‘Necessity; for that alone is insuperable.’

(i) ‘What is easiest?’ ‘To follow Nature’s course; because people often weary of pleasures.’ “

10 1 When all had expressed their satisfaction with Thales, Cleodorus said, “Asking and answering such questions is all right for kings. But the barbarian who would have Amasis drink up the ocean to do him honour needed the terse retort which Pittacus used to Alyattes, when the latter wrote and sent an overbearing command to the Lesbians. The only answer he made was to tell Alyattes to eat onions and hot bread.”

Periander now entered into the conversation, and said, “Nevertheless it is a fact, Cleodorus, that the ancient Greeks also had a habit of propounding such perplexing questions to one another. For we have the story that the most famous poets among the wise men of that time gathered at Chalcis to attend the funeral of Amphidamas. Now Amphidamas was a warrior who had given much trouble to the Eretrians, and had fallen in one of the battles for the possession of the Lelantine plain. But since the verses composed by the poets made the decision a difficult and troublesome matter because they were so evenly matched, and since the repute of the contestants, Homer and Hesiod, caused the judges much perplexity as well as embarrassment, 154 the poets resorted to questionings of this sort, and Homer, as Lesches asserts, propounded this:

Tell me, O Muse, of events which never have happened aforetime,

Nor in the future shall ever betide,

and Hesiod answered quite off-hand:

When round Zeus in his tomb rush the steeds with galloping hoof-beats,

Crashing car against car, as they eagerly run for a trophy.

And for this it is said that he gained the greatest admiration and won the tripod.”

“But what difference is there,” said Cleodorus, “between things like this and Eumetis’s riddles? Perhaps it is not unbecoming for her to amuse herself and to weave these as other girls weave girdles and hair-nets, and to propound them to women, but the idea that men of sense should take them at all seriously is ridiculous.”

Eumetis, to judge by her appearance, would have liked to give him an answer, but restrained herself with all modesty, and her face was covered with blushes. But Aesop, as though he would take her part, said, “Is it not then even more ridiculous not to be able to solve these? Take, for instance, the one which she propounded to us a few minutes before dinner:

Sooth I have seen a man with fire fasten bronze on another.

Could you tell me what this is?”

“No,” said Cleodorus, “and I don’t want to be told, either.”

“Yet it is a fact,” said Aesop, “that nobody knows this more perfectly than you, or does it better, either; and if you deny this, I have cupping-glasses to testify to it.”

At this Cleodorus laughed; for of all the physicians of his time he was most given to the use of cupping-glasses, and it was largely owing to him that this form of treatment has come to have such repute.

11 Mnesiphilus the Athenian, a warm friend and admirer of Solon’s, said, “I think it is no more than fair, Periander, that the conversation, like the wine, should not be apportioned on the basis of wealth or rank, but equally to all, as in a democracy, and that  it should be general. Now in what has just been said dealing with dominion and kingdom, we who live under a popular government have no part. Therefore I think that at this time each of you ought to contribute an opinion on the subject of republican government, beginning again with Solon.”

It was accordingly agreed to do this, and Solon began by saying, “But you, Mnesiphilus, as well as all the rest of the Athenians, have heard the opinion which I hold regarding government. However, if you wish to hear it again now, I think that a State succeeds best, and most effectively perpetuates democracy, Ein which persons uninjured by a crime, no less than the injured person, prosecute the criminal and get him punished.”

Second was Bias, who said that the most excellent democracy was that in which the people stood in as much fear of the law as of a despot.

Following him Thales said that it was the one having citizens neither too rich nor too poor.

After him Anacharsis said that it was the one in which, all else being held in equal esteem, what is better is determined by virtue and what is worse by vice.

Fifth, Cleobulus said that a people was most righteous whose public men dreaded censure more than they dreaded the law.

Sixth, Pittacus said that it was where bad men are not allowed to hold office, and good men are not allowed to refuse it.

Chilon, turning to the other side, declared that the best government is that which gives greatest heed to laws and least heed to those who talk about them.

Finally, Periander once more concluded the discussion with the decisive remark, that they all seemed to him to approve a democracy which was most like an aristocracy.

12 1 When this discussion had come to an end, I said that it seemed to me to be only fair that these men should tell us how a house should be managed. “For,” said I, “but few persons are in control of kingdoms and states, whereas we all have to do with a hearth and home.”

Aesop laughed and said, “Not all, if you include also Anacharsis in our number; 155 for not only has he no home, but he takes an immense pride in being homeless and in using a wagon, after the manner in which they say the sun makes his rounds in a chariot, occupying now one place and now another in the heavens.”

“And that, I would have you know,” said Anacharsis, “is precisely the reason why he solely or pre-eminently of all the gods is free and independent, and rules over all and is ruled by none, but is king, and holds the reins. Only you seem to have no conception of his chariot, how surpassing it is in beauty, and wondrous in size; else you would not, even in jest, have humorously compared it to ours. It seems to me, Aesop, that your idea of a home is limited to these protective coverings made of mortar, wood, and tiles, just as you were to regard a snail’s shell, and not the creature itself, as a snail. Quite naturally, then, Solon gave you occasion to laugh, because, when he had looked over Croesus’s house with its costly furnishings, he did not instantly  declare that the owner led a happy and blessed existence therein, for the good reason that he wished to have a look at the good within Croesus rather than at his good surroundings. But you, apparently, do not remember your own fox. For the fox, having entered into a contest with the leopard to determine which was the more ingeniously coloured, insisted it was but fair that the judge should note carefully what was within her, for there she said she should show herself more ingenious. But you go about, inspecting the works of carpenters and stone-masons, and regarding them as a home, and not the inward and personal possessions of each man, his children, his partner in marriage, his friends, and servants; and though it be in an ant-hill or a bird’s nest, yet if these are possessed of sense and discretion, and the head of the family shares with them all his worldly goods, he dwells in a goodly and a happy home. This then,” said he, “is my answer to Aesop’ insinuation, and my contribution to Diocles. And now it is but right that each of the others should disclose his own opinion.”

Thereupon Solon said that the best home seemed to him to be where no injustice is attached to the acquisition of property, no distrust to keeping it, and no repentance to spending it.

Bias said, “It is the home in which the head of the household, because of his own self, maintains the same character that he maintains outside of it because of the law.”

Thales said, “The home in which it is possible for the head of the household to have the greatest leisure.”

Cleobulus said, “If the head of the household have more who love him than fear him.”

Pittacus said that the best home is that which needs nothing superfluous, and lacks nothing necessary.

Chilon said that the home ought to be most like to a State ruled by a king; and then he added that Lycurgus said to the man who urged him to establish a democracy in the State, “Do you first create a democracy in your own house.”

13 1 When this discussion had come to its end, Eumetis withdrew, accompanied by Melissa. Then Periander drank to Chilon in a big beaker, and Chilon did the same to Bias, whereupon Ardalus arose, and addressing himself to Aesop, said, “Won’t you send the cup over here to us, seeing that these people are sending it to and fro to one another as though it were the beaker of Bathycles, and are not giving anybody else a chance at it?”

And Aesop said, “But this cup is not democratic either, since it has been resting all the time by Solon only.”

Thereupon Pittacus, addressing Mnesiphilus, asked why Solon did not drink, but by his testimony was discrediting the verses in which he had written

Give me the tasks of the Cyprus-born goddess and Lord Dionysus,

Yea, and the Muses besides; tasks which bring cheer among men.

Before the other could reply Anacharsis hastened to say, “He is afraid of you, Pittacus, and that harsh law of yours in which you have decreed, ‘If any man commit any offence when drunk, his penalty shall be double that prescribed for the sober.’ “

And Pittacus said, “But you at any rate showed such insolent disregard for the law, that last year, at the house of Alcaeus’s brother, you were the first to get drunk and you demanded as a prize a wreath of victory.”

156”And why not?” said Anacharsis. “Prizes were offered for the man who drank the most, and I was the first to get drunk; why should I not have demanded the reward of my victory? Else do you instruct me as to what is the aim in drinking much strong wine other than to get drunk.”

When Pittacus laughed at this, Aesop told the following story: “A wolf seeing some shepherds in a shelter eating a sheep, came near to them and said, ‘What an uproar you would make if I were doing that!’ “

“Aesop,” said Chilon, “has very properly defended himself, for a few moments ago he had his mouth stopped by us, and now, later, he sees that others have taken the words out of Mnesiphilus’s mouth; for it was Mnesiphilus who was asked for a rejoinder in defence of Solon.”

“And I speak,” said Mnesiphilus, “with full knowledge that it is Solon’s opinion that the task of every art and faculty, both human and divine, is the thing that is produced rather than the means employed in its production, and the end itself rather than the means that contribute to that end. For a weaver, I imagine, would hold that his task was a cloak or a mantle rather than the arrangement of shuttle-rods or the hanging of loom weights; and so a smith would regard the welding of iron or the tempering of an axe rather than any one of the things that have to be done for this purpose, such as blowing up the fire or getting ready for lux. Even more would an architect find fault with us, if we should declare that his task is not a temple or a house, but to bore timbers and mix mortar. And the Muses would most assuredly feel aggrieved, if we should regard as their task a lyre or flutes, and not the development of the characters and the soothing of the emotions of those who make use of songs and melodies. And so again the task of Aphrodite is not carnal intercourse, nor is that of Dionysus strong drink and wine, but rather the friendly feeling, the longing, the association, and the intimacy, one with one another, which they create in us through these agencies. These are what Solon calls ‘tasks divine,’ and these he says he loves and pursues above all else, now that he has become an old man. And Aphrodite is the artisan who creates concord and friendship between men and women, for through their bodies, under the influence of pleasure, she at the same time unites and welds together their souls. And in the case of the majority of people, who are not altogether intimate or too well known to one another, Dionysus softens and relaxes their characters with wine, as in a fire, and so provides some means for beginning a union and friendship with one another. However, when such men as you, whom Periander has invited here, come together, I think there is nothing for the wine-cup or ladle to accomplish, but the Muses set discourse in the midst before all, a non-intoxicating bowl as it were, containing a maximum of pleasure in jest and seriousness combined; and with this they awaken and foster and dispense friendliness, allowing the ‘ladle,’ for the most part, to lie untouched ‘atop of the bowl’ — a thing which Hesiod would prohibit in a company of men better able to drink than to converse. As a matter of fact,” he continued, “as nearly as I can make out, among the men of olden time the practice of drinking healths was not in vogue, since each man drank one ‘goblet,’ as Homer has said, that is a measured quantity, and later, like Ajax, shared a portion with his neighbour.”

When Mnesiphilus had said this, Chersias the poet F(having been already absolved from the charge against him, and recently reconciled with Periander at Chilon’s solicitation) said, “Is it to be inferred, then, that Zeus used to pour out the drink for the gods also in measured quantity, as Agamemnon did for his nobles, when the gods, dining with Zeus, drank to one another?”

And Cleodorus said, “But, Chersias, if certain doves bring to Zeus his ambrosia, as you poets say, and with great difficulty hardly manage to fly over the ‘clashing rocks,’ do you not believe that his nectar is hard for him to get and scarce, 157 so that he is sparing of it, and doles it out charily to each god?”

14 1 “Possibly,” said Chersias, “but since talk of household management has come up again, who among you will tell us about what was omitted? The topic omitted was, I think, the acquisition of some measure of property which shall be sufficient in itself and adequate.”

“But,” said Cleobulus, “for the wise the law has given the measure, but with reference to those of the baser sort I will tell a story of my daughter’s which she told to her brother. She said that the moon wanted her mother to weave for her a garment to fit her measure; and the mother said, ‘How can I weave it to fit your measure? For now I see you full and round, and at another time crescent-shaped, and at still another but little more than half your full size.’ And in the same way you see, my dear Chersias, there is no measure of possessions that can be applied to a foolish and worthless man. Sometimes he is one man and sometimes another in his needs, which vary according to his desires and fortunes; he is like Aesop’s dog, who, as our friend here says, in the winter-time curled up as closely as possible because he was so cold, and was minded to build himself a house, but when summer returned again, and he had stretched himself out to sleep, he appeared to himself so big that he thought it was neither a necessary nor a small task to construct a house large enough to contain him. Have you not often noticed also, Chersias,” he continued, “those detestable people who at one time restrict themselves to utterly small limits as though they purposed to live the simple Spartan life, and at another time they think that, unless they have everything possessed by all private persons and kings as well, they shall die of want?”

As Chersias lapsed into silence, Cleodorus took up the conversation and said, “But we see that the possessions which even you wise men have are distributed by unequal measure, if you be compared one with another.”

And Cleobulus said, “Yes, for the law, my good sir, like a weaver, assigns to each one of us so much as is fitting, reasonable, and suitable. And you, using reason as your law in prescribing diet, regimen, and drugs for the sick, do not apportion an equal amount to each one, but the proper amount in all cases.”

Ardalus then joined in and said, “Well, then, is there some law which commands that comrade of all of you, Solon’s foreign friend, Epimenides, to abstain from all other kinds of food, and by taking into his mouth a bit of the potent ‘no-hunger,’ which he himself compounds, to go all day without luncheon and dinner?”

This remark arrested the attention of the whole company, and Thales said jestingly that Epimenides showed good sense in not wishing to have the trouble of grinding his grain and cooking for himself like Pittacus. “For,” said he, “when I was at Eresus, I heard the woman at whose house I stayed singing at the mill:

Grind, mill, grind;

Yes, for Pittacus used to grind

King of great Mytilene.”

Solon said that he was surprised at Ardalus if he had not read the regulations governing the manner of living of the man in question, which are given in writing in Hesiod’s verses. For Hesiod is the one who first sowed in the mind of Epimenides the seeds of this form of nourishment, inasmuch as it was he who taught that one should seek to find

How in mallow and asphodel lies an immense advantage.

“Do you really think,” said Periander, “that Hesiod ever had any such idea in mind? Do you not rather think that, since he was always sounding the praises of frugality, he was also summoning us to the simplest of dishes as being the most pleasant? For the mallow is good eating, and the stalk of the asphodel is luscious; but these no-hunger and no-thirst drugs (for they are drugs rather than foods), I understand, include in their composition a sweet gum and a cheese found among barbarian peoples, and a great many seeds of a sort hard to procure. How, then, can we concede to Hesiod his

Rudder on high in the smoke

suspended, and

All the labours of oxen and stout-toiling mules be abolished,

if there is to be need of all this preparation? I am surprised at your friend from abroad, Solon, 158 if, when he was recently carrying out his great purification for the people of Delos, he did not note the memorials and examples of the earliest forms of food being brought into the temple there, including, among other inexpensive and self-propagated foods, mallow and asphodel, whose plainness and simplicity it is most likely that Hesiod recommends to us.”

“Not merely that,” said Anacharsis, “but both are commended as herbs that contribute to health also in greatest measure.”

“You are quite right,” said Cleodorus; “for it is clear that Hesiod has knowledge of medicine, since there is no lack of attention or experience shown in what he has to say about the daily course of life, mixing wine, the great value of water, bathing, women, the proper time for intercourse, and the way in which infants should sit. But it seems to me that Aesop with better right than Epimenides can declare himself the pupil of Hesiod. For the words of the hawk to the nightingale first suggested to Aesop the idea of this beautiful and ingenious wisdom uttered by many different tongues. But I should be glad to listen to Solon; for it is likely that he, having been associated with Epimenides for a long time at Athens, has learned what experience of his or what sophistical argument induced him to resort to such a course of living.”

15 1 Solon said, “What need was there to ask him this? For it is plain that the next best thing to the greatest and highest of all good is to require the minimum amount of food; or is it not the general opinion that the greatest good is to require no food at all?”

“Not mine by any means,” said Cleodorus, “if I must tell what lies in my mind, especially as a table stands here now, which they do away with when food is done away with, and it is an altar of the gods of friendship and hospitality. And as Thales says that, if the earth be done away with, confusion will possess the universe, so this is the dissolution of the household. For when the table is done away with, there go with it all these other things: the altar fire on the hearth, the hearth itself, wine-bowls, all entertainment and hospitality, — the most humane and the first acts of communion between man and man; rather is all real living abolished, Dif so be that living is a spending of time by man which involves carrying on a series of activities, most of which are called for by the need of food and its procurement. And a dreadful situation ensues, my friend, regarding agriculture itself. For let agriculture be destroyed, and it leaves us our earth again unsightly and unclean, filled with unfruitful forests and with streams sweeping on unchecked, all owing to man’s inaction. And with the destruction of agriculture goes also the destruction of all arts and crafts which she initiates, and for which she supplies the basis and the material; and these all come to naught if she vanishes from the earth. Abolished too are the honours paid to the gods, since men will have but little gratitude to the Sun, and still less to the Moon, for merely light and width. Where will there be an altar or where a sacrifice offered to Zeus who sends the rain, or to Demeter who initiates the ploughing, or to Poseidon who watches over the tender crops? How shall Dionysus be the giver of delights, if we shall require none of the gifts which he gives? What shall we offer as a sacrifice or libation, and what shall we dedicate as first-fruits? All this means the overturning and confusion of our highest concerns. To cling to every form of pleasure is utterly irrational, but to avoid every form of pleasure is utterly insensate. Let it be granted that there exist some other superior pleasures for the soul to enjoy, yet it is not possible to discover a way for the body to attain a pleasure more justifiable than that which comes from eating and drinking, and this is a fact which no man can have failed to observe; for this pleasure men put forward openly before all, and share together banquets and table, whereas their carnal delights they veil behind the screen of night and deep darkness, feeling that to share this pleasure openly is shameless and bestial, as it is also not to share the other.”

I took up the conversation as Cleodorus left off, and said, “But there is another point you do not mention, that we banish sleep along with food; and with no sleep there can be no dream, 159 and our most ancient and respected form of divination is gone for ever. Life will have a monotonous sameness, and we might say that the encasement of the soul in the body will lack all purpose and effect. The most, and the most important, of the bodily organs, tongue, teeth, stomach, and liver, are provided as instruments of nutrition, no one of them is inactive, nor is it framed for any other form of usefulness. So he who has no need of food has no need of a body either; and that again would mean having no need of himself! For it is with a body that each one of us exists. This then,” said I, “makes up the contributions which we offer to the belly; and if Solon or anybody else desires to impeach them in any way, we will listen.”

16 1 “Certainly,” said Solon, “let us not show ourselves to be less discriminating than the Egyptians, who cut open the dead body and expose it to the sun, and then cast certain parts of it into the river, and perform their offices on the rest of the body, feeling that this part has now at last been made clean. For this, in truth, it is which constitutes the pollution of our flesh and its bowels of Hell, as it were, teeming with frightful streams and wind, intermingled with burning fire and corpses. For no living man feeds upon another living creature; nay, we put to death the animate creatures and destroy these things that grow in the ground, which also are partakers in life, in that they absorb food, and increase in size; and herein we do wrong. For anything that is changed from what it was by nature into something else is destroyed, and it undergoes utter corruption that it may become the food of another. But to refrain entirely from eating meat, as they record of Orpheus of old, is rather a quibble than a way of avoiding wrong in regard to food. The one way of avoidance and of keeping oneself pure, from the point of view of righteousness is to become sufficient unto oneself and to need nothing from any other source. But in the case of man or beast for whom God has made his own secure existence impossible without his doing injury to another, it may be said that in the nature which God has inflicted upon him lies the source of wrong. Would it not, then, be right and fair, my friend, in order to cut out injustice, to cut out also bowels and stomach and liver, which afford us no perception or craving for anything noble, but are like cooking utensils, such as choppers and kettles, and, in another respect, like a baker’s outfit, ovens and dough-containers and kneading-bowls? Indeed, in the case of most people, one can see that their soul is absolutely confined in the darkness of the body as in a mill, making its endless rounds in its concern over its need of food; just as we ourselves, only a few minutes ago, as a matter of course, neither saw nor listened to one another, but each one was bending down, enslaved to his need of food. But now that the tables have been removed, we have, as you see, been made free, and, with garlands on, we are spending our time in conversation and in the enjoyment of one another’s society, and we have the leisure to do this now that we have come to require no more food for a time. Assuming, then, that the state in which we find ourselves at the present moment will persist without interruption throughout our whole life, shall we not always have leisure to enjoy one another’s society, having no fear of poverty and no knowledge of what wealth is? For craving for the superfluous follows close upon the use of necessities, and soon becomes a settled habit.

“But Cleodorus imagines that there ought to be food, so that there may be tables and wine-bowls and sacrifices to Demeter and the Daughter. Then let the next man argue that it is but right and proper that there be battles and war, so that we may have fortifications and dockyards and arsenals, and may offer sacrifice to celebrate the slaying of an hundred foemen, as they say is the custom among the Messenians. Still another man, I imagine, may entertain a violent hatred against health; for it will be a terrible thing if nobody is ill, and there is no longer any use for a soft bed or couch, and we shall not offer sacrifice to Asclepius or the averting deities, and the profession of medicine together with its numerous instruments and remedies shall be consigned to inglorious desuetude and contempt. Yet, what difference is there between this sort of reasoning and the other? The fact is that food is taken as a remedy for hunger, and all who use food in a prescribed way are said to be giving themselves treatment, 160 not with the thought they are doing something pleasant and grateful, but that this is necessary to comply with Nature’s imperative demand. Indeed, it is possible to enumerate more pains than pleasures derived from food; or rather may it be said that the pleasure affects but a very limited area in the body, and lasts for no long time; but as for the ugly and painful experiences crowded upon us by the bother and discomfort which wait upon digestion, what need to tell their number? I think that Homer had their very number in view when, in the case of the gods, he finds an argument to prove that they do not die in the fact that they do not live by food:

Since they eat no bread and drink no wine brightly sparkling,

Therefore their bodies are bloodless, and they are called the Immortals.

He intimates by this that food is not only an element conducive to life, but that it is also conducive to death. For it is from this source that diseases come, thriving on the very same food as men’s bodies, which find no less ill in fulness than in fasting. For oftentimes it is harder work to use up and again to distribute food, after it has been taken into the body, than it was to procure it and get it together in the first place. But just as the Danaids would be at a loss to know what kind of life and occupation they should follow if they should be relieved of the drudgery in trying to fill the great jar, so we are at a loss to know, if perchance we should have the opportunity to cease from heaping into this relentless flesh of ours all the multitudinous products of land and sea, what we shall do, since, owing to lack of acquaintance with noble things, we now content ourselves with the life conditioned on necessities. Just as men who have been slaves, when they are set free, do for themselves on their own account those very things which they used to do in service to their masters, so the soul now supports the body with much toil and trouble, but if it be relieved of its drudgery, it will quite naturally maintain itself in its new freedom and live with an eye to itself and the truth, since there will be nothing to distract or divert it.”

This then, Nicarchus, is what was said on the subject of food.

17 1 While Solon was still speaking, Gorgus, Periander’s brother, came in; for it happened that, in consequence of certain oracles, he had been sent to Taenarum, Din charge of a sacred mission to offer due sacrifice to Poseidon. After we had greeted him, and Periander had embraced and kissed him, Gorgus sat down beside his brother on the couch, and gave him a report intended apparently for him alone, and he, as he listened, seemed much affected at the story; for he appeared in some ways troubled, in some ways indignant, and oftentimes incredulous, and then again amazed. Finally with a laugh he said to us, “In the circumstances I should like to tell the news which I have just heard, but I hesitate, since I heard Thales say once that what is probable one should tell, but what is impossible one should shroud in silence.”

Thereupon Bias, interrupting, said, “But Thales is responsible also for this sage remark, that one should not believe enemies even about things believable, and should believe friends even about things unbelievable; the name ‘enemies’ he assigned, I think, to the wicked and foolish, and ‘friends’ to the good and sensible. And so, Gorgus,” he continued, “it should be told to all, or rather, to compete with those newly invented dithyrambs, there should be heard the stronger notes of the story which your arrival has brought to us.”

18 1 Gorgus then told us that his offering of the sacrifice had taken three days, and on the last day there was a dance and merry-making, lasting the whole night long, down by the shore. The moon was shining bright upon the sea; there was no wind, but a perfect calm and stillness, when, afar off, was seen a ripple coming towards land close by the promontory, attended by some foam and much noise from its rapid movement, so that they all ran down in amazement to the place where it was coming to shore. Before they could guess what was bearing down upon them so rapidly, dolphins were seen, some forming a dense encircling line, others leading the way to the smoothest part of the shore, and still others behind, forming, as it were, a rear-guard. 161 In their midst, uplifted above the sea, was a mass like a man’s body being borne along, but indistinct and ill-defined, until the dolphins drew near together, and with one accord came close to the shore, and deposited on land a human being, in whom was still the breath of life and power to move; then they themselves put forth again towards the promontory leaping even higher than before, and sporting and frolicking apparently for joy. “Many of us,” continued Gorgus, “were panic-stricken, and fled from the sea-shore, but a few, including myself, grew bold enough to draw near, and they recognized Arion the harper, who pronounced his own name himself, and was easily recognizable by his dress; for he happened to be clad in the ceremonial robes which he had worn when he played and snag.

“We accordingly conducted him to a tent, since there was really nothing the matter with him, save that he seemed somewhat unstrung and wearied by the swiftness and rush of his ride, and we heard from him a story, incredible to all men except to us who with our own eyes had seen its conclusion. Arion said that some time ago he had resolved to leave Italy, and the receipt of a letter from Periander had only stimulated his desire the more, and when a Corinthian merchant-vessel appeared there, he had at once embarked and sailed away from that land. For three days they were favoured by a moderate breeze, and there came over Arion the feeling that the sailors were plotting to make away with him, and later he learned from the pilot, who secretly gave him the information, that they were resolved to do the deed that night. Helpless and at his wits’ end, he put into execution an impulse, divinely inspired, to adorn his person, and to take for his shroud, while he was still living, the elaborate attire which he wore at competitions, and to sing a final song to life as he ended it, and not to prove himself in this respect less generous than the swans. Accordingly he made himself ready, and, first saying that he was possessed by a desire to sing through one of his songs — the ode to Pythian Apollo — as a supplication for the safety of himself and the ship and all on board, he took his stand beside the bulwark at the stern, and, after a prelude invoking the gods of the sea, he began the ode. He had not even half finished it as the sun was sinking into the sea and the Peloponnesus becoming visible. The sailors therefore waited no longer for the night-time, but advanced to the murderous deed; whereupon Arion, seeing knives bared and the pilot already covering up his face, ran back and threw himself as far away from the ship as possible. But before his body was entirely submerged, dolphins swam beneath him, and he was borne upward, full of doubt and uncertainty and confusion at first. But when he began to feel at ease in being carried in this manner, and saw many dolphins gathering around him in a friendly way, and relieving one another as though such service in alternation were obligatory and incumbent upon all, and the sight of the ship left far behind gave a means to measure their speed, there came into his thoughts, as he said, not so much a feeling of fear in the face of death, or a desire to live, as a proud longing to be saved that he might be shown to be a man loved by the gods, and that he might gain a sure opinion regarding them. At the same time, observing that the sky was dotted with stars, and the moon was rising bright and clear, while the sea everywhere was without a wave as if a path were being opened for their course, he bethought himself that the eye of Justice is not a single eye only, but through all these eyes of hers God watches in every direction the deeds that are done here and there both on land and on the sea. By these reflections, he said, the weariness and heaviness which he was already beginning to feel in his body were relieved, and when at the last, as the jutting promontory, rugged and lofty, appeared in their path, they rounded it with great caution, and skirted close to the land as if they were bringing a boat safely into harbour, 162 then he fully realized that his rescue had been guided by God’s hand.

“When Arion had told all this,” continued Gorgus, “I asked him where he thought the ship would make harbour; and he replied that it would surely come to Corinth, but its arrival would be much later; for he thought that after he had thrown himself overboard in the evening, he had been carried a distance of not less than fifty or more miles, and a calm had fallen immediately.” Gorgus went on to say that he had ascertained the name of the captain and of the pilot, and the ship’s emblem, and had sent out boats and soldiers to the landing-places to keep strict watch; moreover, he had brought Arion with him, carefully concealed, so that the guilty ones might not gain any premature information of his rescue from death, and make good their escape; and in fact the whole affair seemed like an event divinely directed, for his men were here just as he arrived, and he learned that the ship had been seized, and the traders and sailors arrested.

19 1 Accordingly Periander bade Gorgus to withdraw at once, and have these men put into prison where nobody should have access to them or tell them that Arion had been rescued.

“Well! well!” said Aesop, “you all make fun of my jackdaws and crows if they talk with one another, and yet dolphins indulge in such pranks as this!”

“Let’s change the subject, Aesop,” said I to him; “more than a thousand years have elapsed since this dolphin story has been believed and committed to writing in Greek lands, even from the days of Ino and Athamas.”

Solon here entered the conversation: “Well, Diocles, let it be granted that these things are near to the gods and far beyond us; but what happened to Hesiod is human and within our ken. Very likely you have heard the story.”

“No, I have not,” said I.

“Well, it is really worth hearing, and so here it is. A man from Miletus, it seems, with whom Hesiod shared lodging and entertainment in Locris, had secret relations with the daughter of the man who entertained them; and when he was detected, Hesiod fell under suspicion of having known about the misconduct from the outset, and of having helped to conceal it, although he was in nowise guilty, but only the innocent victim of a fit of anger and prejudice. For the girl’s brothers killed him, lying in wait for him in the vicinity of the temple of Nemean Zeus in Locris, and with him they killed his servant whose name was Troïlus. The dead bodies were shoved out into the sea, and the body of Troïlus, borne out into the current of the river Daphnus, was caught on a wave-washed rock projecting a little above the sea-level; and even to this day the rock is called Troïlus. The body of Hesiod, as soon as it left the land, was taken up by a company of dolphins, who conveyed it to Rhium hard by Molycreia. It happened that the Locrians’ periodic Rhian sacrifice and festal gathering was being held then, which even nowadays they celebrate in a noteworthy manner at that place. When the body was seen being carried towards them, they were naturally filled with astonishment, and ran down to the shore; recognizing the corpse, which was still fresh, they held all else to be of secondary importance in comparison with investigating the murder, on account of the repute of Hesiod. This they quickly accomplished, discovered the murderers, sank them alive in the sea, and razed their house to the ground. Hesiod was buried near the temple of Nemean Zeus; most foreigners do not know about his grave, but it has been kept concealed, because, as they say, it was sought for by the people of Orchomenos, who wished, in accordance with an oracle, to recover the remains and bury them in their own land. If, therefore, dolphins show such a tender and humane interest in the dead, it is even more likely that they should give aid to the living, and especially if they are charmed by the sound of flutes or some songs or other. For we are all well aware of the fact that these creatures delight in music and follow after it, and swim along beside men who are rowing to the accompaniment of song and flute in a calm, and they enjoy travelling in this way. They take delight also in children’s swimming, and vie with them in diving. 163 For this reason they profit also by an unwritten law of immunity; for nobody hunts them or injures them except when they get into the fishermen’s nets, and do havoc with the catch, and then they are punished with a whipping like naughty children. I remember also hearing from some men of Lesbos that the rescue of a certain maiden from the sea was effected by a dolphin, but, as I am not sure of the various details, it is only right that Pittacus, who does know them, should relate the tale.”

20 1 Pittacus thereupon said that it was a famous story, and one mentioned by many, to this effect. An oracle had been given to those who were setting out to found a colony in Lesbos that when their voyage should bring them to a reef which is called “Midland,” then they should cast into the sea at that place a bull as an offering to Poseidon, and to Amphitrite and the Nymphs of the sea a living virgin. The commanders were seven in number, all kings, and the eighth was Echelaüs, designated by the oracle at Delphi to head the colony, although he was young and still unmarried. The seven, or as many as had unmarried daughters, cast lots, and the lot fell upon the daughter of Smintheus. Her they adorned with fine raiment and golden ornaments as they arrived opposite the spot, and purposed, as soon as they had offered prayer, to cast her into the sea. It happened that one of the company on board, a young man of no mean origin as it seems, was in love with her. His name, according to a tradition still preserved, was Enalus. He, conceiving a despairing desire to help the maiden in her present misfortune, at the critical moment hurriedly clasped her in his arms, and threw himself with her into the sea. Straightway a rumour spread, having no sure foundation, but nevertheless carrying conviction to many in the community, regarding their safety and rescue. Later, as they say, Enalus appeared in Lesbos, and told how they had been borne by dolphins through the sea, and put ashore unharmed on the mainland. Other things he related more miraculous than this, which astonished and fascinated the crowd, and he gave good grounds for believing them all by a deed which he did; for when a towering wave precipitated itself on the shores of the island, and the people were in a state of terror, he, all by himself, went to meet the sea, and cuttle-fish followed him to the shrine of Poseidon, the biggest of which brought a stone with him, and this stone Enalus took and dedicated there, and this we call Enalus. “And in general,” he continued, “if a man realizes a difference between the impossible and the unfamiliar, and between false reasoning and false opinion, such a man, Chilon, who would neither believe nor disbelieve at haphazard, would be most observant of the precept, ‘Avoid extremes,’ as you have enjoined.”

21 1 Following him Anacharsis said that as Thales had set forth the excellent hypothesis that soul exists in all the most dominant and most important parts of the universe, there is no proper ground for wonder that the most excellent things are brought to pass by the will of God. “For the body,” he continued, “is the soul’s instrument, and the soul is God’s instrument; and just as the body has many movements of its own, but the most, and most excellent, from the soul, so the soul performs some actions by its own instinct, but in others it yields itself to God’s use for Him to direct it and turn it in whatsoever course He may desire, since it is the most adaptable of all instruments. For it is a dreadful mistake to assume that, on the one hand, fire is God’s instrument, and wind and water also, and clouds and rain, by means of which He preserves and fosters many a thing, and ruins and destroys many another, but that, on the other hand, He never as yet makes any use whatever of living creatures to accomplish any one of His purposes. Nay, it is far more likely that the living, being dependent on God’s power, serve Him and are responsive to His movements even more than bows are responsive to the Scythians or lyres and flutes to the Greeks.”

Thereupon the poet Chersias cited, among the cases of persons who had been saved when their plight seemed hopeless, the case of Cypselus, the father of Periander, who, when he was a new-born babe, smiled at the men who had been sent to make away with him, and they turned away. And when again they changed their minds, they sought for him and found him not, for he had been put away in a chest by his mother. 164 It was because of this that Cypselus constructed the building at Delphi, firmly believing that the god had at that time stopped his crying so that he might escape the notice of those who were searching for him.

And Pittacus, addressing Periander, said, “Chersias certainly did well to mention the building, for I have often desired, Periander, to ask you the reason for those frogs, and what is their significance, carved as they are in such numbers about the base of the palm-tree, and what relation they have to the god or to the dedicator.”

Periander bade him ask Chersias, for Chersias, he said, knew and was present when Cypselus consecrated the building; but Chersias said with a smile, “No, I will not tell until I learn from our friends here what significance they give to the precepts, ‘Avoid extremes’ and ‘Know thyself,’ and, in particular, that one which has kept many from marrying, and many from trusting, and some even from speaking, and this is it: ‘Give a pledge, and mischief attends.’ “

“What need of us to tell you that?” said Pittacus; “since for this long time you have been praising the stories which Aesop has composed touching each of them, as it seems.”

And Aesop said, “Only when Chersias is poking fun at me; but when he is serious he points to Homer as their inventor, and says that Hector ‘knew himself’ because he attacked all the others, but

Only with Ajax, Telamon’s son, he avoided a conflict.

And Odysseus, he says, gives praise to ‘Avoid extremes’ when he enjoins

Son of Tydeus, praise me not too much nor chide me.

And as for the pledge, other people think that Homer vilifies it as a worthless and futile thing when he says,

Worthless are pledges of worthless folk to accept at their pledging;

but Chersias here asserts that Mischief was hurled from heaven by Zeus because she was present at the pledge which Zeus gave when he was befooled in regard to the birth of Heracles.”

Solon here put in his word: “Well, then, we should have faith in the very great wisdom of Homer who also says,

Night-time advances apace; ‘tis well to pay heed to the night-time.

So, if it please the company, let us offer a libation to the Muses and Poseidon and Amphitrite, and be going.”

And thus, Nicarchus, the party came to an end.

Superstition

164 1 1   Ignorance and blindness in regard to the gods divides itself at the very beginning into two streams, of which the one produces in hardened characters, as it were in stubborn soils, atheism, and the other in tender characters, as in moist soils, produces superstition. Every false judgement, and especially concerning these matters, is a mischievous thing; but where emotion also enters, it is most mischievous. For every emotion is likely to be a delusion that rankles; and just as dislocations of the joints accompanied by lacerations are hardest to deal with, so also is it with derangements of the soul accompanied by emotion.

A man thinks that in the beginning the universe was created out of atoms and void. 165 His assumption is false, but it causes no sore, no throbbing, no agitating pain.

A man assumes that wealth is the greatest good. This falsehood contains venom, it feeds upon his soul, distracts him, does not allow him to sleep, fills him with stinging desires, pushes him over precipices, chokes him, and takes from him his freedom of speech.

Again, some people think that virtue and vice are corporeal. This piece of ignorance is disgraceful, perhaps, but it is not worthy of wailings or lamentations. But consider judgements and assumptions that are like this:

Poor virtue! A mere name thou art, I find,

But I did practise thee as real!

and thereby I gave up wrongdoing which is productive of wealth, and licentiousness which begets every sort of pleasure. These it is right and proper that we pity, and at the same time loathe, because their presence engenders many distempers and emotions, like maggots and grubs, in men’s souls.

2 1   To come now to our subject: atheism, which is a sorry judgement that there is nothing blessed or incorruptible, seems, by disbelief in the Divinity, to lead finally to a kind of utter indifference, and the end which it achieves in not believing in the existence of gods is not to fear them. But, on the other hand, superstition, as the very name (dread of deities) indicates, is an emotional idea and an assumption productive of a fear which utterly humbles and crushes a man, for he thinks that there are gods, but that they are the cause of pain and injury. In fact, the atheist, apparently, is unmoved regarding the Divinity, whereas the superstitious man is moved as he ought not to be, and his mind is thus perverted. For in the one man ignorance engenders disbelief in the one who can help him, and on the other it bestows the added idea that He causes injury. Whence it follows that atheism is falsified reason, and superstition is an emotion engendered from false reason.

3 1   Clear it is that all distempers and emotions of the soul are disgraceful, but in some of them are to be found pride, loftiness, and exaltation, owing to their uplifting power; and no one of them, we might say, is destitute of an impulse to activity. But this general complaint may be made against every one of the emotions, that by their urgings to be up and doing they press hard upon the reasoning power and strain it. But fear alone, lacking no less in boldness than in power to reason, keeps its irrationality impotent, helpless, and hopeless. It is on this ground that the power of fear to tie down the soul, and at the same time to keep it awake, has come to be named both terror and awe.

Of all kinds of fear the most impotent and helpless is superstitious fear. No fear of the sea has he who does not sail upon it, nor of war he who does not serve in the army, nor of highwaymen he who stays at home, nor of a blackmailer he who is poor, nor of envy he who holds no office, nor of earthquake he who is in Gaul, nor of the lightning-stroke he who is in Ethiopia; but he who fears the gods fears all things, earth and sea, air and sky, darkness and light, sound and silence, and a dream. Slaves in their sleep forget their masters, sleep makes light the chains of prisoners, and the inflammations surrounding wounds, the savage gnawing of ulcers in the flesh, and tormenting pains are removed from those who are fallen asleep:

Dear soothing balm of sleep to help my ill,

How sweet thy coming in mine hour of need.

Superstition does not give one a right to say this; for superstition alone makes no truce with sleep, and never gives the soul a chance to recover its breath and courage by putting aside its bitter and despondent notions regarding God; but, as it were in the place of torment of the impious, so in the sleep of the superstitious their malady calls up fearful images, and horrible apparitions and divers forms of punishment, and, by keeping the unhappy soul on the rack, chases it away from sleep by its dreams, lashed and punished by its own self as if by another, and forced to comply with dreadful and extraordinary behests. When, later, such persons arise from their beds, they do not contemn nor ridicule these things, nor realize that not one of the things that agitated them was really true, but, trying to escape the shadow of a delusion 166 that has nothing bad at the bottom, during their waking hours they delude and waste and agitate themselves, putting themselves into the hands of conjurors and impostors who say to them:

If a vision in sleep is the cause of your fear

And the troop of dire Hecate felt to be near,

then call in the old crone who performs magic purifications, dip yourself in the ocean, and sit down on the ground and spend the whole day there.

Greeks from barbarians finding evil ways!

because of superstition, such as smearing with mud, wallowing in filth, immersions, casting oneself down with face to the ground, disgraceful besieging of the gods, and uncouth prostrations. “To sing with the mouth aright” was the injunction given to the harp-players by those who thought to preserve the good old forms of music; and we hold it to be meet to pray to the gods with the mouth straight and aright, and not to inspect the tongue laid upon the sacrificial offering to see that it be clean and straight, and, at the same time, by distorting and sullying one’s own tongue with strange names and barbarous phrases, to disgrace and transgress the god-given ancestral dignity of our religion.

Nor is there lack of humour in what the comic poet has somewhat said with reference to those who cover their bedsteads with gold and silver:

The one free gift the gods bestow on us,

Our sleep, why make its cost to you so much?

But to the superstitious man it is possible to say, “The gift of sleep which the gods bestow on us as a time of forgetfulness and respite from our ills; why do you make this an everlastingly painful torture-chamber for yourself, since your unhappy soul cannot run away to some other sleep?” Heracleitus says that people awake enjoy one world in common, but of those who are fallen asleep each roams about in a world of his own. But the superstitious man enjoys no world in common with the rest of mankind; for neither when awake does he use his intelligence, nor when fallen asleep is he freed from his agitation, but his reasoning power is sunk in dreams, his fear is ever wakeful, and there is no way of escape or removal.

4 1   A despot much feared in Samos was Polycrates, as was Periander in Corinth, but nobody feared these men Dafter he had removed to a free State governed by its own people. But as for the man who fears the rule of the gods as a sullen and inexorable despotism, where can he remove himself, where can he flee, what country can he find without gods, or what sea? Into what part of the universe shall you steal away and hide yourself, poor wretch, and believe that you have escaped God? There is a law even for slaves who have given up all hope of freedom, that they may demand a sale, and thus exchange their present master for one more mild. But superstition grants no such exchange; and to find a god whom he shall not fear is impossible for him who fears the gods of his fathers and his kin, who shudders at his saviours, and trembles with terror at those gentle gods from whom we ask wealth, welfare, peace, concord, and success in our best efforts in speech and action.

Then again these same persons hold slavery to be a misfortune, and say,

For man or woman ‘tis disaster dire

Sudden to be enslaved, and masters harsh

To get.

But how much more dire, think you, is the lot of those for whom there is no escape, no running away, no chance to revolt? For a slave there is an altar to which he can flee, and there are many of our shrines where even robbers may find sanctuary, and men who are fleeing from the enemy, if once they lay hold upon a statue of a god, or a temple, take courage again. These are the very things that most inspire a shuddering fear and dread in the superstitious man, and yet it is in them that those who in fear of the most dreadful fate place their hopes. Do not drag the superstitious man away from his shrines, for it is in them that he suffers punishment and retribution.

What need to speak at length? “In death is the end of life for all men,” but not the end of superstition; for superstition transcends the limits of life into the far beyond, making fear to endure longer than life, and connecting with death the thought of undying evils, and holding fast to the opinion, at the moment of ceasing from trouble, that now is the beginning of those that never cease. 167 The abysmal gates of the nether world swing open, rivers of fire and offshoots of the Styx are mingled together, darkness is crowded with spectres of many fantastic shapes which beset their victim with grim visages and piteous voices, and, besides these, judges and torturers and yawning gulfs and deep recesses teeming with unnumbered woes. Thus unhappy superstition, by its excess of caution in trying to avoid everything suggestive of dread, unwittingly subjects itself to every sort of dread.

5 1   Nothing of this kind attaches to atheism, but its ignorance is distressing, and to see amiss or not to see at all in matters of such importance is a great misfortune for the soul; for it is as if the soul had suffered the extinction of the brightest and most dominant of its many eyes, the conception of God. But superstition is attended by emotion, as has already been said, and by sore distress and disturbance and mental enslavement from the very beginning. Plato says that music, the creator of harmony and order, was given to mankind by the gods not for the sake of pampering them or tickling their ears, but so that whatever in a man’s body is disturbing and errant, affecting the cycles and concords of the soul, and in many instances, for lack of culture and refinement, waxing wanton because of licentiousness and error, music should, in its own way, disengage and bring round and restore to its proper place again.

Whatsoever things there be

Which by Zeus are not held dear,

says Pindar,

In affrighted panic flee

When the Muses’ voice they hear.

In fact they become provoked and angry; and tigers, they say, surrounded by the sounds of beaten drums go utterly mad, and get so excited that they end by tearing themselves to pieces. There is less harm, therefore, for those who, as the result of deafness or impairment of hearing, have a feeling of indifference and insensibility toward music. Teiresias laboured under a misfortune in not being able to see his children or his intimate friends, but greater was the misfortune of Athamas and Agave, who saw them as lions and deer; and for Heracles in his madness it would undoubtedly have been better neither to see his sons, nor to realize that they were present, than to treat his nearest and dearest as enemies.

6 1   What then? Does it not seem to you that the feeling of the atheists compared with the superstitious presents just such a difference? The former do not see the gods at all, the latter think that they do exist and are evil. The former disregard them, the latter conceive their kindliness to be frightful, their fatherly solicitude to be despotic, their loving care to be injurious, their slowness to anger to be savage and brutal. Then again such persons give credence to workers in metal, stone, or wax, who make their images of gods in the likeness of human beings, and they have such images fashioned, and dress them up, and worship them. But they hold in contempt philosophers and statesmen, who try to prove that the majesty of God is associated with goodness, magnanimity, kindliness, and solicitude. So the atheists have more than enough of indifference and distrust of the Beings who can help them, whereas the superstitious experience equal agitation and fear towards the things that can help them. Or, in fine, atheism is an indifferent feeling toward the Deity, which has no notion of the good, and superstition is a multitude of differing feelings with an underlying notion that the good is evil. For the superstitious fear the gods, and flee to the gods for help; they flatter them and assail them with abuse, pray to them and blame them. It is the common lot of mankind not to enjoy continual good fortune in all things.

Age and illness not their lot,

Toil and labour they know not,

‘Scaped is Acheron’s loud strait,

says Pindar of the gods, but human experiences and actions are linked with chance circumstances which move now in one course and now in another.

7 1   Come now, observe the atheist in circumstances not desired by him, and take note of his attitude. If he be moderate in general, you will note that he takes his present fortune without a word, and tries to procure for himself means of help and comfort; but if he be given to impatience or violent emotion, you will note that he directs all his complaints against Fortune and Chance, 168 and exclaims that nothing comes about according to right or as the result of providence, but that the course of all human affairs is confusion and disorder, and that they are all being turned topsy-turvy. This, however, is not the way of the superstitious man; but if even the slightest ill befall him, he sits down and proceeds to construct, on the basis of his trouble, a fabric of harsh, momentous, and practically unavoidable experiences which he must undergo, and he also loads himself with fears and frights, suspicions and trepidations, and all this he bitterly assails with every sort of lamentation and moaning. For he puts the responsibility for his lot upon no man nor upon Fortune nor upon occasion nor upon himself, but lays the responsibility for everything upon God, and says that from that source a heaven-sent stream of mischief has come upon him with full force; and he imagines that it is not because he is unlucky, but because he is hateful to the gods, that he is being punished by the gods, and that the penalty he pays and all that he is undergoing are deserved because of his own conduct.

The atheist, when he is ill, takes into account and calls to mind the times when he has eaten too much or drunk too much wine, also irregularities in his daily life, or instances of over-fatigue or unaccustomed changes of air or locality; and again when he has given offence in administering office, and has encountered disrepute with the masses or calumny with a ruler, he looks to find the reason in himself and his own surroundings:

Where did I err, and what have I done? What duty of mine was neglected?

But in the estimation of the superstitious man, every indisposition of his body, loss of property, deaths of children, or mishaps and failures in public life are classed as “afflictions of God” or “attacks of an evil spirit.” For this reason he has no heart to relieve the situation or undo its effects, or to find some remedy for it or to take a strong stand against it, lest he seem to fight against God and to rebel at his punishment; but when he is ill the physician is ejected from the house, and when he is in grief the door is shut on the philosopher who would advise and comfort him. “Oh,  sir,” he says, “leave me to pay my penalty, impious wretch that I am, accursed, and hateful to the gods and all the heavenly host.”

It is possible in the case of a man unconvinced of the existence of the gods, when he is in grief and great distress in other ways, to wipe away a tear, cut his hair, and take off his cloak; but what words can you address to the superstitious man, or in what way shall you help him? He sits outside his house with sackcloth on and filthy rags about him; and oftentimes he rolls naked in the mire as he confesses divers sins and errors of his — eating this or drinking that, or walking in a path forbidden by his conscience. But if he is very fortunate, and but mildly yoked with superstition, he sits in his house, subjecting himself to fumigation, and smearing himself with mud, and the old crones, as Bion says, “bring whatever chance directs and hang and fasten it on him as on a peg.”

8 1   Tiribazus, they say, when an attempt was made by the Persians to arrest him, drew his sword, being a man of great strength, and fought desperately. But when the men protested and cried out that they were arresting him by the King’s command, he instantly threw down his sword and held out his hands to be bound. Is not what actually happens just like this? The rest of men fight desperately against misfortunes, and force their way through difficulties, contriving for themselves means to escape and avert things undesired; but the superstitious man, without a word from anybody, says all to himself, “This you have to undergo, poor soul, by the dispensation of Providence and by God’s command,” and casts away all hope, gives himself up, runs away, and repulses those who would help him.

Many ills of no great moment are made to result fatally by men’s superstition. Midas of old, dispirited and disturbed, as it appears, as the result of some dreams, reached such a state of mind that he committed suicide by drinking bull’s blood. And Aristodemus, king of the Messenians in the war against the Spartans, when dogs howled like wolves, and quitch-grass began to grow around his ancestral hearth, and the seers were alarmed by these signs, lost heart and hope by his forebodings, and slew himself by his own hand. 169 It would perhaps have been the best thing in the world for Nicias, general of the Athenians, to have got rid of his superstition in the same way as Midas and Aristodemus, rather than to be affrighted at the shadow on the moon in eclipse and sit inactive while the enemy’s wall was being built around him, and later to fall into their hands together with forty thousand men, who were either slain or captured alive, and himself meet an inglorious end. For the obstruction of light caused by the earth’s coming between sun and moon is nothing frightful, nor is the meeting of a shadow with the moon at the proper time in its revolutions anything frightful, but frightful is the darkness of superstition falling upon man, and confounding and blinding his power to reason in circumstances that most loudly demand the power to reason.

Glaucus, see, the mighty ocean

Even now with billows roars,

Round about the Gyrian summits

Sheer in air a dark cloud soars,

Sign of storm . . .;

when the pilot sees this, he prays that he may escape the storm, and calls upon the Saviours, but while he is praying he throws the helm over, lowers the yard, and

Furling the big main sail,

Hastens to make his escape

Out from the murky sea.

Hesiod advises that the farmer before ploughing and sowing should

Pray to Zeus of the world below and to holy Demeter

with his hand on the plough-handle; and Homer says that Ajax, as he was about to engage in single combat with Hector, bade the Greeks pray to the gods for him, and then, while they were praying, donned his armour; and when Agamemnon enjoined on the fighting men,

See that each spear is well sharpened, and each man’s shield in good order,

at the same time he asked in prayer from Zeus,

Grant that I raze to the level of earth the palace of Priam;

for God is brave hope, not cowardly excuse. But the Jews, because it was the Sabbath day, sat in their places immovable, while the enemy were planting ladders against the walls and capturing the defences, and they did not get up, but remained there, fast bound in the toils of superstition as in one great net.

9 1   Such are the characteristics of superstition in undesired and critical (as they are called) circumstances and occasions, but it is not one bit better than atheism even under pleasurable conditions. The pleasantest things that men enjoy are festal days and banquets at the temples, initiations and mystic rites, and prayer and adoration of the gods. Note that the atheist on these occasions gives way to insane and sardonic laughter at such ceremonies, and remarks aside to his cronies that people must cherish a vain and silly conceit to think that these rites are performed in honour of the gods; but with him no harm is done save this. On the other hand the superstitious man, much as he desires it, is not able to rejoice or be glad:

The city is with burning incense filled;

Full too of joyous hymns and doleful groans

is the soul of the superstitious man. When the garland is on his head he turns pale, he offers sacrifice and feels afraid, he prays with quavering voice, with trembling hands he sprinkles incense, and, in a word, proves how foolish are the words of Pythagoras, who said that we reach our best when we draw near to the gods. For that is the time when the superstitious fare most miserably and wretchedly, for they approach the halls or temples of the gods as they would approach bears’ dens or snakes’ holes or the haunts of monsters of the deep.

10 1   Hence it occurs to me to wonder at those who say that atheism is impiety, and do not say the same of superstition. Yet Anaxagoras was brought to trial for impiety on the ground that he had said the sun is a stone; but nobody has called the Cimmerians impious because they do not believe even in the existence of the sun at all. What say you? The man who does not believe in the existence of the gods is unholy? And is not he who believes in such gods as the superstitious believe in a partner to opinions far more unholy? Why, for my part, I should prefer that men should say about me that I have never been born at all, and there is no Plutarch, 170 rather than that they should say “Plutarch is an inconstant fickle person, quick-tempered, vindictive over little accidents, pained at trifles. If you invite others to dinner and leave him out, or if you haven’t the time and don’t go to call on him, or fail to speak to him when you see him, he will set his teeth into your body and bite it through, or he will get hold of your little child and beat him to death, or he will turn the beast that he owns into your crops and spoil your harvest.”

When Timotheus, in a song at Athens, spoke of Artemis as

Ecstatic bacchic frantic fanatic,

Cinesias, the song-writer, standing up in his place among the audience, exclaimed, “May you have a daughter like that!” It is a fact that the superstitious make assumptions like that, and even worse than that, about Artemis:

If hasting in fear from a hanging corpse,

If near to a woman in childbirth pain,

If come from a house where the dead are mourned,

Polluted you entered the holy shrine,

Or if from the triple cross-roads come

Drawn to the place by cleansing rites

For the part you bear to the guilty one.

And they think no more reasonably than this about Apollo and about Hera and about Aphrodite. For they tremble at all of these and dread them. And yet what did Niobe say regarding Leto that was so irreverent as the belief which superstition has fixed in the minds of the unthinking regarding the goddess, that, because she was derided, she required that the unhappy woman’s

Daughters six that she bore and six sons in the prime of young manhood

be shot dead? So insatiable was she in doing harm to others, and so implacable! For if it were really true that the goddess cherishes anger, and hates wickedness, and is hurt at being ill spoken of, and does not laugh at man’s ignorance and blindness, but feels indignation thereat, she ought to require the death of those who falsely impute to her such savagery and bitterness, and tell and write such stories. At any rate, we bring forward the bitterness of Hecuba as something barbaric and savage when she says,

DI wish I might eat up his liver,

Biting it ‘tween my teeth.

And yet of the Syrian goddess the superstitious believe that if anybody eats sprats or anchovies, she will gnaw through the bones of his shins, inflame his body with sores, and dissolve his liver.

11 Is it, then, an unholy thing to speak meanly of the gods, but not unholy to have a mean opinion of them? Or does the opinion of him who speaks malignly make his utterance improper? It is a fact that we hold up malign speaking as a sign of animosity, and those who speak ill of us we regard as enemies, since we feel that they must also think ill of us. You see what kind of thoughts the superstitious have about the gods; they assume that the gods are rash, faithless, fickle, vengeful, cruel, and easily offended; and, as a result, the superstitious man is bound to hate and fear the gods. Why not, since he thinks that the worst of his ills are due to them, and will be due to them in the future? As he hates and fears the gods, he is an enemy to them. And yet, though he dreads them, he worships them and sacrifices to them and besieges their shrines; and this is nothing surprising; for it is equally true that men give welcome to despots, and pay court to them, and erect golden statues in their honour, but in their hearts they hate them and “shake their head.” Hermolaüs attended upon Alexander, Pausanias served as bodyguard for Philip, and Chaerea for Gaius Caligula, yet each one of these must have said as he followed along:

Verily I would have vengeance if only my strength were sufficient.

The atheist thinks there are no gods; the superstitious man wishes there were none, but believes in them against his will; for he is afraid not to believe. And yet, as Tantalus would be glad indeed to get out from under the rock suspended above his head, so the superstitious man would be glad to escape his fear by which he feels oppressed no less than Tantalus by his rock, and he would call the condition of the atheist happy because it is a state of freedom. But, as things are, the atheist has neither part nor lot in superstition, whereas the superstitious man by preference would be an atheist, but is too weak to hold the opinion about the gods which he wishes to hold.

12 1   171 Moreover, the atheist has no part in causing superstition, but superstition provides the seed from which atheism springs, and when atheism has taken root, superstition supplies it with a defence, not a true one or a fair one, but one not destitute of some speciousness. For it is not because these people saw in the heavens anything to find fault with, or anything not harmonious or well-ordered in the stars or seasons, or in the revolutions of the moon or in the movements of the sun around the earth, “artisans of day and night,” or in the feeding and growth of living creatures, or in the sowing and harvesting of crops, as the result of which they decided against the idea of a God in the universe; but the ridiculous actions and emotions of superstition, its words and gestures, magic charms and spells, rushing about and beating of drums, impure purifications and dirty sanctifications, barbarous and outlandish penances and mortifications at the shrines — all these give occasion to some to say that it were better there should be no gods at all than gods who accept with pleasure such forms of worship, and are so overbearing, so petty, and so easily offended.

13 1   Would it not then have been better for those Gauls and Scythians to have had absolutely no conception, no vision, no tradition, regarding the gods, than to believe in the existence of gods who take delight in the blood of human sacrifice and hold this to be the most perfect offering and holy rite? Again, would it not have been far better for the Carthaginians to have taken Critias or Diagoras to draw up their law-code at the very beginning, and so not to believe in any divine power or god, rather than to offer such sacrifices as they used to offer to Cronos? These were not in the manner that Empedocles describes in his attack on those who sacrifice living creatures:

Changed in form is the son beloved of his father so pious,

Who on the altar lays him and slays him. What folly!

No, but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums took the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people. Yet, if Typhons or Giants were ruling over us after they had expelled the gods, with what sort of sacrifices would they be pleased, or what other holy rites would they require? Amestris, the wife of Xerxes, caused twelve human beings to be buried alive as an offering in her behalf to propitiate Hades, of whom Plato says that it is because he is humane and wise and rich, and controls the souls of the dead by persuasion and reason, that he has come to be called by this name. Xenophanes, the natural philosopher, seeing the Egyptians beating their breasts and wailing at their festivals, gave them a very proper suggestion: “If these beings are gods,” said he, “do not bewail them; and if they are men, do not offer sacrifices to them.”

14 1   But there is no infirmity comprehending such a multitude of errors and emotions, and involving opinions so contradictory, or rather antagonistic, as that of superstition. We must try, therefore, to escape it in some way which is both safe and expedient, and not be like people who incautiously and blindly run hither and thither to escape from an attack of robbers or wild beasts, or from a fire, and rush into trackless places that contain pitfalls and precipices. For thus it is that some persons, in trying to escape superstition, rush into a rough and hardened atheism, thus overleaping true religion which lies between.

BOOK III

Sayings of kings and commanders

172 Artaxerxes, King of Persia, O Caesar Trajanus, greatest of princes, esteemed it no less royal and bountiful kindly and cheerfully to accept small, than to make great presents, and when he was in a progress, and a common country labourer, having nothing else, took up water with both his hands out of the river and presented it to him, he smiled and received it pleasantly, measuring the kindness not by the value of the gift, but by the affection of the giver. And Lycurgus ordained in Sparta very cheap sacrifices, that they might always worship the Gods readily and easily with such things as were at hand. Upon the same account, when I bring a mean and slender present of the common first-fruits of philosophy, accept also (I beseech you) with my good affection these short memorials, if they may contribute any thing to the knowledge of the manners and dispositions of great men, which are more apparent in their words than in their actions. My former treatise contains the lives of the most eminent princes, law givers, and generals, both Romans and Greeks; but most of their actions admit a mixture of fortune, whereas such speeches and answers as happened amidst their employments, passions, and events afford us ( as in a looking-glass) a clear discovery of each particular temper and disposition. Accordingly Seiramnes the Persian, to such as wondered that he usually spoke like a wise man and yet was unsuccessful in his designs, replied: I myself am master of my words, but the king and fortune have power over my actions. In the former treatise speeches and actions are mingled together, and require a reader that is at leisure; but in this the speeches, being as it were the seeds and the illustrations of those lives, are placed by themselves, and will not (I think) be tedious to you, since they will give you in a few words a review of many memorable persons.

CYRUS. The Persians affect such as are hawk-nosed and think them most beautiful, because Cyrus, the most beloved of their kings, had a nose of that shape.

  Cyrus said that those that would not do good for themselves ought to be compelled to do good for others; and that nobody ought to govern, unless he was better than those he governed.

  When the Persians were desirous to exchange their hills and rocks for a plain and soft country, he would not suffer them, saying that both the seeds of plants and the lives of men resemble the soil they inhabit.

DARIUS. Darius the father of Xerxes used to praise himself, saying that he became even wiser in battles and dangers.

  When he laid a tax upon his subjects, he summoned his lieutenants, and asked them whether the tax was burdensome or not. When they told him it was moderate, he commanded them to pay half as much as was at first demanded.

  173 As he was opening a pomegranate, one asked him what it was of which he would wish for a number equal to the seeds thereof. He said, Of men like Zopyrus, - who was a loyal person and his friend.

  This Zopyrus, after he had maimed himself by cutting off his nose and ears, beguiled the Babylonians; and being trusted by them, he betrayed the city to Darius, who often said that he would not have had Zopyrus maimed to gain a hundred Babylons.

SEMIRAMIS. Semiramis built a monument for herself, with this inscription: Whatever king wants treasure, if he open this tomb, he may be satisfied. Darius therefore opening it found no treasure, but another inscription of this import : If you were not a wicked person and of insatiable covetousness, you would not disturb the mansions of the dead.

XERXES. Arimenes came out of Bactria as a rival for the kingdom with his brother Xerxes, the son of Darius. Xerxes sent presents to him, commanding those that brought them to say: With these your brother Xerxes now honours you; and if he chance to be proclaimed king, you shall be the next person to himself in the kingdom. When Xerxes was declared king, Arimenes immediately did him homage and placed the crown upon his head; and Xerxes gave him the next place to himself.

  Being offended with the Babylonians, who rebelled, and having overcome them, he forbade them weapons, but commanded they should practise singing and playing on the flute, keep brothel-houses and taverns, and wear loose coats.

  He refused to eat Attic figs that were brought to be sold, until he had conquered the country that produced them.

  When he caught some Greek scouts in his camp, he did them no harm, but having allowed them to view his army as much as they pleased, he let them go.

ARTAXERXES. Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes, surnamed Longimanus (or Long-hand) because he had one hand longer than the other, said, it was more princely to add than to take away.

  He first gave leave to those that hunted with him, if they would and saw occasion, to throw their darts before him.

  He also first ordained that punishment for his nobles who had offended, that they should be stripped and their garments scourged instead of their bodies ; and whereas then, hair should have been plucked out, that the same should be done to their turbans.

  When Satibarzanes, his chamberlain, petitioned him in an unjust matter, and he understood he did it to gain thirty thousand darics, he ordered his treasurer to bring the said sum, and gave them to him, saying: O Satibarzanes ! take it ; for when I have given you this, I shall not be poorer, but it had been more unjust if I had granted your petition.

CYRUS THE YOUNGER. Cyrus the Younger , when he was exhorting the Lacedaemonians to side with him in the war, said that he had a stronger heart than his brother, and could drink more wine unmixed than he, and bear it better ; that his brother, when he hunted, could scarce sit his horse, or when ill news arrived, his throne. He exhorted them to send him men, promising he would give horses to footmen, chariots to horsemen, villages to those that had farms, and those that possessed villages he would make lords of cities; and that he would give them gold and silver, not by tale but by weight.

ARTAXERXES MNEMON. Artaxerxes, the brother of Cyrus the Younger, called Mnemon, did not only give very free and patient access to any that would speak with him, but commanded the queen his wife to draw the curtains of her chariot, that petitioners might have the same access to her also.

  174 When a poor man presented him with a very fair and great apple, By the Sun, said he, ‘tis my opinion, if this person were entrusted with a small city, he would make it great.

  In his flight, when his carriages were plundered, and he was forced to eat dry figs and barley-bread, Of how great pleasure, said he, have I hitherto lived ignorant !

PARYSATIS. Parysatis, the mother of Cyrus and Artaxerxes, advised him that would discourse freely with the king, to use words of fine linen.

ORONTES. Orontes, the son-in-law of King Artaxerxes, falling into disgrace and being condemned, said: As mathematicians count sometimes myriads on their fingers, sometimes units only; in like manner the favourites of kings sometimes can do every thing with them, sometimes little or nothing.

MEMNON. Memnon, one of King Darius’ generals against Alexander, when a mercenary soldier excessively and impudently reviled Alexander, struck him with his spear, adding, I pay you to fight against Alexander, not to reproach him.

EGYPTIAN KINGS. The Egyptian kings, according unto their law, used to swear their judges that they should not obey the king when he commanded them to give an unjust sentence.

POLTYS. Poltys king of Thrace, in the Trojan war, being solicited both by the Trojan and Greek ambassadors, advised Alexander to restore Helen, promising to give him two beautiful women for her.

TERES. Teres, the father of Sitalces, said, when he was out of the army and had nothing to do, he thought there was no difference between him and his grooms.

COTYS. Cotys, when one gave him a leopard, gave him a lion for it.

  He was naturally prone to anger, and severely punished the miscarriages of his servants. When a stranger brought him some earthen vessels, thin and brittle, but delicately shaped and admirably adorned with sculptures, he requited the stranger for them, and then brake them all in pieces, Lest ( said he) my passion should provoke me to punish excessively those that broke them.

IDATHYRSUS. Idathyrsus, King of Scythia, when Darius invaded him, solicited the Ionian tyrants that they would assert their liberty by breaking down the bridge that was made over the Danube: which they refusing to do because they had sworn fealty to Darius, he called them good, honest, lazy slaves.

ATEAS. Ateas wrote to Philippus: You reign over the Macedonians, men that have learned fighting; and I over the Scythians, which can fight with hunger and thirst.

  As he was rubbing his horse, turning to the ambassadors of Philippus, he asked whether Philippus did so or not.

  He took prisoner Ismenias, an excellent piper, and commanded him to play; and when others admired him, he swore it was more pleasant to hear a horse neigh.

SCILURUS. Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave eighty sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them; thus teaching them that, if they held together, they would continue strong, but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak.

GELON. 175 Gelon the tyrant, after he had overcome the Carthaginians at Himera, made peace with them, and among other articles compelled them to subscribe this, - that they should no more sacrifice their children to Cronus.

  He often marched the Syracusans out to plant their fields, as if it had been to war, that the country might be improved by husbandry, and they might not be corrupted by idleness.

  When he demanded a sum of money of the citizens, and thereupon a tumult was raised, he told them he would but borrow it; and after the war was ended, he restored it to them again.

  At a feast, when a harp was offered, and others one after another tuned it and played upon it, he sent for his horse, and with an easy agility leaped upon him.

HIERON. Hieron, who succeeded Gelon in the tyranny, said he was not disturbed by any that freely spoke against him.

  He judged that those that revealed a secret did an injury to those to whom they revealed it; for we hate not only those who tell, but them also that hear what would not have disclosed.

  One upbraided him with his stinking breath, and he blamed his wife that never told him of it ; but she said, I thought all men smelt so.

  To Xenophanes the Colophonian, who said he had much ado to maintain two servants, he replied: But Homerus, whom you disparage, maintains above ten thousand, although he is dead.

  He fined Epicharmus the comedian, for speaking unseemly when his wife was by.

DIONYSIUS THE ELDER. Dionysius the Elder, when the public orators cast lots to know in what order they should speak, drew as his lot the letter M. And when one said to him, morologeis, You will make a foolish speech, O Dionysius, You are mistaken, said he, monarcheso, I shall be a monarch. And as soon as his speech was ended, the Syracusans chose him general.

  In the beginning of his tyranny, the citizens rebelled and besieged him; and his friends advised him to resign the government, rather than to be taken and slain by them. But he, seeing a cook butcher an ox and the ox immediately fall down dead, said to his friends: Is it not a hateful thing, that for fear of so short a death we should resign so great a government!

  When his son, whom he intended to make his successor in the government, had been detected in debauching a freeman’s wife, he asked him in anger, When did you ever know me guilty of such a crime! But you, sir, replied the son, had not a tyrant for your father. Nor will you, said he, have a tyrant for your son, unless you mend your manners.

  And another time, going into his son’s house and seeing there abundance of silver and gold plate, he cried out: You are not capable of being a tyrant, who have made never a friend with all the plate I have given you.

  When he exacted money of the Syracusans, and they lamenting and beseeching him, pretended they had none, he still exacted more, twice or thrice renewing his demands, until he heard them laugh and jeer at him as they went to and fro in the market-place, and then he gave over. Now, said he, since they despise me, it is a sign they have nothing left.

  When his mother, being ancient, requested him to find a husband for her, I can, said he, overpower the laws of the city, but I cannot force the laws of Nature.

  Although he punished other malefactors severely, he favoured such as stole clothes, that the Syracusans might forbear feasting and drunken clubs.

  A certain person told him privately, he could show him a way how he might know beforehand such as conspired against him. Let us know, said he, going aside. 176 Give me, said the person, a talent, that everybody may believe that I have taught you the signs and tokens of plotters; and he gave it him, pretending he had learned them, much admiring the subtlety of the man.

  Being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied: God forbid that it should ever befall me.

  Hearing that two young men very much reviled him and his tyranny in their cups, he invited both of them to supper; and perceiving that one of them prattled freely and foolishly, but the other drank warily and sparing, he dismissed the first as a drunken fellow whose treason lay no deeper than his wine, and put the other to death as a disaffected and resolved traitor.

  Some blaming him for rewarding and preferring a wicked man, and one hated by the citizens; I would have, said he, somebody hated more than myself.

  When he gave presents to the ambassadors of Corinth, and they refused them because their law forbade them to receive gifts from a prince to whom they were sent in embassy, he said they did very ill to destroy the only advantage of tyranny, and to declare that it was dangerous to receive a kindness from a tyrant.

  Hearing that a citizen had buried a quantity of gold in his house, he sent for it; and when the party removed to another city, and bought a farm with part of his treasure which he had concealed, Dionysius sent for him and bade him take back the rest, since he had now begun to use his money, and was no longer making a useful thing useless.

DIONYSIUS THE YOUNGER. Dionysius the Younger said that he maintained many Sophists; not that he admired them, but that he might be admired for their sake.

  When Polyxenus the logician told him he had baffled him; Yes, said he, in words, but I have caught you in deeds; for you, leaving your own fortune, attend me and mine.

  When he was deposed from his government, and one asked him what he got by Platon and philosophy, he answered, That I may bear so great a change of fortune patiently.

  Being asked how it came to pass that his father, a private and poor man, obtained the government of Syracuse, and he already possessed of it, and the son of a tyrant, lost it, - My father, said he, entered upon affairs when the democracy was hated, but I, when tyranny was become odious.

  To another that asked him the same question, he replied: My father bequeathed to me his government, but not his fortune.

AGATHOCLES. Agathocles was the son of a potter. When he became lord and was proclaimed king of Sicily, he used to place earthen and golden vessels together, and show them to young men, telling them, Those I made first, but now I make these by my valour and industry.

  As he was besieging a city, some from the walls reviling him, saying, Do you hear, potter, where will you have money to pay your soldiers ! - he gently answered, I’ll tell you, if I take this city. And having taken it by storm, he sold the prisoners, telling them, If you reproach me again, I will complain to your masters.

  Some inhabitants of Ithaca complained of his mariners, that making a descent on the island they had taken away some cattle; But your king, said he, came to Sicily, and did not only take away sheep, but put out the shepherd’s eyes, and went his way.

DION. Dion, who deposed Dionysius from the tyranny, when he heard Callippus, whom of all his friends and attendants he trusted most, conspired against him, refused to question him for it, saying: It is better for him to die 177 than to live, who must be weary not only of his enemies, but of his friends too.

ARCHELAUS. Archelaus, when one of his companions ( and none of the best) begged a golden cup of him, bade the boy give it Euripides ; and when the man wondered at him, You, said he, are worthy to ask, but he is worthy to receive it without asking.

  A garrulous barber asked him how he would be trimmed. He answered, In silence.

  When Euripides at a banquet embraced fair Agathon and kissed him, although he was no longer beardless, he said, turning to his friends : Do not wonder at it, for the beauty of such as are handsome lasts after autumn.

  Timotheus the harper, receiving of him a reward less than his expectation, twitted him for it not openly; and once singing the short verse of the chorus, You commend earth-born silver, directed it to him. And Archelaus answered him again singing, But you beg it.

  When one sprinkled water upon him, and his friends would have had him punish the man, You are mistaken, said he, he did not sprinkle me, but some other person whom he took me to be.

PHILIPPUS. Theophrastus tells us that Philippus, the father of Alexander, was not only greater in his character and success, but also freer from luxury than other kings of his time.

  He said the Athenians were happy, if they could find every year ten fit to be chosen generals, since in many years he could find but one fit to be a general, and that was Parmenion.

  When he had news brought him of diverse and eminent successes in one day, O fortune, said he, for all these so great kindnesses do me some small mischief.

  After he had conquered Greece, some advised him to place garrisons in the cities. No, said he, I had rather be called merciful a great while, than lord a little while.

  His friends advised him to banish an abusive man from his court. I will not do it, said he, lest he should go about and insult us in many other places.

  Smicythus accused Nicanor for one that commonly spoke evil of King Philippus; and, his friends advised him to send for him and punish him. Truly, said he, Nicanor is not the worst of the Macedonians ; we ought therefore to consider whether we have given him any cause or not. When he understood therefore that Nicanor, being slighted by the king, was much afflicted with poverty, he ordered a boon should be given him. And when Smicythus reported that Nicanor was continually abounding in the king’s praises, You see then, said he, that whether we will be well or ill spoken of is in our own power.

  He said he was beholden to the Athenian orators, who by reproaching him made him better both, in speech and behaviour; for I will endeavour, said he, both by my words and actions to prove them liars.

  Such Athenians as he took prisoners in the fight at Chaeroneia he dismissed without ransom. When they also demanded their garments and quilts, and on that account accused the Macedonians, Philippus laughed and said, Do you not think these Athenians imagine we beat them at a game of dice ?

  In a fight he broke his collar-bone, and the surgeon that had him in care requested him daily for his reward. Take what you will, said he, for you have the key.

  There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good understanding busy fellow and Both a silly fellow and good for little, he said: Either is Both, and Both is Neither.

  178 To some that advised him to deal severely with the Athenians he said: You talk absurdly, who would persuade a man that suffers all things for the sake of glory, to overthrow the theatre of glory.

  Being arbitrator between two wicked persons, he commanded one to fly out of Macedonia and the other to pursue him.

  Being about to pitch his camp in a likely place, and hearing there was no hay to be had for the cattle, What a life, said he, is ours, since we must live according to the convenience of asses!

  Designing to take a strong fort, which the scouts told him was exceeding difficult and impregnable, he asked whether it was so difficult that an ass could not come at it laden with gold.

  Lasthenes the Olynthian and his friends being aggrieved, and complaining that some of Philippus’ retinue called them traitors, These Macedonians, said he, are a rude and clownish people, that call a spade a spade.

  He exhorted his son to behave himself courteously toward the Macedonians, and to acquire influence with the people, while he could be affable and gracious during the reign of another.

  He advised him also to make friends of men of interest in the cities, both good and bad, that afterwards he might make use of these, and suppress those.

  To Philon the Theban, who had been his host and given him entertainment while he remained an hostage at Thebes, and afterwards refused to accept any present from him, he said: Do not take from me the title of invincible, by making me inferior to you in kindness and bounty.

  Having taken many prisoners, he was selling them, sitting in an unseemly posture, with his tunic tucked up; when one of the captives to be sold cried out, Spare me, Philippus, for our fathers were friends. When Philippus asked him, Tell me, how or from whence ! Let me come nearer, said he, and I’ll tell you. When he was come up to him, he said: Let down your cloak a little lower, for you sit indecently. Whereupon said Philippus: Let him go, in truth he wishes me well and is my friend; though I did not know him.

  Being invited to supper, he carried many he took up by the way along with him; and perceiving his host troubled (for his provision was not sufficient), he sent to each of his friends, and bade them reserve a place for the cake. They, believing and expecting it, ate little, and so the supper was enough for all.

  It appeared he grieved much at the death of Hipparchus the Euboean. For when somebody said it was time for him to die, - For himself, said he, but he died too soon for me, preventing me by his death from returning him the kindness his friendship deserved.

  Hearing that Alexander blamed him for having children by several women, Therefore, said he to him, since you have many rivals with you for the kingdom, be just and honourable, that you may not receive the kingdom as my gift, but by your own merit.

  He charged him to be observant of Aristotle, and study philosophy, That you may not, said he, do many things which I now repent of doing.

  He made one of Antipater’s recommendation a judge; and perceiving afterwards that his hair and beard were coloured, he removed him, saying, I could not think one that was faithless in his hair could be trusty in his deeds.

  While he sat as judge in the cause of one Machaetas, he fell asleep, and for want of minding his arguments, gave judgement against him. And when being enraged he cried out, I appeal; To whom, said he, will you appeal ? 179 To you yourself, O king, said he, when you are awake to hear me with attention. Then Philippus rousing and coming to himself, and perceiving Machaetas was injured, although he did not reverse the sentence, he paid the fine himself.

  When Harpalus, on behalf of Crates his kinsman and intimate friend, who was charged with disgraceful crimes, begged that Crates might pay the fine and so cause the action to be withdrawn and avoid public disgrace; - It is better, said he, that he should be reproached upon his own account, than we for him.

  His friends being enraged because the Peloponnesians, to whom he had shown favour, hissed at him in the Olympic games, What then, said he, would they do if we should abuse them ?

  Awaking after he had overslept himself in the army; I slept, said he, securely, for Antipater watched.

  Another time, being asleep in the day-time, while the Greeks fretting with impatience thronged at the gates; Do not wonder, said Parmenion to them, if Philippus be now asleep, for while you slept he was awake.

  When he corrected a musician at a banquet, and discoursed with him concerning notes and instruments, the musician replied: Far be that dishonour from your majesty, that you should understand these things better than I do.

  While he was at variance with his wife Olympias and his son, Demaratus the Corinthian came to him, and Philippus asked him how the Greeks held together. Demaratus replied : You had need to enquire how the Greeks agree, who agree so well with your nearest relations. Whereupon he let fall his anger, and was reconciled to them.

  A poor old woman petitioned and dunned him often to hear her cause ; and he answered, I am not at leisure; the old woman bawled out, Do not reign then. He admired the speech, and immediately heard her and others.

ALEXANDER. While Alexander was a boy, Philippus had great success in his affairs, at which he did not rejoice, but told the children that were brought up with him, My father will leave me nothing to do. The children answered, Your father gets all this for you. But what good, said he, will it do me, if I possess much and do nothing !

  Being nimble and light-footed, his father encouraged him to run in the Olympic race; Yes, said he, if there were any kings there to run with me.

  A wench being brought to lie with him late in the evening, he asked why she tarried so long. She answered, I stayed until my husband was abed; and he sharply reproved his pages, because through their carelessness he had almost committed adultery.

  As he was sacrificing to the Gods liberally, and often offered frankincense, Leonidas his tutor standing by said, O son, thus generously will you sacrifice, when you have conquered the country that bears frankincense. And when he had conquered it, he sent him this letter: I have sent you an hundred talents of frankincense and cassia, that hereafter you may not be niggardly towards the Gods, when you understand I have conquered the country in which perfumes grow.

  The night before he fought at the river Granicus, he exhorted the Macedonians to sup plentifully and to bring out all they had, as they were to sup the next day at the charge of their enemies.

  Perillus, one of his friends, begged of him dowries for his daughters; and he ordered him to receive fifty talents. And when he said, Ten were enough, Alexander replied: Enough for you to receive, but not for me to give.

  He commanded his steward to give Anaxarchus the philosopher as much as he should ask for. He asks, said the steward, for an hundred talents. He does well, said he, knowing he has 180 a friend that both can and will bestow so much on him.

  Seeing at Miletus many statues of wrestlers that had overcome in the Olympic and Pythian games, And where, said he, were these lusty fellows when the barbarians assaulted your city ?

  When Ada queen of Caria was ambitious often to send him sauces and sweetmeats delicately prepared by the best cooks and artists, he said, I have better confectioners of my own - my night-travelling for my breakfast, and my spare breakfast for my dinner.

  All things being prepared for a fight, his captains asked him whether he had any thing else to command them. Nothing, said he, but that the Macedonians should shave their beards. Parmenion wondering at it, Do you not know, said he, there is no better hold in a fight than the beard ?

  When Darius offered him ten thousand talents, and to divide Asia equally with him ; I would accept it, said Parmenion, were I Alexander. And so. truly would I; said Alexander, if I were Parmenion. But he answered Darius, that the earth could not bear two suns, nor Asia two kings.

  When he was going to fight for the world at Arbela, against ten hundred thousand enemies set in array against him, some of his friends came to him, and told him the discourse of the soldiers in their tents, who had agreed that nothing of the spoils should be brought into the treasury, but they would have all themselves. You tell me good news, said he, for I hear the discourse of men that intend to fight, and not to run away. Several of his soldiers came to him and said: O King! be of good courage, and fear not the multitude of your enemies, for they will not be able to endure the very stink of our sweat.

  The army being marshalled, he saw a soldier fitting his thong to his javelin, and dismissed him as a useless fellow, for fitting his weapons when he should use them.

  As he was reading a letter from his mother, containing secrets and accusations of Antipater, Hephaestion also ( as he was accustomed) read it along with him. Alexander did not hinder him; but when the letter was read, he took his ring off his finger, and laid the seal of it upon Hephaestion’s mouth.

  Being saluted as the son of Zeus in the temple of Ammon by the chief priest ; It is no wonder, said he, for Zeus is by nature the father of all, and calls the best men his sons.

  When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a God, he said smiling: That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer says, -

      “Such liquid as distils from blessed Gods.” [ Il5’340 ]

  To some that commended the frugality of Antipater, whose diet was sober and without luxury; Outwardly, said he, Antipater wears white clothes, but within he is all purple.

  In a cold winter day one of his friends invited him to a banquet, and there being a little fire on a small hearth, he bid him fetch either wood or frankincense.

  Antipatridas brought a beautiful singing woman to supper with him ; Alexander, being taken with her visage, asked Antipatridas whether she was his miss or not. And when he confessed she was; O villain, said he, turn her immediately out from the banquet.

  Again, when Cassander forced a kiss from Python, a boy beloved by Euius the piper, and Alexander perceived that Euius was concerned at it, he was extremely enraged at Cassander, and said with a loud voice, It seems nobody must be loved if you can help it.

  When he sent such of the Macedonians as were sick and maimed to the sea, 181 they showed him one that was in health and yet subscribed his name among the sick; being brought into the presence and examined, he confessed he used that pretence for the love of Telesippa, who was going to the sea. Alexander asked, of whom he could make inquiries about this Telesippa, and hearing she was a free woman, he said. Therefore, my Antigenes, let us persuade her to stay with us, for to force her to do so when she is a free woman is not according to my custom.

  Of the Greek mercenaries that fought against him he took many prisoners. He commanded the Athenians should be kept in chains, because they served for wages when they were allowed a public maintenance; and the Thessalians, because when they had a fruitful country they did not till it ; but he set the Thebans free, saying, To them only I have left neither city nor country.

  He took captive an excellent Indian archer who said he could shoot an arrow through a ring, and commanded him to show his skill; and when the man refused to do this, he commanded him in a rage to be put to death. The man told them that led him to execution that, not having practised for many days, he was afraid he should miss. Alexander, hearing this, wondered at him and dismissed him with rewards, because he chose rather to die than show himself unworthy of his reputation.

  Taxiles, one of the Indian kings, met Alexander, and advised him not to make war nor fight with him, but if he were a meaner person than himself, to receive kindness from him, or if he were a better man, to show kindness to him. He answered, that was the very thing they must fight for, who should exceed the other in bounty.

  When he heard the rock called Aornus in India was by its situation impregnable, but the commander of it was a coward; Then, said he, the place is easy to be taken.

  Another, commanding a rock thought to be invincible, surrendered himself and the rock to Alexander, who committed the said rock and the adjacent country to his government, saying: I take this for a wise man, who chose rather to commit himself to a good man than to a strong place.

  When the rock was taken, his friends said that it exceeded the deeds of Heracles - But I, said he, do not think my actions and all my empire to be compared with one word of Heracles.

  He fined some of his friends whom he caught playing at dice in earnest.

  Of his chief and most powerful friends, he seemed most to respect Craterus, and to love Hephaestion. Craterus, said he, is the friend of the king; but Hephaestion is the friend of Alexander.

  He sent fifty talents to Xenocrates the philosopher, who would not receive them, saying he was not in want. And he asked whether Xenocrates had no friend either; For as to myself, said he, the treasure of Darius is hardly sufficient for me to bestow among my friends.

  He demanded of Porus, after the fight, how he should treat him. Royally, said he, like a king. And being again asked, what else he had to request ; All things, said he, are in that word royally. Admiring his wisdom and valour, he gave him a greater government than he had before.

  Being told a certain person reviled him, To do good, said he, and to be evil spoken of is kingly.

  As he was dying, looking upon his friends, I see, said he, my funeral tournament will be great.

  When he was dead, Demades the rhetorician likened the Macedonian army without a general to Polyphemus the Cyclops when his eye was put out.

PTOLEMAEUS. Ptolemaeus, the son of Lagus, frequently supped with his friends and lay at their houses; and if at any time he invited them to supper, he made use of their furniture, sending for vessels, carpets, and tables; for he himself had only things that were of constant use about him, saying it was more becoming a king to make others rich than to be rich himself.

ANTIGONUS. 182 Antigonus exacted money severely. When one told him that Alexander did not do so, It may be so, said he; Alexander reaped Asia, and I but glean after him.

  Seeing some soldiers playing at ball in helmets and breast-plates, he was pleased, and sent for their officers, intending to commend them; but when he heard the officers were drinking, he bestowed their commands on the soldiers.

  When all men wondered that in his old age his government was mild and easy; Formerly, said he, I sought for power, but now for glory and good-will.

  To Philippus his son, who asked him in the presence of many when the army would march, What, said he, are you afraid that you only should not hear the trumpet ?

  The same young man being desirous to quarter at a widow’s house that had three handsome daughters, Antigonus called the quartermaster to him: Please, said he, help my son out of these straits.

  Recovering from a slight disease, he said: No harm; this distemper puts me in mind not to aim at great things, since we are mortal.

  Hermodotus in his poems called him Son of the Sun. He that attends my chamber-pot, said he, would say differently.

  When one said, All things in kings are just and honourable, - Indeed, said he, for barbarian kings ; but for us only honourable things are honourable, and only just things are just.

  Marsyas his brother had a legal case pending, and requested him it might be examined at his house. No, said he, it shall be heard in the judgement-hall, that all may hear whether we do exact justice or not.

  In the winter being forced to pitch his camp where necessities were scarce, some of his soldiers reproached him, not knowing he was near. He opened the tent with his cane, saying: Woe be to you, unless you get you farther off when you revile me.

  Aristodemus, one of his friends, supposed to be a cook’s son, advised him to moderate his gifts and expenses. Your words, said he, Aristodemus, smell of the apron.

  The Athenians, out of a respect to him, gave one of his servants the freedom of their city. And I would not, said he, have any Athenian whipped by my command.

  A youth, scholar to Anaximenes the rhetorician, spoke in his presence a prepared and studied speech ; and he asking something which he desired to learn, the youth was silent. What do you say, said he,

      “Is all that you have said written in your table-book?” [ Euripides, IpTaur787 ]

  When he heard another rhetorician say, The snow-spread season makes the country fodder spent; Will you not stop, said he, declaiming to me as you do to the rabble ?

  Thrasyllus the Cynic begged a drachma of him. That, said he, is too little for a king to give. Why then, said the other, give me a talent. And that, said he, is too much for a Cynic (or for a dog) to receive.

  Sending his son Demetrius with ships and land-forces to make Greece free; Glory, said he, from Greece, as from a watch-tower, will shine throughout the world.

  Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his pan, said: Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers, when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon ? Antagoras replied: Do you think, O King, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers ?

  183 After he had seen in a dream Mithridates mowing a golden harvest, he designed to kill him, and acquainted Demetrius his son with his design, making him swear to conceal it. But Demetrius, taking Mithridates aside and walking with him by the seaside, with the pick of his spear wrote on the shore, “ Fly, Mithridates ; “ which he understanding, fled into Pontus and there reigned until his death.

DEMETRIUS. Demetrius, while he was besieging Rhodes, found in one of the suburbs the picture of Ialysus made by Protogenes the painter. The Rhodians sent a herald to him, beseeching him not to deface the picture. I will sooner, said he, deface my father’s statues, than such a picture.

  When he made peace with the Rhodians, he left behind him an engine, called the Helepolis, that it might be a memorial of his magnificence and of their courage.

  When the Athenians rebelled, and he took the city, which had been distressed for want of provision, he called an assembly and gave them corn. And while he made a speech to them concerning that affair, he spoke improperly ; and when one that sat by told him how the word ought to be spoken, he said: For this correction I bestow upon you five thousand bushels more.

ANTIGONUS THE SECOND. Antigonus the Second, when his father was a prisoner, and sent one of his friends to admonish him to pay no regard to any thing that he might write at the constraint of Seleucus, and to enter into no obligation to surrender up the cities, wrote to Seleucus that he would give up his whole kingdom, and himself for an hostage, that his father might be set free.

  Being about to fight by sea with the lieutenants of Ptolemaeus, and the pilot telling him the enemy outnumbered him in ships, he said: But how many ships do you reckon my presence to be worth ?

  Once when he gave ground, his enemies pressing upon him, he denied that he fled; but he betook himself (as he said) to an advantage that lay behind him.

  To a youth, son of a valiant father, but himself no very great soldier, petitioning he might receive his father’s pay; Young man, said he, I pay and reward men for their own, not for their fathers’ valour.

  When Zenon of Citium, whom he admired beyond all philosophers, died, he said, The theatre of my actions is fallen.

LYSIMACHUS. Lysimachus, when he was overcome by Dromichaetes in Thrace and constrained by thirst, surrendered himself and his army. When he was a prisoner, and had drunk; O Gods, said he, for how small a satisfaction have I made myself a slave from a king !

  To Philippides the comedian, his friend and companion, he said: What have I that I may impart to you ? He answered, What you please, except your secrets.

ANTIPATER. Antipater, hearing that Parmenion was slain by Alexander, said: If Parmenion conspired against Alexander, whom may we trust ? but if he did not, what is to be done ?

  Of Demades the rhetorician, now grown old, he said: As of sacrifices when finished, so there is nothing left of him but his belly and tongue.

ANTIOCHUS THE THIRD. Antiochus the Third wrote to the cities, that if he should at any time write for anything to be done contrary to the law, they should not obey, but suppose it to be done out of ignorance.

  When he saw the Priestess of Artemis, that she was exceeding beautiful, he presently removed from Ephesus, lest he should be swayed, contrary to his judgement, to commit some unholy act.

ANTIOCHUS HIERAX. 184 Antiochus, surnamed the Hawk, warred with his brother Seleucus for the kingdom. After Seleucus was overcome by the Galatians, and was not to be heard of, but supposed to be slain in the fight, he laid aside his purple and went into mourning. A while after, hearing his brother was safe, he sacrificed to the Gods for the good news, and caused the cities under his dominion to put on garlands.

EUMENES. Eumenes was thought to be slain by a conspiracy of Perseus. That report being brought to Pergamum, Attalus his brother put on the crown, married his wife, and took upon him the kingdom. Hearing afterwards his brother was alive and upon the way, he met him, as he used to do, with his life-guard, and a spear in his hand. Eumenes embraced him kindly, and whispered in his ear: -

      “If a widow you will wed,

      Wait till you’re sure her husband’s dead.” -

But he never afterwards did or spoke any thing that showed any suspicion all his lifetime; but when he died, be bequeathed to him his queen and kingdom. In requital of which, his brother bred up none of his own children, although he had many; but when the son of Eumenes was grown up, he bestowed the kingdom on him in his own lifetime.

PYRRHUS OF EPIRUS. Pyrrhus was asked by his sons, when they were boys, to whom he would leave the kingdom. To him of you, said he, that has the sharpest sword.

  Being asked whether Python or Caphisius was the better piper, Polysperchon, said he, is the best general.

  He joined in battle with the Romans, and twice overcame them, but with the loss of many friends and captains. If I should overcome the Romans, said he, in another fight, I were undone.

  Not being able to keep Sicily (as he said) from them, turning to his friends he said: What a fine wrestling ring do we leave to the Romans and Carthaginians!

  His soldiers called him Eagle; And I may deserve the title, said he, while I am borne upon the wings of your arms.

  Hearing some young men had spoken many reproachful words of him in their drink, he summoned them all to appear before him next day; when they appeared, he asked the foremost whether they spoke such things or him or not. The young man answered : Such words were spoken, O King, and more we had spoken, if we had had more wine.

ANTIOCHUS. Antiochus, who twice made an inroad into Parthia, as he was once a hunting, lost his friends and servants in the pursuit, and went into a cottage of poor people who did not know him. As they were at supper, he threw out discourse concerning the king; they said for the most part he was a good prince, but overlooked many things he left to the management of debauched courtiers, and out of love of hunting often neglected his necessary affairs; and there they stopped. At break of day the guard arrived at the cottage, and the king was recognised when the crown and purple robes were brought. From the day, said he, on which I first received these, I never heard truth concerning myself till yesterday.

  When he besieged Jerusalem, the Jews, in respect of their great festival, begged of him seven days’ truce; which he not only granted, but preparing oxen with gilded horns, with a great quantity of incense and perfumes, he went before them to the very gates, and having delivered them as a sacrifice to their priests, he returned back to his army. The Jews wondered at him, and as soon as their festival was finished, surrendered themselves to him.

THEMISTOCLES. Themistocles in his youth was much given to wine and women. But after Miltiades the general overcame the Persian at Marathon, Themistocles utterly forsook his former disorders; 185 and to such as wondered at the change, he said, The trophy of Miltiades will neither suffer me to sleep nor to be idle.

  Being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homerus, - And pray, said he, which would you rather be, a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors ?

  When Xerxes with that great navy made a descent upon Greece, he fearing, if Epicydes (a popular, but a covetous, corrupt, and cowardly person) were made general, the city might be lost, bribed him with a sum of money to desist from that pretence.

  Adeimantus was afraid to hazard a sea-fight, whereunto Themistocles persuaded and encouraged the Greeks. O Themistocles, said he, those that start before their time in the Olympic games are always scourged. Yes; but, Adeimantus, said the other, they that are left behind are not crowned.

  Eurybiades lifted up his cane at him, as if he would strike him. Strike, said he, but hear me.

  When he could not persuade Eurybiades to fight in the straits of the sea, he sent privately to Xerxes, advising him that he need not fear the Greeks, for they were running away. Xerxes, upon this persuasion, fighting in a place advantageous for the Greeks, was worsted; and then he sent him another message, and bade him fly with all speed over the Hellespont, for the Greeks designed to break down his bridge ; that under pretence of saving him he might secure the Greeks.

  A man from the little island of Seriphus told him, he was famous not upon his own account but through the city where he lived, - You say true, said he, for if I had been a Seriphian, I had not been famous; nor would you, if you had been an Athenian.

  To Antiphatus, a beautiful person that avoided and despised Themistocles when he formerly loved him, but came to him and flattered him when he was in great power and esteem; Hark you, lad, said he, though late, yet both of us are wise at last.

  To Simonides desiring him to give an unjust sentence, You would not be a good poet, said he, if you should sing out of tune; nor I a good governor, if I should give judgement contrary to law.

  When his son was a little saucy towards his mother, he said that this boy had more power than all the Greeks, for the Athenians governed Greece, he the Athenians, his wife him, and his son his wife.

  He preferred an honest man that wooed his daughter, before a rich man. I would rather, said he, have a man that wants money, than money that wants a man.

  Having a farm to sell, he bid the crier proclaim also that it had a good neighbour.

  When the Athenians reviled him; Why do you complain, said he, that the same persons so often befriend you? And he compared himself to a row of plane-trees, under which in a storm passengers run for shelter, but in fair weather they pluck the leaves off and abuse them.

  Scoffing at the Eretrians, he said, Like the sword-fish, they have a sword indeed, but no heart.

  Being banished first out of Athens and afterwards out of Greece, he betook himself to the king of Persia, who bade him speak his mind. Speech, he said, was like to tapestry; and like it, when it was spread, it showed its figures, but when it was folded up, hid and spoiled them.

  And therefore he requested time until he might learn the Persian tongue, and could explain himself without an interpreter.

  Having there received great presents, and being enriched of a sudden; O lads, said he to his sons, we had been undone if we had not been undone.

MYRONIDES. Myronides summoned the Athenians to fight against the Boeotians. When the time was almost come, and the captains told him they were not near all come out; 186 They are come, said he, all that intend to fight. And marching while their spirits were up, he overcame his enemies.

ARISTEIDES. Aristeides the Just always managed his offices himself, and avoided all political clubs, because power gained by the assistance of friends was an encouragement to the unjust.

  When the Athenians were fully bent to banish him by an ostracism, an illiterate country fellow came to him with his shell, and asked him to write in it the name of Aristeides. Friend, said he, do you know Aristeides ? Not I, said the fellow, but I do not like his surname of Just. He said no more, but wrote his name in the shell and gave it him.

  He was at variance with Themistocles, who was sent on an embassy with him. Are you content, said he, Themistocles, to leave our enmity at the borders ? and if you please, we will take it up again at our return.

  When he levied an assessment upon the Greeks, he returned poorer by so much as he spent in the journey.

  Aeschylus wrote these verses on Amphiaraus : -

      “His shield no emblem bears; his generous soul

      Wishes to be, not to appear, the best;

      While the deep furrows of his noble mind

      Harvests of wise and prudent counsel bear.”

And when they were pronounced in the theatre, all turned their eyes upon Aristeides.

PERICLES. Whenever he entered on his command as general, while he was putting on his war-cloak, he used thus to bespeak himself: Remember, Pericles, you govern freemen, Greeks, Athenians.

  He advised the Athenians to demolish Aegina, as a dangerous eyesore to the haven of Peiraeus.

  To a friend that wanted him to bear false witness and to bind the same with an oath, he said: I am a friend only as far as the altar.

  When he lay on his death-bed, he blessed himself that no Athenian ever went into mourning upon his account.

ALCIBIADES. Alcibiades, while he was a boy, wrestling in a ring, seeing he could not break his adversary’s hold, bit him by the hand; who cried out, You bite like a woman. Not so, said he, but like a lion.

  He had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas ; and he cut off his tail, that, said he, the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no farther with me.

  Coming into a school, he called for Homerus’ Iliad; and when the master told him he had none of Homerus’ works, he gave him a box on the ear, and went his way.

  He came to Pericles’ gate, and being told he was busy a preparing his accounts to be given to the people of Athens, Had he not better, said he, contrive how he might give no account at all ?

  Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, he absconded, saying, that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it.

  But, said one, will you not trust your country with your cause ? No, said he, nor my mother either, lest she mistake and cast a black pebble, instead of a white one.

  When he heard death was decreed to him and his associates, Let us convince them, said he, that we are alive. And passing over to Lacedaemon, he stirred up the Decelean war against the Athenians.

LAMACHUS. Lamachus rebuked a captain for a fault; and when he had said he would do so no more, Sir, said he, in war there is no room for a second miscarriage.

IPHICRATES. Iphicrates was despised because he was thought to be a shoemaker’s son. 187 The exploit that first brought him into repute was this: when he was wounded himself, he caught up one of the enemies and carried him alive and in his armour to his own ship.

  He once pitched his camp in a country belonging to his allies and confederates, and yet he fortified it exactly with a trench and bulwark. Said one to him, What are you afraid of? Of all speeches, said he, none is so dishonourable for a general, as I should not have thought it.

  As he marshalled his army to fight with barbarians, I am afraid, said he, they do not know Iphicrates, for his very name used to strike terror into other enemies.

  Being accused of a capital crime, he said to the informer: O fellow! what are you doing, who, when war is at hand, do advise the city to consult concerning me, and not with me ?

  To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled him for his mean birth, My nobility, said he, begins in me, but yours ends in you.

  A rhetorician asked him in an assembly, who he was that he took so much upon him, - horseman, or footman, or archer, or shield-bearer. Neither of them, said he, but one that understands how to command all those.

TIMOTHEUS. Timotheus was reputed a successful general, and some that envied him painted cities falling under his net of their own accord, while he was asleep. Said Timotheus, If I take such cities when I am asleep, what do you think I shall do when I am awake ?

  A confident commander showed the Athenians a wound he had received. But I, said he, when I was your general in Samos, was ashamed that a dart from an engine fell near me.

  The orators set up Chares as one they thought fit to be general of the Athenians. Not to be general, said Timotheus, but to carry the general’s baggage.

CHABRIAS. Chabrias said, they were the best commanders who best understood the affairs of their enemies.

  He was once indicted for treason with Iphicrates, who blamed him for exposing himself to danger, by going to the place of exercise, and dining at his usual hour. If the Athenians, said he, deal severely with us, you will die all foul and empty; I’ll die clean and anointed, with my dinner in my belly.

  He was accustomed to say, that an army of stags, with a lion for their commander, was more formidable than an army of lions led by a stag.

HEGESIPPUS. When Hegesippus, surnamed Crobylus (i.e. Top-knot), instigated the Athenians against Philippus, one of the assembly cried out, You would not persuade us to a war ? Yes, indeed, would I, said he, and to mourning clothes and to public funerals and to funeral speeches, if we intend to live free and not submit to the pleasure of .the Macedonians.

PYTHEAS. Pytheas, when he was a young man, stood forth to oppose the decrees made concerning Alexander. One said: Have you, young man, the confidence to speak in such weighty affairs ? And why not ? said he: Alexander, whom you voted a God, is younger than I am.

PHOCION. Phocion the Athenian was never seen to laugh or cry.

  In an assembly one told him, You seem to be thoughtful, Phocion. You guess right, said he, for I am contriving how to reduce what I have to say to the people of Athens.

  The Oracle told the Athenians, there was one man in the city of a contrary judgement to all the rest; and the Athenians in a hubbub ordered search to be made, who this should be. I, said Phocion, am the man ; I alone am pleased with nothing the common people say or do.

  188 Once when he had delivered an opinion which pleased the people, and perceived it was entertained by a general consent, he turned to his friend, and said: Have I not unawares spoken something or other wrong ?

  The Athenians gathered contributions for a certain sacrifice; and when others gave to it, he being often spoken to said: I should be ashamed to give to you, and not to pay this man, - pointing to one of his creditors.

  Demosthenes the orator told him, If the Athenians should be mad, they would kill you. Like enough, said he, me if they were mad, but you if they were wise.

  Aristogeiton the informer, being condemned and ready to be executed in prison, entreated that Phocion would come to him. And when his friends would not suffer him to go to so vile a person; And where, said he, would you discourse with Aristogeiton more pleasantly ?

  The Athenians were offended with the Byzantines, for refusing to receive Chares into their city, who was sent with forces to assist them against Philippus. Said Phocion, You ought not to be displeased with the distrust of your confederates, but with your commanders that are not to be trusted. Whereupon be was chosen general, and being trusted by the Byzantines, he forced Philippus to return without his errand.

  King Alexander sent him a present of a hundred talents; and he asked those that brought it, what it should mean that, of all the Athenians, Alexander should be thus kind to him. They answered, because he esteemed him alone to be a worthy and upright person. Pray therefore, said he, let him suffer me to seem as well as to be so.

  Alexander sent to them for some ships, and the people calling for Phocion by name, bade him speak his opinion. He stood up and told them: I advise you either to conquer yourselves, or else to side with the conqueror.

  An uncertain rumour happened, that Alexander was dead. Immediately the orators leaped into the rostrum, and advised them to make war without delay; but Phocion entreated them to tarry awhile and know the certainty: for, said he, if he is dead to-day, he will be dead to-morrow, and so forwards.

  Leosthenes hurried the city into a war, with fond hopes conceited at the name of liberty and command. Phocion compared his speeches to cypress-trees ; They are tall, said he, and comely, but bear no fruit. However, the first attempts were successful; and when the city was sacrificing for the good news, he was asked whether he did not wish he had done this himself. I would, said he, have done what has been done, but have advised what I did.

  When the Macedonians invaded Attica and plundered the seacoasts, he drew out the youth. When many came to him and generally persuaded him by all means to possess himself of such an ascent, and thereon to marshal his army, O Heracles! said he, how many commanders do I see, and how few soldiers ? Yet he fought and overcame, and slew Nicion, the commander of the Macedonians.

  But in a short time the Athenians were overcome, and admitted a garrison sent by Antipater. Menyllus, the governor of that garrison, offered money to Phocion, who was enraged thereby and said: This man is no better than Alexander; and what I refused then I can with less honour receive now.

  Antipater said, of the two friends he had at Athens, he could never persuade Phocion to accept a present, nor could he ever satisfy Demades with presents.

  When Antipater requested him to do some indirect thing or other, Antipater, said he, you cannot have Phocion for your friend and flatterer too.

  189 After the death of Antipater, democracy was established in Athens, and the assembly decreed the death of Phocion and his friends. The rest were led weeping to execution; but as Phocion passed silently, one of his enemies met him and spat in his face. But he turned himself to the magistrates, and said, Will nobody restrain this insolent fellow ?

  One of those that were to suffer with him lamented and complained: Why, Euippus, said he, are you not pleased that you die with Phocion ?

  When the cup of hemlock was brought to him, being asked whether he had any thing to say to his son; I command you, said he, and entreat you not to think of any revenge upon the Athenians.

PEISISTRATUS. Peisistratus, tyrant of Athens, when some of his party revolted from him and possessed themselves of Phyle, came to them bearing his baggage on his back. They asked him what he meant by it. Either, said he, to persuade you to return with me, or if I cannot persuade you, to tarry with you; and therefore I come prepared accordingly.

  An accusation was brought to him against his mother, that she was in love and used secret familiarity with a young man, who out of fear for the most part refused her. This young man he invited to supper, and as they were at supper asked him how he liked his entertainment. He answered, Very well. Thus, said he, you shall be treated daily, if you please my mother.

  Thrasybulus was in love with his daughter, and as he met her, kissed her; whereupon his wife would have incensed him against Thrasybulus. If, said he, we hate those that love us, what shall we do to them that hate us ? - and he gave the maid in marriage to Thrasybulus.

  Some lascivious drunken persons by chance met his wife, and used unseemly speech and behaviour to her; but the next day they begged his pardon with tears. As for you, said he, learn to be sober for the future; but as for my wife, yesterday she was not abroad at all.

  He designed to marry another wife, and his children asked him whether he could blame them for anything. By no means, said he, but I commend you, and desire to have more such children as you are.

DEMETRIUS PHALEREUS. Demetrius Phalereus persuaded King Ptolemaeus to get and study such books as treated of government and conduct; for those things are written in books which the friends of kings dare not advise.

189 LYCURGUS. Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible.

  To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, Pray, said he, do you first set up a democracy in your own house.

  He ordained that houses should be built with saws and axes only, thinking they would be ashamed to bring plate, tapestry, and costly tables into such pitiful houses.

  He forbade them to contend at boxing or in the double contest of boxing and wrestling, that they might not accustom themselves to be conquered, no, not so much as in jest.

  He forbade them also to war often against the same people, lest they should make them the more warlike. Accordingly, many years after, when Agesilaus was wounded, Antalcidas told him the Thebans had rewarded him worthily for teaching and accustoming them to war, whether they would or no.

CHARILLUS. King Charillus, being asked why Lycurgus made so few laws, answered, They who use few words do not need many laws.

  When one of the Helots behaved rather too insolently towards him, By Castor and Polydeuces, said he, I would kill you, were I not angry.

  To one that asked him why the Spartans wore long hair, Because, said he, of all ornaments that is the cheapest.

TELECLUS. 190 King Teleclus, when his brother inveighed against the citizens for not giving him that respect which they did to the king, said to him, No wonder, you do not know how to bear injury.

THEOPOMPUS. Theopompus, to one that showed him the walls of a city, and asked him if they were not high and beautiful, answered, No, not even if they are built for women.

ARCHIDAMUS. Archidamus, in the Peloponnesian war, when his allies requested him to appoint them their quota of tributes, replied, War has a very irregular appetite.

BRASIDAS. Brasidas caught a mouse among his dried figs, which bit him, and he let it go. Whereupon, turning to the company, Nothing, said he, is so small which may not save itself, if it have the valour to defend itself against its aggressors.

  In a fight he was shot through his shield, and plucking the spear out of his wound, with the same he slew his adversary. When he was asked how he came to be wounded, My shield, said he, betrayed me.

  It was his fortune to be slain in battle, as he endeavoured to liberate the Greeks that were in Thrace. These sent an embassy to Lacedaemon, which made a visit to his mother, who first asked them whether Brasidas died honourably. When the Thracians praised him, and affirmed that there would never be such another man, My friends, said she, you are mistaken ; Brasidas indeed was a valiant man, but Lacedaemon has many more valiant men than he.

AGIS. King Agis said, The Lacedaemonians are not accustomed to ask how many, but where the enemy are.

  At Mantineia he was advised not to fight the enemy that exceeded him in number. It is necessary, said he, for him to fight with many, who would rule over many.

  The Eleans were commended for managing the Olympic games honourably. What wonder, said he, do they do, if one day in four years they do justice ? When the same persons enlarged in their commendation, What wonder is it, said he, if they use justice honourably, which is an honourable thing ?

  To a lewd person, that often asked who was the best man among the Spartans, he answered, He that is most unlike you.

  When another asked what was the number of the Lacedaemonians, Sufficient, said he, to defend themselves from wicked men.

  To another that asked him the same question, If you should see them fight, said he, you would think them to be many.

LYSANDER. Dionysius the tyrant presented Lysander’s daughters with rich garments, which he refused to accept, saying he feared they would seem more deformed in them.

  To such as blamed him for managing much of his affairs by stratagems, which was unworthy of Heracles from whom he was descended, he answered, Where the lion’s skin will not reach, it must be pieced with the fox’s.

  When the citizens of Argos seemed to make out a better title than the Lacedaemonians to a country that was in dispute between them, drawing his sword, He that is master of this, said he, can best dispute about bounds of countries.

  When the Lacedaemonians delayed to assault the walls of Corinth, and he saw a hare leap out of the trench; Do you fear, said he, such enemies as these, whose laziness suffers hares to sleep on their walls ?

  To an inhabitant of Megara, that in a parley spoke confidently unto him, Your words, said he, want the breeding of the city.

AGESILAUS. Agesilaus said that the inhabitants of Asia were bad freemen and good servants.

  When they were wont to call the king of Persia the Great King, Wherein, said he, is he greater than I, if he is not more just and wise than I am ?

  Being asked which was better, valour or justice, he answered, We should have no need of valour, if we were all just.

  191 When he broke up his camp suddenly by night in the enemy’s country, and saw a lad he loved left behind by reason of sickness, and weeping, It is a hard thing, said he, to be pitiful and wise at the same time.

  Menecrates the physician, surnamed Zeus, inscribed a letter to him thus : Menecrates Zeus to King Agesilaus wishes joy. And he returned in answer: King Agesilaus to Menecrates wishes his wits.

  When the Lacedaemonians overcame the Athenians and their confederates at Corinth, and he heard the number of the enemies that were slain; Alas, said he, for Greece, who hath destroyed so many of her men as were enough to have conquered all the barbarians together.

  He had received an answer from the Oracle of Zeus in Olympia, which was to his satisfaction, Afterwards the Ephors bade him consult Apollo in the same case; and to Delphi he went, and asked that God whether he was of the same mind with his father.

  He interceded for one of his friends with Idrieus of Caria, and wrote to him thus: If Nicias has not offended, set him free; but if he is guilty, set him free for my sake; by all means set him free.

  Being exhorted to hear one that imitated the voice of a nightingale, I have often, said he, heard nightingales themselves.

  The law ordained that such as ran away should be disgraced. After the fight at Leuctra, the Ephors, seeing the city void of men, were willing to dispense with that disgrace, and empowered Agesilaus to make a law to that purpose. But he standing in the midst commanded that after the next day the laws should remain in force as before.

  He was sent to assist the king of Egypt, with whom he was besieged by enemies that outnumbered his own forces; and when they had entrenched their camp, the king commanded him to go out and fight them. Since, said he, they intend to make themselves equal to us, I will not hinder them. When the trench was almost finished, he drew up his men in the void space, and so fighting with equal advantage he overcame them.

  When he was dying, he charged his friends that no fiction or counterfeit (so he called statues) should be made for him; For if, said he, I have done any honourable exploit, that is my monument; but if I have done none, all your statues will signify nothing.

ARCHIDAMUS. When Archidamus, the son of Agesilaus, beheld a dart to be shot from an engine newly brought out of Sicily, he cried out, O Heracles! the valour of man is at an end.

AGIS THE YOUNGER. Demades said, the Laconians’ swords were so small, that jugglers might swallow them. That may be, said Agis, but the Lacedaemonians can reach their enemies very well with them.

  The Ephors ordered him to deliver his soldiers to a traitor. I will not, said he, entrust him with strangers, who betrayed his own men.

CLEOMENES. To one that promised to give him hardy cocks, that would die fighting, Please, said he, give me cocks that will kill fighting.

PEDARITUS. Pedaritus, when he was not chosen among the Three Hundred (which was the highest office and honour in the city), went away cheerfully and smiling, saying, he was glad if the city had three hundred better citizens than himself.

DAMONIDAS. Damonidas, being placed by him that ordered the chorus in the last rank of it, said: Well done, you have found a way to make this place also honourable.

NICOSTRATUS. 192 Archidamus tried to entice Nicostratus, the general of the Argives, to betray a fort, by promising a great sum, and the marriage of whatever Lacedaemonian lady he pleased except the king’s daughters. Nicostratus answered, that Archidamus was not a genuine descendant of Heracles, for Heracles went about to punish wicked men, but Archidamus to corrupt honest men.

EUDAEMONIDAS. Eudaemonidas beholding Xenocrates, when he was old, in the Academy reading philosophy to his scholars, and being told he was in quest of virtue, asked: And when does he intend to practise it ?

  Another time, when he heard a philosopher arguing that only the wise man can be a good general, This is a wonderful speech, said he, but he that says it never heard the sound of trumpets.

ANTOCHUS. Antiochus being Ephor, when he heard Philippus had given the Messenians a country, asked whether he had granted them that they should be victorious when they fought for that country,

ANTALCIDAS. To an Athenian that called the Lacedaemonians unlearned, Therefore we alone, said Antalcidas, have learned no mischief of you.

  To another Athenian that told him, Indeed, we have often driven you from the Cephissus, he replied, But we never drove you from the Eurotas.

  When a Sophist was beginning to recite the praise of Heracles; And who, said he, ever spoke against him ?

EPAMINONDAS. No panic fear ever surprised the army or the Thebans while Epaminondas was their general.

  He said, to die in war was the most honourable death, and the bodies of armed men ought to be exercised, not as wrestlers, but in a warlike manner, wherefore he hated fat men, and dismissed one of them, saying, that three or four shields would scarce serve to secure his belly, which would not suffer him to see his members.

  He was so frugal in his diet that, being invited by a neighbour to supper, and finding there dishes, ointments, and junkets in abundance, he departed immediately, saying: I thought you were sacrificing, and not displaying your luxury,

  When his cook gave an account to his colleagues of the charges for several days, he was offended only at the quantity of oil; and when his colleagues wondered at him, I am not, said he, troubled at the charge, but that so much oil should be received into my body.

  When the city kept a festival, and all gave themselves to banquets and drinking, he was met by one of his acquaintance unadorned and in a thoughtful posture. He wondering asked him why he of all men should walk about in that manner. That all of you, said he, may be drunk and revel securely.

  A mean man, who had committed no great fault, he refused to discharge at the request of Pelopidas; when his miss entreated for him, he dismissed him, saying: Whores are fitting to receive such presents, and not generals.

  The Lacedaemonians marched against the Thebans, and oracles were brought to Thebes, some that promised victory, others that foretold an overthrow. He ordered those to be placed on the right hand of the judgement seat, and these on the left. When they were placed accordingly, he rose up and said: If you will obey your commanders and unanimously resist your enemies, these are your oracles, - pointing to the better; but if you play the cowards, those, - pointing to the worse.

  Another time, as he drew nigh to the enemy, it thundered, and some that were about him asked him what he thought the Gods would signify by it. 193 They signify, said he, that the enemy is thunderstruck and demented, since he pitches his camp in a bad place, when he was nigh to a better.

  Of all the happy and prosperous events that befell him, he said that in this he took most satisfaction, that he overcame the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra while his father and mother, that begot him, were living.

  Whereas he usually appeared with his body anointed and a cheerful countenance, the day after that fight he came abroad meanly dressed and dejected; and when his friends asked him whether any misfortune had befallen him, No, said he, but yesterday I was pleased more than became a wise man, and therefore to-day I chastise that immoderate joy.

  Perceiving the Spartans concealed their disasters, and desiring to discover the greatness of their loss, he did not give them leave to take away their dead altogether, but allowed each city to bury its own; whereby it appeared that above a thousand Lacedaemonians were slain.

  Jason, monarch of Thessaly, was at Thebes as their confederate, and sent two thousand pieces of gold to Epaminondas, then in great want; but he refused the gold, and when he saw Jason, he said: You are the first to commit violence. And borrowing fifty drachmas of a citizen, with that money to supply his army he invaded the Peloponnese.

  Another time, when the Persian king sent him thirty thousand darics, he rebuked Diomedon severely, asking him whether he sailed so far to bribe Epaminondas ; and bade him tell the king, as long as he wished the prosperity of the Thebans, Epaminondas would be his friend for free, but when he was otherwise minded, his enemy.

  When the Argives were confederates with the Thebans, the Athenian ambassadors then in Arcadia complained of both, and Callistratus the orator reproached the cities with Orestes and Oedipus. But Epaminondas stood up and said: We confess there hath been one amongst us that killed his father, and among the Argives one that killed his mother; but we banished those that did such things, and the Athenians entertained them.

  To some Spartans that accused the Thebans of many and great crimes, These indeed, said he, are they that have put an end to your short dialect.

  The Athenians made friendship and alliance with Alexander the tyrant of Pherae, who was an enemy to the Thebans, and who had promised to furnish them with meat at half an obol a pound. And we, said Epaminondas, will supply them with wood for that meat without charge; for if they grow meddlesome, we will make bold to cut all the wood in their country for them.

  Being desirous to keep the Boeotians, who were grown rusty by idleness, always in arms, when he was chosen their chief magistrate, he used to exhort them, saying: Yet consider what you do, my friends ; for if I am your general, you must be my soldiers. He called their country, which was plain and open, the stage of war, which they could keep no longer than their hands were upon their shields.

  Chabrias, having slain a few Thebans near Corinth, that engaged too hotly near the walls, erected a trophy, which Epaminondas laughed at, saying, It was not a trophy, but a statue of Hecate, which they usually placed in the highway before the gates.

  One told him that the Athenians had sent an army into the Peloponnese adorned with new armour. What then ? said he, does Antigenidas sigh because Telles has got new pipes ? Now Antigenidas was an excellent piper, but Telles a vile one.

  194 Understanding his shield-bearer had taken a great deal of money from a prisoner, Come, said he, give me the shield, and buy yourself a tavern to live in; for now you are grown rich and wealthy, you will not hazard your life as you did formerly.

  Being asked whether he thought himself or Chabrias or Iphicrates the better general, It is hard, said he, to judge while we live.

  After he returned out of Laconia, he was tried for his life, with his fellow-commanders, for continuing Boeotarch four months longer than the law allowed. He bade the other commanders lay the blame upon him, as if he had forced them, and for himself, he said, his actions were his best speech ; but if any thing at all were to be answered to the judges, he entreated them, if they put him to death, to write his fault upon his monument, that the Greeks might know that Epaminondas compelled the Thebans against their will to plunder and fire Laconia, which in five hundred years before had never suffered the like, - to build Messene two hundred and thirty years after it was sacked, to unite the Arcadians, and to restore liberty to Greece; for those things were done in that expedition. Whereupon the judges arose with great laughter, and refused even to receive the votes against him.

  In his last fight, being wounded and carried into his tent, he called for Daiphantus and after him for Iolaidas; and when he heard they were slain, he advised the Thebans to make their peace with the enemy, since they had no general left to lead them; as by the event proved true. So well did he understand his countrymen.

PELOPIDAS. Pelopidas, Epaminondas’ colleague, when his friends told him that he neglected a necessary business, that was the gathering of money, replied: In good deed money is necessary for this Nicomedas, pointing to a lame man that could not go.

  As he was going out to fight, his wife beseeched him to have a care of himself. To others you may give this advice, said he; but a commander and general you must advise that he should save his countrymen.

  A soldier told him, We have fallen among the enemies. Said he, How are we fallen among them, more than they among us ?

  When Alexander, the tyrant of Pherae, broke his faith and cast him into prison, he reviled him ; and when the other told him he did but hasten his death, That is my design, said he, that the Thebans may be exasperated against you, and be revenged on you the sooner.

  Thebe, the wife of the tyrant, came to him, and told him she wondered to see him so merry in chains. He answered, he wondered more at her, that she could endure Alexander without being chained.

  When Epaminondas caused him to be released, he said: I thank Alexander, for I have now found by trial that I have not only courage to fight, but to die.

ROMAN SAYINGS.

M’. CURIUS. When some blamed M’. Curius for distributing but a small part of a country he took from the enemy, and preserving the greater part for the commonwealth, he prayed there might be no Roman who would think that estate little which was enough to maintain him.

  The Samnites after an overthrow came to him to offer him gold, and found him boiling rape-roots, He answered the Samnites that he that could sup so wanted no gold, and that he had rather rule over those who had gold than have it himself

C. FABRICIUS. C. Fabricius, hearing Pyrrhus had overthrown the Romans, told Laevinus, it was Pyrrhus, not the Epirots, that beat the Romans.

  He went to treat about exchange of prisoners with Pyrrhus, who offered him a great sum of gold, which he refused, 195 The next day Pyrrhus commanded a very large elephant should secretly be placed behind Fabricius, and discover himself by roaring; whereupon Fabricius turned and smiled, saying, I was not astonished either at your gold yesterday or at your beast today.

  Pyrrhus invited him to tarry with him, and to accept of the next command under him: That, said he, will be inconvenient for you; for, when the Epirots know us both, they will rather have me for their king than you.

  When Fabricius was consul, Pyrrhus’ physician sent him a letter, wherein he promised him that, if he commanded him, he would poison Pyrrhus. Fabricius sent the letter to Pyrrhus, and bade him conclude that he was a very bad judge both of friends and enemies.

  The plot was discovered ; Pyrrhus hanged his physician, and sent the Roman prisoners he had taken without ransom as a present to Fabricius. He, however, refused to accept them, but returned the like number, lest he might seem to receive a reward. Neither did he disclose the conspiracy out of kindness to Pyrrhus, but that the Romans might not seem to kill him by treachery, as if they despaired to conquer him in open war.

FABIUS MAXIMUS. Fabius Maximus would not fight, but chose to spin away the time with Hannibal, who lacked both money and provision for his army, by pursuing and facing him in rocky and mountainous places, When many laughed at him and called him Hannibal’s schoolmaster, he took little notice of them, but pursued his own design, and told his friends: He that is afraid of scoffs and reproaches is more a coward than he that flies from the enemy.

  When Minucius, his fellow-consul, upon routing a party of the enemy, was highly extolled as a man worthy of Rome; I am more afraid, said he, of Minucius’ success than of his misfortune. And not long after he fell into an ambush, and was in danger of perishing with his forces, until Fabius came to his aid, slew many of the enemy, and brought him off. Whereupon Hannibal told his friends: Did I not often presage that cloud on the hills would some time or other break upon us ?

  After the city received the great overthrow at Cannae, he was chosen consul with Marcellus, a daring person and much desirous to fight Hannibal, whose forces, if nobody fought him, he hoped would shortly disperse and be dissolved. Therefore Hannibal said, he feared fighting Marcellus less than Fabius who would not fight.

  He was informed of a Lucanian soldier that frequently wandered out of the camp by night after a woman he loved, but otherwise an admirable soldier; he caused his mistress to be seized privately and brought to him. When she came, he sent for the soldier and told him: It is known you lie out at nights, contrary to the law ; but your former good behaviour is not forgotten, therefore your faults are forgiven to your merits. Henceforwards you shall tarry with me, for I have your surety. And he brought out the woman to him.

  Hannibal kept Tarentum with a garrison, all but the castle; and Fabius drew the enemy far from it, and by a stratagem took the town and plundered it. When his secretary asked what was his pleasure as to the holy images, Let us leave, said he, the Tarentines their offended Gods.

  When M. Livius, who kept a garrison in the castle, said he took Tarentum by his assistance, others laughed at him; 196 but said Fabius, You say true, for if you had not lost the city, I had not re-took it.

  When he was ancient, his son was consul, and as he was discharging his office publicly with many attendants, he met him on horseback. The young man sent a lictor to command him to alight; when others were at a stand, Fabius presently alighted, and running faster than for his age might be expected, embraced his son. Well done, son, said he, I see you are wise, and know whom you govern, and the grandeur of the office you have undertaken.

SCIPIO THE ELDER. Scipio the Elder spent on his studies what leisure the campaign and government would allow him, saying, that he did most when he was idle.

  When he took Carthage by storm, some soldiers took prisoner a very beautiful virgin, and came and presented her to him. I would receive her, said he, with all my heart, if I were a private man and not a governor.

  While he was besieging the city of Badia, wherein appeared above all a temple of Venus, he ordered appearances to be given for actions to be tried before him within three days in that temple of Venus; and he took the city, and was as good as his word.

  One asked him in Sicily, on what confidence he presumed to pass with his navy against Carthage. He showed him three hundred disciplined men in armour, and pointed to a high tower on the shore; there is not one of these, said he, that would not at my command go to the top of that tower, and cast himself down, headlong.

  Over he went, landed, and burnt the enemy’s camp, and the Carthaginians sent to him about a truce, and agreed to surrender their elephants, ships, and a sum of money. But when Hannibal sailed back from Italy, their reliance on him made them repent of those conditions. This coming to Scipio’s ear, Nor will I, said he, stand to the agreement if they will, unless they pay me, five thousand talents more for sending for Hannibal.

  The Carthaginians, when they were utterly overthrown, sent ambassadors to make peace and league with him; he bade those that came return immediately, as refusing to hear them before they brought Terentius with them, a good man, whom the Carthaginians had taken prisoner. When they brought him, he placed him in the council next himself, on the judgement-seat, and then he transacted with the Carthaginians and put an end to the war.

  And Terentius followed him when he triumphed, wearing the cap of one that was made free ; and when he died, Scipio gave wine mingled with honey to those that were at the funeral, and performed other funeral rites in his honour. But these things were done afterwards.

  King Antiochus, after the Romans crossed over to Asia against him, sent to Scipio for peace; That should have been done before, said he, not now when you have received a bridle and a rider.

  The senate decreed him a sum of money out of the treasury, but the treasurers refused to open it on that day. Then, said he, I will open it myself, for the moneys with which I filled it caused it to be shut.

  When Petillius and Quintus accused him of many crimes before the people, On this very day, said he, I conquered Hannibal and Carthage ; I for my part am going with my crown on to the Capitol to sacrifice; and let him who pleases stay and pass his vote upon me. 197 Having thus said, he went his way; and the people followed him, leaving his accusers declaiming to themselves.

T. QUINCTIUS. T. Quinctius was eminent so early, that before he had been tribune, praetor, or aedile, he was chosen consul. Being sent as general against Philippus, he was persuaded to come to a conference with him. And when Philippus demanded hostages of him, because he was accompanied with many Romans while the Macedonians had none but himself; You, said Quinctius, have created this solitude for yourself, by killing your friends and kindred.

  Having overcome Philippus in battle, he proclaimed in the Isthmian games that the Greeks were free and to be governed by their own laws. And the Greeks redeemed all the Roman prisoners that in Hannibal’s days were sold for slaves in Greece, each of them with two hundred drachmas, and made him a present of them; and they followed him in Rome in his triumph, wearing caps on their heads such as they use to wear who are made free.

  He advised the Achaeans, who designed to make war upon the island Zacynthus, to take heed lest, like a tortoise, they should endanger their head by thrusting it out of Peloponnese.

  When King Antiochus was coming upon Greece with great forces, and all men trembled at the report of his numbers and equipage, he told the Achaeans this story: Once I dined with a friend at Chalcis, and when I wondered at the variety of dishes, said my host, “ All these are pork, only in dressing and sauces they differ.” And therefore be not you amazed at the king’s forces, when you hear talk of spearmen and men-at-arms and choice footmen and horse-archers, for all these are but Syrians, with some little difference in their weapons.

  Philopoemen, general of the Achaeans, had good store of horses and men-at-arms, but could not tell what to do for money; and Quinctius played upon him, saying, Philopoemen had arms and legs, but no belly; and it happened his body was much after that shape.

CNAEUS DOMITIUS. Cnaeus Domitius, whom Scipio the Great sent in his stead to attend his brother Lucius in the war against Antiochus, when he had viewed the enemy’s army, and the commanders that were with him advised him to set upon them presently, said to them: We shall scarce have time enough now to kill so many thousands, plunder their baggage, return to our camp, and refresh ourselves too; but we shall have time enough to do all this to-morrow. The next day he engaged them, and slew fifty thousand of the enemy.

PUBLIUS LICINIUS. Publius Licinius, consul and general, being worsted in a horse engagement by Perseus king of Macedon, with what were slain and what were took prisoners, lost two thousand eight hundred men. Presently after the fight, Perseus sent ambassadors to make peace and league with him; and although he was overcome, yet he advised the conqueror to submit himself and his affairs to the pleasure of the Romans.

PAULUS AEMILIUS. Paulus Aemilius, when he stood for his second consulship, was rejected. Afterwards, the war with Perseus and the Macedonians being prolonged by the ignorance and effeminacy of the commanders, they chose him consul. I thank, said he, the people for nothing ; they choose me general, not because I want the office, but because they want an officer.

  As he returned from the hall to his own house, and found his little daughter Tertia weeping, he asked her what she cried for ? 198 Perseus, said she (so her little dog was called), is dead. Luckily have you spoken, girl, said he, and I accept the omen.

  When he found in the camp much confident talk among the soldiers, who pretended to advise him and busy themselves as if they had been all officers, he bade them be quiet and only whet their swords, and leave other things to his care.

  He ordered night-guards should be kept without swords or spears, that they might resist sleep, when they had nothing wherewith to resist the enemy.

  He invaded Macedonia by the way of the mountains; and seeing the enemy drawn up, when Nasica advised him to set upon them presently, he replied: So I should, if I were of your age; but long experience forbids me, after a march, to fight an army marshalled regularly.

  Having overcome Perseus, he feasted his friends for joy of the victory, saying, it required the same skill to make an army very terrible to the enemy, and a banquet very acceptable to our friends.

  When Perseus was taken prisoner, he told Paulus that he would not be led in triumph. That, said he, is as you please, - meaning he might kill himself.

  He found an infinite quantity of money, but kept none for himself; only to his son-in-law Tubero he gave a silver bowl that weighed five pounds, as a reward of his valour; and that, they say, was the first piece of plate that belonged to the Aelian family.

  Of the four sons he had, he parted with two that were adopted into other families; and of the two that lived with him, one of them died at the age of fourteen years, but five days before his triumph; and five days after the triumph, at the age of twelve years died the other. When the people that met him bemoaned and sympathised with his calamities, Now, said he, my fears and jealousies for my country are over, since Fortune hath discharged her revenge for our success on my house, and I have paid for all.

CATO THE ELDER. Cato the Elder, in a speech to the people, inveighed against luxury and intemperance. How hard, said he, is it to persuade the belly, that hath no ears ?

  And he wondered how that city was preserved wherein a fish was sold for more than an ox!

  Once he scoffed at the prevailing imperiousness of women: All other men, said he, govern their wives; but we command all other men, and our wives us.

  He said he had rather not be rewarded for his good deeds than not punished for his evil deeds; and at any time he could pardon all other offenders besides himself.

  He instigated the magistrates to punish all offenders, saying, that they that did not prevent crimes when they might encouraged them.

  Of young men, he liked them that blushed better than those who looked pale; and hated a soldier that moved his hands as he walked and his feet as he fought, and whose sneeze was louder than his outcry when he charged.

  He said, he was the worst governor who could not govern himself.

  It was his opinion that everyone ought especially to reverence himself; for everyone was always in his own presence.

  When he saw many had their statues set up, I had rather, says he, men should ask why Cato had no statue, than why he had one.

  He exhorted those in power to be sparing of exercising their power, that they might continue in power.

  They that separate honour from virtue, said he, separate virtue from youth.

  A governor, said he, or judge ought to do justice without entreaty, not injustice upon entreaty.

  199 He said, that injustice, if it did not endanger the authors, endangered all besides.

  He requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils.

  He thought an angry man differed from a madman only in the shorter time which his passion endured.

  He thought that they who enjoyed their fortunes decently and moderately, were far from being envied; For men do not envy us, said he, but our estates.

  He said, they that were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs.

  Honourable actions ought to succeed honourable sayings; Lest, said he, they lose their reputation.

  He blamed the people for always choosing the same men officers; For either you think, said he, the government little worth, or very few fit to govern.

  He pretended to wonder at one that sold an estate by the seaside, as if he were more powerful than the sea; for he had drunk up that which the sea could hardly drown.

  When he stood for the censorship, and saw others begging and flattering the people for votes, he cried out aloud: The people have need of a sharp physician and a great purge; therefore not the mildest but the most inexorable person is to be chosen. For which word he was chosen before all others.

  Encouraging young men to fight boldly, he oftentimes said, The speech and voice terrify and put to flight the enemy more than the hand and sword.

  As he warred against Baetica, he was outnumbered by the enemy, and in danger. The Celtiberi offered for two hundred talents to send him a supply, and the Romans would not suffer him to engage to pay wages to barbarians. You are wrong, said he; for if we overcome, not we but the enemy must pay them; if we are routed, there will be nobody to demand nor to pay either.

  Having taken more cities, as he said, than he stayed days in the enemies’ country, he reserved no more of the booty for himself than what he ate or drank.

  He distributed to every soldier a round of silver, saying, It was better many should return out of the campaign with silver than a few with gold; for governors ought to gain nothing by their governments but honour. Five servants waited on him in the army, whereof one had bought three prisoners; and understanding Cato knew it, before he came into his presence he hanged himself.

  Being requested by Scipio Africanus to befriend the banished Achaeans, that they might return to their own country, he made as if he would not be concerned in that business; but when the matter was disputed in the senate, rising up, he said: We sit here, as if we had nothing else to do but to argue about a few old Greeks, whether they shall be carried to their graves by our bearers or by those of their own country.

  Postumius Albinus wrote a history in Greek, and in it begs the pardon of his readers. Said Cato, jeering him, If the Amphictyonic Council commanded him to write it, he ought to be pardoned.

SCIPIO THE YOUNGER. It is reported that Scipio the Younger never bought nor sold nor built any thing for the space of fifty-four years, and so long as he lived; and that of so great an estate, he left but thirty-three pounds of silver, and two of gold behind him, although he was lord of Carthage, and enriched his soldiers more than other generals.

  He observed the precept of Polybius, and endeavoured never to return from the forum, until by some means or other he had engaged some one he lighted on to be his friend or companion.

200 While he was yet young, he had such a repute for valour and knowledge, that Cato the Elder, being asked his opinion of the commanders in Africa, of whom Scipio was one, answered in that Greek verse, -

      “Others like shadows fly;

      He only is wise.” [ Homer, Od10’495 ]

  When he came from the army to Rome, the people preferred him, not to gratify him, but because they hoped by his assistance to conquer Carthage with more ease and speed.

  After he entered the walls, the Carthaginians defended themselves in the castle, separated by the sea, not very deep. Polybius advised him to scatter caltrops in the water, or planks with iron spikes, that the enemy might not pass over to assault their bulwark. He answered, that it was ridiculous for those who had taken the walls and were within the city to contrive how they might not fight with the enemy.

  He found the city full of Greek statues and presents brought thither from Sicily, and made proclamation that such as were present from those cities might claim and carry away what belonged to them.

  When others plundered and carried away the spoil, he would not suffer any that belonged to him, either slave or freeman, to take, nor so much as to buy any of it.

  He assisted C. Laelius, his most beloved friend, when he stood to be consul, and asked Pompeius (who was thought to be a piper’s son) whether he stood or not. He replied, No ; and besides promised to join with them in going about and procuring votes, which they believed and expected, but were deceived; for news was brought that Pompeius was in the forum, fawning on and soliciting the citizens for himself; whereat others being enraged, Scipio laughed. We may thank our own folly for this, said he, that, as if we were not to request men but the Gods, we lose our time in waiting for a piper.

  When he stood to be censor, Appius Claudius, his rival, told him that he could salute all the Romans by their names, whereas Scipio scarce knew any of them. You say true, said he, for it has been my care not to know many, but that all might know me.

  He advised the city, which then had an army in Celtiberia, to send them both to the army, either as tribunes or envoys, that thus the soldiers might be witnesses and judges of the valour of each of them.

  When he was made censor, he took away his horse from a young man, who, in the time while Carthage was besieged, made a costly supper, in which was a honey-cake, made after the shape of that city, which he named Carthage and set before his guests to be plundered by them; and when the young man asked the reason why he took his horse from him, he said, Because you plundered Carthage before me.

  As he saw C. Licinius coming towards him, I know, said he, that man is perjured; but since nobody accuses him, I cannot be his accuser and judge too.

  The senate sent him thrice, as Cleitomachus says, “to take cognisance of men, cities, and manners”, as an overseer of cities, kings, and countries. As he came to Alexandria and landed, he went with his head covered, and the Alexandrians running about him entreated he would gratify them by uncovering and showing them his desirable face. When he uncovered his head, they clapped their hands with a loud acclamation. The king, by reason of his laziness and corpulency, struggled to keep pace with them, and Scipio whispered softly to Panaetius : The Alexandrians have already received some benefit of our visit, 201 for upon our account they have seen their king walk.

  There travelled with him one friend, Panaetius the philosopher, and five servants, whereof one dying in the journey, he would not buy another, but sent for one to Rome.

  The Numantines seemed invincible, and having overcome several generals, the people the second time chose Scipio general in that war. When great numbers strived to list them in his army, even that the senate forbade, as if Italy thereby would be left destitute. Nor did they allow him money that was in bank, but ordered him to receive the revenues of tributes that were not yet payable. As to money, Scipio said he wanted none, for of his own and by his friends he could be supplied ; but of the decree concerning the soldiers he complained, for the war (he said) was a hard and difficult one, whether their defeat had been caused by the valour of the enemy or by the cowardice of their own men.

  When he came to the army, he found there much disorder, intemperance, superstition, and luxury. Immediately he drove away the soothsayers, priests, and panders. He ordered them to send away their household stuff, all except kettles, a spit, and an earthen cup. He allowed a silver cup, weighing not more than two pounds, to such as desired it. He forbade them to bathe; and those that anointed themselves were to rub themselves too; for horses wanted another to rub them, he said, only because they had no hand of their own: He ordered them to eat their dinner standing, and to have only such food as was dressed without fire; but they might sit down at supper, to bread, plain porridge, and flesh boiled or roasted. He himself walked about clothed in a black cassock, saying, he mourned for the disgrace of the army.

  He met by chance with the pack-horses of Memmius, a tribune that carried wine-coolers set with precious stones, and the best Corinthian vessels. Since you are such a one, said he, you have made yourself useless to me and to your country for thirty days, but to yourself all your life long.

  Another showed him a shield well adorned. The shield, said he, young man, is a fine one, but it becomes a Roman to have his confidence placed rather in his right hand than in his left.

  To one that was building the rampart, saying his burden was very heavy, And deservedly, said he, for you trust more to this wood than to your sword.

  When he saw the rash confidence of the enemy, he said that he bought security with time; for a good general like a good physician, uses iron as his last remedy. And yet he fought when he saw it convenient, and routed the enemy.

  When they were worsted, the elder men rebuked them, and asked why they fled from those they had pursued so often. It is said a Numantine answered, The sheep are the same still: but they have another shepherd.

  After he had taken Numantia and triumphed a second time, he had a controversy with C. Gracchus concerning the senate and the allies; and the abusive people made a tumult about him as he spoke from the rostrum; The outcry of the army, said he, when they charge, never disturbed me, much less the clamour of a rabble of newcomers, to whom Italy is a step-mother (I am well assured) and not a mother.

  And when they of Gracchus’ party cried out, Kill the tyrant, - No wonder, said he, that they who make war upon their country would kill me first; for Rome cannot fall while Scipio stands, nor can Scipio live when Rome is fallen.

CAECILIUS METELLUS. Caecilius Metellus designing to reduce a strong fort, a centurion told him he would undertake to take it with the loss only of ten men; 202 and he asked him, whether he himself would be one of those ten.

  A young officer asked him what plans he had. If I thought my shirt knew, said he, I would pluck it off and burn it.

  He was at variance with Scipio in his lifetime, but he lamented at his death, and commanded his sons to assist at the hearse; and said, he gave the Gods thanks in the behalf of Rome, that Scipio was born in no other country.

C. MARIUS. C. Marius was of obscure parentage, pursuing offices by his valour. He stood as candidate for the chief aedileship, and perceiving he could not reach it, the same day he stood for the lesser, and missing of that also, yet for all that he did not despair of being consul.

  Having a cyst on each leg, he suffered one to be cut, and endured the surgeon without binding, not so much as sighing or once contracting his eyebrows; but when the surgeon would cut the other, he did not suffer him, saying the cure was not worth the pain.

  In his second consulship, Lusius his sister’s son offered unchaste force to Trebonius, a soldier, who slew him; when many pleaded against him, he did not deny but confessed he killed the officer, and told the reason why. Hereupon Marius called for a crown, the reward of extraordinary valour, and put it upon Trebonius’ head.

  He had pitched his camp, when he fought against the Teutones, in a place where water was lacking; when the soldiers told him they were thirsty, he showed them a river running by the enemy’s trench. Look you, said he, there is water for you, to be bought for blood; and they desired him to conduct them to fight, while their blood was fluent and not all dried up with thirst.

  In the Cimbrian war, he gave a thousand valiant Camertines the freedom of Rome, which no law did allow ; and to such as blamed him for it he said, I could not hear the laws for the clash of arrows.

  In the civil war, he lay patiently entrenched and besieged, waiting for a fit opportunity; when Poppaedius Silon called to him, Marius, if you are so great a general come down and fight. And do you, said he, if you are so great a commander, force me to fight against my will, if you can.

LUTATIUS CATULUS. Lutatius Catulus in the Cimbrian war lay encamped by the side of the river Athesis, and his soldiers, seeing the barbarians attempting to pass the river, gave back; when he could not make them stand, he hastened to the front of them that fled, that they might not seem to fly from their enemies but to follow their commander.

SULLA. Sulla, surnamed the Fortunate, reckoned these two things as foremost amongst his good luck: the friendship of Metellus Pius, and that he had spared and not destroyed the city of Athens.

C. POPILIUS. C. Popilius was sent to Antiochus with a letter from the senate, commanding him to withdraw his army out of Egypt, and to renounce the protection of that kingdom during the minority of Ptolemaeus’ children. When he came towards him in his camp, Antiochus kindly saluted him at a distance, but without returning his salutation he delivered his letter; which being read, the king answered, that he would consider, and give his answer. Whereupon Popilius with his staff made a circle round him, saying, consider and answer before you go out of this place; and when Antiochus answered that he would give the Romans satisfaction, 203 then at length Popilius saluted and embraced him.

LUCULLUS. Lucullus in Armenia, with ten thousand foot in armour and a thousand horse, was to fight Tigranes and his army of a hundred and fifty thousand, the day before the nones of October, the same day on which formerly Scipio’s army was destroyed by the Cimbrians. When one told him, The Romans dread and abominate that day; Therefore said he, let us fight to-day valiantly, that we may change this day from a black and unlucky one to a joyful and festival day for the Romans.

  His soldiers were most afraid of their armoured cavalry; but he bade them be of good courage, for it was more labour to strip than to overcome them. He first came up to the crest of a hill, and perceiving the confusion of the barbarians, cried out, Fellow-soldiers, the day’s our own! And when nobody stood him, he pursued, and, with the loss of five Romans, slew above a hundred thousand of them.

CN. POMPEIUS. Cn. Pompeius was as much beloved by the Romans as his father was hated. When he was young, he wholly sided with Sulla, and before he had borne many offices or was chosen into the senate, he enlisted many soldiers in Italy. When Sulla sent for him, he returned answer, that he would not muster his forces in the presence of his general, unbloodied and without spoils; nor did he come before that in several fights he had overcome the captains of the enemy.

  He was sent by Sulla as commander into Sicily, and being told that the soldiers turned out of the way and forced and plundered the country, he sealed the swords of such as he sent abroad, and punished all other stragglers and wanderers.

  He had resolved to put the Mamertines, that were of the other side, all to the sword ; but Sthenius the orator told him, He would do injustice if he should punish many that were innocent for the sake of one that was guilty; and that he himself was the person that persuaded his friends and forced his enemies to side with Marius. Pompeius admired the man, and said, he could not blame the Mamertines for being inveigled by a person who preferred his country beyond his own life; and forgave both the city, and Sthenius too.

  When he passed into Africa against Domitius and overcame him in a great battle, the soldiers saluted him Imperator. He answered, he could. not receive that honour, so long as the fortification of the enemy’s camp stood undemolished ; upon this, although it rained hard, they rushed on and plundered the camp.

  At his return, among other courtesies and honours wherewith Sulla entertained him, he styled him The Great; yet when he was desirous to triumph, Sulla would not consent, because he was not yet chosen into the senate. But when Pompeius said to those that were about him, Sulla does not know that more worship the rising than the setting sun, Sulla cried aloud, Let him triumph.

  Hereat Servilius, one of the nobles, was displeased; the soldiers also withstood his triumph, until he had bestowed a largess among them. But when Pompeius replied, I would rather forego my triumph than flatter them, - Now, said Servilius, I see Pompeius is truly great and worthy of a triumph.

  It was a custom in Rome, that knights who had served in the wars the time appointed by the laws should bring their horse into the forum before the censors, and there give an account of their warfare and the commanders under whom they had served. 204 Pompeius, then consul, brought also his horse before the censors, Gellius and Lentulus ; and when they asked him, as the manner is, whether he had served all his campaigns, All, said he, and under myself as general.

  Having got into his hands the writings of Sertorius in Spain, among which were letters from several leading men in Rome, inviting Sertorius to Rome to innovate and change the government, he burnt them all, by that means giving opportunity to ill-affected persons to repent and mend their manners.

  Phraates, king of Parthia, sent to him requesting that the river Euphrates might be his bounds. He answered, the Romans had rather the right should be their bounds towards Parthia.

  L. Lucullus, after he left the army, gave himself up to pleasure and luxury, jeering at Pompeius for busying himself in affairs unsuitable to his age. He answered, that government became old age better than luxury.

  In a fit of sickness, his physician prescribed him to eat a thrush; but when none could be got, because they were out of season, one said, that Lucullus had some, for he kept them all the year. It seems then, said he, Pompeius must not live, unless Lucullus play the glutton; and dismissing the physician, he ate such things as were easy to get.

  In a great dearth at Rome, he was chosen by title overseer of the market, but in reality lord of sea and land, and sailed to Africa, Sardinia, and Sicily. Having procured great quantities of wheat, he hastened back to Rome; and when by reason of a great tempest the pilots were loath to hoist sail, he went first aboard himself, and commanding the anchor to be weighed, cried out aloud, There is a necessity of sailing, but there is no necessity of living.

  When the difference between him and Caesar broke out, and Marcellinus, one of those whom he had preferred, revolted to Caesar and inveighed much against Pompeius in the senate ; Are you not ashamed, said he, Marcellinus, to reproach me, who taught you to speak when you were dumb, and fed you full even to vomiting when you were starved ?

  To Cato, who severely blamed him because, when he had often informed him of the growing power of Caesar, such as was dangerous to a democracy, he took little notice of it, he answered, Your counsels were more presaging, but mine more friendly.

  Concerning himself, he freely professed, that he entered all his offices sooner than he expected, and resigned them sooner than was expected by others.

  After the fight at Pharsalia, in his flight towards Egypt, as he was going out of the ship into the fishing-boat the king sent to attend him, turning to his wife and son, he said nothing to them beside those two verses of Sophocles :

      “Whoever comes within a tyrant’s door

      Becomes his slave, though he were free before.”

As he came out of the boat, when he was struck with a sword, he, said nothing; but gave one groan, and covering his head submitted to the murderers.

CICERO. Cicero the orator, when his name was played upon and his friends advised him to change it, answered, that he would make the name of Cicero more honourable than the name of the Catos, the Catuli, or the Scauri.

  He dedicated to the Gods a silver cup with a cover, with the first letters of his other names, and instead of Cicero a chick-pea ( cicer ) engraved.

  Loud bawling orators, he said, were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.

  Verres had a son that in his youth had not well secured his chastity; yet he reviled Cicero for his effeminacy, and called him a catamite. Do you not know, said he, that children are to be rebuked at home within doors ?

  Metellus Nepos told him he had slain more by his testimony than he had saved by his pleadings. 205 You say true, said he, my honesty exceeds my eloquence.

  When Metellus asked him who his father was, Your mother, said he, has made that question a harder one for you to answer than for me. For she was unchaste, while Metellus himself was a light, inconstant, and passionate man. The same Metellus, when Diodotus his master in rhetoric died, caused a marble crow to be placed on his monument; and Cicero said, he returned his master a very suitable gratuity, who had taught him to fly out not to declaim.

  Hearing that Vatinius, his enemy and otherwise a lewd person, was dead, and the next day that he was alive, A mischief on him, said he, for lying.

  To one that seemed to be an African, who said he could not hear him when he pleaded, And yet, said he, your ears are of full bore.

  He had summoned Popilius Cotta, an ignorant blockhead that pretended to the law, as a witness in a cause; and when he told the court he knew nothing of the business, On my conscience, I’ll warrant you, said Cicero, he thinks you ask him a question in the law.

  Verres sent a golden sphinx as a present to Hortensius the orator, who told Cicero, when he spoke obscurely, that he was not skilled in riddles. That’s strange, said he, since you have a sphinx in your house.

  Meeting Voconius with his three daughters who were ill favoured, he whispered to his friends that verse, -

      “Children he hath got,

      Though Apollo favoured not.”

  When Faustus the son of Sulla, being very much in debt, set up a notice that he would sell his goods by auction, he said, I like this proscription better than his father’s.

  When Pompeius and Caesar fell out, he said, I know whom to fly from, but I know not whom to fly to. He blamed Pompeius for leaving the city, and for imitating Themistocles rather than Pericles, when his affairs did not resemble the former’s but the latter’s.

  He changed his mind and went over to Pompeius, who asked him where he left his son-in-law Piso. He answered, With your father-in-law Caesar.

  To one that went over from Caesar to Pompeius, saying that in his haste and eagerness he had left his horse behind him, he said, You have taken better care of your horse than of yourself.

  To one that brought news that the friends of Caesar looked sourly, You do as good as call them, said he, Caesar’s enemies.

  After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompeius was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. Your advice, said he, were good, if we were to fight with jackdaws.

  Caesar, now conqueror, honourably restored the statues of Pompeius that were thrown down; whereupon Cicero said, that Caesar by erecting Pompeius’s statues had secured his own.

  He set so high a value on oratory, and did so layout himself especially that way, that having a cause to plead before the centumviri, when the day approached and his slave Eros brought him word it was deferred until the day following, he presently made him free.

C. CAESAR. Caius Caesar, when he was a young man, fled from Sulla, and fell into the hands of pirates, who first demanded of him a sum of money; and he laughed at the rogues for not understanding his quality , and promised them twice as much as they asked him. Afterwards, when he was put into custody until he raised the money, he commanded them to be quiet and silent while he slept. While he was in prison, he made speeches and verses which he read to them, and when they commended them but coldly, he called them barbarians and blockheads, and threatened them in jest that he would hang them. But after a while he was as good as his word ; 206 for when the money for his ransom was brought and he discharged, he gathered men and ships out of Asia, seized the pirates and crucified them.

  At Rome he stood to be chief priest against Catulus, a man of great influence among the Romans. To his mother, who brought him to the gate, he said, To-day, mother, you will have your son high priest or banished.

  He divorced his wife Pompeia, because she was reported to be over familiar with Clodius ; yet when Clodius was brought to trial upon that account, and he was cited as a witness, he spoke no evil against his wife; and when the accuser asked him, Why then did you divorce her ? - Because, said he, Caesar’s wife ought to be free even from suspicion.

  As he was reading the exploits of Alexander, he wept and told his friends, He was of my age when he conquered Darius, and I hitherto have done nothing.

  He passed by a little inconsiderable town in the Alps, and his friends said, they wondered whether there were any contentions and tumults for offices in that place. He stood, and after a little pause answered, I had rather be the first in this town than second in Rome.

  He said, great and surprising enterprises were not to be consulted upon, but done. And coming against Pompeius out of his province of Gaul, he passed the river Rubicon, saying, Let every die be thrown.

  After Pompeius fled to sea from Rome, he went to take money out of the treasury: when Metellus, who had the charge of it, forbade him and shut it against him, he threatened to kill him; whereupon Metellus being astonished, he said to him, This, young man, is harder for me to say than to do.

  When his soldiers were having a tedious passage from Brundisium to Dyrrachium, unknown to all he went aboard a small vessel, and attempted to pass the sea; and when the vessel was in danger of being overturned, he revealed himself to the pilot, crying out, Trust Fortune, and know that you carry Caesar.

  But the tempest being vehement, his soldiers coming about him and expostulating passionately with him, asking whether he distrusted them and was looking for another army, would not suffer him to pass at that time. They fought, and Pompeius had the better of it; but instead of following his blow he retreated to his camp. To-day, said Caesar, the enemy had the victory, but none of them know how to conquer.

  Pompeius commanded his army to stand in array at Pharsalia in their place, and to receive the charge from the enemy. In this, Caesar said he was wrong, thereby allowing the eagerness of his soldiers’ spirits, when they were up and inspired with rage and success, in mid-course to languish and expire.

  After he routed Pharnaces of Pontus at the first assault, he wrote thus to his friends, I came, I saw, I conquered.

  After Scipio was worsted in Africa and fled, and Cato had killed himself, he said: I envy you your death, O Cato! since you envied me the honour of saving you.

  Antonius and Dolabella were suspected by his friends, who advised him to secure them; he answered, I fear none of those fat and lazy fellows, but those pale and lean ones, - meaning Brutus and Cassius.

  As he was at supper, the discourse was of death, which sort was the best. That, said he, which is unexpected.

CAESAR AUGUSTUS. Caesar, who was the first surnamed Augustus, being yet young, demanded of M. Antonius the twenty-five millions of money which he had taken out of the house of Julius Caesar when he was slain, that he might pay the Romans the legacies he had left them, every man seventy-five drachmas. But when Antonius detained the money, and bade him, if he were wise, let fall his demand, 207 he sent the crier to offer his own paternal estate for sale, and therewith discharged the legacies; by which means he procured a general respect to himself, and to Antonius the hatred of the Romans.

  Rhoemetalces, king of Thrace, forsook Antonius and went over to Caesar; but bragging immoderately in his drink, and odiously reproaching his new confederates, Caesar drank to one of the other kings, and told him, I love treason but do not commend traitors.

  The Alexandrians, when he had taken their city, expected great severity from him; but when he came upon the judgement-seat, he placed Areius the Alexandrian by him, and told them: I spare this city, first because it is great and beautiful, secondly for the sake of its founder, Alexander, and thirdly for the sake of Areius my friend.

  When it was told him that Eros, his steward in Egypt, having bought a quail that beat all he came near and was never worsted by any, had roasted and eaten it; he sent for him; and when upon examination he confessed the fact, he ordered him to be nailed on the mast of the ship.

  He removed Theodorus, and in his stead made Areius his steward in Sicily, whereupon a petition was presented to him, in which was written, Theodorus of Tarsus is either a bald-pate or a thief, what is your opinion ? Caesar read it, and subscribed, I think so.

  Maecenas, his intimate companion, presented him yearly on his birthday with a drinking-bowl.

  Athenodorus the philosopher, by reason of his old age, begged leave that he might retire from court, which Caesar granted; and as Athenodorus was taking his leave of him, Remember, said he, Caesar, whenever you are angry, to say or do nothing before you have repeated the four-and-twenty letters to yourself. Whereupon Caesar caught him by the hand and said, I have need of your presence still; and he kept him a year longer, saying, The reward of silence is a secure reward.

  He heard Alexander at the age of thirty-two years had subdued the greatest part of the world and was at a loss what he should do with the rest of his time. But he wondered Alexander should not think it a lesser labour to gain a great empire than to set in order what he had got.

  He made a law concerning adulterers, wherein was determined how the accused were to be tried and how the guilty were to be punished. Afterwards, meeting with a young man that was reported to have been familiar with his daughter Julia, being enraged he struck him with his hands; but when the young man cried out, O Caesar! you have made a law, he was so troubled at it that he refrained from supper that day.

  When he sent Gaius his daughter’s son into Armenia, he begged of the Gods that the favour of Pompeius, the valour of Alexander, and his own fortune might attend him.

  He told the Romans he would leave them one to succeed him in the government that never consulted twice in the same affair, meaning Tiberius.

  He endeavoured to pacify some young men that were imperious in their offices; and when they gave little heed to him, but still kept a stir, Young men, said he, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.

  Once, when the Athenians had offended him, he wrote to them from Aegina: I suppose you know I am angry with you, otherwise I had not wintered at Aegina. Besides this, he neither said nor did any thing to them.

  One of the accusers of Eurycles spoke out lavishly and unreasonably, proceeding so far as to say, If these crimes, O Caesar, do not seem great to you, command him to repeat to me the seventh book of Thucydides ; wherefore Caesar being enraged commanded him to prison. But afterwards, when he heard he was descended from Brasidas, he sent for him again, and dismissed him with a moderate rebuke.

  208 When Piso built his house from top to bottom with great exactness, You cheer my heart, said he, who build as if Rome would be eternal.

Sayings of Spartans

208 b Agasicles

1 When someone expressed surprise to Agasicles, king of the Spartans, because, although he was very fond of reading and lectures, yet he would not admit to his presence Philophanes, a learned man, he said, “I want to be a pupil of those whose son I should like to be as well.”

2 In answer to a man who raised the question how anyone could possibly rule in safety without the protection of a bodyguard, he said, “If one rules his subjects as fathers rule their sons.”

Agesipolis, son of Cleombrotus

1 Agesipolis, son of Cleombrotus, when somebody said that Philip in a few days had razed Olynthus to the ground, said, “By Heaven, he will not build another like it in many years!”

2 When someone else remarked that he while king had been made hostage with those in the prime of life, and not their children or their women, he said, “That is but just, for it is good that we ourselves should bear the consequences of our own mistakes.”

3 When he wished to send for some dogs from home, and some said, “There is no such export permitted from there,” he said, “Nor was there of men before this; but now it has been done!”

Agesipolis, son of Pausanias

Agesipolis, the son of Pausanias, when the Athenians offered to accept the city of Megara as arbitrator regarding some complaints which they had each against the other, said, “It is a shame, men of Athens, that those who have held the hegemony of the Greeks should know less about justice than the Megarians.”

Agis, son of Archidamus

1 Once upon a time the Ephors said to Agis the son of Archidamus, “Take the young men and march against the country of this man here. He will himself guide you to its citadel.” “And how, sirs,” said Agis, “is it right to entrust so many youths to a man who is betraying his own country?”

2 Being asked what form of instruction was most in vogue in Sparta, he said, “Knowledge of how to rule and to be ruled.”

3 He said that the Spartans did not ask ‘how many are the enemy,’ but ‘where are they?’

4 When, at Mantineia, he was not permitted to risk a decisive battle with the enemy, who outnumbered his men, he said, “He who would rule over many must fight with many.”

5 When someone inquired how many Spartans there were, he said, “Enough to keep all bad men away.”

6 As he was going about among the walls of the Corinthians and observed that they were high and towering and vast in extent, he said, “What women live in that place?”

7 When a lecturer said, “Speech is the most important thing of all,” he retorted, “Then if you are silent, you are of no worth at all!”

8 When the Argives, after their defeat, met him again with greater boldness, and he saw that his allies were greatly perturbed, he said, “Do not be afraid, men; for when we who are victorious are frightened, what do you think those vanquished by us are doing?”

9 In answer to the ambassador from Abdera, who, after winding up a long discourse, asked him what report he should make to his people at home, he said, “Report that during all the time you wanted to speak I listened in silence.”

10 When some commended the people of Elis because they were very just in conducting the Olympic games, he said, “What great or marvellous accomplishment is it if they practise justice on one day only in four years?”

11 In answer to those who said that some members of the other royal house were jealous of him he said, “So then, their own ill fortune will make them miserable and, besides that, the good fortune of myself and of my friends.”

12 When someone proffered the advice that they ought to give a passage-way to those of the enemy who were fleeing, he said, “And how, if we do not fight those who because of cowardice are fleeing, shall we fight those who because of bravery stand their ground?”

21613 When someone brought forward a plan for the freedom of the Greeks, which, while not lacking idealism, was difficult to put into practice, he said, “Your words, my friend, need the backing of power and money.”

14 When someone said that Philip would make Greece forbidden ground to them, he said, “It is quite enough, my friend, for us to go and come within the confines of our own land.”

15 An ambassador who had come from Perinthus to Sparta made a long harangue; and when he had stopped speaking and asked Agis what report he should make to the people of Perinthus, Agis said, “What else except that it was hard for you to stop speaking, and that I said nothing?”

16 He came alone on an embassy to Philip, and when Philip exclaimed, “What is this? Have you come all alone?”, he said, “Yes, for I came to only one man.”

17 When one of the elderly men said to him in his old age, inasmuch as he saw the good old customs falling into desuetude, and other mischievous practices creeping in, that for this reason everything was getting to be topsy-turvy in Sparta, Agis said humorously, “Things are then but following a logical course if that is what is happening; for when I was a boy, I used to hear from my father that everything was topsy-turvy among them; and my father said that, when he was a boy, his father had said this to him; so nobody ought to be surprised if conditions later are worse than those earlier, but rather to wonder if they grow better or remain approximately the same.”

18 Being asked how one could be a free man all his life, he said, “By feeling contempt for death.”

The Younger Agis

1 The younger Agis, when Demades said that the jugglers who swallow swords use the Spartan swords because of their shortness, retorted, “But all the same the Spartans reach their enemies with their swords.”

2 In answer to a base man who asked repeatedly who was the best Spartan, he said, “The one most unlike you.”

The Last Agis

Agis, the last of the kings of Sparta, was arrested as the result of treachery and condemned by the Ephors without a trial. As he was being led away to the halter he saw one of the officers weeping, and said, “Stop your weeping for me, man. For in spite of my being put to death in such defiance of law and justice, I am superior to those who are taking my life.” With these words he willingly offered his neck for the noose.

Acrotatus

Acrotatus, when his parents claimed it was his duty to co operate with them in some unjust action, spoke in opposition up to a certain limit. But when they insisted, he said, “While I was with you, I had not the slightest idea of justice; but since you have surrendered me to our country and its laws, and, besides, have had me instructed in justice and honourable conduct so far as lay in your power, I shall try to follow these rather than you. And since your wish is for me to do what is best, and since what is just is best both for a private citizen, and much more so for a ruler, I will do what you wish; but as for what you propose I shall beg to be excused.”

Alcamenes, son of Teleclus

1 Alcamenes, the son of Teleclus, when somebody inquired how a man could best keep a kingdom secure, said, “If he should not hold his own advantage too high.”

2 When another person sought to know the reason why he did not accept gifts from the Messenians, he said, “Because if I took gifts, it would be impossible to maintain peace with impartial regard for the laws.”

3 When someone said that he lived a straitened life while possessed of plenty of property, he said, “Yes, for it is a noble thing for one who possesses much to live according to reason and not according to his desires.”

Anaxandridas

1 Anaxandridas, the son of Leo, in answer to a man who took much to heart the sentence imposed upon him of exile from the country, said, “My good sir, be not downcast at being an exile from your country but at being an exile from justice.”

2 To a man who told the Ephors of things that were needful, but spoke at greater length than would have sufficed, he said, “My friend, in needless time you dwell upon the need!”

3 When someone inquired why they put their fields in the hands of the Helots, 217 and did not take care of them themselves, he said, “It was by not taking care of the fields, but of ourselves, that we acquired those fields.”

4 When someone else said that high repute works injury to men and that he who is freed from this will be happy, he retorted, “Then those who commit crimes would, according to your reasoning, be happy. For how could any man, in committing sacrilege or any other crime, be concerned over high repute?”

5 When another person asked why the Spartans, in their wars, ventured boldly into danger, he said, “Because we train ourselves to have regard for life and not, like others, to be timid about it.”

6 When someone asked him why the elders continue the trials of capital cases over several days, and why, even if the defendant is acquitted, he is none the less still under indictment, he said, “They take many days to decide, because, if they make an error in a capital case, there can be no reversal of the judgement; and the accused continues, perforce, to be under indictment of the law, because, under this law, it may be possible, by deliberation, to arrive at a better decision.”

Anaxander, son of Eurycrates

Anaxander, the son of Eurycrates, when someone inquired why the Spartans did not amass money in the public treasury, said, “So that those made the guardians of it may not become corrupt.”

Anaxilas

Anaxilas, in answer to the man who wondered why the Ephors did not rise and offer their places to the kings, and this, too, although they were appointed to their position by the kings, said, “For the very same reason that they hold the office of Ephor.”

Androcleidas

Androcleidas the Spartan, who had a crippled leg, enrolled himself among the fighting-men. And when some persons were insistent that he be not accepted because he was crippled, he said, “But I do not have to run away, but to stay where I am when I fight the opposing foe.”

Antalcidas

1 When Androcleidas was being initiated into the mysteries at Samothrace, he was asked by the priest what especially dreadful thing he had done during his life, and he replied, “If any such deed has been committed by me, the gods themselves will know it.”

2 In answer to the Athenian who called the Spartans unlearned, he said, “At any rate we are the only people who have learned no evil from you.”

3 When another Athenian said to him, “You must admit that we have many a time put you to rout from the Cephisus,” he retorted, “But we have never put you to rout from the Eurotas.”

4 Being asked how anybody could best make himself agreeable to the people, he said, “If his conversation with them is most pleasant and his suggestions most profitable.”

5 When a lecturer was about to read a laudatory essay on Heracles, he said, “Why, who says anything against him?”

6 When Agesilaus was wounded in battle by the Thebans, Androcleidas said to his face, “You have your just reward for the lessons in fighting you have given to that people who had no desire to fight and no knowledge even of fighting.” For it appeared that they had been made warlike by the continual campaigns of Agesilaus against them.

7 He used to say that the young men were the walls of Sparta, and the points of their spears its boundaries.

8 In answer to the man who sought to know why the Spartans use short daggers in war, he said, “Because we fight close to the enemy.”

Antiochus

Antiochus, when he was Ephor, hearing that Philip had given Messenians their land, asked if he had also provided them with the power to prevail in fighting to keep it.

Areus

1 Areus, when some men commended, not their own wives, but certain wives of other men, said, “By Heaven, there ought to be no random talk about fair and noble women, and their characters ought to be totally unknown save only to their consorts.”

2 Once upon a time, when he was passing though Selinus in Sicily, he saw inscribed upon a monument this elegiac couplet:

Here at Selinus these men, who tyranny strove to extinguish,

Brazen-clad Ares laid low; nigh to our gates were they slain.

Whereupon he said, “You certainly deserved to die for trying to extinguish tyranny when it was ablaze; rather you ought to have let it burn itself out completely.”

Ariston

2181 When someone commended the maxim of Cleomenes, who, on being asked what a good king ought to do, said, “To do good to his friends and evil to his enemies,” Ariston said, “How much better, my good sir, to do good to our friends, and to make friends of our enemies?” This, which is universally conceded to be one of Socrates’ maxims, is also referred to Ariston.

2 When someone inquired how many Spartans there were in all, he said, “Enough to keep away our enemies.”

3 When one of the Athenians read a memorial oration bin praise of those who fell at the hands of the Spartans, he said, “What kind of men, then, do you think ours must be who vanquished these?”

Archidamidas

1 Archidamidas, in answer to a man who commended Charillus because he was gentle towards all alike, said, “And how could any man be justly commended if he be gentle towards the wicked?”

2 When somebody found fault with Hecataeus the sophist because, when he was received as a member at the common table, he spoke not a word, Archidamidas said, “You do not seem to realize that he who knows how to speak knows also the right time for speaking.”

Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus

1 Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, when someone inquired of him who were at the head of Sparta, said, “The laws and the magistrates in accordance with the laws.”

2 In answer to a man who praised a harper and expressed amazement at his ability, he said, “My good sir, what honours shall you be able to offer to good men when you have such praise for a harper?”

3 When someone, in introducing a musician to him, remarked, “This man is a good musician,” he said, “And in this country of ours that man there rates as a good soup-maker,” thus implying that there was no distinction between giving pleasure through the sound of instruments and giving it through the preparation of appetizing foods and soup.

4 When somebody promised him to make the wine pleasant to the taste, he said, “What for? For more of it will be used, and it will make the men’s eating together less beneficial.”

5 As he was establishing his camp hard by the city of Corinth, he saw hares start up from a spot near the wall. He said therefore to his fellow-soldiers, “The enemy are ours.”

6 When two persons accepted him as arbiter, he took them to the sacred precinct of Athena of the Brazen House, and made them swear to abide by his decision; and when they had given their oaths, he said, “My decision, then, is that you are not to leave this sacred precinct before you compose your differences.”

7 When Dionysius, the despot of Sicily, sent costly raiment to Archidamus’ daughters, he would not accept it, saying, “I am afraid that, if the girls should put it on, they would appear ugly to me.”

8 Observing that his son was fighting impetuously against the Athenians, he said, “Either add to your strength, or subtract from your courage.”

Archidamus, son of Agesilaus

1 Archidamus, the son of Agesilaus, when Philip, after the battle of Chaeroneia, wrote him a somewhat haughty letter, wrote in reply, “If you should measure your own shadow, you would not find that it has become any greater than before you were victorious.”

2 Being asked how much land the Spartans controlled, he said, “As much as they can reach with the spear.”

3 Periander, the physician, was distinguished in his profession and commended very highly, but was a writer of wretched verses. “Why in the world, Periander,” said Archidamus, “do you yearn to be called a bad poet instead of a skilful physician?”

4 In the war against Philip, when some proffered the advice that they ought to engage him in battle at a good distance from their own land, Archidamus said, “No, there is not what we ought to look to, but where, in fighting, we shall be superior to the enemy.”

5 In answer to those who commended him when he had been victorious in battle against the Arcadians, he said, “It would have been better if he had vanquished them by intelligence rather than by strength.”

2196 When he invaded Arcadia, he learned that the Eleans were supporting the Arcadians, and so he sent this letter to them: “Archidamus to the Eleans. Quiet is a good thing.”

7 In the plebeian war, when his allies sought to know how much money would be sufficient, and said it was only fair that he set a limit to their contributions, he said, “War does not feed on fixed rations.”

8 When he saw the missile shot by a catapult, which had been brought then for the first time from Sicily, he exclaimed, “Great Heavens! man’s valour is no more!”

9 When the Greeks were not willing to take his advice and break their agreements with Antipater and Craterus the Macedonian, band be free, because of a feeling that the Spartans would be harsher than the Macedonians, he said, “A sheep or a goat bleats always in the same way, but a man talks in a great variety of ways until he accomplishes what he has set his mind upon.”

Astycratidas

When someone said to Astycratidas, after the defeat of Agis their king in the battle against Antipater in the vicinity of Megalopolis, “What will you do, men of Sparta? Will you be subject to the Macedonians? he said, “What! Is there any way in which Antipater can forbid us to die fighting for Sparta?”

Bias

Bias, caught in an ambush by Iphicrates the Athenian general, and asked by his soldiers what was to be done, said, “What else except for you to save your lives and for me to die fighting?”

Brasidas

1 Brasidas caught a mouse among some figs, and, when he got bitten, let it go. Then, turning to those who were present, he said, “There is nothing so small that it does not save its life if it has the courage to defend itself against those who would lay hand on it.”

2 In a battle he was wounded by a spear which pierced his shield, and, pulling the weapon out of the wound, with this very spear he slew the foe. Asked how he got his wound, he said, “ ‘Twas when my shield turned traitor.”

3 As he was going forth to war he wrote to the Ephors, “What I wull to dae I’ll dae as regairds the war or be a deid mon.”

4 When it came to pass that he fell in trying to win independence for the Greeks who were living in the region of Thrace, the committee which was sent to Sparta waited upon his mother Argileonis. Her first question was whether Brasidas had come to his end honourably; and when the Thracians spoke of him in the highest terms, and said that there was no other like him, she said, “You have no knowledge of that, sirs, being from abroad; for Brasidas was indeed a good man, but Sparta has many better than he was.”

Damonidas

Damonidas, being assigned to the last place in the chorus by the director, exclaimed, “Good! You have discovered, sir, how this place which is without honour may be made a place of honour.”

Damis

Damis, with reference to the instructions sent from Alexander that they should pass a formal vote deifying him, said, “We concede to Alexander that, if he so wishes, he may be called a god.”

Damindas

When Philip invaded the Peloponnesus, and someone said, “There is danger that the Spartans may meet a dire fate if they do not make terms with the invader,” Damindas exclaimed, “You poor womanish thing! What dire fate could be ours if we have no fear of death?”

Dercylidas

Dercylidas, when Pyrrhus had his army near Sparta, was sent to him as ambassador; and when Pyrrhus stated that they must receive their king Cleonymus, or they would find out that they were no braver than any of the rest, Dercylidas interrupted to say, “If this man is a god, we do not fear him, for we are guilty of no wrong; but if he is a man, he is surely not superior to us.”

Demaratus

1 Demaratus, when Orontes had talked to him rather haughtily and someone remarked, 220”Orontes has treated you haughtily, Demaratus,” said, “He has committed no fault against me; for it is those who talk to please that do harm, not those who talk with hatred at heart.”

2 When someone asked why they visited disgrace upon those among them who lost their shields, but did not do the same thing to those who lost their helmets or their breastplates, he said, “Because these they put on for their own sake, but the shield for the common good of the whole line.”

3 As he was listening to a musician, he said, “He seems to do his silly task fairly well.”

4 In a council meeting he was asked whether it was due to foolishness or lack of words that he said nothing. “But a fool,” said he, “would not be able to hold his tongue.”

5 When someone inquired why he was an exile from Sparta, being a king, he said, “Because her laws are more powerful than I am.”

6 When one of the Persians, by unremitting bribery, had got away from him his beloved youth, and said to him, “Ho, Spartan, I have captivated your beloved,” he said, “Not you, I swear, but you have bought and paid for him!”

7 When one of the Persians deserted from the king and was persuaded by Demaratus to change his mind and return, and the king was going to have him put to death, Demaratus said: “For shame, your Majesty! To think that when this man was your enemy you could not punish him for his desertion but now that he has become your friend, you would put him to death!”

8 In answer to a man who was a parasite of the king and often jeered at him over his exile, he said, “I have no quarrel with you, my friend; for I have squandered my position in life.”

Ecprepes

Ecprepes, an Ephor, cut out with an adze two of the nine strings of Phrynis the musician, saying, “Do not murder music.”

Epaenetus

Epaenetus said that liars are to blame for all sins and crimes.

Euboedas

Euboedas, on hearing some men praising the wife of another man, could not stomach it, saying, “In regard to a woman’s endowments there should be absolutely no talk among those outside the family.”

Eudamidas, son of Archidamus

1 Eudamidas, the son of Archidamus and the brother of Agis, seeing Xenocrates in the Academy, already well on in years, discussing philosophy with his acquaintances, inquired who the old man was. Somebody said that he was a wise man and one of the seekers after virtue. “And when will he use it,” said Eudamidas, “if he is only now seeking for it?”

2 Hearing a philosopher discoursing to the effect that the wise man is the only good general, he said, “The speech is admirable, but the speaker is not to be trusted; for he has never been amid the blare of trumpets.”

3 Xenocrates had been expounding his theme, and had just reached the stopping-point when Eudamidas arrived. One of the persons with him remarked, “Just when we arrive he comes to the stopping-point.” “Quite properly so,” said Eudamidas, “if he has already said all he wanted to say.” “It would have been nice to hear him,” said the other. “Indeed,” said Eudamidas, “and if we came to a man who had just dined, should we insist that he eat another dinner?”

4 Someone inquired why, when the citizens professed to be all for war against the Macedonians, he himself decided in favour of keeping the peace. He replied, “Because I do not need to prove that they are lying.”

5 When another man brought up their brave successes against the Persians, and was urgent for the war, Eudamidas said, “You do not seem to realize that your proposition is the same as fighting fifty wolves after overcoming a thousand sheep!”

6 When a certain musician made a great hit, they asked Eudamidas what he thought of the man, and he replied, “He has great power to charm in a trifling matter.”

7 When someone praised Athens, he said “And who could praise that city deservedly, towards which nobody has ever felt any affection for having been made a better man by it?”

8 When a man from Argos said that the Spartans became more unscrupulous on going abroad and being out of the control of their long-established laws, he said, 221”But you, when you come to Sparta, do not become worse, but better.”

9 When Alexander caused proclamation to be made at Olympia that all exiles might return to their own land, save only the Thebans, Eudamidas said, “The proclamation for you, men of Thebes, is unfortunate, but very complimentary; for it is you only that Alexander fears.”

10 Being asked for what purpose they offered sacrifice to the Muses before hazardous ventures, he said, “So that our deeds may find good words.”

Eurycratidas, son of Anaxandridas

Eurycratidas, the son of Anaxandridas, when someone inquired why the Ephors try cases involving contracts each day, said “So that also amid our enemies we may trust one another.”

Zeuxidamus

1 When someone inquired why they kept the laws in regard to bravery unwritten, and did not have them written down and thus give them to the young men to read, Zeuxidamus said, “Because the young ought to accustom themselves to deeds of manly valour, a better thing than to apply their mind to writings.”

2 When a certain Aetolian asserted that, for those who are able to play the part of real men, war is better than peace, Zeuxidamus said, “By Heaven, no; but for such men death is better than life.”

Herondas

Herondas was at Athens when a man there was found guilty on a charge of not having any occupation, and when he heard of this, he bade them point out to him the man who had been convicted of the freeman’s crime!

Thearidas

Thearidas, as he was whetting his sword, was asked if it was sharp, and he replied, “Sharper than slander.”

Themisteas

Themisteas foretold to Leonidas, the king, the coming destruction both of himself and of his fellow-soldiers at Thermopylae, for he was a prophet. He was sent away by Leonidas to Sparta, on the pretext of announcing there what would come to pass, but in reality so that he should not suffer death with the rest. He, however, would not brook this, but said, “I was sent out to fight, not to carry messages.”

Theopompus

1 Theopompus, in answer to a man who asked how anyone could keep a kingdom most securely, said, “If he concede to his friends their just share of frank speech, and, so far as lies in his power, do not suffer any of his subjects to be wronged.”

2 In answer to a man from abroad who said that among his own citizens he was called a lover of Sparta, he said, “It would be better to be called a lover of your own country than a lover of Sparta.”

3 When the ambassador from Elis said that his citizens had sent him for the especial reason that he alone emulated the Spartan way of living, Theopompus said, “Is your way of living or that of the other citizens better?” And when the man said that his own was, Theopompus said, “How, then, can that State be saved in which, among many citizens, only one is a good man?”

4 When someone said that Sparta was saved through its kings, because they were competent to rule, he said, “Not so, but through its citizens, because they are obedient to the rulers.”

5 When the people of Pylos voted him some unusually high honours, he wrote in reply that time increases modest honours, but obliterates those that are extravagant.

6 When someone pointed out to him a wall, and inquired if it was strong and high, he said, “Is it not a place where women live?”

Thorycion

Thorycion, arriving from Delphi and seeing in the Isthmus the forces of Philip, who had already gained possession of the narrow entrance, said, “The Peloponnesus has poor gate-keepers in you, men of Corinth!”

Thectamenes

Thectamenes, when the Ephors condemned him to death, went away smiling. Someone among the bystanders asked him if he felt such contempt for the laws of Sparta. “No,” said he, “but I rejoice to think that I must pay this penalty myself without begging or borrowing anything from anybody.”

Hippodamus

222 Hippodamus, when Agis was taking his place on the field of battle beside Archidamus, was sent with Agis to Sparta to render his services there. “But look you,” said he, “I shall meet no more honourable death than in playing the part of a brave man for Sparta’s sake.” (He was over eighty years old.) And thereupon, seizing his arms and taking his stand at the king’s right hand, he fell fighting.

Hippocratidas

1 This is the answer of Hippocratidas to the governor of Caria who wrote a letter to him because a man from Sparta had been privy to the plot of certain conspirators, and had said nothing about it; and the governor added a line, asking how he should deal with him. Hippocratidas wrote in reply: “If you have done him any great favour, put him to death; but if not, expel him from your country, for he is a poltroon so far as any virtue is concerned.”

2 When a youth with a lover in attendance met him one day, and turned colour, he said, “You ought to walk with persons such that when you are seen with them you shall keep the same complexion.”

Callicratidas

1 Callicratidas, an admiral, when Lysander’s friends made him a fair offer that he permit them to make away with one of their enemies and receive ten thousand pounds, although he was in sore need of money for rations for his sailors, would not consent. Cleander, who was a member of his council, said, “But I would take it, if I were you.” “And so would I,” said Callicratidas, “if I were you!”

2 When he came to Cyrus the Younger at Sardis (who was allied with the Spartans) to get money for his fleet, on the first day he bade them send in word that he wished to have an audience with Cyrus. But when he was told that Cyrus was busy drinking, he said, “I will wait till he has finished drinking.” And at that time he withdrew, when he realized that it was not possible to meet Cyrus on that day, thus creating the impression that he was somewhat lacking in manners. On the succeeding day, when he was again told that Cyrus was drinking and would not come forth, he said, “We must not be so eager to get money as to do anything unworthy of Sparta,” and withdrew to Ephesus, invoking many evil curses on those who were first wantonly treated by the barbarians and had taught the barbarians to be arrogant because of wealth. And he swore to the persons present that, just so soon as he should arrive at Sparta, he would do everything to bring about a reconciliation among the Greeks, that they might become more formidable to the barbarians, and cease begging them for their resources to use against one another.

3 Being asked what kind of men the Ionians were, he said, “Poor freemen, but good slaves.”

4 When Cyrus sent on money to pay the soldiers, and special presents for himself as a token of friendship, he took the money only and sent back the presents, saying that there was no need of any private friendship between him and Cyrus, but the general friendship which had been contracted with all the Spartans would also serve for him.

5 As he was about to engage in the naval battle at Arginusae, Hermon the pilot said that it would be well to sail away, for the ships of the Athenians were many more in number; but Callicratidas said, “And what of that? To flee is a disgrace and an injury to Sparta. No; to stay here, be it death or be it victory, is best.”

6 As he offered sacrifice before the battle, and heard from the seer that the indications of the omens were victory for the army, but death for its commander, he said, not at all disconcerted, “Sparta’s fate rests not with one man. For, if I am killed, my country will not be impaired in any way; but if I yield to the enemy, it will be.” And so, after appointing Cleander to take his place as commander, he put forth without delay for the naval engagement, and met his death in the battle.

Cleombrotus, son of Pausanias

2231 Cleombrotus, the son of Pausanias, when a man from abroad was disputing with Cleombrotus’s father about excellence, said, “My father is a better man than you — until you too have become a father.”

Cleomenes, son of Anaxandridas

1 Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandridas, said that Homer was the poet of the Spartans, and Hesiod of the Helots; for Homer had given the necessary directions for fighting, and Hesiod for farming.

2 Having made an armistice of seven days with the Argives, he kept a watch on them, and on the third night, when they were sleeping because of their reliance on the truce, he attacked them, and slew some and took the others prisoners. b 3 When he was reproached for his violation of the oath, he said that he had not included the nights as well as the days in his plighted word; and anyway, whatever ill one can do to one’s enemies is regarded, among both gods and men, as something vastly higher than justice.

4 It was his fortune to be repulsed from Argos, to gain which he had violated the truce, owing to the women’s taking down the weapons in the shrines and defending themselves against him with these. Later he went out of his mind, and, getting hold of a small dagger, he slashed himself, beginning with his ankles until he reached the vital parts, and thus departed this life laughing and grinning.

5 The seer tried to dissuade him from leading his army against the city of the Argives, for the return, he said, would be made in disgrace. But when Cleomenes had advanced near the city, and saw the gates closed and the women upon the walls, he said, “Does it seem to you that the return from here can be made in disgrace, where, since the men are dead, the women have barred the gates?”

6 In answer to those of the Argives who upbraided him as an impious perjurer, he said, “You have the power to speak ill of me, but I have the power to do ill to you.”

7 To the ambassadors from Samos who urged him to make war upon the despot Polycrates, and for this reason spoke at great length, he said, “What you said at the beginning I do not remember; for that reason I do not comprehend the middle part; and the conclusion I do not approve.”

8 A certain pirate overran the country, and, when he was captured, said, “I had not the means to provide subsistence for my soldiers; therefore, to those who had it, but would not willingly give it, I came with the purpose of taking it by force.” To this Cleomenes said, “Villainy is curt.”

9 When a certain low fellow spoke ill of him, he said, “So it is for this reason, is it, that you speak ill of everyone, that we, busied in defending ourselves, may not have time to speak of your baseness?”

10 When one of the citizens said that the good king ought to be mild at all times and in every way, he remarked, “Yes, but not to the extent of being despised.”

11 When he was afflicted with a lingering illness, and began to give attention to mind-healers and seers, to whom formerly he had given no attention, someone expressed surprise. “Why are you surprised?” said he; “for I am not now the same man that I was, and, not being the same man, I do not approve the same things.”

12 When a public lecturer spoke at considerable length about bravery, he burst out laughing and when the man said, “Why do you laugh, Cleomenes, at hearing a man speak about bravery, and that, too, when you are a king?” “Because, my friend, “ he said, “if it had been a swallow speaking about it, I should have done the same thing, but if it had been an eagle, I should have kept very quiet.”

13 When the people of Argos asserted that they would wipe out their former defeat by fighting again, he said, “I wonder if by the addition of a word of two syllables you have now become more powerful than you were before!”

14 When someone upbraided him, saying, “You are inclined to luxury, Cleomenes,” he said, “Well, that is better than being unjust. And you are avaricious though you possess property enough.”

15 When someone, wishing to introduce a musician to him, 224 said, in addition to other commendations, that the man was the best musician among the Greeks, Cleomenes pointed to one of the persons near, and said, “Yonder man, I swear, ranks with me as the best soup-maker.”

16 Maeandrius, the despot of Samos, because of the inroad of the Persians, fled to Sparta, and exhibited all the gold and silver vessels which he had brought with him, and offered to favour Cleomenes with as many as he wished; but he would have none, and taking good care that the man should not distribute any among the rest of the citizens, he went to the Ephors and said that it was better for Sparta that his own friend and guest from Samos should withdraw from the Peloponnesus, so that he should not persuade anyone of the Spartans to become a bad man. And they listened to his advice and proclaimed the expulsion of Maeandrius that very day.

17 When someone said, “Why have you not killed off the people of Argos who wage war against you so often?” he said, “Oh, we would not kill them off, for we want to have some trainers for our young men.”

18 When somebody inquired of him why Spartans do not dedicate to the gods the spoils from their enemies, he said, “Because they are taken from cowards.”

Cleomenes, son of Cleombrotus

Cleomenes, the son of Cleombrotus, when someone offered him fighting cocks and said that they would die fighting for victory, said, “Well then, give me some of those that kill them, for those are better than these.”

Labotas

Labotas, when someone spoke at very great length, said, “Why, pray, such a big introduction to a small subject? For proportionate to the topic should be the words you use.”

Leotychidas

1 Leotychidas the First, when somebody remarked to him that he was very changeable, said, “Yes, because of varying occasion; not like all you because of your baseness.”

2 In answer to the man who asked how any man could best preserve his present state of good fortune, he said, “By not trusting everything to chance.”

3 Being asked what freeborn boys had best learn, he said, “Those things which may help them when they become men.”

4 When someone inquired for what reason the Spartans drank so little, he said “So that others may not deliberate over us, but we over others.”

Leotychidas, son of Ariston

1 Leotychidas, the son of Ariston, in answer to a man who said that the sons of Demaratus were speaking ill of him, remarked, “Egad, I don’t wonder; for not one of them could ever speak a good word.”

2 When at the adjacent gate a snake had coiled around the key, and the soothsayers declared this to be a prodigy, he said, “It doesn’t seem so to me, but if the key had coiled around the snake, that would be a prodigy!”

3 This is his retort to Philip, the priest of the Orphic mysteries, who was in the direst straits of poverty, but used to assert that those who were initiated under his rites were happy after the conclusion of this life; to him Leotychidas said, “You idiot! Why then don’t you die as speedily as possible so that you may with that cease from bewailing your unhappiness and poverty?”

4 When someone inquired why they did not dedicate to the gods the arms taken from the enemy, he said that property wrested from its owners owing to cowardice it is not good either for the young men to see, or to dedicate to the gods.

Leo, son of Eurycratidas

1 When Leo, the son of Eurycratidas, was asked what kind of a city one could live in so as to live most safely, he said, “Where the inhabitants shall possess neither too much nor too little, and where right shall be strong and wrong shall be weak.”

2 Seeing that the runners at Olympia were eager to gain some advantage in starting, he said, “How much more eager are the runners for a quick start than for fair play!”

3 When someone, at an inappropriate time, discoursed about some matters which were not unprofitable, he said, “My friend, in needless time you dwell upon the need!”

Leonidas, son of Anaxandridas

1 Leonidas, the son of Anaxandridas and the brother of Cleomenes, in answer to a man who remarked, 225”Except for your being king, you are no different from the rest of us,” said, “But if I were no better than you others, I should not be king.”

2 His wife Gorgo inquired, at the time when he was setting forth to Thermopylae to fight the Persian, if he had any instructions to give her, and he said, “To marry good men and bear good children.”

3 When the Ephors said that he was taking but few men to Thermopylae, he said, “Too many for the enterprise on which we going.”

4 And when again they said, “Hae ye decided to dae aught else save to keep the barbarians from gettin’ by?” “Nominally that,” he said, “but actually expecting to die for the Greeks.”

5 When he had arrived at Thermopylae he said to his comrades in arms, “They say that the barbarian has come near and is comin’ on while we are wastin’ time. Truth, soon we shall either kill the barbarians, or else we are bound to be killed oursel’s.”

6 When someone said, “Because of the arrows of the barbarians it is impossible to see the sun,” he said, “Won’t it be nice, then, if we shall have shade in which to fight them?”

7 When someone else said, “They are near to us,” he said, “Then we also are near to them.”

8 When someone said, “Leonidas, are you here to take such a hazardous risk with so few men against so many?” he said, “If you men think that I rely on numbers, then all Greece is not sufficient, for it is but a small fraction of their numbers; but if on men’s valour, then this number will do.”

9 When another man remarked the same thing he said, “In truth I am taking many if they are all to be slain.”

10 Xerxes wrote to him, “It is possible for you, by not fighting against God but by ranging yourself on my side, to be the sole ruler of Greece.” But he wrote in reply, “If you had any knowledge of the noble things of life, you would refrain from coveting others’ possessions; but for me to die for Greece is better than to be the sole ruler over the people of my race.”

11 When Xerxes wrote again, “Hand over your arms,” he wrote in reply, “Come and take them.”

12 He wished to engage the enemy at once, but the other commanders, in answer to his proposal, said that he must wait for the rest of the allies. “Why,” said he, “are not all present who intend to fight? Or do you not realize that the only men who fight against the enemy are those who respect and revere their kings?”

13 He bade his soldiers eat their breakfast as if they were to eat their dinner in the other world.

14 Being asked why the best of men prefer a glorious death to an inglorious life, he said, “Because they believe the one to be Nature’s gift but the other to be within their own control.”

15 Wishing to save the lives of the young men, and knowing full well that they would not submit to such treatment, he gave to each of them a secret dispatch, and sent them to the Ephors. He conceived the desire to save also three of the grown men, but they fathomed his design, and would not submit to accepting the dispatches. One of them said, “I came with the army, not to carry messages, but to fight;” and the second, “I should be a better man if I stayed here”; and the third, “I will not be behind these, but first in the fight.”

Lochagus

Lochagus, the father of Polyaenides and Seiron, when word was brought to him that one of his sons was dead, said, “I have known this long while that he was fated to die.”

Lysander

1 When Dionysius, the despot of Sicily, sent costly garments for Lysander’s daughters, he would not accept them, saying that he was afraid that because of them his daughters would appear ugly rather than beautiful. But a little later, when he was sent as ambassador to the same despot from the same State, Dionysius sent to him two robes and bade him choose whichever one of them he would, and take it to his daughter; but Lysander said that she herself would make a better choice, and, taking them both, he departed.

2 Lysander, who was a clever quibbler, and given to employing cunning deceptions to further most of his designs, counted justice as mere expediency, and honour as that which is advantageous. He said that the truth is better than falsehood, but that the worth and value of either is determined by the use to which it is put.

3 In answer to those who blamed him because his carrying out most of his designs through deception, which they said was unworthy of Heracles, and gaining his successes by wile in no straightforward way, he said laughing that where he could not get on with the lion’s skin it must be pieced out with the skin of the fox.

4 When others censured him for his violation of his oaths which he had made in Miletus he said that one must trick children with knuckle-bones, but men with oaths.

5 He conquered the Athenians by a ruse at Aegospotami, and by pressing them hard through famine he forced them to surrender their city, whereupon he wrote to the Ephors, “Athens is taken.”

6 In answer to the Argives, who were disputing with the Spartans in regard to the boundaries of their land and said that they had the better of the case, he drew his sword and said, “He who is master of this talks best about boundaries of land.”

7 Seeing that the Boeotians were wavering at the time when he was about to pass through their country he sent to them to inquire whether he should march through their land with spears at rest or ready for action.

8 When a Megarian in the common council used plain words to him, he said, “My friend, your words need a city to back them.”

9 When the Corinthians had revolted and he was going through their country along by the walls and saw that the Spartans were reluctant to attack, a hare was seen leaping across a ditch, whereupon he said, “Are you not ashamed, men of Sparta, to be afraid of such enemies as these, who are so slack that hares sleep in the walls of their city?”

10 As he was consulting the oracle in Samothrace, the priest bade him tell what was the most lawless deed that had ever been committed by him in his lifetime. Lysander asked, “Must I do this at your command or at the command of the gods?” When the priest said, “At the command of the gods,” Lysander said, “Then do you take yourself out of my way, and I will tell them in case they inquire.”

11 When a Persian asked what kind of government he commended most highly, he said, “The government which duly awards what is fitting to both the brave and the cowardly.”

12 In answer to a man who said that he commended him and was very fond of him, he said “I have two oxen in a field, and although they both may utter no sound, I know perfectly well which one is lazy and which one is the worker.”

13 When someone was reviling him, he said, “Talk right on, you miserable foreigner, talk, and don’t leave out anything if thus you may be able to empty your soul of the vicious notions with which you seem to be filled.”

14 Some time after his death, when a dispute arose regarding a certain alliance, Agesilaus came to Lysander’s house to examine the documents in regard to this, for Lysander had kept these at his own house. Agesilaus found also a book written by Lysander in regard to the government, to this effect: that the citizens should take away the kingship from the Eurypontids and the Agiads and put it up for election, and make their choice from the best men, so that this high honour should belong not to those who were descended from Heracles, but to men like Heracles, who should be selected for their excellence; for it was because of such excellence that Heracles was exalted to divine honours. This document Agesilaus was bent upon publishing to the citizens, and demonstrating what kind of a citizen Lysander had been in secret, and with the purpose also of discrediting the friends of Lysander. But they say that Cratidas, who at that time was at the head of the Ephors, anxious lest, if the speech should be read, it might convert the people to this way of thinking, restrained Agesilaus and said that he ought not to disinter Lysander, 230 but to inter the speech along with him, since it was composed with a vicious purpose and in a plausible vein.

15 The suitors of his daughters, when after his death he was found to be a poor man, renounced their obligations; but the Ephors punished them because when they thought he was rich they courted his favour, but when they found from his poverty that he was just and honest they disdained him.

Namertes

Namertes was sent as an ambassador, and when one of the people in that country congratulated him because he had many friends, he asked if this man had any sure means of testing the man of many friends; and when the other desired to learn, Namertes said, “By means of misfortune.”

Nicander

1 Nicander, when someone said that the Argives were speaking ill of him, said, “Well then, they are paying the penalty for speaking ill of the good!”

2 When someone inquired why the Spartans wore their hair long and cultivated beards, he said, “Because for a man his own adornment is the very beside and cheapest.”

3 When one of the Athenians said, “Nicander, you Spartans insist too much on your principle of doing no work,” he said, “Quite true; we do not make work of this thing or that thing in your haphazard fashion.”

Panthoedas

1 Panthoedas went on embassy to Asia and when they pointed out to him a very strong wall he said, “By Heaven, strangers, fine quarters for women!”

2 When the philosophers in the Academy were conversing long and seriously, and afterwards some people asked Panthoidas how their conversation impressed him, he said, “What else than serious? But there is no good in it unless you put it to use.”

Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus

1 Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, at the time when the people of Delos were asserting their rightful claims to the island against the Athenians, and said that according to the law which prevailed among them there were no births and no burials in the island, said, “How can this be your native land in which no one of you has ever been born nor shall ever be hereafter?”

2 When the exiles were inciting him to lead his army against the Athenians, and saying that, when his name was proclaimed at Olympia, they were the only people who hissed him, he said, “What do you think that those who hissed when they were being well treated will do if they are treated ill?”

3 When someone inquired why the Spartans had made Tyrtaeus the poet a citizen, he said, “So a stranger shall never appear as our leader.”

4 In answer to the man who was weak in body, but was urging that they risk a battle against the enemy by both land and sea, he said, “Are you willing to strip yourself and show what kind of man you are — you who advise us to fight?”

5 When some people were amazed at the costliness of the raiment found among the spoils of the barbarians, he said that it would have been better for them to be themselves men of worth than to possess things of worth.

6 After the victory at Plataea over the Persians he ordered that the dinner which had been prepared for the Persians should be served to himself and his officers. As this had a wondrous sumptuousness, he said, “By Heaven, the Persian was a greedy fellow who, when he had all this, came after our barley-cake.”

Pausanias, the son of Pleistoanax

1 Pausanias, the son of Pleistoanax, in answer to the question why it was not permitted to change any of the ancient laws in their country, said, “Because the laws ought to have authority over the men, and not the men over the laws.”

2 When, in Tegea, after he had been exiled, he commended the Spartans, someone said, “Why did you not stay in Sparta instead of going into exile?” And he said, “Because physicians, too, are wont to spend their time, not among the healthy, but where the sick are.”

3 When someone inquired of him how they could become able to conquer the Thracians, he said, “If we should make the best man our general.”

2314 When a physician paid him a visit and said, “You have nothing wrong with you,” he said, “No, for I do not employ you as my physician.”

5 When one of his friends blamed him because he spoke ill of a certain physician, although he had never had anything to do with him, and had not suffered any harm at his hands, he said, “Because if I had ever had anything to do with him I should not now be alive.”

6 When the physician said to him, “You have lived to be an old man,” he said, “That is because I never employed you as my physician.”

7 He said that the best physician was the man who did not allow his patients to rot, but buried them quickly.

Paedaretus

1 Paedaretus, when someone said that the enemy were many in number, remarked, “Then we shall be the more famous, for we shall kill more men.”

2 Seeing a certain man who was effeminate by nature, but was commended by the citizens for his moderation, he said, “People should not praise men who are like to women nor women who are like to men, unless some necessity overtake the woman.”

3 When he was not chosen as one of the three hundred, which was rated as the highest honour in the State, he went away cheerful and smiling; but when the Ephors called him back, and asked why he was laughing, he said, “Because I congratulate the State for having three hundred citizens better than myself.”

Pleistarchus

1 Pleistarchus the son of Leonidas, in answer to one who asked him for what reason they did not take their titles from the names of the first kings, said, “Because the first kings needed to be absolute monarchs, but those who followed them had no such need.”

2 When a certain advocate kept making jests, he said, “You had better be on your guard, my friend, against jesting all the time, lest you become a jest yourself, just as those who wrestle all the time become wrestlers.”

3 In retort to the man who imitated a nightingale, he said, “My friend, I have had more pleasure in hearing the nightingale itself.”

4 When someone said that a certain evil-speaker was commending him, he said, “I wonder whether possibly someone may not have told him that I was dead; for the man can never say a good word of anybody who is alive.”

Pleistoanax

Pleistoanax, the son of Pausanias, when an Attic orator called the Spartans unlearned, said, “You are quite right, for we alone of the Greeks have learned no evil from you.”

Polydorus

1 Polydorus, the son of Alcamenes, when a certain man was continually making threats against his enemies, said, “Don’t you see that you are using up the best part of your vengeance?”

2 As he was leading out his army to Messene, someone asked him if he was going to fight against his brothers. He said that he was not, but was merely proceeding to the unassigned portion of the land.

3 The Argives, after the battle of the three hundred, were again overcome, with all their forces, in a set battle, and the allies urged Polydorus not to let slip the opportunity, but to make a descent upon the enemy’s wall and capture their city; for this, they said, would be very easy, since the men had been destroyed and the women only were left. He said in answer to them, “To my mind it is not honourable, when fighting on even terms, to conquer our opponents, but, after having fought to settle the boundaries of the country, to desire to capture the city I do not regard as just; for I came to recapture territory and not to capture a city.”

4 Being asked why the Spartans risked their lives so bravely in war, he said, “Because they have learned to respect their commanders and not to fear them.”

Polycratidas

Polycratidas was sent, along with others, as ambassador to the king’s generals, and when these asked whether they were there as private citizens or had been sent as public representatives, he said, “If we succeed, public; if not, private.”

Phoebidas

Phoebidas, before the hazardous engagement at Leuctra, when some remarked that this day would show the brave man, said that the day was worth much if it had the power to show the brave man.

Soüs

232 The story is told that Soüs being besieged by the Cleitorians in a rugged and waterless stronghold, agreed to give up to them the land which he had captured by the spear if all the men with him should drink from the neighbouring spring. This spring the enemy were guarding. When the oaths had been exchanged, he got together his men and offered the kingdom to the man who would not drink; however no one had the strength to resist, but they all drank; whereupon he came down after all the rest, and sprinkled himself, the enemy still being present, and went back and took possession of the land on the ground that he had not drunk.

Teleclus

1 Teleclus, in answer to the man who said that Teleclus’s father was speaking ill of him, said, “If he had had no cause to speak, he would not have spoken.”

2 When his brother said to him that the citizens did not comport themselves toward himself as they did toward the king (although he was of the same family), but with much less consideration, he said, “The reason is, you do not know how to submit to injustice, and I do.”

3 Being asked why it was the custom among them for the younger men to rise up and give place to the elder, he said, “So that, having this attitude regarding honour toward those who are not related to them, they may pay greater honour to their parents.”

4 When someone inquired how much property he possessed, he said, “Not more than enough.”

Charillus

1 Charillus, being asked why Lycurgus made so few laws, said, “Because those who use few words have need of but few laws.”

2 When someone inquired why they took their girls into public places unveiled, but their married women veiled, he said, “Because the girls have to find husbands, and the married women have to keep to those who have them!”

3 When one of the Helots conducted himself rather boldly toward him, he said, “If I were not angry, I would kill you.”

4 When someone asked him what he thought to be the best form of government, he said, “That in which the greatest number of citizens are willing, without civil strife, to vie with one another in virtue.”

5 When someone inquired why all the statues of the gods erected among them were equipped with weapons, he said, “So that we may not put upon the gods the reproaches which are spoken against men because of their cowardice, and so that the young men may not pray to the gods unarmed.”

6 In answer to the man who inquired why they wore their hair long, he said, “Because this is the natural and inexpensive form of ornament.”

Various Sayings of Spartans to Fame Unknown

1 When the ambassadors of the Samians spoke at great length, the Spartans said to them, “We hae forgot the first part, and the later part we did na ken because we hae forgot the first.”

2 When a speaker extended his remarks to a great length, and then asked for answers to report to his citizens, they said, “Report that you found it hard to stop speaking and we to listen.”

3 In answer to the Thebans who were disputing with them over some matters, they said, “You should have less pride or more power.”

4 A Spartan, being asked why he wore his beard so very long, said, “So that I may see my grey hairs and do nothing unworthy of them.”

5 Another, in answer to the inquiry, “Why do you use short swords?” said, “So that we may get close to the enemy.”

6 When someone was praising the Argive warriors, a Spartan said, “Yes, at Troy!”

7 Another, being told that some people after dining are forced to drink, said, “What, and are they forced to eat also?”

8 When Pindar wrote,

Athens the mainstay of Greece,

Spartan said that Greece was like to fall if it rested on any such mainstay as that!

9 Someone on seeing a painting in which Spartans were depicted as slain by Athenians, kept repeating, “Brave, brave Athenians.” A Spartan cut in with, “Yes, in the picture!”

10 To a man who was listening avidly to some spitefully slanderous remarks a Spartan said, “Stop being so generous with your ears against me!”

11 To a man who was being punished, and kept saying, “I did wrong unwillingly,” someone retorted, “Then take your punishment unwillingly.”

12 Someone, seeing men seated on stools in a privy, said, “God forbid that I should ever sit where it is not possible to rise and yield my place to an older man.”

13 When some Chians, on a visit to Sparta, vomited after dinner in the hall of the ephors, and befouled with ordure the very chairs in which the Ephors were wont to sit, 233 the Spartans, first of all, instituted a vigorous investigation, lest possibly these might be citizens; but when they learned that they were, in fact, Chians, they caused public proclamation to be made that ‘The Spartans grant permission to the Chians to be filthy.’

14 When someone saw almonds of the hard sort selling at double the price of others, he said, “Are stones so scarce?”

15 A man plucked a nightingale and finding almost no meat, said, “It’s all voice ye are, and nought else.”

16 One of the Spartans saw Diogenes the Cynic holding his arms around a bronze statue in very cold weather, and asked Diogenes if he were cold, and when Diogenes said “No,” the other said, “What great thing are you doing then?”

17 One of the people of Metapontum, being reproached for cowardice by a Spartan, said, “But as a matter of fact we have not a little of the country of other states”; whereupon the Spartan replied, “Then you are not only cowardly, but also unjust.”

18 A man who was visiting Sparta stood for a long time upon one foot, and said to a Spartan, “I do not think that you, sir, could stand upon one foot as long as that”; and the other interrupting said, “No, but there is not a single goose that could not do it.”

19 When a man boasted greatly of his art in speaking, a Spartan said, “By Heaven, there is no art nor can there be an art without a firm hold on truth.”

20 When an Argive said once upon a time, “There are many tombs of Spartans in our country,” a Spartan said, “But there is not a single tomb of an Argive in our country,” indicating by this that the Spartans had often set foot in Argos, but the Argives had never set foot in Sparta.

21 A Spartan having been taken prisoner in war and put up for sale, when the crier said, “I offer a Spartan for sale,” stopped his mouth, saying, “Cry a prisoner of war.”

22 One of the men serving in the army of Lysimachus, being asked by him whether he were not one of the Helots, said, “Do you suppose that any Spartan would come to get the sixpence which you pay?”

23 At the time when Thebans had conquered the Spartans at Leuctra and advanced to the river Eurotas itself, one of them, boasting, said, “Where are the Spartans now?” A Spartan who had been captured by them said, “They are not here; otherwise you would not have come thus far.”

24 At the time when the Athenians had surrendered their city, they declared it was only right that Samos should be left to them, but the Spartans said, “Do you, at a time when you do not even own yourselves, seek to possess others?” From this incident arose the proverb:

Who does not own himself would Samos own.

25 When the Spartans had taken by storm a certain city, the Ephors said, “Gone is the wrestling-school of our young men; they no longer will have competitors.”

26 When their king promised to wipe out completely another city which, as it happened, had given much trouble to the Spartans, they would not allow it, saying, “You must not abolish nor remove the whetstone of our youth.”

27 They appointed no trainers to instruct in wrestling so that the rivalry might not be in skill, but in courage. This is the reason why Lysanoridas, when he was asked how Charon had conquered him, said, “By his great resourcefulness.”

28 Philip wrote at the time when he entered their country, asking whether they wished that he should come as a friend or as a foe; and they made answer, “Neither.”

29 They sent an ambassador to Antigonus, son of Demetrius, and, upon learning that the ambassador had addressed Antigonus as King, they fined him, although he had brought for each one of them a bushel and a half of wheat at a time when there was great scarcity of food.

30 When Demetrius complained that they had sent only one ambassador to him, they replied, “Is it not enough — one to one?”

31 When a bad man brought in a very good idea, they accepted it; but they took it away from him and bestowed the right of proposing it upon another man who had lived a virtuous life.

32 When two brothers quarrelled with each other, the Spartans fined the father because he permitted his sons to quarrel.

33 They fined a visiting harp-player because he played the harp with his fingers.

34 The boys were fighting, and one of them wounded the other mortally with the stroke of a sickle. The friends of the wounded boy, as they were about to separate, promised to avenge him and make away with the one who had struck him, but the boy said, “In Heaven’s name do not, for it is not right; 234 the fact is, I should have done that myself if I had been quick enough and brave enough.”

35 In the case of another boy, when the time had arrived during which it was the custom for the free boys to steal whatever they could, and it was a disgrace not to escape being found out, when the boys with him had stolen a young fox alive, and given it to him to keep, and those who had lost the fox came in search for it, the boy happened to have slipped the fox under his garment. The beast, however, became savage and ate through his side to the vitals; but the boy did not move or cry out, so as to avoid being exposed, and left, when they had departed, the boys saw what had happened, and blamed him, saying that it would have been better to let the fox be seen than to hide it even unto death; but the boy said, “Not so, but better to die without yielding to the pain than through being detected because of weakness of spirit to gain a life to be lived in disgrace.”

36 Some people, encountering Spartans on the road, said, “You are in luck, for robbers have just left this place,” but they said, “Egad, no, but it is they who are in luck for not encountering us.”

37 A Spartan being asked what he knew, said, “How to be free.”

38 A Spartan boy, being taken captive by Antigonus the king and sold, was obedient in all else to the one who had bought him, that is, in everything which he thought fitting for a free person to do, but when his owner bade him bring him a chamber-pot, he would not brook such treatment, saying, “I will not be a slave”; and when the other was insistent, he went up to the roof, and saying, “You will gain much by your bargain,” he threw himself down and ended his life.

39 Another one being sold, when someone said, “If I buy you, will you be good and helpful?” said, “Yes, and if you do not buy me.”

40 Another captive being put up for sale, when the crier that he was offering a slave for sale, said, “You damnable wretch, won’t you say ‘a captive’?”

41 A Spartan had as an emblem on his shield a fly, and that, too, no bigger than life-size. When some mockingly said that he had done this to escape being noticed, he said, “Rather that I may be noticeable; for I come so close to the enemy that my emblem is seen by them in its true size.”

42 Another, when a lyre was brought in at an evening party, “It is not Spartan to indulge in nonsense.”

43 A Spartan, being asked if the road into Sparta were safe, said, That depends on what kind of a mon ye are; for the lions gang about where they wull, but the hares we hunt over that land.”

44 In a clinch one wrestler, who had the other by the neck, overpowered him with little effort, and pulled him to the ground. Since the one who was down was at a disadvantage in using his body, he bit the arm that held him. His opponent said, “Spartan, you bite like a woman.” “No, indeed,” said he, “but like a lion.”

45 A lame man was going forth to war, and some persons followed after him laughing. He turned around and said, “You vile noddles! A man does not need to run away when he fights the enemy, but to stay where he is and hold his ground.”

46 Another, mortally wounded by an arrow, said, as his life was ebbing away, “I am not troubled because I must die, but because my death comes at the hands of a womanish archer, and before I have accomplished anything.”

47 A man stopped at an inn and gave the innkeeper a piece of meat to prepare; and when the innkeeper asked for cheese and oil besides, the other said, “If I had cheese, what need should I have of meat too?”

48 In answer to the man who called Lampis of Aegina happy, because he seemed very rich in having many cargoes on the sea in ships, a Spartan said, “I do not pay much attention to happiness that hangs by ropes!”

49 When somebody told a Spartan that he was lying, the Spartan replied, “Yea, we are free men; but ithers, if they dinna tell the truth, will rue it.”

50 When someone set himself to make a corpse stand upright, and, for all his efforts, was unable to do this, he said, “Egad, there is need of something inside.”

51 Tynnichus, when his son Thrasybulus was slain, bore it sturdily; and this epigram was written on him:

235 Lifeless to Pitane came, on his shield upborne, Thrasybulus;

Seven the wounds he received, pierced by the Argive spears;

All in the front did he show them; and him with his blood-stained body

Tynnichus placed on the pyre, saying these words in his eld:

“Let the poor cowards be mourned, but with never a tear shall I bury

You, my son, who are mine, yea, and are Sparta’s as well.”

52 When the keeper of a bath was pouring in a great quantity of water for Alcibiades, a Spartan said, “Why all this for him as if he were not clean? The fellow is pouring in extra water as if for a very dirty man.”

53 When Philip of Macedon sent some orders to the Spartans by letter, they wrote in reply, “What you wrote about, ‘No.’ “

When he invaded the Spartans’ country, and all thought that they should be destroyed, he said to one of the Spartans, “What shall you do now, men of Sparta?” And the other said, “What else than die like men? For we alone of all the Greeks have learned to be free, and not to be subject to others.”

54 After the defeat of Agis, Antipater demanded fifty boys as hostages, but Eteocles, who was Ephor, said they would not give boys, lest the boys should turn out to be uneducated through missing the traditional discipline; and they would not be fitted for citizenship either. But the Spartans would give, if he so desired, either old men or women to double the number. And when Antipater made dire threats if he should not get the boys, the Spartans made answer with one consent, “If the orders you lay upon us are harsher than death, we shall find it easier to die.”

55 While the games were being held at Olympia, an old man was desirous of seeing them, but could find no seat. As he went to place after place, he met with insults and jeers, and nobody made room for him. But when he came opposite the Spartans, all the boys and many of the men arose and yielded their places. Whereupon the assembled multitude of Greeks expressed their approbation of the custom by applause, and commended the action beyond measure; but old man, shaking

His head grey-haired and grey-bearded,

and with tears in his eyes, said, “Alas for the evil days! Because all the Greeks know what is right and fair, but the Spartans alone practise it.”

Some say that the same thing happened at Athens also. It was at the time of the Panathenaic festival, and the people of Attica were teasing an old man in an unseemly manner, calling him to them as if they were intending to make room for him, and not making room if he came to them. When he had passed through almost all the spectators and came opposite the delegates of the Spartans, they all arose from where they were sitting and gave him place. The crowd, delighted, applauded the action with great approval, and one of the Spartans said, “Egad, the Athenians know what is right and fair, but do not do it.”

56 A beggar asked alms of a Spartan, who said, “If I should give to you, you will be the more a beggar; and for this unseemly conduct of yours he who first gave you is responsible, for he thus made you lazy.”

57 A Spartan, seeing a man taking up a collection for the gods, said that he did not think much of gods who were poorer than himself.

58 A man who caught another in adultery with an ugly woman said, “Puir soul! what was yer muckle need?”

59 Another, listening to an orator rolling off long sentences, said, “Egad, but the man has courage; he twists his tongue well about no subject at all.”

60 One man who came to Sparta, and observed the honour which the young render to the old, said, “Only in Sparta does it pay to grow old.”

61 A Spartan, being asked what kind of a man Tyrtaeus the poet was, said, “A good man to sharpen the spirit of youth.”

62 Another who had sore trouble with his eyes was going forth to war; and when some said to him, “Where are you going in that state, or what do you purpose to do?” he said, “Even if I accomplish nothing else, I may at least blunt an enemy’s sword.”

63 Bulis and Sperchis of Sparta went as volunteers to Xerxes king of the Persians, to render satisfaction which Sparta owed according to an oracle, 236 because the people had killed the heralds sent to them by the Persian. These men came before Xerxes and bade him make away with them in any manner he desired, as representing the Spartans. But when he, filled with admiration, let them go free, and was insistent that they remain with him, they said, “And how should we be able to live here, abandoning our country and laws and those men in whose behalf we made such a long journey to die?” And when Indarnes the general besought them at greater length, and said that they would receive equal honour with the friends of the king who stood highest in advancement, they said, “You seem to us not to know what is the meed of liberty, which no man of sense would exchange for the kingdom of the Persians.”

64 Because a friend with whom a Spartan was intending to stay dodged him on the first day, and on the next day, having borrowed bedding, received him sumptuously, the Spartan jumped on the bedding and trod it under foot, remarking that it was because of this that yesterday he had not had even straw to sleep on.

65 Another, on going to Athens, saw that the Athenians were hawking salt fish and dainties, collecting taxes, keeping public brothels, and following other unseemly pursuits, and holding none of them to be shameful. When he returned to his own country, his fellow-citizens asked how things were in Athens, and he said, “Everything fair and lovely,” speaking sarcastically and conveying the idea that among the Athenians everything is considered fair and lovely, and nothing shameful.

66 Another, being asked a question, answered “No.” And when the questioner said, “You lie,” the other said, “You see, then, that it is silly of you to ask questions to which you know the answer!”

67 Once upon a time, ambassadors from Sparta arrived at the court of Lygdamis the despot. But as he tried to put them off and repeatedly postponed the interview, and, to crown all, it was asserted that he was in a delicate condition, the Spartans said, “Tell him, in God’s name, that we have not come to wrestle with him, but to have a talk with him.”

68 When someone, initiating a Spartan into the Mysteries, asked him what his conscience told him was the most unholy deed he had ever done, he said, “The gods know.” And when the other became even more insistent, and said, “It is absolutely necessary that you tell,” the Spartan asked in turn, “To whom must I tell it? To you or to the god?” And when the other said, “To the god,” the Spartan said, “You go away then.”

69 Another, passing by a tomb at night, and imagining that he saw a ghost, ran at it with uplifted spear, and, as he thrust at it, he exclaimed, “Where are you fleeing from me, you soul that shall die twice?”

70 Another, having vowed to throw himself from the Leucadian cliff, went up and came down again after seeing the height. Being jeered at for this, he said, “I did na think my vow needed anither greater vow to dae it!”

71 Another, in the thick of the fight, was about to bring down his sword on an enemy when the recall sounded, and he checked the blow. When someone inquired why, when he had his enemy in his power, he did not kill him, he said, “Because it is better to obey one’s commander than to slay an enemy.”

72 Someone said to a Spartan who was defeated at Olympia, “Spartan, your opponent proved himself the better man.” “No,” said he, “not that, but more upsetting!”

The ancient customs of the Spartans

236 1 To each one of those who comes in to the public meals the eldest man says, as he points to the doors, “Through these no word goes out.”

2 A thing that met with especial approval among them was their so called black broth, so much so that the older men did not require a bit of meat, but gave up all of it to the young men. It is said that Dionysus, the despot of Sicily, for the sake of this bought a slave who had been a Spartan cook, and ordered him to prepared the broth for him, sparing no expense; but when the king tasted it he spat it out in disgust; whereupon the cook said, “Your Majesty, it is necessary to have exercised 237 in the Spartan manner, and to have bathed in the Eurotas, in order to relish this broth.”

3 The Spartans, after drinking in moderation at their public meals, go away without a torch. In fact, they are not permitted to walk with a light either on this route or on any other, so that they may become accustomed to travelling in darkness at night confidently and fearlessly.

4 They learned to read and write for purely practical reasons; but all other forms of education they banned from the country, books and treatises being included in this quite as much as men. All their education was directed toward prompt obedience to authority, stout endurance of hardship, and victory or death in battle.

5 They always went without a shirt, receiving one garment for the entire year, and with unwashed bodies, refraining almost completely from bathing and rubbing down.

6 The young men slept together, according to division and company, upon pallets which they themselves brought together by breaking off by hand, without any implement, the tops of the reeds which grew on the banks of the Eurotas. In the winter they put beneath their pallets, and intermingled with them, the plant called lycophon, since the material is reputed to possess some warming qualities.

7 Affectionate regard for boys of good character was permissible, but embracing them was held to be disgraceful, on the ground that the affection was for the body and not for the mind. Any man against whom complaint was made of any disgraceful embracing was deprived of all civic rights for life.

8 It was the custom that the younger men should be questioned by the elder as to where they were going and for what, and also that the elder should rebuke the one who did not answer or tried to contrive plausible reasons. And the elder who did not rebuke a younger who did wrong in his presence was liable to the same reprimand as the wrongdoer. And anyone who showed resentment, if he was reprimanded, was in great opprobrium.

9 If anyone was detected in wrongdoing he had to go round and round a certain altar in the city, chanting lines composed as a reprehension of himself, and this was nothing else than his own self rebuking himself.

10 Moreover, the young men were required not only to respect their own fathers and to be obedient to them, but to have regard for all the older men, to make room for them on the streets, to give up their seats to them, and to keep quiet in their presence. As the result of this custom each man had authority, not as in other states over his own children, slaves, and property, but also over his neighbour’s in like manner as over his own, to the end that the people should, as much as possible, have all things in common, and should take thought for them as for their own.

11 When a boy was punished by anybody, if he told his father, it was a disgrace for his father, upon hearing this, not to give him another beating; for they had confidence one in another, as the result of their ancestral discipline, that no one had ordered their children to do anything disgraceful.

12 The boys steal whatever they can of their food, learning to make their raids adroitly upon people who are asleep or are careless in watching. The penalty for getting caught is a beating and no food. For the dinner allowed them is meagre, so, through coping with want by their own initiative, they may be compelled to be daring and unscrupulous.

13 This was the object of the starvation diet. It was meagre both for the reasons given and purposely that the youth should never become accustomed to being sated, but to being able to go without food; for in this way, the Spartans thought, the youth would be more serviceable in war if they were able to carry on without food, and they would be more self-controlled and more frugal if they lived a very considerable time at small expense. And to put up with the plainest diet, so as to be able to consume anything that came to hand, they thought made the youths’ bodies more healthy owing to the scanty food, and they believed that this practice caused the bodies, repressed in any impulse towards thickness and breadth, to grow tall, and also to make them handsome; for a spare and lean condition they felt served to produce suppleness, while an overfed condition, because of too much weight, was against it.

23814 They were no less seriously concerned over their music and their songs. These contained a stimulus to awaken a spirit of pride and to afford an inspiring and effective impulse. Their language was simple and plain, consisting merely of praise of those who had lived noble lives, and had died for Sparta, and are now counted among the blessed, and also censure of those who had played the coward, and now, presumably, are living a tormenting and ill-fated existence; and therewith profession and boasting in regard to valour, such as was fitting for the different periods of life. 15 So there were three choirs, corresponding to the three periods of life, which were made up at their festivals, and the choir of old men would begin with this song:

Young valiant men long days ago were we.

Then the choir of men in the prime of life would sing in response,

And that are we; look, if you will, and see.

And the third choir, that of the boys, would sing,

And better far ‘tis certain we shall be.

16 Moreover the rhythmic movement of their marching songs was such as to excite courage and boldness, and contempt for death; and these they used both in dancing, and also to the accompaniment of the flute when advancing upon the enemy. In fact, Lycurgus coupled fondness for music with military drill, so that the over-assertive warlike spirit, by being combined with melody, might have concord and harmony. It was for this reason that in time of battle the king offered sacrifice to the Muses before the conflict, so that those who fought should make their deeds worthy to be told and to be remembered with honour.

17 If anyone presumed to transgress in any way the rules of the good old music, they would not permit this; but even Terpander, one of the oldest and the best harp-player of his time as well as a devoted admirer of the deeds of heroes, the Ephors none the less fined, and carried away his instrument and nailed it to a wall because he put in just one extra string for the sake of the variety in the notes; for they approved only the simpler melodies. Moreover, when Timotheus was competing at the Carneian Festival, done of the Ephors took a knife, and asked him on which side he should cut out the superfluous strings beyond the usual seven.

18 Lycurgus did away with all superstitious fear connected with burials, granting the right to bury the dead within the city, and to have the tombs near the shrines. He also abolished the pollutions associated with death and burial. He permitted the people to bury nothing with the dead, but only to enfold the body in a red robe and olive leaves, and all to treat their dead alike. He also did away with the inscriptions on tombs, except of those who had met their end in war, and also did away with mourning and lamentation.

19 It was not allowed them to go abroad, so that they should have nothing to do with foreign ways and undisciplined modes of living.

20 Lycurgus also introduced the practice of banning all foreigners from the country, so that these should not filter in and serve to teach the citizens something bad.

21 Whosoever of the citizens would not submit to the discipline to which the boys were subjected had no participation in civic rights.

22 Some used to assert that whosoever among the foreigners would submit to such discipline as was enjoined by the constitution in accordance with the programme of Lycurgus might become a member of the division assigned to him at the beginning.

The selling of anything was not permitted; 23 but it was their custom to use the neighbours’ servants as their own if they needed them and also their dogs and horses, unless the owners required them for their own use. And in the country, if anyone found himself lacking anything and had need of it, he would open an owner’s storehouse and take away enough to meet his need, and then replace the seals and leave it.

24 In wars they used red garments for two reasons: first, the colour they thought was a manly colour, and second, the blood-red hue causes more terror in the minds of the inexperienced. Also, if anyone of them receive a wound, it is advantageous that it be not easily discovered by the enemy, but be unperceived by reason of the identity of colour.

25 Whenever they overcome their enemies by outgeneralling them, they sacrifice a bull to Ares, but when the victory is gained in open conflict, they offer a cock, thus trying to make their leaders habitually not merely fighters but tacticians as well.

23926 To their prayers they add the petition that they may be able to submit to injustice.

27 And their prayer is that the gods give them fair and honourable requital for their good deeds, and that is all.

28 They worship Aphrodite in her full armour, and the statues of all the gods, both female and male, they make with spear in hand to indicate that all the gods have the valour which war demands.

29 Those fond of proverbs are wont to quote this on occasion:

Yer ain hand use when Fortune ye would call,

thus indicating that calling on the gods for aid ought to be accompanied by effort and action on one’s own part, or else they should not be invoked.

30 They used to make the Helots drunk and exhibit them to the young as a deterrent from excessive drinking.

31 It was their custom not to knock on the outer doors but to call from outside.

32 The strigils which they used were not made of metal but of reeds.

33 They did not attend either comedy or tragedy, so that they might not hear anyone speak either in earnest or in jest against the laws.

34 Archilochus the poet, when he arrived in Sparta, they ordered to depart that very instant because they learned that he had written in his verses that it is better to throw away one’s arms than to be killed:

Shield that was mine, fair armour, now gladdens the heart of some Saian;

Sorry I left it behind tangled in brush in my path;

But for myself I escaped from the clutches of Death. Let perdition

Take the old shield, for no worse surely I’ll get the next time.

35 The temples and religious services were open to maidens and youths alike.

36 The Ephors fined Sciraphidas because he was wronged by many.

37 They made away with a man who wore the very coarsest clothing, because he inserted a border in his garment.

38 They reprimanded the young man from the gymnasium because he knew well about the road to Pylaea.

39 Cephisophon, who asserted that he could speak the whole day long on any topic whatsoever, they expelled from the country, saying that the good orator must keep his discourse equal to the subject in hand.

40 The boys in Sparta were lashed with whips during the entire day at the altar of Artemis Orthia, frequently to the point of death, and they bravely endured this, cheerful and proud, vying with one another for the supremacy as to which one of them could endure being beaten for the longer time and the greater number of blows. And the one who was victorious was held in especial repute. This competition is called ‘The Flagellation,’ and it takes place each year.

41 One of the noble and blessed privileges which Lycurgus appears to have secured for his fellow-citizens was abundance of leisure. In fact it was not permitted them to take up any menial trade at all; and there was no need whatever of making money, which involves a toilsome accumulation, nor of busy activity, because of his having made wealth wholly unenvied and unhonoured. The Helots tilled the soil for them, paying a return which was regularly settled in advance. There was a ban against letting for a higher price, so that the Helots might make some profit, and thus be glad to do the work for their masters, and so that the masters might not look for any larger return.

42 It was forbidden them to be sailors and to fight on the sea. Later, however, they did engage in such battles, and, after they had made themselves masters of the sea, they again desisted, since they observed that the character of the citizens was deteriorating sadly. But they changed about again, as in all else. For example, when money was amassed for the Spartans, those who amassed it were condemned to death; for to Alcamenes and Theopompus, their kings, an oracle had been given:

Eager desire for money will bring the ruin of Sparta.

Yet, nevertheless, when Lysander had taken Athens, he brought home much gold and silver, and they accepted it, and bestowed honours on the man.

As long as the Spartan State adhered to the laws of Lycurgus and remained true to its oaths, it held the first place in Greece for good government and good repute over a period of five hundred years. But, little by little, as these laws and oaths were transgressed, and greed and love of wealth crept in, the elements of their strength began to dwindle also, 240 and their allies on this account were ill-disposed toward them. But although they were in this plight, yet after the victory of Philip of Macedon at Chaeroneia, when all the Greeks proclaimed him commander both on land and sea, and likewise, in the interval following, proclaimed Alexander, his son, after the subjugation of the Thebans, the Spartans only, although they dwelt in an unwalled city, and were few in number because of their continual wars, and had become much weaker and an easy prey, still keeping alive some feeble sparks of the laws of Lycurgus, did not take any part in the campaigns of these or of the other kings of Macedon who ruled in the interval following, nor did they ever enter the general congress or even pay tribute. So it was, until they ceased altogether to observe the laws of Lycurgus, and came to be ruled despotically by their own citizens, preserving nothing of their ancestral discipline any longer, and so they became much like the rest, and put from them their former glory and freedom of speech, and were reduced to a state of subjection; and now they, like the rest of the Greeks, have come under Roman sway.

Sayings of Spartan women

240 c Argileonis

Argileonis, the mother of Brasidas, when her son had met his death, and some of the citizens of Amphipolis arrived at Sparta and came to her, asked if her son had met his death honourably and in a manner worthy of Sparta. And when they proceeded to tell of his greatness, and declared that he was the best of all the Spartans in such enterprises, she said, “Sirs, my son was a gude and honourable mon, but Sparta has mony a mon better than him.”

Gorgo

1 Gorgo, daughter of king Cleomenes, when Aristagoras of Miletus was urging her father to enter upon the war against the Persian king in behalf of the Ionians, promising a vast sum of money, and, in answer to Cleomenes’ objections, making the amount larger and larger, said, “Father, the miserable foreigner will be your ruin if you don’t get him out of the house pretty soon!”

2 Once when her father told her to give some grain to a man by way of remuneration, and added, “It is because he showed me how to make the wine taste good,” she said, “Then, father, there will be more wine drunk, and the drinkers will become more intemperate and depraved.”

3 When she had watched Aristagoras having his shoes put on and laced by one of the servants, she said, “Father, the foreigner hasn’t any hands!”

4 When a foreigner made advances in a mild and leisurely way, she pushed him aside, saying, “Get away from here, you who cannot play a woman’s part either!”

5 Being asked by a woman from Attica, “Why is it that you Spartan women are the only women that lord it over your men,” she said, “Because we are the only women that are mothers of men.”

6 As she was encouraging her husband Leonidas, when he was about to set out for Thermopylae, to show himself worthy of Sparta, she asked what she should do; and he said, “Marry a good man, and bear good children.”

Gyrtias

1 Gyrtias, when on a time Acrotatus, her grandson, in a fight with other boys received many blows, and was brought home for dead, and the family and friends were all wailing, said, “Will you not stop your noise? He has shown from what blood he was sprung.” And she said that people who were good for anything should not scream, but should try to find some remedy.

2 When a messenger came from Crete bringing the news of the death of Acrotatus, she said, “When he had come to the enemy, was he not bound either to be slain by them or to slay them? It is more pleasing to hear that he died in a manner worthy of myself, his country, and his ancestors than if he had lived for all time a coward.”

Damatria

Damatria heard that her son had been a coward and unworthy of her, and when he arrived, she made away with him. This is the epigram referring to her:

Sinner against our laws, Damatrius, slain by his mother,

Was of the Spartan youth; she was of Sparta too.

Other Spartan Women to Fame Unknown

241 1 Another Spartan woman made away with her son, who had deserted his post, on the ground that he was unworthy of his country, saying, “Not mine the scion.” This is the epigram referring to her:

Off to your fate through the darkness, vile scion, who makes such a hatred,

So the Eurotas flow not e’en for the timorous deer.

Worthless whelp that you are, vile remnant, be off now to Hades;

Off! for never I bore Sparta’s unworthy son.

2 Another, hearing that her son had fallen on the field of battle, said:

“Let the poor cowards be mourned, but, with never a tear do I bury

You, my son, who are mine, yea, and are Sparta’s as well.”

3 Another, hearing that her son had been saved and had run away from the enemy, wrote to him, “Ill report is spread about ye; aither clear yersel’ of this or stop yer living.”

4 Another, when her sons had run away from battle and come to her, said, “Where have you come now in your cowardly flight, vile varlets? Do you intend to slink in here whence you came forth?” And with these words she pulled up her garment and showed them.

5 One woman, observing her son coming towards her, inquired, “How fares our country?” And when he said, “All have perished,” she took up a tile and, hurling it at him, killed him, saying, “And so they sent you to bear the bad news to us!”

6 As a man was narrating to his mother the noble death of his brother, she said, “Isn’t it a shame, then, to have missed his company on such a journey?”

7 One woman sent forth her sons, five in number, to war, and, standing in the outskirts of the city, she awaited anxiously the outcome of the battle. And when someone arrived and, in answer to her inquiry, reported that all her sons had met death, she said, “I did not inquire about that, you vile varlet, but how fares our country?” And when he declared that it was victorious, “Then,” she said, “I accept gladly also the death of my sons.”

8 Another was burying her son, when a commonplace old woman came up to her and said, “Ah the bad luck of it, you puir woman.” “No, by Heaven,” said she, “but good luck; for I bore him that he might die for Sparta, and this is the very thing that has come to pass for me.”

9 When a woman from Ionia showed vast pride in a bit of her own weaving, which was very valuable, a Spartan woman pointed to her four sons, who were most well-behaved, and said, “Such should be the employments of the good and honourable woman, and it is over these that she should be elated and boastful.”

10 Another, hearing about her son that he was conducting himself badly in a foreign land, wrote to him, “Ill report is spread about ye; pit this from ye or else stop yer living.”

11 Of somewhat similar character is this: Chian exiles came to Sparta, and accused Paedaretus of many misdeeds; whereupon his mother Teleutia sent for them and, after listening to their complaints, feeling that her son was in the wrong, sent him this letter: “Mither to Paedaretus. Aither dae better, or stay where ye are, and gie up hope o’ gaen back safe to Sparta.”

12 Another, when her son was being tried for some offence, said to him, “My child, either rid yourself of the charges, or rid yourself of life.”

13 Another, as she accompanied a lame son on his way to the field of battle, said, “At every step, my child, remember your valour.”

14 Another, when her son came back to her from field of battle wounded in the foot, and in great pain, said, “If you remember your valour, my child, you will feel no pain, and be quite cheerful.”

15 A Spartan, wounded in battle and unable to walk, was crawling on all fours. He was mortified at being so ridiculous; but his mother said to him, “How much better to be joyful over your bravery than to be mortified at silly laughter.”

16 Another, as she handed her son his shield, exhorted him, saying, “Either this or upon this.”

17 Another, as her son was going forth to war, said, as she gave the shield into his hands, “This shield your father kept always safe for you; do you, therefore, keep it safe, or cease to live.”

18 Another, in answer to her son who said that the sword which he carried was short, said, “Add a step to it.”

242 19 Another, hearing that her son had been slain fighting bravely in the line of battle, said, “Yes, he was mine.” But learning in regard to her other son that he had played the coward and saved his life, she said, “No, he was not mine.”

20 Another, hearing that her son had been killed in battle on the spot where he had been placed, said, “Lay him away, and let his brother take his place.”

21 Another, engaged in conducting a solemn public procession, heard that her son was victorious on the field of battle, but that he was dying from the many wounds he had received. She did not remove the garland from her head, but with a proud air said to the women near her, “How much more noble, my friends, to be victorious on the field of battle and meet death, than to win at the Olympic games and live!”

22 As a man was relating to his sister the noble death of her son, she said, “As glad as I am for him, I am sorry for you that you were left behind when you might have gone in such brave company.”

23 A man sent to a Spartan woman to ask if she were inclined to look with favour upon seduction; she replied, “When I was a child I learned to obey my father, and made that my practice. Then when I became a married woman, my husband took that place. So if the man’s proposal is honourable, let him lay the matter before my husband first.”

24 A poor girl, being asked what dowry she brought to the man who married her, said, “The family virtue.”

25 A Spartan woman, being asked if she had made advances to her husband, said, “No, but my husband has made them to me.”

26 A girl had secret relations with a man, and, after bringing on an abortion, she bore up so bravely, not uttering a single sound, that her delivery took place without the knowledge of her father and others who were near. For the confronting of her indecorum with decorum gained the victory over the poignant distress of her pains.

27 A Spartan woman who was being sold as a slave, when asked what she knew how to do, said, “To be faithful.”

28 Another, taken captive, and asked a similar question, said, “To manage a house well.”

29 Another, asked by a man if she would be good if he bought her, said, “Yes, and if you do not buy me.”

30 Another who was being sold as a slave, when the crier inquired of her what she knew how to do, said, “To be free.” And when the purchaser ordered her to do something not fitting for a free woman, she said, “You will be sorry that your meanness has cost you such a possession,” and committed suicide.”

Bravery of women

242 e 11 Regarding the virtues of women, Clea, I do not hold the same opinion as Thucydides. For he declares that the best woman is she about whom there is the least talk among persons outside regarding either censure or commendation, feeling that the name of the good woman, like her person, ought to be shut up indoors and never go out. But to my mind Gorgias appears to display better taste in advising that not the form but the fame of a woman should be known to many. Best of all seems the Roman custom, which publicly renders to women, as to men, a fitting commemoration after the end of their life. So when Leontis, that most excellent woman, died, I forthwith had then a long conversation with you, which was not without some share of consolation drawn from philosophy, and now, as you desired, I have also written out for you the remainder of what I would have said on the topic 243 that man’s virtues and woman’s virtues are one and the same. This includes a good deal of historical exposition, and it is not composed to give pleasure in its perusal. Yet, if in a convincing argument delectation is to be found also by reason of the very nature of the illustration, then the discussion is not devoid of an agreeableness which helps in the exposition, nor does it hesitate

To join

The Graces with the Muses,

A consorting most fair,

as Euripides says, and to pin its faith mostly to the love of beauty inherent to the soul.

If, conceivably, we asserted that painting on the part of men and women is the same, and exhibited paintings, done by women, of the sort that Apelles, or Zeuxis, or Nicomachus has left to us, would anybody reprehend us on the ground that we were aiming at giving gratification and allurement rather than at persuasion? I do not think so.

Or again, if we should declare that the poetic or the prophetic art is not one art when practised by men and another when practised by women, but the same, and if we should put the poems of Sappho side by side with those of Anacreon, or the oracles of the Sibyls with those of Bacis, will anybody have the power justly to impugn the demonstration because these lead on the hearer, joyous and delighted, to have belief in it? No, you could not say that either.

And actually it is not possible to learn better the similarity and the difference between the virtues of men and of women from any other source than by putting lives beside lives and actions beside actions, like great works of art, and considering whether the magnificence of Semiramis has the same character and pattern as that of Sesostris, or the intelligence of Tanaquil the same as that of Servius the king, or the high spirit of Porcia the same as that of Brutus, or that of Pelopidas the same as Timocleia’s, when compared with due regard to the most important points of identity and influence. For the fact is that the virtues acquire certain other diversities, their own colouring as it were, due to varying natures, and they take on the likeness of the customs on which they are founded, and of the temperament of persons and their nurture and mode of living. For example, Achilles was brave in one way and Ajax in another; and the wisdom of Odysseus was not like that of Nestor, nor was Cato a just man in exactly the same way as Agesilaus, nor Eirene fond of her husband in the manner of Alcestis, nor Cornelia high-minded in the manner of Olympias. But, with all this, let us not postulate many different kinds of bravery, wisdom, and justice — if only the individual dissimilarities exclude no one of these from receiving its appropriate rating.

Those incidents which are so often recited, and those of which I assume that you, having kept company with books, have assuredly record and knowledge, I will pass over for the present; but with this exception: if any tales worthy of perusal have escaped the attention of those who, before our time, have recorded the commonly published stories. Since, however, many deeds worthy of mention have been done by women both in association with other women and by themselves alone, it may not be a bad idea to set down first a brief account of those commonly known.

I. The Trojan Women

Most of those that escaped from Troy at the time of its capture had to weather a storm, and, because of their inexperience in navigation and ignorance of the sea, were driven upon the shores of Italy, and, in the neighbourhood of the river Tiber, they barely escaped by running in, under compulsion, where there were anchorages and havens. While the men were wandering about the country, in search of information, fit suddenly occurred to the women to reflect that for a happy and successful people any sort of a settled habitation on land is better than all wandering and voyaging, and that the Trojans must create a fatherland, since they were not able to recover that which they had lost. Thereupon, becoming of one mind, they burned the ships, one woman, Roma, taking the lead. Having accomplished this, they went to meet the men who were hurrying to the sea to save the ships, and, fearful of their anger, 244 some embraced their husbands and some their relatives, and kissed them coaxingly, and mollified them by this manner of blandishment. This is the origin of the custom, which still persists among the Roman women, of greeting their kinsfolk with a kiss.

The Trojans, apparently realizing the inevitable necessity, and after having also some experience with the native inhabitants, who received them kindly and humanely, came to be content with what had been done by the women, and took up their abode there with the Latins.

II. The Women of Phocis

The deed of the women of Phocis has not found any writer of high repute to describe it, yet it is not inferior in point of bravery to anything ever done by women, as is attested by imposing sacred rites which the Phocians perform even to this day in the neighbourhood of Hyampolis, and by ancient decrees. Of these events a detailed account of the achievements is given in the Life of Daïphantus, and the women’s part was as follows.

The Thessalians were engaged in a war without quarter against the Phocians. For the Phocians had slain on one day all the Thessalian governors and despots in their cities. Whereupon the Thessalians massacred two hundred and fifty Phocian hostages; then with all their forces they made an invasion through Locris, having previously passed a resolution to spare no grown man, and to make slaves of the children and women. Accordingly Daïphantus, Bathyllius’s son, one of the three governors of Phocis, persuaded the men to meet the Thessalians in battle, and to bring together into some one place the women with their children from all Phocis, and to heap about them a mass of faggots, and to post guards, giving them instructions that, if they learned the men were being vanquished, they should with all haste set fire to the mass and reduce the living bodies to ashes. Nearly all voted approval of the plan, but one man arose in the council and said it was only right that the women approve this also; otherwise they must reject it, and use no compulsion. When report of this speech reached the women, they held a meeting by themselves and passed the same vote, and they exalted Daïphantus for having conceived the best plan for Phocis. It is said that the children also held an assembly on their own account and passed their vote too.

After this had been done, the Phocians engaged the enemy near Cleonae of Hyampolis, and gained the victory. To this vote of the Phocians the Greeks gave the name of “Desperation”; and the greatest festival of all, the Elaphebolia in honour of Artemis, they celebrate in Hyampolis even to this day in commemoration of that victory.

III. The Women of Chios

The reason which led the Chians to appropriate Leuconia as a settlement was as follows: One of the men who appear to have been prominent in Chios was getting married, and, as the bride was being conducted to his home in a chariot, the king, Hippoclus, a close friend of the bridegroom, being there with the rest amid the drinking and merry-making, jumped up into the chariot, not with intent to do anything insulting, but merely following the common custom and indulging in facetiousness. Whereupon the friends of the bridegroom killed him.

Signs of divine anger were soon disclosed to the Chians, and the god of the oracle bade them slay the slayers of Hippoclus, but they said that they all had slain Hippoclus. So the god bade them all leave the city, if they were all involved in the crime. And thus the guilty, both those who had taken a hand in the murder and those who had in any way assented to it, being not few in number nor without strength, the Chians sent away to settle in Leuconia, which they had earlier wrested from the Coroneans and taken possession of with the co-operation of the Erythraeans.

Later, however, they became involved in war with the Erythraeans, the most powerful of the Ionians; and when these marched against Leuconia, they were not able to hold out, 245 and agreed to evacuate the town under truce, each man to have one cloak and one inner garment and nothing else. The women, however, called them cowards if they purposed to lay down their arms and go forth naked through the midst of the enemy. But when the men said that they had given their oath, the women bade them not to leave their arms behind, but to say, by way of answer to the enemy, that the spear serves as a cloak, and the shield as a shirt, to a man of spirit. The Chians took this advice, and when they used bold words towards the Erythraeans and displayed their weapons, the Erythraeans were frightened at their boldness, and no one approached nor hindered them, but all were well pleased at their departure. So the Chians, having been taught courage by their women, were saved in this way.

A deed which does not in the least fall short of this one in bravery was performed by the women of Chios many years later at the time when Philip, son of Demetrius, was besieging their city, and had made a barbarous and insolent proclamation bidding the slaves to desert to him, their reward to be freedom and marriage with their owners, meaning thereby that he was intending to unite them with the wives of their masters. But the women, suddenly possessed of fierce and savage spirit, in company with their slaves, who were themselves equally indignant and supported the women by their presence, hastened to mount the walls, both bringing stones and missiles, and exhorting and importuning the fighting men until, finally, by their vigorous defence and the wounds inflicted on the enemy by their missiles, they repulsed Philip. And not a single slave deserted to him.

IV. The Women of Argos

Of all the deeds performed by women for the community none is more famous than the struggle against Cleomenes for Argos, which the women carried out at the instigation of Telesilla the poetess. She, as they say, was the daughter of a famous house but sickly in body, and so she sent to the god to ask about health; and when an oracle was given her to cultivate the Muses, she followed the god’s advice, and by devoting herself to poetry and music she was quickly relieved of her trouble, and was greatly admired by the women for her poetic art.

But when Cleomenes king of the Spartans, having slain many Argives (but not by any means seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven, as some fabulous narratives have it) proceeded against the city, an impulsive daring, divinely inspired, came to the younger women to try, for their country’s sake, to hold off the enemy. Under the lead of Telesilla they took up arms, and, taking their stand by the battlements, manned the walls all round, so that the enemy were amazed. The result was that Cleomenes they repulsed with great loss, and the other king, Demaratus, who managed to get inside, as Socrates says, and gained possession of the Pamphyliacum, they drove out. In this way the city was saved. The women who fell in the battle they buried close by the Argive Road, and to the survivors they granted the privilege of erecting a statue of Ares as a memorial of their surpassing valour. Some say that the battle took place on the seventh day of the month which is now known as the Fourth Month, but anciently was called Hermaeus among the Argives; others say that it was on the first day of that month, on the anniversary of which they celebrate even to this day the ‘Festival of Impudence,’ at which they clothe the women in men’s shirts and cloaks, and the men in women’s robes and veils.

To repair the scarcity of men they did not unite the women with slaves, as Herodotus records, but with the best of their neighbouring subjects, whom they made Argive citizens. It was reputed that the women showed disrespect and an intentional indifference to those husbands in their married relations from a feeling that they were underlings. Wherefore the Argives enacted a law, the one which says that married women having a beard must occupy the same bed with their husbands!

V. The Persian Women

246 At the time when Cyrus induced the Persians to revolt from king Astyages and the Medes he was defeated in battle. As the Persians were fleeing to the city, with the enemy not far from forcing their way in along with the Persians, the women ran out to meet them before the city, and, lifting up their garments, said, “Whither are you rushing so fast, you biggest cowards in the whole world? Surely you cannot, in your flight, slink in here whence you came forth.” The Persians, mortified at the sight and the words, chiding themselves for cowards, rallied and, engaging the enemy afresh, put them to rout. As a result of this it became an established custom that, whenever the king rode into the city, each woman should receive a gold coin; the author of the law was Cyrus. But Ochus, they say, being a mean man and the most avaricious of the kings, would always make a detour round the city and not pass within, but would deprive the women of their largess. Alexander, however, entered the city twice, and gave all the women who were with child a double amount.

VI. The Celtic Women

Before the Celts crossed over the Alps and settled in that part of Italy which is now their home, ca dire and persistent factional discord broke out among them which went on and on to the point of civil war. The women, however, put themselves between the armed forces, and, taking up the controversies, arbitrated and decided them with such irreproachable fairness that a wondrous friendship of all towards all was brought about between both States and families. As the result of this they continued to consult with the women in regard to war and peace, and to decide through them any disputed matters in their relations with their allies. At all events, in their treaty with Hannibal they wrote the provision that, if the Celts complained against the Carthaginians, the governors and generals of the Carthaginians in Spain should be the judges; and if the Carthaginians complained against the Celts, the judges should be the Celtic women.

VII. The Women of Melos

The Melians, being in need of wide acres, put in charge of the colony to be sent forth Nymphaeus, a young man and unusually handsome. The god bade them sail, and wherever they should lose their transports to settle in that place. It came about, as they put in at Caria and went ashore, that their ships were destroyed by a storm. The Carian inhabitants of Cryassus, whether pitying their sorry plight or fearing their boldness, bade them live near themselves, and gave them a portion of their land. Later, seeing their great expansion in a short time, they plotted to make away with them, after preparing a sumptuous banquet for the purpose. It happened that a Carian maiden was in love with Nymphaeus, but nobody else was aware of this. Her name was Caphene. As the plan was being put into operation, she could not suffer Nymphaeus to be put to death, and so she disclosed to him the intention of her fellow-citizens. So, when the Cryassians came to invite them, Nymphaeus said that it was not the custom for the Greeks to go to dinner without women. When the Carians heard this, they told them to bring the women too. On this understanding Nymphaeus informed the Melians of what had been done, and told the men to go to the place unarmed in conventional attire, but that each of the woman should carry a sword in the fold of her garment and sit beside her husband or male relative. When, about the middle of the meal, the predetermined signal was given to the Carians, and the Greeks realized that the time had come, all the women at the same instant threw open the fold of their garments and the men, seizing their swords, attacked the barbarians and slew them all together. Then, taking possession of the land and razing that city, they built another, to which they gave the name of New Cryassus. 247 Caphene married Nymphaeus and received the honour and gratitude merited by her valuable services. It is right and proper to admire both the silence and the courage of the women, and that not a single one of them among so many was led by timidity to turn coward even involuntarily.

VIII. The Etruscan Women

When the Etruscans had gained possession of Lemnos and Imbros, they carried away forcibly from Brauron Athenian women, and children were born to them. These the Athenians expelled from the islands on the ground that they were in part barbarian, and they put in at Taenarum and made themselves useful to the Spartans in the war with the Helots. For this they received citizenship and the right of intermarriage, but were not deemed worthy to hold office or to be members of the Senate, and this gave colour to the idea that some radical design underlay their coming together, and that they purposed to disturb the established institutions. Accordingly the Spartans took them into custody and, shutting them up in prison, placed a strong guard over them, seeking to convict them by clear and certain proofs. The wives of the prisoners, coming to the prison, by dint of many prayers and entreaties, were permitted by the guards to pass within just to greet and to speak to their husbands. When they had gone inside they bade their husbands to change their clothing quickly, leaving their own for their wives, and then, putting on their wives’ garments, to depart with their faces covered. This done, the women waited there, prepared to face all terrors, but the guards were deceived and allowed the men to pass, supposing, of course, that they were women.

Following this, they seized the strongholds on Mount Taÿgetus, incited the body of Helots to revolt, and gladly received them as an addition to their forces. The Spartans were thrown into a great state of fear and, sending heralds, made peace with them, the conditions being that they should get back their wives, should receive money and ships, and sail away and, having found land and a city elsewhere, be considered as colonists and kindred of the Spartans. This the Pelasgians did, taking as their leaders Pollis and Delphus and Crataïdas, all Spartans. A part of them settled in Melos, but Pollis and his associates, with the great majority, sailed to Crete, testing the truth of the oracles. For an oracle had been given them that whenever they should lose their goddess and their anchor they should cease from their wanderings and found a city in that place. So, when they had come to anchor off that part of Crete which is called the Chersonese, panic confusion fell upon them by night, by which they were so excited that they leaped aboard in utter disorder, leaving behind on land an ancient statue of Artemis which had been handed down to them from their ancestors, having been originally brought to Lemnos from Brauron, and from Lemnos had been carried about with them in all their journeyings. But when at sea, as the confusion subsided, they missed this, and at the same time Pollis discovered that the fluke was gone from the anchor (for apparently it had been broken off as the anchor dragged in some rocky places, without anybody’s noticing its loss), he declared that the god-given predictions were now fulfilled, and gave the signal to return. He took possession of the country, prevailed in many battles over those who ranged themselves against him, settled Lyctus, and took other cities under his control. Because of all this people regard them as related to the Athenians by descent on account of their mothers, and as colonists of the Spartans also.

IX. The Lycian Women

That which is said to have happened in Lycia sounds like a myth, yet it has some supporting testimony in the tales that are told. Amisodarus, as they say, whom the Lycians call Isaras, arrived from the Lycian colony in the vicinity of Zeleia, bringing with him pirate ships, in command of which was Chimarrhus, a warlike man, bloodthirsty and brutal. 248 He sailed in a vessel which had a lion as its figurehead at the prow, and a serpent at the stern. He did much evil to the Lycians, and it was not possible to sail at sea or even to live in the cities near the sea.

This man Bellerophon slew, pursuing him with Pegasus as he was trying to escape. Bellerophon also drove out the Amazons, but met with no just treatment; in fact, Iobates was most unjust with him. Because of this, Bellerophon waded into the sea, and prayed to Poseidon that, as a requital against Iobates, the land might become sterile and unprofitable. Thereupon he went back after his prayer, and a wave arose and inundated the land. It was a fearful sight as the sea, following him, rose high in air and covered up the plain. The men besought Bellerophon to check it, but when they could not prevail on him, the women, pulling up their garments, came to meet him; and when he, for shame, retreated towards the sea again, the wave also, it is said, went back with him.

Some, attempting to explain away the mythical element in this account, assert that he did not get the sea to move by imprecations, but that the most fertile part of the plain lies below the sea-level, and Bellerophon broke through the ridge extending along the shore, which kept the sea out; then, as the ocean rushed in violently and covered up the plain, the men accomplished nothing by beseeching him, but the women, flocking about him in a crowd, met with respect, and caused his anger to subside.

Still others assert that the Chimaera, as it was called, was nothing but a mountain facing the sun, and that it caused reflexions of sunlight, fierce and fiery in the summer time, and by these, striking all over the plain, the crops were dried up, and that Bellerophon, sensing this, cut away the smoothest part of the precipice which mostly sent back the reflexions. When, however, he met with no gratitude, in anger he turned to avenge himself upon the Lycians, but was prevailed upon by the women.

But the reason which Nymphis gives in the fourth book of his treatise about Heracleia is least mythical of all; for he says that Bellerophon killed a wild boar which was making havoc of the stock and crops in the land of the Xanthians, but obtained no fitting reward; whereupon he addressed to Poseidon imprecations against the Xanthians, and the whole plain suddenly became glittering with a salt deposit and was completely ruined, since the soil had become saline. This lasted until Bellerophon, out of respect for the women who besought him, prayed to Poseidon to give up his anger. For this reason it was the custom for the Xanthians to bear names derived not from their fathers but from their mothers.

X. The Women of Salmantica

When Hannibal, the son of Barca, before making his campaign against the Romans, attacked a great city in Spain, Salmantica, at first the besieged were terrified, and agreed to do what was ordered by giving him six thousand pounds and three hundred hostages. But when he raised the siege, they changed their minds and did nothing of what they had agreed to do. So he returned and ordered his soldiers, with the promise of plunder, to attack the city. At this the barbarians were panic-stricken, and came to terms, agreeing that the free inhabitants should depart clad in one civilian garment, and should leave behind weapons, property, slaves, and their city. The women, thinking that the enemy would search each man as he came out, but would not touch the women, took swords, and, hiding them, hastened out with the men. When all had come out, Hannibal set over them a guard of Masaesylian soldiers in a place near the city, and kept them there under constraint. The rest of the soldiers rushed into the city in disorder and set to plundering. As much booty was being carried off, the Masaesylians could not bear to be merely spectators, 249 nor did they keep their mind on their watching, but were much aggrieved and started to move away as if to have their share of the spoils. At this juncture the women, calling upon the men, handed them the swords, and some of the women of themselves attacked their guards. One of them snatched away the spear of Banon the interpreter, and smote the man himself; but he happened to have on his breast-plate. Of the others, the men struck down some, routed the rest, and forced a way out in a body, accompanied by the women. Hannibal, learning of this, sent in pursuit of them, and caught those who could not keep up. The others gained the mountains, and, for the time, escaped. Afterwards, however, they sent a petition to him, and were restored to their city, and received immunity and humane treatment.

XI. The Women of Miletus

Once upon a time a dire and strange trouble took possession of the young women in Miletus for some unknown cause. The most popular conjecture was that the air had acquired a distracting and infectious constitution, and that this operated to produced in them an alteration and derangement of mind. At any rate, a yearning for death and an insane impulse toward hanging suddenly fell upon all of them, and many managed to steal away and hang themselves. Arguments and tears of parents and comforting words of friends availed nothing, but they circumvented every device and cunning effort of their watchers in making away with themselves. The malady seemed to be of divine origin and beyond human help, until, on the advice of a man of sense, an ordinance was proposed that the women who hanged themselves should be carried naked through the market-place to their burial. And when this ordinance was passed it not only checked, but stopped completely, the young women from killing themselves. Plainly a high testimony to natural goodness and virtue is the desire to guard against ill repute, and the fact that the women who had no deterrent sense of shame when facing the most terrible of all things in the world, death and pain, yet could not abide nor bear the thought of disgrace which would come after death.

XII. The Women of Ceos

It was a custom for the maidens of Ceos to go in a company to the public shrines and spend the day together, and their suitors watched their sports and dances. At evening they went by turns to each one’s home and waited upon one another’s parents and brothers even to washing their feet. Very often more than one youth would be in love with one maid, but their love was so orderly and so controlled by custom, that when the girl became engaged to one, the others ceased their attentions at once. The net result of this orderly behaviour on the part of the women was that there was no memory of a case of adultery or seduction in that country for the space of seven hundred years.

XIII. The Women of Phocis

When the despots in Phocis had seized Delphi, and the Thebans were waging war against them in what has been called the Sacred War, the women devotees of Dionysus, to whom they give the name of Thyads, in Bacchic frenzy wandering at night unwittingly arrived at Amphissa. As they were tired out, and sober reason had not yet returned to them, they flung themselves down in the market-place, and were lying asleep, some here, some there. The wives of the men of Amphissa, fearing, because their city had become allied with the Phocians, and numerous soldiers of the despots were present there, that the Thyads might be treated with indignity, all ran out into the market-place, and, taking their stand round in silence, did not go up to them while they were sleeping, but when they arose from their slumber, one devoted herself to one of the strangers and another to another, bestowing attentions on them and offering them food. Finally, the women of Amphissa, after winning the consent of their husbands, accompanied the strangers, who were safely escorted as far as the frontier.

250 XIV. Valeria and Cloelia

The two things that brought about the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus, seventh king of Rome from Romulus, were arrogance and the virtue of Lucretia, a woman married to a distinguished man of royal lineage. For she was outraged by one of Tarquin’s sons who had been welcomed as a guest in her home. She told her friends and family what had been done to her, and immediately slew herself. Deposed from power, Tarquin waged various wars in his endeavours to regain his sovereignty. Finally he persuaded Porsena, ruler of the Etruscans, to march against Rome with a great force. At the same time with the war famine also attacked the Romans, and they, learning that Porsena was not merely a great soldier but a just and fair man as well, wished to make him judge in their case against Tarquin. But Tarquin was stubborn, saying that Porsena, if he did not remain faithful as an ally, would not be a just judge either; and so Porsena renounced him and made it his endeavour that when he went away he should be a friend of the Romans, and should get back such part of the land as they had cut off from the Etruscans, and also the prisoners of war. To confirm these terms hostages were given to him, ten youths and ten maidens, among whom was Valeria, the daughter of Publicola the consul, whereupon Porsena at once remitted all his preparation for the war, although the agreement was not yet consummated.

The maidens went down to the river as if to bathe, a short distance away from the camp. At the instigation of one of them, Cloelia, they fastened their clothes to their heads, and took the risk of breasting a swift current and deep-whirling eddies, and by swimming close together they reached the other side by dint of a hard struggle, and with many a chance of failure. There are those who say that Cloelia procured a horse and, mounting it, swam it across slowly, acting as guide for the others, and encouraging and helping them as they were swimming. The argument with which they support this I will mention in a moment.

When the Romans saw them safe and sound, they admired the maidens’ bravery and daring, yet did not like their coming back, nor could endure to prove themselves less honourable than one man in keeping faith. Accordingly they commanded the girls to go back again, and sent men with them to see that they got there. Tarquin set an ambush for these when they had crossed the river, and came very near getting the maidens in his power. But Valeria, daughter of the consul, Publicola, with three servants succeeded in escaping to the camp of Porsena, and the others Porsena’s son, Aruns, rescued from the enemy by hastening with all speed to their assistance.

When they were brought to camp, Porsena, with a look at them, bade them say which one of them was the instigator and leader in the plan. The others, for fear regarding Cloelia, said not a word; but Cloelia of her own accord said that it was herself, and Porsena, in admiration of her, ordered a horse to be brought, fittingly caparisoned, and presented it to her, and sent them all back kindly and humanely. Many make of this an indication that Cloelia rode across the river on a horse. Others, however, say this is not so, but that Porsena, because he admired her strength and daring as above that of a woman, deemed her worthy of a gift fitting for a warrior. At all events, there stood an equestrian statue of a woman close beside the Sacred Way, as it is called, and some say that this is the statue of Cloelia, others of Valeria.

XV. Micca and Megisto

Aristotimus, having succeeded in becoming despot over the people of Elis, was able to prevail through the support of Antigonus the king, 251 but he used his power for no seemly or moderate purpose. He was himself brutal by nature, and he was led by fear to be subservient to a band of mixed barbarians who kept guard over his person and his sovereignty, and he overlooked many arrogant and cruel deeds done to the citizens by them. An example is what happened to Philodemus. The man had a beautiful daughter named Micca, and this girl one of the officers of the despot’s mercenaries named Lucius, to show his arrogance, rather than for love of her, undertook to make his paramour, and sent a summons for her. Her parents, seeing the necessity, advised her to go, but the girl, being noble and high-minded, begged her father, embracing and beseeching him, that he would rather bear to see her dead than robbed of her maidenhood in such a shameful and lawless way. There was some delay, and Lucius himself, lustful and drunk, started forth in the midst of his drinking in a passion. Finding Micca with her head on her father’s knees, he commanded her to follow with him. But, as she was not willing, he tore off her clothes and whipped her naked body, while she bravely bore the painful blows in silence. Her father and mother, effecting nothing by their intreaties and tears, resorted to calling upon gods and men to witness their frightful and lawless treatment. But the barbarian, utterly crazed by rage and drink, killed the maiden, as she lay with her face in her father’s bosom.

The despot, however, was not moved even by things like this, but he made away with many, and forced even more into exile. At any rate, it is said that eight hundred men fled for safety to the Aetolians, asking for rescue of their wives and youngest children from the despot. A little later he himself caused proclamation to be made that the women who wished might go away to their husbands, taking along as much as they wished of their feminine possessions. When he learned that they all received the proclamation with gladness (and their number was over six hundred), he issued orders that all should proceed in a company on a specified day, as if purposing himself to assure their safety. When the day arrived, the women gathered at the gates with their possessions which they had packed up, and some of their children they carried in their arms, and others they had in wagons, and they were waiting there for one another. Suddenly many of the despot’s men bore down upon them, calling out to them, while still a long way off, to wait. And when these came near, they ordered the women to move back, and then turned the teams about and rode them at the women, driving them through their midst mercilessly, and giving the women no chance either to follow or to stay or to come to the help of their little ones who were being killed, some of whom perished by being thrown from the wagons, others by falling under foot. The mercenaries urged them on like a flock of sheep, with shouts and whips, while the women tripped over one another, until the soldiers had cast them all into prison. This possessions were carried off to Aristotimus.

The people of Elis being highly indignant over this affair, the holy women devoted to Dionysus, whom they call the Sixteen, taking suppliant branches and fillets from those sacred to the god, went to meet Aristotimus close by the market-place. His bodyguard made way out of respect, and the priestesses silently halted, first of all reverently holding out their suppliant branches. But when it became clear that they were petitioning in behalf of the women, and trying by entreaty to mollify his anger, he, greatly exasperated with his guards, screamed out that they had permitted the priestesses to come into his presence, and he made them drive these from the market-place by pushing or striking one or another, and he fined each woman four hundred pounds.

After these events, Hellanicus started a concerted activity against the despot. He was a man, who owing to his advanced years and the death of two sons, was not thought of by the despot as likely to be active in any way. 252 The exiles crossed over from Aetolia and occupied Amymone, a stronghold in Elis, well adapted to serve as a base for warlike operations, and there they received a great addition to their numbers from the citizens who managed to escape from Elis. Aristotimus, alarmed at this, went to see the imprisoned women, and, thinking that he should accomplish his purpose better by fear than by favour, he gave orders to them to write and send letters to their husbands so that the men should leave the country; and if they would not write, he threatened to put them all to death after torturing them and making away with their children first. As he stood there a long time and urged them to say whether they would carry out any part of this programme, most of the women made no answer to him, but looked at one another in silence, and showed by nods that all their minds were made up not to be frightened or perturbed at the threat. Megisto, the wife of Timoleon, who, on account of her husband and her own virtues as well, held the position of leader, did not think it meet to rise, nor would she allow the other women to do so; but, keeping her seat, she made answer to him: “If you were a sensible man, you would not be talking to women about husbands, but you would send to them, as to those having authority over us, finding better words to say to them than those by which you tricked us. But if you despair of persuading them yourself, and are attempting to use us to mislead them, do not expect to deceive us again, and I pray that they may never entertain such a base thought that, to spare their wives and little children, they should forsake the cause of their country’s freedom. In truth, it is not so bad a thing for them to lose us, whom they have not at present, as it is a good thing to rescue the citizens from your cruelty and overbearing insolence.”

As Megisto spoke thus, Aristotimus could not brook her words, and ordered her young child to be brought, as if intending to kill him in her sight. As the servants sought for him mingled among the other children playing and wrestling, his mother, calling him by name, said, “Come here, child, and, before you can realize and think, be delivered from this bitter despotism; since for me it is more grievous to look upon your undeserved slavery than upon your death.”

At this, Aristotimus drew his sword upon the mother herself, but as he was rushing at her in a rage, one of his intimate associates, Cylon by name, who was thought to be loyal to him, but really hated him, and was in the conspiracy with Hellanicus and the rest, intervened and turned him from his purpose by intreating him and saying that such action was ignoble and womanish, not that of a manly ruler who had learned to meet any situation. The result was that Aristotimus, with difficulty regaining his senses, came away.

An ominous thing, however, happened to him. It was midday, and he was resting, and his wife was with him. While preparations for dinner were going on, an eagle was seen high in air circling over the house; then, as if with intent and design, it let fall a good-sized stone on that part of the roof under which was the room where Aristotimus happened to be lying. At the same moment there was a great crash above and shouting outside by those who saw the bird. Aristotimus was seized with consternation, and when he learned what had happened, he sent for a seer whom he constantly consulted in the market-place, and, much perturbed, questioned him about the ominous happening. The seer encouraged him to believe that Zeus was rousing him and aiding him, but, on the other hand, told those citizens in whom he trusted that judgement was hovering over the despot’s head, and was all but ready to fall on him. Wherefore it seemed best to Hellanicus and his friends not to delay but to make their attack on the next day.

That night Hellanicus in his sleep dreamed that one of his dead sons stood beside him and said, “What has happened to you, father, that you are asleep? 253 To morrow you must be commander of the city.” So he, having gained good courage because of the vision, urged on his associates, while on the other hand, Aristotimus also having learned that Craterus was coming to his aid with a numerous force and was encamped at Olympia, became so extremely bold that without his bodyguard he went forth into the market-place in the company of Cylon. When, therefore, Hellanicus realized the opportunity, he did not give the signal which had been agreed upon between himself and those who were to make the attempt, but with clear voice, stretching out both arms at the words, he said, “Why delay, brave men? Fair is this place on the soil of your own native land to stage your contest!” So then Cylon first, drawing his sword, smote one of the men following with Aristotimus, but, as Thrasybulus and Lampis rushed at him from the opposite side, Aristotimus forestalled the conspirators by taking refuge in the temple of Zeus. There they slew him, and, exposing his corpse in the market-place, they sounded for the citizens the call to freedom. As a matter of fact, they were not much ahead of the women, for these at once ran forth with joyful acclamations and, surrounding the men, adorned them with ribbons and garlands. Then the crowd surged towards the house of the despot, but his wife, bolting the doors of her chamber, hanged herself. He had two daughters, still unwedded, most beautiful to look upon, of marriageable age. These they seized and dragged out, having resolved to do away with them, but to torture and insult them first. But Megisto, with the rest of the women, meeting them, cried out that they were committing a frightful crime if they who deemed themselves worthy to be a democratic people were, in this matter, showing recklessness and wanton violence like despots. As many had respect for the high worth of the woman who spoke so boldly amid her tears, they decided to omit the violence, and permit the daughters to die by their own hand.

When, therefore, they had returned the maidens to the house and ordered their death immediately, the elder, Myro, loosing her girdle and making a noose of it, bade farewell to her sister and urged her to take note and do exactly what she saw her do, “so that,” she said, “we may not end our lives in any humiliating way, unworthy of ourselves.” But when the younger sister wanted the other to concede to her the privilege of dying first, and seized hold of the girdle, the elder said, “I have never denied you anything else that you wanted; and so you may receive this favour also, and I will patiently endure and bear what is more grievous than death, and that is, dearest, to see you die first.” Thereupon she instructed her sister how to put the noose around her neck, and when she saw that she was dead she took her down and covered her. She herself begged Megisto to take care of her and not to suffer her to be laid in any ignominious way when she should be dead. In consequence no one there was so bitter or such a hater of despots as not to shed tears and commiserate the nobility of the maidens.

Of the deeds, countless in number, done by women acting together these may suffice as examples. But cases of individual bravery I will put down as they come to me, not in any order, because I think that the record of the present subject does not at all require a chronological arrangement.

XVI. Pieria

Some of the Ionians who came to Miletus, owing to lively disagreements with the sons of Neileus, went away to Myus and settled there, suffering many ills at the hands of the Milesians; for these made war upon them because of their defection. However, the war was not without truce or intercourse, but at certain festivals the women commonly went to Miletus from Myus. There was among the people of Myus a prominent man named Pythes, who had a wife named Iapygia and a daughter Pieria. As there was a festival in honour of Artemis, and a sacrifice, which they call Neleis, 254 he sent his wife and daughter, who had asked that they might participate in the festival. The most influential of Neileus’s sons, Phrygius by name, fell in love with Pieria, and tried to think what could be done on his part that would be most pleasing to her. And when she said, “If only you could make it possible for me to come here often and many with me,” Phrygius was quick to understand that she wanted friendship and peace for the citizens, and stopped the war. There was, consequently, in both cities repute and honour for Pieria, so that the women of Miletus pray even to this day that their husbands may love them as Phrygius loved Pieria.

XVII. Polycrite

A war arose between the Naxians and Milesians on account of Neaera the wife of Hypsicreon of Miletus. It was because she fell in love with Promedon of Naxos and sailed away with him. He was a friend and guest of Hypsicreon, but yielded to Neaera’s ardent advances, and then, as she was in fear of her husband, he took her away to Naxos, and placed her as a suppliant at the shrine of Hestia. When the Naxians, as a favour to Promedon, refused to give her up, though they advanced another excuse, her position as suppliant, the war arose. Besides the many others who fought on the side of the Milesians the Erythraeans were the most zealous among the Ionians; and the war dragged on and on, and brought great calamities. Then it came to an end through a woman’s bravery, as it had arisen through a woman’s badness.

Diognetus, the general of the Erythraeans, entrusted with the command of a stronghold, its natural advantages reinforced by fortification to menace the city of the Naxians, gathered much spoil from the Naxians, and captured some free women and maidens; with one of these, Polycrite, he fell in love and kept her, not as a captive, but in the status of a wedded wife. Now when a festival which the Milesians celebrate came due in the army, and all turned to drinking and social gatherings, Polycrite asked Diognetus if there were any reason why she should not send some bits of pastry to her brothers. And when he not only gave her permission but urged her to do so, she slipped into a cake a note written on a sheet of lead, and bade the bearer tell her brothers that they themselves and no others should consume what she had sent. The brothers came upon the piece of lead and read the words of Polycrite, advising them to attack the enemy that night, as they were all in a state of carelessness from drink on account of the festival. Her brothers took this message to their generals and strongly urged them to set forth with themselves. When the place had been taken and many slain, Polycrite begged for the life of Diognetus from her citizens, and saved him. When she herself arrived at the gates, and found herself confronting the citizens who came to meet her, welcoming her with joy and garlands and giving expression to their admiration for her, she could not bear the immensity of her joy, but fell down dead beside the gate; and there she is buried, and her tomb is called the Tomb of Envy, as though by some envious fortune Polycrite was begrudged the enjoyment of her honours.

This is the story which the Naxian writers record. Aristotle, however, says that Polycrite was not taken captive, but that Diognetus, in some other way, saw her and fell in love with her, and stood ready to give or to do anything; and she agreed to come to him, if she might obtain just one thing, for which, as the philosopher asserts, she required an oath of Diognetus. And when he had given the required oath, she demanded in fulfilment that Delium be given to her (the place was called by this name), otherwise she would have nothing to do with him. He, because of his love and his oath, was carried quite away, and handed over the spot to Polycrite, and she in turn to the citizens. Following this, the Naxians were again put on an equal footing, and effected a reconciliation with the Milesians on such terms as they desired.

255 XVIII. Lampsace

There came from Phocaea twin brothers Phobus and Blepsus of the family of the Codridae, of whom Phobus was the first to throw himself into the sea from the Leucadian Rocks, as Charon of Lampsacus has recorded. Phobus, having influence and princely rank, sailed to Parium on some business of his own, and having become the friend and guest of Mandron, who was king of the Bebrycians who are called the Pityoessenians, he aided them by fighting on their side when they were being harassed by their neighbours. When Phobus took his departure Mandron expressed the utmost regard for him, and, in particular, promised to give him a part of their land and city if Phobus wished to come to Pityoessa with Phocaean colonists. So Phobus prevailed on his citizens and sent out his brother with the colonists. And what Mandron had promised was at their disposal, as they expected. But they, inasmuch as they made great gains for themselves through the spoils and booty which they took from the neighbouring barbarians, were first an object of envy, and later an object of fear also, to the Bebrycians, who, desiring to be rid of them, could not prevail on Mandron, who was a fair and just man in his treatment of the Greeks; but when he had gone away on a journey, they prepared to destroy the Phocians by treachery. But the daughter of Mandron, Lampsace, a young girl, learned of the plot beforehand, and tried first to dissuade her friends and relatives and to point out to them that they were undertaking to carry out a frightful and wicked deed in murdering men who were their benefactors and allies and now also their fellow-citizens. But when she could not prevail on them, she secretly told the Greeks what was afoot, and warned them to be on their guard. And they, having made ready a sacrifice and banquet, invited the Pityoessenians to come to it just outside the city; then, dividing themselves into two parties, with the one they took possession of the walls, and with the other made away with the men. Having gained control of the city in this manner, they sent for Mandron, and bade him be king jointly with one or another of their outnumber. Lampsace died as the result of an illness, and they buried her within the city most magnificently, and called the city Lampsacus after her name. When Mandron, endeavouring to avoid any suspicion of treachery, asked to be released from dwelling with them, but asked as his right to take away with him the children and wives of the slain, they sent them forth, doing them no wrong. They rendered heroic honours to Lampsace at first; later they voted to offer sacrifice to her as to a goddess, and so they continue to do.

XIX. Aretaphila

Aretaphila, of Cyrene, was not born long years ago, but in the crucial times of Mithradates; she displayed, however, a bravery and an achievement which may well rival the counsel of the heroines of olden time. She was the daughter of Aeglator and the wife of Phaedimus, both men of note. She had beautiful features, and was reputed to be unusually sensible and not deficient in political wisdom, but the common misfortunes of her country brought her into prominence.

Nicocrates, having made himself despot over the people of Cyrene, not only ordered the murder of many persons, but killed with his own hand Melanippus the priest of Apollo, and took the priesthood himself. He also killed Phaedimus the husband of Aretaphila, and made Aretaphila his unwilling wife. In addition to his other unnumbered acts of lawlessness, he stationed guards at the gates, who maltreated the dead that were being borne to the grave, prodding them with daggers, and applying red-hot irons to them, so that none of the citizens should be secretly carried out in the guise of a corpse.

Even for Aretaphila her own troubles were hard enough to bear, 256 although the despot, because of his love for her, granted her the fullest enjoyment of his power, for he was quite vanquished by her, and with her alone did he conduct himself civilly, being relentless and brutal in all else. But even so, the piteous and undeserved suffering of her country distressed her the more; for one citizen after another was slaughtered, and there was no hope of vengeance from any quarter; for the exiles, altogether weak and timid, were scattered here and there and everywhere. So Aretaphila, risking herself as the sole remaining hope for the common weal, and emulating the glorious and far-famed daring of Thebe of Pherae, but being destitute of faithful supporters in the household, such as the circumstances provided for Thebe, undertook to dispatch her husband by poison. In preparing, procuring, and testing many potent mediums she did not go unnoticed, but was betrayed. And when proofs were presented, Calbia, Nicocrates’s mother, who was by nature bloodthirsty and inexorable, felt that she ought to make away with Aretaphila after torturing her. But Nicocrates’ love had the effect of tempering his anger with procrastination and weakness, and the fact that Aretaphila vigorously met the accusations and defended herself against them provided some excuse for his attitude. But when she was apprehended by the proofs, and saw that her preparations for the poisoning admitted no denial, she confessed, but said that she had prepared no fatal poisoning. “No, my dear,” said she, “my striving is for very important things, your affection for me, and the repute and influence which I enjoy because of you, and so I am an object of envy to bad women. It was fear of their potions and devices that led me to counteract them. It was foolish and feminine perhaps, but not deserving of death, unless you as judge decide to put to death because of love-potions and charms a woman who yearns for more love than you are willing to grant her.”

In spite of this defence of Aretaphila’s, Nicocrates decided to have her put to the torture, and, with Calbia standing by, relentless and inexorable, he tested her in this way. She sustained herself with indomitable courage under the torments until even Calbia unwillingly gave over; and Nicocrates was convinced, and acquitted her, and was sorry that he had caused her to be tortured; and after no long time he came back again, impelled towards her by his passion for her, and resumed the old relations, and tried through honours and acts of kindness to regain her goodwill. But she, who had been triumphant over tortures and pain, had no intention of being vanquished by a show of favour, and, with eagerness for victory added to her eagerness for the honourable and good, she resorted to another device.

She was fortunate in having a daughter of marriageable age, rather good-looking. Her she dangled as a bait before the despot’s brother, who was a young man and an easy prey to pleasures. There is much talk to the effect that Aretaphila, by using charms and love-potions on the girl, got the youth in hand and upset his reasoning powers. His name was Leander. When he had been captivated, and, by importuning his brother, had gained his consent to the marriage, the girl, on the one hand, instructed by her mother, tried to influence him and to induce him to set the city free, arguing that not even he himself was living as a free man under the despotism, and had not even warrant to contract a marriage or to keep to it; and, on the other hand, his friends, thinking to do a favour to Aretaphila, suggested to his mind certain prejudices and suspicions against his brother. When he discovered that Aretaphila was planning and working to the same end, he undertook the deed, and by urging on Daphnis a servant, through him he slew Nicocrates. For the rest, he no longer paid any attention to Aretaphila, but straightway showed by his deeds that he had made away with his brother, but not with the despot; for he ruled in a crazy and foolish way. 257 Nevertheless there remained with him some respect for Aretaphila and some influence on her part, as she was not hateful to him and not directly hostile, but carried on her activities in his affairs unknown to him. First she secretly stirred up a war with the Africans for him by persuading a certain potentate Anabus to overrun the country and lead his army against the city; then she falsely accused to Leander his friends and generals, intimating that they were not zealous in carrying on the war, but wanted rather peace and quiet, which his circumstances and despotism required, as he wished to hold secure his power over the citizens. She said that she herself would effect the reconciliation, and would get Anabus to come to a conference with him, if he would but give the word, before the war should have wrought some irremediable ill. When Leander gave the word, she herself had a talk with the African beforehand, in which she desired him, on the promise of many presents and much money, to seize the despot when he should come to the conference with him. When the African had been won over, Leander was hesitant, but, abashed before Aretaphila, who said that she would be present herself, he went forth unarmed and unattended. When he came near and saw Anabus, he again felt uneasy, and wanted to wait for his bodyguard. But Aretaphila, who was there, at one moment encouraged him, and the next called him a coward. Finally, as a delay ensued, she, quite impulsively and boldly dragging him by the hand, brought him up to the barbarian and handed him over. Instantly he was seized and made a prisoner, and, after having been put in bonds, was kept under watch by the Africans, until Aretaphila’s friends, who were bringing the money for her, arrived, accompanied by the rest of the citizens. For almost all of them, on hearing the news, ran out at the call. When they saw Aretaphila, they came near forgetting their anger against the despot, and considered vengeance upon him a secondary concern. Their first concern in the enjoyment of their freedom was to greet her with joy and tears, prostrating themselves before her as before the statue of a god. As the people surged on, one close upon another, it was with difficulty that by evening they took over Leander and returned to the city. When they had had their fill of honours and praises for Aretaphila, they then turned their attention to the despots. Calbia they burned alive, and Leander they sewed up in a leathern sack and sank in the depths of the sea. They asked that Aretaphila, as her proper due, should share with the best citizens in the control and management of the government. But she, as one who had played through a drama of varying sort and of many rôles up to the winning of the prize, when she saw the city free, withdrew at once to her own quarters among the women, and, rejecting any sort of meddling in affairs, spent the rest of her life quietly at the loom in the company of her friends and family.

XX. Camma

There were in Galatia two of the most powerful of the tetrarchs, distantly related to each other, Sinatus and Sinorix. One of these, Sinatus, had married a maiden, Camma by name, conspicuous for her form and beauty, but even more admired for her virtues. Not only was she modest and fond of her husband, but she was also quick-witted and high-minded, and unusually dear to her inferiors by reason of her kindness and benevolence. A thing that brought her into greater prominence was the fact that she was the priestess of Artemis, whom the Galatians especially reverence, and was seen magnificently attired always in connexion with the processions and sacrifices.

So Sinorix fell in love with her, and not being able to prevail upon her either by persuasion or force as long as her husband lived, he committed a horrible deed, and treacherously killed Sinatus. Then, without allowing much time to elapse, he commenced to woo Camma, 258 who was spending time in the temple and bearing Sinorix’s lawless transgression in no pitiful nor abject manner, but with a spirit that showed sense and bided its time. He was persistent in his suit, and seemed not to be at all at a loss for arguments that had some plausibility, to the effect that in all respects he had shown himself a better man than Sinatus, and had made away with him for love of Camma and not because of any other nefarious intent. The woman’s denials at the first were not too peremptory, and later, little by little, she appeared to be softened; for her relatives and friends also brought pressure to bear upon her by way of service and favour to Sinorix, who held such very great power, and they tried to persuade and coerce her. Finally she yielded, and sent for him to come to her, on the ground that the consenting and pledging should take place in the presence of the goddess. When he had come, she received him kindly and, having led him to the altar, poured a libation from a bowl, then drank a portion herself and bade him drink the rest; it was poisoned mixture of milk and honey. When she saw that he had drunk, she uttered a clear cry of joy, and, prostrating herself before the goddess, said, “I call you to witness, goddess most revered, that for the sake of this day I have lived on after the murder of Sinatus, and during all that time I have derived no comfort from life save only the hope of justice; and now that justice is mine, I go down to my husband. But as for you, wickedest of all men, let your relatives make ready a tomb instead of a bridal chamber and a wedding.”

When the Galatian heard these words, and felt the poison already working and creating a disturbance in his body, he mounted a chariot as if to try shaking and jolting as a relief, but he got out almost immediately and changed over into a litter, and in the evening he died. Camma endured through the night, and when she learned that he had come to his end, she died cheerful and happy.

XXI. Stratonice

Galatia produced also Stratonice the wife of Deiotarus and Chiomara the wife of Ortiagon, dwomen that deserve to be remembered.

Stratonice, well knowing that her husband desired children from her to succeed to the kingdom, but having no child herself, prevailed upon him to have a child by another woman, and to connive at its being passed off as her own. Deiotarus thought highly of the idea, and did everything in dependence upon her judgement, and she procured a comely maiden from among the prisoners, Electra by name, and sealed her to Deiotarus. The children that were born she brought up with loving care and in royal state as if they had been her own.

XXII. Chiomara

It came to pass that Chiomara, the wife of Ortiagon, was made a prisoner of war along with the rest of the women at the time when the Romans under Gnaeus overcame in battle the Galatians in Asia. The officer who obtained possession of her used his good fortune as soldiers do, and dishonoured her. He was, naturally, an ignorant man with no self-control when it came to either pleasure or money. He fell a victim, however, to his love of money, and when a very large sum in gold had been mutually agreed upon as the price for the woman, he brought her to exchange for the ransom to a place where a river, flowing between, formed a boundary. When the Galatians had crossed and given him the money and received Chiomara, she, by a nod, indicated to one man that he should smite the Roman as he was affectionately taking leave of her. And when the man obediently struck off the Roman’s head, she picked it up and, wrapping it in the folds of her garment, departed. When she came to her husband and threw the head down before him, he said in amazement, “A noble thing, dear wife, is fidelity.” “Yes,” said she, “but it is a nobler thing that only one man be alive who has been intimate with me.”

Polybius says that he had a conversation with this woman in Sardis, and that he admired her good sense and intelligence.

259 XXIII. A Woman of Pergamum

When Mithradates, after sending for sixty of the noblest of Galatians to come to Pergamum as friends, seemed to comport himself arrogantly and despotically toward them, and all were indignant, Poredorix, a man of great bodily strength and of unusual spirit, tetrarch of the Tosiopians, undertook, when Mithradates should be hearing cases on the tribunal in a gymnasium, to seize hold of it suddenly and precipitate him, tribunal and all, down into the ravine. But by some chance Mithradates did not go up to the gymnasium on that day, but sent for the Galatians to come to his house, bwhereupon Poredorix urged them to keep up their courage and, when they all should be met together there, to rend Mithradates limb from limb, and kill him, by falling upon him from all sides at once. Knowledge of this came to Mithradates through the agency of some informer, and he delivered over the Galatians one by one to be executed. A little later, happening to remember a young man who, in comeliness and beauty, far surpassed those of his age, he felt sorry for him and changed his mind. It was plain that he was much distressed, since the youth had probably put to death among the first; yet he sent orders that, if the youth should be found alive, they should let him go. The young man’s name was Bepolitanus, and a marvellous piece of luck befell him in this wise: when he was arrested he was wearing very beautiful and costly clothing, which the executioner wished to keep, unstained by blood and unsullied, for himself, and he was stripping this off in a leisurely way, when he saw the messengers from the king running towards him and shouting the youth’s name. So in the case of Bepolitanus, avarice, which has been the undoing of many a man, unexpectedly saved his life.

Poredorix was executed and his body cast forth unburied, and not one of his friends dared to go near him; but a woman of Pergamum, who for her loveliness had been known to the Galatian while he was living, took the risk of burying and covering up his body. The guards, noticing her, arrested her and took her before the king. It is said that Mithradates’ emotions were stirred at the sight of her, as the girl appeared altogether young and innocent. A still stronger influence very likely came from his having learned that love was the reason behind it all; at any rate, he relented and granted her permission to remove and bury the corpse, and to take for it clothing and adornment from what belonged to him.

XXIV. Timocleia

Theagenes of Thebes, who had come to entertain the same aspirations for his city as Epameinondas and Pelopidas and the noblest of the Thebans, came to grief, involved in the general fortunes of Greece at Chaeroneia, when he was already overpowering and pursuing the opposing lines. He is the one who, in answer to a man who cried out, “How far is your pursuit to go?” said, “As far as Macedonia!”

A sister survived him to bear witness that by reason of the virtues of the family and his own natural endowment he was a great and splendid man. However, she had the advantage of getting some benefit from her virtues, so that she could bear more lightly so much of the general misfortunes as came upon her.

For when Alexander had overpowered the Thebans, and some of his men were going to this part of the city, and others to that, and plundering, it happened that a man took possession of Timocleia’s house who was not reasonable or civil but arrogant and foolish. He was commander of a certain Thracian troop, and bore the same name as the king, but was in no way like him; for, without showing the least respect for the ancestry or the estate of the woman, after he had guzzled his fill of wine, he summoned her after dinner to spend the night with him. And this was not the end; he asked for gold and silver, if any had been hidden away by her, at one time threatening to kill her, at another promising to keep her for all time in the position of a wife. She, seizing upon the hold he offered, said, “Would God I had been dead before this night rather than to be alive, 260 so that I might at least, when all else is being ravaged, have preserved my honour. But, since what has been done is done, if I must look upon you as my protector, lord, and husband, by God’s will, I will not deprive you of your own; for I see that I myself have become whatever your will shall decide. I did possess personal ornaments and silver fashioned into drinking-cups, and there was also some gold and money. When the city was being captured, I told my maid-servants to get this all together, and I threw it, or rather deposited it, into a dry well. Nor do many know of it; for there is a cover over the well, and a shady wood growing all around it. I hope you may be fortunate in obtaining it, and for me it will serve as proofs and tokens to you of the happy and splendid state of my house.”

When the Macedonian heard this, he could not wait for daylight, but went straight to the place under the guidance of Timocleia, and, after ordering the garden to be shut close, so that nobody should find out what was going on, he climbed down into the well in his shirt only. An odious Fate led him on, destined to work vengeance upon him at the hands of Timocleia standing over him at the top of the well. When she could tell by his voice that he had reached the bottom, she herself brought many of the stones, while her maid-servants rolled in many big ones on top until they had beaten him down and completely buried him. When the Macedonians came to know of this and recovered the corpse, inasmuch as proclamation had been made before this to kill none of the Thebans, they arrested Timocleia and brought her to the king, and told of her daring deed. But he, seeing in the composure of her countenance and her unhurried step an indication of high rank and noble blood, first questioned her as to who she was among the women. She quite undauntedly and courageously said, “I had the good fortune to have a brother Theagenes, who was a general at Chaeroneia and fell there, fighting against you Macedonians for the freedom of Greece, that we might not have any such experience as we have had. But since we have had an experience undeserved by our family, we have no wish to escape death; for it were better, perhaps, not to live to experience another such night, unless you put a stop to this thing.”

At this the most sympathetic of those present began to weep, but it did not occur to Alexander to pity the woman, for he felt that she was too great for that, but he marvelled at her bravery and her words, which touched him greatly, and he issued orders to his officers that they should take good care and be on the watch that no such insult should again be offered to a noted house. Timocleia he allowed to go free, both herself and all others who were found to be related to her.

XXV. Eryxo

Arcesilaus, the son of Battus who was nicknamed ‘The Happy,’ was not at all like his father in his ways. In fact, while his father was still living, he surrounded his house with a rampart, and was fined two hundred pounds by his father; and when his father had come to his end, for one thing Arcesilaus, being harsh by nature (and this gave him his nickname), and for another consorting with a vicious friend Laarchus, instead of being a king became a despot. Laarchus, secretly scheming to become despot, banished or murdered the noblest among the men of Cyrene, and diverted all the blame for this from himself to Arcesilaus; and finally he brought Arcesilaus into a wasting and grievous illness by a drink containing sea-hare, and thus accomplished his death; then he took over the sovereign rule himself on the pretext that he was keeping it for Arcesilaus’s son Battus. The boy, by reason of his lameness and his youth as well, was looked down upon, but to his mother many gave heed, for she was discreet and humane, and had many influential relatives. Wherefore Laarchus lavished attentions upon her, trying to win her as his wife, saying that it was only right and proper to make Battus his own son by marrying her, and to proclaim him colleague in the sovereignty. Eryxo (for that was the woman’s name), after taking counsel with her brothers, 261 bade Laarchus to have an interview with them, as if she herself looked with favour on the marriage. But when Laarchus interviewed them, and they purposely misled him and put off, Eryxo sent a maid-servant to him to tell him from her that at present her brothers declared themselves opposed, but if the union should be consummated, they would cease their dissent and give over; he must, therefore, come to her by night if he were willing; for if the beginning were once made, all the rest would be well.

This was joyful news to Laarchus, and, all excitement in view of the woman’s compliant mood, he agreed to come bwhenever she should give the word. Eryxo carried out all this in consultation with Polyarchus the eldest of her brothers. When a time had been determined upon for the coming together, Polyarchus was secretly introduced into his sister’s room, having with him two young men with sword in hand who were intent on avenging the murder of their father, whom Laarchus, a short time before, had put to death.

When Eryxo sent for Laarchus, he came in unattended, and, the young men falling upon him, he was run through by their swords and killed. His body they threw over the wall and, bringing forward Battus, they proclaimed him king in succession to his father’s rights, and Polyarchus restored to the people of Cyrene their original form of government.

It happened that there were in the city numerous soldiers of Amasis, king of the Egyptians. These Laarchus had employed as trusty retainers, and they were not the least of his instruments through which he terrorized the citizens. These soldiers sent men to Amasis to accuse Polyarchus and Eryxo. He was much incensed and had thoughts of making war on the people of Cyrene, but just then it happened that his mother died, and it was during the days in which he was holding her funeral that messengers returned from Amasis with the tidings. So Polyarchus thought it best to go there to make his defence. When Eryxo would not be left behind, but expressed her wish to go with him and share the danger, their mother Critola, although well on in years, would not be left behind either. Her standing was of the highest, since she was the sister of Battus the Happy. When they came to Egypt, the people expressed wondrous approval of their exploit, and Amasis expressed extraordinary approval of the self-control and courage of the woman; and after honouring both Polyarchus and the women with presents and royal attentions he sent them back to Cyrene.

XXVI. Xenocrite

No less admiration might be expressed for Xenocrite of Cumae for her behaviour towards Aristodemus the despot, who, some think, had the nickname of ‘Mild’ given to him, but they do not know the truth. The fact is that by the barbarians he was called ‘Mild,’ which, in their tongue, means ‘childlike,’ because, when he was a mere youth with others of his age who were still wearing their hair long (whom they called ‘harassers,’ from their long hair presumably), in the wars against the barbarians he was conspicuous and brilliant, not merely by daring and the work of his hands, but showing himself to be above others in quickness of mind and forethought. Wherefore he advanced to the highest offices, being admired by his fellow-citizens, and he was sent to bring aid to the Romans when they were besieged by the Etruscans who would restore Tarquinius Superbus to his kingdom. In this campaign, which lasted a long time, he gave in altogether to the citizens who were in the military service, and, by playing the part of a demagogue rather than that of a general, he persuaded them to join him in attacking the Senate and in driving into exile the noblest and most influential. Following upon this, he made himself despot, and in the ways in which he misconducted himself towards women and free-born youth he surpassed his former record for viciousness. In fact it is recorded in history that he imposed on boys the custom of wearing long hair and golden ornaments, and the girls he compelled to bob their hair and to wear boy’s clothes and the short undergarment. 262 However, he was singularly enamoured of Xenocrite, whom he kept, the daughter of an exiled father, without restoring her father to his country or winning his consent, but believing that somehow the girl was contented to be with him, inasmuch as she was envied and deemed happy by the citizens. But all this did not make any great impression on her. She was distressed at being partner to a union in which there had been no giving in marriage nor plighting of troth, and she longed for her country’s freedom no less than did those who were the object of the despot’s hatred.

It happened at that juncture that Aristodemus was extending a moat all the way round the country, ba work neither necessary nor useful, but the real reason was that he wished to wear out the citizens and waste their strength with toils and labours; for it was prescribed for each one to carry out a certain number of measures of earth. One woman, when she saw Aristodemus approaching, stepped well out of his way and covered her face with her garment. When he had gone, the young men made fun of her and asked her, in joke, why her modesty led her to avoid Aristodemus only, when she had no such feeling towards the rest of the men. She with a very serious purpose replied, “Because among all the people of Cumae Aristodemus is the only man!”

These few words thus spoken laid holding of them all, and also incited the noble-minded, for very shame, to struggle for their liberty. It is said that when Xenocrite heard of it she said that she herself would rather carry earth for her father, if he were only in his own land, than be associated with Aristodemus in all his luxury and power. These things gave added strength to those who were banding together against Aristodemus, at the head of whom was Thymoteles. And when Xenocrite provided them with a safe way to get in and assurance that Aristodemus was unarmed and unattended, they forced their way in without much difficulty, and dispatched him. Thus the city of Cumae was made free by the bravery of two women, the one who put into their minds the thought and impulse for the deed, and the other who co-operated with them to bring about its conclusion.

Honours and great gifts were tendered to Xenocrite, but she would have none of them; one request only she made, to bury the body of Aristodemus, and this they granted her, and chose her to be priestess of Demeter, feeling that the honour would be no less pleasing to the goddess than appropriate for Xenocrite.

XXVII. The Wife of Pythes

It is said the wife of Pythes, contemporary with Xerxes, was wise and good. Pythes himself, as it appears, came by chance upon some gold mines, and, delighting in the wealth from them not with moderation, but insatiably and beyond measure, he himself spent all his time over them, and put the citizens down there also, and compelled all alike to dig or carry or wash out the gold, performing no other work and carrying on no other activity. Many perished and all were completely exhausted, when the women, coming to the door of the wife of Pythes, made supplication. She bade them depart and not lose heart; then she summoned the goldsmiths whom she trusted most, secluded them, and ordered them to make golden loaves of bread, cakes of all sorts, fruit, and whatever else in the way of dainties and food she knew Pythes liked best. When these had all been made, Pythes arrived home from abroad; for he had been travelling. And when he called for dinner, his wife caused a golden table to be set before him which contained nothing edible, but everything of gold. At first Pythes was delighted with the mimic food, but when he had gazed his fill, he called for something to eat; and she served to him a golden replica of whatever he chanced to express a desire for. By this time he was in a high dudgeon and shouted out that he was hungry, whereupon she said, “But it is you who have created for us a plentiful supply of these things, and of nothing else; 263 for all skill in the trades has disappeared from among us; no one tills the soil, but we have forsaken the sowing and planting of crops in the soil and the sustaining food that comes from it, and we dig and delve for useless things, wasting our own strength and that of our people.”

These things moved Pythes, and he did away with much of his activities at the mines, but not all, ordering a fifth of the citizens to work the mines in turn, and the remainder he transferred to agriculture and the trades.

When Xerxes was on his way to invade Greece, Pythes, who had been most splendid in his entertainments and gifts, asked as a favour from the king that, as he had several sons, the king should exempt one from military duty, and leave him at home to be a comfort to Pythes in his old age. Xerxes, in his rage, ordered that this one son for whom the father made his request should be killed and cut in two, and that the army should march between the two halves; the others he took with him, and all perished in the battles.

Because of this Pythes lost all spirit, and went through an experience similar to that of many bad and foolish men; for he was afraid of death and burdened with life. He wished not to live, and yet could not let go of life. As there was a great mound in the city, and also a river flowing through it, which they called the Pythopolites, he made ready a mausoleum in the mound, and then turned the course of the stream so that the river was carried through the mound with its waters touching the tomb. Upon the completion of all this he went down into the mausoleum, committing the government and care of the whole city to his wife, and ordered her not to come near him, but to send his dinner for him every day, by placing it in a boat, until the time when the boat should pass by the tomb with the dinner untouched; then she should cease sending, taking it for granted that he was dead. He passed the remainder of his life in this way, and his wife administered the government excellently, and gave the citizens relief from their miseries.

BOOK IV

Roman questions

2631 Why do they bid the bride touch fire and water?

Is it that of these two, being reckoned as elements or first principles, fire is masculine and water feminine, and fire supplies the beginnings of motion and water the function of the subsistent element or the material?

Or is it because fire purifies and water cleanses, and a married woman must remain pure and clean?

Or is it that, just as fire without moisture is unsustaining and arid, and water without heat is unproductive and inactive, so also male and female apart from each other are inert, but their union in marriage produces the perfection of their life together?

Or is it that they must not desert each other, but must share together every sort of fortune, even if they are destined to have nothing other than fire and water to share with each other?

2 1   Why in the marriage rites do they light five torches, neither more nor less, which they call cereones?

Is it, as Varro has stated, that while the praetors use three, the aediles have a right to more, and it is from the aediles that the wedding party light their torches?

264 Or is it because in their use of several numbers the odd number was considered better and more perfect for various purposes and also better adapted to marriage? For the even number admits division and its equality of division suggests strife and opposition; the odd number, however, cannot be divided into equal parts at all, but whenever it is divided it always leaves behind a remainder of the same nature as itself. Now, of the odd numbers, five is above all the nuptial number; for three is the first odd number, and two is the first even number, and five is composed of the union of these two, as it were of male and female.

Or is it rather that, since light is the symbol of birth, and women in general are enabled by nature to bear, at the most, five children at one birth, the wedding company makes use of exactly that number of torches?

Or is it because they think that the nuptial pair has need of five deities: Zeus Teleios, Hera Teleia, Aphrodite, Peitho, and finally Artemis, whom women in child-birth and travail are wont to invoke?

3 Why is it that, although there are many shrines of Diana in Rome, the only one into which men may not enter is the shrine in the so called Vicus Patricius?

Is it because of the current legend? For a man attempted to violate a woman who was here worshipping the goddess, and was torn to pieces by the dogs; and men do not enter because of the superstitious fear that arose from this occurrence.

4 1   Why do they, as might be expected, nail up stags’ horns in all the other shrines of Diana, but in the shrine on the Aventine nail up horns of cattle?

Is it because they remember the ancient occurrence? For the tale is told that among the Sabines in the herds of Antro Curiatius was born a heifer excelling all the others in appearance and size. When a certain soothsayer told him that the city of the man who should sacrifice that heifer to Diana on the Aventine was destined to become the mightiest city and to rule all Italy, the man came to Rome with intent to sacrifice his heifer. But a servant of his secretly told the prophecy to the king Servius, who told Cornelius the priest, and Cornelius gave instructions to Antro to bathe in the Tiber before the sacrifice; for this, said he, was the custom of those whose sacrifice was to be acceptable. Accordingly Antro went away and bathed, but Servius sacrificed the heifer to Diana before Antro could return, and nailed the horns to the shrine. This tale both Juba and Varro have recorded, except that Varro has not noted the name of Antro; and he says that the Sabine was cozened, not by Cornelius the priest, but by the keeper of the temple.

5 1   Why is it that those who are falsely reported to have died in a foreign country, even if they return, men do not admit by the door, but mount upon the roof-tiles and let them down inside?

Varro gives an explanation of the cause that is quite fabulous. For he says that in the Sicilian war there was a great naval battle, and in the case of many men a false report spread that they were dead. But, when they had returned home, in a short time they all came to their end except one who, when he tried to enter, found the doors shutting against him of their own accord, nor did they yield when he strove to open them. The man fell asleep there before his threshold and in his sleep saw a vision, which instructed him to climb upon the roof and let himself down into the house. When he had done so, he prospered and lived to an advanced age; and from this occurrence the custom became established for succeeding generations.

But consider if this be not in some wise similar to Greek customs; for the Greeks did not consider pure, nor admit to familiar intercourse, nor suffer to approach the temples any person for whom a funeral had been held and a tomb constructed on the assumption that they were dead. The tale is told that Aristinus, a victim of this superstition, sent to Delphi and besought the god to release him from the difficulties in which he was involved because of the custom; and the prophetic priestess gave response:

265 All that a woman in childbed does at the birth of her baby,

When this again thou hast done, to the blessed gods sacrifice offer.

Aristinus, accordingly, chose the part of wisdom and delivered himself like a new-born babe into the hands of women to be washed, and to be wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and to be suckled; and all other men in such plight do likewise and they are called “Men of Later Fate.” But some will have it that this was done in the case of such persons even before Aristinus, and that the custom is ancient. Hence it is nothing surprising if the Romans also did not think it right to admit by the door, through which they go out to sacrifice and come in from sacrificing, those who are thought to have been buried once and for all and to belong to the company of the departed, but bade them descend from the open air above into that portion of the house which is exposed to the sky. And with good reason, for, naturally, they perform all their rites of purification under the open sky.

6 1   Why do the women kiss their kinsmen on the lips?

Is it, as most authorities believe, that the drinking of wine was forbidden to women, and therefore, so that women who had drunk wine should not escape detection, but should be detected when they chanced to meet men of their household, the custom of kissing was established?

Or is it for the reason which Aristotle the philosopher has recorded? For that far-famed deed, the scene of which is laid in many different places, was dared, it appears, by the Trojan women, even on the very shores of Italy. For when they had reached the coast, and the men had disembarked, the women set fire to the ships, since, at all hazards, they desired to be quit of their wanderings and their sea-faring. But they were afraid of their husbands, and greeted with a kiss and a warm embrace such of their kinsmen and members of their household as they encountered; and when the men had ceased from their wrath and had become reconciled, the women continued thereafter as well to employ this mark of affection towards them.

Or was this rather bestowed upon the women as a privilege that should bring them both honour and power if they should be seen to have many good men among their kinsmen and in their household?

Or is it that, since it is not the custom for men to marry blood relations, affection proceeded only so far as a kiss, and this alone remained as a token of kinship and a participation therein? For formerly men did not marry women related to them by ties of blood, just as even now they do not marry their aunts or their sisters; but after a long time they made the concession of allowing wedlock with cousins for the following reason: a man possessed of no property, but otherwise of excellent character and more satisfactory to the people than other public men, had as wife his cousin, an heiress, and was thought to be growing rich from her estate. He was accused on this ground, but the people would not even try the case and dismissed the charge, enacting a decree that all might marry cousins or more distant relatives; but marriage with nearer kin was prohibited.

7 1   Why is it forbidden for a men to receive a gift from his wife or a wife to receive a gift from her husband?

Is it that, Solon having promulgated a law that the bequests of the deceased should be valid unless a man were constrained by force or persuaded by his wife, whereby he excepted force as overriding the free will, and pleasure as misleading the judgement, in this way the bequests of wives and husbands became suspect?

Or did they regard giving as an utterly worthless token of affection (for even strangers and persons with no kindly feelings give gifts), and so deprived the marriage relationship of this mode of giving pleasure, that mutual affection might be unbought and free, existing for its own sake and for no other reason?

Or is it that women are most likely to be seduced and welcome strangers because of gifts they receive from them; and thus it is seen to be dignified for them to love their own husbands even though their husbands give them no gifts?

Or is it rather that both the husbands’ property should be held in common with their wives and the wives’ with their husbands? 266 For anyone who accepts what is given learns to regard what is not given to him as belonging to another, with the result that by giving a little to each other they deprive each other of all else that they own.

8 1   Why among the Romans is it forbidden to receive a gift from a son-in law or from a father-in law?

Is the father-in law prevented from receiving a gift from his son-in law, in order that the gift may not appear ultimately to reach the wife through her father? And is the son-in law similarly prevented, since it is obviously just that he who may not give shall also not receive?

9 1   Why is it that, when men who have wives at home are returning either from the country or from abroad, they send ahead to tell their wives that they are coming?

Is it because this is the mark of a man who is confident that his wife is not up to any mischief, whereas coming suddenly and unexpectedly is, as it were, an arrival by stratagem and unfair vigilance; and are they eager to send good tidings about themselves to their wives as if they felt certain that their wives would be longing for them and expecting them?

Or is it rather that the men themselves long to hear news of their wives, if they shall find them safe at home and longing for their husbands?

Or is it because during their husbands’ absence the wives have more household duties and occasions, and also dissensions and outbursts against those of the household? Therefore the notice is given in advance that the wife may rid herself of these matters and make for her husband his welcome home undisturbed and pleasant.

10 1   Why is it that when they worship the gods, they cover their heads, but when they meet any of their fellow-men worthy of honour, if they happen to have the toga over the head, they uncover?

This second fact seems to intensify the difficulty of the first. If, then, the tale told of Aeneas is true, that, when Diomedes passed by, he covered his head and completed the sacrifice, it is reasonable and consistent with the covering of one’s head in the presence of an enemy that men who meet good men and their friends should uncover. In fact, the behaviour in regard to the gods is not properly related to this custom, but accidentally resembles it; and its observance has persisted since the days of Aeneas.

But if there is anything else to be said, consider whether it be not true that there is only one matter that needs investigation: why men cover their heads when they worship the gods; and the other follows from this. For they uncover their heads in the presence of men more influential than they: it is not to invest these men with additional honour, but rather to avert from them the jealousy of the gods, that these men may not seem to demand the same honours as the gods, nor to tolerate an attention like that bestowed on the gods, nor to rejoice therein. But they thus worshipped the gods, either humbling themselves by concealing the head, or rather by pulling the toga over their ears as a precaution lest any ill-omened and baleful sound from without should reach them while they were praying. That they were mightily vigilant in this matter is obvious from the fact that when they went forth for purposes of divination, they surrounded themselves with the clashing of bronze.

Or, as Castor states when he is trying to bring Roman customs into relation with Pythagorean doctrines: the Spirit within us entreats and supplicates the gods without, and thus he symbolizes by the covering of the head the covering and concealment of the soul by the body.

11 Why do they sacrifice to Saturn with the head uncovered?

Is it because Aeneas instituted the custom of covering the head, and the sacrifice to Saturn dates from long before that time?

Or is it that they cover the head before the heavenly deities, but they consider Saturn a god whose realm is beneath the earth? Or is it that no part of Truth is covered or overshadowed, and the Romans consider Saturn father of Truth?

12 1   And why do they consider Saturn father of Truth?

Is it that they think, as do certain philosophers, that Saturn (Kronos) is Time (Chronos), and Time discovers the truth? Or because it is likely that the fabled Age of Saturn, if it was an age of the greatest righteousness, participated most largely in truth?

13 1   Why do they also sacrifice to the god called “Honor” with the head uncovered? One might translate Honor as “renown” or “honour.”

Is it because renown is a brilliant thing, conspicuous, and widespread, and for the reason that they uncover in the presence of good and honoured men, 267 is it for the same reason that they also worship the god who is named for “honour”?

14 1   Why do sons cover their heads when they escort their parents to the grave, while daughters go with uncovered heads and hair unbound?

Is it because fathers should be honoured as gods by their male offspring, but mourned as dead by their daughters, that custom has assigned to each sex its proper part and has produced a fitting result from both?

Or is it that the unusual is proper in mourning, and it is more usual for women to go forth in public with their heads covered band men with their heads uncovered? So in Greece, whenever any misfortune comes, the women cut off their hair and the men let it grow, for it is usual for men to have their hair cut and for women to let it grow.

Or is it that it has become customary for sons to cover their heads for the reason already given? For they turn about at the graves, as Varro relates, thus honouring the tombs of their fathers even as they do the shrines of the gods; and when they have cremated their parents, they declare that the dead person has become a god at the moment when first they find a bone.

But formerly women were not allowed to cover the head at all. At least it is recorded that Spurius Carvilius was the first man to divorce his wife and the reason was her barrenness; the second was Sulpicius Gallus, because he saw his wife pull her cloak over her head; and the third was Publius Sempronius, because his wife had been present as a spectator at funeral games.

15 1   Why is it that they were wont to sacrifice no living creature to Terminus, in whose honour they held the Terminalia, although they regard him as a god?

Is it that Romulus placed no boundary-stones for his country, so that Romans might go forth, seize land, and regard all as theirs, as the Spartan said, which their spears could reach; whereas Numa Pompilius, a just man and a statesman, who had become versed in philosophy, marked out the boundaries between Rome and her neighbours, and, when on the boundary-stones he had formally installed Terminus as overseer and guardian of friendship and peace, he thought that Terminus should be kept pure and undefiled from blood and gore?

16 1   Why is it that it is forbidden to slave-women to set foot in the shrine of Matuta, and why do the women bring in one slave-woman only and slap her on the head and beat her?

Is the beating of this slave but a symbol of the prohibition, and do they prevent the others from entering because of the legend? For Ino is said to have become madly jealous of a slave-woman on her husband’s account, and to have vented her madness on her son. The Greeks relate that the slave was an Aetolian by birth and that her name was Antiphera. Wherefore also in my native town, Chaeroneia, the temple-guardian stands before the precinct of Leucothea and, taking a whip in his hand, makes proclamation: “Let no slave enter, nor any Aetolian, man or woman!”

17 1   Why is it that in the shrine of this goddess they do not pray for blessings on their own children, but only on their sisters’ children?

Is it because Ino was fond of her sister and suckled her sister’s son also, but was herself unfortunate in her own children? Or is it that, quite apart from this reason, the custom is morally excellent and produces much goodwill among kindred?

18 1   Why was it the custom for many of the wealthy to give a tithe of their property to Hercules?

Is it because he also sacrificed a tithe of Geryon’s cattle in Rome? Or because he freed the Romans from paying a tithe to the Etruscans?

Or have these tales no historical foundation worthy of credence, but the Romans were wont to sacrifice lavishly and abundantly to Hercules as to an insatiable eater and a good trencher-man?

Or was it rather in curtailing their excessive wealth, since it was odious to their fellow-citizens, and in doing away with some of it, as from a lusty bodily vigour that had reached its culmination, did they think that thus Hercules would be especially honoured and pleased by such a way of using up and reducing overabundance, since in his own life he was frugal, self-sufficient, and free from extravagance?

19 1   Why do they adopt the month of January as the beginning of the new year?

268 The fact is that, in ancient days, March was counted before January, as is clear from many different proofs, and particularly from the fact that the fifth month from March is called Quintilis, the sixth Sextilis, and so on to the last, which they call December, since it is the tenth in order from March. Wherefore it has also naturally occurred to some to believe and to maintain that the ancient Romans completed their year, not in twelve months, but in ten, by adding more days than thirty to some of the months. Others state that December is the tenth from March, January the eleventh, and February the twelfth; and in this month they perform rites of purification and make offerings to the dead, since it is the end of the year. But the order of these months was altered, so they say, and January was put first because in this month on the day of the new moon, which they call the Kalends of January, the first consuls entered office after the kings had been expelled.

But more worthy of credence are they who maintain that it was because Romulus was a warrior and a lover of battle, and was thought to be a son of Mars, that he placed first the month which bore Mars’ name. But Numa, in turn, who was a lover of peace, and whose ambition it was to turn the city towards husbandry and to divert it from war, gave the precedence to January and advanced the god Janus to great honours, since Janus was a statesman and a husbandman rather than a warrior. But consider whether Numa may not have adopted as the beginning of the year that which conforms to our conception of the natural beginning. Speaking generally, to be sure, there is not naturally either last or first in a cycle; and it is by custom that some adopt one beginning of this period and others another. They do best, however, who adopt the beginning after the winter solstice, when the sun has ceased to advance, and turns about and retraces his course toward us. For this beginning of the year is in a certain way natural to mankind, since it increases the amount of light that we receive and decreases the amount of darkness, and brings nearer to us the lord and leader of all mobile matter.

20 1   Why is it that the women, when they adorn in their houses a shrine to the women’s goddess, whom they call Bona Dea, bring in no myrtle, although they are very eager to make use of all manner of growing and blooming plants?

Was this goddess, as the mythologists relate, the wife of the seer Faunus; and was she secretly addicted to wine, but did not escape detection and was beaten by her husband with myrtle rods, and is this the reason why they do not bring in myrtle and, when they make libations of wine to her, call it milk?

Or is it because they remain pure from many things, particularly from venery, when they perform this holy service? For they not only exclude their husbands, but they also drive everything male out of the house whenever they conduct the customary ceremonies in honour of the goddess. So, because the myrtle is sacred to Venus, they religiously exclude it. For she whom they now call Venus Murcia, in ancient days, it seems, they styled Myrtia.

21 1   Why do the Latins revere the woodpecker and all strictly abstain from it?

Is it because, as they tell the tale, Picus, transformed by his wife’s magic drugs, became a woodpecker and in that form gives oracles and prophecies to those who consult him?

Or is this wholly incredible and monstrous, and is that other tale more credible which relates that when Romulus and Remus were exposed, not only did a she-wolf suckle them, but also a certain woodpecker came continually to visit them and bring them scraps of food? For generally, even to this day, in foot-hills and thickly wooded places what the woodpecker is found, there also is found the wolf, as Nigidius records.

Or is it rather because they regard this bird as sacred to Mars, even as other birds to other gods? For it is a courageous and spirited bird 269 and has a beak so strong that it can overturn oaks by pecking them until it has reached the inmost part of the tree.

22 1   Why do they suppose Janus to have been two-faced and so represent him in painting and sculpture?

Is it because, as they relate, he was by birth a Greek from Perrhaebia, and, when he had crossed to Italy and had settled among the savages there, he changed both his speech and his habits? Or is it rather because he changed the people of Italy to another manner and form of life by persuading a people which had formerly made use of wild plants and lawless customs to till the soil and to live under organized government?

23 1   Why do they sell articles for funerals in the precinct of Libitina, bwhom they identify with Venus?

Is this also one of the philosophic devices of king Numa, that they should learn not to feel repugnance at such things nor shun them as a pollution?

Or is it rather a reminder that whatever is born must die, since one goddess presides over births and deaths? For in Delphi there is a little statue of Aphrodite of the Tomb, to which they summon the departed to come forth for the libations.

24 1   Why have they in the month three beginnings or fixed points, and do not adopt the same interval of days between them?

Is it, as Juba and his followers relate, that on the Kalends the officials used to call the people and announce the Nones for the fifth day thereafter, regarding the Ides as a holy day?

Or is it rather because, since they measured time by the phases of the moon, they observed that in each month the moon undergoes three very important changes: first, when she is hidden by her conjunction with the sun; second, when she has escaped the sun’s rays and becomes visible for the first time at sunset; and third, at the full moon, when her orb is completely round? The disappearance and concealment of the moon they call Kalendae, for everything concealed or secret is clam, and “to be concealed” is celari. The first appearance of the moon they call Nones, the most accurate since it is the new moon: for their word for “new” and “novel” is the same as ours. They name the Ides as they do either because of the beauty and form (eidos) of the full-orbed moon, or by derivation from a title of Jupiter. But we must not follow out the most exact calculation of the number of days nor cast aspersions on approximate reckoning; since even now, when astronomy has made so much progress, the irregularity of the moon’s movements is still beyond the skill of mathematicians, and continues to elude their calculations.

269 e 25 Why do they reckon the day that follows the Kalends, the Nones, or the Ides as unsuitable for leaving home or for travel?

Is it, as most authorities think and as Livy records, that on the day after the Ides of Quintilis, which they now call July, the military tribunes led out the army, and were vanquished in battle by the Gauls at the river Allia and lost the City? But when the day after the Ides had come to be regarded as ill-omened, did superstition, as is its wont, extend the custom further, and involve in the same circumspection the day after the Nones and the day after the Kalends?

Or does this contain many irrational assumptions? For it was on a different day that they were defeated in battle, a day which they call Alliensis from the river, and make a dread day of expiation; and although they have many ill-omened days, they do not observe them under the same names in each month, but each in the month in which it occurs; and it is thus quite incredible that the superstition should have attached itself simply to all the days that follow immediately after the Nones or the Kalends.

Consider the following analogy: just as they have dedicated the first month to the gods of Olympus, and the second, in which they perform certain rites of purification and sacrifice to the departed, to the gods of the lower world, 270 so also in regard to the days of the month they have established three as festive and holy days, as I have stated, which are, as it were, fundamental and sovereign days; but the days which follow immediately they have dedicated to the spirits and the dead, and have come to regard them as ill-omened and unsuitable for business. In fact, the Greeks worship the gods on the day of the new moon; the next day they have duly assigned to the heroes and spirits, and the second bowl of wine is mixed in honour of the heroes and heroines. And speaking generally, time is a sort of number; and the beginning of number is divine, for it is the monad. But after it is the dyad, antagonistic to the beginning number, and the first of the even numbers. The even numbers are imperfect, incomplete, and indeterminate, just as the odd numbers are determinate, completing, and perfect. Wherefore, in like manner, the Nones succeed the Kalends at an interval of five days and the Ides succeed the Nones at an interval of nine days. For the odd numbers define the beginnings but even numbers, since they occur after the beginnings, have no position nor power; therefore on these days they do not begin any business or travel.

Or has also the saying of Themistocles some foundation in reason? For once upon a time, said he, the Day-After had an altercation with the Feast-Day on the ground that the Feast-Day had much labour and toil, whereas she herself provided the opportunity of enjoying in leisure and quiet all the things prepared for the festival. To this the Feast-Day replied “You are quite right; but if I had not been, you would not be!” This story Themistocles related to the Athenian generals who succeeded him, to show that they would have been nowhere, if he himself had not saved the city.

Since, therefore, all travel and all business of importance needs provision and preparation, and since in ancient days the Romans, at the time of festivals, made no provision or plan for anything, save only that they were engaged in the service of their gods and busied themselves with this only, just as even to this day the priests cause such a proclamation to be made in advance as they proceed on their way to sacrifice; so it was only natural that they did not set out on a journey immediately after their festivals, nor did they transact any business, for they were unprepared; but that day they always spent at home making their plans and preparations.

Or is it even as men now, who have offered their prayers and oblations, are wont to tarry and sit a while in the temples, and so they would not let busy days succeed holy days immediately, but made some pause and breathing-space between, since business brings with it much that is distasteful and undesired?

26 1   Why do women in mourning wear white robes and white head-dresses?

Do they do this, as men say the Magi do, arraying themselves against Hades and the powers of darkness, and making themselves like unto Light and Brightness?

Or is it that, just as they clothe the body of the dead in white, they think it proper that the relatives should also wear this colour? They adorn the body thus since they cannot so adorn the soul; and they wish to send forth the soul bright and pure, since it is now set free after having fought the good fight in all its manifold forms.

Or are plainness and simplicity most becoming on these occasions? Of the dyed garments, some reflect expense, others over-elaboration; for we may say no less with reference to black than to purple: “These be cheating garments, these be cheating colours.” That which is naturally black is dyed not through art, but by nature; and when it is combined with a dark colour, it is overpowered. Only white, therefore, is pure, unmixed, and uncontaminated by dye, nor can it be imitated; wherefore it is most appropriate for the dead at burial. For he who is dead has become something simple, unmixed, and pure, once he has been released from the body, which is indeed to be compared with a stain made by dyeing. In Argos, as Socrates says, persons in mourning wear white garments washed in water.

27 1   Why do they regard all the city wall as inviolable and sacred, 271 but not the gates?

Is it, as Varro has written, because the wall must be considered sacred that men may fight and die with enthusiasm in its defence? It was under such circumstances, it seems, that Romulus killed his brother because he was attempting to leap across a place that was inviolable and sacred, and to make it traversable and profane.

But it was impossible to consecrate the gates, for through them they carry out many other objectionable things and also dead bodies. Wherefore the original founders of a city yoke a bull and a cow, and mark out with a plough all the land on which they intend to build; and when they are engaged in tracing the circuit of the walls, as they measure off the space intended for gates, they lift up the ploughshare and thus carry the plough across, since they hold that all the land that is ploughed is to be kept sacred and inviolable.

28 1   Why do they tell children, whenever they would swear by Hercules, not to do so under a roof, and bid them go out into the open air?

Is it, as some relate, because they believe that Hercules had no pleasure in staying in the house, but rejoiced in a life in the open air and a bed under the stars?

Or is it rather because Hercules is not one of the native gods, but a foreigner from afar? For neither do they swear under a roof by Bacchus, since he also is a foreign god if he is from Nysa.

Or is this but said in jest to the children, and what is done is really a check upon over-readiness and hastiness to swear, as Favorinus stated? For what is done following, as it were, upon preparation produces delay and allows deliberation. Yet one might urge against Favorinus the fact that this custom is not common, but peculiar to Hercules, as may be seen from the legend about him: for it is recorded that he was so circumspect regarding an oath that he swore but once and for Phyleus, the son of Augeas, alone. Wherefore they say that the prophetic priestess also brought up against the Spartans all the oaths they had sworn, saying that it would be better and much more to be desired if they would keep them!

29 1   Why do they not allow the bride to cross the threshold of her home herself, but those who are escorting her lift her over?

Is it because they carried off by force also the first Roman brides and bore them in this manner, and the women did not enter of their own accord?

Or do they wish it to appear that it is under constraint and not of their own desire that they enter a dwelling where they are about to lose their virginity?

Or is it a token that the woman may not go forth of her own accord and abandon her home if she be not constrained, just as it was under constraint that she entered it? So likewise among us in Boeotia they burn the axle of the bridal carriage before the door, signifying that the bride must remain, since her means of departure has been destroyed.

30 1   Why do they, as they conduct the bride to her home, bid her say, “Where you are Gaius, there am I Gaia”?

Is her entrance into the house upon fixed terms, as it were, at once to share everything and to control jointly the household, and is the meaning, then, “Wherever you are lord and master, there am I lady and mistress”? These names are in common use also in other connexions, just as jurists speak of Gaius Seius and Lucius Titius, and philosophers of Dion and Theon.

Or do they use these names because of Gaia Caecilia, consort of one of Tarquin’s sons, a fair and virtuous woman, whose statue in bronze stands in the temple of Sanctus? And both her sandals and her spindle were, in ancient days, dedicated there as tokens of her love of home and of her industry respectively.

31 Why is the far-famed “Talassio” sung at the marriage ceremony?

Is it derived from talasia (spinning)? For they call the wool-basket (talaros) talasus. When they lead in the bride, they spread a fleece beneath her; she herself brings with her a distaff and her spindle, and wreaths her husband’s door with wool.

Or is the statement of the historians true? They relate that there was a certain young man, brilliant in military achievements and valuable in other ways, whose name was Talasius; and when the Romans were carrying off the daughters of the Sabines who had come to see the games, 272 a maiden of particularly beautiful appearance was being carried off for him by some plebeian retainers of his. To protect their enterprise and to prevent anyone from approaching and trying to wrest the maiden from them, they shouted continually that she was being brought as a wife for Talasius (Talasio). Since, therefore, everyone honoured Talasius, they followed along and provided escort, joining in the good wishes and acclamations. Wherefore since Talasius’s marriage was happy, they became accustomed to invoke Talasius in other marriages also, even as the Greeks invoke Hymen.

32 1   Why is it that in the month of May at the time of the full moon they throw into the river from the Pons Sublicius figures of men, calling the images thrown Argives?

Is it because in ancient days the barbarians who lived in these parts used to destroy thus the Greeks whom they captured? But Hercules, who was much admired by them, put an end to their murder of strangers and taught them to throw figures into the river, in imitation of their superstitious custom. The men of old used to call all Greeks alike Argives; unless it be, indeed, since the Arcadians regarded the Argives also as their enemies because of their immediate proximity, that, when Evander and his men fled from Greece and settled there, they continued to preserve their ancient feud and enmity.

33 1   Why in ancient days did they never dine out without their sons, even when these were still but children?

Did Lycurgus introduce this custom also, and bring boys to the common meals that they might become accustomed to conduct themselves towards their pleasures, not in a brutish or disorderly way, but with discretion, since they had their elders as supervisors and spectators, as it were? No less important is the fact that the fathers themselves would also be more decorous and prudent in the presence of their sons; for “where the old are shameless,” as Plato remarks, “there the young also must needs be lost to all sense of shame.”

34 1   Why is it that while the other Romans make libations and offerings to the dead in the month of February, Decimus Brutus, as Cicero has recorded, used to do so in the month of December? This was the Brutus who invaded Lusitania, and was the first to visit those remote places, and cross the river Lethê with an army.

Since most peoples are accustomed to make offerings to the dead at the close of the day and at the end of the month, is it not reasonable also to honour the dead in the last month at the turn of the year? And December is the last month.

Or do these honours belong to deities beneath the earth, and is it the proper season to honour these deities when all the crops have attained consummation?

Or is it most fitting to remember those below when men are stirring the earth at the beginning of seed-time?

Or is it because this month has been consecrated to Saturn by the Romans, and they regard Saturn as an infernal, not a celestial god?

Or is it that then their greatest festival, the Saturnalia, is set; and it is reputed to contain the most numerous social gatherings and enjoyments, and therefore Brutus deemed it proper to bestow upon the dead first-fruits, as it were, of this festival also?

Or is this statement, that Brutus alone sacrificed to the dead in this month, altogether a falsehood? For it is in December that they make offerings to Larentia and bring libations to her sepulchre.

35 1   And why do they thus honour Larentia who was at one time a courtesan?

They record that there was another Larentia, Acca, the nurse of Romulus, whom they honour in the month of April. But they say that the surname of the courtesan Larentia was Fabula. She became famous for the following reason: a certain keeper of the temple of Hercules enjoyed, it seems, considerable leisure and had the habit of spending the greater part of the day at draughts and dice; and one day, as it chanced, there was present no one of those who were wont to play with him and share the occasion of his leisure. So, in his boredom, he challenged the god to throw dice with him on fixed terms, as it were: if he should win, he was to obtain some service from the god; 273 but if he should lose, he was to furnish a supper for the god at his own expense and provide a comely girl to spend the night with him. Thereupon he brought out the dice, and threw once for himself and once for the god, and lost. Abiding, therefore, by the terms of his challenge he prepared a somewhat sumptuous repast for the god and fetched Larentia, who openly practised the profession of courtesan. He feasted her, put her to bed in the temple, and, when he departed, locked the doors. The tale is told that the god visited her in the night, not in mortal wise, and bade her on the morrow go into the forum, band pay particular attention to the first man she met, and make him her friend. Larentia arose, therefore, and, going forth, met one of the wealthy men that were unwed and past their prime, whose name was Tarrutius. With this man she became acquainted, and while he lived she presided over his household, and when he died, she inherited his estate; and later, when she herself died, she left her property to the State; and for that reason she has these honours.

36 1   Why do they call one of the gates the Window, for this is what fenestra means; and why is the so called Chamber of Fortune beside it?

Is it because King Servius, the luckiest of mortals, was reputed to have converse with Fortune, who visited him through a window?

Or is this but a fable, and is the true reason that when King Tarquinius Priscus died, his wife Tanaquil, a sensible and queenly woman, put her head out of a window and, addressing the citizens, persuaded them to appoint Servius king, and thus the place came to have this name?

37 1   Why is it that of all the things dedicated to the gods it is the custom to allow only spoils of war to disintegrate with the passage of time, and not to move them beforehand nor repair them?

Is it in order that men may believe that their repute deserts them at the same time with the obliteration of their early memorials, and may ever seek to bring in some fresh reminder of valour?

Or is it rather that, as time makes dim the memorials of their dissension with their enemies, it would be invidious and malicious to restore and renew them? Nor among the Greeks, either, do they that first erected a trophy of stone or of bronze stand in good repute.

38 1   Why did Quintus Metellus, when he became pontifex maximus, with his reputation for good sense in all other matters as well as in his statesmanship, prevent divination from birds after the month Sextilis, which is now called August?

Is it that, even as we attend to such matters in the middle of the day or at dawn, or in the beginning of the month when the moon is waxing, and avoid the declining days and hours as unsuitable for business, so likewise did Metellus regard the period of time after the first eight months as the evening or late afternoon, so to speak, of the year, since then it is declining and waning?

Or is it because we should observe birds when they are in their prime and in perfect condition? And this they are before the summer-time; but towards autumn some are weak and sickly, others but nestlings and not full-grown, and still others have vanished completely, migrating because of the time of year.

39 1   Why were men who were not regularly enlisted, but merely tarrying in the camp, not allowed to throw missiles at the enemy or to wound them?

This fact Cato the Elder has made clear in one of his letters to his son, fin which he bids the young man to return home if he has completed his term of service and has been discharged; or, if he should stay over, to obtain permission from his general to wound or slay an enemy.

Is it because sheer necessity alone constitutes a warrant to kill a human being, and he who does so illegally and without the word of command is a murderer? For this reason Cyrus also praised Chrysantas who, when he was about to kill an enemy, and had his weapon raised to strike, heard the recall sounded and let the man go without striking, believing that he was now prevented from so doing.

Or must he who grapples with the enemy and fights 274 not be free from accountability nor go unscathed should he play the coward? For he does not help so much by hitting or wounding an enemy as he does harm by fleeing or retreating. He, therefore, who has been discharge from service is freed from military regulations; but he who asks leave to perform the offices of a soldier renders himself again accountable to the regulations and to his general.

40 1   Why is it not allowed the priest of Jupiter (Flamen Dialis) to anoint himself in the open air?

Is it because it used not to be proper or decent for sons to strip in their father’s sight, nor a son-in law in the presence of his father-in law, nor in ancient days did they bathe together? Now Jupiter is our father, and whatever is in the open air is in some way thought to be particularly in his sight.

Or, just as it is against divine ordinance to strip oneself in a shrine or a temple, so also did they scrupulously avoid the open air and the space beneath the heavens, since it was full of gods and spirits? Wherefore also we perform many necessary acts under a roof, hidden and concealed by our houses from the view of Divine powers.

Or are some regulations prescribed for the priest alone, while others are prescribed for all by the law through the priest? Wherefore also, in my country, to wear a garland, to wear the hair long, not to have any iron on one’s person, and not to set foot within the boundaries of Phocis, are the special functions of an archon; but not to taste fruit before the autumnal equinox nor to prune a vine before the vernal equinox are prohibitions disclosed to practically all alike through the archon; for those are the proper seasons for each of these acts.

In the same way, then, it is apparently a special obligation of the Roman priest also not to use a horse nor to be absent from the city more than three nights nor to lay aside the cap from which he derives the name of flamen. But many other regulations are revealed to all through the priest, and one of them is the prohibition not to anoint oneself in the open air. For the Romans used to be very suspicious of rubbing down with oil, and even to day they believe that nothing has been so much to blame for the enslavement and effeminacy of the Greeks as their gymnasia and wrestling-schools, which engender much listless idleness and waste of time in their cities, as well as paederasty and the ruin of the bodies of the young men with regulated sleeping, walking, rhythmical movements, and strict diet; by these practices they have unconsciously lapsed from the practice of arms, and have become content to be termed nimble athletes and handsome wrestlers rather than excellent men-at arms and horsemen. It is hard work, at any rate, when men strip in the open air, to escape these consequences; but those who anoint themselves and care for their bodies in their own houses commit no offence.

41 1   Why did their ancient coinage have stamped on one side a double-faced likeness of Janus, on the other the stern or the prow of a ship?

Is it, as many affirm, in honour of Saturn who crossed over to Italy in a ship?

Or, since this might be said of many, inasmuch as Janus, Evander, and Aeneas all landed in Italy after a voyage by sea, one might rather conjecture thus: some things are excellent for States, others are necessary; and of the excellent things good government is the chief, and of the necessary things facility of provision. Since, therefore, Janus established for them an ordered government by civilizing their life, and since the river, which was navigable and permitted transportation both from the sea and from the land, provided them with an abundance of necessities, the coinage came to have as its symbol the twofold form of the lawgiver, as has been stated, because of the change he wrought, and the vessel as the symbol of the river.

They also used another kind of coinage, stamped with the figures of a bull, a ram, and a boar, because their prosperity came mostly from their live stock, and from these they also derived their affluence. This is the reason why many of the names of the ancient families are such as 275 the Suillii, Bubulci, Porcii, as Fenestella has stated.

42 1   Why do they use the temple of Saturn as the public treasury and also as a place of storage for records of contracts?

Is it because the opinion and tradition prevailed that when Saturn was king there was no greed or injustice among men, but good faith and justice?

Or is it because the god was the discoverer of crops and the pioneer in husbandry? For this is what his sickle signifies and not as Antimachus, following Hesiod, has written:

Here with sickle in hand was wrought the form of rough Cronus

Maiming his sire at his side, who is Uranus, offspring of Acmon.

Now abundant harvests and their disposal are what give rise to a monetary system; therefore they make the god who is the cause of their good fortune its guardian also. Testimony to support this may be found in the fact that the markets held every eight days and called nundinae are considered sacred to Saturn, for it was the superabundance of the harvest that initiated buying and selling.

Or is this a matter of ancient history, and was Valerius Publicola the first to make the temple of Saturn the treasury, when the kings had been overthrown, because he believed that the place was well-protected, in plain sight, and hard to attack secretly?

43 1   Why do the ambassadors to Rome, from whatever country they come, proceed to the temple of Saturn, and register with the prefects of the treasury?

Is it because Saturn was a foreigner, and consequently takes pleasure in foreigners, or is the solution of this question also to be found in history? For it seems that in early days the treasurers used to send gifts to the ambassadors, which were called lautia, and they cared for the ambassadors when they were sick, and buried them at public expense if they died; but now, owing to the great number of embassies that come, this expensive practice has been discontinued; yet there still remains the preliminary meeting with the prefects of the treasury in the guise of registration.

44 1   Why may not the priest of Jupiter (Flamen Dialis) take an oath?

Is it because an oath is a kind of test to prove that men are free-born, and neither the body nor the soul of the priest must be subjected to any test?

Or is it because it is unreasonable to distrust in trivial affairs him who is entrusted with holy matters of the greatest importance?

Or is it because every oath concludes with a curse on perjury, and a curse is an ill-omened and gloomy thing? This is the reason why priests may not even invoke curses upon others. At any rate the priestess at Athens who was unwilling to curse Alcibiades at the people’s bidding won general approval, for she declared that she had been made a priestess of prayer, not of cursing.

Or is it because the danger of perjury is a public danger if an impious and perjured man leads in prayer and sacrifice on behalf of the State?

275 e 45 Why on the festival of the Veneralia do they pour out a great quantity of wine from the temple of Venus?

Is it true, as most authorities affirm, that Mezentius, general of the Etruscans, sent to Aeneas and offered peace on condition of his receiving the year’s vintage? But when Aeneas refused, Mezentius promised his Etruscans that when he had prevailed in battle, he would give them the wine. Aeneas learned of his promise and consecrated the wine to the gods, and after his victory he collected all the vintage and poured it out in front of the temple of Venus.

Or is this also symbolic, indicating that men should be sober and not drunken on festival days, since the gods take more pleasure in those who spill much strong drink than in those who imbibe it?

46 1   Why did the men of old keep the temple of Horta continually open?

Is it, as Antistius Labeo has stated, that since “to urge on” is expressed by hortari, Horta is the goddess who urges us on, as it were, and incites us to noble actions; and thus they thought that, since she was ever active, she should never be procrastinating nor shut off by herself nor unemployed?

Or rather do they call her, as at present, Hora, with the first syllable lengthened, an attentive and very considerate goddess, who, 276 since she was protective and thoughtful, they felt was never indifferent nor neglectful of human affairs?

Or is this too like many other Latin words, a Greek word, and does it signify the supervising and guardian goddess? Hence her temple was continually open since she neither slumbers nor sleeps.

If, however, Labeo be right in pointing out that Hora is derived from “parorman” (to urge on), consider whether we must not declare that orator is thus to be derived, since an orator is a counsellor or popular leader who stimulates, as it were, and incites; and it is not to be derived from “imprecating” or “praying” (orare), as some assert.

47 1   Why did Romulus build the temple of Vulcan outside the city?

Was it in consequence of Vulcan’s fabled jealousy of Mars because of Venus that Romulus, the reputed son of Mars, did not give Vulcan a share in his home or his city?

Or is this a foolish explanation, and was the temple originally built as a secret place of assembly and council-chamber for himself and his colleague Tatius, that here they might convene with the senators and take counsel concerning public affairs in quiet without being disturbed?

Or was it that since Rome, from the very beginning, has been in great danger from conflagrations, they decided to show honour to this god, but to place his temple outside of the city?

48 1   Why is it that at festival of the Consualia they place garlands on both the horses and the asses and allow them to rest?

Is it because they celebrate this festival in honour of Poseidon, god of horses, and the ass enjoys a share in the horse’s exemption?

Or is it that since navigation and transport by sea have been discovered, pack animals have come to enjoy a certain measure of ease and rest?

49 1   Why was it the custom for those canvassing for office to do so in the toga without the tunic, as Cato has recorded?

Was it in order that they might not carry money in the folds of their tunic and give bribes?

Or was it rather because they used to judge candidates worthy of office, not by their family nor their wealth nor their repute, but by their wounds and scars? Accordingly that these might be visible to those that encountered them, they used to go down to their canvassing without tunics.

Or were they trying to commend themselves to popular favour by thus humiliating themselves by their scanty attire, even as they do by hand-shaking, personal appeals, and fawning behaviour?

50 1   Why did the priest of Jupiter (Flamen Dialis) resign his office if his wife died, as Ateius has recorded?

Is it because the man who has taken a wife and then lost her is more unfortunate than one who has never taken a wife? For the house of the married man is complete, but the house of him who has married and later lost his wife is not only incomplete, but also crippled.

Or is it because the wife assists her husband in the rites, so that many of them cannot be performed without the wife’s presence, and for a man who has lost his wife to marry again immediately is neither possible perhaps nor otherwise seemly? Wherefore it was formerly illegal for the flamen to divorce his wife; and it is still, as it seems, illegal, but in my day Domitian once permitted it on petition. The priests were present at that ceremony of divorce and performed many horrible, strange, and gloomy rites.

One might be less surprised at this resignation of the flamen if one should adduce also the fact that when one of the censors died, the other was obliged to resign his office; but when the censor Livius Drusus died, his colleague Aemilius Scaurus was unwilling to give up his office until certain tribunes ordered him to be led away to prison.

51 1   Why is a dog placed beside the Lares that men call by the special name of praestites, and why are the Lares themselves clad in dog-skins?

Is it because “those that stand before” are termed praestites, and, also because it is fitting that those who stand before a house should be its guardians, terrifying to strangers, but gentle and mild to the inmates, even as a dog is?

Or is the truth rather, as some Romans affirm, that, just as the philosophic school of Chrysippus think that evil spirits stalk about 277 whom the gods use as executioners and avengers upon unholy and unjust men, even so the Lares are spirits of punishment like the Furies and supervisors of men’s lives and houses? Wherefore they are clothed in the skins of dogs and have a dog as their attendant, in the belief that they are skilful in tracking down and following up evil-doers.

52 1   Why do they sacrifice a bitch to the goddess called Geneta Mana and pray that none of the household shall become “good”?

Is it because Geneta is a spirit concerned with the generation and birth of beings that perish? Her name means some such thing as “flux and birth” or “flowing birth.” Accordingly, just as the Greeks sacrifice a bitch to Hecatê, even so do the Romans offer the same sacrifice to Geneta on behalf of the members of their household. But Socrates says that the Argives sacrifice a bitch to Eilioneia by reason of the ease with which the bitch brings forth its young. But does the import of the prayer, that none of them shall become “good,” refer not to the human members of a household, but to the dogs? For dogs should be savage and terrifying.

Or, because of the fact that the dead are gracefully called “the good,” are they in veiled language asking in their prayer that none of their household may die? One should not be surprised at this; Aristotle, in fact, says that there is written in the treaty of the Arcadians with the Spartans: “No one shall be made good for rendering aid to the Spartan party in Tegea”; that is, no one shall be put to death.

53 1   Why do they even now, at the celebration of the Capitoline games, proclaim “Sardians for sale!”, and why is an old man led forth in derision, wearing around his neck a child’s amulet which they call a bulla?

Is it because the Etruscans called Veians fought against Romulus for a long time, and he took this city last of all and sold at auction many captives together with their king, taunting him for his stupidity and folly? But since the Etruscans were originally Lydians, and Sardis was the capital city of the Lydians, they offered the Veians for sale under this name; and even to this day they preserve the custom in sport.

54 1   Why do they call the meat-markets macella and macellae?

Is this word corrupted from mageiroi (cooks) and has it prevailed, as many others have, by force of habit? For c and g have a close relationship in Latin, and it was only after many years that they made use of g, which Spurius Carvilius introduced. And l, again, is substituted lispingly for r when people make a slip in the pronunciation of r because of the indistinctness of their enunciation.

Or must this problem also be solved by history? For the story goes that there once lived in Rome a violent man, a robber, Marcellus by name, who despoiled many people and was with great difficulty caught and punished; from his wealth the public meat-market was built, and it acquired its name from him.

55 1   Why is it that on the Ides of January the flute-players are allowed to walk about the city wearing the raiment of women?

Is it for the reason commonly alleged? They used to enjoy, as it seems, great honours, which King Numa had given them by reason of his piety towards the gods. Because they were later deprived of these honours by the decemviri, who were invested with consular power, they withdrew from the city. There was, accordingly, inquiry made for them, and a certain superstitious fear seized upon the priests when they sacrificed without flutes. But when the flute-players would not hearken to those sent to summon them to return, but remained in Tibur, a freedman secretly promised the officials to bring them back. On the pretext of having sacrificed to the gods, he prepared a sumptuous banquet and invited the flute-players. Women were present, as well as wine, and a party lasting all the night was being celebrated with merriment and dancing, when suddenly the freedman interrupted, saying that his patron was coming to see him, 278 and, in his perturbation, he persuaded the flute-players to climb into wagons, which were screened round about with skins, to be conveyed back to Tibur. But this was a trick, for he turned the wagons around, and, without being detected, since the flute-players comprehended nothing because of the wine and the darkness, at dawn he had brought them all to Rome. Now the majority of them happened to be clad in raiment of feminine finery because of the nocturnal drinking-bout; when, therefore, they had been persuaded and reconciled by the officials, bit became their custom on that day to strut through the city clad in this manner.

56 1   Why are the matrons supposed to have founded the temple of Carmenta originally, and why do they reverence it now above all others?

There is a certain tale repeated that the women were prevented by the senate from using horse-drawn vehicles; they therefore made an agreement with one another not to conceive nor to bear children, and they kept their husbands at a distance, until the husbands changed their minds and made the concession to them. When children were born to them, they, as mothers of a fair and numerous progeny, founded the temple of Carmenta.

Some assert that Carmenta was the mother of Evander and that she came to Italy; that her name was Themis, or, as others say, Nicostratê; and that because she chanted oracles in verse, she was named Carmenta by the Latins, for they call verses carmina.

But others think that Carmenta is a Fate, and that this is the reason why the matrons sacrifice to her. The true meaning of the name is “deprived of sense,” by reason of her transports. Wherefore Carmenta was not so named from carmina, but rather carmina from her, because, in her divine frenzy, she chanted oracles in verse and metre.

57 1   Why do women that sacrifice to Rumina pour milk over the offerings, but make no oblation of wine in the ceremony?

Is it because the Latins call the teat ruma, and assert that Ruminalis acquired its name inasmuch as the she-wolf offered its teat to Romulus? Therefore, as we call wet-nurses thelonai from thele (teat), even so Rumina is she that gives suck, the nurse and nurturer of children; she does not, therefore, welcome pure wine, since it is harmful for babes.

58 1   Why did they use to address some of the senators as Conscript Fathers, others merely as Fathers?

Is it because they used to call those senators originally assigned to that body by Romulus fathers and patricians, that is to say “well-born,” since they could point out their fathers, while they called those who were later enrolled from the commoners conscript fathers?

59 1   Why did Hercules and the Muses have an altar in common?

Is it because Hercules taught Evander’s people the use of letters, as Juba has recorded? And this action was held to be noble on the part of men who taught their friends and relatives. It was a long time before they began to teach for pay, and the first to open an elementary school was Spurius Carvilius, a freedman of the Carvilius who was the first to divorce his wife.

60 1   Why, when there are two altars of Hercules, do women receive no share nor taste of the sacrifices offered on the larger altar?

Is it because the friends of Carmenta came late for the rites, as did also the clan of the Pinarii? Wherefore, as they were excluded from the banquet while the rest were feasting, they acquired the name Pinarii (Starvelings). Or is it because of the fable of Deianeira and the shirt?

61 1   Why is it forbidden to mention or to inquire after or to call by name that deity, whether it be male or female, whose especial province it is to preserve and watch over Rome? This prohibition they connect with a superstition and relate that Valerius Soranus came to an evil end because he revealed the name.

Is it because, as certain Roman writers have recorded, there are certain evocations and enchantments affecting the gods, by which the Romans also believed that certain gods had been called forth from their enemies, and had come to dwell among themselves, 279 and they were afraid of having this same thing done to them by others? Accordingly, as the Tyrians are said to have put chains upon their images, and certain other peoples are said to demand sureties when they send forth their images for bathing or for some other rite of purification, so the Romans believed that not to mention and not to know the name of a god was the safest and surest way of shielding him.

Or as Homer has written,

Earth is yet common to all,

so that mankind should reverence and honour all the gods, since they possess the earth in common, even so did the Romans of early times conceal the identity of the god who was the guardian of their safety, since they desired that not only this god, but all the gods should be honoured by the citizens?

62 1 Why, among those called Fetiales, or, as we should say in Greek, peace-makers or treaty-bringers, was he who was called pater patratus considered the chief? The pater patratus is a man whose father is still alive and who has children; even now he possesses a certain preferment and confidence, for the praetors entrust to him any wards whose beauty and youth require a careful and discreet guardianship.

Is it because there attaches to these men respect for their children and reverence for their fathers? Or does the name suggest the reason? For patratus means, as it were, “completed” or “perfected,” since he to whose lot it has fallen to become a father while he still has a father is more perfect than other men.

Or should the man who presides over oaths and treaties of peace be, in the words of Homer, one “looking before and after”? Such a man above all others would be he that has a son to plan for and a father to plan with.

63 1   Why is the so called rex sacrorum, that is to say “king of the sacred rites,” forbidden to hold office or to address the people?

Is it because in early times the kings performed greater part of the most important rites, and themselves offered the sacrifices with the assistance of the priests? But when they did not practise moderation, but were arrogant and oppressive, most of the Greek states took away their authority, and left to them only the offering of the sacrifice to the gods; but the Romans expelled their kings altogether, and to offer the sacrifices they appointed another, whom they did not allow to hold office or to address the people, so that in their sacred rites only they might seem to be subject to a king, and to tolerate a kingship only on the gods’ account. At any rate, there is a sacrifice traditionally performed in the forum at the place called Comitium, and, when the rex has performed this, he flees from the forum as fast as he can.

64 1   Why did they not allow the table to be taken away empty, but insisted that something should be upon it?

Was it that they were symbolizing the necessity of ever allowing some part of the present provision to remain for the future, and to day to be mindful of to morrow, or did they think it polite to repress and restrain the appetite while the means of enjoyment was still at hand? For persons who have accustomed themselves to refrain from what they have are less likely to crave for what they have not.

Or does the custom also show a kindly feeling towards the servants? For they are not so well satisfied with taking as with partaking, since they believe that they thus in some manner share the table with their masters.

Or should no sacred thing be suffered to be empty, and the table is a sacred thing?

65 1   Why does the husband approach his bride for the first time, not with a light, but in darkness?

Is it because he has a feeling of modest respect, since he regards her as not his own before his union with her? Or is he accustoming himself to approach even his own wife with modesty?

Or, as Solon has given directions that the bride shall nibble a quince before entering the bridal chamber, in order that the first greeting may not be disagreeable nor unpleasant, even so did the Roman legislator, if there was anything abnormal or disagreeable connected with the body, keep it concealed?

Or is this that is done a manner of casting infamy upon unlawful amours, since even lawful love has a certain opprobrium connected with it?

66 1   Why is one of the hippodromes called Flaminian?

280 Is it because a certain Flaminius long ago bestowed some land upon the city and they used the revenues for the horse-races; and, as there was money still remaining, they made a road, and this they also called Flaminian?

67 1   Why do they call the rod-bearers “lictors”?

Is it because these officers used both to bind unruly persons and also to follow in the train of Romulus with straps in their bosoms? Most Romans use alligare for the verb “to bind,” but purists, when they converse, say ligare.

Or is the c but a recent insertion, and were they formerly called litores, that is, a class of public servants? The fact that even to this day the word “public” is expressed by leitos in many of the Greek laws has escaped the attention of hardly anyone.

68 1   Why do the Luperci sacrifice a dog? The Luperci are men who race through the city on the Lupercalia, lightly clad in loin-cloths, striking those whom they meet with a strip of leather.

Is it because this performance constitutes a rite of purification of the city? In fact they call this month February, and indeed this very day, februata; and to strike with a kind of leather thong they call februare, the word meaning “to purify.” Nearly all the Greeks used a dog as the sacrificial victim for ceremonies of purification; and some, at least, make use of it even to this day. They bring forth for Hecatê puppies along with the other materials for purification, and rub round about with puppies such persons as are in need of cleansing, and this kind of purification they call periskylakismos (“puppifrication”).

Or is it that lupus means “wolf” and the Lupercalia is the Wolf Festival, and that the dog is hostile to the wolf, and for this reason is sacrificed at the Wolf Festival?

Or is it that the dogs bark at the Luperci and annoy them as they race about in the city?

Or is it that the sacrifice is made to Pan, and a dog is something dear to Pan because of his herds of goats?

69 1   Why on the festival called Septimontium were they careful to refrain from the use of horse-drawn vehicles; and why even to this day are those who do not contemn ancient customs still careful about this?

The festival Septimontium they observe in commemoration of the addition to the city of the seventh hill, by which Rome was made a city of seven hills.Is it, as some of the Roman writers conceive, because the city had not yet been completely joined together in all its parts?

Or has this “nothing to do with Dionysus”? But did they imagine, when their great task of consolidation had been accomplished, that the city had now ceased from further extension; and they rested themselves, and gave respite to the pack-animals, which had helped them in their labours, and afforded the animals an opportunity to enjoy the general festival with no work to do?

Or did they wish that the presence of the citizens should adorn and honour every festival always, and, above all, that one which was held in commemoration of the consolidation of the city? Wherefore in order that they might not leave the City, in whose honour the festival was being held, it was not permitted to make use of vehicles on that day.

70 1   Why do they call such persons as stand convicted of theft or of any other servile offences furciferi?

Is this also evidence of the carefulness of the men of old? For anyone who had found guilty of some knavery a slave reared in his own household used to command him to take up the forked stick, which they put under their carts, and to proceed through the community or the neighbourhood, observed of all observers, that they might distrust him and be on their guard against him in the future. This stick we call a prop, and the Romans furca (“fork”); wherefore also he who has borne it about is called furcifer (“fork-bearer”).

71 1   Why do they tie hay to one horn of vicious bulls to warn anyone who meets them to be on guard?

Is it because bulls, horses, asses, men, all wax wanton through stuffing and gorging? So Sophocles has somewhere written,

You prance, as does a colt, from glut of food,

For both your belly and your cheeks are full.

Wherefore also the Romans used to say that Marcus Crassus had hay on his horn: for those who heckled the other chief men in the State were on their guard against assailing him, 281 since they knew that he was vindictive and hard to cope with. Later, however, another saying was bandied about, that Caesar had pulled the hay from Crassus; for Caesar was the first to oppose Crassus in public policy and to treat him with contumely.

72 1   Why did they think that the priests that take the omens from birds, whom they formerly called Auspices, but now Augures, should always keep their lanterns open and put no cover on them?

Were they like the Pythagoreans, who made small matters symbols of great, forbidding men to sit on a peck measure or the poke a fire with a sword; band even so did the men of old make use of many riddles, especially with reference to priests; and is the question of the lantern of this sort? For the lantern is like the body which encompasses the soul; the soul within is a light and the part of it that comprehends and thinks should be ever open and clear-sighted, and should never be closed nor remain unseen.

Now when the winds are blowing the birds are unsteady, and do not afford reliable signs because of their wandering and irregular movements. Therefore by this custom they instruct the augurs not to go forth to obtain these signs when the wind is blowing, but only in calm and still weather when they can use their lanterns open.

281 c 73 Why was it forbidden to priests that had any sore upon their bodies to sit and watch for birds of omen?

Is this also a symbolic indication that those who deal with matters divine should be in no way suffering from any smart, and should not, as it were, have any sore or affection in their souls, but should be untroubled, unscathed, and undistracted?

Or is it only logical, if no one would use for sacrifice a victim afflicted with a sore, or use such birds for augury, that they should be still more on their guard against such things in their own case, and be pure, unhurt, and sound when they advance to interpret signs from the gods? For a sore seems to be a sort of mutilation or pollution of the body.

74 1   Why did King Servius Tullius build a shrine of Little Fortune, which they call Brevis?

Is it because although, at the first, he was a man of little importance and of humble activities and the son of a captive woman, yet, owing to Fortune, he became king of Rome? Or does this very change reveal the greatness rather than the littleness of Fortune, and does Servius beyond all other men seem to have deified the power of Fortune, and to have set her formally over all manner of actions? For he not only built shrines of Fortune the Giver of Good Hope, the Averter of Evil, the Gentle, the First-Born, and the Male; but there is also a shrine of Private Fortune, another of Attentive Fortune, and still another of Fortune the Virgin. Yet why need anyone review her other appellations, when there is a shrine of the Fowler’s Fortune, or Viscata, as they call her, signifying that we are caught by Fortune from afar and held fast by circumstances?

Consider, however, whether it be not that Servius observed the mighty potency of Fortune’s ever slight mutation, and that by the occurrence or non-occurrence of some slight thing, it has often fallen to the lot of some to succeed or to fail in the greatest enterprises, and it was for this reason that he built the shrine of Little Fortune, teaching men to give great heed to events, and not to despise anything that they encountered by reason of its triviality.

75 1   Why did they not extinguish a lamp, but suffered it to go out of itself?

Did they reverence it as akin and closely related to the inextinguishable and undying fire, or is this also a symbolic indication that we should not destroy nor do away with any living thing, if it does us no harm, since fire is like a living thing? For it needs sustenance, it moves of itself, and when it is extinguished it gives out a sound as if it were being slain.

Or does this custom teach us that we should not destroy fire, water, or any other necessity when we have enough and to spare, but should allow those who have need of these things to use them, and should leave them for others when we ourselves no longer have any use for them?

282 76 Why do they that are reputed to be of distinguished lineage wear crescents on their shoes?

Is this, as Castor says, an emblem of the fabled residence in the moon, and an indication that after death their souls will again have the moon beneath their feet; or was this the special privilege of the most ancient families? These were Arcadians of Evander’s following, the so called Pre-Lunar people.

Or does this also, like many another custom, remind the exalted and proud of the mutability, for better or worse, in the affairs of men, and that they should take the moon as an illustration:

When out of darkness first she comes anew

Her face she shows increasing fair and full;

And when she reaches once her brightest sheen,

Again she wastes away and comes to naught?

Or was it a lesson in obedience to authority, teaching them not to be disaffected under the government of kings, but to be even as the moon, who is willing to give heed to her superior and to be a second to him,

Ever gazing in awe at the rays of the bright-gleaming Sun-god,

as Parmenides puts it; and were they thus to be content with their second place, living under their ruler, and enjoying the power and honour derived from him?

77 1   Why do they believe that the year belongs to Jupiter, but the months to Juno?

Is it because Jupiter and Juno rule the invisible, conceptual deities, but the sun and moon the visible deities? Now the sun makes the year and the moon the months; but one must not believe that the sun and moon are merely images of Jupiter and Juno, but that the sun is really Jupiter himself in his material form and in the same way the moon is Juno. This is the reason why the Romans apply the name Juno to our Hera, for the name means “young” or “junior,” so named from the moon. And they also call her Lucina, that is “brilliant” or “light-giving”; and they believe that she aids women in the pangs of childbirth, even as the moon:

On through the dark-blue vault of the stars,

Through the moon that brings forth quickly;

for women are thought to have easiest travail at the time of the full moon.

78 1   Why of birds is the one called “left-hand” a bird of good omen?

Is this not really true, but is it the peculiarity of the language which throws many off the track? For their word for “left” is sinistrum; “to permit” is sinere; and they say sine when they urge giving permission. Accordingly the bird which permits the augural action to be taken, that is, the avis sinisteria, the vulgar are not correct in assuming to be sinistra and in calling it so.

Or is it, as Dionysius says, that when Ascanius, son of Aeneas, was drawing up his army against Mezentius, and his men were taking the auspices, a flash of lightning, which portended victory, appeared on the left, and from that time on they observe this practice in divination? Or is it true, as certain other authorities affirm, that this happened to Aeneas? As a matter of fact, the Thebans, when they had routed and overpowered their enemies on the left wing at Leuctra, continued thereafter to assign to the left the chief command in all battles.

Or is it rather, as Juba declares, that as anyone looks eastward, the north is on the left, and some make out the north to be the right, or upper, side of the universe?

But consider whether it be not that the left is by nature the weaker side, and they that preside over auguries try to strengthen and prop its deficient powers by this method of equalization.

Or was it that they believed earthly and mortal matters to be antithetical to things heavenly and divine, and so thought that whatever was on the left for us the gods were sending forth from the right?

79 1   Why was it permitted to take up a bone of a man who had enjoyed a triumph, and had later died and been cremated, and carry it into the city and deposit it there, as Pyrrhon of Lipara has recorded?

Was it to show honour to the dead? In fact, to other men of achievement, as well as to generals, they granted, not only for themselves, but also for their descendants, the right to be buried in the Forum, 283 as they did to Valerius and to Fabricius; and they relate that when descendants of these men die and have been conveyed to the Forum, a lighted torch is placed beneath the body and then immediately withdrawn; thus they enjoy the honour without exciting envy, and merely confirm their prerogative.

80 1   Why was it that when they gave a public banquet for men who had celebrated a triumph, they formally invited the consuls and then sent word to them requesting them not to come to the dinner?

Was it because it was imperative that the place of honour at table and an escort home after dinner should be assigned to the man who had triumphed? But these honours can be given to no one else when the consuls are present, but only to them.

81 1   Why does not the tribune wear a garment with the purple border, although the other magistrates wear it?

Is it because he is not a magistrate at all? For tribunes have no lictors, nor do they transact business seated on the curule chair, nor do they enter their office at the beginning of the year as all the other magistrates do, nor do they cease from their functions when a dictator is chosen; but although he transfers every other office to himself, the tribunes alone remain, as not being officials but as holding some other position. Even as some advocates will not have it that a demurrer is a suit, but hold that its effect is the opposite of a suit; for a suit brings a case into court and obtains a judgement, while a demurrer takes it out of court and quashes it; in the same way they believe that the tribuneship is a check on officialdom and a position to offer opposition to magistracy rather than a magistracy. For its authority and power consist in blocking the power of a magistrate and in the abrogation of excessive authority.

Or one might expound these matters and others like them, if one were to indulge in the faculty of invention; but since the tribunate derives its origin from the people, the popular element in it is strong; and of much importance is the fact that the tribune does not pride himself above the rest of the people, but conforms in appearance, dress, and manner of life to ordinary citizens. Pomp and circumstance become the consul and the praetor; but the tribune, as Gaius Curio used to say, must allow himself to be trodden upon; he must not be proud of mien, nor difficult of access nor harsh to the multitude, but indefatigable on behalf of others and easy for the multitude to deal with. Wherefore it is the custom that not even the door of his house shall be closed, but it remains open both night and day as a haven of refuge for such as need it. The more humble he is in outward appearance, the more is he increased in power. They think it meet that he shall be available for the common need and be accessible to all, even as an altar; and by the honour paid to him they make his person holy, sacred, and inviolable. Wherefore if anything happen to him when he walks abroad in public, it is even customary for him to cleanse and purify his body as if it had been polluted.

82 1   Why are the rods of the praetors carried in bundles with axes attached?

Is it because this is a symbolic indication that the temper of the official should not be too quick or unrestrained? Or does the deliberate unfastening of the rods, which creates delay and postponement of his fit of temper, oftentimes cause him to change his mind about the punishment? Now since some badness is curable, but other badness is past remedy, the rods correct that which may be amended and the axes cut off the incorrigible.

83 1   When the Romans learned that the people called Bletonesii, a barbarian tribe, had sacrificed a man to the gods, why did they send for the tribal rulers with intent to punish them, but, when it was made plain that they had done thus in accordance with a certain custom, why did the Romans set them at liberty, but forbid the practice for the future? Yet they themselves, not many years before, had buried alive two men and two women, two of them Greeks, two Gauls, in the place called the Forum Boarium. It certainly seems strange that they themselves should do this, and yet rebuke barbarians on the ground that they were acting with impiety.

Did they think it impious to sacrifice men to the gods, but necessary to sacrifice them to the spirits? 284 Or did they believe that men who did this by tradition and custom were sinning, whereas they themselves did it by command of the Sibylline books? For the tale is told that a certain maiden, Helvia, was struck by lightning while she was riding on horseback, and her horse was found lying stripped of its trappings; and she herself was naked, for her tunic had been pulled far up as if purposely; and her shoes, her rings, and her head-dress were scattered apart here and there, and her open mouth allowed the tongue to protrude. The soothsayers declared that it was a terrible disgrace for the Vestal Virgins, that it would be bruited far and wide, and that some wanton outrage would be found touching the knights also. Thereupon a barbarian slave of a certain knight gave information against three Vestal Virgins, Aemilia, Licinia, and Marcia, that they had all been corrupted at about the same time, and that they had long entertained lovers, one of whom was Vetutius Barrus, the informer’s master. The Vestals, accordingly, were convicted and punished; but, since the deed was plainly atrocious, it was resolved that the priests should consult the Sibylline books. They say that oracles were found foretelling that these events would come to pass for the bane of the Romans, and enjoining on them that, to avert the impending disaster, they should offer as a sacrifice to certain strange and alien spirits two Greeks and two Gauls, buried alive on the spot.

84 1   Why do they reckon the beginning of the day from midnight?

Is it because the Roman State was based originally on a military organization and most of the matters that are of use on campaigns are taken up beforehand at night? Or did they make sunrise the beginning of activity, and night the beginning of preparation? For men should be prepared when they act, and not be making their preparations during the action, as Myson, who was fashioning a grain-fork in winter-time, is reported to have remarked to Chilon the Wise.

Or, just as noon is for most people the end of their transaction of public or serious business, even so did it seem good to make midnight the beginning? A weighty testimony to this is the fact that a Roman official does not make treaties or agreements after midday.

Or is it impossible to reckon the beginning and end of the day by sunset and sunrise? For if we follow the method by which most people formulate their definitions, by their perceptions, reckoning the first peep of the sun above the horizon as the beginning of day, and the cutting off of its last rays as the beginning of night, we shall have no equinox; but that night which we think is most nearly equal to the day will plainly be less than that day by the diameter of the sun. But then again the remedy which the mathematicians apply to this anomaly, decreeing that the instant when the centre of the sun touches the horizon is boundary between day and night, is a negation of plain fact; for the result will be that when there is still much light over the earth and the sun is shining upon us, we cannot admit that it is day, but must say that it is already night. Since, therefore, the beginning of day and night is difficult to determine at the time of the risings and settings of the sun because of the irrationalities which I have mentioned, there is left the zenith or the nadir of the sun to reckon as the beginning. The second is better; for from noon on the sun’s course is away from us to its setting, but from midnight on its course is towards us to its rising.

85 1   Why in the early days did they not allow their wives to grind grain or to cook?

Was it in memory of the treaty which they made with the Sabines? For when they had carried off the Sabines’ daughters, and later, after warring with the Sabines, had made peace, it was specified among the other articles of agreement that no Sabine woman should grind grain for a Roman or cook for him.

86 1   Why do men not marry during the month of May?

Is it because this month comes between April and June, 285 of which they regard April as sacred to Venus and June as sacred to Juno, both of them divinities of marriage; and so they put the wedding a little earlier or wait until later?

Or is it because in this month they hold their most important ceremony of purification, in which they now throw images from the bridge into the river, but in days of old they used to throw human beings? Wherefore it is the custom that the Flaminica, reputed to be consecrate to Juno, shall wear a stern face, and refrain from bathing and wearing ornaments at this time.

Or is it because many of the Latins make offerings to the departed in this month? And it is for this reason, perhaps, that they worship Mercury in this month and that the month derives its name from Maia.

Or is May, as some relate, named after the older (maior) and June after the younger generation (iunior)? For youth is better fitted for marriage, as Euripides also says:

Old age bids Love to take her leave for aye

And Aphroditê wearies of the old.

They do not, therefore, marry in May, but wait for June which comes next after May.

87 1   Why do they part the hair of brides with the point of a spear?

Does this symbolize the marriage of the first Roman wives by violence with attendant war, or do the wives thus learn, now that they are mated to brave and warlike men, to welcome an unaffected, unfeminine, and simple mode of beautification? Even as Lycurgus, by giving orders to make the doors and roofs of houses with the saw and the axe only, and to use absolutely no other tool, banished all over-refinement and extravagance.

Or does this procedure hint at the manner of their separation, that with steel alone can their marriage be dissolved?

Or is it that most of the marriage customs were connected with Juno? Now the spear is commonly held to be sacred to Juno, and most of her statues represent her as leaning on a spear, and the goddess herself is surnamed Quiritis; for the men of old used to call the spear curis; wherefore they further relate that Enyalius is called Quirinus by the Romans.

88 1   Why do they call the money expended upon public spectacles Lucar?

Is it because round about the city there are, consecrated to gods, many groves which they call luci, and they used to spend the revenue from these on the public spectacles?

89 1   Why do they call the Quirinalia the Feast of Fools?

Is it because, as Juba states, they apportioned that day to men who did not know their own kith and kin? Or was it granted to those who, because of some business, or absence from Rome, or ignorance, had not sacrificed with the rest of their tribe on the Fornacalia, that, on this day, they might take their due enjoyment of that festival?

285 e 90 Why is it that, when the sacrifice to Hercules takes place, they mention by name no other god, and why is a dog never seen within his enclosure, as Varro has recorded?

Do they make mention of no other god because they regard Hercules as a demigod? But, as some relate, even while he was still on earth, Evander erected an altar to him and brought him sacrifice. And of all animals he contended most with a dog, for it is a fact that this beast always gave him much trouble, Cerberus, for instance. And, to crown all, when Oeonus, Licymnius’s son, had been murdered by the sons of Hippocoön because of a dog, Hercules was compelled to engage in battle with them, and lost many of his friends and his brother Iphicles.

91 1   Why was it not permitted the patricians to dwell about the Capitoline?

Was it because Marcus Manlius, while he was dwelling there, tried to make himself king? They say that because of him the house of Manlius was bound by an oath that none of them should ever bear the name of Marcus.

Or does this fear date from early times? At any rate, although Publicola was a most democratic man, the nobles did not cease traducing him nor the commoners fearing him, until he himself razed his house, the situation of which was thought to be a threat to the Forum.

286 92 1   Why do they give a chaplet of oak leaves to the man who has saved the life of a citizen in time of war?

Is it because it is easy to find an abundance of oak leaves everywhere on a campaign?

Or is it because the chaplet is sacred to Jupiter and Juno, whom they regard as guardians of the city?

Or is the custom an ancient inheritance from the Arcadians, who have a certain kinship with the oak? for they are thought to have been the first men sprung from the earth, even as the oak was the first plant.

93 1   Why do they make most use of vultures in augury?

Because vultures are not much use for anything else! (Now back to Plutarch:)

Is it because twelve vultures appeared to Romulus at the time of the founding of Rome? Or is it because this is the least frequent and familiar of birds? For it is not easy to find a vulture’s nest, but these birds suddenly swoop down from afar; wherefore the sight of them is portentous.

Or did they learn this also from Hercules? If Herodorus tells the truth, Hercules delighted in the appearance of vultures beyond that of all other birds at the beginning of any undertaking, since he believed that the vulture was the most righteous of all flesh-eating creatures; for, in the first place, it touches no living thing, nor does it kill any animate creature, as do eagles and hawks and the birds that fly by night; but it lives upon that which has been killed in some other way. Then again, even of these it leaves its own kind untouched; for no one has ever seen a vulture feeding on a bird, as eagles and hawks do, pursuing and striking their own kind particularly. And yet, as Aeschylus says,

How can a bird that feeds on birds be pure?

And we may say that it is the most harmless of birds to men, since it neither destroys any fruit or plant nor injures any domesticated animal. But if, as the Egyptians fable, the whole species is female, and they conceive by receiving the breath of the East Wind, even as the trees do by receiving the West Wind, then it is credible that the signs from them are altogether unwavering and certain. But in the case of the other birds, their excitements in the mating season, as well as their abductions, retreats, and pursuits, have much that is disturbing and unsteady.

94 1   Why is the shrine of Aesculapius outside the city?

Is it because they considered it more healthful to spend their time outside the city than within its walls? In fact the Greeks, as might be expected, have their shrines of Asclepius situated in places which are both clean and high.

Or is it because they believe that the god came at their summons from Epidaurus, and the Epidaurians have their shrine of Asclepius not in the city, but at some distance?

Or is it because the serpent came out from the trireme into the island, and there disappeared, and thus they thought that the god himself was indicating to them the site for building?

95 1   Why is it the customary rule that those who are practising holy living must abstain from legumes?

Did they, like the followers of Pythagoras, religiously abstain from beans for the reasons which are commonly offered, and from vetch and chickpea, because their names (lathyros and erebinthos) suggest Lethê and Erebus?

Or is it because they make particular use of legumes for funeral feasts and invocations of the dead?

Or is it rather because one must keep the body clean and light for purposes of holy living and lustration? Now legumes are a flatulent food and produce surplus matter that requires much purgation.

Or is it because the windy and flatulent quality of the food stimulates desire?

96 1   Why do they inflict no other punishment on those of the Holy Maidens who have been seduced, but bury them alive?

Is it because they cremate their dead, and to use fire in the burial of a woman who had not guarded the holy fire in purity was not right?

Or did they believe it to be against divine ordinance to annihilate a body that had been consecrated by the greatest of lustral ceremonies, or to lay hands upon a holy woman? Accordingly they devised that she should die of herself; they conducted her underground into a chamber built there, in which had been placed a lighted lamp, a loaf of bread, and some milk and water. Thereafter they covered over the top of the chamber with earth. 287 And yet not even by this manner of avoiding the guilt have they escaped their superstitious fear, but even to this day the priests proceed to this place and make offerings to the dead.

97 1   Why is it that after the chariot-race on the Ides of December the right-hand trace-horse of the winning team is sacrificed to Mars, and then someone cuts off its tail, and carries it to the place called Regia and sprinkles its blood on the altar, while some come down from the street called the Via Sacra, and some from the Subura, and fight for its head?

Is it, as some say, that they believe Troy to have been taken by means of a horse; and therefore they punish it, since, forsooth, they are

Noble scions of Trojans commingled with children of Latins.

Or is it because the horse is a spirited, warlike, and martial beast, and they sacrifice to the gods creatures that are particularly pleasing and appropriate for them; and the winner is sacrificed because Mars is the specific divinity of victory and prowess?

Or is it rather because the work of the god demands standing firm, and men that hold their ground defeat those that do not hold it, but flee? And is swiftness punished as being the coward’s resource, and do they learn symbolically that there is no safety for those who flee?

98 1   Why do the censors, when they take office, do nothing else before they contract for the food of the sacred geese and the polishing of the statue?

Is it that they begin with the most trivial things, matters that require little expense or trouble?

Or is this a commemoration of an old debt of gratitude owed to these creatures for their services in the Gallic wars? For when in the night the barbarians were already climbing over the rampart of the Capitol, the geese perceived the invaders, although the dogs were asleep, and waked the guards by their clamour.

Or is it because the censors are guardians of the most important matters, and, since it is their duty to oversee and to busy themselves with sacred and State affairs and with the lives, morals, and conduct of the people, they immediately take into account the most vigilant of creatures, and at the same time by their care of the geese they urge the citizens not to be careless or indifferent about sacred matters?

But the polishing of the statue is absolutely necessary; for the red pigment, with which they used to tint ancient statues, rapidly loses its freshness.

99 1   Why is it that, if any one of the other priests is condemned and exiled, they depose him and elect another, but the augur, as long as he lives, even if they find him guilty of the worst offences, they do not deprive of his priesthood? They call “augurs” the men who are in charge of the omens.

Is it, as some say, because they wish no one who is not a priest to know the secrets of the holy rites?

Or, because the augur is bound by oaths to reveal the sacred matters to no one, are they unwilling to release him from his oath as would be the case eif he had been reduced to private status?

Or is “augur” a name denoting, not a rank or office, but knowledge and skill? Then to prevent a soothsayer from being a soothsayer would be like voting that a musician shall not be a musician, nor a physician a physician; for they cannot deprive him of his ability, even if they take away his title. They naturally appoint no successor since they keep the original number of augurs.

100 1   Why is it that on the Ides of August, formerly called Sextilis, all the slaves, female and male, keep holiday, and the Roman women make a particular practice of washing and cleansing their heads?

Do the servants have release from work because on this day King Servius was born from a captive maidservant? And did the washing of their heads begin with the slave-women, because of their holiday, and extend itself to free-born women?

101 1   Why do they adorn their children’s necks with amulets which they call bullae?

Was it, like many another thing, in honour of their wives, who had been made theirs by force, that they voted this also as a traditional ornament for the children born from them?

Or is it to honour the manly courage of Tarquin? For the tale is told that, while he was still but a boy, 288 in the battle against the combined Latin and Etruscan forces he charged straight into the enemy; and although he was thrown from his horse, he boldly withstood those that hurled themselves upon him, and thus gave renewed strength to the Romans. A brilliant rout of the enemy followed, sixteen thousand were killed, and he received this amulet as a prize of valour from his father the king.

Or did the Romans of early times account it not disreputable nor disgraceful to love male slaves in the flower of youth, as even now their comedies testify, but they strictly refrained from boys of free birth; and that they might not be in any uncertainty, even when they encountered them unclad, did the boys wear this badge?

Or is this a safeguard to insure orderly conduct, a sort of bridle on incontinence, that they may be ashamed to pose as men before they have put off the badge of childhood?

What Varro and his school say is not credible: that since boulê (counsel) is called bolla by the Aeolians, the boys put on this ornament as a symbol of good counsel.

But consider whether they may not wear it because of the moon. For the visible shape of the moon at the first quarter is not like a sphere, but like a lentil-seed or a quoit; and, as Empedocles thinks, so also is the matter of which the moon is composed.

102 1   Why do they name boys when they are nine days old, but girls when they are eight days old?

Does the precedence of the girls have Nature as its cause? It is a fact that the female grows up, and attains maturity and perfection before the male. As for the days, they take those that follow the seventh; for the seventh is dangerous for newly-born children in various ways and in the matter of the umbilical cord; for in most cases this comes away on the seventh day; but until it comes off, the child is more like a plant than an animal.

Or did they, like the adherents of Pythagoras, regard the even number as female and the odd number as male? For the odd number is generative, and, when it is added to the even number, it prevails over it. And also, when they are divided into units, the even number, like the female, yields a vacant space between, while of the odd number an integral part always remains. Wherefore they think that the odd is suitable for the male, and the even for the female.

Or is it that of all numbers nine is the first square from the odd and perfect triad, while eight is the first cube from the even dyad? Now a man should be four-square, eminent, and perfect; but a woman, like a cube, should be stable, domestic, and difficult to remove from her place. And this should be added, that eight is the cube of two and nine the square of three; women have two names, men have three.

103 1   Why do they call children of unknown fathers spurii?

Now the reason is not, as the Greeks believe and lawyers in court are wont to assert, that these children are begotten of some promiscuous and common seed; but Spurius is a first name like Sextus and Decimus and Gaius. They do not write first names in full, but by one letter, as Titus (T.) and Lucius (L.) and Marcus (M.); or by two, as Tiberius (Ti.) and Gnaeus (Cn.); or by three, as Sextus (Sex.) and Servius (Ser.). Spurius, then, is one of those written by two letters: Sp. And by these two letters they also denote children of unknown fathers, sine patre, that is “without a father”; by the s they indicate sine and by the patre. This, then, caused the error, the writing of the same abbreviation for sine patre and for Spurius.

I must state the other explanation also, but it is somewhat absurd: They assert that the Sabines use the word spurius for the pudenda muliebria, and it later came about that they called the child born of an unmarried, unespoused woman by this name, as if in mockery.

104 1   Why do they call Bacchus Liber Pater (“Free Father”)?

Is it because he is the father of freedom to drinkers? 289 For most people become bold and are abounding in frank speech when they in their cups. Or is it because he has provided the means for libations? Or is it derived, as Alexander asserts, from Dionysus Eleuthereus, so named from Eleutherae in Boeotia?

105 1   For what reason is it not the custom for maidens to marry on public holidays, but widows do marry at this time?

Is it, as Varro has remarked, that maidens are grieved over marrying, but older women are glad, and on a holiday one should do nothing in grief or by constraint?

Or is it rather because it is seemly that not a few should be present when maidens marry, but disgraceful that many should be present when widows marry? Now the first marriage is enviable; but the second is to be deprecated, for women are ashamed if they take a second husband while the first husband is still living, and they feel sad if they do so when he is dead. Wherefore they rejoice in a quiet wedding rather than in noise and processions. Holidays distract most people, so that they have no leisure for such matters.

Or, because they seized the maiden daughters of the Sabines at a holiday festival, and thereby became involved in war, did they come to regard it as ill-omened to marry maidens on holy days?

106 1   Why do the Romans reverence Fortuna Primigenia, or “First-born,” as one might translate it?

Is it because by Fortune, as they say, it befell Servius, born of a maidservant, to become a famous king of Rome? This is the assumption which the majority of Romans make.

Or is it rather because Fortune supplied the origin and birth of Rome?

Or does the matter have an explanation more natural and philosophic, which assumes that Fortune is the origin of everything, and Nature acquires its solid frame by the operation of Fortune, whenever order is created in any store of matter gathered together at haphazard.

107 1   Why do the Romans call the Dionysiac artists histriones?

Is it for the reason that Cluvius Rufus dhas recorded? For he states that in very ancient times, in the consulship of Gaius Sulpicius and Licinius Stolo, a pestilential disease arose in Rome and destroyed to a man all persons appearing on the stage. Accordingly, at the request of the Romans, there came many excellent artists from Etruria, of whom the first in repute and the one who for the longest time enjoyed success in their theatres, was named Hister; and therefore all actors are named histriones from him.

108 1   Why do they not marry women who are closely akin to them?

Do they wish to enlarge their relationships by marriage and to acquire many additional kinsmen by bestowing wives upon others and receiving wives from others?

Or do they fear the disagreements which arise in marriages of near kin, on the ground that these tend to destroy natural rights?

Or, since they observe that women by reason of their weakness need many protectors, were they not willing to take as partners in their household women closely akin to them, so that if their husbands wronged them, their kinsmen might bring them succour?

109 1   Why was it not permitted for the priest of Jupiter, whom they call the Flamen Dialis, to touch either flour or yeast?

Is it because flour is an incomplete and crude food? For neither has it remained what it was, wheat, nor has it become what it must become, bread; but it has both lost the germinative power of the seed and at the same time it has not attained to the usefulness of food. Wherefore also the Poet by a metaphor applied to barley-meal the epithet mylephatos, as if it were being killed or destroyed in the grinding.

Yeast is itself also the product of corruption, and produces corruption in the dough with which it is mixed; for the dough becomes flabby and inert, and altogether the process of leavening seems to be one of putrefaction; at any rate if it goes too far, it completely sours and spoils the flour.

110 1   Why is this priest also forbidden to touch raw flesh?

Is this custom intended to deter people completely from eating raw meat, or do they scrupulously repudiate flesh for the same reason as flour? 290 For neither is it a living creature nor has it yet become a cooked food. Now boiling or roasting, being a sort of alteration and mutation, eliminates the previous form; but fresh raw meat does not have a clean and unsullied appearance, but one that is repulsive, like a fresh wound.

111 1   Why did they bid the priest avoid the dog and the goat, neither touching them nor naming them?

Did they loathe the goat’s lasciviousness and foul odour, or did they fear its susceptibility to disease? For it is thought to be subject to epilepsy beyond all other animals, and to infect persons who eat it or touch it when it is possessed of the disease. The reason, they say, is the narrowness of the air passages, which are often suddenly contracted; this they deduce from the thinness of its voice. So also in the case of men, if they chance to speak during an epileptic fit, the sound they make is very like a bleat.

The dog has, perhaps, less of lasciviousness and foul odour. Some, however, assert that a dog may not enter either the Athenian acropolis nor the island of Delos because of its open mating, as if cattle and swine and horses mated within the walls of a chamber and not openly and without restraint! For these persons are ignorant of the true reason: because the dog is a belligerent creature they exclude it from inviolable and holy shrines, thereby offering a safe place of refuge for suppliants. Accordingly it is likely that the priest of Jupiter also, since he is, as it were, the animate embodiment and sacred image of the god, should be left free as a refuge for petitioners and suppliants, with no one to hinder them or to frighten them away. For this reason his couch was placed in the vestibule of his house, and anyone who fell at his knees had immunity from beating or chastisement all that day; and if any prisoner succeeded in reaching the priest, he was set free, and his chains they threw outside, not by the doors, but over the roof. So it would have been of no avail for him to render himself so gentle and humane, if a dog had stood before him frightening and keeping away those who had need of a place of refuge.

Nor, in fact, did the men of old think that this animal was wholly pure, for it was never sacrificed to any of the Olympian gods; and when it is sent to the cross-roads as a supper for the earth-goddess Hecatê, it has its due portion among sacrifices that avert and expiate evil. In Sparta they immolate puppies to the bloodiest of the gods, Enyalius; and in Boeotia the ceremony of public purification is to pass between the parts of a dog which has been cut in twain. The Romans themselves, in the month of purification, at the Wolf Festival, which they call the Lupercalia, sacrifice a dog. Hence it is not out of keeping that those who have attained to the office of serving the highest and purest god should be forbidden to make a dog their familiar companion and housemate.

112 1   For what reason was it forbidden the priest of Jupiter to touch ivy or to pass along a road overhung by a vine growing on a tree?

Is this second question like the precepts: “Do not eat seated on a stool,” “Do not sit on a peck measure,” “Do not step over a broom”? For the followers of Pythagoras did not really fear these things nor guard against them, but forbade other things through these. Likewise the walking under a vine had reference to wine, signifying that it is not right for the priest to get drunk; for wine is over the heads of drunken men, and they are oppressed and humbled thereby, when they should be above it and always master its pleasure, not be mastered by it.

Did they regard the ivy as an unfruitful plant, useless to man, and feeble, and because of its weakness needing other plants to support it, but by its shade and the sight of its green fascinating to most people? And did they therefore think that it should not be uselessly grown in their homes nor be allowed to twine about in a futile way, contributing nothing, since it is injurious to the plants forming its support? Or is it because it cleaves to the ground? 291 Wherefore it is excluded from the ritual of the Olympian gods, nor can any ivy be seen in the temple of Hera at Athens, or in the temple of Aphroditê at Thebes; but it has its place in the Agrionia and the Nyctelia, the rites of which are for the most part performed at night.

Or was this also a symbolic prohibition of Bacchic revels and orgies? For women possessed by Bacchic frenzies rush straightway for ivy and tear it to pieces, clutching it in their hands and biting it with their teeth; so that not altogether without plausibility are they who assert that ivy, possessing as it does an exciting and distracting breath of madness, deranges persons and agitates them, and in general brings on a wineless drunkenness and joyousness in those that are precariously disposed towards spiritual exaltation.

113 1   Why were these priests not allowed to hold office nor to solicit it, yet they have the service of a lictor and the right to a curule chair as an honour and a consolation for holding no office?

Is this similar to the conditions in some parts of Greece where the priesthood had a dignity commensurate with that of the kingship, and they appointed as priests no ordinary men?

Or was it rather that since priests have definite duties, whereas officials have duties which are irregular and undefined, if the occasions for these duties happened to coincide, it was impossible for the same man to be present at both, but oftentimes, when both duties were pressing, he had to neglect one of them and at one time commit impiety against the gods, and at another do hurt to his fellow-citizens?

Or did they observe that there is implicit in the government of men no less constraint than authority, and that the ruler of the people, as Hippocrates said of the physician, must see dreadful things and touch dreadful things and reap painful emotions of his own from the ills of other men? Did they, then, think it impious for a man to offer sacrifice to the gods, if he was concerned in pronouncing judgements and sentences of death upon citizens, and often upon kinsmen and members of his household, such as fell to the lot of Brutus?

Greek questions

1. Who were the “dusty-feet” and the “directors” in Epidaurus?

There were one hundred and eighty men who directed the State. From these they used to elect councillors whom they called “directors.” But the majority of the populace spent their life in the country. They were called “dusty-feet” a since, as one may conjecture, they were recognized by their dust-covered feet whenever they came down to the city.

2. Who was the “woman that rode on a donkey” at Cumae?

Any woman taken in adultery they used to bring into the market-place and set her on a certain stone in plain sight of everyone. In like manner they then proceeded to mount her upon a donkey, and when she had been led about the circuit of the entire city, she was required again to take her stand upon the same stone, and for the rest of her life to continue in disgrace, bearing the name “donkey-rider.” After this ceremony they believed that the stone was unclean and they used ritually to purify it.

The citizens of Cumae had also a certain office called the Guards. The man who held this office used to watch the prison most of the time, but he came to the nocturnal assemblies of the council and led out the kings by the hand and kept them out, until by secret ballot the council had decided on their case, whether they had done wrong or no.

3. Who is She that Kindles the Fire (hypekkaustria) a among the people of Soli?

This is the name which they give to the priestess of Athena because she performs certain sacrifices and ceremonies to avert evil.

4. Who were the Forgetful Ones (Amnemones) at Cnidus, and who was the Dismisser b (Aphester)?

They were wont to employ sixty men chosen from the nobles, and appointed for life, as overseers and preliminary advisers in matters of the greatest importance. They were called the Forgetful Ones, one might conjecture, because they could not be held to account for their actions; unless, indeed, it was because they were men who remembered many things. c He who asked them their opinions was the Dismisser.

5. Who are the “good” among the Arcadians and the Spartans?

When the Spartans had come to terms with the Tegeans, they made a treaty and set up in common a pillar by the Alpheius. On this, among other matters, was inscribed: “The Messenians must be expelled from the country; it shall not be lawful to make men good.” d Aristotle, e then, in explaining this, states that it means that no one shall be put  to death because of assistance given to the Spartan party in Tegea.

6. Who is “he that selects barley” (krilhologos) among the Opuntians?

For sacrifices of very ancient origin most of the Greeks used to employ barley, which the citizens offered as first-fruits of the harvest. Accordingly they called the officer who presided at the sacrifices and brought these first-fruits the Barley-selector. They had two priests: one appointed for sacrifices to the gods, the other for sacrifices to the spirits.

7. What were the “floating clouds “?

They used to call clouds “floating” which particularly threatened rain and were in constant motion, as Theophrastus has stated in the fourth book of his Meteorology. The passage reads thus: “Since also these floating clouds and these compact clouds, which are immovable and very white in colour, exhibit a certain difference of substance which is filled neither with water nor with wind.”

8. Who is the “near-dweller” (platioiketas) among the Boeotians?

This is the name they give in the Aeolian dialect to persons who dwell in the next house or occupy adjoining property. signifying that they hold land near at hand. I shall add one phrase from the Edict of the Guardians of the Law, although there are several more … a

9. Who is the Consecrator (hosiōtēr) among the Delphians and why do they call one of the months “Bysios”? They call the victim that is sacrificed Consecrator whenever an Holy One a is appointed. There are five Holy Ones, who hold office for life; they do a great many things with the co-operation of the oracle-interpreters and with them take part in the holy rites, since they are thought to have descended from Deucalion.

The month “Bysios,” as many think, is the month of growth (physios); for it begins the spring and during it many plants spring up and come into bloom. But this is not the truth of the matter, for Delphians do not use b in place of ph (as Macedonians do who say “Bilip” and “balacros” and “Beronicê”), but in place of p; thus they naturally say “broceed” for “proceed” and “bainful” for “painful.” Accordingly “Bysios” is “pysios,” the month of oracular inquiry, in which men ask questions and obtain responses from the god; for this is the legitimate and traditional procedure. In this month, then, oracles used to be given and the seventh day of this month they consider the birthday of the god. b They call this day the day of Many Utterances (Polyphthoös) not because they then bake cakes (phthoïs), c but because it is a day when many inquire of the god and receive many oracles. For only recently have monthly oracles been given out to inquirers; formerly the prophetic priestess was wont to give responses but once a year on this day, as Callisthenes d and Anaxandrides have recorded.

10. What is the “sheep-escaper”?

It is one of the small plants that grow close to the ground, whose shoots the grazing animals attack, cutting off the tops and injuring them and so spoiling the growth. But when these plants grow up and gain some size and escape injury from the flocks which graze upon them, then they are called “sheep-escapers.” The evidence for this is Aeschylus. a

11. Who are the “Men repulsed by slings”?

Men from Eretria used to inhabit the island of Corcyra. But Charicrates sailed thither from Corinth with an army and defeated them in war; so the Eretrians embarked in their ships and sailed back home. Their fellow-citizens, however, having learned of the matter before their arrival, barred their return to the country and prevented them from disembarking by showering upon them missiles from slings. Since the exiles were unable either to persuade or to overcome their fellow-citizens, who were numerous and inexorable, they sailed to Thrace and occupied a territory in which, according to tradition, Methon, the ancestor of Orpheus, had formerly lived. So the Eretrians named their city Methonê, but they were also named by their neighbours the “Men repulsed by slings.”

12. Who was “Charilla” among the Delphians?

The Delphians celebrate three festivals one after the other which occur every eight b years, the first of which they call Septerion, the second Heroïs, and the third Charilla.

Now the Septerion seems to be a representation of Apollo’s fight with the Python and the flight to Tempê and pursuit that followed the battle. b Some indeed affirm that Apollo fled because he desired purification as a consequence of the slaughter he had done, others that he was following the wounded Python as he fled along the road which we now call the Sacred Way, and was only a little late for the monster’s death; for he overtook him when he had just died from the effects of the wound and had been buried by his son, whose name, as they say, was Aix. The Septerion, then, is a representation of these matters or certain matters of a similar nature. a

The greater part of the Heroïs has a secret import which the Thyiads b know; but from the portions of the rites that are performed in public one might conjecture that it represents the evocation of Semelê.

The story of Charilla which they relate is somewhat as follows: A famine following a drought oppressed the Delphians, and they came to the palace of their king with their wives and children and made supplication. The king gave portions of barley and legumes to the more notable citizens, for there was not enough for all. But when an orphaned girl, who was still but a small child, approached him and importuned him, he struck her with his sandal and cast the sandal in her face. But, although the girl was poverty-stricken and without protectors, she was not ignoble in character; and when she had withdrawn, she took off her girdle and hanged herself. As the famine increased and diseases also were added thereto, the prophetic priestess gave an oracle to the king that he must appease Charilla, the maiden who had slain herself. Accordingly, when they had discovered with some difficulty that this was the name of the child who had been struck, they performed a certain sacrificial rite combined with purification, which even now they continue to perform every eight years. For the king sits in state and gives a portion of barley-meal and legumes to everyone, alien and citizen alike, and a doll-like image of Charilla is brought thither. When, accordingly, all have received a portion, the king strikes the image with his sandal. The leader of the Thyiads picks up the image and bears it to a certain place which is full of chasms; there they tie a rope round the neck of the image and bury it in the place where they buried Charilla after she had hanged herself.

13. What is the “beggar’s meat” among the Aenianians?

There have been several migrations of the Aenianians. For first, when they inhabited the region about the Dotian plain, they were expelled by the Lapiths to Aethicia. a From there they proceeded to take possession of the region of Molossia about the river Auas, from which they received the name Parauaei. After this they took possession of Cirrha. There, when they had stoned to death Oenoclus, a their king, at the command of the god, they descended to the country about the Inachus, which was inhabited by Inachians and Achaeans. Since an oracle had declared that if the Inachians gave away any part of their country, they should lose it all, and that if the Aenianians received any part of the land from willing givers, they should gain possession of it, Temon, a notable man among the Aenianians, donned rags and wallet and came to the Inachians in the guise of a beggar. In scorn and mockery their king gave him a clod of earth, which Temon accepted, placed within his wallet, and was evidently satisfied with the gift; for he straightway withdrew without asking for anything more. The Inachian elders were astonished, but, recalling the oracle, they went to the king and told him not to make light of the fellow nor to let him get away. Temon, then, perceiving their intent, hastened his flight and made his escape after vowing a hecatomb to Apollo.

After this affair the two kings engaged in single combat, and Phemius, king of the Aenianians, observing the Inachian king, Hyperochus, advancing to meet him accompanied by a dog, said that Hyperochus was acting unfairly in bringing on a second combatant. But while Hyperochus was driving off the dog and had his back turned, Phemius hit him with a stone and killed him. The Aenianians gained possession of the country, driving out the Inachians together with the Achaeans, and they revere that stone as sacred, and sacrifice to it and cover it round about with the fat of the sacrificial victim; and whenever they pay the hecatomb to Apollo, they sacrifice a bull to Zeus; and they set aside a select portion of the flesh for the descendants of Temon, and this they call the “beggar’s meat.”

14. Who are the “Coliadae” among the inhabitants of Ithaca and what is the phagilos?

After the slaughter of the suitors the relatives of the dead men rose up against Odysseus; but Neoptolemus was sent for by both parties to act as arbiter. a He adjudged that Odysseus should depart from the country and be exiled for homicide from Cephallenia, Zacynthus, and Ithaca; and that the companions and the relatives of the suitors should recompense Odysseus each year for the injuries which they had done to his estate. Odysseus accordingly departed to Italy; but the recompense he formally transferred to his son, and ordered the inhabitants of Ithaca to pay it to him. The recompense consisted of barley, wine, honeycombs, olive-oil, salt, and beasts for sacrifice that were older than phagiloi; according to Aristotle’s a statement, a lamb is a phagilos. Now Telemachus bestowed freedom upon Eumaeus and his associates, and incorporated them among the citizens; and the clan of the Coliadae is descended from Eumaeus, and that of the Bucolidae from Philoetius. b

15. What is “the wooden dog” among the Locrians?

Locrus was the son of Physcius, the son of Amphictyon. The son of Locrus and Cabyê was Opus. His father quarrelled with Opus and taking many of the citizens with him he went to seek an oracle concerning a colony. The god told him to found a city where he should chance to be bitten by a wooden dog, and, as he was crossing to the other sea, he trod upon a dog-brier. c Greatly troubled by the wound, he spent several days there, during which he explored the country and founded the cities Physcus and Oeantheia and the other cities which the so-called Ozolian Locrians inhabited.

Some say that the Locrians are called Ozolian because of Nessus; others say that it is because of the serpent Python, since their bodies were washed up by the sea and rotted away in the country of the Locrians. But some say that these men wear fleeces and goatskins and for the most part spend their time with herds of goats, and thus became evil-smelling. a But some, on the contrary, assert that, since the country has many flowers, it acquired its name from sweet odour. Among these is also Archytas b of Amphissa, for he has written thus:

Lovely Macyna, wreathed with clusters of grapes and fragrant with perfume.

16. What is it that the Megarians call aphabroma?

When Nisus, from whom Nisaea acquired its name, was king, he took a wife from Boeotia, Habrotê, daughter of Onchestus, the sister of Megareus, a woman who, as it appears, was both exceptionally intelligent and remarkably discreet. When she died, the Megarians mourned her with one accord, and Nisus, wishing that her memory and her repute should be established everlastingly, ordered the women of the city to wear the garment that she used to wear; and because of her he called the garment aphabroma. Even the god seems to have furthered the repute of this woman, for often, when the Megarian women wished to make a change in their raiment, he prevented them by an oracle.

17. What is the “spear-friend”?

In days of old the Megarid used to be settled in village communities with the citizens divided into five groups. They were called Heraeïs, Piraeïs, [paragraph continues] Megareis, Cynosureis, and Tripodiscioi. Although the Corinthians brought about a civil war among them, for the Corinthians were ever plotting to get Megara under their control, none the less, because of their fair-mindedness, they conducted their wars in a civilized and a kinsmanly way. For no one did any harm at all to the men working in the fields, and when anyone was captured, he but needed to pay a certain specified ransom; this his captors received after they had set him free, and did not collect it earlier; but he who took a prisoner conducted the man to his house and, after sharing with him salt and food, sent him home. He, accordingly, who brought his ransom, was highly regarded and continued thenceforward to be a friend of his captor; and, as a consequence of his capture by the spear, he was now called “spear-friend.” But anyone who failed to pay the ransom was held in disrepute as dishonest and faithless, not only among his enemies, but also among his fellow-citizens.

18. What is “return-interest”? a

When the Megarians had expelled Theagenes, b their despot, for a short time they were sober and sensible in their government. But later when the popular leaders poured a full and heady draught of freedom for them, as Plato c says, they were completely corrupted and, among their shocking acts of misconduct toward the wealthy, the poor would enter their homes and insist upon being entertained and banqueted sumptuously. But if they did not receive what they demanded, they would treat all the household with violence and insult. Finally they enacted a decree whereby they received back again the interest which they chanced to have paid to their creditors, calling the measure “return-interest.”

19. Which is the Anthedon to which the utterance of the prophetic priestess refers:

Drink wine turbid with lees, since thou dwellest not in Anthedon,

for Anthedon in Boeotia is not rich in wine?

In days of old they used to call Calaureia by the name of Eirenê, from the woman Eirenê who, as legend has it, was born of Poseidon and Melantheia, the daughter of the Alpheius. But later, when the companions of Anthus and Hypera settled there, they called the island Anthedonia and Hypereia. According to Aristotle a the oracle ran as follows:

Drink wine turbid with lees, since thou dwellest not in Anthedon,
No, nor in Hypera holy; for wine without lees thou didst drink there.

[paragraph continues] This, then, is Aristotle’s version. But Mnasigeiton says that Anthus, the brother of Hypera, disappeared from home while he was still a child, and that Hypera, while she was wandering about in search of him, came to Pherae to the house of Acastus, where it chanced that Anthus was the slave appointed to be cupbearer. While they were feasting the boy recognized his sister, as he was bearing her cup to her, and said to her softly

Drink wine turbid with lees, since thou dwellest not in Anthedon.

20. What is it that is called in Prienê “the darkness by the Oak”?

When the Samians and the Prienians were at war with each other, on the other occasions they suffered injuries and inflicted injuries to a moderate degree only; but when a great battle took place, the people of Prienê slew one thousand Samians. Six years later they engaged the Milesians at a place called the Oak, and lost practically all the best and the foremost of their citizens. At this time also the sage Bias was sent on an embassy from Prienê to Samos and won high repute. For the women of Prienê this was a cruel experience and a pitiable calamity, and it became established as a curse and an oath in the most important matters to swear by “the darkness by the Oak,” because of the fact that there their sons, their fathers, and their husbands had been slaughtered. a

21. Who are they that are called “burners” among the Cretans?

They relate that the Tyrrhenians who, at the time when they inhabited Lemnos and Imbros, carried off the daughters and wives of the Athenians from Brauron, later, when they had been expelled from there, came to Sparta and consorted with the women of the country even to the begetting of children. But again, as the result of suspicions and false accusations, they were forced to leave the Spartan country. With their children and wives they effected a landing in Crete with Pollis and Delphus as their leaders. b There, while they were fighting the possessors of the island, they suffered many of the men who had been slain in the battles to lie unburied, because at first they had no leisure to bury them because of the war and the danger, and later because they shrank from touching corpses that had been decomposed and putrefied by the lapse of time. Accordingly Pollis devised certain honours, privileges, and immunities, and some of these he bestowed on the priests of the gods, others upon them that buried the dead. These honours he put in the keeping of the spirits of the underworld in order that they might continue for ever irrevocable. The one class received the name of priests, and the other that of “burners.”

Then Pollis made a division by lot with Delphus, and they governed separate and independent states; and, along with other humane provisions which they enjoyed, they had freedom from the injuries which the other Cretans are wont to inflict upon one another through stealthy plundering and pillaging. For to the Tyrrhenian communities they do no injury, nor do they steal anything from them or dispossess them of anything.

22. What is the “Children’s Tomb” among the Chalcidians?

Cothus and Aeclus, the sons of Xuthus, came to Euboea to dwell at a time when the Aeolians possessed the greater part of the island. It had been prophesied to Cothus that he should have great success and get the better of his enemies if he bought the land. When he had landed on the island with a few men, he encountered little children playing by the sea. So he joined in their play, and in a kindly spirit showed them many playthings from foreign lands. But when he saw that the children were desirous of having them for their own, he refused to give them unless he too should receive some earth from the children. So they picked up some from the ground and gave it to Cothus, and then, taking the playthings, departed. But the Aeolians discovered what had happened, and, when their enemies sailed against them, they made away with the children under stress of anger and grief. The children were buried beside the road which leads from the city to the Euripus, and the place is called the Children’s Tomb.

23. Who is the “Associate-founder” (mixarchagetas) at Argos, and who are the “Averters” (elasioi)?

They call Castor the Associate-founder, and think that he is buried in Argive territory, but Polydeuces they reverence as one of the Olympians. Persons who have the reputed ability to turn away attacks of epilepsy they call Averters, and these are thought to be of the descendants of Alexida, the daughter of Amphiaraüs.

24. What is that which is called an enknisma (a roast) among the Argives? a

It is the custom for those who have lost a relative or an intimate friend to sacrifice to Apollo b immediately after the mourning, and again thirty days later to Hermes. For they believe that, just as the earth receives the bodies of the dead, even so Hermes receives their souls. They give barley to the priest of Apollo and receive some meat of the sacrificial victim; and when they have put out their fire, since they believe it to be polluted, and have relighted it from the hearth of others, they proceed to roast this flesh which they call enknisma.

25. What is an alastor, an aliterios, a palamnaeos?

We certainly must not believe those who say that persons who, during a famine, set a watch upon the miller and plunder him are called aliterioi. a But he who has done unforgettable (alesta) things, b things that will be remembered for a long time, is called alastor; and he whom it were well to avoid (aleuasthai) and to guard against because of his wickedness is called aliterios. These things, according to the statement of Socrates, c they have written on tablets of bronze.

26. What is the intent of the custom by which the maidens who serve as an escort for the men who lead the bull from Aenis to Cassiopaea chant until they reach the boundary,

Never may ye return to the well-loved soil of your homeland? d

When the Aenianians had been driven out of their country by the Lapiths, e they dwelt first of all about Aethicia, and later about Molossia and Cassiopaea. But, since they had no benefit from the country, and, in addition, had to deal with ungentle peoples on their borders, they came to the Cirrhaean plain under the leadership of Oenoclus, their king. But great droughts befell them there, and, as it is related, in accordance with an oracle they stoned [paragraph continues] Oenoclus. a Then they wandered on and came to this country which they now possess, a goodly country, productive of all manner of crops; wherefore it is with good reason that they pray to the gods that they may not return again to their ancient fatherland, but may remain here in prosperity.

27. Why is it that among the Rhodians a herald does not enter the shrine of the hero Ocridion?

Is it because Ochimus affianced his daughter Cydippê to Ocridion? But Cercaphus, who was the brother of Ochimus, was in love with the maiden and persuaded the herald (for it used to be the custom to use heralds to fetch the brides), when he should receive Cydippê, to bring her to him. When this had been accomplished, Cercaphus fled with the maiden; but later, when Ochimus had grown old, Cercaphus returned to his home again. But the custom became established among the Rhodians that a herald should not approach the shrine of Ocridion because of the wrong that had been done.

28. Why is it that among the inhabitants of Tenedos a flute-player may not enter the shrine of Tenes, nor may anyone mention Achilles’ name within the shrine?

Is it that, when Tenes’ stepmother b falsely accused him of wishing to lie with her, Molpus the flute-player bore false witness against him, and because of this it came about that Tenes had to flee to Tenedos with his sister? But as for Achilles, it is said that his mother Thetis straitly forbade him to kill Tenes, since [paragraph continues] Tenes was honoured by Apollo; and she commissioned one of the servants to be on guard, and to remind Achilles lest he should unwittingly slay Tenes. But when Achilles was overrunning Tenedos and was pursuing Tenes’ sister, who was a beautiful maiden, Tenes met him and defended his sister; and she escaped, though Tenes was slain. When he had fallen, Achilles recognized him, and slew the servant because he had, although present, not reminded him; and he buried Tenes where his shrine now stands and neither does a flute-player enter it nor is Achilles mentioned there by name.

29. Who is the “Seller” among the Epidamnians?

The Epidamnians were neighbours of the Illyrians and perceived that such of their citizens as associated with the Illyrians were becoming corrupted; and, since they feared a revolution, they used to select one of the most reputable of their fellow-citizens each year to conduct such commercial dealings and barters. This man visited the barbarians and provided them with a market and an opportunity for all the citizens to display what they had to sell: thus he was called the “Seller.”

30. What is the “Beach of Araenus” in Thrace?

When the Andrians and Chalcidians sailed to Thrace to settle there, they jointly seized the city of Sanê, which was betrayed to them; but when they learned that the barbarians had abandoned Acanthus, they sent out two scouts. When these were approaching the city, they perceived that the enemy had all fled; so the Chalcidian ran forward to take possession of the city for Chalcis, but the Andrian, since he could not cover the distance so rapidly as his rival, hurled his spear, and when it was firmly implanted in the city gates, he called out in a loud voice that by his spear the city had been taken into prior possession for the children of the Andrians. As a result of this a dispute arose, and, without going to war, they agreed to make use of Erythraeans, Samians, and Parians as arbitrators concerning the whole matter. But when the Erythraeans and the Samians gave their vote in favour of the Andrians, and the Parians in favour of the Chalcidians, the Andrians, in the neighbourhood of this place, made a solemn vow against the Parians that they would never give a woman in marriage to the Parians nor take one from them. And for this reason they called the place the Beach of Araenus, a although it had formerly been named the Serpent’s Beach.

31. Why is it that at the Thesmophoria the Eretrian women cook their meat, not by fire, but by the rays of the sun; and why do they not call upon Calligeneia? b

Is it because it happened that the captive women whom Agamemnon was bringing home from Troy were celebrating the Thesmophoria at this place, but when conditions for sailing suddenly appeared favourable, they put out to sea leaving behind them the sacrifice uncompleted?

32. Who are the Perpetual Sailors among the Milesians?

When the despots associated with Thoas and Damasenor had been overthrown, two political parties came into control of the city, one of which was called Plutis, the other Cheiromacha. c When, accordingly, the men of influence gained the upper hand and brought matters into the control of their party, they used to deliberate about matters of the greatest importance by embarking in their ships and putting out to a considerable distance from the land. But when they had come to a final decision, they sailed back; and because of this they acquired the appellation of Perpetual Sailors.

33. Why do the Chalcidians call the neighbourhood of the Beacon “the Young Men’s Club”?

They relate that Nauplius, when he was being pursued by the Achaeans, came as a suppliant to the Chalcidians; and on the one hand he defended himself in regard to the indictment brought against him, and on the other hand brought a counter-charge against the Achaeans. The Chalcidians had no intention of surrendering him; but, since they were afraid that he might be slain by treachery, they gave him a guard of young men in the prime of their youth and stationed them in this place, where they lived together and at the same time served as a guard for Nauplius.

34. Who was the man that slew an ox for a his benefactor?

Anchored off the island of Ithaca was a pirate vessel in which there chanced to be an old man with earthenware jars containing pitch. By chance a ferryman of Ithaca, by name Pyrrhias, put off to the ship and rescued the old man without asking for any reward, but because he had been persuaded by the old man and pitied him. He did, however, accept some of the jars, for the old man bade him do so. But when the pirates had departed and there was nothing to fear, the old man led Pyrrhias to the jars, and in them showed him much gold and silver mixed with the pitch. So Pyrrhias, suddenly becoming rich, treated the old man well in various ways, and also slew an ox for him. Wherefore men make use of this as a proverbial expression: “No one but Pyrrhias has slain an ox for his benefactor.”

35. Why was it the custom for the Bottiaean maidens to chant as they danced, “Let us go to Athens “?

They relate that the Cretans in accordance with a vow sent a consecrated offering of men to Delphi; but the men who had been sent, when they saw that there was no abundance there, set out from Delphi to found a colony. They settled first in Iapygia, but later occupied this region of Thrace. There were some Athenians included among them; for it appears that Minos did not destroy the young persons whom the Athenians sent him for tribute, but kept them by him as servants. Accordingly, some who were descended from these Athenians and had come to be considered Cretans were included in this company sent to Delphi. Wherefore the daughters of the Bottiaeans, in remembrance of their lineage, were wont to sing in their festivals, “Let us go to Athens.”

36. Why is it that the women of the Eleans, when they sing hymns to Dionysus, call upon him to come to them “with the foot of a bull” b? The hymn c runs as follows: Come, O hero Dionysus,
To thy Elean holy
Temple, with the Graces,
To thy temple
With thy bull’s foot hasting.

[paragraph continues] Then they chant twice the refrain: “O worthy bull.”

Is it because some address the god as “kine-born” or as “bull “? Or by “ox-foot” do they mean “with thy mighty foot,” even as the Poet used “ox-eyed” a to signify “large-eyed,” and “bully” b for “loudmouthed”?

Or is it rather because the foot of the bull is harmless, but the part that bears horns is harmful, and thus they call upon the god to come in a gentle and painless manner?

Or is it because many believe that the god was the pioneer in both ploughing and sowing?

37. Why do the people of Tanagra have before their city an Achilleum, that is, a place bearing this name? For it is related that Achilles actually had more enmity than friendship for the city, since he carried off Stratonicê, the mother of Poemander, and slew Acestor, the son of Ephippus. c

While the territory of Tanagra was still inhabited in village communities, Poemander, the father of Ephippus, had been besieged by the Achaeans in the place called Stephon, because of his unwillingness to join their expedition. d But he abandoned that stronghold by night and fortified Poemandria. e [paragraph continues] Polycrithus the master-builder, however, who was present, spoke slightingly of the fortifications and, in derision, leaped over the moat. Poemander was enraged and hastened to throw at him a great stone which had been hidden there from ancient days, set aside for use in the ritual of the Nyctelia. a This stone Poemander snatched up in his ignorance, and hurled. He missed Polycrithus, but slew his son Leucippus. According to the law, therefore, he had to depart from Boeotia and become a suppliant at a stranger’s hearth. But this was not easy, since the Achaeans had invaded the territory of Tanagra. Accordingly he sent his son Ephippus to appeal to Achilles. Ephippus, by his persuasive words, brought to his father Achilles, as well as Tlepolemus, the son of Heracles, and Peneleös, the son of Hippalcmas, all of them interrelated. Poemander was escorted by them to Chalcis, and there at the house of Elephenor he was purified of the murder. Therefore he honoured these heroes and set apart sacred precincts for them all, and of these the precinct of Achilles has still kept its name.

38. Who are the “Psoloeis” and who the “Oleiae” among the Boeotians?

They relate that the daughters of Minyas, Leucippê and Arsinoê and Alcathoê, becoming insane, conceived a craving for human flesh, and drew lots for their children. b The lot fell upon Leucippê to contribute her son Hippasus to be torn to pieces, and their husbands, who put on ill-favoured garments for very grief and sorrow, were called “Grimy” (Psoloeis); but the Minyads themselves were called “Oleiae,” that is to say, ‘Murderesses.’ And even to-day the people of Orchomenus give this name to the women descended from this family; and every year, at the festival of Agrionia, a there takes place a flight and pursuit of them by the priest of Dionysus with sword in hand. Any one of them that he catches he may kill, and in my time the priest Zoïlus killed one of them. But this resulted in no benefit for the people of Orchomenus; but Zoïlus fell sick from some slight sore and, when the wound had festered for a long time, he died. The people of Orchomenus also found themselves involved in some suits for damages and adverse judgements; wherefore they transferred the priesthood from Zoïlus’s family and chose the best man from all the citizens to fill the office.

39. Why do the Arcadians stone persons who voluntarily enter the Lycaeon; but if such persons enter through ignorance, they send them away to Eleutherae?

Is it because they were released and set free that this story gained credence, and is the expression “to Free Town” (Eleutherae) of the same sort as “to the land of Sans Souci” and “you will come to the Seat of Satisfaction”?

Or is it in accordance with the legend, since Eleuther and Lebadus were the only sons of Lycaon that had no share in the abomination prepared for Zeus, b but instead they fled to Boeotia, and there is community of citizenship between the people of Lebadeia and the Arcadians, and do they accordingly send away to Eleutherae those who involuntarily enter the inviolate sanctuary of Zeus?

Or is it as Architimus a relates in his Arcadian History, that certain men who entered through ignorance were handed over by the Arcadians to the Phliasians, and by the Phliasians to the Megarians, and, as they were being conducted from Megara to Thebes, they were stopped near Eleutherae b by rain and thunder and other signs from heaven? Whence, in fact, some assert that the place acquired the name of Eleutherae.

The tale, however, that no shadow is cast by a person who enters the Lycaeon is not true, although it has acquired widespread credence. c Is it because the air turns to clouds, and lowers darkly upon those who enter? Or is it because he that enters is condemned to death, and the followers of Pythagoras declare that the spirits of the dead cast no shadow, d neither do they blink? Or is it because it is the sun which causes shadow, but the law deprives him that enters of the sunlight?

This too they relate allegorically: he that enters is called a “deer.” Wherefore, when Cantharion the Arcadian deserted to the Eleans while they were at war with the Arcadians, and with his booty crossed the inviolate sanctuary, even though he fled to Sparta after peace had been made, the Spartans surrendered him to the Arcadians, since the god ordered them to give back “the deer.”

40. Who was the hero Eunostus in Tanagra, and why may no women enter his grove?

Eunostus was the son of Elieus, who was the son of Cephisus, and Scias. They relate that he acquired his name because he was brought up by the nymph Eunosta. Handsome and righteous as he was, he was no less virtuous and ascetic. They say that Ochnê, his cousin, one of the daughters of Colonus, became enamoured of him; but when Eunostus repulsed her advances and, after upbraiding her, departed to accuse her to her brothers, the maiden forestalled him by doing this very thing against him. She incited her brothers, Echemus, Leon, and Bucolus, to kill Eunostus, saying that he had consorted with her by force. They, accordingly, lay in ambush for the young man and slew him. Then Elieus put them in bonds; but Ochnê repented, and was filled with trepidation and, wishing to free herself from the torments caused by her love, and also feeling pity for her brothers, reported the whole truth to Elieus, and he to Colonus. And when Colonus had given judgement, Ochnê’s brothers were banished, and she threw herself from a precipice, as Myrtis, a the lyric poetess of Anthedon, has related.

But the shrine and the grove of Eunostus were so strictly guarded against entry and approach by women that, often, when earthquakes or droughts or other signs from heaven occurred, the people of Tanagra were wont to search diligently and to be greatly concerned lest any woman might have approached the place undetected; and some relate, among them Cleidamus, a man of prominence, that Eunostus met them on his way to the sea to bathe because a woman had set foot within the sacred precinct. And Diodes a also, in his treatise upon the Shrines of Heroes, quotes a decree of the people of Tanagra concerning the matters which Cleidamus reported.

41. From what cause was a river in Boeotia in the vicinity of Eleon called Scamander?

Deïmachus, the son of Eleon and a companion of Heracles, took part in the expedition against Troy. But since, as it appears, the war was dragging on, he welcomed to his quarters Glaucia, the daughter of Scamander, who had fallen in love with him, and got her with child; then he himself fell in fighting against the Trojans. But Glaucia, fearing detection, fled for refuge, and told Heracles of her love and of her association with Deïmachus. And he, both through pity for the woman, and for joy that the stock of a brave man who was his close friend should thus survive, took Glaucia on board his fleet; and when she gave birth to a son, he brought both the child and the mother, and delivered them to Eleon in Boeotia. The child was named Scamander, and he became the king of the country; and he named the Inachus river Scamander after himself, and the stream near by he called Glaucia from his mother. The spring Acidusa he named after his wife; and from her he had three daughters whom even to this day they honour under the name of the “Maidens.”

42. Whence arose the proverbial saying, “This is valid”?

When Deinon of Tarentum, a brave soldier, was general, his fellow-citizens voted to reject a certain proposal of his. When the herald reported the prevailing majority, he held up his right hand and said, “But this is stronger.” This is Theophrastus’s a version of the story; but Apollodorus has a supplementary version, that when the herald of the Tarentines proclaimed, “These are in the majority,” Deinon said, “But these are better!” and validated the vote of the minority.

43. For what reason was the city of the Ithacans called Alalcomenae?

Because Anticleia, while yet a virgin, was violated by Sisyphus and conceived Odysseus. This is related by several authorities b; but Ister c of Alexandria in his Commentaries has in addition recorded that when Anticlea had been given in marriage to Laërtes and was being conducted to his home, she gave birth to Odysseus near the Alalcomenium in Boeotia. And for this reason, as though referring the name to that of a mother-city, he states that the city in Ithaca acquired its name.

44. Who were the “solitary eaters” in Aegina?

Of the Aeginetans who were engaged in the war against Troy many perished in the battles there, but even more were destroyed by the storm on the return-voyage. So there were but few who survived, and when their relatives had welcomed them home, and observed that the other citizens were in mourning and sorrow, they deemed it proper neither to rejoice nor to sacrifice to the gods openly; but secretly and separately in their own houses they received with feasting and good cheer those who had reached home in safety. They themselves waited upon their fathers and kinsmen, their brothers and relatives, and no one outside the family was allowed to enter. It is, then, in imitation of this that they hold a sacrifice to Poseidon, which is called thiasoi, a in which they feast by themselves in silence for sixteen days, and no slave is present. Then, when they have celebrated the Aphrodisia, they terminate the festival. For this reason they are called “solitary eaters.”

45. Why is it that the statue of the Labrandean Zeus in Caria is fashioned holding an axe, but not a sceptre or a thunderbolt?

Because when Heracles had slain Hippolytê, together with her other arms he took her axe and gave it as a present to Omphalê. The Lydian kings who succeeded Omphalê used to carry it as a part of the sacred regalia, handing it down one to the other until it came to Candaules. He deemed it of little worth and gave it to one of his Companions b to carry. But when Gyges c revolted and was at war with Candaules, Arselis came from Mylasa with an army as an ally for Gyges and slew both Candaules and his Companion and brought the axe to Caria together with the other spoils. He therefore constructed a statue of Zeus and placed the axe in its hand, and called the god Labrandeus; for the Lydians call the axe labrys. a

46. Why is it that the people of Tralles call vetch “purifier” and make particular use of it for expiations and purifications?

Is it because the Leleges and Minyae in days of old drove them out and took possession of their city and their land, and because later the Trallians returned and prevailed, and as many of the Leleges as had not been slain nor had fled away, but had been left behind there because of their destitution and weakness — of these they took no account either of their life or of their death, and they established a law that any Trallian who killed a Minyan or a Lelegian should be free from pollution when he had measured out a bushel of vetch to the relatives of the murdered man?

47. Why is there a proverb among the Eleans “to suffer more terribly than Sambicus”?

The story is told that a certain Sambicus, an Elean, at the head of a numerous group of confederates, cut many pieces from the bronze votive statues in Olympia and sold them, and finally he despoiled the shrine of Artemis the Guardian. This is in Elis and is called the Aristarcheum. Immediately, then, after this sacrilege, he was caught and tortured for a year, being interrogated about each of his confederates in turn; and in this manner he died and the proverb arose from his sufferings. 48. Why at Sparta is a shrine of Odysseus built near the shrine of the daughters of Leucippus?

Erginus, one of the descendants of Diomedes, was persuaded by Temenus to steal the Palladium from Argos; this he did with the knowledge and help of Leagrus, who was one of Temenus’s friends. But later Leagrus became incensed at Temenus and removed to Sparta, taking the Palladium with him. The Spartan kings received it eagerly, and gave it a place near the shrine of the daughters of Leucippus, and they sent to Delphi to obtain an oracle concerning its safety and preservation. When the god gave oracle that one of those who had purloined the Palladium should be made its guardian, the Spartans constructed there the shrine of Odysseus, especially since, because of his marriage with Penelopê, a they reckoned that this hero had close relations with their city.

49. Why is it the custom for the women of Chalcedon, whenever they encounter strange men, and especially officials, to veil one cheek?

The Chalcedonians were involved in a war against the Bithynians, to which they were provoked by all kinds of reasons. When Zeipoetes became king of Bithynia, the Chalcedonians, in full force and with the addition of Thracian allies, devastated the country with fire and sword. When Zeipoetes attacked them near the so-called Phalion, they fought badly through rashness and lack of discipline, and lost over eight thousand soldiers. It was only because Zeipoetes granted an armistice to please the Byzantines that they were not completely annihilated at that time. Since, then, there was a great scarcity of men throughout the city, most of the women were forced to consort with freedmen and resident aliens. But those women who preferred to have no husband at all rather than a marriage of this sort, themselves conducted whatever business they needed to transact with the judges or the officials, drawing aside one part of the veil that covered their faces. And the married women, for very shame, followed the example of these, who, they felt, were better than themselves, and also changed to a similar custom.

50. Why is it that the Argives drive their sheep to the precinct of Agenor when they wish to mate them?

Is it because Agenor took most excellent care of his sheep and acquired more flocks than any other king?

51. Why is it that Argive children in a certain festival call themselves, in jest, “Pear-throwers “?

Is it because the first men that were led down by Inachus from the mountains to the plain lived, as they say, on wild pears? They also say that wild pears were first discovered by the Greeks in the Peloponnesus at a time when that country was still called Apia, a wherefore wild pears were named apioi.

52. What is the reason why the Eleans lead their mares outside the boundaries of their country to mate them with asses? b

Is it because of all kings Oenomaüs was the most fond of horses, and, since he particularly loved this animal, he laid many terrible curses upon any that should thus mate horses in Elis; and it is in fear of that curse that they endeavour to keep clear of it?

53. Why was it the custom among the Cnossians for those who borrowed money to snatch it?

Was it that if they defaulted they might be liable to the charge of violence, and so be punished the more?

54. What is the reason why in Samos they invoke the Aphroditê of Dexicreon?

Is it because a sorcerer Dexicreon, making use of a rite of purification, freed the women of Samos from the unbridled licentiousness in which they indulged because of their great luxury and wantonness?

Or is it because Dexicreon was a shipmaster and sailed to Cyprus on a trading voyage, and, when he was about to freight his ship, Aphroditê bade him put into it water and nothing else, and set sail as quickly as possible? He obeyed and, putting much water aboard the ship, sailed away; after a time the wind died down and the ship was becalmed in the open sea. To the other merchants and shipmasters, who were athirst, he sold the water and amassed much money. Wherefore he fashioned an image of the goddess and called it by his own name. If this is really true, it appears that the goddess wished not to make one man rich, but to save the lives of many through one man.

55. Why is it that whenever the Samians are engaged in sacrificing to Hermes the Giver of Joy they allow whoever so desires to steal from them and filch their clothes? Because in obedience to an oracle they changed their abode from Samos to Mycalê and supported themselves by piracy there for ten years; and after this they sailed again to Samos and overcame their enemies.

56. From what does the place Panhaema on the island of Samos derive its name?

Is it because the Amazons sailed from the country of the Ephesians a across to Samos when they were endeavouring to escape from Dionysus? But he built boats and crossed over and, joining battle, slew many of them near this place, which the spectators in amazement called Panhaema b because of the vast quantity of blood shed there. And of the elephants c some are said to have been slain near Phloeum, and their bones are pointed out there; but some relate that Phloeum also was cleft by them as they uttered a loud and piercing cry.

57. For what reason is the great hall in Samos called the Hall of Fetters?

After the murder of Demoteles and the dissolution of his monarchic government the Land-owners d controlled the State, and at this time the Megarians made an expedition against the Perinthians, who were colonists of the Samians; as it is related, they brought with them fetters for their captives. When the Land-owners learned of this, they dispatched aid to the Perinthians with all speed, appointing nine generals and manning thirty ships. Two of these ships, as they were sailing out, were destroyed by a thunderbolt in front of the harbour; but the generals kept on with the others, defeated the Megarians, and took six hundred of them alive. Elated by their victory, they conceived the project of overthrowing the oligarchy of the Land-owners at home. Now the officials in charge of the government had provided an occasion for undertaking this, by writing to the generals to bring back the captive Megarians bound in their own fetters. The generals, accordingly, took the letter, and secretly showed it to certain of the Megarians and persuaded them to join with themselves and free the city. When they took counsel together concerning the deed, they decided to knock loose the rings that fastened the fetters, and in this condition to put them on the legs of the Megarians, holding them up with thongs to their girdles, so that the fetters might not slip down and fall off when their legs became relaxed in walking. Having thus equipped the men and given a sword to each, they sailed back to Samos and disembarked, and there they led the Megarians through the market-place to the council-chamber, where practically all the Land-owners were sitting together. Then, at a given signal, the Megarians fell upon them and slew them. When the city had thus been freed, they made citizens of those Megarians who so desired; and they constructed a great building and dedicated the fetters there; and from this the building was called the Hall of Fetters.

58. Why is it that among the Coans the priest of Heracles at Antimacheia dons a woman’s garb, and fastens upon his head a woman’s head-dress before he begins the sacrifice?

Heracles, putting out with his six ships from Troy, encountered a storm; and when his other ships had been destroyed, with the only one remaining he was driven by the gale to Cos. He was cast ashore upon the Laceter, as the place is called, with nothing salvaged save his arms and his men. Now he happened upon some sheep and asked for one ram from the shepherd. This man, whose name was Antagoras, was in the prime of bodily strength, and bade Heracles wrestle with him; if Heracles could throw him, he might carry off the ram. And when Heracles grappled with him, the Meropes came to the aid of Antagoras, and the Greeks to help Heracles, and they were soon engaged in a mighty battle. In the struggle it is said that Heracles, being exhausted by the multitude of his adversaries, fled to the house of a Thracian woman; there, disguising himself in feminine garb, he managed to escape detection. But later, when he had overcome the Meropes in another encounter, and had been purified, he married Chalciopê and assumed a gay-coloured raiment. Wherefore the priest sacrifices on the spot where it came about that the battle was fought, and bridegrooms wear feminine raiment when they welcome their brides.

59. Whence came the clan of “Wagon-rollers” among the Megarians?

In the time of the unbridled democracy which brought about both the return-interest a and the temple sacrilege, a sacred mission of Peloponnesians passed through the Megarid, on its way to Delphi and had encamped, as chance dictated, in their wagons, with their wives and children, in Aegeiri beside the lake. But the boldest spirits among the Megarians, inflamed with wine, in their insolence and savagery rolled back the wagons and pushed them into the lake, so that many members of the mission were drowned. Now because of the unsettled state of their government the Megarians took no notice of the crime; but the Amphictyonic Assembly, since the mission was sacred, took cognizance of the matter and punished some of the guilty men with banishment and others with death. The descendants of these men were called “Wagon-rollers.”

Greek and Roman parallel stories

305 The greater part of mankind think that tales of ancient events are inventions and myths because of the incredible elements which they contain. But since I have discovered that similar events have happened in this modern era, I have singled out crises of Roman history; and, to parallel each ancient happening, I have subjoined a more modern instance. I have also recorded my authorities.

1 1 Datis, the Persian satrap, came to Marathon, a plain of Attica, with an army of three hundred thousand, encamped there, and declared war on the inhabitants of the country. The Athenians, however, contemning the barbarian host, sent out nine thousand men, and appointed as generals Cynegeirus, Polyzelus, Callimachus, and Miltiades. When this force had engaged the enemy, Polyzelus, having seen a supernatural vision, lost his sight, and became blind. Callimachus was pierced with so many spears that, dead though he was, he stood upright; and Cynegeirus, seizing hold of a Persian ship that was putting out to sea, had his hand chopped off.

Hasdrubal the king seized Sicily and declared war on the Romans. Metellus was elected general by the Senate and was victor in the battle in which Lucius Glauco, a patrician, seizing hold of Hasdrubal’s ship, lost both his hands. This Aristeides the Milesian relates in the first book of his Sicilian History; from him Diodorus Siculus learned the facts.

2 1 Xerxes with five million men anchored near Artemisium and declared war on the inhabitants. The Athenians were in confusion and sent Agesilaüs, the brother of Themistocles, as a spy, although his father Neocles had seen in a dream his son deprived of both his hands. Agesilaüs, arriving among the barbarians in Persian garb, slew Mardonius, one of the king’s bodyguards, supposing him to be Xerxes. He was arrested by the bystanders and led in bonds to the king. The aforesaid king was about to offer sacrifice at the altar of the Sun, and Agesilaüs placed his right hand upon the altar; and when he had endured the cruel torture without a groan, he was freed from his bonds, whereupon he declared, “All we Athenians are men of this sort; if you do not believe me, I will place my left hand also on the altar.” Xerxes was frightened and gave command that he be kept under guard. This Agatharchides the Samian relates in the second book of his Persian History.

Porsenna, king of the Etruscans, made a foray on the other side of the river Tiber and warred against the Romans; he intercepted the abundant supply of grain and oppressed the aforesaid with famine. The senate was in confusion; but Mucius one of the nobles, with the consuls’ authorization, took four hundred men of his own age in civilian dress, and crossed the river. He observed one of the tyrant’s bodyguards distributing provisions to the officers and, supposing him to be Porsenna, killed him. When he was led to the king, he put forth his right hand into the sacrificial fire; 306 and dissembling his torments with a stout heart, he said with a smile, “Ruffian, I am free, whether you will or no. Know that there are against you even now in your camp four hundred of us that seek to slay you.” Porsenna was frightened, and made a truce with the Romans. This Aristeides the Milesian relates in the third book of his Histories.

3 1 When Argives and Spartans were contending for the Thyreatis, the Amphictyonic Assembly decreed that three hundred of each should fight, and the country should belong to the victors. The Spartans accordingly made Othryades their general, and the Argives made Thersander theirs. In the battle two of the Argives survived, Agenor and Chromius, who brought to their city the report of their victory. But when the battlefield was deserted, Othryades revived and, supporting himself on spear-shafts broken in two, despoiled and stripped the corpses of their shields; and when he had erected a trophy, he wrote with his own blood upon it: ‘To Zeus, Guardian of Trophies.’ And when the two peoples still disputed over the victory, the Amphictyonic Assembly, after a personal inspection of the battlefield, decided in favour of the Spartans. Thus Chrysermus in the third book of his Peloponnesian History.

The Romans in a war with the Samnites elected Postumius Albinus general. He was ambushed at a place called the Caudine Forks (it is a very narrow pass) and lost three legions, and himself fell mortally wounded. But in the dead of night he revived for a little and despoiled the enemy’s corpses of their shields. With these he set up a trophy and, dipping his hand in his blood, wrote upon it: “The Romans from the Samnites to Jupiter Feretrius.” But Maximus, surnamed the Glutton, was dispatched as general and when he had come to the place and had seen the trophy, he gladly accepted the omen. He attacked the enemy and conquered, and taking their king prisoner, sent him to Rome. Thus Aristeides the Milesian in the third book of his Italian Histories.

4 1 When the Persians were marching with five million men against Greece, Leonidas was sent by the Spartans to Thermopylae with three hundred men. While they were eating and drinking there, the barbarian host attacked them; and when Leonidas saw the barbarians, he said, “Eat your lunch now as if you were to dine in the other world.” And when he rushed against the barbarians, and was pierced by many a spear, he made his way up to Xerxes and snatched off his crown. When he was dead the barbarian king cut out his heart and found it covered with hair. So Aristeides in the first book of his Persian History.

When the Romans were at war with the Carthaginians, they dispatched three hundred men and Fabius Maximus as their general. He attacked the enemy and lost all his men, but he himself, although mortally wounded, with a mad rush reached Hannibal and knocked down his crown, and so died with him. This Aristeides the Milesian relates.

5 1 At the city of Celaenae in Phrygia the earth yawned open, together with a heavy rain, and dragged down many homesteads with their inhabitants into the depths. Midas the king received an oracle that if he should throw his most precious possession into the abyss, it would close. He cast in gold and silver, but this availed nothing. But Anchurus, the son of Midas, reasoning that there is nothing in life more precious than a human life, embraced his father and his wife Timothea, and rode on his horse into the abyss. When the earth had closed, Midas made an altar of Idaean Zeus golden by a touch of his hand. This altar becomes of stone at that time of the year when this yawning of the earth occurred; but when this limit of time has passed, it is seen to be golden. So Callisthenes in the second book of his Metamorphoses.

Because of the wrath of Jupiter Tarpeius the Tiber coursed through the middle of the Forum, broke open a very large abyss and engulfed many houses. An oracle was given that this would end if they threw in their precious possession. As they were casting in gold and silver, 307 Curtius, a youth of noble family, apprehended the meaning of the oracle, and, reasoning that human life is more precious, he hurled himself on horseback into the abyss, and saved his people from their miseries. So Aristeides in the fortieth book of his Italian History.

6 1 When the captains that accompanied Polyneices were feasting, an eagle swooped down and carried the spear of Amphiaraüs up to a height and then let it drop. The spear became fixed in the earth and was changed into a laurel. The next day, when the captains were fighting, at that very spot Amphiaraüs was swallowed up with his chariot, where now is the city that is called Harma. So Trisimachus in the third book of his Founding of Cities.

When the Romans were fighting against Pyrrhus of Epeirus, Aemilius Paulus received an oracle that he should be victorious if he would build an altar where he should see a man of the nobles with his chariot swallowed up in an abyss. Three days later Valerius Conatus in a dream saw a vision which commanded him to don his priestly raiment (he was, in fact, an expert augur). When he had led forth his men and slain many of the enemy, he was swallowed up by the earth. Aemilius built an altar, gained a victory, and sent back an hundred and sixty turreted elephants to Rome. The altar delivers oracles at that time of year when Pyrrhus was vanquished. This Critolaüs relates in the third book of his Epeirote History.

7 1 Pyraechmes, king of the Euboeans, was at war with the Boeotians. Heracles, while still a youth, vanquished him. He tied Pyraechmes to colts, tore his body into two parts, and cast it forth unburied. The place is called “Colts of Pyraechmes.” It is situated beside the river Heracleius, and it gives forth a sound of neighing when horses drink of it. So in the third book of Concerning Rivers.

Tullus Hostilius, King of the Romans, waged war with the Albans, whose king was Metius Fufetius. And Tullus repeatedly postponed battle. But the Albans, assuming his defeat, betook themselves to feasting and drinking. When they were overcome by wine, Tullus attacked them, and, tying their king to two colts, tore him apart. So Alexarchus in the fourth book of his Italian History.

8 1 Philip wished to plunder Methonê and Olynthus and, while he was attempting to force a crossing at the Sandanus river, his eye was pierced by an arrow from the bow of a certain Olynthian named Aster, who uttered these words:

Aster to Philip sends this deadly shaft.

But Philip swam back to his friends and was saved, although he lost his eye. So Callisthenes in the third book of his Macedonian History.

Porsenna, king of the Etruscans, made a foray on the other side of the river Tiber and warred against the Romans, and, by intercepting their abundant supply of grain, he oppressed the aforesaid with famine. But Horatius Cocles, who was elected general, took possession of the Wooden Bridge and checked the barbarian horde that sought to cross. But as he was being worsted by the enemy, he ordered his subordinates to cut down the bridge, and so thwarted the barbarian horde that sought to cross. When his eye was struck by an arrow, he threw himself into the river and swam across to his friends. So Theotimus in the second book of his Italian History.

9 1 The story of Icarius who entertained Dionysus: Eratosthenes in his Erigonê.

Saturn, when once he was entertained by a farmer who had a fair daughter named Entoria, seduced her and begat Janus, Hymnus, Faustus, and Felix. He then taught Icarius the use of wine and viniculture, and told him that he should share his knowledge with his neighbours also. When the neighbours did so and drank more than is customary, they fell into an unusually deep sleep. Imagining that they had been poisoned, they pelted Icarius with stones and killed him; and his grandchildren in despair ended their lives by hanging themselves. 308 When a plague had gained a wide hold among the Romans, Apollo gave an oracle that it would cease if they should appease the wrath of Saturn and the spirits of those who had perished unlawfully. Lutatius Catulus, one of the nobles, built for the god the precinct which lies near the Tarpeian Rock. He made the upper altar with four faces, either because of Icarius’s grandchildren or because the year has four parts; and he designated a month January. Saturn placed them all among the stars. The others are called harbingers of the vintage, but Janus rises before them. His star is to be seen just in front of the feet of Virgo. So Critolaüs in the fourth book of his Phaenomena.

10 1 When the Persians were plundering Greece, Pausanias, the Spartan general, accepted five hundred talents of gold from Xerxes and intended to betray Sparta. But when he was detected, Agesilaüs, his father, helped to pursue him to the temple of Athena of the Brazen House; the father walled up the doors of the shrine with bricks and killed his son by starvation. His mother also cast his body forth unburied. So Chrysermus in the second book of his Histories.

The Romans in their war with the inhabitants of Latium elected Publius Decius general. A certain poor, but noble, youth named Cassius Brutus wished to open the gates at night for a stated sum of money. He was detected and fled to the temple of Minerva Auxiliaria. Cassius Signifer, his father, shut him in, killed him by starvation, and cast him forth unburied. So Cleitonymus in his Italian History.

11 When Darius the Persian had fought with Alexander at the Granicus, and had lost seven satraps and five hundred and two scythe-bearing chariots, he intended to attack again on the next day. But Ariobarzanes, his son, who was kindly disposed toward Alexander, promised to betray his father. But the father fell into a rage and cut off his head. So Aretades of Cnidus in the third book of his Macedonian History.

Brutus, unanimously elected consul, drove into exile Tarquin the Proud, who was comporting himself despotically. Tarquin went to the Etruscans and began to wage war against the Romans. But Tarquin’s sons wished to betray their father. But they were detected, and Tarquin cut off their heads. So Aristeides the Milesian in his Italian History.

12 1 Epameinondas, the Theban general, when he was waging war against the Spartans, returned home at the season of the elections, giving orders to his son Stesimbrotus not to engage the enemy. But the Spartans learned of Epameinondas’s absence and taunted the youth with lack of manliness. He became indignant and, forgetting his father’s command, engaged the enemy and conquered. But his father being deeply offended, crowned the youth and cut off his head. This Ctesiphon relates in the third book of his Boeotian History.

When the Romans were engaged in war against the Samnites, they appointed Manlius, called Imperiosus, general. As he was journeying to Rome for the consular elections, he ordered his son not to engage the enemy. But the Samnites learned of this and insultingly called the youth a nobody. He was provoked and defeated them, but Manlius cut off his head. This Aristeides the Milesian relates.

13 1 Heracles failed in his suit for Iolê’s hand and sacked Oechalia. Iolê threw herself down from the wall; but it came about, since her garment was billowed out by the wind, that she suffered no harm. This Nicias of Mallus relates.

When the Romans were warring against the Etruscans, they elected Valerius Torquatus general. When he beheld the king’s daughter, whose name was Clusia, he asked the Etruscan for his daughter; but when he failed to obtain her, he attempted to sack the city. Clusia threw herself down from the battlements; 309 but by the foresight of Venus her garment billowed out, and she came safely to the ground. The general violated her, and for all these reasons was banished by public decree of the Romans to Corsica, an island off Italy. So Theophilus in the third book of his Italian History.

14 1 When the Carthaginians and Siceliots were negotiating an alliance against the Romans, Vesta was the only divinity to whom Metellus, the general, did not sacrifice. She, accordingly, sent a contrary wind against his ships. Gaius Julius, the augur, said that it would abate if Metellus should sacrifice his daughter. Forced by necessity, he brought forward his daughter Metella. But Vesta took pity, substituted a heifer, transported the maiden to Lanuvium, and appointed her priestess of the serpent that is worshipped by the people there. So Pythocles in the third book of his Italian History.

The like fate of Iphigeneia at Aulis in Boeotia Menyllus relates in the first book of his Boeotian History.

15 1 Brennus, king of the Gauls, when he was ravaging Asia, came to Ephesus and fell in love with a maiden Demonicê. She promised to satisfy his desires and also to betray Ephesus, if he would give her the Gauls’ bracelets and feminine ornaments. But Brennus required his soldiers to throw into the lap of the avaricious woman the gold which they were wearing. This they did, and she was buried alive by the abundance of gold. This Cleitophon relates in the first book of his Gallic History.

Tarpeia, one of the maidens of honourable estate, was the guardian of the Capitol when the Romans were warring against the Sabines. She promised Tatius that she would give him entry to the Tarpeian Rock if she received as pay the necklaces which the Sabines wore for adornment. The Sabines understood the import and buried her alive. So Aristeides the Milesian in his Italian History.

16 1 When a war between the Tegeans and the Pheneans had continued for a long time, dit was agreed to send triplet brothers to determine the victory by their fighting. The Tegeans accordingly chose to represent them the sons of Rheximachus, and the Pheneans the sons of Demostratus. When battle was joined, two of Rheximachus’s sons were slain. But the third, Critolaüs by name, by a stratagem succeeded in surviving his two brothers. For he devised the ruse of simulated flight, and so killed one after another of his pursuers. And when he came home all the rest rejoiced with him; but his sister Demodicê alone did not rejoice, for he had slain her betrothed, Demodicus. Critolaüs, smarting under such undeserved treatment, killed her. He was prosecuted for murder by his mother, but was acquitted of the charge. So Demaratus in the second book of his Arcadian History.

When the Romans and the Albans were at war, they chose triplets as their champions, the Albans the Curiatii, the Romans the Horatii. When the battle was joined, the Curiatii killed two of their opponents; but the survivor made use of simulated flight to help him, and killed one after another of his pursuers. Amid the universal rejoicing his sister Horatia alone did not rejoice with him; for he had slain her betrothed, Curiatius. So Horatius killed his sister. This Aristeides the Milesian narrates in his Italian History.

17 1 When the shrine of Athena in Ilium was in flames, Ilus rushed up and seized the Palladium, a statue which had fallen from heaven, and was blinded: for the Palladium might not be looked upon by man. But later, when he had placated the goddess, he regained his sight. So Dercyllus in the first book of his Foundations of Cities.

When Antylus, one of the noblemen, was on his way to the outskirts of the city, he was checked by crows which struck at him with their wings. Frightened by the omen, he returned to Rome. 310 He saw that the shrine of Vesta was on fire, seized the Palladium, and was blinded. But later he regained his sight when he had placated the goddess. So Aristeides the Milesian in his Italian History.

18 1 When the Thracians were at war with the Athenians, they received an oracle that they would be victorious if they should spare Codrus; but Codrus took a scythe and, in the guise of a poor man, went to meet the enemy. He slew one and was killed by the second, and thus the Athenians gained the victory. So Socrates in the second book of his Thracian History.

When Publius Decius, a Roman, was warring against the Albans, he saw in a dream that, if he should die, his death would bring strength to the Romans. He went into the thick of the battle, slew many, and was himself slain. In like manner did his son Decius also save the Romans in the war against the Gauls. So Aristeides the Milesian.

19 1 To Dionysus alone did Cyanippus, a Syracusan, omit to sacrifice. The god was angry and cast upon him a fit of drunkenness, in which he violated his daughter Cyanê in a dark place. She took off his ring and gave it to her nurse to be a mark of recognition. When the Syracusans were oppressed by a plague, and the Pythian god pronounced that they should sacrifice the impious man to the Averting Deities, the rest had no understanding of the oracle; but Cyanê knew, and seized her father by the hair and dragged him forth; and when she had herself cut her father’s throat, she killed herself upon his body in the same manner. So Dositheüs in the third book of his Sicilian History.

When the Bacchanalian revels were being celebrated at Rome, Aruntius, who had been from birth a water-drinker, set at naught the power of the god. But Dionysus cast a fit of drunkenness upon him, and he violated his daughter Medullina. But she recognized from a ring his relationship and devised a plan wiser than her years; making her father drunk, and crowning him with garlands, she led him to the altar of Divine Lightning, and there, dissolved in tears, she slew the man who had plotted against her virginity. So Aristeides in the third book of his Italian History.

20 When Erechtheus was at war with Eumolpus, he learned that he would conquer if he sacrificed his daughter before the battle, and, communicating this to his wife Praxithea, he sacrificed his daughter. Euripides records this in the Erechtheus.

When Marius was fighting the Cimbri and was being worsted, he saw in a dream that he would conquer if he sacrificed his daughter before the battle; for he had a daughter Calpurnia. Since he placed his fellow-citizens before the ties of nature, he did the deed and won the victory. And even to this day there are two altars in Germany which at that time of year send forth the sound of trumpets. So Dorotheüs in the fourth book of his Italian History.

21 1 Cyanippus, a Thessalian by birth, used continually to go forth to hunt, but his wife, whom he had but lately wed, suspected him of intimacy with another woman, because of his habit of frequently passing the night in the forest, and she followed on the track of Cyanippus. Hiding herself in a thicket, she awaited events. But some branches were shaken by her movements, and the dogs, thinking that she was a wild animal, rushed upon her and tore to pieces the loving wife like a brute beast. Cyanippus was a witness of this unexpected event and slew himself. So the poet Parthenius.

In Sybaris, a city of Italy, a young man Aemilius, greatly admired for his beauty, was very fond of hunting. But his wife, whom he had but lately wed, thought that he was consorting with another woman and entered the dell. The trees were shaken by her movements and the dogs rushed upon her and tore her to pieces; and her husband slew himself. So Cleitonymus in the second book of his History of Sybaris.

22 1 Through the wrath of Aphroditê, Smyrna, the daughter of Cinyras, fell in love with her father, and revealed to her nurse 311 the all-compelling force of her love. The nurse led on her master by a trick; for she declared that a neighbouring maiden was in love with him and was too modest to approach him openly; and Cinyras consorted with her. But on one occasion, wishing to learn the identity of his mistress, he called for a light; but when he saw her, sword in hand he pursued this most wanton woman. But by the foresight of Aphroditê she was changed into the tree that bears her name. So Theodorus in his Metamorphoses.

Through the wrath of Venus, Valeria Tusculanaria fell in love with her father Valerius, and imparted her secret to her nurse. The nurse deceived her master by a trick, saying that there was someone who was too modest to consort with him openly, but that she was a maiden of the neighbourhood. The father, sodden with wine, kept calling for a light; but the nurse was quick enough to wake the daughter, who went to the country, since she was with child. Once on a time she threw herself down from a cliff, but the child still lived. Returning home, she found her pregnancy inescapable, and in due time gave birth to Aegipan, called in the Roman tongue Silvanus. But Valerius, in a fit of despair, hurled himself down the same cliff. So Aristeides the Milesian in the third book of his Italian History.

23 1 After the sack of Troy Diomedes was cast upon on the Libyan coast where Lycus was king, whose custom it was to sacrifice strangers to his father Ares. But Callirhoê, the king’s daughter, fell in love with Diomedes and betrayed her father: loosing Diomedes from his bonds, she saved him. But he, without regard for his benefactor, sailed away, and she ended her life with a halter. So Juba in the third book of his Libyan History.

Calpurnius Crassus, one of the noblemen who had campaigned with Regulus, was dispatched against the Massylians to sack a certain stronghold by name Garaetium, a place difficult to capture. He was taken captive and was destined to be sacrificed to Saturn; but Bisaltia, daughter of the king, fell in love with him, betrayed her father, and gave her lover the victory. But when he returned home, the maiden slew herself. So Hesianax in the third book of his Libyan History.

24 1 Priam sent away Polydorus with gold to Thrace to his son-in law Polymestor, because the city was on the point of being sacked. But, after its capture, Polymestor killed the child that he might gain the gold. Hecuba, however, came to the country and, tricking him with the promise of gold, put out his eyes with her own hands, assisted by the captive women. So Euripides the tragedian.

When Hannibal was ravaging Campania, Lucius Tiberis placed his son Rustius together with his possessions in the hands of Valerius Gestius, who was his son-in law; but Hannibal was victorious. When the Campanian heard this, through his love of money he violated the rights of nature and slew the child. But when Tiberis was journeying through the country-side and came upon the body of his son, he sent to his son-in law, pretending that he would show him treasures; but when he came, Tiberis put out his eyes and nailed him to a cross. So Aristeides in the third book of his Italian History.

25 1 Telamon led out to hunt Phocus, the beloved son of Aeacus by his wife Psamathê. When a boar appeared, Telamon threw his spear at his hated brother and killed him. But his father drove him into exile. So Dorotheüs in the first book of his Metamorphoses.

Gaius Maximus had two sons, Similius and Rhesus, of whom this Rhesus, whom he begat from Ameria out of wedlock, killed his brother during a hunt; and when he returned home, he declared that the mischance was accidental, not deliberate. But his father recognized the truth and banished him. So Aristocles in the third book of his Italian History.

312 26 1 Ares consorted with Althaea and begat Meleager. . . . So Euripides in his Meleager.

Septimius Marcellus, who was wedded to Silvia, was much given to hunting. Mars, in the guise of a shepherd, violated the young bride, and got her with child. He acknowledged his identity and gave her a spear-shaft, declaring that with it the life of her child that was to be born was inseparably united. She duly bore for Septimius a son Tuscinus. Now the only divinity that Mamercus neglected when he was sacrificing to the gods for a bountiful harvest was Ceres, and she sent a wild boar. But Tuscinus assembled many huntsmen, slew it band presented the head and the hide to his affianced bride; but Scymbrates and Muthias, his mother’s brothers, took them away from the maiden. Tuscinus was enraged and slew his kinsmen, but his mother burned the spear-shaft. So Menyllus in the third book of his Italian History.

27 1 Telamon, the son of Aeacus and Endeïs, came to Euboea, violated the daughter of Alcothoüs, Eriboea and escaped by night. But when her father discovered the matter and suspected someone of the citizens, he gave the girl to one of his guardsmen to be cast into the sea. But the guardsman took pity on her, and sold her into slavery. When the ship on which she was put in at Salamis, Telamon bought her, and she bore Ajax. So Aretades the Cnidian in the second book of his History of the Islands.

Lucius Troscius had by Patris a daughter Florentia. Calpurnius, a Roman, violated her, and Lucius delivered over the maiden to be thrown into the sea. But she was pitied by the guardsman and sold into slavery; and by chance her ship put in at Italy, Calpurnius bought her, and had from her Contruscus.

28 1 Aeolus, king of the Etruscans, begat from Amphithea six daughters and the like number of sons. Macareus, the youngest, for love violated one of his sisters and she became pregnant. Her plight was discovered and her father sent her a sword; she judged herself a law-breaker and made away with herself. Macareus also did likewise. So Sostratus in the second book of his Etruscan History.

Papirius Tolucer married Julia Pulchra and begat six daughters and the like number of sons. The eldest, Papirius Romanus, fell in love with his sister Canulia and got her with child. Their father learned of it and sent his daughter a sword. She killed herself; Romanus also did the same. So Chrysippus in the first book of his Italian History.

29 1 Aristonymus of Ephesus, the son of Demostratus, hated women and used to consort with an ass; and in due time the ass gave birth to a very beautiful maiden, Onoscelis by name. So Aristocles in the second book of his Strange Events.

Fulvius Stellus hated women and used to consort with a mare and in due time the mare gave birth to a beautiful girl and they named her Epona. She is the goddess that is concerned with the protection of horses. So Agesilaüs in the third book of his Italian History.

30 1 The people of Sardis, when they were engaged in war against the people of Smyrna, encamped round about the walls, and sent word through ambassadors that they would never retire unless the people of Smyrna would agree to let their wives consort with them. The Smyrnaeans, because of the compelling necessity, were in a fair way to suffer grievously; but there was a certain maid-servant to one of the better class who ran up to her master Philarchus and said, “You must dress up the maid-servants and send them in place of free-born women.” And this, in fact, they did. The men of Sardis were quite exhausted by the serving-maids, and so were taken captive; whence even now the people of Smyrna have a festival called Eleutheria 313 in which the maid-servants wear the adornments of free women. So Dositheüs in the third book of his Lydian History.

When Atepomarus, king of the Gauls, was at war with the Romans, he said he would never retire unless the Romans should surrender their wives for intercourse. But the Romans, on the advice of their maid-servants, sent slave-women; and the barbarians, exhausted by unremitting intercourse, fell asleep. But Rhetana (for she had been the author of this advice), by taking hold of a wild fig-tree, climbed upon the wall and informed the consuls; and the Romans attacked and conquered. From this the Servants’ Festival takes its name. So Aristeides the Milesian bin the first book of his Italian History.

31 1 When the Athenians were engaged in a war against Eumolpus, and their supply of food was insufficient, Pyrander, the treasurer of the public funds, secretly reduced the unit of measure and distributed food very sparingly. But his countrymen suspected that he was a traitor and stoned him to death. So Callisthenes in the third book of his Thracian History.

When the Romans were waging war against the Gauls, and their supply of food was insufficient, Cinna secretly reduced the distribution of grain to the people. But the Romans stoned him to death on the suspicion that he had designs on the kingship. So Aristeides in the third book of his Italian History.

32 1 During the Peloponnesian War Peisistratus of Orchomenus hated the aristocracy and strongly favoured the poorer citizens. The members of the Council plotted to kill him; they cut him up into bits, thrust these into the folds of their garments, and scraped the earth clean. But the crowd of commoners caught a suspicion of this deed and hurried to the Council. Tlesimachus, however, the younger son of the king, was privy to the plot and drew the crowd away from the assembly by declaring that he had seen his father, endowed with more than mortal stature, being swiftly borne toward mount Pisa and thus the crowd was deceived. So Theophilus in the second book of his Peloponnesian History.

Because of the wars with neighbouring States the Roman Senate had done away with the distribution of grain to the people; but Romulus the king could not brook this, restored the dole to the people, and punished many of the more prominent men. They slew him in the Senate, cut him into bits, and thrust these into the folds of their garments; but the Roman people ran with fire to the Senate-house. Julius Proculus, however, one of the prominent men, declared that on a mountain he had seen Romulus with greater stature than any mortal’s and that he had become a god. The Romans believed him and withdrew. So Aristobulus in the third book of his Italian History.

33 1 Pelops, the son of Tantalus and Euryanassa, married Hippodameia and begat Atreus and Thyestes; but by the nymph Danaïs he had Chrysippus, ewhom he loved more than his legitimate sons. But Laïus the Theban conceived a desire for him and carried him off; and, although he was arrested by Thyestes and Atreus, he obtained mercy from Pelops because of his love. But Hippodameia tried to persuade Atreus and Thyestes to do away with Chrysippus, since she knew that he would be a contestant for the kingship; but when they refused, she stained her hands with the pollution. For at dead of night, when Laïus was asleep, she drew his sword, wounded Chrysippus, and fixed the sword in his body. Laïus was suspected because of the sword, but was saved by Chrysippus, who, though half-dead, acknowledged the truth. Pelops buried Chrysippus and banished Hippodameia. So Dositheüs in his Descendants of Pelops.

Ebius Tolieix married Nuceria and had from her two sons; and he had also, from a freedwoman, Firmus, conspicuous for his beauty, whom he loved more than his legitimate sons. Nuceria was disposed to hate her stepson and tried to persuade her sons to kill him; but when they righteously refused, she herself effected the murder. 314 By night she drew the sword of Firmus’s body-guard and mortally wounded the boy as he slept, leaving the sword behind in his body. The guard was suspected, but the boy told the truth. Ebius buried his son and banished his wife. So Dositheüs in the third book of his Italian History.

34 1 Theseus, who was actually the son of Poseidon, begat a son Hippolytus from Hippolytê the Amazon and took a second wife, Phaedra, the daughter of Minos, who thus became a stepmother. Phaedra fell in love with her stepson, and sent her nurse to him; but he left Athens and, coming to Troezen, devoted himself to hunting. But when the wanton woman failed to obtain her cherished desire, she indited a false letter against the chaste youth and ended her life with a halter. Theseus believed the letter and asked from Poseidon the destruction of Hippolytus as fulfilment of one of the three wishes which he had as a concession from Poseidon. The god sent a bull to confront Hippolytus as he was driving along the shore in his chariot and terrified the horses, which crushed Hippolytus.

Comminius Super of Laurentum begat a son Comminius from the nymph Egeria and took a second wife Gidica, who thus became a stepmother. She fell in love with her stepson and, failing to obtain her desire, put an end to her life with a halter, leaving behind her a lying letter. Comminius read the accusations, believed the invidious charge, and called upon Neptune, who placed a bull in the youth’s path as he was riding in a chariot; and the young man’s horses ran away with him and killed him. So Dositheüs in the third book of his Italian History.

35 1 When a plague had overspread Sparta, the god gave an oracle that it would cease if they sacrificed a noble maiden each year. Once when Helen had been chosen by lot and had been led forward adorned for the sacrifice, an eagle swooped down, snatched up the sword, carried it to the herds of cattle, and let it fall on a heifer; wherefore the Spartans refrained from the slaying of maidens. So Aristodemus in his Third Collection of Fables.

When a plague had gained a wide hold on the city of Falerii, and many perished of it, an oracle was given that the terror would abate if they sacrificed a maiden to Juno each year. This superstitious practice persisted and once, as a maiden chosen by lot, Valeria Luperca, had drawn the sword, an eagle swooped down, snatched it up, and placed a wand tipped with a small hammer upon the sacrificial offerings; but the sword the eagle cast down upon a certain heifer which was grazing near the shrine. The maiden understood the import: she sacrificed the heifer, took up the hammer, and went about from house to house, tapping the sick lightly with her hammer and rousing them, bidding each of them to be well again; whence even to this day this mystic rite is performed. So Aristeides in the nineteenth book of his Italian History.

36 1 Phylonomê, the daughter of Nyctimus and Arcadia, was wont to hunt with Artemis; but Ares, in the guise of a shepherd, got her with child. She gave birth to twin children and, fearing her father, cast them into the Erymanthus; but by some divine providence they were borne round and round without peril, and found haven in the trunk of a hollow oak-tree. A wolf, whose den was in the tree, cast her own cubs into the stream and suckled the children. A shepherd, Gyliphus, was witness of this event and, taking up the children, reared them as his own, and named them Lycastus and Parrhasius, the same that later succeeded to the throne of Arcadia. So Zopyrus of Byzantium in the third book of his Histories.

Amulius, being despotically disposed toward his brother Numitor, killed his brother’s son Aenitus in hunting, and his daughter Silvia, or Ilia, he made a priestess of Juno. But Mars got Silvia with child. She gave birth to twins and acknowledged the truth to the despot; he became frightened and threw both the children into the water by the banks of the Tiber. 315 But they found a haven at a place where was the den of a wolf which had recently whelped. She abandoned her cubs and suckled the children. A shepherd Faustus was witness of this event and reared the children; he named them Remus and Romulus, who became the founders of Rome. So Aristeides the Milesian in his Italian History.

37 1 After the capture of Troy Agamemnon together with Cassandra was slain. But Orestes was reared in the house of Strophius, and took vengeance on the murderers of his father. So Pyrander in the fourth book of his Peloponnesian History.

Fabius Fabricianus, a kinsman of Fabius Maximus, sacked Tuxium, the chief city of the Samnites, band sent to Rome the statue of Venus Victrix, which was held in honour among the Samnites. His wife Fabia, debauched by a certain handsome youth whose name was Petronius Valentinus, slew her husband by treachery. But a daughter Fabia rescued from danger her brother Fabricianus, who was still a young child, and sent him away secretly to be reared elsewhere. When he reached manhood he slew his mother and her lover, and was absolved from guilt by the senate. This Dositheüs relates in the third book of his Italian History.

38 1 Busiris, the son of Poseidon and Anippê, daughter of the Nile, with treacherous hospitality was wont to sacrifice such persons as passed his way. But there came upon him vengeance for those that had perished by his hand. For Heracles attacked him with his club and slew him. So Agathon of Samos.

When Hercules was driving through Italy the cattle of Geryon, he was entertained by king Faunus, the son of Mercury, who was wont to sacrifice his guests to the god that was his father. But when he attacked Hercules, he was slain. So Dercyllus in the third book of his Italian History.

39 1 Phalaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum, used to inflict most cruel torture upon the strangers that passed his way. Perillus, a bronze-founder by trade, made a bronze heifer and gave it to the king that he might burn the strangers in it alive. But Phalaris on this one occasion proved himself a just man and threw into it the artisan; the heifer seemed to give forth a sound of bellowing. So in the second book of Causes.

In Segesta, a city of Sicily, there lived a certain cruel despot, Aemilius Censorinus, who used to reward with gifts those who invented more novel forms of torture; and a certain Arruntius Paterculus constructed a horse of bronze and gave it as a gift to the aforesaid that he might cast the citizens therein. But on this occasion, for the first time, the despot behaved in a just manner and thrust first the giver of the gift into the horse, so that he himself should be the first to experience the torment which he had devised for others. Then he seized the man and hurled him from the Tarpeian Rock. It is believed that those who rule with great cruelty are called Aemilii from this Aemilius. So Aristeides in the fourth book of his Italian History.

40 1 Evenus, the son of Ares and Steropê, married Alcippê, the daughter of Oenomaüs, and begat a daughter Marpessa, whom he endeavoured to keep a virgin. Idas, the son of Aphareus, seized her from a band of dancers and fled. Her father gave chase; but, since he could not capture them, he hurled himself into the Lycormas river and became immortal. So Dositheüs in the first book of his Aetolian History.

Annius, king of the Etruscans, had a beautiful daughter named Salia, whom he endeavoured to keep a virgin. But Cathetus, one of the nobles, saw the maiden at play and fell in love with her; nor could he control his passion, but seized her and set out with her for Rome. Her father gave chase, but since he could not capture them, he leaped into the river Pareüsium, and from him its name was changed to Anio. And Cathetus consorted with Salia and begat Latinus and Salius, from whom the most noble patricians traced their descent. So Aristeides the Milesian, and also Alexander Polyhistor in the third book of his Italian History.

41 1 Hegesistratus, an Ephesian, having murdered one of his kinsmen, fled to Delphi, and inquired of the god where he should make his home. And Apollo answered: “Where you shall see rustics dancing, garlanded with olive-branches.” 316 When he had come to a certain place in Asia and had observed farmers garlanded with olive-leaves and dancing, there he founded a city and called it Elaeüs. So Pythocles the Samian in the third book of his Treatise on Husbandry.

When Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and Circê, was sent to search for his father, he was instructed to found a city where he should see farmers garlanded and dancing. When he had come to a certain place in Italy, and had observed rustics garlanded with twigs of oak (prininoi) and diverting themselves with dancing, he founded a city, and from the coincidence named it Prinistum, which the Romans, by a slight change, call Praenestê. So Aristocles relates in the third book of his Italian History.

On the fortune of the Romans

316 c 1 Virtue and Fortune, who have often engaged in many great contests, are now engaging each other in the present contest, which is the greatest of all; for in this they are striving for a decision regarding the hegemony of Rome, to determine whose work it is and which of them created such a mighty power. For to her who is victorious this will be no slight testimonial, but rather a defence against accusation. For Virtue is accused of being a fair thing, but unprofitable; Fortune of being a thing inconstant, but good. Virtue’s labours, they say, are fruitless, Fortune’s gifts untrustworthy. Who, then, will not declare, when Rome shall have been added to the achievements of one of the contestants, either that Virtue is a most profitable thing dif she has done such good to good men, or that Good Fortune is a thing most steadfast if she has already preserved for so long a time that which she has bestowed?

The poet Ion in his prose works observes that Fortune is a thing very dissimilar to Wisdom, and yet she becomes the creator of things very similar: they both bring increase and added honours to men, they lead them on to high repute, to power, to dominion. What need to be tedious by enumerating the many examples? Even Nature herself, who creates and produces all things for us, some think to be Fortune, others Wisdom. Wherefore our present discourse does, in a measure, bestow a fair and enviable dignity upon Rome, if we raise the question over her, even as we do over earth and sea, heaven and stars, whether she has come to her present state by Fortune or by Forethought.

2 1 I believe myself to be right in suspecting that, even if Fortune and Virtue are engaged in a direct and continual strife and discord with each other, yet, at least for such a welding together of dominion and power, it is likely that they suspended hostilities and joined forces; and by joining forces they co-operated in completing this most beautiful of human works. Even as Plato asserts that the entire universe arose from fire and earth as the first and necessary elements, that it might become visible and tangible, earth contributing to it weight and stability, and fire contributing colour, form, and movement; but the medial elements, water and air, by softening and quenching the dissimilarity of both extremes, united them and brought about the composite nature of Matter through them; in this way, then, in my opinion, did Time lay the foundation for the Roman State and, with the help of God, so combine and join together Fortune and Virtue 317 that, by taking the peculiar qualities of each, he might construct for all mankind a Hearth, in truth both holy and beneficent, a steadfast cable, a principle abiding for ever, “an anchorage from the swell and drift,” as Democritus says, amid the shifting conditions of human affairs. For even as the physicists assert that the world was in ancient days not a world nor were the atoms willing to coalesce and mix together and bestow a universal form upon Nature, but, since the atoms, which were yet small and were being borne hither and thither, kept eluding and escaping incorporation and entanglement, and the larger, close-compacted atoms were already engaging in terrific struggles and confusion among themselves, there was pitching and tossing, and all things were full of destruction and drift and wreckage until such time as the earth, by acquiring magnitude from the union of the wandering atoms, somehow came to be permanently abiding herself, and provided a permanent abode in herself and round about herself for the other elements; even so, while the mightiest powers and dominions among men were being driven about as Fortune willed, and were continuing to collide one with another because no one held the supreme power, but all wished to hold it, the continuous movement, drift, and change of all peoples remained without remedy, until such time as Rome acquired strength and growth, and had attached to herself not only the nations and peoples within her own borders, but also royal dominions of foreign peoples beyond the seas, and thus the affairs of this vast empire gained stability and security, since the supreme government, which never knew reverse, was brought within an orderly and single cycle of peace; for though Virtue in every form was inborn who contrived these things, yet great Good Fortune was also joined therewith, as it will be possible to demonstrate as the discourse proceeds.

3 1 And now, methinks, from my lofty look-out, as it were, from whence I survey the matter in hand, I can descry Fortune and Virtue advancing to be judged and tried one against the other. The gait of Virtue is unhurried, her gaze unwavering; yet the flush of ambition lends to her countenance some intimation regarding the contest. She follows far behind Fortune, who makes great haste, and in a throng conducting her and guarding her person are

Heroes slain in the conflict, wearing their blood-stained armour,

men befouled with wounds in front, dripping blood with sweat commingled, trampling upon battered spoils. Is it your desire that we inquire what men are these? They declare themselves to be the Fabricii, the Camilli, the Decii, the Cincinnati, the Fabii Maximi, the Claudii Marcelli, and the Scipios. I see also Gaius Marius showing anger at Fortune, and yonder Mucius Scaevola is exhibiting his burning hand and crying, “Do you graciously attribute this also to Fortune?” And Marcus Horatius, the hero of the battle by the Tiber, weighed down by Etruscan shafts and showing his limping limb, cries aloud from the deep whirl of the waters, “Then am I also maimed by Fortune’s will?” Of such character is Virtue’s choir that advances to the lists,

Sturdy contender in arms, baleful to all that oppose.

4 1 But swift is the pace of Fortune, bold is her spirit, and most vaunting her hopes; she outstrips Virtue and is close at hand. She does not raise herself in the air on light pinions, nor advance “poised on tip-toe above a globe,” in precarious and hesitant posture, and then depart from sight. But even as the Spartans say that Aphroditê, as she crossed the Eurotas, put aside her mirrors and ornaments and her magic girdle, and took a spear and shield, adorning herself to please Lycurgus, even so Fortune, when she had deserted the Persians and Assyrians, had flitted lightly over Macedonia, and had quickly shaken off Alexander, made her way through Egypt and Syria, conveying kingships here and there; and turning about, she would often exalt the Carthaginians. 318 But when she was approaching the Palatine and crossing the Tiber, it appears that she took off her wings, stepped out of her sandals, and abandoned her untrustworthy and unstable globe. Thus did she enter Rome, as with intent to abide, and in such guise is she present to day, as though ready to meet her trial.

For stubborn she is not,

as Pindar says,

Nor is the rudder double that she plies;

but rather is she

The sister of Good Order and persuasion, and

The daughter of Foresight,

as Alcman describes her lineage. And she holds that celebrated Horn of Plenty in her hand, filled not with fruits of everlasting bloom, but as many as are the products of the whole earth band of all the seas, rivers, mines and harbours, these does she pour forth in unstinted abundance. Not a few splendid and distinguished men are seen in her company: Numa Pompilius from the Sabine country and Priscus from Tarquinii, whom as adventitious and foreign kings she set upon the throne of Romulus; and Aemilius Paulus, leading back his army without a wound from Perseus and the Macedonians, triumphing for a tearless victory, magnifies Fortune. There magnifies her also the aged Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, borne to his grave by four sons of consular rank, Quintus Baliaricus, Lucius Diadematus, Marcus Metellus, Gaius Caprarius, and by two sons-in law of consular rank, and by grandsons made distinguished by illustrious deeds and offices. Aemilius Scaurus, a novus homo, was raised by her from a humble station and a humbler family to be enrolled as the first man of the Senate. Cornelius Sulla she took up and elevated from the embraces of his mistress, Nicopolis, and designated him for a monarchy and dictatorship which ranked far above the Cimbrian triumphs and the seven consulships of Marius. Sulla used openly to declare himself, together with his exploits, to be the adopted child of Fortune, loudly asserting in the words of Sophocles’ Oedipus,

And Fortune’s son I hold myself to be.

In the Latin tongue he was called Felix, but for the Greeks he wrote his name thus: Lucius Cornelius Sulla Epaphroditus. And the trophies at my home in Chaeroneia and those of the Mithridatic Wars are thus inscribed, quite appropriately; for not “Night,” as Menander has it, but Fortune has the “greater share in Aphroditê.”

5 1 Might one, then, after proffering this as a suitable introduction, bring on the Romans once more as witnesses in behalf of Fortune, on the ground that they assigned more to Fortune than to Virtue? At least, it was only recently and after many years that Scipio Numantinus built a shrine of Virtue in Rome; later Marcellus built what is called the Temple of Virtue and Honour; and Aemilius Scaurus, who lived in the time of the Cimbrian Wars, built the shrine of Mens (Mind) so called, which might be considered a Temple of Reason. For at this time rhetoric, sophistry, and argumentation had already found their way into the City; and people were beginning to magnify such pursuits. But even to this day they have no shrine of Wisdom or Prudence or Magnanimity or Constancy or Moderation. But of Fortune there are splendid and ancient shrines, all but coeval with the first foundations of the City. For the first to build a temple of Fortune was Ancus Marcius, the grandson of Numa and king fourth in line from Romulus. He, perchance, it was who added the title of Fortis to Fortuna; for in Fortune Manly Fortitude shares most largely in the winning of victory. They erected a temple of Fortuna Muliebris before the time of Camillus, when, through the offices of their women, they had turned back Marcius Coriolanus, who was leading the Volsci against the City. For a delegation of women, together with his mother and his wife, went to the hero and besought him and gained their request that he spare the City and lead away the foreign army. 319 It is said that at this time, when the statue of Fortune was consecrated, it spoke and said, “Women of the City, you have dedicated me by the holy law of Rome.”

And it is a fact that Furius Camillus likewise, when he had quenched the Gallic conflagration and had removed Rome from the balance and scales when her price was being weighed in gold, founded no shrine of Good Counsel or of Valour, but a shrine of Report and Rumour by New Street, where, as they assert, before the war there came to Marcus Caedicius, as he was walking by night, a voice which told him to expect in a short time a Gallic war.

The Fortune whose temple is by the river they call Fortis, that is, strong or valiant or manly, as having the power to conquer everything. And her temple they have built in the Gardens bequeathed by Caesar to the People, since they believed that he also reached his most exalted position through good fortune, as he himself has testified.

6 1 Yet I should hesitate to say of Gaius Caesar that he was raised to his most exalted position by good fortune, if he had not himself testified to this. For when on the fourth day of January he put out from Brundisium in pursuit of Pompey, though it was the time of the winter solstice, yet he crossed the sea in safety; for Fortune postponed the season. But when he found that Pompey had a compact and numerous army on land and a large fleet on the sea, and was well entrenched with all his forces, while he himself had a force many times smaller, and since his army with Antony and Sabinus was slow in coming, he had the courage to go on board a small boat and put out to sea in the guise of a servant, unrecognized by the captain and the pilot. But there was a violent commotion where heavy surge from without encountered the current of the river, and Caesar, seeing the pilot changing his course, removed the cloak from his head and, revealing himself, said, “Go on, good sir, be brave and fear nothing! But entrust your sails to Fortune and receive her breeze, confident because you bear Caesar and Caesar’s Fortune.” Thus firmly was he convinced that Fortune accompanied him on his voyages, his travels, his campaigns, his commands; Fortune’s task it was to enjoin calm upon the sea, summer weather upon the winter-time, speed upon the slowest of men, courage upon the most dispirited, and (more unbelievable than these) to enjoin flight upon Pompey, and upon Ptolemy the murder of his guest, that Pompey should fall and Caesar should escape the stain of his blood.

7 1 What then? Caesar’s son, who was the first to be styled Augustus, and who ruled for fifty-four years, when he was sending forth his grandson to war, did he not pray to the goddess to bestow upon the young man the courage of Scipio, the popularity of Pompey, and his own Fortune, thus recording Fortune as the creator of himself, quite as though he were inscribing the artist’s name on a great monument? For it was Fortune that imposed him upon Cicero, Lepidus, Pansa, Hirtius, and Mark Antony, and by their displays of valour, their deeds, victories, fleets, wars, armies, raised him on high to be the first of Roman citizens; and she cast down these men, through whom he had mounted, and left him to rule alone. It was, in fact, for him that Cicero governed the State, that Lepidus commanded armies, that Pansa conquered, that Hirtius fell, that Antony played the wanton. For I reckon even Cleopatra as a part of Caesar’s Fortune, on whom, as on a reef, even so great a commander as Antony was wrecked and crushed that Caesar might rule alone. The tale is told of Caesar and Antony that, when there was much familiarity and intimacy between them, they often devoted their leisure to a game of ball or dice or even to fights of pet birds, such as quails or cocks; and Antony always retired from the field defeated. It is further related that one of his friends, who prided himself on his knowledge of divination, was often wont to speak freely to him and admonish him, 320 “Sir, what business have you with this youth? Avoid him! Your repute is greater, you are older, you govern more men, you have fought in wars, you excel in experience; but your Guardian Spirit fears this man’s Spirit. Your Fortune is mighty by herself, but abases herself before his. Unless you keep far away from him, your Fortune will depart and go over to him!

8 1 But enough! For such important testimonies from her witnesses has Fortune to support her. But we must also introduce the testimony of the very events of history, taking as the beginning of our account the beginning of Rome. To begin with, who would not at once declare touching the birth, the preservation, the nurture, the development of Romulus, that Fortune laid the foundations, and that Virtue finished the building? In the first place, then, it appears that the circumstances surrounding the origin and the birth of the very founders and builders of Rome were of a marvellous good fortune. For their mother is said to have consorted with a god; and even as they relate that Heracles was conceived during a long night (for the day was retarded in contrariety to nature, and the sun delayed), so regarding the generation and conception of Romulus they record that the sun was eclipsed and came into exact conjunction with the moon at the time when Mars, a god, consorted with the mortal Silvia. And this same thing, they say, happened to Romulus also at the very time of his translation from this life; for they relate that he disappeared during an eclipse of the sun on the Capratine Nones, on which day, even to the present time, they hold high festival.

Later, when the children were born and the despot gave orders to do away with them, by the decree of Fortune no barbarous or savage servant but a compassionate and humane man received them, with the result that he did not kill them; but there was a margin of the river, bordering upon a green meadow, shaded round about with lowly shrubs; and here the servant deposited the infants near a certain wild fig-tree, to which people later gave the name Ruminalis. Then a she-wolf, that had newly whelped, with her dugs distended and overflowing with milk because her young had perished, being herself in great need of relief, circled around the infants and then gave them suck, thus ridding herself of the pain caused by the milk as if it had been a second birth-pang. And a bird sacred to Mars, which they call the woodpecker, visited them and, perching near on tiptoe, would, with its claw, open the mouth of each child in turn and place therein a morsel, sharing with them a portion of its own food. Wherefore they named this wild fig-tree Ruminalis, from the teat (ruma) which the wolf offered to the children as she crouched beside the tree. And for a long time the people who dwelt near this place preserved the custom of never exposing any of the new-born infants, but they acknowledged and reared them all, in honour of Romulus’s experience and the similarity of the children’s case with his.

And, in truth, the fact that they were not discovered while they were being reared and educated in Gabii, and that it was unknown that they were the sons of Silvia and the grandchildren of king Numitor surely appears to have been a furtive and shrewd device of Fortune, so that they might not, because of their lineage, be put to death before performing their tasks, but that they might in their very successes be discovered, by bringing to notice their noble qualities as tokens by which to recognize their high birth.

At this point there occurs to me the remark of a great and prudent general, Themistocles, which was made to certain of the generals who came into favour at Athens after him and felt that they deserved to be rated above him. He said that the Day-After contended with the Feast-Day, saying that the Feast-Day was full of wearying tasks and labours, but on the Day-After men enjoyed in quiet all things that had been made ready. Then the Feast-Day said, “What you say is true; but if I had not been, where would you be?” “And so,” said Themistocles, “if I had not been at the time of the Persian Wars, what benefit would now come from you?” And this, methinks, is what Fortune says to the Virtue of Romulus: “Brilliant and mighty are your deeds, and in very truth you have proved yourself to be divine in blood and birth. 321 But do you observe how far you fall behind me? For if, at the time of his birth, I had not accompanied him in a helpful and humane guise, but had deserted and abandoned the infants, how could you have come into being and whence had you derived such lustre? If on that occasion there had not come to them a female beast swollen with the abundance and the burden of her milk, and in need of some creature to be fed rather than of something to yield her sustenance, but if instead there had come some utterly savage and ravening creature, would not even now these fair palaces and temples, theatres, promenades, fora, and public buildings be herdsmen’s huts and folds of shepherds who paid homage to some man of Alba or Etruria or Latium as their lord?” The beginning, as every one knows, is of supreme importance in everything, and particularly in the founding and building of a city; and this Fortune provided, since she had preserved and protected the founder. For Virtue made Romulus great, but Fortune watched over him until he became great.

9 1 And in truth, it is generally agreed that a marvellous good Fortune guided the reign of Numa which endured for so many years. For the tale that a certain Egeria, a dryad and a wise divinity, consorted in love with the man, and helped him in instituting and shaping the government of his State, is perhaps somewhat fabulous. For other mortals who are said to have attained divine marriages and to have been beloved of goddesses, men like Peleus and Anchises, Orion and Emathion, by no means lived through their lives in a satisfactory, or even painless, manner. On the contrary, it appears likely that Numa had Good Fortune as his true wife, counsellor, and colleague; and she took the city in charge when it was being carried hither and yon amid the enmity and fierceness of bordering tribes and neighbours, as in the midst of turbulent billows of a troubled sea and was inflamed by countless struggles and dissensions; and she calmed those opposing passions and jealousies as though they had been but gusts of wind. Even as they relate that the sea, when it has received the brood of halcyons in the stormy season, keeps them safe and assists in their nurture, even such a calm in the affairs of Rome, free from war or pestilence or danger or terror, Fortune caused to overspread and surround the city, and thus afforded the opportunity to a newly settled and sorely shaken people to take root and to establish their city on a firm foundation where it might grow in quiet, securely and unhindered. It is as with a merchantman or a trireme, which is constructed by blows and with great violence, and is buffeted by hammers and nails, bolts and saws and axes, and, when it is completed, it must remain at rest and grow firm for a suitable period of time until its bonds hold tight and its fastenings have acquired affinity; but if it be launched while its joinings are still damp and slippery, these will all be loosened when they are racked by the waves, and will admit the sea. Even so the first ruler and artificer of Rome, in organizing the city from rustics and shepherds, as though building up from a stout keel, took upon himself no few labours, nor of slight moment were the wars and dangers that he withstood in warding off, of necessity, those who opposed the creation and foundation of Rome.

But he who was the second to take over the State gained time by good fortune to consolidate and make assured the enlargement of Rome; for much peace did he secure for her and much quiet. But if at that time a Porsenna had pressed hard upon the city and had erected an Etruscan stockade and a camp beside the new walls which were still moist and unstable, or if from the Marsi had come some rebellious chief filled with warlike frenzy, or some Lucanian, incited by envy and love of strife, a man contentious and warlike, as later was Mutilus or the bold Silo or Sulla’s last antagonist, Telesinus, arming all Italy at any time one preconcerted signal, as it were — if one of these had sounded his trumpets round about Numa, the lover of wisdom, while he was sacrificing and praying, the early beginnings of the City would not have been able to hold out against such a mighty surge and billow, 322 nor would they ever have increased to such a goodly and numerous people. But as it is, it seems likely that the peace of Numa’s reign was a provision to equip them for their subsequent wars, and that the people, like an athlete, having, during a period of forty-three years following the contests of Romulus’s time, trained themselves in quiet and made their strength staunch enough to cope in battle with those who later arrayed themselves against them. For they relate that no famine nor pestilence nor failure of crops nor any unseasonable occurrence in either summer or winter vexed Rome during that time, as if it were not a wise human counsel, but divine Fortune that was Rome’s guardian during those crucial days. Therefore at that time the double door of Janus’s temple was shut, which the Romans call the Portal of War; for it is open when there is war, but closed when peace has been made. But after Numa died it was opened, since the war with the Albans had broken out. Then countless of the wars followed in continuous succession until again, after four hundred and eighty years, it was closed in the peace following the Punic War, when Gaius Atilius and Titus Manlius were consuls. After this year it was again opened and the wars continued until Caesar’s victory at Actium. Then the arms of Rome were idle for a time, but not for long; for the tumults caused by the Cantabri and Gaul, breaking forth at the same time with the Germans, disturbed the peace. These facts are added to the record as proofs of Numa’s good fortune.

10 1 And even the kings who succeeded Numa honoured Fortune as the head and foster-parent of Rome and, as Pindar has it, truly the “Prop of the State.” And Servius Tullius, the man who of all kings most increased the power of his people, and introduced a well-regulated government and imposed order upon both the holding of elections and military procedure, and became the first censor and overseer of the lives and decorum of the citizens, and held the highest repute for courage and wisdom, of his own initiative attached himself to Fortune and bound his sovereignty fast to her, with the result that it was even thought that Fortune consorted with him, descending into his chamber through a certain window which they now call the Porta Fenestella. He, accordingly, built on the Capitoline a temple of Fortune which is now called the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia (which one might translate as “First-Born”) and the Temple of Fortuna Obsequens, which some think means “obedient” and others “gracious.” However, I prefer to abandon the Latin nomenclature, and shall endeavour to enumerate in Greek the different functions of the shrines of Fortune. There is, in fact, a shrine of Private Fortune on the Palatine, and the shrine of the Fowler’s Fortune which, even though it be a ridiculous name, yet gives reason for reflexion on metaphorical grounds, as if she attracted far-away objects and held them fast when they come into contact with her. Beside the mossy Spring, as it is called, 323 there is even yet a temple of Virgin Fortune; and on the Esquiline a shrine of Regardful Fortune. In the Angiportus Longus there is an altar of Fortune of Good Hope; and there is also beside the altar of Venus of the Basket a shrine of the Men’s Fortune. And there are countless other honours and appellations of Fortune, the greater part of which Servius instituted; for he knew that “Fortune is of great moment, or rather, she is everything in human affairs,” and particularly since he himself, through good fortune, had been promoted from the family of a captive enemy to the kingship. For, when the town of Corniculum was taken by the Romans, a captive maiden Ocrisia, whose fortune could not obscure either her beauty or her character, was given to be a slave to Tanaquil, the wife of king Tarquin; and a certain dependent, one of these whom the Romans call clientes, had her to wife; from these parents Servius was born. Others deny this, but assert that Ocrisia was a maiden who took the first-fruits and the libations on all occasions from the royal table and brought them to the hearth; and once on a time when she chanced, as usual, to be casting the offerings upon the fire, suddenly, as the flames died down, the member of a man rose up out of the hearth; and this the girl, greatly frightened, told to Tanaquil only. Now Tanaquil was an intelligent and understanding woman, and she decked the maiden in garments such as become a bride, and shut her up in the room with the apparition, for she judged it to be of a divine nature. Some declare that this love was manifested by the Lar of the house, others that it was by Vulcan. At any rate, it resulted in the birth of Servius, and, while he was still a child, his head shone with a radiance very like the gleam of lightning. But Antias and his school say not so, but relate that when Servius’s wife Gegania lay dying, in the presence of his mother he fell into a sleep from dejection and grief; and as he slept, his face was seen by the women to be surrounded by the gleam of fire. This was a token of his birth from fire and an excellent sign pointing to his unexpected accession to the kingship, which he gained after the death of Tarquin, by the zealous assistance of Tanaquil. Inasmuch as he of all kings is thought to have been naturally the least suited to monarchy and the least desirous of it, he who was minded to resign the kingship, but was prevented from doing so; for it appears that Tanaquil on her death-bed made him swear that he would remain in power and would ever set before him the ancestral Roman form of government. Thus to Fortune wholly belongs the kingship of Servius, which he received contrary to his expectations and retained against his will.

11 That we may not, however, appear to be retreating and withdrawing from illuminating and perspicuous testimonials into the dim past, as into a place of darkness, let us now leave the kings and transfer our discourse to the most notable deeds and the most celebrated wars. And in these wars, who would not acknowledge that much daring and courage was needed and also, as Timotheüs has it,

Shame, the helpmate of warring Valour?

Yet the smooth flow of events and the impelling swiftness of Rome’s progress to so high a pinnacle of power and expansion demonstrates to all who reason aright that the progress of Rome’s sovereignty was not brought about by the handiwork and urging of human beings, but was speeded on its way by divine escort and the fair wind of Fortune. Trophy upon trophy arises, triumph meets triumph, and the first blood, while still warm on their arms, is overtaken and washed away by a second flood. They count their victories, not by the multitude of corpses and spoils, but by captive kingdoms, by nations enslaved, by islands and continents added to their mighty realm. In one battle Philip lost Macedonia, with one stroke Antiochus was forced to withdraw from Asia, by one defeat the Carthaginians lost Africa. 324 One man in the swift onset of one campaign added to the Roman dominion Armenia, Pontus, the Euxine, Syria, Arabia, the Albanians, the Iberians, and all the territory to the Caucasus and the Hyrcanians; thrice did the Ocean which encircles the inhabited world see him victorious, for in Africa he drove back the Numidians to the strands of the southern sea; even as far as the Atlantic Ocean, he subdued Iberia, which had joined in the distemper of Sertorius; the kings of the Albanians were pursued until he brought them to a halt near the Caspian Sea. All these successes he won through enjoying the Fortune of the Roman commonwealth; then he was overthrown by his own fate.

But the great Guardian Spirit of Rome sent a favouring breeze, not for one day, nor at its height for a brief time only, like the Macedonian, nor but a land breeze, like the Spartan, nor but a sea breeze, like the Athenian, nor late to rise, like the Persian, nor quick to cease, like the Carthaginian; but this Spirit, from its first creation, grew in maturity, in might, and in polity together with the City, and remained constant to it on land and on sea, in war and in peace, against foreigners, against Greeks. This it was that dissipated and exhausted in the confines of Italy, like a mountain torrent, Hannibal the Carthaginian, since no fresh aid flowed to him from home because of jealousy and political enmities. This it was that separated and kept apart by great intervals of space and time the armies of the Cimbri and of the Teutons, that Marius might avail to fight each of them in turn, and that three hundred thousand men of irresistible and invincible arms might not simultaneously invade and overwhelm Italy. Through the agency of this Spirit Antiochus was fully occupied while war was being waged against Philip, and Philip had been vanquished and was falling when Antiochus was making his venture; the Sarmatian and Bastarnian wars restrained Mithridates during the time when the Marsian war was blazing up against Rome; suspicion and jealousy kept Tigranes from Mithridates while Mithridates was brilliantly successful, but he joined himself to Mithridates only to perish with him in defeat.

12 1 And why not admit that Fortune also retrieved the city in times of the greatest danger? When the Gauls were encamped round about the Capitol and were besieging the citadel,

Baneful the plague that she brought on the host, and the people were dying.

And as for the Gauls’ nocturnal assault, though they were noticed by none, yet Fortune and Chance brought about the discovery.

Concerning this assault of the Gauls it will perhaps not be unseasonable to give some additional details, however briefly. After the great defeat of the Romans at the river Allia, some in their flight found a haven in Rome and filled the people with consternation and terror, and caused them to scatter far and wide, although a few went to the Capitol and prepared to stand a siege. Others, immediately after their defeat, gathered together at Veii and appointed as dictator Furius Camillus, whom the people in their prosperity and lofty pride had rejected and deposed because he had become involved in a suit concerning the appropriation of public property. But now, cowed and humbled after their defeat, they were for recalling him, and offered to hand over to him the supreme command, accountable to no one. Accordingly, that he might not be thought to be obtaining office because of the crisis, but in accordance with the law, and that he should not, as if he had given up all hope for the city, be elected by soldiery in a canvass of the remnants of the army, now scattered and wandering, it was necessary that the senators on the Capitoline should vote upon the matter after they had been informed of the decision of the soldiers. Now there was a certain Gaius Pontius, a brave man, who, by volunteering personally to report these resolutions to Senate on the Capitol, took upon himself great danger. For the way led through the midst of the enemy, who encompassed the citadel with sentries and palisades. When, accordingly, he had come by night to the river, 325 he bound broad strips of cork beneath his breast and, entrusting his body to the buoyancy of this support, committed himself to the stream. Encountering a gentle current which bore him slowly down stream, he reached the opposite bank in safety, and, climbing out of the river, advanced toward the senate void of lights, inferring from the darkness and quiet that no one was there. Clinging to the precipitous cliff and entrusting himself to the support of sloping and circuitous ways and jagged surfaces of the rock which would allow a foothold or afford a clutch for his hand, he reached the top of the rock; he was received by the sentries, and made known to those within the decision of the army, band having obtained the decree of the Senate, he returned again to Camillus.

The next day one of the barbarians was wandering idly about this place, when he saw in one spot prints of feet and marks of slipping, and in another the bruising and tearing off of the grass, which grew on the earth of the cliff, and marks of the zigzag dragging and pulling up of a body; and this he told to the others. They, thinking that the way was pointed out to them by their enemies, attempted to rival them; and waiting till the very dead of night, they made the ascent, unnoticed not only by the sentinels, but also by the dogs which shared guard duty and formed the outpost, but then were overcome by sleep.

Rome’s Fortune, however, did not lack a voice capable of revealing and declaring such a great mischance. Sacred geese were kept near the temple of Juno for the service of the goddess. Now by nature this bird is easily disturbed and frightened by noise; and at this time, since they were neglected, because dire want oppressed the garrison, their sleep was light, and was made uncomfortable by hunger, with the result that they were at once aware of the enemy as they showed themselves above the edge of the cliff. The geese hissed at them and rushed at them impetuously, and at the sight of arms, became even more excited, and filled the place with piercing and discordant clamour. By this the Romans were aroused, and, when they comprehended what had happened, they forced back their enemies and hurled them over the precipice. And even to this day, in memory of these events, there are borne in solemn procession a dog impaled on a stake, but a goose perched in state upon a costly coverlet in a litter.

This spectacle exhibits the might of Fortune and the ease with which, whenever she busies herself and takes command, she provides from unexpected sources against all emergencies by implanting intelligence in the unreasoning and senseless, and prowess and daring in the craven. For who would not, truly, be struck with astonishment and amazement when he has come to learn and has embraced in his consideration the former dejection of the city and her present prosperity, and has looked upon the splendour of her temples, the richness of her votive offerings, the rivalry of her arts and crafts, the ambitious efforts of subject cities, the crowns of dependent kings, and all things which the earth contributes and the sea and islands, continents, rivers, trees, living creatures, plains, mountains, mines, the first-fruits of everything, vying for beauty in the aspect and grace that adorns this place? And then comes the thought: how near did all this come to not being created and to not existing at all! When all things else were overcome by fire and frightful darkness and gloom, by foreign swords and murderous rage, it was poor, irrational, and timorous creatures that contributed the beginning of deliverance; and those great heroes and commanders, the Manlii, the Servilii, the Postumii, the Papirii, the founders of future illustrious houses, whom naught separated from death, geese aroused to make defence for the god of their fathers and for their fatherland. But if it be true, as Polybius has recorded in his second book, concerning the Gauls who had at this time seized Rome, that, when news suddenly came to them that their domains at home were in danger of being lost to them at the hands of neighbouring barbarians who had invaded their land and were masters of it, they concluded a treaty of peace with Camillus and withdrew — 326 if this be true, then there can be no contention with Fortune that she was not the cause of Rome’s preservation, by distracting the enemy, or rather, by abstracting them from Rome quite unexpectedly.

13 1 But what need is there to dwell on these matters, which offer nothing certain or definite because of the confusion of the events of Roman history and the destruction of contemporary chronicles, as Livy has recorded? Certainly the later events, plainer and clearer as they are, exhibit Fortune’s benignity; and to Fortune I ascribe also the death of Alexander, a man who by great good luck and lofty aspirations, was sweeping swiftly through the world blike a shooting star from East to West, and was already allowing the lustre of his arms to gleam upon Italy, since the destruction of Alexander the Molossian near Pandosia at the hands of the Bruttians and Lucanians served him as pretext for the campaign. But truly that love of glory which led him against all mankind embraced both an emulous desire for sovereignty and a wish to rival and to pass beyond the limits of Dionysus’s and Heracles’ expeditions. He learned that Rome’s power and courage was arrayed for the protection of Italy like a firm-set battle-line; for some account of their illustrious name and fame was often transmitted to him, as of athletes thoroughly practised in countless wars.

Not without spilling of blood could this matter, I deem, have been settled,

had the great aspirations of these two unconquered peoples with their invincible arms clashed with each other. For in numbers at this time the Romans were no fewer than an hundred and thirty thousand men; and every one of them was warlike and intrepid,

Knowing on horseback

How to do battle with men, and even, if need be, dismounted.

On the fortune or the virtue of Alexander

I

326 11 This is Fortune’s discourse, who declares that Alexander is her own characteristic handiwork, and hers alone. But some rejoinder must be made on behalf of philosophy, or rather on Alexander’s behalf, who would be vexed and indignant if he should be thought to have received as a pure gift, even at the hands of Fortune, the supremacy which he won at the price of much blood and of wounds that followed one after another; and

Many a night did he spend without sleeping,
Many a blood-stained day did he pass amid combats unceasing,

against irresistible forces and innumerable tribes, against impassable rivers and mountain fastnesses whose summit no arrow could reach, furthered by wise counsels, steadfast purpose, manly courage, and a prudent heart.

2 1 I think that if Fortune should try to inscribe her name on his successes, he would say to her, “Slander not my virtues, nor take away my fair name by detraction. Darius was your handiwork: he who was a slave and courier of the king, him did you make the mighty lord of Persia; and Sardanapalus, upon whose head you placed the royal diadem, though he spent his days in carding purple wool. But I, through my victory at Arbela, went up to Susa, and Cilicia opened the way for me into the broad land of Egypt; but to Cilicia I came by way of the Granicus, which I crossed, using as a bridge the dead bodies of Mithridates and Spithridates. Adorn yourself, proud Fortune, and vaunt your dominion over kings that never felt a wound nor shed a drop of blood. For they have been Fortune’s favourites, 327 men such as Ochus was and Artaxerxes, whom at the very hour of their birth you placed upon the throne of Cyrus. But my body bears many a token of an opposing Fortune and no ally of mine. First, among the Illyrians, my head was wounded by a stone and my neck by a cudgel. Then at the Granicus my head was cut open by an enemy’s dagger, at Issus my thigh was pierced by the sword. Next at Gaza my ankle was wounded by an arrow, my shoulder was dislocated, and I whirled heavily round and round. Then at Maracanda the bone of my leg was split open by an arrow. There awaited me towards the last also the buffetings I received among the Indians and the violence of famines. Among the Aspasians my shoulder was wounded by an arrow, and among the Gandridae my leg. Among the Mallians, the shaft of an arrow sank deep into my breast and buried its steel; and I was struck in the neck by a cudgel, when the scaling-ladders which we had moved up to the walls were battered down; and Fortune cooped me up alone, favouring ignoble barbarians and not illustrious adversaries with such an exploit. But if Ptolemy had not held his shield above me, and Limnaeus taking his stand before me had not fallen, a target for ten thousand shafts, and if my Macedonians had not overthrown the wall with spirit and main force, then that nameless village in a foreign land must needs have become the tomb of Alexander.”

3 1 Moreover, there were the trials of the campaign itself: storms, droughts, deep rivers, the heights of the Birdless Rock, the monstrous shapes of savage beasts, an uncivilized manner of life, the constant succession of petty kings and their repeated treachery. Then there were also the difficulties before his expedition: Greece was still gasping over Philip’s wars; Thebes staggering to her feet after her fall, was shaking the dust of Chaeroneia from her arms, and Athens was stretching forth a helping hand to join with Thebes. All Macedonia was festering with revolt and looking toward Amyntas and the children of Aëropus; the Illyrians were again rebelling, and trouble with the Scythians was impending for their Macedonian neighbours, who were in the throes of political change; Persian gold flowed freely through the hands of the popular leaders everywhere, and helped to rouse the Peloponnesus; Philip’s treasuries were bare of money, and in addition there was owing a loan of two hundred talents (as Onesicritus records). In such poverty and in circumstances fraught with such uncertainty, a stripling, scarcely older than a boy, had the daring to hope for Babylon and Susa; nay more, to conceive the project of dominion over all the world, relying only on the thirty thousand foot and four thousand cavalry which were his; for, according to Aristobulus, that was the full extent of their number. But King Ptolemy puts them at thirty thousand foot and five thousand horse, Anaximenes at forty-three thousand foot, fifty-five hundred horse. And the great and glorious war-chest which Fortune had ready for him was only seventy talents, as Aristobulus says, though Duris says it was provision for only thirty days.

4 1 Was, then, Alexander ill-advised and precipitate in setting forth with such humble resources to acquire so vast an empire? By no means. For who has ever put forth with greater or fairer equipment than he: greatness of soul, keen intelligence, self-restraint, and manly courage, with which Philosophy herself provided him for his campaign? Yes, the equipment that he had from Aristotle his teacher when he crossed over into Asia was more than what he had from his father Philip. But although we believe those who record that Alexander once said that the Iliad and the Odyssey accompanied him as equipment for his campaigns, since we hold Homer in reverence, yet are we to contemn anyone who asserts that the works of Homer accompanied him as a consolation after toil and as a pastime for sweet leisure, 328 but that his true equipment was philosophic teaching, and treatises on Fearlessness and Courage, and Self-restraint also, and Greatness of Soul? For of course it is obvious that Alexander wrote nothing on the subject of either syllogisms or axioms, nor did he have the opportunity of sharing the walks in the Lyceum, or of discussing propositions in the Academy. For it is by these criteria that those define philosophy who regard it as a theoretical rather than a practical pursuit. And yet even Pythagoras wrote nothing at all, nor did Socrates, nor Arcesilaüs, nor Carneades, who were all most notable among philosophers. Nor were these philosophers continuously occupied with such tremendous wars, bnor with spreading civilization among foreign princes, nor in establishing Grecian cities among savage nations, nor did they go on and on, instructing lawless and ignorant tribes in the principles of law and peace; but, even though they had leisure, they relinquished the writing of philosophy to sophists. Whence, then, comes our belief that they were true philosophers? Surely from what they said, or from the manner of life which they led, or from the principles which they taught. By these criteria let Alexander also be judged! For from his words, from his deeds, and from the instruction which he imparted, it will be seen that he was indeed a philosopher.

5 1 And first, if you will, consider a matter entirely contrary to the general belief, and compare Alexander’s pupils with those of Plato and Socrates. Plato and Socrates taught pupils of splendid natural endowment who spoke the same language; so that, even if the pupils understood nothing else, at least they understood the Greek tongue. And even so, Plato and Socrates did not win over many. But their pupils, such as Critias and Alcibiades and Cleitophon, were prone to spew the good word forth, as a horse the curbing bit, and turned them to other ways.

But if you examine the results of Alexander’s instruction, you will see that he educated the Hyrcanians to respect the marriage bond, and taught the Arachosians to till the soil, and persuaded the Sogdians to support their parents, not to kill them, and the Persians to revere their mothers and not to take them in wedlock. O wondrous power of Philosophic Instruction, that brought the Indians to worship Greek gods, and the Scythians to bury their dead, not to devour them! We admire Carneades’ power, which made Cleitomachus, formerly called Hasdrubal, and a Carthaginian by birth, adopt Greek ways. We admire the character of Zeno, which persuaded Diogenes the Babylonian to be a philosopher. But when Alexander was civilizing Asia, Homer was commonly read, and the children of the Persians, of the Susianians, and of the Gedrosians learned to chant the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. And although Socrates, when tried on the charge of introducing foreign deities, lost his cause to the informers who infested Athens, yet through Alexander Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Greeks. Plato wrote a book on the One Ideal Constitution, but because of its forbidding character he could not persuade anyone to adopt it; but Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Grecian magistracies, and thus overcame its uncivilized and brutish manner of living. Although few of us read Plato’s Laws, yet hundreds of thousands have made use of Alexander’s laws, and continue to use them. Those who were vanquished by Alexander are happier than those who escaped his hand; for these had no one to put an end to the wretchedness of their existence, while the victor compelled those others to lead a happy life. Therefore it is even more just to apply Themistocles’ saying to the nations conquered by Alexander. For, when Themistocles in exile had obtained great gifts from Artaxerxes, and had received three cities to pay him tribute, one to supply his bread, another his wine, and a third his meat, he exclaimed, “My children, we should be ruined now, had we not been ruined before.” Thus Alexander’s new subjects would not have been civilized, had they not been vanquished; Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleuceia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city hard by; 329 for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence. If, then, philosophers take the greatest pride in civilizing and rendering adaptable the intractable and untutored elements in human character, and if Alexander has been shown to have changed the savage natures of countless tribes, it is with good reason that he should be regarded as a very great philosopher.

6 1 Moreover, the much-admired Republic of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, may be summed up in this one main principle: that all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not live differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities, but that we should consider all men to be of one community and one polity, and that we should have a common life and an order common to us all, even as a herd that feeds together and shares the pasturage of a common field. This Zeno wrote, giving shape to a dream or, as it were, shadowy picture of a well-ordered and philosophic commonwealth; but it was Alexander who gave effect to the idea. For Alexander did not follow Aristotle’s advice to treat the Greeks as if he were their leader, and other peoples as if he were their master; to have regard for the Greeks as for friends and kindred, but to conduct himself toward other peoples as though they were plants or animals; for to do so would have been to cumber his leadership with numerous battles and banishments and festering seditions. But, as he believed that he came as a heaven-sent governor to all, and as a mediator for the whole world, those whom he could not persuade to unite with him, he conquered by force of arms, and he brought together into one body all men everywhere, uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup, as it were, men’s lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life. He bade them all consider as their fatherland the whole inhabited earth, as their stronghold and protection his camp, as akin to them all good men, and as foreigners only the wicked; they should not distinguish between Grecian and foreigner by Grecian cloak and targe, or scimitar and jacket; but the distinguishing mark of the Grecian should be seen in virtue, and that of the foreigner in iniquity; clothing and food, marriage and manner of life they should regard as common to all, being blended into one by ties of blood and children.

7 1 Now Demaratus the Corinthian, one of Philip’s intimate friends, when he had seen Alexander in Susa, exclaimed with tears of joy that all the Greeks who had died before that hour had been deprived of a great joy, since they had not seen Alexander seated on the throne of Darius. But I swear that for my part I feel no envy because of this spectacle toward them that saw it, for it was but the handiwork of Fortune, and the lot of other kings as well. But methinks I would gladly have been a witness of that fair and holy marriage-rite, when he brought together in one golden-canopied tent an hundred Persian brides and an hundred Macedonian and Greek bridegrooms, united at a common hearth and board. He himself, crowned with garlands, was the first to raise the marriage hymn as though he were singing a song of truest friendship over the union of the two greatest and most mighty peoples; for he, of one maid the bridegroom, and at the same time of all the brides the escort, as a father and sponsor united them in the bonds of wedlock. Indeed at this sight I should have cried out for joy, “O dullard Xerxes, stupid fool that spent so much fruitless toil to bridge the Hellespont! This is the way that wise kings join Asia with Europe; it is not by beams or rafts, nor by lifeless and unfeeling bonds, but by the ties of lawful love and chaste nuptials and mutual joy in children that they join the nations together.”

8 1 Considering carefully this order of affairs, Alexander did not favour the Median raiment, but preferred the Persian, for it was much more simple than the Median. Since he deprecated the unusual and theatrical varieties of foreign adornment, 330 such as the tiara and the full-sleeved jacket and trousers, he wore a composite dress adapted from both Persian and Macedonian fashion, as Eratosthenes has recorded. As a philosopher what he wore was a matter of indifference, but as sovereign of both nations and benevolent king he strove to acquire the goodwill of the conquered by showing respect for their apparel, so that they might continue constant in loving the Macedonians as rulers, and might not feel hate toward them as enemies. Conversely it were the mark of an unwise and vainglorious mind to admire greatly a cloak of uniform colour and to be displeased by a tunic with a purple border, or again to disdain those things and to be struck with admiration for these, bholding stubbornly, in the manner of an unreasoning child, to the raiment in which the custom of his country, like a nurse, had attired him. When men hunt wild animals, they put on the skins of deer, and when they go to catch birds, they dress in tunics adorned with plumes and feathers; they are careful not to be seen by bulls when they have on red garments, nor by elephants when dressed in white; for these animals are provoked and made savage by the sight of these particular colours. But if a great king, in taming and mollifying headstrong and warring nations, just as in dealing with animals, succeeded in soothing and stilling them cby wearing a garb familiar to them and by following their wonted manner of life, thereby conciliating their rough natures and smoothing their sullen brows, can men impeach him? Must they not rather wonder at his wisdom, since by but a slight alteration of his apparel he made himself the popular leader of all Asia, conquering their bodies by his arms, but winning over their souls by his apparel? And yet men marvel at the disciple of Socrates, Aristippus, that whether he wore a threadbare cloak or a fine Milesian robe he retained his gentility in either; but they impeach Alexander because, although paying due respect to his own national dress, he did not disdain that of his conquered subjects in establishing the beginnings of a vast empire. For he did not overrun Asia like a robber nor was he minded to tear and rend it, as if it were booty and plunder bestowed by unexpected good fortune, after the manner in which Hannibal later descended upon Italy, or as earlier the Treres descended upon Ionia and the Scythians upon Media. But Alexander desired to render all upon earth subject to one law of reason and one form of government and to reveal all men as one people, and to this purpose he made himself conform. But if the deity that sent down Alexander’s soul into this world of ours had not recalled him quickly, one law would govern all mankind, and they all would look toward one rule of justice as though toward a common source of light. But as it is, that part of the world which has not looked upon Alexander has remained without sunlight.

9 1 Therefore, in the first place, the very plan and design of Alexander’s expedition commends the man as a philosopher in his purpose not to win for himself luxury and extravagant living, but to win for all men concord and peace and community of interests.

And, in the second place, let us examine his sayings too, since it is by their utterances that the souls of other kings and potentates also best reveal their characters. The elder Antigonus remarked to a certain sophist who put in his hands a treatise on justice, “You are a fool to say anything about justice when you see me smiting other people’s cities.” The despot Dionysius remarked that one should trick children with dice, but men with oaths. Upon the tomb of Sardanapalus is written,

These are still mine — what I ate, and my wanton love-frolics.

Who would not own that by these several sayings are revealed Sardanapalus’s love of pleasure, Dionysius’s impiety, and Antigonus’s injustice and greed? But if you subtract from Alexander’s sayings his crown, his relationship with Ammon, and his noble birth, 331 they will appear to you as the utterances a Socrates or a Plato or a Pythagoras. Let us, then, pay no heed to the proud boasts which the poets inscribed upon his portraits and statues, studying, as they were, to portray, not Alexander’s moderation, but his power:

Eager to speak seems the statue of bronze, up to Zeus as it gazes:

“Earth I have set under foot; Zeus, keep Olympus yourself.”

And another man makes Alexander say, “I am the son of Zeus.” These expressions, then, as I have said, the poets addressed to Alexander in flattery of his good fortune.

But of the genuine sayings of Alexander we might first review those of his youth. Since he was the swiftest of foot of all the young men of his age, his comrades urged him to enter the Olympic games. He asked if the competitors were kings, and when his friends replied that they were not, he said that the contest was unfair, for it was one in which a victory would be over commoners, but a defeat would be the defeat of a king.

When the thigh of his father Philip had been pierced by a spear in battle with the Triballians, and Philip, although he escaped with his life, was vexed with his lameness, Alexander said, “Be of good cheer, father, and go on your way rejoicing, that at each step you may recall your valour.” Are not these the words of a truly philosophic spirit which, because of its rapture for noble things, already revolts against mere physical encumbrances? How, then, think you, did he glory in his own wounds, remembering by each part of his body affected a nation overcome, a victory won, the capture of cities, the surrender of kings? He did not cover over nor hide his scars, but bore them with him openly as symbolic representations, graven on his body, of virtue and manly courage.

10 1 And in the same spirit if ever there chanced to be in hours of ease or at a banquet a comparison of the verses of Homer, each man choosing his favourite line, Alexander always judged this verse to be the greatest of all:

Both things is he: both a goodly king and a warrior mighty.

This praise, which at the time it was written another had received, Alexander conceived to be a law for himself, so that he said of Homer that in this same verse he had honoured the manly courage of Agamemnon and prophesied that of Alexander. Accordingly when he had crossed the Hellespont, he went to see the site of Troy, imagining to himself the heroic deeds enacted there; and when one of the natives of the country promised to give him the lyre of Paris, if he wished it, Alexander said, “Of his lyre I have no need; for I already possess Achilles’ lyre to the accompaniment of which, as he rested from his labours,

he sang the famed deeds of heroes.

But the lyre of Paris gave forth an altogether weak and womanish strain to accompany his love songs.” Thus it is the mark of a truly philosophic soul to be in love with wisdom and to admire wise men most of all, and this was more characteristic of Alexander than of any other king. His attitude toward Aristotle has already been stated; and it is recorded by several authors that he considered the musician Anaxarchus the most valuable of all his friends, that he gave ten thousand gold pieces to Pyrrhon of Elis the first time he met him, that he sent to Xenocrates, the friend of Plato, fifty talents as a gift, and that he made Onesicritus, the pupil of Diogenes the Cynic, chief pilot of his fleet.

But when he came to talk with Diogenes himself in Corinth, he was so awed and astounded with the life and the worth of the man that often, when remembrance of the philosopher came to him, he would say, “If I were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes,” that is to say: “If I did not actively practise philosophy, I should apply myself to its theoretical pursuit.” He did not say, “If I were not a king, I should be Diogenes,” nor “If I were not rich and an Argead”; 332 for he did not rank Fortune above Wisdom, nor a crown and royal purple above the philosopher’s wallet and threadbare gown. But he said, “If I were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes”; that is to say: “If it were not my purpose to combine foreign things with things Greek, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of Greek justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me, Diogenes, that I imitate Heracles, and emulate Perseus, band follow in the footsteps of Dionysus, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Greeks should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Caucasus. Even there it is said that there are certain holy men, a law unto themselves, who follow a rigid gymnosophy and give all their time to God; they are more frugal than Diogenes since they have no need of a wallet. For they do not store up food, since they have it ever fresh and green from the earth; the flowing rivers give them drink and they have fallen leaves and grassy earth to lie upon. Because of me even those faraway sages shall come to know of Diogenes, and he of them. And I also, like Diogenes, must alter the standard of coinage and stamp foreign states with the impress of Greek government.”

11 Very well. Do Alexander’s actions, then, reveal the caprice of Fortune, the violence of war, the might of conquest, or do they rather reveal the great courage and justice, the great restraint and mildness together with the decorous behaviour and intelligence, of one who did all things with sober and sane judgement? For, by Heaven, it is impossible for me to distinguish his several actions and say that this betokens his courage, this his humanity, this his self-control, but everything he did seems the combined product of all the virtues; for he confirms the truth of that principle of the Stoics which declares that every act which the wise man performs is an activity in accord with every virtue; and although, as it appears, one particular virtue performs the chief rôle in every act, yet it but heartens on the other virtues and directs them toward the goal. Certainly one may observe that in Alexander the warlike is also humane, the mild also manly, the liberal provident, the irascible placable, the amatory temperate, his relaxation not idle, and his labours not without recreation. Who but he combined festivals with wars, campaigns with revels, Bacchic rites and weddings and nuptial songs with sieges and battle-fields? Who was ever more hostile to wrongdoers or kinder to the unfortunate? Who more stern to his opponents or more indulgent to petitioners?

It occurs to me to introduce here an incident touching Porus. For when Porus was brought as a captive before Alexander, the conqueror asked how he should treat him. “Like a king, Alexander,” said Porus. When Alexander asked again if there were nothing else, “No,” said he, “for everything is included in that word.” And it naturally occurs to me also to exclaim over each of Alexander’s deeds, “Like a philosopher!” For in this is included everything. He became enamoured of Roxanê, the daughter of Oxyartes, as she danced among the captive maidens; yet he did not offer any violence to her, but made her his wife. “Like a philosopher!” When he saw Darius pierced through by javelins, he did not offer sacrifice nor raise the paean to indicate that the long war had come to an end; but he took off his own cloak and threw it over the corpse as though to conceal the divine retribution that waits upon the lot of kings. “Like a philosopher!” Once when he was reading a confidential letter from his mother, and Hephaestion, who, as it happened, was sitting beside him, was quite openly reading it too, Alexander did not stop him, 333 but merely placed his own signet-ring on Hephaestion’s lips, sealing them to silence with a friend’s confidence. “Like a philosopher!” For if these actions be not those of a philosopher, what others are?

12 1 But let us compare the actions of men who are admitted to be philosophers. Socrates forbore when Alcibiades spent the night with him. But when Philoxenus, the governor of the coast-lands of Asia Minor, wrote to Alexander that there was in Ionia a youth, the like of whom for bloom and beauty did not exist, and inquired in his letter whether he should send the boy on to him, Alexander wrote bitterly in reply, “Vilest of men, what deed of this sort have you ever been privy to in my past that now you would flatter me with the offer of such pleasures?” We admire Xenocrates because he would not accept the gift of fifty talents which Alexander sent him. But shall we not admire the giving of it? Or do we think that he who does not welcome a gift and he who bestows it are not at one in their contempt for money? Because of philosophy Xenocrates had no need of wealth and because of philosophy Alexander had need of wealth that he might lavish it upon such men. How many times has Alexander said this when forcing an attack amid a shower of missiles? And yet we believe that all men are endowed with the capacity to form right judgements. For Nature of herself is prone to lead men toward the Good. But philosophers differ from common persons in having their powers of judgement strong and firm to face danger, since the common man is not fortified by conceptions such as these: “Best is one omen” and “Death is the end for all men”; but crises destroy all his calculations in the face of danger, and the fantastic imaginings of perils close at hand dispel his powers of judgement. For not only does “fear,” as Thucydides says, “drive out memory,” but it also drives out every purpose and ambition and impulse, unless philosophy has drawn her cords about them.

II

333 1 1   Yesterday we forgot, it seems, to remark that the age of Alexander had the good fortune to produce both many artistic achievements and many men of great talent. Perhaps, however, this was not part of Alexander’s good fortune, but rather that of the artists, to have obtained as witness and spectator of their achievements the man who was both best able to judge of their success and to reward them most liberally. At any rate, it is said that, when Archestratus, a poet of a later age, who, though an accomplished writer, was passing his days in poverty and neglect, someone remarked to him, “If you had been born in Alexander’s time, for every verse he would have given you a Cyprus or a Phoenicia.” And I think that the foremost of the artists of that age became so, not because they lived in Alexander’s day, but through what Alexander did for them. For a good climate and a lightness of the surrounding air produces a bountiful harvest; and likewise the favour, esteem, and benignity shown by a king evokes a rich increase in the arts and in men of talent. And, conversely, through jealousy and parsimony or emulous rivalry on the part of monarchs all artistic production is quenched and perishes.

Thus the despot Dionysius, as the story goes, while listening to a celebrated harper, engaged to give him a talent. Next day, when the man asked for the fulfilment of the promise, Dionysius said, “Yesterday I was delighted with your performance, 334 and during the time that you were singing I also delighted you with hopes! The result is that at that very time you were receiving full pay for the pleasure you gave by having your pleasure too!”

Alexander, the tyrant of Pherae (this last should be his only appellation; he should not be permitted to disgrace the name of Alexander), as he watched a tragic actor, felt himself much moved to pity through enjoyment of the acting. He jumped up, therefore, and left the theatre at a rapid pace, exclaiming that it would be a dreadful thing, if, when he was slaughtering so many citizens, he should be seen to weep over the sufferings of Hecuba and Polyxena. And he came near visiting punishment upon the actor because the man had softened his heart, as iron in the fire.

Archelaüs was thought to be somewhat niggardly in his favours, and Timotheüs liked to hint at this by often chanting this refrain:

Over the earth-born silver you rave.

But Archelaüs, with some wit, chanted in reply:

That, however, is what you crave.

Ateas, the Scythian king, took the flute-player Ismenias captive, and ordered him to play at a banquet. The rest were delighted, and applauded, but Ateas swore his horse’s neighing was sweeter to his ear. So far from the Muses’ habitation did he allow his ears to dwell, and his soul he kept in the mangers, better attuned to hear, not horses’ neigh, but asses’ bray! At the court of monarchs such as these what advancement or esteem could there be for Art, or for Poetry and Music of excellence? Nor, again, could artistic endeavour flourish at the court of those who wish to be rival performers in these arts, and thus through malice and ill-will suppress the true artists. Such a prince was Dionysius (to use him again as an example), who threw the poet Philoxenus into the stone-quarries; for when Dionysius ordered him to correct a tragedy of his, Philoxenus cancelled the whole piece from the very beginning to the final flourish.

Philip also was in these matters somewhat more petty and childish than became him, since he had acquired his knowledge late in life. Thus they tell the tale that Philip once argued with a certain harp-player about the technique of his instrument, and even thought he was confuting the man; but the harp-player smiled gently and said, “God forbid, your Majesty, that you should ever fall so low as to know more of these matters than I.”

2 1 But Alexander, knowing well in what matters he should be merely a spectator and listener, and in what he should play the chief rôle, trained himself always to be formidable in arms, and, in the words of Aeschylus,

Sturdy contender in arms, baleful to all that oppose.

This art he inherited from his ancestors, the Aeacidae, and from Heracles; but upon the other arts he freely bestowed honour without jealousy according to their worth and artistic excellence; but he was not so easily carried away by the pleasure they gave him as to try to imitate them. The tragic actors of his time were the group that centred about Thettalus and Athenodorus. At the contest of these two, the kings of Cyprus defrayed the expenses of the performance and Alexander’s most celebrated generals served as judges. When Athenodorus won, “I would rather,” said Alexander, “have lost half my kingdom than see Thettalus defeated.” However, he did not intercede with the judges nor find fault with the judgement, since he felt that, while he must be superior to all men, yet he must submit to Justice.

The comic actors of his time were the group that centred about Lycon of Scarpheia. When Lycon inserted in one of his comedies a begging verse, Alexander laughed and gave him ten talents.

Various harp-players also were his friends, among them Aristonicus, who came to Alexander’s aid in a certain battle, and was slain, fighting gloriously. Therefore Alexander ordered to be made and set up at Delphi a bronze statue of him, with lyre in hand and spear advanced; thereby he not only honoured this particular man, but also paid tribute to Music herself, in the belief that she is a creator of true men and, in particular, that she fills with inspiration and impetuousness those who are truly her foster-children. 335 For once upon a time, when Antigenides was playing on his flute the Chariot Song, Alexander became so transported, and his spirit so inflamed by the strains, that he leapt up and laid hands upon the weapons that lay near, and thus confirmed the testimony of the Spartans who used to sing,

The noble playing of the lyre is meet to match the sword.

Apelles the painter and Lysippus the sculptor also lived in the time of Alexander. The former painted “Alexander wielding the Thunderbolt” so vividly and with so natural an expression, that men said that, of the two Alexanders, Alexander, son of Philip, was invincible, but the Alexander of Apelles was inimitable. And when Lysippus modelled his first statue of Alexander which represented him looking with his face turned towards the heavens (as indeed Alexander often did look, with a slight inclination of his head to one side), someone engraved these verses on the statue, not without some plausibility,

Eager to speak seems the statue of bronze, up to Zeus as it gazes

“Earth I have set under foot: Zeus, keep Olympus yourself!”

Wherefore Alexander gave orders that Lysippus only should make statues of him. For Lysippus was, it seemed, the only one that revealed in the bronze Alexander’s character and in moulding his form portrayed also his virtues. The others wished to imitate the flexing of his neck and liquid softness of his eyes, but were unable to preserve his virile and leonine expression.

Among the other artists at his court was Stasicrates the master-sculptor, not seeking to make something flowery or pleasant or lifelike to look upon, but employing a magnificence in workmanship and design worthy of a king’s munificence. He followed Alexander into Asia and found fault with the paintings, sculptures, and moulded likenesses that had been made of him, on the ground that they were the works of timid and ignoble artists. “But I, your Majesty,” said he, “have conceived the project of placing your likeness in living and imperishable material, with roots that are everlasting and weight immovable and unshakable. For Mount Athos in Thrace, in that part where is its highest and most conspicuous summit, has well-proportioned surfaces and heights, limbs and joints and proportions that suggest the human form. When it has been properly carved and worked into shape, it can be called Alexander’s statue, and Alexander’s statue it will be; with its base set in the sea, in its left hand it will encompass and hold a city with ten thousand inhabitants, and with its right pour from a bowl of libation an ever-flowing river down into the sea. But as for gold and bronze, ivory, wooden timbers, and dyes, which make those paltry images that can be bought and sold, stolen, or melted down, let us reject them all!” Alexander listened to his words and admired but declined with thanks the lofty designs and the boldness of the artist. “But,” said he, “let Athos remain as it is. It is enough that it be the memorial of the arrogance of one king; but my imprint the Caucasus shall show and the Emodian range and the Tanaïs and the Caspian Sea; these will be the image of my deeds.

3 1 But imagine, pray, that such a work had been completed and made evident to men’s eyes. Is there anyone who could look upon it and suppose that the form, the arrangement, and the appearance were created by Fortune and Accident? No one, I think. What of Apelles’ “Wielder of the Thunderbolt”? What of the statue which takes its name from the Spear? Shall we admit, then, that greatness in a statue cannot, without the help of Art, be created by Fortune’s profuse provision of gold and bronze and ivory and much rich material, but is it possible that a great man, or rather the greatest man of all that have ever lived, without the help of Virtue, was perfected through Fortune’s supplying him with arms and money, foot and horse? 336 But for him who has not learned how to use these things they are a danger, not a strength and enrichment, but a means of proving his weakness and pettiness. For Antisthenes was right when he said, “We should pray that our enemies be provided with all good things, except courage; for thus these good things will belong, not to their owners, but to those that conquer them.” Therefore they say that Nature also for defence has caused horns, wonderful for their size and jagged points, to grow upon the deer, the most cowardly of all animals; and therein does Nature teach us that strength and arms are of no benefit to such as have not the courage to stand their ground. Thus also Fortune, by frequently bestowing on cowards and fools military forces and dominions, in which they disgrace themselves, emblazons and commends Virtue as the one quality that constitutes the greatness and beauty of man. For if indeed, as Epicharmus says,

Mind has sight and Mind has hearing;

but

All things else are deaf and blind;

then it happens that these are really lacking in reason. For our perceptive faculties seem to respond to their own special stimuli; but the fact that it is mind which aids us and mind which emblazons our deeds, and it is mind that conquers and overpowers and plays the monarch, and that “all things else,” since they are “blind and deaf” and soulless, mislead and burden and disgrace their possessors, if Virtue be not present, is a truth which may be gleaned from history.

Now of the two monarchs Semiramis and Sardanapalus, in whose hands were placed the same power and dominion, Semiramis, though a woman, equipped great expeditions, armed her ranks, established the Babylonian Empire, and sailed about the Persian Gulf subduing the Ethiopians and Arabs. But Sardanapalus, though born a man, spent his days at home carding purple wool, sitting with his knees drawn up in front of him among his concubines; and when he died, they made a stone statue of him dancing in a barbaric fashion and apparently snapping his fingers above its head. They engraved upon it: “Eat, drink, and sport with love; all else is naught.”

When Crates saw a golden statue of Phrynê the courtesan dstanding at Delphi, he cried out that it stood there as a monument to Greek licentiousness; and thus if one examine either the life or the tomb of Sardanapalus (for I think there is no difference between them), one would say that they are a monument to the bounty of Fortune. But if this be so, shall we allow Fortune to lay hold upon Alexander after Sardanapalus, and to lay claim to Alexander’s greatness and power? For what greater gift did she bestow on him than those which other monarchs received at her hands: arms, horses, missiles, money, guardsmen? Let Fortune endeavour to make an Aridaeus great by these, if she can, or an Ochus or Oarses eor Tigranes the Armenian, or the Bithynian Nicomedes. Of these Tigranes cast down his crown before the feet of Pompey and ignominiously received back his kingdom, which had become the spoil of war. But Nicomedes shaved his head and put on the freedman’s cap and proclaimed himself an emancipated slave of the Roman people.

4 1 Shall we say, then, that Fortune makes men petty, timid, and abject in spirit? Yet it is not right for anyone to charge baseness to misfortune, or courage and intelligence to good fortune; but Fortune was magnified by Alexander’s reign, for in him she was illustrious, invincible, magnanimous, inoffensive, and humane. Then, immediately after Alexander’s decease, Leosthenes said that his forces, as they wandered here and there and fell foul of their own efforts, were like the Cyclops after his blinding, groping about everywhere with his hands, which were directed at no certain goal; even thus did that vast throng roam about with no safe footing, blundering through want of a leader. Or rather, in the manner of dead bodies, after the soul departs, when they are no longer held together by natural forces, but undergo dispersion and dissolution, and finally are dissipated and disappear altogether; even so Alexander’s forces, having lost him, maintained a gasping, agitated, and fevered existence 337 through men like Perdiccas, Meleager, Seleucus, and Antigonus, who, as it were, provided still a warm breath of life and blood that still pulsed and circulated. But at length the host wasted away and perished, generating about itself maggots, as it were, of ignoble kings and rulers in their last death-struggle. This, then, it is likely that Alexander himself meant when he rebuked Hephaestion for quarrelling with Craterus: “What,” said he, “will be your power and your achievements if someone deprive you of Alexander?” But I, for my part, shall not hesitate to say this very thing to the Fortune that presided over Alexander’s career: “What is your greatness or your repute? Where is your power or your invincibility, if someone deprive you of Alexander?” That is to say, “If someone deprive you of your skill in arms, your munificent use of riches, your self-restraint in expending them, your boldness against your foes in battle, your mildness towards the vanquished? Make another great, if you can; but one that shall not be generous with his substance, nor court danger in the front ranks, nor give honour to his friends, nor feel pity for his captives, nor be temperate in his pleasures, nor sleepless in crises, nor placable in his victories, nor humane amid his successes. What man is great in the exercise of power, if folly and wickedness attend him? Take away virtue from the fortunate man and in everything he is petty; in acts of generosity, through parsimony; in hard tasks, through softness; in religion, through superstition; towards the good, through envy; among men, through cowardice; among women, through wantonness.” Just as inexpert artisans, who construct large pedestals for petty offerings, make the smallness of the offerings noticeable, so Fortune, whenever she elevates a petty character by acts that have a certain pomp and circumstance, makes the more conspicuous and disgraceful the blundering and instability that result from a shallow character.

5 1 Wherefore greatness lies, not in the possession of good things, but in our use of them, dsince even infant children inherit their fathers’ kingdoms and dominions, even as Charillus, whom Lycurgus carried in his swaddling-clothes into the common dining-hall and proclaimed king of Sparta in place of himself. Assuredly it was not the child who was great, but he who surrendered to the child its paternal rights, and did not keep them for himself nor take them away.

But who could have made Aridaeus great, whom, differing no whit from a child, only that his swaddling-clothes were royal purple, Meleager set on the throne of Alexander? And indeed it was well that he did so, that for a few days it might be observed how it is that men rule by right of virtue and how by gift of Fortune. For in succession to a real competitor for sovereignty Meleager introduced a mere actor, eor rather, did a mute figure wearing a crown parade across the stage, as it were, of the inhabited world.

Even a woman can carry a burden if a man impose it upon her.

Conversely, however, one might affirm that it lies within the strength of even a woman or a child to take up and impose the gifts of power and wealth and sovereignty. The eunuch Bagoas took up the kingship of Persia and bestowed it upon Oarses and Darius. But the ability to sustain and administer great authority when one has received it, and not to be crushed or turned from one’s purpose by the weight and the magnitude of one’s activities, is the mark of a man who possesses virtue, sense, and intelligence. This virtue Alexander possessed, whom some accuse of drunkenness and a passion for wine! But he was truly a great man, for in his conduct of affairs he was sober, nor was he made drunk nor led to revelling by authority and power; but others, when they get but a small portion, or even a taste, of power are unable to control themselves:

Bad men, when gorged with wealth, or chancing on

Some honours in the State, caper and prance

When luck, unhoped for, to their house has come.

338 Cleitus, when he had scuttled three or four Greek triremes at Amorgos, caused himself to be proclaimed Poseidon and carried a trident. Demetrius, to whom Fortune added the little that she was able to subtract from Alexander’s power, allowed himself to be called “The Heaven-descended,” and the subject states did not send ambassadors to him, but “Sacred Deputies,” and his replies they spoke of as “Oracles.” Lysimachus, who obtained possession of the regions adjoining Thrace, the mere outskirts of the kingdom of Alexander, as it were, reached such a pitch of arrogance and boldness as to say, “The Byzantines now come to me when I am touching Heaven with my spear.” But Pasiades of Byzantium, who was present, said, “Let us be off, lest he make a hole in the sky with his spear-point!”

And yet why should anyone mention these men who might have some legitimate ground for pride because of Alexander, when even Clearchus, after he became despot of Heracleia, used to carry a thunderbolt, and named one of his sons Thunderer? And Dionysius the younger styled himself the son of Apollo in the inscription:

Sprung from a Dorian mother by union with Phoebus Apollo.

And Dionysius’s father killed ten thousand or more citizens, and, led on by envy, betrayed his brother to the enemy, cnor could he wait for his already aged mother to die a few days later, but strangled her; yet in one of his tragedies he wrote these words:

The mother of foul wrong is tyranny!

Notwithstanding, of his daughters he named one Virtue, another Temperance, a third Justice. And yet other persons publicly styled themselves Benefactors, Conquerors, Saviours, or The Great; but no one would be able to tell the tale of their marriages one after another, like the matings of horses, as they spent their days with no restraint amid herds of women, their corruption of boys, their beating of drums in the company of emasculated men, their daily dicing, their flute-playing in the public theatres, the night that was too short for them at their dinners, and the day at their breakfasts.

6 1 But Alexander took his breakfast at daybreak seated; he dined late in the evening; he drank only after sacrificing to the gods; he played dice with Medius when he had a fever; he played games while travelling, at the same time also learning to wield a bow and mount a chariot. For himself he married Roxanê, the only woman he ever loved; but Stateira, the daughter of Darius, he married for imperial and political reasons, since the union of the two races was highly advantageous. But as for the other Persian women, he was as much their superior in self-control as in valour he was superior to Persian men. For he looked at no woman against her will and those that he looked at he passed by more readily than those that he did not look at; and although he bore himself humanely toward all other persons, it was toward fair youth alone that he conducted himself haughtily. He would not listen to a single word in praise of the beauty of the wife of Darius, who was a very handsome woman; but when she died, he graced her funeral with such a royal pomp and bewailed her death so feelingly that his self-control was questioned amid his display of humanity, and his goodness incurred the charge of wrongdoing. For Darius was disturbed by suspicion of Alexander’s power and youth; for he also was still one of those who believed Alexander’s victory to be through Fortune. But when he had tested the matter from every angle, and recognized the truth, “Then,” said he, “the lot of the Persians is not so utterly wretched, nor will anyone say that we are altogether cowardly or unmanly in that we have been overcome by such a man. But for my part I pray the gods for fair fortune and for might in war, that I may surpass Alexander in bestowing favours; and I am possessed by an ambitious and emulous desire to prove myself more humane than Alexander. But if my power be spent, do thou, O Zeus, ancestral god of the Persians, and ye other gods that guard our kingship, grant that none other than Alexander take his seat upon the throne of Cyrus.” This was Darius’s way of adopting Alexander, invoking the gods as witnesses.

339 7 Thus do men prevail through Virtue. Ascribe to Fortune, if you will, Arbela and the Cilician victory and his other deeds of violence and war: Fortune battered down the walls of Tyre for him; Fortune opened the way to Egypt; through Fortune Halicarnassus fell, and Miletus was captured, and Mazaeus left the Euphrates unguarded, and the Babylonian plain was strewn with corpses. But at least it was not in any way Fortune’s gift that he was temperate, nor was it because of Fortune that he was self-controlled, nor did Fortune lock his soul and keep it impregnable to pleasure and invulnerable to desire; in fact, these were the qualities by which he defeated Darius himself. The rest were but defeats of arms and horses, bbattles, slaughters and routs of men. But the truly great and indisputable defeat Darius suffered: he yielded in virtue and greatness of soul, in prowess and justice, and marvelled at Alexander’s invincibility in pleasure, in toil, in the bestowal of favours. It is true that Tarrias, son of Deinomenes, and Antigenes of Pallenê, and Philotas, the son of Parmenion, were also invincible at least amid shields, pikes, battle-cries, and the clash of arms; but towards pleasures and women and gold and silver they were no better than their captives. In fact, when Alexander was freeing the Macedonians from debt and paying creditors for everybody, Tarrias csaid falsely that he was a debtor, and produced at the bank a person who asserted that he was Tarrias’s creditor; later, when he was detected, he was ready to commit suicide had not Alexander, coming to know of this, exculpated him, and allowed him to keep the money; for the king remembered that when Philip was assaulting Perinthus, Tarrias, although his eye was pierced by a missile, would not submit nor suffer the shaft to be extracted until they had routed the enemy.

Antigenes joined himself with those who were being sent back to Macedonia because of sickness or wounds, and had himself enrolled among them; but when, however, it was discovered that he had nothing wrong with him, but was feigning some infirmity, and it was seen that he was a stout fighting man dwhose body was covered with wounds, the matter vexed Alexander. When he asked the reason for such conduct, Antigenes confessed that he was in love with Telesippa, and was accompanying her to the sea, since he could not be left behind if she went away. “Whose is she?” asked Alexander, “and to whom must we speak?” Antigenes replied that she was free-born. “Then,” said Alexander, “let us persuade her with promises and presents to remain behind.” So ready was he with an excuse for every lover rather than for himself.

And further, Philotas, the son of Parmenion, had in his licentiousness the nurse, as it were, of all his ills. For among the captives taken at Damascus was a courtesan from Pella, by name Antigona. Ere this she had crossed over to Samothrace, and there had been taken captive by Autophradates. She was comely enough to look upon and, after Philotas had attached himself to her, she had complete possession of him. Indeed that man of iron was so softened that he was not in control of his reasoning powers amid his pleasures, but unlocked and brought forth many of his secrets for the woman: “What was that famed Philip, were it not for Parmenion? What was this Alexander, were it not for Philotas? Where his Ammon, and where his serpents, if we do not wish it so?” These words Antigona reported to an intimate friend of hers among the women, and she reported them to Craterus; Craterus brought Antigona herself secretly to Alexander, who did not touch her person, but restrained himself and, working secretly through her, he discovered the whole of Philotas’s plans. And for a period of more than seven years Alexander never revealed his suspicion; not in his cups, the reputed drunkard! not in anger, this man of fiery temper! not to a friend, this man who trusted Hephaestion in everything and shared everything with him! 340 In fact it is recorded that once, when he had broken the seal of a confidential letter from his mother and was reading it silently to himself, Hephaestion quietly put his head beside Alexander’s and read the letter with him; Alexander could not bear to stop him, but took off his ring and placed the seal on Hephaestion’s lips.

8 1 But one might grow weary in the enumeration of these matters by which Alexander is shown to have made the most honourable and the most regal use of his authority. And even though he became great through Fortune, he is even greater in that he made good use of his Fortune. And the more we praise his Fortune the more shall we exalt his Virtue by reason of which he became worthy of his Fortune.

Now, however, I shall proceed at once to the first steps in his advancement and the beginnings of his power, and I shall examine in those matters the rôle played by Fortune, by reason of which men assert that Alexander became great through the instrumentality of Fortune. In Heaven’s name! Why do they not assert this of one that never felt a wound nor lost a drop of blood nor ever served in war, whom the neighing of a horse placed upon the throne of Cyrus, even as the first Darius, the son of Hystaspes? Or of Xerxes, whom a king, flattered by his wife, as Darius was flattered by Atossa, set upon the throne? Did the royal diadem come to Alexander’s doors, as to Oarses through the machinations of Bagoas, who stripped from him the garb of a courier and put upon him the royal raiment and the tiara that ever stands erect? Was he suddenly and unexpectedly chosen by lot and thus came to rule the inhabited world, as at Athens the Thesmothetae and Archons attain their office?

Would you learn how it is that men come to the throne by choice of Fortune? Once upon a time among the Argives the family of Heracleidae became extinct, from which family it was their ancestral custom to select the Argive kings. When in their search they made inquiry of the god at Delphi, he replied that an eagle would show them; and a few days later an eagle appeared on high and, swooping down, alighted on the house of Aegon, and Aegon was chosen king.

Again in Paphos when the reigning king was seen to be unjust and wicked, Alexander expelled him and searched for another, dsince the family of Cinyradaea appeared to be already passing away or extinct. However, they told him that there still survived one poor and obscure person, who eked out a forsaken existence in a certain garden. Men were sent to fetch him and, when they arrived, he was found watering his garden-plots; and he was much perturbed when the soldiers laid hands on him and ordered him to come with them. He was brought before Alexander and, dressed as he was in a single cheap garment, he was proclaimed king, and received the royal purple, and became one of those who are styled the king’s “Companions.” His name was Abdalonymus. Thus does shifting Fortune create kings, change their raiment, and quickly and easily alter the status of men who expect nothing of the sort, and do not even hope for it.

9 1 But what greatness did Alexander acquire beyond his just merits, what without sweat, what without blood, what without a price, what without labour? He drank rivers fouled with blood, crossed streams bridged by dead bodies, through hunger ate the first grass that he saw, dug through nations buried in deep snow and cities built beneath the earth, sailed over a battling sea; and as he traversed the parching strands of Gedrosia and Arachosia, it was in the sea, not on the land, that first he saw a living plant.

If to Fortune, as to a human being, one might present Frankness in Alexander’s behalf, would she not say, “When and where did you ever vouchsafe a way for the exploits of Alexander? What fortress did he ever capture by your help without the shedding of blood? What city unguarded or what regiment unarmed did you deliver into his hands? What king was found to be indolent, or what general negligent, or what watchman asleep at the gate? But no river was easy to cross, no storm was moderate, no summer’s heat was without torment. 341 Betake yourself to Antiochus, the son of Seleucus, or to Artaxerxes, the brother of Cyrus; depart to Ptolemy Philadelphus! Their fathers, while yet alive, proclaimed them kings; they won battles that did not cost a tear; they made merry all their lives in processions and theatres; and every one of them, because of good fortune, grew old upon the throne.

“But in the case of Alexander, though I were to mention nothing else, behold his body gashed with wounds tip to toe, bruised all over, smitten at the hands of his enemies

Now with the spear, now the sword, now with mighty masses of boulders.

On the banks of the Granicus his helmet was cleft through to his scalp by a sword; at Gaza his shoulder was wounded by a missile; at Maracanda his shin was so torn by an arrow that by the force of the blow the larger bone was broken and extruded. Somewhere in Hyrcania his sight was dimmed, and for many days he was haunted by the fear of blindness. Among the Assacenians his ankle was wounded by an Indian arrow; that was the time when he smilingly said to his flatterers, ‘this that you see is blood, not

Ichor, that which flows from the wounds of the blessed immortals.’

At Issus he was wounded in the thigh with a sword, as Chares states, by Darius the king, who had come into hand-to hand conflict with him. Alexander himself wrote of this simply, and with complete truth, in a letter to Antipater: ‘I myself happened,’ he writes, ‘to be wounded in the thigh by a dagger. But nothing untoward resulted from the blow either immediately or later.’ Among the Mallians he was wounded in the breast by an arrow three feet long, which penetrated his breastplate, and someone rode up under him, and struck him in the neck, as Aristobulus relates. When he had crossed the Tanaïs against the Scythians and had routed them, he pursued them on horseback an hundred and fifty stades, though he was grievously distressed with diarrhoea.

10 1 “Well done, Fortune! You exalt Alexander and make him great by running him through from every side, by making him lose his footing, dby laying open every portion of his body. Not like Athena before Menelaüs did you guide the missile to the stoutest parts of his armour, and by breastplate, belt, and kilt take away the intensity of the blow, which only grazed his body with force enough to cause blood to flow; but you exposed to the missiles the vital portions of Alexander’s body unprotected, you drove home the blows through his very bones, you circled around his body, you laid siege to his eyes and his feet, you hindered him in pursuing his foes, you endeavoured to strip him of his victories, you upset his expectations.”

No other king seems to me to have felt the hand of Fortune more heavily upon him, even though on many it has fallen harshly and malignantly. But like a thunderbolt it cut down the other rulers, and destroyed them; toward Alexander, however, fortune’s ill-will became but contentious and quarrelsome and hard to overpower, even as it was toward Heracles. For what manner of Typhons or monstrous giants did she not raise up to oppose him? Whom of his foes did she not fortify with a vast supply of weapons or deep rivers or jagged cliffs or the might of beasts from foreign lands? But if Alexander’s thought had not been set on high emprise, if it had not derived its impelling force from great Virtue, and had not refused to submit to defeat in its wrestling with Fortune, would he not have grown tired and weary of marshalling and arming his forces, weary of his sieges and pursuits famid unnumbered revolts, desertions, and riots of subject peoples, defections of kings, against Bactria, Maracanda, Sogdiana, as if he were cutting off the heads of a hydra which ever grew again in renewed wars among these faithless and conspiring peoples?

11 I shall be thought to be making a strange statement, yet what I shall say is true: it was because of Fortune that Alexander all but lost the repute of being the son of Ammon! For what offspring of the gods could have toiled through such hazardous, toilsome, and painful Labours save only Heracles, the son of Zeus? 342 But it was one arrogant man who imposed upon Heracles the task of capturing lions, of pursuing wild boars, of frightening off birds so that he might not have time to go about performing greater deeds, such as punishing men like Antaeus and stopping creatures like Busiris from their abominable murders. But upon Alexander it was Virtue who laid the kingly and god-like Labour, the end and aim of which was not gold, carried about by countless camels, nor Persian luxury, banquets, and women, nor the wine of Chalybon, nor the fish of Hyrcania, but to order all men by one law and to render them submissive to one rule accustomed to one manner of life. The desire which he cherished to accomplish this task was implanted in him from childhood, and was fostered and increased with the years that passed. Once, when ambassadors came from the Persian king to Philip, who was not at home, Alexander, while he entertained them hospitably, asked no childish questions, as the others did, about the vine of gold, or the Hanging Gardens, or how the Great King was arrayed; but he was completely engrossed with the most vital concerns of the dominion, asking how large was the Persian army; where the king stationed himself in battle (even as the famed Odysseus asked

Where are his arms that he wields in the battle, and where are his horses?);

cand which roads were the shortest for travellers going inland from the sea — so that the strangers were astounded and said, “This boy is a ‘great king’; our king is only wealthy.” But after Philip’s end, when Alexander was eager to cross over and, already absorbed in his hopes and preparations, was hastening to gain a hold upon Asia, Fortune, seizing upon him, blocked his way, turned him about, dragged him back, and surrounded him with countless distractions and delays. First she threw into the utmost commotion the barbarian elements among his neighbours, and contrived wars with the Illyrians and Triballians. By these wars he was drawn from his Asiatic projects as far away as the portion of Scythia that lies along the Danube; dwhen, by sundry manoeuvres, he had subjugated all this territory with much danger and great struggles, he was again eager and in haste for the crossing. Again, however, Fortune stirred up Thebes against him, and thrust in his pathway a war with Greeks, and the dread necessity of punishing, by means of slaughter and fire and sword, men that were his kith and kin, a necessity which had a most unpleasant ending.

After this he crossed with provision for thirty days, as Phylarchus relates; but Aristobulus says, with seventy talents. He divided the greater part of his possessions at home and his royal revenues among his friends; Perdiccas alone would take nothing when Alexander offered, but asked, “What are you leaving for yourself, Alexander?” And when Alexander replied, “High hopes!”, “Then,” said Perdiccas, “we shall also share in these; for it is not right to take your possessions, but right to wait in expectation of those of Darius.”

12 1 What, then, were the hopes on which Alexander relied when he crossed into Asia? Not a force counted by means of a wall that would hold a city of 10,000 men, nor fleets that sailed through mountains, nor scourges or fetters, insane and barbaric implements for chastising the sea; but externally they were the great ambition in his little army, mutual rivalry of hot youth, competition for repute and excellence among his Companions. And within himself he had his own high hopes, freverence for the gods, fidelity towards his friends, frugality, self-control, experience, fearlessness toward death, high courage, humanity, affability, integrity of character, constancy in counsel, quickness in execution, the height of good repute, and a disposition to gain his end in everything honourable. For not appropriately nor convincingly did Homer employ a combination of three similes in his comparison describing the fair appearance of Agamemnon:

343 Like in his eyes and his head unto Zeus who delighteth in thunder,

Like unto Ares in waist, and in breadth of his chest to Poseidon.

But if the god who begat Alexander made his natural endowment an harmoniously joined combination of many virtues, may we not say that he possessed the high spirit of Cyrus, the discretion of Agesilaüs, the intelligence of Themistocles, the experience of Philip, the daring of Brasidas, the eloquence and statesmanship of Pericles? And, to compare him with the men of still more ancient days, he was more self-restrained than Agamemnon; for Agamemnon set a captive woman above his wedded wife, but Alexander, even before his marriage, kept aloof from his captives. He was more magnanimous than Achilles; for Achilles gave back the body of Hector for a small ransom, but Alexander buried Darius at great expense; Achilles, when he had become reconciled, accepted gifts and recompense from his friends to requite him for ceasing from his Wrath, but Alexander enriched his enemies by conquering them. He was more reverent than Diomedes; for Diomedes was ready to fight with gods, but Alexander believed the gods to be the authors of all success. He was more deeply mourned by his relatives than was Odysseus; for Odysseus’ mother died of grief, but the mother of Alexander’s foe, for the goodwill she bore him, shared his death.

13 1 In short, if Solon’s statesmanship also was due to Fortune, and if Miltiades’ generalship, and Aristeides’ justice were but the result of Fortune, then surely there is no work of Virtue in these men, but it is a name only, talk based on appearance, pervading their lives to no purpose, a figment of the sophists and legislators. But if every one of these men and of others like them became poor or rich, weak or strong, ugly or handsome, lived to a ripe old age or met an untimely death through Fortune, or if each one of them proved himself a great general, a great lawgiver, or great in government and statesmanship through Virtue and Reason, then consider Alexander and compare him with them all. Solon brought about a cancellation of debts in Athens which he called the “Relief from Burdens” (Seisachtheia); but Alexander himself paid the debts which his men owed to their creditors. Pericles collected tribute from the Greeks and with the money adorned the Acropolis with temples; but Alexander captured the riches of barbarians and sent them to Greece with orders that ten thousand talents be used to construct temples for the gods. Brasidas’s dash along the shore to Methonê through the armed host of the enemy amid showers of missiles made him renowned in Greece; but that daring leap of Alexander in the country of the Oxydrachae, incredible to them that hear of it and fearful to them that saw it, when he hurled himself down from the walls into the midst of the enemy, who received him with spears and arrows and naked swords — with what may one compare it, save with the levin bolt that breaks and flashes in the midst of a hurricane, like the apparition of Phoebus that darted down to earth, gleaming round about with flaming armour. The enemy at first were amazed and affrighted and retired with trembling fear; but a moment later, when they saw that he was but one man attacking many, they made a stand against him.

There indeed Fortune made manifest great and splendid results of her kindliness toward Alexander, when she cast him into an insignificant foreign town and shut him in and fenced him round about! And when his men were earnestly trying to bring help from without and were attempting to scale the walls, Fortune, by breaking and shattering their ladders, took away their foothold and hurled them from the walls. And of the three men who alone were quick enough to grasp the wall and, throwing themselves down inside, to take their stand beside the king, Fortune straightway snatched up one and made away with him before he could strike a blow; and a second, pierced through by many arrows, was only so far from death that he could see and perceive his king’s danger. 344 But the charges and shouting of the Macedonians were unavailing for they had no machines nor engines with them; but in their zeal they tried to hack the walls with their swords, and were forced to break them off with their bare hands, and all but bite their way through.

But the king, who was Fortune’s favourite, and was always guarded and personally protected by her, was caught within like a wild beast in the toils, alone and without succour; nor was he struggling for Susa or Babylon, nor to capture Bactria, nor to vanquish the great Porus; for in great and glorious conflicts, even though men fail, disgrace, at least, can find no place. But so contentious and malicious was Fortune, so greatly did she favour barbarians and hate Alexander, that she tried to destroy not only his body and his life, but also, in so far as she could, to destroy his repute and to wipe out his fair fame. For it were not a terrible thing for Alexander to fall and lie buried beside the Euphrates or the Hydaspes, nor ignoble to meet death by coming into close combat with Darius or in confronting the horses and swords and battle-axes of the Persians as they fought to defend their king, nor to be overthrown while he bestrode the walls of Babylon and to fall from his high hope. Thus fell Pelopidas and Epameinondas; their death was a death belonging to Virtue, not to misfortune, engaged as they were in such a high emprise. But of what sort was the deed of Fortune, who is now under scrutiny? Was it not that on the farthest outposts of a land beside a foreign river within the walls of an obscure hamlet, which surrounded and hid away from sight the lord and master of the inhabited world, he should perish, smitten and stricken by ignominious weapons and whatever else lay at hand? For his head was wounded through his helmet by an axe, and someone shot an arrow through his breastplate so that it penetrated the bones of his breast and was lodged there firmly, while the shaft protruded and hampered him and the iron point was four fingers broad and five fingers long. But — the extreme of all the dangers he confronted — while he was defending himself against those who had attacked him in front, the archer who shot him had plucked up courage to approach him with a sword, but Alexander with his dagger was too quick for the man and knocked him down and killed him; but while he was thus occupied, someone ran out from a mill, and gave him a blow on the neck with a cudgel from behind; this confused his senses, and his head swam. But Virtue was by his side and in him she engendered daring, and in his companions strength and zeal. For men like Limnaeus and Ptolemy and Leonnatus and all those who had surmounted the wall or had broken through it took their stand before him and were a bulwark of Virtue, exposing their bodies in the face of the foe and even their lives for the goodwill and love they bore their king. Surely it is not due to Fortune that the companions of good kings risk their lives and willingly die for them; but this they do through a passion for Virtue, even as bees, as if under the spell of love-charms, approach and closely surround their sovereign.

What spectator, then, who might without danger to himself have been present at that scene, would not exclaim that he was witnessing the mighty contest of Fortune and Virtue; that through Fortune the foreign host was prevailing beyond its deserts, but through Virtue the Greeks were holding out beyond their ability? And if the enemy gains the upper hand, this will be the work of Fortune or of some jealous deity or of divine retribution; but if the Greeks prevail, it will be Virtue and daring, friendship and fidelity, that will win the guerdon of victory? These were, in fact, the only support that Alexander had with him at this time, fsince Fortune had put a barrier between him and the rest of his forces and equipment, fleets, horse, and camp.

Finally, the Macedonians routed the barbarians, and, when they had fallen, pulled down their city on their heads. But this was no help to Alexander; for he had been hurried from the field, arrow and all, and he had the shaft in his vitals; the arrow was as a bond or bolt holding his breastplate to his body. 345 And when they tried forcibly to pull it out of the wound by the roots, as it were, the iron would not budge, since it was lodged in the bony part of the breast in front of the heart. They did not dare to saw off the protruding portion of the shaft, since they were afraid that the bone might be split by the jarring and cause excruciating pain, and that an internal haemorrhage might result. But when Alexander perceived their great perplexity and hesitation, he himself tried with his dagger to cut off the arrow close to his breastplate; but his hand was unsteady and affected by a torpid languor from the inflammation of the wound. Accordingly with encouraging words he urged those that were unwounded to take hold and not to be afraid; band he railed at some who were weeping and could not control themselves, others he branded as deserters, since they had not the courage to come to his assistance. And he cried aloud to his Companions, “Let no one be faint-hearted even for my sake! For it will not be believed that I do not fear death, if you fear death for me!”

Were the Athenians more famous in war or in wisdom?

345 1 1   . . . .Thus rightly spoke the great Themistocles to the generals who succeeded him, for whom he had opened a way for their subsequent exploits by driving out the barbarian host and making Greece free. And rightly will it be spoken also to those who pride themselves on their writings; for if you take away the men of action, you will have no men of letters. Take away Pericles’ statesmanship, and Phormio’s trophies for his naval victories at Rhium, and Nicias’s valiant deeds at Cythera and Megara and Corinth, Demosthenes’ Pylos, and Cleon’s four hundred captives, Tolmides’ circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus, and Myronides’ victory over the Boeotians at Oenophyta — take these away and Thucydides is stricken from your list of writers. Take away Alcibiades’ spirited exploits in the Hellespontine region, and those of Thrasyllus by Lesbos, and the overthrow by Theramenes of the oligarchy, Thrasybulus and Archinus and the uprising of the Seventy from Phylê against the Spartan hegemony, and Conon’s restoration of Athens to her power on the sea — Etake these away and Cratippus is no more.

Xenophon, to be sure, became his own history by writing of his generalship and his successes and recording that it was Themistogenes the Syracusan who had compiled an account of them, his purpose being to win greater credence for his narrative by referring to himself in the third person, thus favouring another with the glory of the authorship. But all the other historians, men like Cleitodemus, Diyllus, Philochorus, Phylarchus, have been for the exploits of others what actors are for plays, exhibiting the deeds of the generals and kings, and merging themselves with their characters as tradition records them, in order that they might share in a certain effulgence, so to speak, and splendour. For there is reflected from the men of action upon the men of letters an image of another’s glory, which shines again there, since the deed is seen, as in a mirror, through the agency of their words.

2 1   This city, as we all know, has been the mother and kindly nurse of many other arts, some of which she was the first to discover and reveal, while to others she gave added strength and honour and advancement; not least of all, painting was enhanced and embellished by her. 346 For Apollodorus the painter, the first man to discover the art of mixing colours and chiaroscuro, was an Athenian. Upon his productions is inscribed:

It were easier that you blame than try to make the same.

Euphranor, Nicias, Asclepiodorus, and Panaenus, the brother of Pheidias, some of them painted conquering generals, others battles, and still others the heroes of old. As, for example, Euphranor compared his own Theseus with that of Parrhasius, saying that Parrhasius’s Theseus had fed on roses, but his on beef; for in truth Parrhasius’s portrait has a certain delicacy and subtlety in its execution, and it does somewhat resemble Theseus; but someone, on seeing Euphranor’s Theseus, exclaimed, not inaptly,

Race of the great-hearted hero Erechtheus, whom once Athena

Nurtured, the daughter of Zeus.

Euphranor has painted also, not without some animation, the cavalry battle against Epameinondas at Mantineia. The action came about in this way: Epameinondas the Theban, after the battle of Leuctra, was greatly elated, and conceived the desire to trample upon the prostrate Sparta, and grind her pride and self-esteem into the dust. And first he attacked with an army of seventy thousand, pillaged the Spartans’ territory, and persuaded the Perioeci to revolt from them. Then he challenged to battle the forces that were drawn up in the vicinity of Mantineia; but when they did not wish or even dare to risk an engagement, but continued to await reinforcements from Athens, he broke camp by night and, without being observed by anybody, descended into Lacedaemon and almost succeeded, by a sudden attack, in capturing and occupying the city, which was without defenders. But when the Spartan allies perceived this, and aid for the city quickly arrived, he retired as though he were again about to turn to plundering and devastating the countryside. But when he had thus deceived his enemies and quieted their suspicions, he set forth by night from Laconia and, rapidly traversing the intervening territory, appeared to the Mantineans unexpectedly, while they also were engaged in discussing the right moment for sending aid to Sparta, and ordered the Thebans to arm straightway for the attack. Accordingly the Thebans, who took great pride in their skill at arms, advanced to the attack and encircled the city walls. There was consternation among the Mantineans, and shouting and running hither and thither, since they were unable to repulse this assembled force which was bursting upon them like a torrent, nor did any thought of possible succour occur to their minds. At this crucial and fateful moment the Athenians were descending from the heights to the plain of Mantineia, with no knowledge of this turn of fortune or of the keenness of the struggle, but were proceeding leisurely on their journey. However, when one of the Mantineans ran out with report of the danger, Ealthough the Athenians were few in comparison with the great numbers of their enemy, and although they were weary from their march, and none of their other allies was at hand, nevertheless they straightway took their places in battle-array with almost their whole number, while the cavalry donned their armour and rode ahead of the rest, and under the very gates and the wall of the city engaged in a sharp cavalry encounter; the Athenians prevailed and rescued Mantineia from the clutches of Epameinondas.

This was the action which Euphranor depicted, and in his portrayal of the battle one may see the clash of conflict and the stout resistance abounding in boldness and courage and spirit. But I do not think you would award judgement to the painter in comparison with the general, nor would you bear with those who prefer the picture to the trophy of victory, or the imitation to the actuality.

3 1   Simonides, however, calls painting inarticulate poetry and poetry articulate painting: for the actions which painters portray as taking place at the moment literature narrates and records after they have taken place. 347 Even though artists with colour and design, and writers with words and phrases, represent the same subjects, they differ in the material and the manner of their imitation; and yet the underlying end and aim of both is one and the same; the most effective historian is he who, by a vivid representation of emotions and characters, makes his narration like a painting. Assuredly Thucydides is always striving for this vividness in his writing, since it is his desire to make the reader a spectator, as it were, and to produce vividly in the minds of those who peruse his narrative the emotions of amazement and consternation which were experienced by those who beheld them. For he tells how Demosthenes is drawing up the Athenians at the very edge of the breakwater at Pylos, and Brasidas is urging on his pilot to beach the ship, and is hurrying to the landing-plank, and is wounded and falls fainting on the forward-deck; and the Spartans are fighting an infantry engagement from the sea, while the Athenians wage a naval battle from the land. Again, in his account of the Sicilian expedition: “The armies of both sides on the land, as long as the fighting at sea is evenly balanced, are enduring an unceasing struggle and tension of mind” because of their battling forces; and “because of the continued indecisiveness of the struggle they accompany it in an extremity of fear, Cwith their very bodies swaying in sympathy with the opinion of the outcome.” Such a description is characterized by pictorial vividness both in its arrangement and in its power of description; so, if it be unworthy to compare painters with generals, let us not compare historians either.

Again, the news of the battle of Marathon Thersippus of Eroeadae brought back, as Heracleides Ponticus relates; but most historians declare that it was Eucles who ran in full armour, hot from the battle, and, bursting in at the doors of the first men of the State, could only say, “Hail! we are victorious!” and straightway expired. Yet this man came as a self-sent messenger regarding a battle in which he himself had fought; but suppose that some goatherd or shepherd upon a hill or a height had been a distant spectator of the contest and had looked down upon that great event, too great for any tongue to tell, and had come to the city as a messenger, a man who had not felt a wound nor shed a drop of blood, and yet had insisted that he have such honours as Cynegeirus received, or Callimachus, or Polyzelus, because, forsooth, he had reported their deeds of valour, their wounds and death; would he not have been thought of surpassing impudence? Why, as we are told, the Spartans merely sent meat from the public commons to the man who brought glad tidings of the victory in Mantineia which Thucydides describes! And indeed the compilers of histories are, as it were, reporters of great exploits who are gifted with the faculty of felicitous speech, and achieve success in their writing through the beauty and force of their narration; and to them those who first encountered and recorded the events are indebted for a pleasing retelling of them. We may be sure that such writers are lauded also merely through being remembered and read because of the men who won success; for the words do not create the deeds, but because of the deeds they are also deemed worthy of being read.

4 1   Poetry also has won favour and esteem because it utters words which match the deeds, as Homer says,

Many the lies that he spoke, but he made them all to seem truthful.

The story is also told that one of Menander’s intimate friends said to him, “The Dionysian Festival is almost here, Menander; haven’t you composed your comedy?” Menander answered, “By heaven, I have really composed the comedy: the plot’s all in order. But I still have to fit the lines to it.” For even poets considered the subject matter more necessary and vital than the words.

When Pindar was still young, and prided himself on his felicitous use of words, Corinna warned him that his writing lacked refinement, since he did not introduce myths, which are the proper business of poetry, but used as a foundation for his work unusual and obsolete words, extensions of meaning, paraphrases, lyrics and rhythms, which are mere embellishments of the subject matter. 348 So Pindar, giving all heed to her words, composed the famous lyric:

Ismenus, or Melia of the golden distaff,

Or Cadmus, or the holy race of men that were sown,

Or the mighty strength of Heracles,

Or the gladsome worship of Dionysus.

He showed it to Corinna, but she laughed and said that one should sow with the hand, not with the whole sack. For in truth Pindar had confused and jumbled together a seed-mixture, as it were, of myths, and poured them into his poem. That poetry concerns itself with the composition of mythological matters Plato also has stated. A myth aims at being a false tale, resembling a true one; wherefore it is far removed from actual events,B if a tale is but a picture and an image of actuality, and a myth is but a picture and image of a tale. And thus those who write of imaginative exploits lag as far behind historians as persons who tell of deeds come short of those that do them.

5 1   Athens, to be sure, possessed no famous writer of either epic or melic poetry; for Cinesias seems to have been an infelicitous dithyrambic poet. He was himself without family or fame but, jeered and mocked by the comic poets, he acquired his share in unfortunate notoriety. And for the dramatic poets, the Athenians considered the writing of comedy so undignified and vulgar a business that there was a law forbidding any member of the Areopagus to write comedies. But tragedy blossomed forth and won great acclaim, becoming a wondrous entertainment for the ears and eyes of the men of that age, and, by the mythological character of its plots, and the vicissitudes which its characters undergo, it effected a deception wherein, as Gorgias records, “he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived.” For he who deceives is more honest, because he has done what he has promised to do; and he who is deceived is wiser, because the mind which is not insensible to fine perceptions is easily enthralled by the delights of language.

What profit, then, did these fine tragedies bring to Athens to compare with the shrewdness of Themistocles which provided the city with a wall, with the diligence of Pericles which adorned the Acropolis, Dwith the liberty which Miltiades bestowed, with the supremacy to which Cimon advanced her? If in this manner the wisdom of Euripides, the eloquence of Sophocles, and the poetic magnificence of Aeschylus rid the city of any of its difficulties or gained for her any brilliant success, it is but right to compare their tragedies with trophies of victory, to let the theatre rival the War Office, and to compare the records of dramatic performances with the memorials of valour.

6 1   Is it, then, your pleasure that we introduce the men themselves bearing the emblems and badges of their achievements, and assign to each their proper entrance? Then from this entrance let the poets approach, speaking and chanting to the accompaniment of flutes and lyres,

Nor speak not a word of evil sound, and keep clear the way for our chorus,

Whoever in words like these is unskilled and whose mind is not free from uncleanness,

Who never has sung and never has danced in the rites of the noble Muses,

Nor has ever been trained in the Bacchic rites of the tongue of bull-eating Cratinus!

Let them bring with them their equipment, their masks and altars, their stage machinery, their revolving changes of scene, and the tripods that commemorate their victories. Let their tragic actors accompany them, men like Nicostratus and Callippides, Mynniscus, Theodorus, and Polus, who robe Tragedy and bear her litter, as though she were some woman of wealth; or rather, let them follow on as though they were painters and gilders and dyers of statues. Let there be provided also a bounteous outlay for stage furnishings, supernumeraries, sea-purple robes, stage machinery, as well as dancing-masters and bodyguards, an intractable crowd. It was in reference to all this that a Spartan not ineptly remarked that the Athenians were making a great mistake in wasting their energies on amusements, that is to say, in lavishing on the theatre what would pay for great fleets and would support armies in the field. 349 For, if we reckon up the cost of each tragedy, the Athenian people will be seen to have spent more on productions of Bacchae, Phoenissae, Oedipuses, and Antigones, and the woes of Medea and Electra, than they spent in fighting for their supremacy and for their liberty against the barbarians. For the generals often ordered their men to bring along uncooked rations when they led them forth to battle; and the commanders, I can swear, after providing barley-meal and a relish of onions and cheese for the rowers, would embark them on the triremes. But the men who paid for the choruses gave the choristers eels and tender lettuces, roast-beef and marrow, and pampered them for a long time while they were training their voices and living in luxury. The result for the defeated choregoi was to be held in contumely and ridicule; but to the victors belonged a tripod, which was, as Demetrius says, not a votive offering to commemorate their victory, but a last oblation of their wasted livelihood, an empty memorial of their vanished estates. Such are the returns paid by the poetic art and nothing more splendid ever comes from it.

7 1   But let us now review the generals in their turn, as they make entrance from the other side; and at their approach those who have had no part in deeds of valour or political life or campaigns must in very truth “speak not a word of evil sound and clear the way,” whoever there be that lacks courage for such deeds as theirs and “whose mind is not free from uncleanness, nor has ever been trained in the Bacchic rites” that are the handiwork of Miltiades, bane of Medes, and Themistocles, slayer of Persians. This is the rebel-rout of the god of war, with battalions on land and squadrons on sea, laden with mingled spoils and trophies:

Hearken, Alala, daughter of War,

Thou prelude of clashing spears, thou to whom are offered

Heroes in the holy sacrifice of death,

as Epameinondas the Theban cried, when he and his men were dedicating themselves to the noblest and most resplendent of struggles for their native land, the graves of their fathers, and their holy shrines. I seem to see their victories advancing, not dragging along a bull or a goat as their prize, nor garlanded with ivy and redolent of the lees of Dionysus; but whole cities are theirs, and islands, and even continents, temples costing a thousand talents, and colonies of vast population; and they are garlanded with all manner of trophies and spoils. Their ornaments and emblems are buildings like the Parthenon one hundred feet in length, southern Long Walls, dockyards, Propylaea, Chersonese, and Amphipolis. Marathon leads forward the Victory of Miltiades, and Salamis does the same for Themistocles’ Victory, poised upon the wreckage of a thousand ships. Cimon’s Victory brings an hundred Phoenician ships from the Eurymedon, and the Victory of Demosthenes and Cleon brings from Sphacteria the captive shield of Brasidas and his soldiers in chains. Conon’s Victory fortifies the city with new walls, while that of Thrasybulus leads back from Phylê the people restored to freedom. Alcibiades’ Victories revive the city laid prostrate by her failure in Sicily. From the struggles of Neileus and Androclus about Lydia and Caria Greece came to see that Ionia was rising. If you inquire of the other Victories in turn what good came to the State from each, one will reply Lesbos, another Samos, another Cyprus, another the Euxine, another five hundred triremes, another ten thousand talents, to say nothing of the glory and the trophies which they won. These are the things which the city celebrates in her festivals, for these she sacrifices to the gods, not for the dramatic victories of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Nor is the day celebrated when Carcinus was successful with his Aëropê, or Astydamas with his Hector, but even yet the State celebrates the victory at Marathon on the sixth of Boëdromion. On the sixteenth of this month they pour a libation of wine in memory of Chabrias’s victory at Naxos. On the twelfth they used to sacrifice thank-offerings for the recovery of their liberty, for on that day the exiles returned from Phylê. On the third they won the battle of Plataeae. The sixteenth of Munichion they dedicated to Artemis, for on that day the goddess shone with full moon upon the Greeks as they were conquering at Salamis. 350 The conflict at Mantineia has made the twelfth of Scirophorion more sacred; for in this battle, when the other allies were overpowered and routed, it was that Athenians alone who defeated the force opposed to them and erected a trophy taken from the victorious enemy. These are the things which have uplifted Athens to heights of glory and greatness; it was for these that Pindar addressed Athens as

The mainstay of Greece,

not because she had guided the Greeks aright with the tragedies of Phrynichus and Thespis, but because, as he himself says, first at Artemisium

Sons of the Athenians laid the far-shining foundation of freedom.

And when at Salamis and Mycalê and Plataeae they had firmly established, as in adamant, the liberty of Greece, they handed it down to all mankind.

8 1   But the compositions of the poets we may affirm to be but a childish pastime; orators, however, have some claim when compared with generals; wherefore with good reason Aeschines asserts derisively that Demosthenes declares that he will enter a suit for possession on behalf of the Speakers’ Platform against the War Office. Is it, then, right to prefer Hypereides’ Plataean oration to Aristeides’ victory at Plataea? Or Lysias’s speech against the Thirty to Thrasybulus’s and Archinus’s slaughter of those tyrants? Or Aeschines’ oration against Timarchus’s wanton ways to Phocion’s expedition to Byzantium, by which he prevented the sons of Athenian allies from becoming victims of the wantonness and drunken lust of Macedonians? Or with the crowns which the Athenian people in common received when they had given freedom to Greece shall we compare Demosthenes’ oration On the Crown? For in this speech the orator has made this matter exceedingly perspicuous and intelligible in taking his oath “by the memory of those of our ancestors who risked their lives for us at Marathon,” not by the teachers who in the schools gave them as youths their early training.

Wherefore the State has given public burial not to men like Isocrates, Antiphon,c and Isaeus, but to these men, whose remains she has taken in her embrace; and these men it was that the orator deified in his oath when he swore by men whose example he was not following. But Isocrates, although he had declared that those who had risked their lives at Marathon and fought as though their souls were not their own, and although he had hymned their daring and their contempt of life, himself (so they say), when he was already an old man, replied to someone who asked him how he was getting on, “Even as does a man over ninety years of age who considers death the greatest of evils.” For he had not grown old sharpening his sword nor whetting his spear-point nor polishing his helmet nor campaigning nor pulling at the oar, but in glueing together and arranging antitheses, balanced clauses, and inflexional similarities, Eall but smoothing off and proportioning his periods with chisel and file. How could this person do other than fear the clash of arms and the impact of phalanxes, he who feared to let vowel collide with vowel, or to utter a phrase whose balance was upset by the lack of a single syllable? For Miltiades set forth for Marathon, joined battle the next day, and returned victorious with his army to the city; and Pericles, when he had subdued the Samians in nine months, was prouder of his achievement than was Agamemnon, who captured Troy in the tenth year. But Isocrates consumed almost twelve years in writing his Panegyric; and during this period he took part in no campaigns, nor served on any embassy, nor founded any city, nor was dispatched as commander of a fleet, although this era brought forth countless wars. But while Timotheus was freeing Euboea, and Chabrias with his fleet was fighting at Naxos, and Iphicrates near Lechaeum was cutting to pieces the Spartan division, and the Athenian people, having liberated every city, 351 bestowed upon Greece equal suffrage with themselves, Isocrates sat at home remodelling a book with mere words, as long a time as sufficed for Pericles to erect the Propylaea and his temples a hundred feet long. Yet Cratinus pokes fun even at Pericles for his slowness in accomplishing his undertakings, and remarks somewhat as follows about his Middle Wall:

Pericles in his talk makes the wall to advance,

By his acts he does nothing to budge it.

But consider the petty spirit of this sophist, which caused the ninth part of his life to be spent on the composition of one speech. Is it, then, greatly worth our while to compare the speeches of the orator Demosthenes with the deeds of Demosthenes the general? To compare the speech Against Conon for assault and battery with Demosthenes’ trophies won at Pylos? To compare the speech directed at Arethusius on the slaves with Demosthenes’ reduction of the Spartans to slavery? The orator’s age when he wrote his speeches against his guardians was the same as that of Alcibiades when he united the Mantineans and Eleans against Sparta. And indeed Demosthenes’ public orations have this wonderful characteristic: in the Philippics he spurs his countrymen on to action and he praises the action of Leptines.

BOOK V

Isis and Osiris

3511 All good things, my dear Clea, sensible men must ask from the gods; and especially do we pray that from those mighty gods we may, in our quest, gain a knowledge of themselves, so far as such a thing is attainable by men. For we believe that there is nothing more important for man to receive, or more ennobling for God of His grace to grant, than the truth. God gives to men the other things for which they express a desire, but of sense and intelligence He grants them only a share, inasmuch as these are His especial possessions and His sphere of activity. For the Deity is not blessed by reason of his possession of gold and silver, nor strong because of thunder and lightning, but through knowledge and intelligence. Of all the things that Homer said about the gods, he has expressed most beautifully this thought:

Both, indeed, were in lineage one, and of the same country,

Yet was Zeus the earlier born and his knowledge was greater.

Thereby the poet plainly declares that the primacy of Zeus is nobler since it is elder in knowledge and in wisdom. I think also that a source of happiness in the eternal life, which is the lot of God, is that events which come to pass do not escape His prescience. But if His knowledge and meditation on the nature of Existence should be taken away, then, to my mind, His immortality is not living, but a mere lapse of time.

2 1 Therefore the effort to arrive at the Truth, and especially the truth about the gods, is a longing for the divine. For the search for truth requires for its study and investigation the consideration of sacred subjects, and it is a work more hallowed than any form of holy living or temple service; and, not least of all, it is well-pleasing to that goddess whom you worship, a goddess exceptionally wise and a lover of wisdom, to whom, as her name at least seems to indicate, knowledge and understanding are in the highest degree appropriate. For Isis is a Greek word, and so also is Typhon, her enemy, who is conceited, as his name implies, because of his ignorance and self-deception. He tears to pieces and scatters to the winds the sacred writings, which the goddess collects and puts together and gives into the keeping of those that are initiated into the holy rites, since this consecration, by a strict regimen and by abstinence from many kinds of food and from the lusts of the flesh, 352 curtails licentiousness and the love of pleasure, and induces a habit of patient submission to the stern and rigorous services in shrines, the end and aim of which is the knowledge of Him who is the First, the Lord of All, the Ideal One. Him does the god urge us to seek, since He is near her and with her and in close communion. The name of her shrine also clearly promises knowledge and comprehension of reality; for it is named Iseion, to indicate that we shall comprehend reality if in a reasonable and devout frame of mind we pass within the portals of her shrines.

3 1 Moreover, many writers have held her to be the daughter of Hermes, and many others the daughter of Prometheus, because of the belief that Prometheus is the discoverer of wisdom and forethought, and Hermes the inventor of grammar and music. For this reason they call the first of the Muses at Hermopolis Isis as well as Justice: for she is wise, as I have said, and discloses the divine mysteries to those who truly and justly have the name of “bearers of the sacred vessels” and “wearers of the sacred robes.” These are they who within their own soul, as though within a casket, bear the sacred writings about the gods clear of all superstition and pedantry; and they cloak them with secrecy, thus giving intimation, some dark and shadowy, some clear and bright, of their concepts about the gods, intimations of the same sort as are clearly evidenced in the wearing of the sacred garb. For this reason, too, the fact that the deceased votaries of Isis are decked with these garments is a sign that these sacred writings accompany them, and that they pass to the other world possessed of these and of naught else. It is a fact, Clea, that having a beard and wearing a coarse cloak does not make philosophers, nor does dressing in linen and shaving the hair make votaries of Isis; but the true votary of Isis is he who, when he has legitimately received what is set forth in the ceremonies connected with these gods, uses reason in investigating and in studying the truth contained therein.

4 1 It is true that most people are unaware of this very ordinary and minor matter: the reason why the priests remove their hair and wear linen garments. Some persons do not care at all to have any knowledge about such things, while others say that the priests, because they revere the sheep, abstain from using its wool, as well as its flesh; and that they shave their heads as a sign of mourning, and that they wear their linen garments because of the colour which the flax displays when in bloom, and which is like to the heavenly azure which enfolds the universe. But for all this there is only one true reason, which is to be found in the words of Plato: “for the Impure to touch the Pure is contrary to divine ordinance.” No surplus left over from food and no excrementitious matter is pure and clean; and it is from forms of surplus that wool, fur, hair, and nails originate and grow. So it would be ridiculous that these persons in their holy living should remove their own hair by shaving and making their bodies smooth all over, and then should put on and wear the hair of domestic animals. We should believe that when Hesiod said,

Cut not the sere from the green when you honour the gods with full feasting,

Paring with glittering steel the member that hath the five branches,

he was teaching that men should be clean of such things when they keep high festival, and they should not amid the actual ceremonies engage in clearing away and removing any sort of surplus matter. But the flax springs from the earth which is immortal; fit yields edible seeds, and supplies a plain and cleanly clothing, which does not oppress by the weight required for warmth. It is suitable for every season and, as they say, is least apt to breed lice; but this topic is treated elsewhere.

5 1 The priests feel such repugnance for things that are of a superfluous nature that they not only eschew most legumes, as well as mutton and pork, which leave a large residuum, but they also use no salt with their food during their periods of holy living. For this they have various other reasons, but in particular the fact that salt, by sharpening the appetite, makes them more inclined to drinking and eating. To consider salt impure, because, as Aristagoras has said, when it is crystallizing many minute creatures are caught in it and die, is certainly silly.

353 It is said also that they water the Apis from a well of his own, and keep him away from the Nile altogether, not that they think the water unclean because of the crocodile, as some believe; for there is nothing which the Egyptians hold in such honour as the Nile. But the drinking of the Nile water is reputed to be fattening and to cause obesity. They do not want Apis to be in this condition, nor themselves either; but rather they desire that their bodies, the encasement of their souls, shall be well adjusted and light, and shall not oppress and straiten the divine element by the predominance and preponderance of the mortal.

6 1 As for wine, those who serve the god in Heliopolis bring none at all into the shrine, bsince they feel that it is not seemly to drink in the day-time while their Lord and King is looking upon them. The others use wine, but in great moderation. They have many periods of holy living when wine is prohibited, and in these they spend their time exclusively in studying, learning, and teaching religious matters. Their kings also were wont to drink a limited quantity prescribed by the sacred writings, as Hecataeus has recorded; and the kings are priests. The beginning of their drinking dates from the reign of Psammetichus; before that they did not drink wine nor use it in libation as something dear to the gods, thinking it to be the blood of those who had once battled against the gods, and from whom, when they had fallen and had become commingled with the earth, they believed vines to have sprung. This is the reason why drunkenness drives men out of their senses and crazes them, inasmuch as they are then filled with the blood of their forbears. These tales Eudoxus says in the second book of his World Travels are thus related by the priests.

7 1 As for sea-fish, all Egyptians do not abstain from all of them, but from some kinds only; as, for example, the inhabitants of Oxyrhynchus abstain from those that are caught with a hook; for, inasmuch as they revere the fish called oxyrhynchus (the pike), they are afraid that the hook may be unclean, since an oxyrhynchus may have been caught with it. The people of Syenê abstain from the phagrus (the sea-bream); for this fish is reputed to appear with the oncoming of the Nile, and to be a self-sent messenger, dwhich, when it is seen, declares to a glad people the rise of the river. The priests, however, abstain from all fish; and on the ninth day of the first month, when every one of the other Egyptians eats a broiled fish in front of the outer door of his house, the priests do not even taste the fish, but burn them up in front of their doors. For this practice they have two reasons, one of which is religious and curious, and I shall discuss it at another time, since it harmonizes with the sacred studies touching Osiris and Typhon; the other is obvious and commonplace, in that it declares that fish is an unnecessary and superfluous food, and confirms the words of Homer, who, in his poetry, represents neither the Phaeacians, who lived amid a refined luxury, nor the Ithacans, who dwelt on an island, as making any use of fish, nor did even the companions of Odysseus, while on such a long voyage and in the midst of the sea, until they had come to the extremity of want. In fine, these people hold the sea to be derived from purulent matter, and to lie outside the confines of the world and not to be a part of it or an element, but a corrupt and pestilential residuum of a foreign nature.

8 1 Nothing that is irrational or fabulous or prompted by superstition, as some believe, has ever been given a place in their rites, but in them are some things that have moral and practical values, and others that are not without their share in the refinements of history or natural science, as, for example, that which has to do with the onion. For the tale that Dictys, the nurseling of Isis, in reaching for a clump of onions, fell into the river and was drowned is extremely incredible. But the priests keep themselves clear of the onion and detest it and are careful to avoid it, because it is the only plant that naturally thrives and flourishes in the waning of the moon. It is suitable for neither fasting nor festival, because in the one case it causes thirst and in the other tears for those who partake of it.

In like manner they hold the pig to be an unclean animal, because it is reputed to be most inclined to mate in the waning of the moon, and because the bodies of those who drink its milk break out with leprosy and scabrous itching. 354 The story which they relate at their only sacrifice and eating of a pig at the time of the full moon, how Typhon, while he was pursuing a boar by the light of the full moon, found the wooden coffin in which lay the body of Osiris, which he rent to pieces and scattered, they do not all accept, believing it to be a misrepresentation, even as many other things are.

Moreover, they relate that the ancient Egyptians put from them luxury, and self-indulgence, to such a degree that they used to say that there was a pillar standing in the temple at Thebes which had inscribed upon it curses against Meinis, their king, who was the first to lead the Egyptians to quit their frugal, thrifty, and simple manner of living. It is said also that Technactis, the father of Bocchoris, when he was leading his army against the Arabians, because his baggage was slow in arriving, found pleasure in eating such common food as was available, and afterwards slept soundly on a bedding of straw, and thus became fond of frugal living; as the result, he invoked a curse on Meinis, and, with the approval of the priests, had a pillar set up with the curse inscribed upon it.

9 1 The kings were appointed from the priests or from the military class, since the military class had eminence and honour because of valour, and the priests because of wisdom. But he who was appointed from the military class was at once made one of the priests and a participant in their philosophy, cwhich, for the most part, is veiled in myths and in words containing dim reflexions and adumbrations of the truth, as they themselves intimate beyond question by appropriately placing sphinxes before their shrines to indicate that their religious teaching has in it an enigmatical sort of wisdom. In Saïs the statue of Athena, whom they believe to be Isis, bore the inscription: “I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and my robe no mortal has yet uncovered.”

Moreover, most people believe that Amoun is the name given to Zeus in the land of the Egyptians, a name which we, with a slight alteration, pronounce Ammon. But Manetho of Sebennytus dthinks that the meaning “concealed” or “concealment” lies in this word. Hecataeus of Abdera, however, says that the Egyptians use this expression one to another whenever they call to anyone, for the word is a form of address. When they, therefore, address the supreme god, whom they believe to be the same as the Universe, as if he were invisible and concealed, and implore him to make himself visible and manifest to them, they use the word “Amoun”; so great, then, was the circumspection of the Egyptians in their wisdom touching all that had to do with the gods.

10 1 Witness to this also are the wisest of the Greeks: Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, who came to Egypt and consorted with the priests; and in this number some would include Lycurgus also. Eudoxus, they say, received instruction from Chonuphis of Memphis, Solon from Sonchis of Saïs, and Pythagoras from Oenuphis of Heliopolis. Pythagoras, it seems, was greatly admired, and he also greatly admired the Egyptian priests, and, copying their symbolism and occult teachings, incorporated his doctrines in enigmas. As a matter of fact most of the Pythagorean precepts do not at all fall short of the writings that are called hieroglyphs; such, for example, as these: “Do not eat upon a stool”; “Do not sit upon a peck measure”; “Do not lop off the shoots of a palm-tree”; “Do not poke a fire with a sword within the house.”

For my part, I think also that their naming unity Apollo, duality Artemis, the hebdomad Athena, and the first cube Poseidon, bears a resemblance to the statues and even to the sculptures and paintings with which their shrines are embellished. For their King and Lord Osiris they portray by means of an eye and a sceptre; 355 there are even some who explain the meaning of the name as “many-eyed” on the theory that os in the Egyptian language means “many” and iri “eye”; and the heavens, since they are ageless because of their eternity, they portray by a heart with a censer beneath. In Thebes there were set up statues of judges without hands, and the statue of the chief justice had its eyes closed, to indicate that justice is not influenced by gifts or by intercession.

The military class had their seals engraved with the form of a beetle; for there is no such thing as a female beetle, but all beetles are male. They eject their sperm into a round mass which they construct, since they are no less occupied in arranging for a supply of food than in preparing a place to rear their young.

11 Therefore, Clea, whenever you hear the traditional tales which the Egyptians tell about the gods, their wanderings, dismemberments, and many experiences of this sort, you must remember what has been already said, and you must not think that any of these tales actually happened in the manner in which they are related. The facts are that they do not call the dog by the name Hermes as his proper name, but they bring into association with the most astute of their gods that animal’s watchfulness and wakefulness and wisdom,b since he distinguishes between what is friendly and what is hostile by his knowledge of the one and his ignorance of the other, as Plato remarks. Nor, again, do they believe that the sun rises as a new-born babe from the lotus, but they portray the rising of the sun in this manner to indicate allegorically the enkindling of the sun from the waters. So also Ochus, the most cruel and terrible of the Persian kings, who put many to death and finally slaughtered the Apis and ate him for dinner in the company of his friends, the Egyptians called the “Sword”; and they call him by that name even to this day in their list of kings. But manifestly they do not mean to apply this name to his actual being; they but liken the stubbornness and wickedness in his character to an instrument of murder. If, then, you listen to the stories about the gods in this way, accepting them from those who interpret the story reverently and philosophically, and if you always perform and observe the established rites of worship, and believe that no sacrifice that you can offer, no deed that you may do will be more likely to find favour with the gods than your belief in their true nature, you may avoid superstition which is no less an evil than atheism.

12 1 Here follows the story related in the briefest possible words with the omission of everything that is merely unprofitable or superfluous:

They say that the Sun, when he became aware of Rhea’s intercourse with Cronus, invoked a curse upon her that she should not give birth to a child in any month or year; but Hermes, being enamoured of the goddess, consorted with her. Later, playing at draughts with the moon, he won from her the seventieth part of each of her periods of illumination, and from all the winnings he composed five days, and intercalated them as an addition to the three hundred and sixty days. The Egyptians even now call these five days intercalated and celebrate them as the birthdays of the gods. They relate that on the first of these days Osiris was born, and at the hour of his birth a voice issued forth saying, “The Lord of All advances to the light.” But some relate that a certain Pamyles, while he was drawing water in Thebes, heard a voice issuing from the shrine of Zeus, which bade him proclaim with a loud voice that a mighty and beneficent king, Osiris, had been born; and for this Cronus entrusted to him the child Osiris, which he brought up. It is in his honour that the festival of Pamylia is celebrated, a festival which resembles the phallic processions. On the second of these days Arueris was born whom they call Apollo, and some call him also the elder Horus. On the third day Typhon was born, but not in due season or manner, but with a blow he broke through his mother’s side and leapt forth. On the fourth day Isis was born in the regions that are ever moist; and on the fifth Nephthys, to whom they give the name of Finality and the name of Aphroditê, and some also the name of Victory. There is also a tradition that Osiris and Arueris were sprung from the Sun, Isis from Hermes, 356 and Typhon and Nephthys from Cronus. For this reason the kings considered the third of the intercalated days as inauspicious, and transacted no business on that day, nor did they give any attention to their bodies until nightfall. They relate, moreover, that Nephthys became the wife of Typhon; but Isis and Osiris were enamoured of each other and consorted together in the darkness of the womb before their birth. Some say that Arueris came from this union and was called the elder Horus by the Egyptians, but Apollo by the Greeks.

13 1 One of the first acts related of Osiris in his reign was to deliver the Egyptians from their destitute and brutish manner of living. This he did by showing them the fruits of cultivation, by giving them laws, and by teaching them to honour the gods. Later he travelled over the whole earth civilizing it without the slightest need of arms, but most of the peoples he won over to his way by the charm of his persuasive discourse combined with song and all manner of music. Hence the Greeks came to identify him with Dionysus.

During his absence the tradition is that Typhon attempted nothing revolutionary because Isis, who was in control, was vigilant and alert; but when he returned home Typhon contrived a treacherous plot against him and formed a group of conspirators seventy-two in number. He had also the co-operation of a queen from Ethiopia who was there at the time and whose name they report as Aso. Typhon, having secretly measured Osiris’s body and having made ready a beautiful chest of corresponding size artistically ornamented, caused it to be brought into the room where the festivity was in progress. The company was much pleased at the sight of it and admired it greatly, whereupon Typhon jestingly promised to present it to the man who should find the chest to be exactly his length when he lay down in it. They all tried it in turn, but no one fitted it; then Osiris got into it and lay down, and those who were in the plot ran to it and slammed down the lid, which they fastened by nails from the outside and also by using molten lead. Then they carried the chest to the river and sent it on its way to the sea through the Tanitic Mouth. Wherefore the Egyptians even to this day name this mouth the hateful and execrable. Such is the tradition. They say also that the date on which this deed was done was the seventeenth day of Athyr, when the sun passes through Scorpion, and in the twenty-eighth year of the reign of Osiris; but some say that these are the years of his life and not of his reign.

14 1 The first to learn of the deed and to bring to men’s knowledge an account of what had been done were the Pans and Satyrs who lived in the region around Chemmis, and so, even to this day, the sudden confusion and consternation of a crowd is called a panic. Isis, when the tidings reached her, at once cut off one of her tresses and put on a garment of mourning in a place where the city still bears the name of Kopto. Others think that the name means deprivation, for they also express “deprive” by means of “koptein.” But Isis wandered everywhere at her wits’ end; no one whom she approached did she fail to address, and even when she met some little children she asked them about the chest. As it happened, they had seen it, and they told her the mouth of the river through which the friends of Typhon had launched the coffin into the sea. Wherefore the Egyptians think that little children possess the power of prophecy, and they try to divine the future from the portents which they find in children’s words, especially when children are playing about in holy places and crying out whatever chances to come into their minds.

They relate also that Isis, learning that Osiris in his love had consorted with her sister through ignorance, in the belief that she was Isis, and seeing the proof of this in the garland of melilote which he had left with Nephthys, sought to find the child; for the mother, immediately after its birth, had exposed it because of her fear of Typhon. And when the child had been found, after great toil and trouble, with the help of dogs which led Isis to it, it was brought up and became her guardian and attendant, receiving the name of Anubis, and it is said to protect the gods just as dogs protect men.

15 1 Thereafter Isis, as they relate, learned 357 that the chest had been cast up by the sea near the land of Byblus and that the waves had gently set it down in the midst of a clump of heather. The heather in a short time ran up into a very beautiful and massive stock, and enfolded and embraced the chest with its growth and concealed it within its trunk. The king of the country admired the great size of the plant, and cut off the portion that enfolded the chest (which was now hidden from sight), and used it as a pillar to support the roof of his house. These facts, they say, Isis ascertained by the divine inspiration of Rumour, and came to Byblus and sat down by a spring, all dejection and tears; she exchanged no word with anybody, save only that she welcomed the queen’s maidservants and treated them with great amiability, plaiting their hair for them band imparting to their persons a wondrous fragrance from her own body. But when the queen observed her maidservants, a longing came upon her for the unknown woman and for such hairdressing and for a body fragrant with ambrosia. Thus it happened that Isis was sent for and became so intimate with the queen that the queen made her the nurse of her baby. They say that the king’s name was Malcander; the queen’s name some say was Astartê, others Saosis, and still others Nemanûs, which the Greeks would call Athenaïs.

16 1 They relate that Isis nursed the child by giving it her finger to suck instead of her breast, and in the night she would burn away the mortal portions of its body. She herself would turn into a swallow and flit about the pillar with a wailing lament, until the queen who had been watching, when she saw her babe on fire, gave forth a loud cry and thus deprived it of immortality. Then the goddess disclosed herself and asked for the pillar which served to support the roof. She removed it with the greatest ease and cut away the wood of the heather which surrounded the chest; then, when she had wrapped up the wood in a linen cloth and had poured perfume upon it, she entrusted it to the care of the kings; and even to this day the people of Byblus venerate this wood which is preserved in the shrine of Isis. Then the goddess threw herself down upon the coffin with such a dreadful wailing that the younger of the king’s sons expired on the spot. The elder son she kept with her, and, having placed the coffin on board a boat, she put out from land. Since the Phaedrus river toward the early morning fostered a rather boisterous wind, the goddess grew angry and dried up its stream.

17 1 In the first place where she found seclusion, when she was quite by herself, they relate that she opened the chest and laid her face upon the face within and caressed it and wept. The child came quietly up behind her and saw what was there, and when the goddess became aware of his presence, she turned about and gave him one awful look of anger. The child could not endure the fright, and died. Others will not have it so, but assert that he fell overboard into the sea from the boat that was mentioned above. He also is the recipient of honours because of the goddess; for they say that the Maneros of whom the Egyptians sing at their convivial gatherings is this very child. Some say, however, that his name was Palaestinus or Pelusius, and that the city founded by the goddess was named in his honour. They also recount that this Maneros who is the theme of their songs was the first to invent music. But some say that the word is not the name of any person, but an expression belonging to the vocabulary of drinking and feasting: “Good luck be ours in things like this!”, and that this is really the idea expressed by the exclamation “maneros” whenever the Egyptians use it. In the same way we may be sure that the likeness of a corpse which, as it is exhibited to them, is carried around in a chest, is not a reminder of what happened to Osiris, as some assume; but it is to urge them, as they contemplate it, to use and to enjoy the present, since all very soon must be what it is now and this is their purpose in introducing it into the midst of merry-making.

18 1 As they relate, Isis proceeded to her son Horus, who was being reared in Buto, and bestowed the chest in a place well out of the way; but Typhon, who was hunting by night in the light of the moon, happened upon it. 358 Recognizing the body he divided it into fourteen parts and scattered them, each in a different place. Isis learned of this and sought for them again, sailing through the swamps in a boat of papyrus. This is the reason why people sailing in such boats are not harmed by the crocodiles, since these creatures in their own way show either their fear or their reverence for the goddess.

The traditional result of Osiris’s dismemberment is that there are many so called tombs of Osiris in Egypt; for Isis held a funeral for each part when she had found it. Others deny this and assert that she caused effigies of him to be made and these she distributed among the several cities, pretending that she was giving them his body, in order that he might receive divine honours in a greater number of cities, band also that, if Typhon should succeed in overpowering Horus, he might despair of ever finding the true tomb when so many were pointed out to him, all of them called the tomb of Osiris.

Of the parts of Osiris’s body the only one which Isis did not find was the male member, for the reason that this had been at once tossed into the river, and the lepidotus, the sea-bream, and the pike had fed upon it; and it is from these very fishes the Egyptians are most scrupulous in abstaining. But Isis made a replica of the member to take its place, and consecrated the phallus, in honour of which the Egyptians even at the present day celebrate a festival.

19 1 Later, as they relate, Osiris came to Horus from the other world and exercised and trained him for the battle. After a time Osiris asked Horus what he held to be the most noble of all things. When Horus replied, “To avenge one’s father and mother for evil done to them,” Osiris then asked him what animal he considered the most useful for them who go forth to battle; and when Horus said, “A horse,” Osiris was surprised and raised the question why it was that he had not rather said a lion than a horse. Horus answered that a lion was a useful thing for a man in need of assistance, but that a horse served best for cutting off the flight of an enemy and annihilating him. When Osiris heard this he was much pleased, since he felt that Horus had now an adequate preparation. It is said that, as many were continually transferring their allegiance to Horus, Typhon’s concubine, Thueris, also came over to him; and a serpent which pursued her was cut to pieces by Horus’s men, and now, in memory of this, the people throw down a rope in their midst and chop it up.

Now the battle, as they relate, lasted many days and Horus prevailed. Isis, however, to whom Typhon was delivered in chains, did not cause him to be put to death, but released him and let him go. Horus could not endure this with equanimity, be laid hands upon his mother and wrested the royal diadem from her head; but Hermes put upon her a helmet like unto the head of a cow.

Typhon formally accused Horus of being an illegitimate child, but with the help of Hermes to plead his cause it was decided by the gods that he also was legitimate. Typhon was then overcome in two other battles. Osiris consorted with Isis after his death, and she became the mother of Harpocrates, untimely born and weak in his lower limbs.

35820 These are nearly all the important points of the legend, with the omission of the most infamous of the tales, such as that about the dismemberment of Horus and the decapitation of Isis. There is one thing that I have no need to mention to you: if they hold such opinions and relate such tales about the nature of the blessed and imperishable (in accordance with which our concept of the divine must be framed) and if such deeds and occurrences actually took place, then

Much there is to spit and cleanse the mouth,

as Aeschylus has it. But the fact is that you yourself detest those persons who hold such abnormal and outlandish opinions about the gods. That these accounts do not, in least, resemble the sort of loose fictions and frivolous fabrications which poets and writers of prose evolve from themselves, after the manner of spiders, interweaving and extending their unestablished first thoughts, but that these contain narrations of certain puzzling events and experiences, you will of yourself understand. Just as the rainbow, according to the account of the mathematicians, is a reflection of the sun, and owes its many hues to the withdrawal of our gaze from the sun and our fixing it on the cloud, 359 so the somewhat fanciful accounts here set down are but reflections of some true tale which turns back our thoughts to other matters; their sacrifices plainly suggest this, in that they have mourning and melancholy reflected in them; and so also does the structure of their temples, which in one portion are expanded into wings and into uncovered and unobstructed corridors, and in another portion have secret vesting-rooms in the darkness under ground, like cells or chapels; and not the least important suggestion is the opinion held regarding the shrines of Osiris, whose body is said to have been laid in many different places. For they say that Diochites is the name given to a small town, on the ground that it alone contains the true tomb; and that the prosperous and influential men among the Egyptians are mostly buried in Abydos, since it is the object of their ambition to be buried in the same ground with the body of Osiris. In Memphis, however, they say, the Apis is kept, being the image of the soul of Osiris, whose body also lies there. The name of this city some interpret as “the haven of the good” and others as meaning properly the “tomb of Osiris.” They also say that the sacred island by Philae at all other times is untrodden by man and quite unapproachable, and even birds do not alight on it nor fishes approach it; yet, at one special time, the priests cross over to it, and perform the sacrificial rites for the dead, and lay wreaths upon the tomb, which lies in the encompassing shade of a persea-tree, which surpasses in height any olive.

21 1 Eudoxus says that, while many tombs of Osiris are spoken of in Egypt, his body lies in Busiris; for this was the place of his birth; moreover, Taphosiris requires no comment, for the name itself means “the tomb of Osiris.” I pass over the cutting of wood, the rending of linen, and the libations that are offered, for the reason that many of their secret rites are involved therein. In regard not only to these gods, but in regard to the other gods, save only those whose existence had no beginning and shall have no end, the priests say that their bodies, after they have done with their labours, have been placed in the keeping of the priests and are cherished there, but that their souls shine as the stars in the firmament, and the soul of Isis is called by the Greeks the Dog-star, but by the Egyptians Sothis, and the soul of Horus is called Orion, and the soul of Typhon the Bear. Also they say that all the other Egyptians pay the agreed assessment for the entombment of the animals held in honour, but that the inhabitants of the Theban territory only do not contribute because they believe in no mortal god, but only in the god whom they call Kneph, whose existence had no beginning and shall have no end.

22 1 Many things like these are narrated and pointed out, and if there be some who think that in these are commemorated the dire and momentous acts and experiences of kings and despots who, by reason of their pre-eminent virtue or might, laid claim to the glory of being styled gods, and later had to submit to the vagaries of fortune, then these persons employ the easiest means of escape from the narrative, and not ineptly do they transfer the disrepute from the gods to men; and in this they have the support of the common traditions. The Egyptians, in fact, have a tradition that Hermes had thin arms and big elbows, that Typhon was red in complexion, Horus white, and Osiris dark, as if they had been in their nature but mortal men. Moreover, they give to Osiris the title of general, and the title of pilot to Canopus, from whom they say that the star derives its name; falso that the vessel which the Greeks call Argo, in form like the ship of Osiris, has been set among the constellations in his honour, and its course lies not far from that of Orion and the Dog-star; of these the Egyptians believe that one is sacred to Horus and the other to Isis.

23 1 I hesitate, lest this be the moving of things immovable and not only “warring against the long years of time,” as Simonides has it, but warring, too, against “many a nation and race of men” who are possessed by a feeling of piety towards these gods, and thus we should not stop short of transplanting such names from the heavens to the earth, 360 and eliminating and dissipating the reverence and faith implanted in nearly all mankind at birth, opening wide the great doors to the godless throng, degrading things divine to the human level, and giving a splendid licence to the deceitful utterances of Euhemerus of Messenê, who of himself drew up copies of an incredible and non-existent mythology, and spread atheism over the whole inhabited earth by obliterating the gods of our belief and converting them all alike into names of generals, admirals, and kings, who, forsooth, lived in very ancient times and are recorded bin inscriptions written in golden letters at Panchon, which no foreigner and no Greek had ever happened to meet with, save only Euhemerus. He, it seems, made a voyage to the Panchoans and Triphyllians, who never existed anywhere on earth and do not exist!

24 1 However, mighty deeds of Semiramis are celebrated among the Assyrians, and mighty deeds of Sesostris in Egypt, and the Phrygians, even to this day, call brilliant and marvellous exploits “manic” because Manes, one of their very early kings, proved himself a good man and exercised a vast influence among them. Some give his name as Masdes. Cyrus led the Persians, and Alexander the Macedonians, in victory after victory, almost to the ends of the earth; yet these have only the name and fame of noble kings. “But if some, elated by a great self-conceit,” as Plato says, “with souls enkindled with the fire of youth and folly accompanied by arrogance,” have assumed to be called gods and to have temples dedicated in their honour, yet has their repute flourished by a brief time, and then, convicted of vain-glory and imposture,

Swift in their fate, like to smoke in the air, rising upward they flitted,

and now, like fugitive slaves without claim to protection, they have been dragged from their shrines and altars, and have nothing left to them save only their monuments and their tombs. Hence the elder Antigonus, when a certain Hermodotus in a poem proclaimed him to be “the Offspring of the Sun and a god,” said, “the slave who attends to my chamber-pot is not conscious of any such thing!” Moreover, Lysippus the sculptor was quite right in his disapproval of the painter Apelles, because Apelles in his portrait of Alexander had represented him with a thunderbolt in his hand, whereas he himself had represented Alexander holding a spear, the glory of which no length of years could ever dim, since it was truthful and was his by right.

25 1 Better, therefore, is the judgment of those who hold that the stories about Typhon, Osiris, and Isis, are records of experiences of neither gods nor men, but of demigods, ewhom Plato and Pythagoras and Xenocrates and Chrysippus, following the lead of early writers on sacred subjects, allege to have been stronger than men and, in their might, greatly surpassing our nature, yet not possessing the divine quality unmixed and uncontaminated, but with a share also in the nature of the soul and in the perceptive faculties of the body, and with a susceptibility to pleasure and pain and to whatsoever other experience is incident to these mutations, and is the source of much disquiet in some and of less in others. For in demigods, as in men, there are divers degrees of virtue and vice. The exploits of the Giants and Titans celebrated among the Greeks, the lawless deeds of a Cronus, the stubborn resistance of Python against Apollo, the flights of Dionysus, and the wanderings of Demeter, do not fall at all short of the exploits of Osiris and Typhon and other exploits which anyone may hear freely repeated in traditional story. So, too, all the things which are kept always away from the ears and eyes of the multitude by being concealed behind mystic rites and ceremonies have a similar explanation.

26 1 As we read Homer, we notice that in many different places he distinctively calls the good “god-like” 361 and “peers of the gods” and “having prudence gained from the gods,” but that the epithet derived from the demigods (or daemons) he uses of the worthy and worthless alike; for example:

Daemon-possessed, come on! Why seek you to frighten the Argives

Thus?

and again

When for the fourth time onward he came with a rush, like a daemon;

and

Daemon-possessed, in what do Priam and children of Priam

Work you such ill that your soul is ever relentlessly eager

Ilium, fair-built city, to bring to complete desolation?

The assumption, then, is that the demigods (or daemons) have a complex and inconsistent nature and purpose; wherefore Plato assigns to the Olympian gods right-hand qualities and odd numbers, and to the demigods the opposite of these. Xenocrates also is of the opinion that such days as are days of ill omen, and such festivals as have associated with them either beatings or lamentations or fastings or scurrilous language or ribald jests have no relation to the honours paid to the gods or to worthy demigods, but he believes that there exist in the space about us certain great and powerful natures, obdurate, however, and morose, which take pleasure in such things as these, and, if they succeed in obtaining them, resort to nothing worse.

Then again, Hesiod calls the worthy and good demigods “holy deities” and “guardians of mortals” and

Givers of wealth, and having therein a reward that is kingly.

Plato calls this class of beings an interpretative and ministering class, midway between gods and men, in that they convey thither the prayers and petitions of men, and thence they bring hither the oracles and the gifts of good things.

Empedocles says also that the demigods must pay the penalty for the sins that they commit and the duties that they neglect:

Might of the Heavens chases them forth to the realm of the Ocean;

Ocean spews them out on the soil of the Earth, and Earth drives them

Straight to the rays of the tireless Sun, who consigns them to Heaven’s

Whirlings; thus one from another receives them, but ever with loathing;

until, when they have thus been chastened and purified, they recover the place and position to which they belong in accord with Nature.

27 1 Stories akin to these and to others like them they say are related about Typhon; how that, prompted by jealousy and hostility, he wrought terrible deeds and, by bringing utter confusion upon all things, filled the whole Earth, and the ocean as well, with ills, and later paid the penalty therefor. But the avenger, the sister and wife of Osiris, after she had quenched and suppressed the madness and fury of Typhon, was not indifferent to the contests and struggles which she had endured, nor to her own wanderings nor to her manifold deeds of wisdom and many feats of bravery, nor would she accept oblivion and silence for them, but she intermingled in the most holy rites portrayals and suggestions and representations of her experiences at that time, and sanctified them, both as a lesson in godliness and an encouragement for men and women who find themselves in the clutch of like calamities. She herself and Osiris, translated for their virtues from good demigods into gods, as were Heracles and Dionysus later, not incongruously enjoy double honours, both those of gods and those of demigods, and their powers extend everywhere, but are greatest in the regions above the earth and beneath the earth. In fact, men assert that Pluto is none other than Serapis and that Persephonê is Isis, even as Archemachus of Euboea has said, and also Heracleides Ponticus who holds the oracle in Canopus to be fan oracle of Pluto.

28 1 Ptolemy Soter saw in a dreamb the colossal statue of Pluto in Sinopê, not knowing nor having ever seen how it looked, and in his dream the statue bade him convey it with all speed to Alexandria. He had no information and no means of knowing where the statue was situated, but as he related the vision to his friends there was discovered for him a much travelled man by the name of Sosibius, who said that he had seen in Sinopê just such a great statue as the king thought he saw. Ptolemy, therefore, sent Soteles and Dionysius, who, after a considerable time and with great difficulty, and not without the help of divine providence, 362 succeeded in stealing the statue and bringing it away. When it had been conveyed to Egypt and exposed to view, Timotheus, the expositor of sacred law, and Manetho of Sebennytus, and their associates, conjectured that it was the statue of Pluto, basing their conjecture on the Cerberus and the serpent with it, and they convinced Ptolemy that it was the statue of none other of the gods but Serapis. It certainly did not bear this name when it came for Sinope, but, after it had been conveyed to Alexandria, it took to itself the name which Pluto bears among the Egyptians, that of Serapis. Moreover, since Heracleitus the physical philosopher says, “The same are Hades and Dionysus, to honour whom they rage and rave,” people are inclined to come to this opinion. In fact, those who insist that the body is called Hades, since the soul is, as it were, deranged and inebriate when it is in the body, are too frivolous in their use of allegory. It is better to identify Osiris with Dionysus and Serapis with Osiris, who received this appellation at the time when he changed his nature. For this reason Serapis is a god of all peoples in common, even as Osiris is; and this they who have participated in the holy rites well know.

29 1 It is not worth while to pay any attention to the Phrygian writings, in which it is said that Serapis was the son of Heracles, and Isis was his daughter, and Typhon was the son of Alcaeus, who also was a son of Heracles; nor must we fail to contemn Phylarchus, who writes that Dionysus was the first to bring from India into Egypt two bulls, and that the name of one was Apis and of the other Osiris. But Serapis is the name of him who sets the universe in order, and it is derived from “sweep” (sairein), which some say means “to beautify” and “to put in order.” As a matter of fact, these statements of Phylarchus are absurd, but even more absurd are those put forth by those who say that Serapis is no god at all, but the name of the coffin of Apis; and that there are in Memphis certain bronze gates called the Gates of Oblivion and Lamentation, which are opened when the burial of Apis takes place, and they give out a deep and harsh sound; and it is because of this that we lay hand upon anything of bronze that gives out a sound. More moderate is the statement of those who say that the derivation is from “shoot” (seuesthai) or “scoot” (sousthai), meaning the general movement of the universe. Most of the priests say that Osiris and Apis are conjoined into one, thus explaining to us and informing us that we must regard Apis as the bodily image of the soul of Osiris. But it is my opinion that, if the name Serapis is Egyptian, it denotes cheerfulness and rejoicing, and I base this opinion on the fact that Egyptians call their festival of rejoicing sairei. In fact, Plato says that Hades is so named because he is a beneficent and gentle god towards those who have come to abide with him. Moreover, among the Egyptians many others of the proper names are real words; for example, that place beneath the earth, to which they believe that souls depart after the end of this life, they call Amenthes, the name signifying “the one who receives and gives.” Whether this is one of those words which came from Greece in very ancient times and were brought back again we will consider later, but for the present let us go on to discuss the remainder of the views now before us.

30 1 Now Osiris and Isis changed from good minor deities into gods. But the power of Typhon, weakened and crushed, but still fighting and struggling against extinction, they try to console and mollify by certain sacrifices; but again there are times when, fat certain festivals, they humiliate and insult him by assailing red-headed men with jeering, and by throwing an ass over the edge of a precipice, as the people of Kopto do, because Typhon had red hair and in colour resembled an ass. The people of Busiris and Lycopolis do not use trumpets at all, because these make a sound like an ass; and altogether they regard the ass as an unclean animal dominated by some higher power because of its resemblance to Typhon, and when they make cakes at their sacrifices in the month of Paÿni and of Phaophi they imprint upon them the device of an ass tied by a rope. 363 Moreover, in the sacrifice to the Sun they enjoin upon their worshippers not to wear any golden ornaments nor to give fodder to an ass. It is plain that the adherents of Pythagoras hold Typhon to be a daemonic power; for they say that he was born in an even factor of fifty-six; and the dominion of the triangle belongs to Hades, Dionysus, and Ares, that of the quadrilateral to Rhea, Aphroditê, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera, that of the dodecagon to Zeus, that of a polygon of fifty-six sides to Typhon, as Eudoxus has recorded.

31 1 The Egyptians, because of their belief that Typhon was of a red complexion, also dedicate to sacrifice such of their neat cattle as are of a red colour, but they conduct the examination of these so scrupulously that, if an animal has but one hair black or white, they think it wrong to sacrifice it; for they regard as suitable for sacrifice not what is dear to the gods but the reverse, namely, such animals as have incarnate in them souls of unholy and unrighteous men who have been transformed into other bodies. For this reason they invoke curses on the head of the victim and cut it off, and in early times they used to throw it into the river, but now they sell it to aliens. Upon the neat animal intended for sacrifice cthose of the priests who were called “Sealers” used to put a mark; and their seal, as Castor records, bore an engraving of a man with his knee on the ground and his hands tied behind his back, and with a sword at his throat. They think, as has been said, that the ass reaps the consequences of his resemblance because of his stupidity and his lascivious behaviour no less than because of his colour. This is also the reason why, since they hated Ochus most of all the Persian kings because he was a detested and abominable ruler, they nicknamed him “the Ass”; and he remarked, “But this Ass will feast upon your Bull,” and slaughtered Apis, as Deinon has recorded. But those who relate that Typhon’s flight from the battle was made on the back of an ass and lasted for seven days, and that after he had made his escape, he became the father of sons, Hierosolymus and Judaeus, are manifestly, as the very names show, attempting to drag Jewish traditions into the legend.

32 1 Such, then, are the possible interpretations which these facts suggest. But now let us begin over again, and consider first the most perspicuous of those who have a reputation for expounding matters more philosophically. These men are like the Greeks who say that Cronus is but a figurative name for Chronus (Time), Hera for Air, and that the birth of Hephaestus symbolises the change of Air into Fire. And thus among the Egyptians such men say that Osiris is the Nile consorting with the Earth, which is Isis, and that the sea is Typhon into which the Nile discharges its waters and is lost to view and dissipated, esave for that part which the earth takes up and absorbs and thereby becomes fertilized.

There is also a religious lament sung over Cronus. The lament is for him that is born in the regions on the left, and suffers dissolution in the regions on the right; for the Egyptians believe that the eastern regions are the face of the world, the northern the right, and the southern the left. The Nile, therefore, which runs from the south and is swallowed up by the sea in the north, is naturally said to have its birth on the left and its dissolution on the right. For this reason the priests religiously keep themselves aloof from the sea, and call salt the “spume of Typhon”; and one of the things forbidden them is to set salt upon a table; also they do not speak to pilots, because these men make use of the sea, and gain their livelihood from the sea. This is also not the least of the reasons why they eschew fish, and they portray hatred by drawing the picture of a fish. At Saïs in the vestibule of the temple of Athena was carved a babe and an aged man, and after this a hawk, and next a fish, and finally an hippopotamus. The symbolic meaning of this was: “O ye that are coming into the world and departing from it, God hateth shamelessness.” The babe is the symbol of coming into the world and the aged man the symbol of departing from it, and by a hawk they indicate God, by the fish hatred, as has already been said, because of the sea, and by the hippopotamus shamelessness; 364 for it is said that he kills his sire and forces his mother to mate with him. That saying of the adherents of Pythagoras, that the sea is a tear of Cronus, may seem to hint at its impure and extraneous nature.

Let this, then, be stated incidentally, as a matter of record that is common knowledge. 33 1 But the wiser of the priests call not only the Nile Osiris and the sea Typhon, but they simply give the name of Osiris to the whole source and faculty creative of moisture, believing this to be the cause of generation and the substance of life-producing seed; and the name of Typhon they give to all that is dry, fiery, and arid, in general, and antagonistic to moisture. Therefore, because they believe that he was personally of a reddish sallow colour, they are not eager to meet men of such complexion, nor do they like to associate with them.

Osiris, on the other hand, according to their legendary tradition, was dark, because water darkens everything, earth and clothes and clouds, when it comes into contact with them. In young people the presence of moisture renders their hair black, while greyness, like a paleness as it were, is induced by dryness in those who are passing their prime. Also the spring-time is vigorous, prolific, and agreeable; but the autumn, since it lacks moisture, is inimical to plants and cunhealthful for living creatures.c

The bull kept at Heliopolis which they call Mneuis, and which is sacred to Osiris (some hold it to be the sire of Apis), is black and has honours second only to Apis. Egypt, moreover, which has the blackest of soils, they call by the same name as the black portion of the eye, “Chemia,” and compare it to a heart; for it is warm and moist and is enclosed by the southern portions of the inhabited world and adjoins them, like the heart in a man’s left side.

34 1 They say that the sun and moon do not use chariots, but boats in which to sail round in their courses; and by this they intimate that the nourishment and origin of these heavenly bodies is from moisture. They think also that Homer, like Thales, had gained his knowledge from the Egyptians, when he postulated water as the source and origin of all things; for, according to them, Oceanus is Osiris, and Tethys is Isis, since she is the kindly nurse and provider for all things. In fact, the Greeks call emission apousia and coition synousia, and the son (hyios) from water (hydor) and rain (hysai); Dionysus also they call Hyes since he is lord of the nature of moisture; and he is no other than Osiris. In fact, Hellanicus seems to have heard Osiris pronounced Hysiris by the priests, for he regularly spells the name in this way, deriving it, in all probability, efrom the nature of Osiris and the ceremony of finding him.

35 1 That Osiris is identical with Dionysus who could more fittingly know than yourself, Clea? For you are at the head of the inspired maidens of Delphi, and have been consecrated by your father and mother in the holy rites of Osiris. If, however, for the benefit of others it is needful to adduce proofs of this identity, let us leave undisturbed what may not be told, but the public ceremonies which the priests perform in the burial of the Apis, when they convey his body on an improvised bier, do not in any way come short of a Bacchic procession; for they fasten skins of fawns about themselves, and carry Bacchic wands and indulge in shoutings and movements exactly as do those who are under the spell of the Dionysiac ecstasies. For the same reason many of the Greeks make statues of Dionysus in the form of a bull; and the women of Elis invoke him, praying that the god may come with the hoof of a bull; and the epithet applied to Dionysus among the Argives is “Son of the Bull.” They call him up out of the water by the sound of trumpets, at the same time casting into the depths a lamb as an offering to the Keeper of the Gate. The trumpets they conceal in Bacchic wands, as Socrates has stated in his treatise on The Holy Ones. Furthermore, the tales regarding the Titans and the rites celebrated by night agree with the accounts of the dismemberment of Osiris and his revivification and regenesis. 365 Similar agreement is found too in the tales about their sepulchres. The Egyptians, as has already been stated, point out tombs of Osiris in many places, and the people of Delphi believe that the remains of Dionysus rest with them close beside the oracle; and the Holy Ones offer a secret sacrifice in the shrine of Apollo whenever the devotees of Dionysus wake the God of the Mystic Basket. To show that the Greeks regard Dionysus as the lord and master not only of wine, but of the nature of every sort of moisture, it is enough that Pindar be our witness, when he says

May gladsome Dionysus swell the fruit upon the trees,

The hallowed splendour of harvest time.

For this reason all who reverence Osiris are prohibited from destroying a cultivated tree or blocking up a spring of water.

36 1 Not only the Nile, but every form of moisture they call simply the effusion of Osiris; and in their holy rites the water jar in honour of the god heads the procession. And by the picture of a rush they represent a king and the southern region of the world, and the rush is interpreted to mean the watering and fructifying of all things, and in its nature it seems to bear some resemblance to the generative member. Moreover, when they celebrate the festival of the Pamylia which, as has been said, is of a phallic member, they expose and carry about a statue of which the male member is triple; for the god is the Source, and every source, by its fecundity, multiplies what proceeds from it; and for “many times” we have a habit of saying “thrice,” cas, for example, “thrice happy,” and

Bonds, even thrice as many, unnumbered,

unless, indeed, the word “triple” is used by the early writers in its strict meaning; for the nature of moisture, being the source and origin of all things, created out of itself three primal material substances, Earth, Air and Fire. In fact, the tale that is annexed to the legend to the effect that Typhon cast the male member of Osiris into the river, and Isis could not find it, but constructed and shaped a replica of it, and ordained that it should be honoured and borne in processions, plainly comes round to this doctrine, that the creative and germinal power of the god, at the very first, acquired moisture as its substance, and through moisture combined with whatever was by nature capable of participating in generation.

There is another tale current among the Egyptians that Apopis, brother of the Sun, made war upon Zeus, and that because Osiris espoused Zeus’s cause and helped him to overthrow his enemy, Zeus adopted Osiris as his son and gave him the name of Dionysus. It may be demonstrated that the legend contained in this tale has some approximation to truth so far as Nature is concerned; for the Egyptians apply the name “Zeus” to the wind, and whatever is dry or fiery is antagonistic to this. This is not the Sun, but it has some kinship with the Sun; and the moisture, eby doing away with the excess of dryness, increases and strengthens the exhalations by which the wind is fostered and made vigorous.

37 1 Moreover, the Greeks are wont to consecrate the ivy to Dionysus, and it is said that among the Egyptians the name for ivy is chenosiris, the meaning of the name being, as they say, “the plant of Osiris.” Now, Ariston, the author of Athenian Colonization, happened upon a letter of Alexarchus, in which it is recorded that Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Isis, and is called not Osiris, but Arsaphes, spelled with an “a,” the name denoting virility. Hermaeus, too, makes this statement in the first volume of his book The Egyptians; for he says that Osiris, properly interpreted, means “sturdy.” I leave out of account Mnaseas’s annexation of Dionysus, Osiris, and Serapis to Epaphus, as well as Anticleides’ statement that Isis was the daughter of Prometheus and was wedded to Dionysus. The fact is that the peculiarities already mentioned regarding the festival and sacrifices carry a conviction more manifest than any testimony of authorities.

38 1 Of the stars the Egyptians think that the Dog-star is the star of Isis, because it is the bringer of water. 366 They also hold the Lion in honour, and they adorn the doorways of their shrines with gaping lions’ heads, because the Nile overflows

When for the first time the Sun comes into conjunction with Leo.

As they regard the Nile as the effusion of Osiris, so they hold and believe the earth to be the body of Isis, not all of it, but so much of it as the Nile covers, fertilizing it and uniting with it. From this union they make Horus to be born. The all-conserving and fostering Hora, that is the seasonable tempering of the surrounding air, is Horus, who they say was brought up by Leto in the marshes round about Buto; for the watery and saturated land best nurtures bthose exhalations which quench and abate aridity and dryness.

The outmost parts of the land beside the mountains and bordering on the sea the Egyptians call Nephthys. This is why they give to Nephthys the name of “Finality,” and say that she is the wife of Typhon. Whenever, then, the Nile overflows and with abounding waters spreads far away to those who dwell in the outermost regions, they call this the union of Osiris with Nephthys, which is proved by the upspringing of the plants. Among these is the melilotus, by the wilting and failing of which, as the story goes, Typhon gained knowledge of the wrong done to his bed. So Isis gave birth to Horus in lawful wedlock, but Nephthys bore Anubis clandestinely. However, in the chronological lists of the kings they record that Nephthys, after her marriage to Typhon, was at first barren. If they say this, not about a woman, but about the goddess, they must mean by it the utter barrenness and unproductivity of the earth resulting from a hard-baked soil.

39 1 The insidious scheming and usurpation of Typhon, then, is the power of drought, which gains control and dissipates the moisture which is the source of the Nile and of its rising; and his coadjutor, the Queen of the Ethiopians, signifies allegorically the south winds from Ethiopia; for whenever these gain the upper hand over the northerly or Etesian winds which drive the clouds towards Ethiopia, and when they prevent the falling of the rains which cause the rising of the Nile, then Typhon, being in possession, blazes with scorching heat; and having gained complete mastery, he forces the Nile in retreat to draw back its waters for weakness, and, flowing at the bottom of its almost empty channel, to proceed to the sea. The story told of the shutting up of Osiris in the chest seems to mean nothing else than the vanishing and disappearance of water. Consequently they say that the disappearance of Osiris occurred in the month of Athyr, at the time when, owing to the complete cessation of the Etesian winds, the Nile recedes to its low level and the land becomes denuded. As the nights grow longer, the darkness increases, and the potency of the light is abated and subdued. Then among the gloomy rites which the priests perform, they shroud the gilded image of a cow with a black linen vestment, and display her as a sign of mourning for the goddess, inasmuch as they regard both the cow and the earth as the image of Isis; and this is kept up for four days consecutively, beginning with the seventeenth of the month. The things mourned for are four in number: first, the departure and recession of the Nile; second, the complete extinction of the north winds, as the south winds gain the upper hand; third, the day’s growing shorter than the night; and, to crown all, the denudation of the earth together with the defoliation of the trees and shrubs at this time. On the nineteenth day they go down to the sea at night-time; and the keepers of the robes and the priests bring forth the sacred chest containing a small golden coffer, into which they pour some potable water which they have taken up, and a great shout arises from the company for joy that Osiris is found. Then they knead some fertile soil with the water and mix in spices and incense of a very costly sort, and fashion therefrom a crescent-shaped figure, which they clothe and adorn, thus indicating that they regard these gods as the substance of Earth and Water.

40 1 When Isis recovered Osiris and was watching Horus grow up 367 as he was being made strong by the exhalations and mists and clouds, Typhon was vanquished but not annihilated; for the goddess who holds sway over the Earth would not permit the complete annihilation of the nature opposed to moisture, but relaxed and moderated it, being desirous that its tempering potency should persist, because it was not possible for a complete world to exist, if the fiery element left it and disappeared. Even if this story were not current among them, one would hardly be justified in rejecting that other account, to the effect that Typhon, many ages ago, held sway over Osiris’s domain; for Egypt used to be all a sea, and, for that reason, beven to day it is found to have shells in its mines and mountains. Moreover, all the springs and wells, of which there are many, have a saline and brackish water, as if some stale dregs of the ancient sea had collected there.

But, in time, Horus overpowered Typhon; that is to say, there came on a timely abundance of rain, and the Nile forced out the sea and revealed the fertile land, which it filled out with its alluvial deposits. This has support in the testimony of our own observation; for we see, even to day, as the river brings down new silt and advances the land, that the deep waters gradually recede and, as the bottom gains in height by reason of the alluvial deposits, the water of the sea runs off from these. We also note that Pharos, which Homer knew as distant a day’s sail from Egypt, is now a part of it; not that the island has extended its area by rising, or has come nearer to the land, but the sea that separated them was obliged to retire before the river, as the river reshaped the land and made it to increase.

The fact is that all this is somewhat like the doctrines promulgated by the Stoics about the gods; for they say that the creative and fostering spirit is Dionysus, the truculent and destructive is Heracles, the receptive is Ammon, that which pervades the Earth and its products is Demeter and the Daughter, and that which pervades the Sea is Poseidon.

36741 But the Egyptians, by combining with these physical explanations some of the scientific results derived from astronomy, think that dby Typhon is meant the solar world, and by Osiris the lunar world; they reason that the moon, because it has a light that is generative and productive of moisture, is kindly towards the young of animals and the burgeoning plants, whereas the sun, by its untempered and pitiless heat, makes all growing and flourishing vegetation hot and parched, and, through its blazing light, renders a large part of the earth uninhabitable, and in many a region overpowers the moon. For this reason the Egyptians regularly call Typhon “Seth,” which, being interpreted, means “overmastering and compelling.” They have a legend that Heracles, making his dwelling in the sun, is a companion for it in its revolutions, as is the case also with Hermes and the moon. In fact, the actions of the moon are like actions of reason and perfect wisdom, whereas those of the sun are like beatings administered through violence and brute strength. The Stoics assert that the sun is kindled and fed from the sea, but that for the moon the moving waters from the springs and lakes send up a sweet and mild exhalation.

42 1 The Egyptians have a legend that the end of Osiris’s life came on the seventeenth of the month, on which day it is quite evident to the eye that the period of the full moon is over. Because of this the Pythagoreans call this day “the Barrier,” and utterly abominate this number. For the number seventeen, coming in between the square sixteen and the oblong rectangle eighteen, which, as it happens, are the only plane figures that have their perimeters equal their areas, bars them off from each other and disjoins them, and breaks up the ratio of eight to eight and an eighth by its division into unequal intervals.

Some say that the years of Osiris’s life, others that the years of his reign, were twenty-eight; 368 for that is the number of the moon’s illuminations, and in that number of days does she complete her cycle. The wood which they cut on the occasions called the “burials of Osiris” they fashion into a crescent-shaped coffer because of the fact that the moon, when it comes near the sun, becomes crescent-shaped and disappears from our sight. The dismemberment of Osiris into fourteen parts they refer allegorically to the days of the waning of that satellite from the time of the full moon to the new moon. bAnd the day on which she becomes visible after escaping the solar rays and passing by the sun they style “Incomplete Good”; for Osiris is beneficent, and his name means many things, but, not least of all, an active and beneficent power, as they put it. The other name of the god, Omphis, Hermaeus says means “benefactor” when interpreted.

43 1 They think that the risings of the Nile have some relation to the illuminations of the moon; for the greatest rising, in the neighbourhood of Elephantinê, is twenty-eight cubits, which is the number of its illuminations that form the measure of each of its monthly cycles; the rising in the neighbourhood of Mendes and Xoïs, which is the least, is six cubits, corresponding to the first quarter. The mean rising, in the neighbourhood of Memphis, when it is normal, is fourteen cubits, corresponding to the full moon.

The Apis, they say, is the animate image of Osiris, and he comes into being when a fructifying light thrusts forth from the moon and falls upon a cow in her breeding-season. Wherefore there are many things in the Apis that resemble features of the moon, his bright parts being darkened by the shadowy. Moreover, at the time of the new moon in the month of Phamenoth they celebrate a festival to which they give the name of “Osiris’s coming to the Moon,” and this marks the beginning of the spring. Thus they make the power of Osiris to be fixed in the Moon, and say that Isis, since she is generation, is associated with him. For this reason they also call the Moon the mother of the world, and they think that she has a nature both male and female, as she is receptive and made pregnant by the Sun, but she herself in turn emits and disseminates into the air generative principles. For, as they believe, the destructive activity of Typhon does not always prevail, but oftentimes is overpowered by such generation and put in bonds, and then at a later time is again released and contends against Horus, who is the terrestrial universe; and this is never completely exempt either from dissolution or from generation.

44 1 There are some who would make the legend an allegorical reference to matters touching eclipses; for the Moon suffers eclipse only when she is full, with the Sun directly opposite to her, and she falls into the shadow of the Earth, as they say Osiris fell into his coffin. Then again, the Moon herself obscures the Sun and causes solar eclipses, always on the thirtieth of the month; ehowever, she does not completely annihilate the Sun, and likewise Isis did not annihilate Typhon.

When Nephthys gave birth to Anubis, Isis treated the child as if it were her own; for Nephthys is that which is beneath the earth and invisible, Isis that which is above the earth and visible; and the circle which touches these, called the horizon, being common to both, has received the name Anubis, and is represented in form like a dog; for the dog can see with his eyes both by night and by day alike. And among Egyptians Anubis is thought to possess this faculty, which is similar to that which Hecatê is thought to possess among the Greeks, for Anubis is a deity of the lower world as well as a god of Olympus. Some are of the opinion that Anubis is Cronus. For this reason, inasmuch as he generates all things out of himself and conceives all things within himself, he has gained the appellation of “Dog.” There is, therefore, a certain mystery observed by those who revere Anubis; in ancient times the dog obtained the highest honours in Egypt; but, when Cambyses had slain the Apis and cast him forth, nothing came near the body or ate of it save only the dog; and thereby the dog lost his primacy and his place of honour above that of all the other animals.

There are some who give the name of Typhon to the Earth’s shadow, into which they believe the moon slips when it suffers eclipse. 45 1 369 Hence it is not unreasonable to say that the statement of each person individually is not right, but that the statement of all collectively is right; for it is not drought nor wind nor sea nor darkness, but everything harmful and destructive that Nature contains, which is to be set down as a part of Typhon. The origins of the universe are not to be placed in inanimate bodies, according to the doctrine of Democritus and Epicurus, nor yet is the Artificer of undifferentiated matter, according to the Stoic doctrine, one Reason, and one Providence which gains the upper hand and prevails over all things. The fact is that it is impossible for anything bad whatsoever to be engendered where God is the Author of all, bor anything good where God is the Author of nothing; for the concord of the universe, like that of a lyre or bow, according to Heracleitus, is resilient if disturbed; and according to Euripides,

The good and bad cannot be kept apart,

But there is some commingling, which is well.

Wherefore this very ancient opinion comes down from writers on religion and from lawgivers to poets and philosophers; it can be traced to no source, but it carried a strong and almost indelible conviction, and is in circulation in many places among barbarians and Greeks alike, not only in story and tradition but also in rites and sacrifices, to the effect that the Universe is not of itself suspended aloft cwithout sense or reason or guidance, nor is there one Reason which rules and guides it by rudders, as it were, or by controlling reins, but, inasmuch as Nature brings, in this life of ours, many experiences in which both evil and good are commingled, or better, to put it very simply, Nature brings nothing which is not combined with something else, we may assert that it is not one keeper of two great vases who, after the manner of a barmaid, deals out to us our failures and successes in mixture, but it has come about, as the result of two opposed principles and two antagonistic forces, one of which guides us along a straight course to the right, while the other turns us aside and backward, that our life is complex, and so also is the universe; and if this is not true of the whole of it, dyet it is true that this terrestrial universe, including its moon as well, is irregular and variable and subject to all manner of changes. For if it is the law of nature that nothing comes into being without a cause, and if the good cannot provide a cause for evil, then it follows that Nature must have in herself the source and origin of evil, just as she contains the source and origin of good.

46 1   The great majority and the wisest of men hold this opinion: they believe that there are two gods, rivals as it were, the one the Artificer of good and the other of evil. There are also those who call the better one a god and the other a daemon, eas, for example, Zoroaster the sage, who, they record, lived five thousand years before the time of the Trojan War. He called the one Oromazes and the other Areimanius; and he further declared that among all the things perceptible to the senses, Oromazes may best be compared to light, and Areimanius, conversely, to darkness and ignorance, and midway between the two is Mithras: for this reason the Persians give to Mithras the name of “Mediator.” Zoroaster has also taught that men should make votive offerings and thank-offerings to Oromazes, and averting and mourning offerings to Areimanius. They pound up in a mortar a certain plant called omomi at the same time invoking Hades and Darkness; then they mix it with the blood of a wolf that has been sacrificed, and carry it out and cast it into a place where the sun never shines. In fact, they believe that some of the plants belong to the good god and others to the evil daemon; so also of the animals they think that dogs, fowls, and hedgehogs, for example, belong to the good god, but that water-rats belong to the evil one; therefore the man who has killed the most of these they hold to be fortunate.

47 1   However, they also tell many fabulous stories about their gods, such, for example, as the following: Oromazes, born from the purest light, and Areimanius, born from the darkness, are constantly at war with each other; 370 and Oromazes created six gods, the first of Good Thought, the second of Truth, the third of Order, and, of the rest, one of Wisdom, one of Wealth, and one the Artificer of Pleasure in what is Honourable. But Areimanius created rivals, as it were, equal to these in number. Then Oromazes enlarged himself to thrice his former size, and removed himself as far distant from the Sun as the Sun is distant from the Earth, and adorned the heavens with stars. One star he set there before all others as a guardian and watchman, the Dog-star. Twenty-four other gods he created and placed in an egg. But those created by Areimanius, who were equal in number to the others, pierced through the egg and made their way inside; hence evils are now combined with good. But a destined time shall come when it is decreed that Areimanius, engaged in bringing on pestilence and famine, shall by these be utterly annihilated and shall disappear; and then shall the earth become a level plain, and there shall be one manner of life and one form of government for a blessed people who shall all speak one tongue. Theopompus says that, according to the sages, one god is to overpower, and the other to be overpowered, each in turn for the space of three thousand years, and afterward for another three thousand years they shall fight and war, and the one shall undo the works of the other, and finally Hades shall pass away; then shall the people be happy, and neither shall they need to have food nor shall they cast any shadow. And the god, who has contrived to bring about all these things, shall then have quiet and shall repose for a time, no long time indeed, but for the god as much as would be a moderate time for a man to sleep.

Such, then, is the character of the mythology of the sages. 48 1 The Chaldeans declare that of the planets, which they call tutelary gods, two are beneficent, two maleficent, and the other three are median and partake of both qualities. The beliefs of the Greeks are well known to all; they make the good part to belong the Olympian Zeus and the abominated part to Hades, and they rehearse a legend that Concord is sprung from Aphroditê and Ares, the one of whom is harsh and contentious, and the other mild and tutelary.

Observe also that the philosophers are in agreement with these; for Heracleitus without reservation styles War “the Father and King and Lord of all,” and he says that when Homer prays that

Strife may vanish from the ranks of the gods and of mortals,

he fails to note that he is invoking a curse on the origin of all things, since all things originate from strife and antagonism; also Heracleitus says that the Sun will not transgress his appropriate bounds, otherwise the stern-eyed maidens, ministers of Justice, will find him out.

Empedocles calls the beneficent principle “friendship” or “friendliness,” and oftentimes he calls Concord “sedate of countenance”; the worse principle he calls “accursed quarreling” and “blood-stained strife.”

The adherents of Pythagoras include a variety of terms under these categories: under the good they set Unity, the Determinate, the Permanent, the Straight, the Odd, the Square, the Equal, the Right-handed, the Bright; under the bad they set Duality, the Indeterminate, the Moving, the Curved, the Even, the Oblong, the Unequal, the Left-handed, the Dark, on the supposition that these are the underlying principles of creation. For these, however, Anaxagoras postulates Mind and Infinitude, Aristotle Form and Privation, and Plato, in many passages, as though obscuring and veiling his opinion, names the one of the opposite principles “Identity” and the other “Difference”; but in his Laws, when he had grown considerably older, he asserts, not in circumlocution or symbolically, but in specific words, that the movement of the Universe is actuated not by one soul, but perhaps by several, and certainly by not less than two, and of these the one is beneficent, and the other is opposed to it and the artificer of things opposed. Between these he leaves a certain third nature, not inanimate nor irrational nor without the power to move of itself, as some think, 371 but with dependence on both those others, and desiring the better always and yearning after it and pursuing it, as the succeeding portion of the treatise will make clear, in the endeavour to reconcile the religious beliefs of the Egyptians with this philosophy.

49 1 The fact is that the creation and constitution of this world is complex, resulting, as it does, from opposing influences, which, however, are not of equal strength, but the predominance rests with the better. Yet it is impossible for the bad to be completely eradicated, since it is innate, in large amount, in the body and likewise in the soul of the Universe, and is always fighting a hard fight against the better. So in the soul Intelligence and reason, the Ruler and Lord of all that is good, is Osiris, band in earth and wind and water and the heavens and stars that which is ordered, established, and healthy, as evidenced by season, temperatures, and cycles of revolution, is the efflux of Osiris and his reflected image. But Typhon is that part of the soul which is impressionable, impulsive, irrational and truculent, and of the bodily part the destructible, diseased and disorderly as evidenced by abnormal seasons and temperatures, and by obscurations of the sun and disappearances of the moon, outbursts, as it were, and unruly actions on the part of Typhon. And the name “Seth,” by which they call Typhon, denotes this; it means “the overmastering” and “overpowering,” and it means in very many instances “turning back,” and again “overpassing.” Some say that one of the companions of Typhon was Bebon, but Manetho says that Bebon was still another name by which Typhon was called. The name signifies “restraint” or “hindrance,” as much as to say that, when things are going along in a proper way and making rapid progress towards the right end, the power of Typhon obstructs them. 50 1 For this reason they assign to him the most stupid of the domesticated animals, the ass, and of the wild animals, the most savage, the crocodile and the hippopotamus.

In regard to the ass we have already offered some explanation. At Hermopolis they point out a statue of Typhon in the form of an hippopotamus, on whose back is poised a hawk fighting with a serpent. By the hippopotamus they mean to indicate Typhon, and by the hawk a power and rule, which Typhon strives to win by force, oftentimes without success, being confused by his wickedness and creating confusion. For this reason, when they offer sacrifice on the seventh day of the month Tybi, which they call the “Coming of Isis from Phoenicia,” they imprint on their sacred cakes the image of an hippopotamus tied fast. In the town of Apollonopolis it is an established custom for every person without exception to eat of a crocodile; and on one day they hunt as many as they can and, after killing them, cast them down directly opposite the temple. And they relate that Typhon escaped Horus by turning into a crocodile, and they would make out that all animals and plants and incidents that are bad and harmful are the deeds and parts and movements of Typhon.

51 1 Then again, they depict Osiris by means of an eye and a sceptre, the one of which indicates forethought and the other power, much as Homer in calling the Lord and King of all “Zeus supreme and counsellor” appears by “supreme” to signify his prowess and by “counsellor” his careful planning and thoughtfulness. They also often depict this god by means of a hawk; for this bird is surpassing in the keenness of his vision and the swiftness of its flight, and is wont to support itself with the minimum amount of food. It is said also in flying over the earth to cast dust upon the eyes of unburied dead; and whenever it settles down beside the river to drink it raises its feather upright, and after it has drunk it lets this sink down again, by which it is plain that the bird is safe and has escaped the crocodile, for if it be seized, the feather remains fixed upright as it was at the beginning.

Everywhere they point out statues of Osiris in human form of the ithyphallic type, on account of his creative and fostering power; and they clothe his statues in a flame-coloured garment, 372 since they regard the body of the Sun as a visible manifestation of the perceptible substance of the power for good. Therefore it is only right and fair to contemn those who assign the orb of the Sun to Typhon, to whom there attaches nothing bright or of a conserving nature, no order nor generation nor movement possessed of moderation or reason, but everything the reverse; moreover, the drought, by which he destroys many of the living creatures and growing plants, is not to be set down as the work of the Sun, but rather as due to the fact that the winds and waters in the earth and the air are not seasonably tempered when the principle of the disorderly and unlimited power gets out of hand and quenches the exhalations.

52 1 In the sacred hymns of Osiris they call upon him who is hidden in the arms of the Sun; and on the thirtieth of the month Epiphi they celebrate the birthday of the Eyes of Horus, at the time when the Moon and the Sun are in a perfectly straight line, since they regard not only the Moon but also the Sun as the eye and light of Horus.

On the waning of the month Phaophi they conduct the birthday of the Staff of the Sun following upon the autumnal equinox, and by this they declare, as it were, that he is in need of support and strength, since he becomes lacking in warmth and light, and undergoes decline, and is carried away from us to one side.

Moreover, at the time of the winter solstice they lead the cow seven times around the temple of the Sun and this circumambulation is called the Seeking for Osiris, since the Goddess in the winter-time yearns for water; so many times do they go around, because in the seventh month the Sun completes the transition from the winter solstice to the summer solstice. It is said also that Horus, the son of Isis, offered sacrifice to the Sun first of all on the fourth day of the month, as is written in the records entitled the Birthdays of Horus.

Every day they make a triple offering of incense to the Sun, dan offering of resin at sunrise, of myrrh at midday, and of the so called cyphi at sunset; the reason which underlies each one of these offerings I will describe later. They think that by means of all these they supplicate and serve the Sun. Yet, what need is there to collect many such things? There are some who without reservation assert that Osiris is the Sun and is called the Dog-star (Sirius) by the Greeks even if among the Egyptians the addition of the article has created some ambiguity in regard to the name; and there are those who declare that Isis is none other than the Moon; for this reason it is said that the statues of Isis that bear horns are imitations of the crescent moon, and in her dark garments are shown the concealments and the obscurations in which she in her yearning pursues the Sun. For this reason also they call upon the Moon in love affairs, and Eudoxus asserts that Isis is a deity who presides over love affairs. These people may lay claim to a certain plausibility, but no one should listen for a moment to those who make Typhon to be the Sun.

372 But now let us take up again the proper subject of our discussion. 53 1 Isis is, in fact, the female principle of Nature, and is receptive of every form of generation, in accord with which she is called by Plato the gentle nurse and the all-receptive, and by most people has been called by countless names, since, because of the force of Reason, she turns herself to this thing or that and is receptive of all manner of shapes and forms. She has an innate love for the first and most dominant of all things, which is identical with the good, and this she yearns for and pursues; but the portion which comes from evil she tries to avoid and to reject, for she serves them both as a place and means of growth, but inclines always towards the better and offers to it opportunity to create from her and to impregnate her with effluxes and likenesses in which she rejoices and is glad that she is made pregnant and teeming with these creations. For creation is the image of being in matter, and the thing created is a picture of reality.

37354 It is not, therefore, out of keeping that they have a legend that the soul of Osiris is everlasting and imperishable, but that his body Typhon oftentimes dismembers and causes to disappear, and that Isis wanders hither and yon in her search for it, and fits it together again; for that which really is and is perceptible and good is superior to destruction and change. The images from it with which the sensible and corporeal is impressed, and the relations, forms, and likenesses which this take upon itself, like impressions of seals in wax, are not permanently lasting, but disorder and disturbance overtakes them, bbeing driven hither from the upper reaches, and fighting against Horus, whom Isis brings forth, beholden of all, as the image of the perceptible world. Therefore it is said that he is brought to trial by Typhon on the charge of illegitimacy, as not being pure nor uncontaminated like his father, reason unalloyed and unaffected of itself, but contaminated in his substance because of the corporeal element. He prevails, however, and wins the case when Hermes, that is to say Reason, testifies and points out that Nature, by undergoing changes of form with reference to the perceptible, duly brings about the creation of the world. The birth of Apollo from Isis and Osiris, while these gods were still in the womb of Rhea, has the allegorical meaning that before this world was made visible and its rough material was completely formed by reason, it was put to the test by Nature and brought forth of itself the first creation imperfect. This is the reason why they say that this god was born in the darkness a cripple, and they call him the elder Horus; for there was then no world, but only an image and outline of a world to be.

55 1 But this Horus is himself perfected and complete; but he has not done away completely with Typhon, but has taken away his activity and strength. Hence they say that at Kopto the statue of Horus holds in one hand the privy members of Typhon, and they relate a legend that Hermes cut out the sinews of Typhon, and used them as strings for his lyre, dthereby instructing us that Reason adjusts the Universe and creates concord out of discordant elements, and that it does not destroy but only cripples the destructive force. Hence this is weak and inactive here, and combines with the susceptible and changeable elements and attaches itself to them, becoming the artificer of quakes and tremblings in the earth, and of droughts and tempestuous winds in the air, and of lightning-flashes and thunderbolts. Moreover, it taints waters and winds with pestilence, and it runs forth wanton even as far as the moon, oftentimes confounding and darkening the moon’s brightness; according to the belief and account of the Egyptians, Typhon at one time smites the eye of Horus, and at another time snatches it out and swallows it, and then later gives it back again to the Sun. By the smiting, they refer allegorically to the monthly waning of the moon, and by the crippling, to its eclipse, which the Sun heals by shining straight upon it as soon as it has escaped the shadow of the earth.

56 1 The better and more divine nature consists of three parts: the conceptual, the material, and that which is formed from these, which the Greeks call the world. Plato is wont to give to the conceptual the name of idea, example, or father, and to the material the name of mother or nurse, or seat and place of generation, and to that which results from both the name of offspring or generation.

One might conjecture that the Egyptians hold in high honour the most beautiful of the triangles, since they liken the nature of the Universe most closely to it, as Plato in the Republic seems to have made use of it in formulating his figure of marriage. This triangle has its upright of three units, its base of four, 374 and its hypotenuse of five, whose power is equal to that of the other two sides. The upright, therefore, may be likened to the male, the base to the female, and the hypotenuse to the child of both, and so Osiris may be regarded as the origin, Isis as the recipient, and Horus as perfected result. Three is the first perfect odd number: four is a square whose side is the even number two; but five is in some ways like to its father, and in some ways like to its mother, being made up of three and two. And panta (all) is a derivative of pente (five), and they speak of counting as “numbering by fives.” Five makes a square of itself, as many as the letters of the Egyptian alphabet, and as many as the years of the life of the Apis.

Horus they are wont to call also Min, which means “seen”; for the world is something perceptible and visible, and Isis is sometimes called Muth, and again Athyri or Methyer. By the first of these names they signify “mother,” by the second the mundane house of Horus, the place and receptacle of generation, as Plato has it, and the third is compounded of “full” and “cause”; for the material of the world is full, and is associated with the good and pure and orderly.

57 It might appear that Hesiod, in making the very first things of all to be Chaos and Earth and Tartarus and Love, did not accept any other origins but only these, if we transfer the names somewhat and assign to Isis the name of Earth and to Osiris the name of Love and to Typhon the name of Tartarus; for the poet seems to place Chaos at the bottom as a sort of region that serves as a resting-place for the Universe.

This subject seems in some wise to call up the myth of Plato, which Socrates in the Symposium gives at some length in regard to the birth of Love, saying that Poverty, wishing for children, insinuated herself beside Plenty while he was asleep, and having become pregnant by him, gave birth to Love, who is of a mixed and utterly variable nature, inasmuch as he is the son of a father who is good and wise and self-sufficient in all things, but of a mother who is helpless and without means and because of want always clinging close to another and always importunate over another. For Plenty is none other than the first beloved and desired, the perfect and self-sufficient; and Plato calls raw material Poverty, utterly lacking of herself in the Good, but being filled from him and always yearning for him and sharing with him. The World, or Horus, which is born of these, is not eternal nor unaffected nor imperishable, but, ebeing ever reborn, contrives to remain always young and never subject to destruction in the changes and cycles of events.

58 1 We must not treat legend as it were history at all, but we should adopt that which is appropriate in each legend in accordance with its verisimilitude. Whenever, therefore, we speak of material we must not be swept away to the opinions of some philosophers, and conceive of an inanimate and indifferentiated body, which is of itself inert and inactive. The fact is that we call oil the material of perfume and gold the material of a statue, and these are not destitute of all differentiation. We provide the very soul and thought of Man as the basic material of understanding and virtue for Reason to adorn and to harmonize, and some have declared the Mind to be a place for the assembling of forms and for the impression of concepts, as it were.

Some think the seed of Woman is not a power or origin, but only material and nurture of generation. To this thought we should cling fast and conceive that this Goddess also who participates always with the first God and is associated with him in the love of the fair and lovely things about him is not opposed to him, 375 but, just as we say that an honourable and just man is in love if his relations are just, and a good woman who has a husband and consorts with him we say yearns for him; thus we may conceive of her as always clinging close to him and being importunate over him and constantly filled with the most dominant and purest principles. 59 1 But where Typhon forces his way in and seizes upon the outermost areas, there we may conceive of her as seeming sad, and spoken of as mourning, and that she seeks for the remains and scattered members of Osiris and arrays them, receiving and hiding away the things perishable, bfrom which she brings to light again the things that are created and sends them forth from herself.

The relations and forms and effluxes of the god abide in the heavens and in the stars; but those things that are distributed in susceptible elements, earth and sea and plants and animals, suffer dissolution and destruction and burial, and oftentimes again shine forth and appear again in their generations. For this reason the fable has it that Typhon cohabits with Nephthys and that Osiris has secret relations with her; for the destructive power exercises special dominion over the outermost part of matter which they call Nephthys or Finality. But the creating and conserving power distributes to this only a weak and feeble seed, which is destroyed by Typhon, except so much as Isis takes up and preserves and fosters and makes firm and strong.

60 1 In general this god is the better, as both Plato and Aristotle conceive. The creative and conserving element of Nature moves toward him and toward existence while the annihilating and destructive moves away from him towards non-existence. For this reason they call Isis by a name derived from “hastening” (hiemai) with understanding, or being borne onward (pheromai), since she is an animate and intelligent movement; for the name is not a foreign name, but, just as all the gods have a name in common derived from two words, “visible” (theaton) and “rushing” (theon), din the same way this goddess, from her understanding and her movement, we call her Isis and the Egyptians call her Isis. So also Plato says that the men of ancient times made clear the meaning of “essence” (ousia) by calling it “sense” (isia). So also he speaks of the intelligence and understanding as being a carrying and movement of mind hasting and being carried onward; and also comprehension and good and virtue they attribute to those things which are ever flowing and in rapid motion, just as again, on the other hand, by means of antithetical names they vilified evil; for example, that which hinders and binds fast and holds and checks Nature from hasting and going they called baseness, or “ill-going” (kak-ia), and helplessness or “difficulty of going” (apor-ia), and cowardice or “fear of going” (deil-ia), and distress or “not going” (an-ia).

61 1 Osiris has a name made up from “holy” (hosion) and “sacred” (hieron); for he is the combined relation of the things in the heavens and in the lower world, the former of which it was customary for people of olden time to call sacred and the latter to call holy. But the relation which discloses the things in the heavens and belongs to the things which tend upward is sometimes named Anubis and sometimes Hermanubis as belonging in part to the things above and in part to the things below. For this reason they sacrifice to him on the one hand a white cock and on the other hand one of saffron colour, regarding the former things as simple and clear, and the others as combined and variable.

There is no occasion to be surprised at the revamping of these words into Greek. The fact is that countless other words went forth in company with those who migrated from Greece, and persist even to this day as strangers in strange lands; fand, when the poetic art would recall some of these into use, those who speak of such words as strange or unusual falsely accuse it of using barbarisms. Moreover, they record that in the so called books of Hermes it is written in regard to the sacred names that they call the power which is assigned to direct the revolution of the Sun Horus, but the Greeks call it Apollo; and the power assigned to the wind some call Osiris and others Serapis; 376 and Sothis in Egyptian signifies “pregnancy” (cyesis) or “to be pregnant” (cyein): therefore in Greek, with a change of accent, the star is called the Dog-star (Cyon), which they regard as the special star of Isis. Least of all is there any need of being very eager in learning about these names. However, I would rather make a concession to the Egyptians in regard to Serapis than in regard to Osiris; for I regard Serapis as foreign, but Osiris as Greek, and both as belonging to one god and one power.

62 1 Like these also are the Egyptian beliefs; for they oftentimes call Isis by the name of Athena, expressive of some such idea as this, “I came of myself,” which is indicative of self-impelled motion. Typhon, as has been said, is named Seth and Bebon and Smu, and these names would indicate some forcible and preventive check or opposition or reversal.

Moreover, they call the loadstone the bone of Horus, and iron the bone of Typhon, as Manetho records. For, as the iron oftentimes acts as if it were being attracted and drawn toward the stone, and oftentimes is rejected and repelled in the opposite direction, in the same way the salutary and good and rational movement of the world at one time, by persuasion, attracts and draws toward itself and renders more gentle that harsh and Typhonian movement, and then again it gathers itself together and reverses it and plunges it into difficulties.

Moreover, Eudoxus says that the Egyptians have a mythical tradition in regard to Zeus that, because his legs were grown together, he was not able to walk, and so, for shame, tarried in the wilderness; but Isis, by severing and separating those parts of his body, provided him with means of rapid progress. This fable teaches by its legend that the mind and reason of the god, fixed amid the unseen and invisible, advanced to generation by means of motion.

63 1 The sistrum (rattle) also makes it clear that all things in existence need to be shaken, or rattled about, and never to cease from motion but, as it were, to be waked up and agitated when they grow drowsy and torpid. They say that they avert and repel Typhon by means of the sistrums, indicating thereby that when destruction constricts and checks Nature, generation releases and arouses it by means of motion.

The upper part of the sistrum is circular and its circumference contains the four things that are shaken; for that part of the world which undergoes reproduction and destruction is contained underneath the orb of the moon, and all things in it are subjected to motion and to change through the four elements: fire, earth, water, and air. At the top of the circumference of the sistrum they construct the figure of a cat with a human face, and at the bottom, below the things that are shaken, the face of Isis on one side, and on the other the face of Nephthys. By these faces they symbolize birth and death, for these are the changes and movements of the elements; and by the cat they symbolize the moon because of the varied colouring, nocturnal activity, and fecundity of the animal. For the cat is said to bring forth first one, then two and three and four and five, thus increasing the number by one until she reaches seven, so that she brings forth in all twenty-eight, the number also of the moon’s illuminations. Perhaps, however, this may seem somewhat mythical. But the pupils in the eye of the cat appear to grow large and round at the time of the full moon, and to become thin and narrow at the time of the wanings of that heavenly body. By the human features of the cat is indicated the intelligence and the reason that guides the changes of the moon.

64 1 To put the matter briefly, it is not right to believe that water or the sun or the earth or the sky is Osiris or Isis; or again that fire or drought or the sea is Typhon, but simply if we attribute to Typhon whatever there is in these 377 that is immoderate and disordered by reason of excesses or defects; and if we revere and honour what is orderly and good and beneficial as the work of Isis and as the image and reflection and reason of Osiris, we shall not be wrong. Moreover, we shall put a stop to the incredulity of Eudoxus and his questionings how it is that Demeter has no share in the supervision of love affairs, but Isis has; and the fact that Dionysus cannot cause the Nile to rise, nor rule over the dead. For by one general process of reasoning do we come to the conclusion that these gods have been assigned to preside over every portion of what is good; and whatever there is in nature that is fair and good exists entirely because of them, inasmuch as Osiris contributes the origins, and Isis receives them band distributes them.

65 1 In this way we shall undertake to deal with the numerous and tiresome people, whether they be such as take pleasure in associating theological problems with the seasonal changes in the surrounding atmosphere, or with the growth of the crops and seed-times and ploughing; and also those who say that Osiris is being buried at the time when the grain is sown and covered in the earth and that he comes to life and reappears when plants begin to sprout. For this reason also it is said that Isis, when she perceived that she was pregnant, put upon herself an amulet on the sixth day of the month Phaophi; and about the time of the winter solstice she gave birth to Harpocrates, cimperfect and premature, amid the early flowers and shoots. For this reason they bring to him as an offering the first-fruits of growing lentils, and the days of his birth they celebrate after the spring equinox. When the people hear these things, they are satisfied with them and believe them, deducing the plausible explanation directly from what is obvious and familiar.

66 1 And there is nothing to fear if, in the first place, they preserve for us our gods that are common to both peoples and do not make them to belong to the Egyptians only, and do not include under these names the Nile alone and the land which the Nile waters, and do not assert that the marshes and the lotus are the only work of God’s hand, and if they do not deny the great gods to the rest of mankind that possess no Nile nor Buto nor Memphis. But as for Isis, and the gods associated with her, all peoples own them and are familiar with them, although they have learned not so very long ago to call some of them by the names which come from the Egyptians; yet they have from the beginning understood and honoured the power which belongs to each one of them.

In the second place, and this is a matter of greater importance, they should exercise especial heed and caution lest they unwittingly erase and dissipate things divine into winds and streams and sowings and ploughings, developments of the earth and changes of the seasons, as do those who regard wine as Dionysus and flame as Hephaestus. And Cleanthes says somewhere that the breath of air which is carried (pheromenon) through the crops and then suffers dissolution (phoneuomenon) is Phersephone; and a certain poet has written with reference to the reapers,

Then when the sturdy youth come to sever the limbs of Demeter.

The fact is that these persons do not differ at all from those who regard sails and ropes and anchor as a pilot, warp and woof as a weaver, a cup or an honey mixture or barley gruel as a physician. But they create in men fearful atheistic opinions by conferring the names of gods upon natural objects which are senseless and inanimate, and are of necessity destroyed by men when they need to use them.

It is impossible to conceive of these things as being gods in themselves; f 67 for God is not senseless nor inanimate nor subject to human control. As a result of this we have come to regard as gods those who make use of these things and present them to us and provide us with things everlasting and constant. Nor do we think of the gods as different gods among different peoples, nor as barbarian gods and Greek gods, nor as southern and northern gods; but, just as the sun and the moon and the heavens and the earth and the sea are common to all, but are called by different names by different peoples, so for that one rationality which keeps all these things in order 378 and the one Providence which watches over them and the ancillary powers that are set over all, there have arisen among different peoples, in accordance with their customs, different honours and appellations. Thus men make use of consecrated symbols, some employing symbols that are obscure, but others those that are clearer, in guiding the intelligence toward things divine, though not without a certain hazard. For some go completely astray and become engulfed in superstition; and others, while they fly from superstition as from a quagmire, on the other hand unwittingly fall, as it were, over a precipice into atheism.

37868 Wherefore in the study of these matters it is especially necessary that we adopt, as our guide in these mysteries, the reasoning that comes from philosophy, and consider reverently beach one of the things that are said and done, so that, to quote Theodorus, who said that while he offered the good word with his right hand some of his auditors received it in their left, we may not thus err by accepting in a different spirit the things that the laws have dictated admirably concerning the sacrifices and festivals. The fact that everything is to be referred to reason we may gather from the Egyptians themselves; for on the nineteenth day of the first month, when they are holding festival in honour of Hermes, they eat honey and a fig; and as they eat they say, “A sweet thing is Truth.” The amulet of Isis, which they traditionally assert that she hung about her neck, is interpreted “a true voice.” And Harpocrates is not to be regarded as an imperfect and an infant god, nor some deity or other that protects legumes, but as the representative and corrector of unseasoned, imperfect, and inarticulate reasoning about the gods among mankind. For this reason he keeps his finger on his lips in token of restrained speech or silence. In the month of Mesorê they bring to him an offering of legumes and say, “The tongue is luck, the tongue is god.” Of the plants in Egypt they say that the persea is especially consecrated to the goddess because its fruit resembles a heart and its leaf a tongue. The fact is that nothing of man’s usual possessions is more divine than reasoning, especially reasoning about the gods; and nothing has a greater influence toward happiness. For this reason we give instructions to anyone who comes down to the oracle here to think holy thoughts and to speak words of good omen. But the mass of mankind act ridiculously in their processions and festivals in that they proclaim at the outset the use of words of good omen, but later they both say and think the most unhallowed thoughts about the very gods.

69 1 How, then, are we to deal with their gloomy, solemn, and mournful sacrifices, if it be not proper either to omit the customary ceremonials or to confound and confuse our opinions about the gods by unwarranted suspicions? Among the Greeks also many things are done which are similar to the Egyptian ceremonies in the shrines of Isis, and they do them at about the same time. At Athens the women fast at the Thesmophoria sitting upon the ground; and the Boeotians move the halls of the Goddess of Sorrow and name that festival the Festival of Sorrow, since Demeter is in sorrow because of her Daughter’s descent to Pluto’s realm. This month, in the season of the Pleiades, is the month of seeding which the Egyptians call Athyr, the Athenians Pyanepsion, and the Boeotians Damatrius. Theopompus records that the people who live toward the west believe that the winter is Cronus, the summer Aphroditê, and the spring Persephonê, and that they call them by these names and believe that from Cronus and Aphroditê all things have their origin. The Phrygians, believing that the god is asleep in the winter and awake in the summer, sing lullabies for him in the winter and in the summer chants to arouse him, after the manner of bacchic worshippers. The Paphlagonians assert that in the spring he bestirs himself and sets himself free again.

70 1 The season of the year also gives us a suspicion that this gloominess is brought about because of the disappearance from our sight of the crops and fruits that people in days of old did not regard as gods, but as necessary and important contributions of the gods toward the avoidance of a savage and a bestial life. 379 At the time of year when they saw some of the fruits vanishing and disappearing completely from the trees, while they themselves were sowing others in a mean and poverty-stricken fashion still, scraping away the earth with their hands and again replacing it, committing the seeds to the ground with uncertain expectation of their ever appearing again or coming to fruition, they did many things like persons at a funeral in mourning for their dead. Then again, even as we speak of the man who buys the books of Plato as “buying Plato,” and of the man who represents the poems of Menander as “acting Menander,” even so those men of old did not refrain from calling by the names of the gods the gifts and creations of the gods, bhonouring and venerating them because of the need which they had for them. The men of later times accepted this blindly, and in their ignorance referred to the gods the behaviour of the crops and the presence and disappearance of necessities, not only calling them the births and deaths of the gods, but even believing that they are so; and thus they filled the minds with absurd, unwarranted, and confused opinions although they had before their eyes the absurdity of such illogical reasoning. Rightly did Xenophanes of Colophon insist that the Egyptians, cif they believed them to be gods, should not lament them; but if they lamented them, they should not believe them to be gods. Is it anything but ridiculous amid their lamentations to pray that the powers may cause their crops to sprout again and bring them to perfection in order that they again be consumed and lamented? 71 1 This is not quite the case: but they do lament for their crops and they do pray to the gods, who are the authors and givers, that they produce and cause to grow afresh other new crops to take the place of those that are undergoing destruction. Hence it is an excellent saying current among philosophers that they that have not learned to interpret rightly the sense of words are wont to bungle their actions. For example, there are some among the Greeks who have not learned nor habituated themselves to speak of the bronze, the painted, and the stone effigies as statues of the gods and dedications in their honour, but they call them gods; and then they have the effrontery to say that Lachares stripped Athena, that Dionysius sheared Apollo of the golden locks, and that Jupiter Capitolinus was burned and destroyed in the Civil War, and thus they unwittingly take over and accept the vicious opinions that are the concomitants of these names.

This has been to no small degree the experience of the Egyptians in regard to those animals that are held in honour. In these matters the Greeks are correct in saying and believing that the dove is the sacred bird of Aphroditê, that the serpent is sacred to Athena, the raven to Apollo, and the dog to Artemis — as Euripides says,

Dog you shall be, pet of bright Hecatê.

But the great majority of the Egyptians, in doing service to the animals themselves and in treating them as gods, have not only filled their sacred offices with ridicule and derision, but this is the least of the evils connected with their silly practices. There is engendered a dangerous belief, which plunges the weak and innocent into sheer superstition, and in the case of the more cynical and bold, goes off into atheistic and brutish reasoning. Wherefore it is not inappropriate to rehearse in some detail what seem to be the facts in these matters.

72 1 The notion that the gods, in fear of Typhon, changed themselves into these animals, fconcealing themselves, as it were, in the bodies of ibises, dogs, and hawks, is a play of fancy surpassing all the wealth of monstrous fable. The further notion that as many of the souls of the dead as continue to exist are reborn into these animals only is likewise incredible. Of those who desire to assign to this some political reason some relate that Osiris, on his great expedition, divided his forces into many parts, which the Greeks call squads and companies, and to them all he gave standards in the form of animals, 380 each of which came to be regarded as sacred and precious by the descendants of them who had shared in the assignment. Others relate that the later kings, to strike their enemies with terror, appeared in battle after putting on gold and silver masks of wild beasts’ heads. Others record that one of these crafty and unscrupulous kings, having observed that the Egyptians were by nature light-minded and readily inclined to change and novelty, but that, because of their numbers, they had a strength that was invincible and very difficult to check when they were in their sober senses and acted in concert, communicated to them and planted among them an everlasting superstition, a ground for unceasing quarrelling. For he enjoined on different peoples to honour and revere different animals; and inasmuch as these animals conducted themselves with enmity and hostility toward one another, one by its nature desiring one kind of food and another another, the several peoples were ever defending their own animals, and were much offended if these animals suffered injury, and thus they were drawn on unwittingly by the enmities of the animals until they were brought into open hostility with one another. Even to day the inhabitants of Lycopolis are the only people among the Egyptians that eat a sheep; for the wolf, whom they hold to be a god, also eats it. And in my day the people of Oxyrhynchus caught a dog and sacrificed it and ate it up as if it had been sacrificial meat, because the people of Cynopolis were eating fish known as the oxyrhynchus or pike. As a result of this they became involved in war and inflicted much harm upon each other; and later they were both brought to order through chastisement by the Romans.

73 1 Many relatea that the soul of Typhon himself was divided among these animals. The legend would seem to intimate that all irrational and brutish nature belongs to the portion of the evil deity, and in trying to soothe and appease him they lavish attention and care upon these animals. If there befall a great and severe drought that brings on in excess either fatal diseases or other unwonted and extraordinary calamities, the priests, under cover of darkness, in silence and stealth, lead away some of the animals that are held in honour; and at first they but threaten and terrify the animals, but if the drought still persists, they consecrate and sacrifice them, as if, forsooth, this were a means of punishing the deity, or at least a mighty rite of purification in matters of the highest importance! The fact is that in the city of Eileithiya they used to burn men alive, as Manetho has recorded; they called them Typhonians, and by means of winnowing fans they dissipated and scattered their ashes. But this was performed publicly and at a special time in the dog-days. The consecrations of the animals took place at indeterminate times with reference to the circumstances; and thus they are unknown to the multitude, except when they hold the animals’ burials, and then they display some of the other sacred animals and, in presence of all, cast them into the grave together, thinking thus to hurt and to curtail Typhon’s satisfaction. The Apis, together with a few other animals, seems to be sacred to Osiris; but to Typhon they assign the largest number of animals. If this account is true, I think it indicates that the object of our inquiry concerns those which are commonly accepted and whose honours are universal: for example, the ibis, the hawk, the cynocephalus, and the Apis himself, as well as the Mendes, for thus they call the goat in Mendes.

74 1 There remain, then, their usefulness and their symbolism; of these two, some of the animals share in the one, and many share in both. It is clear that the Egyptians have honoured the cow, the sheep, and the ichneumon because of their need for these animals and their usefulness. Even so the people of Lemnos hold larks in honour because they seek out the eggs of the locust and destroy them; and so the people of Thessaly honour storks, because, when their land produced many snakes, the storks appeared and destroyed them all. For this reason they passed a law that whoever killed a stork should be banished from the country. The Egyptians also honoured the asp, the weasel, and the beetle, since they observed in them certain dim likenesses of the power of the gods, 381 like images of the sun in drops of water. There are still many people who believe and declare that the weasel conceives through its ear and brings forth its young by way of the mouth, and that this is a parallel of the generation of speech. The race of beetles has no female, but all the males eject their sperm into a round pellet of material which they roll up by pushing it from the opposite side, just as the sun seems to turn the heavens in the direction opposite to its own course, which is from west to east. They compare the asp to lightning, bsince it does not grow old and manages to move with ease and suppleness without the use of limbs.

75 1 The crocodile, certainly, has acquired honour which is not devoid of a plausible reason, but he is declared to be a living representation of God, since he is the only creature without a tongue; for the Divine Word has no need of a voice, and

through noiseless ways advancing, guides

By Justice all affairs of mortal men.

They say that the crocodile is the only animal living in the water which has a thin and transparent membrane extending down from his forehead to cover up his eyes, so that he can see without being seen; and this prerogative belongs also unto the First God. In whatever part of the land the female crocodile lays her eggs, well she knows that this is destined to mark the limit of the rise of the Nile; for the females, being unable to lay their eggs in the water and afraid to lay them far from it, have such an accurate perception of the future that they make use of the oncoming river as a guide in laying their eggs and in keeping them warm; and thus they preserve them dry and untouched by the water. They lay sixty eggs and hatch them in the same number of days, and those crocodiles that live longest live that number of years: the number sixty is the first of measures for such persons as concern themselves with the heavenly bodies.

Of the animals that are held in honour for both reasons, mention has already been made of the dog. The ibis, which kills the deadly creeping things, was the first to teach men the use of medicinal purgations when they observed her employing clysters and being purged by herself. The most strict of the priests take their lustral water for purification from a place where the ibis has drunk: for she does not drink water if it is unwholesome or tainted, nor will she approach it. By the spreading of her feet, in their relation to each other and to her bill, she makes an equilateral triangle. Moreover the variety and combination of her black feathers with her white picture the moon in its first quarter.

There is no occasion for surprise that the Egyptians were so taken with such slight resemblances; for the Greeks in their painted and sculptured portrayals of the gods made use of many such. For example, in Crete there was a statue of Zeus having no ears; for it is not fitting for the Ruler and Lord of all to listen to anyone. Beside the statue of Athena Pheidias placed the serpent and in Elis beside the statue of Aphroditê the tortoise, to indicate that maidens need watching, and that for married women staying at home and silence is becoming. The trident of Poseidon is a symbol of the Third Region where the sea holds sway, for it has been assigned to a demesne of less importance than the heavens and the air. For this reason they thus named Amphitritê and the Tritons.

The Pythagoreans embellished also numbers and figures with the appellations of the gods. The equilateral triangle they called Athena, born from the head and third-born, because it is divided by three perpendiculars drawn from its three angles. The number one they called Apollo because of its rejection of plurality and because of the singleness of unity. The number two they called “Strife,” and “Daring,” and three they called “Justice,” for, although the doing of injustice and suffering from injustice are caused by deficiency and excess, Justice, by reason of its equality, intervenes between the two. 382 The so called sacred quaternion, the number thirty-six, was, so it is famed, the mightiest of oaths, and it has been given the name of “World” since it is made up of the first four even numbers and the first four odd numbers added together.

76 1 If, then, the most noted of the philosophers, observing the riddle of the Divine in inanimate and incorporeal objects, have not thought it proper to treat anything with carelessness or disrespect, even more do I think that, in all likelihood, we should welcome those peculiar properties existent in natures which possess the power of perception and have a soul and feeling and character. It is not that we should honour these, but that through these we should honour the Divine, since they are clearer mirrors of the Divine by their nature also, so that we should regard them as the instrument or device of the God who orders all things. And in general we must hold it true that nothing inanimate is superior to what is animate, and nothing without the power of perception is superior to that which has that power — no, not even if one should heap together all the gold and emeralds in the world. The Divine is not engendered in colours or in forms or in polished surfaces, but whatsoever things have no share in life, things whose nature does not allow them to share therein, have a portion of less honour than that of the dead. But the nature that lives and sees and has within itself the source of movement and a knowledge of what belongs to it and what belongs to others, has drawn to itself an efflux and portion of beauty from the Intelligence “by which the Universe is guided,” as Heracleitus has it. Wherefore the Divine is no worse represented in these animals than in works of bronze and stone which are alike subject to destruction and disfiguration, and by their nature are void of all perception and comprehension. This, then, is what I most approve in the accounts that are given regarding the animals held in honour.

77 1 As for the robes, those of Isis are variegated in their colours; for her power is concerned with matter which becomes everything and receives everything, light and darkness, day and night, fire and water, life and death, beginning and end. But the robe of Osiris has no shading or variety in its colour, but only one single colour like to light. For the beginning is combined with nothing else, and that which is primary and conceptual is without admixture; wherefore, when they have once taken off the robe of Osiris, they lay it away and guard it, unseen and untouched. But the robes of Isis they use many times over; for in use those things that are perceptible and ready at hand afford many disclosures of themselves and opportunities to view them as they are changed about in various ways. But the apperception of the conceptual, the pure, and the simple, shining through the soul like a flash of lightning, affords an opportunity to touch and see it but once. For this reason Plato and Aristotle call this part of philosophy the epoptic or mystic part, inasmuch as those who have passed beyond these conjectural and confused matters of all sorts by means of Reason proceed by leaps and bounds to that primary, simple, and immaterial principle; and when they have somehow attained contact with the pure truth abiding about it, they think that they have the whole of philosophy completely, as it were, within their grasp.

78 1 This idea at the present time the priests intimate with great circumspection in acquitting themselves of this religious secret and in trying to conceal it: that this god Osiris is the ruler and king of the dead, nor is he any other than the god that among the Greeks is called Hades and Pluto. But since it is not understood in which manner this is true, it greatly disturbs the majority of people who suspect that the holy and sacred Osiris truly dwells in the earth and beneath the earth, fwhere are hidden away the bodies of those that are believed to have reached their end. But he himself is far removed from the earth, uncontaminated and unpolluted and pure from all matter that is subject to destruction and death; but for the souls of men here, which are compassed about by bodies and emotions, there is no association with this god except in so far as they may attain to a dim vision of his presence by means of the apperception which philosophy affords. But when these souls are set free and migrate 383 into the realm of the invisible and the unseen, the dispassionate and the pure, then this god becomes their leader and king, since it is on him that they are bound to be dependent in their insatiate contemplation and yearning for that beauty which is for men unutterable and indescribable. With this beauty Isis, as the ancient story declares, is for ever enamoured and pursues it and consorts with it and fills our earth here with all things fair and good that partake of generation.

This which I have thus far set forth comprises that account which is most befitting the gods. 79 1 If, as I have promised, I must now speak of the offerings of incense which are made each day, one should first consider that bthis people always lays the very greatest stress upon those practices which are conducive to health. Especially in their sacred services and holy living and strict regimen the element of health is no less important than that of piety. For they did not deem it proper to serve that which is pure and in all ways unblemished and unpolluted with either bodies or souls that were unhealthy and diseased. Since, then, the air, of which we make the greatest use and in which we exist, has not always the same consistency and composition, but in the night-time becomes dense and oppresses the body and brings the soul into depression and solicitude, as if it had become befogged and heavy, therefore, immediately upon arising, they burn resin on their altars, revivifying and purifying the air by its dissemination, and fanning into fresh life the languished spirit innate in the body, inasmuch as the odour of resin contains something forceful and stimulating.

Again at midday, when they perceive that the sun is forcibly attracting a copious and heavy exhalation from the earth and is combining this with the air, they burn myrrh on the altars; for the heat dissolves and scatters the murky and turgid concretions in the surrounding atmosphere. In fact, physicians seem to bring relief to pestilential affections by making a large blazing fire, for this rarefies the air. But the rarefication is more effective if they burn fragrant woods, such as that of the cypress, the juniper, and the pine. At any rate, they say that Acron, the physician in Athens at the time of the great plague, won great repute by prescribing the lighting of a fire beside the sick, and thereby he helped not a few. Aristotle says that fragrant exhalations from perfumes and flowers and meadows are no less conducive to health than to pleasure, inasmuch as by their warmth and lightness they gently relax the brain, which is by nature cold and frigid. If it is true that among the Egyptians they call myrrh “bal,” and that this being interpreted has the particular meaning “the dissipation of repletion,” then this adds some testimony to our account of the reason for its use.

80 1 Cyphi is a compound composed of sixteen ingredients: honey, wine, raisins, cyperus, resin, myrrh, aspalathus, seselis, mastich, bitumen, rush, sorrel, and in addition to these both the junipers, of which they call one the larger and one the smaller, cardamum, and calamus. These are compounded, not at random, but while the sacred writings are being read to the perfumers as they mix the ingredients. As for this number, even if it appears quite clear that it is the square of a square and is the only one of the numbers forming a square that has its perimeter equal to its area, and deserves to be admired for this reason, yet it must be said that its contribution to the topic under discussion is very slight. Most of the materials that are taken into this compound, inasmuch as they have aromatic properties, give forth a sweet emanation and a beneficent exhalation, by which the air is changed, and the body, being moved gently and softly by the current, acquires a temperament conducive to sleep; and the distress and strain of our daily carking cares, as if they were knots, these exhalations relax and loosen without the aid of wine. 384 The imaginative faculty that is susceptible to dreams it brightens like a mirror, and makes it clearer no less effectively than did the notes of the lyre which the Pythagoreans used to employ before sleeping as a charm and a cure for the emotional and irrational in the soul. It is a fact that stimulating odours often recall the failing powers of sensation, and often again lull and quiet them when their emanations are diffused in the body by virtue of their ethereal qualities; even as some physicians state that sleep supervenes when the volatile portion of our food, gently permeating the digestive tract and coming into close contact with it, bproduces a species of titillation.

They use cyphi as both a potion and a salve; for taken internally it seems to cleanse properly the internal organs, since it is an emollient. Apart from this, resin and myrrh result from the action of the sun when the trees exude them in response to the heat. Of the ingredients which compose cyphi, there are some which delight more in the night, that is, those which are wont to thrive in cold winds and shadows and dews and dampness. For the light of day is single and simple, and Pindar says that the sun is seen “through the deserted aether.” But the air at night is a composite mixture made up of many lights and forces, even as though seeds from every star were showered down into one place. Very appropriately, therefore, they burn resin and myrrh in the daytime, for these are simple substances and have their origin from the sun; but the cyphi, since it is compounded of ingredients of all sorts of qualities, they offer at nightfall.

The E at Delphi

(In the Pronaos of the temple at Delphi the visitor was confronted by certain inscriptions (γράμματα): ‘Know thyself’— ‘Nothing too much’— ‘Go bail and woe is at hand’ — all exhortations to wisdom or prudence (Plato, Charmides, 163-4). To these is to be added, on the sole authority of Plutarch’s Dialogue, the letter E, pronounced EI.)

THE SPEAKERS

AMMONIUS, the Platonist philosopher, Plutarch’s teacher.
LAMPRIAS, Plutarch’s brother.
PLUTARCH.
THEON, a literary friend.
EUSTROPHUS, an Athenian.
NICANDER, a priest of the temple.

I. A day or two ago, dear Serapion, I met with some rather good lines, addressed, Dicaearchus thinks, to Archelaus by Euripides:

No gifts, my wealthy friend, from humble me;
You’ll think me fool, or think I did but beg.

He who out of his narrow store offers trifles to men of great possessions, confers no favour; no one believes that he gives something for nothing, and he gets credit for a jealous and ungenerous temper. Now surely as money presents fall far below those of literature and learning, so there is beauty in giving these, and beauty in claiming a return in kind. At any rate, I am sending to you, and so to my friends down there, some of our Pythian Dialogues, as a sort of first-fruits; and in doing so, confess that I expect others from you, and more and better ones, since you enjoy a great city and abundant leisure, with many books and discussions of every sort. Well, then, our kind Apollo, in the oracles which he gives his consultants, seems to solve the problems of life and to find a remedy, while problems of the intellect he actually suggests and propounds to the born love of wisdom in the soul, thus implanting an appetite which leads to truth. Among other instances, this is made clear as to the consecration of the letter ‘E’. We may well guess that it was not by chance, or by lot, that, along among the letters, it received pre-eminence in the God’s house, and took rank as a sacred offering and a show object. No, the officials of the God in early times, when they came to speculate, either saw in it a special and extraordinary virtue, or found it a symbol for something else of serious importance, and so adopted it. I had often myself avoided the question and quietly declined it when raised in the school. However, I was lately surprised by my sons in earnest discussion with certain strangers, who were just starting from Delphi; it was not decent to put them off with excuses, they were so anxious to receive some account. We sat down near the temple, and I began to raise questions with myself, and to put others to them; and the place, and what they said, reminded me of a discussion which we heard a long time ago from Ammonius and others, at the time of Nero’s visit, when the same problem had been stated in the same way.

II. That the God is no less philosopher than he is prophet appeared to all to come out directly from the exposition which Ammonius gives us of each of his names. He is ‘Pythian’ (The Inquirer) to those who are beginning to learn and to inquire; ‘Delian’ (The Clear One) and ‘Phanaean’ to those who are already getting something clear and a glimmering of the truth; ‘Ismenian’ (The Knowing) to those who possess the knowledge; ‘Leschenorian’ (God of Discourse) when they are in active enjoyment of dialectical and philosophic intercourse. ‘Now since,’ he continued, ‘Philosophy embraces inquiry, wonder, and doubt, it seems natural that most of the things relating to the God should have been hidden away in riddles, and should require some account of their purpose, and an explanation of the cause. For instance, in the case of the undying fire, why the only woods used here are pine for burning and laurel for fumigation; again, why two Fates are here installed, whereas their number is everywhere else taken as three; why no woman is allowed to approach the place of the oracles; questions about the tripod, and the rest. These problems when suggested to persons not altogether wanting in reason and soul, lure them on, and challenge them to inquire, to listen, and to discuss. Look again at those inscriptions, KNOW THYSELF and NOTHING TOO MUCH; how many philosophic inquiries have they provoked! What a multitude of arguments has sprung up out of each, as from a seed! Not one of them I think is more fruitful in this way than the subject of our present inquiry.’

III. When Ammonius had said this, my brother Lamprias spoke: ‘After all, the account which we have heard of the matter is simple enough and quite short. They say that the famous Wise Men, also called by some “Sophists”, were properly only five, Chilon, Thales, Solon, Bias, and Pittacus. But Cleobulus, tyrant of Lindos, and, later on, Periander of Corinth, men with no wisdom or virtue in them, but forcing public opinion by influence, friends, and favours, thrust themselves into the list of the wise, and disseminated through Greece maxims and sayings resembling the utterances of the five. Then the five were vexed, but did not choose to expose the imposture, or to have an open quarrel on the matter of title, and to fight it out with such powerful persons. They met here by themselves; and after discussing the matter, dedicated the letter which is fifth in the alphabet, and also as a number signifies five, thus making their own protest before the God, that they were five, discarding and rejecting the seventh and the sixth, as having no part or lot with themselves. That this account is not beside the mark may be recognized by any one who has heard the officials of the temple naming the golden “E” as that of Livia the wife of Cæsar, the brazen one as that of the Athenians, whereas the original and oldest letter, which is of wood, is to this day called that “Of the Wise Men”, as having been offered of all in common, not of any one of them.’

IV. Ammonius gave a quiet smile; he had a suspicion that Lamprias had been giving us a view of his own, making up history and legend at discretion. Some one else said that it was like the nonsense which they had heard from the Chaldæan stranger a day or so before; that there were seven letters which were vowels, seven stars that have an independent motion and are unattached to the heavens; moreover that ‘E’ is the second vowel from the beginning, and the sun the second planet, after the moon, and that all Greeks, or nearly all, identify Apollo with the sun.

‘But all that’, he said, ‘is pernicious nonsense. Lamprias, however, has, probably without knowing it, made a move which stirs up all who have to do with the temple against his view. What he told us was unknown to any of the Delphians; they used to give the regular guides’ account, that neither the appearance nor the sound of the letter has any significance, but only the name.’

V. ‘No, the Delphic Officials’, said Nicander the priest, speaking for them, ‘believe that it is a vehicle, a form assumed by the petition addressed to the God; it has a leading place in the questions of those who consult him, and inquire, If they shall conquer; If they shall marry; If it is advisable to sail; If to farm; If to travel. The God in his wisdom would bow out the dialecticians when they think that nothing practical comes of the “If” part with its clause attached; he admits as practical, in his sense of the word, all questions so attached. Then, since it is our personal concern to question him as prophet, but a general concern to pray to him as God, they hold that the letter embraces the virtue of prayer no less than that of inquiry; “O, If I might!” says every one who prays, as Archiolochus,

If it might be mine, prevailing, Neobule’s hand to touch!

When If-so-be is used, the latter part is dragged in (compare Sophron’s “Bereaved of children, I trow”, or Homer’s “As I will break thy might, I trow”). But If gives the sense of prayer sufficiently.’

VI. When Nicander had finished, our friend Theon, whom I am sure you know, asked Ammonius whether Dialectic might speak freely, after the insulting remarks to which she had been treated. Ammonius told him to speak out on her behalf. ‘That the God is a master of Dialectic,’ Theon said, ‘is shown clearly by most of his oracles; for you will grant that the solution of puzzles belongs to the same person as their invention. Again, as Plato used to say, when a response was given that the altar at Delos should be doubled, a matter requiring the most advanced geometry, the God was not merely enjoining this, but was also putting his strong command upon the Greeks to practice geometry. Just so, when the God puts out ambiguous oracles, he is exalting and establishing Dialectic, as essential to the right understanding of himself. You will grant again, that in Dialectic this conjunctive particle has great force, because it formulates the most logical of all sentences. This is certainly the “conjunctive”, seeing that the other animals know the existence of things, but man alone has been gifted by nature with the power of observing and discerning their sequence. That “it is day” and “it is light” we may take it that wolves and dogs and birds perceive. But “if it is day it is light”, is intelligible only to man; he alone can apprehend antecedent and consequent, the enunciation of each and their connexion, their mutual relation and difference, and it is in these that all demonstration has its first and governing principle. Since then Philosophy is concerned with truth, and the light of truth is demonstration, and the principle of demonstration is the conjunctive proposition, the faculty which includes and produces this was rightly consecrated by the wise men to that God who is above all things a lover of truth. Also, the God is a prophet, and prophetic art deals with that future which is to come out of things present or things past. Nothing comes into being without a cause, nothing is known beforehand without a reason. Things which come into being follow things which have been, things which are to be follow things which now are coming into being, all bound in one continuous chain of evolution. Therefore he who knows how to link causes together into one, and combine them into a natural process, can also declare beforehand things

Which are, which shall be, and which were of old.

Homer did well in putting the present first, the future next, and the past last. Inference starts with the present, and works by the force of the conjunction: “If this is, that was its antecedent”, “If this is, that will be”. As we have said, the technical and logical requirement is knowledge of consequence; sense supplies the minor premiss. Hence, though it may perhaps seem a petty thing to say, I will not shrink from it; the real tripod of truth is the logical process which assumes the relation of consequent to antecedent, then introduces the fact, and so establishes the conclusion. If the Pythian God really finds pleasure in music, and in the voices of swans, and the tones of the lyre, what wonder is it that as a friend to Dialectic, he should welcome and love that part of speech which he sees philosophers use more, and more often, than any other. So Hercules, when he had not yet loosed Prometheus, nor yet conversed with the sophists Chiron and Atlas, but was young and just a Boeotian, first abolished Dialectic, made a mock at the “If the first then the second”, and bethought him to remove the tripod by force, and to try conclusions with the God for his art. At any rate, as time went on, he also appears to have become a great prophet and a great dialectician.’

VII. When Theon had done, I think it was Eustrophus of Athens who addressed us: ‘Do you see with what a will Theon backs Dialectic? He has only to put on the lion’s skin! Now then for you who put down under number all things in one mass, all natures and principles divine as well as human, and take it to be leader and lord in all that is beautiful and honourable! It is n time for you to keep quiet; offer to the god a first-fruits of your dear Mathematics, if you think that “E” rises above the other letters, not in its own right by power or shape, or by its meaning as a word, but as the honoured symbol of an absolutely great and sovereign number, the “Pempad”, from which the Wise Men took their verb “to count”. Eustrophus was not jesting when he said this to us; he said it because I was at the time passionately devoted to Mathematics, though soon to find the value of the maxim, ‘NOTHING TOO MUCH’, having joined the Academy.

VIII. So I said that Eustrophus’ solution of the problem by number was excellent. ‘For since,’ I continued, ‘when all number is divided into even and odd, unity alone is in its effect common to both, and therefore, if added to an odd number makes it even, and vice versa; and since even numbers start with two, odd numbers with three, and five is produced by combination of these, it has rightly received honour as the product of first principles, and it has further been called “Marriage”, because even resembles the female, odd the male. For when we divide the several numbers into equal segments, the even parts asunder perfectly, and leaves inside a sort of recipient principle or space; if the odd is treated the same way, a middle part is always left over, which is generative. Hence the odd is the more generative, and when brought into combination invariably prevails; in no combination does it give an even result, but in all cases an odd. Moreover, when each is applied to itself and added, the difference is shown. Even with even never gives odd, or passes out of its proper nature; it wants the strength to produce anything different. Odd numbers with odd yield even numbers in plenty because of their unfailing fertility. The other powers of numbers and their distinctions cannot be now pursued in detail. However, the Pythagoreans called five “Marriage”, as produced by the union of the first male number and the first female. From another point of view it has been called “Nature”, because when multiplied into itself it ends at last in itself. For as Nature takes a grain of wheat, and in the intermediate stages of growth gives forms and shapes in abundance, through which she brings her work to perfection, and, after them all, shows us again a grain of wheat, thus restoring the beginning in the end of the whole process, so it is with numbers. When other numbers are multiplied into themselves they end in different numbers after being squared; only those formed of five or six recover and preserve themselves every time. Thus six times six gives thirty-six, five times five twenty-five. And again, a number formed of six does this only once, in the single case of being squared. Five has the same property in multiplication, and also a special property of its own when added to itself; it produces alternately itself or ten, and that to infinity. For this number mimics the principle which orders all things. As Heraclitus tells us that Nature successively produces the universe out of herself and herself out of the universe, bartering “fire for things and things for fire, as goods for gold and gold for goods”, even so it is with the Pempad. In union with itself, it does not by its nature produce anything imperfect or foreign. All its changes are defined; it either produces itself or the Decad, either the homogeneous or the perfect.

IX. ‘Then if any one ask “What is all this to Apollo?” Much, we will answer, not to Apollo only but also to Dionysus, who has no less to do with Delphi than has Apollo. Now we hear theologians saying or singing, in poems or in plain prose, that the God subsists indestructible and eternal, and that, by force of some appointed plan and method, he passes through changes of his person; at one time he sets fire to Nature and so makes all like unto all, at another passes through all phases of difference — shapes, sufferings, powers — at the present time, for instance, he becomes “Cosmos”, and that is his most familiar name. The wiser people disguise from the vulgar the change into fire, and call him “Apollo” from his isolation, “Phoebus” from his undefiled purity. As for his passage and distribution into waves and water, and earth, and stars, and nascent plants and animals, they hint at the actual change undergone as a rending and dismemberment, but name the God himself Dionysus or Zagreus or Nyctelius or Isodaites. Deaths too and vanishings do they construct, passages out of life and new births, all riddles and tales to match the changes mentioned. So they sing to Dionysus dithyrambic strains, charged with sufferings and a change wherein are wanderings and dismemberment. For Aeschylus says:

In mingled cries the dithyramb should ring,
With Dionysus revelling, its King.

‘But Apollo has the Pæan, a set and sober music. Apollo is ever ageless and young; Dionysus has many forms and many shapes as represented in paintings and sculpture, which attribute to Apollo smoothness and order and a gravity with no admixture, to Dionysus a blend of sport and sauciness with seriousness and frenzy:

God that sett’st maiden’s blood
Dancing in frenzied mood,
Blooming with pageantry!
Evoe! we cry

‘So do they summon him, rightly catching the character of either change. But since the periods of change are not equal, that called “satiety” being longer, that of “stint” shorter, they here preserve a proportion, and use the Pæan with their sacrifice for the rest of the year, but at the beginning of winter revive the dithyramb, and stop the Pæan, and invoke this God instead of the other, supposing that this ratio of three to one is that of the “Arrangement” to the “Conflagration”.

X. ‘But perhaps this has been drawn out at too great length for the present opportunity. This much is clear, that they do associate the pempad with the God, as it now produces its own self like fire, and again produces the Decad out of itself like the universe. Now take music, which the God favours so highly: are we not to suppose that this number has its share here?

‘Most of the science of harmonies, to put it in a word, is concerned with consonances. That these are five and no more is proved by reason, as against the man who is all for strings and holes, and wants to explore these points irrationally by the senses: they all have their origin in numerical ratios. The ratio of the fourth is four to three, of the fifth three to two, of the octave two to one, of the octave and fifth three to one, of the double octave four to one. The additional consonance which writers of harmony introduce under the name of octave and fourth, does not merit admission, being extra-metrical; to admit it would be to indulge the irrational side of our sense of hearing, and to violate reason, or law. Passing by then five arrangements of tetrachords, and the first five “tones”, or “tropes”, or “harmonies”, whichever name is right, by variations of which, made higher or lower, the remaining scales, high and low, are produced, is it not true that, though intervals are many, indeed infinite, the principles of melody are five only, quarter tone, half tone, tone, tone and a half, double tone? In sounds no other interval of high and low, be it smaller or greater, can be used for melody.

XI. ‘Passing over many similar points, I will’, I said, ‘adduce Plato, who, in discussing the question of a single universe, says that if there are others besides ours, and it is not alone, then the whole number of them is five and no more; not but that, if ours is the only universe in being, as Aristotle also thinks, even this one is in a fashion composite and formed out of five; one of earth, one of water, a third of fire, and a fourth of air, while the fifth is called heaven or light or air, or by others “fifth essence” to which alone of all bodies circular motion is natural, not due to force or other accidental cause. Therefore it is that Plato, observing the five perfect figures of Nature — Pyramid, Cube, Octahedron, Eicosahedron, and Dodecahedron — assigned them to the elements, each to each.

XII. ‘There are some who appropriate to the same elements our own senses, also five in number. Touch, as they see, is resistent and earthy. Taste takes in properties by moisture in the things tasted. Air when struck becomes audible voice or sound. There remain two: smell, the object of our olfactory sense, is an exhalation engendered by heat, and so resembles a fire; sight is akin to air and light, which give it a luminous passage, so there is a commixture of both which is sympathetic. Besides these, the animal has no other sense, and the universe no other substance, which is simple and not blended. A marvellous apportionment of the five to the five!’

Here, I think, I paused, and after an interval I went on: ‘What has happened to us, Eustrophus? We have almost forgotten Homer, as if he had not been the first to divide the universe into five parts, assigning the three in the middle to the extremes, Olympus and earth, one the limit of what is below, the other of what is above. “We must cry back”, as Euripides says. Now those who exalt the number four as the basis of the genesis of every body, make out a fairly good case. For every solid body possesses length, breadth, and depth; but length presupposes a point as an unit; the line is called length without breadth, and is length; the movement of a line in breadth produces a plane surface, and that is three; add depth, and we get to a solid with four factors. Any one can see that the number four carries Nature up to this point, that is, to the formation of a complete body, which may be touched, weighed, or struck; there it has left her, wanting in what is greatest. For that which has no soul is, in plain terms, orphaned and incomplete and fit for nothing, unless it be employed by soul. But the movement or disposition which sets soul therein — a change introducing a fifth factor — restores to Nature her completeness, its rational basis is as much more commanding than that of the Tetrad as the animal is above the inanimate. Further, the symmetry and potency of the whole five prevails, so as not to allow the animate to form classes without limit, but gives five types for all living things. There are Gods, we know, and dæmons, and heroes, and after these, fourth in all, the race of men: fifth, and last, the irrational order of brutes. Again, if you make a natural division of the soul itself, the first and least distinct principle is that of growth; second is that of sense, then comes appetite, then the spirited part; when it has reached the power of reasoning and perfected its nature, it stays at rest in the fifth stage as its upper limit.

XIV. ‘Now as this number five has powers so many and so great, its origin is also noble: not the process already described, out of the numbers two and three, but that given by the combination of the first principle of number with the first square. The first principle is unity, the first square is four; from these as from idea and limited substance, comes five. Or, if it be really correct, as some hold, to reckon unity as a square, being a power of itself and working out to itself, then the Pempad is formed out of the first two squares, and so has not missed noble birth and that the highest.

XV. ‘My most important point’, I went on, ‘may, I fear, bear hardly on Plato, just as he said that Anaxagoras “was hardly used by the name of Selene”, when he had wished to appropriate the theory of her illumination, really a very old one. Are not these Plato’s words, in the Cratylus?’ ‘They certainly are’, said Eustrophus, ‘but I fail to see the resemblance.’ ‘Very well then; you know, I suppose, that in the Sophist he proves that the supreme principles are five: being, identity, difference, and after these, as fourth and fifth, movement and position. But in the Philebus he divides on a different plan. He distinguishes the unlimited and the limited, from whose combination comes the origin of all being. The cause of combination he takes to be a fourth. The fifth, whereby things so mingled are again parted and distinguished, he has left us to guess. I conjecture that those on the one list are figures of those on the other; to being corresponds that which becomes, to motion the unlimited; to position the limited, to identity the combining principle, to difference that which distinguishes. But if the two sets are different, yet, on one view as on the other, there would be five classes, and five modes of difference. Some early inquirer, it will surely be said, saw into this before Plato, and consecrated two “E’s” to the God, as a manifestation and symbol of the number of all things. But further, having perceived that the good also takes shape under five heads, firstly moderation, secondly symmetry, thirdly mind, fourthly the sciences and arts and true opinions which relate to soul, fifthly every pleasure which is pure and unmingled with what causes pain, he there leaves off, merely suggesting the Orphic verse,

In the sixth order let the strain be stayed!

XVI. ‘Having said so much’, I went on, to you all, I will sing one short stave to Nicander and “his cunning men”.

‘On the sixth day of the new moon, when the Pythia is introduced into Prytaneum by one person, the first of your three castings of lot is a single one, namely the five: the three against the two.’ ‘It is so,’ said Nicander, ‘but the reason may not be disclosed to others.’ ‘Then’, I answered with a smile, ‘until such time as we become priests, and the God allows us to know the truth, this much and no more shall be added to what we have to say about the Pempad.’ Such, so far as I remember, was the end of the arithmetical or mathematical reasons for extolling the letter ‘E’.

XVII. Ammonius, as one who himself gave Mathematics no mean place in Philosophy, was pleased at the course the conversation was taking, and said: ‘It is not worth our while to answer our young friends with too absolute accuracy on these points; I will only observe that any one of the numbers will provide not a few points for those who choose to sing its praises. Why speak about the others? Apollo’s holy “Seven” will take up all one day before we have exhausted its powers. Are we then to show the Seven Wise Men at odds with common usage, and “the time which runs”, and to suppose that they ousted the “Seven” from its pre-eminence before the God, and consecrated the “Five” as perhaps more appropriate?

‘My own view is that the letter signifies neither number, nor order, nor conjunction, nor any other omitted part of speech; it is a complete and self-operating mode of addressing the God; the word once spoken brings the speaker into apprehension of his power. The God, as it were, addresses each of us, as he enters, with his “KNOW THYSELF”, which is at least as good as “Hail”. We answer the God back with “EI” (Thou Art), rendering to him the designation which is true and has no lie in it, and alone belongs to him, and to no other, that of BEING.

XVIII. ‘For we have, really, no part in real being; all mortal nature is in a middle state between becoming and perishing, and presents but an appearance, a faint unstable image, of itself. If you strain the intellect, and wish to grasp this, it is as with water; compress it too much and force it violently into one space as it tries to flow through, and you destroy the enveloping substance; even so when the reason tries to follow out too closely the clear truth about each particular thing in a world of phase and change, it is foiled, and rests either on the becoming of that thing or on its perishing; it cannot apprehend anything which abides or really is. “It is impossible to go into the same river twice”, said Heraclitus; no more can you grasp mortal being twice, so as to hold it. So sharp and so swift its change; it scatters and brings together again, nay not again, no nor afterwards; even while it is being formed it fails, it approaches, and it its gone. Hence becoming never ends in being, for the process never leaves off, or is stayed. From seed it produces, in its constant changes, an embryo, then an infant, then a child; in due order a boy, a young man; then a man, an elderly man, an old man; it undoes the former becomings and the age which has been, to make those which come after. yet we fear (how absurdly!) a single death, we who have died so many deaths, and yet are dying. For it is not only that, as Heraclitus would say, “death of fire is birth of air”, and “death of air is birth of water”; the thing is much clearer in our own selves. The man in his strength is destroyed when the old man comes into being, the young man was destroyed for the man in his strength to be, so the boy for the young man, the babe for the boy. He of yesterday has died unto him of to-day; he of to-day is dying unto him of to-morrow. No one abides, no one is; we that come into being are many, while matter is driven around, and then glides away, about some one appearance and a common mould. Else how is it, if we remain the same, that the things in which we find pleasure now are different from those of a former time; that we love, hate, admire, and censure different things; that our words are different and our feelings; that our look, our bodily form, our intellect are not the same now as then? If a man does not change, these various conditions are unnatural; if he does change, he is not the same man. But if he is not the same man, he is not at all; his so-called being is simply change and new birth of man out of man. In our ignorance of what being is, sense falsely tells us that what appears is.

XIX. ‘What then really is? That which is eternal, was never brought into being, is never destroyed, to which no time ever brings change. Time is a thing which moves and takes the fashion of moving matter, which ever flows or is a sort of leaky vessel which holds destruction and becoming. Of time we use the words “afterwards”, “before”, “shall be”, and “has been”, each on its face an avowal of not being. For, in this question of being, to say of a thing which has not yet come into being, or which has already ceased from being, that “it is”, is silly and absurd. When we strain to the uttermost our apprehension of time, and say “it is at hand”, “it is here”, or “now”, a rational development of the argument brings it all to nothing. “Now” is squeezed out into the future or into the past, as though we should try to see a point, which of necessity passes away to right or left. But if the case be the same with Nature, which is measured, as with time which measures, nothing in it abides or really is. All things are coming into being, or being destroyed, even while we measure them by time. Hence it is not permissible, even in speaking of that which is, to say that “it was”, or “it shall be”; these all are inclinations, transitions, passages, for of permanent being there is none in Nature.

XX. ‘But the God IS, we are bound to assert, he is, with reference to no time but to that age wherein is no movement, or time, or duration; to which nothing is prior or subsequent; no future, no past, no elder, no younger, which by one long “now” has made the “always” perfect. Only with reference tot his that which really is, is; it has not come into being, it is not yet to be, it did not begin, it will not cease. Thus then we ought to hail him in worship, and thus to address him as “Thou Art”, aye, or in the very words of some of the old people, “Ei Hen”, “Thou art one thing”. For the Divine is not many things, in the sense in which each one of us is made up of ten thousand different and successive states, a scrap-heap of units, a mob of individuals. No, that which is must be one, as that is which is one is. Variety, any difference in being, passes to one side to produce that which is not. Therefore the first of the names of the God, and the second, and the third. “Apollo” (Not-many) denies plurality and excludes multitude. Ἴητος means one and one only; Phoebus, we know, is a word by which the ancients expressed that which is clean and pure, even as to this day the Thessalians, when their priests pass their solemn days in strict seclusion outside the temple, apply to them a verb formed from Phoebus. Now The One is transparent and pure, pollution comes by commixture of this with that, just as Homer, you remember, says of ivory dyed red that it is stained, and dyers say of mingled pigments that they are destroyed, and call the process “destruction”. Therefore it is the property of that which is indestructible and pure to be one and without admixture.

XXI. ‘There are those who think that Apollo and the sun are the same; we hail them and love them for the fair name they give, and it is fitting to do so; for they associate their idea of the God with that which they honour and desire more than all other things which they know. But now that we see them dreaming of the God in the fairest of nightly visions, let us rise and encourage them to mount yet higher, to contemplate him in a dream of the day, and to see his own being. Let them pay honour also to the image of him and worship the principle of increase which is about it; so far as what is of sense can lead to what is of mind, a moving body to that which abides, it allows presentments and appearances of his kind and blessed self to shine through after a fashion. But as to transitions and changes in himself, that he now discharges fire, and so is drawn up, as they put it, or again presses down and strains himself into earth and sea, winds and animals, and all the strange passages into animals and also plants, piety forbids us so much as to hear them. Otherwise the God will be a greater trifler than the boy in Homer, for ever playing with the universe the game which the boy plays with a pile of sand, which is heaped together and sucked away under his hand; moulding the universe when there is none, and again destroying it when it has come into being. The opposite principle which we find in the universe, whatever its origin, is that which binds beings together and prevails over the corporeal weakness tending to destruction. To my thinking the word “EI” is confronted with this false view, and testifies to the God that THOU ART, meaning that no shift or change has place in him, but that such things belong to some other God, or rather to some Spirit set over Nature in its perishing and becoming, whether to effect either process or to undergo it. This appears from the names, in themselves opposite and contradictory. He is called Apollo, another is called Pluto; he is Delius (apparent), the other Aidoneus (invisible); he is Phoebus (bright), the other Skotios (full of darkness); by his side are the Muses, and Memory, with the other are Oblivion and Silence; he is Theorius and Phanæus, the other is “King of dim Night and ineffectual Sleep.” The other is

Of all the Gods to men the direst foe.

Whereas of him Pindar has pleasantly said:

Well tried and mildest found, to men who live and die.

so Euripides was right:

Draughts to the dead out-poured,
Songs which our bright-haired lord
Apollo hath abhorred.

And still earlier Stesichorus:

Jest and song Apollo owns,
Let Hades keep his woes and groans.

Sophocles again, in his actual assignment of instruments to each, is quite clear, thus:

Nor harp nor lyre to wailing strains is dear,

for it was quite late, indeed only the other day, that the flute ventured to let itself speak “on themes of joy”; in early times it trailed along in mourning, nor was its service therein much esteemed or very cheerful; then there came a general confusion. It was specially by mingling things which were of Gods with those which were of dæmons that the distinction of the instruments was lost. Anyhow, the phrase “KNOW THYSELF” seems to stand in a sort of antithesis to the letter “E”, and yet, again, to accord with it. The letter is an appeal, a cry raised in awe and worship to the God, as being throughout all eternity; the phrase is a reminder to mortal man of his own nature and of his weakness.’

Oracles at Delphi no longer given in verse

I.

THE SPEAKERS

BASILOCLES, a citizen of Delphi

PHILINUS, a friend, perhaps also of Delphi

Bas. “You have made it late in the evening, Philinus, by escorting your guest about amongst the dedicated things: I lost all patience in waiting for you both.”

Phil. “Yes, Basilocles, we strolled along slowly — sowing words as we went, and forthwith ‘reaping words with strife’, that sprung up and emerged along our path, like the crop of the Dragon’s Teeth, spiteful and contentious words.”

Bas. “Will it then be necessary to ask one of those who were there at the time, or are you willing yourself to oblige us and repeat your conversation? and tell us who were the speakers?”

Phil. “That task, it seems, is mine, for you won’t find the others easily; I saw most of them going up again to the Corcium and the Lycoreia, in company with the visitor.”

Bas. “How fond our visitor is of seeing the sites, and how extravagantly fond of hearing stories!”

Phil. “Rather, fond of history, and willing to learn; and not so much to be admired for these two qualities, as for gentleness combined with elegance of manner, and then an incredulity and a fondness for disputation — the result of intelligence — with nothing in it ill-tempered or stubborn: so that after being a little while in his company you exclaim, ‘The child of a good father!’ [Plato Republic ] You are surely acquainted with Diogenianus, that best of men?

Bas. “I have not seen him; but I have met many who greatly approve of his conversation and character, and say just the same things of him as you do of the youth. But what was the occasion of this discussion of yours?”

PHILINUS NARRATES THEIR CONVERSATION

II.

THE SPEAKERS

PHILINUS

DIOGENIANUS, a young visitor from Pergamum, son of Diogenianus

THEON, a literary friend.

SERAPION, Athenian poet.

BOETHUS, a geometrician, nearly a converted Epicurean.

TWO GUIDES to the Temple of Delphi.

Phil. “The guides were going through their regular spiel, paying no heed to our entreaties that they cut short their long stories and their reading of every single inscription, whatever its interest. The appearance and artistic merit of the statues did not so much attract the notice of the visitor, who had no doubt seen many fine things of the sort elsewhere. But he admired the color of the bronze, which was not like dirt nor like verdigris, but shone with a dark blue dye, so as to contribute considerably to the effect of the statues of the admirals (for there he had begun his tour), standing as they did, sea-like in color, and truly men of the ocean deep. Was there, he asked, some special mode of alloying and preparing the bronze used by the ancient artificers, like the tempering of swords, on the loss of which skill, bronze was exempted from the uses of war? For we know,” he continued, “that Corinthian bronze acquired its beauty of color not through any art, but through accident, when a fire consumed a house containing a little gold and silver and a great quantity of bronze; all which being mixed and melted together; and the whole thing took its name from bronze, the preponderating metal.”

Theon broke in: “We have heard a different story, with a bit of mischief in it. A Corinthian bronze-worker found a chest containing a hoard of gold. Fearing detection, he chipped it off little by little, quietly mixing the bits with bronze; the result was a marvellous blend, which he sold at a high price, as people were delighted with its color and beauty. However, the one story is as mythical as the other; what we may suppose is that some method was known of mixing and preparing, much as now they alloy gold with silver, producing a peculiar and rare, and to my mind a sickly and pallid effect, a perversion with no beauty in it.”

III. Diog.”What then has been the cause, do you think, of the color of these bronzes?”

Theon “Here is a case in which, of the first and primal elements of Nature — namely, Fire, Earth, Air Water — none comes near to, or has to do with, bronze, except only air: clearly then, air is the agent; from its constant presence and contact the bronze gets its exceptional quality, or perhaps

τουτί μὲν ᾔδη πρὶν Θέογνιν γεγονέναι
Thus much you knew before Theognis was,

as the comic poet has it. But what you want to learn, Diogenianus, is perhaps the nature of the air, and the property in virtue of which repeated contact has thus colored the bronze?” Diogenianus said that it was; “And I too,” continued Theon; “my young friend, let us continue our quest together; and first, if you will agree, ask why olive oil produces a more copious rust on the metal than other liquids. It does not, of course, actually make the deposit, because it is pure and uncontaminated when applied.”

Diog. “Certainly not; the real cause appears to me to be something different; the oil is fine, pure, and transparent, so the rust when it meets it is specially evident, whereas with other liquids rust becomes invisible.”

Theon “Excellent, my young friend, that is prettily put. But consider also, if you please, the cause given by Aristotle.”

Diog. “I do please. Aristotle says that rust, when it comes into contact with other liquids, passes invisibly through and is dispersed, because the particles are irregular and fine; whereas in dense oil it is held together and permanently condensed. If, then, we can come to some such hypothesis ourselves, we shall not be entirely at a loss for a spell to charm away this difficulty.”

IV. We encouraged him and agreed, and Theon went on to say that the air of Delphi is thick and close of texture, with a tenseness caused by reflection from the hills and their resistance, but is also fine and biting, as seems to be proved by the facts of digestion of food. The tenuity allows it to enter bronze, and to scrape up from it much solid rust, which rust again is held up and compressed, because the density of the air does not allow it a passage through; but the deposit breaks out, because it is so copious, and takes on a bright rich hue at the surface. This we applauded, but the visitor remarked that either hypothesis was sufficient for the argument.

Diog. “The fineness will be found to be in contradiction to the density you speak of, but there is no necessity to assume it. The bronze, as it ages, exhales or throws off rust by its own inherent action; the density holds together and solidifies the rust, and makes it apparent because of its quantity.”

Theon broke in, “What is to prevent the same thing being both fine and dense, as silks or fine linen stuffs, of which Homer says

καιροσέων δ᾽ ὀθονῶν ἀπολείβεται ὑγρόν ἔλαιον,
And from the close-spun weft the trickling oil will fall,

[Od. .: *] where he indicates the minute and delicate workmanship of the fabric by the fact that the oil would not remain, but trickled or glided off, the fineness at once and the density refusing it passage. And again, the scraping up of the rust is not the only purpose served by the tenuity of the air; it also makes the color itself pleasanter to the eye and brighter, mingling lustre with the azure of the blue.”

V. Here there was an interval of silence; the guides were getting back to their routine speeches. A certain oracle given in verse was mentioned — I think it was one about the reign of Aegon the Argive — when Diogenianus observed that he had often been surprised at the badness and common quality of the verse in which oracles are delivered. yet the God is Choirmaster of the Muses, and eloquent language is no less his function than beauty of ode for tune, and he should have a voice far above that of Homer and Hesiod in verse. And yet we have the greater part of the oracles a tissue of bad taste, both in diction and in metre. Then Serapion the poet of Athens, said

Serap. “Then do we really believe that these verses are the God’s, yet venture to say that they fall behind Homer and Hesiod in beauty? Shall we not rather take them as the best and most beautiful in poetry, and revise our judgement of them, as prejudiced by familiarity with a bad standard?”

At this point Boethus the geometer — you know him, already well on his way into the Epicurean camp — broke in.

Boeth. “Have you ever heard the story of Pauson the painter?”

Serap. “No, I have not.”

Boeth. “Well, it’s certainly worth hearing. It seems that he had contracted to paint a horse rolling, and not galloping. The buyer was indignant; so Pauson laughed and turned the canvas upside down, with the result that the lower parts became the upper, and there was the horse rolling, not galloping. So it is, Bion tells us, with certain syllogisms when converted. Thus some will tell us not that the oracles are quite beautiful because they are the God’s, but that they are not the God’s because they are bad! That point may be left unsettled. But that the verses used in the oracles are bad poetry,” he continued, “is made clear also in your judgement, my dear Serapion, isn’t it so? For you write poems which are severe and philosophical in subject, but in force, grace, and diction are more like the work of Homer and Hesiod than like the utterances of the Pythia!”

VI. Serap. “Yes, we are sick, Boethus, sick in ear, and sick in eye. Luxury and softness have accustomed us to think things beautiful as they are more sweet, and call them so. Soon we shall actually be finding fault with the Pythia because she does not speak with a more thrilling voice than Glauce the singing-girl, or use costly ointments, or put on purple robes to go down into the sanctuary, or burn on her censer cassia, mastic, and frankincense, rather than her own barley and bay leaves. Do you not see,” he went on, “what grace the songs of Sappho have, how they charm and soothe the hearers, while the Sibyl ‘with raving mouth,’ as Heraclitus says, ‘utters words with no laugher, no adornment, no perfumes,’ yet makes her voice carry to ten thousand years, because of the God. And Pindar tells us that Cadmus heard from the God ‘right music’, not sweet music, or delicate music, or twittering music. What is passionless and pure gives no admission to pleasure; she was cast out in this very place, together with pain; and the most of her has dribbled away, it seems, into the ears of men.”

VII. When Serapion had done, Theon smiled.

Theon “Serapion has paid his usual tribute to his own proclivities, making capital out of the turn which the conversation had taken about pain and pleasure! But for us, Boethus, even if these verses are inferior to Homer, let us never suppose that the God has composed them; he only gives the initial impulse according to the capacity of each prophetess. Why, suppose the answers had to be written, not spoken. I do not think we should suppose that the letters were made by God, and find fault with the calligraphy as below royal standard. The strain is not the God’s, but the woman’s, and so with the voice and the phrasing and the metre; he only provides the fantasies, and puts light into her soul to illuminate the future; for that is what inspiration is. To put it plainly, there is no escaping you prophets of Epicurus — yes, you too, Boethus, are drifting that way — you blame those old prophetesses because they used bad poetry, and you also blame those of today because they use no poetry, and speak the first words which come, that they may not be assailed for delivering headless, hollow, crop-tailed lines.”

Diog. “Do not jest, in Heaven’s name, no! but help us to solve the problem, which interests us all. There is no one who is not in search of a rational account of the fact that the oracle has ceased to use metre and poetry.”

Theon “But right now, my young friend, we seemed to be doing a shabby turn by the guides, keeping them from their proper duties. Suffer them first to do their office; afterwards we shall discuss in peace whatever you wish.”

VIII. Our round had now brought us in front of the statue of Hiero the tyrant. Most of the stories the foreign visitor knew well, but he good-naturedly lent his ear to them. But at last, when he heard that a certain bronze pillar given by Hiero, which had been standing upright, fell of its own accord on the very day when Hiero died at Syracuse, he showed surprise. I set myself to remember similar instances, such as the notable one of Hiero the Spartan, how before his death at Leuctra the eyes fell out of his statue, and the gold stars disappeared which Lysander had dedicated after the naval battle of Aegospotami. And then the stone statue of Lysander himself broke out into such a growth of weeds and grass that the face was hidden. At the time of the Athenian disaster in Syracuse, the golden berries kept dropping off from the palm trees, and crows chipped the shield on the figure of Pallas. Again, the crown of the Cnidians, which Philomelus, tyrant of Phocis, had given to Pharsalia the dancing girl, caused her death, as she was playing near the temple of Apollo in Metapontum, after she had removed from Greece into Italy: for young men made a rush for the crown and in their struggle with one another for the gold, they tore her limb from limb. Now Aristotle used to say that Homer is the only poet who made “words which stir, because of their energy.” But I would say that there have been votive offerings sent here which have movement in a high degree, and help the God’s foreknowledge to signify things; that none of them is void or without feeling, but all are full of Divinity.

Boeth. “Very good! So it is not enough to shut the God into a mortal body once every month. We will also knead him into every morsel of stone and brass, to show that we do not choose to hold Fortune, or Spontaneity, a sufficient author of such occurrences.”

Phil. “Then in your opinion,” I said, “each of the occurrences looks like Fortune or Spontaneity; and it seems probable to you that the atoms glided forth, and were dispersed, and swerved, not sooner and not later, but at the precise moment when each of the dedicators was to fare worse or better. Epicurus helps you now by what he said or wrote three hundred years ago; but the God, unless he take and shut himself up in all things, and be mingled with all, cannot, you think, initiate movement, or cause change of condition in anything which is.”

IX. Such was my answer to Boethus, and to the same effect about the Sibyl and her utterances. For when we stood near the rock by the Council Chamber, on which the first Sibyl is said to have been seated on her arrival from Helicon, where she had been brought up by the Muses (though others says that she came from the Maleans, and was the daughter of Lamia the daughter of Poseidon), Serapion remembered the verses in which she hymned herself; how she will never cease from prophesying, even after death, but will herself go round in the moon, being turned into what we call the “bright face”, while her breath is mingled with the air and borne about in rumours and voices for ever and ever; and her body within the earth is transformed, so that from it spring grass and weeds, the pasture of sacred cattle, which have in their inward parts all the colours, shapes and qualities by which men obtain forecasts of future things. Here Boethus made his derision still more evident.

The foreign visitor observed that, although these things have a mythical appearance, yet the prophecies are attested by many uprootings and removals of Greek cities, inroads of barbarian hordes, and the overthrow of dynasties.

Diog. “These still recent troubles at Cumae and Dicæarchia, were they not long ago foretold in the songs of the Sibyl; so that Time was only discharging his debts in the fires which have burst out of mountains, the boiling seas, the masses of burning rocks tossed aloft by the winds, the ruin of cities many and great, so that if you visit them in broad daylight you cannot get a clear idea of the site, the ground being covered with confused ruins? It is hard to believe that such things have happened at all, let alone that they were predicted long ago — unless with divine assistance.”

X. Boeth. “My good Sir; what does happen in Nature which is not Time paying his debts? Of all the strange, unexpected things, by land or sea, among cities and men, is there any which some one might not foretell, and then, after it has happened, find himself right? Yet this is hardly foretelling at all; it is telling, rather it is tossing or scattering words into the infinite, with no principle in them. They wander about, and sometimes Fortune meets them and falls in with them; but it is all chance. It is one thing, I think, when what has been foretold happens, and quite another when what will happen is foretold. Any statement made about things then non-existent contains intrinsic error; it has no right to await the confirmation which comes from accident; nor is it any true proof of having foretold with knowledge that the thing happened after it was foretold; for Infinity will bring all things. No, the ‘good guesser’, whom the proverb has announced to be the best prophet, is like a man who hunts on the tail of the future, by the help of the plausible. These Sibyls and Bacises threw into the sea, that is, into time, without having any real clue, nouns and verbs about troubles and occurrences of every description. Some of these prophecies came about, but they were lies; and what is now pronounced is a lie like them, even if, later on, it should happen to turn out true.”

XI. When Boethus had finished, Serapion spoke.

Serap. “The case is quite fairly put by Boethus against prophecies so indefinitely worded as those he mentions, with no basis of circumstance: ‘If victory has been foretold to a general, he has conquered; If the destruction of a city, it is overthrown.’ But where not only the thing which is to happen is stated, but also the how, the when, after what event, with whose help, then it is not a guess at things which will perhaps be, but a clear prediction of things which will certainly be. Here are the lines with reference to the lameness of Agesilaus:

Sure though thy feet, proud Sparta, have a care,
A lame king’s reign may see thee trip — Beware!
Troubles unlooked for long shall vex thy shore,
And rolling Time his tide of carnage pour.

“And then again those about the island which the sea threw up off Thera and Therasia, and upon the war between Philip and the Romans:

When Trojan race the victory shall win
From Punic foe, lo! wonders shall begin;
Unearthly fires from out the sea shall flash,
Whirlwinds toss stones aloft, and thunder crash,
An isle unnamed,unknown, shall stand upright,
The weak shall beat the stronger in the fight.

“What happened within a short time — that the Romans mastered the Carthaginians, and brought the war with Philip to a finish, that Philip met the Aetolians and Romans in battle and was defeated, and lastly, that an island rose out of the depths of the sea, with much fire and boiling waves — could not all be set down to chance and spontaneous occurrence. Why, the order emphasizes the foreknowledge, and so does the time predicted to the Romans, some five hundred years before the event, as that in which they were to be at war with all the races at once, which meant the war with the slaves after their revolt. In all this nothing is unascertainable, the story is not left in dim light to be groped out with reference to Fortune ‘in Infinity’, it gives many securities, and is open to trial, it points the road which the destined event is to tread. For I do not think that any one will say that the agreement with the details as foretold was accidental. Otherwise, what prevents some one else from saying that Epicurus did not write his Leading Principles for our use, Boethus, but that the letters fell together by chance and just spontaneously, and so the book was finished off?”

XII. While we were talking thus, we were moving forward. In the store-house of the Corinthians we were looking at the golden palm tree, the only remnant of their offerings, when the frogs and water-snakes embossed round the roots caused much surprise to Diogenianus, and for the matter of that, to us. For the palm tree is not, like many others, a marshy or water-loving plant, nor have frogs anything specially to do with the Corinthians. Thus they must be a symbolical or canting device of that city, just as the men of Selinus are said to have dedicated a golden plant of parsley (σέλινον), and those of Tenedos the axe, because of the crabs found round the place which they call Asterium, the only ones, it appears, with the brand of an axe on the shell. Yet the God himself is supposed to have a partiality for crows and swans and wolves and hawks, for anything rather than beasts like crabs. Serapion observed that the artist intended a veiled hint at the sun drawing his aliment and origin from exhalations out of moist plants, whether he had it from Homer,

ἠέλιος δ’ ἀπόρουσε λιπὼν περικαλλέα λίμνην
Leaving the beauteous lake, the great sun scaled the brazen sky

or whether he had seen the sun painted by the Egyptians as a new-born child seated on a lotus. I laughed:

Phil. “Where have you got to again, my good Sir, thrusting the Stoa in here, and quietly slipping into our discussion their ‘Conflagrations’ and ‘Exhalations’? Thessalian women fetch the sun and the moon down to us, but you are assuming that they are first born and then watered out of earth and its waters. Plato dubbed man a ‘heavenly plant’, rearing himself up from a root on high, namely his head; but you laugh down Empedocles when he tells us how the sun, having been brought into being by reflection of heavenly light around the earth,

ἀνταυγεῖν πρὸς Ὄλυμπον ἀταρβήτοισι προσώποις
Beams back upon Olympus undismayed!

Yet, on your own showing, the sun is a creature or plant of the marshes, naturalized by you in the country of frogs or water-snakes. However, all this may be reserved for the Stoics and their tragedies; here we have the incidental works of the artists, and let us examine them incidentally. In many respects they are clever people, but they have not in all cases avoided coldness and elaboration. Just as the man who designed Apollo with the cock in his hand meant to suggest the early morning hour when dawn is coming, so here the frogs may be taken for a symbol of the spring season when the sun begins to have power over the air and to break up winter; always supposing that, with you, we are to reckon Apollo and the sun one God, not two.”

Serap. “What? do you not agree? do you hold the sun to be different from Apollo?”

Phil. “As different as the moon from the sun; only she does not hide the sun often or from all the world, whereas the sun has made, we may almost say, all the world ignorant of Apollo, diverting thought by sensation, to the apparition from the real.”

XIII. Next Serapion asked the guide the real reason why they call the chamber not after Cypselus, the Dedicator, but after the Corinthians. When they were silent, being, as I privately believe, at a loss for reason, I laughed, and said “What can these men possibly know or remember, utterly dazed as they must be by our high celestial talk? Why, it was only just now that we heard them saying that, after the tyranny was overthrown, the Corinthians wished to inscribe the golden statue at Pisa, and also this treasure-house, with the name of the city. So the Delphians granted it as a right, and agreed; but the Corinthians passed a vote to exclude the Eleians, who had shown jealousy of them, from the Isthmian meetings, and from that time to this there has been no competitor from Elis. The murder of the Molionidæ by Hercules near Cleonæ has nothing to do with the exclusion of the Eleians, though some think that it has. On the contrary, it would have been for them to exclude the Corinthians if that had been the cause of the conflict.” Such were my remarks.

XIV. When we passed the chamber of the Acanthians and Brasidas, the guide showed us a place where iron obelisks to Rhodopis the courtesan once used to stand. Diogenianus showed annoyance.

Diog. “So it was felt to be the duty of the same state both to find a place for Rhodopis to deposit the tithes of her earnings and to put Aesop, her fellow slave, to death!”

Serap. “Bless you, friend; why so vexed at that? Carry your eyes upwards, and behold among the generals and kings the golden Mnesarete, which Crates called a standing trophy of the lewdness of the Greeks.”

Diog. “Was it then about Phryne that Crates said that?”

Serap. “Yes it was; her name was Mnesarete, but she took on that of Phryne [toad] as a nickname because of her yellow skin. Many names, it would seem, are concealed by nicknames. There was Polyxena, mother of Alexander, afterwards said to have been called Myrtale and Olympias and Stratonice. Then Eumetis of Rhodes is to this day called by most people Cleobuline, after her father; and Herophile of Erythræ, when she showed a prophetic gift, was addressed as Sibylla. You will hear the grammarians telling us that Leda was named Mnesinoe, and Orestes Achæus. But how do you propose,” he continued, looking hard at Theon, “to get rid of the charge as to Phryne?”

XV. Theon smiled quietly: “In this way: a counter-charge against you for raking up the pettiest of the Greek misdoings. For as Socrates, when entertained in the house of Callias, makes war upon the ointment only, but looks on all the dancing and tumbling and kisses and buffoonery, and holds his tongue, so you, it seems to me, want to exclude from the temple a poor woman who made an unworthy use of her charms; but when you see the God encompassed by first-fruits and tithes of murder, war, and rapine, and his temple loaded with Greek spoils and booty, you show no disgust; you have no pity for the Greeks when you read on the beautiful offerings such deeply disgraceful inscriptions as ‘Brasidas and the Acanthians from the Athenians’, ‘Athenians from Corinthians’, ‘Phocians from Thessalians’, ‘Orneatans from Sicyonians’, and ‘Amphictyones from Phocians’. So Praxiteles, it seems, was one person who offended Crates by finding room for his mistress to stand here, whereas Crates ought to have commended him for placing beside those golden kings a golden courtesan, a strong rebuke to wealth as having nothing wonderful or worshipful about it. It would be good if kings and rulers were to set up in the God’s house offerings to Justice, to Temperance and Magnanimity, not to golden and delicate Abundance, in which even the very foulest lives have their share.”

XVI. “You forget to mention,” said one of our guides, “how Crœsus had sculpted a golden figure of his baker-woman and dedicated it here.”

Theon “Yes; but that was not to flout the temple with his luxury of wealth, but for a good and righteous cause. The story is that Alyattes, father of Crœsus, married a second wife and brought up a second family. This woman fomented a plot against Crœsus, giving poison to the baker and telling her to knead a loaf with it and serve it to Crœsus. The baker told Crœsus in secret and set the loaf before the second wife’s children. And so, when Crœsus became king, he requited the baker-woman’s service in away which made the God a witness, and moreover did a good turn to him. Hence, it is quite proper to honour and love any such offering from cities as that from the Opuntians. When the Phocian tyrants had melted up many of the gold and silver offerings and struck coined money, which they distributed among the cities, the Opuntians collected all the silver they could find, and sent a large jar to be consecrated here to the God. I commend the Myrinæans also, and the Apollonians, who sent hither sheaves of gold, and even more highly the Eretrians and Magnesians, who endowed the God with firstfruits of men, as being the giver of crops and also ancestral, the god of their fathers; racial, the creator of men; and the friend of man. Whereas I blame the Megarians, because they were almost alone in setting up the God holding a lance; this was after the battle in which they defeated and expelled the Athenians who were holding their city, after the Persian wars. Later on, however, they offered to him a golden plectrum, referring it, as it appears, to Scythinus, who says of the lyre:

ἣν ἁρμόζεται
Ζηνὸς εὐειδὴς Ἀπόλλων, πᾶσαν ἀρχῆν καὶ τέλος
συλλαβλων: ἔχει δὲ παμπὸν πλῆκτρον ἡλίου φάος
which the son of Zeus
Wears, the comely God Apollo, gathering first and last in one,
And he holds a golden harp-quill flashing as the very sun.

XVII. Serapion wanted to put in some further remark on this, when the stranger said:

Dion. “It is delightful to listen to such speeches as we have heard, but I feel myself obliged to claim fulfillment of the original promise, that we should hear the cause which has made the Pythia cease to prophesy in epic or other verse. So, if it be your pleasure, let us leave to another time the remainder of the sights, sit down where we are, and hear about that. For it is this more than anything else which militates against the credibility of the oracle; for it must be one of two things: either the Pythia does not get near the spot where the Divinity is, or the current is altogether exhausted, and the power has failed.”

Accordingly we went round and seated ourselves on the southern plinth of the temple, in view of the temple of Earth and the spring of water, which made Boethus at once observe that the very place where the problem was raised lent itself to the stranger’s case. For here was a temple of the Muses where the exhalation rises from the fountain; from which fountain they drew the water used for the lustrations, as Simonides has it:

ἔνθα χερίβεσσιν ἀπύνεται τὸ Μουσᾶν
καλλικόμοων ὑπένρθεν ἁγνὸν ὕδωρ.
Whence is drawn for holy washings
Water of the Muses bright.

And again, in a rather more affected strain, the same poet addresses Clio:

ἁγνᾶν ἐπίσκοπον χερνίβων,
Chaste guardian of our lustrations

and goes on to say

πολύλιστον ἀρυόντεσσιν
ἀχρυσόπεπλον . . .
εὐῶδες ἀμβροσίων ἐκ μυχῶν
ἐρανὸν ὕδωρ λαβεῖν.
Goddess sought in many a vow
By no golden robe encumbered, hear thy servants drawing now
Water, fragrant and delightful, from ambrosial depths below.

So Eudoxus was wrong in believing those who have made out that this was called ‘Water of Styx’. But they installed the Muses as guardians of prophecy and wardens of the place, by the fountain and the temple of Earth where the oracle used to be, some say, because the responses were given in metre and in lyric strains. And some say further that here the heroic metre was first heard:

συμφέρετε πρερά τ᾽, οἰωνοις, κηρόη τε, μέλισσαι.
Bring in your feathers, ye birds; ye bees, bring wax at his bidding.

Later Earth became inferior to the God and lost her august position.

XVIII. Serapion responded, “More reasonable, that, Boethus, and more in tune with the Muses. For we ought not to fight against the God, nor to remove, along with his prophecy, his Providence and Godhead also, but rather to seek fresh solutions for apparent contradictions, and never to surrender the reverent belief of our fathers.”

Phil. “Excellent Serapion! you are right. We are not abandoning Philosophy, as cleared out of the way and done for, because once upon a time philosophers put out their dogmas and theories in verse, as Orpheus, Hesiod, Parmenides, Empedocles, Thales, whereas later on they gave it up, and have now all given it up — except you! In your hands Poetry is returning home to Philosophy, and clear and noble is the strain in which she rallies our young people. Astronomy again: she was not lowered in the hands of Aristarchus, Timocharis, Aristyllus, Hipparchus, all writing in prose, whereas Eudoxus, Hesiod, and Thales used metre, if we assume that Thales really wrote the Astronomy attributed to him. And Pindar himself confesses that he is quite at a loss about the neglect of verse in his own day, and is astonished .... It is neither out of the way nor absurd for us to seek out the causes of such changes; but to dismiss any of the arts and sciences altogether, because there is some alteration or variation in their details or delivery, is totally unfair.”

XIX. Theon “And yet those instances have involved really great variations and novelties, whereas of the oracles given here we know many in prose even in old days, and those on no trifling matters. When the Lacedæmonians consulted the God after their war with the Athenians, as Thucydides tells us, he promised them victory and mastery, and that “he himself will help them, invited or uninvited”. And again, that if they did not restore Pleistonax, they should plough with a silver share. When the Athenians consulted the God about their expedition in Sicily, he directed them to bring the priestess of Erythræ to Athens; now the woman’s name was ‘Quiet’. When Deinomenes of Sicily inquired about his sons, the answer was that all three should reign as tyrants. ‘And the worse for them,’ rejoined Deinomenes. ‘That too,’ added the God, and added it to the response. You know that Gelo had the dropsy and Hiero the stone, while they reigned; Thrasybulus, the third son, was involved in revolutions and wars and soon lost his throne. Then Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus, after putting many others to death in cruel and unlawful ways, at last killed Timarchus, who had come to him from Athens with money, after receiving him with hospitality and kindness; he thrust his body into a basket and threw it into the sea. This he did by the hands of Cleander of Aegina, and no one else knew about it. Afterwards, when he was in sore trouble, he sent his brother Cleotimus to consult the oracle secretly about his own flight and retirement to another land. The God answered that he granted exile to Procles, and retirement either to the place where he had ordered his Aeginetan friend to lodge the basket, or to where the stag sheds his horn. The tyrant understood the God to bid him fling himself into the sea, or to buy himself underground (for the stag buries his horn deep out of sight when it falls off). He waited a short time, but when his affairs became desperate he sought exile. But the friends of Timarchus caught him and slew him, casting the corpse into the sea.

“Now comes the strongest instance: the statutes by which Lycurgus regulated the Lacedæmonian constitution were given to him in prose. So Alyrius, Herodotus, Philochorus, and Ister, the men who most zealously set about collecting metrical prophecies, have written down oracular responses which were not in metre; and Theopompus, who was exceptionally interested in the oracle, administered a vigorous rebuke to those who held that the Pythia did not prophesy in metre in those days; yet, when he wanted to prove the point, he found an exceedingly small number of such answers, which shows that the others, even at that early time, were put forth in prose.

XX. “Some oracles, however, still give their answers in metre; and one of them has become famous. There is in Phocis a temple of Hercules Woman-Hater, where the practice is for the consecrated priest not to associate with a woman during his year of office. So they appoint comparatively old men to the priesthood. However, not very long ago, the office was accepted by a young man of good character, but ambitious, and in love with a young woman. At first he restrained himself and avoided her; but one day, when he was resting after wine and dancing, she burst in and he yielded. Then, in his fear and confusion, he fled to the oracle, and proceeded to ask the God about his offence, and whether it admitted of excuse or expiation. He received his reply:

ἅπαντα ἀναγκαῖα συγχωρεῖ θεὀς.
All needful business doth the God allow.

All the same, if it be granted that nothing is prophesied in our own day, otherwise than in metre, the difficulty will be so much greater about the ancients, who sometimes employed metre for the responses, sometimes not. There is nothing strange, my young friend, in either one or the other, so long as we hold sound, pure views about the God, and do not suppose that it is himself who formerly used to compose the verses, or who now speaks through the Pythia, giving answers as it were through a mask.

XXI. “However, it is worth our while to pursue this inquiry at greater length another time. For the present, let us remember our results, which are briefly these: Body uses ;many instruments, soul uses body and parts, soul has been brought into being as the instrument of God. The excellence of an instrument is to imitate most closely the power which uses it, with all its own natural power, and to reproduce the effect of his essential thought, but to exhibit it, not pure and passionless and free from error, as it was in the creative artist, but with a large admixture of foreign element. For in itself it is invisible to us, but appearing ‘other’ and through another medium it is saturated with the nature of that medium. I pass over wax and gold and silver and copper, and all other varieties of moulded substance, which take on one common form of impressed likeness, but add to the copy each its distinct specialty. I pass over the myriad distortions of images and reflections from a single form in mirrors, plane, hollow, or convex. For nothing seems better to reproduce the type, no instrument more obediently to use its own nature, than the moon. Yet taking from the sun his bright and fiery rays, she does not transmit them so to us: mingled with herself they change colour and also take on a different power; the heat wholly disappeared, and the light fails from weakness before it reaches us. I think you know the saying found in Heraclitus, that ‘the sovereign whose seat is at Delphi, speaks not, nor conceals, but signifies’. Take and add then to what is here so well said, the conception that the God of this place employs the Pythia for the hearing as the sun employs the moon for the seeing. He shows and reveals his own thoughts, but shows them mingled in their passage through a mortal body, and a soul which cannot remain at rest or present itself to the exciting power unexcited and inwardly composed, but which boils and surges and is involved in the stirrings and troublesome passions from within. As whirlpools do not keep a steady hold on bodies borne round and round, and also downwards, since an outer force carries them round, but they sink down of their own nature, so that there is a compound spiral movement, of a confused and distorted kind, even so what we call inspiration seems to be a mixture of two impulses, and the soul is stirred by two forces, one of which it is a passive recipient, one form its own nature. We see that inanimate and stationary bodies cannot be used or forced contrary to their own nature, that a cylinder cannot be moved as if it were a sphere or a cube, that a lyre cannot be played like a flute or a trumpet like a harp, but that the artistic use of a thing is no other than the natural use. Is it possible, then, that the animate and self-moving, which has both impulse and reason, can be treated in any other way than is agreeable to the habit, force or natural condition which is already existent within it? Can an unmusical mind be excited like a musical, or an unlettered mind be moved by literature, a mind untrained in reasoning, whether speculative or disciplinary, by logic? It is not to be spoken of.

XXII. “Again, Homer is my witness: he assumes that nothing, so to speak, is brought about without a God; he does not, however, describe the God as using all things for all ends, but according to the art or faculty which each possesses. For do you not see, dear Diogenianus, that Athena, when she wants to persuade the Achæans, calls in Odysseus; when to wreck th truce, she looks for Pandarus; when to rout the Trojans, she approaches Diomedes? Why? because Diomedes is a sturdy man and a fighter, Pandarus an archer and a food, Odysseus a clever speaker and a sensible man. For Homer was not of the same mind as Pindar, if it was Pindar who wrote

Sail on a crate, if God so choose ‘twill swim.

He knew that different faculties and natural gifts are appointed for different ends; each is moved in its own way, even if the moving force be one for all. As then the force cannot move that which walks so as to make it fly, nor that which lisps to speak clearly, nor the thin voice to be melodious — why, Battus himself was sent as colonist of Libya to get his voice, because he lisped and had a thin voice, but withal was a kingly, statesmanlike, prudent man — even so, it is impossible for one who has no letters and knows no verse to talk like a poet. And so she who now serves the God has been born as respectably as any man here, and has lived as good and orderly a life; but having been reared in the house of small farmer folk, she brings nothing with her from art or from practice or faculty whatsoever, as she goes down into the sanctuary. As Xenophon thinks that the bride should step into her husband’s home having seen as little as may be, and heard as little, so she, ignorant and untried in almost all things, and a true virgin in soul, is associated with the God. Yet we, who think that the God, when he ‘signifies’, uses the cries of herons and wrens and ravens, and never ask that they, as the messengers and heralds of the God, should put things into clear rational phrases, do nevertheless ask that the Pythia should use a voice and style as though from the Thymele, not unembellished and plain, but with metre and elevation, and trills, and verbal metaphors, and a flute accompaniment!

XXIII. “What shall we say then about her older predecessors? Not one thing, I think, but several. In the first place, as has been already said, they, too, for the most part, used to give the responses in prose. In the second place, those times produced temperaments and natural conditions which offered an easy and convenient channel for the stream of poetry, to which were at once superadded, in one and another, an eagerness, an impulse, a preparation of soul, all resulting in a readiness which needed but a slight initial movement from without to give the imagination a turn. So it was that not only were astronomers and philosophers drawn, as Philinus says, in their several directions, but also, when men were mellow with wine and sentiment, some undercurrent of pity or joy would come, and they would glide into a song-like voice; drinking parties were filled with amorous strains and songs, books with poems in writing. When Euripides wrote:

ποιητῆν ἄρα
Ἔρως διδάσκει, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν
Love can teach, he makes
A poet of a stranger to the Muse.

he did not mean that Love implants a faculty for poetry or music; the faculty is there already, but Love stirs and warms what was latent and idle. Or are we to say, Sir Stranger, that no one now loves, that Love has gone by the heels, because there is no who, to quote Pindar,

ῥίμφα παιδείους
τοξεύει μελιγάρυας ὕμνους
Scatters with easy grace
The vocal shafts of love and joy?

That is absurd. Loves there are and many of them, and they master men; but when they associate with souls which have no natural turn for music, they drop the flute and the lyre, yet are vocal still and fiery through and through, as much as of old. It is an unhallowed thing to say, and an unfair, that the Academy was loveless, or the choir of Socrates and Plato; yet, while we have their love dialogues to read, they have left no poems. Why not declare at once that Sappho was the only woman who ever loved, if you are to say that Sibylla alone had the gift of prophecy, or Aristonica, and the others who delivered themselves in verse? As Chæremon used to say,

ὁ μὲν γὰρ οἶνος τοῖς τρόποις κεράννυται
Wine mingles with the moods of them that drink,

and the prophetic inspiration, like that of love, uses the faculty which is subjected to it, and stirs its recipients according to the nature of each.

XXIV. “Not but that, if we look also into the subject of the God and his foreknowledge, we shall see that the change has taken place for the better. For the use of language is like exchange in coined money. Here also it is familiarity which gives currency, the purchasing power varies with the times. There was a day when metres, tunes, odes were the coins of language in us; all History and Philosophy, in a word, every feeling and action which called for a more solemn utterance, were drawn to poetry and music. It is not only that now but few understand, and they with effort, whereas then all the world were listeners, and all felt pleasure in what was sung,

μηλοβόται τ᾽ ἀρόται τ᾽ ὀρνιχολόχοι τε
who fats his flock
Who ploughs the soil, who snares the wingèd game,

as Pindar has it. More than that, there was an aptitude for poetry, most men used the lyre and the ode to rebuke, to encourage, to frame myths and proverbs; also hymns to the Gods, prayers, thanksgivings, were composed in metre and song, as genius or practice enabled them to do. And so it was with prophecy; the God did not grudge it ornament and grace, or drive from hence into disgrace the honoured Muse of the tripod; he rather led her on, awakening and welcoming poetic natures; he gave them visions from himself, he lent his aid to draw out pomp and eloquence as being fitting and admirable things. Then there was a change in human life, affecting men both in fortune and in genius. Expediency banished what was superfluous, top-knots of gold were dropped, rich robes discarded; probably too clustering curls were shorn off, and the buskin discontinued. It was not a bad training, to set the beauty of frugality against that of profusion, to account what was plain and simple, a better ornament than the pompous and elaborate. So it was with language: it changed with the times, and shared the general break-up. History got down from its coach, and dropped metre. Truth was best sifted out from Myth in prose; Philosophy welcomed clearness, and found it better to instruct than to astonish, so she pursued her inquiry in plain language. The God made the Pythia leave off calling her own fellow townsmen ‘fire-burners’, the Spartans ‘serpent-eaters’, men ‘mountaineers’, rivers ‘mountain-drainers’. He cleared the oracle of epic verses, unusual words, circumlocutions, and vagueness, and so prepared the way to converse with his consultants just as law converse with states, as kings address subjects, as disciples hear their masters speak, so framing language as to be intelligible and convincing.

XXV. “For it should be clearly understood that the God is, in the words of Sophocles,

σοφοῖς μὲν αἰνικτῆρα θεσφάτων ἀεί,
σκαιοῖς δὲ φαῦλον κἀν βραχεῖ διδάσκαλον
Unto the wise a riddling prophet aye,
to silly souls a teacher plain and brief.

The same turn of things which brought clearness brought also a new standard of belief; it shared the general change. Whereas of old that which was not familiar or common, but, in plain words, contorted and over-phrased, was ascribed by the many to an implied Divinity, and received with awe and reverence; in later times men were content to learn things clearly and easily with no pomp or artifice; they began to find fault with the poetical setting of the oracles, not only as a hindrance to the perception of truth, because it mingled indistinctions and shadow with the meaning, but also because by this time they were getting to mistrust metaphors, riddles, and ambiguities, as so many holes or hiding-places provided for him who should trip in his prophecy, that he might step into them and secure his retreat. You might have heard it told by many, how certain persons with a turn for poetry still sit about the place of oracles, waiting to catch the utterances, and then weaving verses, metres, rhythms, according to occasion, as a sort of vehicle. As to your Onomacrituses, and Herodotuses, and Cinæthons, and the censures which they brought upon the oracles, by importing tragedy and pomp where they were out of place, I let the charge pass and won’t join in the attack on them. Most, however, of the discredit which attached so copiously to poetry came from the gang of soothsayers and scamps who strolled around the ceremonies of the Great Mother and of Serapis, with their mummeries and tricks, turning verses out of their own heads, or taking them at random from handbooks, for servant boys and silly girls, and such as are best attracted by metre and a poetic cast of words; from all which causes poetry seemed to put herself at the service of cheats and jugglers and lying prophets, and was lost to truth and to the tripod.

XXVI. “Thus I should not be surprised to find that the old people sometimes required a certain ambiguity, circumlocution, indistinctness. For it was not then a case of ‘A’ approaching the oracle with a question, if you please, about the purchase of a slave, or ‘B’ about business; powerful states, haughty kings and tyrants would consult the God on public affairs, men whom it did not answer the officials of his temple to vex and provoke by letting them hear what they did not wish to hear. For the God does not obey Euripides, who sets up as a lawgiver with

Φοῖβον ἀνθρώποις μόνον
χρῆν θεσπιῳδεῖν
Phoebus, none but he,
May give men prophecies.

He uses mortal men as ministers and prophets, whom it is his duty to make his care, and to protect, lest they perish at the hands of the bad while serving him. He does not then choose to conceal the truth; what he used to do was to give a twist to its manifestation, which, like a beam of light, is refracted more than once in its passage, and is parted into many rays as it becomes poetry, and so to remove whatever in it was harsh and hard. Tyrants might thus be left in ignorance, and enemies not forewarned. For them he threw a veil in the innuendoes and ambiguities which hid the meaning from others, but he did not elude the intelligence of the actual consultants who gave their whole mind to the answers. Hence, now that things have changed, it is sheer folly to criticize and find fault with the God because he thinks right to give his aid no longer n the same manner but in another.

“Another thing is this: Language receives no greater advantage from a poetical form than this, that a meaning which is wrapped and bound in metre is more easily remembered and grasped. Now in those days much memory was required. Many things used to be explained orally; local indications, the times when things were to be done, rites of Gods across the seas, secret burying-places of heroes, hard to be discovered by those setting off for lands far from Greece. You know about Chius and Cretinus, and Nesichus, and Phalanthus, and many other leaders of expeditions, how many clues they needed to find the proper place appointed to each for settlement, while some of them missed the way, as did Battus. He thought that he would be turned out, not understanding what the place was to which he had been sent; then he came a second time loudly complaining. Then the God answered:

αἰ τὺ ἐμεῦ Λιβύαν μαλοτρόφον οἶσθας ἄρειον,
μὴ ἐλθὼν ἐλθόντος, ἄγαν ἄγαμαι σοφίην σευ
Thou that hast never been there, if thou know’st Libya the sheepland
Better than I that have been, then wonderful wise is they wisdom.

And thus he sent him out again.

Then Lysander entirely failed to make out the hill Orchalides, otherwise called Alopecus, and the river Hoplites,

γῆς τε δράκονθ᾽ ὑϊὸν δόλιον κατόπισθεν ἰόντα
Also the dragon, earthborn, in craftiness coming behind thee.

and was defeated in battle and slain in those very spots by Neochorus, a man of Haliartus, who bore on his shield the device of a serpent. There are many such answers given to the old people, all hard to grasp and remember, which I need not give you at length, since you know them.

XXVIII. “Our present settled condition, out of which the questions now put to the God arise, I welcome and accept. There is great peace and tranquility, war has been made to cease, there are no wanderings in exile, no revolutions, no tyrannies, no other plagues or ills in Greece asking for potent and extraordinary remedies. But when there is nothing complicated or mysterious, or dangerous, only questions on petty popular matters, like school themes, ‘whether I should marry’, ‘whether I should sail’, ‘whether I should lend’, and the most serious responses given to states concern harvests and cattle-breeding and public health; in such circumstances, to clothe the answers in metre, or to devise circumlocutions, to introduce strange words on questions calling for a plain, concise answer, is what an ambitions sophist might do, bedizening the oracle for his glory. But the Pythia is a lady in herself, and when she descends thither and is in the presence of the God, she cares for truth rather than for glory, or for the praise or blame of men.

XXIX. “So perhaps ought we too to feel. As it is, in a sort of agony of fear, lest the place should lose its reputation of three thousand years, and a few persons should think lightly of it and cease to visit the oracle, for all the world as if it were a sophist’s school, we apologize, and make up reasons and theories about things which we neither know now ought to know. We smooth the critic down, and try to persuade him, whereas we ought to bid him be gone —

αὐτῷ γἀρ οἱ πρῶτον ἀνιηρότερον ἒσται
He shall first suffer in a loss not light —

if that is the view which he takes of the God; for if we welcome and admire what the Wise Men of old days have written up: ‘Know Thyself’ and ‘Nothing too much’, not least because of the brevity which includes in a small compass a close hammer-beaten sense, we cannot blame the oracles because they mostly use concise, plain, direct phrases. It is with sayings like those of the Wise Men as with streams compressed into a narrow channel; there is no distinctness or transparency to the eye of the mind, but if you look into what has been written or said about them ;by those who have wished to learn the full meaning of each, you will not easily find longer treaties elsewhere. The language of the Pythia illustrates what mathematicians mean by calling a straight line the shortest between the same points; it makes no bending, or curve, or doubling or ambiguity; it lies straight towards truth; it takes risks, its good faith is open to examination, and it has never yet been found wrong; it has filled the shrine with offerings from Barbarians and Greeks, and has beautified it with noble buildings and Amphictyonic fittings. Why, you see for yourselves many buildings added which were not here formerly, many restored which were ruinous or destroyed. As new trees spring up by the side of those in vigorous bearing, so the Pylæa flourishes together with Delphi and is fed upon the same meat; the plenty of the one causes the other to take on shapeliness and figure and a beauty of temples, and halls of meeting and fountains of water, such as it never had in the thousand years before. Now those who dwell about Galaxius in Boeotia felt the manifest presence of the God in the abundance and more than abundance of milk:

προβάτων γᾶρ ἐκ πάντων κελάρυξεν,
ὡς ἀπὸ κρηνᾶν φέρτατον ὕδωρ,
θηλᾶν γάλα τοὶ δ᾽ ἐπίμπλεν ἐσσύμενοι πίθους
ἀσκὸς δ’ οὐδέ τις ἀμφορεὺς ἐλίνυεν δόμοις,
πέλλαι γὰρ ξύλιναι πίθοι τε πλῆσθεν ἅπαντες
From all the kine and every flock,
Plenteous as water from the rock,
Came welling, gurgling on its way
    The milk that day.
Hot foot they hied them to the task,
To fill the pail, to fill the cask;
No pot or pan had holiday;
Wine-skin or flagon, none might stay
    Within, that day.

But to us he gives tokens bright and stronger and more evident than these, in having, after the days of drought, of desertion and poverty, brought us plenty, splendour, and reputation. True, I am well pleased with myself for anything which my own zeal or service may have contributed to this result in support of Polycrates and Petraeus, well pleased too with him who has been our leader in this policy, to whose thought and planning most of the improvements are due; but it is wholly impossible that so great, so vast a change could have been effected in this short time by merely human care, with no God present here or lending his Divinity to the place of the oracle.

XXX. “But as in those days there were some who found fault with the responses for obliquity and want of clearness, so now there are those who criticize them as too simple, which is childishness indeed and rank stupidity! For as children show more glee and satisfaction at the sight of rainbows or haloes or comets than in that of the sun or of the moon, so do these people regret the riddles, allegories, and metaphors which are so many modes of refraction of prophetic art in a mortal and fanciful medium. And if they do not fully inquire into the cause of the change, they go away having passed judgement against the God, rather than against ourselves or themselves, for having a power of thought which is too feeble to attain to his counsels.”

The obsolescence of oracles

409 1 The story is told, my dear Terentius Priscus, that certain eagles or swans, flying from the uttermost parts of the earth towards its centre, met in Delphi at the omphalus, as it is called; and at a later time Epimenides of Phaestus put the story to test by referring it to the god and upon receiving a vague and ambiguous oracle said,

Now do we know that there is no mid-centre of earth or of ocean;

Yet if there be, it is known to the gods, but is hidden from mortals.

Now very likely the god repulsed him from his attempt to investigate an ancient myth 410 as though it were a painting to be tested by the touch. 2 Yet a short time before the Pythian games, which were held when Callistratus was in office in our own day, it happened that two revered men coming from opposite ends of the inhabited earth met together at Delphi, Demetrius the grammarian journeying homeward from Britain to Tarsus, and Cleombrotus of Sparta, who had made many excursions in Egypt and about the land of the Cave-dwellers, and had sailed beyond the Persian Gulf; his journeyings were not for business, but he was fond of seeing things and of acquiring knowledge; he had wealth enough, and felt that it was not of any great moment to have more than enough, and so he employed his leisure for such purposes; he was getting together a history to serve as a basis for a philosophy that had as its end and aim theology, as he himself named it. He had recently been at the shrine of Ammon, and it was plain that he was not particularly impressed by most of the things there, but in regard to the ever-burning lamp he related a story told by the priests which deserves special consideration; it is that the lamp consumes less and less oil each year, and they hold that this is a proof of a disparity in the years, which all the time is making one year shorter in duration than its predecessor; for it is reasonable that in less duration of time the amount consumed should be less.

3 1 The company was surprised at this, and Demetrius went so far as to say that it was ridiculous to try in this way to draw great conclusions from small data, not, as Alcaeus puts it, “painting the lion from a single claw,” but with a wick and lamp postulating a mutation in the heavens and the universe, and doing away completely with mathematical science.

“Neither of these things,” said Cleombrotus, “will disturb these men; certainly they will not concede any superior accuracy to the mathematicians, since it is more likely that a set period of time, in movements and cycles so far away, should elude mathematical calculation than that the measurement of the oil should elude the very men who were always giving careful attention to the anomaly and watching it closely because of its strangeness. Besides, Demetrius, not to allow that small things are indication of great stands directly in the way of many arts; for it will result in taking away from us the demonstration of many facts and the prognostication of many others. Yet you people try to demonstrate to us also a matter of no small importance: that the heroes of old shaved their bodies with a razor, because you met with the word ‘razor’ in Homer; also that they lent money on interest because Homer somewhere says that ‘a debt is owing, not recent nor small,’ the assumption being that ‘owing’ signifies ‘accumulating.’ And again when Homer speaks of the night as ‘swift,’ you cling to the expression with great satisfaction and say that it means this: that the Earth’s shadow is by him called conical, being caused by a spherical body; and as for the idea that medical science can predict a pestilential summer by a multitude of spiders’ webs or by the fig-leaves in the spring when they are like crows’ feet, who of those that insist that small things are not indications of great will allow this to go unchallenged? Who will endure that the magnitude of the sun be measured by reference to a quart or a gill, or that, in the sun-dial here, the inclination of the acute angle which its shadow makes with the level plane be called the measurement of the elevation of the ever-visible pole above the horizon? This was what one might hear from the priests of the prophetic shrine there; so some other rejoinder must be offered to them, if we would make for the sun the wonted order of its course immutable, in accord with the tradition of the ages.”

4 1 Thereupon Ammonius the philosopher, who was present, exclaimed, “Not for the sun only, but for the whole heavens. For the sun’s course in passing from solstice to solstice 411 must inevitably become shorter and not continue to be so large a part of the horizon as the mathematicians say it is, since the southern portion is constantly subject to a contracting movement, which brings it closer to the northern portion; and so our summer must become shorter and its temperature lower, as the sun turns about within narrower limits and touches fewer parallels of latitude at the solstitial points; moreover, the phenomenon observed at Syenê, where the upright rods on the sun-dials cast no shadow at the time of the summer solstice, is bound to be a thing of the past; many of the fixed stars must have gone below the horizon, and some of them must be touching one another, or have become coalescent, as the space separating them has disappeared! But if, on the other hand, they are going to assert that, while all the other bodies are without change, the sun displays irregularity in its movements, they will not be able to state the cause of the acceleration which affects the sun alone among so many bodies, and they will throw into confusion almost all the celestial mechanics, and into complete confusion those relating to the moon, so that they will have no need of measures of oil to prove the difference. In fact, the eclipses will prove it, as the sun more frequently casts a shadow on the moon and the moon on the earth; the other facts are clear, and there is no need to disclose in further detail the imposture in the argument.”

“But,” said Cleombrotus, “I myself actually saw the measure; for they had many of them to show, and that of this past year failed to come up to the very oldest by not a little.”

“Then,” said Ammonius, taking up the argument again, “this fact has escaped the notice of the other peoples among whom ever-burning fires have been cherished and kept alive for a period of years which might be termed infinite? But on the assumption that the report is true, is it not better to assign the cause to some coldness or moisture in the air by which the flame is made to languish, and so very likely does not take up nor need very much to support it? Or, quite the reverse, may we assign the cause to spells of dryness and heat? In fact, I have heard people say before this regarding fire, that it burns better in the winter, being strongly compacted and condensed by the cold; whereas in warm, dry times it is very weak and loses its compactness and intensity, and if it burns in the sunlight, it does even worse, and takes hold of the fuel without energy, and consumes it more slowly. Best of all, the cause might be assigned to the oil itself; for it is not unlikely that in days of old it contained incombustible material and water, being produced from young trees; but that later, being ripened on full-grown trees and concentrated, it should, in an equal quantity, show more strength and provide a better fuel, if the people at Ammon’s shrine must have their assumption preserved for them in spite of its being so strange and unusual.”

5 1 When Ammonius had ceased speaking, I said, “Won’t you rather tell us all about the oracle, Cleombrotus? For great was the ancient repute of the divine influence there, but at the present time it seems to be somewhat evanescent.”

As Cleombrotus made no reply and did not look up, Demetrius said, “There is no need to make any inquiries nor to raise any questions about the state of affairs there, when we see the evanescence of the oracles here, or rather the total disappearance of all but one or two; but we should deliberate the reason why they have become so utterly weak. What need to speak of others, when in Boeotia, which in former times spoke with many tongues because of its oracles, the oracles have now failed completely, even as if they were streams of flowing water, and a great drought in prophecy has overspread the land? For nowhere now except in the neighbourhood of Lebadeia has Boeotia aught to offer to those who would draw from the well-spring of prophecy. As for the rest, 412 silence has come upon some and utter desolation upon others. And yet at the time of the Persian Wars many had gained a high repute, that of Ptoan Apollo no less than that of Amphiaraüs; Mys, as it seems, made trial of both. The prophetic priest of this oracle, accustomed in former times to use the Aeolic dialect, on that occasion took the side of the barbarians and gave forth an oracle such that no one else of those present comprehended it, but only Mys himself, since it is quite clear from the inspired language then used by the prophetic priest that it is not for barbarians ever to receive a word in the Greek tongue subservient to their command.

“The minion who was sent to the oracle of Amphiaraüs had, in his sleep there, a vision of the servant of the god who appeared to him and tried first to eject him by word of mouth, alleging that the god was not there; then next he tried to push him away with his hands, and, when the man persisted in staying, btook up a large stone and smote him on the head. All this was in harmony, as it were, with events to come; for Mardonius was vanquished while the Greeks were led, not by a king, but by a guardian and deputy of a king; and he fell, struck by a stone just as the Lydian dreamed that he was struck in his sleep.

“That time, too, was the most flourishing period of the oracle at Tegyrae, which place also by tradition is the birthplace of the god; and of the two streams of water that flow past it, the inhabitants even to this day call the one ‘Palm’ and the other ‘Olive.’ Now in the Persian Wars, when Echecrates was the prophetic priest, the god prophesied for the Greeks victory and might in war; and in the Peloponnesian War, when the people of Delos had been driven out of their island, an oracle, it is said, was brought to them from Delphi directing them to find the place where Apollo was born, and to perform certain sacrifices there. While they were wondering and questioning the mere possibility that the god had been born, not in their island, but somewhere else, the prophetic priestess told them in another oracle that a crow would show them the spot. So they went away and, when they reached Chaeroneia, they heard the woman who kept their inn conversing about the oracle with some strangers who were on their way to Tegyrae. The strangers, as they were leaving, bade good-bye to the woman and called her by her name, which actually was ‘Crow.’ Then the Delians understood the meaning of the oracle and, having offered sacrifice in Tegyrae, they found a way to return home a short time thereafter. There have been also more recent manifestations than these at these oracles, but now the oracles are no more; so it is well worth while, here in the precinct of the Pythian god, to examine into the reason for the change.”

6 1 Proceeding onward from the temple, we had by this time reached the doors of the Cnidian Clubhouse. Accordingly we passed inside, and there we saw sitting and waiting for us the friends to whom we were going. There was quiet among the other people there because of the hour, as they were engaged in taking a rub-down or else watching the athletes. Then Demetrius with a smile said, “ ‘Shall I tell you a falsehood or speak out the truth?’ You seem to have on hand nothing worth considering; for I see that you are sitting about quite at your ease and with faces quite relaxed.”

“Yes,” said Heracleon of Megara in reply, “for we are not investigating which of the two lambdas in the verb ‘hurl’ is the one that it loses in the future tense; nor from what positives the adjectives ‘worse’ and ‘better’ and ‘worst’ and ‘best’ are formed; for these and similar problems may set the face in hard lines, but the others it is possible to examine in a philosophic spirit, without knitting the brows, and to investigate quietly without any fierce looks or any hard feelings against the company.”

“Then permit us to come in,” said Demetrius, “and with us a subject which has naturally occurred to us, one which is related to the place and concerns of all of us on account of the god; and beware of knitting your brows when you attack it!”

7 1 When, accordingly, we had joined their company and seated ourselves among them and Demetrius had laid the subject before them, 413 up sprang at once the Cynic Didymus, by nickname Planetiades, and, striking the ground two or three times with his staff, cried out, “Aha! a difficult matter to decide and one requiring much investigation is that which you have come bringing to us! It is indeed a wonder, when so much wickedness has been disseminated upon earth that not only Modesty and Righteous Indignation, as Hesiod said long ago, have deserted the life of mankind, but that Divine Providence also has gathered up its oracles and departed from every place! Quite the contrary, I propose that you discuss how it happens that the oracle here has not also given out, and Heracles for a second time, or some other god, has not wrested away the tripod which is constantly being occupied with shameful and impious questions which people propound to the god, some of whom try to make a test of him as though his wisdom were an affectation, while others put questions about treasures or inheritances or unlawful marriages; so Pythagoras is proved to be utterly wrong in asserting that men are at their best when they approach the gods. Thus those maladies and emotions of the soul which it would be good to disclaim and conceal in the presence of an older man, they bring naked and exposed before the god.”

He would have said more, but Heracleon seized hold of his cloak, and I, being about as intimate with him as anybody, said, “Cease provoking the god, my dear Planetiades; for he is of a good and mild disposition,

And towards mortal men he hath been judged the most gentle,

as Pindar says. And whether he be the sun or the lord and father of the sun and of all that lies beyond our vision, it is not likely that he should deny his utterance to people of the present day because of their unworthiness, when he is responsible for their birth and nurture and their existence and power to think; nor is it likely withal that Providence, like a benign and helpful mother, who does everything for us and watches over us, should cherish animosity in the matter of prophecy only, and take away that from us after having given it to us at the beginning, as if the number of wicked men included among a larger population were not larger at that earlier time when the oracles were established in many places in the inhabited world! Come, sit down again and make a ‘Pythian truce’ with evil, which you are wont to chastise with words every day, and join us in seeking some other reason for what is spoken of as the obsolescence of oracles; but keep the god benign and provoke him not to wrath.”

What I had said was so far effective that Planetiades went out through the door without another word.

8 1 There was quiet for a moment, and then Ammonius, addressing himself to me, said, “See what it is that we are doing, Lamprias, and concentrate your thoughts on our subject so that we shall not relieve the god of responsibility. The fact is that the man who holds that the obsolescence of such of the oracles as have ceased to function has been brought about by some other cause and not by the will of a god gives reason for suspecting that he believes that their creation and continued existence was not due to the god, but was brought about in some other way. For prophecy is something created by a god, and certainly no greater or more potent force exists to abolish and obliterate it. Now I do not like what Planetiades said, and one of the reasons is the inconsistency which it creates regarding the god, who in one way turns away from wickedness and disavows it, and again in another way welcomes its presence; just as if some king or despot should shut out bad men at certain doors and let them in at others and have dealings with them. Now moderation, adequacy, excess in nothing, and complete self-sufficiency are above all else the essential characteristics of everything done by the gods; and if anyone should take this fact as a starting-point, and assert that 414 Greece has far more than its share in the general depopulation which the earlier discords and wars have wrought throughout practically the whole inhabited earth, and that to day the whole of Greece would hardly muster three thousand men-at arms, which is the number that the one city of the Megarians sent forth to Plataeae (for the god’s abandoning of many oracles is nothing other than his way of substantiating the desolation of Greece), in this way such a man would give some accurate evidence of his keenness in reasoning. For who would profit if there were an oracle in Tegyrae, as there used to be, or at Ptoüm, where during some part of the day one might possibly meet a human being pasturing his flocks? And regarding the oracle here at Delphi, the most ancient in time and the most famous in repute, men record that for a long time it was made desolate and unapproachable by a fierce creature, a serpent; they do not, however, put the correct interpretation upon its lying idle, but quite the reverse; for it was the desolation that attracted the creature rather than that the creature caused the desolation. But when Greece, since God so willed, had grown strong in cities and the place was thronged with people, they used to employ two prophetic priestesses who were sent down in turn; and a third was appointed to be held in reserve. But to day there is one priestess and we do not complain, for she meets every need. There is no reason, therefore, to blame the god; the exercise of the prophetic art which continues at the present day is sufficient for all, and sends away all with their desires fulfilled. Agamemnon, for example, used nine heralds and, even so, had difficulty in keeping the assembly in order because of the vast numbers; but here in Delphi, a few days hence, in the theatre you will see that one voice reaches all. In the same way, in those days, prophecy employed more voices to speak to more people, but to day, quite the reverse, we should needs be surprised at the god if he allowed his prophecies to run to waste, like water, or to echo like the rocks with the voices of shepherds and flocks in waste places.”

9 1 When Ammonius had said this and I remained silent, Cleombrotus, addressing himself to me, said, “Already you have conceded this point, that the god both creates and abolishes these prophetic shrines.”

“No indeed,” said I, “my contention is that no prophetic shrine or oracle is ever abolished by the instrumentality of the god. He creates and provides many other things for us, and upon some of these Nature brings destruction and disintegration; or rather, the matter composing them, being itself a force for disintegration, often reverts rapidly to its earlier state and causes the dissolution of what was created by the more potent instrumentality; and it is in this way, I think, that in the next period there are dimmings and abolitions of the prophetic agencies; for while the god gives many fair things to mankind, he gives nothing imperishable, so that, as Sophocles puts it, ‘the works of gods may die, but not the gods.” Their presence and power wise men are ever telling us we must look for in Nature and in Matter, where it is manifested, the originating influence being reserved for the Deity, as is right. Certainly it is foolish and childish in the extreme to imagine that the god himself after the manner of ventriloquists (who used to be called ‘Eurycleis,’ but now ‘Pythones’) enters into the bodies of his prophets and prompts their utterances, employing their mouths and voices as instruments. For if he allows himself to become entangled in men’s needs, he is prodigal with his majesty and he does not observe the dignity and greatness of his preeminence.”

10 1 “You are right,” said Cleombrotus; “but since it is hard to apprehend and to define in what way and to what extent Providence should be brought in as an agent, those who make the god responsible for nothing at all and those make him responsible for all things alike go wide of moderation and propriety. They put the case well who say that Plato, by his discovery of the element underlying all created qualities, which is now called ‘Matter’ and ‘Nature,’ has relieved philosophers of many great perplexities; 415 but, as it seems to me, those persons have resolved more and greater perplexities who have set the race of demigods midway between gods and men, and have discovered a force to draw together, in a way, and to unite our common fellowship — whether this doctrine comes from the wise men of the cult of Zoroaster, or whether it is Thracian and harks back to Orpheus, or is Egyptian, or Phrygian, as we may infer from observing that many things connected with death and mourning in the rites of both lands are combined in the ceremonies so fervently celebrated there. Among the Greeks, Homer, moreover, appears to use both names in common band sometimes to speak of the gods as demigods; but Hesiod was the first to set forth clearly and distinctly four classes of rational beings: gods, demigods, heroes, in this order, and, last of all, men; and as a sequence to this, apparently, he postulates his transmutation, the golden race passing selectively into many good divinities, and the demigods into heroes.

“Others postulate a transmutation for bodies and souls alike; in the same manner in which water is seen to be generated from earth, air from water, and fire from air, as their substance is borne upward, even so from men into heroes and from heroes into demigods the better souls obtain their transmutation. But from the demigods ca few souls still, in the long reach of time, because of supreme excellence, come, after being purified, to share completely in divine qualities. But with some of these souls it comes to pass that they do not maintain control over themselves, but yield to temptation and are again clothed with mortal bodies and have a dim and darkened life, like mist or vapour.

11 “Hesiod thinks that with the lapse of certain periods of years the end comes even to the demigods; for, speaking in the person of the Naiad, he indirectly suggests the length of time with these words:

Nine generations long is the life of the crow and his cawing,

Nine generations of vigorous men. Lives of four crows together

Equal the life of a stag, and three stages the old age of a raven;

Nine of the lives of the raven the life of the Phoenix doth equal;

Ten of the Phoenix we Nymphs, fair daughters of Zeus of the aegis.

Those that do not interpret ‘generation’ well make an immense total of this time; but it really means a year, so that the sum of the life of these divinities is nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty years, less than most mathematicians think, and more than Pindar has stated when he says that the Nymphs live

Allotted a term as long as the years of a tree,

and for this reason he calls them Hamadryads.”

While he was still speaking Demetrius, interrupting him, said, “How is it, Cleombrotus, that you can say that the year has been called a generation? For neither of a man ‘in his vigour’ nor ‘in his eld,’ as some read the passage, is the span of human life such as this. Those who read ‘in their vigour’ make a generation thirty years, in accord with Heracleitus, a time sufficient for a father to have a son who is a father also; but again those who write ‘in their eld’ and not ‘in their vigour’ assign an hundred and eight years to a generation; for they say that fifty-four marks the limit of the middle years of human life, a number which is made up of the first number, the first two plane surfaces, two squares and two cubes, numbers which Plato as took in the Generation of the Soul. The whole matter as stated by Hesiod seems to contain a veiled reference to the ‘Conflagration,’ when the disappearance of all liquids will most likely be accompanied by the extinction of the Nymphs,

Who in the midst of fair woodlands,

Sources of rivers, and grass-covered meadows have their abiding.”

12 1 “Yes,” said Cleombrotus, “I hear this from many persons, and I observe that the Stoic “Conflagration,’ just as it feeds on the verses of Heracleitus and Orpheus, is also seizing upon those of Hesiod. 416 But I cannot brook this talk of universal destruction; and such impossibilities, in recalling to our minds these utterances, especially those about the crow and the stag, must be allowed to revert upon those that indulge in such exaggeration. Does not a year include within itself the beginning and the end of ‘all things which the Seasons and the Earth make grow,’ and is it not foreign to men’s ways to call it a ‘generation’? As a matter of fact you yourselves surely agree that Hesiod by the word ‘generation’ means a man’s life. Is not that so?”

“Yes,” said Demetrius.

“And this fact also is clear,” said Cleombrotus, “that often the measure and the things measured are called by the same name, as, for example, gill, quart, gallon, and bushel. In the same way, then, in which we call unity a number, being, as it is, the smallest number and the first; so the year, which we use as the first measure of man’s life, Hesiod has called by the same name as the thing measured, a ‘generation.’ The fact is that the numbers which those other persons produce have none of those notable and conspicuous qualities which may be inherent in numbers. The number nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty has been produced by adding together the first four numbers and multiplying them by four, or by multiplying four by ten. Either process gives forty, and when this is multiplied five times by three it gives the specified number. But concerning these matters there is no need for us to disagree with Demetrius. In fact, even if the period of time in which the soul of the demigod or hero changes its life be longer or shorter, determinate or indeterminate, none the less the proof will be there on the basis which he desires, fortified by clear testimony from ancient times, that in the confines, as it were, between gods and men there exist certain natures susceptible to human emotions and involuntary changes, whom it is right that we, like our fathers before us, should regard as demigods, and, calling them by that name, should reverence them.

13 1 “As an illustration of this subject, Xenocrates, the companion of Plato, demployed the order of the triangles; the equilateral he compared to the nature of the gods, the scalene to that of man, and the isosceles to that of the demigods; for the first is equal in all its lines, the second unequal in all, and the third is partly equal and partly unequal, like the nature of the demigods, which has human emotions and godlike power. Nature has placed within our ken perceptible images and visible likenesses, the sun and the stars for the gods, and for mortal men beams of light, comets, and meteors, a comparison which Euripides has made in the verses:

He that but yesterday was vigorous

Of frame, even as a star from heaven falls,

Gave up in death his spirit to the air.

But there is a body with complex characteristics which actually parallels the demigods, namely the moon; and when men see that she, by her being consistently in accord with the cycles through which those beings pass, is subject to apparent wanings and waxings and transformations, some call her an earth-like star, others a star-like earth, and others the domain of Hecatê, who belongs both to the earth and to the heavens. Now if the air that is between the earth and the moon were to be removed and withdrawn, the unity and consociation of the universe would be destroyed, since there would be an empty and unconnected space in the middle; and in just the same way those who refuse to leave us the race of demigods make the relations of gods and men remote and alien by doing away with the ‘interpretative and ministering nature,’ as Plato has called it; or else they force us to a disorderly confusion of all things, in which we bring the god into men’s emotions and activities, drawing him down to our needs, as the women of Thessaly are said to draw down the moon. 417 This cunning deceit of theirs, however, gained credence among women when the daughter of Hegetor, Aglaonicê, who was skilled in astronomy, always pretended at the time of an eclipse of the moon that she was bewitching it and bringing it down. But as for us, let us not listen to any who say that there are some oracles not divinely inspired, or religious ceremonies and mystic rites which are disregarded by the gods; and on the other hand let us not imagine that the god goes in and out and is present at these ceremonies and helps in conducting them; but let us commit these matters to those ministers of the gods to whom it is right to commit them, as to servants and clerks, and let us believe that demigods are guardians of sacred rites of the gods and prompters of the Mysteries, while others go about as avengers of arrogant and grievous cases of injustice. Still others Hesiod has very impressively addressed as

Holy

Givers of wealth, and possessing in this a meed that is kingly,

implying that doing good to people is kingly. For as among men, so also among the demigods, there are different degrees of excellence, and in some there is a weak and dim remainder of the emotional and irrational, a survival, as it were, while in others this is excessive and hard to stifle. Of all these things there are, in many places, sacrifices, ceremonies, and legends which preserve and jealously guard vestiges and tokens embodied here and there in their fabric.

14 1 “Regarding the rites of the Mysteries, in which it is possible to gain the clearest reflections and adumbrations of the truth about the demigods, ‘let my lips be piously sealed,’ as Herodotus says; but as for festivals and sacrifices, which may be compared with ill-omened and gloomy days, in which occur the eating of raw flesh, rending of victims, fasting, and beating of breasts, and again in many places scurrilous language at the shrines, and

Frenzy and shouting of throngs in excitement

With tumultuous tossing of heads in the air,

I should say that these acts are not performed for any god, but are soothing and appeasing rites for the averting of evil spirits. Nor is it credible that the gods demanded or welcomed the human sacrifices of ancient days, nor would kings and generals have endured giving over their children and submitting them to the preparatory rites and cutting their throats to no purpose save that they felt they were propitiating and offering satisfaction to the wrath and sullen temper of some harsh and implacable avenging deities, or to the insane and imperious passions of some who had not the power or desire to seek satisfaction in a natural and normal way. But as Heracles laid siege to Oechalia for the sake of a maiden, so powerful and impetuous divinities, in demanding a human soul which is incarnate within a mortal body, bring pestilences and failures of crops upon States and stir up wars and civil discords, until they succeed in obtaining what they desire. To some, however, comes the opposite; for example, when I was spending a considerable time in Crete, I noticed an extraordinary festival being celebrated there in which they exhibit the image of a man without a head, and relate that this used to be Molus, father of Meriones, and that he violated a young woman; and when he was discovered, he was without a head.

15 1 “As for the various tales of rapine and wanderings of the gods, their concealments and banishment and servitude, which men rehearse in legend and in song, all these are, in fact, not things that were done to the gods or happened to them, but to the demigods; and they are kept in memory because of the virtues and power of these beings; nor did Aeschylus speak devoutly when he said

Holy Apollo, god from heaven banned;

nor Admetus in Sophocles,

My cock it was that sent him to the mill.

But the greatest error in regard to the truth is that of the theologians of Delphi who think that the god once had a battle here with a serpent for the possession of the oracle, and they permit poets and prose-writers to tell of this in their competitions in the theatres, 418 whereby they bear specific testimony against the most sacred of the rites that they perform.”

At this Philip the historian, who was present, expressed surprise, and inquired against what hallowed rites Cleombrotus thought that the competition bore testimony. “These,” said Cleombrotus, “which have to do with the oracle here, and in which the city recently initiated all the Greeks west of Thermopylae and extended the rites as far as Tempê. For the structure which is erected here near the threshing-floor every eight years is not a nest-like serpent’s den, but a copy of the dwelling of a despot or king. The onset upon it, which is made in silence through the way called ‘Dolon’s Way,’ by which the Labyadae with lighted torches conduct the boy, who must have two parents living, and, after, applying fire to the structure and upsetting the table, flee through the doors of the temple without looking back; and finally the wanderings and servitude of the boy and the purifications that take place at Tempê — all prompt a suspicion of some great and unholy deed of daring. For it is utterly ridiculous, my good friend, that Apollo, after slaying a brute creature, should flee to the ends of Greece in quest of purification and, after arriving there, should offer some libations and perform those ceremonies which men perform in the effort to placate and mollify the wrath of spirits whom men call the ‘unforgetting avengers,’ as if they followed up the memories of some unforgotten foul deeds of earlier days. And as for the story which I have heard before about this flight and the removal to another place, it is dreadfully strange and paradoxical, but if it has any vestige of truth in it, let us not imagine that what was done in those days about the oracle was any slight or common affair. But that I may not seem to be doing what is described by Empedocles as

Putting the heads of myths together,

Bringing no single path to perfection,

permit me to add to what was said at the outset the proper conclusion, for we have already come to it. Let this statement be ventured by us, following the lead of many others before us, that coincidently with the total defection of the guardian spirits assigned to the oracles and prophetic shrines, occurs the defection of the oracles themselves; and when the spirits flee or go to another place, the oracles themselves lose their power, but when the spirits return many years later, the oracles, like musical instruments, become articulate, since those who can put them to use are present and in charge of them.”

16 1 When Cleombrotus had expounded these matters, Heracleon said, “there is no unsanctified or irreligious person present, or anyone who holds opinions about the gods that are out of keeping with ours; but let us ourselves be stringently on our guard lest we unwittingly try to support the argument with extraordinary and presumptuous hypotheses.”

“That is a very good suggestion,” said Philip, “but which of the theses of Cleombrotus makes you the most uncomfortable?”

“That it is not the gods,” said Heracleon, “who are in charge of the oracles, since the gods ought properly to be freed of earthly concerns; but that it is the demigods, ministers of the gods, who have them in charge, seems to me not a bad postulate; but to take, practically by the handful, from the verses of Empedocles sins, rash crimes, and heaven-sent wanderings, and to impose them upon the demigods, and to assume that their final fate is death, just as with men, I regard as rather too audacious and uncivilized.”

Cleombrotus was moved to ask Philip who the young man was and whence he came; and after learning his name and his city he said, “It is not unwittingly, Heracleon, that we have become involved in strange arguments; but it is impossible, when discussing important matters, to make any progress in our ideas towards the probable truth without employing for this purpose important principles. But you unwittingly take back what you concede; for you agree that these demigods exist, 419 but by your postulating that they are not bad nor mortal you no longer keep them; for in what respect do they differ from gods, if as regards their being they possess immortality and as regards their virtues freedom from all emotion or sin?”

17 1 As Heracleon was reflecting upon this in silence, Philip said, “Not only has Empedocles bequeathed to us bad demigods, Heracleon, but so also have Plato, Xenocrates, and Chrysippus; and, in addition, Democritus, by his prayer that he may meet with ‘propitious spirits,’ clearly recognized that there is another class of these which is perverse and possessed of vicious predilections and impulses.

“As for death among such beings, I have heard the words of a man who was not a fool nor an impostor. The father of Aemilianus the orator, to whom some of you have listened, was Epitherses, who lived in our town and was my teacher in grammar. He said that once upon a time in making a voyage to Italy he embarked on a ship carrying freight and many passengers. It was already evening when, near the Echinades Islands, the wind dropped, and the ship drifted near Paxi. Almost everybody was awake, and a good many had not finished their after-dinner wine. Suddenly from the island of Paxi was heard the voice of someone loudly calling Thamus, so that all were amazed. Thamus was an Egyptian pilot, not known by name even to many on board. Twice he was called and made no reply, but the third time he answered; and the caller, raising his voice, said, ‘When you come opposite to Palodes,a announce that Great Pan is dead.’ On hearing this, all, said Epitherses, were astounded and reasoned among themselves whether it were better to carry out the order or to refuse to meddle and let the matter go. Under the circumstances Thamus made up his mind that if there should be a breeze, he would sail past and keep quiet, but with no wind and a smooth sea about the place he would announce what he had heard. So, when he came opposite Palodes, and there was neither wind nor wave, Thamus from the stern, looking toward the land, said the words as he had heard them: ‘Great Pan is dead.’ Even before he had finished there was a great cry of lamentation, not of one person, but of many, mingled with exclamations of amazement. As many persons were on the vessel, the story was soon spread abroad in Rome, and Thamus was sent for by Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius became so convinced of the truth of the story that he caused an inquiry and investigation to be made about Pan; and the scholars, who were numerous at his court, conjectured that he was the son born of Hermes and Penelopê.”

Moreover, Philip had several witnesses among the persons present who had been pupils of the old man Aemilianus.

18 1 Demetrius said that among the islands lying near Britain were many isolated, having few or no inhabitants, some of which bore the names of divinities or heroes. He himself, by the emperor’s order, had made a voyage for inquiry and observation to the nearest of these islands which had only a few inhabitants, holy men who were all held inviolate by the Britons. Shortly after his arrival there occurred a great tumult in the air and many portents; violent winds suddenly swept down and lightning-flashes darted to earth. When these abated, the people of the island said that the passing of someone of the mightier souls had befallen. “For,” said they, “as a lamp when it is being lighted has no terrors, but when it goes out is distressing to many, so the great souls have a kindling into life that is gentle and inoffensive, but their passing and dissolution often, as at the present moment, fosters tempests and storms, and often infects the air with pestilential properties.” 420 Moreover, they said that in this part of the world there is one island where Cronus is confined, guarded while he sleeps by Briareus; for his sleep has been devised as a bondage for him, and round about him are many demigods as attendants and servants.

19 1 Cleombrotus here took up the conversation and said, “I too have similar stories to tell, but it is sufficient for our purpose that nothing contravenes or prevents these things from being so. Yet we know,” he continued, “that the Stoics entertain the opinion that I mention, not only against the demigods, but they also hold that among the gods, who are so very numerous, there is only one who is eternal and immortal, band the others they believe have come into being, and will suffer dissolution.

“As for the scoffing and sneers of the Epicureans which they dare to employ against Providence also, calling it nothing but a myth, we need have no fear. We, on the other hand, say that their ‘Infinity’ is a myth, which among so many worlds has not one that is directed by divine reason, but will have them all produced by spontaneous generation and concretion. If there is need for laughter in philosophy, we should laugh at these spirits, dumb, blind, and soulless, which they shepherd for boundless cycles of years, and which make their returning appearance everywhere, some floating away from the bodies of persons still living, others from bodies long ago burned or decayed, whereby these philosophers drag witlessness and obscurity into the study of natural phenomena; but if anyone asserts that such demigods exist, not only for physical reasons, but also for logical reasons, and that they have the power of self-preservation and continued life a long time, then these philosophers feel much aggrieved.”

20 1 After these remarks Ammonius said, “It seems to me that Theophrastus was right in his pronouncement. What, in fact, is there to prevent our accepting an utterance that is impressive and most highly philosophical? For if it be rejected, it does away with many things which are possible but cannot be proved; and if it be allowed as a principle, it brings in its train many things that are impossible or non-existent. The one thing that I have heard the Epicureans say dwith reference to the demigods introduced by Empedocles is that it is not possible, if they are bad and sinful, that they should be happy and of long life, inasmuch as vice has a large measure of blindness and the tendency to encounter destructive agencies, so that argument of theirs is silly. For by this reasoning Epicurus will be shown to be a worse man than Gorgias the sophist, and Metrodorus worse than Alexis the comic poet; for Alexis lived twice as long as Metrodorus and Gorgias more than a third as long again as Epicurus. It is in another sense that we speak of virtue as something strong, and vice as something weak, not with reference to permanence or dissolution of the body. For example, many of the animals that are sluggish in movement and slow in their reactions and many that are lascivious and ungovernable live a longer time than the quick and the clever. Therefore they do not well who make God’s eternal existence to be the result of watchfulness and the thrusting aside of destructive agencies. No, immunity from emotion and destruction ought to reside in the blessed Being, and should require no activity on His part. Perhaps, however, to speak thus with reference to people that are not present does not show great consideration. So fit is right that Cleombrotus should resume the topic which he discontinued a few moments ago about the migration and flight of the demigods.”

21 1 Then Cleombrotus continued, “I shall be surprised if it does not appear to you much more strange than what has already been said. Yet it seems to be close to the subject of natural phenomena and Plato has given the key-note for it, not by an unqualified pronouncement, but as the result of a vague concept, cautiously suggesting also the underlying idea in an enigmatic way; but, for all that, there has been loud disparagement of him on the part of other philosophers. 421 But there is set before us for general use a bowl of myths and stories combined, and where could one meet with more kindly listeners for testing these stories, even as one tests coins from foreign lands? So I do not hesitate to favour you with a narrative about a man, not a Greek, whom I had great difficulty in finding, and then only by dint of long wanderings, and after paying large sums for information. It was near the Persian Gulf that I found him, where he holds a meeting with human beings once every year; and there I had an opportunity to talk with him and met with a kindly reception. The other days of his life, according to his statement, he spends in association with roving nymphs and demigods. He was the handsomest man I ever saw in personal appearance band he never suffered from any disease, inasmuch as once each month he partook of the medicinal and bitter fruit of a certain herb. He was practised in the use of many tongues; but with me, for the most part, he spoke a Doric which was almost music. While he was speaking, a fragrance overspread the place, as his mouth breathed forth a most pleasant perfume. Besides his learning and his knowledge of history, always at his command, he was inspired to prophesy one day in each year when he went down to the sea and told of the future. Potentates and kings’ secretaries would come each year and depart. He made most account of Delphi and there was none of the stories told of Dionysus or of the rites performed here of which he had not heard; these too he asserted were the momentous experiences of the demigods and so, plainly, were those which had to do with the Python. And upon the slayer of that monster was not imposed an exile of eight full years, nor, following this, was he exiled to Tempê; but after he was expelled, he fared forth to another world, and later, returning from there, after eight cycles of the Great Years, pure and truly the ‘Radiant One,’ he took over the oracle which had been guarded during this time by Themis. Such also, he said, were the stories about Typhons and Titans; battles of demigods against demigods had taken place, followed by the exile of the vanquished, or else judgement inflicted by a god upon the sinners, as, for example, for the sin which Typhon is said to have committed in the case of Osiris, or Cronus in the case of Uranus; and the honours once paid to these deities have become quite dim to our eyes or have vanished altogether when the deities were transferred to another world. In fact, I learn that the Solymi, who live next to the Lycians, paid especial honour to Cronus. But when he had slain their rulers, Arsalus, Dryus, and Trosobius, he fled away from that place to some place or other, where they cannot say; and then he ceased to be regarded, but Arsalus and those connected with him are called the ‘stern gods,’ and the Lycians employ their names in invoking curses both in public and in private. Many accounts similar to these are to be had from theological history. But, as that man said, if we call some of the demigods by the current name of gods, that is no cause for wonder; for each of them is wont to be called after that god with whom he is allied and from whom he has derived his portion of power and honour. In fact, among ourselves one of us is Dius, another Athenaeus, another Apollonius or Dionysius or Hermaeus; but only some of us have, by chance, been rightly named; the majority have received names derived from the gods which bear no relation to the persons, but are only a travesty.”

22 1 Cleombrotus said nothing more, and his account appeared marvellous to all. But when Heracleon inquired in what way this was related to Plato and how he had given the key-note for this topic, Cleombrotus said, “You well remember that he summarily decided against 422 an infinite number of worlds, but had doubts about a limited number; and up to five he conceded a reasonable probability to those who postulated one world to correspond to each element, but for himself, he kept to one. This seems to be peculiar to Plato, for the other philosophers conceived a fear of plurality, feeling that if they did not limit matter to one world, but went beyond one, an unlimited and embarrassing infinity would at once fasten itself upon them.”

“But,” said I, “did your far-away friend set a limit to the number of worlds, as Plato did, or did you not go so far as to sound him on this point when you had your interview with him?”

“Was it not likely,” said Cleombrotus, “that on anything touching these matters, if on nothing else, I should be an inquisitive and eager listener, when he so graciously put himself at my disposal and gave me the opportunity? He said that the worlds are not infinite in number, nor one, nor five, but one hundred and eighty-three, arranged in the form of a triangle, each side of the triangle having sixty worlds; of the three left over each is placed at an angle, and those that are next to one other are in contact and revolve gently as in a dance. The inner area of the triangle is the common hearth of all, and is called the Plain of Truth, in which the accounts, the forms, and the patterns of all things that have come to pass and of all that shall come to pass rest undisturbed; and round about them lies Eternity, whence Time, like an ever-flowing stream, is conveyed to the worlds. Opportunity to see and to contemplate these things is vouchsafed to human souls once in ten thousand years if they have lived goodly lives; and the best of the initiatory rites here are but a dream of that highest rite and initiation; and the words of our philosophic inquiry are framed to recall these fair sights there — else is our labour vain. This,” said he, “is the tale I heard him recite quite as though it were in some rite of mystic initiation, but without offering any demonstration or proof of what he said.”

23 1 Then I, addressing Demetrius, said, “How do the verses about the suitors run, when they are marvelling at Odysseus as he handles the bow?” And when Demetrius had recalled them to my mind, I said, “It occurs to me to say this of your far-away friend:

Surely he liked to see, or else was given to filching

beliefs and tales of all sorts. He had ranged widely in literature and was no foreigner, but a Greek by birth, and replete with Greek culture to a high degree. The number of his worlds convicts him, since it is not Egyptian nor Indian, but Dorian and from Sicily, being the idea of a man of Himera named Petron. Petron’s own treatise I have never read nor am I sure that a copy is now extant; but Hippys of Rhegium, whom Phanias of Eresus mentions, records that this was the opinion and the account of it given by Petron: that there are one hundred and eighty-three worlds in contact with one another according to element; but what this is, ‘to be in contact according to element,’ he does not explain further nor subjoin any plausible proof.”

Demetrius, joining in, said, “What plausible proof could there be in matters of this sort in which even Plato, without stating anything reasonable or plausible, simply set down his own account?”

“But,” said Heracleon, “we hear you grammarians attributing this view to Homer fon the ground that he distributed the universe into five worlds: the heavens, the water, the air, the earth, and Olympus. Of these he leaves two to be held in common, the earth for all below and Olympus for all above, and the three that lie between were assigned to the three gods. In this wise Plato also, apparently, associated the fairest and foremost forms and figures with the different divisions of the universe, and called them five worlds, 423 one of earth, one of water, one of air, one of fire, and last of all, the one which includes all of these, the world of the dodecahedron, of wide expanse and many turnings, to which he assigned a form appropriate to the cycles and movements of the soul.”

“Why,” said Demetrius, “do we call up Homer in the present instance? Enough of legends! Plato, however, is very far from calling the five different divisions of the world five different worlds; and in those passages again, in which he contends against those who postulate an infinite number of worlds, he says that his opinion is that this world is the only-begotten and beloved of God, having been created out of the corporeal whole, entire, complete, and sufficient unto itself. Wherefore one might well be surprised that he, in stating the truth himself, has supplied others with a source for a doctrine that is unconvincing and lacking in reason. For not to defend the idea of a single world implied somehow an assumption of the infinity of the whole universe; but to make the worlds definitely just so many, neither more nor less than five, is altogether contrary to reason and devoid of all plausibility — unless,” he added, with a glance at me, “you have anything to say.”

“It appears,” said I, “that we have already discontinued our discussion about oracles, feeling it to be completed, and are now taking up another topic just as large.”

“Not discontinued that topic,” said Demetrius, “but not passing over this one which claims our attention. We will not spend much time on it, but only touch upon it long enough to inquire into its plausibility; and then we will follow up the original proposition.”

24 1 “In the first place, then,” said I, “the considerations that prevent our making an infinite number of worlds do not preclude our making more than one. For it is possible for God and prophecy and Providence to exist in more worlds than one, and for the incidence of chance to be reduced to the very smallest limits, while the vast majority of things and those of the highest importance attain to genesis and transmutation in a quite orderly sequence, none of which things does infinity, by its nature, admit. Then again it is more consistent with reason that the world should not be the only-begotten of God and quite alone. For He, being consummately good, is lacking in none of the virtues, and least of all in those which concern justice and friendliness; for these are the fairest and are fitting for gods. Nor is it in the nature of God to possess anything to no purpose or for no use. Therefore there exist other gods and other worlds outside, in relation with which He exercises the social virtues. For not in relation with Himself nor with any part of Himself is there any exercise of justice or benevolence or kindness, but only in relation with others. Thus it is not likely that this world, friendless, neighbourless, and unvisited, swings back and forth in the infinite void, since we see that Nature includes individual things in classes and species, like seeds in pods and envelopes. For there is nothing in the whole list of existing things for which there is not some general designation, nor does anything that does not possess certain qualities, either in common with others or solely by itself, obtain such an appellation. Now the world is not spoken of as having qualities in common with others. It has its qualities, therefore, solely by itself, by virtue of the difference when it is compared with other things which are akin to it and similar in appearance, since it has been created with such qualities as it possesses. If in all creation such a thing as one man, one horse, one star, one god, one demigod does not exist, what is there to prevent creation from having, not one world, but more than one? For he who says that creation has but one land and one sea overlooks a matter which is perfectly plain, the doctrine of similar parts; for we divide the earth into parts which bear similar names, and the sea likewise. A part of the world, however, is not a world, but something combined from the differing elements in Nature.

424 25 1 “Again, as for the dread which some people especially have felt, and so use up the whole of matter on the one world, so that nothing may be left over outside to disturb the structure of it by resisting or striking it — this fear of theirs is unwarranted. For if there are more worlds than one, and each of them has received, as its meet portion, substance and matter having a restricted measure and limit, then there will be nothing left unplaced or unorganized, an unused remnant, as it were, to crash into them from the outside. For the law of reason over each world, having control over the matter assigned to each, will not allow anything to be carried away from it nor to wander about and crash into another world, nor anything from another world to crash into it, because Nature has neither unlimited and infinite magnitude nor irrational and disorganized movement. Even if any emanation is carried from some worlds to others, it is certain to be congenial, agreeable, and to unite peaceably with all, like the rays of starlight and their blending; and the worlds themselves must experience joy in gazing at one another with kindly eyes; and for the many good gods in each, they must provide opportunities for visits and a friendly welcome. Truly in all this there is nothing impossible or fabulous or contrary to reason unless, indeed, because of Aristotle’s statements some persons shall look upon it with suspicion as being based on physical grounds. For if each of the bodies has its own particular space, as he asserts, the earth must of necessity turn toward the centre from all directions and the water be above it, settling below the lighter elements because of its weight. If, therefore, there be more worlds than one, it will come to pass that in many places the earth will rest above the fire and the air, and in many places below them; and the air and the water likewise, in some places existing in positions in keeping with nature and in other places in positions contrary to nature. As this, in his opinion, is impossible, the inference is that there are neither two worlds nor more, but only this one, composed of the whole of matter and resting firmly in keeping with Nature, as befits the diversity of its bodies. 26 All this, however, has been put in a way that is more plausible than true. Look at it in this way, my dear Demetrius,” said I; “when he says of the bodies that some have a motion towards the centre and downwards, others away from the centre and upwards, and others around the centre and in a circular path, in what relation does he take the centre? Certainly not in relation to the void, for according to him it does not exist. And according to those for whom it does exist, it has no centre, just as it has no point where it begins or where it ends; for these are limitations, and the infinite has no limitations. And if a man could force himself, by reasoning, to dare the concept of a violent motion of the infinite, what difference, if referred to this, is created for the bodies in their movements? For in the void there is no power in the bodies, nor do the bodies have a predisposition and an impetus, by virtue of which they cling to the centre and have a universal tendency in this one direction. It is equally difficult, in the case of inanimate bodies and an incorporeal and undifferentiated position, to conceive of a movement created from the bodies or an attraction created by the position. Thus one conclusion is left: when the centre is spoken of it is not with reference to any place, but with reference to the bodies. For in this world of ours, which has a single unity in its organization from numerous dissimilar elements, these differences necessarily create various movements towards various objects. Evidence of this kind is found in the fact that everything, when it undergoes transformation, changes its position coincidently with the change in its substance. For example, dispersion distributes upwards and round about the matter rising from the centre and condensation and consolidation press it down towards the centre and drive it together.

27 1 “On this topic it is not necessary to use more words at present. The truth is that whatever cause one may postulate as the author of these occurrences and changes, that cause will keep each of the worlds together within itself; 425 for each world has earth and sea, and each has its own centre and occurrences that affect its component bodies; it has its own transmutations and a nature and power which preserves each one and keeps it in place. In what lies beyond, whether it be nothing or an infinite void, no centre exists, as has been said; and if there are several worlds, in each one is a centre which belongs to it alone, with the result that the movements of its bodies are its own, some towards it, some away from it, and some around it, quite in keeping with the distinctions which these men themselves make. But anyone who insists that, while there are many centres, the heavy substances are impelled from all sides towards one only, does not differ at all from him who insists that, while there are many men, the blood from all shall flow together into a single vein and the brains of all shall be enveloped in a single membrane, deeming it a dreadful thing in the case of natural bodies if all the solids shall not occupy one place only and the fluids also only one place. Such a man as that will be abnormal, and so will he be who is indignant if everything constituting a whole has its own parts, of which it makes use in their natural arrangement and position in every case. For that would be preposterous, and so too if anybody called that a world which had a moon somewhere inside it; as well call that a man who carries his brains in his heels or his heart in his head! But to make more worlds than one, each separate from the other, and to delimit and distinguish the parts belonging to each to go with the whole is not preposterous. For the land and the sea and the heavens in each will be placed to accord with nature, as is fitting; and each of the worlds has its above and below and its round about and centre, not with reference to another world or the outside, but in itself and with reference to itself.

28 1 “As for the stone which some assume to exist in the regions outside the world, it does not readily afford a concept regarding either its fixity or its motion. For how is it either to remain fixed, if it has weight, or to move towards the world like other heavy substances when it is no part of the world and has no place in the order of its being? and embraced in another world and bound up with it ought not to raise any question as to how it comes about that it does not break away from the whole and transfer itself to our world, because we see the nature and the tension under which each of the parts is held secure. For if we take the expressions ‘below’ and ‘above’ as referring, not to the world, but outside of it, we shall become involved in the same difficulties as Epicurus, who would have all his atoms move to places under our feet, as if either the void had feet, or infinity granted us to conceive of ‘below’ and ‘above’ within itself! Wherefore we may well wonder at Chrysippus, or rather be quite unable to understand what possessed him to assert that the world has been firmly set in the centre and that its substance, having pre-empted the central place from time eternal, thereby gains the greatest help towards its permanence, and that is as much as to say its immunity from destruction. This is actually what he says in the fourth book of his work on Things Possible, where he indulges in a day-dream of a central place in the infinite and still more preposterously ascribes the cause of the permanence of the world to the non-existent centre; yet in other works he has often said that substance is regulated and held together by its movements towards its own centre and away from its own centre.

29 1 “Then again, who could feel alarm at the other notions of the Stoics, who ask how there shall continue to be one Destiny and one Providence, and how there shall not be many supreme gods bearing the name of Zeus or Zen, if there are more worlds than one? For, in the first place, if it is preposterous that there should be many supreme gods bearing this name, then surely these persons’ ideas will be far more preposterous; for they make an infinite number of suns and moons and Apollos and Artemises and Poseidons in the infinite cycle of worlds. But the second point is this: what is the need that there be many gods bearing the name of Zeus, if there be more worlds than one, and that there should not be in each world, 426 a god possessing sense and reason, such as the one who among us bears the name of Lord and Father of all? Or again, what shall prevent all worlds from being subject to the Destiny and Providence of Zeus, and what shall prevent his overseeing and directing them all in turn and supplying them all with first principles, material sources, and schemes of all that is being carried out? Do we not in this world of ours often have a single body composed of separate bodies, as, for example, an assembly of people or an army or a band of dancers, each one of whom has the contingent faculty of living, thinking, and learning, as Chrysippus believes, while in the whole universe, that there should be ten worlds, or fifty, or an hundred even, living under one reasoned plan, and organized under one government, is an impossibility? Yet such an organization is altogether appropriate for the gods. For we must not make them unable to go out, like the queens in a hive of bees, nor keep them imprisoned by enclosing them with matter, or rather fencing them about with it, as those do who make the gods to be atmospheric conditions, or regard them as powers of waters or of fire blended therewith, and bring them into being at the same time with the world, and burn them up with it, since they are not unconfined and free like drivers of horses or pilots of ships, but, just as statues are riveted and welded to their bases, so they are enclosed and fastened to the corporeal; and are partners with it even unto destruction, dissolution, and transmutation, of whatsoever sort may befall.

30 1 “That other concept is, I think, more dignified and sublime, that the gods are not subject to outside control, but are their own masters, even as the twin sons of Tyndareüs come to the aid of men who are labouring in the storm,

Soothing the oncoming raging sea,

Taming the swift-driving blasts of the winds,

not, however, sailing on the ships and sharing in the danger, but appearing above and rescuing; so, in the same way, one or another of the gods visits now this world and now that, led thither by pleasure in the sight, and co-operates with Nature in the directing of each. The Zeus of Homer turned his gaze not so very far away from the land of Troy towards the Thracian regions and the wandering tribes about the Danube; but the real Zeus has a fair and fitting variety of spectacles in numerous worlds, not viewing the infinite void outside nor concentrating his mind upon himself and nothing else, as some have imitated, but surveying from above the many works of gods and men and the movements and courses of the stars in their cycles. In fact, the Deity is not averse to changes, but has a very great joy therein, to judge, if need be, by the alternations and cycles in the heavens among the bodies that are visible there. Infinity is altogether senseless and unreasoning, and nowhere admits a god, but in all relations it brings into action the concept of chance and accident. But the Oversight and Providence in a limited group and number of worlds, when compared with that which has entered one body and become attached to one and reshapes and remodels it an infinite number of times, seems to me to contain nothing involving less dignity or greater labour.”

31 1 Having spoken at this length, I stopped. Philip, after no long interval, said, “That the truth about these matters is thus or otherwise is not for me to assert. But if we eliminate the god from one world, there is the question why we make him the creator of only five worlds and no more, and what is the relation of this number to the great mass of numbers; and I feel that I would rather gain a knowledge of this than of the meaning of the E dedicated here. For the number five represents neither a triangle nor a square, nor is it a perfect number nor a cube, nor does it seem to present any other subtlety for those who love and admire such speculations. Its derivation from the number of elements, at which the Master hinted darkly, is in every way hard to grasp and gives no clear intimation of the plausibility which must have drawn him on to assert 427 that it is likely that when five bodies with equal angles and equal sides and enclosed by equal areas are engendered in matter the same number of worlds should at once be perfected from them.”

32 1 “Yes,” said I, “Theodorus of Soli seems to follow up the subject not ineptly in his explanations of Plato’s mathematical theories. He follows it up in this way: a pyramid, an octahedron, an icosahedron, and a dodecahedron, the primary figures which Plato predicates, are all beautiful because of the symmetries and equalities in their relations, and nothing superior or even like to these has been left for Nature to compose and fit together. It happens, however, that they do not all have one form of construction, nor have they all a similar origin, but the pyramid is the simplest and smallest, while the dodecahedron is the largest and most complicated. Of the remaining two the icosahedron is more than double the octahedron in the number of its triangles. For this reason it is impossible for them all to derive their origin from one and the same matter. For those that are simple and small and more rudimentary in their structure would necessarily be the first to respond to the instigating and formative power, and to be completed and acquire substantiality earlier than those of large parts and many bodies, from which class comes the dodecahedron, which requires more labour for its construction. Hence it follows that the only primal body is the pyramid, and not one of the others, since by their nature they are outdistanced by it coming into being. Accordingly, the remedy which exists for this strange state of affairs consists in the division and separation of matter into five worlds, one where the pyramid shall acquire substantiality first, another for the octahedron, and another for the icosahedron; then from the one that first acquires substantiality in each world the rest will have their origin, since a transmutation for everything into everything takes place according to the adaptability of parts to fit together, as Plato himself has indicated, going into the details of nearly all cases. But for us it will suffice to acquire the knowledge in brief form. Since air is formed when fire is extinguished, we must observe the behaviour of each of the generative elements and their transmutations. The generative elements of fire are the pyramid, composed of twenty-four primary triangles, and likewise for air the octahedron, composed of forty-eight of the same. Therefore one element of air is produced from two corpuscles of fire combined and united; and that of air again, when divided, is separated into two corpuscles of fire, and again, when compressed and condensed, it goes off into the form of water. The result is that in every case the one which first acquires substantiality always affords the others a ready means of coming into being through transmutation; and it is not one alone that first exists, but another in a different environment is endowed with movement, which takes the lead and forestalls the others in coming into being, and thus the name of being first is kept by all.”

33 1 “Manfully and zealously,” said Ammonius, “have these matters been worked out by Theodorus; but I should be surprised if it should not appear that he has made use of assumptions which nullify each other. For he insists that all the five shall not undergo construction at the same time, but the simplest always, which requires the least trouble to construct, shall first issue forth into being. Then, as a corollary to this, and not conflicting with it, he lays down the principle that not all matter brings forth the simplest and most rudimentary form first, but that sometimes the ponderous and complex forms, in the time of their coming into being, are earlier in arising out of matter. But apart from this, five bodies having been postulated as primary, and on the strength of this the number of worlds being put as the same, he adduces probability with reference to four only; the cube he has taken off the board, as if he were playing a game with counters, since, because of its nature, it cannot transmute itself into them nor confer upon them the power of transmutation into itself, 428 inasmuch as the triangles are not homologous triangles. For in the others the common triangle which underlies them all is the half-triangle; but in this, and peculiar to it alone, is the isosceles triangle, which makes no convergence towards the other nor any conjunction that would unify the two. If, therefore, there are five bodies and five worlds, and in each one body only has precedence in coming into being, then where the cube has been the first to come into being, there will be none of the others, since, because of its nature, it cannot transmute itself into any one of them. I leave out of account the fact that they make the element of the dodecahedron, as it is called, something else and not that scalene from which Plato constructs the pyramid and the octahedron and the icosahedron. So,” added Ammonius, laughing, “either you must solve these problems or else contribute something of your own concerning this difficulty in which we all find ourselves involved.”

34 1 “For the present, at least,” said I, “I have nothing more plausible to offer; but perhaps it is better to submit to examination on views of one’s own rather than on another’s. I repeat, therefore, what I said at the beginning, that if two natures be postulated, one evident to the senses, subject to change in creation and dissolution, carried now here now there, while the other is essentially conceptual and always remains the same, it is a dreadful thing that, while the conceptual nature has been parcelled out and has variety within itself, we should feel indignant and annoyed if anyone does not leave the corporeal and passive nature as a unity knit together and converging upon itself, but separates and parts it. For it is surely fitting that things permanent and divine should hold more closely together and escape, so far as may be, all segmentation and separation. But even on these the power of Differentiation has laid its hand and has wrought in things conceptual dissimilarities in reasons and ideas, which are vaster than the separations in location. Wherefore Plato, opposing those who declare for the unity of the whole, says that these five things exist: Being, Identity, Differentiation, and, to crown all, Movement and Rest. Granted, then, that these five exist, it is not surprising if each of these five corporeal elements has been made into a copy and image of each of them respectively, not unmixed and unalloyed, but it is because of the fact that each of them participates most in its corresponding faculty. The cube is patently a body related to rest because of the security and stability of its plane surfaces. In the pyramid everybody may note its fiery and restless quality in the simplicity of its sides and the acuteness of its angles. The nature of the dodecahedron, which is comprehensive enough to include to figures, may well seem to be a model with reference to all corporeal being. Of the remaining two, the icosahedron shares in the nature of Differentiation mostly, and the octahedron in that of Identity. For this reason the octahedron contributed air, which in a single form holds all being in its embrace, and the icosahedron water, which by admixture assumes the greatest variety of qualities. If, therefore, nature demands an equal distribution in all things, there is a reasonable probability that the worlds which have been created are neither more nor less in number than the patterns, so that each pattern in each world may have the leading rank and power just as it has acquired it in the construction of the primary bodies.

35 1 “However, let this be a comfort for him that wonders because we divide Nature into so many classes in its generation and transmutation. But here is another matter which I ask you all to consider, and to give your undivided attention to it: of those numbers which come at the very first (I mean the number one and the indeterminate duality), the second, being the element underlying all formlessness and disarrangement, has been called infinity; but the nature of the number one limits and arrests what is void and irrational and indeterminate in infinity, gives it shape, and renders it in some way tolerant and receptive of definition, which is the next step after demonstration regarding things perceptible. 429 Now these first principles make their appearance at the beginning in connexion with number; rather, however, larger amounts are not number at all unless the number one, created from the illimitability of infinity, like a form of matter, cuts off more on one side and less on the other. Then, in fact, any of the larger amounts becomes number through being delimited by the number one. But if the number one be done away with, once more the indeterminate duality throws all into confusion, and makes it to be without rhythm, bounds, or measure. Inasmuch as form is not the doing away with matter, but a shaping and ordering of the underlying matter, it needs must be that both these first principles be existent in number, band from this has arisen the first and greatest divergence and dissimilarity. For the indeterminate first principle is the creator of the even, and the better one of the odd. Two is the first of the even numbers and three the first of the odd; from the two combined comes five, which in its composition is common to both numbers and in its potentiality is odd. For when the perceptible and corporeal was divided into several parts because of the innate necessity of differentiation, that number had to be neither the first even nor the first odd, but the third number, which is formed from these two, so that it might be produced from both the primary principles, that which created the even and that which created the odd, because it was not possible for the one to be divorced from the other; for each possesses the nature and the potentiality of a first principle. So when the two were paired, the better one prevailed over the indeterminate as it was dividing the corporeal and checked it; and when matter was being distributed to the two, it set unity in the middle and did not allow the whole to be divided into two parts, but there has been created a number of worlds by differentiation of the indeterminate and by its being carried in varying directions; yet the power of Identity and Limitation has had the effect of making that number odd, but the kind of odd that did not permit Nature to progress beyond what is best. If the number one were unalloyed and pure, matter would not have any separation at all; but since it has been combined with the dividing power of duality, it has had to submit to being cut up and divided, but there it stopped, the even being overpowered by the odd.

36 1 “It was for this reason that among the people of olden time it was the custom to call counting ‘numbering by fives.’ I think also that ‘panta’ (all) is derived from ‘pente’ (five) in accord with reason, inasmuch as the pentad is a composite of the first numbers. As a matter of fact, when the others are multiplied by other numbers, the result is a number different from themselves; but the pentad, if it be taken an even number of times, makes ten exactly; and if an odd number of times, it reproduces itself. I leave out of account the fact that it is the first composite of the first two squares, unity and the tetrad; and that it is the first whose square is equal to the two immediately preceding it, making with them the most beautiful of the right-angled triangles; and it is the first to give the ratio 1½ : 1. However, perhaps these matters have not much relation to the subject before us; but there is another matter more closely related, and that is the dividing power of this number, by reason of its nature, and the fact that Nature does distribute most things by fives. For example, she has allotted to ourselves five senses and five parts to the soul: physical growth, perception, appetite, fortitude, and reason; also five fingers on each hand, and the most fertile seed when it is divided five times, for there is no record that a woman ever had more than five children together at one birth. The Egyptians have a tradition that Rhea gave birth to five gods, an intimation of the genesis of the five worlds from one single Matter; and in the universe the surface of the earth is divided among five zones, and the heavens by five circles, two arctic, two tropic, and the equator in the middle. 430 Five, too, are the orbits of the planets, if the Sun and Venus and Mercury follow the same course. The organization of the world also is based on harmony, just as a tune with us is seen to depend on the five notes of the tetrachord; lowest, middle, conjunct, disjunct, and highest; and the musical intervals are five: quarter-tone, semitone, tone, tone and a half, and double tone. Thus it appears that Nature takes a greater delight in making all things in fives than in making them round, as Aristotle has said.

37 1 “ ‘Why, then,’ someone will say, ‘did Plato refer the number of his five worlds to the five geometric figures, saying that God used up the fifth construction on the universe in completing this embellishment?’ Further on, where he suggests the question about there being more worlds than one, whether it is proper to speak of one or of five as in truth naturally existent, it is clear that he thinks that the idea started from this source. If, therefore, we must apply reasonable probability to his conception, let us consider that the variations in movement necessarily follow close upon the variations in the bodies and their shapes, as he himself teaches when he makes it plain that whatever is disunited or united changes its place at the same time with the alternation of its substance. For example, if fire is generated from air by the breaking up of the octahedron and its resolution into pyramids, or again if air is generated from fire by its being forced together and compressed into an octahedron, it is not possible for it to stay where it was before, but it escapes and is carried to some other place, forcing its way out and contending against anything that blocks its course or keeps it back. What takes place he describes more clearly by a simile, saying that in a manner like to ‘grain and chaff being tossed about and winnowed by the fans and other tools used in cleaning the grain’ the elements toss matter about and are tossed about by it; and like always draws near to like, some things occupying one place and others another, before the universe becomes completely organized out of the elements. Thus, when matter was in that state in which, in all probability, is the universe from which God is absent, the first five properties, having tendencies of their own, were at once carried in different directions, not being completely or absolutely separated, because, when all things were amalgamated, the inferior always followed the superior in spite of Nature. For this reason they produced in the different kinds of bodies, as these were carried some in one direction and others in another, an equal number of separate divisions with intervals between them, one not of pure fire, but fiery, another not of earth by itself alone, but earthy; and above all, in keeping with the close association of air with water, they contrived, as has been said, that these should come away filled with many foreign elements. It was not the Deity who parted substance and caused it to rest in different places, but, after it had been parted by its own action and was being carried in diverse ways in such great disarray, he took it over and set it in order and fitted it together by the use of proportions and means. Then, after establishing Reason in each as a governor and guardian, he created as many worlds as the existing primal bodies. Let this, then, be an offering for the gratification of Plato on Ammonius’s account, but as for myself, I should not venture to assert regarding the number of worlds that they are just so many; but the opinion that sets their number at more than one, and yet not infinite, but limited in amount, I regard as no more irrational than either of the others, when I observe the dispersiveness and divisibility implicit by nature in Matter, and that it neither abides as a unit nor is permitted by Reason to progress to infinity. 431 But if in any other place we have recalled the Academy to our mind, let us do so here as well, and divest ourselves of excessive credulity and, as if we were in a slippery place in our discussion about infinity, let us merely keep a firm footing.”

38 1 When I had said this, Demetrius remarked, “Lamprias gives the right advice; for

The gods make us to slip by many forms

not ‘of tricks,’ as Euripides says, but of facts, whenever we make bold to pronounce opinions about such matters as if we understood them. ‘But the discussion must be carried back,’ as the same writer says, to the assumption made at the beginning. For what was said then, that when the demigods withdraw and forsake the oracles, these lie idle and inarticulate like the instruments of musicians, raises another question of greater import regarding the causative means and power which they employ to make the prophetic priests and priestesses possessed by inspiration and able to present their visions. For it is not possible to hold that the desertion by the demigods is the reason for the silence of the oracles unless we are convinced as to the manner in which the demigods, by having the oracles in their charge and by their presence there, make them active and articulate.”

Here Ammonius joined in and said, “Do you really think that the demigods are aught else than souls that make their rounds, ‘in mist apparelled,’ as Hesiod says? To my mind the difference between man and man in acting tragedy or comedy is the difference between soul and soul arrayed in a body suitable for its present life. It is, therefore, not at all unreasonable or even marvellous that souls meeting souls should create in them impressions of the future, exactly as we do not convey all our information to one another through the spoken word, but by writing also, or merely by a touch or a glance, we give much information about what has come to pass and intimation of what is to come. Unless it be, Lamprias, that you have another story to tell. For not long ago a rumour reached us about your having had a long talk on these subjects with strangers at Lebadeia, but the man who told of it could recall none of it with exactness.”

“You need not be surprised,” said I, “since many activities and distractions occurring in the midst of it, because it was a day for oracles and sacrifice, made our conversation desultory and disconnected.”

“But now,” said Ammonius, “you have listeners with nothing to distract them and eager to seek and gain information on this point or that; all strife and contention is banished and a sympathetic hearing and freedom of statement, as you observe, is granted for all that may be said.”

39 1 As the others also joined in the request, I, after a moment of silence, continued, “As a matter of fact, Ammonius, by some chance you happen to be the one who provided the opening and approach for what was said on that occasion. For if the souls which have been severed from a body, or have had no part with one at all, are demigods according to you and the divine Hesiod,

Holy dwellers on earth and the guardian spirits of mortals,

why deprive souls in bodies of that power by virtue of which the demigods possess the natural faculty of knowing and revealing future events before they happen? For it is not likely that any power or portion accrues to souls when they have left the body, if they did not possess them before; but the souls always possess them; only they possess them to a slight degree while conjoined with the body, some of them being completely imperceptible and hidden, others weak and dim, and about as ineffectual and slow in operation as persons that try to see in a fog or to move about in water, and requiring much nursing and restoring of the functions that properly belong to them and the removal and clearing away of the covering which hides them. Just as the sun does not become bright when it bursts through the clouds, but is bright always, 432 and yet in a fog appears to us indistinct and dim, even so the soul does not acquire the prophetic power when it goes forth from the body as from a cloud; it possesses that power even now, but is blinded by being combined and commingled with the mortal nature. We ought not to feel surprised or incredulous at this when we see in the soul, though we see naught else, that faculty which is the complement of prophecy, and which we call memory, and how great an achievement is displayed in preserving and guarding the past, or rather what has been the present, since nothing of all that has come to pass has any existence or substantiality, because the very instant when anything comes to pass, that is the end of it — of actions, words, experiences alike; for Time like an everflowing stream bears all things onward. But this faculty of the soul lays hold upon them, I know not how, and invests with semblance and being things not now present here. The oracle given to the Thessalians about Arnê bade them note

A deaf man’s hearing, a blind man’s sight.

But memory is for us the hearing of deeds to which we are deaf and the seeing of things to which we are blind. Hence, as I said, it is no wonder that, if it has command over things that no longer are, it anticipates many of those which have not yet come to pass, since these are more closely related to it, and with these it has much in common; for its attachments and associations are with the future, and it is quit of all that is past and ended, save only to remember it.

40 1 “Souls therefore, all possessed of this power, which is innate but dim and hardly manifest, nevertheless oftentimes disclose its flower and radiance in dreams, and some in the hour of death, when the body becomes cleansed of all impurities and attains a temperament adapted to this end, a temperament through which the reasoning and thinking faculty of the souls is relaxed and released from their present state as they range amid the irrational and imaginative realms of the future. It is not true, as Euripides says, that

The best of seers is he that guesses well;

no, the best of seers is the intelligent man, following the guidance of that in his soul which possesses sense and which, with the help of reasonable probability, leads him on his way. But that which foretells the future, like a tablet without writing, is both irrational and indeterminate in itself, but receptive of impressions and presentiments through what may be done to it, and inconsequently grasps at the future when it is farthest withdrawn from the present. Its withdrawal is brought about by a temperament and disposition of the body as it is subjected to a change which we call inspiration. Often the body of itself alone attains this disposition. Moreover the earth sends forth for men streams of many other potencies, some of them producing derangement, diseases, or deaths; others helpful, benignant, and beneficial, as is plain from the experience of persons who have come upon them. But the prophetic current and breath is most divine and holy, whether it issue by itself through the air or come in the company of running waters; for when it is instilled into the body, it creates in souls an unaccustomed and unusual temperament, the peculiarity of which it is hard to describe with exactness, but analogy offers many comparisons. It is likely that by warmth and diffusion it opens up certain passages through which impressions of the future are transmitted, just as wine, when its fumes rise to the head, reveals many unusual movements and also words stored away and unperceived.

For Bacchic rout

And frenzied mind contain much prophecy,

according to Euripides, when the soul becomes hot and fiery, and throws aside the caution that human intelligence lays upon it, and thus often diverts and extinguishes the inspiration.

41 1 “At the same time one might assert, not without reason, that a dryness engendered with the heat subtilizes the spirit of prophecy and renders it ethereal and pure; for this is ‘the dry soul,’ as Heracleitus has it. Moisture not only dulls sight and hearing, 433 but when it touches mirrors and combines with air, it takes away their brightness and sheen. But again the very opposite of this may not be impossible: that by a sort of chilling and compacting of the spirit of inspiration the prophetic element in the soul, as when steel is dipped in cold water, is rendered tense and keen. And further, just as tin when alloyed with copper, which is loose and porous in texture, binds it together and compacts it, and at the same time makes it brighter and cleaner, even so there is nothing to prevent the prophetic vapour, which contains some affinity and relationship to souls, from filling up the vacant spaces and cementing all together by fitting itself in. For one thing has affinity and adaptability for one thing, another for another, just as the bean seems to further the dyeing of purple and sodium carbonate that of scarlet, when mixed with the dye;

All in the linen is blended the splendour of glorious scarlet,

as Empedocles has said. But regarding the Cydnus and the sacred sword of Apollo in Tarsus we used to hear you say, my dear Demetrius, that the Cydnus will cleanse no steel but that, and no other water will cleanse that sword. There is a similar phenomenon at Olympia, where they pile the ashes against the altar and make them adhere all around by pouring on them water from the Alpheius; but, although they have tried the waters of other rivers, there is none with which they can make the ashes cohere and stay fixed in their place.

42 1 “It is not, therefore, anything to excite amazement if, although the earth sends up many streams, it is only such as these that dispose souls to inspiration and impressions of the future. Certainly the voice of legend also is in accord with my statement; for they record that here the power hovering about this spot was first made manifest when a certain shepherd fell in by accident and later gave forth inspired utterances, which those who came into contact with him at first treated with disdain; but later, when what he had foretold came to pass, they were amazed. The most learned of the people of Delphi still preserve the tradition of his name, which they say was Coretas. But I incline most to the opinion that the soul acquires towards the prophetic a close and intimate connexion of the sort that vision has towards light, which possesses similar properties. For, although the eye has the power of vision, there is no function for it to perform without light; and so the prophetic power of the soul, like an eye, has need of something kindred to help to kindle it and stimulate it further. Hence many among earlier generations regarded Apollo and the Sun as one and the same god; but those who understood and respected fair and wise analogy conjectured that as body is to soul, vision to intellect, and light to truth, so is the power of the sun to the nature of Apollo; and they would make it appear that the sun is his offspring and progeny, being for ever born of him that is for ever. For the sun kindles and promotes and helps to keep in activity the power of vision in our perceptive sense, just as the god does for the power of prophecy in the soul.

43 1 “Those, however, who had reached the conclusion that the two are one and the same god very naturally dedicated the oracle to Apollo and Earth in common, thinking that the sun creates the disposition and temperament in the earth from which the prophet-inspiring vapours are wafted forth. As Hesiod, then, with a better understanding than some philosophers, spoke of the Earth itself as

Of All the unshaken foundation,

so we believe it to be everlasting and imperishable. But in the case of the powers associated with the earth it is reasonable that there should come to pass disappearances in one place and generation in another place, and elsewhere shifting of location and, from some other source, changes in current, and that such cycles should complete many revolutions within it in the whole course of time, as we may judge from what happens before our eyes. For in the case of lakes and rivers, and even more frequently in hot springs, there have occurred disappearances and complete extinction in some places, and in others a stealing away, as it were, and sinking under ground; 434 later they came back, appearing after a time in the same places or flowing out from below somewhere near. We know also of the exhaustion of mines, some of which have given out recently, as for example the silver mines of Attica and the copper ore in Euboea from which the cold-forged sword-blades used to be wrought, as Aeschylus has said,

Euboean sword, self-sharpened, in his hand.

And it is no long time since the rock in Euboea ceased to yield, among its other products, soft petrous filaments like yarn. I think some of you have seen towels, nets, and women’s head-coverings from there, which cannot be burned by fire; but if any become soiled by use, their owners throw them into a blazing fire and take them out bright and clear. To day all this has disappeared, and there are scarcely any attenuated fibres or hairs, as it were, running through the mines.

44 1 “And yet the school of Aristotle would make it appear that exhalation is the author of all these changes that have taken place in the earth, and that things of this nature must of necessity follow with it in disappearing, changing their locality, and bursting forth once more in full vigour. Plainly the same sober opinion is to be held regarding the spirits that inspire prophecy; the power that they possess is not everlasting and ageless, but is subject to changes. For excessive rains most likely extinguish them, and they probably are dispersed by thunderbolts, and especially, when the earth is shaken beneath by an earthquake and suffers subsidence and ruinous confusion in its depths, the exhalations shift their site or find completely blind outlets, as in this place they say that there are still traces of that great earthquake which overthrew the city. And in Orchomenos they relate that a pestilence raged and many persons died of it, and the oracle of Teiresias became altogether obsolescent and even to this day remains idle and mute. And if a like fate has befallen those in Cilicia, as we have been told, there is nobody, Demetrius, who could give us more certain information than you.”

45 1 “I do not know,” said Demetrius, “the state of affairs there at present; for as you all know, I have been out of the country for a long time now. But, when I was there, both the oracle of Mopsus and that of Amphilochus were still flourishing. I have a most amazing thing to tell as the result of my visit to the oracle of Mopsus. The ruler of Cilicia was himself still of two minds towards religious matters. This, I think, was because his skepticism lacked conviction, for in all else he was an arrogant and contemptible man. Since he kept about him certain Epicureans, who, because of their admirable nature-studies, forsooth, have an arrogant contempt, as they themselves aver, for all such things as oracles, he sent in a freedman, like a spy into the enemy’s territory, arranging that he should have a sealed tablet, on the inside of which was written the inquiry without anyone’s knowing what it was. The man accordingly, as is the custom, passed the night in the sacred precinct and went to sleep, and in the morning reported a dream in this fashion: it seemed to him that a handsome man stood beside him who uttered just one word ‘Black’ and nothing more, and was gone immediately. The thing seemed passing strange to us, and raised much inquiry, but the ruler was astounded and fell down and worshipped; then opening the tablet he shoed written there the question: ‘Shall I sacrifice to you a white bull or a black?’ The result was that the Epicureans were put to confusion, and the ruler himself not only duly performed the sacrifice, but ever after revered Mopsus.”

46 1 When Demetrius had told this tale he lapsed into silence. But I, wishing to crown, as it were, the discussion, glanced again towards Philip and Ammonius who were sitting side by side. They seemed to me to be desirous of saying something to us, and again I checked myself. Then Ammonius said, “Philip also has some remarks to make, Lamprias, about what has been said; for he himself thinks, as most people do, that Apollo is not a different god, but is the same as the sun. 435 But my difficulty is greater and concerns greater matters. I do not know how it happened, but a little time ago we yielded to logic in wresting here the prophetic art from the gods and transferring it merely to the demigods. But now it seems to me that we are thrusting out these very demigods, in their turn, and driving them away from the oracle and the tripod here, when we resolve the origin of prophecy, or rather its very being and power, into winds and vapours and exhalations. For these temperings and heatings and hardenings that have been spoken of serve only the more to withdraw repute from the gods band suggest in regard to the final cause some such conclusion as Euripides makes his Cyclops employ:

The earth perforce, whether it will or no,

Brings forth the grass to fat my grazing flocks.

But there is one difference: he says that he does not offer them in sacrifice to the gods, but to himself and to his ‘belly, greatest of divinities,’ whereas we offer both sacrifices and prayers as the price for our oracles. What possesses us to do so, if our souls carry within themselves the prophetic power, and it is some particular state of the air or its currents which stirs this to activity? And what is the significance of the libations poured over the victims and the refusal to give responses unless the whole victim from the hoof-joints up is seized with a trembling and quivering, as the libation is poured over it? Shaking the head is not enough, as in other sacrifices, but the tossing and quivering must extend to all parts of the animal alike accompanied by a tremulous sound; and unless this takes place they say that the oracle is not functioning, and do not even bring in the prophetic priestess. Yet it is only on the assumption that they ascribe the cause almost entirely to a god or a demigod that it is reasonable for them to act and to believe thus; but on the basis of what you say it is not reasonable. For the presence of the exhalation, whether the victim be excited or not, will produce the inspiration and will dispose the soul auspiciously, not only the soul of the priestess, but that of any ordinary person with whom it may come into contact. Wherefore it is silly to employ one woman alone for the purpose of the oracles and to give her trouble by watching her to keep her pure and chaste all her life. As a matter of fact, this Coretas, who the people of Delphi say was the first, because he fell in, to supply any means of knowing about the power with which the place is endowed, was not, I think, any different from the rest of the goatherds and shepherds, if so be that this is not a fable or a fabrication as I, for one, think it is. When I take into account the number of benefactions to the Greeks for which this oracle has been responsible, both in wars and in the founding of cities, in cases of pestilence and failure of crops, I think it is a dreadful thing to assign its discovery and origin, not to God and Providence, but to chance and accident. But regarding these matters,” he added, “I wish that Lamprias would say something to us. Will you wait?”

“Certainly I will,” said Philip, “and so will all who are here. For what you have said has set us all thinking.”

47 1 Then I, addressing myself to him, said, “Not only has it set me thinking, Philip, but it has filled me with confusion, if, in the presence of so many men such as you all are, I seem, in contradiction to my years, to give myself airs over the plausibility of my argument and to upset or disturb any of the briefs regarding the Deity which have been conceived in truth and in piety. I shall defend myself by citing Plato as my witness and advocate in one. That philosopher found fault with Anaxagoras, the one of early times, because he was too much wrapped up in the physical causes and was always following up and pursuing the law of necessity as it was worked out in the behaviour of bodies, and left out of account the purpose and the agent, which are better causes and origins. Plato himself was the first of the philosophers, or the one most prominently engaged in prosecuting investigations of both sorts, to assign to God, on the one hand, the origin of all things that are in keeping with reason, and on the other hand, not to divest matter of the causes necessary for whatever comes into being, 436 but to realize that the perceptible universe, even when arranged in some such orderly way as this, is not pure and unalloyed, but that it takes its origin from matter when matter comes into conjunction with reason. Observe first how it is with the artists. Take as our first example the far-famed stand and base for the mixing-bowl here which Herodotus has styled the ‘bowl-holder’; it came to have as its material causes fire and steel and softening by means of fire and tempering by means of water, without which there is no expedient by which this work could be produced; but art and reason supplied for it the more dominant principle which set all these in motion and operated through them. And, indeed, the author and creator of these likenesses and portraits here stands recorded in the inscription:

Thasian by race and descent, Aglaophon’s son Polygnotus

Painted the taking of Troy, showing her citadel’s sack;

so that it may be seen that he painted them. But without pigments ground together, losing their own colour in the process, nothing could achieve such a composition and sight. Does he, then, who is desirous of getting hold of the material cause, as he investigates and explains the behaviour of the red earth of Sinopê and the changes to which it is subject when mixed with yellow ochre, or of the light-coloured earth of Melos when mixed with lamp-black, take away the repute of the artist? And he that goes into the details of the hardening and the softening of steel, how it is relaxed by the fire, and becomes pliant and yielding for those who forge and fashion it, and then, plunged anew into clear water, is contracted and compacted by the coldness because of the softness and looseness of texture previously engendered by the fire, and acquires a tenseness and firmness which Homer has called ‘the brawn of steel’ — does such an investigator any the less preserve intact for the artist the credit for the creation of the work? I think not. In fact there are some who question the properties of medicinal agents, but they do not do away with medical science. And thus when Plato declared that we see by the commingling of the irradiation from our eyes with the light of the sun, and that we hear by the vibration of the air, he certainly did not mean by this to abrogate the fundamental fact that it is according to the design of Reason and Providence that we have been endowed with sight and hearing.

48 1 “To sum up, then: while every form of creation has, as I say, two causes, the very earliest theological writers and poets chose to heed only the superior one, uttering over all things that come to pass this common generality:

Zeus the beginning, Zeus in the midst, and from Zeus comes all being;

but as yet they made no approach towards the compelling and natural causes. On the other hand the younger generation which followed them, and are called physicists or natural philosophers, reverse the procedure of the older school in their aberration from the beautiful and divine origin, and ascribe everything to bodies and their behaviour, to clashes, transmutations, and combinations. Hence the reasoning of both parties is deficient in what is essential to it, since the one ignores or omits the intermediate and the agent, the other the source and the means. He who was the first to comprehend clearly both these points and to take, as a necessary adjunct to the agent that creates and actuates, the underlying matter, which is acted upon, clears us also of all suspicion of wilful misstatement. The fact is that we do not make the prophetic art godless or irrational when we assign to it as its material the soul of a material human being, and assign the spirit of inspiration and the exhalation as an instrument or plectrum for playing on it. For, in the first place, the earth, which generates the exhalation, and the sun, which endows the earth with all its power of tempering and transmutation, are, by the usage of our fathers, gods for us. Secondly, if we leave demigods as overseers, watchmen, and guardians of this tempered constitution, as if it were a kind of harmony, slackening here and tightening there on occasion, 437 taking from it its too distracting and disturbing elements and incorporating those that are painless and harmless to the users, we shall not appear to be doing anything irrational or impossible. 49 Nor again, in offering the preliminary sacrifice to learn the god’s will and in putting garlands on victims or pouring libations over them, are we doing anything to contradict this reasoning. For when the priests and holy men say that they are offering sacrifice and pouring the libation over the victim and observing its movements and its trembling, of what else do they take this to be a sign save that the god is in his holy temple? For what is to be offered in sacrifice must, both in body and in soul, be pure, unblemished, and unmarred. Indications regarding the body it is not at all difficult to perceive, but they test the soul by setting meal before the bulls and peas before the boars; and the animal that does not eat of this they think is not of sound mind. In the case of the goat, they say, cold water gives positive proof; for indifference and immobility against being suddenly wet is not characteristic of a soul in a normal state. But for the most part, even if it be firmly established that the trembling is a sign of the god’s being in his holy temple and the contrary a sign of his not being there, I cannot see what difficulty in my statements results therefrom. For every faculty duly performs its natural functions better or worse concurrently with some particular time; and if that time escapes our ken, it is only reasonable that the god should give sign of it.

50 1 “I think, then, that the exhalation is not in the same state all the time, but that it has recurrent periods of weakness and strength. Of the proof on which I depend I have as witnesses many foreigners and all the officials and servants at the shrine. It is a fact that the room in which they seat those who would consult the god is filled, not frequently or with any regularity, but as it may chance from time to time, with a delightful fragrance coming on a current of air which bears it towards the worshippers, as if its source were in the holy of holies; and it is like the odour which the most exquisite and costly perfumes send forth. It is likely that this efflorescence is produced by warmth or some other force engendered there. If this does not seem credible, you will at least all agree that the prophetic priestess herself is subjected to differing influences, varying from time to time, which affect that part of her soul with which the spirit of inspiration comes into association, and that she does not always keep one temperament, like a perfect concord, unchanged on every occasion. For many annoyances and disturbances of which she is conscious, and many more unperceived, lay hold upon her body and filter into her soul; and whenever she is replete with these, it is better that she should not go there and surrender herself to the control of the god, when she is not completely unhampered (as if she were a musical instrument, well strung and well tuned), but is in a state of emotion and instability. Wine, for example, does not always produce the same state of intoxication in the toper, nor the music of the flute the same state of exaltation in the votary; but the same persons are roused now to less, now to more, extravagant conduct by the Bacchic revels or stimulated by the wine, as the temperament within them becomes different. But especially does the imaginative faculty of the soul seem to be swayed by the alterations in the body, and to change as the body changes, a fact which is clearly shown in dreams; for at one time we find ourselves beset in our dreams by a multitude of visions of all sorts, and at another time again there comes a complete calmness and rest free from all such fancies. We ourselves know of Cleon here from Daulia and that he asserts that in all the many years he has lived he has never had a dream; and among the older men the same thing is told of Thrasymedes of Heraea. The cause of this is the temperament of the body, just as that of persons who are prone to melancholy, at the other extreme, is subject to a multitude of dreams and visions; wherefore they have the repute of possessing the faculty of dreaming straight; for since they turn now to this and now to that in their imagery, 438 like persons who shoot many arrows, they often manage to hit the mark.

51 1 “Whenever, then, the imaginative and prophetic faculty is in a state of proper adjustment for attempering itself to the spirit as to a drug, inspiration in those who foretell the future is bound to come; and whenever the conditions are not thus, it is bound not to come, or when it does come to be misleading, abnormal, and confusing, as we know in the case of the priestess who died not so long ago. As it happened, a deputation from abroad had arrived to consult the oracle. The victim, it is said, remained unmoved and unaffected in any way by the first libations; but the priests, in their eagerness to please, went far beyond their wonted usage, band only after the victim had been subjected to a deluge and nearly drowned did it at last give in. What, then, was the result touching the priestess? She went down into the oracle unwillingly, they say, and half-heartedly; and at her first responses it was at once plain from the harshness of her voice that she was not responding properly; she was like a labouring ship and was filled with a mighty and baleful spirit. Finally she became hysterical and with a frightful shriek rushed towards the exit and threw herself down, with the result that not only the members of the deputation fled, but also the oracle-interpreter Nicander and those holy men that were present. However, after a little, they went in and took her up, still conscious; and she lived on for a few days.

“It is for these reasons that they guard the chastity of the priestess, and keep her life free from all association and contact with strangers, and take the omens before the oracle, thinking that it is clear to the god when she has the temperament and disposition suitable to submit to the inspiration without harm to herself. The power of the spirit does not affect all persons nor the same persons always in the same way, but it only supplies an enkindling and an inception, as has been said, for them that are in a proper state to be affected and to undergo the change. The power comes from the gods and demigods, but, for all that, it is not unfailing nor imperishable nor ageless, lasting into that infinite time by which all things between earth and moon become wearied out, according to our reasoning. And there are some who assert that the things above the moon also do not abide, but give out as they confront the everlasting and infinite, and undergo continual transmutations and rebirths.

52 1 “These matters,” I added, “I urge upon you for your frequent consideration, as well as my own, in the belief that they contain much to which objections might be made, and many suggestions looking to a contrary conclusion, all of which the present occasion does not allow us to follow out. So let them be postponed until another time, and likewise the question which Philip raises about the Sun and Apollo.”

BOOK VI

Can virtue be taught?

439 1 1   When we discuss Virtue we debate the question whether Prudence, Justice, and the Good Life can be taught; then we are surprised that the achievements of orators, pilots, musicians, architects, and farmers are past counting, whereas “good men” is only a name and a mere term, like “Centaurs,” “Giants,” or “Cyclopes”! And it is impossible to find any deed that is faultless as regards its virtue, or any character undefiled by passion, or any life untouched by dishonour; but even if Nature does spontaneously produce something that is excellent, this excellence is obscured by much that is foreign to it, like wheat mixed with wild and impure stuff. Men learn to play the harp, to dance and to read, to farm and to ride the horse; they learn to put on shoes and to don garments, they are taught to pour wine and to bake meat. All these things it is impossible to do properly without instruction; but shall that for the attainment of which all these things are done, that is, the Good Life, be unteachable, irrational, requiring no skill, and fortuitous?

2 1   O mortal men! Why do we assert that virtue is unteachable, and thus make it non-existent? For if learning begets virtue, the prevention of learning destroys it. Yet truly, as Plato says, just because a foot of verse is out of measure with the lyre and fails to harmonize with it, brother does not war with brother, nor does friend quarrel with friend, nor do states conceive hatred toward other states and wreak upon each other the most extreme injuries and suffer them as well; nor can anyone say that civil strife has ever broken out in a state over a question of accent, as, for instance, whether we should read Télchines or Telchínes, nor that a quarrel has ever arisen in a household between husband and wife as to which is the warp and which the woof. Yet, for all that, no one, unless he has received instruction, would attempt to handle a loom or a book or a lyre, though he would suffer no great harm if he did so, but he is merely afraid of becoming ridiculous (for, as Heraclitus says, “It is better to conceal ignorance”); but everyone thinks that without instruction he will handle successfully a home, a marriage, a commonwealth, a magistracy — though he has not learned how to get along with wife, or servant, or fellow-citizen, or subject, or ruler!

Diogenes, when he saw a child eating sweet-meats, gave the boys’ tutor a cuff, rightly judging the fault to be, not that of him who had not learned, but of him who had not taught. Then, when it is impossible to eat and drink politely in company if one has not learned from childhood, as Aristophanes says,

Not to laugh like a clown, nor dainties gulp down, nor to cross one leg on the other;

yet can men enter without censure the fellowship of a household, a city, a marriage, a way of life, a magistracy, if they have not learned how they should get along with fellow-beings? When Aristippus was asked by someone, “So you are everywhere, it seems, aren’t you?” “Well then,” he replied with a laugh, “I am wasting my fare, if indeed I am everywhere.” Why, then, would you also not say, “If men do not become better by teaching, the fee given to their tutors is wasted”? For these are the first to receive the child when it has been weaned and, just as nurses mould its body with their hands, so tutors by the habits they inculcate train the child’s character to take a first step, as it were, on the path of virtue. So the Spartan, when he was asked what he effected by his teaching, said, “I make honourable things pleasant to children.” And yet what do tutors teach? To walk in the public streets with lowered head; to touch salt-fish with but one finger, but fresh fish, bread, and meat with two; to sit in such and such a posture; 440 in such and such a way to wear their cloaks.

3 1   What then? He who says that the physician’s art concerns itself with rashes and hang-nails, but not with pleurisy or fever or inflammation of the brain, in what does he differ from one who says that schools and lectures and precepts are for instruction in trifling and childish duties, but that for the great and supreme duties there is only brute knocking about and accident? For just as he is ridiculous who declares that one must be taught before pulling at the oar, but may steer the boat even without having learned; so one who grants that the other arts are acquired by learning, but deprives virtue of this, appears to be acting directly contrary to the practice of the Scythians. For the Scythians, as Herodotus says, blind their slaves that these may hand over the cream to themselves; but such a man as this gives Reason, like an eye, as it were, to the subservient and ancillary arts, while denying it to virtue.

Yet when Callias, son of Charias, asked the general Iphicrates, “Who are you? Bowman, targeteer, horseman, or hoplite?” Iphicrates replied, “None of these, but the one who commands them all.” Ridiculous, therefore, is the man who declares that the art of using the bow, or of fighting in heavy armour, or of manipulating the sling, or of riding a horse may be taught, but that the art of commanding and leading an army comes at it chances and to whom it chances without previous instruction! Surely he is more ridiculous who affirms that prudence alone cannot be taught, for without prudence there can be no gain or profit from the other arts. But if prudence is in command, the principle which orders all the arts, which assigns each person to a place of usefulness, what joy, for instance, can one have at a banquet, though the servants are well-trained and have learned to

Carve the meat and roast it well and pour the wine,

if there be no system nor order in the servitors?

On moral virtue

440 D 1 It is my purpose to speak of that virtue which is called “moral” and reputed to be so, which differs from contemplative virtue chiefly in that it has as its material the emotions of the soul and as its form reason, and to inquire what its essential nature is and how, by its nature, it subsists; whether, also, that part of the soul which receives it is equipped with its own reason, or does but share in the reason of some other part; and if the latter, whether it does this after the manner of elements that are mingled with what is better than themselves, or rather, whether this portion of the soul is guided and governed by another part and in this sense may be said to share in that governing part’s power. For that it is possible for virtue also to have come into being and to remain entirely independent of matter and free from all admixture with it, I think is quite obvious. It is better, however, to run summarily through the opinions of the philosophers holding opposing views, not so much for the sake of inquiring into them as that my own opinions may become clearer and more firmly established when those of the philosophers in question have been presented.

2 In the first place, Menedemus of Eretria deprived the virtues of both plurality and differences by asserting that virtue is but one, though it goes under many names: the same thing is meant by temperance and courage and justice, as is the case with “mortal” and “man.” And Ariston of Chios himself also made virtue but one in its essential nature and called it health; F but in its relative aspect he made certain distinctions and multiplied virtues, just as though one should wish to call our sight “white-sight” when it is applied to white objects, or “black-sight” when applied to black objects, or anything else of the sort. For instance virtue, when it considers what we must do or avoid, is called prudence; 441 when it controls our desires and lays down for them the limitations of moderation and seasonableness in our pleasures, it is called temperance; when it has to do with men’s relations to one another and their commercial dealings, it is called justice — just as a knife is one and the same knife, though it cuts now one thing, now another, or as a fire retains its single nature though it operates upon different substances. Moreover it appears likely that Zeno of Citium also inclines in some measure to this opinion, for he defines prudence as justice when it is concerned with what must be rendered to others as their due, as temperance when concerned with what must be chosen or avoided, as fortitude when concerned with what must be endured; and those who defend Zeno postulate that in these definitions he uses the word prudence in the sense of knowledge. B Chrysippus, however, by his opinion that corresponding to each several quality a virtue is formed by its own distinctive attribute of quality, unwittingly stirred up a “swarm of virtues,” as Plato has it, which were not familiar nor even known; for as from the adjective “brave” he derived “bravery,” from “mild” “mildness,” and “justice” from “just,” so from “charming” he derived “charmingness,” from “virtuous” “virtuousnesses,” from “great” “greatnesses,” from “honourable” “honourablenesses,” postlating also the other qualities of the same sort, dexterousnesses, approachablenesses, adroitnesses, as virtues, and thus filled philosophy, which needed nothing of the sort, with many uncouth names.

3 Yet all of these men agree in supposing virtue to be a certain disposition of the governing portion of the soul C and a faculty engendered by reason, or rather to be itself reason which is in accord with virtue and is firm and unshaken. They also think that the passionate and irrational part of the soul is not distinguished from the rational by any difference or by its nature, but is the same part, which, indeed, they term intelligence and the governing part; it is, they say, wholly transformed and changes both during its emotional states and in the alterations brought about in accordance with an acquired disposition or condition and thus becomes both vice and virtue; it contains nothing irrational within itself, but is called irrational whenever, by the overmastering power of our impulses, which have become strong and prevail, it is hurried on to something outrageous which contravenes the convictions of reason. D Passion, in fact, according to them, is a vicious and intemperate reason, formed from an evil and perverse judgement which has acquired additional violence and strength.

But it seems to have eluded all these philosophers in what way each of us is truly two fold and composite. For that other two fold nature of ours they have not discerned, but merely the more obvious one, the blend of soul and body. But that there is some element of composition, some two fold nature and dissimilarity of the very soul within itself, since the irrational, as though it were another substance, is mingled and joined with reason by some compulsion of Nature — E this, it is likely, was not unknown even to Pythagoras, if we may judge by the man’s enthusiasm for the study of music, which he introduced to enchant and assuage the soul, perceiving that the soul has not every part of itself in subjection to discipline and study, and that not every part can be changed from vice by reason, but that the several parts have need of some other kind of persuasion to co operate with them, to mould them, and to tame them, if they are not to be utterly intractable and obstinate to the teaching of philosophy.

Plato, however, comprehended clearly, firmly, and without reservation both that the soul of this universe of ours F is not simple nor uncompounded nor uniform, but that, being compounded of the potentialities of sameness and otherness, in one part it is ever governed in uniformity and revolves in but one and the same order, which maintains control, yet in another part it is split into movements and circles which go in contrariety to each other and wander about, thus giving rise to the beginnings of differentiation and change and dissimilarity in those things which come into being and pass away on earth; and also that the soul of man, since it is a portion or a copy of the soul of the Universe and is joined together on principles and in proportions corresponding to those which govern the Universe, 442 is not simple nor subject to similar emotions, but has as one part the intelligent and rational, whose natural duty it is to govern and rule the individual, and as another part the passionate and irrational, the variable and disorderly, which has need of a director. This second part is again subdivided into two parts, one of which, by nature ever willing to consort with the body and to serve the body, is called the appetitive; the other, which sometimes joins forces with this part and sometimes lends strength and vigour to reason, is called the spirited part. And Plato shows this differentiation chiefly by the opposition of the reasoning and intelligent part to the appetitive part and the spirited part, since it is by the very fact that these last are different that they are frequently disobedient and quarrel with B the better part.

Aristotle at first made use of these principles to a very great extent, as is obvious from his writings. But later he assigned the spirited to the appetitive part, on the ground that anger is a sort of appetite and desire to cause pain in requital; to the end, however, he continued to treat the passionate and irrational part as distinct from the rational, not because this part is wholly irrational, as is the perceptive part of the soul, or the nutritive and vegetative part (for these parts are completely unsubmissive and deaf to reason and, so to speak, mere off shoots of our flesh and wholly attached to the body), C but though the passionate part is wanting in reason and has no reason of its own, yet otherwise it is by nature fitted to heed the rational and intelligent part, to turn toward it, to yield to it, to conform itself thereto, if it is not completely corrupted by the foolish pleasure and a life of no restraint.

4 Those who wonder how it is that this part is irrational, yet subservient to reason, do not seem to me to reflect thoroughly upon the power of reason,

How great it is, how far it penetrates,

through its mastery and guidance, not by harsh and inflexible methods, but by flexible ones, which have a quality of yielding and submitting to the rein which is more effective than any possible constraint or violence. For, to be sure, even our breathing, our sinews and bones, D and the other parts of the body, though they are irrational, yet when an impulse comes, with reason shaking the reins, as it were, they all grow taut and are drawn together in ready obedience. So, when a man purposes to run, his feet are keyed for action; if he purposes to throw or to grasp, his hands fall to their business. And most excellently does the Poet portray in the following words the sympathy and conformity of the irrational with reason:

Thus were her fair cheeks wet with tears, as she

Wept for her lord, though he sat by. In heart

Odysseus pitied his lamenting wife,

E But kept his eyes firm-fixed within their lids

Like horn or iron: with guile he hid his tears.

Under such subjection to his judgement did he keep his breathing and his blood and his tears.

An evident proof of this is also the shrinking and withdrawal of the private parts, which hold their peace and remain quiet in the presence of such beautiful maidens and youths as neither reason nor law allows us to touch. This is particularly the case with those who first fall in love and then hear that they have unwittingly become enamoured of a sister or a daughter; for lust cowers as reason asserts itself and, at the same time, the body brings its parts into decent conformity with the judgement. F Indeed, very often with foods and meat, when men have partaken of them with gusto, if they then perceive or come to know that they have eaten something unclean or unlawful, not only is this judgement of theirs attended by displeasure and remorse, but the body itself, revolted and sharing the mind’s disgust, falls a prey to the retchings and vomitings of nausea.

But I fear that I shall be thought to be rounding out my discourse with instances which are altogether seductive and exotic, 443 if I recount in full how harps and lyres, pipes and flutes, and all the other harmonious and consonant instruments which musical art has devised, void of soul though they be, accord in songs of both joy and grief, in stately measures and dissolute tunes, with human experiences, reproducing the judgements, the experiences, and the morals of those who use them. And yet they say that even Zeno on his way to the theatre when Amoebeus was singing to the lyre, remarked to his pupils, “Come, let us observe what harmony and music gut and sinew, wood and bone, send forth when they partake of reason, proportion, and order.”

But, letting these subjects pass, I would gladly learn from my opponents whether, when they see dogs, B horses, and domestic birds, through habituation, breeding, and teaching, uttering intelligible sounds and moving and assuming postures in subordination to reason, and acting in a manner conformable to due proportion and our advantage; and when they hear Homer declaring that Achilles

Urged on both horses and men

to battle — whether, I say, they still wonder and are in doubt that the element in us which is spirited and appetitive and experiences pain and pleasure, does, by its very nature, harken to the intelligence, and is affected and harmoniously disposed by its agency, and does not dwell apart from the intelligence, nor is it separated therefrom, nor moulded from without the body, C nor formed by any extraneous violence or blows, but that by its nature it is dependent upon the intelligence and is always in association with it and nurtured together with it and influenced by familiar intercourse.

Therefore, also, ethical, or moral, virtue (ēthos) is well named, for ethical virtue is, to but sketch the subject, a quality of the irrational, and it is so named because the irrational, being formed by reason, acquires this quality and differentiation by habit (ĕthos), since reason does not wish to eradicate passion completely (for that would be neither possible nor expedient), D but puts upon it some limitation and order and implants the ethical virtues, which are not the absence of passion but a due proportion and measure therein; and reason implants them by using prudence to develop the capacity for passion into a good acquired disposition. For these three things the soul is said to possess: capacity, passion, acquired state. Now capacity is the starting-point, or raw material, of passion, as, for instance, irascibility, bashfulness, temerity. And passion is a kind of stirring or movement of the capacity, as anger, shame, boldness. And finally, the acquired state is a settled force and condition being bred by habit and becoming on the one hand vice, if the passion has been educated badly, but virtue, if educated excellently by reason.

5 But inasmuch as philosophers do not make virtue as a whole a mean nor apply to it the term “moral,” E we must discuss the difference, starting with first principles. Now in this world things are of two sorts, some of them existing absolutely, others in some relation to us. Things that exist absolutely are earth, heavens, stars, sea; things that exist in relation to us are good and evil, things desirable and to be avoided, things pleasant and painful. Now reason contemplates both of these, but when it is concerned merely with things which exist in relation to us, it is called deliberative and practical. The virtue of the latter activity is called prudence, that of the former wisdom; and prudence differs from wisdom in that when the contemplative faculty is occupied in a certain active relationship with the practical and passionate, F prudence comes to subsist in accordance with reason. Therefore prudence has need of chance, but wisdom has no need of it, nor yet of deliberation, to attain its proper end; for wisdom is concerned with things that remain ever the same and unchanging. And just as the geometer does not deliberate 444 whether the triangle has its internal angles equal to two right angles, but knows it to be true (for deliberation concerns matters that are now one way, now another, not things that are sure and immutable), just so the contemplative mind has its activity concerning first principles, things that are permanent and have ever one nature incapable of mutation, and so has no occasion for deliberation. But prudence must often come down among things that are material and are full of error and confusion; it has to move in the realm of chance; to deliberate where the case is doubtful and then at last to reduce deliberation to practice in activities in which decisions are both accompanied by and influenced by the irrational, B whose impulsion they, as a matter of fact, need. The impulsion of passion springs from moral virtue; but it needs reason to keep it within moderate bounds and to prevent its exceeding or falling short of its proper season. For it is indeed true that the passionate and irrational moves sometimes too violently and swiftly, at other times more weakly and slothfully than the case demands. Therefore everything that we ever do can succeed but in one way, while it may fail in many ways: for to hit the mark there is but one single, uncomplicated, way, yet it can be missed in several ways, according to whether we exceed the mean, or fall short of it. This, then, is the natural task of practical reason: C to eliminate both the defects and the excesses of the passions. For wherever, through infirmity and weakness, or fear and hesitation, the impulsion yields too soon and prematurely forsakes the good, there practical reason comes on the scene to incite and kindle the impulsion; and where, again, the impulsion is borne beyond proper bounds, flowing powerfully and in disorder, there practical reason removes its violence and checks it. And thus by limiting the movement of the passions reason implants in the irrational the moral virtues, which are means between deficiency and excess. For we must not declare that every virtue comes into being by the observance of a mean, but, on the one hand, wisdom, being without any need of the irrational and arising in the activity of the mind, pure and uncontaminated by passion, D is, as it were, a self-sufficing perfection and power of reason, by which the most divine and blessed element of knowledge becomes possible for us; on the other hand, that virtue which is necessary to us because of our physical limitations, and needs, by Heaven, for its practical ends the service of the passions as its instrument, so to speak, and is not a destruction nor abolition of the irrational in the soul, but an ordering and regulation thereof, is an extreme as regards its power and quality, but as regards its quantity it is a mean, since it does away with what is excessive and deficient.

6 But since a “mean” is capable of various interpretations (for that which is a compound is a mean between the simple uncompounded substances, as grey is of white and black; and that which contains and is contained is a mean between the contained and the container, E as eight of twelve and four; and that which partakes of neither of the extremes is a mean, as the indifferent is a mean between good and bad), in none of these ways can virtue be called a mean, for it is not a mixture of the vices, nor, encompassing what falls short of due measure, is it encompassed by that which is in excess of it; nor is it entirely exempt from the impulses of the passions, wherein are found excess and deficiency. But it is a mean, and is said to be so, in a sense very like that which obtains in musical sounds and harmonies. For there the mean or mesê, a properly-pitched note like the netê and the hypatê, escapes the sharp highness of one and the heavy deepness of the other; F so virtue, being an activity and faculty concerned with the irrational, does away with the remissions and overstrainings of the impulse and its excesses and defects altogether, 445 and reduces each passion to moderation and faultlessness. So, for instance, they declare courage to be a mean between cowardice and rashness, of which the former is a defect, the latter is an excess, of the spirited part of the soul; so, likewise, liberality is a mean between parsimony and prodigality, and gentleness between insensibility and cruelty; and temperance itself and justice are means, the latter distributing to itself in contracts neither more nor less than what is due, the former ever regulating the desires to a mean between lack of feeling and intemperance.

In this last instance, indeed, the irrational seems, with particular clearness, to allow us to observe the difference B between itself and the rational, and to show that passion is essentially quite a different thing from reason. For self-control would not differ from temperance, nor incontinence from intemperance, as regards the pleasures and desires, if it were the same part of the soul that we naturally use for desiring as for forming judgements. But the fact is that temperance belongs to the sphere where reason guides and manages the passionate element, like a gentle animal obedient to the reins, making it yielding in its desires and willingly receptive of moderation and propriety; but the self-controlled man, while he does indeed direct his desire by the strength and mastery of reason, yet does so not without pain, nor by persuasion, but as its plunges sideways and resists, C as though with blow and curb, he forcibly subdues it and holds it in, being the while himself full of internal struggle and turmoil. Such a conflict Plato portrays in his simile of the horses of the soul, where the worse horse struggles against his better yoke-fellow and at the same time disconcerts the charioteer, who is ever forced to hold out against him and with might and main to rein him in,

Lest he let fall from his hands the crimson thongs,

as Simonides has it. That is the reason why they do not account self-control even a virtue in the absolute sense, but less than virtue. For it is not a mean which has been produced by the harmony of the worse with the better, nor has the excess of passion in it been eliminated, nor has the desiderative part of the soul become obedient and compliant to the intelligent part, D but is vexed and causes vexation and is confined by compulsion and, though living with reason, lives as in a state of rebellion against it, hostile and inimical:

The city reeks with burning incense, rings

Alike with prayers for health and cries of woe

even so is the soul of the self-controlled man because of its lack of consistency and its conflict. And on the same grounds they hold that incontinence also is something less than a vice, but that intemperance is a full-fledged vice. For intemperance possesses both an evil passion and an evil reason; under the influence of the former, it is incited by desire to shameful conduct; under the influence of the latter, which, since its judgement is evil, is enlisted with the desires, intemperance loses even the perception of its errors. E But incontinence, with the aid of reason, preserves its power of judgement intact, yet by its passions, which are stronger than its reason, it is swept along against its judgement. That is why incontinence differs from intemperance, for in it reason is worsted by passion, whereas with intemperance reason does not even fight; in the case of incontinence reason argues against the desires as it follows them, whereas with intemperance reason guides them and is their advocate; it is characteristic of intemperance that its reason shares joyfully in the sins committed, whereas with incontinence the reason shares in them, but with reluctance; with intemperance, reason is willingly swept along into shameful conduct, whereas with incontinence, it betrays honour unwillingly.

So also the difference between them is not less manifest in their words than in their actions. F These are, for instance, the sayings of intemperate persons:

What pleasure can there be, what joy, without

The golden Aphroditê? May I die

When things like these no longer comfort me.

And another says,

To eat, to drink, to have one’s way in love:

All other things I call accessory,

446 as though with all his soul he were acquiescing in pleasures and were being subverted thereby. Not less than these does he who says

Leave me to die, for that is best for me,

have his judgement suffering with the same ailment as his passions.

But the sayings of incontinence are otherwise and different:

A mind I have, but Nature forces me;

and

Alas! from God this evil comes to men

When, knowing what is good, they do it not;

and

The spirit yields and can resist no more,

Like anchor-hook in sand amid the surge.

Here not inaptly the poet terms “an anchor-hook in sand” that which is not under the control of reason, nor firmly fixed, but surrenders its judgement to the loose and soft part of the soul. Very close to this imagery are also those famous lines:

I, like some ship, am tied by ropes to shore,

And when winds blow, our cables do not hold.

For here the poet calls “cables” the judgements which resist shameful conduct and then are broken by passion, as by a great gust of wind. Truly the intemperate man is swept along to his pleasures by his desires with sails full-spread and delivers himself over to them and steers his course directly thither; whereas the course of the incontinent man zigzags here and there, as he strives to emerge from his passion and to stave it off and is yet swept down and shipwrecked on the reef of shameful conduct. Just as Timon used to lampoon Anaxarchus :

The Cynic might of Anaxarchus seemed

Steadfast and bold, wherever he wished, to spring;

Well did he know the truth, they said, and yet

C Was bad: for Nature smote him with desire

And led him back from truth— ‘twas Nature’s dart,

Before whom trembles many a Sophist heart.

For neither is the wise man continent, though he is temperate, nor is the fool incontinent, though he is intemperate. For the wise man takes pleasure in what is honourable, but the fool is not vexed by shamefulness. Incontinence, therefore, is the mark of a sophistic soul, which has, indeed, reason, but reason which cannot stand firm by its own just decisions.

7 Such, then, are the differences between incontinence and intemperance; and again between continence and temperance, these differences being the counterpart of the former. For continence is not yet free from remorse and pain and indignation; but in the soul of the temperate man there is serenity on all occasions, D freedom from violent changes, and sanity, by which the irrational is harmonized and blended with reason, when this is equipped with great persuasion and a wonderful gentleness. And you would say, as you looked at the man,

Then, indeed, ceased the gale; a windless calm

Arose; some god had laid the waves to rest,

since by reason the violent, raging, and furious movements of the desires had been quenched and those movements which Nature absolutely requires had been made sympathetic, submissive, friendly, and, when the man chose a course of action, willing to co operate, so that they did not outstrip the dictates of reason, E nor fall short of them, nor misbehave, nor disobey, but so that every impulse was easily led

As new weaned foal beside his mother runs,

and confirmed the remark of Xenocrates about true philosophers, that they alone do willingly what all others do unwillingly because of the law, even as dogs by a blow and cats by a noise are turned from their pleasures and regard with suspicion the danger that threatens them.

It is quite obvious, then, that there is in the soul a perception of some such distinction and difference as regards the desires, as though some force were fighting against them and contradicting them. F But some affirm that passion is not essentially different from reason, nor is there quarrelling between the two and factious strife, but only a conversion of one and the same reason to its two aspects; this escapes our notice by reason of the suddenness and swiftness of the change, 447 for we do not perceive that it is the same part of the soul with which we naturally desire and change to aversion, are angry and afraid, are swept along by pleasure to shameful conduct, and then, when the soul itself is being swept away, recover ourselves again. In fact, they say, desire and anger and fear and all such things are but perverse opinions and judgements, which do not arise in one certain part of the soul, but are inclinations and yieldings, assents and impulses of the whole directive faculty and, in a word, certain activities which may in a moment be changed this way or that, just as the sudden assaults of children have an impetuosity and violence that is precarious and inconstant because of children’s weakness.

But this doctrine is, in the first place, contrary to the clear evidence of our perceptions. B For no one ever perceives in himself a change from desiring to judging, nor again a change from judging to desiring; nor does the lover cease loving when he reasons that he must restrain his love and fight against it, and then give up again the process of reasoning and judging when he is softened by desire and yields to love; but both while by reason he still continues to oppose passion, he continues in the passion, and again, when mastered by passion, he plainly sees he error by the light of reason: and neither through passion has he done away with reason, nor through reason is he rid of passion, but being borne back and forth from one or the other he lies between them and participates in both. For those who assume now that desire becomes the controlling faculty, C now that it is reason which arrays itself against desire, are in the same position as those who assume the hunter and the beast to be not two, but one and the same body which, by a change, is now the beast, and now becomes the hunter. For just as those persons overlook something quite plain, so these testify against the evidence of perception, which tells us that we have in these cases, not a changing of some one thing, but two things struggling and fighting against one another.

“What then?” they object. “Is it not true that man’s deliberative faculty also is often divided and distracted toward contrary opinions regarding what is expedient, but that it is yet one and the same?’ D “Quite so,” we shall say, “but the process is not parallel.” For the intellectual part of the soul does not here oppose itself, but, using one and the same faculty, applies itself to different lines of reasoning; or rather, there is but one single reason, which functions on things essentially different, as though on different matters. Therefore neither is pain present in reasoning where passion is absent, nor are men forced, as it were, to choose a course contrary to reason, unless indeed some emotion is furtively attached, as it were, to one pan of the balances. This, in fact, happens often: when it is not reasoning that opposes reasoning, but ambition or contentiousness or the pursuit of favour or jealousy or fear that opposes, E we think it is a difference between two reasons, as in the verse:

To refuse they were ashamed, but feared to accept;

and this:

To die is dreadful, yet it brings fair fame;

Not to die is craven, yet there’s pleasure there.

And in the judgement of suits concerning business affairs the passions rush in unawares and cause the greatest waste of time. So also in the councils of kings those who speak to obtain favour are not advocating one or the other of two decisions, but are submitting to some emotion which is contrary to their calculation of what is expedient. Therefore in aristocratic states the magistrates do not allow political speakers to make passionate harangues, for reason, if not influenced by passion, F inclines to a just balance toward what is right; but if passion intervenes, the part of the soul that feels pleasure and pain fights and opposes the part which forms judgements and deliberates. Otherwise, why is it that in philosophical speculations no feeling of pain is present when, under the influence of those who hold different opinions, we change our views again and again, 448 but that Aristotle himself and Democritus and Chrysippus have recanted without any dismay or pain, and even with pleasure, some of the dogmas they previously held? It is because passion has set up no opposition to the contemplative and scientific part of the soul and the irrational part remains quiet and does not meddle with these matters. Therefore reason, as soon as the truth appears, dismisses the false and gladly inclines toward the truth; for it is in reason, not in its opposite, that the faculty resides which yields to persuasion and, through persuasion, changes opinion. But with most people, their deliberations, judgements, and decisions which are to be converted into action are in a state of emotion and therefore offer obstructions and difficulties to the path of reason, for reason is checked and confused by the irrational, B which, with some emotion of pleasure or fear, pain or desire, rises up to oppose it. In such cases the senses make the decision, since they have contact with both; and if, in fact, one gains the mastery, it does not destroy the other, but forces it to comply and drags it along resisting. For the lover who admonishes himself uses reason against his passion, since they both exist at the same time in his soul, as it were pressing with his hand the other member, which is inflamed, and clearly perceiving that there are two distinct forces and that they are at variance. On the other hand, in those deliberations and speculations where passion is absent (and these are the sort in which the contemplative faculty most commonly engages), if they be equally balanced, C no judgement has taken place, but merely a perplexity has arisen, which is a rest or suspension of intellectual activity brought about by opposing probabilities; but if the inclination falls to either side, the winning opinion has cancelled the other, with the result that there is no pain nor any opposition left. In general, when it appears that reason is opposing reason, there is no perception of them as two distinct things, but as a single thing which arises in different impressions upon the senses. Yet when there is a struggle against reason on the part of the irrational, which, by its very nature, can neither conquer nor be conquered without pain, straightway the irrational splits the soul in two by its battling and makes the distinction between the two perfectly obvious.

8 It is not only from their dissension, however, but no less from their agreement, D that one can perceive that the source of passion is essentially different from that of reason. For since it is equally possible to love a noble youth, well-formed by nature for virtue, and to love an evil and profligate one, and since it happens that one both becomes angry irrationally against one’s own children or parents, and angry justly on behalf of parents and children against enemies and despots; just as in the one case there is perception of struggle and dissension of passion against reason, so in the other there is perception of persuasion and agreement on the part of passion, which inclines the scales, as it were, in favour of reason and increases its power. Yet again, when a good man has lawfully married a wife, his intention is E to treat her respectfully and consort with her honourably and soberly; but as time goes on, his intimacy with her has given birth to passion, when he perceives that his love and affection increases by the exercise of his reason. So again, when young men happen upon cultivated teachers, they follow them and admire them at first because of their usefulness; but later they come to feel affection for them also, and in place of familiar companions and pupils they are called lovers and are actually so. The same thing happens also in people’s relations to good magistrates in cities and good neighbours and relatives by marriage; for in the beginning they dutifully associate with one another from some consideration of usefulness, but later they are carried unconsciously into genuine affection, reason drawing along, F and aiding in the persuasion of, the passionate element. Is it not obvious that he who said,

And modesty. Two kinds there are: the one

Not bad, the other burdening our homes,

has perceived in himself that this emotion often follows the lead of reason and is arrayed at reason’s side, but often, contrary to reason, 449 by hesitations and delays ruins opportunities and actions?

9 But my opponents, though forced to concede in a manner these arguments because of their obvious truth, yet persist in calling shame “modesty,” pleasure “joy,” and fears “precautions.” No one would blame them for this euphemism if they would but call these same emotions by these soft names when they attach themselves to reason, and call them by those harsher names when the emotions oppose and offer violence to reason. But when, convicted by their tears and tremblings and changes of colour, in place of grief and fear they call these emotions “compunctions” and “perplexities” and gloss over the desires with the term “eagernesses,” they seem to be devising casuistic, not philosophic, B shifts and escapes from reality through the medium of fancy names.

And yet these very men, to cite another instance, call those “joys,” “volitions,” and “precautions” of theirs “right sensibilities to emotion,” not “insensibilities,” in this case using the terms correctly. For a “right sensibility” arises when reason does not destroy the emotion, but composes and sets it in order in the souls of temperate persons. But what it is that happens in the case of evil and incontinent persons when, though their judgement tells them to love father and mother in place of a favourite or mistress, they cannot do this; yet when their judgement bids them to love courtesan and flatterer, they immediately do that very thing? For if emotion and judgement were one, love and hate would follow upon our judgement C of what we ought to love and hate; but as it is, the contrary happens: with some judgements the emotion joins forces, others it disregards. Therefore even those very men affirm, since the evidence forces them to do so, that not every judgement is an emotion, but only that which sets in motion a violent and excessive impulse, thereby acknowledging that in us the faculty of judging and the faculty of feeling emotion are different, in the sense that the one is that which sets in motion, the other that which is moved. And Chrysippus himself in many places, by defining endurance and continence as states which follow the convictions of reason, is obviously forced by the evidence to acknowledge that that within us which follows is different from that which it follows when persuaded, D or, on the other hand, fights against when it is not persuaded.

10 Now if, by positing that all errors and faults are equal, they are in some other way overlooking the truth, this present discourse is not the proper occasion to confute them; but in the case of the emotions they certainly appear to be in opposition to reason and contrary to plain evidence. For, according to them, every emotion is an error, and every one who grieves or fears or desires is guilty of error. Yet there are seen to be great differences in the emotions according to their greater or lesser intensity. For who would declare that Dolon’s fear was no greater than that of Ajax, who “often faced about” and departed slowly from the midst of his enemies, “scarcely changing knee for knee”? E Or that the grief of Alexander, who attempted to kill himself because of Cleitus, was equal to Plato’s grief for the death of Socrates? For griefs are increased immoderately by unpredictable circumstances, and an unexpected occurrence is more painful than one quite likely to happen; if, for instance, one should expect to see someone in prosperity and honour and then should learn that he had been cruelly tortured, as Parmenion did of Philotas. And who would affirm that the rage of Nicocreon against Anaxarchus was equal to that of Magas against Philemon, though they had both been reviled by their opponents? For Nicocreon with iron pestles ground Anaxarchus to powder, but Magas merely ordered the public executioner to place his naked blade on Philemon’s neck F and then to let him go. That is the reason why Plato also called anger “sinews of the soul” on the ground that it is intensified by harshness and relaxed by gentleness.

So to elude these and similar difficulties my opponents deny that these intensities and violences of the emotions come into existence in accordance with the judgement, 450 in which lies the liability to error; but maintain that the irritations, contractions, and diffusions admit of increase and diminution through the operations of the irrational element. Yet there obviously are differences in judgements also; for some adjudge poverty not to be an evil, others to be a great evil, still others to be the greatest evil, so that they even hurl themselves down from precipices or throw themselves into the sea. Some think death to be an evil merely because it deprives them of the good things of life, others because there are eternal torments and horrible punishments beneath the earth. By some the health of the body is cherished because it is in accordance with Nature and useful, to others it appears the greatest good in the world; for neither do they value

Joy in wealth or children.

nor

In that kingly rule that makes man like to gods

in comparison therewith; and finally they think even virtue to be useless and unprofitable if health be not present. Hence it plainly appears that some make a greater, some a lesser, error in their judgements also.

This doctrine, however, need not be confuted at present, but that other point may be assumed from this discussion: that my opponents themselves all concede that the irrational part is essentially different from judgement, the irrational, in accordance with which they say that emotion becomes greater and more violent; their contention is concerning the name and the expression, but they really surrender the point at issue to those who assert that the passionate and irrational element is different from the reasoning and judging. C In his book On the Failure to Lead a Consistent Life Chrysippus has said “Anger is a blind thing: often it prevents our seeing obvious matters, and often it obscures matters which are already apprehended”; and, proceeding a little further, he says, “For the passions, when once raised, drive out the processes of reasoning and all things that appear otherwise than they would have them be, and push forward with violence to actions contrary to reason.” He then uses as evidence the words of Menander:

Ah woe, alas for me! Where ever were

My wits awandering in my body then

When I made choice to do not this, but that?

D And again, Chrysippus proceeds to say that every rational creature is so disposed by nature as to use reason in all things and to be governed by it; yet often reason is rejected when we are under the impulse of some other more violent force. Thus in this passage he plainly acknowledges what conclusion is to be drawn from the difference which exists between passion and reason.

Why, it would be ridiculous, as Plato says, for a man to say that he is now better than himself and again worse than himself, and sometimes master of himself and sometimes not. 11 For how is it possible for the same man to be both better and worse than himself, or to be master of himself and at the same time be mastered, if in some way or other each man were not by nature double and had not both the worse and the better within himself? E This being the case, he who holds the worse in subjection to the better is self-controlled and better than himself, but he who permits the better part to follow and be in subjection to the intemperate and irrational part of his soul is called worse than himself and incontinent and in a state contrary to Nature.

For, in accordance with Nature, it is proper that reason, which is divine, should lead and rule the irrational, which derives its origin directly from the body to which Nature has designed that it should bear a resemblance and share in the body’s passions and be contaminated by it, since it has entered into the body and has become merged with it; that this is so is shown by our impulses, which arise and are set in motion toward corporal objects and become violent or relax in keeping with the changes of the body. F For this reason young men are swift and impetuous and fiery in their appetites, and stung by madness, as it were, through the abundance and heat of their blood; but in old men the source of desire, which is seated about the liver, is in the process of being extinguished and becoming small and weak, whereas reason increases more and more in vigour as the passionate element fades away together with the body. And this, of course, is what determines the natures of wild beasts also as regards the passions. 451 For it is not, I presume, by the rightness or wrongness of their opinions the some of them oppose apparent dangers with valour and impetuousness whereas others have helpless flutterings and fears in their souls; but the faculties which control the blood, the breath, and the body in general cause the difference in their affections, since the emotional part springs up from the flesh as from a root and carries with it its quality and composition. But that in man his body is affected and moved together with the impulses of his passions is proved by his paleness and blushing, his trembling and palpitations of the heart, and again by his cheerful and relaxed expression when in hope and expectation of pleasures. B But whenever the intellect acts, not accompanied by emotion but by itself alone, the body remains in repose and at rest, neither sharing nor partaking in the activity of the mind, so long as the body does not have to deal with the emotional element or include the irrational in such activity. Consequently, this fact also makes it plain that there are two parts within us which differ from each other in their faculties.

12 And in general, both as my opponents themselves admit and as is quite obvious, in this world some things are governed by an acquired disposition, others by a natural one, some by an irrational soul, others by a rational and intellectual one; and in practically all these things man participates and he is subject to all the differences I have mentioned. C For he is controlled by his acquired disposition, nurtured by his natural disposition, and makes use of reason and intellect. He has, therefore, some portion of the spring of the irrational also and has innate within him the mainspring of emotion, not as an adventitious accessory, but as a necessary part of his being, which should never be done away with entirely, but must needs have careful tending and education. Therefore the work of reason is not Thracian, not like that of Lycurgus — to cut down and destroy the helpful elements of emotion together with the harmful — but to do as the god who watches over crops and the god who guards the vine do to lop off the wild growth and to clip away excessive luxuriance, and then to cultivate and to dispose for use the serviceable remainder. For neither do those who fear drunkenness pour out their wine upon the ground, D nor do those who fear passion eradicate the disturbing element, but both temper what they fear. It is, in fact, the rebellious kicking and plunging of oxen and horses that men do away with, not their movements and activities; even so reason makes use of the emotions when they have been subdued and are tame, and does not hamstring nor altogether excise that part of the soul which should be its servant. For

The horse is meet for the chariot,

as Pindar says,

the ox for the plough;

But if you think to slay a boar, you must find a stout-hearted hound.

Yet much more useful than these beasts are the whole brood of passions when they are present in the service of reason and help to intensify the virtues: E anger, if it be moderate, will assist courage, and hatred of evil will aid justice, and righteous indignation will oppose those who are prosperous beyond their deserts when their souls are inflamed with folly and insolence and they need to be checked. For who, even if he so wished, could separate or sever from friendship a natural propensity toward affection, from humaneness pity, and from true benevolence the mutual participation in joy and grief? And if those err who discard love entirely because love may bring madness, neither are they right who blame commerce because it may beget covetousness; on the contrary, what they do is somewhat like the action of those who would abolish running because one may chance to stumble, or shooting because one may overshoot the mark, and dislike any singing at all because some sing off key. F For as in the realm of sound musical art produces consonance, not by doing away with the deep low and the shrill high notes; and in the case of the body, medical art produces health, not by the removal of heat and coldness, but by the proportionately quantitative admixture of the two; so in the soul moral virtue is produced when equity and moderation are engendered by reason in the emotional faculties and activities. 452 For a soul possessed of excessive pain or joy or fear is like a swollen and feverish body; it is not so, however, if the joy or pain or fear be moderate. And Homer in his admirable words,

A valiant man will never change his hue,

Nor will his fear be over-great,

does not abolish fear, but excessive fear, in order that the valiant man may have not foolhardiness but courage, not audacity but daring. In his pleasures, therefore, a man must rid himself of excessive desire, and in punishing wrong, of excessive hatred of evil: for in this way he will be, in the former case, not insensible but temperate, and in the latter case, just, not serving nor cruel. B But if the passions could in reality be entirely done away with, in many persons reason would be too inactive and dulled, like a pilot when the wind dies down. It is surely this truth that the legislators also have perceived when they try to put into their constitutions the emotions of ambition and emulation as regards the citizens’ relations to each other, but in relation to the enemy they try to rouse and increase their spirited and fighting qualities with trumpets and pipes. For it is not in poetry only that, as Plato says, he who is inspired and possessed by the Muses renders ridiculous the man who is an artist equipped with exact knowledge of technique, but in battles also the passionate and inspired is irresistible and invincible. C This quality it is that Homer says the gods instil into men:

So did he speak and he breathed great might

Into the shepherd of the people;

and

Not without some god does he

These deeds of madness;

as though the gods were adding passion as an incitement or a vehicle to reason.

Indeed we may see these very opponents of mine often inciting young men with praise and often chastising them with admonitions; and of these, in the first case pleasure is the consequence, in the second pain (in fact, admonition and rebuke engender repentance and shame, of which the first is a kind of pain, the second a kind of fear); and of these methods they make particular use to improve their charges. As Diogenes also remarked, when Plato was being praised, D “What is there so august about one who has spent so much time talking philosophy, yet has never caused anyone pain?” For surely studies could not so properly be called, to use Xenocrates’ words, the “grips of philosophy,” as could the emotions of young men: shame, desire, repentance, pleasure, pain, ambition. On these if reason and law obtain a suitable and salutary grip, they efficaciously set the young man upon the path that he should take. Therefore the Spartan tutor was not wide of the mark when he said that he intended to make a boy entrusted to him delight in honourable and be vexed at dishonourable things. Than this saying there can be shown no greater nor fairer end of such education as befits a free-born child.

On the control of anger

452 1 1 Sulla. A good plan, as it seems to me, Fundanus, is that which painters follow: they scrutinize their productions from time to time before they finish them. They do this because, by withdrawing their gaze and by inspecting their work often, they are able to form a fresh judgement, and one which is more likely to seize upon any slight discrepancy, such as the familiarity of uninterrupted contemplation will conceal. 453 Since, therefore, it is impossible for a man to contemplate himself from time to time by getting apart from himself and interrupting his consciousness of himself by breaking its continuity (and this is what, more than anything else, makes every man a poorer judge of himself than of others), the next best course would be for him to inspect his friends from time to time and likewise to offer himself to them, not to see if he is grown old suddenly or if his body is better or worse, but for them to examine both his behaviour and his character to learn whether time has added some excellence or taken away some vice. As for me, since I have returned to Rome after a year’s absence and this is now the fifth month that I have been with you constantly, BI do not  find it altogether surprising that, of the virtues which were already yours by gift of Nature, there has been so great an increment and increase; but when I see that that violent and fiery tendency of yours toward anger has become so gentle and submissive to reason, it occurs to me to say with reference to your temper

O wonder, how much milder has it grown!

Yet this mildness has brought about no inactivity or feebleness in you, but, like the earth when it has been subdued by cultivation, it has received a smoothness and depth conducive to fruitful action in place of that impetuousness of yours and quickness of temper. For that reason it is evident that the spirited part of your soul is not withering away through any abatement of vigour caused by age, nor yet spontaneously, but that it is receiving the skilful treatment of some excellent precepts. And yet — for I shall tell you the plain truth — when our friend Eros told me all this, CI suspected that he was bearing witness, by reason of his goodwill, to qualities that were not actually present in you, yet should be so in men of breeding, although, as you know, he is by no means the sort of man to surrender his own opinion as a favour to anyone. But as things are, Eros stands acquitted of the charge of bearing false witness, and do you, since our journey gives us leisure for conversation, tell me, as though you were recounting some medical treatment, what remedy you used that you have made your temper so obedient to the rein and tender-mouthed, so mild and subservient to reason.

Fundanus. Well, what about you, my generous friend Sulla? Are you careful not to let your goodwill and friendship for me make you overlook some of my real qualities? For since on many occasions not even Eros himself can keep his temper in its place Din that Homeric obedience, but when it becomes too exasperated through hatred of evil, it is reasonable to suppose that I appear more gentle to him, just as in changes of key certain high notes assume the position of low notes in contrast with other high notes.

Sulla. Neither of these suppositions is true, Fundanus. Please do as I ask.

2 1 Fundanus. One of those excellent precepts of Musonius which I remember, Sulla, is: “He that wishes to come through life safe and sound must continue throughout his life to be under treatment.” For I do not think that reason should be used in one’s cure as we use hellebore, and be washed out of the body together with the disease, but it must remain in the soul and keep watch and ward over the judgements. For the power of reason is not like drugs, but like wholesome food, engendering an excellent state, together with great vigour, in those who become accustomed to it; but exhortations and admonitions, if applied to the passions when they are at their height and swollen, can scarcely accomplish anything at all, and that with difficulty. They are no better than those aromatic preparations which rouse epileptics when they lie prostrate, and but do not rid them of the disease. Yet the other passions, even at their height, do in some sort yield and admit reason, when it comes from without to the rescue, into the soul; but temper does not, as Melanthius says,

Shunt off the mind, and then do dreadful deeds,

but on the contrary, it shuts out sense completely and locks it out, and just like those who burn themselves up in their own homes, Fit makes everything within full of confusion and smoke and noise, so that the soul can neither see nor hear anything that might help it. For this reason a ship deserted by her crew in the midst of a storm far out at sea will more easily be able to take on a pilot from the outside, than will a man who is being tossed upon the billows of passion and anger 454 admit the reasoning of another, unless he has his own powers of reason prepared to receive it. But just as those who expect a siege collect and store up all that is useful to them if they despair of relief from without, so it is most important that we should acquire far in advance the reinforcements which philosophy provides against temper and convey them into the soul in the knowledge that, when the occasion for using them comes, it will not be possible to introduce them with ease. For the soul hears nothing from the outside because of its tumult unless it has its own reason within, which, like a boatswain who directs the rowers, will promptly catch and understand every order given. Yet if the soul has heard words of advice which have been quietly and mildly spoken, it despises them; and toward any who insist in a rougher fashion, it grows exasperated. In fact, temper is overbearing and stubborn and altogether difficult for anyone other than itself to move, and, like a well-fortified tyranny, must have its destroyer born and bred in the same household.

3 1 To be sure, when anger persists and its outbursts are frequent, there is created in the soul an evil state which is called irascibility, and this usually results in sudden outbursts of rage, moroseness, and peevishness when the temper becomes ulcerated, Ceasily offended, and liable to find fault for even trivial offences, like a weak, thin piece of iron which is always getting scratched. But if judgement at once opposes the fits of anger and represses them, it not only cures them for the present, but for the future also it renders the soul firm and difficult for the passion to attack. In my own case, at any rate, when I had opposed anger two or three times, it came about that I experienced what the Thebans did, who, when they had for the first time repulsed the Spartans, who had the reputation of being invincible, were never thereafter defeated by them in any battle; for I acquired the proud consciousness that it is possible for reason to conquer. Not only did I see that anger ceases when cold water is sprinkled on it, as Aristotle says, but that it is also extinguished when a poultice of fear is applied to it. And, by Heaven, if joy comes on the scene, in the case of many the temper has been quickly “warmed,” as Homer says, or dissipated. Consequently I came to the opinion that this passion is not altogether incurable, for those, at least, who wish to cure it.

For anger does not always have great and powerful beginnings; on the contrary, even a jest, a playful word, a burst of laughter or a nod on the part of somebody, and many things of the kind, rouse many persons to anger; just as Helen, by thus addressing her niece,

Electra, virgin for so long a time,

provoked her to reply,

Too late you’re wise; but once you left your home

Disgraced.

And so was Alexander provoked by Callisthenes, who said, when the great bowl was going its rounds, “I do not care to have a drink of Alexander and then have to call in Asclepius.”

4 1 And so, just as it is an easy matter to check a flame which is being kindled in hare’s fur or candle-wicks or rubbish, but if it ever takes hold of solid bodies having depth, it quickly destroys and consumes

With youthful vigour lofty craftsmen’s work,

as Aeschylus has it; so the man who at the beginning gives heed to his temper and observes it while it is still smoking and catching flame little by little from some gossip or rubbishy scurrility need have no great concern about it; on the contrary, he has often succeeded in extinguishing it merely by keeping silent and ignoring it. For he who gives no fuel to fire puts it out, and likewise he who does not in the beginning nurse his wrath and does not puff himself up with anger takes precautions against it and destroys it. I was therefore not satisfied with what Hieronymus says — although he contributes other useful remarks and advice — in the passage where he declares that we have no perception of anger when it comes into being, but only when it has already come into being and exists, the reason being the swiftness with which it acts. For the truth is that none of the emotions, at the time when they are gathering and beginning to move, has a birth and increase so easy to perceive. 455 Indeed Homer also skilfully teaches us this lesson when he causes Achilles to be suddenly overwhelmed by grief on receiving the report, in the passage where the poet says:

He spoke, and a black cloud of grief closed round Achilles;

but Homer portrays Achilles as being slow to lose his temper with Agamemnon and as becoming inflamed only when many words had been spoken. Yet if either one of the men had held back their words at the beginning and prevented their utterance, the quarrel would not have had so great a growth or have reached such magnitude. That is the reason why Socrates, as often as he perceived himself being moved to too great harshness against any of his friends, betaking himself to coast

Before the storm along some promontory,

Bwould lower his voice, cause a smile to spread over his face, and make the expression of his eyes more gentle, preserving himself from fault and defeat by setting up within himself an influence to counteract his passion.

5 1 For the first way, my friend, to dethrone temper as you would a tyrant, is not to obey or hearken when it bids us cry aloud and look fierce and beat our breasts, but to keep quiet and not intensify the passion, as we would a disease, by tossing about and making a clamour. It is quite true that lovers’ practices, such as serenading in concert or alone and crowning the beloved’s door with garlands, do in some way or other bring an alleviation that is not without charm or grace:

I came, but did not shout your name or race;

I merely kissed the door. If this be sin,

Then I have sinned.

So too the surrender of mourners to weeping and wailing carries away much of their grief together with their tears. But temper is the more readily fanned into flame by what people in that state do and say.

The best course, therefore, is for us to compose ourselves, or else to run away and conceal ourselves, and anchor ourselves in a calm harbour, as though we perceived a fit of epilepsy coming on, so that we may not fall, or rather may not fall upon others; and we are especially likely to fall most often upon our friends. For we do not love or envy or fear everyone indiscriminately, but there is nothing that temper will not touch and assail: Dwe grow angry with enemies and friends, with children and parents, yes, even with the gods, with wild beasts and soulless implements, as Thamyris did:

Breaking the lyre-arms, overlaid with gold,

Breaking his melodious, taut-strung lyre;

and Pandarus, who invoked a curse on himself if he did not “break with his hands” his bow and burn it. And Xerxes not only branded and lashed the sea, but also sent a letter to Mount Athos: “Noble Athos, whose summit reaches Heaven, do not put in the way of my deeds great stones difficult to work. Else I shall hew you down and cast you into the sea.” For temper can do many terrible things, and likewise many that are ridiculous; therefore it is both the most hated and the most despised of the passions. It will be useful to consider it in both of these aspects.

6 1 As for me — whether rightly I do not know — I made this start in the treatment of my anger: I began to observe the passion in others, just as the Spartans used to observe in the Helots what a thing drunkenness is. And first, as Hippocrates says that the most severe disease is that in which the countenance of the sufferer is most unlike itself, so I observed that those who are transported by anger also change most in countenance, colour, gait, and voice, and thus formed for myself a picture of that passion and was exceedingly uncomfortable to think that I should ever appear so terrible and deranged to my friends and my wife and daughters, not merely savage and unfamiliar to their sight, but also speaking with so harsh and rough a voice as were others of my intimate friends whom I used to meet at times when anger had made them unable to preserve their character or bearing or grace of speech or their  winning and affable manners. 456 The case of Gaius Gracchus the orator will serve as an illustration. He was not only severe in his disposition, but spoke too passionately; so he caused a pitch-pipe but made of the sort which musicians use to lead the voice up and down the scales to the proper note; with this in hand his servant used to stand behind him as he spoke and give him a decorous and gentle tone which enabled Gracchus to remit his loud cries and remove from his voice the harsh and passionate element; just as the shepherds’

Wax-joined pipe, clear sounding,

Drones a slumberous strain,

so did he charm and lay to rest the rage of the orator. But as for me, if I had some attentive and clever companion, I should not be vexed if he held a mirror up to me during my moments of rage, Bas they do for some persons after bathing, though to no useful purpose. For to see oneself in a state which nature did not intend, with one’s features all distorted, contributes in no small degree toward discrediting that passion. In fact, those who delight in pleasant fables tell us that when Athena played on the pipes, she was rebuked by the satyr and would give no heed:

That look becomes you not; lay by your pipes

And take your arms and put your cheeks to rights;

but when she saw her face in a river, she was vexed and threw her pipes away. Yet art makes melody  some consolation for unsightliness. And Marsyas, it seems, by a mouthpiece and cheek-bands repressed the violence of his breath and tricked up and concealed the distortion of his face:

He fitted the fringe of his temples with gleaming gold

And his greedy mouth he fitted with thongs bound behind;

but anger, which puffs up and distends the face in an unbecoming way, utters a voice still more ugly and unpleasant,

Stirring the heart-strings never stirred before.

For when the sea is disturbed by the winds and casts up tangle and seaweed, they say that it is being cleansed; but the intemperate, bitter, and vulgar words which temper casts forth when the soul is disturbed defile the speakers of them first of all and fill them with disrepute, the implication being that they have always had these traits inside of them and are full of them, but that their inner nature is now laid bare by their anger. Hence for a mere word, the “lightest of things,” as Plato says, they incur the “heaviest of punishments,” being esteemed as hostile, slanderous, and malicious.

7 1 When I, accordingly, observe these things, and store them carefully away, it occurs to me to lay up and quite thoroughly remember for my own use that, just as it is a good thing in a fever, so it is an even better thing in anger, to keep the tongue soft and smooth. For if the tongue of men who are sick of a fever is in an unnatural state, it is a bad symptom, but not the cause of their malady; but when the tongue of angry men becomes rough and foul and breaks out in unseemly speeches, Eit brings forth insolence which creates irremediable enmity and argues a festering malevolence within. For unmixed wine produces nothing so intemperate and odious as anger does: words flown with wine go well with laughter and sport, but those which spring from anger are mixed with gall; and whereas the man who keeps silent at a drinking-bout is disagreeable and irksome to the company, there is nothing more dignified, if one is angry, than holding one’s peace, as Sappho advises:

When aggression swells within the breast,

Restrain the idly barking tongue.

8 1 But it is not these considerations only that constant watching of those who are in the grip of anger furnishes us, but also an understanding of the general nature of ill temper — that it is not well-bred, nor manly, nor possessing any quality of pride or greatness. Yet most people think its turbulence to be activity, its blustering to be confident boldness, its obstinacy force of character; and some claim that even its cruelty is magnificence in action and its implacability firmness in resolution and its moroseness hatred of evil, but they are wrong in this.  For the actions and the motions and the whole demeanour of angry persons declare their utter littleness and weakness, 457 not only when they rend little children and rage bitterly against women and think it proper to punish dogs and horses and mules, as Ctesiphon the pancratiast did, who thought it right to kick back at his mule; but also in the butcheries that tyrants perpetrate, their meanness of soul is apparent in their cruelty and their perverted state in their action, and is like the bites of vipers, which, when thoroughly inflamed with rage and pain, eject their excessive fiery passion upon those who have hurt them. For just as with the flesh a swelling results from a great blow, so with the weakest souls the inclination to inflict a hurt Bproduces a flaring up of temper as great as the soul’s infirmity is great. That is also the reason why women are more prone to anger than men, and sick persons than healthy, and old men than men in their prime, and the unfortunate than the prosperous. Most prone to anger, for instance, are the miser with his steward, the glutton with his cook, the jealous man with his wife, the conceited man when he has been maligned; but worst of all are

Men who court too eagerly

Ambition in the towns:

Manifest is the pain they bring.

as Pindar has it. In like manner from the pain and suffering of the soul, caused generally by weakness, there arises the outburst of passion which is not, as  someone has said, like “sinews of the soul,” but like the strainings and convulsions of the soul when it is stirred too vehemently in its impulse to defend itself.

9 1 These base examples, to be sure, were not pleasant to observe, but merely unavoidable; but in discussing those who deal with transports of rage in a mild and gentle way I offer instances which are very beautiful both to hear and to witness, and I begin with a word of scorn for those who say,

It was a man you wronged: should a man bear this?

and

Trample him underfoot, tread on his neck,

And bring him to the ground!

and other provocative expressions, by using which some err in transferring anger from the women’s quarters to the men’s. For although courage gets along well with justice in all other respects, yet, as it seems to me, it fights for the possession of gentleness alone, as belonging rather to itself. But although cases do occur in which even baser men gain the mastery over their betters, yet to erect in the soul a trophy of victory over anger (which Heracleitus says it is difficult to contend against: “for whatever it wishes, it buys at the price of the soul”) is proof of a great and victorious strength which possesses against the passions the weapons of its judgements, as in very truth its nerves and sinews.

For this reason I always strive to collect and to peruse, not only these sayings and deeds of the philosophers, who are said by fools to have no bile, but even more those of kings and despots. There is, for instance, the remark of Antigonus to his soldiers who were reviling him near his tent in the belief that he could not hear them: he merely thrust out his staff and cried, “Good heavens! will you not go somewhere farther off to abuse me?” And there is the case of Arcadion the Achaean who was always railing against Philip and advising flight

Until one comes to men who know not Philip;

when Arcadion later visited Macedonia on some chance or other, Philip’s friends thought that he should not be let off but punished. Yet Philip, when he met him, treated him kindly and sent him friendly presents and gifts; and later bade his friends inquire how Arcadion now spoke of him to the Greeks. When all testified that the fellow had become a wonderful eulogist of the king, Philip said, “Then I am a better physician than you.” So in Olympia when Philip was being defamed, and some persons said that the Greeks should smart for it since they spoke evil of Philip though they were being well  treated by him, Philip said, “What will they do, then, if they are badly treated?”

Likewise admirable was the behaviour of Peisistratus to Thrasybulus, 458 and of Porsenna to Mucius, and of Magas to Philemon. For when Magas had been publicly ridiculed by Philemon in a comedy at the theatre:

A. For you some letters, Magas, from the king.

B. Unhappy Magas, who no letters know!

Magas later captured Philemon, who had been cast ashore by a storm at Paraetonium, and ordered a soldier merely to touch Philemon on the neck with a naked sword and then depart courteously; and Magas sent dice and a ball to Philemon, as to a senseless child, and sent him on his way. So also Ptolemy, when he was jeering at a pedant for his ignorance, asked him who was Peleus’ father; and the pedant replied, “I shall tell you if you will first tell me who was the father of Lagus.” This was a jest at the dubious birth of the king, and everyone was indignant at its improper and inopportune character; but Ptolemy said, “If it is not the part of a king to take a jest, neither is it to make one.” But Alexander had behaved more harshly than was his custom toward Callisthenes and Cleitus. And so Porus, when he was taken captive, requested Alexander to treat him “like a king.” When Alexander asked, “Is there nothing more?” “In the words ‘like a king,’ “ replied Porus, “there is  everything.” For this reason also they call the king of the gods Meilichios, or the Gentle One, while the Athenians, I believe, call him Maimactes, or the Boisterous; but punishment is the work of the Furies and spirits, not of the high gods and Olympian deities.

10 1 Just as, then, someone said of Philip when he had razed Olynthus to the ground, “But he could not possibly repeople a city so large,” so one may address Anger and say, “You are able to overturn and destroy and throw down, but to raise up and preserve and spare and forbear is the work of mildness and forgiveness and moderation in passion, the work of a Camillus or a Metellus or an Aristeides or a Socrates; but to attach oneself to the wound and to sting is the part of an ant or a horse-fly.” As I study, however, anger’s method of defending itself, I find it for the most part ineffectual, Dsince it spends itself in biting the lips and gnashing the teeth, in vain attacks and railings coupled with senseless threats, and eventually resembles children running races, who, through lack of self-control, fall down ridiculously before they reach the goal toward would they are human. Therefore there was point in what the Rhodian said to the Roman general’s servant who was shouting and talking insolently: “What you say,” said the Rhodian, “matters nothing  to me, but what your master doesn’t say.” And Sophocles, when he has armed Neoptolemus and Eurypylus, says

Without a vaunt, without reviling, they

Have rushed within the ring of brazen arms.

For although there are barbarians who poison their steel, true bravery has no need of bitter gall, for it has been dipped in reason; but rage and fury are rotten and easily broken. At any rate the Spartans use the playing of pipes to remove from their fighting men the spirit of anger, and they sacrifice to the Muses before battle in order that reason may remain constant within them; and when they have routed the enemy, they do not pursue, but sound the recall to their high spirits, which, like small daggers, are manageable and can be easily withdrawn. Yet wrath has slain thousands before its revenge was accomplished, as, for instance, Cyrus and Pelopidas the Theban. But Agathocles endured with mildness the revilings of those he was besieging, and when one of them cried out, “Potter, how will you get pay for your mercenaries?” Agathocles laughed and said, “If I take this town.” And there is the case of Antigonus, who, when some men on the wall of a town jeered at him because of his deformity, said to them, “Why, I thought my face was handsome!” But when he took the town he sold as slaves those who jeered at him, protesting that he would have speech with their masters if they reviled him again.

I observe also that both advocates and orators commit serious mistakes because of anger; and Aristotle relates that the friends of Satyrus the Samian, 459 when he was to plead, stopped up his ears with wax, that he might not spoil his case through temper at the insults of his enemies. And as for ourselves, does it not happen often that the punishment of a delinquent slave eludes our power? For slaves are made afraid by threatening words and run away. The words, therefore, which nurses use with children, “Stop crying and you shall have it!” may, not without benefit, be applied to temper: “Stop hurrying and shouting and making haste, and you shall have what you want better and more easily!” For if a father sees his son trying to cut something in two or to make a notch in it with a knife, he takes the knife himself and does it; so likewise, if reason takes upon itself the punishment which temper would inflict, it chastises the person who deserves it safely and harmlessly and for that person’s good, and does not, as temper often does, punish itself instead.

11 But however true it is that all the passions have need of a process of habituation, which tames as it were and subdues by rigorous training the irrational and obstinate element of the soul, there is no passion  that we can better learn to control by practising on servants than temper. For no envy or fear or rivalry enters into our relations with them, but frequent fits of anger bring about many conflicts and errors, and because of the absolute power we possess, there being no one to oppose or to prevent us, these cause us to slide and fall, since we are, as it were, on slippery ground. For it is impossible that irresponsible power under the influence of passion should be free from error, unless he who wields this power shall encompass it with a bulwark of gentleness, and shall hold out against many pleas of wife and friends, all charging him with laxity and easy-going ways. By such charges I myself used to be very greatly exasperated against my slaves, in the conviction that they were being ruined by not being punished. At long last, however, though late it was, I came to perceive that, in the first place, it is better to make them worse by forbearance than by harshness and anger to pervert my own self for the correction of the others. In the second place, when I observed that many, just because they were not being punished, were often ashamed to be bad, and made pardon, rather than correction, the starting-point of reformation, and, I swear, performed their duties more zealously for the kind of master who gave orders silently with a nod Dthan for the others who used blows and branding-irons, I began to be convinced that reason is more fit than anger to govern. For it is not as the Poet has said,

Where fear is, there is also reverence;

but, on the contrary, in those who revere there is  engendered the kind of fear that corrects behaviour, whereas continual and unmerciful beating produces, not repentance for wrongdoing, but rather the far-sighted cunning to do wrong without detection. In the third place, I always keep in mind and reflect in privacy that he who taught us the use of the bow did not forbid us to shoot, but only to miss the mark, and that the infliction of punishment will not be hindered by our teaching how to inflict it at the right time, with moderation, and in a useful and suitable manner; and, remembering these things, I try to get rid of my anger, if possible, by not depriving those who are to be punished of the right to speak in their defence, but by listening to their plea. For both the passage of time gives a pause to passion and a delay which dissolves it, and also the judgement discovers a suitable manner of punishment and an adequate amount; furthermore, the man who suffers punishment has no pretext left for opposing the correction if punishment is inflicted, not in anger, but after the accused has been proved guilty; and finally, the most shameful thing is avoided — that the slave should seem to be making a juster plea than his master.

And so, just as Phocion after Alexander’s death, trying to keep the Athenians from revolting prematurely or believing the report too quickly, said to them, “If, men of Athens, he is dead to day, he will be dead to morrow also, and the day after”; in like manner, I think, the man who, urged on by anger, is in a hurry for vengeance, should suggest to himself, “If this person is guilty of wronging you to day, he will still be guilty to morrow also, and the day after;  no harm will be done if he shall be punished somewhat late, but if he is punished in haste he will always be thought to have suffered without offending; and this has happened many times in the past.” For which of us is so harsh that he scourges and chastises a slave 460 because five or ten days ago he overroasted the meat or upset the table or came too slowly at our bidding? And yet these are the very things which cause us to be excited and in a cruel and implacable mood at the moment they happen and are still fresh in our memory. For as the shapes of persons seen through a fog, so things seen through a mist of rage appear greater than they are.

These are the reasons why we should immediately call to mind such instances and precepts; and when we are free from all suspicion of passion, if the offence still appears evil to the clear and settled judgement, we should attend to it then and not dismiss or abandon the punishment, as we leave food when we have lost our appetite. And nothing is so much the cause of our punishing in a rage as that, when our anger is over, we do not punish, but leave things alone. We are very much like lazy oarsmen, who during calm weather lie in port, and later, at the risk of their lives, avail themselves of a wind to go sailing. And so do we condemn reason for remissness and softness in punishment and hasten on to the deed rashly and to our peril when anger, like a gale, is upon us. For while a hungry man indulges in food as nature dictates, yet punishment is indulged in by one who is not hungry or thirsty for it, nor does he need anger as a relish to stimulate him to punish; on the contrary, when he finds himself very far removed from the desire to punish, he brings up reason to reinforce him and punishes under compulsion. Aristotle relates that in Etruria in his day slaves were scourged to the music of pipes. But one should not, in that spirit, through a craving for the punishment as for a kind of enjoyment, gorge oneself with it, and rejoice while inflicting chastisement and after inflicting it repent — of these the first is bestial, the second womanish — but without either sorrow or pleasure one should mete out punishment in reason’s own good time, leaving anger no excuse.

12 1 However this, perhaps, will not appear to be a cure for anger, but a temporary reprieve and prophylactic against those errors which some men commit in anger. And yet, though the swelling of the spleen is but a symptom of fever, reducing it assuages the fever, as Hieronymus says. But when I contemplated the origin of anger itself, I observed that different persons are liable to anger from different causes; yet in the case of practically all of them there is present a belief that they are being despised or neglected. For this reason we should assist those who endeavour to avoid anger, by removing as far as possible the act that rouses wrath from any suspicion of contempt or arrogance and by imputing it to ignorance or necessity or emotion or mischance. So Sophocles:

O king, not even the reason Nature gives

Stays with the unfortunate, but goes astray;

and so likewise Agamemnon ascribes the taking away of Briseïs to divine infatuation:

I wish again to make amends, to give

You countless ransom.

Supplication, indeed, is the act of one who does not despise; and when he that has done an injury shows himself humble, he removes all notion of contempt. But the man in a rage should not wait for such humility, but should take to himself the reply of Diogenes: when someone said to him, “They are laughing at you, Diogenes,” he answered, “But I am not laughed down.” Just so the angry man should not consider himself despised, but rather despise the man who gave the offence as acting from weakness or rashness, carelessness or illiberality, dotage or childishness. But such a notion must not on any account be entertained toward servants or friends; for our servants presume on our upright character, our friends on our affection, and both disregard us, Fnot as being impotent or ineffectual, but because of our reasonableness or our goodwill. As it is, thinking ourselves despised, we not only treat harshly wife and slaves and friends, but also through rage often fall out with innkeepers and sailors and drunken muleteers; we even rage against dogs that bark at us and asses that jostle us, 461 like the man who wished to beat the ass-driver, but when the driver cried out, “I am an Athenian,” indicated the ass and said, “You at any rate are not an Athenian,” and fell to beating it with many blows.

13 1 Furthermore it is especially selfishness and peevishness, together with luxury and softness, which beget in us those continuous or oft-recurring fits of anger that are gathered together in the soul little by little, like a swarm of bees or wasps. And so there is nothing more conducive to gentleness and graciousness and simplicity toward servants and wife and friends if a man is able to get along with what comforts he has and is in no need of many superfluities:

But he who liked his meat not overdone

Nor underdone, nor medium, nor boiled

Too much; and liked no food enough to praise;

who will drink no wine if there is no snow with it, nor eat bread purchased in the market, nor touch food served on cheap or earthenware dishes, nor sleep upon a bed that does not billow like the sea stirred to its depths; he who with rods and blows makes his servants at table hasten about running and crying out and sweating as though they were bringing poultices for boils, Csuch a man is enslaved to an impotent, querulous, and discontented mode of life. His many shocks of anger are like a chronic cough by which he reduces himself to a condition where anger becomes a running sore. We must, therefore, accustom the body to contentment by plain living and to self-sufficiency, for those who need but little are not disappointed of much.

And, to begin with our food, it is no great hardship if we partake in silence of whatever is set before us and do not, by being repeatedly choleric and peevish, thrust upon ourselves and our friends the worst sauce for meat, anger.

No more unpleasant supper could there be

than that wherein servants are beaten and wife is reviled because something is burned or smoked or not salted enough, or because the bread is too cold.

Arcesilaüs was once entertaining his friends and with them some foreign guests, and when dinner was served, there was no bread, since the slaves had neglected to buy any. In such a predicament which one of us would not have rent the walls asunder with outcries? But Arcesilaüs merely smiled and said, How lucky it is that the wise man takes to the flowing bowl!”

Once when Socrates took Euthydemus home with him from the palaestra, Xanthippê came up to them in a rage and scolded them roundly, finally upsetting the table. Euthydemus, deeply offended, got up and was about to leave when Socrates said, “At your house the other day did not a hen fly in and do precisely this same thing, yet we were not put out about it?”

For we should receive our friends affably and with laughter and cheerful friendliness, not with frowning brows, or striking fear and trembling into our servants. We must, further, accustom ourselves to make cheerful use of any kind of table utensils and not to prefer this service to that, as some men do who select one goblet or horn out of the many they have, and will drink from no other, as they relate of Marius. Some have this same feeling about oil-flasks and strigils, of which they have a liking for but one out of many; and so when one of these preferred objects is broken or lost, they take it hard and punish severely. Therefore anyone who is prone to anger should abstain from rare and curiously wrought things, like drinking-cups and seal-rings and precious stones; Ffor their loss drives their owner out of his senses more than do objects which are easily procured and may be seen everywhere. This is the reason why, when Nero had had an octagonal tent built, a huge structure which was a sight to be seen because of its beauty and costliness, Seneca remarked, “You have proved yourself a poor man, for if you ever lose this you will not have the means to procure another like it.” 462 And indeed it did so happen that the ship which conveyed it was sunk and the tent lost. But Nero remembered Seneca’s saying and bore his loss with greater moderation.

A cheerful behaviour toward the affairs of life makes a master cheerful and gentle toward his slaves also; and if to slaves, he will evidently be so to his friends as well as to those who are subject to his rule. And in fact we observe that newly purchased slaves inquire about their new master, not whether he is superstitious or envious, but whether he is ill-tempered; and, speaking generally, we see that if anger is present in a home, husbands cannot endure even their wives’ chastity, nor wives even their husbands’ love, nor friends even familiar intercourse with one another. Thus neither marriage nor friendship is tolerable if anger is there, but without anger even drunkenness is easily borne. For the wand of Dionysus suffices to punish the drunkard, unless hot temper is added and makes the undiluted drink a cause of savagery and madness instead of a dispeller of care and an inspirer or the dance. Madness pure and simple can indeed be cured by Anticyra; but if madness is mixed with anger, it produces tragedies and tales of horror.

14 1 Surely we should allow no place to anger even in jest, for that brings enmity in where friendliness was; nor in learned discussions, for that turns love of learning into strife; nor when rendering judgement, for that adds insolence to authority; Cnor in teaching, for that engenders disappointment and hatred of learning; nor in prosperity, for that increases envy; nor in adversity, for that drives away compassion when men become irritable and quarrel with those who sympathize with them, as Priam did:

Be gone, you wretched, shameful men! Have you

No cause for grief at home that you have come

To trouble me?

But a cheerful disposition in some circumstances is helpful, others it adorns, and still others it helps to sweeten; by its gentleness it overcomes both anger and all moroseness. Thus Eucleides, when his brother said to him after a quarrel, “Damned if I don’t get even with you!” answered, “But as for me, may I be damned if I don’t convince you!” and so at once turned him from his purpose and won him over. And Polemon, when a man who was fond of precious stones and quite mad about expensive seal-rings reviled him, made no answer, but fixed his gaze on one of the seal-rings and eyed it closely. The man, accordingly, was pleased and said to him, “Do not look at it in this light, Polemon, but under the sun’s rays, and it will appear to you far more beautiful.” Aristippus, again, when anger had arisen between him and Aeschines and someone said, “Where now, Aristippus, is the friendship of you two?” replied, “It is asleep, but I shall awaken it”; and, going to Aeschines, he said, “Do I appear to you so utterly unfortunate and incurable as not to receive correction from you?” And Aeschines replied, “No wonder if you, who are naturally superior to me in all things, should in this matter also have discerned before I did the right thing to do.”

For not a woman only, even a child,

Tickling the bristly boar with tender hand,

May throw him easier than a wrestler might.

But we who tame wild beasts and make them gentle and carry about in our arms young wolves and lions’ cubs, then under the impulse of rage cast off children, friends, and companions and let loose our wrath, like some wild beast, on servants and fellow-citizens — we, I say, do not well to use a cozening word for our anger by calling it “righteous indignation,” but it is with anger, I believe, as with the other passions and diseases of the soul: we can rid ourselves of none of them by calling one “foresight,” another “liberality,” another “piety.”

15 1 And yet, as Zeno used to say that the seed was a mixture and compound drawn from all the faculties of the soul, so temper appears to be a mixture of seeds drawn from all the passions. 463 For it is drawn from pain and pleasure, and from insolence; and although it has envy’s malicious joy in the ills of others, it is even worse than envy; for the object of its striving is, not that it may itself avoid suffering evil, but that at the cost of suffering evil, it may utterly ruin its antagonist; and the most unlovely kind of desire is innate in it, inasmuch as it is a craving to pain someone else. And that is why, when we approach the houses of profligates, we hear a flute-girl still playing in the early morning, and we see “muddy dregs of wine,” as someone has said, “and mangled fragments of garlands,” and tipsy servants reeling at the doors; but the tokens of savage and irascible men you will see on the faces of their servants and in the marks branded upon them and their fetters.

The only music heard within the house

of an angry man

Is wailing cries,

and the stewards are being lashed within and the serving-maids being tortured, so that those who witness the anguish caused by anger in gratifying its desires and ministering to its pleasures must feel pity.

16 1 However, those of whom it is true that righteous indignation causes them frequently to be overwhelmed by anger should get rid of its excessive and violent form, together with their extreme confidence in those with whom they live. For such confidence more than any other cause increases the spirit of wrath, when, for example, one who has been accounted honourable proves to be base, or one whom we have supposed a true friend quarrels and finds fault with us. As for my own temperament, you doubtless know how strong are the impulses which incline it to be of goodwill toward my fellow-men and to trust them. Consequently, like men who attempt to walk on empty air, the more I give myself up to loving a person the more I go astray, and when I stumble and fall, the greater my distress; and although I may no longer be able to reduce my too great propensity and eagerness to love, yet I may perhaps be able to use Plato’s caution as a curb against excessive trust. For Plato says that he praises Helicon the mathematician in such terms as he uses because man is by nature an animal readily subject to change; and that he does well to fear those who have been educated in the city Dlest, being men and the seeds of men, they may reveal somewhere the weakness inherent in their nature. But when Sophocles says

Search out most human traits; you’ll find them base,

he seems to go too far in trampling upon and belittling us. This peevish and censorious judgement does, however, tend to make us more considerate in our outbursts of temper; for it is the sudden and the unexpected that throw men off their bearings. But we should, as Panaetius also has somewhere remarked, make use of the precept of Anaxagoras, and just as he, at the death of his son, said, “I knew that I had begotten a mortal”; so on each occasion we should remark with reference to the faults which exasperate us: “I knew that I had not bought a philosopher for a slave,” “I knew that the friend I had made was not incapable of error,” “I knew that my wife was a woman.” And if we keep repeating to ourselves Plato’s question, “Can it be that I am like that?” and turn our reason inward instead of to external things, and substitute caution for censoriousness, we shall no longer make much use of “righteous indignation” toward others when we observe that we ourselves stand in need of much indulgence. But as it is, everyone of us, when we are angry and inflicting punishment, brings out the injunctions of an Aristeides or a Cato: “Do not steal!” “Do not lie!” “Why are you so lazy?”; and — what is most disgraceful of all — while angry we chide others for being angry and punish by rage faults which have been committed in a rage, Fnot like physicians, who

With bitter drugs can purge the bitter bile;

but rather make more intense the malady and aggravate it.

Whenever, therefore, I have become engaged in these reflections, at the same time I try to do away with some part of my inquisitiveness. 464 For to search out with great precision and detect and drag into the light every little concern of a slave, every action of a friend, every pastime of a son, every whisper of a wife, produces frequent, or rather continual and daily, fits of anger, of which the sum total is a morose and intractable disposition. It may be, as Euripides says, that God

Will intervene in matters grown too great,

But small things he lets pass and leaves to Fate;

but I am of the opinion that a man of sense should commit nothing to Fate, nor overlook anything at all, but should trust and use for some things his wife, for others servants, for others friends, Bas a ruler makes use of overseers and accountants and administrators, but himself keeps under his own control the most important and weighty matters by the use of reason. For as small writing strains the eyes, so do trifling matters, by causing a greater strain, prick and stir up anger, which become a bad habit that affects more important matters.

Accordingly, in addition to all these considerations, I have been wont to regard as great and divine that saying of Empedocles, “Fast from evil,” and to applaud also those other vows made in prayer as being neither ungracious nor inappropriate to a philosopher: to abstain from love and wine for a year, honouring God by continence; or again to refrain from lying for a stated time, paying close heed to ourselves that we shall be truthful always whether in jest or earnest. Then with these I compared my own vow, thinking it no less sacred and pleasant in the sight of God: first, to pass a few days without anger, sober and wineless days, as it were, as though I were offering a sacrifice of honey unmixed with wine; then I would do so for a month or two, and so, making trial of myself little by little, in time I made some progress in my forbearance, continently observing and keeping myself courteous in speech, placid, and free from anger, and pure of the taint of evil words and offensive actions and of passion which, Dat the price of a little unsatisfying pleasure, brings great perturbations of spirit and the most shameful repentance. By such means, I think — and God also gave me help — experience has shown the truth of that judgement: this placid and gentle and humane spirit is not so agreeable and pleasant and free from sorrow to any of those brought in contact with it as it is to those who themselves possess it.

On tranquillity of mind

464 From Plutarch to Paccius, health and prosperity.

1 1 It was only very recently that I received your letter in which you urged me to write you something on tranquillity of mind, and also something on those subjects in the Timaeus which require more careful elucidation. And at the same time it chanced that our friend Eros was obliged to sail at once for Rome, since he had received from the excellent Fundanus a letter, which, in his usual style, urged haste. But since I neither had the time I might have desired to meet your wishes nor could I bring myself to let the friend who came from me be seen arriving at your home with hands quite empty, I gathered together from my note-books those observations on tranquillity of mind which I happened to have made for my own use, believing that you on your part requested this discourse, not for the sake of hearing a work which would aim at elegance of style, 465 but for the practical use in living it might afford; and I congratulate you because, though you have commanders as your friends and a reputation second to none of the forensic speakers of our day, your experience has not been that of Merops in the play, and because it cannot be said openly, as of him, that

The plaudits of the mob have driven you

from those emotions given us by nature; but you continue to remember what you have often heard, that an aristocratic shoe does not rid us of the gout, nor an expensive ring of a hangnail, nor a diadem of a headache. For what power is there in money or fame or influence at court to help us to gain ease of soul or an untroubled life, if it is not true that the use of them is pleasant to us when we have them and that we never miss them when we have them not? And how else can this be achieved except through reason, which has been carefully trained quickly to hold back the passionate and irrational part of the soul when it breaks bounds, as it often does, and not to allow it to flow away and be swept downstream because it does not have what it wants? Therefore, just as Xenophon advised that in prosperity we should be particularly mindful of the gods and should honour them, so that, when some need comes upon us, we may invoke them with the confidence that they are already well-disposed and friendly; so also with such reasonings as give help in controlling the passions: wise men should give heed to them before the passions arise in order that, being prepared far in advance, their help may be more efficacious. For as savage dogs become excited at every strange cry and are soothed by the familiar voice only, so also the passions of the soul, when they are raging wild, are not easily allayed, unless customary and familiar arguments are at hand to curb the excited passions.

2 1 Now he who said: “The man who would be tranquil in his mind must not engage in many affairs, either private or public,” first of all makes our tranquillity very expensive if it is bought at the price of inactivity; it is as though he advised every sick man:

Lie still, poor wretch, and move not from your bed.

And yet it is true that a state of bodily stupor is a bad remedy for insanity; but no whit better as a physician of the soul is he who would relieve it of its disturbances and distress by prescribing idleness and softness and the betrayal of friends and family and country.

In the next place, it is also false that those who are not occupied with many things are tranquil in mind. For if that were true, women ought to be more tranquil than men, since for the most part they keep at home; but as it is, the North Wind

Blows not through the soft-skinned maid,

as Hesiod says, yet more pain and excitement and despondency than one could enumerate, caused by jealousy and superstition and ambition and vain imaginings, seep into the women’s quarters. And though Laërtes lived twenty years by himself in the country

With one old woman, who his food and drink

Would place beside him,

and abandoned his birthplace, his home, and his kingship, yet he had grief as an ever-constant companion of his inactivity and dejection. And for some persons, even inactivity itself often leads to discontent, as in this instance:

The swift Achilles, Peleus’ noble son,

Continued in his wrath beside the ships;

Nor would he ever go to council that

Ennobles men, nor ever go to war,

But wasted away his heart, remaining there,

And always longed for tumult and for war.

And he himself is greatly disturbed and distressed at this and says:

But here I sit beside my ships,

A useless burden to the earth.

For this reason not even Epicurus believes that men who are eager for honour and glory should lead an inactive life, but that they should fulfil their natures by engaging in politics and entering public life, on the ground that, because of their natural dispositions, 466 they are more likely to be disturbed and harmed by inactivity if they do not obtain what they desire. But he is absurd in urging public life, not on those who are able to undertake it, but on those who are unable to lead an inactive life; tranquillity and discontent should be determined, not by the multitude or the fewness of one’s occupations, but by their excellence or baseness; for the omission of good acts is no less vexatious and disturbing than the commission of evil acts, as has been said.

3 1 To those who believe that one quite special kind of life is free from pain, as some do the life of farmers, others that of bachelors, others that of kings, the words of Menander are a sufficient reminder:

BI used to think the wealthy, Phanias,

Who have no need to borrow, would not groan

Of nights, nor tossing up and down would cry

“Ah, woe is me!” but that they slept a sweet

And tranquil sleep.

He then goes on to relate that he observes that even the wealthy fare the same as the poor:

Is there then kinship between life and grief?

Grief’s in a famous life; with a rich life

It stays; with a mean life it too grows old.

But like people at sea who are cowardly and seasick and think that they would get through this voyage more comfortably if they should transfer from their little boat to a ship, and then again from the ship to a man-of war; but they accomplish nothing by the changes, since they carry their nausea and cowardice along with them; so the exchange of one mode of life for another does not relieve the soul of those things which cause it grief and distress: these are inexperience in affairs, unreasonableness, the want of ability or knowledge to make the right use of present conditions. These are the defects which, like a storm at sea, torment rich and poor alike, that afflict the married as well as the unmarried; because of these men avoid public life, then find their life of quiet unbearable; because of these men seek advancement at court, by which, when they have gained it, they are immediately bored.

Through helplessness the sick are hard to please,

for their wives are troublesome, they grumble at the doctor, they are vexed with the bed,

Each friend that comes annoys, that goes affronts,

as Ion has it. But later, when the disease is over and a sounder disposition supervenes, health returns and makes everything pleasant and agreeable: he that yesterday loathed eggs and delicate cakes and fine bread to day eats eagerly and willingly of a coarse loaf with olives and water-cress.

4 1 Such contentment and change of view toward every kind of life is created by reason when it has been engendered within us. Alexander wept when he heard Anaxarchus discourse about an infinite number of worlds, and when his friends inquired what ailed him, “Is it not worthy of tears,” he said, “that, when the number of worlds is infinite, we have not yet become lords of a single one?” But Crates, though he had but a wallet and a threadbare cloak, passed his whole life jesting and laughing as though at a festival. It was, indeed, burdensome to Agamemnon to be lord of many men:

Agamemnon you shall know, King Atreus’ son,

Whom, beyond all, Zeus cast into a mesh

Of never-ending cares;

but Diogenes, when he was being sold at auction, lay down on the ground and kept mocking the auctioneer; when this official bade him arise, he would not, but joked and ridiculed the man, saying, “Suppose you were selling a fish?” And Socrates, though in prison, discoursed on philosophic themes to his friends; but Phaëthon, when he had mounted up to heaven, wept because no one would deliver to him his father’s horses and chariot.

So, just as the shoe is turned with the foot, and not the contrary, so do men’s dispositions make their lives like themselves. For it is not, as someone has said, habituation which makes the best life sweet to those who have chosen it, but wisdom which makes the same life at once both best and sweetest. 467 Therefore let us cleanse the fountain of tranquillity that is in our selves, in order that external things also, as if our very own and friendly, may agree with us when we make no harsh use of them:

It does no good to rage at circumstance;

Events will take their course with no regard

For us. But he who makes the best of those

Events he lights upon will not fare ill.

5 1 Plato, for instance, compared life to a game of dice in which we must try, not only to throw what suits us best, but also, when we have thrown, to make good use of whatever turns up. But with circumstances, though it is not in our power to throw what we please, yet it is our task, if we are wise, to accept in a suitable manner whatever accrues from Fortune and to assign to each event a place in which both what suits us shall help us most and what is unwanted shall do least harm. For those who are without skill and sense as to how they should live, like sick people whose bodies can endure neither heat nor cold, are elated by good fortune and depressed by adversity; and they are greatly disturbed by both, or rather by themselves in both and as much in what is called good as in the bad. Theodorus, called the Atheist, used to say that he offered his discourses with his right hand, but his audience received them with their left; so uninstructed persons, when Fortune presents herself adroitly on their right, often gauchely substitute their left hands in receiving her and cut a sorry figure. But men of sense, just as bees extract honey from thyme, the most pungent and the driest of plants, often in like manner draw from the most unfavourable circumstances something which suits them and is useful.

6 1 This, then, we should practice and cultivate first of all, like the man who threw a stone at his dog, but missed her and hit his stepmother, whereupon he exclaimed, “Not so bad after all!” For it is possible to change the direction of Fortune when she has given us things we do not wish. Diogenes was driven into exile: “Not so bad after all!” for after his exile he began to lead the life of a philosopher. Zeno of Citium had one merchantman remaining; when he learned that this had been sunk at sea and lost with all its cargo, he cried, “Much obliged, Fortune! You also drive me to the philosopher’s cloak.”

What, then, prevents our imitating such men as these? Have you failed in your canvass for an office? You will be able to live in the country and look after your own affairs. Were you repulsed in wooing the friendship of some great man? Your life will be free from danger and trouble. Have you, again, become occupied with matters which take all your time and fill you with cares?

Nor shall hot water so soften the limbs,

as Pindar has it, since high repute and honour conjoined with a measure of power make

Labour pleasant and toil to be sweet toil.

Have you, by reason of slander or envy, become the butt of jeers and cat-calls? The breeze is favouring that bears you to the Muses and the Academy, as it was Plato when he was buffeted by the storm of Dionysius’s friendship.

For this reason it will also help greatly toward tranquillity of mind to observe that famous men have suffered nothing at all from evils the same as yours. Does childlessness, for example, vex you? Consider the kings of Rome, of whom not one was able to bequeath the kingdom to a son. Are you distressed by your present poverty? Well, what Boeotian rather than Epameinondas, what Roman rather than Fabricius, would you have preferred to be? “But my wife has been seduced.” Have you, then, not read the inscription at Delphi,

The lord of land and sea, King Agis, put me here;

and have you not heard that Alcibiades seduced Agis’s wife, Timaea, and that, whispering to her handmaids, she called her child Alcibiades? But this did not prevent Agis from being the most celebrated and the greatest of Greeks. Just as the licentiousness of his daughter did not prevent Stilpo 468 from leading the most cheerful life of all the philosophers of his time; on the contrary, when Metrocles reproached him, he asked, “Is this my fault or hers?” And when Metrocles replied, “Her fault, but your misfortune,” he said, “What do you mean? Are not faults also slips?” “Certainly,” said Metrocles. “And are not slips also mischances of those who have slipped?” Metrocles agreed. “And are not mischances also misfortunes of those whose mischances they are?” By this gentle and philosophic argument he showed the Cynic’s abuse to be but idle yapping.

7 1 But most people are pained and exasperated by the faults, not only of their friends and relatives, but also of their enemies. For abuse and rage on their part, envy and malevolence and jealousy, coupled with ill-will, are the bane of those who are subject to these faults, but it is fools whom they trouble and exasperate — as, for example, neighbours’ outbursts of temper and friends’ peevishness, and certain acts of dishonesty on the part of state officials charged with administration. By these things you yourself seem to me to be disturbed as much as anybody, and like the physicians to whom Sophocles alludes —

With bitter drugs they purge the bitter bile —

so you become angry and bitter against these men and suffer from their passions and infirmities; but this is irrational. For even in the execution of matters committed to your personal care, most of them are in fact administered, not by simple and excellent natures, men naturally suited to be another’s instruments, as it were, but by jagged and crooked ones. Do not, therefore, consider it your business to straighten them out, and it would not in any case be easy to do so. But if — dealing with them as being what they are by nature, just as a physician uses forceps for teeth and clips for wounds — you show yourself as gentle and self-controlled as you can, you will have greater pleasure in your own state of mind than distress at the unpleasantness and villainy of those others, and you will think that they, like dogs when they bark, are but fulfilling their nature; and no longer will you unwittingly gather into this present captiousness or infirmity of yours many grievances, like offscourings which drain into some hollow and low-lying ground, thus letting yourself be infected with the vices of others. For since some of the philosophers censure even pity that is expended upon unfortunate persons, on the ground that it is good to give help to our neighbours, but not to participate in their sorrows nor give in to them; and, what is more important, since these philosophers do not allow us, when we perceive ourselves to be doing wrong and to be getting into a bad state of mind, to despair or be dejected, but bid us cure our vice painlessly, as we should; just consider, then — how can it be anything but irrational to allow ourselves to become vexed and troubled because not everyone who has dealings with us or approaches us is honourable and cultivated? No, my dear Paccius, you must see to it that we are not unwittingly taking a stand in alarm, not at the general wickedness of those we encounter, but at their particular wickedness to us; so our motive would be a selfish interest, not detestation of villainy. For excessive apprehension about public affairs and unworthy appetites and desires, or, on the other hand, aversions and dislikes, engender suspicions and enmities toward persons who were, we think, the cause of our being deprived of some desirable things and of our encountering others which are unpleasant; it is the man who has become accustomed to adapt himself to public affairs easily and with self-control who becomes the most gracious and gentle in his dealings with his fellows.

8 1 Therefore let us resume our discussion of circumstances. For just as in a fever everything we eat seems bitter and unpleasant to the taste, and yet when we see others taking the same food and finding no displeasure in it, we no longer continue to blame the food and the drink, but accuse ourselves and our malady; 469 so we shall cease blaming and being disgruntled with circumstances if we see others accepting the same events cheerfully and without offence. And so it is conducive to tranquillity of mind, in the midst of happenings which are contrary to our wishes, not to overlook whatever we have that is pleasant and attractive, but, mingling good with bad, cause the better to outshine the worse. But as it is, while we turn away our eyes when they are wounded by too dazzling a light and refresh them with the tints and hues of flowers and grass, yet we strain the mind toward painful things and force it to dwell on the consideration of disagreeable matters, Ball but dragging it by compulsion away from those which are better. And yet one might adapt here not inaptly the remark addressed to the meddlesome man:

Why do you look so sharp on others’ ills,

Malignant man, yet overlook your own?

Why do you scrutinize too keenly your own trouble, my good sir, and continue to make it ever vivid and fresh in your mind, but do not direct your thoughts to those good things which you have? But, just as cupping-glasses draw the most virulent humour from the flesh, so you gather together against yourself the worst of your own conditions, proving yourself not a whit better than the man of Chios who sold excellent old wine to everyone else, but tried to find sour wine for his own luncheon; and when one of his slaves was asked by the other what he had left his master doing, he answered, “Hunting bad when good was at hand.” Most persons, in fact, do pass by the excellent and palatable conditions of their lot and hasten to those that are unpleasant and disagreeable. Aristippus, however, was not one of these, but was wise enough, like one who weighs things in a balance, by weighing the bad against the better, to rise above the conditions in which he found himself and thus to lighten his spirits. At any rate, when he had lost a fine estate, he asked one of those who made a great pretence of condoling with him and sharing in his ill humour at misfortune, “Isn’t it true that you have only one small bit of land, while I have three farms remaining?” When the person agreed that this was so, Aristippus said, “Should I not then rather condole with you?” For it is the act of a madman to be distressed at what is lost and not rejoice at what is saved, but like little children, who, if someone takes away one of their many toys, will throw away all the rest as well and cry and howl; in the same way, if we are troubled by Fortune in one matter, we make everything else also unprofitable by lamenting and taking it hard.

9 1 “And what,” someone may say, “do we really have and what do we not have?” One man has reputation, another a house, another a wife, another a good friend. Antipater of Tarsus, on his deathbed reckoning up the good things that had fallen to his lot, did not omit even the fair voyage he had from Cilicia to Athens; so we should not overlook even common and ordinary things, but take some account of them and be grateful that we are alive and well and look upon the sun; that there is neither war near factious strife among us, but that both the earth grants cultivation and the sea fair sailing to those who wish it; that we may speak or act, be silent or at leisure, as we choose. These things when they are present will afford us greater tranquillity of mind, if we but imagine them to be absent, and remind ourselves often how desirable is health to the sick, and peace to those at war, and, to an unknown stranger in so great a city, the acquisition of reputation and friends; and how painful it is to be deprived of these things when we have once had them. For it will not then be the case that we find each one of these important and valuable only when it has been lost, but worthless while securely held. Our not possessing it does not add value to anything, nor should we acquire these things as though they were of great worth and live in fear and trembling as though for things of great moment, lest we be deprived of them, and yet while we have them overlook and despise them as of no value: 470 we should above all take care to use them for our pleasure and enjoyment, in order that we may bear their loss, if that should happen, with greater moderation. But most people, as Arcesilaüs said, think it right to examine poems and paintings and statues of others with the eyes of both the mind and the body, poring over them minutely and in every detail, whereas they neglect their own life, which has many not unpleasing subjects for contemplation, looking ever to externals and admiring the repute and the fortunes of others, as adulterers do other men’s wives, yet despising themselves and their own possessions.

10 1 And yet it is also highly conducive to tranquillity of mind to examine, if possible, oneself and one’s fortunes, but if that is not possible, to observe persons of inferior fortune, and not, as most people do, compare oneself with those who are superior; as, for example, those in prison account fortunate those who have been set free; and they, men born free; and free men, citizens; and citizens, in their turn, the rich; and the rich, satraps; and satraps, kings; and kings, the gods, scarcely stopping short of desiring the power to produce thunder and lightning. Thus, through being always conscious that they lack things which are beyond them, they are never grateful for what befits their station.

I want no wealth of Gyges rich in gold,

Nor have I ever envied him; I am

Not jealous of gods’ works, nor love a great

Kingdom: such things are far beyond my ken.

“But he was a Thasian,” one may say. Yet there are others, Chians, Galatians, or Bithynians, who are not content with whatever portion of either repute or power among their own fellow-countrymen has fallen to their lot, but weep because they do not wear the patrician shoe; yet if they do wear it, they weep because they are not yet Roman praetors; if they are praetors, because they are not consuls; and if consuls, because they were proclaimed, not first, but later. What is this other than collecting excuses for ingratitude to Fortune Din order to chastise and punish oneself? But he, at least, who has a mind filled with salutary thoughts, knowing that the sun looks down upon countless myriads of men,

As many of us as win the fruit of the spacious earth,

if he be less famous or wealthy than some others, does not sit down in sorrow and dejection, but since he knows that he lives ten thousand times better and more suitably than tens of thousands in so great a number, he will go on his way praising his own guardian spirit and his life.

Now at Olympia you cannot win the victory by selecting competitors, but in this life circumstances permit you to take pride in your superiority to many, and to be an object of envy rather than envious of the others — unless, indeed, you make a Briareus or a Heracles your opponent. Whenever, then, you are lost in admiration of a man borne in his litter as being superior to yourself, lower your eyes and gaze upon the litter-bearers also; and whenever you account happy, as the man of Hellespont did, that famous Xerxes crossing his bridge, look also upon those who are digging through Athos beneath the lash, and those whose ears and noses are mutilated because the bridge was broken by the current. Consider also their state of mind: they account happy your life and your fortunes.

When Socrates heard one of his friends remark how expensive the city was, saying “Chian wine costs a mina, a purple robe three minae, a half-pint of honey five drachmas,” he took him by the hand and led him to the meal-market, “Half a peck for an obol! the city is cheap”; then to the olive-market, “A quart for two coppers!”, then to the clothes-market, “A sleeveless vest for ten drachmas! the city is cheap.” We also, therefore, whenever we hear another say that our affairs are insignificant and in a woeful plight because we are not consuls or governors, may reply, 471”Our affairs are splendid and our life is enviable: we do not beg, or carry burdens, or live by flattery.”

11 Yet since, however, through our folly we have grown accustomed to live with eyes fixed on everyone else rather than on ourselves, and since our nature contains much envy and malice and does not rejoice so much in our own blessings as it is pained by those which other men possess, do not look only at the splendour and notoriety of those you envy and wonder at, but open and, as it were, draw aside the gaudy curtain of their repute and outward appearance, and get inside them, and you will see many disagreeable things and many things to vex them there. Thus, when that renowned Pittacus, whose fame for bravery and for wisdom and justice was great, was entertaining some guests, his wife entered in a rage and upset the table; his guests were dismayed, but Pittacus said, “Every one of us has some trouble. He that has only mine is doing very well indeed.”

This man’s held happy in the market-place,

But when he enters home, thrice-wretched he:

His wife rules all, commands, and always fights.

His woes are more than mine, for mine are none!

Many such evils attend wealth and repute and kingship, evils unknown to the vulgar, for ostentation hinders the vision.

O happy son of Atreus, child of destiny,

Blessed with a kindly guardian spirit!

Such felicitation comes from externals only — for his arms and horses and far-flung host of warriors; but against the emptiness of his glory the voice of his sufferings cries out in protest from the very heart:

The son of Cronus, Zeus, entangled me

In deep infatuation,

and

I envy you, old man;

I envy any man whose life has passed

Free from danger, unknown and unrenowned.

By such reflections also, then, it is possible to reduce the violence of our fault-finding with fate, fault-finding which, through admiration of our neighbours’ lot, both debases and destroys our own.

12 1 Further, another matter which greatly interferes with tranquillity of mind is that we do not manage our impulses, as sailors do their sails, to correspond to our capacity; in our expectations we aim at things too great; then, when we fail, we blame our destiny and our fortune instead of our own folly. For he is not unfortunate who wishes to shoot with his plough and hunt the hare with his ox, nor does a malicious destiny oppose him who cannot capture deer or boar with fishing creels or drag-nets; it is through folly and stupidity that such men attempt the impossible. And self-love is chiefly to blame, which makes men eager to be first and to be victorious in everything and insatiably desirous of engaging in everything. For not only do men demand to be at the same time rich and learned and strong and convivial spirits and good company, and friends of kings and magistrates of cities, but unless they shall also have dogs and horses and quails and cocks that can win prizes, they are disconsolate.

The elder Dionysius was not content with being the greatest tyrant of his age, but because he could not sing verses better than the poet Philoxenus or get the better of Plato in dialectic, enraged and embittered, he cast Philoxenus into the stone-quarries, and, sending Plato to Aegina, sold him into slavery. Alexander was not of this temper, but when Crison, the famous sprinter, ran a race with him and appeared to slacken his pace deliberately, Alexander was very indignant. And when the Homeric Achilles had first said,

Of the bronze-clad Achaeans none is a match for me,

he did well to add,

In war; but in speaking others are better than I.

But when Megabyzus the Persian came up to the studio of Apelles 472 and attempted to chatter about art, Apelles shut his mouth by saying, “As long as you kept still, you seemed to be somebody because of your gold and purple; but now even these lads who grind the pigments are laughing at your nonsense.”

But some think that the Stoics are jesting when they hear that in their sect the wise man is termed not only prudent and just and brave, but also an orator, a poet, a general, a rich man, and a king; and then they count themselves worthy of all these titles, and if they fail to get them, are vexed. Yet even among the gods different gods hold different powers: Bone bears the epithet “War-like,” another “Prophetic,” another “Gain-bringing”; and Zeus dispatches Aphroditê to marriages and nuptial chambers, on the ground that she has no part in deeds of war.

13 1 There are, indeed, some pursuits which cannot by their very nature exist together, but rather are by nature opposed to each other; for example, training in rhetoric and the pursuit of mathematics require a quiet life and leisure, while political functions and the friendship of kings cannot succeed without hard work and the full occupation of one’s time. And “wine and indulgence in meat” do indeed “make the body strong and vigorous, but the soul weak”; and unremitting care to acquire and preserve money increases wealth, yet contempt and disdain for it is greatly conducive to progress in philosophy. Therefore not all pursuits are for everyone, but one must, obeying the Pythian inscription, “know one’s self,” and then use one’s self for that one thing for which Nature has fitted one and not do violence to nature by dragging one’s self towards the emulation of now one sort of life, now another.

The horse is for the chariot;

The ox for the plough; beside the ship most swiftly speeds the dolphin;

And if you think to slay a boar, you must find a stout-hearted hound.

But that man is out of his wits who is annoyed and pained that he is not at the same time both a lion

Bred on the mountains, sure of his strength,

and a little Maltese dog cuddled in the lap of a widow. But not a whit better than he is the man who wishes at the same time to be an Empedocles or a Plato or a Democritus, writing about the universe and the true nature of reality, and, like Euphorion, to be married to a wealthy old woman, or, like Medius, to be one of Alexander’s boon companions and drink with him; and is vexed and grieved if he is not admired for his wealth, like Ismenias, and also for his valour, like Epameinondas. We know that runners are not discouraged because they do not carry off wrestlers’ crowns, but they exult and rejoice in their own.

Your portion is Sparta: let your crowns be for her!

So also Solon:

But we shall not exchange with them our virtue

For their wealth, since virtue is a sure possession,

But money falls now to this man, now that.

And Strato, the natural philosopher, when he heard that Menedemus had many more pupils than he himself had, said, “Why be surprised if there are more who wish to bathe than to be anointed for the contest?” And Aristotle, writing to Antipater, said, “it is not Alexander alone who has the right to be proud because he rules over many men, but no less right to be proud have they who have true notions concerning the gods.” For those who have such lofty opinions of their own possessions will not be offended by their neighbours’ goods. But as it is, we do not expect the vine to bear figs nor the olive grapes, but, for ourselves, if we have not at one and the same time the advantages of both the wealthy and the learned, of both commanders and philosophers, of both flatterers and the outspoken, of both the thrifty and the lavish, we slander ourselves, we are displeased, we despise ourselves as living an incomplete and trivial life.

473 Furthermore, we see that Nature also admonishes us; for just as she has provided different foods for different beasts and has not made them all carnivorous or seed-pickers or root-diggers, so has she given to men a great variety of means for gaining a livelihood,

To shepherd and ploughman and fowler and to him whom the sea

Provides with sustenance.

We should, therefore, choose the calling appropriate to ourselves, cultivate it diligently, let the rest alone, and not prove that Hesiod spoke inexactly when he said,

Potter is angry with potter, joiner with joiner.

For not only are men jealous of fellow-craftsmen and those who share the same life as themselves, but also the wealthy envy the learned, the famous the rich, advocates the sophists, and, by Heaven, free men and patricians regard with wondering admiration and envy successful comedians in the theatre and dancers and servants in the courts of kings; and by so doing they afford themselves no small vexation and disturbance.

14 1 But that every man has within himself the store-rooms of tranquillity and discontent, and that the jars containing blessings and evils are not stored “on the threshold of Zeus,” but are in the soul, is made plain by the differences in men’s passions. For the foolish overlook and neglect good things even when they are present, because their thoughts are ever intent upon the future, but the wise by remembrance make even those benefits that are no longer at hand to be vividly existent for themselves. For the present good, which allows us to touch it but for the smallest portion of time and then eludes our perception, seems to fools to have no further reference to us or to belong to us at all; but like that painting of a man twisting rope in Hades, who permits a donkey grazing near by to eat it up as he plaits it, so insensible and thankless forgetfulness steals upon the multitude and takes possession of them, consuming every action and success, every pleasant moment of leisure and companionship and enjoyment; it does not allow life to become unified, when past is interwoven with present, but separating yesterday, as though it were different, from to day, and to morrow likewise, as though it were not the same as to day, forgetfulness straightway makes every event to have never happened because it is never recalled. For those who in the Schools do away with growth and increase on the ground that Being is in a continual flux, in theory make each of us a series of persons different from oneself; so those who do not preserve or recall by memory former events, but allow them to flow away, actually make themselves deficient and empty each day and dependent upon the morrow, as though what had happened last year and yesterday and the day before had no relation to them nor had happened to them at all.

15 1 This, then, is a matter disturbing to tranquillity of mind; and another, even more disturbing, arises when, like flies which slip off the smooth surfaces of mirrors, but stick to places which are rough or scratched, men drift away from joyous and agreeable matters and become entangled in the remembrance of unpleasant things; or rather, as they relate that when beetles have fallen into a place at Olynthus which is called “Death-to Beetles,” they are unable to get out, but turn and circle about there until they die in that place, so when men have slipped into brooding upon their misfortunes, they do not wish to recover or revive from that state. But, like colours in a painting, so in the soul it is right that we should place in the foreground bright and cheerful experiences and conceal and suppress the gloomy; for to wipe them out and be rid of them altogether is impossible. “For the harmony of the universe, like that of a lyre or a bow, is by alternatives,” 474 and in mortal affairs there is nothing pure and unmixed. But as in music there are low notes and high notes, and in grammar there are vowels and consonants, yet a musician or a grammarian is not the man who dislikes and avoids the one or the other, but rather the man who knows how to use all and to blend them properly, so also in human affairs, which contain the principles of opposition to each other (since, as Euripides has it,

The good and bad cannot be kept apart,

But there’s some blending, so that all is well),

we should not be disheartened or despondent in adversity, but like musicians who achieve harmony by constantly deadening bad music with better and encompassing the bad with the good, we should make the blending of our life harmonious and conformable to our own nature.

For it is not true, as Menander says, that

By every man at birth a Spirit stands,

A guide of virtue for life’s mysteries;

but rather, as Empedocles affirms, two Fates, as it were, or Spirits, receive in their care each one of us at birth and consecrate us:

Chthonia was there and far-seeing Heliopê,

And bloody Deris, grave-eyed Harmonia,

Callisto, Aeschra, Thoösa, and Denaea,

Lovely Nemertes, dark-eyed Asapheia.

16 1 The result is that since we at our birth received the mingled seeds of each of these affections, and since therefore our nature possesses much unevenness, a man of sense prays for better things, but expects the contrary as well, and, avoiding excess, deals with both conditions. For not only does “he who has least need of the morrow,” as Epicurus says, “most gladly advance to meet the morrow,” but also wealth and reputation and power and public office delight most of all those who least fear their opposites. For the violent desire for each of these implants a most violent fear that they may not remain, and so renders pleasure in them weak and unstable, like a fluttering flame. But the man whom Reason enables to say to Fortune without fear and trembling,

Welcome to me if any good thing you bring;

But if you fail, the pain is very slight,

his confidence and the absence of fear that their loss would be unbearable cause him to make most pleasant use of present advantages. For it is possible not only to admire the disposition of Anaxagoras, which made him say at the death of his son, “I knew that my son was mortal,” but also to imitate it and to apply it to every dispensation of Fortune: “I know that my wealth is temporary and insecure,” “I know that those who bestowed my magistracy can take it away,” “I know that my wife is excellent, but a woman, and that my friend is but a man, by nature an animal readily subject to change, as Plato said.” For men of such preparedness and of such disposition, if anything unwished yet not unexpected happens, disdain sentiments like these: “I never should have thought it,” or “I had hoped for other things,” or “I did not expect this,” and so do away with anything like throbbings and palpitations of the heart, and speedily restore again to quiet the madness and disturbance of their minds. Carneades, indeed, reminded us that in matters of great importance it is the unexpected that is completely and wholly the cause of grief and dejection. For example, the kingdom of Macedonia was infinitely smaller than the Roman dominion, yet when Perseus lost Macedonia, both he himself bewailed his own evil genius and every one thought that he had become the most unfortunate and ill-starred man in the world; 475 but Aemilius, his conqueror, handed over to another his supreme command of practically the whole earth and sea, yet was crowned and offered sacrifice and was esteemed fortunate — and with good reason, for he knew that he had taken a command which would have to be relinquished again, whereas Perseus lost his kingdom when he had not expected to do so. And well has the Poet taught us how strong the effect of an unexpected happening is: Odysseus, for instance, shed a tear when his dog fawned upon him, yet when he sat beside his weeping wife, gave way to no such emotion; for into the latter situation he had come with his emotion under control and fortified by reason, but he had stumbled into the former without having expected it, and suddenly.

17 1 And, to speak generally, although some of the things which happen against our will do by their very nature bring pain and distress, yet since it is through false opinion that we learn and become accustomed to be disgruntled with the greatest part of them, it is not unprofitable to have the verse of Menander ever ready against the latter:

No harm’s been done you, if you none admit

(for what, he means, if they touch neither body nor soul, are such things to you as the low birth of your father, or the adultery of your wife, or the deprivation of a crown or of front seats, since when these misfortunes are present a man is not prevented from having both body and soul in the best of condition?); and against those things which seem to pain us by their very nature, as sicknesses, anxieties, and the death of friends and children, we should have ready that famous verse of Euripides:

Alas! — Yet why alas? Our sufferings

Are but what we mortals must endure.

For no reasoning so effectively engages the emotional part of us, when it is being borne down and is slipping, as that which reminds us of the common and natural necessity to which man is exposed through his composite and corporeal nature: it is the only hold he gives to Fortune, while in his most vital and important parts he stands secure.

When Demetrius took the Megarians’ city, he asked Stilpo if any of his possessions had been plundered. And Stilpo said, “I saw no one carrying off my property.” And therefore when Fortune plunders and strips us of everything else, we have something within ourselves of the sort that

Achaeans could never harry or plunder.

Therefore we should not altogether debase and depreciate Nature in the belief that she has nothing strong, stable, and beyond the reach of Fortune, but, on the contrary, since we know that the corrupt and perishable part of man wherein he lies open to Fortune is small, and that we ourselves are masters of the better part, in which the greatest of our blessings are situated — right opinions and knowledge and the exercise of reason terminating in the acquisition of virtue, all of which have their being inalienable and indestructible — knowing all this, we should face the future undaunted and confident and say to Fortune what Socrates, when he was supposed to be replying to his accusers, was really saying to the jury, “Anytus and Meletus are able to take away my life, but they cannot hurt me.” Fortune, in fact, can encompass us with sickness, take away our possessions, slander us to people or despot; but she cannot make the good and valiant and high-souled man base or cowardly, mean, ignoble, or envious, nor can she deprive us of that disposition, the constant presence of which is of more help in facing life than is a pilot in facing the sea. For a pilot cannot calm a savage wave or a wind, nor can he find a harbour wherever he wishes at need, nor can he await the event confidently and without trembling; as long as he has not despaired, making use of his skill,

With the mainsail dropped to the lower mast

He flees from the murky sea,

476 whereas when the sea towers over him, he sits there quaking and trembling. But the disposition of the wise man yields the highest degree of calm to his bodily affections, destroying by means of self-control, temperate diet, and moderate exertion the conditions leading to disease; even if the beginning of some evil comes from without, “he rides it out with light and well-furled sail,” as Asclepiades has it, just as one passes through a storm. But if some great unforeseen disaster comes upon him and masters him, the harbour is close at hand and he may swim away from his body, as from a leaky boat.

18 1 For it is the fear of death, not the desire for life, which makes the fool dependent on his body, clinging to it as Odysseus did to the fig-tree through fear of Charybdis below,

Where breezes let him neither stay nor sail,

so that he is displeased at this and fearful of that. But he who understands somehow or other the nature of the soul and reflects that the change it undergoes at death will be for the better, or at least not for the worse, has no small provision to secure tranquillity of mind for facing life — fearlessness towards death. For he who can live pleasantly when the agreeable and congenial part of life is in the ascendant, but when alien and unnatural principles prevail, can depart fearlessly, saying,

The god himself shall free me, when I will,

what can we imagine might befall such a man as this that would vex or trouble or disturb him? For he who said, “I have anticipated you, Fortune, and taken from you every entry whereby you might get at me,” encouraged himself, not with bolts or keys or battlements, but by precepts and reasoning in which everyone who desires may share. And one must not despair or disbelieve any of these arguments, but should admire and emulate them and, being filled with their inspiration, make trial of oneself and observe oneself in smaller matters with a view to the greater, not avoiding or rejecting from the soul the care of these things, nor taking refuge in the remark, “Perhaps nothing will be more difficult than this.” For languor and flabby softness are implanted by that self-indulgence of the soul which ever occupies itself with the easiest way, and retreats from the undesirable to what is most pleasant. But the soul which endeavours, by study and the severe application of its powers of reasoning, to form an idea of what sickness, suffering, and exile really are will find much that is false and empty and corrupt in what appears to be difficult and fearful, as the reason shows in each particular.

19 1 And yet many shudder even at the verse of Menander,

No man alive may say, “I shall not suffer this,”

since they do not know how much it helps in warding off grief to be able by practice and study to look Fortune in the face with eyes open, and not to manufacture in oneself “smooth, soft” fancies, like one reared in the shade of many hopes which ever yield and hold firm against nothing. We can, however, make this reply to Menander: “True,

No man alive may say, ‘I shall not suffer this,’

yet while still alive one can say, ‘I will not do this: I will not lie nor play the villain nor defraud nor scheme.’ “ For this is in our power and is not a small, but a great help toward tranquillity of mind. Even as, on the contrary again,

My conscience, since I know I’ve done a dreadful deed,

like an ulcer in the flesh, leaves behind it in the soul regret which ever continues to wound and prick it. For the other pangs reason does away with, but regret is caused by reason itself, since the soul, together with its feeling of shame, is stung and chastised by itself. 477 For as those who shiver with ague or burn with fevers are more distressed and pained than those who suffer the same discomforts through heat or cold from a source outside the body, so the pangs which fortune brings, coming, as it were, from a source without, are lighter to bear; but that lament,

None is to blame for this but me myself,

which is chanted over one’s errors, coming as it does from within, makes the pain even heavier by reason of the disgrace one feels. And so it is that no costly house nor abundance of gold nor pride of race nor pomp of office, no grace of language, no eloquence, impart so much calm and serenity to life as does a soul free from evil acts and purposes and possessing an imperturbable and undefiled character as the source of its life, a source whence flow fair actions which have both an inspired and joyous activity joined with a lofty pride therein, and a memory sweeter and more stable than that hope of Pindar’s which sustains old age. For do not censers, as Carneades said, even if they have been completely emptied, retain their fragrance for a long time, and in the soul of the wise man do not fair actions leave behind the remembrance of them eternally delightful and fresh, by which joy in them is watered and flourishes, and he comes to despise those who bewail and abuse life as a land of calamities or a place of exile appointed here for our souls?

20 1 And I am delighted with Diogenes, who, when he saw his host in Sparta preparing which much ado for a certain festival, said, “Does not a good man consider every day a festival?” and a very splendid one, to be sure, if we are sound of mind. For the universe is a most holy temple and most worthy of a god; into it man is introduced through birth as a spectator, not of hand-made or immovable images, but of those sensible representations of knowable things that the divine mind, says Plato, has revealed, representations which have innate within themselves the beginnings of life and motion, sun and moon and stars, rivers which ever discharge fresh water, and earth which sends forth nourishment for plants and animals. Since life is a most perfect initiation into these things and a ritual celebration of them, it should be full of tranquillity and joy, and not in the manner of the vulgar, who wait for the festivals of Cronus and of Zeus and the Panathenaea and other days of the kind, at which to enjoy and refresh themselves, paying the wages of hired laughter to mimes and dancers. It is true that we sit there on those occasions decorously in reverent silence, for no one wails while he is being initiated or laments as he watches the Pythian games or as he drinks at the festival of Cronus; but by spending the greater part of life in lamentation and heaviness of heart and carking cares men shame the festivals with which the god supply us and in which he initiates us. And though men delight in sweetly sounding instruments and singing birds, and take pleasure in seeing animals romping and frisking, and, on the contrary, are displeased when they howl and bellow and look fierce; yet though they see that their own life is unsmiling and dejected and ever oppressed and afflicted by the most unpleasant experiences and troubles and unending cares, F]they not only do not provide themselves with some alleviation or ease — from what source could they do so? — but even when others urge them, they do not accept a word of admonition by following which they would acquiesce in the present without fault-finding, remember the past with thankfulness, and meet the future without fear or suspicion, with their hopes cheerful and bright.

On brotherly love   -   De fraterno amore

478 1 1 The ancient representations of the Dioscuri are called by the Spartans “beam-figures”: they consist of two parallel wooden beams joined by two other transverse beams placed across them; and this common and indivisible character of the offering appears entirely suitable to the brotherly love of these gods. In like manner do I also dedicate this treatise On Brotherly Love to you, Nigrinus and Quietus, a joint gift for you both who well deserve it. For as to the exhortations this essay contains, since you are already putting them into practice, you will seem to be giving your testimony in their favour rather than to be encouraged to perform them; and the pleasure you will take in acts which are right will make the perseverance of your judgement more firm, inasmuch as your acts will win approval before spectators, so to speak, who are honourable and devoted to virtue.

Now Aristarchus, the father of Theodectes, by way of jeering at the crowd of sophists, used to say that in the old days there were barely seven Sophists, but that in his own day an equally large number of non-sophists could not easily be found. And according to my observation, brotherly love is as rare in our day as brotherly hatred was among the men of old; when instances of such hatred appeared, they were so amazing that the times made them known to all as warning examples in tragedies and other stage-performances; but all men of to day, when they encounter brothers who are good to each other, wonder at them no less than at those famous sons of Molionê, who, according to common belief, were born with their bodies grown together; and to use in common a father’s wealth and friends and slaves is considered as incredible and portentous Das for one soul to make use of the hands and feet and eyes of two bodies.

2 1 And yet the illustration of such common use by brothers Nature has placed at no great distance from us; on the contrary, in the body itself she has contrived to make most of the necessary parts double and brothers and twins: hands, feet, eyes, ears, nostrils; and she has thus taught us that she has divided them in this fashion for mutual preservation and assistance, not for variance and strife. And when she separated the very hands into a number of unequal fingers, she supplied men with the most accurate and skilful of instruments, so that Anaxagoras of old assigned the reason for man’s wisdom and intelligence to his having hands. The contrary of this, however, seems to be true: it is not because man acquired hands that he is wisest of animals;  it is because by nature he was endowed with reason and skill that he acquired instruments of a nature adapted to these powers. And this fact is obvious to everyone: Nature from one seed and one source has created two brothers, or three, or more, not for difference and opposition to each other, but that by being separate they might the more readily co-operate with one another. For indeed creatures that had three bodies and an hundred hands, if any such were ever really born, being joined together in all their members, could do nothing independently and apart from one another, as may brothers, who can either remain at home or reside abroad, as well as undertake public office and husbandry through each other’s help if they but preserve that principle of goodwill and concord which Nature has given them. But if they do not, they will differ not at all, I think, from feet which trip up one another and fingers which are unnaturally entwined and twisted by each other. But rather, just as in the same body 479 the combination of moist and dry, cold and hot, sharing one nature and diet, by their consent and agreement engender the best and most pleasant temperament and bodily harmony — without which, they say, there is not any joy or profit either “in wealth” or

In that kingly rule which makes men

Like to gods —

but if overreaching and factious strife be engendered in them, they corrupt and destroy the animal most shamefully; so through the concord of brothers both  family and household are sound and flourish, and friends and intimates, like an harmonious choir, neither do say, nor think, anything discordant;

Even the base wins honour in a feud:

slandering servant, or a flatterer who slips in from outside, or a malignant citizen. For as diseases in bodies which cannot accept their proper diet engender cravings for many strange and harmful foods, so slander and suspicion entertained against kinsmen ushers in evil and pernicious associations which flow in from outside to fill the vacant room.

3 1 It is true that the Arcadian prophet of necessity manufactured for himself, according to Herodotus, a wooden foot, deprived as he was of his own; but the man who quarrels with his brother, and takes as his comrade a stranger from the market-place or the wrestling-floor, appears to be doing nothing but cutting off voluntary a limb of his own flesh and blood, and taking to himself and joining to his body an extraneous member. Indeed it is our very need, which welcomes and seeks friendship and comradeship, that teaches us to honor and cherish and keep our kin, since we are unable and unfitted by Nature to live friendless, unsocial, hermits’ lives. Wherefore Menander rightly says,

Not from drink or from daily revelling

Do we seek one to whom we may entrust

Our life, father. Do we not think we’ve found

Great good in but the shadow of a friend?

For most friendships are in reality shadows and imitations of that first friendship which Nature implanted in children toward parents and in brothers toward brothers; and as for the man who does not reverence or honour this friendship, can he give any pledge of goodwill to strangers? Or what sort of man is he who addresses his comrade as “brother” in salutations and letters, but does not care even to walk with his own brother when they are going the same way? For as it is the act of a madman to adorn the effigy of a brother and at the same time to beat and mutilate the brother’s body, even so to reverence and honour the name “brother” in others, but to hate and shun the person himself, is the act of one who is not sane and has never yet got it into his head that Nature is the most holy and great of sacred things.

4 1 EI remember, for instance, that in Rome I undertook to arbitrate between two brothers, of whom one had the reputation of being a philosopher. But he was, as it appears, not only as a brother but also as a philosopher, masquerading under a false name and appellation; for when I asked him to conduct himself as brother to brother and as philosopher to layman, “What you say,” said he, “as to his being a layman, is correct, but I account it no momentous or important matter to have sprung from the same loins.” “As for you,” said I, “it is obvious that you  consider it no important or momentous matter to have sprung from any loins at all.” But certainly all other philosophers, even if they do not think so, at least do affirm with constant iteration that both Nature and the Law, which upholds Nature, have assigned to parents, after gods, first and greatest honour; and there is nothing which men do that is more acceptable to gods than with goodwill and zeal to repay to those who bore them and brought them up the favours “long ago lent to them when they were young.” Nor is there, again, a greater exhibition of an impious nature than neglect of parents or offences against them. 480 Therefore, while we are forbidden to do wrong to all others, yet to our mother and father, if we do not always afford, both in deed and in word, matter for their pleasure, even if offence be not present, men consider it unholy and unlawful. Hence what deed or favour or disposition, which children may show toward their parents, can give more pleasure than steadfast goodwill and friendship toward a brother?

5 1 And surely this fact is quite easy to perceive from the contrary. For when we observe that parents are grieved by sons who maltreat a servant honoured by mother and father, and neglect plants or farm-lands in which their parents took delight, and that remissness in caring for some house-dog or horse hurts elderly persons who feel a jealous affection for them; and when, again, we observe that parents are vexed when their children disparage and hiss at concerts and spectacles and athletes all of which they themselves used to admire; when we observe these things, is it reasonable to suppose that parents are indifferent  when sons quarrel, hate and malign each other, and array themselves ever against each other’s interests and actives, and are finally ruined by each other? No one can say that the parents are indifferent. Hence when, on the other hand, brothers love and feel affection for each other, and, in so far as Nature has made them separate in their bodies, so far do they become united in their emotions and actions, and share with each other their studies and recreations and games, then they have made their brotherly love a sweet and blessed “sustainer of old age” for their parents. For no father is so fond of oratory or of honour or of riches as he is of his children; therefore fathers do not find such pleasure in seeing their sons gaining a reputation as orators, acquiring wealth, or holding office as in seeing that they love one another. So they report of Apollonis of Cyzicus, mother of King Eumenes and three other sons, Attalus and Philetaerus and Athenaeus, that she always congratulated herself and gave thanks to the gods, not because of wealth or empire, but because she saw her three sons members of the body-guard of the eldest, who passed his days without fear surrounded by brothers with swords and spears in their hands. So again, on the contrary, when Artaxerxes perceived that his son Ochus had plotted against his brothers, he despaired and died.

For cruel are the wars of brothers,

as Euripides says, and they are cruellest of all to the parents themselves. For he that hates his own brother and is angry with him cannot refrain from blaming the father that begat and the mother that bore such a brother.

6 1 So Peisistratus, marrying for a second time when his sons were full grown, said that because he considered them to be honourable and good he wished to become the father of more children like them. Excellent and just sons will not only love each other the more because of their parents, but will also love their parents the more because of each other; so will they always both think and say that, though they owe their parents gratitude for many favours, it is most of all for their brothers that they owe it, since these are truly the most precious and delightful of all the possessions they have received from them. Well indeed has Homer also depicted Telemachus as reckoning his brotherless condition a misfortune:

The son of Cronus thus has doomed our race

To have one son alone.

But Hesiod does not well in advising “an only son” to inherit his father’s estate — and that too when he was himself a pupil of the Muses, who, in fact, received this name just because they were “always together” (homou ousas) in concord and sisterly affection.

Now, as regards parents, brotherly love is of such sort that to love one’s brother is forthwith a proof of love for both mother and father; and again, as regards children, for them there is no lesson and example comparable to brotherly love on their father’s part. And, on the other hand, the contrary is a bad example for children who inherit, as from a father’s testament, his hatred of brothers. 481 For a man who has grown old in law-suits and quarrels and contentions with his brothers, and then exhorts his children to concord,

Healer of others, full of sores himself,

weakens the force of his words by his own actions. If, at any rate, Eteocles of Thebes had said with reference to his brother,

To where the sun and stars rise would I go,

And plunge beneath the earth — if this I could —

To hold Dominion, greatest of the gods,

and then had proceeded to exhort his own children,

Revere Equality, which ever binds

Friend to friend, state to state, allies unto

Allies: Nature made equal rights secure,

who would not have despised him? And what sort of man would Atreus have been, if, after serving his brother that dinner, he had then proceeded to preach to his own children:

And yet the use of friends, fast joined with ties

Of blood, alone brings help when troubles flow?

7 1 Therefore it is fitting to cleanse away completely hatred of brothers, which is both an evil sustainer of parents in their old age and a worse nurturer of children in their youth. And it is also a cause of slander and accusations against such brothers; for their fellow-citizens think that, after having been so closely bound together by their common education, their common life together, and their censorship, brothers could not have become deadly enemies unless each were aware of many wicked deeds committed by the other. There must be, they infer, great reasons for the breaking-up of a great goodwill and affection. For this reason it is not easy to effect a reconciliation of brothers; for just as things which have been joined together, even if the glue becomes loose, may be fastened together again and become united, yet if a body which has grown together is broken or split, it is difficult to find means of welding or joining it; so friendships knitted together through long familiarity, even though the friends part company, can be easily resumed again, but when brothers have once broken the bonds of Nature, they cannot readily come together, and even if they do, their reconciliation bears with it a filthy hidden sore of suspicion. Or rather, every enmity between man and man which steals into the heart in company with the most painful emotions — contentiousness, anger, envy, remembrance of wrongs — causes pain and perturbation of mind; but when that enmity is toward a brother, with whom it is necessary to share sacrifices and the family’s sacred rites, to occupy the same sepulchre, and in life, perhaps, the same or a neighbouring habitation — such an enmity keeps the painful situation ever before our eyes, and reminds us every day of the madness and folly which has made the sweetest countenance of the nearest kinsman become most frowning and angry to look upon, and that voice which has been beloved and familiar from boyhood most dreadful to hear. And though they see many other examples of brothers using the same house and table and undistributed estates and slaves, yet they alone maintain different sets of friends and guests, considering as hostile everything dear to their brothers — and that too though all the world may readily reflect that while friends and relatives by marriage may be “taken as booty,” and relatives by marriage and familiars may be “obtained” when the old ones, like arms or implements, have been lost, yet the acquisition of another brother is impossible, as is that of a new hand when one has been removed or that of a new eye when one has been knocked out; rightly, then, did the Persian woman declare, when she chose to save her brother in place of her children, that she could get other children, but not another brother, since her parents were dead.

8 1 “What then,” someone will say, “must one who has a bad brother do?” We must remember this first of all: badness can lay hold on every kind of friendship; and, according to Sophocles,

Search out most human traits: you’ll find them base.

For it is impossible to discover that our relations with  relatives or comrades or lovers are unmixed with baseness, free from passion, or pure from evil. So the Spartan, when he married a little wife, 482 said that of evils one should choose the least; but brothers one would prudently advise to put up with the evils with which they are most familiar rather than to make trial of unfamiliar ones; for the former procedure as being necessary brings no reproach, but the latter is blameworthy because voluntary. No boon-companion or comrade-in arms or guest

Is yoked in honour’s bonds not forged by man,

but he is who is of the same blood and upbringing, and born of the same father and mother. For such a kinsman it is altogether fitting to concede and allow some faults, saying to him when he errs,

“I cannot leave you in your wretchedness

and trouble and folly, lest I might, unwittingly, punish harshly and bitterly, because I hate it, some ailment instilled into you from the seed of father or mother.” For, as Theophrastus said, we must not grow to love those not of our blood and then judge them, but judge them first and love them later; but where Nature does not commit the initiative to judgement in conceiving goodwill toward another nor wait for the proverbial bushel of salt, but has begotten with the child at its birth the principle of love, in that case there should be no harsh nor strict censors of his faults. But as it is, what would you say of those who sometimes readily put up with the wrongdoings of strangers and men of no kin to themselves, men picked up at some drinking-bout or play-ground or wrestling-floor, and take pleasure in their company, yet are peevish and inexorable toward their own brothers? Why some even breed and grow fond of savage dogs and horses, and many people do so with lynxes and cats, monkeys and lions, yet cannot endure their brothers’ rages or stupidities or ambitions; still others make over their houses and property to concubines and harlots, yet fight it out in a duel with their brothers over a site for a building or a corner of property; and finally, giving the name of “hatred of evil” to their hatred of their brothers, they stalk about pompously, accusing and reviling the wickedness in their brothers; yet in others they take no offence at this same quality, but frequently resort to them and are often in their company.

9 1 Let this, then, serve as a preamble to my whole discourse. But as the starting-point of my admonitions, let us take, not the division of the father’s goods, as other writers do, but the misguided quarrels and jealousy of the children while the parents are yet alive. The ephors, when Agesilaüs used to send an ox as a mark of distinguished service to each member of the gerousia as he was appointed, fined him, alleging as their reason that by such demagogic means of gaining popular favour he was trying to acquire as his own personal followers men who belonged to the state; but one would advise a son to care for his parents, not with the design of acquiring their goodwill for himself alone or turning it away  from others to himself. It is in this way that many play the demagogue against their brothers, having a specious but unjust pretext for this rapacity; for they deprive them of the greatest and fairest of inheritances, their parents’ goodwill, by servilely and unscrupulously cutting across their brothers’ path, opportunely making their attacks when their parents are occupied and unsuspecting, and, in particular, showing themselves dutiful and obedient and prudent in those matters in which they perceive their brothers to be in error, or seeming to be so. But the right way, on the contrary, when a son sees that his father is angry with his brother, is to take his share of it and bear the brunt of it together with his brother, by such assistance making the anger lighter, and then by rendering services and favours to help somehow or other to restore his bread to his father’s grace. If there is error of omission, he can allege in the brother’s favour the absence of opportunity, or that he was engaged on some other work, or his very nature, as being more useful and more intelligent in other directions. The saying of Agamemnon also is admirable:

“Not to slackness does he yield or foolishness,

But looks to me,

and to me he has committed this duty.” And fathers are very willing to accept even the substitution of other terms 483 and to believe their sons when they call their brothers’ carelessness “simplicity,” their stupidity “straightforwardness,” and their contentiousness “inability to endure contempt”; the result is that he who acts as mediator succeeds in lessening the anger against his brother, and at the same time he increases his father’s goodwill toward himself.

10 1 Only after the erring brother has been defended in this manner should the other turn to him and rebuke him somewhat sharply, pointing out with all frankness his errors of commission and of omission. For one should neither give free rein to brothers, nor, again, should one trample on them when they are at fault (for the latter is the act of one who gloats over the sinner, the former that of one who aids and abets him), but should apply his admonition as one who cares for his brother and grieves with him. Otherwise he who has been the most zealous advocate before his parents becomes before the brother himself the most vehement of accusers.

But if a brother is guiltless when he is accused, though it is right to be subservient to parents in everything else and to endure all their wrath and displeasure, yet pleas and justifications offered to parents on behalf of a brother who is being undeservedly criticized or punished are honourable and not reprehensible; nor must one be afraid that the words of Sophocles will be addressed to him:

Most shameless son, who with his father dare

To litigate,

when one is speaking with all frankness on behalf of a brother who seems to be receiving unfair treatment. For to the parents themselves, when they are proved wrong, such a “litigation” makes defeat sweeter than victory.

11 After the father is dead, however, even more than before it is right for the brother to cling fast to his brother’s goodwill, immediately sharing his affection for the dead in tears and grief, rejecting the insinuations of servants and the calumnies of comrades who range themselves on the other side, believing all the tales about the brotherly love of the Dioscuri and in particular the one which relates that Polydeuces killed with a blow of his fist a man who whispered to him something against his brother.

And when they seek to divide their father’s goods, they should not first declare war on each other, as the majority do, and then, shouting

Hearken, Alala, daughter of War,

go out to meet each other ready armed, but they must by all means be on their guard against that day of the division, knowing that for some brothers it is the beginning of implacable enmity and strife, but for others the beginning of friendship and concord. Let them preferably assemble alone by themselves; otherwise, let there be present some common friend as a witness equally friendly to both, and then “by the lots of Justice,” as Plato says, let them, as they give and take what is suitable to each and preferred by each, be of the opinion that it is the care and administration of the estate that is being distributed, but that its use and ownership is left unassigned and undistributed for them all in common. But those who have outbidden their brothers by their shrewd calculations  and then drag away from each other nurses and slave-boys, who have been brought up with their brothers and are their familiar companions, when they go away have got the better of their brothers by the value of a slave, but have lost the greatest and most valuable part of their inheritance, a brother’s friendship and confidence.

And some we know who, even with no thought of gain, but merely from the love of contention, deal with their father’s goods with no more decency than they would with spoils taken from an enemy. Of this number were Charicles and Antiochus the Opuntians, who would not part until they had split in two a silver cup and torn apart a cloak, as though driven on by some imprecation from a tragedy to

Divide with whetted sword their heritage.

Some even relate to outsiders boastfully how by knavery and craftiness and jugglery of accounts they have got the better of their brothers in the apportionment, when they ought rather to rejoice and to pride themselves in having surpassed their brothers in fairness and generosity and compliance. 484 It is worth our while to illustrate this point by citing the case of Athenodorus, and indeed all my countrymen still speak of him. For he had an elder brother named Xenon, who, as administrator of Athenodorus’s estate, squandered a large part of his substance; at last Xenon raped a woman, was condemned in court, and lost the entire estate, made confiscate to the imperial treasury. But Athenodorus, although he was then still a beardless lad, yet when his portion of the money was restored to him, he did not neglect his brother, but put down all the money before them both and apportioned it; and even though he was being treated very unfairly in the division, he did not express indignation or change his mind, but calmly and cheerfully endured his brother’s folly, which had become notorious throughout Greece.

12 1 When Solon, speaking of principles of government, said that equality does not create sedition, he was thought to be playing too much to the crowd by introducing an arithmetical proportion, a democratic principle, instead of the sound geometrical proportion. As for a man who gives advice to brothers in the matter of a family estate after the manner of Plato’s advice to the citizens of his state, to abolish, if possible, the notion of “mine” and “not mine,” but if he cannot do this, to cherish equality and cling to it, and thus lays a fair and abiding foundation of concord and peace, let him also make use of eminent precedents, such as that reply of Pittacus to the king of Lydia who inquired if Pittacus had money: “Twice as much,” said he, “as I would wish, now that my brother is dead.” But since it is not only the getting of money and the losing of it that makes “less grow hostile to more,” but in general, as Plato says, in inequality movement is produced and in equality rest and repose; thus all manner of inequality is dangerous as likely to foster brothers’ quarrels, and though it is impossible for them to be equal and on the same footing in all respects (for on the one hand our natures at the very beginning make an unequal apportionment, and then later on our varying fortunes beget envies and jealousies, the most shameful diseases and baneful plagues, ruinous not only for private houses, but for whole states as well); against these inequalities we must be on our guard and must cure them, if they arise. One would therefore advise a brother, in the first place, to make his brothers partners in those respects in which he is considered to be superior, adorning them with a portion of his repute and adopting them into his friendships, and if he is a cleverer speaker than they, to make his eloquence available for their use as though it were no less theirs than his; in the next place, to make manifest to them neither haughtiness nor disdain, but rather, by deferring to them and conforming his character to theirs, to make his superiority secure from envy and to equalize, so far as this is attainable, the disparity of his fortune by his moderation of spirit. Lucullus, for instance, refused to hold office before his brother, older though he was, but forwent his own proper time for candidature and awaited his brother’s. And Polydeuces refused to become even a god by himself, but chose rather to become a demigod with his brother and to share his mortal portion upon the condition of yielding to Castor part of his own immortality.

“But you, fortunate man,” one might say, “are so situated that, without in the least diminishing your present blessings, you can make another an equal sharer in them and give him a portion of your adornment so that he may enjoy the radiance, as it were, of your reputation or excellence or prosperity.” Just so did Plato make his brothers famous by introducing them into the fairest of his writings, Glaucon and Adeimantus into the Republic, Antiphon the youngest into the Parmenides. 13 1 And further, just as there exist inequalities in the natures and the fortunes of brothers, so it is impossible that the one brother should excel at all points and in all ways. They say that the elements come into being from one substance, yet possess the most opposite faculties; 485 but of two brothers sprung from one mother and father, no one ever saw the one, like the wise man of the Stoics, at once handsome, gracious, liberal, eminent, rich, eloquent, learned, philanthropic, and the other ugly, graceless, illiberal, dishonoured, needy, a poor speaker, unlearned, misanthropic. Yet somehow or other there inheres, in even the more disreputable and humble creatures, some portion of grace or faculty or natural aptitude for some good thing:

As among urchin’s foot and rough rest-harrow

There grow the blossoms of soft snow-drops.

Therefore he who appears to have the better in other respects, if he does not try to curtail or conceal these points of vantage in his brother or thrust him, as though in athletic competitions, from the first places always, but yields in his turn and reveals that his brother is better and more useful in many respects, by thus continually removing all ground for envy, fuel for fire, as it were, will quench the envy, or rather will not allow it to spring up or begin at all. And he who continually makes his brother a helper and adviser in matters in which he himself is supposed to be superior, as in law-suits, being himself a barrister; in the conduct of office, himself a politician; in practical affairs, himself being fond of such — in brief, he that permits his brother to be left out of no task that is worthy of notice and would bring honour, but makes him a sharer in all honourable enterprises and employs him when present, waits for him when absent, and, in general, by showing that his brother is no less a man of affairs than himself, but merely more inclined to shrink from fame and power — he deprives himself of nothing, but adds a great deal to his brother.

14 1 Such is the advice, then, which one would give to the superior brother. The inferior brother, on the other hand, must reflect that his brother is not the only one who is richer or more learned or more famous than himself, but that he is frequently inferior to many others — ten thousand times ten thousand,

As many as enjoy the fruit of spacious earth;

whether, then, he envies every man as he walks about, or whether, among the vast number of fortunate beings, the only one that distresses him is his nearest and dearest, he has left no room for any other than to surpass him in wretchedness. Just as Metellus, therefore, thought that Romans should be grateful to the gods because so great a man as Scipio was not born in any other city, so each one of us should pray that, if possible, he himself may succeed beyond all other men, yet if this cannot be, that his brother may have that superiority and influence so coveted by himself. But some are by nature so unfortunate in matters of right conduct that they exult in famous friends and are proud if they are on terms of hospitality with commanders and men of wealth, but consider that their brothers’ brilliance obscures their own; and that while they are elated by the narration of their fathers’ successes and their great-grandfathers’ high commands, matters from which they received no benefit and in which they had no share, yet they are depressed and dejected when their brothers inherit fortunes, are elected to office, or contract marriages with famous families. And yet they should by all means envy no one; if this is impossible, they should turn their malignancy outwards and drain it off on those not of their blood, just as men do who divert sedition from the city by means of foreign wars:

Many Trojans have I and famous allies,

And many Achaeans have you —

by nature suitable objects for envy and jealousy.

15 1 But a brother should not, like the pan of a balance, incline the opposite way and be himself lowered when his brother is raised on high; but just as lesser numbers multiply greater and are multiplied by them, so should he give increase to his brother and at the same time be increased along with him by their common blessings. For it is not true of the fingers, either, that the one which writes and plays musical instruments is superior to the one which cannot, by either nature or attainment, do so, but in some manner or other they all contrive to move together and assist each other, 486 having been made unequal, as though of set purpose, and all deriving their power to grasp from the position of the others opposite the thumb, the largest and strongest of them.

In this spirit Craterus, the brother of King Antigonus, and Perilaüs, the brother of Cassander, assigned themselves to the management of their brothers’ military and domestic affairs; but men like Antiochus and Seleucus, and again Grypus and Cyzicenus, who had not learned to play parts secondary to their brothers, but yearned for the purple and the crown, infected themselves and each other with many horrors, and infected all Asia also.

But since envy and jealousy of those who surpass them in repute and honour Bare implanted by nature chiefly in men of ambitious character, to guard against these vices it is highly expedient that brothers should not seek to acquire honours or power in the same field, but in quite different fields. Wild beasts, to be sure, which depend for their food upon the same things, war against each other, and athletes who direct their efforts toward one and the same contest are rivals; whereas boxers are friendly to pancratiasts and long-distance runners are well disposed toward wrestlers, and they mutually assist and cheer for each other. This, in fact, is the reason why, of the two sons of Tyndareüs, Polydeuces won his victories in boxing and Castor in running. And Homer did well to represent Teucer as renowned in archery, while his brother was foremost among the heavy-armed:

And he covered Teucer with gleaming shield.

So, of those engaged in the service of the state, generals do not at all envy popular leaders; nor, among those occupied with the art of speaking, do barristers envy teachers of rhetoric; nor, among physicians, do dieticians envy surgeons; but they even call each other into consultation and commend one another. For brothers to seek eminence and repute from the same art or faculty is precisely the same as for both to fall in love with one woman and each seek to outstrip the other in her esteem. Those, indeed, who travel different roads afford each other no help, but those who follow different modes of life both strive to avoid envy and are of greater service to each other, as were Demosthenes and Chares, and again Aeschines and Eubulus, Hypereides and Leosthenes, of whom the former in each pair harangued the people and drew up laws, the latter commanded armies and translated words into action. Therefore those who cannot, by their very nature, share without envy their brothers’ reputation and influence, should divert as far as possible from those of their brothers their own desires and ambitions, so that by their successes they may give pleasure to each other instead of pain.

16 1 But, over and above these considerations, we should be on our guard against the pernicious talk of relatives, of members of our household, and sometimes even of a wife who joins in the rest in challenging our ambition by saying: “Your brother carries all before him and is admired and courted, but you are not visited by anybody and enjoy no distinction at all.” “Not so,” a sensible man would reply, “I have a brother who is highly esteemed, and most of his influence is mine to share.” Socrates, for instance, remarked that he would rather have Darius than a daric as a friend, and for a brother who has good sense it is no less an advantage than the possession of wealth, high office, or eloquence, to have a brother who has attained to fame by virtue of office or wealth or eloquence.

But although these means are the best for smoothing away such inequalities, yet there are the other differences which naturally arise among brothers who lack the proper training, differences due to disparity in their ages. For, generally speaking, elder brothers, when they claim the right always to dominate and to have precedence over the younger and to have the advantage in every matter where reputation and influence are involved, are oppressive and disagreeable; and younger brothers, in turn, being restive under the curb and becoming fractious, make it their practice to despise and belittle the elder. The result is that while the younger, feeling that they are being treated despitefully and are discriminated against, resent and try to avoid their elders’ admonitions, 487 the elder, ever clinging fast to their superiority, fear their brothers’ augmentation as though it meant elimination for themselves. Just as, then, we think it right that those who receive a favour should look upon it as of greater, and those who bestow it as of lesser value, so, in regard to a difference in ages, if we advise the elder to regard it as no great matter and the younger to think it no slight thing, we should rid the one of arrogance and neglect, and the other of disdain and contempt. And since it is fitting that the older should be solicitous about the younger and should lead and admonish him, and that the younger should honour and emulate and follow the older, let the solicitude of the former be rather that of a comrade than of a father, and of one who would persuade rather than command, and would rejoice in a brother’s successes and applaud them rather than criticize him if he errs and restrain him — a spirit showing not only a greater desire to help, but also more kindness of heart. And in the emulation of the younger let imitation, not rivalry, be present; for imitation is the act of one who admires, but rivalry of one who envies. It is for this reason that men love those who wish to become like themselves, but repress and crush those who wish to become their equals. And among the many honours which it is fitting that young render to their elders, obedience is most highly esteemed, and, together with respectfulness, brings about a staunch goodwill and favour which will in turn lead to concessions. Thus it was with Cato: he so won over his elder brother Caepio by obedience and gentleness and silence from his earliest childhood that finally, by the time they both were men, he had so subdued him and filled him with so great a respect for himself that Caepio would neither do not say anything without Cato’s knowledge. For example, it is said that on one occasion, when Caepio had affixed his seal to a deposition and Cato came up later and was unwilling to add his own seal, Caepio demanded that the document be returned and removed his seal before asking the reason why his brother had suspected the deposition instead of believing it to be true. In the case of Epicurus also his brothers’ respect for him was clearly great because of the goodwill and solicitude he had for them, inspired as they were with admiration both for his other attainments and especially for his philosophy. For even if they were mistaken in their opinion, yet since they were convinced and constantly declared from their earliest childhood that there was no one wiser than Epicurus, we may well admire both the man who inspired this devotion and also those who felt it. However, of the more recent philosophers, Apollonius the Peripatetic, by making Sotion, his younger brother, more famous than himself, refuted the man who asserted that fame could not be shared with another. And for myself, though I have received from Fortune many favours which call for gratitude, that my brother Timon’s affection for me has always transcended and still transcends all the rest, no one is unaware who has ever had any dealings whatever with me, and least of all you, my familiar friends.

17 1 Furthermore, there are other disturbances which brothers of nearly the same age must guard against; they are but small, to be sure, yet continuous and frequent, and create a vicious practice of exasperating one another on all occasions, which at last ends in incurable hatred and malevolence. For having once begun to differ in childish matters, about the care of animals and their fights, as, for instance, those of quails or cocks, they then continue to differ about the contests of boys in the palaestra, of dogs on the hunt, and of horses at the races, until they are no longer able to control or subdue their contentious and ambitious spirit in more important matters. So the most powerful of the Greeks in my time, disagreeing first about rival dancers, then about harp-players, and afterwards by continually holding up to invidious comparison the swimming-baths and porticoes and banquet-halls at Aedepsus, and then manoeuvring for places and positions, and going on to cut off aqueducts and divert their waters, 488 they became so savage and reckless that they were deprived of everything by the despot, and, becoming exiles and paupers and — I had almost said — something other than their former selves, they remained the same only in their hatred for one another. It is therefore of no slight importance to resist the spirit of contentiousness and jealousy among brothers when it first creeps in over trivial matters, practising the art of making mutual concessions, of learning to take defeat, and of taking pleasure in indulging brothers rather than in winning victories over them. For the men of old gave the name of “Cadmean victory” to no other than that of the brothers at Thebes, as being the most shameful and the worst of victories.

What then? Do not practical affairs bring many occasions for controversy and dissension even to those who have the reputation of being an equitable and gentle disposition? Yes, certainly. But there also we must see to it that the affairs fight the battle quite by themselves, without our inserting into the contest, like a hook, as it were, any emotion arising from contentiousness or anger; but, keeping our eyes fixed impartially upon the swaying of Justice, as though we were watching a pair of balances, we should with all speed turn over the matter in dispute to the decision of a jury or of arbitrators, and cleanse its filth away before, like a dye or stain, it sinks into the fabric and its colours become fast and hard to wash out. We should next pattern ourselves after the Pythagoreans, who, though related not at all by birth, yet sharing a common discipline, Cif ever they were led by anger into recrimination, never let the sun go down before they joined right hands, embraced each other, and were reconciled. For just as it is nothing alarming if a fever attends a swelling in the groin, but if the fever persists when the swelling is gone, it is thought to be a malady and to have a deeper origin: so when the dissension of brothers ceases after the matter in dispute is settled, the dissension was caused by the matter; but if it remains, the matter was but a pretext and contained some malignant and festering reason.

18 1 It is worth our while to inquire into a dispute of brothers who were not Greeks, which arose, not about a little patch of land, nor over slaves or flocks, but about the empire of Persia. For when Darius died, some thought it right that Ariamenes should be kind, being the eldest of his children; but others chose Xerxes, as being the child of Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, and born to Darius after he had come to the throne. Now Ariamenes came indeed from the country of the Medes in no hostile manner, but quietly, as though to a court of justice; and Xerxes was present and performing the functions of a king. But when his brother came, putting aside the diadem and pressing down the crest of his tiara, which reigning kings wear erect, he went to meet Ariamenes and embraced him, and, sending gifts, he bade the bearers say, “With these your brother Xerxes honours you now; but if he shall be proclaimed king by judgement and vote of the Persians, he grants to you the right of being second after himself.” And Ariamenes said, “I accept the gifts, yet I believe the kingdom of the Persians to be mine by right. But I shall guard for my brothers their honour after my own, and for Xerxes as the first of my brothers.” And when the day of judgement came, the Persians appointed as judge Artabanus, the brother of Darius; but Xerxes sought to evade their decision that the judgement should be made by Artabanus, since he put his faith in the people. But Atossa, his mother, chided him: “Why, my son, do you try to evade Artabanus, who is your uncle and the best of the Persians? Why do you so fear this contest in which even the second place is honourable — to be adjudged brother to the king of Persia?” Xerxes was therefore persuaded and when the pleas were made, Artabanus declared that the kingdom belonged by right to Xerxes; and Ariamenes at once leapt up and did obeisance to his brother and taking him by the hand set him upon the kingly throne. From that time forth Ariamenes was highest in honour with Xerxes and showed himself of such loyalty toward the king that he fell in the sea-fight at Salamis performing deeds of valour for his brother’s glory. 489 Let this, then, be set forth as a pure and blameless model of goodwill and high-mindedness.

But Antiochus might be condemned because of his lust for dominion, yet admired because his love for his brother was not altogether extinguished thereby. For he went to war against Seleucus for the kingdom, though he was the younger brother and had the aid of his mother. But when the war was at its height, Seleucus joined battle with the Galatians and was defeated; he disappeared and was thought to be dead, since practically all his army had been cut to pieces by the barbarians. So when Antiochus learned this, he laid aside his purple and put on a dark robe, Band, shutting the gates of the palace, went into mourning for his brother. But a little later, when he heard that his brother was safe and was again collecting another army, he came forth and sacrificed to the gods, and made proclamation to the cities over which he ruled that they should sacrifice and wear garlands of rejoicing.

The Athenians, though they absurdly invented the tale of the strife of the gods, yet inserted in it no slight correction of its absurdity, for they always omit the second day of Boedromion, thinking that on that day occurred Poseidon’s quarrel with Athena. What, then, prevents us also from treating the day on which we have quarrelled with any of our family or relatives as one to be consigned to oblivion, and counting it one of the unlucky days, instead of forgetting because of one day the many good days in which we grew up and lived together? For either it is in vain and to no avail that Nature has given us gentleness and forbearance, the child of restraint, or we should make the utmost use of our virtues in our relations with our family and relatives. And our asking and receiving forgiveness for our own errors reveals goodwill and affection quite as much as granting it to others when they err. For this reason we should neither overlook the anger of others, nor be stubborn with them when they ask forgiveness, but, on the contrary, should try to forestall their anger, when we ourselves are time and again at fault, by begging forgiveness, and again, when we have been wronged, in our turn should forestall their request for forgiveness by granting it before being asked.

Eucleides, the Socratic, is famous in the schools because, when he heard an inconsiderate and brutal speech from his brother who said, “May I be damned if I don’t get even with you,” he replied, “And so will I, if I don’t persuade you to stop your anger and love me as you used to do.”

But in the case of King Eumenes it was not a mere word, but a deed, which revealed a gentleness that no one could surpass. For Perseus, the king of Macedonia, who was his enemy, procured men to kill him. These men set an ambush near Delphi, Eobserving that he was coming on foot from the sea to the temple of the god. They came behind him and hurled great stones down upon his head and neck; these made him dizzy and he fell down and was thought to be dead. A report of his death spread far and wide, and some of his friends and servants came back to Pergamum, and were thought to bring their report as actual eye-witnesses of the calamity. Attalus, therefore, the eldest of the king’s brothers, an honourable man and more loyal to Eumenes than any of the others, not only took the crown and was proclaimed king, but also married his brother’s wife, Stratonicê, and had intercourse with her. But when the news came that Eumenes was alive, and he himself was approaching, Attalus laid aside the crown, took his spears, as had been his custom before, and went with the other guardsmen to meet the king. And Eumenes not only cordially clasped his hand, but also embraced the queen, showing her honour and friendliness; and living a considerable time after his return, without giving a hint of blame or suspicion, he died, leaving to Attalus both his kingdom and his wife. And what did Attalus? When Eumenes was dead, he was unwilling to acknowledge as his own any of the children his wife had borne him, though they were many, 490 but brought up and educated his brother’s son and in his own life-time placed the crown upon his head and saluted him as king.

But Cambyses, frightened by a dream into the belief that his brother would be king of Asia, killed him without waiting for any evidence or proof. For this reason, when Cambyses died, the throne passed from the line of Cyrus and the kingship was gained by the family of Darius, a man who knew how to give, not only to brothers, but also to friends, participation in affairs of state and in power.

19 1 Then this further matter must be borne in mind and guarded against when differences arise among brothers: we must be careful especially at such times to associate familiarly with our brothers’ friends, but avoid and shun all intimacy with their enemies, imitating in this point, at least, the practice of Cretans, who, though they often quarreled with and warred against each other, made up their differences and united when outside enemies attacked; and this it was which they called “syncretism.” For some there are, fluid as water, who, seeping through those who relax their hold and disagree, overthrow affinities and friendships, hating indeed both sides, but attacking the one which yields more readily because of its weakness. For while it is true that when a man is in love his young and guileless friends share his love, Cit is also true that the most ill-disposed of enemies make a show of sharing the indignation and wrath of one who is angered and at variance with his brother. As, then, Aesop’s hen said to the cat who inquired, with pretended solicitude, of the sick bird “How are you?” “Very well, if you keep away”; so one would say to the sort of person who brings up the subject of the quarrel and makes inquiries and tries to dig up some secrets, “But I shall have no trouble with my brother if neither I nor he pay attention to slanderers.” But as it is — I do not know the reason — although when we suffer from sore eyes, we think it proper to turn our gaze to colours and objects which do not beat against or offend the sight, Dyet when we are in the midst of fault-finding and bursts of anger and suspicion toward our brothers, we enjoy the company of those who cause the disturbance and we take on from them a false colouring, when it would be wise to run away from our enemies and ill-wishers and avoid their notice, and to associate and spend our days almost entirely with relatives and intimates and friends of our brothers, visiting their wives also and frankly telling them our reasons for complaint. And yet there is a saying that brothers walking together should not let a stone come between them, and some people are troubled if a dog runs between brothers, and are afraid of many such signs, not one of which ever ruptured the concord of brothers; yet they do not perceive what they are doing when they allow snarling and slanderous men to come between them and cause them to stumble.

20 1 And so the saying of Theophrastus, — its relevance is suggested by our very subject — is excellent: “If the possessions of friends are common, then by all means the friends of friends should be common”; and one should urge this advice upon brothers with special emphasis. For associations and intimacies which are maintained separately and apart lead brothers away from each other and turn them toward others, since an immediate consequence of affection for others is to take pleasure in others, to emulate others, and to follow the lead of others. For friendships shape character and there is no more important indication of a difference in character than the selection of different friends. For this reason neither eating and drinking together nor playing and spending the day together can so firmly cement concord between brothers as the sharing of friendships and enmities, taking pleasure in the company of the same persons, and loathing and avoiding the same. For friendships held in common do not tolerate either slanders or conflicts, but if any occasion for wrath or blame arises, it is dissipated by the mediation of friends, who take it upon themselves and disperse it, if they are but intimate with both parties and incline in their goodwill to both alike. 491 For as tin joins together broken bronze and solders it by being applied to both ends, since it is of a material sympathetic to both, so should the friend, well-suited as he is to both and being theirs in common, join still closer their mutual goodwill; but those who are uneven and will not blend, like false notes of a scale in music, create discord, not harmony. One may, then, be in doubt as to whether Hesiod was right or not in saying,

Nor should one make a friend a brother’s peer.

For that man who is a considerate and a common friend to both brothers, as we have described him, compounded as he is of the natures of both, will the more readily be a bond of brotherly love between them. But Hesiod, it is likely, was afraid of the common run of friends who are evil because of their jealous and selfish natures.

But even if we feel an equal affection for a friend, we should always be careful to reserve for a brother the first place in public offices and administration, and in invitations and introductions to distinguished men, and, in general, whenever we deal with occasions which in the eyes of the public give distinction and tend to confer honour, rendering thus to Nature the appropriate dignity and prerogative. For undue precedence in such matters is not so grand a thing for the friend, as the slight is shameful and degrading for a brother.

But concerning this subject my opinions have been expressed more fully elsewhere. However, that verse of Menander, which is quite true,

No one that loves will gladly bear neglect,

reminds and teaches us to be considerate of our brothers and not, through trust in Nature’s influence, to slight them. It is true that a horse is by nature fond of man and a dog fond of his master, but if they do not meet with the proper tending or care, they grow estranged and alienated; and though the body is very closely related to the soul, yet if it is neglected and overlooked by the soul, it becomes unwilling to co-operate and even harms and abandons the soul’s activities.

21 1 But while care for brothers themselves is an excellent thing, yet even more excellent is it to show oneself always well-disposed and obliging in all matters to brothers’ fathers-in law and brothers-in law, to salute and treat kindly such of their servants as are loyal to their masters, and to be grateful to physicians who have restored brothers to health and to such faithful friends as have rendered zealous and efficient service to them in sharing the hardships of some journey abroad or military expedition. But a brother’s wife should be esteemed and reverenced as the most holy of all sacred things; if her husband honours her, we should applaud him; if he neglects her, we should sympathize with her annoyance; when she grows angry, soothe her; if she commits some trifling fault, take part in urging her husband to a reconciliation; and if some private difference arise between yourself and your brother, bring your complaints to her and so do away with the reasons for complaint. But above all we should be troubled at a brother’s unmarried and childless state, and by exhortation and raillery take part in pressing him on every side into marriage and in getting him well fastened in the bonds of lawful matrimony. And when he gets children, we should make even more manifest our affection for him and the honour we pay to his wife; and to their children let us be as well-disposed as toward our own, but even more gentle and tender, so that when they err, as children will, they may not run away or, through fear of father or mother, enter into association with knaves or sluggards, but may have recourse and refuge which at once admonishes in a kindly way and intercedes for their offence. It was in this way that Plato reclaimed his nephew Speusippus from great self-indulgence and debauchery, not by either saying or doing to him anything that would cause him pain, but when the young man was avoiding his parents, who were always showing him to be in the wrong and upbraiding him, Plato showed himself friendly and free from anger to Speusippus 492 and so brought about in him great respect and admiration for Plato himself and for philosophy. Yet many of Plato’s friends used to rebuke him for not admonishing the youth, but Plato would say that he was indeed admonishing him: by his own, the philosopher’s, manner of life, showing him a way to distinguish the difference between what is shameful and what is honourable.

So Aleuas the Thessalian, who was an arrogant and insolent youth, was kept down and treated harshly by his father; but his uncle received him and attached him to himself, and when the Thessalians sent to the god at Delphi lots to determine who should be king, the uncle, without the father’s knowledge, slipped in a lot for Aleuas. When the Pythian priestess drew the lot of Aleuas, his father denied that he had put in one for him, and to everyone it appeared that there had been some error in the recording of names. Set out they sent again and questioned the god a second time; and the prophetic priestess, as though to confirm fully her former declaration, answered:

It is the red-haired man I mean,

The child whom Archedicê bore.

And in this manner Aleuas was proclaimed king by the god through the help of his father’s brother, and himself surpassed by far his predecessors and advanced his race to great fame and power.

And indeed it is an uncle’s duty to rejoice and take pride in the fair deeds and honours and offices of a brother’s sons and to help to give them an incentive to honourable achievement, and, when they succeed, to praise them without stint; for it is, perhaps, offensive to praise one’s own son, yet to praise a brother’s is a noble thing, not inspired by selfishness, but honourable and truly divine; for it seems to me that the very name admirably points the way to goodwill and affection for nephews. And one must also strive to emulate the deeds of those beings who are superior to man. So Heracles, though he begat sixty-eight sons, loved his nephew no less than any of them, and even to this day in many places Iolaüs has an altar in common with Heracles and men pray to them together, calling Iolaüs Heracles’ assistant. And when his brother Iphicles fell at the battle in Lacedaemon, Heracles was filled with great grief and retired from the entire Peloponnesus. And Leucothea, also, when her sister died, brought up her child and helped to have him consecrated together with herself as a god; whence it is that the women of Rome in the festival of Leucothea, whom they call Matuta, take in their arms and honour, not their own, but their sisters’ children.

On affection for offspring

493 1 1 Trials of cases on appeal before special arbitrators and the carrying of cases before foreign courts were first devised by the Greeks by reason of their mutual distrusts, since they had need of the justice supplied by others than themselves, like any other non-indigenous necessity. Is it thus, then, that philosophers also, because of their disagreements with each other, refer some of their questions to the nature of irrational animals, as though to a foreign city, and submit the decision to the emotions and character and habits of these creatures as to a court that cannot be influenced or bribed? Or is this also a common charge against human depravity — that, being in doubt about the most necessary and important things, we seek among horses and dogs and birds how we ourselves should marry and beget and bring up children (as though we had no plain indication of Nature in ourselves); and that we term the traits which brute beasts have “characters” and “emotions,” and accuse our life of a great deviation and departure from Nature, confused and disordered as we are at the very beginning concerning even the first principles? For in dumb animals Nature preserves their special characteristics pure and unmixed and simple, but in men, through reason and habit, they have been modified by many opinions and adventitious judgements so that they have lost their proper form and have acquired a pleasing variety comparable to the variety of perfumes made by the pharmacist on the basis of a single oil. And let us not wonder if irrational animals follow Nature more closely than rational ones; for animals are, in fact, outdone in this by plants, to which Nature has given neither imagination nor impulse, nor desire for something different, which causes men to shake themselves free from what Nature desires; but plants, as though they were fastened in chains, remain in the power of Nature, always traversing the one path along with Nature leads them. Yet in wild beasts versatility of reasoning and uncommon cleverness and excessive love of freedom are not too highly developed; and though they have irrational impulses and desires and often wander about on circuitous paths, they do not go far afield, but ride, as it were, at the anchor provided by Nature, who points out to them the straight way, as to an ass which proceeds under bit and bridle. But in man ungoverned reason is absolute master, and, discovering now one way of deviation and innovation and now another, has left no clear or certain vestige of Nature visible.

2 1 Observe to what extent there exists in animals conformity to nature in regard to their marriages. In the first place, they do not wait for laws against celibacy or late wedlock, as did the citizens of Lycurgus and Solon, nor fear loss of civil rights because of childlessness, nor pursue the honours of the ius trium liberorum, as many Romans do when they marry and beget children, not that they may have heirs, but that they may inherit. In the next place, the male does not consort with the female during all seasons, for the end and aim is not pleasure, but procreation and the begetting of offspring; Ftherefore it is in the season of spring, which has procreative breezes and a temperature suitable to intercourse, that the female, rendered submissive and desirable, comes to consort with the male, exulting, as she does, in the pleasing odour of her flesh and the peculiar adornment of her body, and filled with dew and clean grass; 494 but when she perceives that she is pregnant and sated, she modestly retires and takes thought for the birth and safety of her offspring. But it is impossible to recount the procedure in a manner worthy of the subject, except to say that each of the pair is as one in their affection for their offspring, in their forethought, their endurance, and their self-control. Further, though we call the bee wise and believe that it

Makes the yellow honey its care,

flattering the saccharine quality of its sweetness which tickles our palates, yet we overlook the wisdom and artifice of the other creatures which is manifested in the bearing and the nurture of offspring. As, for example, the king-fisher after conception makes her nest by gathering the thorns of the sea-needle and interweaving and joining them together, and makes it round and oblong in form, like a fisherman’s creel; and, packing the thorns closely together with the most exact jointure and density, submits it to the dashing of the waves so that, being gradually beaten upon and riveted together, the hard-packed surface may become water-proof; and it does become hard to divide with iron or stone. And what is more wonderful, the mouth of the nest is so exactly fitted to the size and measure of the king-fisher that no other creature, either larger or smaller, may enter, and, so they say, that it will not admit even the most minute drops of sea-water.

And sea-dogs are a very good example, for they bring forth their young alive within their bodies, but permit their offspring to emerge and forage, and then take them back again and enfold them in their vitals and let them sleep there.

And the she-bear, the most savage and sullen of beasts, brings forth her young formless and without visible joints, and with her tongue, as with a tool, she moulds into shape their skin; and thus she is thought, not only to bear, but to fashion her cub.

And in Homer the lion —

Whom hunters meet leading his young within

A wood; he glares with valour and draws down

His eye-lids till they hide his eyes —

does he look like a beast that has any notion of making terms with the hunters for his children’s lives? For, in general, the love of animals for their children makes the timid bold, the lazy energetic, the voracious sparing; like the bird in Homer which brings to her nestlings

Whatever morsels she can catch, though she

Fares ill herself,

for she feeds her young at the cost of her own hunger, and, though she has laid hold of food for her belly, she withholds it and presses it tightly with her beak, lest she gulp it down unawares; or

As a bitch bestrides her tender pup, and barks

At one she does not know, and longs to fight,

acquiring, as it were, a second courage in her fear for her young.

And partridges, when, accompanied by their young, they are being pursued, allow the fledglings to fly ahead and attempt to escape, and contrive to fix the hunter’s attention on themselves by wheeling close and, when they are almost captured, fly off and away, then again remain at rest and place themselves within the reach of the hunter’s hope, until, by so exposing themselves to danger for their nestlings’ safety, they have led on the hunters to a considerable distance.

And we have before our eyes every day the manner in which hens care for their brood, drooping their wings for some to creep under, and receiving with joyous and affectionate clucks others that mount upon their backs or run up to them from every direction; and though they flee from dogs and snakes if they are frightened only for themselves, if their fright is for their children, they stand their ground and fight it out beyond their strength.

Are we, then, to believe that Nature has implanted these emotions in these creatures because she is solicitous for the offspring of hens and dogs and bears, and not, rather, because she is striving to make us ashamed and to wound us, when we reflect that these instances are examples to those of us who would follow the lead of Nature, 495 but to those who are callous, as rebukes for their insensibility, by citing which they disparage human nature as being the only kind that has no disinterested affection and that does not know how to love without prospect of gain? In our theatres, indeed, people applaud the verse of the poet who said,

What man will love his fellow-man for pay?

And yet, according to Epicurus, it is for pay that a father loves his son, a mother her child, children their parents; but if beasts come to understand speech and someone should bring together to a common theatre horses and cows and dogs and birds and should revise this speech and say, “Dogs do not love their pups, nor horses their colts, nor birds their nestlings, for pay, but gratuitously and naturally,” it would be recognized by the emotions of them all that this was well and truly spoken. For it is shameful — great Heaven! — that the begetting and the pains and travail and the nurture of beasts should be “Nature” and “a free gift,” but that those of men should be loans and wages and caution-money, all given on condition of a return!

3 1 But such a statement is neither true nor worth the hearing. For just as in uncultivated plants, such as wild vines and figs and olives, Nature has implanted the principles, though crude and imperfect, of cultivated fruits, so on irrational animals she has bestowed a love of offspring, though imperfect and insufficient as regards the sense of justice and one which does not advance beyond utility; but in the case of man, a rational and social animal, Nature, by introducing him to a conception of justice and law and to the worship of the gods and to the founding of cities and to human kindness, has furnished noble and beautiful and fruitful seeds of all these in the joy we have in our children and our love of them, emotions which accompany their first beginnings; and these qualities are found in the very constitution of their bodies. For although Nature is everywhere exact and workmanlike with no deficiency or superfluity, “and has,” as Erasistratus said, “no trumpery about her”; yet when it comes to the processes of procreation, it is impossible to describe them in a fitting manner, and perhaps it would not be decent to fix our attention too precisely upon the names and designations of these forbidden topics, but it is proper that we should apprehend the admirable adaptation of those hidden and concealed parts to the functions of procreation and bringing to birth. However, the production and administering of milk is sufficient proof of Nature’s foresight and care. For in women the amount of blood exceeds the use for it because of the sluggishness and paucity of their breath and, coming to the surface, wanders at large and burdens them; at other times it is Nature’s custom and care to discharge the blood at monthly periods by opening canals and channels for it, to lighten and cleanse the rest of the body and in season to render the womb fertile ground for ploughing, as it were, and sowing. But when the womb receives the seed as it encounters it and enfolds it and it has taken root there (“for the umbilical cord grows at first in the womb,” as Democritus says, “as an anchorage against the swell and drift, a cable and vine” for the fruit now conceived that is to be), Nature shuts the monthly canals of purification and, taking the drifting blood, uses it for nourishment and irrigates the embryo, which already is beginning to be formed and shaped, until, having been carried the number of months proper to its growth within the womb, it needs other nourishment and abiding-place. At that time, then, Nature, more carefully than any gardener or irrigator, turns and changes the blood from one use to another and has in readiness subterranean springs, as it were, of a fresh-flowing stream; and the springs receive the blood in no perfunctory or unemotional manner, 496 but are even able, by the gentle heat and soft womanliness of respiration, to digest, mollify, and change it; for such a disposition and temper does the breast have within it. Yet there are no outflowing streams of milk nor spouts which discharge it all at once, but the breast terminates in flesh that is full of springs and can filter the milk gently through minute passage-ways; and it thus gives a store of food that is comfortable for the infant’s mouth and pleasant for it to touch and to grasp.

But there would be no benefit in these many kinds of equipment for procreation, or in such ways and means, such zeal and forethought, if Nature had not implanted in mothers affection and care for their offspring.

There is nothing more wretched than a man,

Of all that breathes and creeps upon the earth —

the poet tells no falsehood if it is about a new-born babe that he speaks. For there is nothing so imperfect, so helpless, so naked, so shapeless, so foul, as man observed at birth, to whom alone, one might almost say, Nature has given not even a clean passage to the light; but, defiled with blood and covered with filth and resembling more one just slain than one just born, he is an object for none to touch or lift up or kiss or embrace except for someone who loves with a natural affection. Therefore, while the other animals have their dugs hanging loose beneath the belly, in women they grow above on the breast where mothers can kiss and embrace and fondle the infant, the inference being that the end and aim of bearing and rearing a child is not utility, but affection.

4 1 Carry the discussion back to primitive mankind, to those whose women were the first to bear, and whose men were the first to see a child born; they had neither any law which bade them rear their children, nor any expectation of gratitude or of receiving the wages of maintenance “lent to their children when they were young.” Nay, I should rather be inclined to affirm that these mothers were hostile and malicious toward their children, since great dangers and travail had come to them from child-birth:

As when a sharp pang pierces a woman in labour,

A pang which the Eileithyiae of child-bed send,

The daughters of Hera, who bring the bitter pangs —

These lines, women tell us, were written, not by Homer, but by an Homerid after child-birth or while she was still in the throes of it and had the pain of travail, alike bitter and sharp, actually present in her entrails. But even then the affection for offspring implanted by Nature would bend and lead the mother: still hot and suffering and shaken with her pangs, she did not neglect or avoid her child, but turned to it and smiled at it and took it up and kissed it, though she reaped nothing sweet or profitable therefrom, but received it with pain and suffering, and “with tatters” of swaddling-clothes

Thus warming and caressing it, both night

And day she passes in alternate toil.

For what pay or advantage were these services performed by those ancient parents? Nor is there any for those of our day, since their expectations are uncertain and far off. He that plants a vineyard in the vernal equinox gathers the grapes in the autumnal; he that sows wheat when the Pleiades set reaps it when they rise; cattle and horses and birds bring forth young among other things ready for use; but as for man, his rearing is full of trouble, his growth is slow, his attainment of excellence is far distant and most fathers die before it comes. Neocles did not live to see the Salamis of Themistocles nor Miltiades the Eurymedon of Cimon; nor did Xanthippus ever hear Pericles harangue the people, nor did Ariston hear Plato expound philosophy; nor did the fathers of Euripides and Sophocles come to know their sons’s victories; they but heard them lisping and learning to speak and witnessed their revellings and drinking bouts and love-affairs, as they indulged in such follies as young men commit; 497 so that of all Evenus wrote the only line that is praised or remembered is

For fathers a child is always fear or pain.

Yet none the less fathers do not cease rearing children and, most of all, those who least need them. For it is ridiculous if anyone thinks that the rich sacrifice and rejoice when sons are born to them because they will have someone to support them and bury them — unless, by Heaven, it is for lack of heirs that they bring up children, since it is impossible to find or happen upon anyone willing to accept another’s property!

Not sand or dust or feathers of birds of varied note

Could heap up so great a number

as is the number of those seeking inheritances.

The sire of fifty daughters, Danaüs;

but if he had been childless, he would have had more heirs, and heirs unlike his own. For sons feel no gratitude, nor, for the sake of inheriting, do they pay court or show honour, knowing that they receive the inheritance as their due. But you hear the words of strangers clustering around the childless man, like those famous verses of the Poet,

O Demos, judge one case, then to your bath:

Gorge, guzzle, stuff, and take three obols’ pay.

And the remark of Euripides,

Money it is that finds out friends for men

And holds the greatest power among mankind,

is not a simple and general truth, but applies to the childless: it is these whom rich men feast, whom great men court, for these alone do advocates plead gratis.

A rich man with an unknown heir’s a power.

Many, at any rate, who had many friends and much honour, the birth of one child has made friendless and powerless. Therefore not even toward the acquisition of power is there any aid to be derived from children, but the whole force of Nature exists no less in man than in beasts.

5 1 Now both this and many other excellences are obscured by vice, as a thicket springs up beside seeds planted in a garden. Or are we to say that man has no natural love for himself just because many men cut their throats or hurl themselves from precipices? And Oedipus

Smote his eyes with a brooch and at each blow

The bloody eye-balls wet his beard;

and Hegesias by the eloquence of his reasoning persuaded many of his hearers to starve themselves to death.

In many a guise the gods appear.

But these are like those diseases and morbid states of the soul which drive men from their natural condition, as they themselves testify against themselves. For if a sow tears to pieces her suckling pig, or a bitch her puppy, men grow despondent and disturbed and offer to the gods sacrifices to avert the evil, and consider it a portent on the ground that Nature prescribes to all creatures that they should love and rear their offspring, not destroy them. Moreover, as in mines the gold, though mingled and covered with much earth, yet gleams through, so Nature, even in characters and passions which are themselves perverted, reveals their love for their offspring. For when poor men do not rear their children it is because they fear that if they are educated less well than is befitting they will become servile and boorish and destitute of all the virtues; since they consider poverty the worst of evils, they cannot endure to let their children share it with them, as though it were a kind of disease, serious and grievous. . . .

Whether vice is sufficient to cause unhappiness

498 1 1   . . . . He will not submit to (such a marriage)

His body bartered for the dower’s sake,

as Euripides says; but he has only a slight and precarious reason for being envied. For this man (it were better) to make his journey, not “through heaps of hot cinders,” but “through a royal conflagration,” as it were, and surrounded by flames, panting and full of terror and drenched with sweat, and so to perish, though (his mother) had offered to him such a wealth as Tantalus had, which he was too busy to enjoy. For while that Sicyonian horse-breeder was a wise man, who gave to the king of the Achaeans, Agamemnon, a swift mare as a gift,

That he might not follow him to wind-swept Troy,

But stay at home and take his pleasure,

surrendering himself to the enjoyment of deep riches and to unmolested ease; yet modern courtiers who are looked upon as men of affairs, though no one summons them, of their own accord push their way headlong into courts and official escorts and toilsome bivouacs that they may get a horse or a brooch or some such piece of good fortune.

His wife, rending both cheeks, was left behind

In Phylacê, and his half-finished home,

while he himself is swept about and wanders afar, worn out by one hope after another and constantly insulted; and even if he obtains any of his desires, yet, whirled about and made giddy by Fortune’s rope-dance, he seeks to make his descent and considers happy those who live in obscurity and safety, whereas they so regard him as they look up at him soaring above their heads.

2 1   Vice makes all men completely miserable, since as a creator of unhappiness it is clothed with absolute power, for it has no need of either instruments or ministers. But whereas despots, when they desire to make miserable those whom they punish, maintain executioners and torturers, or devise branding-irons and wedges; vice, without any apparatus, when it has joined itself to the soul, crushes and overthrows it, and fills the man with grief and lamentation, dejection and remorse. And this is the proof: many are silent under mutilation and endure scourging and being tortured by the wedge at the hands of masters or tyrants without uttering a cry, whenever by the application of reason the soul abates the pain and by main force, as it were, checks and represses it; but you cannot order anger to be quiet nor grief to be silent, nor can you persuade a man possessed by fear to stand his ground, nor one suffering from remorse not to cry out or tear his hair or smite his thigh. So much more violent is vice than either fire or sword.

3 1   Cities, as we know, when they give public notice of intent to let contracts for the bidding of temples or colossal statues, listen to the proposals of artists competing for the commission and bringing in their estimates and models, and then choose the man who will do the same work with the least expense and better than the others and more quickly. Come, then, let us suppose that we also give public proclamation of intent to contract for making life wretched, and that Fortune and Vice come to get the commission in a rival spirit. Fortune is provided with all manner of instruments and costly apparatus to render a life miserable and wretched; she brings in her train frightful robberies and wars, the foul bloodthirstiness of tyrants, and storms at sea and thunder from the sky; 499 she compounds hemlock, she carries swords, she levies informers, she kindles fevers, she claps on fetters, and builds prison enclosures (and yet the greater part of these belong to Vice rather than to Fortune, but let us suppose them all Fortune’s). And let Vice stand by quite unarmed, needing no external aid against the man, and let her ask Fortune how she intends to make man wretched and dejected:

“Fortune,

Do you threaten poverty? Metrocles laughs at you,

Metrocles, who in winter slept among the sheep and in summer in the gateways of sacred precincts, yet challenged to vie with him in happiness the king of the Persians who winters in Babylon and summers in Media. Do you bring on slavery and chains and the auction block? Diogenes despises you, for when he was being sold by pirates, he cried out with the voice of an auctioneer, ‘Who wants to buy a master?’ Do you mix a cup of poison? Did you not present this to Socrates also? And cheerfully and calmly, without trembling or changing either colour or posture, he drained it with great cheerfulness; and as he died the living esteemed him happy, believing that ‘not even in Hades would he be without some god-given portion.’ And as for your fire, Decius the Roman general anticipated it, when he built a funeral pyre between the camps and, to fulfil a vow, sacrificed himself to Saturn on behalf of Rome’s supremacy. And among the Indians, loving and chaste wives strive and contend with one another for the fire, and the wife who wins the honour of being consumed together with her dead husband is hymned as happy by the others. And of the wise men in that part of the world, not one is considered enviable or happy, if, while he yet lives and is sane and healthy, he does not separate by fire his soul from his body and emerge pure from the flesh, with the mortal part washed away. Or will you reduce a man from splendid wealth and house and table and lavish living to a threadbare cloak and wallet and begging of his daily bread? These things were the beginning of happiness for Diogenes, of freedom and repute for Crates. But will you nail him to a cross or impale him on a stake? And what does Theodorus care whether he rots above ground or beneath? Among the Scythians such is the manner of happy burial; and among the Hyrcanians dogs, among the Bactrians birds, devour, in accordance with the laws, the bodies of men, when these have met a happy end.”

4 1   Whom, then, do these things make wretched? The unmanly and irrational, the unpracticed and untrained, those who retain from childhood their notions unchanged. Therefore Fortune is not a producer of perfect unhappiness if she does not have Vice to co-operate with her. For as a thread saws through the bone that has been soaked in ashes and vinegar, and as men bend and fashion ivory when it has been made soft and pliable by beer, but cannot do so otherwise, so Fortune, falling upon that which is of itself ill-affected and soft as the result of Vice, gouges it out and injures it. And just as the Parthian poison, though harmful to no one else nor injurious to those who touch it and carry it about, if it is merely brought into the presence of wounded men, it straightway destroys them, since they receive its effluence because of their previous susceptibility; so he who is liable to have his soul crushed by Fortune must have within himself some festering wound of his own in order that it may make whatever befalls him from without pitiful and lamentable.

5 1   Is, then, Vice such a thing that it needs Fortune’s help to produce unhappiness? How can that be? Vice does not raise up a rough and stormy sea, she does not gird the skirts of lonely mountains with ambushes of robbers along the way, she does not make clouds of hail to burst on fruitful plains, she does not bring in a Meletus or an Anytus or a Callixenus as accusers, she does not take away wealth, she does not debar from the praetorship, 500 in order to make men unhappy. Yet she dismays men who are rich, prosperous, and heirs to fortunes; on land and on sea she insinuates herself into them and clings to them, sinking deep into them through evil lusts, firing them with anger, crushing them with superstitious fears, shattering them with the eyes . . .

Whether affections of the soul are worse than those of the body

500 1 1   Homer, having contemplated the mortal varieties of animals and having compared them with each other in respect to their lives and habits, cried out that nothing is

More wretched than man,

Of all that breathes and creeps upon the earth,

awarding to man an unfortunate primacy in excess of evils. But as for us, as though acknowledging that man has won the victory in wretchedness and has been proclaimed the most miserable of animals, let us compare him with himself, dividing body and soul for competition of their individual miseries, a task not unprofitable but even quite necessary, to the end that we may learn whether it is through Fortune or through ourselves that we live more wretchedly. For while disease grows in the body through Nature, vice and depravity in the soul are first the soul’s own doing, and then its affliction. It will be no slight aid toward tranquillity of mind, if the worse condition be curable, being both lighter to bear and lacking intensity.

2 1   The fox in Aesop, disputing at law with the leopard concerning their claims to variety, when the leopard had shown her body with its glossy surface bright and spotted, and the fox’s tawny skin was rough and unpleasant to the eye,

“But look at me within, sir judge,” said she,

“And you will find me fuller far than she

Of fair variety,”

making manifest the versatility of her character which changes to many forms as necessity arises. Shall we, then, say in our own case, “Many of your diseases and affections, O man, your body naturally produces of itself, and it receives also many that befall it from without; but if you lay yourself open on the inside, you will find a storehouse and treasury, as Democritus says, of all manner of evils and many abnormal states, which do not flow in from outside, but have, as it were, subterranean and earth-born springs, which Vice, being widely diffused and abundantly supplied with those abnormal states, causes to gush forth”? And if the diseases in the flesh are detected by the pulse and biliousness, and temperatures and sudden pains confirm their presence, but the evils in the soul escape the notice of most men, they are for this reason worse evils, since they also deprive the sufferer of any awareness of themselves. For although the reason, if sound, perceives the diseases which affect the body, yet, being itself afflicted with those of the soul, it can form no judgement of its own afflictions, for it is affected in the very part by which it judges; and, of the soul’s diseases, one must account as first and greatest ignorance, which causes Vice beyond hope of cure to abide with most men, to cling to them through life, and to die with them. For the beginning of the riddance of disease is awareness which leads the ailing part to the use of what will relieve it; but the man who through disbelief in his ailment does not know what he needs, refuses the remedy, even if it be at hand. For it is true of the diseases of the body also that those are worse which are attended by inability to perceive the body’s condition: 501 lethargies, migraine, epilepsies, apoplexies, and those very fevers which, raising inflammation to the pitch of delirium and confounding consciousness, as on a musical instrument,

Will touch the heart-strings never touched before.

3 1   Therefore professional physicians desire, in the first place that a man should not be ill; and next, if he is ill, that he should not be unaware that he is ill — which is the case with all the maladies which affect the soul. For when men act foolishly or licentiously or unjustly, they do not think that they are doing wrong, but some even think that they are doing right. For although no one has ever called a fever “health,” nor consumption “excellent condition,” nor gout “swiftness of foot,” nor sallowness a “fresh complexion,” yet many call hot temper “manliness,” and love “friendship,” and envy “emulation,” and cowardice “caution.” Again, while men sick in body send for a doctor, since they perceive whom they need to counteract their ailments, yet those that are sick in soul avoid philosophers, for they think that they are doing well in those very matters where they are at fault. The fact is that, if we follow on this line of reasoning, we maintain that defective eyesight is easier to bear than madness, and gout than inflammation of the brain! For a man that is sick in body perceives it and calls loudly for a physician, and when he comes, allows him to anoint the eyes or open the veins; but you hear the maddened Agavê say, not recognizing her dearest by reason of her affliction:

From the mountain we bring

To the palace a fresh-cut tendril,

A fortunate capture.

It is true that one who is sick in body gives in at once and goes to bed and remains quiet while he is being cured, and if, perchance, when the fever comes upon him, he tosses a bit and tumbles his body about, one of those who sit by him will say to him gently,

Lie still, poor wretch, and move not from your bed,

and so checks and restrains him; but those who suffer from diseases of the soul are then most active, then least at rest. For impulses are the beginning of action, and the soul’s abnormal states are violent impulses. That is the reason why they do not allow the soul to be at rest, but just at the time when man most needs repose and silence and relaxation, then his fits of temper, of contentiousness, of love, or grief, drag him into the open air and strip him bare, and he is forced both to do many lawless things and to give tongue to many things unsuited to the occasion.

4 1   As, therefore, the storm that prevents a sailor from putting into port is more dangerous than that which does not allow him to sail, so those storms of the soul are more serious which do not allow a man to compose or to calm his disturbed reason; but pilotless and without ballast, in confusion and aimless wandering, rushing headlong in oblique and reeling courses, he suffers a terrible shipwreck, as it were, and ruins his life. Consequently for this reason also it is worse to be sick in soul than in body; for men afflicted in body only suffer, but those afflicted in soul both suffer and do ill.

But why need I recount the multitude of the soul’s maladies? The present occasion of itself brings them to mind. Do you see this vast and promiscuous crowd which jostles and surges in confusion here about the tribunal and the market-place? These persons have come together, not to sacrifice to their country’s gods, not to share in each other’s family rites, not bringing “to Ascraean Zeus the first-fruits of Lydian harvests,” nor, in honour of Dionysus, to celebrate his mystic festival on sacred nights with common revellings, but, as it were, a mighty pestilence drives them together here with yearly visitations stirring up Asia, which must come for law-suits and litigation at certain stated times; 502 and the overwhelming multitude, like streams flowing together, has inundated this one market-place and boils with fury and dashes together in a tumult “of destroyers and destroyed.” What fevers, what agues, have brought this about? What stoppages, or irruptions of blood, or distemperature of heat, or overflow of humours, have caused this? If you examine every law-suit, as though it were a person, to discover what gave rise to it and whence it came, you will find that obstinate anger begat one, frantic ambition another, unjust desire a third . . .

On talkativeness

502 1 1 It is a troublesome and difficult task that philosophy has in hand when it undertakes to cure garrulousness. For the remedy, words of reason, requires listeners; but the garrulous listen to nobody, for they are always talking. And this is the first symptom of their ailment: looseness of the tongue become impotence of the ears. For it is a deliberate deafness, that of men who, I take it, blame Nature because they have only one tongue, but two ears. If, then, Euripides was right when he said with reference to the unintelligent hearer,

I could not fill a man who will not hold

My wise words flooding into unwise ears,

it would be more just to say to the garrulous man, or rather about the garrulous man,

I could not fill a man who will not take

My wise words flooding into unwise ears,

or rather submerging, a man who talks to those who will not listen, and will not listen when others talk. For even if he does listen for a moment, when his loquacity is, as it were, at ebb, the rising tide immediately makes up for it many times over.

They give the name Seven-voiced to the portico at Olympia which reverberates many times from a single utterance; and if but the least word sets garrulousness in motion, straightway it echoes round about on all sides,

Touching the heart-strings never touched before.

Indeed one might think that the babbler’s ears have no passage bored through to the soul, but only to the tongue. Consequently, while others retain what is said, in talkative persons it goes right through in a flux; then they go about like empty vessels, void of sense, but full of noise.

2 1 But if, however, we are resolved to leave no means untried, let us say to the babbler,

Hush, child: in silence many virtues lie,

and among them the two first and greatest, the merits of hearing and being heard; neither of these can happen to talkative persons, but even in that which they desire especially they fail miserably. For in other diseases of the soul, such as love of money, love of glory, love of pleasure, there is at least the possibility of attaining their desires, but for babblers this is very difficult: they desire listeners and cannot get them, since every one runs away headlong. If men are sitting in a public lounge or strolling about in a portico, and see a talker coming up, they quickly give each other the counter-sign to break camp. And just as when silence occurs in an assemblage they say that Hermes has joined the company, so when a chatterbox comes into a dinner-party or social gathering, 503 every one grows silent, not wishing to furnish him a hold; and if he begins of his own accord to open his mouth,

As when the North-wind blows along

A sea-beaten headland before the storm,

suspecting that they will be tossed about and sea-sick, they rise up and go out. And so it is a talker’s lot when travelling by land or sea, to find volunteer listeners neither as table-companions nor as tent-mates, but only conscripts; for the talker is at you everywhere, catching your cloak, plucking your beard, digging you in the ribs.

Then are your feet of the greatest value,

as Archilochus says, and on my word the wise Aristotle will agree. For when Aristotle himself was annoyed by a chatterer and bored with some silly stories, and the fellow kept repeating, “Isn’t it wonderful, Aristotle?” “There’s nothing wonderful about that,” said Aristotle, “but that anyone with feet endures you.” To another man of the same sort, who said after a long rigmarole, “Poor philosopher, I’ve wearied you with my talk,” “Heavens, no!” said Aristotle, “I wasn’t listening.” In fact, if chatterers force their talk upon us, the soul surrenders to them the ears to be flooded from outside, but herself within unrolls thoughts of another sort and follows them out by herself. Therefore talkers do not find it easy to secure listeners who either pay attention or believe what they say; for just as they affirm that the seed of persons too prone to lusts of the flesh is barren, so is the speech of babblers ineffectual and fruitless.

3 1 And yet Nature has built about none of our parts so stout a stockade as about the tongue, having placed before it as an outpost the teeth, so that when reason within tightens “the reins of silence,” if the tongue does not obey or restrain itself, we may check its incontinence by biting it till it bleeds. For Euripides says that “disaster is the end,” not of unbolted treasuries or storerooms, but of “unbridled tongues.” And those who believe that storerooms without doors and purses without fastenings are of no use to their owners, yet keep their mouths without lock or door, maintaining as perpetual an outflow as the mouth of the Black Sea, appear to regard speech as the least valuable of all things. They do not, therefore, meet with belief, which is the object of all speech. For this is the proper end and aim of speech, to engender belief in the hearer; but chatterers are disbelieved even if they are telling the truth. For as wheat shut up in a jar is found to have increased in quantity, but to have deteriorated in quality, so when a story finds its way to a chatterer, it generates a large addition of falsehood and thereby destroys its credit.

4 1 Again, every self-respecting and orderly man would, I think, avoid drunkenness. For while, according to some, anger lives next door to madness, drunkenness lives in the same house with it; or rather, drunkenness is madness, shorter in duration, but more culpable, because the will also is involved in it. And there is no fault so generally ascribed to drunkenness as that of intemperate and unlimited speech. “For wine,” says the Poet,

Urges a man to sing, though he be wise,

And stirs to merry laughter and the dance.

And what is here so very dreadful? Singing and laughing and dancing? Nothing so far —

But it lets slip some word better unsaid:

this is where the dreadful and dangerous part now comes in. And perhaps the Poet has here resolved the question debated by the philosophers, the difference between being under the influence of wine and being drunk, when he speaks of the former as relaxation, but drunkenness as sheer folly. For what is in a man’s heart when he is sober is on his tongue when he is drunk, as those who are given to proverbs say. Therefore when Bias kept silent at a drinking-bout and was taunted with stupidity by a chatterer, 504 “What fool,” said he, “in his cups can hold his tongue?” And when a certain man at Athens was entertaining envoys from the king, at their earnest request he made every effort to gather the philosophers to meet them; and while the rest took part in the general conversation and made their contributions to it, but Zeno kept silent, the strangers, pledging him courteously, said, “And what are we to tell the king about you, Zeno?” “Nothing,” said he, “except that there is an old man at Athens who can hold his tongue at a drinking-party.”

Thus silence is something profound and awesome and sober, but drunkenness is a babbler, for it is foolish and witless, and therefore loquacious also. And the philosophers even in their very definition of drunkenness say that it is intoxicated and foolish talking; thus drinking is not blamed if silence attends the drinking, but it is foolish talk which converts the influence of wine into drunkenness. While it is true that the drunken man talks foolishness in his cups, the chatterer talks foolishness on all occasions, in the market-place, in the theatre, out walking, drunk or sober, by day, by night. As your physician, he is worse than the disease; as your ship-mate, more unpleasant than sea-sickness; his praises are more annoying than another’s blame: we certainly have greater pleasure in company with clever rascals than with honest chatterboxes. In Sophocles, when Ajax uses boisterous language, Nestor, in soothing him, says in words which show his knowledge of character,

CI blame you not: ill your words, but good your deeds.

But these are not our feelings toward the chatterer; on the contrary, the untimeliness of his words destroys and annuls all gratitude for any deed.

5 1 Lysias once composed a speech for a litigant and gave it to him. The man read it through a number of times and came to Lysias in despair and said that the first time he read it the speech seemed to him wonderfully good, but on taking it up a second and third time it appeared completely dull and ineffectual. “Well,” said Lysias laughing, “isn’t it only once that you are going to speak it before the jurors?” And consider the persuasiveness and charm of Lysias! For he is one who, for my part,

DI say has a fair portion in the violet-tressed Muses.

And of the things said about the Poet this is the truest — that Homer alone has survived the fastidiousness of men, since he is ever new and his charm is ever at his best; yet none the less, he spoke and proclaimed that famous remark about himself,

I scorn to tell

A tale again that’s once been clearly told:

and he avoids and fears the satiety which lies in ambush for every tale, leading his hearers from one narrative to another and soothing away the ear’s surfeit by constant novelty. But babblers actually wear out our ears by their repetitions, just as though they were smudging palimpsests.

6 1 Let this, then, be the first thing of which we remind them — that just as wine, discovered for the promotion of pleasure and good fellowship, is sometimes misused to produce discomfort and intoxication by those who compel others to drink it undiluted in large quantities, so speech, which is the most pleasant and human of social ties, is made inhuman and unsocial by those who use it badly and wantonly, because they offend those whom they think they please, are ridiculed for their attempts at gaining admiration, and are disliked because of the very means they employ to gain affection. As, then, he can have no share in Aphroditê who uses her girdle to drive away and alienate those who seek his company, so he who arouses annoyance and hostility with his speech is no friend of the Muses and a stranger to art.

7 1 Now of the other affections and maladies some are dangerous, some detestable, some ridiculous; but garrulousness has all these qualities at once; for babblers are derided for telling what everyone knows, they are hated for bearing bad news, they run into danger they since they cannot refrain from revealing secrets. So it is that Anacharsis, 505 when he had been entertained and feasted at Solon’s house and lay down to sleep, was seen to have his left hand placed upon his private parts, but his right hand upon his mouth; for he believed, quite rightly, that the tongue needs the stronger restraint. It would not be easy, for example, to enumerate as many men who have been ruined by incontinent lust as is the number of cities and empires which a secret revealed has brought to destruction. When Sulla was besieging Athens, he had very little time to waste in the operations

Since other labour was pressing,

Mithridates having ravaged Asia, and the party of Marius being again masters in Rome. But spies heard some old men in a barber’s shop remarking to each other that the Heptachalcon was unguarded and that the city was in danger of being captured at that place; and the spies brought word of this to Sulla, who at once brought up his forces at midnight, led in his army, and almost razed the city to the ground, filling it with carnage and corpses so that the Cerameicus ran with blood. And Sulla’s anger with the Athenians was due more to their words than to their deeds; for they used to revile him and Metella, leaping upon the walls and jesting,

Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled with meal;

and with much similar idle banter they drew upon themselves, as Plato says, “a very heavy penalty for the lightest of things, words.”

The loquacity of one man, again, prevented Rome from becoming free by the removal of Nero. For but one night remained, after which the tyrant was to die, and all preparations had been made; but the man who was to kill him saw at the palace gates when on his way to the theatre a prisoner about to be led before Nero and lamenting his evil fortune. He approached the prisoner and whispered to him, “Only pray, my good man, that to day may pass by and to morrow you will be thankful to me.” So the prisoner grasped the intended meaning, and reflecting, I suppose, that

He is a fool who leaves things close at hand

To follow what is out of reach,

chose the surer rather than the more just way of safety. For he revealed to Nero what had been said to him by the man, who was immediately seized, and tortures and fire and the lash were applied to the conspirator as he denied, in the face of constraint, what he had revealed without constraint.

8 1 Zeno the philosopher, in order that even against his will no secret should be betrayed by his body when under torture, bit his tongue through and spat it out at the despot. And Leaena also has a splendid reward for her self-control. She was a courtesan belonging to the group led by Harmodius and Aristogeiton and shared in the conspiracy against the tyrants — with her hopes, all a woman could do; for she also had joined in the revels about that noble mixing-bowl of Eros and through the god had been initiated into the secrets which might not be revealed. When, therefore, the conspirators failed and were put to death, she was questioned and commanded to reveal those who still escaped detection; but she would not do so and continued steadfast, proving that those men had experienced a passion not unworthy of themselves in loving a woman like her. And the Athenians caused a bronze lioness without a tongue to be made and set up in the gates of the Acropolis, representing by the spirited courage of the animal Leaena’s invincible character, and by its tonguelessness her power of silence in keeping a holy secret.

No spoken word, it is true, has ever done such service as have in many instances words unspoken; for it is possible at some later time to tell what you have kept silent, but never to keep silent what once has been spoken — that has been spilled, and has made its way abroad. Hence, I think, in speaking we have men as teachers, but in keeping silent we have gods, and we receive from them this lesson of silence at initiations into the Mysteries. 506 And the Poet has made the most eloquent Odysseus the most reticent, and also his son and his wife and his nurse; for you hear the nurse saying,

I’ll hold it safe like sturdy oak or iron.

And Odysseus himself, as he sat beside Penelopê,

Did pity in his heart his wife in tears,

But kept his eyes firm-fixed within their lids

Like horn or iron.

So full of self-control was his body in every limb, and Reason, with all parts in perfect obedience and submission, ordered his eyes not to weep, his tongue not to utter a sound, his heart not to tremble or bark:

His heart remained enduring in obedience,

since his reason extended even to his irrational or involuntary movements and made amenable and subservient to itself both his breath and his blood. Of such character were also most of his companions; for even when they were dragged about and dashed upon the ground by the Cyclops, they would not denounce Odysseus nor show that fire-sharpened instrument prepared against the monster’s eye, but preferred to be eaten raw rather than to tell a single word of the secret — an example of self-control and loyalty which cannot be surpassed. Therefore Pittacus did not do badly, when the king of Egypt sent him a sacrificial animal and bade him cut out the fairest and foulest meat, when he cut out and sent him the tongue, as being the instrument of both the greatest good and the greatest evil.

9 1 And Ino in Euripides, speaking out boldly concerning herself, says that she knows how to be

Silent in season, to speak where speech is safe.

For those who have received a noble and truly royal education learn first to be silent, and then to speak. For example, that famous king Antigonus, when his son asked him at what hour they were to break camp, said, “What are you afraid of? That you alone may not hear the trumpet?” This was not, surely, because he would not entrust a secret to the man to whom he intended to leave his kingdom? No, he was teaching his son to be self-controlled and guarded about such matters. And the old Metellus, when on a campaign he was asked some such question, said, “If I thought my shirt was privy to that secret, I would have stripped it off and put it in the fire.” And Eumenes, when he heard that Craterus was advancing, told none of his friends, but pretended that it was Neoptolemus. For his soldiers despised Neoptolemus, but both repulsed the reputation of Craterus and admired his valour. No one else knew the truth, and they joined battle, won the victory, killed Craterus without knowing it, and only recognized him when he was dead. So successfully did silence manoeuvre the contest and keep hidden so formidable an opponent that his friends admired Eumenes for not forewarning them rather than blamed him. And even if some do blame you, it is better that men should criticize you when they are already saved through mistrust than that they should accuse you when they are being destroyed because you did trust them.

10 1 Yet, speaking generally, who has left himself the right to speak out boldly against one who has not kept silent? If the story ought not to have been known, it was wrong for it to be told to another; and if you have let the secret slip from yourself and yet seek to confine it to another, you have taken refuge in another’s good faith when you have already abandoned your own. And if he turns out to be no better than yourself, you are deservedly ruined; if better, you are saved beyond all expectation, since you have found another more faithful on your own behalf than you yourself are. “But this man is my friend.” Yet he has another friend, whom he will likewise trust as I trust him; and his friend, again, will trust another friend. Thus, then, the story goes on increasing and multiplying by link after link of incontinent betrayal. For just as the monad does not pass out of its own boundaries, 507 but remains once and for all one (for which reason it is called a monad), and as the dyad is the indeterminate beginning or difference (for by doubling it at once shifts from unity to plurality), so a story confined to its first possessor is truly secret; but if it passes to another, it has acquired the status of rumour. The Poet, in fact, says that “words” are “winged”: neither when you let go from your hands a winged thing is it easy to get it back again, nor when a word is let slip from the mouth is it possible to arrest and control it, but it is borne away

Circling on swift wings,

and is scattered abroad from one to another. So when a ship has been caught by a wind, they try to check it, deadening its speed with cables and anchors, but if a story runs out of harbour, so to speak, there is no roadstead or anchorage for it, but, carried away with a great noise and reverberation, it dashes upon the man who uttered it and submerges him in some great and terrible danger.

With but a little torch one might set fire

To Ida’s rock; and tell one man a tale,

Soon all the town will know.

11 The Roman Senate was once for many days debating in strict privacy a certain secret policy; and since the matter gave rise to much uncertainty and suspicion, a woman prudent in other respects, but yet a woman, kept pestering her husband and persistently begging to learn the secret. She vowed with imprecations upon herself that she would keep silent, and wept and moaned because she was not trusted. And the Roman, wishing to bring home her folly by proof, said, “Wife, you have won; listen to a terrible and portentous matter. We have been informed by the priests that a lark has been seen flying about with a golden helmet and a spear; we are therefore examining the portent whether it be good or bad, and are in constant consultation with the augurs. But do you hold your tongue.” So saying he went off to the Forum. But his wife at once seized the first maid to come into the room and beat her own breast and tore her hair. “Alas,” she cried, “for my husband and my country! What will become of us?” wishing, and in fact instructing, the maid to ask, “Why, what has happened?” So when the maid asked the question, she told the tale and added that refrain common to every babbler, “Keep this quiet and tell it to no one!” The little maid had scarcely left her when she herself tells the tale to that fellow servant who, she saw, had least to do; and this servant, in turn, told it to her lover who was paying a visit. With such speed was the story rolled out into the Forum that it preceded its inventor: he was met by an acquaintance who said, “Have you just now come down to the Forum from home?” “This very moment,” said he. “Then you have heard nothing?” “Why, is there any news?” “A lark has been seen flying about with a gold helmet and a spear and the magistrates are going to convene the senate about the matter.” And the husband laughed and said, “All praise to your speed, my wife! The story has even reached the Forum before me!” So he interviewed the magistrates and relieved them of their anxiety; but, by way of punishing his wife, as soon as he entered home, he said, “Wife, you have ruined me! The secret has been discovered to have been made public from my house; consequently I am to be exiled from my native land because you lack self-control.” When she denied it and said, “What, didn’t you hear it in company with three hundred others?” “Three hundred, nonsense!” said he. “You made such a fuss that I had to invent the whole story to try you out.” Thus this man made trial of his wife cautiously and in complete safety, pouring, as it were into a leaky vessel, 508 not wine or oil, but water.

But Fulvius, the friend of Caesar Augustus, heard the emperor, now an old man, lamenting the desolation of his house: two of his grandsons were dead, and Postumius, the only one surviving, was in exile because of some false accusation, and thus he was forced to import his wife’s son into the imperial succession; yet he pitied his grandson and was planning to recall him from abroad. Fulvius divulged what he had heard to his own wife, and she to Livia; and Livia bitterly rebuked Caesar: if he had formed this design long ago, why did he not send for his grandson, instead of making her an object of enmity and strife to the successor to the empire. Accordingly, when Fulvius came to him in the morning, as was his custom, and said, “Hail, Caesar,” Caesar replied, “Farewell, Fulvius.” And Fulvius took his meaning and went away; going home at once, he sent for his wife, “Caesar has found out,” he said, “that I have not kept his secret, and therefore I intend to kill myself.” “It is right that you should,” said his wife, “since, after living with me for so long a time, you have not learned to guard against my incontinent tongue. But let me die first.” And, taking the sword, she dispatched herself before her husband.

12 1 Philippides, the comic poet, therefore, made the right answer when King Lysimachus courteously asked him, “What is there of mine that I may share with you?” and he replied, “Anything you like, Sire, except your secrets.” And to garrulousness is attached also a vice no less serious than itself, inquisitiveness. For babblers wish to hear many things so that they may have many things to tell. And they go about tracking down and searching out especially those stories that have been kept hidden and are not to be revealed, storing up for their foolish gossip, as it were, a second-hand stock of hucksters’ wares; then, like children with a piece of ice, they are neither able to hold it nor willing to let it go. Or rather, the secrets are like reptiles which they catch and place in their bosoms, yet cannot confine them there, but are devoured by them; for pipefish and vipers, they say, burst in giving birth, and secrets, when they escape, destroy and ruin those who cannot keep them.

Seleucus the Victorious lost his entire army and power in the battle against the Gauls; he tore off his crown with his own hands and fled on horseback with three or four companions. When he had travelled a long journey through winding ways and trackless wilds, at length becoming desperate from lack of food he approached a certain farmhouse. By chance he found the master himself and begged bread and water from him. And the farmer gave him lavishly both these and whatever else there was in a farmstead, and while entertaining him hospitably, recognized the face of the king. In his joy at the fortunate chance of rendering service he could not restrain himself or dissemble as did the king, who wished to remain unknown, but he escorted the king to the highway and, on taking leave, said, “Fare well, King Seleucus.” And Seleucus, stretching out his right hand to him and drawing him towards himself as though to kiss him, gave a sign to one of his companions to cut off the man’s head with a sword:

Still speaking his head was mingled with the dust.

But if the man had remained silent at that time and had mastered himself for a little while, when the king later won success and regained power, he would have earned, I fancy, an even larger reward for his silence than for his hospitality.

This man, it is true, had as something of an excuse for his incontinence his hopes and the friendly service he had rendered; 13 1 but most talkers do not even have a reason for destroying themselves. For example, people were once talking in a barber’s shop about how adamantine and unbreakable the despotism of Dionysius was. The barber laughed and said, “Fancy your saying that about Dionysius, when I have my razor at his throat every few days or so!” 509 When Dionysius heard this, he crucified the barber.

It is not strange that barbers are a talkative clan, for the greatest chatterboxes stream in and sit in their chairs, so that they are themselves infected with the habit. It was a witty answer, for instance, that King Archelaüs gave to a loquacious barber, who, as he wrapped his towel around him, asked, “How shall I cut your hair, Sire?” “In silence,” said Archelaüs. And it was a barber also who first announced the great disaster of the Athenians in Sicily, having learned it in the Peiraeus from a slave, one of those who had escaped from the island. Then the barber left his shop and hurried at full speed to the city,

Lest another might win the glory

of imparting the news to the city,

and he come second.

A panic naturally arose and the people gathered in assembly and tried to come at the origin of the rumour. So the barber was brought forward and questioned; yet he did not even know the name of his informant, but referred the origin to a nameless and unknown person. The assembly was enraged and cried out, “Torture the cursèd fellow! Put him on the rack! He has fabricated and concocted this tale! Who else heard it? Who believed it?” The wheel was brought and the man was stretched upon it. Meanwhile there arrived bearers of the disastrous news, men who had escaped from the slaughter itself. All, therefore, dispersed, each to his private mourning, leaving the wretched fellow bound on the wheel. But when he was set free late in the day when it was already nearly evening, he asked the executioner if they had also heard “how the general, Nicias, had died.” Such an unconquerable and incorrigible evil does habit make garrulity.

14 1 And yet, just as those who have drunk bitter and evil-smelling drugs are disgusted with the cups as well, so those who bear ill tidings cause disgust and hatred in those who hear them. Therefore Sophocles has very neatly raised the question:

Gu. Is it in ear or soul that you are stung? —

Cr. But why seek to define where lies my pain? —

Gu. The doer grieves your heart, I but your ears.

Be that as it may, speakers also cause pain, just as doers do, but none the less there is no checking or chastening a loose tongue.

The temple of Athena of the Brazen House at Sparta was discovered to have been plundered, and an empty flask was found lying inside. The large crowd which had quickly formed was quite at a loss, when one of the bystanders said, “If you wish, I shall tell you what occurs to me about that flask. I think that the robbers, before undertaking so dangerous a task, drank hemlock and brought along wine, so that, if they should escape detection, by drinking the unmixed wine they might quench the poison and rid themselves of its evil effects, and so might get away safely; but if they should be caught, that they might die an easy and painless death from the poison before they should be put to the torture.” When he had said this, the explanation appeared so very complicated and subtle that it did not seem to come from fancy, but from knowledge; and the people surrounded him and questioned him one after another, “Who are you?” “Who knows you?” “How did you come to know this?” and at last he was put through so thorough an examination that he confessed to being one of the robbers.

Were not the murderers of Ibycus caught in the same way? They were sitting in a theatre, and when cranes came in sight, they laughed and whispered to each other that the avengers of Ibycus were come. Persons sitting near overheard them, and since Ibycus had disappeared and now for a long time had been sought, they caught at this remark and reported it to the magistrates. And thus the slayers were convicted and led off to prison, not punished by the cranes, 510 but compelled to confess the murder by the infirmity of their own tongues, as it were some Fury or spirit of vengeance. For as in the body the neighbouring parts are borne by attraction toward diseased and suffering parts, so the tongue of babblers, ever inflamed and throbbing, draws and gathers to itself some portion of what has been kept concealed and should not be revealed. Therefore the tongue must be fenced in, and reason must ever lie, like a barrier, in the tongue’s way, checking its flow and keeping it from slipping, in order that we may not be thought to be less sensible than geese, of whom they relate that when from Cilicia they cross Mt. Taurus, which is full of eagles, they take a great stone in their mouths to serve as a bolt or bridle for their scream, and pass over at night unobserved.

15 1 Now if anyone were to ask,

Who is the most wicked and the most abandoned man,

no one would pass the traitor by and name anyone else. So Euthycrates “roofed his house with the timber he got from Macedon,” as Demosthenes says, and Philocrates received much money and “bought strumpets and fish”; and to Euphorbus and Philagrus, who betrayed Eretria, the king gave land. But the babbler is a traitor who volunteers his services without pay: he does not betray horses or city-walls, but divulges secrets connected with lawsuits, party strife, and political manoeuvres. No one thanks him, but he himself, if he can win a hearing, must owe thanks. The result is that the verse directed at the man who recklessly and injudiciously pours forth and squanders his own possessions,

You are not generous: it’s your disease,

You love to give,

fits the foolish talker also: “You are no friend or well-wisher in revealing this: it’s your disease, you love to be babbling and prating.”

16 1 But these remarks are not to be regarded as an accusation against garrulity, but an attempt to cure it; for we get well by the diagnosis and treatment of our ailments, but the diagnosis must come first; since no one can become habituated to shun or to eradicate from his soul what does not distress him, and we only grow distressed with our ailments when we have perceived, by the exercise of reason, the injuries and shame which result from them. Thus, in the present instance, we perceive in the case of babblers that they are hated when they wish to be liked, that they cause annoyance when they wish to please, that they are laughed at when they think they are admired, that they spend their money without any gain, that they wrong their friends, help their enemies, and destroy themselves. Consequently this is the first step in curing the disease — by the application of reason to discover the shameful and painful effects that result from it.

17 1 And the second is that we must apply our reasoning powers to the effects of the opposite behaviour, always hearing and remembering and keeping close at hand the praises bestowed on reticence, and the solemn, holy, and mysterious character of silence, remembering also that terse and pithy speakers and those who can pack much sense into a short speech are more admired and loved, and are considered to be wiser, than these unbridled and headstrong talkers. Plato, in fact, commends such pithy men, declaring that they are like skilful throwers of the javelin, for what they say is crisp, solid, and compact. And Lycurgus, constraining his fellow-citizens from their earliest childhood to acquire this clever habit by means of silence, made them concise and terse in speech. For just as the Celtiberians make steel from iron by burying it in the earth and then cleaning off the large earthy accumulation, so the speech of Spartans has no dross, but being disciplined by the removal of all superfluities, it is tempered to complete efficiency; for this capacity of theirs for aphoristic speech and for quickness 511 and the ability to turn out a neat phrase in repartee is the fruit of much silence.

And we must be careful to offer to chatterers examples of this terseness, so that they may see how charming and how effective they are. For example: “The Spartans to Philip: Dionysius in Corinth.” And again, when Philip wrote to them, “If I invade Laconia, I shall turn you out,” they wrote back, “If.” And when King Demetrius was annoyed and shouted, “Have the Spartans sent only one envoy to me?” the envoy replied undismayed, “One to one.”

And among the men of old also sententious speakers are admired, and upon the temple of the Pythian Apollo the Amphictyons inscribed, not the Iliad and the Odyssey or the paeans of Pindar, but “Know thyself” and “Avoid extremes” and “Give a pledge and mischief is at hand,” admiring, as they did, the compactness and simplicity of the expression which contains within a small compass a well-forged sentiment. And is not the god himself fond of conciseness and brevity in his oracles, and is he not called Loxias because he avoids prolixity rather than obscurity? And are not those who indicate by signs, without a word, what must be done, praised and admired exceedingly? So Heracleitus, when his fellow-citizens asked him to propose some opinion about concord, mounted the platform, took a cup of cold water, sprinkled it with barley-meal, stirred it with penny-royal, drank it up, and departed, thus demonstrating to them that to be satisfied with whatever they happen upon and not to want expensive things is to keep cities in peace and concord. And Scilurus, king of the Scythians, left behind him eighty sons; when he was dying, he asked for a bundle of spear shafts and bade his sons take it and break it in pieces, tied closely together as the shafts were. When they gave up the task, he himself drew all the spears out one by one and easily broke them in two, thus revealing that the harmony and concord of his sons was a strong and invincible thing, but that their disunion would be weak and unstable.

18 1 If anyone will but review and recollect constantly these and similar instances, he may conceivably stop taking pleasure in foolish chatter. But as for me, that famous case of the slave puts me utterly to shame when I reflect what immense importance it is to pay attention to what is said and to be master of our purpose. Pupius Piso, the orator, not wishing to be troubled, ordered his slaves to speak only in answer to questions and not a word more. Subsequently, wishing to pay honour to Clodius when he was a magistrate, Piso gave orders that he be invited to dinner and prepared what was, we may suppose, a sumptuous banquet. When the hour came, the other guests were present, but Clodius was still expected, and Piso repeatedly sent the slave who regularly carried invitations to see if Clodius was approaching. And when evening came and he was finally despaired of, Piso said to the slave, “See here, did you give him the invitation?” I did,” said the slave. “Why hasn’t he come then?” “Because he declined.” “Then why didn’t you tell me at once?” “Because you didn’t ask me that.” So a Roman slave, but the Athenian slave while digging will tell his master

On what terms the truce is made,

so great in all things is the force of habit. And of this let us now speak.

19 1 For it is impossible to check the babbler by gripping the reins, as it were; his disease must be mastered by habituation. In the first place, then, when questions are asked of neighbours, let him accustom himself to remaining silent until all have refused a response:

For counsel’s aim is not that of a race,

as Sophocles says, nor, indeed, is this the aim of speaking and answering. For in a race the victory is his who comes in first; but here, if another makes a sufficient answer, it is proper to join in the approval and assent and so acquire the reputation of being a friendly fellow. 512 But if such an answer is not made, the it is not invidious or inopportune both to point out the answer others have not known and thus to fill in the gap. And, in particular, let us be on our guard, when someone else has been asked a question, that we do not forestall him by taking the answer out of his mouth. For perhaps there are other times also when it is not seemly, another having been asked, to shoulder him aside and volunteer ourselves, since we shall seem to be casting a slur both on the man asked, as being unable to furnish what is demanded of him, and on the asker, as being ignorant of the source from which he can get help; and, in particular, such precipitancy and boldness in answering questions smacks of insolence. For one who tries to get in the answer ahead of the man who is questioned suggests, “What do you need him for?” or “What does he know?” or “When I am present, no one else should be asked about these matters.” And yet we often ask people questions, not because we need an answer, but to elicit some friendly word from them, and because we wish to draw them on to friendly converse, as Socrates with Theaetetus and Charmides. So to take the answer out of another’s mouth, to divert another’s hearing and attract his attention and wrest it from some other, is as bad as to run up and kiss someone who wished to be kissed by somebody else, or to turn toward yourself someone who was looking at another; since, even if he who has been asked cannot give the information, it is proper to practise restraint and conform oneself to the wish of the asker and thus to encounter with modesty and decorum the situation, an invitation, as it were, given to another. And it is also true that if persons who are asked questions make mistakes in their answers, they meet with just indulgence; but he who voluntarily undertakes an answer and anticipates another is unpleasant even if he corrects a mistake, and if he makes a mistake himself, he affords a malicious joy to one and all, and becomes an object of ridicule.

20 1 Then the second matter for diligent practice concerns our own answers; to these the chatterer must pay very close attention: Din the first place, that he may not inadvertently give a serious answer to those who provoke him to talk merely that they may insolently ridicule him. For some persons who require no information, but merely to divert and amuse themselves, devise questions and put them to men of this sort to set going their foolish twaddle. Against this talkers should be on their guard and not leap upon a subject quickly, or as though grateful that it is offered to them, but should first consider both the character of the questioner and the necessity for the question. And when it appears that the questioner is really anxious to learn, the babbler must accustom himself to stop and leave between the question and the answer an interval, in which the asker may add anything he wishes and he himself may reflect upon his reply instead of overrunning and obscuring the question by giving a long string of answers in a hurry while the question is still being asked. For although the Pythian priestess is accustomed to deliver some oracles on the instant, even before the question is put — for the god whom she serves

Understands the dumb and hears when no man speaks —

yet the man who wishes to make a careful answer must wait to apprehend exactly the sense and the intent of him who asks the question, lest it befall, as the proverb has it,

They asked for buckets, but tubs were refused.

In any case this ravenous hunger for talking must be checked so that it may not seem as though a stream which has long been pressing hard upon the tongue were being gladly discharged at the instance of the question. Socrates, in fact, used to control his thirst in this manner — he would not allow himself to drink after exercise until he had drawn up and poured out the first bucketful, so that his irrational part might be trained to await the time dictated by reason.

21 1 513 Furthermore, there are three kinds of answers to questions: the barely necessary, the polite, and the superfluous. For example, if someone asks, “Is Socrates at home?” one person may reply, as it were unwillingly and grudgingly, “Not at home.” And if he wishes to adopt the Laconic style, he may omit the “At home” and only utter the bare negative. So the Spartans, when Philip wrote to ask if they would receive him into their city, wrote a large “No” on the paper and sent it back. Another will answer more politely, “He is not at home, but at the bank,” and if he wants to give fuller measure may add, “waiting there for some guests.” But your over-officious and garrulous man, particularly if he happens to have read Antimachus of Colophon, will say, “He is not at home, but at the bank, waiting for some Ionian guests on whose behalf he has had a letter from Alcibiades who is near Miletus staying with Tissaphernes, the satrap of the Great King, who formerly used to help the Spartans, but now is attaching himself to the Athenians because of Alcibiades. For Alcibiades desires to be restored to his native country and therefore is causing Tissaphernes to change sides.” And he will run on, reciting at full stretch the whole eighth book of Thucydides, and deluge the questioner until, before he has done, Miletus is at war again and Alcibiades exiled for the second time.

Regarding this tendency especially, one must keep talkativeness within bounds by following the question step by step and circumscribing the answer within a circle to which the questioner’s need gives the center and the radius. So when Carneades, who had not yet acquired a great reputation, was disputing in a gymnasium, the director sent and bade him lower his voice, which was a very loud one. And when Carneades said, “Give me something to regulate my voice,” the director aptly rejoined, “I am giving you the person conversing with you.” So, in making an answer, let the wishes of the questioner provide the regulation.

22 1 Moreover, just as Socrates used to urge men to be on their guard against those foods which induce us to eat when we are not hungry, and against those liquids which induce us to drink when we are not thirsty, so it is with the babbler as regards subjects for talk: those in which he takes most delight and employs ad nauseam he should fear and stoutly resist when they stream in upon him. For example, military men are great tellers of war-stories, and the Poet introduces Nestor in that character, often narrating his own deeds of prowess. Again, as one might expect, those who have scored a victory in the law-courts or have had some unexpected success at the courts of governors or kings are attacked, as it were, by a malady which never leaves them, by the desire to call to mind and tell over and over again how they made their entrance, how they were presented, how they argued, how they held forth, how they confuted some opponents or accusers, how they were applauded. For their delight is far more loquacious than that well-known insomnia in the comedy: it often fans itself into new flame and makes itself ever fresh with each successive telling. They are, therefore, ready to slip into such subjects on any pretext. For not only

Where one feels pain, there will he keep his hand,

but also what causes pleasure draws the voice toward itself and twists the tongue from a desire to dwell perpetually on the joys of remembrance. So also with lovers, who chiefly occupy themselves with conversation that recalls some memory of the objects of their love; and if they cannot talk to human beings, they will speak of their passion to inanimate things:

O dearest bed!

and

O blessèd lamp, Bacchis thought you a god,

And greatest god you are if she thinks so.

There is, however, really not a pin’s difference to the chatterer what subjects may arise; 514 nevertheless he that has a greater weakness for one class of subjects than for the other should be on his guard against these subjects and force himself to hold back and withdraw as far as possible from them, since they are always able, because of the pleasure they give, to lure him on to dilate upon them. And talkers have this same difficulty with those subjects in which they think that they surpass all others because of some experience or acquired habit. For such a person, being self-centred and vain,

Will give the chief part of the day to that

In which he chances to surpass himself;

the great reader will spend it in narrating tales, the literary expert in technical discussions, the wide traveller and wanderer over the face of the earth in stories of foreign parts. We must, therefore, be on our guard against these subjects also, since garrulity is enticed by them, like a beast making for familiar haunts. And Cyrus’s conduct was admirable, because he challenged his mates to match themselves with him, not in those contests in which he was superior, but in those in which he was less skilled than they, so that he might cause no pain by surpassing them and might also have the advantage of learning something. But the chatterer, on the contrary, if some topic comes up from which he can learn and find out something he does not know, thrusts it aside and diverts it, being unable to give even so small a fee as silence, but he works steadily around until he drives the conversation into the stale and well-worn paths of twaddle. Just so, in my native town, there was a man who chanced to have read two or three books of Ephorus, and would always bore everybody to death and put every dinner-party to rout by invariably narrating the battle of Leuctra and its sequel; so he got the nickname of “Epameinondas.”

23 1 Nevertheless, this is the least of the evils, and we should turn garrulity into these channels; for talkativeness will be less unpleasant when its excesses are in some learned subject. Yet such persons must accustom themselves to do some writing and so argue all by themselves. So Antipater the Stoic, since, as it seems, he could not and would not come to close quarters with Carneades and his violent attacks upon the Stoa, used to fill whole books with written disputations against him, and so earned the sobriquet of “Pen-valiant.” But with the talker, such shadow-boxing with the pen and such alarums, by keeping him away from the multitude, may perhaps make him less of a daily burden to his associates, just as dogs that vent their anger on sticks and stones are less savage to men. And it will also be very advantageous for chatterers to frequent invariably the company of their superiors and elders, out of respect for whose opinion they will become accustomed to silence.

And with these exercises in habituation it is proper to intermix and entwine that well-known vigilance and habit of reflection, at the very moment when we are about to speak and the words are hurrying to our lips, “What is this remark that is so pressing and importunate? What object is my tongue panting for? What good will come of its being said or what ill of its being suppressed?” For it is not as though the remark were some oppressive weight which one ought to get rid of, since it stays by you all the same even if it is spoken; when men talk, it is either for their own sake, because they need something, or to benefit their hearers, or they seek to ingratiate themselves with each other by seasoning with the salt of conversation the pastime or business in which they happen to be engaged. But if a remark is neither useful to the speaker nor of serious importance to the hearers, and if pleasure or charm is not in it, why is it made? For the futile and purposeless can exist in speech as well as in deeds.

And over and above all else we must keep at hand and in our minds the saying of Simonides, 515 that he had often repented of speaking, but never of holding his tongue. We must remember also that practice is master of all things and stronger than anything else; since people can even get rid of hiccoughs and coughs by resisting them resolutely and with much pain and trouble. But silence, as Hippocrates says, not only prevents thirst, but also never causes sorrow and suffering.

On being a busybody

515 1 It is perhaps best to avoid a house which has no ventilation, or is gloomy, or cold in winter, or unhealthy; yet if familiarity has made you fond of the place, it is possible to make it brighter, better ventilated, and healthier by altering the lights, shifting the stairs, and opening some doors and closing others. Even some cities have gained by such changes. So in the case of my own town, which used to face the west and receive the full force of the sun in the late afternoon from Parnassus, they say that it was turned by Chaeron to face the east. And Empedocles, the natural philosopher, by blocking up a certain mountain gorge, which permitted the south wind to blow a dire and pestilential draught down upon the plains, was thought to have shut plague out of his country.

Since, then, there are certain unhealthy and injurious states of mind which allow winter and darkness to enter the soul, it is better to thrust these out and to make a clean sweep to the foundations, thus giving to ourselves a clear sky and light and pure air; but if that is impossible, it is best at least to interchange and readjust them in some way other, turning or shifting them about.

Such a malady of the mind, to take the first instance, is curiosity, which is a desire to learn the troubles of others, a disease which is thought to be free from neither envy nor malice:

Why do you look so sharp on others’ ills,

Malignant man, yet overlook your own?

Shift your curiosity from things without and turn it inwards; if you enjoy dealing with the recital of troubles, you have much occupation at home:

Great as the water flowing down Alizon,

Many as the leaves around the oak,

so great a quantity of transgressions will you find your own life, of afflictions in your own soul, of oversights in the performance of your own obligations.

For as Xenophon says that good householders have a special place for sacrificial utensils, and a special place for dinner-ware, and that farming implements should be stored elsewhere, and apart from them the weapons of war; even so in your own case you have one store of faults arising from envy, another from jealousy, another from cowardice, another from pettiness. Assault these, examine these! Block up the windows and the side-doors of your curiosity that open on your neighbours’ property, and open up others leading to your own — to the men’s quarters, to the women’s quarters, to the living-rooms of your servants! Here this curiosity and meddlesomeness of yours will have an occupation not unhelpful or malicious, but useful and salutary if each one will but say to himself

Where did I err? And what deed have I done?

What duty neglected?

2 But as it is, like the Lamia in the fable, who, they say, when at home sleeps in blindness with her eyes stored away in a jar, 516 but when she goes abroad puts in her eyes and can see, so each one of us, in our dealings with others abroad, puts his meddlesomeness, like an eye, into his maliciousness; but we are often tripped up by our own faults and vices by reason of our ignorance of them, since we provide ourselves with no sight or light by which to inspect them. Therefore the busybody is also more useful to his enemies than to himself, for he rebukes and drags out their faults and demonstrates to them what they should avoid or correct, but he neglects the greater part of his own domestic errors through his passionate interest in those abroad. So Odysseus refused to converse even with his mother until he had learned from the seer the matters by reason of which he had come to the House of Hades; and when he had his answer, he both turned to his mother and also made inquiries of the other women, asking who was Tyro, who the beautiful Chloris, why Epicastê met her death

Tying a noose, sheer-hung, from the high roof.

But we, while treating our own affairs with considerable laxity and ignorance and neglect, pry into the pedigrees of the rest of the world: our neighbour’s grandfather was a Syrian and his grandmother a Thracian; so and so owes three talents and has not paid the interest. We inquire also into such matters as where so and so’s wife was coming back from, and what A and B’s private conversation in the corner was about. Yet Socrates went about seeking to solve the question of what arguments Pythagoras used to carry conviction; and Aristippus, when he met Ischomachus at Olympia, asked him by what manner of conversation Socrates succeeded in so affecting the young men. And when Aristippus had gleaned a few odd seeds and samples of Socrates’ talk, he was so moved that he suffered a physical collapse and became quite pale and thin. Finally he sailed for Athens and slaked his burning thirst with draughts from the fountain-head, and engaged in a study of the man and his words and his philosophy, of which the end and aim was to come to recognize one’s own vices and so rid oneself of them.

3 Yet there are some who cannot bear to face their own lives, regarding these as a most unlovely spectacle, or to reflect and revolve up themselves, like a light, the power of reason, but their souls, being full of all manner of vices, shuddering and frightened at what is within, leap outwards and prowl about other people’s concerns and there batten and make fat their own malice. For as a domestic fowl will often, though its own food lies near at hand, slip into a corner and there scratch

Where one sole barley grain perhaps appears

In the dung-heap,

in the same way busybodies, passing over topics and narratives which are in plain view and matters concerning which no one prevents their inquiring or is vexed if inquiry is made, pick out the hidden and obscure troubles of every household. And yet it was surely a clever answer that the Egyptian gave to the man who asked him what he was carrying wrapped up: “That’s why it is wrapped up.” And why, if you please, are you inquisitive about what is concealed? If it were not something bad, it would not be concealed. Yet it is not customary to walk into the house of someone else without at least first knocking on the door; but nowadays there are doormen and formerly there were knockers to be struck at the door and give warning, so that the stranger might not catch the mistress of the house or the unmarried daughter unawares, or a slave being punished or the maid-servants screaming. But it is for these very things that the busybody slips in. A sober and respectable household he would not willingly enter as a spectator even if he were invited to come; but the matters to conceal which keys and bolts and street-doors are used — these are what he uncovers and communicates to outsiders. And yet “the winds with which we are most vexed,” as Ariston says, “are those which pull up our garments,” but the busybody strips off not only the mantles and tunics of those near him, but also their very walls; he flings the doors wide open and makes his way, like a piercing wind, “through the maiden of tender skin,” and creeps in, 517 searching out with slanderous intent drunken revels and dances and all night festivals.

4 And like Cleon in the comedy,

His hands in Beggar-town, his mind on Thefton,

so the mind of the busybody is at the same time in mansions of the rich, in hovels of the poor, in royal courts, and in bridal chambers of the newly wed. He searches out everybody’s business, that of strangers and that of rulers, nor is this search of his without danger; but just as though a man should taste aconite through curiosity about its properties, he would find that he had killed the taster before he had got his taste, so those who search out the vices of those more powerful than themselves destroy themselves before they acquire their knowledge. For instance those who scarcely glance at these sunbeams which have been poured down so lavishly upon us all, but recklessly dare to gaze upon the orb itself and to rend its radiance apart, striving to force their way within, are blinded. This is the reason why Philippides, the comic poet, made an excellent reply when King Lysimachus once said to him, “Which one of my possessions may I share with you?” “Anything, Sire,” said Philippides, “except your secrets.” For only the most pleasant and most decorous attributes of kings are displayed openly — their banquets and wealth and festivals and favours; but if there is anything secret, do not approach it, but let it be! The joy of a prosperous king is not concealed, nor is his laughter when he is amused, nor his outlay on entertainment and favours; but it is time for alarm when something is hidden, something dark, unsmiling, unapproachable, a storehouse of festering wrath, or the meditation of a punishment indicative of sullen anger, or jealousy of a wife, or some suspicion against a son, or distrust of a friend. Beware of this darkening and gathering cloud! That which is now hidden will be disclosed to you when the cloud bursts forth amid crashes of thunder and bolts of lightning!

5 What escape is there, then, from this vice? By a process of shifting and diverting our inquisitiveness, as has been said, and, if possible, by turning the soul to better and more pleasant objects. Direct your curiosity, to heavenly things and things on earth, in the air, in the sea. Are you by nature fond of small or of great spectacles? If of great ones, apply your curiosity to the sun: where does it set and whence does it rise? Inquire into the changes in the moon, as you would into those of a human being: what becomes of all the light she has spent and from what source did she regain it, how does it happen that

When out of darkness first she comes anew,

She shows her face increasing fair and full;

And when she reaches once her brightest sheen,

Again she wastes away and comes to naught?

And these are secrets of Nature, yet Nature is not vexed with those who find them out. Or suppose you have renounced great things. Then turn your curiosity to smaller ones: how some plants always blooming and green and rejoicing in the display of their wealth at every season, while others are sometimes like these, but at other times, like a human spendthrift, they squander all at once their abundance and are left bare and beggared? Why, again, do some plants produce elongated fruits, others angular, and still others round and globular?

But perhaps you will have no curiosity about these subjects since there is nothing evil in them. Yet if your zest for meddling must by all means be for ever feeding and dwelling on depraved things, like a maggot on dead matter, let us escort it to history and supply it with an unstinted abundance of evils. For there you will find

The deaths of men, the shufflings off of life,

seductions of women, assaults of slaves, slanders of friends, compounding of poisons, envies, jealousies, shipwrecks of households, overthrow of empires. Glut and enjoy yourself and cause no trouble or pain to any of your associates!

6 But curiosity apparently takes no pleasure in stale calamities, but wants them hot and fresh; it enjoys the spectacle of novel tragedies and has not much zest for association 518 with the comic and more cheerful side of life. Consequently when anyone tells the tale of a wedding or a sacrifice or a complimentary escort, the busybody is a careless and inattentive listener, and declares that he has already heard most of the details and urges the narrator to cut them short or skip them. But if someone sitting near at hand narrates the seduction of a maiden or the adultery of a wife or the framing of a law suit or a quarrel of brothers, the busybody neither dozes off to sleep nor pleads an engagement,

But asks more speech and proffers both his ears

and that saying,

Alas!

How much more readily than glad events

Is mischance carried to the ears of men!

is spoken truly when applied to busybodies. For as cupping-glasses draw from the flesh what is worst in it, so the ears of busybodies attract the most evil stories. Or rather, as cities have certain unlucky and dismal gates through which they lead out condemned criminals and cast out the refuse and the scapegoats, while nothing undefiled or sacred either goes in or out through them, so also the ears of busybodies give passage and thoroughfare to nothing good or decent, but only to gruesome tales, serving, as they do, as conveyance for foul and polluted narratives.

The only song that’s heard within my house

Is wailing cries.

This is the one Muse and Siren for busybodies, this is the sweetest of all music to their ears.

For curiosity is really a passion for finding out whatever is hidden and concealed, and no one conceals a good thing when he has it; why, people even pretend to have good things when they have them not. Since, then, it is the searching out of troubles that the busybody desires, he is possessed by the affliction called “malignancy,” brother to envy and spite. For envy is pain at another’s good, while malignancy is joy at another’s evil; and both spring from a savage and bestial affliction, a vicious nature.

7 So painful for all of us is the revelation of our own troubles that many die rather than reveal to physicians some hidden malady. Just imagine Herophilus or Erasistratus or Asclepius himself, when he was a mortal man, carrying about their drugs and instruments, calling at one house after another, and inquiring whether a man had an abscess in the anus or a woman a cancer in the womb! And yet the inquisitiveness of this profession is a salutary thing. Yet everyone, I imagine, would have driven such a man away, because he does not wait to be sent for, but comes unsummoned to investigate others’ infirmities. And busybodies search out these very matters and others still worse, not to cure, but merely to expose them. For this reason they are hated deservedly. For example, we are annoyed and displeased with customs-officials, not when they pick up those articles which we are importing openly, but when in the search for concealed goods they pry into baggage and merchandize which are another’s property. And yet the law allows them to do this and they would lose by not doing so. But busybodies ruin and abandon their own interests in their excessive occupation with those of others. Only rarely do they visit the farm, for they cannot endure the quiet and silence of being alone. But if, after a long absence, they do chance to put in there, they have more of an eye for their neighbours’ vines than for their own, and they ask how many of their neighbours’ cattle have died, or how much of his wine has turned sour. But they are soon sated with such news and run away. Yet the true and genuine farmer does not care to hear even news that makes its own way from the city; he says

519 Then he will tell me while he digs

On what terms peace was made. The cursèd scamp

Now strolls around and meddles with these things.

8 And the busybody, shunning the country as something stale and uninteresting and undramatic, pushes into the bazaar and the market-place and the harbours: “Is there any news?” “Weren’t you at market early this morning? Well then, do you suppose the city has changed its constitution in three hours?” If, however, someone really does have something of that nature to tell him, he dismounts from his horse, grasps his informant’s hand, kisses him, and stands there listening. But if someone meets him and tells him that there is no news, he exclaims as though he were annoyed, “What do you mean? Haven’t you been at market? Didn’t you pass the War Office? Didn’t you interview the new arrivals from Italy either?” It is for this reason that the legislation of the Locrian magistrates was excellent. For if anyone who had been out of town came up and asked, “Is there any news?” they fined him. Just as cooks pray for a good crop of young animals and fishermen for a good haul of fish, in the same way busybodies pray for a good crop of calamities, a good haul of difficulties, for novelties, and changes, that they, like cooks and fishermen, may always have something to fish out or butcher.

Another good law was that of the legislator of Thurii, for he forbade the lampooning on the comic stage of all citizens except adulterers and busybodies. And indeed adultery does seem to be a sort of curiosity about another’s pleasure and a searching out and examination of matters which are closely guarded and escape general observation, while curiosity is an encroaching, a debauching and denuding of secret things.

9 Since a natural consequence of much learning is to have much to say (and for this reason Pythagoras enjoined upon the young a five years’ silence which he called a “Truce to Speech”), a necessary concomitant of inquisitiveness is to speak evil. For what the curious delight to hear they delight to tell, and what they zealously collect from others they joyously reveal to everyone else. Consequently, in addition to its other evils, their disease actually impedes the fulfilment of their desires. For everyone is on his guard to hide things from them and is reluctant to do anything while a busybody is looking, or to say anything while one is listening, but defers consultation and postpones the consideration of business until such an inquisitive person is out of the way. And if, when either some secret matter is under discussion or some important business is being transacted, a busybody comes on the scene, men drop the matter from the discussion and conceal it, as one does a tidbit when a cat runs by. Consequently these persons are often the only ones to whom those matters are not told or shown which everyone else may hear and see.

For the same reason the busybody is deprived of everybody’s confidence: Ewe should prefer, on any account, to entrust our letters and papers and seals to slaves and strangers rather than to inquisitive friends and relatives. That noble Bellerophon did not break the seal even on a letter accusing himself which he was carrying, but kept his hands from the king’s letter by reason of that same continence which kept him from the king’s wife. Inquisitiveness, in fact, is indicative of incontinence no less than is adultery, and in addition, it is indicative of terrible folly and fatuity. For to pass by so many women who are public property open to all and then to be drawn toward a woman who is kept under lock and key and is expensive, and often, if it so happens, quite ugly, is the very height of madness and insanity. And it is this same thing which busybodies do: they pass by much that is beautiful to see and to hear, many matters excellent for relaxation and amusement, and spend their time digging into other men’s trifling correspondence, gluing their ears to their neighbours’ walls, whispering with slaves and women of the streets, and often incurring danger, and always infamy.

10 For this reason the most useful means possible for turning the busybody from his vice is for him to remember what he has previously learned. 520 For, as Simonides used to say that when he opened his boxes after some time, he always found the fee box full, but the thanks box empty, so if one opens from time to time the deposit box of inquisitiveness and examines it, full as it is of many useless, futile, and unlovely things, perhaps this procedure would give sufficient offence, so completely disagreeable and silly would it appear. Suppose a man should run over the works of the ancients and pick out the worst passages in them and keep a book compiled from such things as “headless lines” in Homer and solecisms in the tragedians and the unbecoming and licentious language applied to women by which Archilochus makes a sorry spectacle of himself, would he not deserve that curse in the tragedy,

Be damned, compiler of men’s miseries?

And even without this curse, such a man’s treasure-house of other people’s faults is unbecoming and useless. It is like the city populated by the vilest and most intractable of men which Philip founded and called Roguesborough.

Busybodies, however, by gleaning and gathering the blunders and errors and solecisms, not of lines or poems, but of lives, carry about with them a most inelegant and unlovely record box of evils, their own memory. Therefore just as at Rome there are some who take no account of paintings or statues or even, by Heaven, of the beauty of the boys and women for sale, but haunt the monster-market, examining those who have no calves, or are weasel-armed, or have three eyes, or ostrich-heads, and searching to learn whether there has been born some

Commingled shape and misformed prodigy,

yet if one continually conduct them to such sights, they will soon experience satiety and nausea; so let those who are curious about life’s failures, the blots on the scutcheon, the delinquencies and errors in other people’s homes, remind themselves that their former discoveries have brought them no favour or profit.

11 The greatest factor, however, in ridding ourselves of this affliction is the habit of beginning early to train and teach ourselves to acquire this self-control. It is, in fact, by habituation that the disease has come to increase, advancing, as it does, little by little. How this habit is acquired, we shall learn when we discuss the proper training. So first let us begin with the most trifling and unimportant matters. What difficulty is there about refraining from reading the inscriptions on tombs as we journey along the roads? Or what is there arduous in just glancing at the writing on walls when we take our walks? We have only to remind ourselves that nothing useful or pleasant has been written there: merely “commemorates” so and so “wishing him well,” and someone else is the “best of friends,” and much twaddle of this sort. It may seem that no harm will come from reading these, but harm you it does by imperceptibly instilling the practice of searching out matters which do not concern you. And as hunters do not allow young hounds to turn aside and follow every scent, but pull them up and check them with the leash, keeping their sense of smell pure and untainted for their proper task in order that it may keep more keenly to the trail,

With nostrils tracking down the paths of beasts,

so one should be careful to do away with or divert to useful ends the sallies and wanderings of the busybody, directed as they are to everything that one may see and hear. For as eagles and lions draw in their claws when they walk so that they may not wear off the sharpness of the tips, so, 521 if we consider that curiosity for learning has also a sharp and keen edge, let us not waste or blunt it upon matters of no value.

12 In the second place, then, let us accustom ourselves not to look inside when we pass another’s door, nor with our curious gaze to clutch, as it were by main force, at what is happening within, but let us ever keep ready for use the saying of Xenocrates, that it makes no difference whether it is the feet or the eyes that we set within another’s house; for what the eyes behold is neither just nor honourable, and not even pleasant.

Unsightly, stranger, are the things within,

since the greater part of what we see inside is of this sort — kitchen utensils lying about and servant-girls sitting in idleness, and nothing important or pleasurable. And this practice of throwing sidelong and furtive glances, distorting the soul as it disease, is shameful, and the habit it implants is depraved. For instance, when Diogenes saw the Olympic victor Dioxippus making his triumphal entry in his chariot and unable to tear his eyes away from a beautiful woman who was among the spectators of the procession, but continually turning around and throwing side-glances in her direction, “Do you see,” said the Cynic, “how a slip of a girl gets a strangle-hold on our athlete?” And you may observe how every kind of spectacle alike gets a strangle-hold on busybodies and twists their necks round when they once acquire a habit and practice of scattering their glances in all directions. But, as I think, the faculty of vision should not be spinning about outside of us, like an ill trained servant girl, but when it is sent on an errand by the soul it should quickly reach its destination and deliver its message, then return again in good order within the governance of the reason and heed its command. But as it is, the words of Sophocles come true:

Then the Aenianian’s hard-mouthed yearlings break

From his control and bolt;

that is, the senses which have not received what we called above right instruction and training run away, dragging the intellect with them, and often plunge it into deep disaster. Consequently, though that story about Democritus is false, that he deliberately destroyed his sight by fixing his eyes on a red hot mirror and allowing its heat to be reflected on his sight, in order that his eyes might not repeatedly summon his intellect outside and disturb it, but might allow his mind to remain inside at home and occupy itself with pure thinking, blocking up as it were windows which open on the street; yet nothing is more true than this, that those who make most use of the intellect make fewest calls upon the senses. We observe, for instance, that men have built their sanctuaries of the Muses far from cities and that they have called night “kindly” from a belief that its quiet and absence of distraction is greatly conducive to the investigation and solution of the problems in hand.

13 Yet truly, neither is this a difficult nor arduous task: when men are reviling and abusing each other in the market-place, not to approach them, or when a crowd is running to see something or other, to remain seated, or, if you are without self-control, to get up and go away. For you will reap no advantage from mixing yourself with busybodies, whereas you will obtain great benefit from forcibly turning aside your curiosity and curtailing it and training it to obey reason.

And after this it is well to make our training more intensive and pass by a theatre where a successful performance is in progress; and, when our friends urge us to see a certain dancer or comedian, to thrust them aside; and, when shouts are heard on the race-course or in the circus, not to turn round. For as Socrates used to advise the avoidance of such foods as tempt us to eat when we are not hungry and such drinks as tempt us to imbibe when we are not thirsty, so we also should avoid and guard against such sights and sounds as master and attract us without fulfilling any need of ours. Thus Cyrus was unwilling to see Pantheia; and when Araspes declared that the woman’s beauty was worth seeing, Cyrus said, 522”Then this is all the more reason for keeping away from her. For if, persuaded by you, I should go to her, perhaps she herself might tempt me, when I couldn’t spare the time, to go to see her again and sit by her, to the neglect of many important matters.” So too Alexander would not go to see Darius’s wife who was said to be very beautiful, but although he visited her mother, an elderly woman, he could not bring himself to see the young and beautiful daughter. Yet we peep into women’s litters and hang about their windows, and think we are doing nothing wrong Bin thus making our curiosity prone to slip and slide into all kinds of vice.

14 Since, therefore, for the attainment of justice you may sometimes forgo an honest gain that you may accustom yourself to keep clear of dishonest profit, so likewise, for the attainment of continence, you may sometimes keep aloof from your own wife in order that you may never be stirred by another’s. Then apply this habit to inquisitiveness and endeavour sometimes not to hear or see some of the things that concern you, and when someone wishes to tell you something that has happened in your house, put him off and refuse to hear words that are supposed to have been spoken about you. It was, in fact, curiosity which involved Oedipus in the greatest calamities. Believing that he was no Corinthian, but a foreigner, and seeking to discover his identity, he encountered Laïus; and when he had killed Laïus and had taken, in addition to the throne, his own mother to wife, though seeming to all to be blessed by fortune, he began again to try to discover his identity. And although his wife attempted to prevent him, all the more vigorously did he cross-examine the old man who knew the truth, bringing every form of compulsion to bear. And at last, when circumstances were already bringing him to suspect the truth and the old man cried out,

Alas! I stand on the dread brink of speech,

Oedipus was none the less so inflamed and maddened by his affliction that he replied,

And I of hearing, and yet hear I must;

so bitter-sweet, so uncontrollable is the itching of curiosity, like the itching of a sore which gets bloody whenever we scratch it. But the man who has got rid of this disease and is gentle by nature will say, if he is ignorant of something unpleasant,

Forgetfulness of evil, sovereign queen,

How wise you are!

15 We must, therefore, also habituate ourselves to things like these: when a letter is brought to us, not to open it quickly or in a hurry, as most people do, who go so far as to bite through the fastenings if their teeth are too slow; when a messenger arrives from somewhere or other, not to rush up, or even to rise to our feet; when a friend says, “I have something new to tell you,” to say, “I should prefer that you had something useful or profitable.”

When I was once lecturing in Rome, that famous Rusticus, whom Domitian later killed through envy at his repute, was among my hearers, and a soldier came through the audience and delivered to him a letter from the emperor. There was a silence and I, too, made a pause, that he might read his letter; but he refused and did not break the seal until I had finished my lecture and the audience had dispersed. Because of this incident everyone admired the dignity of the man.

But when one nourishes his curiosity upon permissible material until he renders it vigorous and violent, he is no longer able to master it easily, since it is borne, by force of habit, toward forbidden things. And such persons pry into their friends’ correspondence, thrust themselves into secret meetings, become spectators of sacred rites which it is an impiety for them to see, tread consecrated ground, investigate the deeds and words of kings.

16 And yet surely in the case of despots, who have to know everything, it is the tribe of so called “Ears” and “Jackals” that makes them most detested. It was Darius Nothus, who had no confidence in himself and regarded everyone with fear and suspicion, who first instituted “Listeners”; and “Jackals” 523 were distributed by the Dionysii among the people of Syracuse. Consequently when the revolution came, these were the first persons whom the Syracusans arrested and crushed to death. And in fact the tribe of informers is from the same clan and family as busybodies. But while informers search to see whether anyone has planned or committed a misdemeanour, busybodies investigate and make public even the involuntary mischances of their neighbours. And it is said that the person called aliterios first acquired his name from being a busybody. For it appears that when there was a severe famine at Athens and those who possessed wheat would not contribute it to the common stock, but ground it in their houses secretly by night, some persons went about listening for the noise of the mills, and so acquired the name aliterioi. It was in the same way, they say, that the sycophant won his name. Since the export of figs was prohibited, men who revealed and gave information against those who did export them were called sycophants. So it is well worth the while of busybodies to consider this fact also, that they may be ashamed of the resemblance and relationship of their own practice to that of persons who are very cordially hated and loathed.

BOOK VII

On love of wealth

523 1 When some persons praised a tall fellow with a long reach
Das having the makings of a fine boxer, the trainer Hippomachus remarked: “Yes, if the crown were hung up and to be got by reaching.” So too we can say to those who are dazzled by fine estates, great houses, and large sums of money and regard them as the greatest of blessings: “Yes, if happiness were for sale and to be got by purchase.” (Nevertheless many cases could be cited of men who would rather be rich though miserable than become happy by paying money to be so.) But money cannot buy peace of mind, greatness of spirit, serenity, confidence, and self-sufficiency.

Having wealth is not the same as being superior to it, nor is possessing luxuries the same as feeling no need of them. 2 From what other ills then does wealth deliver us, if it does not even deliver us from the craving for it? Nay, drink allays the desire of drink, and food is a remedy for hunger; and one who says

A cloak I beg: Hipponax is cold

is annoyed when several are brought and rejects them; but neither silver nor gold allays the craving for money, nor does the greed of gain ever cease from acquiring new gains. No; one can say to wealth as to a pretentious physician:

Your physic but increases the disease.

Finding us in want of a loaf, a house, a modest protection from the weather, and whatever comes to hand to supplement our loaf, wealth infects us with the desire for gold and silver and ivory and emeralds and hounds and horses, diverting our appetite from the necessities of life to what is difficult, rare, hard to procure, and useless. Indeed in what suffices no one is poor; and no one has ever borrowed money to buy barley meal, a cheese, a loaf, or olives. Rather one man has run into debt for a splendid house, 524 another for an adjoining olive plantation, another for fields and vineyards; and there are still others that Galatian mules or a set of horses

Rattling an empty chariot behind

have driven into a morass of bonds, usury, and mortgages. And then, as those who drink when no longer thirsty, or eat when no longer hungry, vomit up with the surfeit the rest as well that was taken to satisfy hunting or thirst, so those who seek the useless and superfluous do not even retain the necessary. Such then is the condition of one sort of lover of wealth.

3 Those on the other hand who part with nothing, though they have great possessions, but always want greater, would strike one who remembered what Aristippus said as even more absurd. “If a man eats and drinks a great deal,” he used to say, “but is never filled, he sees a physician, inquires what ails him, what is wrong with his system, and how to rid himself of the disorder; but if the owner of five couches goes looking for ten, and the owner of ten tables buys up as many again, and though he has lands and money in plenty is not satisfied but bent on more, losing sleep and never sated by any amount, does he imagine that he does not need someone who will prescribe for him and point out the cause of his distress?” Certainly in the case of sufferers from thirst you would expect the one who had had nothing to drink to find his thirst relieved after drinking, while we assume that the one who drinks on and on without stopping needs to relieve, not stuff, himself, and we tell him to vomit, taking his trouble to be caused not by any shortage in anything but by the presence in him of some unnatural pungency or heat. So too with money-getters: he who is in want and destitute would perhaps call a halt once he got an estate or discovered a hidden treasure or was helped by a friend to pay his debt and get free from his creditor; whereas he who has more than enough and yet hungers for still more will find no remedy in gold or silver or horses and sheep and cattle, but in casting out the source of mischief and being purged. For his ailment is not poverty, but insatiability and avarice, arising from the presence in him of a false and unreflecting judgement; and unless someone removes this, like a tapeworm, from his mind, he will never cease to need superfluities — that is, to want what he does not need.

4 When a physician visits a patient lying limp in bed, moaning, and refusing food, and on examining and questioning him finds no fever, he pronounces the disorder mental and departs. We too, then, seeing a man absorbed in money-getting, moaning over his expenditures, and sticking at nothing base or painful that brings him money, though he has houses, land, herds, and slaves together with a supply of clothing, what are we to call his trouble but mental poverty? For poverty in money is a thing from which a single friend, as Menander says, could deliver a man by his bounty. But that other poverty of the mind could never be replenished by all his friends together, whether in life or death. It is to such as these, then, that Solon’s words are well applied:

No bourne of wealth is manifest to men,

since for men of sense natural wealth does have a limit and a bourne, which is drawn around it by utility as by a compass.

Another peculiarity of the love of money is this: it is a desire that opposes its own satisfaction. The rest actually aid their satisfaction: no one refuses good food because he has a weakness for it, or wine because he is fond of the bottle, as men abstain from using money because they love it. Yet how can it be called anything but madness and misery when a man refuses to put on a cloak because he is cold, to eat a loaf because he is hungry, or to use wealth because he loves it, and is instead in Thrasonides’ plight:

525 My love is in my house, no law forbids;

And never lover in the wildest passion

Had better will to do it, but I don’t —

I’ve put away everything under lock and seal or laid it out with money-lenders and agents and yet I go on amassing and pursuing new wealth, and I wrangle with my servants, my farmers, my debtors —

Merciful Heaven! Have you ever seen

A man more wretched or more crossed in love?

5 Asked if he was able to enjoy a woman Sophocles replied: “Hush, fellow, I am now a free man, delivered by old age from a set of mad and cruel masters.” For it is a happy thing that when pleasures fail desires should fail as well, which Alcaeus says . . . nor woman. But it is otherwise with avarice: like an oppressive and vexatious mistress it compels us to make money but forbids the use of it, and arouses the desire but cheats us of the pleasure. Stratonicus indeed rallied the Rhodians for lavish spending, saying that they built as immortals and furnished their tables as if soon to die. But while lovers of money acquire it as lavish spenders, they use it as churls, and endure the pains, but do not get the pleasures. Thus Demades once found Phocion at luncheon, and remarked, observing the austerity and plainness of his table: “I am astonished, Phocion, that when you can stomach such food you engage in politics.” For Demades himself played the demagogue to fill his belly, and regarding Athens as no adequate provision for his prodigality laid in supplies from Macedon as well. (Hence Antipater, seeing him in his old age, said that like a carcass when the butchers had finished, nothing remained but the tongue and the gut.) As for you, unhappy wretch, is one not to be astonished that living as you do — a miser, unsocial, selfish, heedless of friends, indifferent to country — you nevertheless suffer hardships, lose sleep, engage in traffic, chase after legacies, and truckle to others despite this abundant provision for a life of ease, your meanness? We hear that a certain Byzantine said on finding an adulterer with his ill-favoured wife, “Poor fellow! What drives you to it? The dregs are foul!” . . . unhappy man! Let kings and royal stewards and those who would be foremost in their cities and hold office engage in money-getting. These are driven to it, their ambition and pretension and vainglory compel them, engaged as they are in giving banquets, bestowing favours, paying court, sending presents, supporting armies, buying gladiators. But you stir up this vast turmoil of affairs and harass and distract yourself when for meanness you live the life of a snail, and you put up with every discomfort and get no good of it, like a bathhouse keeper’s ass that carries faggots and kindling, always foul with smoke and ashes, but getting no bath or warmth or cleanliness.

6 We have been speaking of this avarice of the ass or ant. But there is another, the avarice of the beast of prey; it runs to legal blackmail, to the pursuit of legacies, to cheating and intrigue and scheming, it counts the number of friends still alive, and after all this puts the ill-gotten wealth to no use. Thus as vipers, blister-beetles, and venomous spiders offend and disgust us more than bears and lions, because they kill and destroy men without using what they destroy, so too should men whose rapacity springs from meanness and illiberality disgust us more than those in whom it springs from prodigality, since the miserly take from others what they have no power or capacity to use themselves. 526 Hence prodigals call a truce once they are affluent and well provided for (as Demosthenes said to those who imagined that Demades had ceased to be a scoundrel: “At present you see him like the lions, glutted”); whereas in those who follow no policy of pleasure or utility there is no suspension of greed or distraction from it by more pressing claims, as they are forever empty and still want the whole world.

7 Someone will say, “But they preserve and lay up their goods for children and heirs.” When in their lifetime they give them nothing? Nay, as with the mice that eat the gold ore in the mines, the gold cannot be had until they dead and laid open. And why do they desire to leave children and heirs an accumulation of money and a great estate? Plainly that these may preserve it for others, and these for still others, like earthen pipes, taking nothing for themselves but each conveying to another what it receives, until some outsider, an informer or tyrant, cuts off and shatters the keeper of the wealth, thus intercepting and drawing off the flow of riches, or (as the saying goes) the one member of the family who turns out worst consumes the property of all. For not only

The sons of slaves are wanton from neglect,

as Euripides says, the sons of misers are so as well, as Diogenes doubtless implied in his taunt: “Better to be a Megarian’s ram than his son.” For by the very means whereby they suppose that they are training their children, misers ruin them instead and warp their characters all the more, implanting in them their own avarice and meanness as though constructing in their heirs a fort to guard the inheritance. For their admonition and instruction comes to this: “Get profit and be sparing, and count yourself as worth exactly what you have.” This is not to educate a son, but to compress him and sew him shut, like a money bag, that he may hold tight and keep safe what you have put in. But whereas the bag gets dirty and foul-smelling only after the coin has been stored in it, the children of misers, before touching the money, catch the taint of avarice directly from their fathers. Note, however, that the young pay them for this instruction in the right coin, not loving their fathers because they are to inherit a fortune, but hating them because they have not got it already. For having been taught to look up to nothing but wealth and to live for nothing but great possessions, they consider that their fathers’ lives stand in the way of their own, and conceive that time steals from them whatever it adds to their fathers; years. Hence even when the father is still alive the son behind his back finds one way or another to steal some pleasure from the money and spends it as if he had no interest in it, giving it to friends and lavishing it on his appetites, when still attending lectures and still at his studies. But when at his father’s death the son takes over the keys and seals, his way of life is altered and his countenance becomes unsmiling, stern, and forbidding. Here is an end of . . ., of ball-playing, of wrestling, of the Academy and the Lyceum. There is instead the interrogation of servants, inspection of ledgers, the casting up of accounts with stewards and debtors, and occupation and worry that deny him his luncheon and drive him to the bath at night.

The place of exercise where he was schooled

And Dircê’s fount

are passed by; and if someone says, “Are you not going to hear the philosopher?” the answer is, “How could I? I have no time now my father is dead.” Poor soul! What has your father left to compare with what he has taken away, your leisure and your freedom? Rather it is not he, it is your wealth, that overwhelming and overpowering you, like the woman in Hesiod

527 Singes without a brand and ages you ere your time,

bringing upon the mind like premature wrinkles and grey hairs the cares and distractions that come from avarice, whereby all high-heartedness and keenness and friendliness are blighted.

8 “Well,” someone will say, “do you not observe that some people do make lavish use of their money?” To this we shall answer: And have you not heard from Aristotle that some fail to use it, others use it ill, neither course being right? But whereas the first get no good or glory from what they have, the others actually get harm and disgrace from it.

Come, first let us consider what is this “use,” for which wealth is highly regarded. Is it the use of what suffices? Then the rich are no better off than men of modest means, and wealth, as Theophrastus says, is “no wealth” and in truth “unenviable,” if Callias, the wealthiest man of Athens, and Hismenias, the richest of Thebes, got the same use of what they had as Socrates and Epameinondas. For as Agathon dismissed the flute-players from the banquet to the women’s quarters, holding the conversation of the company to be sufficient entertainment, so too might you dismiss purple coverlets and expensive tables and all superfluities, when you see that the rich have the same service as the poor, and

Soon you’d hang the rudder o’er the hearth

And all for nought would be the patient toil

not

Of ox and mule

but of goldsmith, enchaser, perfumer, and cook, once we had been wise and sober enough to expel all that is useless from our state. But if even those who are not rich equally possess enough for their needs, whereas wealth plumes itself on luxuries, and you approve of Scopas the Thessalian, who when begged for some article in his house on the ground that there it was superfluous and not put to any use, exclaimed: “Why it is just these articles of superfluity, and not the indispensables, that give me the name of enviable and fortunate,” you must look to it or you will be like one who gives his approval to a pageant or a festival rather than to the business of living.

Our traditional festival of the Dionysia was in former times a homely and merry procession. First came a jug of wine and a vine branch, then one celebrant dragged a he goat along, another followed with a basket of dry figs, and the phallos-bearer came last. But all this is nowadays unregarded and vanished, what with vessels of gold carried past, rich apparel, carriages riding by, and masks: so has what is necessary and useful in wealth been buried under what is useless and superfluous. 9 But we are most of us like Telemachus. In his innocence, or rather want of taste, when he saw Nestor’s house with its couches, tables, clothes, coverlets, and pleasant wine, he expressed no admiration for one provided with all that was necessary or useful; but when he visited Menelaüs and beheld ivory, gold, and amber, he was struck with amazement and cried:

Olympian Zeus, methinks, has halls like this:

What riches past all telling! I behold

And marvel.

Socrates or Diogenes would have said:

What rubbish past all telling

and superfluity and vanity!

FI behold

And laugh.

Fool! You should strip your wife of her purple and adornments, that she may get over her fine airs and her infatuation with foreign guests, and do you trick out your house instead like a theatre or stage for visitors?

10 Such is the felicity of wealth — a felicity of spectators and witnesses or else a thing of naught. How different are self-mastery, the pursuit of wisdom, the knowing what we should about the gods, though known to no man else! 528 These have in the soul a luminousness of their own and a surpassing radiance, and make delight her constant companion, as by her sole power she grasps the Good, whether there is anyone to see, or whether no one, god or man, is witness. Such is the nature of virtue, truth, the beauty of mathematics — geometry and astronomy — ; and with what of these do your trappings of wealth, your necklaces, your girlish baubles, compare? With no one to see or look on, wealth becomes sightless indeed and bereft of radiance. For when the rich man dines alone with his wife or intimates he lets his tables of citrus-wood and golden beakers rest in peace and uses common furnishings, and his wife attends without her gold and purple and dressed in plain attire. But when a banquet — that is, a spectacle and a show — is got up and the drama of wealth brought on, “out of the ships he fetched the urns and tripods,” the repositories of the lamps are given no rest, the cups are changed, the cup-bearers are made to put on new attire, nothing is left undisturbed, gold, silver, or jewelled plate, the owners thus confessing that their wealth is for others. But mastery of self is in order whether the owner dines alone or gives a sumptuous feast.

On compliancy

528 1 1 Certain plants are in themselves wild and unproductive, and when allowed to grow are harmful to cultivated grain and vines and trees; yet the farmer takes them as signs of a soil not unfertile, but generous and rich. So too with the affections of the mind; some that are bad are nevertheless the outgrowths, as it were, of an excellent nature well able to respond to the cultivation of reason. Among these I count what is called “compliancy,” — no unfavourable sign, though it leads to bad conduct. For men who feel shame often show the same faults as those who feel none, with this difference, however: they are grieved and distressed at their errors, unlike the shameless, who take pleasure in theirs. For the shameless feel no pain in doing what is base, whereas the mere semblance of baseness dismays the compliant. For compliancy is excess of shame. Hence the name (dysōpeomai), the face (prosōpon) being somehow involved in the embarrassment and discomposure of the mind. For as dejection (katēpheia) is defined as pain that makes us look down (katō), so when modesty yields to suitors to the point where one does not even look them in the face, it is termed “compliancy.” And so, as the orator said that the shameless man had harlots, not maidens, in his eyes, so the compliant man in his turn betrays only too clearly in his countenance the effeminacy and flabbiness of his spirit, giving his surrender to the shameless the fair name of “modesty.” Cato indeed said that in the young he preferred the flush of colour to pallor, rightly training and teaching us to dread censure more than labour, and disapproval more than peril. Nevertheless we must also do away with the excess of timidity and apprehension at the prospect of censure, for instances are frequently found of men who, 529 in terror no less of a bad name than of bodily hurt, have played the coward and failed in the good fight, not having the firmness to submit to ill fame.

2 1 Neither then should we be unmindful of these, who suffer from so great an infirmity, nor again should we approve the other unyielding and stern set of character; we should rather contrive an harmonious blend of both qualities, one that removes the ruthlessness of extreme severity and the infirmity of excessive courtesy. Thus the cure is difficult, and the correction of such excesses is not without risk. For as the farmer in weeding out some wild and worthless growth thrusts his spade in roughly with no further ado and turns up the root, or applies fire to the weed and blasts it, but when he comes to a vine in need of pruning or deals with an apple tree or olive, he handles it gently, fearing to strip the buds from some healthy part, so the philosopher, when he removes envy from a young man’s soul, a worthless and incorrigible growth, or cuts off an early appearance of avarice or self-indulgence running riot, draws blood, bears down hard, and makes an incision deep enough to leave a scar; but when he applies the knife of chastening discourse to a soft and delicate part of the soul — a description that applies to the part that suffers from compliancy and shyness — he takes heed lest unawares he amputate with these all feeling of respect. For nurses too, when they scour infants too often, sometimes wound the flesh and do them hurt. It follows that we must not scour too close in removing from the young the fear to disoblige, and thus make them inconsiderate and unyielding to a fault, but as those who pull down houses adjoining a temple let the connected and neighbouring portions stand and shore them up, in the same way we must deal with compliancy, taking care not to remove with it the adjacent portions of respect and courtesy and gentleness where it hides and clings, while it bestows on the man who yields to pressure easily the flattering epithets of “friendly,” “civil,” and “considerate of others,” not “rigid” or “blunt.” Hence the Stoics distinguish from the outset the very words, separating “shame” and compliancy from “respect,” so as to leave the disorder not even the ambiguity of its name as an occasion of doing harm. But by their leave we shall not quibble about the names, but rather follow Homer, who says

Respect, the bane and blessing of mankind.

And he did well to put first its harmfulness. For it becomes helpful only when reason removes the overplus and leaves us with the right amount.

3 1 One who feels a strong compulsion to be facile must first be convinced of this: that he suffers from a harmful disorder, and that nothing harmful is admirable; and he should refuse to be beguiled by plaudits into preferring the epithets “civilized” and “gracious” to the terms “grave” and “great” and “just,” or like Pegasus in Euripides, who

Cringed and yielded as the rider willed

(the rider being Bellerophon), surrender to suitors and descend to their level for fear of the remark “Truly a cold, harsh man.” Now To Bocchoris the Egyptian, a man naturally cruel, Isis (they say) sent the asp, which coiled around his head and shadowed him from above, to make him observe justice in his verdicts; whereas false courtesy, pressing down upon those who are flabby and unmanly, and incapable of denying or refusing anything, turns them aside from justice in their verdicts, silences them in the council, and compels them to say and do many things that go against their will. 530 The most unreasonable person is always master of such a man and controls him, coercing with his effrontery the other’s shyness. And so, like a low-lying and loose terrain, a compliant disposition, being unable to fend off or repulse any appeal, is exposed to the most degrading experiences and deeds. For it is a poor guardian of the years of boyhood (thus Brutus said that he thought one who denied nothing had made no good disposal of his youthful grace), and a poor custodian of the nuptial chamber and the women’s apartments, as she who repels in Sophocles says to the adulterer,

You coaxed and wheedled me to ruin.

Thus complaisance further corrupts the profligate mind and delivers everything up to the attacker: the position has no defences, no bars, and is commanded on all sides. And whereas it is with gifts that the vilest women are taken, argument and a bold address often prevail even over the good. I pass over the losses in money for which compliancy is responsible, when men lend to persons they distrust and go bail against their will, and though they approve the proverb “he that is surety is never sure,” are unable to follow it in practice.

4 1 The lives that this disorder has cost would not be easy to number. Thus when Creon said to Medea,

Better for me to have thy hatred now

Than yield to rue it bitterly thereafter,

he expressed a maxim for others to use, but succumbed to pressure himself, and by granting her request for a day’s respite brought ruin on his house. Even some who suspected assassination and poison have given way to the feeling. Thus Dion was lost, not from ignorance of Callippus’ plot, but because he was ashamed to take precautions against one who was his friend and guest. Thus when Antipater, son of Cassander, after inviting Demetrius to dinner, was invited by him the following day, he was ashamed to distrust one who had trusted him, went, and was murdered after the meal. Polyperchon agreed with Cassander for a hundred talents to do away with Heracles, Alexander’s son by Barsinê, and proceeded to invite him to dinner. When the youth, suspecting and dreading the invitation, alleged an indisposition, Polyperchon called on him and said: “Young man, the first quality of your father you should imitate is his readiness to oblige and attachment to his friends, unless indeed you fear me as a plotter.” The youth was shamed into going; and they gave him his dinner and strangled him. The advice of Hesiod is therefore not absurd or silly, as some assert, but wise:

Your friend invite to dinner, not your foe.

Do not let your enemy embarrass you, nor fawn on him when he appears to trust you. For after you invite him he will invite you, and after he dines with you you will dine with him, once you have let the mistrust that was your preservation lose its keen edge under the influence of shame.

5 1 This malady therefore, as cause of many evils, we must endeavour to expel by a course of training, beginning first (as tiros elsewhere) with what is trivial and not too hard to face. Thus a man drinks to you at dinner when you have had your fill. Do not yield or force yourself to comply, but set the cup down. Another again invites you to play at dice over the wine: do not yield or let his scoffing daunt you, but like Xenophanes, when Lasus of Hermionê called him coward for not wanting to throw the dice with him, confess in your turn that you are a great coward indeed and too faint-hearted to risk disgrace. Again: you meet a bore who lays hold of you and clings. Do not yield but break his hold and make haste to complete what you have to do. 531 For such escapes and rebuffs as these, where we practise firmness at the cost of but slight dissatisfaction, condition us to meet more difficult occasions. In this connexion it is also well to bear Demosthenes’ words in mind. The Athenians were set on joining Harpalus and were girding themselves against Alexander when Alexander’s admiral Philoxenus suddenly sailed in view. To the assembly, which its fear had rendered mute, Demosthenes said: “What will they do on seeing the sun who are dazzled by a lamp?” For what will you do in great affairs, in the presence of a king or when the assembled people put you out of countenance, if you want the strength to reject a cup held out by a friend or to escape the clutches of a bore, but allow a driveller to have his will with you because you lack the firmness to say, “I’ll see you another time; just now I am busy”?

6 1 So too with the bestowal of praise: to practise and train ourselves not to be daunted in trivial and easy things is not without its use. Thus at a friend’s banquet a citharode sings badly or a comic actor got for a great price murders Menander, and the crowd applauds and admires. Here I think it no hard or grievous matter to listen in silence and refrain from insincere and unmanly applause. For if you are not your own master here, what will you do when a friend reads a wretched poem or declaims a silly and preposterous speech? You will of course praise him and join the flatterers in their applause. How then will you correct him when he errs in the affairs of life? How admonish him when he is misguided in the case of some office, marriage, or policy of state? For my part I cannot even approve Pericles’ answer to the friend who asked him to give false testimony under oath, “As far as the altar I am your friend.” For this was getting much too close. Whereas he who keeps his distance by making it a practice never to praise a speech or applaud a song insincerely or laugh at a pointless joke, will call a halt long before there is any question of presuming so far or of saying to one who is independent in these ways “take an oath for me and give false testimony” or “pronounce an unjust verdict.”

7 1 The same method is to be used in opposing requests for money: we must first school ourselves in situations that are of no great moment, and where refusal is not difficult. Thus Archelaüs, king of the Macedonians, when asked at dinner for a golden cup by one whose only notion of propriety was that it is proper to receive, ordered the servant to give it to Euripides, and looking the fellow in the face remarked: “You are just the man to ask and not receive; he to receive even when he does not ask,” wisely letting his judgement, and not any feeling of embarrassment, govern the disposal of his gifts and favours; we, on the other hand, often pass over honest men, kinsmen, and those in need, to confer our gifts on others who are persistent and pressing in their demands, not that we consent to make the gift, but that we are too weak to refuse. Thus, repeatedly pestered by Bion, the aged Antigonus said: “Give Violence and Coercion a talent.” Yet he was the most adroit and plausible of kings Fat brushing such importunities aside. On one occasion, asked by a Cynic for a drachma, he answered: “Kings do not give so little”; and when the other countered, “Then give me a talent,” he replied, “Or Cynics take so much.” Now Diogenes went about the Cerameicus soliciting the statues, and said to the astonished spectators that he was getting in condition to meet refusals; we, however, must first practise on the vulgar and train ourselves in trivial matters to rebuff those who present unfitting requests, 532 that we may have the means to succour those on whom our bounty will be fittingly bestowed. For no one, says Demosthenes, after spending what he has on what he should not, will be able to spend what he has not on what he should. And our disgrace is rendered many times greater when we are short of funds for worthy ends because we were lavish in expenditures that were not called for.

8 1 Since compliancy is not only a wasteful and injudicious manager of an estate, but in graver concerns as well deprives us of the fruits of understanding — when in illness, for example, we do not call in the expert in the disease, fearing to offend our family practitioner; or when to instruct our children we choose not those who are competent but those who beg for the employment; or when in a lawsuit, as we often do, we do not commit our case to one who can help us from his familiarity with the courts, but in order to oblige a friend’s or kinsman’s son allow him to practice declamation at our expense; and when to crown it all we can see many so called philanthropists who are Epicureans or Stoics not from choice or judgement, but because they acceded to importunate relations or friends — let us keep a wide berth and train ourselves for these situations too on ordinary people and in trivial occasions, accustoming ourselves not to patronize a barber or fuller from fear of giving offence or to put up at a bad inn when a better can be had because the innkeeper has often greeted us, but instead, for the habit’s sake, to choose the better, though the odds be small, as the Pythagoreans always took care never to cross the left leg over the right or to take the even number instead of the odd, when otherwise there was no difference. We must also form the habit when celebrating a sacrifice or marriage or giving some other entertainment of not inviting a person who has greeted us or run up to welcome us in preference to a friend and honest man; for one who has this habit and training will in greater matters be no easy victim, or rather will be quite proof against assault.

9 1 So much for training. To pass to useful reflexions: the first is that which teaches and reminds us that all passions and disorders involve us in what we think we are avoiding by their means: ambition leads to disgrace, love of pleasure to pain, indolence to toil, contentiousness to discomfiture and defeat at law; and it turns out that compliancy, in its dread of getting a bad name, escapes the smoke to fall into the fire. For when men are too embarrassed to refuse unreasonable petitioners they later must incur the embarrassment of just reproaches; and from dread of trifling censure they must often put up with out-and out disgrace. Thus having been too shy to refuse a friend’s request for money that they do not have, they presently cut a sorry figure when the truth comes out; and having agreed to support one of the parties to a lawsuit, they then are so put out of countenance by the others that they hide and runaway. And many, reduced by this feeling to consenting to disadvantageous terms for a daughter’s or a sister’s marriage, are then driven by it in turn to break their word by making new arrangements.

10 1 Now he who said that the entire population of Asia were one man’s slaves because they could not say the one syllable “no,” was not serious but jesting. Yet those who are importuned need not say anything: merely by raising the brows or dropping the eyes they can avoid rendering many reluctant and uncalled-for services. For while Euripides asserts that silence is an answer to the wise, we are much more likely to need it in dealing with the inconsiderate, for reasonable men are open to persuasion.

Yes, and we must also have in readiness a stock of sayings of illustrious and virtuous men and quote them to the importunate, as Phocion’s reply to Antipater: 533 “You cannot use me both as a friend and flatterer,” and his answer to the Athenians who applauded him at a festival, clamouring for a special gift to the city: “I should be ashamed to give the money away to you and not back to him,” pointing to Callicles the money lender. For as Thucydides says, “the confession of poverty is no disgrace; what is disgraceful is the failure to avoid the reality.” But he who in his silly spinelessness is too meek to say to a suitor

But sir, no silver shines within my caves

and then proceeds to surrender his promise, as a pledge,

Lies bound in honour’s gyves, unforged by man.

Lending money to one of his followers Persaeus drew up a contract in the market-place with a banker, evidently remembering Hesiod:

Be he your brother, laugh and call a witness.

The other was surprised and said: “So legal, Persaeus?” “Yes,” he answered, “that the sum may be repaid in the way of friendship, not reclaimed by way of law.” For many who start out by waiving security for fear of giving offence later go to law and lose their friend. 11 Again, giving Helicon of Cyzicus a letter to Dionysius, Plato commended the bearer as good and estimable, but added at the close: “I write this to you about a mortal man, a creature naturally unstable.” But Xenocrates despite the rigour of his character gave in to pressure and wrote to Polyperchon a letter of introduction for a worthless fellow, as appeared from the event. When the Macedonian welcomed him and inquired if he needed anything, the man asked for a talent. Polyperchon gave it but wrote to Xenocrates advising him in future to scrutinize more carefully the persons he recommended. Now Xenocrates acted in ignorance; we, however, although often well aware that a man is a scoundrel, yet part with letters and money, injuring ourselves without the pleasure got by those who indulge courtesans and flatterers, but loathing and resenting the brazen importunity that overthrows and masters our reason. For to no one more aptly than to those who wring concessions from us by their importunity can we say

I know the evil I set out to do —

in giving false testimony, rendering an unjust verdict, voting for an inexpedient measure, or borrowing for one who will never repay.

12 1 Thus it is facility, more than in any other disorder, that regret is not subsequent to the act, but present from the first: when we give, we chafe; when we testify, we are ashamed; when we act as partners, we are disgraced; — and when we fail to perform, the sorry truth comes out. For being too weak to refuse we promise persistent suitors many things beyond our power, such as presentation at court or introduction to a governor, for want of the will and the firmness to say: “I am unknown to the king; you must apply elsewhere,” as Lysander, who after the break with Agesilaüs was still supposed from his celebrity to stand high in his favour, was not ashamed to turn suitors away, directing them to others, and telling them to resort to those who had more influence with the king. For there is no disgrace in not being omnipotent; whereas to undertake such services and to force matters when we have not the power or the talent required, is not only ignominious but mortifying in the extreme.

13 1 There is another point of view. Reasonable and proper services we must render gladly to those that ask them, not in helpless submission, but because we choose to. 534 But when the service is harmful and unjustified we must always be ready with the saying of Zeno. Meeting a young man of his acquaintance pacing slowly by the city wall, and learning that he was avoiding a friend who expected him to give false testimony in his behalf, Zeno said: “Fool! This man, who is dealing unfairly and unjustly, has no fear or respect for you; and you, to defend the right, dare not stand up to him?” For he who said

A handy arm with knaves is knavery

recommends to us the bad habit of resisting vice by resorting to it; whereas to rid ourselves of brazen and unabashed suitors by being unabashed ourselves, and not, by giving in to shame, to render shameful favours to the shameless, is what is rightly and justly done by men of sense.

14 1 Again when suitors are obscure, of humble station, and of little worth, it is no great trouble to resist them; some indeed put them off with an amusing jest. Thus when two men in a bath-house wanted to borrow Theocritus’ scraper, the one a stranger, the other a thieving acquaintance, he evaded both with a quip, “You I don’t know, you I do.” At Athens Lysimachê, priestess of Athenê Polias, when asked for a drink by the muleteers who had brought the sacred vessels, replied: “I fear it will get into the ritual.” And Antigonus answered when a certain youth whose father was a distinguished captain, but who lacked resolution and courage himself, asked for advancement: “At my court, boy, it is man’s valour and not his father’s that is rewarded.”

15 1 But if the petitioner is a man of prominence and power — and these are the hardest to refuse and shake off when they appeal to us about a verdict or an appointment — the course indeed that was taken by Cato, while still a young man, Din dealing with Catulus, would hardly, I think, commend itself as easy or necessary. Catulus, of all the Romans the most highly regarded, held the office of censor at the time. He had gone up to see Cato, who was in charge of the public treasury, to intercede for one of the persons he had fined, and urged his appeal with great insistence. Cato at last lost patience and said: “It is unseemly, Catulus, that you, the censor, since you won’t take yourself off, should be thrown out by my staff.” Catulus was abashed and left in anger. But consider whether the conduct of Agesilaüs and Themistocles was not more courteous and moderate. Told by his father to render an illegal verdict in a certain case, Agesilaüs said: “But it was you, father, that taught me from childhood to obey the laws; I am therefore obeying you when I do nothing unlawful.” When Simonides asked an unjustified favour Themistocles answered: “You would not be a good poet if in your singing you failed to observe the music, nor I a proper officer if in my judgements I failed to observe the law.” 16 Yet, as Plato said, it is not discord of measure and music that sets city against city and friend against friend and lead them to inflict and undergo the greatest calamities, but jarring errors in law and justice. Nevertheless some, themselves sticklers for propriety in music, words, and metre, expect others who hold office, render verdicts, and are engaged in public affairs to disregard what is proper. This therefore is the very point that we must chiefly use against them. A pleader appeals to you when you are hearing a case, or a party-leader when you hold a seat in the council: give your consent if he will commit a solecism in his proem or a barbarism in his narration. For this he will not do because it appears unseemly — indeed we see that some cannot even abide the collision of one vowel with another in making a speech. 535 Another shameless petitioner is an eminent and reputable personage: tell him to dance or make a face as he passes through the market-place. If he refuses, it is your cue to speak and inquire which is unseemly — to commit a solecism and make a face, or to break the law, to perjure yourself, and unjustly to favour a scoundrel at the expense of an upright man? Furthermore, as Nicostratus the Argive, when offered by Archidamus a great sum and his choice of the Spartan women in marriage if he would betray Crommyon, called Archidamus no true Heraclid, since Heracles had gone about killing malefactors, while Archidamus was making malefactors of honest men, in the same way we must say to one that claims the name of gentleman, if he forces matters and presses an impudent request, that his conduct is unseemly and unworthy of his birth and character.

17 1 With men who have vices you must consider and reflect whether you could bully the miser into lending a talent without a bond, the proud man into resigning his post of honour, or the ambitious politician into giving up his candidacy when expected to win. For it would appear strange indeed that these in their disorders and passions should remain undaunted, firm, and steadfast, while we, who desire and profess to be partisans of honesty and justice, should so fail in control that we are overthrown and abandon our character for virtue. Indeed, if the suitor’s aim is glory and power, it is absurd to enhance the lustre and greatness of another by cutting a sorry figure ourselves and getting a bad name, just as umpires who cheat at the games or officials who make corrupt appointments, while awarding to others offices, crowns, and glory not theirs to bestow, lose their own reputation and honour; whereas if money is his object, can we fail to observe that it is a strange bargain to squander our own repute and character in order to increase the weight of so and so’s purse?

Yet such thoughts do occur to most people, and they know well that they are making a mistake. They are like men compelled to down a large beaker, who barely manage, moaning and with a wry face, to carry out the order. 18 1 But infirmity of the mind resembles a bodily constitution intolerant of either heat or cold. For when praised by the importunate such men go utterly soft and limp; while in face of the complaint and disapproval of rejected suitors they are timorous and fearful. We should make a bold stand on both fronts, yielding neither to intimidation nor to flattery. Thucydides, indeed, holding that power necessarily attracts envy, says “He does wisely who incurs envy for the greatest prize,” but we, who though we consider envy difficult to avoid, yet observe the utter impossibility of escaping reproach or avoiding offence to some of those who will have just cause to complain if we do injustice to oblige the others. Furthermore, the praise that comes from suitors is false coin: we must be thoroughly on our guard against it and not behave like swine, because of our itch to be scratched and tickled allowing the suitor to handle us as he pleases, and sinking to the ground in subservience to him. For he who gives ear to flatterers is no better than he who allows a leghold to one who would throw him; nay, the toss and fall is in his case more disgraceful. 536 Some, to get a name as merciful, humane, and compassionate, release wrongdoers from enmity and punishment; others on the contrary are persuaded to undertake quarrels and prosecutions that are neither compulsory nor free from risk, when they are praised as alone deserving to be called “men” and alone incapable of subservience — yes, and the flatterers even call them “mouths” and “voices.” Consequently Bion compared men of this sort to pitchers easily carried away by the ears. Thus it is reported that Alexinus the sophist was roundly abusing Stilpon of Megara in the Promenade when one of the audience said: “But he was praising you the other day.” “Exactly,” said Alexinus, “he is the most honest and outspoken of men.” Menedemus said on the contrary, on hearing that Alexinus often praised him, “For my part I have never a good word for him. The fellow is therefore a knave, as he either praises a knave or is censured by an honest man.” So steadfast was he and secure against the likes of these, and so firmly did he hold to the advice that Heracles in Antisthenes gave his sons, to thank no man for his praise, which came exactly to this: not to let themselves be prevailed upon by those who praised them and not to flatter them in return. Pindar’s answer is enough, I fancy. To one who said that he praised him everywhere and to everyone he replied: “And I return the courtesy; it is my doing that you tell the truth.”

19 1 Now the same remedy that helps to cure all disorders of the mind is especially indicated for those who yield easily to pressure: when forced by the disorder to err against their judgement and succumb to embarrassment, they must keep it firmly in the memory and store up reminders of their remorse and regret and rehearse them and preserve them for a very long time. For as wayfarers who have stumbled over a stone, or skippers who have capsized off a headland, Dif they retain the circumstances in their memory, henceforth never fail to avoid with a shudder not only the occasion of their misadventure, but everything resembling it, so those who constantly hold up to their repentance and remorse the shame and loss involved in compliancy will in similar circumstances resist the feeling and not easily allow it to carry them away.

On envy and hate

536 1 1 On the following view it is thought to differ not at all from hate, but to be the same. Thus one may say in general that vice, like a line with many hooks, as it moves to and fro with the passions attached to it, gives them occasion to form many connexions and entanglements one another; and that it is with the passions as with diseases: when one becomes inflamed the other does. Thus it is the fortunate man that is a source of pain to one who feels hate as well as to one who feels envy. Hence we consider goodwill to be contrary to both, as it is the wish for one’s neighbour’s prosperity; and hatred and envy to be the same, since their aim is the contrary to that of friendship. But since similarities do not so surely make for sameness as dissimilarities make for difference, we shall endeavour to settle the question by examining the latter, noting first the origin of the two passions.

2 1 Now hate arises from a notion that the person hated is bad either in general or toward oneself. 7 Thus it is men’s nature to hate when they think they have been wronged themselves; and again men reprobate and view with disgust all who in any other way are given to wrongdoing or wickedness. Whereas to attract envy all that is required is apparent prosperity. Hence it would appear that no bounds are set to envy, which, like sore eyes, is disturbed by everything resplendent; whereas hate has bounds and is in every case directed against particular subjects.

3 1 In the second place, even irrational animals may be objects of hate: some people hate weasels, beetles, toads, or snakes. Germanicus could not abide the sound or sight of a cock; and the Persian magi killed water mice, not only because they personally hated them, but because they felt that God regarded the animal as offensive; thus nearly all Arabs and Ethiopians loathe it. But envy occurs only between man and man.

4 1 In animals it is not likely that envy of one another arises, as they have no notion of another’s good or ill fortune, nor are they affected by glory or disgrace, things by which envy is most exasperated. But there is mutual hatred, hostility, and what might be called truceless war between eagles and snakes, crows and owls, titmice and goldfinches; indeed it is said that the blood of these last will not mingle when the animals are killed, but even if you mix it, separates again and runs off in two distinct streams. It is likely, moreover, that in lions the strong hatred of cocks, and in elephants of swine, has been engendered by fear; for what they fear they naturally hate as well. Here, too, therefore, envy is seen to differ from hate, as animal nature admits the one but not the other.

5 1 Again, no one is ever envied with justice, as no one is unjust in being fortunate, and it is for good fortune that men are envied. On the other hand, many are hated with justice, Das those we call “deserving of hate”; and we censure others when they fail to shun such persons and to feel loathing and disgust for them. Good evidence of this is the circumstance that while some confess that they hate a good many people, there is no one that they will say they envy. Indeed hatred of wickedness is among the things we praise; and when certain persons praised Charillus, Lycurgus’ nephew, who was king of Sparta, but a mild and gentle man, his colleague remarked: “How can you call Charillus a good man, when he is not even severe with scoundrels?” And whereas Homer was very detailed and circumstantial in his description of Thersites’ bodily deformity, he expressed the viciousness of his character very succinctly and in a single statement:

Most hateful he to Achilles and Odysseus.

For it is a kind of extreme of baseness to be hateful to the best men. But men deny that they envy as well; and if you show that they do, they allege any number of excuses and say they are angry with the fellow or hate him, cloaking and concealing their envy with whatever other name occurs to them for their passion, implying that among the disorders of the soul it is alone unmentionable.

6 1 Now these passions, like plants, must also feed and grow with what produces them. They are consequently intensified by different things. Thus while our hatred increases as the hated progress in vice, envy on the other hand increases with the apparent progress of the envied in virtue. This explains why when Themistocles was still a youth he said that he was doing nothing remarkable, as he was not yet envied. For just as beetles appear most of all in grain when it is ripe for harvest and in roses when they are in full bloom, so envy fastens most of all on characters and persons that are good and increasing in virtue and fame. In contrast unredeemed villainies intensify hate. At any rate, those who brought false charges against Socrates, 538 being held to have received the limit of baseness, were so hated and shunned by their countrymen that no one would lend them light for a fire, answer their questions, or bathe in the same water, but made the attendants pour it out as polluted, until the men hanged themselves, finding the hatred unendurable. On the other hand supreme and resplendent good fortune often extinguishes envy. For it is hardly likely that anyone envied Alexander or Cyrus when they had prevailed and become masters of the world. But just as the sun, when it stands directly over a man’s head, pouring down its light, either quite obliterates his shadow or makes it small, so when good fortune attains great elevation and comes to stand high over envy, then envy diminishes and withdraws, being overcome by the blaze of glory. Hate, however, is not made to relent by the preeminence and power of one’s enemies. Alexander certainly had none who envied, but many who hated him, and it was these who plotted against him and killed him in the end. So too with misfortunes: they put a stop to envy but not to hate, for men hate even their humbled enemies, whereas no one envies the unfortunate. Rather it is a true remark of a certain sophist of our day that those who envy take the greatest delight in pitying. Here too, therefore, there is a great difference between the two passions, since it is the nature of hate to depart from neither the fortunate nor the unfortunate, whereas envy is no longer sustained when either fortune is at its height.

7 1 Again — or rather this is what we have just been doing — , let us examine the same principle in its negative aspect. Men forgo hostility and hate either when convinced that no injustice is being done them, or when they adopt the view that those they hated as evil are good, or thirdly when they have received from them some benefit, “for the final service,” as Thucydides says, “though small, if opportunely bestowed, wipes out a greater disservice.” Now the first of these circumstances does not wipe out envy; for men feel it though persuaded from the first that no injustice is being done them. The other two actually exasperate it: for enviers eye more jealously those who enjoy a reputation for goodness, feeling that they possess the greatest blessing, virtue; and even if they receive some benefit from the fortunate, are tormented, envying them for both the intention and the power. For the intention proceeds from their virtue, the power from their good fortune, and both are blessings. It is therefore quite distinct from hate, if what soothes the one torments and embitters the other.

8 1 Let us therefore now take the intention of each of the two passions and examine it by itself. The intention of the hater is to injure, and the meaning of hate is thus defined: it is a certain disposition and intention awaiting the opportunity to injure. In envy this, at any rate, is absent. For there are many of their intimates and connexions that the envious would not be willing to see destroyed or suffer misfortune, although tormented by their good fortune; and while they abridge their fame and glory if they can, they would not, on the other hand, afflict them with irreparable calamities, but as with a house towering above their own, are content to pull down the part that casts them in the shade.

On praising oneself inoffensively

539 1 1 In theory, my dear Herculanus, it is agreed that to speak to others of one’s own importance or power is offensive, but in practice not many even of those who condemn such conduct avoid the odium of it. Thus Euripides says:

If speech were got by purchase, there is none

Would care to lay out money on self-praise.

But since the bounteous air provides it free

There’s none but dwells with pleasure on his merits

Real or fancied, for it cost him nothing.

Yet he brags most intolerably, interweaving with the calamities and concerns of his tragedies the irrelevant theme of his own praise. Pindar does the like. Though he says

Untimely vaunting plays the tune for madness

he never wearies of extolling his own powers, which indeed deserve all praise — who denies it? — ; but even the winners of the crown at the games are proclaimed victors by others, who thus remove the odium of self-praise. Thus when Timotheüs writes in celebration of his triumph over Phrynis,

O blest wert thou, Timotheüs, when the herald

Called forth: “Timotheüs of Miletus wins

The prize from Camon’s son, the modulator

Of soft Ionic cadences,”

Dwe are properly disgusted at this jarring and irregular heralding of his own victory. For while praise from others, as Xenophon said, is the most pleasant of recitals, praise of ourselves is for others most distressing. For first we regard self-praisers as shameless, since they should be embarrassed even by praise from others; second as unfair, as they arrogate to themselves what it is for others to bestow; and in the third place if we listen in silence we appear disgruntled and envious, while if we shy at this we are forced to join in the eulogies and confirm them against our better judgement, thus submitting to a thing more in keeping with unmanly flattery than with the showing of esteem — the praise of a man to his face.

2 1 Yet in spite of all this there are times when the statesman might venture on self-glorification, as it is called, not for any personal glory or pleasure, but when the occasion and the matter in hand demand that the truth be told about himself, as it might about another — especially when by permitting himself to mention his good accomplishments and character he is enabled to achieve some similar good. For such praise as this yields a handsome return, as a greater harvest of yet nobler praise springs up from it as from a seed. Indeed it is not as a reward or compensation for his merit that the statesman demands recognition and values it when accorded to his acts: he does so rather because the enjoyment of confidence and good repute affords means for further and yet nobler actions. For when men are trusting and friendly it is pleasant and easy to do them good; whereas in the presence of distrust and dislike it is impossible to put one’s merit to use and force benefits on those who shun them. Whether there are also other reasons for a statesman’s self-praise is a question to consider, 540 so that, while avoiding all that is frivolous and offensive in the practice, we may not overlook its possible uses.

3 1 Now the praise is frivolous which men are felt to bestow upon themselves merely to receive it; and it is held in the greatest contempt, as it appears to aim at gratifying ambition and an unseasonable appetite for fame. For just as those who can find no other food are compelled to feed unnaturally on their own persons, and this is the extremity of famine, so when those who hunger for praise cannot find others to praise them, they give the appearance of seeking sustenance and succour for their vainglorious appetite from themselves, a graceless spectacle. But when they do not even seek to be praised simply and in themselves, but try to rival the honour that belongs to others and set against it their own accomplishments and acts in the hope of dimming the glory of another, their conduct is not only frivolous, but envious and spiteful as well. For the proverb makes of him who sets foot in another’s chorus a meddler and a fool; and self-praise that is thrust by envy and jealousy among praises of others should be most diligently avoided; indeed we should not even endure such praise from others, but should give place to those on whom honour is conferred when they deserve it. If we hold them undeserving and of little worth, let us not strip them of their praise by presenting our own, but plainly refute their claim and show their reputation to be groundless. Here then is something we clearly must avoid.

4 1 In the first place self-praise goes unresented if you are defending your good name or answering a charge, as Pericles when he said:

“Yet I, with whom you are angry, yield to none, I believe, in devising needful measures and laying them before you; and I love my country and cannot be bought.”

For not only is there nothing puffed up, vainglorious, or proud in taking a high tone about oneself at such a moment, but it displays as well a lofty spirit and greatness of character, which by refusing to be humbled humbles and overpowers envy. For men no longer think it fit even to pass judgement on such as these, but exult and rejoice and catch the inspiration of the swelling speech, when it is well-founded and true. The facts confirm this. Thus when the generals were tried on the charge that they had not returned home at once on the expiration of their term as Boeotarchs, but had invaded Laconia and handled the Messenian affair, the Thebans came near to condemning Pelopidas, who truckled to them and entreated mercy; but when Epameinondas expatiated on the glory of his acts and said in conclusion that he was ready to die if they would admit that he had founded Messenê, ravaged Laconia, and united Arcadia against their will, they did not even wait to take up the vote against him, but with admiration for the man commingled with delight and laughter broke up the meeting. Neither then should we altogether blame Sthenelus in Homer for saying

Far better men are we than were our sires,

but remember the words

For shame! Why dost thou, valiant Tydeus’ son,

Hang back? Why peer about the paths of war?

For Sthenelus had not even received the insult himself; he was answering the affront to his friend, and the imputation gave a pardonable latitude to his self-praise. The Romans again were annoyed with Cicero for frequently vaunting his success with Catiline; but when Scipio said that it ill befitted them to sit in judgement over Scipio, to whom they owed the power to sit in judgement for all mankind, they put garlands on their heads, escorted him to the Capitol, and joined him in the sacrifice. 541 For Cicero boasted not from necessity but for glory; whereas the peril of the other did away with envy.

5 1 This holds not only of those on trial and in peril; the unfortunate as well can boast and extol themselves with better grace than the fortunate. For the  fortunate are felt to lay hands on glory, as it were, and take their pleasure of it in gratification of their pride, but the others, far removed from ambition by their plight, are looked upon as breasting ill-fortune, shoring up their courage, and eschewing all appeal to pity and all whining and self-abasement in adversity. And so, just as we regard those who strut on a walk and hold up their chin as fatuous and vain, but when in boxing or fighting men rise to their full height and hold the head erect, we applaud; so the man cast down by fortune, when he stands upright in fighting posture

Like a boxer closing in,

using self-glorification to pass from a humbled and perilous state to an attitude of triumph and pride, strikes us not as offensive or bold, but as great and indomitable. Thus in Homer Patroclus is moderate and inoffensive in success, but boastful in death, when he said

Had twenty faced me such as thou . . .

Again Phocion, who was at other times of mild temper, gave after his condemnation many signs of his great spirit, notably when he said to one of those sentenced to die with him, who was lamenting and showing impatience, “What’s the matter, my good man? Are you not content to die with Phocion?”

Further, it is no less, nay even more, permissible for a statesman when wronged to make some boast to  those who deal hardly with him. Thus Achilles at other times yielded the glory to Heaven and showed his modesty by saying:

If we by Zeus’ high will

Shall take at last the lofty walls of Troy;

but when wrongfully affronted and outraged he let his anger give full course to vaunting:

Twelve cities with my fleet have I made empty

and:

For they see not

The glancing light upon my helm draw nigh.

For the freedom of speech that is involved in a plea for justice gives scope for self-praise. Thus Themistocles neither said nor did anything invidious at the time of his successes; but when he saw that the Athenians had grown weary of him and indifferent, he did not hesitate to say: “My innocent friends, why so tired of repeated benefits from the same hands?” And again: “In a storm you take shelter with me, as under a tree; but in fair weather you pluck the leaves as you pass me by.”

7 1 Now the wrongs of these men did not bear directly on the triumphs that they recalled to their persecutors. But a man reproached for his very triumphs is entirely pardonable and escapes all censure if he extols what he has done. For this, it is felt, is not recrimination but self-defence. It was this, for example, that allowed Demosthenes to speak with full freedom and made palatable the self-praise with which he fills nearly the whole oration On the Crown, as he glories Fin the very charges brought against him: his conduct as ambassador and statesman in the war.

8 1 Not far removed from this is the use of contrast. There is a certain graceful effect in showing that the opposite of what one is charged with would have been shameful and base. Thus Lycurgus said at Athens when abused for buying off an informer: “What do you think of my character as a citizen, when after all these years in office I am caught giving money dishonestly, instead of taking it?” 542 And when Metellus told Cicero that his testimony had killed more men than his pleading had saved, he replied: “Who denies that I am more honest than eloquent?” Such too are the words of Demosthenes: “Who would not rightly have condemned me to death if even by word I had tried to sully any of our country’s glories?” And “What do you think these blackguards would have said if the cities had deserted us  while I was busy quibbling about that?” And in general the oration On the Crown uses the most felicitous contrasts, as each charge is refuted, to introduce self-praise.

9 1 There is in that oration a further point that it is useful to note: by most harmoniously blending the praises of his audience with his own he removed the offensiveness and self-love in his words, praising the Athenians for their conduct towards the Euboeans and toward the Thebans, and for all the good that they had done the people of Byzantium and of the Chersonese, claiming for himself but a share in carrying out instructions. For in this way the hearers, taken off guard, accept with pleasure the praise of the speaker, which insinuates itself along with the praise of themselves; and their delight in the rehearsal of their own successes is followed at once with admiration and approval of him who made them possible. Hence Epameinondas said when Menecleidas derided him as prouder than Agamemnon: “But it is your doing, men of Thebes; with your help alone I overthrew the Spartan empire in a day.”

10 1 Since towards one who praises himself the generality of men feel a great hostility and resentment, but do not feel so strongly against one who praises another, but often even listen with pleasure and voice their agreement, some, when the occasion allows, are in the habit of praising others whose aims and acts are the same as their own and whose general character is similar. In this way they conciliate the hearer and draw his attention to themselves; for although they are speaking of another, he at once recognizes in the speaker a merit that from its similarity deserves the same praises. For as one who vilifies another in terms that apply to himself does not deceive the audience, which sees that he vilifies himself rather than the other, so when one good man commends another he reminds hearers conscious of his merit of himself, so that they at once exclaim “And are not you one of these?” Alexander by honouring Heracles, and again Androcottus by honouring Alexander, won esteem for themselves for similar merit; whereas when Dionysius made sport of Gelon and dubbed him the jest of Sicily, he unwittingly in his envy defamed the greatness and majesty of his own power.

11 This the statesman must in any case understand and for this he must seize the proper occasions.  But those who are forced to speak in their own praise are made more endurable by another procedure as well: not to lay claim to everything, but to disburden themselves, as it were, of honour, letting part of it rest with chance, and part with God. For this reason Achilles did well to say

Since I by Heaven’s will have slain this man,

and Timoleon did well to erect an altar at Syracuse to the Goddess of Accidents in commemoration of his acts, and to consecrate his house to the Good Daemon. Best of all is what Python of Athens did. After killing Cotys he had come to Athens and the speakers were outdoing one another in extolling him to the assembly. Noticing that some persons were jealous and disaffected he came forward and said: “This, men of Athens, was the doing of some god; I did but lend my arm.” Sulla too got rid of envy by always praising his luck, eventually proclaiming himself the Fortunate. For men would rather be bested by luck than by merit, feeling that in the first event another had had an advantage, in the second, that the failure lies in themselves and is their own doing. 543 Thus the code of Zaleucus found favour with the Locrians not least, it is said, because he asserted that Athena had constantly appeared to him and had in each case guided and instructed him in his legislation, and that  nothing he proposed was of his own invention or devising.

12 1 But it is perhaps for the altogether intractable and envious that such medicines and palliatives must be invented. With the fair-minded it is not amiss to use another device, that of amending the praise: when praised as eloquent, rich, or powerful, to request the other not to mention such points but rather to consider whether one is of worthy character, commits no injuries, and leads a useful life. He that does this does not introduce the praise, but transfers it; and he leaves the impression not of delighting in the encomiasts but of being displeased with them for praise that is unbecoming and bestowed for the wrong reasons, using his better points to draw attention from the worse, not from a desire for praise, but to show how to praise aright. Indeed the words “Not with stone did I encircle Athens nor with brick; survey the wall I built and you will discover arms, cavalry, and allies” appear to reflect such a procedure. Still more does the saying of Pericles. His friends, we are told, lamented as he lay dying and were disconsolate, recalling his commands and power and the many trophies, victories, and cities he had won and left to Athens. Rallying a moment he rebuked them for extolling what many others had done as well and what was in part the work of fortune rather than of merit, while they passed over the noblest and greatest encomium and his alone, that no Athenian for any  act of his had put on mourning. This precedent allows the orator, if meritorious, when praised for eloquence, to transfer the praise to his life and character, and the commander admired for skill or success in war to speak freely of his clemency and justice; and again, when the praise runs on the contrary to extravagance, as with the invidious flattery used by many, it permits one to say:

“No god am I; why likenest thou me

To the immortals?

If you know me truly, commend my probity, temperance, reasonableness, or humanity.” For to him who declines the greater honours envy is not displeased to grant the more moderate, and does not cheat of true praise those who reject what is false and vain. Hence those kings who were unwilling to be proclaimed a god or son of a god, but rather Philadelphus or Philometor or Euergetes or Theophiles, were ungrudgingly honoured by those who gave them these noble yet human titles. So again, while men resent the writers and speakers who assume the epithet “wise,” they are delighted with those who say that they love wisdom or are advancing in merit, or put forward some other such moderate and inoffensive claim. Whereas the rhetorical sophists who at their displays of eloquence accept from the audience the cries of “how divine” and “spoken like a god” lose even such commendation as “fairly said” and “spoken as becomes a man.”

13 1 Again, as those who would spare the susceptibilities of sufferers from sore eyes temper with shade whatever is unduly brilliant, so some do not present their own praise in all its brilliance and undimmed, but throw in certain minor shortcomings, failures, or faults, thus obviating any effect of displeasure or disapproval. Thus Epeius says after his extravagant talk about boxing and his vaunt that a blow from him would rip clean through the skin and smash the bones:

Nay is it not enough

That I am slack in war?

544 But he indeed is perhaps ridiculous for mitigating his athlete’s bragging by a confession of cowardice and unmanliness. There is tact, however, and grace in one who tells of some slip of his own or some mistake or  feeling of ambition or weakness for some piece of instruction or information, like Odysseus:

But my heart

Was fain to hear, and nodding with my brows

I bade my mates unbind me

and again:

BI hearkened not — far better had it been —

For I would see the man himself, and hoped

To have from him some hospitable gift.

And in general when faults not altogether degrading or ignoble are set down beside the praise they do away with envy. Many also blunt the edge of envy by occasionally inserting into their own praise a confession even of poverty and indigence or actually of low birth. Thus when Agathocles at a banquet was presenting the young men with cups of enchased gold he ordered earthen cups also to be brought and said: “You see what perseverance, diligence, and courage can do; I once fashioned cups of clay; I now fashion them of gold.” For Agathocles was believed to have been brought up in the potter’s trade because of his low birth and poverty; and from this state he rose to become king of well-nigh the whole of Sicily.

14 1 These antidotes for self-praise we can introduce from outside; others are in a way inherent in the very content of the praise. Such Cato used when he said that he was envied for neglecting his own affairs and spending sleepless nights to serve his country. So too with the lines

I wise? I could have rested at my ease

Unmarked among the mass of those who served

And shared an equal fortune with the wisest

and

Since I would not my former credit lose

So hardly won, I take upon myself

This present task as well.

For it is with reputation and character as with a house or an estate: the multitude envy those thought to have acquired them at no cost or trouble; they do not envy those who have purchased them with much hardship and peril.

15 1 It is not enough, however, to praise ourselves without giving offence and arousing envy; there should be some use and advantage in it as well, that we may appear not merely to be intent on praise, but to have some further end in view. Consider first, then, whether a man might praise himself to exhort his hearers and inspire them with emulation and ambition, as Nestor by recounting his own exploits and battles incited Patroclus and roused the nine champions  to offer themselves for the single combat. For exhortation that includes action as well as argument and presents the speaker’s own example and challenge is endued with life: it arouses and spurs the hearer, and not only awakens his ardour and fixes his purpose, but also affords him hope that the end can be attained and is not impossible. Therefore in the Spartan choruses the old men sing:

Time was when we were valiant youths;

the boys sing:

So we shall be, and braver far;

and the young men:

So we now are: you need but look.

Here the legislator acted well and like a statesman in proposing to the young examples close at hand and taken from their own people, employing as spokesmen the very men whose actions were to be their model.

16 1 But there are also times when in order to overawe and restrain the hearer and to humble and subdue the headstrong and rash, it is not amiss to make  some boast and extol oneself. To quote Nestor once more:

Time was I served

With better men than you, and never these

Disdained my counsel.

545 So too Aristotle said to Alexander that not only the rulers of a great empire have a right to be proud but also those with true opinions about the gods. Useful too against public and private enemies are such remarks as these:

Unhappy they whose sons oppose my power,

and Agesilaüs’ saying about the King of the Persians (who was called “Great”): “Wherein greater than I, if not more just?” And Epameinondas’ reply to the Lacedaemonians when they denounced the Thebans: “We have at any rate put a stop to your Laconic speech.”

These however are against enemies public and private; among friends and countrymen we can not only calm and chasten the overbold, but also restore and rouse the spirits of the terrified and timorous by a seasonable recourse to self-praise. Thus in danger and in battle Cyrus “boasted, but at other times was not given to high talk.” And Antigonus the Second  was ordinarily sober and moderate, but in the sea-fight off Cos, when one of his friends said, “Do you not see how greatly the enemy’s ships outnumber ours?” he replied, “Yes, but against how many do you, my friends, set me?” This too Homer appears to have understood, for he represents Odysseus, when his men were dismayed at the noise and raging waters of Charybdis, as recalling to them his own skill and stout heart:

No greater peril this than when by force

The Cyclops penned us in his hollow cave;

Yet from that cave my manhood and my wit

Availed to save us.

This is not the self-praise of a demagogue or would be sophist or of one who courts plaudits and cheers, but of a man who offers his virtue and understanding to his friends as security against despair. For at critical moments a successful outcome may depend largely on the regard and confidence that are placed in some man who possesses the experience and talents of a leader.

17 1 That it is most unstatesmanlike to pit oneself against the praise and fame of others was said earlier; yet where mistaken praise injures and corrupts by arousing emulation of evil and inducing the adoption of an unsound policy where important issues are at stake, it is no disservice to counteract it, or rather to divert the hearer’s purpose to a better course by pointing out the difference. One would be well content, I think, to see the multitude, when vice is denounced and censured, willing to abstain from it; but if vice should acquire good standing, and if honour and reputation should be added to its temptations in the way of pleasure or profit, there is no human nature so fortunate or strong as not to succumb. It is not then with the praise of persons, but with that of acts, when they are vicious, that the statesman must wage war. For this sort of praise perverts; it brings with it the imitation and emulation of what is shameful as if it were noble.

Such praise is best shown for what it is when true praise is set beside it. For example the tragic actor Theodorus once remarked, it is said, to the comedian Satyrus that there was nothing wonderful in making the audience laugh, but in making them weep and lament. Now I think if a philosopher replies to this same Theodorus: “Sir, it is not making men lament and weep, but putting an end to sorrow and lamentation that is admirable,” this self-praise benefits the hearer and corrects his judgement. Thus Zeno said of the great number of Theophrastus’ pupils: “His is the larger chorus, mine the more harmonious.” 546 And while Leosthenes still prospered in his campaign Phocion replied when the speakers asked what service he had done the state: “Only that when I was general you speakers delivered no funeral oration, as all who died were buried in their family graves.” And the lines

This have I: what I ate, what with high hand

I seized, the lover’s soft delight

were very happily answered by Crates when he wrote

This have I: what I learned, what with deep thought

BI grasped, the Muses’ stern delight.

Such praise as this is good and helpful, teaching admiration and love of the useful and profitable rather than of the vain and superfluous. So let this point take its place with the others in our discussion of the subject.

18 1 As the discussion now requires and invites us to proceed to the next point, it remains to state how we may each avoid unseasonable self-praise. Boasting has in self-love a powerful base of operations, and we can often detect its assaults even against those who are held to take but a modest interest in glory. For as one of the rules of health is either to avoid unwholesome places altogether, or being in them to take the greater care, so with self-love: there are certain treacherous situations and themes that make us blunder into it on the slightest occasion.

First, when others are praised, our rivalry erupts, as we said, into praise of self; it is seized with a certain barely controllable yearning and urge for glory that stings and tickles like an itch, especially when the other is praised for something in which he is our equal or inferior. For just as in the hungry the sight of others eating makes the appetite sharper and keener, so the praise of others not far removed inflames with jealousy those who are intemperate in seeking glory.

19 1 Second, in telling of exploits that have been lucky and have turned out according to plan, many are so pleased with themselves that before they know it they have drifted into vainglorious boasting. For once they come to talk of some of victory or political success or act or word of theirs that found favour with leading men, they get out of hand and go too far. To this sort of self-glorification one may observe that courtiers and the military most readily succumb. But it may also attack those who have returned from a governor’s banquet or from handling affairs of state. For with the mention of illustrious and royal personages they interweave certain gracious remarks that these personages have addressed to them, and fancy that they are not praising themselves but recounting praise received from others. Some even suppose that the self-praise is quite unobserved by their audience when they report the greetings, salutations, and attentions of kings and generals, feeling that what they recite is not their own praise but proofs of the courtesy and affability of others. We must therefore look warily to ourselves when we recount praise received from others and see that we do not allow any taint or suggestion of self-love and self-praise to appear, lest we be thought to make Patroclus our excuse, while we are really singing our own praise.

20 1 But the topic of censure and reproof also has its dangers and offers opportunities of deviation to those who suffer from a morbid craving for glory. Here old men especially go astray: once they have been drawn into admonishing others and rating unworthy habits and unwise acts, they magnify themselves as men who in the like circumstances have been prodigies of wisdom. 547 These indeed, if not merely distinguished by years but by reputation and merit as well, must have licence. What they do is not unprofitable — far from it — : it arouses emulation and a kind of ambition in the persons so rebuked. But the rest of us must carefully avoid and be wary of this deviation. For to point out the faults of our neighbours in any case gives pain, can hardly be borne, and requires great tact; but when a man intermingles praise of himself with censure of another, and uses another’s disgrace to secure glory for himself, he is altogether odious and vulgar, as one who would win applause from the humiliation of another.

21 1 Again, as those who are naturally prone and prompt to laugh should take special care to avoid being tickled or so handled that the smoothest particles of the body glide and flow together and thus bring on and precipitate the fit, in the same way those with a too ardent weakness for fame should especially be advised to abstain from praising themselves when they are praised by others. For you should blush when praised, not be unblushing; you should restrain those who mention some great merit of yours, not find fault with them for doing you scant justice, as most do, going on themselves to recall and gorge themselves Con other actions and feats of prowess until by thus commending themselves they undo the commendation of others. Now some tickle these men as it were by flattery and puff them up; others maliciously throw out a little tribute as a kind of bait to elicit self-praise; still others press for details and interrogate them for the fun of it, as with Menander’s soldier:

 — What made this scar? — A javelin. — O please

Tell us the story. — I was on a ladder

Scaling a wall . . . I in all seriousness

Proceed to demonstrate; and then once more

They sneered at me.

22 1 In all these circumstances we cannot be too cautious, not allowing ourselves to be drawn out by the praise nor to be led on by the questions. The surest precaution and safeguard is to attend closely to the self-praise of others and to remember the distaste and vexation that was felt by all: no other kind of talk is so odious or offensive. For although we can point to no further harm than the mere hearing of the self-praise, yet as though instinctively irked by the performance and uncomfortable we are eager to escape and breathe freely again. Why even a flatterer, a hanger on, a man in need, finds it hard in his necessity to stomach and endure a rich man or satrap or king bestowing praises on himself, and calls it the most exorbitant reckoning he ever paid. Witness the character in Menander:

He murders me. The feasting makes me thin.

Good God! The wit! The military wit!

What airs he gives himself, the blasted windbag!

These are the flatterers and language to which we are prompted not only by soldiers and the newly rich with their flaunting and ostentatious talk, but also by sophists, philosophers, and commanders who are full of their own importance and hold forth on the theme; and if we remember that praise of oneself always involves dispraise from others, that this vainglory has an inglorious end, the audience being left, as Demosthenes says, with a feeling of vexation, not with any belief in the truth of the self-portrait, we shall avoid talking about ourselves unless we have in prospect some great advantage to our hearers or to ourselves.

On the delays of divine vengeance

PATROCLEAS, PLUTARCH, TIMON, OLYMPICUS.

1.These and such like things, O Quintus! when Epicurus had spoken, before any person could return an answer, while we were busy at the farther end of the portico, he flung away in great haste. However, we could not but in some measure admire at the odd behavior of the man, though without taking any farther notice of it in words; and therefore, after we had gazed a while one upon another, we returned to walk as we were singled out in company before. At this time Patrocleas first breaking silence, How say ye, gentlemen? said he: if you think fitting, why may not we discuss this question of the last proposer as well in his absence as if he were present? To whom Timon replying, Surely, said he, it would but ill become us, if at us he aimed upon his departure, to neglect the arrow sticking in our sides. For Brasidas, as history reports, drawing forth the javelin out of his own body, with the same javelin not only wounded him that threw it, but slew him outright. But as for ourselves, we surely have no need to revenge ourselves on them that pelt us with absurd and fallacious reasonings; but it will be sufficient that we shake them off before our opinion has taken hold of them. Then, said I, which of his sayings is it that has given you the greatest cause to be moved? For the man dragged into his discourse many things confusedly, and nothing in order; but gleaning up and down from this and the other place, as it were in the transports of his wrath and scurrility, he then poured the whole in one torrent of abuse upon the providence of God.

2. To which Patrocleas: The slowness of the Supreme Deity and his procrastination in reference to the punishment of the wicked have long perplexed my thoughts; but now, puzzled by these arguments which he produces, I find myself as it were a stranger to the opinion, and newly beginning again to learn. For a long time I could not with patience hear that expression of Euripides,

Does he delay and slowly move;

‘Tis but the nature of the Gods above.

For indeed it becomes not the Supreme Deity to be remiss in any thing, but more especially in the prosecution of the wicked, since they themselves are no way negligent or dilatory in doing mischief, but are always driven on by the most rapid impetuosities of their passions to acts of injustice. For certainly, according to the saying of Thucydides, that revenge which follows injury closest at the heels presently puts a stop to the progress of such as make advantage of successful wickedness. Therefore there is no debt with so much prejudice put off, as that of justice. For it weakens the hopes of the person wronged and renders him comfortless and pensive, but heightens the boldness and daring insolence of the oppressor; whereas, on the other side, those punishments and chastisements that immediately withstand presuming violence not only restrain the committing of future outrages, but more especially bring along with them a particular comfort and satisfaction to the sufferers. Which makes me no less troubled at the saying of Bias, which frequently comes into my mind. For thus he spake once to a notorious reprobate: It is not that I doubt thou wilt suffer the just reward of thy wickedness, but I fear that I myself shall not live to see it. For what did the punishment of Aristocrates avail the Messenians who were killed before it came to pass? He, having betrayed them at the battle of Taphrus yet remained undetected for above twenty years together, and all that while reigned king of the Arcadians, till at length, discovered and apprehended, he received the merited recompense of his treachery. But alas! they whom he had betrayed were all dead at the same time. Or when the Orchomenians had lost their children, their friends, and familiar acquaintance through the treachery of Lyciscus, what consolation was it to them, that many years after a foul distemper seized the traitor, and fed upon his body till it had consumed his putrefied flesh? — who, as often as he dipped and bathed his feet in the river, with horrid oaths and execrations prayed that his members might rot if he had been guilty of treachery or any other villany. Nor was it possible even for the children’s children of the Athenians who had been murdered long before, to behold the bodies of those sacrilegious caitiffs torn out of their graves and transported beyond the confines of their native soil. Whence, in my opinion, Euripides absurdly makes use of these expressions, to divert a man from wickedness:

If thou fear’st heav’n, thou fearest it in vain;

Justice is not so hasty, foolish man,

To pierce thy heart, or with contagious wound

Or thee or weaker mortals to confound;

But with slow pace and silent feet his doom

O’ertakes the sinner, when his time is come.

And I am apt to persuade myself that upon these and no other considerations it is, that wicked men encourage and give themselves the liberty to attempt and commit all manner of impieties, seeing that the fruit which injustice yields is soon ripe, and offers itself early to the gatherer’s hand, whereas punishment comes late, and lagging long behind the pleasure of enjoyment.

3. After Patrocleas had thus discoursed, Olympicus taking him up, There is this farther, said he, O Patrocleas! which thou shouldst have taken notice of; for how great an inconveniency and absurdity arises besides from these delays and procrastinations of divine justice! For the slowness of its execution takes away the belief of providence; and the wicked, perceiving that calamity does not presently follow at the heels of every enormous crime, but a long time after, look upon their calamity as a misfortune, and calling it chance, not punishment, are nothing at all thereby reformed; troubled indeed they well may be at the dire accident befallen them, but they never repent of the villanies they have committed. For as, in the case of the horse, the lashing and spurring that immediately pursue the transgression correct and reduce him to his duty, but all the tugging at the bit and shouting which are late and out of time seem to be inflicted for some other reason than to teach or instruct, the animal being thereby put to pain without understanding his error; in like manner, were the impieties of enormous transgressors and heinous offenders singly scourged and repressed by immediate severity, it would be most likely to bring them to a sense of their folly, humble them, and strike them with an awe of the Divine Being, whom they find with a watchful eye beholding the actions and passions of men, and feel to be no dilatory but a speedy avenger of iniquity; whereas that remiss and slow-paced justice (as Euripides describes it) that falls upon the wicked by accident, by reason of its uncertainty, ill-timed delay, and disorderly motion, seems rather to resemble chance than providence. So that I cannot conceive what benefit there is in these millstones of the Gods which are said to grind so late, as thereby celestial punishment is obscured, and the awe of evil doing rendered vain and despicable.

4. These things thus uttered, while I was in a deep meditation of what he had said, Timon interposed. Is it your pleasure, said he, that I shall give the finishing stroke to the difficulties of this knotty question, or shall I first permit him to argue in opposition to what has been propounded already? Nay then, said I, to what purpose is it to let in a third wave to drown the argument, if one be not able to repel or avoid the objections already made?

To begin therefore, as from the Vestal hearth, from that ancient circumspection and reverence which our ancestors, being Academic philosophers also, bare to the Supreme Godhead, we shall utterly decline to speak of that mysterious Being as if we could presume to utter positively any thing concerning it. For though it may be borne withal, for men unskilled in music to talk at random of notes and harmony, or for such as never experienced warfare to discourse of arms and military affairs; yet it would be a bold and daring arrogance in us, that are but mortal men, to dive too far into the incomprehensible mysteries of Deities and Daemons, — just as if persons void of knowledge should undertake to judge of the methods and reason of cunning artists by slight opinions and probable conjectures of their own. And while one that understands nothing of science finds it hard to give a reason why the physician did not let blood before but afterwards, or why he did not bathe his patient yesterday but to-day; it cannot be that it is safe or easy for a mortal to speak otherwise of the Supreme Deity than only this, that he alone it is who knows the most convenient time to apply most proper corrosives for the cure of sin and impiety, and to administer punishments as medicaments to every transgressor, yet being not confined to an equal quality and measure common to all distempers, nor to one and the same time. Now that the medicine of the soul which is called justice is the most transcendent of all sciences, besides ten thousand other witnesses, even Pindar himself testifies, where he gives to God, the ruler and lord of all things, the title of the most perfect artificer, as being the grand author and distributer of Justice, to whom it properly belongs to determine at what time, in what manner, and to what degree to punish every particular offender. And Plato asserts that Minos, being the son of Jupiter, was the disciple of his father to learn this science; intimating thereby that it is impossible for any other than a scholar, bred up in the school of equity, rightly to behave himself in the administration of justice, or to make a true judgment of another whether he does well or no. For the laws which are constituted by men do not always prescribe that which is unquestionable and simply decent, or of which the reason is altogether without exception perspicuous, in regard that some of their ordinances seem to be on purpose ridiculously contrived; particularly those which in Lacedaemon the Ephori ordain at their first entering into the magistracy, that no man suffer the hair of his upper lip to grow, and that they shall be obedient to the laws to the end they may not seem grievous to them. So the Romans, when they asserted the freedom of any one, cast a slender rod upon his body; and when they make their last wills and testaments, some they leave to be their heirs, while to others they sell their estates; which seems to be altogether contrary to reason. But that of Solon is most absurd, who, when a city is up in arms and all in sedition, brands with infamy the person who stands neuter and adheres to neither party. And thus a man that apprehends not the reason of the lawgiver, or the cause why such and such things are so prescribed, might number up several absurdities of many laws. What wonder then, since the actions of men are so difficult to be understood, if it be no less difficult to determine concerning the Gods, wherefore they inflict their punishments upon sinners, sometimes later, sometimes sooner.

5. Nor do I allege these things as a pretence to avoid the dispute, but to secure the pardon which I beg, to the end that our discourse, having a regard (as it were) to some port or refuge, may proceed the more boldly in producing probable circumstances to clear the doubt. But first consider this; that God, according to Plato, when he set himself before the eyes of the whole world as the exemplar of all that was good and holy, granted human virtue, by which man is in some measure rendered like himself, unto those that are able to follow the Deity by imitation. For universal Nature, being at first void of order, received its first impulse to change and to be formed into a world, by being made to resemble and (as it were) partake of that idea and virtue which is in God. And the self-same Plato asserts, that Nature first kindled the sense of seeing within us, to the end that the soul, by the sight and admiration of the heavenly bodies, being accustomed to love and embrace decency and order, might be induced to hate the disorderly motions of wild and raving passions, and avoid levity and rashness and dependence upon chance, as the original of all improbity and vice. For there is no greater benefit that men can enjoy from God, than, by the imitation and pursuit of those perfections and that sanctity which is in him, to be excited to the study of virtue. Therefore God, with forbearance and at leisure, inflicts his punishment upon the wicked; not that he is afraid of committing an error or of repenting should he accelerate his indignation; but to eradicate that brutish and eager desire of revenge that reigns in human breasts, and to teach us that we are not in the heat of fury, or when our anger heaving and palpitating boils up above our understanding, to fall upon those who have done us an injury, like those who seek to gratify a vehement thirst or craving appetite, but that we should, in imitation of this mildness and forbearance, wait with due composure of mind before we proceed to chastisement or correction, till such sufficient time for consideration is taken as shall allow the least possible room for repentance. For, as Socrates observed, it is far the lesser mischief for a man distempered with ebriety and gluttony to drink puddle-water, than, when the mind is disturbed and over-charged with anger and fury, before it be settled and become limpid again, for a man to seek the satiating his revenge upon the body of his friend or kinsman. For it is not the revenge which is the nearest to injury, as Thucydides says, but rather that which is the most remote from it, that observes the most convenient opportunity. For as anger, according to that of Melanthius,

Quite from the brain transplants the wit,

Vile acts designing to commit;

so reason does that which is just and moderate, laying passion and fury aside. Whence it comes to pass that men, giving ear to human examples, become more mansuete and gentle; as when they hear how Plato, holding his cudgel over his page’s shoulders, as himself relates, paused a good while, correcting his own anger; and how in like manner Archytas, observing the sloth and wilful negligence of his servants in the field, and perceiving his passion to rise at a more than usual rate, did nothing at all; but as he went away, It is your good fortune, said he, that ye have angered me. If then the sayings of men when called to mind, and their actions being told, have such a power to mitigate the roughness and vehemency of wrath, much more becomes it us, beholding God, with whom there is neither dread nor repentance of any thing, deferring nevertheless his punishments to future time and admitting delay, to be cautious and circumspect in these matters, and to deem as a divine part of virtue that mildness and long-suffering of which God affords us an example, while by punishing he reforms some few, but by slowly punishing he helpeth and admonisheth many.

6. In the second place, therefore, let us consider this, that human punishments of injuries regard no more than that the party suffer in his turn, and are satisfied when the offender has suffered according to his merit; and farther they never proceed. Which is the reason that they run after provocations, like dogs that bark in their fury, and immediately pursue the injury as soon as committed. But probable it is that God, whatever distempered soul it be which he prosecutes with his divine justice, observes the motions and inclinations of it, whether they be such as tend to repentance, and allows time for the reformation of those whose wickedness is neither invincible nor incorrigible. For, since he well knows what a proportion of virtue souls carry along with them from himself when they come into the world, and how strong and vigorous their innate and primitive good yet continues, — while wickedness buds forth only preternaturally upon the corruption of bad diet and evil conversation, and even then some souls recover again to perfect cure or an indifferent habitude, — therefore he doth not make haste to inflict his punishments alike upon all. But those that are incurable he presently lops off and deprives of life, deeming it altogether hurtful to others, but most baneful to themselves, to be always wallowing in wickedness. But as for those who may probably be thought to transgress rather out of ignorance of what is virtuous and good, than through choice of what is foul and vicious, he grants them time to turn; but if they remain obdurate, then likewise he inflicts his punishments upon them; for he has no fear lest they should escape.

Now let us consider how oft the characters and lives of men are changed; for which reason, the character is called τϱόπος, as being the changeable part, and also ἦθος, since custom (ἔθος) chiefly prevails in it and rules with the greatest power when it has seized upon it. Therefore I am of opinion, that the ancients reported Cecrops to have had two bodies, not, as some believe, because of a good king he became a merciless and dragon-like tyrant, but rather, on the contrary, for that being at first both cruel and formidable, afterwards he became a most mild and gentle prince. However, if this be uncertain, yet we know both Gelo and Hiero the Sicilians, and Pisistratus the son of Hippocrates, who, having obtained the sovereignty by violence and wickedness, made a virtuous use of their power, and coming unjustly to the throne, became moderate rulers and beneficial to the public. For, by recommending wholesome laws and the exercise of useful tillage to their subjects, they reduced them from idle scoffers and talkative romancers to be modest citizens and industrious good husbands. And as for Gelo, after he had been successful in his war and vanquished the Carthaginians, he refused to grant them the peace which they sued for, unless they would consent to have it inserted in their articles that they would surcease from sacrificing their children to Saturn.

Over Megalopolis Lydiadas was tyrant; but then, even in the time of his tyranny, changing his manners and maxims of government and growing into a hatred of injustice, he restored to the citizens their laws, and fighting for his country against his own and his subjects’ enemies, fell an illustrious victim for his country’s welfare. Now if any one, bearing an antipathy to Miltiades or Cimon, had slain the one tyrannizing in the Chersonese or the other committing incest with his own sister, or had expelled Themistocles out of Athens at what time he lay rioting and revelling in the market-place and affronting all that came near him, according to the sentence afterwards pronounced against Alcibiades, had we not lost Marathon, the Eurymedon, and lovely Artemisium,

Where the Athenian youth

The famed foundations of their freedom laid?

For great and lofty geniuses produce nothing that is mean and little; the innate smartness of their parts will not endure the vigor and activity of their spirits to grow lazy; but they are tossed to and again, as with the waves, by the rolling motions of their own inordinate desire, till at length they arrive to a stable and settled constitution of manners. Therefore, as a person that is unskilful in husbandry would by no means make choice of a piece of ground quite overrun with brakes and weeds, abounding with wild beasts, running streams, and mud; while, to him who hath learnt to understand the nature of the earth, these are certain symptoms of the softness and fertility of the soil; thus great geniuses many times produce many absurd and vile enormities, of which we not enduring the rugged and uneasy vexation, are presently for pruning and lopping off the lawless transgressors. But the more prudent judge, who discerns the abounding goodness and generosity covertly residing in those transcendent geniuses, waits the co-operating age and season for reason and virtue to exert themselves, and gathers the ripe fruit when Nature has matured it. And thus much as to those particulars.

7. Now to come to another part of our discourse, do you not believe that some of the Greeks did very prudently to register that law in Egypt among their own, whereby it is enacted that, if a woman with child be sentenced to die, she shall be reprieved till she be delivered? All the reason in the world, you will say. Then, say I, though a man cannot bring forth children, yet if he be able, by the assistance of Time, to reveal any hidden action or conspiracy, or to discover some concealed mischief, or to be author of some wholesome piece of advice, — or suppose that in time he may produce some necessary and useful invention, — is it not better to delay the punishment and expect the benefit, than hastily to rid him out of the world? It seems so to me, said I. And truly you are in the right, replied Patrocleas; for let us consider, had Dionysius at the beginning of his tyranny suffered according to his merits, never would any of the Greeks have re-inhabited Sicily, laid waste by the Carthaginians. Nor would the Greeks have repossessed Apollonia, nor Anactorium, nor the peninsula of the Leucadians, had not Periander’s execution been delayed for a long time. And if I mistake not, it was to the delay of Cassander’s punishment that the city of Thebes was beholden for her recovery from desolation. But the most of those barbarians who assisted at the sacrilegious plunder of this temple, following Timoleon into Sicily, after they had vanquished the Carthaginians and dissolved the tyrannical government of that island, wicked as they were, came all to a wicked end. So the Deity makes use of some wicked persons as common executioners to punish the wickedness of others, and then destroys those instruments of his wrath, — which I believe to be true of most tyrants. For as the gall of a hyena and the rennet of a sea-calf — both filthy monsters — contain something in them for the cure of diseases; so when some people deserve a sharp and biting punishment, God, subjecting them to the implacable severity of some certain tyrant or the cruel oppression of some ruler, does not remove either the torment or the trouble, till he has cured and purified the distempered nation. Such a sort of physic was Phalaris to the Agrigentines, and Marius to the Romans. And God expressly foretold the Sicyonians how much their city stood in need of most severe chastisement, when, after they had violently ravished out of the hands of the Cleonaeans Teletias, a young lad who had been crowned at the Pythian games, they tore him limb from limb, as their own fellow-citizen. Therefore Orthagoras the tyrant, and after him Myro and Clisthenes, put an end to the luxury and lasciviousness of the Sicyonians; but the Cleonaeans, not having the good fortune to meet with the same cure, went all to wreck. To this purpose, hear what Homer says:

From parent vile by far the better son

Did spring, whom various virtues did renown

And yet we do not find that ever the son of Copreus performed any famous or memorable achievement; but the offspring of Sisyphus, Autolycus, and Phlegyas flourished among the number of the most famous and virtuous princes. Pericles at Athens descended from an accursed family; and Pompey the Great at Rome was the son of Strabo, whose dead body the Roman people, in the height of their hatred conceived against him when alive, cast forth into the street and trampled in the dirt. Where is the absurdity then, — as the husbandman never cuts away the thorn till it injures the asparagus, or as the Libyans never burn the stalks till they have gathered all the ladanum, — if God never extirpates the evil and thorny root of a renowned and royal race before he has gathered from it the mature and proper fruit? For it would have been far better for the Phocians to have lost ten thousand of Iphitus’s horses and oxen, or a far greater sum in gold and silver from the temple of Delphi, than that Ulysses and Aesculapius should not have been born, and those many others who, of wicked and vicious men, became highly virtuous and beneficial to their country.

8. And should we not think it better to inflict deserved punishments in due season and by convenient means, than hastily and rashly when a man is in the heat and hurry of passion? Witness the example of Callippus, who, having stabbed Dio under the pretence of being his friend, was himself soon after slain by Dio’s intimates with the same dagger. Thus again, when Mitius of Argos was slain in a city tumult, the brazen statue which stood in the market-place, soon after, at the time of the public shows, fell down upon the murderer’s head and killed him. What befell Bessus the Paeonian, and Aristo the Oetaean, chief commander of the foreign soldiers, I suppose you understood full well, Patrocleas. Not I, by Jove, said he, but I desire to know. Well then, I say, this Aristo, having with permission of the tyrants carried away the jewels and ornaments belonging to Eriphyle, which lay deposited in this temple, made a present of them to his wife. The punishment of this was that the son, being highly incensed against his mother, for what reason it matters not, set fire to his father’s house, and burned it to the ground, with all the family that were in it.

As for Bessus, it seems he killed his own father, and the murder lay concealed a long time. At length being invited to supper among strangers, after he had so loosened a swallow’s nest with his spear that it fell down, he killed all the young ones. Upon which, being asked by the guests that were present, what injury the swallows had done him that he should commit such an irregular act; Did you not hear, said he, these cursed swallows, how they clamored and made a noise, false witnesses as they were, that I had long ago killed my father? This answer struck the rest of the guests with so much wonder, that, after a due pondering upon his words, they made known the whole story to the king. Upon which, the matter being dived into, Bessus was brought to condign punishment.

9. These things I have alleged, as it was but reason, upon a supposition that there is a forbearance of inflicting punishment upon the wicked. As for what remains, it behooves us to listen to Hesiod, where he asserts, — not like Plato, that punishment is a suffering which accompanies injustice, — but that it is of the same age with it, and arises from the same place and root. For, says he,

Bad counsel, so the Gods ordain,

Is most of all the adviser’s bane.

And in another place,

He that his neighbor’s harm contrives, his art

Contrives the mischief ‘gainst his own false heart.

It is reported that the cantharis fly, by a certain kind of contrariety, carries within itself the cure of the wound which it inflicts. On the other side wickedness, at the same time it is committed, engendering its own vexation and torment, not at last, but at the very instant of the injury offered, suffers the reward of the injustice it has done. And as every malefactor who suffers in his body bears his own cross to the place of his execution, so are all the various torments of various wicked actions prepared by wickedness herself. Such a diligent architectress of a miserable and wretched life is wickedness, wherein shame is still accompanied with a thousand terrors and commotions of the mind, incessant repentance, and never-ceasing tumults of the spirits. However, there are some people that differ little or nothing from children, who, many times beholding malefactors upon the stage, in their gilded vestments and short purple cloaks, dancing with crowns upon their heads, admire and look upon them as the most happy persons in the world, till they see them gored and lashed, and flames of fire curling from underneath their sumptuous and gaudy garments. Thus there are many wicked men, surrounded with numerous families, splendid in the pomp of magistracy, and illustrious for the greatness of their power, whose punishments never display themselves till those glorious persons come to be the public spectacles of the people, either slain and lying weltering in their blood, or else standing on the top of the rock, ready to be tumbled headlong down the precipice; which indeed cannot so well be said to be a punishment, as the consummation and perfection of punishment.

Moreover, as Herodicus the Selymbrian, falling into a consumption, the most incurable of all diseases, was the first who intermixed the gymnastic art with the science of physic (as Plato relates), and in so doing did spin out in length a tedious time of dying, as well for himself as for others laboring under the same distemper; in like manner some wicked men who flatter themselves to have escaped the present punishment, not after a longer time, but for a longer time, endure a more lasting, not a slower punishment; not punished with old age, but growing old under the tribulation of tormenting affliction. When I speak of a long time I speak in reference to ourselves. For as to the Gods, every distance and distinction of human life is nothing; and to say “now, and not thirty years ago” is the same thing as to say that such a malefactor should be tormented or hanged in the afternoon and not in the morning; — more especially since a man is but shut up in this life, like a close prisoner in a gaol, from whence it is impossible to make an escape, while yet we feast and banquet, are full of business, receive rewards and honors and sport. Though certainly these are but like the sports of those that play at dice or draughts in the gaol, while the rope all the while hangs over their heads.

10. So that what should hinder me from asserting, that they who are condemned to die and shut up in prison are not truly punished till the executioner has chopped off their heads, or that he who has drunk hemlock, and then walks about and stays till a heaviness seizes his limbs, has suffered no punishment before the extinction of his natural heat and the coagulation of his blood deprive him of his senses, — that is to say, if we deem the last moment of the punishment only to be the punishment, and omit the commotions, terrors, apprehensions, and embitterments of repentance, with which every malefactor and all wicked men are teased upon the committing of any heinous crime? But this is to deny the fish to be taken that has swallowed the hook, before we see it boiled and cut into pieces by the cook; for every offender is within the gripes of the law, so soon as he has committed the crime and has swallowed the sweet bait of injustice, while his conscience within, tearing and gnawing upon his vitals, allows him no rest:

Like the swift tunny, frighted from his prey,

Rolling and plunging in the angered sea.

For the daring rashness and precipitate boldness of iniquity continue violent and active till the fact be perpetrated; but then the passion, like a surceasing tempest, growing slack and weak, surrenders itself to superstitious fears and terrors. So that Stesichorus may seem to have composed the dream of Clytemnestra, to set forth the event and truth of things:

Then seemed a dragon to draw near,

With mattery blood all on his head besmeared;

Therefrom the king Plisthenides appeared.

For visions in dreams, noon-day apparitions, oracles, descents into hell, and whatever objects else which may be thought to be transmitted from heaven, raise continual tempests and horrors in the very souls of the guilty. Thus it is reported that Apollodorus in a dream beheld himself flayed by the Scythians and then boiled, and that his heart, speaking to him out of the kettle, uttered these words, I am the cause thou sufferest all this. And another time, that he saw his daughters run about him, their bodies burning and all in a flame. Hipparchus also, the son of Pisistratus, had a dream, that the Goddess Venus out of a certain phial flung blood in his face. The favorites of Ptolemy, surnamed the Thunderer, dreamed that they saw their master cited to the judgment-seat by Seleucus, where wolves and vultures were his judges, and then distributing great quantities of flesh among his enemies. Pausanias, in the heat of his lust, sent for Cleonice, a free-born virgin of Byzantium, with an intention to have enjoyed her all night; but when she came, out of a strange sort of jealousy and perturbation for which he could give no reason, he stabbed her. This murder was attended with frightful visions; insomuch that his repose in the night was not only interrupted with the appearance of her shape, but still he thought he heard her uttering these lines:

To judgment-seat approach thou near, I say;

Wrong dealing is to men most hurtful aye.

After this the apparition still haunting him, he sailed to the oracle of the dead in Heraclea, and by propitiations, charms, and dirges, called up the ghost of the damsel; which, appearing before him, told him in few words, that he should be free from all his affrights and molestations upon his return to Lacedaemon; where he was no sooner arrived, but he died.

11. Therefore, if nothing befalls the soul after the expiration of this life, but death is the end of all reward and punishment, I might infer from thence rather that the Deity is remiss and indulgent in swiftly punishing the wicked and depriving them of life. For if a man shall assert that in the space of this life the wicked are no otherwise affected than by the convincement that crime is a fruitless and barren thing, that produces nothing of good, nothing worthy of esteem, from the many great and terrible combats and agonies of the mind, the consideration of these things altogether subverts the soul. As it is related that Lysimachus, being under the violent constraint of a parching thirst, surrendered up his person and his dominions to the Getae for a little drink; but after he had quenched his draught and found himself a captive, Shame of this wickedness of mine, cried he, that for so small a pleasure have lost so great a kingdom. But it is a difficult thing for a man to resist the natural necessity of mortal passions. Yet when a man, either out of avarice, or ambition of civil honor and power, or to gratify his venereal desires, commits any enormous and heinous crime, after which, the thirst and rage of his passion being allayed, he comes to set before his eyes the ignominious and horrible passions tending to injustice still remaining, but sees nothing useful, nothing necessary, nothing conducible to make his life happy; may it not be probably conjectured that such a person is frequently solicited by these reflections to consider how rashly, either prompted by vain-glory, or for the sake of a lawless and barren pleasure, he has overthrown the noblest and greatest maxims of justice among men, and overflowed his life with shame and trouble? As Simonides jesting was wont to say, that the chest which he kept for money he found always full, but that which he kept for gratitude he found always empty; thus wicked men, contemplating their own wickedness, find it always void altogether and destitute of hope (since pleasure gives but a short and empty delight), but ever weighed down with fears and sorrows, ungrateful remembrances, suspicions of futurity, and distrusts of present accidents. Thus we hear Ino complaining upon the theatre, after her repentance of what she had done:

Dear women, tell me, with what face

Shall I return to dwell with Athamas,

As if it ne’er had been my luckless fate

The worst of foul misdeeds to perpetrate?

Thus is it not reason to believe, that the soul of every wicked man revolves and reasons within itself, how by burying in oblivion former transgressions, and casting from itself the consciousness and the guilt of hitherto committed crimes, to fit frail mortality under her conduct for a new course of life? For there is nothing for a man to confide in, nothing but what vanishes like smoke, nothing durable or constant in whatever impiety proposes to itself, — unless, by Jove, we will allow the unjust and vicious to be sage philosophers, — but wherever eager avarice and voluptuousness, inexorable hatred, enmity, and improbity associate together, there you shall also be sure to find superstition nestling and herding with effeminacy and terror of death, a swift change of the most violent passions, and an arrogant ambition after undeserved honor. Such men as these stand in continual dread of their contemners and backbiters, they fear their applauders, believing themselves injured by their flatteries; and more especially, they are at enmity with bad men, because they are so free to extol those that seem good. However, that which hardens men to mischief soon cankers, grows brittle, and shivers in pieces like bad iron. So that in process of time, coming to understand themselves better and to be more sensible of their miscarriages, they disdain, abhor, and utterly disclaim their former course of life. And when we see how a wicked man who restores a trust or becomes security for his friend, or ambitious of honor contributes more largely to the benefits of his country, is immediately in a condition of repentance and sorry for what he has just done, by reason of the natural inclination of his mind to ramble and change; and how some men, being clapped and hummed upon the theatre, presently fall a weeping, their desire of glory relapsing into covetousness; we surely cannot believe that those which sacrificed the lives of men to the success of their tyrannies and conspiracies, as Apollodorus, or plundered their friends of their treasure and deprived them of their estates, as Glaucus the son of Epicydes, did not repent and abhor themselves, or that they were not sorry for the perpetration of such foul enormities. For my part, if it may be lawful for me to deliver my opinion, I believe there is no occasion either for the Gods or men to inflict their punishment upon the most wicked and sacrilegious offenders; seeing that the course of their own lives is sufficient to chastise their crimes, while they remain under the consternations and torments attending their impiety.

12. And now consider whether my discourse have not enlarged itself too far. To which Timon: Perhaps (said he) it may seem to have been too long, if we consider what remains behind, and the length of time required for the discussion of our other doubts. For now I am going about to put forward the last question, like a new champion, since we have contended already long enough upon the former. Now, as to what we have further to say, we find that Euripides delivers his mind freely, and censures the Gods for imputing the transgressions of forefathers unto their offspring. And I am apt to believe that even they who are most silent among us do the like. For if the offenders themselves have already received their reward, then there is no reason why the innocent should be punished, since it is not equal to punish even criminals twice for the same fact. But if remiss and careless, the Gods, omitting opportunely to inflict their penalties upon the wicked, send down their tardy rigor on the blameless, they do not well to repair their defective slowness by injustice. As it is reported of Aesop, that he came upon a time to Delphi, having brought along with him a great quantity of gold which Croesus had bestowed upon him, on purpose to offer a most magnificent oblation to the Gods, and with a design moreover to distribute among the priests and the people of Delphi four minas apiece. But there happening some disgust and difference between him and the Delphians, he performed his solemnity, but sent back his money to Sardis, not deeming those ungrateful people worthy of his bounty. Upon which the Delphians, laying their heads together, accused him of sacrilege, and then threw him down headlong from a steep and prodigious precipice, which is there, called Hyampia. Upon which it is reported that the Deity, being highly incensed against them for so horrid a murder, brought a famine upon the land, and infested the people with noisome diseases of all sorts; insomuch that they were constrained to make it their business to travel to all the general assemblies and places of public concourse in Greece, making public proclamation wherever they came, that, whoever they were that would demand justice for the death of Aesop, they were prepared to give him satisfaction and to undergo whatever penalty he should require. Three generations afterwards came one Idmon, a Samian, no way of kin or otherwise related to Aesop, but only descended from those who had purchased Aesop in Samos; to whom the Delphians paid those forfeitures which he demanded, and were delivered from all their pressing calamities. And from hence (by report) it was, that the punishment of sacrilegious persons was transferred from the rock Hyampia to that other cliff which bears the name of Nauplia.

Neither is Alexander applauded by those who have the greatest esteem for his memory (of which number are we ourselves), who utterly laid waste the city of Branchidae, putting men, women, and children to the sword, for that their ancestors had long before delivered up the temple of Miletus. In like manner Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, when the Corcyraeans requested to know the reason of him, why he depopulated their island, deriding and scoffing at their demand, replied: For no other reason, by Jove, but because your forefathers entertained Ulysses. And when the islanders of Ithaca expostulated with him, asking why his soldiers carried away their sheep; because, said he, when your king came to our island, he put out the eyes of the shepherd himself. And therefore do you not think Apollo more extravagant than all these, for punishing so severely the Pheneatae by stopping up that profound and spacious receptacle of all those floods that now cover their country, upon a bare report that Hercules a thousand years ago took away the prophetic tripod and carried it to Pheneus? — or when he foretold to the Sybarites, that all their calamities should cease, upon condition they appeased the wrath of Leucadian Juno by enduring three ruinous calamities upon their country? Nor is it so long since, that the Locrians surceased to send their virgins to Troy;

Who like the meanest slaves, exposed to scorn,

Barefoot, with limbs unclad, at earliest morn

Minerva’s temple sweep; yet all the while,

No privilege has age from weary toil.

Nor, when with years decrepit, can they claim

The thinnest veil to hide their aged shame;

and all this to punish the lasciviousness of Ajax.

Now where is the reason or justice of all this? Nor is the custom of the Thracians to be approved, who to this day abuse their wives in revenge of their cruelty to Orpheus. And with as little reason are the Barbarians about the river Po to be extolled, who once a year put themselves into mourning for the misfortune of Phaethon. And still more ridiculous than all this it would certainly be, when all those people that lived at the time took no notice of Phaethon’s mischance, that they, who happened to be born five or ten generations after, should be so idle as to take up the custom of going into black and bewailing his downfall. However, in all these things there is nothing to be observed but mere folly; nothing pernicious, nor any thing dangerous. But as for the anger of the Gods, what reason can be given why their wrath should stop and conceal itself upon a sudden, like some certain rivers, and when all things seem to be forgot, should break forth upon others with so much fury, as not to be atoned but with some remarkable calamities?

13. Upon that, so soon as he had done speaking, not a little afraid lest, if he should begin again, he would run himself into many more and greater absurdities, I asked: Do you believe, sir, all that you have said to be true? Then he: Though all that I have alleged may not be true, yet if only some part may be allowed for truth, do not you think there is the same difficulty still remaining in the question? It may be so, said I. And thus it is with those who labor under a vehement burning fever; for, whether covered with one blanket or many, the heat is still the same or very little different; yet for refreshment’s sake it may be convenient sometimes to lighten the weight of the clothes; and if the patient refuse your courtesy, to let him alone. Yet I must tell you, the greatest part of these examples look like fables and fiction. Call to mind therefore the feast called Theoxenia lately celebrated, and that most noble portion which the public criers proclaim to be received as their due by the offspring of Pindar; and recollect with yourself, how majestic and grateful a mark of grandeur you look upon that to be. Truly, said he, I judge there is no man living who would not be sensible of the curiosity and elegancy of such an honor, displaying antiquity void of tincture and false glitter, after the Greek manner, unless he were such a brute that I may use the words of Pindar himself:

Whose coal-black heart, from natural dross unpurged,

Had only by cold flames at first been forged.

Therefore I forbear, said I, to mention that proclamation not much unlike to this, usually made in Sparta,— “After the Lesbian singer,” — in honor and memory of the ancient Terpander. But you, on the other side, deem yourself worthy to be preferred above all the rest of the Boeotians, as being of the noble race of the Opheltiadae; and among the Phocians you claim undoubted pre-eminence, for the sake of your ancestor Daiphantus. And, for my part, I must acknowledge that you were one of the first who assisted me, as my second, against the Lycormaeans and Satilaeans, claiming the privilege of wearing crowns and the honor due by the laws of Greece to the descendants from Hercules; at what time I affirmed, that those honors and guerdons ought more especially to be preserved inviolable to the immediate progeny of Hercules, in regard that, though he were so great a benefactor to the Greeks, yet in his lifetime he was not thought worthy of any reward or return of gratitude. You recall to my remembrance, said he, a most noble contest, and worthy the debate of philosophy itself. Dismiss therefore, said I, that vehement humor of yours that excites you to accuse the Gods, nor take it ill, if many times celestial punishment discharges itself upon the offspring of the wicked and vicious; or else be not too much overjoyed or too forward to applaud those honors which are due to nobility of birth. For it becomes us, if we believe that the reward of virtue ought to be extended to posterity, by the same reason to take it for granted that punishment for impieties committed ought not to be stayed and cease any sooner, but that it should run forward at equal pace with the reward, which will in turn requite every man with what is his due. And therefore they that with pleasure behold the race of Cimon highly honored in Athens, but on the other side, fret and fume at the exilement of the posterity of Lachares or Ariston, are too remiss and oscitant, or rather too morose and over quarrelsome with the Deity itself, one while accusing the Divinity if the posterity of an unjust and wicked person seem to prosper in the world, another time no less moody and finding fault if it fall out that the race of the wicked come to be utterly destroyed and extirpated from the earth. And thus, whether the children of the wicked or the children of the just fall under affliction, the case is all one to them; the Gods must suffer alike in their bad opinions.

14. These, said I, are the preliminaries, which I would have you make use of against those choleric accusers and testy snarlers of whom I have given you warning. But now to take in hand once more, as it were, the first end of the bottom of thread, in this same dark discourse of the Gods, wherein there are so many windings and turnings and gloomy labyrinths, let us by degrees and with caution direct our steps to what is most likely and probable. For, even in those things which fall under our daily practice and management, we are many times at a loss to determine the undoubted and unquestioned truth. For example, what certain reason can be given for that custom amongst us, of ordering the children of parents that die of a consumption or a dropsy to sit with both their feet soaking in the water till the dead body be burnt? For people believe, that thereby the disease is prevented from becoming hereditary, and also that it is a charm to secure those children from it as long as they live. Again, what should be the reason, that if a goat take a piece of sea-holly in her mouth, the whole herd will stand still till the goat-herd come and take it out? Other hidden properties there are, which, by virtue of certain touches and transitions, pass from some bodies into others with incredible swiftness and often to incredible distances. But we are more apt to wonder at distances of time than those of space. And yet there is more reason to wonder, that Athens should be infected with an epidemic contagion taking its rise in Ethiopia, that Pericles should die and Thucydides be smitten with the infection, than that, upon the impiety of the Delphians and Sybarites, delayed vengeance should at length overtake their posterity. For these hidden powers and properties have their sacred connections and correspondences between their utmost endings and their first beginnings; of which although the causes be concealed from us, yet silently they bring to pass their proper effects.

15. Not but that there is a reason ready at hand for the public punishments showered down from heaven upon particular cities. For a city is a kind of entire thing and continued body, a certain sort of creature, never subject to the changes and alterations of age, nor varying through process of time from one thing to another, but always sympathizing and in unity with itself, and receiving the punishment or reward of whatever it does or has ever acted in common, so long as the community, which makes it a body and binds it together with the mutual bands of human benefit, preserves its unity. For he that goes about of one city to make many, and perhaps an infinite number, by distinguishing the intervals of time, seems to be like a person who would make several of one single man, because he is now grown elderly who before was a young man, and before that a mere stripling. Or rather, it resembles the method of disputing amongst the Epicharmians, the first authors of that manner of arguing called the increaser. For example: he that formerly ran in debt, although he never paid it, owes nothing now, as being become another man; and he that was invited yesterday to supper comes the next night an unbidden guest, for that he is quite another person. And indeed the distinctions of ages cause greater alterations in every one of us than commonly they do in cities. For he that has seen Athens may know it again thirty years after; the present manners, motions, pastimes, serious studies, their familiarities and marks of their displeasure, little or nothing differing from what formerly they were. But after a long absence there is many a man who, meeting his own familiar friend, hardly knows him again, by reason of the great alteration of his countenance and the change of his manners, which are so easily subject to the alterations of language, labor, and employment, all manner of accidents, and mutation of laws, that even they who are most usually conversant with him admire to see the strangeness and novelty of the change; and yet the man is reputed still to be the same from his birth to his decease. In the same manner does a city still remain the same; and for that reason we think it but justice, that a city should as well be obnoxious to the blame and reproach of its ancient inhabitants, as participate the glory of their former puissance and renown; else we shall throw every thing before we know it into the river of Heraclitus, into which (he says) no one can step twice, since Nature by her changes is ever altering and transforming all things.

16. Now then, if a city be one entire and continued body, the same opinion is to be conceived of a race of men, depending upon one and the same beginning, and carrying along with it a certain power and communion of qualities; in regard that what is begotten cannot be thought to be severed from that which begets it, like a piece of workmanship from the artificer; the one being begotten of the person, the other framed by him. So that what is engendered is a part of the original from whence it sprung, whether meriting honor or deserving punishment. So that, were it not that I might be thought to be too sportive in a serious discourse, I would affirm, that the Athenians were more unjust to the statue of Cassander when they caused it to be melted down and defaced, and that the Syracusans were more rigorous to the dead carcass of Dionysius when they cast it forth of their own confines, than if they had punished their posterity; for that the statue did no way partake of the substance of Cassander, and the soul of Dionysius was absolutely departed from the body deceased. Whereas Nisaeus, Apollocrates, Antipater, Philip, and several others descended from wicked parents, still retained the most principal part of those who begot them, not lazily and sluggishly dormant, but that very part by which they live, are nourished, act and move, and become rational and sensible creatures. Neither is there any thing of absurdity, if, being the offspring of such parents, they should retain many of their bad qualities. In short, therefore, I affirm that, as it is in the practice of physic, that whatever is wholesome and profitable is likewise just, and as he would be accounted ridiculous that should aver it to be an act of injustice to cauterize the thumb for the cure of the sciatica, or when the liver is imposthumated, to scarify the belly, or when the hoofs of laboring oxen are over tender, to anoint the tips of their horns; in the same manner is he to be laughed at who seeks for any other justice in the punishment of vice than the cure and reformation of the offender, and who is angry when medicine is applied to some parts for the cure of others, as when a chirurgeon opens a vein to give his patient ease upon an inflammation of the eyes. For such a one seems to look no farther than what he reaches by his senses, forgetting that a schoolmaster, by chastising one, admonishes all the rest of his scholars, and that a general, condemning only one in ten, reduces all the rest to obedience. And thus there is not only a cure and amendment of one part of the body by another; but many times the very soul itself is inclined to vice or reformation, by the lewdness or virtue of another, and indeed much more readily than one body is affected by another. For, in the case of the body, as it seems natural, the same affections and the same changes must always occur; while the soul, being agitated by fancy and imagination, becomes better or worse, as it is either daring and confident or timorous and mistrustful.

17. While I was yet speaking, Olympicus interrupting me said: You seem by this discourse of yours to infer as if the soul were immortal, which is a supposition of great consequence. It is very true, said I, nor is it any more than what yourselves have granted already; in regard the whole dispute has tended from the beginning to this, that the supreme Deity overlooks us, and deals to every one of us according to our deserts. To which the other: Do you then believe (said he) it follows of necessity that, because the Deity observes our actions and distributes to every one of us according to our merits, therefore our souls should exist and be altogether incorruptible, or else for a certain time survive the body after death? Not so fast, good sir, said I. But can we think that God so little considers his own actions, or is such a waster of his time in trifles, that, if we had nothing of divine within us, nothing that in the least resembled his perfection, nothing permanent and stable, but were only poor creatures, that (according to Homer’s expression) faded and dropped like withered leaves, and in a short time too, yet he should make so great account of us — like women that bestow their pains in making little gardens, no less delightful to them than the gardens of Adonis, in earthen pans and pots — as to create us souls to blossom and flourish only for a day, in a soft and tender body of flesh, without any firm and solid root of life, and then to be blasted and extinguished in a moment upon every slight occasion? And therefore, if you please, not concerning ourselves with other Deities, let us go no farther than the God Apollo, whom here we call our own; see whether it is likely that he, knowing that the souls of the deceased vanish away like clouds and smoke, exhaling from our bodies like a vapor, requires that so many propitiations and such great honors be paid to the dead, and such veneration be given to the deceased, merely to delude and cozen his believers. And therefore, for my part, I will never deny the immortality of the soul, till somebody or other, as they say Hercules did of old, shall be so daring as to come and take away the prophetical tripod, and so quite ruin and destroy the oracle. For as long as many oracles are uttered even in these our days by the Delphic soothsayer, the same in substance which was formerly given to Corax the Naxian, it is impious to declare that the human soul can die.

Then Patrocleas: What oracle was this? Who was that same Corax? For both the answer itself and the person whom you mention are strangers to my remembrance. Certainly, said I, that cannot be; only it was my error which occasioned your ignorance, in making use of the addition to the name instead of the name itself. For it was Calondas, who slew Archilochus in fight, and who was surnamed Corax. He was thereupon ejected by the Pythian priestess, as one who had slain a person devoted to the Muses; but afterwards, humbling himself in prayers and supplications, intermixed with undeniable excuses of the fact, was enjoined by the oracle to repair to the habitation of Tettix, there to expiate his crime by appeasing the ghost of Archilochus. That place was called Taenarus; for there it was, as the report goes, that Tettix the Cretan, coming with a navy, landed, built a city not far from the Psychopompaeum (or place where ghosts are conjured up), and stored it with inhabitants. In like manner, when the Spartans were commanded by the oracle to atone the ghost of Pausanias, they sent for several exorcisers and conjurers out of Italy, who by virtue of their sacrifices chased the apparition out of the temple.

18. Therefore, said I, there is one and the same reason to confirm the providence of God and the immortality of the soul; neither is it possible to admit the one, if you deny the other. Now then, the soul surviving after the decease of the body, the inference is the stronger that it partakes of punishment and reward. For during this mortal life the soul is in continual combat like a wrestler; but after all those conflicts are at an end, she then receives according to her merits. But what the punishments and what the rewards of past transgressions or just and laudable actions are to be while the soul is thus alone by itself, is nothing at all to us that are alive; for either they are altogether concealed from our knowledge, or else we give but little credit to them. But those punishments that reach succeeding posterity, being conspicuous to all that are living at the same time, restrain and curb the inclinations of many wicked persons. Now I have a story that I lately heard, which I might relate to show that there is no punishment more grievous or that touches more to the quick, than for a man to behold his children born of his body suffering for his crimes; and that, if the soul of a wicked and lawless criminal were to look back to earth and behold, not his statues overturned and his dignities reversed, but his own children, his friends, or his nearest kindred ruined and overwhelmed with calamity, such a person, were he to return to life again, would rather choose the refusal of all Jupiter’s honors than abandon himself a second time to his wonted injustice and extravagant desires. This story, I say, I could relate, but that I fear lest you should censure it for a fable. And therefore I deem it much the better way to keep close to what is probable and consentaneous to reason. By no means, replied Olympicus; but proceed, and gratify us with your story also, since it was so kindly offered. Thereupon, when the rest of the company likewise made me the same request, Permit me, said I, in the first place, to pursue the rational part of my discourse, and then, according as it shall seem proper and convenient, if it be a fable, you shall have it as cheap as I heard it.

19. Bion was of opinion that God, in punishing the children of the wicked for the sins of their fathers, seems more irregular than a physician that should administer physic to a son or a grandchild, to cure the distemper of a father or a grandfather. But this comparison does not run cleverly; since the amplification of the similitude agrees only in some things, but in others is altogether defective. For if one man be cured of a disease by physic, the same medicine will not cure another; nor was it ever known that any person troubled with sore eyes or laboring under a fever was ever restored to perfect health by seeing another in the same condition anointed or plastered. But the punishments or executions of malefactors are done publicly in the face of the world, to the end that, justice appearing to be the effect of prudence and reason, some may be restrained by the correction inflicted upon others. So that Bion never rightly apprehended where the comparison answered to our question. For oftentimes it happens, that a man comes to be haunted with a troublesome though not incurable disease, and through sloth and in temperance increases his distemper, and weakens his body to that degree that he occasions his own death. After this, it is true, the son does not fall sick; only he has received from his father’s seed such a habit of body as makes him liable to the same disease; which a good physician or a tender friend or a skilful apothecary or a careful master observing confines him to a strict and spare diet, restrains him from all manner of superfluity, keeps him from all the temptations of delicious fare, wine, and women, and making use of wholesome and proper physic, together with convenient exercise, dissipates and extirpates the original cause of a distemper at the beginning, before it grows to a head and gets a masterless dominion over the body. And is it not our usual practice thus to admonish those that are born of diseased parents, to take timely care of themselves, and not to neglect the malady, but to expel the original nourishment of the inbred evil, as being then easily movable and apt for expulsion? It is very true, cried they. Therefore, said I, we cannot be said to do an absurd thing, but what is absolutely necessary, — nor that which is ridiculous, but what is altogether useful, — while we prescribe to the children of the epileptic, the hypochondriacal, and those that are subject to the gout, such exercises, diet, and remedies as are proper, not so much because they are at that time troubled with the distemper, as to prevent the malady. For a man begotten by an unsound body does not therefore deserve punishment, but rather the preservation of proper physic and good regimen; which if any one call the punishment of fear or effeminacy, because the person is debarred his pleasures and put to some sort of pain by cupping and blistering, we mind not what he says. If then it be of such importance to preserve, by physic and other proper means, the vitiated offspring of another body, foul and corrupted; ought we to suffer the hereditary resemblances of a wicked nature to sprout up and bud in the youthful character, and to wait till they are diffused into all the affections of the mind, and bring forth and ripen the malignant fruit of a mischievous disposition? For such is the expression of Pindar.

20. Or can you believe but that in this particular God is wiser than Hesiod, admonishing and exhorting us in this manner:

Nor mind the pleasures of the genial bed,

Returning from th’ interment of the dead;

But propagate the race, when heavenly food

And feasting with the Gods have warmed the blood;

intimating thereby, that a man was never to attempt the work of generation but in the height of a jocund and merry humor, and when he found himself as it were dissolved into jollity; as if from procreation proceeded the impressions not only of vice or virtue, but of sorrow and joy, and of all other qualities and affections whatever. However, it is not the work of human wisdom (as Hesiod supposes) but of divine providence, to foresee the sympathies and differences of men’s natures, before the malignant infection of their unruly passions come to exert itself, by hurrying their unadvised youth into a thousand villanous miscarriages. For though the cubs of bears and whelps of wolves and apes immediately discover their several inbred qualities and natural conditions without any disguise or artificial concealment, man is nevertheless a creature more refined, who, many times curbed by the shame of transgressing common customs, universal opinion, or the law, conceals the evil that is within him, and imitates only what is laudable and honest. So that he may be thought to have altogether cleansed and rinsed away the stains and imperfections of his vicious disposition, and so cunningly for a long time to have kept his natural corruption wrapped up under the covering of craft and dissimulation, that we are scarce sensible of the fallacy till we feel the stripes or sting of his injustice; believing men to be only then unjust, when they offer wrong to ourselves; lascivious, when we see them abandoning themselves to their lusts; and cowards, when we see them turning their backs upon the enemy; just as if any man should be so idle as to believe a scorpion had no sting until he felt it, or that a viper had no venom until it bit him, — which is a silly conceit. For there is no man that only then becomes wicked when he appears to be so; but, having the seeds and principles of iniquity within him long before, the thief steals when he meets with a fit opportunity, and the tyrant violates the law when he finds himself surrounded with sufficient power. But neither is the nature and disposition of any man concealed from God, as taking upon him with more exactness to scrutinize the soul than the body; nor does he tarry till actual violence or lewdness be committed, to punish the hands of the wrong-doer, the tongue of the profane, or the transgressing members of the lascivious and obscene. For he does not exercise his vengeance on the unjust for any wrong that he has received by his injustice, nor is he angry with the highway robber for any violence done to himself, nor does he abominate the adulterer for defiling his bed; but many times, by way of cure and reformation, he chastises the adulterer, the covetous miser, and the wronger of his neighbors, as physicians endeavor to subdue an epilepsy by preventing the coming of the fits.

21. What shall I say? But even a little before we were offended at the Gods protracting and delaying the punishments of the wicked, and now we are as much displeased that they do not curb and chastise the depravities of an evil disposition before the fact committed; not considering that many times a mischief contrived for future execution may prove more dreadful than a fact already committed, and that dormant villany may be more dangerous than open and apparent iniquity; not being able to apprehend the reason wherefore it is better to bear with the unjust actions of some men, and to prevent the meditating and contrivance of mischief in others. As, in truth, we do not rightly comprehend why some remedies and physical drugs are no way convenient for those that labor under a real disease, yet wholesome and profitable for those that are seemingly in health, but yet perhaps in a worse condition than they who are sick. Whence it comes to pass, that the Gods do not always turn the transgressions of parents upon their children; but if a virtuous son happen to be the offspring of a wicked father, — as often it falls out that a sane child is born of one that is unsound and crazy, — such a one is exempted from the punishment which threatens the whole descent, as having been adopted into a virtuous family. But for a young man that treads in the footsteps of a criminal race, it is but just that he should succeed to the punishment of his ancestor’s iniquity, as one of the debts attached to his inheritance. For neither was Antigonus punished for the crimes of Demetrius; nor (among the ancient heroes) Phyleus for the transgressions of Augeas, nor Nestor for the impiety of Neleus; in regard that, though their parents were wicked, yet they were virtuous themselves. But as for those whose nature has embraced and espoused the vices of their parentage, them holy vengeance prosecutes, pursuing the likeness and resemblance of sin. For as the warts and moles and freckles of parents, not seen upon the children of their own begetting, many times afterwards appear again upon the children of their sons and daughters; and as the Grecian woman that brought forth a blackamore infant, for which she was accused of adultery, proved herself, upon diligent inquiry, to be the offspring of an Ethiopian after four generations; and as among the children of Pytho the Nisibian, — said to be descended from the Sparti, that were the progeny of those men that sprung from the teeth of Cadmus’s dragon, — the youngest of his sons, who lately died, was born with the print of a spear upon his body, the usual mark of that ancient line, which, not having been seen for many revolutions of years before, started up again, as it were, out of the deep, and showed itself the renewed testimonial of the infant’s race; so many times it happens that the first descents and eldest races hide and drown the passions and affections of the mind peculiar to the family, which afterward bud forth again, and display the natural propensity of the succeeding progeny to vice or virtue.

22. Having thus concluded, I held my peace; when Olympicus smiling said: We forbear as yet to give you our approbation, that we may not seem to have forgot the fable; not but that we believe your discourse to have been sufficiently made out by demonstration, only we reserve our opinion till we shall have heard the relation of that likewise. Upon which, I began again after this manner: There was one Thespesius of Soli, the friend and familiar acquaintance of that Protogenes who for some time conversed among us. This gentleman, in his youth leading a debauched and intemperate life, in a short time spent his patrimony, and then for some years became very wicked; but afterwards repenting of his former follies and extravagancies, and pursuing the recovery of his lost estate by all manner of tricks and shifts, did as is usual with dissolute and lascivious youth, who when they have wives of their own never mind them at all, but when they have dismissed them, and find them married to others that watch them with a more vigilant affection, endeavor to corrupt and vitiate them by all the unjust and wicked provocations imaginable. In this humor, abstaining from nothing that was lewd and illegal, so it tended to his gain and profit, he got no great matter of wealth, but procured to himself a world of infamy by his unjust and knavish dealing with all sorts of people. Yet nothing made him more the talk of the country, than the answer which was brought him back from the oracle of Amphilochus. For thither it seems he sent, to inquire of the Deity whether he should live any better the remaining part of his life. To which the oracle returned, that it would be better with him after he was dead. And indeed, not long after, in some measure it so fell out; for he happened to fall from a certain precipice upon his neck, and though he received no wound nor broke any limb, yet the force of the fall beat the breath out of his body. Three days after, being carried forth to be buried, as they were just ready to let him down into the grave, of a sudden he came to himself, and recovering his strength, so altered the whole course of his life, that it was almost incredible to all that knew him. For by the report of the Cilicians, there never was in that age a juster person in common dealings between man and man, more devout and religious as to divine worship, more an enemy to the wicked, nor more constant and faithful to his friends; which was the reason that they who were more conversant with him were desirous to hear from himself the cause of so great an alteration, not believing that so great a reformation could proceed from bare chance; though it was true that it did so, as he himself related to Protogenes and others of his choicest friends.

For when his sense first left his body, it seemed to him as if he had been some pilot flung from the helm by the force of a storm into the midst of the sea. Afterwards, rising up again above water by degrees, so soon as he thought he had fully recovered his breath, he looked about him every way, as if one eye of his soul had been open. But he beheld nothing of those things which he was wont formerly to see, only he saw stars of a vast magnitude, at an immense distance one from the other, and sending forth a light most wonderful for the brightness of its color, which shot itself out in length with an incredible force; on which the soul riding, as it were in a chariot, was most swiftly, yet as gently and smoothly, dandled from one place to another. But omitting the greatest part of the sights which he beheld, he saw, as he said, the souls of such as were newly departed, as they mounted from below, resembling little fiery bubbles, to which the air gave way. Which bubbles afterwards breaking insensibly and by degrees, the soul came forth in the shapes of men and women, light and nimble, as being discharged of all their earthly substance. However, they differed in their motion; for some of them leaped forth with a wonderful swiftness, and mounted up in a direct line; others like so many spindles of spinning-wheels turned round and round, sometimes whisking upwards, sometimes darting downwards, with a confused and mixed agitation, that could hardly be stopped in a very long time.

Of these souls he knew not who the most part were; only perceiving two or three of his acquaintance, he endeavored to approach and discourse them. But they neither heard him speak, neither indeed did they seem to be in their right mind, fluttering and out of their senses, avoiding either to be seen or felt; they frisked up and down at first, alone and apart by themselves, till meeting at length with others in the same condition, they clung together; but still their motions were with the same giddiness and uncertainty as before, without steerage or purpose; and they sent forth inarticulate sounds, like the cries of soldiers in combat, intermixed with the doleful yells of fear and lamentation. Others there were that towered aloft in the upper region of the air, and these looked gay and pleasant, and frequently accosted each other with kindness and respect; but they shunned those troubled souls, and seemed to show discontent by crowding together, and joy and pleasure by expanding and separating from each other. One of these, said he, being the soul of a certain kinsman, — which, because the person died when he was but very young, he did not very well know, — drew near him, and saluted him by the name of Thespesius; at which being in a kind of amazement, and saying his name was not Thespesius but Aridaeus, the spirit replied, ‘twas true that formerly he was so called, but that from thenceforth he must be Thespesius, that is to say “divine.” For thou art not in the number of the dead as yet, it said, but by a certain destiny and permission of the Gods, thou art come hither only with thy intellectual faculty, having left the rest of thy soul, like an anchor, in thy body. And that thou mayst be assured of this, observe it for a certain rule, both now and hereafter, that the souls of the deceased neither cast any shadow, neither do they open and shut their eyelids. Thespesius having heard this discourse, was so much the more encouraged to make use of his own reason; and therefore looking round about to prove the truth of what had been told him, he could perceive that there followed him a kind of obscure and shadowlike line, whereas those other souls shone like a round body of perfect light, and were transparent within. And yet there was a very great difference between them too; for that some yielded a smooth, even, and contiguous lustre, all of one color, like the full-moon in her brightest splendor; others were marked with long scales or slender streaks; others were all over spotted and very ugly to look upon, as being covered with black speckles like the skins of vipers; and others were marked by faint scratches.

Moreover, this kinsman of Thespesius (for nothing hinders but that we may call the souls by the names of the persons which they enlivened), proceeding to give a relation of several other things, informed his friend how that Adrastea, the daughter of Jupiter and Necessity, was seated in the highest place of all, to punish all manner of crimes and enormities; and that in the whole number of the wicked and ungodly, there never was any one, whether great or little, high or low, rich or poor, that ever could by force or cunning escape the severe lashes of her rigor. But as there are three sorts of punishments, so there are three several Furies, or female ministers of justice; and to every one of these belongs a peculiar office and degree of punishment. The first of these was called Speedy Punishment, who takes in charge those that are presently to receive bodily punishment in this life, which she manages after a more gentle manner, omitting the correction of many offences which need expiation. But if the cure of impiety require a greater labor, the Deity delivers them after death to Justice. But when Justice has given them over as altogether incurable, then the third and most severe of all Adrastea’s ministers, Erinnys (the Fury), takes them in hand; and after she has chased and coursed them from one place to another, flying, yet not knowing where to fly, for shelter or relief, plagued and tormented with a thousand miseries, she plunges them headlong into an invisible abyss, the hideousness of which no tongue car express.

Now, of all these three sorts, that which is inflicted by punishment in this life resembles the practice among the barbarians. For, as among the Persians, they take off the garments and turbans of those that are to be punished, and tear and whip them before the offender’s faces, while the criminals, with tears and lamentations, beseech the executioners to give over; so corporal punishments, and penalties by mulcts and fines, have no sharpness or severity, nor do they take hold upon the vice itself, but are inflicted for the most part only with regard to appearance and to the outward sense. But if any one comes hither that has escaped punishment while he lived upon earth and before he was well purged from his crimes, Justice takes him to task, naked as he is, with his soul displayed, as having nothing to conceal or veil his impiety; but on all sides and to all men’s eyes and every way exposed, she shows him first to his honest parents, if he had any such, to let them see how degenerate he was and unworthy of his progenitors. But if they were wicked likewise, then are their sufferings rendered yet more terrible by the mutual sight of each other’s miseries, and those for a long time inflicted, till each individual crime has been quite effaced with pains and torments as far surmounting in sharpness and severity all punishments and tortures of the flesh, as what is real and evident surpasses an idle dream. But the weals and stripes that remain after punishment appear more signal in some, in others are less evident.

View there, said he, those various colors of souls. That same black and sordid hue is the tincture of avarice and fraud. That bloody and flame-like dye betokens cruelty, and an imbittered desire of revenge. Where you perceive a bluish color, it is a sign that soul will hardly be cleansed from the impurities of lascivious pleasure and voluptuousness. Lastly, that same dark, violet, and venomous color, resembling the sordid ink which the cuttle fish spews up, proceeds from envy. For as during life the wickedness of the soul, being governed by human passions and itself governing the body, occasions this variety of colors; so here it is the end of expiation and punishment, when these are cleansed away, and the soul recovers her native lustre and becomes clear and spotless. But so long as these remain, there will be some certain returns of the passions, accompanied with little pantings and beatings, as it were of the pulse, in some remiss and languid and quickly extinguished, in others more quick and vehement. Some of these souls, being again and again chastised, recover a due habit and disposition; while others, by the force of ignorance and the enticing show of pleasure, are carried into the bodies of brute beasts. For while some, through the feebleness of their ratiocinating, while their slothfulness will not permit them to contemplate, are impelled by their active principle to seek a new generation; others again, wanting the instrument of intemperance, yet desirous to gratify their desires with the full swing of enjoyment, endeavor to promote their designs by means of the body. But alas! here is nothing but an imperfect shadow and dream of pleasure, that never attains to ability of performance.

Having thus said, the spirit quickly carried Thespesius to a certain place, as it appeared to him, prodigiously spacious; yet so gently and without the least deviation, that he seemed to be borne upon the rays of the light as upon wings. Thus at length he came to a certain gaping chasm, that was fathomless downward, where he found himself deserted by that extraordinary force which brought him thither, and perceived other souls also to be there in the same condition. For hovering upon the wing in flocks together like birds, they kept flying round and round the yawning rift, but durst not enter into it. Now this same cleft withinside resembled the dens of Bacchus, fringed about with the pleasing verdure of various herbs and plants, that yielded a more delightful prospect still of all sorts of flowers, enamelling the green so with a wonderful diversity of colors, and breathing forth at the same time a soft and gentle breeze, which perfumed all the ambient air with odors most surprising, as grateful to the smell as the sweet flavor of wine to those that love it. Insomuch that the souls banqueting upon these fragrancies were almost all dissolved in raptures of mirth and caresses one among another, there being nothing to be heard for some fair distance round about the place, but jollity and laughter, and all the cheerful sounds of joy and harmony, which are usual among people that pass their time in sport and merriment.

The spirit said, moreover, that Bacchus ascended through this overture to heaven, and afterwards returning fetched up Semele the same way; and that it was called the place of oblivion. Wherefore his kinsman would not suffer Thespesius to tarry there any longer, though very unwilling to depart, but took him away by force; informing and instructing him withal, how strangely and how suddenly the mind was subject to be softened and melted by pleasure; that the irrational and corporeal part, being watered and incarnated thereby, revives the memory of the body, and that from this remembrance proceed concupiscence and desire, exciting an appetite for a new generation and entrance into a body — which is named γένεσις as being an inclination towards the earth (ἐπὶ γῆν νεῦσις) — when the soul is weighed down with overmuch moisture.

At length, after he had been carried as far another way as when he was transported to the yawning overture, he thought he beheld a prodigious standing goblet, into which several rivers discharged themselves; among which there was one whiter than snow or the foam of the sea, another resembled the purple color of the rainbow. The tinctures of the rest were various; besides that, they had their several lustres at a distance. But when he drew nearer, the ambient air became more subtile and rarefied, and the colors vanished, so the goblet retained no more of its flourishing beauty except the white. At the same time he saw three Daemons sitting together in a triangular aspect, and blending and mixing the rivers together with certain measures. Thus far, said the guide of Thespesius’s soul, did Orpheus come, when he sought after the soul of his wife; and not well remembering what he had seen, upon his return he raised a false report in the world, that the oracle at Delphi was in common to Night and Apollo, whereas Apollo never had any thing in common with Night. But, said the spirit, this oracle is in common to Night and to the Moon, no way included within earthly bounds, nor having any fixed or certain seat, but always wandering among men in dreams and visions. For from hence it is that all dreams are dispersed, compounded as they are of truth jumbled with falsehood, and sincerity with the various mixtures of craft and delusion. But as for the oracle of Apollo, said the spirit, you neither do see it, neither can you behold it; for the earthly part of the soul is not capable to release or let itself loose, nor is it permitted to reach sublimity, but it swags downward, as being fastened to the body.

And with that, leading Thespesius nearer, the spirit endeavored to show him the light of the Tripod, which, as he said, shooting through the bosom of Themis, fell upon Parnassus; which Thespesius was desirous to see, but could not, in regard the extraordinary brightness of the light dazzled his eyes; only passing by, he heard the shrill voice of a woman speaking in verse and measure, and among other things, as he thought, foretelling the time of his death. This the genius told him was the voice of a Sibyl who, being orbicularly whirled about in the face of the moon, continually sang of future events. Thereupon being desirous to hear more, he was tossed the quite contrary way by the violent motion of the moon, as by the force of rolling waves; so that he could hear but very little, and that very concisely too. Among other things, he heard what was prophesied concerning the mountain Vesuvius, and the future destruction of Dicaearchia by fire; together with a piece of a verse concerning a certain emperor or great famous chieftain of that age,

Who, though so just that no man could accuse,

Howe’er his empire should by sickness lose.

After this, they passed on to behold the torments of those that were punished. And indeed at first they met with none but lamentable and dismal sights. For Thespesius, when he least suspected any such thing, and before he was aware, was got among his kindred, his acquaintance, and companions, who, groaning under the horrid pains of their cruel and ignominious punishments, with mournful cries and lamentations called him by his name. At length he saw his father ascending out of a certain abyss, all full of stripes, gashes, and scars; who stretching forth his hands — not permitted to keep silence, but constrained to confess by his tormentors — acknowledged that he had most impiously poisoned several of his guests for the sake of their gold; of which not being detected while he lived upon earth, but being convicted after his decease, he had endured part of his torments already, and now they were haling him where he should suffer more. However, he durst not either entreat or intercede for his father, such was his fear and consternation; and therefore being desirous to retire and be gone, he looked about for his kind and courteous guide; but he had quite left him, so that he saw him no more.

Nevertheless, being pushed forward by other deformed and grim-looked goblins, as if there had been some necessity for him to pass forward, he saw how that the shadows of such as had been notorious malefactors, and had been punished in this world, were not tormented so grievously nor alike to the others, in regard that only the imperfect and irrational part of the soul, which was consequently most subject to passions, was that which made them so industrious in vice. Whereas those who had shrouded a vicious and impious life under the outward profession and a gained opinion of virtue, their tormentors constrained to turn their insides outward with great difficulty and dreadful pain, and to writhe and screw themselves contrary to the course of nature, like the sea scolopenders, which, having swallowed the hook, throw forth their bowels and lick it out again. Others they flayed and scarified, to display their occult hypocrisies and latent impieties, which had possessed and corrupted the principal part of their souls. Other souls, as he said, he also saw, which being twisted two and two, three and three, or more together gnawed and devoured each other, either upon the score of old grudges and former malice they had borne one another, or else in revenge of the injuries and losses they had sustained upon earth.

Moreover, he said, there were certain lakes that lay parallel and equidistant one from the other, the one of boiling gold, another of lead, exceeding cold, and the third of iron, which was very scaly and rugged. By the sides of these lakes stood certain Daemons, that with their instruments, like smiths or founders, put in or drew out the souls of such as had transgressed either through avarice or an eager desire of other men’s goods. For the flame of the golden furnace having rendered these souls of a fiery and transparent color, they plunged them into that of lead; where after they were congealed and hardened into a substance like hail, they were then thrown into the lake of iron, where they became black and deformed, and being broken and crumbled by the roughness of the iron, changed their form; and being thus transformed, they were again thrown into the lake of gold; in all these transmutations enduring most dreadful and horrid torments. But they that suffered the most dire and dismal torture of all were those who, thinking that divine vengeance had no more to say to them, were again seized and dragged to repeated execution; and these were those for whose transgression their children or posterity had suffered. For when any of the souls of those children come hither and meet with any of their parents or ancestors, they fall into a passion, exclaim against them, and show them the marks of what they have endured. On the other side, the souls of the parents endeavor to sneak out of sight and hide themselves; but the others follow them so close at the heels, and load them in such a manner with bitter taunts and reproaches, that not being able to escape, their tormentors presently lay hold of them, and hale them to new tortures, howling and yelling at the very thought of what they have suffered already. And some of these souls of suffering posterity, he said, there were, that swarmed and clung together like bees or bats, and in that posture murmured forth their angry complaints of the miseries and calamities which they had endured for their sakes.

The last things that he saw were the souls of such as were designed for a second life. These were bowed, bent, and transformed into all sorts of creatures by the force of tools and anvils and the strength of workmen appointed for that purpose, that laid on without mercy, bruising the whole limbs of some, breaking others, disjointing others, and pounding some to powder and annihilation, on purpose to render them fit for other lives and manners. Among the rest, he saw the soul of Nero many ways most grievously tortured, but more especially transfixed with iron nails. This soul the workmen took in hand; but when they had forged it into the form of one of Pindar’s vipers, which eats its way to life through the bowels of the female, of a sudden a conspicuous light shone out, and a voice was heard out of the light, which gave order for the transfiguring it again into the shape of some more mild and gentle creature; and so they made it to resemble one of those creatures that usually sing and croak about the sides of ponds and marshes. For indeed he had in some measure been punished for the crimes he had committed; besides, there was some compassion due to him from the Gods, for that he had restored the Grecians to their liberty, a nation the most noble and best beloved of the Gods among all his subjects. And now being about to return, such a terrible dread surprised Thespesius as had almost frighted him out of his wits. For a certain woman, admirable for her form and stature, laying hold of his arm, said to him: Come hither, that thou mayst the better be enabled to retain the remembrance of what thou hast seen. With that she was about to strike him with a small fiery wand, not much unlike to those that painters use; but another woman prevented her. After this, as he thought himself, he was whirled or hurried away with a strong and violent wind, forced as it were through a pipe; and so lighting again into his own body, he awoke and found himself on the brink of his own grave.

On fate

568 1 1 I shall endeavour to send you my views on fate in as clear and concise a form as possible,
Dear Piso, since you have asked this of me although not unaware of my scruple about writing.

The two senses of fate

1 1 You must know, then, to begin with, that the term “fate” is used and understood in two senses: one fate is an activity, the other, a substance.

Active fate: its substance

In the first place, Plato has roughly indicated an activity (a) in the Phaedrus with these words: “This is the ordinance of Adrasteia: if a soul have accompanied a god . . .” and (b) in the Timaeus, when he speaks of the “laws,” applying to the nature of the universe, which God proclaimed to the immortal soul; while (c) in the Republic he calls fate the “word of Lachesis, maiden daughter of Necessity,” expressing his view not in high tragic style, but in the language of theology. Should one wish to recast these descriptions and phrase them in more ordinary language, fate as described in the Phaedrus might be called “a divine formula which, owing to a cause from which there is no escape, is not transgressed”; as described in the Timaeus it would be a “law conforming to the nature of the universe, determining the course of everything that comes to pass”; while as described in the Republic it is a “divine law determining the linking of future events to events past and present.” For this is what Lachesis, in very truth the “daughter of Necessity,” performs, as we learned before, and as later, in the lectures in the school, we shall know yet better. This, then, is fate in the sense of activity.

Substantial fate

2 1 Fate as a substance appears to be the entire soul of the universe in all three of its subdivisions, the fixed portion, the portion supposed to wander, and third, the portion below the heavens in the region of the earth; of these the highest is called Clotho, the next Atropos, and the lowest Lachesis, who is receptive to the celestial activities of her sisters, and combines and transmits them to the terrestrial regions subject to her authority.

What needs to be said, then, about substantial fate has been implicitly stated, as an abridged account has been given of its substance, quantity, quality, order, and relation both to itself and to us; the full account of these matters is well presented in the imagery of the second myth, that of the Republic, and I have done my best to give you an exposition of that account.

Active fate

3 1 But let us once more turn our attention to active fate, as the greater number of problems — physical, ethical, and dialectical — are concerned with it. Its substance has been adequately defined; we must next tell its quality, strange though it may appear to many.

Its quality

569 Although events are infinite, extending infinitely into the past and future, fate, which encloses them all in a cycle, is nevertheless not infinite but finite, as neither a law nor a formula nor anything divine can be infinite. Further, you would understand what is meant if you should apprehend the entire revolution and the complete sum of time, “when,” as Timaeus says, “the speeds of the eight revolutions, completing their courses relatively to one another, are measured by the circuit of the Same and Uniformly moving and come to a head.” For in this time, which is definite and knowable, everything in the heavens and everything on earth whose production is necessary and due to celestial influences, will once again be restored to the same state and once more be produced anew in the same way and manner. Then the arrangement of the heavenly bodies, the only one in all respects ordered both in relation to itself and to the earth and all things terrestrial, will eventually return, at intervals composed of long revolutions; and those arrangements that come after it in a series and are contiguous to one another, will occur in contiguous fashion, each bringing with itself of necessity its own set of events. (Be it noted, however, to make our present situation clear, that my writing these words at this moment as I write them, and your doing what you happen to be doing as you happen to be doing it are not events brought about by the agency of the heavenly bodies alone as causes of everything.) And so, when the same cause returns again, we shall, once more becoming the same persons, do the same things and in the same way, and so will all men besides; and what comes next in order will come into existence and be done in accordance with the cause that comes next in order, and everything that is found in a single entire revolution will be repeated in a similar fashion in each of the entire revolutions as well. And so it is now plain what we meant by our statement that fate, although in a way infinite, is not infinite; and our remark that it is a sort of cycle has, I take it, been adequately understood; for just as the movement of a cycle and the time which measures that movement of a cycle and the time which measures that movement are cycles, so too the formula of cyclical events would be considered a cycle.

4 1 Even this treatment, then, I venture to say, shows the quality of fate, except that it does not tell of that fate which is particular or individual. What, then, is the quality of this fate, considered in turn as this kind of formula? It is, we may conjecture, of the quality of the law of a state, with in the first place promulgates most, if not all, of its commands as consequents of hypotheses, and secondly, so far as it can, embraces all the concerns of a state in the form of universal statements.

Let us go on to examine in turn the meaning of these two points.

The universality of fate

The law of a state uses the form of a supposition and its conclusion to speak of a “soldier distinguishing himself in action” and of a “deserter,” and so with the rest; it does not lay down the law for this or that individual, but speaks primarily of the general case, and only secondarily of what comes under it. Thus we should say that it is lawful to honour this particular man who has distinguished himself in action, and to punish this other who has deserted the post, on the ground that the law has potentially provided for them, just as the “law” (if one may use the expression) of medicine and of gymnastics embraces the particular cases potentially in its general provisions; so also the law of nature, while dealing with universals primarily, deals secondarily with particulars. The latter too are all fated after a fashion, since they are co fated with the former. Perhaps a stickler for precision in such matters might insist that on the contrary it is the particulars that have priority, and that the universal exists for their sake — the end being prior to what serves it. But these questions have their place elsewhere, whereas the statement that fate does not contain everything plainly or expressly, but only universals, when made at this point, is properly placed both in respect of the point made shortly before and of the one that is now to be made: 570 the determinate, which is appropriate to divine wisdom, is seen rather in the universal — and the divine law and the political are of this description — while the unlimited is seen in the particular.

The hypothetical character of fate

Let us next determine the character of what is “consequent of an hypothesis,” and show that fate is of that character.

We meant by “consequent of an hypothesis” that which is not laid down independently, but in some fashion is really “subjoined” to something else, wherever there is an expression implying that if one thing is true, another follows: “this is the ordinance of Adrasteia: if a soul have accompanied a god and beheld aught of reality, it shall suffer nought until the next revolution, and if able to do so ever, it shall ever go unscathed.” What is both consequent upon an hypothesis and universal is, then, of the description given above. That fate is actually of this description is evident from its substance alone and from its name: it is called fate (heimarmenê) as being a thing concatenated (eiromenê); and it is an ordinance and a law because it has laid down the consequences which follow upon occurrences, as in the legislation of a state.

The relations of active fate

5 1 We must next examine what comes under the heading of relation — how fate stands in relation to providence on the one hand, and on the other to chance, to what is in our power and the contingent, and to the like; we must moreover distinguish in what way the dictum “everything conforms to fate” is true, and in what way false.

Examination of the dictum “Everything conforms to fate”

Now (a) if the statement means that everything is contained in fate, we must grant that it is true (whether it is in all human events, or all terrestrial or all celestial events one wishes to place in fate, let us for the present grant these points too); but (b) if the expression “conforming to fate,” as would rather seem to be its implication, designates not everything, but only the consequences of fate, we must not say that everything conforms to fate, even if “everything conforms to fate.” For neither is everything included in law “lawful” or “in conformity with law”; for law includes treason, desertion, adultery, and a good many other things of the sort, none of which one would term lawful; indeed I should not even call an act of valour, the slaying of a tyrant, or the performance of any other right action lawful. For the lawful is what the law enjoins; but if the law enjoins such conduct, how then can we deny that persons who display no valour, slay no tyrant, and perform no such right action, disobey and violate it? Or how, if such persons are lawbreakers, is it not right to punish them? If, however, all this is unreasonable, we must call “lawful” and “in conformity with law” only what the law determines as applicable to any action performed, whatever its character; and we must call “fated” and “in conformity with fate” only the consequents of antecedents in the divine appointment of things. Fate, then, includes everything that occurs, but much of what is thus included, and I might say all antecedents, could not rightly be said to be in conformity with fate.

6 1 Such being the case with these matters, we must next discuss how it is that what is in our power and chance, the possible and the contingent, and what is akin to these, by being classed among antecedents, might find a place themselves and leave a place in turn for fate. For fate contains them all, as indeed it is held to do; yet these things will not occur necessarily, but each will follow its own nature in its manner of occurrence.

The possible

It is the nature of the possible, as genus, to be prior in reality to the contingent; of the contingent, as matter, to be prior as substrate to the things which are in our power; of what lies in our power, as sovereign, to make use of the contingent; and chance is incidental to what is in our power because of the variation of the contingent in either direction. You will apprehend my meaning clearly if you reflect that everything that comes to pass, as well as the process itself of coming to pass, is always accompanied with potency, and potency with a substance. 571 For example, what comes about through the agency of man, whether we take the process or the thing which has been brought to pass, is never found without the potency which produces it; this is found in man; and man is a substance. It is owing to the potency, which is intermediate, that the substance is potent, and the process of coming to pass and the thing which comes to pass are both possible. Of these three, then, potency, the potent, and the possible, the potent, in its quality of substance, is prior as substrate to potency, while potency is prior in reality to the possible. It is plain, then, even from this statement, what the possible is; it might, however, be roughly defined in two ways: in a looser fashion as that whose nature it is to occur in conformity with potency, while we might define it more strictly by adding the clause “when there is nothing outside it interfering with its occurrence.”

The contingent

Of things possible some can never be prevented, as celestial phenomena — risings and settings and the like — whereas others are preventable, as frieze much of what pertains to man and many meteorological phenomena as well. The former sort, as occurring necessarily, are termed necessary; while those things which in addition allow (epidechetai) their contrary are contingent (endechomena). They might also be defined as follows: the necessary is the possible whose opposite is impossible; whereas the contingent is the possible whose opposite is also possible. Thus, that the sun should set is necessary as well as possible — it has an opposite, its not setting, which is impossible; whereas the falling and not falling of rain after sunset are both of them possible and contingent.

What is in our power

Again, in the case of the contingent, one form occurs usually, another is unusual, and another is as usual as its opposite and an “even chance.” This last is evidently opposed to itself, whereas the usual and the unusual are for the most part determined by nature, while the form which is as usual as its opposite is in our power. Thus, that during the dog days there should be hot weather or cold weather, the former of which is usual, the latter, unusual, is in both cases under the control of nature; whereas walking and not walking and the like, either of which is as usual as its opposite, are under the control of human impulse, and what is under its control is said to lie in our power and be a matter of choice. Of these what is in our power is the more general, as it has two species, the one comprising actions proceeding from passion — anger or desire, the other, actions that proceed from calculation or thought, in which last case we may now speak of “a matter of choice.” It is reasonable that the form of the “possible and contingent” which has been said to conform to our impulse and lie in our power should, in a different connexion, be spoken of under a different name; for in connexion with the future it is called “possible and contingent,” in connexion with the present, “in our power” and “in conformity with our impulse.” They might be defined as follows: the contingent is that which is both possible itself and has a possible opposite, whereas what is in our power is one of the two parts of the contingent, namely, the one that is already occurring in conformity with our impulse.

Our discussion of the natural priority of the possible to the contingent, of the real priority of the contingent to what is in our power, of their respective characters, of the sources of their names, and of related matters, is now, I trust, complete.

7 1 We must now speak of chance and the spontaneous and matters the theory of which depends on these.

Chance

Chance is a kind of cause. Of causes some are essential, some accidental; thus skill in housebuilding and skill in shipbuilding are essential causes of a house or of a ship, whereas skill in music or in geometry, and everything accidental, whether in the body, in the soul, or in externals, to the housebuilding or shipbuilding form, is an accidental cause. Hence it is evident that the essential is determinate and one, whereas the accidental is not one and is indeterminate; 572 for a single thing has a multiplicity, indeed an infinity, of attributes that are quite different from one another. The accidental, however, when found not simply in things directed toward an end, but further in those among them in which choice is found, is then called “by chance” as well; examples are: discovering a sum of gold when one is digging for the purpose of planting, or doing or undergoing something unusual when one is pursuing or being pursued or proceeding on foot in some other way, or merely turning around with some other end in view than the actual result. Hence some of the ancients described chance as a cause unforeseen and not evident to human calculation. But according to the Platonists, who formulate it yet more closely, chance is defined as follows: “chance is an accidental cause found in the class of things directed toward an end which take place in conformity with choice,” and only then do they add “unforeseen” and “not evident to human calculation.” (For that matter, “rare” and “unexpected” are also similarly implied in the term “accidental.”) What sort of thing chance is, if not evident from the preceding remarks, is to be seen very clearly in the words of the Phaedo. The passage runs as follows: “ — And did you not hear of the course of the trial either? — Yes; a report came to us about that; and we were astonished that he was evidently put to death long after the trial had taken place. What was the reason, Phaedo? — There was a certain chance coincidence, checrates; the stern of the ship which the Athenians send to Delos chanced to have been garlanded on the day before the trial.” In this passage we are not to take “coincidence” as equivalent to “occurrence”; the meaning is rather that the outcome resulted from a concourse of causes, each of them having a different end. Thus the priest placed a garland on the ship for some other purpose, and not for Socrates’ sake; and the court condemned him with a different end in view; while the actual outcome was unexpected and fell out as if it had occurred as a result of forethought, whether human or that of some still higher power. So much, then, will suffice for our discussion of chance.

The spontaneous

We must next speak of the things with which it necessarily co-exists. The contingent, we said, is the pre-existent substrate of what, by an expression derived from “chance,” is said to be “by chance,” and of what is in our power, whereas the spontaneous has a greater extension than chance, since it comprises both the latter and moreover many of the things whose nature it is to fall out differently at different times. What is meant by the term “spontaneous” (automaton), as the very name shows, is that which has a certain natural end when it does not accomplish that natural end. An example is held to be cold weather during the dog days; for at some times cold weather is not purposeless (matên), and does not occur in isolation (auto) from its end. To put the matter generally, as what is in our power is a part of the contingent, so chance is a part of the spontaneous. Taken two by two, the one set is identical to the other, the spontaneous to the contingent, and chance to what is in our power — not to all of the latter, but to that part of it which is also a matter of choice, as has been previously stated. Hence the spontaneous is common both to living things and things without life, whereas chance is peculiar to a man who has reached the stage of being able to act. A sign of this is the belief that enjoying good fortune and enjoying happiness are the same; now happiness is a kind of doing well, and doing well is found in man alone when he has reached his full development.

8 1 What is included in fate — the contingent and the possible, choice and what is in our power, chance and the spontaneous, as well as matters associated with these, such as what is designated by the words “perhaps” and “peradventure” — is of the description we have given above; and fate contains them all, although none of them conforms to fate. It remains to speak of providence, as it in turn includes fate.

Primary providence

9 1 The highest and primary providence is the intellection or will, beneficent to all things, of the primary God; and in conformity with it all things divine are primordially arranged throughout, each as is best and most excellent. Secondary providence belongs to secondary gods, who move in heaven, 573 and in conformity with it all mortal things come into being in orderly fashion, together with all that is requisite to the survival and preservation of the several genera. The providence and forethought which belongs to the daemons stationed in the terrestrial regions as watchers and overseers of the actions of man would reasonably be called tertiary. As providence, then, is seen to be threefold, and as primary providence is providence in the strictest sense and to the highest degree, I should not hesitate to say, even at the cost of appearing to contradict certain philosophers, that while all that conforms to fate conforms to providence (though not to nature as well), yet some things conform to providence (some to one, some to another), some to fate. And whereas fate most certainly conforms to providence, providence most certainly does not conform to fate (here it is to be understood that we are speaking of the primary and highest providence): for what is said to “conform to” a thing is posterior to that, whatever it may be, to which it is said to conform (for example, “what conforms to law” is posterior to law and “what conforms to nature” to nature); thus “what conforms to fate” is younger than fate, while the highest providence is eldest of all, save the one whose will or intellection or both it is, and it is that, as has been previously stated, of the Father and Artisan of all things. Timaeus says: “Let us state for what reason the realm of events and this universe were framed by him who framed them. He was good; and in the good no grudging ever arises about aught; and being exempt from this, he wished all things to become as similar as might be to himself. To accept from men of wisdom this, rather than any other, as the foremost principle of Coming into being and of Order, is to accept most rightly. For God, wishing that all things should be good, and naught, so far as possible, evil, took over all that was visible, which was in no state of rest, but in discordant and disordered motion, and brought it into order out of its disorder, deeming the former in all ways better than the latter. It neither was nor is right for him who is best to do aught save that which is most excellent. These matters and what is mentioned after them, as far as and including the souls of men, we must take to have been framed in conformity with providence — primary providence; but the words that follow (“and when he had compounded the whole, he divided it into souls equal in number to the stars and assigned to every star a soul, and mounting them thereon as on a vehicle, showed them the nature of the universe and proclaimed to them the laws of fate”), who would not suppose to indicate fate, explicitly and in the plainest of terms, as a sort of foundation and political legislation appropriate to the souls of men, the very legislation for which he next proceeds to state the reason?

Secondary providence

He indicates secondary providence in the following words: “Having prescribed all these ordinances to them, to the end that he might not be chargeable for the future wickedness of which they would be severally guilty, he sowed some on the earth, some on the moon, and others on the remaining instruments of time. After the sowing he delegated to the new-made gods the task of modelling mortal bodies, and, when they had completed all the rest of the human soul that it was necessary to add and all that this involved, of ruling and guiding the mortal animal, so far as lay within their powers, Fin the fairest and best fashion possible, except for those evils which it should incur from its own guilt.” In this passage the phrase “to the end that he might not be chargeable for the future wickedness of which they would be severally guilty” indicates in the plainest language the reason for fate, while the government and creation which is in the hands of the new-made gods refers to secondary providence.

Tertiary providence

He appears, moreover, to allude to a third providence as well, inasmuch as the enactment of ordinances is “to the end that he might not be chargeable for the future wickedness of which they would be severally guilty”; a god, having no part in evil, can stand in no need of either laws or fate, but each of them fulfils his own office as the providence of his begetter draws him along in its train. 574 The words of the Lawgiver in the Laws are, I think, clear testimony that this is true and the doctrine held by Plato. They are to this effect: “Since if ever any man, gifted by nature, born under a divine dispensation, should be capable of apprehending this, he would need no laws to govern him, for no law or ordinance is mightier than understanding, nor is it permitted that intelligence should be subject or slave to aught; it must rather be ruler in all things, if it be genuine and really free in conformity with its nature.”

The three providences and fate

10 1 Now I take Plato’s meaning to be as described or very near it: Bas providence is threefold, the first, since it has begotten fate, includes it in a sense; the second, having been begotten together with fate, is most certainly included together with it; and the third, since it is begotten later than fate, is contained in it in the same way as what is in our power and chance were said to be contained in fate. For, “those persons with whom the daemonic power encourages me to associate,” as Socrates says in recounting to Theages what is all but an ordinance, although not that of Adrasteia, “are the ones you have remarked; for their progress is immediate and rapid.” In this passage we must posit that the encouragement given to association with certain persons by the daemonic power conforms to tertiary providence, while their immediate and rapid progress conforms to fate; and the whole complex is plainly enough none other than a form of fate.

On this view, however, it might appear much more credible that secondary providence also, and indeed all things, without any limitation, that come to pass, are contained in fate, if we were right in dividing substantial fate into the three portions and if the argument of the “chain” brings the revolutions in heaven into the class of consequences of an hypothesis. Yet with regard to this question DI for one would not pursue the quarrel further whether these matters are to be termed consequences of an hypothesis, the initiatory cause of fate itself being fated, or, as I rather take to be the case, they exist side by side with fate.

The order of points in the present argument

11 Our argument, then, presented under its main heads, would be as described; the contrary argument, on the other hand, posits that everything is not only in fate but also conforms to it. But everything is consistent with the former contention, and what is consistent with the latter is evidently consistent with the former as well.

In our argument the contingent is placed first; what is in our power, second; third come chance and the spontaneous and all that conforms to them; fourth, praise and blame and whatever is related to them; while the fifth and final place must be given to prayers to the gods and worship of them. But the “indolent argument,” that of the “reaper,” and that termed “contrary to fate” turn out on this view to be sophisms indeed.

The order of points in the Stoic argument

According to the opposing argument the chief and first point would appear to be that nothing occurs without cause, and that instead everything occurs in conformity with antecedent causes; the second, that this universe, at one with itself in spirit and in affections, is governed by nature; and in the third place comes what would rather seem to be evidence added to these points in contention: the good repute in which the art of divination is held by all mankind, in the belief that its existence and that of God are in fact involved in one another; the acquiescence of the wise in whatever befalls, in the belief that everything that occurs is in order, in the second place; and third, that oft repeated dictum, that every proposition is either true or false.

I have dealt with these matters thus briefly in order to present the main headings of the topic of fate in a compendious form; these we must investigate when we subject the two arguments to exact scrutiny. The details that come under these headings we shall enter into at some later time.

On the sign of Socrates

(The persons who take part in the dialogue are Archedamus, an Athenian, and Caphisias, a Theban.)

575 B 1 1 I recall, Caphisias, that a painter once gave me, in the form of a comparison, no bad description of those who view pictures. Spectators who are laymen and without instruction in the art resemble, he said, those who greet a large company with a single salutation, whereas cultivated and artistic spectators resemble men who have a private word of welcome for everyone they meet; for the general impression that the first obtain of the performance is inaccurate and as it were a mere sketch; whereas the others use their critical judgement for a separate scrutiny of each detail, and thus allow nothing well or poorly executed to pass without a look or word of recognition. I think the same is true of real events: duller minds are content with history if they learn the mere general drift and upshot of the matter, whereas the spectator fired with emulation and the love of noble conduct, when he views the works which virtue, like a great art, has executed, is more delighted with the particulars, feeling that in the outcome much is due to chance, whereas in the actions themselves and in their causes he observes the details of the struggles of virtue pitted against fortune, and the sober acts of daring in peril that come of reason blended with the stress and passion of the moment. Take us to be spectators of this sort; tell us of your enterprise from the beginning, and impart to us the discussion that we hear was held at the time in your presence; for you may rest assured that to hear the story I should not have shrunk from journeying all way to Thebes, except that the Athenians consider me unduly pro-Boeotian as it is.

 — Indeed, Archedamus, seeing this friendly eagerness of yours to know what happened, I, for my part, should have been obliged to hold it a duty “transcending any business,” as Pindar says, to come here to tell the story; as it is, when I am already here on an embassy and at leisure until the assembly delivers its reply, to refuse and be uncivil with one so sympathetic and friendly, would be enough, I think, to revive the ancient reproach against Boeotians of hostility to discussion, just when that reproach was dying out. . . . Yet consider whether the company is disposed to hear a narrative involving so much history and philosophy combined; it will not be short in the telling, as you would have me include the discussions with the rest.

 — You are unacquainted, Caphisias, with these gentlemen. I assure you that they are well worth knowing: their fathers were excellent men and good friends of your country. This is Lysitheides, nephew of Thrasybulus; this, Timotheüs, son of Conon; these are the sons of Archinus; and the rest, like these, are all men of our society. Your narrative, then, will have a friendly and interested audience.

 — Excellent. But at what point would it suit you for me to begin the tale so as to connect it with the events you already know?

 — We know pretty well, Caphisias, how matters stood at Thebes before the exiles’ return. Thus, the news that after inducing Phoebidas to seize the Cadmeia in time of peace, Archias and Leontiades had expelled some of your countrymen and were holding the rest in terrified submission, 576 exercising authority themselves in defiance of the laws and by the use of force, reached us here, as we had opened our homes to Melon and Pelopidas, as you know, and for the duration of their exile were constantly in their company. Again, we have heard that although the Lacedaemonians fined Phoebidas for seizing the Cadmeia and relieved him of the command against Olynthus, they nevertheless sent in his place Lysanoridas with two others and strengthened the garrison in the citadel; we have also learned that Hismenias, immediately after his trial, met death not in its noblest form; all this Gorgidas reported in letters to the exiles here. So all that remains for you to tell is the story how your friends returned and overthrew the tyrants.

2 1 — In those days, Archedamus, all who were in the plot used to forgather at the house of Simmias, who was recovering from a wound in the leg. Our real purpose was to see each other as the need arose, but ostensibly we met for philosophical discussion; often, to avoid suspicion, we brought Archias and Leontiades along, who were not entire strangers to such pursuits. Indeed, after a long stay abroad and much travel among strange peoples, Simmias had but recently returned to Thebes with a great store of all manner of foreign legends and information; to this Archias delighted to listen in his leisure moments, mingling affably with the youthful company and preferring that we should spend our time in talk rather than attend to what he and his party were doing.

On the day when the exiles were to come secretly to the walls after dark, a messenger from Pherenicus, known to none of us except Charon, arrived from here with word that the youngest exiles, twelve in number, had taken hounds and gone out to hunt on Cithaeron, intending to reach Thebes that evening; he had been sent, he said, to give notice of this and to learn who would provide a house for their concealment when they slipped into the city, so that with this information they could proceed to it among other things. In the midst of our hesitation and perplexity, Charon offered to provide his own house. The messenger, then, determined to rejoin the exiles with all speed.

3 1 Grasping my hand firmly, with his eyes on Charon, who was going on before, Theocritus the soothsayer said: “This man, Caphisias, is no philosopher, nor has he, like your brother Epameinondas, had any schooling of a distinguished and exceptional kind; yet you observe that he is naturally guided to noble conduct by the laws, and willingly assumes the gravest risks for his country’s sake. Whereas Epameinondas, who feels that by reason of his schooling he is superior in virtue to all other Boeotians, is not keen or eager to help the men who are braving danger for their country. Yet what better occasion can he desire than this for putting himself to use, splendidly equipped as he is by nature and training?”

I replied: “We, my eager friend, are carrying out our own decisions, whereas Epameinondas has been unsuccessful in his endeavour to persuade us to drop them, as he believes would be for the best. It is hardly surprising, then, that he refuses our invitation to proceedings that run counter to his nature and his judgement. Suppose a physician promised to cure a disease without recourse to the knife or cautery: here too it would be unreasonable of you, I think, to compel him to cut or sear the diseased member.” Theocritus admitted this was true, and I pursued: “And is not Epameinondas in the same case? He asserts, does he not? that unless driven to it by extreme necessity, he will put no countryman to death untried, but will gladly join forces with all who endeavour without resorting to civil bloodshed and slaughter to set our city free. But since the majority are against him, and we are already engaged in this course, he would have us allow him to await the favourable moment for intervention, remaining innocent and guiltless of bloodshed. 577 Thus interest as well as justice will be served. For, he contends, no distinction will be drawn in the actual fighting; Pherenicus perhaps and Pelopidas will turn their arms against those most deep in guilt and crime, but Eumolpidas and Samidas, men white-hot in anger and passionate in temper, once they get a free hand in the night, will not lay their swords aside until they have filled the entire city with slaughter and destroyed many of their personal enemies.”

4 1 As I was thus conversing with Theocritus Galaxidorus interrupted us to announce that Archias and Lysanoridas the Spartan were close at hand, hastening from the Cadmeia as if bent on meeting us. We, then, broke off; and Archias, summoning Theocritus and taking him to Lysanoridas, talked privately for a long time, withdrawing a short distance from the street to the foot of the Amphion, so that we were in an agony of fear that some suspicion or intelligence had reached them and they were interrogating Theocritus about it.

Meanwhile Phyllidas — you know the man, Archedamus, at that time secretary to Archias and the other polemarchs, who was in the secret of the exiles’ intended return and one of the conspiracy, took my hand and made a show of twitting me in his usual fashion about my fondness for exercise and wrestling; then, when he had drawn me aside from the rest, he asked if the exiles were keeping to the appointed day. When I answered that they were, he said: “I did well, then, to prepare for to day the entertainment in which I am to receive Archias into my house and make him an easy prey for our men at a drunken banquet.”

“Well done indeed, Phyllidas,” I answered; “and endeavour to bring all or most of our enemies together.”

“That is no easy matter,” he said; “or rather it is impossible, as Archias, who expects a visit at that very time from a certain lady of rank, does not desire Leontiades to be present. You must therefore split forces and take the houses separately; for with Archias and Leontiades both disposed of I imagine the rest will take to flight and be out of the way, or make no trouble if they remain, only too glad to be offered safety.”

“That we will do,” I said. “But what business have these men with Theocritus that they are talking about?”

Phyllidas answered: “I cannot tell you definitely and do not speak from knowledge, but I have heard that disquieting and ominous portents and prophecies bode ill for Sparta.”

Meantime Theocritus rejoined us and we proceeded to Simmias’ house, where we were met by Pheidolaüs of Haliartus. “Simmias,” he said, “asks you to await him here a moment; he is conferring in private with Leontiades about Amphitheüs, entreating him to wait until he can arrange for a sentence of banishment instead of death.”

5 1 “You come most opportunely and as if by design,” said Theocritus. “I had been desiring to hear what objects were found and what was the general appearance of Alcmena’s tomb when it was opened up in your country — that is, if you were present when the remains were removed to Sparta on orders received from Agesilaüs.”

“I was not present,” Pheidolaüs replied; “and although I expressed to my countrymen my strong indignation and exasperation at the outrage, they left me helpless. Be that as it may, in the tomb itself no remains were found, but only a stone, together with a bronze bracelet of no great size and two pottery urns containing earth which had by then, through the passage of time, become a petrified and solid mass. Before the tomb, however, lay a bronze tablet with a long inscription of such amazing antiquity that nothing could be made of it, although it came out clear when the bronze was washed; but the characters had a peculiar and foreign conformation, greatly resembling that of Egyptian writing. Agesilaüs accordingly, it was said, dispatched copies to the king, with the request to submit them to the priests for possible interpretation. But about these matters Simmias might perhaps have something to tell us, 578 as at that time he saw a good deal of the priests in Egypt in the pursuit of his philosophical inquiries. At Haliartus the great failure of crops and encroachment of the lake are held to have been no mere accident, but a judgement on us for having allowed the excavation of the tomb.”

After a short pause Theocritus replied: “No more do the Lacedaemonians themselves appear to have escaped the wrath of heaven, as is evinced by the portents about which Lysanoridas was consulting me just now; indeed he is now leaving for Haliartus to close up the tomb and pour libations to Alcmena and Aleüs, in obedience to some oracle — though quite in the dark as to who this Aleüs was — ; and on his return he intends to search out the tomb of Dircê, which is unknown to any Theban who has not served as hipparch. For the retiring hipparch takes his successor and shows him the tomb in private and at night; and upon performing certain rites there in which no fire is used, they rub out and destroy all trace of them and return their separate ways in the darkness. Now I commend our opponents’ zeal, Pheidolaüs, for the performance of the rites, but they will not, I think, find it easy to discover the place of the tomb, as most of those who have legally held the office of hipparch are in exile, or rather all of them except Gorgidas and Platon — and from these they would not even attempt to secure the information, so greatly do they fear them — whereas the present magistrates on the Cadmeia take over the spear and the seal in utter ignorance of both the ritual and the tomb.”

6 1 While Theocritus spoke Leontiades and his friends left. We entered and greeted Simmias, who was sitting up on his couch, very downcast and distressed, doubtless because his petition had failed. Looking up at all of us, he exclaimed “Good God! What cruel and barbarous natures! Was that not a most excellent answer of Thales of old, when asked by his friends on his return from a long absence abroad for the greatest curiosity he had discovered: ‘a tyrant in old age’? For even if a man happens to have endured no personal injury, yet his disgust at the offensive and brutal society of such men is in itself enough to make him an enemy to lawless and irresponsible domination. But these matters Heaven will perhaps attend to. Does your family, Caphisias, know who the stranger is that has come to see them?”

“I do not know whom you mean,” I replied.

“Yet Leontiades,” said he, “asserts that a man making an imposing figure Ewith a numerous and splendid retinue has been seen breaking camp before dawn at the tomb of Lysis, where he had lodged on rude beds, couches of chaste tree and tamarisk being found there — and traces of burnt offerings and libations of milk as well — ; and that this morning he had asked passers by whether he should find the sons of Polymnis in town.”

“Who indeed could the stranger be?” I said. “From your description he seems to be of some consequence and not a private person.”

7 1 “He does indeed,” said Pheidolaüs; “and we shall make him welcome when he comes. But at present, Simmias, to return to the inscription we were wondering about just now, give us what further information you may have; for it is said that the priests in Egypt were able to read the inscription which was written on the tablet and which Agesilaüs took from us at Haliartus when he dismantled Alcmena’s tomb.”

Simmias at once recollected: “Of your tablet, Pheidolaüs, I know nothing. But Agetoridas the Spartan came to Memphis with a long document from Agesilaüs for the spokesman of the god, Chonuphis, with whom Plato, Ellopion of Peparethos and I had many philosophical discussions in those days. He brought orders from the king that Chonuphis should translate the writing, if he could make anything of it, and send the translation to him at once. Chonuphis shut himself up for three days, conning scripts of all kinds in the ancient books, 579 and then wrote his answer to the king, of which he also informed us. The document, he said, ordered the celebration of a contest in honour of the Muses; the characters had the forms of the script current in the time of King Proteus, which Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, had learned; and the god was using the inscription to instruct and urge the Greeks to live in the enjoyment of leisure and peace by always taking philosophy as their field of contention, laying their arms aside and settling their disputes about right and wrong by an appeal to the Muses and discussion. As for ourselves, we felt at the time that Chonuphis was right; we felt so yet more when our return from Egypt a party of Delians met us in Caria and requested Plato, as a geometer, to solve a problem set them by the god in a strange oracle. The oracle was to this effect: the present troubles of the Delians and the rest of the Greeks would be at an end when they had doubled the altar at Delos. As they not only were unable to penetrate its meaning, but failed absurdly in constructing the altar (for upon doubling all four sides they discovered to their surprise that in their ignorance of the progression from which the linear double is obtained they had produced by this increase a solid eight times as large), they called on Plato for help in their difficulty. Plato, recalling the Egyptian, replied that the god was rallying the Greeks for their neglect of education, deriding, as it were, our ignorance and bidding us engage in no perfunctory study of geometry; for no ordinary or near-sighted intelligence, but one well versed in the subject, was required to find two mean proportionals, that being the only way in which a body cubical in shape can be doubled with a similar increment in all dimensions. This would be done for them by Eudoxus of Cnidus or Helicon of Cyzicus; they were not, however, to suppose that it was this the god desired, but rather that he was ordering the entire Greek nation to give up war and its miseries and cultivate the Muses, and by calming their passions through the practice of discussion and study of mathematics, so to live with one that their intercourse should be not injurious, but profitable.”

8 1 While Simmias was speaking my father Polymnis entered. Sitting down beside Simmias he said: “Epameinondas entreats you and the whole company, unless you have some pressing business, to await him here, as he wishes to acquaint you with the stranger, a man of generous spirit who has been sent on a generous and noble errand by the Pythagoreans in Italy. He comes to offer libations at the grave of the aged Lysis, in consequence, he says, of certain vivid dreams and apparitions; and he brings with him a large sum of gold, thinking it proper to repay Epameinondas for the support of Lysis in his old age. This he is very intent on doing, although we neither ask nor desire him to relieve our poverty.”

Simmias exclaimed, in great delight, “An admirable man, and worthy of philosophy! But why does he not join us directly?”

As he had, I believe, spent the night at Lysis’ grave,” my father replied, “Epameinondas was first taking him to the Hismerus to wash himself clean; they will then join us here. His motive in encamping at the tomb before meeting us was to take up the remains and remove them to Italy, unless some sign from heaven should appear in the night to forbid it.” With this my father fell silent.

9 1 “Good God!” exclaimed Galaxidorus. “How hard it is to find a man untainted with humbug and superstition! Some, through no desire of their own, succumb to these disorders from ignorance or weakness, whereas others, to be reputed the favourites of heaven and above the common sort, invest their doings with a character of sanctity, hiding what occurs to their intelligence behind a pretence of dreams and apparitions and the like mummery. 580 For men engaged in public affairs and compelled to live at the caprice of a self-willed and licentious mob this may have its use — to treat the superstition of the populace as a bridle, and thereby pull them back to the profitable course and set them right; but for Philosophy such outward seeming appears not only unseemly but in open conflict with her claims. Professing to teach the whole of the good and the profitable by the sole use of reason, she nevertheless withdraws from the government of conduct to take refuge with the gods, as if holding reason in contempt, and scorning demonstration, where her chief excellence is supposed to lie, resorts to divination and the visions seen in dreams, wherein the least of men is often no less rewarded with success than the greatest. For this reason, Simmias, I think your friend Socrates embraced a manner of teaching and prospecting that had more of the true philosophic stamp, choosing that simplicity and sincerity of his for its manliness and great affinity to truth; as for humbug, the mere vapour as it were of philosophy, he sent it flying to the sophists.”

“What is this, Galaxidorus?” Theocritus broke in. “Has Meletus convinced you too that Socrates had no use for things divine? That was the charge Meletus brought against him before the Athenians.”

“Things really divine,” he answered, “he by no means ignored; but he took philosophy, left by Pythagoras and his company a prey to phantoms, fables, and superstition, and by Empedocles in a wild state of exaltation, and trained her to face reality with steadfast understanding, as it were, and to rely on sober reason in the pursuit of truth.”

10 1 “Very well,” said Theocritus; ‘but what, my dear sir, do we call Socrates’ sign? An imposture? For my part, nothing reported of Pythagoras’ skill in divination has struck me as so great or so divine; for exactly as Homer has represented Athena as ‘standing at’ Odysseus’ ‘side in all his labours,’ so Heaven seems to have attached to Socrates from his earliest years as his guide in life a vision of this kind, which alone

Showed him the way, illuminating his path

in matters dark and inscrutable to human wisdom, through the frequent concordance of the sign with his own decisions, to which it lent a divine sanction. For further and greater instances you must ask Simmias and Socrates’ other friends; but I was myself present (I had come to visit Euthyphron the soothsayer) when Socrates — you recall the incident, Simmias — happened to be making the ascent toward the Symbolon and the house of Andocides, putting some question to Euthyphron the while and sounding him out playfully. Suddenly he stopped short and fell silent, lost for a good time in thought; at last he turned back, taking the way through the street of the cabinetmakers, and called out to the friends who had already gone onward to return, saying that the sign had come to him. Most turned back with him, I with the rest, clinging close to Euthyphron; but certain young fellows went straight ahead, imagining that they would discredit Socrates’ sign, and drew along Charillus the flute-player, who had also come to Athens with me to visit Cebes. As they were walking along the street of the statuaries past the law-courts, they were met by a drove of swine, covered with mud and so numerous that they pressed against one another; and as there was nowhere to step aside, the swine ran into some and knocked them down, and befouled the rest. Charillus came home like the others, his legs and clothes covered with mud; so that we always mentioned Socrates’ sign with laughter, at the same time marvelling that Heaven never deserted or neglected him.”

11 “You suppose, then, Theocritus,” replied Galaxidorus, “that Socrates’ sign had some peculiar and extraordinary power, and that he did not, upon verifying from experience some rule of ordinary divination, let it turn the scale in matters dark and beyond the reach of reason? For just as a single drachm does not by itself tip the beam, but when joined to a weight in equilibrium with another inclines the whole mass in the direction of its own pull, 581 so too a sneeze or chance remark or any such omen cannot, being trivial and light, incline a weighty mind to action; but when it is joined to one of two opposing reasons, it solves the dilemma by destroying the balance, and thus allows a movement and propulsion to arise.”

“Just so, Galaxidorus,” my father broke in. “I have it from one of the Megarian school, who had it from Terpsion, that Socrates’ sign was a sneeze, his own and others’; thus, when another sneezed at his right, whether behind or in front, he proceeded to act, but if at his left, desisted; while of his own sneezes the one that occurred when he was on the point of acting confirmed him in how he had set out to do, whereas the one occurring after he had already begun checked and prevented his movement. But what astonishes me is that, supposing he relied on sneezes, he did not speak to his friends of being prompted or deterred by these, but by a sign from Heaven; for here again, my dear friend, we have a form of hollow affectation and boasting, and not the sincerity and simplicity that made him to our feeling truly great and superior to the generality of men — to be upset at odd moments by such external matters as a voice or sneeze, and thus be diverted from his actions and abandon his decisions. Nay, Socrates’ movements are observed to have had an indeflectible force and intensity in all he did, which implies that they were launched forth from a correct and powerful judgement and foundation; for of his own free will to have remained poor throughout his life when he could have had money which the donors would have been delighted and thankful to see him accept, and not to have forsaken philosophy despite so many obstacles, and in the end, although his followers had spared no efforts to save his life and had contrived a perfectly feasible means of escape, neither to have yielded to their entreaties nor to have flinched at the approach of death, but to have faced its terrors with reasoning unshaken, are not acts of a man whose views are at the mercy of voices or sneezes, but of one guided by a higher authority and principle to noble conduct.

“I also hear that he foretold to some of his friends the loss of the Athenian forces in Sicily. And still earlier, when Pyrilampes, the son of Antiphon, who had been wounded with a javelin and was taken prisoner by us in the pursuit at Delion, was told by the commissioners that came from Athens to negotiate a truce that Socrates had reached the coast at Oropus with Alcibiades and Laches and come home safe, Ehe often invoked the name of Socrates, and of those of certain friends and members of his company who had fled with him toward Mount Parnes and been killed by our cavalry, as they had (he said) disregarded Socrates’ sign and taken a different way, not following where Socrates led, in their retreat from the battle. Simmias too has heard of this I think.”

“Many times,” said Simmias, “and from many persons; for these events led to no little talk at Athens about Socrates’ sign.”

12 1 “Are we, then, Simmias,” said Pheidolaüs, “to let Galaxidorus in sport reduce so mighty a work of divination to sneezes and chance remarks? Even the ignorant multitude rely on these in trivial matters and in playful moods, but when graver dangers and actions of greater moment confront them, the words of Euripides come true:

None talks such folly when the fray impends.”

“I am ready, Pheidolaüs,” rejoined Galaxidorus, “to listen to what Simmias has to say about these matters, if he has himself heard Socrates talk of them, and to share your forbearance; but what you and Polymnis have said is not hard to refute. For as in medicine a rapid pulse or a blister, trifling in itself, is a sign of something by no means trifling, and as for a skipper the cry of a marine bird or the passing of a wisp of yellow cloud 582 betokens wind and a rising sea, so for a mind expert in divination a sneeze or random utterance, in itself no great matter, may yet be a sign of some great event; for in no art is the prediction of great things from small, or of many things from few, neglected. No; if a man ignorant of the significance of writing, on seeing letters few in number and mean in appearance, should doubt that a literate person could gather from them the story of great wars that happened to men in the past, of foundations of cities, and of acts and sufferings of kings, and should then assert that what revealed and recounted all this to that student of history was something divine, you would, my friend, be moved to hearty laughter at the fellow’s simplicity; so here too take heed lest it be simplicity in us, in our ignorance of the significance for the future of the various signs interpreted by the art of divination, to resent the notion that a man of intelligence can draw from them some statement about things hidden from view — and that too when it is the man himself who says that it is no sneeze or utterance that guides his acts, but something divine. For I shall now deal with you, Polymnis, who are astonished that Socrates, a man who by his freedom from humbug and affectation had more than any other made philosophy human, should have termed his token not a ‘sneeze’ or ‘omen’ but in high tragic style ‘the sign from Heaven.’ I, on the contrary, should have been astonished if a master of dialectic and the use of words, like Socrates, had spoken of receiving intimations not from ‘Heaven’ but from the ‘Sneeze’: it is as if a man should say that the arrow wounded him, and not the archer with the arrow, or that the scales, and not the weigher with the scales, measured the weight. For the act does not belong to the instrument, but to the person to whom the instrument itself belongs, who uses it for the act; and the sign used by the power that signals is an instrument like any other. But, as I said, if Simmias should have anything to say, we must listen to him, as he is better informed.”

13 1 “First,” said Theocritus, “we must see who the persons are that are entering the room — but I see it is Epameinondas, who is apparently bringing the stranger to meet us.”

We looked toward the door and saw Epameinondas in the lead, with Hismenodorus, Bacchyllidas, and Melissus the fluteplayer among our friends in the plot, while the stranger came last, a man of no ignoble presence, but showing gentleness and kindness in his demeanour and in person magnificently attired. When the stranger had taken his place beside Simmias, my brother beside me, and the rest as they happened to find seats, and all had fallen silent, Simmias called out to my brother: “Well, Epameinondas, Ewhat name and title are we to give the stranger, and what is his country? Such inquiries are the usual preliminaries to intercourse and acquaintance.”

Epameinondas answered: “His name, Simmias, is Theanor; he is a native of Croton, one of philosophers of that region, and reflects no dishonour on the great fame of Pythagoras; indeed, he has come here at present on a long journey from Italy, confirming noble doctrines by noble works.”

Here the stranger spoke: “Are not you, Epameinondas, preventing the noblest of those works? For if it is a noble act to benefit friends, it is no disgrace to be benefited by them; for the favour, requiring a recipient no less than a giver, needs both to be made perfect in nobility. He who refuses to accept the favour, like the man who refuses to catch a well-directed ball, disgraces it, allowing it to fall to the ground without achieving its end. For what target is so delightful to hit and so painful to miss, as a man deserving kindness at whom we aim a favour? Yet in the case of the target the man who misses has only himself to blame, as the mark is fixed; whereas with favours, the man who declines and moves aside is guilty of an offence against the favour, allowing it to fall short of its goal. To you I have already recounted the motives of my voyage hither; 583 but I desire to recount them to these others as well and let them judge between us.

“After the Pythagorean societies throughout the different cities had been defeated by the revolutionaries and driven out, and after partisans of Cylon, heaping fuel about the house where the society that still held together at Metapontum was in session, and setting fire to it, had destroyed them all in the conflagration except Philolaüs and Lysis, who were still young and forced a way through the flames by strength and agility, Philolaüs escaped to Lucania and from there reached in safety our remaining adherents, who had once more begun to assemble and prevail over Cylon’s party, but for a long time no one knew what had become of Lysis; Bat last Gorgias of Leontini, on his return from Greece to Sicily, brought definite word, and told Aresas of meeting Lysis, who was living in Thebes. Aresas so felt his absence that he proposed with no more ado to make the voyage himself, but from age and infirmity proving quite unequal to the effort, he charged us to bring Lysis back to Italy alive if possible, or his remains if dead. The intervening wars, seditions and usurpations, however, kept his friends from carrying out the task for him during his lifetime. But when the daemon of Lysis — who had died in the interval — clearly revealed to us his death, and reports from men well acquainted with the circumstances told, Polymnis, Chow he had been cared for by your family and lived with you — that in the poverty of your household he had received rich provision for his age and departed in felicity, enrolled as father of your sons — I was sent, young and uncompanied, by a company numerous and advanced in years, offering money, of which they have provision, to you who have none in return for great favour and friendship. Lysis has had from you a fitting burial, and better in his sight than a fitting burial is favour requited to friends by friends and fellows.”

14 1 While the stranger spoke my father wept a long time at the memory of Lysis. My brother said, smiling gently at me, as is his wont: “What are you doing, Caphisias? Are we yielding up our poverty to riches without a word?”

“Let us by no means yield up,” said I, “that dear and ‘goodly nurse of youth’: fly to her defence; it is for you to speak.”

“Well, my dear father,” he said, “I had feared that in the defences of our household against money there was but this one vulnerable spot: Caphisias’ person, which requires fine dress that he may display himself to advantage to his numerous admirers, and unstinted and abundant food to sustain him in his exercises and his bouts on the wrestling grounds; but now that we see him refusing to surrender his ancestral poverty or let its tempered edge be taken off, but instead, for all his youth, displaying himself in frugality and content with what he has, how could we lay the money out and use it? Are we to gild our arms and like Nicias of Athens decorate our shields with a blend of purple and gold? Are we, father, to buy you a Milesian mantle and our mother a tunic bordered with purple?? For surely we shall not expend the bounty on our belly to treating ourselves to more sumptuous fare, as if we had admitted wealth to our house as a burdensome guest.”

“Heaven forbid, my son,” said my father; “may I never live to see our way of life so changed!”

“Nor yet,” Epameinondas pursued, “shall we sit at home to guard a wealth that remains idle; for then the favour would be no favour and our ownership without honour.”

“Of course we shall not,” said my father.

“Lately,” Epameinondas went on, “when Jason, the prince of Thessaly, sent me a great sum of gold and begged me to accept it, I was openly rude, was I not? when I replied that he was the assailant in a hand-to hand affair, since to gratify his lust for royal power, he was tempting with money a common citizen of a free and independent state. 584 As for you, sir, I welcome your kind thought and am delighted with it — it was generous and worthy a philosopher — but you come with medicine to friends who are not ill. If you had heard that we were under hostile attack and sailed to our aid with arms and missiles, but found on arrival that all was friendliness and peace, you would not have felt called upon to offer and leave those provisions with men who had no use for them. Just so you have come to help us against Poverty, supposing us molested by her; whereas we find her most companionable and a friendly member of our household; no armament of riches, then, is needed against her who gives us no offence. No; report to your comrades abroad that while they put riches to the best of uses themselves, they here have friends who make good use of poverty; and that Lysis has repaid us himself for the cost of his keeping and burial by teaching us, among other lessons, to feel no disgust at poverty.”

15 1 Theanor rejoined: “Is it vulgar to feel disgust at poverty, and yet not absurd to dread and shun wealth?”

“It is absurd,” replied Epameinondas, “if what moves a man to reject it is not reason, but a pose arising from coarseness or a kind of vanity.”

“Indeed! And what reason, Epameinondas,” he said, “would forbid its acquisition by noble and honest means? Or rather tell me this (for I beg you to show me a milder temper Cthan you did the Thessalian in your answers on this point): do you think it sometimes proper to give money, but never to accept it, or do you think that under all circumstances givers are at fault as well as takers?”

“Not at all,” said Epameinondas; “but in wealth as in other things I hold that the conferring and acceptance of a favour are sometimes shameful and sometimes honourable.”

“Does not,” Theanor went on, “the man who pays his debt willingly and cheerfully, do well in giving?”

Epameinondas agreed.

“And does not he who accepts a gift well given do well in receiving? Or how could money be more honestly accepted than by accepting it from one who gives it honestly?”

“In no other way,” was the reply.

“Therefore, Epameinondas,” he went on, “if of two friends the one ought to give, the other surely ought to accept; in battles one should elude the enemy who casts well, but in the matter of favours it is not right either to evade or to repulse the friend who gives well; for granting poverty no burden, no more is wealth in its turn so valueless and undesirable as all that.”

“True,” said Epameinondas; “yet there is a case where the rightly offered gift is more valuable and honourable if not accepted. Consider the point with me in the light of the following considerations.

“There are, I take it, many desires, and these have many objects. Some desires, called innate, spring up in the body with the necessary pleasures as objects. Others are adventitious, and seek to gratify mere empty fancies. Yet when a man has had a poor upbringing, long habit makes them strong and violent, and often they drag the soul along and humble it more forcibly than do the necessary desires. Habit and practice, however, have been known to enable reason to abate much of even the innate passions; and one must apply the whole might of a strict course of training, my dear friend, to the intrusive and superfluous desires and wear them down and cut them off by letting reason chasten them with repeated repression and restraint. For if thirst and hunger Fare overpowered by the resistance of reason to food and drink, it is surely far easier to check the appetites for wealth and fame and break their power in the end by abstaining from what they desire and holding them back. Do you not agree?”

The stranger assented.

“Do you observe,” he asked, “a difference between a course of training and the goal such training serves; and as you would say that in athletics the goal is to compete with one’s opponent for the crown, whereas the training is the preparation of the body for that end through exercise, so do you agree that in virtue as well the goal is one thing and the training another?”

When the stranger had agreed, Epameinondas continued: “First take the case of continence: do you regard abstention from shameful and unlawful pleasures as training 585 or rather as the goal and evidence of training?”

“The goal and evidence,” he replied.

“And do you not consider it as training and practice in continence to achieve it as you have all achieved it to this day? Exercising till your appetites, like so many animals, have been stirred up, you place yourself for some time before splendid tables and varied meats; then, relinquishing to your slaves enjoyment of the feast, you partake yourself of plain and simple fare with desires which by that time have been chastened. For abstention from pleasure in what is allowed is a training of the soul to resist what is forbidden.”

“Assuredly,” he said.

“For justice too, my dear friend, a mode of training exists, whereby we resist the appetite for riches and money. It does not lie in abstention from going about at night to steal our neighbour’s goods or strip men of their cloaks; nor yet does the man who refuses to betray country and friends for gold train himself to resist the passion for money (here, actually, it is perhaps the law and fear that keeps his cupidity from crime); it is instead the man who of his own free will repeatedly holds back from profits honourable and conceded by the law, that trains and accustoms himself to keep well aloof from all dishonest and unlawful gain. For neither in the midst of great but unseemly and harmful pleasures can the mind remain unmoved, Cunless it has often, while free to enjoy it, held pleasure in contempt; nor yet is it easy to forgo sordid profits and lucrative but dishonest gains, when they come within our power, if a man’s avarice, instead of being subdued well in advance and chastened, has been bred to profit without stint where profit is legitimate, and so is all agog for fraud and crime, held back just barely and with difficulty from unrightful gain. He, on the other hand, who does not yield himself up to the favours of friends or the bounty of kings, but rejects even the windfalls of fortune, and on discovering hidden treasure, calls off the cupidity that leaps at it, finds that his cupidity does not rise in rebellion against him at the prospect of wrongdoing nor throw his thoughts into turmoil; Dinstead, he readily disposes of himself for all good ends, holding his head high and conscious of the presence in his soul of nothing but the noblest thoughts. In our admiration for such men, dear Simmias, Caphisias and I entreat this grace of the stranger — to allow us practice enough in our poverty to achieve that excellence.”

16 1 When my brother had done, Simmias nodded some two or three times in assent, and said: “Epameinondas is a great man, great indeed, and his greatness is due to Polymnis here, who from their early years provided his sons with the best upbringing, schooling them in philosophy. But this dispute, sir, you must settle with them yourself. To return to Lysis: if it is lawful for us to be told, are you going to remove him from his grave and take him to Italy, or will you permit him to remain here with us? He will find us good and friendly neighbours when we join him there.”

Theanor smiled at this and said: “It would appear, Simmias, that Lysis is attached to his present abode, since, thanks to Epameinondas, he lacks no honourable provision. For a certain special rite is performed at the burials of Pythagoreans, and without it we do not feel in full possession of the blessed end that is proper to our sect. And so, when we learned from our dreams of Lysis’ death F(we tell by a certain token appearing in our sleep whether the apparition is of the dead or of the living) it occurred to many that Lysis had been improperly buried in a foreign land and that we must remove him so that over there he might have the benefit of our customary rites. It was with this in mind that I came here; and as soon as the people of the country had led me to the grave (it was evening by then) I poured libations, summoning the soul of Lysis to return and reveal what course I should take. As the night advanced I saw no vision, but seemed to hear a voice that said ‘touch not the inviolable,’ as Lysis’s friends had given his body consecrated burial, while his soul, already judged, had been joined by lot to another daemon and released for another birth. Moreover, on meeting Epameinondas this morning 586 and hearing how he had buried Lysis, I recognized that he had been well instructed by that other, even in the secrets, and that he had the same daemon for his life, if I have any skill to judge of the skipper by the navigation. For while the paths of life are numberless, yet those are few on which men are guided by daemons.” On saying this Theanor looked at Epameinondas as though in renewed study of his character and appearance.

17 1 Meanwhile the physician approached Simmias and removed the bandage, preparing to dress the wound. But Phyllidas entered with Hippostheneidas, and calling Charon, Theocritus, and myself aside, led us to a corner of the peristyle, in great agitation as his face revealed. When I asked: “Has something unexpected occurred, Phyllidas?” he replied: “nothing I had not expected, Caphisias; I knew and forewarned you that Hippostheneidas was a weakling and begged you not to inform him of our plans or include him in the execution.”

We were alarmed at these words; and Hippostheneidas said: “In the name of the gods, Phyllidas, do not say that; do not, mistaking rashness for courage, bring ruin on ourselves and our country, but allow the exiles to return C(if such is their fate) in safety.”

Phyllidas said in exasperation: “Tell me, Hippostheneidas, how many do you think are in the secret of our enterprise?”

“For my part,” he answered, “I know of not less than thirty.”

“Then why,” he asked, “when the number is so great, have you, acting alone, ruined and thwarted the plans agreed upon by all? Sending a mounted messenger to the exiles, already on the way, you told them to turn back and not press on to day — to day when mere luck has helped to bring about most of the conditions favourable to their return.”

At these words of Phyllidas we were all dismayed, and Charon said, with a cold stare at Hippostheneidas, “Wretch! What have you done to us?”

“Nothing terrible,” said Hippostheneidas, “if you will soften the harshness of your voice and listen to the reasons of a man of your own age with white hairs like yourself. If we are resolved to show our countrymen an example of undaunted courage and of a high spirit that holds life cheap, Phyllidas, much of the day still remains; let us not wait for nightfall, but at once set out against the tyrants, sword in hand; let us slay and be slain and be prodigal of our lives. But slaying or being slain is not difficult, whereas it is no easy task to capture Thebes when hostile arms beset us in such numbers and to repel the Spartan garrison at the cost of but two or three dead; for the store of unmixed wine laid in by Phyllidas for his banquets and entertainments is not enough to make the fifteen hundred men in Archias’ bodyguard drunk, and even if we succeed in killing Archias, we still have Herippidas and Arcesus, sober men, to face in the morning. Why then this haste to bring friends and kinsmen home to certain destruction, and that too when our foes are not entirely unaware of their coming? Why have the Thespians had orders these past two days to stand under arms and hold themselves ready for the summons of the Spartan commanders? They are going to interrogate Amphitheüs to day, I hear, and on Archias’ return put him to death. Is not all this strong evidence that our plot is known? Is it not best to wait a little, just long enough to propitiate Heaven? For when they sacrificed the ox to Demeter the diviners say that the flesh burnt on the altar portended great tumult and danger to the state. And for you, Charon, here is something that requires the greatest caution. Yesterday I came in from the country with Hypatodorus, son of Erianthes, an excellent person and a kinsman of mine, but quite unaware of what is afoot. 587 ‘Charon,’ he said, ‘is a close friend of yours, Hippostheneidas, but not well known to me; you must put him on his guard, then, if you will, against a danger portended by a most ominous and extraordinary dream. Last night I dreamed that his house was in labour, as with child, and that as he and his friends in their anxiety were offering prayers and gathered around it, it groaned and gave utterance to certain inarticulate sounds; at last a great and terrible fire flared up from within, so that most of the city was in flames, though the Cadmeia was only veiled in smoke, as the fire enveloping it did not rise so high.’ Such, Charon, was the vision he recounted. For my part, I was alarmed even at the time, and on hearing to day that it is at your house the exiles intend to stay, I have become much more apprehensive, for fear that we may involve ourselves in disaster and yet do the enemy no serious injury, but merely give them a fright. For I take the city to stand for ourselves, and the Cadmeia to be on their side, as indeed it is.”

18 1 Theocritus interposed, checking Charon, who desired to say something to Hippostheneidas. “But as for myself, Hippostheneidas,” he said, nothing has ever so encouraged me in our venture as this vision, although my sacrifices have always augured well for exiles — if as you say a great and brilliant light arose in the city from a friendly house, while the habitation of the enemy was darkened with smoke (which never leads to anything better than tears and confusion), and indistinct sounds got abroad from our side, so that even if an attempt is made to denounce us, our enterprise, attended with but indistinct rumours and blind suspicion, will be revealed only by its triumph. As for their sacrifice, it was of course unfavourable. The official and the victim do not represent the state but the faction in power.”

While Theocritus was still speaking I asked Hippostheneidas: “Whom did you send with the message? If you have given him no great start, we will set out in pursuit.”

He replied: “I am afraid, Caphisias (I must tell you and others the truth), that you cannot overtake him, as he has the best mount in Thebes. You all know the man: he is overseer of Melon’s charioteers and through Melon has been aware of the plot from the beginning.”

And I, who had caught sight of the man, remarked: “It must be Chlidon you mean, Hippostheneidas, who won the horse-race at the games of Heracles last year.”

“The very man,” he replied.

“And who,” I asked, “is this? He has been standing for some time at the outer door looking our way.”

Hippostheneidas turned and exclaimed: “Good heavens! It is Chlidon. Dear me, has anything serious happened?”

Seeing our eyes on him, Chlidon slowly advanced from the door. When Hippostheneidas had nodded to him and told him to speak out before all of us, as all were in the plot, he said: “I know the gentlemen well, Hippostheneidas. Not finding you either at home or in the market-place, FI guessed that you had joined them here and came as fast as I could, so that you might all know everything that has happened.

“On receiving your order to ride at full speed and meet the men on the mountain I went home for my horse. I called for the bridle but my wife didn’t have it, and spent a long time in the storeroom, rummaging through the contents as if looking for it. When she had had enough of making a fool of me she at last admitted lending it the evening before to our neighbour at his wife’s request. In my exasperation I railed at her; she then resorted to ominous and appalling language, cursing me with an unlucky journey and an unlucky return; 588 by Heaven! may the gods send all of it on her own head. Finally I got so furious I beat her. Then neighbours and women came running up and a crowd collected; and it was all I could do to get here to you gentlemen, after the shameful way I had acted and been treated, so that you might send someone else to meet the men, as I am just now in a thoroughly distracted and wretched state.”

19 1 As for ourselves, our feelings suffered an odd reversal; a little before we had been disappointed at the failure of our plans, while now, with the decision at hand and the need for immediate action upon us (postponement being impossible), we were yielding to anxiety and fear. Nevertheless, I spoke to Hippostheneidas and gave him my hand, encouraging him with the thought that the very gods were calling on us to act.

Thereupon Phyllidas left to prepare his entertainment and lure Archias at once to his cups, and Charon to make the necessary preparations in his house for receiving the exiles. Theocritus and I returned to Simmias for an opportunity to confer with Epameinondas.

(588 B) 20 1 They were already well along in an inquiry of no trivial scope, the one Galaxidorus and Pheidolaüs had engaged in shortly before, when they raised the problem of the nature and mode of operation of the so called sign of Socrates. Simmias’ reply to Galaxidorus’ argument we did not hear; speaking for himself, however, he said that he had once asked Socrates about the matter without receiving an answer and had therefore never asked again; but he had often heard Socrates express the view that men who laid claim to visual communication with Heaven were impostors, while to such as affirmed that they had heard a voice he paid close attention and earnestly inquired after the particulars. “It thus occurred to us,” Simmias went on to say, “as we examined the question in private among ourselves, to surmise that Socrates’s sign was perhaps no vision, but rather the perception of a voice or else the mental apprehension of language that reached him in some strange way. So in sleep, where no sound is uttered, we fancy, as we receive the impression or notion of certain statements, that we hear people speaking.

“But whereas some men actually have this sort of apprehension in dreams, hearing better asleep, when the body is quiet and undisturbed, while when they are awake their soul can hear the higher powers but faintly, and moreover, as they are overwhelmed by the tumult of their passions and the distractions of their wants, they cannot listen or attend to the message; Socrates, on the other hand, had an understanding which, being pure and free from passion, and commingling with the body but little, for necessary ends, was so sensitive and delicate as to respond at once to what reached him. What reached him, one would conjecture, was not spoken language, but the unuttered words of a daemon, making voiceless contact with his intelligence by their sense alone. For speech is like a blow — when we converse with one another, the words are forced through our ears and the soul is compelled to take them in — ; whereas the intelligence of the higher power guides the gifted soul, which requires no blows, by the touch of its thought; and the soul on its part yields to the slackening and tightening of its movements by the higher intelligence. No constraint is exerted, as no passion pulls the other way, and the movements of the soul respond easily and gently, like reins that give. This should occasion no surprise, when we observe that large merchantmen are brought round by small tillers, and that potters’ wheels whirl about evenly at the touch of the finger tip; for these, though inanimate, nevertheless, being constructed to revolve easily, move so smoothly that they respond to the mover at the slightest pressure. But the soul of man, which is strung with countless inward movements, as with resilient cords, is, when rationally dealt with, by far the most sensitive of all instruments, moving at a slight impulse toward the goal conceived by the understanding. 589 For here it is in the understanding, to which they are made fast and taut, that the passions and inward movements have their origins; and when that is struck, these are pulled and thereby exercise traction on the man and give him tension. Indeed, it is most of all by this that we are enabled to comprehend the great power of an idea. For insensate bones and thews and flesh saturated with humours, and the inert and prostrate mass they constitute, the instant the soul conceives a purpose in the understanding and sets its movement going for that end, arise as a whole, tense and co-ordinate in all its parts, and fly as if winged to carry the idea to execution.

“Moreover, it is no hard or hopeless task to understand by what manner of impact, co-ordination, and suggestion the soul receives a thought and thereby with its movements draws after it the corporeal mass. But if the body is moved with so little trouble by a notion that enters the understanding without the help of spoken language, it cannot be hard, I think, to believe that the understanding may be guided by a higher understanding and a diviner soul, that lays hold of it from without by a touch, which is the way in which it is the nature of thought to impinge on thought, just as light produces a reflection. For in very truth our recognition of one another’s thoughts through the medium of the spoken word is like groping in the dark; whereas the thoughts of daemons are luminous and shed their light on the daemonic man. Their thoughts have no need of verbs or nouns, which men use as symbols in their intercourse, and thereby behold mere counterfeits and likenesses of what is present in thought, but are unaware of the originals except for those persons who are illuminated, as I have said, by some special and daemonic radiance. Even so the phenomenon of speech serves in a way to allay the doubts of the incredulous. For on receiving the impression of articulate sounds, the air is fully changed to language and speech and conveys the thought to the soul of the hearer. Need we then feel surprised that the air, with its ready susceptibility, should also be transformed by the mere ideas of higher beings and thereby indicate to divine and exceptional men the meaning of him who conceived the idea? For just as the sound of sappers’ blows is detected by bronze shields, which re-echo it as it rises from the depths of the earth and strikes them, whereas through everything else it slips unnoticed; so the messages of daemons pass through all other men, but find an echo in those only whose character is untroubled and soul unruffled, the very men in fact we call holy and daemonic. In popular belief, on the other hand, it is only in sleep that men receive inspiration from on high; and the notion that they are so influenced when awake and in full possession of their faculties is accounted strange and incredible. This is like supposing that a musician uses his lyre when the strings are slack, but does not touch or play it when it has been adjusted to a scale and attuned. This belief arises from ignorance of the cause of this insensibility: the inner lack of attunement and the confusion in the men themselves. From this my friend Socrates was free, as is shown by the oracle delivered to his father when Socrates was yet a boy. It bade him let the child do whatever came into his mind, and not do violence to his impulses or divert them, but allow them free play, taking no further trouble about him than to pray to Zeus Agoraeus and the Muses, surely implying by this that he had a better guide of life in himself than a thousand teachers and attendants.

21 1 “Such was the notion, Pheidolaüs, that we for our part held about Socrates’ sign while he was alive and still hold now he is dead; we have scant use for those who account for it by chance remarks overheard or sneezes or the like. The story I had about it from Timarchus of Chaeroneia, as it more resembles a myth or fiction than an argument, I had perhaps better leave untold.”

“Do no such thing,” said Theocritus, “but let us have it; for myths, too, despite the loose manner in which they do so, have a way of reaching the truth. But first tell us who this Timarchus was, 590 as I do not recognize the name.”

“And little wonder, Theocritus,” said Simmias, “for he died very young, after asking Socrates’ leave to be buried beside Lamprocles, Socrates’ son, his friend and agefellow, who had died a few days before. Timarchus, then, in his desire to learn the nature of Socrates’ sign, acted like the high-spirited young initiate in philosophy he was: consulting no one but Cebes and me, he descended into the crypt of Trophonius, first performing the rites that are customary at the oracle. He remained underground two nights and a day, and most people had already given up hope, and his family were lamenting him for dead, when he came up in the morning with a radiant countenance. He did obeisance to the god, and as soon as he had escaped the crowd, began to tell us of many wonders seen and heard.

22 1 “He said that on descending into the oracular crypt his first experience was of profound darkness; next, after a prayer, he lay a long time not clearly aware whether he was awake or dreaming. It did seem to him, however, that at the same moment he heard a crash and was struck on the head, and that the sutures parted and released his soul. As it withdrew and mingled joyfully with air that was translucent and pure, it felt in the first place that now, after long being cramped, Cit had again found relief, and was growing larger than before, spreading out like a sail; and next that it faintly caught the whir of something revolving overhead with a pleasant sound. When he lifted his eyes the earth was nowhere to be seen; but he saw islands illuminated by one another with soft fire, taking on now one colour, now another, like a dye, as the light kept varying with their mutations. They appeared countless in number and huge in size, and though not all equal, yet all alike round; and he fancied that their circular movement made a musical whirling in the aether, for the gentleness of the sound resulting from the harmony of all the separate sounds corresponded to the evenness of their motion. In their midst lay spread a sea or lake, through whose blue transparency the colours passed in their migrations; and of the islands a few sailed out in a channel and crossed the current, while many others were carried along with it, the sea itself drifting around, as it were, smoothly and evenly in a circle. In places it was very deep, mainly toward the south, but elsewhere there were faint shoals and shallows; and in many parts it overflowed and again receded, never extending very far. Some of it was of the pure hue of the high seas, while elsewhere the colour was not unmixed, but turbid and like that of a pool. As they crested the surge the islands came back, without, however, returning to their point of departure or completing a circle; but with each new circuit they advanced slightly beyond the old, describing a single spiral in their revolution. The sea containing these was inclined at an angle of somewhat less than eight parts of the whole toward the midmost and largest portion of the surrounding envelope, as he made out; and it had two openings receiving rivers of fire emptying into it across from one another, so that it was forced far back, boiling, and its blue colour was turned to white. All this he viewed with enjoyment of the spectacle. But looking down he saw a great abyss, round, as though a sphere had been cut away; most terrible and deep it was, and filled with a mass of darkness that did not remain at rest, but was agitated and often welled up. From it could be heard innumerable roars and groans of animals, the wailing of innumerable babes, the mingled lamentations of men and women, and noise and uproar of every kind, coming faintly from far down in the depths, 591 all of which startled him not a little.

“After an interval someone he did not see addressed him: ‘Timarchus what would you have me explain?’

“ ‘Everything,’ he answered; ‘for what is here that is not marvellous?’

“ ‘Nay,’ the voice replied, ‘in the higher regions we others have but little part, as they belong to gods; but you may, if you wish, inquire into the portion of Persephonê, administered by ourselves; it is one of the four, and marked off by the course of the Styx.’

“ ‘What is the Styx?’ he asked. ‘It is the path to Hades,’ came the answer; ‘it passes across from you here, cleaving the light with its vertex; it extends upward, as you see, from Hades below, and where in its revolution it also touches the world of light, it bounds the last region of all. Four principles there are of all things: the first is of life, the second of motion, the third of birth, and the last of decay; the first is linked to the second by Unity at the invisible, the second to the third by Mind at the sun, and the third to the fourth by Nature at the moon. A Fate, daughter of Necessity, holds the keys and presides over each link: over the first Atropos, over the second Clotho, and over the link at the moon Lachesis. The turning point of birth is at the moon. For while the rest of the islands belong to the gods, the moon belongs to terrestrial daemons and avoids the Styx by passing slightly above it; it is caught, however, once in a hundred and seventy-seven secondary measures. As the Styx draws near the souls cry out in terror, for many slip off and are carried away by Hades; others, whose cessation of birth falls out at the proper moment, swim up from below and are rescued by the Moon, the foul and unclean excepted. These the Moon, with lightning and a terrible roar, forbids to approach, and bewailing their lot they fall away and are borne downward again to another birth, as you see.’

D” ‘But I see nothing,’ said Timarchus; ‘only many stars trembling about the abyss, others sinking into it, and others again shooting up from below.’

“ ‘Then without knowing it,’ the being replied, ‘you see the daemons themselves. I will explain: every soul partakes of understanding; none is irrational or unintelligent. But the portion of the soul that mingles with flesh and passions suffers alteration and becomes in the pleasures and pains it undergoes irrational. Not every soul mingles to the same extent: some sink entirely into the body, and becoming disordered throughout, are during their life wholly distracted by passions; others mingle in part, but leave outside what is purest in them. This is not dragged in with the rest, but is like a buoy attached to the top, floating on the surface in contact with the man’s head, while he is as it were submerged in the depths; and it supports as much of the soul, which is held upright about it, as is obedient and not overpowered by the passions. Now the part carried submerged in the body is called the soul, whereas the part left free from corruption is called by the multitude the understanding, who take it to be within themselves, as they take reflected objects to be in the mirrors that reflect them; but those who conceive the matter rightly call it a daemon, as being external. Thus, Timarchus,’ the voice pursued, ‘in the stars that are apparently extinguished, you must understand that you see the souls that sink entirely into the body; in the stars that are lighted again, as it were, and reappear from below, you must understand that you see the souls that float back from the body after death, shaking off a sort of dimness and darkness as one might shake off mud; while the stars that move about on high are the daemons of men said to “possess understanding.” See whether you can make out in each the manner of its linkage and union with the soul.’

“Hearing this, he attended more carefully and saw that the stars bobbed about, some more, some less, 592 like the corks we observe riding on the sea to mark nets; a few described a confused and uneven spiral, like spindles as they twist the thread, and were unable to reduce their movement to a straight and steady course. The voice explained that the daemons whose motion was straight and ordered had souls which good nurture and training had made submissive to the rein, and whose irrational part was not unduly hard-mouthed and restive; whereas those which were constantly deviating in all directions from a straight course in an uneven and confused motion, Bas though jerked about on a tether, were contending with a character refractory and unruly from lack of training, at one moment prevailing over it and wheeling to the right, at another yielding to their passions and dragged along by their errors, only to resist them later and oppose them with force. For, exerting a contrary pull on the tie, which is like a bridle inserted into the irrational part of the soul, the daemon applies what is called remorse to the errors, and shame for all lawless and wilful pleasures — remorse and shame being really the painful blow inflicted from this source upon the soul as it is curbed by its controlling and ruling part — until from such chastening the soul, like a docile animal, becomes obedient and accustomed to the reins, needing no painful blows, but rendered keenly responsive to its daemon by signals and signs. ‘These souls indeed,’ the voice pursued, ‘are brought to their duty and made firm in it late and gradually; but from those other souls, which from their very beginning and birth are docile to the rein and obedient to their daemon, comes the race of diviners and of men inspired. Among such souls you have doubtless heard of that of Hermodorus of Clazomenae — how night and day it used to leave his body entirely and travel far and wide, returning after it had met with and witnessed many things said and done in remote places, until his wife betrayed him and his enemies found his body at home untenanted by his soul and burnt it. The story as thus told is indeed not true: his soul did not leave his body, but gave its daemon free play by always yielding to it and slackening the tie, permitting it to move about and roam at will, so that the daemon could see and hear much that passed in the world outside and return with the report. The men who destroyed his body as he slept are still atoning for the deed in Tartarus. Of these matters,’ the voice said, ‘you will have better knowledge, young man, in the third month from now; for the present, depart.’

“When the voice ceased Timarchus desired to turn (he said) and see who the speaker was. But once more he felt a sharp pain in his head, as though it had been violently compressed, and he lost all recognition and awareness of what was going on about him; but he presently recovered and saw that he was lying in the crypt of Trophonius near the entrance, at the very spot where he had first laid himself down.

23 1 “Such then is the myth of Timarchus. When he had come to Athens and died in the third month, as the voice had foretold, we were amazed and told Socrates the story, who censured us for recounting it when Timarchus was no longer alive, as he would have been glad to hear it from Timarchus himself and question him about it more closely.

“My statement is now complete, Theocritus, and you have the myth along with the argument. But consider whether we should not also invite the stranger to join in the inquiry, for it is one most fitting and appropriate to inspired men.”

“Why does not Epameinondas make his contribution?” asked the stranger. “He draws upon the same doctrines as I.”

“That is his way, sir,” said my father with a smile: “to be silent and chary of speech, but insatiable of learning and listening. On this account Spintharus of Tarentum, who was long associated with him here, keeps saying, as you know, that nowhere in his generation has he met 593 a man of greater knowledge and fewer words. You must accordingly present your views about what has been said yourself.”

24 1 “I say, therefore,” he said, “that the story of Timarchus, as sacred and not to be profaned, should be dedicated to the god. As for Simmias’ own statement, I should be surprised if any should find it hard to accept, and when they call swans, serpents, dogs, and horses sacred, refuse to believe that men are divine and dear to God, and that too holding him no lover of birds, but of men. As, then, a man that loves horses does not devote the same care to all members of the species, but always singles out and sets apart some one horse that is best, training and rearing it by itself and cherishing it above the rest, so too our betters take the best of us, as from a herd, and setting a mark on us, honour us with a peculiar and exceptional schooling, guiding us not by rein or bridle, but by language expressed in symbols quite unknown to the generality and common herd of men. So too it is not the generality of hounds that understand the hunter’s signals, or of horses the horseman’s; it is only such as have been taught that readily take their orders from a mere casual whistle or clucking of the tongue and do what is required. Homer too, it is evident, knew the distinction of which we others speak, as he calls some diviners ‘consulters of birds’ and ‘priests,’ but thinks that others indicate the future from an understanding and awareness of the actual conversation of the gods. These are his words:

That counsel Helenus in his heart perceived,

The son of Priam, which the gods had reached

In their deliberation

and

Such speech of the immortal gods I heard.

For as outsiders perceive and recognize the intention of kings and generals from beacons and the proclamations of heralds and the blare of trumpets, whereas to confidants and intimates it is imparted by the kings and generals themselves, so heaven consorts directly with but few, and rarely, but to the great majority gives signs, from which arises the art called divination. The gods, then, order the life of but few among men, such as they wish to make supremely blessed and in very truth divine; whereas souls delivered from birth and henceforth at rest from the body — set quite free, as it were, to range at will — are, as Hesiod says, daemons that watch over man. For as athletes who from old age have given up training do not entirely lose their ardour and their love of bodily prowess, but look on with pleasure as others train, and call out encouragement and run along beside them, so those who are done with the contests of life, and who, from prowess of soul, have become daemons, do not hold what is done and said and striven after in this world in utter contempt, but are propitious to contenders for the same goal, join in their ardour, and encourage and help them to the attainment of virtue than they see them keeping up the struggle and all but reaching their heart’s desire. For daemons do not assist all indifferently, but as when men swim a sea, those standing on the shore merely view in silence the swimmers who are still far out distant from land, whereas they help with hand and voice alike such as have come near, and running along and wading in beside them bring them safely in, such too, my friends, is the way of daemons: as long as we are head over ears in the welter of worldly affairs and are changing body after body, like conveyances, they allow us to fight our way out and persevere unaided, as we endeavour by our own prowess to come through safe and reach a haven; but when in the course of countless births a soul has stoutly and resolutely sustained a long series of struggles, and as her cycle draws to a close, she approaches the upper world, bathed in sweat, 594 in imminent peril and straining every nerve to reach the shore, God holds it no sin for her daemon to go to the rescue, but lets whoever will lend aid. One daemon is eager to deliver by his exhortations one soul, another another, and the soul on her part, having drawn close, can hear, and is thus saved; but if she pays no heed, she is forsaken by her daemon and comes to no happy end.”

594 25 1 When Theanor had done, Epameinondas looked at me and said: “Caphisias, it is time, I believe, for you to go to the gymnasium and not disappoint your companions; when we decide to break up this gathering, we will look after Theanor ourselves.”

“That I shall do,” I replied; “but I think Theocritus here would like a few words with you, in the presence of Galaxidorus and myself.”

“He shall have them; and good luck attend!” he said, rising and leading us to the angle in the colonnade. We gathered about and endeavoured to prevail upon him to join in the attack. He was perfectly well informed, he replied, of the day appointed for the exiles’ return; indeed Gorgidas and he had organized their friends for the occasion. But he would never put a countryman to death without trial unless driven to it by extreme necessity. Apart from this it was to the interest of democratic government at Thebes that there should be some men not chargeable with the guilt of what was done: these would enjoy the greater confidence of the people, as their counsels would be less suspected of bias. With this we agreed; and he returned to Simmias and the company while I went down to the gymnasium and joined my friends. Shifting partners as we wrestled, we exchanged information and made arrangements for the execution of the plot. We also saw Archias and Philippus, freshly anointed, going off to dinner; for when Archias had returned after escorting Lysanoridas, Phyllidas immediately took him into his house, fearing that Amphitheüs might be put to death before we could prevent it; and leading Archias to hope that the married woman he desired would come to the banquet, he prevailed on him to dismiss his cares and relax with the usual companions of his debauches.

26 1 It was now late and growing colder, as a wind had arisen; and most of the townspeople had on this account withdrawn into their houses earlier than usual, when our group met and picked up Damocleidas, Pelopidas, and Theopompus, and other groups picked up the rest (for they had separated as far back as the crossing of Cithaeron); and the bad weather allowed them to muffle up their faces and pass through the city without fear. Some, as they entered the gates, saw a flash of lightning on the right, not followed by thunder; and the sign was taken to portend safety and glory — our acts would be brilliant and yet unattended with danger.

27 1 Now when we were all in the house, to the number of forty-eight, and Theocritus was taking sacrificial omens off in a room by himself, there came a loud pounding at the door. It was shortly announced that two officers of Archias, dispatched on urgent business to Charon, were knocking at the outer door and ordering it to be opened, and showed impatience at the delay in answering. Charon, in great alarm, gave orders to open it at once, and going to meet them in person, with a chaplet on his head, as if he was in the midst of drinking after a sacrifice, asked the officers what they wanted.

The one replied: “Archias and Philippus have sent us with orders for you to report to them at once.”

When Charon asked to what urgency this summons at such an hour was due and whether anything serious had happened, the messenger answered: “That is all we know. What shall we tell them?”

“Why, tell them,” said Charon, “that I am laying my chaplet aside this moment and putting on my cloak and following after; for if I accompany you at this hour some people will take alarm, supposing me under arrest.”

595 “Do so,” the man answered; “it so happens that we have an order from the authorities to convey to the guards at the foot of the citadel.”

With that they left. When Charon rejoined us with the news we were all struck with consternation, imagining ourselves betrayed; and most of us suspected that Hippostheneidas, after using Chlidon in his attempt to prevent the exiles’ return, when this failed and the crisis was upon us, had in his fear denounced the plot (being a man who would be credited); for he had not come to the house with the rest and had on all counts, it was felt, shown himself base and treacherous. Still, we all felt that Charon should go Bin obedience to the summons he had received from the magistrates. He gave orders for his son to enter, the most handsome boy in Thebes, Archedamus, and most diligent in athletic exercise; he was, I should say, about fifteen years old, but far stronger and taller than others of his age. “Gentlemen,” he said, “this is my only child, and very dear to me, as you know; I place him in your hands, adjuring all of you in the name of gods and daemons: if it should appear that I have played you false, kill him, show no mercy. For the rest, face what has befallen like the brave men you are; do not surrender your bodies to unmanly and inglorious destruction by your bitterest foes, but fight back, keeping your souls unconquered for your country’s sake.”

As Charon said this we were filled with admiration for his high heart and noble mind, but indignant at the thought of suspicion, and told him to take the boy away.

“In any case, Charon, said Pelopidas, “I think you were ill-advised in not removing your son to another house; for why should he be exposed to danger by being shut up with us here? Even now he should be sent away, so that, if anything happens to us, he may grow up in our place to be our noble avenger upon the tyrants.”

“That may not be,” replied Charon; “here he shall stay and meet the danger with you; for him too it would be no honour to fall into the hands of the enemy. But, my son, be brave in this first trial before your age of the real business of fighting, and encounter peril at the side of many brave countrymen, with freedom and virtue as the prize; much hope yet remains, and doubtless some god is watching over us as we struggle for the right.”

28 1 Tears came to the eyes of many of us, Archedamus, at his words; but he was dry-eyed himself and unmoved as he put his son into the charge of Pelopidas and passed through the door, taking every one by the hand and speaking words of encouragement. Even more admirable would you have found the boy’s own radiance and fearlessness in face of danger; like Neoptolemus, he neither blenched nor was dismayed, but drew Pelopidas’ sword and studied it with care.

Meanwhile Cephisodorus, son of Diogeiton, one of our party, arrived, armed with a sword and wearing an iron corslet under his cloak. When he heard that Charon had been summoned by Archias, he blamed our delay and spurred us on to proceed to the houses at once; we should thus be upon them before they could attack, and failing that, it was better to get out into the open and engage with an enemy unorganized and scattered like ourselves than to remain where we were, confining ourselves in a small room for them to collect like a swarm of bees. Theocritus the diviner also urged us to act, as his sacrifice promised deliverance and triumph and assured our safety.

29 1 We were arming and preparing for combat when Charon returned with a cheerful and smiling face, and looking us straight in the eye told us to be of good courage; there was nothing to fear, and our plans were working smoothly. “When Archias and Philippus,” he said, “heard that I had answered the summons, 596 they were already heavy with drink and their minds, like their bodies, had lost their vigour; it was all they could do to get up and come out to the door. ‘We hear, Charon,’ said Archias, ‘that exiles have slipped into the city and are lying concealed.’ At this I felt no ordinary alarm and asked: ‘Where are they reported to be, and who are they?’ ‘We do not know,’ he replied’; ‘that is why we sent for you, to see if you had heard any more definite news.’

“Recovering my wits somewhat as from a blow, I reflected that the report was mere hearsay; that our plot had not been denounced by anyone privy to it (for if someone knowing the true state of affairs had betrayed us, they would not be ignorant of the house); and that a mere suspicion or vague report circulating in the city had reached them. And so I replied: ‘When Androcleidas was alive I understand that spates of such idle rumours and false reports often gave us trouble, but at present,’ I said, ‘I have heard nothing of the sort, Archias; I shall however investigate the story, if you so direct, and if I hear of anything alarming it will be brought to your attention.’

“ ‘By all means do so, Charon,’ said Phyllidas; ‘omit no search or inquiry into this matter; for what is to keep us from making light of nothing, but being everywhere cautious and vigilant? Forethought and circumspection are an excellent thing.’ With this he took Archias in hand and led him back to the dining hall where they are now carousing.

“Then let us not delay, gentlemen,” he said; “but address our prayers to the gods and go forth.” When Charon had thus spoken we began praying to the gods and cheering one another on.

30 1 It was the hour when people are mostly at dinner; and the wind, growing stronger, had begun to bring on a fall of snow mixed with a thin drizzle, so that we found very few people abroad as we passed through the streets. The party appointed to attack Leontiades and Hypates, who lived near one another, went out in their mantles, taking none of their weapons but a knife each; among them were Pelopidas, Damocleidas, and Cephisodorus. Charon and Melon and their party, who were to set upon Archias, went out wearing the front plates of their corslets and crowned with bushy chaplets, some of silver fir and some of pine; a few were dressed in women’s clothing. Thus the party represented a band of tipsy revellers in the company of women.

Our worse fortune, Archedamus, which would have made all the indolence and blindness of the enemy a match for all our daring and preparation, and which had from the outset been enlivening the course of our enterprise, like the action of a play, with perilous incidents, now joined issue with us in the very moment of execution, involving us in a sudden and terrible ordeal that threatened unlooked-for disaster to our hopes. When Charon, on returning home from his encounter with Archias and Philippus, was disposing us for the attack, a letter came from Archias the hierophant here at Athens to the Archias at Thebes, his friend it appears and host, revealing the exiles’ return, their plot, the house they had entered, and their confederates. Archias, now quite overcome with wine and all agog, too, with his expectation of the women, took the letter in his hand, but when the messenger said that it concerned important business, remarked, “If business is important it can wait till tomorrow,” and slipped it under his cushion. Calling for a beaker he ordered it filled and every moment kept sending Phyllidas to the street to see if the women were coming.

31 1 These were the hopes that had beguiled them over the wine when we came up and, forcing a way at once through the servants to the banqueting hall, stood for a moment at the door, looking over each of the company reclining there. 597 The sight of our chaplets and dress deceived them about our presence in the city and kept them quiet; but when Melon, the first to make a move, set out through their midst, his hand on his sword hilt, Cabirichus, the magistrate appointed by lot, caught his arm as he passed and shouted: “Isn’t this Melon, Phyllidas?” Melon, however, disengaged himself, drawing his sword as he did so, and rushing at Archias, who was having trouble getting to his feet, did not slacken his blows until he had killed him.

Philippus was wounded by Charon near the neck, and as he defended himself with the goblets set before him, Lysitheüs threw him from his couch to the ground and dispatched him.

We endeavoured to quiet Cabirichus, adjuring him not to lend aid to the tyrants but help us set his country free, as his person was sacred and consecrated to the gods in that country’s behalf. But as he was not easily to be won over to the wiser course by an appeal to reason, the wine also having its effect, but was getting to his feet, excited and confused, and couching the spear our magistrates are accustomed to keep always with them, I seized it in the middle and raising it above my head shouted to him to let go and save himself, as he would otherwise be cut down; but Theopompus came up at his right and struck him with his sword, saying: “Lie there with these you toadied to: may you never wear the chaplet when Thebes is free and never sacrifice again to the gods before whom you have invoked so many curses on your country in your many prayers for her enemies.” When Cabirichus had fallen, Theocritus (who was standing near) caught up the sacred spear from the blood, while we dispatched the few servants who had ventured to fight back and locked up the rest, who made no resistance, in the banqueting hall, as we did not wish them to slip away and report what had been done until we knew whether the other party had been successful.

32 1 That action too was carried out as I will describe. Pelopidas’ party quietly went up to Leontiades’ outer door and knocked, telling the slave who answered that they came from Athens with a letter for Leontiades from Callistratus. The slave took the message and was ordered to open. When he had removed the bolt and partly opened the door, they all burst in together, bowled the fellow over, and dashed through the courtyard to the bedchamber. Leontiades guessed the truth at once, and drawing his dagger, prepared to defend himself; he was, it is true, an unjust and tyrannical man, yet firm of soul and stout of arm. He did not, however, determine to dash the lamp to the ground and close with his assailants in the dark, but was visible to them in the lamplight as he struck Cephisodorus in the side the instant the door opened and engaging with Pelopidas, who came next, called loudly for his servants. But these were held back by Samidas and the men with him, and did not risk coming to blows with opponents who were the most illustrious citizens of Thebes and excellent fighters. Pelopidas struggled and fenced with Leontiades in the doorway of the chamber; as the passage was narrow and Cephisodorus had fallen between the folding doors and lay there dying, the rest were kept from coming to his aid. Finally our champion, after receiving a slight wound in the head and dealing out many, struck Leontiades to the ground and killed him over the body of Cephisodorus, still warm with life, who saw his enemy fall, gave Pelopidas his hand, and when he had saluted the rest, serenely breathed his last. This done they turned their attention to Hypates, and gaining admittance by a similar stratagem, killed him as he fled over a roof-top to the neighbouring house.

33 1 598 From there they made haste to join us and met us outside the Porch of Many Columns. After exchanging greetings and talk we proceeded to the prison. Phyllidas called the gaoler out and said: “Archias and Philippus order you to bring Amphitheüs to them at once.” The man, observing the unusual hour and that Phyllidas was not talking to him coolly, but was flushed with the combat and in a ferment, saw through the trick and asked: “When have the polemarchs ever sent for a prisoner at such an hour? And when through you? What token of authority do you bring?” “This is my authority,” said Phyllidas, and, as he said it, ran him through the body with a cavalry lance he held, striking down a vile fellow, on whom not a few women trod and spat the next day.

We then split down the gaol door and first called out the name of Amphitheüs and then those of the rest with whom we were severally connected. Recognizing our voices they leapt joyfully from their pallets, dragging their chains; and those whose feet were confined in the stocks stretched out their arms and cried out, begging not to be left behind. While these were released, not a few of the people who lived near by were already joining us, getting wind of what was afoot and elated with it. The women, as one after another heard news of someone close to her, ran out into the streets to meet one another, unmindful of our Boeotian manners, and made inquiries of the passers-by. Those who had found a father or husband followed along, no one stopping them; for all who met them were mightily swayed by their own pity and the tears and entreaties of decent women.

34 1 This was the situation when I heard that Epameinondas and Gorgidas were already Dassembling with their friends at the temple of Athena and went to find them. Many brave citizens had gathered there and more and more kept arriving. When I had given them a full account of what had passed, urging them to go to the market place and reinforce us, all of them at once set to summoning the citizenry to rally to the cause of liberty. The crowds that then formed found weapons in the colonnades, which were full of trophies of all kinds, and in the workshops of the cutlers who dwelt near by. Hippostheneidas too appeared with his friends and servants, bringing the trumpeters who happened to be in town for the festival of Heracles. They at once set to blowing their trumpets, some in the market place, others elsewhere, from all sides filling our opponents with alarm as if the whole city had risen. The partisans of Sparta fled from the town to the Cadmeia, drawing along with them the so called “Incomparables,” a body of men whose custom it was to bivouac nightly at the foot of the citadel. The garrison on the height, with this disordered and terrified rout pouring in, and with us visible to them down in the market place, no quarter remaining quiet, but noises and the sounds of tumult being borne up to them from all sides, were in no mood to descend into the town, although fifteen hundred strong, but were terror-struck and took refuge in the pretext that they were waiting for Lysanoridas, who had promised to return that day. For this reason he was later sentenced by the Spartan Elders to a large fine; Herippidas and Arcesus were put to death by them the moment they were apprehended in Corinth. They surrendered the Cadmeia to us under a truce and set about withdrawing with their forces.

On exile

599 1 1 As it is with our friends, so it is with the words we speak: best and most to be depended upon, we are told, are those which appear in adversity to some purpose and give help; for many people visit the unfortunate and talk to them, but their efforts do no good, or rather do harm. These people are like men unable to swim who try to rescue the drowning — they hug them close and help to drag them under. The language addressed to us by friends and real helpers should mitigate, not vindicate, what distresses us; it is not partners in tears and lamentation, like tragic choruses, that we need in unwished-for circumstances, but men who speak frankly and instruct us that grief and self-abasement are everywhere futile, that to indulge in them is unwarranted and unwise, and that where the facts themselves, when reason has groped them out and brought them to light, enable a man to say to himself

You’ve not been hurt, unless you so pretend,

it is utterly absurd not to ask the body what it has suffered, or the soul whether it is the worse for this mischance, but instead to seek instruction in grief from those who come from the outside world to join their vexation and resentment to our own.

2 1 Let us, therefore, withdraw from the world and taking our calamities one by one examine their weight, as if they were so many loads; for while the burden felt by the body is the actual weight of the thing that presses upon it, the soul often adds the heaviness to circumstances from itself. It is by nature that stone is hard, it is by nature that ice is cold; it is not from outside themselves, fortuitously, that they convey the sensation of rigidity and freezing; but banishment, loss of fame, and loss of honours, like their opposites, crowns, public office, and front-seat privileges, whose measure of causing sorrow and joy is not their own nature, but our judgement, every one makes light or heavy for himself, and easy to bear or the reverse. We can listen on the one hand to Polyneices, when, on being asked

What is the loss of country? A great ill?

he replies

The greatest; and no words can do it justice;

on the other hand, we can hear what Alcman has to say, as the author of the little epigram has represented him:

Sardis, of old the sojourn of my sires,

Had I been bred in thee, then had I been

Some priest or temple eunuch, tricked in gold,

Smiting the painted timbrels; now instead

My name is Alcman, and my country Sparta,

City of many tripods; I have been taught

The Hellenic Muses, who have raised me high

Above the despots Dascyles and Gyges.

Thus opinion had made the same event useful for the one, as it makes a coin pass current, but useless and harmful to the other.

3 1 Assume that exile is a calamity, as the multitude declare in speech and song. So too, many foods are bitter and pungent and irritate the taste; but by combining with them certain sweet and pleasant ingredients we get rid of the disagreeable savour. There are colours too, painful to the sight, and when confronted with them our vision is blurred and dazzled by their harshness and unrelieved intensity. 600 Now if we have found that we could remedy this inconvenience by mingling shadow with them or turning our eyes aside and resting them upon something of a greenish and pleasant shade, the same can be done with misfortunes as well: they can be blended with whatever is useful and comforting in your present circumstances: wealth, friends, freedom from politics, and lack of none of the necessities of life. For I fancy that there are not many Sardians who would not prefer your circumstances, even with exile thrown in, and be content to live on such terms in a foreign land, rather than, like snails, which are of a piece with their shells but enjoy no other blessing, maintain a painless connexion with their homes. 4 1 As, then, in the comedy a character who is urging an unfortunate friend to take heart and make a stand against Fortune, when asked, “How?” replies, “like a philosopher,” so let us too make a stand against her by playing the philosopher worthily. But how are we to face

Zeus when he pours down rain? And how the North Wind?

Why, we look for a fire, a bath-house, a cloak, a roof: in a rainstorm we do not sit idle or lament. You too, then, are as able as any man to revive this chilled portion of your life and restore it to warmth: you need no further resources; it is enough to use wisely those you have. For whereas the cupping-glasses of physicians, by drawing out of the body its most worthless elements, relieve and preserve the rest, lovers of gift and fault-finding, by constantly collecting and counting up what is worst in their lot, and by getting absorbed in their troubles, make even the most useful things in it useless for themselves at the moment when these would naturally afford the greatest help. For it is not Zeus, dear friend, that sits by the “two urns” of Homer, which stand in heaven “brimful,” the one of good, the other of evil “dooms,” dispensing them, releasing to some a gentle and well-tempered flow, to others, an undiluted stream of misery; rather, it is ourselves: the wise among us, by drawing from the good and pouring it upon the bad, make their lives more pleasant and potable; whereas in the multitude, as in filters, the worst remains and adheres as the better flows away and vanishes.

5 1 If, therefore, we suffer some real and truly painful calamity, we must summon cheerfulness and peace of spirit by drawing upon the store of good still left us, using our own resources to smooth out the roughness of what comes from outside ourselves but with things which have no evil in their nature, and whose painfulness is wholly and entirely a figment of unfounded opinion, Ewe must act as we do with little children who are frightened by masks: by bringing the masks close and putting them into their hands and turning them about we accustom the child to make light of them; so, by coming to close quarters with these things and applying to them the firm pressure of reason, we must expose their unsoundness, their hollowness, and their theatrical imposture.

Such is your present removal from what you take to be your native land. For by nature there is no such thing as a native land, any more than there is by nature a house or farm or forge or surgery, as Ariston said; but in each case the thing becomes so, or rather is so named and called, with reference to the occupant and user. For man, as Plato says, is “no earthly” or immovable “plant,” but a “celestial” one, — the head, like a root, keeping the body erect — inverted to point to heaven. Thus Heracles spoke well when he said

an Argive I

Or Theban, for I boast no single exist;

There is no fort in Greece but is my country;

whereas the saying of Socrates is still better, that he was no Athenian or Greek, but a “Cosmian” (as one might say “Rhodian” or “Corinthian”), 601 because he did not shut himself up within Sunium and Taenarus and the Ceraunian mountains.

Seest thou yon boundless aether overhead

That holds the earth within its soft embrace?

This is the boundary of our native land, and here no one is either exile or foreigner or alien; here are the same fire, water, and air; the same magistrates and procurators and chancellors — Sun, Moon, and Morning Star; the same laws for all, decreed by one commandment and one sovereignty, the summer solstice, the winter solstice, the equinox, the Pleiades, Arcturus, the seasons of sowing, the seasons of planting; here one king and ruler, “God, holding the beginning, middle, and end of the universe, proceeds directly, as is his nature, in his circuit; upon him follows Justice, who visits with punishment those that fall short of the divine law,” the justice which all of us by nature observe toward all men as our fellow-citizens.

6 1 That you do not live in Sardis is nothing; neither do all Athenians live in Collytus, all Corinthians in Craneion, all Laconians in Pitanê. Are those Athenians foreigners and men without a country who removed from Melitê to the region of Diomeia, where they observe both the month Metageitnion and a festival, “the Metageitnia,” named for their migration, accepting this change of neighbours in a serene and joyful spirit, and remaining content with their condition? You would not say so. What part, then, of the inhabited world, or of the whole earth, is remote from another, when astronomers teach that in comparison to the universe the earth is a mere point, without extension? But we, when like ants or bees we have been driven out of one anthill or beehive, are dismayed and feel strange, possessing neither the knowledge nor the instruction that would teach us to take and consider the whole world to be our own, as indeed it is. Yet we laugh at the stupidity of the man who asserts that at Athens there is a better moon than at Corinth, although we are in a sense in the same case as he, when, on coming to a foreign land, we fail to recognize the earth, the sea, the air, the sky, as though they were distinct and different from those familiar to us. For nature leaves us free and untrammelled; it is we who bind ourselves, confine ourselves, immure ourselves, herd ourselves into cramped and sordid quarters. And then we scoff at the Persian kings, if in truth, by drinking no water but that of the Choaspes, they turn the rest of the inhabited world for themselves into a waterless waste; but when we move to other lands, in our attachment to the Cephisus and our longing for the Eurotas or Taÿgetus or Parnassus, we make the inhabited world empty of cities for ourselves and unfit for habitation.

7 1 The Egyptians indeed, who because of some outbreak of anger and severity on the part of their king, were migrating to Ethiopia, replied to those who entreated them to return to their children and wives by pointing with Cynic licence to their private parts and remarking that they would be at no loss for either marriage or children so long as they had these with them. One can, however, with greater decency and decorum, say that wherever a man happens to find a moderate provision for his livelihood, there that man lacks neither city nor hearth nor is an alien. Only he must also have good sense and reason, as a skipper needs an anchor that he may moor in any haven and make use of it. For while loss of wealth cannot easily and quickly be repaired, every city at once becomes a native city to the man who has learned to make use of it and has roots which can live and thrive everywhere and take hold in any region, roots such as Themistocles and Demetrius of Phalerum had. For Demetrius was after his banishment first among the friends of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and not only lived in plenty himself, but even used to send largesse to the Athenians; 602 while Themistocles, when royally maintained by the King’s bounty, is reported to have said to his wife and children: “It would have been our undoing not to have been undone.” For this reason, to the one who remarked: “The Sinopians condemned you to banishment from Pontus,” Diogenes the Cynic replied: “But I condemned them to stay there,” —

Out where meet the shore

The breakers of the Inhospitable Sea.

Stratonicus asked his host in Seriphos what crime was punished there with banishment; when told that persons guilty of fraud were expelled, he said: “Then why not commit fraud and escape from this confinement?” — Bwhere the comic poet says that the figs are gathered in with slings, and remarks that the island is well provided with every incommodity.

8 1 Indeed, if you lay aside unfounded opinion and consider the truth, the man who has a single city is a stranger and an alien to all the rest; for it is felt he can neither in decency nor in justice forsake his own city to inhabit another:

Your lot is Sparta: look to Sparta then,

whether it be obscure, or unhealthy, or a prey to faction and turbulence. But Fortune grants possession of what city he pleases to the man she has deprived of his own. For that excellent precept of the Pythagoreans, “choose the best life, and familiarity will make it pleasant,” is here too wise and useful: “choose the best and most pleasant city, and time will make of it your native land” — a native land that does not distract you, is not importunate, does not command: “pay a special levy,” “go on an embassy to Rome,” “entertain the governor,” “undertake a public service at your own expense.” For if a person in his senses and not utterly infatuated bears this in mind, he will choose, if exiled, to live even on an island, Gyaros or Cinaros,

Rocky, unfit for corn or vine or tree,

not downcast or lamenting or uttering the words of the women in Simonides

The clamour of the blue salt sea

Tossing about me, hems me in,

but he will rather reason as Philip did, who said, on being thrown in wrestling, as he turned about and saw the imprint of his body: “Good God! How small a portion of the earth we hold by nature, yet we covet the whole world!”

9 1 You have, I think, seen Naxos, if not, Hyria, which is not far from here; yet Naxos had room for Ephialtes and Otus; Hyria was the habitation of Orion. When Alcmaeon was fleeing before the Eumenides, he settled, Eas poets tell, on newly hardened silt built up by the Acheloüs; but my conjecture is that he too, fleeing from the tumults, factions, and fiendish legal blackmail of his countrymen, chose to dwell on a small plot unharassed and in peace. Tiberius Caesar passed the last seven years of his life at Capri; and the ruling part of the inhabited world, as if gathered up into a heart, made not the slightest change in its abode for all that time. Yet in his case the cares of state, pouring in upon him and brought in from everywhere, made the island repose not unmixed and not free from storms; Fwhereas the man who finds that by disembarking on a small island he can be rid of no small troubles, is pitiful indeed if he does not recite to himself the words of Pindar and often repeat them as a spell:

Forgo, my heart, the cypress;

Forgo the contested land;

To me but little earth is given, where grows the oak;

But to my lot has fallen no sorrow, no discord.

or commands from the governor or ministrations to the needs of countrymen and public services that are difficult to decline. 10 1 For when Callimachus is applauded for saying,

Use not a Persian rope to measure art,

are we to measure felicity by “ropes” and parasangs, 603 and if we dwell on an island of two hundred stades’ circumference, and not, like Sicily, four days’ sail in circuit, are we to torment ourselves and lament our wretched plight? For what has breadth of land to do with the life free from pain? Have you not heard the words of Tantalus in the tragedy? He says,

The field I sow is twelve days’ journey long,

The Berecynthian land

and then says a little later:

My fate, while reaching upward to the skies,

Falls to the earth, and speaks these words to me:

Learn not to honour human beings too much.

Nausithoüs, by leaving “the broad land of Hypereia” because the Cyclopes were its neighbours, moving to an island “far from industrious men,” and dwelling apart from human traffic “far off in the stormy seas,” provided his countrymen with the most pleasant of lives. It was first the children of Minos, and later the children of Codrus and Neileus, that settled the Cyclades, where at present the thoughtless exiles fancy they are punished. Yet what island of exile is not more spacious than the district of Scillus, where Xenophon after his campaign lived to see a “comfortable old age”? The Academy, a little plot of ground bought for three thousand drachmas, was the dwelling of Plato and Xenocrates and Polemon, who taught and spent their lives there, except for the one day every year when Xenocrates went down to the city for the new tragedies at the Dionysia, and graced the festival, as people said. Theocritus of Chios went so far as to abuse Aristotle, because he had conceived a taste for the style of living at the court of Philip and Alexander, and

preferred to Academe

A dwelling in the flow of Slime, —

there being a river near Pella which the Macedonians call Borborus. Homer, who praises the islands and recommends them to us as though by design —

To Lemnos came she, town of godlike Thoas,

and

All that Lesbos bounds toward the sea,

Seat of the blest,

and

Taking steep Scyros, fortress of Enyeus,

and

Men from Dulichium and the sacred isles

Echinae, facing Elis over the sea —

also says that of famous men Aeolus the dearest to the gods, Odysseus the wisest, Ajax the bravest, and Alcinoüs the most hospitable, dwelt on islands.

11 Zeno indeed, when he learned that his only remaining ship had been engulfed with its cargo by the sea, exclaimed: “Well done, Fortune! thus to confine me to a threadbare cloak” and a philosopher’s life; while a man not wholly infatuated or mad for the mob would not, I think, on being confined to an island, reproach Fortune, but would commend her for taking away from him all his restlessness and aimless roving, wanderings in foreign lands and perils at sea and tumults in the market place, and giving him a life that was settled, leisurely, undistracted, and truly his own, describing with centre and radius a circle containing the necessities that meet his needs. For what island is there that does not afford a house, a walk, a bath, fish and hares for those who wish to indulge in hunting and sport? And best of all, the quiet for which others thirst, you can repeatedly enjoy. But at home, as men play at draughts and retire from the public eye, informers and busybodies track them down and hunt them out of their suburban estates and parks and bring them back by force to the market place and court; whereas it is not the persons who plague us, who come to beg or borrow money, to entreat us to go surety for them or help in canvassing an election, 604 that sail to an island, it is the best of our connexions and intimates that do so out of friendship and affection, while the rest of life, if one desires leisure and has learned to use it, is left inviolate and sacred. He that calls those persons happy who run about in the world outside and use up most of their lives at inns and ferry-stations is like the man who fancies that the planets enjoy greater felicity than the fixed stars. And yet each planet, revolving in a single sphere, as on an island, preserves its station; for “the Sun will not transgress his bounds,” says Heracleitus; “else the Erinyes, ministers of Justice, will find him out.”

12 1 But, my dear friend, let us address the preceding remarks and the like and repeat them as a spell to those others who have been banished to an island and are cut off from the rest of the world by

The grey salt sea, that bars the way to many

Against their will;

but for you, to whom one solitary spot is not appointed, but forbidden, the exclusion from one city is the freedom to choose from all. Further, set off against the consideration “I do not hold office or sit in the council or preside at games” the other consideration: “I am not involved in faction; I am not exhausting my fortune; I wait upon no governor; I care not now who has obtained the province, whom he is quick to anger or in other ways oppressive.” But we are like Archilochus. As he, overlooking the fruitful fields and vineyards of Thasos, because of its steep and rugged surface maligned it, saying

This island, like the backbone of an ass,

Stands up beneath its cover of wild wood,

so we, intent upon one part of exile, lack of fame, overlook its lack of politics, its leisure, and its freedom. Yet the kings of the Persians were called happy for spending the winter in Babylon, the summer in Media, and the most pleasant part of the spring in Susa. Surely the exile too is free to sojourn in Eleusis during the Mysteries, to keep holiday in the city at the Dionysia, and to visit Delphi for the Pythian and Corinth for the Isthmian games, if he is fond of spectacles; Dif not, he has at his command leisure, walking, reading, undisturbed sleep, and what Diogenes expressed when he said: “Aristotle lunches at Philip’s pleasure, Diogenes at his own,” since no politics or magistrate or governor disrupts the customary tenor of his life.

13 1 On this account you will find that few men of the greatest good sense and wisdom have been buried in their own country, and that most of them, under compulsion from no one, weighed anchor of their own accord and found a new haven for their lives, removing some to Athens, some from Athens. For who has pronounced such an encomium on his native land as Euripides?

Where, first, the people are no immigrants

But native to the soil: all other cities,

Disrupted once, as in the game, have been

Pieced out by importation from abroad,

If, madam, you permit a passing boast,

The sky above our land is temperate,

Where neither comes excess of heat nor cold,

And all the fairest fruits of Greece and Asia

With Africa as bait entice we hither.

Yet the writer of these lines went off to Macedonia and spent his remaining years at the court of Archelaüs. You have doubtless also heard this little poem:

The Athenian, Aeschylus, Euphorion’s son,

This grave conceals in Gela’s fields of corn.

For he also sailed away to Sicily, as Simonides did before him. The statement “This is the setting forth of the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus” is altered by many to read “Herodotus of Thurii,” as the author migrated to Thurii and joined in the settlement of that colony. 605 Take that spirit of poetry, holy and inspired,

Who glorified the Phrygian fray,

Homer: what else has made many cities contend for him, but the fact that he eulogizes no single one? So too the honours of Zeus Xenios are numerous and great.

14 1 If it is objected that these men went in quest of fame and honours, go to the wise men and to the schools and resorts of wisdom at Athens; pass in review those in the Lyceum, in the Academy; the Porch, the Palladium, the Odeum. If it is the Peripatetic school you favour and admire most, Aristotle was from Stageira, Theophrastus from Eresus, Straton from Lampsacus, Glycon from the Troad, Ariston from Ceos, Critolaüs from Phaselis; if the Stoic, Zeno was from Citium, Cleanthes from Assos, Chrysippus from Soli, Diogenes from Babylon, Antipater from Tarsus, and the Athenian Archedemus removed to the country of the Parthians and left a Stoic succession at Babylon. Who, then, pursued these men? No one; it was they who pursued peace, which at home is hardly the portion of those who have any fame or power, and thus, while teaching the rest of their doctrines by what they said, teach us this lesson by what they did. So too at present those men who are of most approved and surpassing merit live abroad, not forced to depart, but departing of themselves, and not put to flight, but themselves fleeing the cares, distractions, and press of business that are the product of their native lands. Indeed the Muses, it appears, called exile to their aid in perfecting for the ancients the finest and most esteemed of their writings. “Thucydides of Athens composed the history of the war of the Peloponnesians and Athenians” in Thrace at Scaptê Hylê; Xenophon wrote at Scillus in Elis, Philistus in Epeirus, Timaeus of Tauromenium at Athens, Androtion of Athens at Megara, and the poet Bacchylides in the Peloponnese. All these and many more, when driven from their country, did not despair or lie prostrate in grief, but put their native abilities to use, accepting their exile as a provision granted by Fortune for this end, an exile that has made them everywhere remembered even in death; while of those who banished them and triumphed over them in the struggle of factions not one enjoys at present the slightest recognition.

15 1 He, therefore, who thinks that loss of fame is attendant upon exile is ridiculous. What nonsense! Is Diogenes lacking in fame? Why, Alexander, seeing him sitting in the sun, stopped to ask whether he wanted anything; and when Diogenes merely requested him to stand a bit out of his light, the king, struck with such high spirit, said to his friends: “Were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes.” Was Camillus deprived of fame when he was banished from Rome, of which he is now acclaimed the second founder? Indeed Themistocles after his banishment did not lose his fame among the Greeks, but won new fame among the barbarians; and no one is so indifferent to fame or so ignoble that he would rather have been Leobotes, who brought the indictment, than Themistocles, who was condemned to exile, Clodius the banisher than Cicero the banished, For Aristophon, who made the accusation, than Timotheüs, who withdrew from his native land.

16 1 But since many are stirred by the words of Euripides, who is thought to arraign exile very forcibly, let us see what he has to say on the several counts of his indictment, as he presents them in the form of question and answer:

Joc. What is the loss of country? A great ill?

Pol. Surpassing great; no words can do it justice.

Joc. What is it like? What ills beset the banished?

Pol. One greater than the rest: speech is not free.

Joc. That is a slave’s part — not to speak one’s mind.

606 Pol. The folly of the mighty must be borne.

These initial assumptions are wrong and untrue. In the first place it is not a slave’s part “not to speak one’s mind,” but that of a man of sense on occasions and in matters that demand silence and restraint of speech, as Euripides himself has elsewhere put it better:

Silence in season, speech where speech is safe.

In the next place we are compelled to bear “the folly of the mighty” no less at home than in exile; indeed, those who remain behind are often in even greater terror of men who wield unjust power in cities through chicane or violence than those who have taken their departure. But the last and greatest absurdity is that banishment should deprive the exile of free speech: it is astonishing if Theodorus was without free speech, the man who, when King Lysimachus said to him: “Did your country cast out a man of your qualities?” replied: “Yes I was too much for it, as Dionysus was for Semelê.” And when the king showed him Telesphorus in a cage, his eyes gouged out, and said: “To this plight I bring those who injure me,” Theodorus replied: “What cares Theodorus whether he rots above the ground or under it?” And did Diogenes lack freedom of speech — Diogenes who appeared at the camp of Philip as the king was advancing to join battle with the Greeks, was brought before him as a spy, and answered that he had come to spy indeed — on Philip’s insatiable greed and folly in coming to stake on the cast of the dice in a few decisive moments both his empire and his person? Did Hannibal the Carthaginian mince his words to Antiochus, an exile to a king, on that occasion when he urged him to seize a favourable chance to attack the enemy, and when the king resorted to sacrifice and said that the entrails opposed such a course, Hannibal rebuked him with the words: “You defer to a piece of meat, and not a man of sense”? Nay, exile does not even destroy freedom of speech in geometers and grammarians, when they converse about the subjects they know and have been taught; however, then, could exile destroy it in good and worthy men? It is meanness of spirit that everywhere “stops up the voice, ties the tongue, chokes, imposes silence.”

What are we to say of the next words of Euripides?

‘Tis said that exiles live upon their hopes.

Their eyes hold promise, but they tarry ever.

This too is rather a charge against stupidity than against exile. For it is not those who have learned and know how to put the present to good use, but those who are ever hanging upon the future and longing for what they do not have, that are tossed about on hope as on a raft, though they never go beyond the city wall.

Did not your father’s friends and hosts avail you?

Prosper: your friends are naught when trouble comes.

Nor yet did noble lineage raise you high?

To have not is a curse: birth would not feed me.

These words of Polyneices now smack of ingratitude, when he charges noble birth with depriving him of honours and banishment with robbing him of friends; for he, an exile, won a princess in marriage by his noble birth, and when he took the field had that great and powerful alliance of friends to defend him, Fas he himself admits a few lines later:

And many Danaan chiefs and Mycenaean

Are here to do me kindness — sorry kindness,

But sorry though it be, I need it sore.

In the same vein are his mother’s words, when she laments:

But I have lighted

No ritual torch to celebrate thy nuptials;

No hymeneal pride of soft ablution

Attended this alliance of Hismenus.

She should have rejoiced and been content when she learned that her son dwelt in so great a palace; instead, bewailing the unlit torch and Hismenus, who had provided no ablution, 607 as though in Argos bridegrooms had neither water nor fire, she imputes to exile the miseries arising from infatuation and stupidity.

17 1 But “exile” is a term of reproach. Yes, among fools, who make terms of abuse of “pauper,” “bald,” “short,” and indeed “foreigner” and “immigrant.” But those who are not carried away by such considerations admire good men, even if they are poor or foreigners or exiles. Nay, do we not observe that like the Parthenon and the Eleusinium, so the Theseum is saluted with reverence by all? Yet Theseus was banished from Athens, though it is because of him that Athens is now inhabited; and that city was lost to him which he did not take possession of, but himself created. What glory remains to Eleusis, if we are to be ashamed of Eumolpus, who, a migrant from Thrace, initiated and still initiates the Greeks into the mysteries? Whose son was Codrus, who became king? Was it not of Melanthus, an exile from Messenê? Do you not commend Antisthenes’ retort to the man who remarked, “Your mother is a Phrygian:” “So too is the Mother of the Gods”? Why then do not you, when “exile” is cast in your teeth, make a similar reply: “So too the father of Heracles the victorious was an exile, so too the grandsire of Dionysus, when sent out to find Europa, like her, did not return, though ‘Phoenician born,’ but by coming to Thebes expatriated his ‘descendant,’

Euhius Dionysus,

Rouser of women,

Him that is adored in frenzy”?

Now as to the matters at which Aeschylus hinted darkly when he said

And pure Apollo, god exiled from heaven

“let my lips” in the words of Herodotus “be sealed”; Empedocles, however, when beginning the presentation of his philosophy, says by way of prelude:

A law there is, an oracle of Doom,

Of old enacted by the assembled gods,

That if a Daemon — such as live for ages —

Defile himself with foul and sinful murder,

He must for seasons thrice ten thousand roam

Far from the Blest: such is the path I tread,

DI too a wanderer and exile from heaven,

indicating that not he himself merely, but all of us, beginning with himself, are sojourners here and strangers and exiles. “For,” he says, “no commingling of blood or breath, O mortals, gave our souls their being and beginning; it is the body, earth-born and mortal, that has been fashioned out of these,” and as the soul has come hither from elsewhere, he euphemistically calls birth a “journey, using the mildest of terms. But it is truest to say that the soul is an exile and a wanderer, driven forth by divine decrees and laws; and then, as on an island buffeted by the seas, imprisoned within the body “like an oyster in its shell,” as Plato says, because it does not remember or recall

What honour and what high felicity

it has left, not leaving Sardis for Athens or Corinth for Lemnos or Scyros, but Heaven and the Moon for earth and life on earth, if it shifts but a short distance here from one spot to another, it is resentful and feels strange, drooping like a base-born plant. And yet for a plant one region is more favourable than another for thriving and growth, but from a man no place can take away happiness, as none can take away virtue or wisdom; nay, Anaxagoras in prison was busied with squaring the circle, and Socrates, when he drank the hemlock, engaged in philosophy and invited his companions to do the same, and was by them deemed happy; whereas Phaëthon and Tantalus, as poets tell, when they had ascended to heaven, met with the most grievous disasters through their folly.

Consolation to his wife

608 b Plutarch to his wife, best wishes.

1 1 The messenger you sent to report the death of our little child seems to have missed me on the way as he travelled to Athens; but when I reached Tanagra I learned of it from my granddaughter. Now the funeral, I suppose, has already been held — and my desire is that it has been so held as to cause you the least pain, both now and hereafter; but if you want something done that you are leaving undone while you await my decision, something that you believe will make your grief easier to bear, that too you shall have, so it be done without excess or superstition, faults to which you are not at all prone.

2 1 Only, my dear wife, in your emotion keep me as well as yourself within bounds. For I know and can set a measure to the magnitude of our loss, taken by itself; but if I find any extravagance of distress in you, this will be more grievous to me than what has happened. Yet neither was I born “from oak or rock”; you know this yourself, you who have reared so many children in partnership with me, all of them brought up at home under our own care. And I know what great satisfaction lay in this that after four sons the longed-for daughter was born to you, and that she made it possible for me to call her by your name. Our affection for children so young has, furthermore, a poignancy all its own: the delight it gives is quite pure and free from all anger or reproach. She had herself, moreover, a surprising gift of mildness and good temper, and her way of responding to friendship and of bestowing favours gave us pleasure while it afforded an insight into her kindness. For she would invite the nurse to offer the breast and feed with it not only other infants, but even the inanimate objects and playthings she took pleasure in, as though serving them at her own table, dispensing in her kindness what bounty she had and sharing her greatest pleasures with whatever gave her delight.

3 1 But I do not see, my dear wife, why these things and the like, after delighting us while she lived, should now distress and dismay us as we take thought of them. Rather I fear on the contrary that while we banish painful thoughts we may banish memory as well, like Clymenê, who said

I hate the crooked bow of cornel wood,

I hate the sports of youth: away with them!

ever shunning and shrinking from what reminded her of her son, because it was attended with pain; for nature shuns everything unpleasant. But rather, just as she was herself the most delightful thing in the world to embrace, to see, to hear, so too must the thought of her live with us and be our companion, bringing with it joy in greater measure, nay in many times greater measure, than it brings sorrow (if indeed it is reasonable that the arguments we have often used to others should be of seasonable aid to ourselves as well), and we must not sit idle and shut ourselves in, paying for those pleasures with sorrows many times as great.

4 1 This also those who were present report — with amazement — that you have not even put on mourning, that you did not subject yourself or your women to any uncomeliness or ill-usage, and that there was no sumptuous display, like that of a festival, at the burial, but that everything was done with decorum and in silence, in the company of our nearest kin. 609 But this was no surprise to me, that you, who have never decked yourself out at theatre or procession, but have regarded extravagance as useless even for amusements, should have preserved in the hour of sadness the blameless simplicity of your ways; for not only “in Bacchic riot” must the virtuous woman remain uncorrupted; but she must hold that the tempest and tumult of her emotion in grief requires continence no less, a continence that does not resist maternal affection, as the multitude believe, but the licentiousness of the mind. For it is yielding to a parent’s love to long for and honour and remember the departed; bwhereas the never-sated passion for lamentation, a passion which incites us to transports of wailing and of beating the breast, is no less shameful than incontinence in pleasures, although it finds an excuse — more apparent than real — in the circumstance that its shamefulness is attended with pain and bitterness instead of delight. For what is more unreasonable than to do away with excess of laughter and jubilation, and yet allow free course to the torrents of weeping and wailing that burst forth from the same source? Or more unreasonable than for husbands to quarrel, as some do, with their wives about scented unguent for the hair and the wearing of purple, but to permit them to crop their heads in mourning, to dye their clothes black, to sit in an uncomely posture and lie in discomfort? And worst of all, if they punish their manservants or maidservants excessively and unjustly, to resist and oppose them, but to pay no heed when they savagely and cruelly punish themselves in the midst of passions and misfortunes that require gentle and kindly treatment?

5 1 But we, my dear wife, in our relations with each other have had no occasion for the one quarrel, nor, I think, shall we have any for the other. For, on the one hand, your plainness of attire and sober style of living has without exception amazed every philosopher who has shared our society and intimacy, neither is there any townsman of ours to whom at religious ceremonies, sacrifices, and the theatre you do not offer another spectacle — your own simplicity. On the other hand, you have already shown great steadfastness in circumstances like the present, when you lost your eldest child and again when the fair Charon left us. For I remember that strangers accompanied me in my journey from the sea and gathered at our house with the rest at the news of the little child’s death; and observing great composure and quiet, as they later recounted to others they thought that no tragedy had occurred, and that a false report had got abroad — such was the self-possession with which you kept order in your household at a time that gave full scope to disorderly confusion, and yet you had nursed him at your own breast and had submitted to surgery when your nipple was bruised. For such conduct was noble, and it showed true mother love.

6 1 But we observe that most mothers, after others have cleansed and prettied up their children, receive them in their arms like pets; and then, at their death, give themselves up to an unwarranted and ungrateful grief, not out of good will toward them — for good will is rational and right — but because the combination with a little natural feeling of a great deal of vain opinion makes their mourning wild, frenzied, and difficult to calm. And this appears not to have escaped Aesop, who said that when Zeus was apportioning honours among the gods, Grief asked for a share, which Zeus accordingly granted, but only from such as should choose and so desire. At the outset indeed this is true; for each person takes grief in of his own accord. But once it has fixed itself with the passing of time and become his companion and household intimate, it will not quit him even at his earnest desire. We must, therefore, resist it at the door and must not let it in to be quartered on us by wearing mourning or cropping the hair or by any other manifestations of the kind that, 610 confronting the mind daily and shaming it into submission, make it dispirited, cramped, shut in, deaf to all soothing influences, and a prey to vain terrors, in the feeling that it has no part in laughter or the light of day or the friendly board, since it has adopted such habiliments and engages in such practices because of its grief. This unhappy state leads to widespread neglect of the body and aversion to ointment, the bath, and the other usages of our daily life. Quite the contrary should happen; in its own suffering the soul should be helped by a vigorous condition of the body. For its distress loses much of its keenness and intensity when dissipated in the calm of the body, as waves are dispersed in fair weather; whereas if the body is in the interval allowed to become squalid and unkempt from a mean way of life, and if it sends up to the soul nothing benign or good, but only pains and sorrows, like acrid and noisome exhalations, the sufferings that take possession of the soul when it has undergone such ill-usage are so serious that an easy recovery is no longer possible even if desired.

7 1 On the other hand, what is most grave and to be dreaded in such a case holds no terrors for me: “the visits of pernicious women” and their cries and their chiming in with lamentations, whereby they polish and whet the keen edge of pain, and do not allow our grief to subside either from other influences or of itself; for I know what struggles you recently sustained when you went to the aid of Theon’s sister and fought off the assaults of the women who came from the world outside with wailing and screaming, as if they were in very truth adding “fire to fire.” For when people see the houses of their friends in flames, they put the fire out with all the speed or power at their command; but when those friends are themselves ablaze with fire in their hearts, they bring more fuel. And whereas men refuse to permit anyone who so desires to lay his hands on a sufferer from ophthalmia, and do not touch the inflammation, the person who mourns sits patiently and allows anyone who happens to pass by to meddle with his suffering das with a rheumatic sore and to envenom it, a little tickling and scratching making it break out into a far-reaching and troublesome affliction. This thing, then, I know you will guard against.

8 1 Do, however, try to carry yourself back in your thoughts and return again and again to the time when this little child was not yet born and we had as yet no complaint against Fortune; next try to link this present time with that as though our circumstances had again become the same. For, my dear wife, we shall appear to be sorry that our child was ever born if our conduct leads us to regard the state of things before her birth as preferable to the present. Yet we must not obliterate the intervening two years from our memory; rather, since they afforded us delight and enjoyment of her, we should credit them to the account of pleasure; and we should not consider the small good a great evil, nor, because Fortune did not add what we hoped for, be ungrateful for what was given. For reverent language toward the Deity and a serene and uncomplaining attitude toward Fortune never fail to yield an excellent and pleasant return; while in circumstances like these he who in greatest measure draws upon his memory of past blessings and turns his thought toward the bright and radiant part of his life, averting it from the dark and disturbing part, either extinguishes his pain entirely, or by thus combining it with its opposite, renders it slight and faint. For just as perfume, while always a delight to the smell, serves on occasion to counteract foul odours, so the thought of our blessings has in time of trouble a further, necessary, use: it is an antidote in the hands of those who do not shun the remembrance of happiness and do not insist on reproaching Fortune in everything. It ill becomes us to fall into this state by cavilling at our own life for receiving, 611 like a book, a single stain, while all the rest is clean and unspoiled. 9 1 For you have often heard that felicity depends on correct reasoning resulting in a stable habit, and that the changes due to fortune occasion no serious departure from it and do not bring with them a falling away that destroys the character of our lives.

But if, like the multitude, we too are to be guided by external circumstances, to reckon up the dispensations of fortune, and to take any chance persons as our judges of felicity, you must not dwell upon the present tears band lamentations of your visitors, a performance dictated by a pernicious custom and rehearsed to every sufferer; you must rather bear in mind how enviable you still appear in their eyes for your children, home, and way of life. And it is unreasonable, when others would gladly choose your lot, even with our present grief thrown in, for you, whose lot it actually is, to complain and be disconsolate; nor yet to be taught by the very bitterness of your grief how great is the delight for us in what is still left, but instead, like the critics who pick out the “headless” and “docked” lines of Homer, overlooking the many splendid passages of flawless execution, to keep a strict account of the shortcomings of your life and cavil at them, and by noting the advantages without particularity or discrimination, to resemble in your attitude the illiberal and miserly, who make no use of the great wealth they accumulate when it is in their possession, but lament and are disconsolate when it is lost. If you pity her for departing unmarried and childless, you can find comfort for yourself in another consideration, that you have lacked fulfilment of and participation in neither of these satisfactions; for these are not great blessings for those deprived of them, but small for their possessors. That she has passed to a state where there is no pain need not be painful to us; for what sorrow can come to us through her, if nothing now can make her grieve? For even great deprivations lose their power to cause pain when they reach the point where the want is no longer felt; and your Timoxena has been deprived of little, for what she knew was little, and her pleasure was in little things; and as for those things of which she had acquired no perception, which she had never conceived, and to which she had never given thought, how could she be said to be deprived of them?

10 1 Furthermore, I know that you are kept from believing the statements of that other set, who win many to their way of thinking when they say that nothing is in any way evil or painful to “what has undergone dissolution,” by the teaching of our fathers and by the mystic formulas of Dionysiac rites, the knowledge of which we who are participants share with each other. Consider then that the soul, which is imperishable, is affected like a captive bird: if it has long been reared in the body and has become tamed to this life by many activities and long familiarity, it alights again and re enters the body, and does not leave off or cease from becoming entangled in the passions and fortunes of this world through repeated births. For do not fancy that old age is vilified and ill spoken of because of the wrinkles, the grey hairs, and the debility of the body; no, its most grievous fault is to render the soul stale in its memories of the other world and make it cling tenaciously to this one, and to warp and cramp it, since it retains in this strong attachment the shape imposed upon it by the body. Whereas the soul that tarries after its capture but a brief space in the body before it is set free by higher powers proceeds to its natural state as though released from a bent position with flexibility and resilience unimpaired. For just as a fire flares up again and quickly recovers, if a person who has extinguished it immediately lights it again, but is harder to rekindle if it remains extinguished for some time, so too those souls fare best whose lot it is, according to the poet,

Soon as they may pass through Hades’ gates

before much love of the business of our life here has been engendered in them, and before they have been adapted to the body by becoming softened and fused with it as by reagents.

11 612 It is rather in our ancestral and ancient usages and laws that the truth of these matters is to be seen; for our people do not bring libations to those of their children who die in infancy, nor do they observe in their case any of the other rites that the living are expected to perform for the dead, as such children have no part in earth or earthly things; nor yet do they tarry where the burial is celebrated, at the graves, or at the laying out of the dead, and sit by the bodies. For the laws forbid us to mourn for infants, holding it impiety to mourn for those who have departed to a dispensation and a region too that is better and more divine. And since this is harder to disbelieve than to believe, blet us keep our outward conduct as the laws command, and keep ourselves within yet freer from pollution and purer and more temperate.

BOOK VIII

Table talk

CONTENTS

Book I.

Book II.

Book III

Book IV.

Book V.

Book VI.

Book VII.

Book VIII.

Book IX

Book I.

Some, my dear Sossius Senecio imagine that this sentence, [Greek omitted] was principally designed against the stewards of a feast, who are usually troublesome and press liquor too much upon the guests. For the Dorians in Sicily (as I am informed) called the steward, [Greek omitted] a REMEMBRANCER. Others think that this proverb admonisheth the guests to forget everything that is spoken or done in company; and agreeably to this, the ancients used to consecrate forgetfulness with a ferula to Bacchus, thereby intimating that we should either not remember any irregularity committed in mirth and company, or apply a gentle and childish correction to the faults. But because you are of opinion (as Euripides says) that to forget absurdities is indeed a piece of wisdom, but to deliver over to oblivion all sort of discourse that merry meetings do usually produce is not only repugnant to that endearing quality that most allow to an entertainment, but against the known practice of the greatest philosophers (for Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Speusippus, Epicurus, Prytanis, Hieronymus, Dion the Academic, have thought it a worthy and noble employment to deliver down to us those discourses they had at table), and since it is your pleasure that I should gather up the chiefest of those scattered topics which both at Rome and Greece amidst our cups and feasting we have disputed on, in obedience to your commands I have sent three books, each containing ten problems; and the rest shall quickly follow, if these find good acceptance and do not seem altogether foolish and impertinent.

QUESTION I.

Whether at Table It is Allowable to Philosophize?

SOSSIUS, SENECIO, ARISTO, PLUTARCH, CRATO, and OTHERS.

The first question is, Whether at table it is allowable to philosophize? For I remember at a supper at Athens this doubt was started, whether at a merry meeting it was fit to use philosophical discourse, and how far it might be used? And Aristo presently cried out: What then, for heaven’s sake, are there any that banish philosophy from company and wine? And I replied: Yes, sir, there are, and such as with a grave scoff tell us that philosophy, like the matron of the house, should never be heard at a merry entertainment; and commend the custom of the Persians, who never let their wives appear, but drink, dance, and wanton with their whores. This they propose for us to imitate; they permit us to have mimics and music at our feasts, but forbid philosophy; she, forsooth, being very unfit to be wanton with us, and we in a bad condition to be serious. Isocrates the rhetorician, when at a drinking bout some begged him to make a speech, only returned: With those things in which I have skill the time doth not suit; and in those things with which the time suits I have no skill.

And Crato cried out: By Bacchus, he was right to forswear talk, if he designed to make such long-winded discourses as would have spoiled all mirth and conversation; but I do not think there is the same reason to forbid philosophy as to take away rhetoric from our feasts. For philosophy is quite of another nature; it is an art of living, and therefore must be admitted into every part of our conversation, into all our gay humors and our pleasures, to regulate and adjust them, to proportion the time, and keep them from excess; unless, perchance, upon the same scoffing pretence of gravity, they would banish temperance, justice, and moderation. It is true, were we to feast before a court, as those that entertained Orestes, and were silence enjoined by law, that might prove no mean cloak of our ignorance; but if Bacchus is really [Greek omitted] (A LOOSER of everything), and chiefly takes off all restraints and bridles from the tongue, and gives the voice the greatest freedom, I think it is foolish and absurd to deprive that time in which we are usually most talkative of the most useful and profitable discourse; and in our schools to dispute of the offices of company, in what consists the excellence of a guest, how mirth, feasting, and wine are to be used and yet deny philosophy a place in these feasts, as if not able to confirm by practice what by precepts it instructs.

And when you affirmed that none ought to oppose what Crato said, but determine what sorts of philosophical topics were to be admitted as fit companions at a feast, and so avoid that just and pleasant taunt put upon the wrangling disputers of the age,

Come now to supper, that we may contend;

and when you seemed concerned and urged us to speak to that head, I first replied: Sir, we must consider what company we have; for if the greater part of the guests are learned men, — as for instance, at Agatho’s entertainment, characters like Socrates, Phaedrus, Pausanias, Euryximachus; or at Callias’s board, Charmides, Antisthenes, Hermogenes, and the like, — we will permit them to philosohize, and to mix Bacchus with the Muses as well as with the Nymphs; for the latter make him wholesome and gentle to the body, and the other pleasant and agreeable to the soul. And if there are some few illiterate persons present, they, as consonants with vowels, in the midst of the other learned, will participate not altogether inarticulately and insignificantly. But if the greater part consists of such who can better endure the noise of any bird, fiddle-string, or piece of wood than the voice of a philosopher, Pisistratus hath shown us what to do; for being at difference with his sons, when he heard his enemies rejoiced at it, in a full assembly he declared that he had endeavored to persuade his sons to submit to him, but since he found them obstinate, he was resolved to yield and submit to their humors. So a philosopher, midst those companions that slight his excellent discourse, will lay aside his gravity, follow them, and comply with their humor as far as decency will permit; knowing very well that men cannot exercise their rhetoric unless they speak, but may their philosophy even whilst they are silent or jest merrily, nay, whilst they are piqued upon or repartee. For it is not only (as Plato says) the highest degree of injustice not to be just and yet seem so; but it is the top of wisdom to philosophize, yet not appear to do it; and in mirth to do the same with those that are serious, and still seem in earnest. For as in Euripides, the Bacchae, though unprovided of iron weapons and unarmed, wounded their invaders with their boughs, thus the very jests and merry talk of true philosophers move those that are not altogether insensible.

I think there are topics fit to be used at table, some of which reading and study give us, others the present occasion; some to incite to study, others to piety and great and noble actions, others to make us rivals of the bountiful and kind; which if a man cunningly and without any apparent design inserts for the instruction of the rest, he will free these entertainments from many of those considerable evils which usually attend them. Some that put borage into the wine, or sprinkle the floor with water in which verbena and maiden-hair have been steeped, as good raise mirth and jollity in the guests (in imitation of Homer’s Helen, who with some medicament diluted the pure wine she had prepared), do not understand that that fable, coming from round Egypt, after a long way ends at last in easy and fit discourse. For whilst they were drinking Helen relates the story of Ulysses,

How Fortune’s spite the hero did control,
And bore his troubles with a manly soul.
(“Odyssey,” iv. 242.)

For that, in my opinion, was the Nepenthe, the care-dissolving medicament, viz, that story exactly fitted to the then disasters and juncture of affairs. The pleasing men, though they designedly and apparently instruct, draw on their maxims rather with persuasive and smooth arguments, than the violent force of demonstrations. You see that even Plato in his Symposium, where he disputes of the chief end, the chief good, and is altogether on subjects theological, doth not lay down strong and close demonstrations; he doth not make himself ready for the contest (as he is wont) like a wrestler, that he may take the firmer hold of his adversary and be sure of giving him the trip; but draws men on by more soft and pliable attacks, by pleasant fictions and pat examples.

Besides the questions should be easy, the problems known, the interrogations plain, familiar, and not intricate and dark that they might neither vex the unlearned, nor fright them from the disquisition. For — as it is allowable to dissolve our entertainment into a dance, but if we force our guests to toss quoits or play at cudgels, we shall not only make our feast unpleasant, but hurtful and unnatural — thus light and easy disquisitions do pleasantly and profitably excite us, but we must forbear all contentions and (to use Democritus’s word) wrangling disputes, which perplex the proposers with intricate and inexplicable doubts, and trouble all the others that are present. Our discourse should be like our wine, common to all, and of which every one may equally partake; and they that propose hard problems seem no better fitted for society than Aesop’s fox and crane. For the fox vexed the crane with thin broth poured out upon a plain table, and laughed at her when he saw her, by reason of the narrowness of her bill and the thinness of the broth, incapable of partaking what he had prepared; and the crane, in requital, inviting the fox to supper, brought forth her dainties in a pot with a long and narrow neck, into which she could conveniently thrust her bill, whilst the fox could not reach one bit. Just so, when philosophers midst their cups dive into minute and logical disputes, they are very troublesome to those that cannot follow them through the same depths; and those that bring in idle songs, trifling disquisitions, common talk, and mechanical discourse destroy the very end of conversation and merry entertainments, and abuse Bacchus. Therefore, as when Phrynichus and Aeschylus brought tragedy to discourse of fictions and misfortunes, it was asked, What is this to Bacchus? — so methinks, when I hear some pedantically drawing a syllogism into table-talk, I have reason to cry out, Sir, what is this to Bacchus? Perchance one, the great bowl standing in the midst, and the chaplets given round, which the god in token of the liberty he bestows sets on every head, sings one of those songs called [Greek omitted] (CROOKED OR OBSCURE); this is not fit nor agreeable to a feast. Though some say these songs were not dark and intricate composures; but that the guests sang the first song all together, praising Bacchus and describing the power of the god; and the second each man sang singly in his turn, a myrtle bough being delivered to every one in order, which they call an [Greek omitted] because he that received it was obliged [Greek omitted] to sing; and after this a harp being carried round the company, the skilful took it, and fitted the music to the song; this when the unskilful could not perform, the song was called [Greek omitted] because hard to them, and one in which they could not bear a part. Others say this myrtle bough was not delivered in order, but from bed to bed; and when the uppermost of the first table had sung, he sent it to the uppermost of the second, and he to the uppermost of the third; and so the second in like manner to the second; and from these many windings and this circuit it was called [Greek omitted] CROOKED.

QUESTION II.

Whether the Entertainer Should Seat the Guests, or Let Every Man Take His Own Place.

TIMON, A GUEST, PLUTARCH, PLUTARCH’S FATHER, LAMPRIAS, and OTHERS.

My brother Timon, making a great entertainment, desired the guests as they came to seat themselves; for he had invited strangers and citizens, neighbors and acquaintance, and all sorts of persons to the feast. A great many being already come, a certain stranger at last appeared, dressed as fine as hands could make him, his clothes rich, and an unseemly train of foot-boys at his heels; he walking up to the parlor-door, and, staring round upon those that were already seated, turned his back and scornfully retired; and when a great many stepped after him and begged him to return, he said, I see no fit place left for me. At that, the other guests (for the glasses had gone round) laughed abundantly, and desired his room rather than his company.

But after supper, my father addressing himself to me, who sat at another quarter of the table, — Timon, said he, and I have a dispute, and you are to be judge, for I have been upon his skirts already about that stranger; for if according to my directions he had seated every man in his proper place, we had never been thought unskilful in this matter, by one

Whose art is great in ordering horse and foot.
(“Iliad,” ii 554.)

And story says that Paulus Aemilius, after he had conquered Perseus the king of Macedon, making an entertainment besides his costly furniture and extraordinary provision, was very critical in the order of his feast; saying, It is the same man’s task to order a terrible battle and a pleasing, entertainment, for both of them require skill in the art of disposing right, and Homer often calls the stoutest and the greatest princes [Greek omitted] disposers of the people; and you use to say that the great Creator, by this art of disposing, turned disorder into beauty, and neither taking away nor adding any new being, but setting everything in its proper place, out of the most uncomely figure and confused chaos produced this beauteous, this surprising face of nature that appears. In these great and noble doctrines indeed you instruct us; but our own observation sufficiently assures us, that the greatest profuseness in a feast appears neither delightful nor genteel, unless beautified by order. And therefore it is absurd that cooks and waiters should be solicitous what dish must be brought first, what next, what placed in the middle, and what last; and that the garlands, and ointment, and music (if they have any) should have a proper place and order assigned, and yet that the guests should be seated promiscuously, and no respect be had to age, honor, or the like; no distinguishing order by which the man in dignity might be honored, the inferior learn to give place, and the disposer be exercised in distinguishing what is proper and convenient. For it is not rational that, when we walk or sit down to discourse, the best man should have the best place, and not the same order be observed at table; or that the entertainer should in civility drink to one before another, and yet make no difference in their seats, at the first dash making the whole company one Myconus (as they say), a hodge-podge and confusion. This my father brought for his opinion.

And my brother said: I am not so much wiser than Bias, that, since he refused to be arbitrator between two only of his friends, I should pretend to be a judge between so many strangers and acquaintance; especially since it is not a money matter, but about precedence and dignity, as if I invited my friends not to treat them kindly, but to abuse them. Menelaus is accounted absurd and passed into a proverb, for pretending to advise when unasked; and sure he would be more ridiculous that instead of an entertainer should set up for a judge, when nobody requests him or submits to his determination which is the best and which the worst man in the company; for the guests do not come to contend about precedency, but to feast and be merry. Besides, it is no easy task to distinguish for some claim respect by reason of their age, others — from their familiarity and acquaintance; and, as those that make declamations consisting of comparisons, he must have Aristotle’s [Greek omitted] and Thrasymachus’s [Greek omitted] (books that furnish him with heads of argument) at his fingers’ ends; and all this to no good purpose or profitable effect but to bring vanity from the bar and the theatre into our feasts and entertainments, and, whilst by good fellowship endeavor to remit all other passions, especially pride and arrogance, from which, in my opinion we should be more careful to cleanse our souls than to wash our feet from dirt, that our conversation be free, simple, and full of mirth. And while by such meetings we strive to end all differences that have at any time risen amongst the invited, we should make them flame anew, and kindle them again by emulation, by thus humbling some and puffing up others. And if, according as we seat them, we should drink oftener and discourse more with some than others and set daintier dishes before them, instead of being friendly we should be lordly in our feasts. And if in other things we treat them all equally, why should we not begin at the first part, and bring it into fashion for all to take their seats promiscuously, without ceremony or pride, and to let them see, as soon as they enter, that they are invited to a dinner whose order is free and democratical, and not, as particular chosen men to the government of a city where aristocracy is the form; since the richest and the poorest sit promiscuously together.

When this had been offered on both sides, and all present required my determination, I said: Being an arbitrator and not a judge, I shall close strictly with neither side, but go indifferently in the middle between both. If a man invites young men, citizens, or acquaintance, they should (as Timon says) be accustomed to be content with any place, without ceremony or concernment; and this good nature and unconcernedness would be an excellent means to preserve and increase friendship. But if we use the same method to strangers, magistrates, or old men, I have just reason to fear that, whilst we seem to thrust our pride at the fore-door, we bring it in again at the back, together with a great deal of indifferency and disrespect. But in this, custom and the established rules of decency must guide; or else let us abolish all those modes of respect expressed by drinking to or saluting first; which we do not use promiscuously to all the company but according to their worth we honor every one

With better places, meat, and larger cups,
(“Iliad,” xii. 311.)

as Agamemnon says, naming the place first, as the chiefest sign of honor. And we commend Alcinous for placing his guest next himself: —

He stout Laomedon his son removed,
Who sat next him, for him he dearly loved;
(“Iliad,” xx. 15.)

for to place a suppliant stranger in the seat of his beloved son was wonderful kind, and extreme courteous. Nay even amongst the gods themselves this distinction is observed; for Neptune, though he came last into the assembly,

sat in the middle seat,
(“Odyssey,” vii. 170.)

as if that was his proper place. And Minerva seems to have that assigned her which is next Jupiter himself; and this the poet intimates, when speaking of Thetis he says,

She sat next Jove, Minerva giving Place.
(Ibid. xxiv. 100.)

And Pindar plainly says,

She sits just next the thunder-breathing flames.

Indeed Timon urges, we ought not to rob many to honor one, which he seems to do himself, even more than others; for he robs that which makes something that is individual common; and suitable honor to his worth is each man’s possession. And he gives that preeminence to running fast and making haste, which belongs to virtue, kindred, magistracies, and such other qualities; and whilst he endeavors not to affront his guests, he necessarily falls into that very inconvenience; for he must affront every one by defrauding them of their proper honor. Besides, in my opinion it is no hard matter to make this distinction, and seat our guests according to their quality; for first, it very seldom happens that many of equal honor are invited to the same banquet; and then, since there are many honorable places, you have room enough to dispose them according to content, if you can but guess that this man must be seated uppermost, that in the middle, another next to yourself, friend, acquaintance, tutor, or the like, appointing every one some place of honor; and as for the rest, I would supply their want of honor with some little presents, affability, and kind discourse. But if their qualities are not easy to be distinguished, and the men themselves hard to be pleased, see what device I have in that case; for I seat in the most honorable place my father, if invited; if not my grandfather, father-inlaw, uncle, or somebody whom the entertainer hath a more particular reason to esteem. And this is one of the many rules of decency that we have from Homer; for in his poem, when Achilles saw Menelaus and Antilochus contending about the second prize of the horse-race, fearing that their strife and fury would increase, he gave the prize to another, under pretence of comforting and honoring Eumelus, but indeed to take away the cause of their contention.

When I had said this, Lamprias, sitting (as he always doth) upon a low bed, cried out: Sirs, will you give me leave to correct this sottish judge? And the company bidding him speak freely and tell me roundly of my faults, and not spare, he said: And who can forbear that philosopher who disposes of places at a feast according to the birth, wealth, or offices of the guests, as if they were in a theatre or the Council House, so that pride and arrogance must be admitted even into our mirth and entertainments? In seating our guests we should not have any respect to honor, but mirth and conversation; not look after every man’s quality, but their agreement and harmony with one another, as those do that join several different things in one composure. Thus a mason doth not set an Athenian or a Spartan stone, because formed in a more noble country, before an Asian or a Spanish; nor a painter give the most costly color the chiefest place; nor a shipwright the Corinthian fir or Cretan cypress; but so distribute them as they will best serve to the common end, and make the whole composure strong, beautiful, and fit for use. Nay, you see even the deity himself (by our Pindar named the most skilful artificer) doth not everywhere place the fire above and the earth below; but, as Empedocles hath it,

The Oysters Coverings do directly prove,
That heavy Earth is sometimes rais’d above;

not having that place that Nature appoints, but that which is necessary to compound bodies and serviceable to the common end, the preservation of the whole. Disorder is in everything an evil; but then its badness is principally discovered, when it is amongst men whilst they are making merry; for then it breeds contentions and a thousand unspeakable mischiefs, which to foresee and hinder shows a man well skilled in good order and disposing right.

We all agreed that he had said well, but asked him why he would not instruct us how to order things aright, and communicate his skill. I am content, says he, to instruct you, if you will permit me to change the present order of the feast, and will yield as ready obedience to me as the Thebans to Epaminondas when he altered the order of their battle. We gave him full power; and he, having turned all the servants out, looked round upon every one, and said: Hear (for I will tell you first) how I design to order you together. In my mind, the Theban Pammenes justly taxeth Homer as unskilful in love matters, for setting together, in his description of an army, tribe and tribe, family and family; for he should have joined the lover and the beloved, so that the whole body being united in their minds might perfectly agree. This rule will I follow, not set one rich man by another, a youth by a youth, a magistrate by a magistrate, and a friend by a friend; for such an order is of no force, either to beget or increase friendship and good-will. But fitting that which wants with something that is able to supply it, next one that is willing to instruct I will place one that is as desirous to be instructed; next a morose, one good-natured; next a talkative old man a youth patient and eager for a story; next a boaster, a jeering smooth companion; and next an angry man, a quiet one. If I see a wealthy fellow bountiful and kind, I will take some poor honest man from his obscure place, and set him next, that something may run out of that full vessel to the other empty one. A sophister I will forbid to sit by a sophister, and one poet by another;

For beggars beggars, poets envy poets.
(Hesiod, “Work and Days,” 26)

I separate the clamorous scoffers and the testy, by putting some good-nature between them, so they cannot jostle so roughly on one another; wrestlers, hunters, and farmers I put in one company. For some of the same nature, when put together, fight as cocks; others are very sociable as daws. Drinkers and lovers I set together, not only those who (as Sophocles says) feel the sting of masculine love, but those that are mad after virgins or married women; for they being warmed with the like fire, as two pieces of iron to be joined, will more readily agree; unless perhaps they both fancy the same person.

QUESTION III.

Upon What Account is the Place at the Table Called Consular Esteemed Honorable.

THE SAME.

This raised a dispute about the dignity of places, for the same seat is not accounted honorable amongst all nations; in Persia the midst, for that is the place proper to the king himself; in Greece the uppermost; at Rome the lowermost of the middle bed, and this is called the consular; the Greeks about Pontus, and those of Heraclea, reckon the uppermost of the middle bed to be the chief. But we were most puzzled about the place called consular; for though it is esteemed most honorable, yet it is not because it is either the first or the midst; and its other circumstances are either not proper to that alone, or very frivolous. Though I confess three of the reasons alleged seemed to have something in them. The first, that the consuls, having dissolved the monarchy and reduced everything to a more equal level and popular estate, left the middle, the kingly place, and sat in a lower seat; that by this means their power and authority might be less subject to envy, and not so grievous to their fellow-citizens. The second, that, two beds being appointed for the invited guests, the third — and the first place in it — is most convenient for the master of the feast, from whence like a pilot, he can guide and order everything, and readily overlook the management of the whole affair. Besides, he is not so far removed that he can easily discourse, talk to, and compliment his guests; for next below him his wife and children usually are placed; next above him the most honorable of the invited, that being the most proper place, as near the master of the feast. The third reason was, that it is peculiar to the this place to be most convenient for the despatch of any sudden business; for the Roman consul will not as Archias, the governor of Thebes, say, when letters of importance are brought to him at dinner, “serious things tomorrow” and then throw aside the packet and take the great bowl; but he will be careful, circumspect, and mind it at that very instant. For not only (as the common saying hath it)

Each throw doth make the dicer fear,

but even midst his feasting and his pleasure a magistrate should be intent on intervening business; and he hath this place appointed, as the most convenient for him to receive any message, answer it, or sign a bill; for there the second bed joining with the third, the turning at the corner leaves a vacant space, so that a notary, servant, guard, or a messenger from the army might approach, deliver the message, and receive orders; and the consul, having room enough to speak or use his hand, neither troubles any one, nor is hindered by any the guests.

QUESTION IV.

What Manner of Man Should a Director of a Feast Be?

CRATO, THEON, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

Crato my relative, and Theon my acquaintance, at a certain banquet, where the glasses had gone round freely, and a little stir arose but was suddenly appeased, began to discourse of the office of the steward of a feast; declaring that it was my duty to wear the chaplet, assert the decaying privilege, and restore that office which should take care for the decency and good order of the banquet. This proposal pleased every one, and they were all an end begging me to do it. Well then, said I, since you will have it so, I make myself steward and director of you all, command the rest to drink every one what he will but Crato and Theon, the first proposers and authors of this decree, I enjoin to declare in short what qualifications fit a man for this office, what he should principally aim at and how behave himself towards those under his command. This is the subject, and let them agree amongst themselves which head each shall manage.

They made some slight excuse at first; but the whole company urging them to obey, Crato began thus. A captain of a watch (as Plato says) ought to be most watchful and diligent himself, and the director of merry companions ought to be the best. And such a one he is, that will not be easily overtaken or apt to refuse a glass; but as Cyrus in his epistle to the Spartans says, that in many other things he was more fit than his brother to be a king, and chiefly because he could bear abundance of wine. For one that is drunk must have an ill carriage and be apt to affront; and he that is perfectly sober must be unpleasant, and fitter to be a governor of a school than of a feast. Pericles as often as he was chosen general, when he put on his cloak, used to say to himself, as it were to refresh his memory, Take heed, Pericles, thou dost govern freemen, thou dost govern Greeks, thou dost govern Athenians. So let our director say privately to himself, Thou art a governor over friends, that he may remember to neither suffer them to be debauched nor stint their mirth. Besides he ought to have some skill in the serious studies of the guests and not be altogether ignorant of mirth and humor yet I would have him (as pleasant wine ought to be) a little severe and rough, for the liquor will soften and smooth him, and make his temper pleasant and agreeable. For as Xenophon says, that Clearchus’s rustic and morose humor in a battle, by reason of his bravery and heat, seemed pleasant and surprising; thus one that is not of a very sour nature, but grave and severe, being softened by a chirping cup becomes more pleasant and complaisant. But chiefly he should be acquainted with every one of the guests’ humors, what alteration the liquor makes in him, what passion he is most subject to, and what quantity he can bear; for it is not to be supposed different sorts of water bear various proportions to different sorts of wine (which kings’ cup-bearers understanding sometimes pour in more, sometimes less), and that man hath no such relation to them. This our director ought to know, and knowing, punctually observe; so that like a good musician, screwing up one and letting down another, he may make between these different natures a pleasing harmony and agreement; so that he shall not proportion his wine by measure, but give every one what was proper and agreeable, according to the present circumstances of time and strength of body. But if this is too difficult a task, yet it is necessary that a steward should know the common accidents of age and nature, such as these, — that an old man will be sooner overtaken than a youth, one that leaps about or talks than he that is silent or sits still, the thoughtful and melancholy than the cheerful and the brisk. And he that understands these things is much more able to preserve quietness and order, than one that is perfectly ignorant and unskilful. Besides, I think none will doubt but that the steward ought to be a friend, and have no pique at any of the guests; for otherwise in his injunctions he will be intolerable, in his distributions unequal, in his jests apt to scoff and give offence. Such a figure, Theon, as out of wax, hath my discourse framed for the steward of a feast; and now I deliver him to you.

And Theon replied: He is welcome, — a very well-shaped gentleman, and fitted for the office; but whether I shall not spoil him in my particular application, I cannot tell. In my opinion he seems such a one as will keep an entertainment to its primitive institution, and not suffer it to be changed, sometimes into a mooting hall, sometimes a school of rhetoric, now and then a dicing room, a playhouse, or a stage. For do not you observe some making fine orations and putting cases at a supper, others declaiming or reading some of their own compositions, and others proposing prizes to dancers and mimics? Alcibiades and Theodorus turned Polition’s banquet into a temple of initiation, representing there the sacred procession and mysteries of Ceres; now such things as these, in my opinion, ought not to be suffered by a steward, but he must permit such discourse only, such shows, such merriment, as promote the particular end and design of such entertainments; and that is, by pleasant conversation either to beget or maintain friendship and good-will among the guests; for an entertainment is only a pastime table with a glass of wine, ending in friendship through mutual goodwill.

But now because things pure and unmixed are usually surfeiting and odious, and the very mixture itself, unless the simples be well proportioned and opportunely put together, spoils the sweetness and goodness of the composition; it is evident that there ought to be a director to take care that the mirth and jollity of the guests be exactly and opportunely tempered. It is a common saying that a voyage near the land and a walk near the sea are the best recreation. Thus our steward should place seriousness and gravity next jollity and humor; that when they are merry, they should be on the very borders of gravity itself, and when grave and serious, they might be refreshed as sea-sick persons having an easy and short prospect to the mirth and jollity on land. For mirth may be exceeding useful, and make our grave discourses smooth and pleasant, —

As near the bramble oft the lily grows,
And neighboring rue commands the blushing rose.

But against vain and empty tempers, that wantonly break in upon our feasts, like henbane mixed with the wine, he must advise the guests, lest scoffing and affronts creep in under these, lest in their questions or commands they grow scurrilous and abuse, as for instance by enjoining stutterers to sing, bald-pates to comb their heads, or a cripple to rise and dance. As the company abused Agapestor the Academic, one of whose legs was lame and withered, when in a ridiculing frolic they ordained that every man should stand upon his right leg and take off his glass, or pay a fine; and he, when it was his turn to command, enjoined the company to follow his example drink as he did, and having a narrow earthen pitcher brought in, he put his withered leg into it, and drank his glass and every one in the company, after a fruitless endeavor to imitate, paid his forfeit. It was a good humor of Agapestor’s and thus every little merry abuse must be as merrily revenged. Besides he must give such commands as will both please and profit, putting such as are familiar and easy to the person, and when performed will be for his credit and reputation. A songster must be enjoined to sing, an orator to speak, a philosopher to solve a problem, and a poet to make a song; for every one very readily and willingly undertakes that

In which he may outdo himself.

An Assyrian king by public proclamation promised a reward to him that would find out any new sort of luxury and pleasure. And let the governor, the king of an entertainments propose some pleasant reward for any one that introduceth inoffensive merriment, profitable delight and laughter, not such as attends scoffs and abusive jests, but kindness, pleasant humor, and goodwill; for these matters not being well looked after and observed spoil and ruin most of our entertainments. It is the office of a prudent man to hinder all sort of anger and contention; in the exchange, that which springs from covetousness; in the fencing and wrestling schools, from emulation; in offices and state affairs, from ambition; and in a feast or entertainment, from pleasantness and joke.

QUESTION V.

Why It is Commonly Said that Love Makes a Man a Poet.

SOSSIUS, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

One day when Sossius entertained us, upon singing some Sapphic verses, this question was started, how it could be true

That love in all doth vigorous thoughts inspire,
And teaches ignorants to tune the lyre?

Since Philoxenus, on the contrary, asserts, that the Cyclops

With sweet-tongued Muses cured his love.

Some said that love was bold and daring, venturing at new contrivances, and eager to accomplish, upon which account Plato calls it the enterpriser of everything; for it makes the reserved man talkative, the modest complimental, the negligent and sluggish industrious and observant; and, what is the greatest wonder, a close, hard, and covetous fellow, if he happens to be in love, as iron in fire, becomes pliable and soft, easy, good-natured, and very pleasant; as if there were something in that common jest. A lover’s purse is tied with the blade of a leek. Others said that love was like drunkenness; it makes men warm, merry, and dilated; and, when in that condition, they naturally slide down to songs and words in measure; and it is reported of Aeschylus, that he wrote tragedies after he was heated with a glass of wine; and my grandfather Lamprias in his cups seemed to outdo himself in starting questions and smart disputing, and usually said that, like frankincense, he exhaled more freely after he was warmed. And as lovers are extremely pleased with the sight of their beloved, so they praise with as much satisfaction as they behold; and as love is talkative in everything, so more especially in commendation; for lovers themselves believe, and would have all others think, that the object of their passion is pleasing and excellent; and this made Candaules the Lydian force Gyges into his chamber to behold the beauty of his naked wife. For they delight in the testimony of others, and therefore in all composures upon the lovely they adorn them with songs and verses, as we dress images with gold, that more may hear of them and that they may be remembered the more. For if they present a cock, horse, or any other thing to the beloved, it is neatly trimmed and set off with all the ornaments of art; and therefore, when they would present a compliment, they would have it curious, pleasing, as verse usually appears.

Sossius applauding these discourses added: Perhaps we may make a probable conjecture from Theophrastus’s discourse of Music, for I have lately read the book. Theophrastus lays down three causes of music, — grief, pleasure and enthusiasm; for each of these changes the usual tone, and makes the voice slide into a cadence; for deep sorrow has something tunable in its groans, and therefore we perceive our orators in their conclusions, and actors in their complaints, are somewhat melodious, and insensibly fall into a tune. Excess of joy provokes the more airy men to frisk and dance and keep their steps, though unskilful in the art; and, as Pindar hath it,

They shout, and roar, and wildly toss their heads.

But the graver sort are excited only to sing, raise their voice, and tune their words into a sonnet. But enthusiasm quite changes the body and the voice, and makes it far different from its usual constitution. Hence the very Bacchae use measure, and the inspired give their oracles in measure. And we shall see very few madmen but are frantic in rhyme and rave in verse. This being certain, if you will but anatomize love a little, and look narrowly into it, it will appear that no passion in the world is attended with more violent grief, more excessive joy, or greater ecstasies and fury; a lover’s soul looks like Sophocles’s city: —

At once ‘tis full of sacrifice,
Of joyful songs, of groans and cries.’
(Sophocles, “Oedipus Tyrannus,” 4.)

And therefore it is no wonder, that since love contains all the causes of music, — grief, pleasure, and enthusiasm, — and is besides industrious and talkative, it should incline us more than any other passion to poetry and songs.

QUESTION VI.

Whether Alexander Was a Great Drinker.

PHILINUS, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

Some said that Alexander did not drink much, but sat long in company, discoursing with his friends; but Philinus showed this to be an error from the king’s diary, where it was very often registered that such a day, and sometimes two days together, the king slept after a debauch; and this course of life made him cold in love, but passionate and angry, which argues a hot constitution. And some report his sweat was fragrant and perfumed his clothes; which is another argument of heat, as we see the hottest and driest climates bear frankincense and cassia; for a fragrant smell, as Theophrastus thinks, proceeds from a due concoction of the humors, when the noxious moisture is conquered by the heat. And it is thought probable, that he took a pique at Calisthenes for avoiding his table because of the hard drinking, and refusing the great bowl called Alexander’s in his turn, adding, I will not drink of Alexander’s bowl, to stand in need of Aesculapius’s. And thus much of Alexander’s drinking.

Story tells us, that Mithridates, the famous enemy of the Romans, among other trials of skill that he instituted, proposed a reward to the greatest eater and the stoutest drinker in his kingdom. He won both the prizes himself; he outdrank every man living, and for his excellency that way was called Bacchus. But this reason for his surname is a vain fancy and an idle story; for whilst he was an infant a flash of lightning burnt his cradle, but did his body no harm, and only left a little mark on his forehead, which his hair covered when he was grown a boy; and after he came to be a man, another flash broke into his bedchambers, and burnt the arrows in a quiver that was hanging under him; from whence his diviners presaged, that archers and light-armed men should win him considerable victories in his wars; and the vulgar gave him this name, because in those many dangers by lightning he bore some resemblance to the Theban Bacchus.

From hence great drinkers were the subject of our discourse; and the wrestler Heraclides (or, as the Alexandrians mince it, Heraclus), who lived but in the last age, was accounted one. He, when he could get none to hold out with him, invited some to take their morning’s draught, others to dinner, to supper others, and others after, to take a merry glass of wine; so that as the first went off, the second came, and the third and fourth company and he all the while without any intermission took his glass round, and outsat all the four companies.

Amongst the retainers to Drusus, the Emperor Tiberus’s son, was a physician that drank down all the court; he, before he sat down, would usually take five or six bitter almonds to prevent the operation of the wine; but whenever he was forbidden that, he knocked under presently, and a single glass dozed him. Some think these almonds have a penetrating, abstersive quality, are able to cleanse the face, and clear it from the common freckles; and therefore, when they are eaten, by their bitterness vellicate and fret the pores, and by that means draw down the ascending vapors from the head. But, in my opinion, a bitter quality is a drier, and consumes moisture; and therefore a bitter taste is the most unpleasant. For, as Plato says, dryness, being an enemy to moisture, unnaturally contracts the spongy and tender nerves of the tongue. And green ulcers are usually drained by bitter injections. Thus Homer: —

He squeezed his herbs, and bitter juice applied;
And straight the blood was stanched, the sore was dried.
(“Iliad,” xi. 846.)

And he guesses well, that what is bitter to the taste is a drier. Besides, the powders women use to dry up their sweat are bitter, and by reason of that quality astringent. This then being certain, it is no wonder that the bitterness of the almonds hinders the operation of the wine, since it dries the inside of the body and keeps the veins from being overcharged; for from their distention and disturbance they say drunkenness proceeds. And this conjecture is much confirmed from that which usually happens to a fox; for if he eats bitter almonds without drinking, his moisture suddenly fails, and it is present death.

QUESTION VII.

Why Old Men Love Pure Wine.

PLUTARCH and OTHERS.

It was debated why old men loved the strongest liquors. Some, fancying that their natural heat decayed and their constitution grew cold, said such liquors were most necessary and agreeable to their age; but this was mean and the obvious, and besides, neither a sufficient nor a true reason; for the like happens to all their other senses. For they are not easily moved or wrought on by any qualities, unless they are in intense degrees and make a vigorous impression; but the reason is the laxity of the habit of their body, for that, being grown lax and weak, loves a smart stroke. Thus their taste is pleased most with strong sapors, their smelling with brisk odors; for strong and unalloyed qualities make a more pleasing impression on the sense. Their touch is almost senseless to a sore, and a wound generally raises no sharp pain. The like also in their hearing may be observed; for old musicians play louder and sharper than others, that they may move their own dull tympanum with the sound. For what steel is to the edge in a knife, that spirit is to the sense in the body; and therefore, when the spirits fail, the sense grows dull and stupid, and cannot be raised, unless by something, such as strong wine, that makes a vigorous impression.

QUESTION VIII.

Why Old Men Read Best at a Distance.

PLUTARCH, LAMPRIAS, and OTHERS.

To my discourse in the former problem some objection may be drawn from the sense of seeing in old men; for, if they hold a book at a distance, they will read pretty well, nearer they cannot see a letter and this Aeschylus means by these verses: —

Behold from far; for near thou canst not see;
A good old scribe thou mayst much sooner be.

And Sophocles more plainly: —

Old men are slow in talk, they hardly hear;
Far off they see; but all are blind when near.

And therefore, if old men’s organs are more obedient to strong and intense qualities, why, when they read, do they not take the reflection near at hand, but, holding the book a good way off, mix and weaken it by the intervening air, as wine by water?

Some answered, that they did not remove the book to lesson the light, but to receive more rays, and let all the space between the letters and their eyes be filled with lightsome air. Others agreed with those that imagine the rays of vision mix with one another; for since there is a cone stretched between each eye and the object, whose point is in the eye and whose basis is the object, it is probable that for some way each cone extends apart and by itself; but, when the distance increases, they mix and make but one common light; and therefore every object appears single and not two, though it is seen by both eyes at once; for the conjunction of the cones makes these two appearances but one. These things supposed, when old men hold the letters close to their eyes, the cones not being joined, but each apart and by itself, their sight is weak; but when they remove it farther, the two lights being mingled and increased, see better, as a man with both hands can hold that for which either singly is too weak.

But my brother Lamprias, though unacquainted with Hieronymus’s notions, gave us another reason. We see, said he, some species that come from the object to the eye, which at their first rise are thick and great; and therefore when near disturb old men, whose eyes are stiff and not easily penetrated; but when they are separated and diffused into the air, the thick obstructing parts are easily removed, and the subtile remainders coming to the eye gently and easily slide into the pores; and so the disturbance being less, the sight is more vigorous and clear. Thus a rose smells most fragrant at a distance; but if you bring it near the nose, it is not so pure and delightful; and the reason is this, — many earthy disturbing particles are carried with the smell, and spoil the fragrancy when near, but in a longer passage those are lost, and the pure brisk odor, by reason of its subtility, reaches and acts upon the sense.

But we, according to Plato’s opinion, assert that a bright spirit darted from the eye mixes with the light about the object, and those two are perfectly blended into one similar body; now these must be joined in due proportion one to another; for one part ought not wholly to prevail on the other, but both, being proportionally and amicably joined, should agree in one third common power. Now this (whether flux, illuminated spirit, or ray) in old men being very weak, there can be no combination, no mixture with the light about the object; but it must be wholly consumed, unless, by removing the letters from their eyes, they lessen the brightness of the light, so that it comes to the sight not too strong or unmixed, but well proportioned and blended with the other. And this explains that common affection of creatures seeing in the dark; for their eyesight being weak is overcome and darkened by the splendor of the day; because the little light that flows from their eyes cannot be proportionably mixed with the stronger and more numerous beams; but it is proportionable and sufficient for the feeble splendor of the stars, and so can join with it, and cooperate to move the sense.

QUESTION IX.

Why Fresh Water Washes Clothes Better Than Salt.

THEON, THEMISTOCLES, METRIUS, FLORUS, PLUTARCH; and OTHERS.

Theon the grammarian, when Metrius Florus gave us an entertainment, asked Themistocles the Stoic, why Chrysippus, though he frequently mentioned some strange phenomena in nature (as that salt meat soaked in salt water grows fresher than before; fleeces of wool are more easily separated by a gentle than a quick and violent force, and men that are fasting eat slower than those who took a breakfast), yet never gave any reason for the appearance. And Themistocles replied, that Chrysippus only proposed such things by the by, as instances to correct us, who easily assent and without any reason to what seems likely, and disbelieve everything that seems unlikely at the first sight. But why, sir, are you concerned at this? For if you are speculative and would inquire into the causes of things you need not want subjects in your own profession; but pray tell me why Homer makes Nausicaa wash in the river rather than the sea, though it was near, and in all likelihood hotter, clearer, and fitter to wash with than that? And Theon replied: Aristotle hath already given an account for this from the grossness of the sea water; for in this an abundance of rough earthy particles is mixed, and those make it salt; and upon this account swimmers or any other weights sink not so much in sea water as in fresh for the latter, being thin and weak, yields to every pressure and is easily divided, because it is pure and unmixed and by reason of this subtility of parts it penetrates better than salt water, and so looseneth from the clothes the sticking particles of the spot. And is not this discourse of Aristotle very probable?

Probable indeed, I replied, but not true; for I have observed that with ashes, gravel, or, if these are not to be gotten, with dust itself they usually thicken the water, as if the earthy particles being rough would scour better than fair water, whose thinness makes it weak and ineffectual. And therefore he is mistaken when he says the thickness of the sea water hinders the effect, since the sharpness of the mixed particles very much conduces to make it cleansing; for that open the pores, and draws out the stain. But since all oily matter is most difficult to be washed out and spots a cloth, and the sea is oily, that is the reason why it doth not scour as well as fresh and that it is oily, even Aristotle himself asserts, for salt in his opinion hath some oil in it, and therefore makes candles, when sprinkled on them, burn the better and clearer than before. And sea water sprinkled on a flame increaseth it, and it more easily kindled than any other; in my opinion, makes it hotter than the fresh. And besides, I may urge another cause; for the end of washing is drying, and that seems cleanest which is driest; and the moisture that scours (as hellebore, with the humors that it purges) ought to fly away quickly together with the stain. The sun quickly draws out the fresh water, because it is so light but the salt water being rough lodges in the pores, and therefore is not easily dried.

And Theon replied: You say just nothing, sir; for Aristotle in the same book affirms that those that wash in the sea, if they stand in sun, are sooner dried than those that wash in the fresh streams. If it is true, I am answered, he says so; but I hope that Homer asserting the contrary will, by you especially, be more easily believed; for Ulysses (as he writes) after his shipwreck meeting Nausicaa,

A frightful sight, and with the salt besmeared

said to her maidens,

Retire a while, till I have washed my skin,

And when he had leaped into the river,

He from his head did scour the foaming sea.
(See “Odyssey,” vi. 137, 218, 226.)

The poet knew very well what happens in such a case; for when those that come wet out of the sea stand in the sun, the subtilest and lightest parts suddenly exhale, but the salt and rough particles stick upon the body in a crust, till they are washed away by the fresh water of a spring.

QUESTION X.

Why at Athens the Chorus of the Tribe Aeantis Was Never Determined to Be the Last.

PHILOPAPPUS, MARCUS, MILO, GLAUCIAS, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

When we were feasting at Serapion’s, who gave an entertainment after the tribe Leontis under his order and direction had won the prize (for we were citizens and free of that tribe), a very pertinent discourse, and proper to the then occasion, happened. It had been a very notable trial of skill, the king Philopappus being very generous and magnificent in his rewards, and defraying the expenses of all the tribes. He was at the same feast with us and being a very good-humored man and eager for instruction, he would now and then freely discourse of ancient customs, and as freely hear.

Marcus the grammarian began thus: Neanthes the Cyzicenian, in his book called the “Fabulous Narrations of the City,” affirms that it was a privilege of the tribe Aeantis that their chorus should never be determined to be the last. It is true, he brings some stories for confirmation of what he says; but if he falsifies, the matter is open, and let us all inquire after the reason of the thing. But, says Milo, suppose it be a mere tale. It is no strange thing replied Philopappus, if in our disquisitions after truth we meet now and then with such a thing as Democritus the philosopher did; for he one day eating a cucumber, and finding it of a honey taste, asked his maid where she bought it; and she telling him in such a garden, he rose from table and bade her direct him to the place. The maid surprised asked him what he meant; and he replied, I must search after the cause of the sweetness of the fruit, and shall find it the sooner if I see the place. The maid with a smile replied, Sit still, pray, sir, for I unwittingly put it into a honey barrel. And he, as it were discontented, cried out, Shame take thee, yet I will pursue my purpose, and seek after the cause, as if this sweetness were a taste natural and proper to the fruit. Therefore neither will we admit Neanthes’s credulity and inadvertency in some stories as an excuse and a good reason for avoiding this disquisition; for we shall exercise our thoughts by it, though no other advantage rises from that inquiry.

Presently every one poured out something in commendation of that tribe, mentioning every matter that made for its credit and reputation. Marathon was brought in as belonging to it, and Harmodius with his associates, by birth Aphidneans, were also produced as glorious members of that tribe. The orator Glaucias proved that that tribe made up the right wing in the battle at Marathon, from the elegies of Aeschylus, who had himself fought valiantly in the same encounter; and farther evinced that Callimachus the field marshal was of that tribe, who behaved himself very bravely, and was the principal cause next to Miltiades, with whose opinion he concurred, that that battle was fought. To this discourse of Glaucias I added, that the edict which impowered Miltiades to lead forth the Athenians, was made when the tribe Aeantis was chief of the assembly, and that in the battle of Plataea the same tribe won the greatest glory; and upon that account, as the oracle directed, that tribe offered a sacrifice for this victory to the nymphs Sphragitides, the city providing a victim and all other necessaries belonging to it. But you may observe (I continued) that other tribes likewise have their peculiar glories; and you know that mine, the tribe Leontids, yields to none in any point of reputation. Besides, consider whether it is not more probable that this was granted out of a particular respect, and to please Ajax, from whom this tribe received its name; for we know he could not endure to be outdone, but was easily hurried on to the greatest enormities by his contentious and passionate humor; and therefore to comply with him and afford him some comfort in his disasters, they secured him from the most vexing grievance that follows the misfortune of the conquered, by ordering that his tribe should never be determined to be last.

Book II.

Of the several things that are provided for an entertainment, some, my Sossius Senecio, are absolutely necessary; such are wine, bread, meat, lounges, and tables. Others are brought in, not for necessity, but pleasure; such are songs, shows, mimics, and buffoons; which, when present, delight indeed, but when absent, are not eagerly desired; nor is the entertainment looked upon as mean because such things are wanting. Just so of discourses; some the sober men admit as necessary to a banquet, and others for their pretty nice speculations, as more profitable and agreeable than the fiddle and the pipe. My former book gives you examples of both sorts. Of the first are these, Whether we should philosophize at table? — Whether the entertainer should appoint proper seats, or leave the guests to agree upon there own? Of the second, Why lovers are inclined to poetry? And the question about the tribe of Aeantis. The former I call properly [Greek omitted] but both together I comprehend under the general name of Symposiacs. They are promiscuously set down, not in the exact method, but as each singly occurred to memory. And let not my readers wonder that I dedicate these collections to you, which I have received from others or your own mouth; for if all learning is not bare remembrance, yet to learn and to remember are very commonly one and the same.

QUESTION I

What, As Xenophon Intimates, are the Most Agreeable Questions and Most Pleasant Raillery at an Entertainment?

SOSSIUS, SENECIO, and PLUTARCH.

Now each book being divided into ten questions, that shall make the first in this, which Socratial Xenophon hath as it were proposed; for he tells that, Gobryas banqueting with Cyrus, amongst other things he found admirable in the Persians, was surprised to hear them ask one another such questions that it was more pleasant to be interrogated than to be let alone, and pass such jests on one another that it was more pleasant to be jested on than not. For if some, even whilst they praise, offend, why should not their polite and neat facetiousness be admired, whose very raillery is delightful and pleasant to him that is the subject of it? Once you said: I wish I could learn what kind of questions those are; for to be skilled in and make right use of apposite questions and pleasant raillery, I think is no small part of conversation.

A considerable one, I replied; but pray observe whether Xenophon himself, in his descriptions of Socrates’s and the Persian entertainments, hath not sufficiently explained them. But if you would have my thoughts, first, men are pleased to be asked those questions to which they have an answer ready; such are those in which the persons asked have some skill and competent knowledge; for when the inquiry is above their reach, those that can return nothing are troubled, as if requested to give something beyond their power; and those that do answer, producing some crude and insufficient demonstration, must needs be very much concerned, and apt to blunder on the wrong. Now, if the answer not only is easy but hath something not common, it is more pleasing to them that make it; and this happens, when their knowledge is greater than that of the vulgar, as suppose they are well skilled in points of astrology or logic. For not only in action and serious matters, but also in discourse, every one hath a natural disposition to be pleased (as Euripides hath it)

To seem far to outdo himself.

And all are delighted when men put such questions as they understand, and would have others know that they are acquainted with; and therefore travellers and merchants are most satisfied when their company is inquisitive about other countries, the unknown ocean, and the laws and manners of the barbarians; they are very ready to inform them, and describe the countries and the creeks, imagining this to be some recompense for their toil, some comfort for the dangers they have passed. In short, whatever though unrequested, we are wont to discourse of, we are desirous to be asked; because then we seem to gratify those whom otherwise our prattle would disturb and force from our conversation. And this is the common disease of travellers. But more genteel and modest men love to be asked about those things which they have bravely and successfully performed, and which modesty will not permit to be spoken by themselves before company; and therefore Nestor did well when, being acquainted with Ulysses’s desire of reputation, he said,

Tell, brave Ulysses, glory of the Greeks,
How you the horses seized.
(“Iliad,” x. 544.)

For man cannot endure the insolence of those who praise themselves and repeat their own exploits, unless the company desires it and they are forced to a relation; therefore it tickles them to be asked about their embassies and administrations of the commonwealth, if they have done anything notable in either. And upon this account the envious and ill-natured start very few questions of that they sort; that thwart and hinder all such kind of motions, being very unwilling to give any occasion or opportunity for that discourse which shall tend to the advantage of the relater. In short, we please those to whom we put them, when we start questions about those matters which their enemies hate to hear.

Ulysses says to Alcinous,

You bid me tell what various ills I bore,
That the sad tale might make me grieve the more.
(Sophocles, “Oedipus at Colonus,” 510.)

And Oedipus says to the chorus,

‘Tis pain to raise again a buried grief.
(“Odyssey,” ix. 12.)

But Euripides on the contrary,

How sweet it is, when we are lulled in ease,
To think of toils! — when well, of a disease!
(Euripides, “Andromeda,” Frag. 131.)

True indeed, but not to those that are still tossed, still under a misfortune. Therefore be sure never ask a man about his own calamities; it is irksome to relate his losses of children or estate, or any unprosperous adventure by sea or land; but ask a man how he carried the cause, how he was caressed by the king, how he escaped such a storm, such an assault, thieves, and the like; this pleaseth him, he seems to enjoy it over again in his relation, and is never weary of the topic. Besides, men love to be asked about their happy friends, or children that have made good progress in philosophy or the law, or are great at court; as also about the disgrace and open conviction of their enemies; or of such matters they are most eager to discourse, yet are cautious of beginning it themselves, lest they should seem to insult over and rejoice at the misery of others. You please a hunter if you ask him about dogs, a wrestler about exercise, and an amorous man about beauties; the ceremonious and superstitious man discourses about dreams, and what success he hath had by following the directions of omens or sacrifices, and by the kindness of the gods; and some questions concerning those things will extremely please him. He that inquires anything of an old man, though the story doth not at all concern him, wins his heart, and urges one that is very willing to discourse: —

Nelides Nestor, faithfully relate
How great Atrides died, what sort of fate;
And where was Menelaus largely tell?
Did Argos hold him when the hero fell?
(“Odyssey,” iii. 247.)

Here is a multitude of questions and variety of subjects; which is much better than to confine and cramp his answers, and so deprive the old man of the most pleasant enjoyment he can have. In short, they that had rather please than distaste will still propose such questions, the answers to which shall rather get the praise and good-will than the contempt and hatred of the hearers. And so much of questions.

As for raillery, those that cannot use it cautiously with art, and time it well, should never venture at it. For as in a slippery place, if you but just touch a man as you pass by, you throw him down; so when we are in drink, we are in danger of tripping at every little word that is not spoken with due address. And we are more apt to be offended with a joke than a plain and scurrilous abuse; for we see the latter often slip from a man unwittingly in passion, but consider the former as a thing voluntary, proceeding from malice and ill-nature; and therefore we are generally more offended at a sharp jeerer than a whistling snarler. Such a jest has indeed something designedly malicious about it, and often seems to be an insult skilfully devised and prepared. For instance, he that calls thee salt-fish monger plainly and openly abuseth; but he that says, I remember when you wiped your nose upon your sleeve, maliciously jeers. Such was Cicero’s to Octavius, who was thought to be descended from an African slave; for when Cicero spoke something, and Octavius said he did not hear him, Cicero rejoined, Remarkable, for you have a hole through your ear. And Melanthius, when he was ridiculed by a comedian, said, You pay me now something that you do not owe me. And upon this account jeers vex more; for like bearded arrows they stick a long while, and gall the wounded sufferer. Their smartness is pleasant, and delights the company; and those that are pleased with the saving seem to believe the detracting speaker. For according to Theophrastus, a jeer is a figurative reproach for some fault or misdemeanor; and therefore he that hears it supplies the concealed part, as if he knew and gave credit to the thing. For he that laughs and is tickled at what Theocritus said to one whom he suspected of a design upon his clothes, and who asked him if he went to supper at such a place, — Yes, he replied, I go, but shall likewise lodge there all night, — doth, as it were, confirm the accusation, and believe the fellow was a thief. And therefore an impertinent jeerer makes the whole company seem ill-natured and abusive, as being pleased with and consenting to the scurrility of the jeer. It was one of the excellent laws in Sparta, that none should be bitter in their jests, and the jeered should patiently endure; but if he took offence, the other was to forbear, and pursue the frolic no farther. How is it possible therefore to determine such raillery as shall delight and please the person that is jested on, when to be smart without offence is no mean piece of cunning and address?

First then, such as will vex and gall the conscious must please those that are clean, innocent, and not suspected of the matter. Such a joke is Xenophon’s, when he pleasantly brings in a very ugly ill-looking fellow, and is smart upon him for being Sambaulas’s minion. Such was that of Aufidius Modestus, who, when our friend Quinitus in an ague complained his hands were cold, replied, Sir, you brought them warm from your province; for this made Quintius laugh, and extremely pleased him; yet it had been a reproach and abuse to a covetous and oppressing governor. Thus Socrates, pretending to compare faces with the beauteous Critobulus, rallied only, and not abused. And Alcibiades again was smart on Socrates, as his rival in Agatho’s affection. Kings are pleased when jests are put upon them as if they were private and poor men. Such was the flatterer’s to Philip, who chided him: Sir, don’t I keep you? For those that mention faults of which the persons are not really guilty intimate those virtues with which they are really adorned. But then it is requisite that those virtues should be evident and certainly belong to them; otherwise the discourse will breed disturbance and suspicion. He that tells a very rich man that he will procure him a sum of money, — a temperate sober man, and one that drinks water only, that he is foxed, or hath taken a cup too much, — a hospitable, generous, good-humored man, that he is a niggard and pinch-penny, — or threatens an excellent lawyer to meet him at the bar, — must make the persons smile and please the company. Thus Cyrus was very obliging and complaisant, when he challenged his playfellows at those sports in which he was sure to be overcome. And Ismenias piping at a sacrifice, when no good omens appeared, the man that hired him snatched the pipe, and played very ridiculously himself; and when all found fault, he said: To play satisfactorily is the gift of Heaven. And Ismenias with a smile replied: Whilst I played, the gods were so well pleased that they were careless of the sacrifice; but to be rid of thy noise they presently received it.

But more, those that jocosely put scandalous names upon things commendable, if it be opportunely done, please more than he that plainly and openly commends; for those that cover a reproach under fair and respectful words (as he that calls an unjust man Aristides, a coward Achilles) gall more than those that openly abuse. Such is that of Oedipus, in Sophocles, —

The faithful Creon, my most constant friend.
(Sophocles, “Oedipus Tyrannus,” 385.)

The familiar irony in commendations answers to this on the other side. Such Socrates used, when he called the kind endeavor and industry of Antisthenes to make men friends pimping, bawds-craft, and allurement; and others that called Crates the philosopher, who wherever he went was caressed and honored, the door-opener.

Again, a complaint that implies thankfulness for a received favor is pleasant raillery. Thus Diogenes of his master Antisthenes: —

That man that made me leave my precious ore,
Clothed me with rags, and forced me to be poor;
That man that made me wander, beg my bread,
And scorn to have a house to hide my head.

For it had not been half so pleasant to have said, that man that made me wise, content, and happy. And a Spartan, making as if he would find fault with the master of the exercises for giving him wood that would not smoke, said, He will not permit us even to shed a tear. And he calls a hospitable man, and one that treats often, a kidnapper, and a tyrant who for a long time would not permit him to see his own table; and he whom the king hath raised and enriched, that says he had a design upon him and robbed him of his sleep and quiet. So if he that hath an excellent vintage should complain of Aeschlus’s Cabeiri for making him want vinegar, as they haul jocosely threatened. For such as these have a pungent pleasantness, so that the praised are not offended nor take it ill.

Besides, he that would be civilly facetious must know the difference between a vice and a commendable study or recreation; for instance, between the love of money or contention and of music or hunting; for men are grieved if twitted with the former, but take it very well if they are laughed at for the latter. Thus Demosthenes the Mitylenean was pleasant enough when, knocking at a man’s door that was much given to singing and playing on the harp, and being bid come in, he said, I will, if you will tie up your harp. But the flatterer of Lysimachus was offensive; for being frighted at a wooden scorpion that the king threw into his lap, and leaping out of his seat, he said after he knew the humor, And I’ll fright your majesty too; give me a talent.

In several things about the body too the like caution is to be observed. Thus he that is jested on for a flat or hooked nose usually laughs at the jest. Thus Cassander’s friend was not at all displeased when Theophrastus said to him, ‘Tis strange, sir, that your eyes don’t play, since your nose is so near and so well fitted for a pipe to give them the tune; and Cyrus commanded a long hawk-nosed fellow to marry a flat-nosed girl, for then they would very well agree. But a jest on any for his stinking breath or filthy nose is irksome; for baldness it may be borne, but for blindness or infirmity in the eyes it is intolerable. It is true, Antigonus would joke upon himself, and once, receiving a petition written in great letters, he said, This a man may read if he were stark blind. But he killed Theocritus the Chian for saying, — when one told him that as soon as he appeared before the king’s eyes he would be pardoned, — Sir, then it is impossible for me to be saved. And the Byzantine to Pasiades saying, Sir, your eyes are weak, replied, You upbraid me with this infirmity, not considering that thy son carries the vengeance of Heaven on his back: now Pasiades’s son was hunch-backed. And Archippus the popular Athenian was much displeased with Melanthius for being smart on his crooked back; for Melanthius had said that he did not stand at the head of the state but bowed down before it. It is true, some are not much concerned at such jeers. Thus Antigonus’s friend, when he had begged a talent and was denied, desired a guard, lest somebody should rob him of that talent he was now to carry home. Different tempers make men differently affected, and that which troubles one is not regarded by another. Epaminondas feasting with his fellow-magistrates drank vinegar; and some asking if it was good for his health, he replied, I cannot tell that, but I know it makes me remember what I drink at home. Therefore it becomes every man that would rally, to look into the humors of his company, and take heed to converse without offence.

Love, as in most things else, so in this matter causes different effects; for some lovers are pleased and some displeased at a merry jest. Therefore in this case a fit time must be accurately observed; for as a blast of wind puffs out a fire whilst it is weak and little, but when thoroughly kindled strengthens and increaseth it; so love, before it is evident and confessed, is displeased at a discoverer, but when it breaks forth and blazes in everybody’s eyes, then it is delighted and gathers strength by the frequent blasts of joke and raillery. When their beloved is present it will gratify them most to pass a jest upon their passion, but to fall on any other subject will be counted an abuse. If they are remarkably loving to their own wives, or entertain a generous affection for a hopeful youth, then are they proud, then tickled when jeered for such a love. And therefore Arcesilaus, when an amorous man in his school laid down this proposition, in my opinion one thing cannot touch another, replied, Sir you touch this person, pointing to a lovely boy that sat near him.

Besides, the company must be considered; for what a man will only laugh at when mentioned amongst his friends and familiar acquaintance, he will not endure to be told of before his wife, father, or his tutor, unless perhaps it be something that will please those too; as for instance, if before a philosopher one should jeer a man for going barefoot or studying all night; or before his father, for carefulness and thrift; or in the presence of his wife, for being cold to his companions and doting upon her. Thus Tigranes, when Cyrus asked him, What will your wife say when she hears that you are put to servile offices? replied, Sir, she will not hear it, but be present herself and see it.

Again, those jokes are accounted less affronting which reflect somewhat also on the man that makes them; as when one poor man, base-born fellow, or lover jokes upon another. For whatever comes from one in the same circumstances looks more like a piece of mirth than a designed affront; but otherwise it must needs be irksome and distasteful. Upon this account, when a slave whom the king had lately freed and enriched behaved himself very impertinently in the company of some philosophers, asking them, how it came to pass that the broth of beans whether white or black, was always green, Aridices putting another question, why, let the whips be white or not, the wales and marks they made were still red, displeased him extremely, and made him rise from the table in a great rage and discontent. But Amphias the Tarsian, who was supposed to be sprung from a gardener, joking upon the governor’s friend for his obscure and mean birth, and presently subjoining, But ‘tis true, I sprung from the same seed, caused much mirth and laughter. And the harper very facetiously put a cheek to Philip’s ignorance and impertinence; for when Philip pretended to correct him, he cried out, God forbid, sir, that ever you should be brought so low as to understand these things better than I. For by this seeming joke he instructed him without giving any offence. And therefore some of the comedians seem to lay aside their bitterness in every jest that may reflect upon themselves; as Aristophanes, when he is merry upon a baldpate; and Cratinus in his play “Pytine” upon drunkenness and excess.

Besides, you must be very careful that the jest should seem to be extempore, taken from some present question or merry humor; not far-fetched, as if premeditate and designed. For as men are not much concerned at the anger and disputes among themselves at table while they are drinking, but if any stranger should come in and offer abuse, they would hate and look upon him as an enemy; so they will easily pardon and indulge a jest if undesignedly taken from any present circumstance; but if it is nothing to the matter in hand but fetched from another thing, it must look like a design and be resented as an affront. Such was that of Timagenes to the husband of a woman that often vomited,— “Thou beginnest thy troubles by bringing home this vomiting woman,” saying [Greek omitted] (this vomiting woman), when the poet had written [Greek omitted] (this Muse); and also his question to Athenodorus the philosopher, — Is affection to our children natural? For when the raillery is not founded on some present circumstance, it is an argument of ill-nature and a mischievous temper; and such as these do often for a mere word, the lightest thing in the world (as Plato says), suffer the heaviest punishment. But those that know how to time and apply a jest confirm Plato’s opinion, that to rally pleasantly and facetiously is the business of a scholar and a wit.

QUESTION II.

Why in Autumn Men Have Better Stomachs Than in Other Seasons of the Year.

GLAUCLAS, XENOCLES, LAMPRIAS, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

In Eleusis, after the solemn celebration of the sacred mysteries, Glaucias the orator entertained us at a feast; where after the rest had done, Xenocles of Delphi, as his humor is, began to be smart upon my brother Lamprias for his good Boeotian stomach. I in his defence opposing Xenocles, who was an Epicurean, said, Pray, sir, do not all place the very substance of pleasure in privation of pain and suffering? But Lamprias, who prefers the Lyceum before the Garden, ought by his practice to confirm Aristotle’s doctrine; for he affirms that every man hath a better stomach in the autumn than in other seasons of the year, and gives the reason, which I cannot remember at present. So much the better (says Glaucias), for when supper is done, we will endeavor to discover it ourselves. That being over, Glaucias and Xenocles drew various reasons from the autumnal fruit. One said that it scoured the body, and by this evacuation continually raised new appetites. Xenocles affirmed, that ripe fruit had usually a pleasing, vellicating sapor, and thereby provoked the appetite better than sauces or sweetmeats; for sick men of a vitiated stomach usually recover it by eating fruit. But Lamprias said, that our natural heat, the principal instrument of nutrition, in the midst of summer is scattered and becomes rare and weak, but when autumn comes it unites again and gathers strength, being shut in by the ambient cold and contraction of the pores, and I for my part said: In summer we are more thirsty and use more moisture than in other seasons; and therefore Nature, observing the same method in all her operations, at this change of seasons employs the contrary and makes us hungry; and to maintain an equal temper in the body, she gives us dry food to countervail the moisture taken in the summer. Yet none can deny but that the food itself is a partial cause; for not only new fruit, bread, or corn, but flesh of the same year, is better tasted than that of the former, more forcibly provokes the guests, and enticeth them to eat on.

QUESTION III.

Which Was First the Bird or the Egg?

PLUTARCH, ALXanER, SYLLA, FIRMUS, SOSSIUS SENECI0, AND OTHERS.

When upon a dream I had forborne eggs a long time, on purpose that in an egg (as in a heart) I might make experiment of a notable vision that often troubled me; some at Sossius Senecio’s table suspected that I was tainted with Orpheus’s or Pythagoras’s opinions, and refused to eat an egg (as some do the heart and brain) imagining it to be the principle of generation. And Alexander the Epicurean ridiculingly repeated,

To feed on beans and parents’ heads
Is equal sin;

As if the Pythagoreans meant eggs by the word [Greek omitted] (BEANS), deriving it from [Greek omitted](TO CONCEIVE), and thought it as unlawful to feed on eggs as on the animals that lay them. Now to pretend a dream for the cause of my abstaining, to an Epicurean, had been a defence more irrational than the cause itself; and therefore I suffered jocose Alexander to enjoy his opinion, for he was a pleasant man and an excellent scholar.

Soon after he proposed that perplexed question, that plague of the inquisitive, Which was first, the bird or the egg? And my friend Sylla, saying that with this little question, as with an engine, we shook the great and weighty problem (whether the world had a beginning), declared his dislike of such questions. But Alexander deriding the question as slight and impertinent, my relation Firmus said:. Well, sir, at present your atoms will do me some service; for if we suppose that small things must be the principles of greater, it is likely that the egg was before the bird; for an egg amongst sensible things is very simple, and the bird is more mixed, and contains a greater variety of parts. It is universally true that a principle is before that whose principle it is; now the seed is a principle, and the egg is somewhat more than the seed and less than the bird for as a disposition or a progress in goodness is something between a tractable mind and a habit of virtue, so an egg is as it were a progress of Nature tending from the seed to a perfect animal. And as in an animal they say the veins and arteries are formed first, upon the same account the egg should be before the bird, as the thing containing before the thing contained. Thus art first makes rude and ill-shapen figures and afterwards perfects everything with its proper form; and it was for this that the statuary Polycletus said, Then our work is most difficult, when the clay comes to be fashioned by the fingers. So it is probable that matter, not readily obeying the slow motions of contriving Nature, at first frames rude and indefinite masses, as the egg, and of these moulded anew, and joined in better order, the animal afterward is formed. As the canker is first, and then growing dry and cleaving lets forth a winged animal, called psyche; so the egg is first as it were the subject-matter of the generation. For it is certain that, in every change, that out of which the thing changes must be before the thing changing. Observe how worms and caterpillars are bred in trees from the moisture corrupted or concocted; now none can say but that the engendering moisture is naturally before all these. For (as Plato says) matter is as a mother or nurse in respect of the bodies that are formed, and we call that matter out of which anything that is made. And with a smile continued he, I speak to those that are acquainted with the mystical and sacred discourse of Orpheus, who not only affirms the egg to be before the bird, but makes it the first being in the whole world. The other parts, because deep mysteries, we shall now pass by; but let us look upon the various kinds of animals, and we shall find almost every one beginning from an egg, — fowls and fishes; land animals, as lizards; amphibious, as crocodiles; some with two legs, as a cock; some without any, as a snake; and some with many, as a locust. And therefore in the solemn feast of Bacchus it is very well done to dedicate an egg, as the emblem of that which begets and contains everything in itself.

To this discourse of Firmus, Senecio replied: Sir, your last similitude contradicts your first, and you have unwittingly opened the world (instead of the door, as the proverb goes) against yourself. For the world was before all, being the most perfect; and it is rational that the perfect in Nature should be before the imperfect, as the sound before the maimed, and the whole before the part. For it is absurd that there should be a part when there is nothing whose part it is; and therefore nobody says the seed’s man or egg’s hen, but the man’s seed and hen’s egg; because those being after these and formed in them, pay as it were a debt to Nature, by bringing forth another. For they are not in themselves perfect, and therefore have a natural appetite to produce such a thing as that out of which they were first formed; and therefore seed is defined as a thing produced that is to be perfected by another production. Now nothing can be perfected by or want that which as yet is not. Everybody sees that eggs have the nature of a concretion or consistence in some animal or other, but want those organs, veins, and muscles which animals enjoy. And therefore no story delivers that ever any egg was formed immediately from earth; and the poets themselves tell us, that the egg out of which came the Tyndaridae fell down from heaven. But even till this time the earth produceth some perfect and organized animals, as mice in Egypt, and snakes, frogs, and grasshoppers almost everywhere, some external and invigorating principle assisting in the production. And in Sicily, where in the servile war much blood was shed, and many carcasses rotted on the ground, whole swarms of locusts were produced, and spoiled the corn over the whole isle. Such spring from and are nourished by the earth; and seed being formed in them, pleasure and titillation provoke them to mix, upon which some lay eggs, and some bring forth their young alive; and this evidently proves that animals first sprang from earth, and afterwards by copulation, after different ways, propagated their several kinds. In short, it is the same thing as if you said the womb was before the woman; for as the womb is to the egg, the egg is to the chick that is formed in it; so that he that inquires how birds should be when there were no eggs, might ask as well how men and women could be before any organs of generation were formed. Parts generally have their subsistence together with the whole; particular powers follow particular members, and operations those Powers, and effects those operations. Now the effect of the generative power is the seed and egg; so that these must be after the formation of the whole. Therefore consider, as there can be no digestion of food before the animal is formed, so there can be no seed nor egg; for those, it is likely, are made by some digestion and alterations; nor can it be that, before the animal is, the superfluous parts of the food of the animal should have a being. Besides, though seed may perhaps pretend to be a principle, the egg cannot; for it doth not subsist first, nor hath it the nature of a whole, for it is imperfect. Therefore we do not affirm that the animal is produced without a principle of its being; but we call the principle that power which changes, mixes, and tempers the matter, so that a living creature is regularly produced; but the egg is an after-production, as the blood or milk of an animal after the taking in and digestion of the food. For we never see an egg formed immediately of mud, for it is produced in the bodies of animals alone; but a thousand living creatures rise from the mud. What need of many instances? None ever found the spawn or egg of an eel; yet if you empty a pit and take out all the mud, as soon as other water settles in it, eels likewise are presently produced. Now that must exist first which hath no need of any other thing that it may exist, and that after, which cannot be without the concurrence of another thing. And of this priority is our present discourse. Besides, birds build nests before they lay their eggs; and women provide cradles, swaddling cloths and the like; yet who says that the nest is before the egg, or the swaddling cloths before the infant. For the earth (as Plato says doth not imitate a woman, but a woman, and so likewise all other females, the earth. Moreover, it is probable that the first production out of the earth, which was then vigorous and perfect, was self-sufficient and entire, nor stood in need of those secundines, membranes, and vessels, which now Nature forms to help the weakness and supply the defects of breeders.

QUESTION IV.

Whether or No Wrestling is the Oldest Exercise.

SOSICLES, LYSIMACHUS, PLUTARCH, PHILINUS.

Sosicles of Coronea having at the Pythian games won the prize from all the poets, gave us an entertainment. And the time for running, cuffing, wrestling, and the like drawing on, there was a great talk of the wrestlers; for there were many and very famous men, who came to try their skill. Lysimachus, one of the company, a procurator of the Amphictyons, said he heard a grammarian lately affirm that wrestling was the most ancient exercise of all, as even the very name witnessed; for some modern things have the names of more ancient transferred to them; thus to tune a pipe is called fitting it, and playing on it is called striking; both these names being transferred to it from the harp. Thus all places of exercise they call wrestling schools, wrestling being the oldest exercise, and therefore giving its name to the newer sorts. That, said I, is no good argument, for these palaestras or wrestling schools are called so from wrestling [Greek omitted] not because it is the most ancient exercise, but because it is the only sort in which they use clay [Greek omitted] dust, and oil; for in these there is neither racing nor cuffing, but wrestling only, and that feature of the pancratium in which they struggle on the ground, — for the pancratium comprises both wrestling and cuffing. Besides, it is unlikely that wrestling, being more artificial and methodical than any other sort of exercise, should likewise be the most ancient; for mere want or necessity putting us upon new inventions, produces simple and inartificial things first, and such as have more of force in them than sleight and skill. This ended, Sosicles said: You speak right, and I will confirm your discourse from the very name; for, in my opinion, [Greek omitted] wrestling, is derived from [Greek omitted] i.e. to throw down by sleight and artifice. And Philinus said, it seems to me to be derived from [Greek omitted] the palm of the hand, for wrestlers use that part most, as cuffers do the [Greek omitted] fist; and hence both these sorts of exercises have their proper names, the one [Greek omitted] the other [Greek omitted]. Besides, since the poets use the word [Greek omitted] for [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted], to sprinkle, and this action is most frequent amongst wrestlers, this exercise [Greek omitted] may receive its name from that word. But more, consider that racers strive to be distant from one another; cuffers, by the judges of the field, are not permitted to take hold; and none but wrestlers come up breast to breast, and clasp one another round the waist, and most of their turnings, liftings, lockings bring them very close. It is probable that this exercise is called [Greek omitted] from [Greek omitted] or [Greek omitted] to come up close or to be near together.

QUESTION V.

Why, in Reckoning Up Different Kinds of Exercises, Homer Puts Cuffing First, Wrestling Next, and Racing Last.

LYSIMACHUS, CRATES, TIMON, PLUTARCH.

This discourse being ended, and Philinus hummed, Lysimachus began again, What sort of exercise then shall we imagine to be first? Racing, as at the Olympian games? For here in the Pythian, as every exercise comes on, all the contenders are brought in, the boy wrestlers first, then the men, and the same method is observed when the cuffers and fencers are to exercise; but there the boys perform all first, and then the men. But, says Timon interposing, pray consider whether Homer hath not determined this matter; for in his poems cuffing is always put in the first place, wrestling next, and racing last. At this Menecrates the Thessalian surprised cried out, Good God, what things we skip over! But, pray sir, if you remember any of his verses to that purpose, do us the favor to repeat them. And Timon replied: That the funeral solemnities of Patroclus had this order I think every one hath heard; but the poet, all along observing the same order, brings in Achilles speaking to Nestor thus:

With this reward I Nestor freely grace,
Unfit for cuffing, wrestling, or the race.

And in his answer he makes the old man impertinently brag: —

I cuffing conquered Oinop’s famous son,
With Anceus wrestled, and the garland won,
And outran Iphiclus.
(“Iliad,” xxiii. 620 and 634.)

And again he brings in Ulysses challenging the Phaeacians

To cuff, to wrestle, or to run the race;

and Alcinous answers:

Neither in cuffing nor in wrestling strong
But swift of foot are we.
(“Odyssey” viii. 206 and 246.)

So that he doth not carelessly confound the order, and, according to the present occasion, now place one sort first and now another; but he follows the then custom and practice and is constant in the same. And this was so as long as the ancient order was observed.

To this discourse of my brother’s I subjoined, that I liked what he said, but could not see the reason of this order. And some of the company, thinking it unlikely that cuffing or wrestling should be a more ancient exercise than racing, they desired me to search farther into the matter; and thus I spake upon the sudden. All these exercises seem to me to be representations of feats of arms and training therein; for after all, a man armed at all points is brought in to show that that is the end at which all these exercises and trainings end. And the privilege granted to the conquerors, viz., as they rode into the city, to throw down some part of the wall — hath this meaning; that walls are but a small advantage to that city which hath men able to fight and overcome. In Sparta those that were victors in any of the crowned games had an honorable place in the army and were to fight near the king’s person. Of all other creatures a horse only can have a part in these games and win the crown, for that alone is designed by nature to be trained to war, and to prove assisting in a battle. If these things seem probable, let us consider farther, that it is the first work of a fighter to strike his enemy and ward the other’s blows; the second, when they come up close and lay hold of one another, to trip and overturn him; and in this, they say, our countrymen being better wrestlers very much distressed the Spartans at the battle of Leuctra. And Aeschylus describes a warrior thus, —

One stout, and skilled to wrestle in his arms;

and Sophocles somewhere says of the Trojans, —

They rid the horse, they could the bow command
And wrestle with a rattling shield in hand.

But it is the third and last, either when conquered to fly, when conquerors to pursue. And therefore it is likely that cuffing is set first, wrestling next, and racing last; for the first bears the resemblance of charging or warding the blows; the second, of close fighting and repelling; the third, of flying a victorious, or pursuing a routed enemy.

QUESTION VI.

Why Fir-Trees, Pine-Trees, and the Like Will Not Be Grafted Upon.

SOCLARUS, CRATO, PHILO.

Soclarus entertaining us in his gardens, round which the river Cephissus runs, showed us several trees strangely varied by the different grafts upon their stocks. We saw an olive upon a juniper, a peach upon a myrtle, pear grafts on an oak, apple upon a plane, a mulberry on a fig and a great many such like, which were grown strong enough to bear. Some joked on Soclarus as nourishing stranger kinds of things than the poets’ Sphinxes or Chimaeras, but Crato set us to inquire why those stocks only that are of an oily nature will not admit such mixtures for we never see a pine, fir, or cypress bear a graft of another kind.

And Philo subjoined: There is, Crato, a reason for this amongst the philosophers, which the gardeners confirm and strengthen. For they say, oil is very hurtful to all plants, and any plant dipped in it like a bee, will soon die. Now these trees are of a fat and oily nature, insomuch that they weep pitch and rosin; and, if you cut then gore (as it were) appears presently in the wound. Besides, a torch made of them sends forth an oily smoke, and the brightness of the flame shows it to be fat; and upon this account these trees are as great enemies to all other kinds of grafts as oil itself. To this Crato added, that the bark was a partial cause; for that, being rare and dry, could not afford either convenient room or sufficient nourishment to the grafts; but when the bark is moist, it quickly joins with those grafts that are let into the body of the tree.

Then Soclarus added: This too ought to be considered, that that which receives a graft of another kind ought to be easy to be changed, that the graft may prevail, and make the sap in the stock fit and natural to itself. Thus we break up the ground and soften it, that being thus broken it may more easily be wrought upon, and applied to what we plant in it; for things that are hard and rigid cannot be so quickly wrought upon nor so easily changed. Now those trees, being of very light wood, do not mix well with the grafts, because they are very hard either to be changed or overcome. But more, it is manifest that the stock which receives the graft should be instead of a soil to it, and a soil should have a breeding faculty; and therefore we choose the most fruitful stocks to graft on, as women that are full of milk, when we would put out a child to nurse. But everybody knows that the fir, cypress, and the like are no great bearers. For as men very fat have few children (for, the whole nourishment being employed in the body, there remains no overplus to make seed), so these trees, spending all their sap in their own stock, flourish indeed and grow great; but as for fruit, some bear none at all, some very little, and that too slowly ripens; therefore it is no wonder that they will not nourish another’s fruit, when they are so very sparing to their own.

QUESTION VII.

About the Fish Called Remora or Echeneis.

CHAEREMONIANUS, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

Chaeremonianus the Trallian, when we were at a very noble fish dinner, pointing to a little, long, sharp-headed fish, said the echeneis (ship-stopper) was like that, for he had often seen it as he sailed in the Sicilian sea, and wondered at its strange force; for it stopped the ship when under full sail, till one of the seamen perceived it sticking to the outside of the ship, and took it off. Some laughed at Chaeremonianus for believing such an incredible and unlikely story. Others on this occasion talked very much of antipathies, and produced a thousand instances of such strange effects; for example, the sight of a ram quiets an enraged elephant; a viper lies stock-still, if touched with a beechen leaf; a wild bull grows tame, if bound with the twigs of a fig-tree; and amber draws all light things to it, except basil and such as are dipped in oil; and a loadstone will not draw a piece of iron that is rubbed with onion. Now all these, as to matter of fact, are very evident; but it is hard, if not altogether impossible, to find the cause.

Then said I: This is a mere shift and avoiding of the question, rather than a declaration of the cause; but if we please to consider, we shall find a great many accidents that are only consequents of the effect to be unjustly esteemed the causes of it; as for instance, if we should fancy that by the blossoming of the chaste-tree the fruit of the vine is ripened; because this is a common saying, —

The chaste-tree blossoms, and the grapes grow ripe;

Or that the little protuberances in the candle-snuff thicken the air and make it cloudy; or the hookedness of the nails is the cause and not an accident consequential to an ulcer. Therefore as those things mentioned are but consequents to the effect, though proceeding from one and the same cause, so one and the same cause stops the ship, and joins the echeneis to it; for the ship continuing dry, not yet made heavy by the moisture soaking into the wood, it is probable that it lightly glides, and as long as it is clean, easily cuts the waves; but when it is thoroughly soaked, when weeds, ooze, and filth stick upon its sides, the stroke of the ship is more obtuse and weak; and the water, coming upon this clammy matter, doth not so easily part from it; and this is the reason why they usually calk their ships. Now it is likely that the echeneis in this case, sticking upon the clammy matter, is not thought an accidental consequent to this cause, but the very cause itself.

QUESTION VIII.

Why They Say Those Horses Called [Greek Omitted] are Very Mettlesome.

PLUTARCH, HIS FATHER, and OTHERS.

Some say the horses called [Greek omitted] received that name from the fashion of their bridles (called [Greek omitted]), that had prickles like the teeth on the wolf’s jaw; for being fiery and hard-mouthed, the riders used such to tame them. But my father, who seldom speaks but on good reason, and breeds excellent horses, said, those that were set upon by wolves when colts, if they escaped, grew swift and mettlesome, and were called [Greek omitted] Many agreeing to what he said, it began to be inquired why such an accident as that should make them more mettlesome and fierce; and many of the company thought that, from such an assault, fear and not courage was produced; and that thence growing fearful and apt to start at everything, their motions became more quick and vigorous, as they are in wild beasts when entangled in a net. But, said I, it ought to be considered whether the contrary be not more probable; for the colts do not become more swift by escaping the assault of a wild beast, but they had never escaped unless they had been swift and mettlesome before. As Ulysses was not made wise by escaping from the Cyclops, but by being wise before he escaped.

QUESTION IX.

Why the Flesh of Sheep Bitten by Wolves is Sweeter Than that of Others, and the Wool More Apt to Breed Lice.

PATROCLIAS, THE SAME.

After the former discourse, mention was made of those sheep that wolves have bitten; for it is commonly said of them, that their flesh is very sweet, and their wool breeds lice. My relative Patroclias seemed to be pretty happy in his reasoning upon the first part, saying, that the beast by biting it did mollify the flesh; for wolves’ spirits are so hot and fiery, that they soften and digest the hardest bones and for the same reason things bitten by wolves rot sooner than others. But concerning the wool we could not agree, being not fully resolved whether it breeds those lice, or only opens a passage for them, separating the flesh by its fretting roughness or proper warmth; and appeared that this power proceeded from the bite of wolf, which alters even the very hair of the creature that it kills. And this some particular instances seem to confirm; for we know some huntsmen and cooks will kill a beast with one stroke, so that it never breathes after, whilst others repeat their blows, and scarce do it with a great deal of trouble. But (what is more strange) some, as they kill it, infuse such a quality that the flesh rots presently and cannot be kept sweet above a day; yet others that despatch it as soon find no such alteration, but the flesh will keep sweet a long while. And that by the manner of killing a great alteration is made even in the skins, nails, and hair of a beast, Homer seems to witness, when, speaking of a good hide, he says, —

An ox’s hide that fell by violent blows;
(“Iliad,” iii. 375.)

for not those that fell by a disease or old age, but by a violent death, leave us tough and strong hides; but after they are bitten by wild beasts, their hoofs grow black, their hair falls, their skins putrefy and are good for nothing.

QUESTION X.

Whether the Ancients, by Providing Every One His Mess, Did Best or We, Who Set Many to the Same Dish.

PLUTARCH, HAGIAS.

When I was chief magistrate, most of the suppers consisted of distinct messes, where every particular guest had his portion of the sacrifice allowed him. Some were wonderfully well pleased with this order; others blamed it as unsociable and ungenteel, and were of the opinion that, as soon as I was out of my office, the manner of entertainments ought to be reformed; for, says Hagias, we invite one another not barely to eat and drink, but to eat and drink together. Now this division into messes takes away all society, makes many suppers, and many eaters, but no one sups with another; but every man takes his pound of beef, as from the meat shop, sets it before himself, and falls on. And is it not the same thing to provide a different cup and different table for every guest (as the Demophontidae treated Orestes), as now to set each man his loaf of bread and mess of meat, and feed him, as it were, out of his own proper manger? Only, it is true, we are not (as those that treated Orestes were) obliged to be silent and not discourse. Besides, that all the guests should have a share in everything, we may draw an argument from hence; — the same discourse is common to us all, the same songstress sings, and the same musician plays to all. So, when the same cup is set in the midst, not appropriated to any, it is a large spring of good fellowship, and each man may take as much as his appetite requires; not like this most unjust distribution of bread and meat, which prides itself forsooth in being equal to all, though unequal, stomachs; for the same share to a man of a small appetite is too much; to one of a greater, too little. And, sir, as he that administers the very same dose of physic to all sorts of patients must be very ridiculous; so likewise must that entertainer who, inviting a great many guests that can neither eat nor drink alike, sets before every one an equal mess, and measures what is just and fit by an arithmetical not geometrical proportion. When we go to a shop to buy, we all use, it is true, one and the same public measure; but to an entertainment each man brings his own belly, which is satisfied with a portion, not because it is equal to that which others have, but because it is sufficient for itself. Those entertainments where every one had his single mess Homer mentions amongst soldiers and in the camp, which we ought not to bring into fashion amongst us; but rather imitate the good friendship of the ancients, who, to show what reverence they had for all kinds of societies, not only respected those that lived with them or under the same roof, but also those that drank out of the same cup or ate out of the same dish. Let us never mind Homer’s entertainments; they were good for nothing but to starve a man, and the makers of them were kings more stingy and observant than the Italian cooks; insomuch that in the midst of a battle, whilst they were at handy-blows with their enemies, they could exactly reckon up how many glasses each man drank at his table. But those that Pindar describes are much better, —

Where heroes mixed sat round the noble board,

because they maintained society and good fellowship; for the latter truly mixed and joined friends, but our modern system divides and asperses them as persons who, though seemingly very good friends, cannot so much as eat with one another out of the same dish.

To this polite discourse of Hagias they urged me to reply. And I said: Hagias, it is true, hath reason to be troubled at this unusual disappointment, because having so great a belly (for he was an excellent trencherman) he had no larger mess than others; for in a fish eaten together Democritus says, there are no bones. But that very thing is likely to increase our share beyond our own proper allowance. For it is equality, as the old woman in Euripides hath it,

That fastens towns to towns, and friends to friends;
(Euripides, “Phoenissae,” 536.)

and entertainments chiefly stand in need of this. The necessity is from nature as well as custom, and is not lately introduced or founded only on opinion. For when the same dish lies in common before all, the man that is slow and eats little must be offended at the other that is too quick for him, as a slow ship at the swift sailor. Besides, snatching, contention, shoving, and the like, are not, in my mind, neighborly beginnings of mirth and jollity; but they are absurd, doggish, and often end in anger or reproaches, not only against one another, but also against the entertainer himself or the carvers of the feast. But as long as Moera and Lachesis (DIVISION and DISTRIBUTION) maintained equality in feasts, nothing uncivil or disorderly was seen, and they called the feasts [Greek omitted], DISTRIBUTIONS, the entertained [Greek omitted], and the carvers [Greek omitted], DISTRIBUTERS, from dividing and distributing to every man his proper mess. The Lacedaemonians had officers called distributers of the flesh, no mean men, but the chief of the city; for Lysander himself by king Agesilaus was constituted one of these in Asia. But when luxury crept into our feasts, distributing was thrown out; for I suppose they had not leisure to divide these numerous tarts, cheese-cakes, pies, and other delicate varieties; but, surprised with the pleasantness of the taste and tired with the variety, they left off cutting it into portions, and left all in common. And this is confirmed from the present practice; for in our religious or public feasts, where the food is simple and inartificial, each man hath his mess assigned him; so that he that endeavors to retrieve the ancient custom will likewise recover thrift and almost lost frugality again. But, you object, where only property is, community is lost. True indeed, where equality is not; for not the possession of what is proper and our own, but the taking away of another’s and coveting that which is common, is the cause of all injury and contention; and the laws, restraining and confining these within the proper bounds, receive their name from their office, being a power distributing equally to every one in order to the common good. Thus every one is not to be honored by the entertainer with the garland or the chiefest place; but if any one brings with him his sweetheart or a singing girl, they must be common to him and his friends, that all possessions may be brought together, as Anaxagoras would have it. Now if propriety in these things doth not in the least hinder but that things of greater moment, and the only considerable, as discourse and civility, may be still common, let us leave off abasing distributions or the lot, the son of Fortune (as Euripides hath it), which hath no respect either to riches or honor, but in its inconsiderate wheel now and then raiseth up the humble and the poor, and makes him master of himself, and, by accustoming the great and rich to endure and not be offended at equality, pleasingly instructs.

Book III

Simonides the poet, my Sossius Senecio, seeing one of the company sit silent and discourse nobody, said: Sir, if you are fool, it is wisely done; if a wise man, very foolishly. It is good to conceal a man’s folly (but as Heraclitus says) it is very hard to do it over a glass of wine, —

Which doth the gravest men to mirth advance,
And let them loose to sing, to laugh, and dance,
And speak what had been better unsaid.
(“Odyssey,” xiv. 464.)

In which lines the poet in my mind shows the difference between being a little heated and downright drunk; for to sing, laugh, and dance may agree very well with those that have gone no farther than the merry cup; but to prattle, and speak what had been better left unsaid, argues a man to be quite gone. And therefore Plato thinks that wine is the must ingenious discoverer of men’s humors; and Homer, when he says, —

At feasts they had not known each other’s minds,
(Ibid. xxi. 35.)

evidently shows that he knew wine was powerful to open men’s thoughts, and was full of new discoveries. It is true from the bare eating and drinking, if they say nothing we can give no guess at the tempers of the men; but because drinking leads them into discourse, and discourse lays a great many things open and naked which were secret and hid before, therefore to sport a glass of wine together lets us into one another’s humors. And therefore a man may reasonably fall foul on Aesop: Why sir, would you have a window in every man’s breast, through which we may look in upon his thoughts? Wine opens and exposes all, it will not suffer us to be silent, but takes off all mask and visor, and makes us regardless of the severe precepts of decency and custom. Thus Aesop or Plato, or any other that designs to look into a man, may have his desires satisfied by the assistance of a bottle; but those that are not solicitous to pump one another, but to be sociable and pleasant, discourse of such matters and handle such questions as make no discovery of the bad parts of the soul, but such as comfort the good, and, by the help of neat and polite learning, lead the intelligent part into an agreeable pasture and garden of delight This made me collect and dedicate the first to you this third dedication of table discourses, the first of which is about chaplets made of flowers.

QUESTION I.

Whether It is Fitting to Wear Chaplets of Flowers at Table.

ERATO, AMMONIUS, TRYPHO, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

At Athens Erato the musician keeping a solemn feast to the Muses, and inviting a great many to the treat, the company was full of talk, and the subject of the discourse garlands. For after supper many of all sorts of flowers being presented to the guests, Ammonius began to jeer me for choosing a rose chaplet before a laurel, saying that those made of flowers were effeminate, and fitted toyish girls and women more than grave philosophers and men of music. And I admire that our friend Erato, that abominates all flourishing in songs, and blames good Agatho, who first in his tragedy of the Mysians ventured to introduce the chromatic airs, should himself fill his entertainment with such various and such florid colors; yet, while he shuts out all the soft delights that through the ears can enter to the soul, he should introduce others through the eyes and through the nose, and make these garlands, instead of signs of piety, to be instruments of pleasure. For it must be confessed that this ointment gives a better smell than those trifling flowers, which wither even in the hands of those that wreathe them. Besides, all pleasure must be banished the company of philosophers, unless it is of some use or desired by natural appetite; for as those that are carried to a banquet by some of their invited friends (as, for instance, Socrates carried Aristodemus to Agatho’s table) are as civilly entertained as the bidden guests, but he that goes on his own account is shut out of doors; thus the pleasures of eating and drinking, being invited by natural appetite, should have admission; but all the others which come on no account and have only luxury to introduce them, ought in reason to be denied.

At this some young men, not thoroughly acquainted with Ammonius’s humor, being abashed, privately tore their chaplets; but I, perceiving that Ammonius proposed this only for discourse and disputation’s sake, applying myself to Trypho the physician, said: Sir, you must put off that sparkling rosy chaplet as well as we, or declare, as I have often heard you, what excellent preservatives these flowery garlands are against the strength of liquor. But here Erato putting in said: What, is it decreed that no pleasure must be admitted without profit? And must we be angry with our delight, unless hired to endure it? Perhaps we may have reason to be ashamed of ointments and purple vests, because so costly and expensive, and to look upon them as (in the barbarian’s phrase) treacherous garments and deceitful odors; but these natural smells and colors are pure and simple as fruits themselves, and without expense or the curiosity of art. And I appeal to any one, whether it is not absurd to receive the pleasant savors Nature gives us, and enjoy and reject those smells and colors that the seasons afford us, because forsooth they blossom with delight, if they have no other external profit or advantage. Besides, we have an axiom against you, for if (as you affirm) Nature makes nothing in vain, those things that have no other use were designed on purpose to please and to delight. Besides, observe that to thriving trees Nature hath given leaves, both for the preservation of the fruit and of the stock itself; for those sometimes warming, sometimes cooling it, the seasons creep on by degrees, and do not assault it with all their violence at once. But now the flower, whilst it is on the plant, is of no profit at all, unless we use it to delight our nose with the admirable smell, and to please our eyes when it opens that inimitable variety of colors. And therefore, when the leaves are plucked off, the plants as it were suffer injury and grief. There is a kind of an ulcer raised, and an unbecoming nakedness attends them; and we must not only (as Empedocles says)

By all means spare the leaves that grace the palm,

but likewise of all other trees, and not injuriously against Nature robbing them of their leaves, bring deformity on them to adorn ourselves. But to pluck the flowers doth no injury at all. It is like gathering of grapes at the time of vintage; unless plucked when ripe, they wither of themselves and fall. And therefore, like the barbarians who clothe themselves with the skins more commonly than with the wool of sheep, those that wreathe leaves rather than flowers into garlands seem to me to use the plants neither according to the dictates of reason nor the design of Nature. And thus much I say in defence of those who sell chaplets of flowers; for I am not grammarian enough to remember those poems which tell us that the old conquerors in the sacred games were crowned with flowers. Yet, now I think of it, there is a story of a rosy crown that belongs to the Muses; Sappho mentions it in a copy of verses to a woman unlearned and unacquainted with the Muses: —

Thou shalt unregarded lie
Cause ne’er acquainted with the Muses’ Rose.
(From Sappho, Frag. 68.)

But if Trypho can produce anything to our advantage from physic, pray let us have it.

Then Trypho taking the discourse said: The ancients were very curious and well acquainted with all these things, because plants were the chief ingredients of their physic. And of this some signs remain till now; for the Tyrians offer to Agenor, and the Magnesians to Chiron, the first supposed practitioners of physic, as the first fruits, the roots of those plants which have been successful on a patient. And Bacchus was not only counted a physician for finding wine, the most pleasing and most potent remedy, but for bringing ivy, the greatest opposite imaginable to wine, into reputation, and for teaching his drunken followers to wear garlands of it, that by that means they might be secured against the violence of a debauch, the heat of the liquor being remitted by the coldness of the ivy. Besides, the names of several plants sufficiently evidence the ancients curiosity in this matter; for they named the walnut-tree [Greek omitted], because it sends forth a heavy and [Greek omitted] drowsy spirit, which affects their heads who sleep beneath it; and the daffodil, [Greek omitted], because it benumbs the nerves and causes a stupid narcotic heaviness in the limbs, and therefore Sophocles calls it the ancient garland flower of the great (that is, the earthy) gods. And some say rue was called [Greek omitted] from its astringent quality; for, by its dryness preceding from its heat, it fixes [Greek omitted] or dries the seed, and is very hurtful to great-bellied women. But those that imagine the herb amethyst [Greek omitted], and the precious stone of the same name, are called so because powerful against the force of wine are much mistaken; for both receive there names from their color; for its leaf is not of the color of strong wine, but resembles that of weak diluted liquor. And indeed I could mention a great many which have their names from their proper virtues. But the care and the experience of the ancients sufficiently appears in those of which they made their garlands when they designed to be merry and frolic over a glass of wine; for wine, especially when it seizes on the head, and weakens the body just at the very spring and origin of the sense, disturbs the whole man. Now the effluvia of flowers are an admirable preservative against this, they secure the brain, as it were a citadel, against the effects of drunkenness; for those that are hot upon the pores and give the fumes free passage to exhale, and those moderately cold repel and keep down the ascending vapors. Such are the violet and rose; for the odors of both these are prevalent against any ache and heaviness in the head. The flowers of the privet and crocus bring those that have drunk freely into a gentle sleep; for they send forth a smooth and gentle effluvia, which softly takes off all asperities that arise in the body of the drunken; and so all things being quiet and composed, the violence on the noxious humor is abated and thrown off. The smells of some flowers being received into the brain cleanse the organs and instruments of sense, and gently by their heat, without any violence or force, dissolve the humors, and warm and cherish the brain itself, which is naturally cold. And upon this account, they call those little posies they hang about their necks [Greek omitted], and anointed their breasts with the oils that were squeezed from them; and of this Alcaeus is a witness, when he bids his friends,

Pour ointments o’er his laboring temples, pressed
With various cares, and o’er his aged breast.

For the warm odors shoot upward into the very brain, being drawn up by the nostrils. For they did not call those garlands hung about the neck [Greek omitted] because they thought the heart was the seat and citadel of the mind [Greek omitted], for on that account they should rather have called them [Greek omitted], but, as I said before, from their vapor and exhalation. Besides, it is no strange thing that these smells of garlands should be of so considerable a virtue; for some tell us that the shadow of the yew, especially when it blossoms, kills those that sleep under it; and a subtle spirit ariseth from pressed poppy, which suddenly overcomes the unwary squeezers. And there is an herb called alyssus, which to some that take it in their hands, to others that do but look on it, is found a present remedy against the hiccough; and some affirm that planted near the stalls it preserves sheep and goats from the rot and mange. And the rose is called [Greek omitted], probably because it sends forth a stream [Greek omitted] of odors; and for that reason it withers presently. It is a cooler, yet fiery to look upon; and no wonder, for upon the surface a subtile heat, being driven out by the inward heat, looks vivid and appears.

QUESTION II.

Whether Ivy is of a Hot or Cold Nature.

AMMONIUS, TRYPHO, ERATO.

Upon this discourse, when we all hummed Trypho, Ammonius with a smile said: It is not decent by any contradiction to pull in pieces, like a chaplet, this various and florid discourse of Trypho’s. Yet methinks the ivy is a little oddly interwoven, and unjustly said by its cold powers to temper the heat of strong wine; for it is rather fiery and hot, and its berries steeped in wine make the liquor more apt to inebriate and inflame. And from this cause, as in sticks warped by the fire, proceeds the crookedness of the boughs. And snow, that for many days will lie on other trees, presently melts from the branches of the ivy, and wastes all around, as far as the warmth reaches. But the greatest evidence is this. Theophrastus tells us, that when Alexander commanded Harpalus to plant some Grecian trees in the Babylonian gardens, and — because the climate is very hot and the sun violent — such as were leafy, thick, and fit to make a shade, the ivy only would not grow; though all art and diligence possible were used, it withered and died. For being hot itself, it could not agree with the fiery nature of the soil; for excess in similar qualities is destructive, and therefore we see everything as it were affects its contrary; a cold plant flourishes in a hot ground, and a hot plant is delighted with a cold. Upon which account it is that bleak mountains, exposed to cold winds and snow, bear firs, pines, and the like, full of pitch, fiery, and excellent to make a torch. But besides, Trypho, trees of a cold nature, their little feeble heat not being able to diffuse itself but retiring to the heart, shed their leaves; but their natural oiliness and warmth preserve the laurel, olive, and cypress always green; and the like too in the ivy may be observed. And therefore it is not likely our dear friend Bacchus, who called wine [Greek omitted] intoxicating and himself [Greek omitted], should bring ivy into reputation for being a preservative against drunkenness and an enemy to wine. But in my opinion, as lovers of wine, when they have not any juice of the grape ready, drink ale, mead, cider, or the like; thus he that in winter would have a vine-garland on his head, and finding the vine naked and without leaves, used the ivy that is like it; for its boughs are twisted and irregular, its leaves moist and disorderly confused, but chiefly the berries, like ripening clusters, make an exact representation of the vine. But grant the ivy to be a preservative against drunkenness, — that to please you, Trypho, we may name Bachus a physician, — still I affirm that power to proceed from its heat, which either opens the pores or helps to digest the wine.

Upon this Trypho sat silent, studying for an answer. Erato addressing himself to us youths, said: Trypho wants your assistance; help him in this dispute about the garlands, or be content to sit without any. Ammonius too bade us not be afraid, for he would not reply to any of our discourses; and Trypho likewise urging me to propose something, I said: To demonstrate that the ivy is cold is not so proper a task for me as Trypho, for he often useth coolers and binders; but that proposition, that wine in which ivy berries have been is more inebriating, is not true; for that disturbance which it raiseth in those that drink it is not so properly called drunkenness as alienation of mind or madness, such as hyoscyamus and a thousand other things that set men beside themselves usually produce. The crookedness of the bough is no argument at all, for such violent and unnatural effects cannot be supposed to proceed from any natural quality or power. Now sticks are bent by the fire, because that draws the moisture, and so the crookedness is a violent distortion; but the natural heat nourishes and preserves the body. Consider, therefore, whether it is not the weakness and coldness of the body that makes it wind, bend, and creep upon the ground; for those qualities check its rise, and depress it in its ascent, and render it like a weak traveller, that often sits down and then goes on again. And therefore the ivy requires something to twine about, and needs a prop; for it is not able to sustain and direct its own branches, because it wants heat, which naturally tends upward. The snow is melted by the wetness of the leaf, for water destroys it easily, passing through the thin contexture, it being nothing but a congeries of small bubbles; and therefore in very cold but moist places the snow melts as soon as in hot. That it is continually green doth not proceed from its heat, for to shed its leaves doth not argue the coldness of a tree. Thus the myrtle and well fern, though not hot, but confessedly cold, are green all the year. Some imagine this comes from the equal and duly proportioned mixture of the qualities in the leaf, to which Empedocles hath added a certain aptness of pores, through which the nourishing juice is orderly transmitted, so that there is still supply sufficient. But now it is otherwise in trees whose leaves fall, by reason of the wideness of their higher and narrowness of their lower pores; for the latter do not send juice enough, nor do the former keep it, but as soon as a small stock is received pour it out. This may be illustrated from the usual watering of our gardens; for when the distribution is unequal, the plants that are always watered have nourishment enough, seldom wither, and look always green. But you further argue, that being planted in Babylon it would not grow. It was well done of the plant, methinks, being a particular friend and familiar of the Boeotian god, to scorn to live amongst the barbarians, or imitate Alexander in following the manners of those nations; but it was not its heat but cold that was the cause of this aversion, for that could not agree with the contrary quality. For one similar quality doth not destroy but cherish another. Thus dry ground bears thyme, though it is naturally hot. Now at Babylon they say the air is so suffocating, so intolerably hot, that many of the more prosperous sleep upon skins full of water, that they may lie cool.

QUESTION III.

Why Women are Hardly, Old Men Easily, Foxed.

FLORUS, SYLLA.

Florus thought it strange that Aristotle in his discourse of Drunkenness, affirming that old men are easily, women hardly, overtaken, did not assign the cause, since he seldom failed on such occasions. Therefore he proposed it to us (we were a great many acquaintance met at supper) as a fit subject for our inquiry. Sylla began: One part will conduce to the discovery of the other; and if we rightly hit the cause in relation to the women, the difficulty, as it concerns the old men, will be easily despatched; for their two natures are quite contrary. Moistness, smoothness, and softness belong to the one; and dryness, roughness, and hardness are the accidents of the other. As for women, I think the principal cause is the moistness of their temper; this produceth a softness in the flesh, a shining smoothness, and their usual purgations. Now when wine is mixed with a great deal of weak liquor, it is overpowered by that, loses its strength, and becomes flat and waterish. Some reason likewise may be drawn from Aristotle himself; for he affirms that those that drink fast, and take a large draught without drawing breath, are seldom overtaken, because the wine doth not stay long in their bodies, but having acquired an impetus by this greedy drinking, suddenly runs through; and women are generally observed to drink after that manner. Besides, it is probable that their bodies, by reason of the continual deduction of the moisture in order to their usual purgations, are very porous, and divided as it were into many little pipes and conduits; into which when the wine falls, it is quickly conveyed away, and doth not lie and fret the principal parts, from whose disturbance drunkenness proceeds. But that old men want the natural moisture, even the name [Greek omitted], in my opinion, intimates; for that name was given them not as stooping to the earth [Greek omitted] but as being in the habit of their body [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted], earthlike and earthy. Besides, the stiffness and roughness prove the dryness of their nature. Therefore it is probable that, when they drink, their body, being grown spongy by the dryness of its nature, soaks up the wine, and that lying in the vessels it affects the senses and prevents the natural motions. For as floods of water glide over the close grounds, nor make them slabby, but quickly sink into the open and chapped fields; thus wine, being sucked in by the dry parts, lies and works in the bodies of old men. But besides, it is easy to observe, that age of itself hath all the symptoms of drunkenness. These symptoms everybody knows; viz., shaking of the joints, faltering of the tongue, babbling, passion, forgetfulness, and distraction of the mind; many of which being incident to old men, even whilst they are well and in perfect health, are heightened by any little irregularity and accidental debauch. So that drunkenness doth not beget in old men any new and proper symptoms, but only intend and increase the common ones. And an evident sign of this is, that nothing is so like an old man as a young man drunk.

QUESTION IV.

Whether the Temper of Women is Colder or Hotter Than that of Men.

APOLLONIDES, ATHRYILATUS.

Thus Sylla said, and Apollonides the marshal subjoined: Sir, what you discoursed of old men I willingly admit; but in my opinion you have omitted a considerable reason in relation to the women, viz., the coldness of their temper, which quencheth the heat of the strongest wine, and makes it lose all its destructive force and fire. This reflection seeming reasonable, Athryilatus the Thasian, a physician, kept us from a hasty conclusion in this matter, by saying that some supposed the female sex was not cold, but hotter than the male; and others thought wine rather cold than hot.

When Florus seemed surprised at this discourse, Athryilatus continued: Sir, what I mention about wine I shall leave to this man to make out (pointing to me, for a few days before we had handled the same matter). But that women are of a hot constitution, some suppose, may be proved, first, from their smoothness, for their heat wastes all the superfluous nourishment which breeds hair; secondly from their abundance of blood, which seems to be the fountain and source of all the heat that is in the body; — now this abounds so much in females, that they would be all on fire, unless relieved by frequent and sudden evacuations. Thirdly, from a usual practice of the sextons in burning the bodies of the dead, it is evident that females are hotter than males; for the bedsmen are wont to put one female body with ten males upon the same pile, for that contains some inflammable and oily parts, and serves for fuel to the rest. Besides, if that that is soonest fit for generation is hottest, and a maid begins to be furious sooner than a boy, this is a strong proof of the hotness of the female sex. But a more convincing proof follows: women endure cold better than men, they are not so sensible of the sharpness of the weather, and are contented with a few clothes.

And Florus replied: Methinks, sir, from the same topics I could draw conclusions against your assertion. For, first, they endure cold better, because one similar quality doth not so readily act upon another; and then again, their seed is not active in generation, but passive matter and nourishment to that which the male injects. But more, women grow effete sooner than men; that they burn better than the males proceeds from their fat, which is the coldest part of the body; and young men, or such as use exercise, have but little fat. Their monthly purgations do not prove the abundance, but the corruption and badness, of their blood; for being the superfluous and undigested part, and having no convenient vessel in the body it flows out, and appears languid and feculent, by reason of the weakness of its heat. And the shivering that seizes them at the time of their purgations sufficiently proves that which flows from them is cold and undigested. And who will believe their smoothness to be an effect of heat rather than cold, when everybody knows that the hottest parts of a body are the most hairy? For all such excrements are thrust out by the heat, which opens and makes passages through the skin; but smoothness is a consequent of that closeness of the superficies which proceeds from condensing cold. And that the flesh of women is closer than that of men, you may be informed by those that lie with women that have anointed themselves with oil or other perfumes; for though they do not touch the women, yet they find themselves perfumed, their bodies by reason of their heat and rarity drawing the odor to them. But I think we have disputed plausibly and sufficiently of this matter. . . .

QUESTION V.

Whether Wine is Potentially Cold.

ATHRYILATUS, PLUTARCH.

But now I would fain know upon what account you can imagine that wine is cold. Then, said I, do you believe this to be my opinion? Yes, said he, whose else? And I replied: I remember a good while ago I met with a discourse of Aristotle’s upon this very question. And Epicurus, in his Banquet, hath a long discourse, the sum of which is that wine of itself is not hot, but that it contains some atoms that cause heat, and others that cause cold; now, when it is taken into the body, it loses one sort of particles and takes the other out of the body itself, as it agrees with one’s nature and constitution; so that some when they are drunk are very hot, and others very cold.

This way of talking, said Florus, leads us by Protagoras directly to Pyrrho; for it is evident that, suppose we were to discourse of oil, milk, honey, or the like, we shall avoid all inquiry into their particular natures by saying that things are so and so by their mutual mixture with one another. But how do you prove that wine is cold? And I, being forced to speak extempore, replied: By two arguments. The first I draw from the practice of physicians, for when their patients’ stomachs grow very weak, they prescribe no hot things, and yet give them wine as an excellent remedy. Besides, they stop looseness and immoderate sweating by wine; and this shows that they think it more binding and constipating than snow itself. Now if it were potentially hot, I should think it as wise a thing to apply fire to snow as wine to the stomach.

Again, most teach that sleep proceeds from the coolness of the parts; and most of the narcotic medicines, as mandrake and opium, are coolers. Those indeed work violently, and forcibly condense, but wine cools by degrees; it gently stops the motion, according as it hath more or less of such narcotic qualities. Besides, heat has a generative power; for owing to heat the fluid flows easily and the vital spirit gets vigor and a stimulating force. Now the great drinkers are very dull, inactive fellows, no women’s men at all; they eject nothing strong, vigorous, and fit for generation, but are weak and unperforming, by reason of the bad digestion and coldness of their seed. And it is farther observable that the effects of cold and drunkenness upon men’s bodies are the same, — trembling, heaviness, paleness, shivering, faltering of tongue, numbness, and cramps. In many, a debauch ends in a dead palsy, when the wine stupefies and extinguisheth all the heat. And the physicians use this method in curing the qualms and diseases gotten by debauch; at night they cover them well and keep them warm; and at day they annoint and bathe, and give them such food as shall not disturb, but by degrees recover the heat which the wine hath scattered and driven out of the body. Thus, I added, in these appearances we trace obscure qualities and powers; but as for drunkenness, it is easily known what it is. For, in my opinion, as I hinted before, those that are drunk are very much like old men; and therefore great drinkers grow old soonest, and they are commonly bald and gray before their time; and all these accidents certainly proceed from want of heat. But mere vinegar is of a vinous nature, and nothing quenches fire so soon as that; its extreme coldness overcomes and kills the flame presently. And of all fruits physicians use the vinous as the greatest coolers, as pomegranates and apples. Besides, do they not make wine by mixing honey with rain-water or snow; for the cold, because those two qualities are near akin, if it prevails, changes the luscious into a poignant taste? And did not the ancients of all the creeping beasts consecrate the snake to Bacchus, and of all the plants the ivy, because they were of a cold and frozen nature? Now, lest any one should think this is a proof of its heat, that if a man takes juice of hemlock, a large dose of wine cures him, I shall, on the contrary affirm that wine and hemlock juice mixed is an incurable poison, and kills him that drinks it presently. So that we can no more conclude it to be hot because it resists, than to be cold because it assists, the poison. For cold is the only quality by which hemlock juice works and kills.

QUESTION VI.

Which is the Fittest Time for a Man to Know His Wife?

YOUTHS, ZOPYRUS, OLYMPICHUS, SOCLARUS.

Some young students, that had not gone far in the learning of the ancients, inveighed against Epicurus for bringing in, in his Svmposium, an impertinent and unseemly discourse, about what time was best to lie with a woman; for an old man at supper in the company of youths to talk of such a subject, and dispute whether after or before supper was the most convenient time, argued him to be a very loose and debauched man. To this some said that Xenophon, after his entertainment was ended, sent all his guests home on horseback, to lie with their wives. But Zopyrus the physician, a man very well read in Epicurus, said, that they had not duly weighed that piece; for he did not propose that question first, and then discuss that matter on purpose; but after supper he desired the young men to take a walk, and he then discoursed on it, that he might persuade them to continence, and to abate their desires and restrain their appetites; showing them that it was very dangerous at all times, but especially after they had been eating or making merry. But suppose he had proposed this as the chief topic for discourse, doth it never become a philosopher to inquire which is the convenient and proper time? Ought we not to time it well, and direct our embrace by reason? Or may such discourse be otherwise allowed, and must they be thought unseemly problems to be proposed at table? Indeed I am of another mind. It is true, I should blame a philosopher that in the middle of the day, in the schools, before all sorts of men, should discourse of such a subject; but over a glass of wine between friends and acquaintance, when it is necessary to propose something beside dull, serious discourse, why should it be a fault to hear or speak anything that may inform our judgments or direct our practice in such matters? And I protest I had rather that Zeno had inserted his loose topics in some merry discourses and agreeable table-talk, than in such a grave, serious piece as his politics.

The youth, startled at this free declaration, sat silent; and the rest of the company desired Zopyrus to deliver Epicurus’s sentiment. He said: The particulars I cannot remember; but I believe he feared the violent agitations of such exercises, because the bodies employed in them are so violently disturbed. For it is certain that wine is a very great disturber, and puts the body out of its usual temper; and therefore, when thus disquieted, if quiet and sleep do not compose it but other agitations seize it, it is likely that those parts which knit and join the members may be loosened, and the whole frame be as it were unsettled from its foundation and overthrown. For then likewise the seed cannot freely pass, but is confusedly and forcibly thrown out, because the liquor hath filled the vessels of the body, and stopped its way. Therefore, says Epicurus, we must use those sports when the body is at quiet, when the meat hath been thoroughly digested, carried about and applied to several parts of the body, so that we begin to want a fresh supply of food. To this of Epicurus we might join an argument taken from physic. At day-time, while our digestion is performing, we are not so lusty nor eager to embrace; and presently after supper to endeavor it is dangerous, for the crudity of the stomach, the food being yet undigested, may be disorderly motion upon this crudity, and so the mischief be double. Olympicus, continuing the discourse, said: I very much like what Clinias the Pythagorean delivers. For the story goes that, being asked when a man should lie with a woman, he replied, when he hath a mind to receive the greatest mischief that he can. For Zopyrus’s discourse seems rational, and other times as well as those he mentions have their peculiar inconveniences. And therefore, — as Thales the philosopher, to free himself from the pressing solicitations of his mother who advised him to marry, said at first, ‘tis not yet time; and when, now he was growing old, she repeated her admonition, replied, nor is it now time, — so it is best for every man to have the same mind in relation to those sports of Venus; when he goes to bed, let him say, ‘tis not yet time; and when he rises, ‘tis not now time.

What you say, Olympicus, said Soclarus interposing, befits wrestlers indeed; it smells, methinks, of their meals of flesh and casks of wine, but is not suitable to the resent company, for there are some young married men here,

Whose duty ‘tis to follow Venus’ sports.

Nay, we ourselves seem to have some relation to Venus still, when in our hymns to the gods we pray thus to her,

Fair Venus, keep off feeble age.

But waiving this, let us inquire (if you think fit) whether Epicurus does well, when contrary to all right and equity he separates Venus and the Night, though Menander, a man well skilled in love matters, says that she likes her company better than that of any of the gods. For, in my opinion, night is a very convenient veil, spread over those that give themselves to that kind of pleasure; for it is not fit that day should be the time, lest modesty should be banished from our eyes, effeminacy grow bold, and such vigorous impressions on our memories be left, as might still possess us with the same fancies and raise new inclinations. For the sight (according to Plato) receives a more vigorous impression than any other bodily organ, and joining with the imagination, that lies near it, works presently upon the soul, and ever causes fresh desires by those images of pleasure which it brings. But the night, hiding many and the most furious of the actions, quiets and lulls nature, and doth not suffer it to be carried to intemperance by the eye. But besides this, how absurd is it, that a man returning from an entertainment merry perhaps and jocund, crowned and perfumed, should cover himself up, turn his back to his wife, and go to sleep; and then at day-time, in the midst of his business, send for her out of her apartment to serve his pleasure or in the morning, as a cock treads his hens. No, sir the evening is the end of our labor, and the morning the beginning. Bacchus the Loosener and Terpsichore and Thalia preside over the former; and the latter raiseth us up betimes to attend on Minerva the Work-mistress, and Mercury the merchandiser. And therefore songs, dances, and epithalamiums, merry-meetings, with balls and feasts, and sounds of pipes and flutes, are the entertainment of the one; but in the other, nothing but the noise of hammers and anvils, the scratching of saws, the city cries, citations to court or to attend this or that prince and magistrate are heard.

Then all the sports of pleasure disappear,
Then Venus, then gay youth removes:
No Thyrsus then which Bacchus loves;
But all is clouded and o’erspread with care.

Besides, Homer makes not one of the heroes lie with his wife or mistress in the day-time, but only Paris, who, having shamefully fled from the battle, sneaked into the embraces of his wife; intimating that such lasciviousness by day did not befit the sober temper of a man, but the mad lust of an adulterer. But, moreover, the body will not (as Epicurus fancies) be injured more after supper than at any other time, unless a man be drunk or overcharged, — for in those cases, no doubt, it is very dangerous and hurtful. But if a man is only raised and cheered, not overpowered by liquor, if his body is pliable, his mind agreeing, and then he sports, he need not fear any disturbance from the load he has within him; he need not fear catching cold, or too great a transportation of atoms, which Epicurus makes the cause of all the ensuing harm. For if he lies quiet he will quickly fill again, and new spirits will supply the vessels that are emptied.

But this is to be especially taken care of, that, the body being then in a ferment and disturbed, no cares of the soul, no business about necessary affairs, no labor, should distract and seize it, lest they should corrupt and sour its humors, Nature not having had time enough for settling what has been disturbed. For, sir, all men have not the command of that happy ease and tranquillity which Epicurus’s philosophy procured him; for many great incumbrances seize almost upon every one every day, or at least some disquiets; and it is not safe to trust the body with any of these, when it is in such a condition and disturbance, presently after the fury and heat of the embrace is over. Let, according to his opinion, the happy and immortal deity sit at ease and never mind us; but if we regard the laws of our country, we must not dare to enter into the temple and offer sacrifice, if but a little before we have done any such thing. It is fit therefore to let night and sleep intervene, and after there is a sufficient space of time past between, to rise as it were pure and new, and (as Democritus was wont to say) “with new thoughts upon the new day.”

QUESTION VII.

Why New Wine Doth Not Inebriate As Soon As Other.

PLUTARCH, HIS FATHER, HAGIAS, ARISTAENETUS, and OTHER YOUTH.

At Athens on the eleventh day of February (thence called [Greek omitted] THE BARREL-OPENING), they began to taste their new wine; and in old times (as it appears), before they drank, they offered some to the gods, and prayed that that cordial liquor might prove good and wholesome. By us Thebans the month is named [Greek omitted], and it is our custom upon the sixth day to sacrifice to our good Genius and then taste our new wine, after the zephyr has done blowing; for that wind makes wine ferment more than any other, and the liquor that can bear this fermentation is of a strong body and will keep well. My father offered the usual sacrifice, and when after supper the young men, my fellow-students, commended the wine, he started this question: Why does not new wine inebriate as soon as other? This seemed a paradox and incredible to most of us; but Hagias said, that luscious things were cloying and would presently satiate, and therefore few could drink enough to make them drunk; for when once the thirst is allayed, the appetite would be quickly palled by that unpleasant liquor; for that a luscious is different from a sweet taste, even the poet intimates, when he says,

With luscious wine, and with sweet milk and cheese.
(“Odyssey, xx. 69.)

Wine at first is sweet; afterward, as it grows old, it ferments and begins to be pricked a little; then it gets a sweet taste.

Aristaenetus the Nicaean said, that he remembered he had read somewhere that sweet things mixed with wine make it less heady, and that some physicians prescribe to one that hath drunk freely, before he goes to bed, a crust of bread dipped in honey. And therefore, if sweet mixtures weaken strong wine, it is reasonable that wine should not be heady till it hath lost its sweetness.

We admired the acuteness of the young philosophers, and were well pleased to see them propose something out of the common road and give us their own sentiments on this matter. Now the common and obvious reason is the heaviness of new wine, — which (as Aristotle says) violently presseth the stomach, — or the abundance of airy and watery parts that lie in it; the former of which, as soon as they are pressed, fly out; and the watery parts are naturally fit to weaken the spirituous liquor. Now, when it grows old, the juice is improved, and though by the separation of the watery parts it loses in quantity, it gets in strength.

QUESTION VIII.

Why Do Those that are Stark Drunk Seem Not So Much Debauched As Those that are But Half Foxed?

PLUTARCH, HIS FATHER.

Well then, said my father, since we have fallen upon Aristotle, I will endeavor to propose something of my own concerning those that are half drunk; for, in my mind, though he was a very acute man, he is not accurate enough in such matters. They usually say, I think, that a sober man’s understanding apprehends things right and judges well; the sense of one quite drunk is weak and enfeebled; but of him that is half drunk the fancy is vigorous and the understanding weakened, and therefore, following their own fancies, they judge, but judge ill. But pray, sirs, what is your opinion in these matters?

This reason, I replied, would satisfy me upon a private disquisition; but if you will have my own sentiments, let us first consider, whether this difference doth not proceed from the different temper of the body. For of those that are only half drunk, the mind alone is disturbed, but the body not being quite overwhelmed is yet able to obey its motions; but when it is too much oppressed and the wine has overpowered it, it betrays and frustrates the motions of the mind, for men in such a condition never go so far as action. But those that are half drunk, having a body serviceable to the absurd motions of the mind, are rather to be thought to have greater ability to comply with those they have, than to have worse inclinations than the others. Now if, proceeding on another principle, we consider the strength of the wine itself, nothing hinders but that this may be different and changeable, according to the quantity that is drunk. As fire, when moderate, hardens a piece of clay, but if very strong, makes it brittle and crumble into pieces; and the heat of the spring fires our blood with fevers but as the summer comes on, the disease usually abates; what hinders then but that the mind, being naturally raised by the power of the wine, when it is come to a pitch, should by pouring on more be weakened again and its force abated? Thus hellebore, before it purges, disturbs the body; but if too small a dose be given, disturbs only and purges not at all; and some taking too little of an opiate are more restless than before; and some taking too much sleep well. Besides, it is probable that this disturbance into which those that are half drunk are put, when it comes to a pitch, leads to that decay. For a great quantity being taken inflames the body and consumes the frenzy of the mind; as a mournful song and melancholy music at a funeral raises grief at first and forces tears, but as it continues, by little and little it takes away all dismal apprehensions and consumes our sorrows. Thus wine, after it hath heated and disturbed, calms the mind again and quiets the frenzy; and when men are dead drunk, their passions are at rest.

QUESTION IX.

What is the Meaning of the Saying: Drink Either Five or Three, But Not Four?

ARISTO, PLUTARCH, PLUTARCH’S FATHER.

When I had said these things Aristo, as his habit was, cried out: A return has been decreed in banquets to a very popular and just standard, which, because it was driven away by unseasonable temperance as if by the act of a tyrant, has long remained in exile. For just as those trained in the canons of the lyre declare the sesquialter proportion produces the symphony diapente, the double proportion the diapason, the sesquiterte the diatessaron, the slowest of all, so the specialists in Bacchic harmonies have detected three accords between wine and water — Diapente, Diatrion, Diatessaron. For so they speak and sing, “drink five or three, but not four.” For five have the sesquialter proportion, three cups of water being mixed in two of wine; three, the double proportion, two being mixed with one; four, the sesquiterce, three cups of water to one of wine, which is the epitrite proportion for those exercising their minds in the council-chamber or frowning over dialectics, when changes of speeches are expected, — a sober and mild mixture. But in regard to those proportions of two to one, that mixture gives the strength by which we are confused and made half drunk, “Exciting the chords of the soul never moved before.” For it does not admit of sobriety, nor does it induce the senselessness of pure wine. The most harmonious is the proportion of two to three, provoking sleep, generating the forgetfulness of cares, and like that cornfield of Hesiod,” which mildly pacifieth children and heals injuries.” It composes in us the harsh and irregular motions of the soul and secures deep peace for it. Against these sayings of Aristo no one had anything to offer in reply, since it was quite evident he was jesting. I suggested to him to take a cup and treat it as a lyre, tuning it to the harmony and order he praised. At the same time a slave came offering him pure wine. But he refused it, saying with a laugh that he was discussing logical not organic music. To what had been said before my father added that Jove seemed to have taken, according to the ancients, two nurses, Ite and Adrastea; Juno one, Euboea; Apollo also two, Truth and Corythalea; but Bacchus several, because he needed several measures of water to make him manageable, trained, milder, and more prudent.

QUESTION X.

Why Flesh Stinks Sooner When Exposed to the Moon, Than to the Sun.

EUTHYDEMUS, SATYRUS.

Euthydemus of Sunium gave us at an entertainment a very large boar. The guests wondering at the bigness of the beast, he said that he had one a great deal larger, but in the carriage the moon had made it stink; he could not imagine how this should happen, for it was probable that the sun, being much hotter than the moon, should make it stink sooner. But, said Satyrus, this is not so strange as the common practice of the hunters; for, when they send a boar or a doe to a city some miles distant, they drive a brazen nail into it to keep it from stinking.

After supper Euthydemus bringing the question into play again, Moschio the physician said, that putrefaction was a colliquation of the flesh, and that everything that putrefied grew moister than before, and that all heat, if gentle, did stir the humors, though not force them out, but if strong, dry the flesh; and that from these considerations an answer to the question might be easily deduced. For the moon gently warming makes the body moist; but the sun by his violent beams dries rather, and draws all moisture from them. Thus Archilochus spoke like a naturalist,

I hope hot Sirius’s beams will many drain,

And Homer more plainly concerning Hector, over whose body Apollo spread a thick cloud,

Lest the hot sun should scorch his naked limbs.
(Iliad, xxiii, 190.)

Now the moon’s rays are weaker; for, as Ion says,

They do not ripen well the clustered grapes.

When he had done, I said: The rest of the discourse I like very well, but I cannot consent when you ascribe this effect to the strength and degree of heat, and chiefly in the hot seasons; for in winter every one knows that the sun warms little, yet in summer it putrefies most. Now the contrary should happen, if the gentleness of the heat were the cause of putrefaction. And besides, the hotter the season is, so much the sooner meat stinks; and therefore this effect is not to be ascribed to the want of heat in the moon, but to some particular proper quality in her beams. For heat is not different only by degrees; but in fires there are some proper qualities very much unlike one another, as a thousand obvious instances will prove. Goldsmiths heat their gold in chaff fires; physicians use fires of vine-twigs in their distillations; and tamarisk is the best fuel for a glass-house. Olive-boughs in a chimney warm very well, but hurt other baths: they spoil the plastering, and weaken the foundation; and therefore the most skilful of the public officers forbid those that rent the baths to burn olive-tree wood, or throw darnel seed into the fire, because the fumes of it dizzy and bring the headache to those that bathe. Therefore it is no wonder that the moon differs in her qualities from the sun; and that the sun should shed some drying, and the moon some dissolving, influence upon flesh. And upon this account it is that nurses are very cautious of exposing their infants to the beams of the moon; for they being full of moisture, as green plants, are easily wrested and distorted. And everybody knows that those that sleep abroad under the beams of the moon are not easily waked, but seem stupid and senseless; for the moisture that the moon sheds upon them oppresses their faculty and disables their bodies. Besides, it is commonly said, that women brought to bed when the moon is a fortnight old, have easy labors; and for this reason I believe that Diana, which was the same with the moon, was called the goddess of childbirth. And Timotheus appositely says,

By the blue heaven that wheels the stars,
And by the moon that eases women’s pains.

Even in inanimate bodies the power of the moon is very evident. For trees that are cut in the full of the moon carpenters refuse, as being soft, and, by reason of their moistness, subject to corruption; and in its wane farmers usually thresh their wheat, that being dry it may better endure the flail; for the corn in the full of the moon is moist, and commonly bruised in threshing. Besides, they say dough will be leavened sooner in the full, for then, though the leaven is scarce proportioned to the meal, yet it rarefies and leavens the whole lump. Now when flesh putrefies, the combining spirit is only changed into a moist consistence, and the parts of the body separate and dissolve. And this is evident in the very air itself, for when the moon is full, most dew falls; and this Alcman the poet intimates, when he somewhere calls dew the air’s and moon’s daughter, saying,

See how the daughter of the Moon and Air
Does nourish all things.

Thus a thousand instances do prove that the light of the moon is moist, and carries with it a softening and corrupting quality. Now the brazen nail that is driven through the flesh, if, as they say, it keeps the flesh from putrefying, doth it by an astringent quality proper to the brass. The rust of brass physicians use in astringent medicines, and they say those that dig brass ore have been cured of a rheum in their eyes, and that the hair upon their eyelids hath grown again; for the particles rising from the ore, being insensibly applied to the eyes, stops the rheum and dries up the humor, and upon this account, perhaps; Homer calls brass [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted], and Aristotle says, that wounds made by a brazen dart or a brazen sword are less painful and sooner cured than those that are made of iron weapons, because brass hath something medicinal in itself, which in the very instant is applied to the wound. Now it is manifest that astringents are contrary to putrefying, and healing to corrupting qualities. Some perhaps may say, that the nail being driven through draws all the moisture to itself, for the humor still flows to the part that is hurt; and therefore it is said that by the nail there always appears some speck and tumor; and therefore it is rational that the other parts should remain sound, when all the corruption gathers about that.

Book IV.

Polybius, my Sossius Senecio, advised Scipio Africanus never to return from the Forum, where he was conversant about the affairs of the city, before he had gained one new friend. Where I suppose the word friend is not to be taken too nicely, to signify a lasting and unchangeable acquaintance; but, as it vulgarly means, a well-wisher, and as Dicearchus takes it, when he says that we should endeavor to make all men well-wishers, but only good men friends. For friendship is to be acquired by time and virtue; but good-will is produced by a familiar intercourse, or by mirth and trifling amongst civil and genteel men, especially if opportunity assists their natural inclinations to good-nature. But consider whether this advice may not be accommodated to an entertainment as well as the Forum; so that we should not break up the meeting before we had gained one of the company to be a well-wisher and a friend. Other occasions draw men into the Forum, but men of sense come to an entertainment as well to get new friends as to make their old ones merry; indeed, to carry away anything else is sordid and uncivil, but to depart with one friend more than we had is pleasing and commendable. And so, on the contrary, he that doth not aim at this renders the meeting useless and unpleasant to himself, and departs at last, having been a partaker of an entertainment with his belly but not with his mind. For he that makes one at a feast doth not come only to enjoy the meat and drink, but likewise the discourse, mirth, and genteel humor which ends at last in friendship and good-will. The wrestlers, that they may hold fast and lock better, use dust; and so wine mixed with discourse is of extraordinary use to make us hold fast of, and fasten upon, a friend. For wine tempered with discourse carries gentle and kind affections out of the body into the mind; otherwise, it is scattered through the limbs, and serves only to swell and disturb. Thus as a marble, by cooling red hot iron, takes away its softness and makes it hard, fit to be wrought and receive impression; thus discourse at an entertainment doth not permit the men that are engaged to become altogether liquid by the wine, but confines and makes their jocund and obliging tempers very fit to receive an impression from the seal of friendship if dexterously applied.

QUESTION I.

Whether Different Sorts of Food, or One Single Dish Fed Upon at Once, is More Easily Digested.

PHILO, PLUTARCH, MARCION.

The first question of my fourth decade of Table Discourses shall be concerning different sorts of food eaten at one meal. When we came to Hyampolis at the feast called Elaphebolia, Philo the physician gave us a very sumptuous entertainment; and seeing a boy who came with Philinus feeding upon dry bread and calling for nothing else, he cried out, O Hercules, well I see the proverb is verified,

They fought midst stones, but could not take up one,

and presently went out to fetch him some agreeable food. He stayed some time, and at last brought them dried figs and cheese; upon which I said: It is usually seen that those that provide costly and superfluous dainties neglect, or are not well furnished with, useful and necessary things. I protest, said Philo, I did not mind that Philinus designs to breed us a young Sosastrus, who (they say) never all his lifetime drank or ate anything beside milk, although it is probable that it was some change in his constitution that made him use this sort of diet; but our Chiron here, — quite contrary to the old one that bred Achilles from his very birth, — feeding his son with unbloody food, gives people reason to suspect that like a grasshopper he keeps him on dew and air. Indeed, said Philinus, I did not know that we were to meet with a supper of a hundred beasts, such as Aristomenes made for his friends; otherwise I had come with some poor and wholesome food about me, as a specific against such costly and unwholesome entertainments. For I have often heard that simple diet is not only more easily provided, but likewise more easily digested, than such variety. At this Marcion said to Philo: Philinus hath spoiled your whole provision by deterring guests from eating; but, if you desire it, I will be surety for you, that such variety is more easily digested than simple food, so that without fear or distrust they may feed heartily. Philo desired him to do so.

When after supper we begged Philinus to discover what he had to urge against variety of food, he thus began: I am not the author of this opinion, but our friend Philo here is ever now and then telling us, first, that wild beasts, feeding on one sort only and simple diet, are much more healthy than men are; and that those which are kept in pens are much more subject to diseases and crudities, by reason of the prepared variety we usually give them. Secondly, no physician is so daring, so venturous at new experiments, as to give a feverish patient different sorts of food at once. No, simple food, and without sauce, as more easy to be digested, is the only diet they allow. Now food must be wrought on and altered by our natural powers; in dyeing, cloth of the most simple color takes the tincture soonest; the most inodorous oil is soonest by perfumes changed into an essence; and simple diet is soonest changed, and soonest yields to the digesting power. For many and different qualities, having some contrariety, when they meet disagree and corrupt one another; as in a city, a mixed rout are not easily reduced into one body, nor brought to follow the same concerns; for each works according to its own nature, and is very hardly brought to side with another’s quality. Now this is evident in wine; mixed wine inebriates very soon, and drunkenness is much like a crudity rising from undigested wine; and therefore the drinkers hate mixed liquors, and those that do mix them do it privately, as afraid to have their design upon the company discovered. Every change is disturbing and injurious, and therefore musicians are very careful how they strike many strings at once; though the mixture and variety of the notes would be the only harm that would follow. This I dare say, that belief and assent can be sooner procured by disagreeing arguments, than concoction by various and different qualities. But lest I should seem jocose, waiving this, I will return to Philo’s observations again. We have often heard him declare that it is the quality that makes meat hard to be digested; that to mix many things together is hurtful, and begets unnatural qualities; and that every man should take that which by experience he finds most agreeable to his temper.

Now if nothing is by its own nature hard to be digested, but it is the quantity that disturbs and corrupts, I think we have still greater reason to forbear that variety with which Philo’s cook, as it were in opposition to his master’s practice, would draw us on to surfeits and diseases. For by the different sorts of food and new ways of dressing, he still keeps up the unwearied appetite, and leads it from one dish to another, till tasting of everything we take more than is sufficient and enough; as Hypsipyle’s foster-son,

Who, in a garden placed, plucked up the flowers,
One after one, and spent delightful hours;
But still his greedy appetite goes on,
And still he plucked till all the flowers were gone.
(From the “Hypsipyle” of Euripides, Frag. 754.)

But more, methinks, Socrates is here to be remembered, who adviseth us to forbear those junkets which provoke those that are not hungry to eat; as if by this he cautioned us to fly variety of meats. For it is variety that in everything draws us on to use more than bare necessity requires. This is manifest in all sorts of pleasures, either of the eye, ear, or touch; for it still proposeth new provocatives; but in simple pleasures, and such as are confined to one sort, the temptation never carries us beyond nature’s wants. In short, in my opinion, we should more patiently endure to hear a musician praise a disagreeing variety of notes, or a perfumer mixed ointments, than a physician commend the variety of dishes; for certainly such changes and turnings as must necessarily ensue will force us out of the right way of health.

Philinus having ended his discourse, Marcion said: In my opinion, not only those that separate profit from honesty are obnoxious to Socrates’s curse, but those also that separate pleasure from health, as if it were its enemy and opposite, and not its great friend and promoter. Pain we use but seldom and unwillingly, as the most violent instrument. But from all things else, none, though he would willingly, can remove pleasure. It still attends when we eat, sleep, bathe, or anoint, and takes care of and nurses the diseased; dissipating all that is hurtful and disagreeable, by applying that which is proper, pleasing, and natural. For what pain, what want, what poison so quickly and so easily cures a disease as seasonable bathing? A glass of wine, when a man wants it, or a dish of palatable meat, presently frees us from all disturbing particles, and settles nature in its proper state, there being as it were a calm and serenity spread over the troubled humors. But those remedies that are painful do hardly and by little and little only promote the cure, every difficulty pushing on and forcing Nature. And therefore let not Philinus blame us, if we do not make all the sail we can to fly from pleasure, but more diligently endeavor to make pleasure and health, than other philosophers do to make pleasure and honesty, agree. Now, in my opinion, Philinus, you seem to be out in your first argument, where you suppose the beasts use more simple food and are more healthy than men; neither of which is true. The first the goats in Eupolis confute, for they extol their pasture as full of variety and all sorts of herbs, in this manner,

We feed almost on every kind of trees,
Young firs, the ilex, and the oak we crop:
Sweet trefoil fragrant juniper, and yew,
Wild olives, thyme, — all freely yield their store.

These that I have mentioned are very different in taste, smell, and other qualities, and he reckons more sorts which I have omitted. The second Homer skilfully refutes, when he tells us that the plague first began amongst the beasts. Besides, the shortness of their lives proves that they are very subject to diseases; for there is scarce any irrational creature long lived, besides the crow and the chough; and those two every one knows do not confine themselves to simple food, but eat anything. Besides, you take no good rule to judge what is easy and what is hard of digestion from the diet of those that are sick; for labor and exercise, and even to chew our meat well, contribute very much to digestion, neither of which can agree with a man in a fever. Again, that the variety of meats, by reason of the different qualities of the particulars, should disagree and spoil one another, you have no reason to fear. For if Nature takes from dissimilar bodies what is fit and agreeable, the diverse nourishment forces many and sundry qualities into the mass and bulk of the body, applying to every part that which is meet and fit; so that, as Empedocles words it,

The sweet runs to the sweet, the sour combines
With sour, the sharp with sharp, the salt with salt;

and after being mixed it is spread through the mass by the heat, the proper parts are separated and applied to the proper members. Indeed, it is very probable that such bodies as ours, consisting of parts of different natures, should be nourished and built up rather of various than of simple matter. But if by concoction there is an alteration made in the food, this will be more easily performed when there are different sorts of meat, than when there is only one, in the stomach; for similars cannot work upon similars and the very contrariety in the mixture considerably promotes the alteration of the weakened qualities. But if, Philinus, you are against all mixture, do not chide Philo only for the variety of his dishes and sauces, but also for using mixture in his sovereign antidotes, which Erasistratus calls the gods’ hands. Convince him of absurdity and vanity, when he mixes herbs, metals, and animals, and things from sea and land, in one potion; and recommend him to neglect these, and to confine all physic to barley-broth, gourds, and oil mixed with water. But you urge farther, that variety enticeth the appetite that hath no command over itself. That is, good sir, cleanly, wholesome, sweet, palatable, pleasing diet makes us eat and drink more than ordinary. Why then, instead of fine flour, do not we thicken our broth with coarse bran? And instead of asparagus, why do we not dress nettle-tops and thistles; and leaving this fragrant and pleasant wine, drink sour, harsh liquor that gnats have been buzzing about a long while? Because, perhaps you may reply, wholesome feeding doth not consist in a perfect avoiding of all that is pleasing, but in moderating the appetite in that respect, and making it prefer profit before pleasure. But, sir, as a mariner has a thousand ways to avoid a stiff gale of wind, but when it is clear down and a perfect calm, cannot raise it again; thus to correct and restrain our extravagant appetite is no hard matter, but when it grows weak and faint, when it fails as to its proper objects, then to raise it and make it vigorous and active again is, sir, a very difficult and hard task. And therefore variety of viands is as much better than simple food, which is apt to satisfy by being but of one sort, as it is easier to stop Nature when she makes too much speed than to force her on when languishing and faint. Besides, what some say, that fullness is more to be avoided than emptiness, is not true; but, on the contrary, fullness then only hurts when it ends in a surfeit or disease; but emptiness, though it doth no other mischief, is of itself unnatural. And let this suffice as an answer to what you proposed. But you sparing men have forgot, that variety is sweeter and more desired by the appetite, unless too sweet. For, the sight preparing the way, it is soon assimilated to the eager receiving body; but that which is not desirable Nature either throws off again, or keeps it in for mere want. But pray observe this, that I do not plead for variety in tarts, cakes, or custards; — those are vain, insignificant, and superfluous things; — but even Plato allowed variety to those fine citizens of his, setting before them onions, olives, leeks, cheese, and all sorts of meat and fish, and besides these, allowed them some comfits.

QUESTION II.

Why Mushrooms are Thought to Be Produced by Thunder, and Why It is Believed that Men Asleep are Never Thunderstruck.

AGEMACHUS, PLUTARCH, DOROTHEUS.

At a supper in Elis, Agemachus set before us very large mushrooms. And when all admired at them, one with a smile said, These are worthy the late thunder, as it were deriding those who imagine mushrooms are produced by thunder. Some said that thunder did split the earth, using the air as a wedge for that purpose, and that by those chinks those that sought after mushrooms were directed where to find them; and thence it grew a common opinion, that thunder engenders mushrooms, and not only makes them a passage to appear; as if one should imagine that a shower of rain breeds snails, and not rather makes them creep forth and be seen abroad. Agemachus stood up stiffly for the received opinion, and told us, we should not disbelieve it only because it was strange, for there are a thousand other effects of thunder and lightning and a thousand omens deduced from them, whose causes it is very hard, if not impossible, to discover; for this laughed-at, this proverbial mushroom doth not escape the thunder because it is so little, but because it hath some antipathetical qualities that preserve it from blasting; as likewise a fig-tree, the skin of a sea-calf (as they say), and that of the hyena, with which sailors cover the ends of their sails. And husbandmen call thunder-showers nourishing, and think them to be so. Indeed, it is absurd to wonder at these things, when we see the most incredible things imaginable in thunder, as flame rising out of moist vapors, and from soft clouds such astonishing noises. Thus, he continued, I prattle, exhorting you to inquire after the cause; and I shall accept this as your club for these mushrooms.

Then I began: Agemachus himself helps us exceedingly towards this discovery; for nothing at the present seems more probable than that, together with the thunder, oftentimes generative waters fall, which take that quality from the heat mixed with them. For the piercing pure parts of the fire break away in lightning; but the grosser windy part, being wrapped up in cloud, changes it, taking away the coldness and heating the moisture, altering and being altered with it, affects it so that it is made fit to enter the pores of plants, and is easily assimilated to them. Besides, such rain gives those things which it waters a peculiar temperature and difference of juice. Thus dew makes the grass sweeter to the sheep, and the clouds from which a rainbow is reflected make those trees on which they fall fragrant. And our priests, distinguishing it by this, call the wood of those trees Iris-struck, fancying that Iris, or the rainbow, hath rested on them. Now it is probable that when these thunder and lightning showers with a great deal of warmth and spirit descend forcibly into the caverns of the earth, these are rolled around, and knobs and tumors are formed like those produced by heat and noxious humors in our bodies, which we call wens or kernels. For a mushroom is not like a plant, neither is it produced without rain; it hath no root nor sprouts, it depends on nothing, but is a being by itself, having its substance of the earth, a little changed and altered. If this discourse seems frivolous, I assure you that such are most of the effects of thunder and lightning which we see; and upon that account men think them to be immediately directed by Heaven, and not depending on natural causes.

Dorotheus the rhetorician, one of our company, said: You speak right, sir, for not only the vulgar and illiterate, but even some of the philosophers, have been of that opinion. I remember here in this town lightning broke into a house and did a great many strange things. It let the wine out of a vessel, though the earthen vessel remained whole; and falling upon a man asleep, it neither hurt him nor blasted his clothes, but melted certain pieces of silver that he had in his pocket, defaced them quite, and made them run into a lump. Upon this he went to a philosopher, a Pythagorean, that sojourned in the town, and asked the reason; the philosopher directed him to some expiating rites, and advised him to consider seriously with himself and go to prayers. And I have been told, upon a sentinel at Rome, as he stood to guard the temple, burned the latchet of his shoe, and did no other harm; and several silver candlesticks lying in wooden boxes, the silver was melted while the boxes lay untouched. These stories you may believe or not as you please. But that which is most wonderful, and which everybody knows, is this, — the bodies of those that are killed by thunderbolt never putrefy. For many neither burn nor bury such bodies, but let them lie above ground with a fence about them, so that every one may see the they remain uncorrupted, confuted by this Euripides’s Clymene, who says thus of Phaeton,

My best beloved, but now he lies
And putrefies in some dark vale.

And I believe brimstone is called [Greek omitted] (DIVINE), because its smell is like that fiery offensive scent which rises from bodies that are thunderstruck. And I suppose that, because of this scent, dogs and birds will not prey on such carcasses. Thus far have I gone; let him proceed, since he hath been applauded for his discourse of mushrooms, lest the same jest might be put upon us that was upon Androcydes the painter. For when in his landscape of Scylla he painted fish the best and most to the life of anything in the whole draught, he was said to use his appetite more than his art, for he naturally loved fish. So some may say that we philosophize about mushrooms, the cause of whose production is confessedly doubtful, for the pleasure we take in eating them. . . .

And when I put in my suggestion, saying that it was as seasonable to dispute about thunder and lightning amidst our banquets as it would be in a comedy to bring in machines to throw out lightning, the company agreed to omit all other questions relating to the subject, and desired me only to proceed on this head, Why men asleep are never struck with lightning. And I, though I knew I should get no great credit by proposing a cause whose reason was common to other things, said thus: Lightning is wonderfully piercing and subtile, partly because it rises from a very pure substance, and partly because by the swiftness of its motion it purges itself and throws off all gross earthy particles that are mixed with it. Nothing, says Democritus, is blasted with lightning, that cannot resist and stop the motion of the pure flame. Thus the close bodies, as brass, silver, and the like, which stop it, feel its force and are melted, because they resist; whilst rare, thin bodies, and such as are full of pores, are passed through and are not hurted, as clothes or dry wood. It blasts green wood or grass, the moisture within them being seized and kindled by the flame. Now if it is true that men asleep are never killed by lightning, from what we have proposed, and not from anything else, we must endeavor to draw the cause. Now the bodies of those that are awake are stiffer and more apt to resist, all the parts being full of spirits; which as it were in a harp, distending and screwing up the organs of sense, makes the body of the animal firm, close, and compacted. But when men are asleep, the organs are let down, and the body becomes rare, lax, and loose; and the spirits failing, it hath abundance of pores, through which small sounds and smells do flow insensibly. For in that case, there is nothing that can resist and by this resistance receive any sensible impression from any objects that are presented, much less from such as are so subtile and move so swiftly as lightning. Things that are weak Nature shields from harm, fencing them about with some hard, thick covering; but those things that cannot be resisted do less harm to the bodies that yield than to those that oppose their force. Besides, those that are asleep are not startled at the thunder; they have no consternation upon them, which kills a great many that are no otherwise hurt, and we know that thousands die with the very fear of being killed. Even shepherds teach their sheep to run together when it thunders, for whilst they lie scattered they die with fear; and we see thousands fall, which have no marks of any stroke or fire about them, their souls (as it seems), like birds, flying out of their bodies at the fright. For many, as Euripides says,

A clap hath killed, yet ne’er drew drop of blood.

For certainly the hearing is a sense that is soonest and most vigorously wrought upon, and the fear that is caused by an astonishing noise raiseth the greatest commotion and disturbance in the body; from all which men asleep, because insensible, are secure. But those that are awake are oftentimes killed with fear before they are touched; the fear contracts and condenses the body, so that the stroke must be strong, because there is so considerable a resistance.

QUESTION III.

Why Men Usually Invite Many Guests to a Wedding Supper.

SOSSIUS SENECIO, PLUTARCH, THEO.

At my son Autobulus’s marriage, Sossius Senecio from Chaeronea and a great many other noble persons were present at the same feast; which gave occasion to this question (Senecio proposed it), why to a marriage feast more guests are usually invited than to any other. Nay even those law-givers that chiefly opposed luxury and profuseness have particularly confined marriage feasts to a set number. Indeed, in my opinion, he continued, Hecataeus the Abderite, one of the old philosophers, hath said nothing to the purpose in this matter, when he tells us that those that marry wives invite a great many to the entertainment, that many may see and be witnesses that they being born free take to themselves wives of the same condition. For, on the contrary, the comedians reflect on those who revel at their marriages, who make a great ado and are pompous in their feasts, as such who are taking wives with not much confidence and courage. Thus, in Menander, one replies to a bridegroom that bade him beset the house with dishes, . . .

Your words are great, but what’s this to your bride?

But lest I should seem to find fault with those reasons others give, only because I have none of my own to produce, continued he, I will begin by declaring that there is no such evident or public notice given of any feast as there is of one at a marriage. For when we sacrifice to the gods, when we take leave of or receive a friend, a great many of our acquaintance need not know it. But a marriage dinner is proclaimed by the loud sound of the wedding song, by the torches and the music, which as Homer expresseth it,

The women stand before the doors to see and hear.
(Iliad, xviii. 495.)

And therefore when everybody knows it, the persons are ashamed to omit the formality of an invitation, and therefore entertain their friends and kindred, and every one that they are anyway acquainted with.

This being generally approved, Well, said Theo, speaking next, let it be so, for it looks like truth; but let this be added, if you please, that such entertainments are not only friendly, but also kindredly, the persons beginning to have a new relation to another family. But there is something more considerable, and that is this; since by this marriage two families join in one, the man thinks it his duty to be civil and obliging to the woman’s friends, and the woman’s friends think themselves obliged to return the same to him and his; and upon this account the company is doubled. And besides, since most of the little ceremonies belonging to the wedding are performed by women, it is necessary that, where they are entertained, their husbands should be likewise present.

QUESTION IV.

Whether the Sea or and Affords Better Food.

CALLISTRATUS, SYMMACHUS, POLYCRATES.

Aedepsus in Euboea, where the baths are, is a place by nature every way fitted for free and gentle pleasures, and withal so beautified with stately edifices and dining rooms, that one would take it for no other than the common place of repast for all Greece. Here, though the earth and air yield plenty of creatures for the service of men, the sea no less furnisheth the table with variety of dishes, nourishing a store of delicious fish in its deep and clear waters. This place is especially frequented in the spring; for hither at this time of year abundance of people resort, solacing themselves in the mutual enjoyment of all those pleasures the place affords, and at spare hours pass away the time in many useful and edifying discourses. When Callistratus the Sophist lived here, it was a hard matter to dine at any place besides his house; for he was so extremely courteous and obliging, that no man whom he invited to dinner could have the face to say him nay. One of his best humors was to pick up all the pleasant fellows he could meet with, and put them in the same room. Sometimes he did, as Cimon one of the ancients used to do, and satisfactorily treated men of all sorts and fashions. But he always (so to speak) followed Celeus, who was the first man, it is said, that assembled daily a number of honorable persons of distinction, and called the place where they met the Prytaneum.

Several times at these public meetings divers agreeable discourses were raised; and it fell out that once a very splendid treat, adorned with all variety of dainties, gave occasion for inquiries concerning food, whether the land or sea yielded better. Here when a great part of the company were highly commanding the land, as abounding with many choice, nay, an infinite variety of all sorts of creatures, Polycrates calling to Symmachus, said to him: But you, sir, being an animal bred between two seas, and brought up among so many which surround your sacred Nicopolis, will not you stand up for Neptune? Yes, I will, replied Symmachus, and therefore command you to stand by me, who enjoy the most pleasant part of all the Achaean Sea. Well, says Polycrates, the beginning of my discourse shall be grounded upon custom; for as of a great number of poets we usually give one, who far excels the rest, the famous name of poet; so though there be many sorts of dainties, yet custom has so prevailed that the fish alone, or above all the rest, is called [Greek omitted], because it is more excellent than all others. For we do not call those gluttonous and great eaters who love beef as Hercules, who after flesh used to eat green figs; nor those that love figs, as Plato; nor lastly, those that are for grapes, as Arcesilaus; but those who frequent the fish-market, and soonest hear the market-bell. Thus when Demosthenes had told Philocrates that the gold he got by treachery was spent upon whores and fish, he upbraids him as a gluttonous and lascivious fellow. And Ctesiphon said pat enough, when a certain glutton cried aloud in company that he should burst asunder: No, by no means let us be baits for your fish! And what did he mean, do you think, who made this verse,

You capers gnaw, when you may sturgeon eat?

And what, for God’s sake, do those men mean who, inviting one another to sumptuous collations, usually say: To-day we will dine upon the shore? Is it not that they suppose, what is certainly true, that a dinner upon the shore is of all others most delicious? Not by reason of the waves and stones in that place, — for who upon the sea-coast would be content to feed upon a pulse or a caper? — but because their table is furnished with plenty of fresh fish. Add to this, that sea-food is dearer than any other. Wherefore Cato inveighing against the luxury of the city, did not exceed the bounds of truth, when he said that at Rome a fish was sold for more than an ox. For they sell a small pot of fish for as much as a hecatomb of sheep and all the accessories of sacrifice. Besides, as the physician is the best judge of physic, and the musician of songs; so he is able to give the best account of the goodness of meat who is the greatest lover of it. For I will not make Pythagoras and Xenocrates arbitrators in this case; but Antagoras the poet, and Philoxenus the son of Eryxis, and Androcydes the painter, of whom it was reported that, when he drew a landscape of Scylla, he drew fish in a lively manner swimming round her, because he was a great lover of them. So Antigonus the king, surprising Antagoras the poet in the habit of a cook, broiling congers in his tent, said to him: Dost thou think that Homer was dressing congers when he writ Agamemnon’s famous exploits? And he as smartly replied: Do you think that Agamemnon did so many famous exploits when he was inquiring who dressed congers in the camp? These arguments, says Polycrates, I have urged in behalf of fishmongers, drawing them from testimony and custom.

But, says Symmachus, I will go more seriously to work, and more like a logician. For if that may truly be said to be a relish which gives meat the best relish, it will evidently follow, that that is the best sort of relish which gets men the best stomach to their meat. Therefore, as those philosophers who were called Elpistics (from the Greek word signifying hope, which above all others they cried up) averred that there was nothing in the world which concurred more to the preservation of life than hope, without whose gracious influence life would be a burden and altogether intolerable; in the like manner that of all other things may be said to get us a stomach to our meat without which all meat would be unpalatable and nauseous. And among all those things the earth yields, we find no such things as salt, which we can only have from the sea. First of all, without salt, there would be nothing eatable which mixed with flour seasons bread also. Neptune and Ceres had both the same temple. Besides, salt is the most pleasant of all condiments. For those heroes who like athletes used themselves to a spare diet, banishing from their tables all vain and superfluous delicacies, to such a degree that when they encamped by the Hellespont they abstained from fish, yet for all this could not eat flesh without salt; which is a sufficient evidence that salt is the most desirable of all relishes. For as colors need light, so tastes require salt, that they may affect the sense, unless you would have them very nauseous and unpleasant. For, as Heraclitus used to say, a carcass is more abominable than dung. Now all flesh is dead and part of a lifeless carcass; but the virtue of salt, being added to it, like a soul, gives it a pleasing relish and a poignancy. Hence it comes to pass that before meat men use to take sharp things, and such as have much salt in them; for these beguile us into an appetite. And whoever has his stomach sharpened with these sets cheerfully and freshly upon all other sorts of meat. But if he begin with any other kind of food, all on a sudden his stomach grows dull and languid. And therefore salt doth not only make meat but drink palatable. For Homer’s onion, which, he tells us, they were used to eat before they drank, was fitter for seamen and boatmen than kings. Things moderately salt, by being pleasing to the mouth, make all sorts of wine mild and palateable, and water itself of a pleasing taste. Besides, salt creates none of those troubles which an onion does, but digests all other kinds of meat, making them tender and fitter for concoction; so that at the same time it is sauce to the palate and physic to the body. But all other seafood, besides this pleasantness, is also very innocent for though it be fleshly, yet it does not load the stomach as all other flesh does, but is easily concocted and digested. This Zeno will avouch for me, and Crato too, who confine sick persons to a fish diet, as of all others the lightest sort of meat. And it stands with reason, that the sea should produce the most nourishing and wholesome food, seeing it yields us the most refined, the purest and therefore the most agreeable air.

You say right, says Lamprias, but let us think of something else to confirm what you have spoken. I remember my old grandfather was used to say in derision of the Jews, that they abstained from most lawful flesh; but we will say that that is the most lawful meat which comes from the sea. For we can claim no great right over land creatures, which are nourished with the same food, draw the same air, wash in and drink the same water, that we do ourselves; and when they are slaughtered, they make us ashamed of what we are doing, with their hideous cries; and then again, by living amongst us, they arrive at some degree of familiarity and intimacy with us. But sea creatures are altogether strangers to us, and are born and brought up as it were in another world; neither does their voice, look, or any service they have done us plead for their life. For this kind of creatures are of no use at all to us, nor is there any necessity that we should love them. But that place which we inhabit is hell to them, and as soon as ever they enter upon it they die.

QUESTION V.

Whether the Jews Abstained From Swine’s Flesh Because They Worshipped that Creature, or Because They Had an Antipathy Against It.

CALLISTRATUS, POLYCRATES, LAMPRIAS.

After these things were spoken, and some in the company were minded to say something in defence of the contrary opinion, Callistratus interrupted their discourse and said: Sirs, what do you think of that which was spoken against the Jews, that they abstain from the most lawful flesh? Very well said, quoth Polycrates, for that is a thing I very much question, whether it was that the Jews abstained from swine’s flesh because they conferred divine honor upon that creature, or because they had a natural aversion to it. For whatever we find in their own writings seems to be altogether fabulous, except they have some more solid reasons which they have no mind to discover.

Hence it is, says Callistratus, that I am of an opinion that this nation has that creature in some veneration; and though it be granted that the hog is an ugly and filthy creature, yet it is not quite so vile nor naturally stupid as a beetle, griffin, crocodile, or cat, most of which are worshipped as the most sacred things by some priests amongst the Egyptians. But the reason why the hog is had in so much honor and veneration amongst them is, because as the report goes, that creature breaking up the earth with its snout showed the way to tillage, and taught them how to use the ploughshare, which instrument for that very reason, as some say, was called HYNIS from [Greek omitted], A SWINE. Now the Egyptians inhabiting a country situated low and whose soil is naturally soft, have no need of the plough; but after the river Nile hath retired from the grounds it overflowed, they presently let in all their hogs into the fields, and they with their feet and snout break up the ground, and cover the sown seed. Nor ought this to seem strange to anyone, that there are in the world those that abstain from swine’s flesh on such an account as this; when it is evident that in barbarous nations there are other animals had in greater honor and veneration for lesser reasons, if not altogether ridiculous. For the field-mouse only for its blindness was worshipped as a god among the Egyptians, because they were of an opinion that darkness was before light and that the latter had its birth from mice about the fifth generation at the new moon; and moreover that the liver of this creature diminishes in the wane of the moon. But they consecrate the lion to the sun, because the lioness alone, of all clawed four-footed beasts, brings forth her young with their eyesight; for they sleep in a moment, and when they are asleep their eyes sparkle. Besides, they place gaping lions’ heads for the spouts of their fountains, because Nilus overflows the Egyptian fields when the sign is Leo: they give it out that their bird ibis, as soon as hatched, weighs two drachms, which are of the same weight with the heart of a newborn infant; and that its legs being spread with the bill an exact equilateral triangle. And yet who can find fault with the Egyptians for these trifles, when it is left upon record that the Pythagoreans worshipped a white cock, and of sea creatures abstained especially from mullet and urtic. The Magi that descended from Zoroaster adored the land hedgehog above other creatures but had a deadly spite against water-rats, and thought that man was dear in the eyes of the gods who destroyed most of them. But I should think that if the Jews had such an antipathy against a hog, they would kill it as the magicians do mice; when, on the contrary, they are by their religion as much prohibited to kill as to eat it. And perhaps there may be some reason given for this; for as the ass is worshipped by them as the first discoverer of fountains, so perhaps the hog may be had in like veneration, which first taught them to sow and plough. Nay, some say that the Jews also abstain from hares, as abominable and unclean creatures.

They have reason for that, said Lamprias, because a hare is so like an ass which they detest; for in its color, ears, and the sparkling of its eyes, it is so like an ass, that I do not know any little creature that represents a great one so much as a hare doth an ass; except in this likewise imitating the Egyptians, they suppose that there is something of divinity in the swiftness of this creature, as also in its quickness of sense; for the eyes of hares are so unwearied that they sleep with them open. Besides, they seem to excel all other creatures in quickness of hearing; whence it was that the Egyptians painted a hare’s ear amongst their other hieroglyphics, as an emblem of hearing. But the Jews do hate swine’s flesh, because all the barbarians are naturally fearful of a scab and leprosy, which they presume comes by eating such kind of flesh. For we may observe that all pigs under the belly are overspread with a leprosy and scab; which may be supposed to proceed from an ill disposition of body and corruption within, which breaks out through the skin. Besides, swine’s feeding is commonly so nasty and filthy, that it must of necessity cause corruptions and vicious humors; for, setting aside those creatures that are bred from and live upon dung, there is no other creature that takes so much delight to wallow in the mire and in other unclean and stinking places. Hogs’ eyes are said to be so flattened and fixed upon the ground, that they see nothing above them, nor ever look up to the sky, except when turned upon their back they turn their eyes upwards contrary to nature. Therefore this creature, at other times most clamorous’ when laid upon his back, is still, as astonished at the unusual sight of the heavens; while the greatness of the fear he is in (as it is supposed) is the cause of his silence. And if it be lawful to intermix our discourse with fables, it is said that Adonis was slain by a boar. Now Adonis is supposed to be the same with Bacchus; and there are a great many rites in both their sacrifices which confirm this opinion. Others will have Adonis to be Bacchus’s paramour; and Phanocles an amorous love-poet writes thus,

Bacchus on hills the fair Adonis saw,
And ravished him, and reaped a wondrous joy.

QUESTION VI.

What God is Worshipped by the Jews.

SYMMACHUS, LAMPRIAS, MOERAGENES.

Here Symmachus, greatly wondering at what was spoken, says: What, Lamprias, will you permit our tutelar god, called Evius, the inciter of women, famous for the honors he has conferred upon him by madmen, to be inscribed and enrolled in the mysteries of the Jews? Or is there any solid reason that can be given to prove Adonis to be the same with Bacchus? Here Moeragenes interposing, said: Do not be so fierce upon him, for I who am an Athenian answer you, and tell you, in short, that these two are the very same. And no man is able or fit to bring the chief confirmation of this truth, but those amongst us who are initiated and skilled in the triennial [Greek omitted] or chief mysteries of the god. But what no religion forbids to speak of among friends, especially over wine, the gift of Bacchus, I am ready at the command of these gentlemen to disclose.

When all the company requested and earnestly begged it of him; first of all (says he), the time and manner of the greatest and most holy solemnity of the Jews is exactly agreeable to the holy rites of Bacchus; for that which they call the Fast they celebrate in the midst of the vintage, furnishing their tables with all sorts of fruits while they sit under tabernacles made of vines and ivy; and the day which immediately goes before this they call the day of Tabernacles. Within a few days after they celebrate another feast, not darkly but openly, dedicated to Bacchus, for they have a feast amongst them called Kradephoria, from carrying palm-trees, and Thyrsophoria, when they enter into the temple carrying thyrsi. What they do within I know not; but it is very probable that they perform the rites of Bacchus. First they have little trumpets, such as the Grecians used to have at their Bacchanalia to call upon their gods withal. Others go before them playing upon harps, which they call Levites, whether so named from Lusius or Evius, — either word agrees with Bacchus. And I suppose that their Sabbaths have some relation to Bacchus; for even now many call the Bacchi by the name of Sabbi, and they make use of that word at the celebration of Bacchus’s orgies. And this may be discovered out of Demosthenes and Menander. Nor would it be out of place, were any one to say that the name Sabbath was given to this feast from the agitation and excitement [Greek omitted] which the priests of Bacchus display. The Jews themselves witness no less; for when they keep the Sabbath, they invite one another to drink till they are drunk; or if they chance to be hindered by some more weighty business, it is the fashion at least to taste the wine. Some perhaps may surmise that these are mere conjectures. But there are other arguments which will clearly evince the truth of what I assert. The first may be drawn from their High-priest, who on holidays enters their temple with his mitre on, arrayed in a skin of a hind embroidered with gold, wearing buskins, and a coat hanging down to his ankles; besides, he has a great many little bells depending from his garment which make a noise as he walks. So in the nocturnal ceremonies of Bacchus (as the fashion is amongst us), they make use of music, and call the god’s nurses [Greek omitted]. High up on the wall of their temple is a representation of the thyrsus and timbrels, which surely suits no other god than Bacchus. Moreover, they are forbidden the use of honey in their sacrifices, because they suppose that a mixture of honey corrupts and deads the wine. And honey was used for a libation in former days and with it the ancients were wont to make themselves drunk, before the vine was known. And at this day barbarous people who want wine drink metheglin, allaying the sweetness of the honey by bitter roots, much of the taste of our wine. The Greeks offered to their gods these temperate offerings or honey-offerings, as they called them, because that honey was of a nature quite contrary to wine. But this is no inconsiderable argument that Bacchus was worshipped by the Jews, in that, amongst other kinds of punishment, that was most remarkably odious by which malefactors were forbid the use of wine for so long a time as the judge thought fit to prescribe. Those thus punished. . . .

(The remainder of the Fourth Book is wanting.)

QUESTION VII.

Why the Days Which Have the Names of the Planets are Not Arranged According to the Order of the Planets, But the Contrary. There is Added a Discourse on the Position of the Sun.

QUESTION VIII.

Why Signet-Rings are Worn Chiefly on the Fourth Finger.

QUESTION IX.

Whether We Ought to Carry in Our Seal-Rings Effigies of Gods, or Those of Wise Personages.

QUESTION X.

Why Women Do Not Eat the Middle Part of Lettuce.

Book V.

What is your opinion at present, Sossius Senecio, of the pleasures of mind and body, is not evident to me;

Because us two a thousand things divide,
Vast shady hills, and the rough ocean’s tide.
(“Iliad” i. 156)

But formerly, I am sure, you did not lean to nor like their opinion, who will not allow the soul to have any proper agreeable pleasure, which without respect to the body she desires for herself; but define that she lives as a form assistant to the body, is directed by the passions of it, and, as that is affected, is either pleased or grieved, or, like a looking-glass, only receives the images of those sensible impressions made upon the body. This sordid and debasing opinion is especially confuted as follows; for at a feast, the genteel well-bred men after supper fall upon some topic or another as second course, and cheer one another by their pleasant talk. Now the body hath very little or no share in this; which evidently proves that this is a particular banquet for the soul, and that those pleasures are peculiar to her, and different from those which pass to her through the body and are vitiated thereby. Now, as nurses, when they feed children, taste a little of their pap, and have but little pleasure therefrom, but when the infants are satisfied, leave crying, and go to sleep, then being at their own disposal, they take such meat and drink as is agreeable to their own bodies; thus the soul partakes of the pleasures that arise from eating and drinking, like a nurse, being subservient to the appetites of the body, kindly yielding to its necessities and wants, and calming its desires; but when that is satisfied and at rest, then being free from her business and servile employment, she seeks her own proper pleasures, revels on discourse, problems, stories, curious questions, or subtle resolutions. Nay, what shall a man say, when he sees the dull unlearned fellows after supper minding such pleasures as have not the least relation to the body? They tell tales, propose riddles, or set one another a-guessing at names, comprised and hid under such and such numbers. Thus mimics, drolls, Menander and his actors were admitted into banquets, not because they can free the eye from any pain, or raise any tickling motion in the flesh; but because the soul, being naturally philosophical and a lover of instruction, covets its own proper pleasure and satisfaction, when it is free from the trouble of looking after the body.

QUESTION I.

Why We Take Delight in Hearing Those that Represent the Passions of Men Angry or Sorrowful, and Yet Cannot Without Concern Behold Those Who are Really So Affected?

PLUTARCH, BOETHUS.

Of this we discoursed in your company at Athens, when Strato the comedian (for he was a man of great credit) flourished. For being entertained at supper by Boethus the Epicurean, with a great many more of the sect, as it usually happens when learned and inquisitive men meet together, the remembrance of the comedy led us to this inquiry, — Why we are disturbed at the real voices of men, either angry, pensive, or afraid, and yet are delighted to hear others represent them, and imitate their gestures, speeches, and exclamations. Every one in the company gave almost the same reason. For they said, he that only represents excels him that really feels, inasmuch as he doth not suffer the misfortunes; which we knowing are pleased and delighted on that account.

But I, though it was not properly my talent, said that we, being by nature rational and lovers of ingenuity, are delighted with and admire everything that is artificially and ingeniously contrived. For as a bee, naturally loving sweet things, seeks after and flies to anything that has any mixture of honey in it; so man, naturally loving ingenuity and elegancy, is very much inclined to accept and highly approve every word or action that is seasoned with wit and judgement. Thus, if any one offers a child a piece of bread, and at the same time, a little dog or ox made in paste, we shall see the boy run eagerly to the latter; so likewise if anyone, offers silver in the lump, and another a beast or a cup of the same metal, he will rather choose that in which he sees a mixture of art and reason. Upon the same account it is that a child is much in love with riddles, and such fooleries as are difficult and intricate; for whatever is curious and subtle doth attract and allure mankind, as antecedently to all instruction agreeable and proper to it. And therefore, because he that is really affected with grief or anger presents us with nothing but the common bare passion, but in the imitation some dexterity and persuasiveness appears, we are naturally inclined to be disturbed at the former, whilst the latter delights us. It is unpleasant to see a sick man, or one at his last gasp; yet with content we can look upon the picture of Philoctetes, or the statue of Jocasta, in whose face it is commonly said that the workmen mixed silver, so that the brass might depict the face and color of one ready to faint and expire. And this, said I, the Cyrenaics may use as a strong argument against you Epicureans, that all the sense of pleasure which arises from the working of any object on the ear or eye is not in those organs, but in the intellect itself. Thus the continual cackling of a hen or cawing of a crow is very ungrateful and disturbing; yet he that imitates those noises well pleases the hearers. Thus to behold a consumptive man is no delightful spectacle; yet with pleasure we can view the pictures and statues of such persons, because the very imitating hath something in it very agreeable to the mind, which allures and captivates its faculties. For upon what other account, for God’s sake, from what external impression upon our organs, should men be moved to admire Parmeno’s sow so much as to pass it into a proverb? Yet it is reported, that Parmeno being very famous for imitating the grunting of a pig, some endeavoured to rival and outdo him. And when the hearers, being prejudiced, cried out, Very well indeed, but nothing comparable to Parmeno’s sow; one took a pig under his arm and came upon the stage. And when, though they heard the very pig, they still continued, This is nothing comparable to Parmeno’s sow; he threw his pig amongst them, to show that they judged according to opinion and not truth. And hence it is very evident, that like motions of the sense do not always raise like affections in the mind, when there is not an opinion that the thing done was not neatly and ingeniously performed.

QUESTION II.

That the Prize for Poets at the Games Was Ancient.

At the solemnity of the Pythian names, there was a consult about taking away all such sports as had lately crept in and were not of ancient institution. For after they had taken in the tragedy in addition to the three ancient, which were as old as the solemnity itself, the Pythian piper, the harper, and the singer to the harp, as if a large gate were opened, they could not keep out an infinite crowd of plays and musical entertainments of all sorts that rushed in after him. Which indeed made no unpleasant variety, and increased the company, but yet impaired the gravity and neatness of the solemnity. Besides it must create a great deal of trouble to the umpires, and considerable dissatisfaction to very many, since but few could obtain the prize. It was chiefly agreed upon, that the orators and poets should be removed; and this determination did not proceed from any hatred to learning, but forasmuch as such contenders are the most noted and worthiest men of all, therefore they reverence them, and were troubled that, when they must judge every one very deserving, they could not bestow the prize equally upon all. I, being present at this consult, dissuaded those who were for removing things from their present settled order, and who thought this variety as unsuitable to the solemnity as many strings and many notes to an instrument. And when at supper, Petraeus the president and director of the sports entertaining us, the same subject was discoursed on, I defended music, and maintained that poetry was no upstart intruder, but that it was time out of mind admitted into the sacred games, and crowns were given to the best performer. Some straight imagined that I intended to produce some old musty stories, like the funeral solemnities of Oeolycus the Thessalian or of Amphidamas the Chalcidean, in which they say Homer and Hesiod contended for the prize. But passing by these instances as the common theme of every grammarian, as likewise their criticisms who, in the description of Patroclus’s obsequies in Homer, read [Greek omitted] ORATORS, and not [Greek omitted], DARTERS, (“Iliad,” xxiii, 886.) as if Achilles had proposed a prize for the best speaker, — omitting all these, I said that Acastus at his father Pelias’s funeral set a prize for contending poets, and Sibylla won it. At this, a great many demanding some authority for this unlikely and incredible relation, I happily recollecting myself produced Acesander, who in his description of Africa hath this relation; but I must confess this is no common book. But Polemo the Athenian’s “Commentary of the Treasures of the City Delphi” I suppose most of you have diligently perused, he being a very learned man in the Greek Antiquities. In him you shall find that in the Sicyonian treasure there was a golden book dedicated to the god, with this inscription: Aristomache, the poetess of Erythraea, dedicated this after she had got the prize at the Isthmian games. Nor is there any reason, I continued, why we should so admire and reverence the Olympic games, as if, like Fate, they were unalterable, and never admitted any change since the first institution. For the Pythian, it is true, hath had three or four musical prizes added; but all the exercises of the body were for the most part the same from the beginning. But in the 0 lympian all beside racing are late additions. They instituted some, and abolished them again; such were the races of mules, either rode or in a chariot as likewise the crown appointed for boys that were victor’s in the five contests. And, in short, a thousand things in those games are mere novelties. At Pisa they had a single combat, where he that yielded or was overcome was killed upon the place. But pray for the future require no author for my story, lest I may appear ridiculous if amidst my cups I should forget the name.

QUESTION III.

Why Was the Pine Counted Sacred to Neptune and Bacchus? And Why at First the Conqueror in the Isthmian Games Was Crowned With a Garland of Pine, Afterwards with Parsley, and Now Again with Pine.

LUCANIUS, PRAXITELES.

This question was started, why the Isthmian garland was made of pine. We were then at supper in Corinth, in the time of the Isthmian games, with Lucanius the chief priest. Praxiteles the commentator brought this fable for a reason; it is said that the body of Melicertes was found fixed to a pine-tree by the sea; and not far from Megara, there is a place called the Race of a Fair Lady, through which the Megarians say that Ino, with her son Melicertes in her arms, ran to the sea. And when many put forth the common opinion, that the pine-tree garland peculiarly belongs to Neptune, Lucanius added that it is sacred to Bacchus too, but yet, for all that, it might also be appropriated to the honor of Melicertes; this started the question, why the ancients dedicated the pine to Neptune and Bacchus. As for my part, it did not seem incongruous to me, for both the gods seem to preside over the moist and generative principle; and almost all the Greeks sacrifice to Neptune the nourisher of plants, and to Bacchus the preserver of trees. Besides, it may be said that the pine peculiarly agrees to Neptune, not, as Apollodorus thinks, because it grows by the seaside, or because it loves a bleak place (for some give this reason), but because it is used in building ships; for it together with the like trees, as fir and cypress, affords the best and the lightest timber, and likewise pitch and rosin, without which the compacted planks would be altogether unserviceable at sea. To Bacchus they dedicate the pine, because it seasons wine, for among the pines they say the sweetest and most delicious grapes grow. The cause of this Theophrastus thinks to be the heat of the soil; for pines grow most in chalky grounds. Now chalk is hot, and therefore must very much conduce to the concoction of the wine; as a chalky spring affords the lightest and sweetest water; and if chalk is mixed with corn, by its heat it makes the grains swell, and considerably increases the heap. Besides, it is probable that the vine itself is bettered by the pine, for that contains several things which are good to preserve wine. All cover the insides of wine casks with rosin, and many mix rosin with wine, as the Euboeans in Greece, and in Italy those that live about the river Po. From the parts of Gaul about Vienna there is a sort of pitched wine brought, which the Romans value very much; for such things mixed with it do not only give it a good flavor, but make the wine generous, taking away by their gentle heat all the crude, watery, and undigested particles. When I had said thus much, a rhetorician in the company, a man well read in all sorts of polite learning, cried out: Good Gods! was it not but the other day that the Isthmian garland began to be made of pine? And was not the crown anciently of twined parsley? I am sure in a certain comedy a covetous man is brought in speaking thus: —

The Isthmian garland I will sell as cheap
As common wreaths of parsley may be sold.

And Timaeus the historian says that, when the Corinthians were marching to fight the Carthaginians in the defence of Sicily, some persons carrying parsley met them, and when several looked upon this as a bad omen, — because parsley is accounted unlucky, and those that are dangerously sick we usually say have need of parsley, — Timoleon encouraged them by putting them in mind of the Isthmian parsley garland with which the Corinthians used to crown the conquerors. And besides, the admiral-ship of Antigonus’s navy, having by chance some parsley growing on its poop, was called Isthmia. Besides, a certain obscure epigram upon an earthen vessel stopped with parsley intimates the same thing. It runs thus: —

The Grecian earth, now hardened by the flame,
Holds in its hollow belly Bacchus blood;
And hath its mouth with Isthmian branches stopped.

Sure, he continued, they never read these authors, who cry up the pine as anciently wreathed in the Isthmian garlands, and would not have it some upstart intruder. The young men yielded presently to him, as being a man of various reading and very learned.

But Lucanius, with a smile looking upon me, cried out: Good God! here’s a deal of learning. But others have taken advantage of our ignorance and unacquaintedness with such matters, and, on the contrary, persuaded us that the pine was the first garland, and that afterwards in honor of Hercules the parsley was received from the Nemean games, which in a little time prevailing, thrust out the pine, as if it were its right to be the wreath; but a little while after the pine recovered its ancient honor, and now flourishes in its glory. I was satisfied, and upon consideration found that I had run across a great many authorities for it. Thus Euphorion writes of Melicertes,

They mourned the youth, and him on pine boughs laid
Of which the Isthmian victors’ crowns are made.
Fate had not yet seized beauteous Mene’s son
By smooth Asopus; since whose fall the crown
Of parsley wreathed did grace the victor’s brow.

And Callimachus is plainer and more express, when he makes Hercules speak thus of parsley,

This at Isthmian sports
To Neptune’s glory now shall be the crown;
The pine shall be disused, which heretofore
In Corinth’s fields successful victors wore.

And besides, if I am not mistaken, in Procles’s history of the Isthmian games I met with this passage; at first a pine garland crowned the conqueror, but when this game began to be reckoned amongst the sacred, then from the Nemean solemnity the parsley was received. And this Procles was one of Xenocrates’s fellow-students at the Academy.

QUESTION IV.

Concerning that Expression in Homer, [Greek Omitted] (“Iliad,” ix. 203.)

NICERATUS, SOSICLES, ANTIPATER, PLUTARCH.

Some at the table were of opinion that Achilles talked nonsense when he bade Patroclus “mix the wine stronger,” adding this reason,

For now I entertain my dearest friends.

But Niceratus a Macedonian, my particular acquaintance, maintained that [Greek omitted] did not signify pure but hot wine; as if it were derived from [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] (LIFE-GIVING and BOILING), and it were requisite at the coming of his friends to temper a fresh bowl, as every one of us in his offering at the altar pours out fresh wine. But Sosicles the poet, remembering a saying of Empedocles, that in the great universal change those things which before were [Greek omitted], UNMIXED, should then be [Greek omitted], affirmed that [Greek omitted] there signified [Greek omitted], WELL-TEMPERED, and that Achilles might with a great deal of reason bid Patroclus provide well-tempered wine for the entertainment of his friends; and it was absurd (he said) to use [Greek omitted] for [Greek omitted] any more than [Greek omitted] for [Greek omitted], or [Greek omitted] for [Greek omitted], for the comparatives are very properly put for the positives. My friend Antipater said that years were anciently called [Greek omitted], and that the particle [Greek omitted] in composition signified greatness; and therefore old wine, that had been kept for many years, was called by Achilles [Greek omitted].

I put them in mind that some imagine that [Greek omitted], hot, is signified by [Greek omitted], and that hotter means really faster, as when we command servants to move themselves more hotly or in hotter haste. But I must confess, your dispute is frivolous, since it is raised upon this supposition that if [Greek omitted], signifies more pure wine, Achilles’s command would be absurd, as Zoilus of Amphipolis imagined. For first he did not consider that Achilles saw Phoenix and Ulysses to be old men, who are not pleased with diluted wine, and upon that account forbade any mixture. Besides, he having been Chiron’s scholar, and from him having learned the rules of diet, he considered that weaker and more diluted liquors were fittest for those bodies that lay at ease, and were not employed in their customary exercise or labor. Thus with the other provender he gave his horses smallage, and this upon very good reason; for horses that lie still grow sore in their feet, and smallage is the best remedy in the world against that. And you will not find smallage or anything of the same nature given to any other horses in the whole “Iliad.” Thus Achilles, being experienced in physic, provided suitable provender for his horses, and used the lightest diet himself, as the fittest whilst he lay at ease. But those that had been wearied all day in fight he did not think convenient to treat like those that had lain at ease, but commanded more pure and stronger wine to be prepared. Besides, Achilles doth not appear to be naturally addicted to drinking, but he was of a haughty, inexorable temper.

No pleasant humor, no, soft mind he bore,
But was all fire and rage.
(“Iliad,” xx. 467.)

And in another place very plainly Homer says, that

Many a sleepless night he knew.
(“Iliad,” ix. 325.)

Now little sleep cannot content those that drink strong liquors; and in his railing at Agamemnon, the first ill name he gives him is drunkard, proposing his great drinking as the chiefest of his faults. And for these reasons it is likely that, when they came, he thought his usual mixture too weak and not convenient for them.

QUESTION V.

Concerning Those that Invite Many to a Supper.

PLUTARCH, ONESICRATES, LAMPRIAS THE ELDER.

At my return from Alexandria all my friends by turns treated me, inviting all such too as were any way acquainted, so that our meetings were usually tumultuous and suddenly dissolved; which disorders gave occasion to discourses concerning the inconveniences that attend such crowded entertainments. But when Onesicrates the physician in his turn invited only the most familiar acquaintance, and men of the most agreeable temper, I thought that what Plato says concerning the increase of cities might be applied to entertainments. For there is a certain number which an entertainment may receive, and still be an entertainment; but if it exceeds that, so that by reason of the number there cannot be a mutual conversation amongst all, if they cannot know one another nor partake of the same jollity, it ceaseth to be such. For we should not want messengers there, as in a camp, or boatswains, as in a galley; but we ourselves should immediately converse with one another. As in a dance, so in an entertainment, the last man should be placed within hearing of the first.

As I was speaking, my grandfather Lamprias cried out: Then it seems there is need of temperance not only in our feasts, but also in our invitations. For methinks there is even an excess in kindness, when we pass by none of our friends, but draw them all in, as to see a sight or hear a play. And I think, it is not so great a disgrace for the entertainer not to have bread or wine enough for his, guests, as not to have room enough, with which he ought always to be provided, not only for invited guests, strangers and chance visitants. For suppose he hath not wine and bread enough, it may be imputed either to the carelessness or dishonesty of his servants; but the want of room must be imputed to the imprudence of the inviter. Hesiod is very much admired for beginning thus,

A vast chaos first was made.
(Hesiod, “Theogony,” 116.)

For it was necessary that there should be first a place and room provided for the beings that were afterward to be produced; and not as was seen yesterday at my son’s entertainment, according to Anaxagoras’s saying,

All lay jumbled together.

But suppose a man hath room and provision enough, yet a large company itself is to be avoided for its own sake, as hindering all familiarity and conversation; and it is more tolerable to let the company have no wine, than to exclude all converse from a feast. And therefore Theophrastus jocularly called the barbers’ shops feasts without wine; because those that sit there usually prattle and discourse. But those that invite a crowd at once deprive all of free communication of discourse, or rather make them divide into cabals, so that two or three privately talk together, and neither know nor look on those that sit, as it were, half a mile distant.

Some took this way to valiant Ajax’s tent,
And some the other to Achilles’ went.
(“Iliad,” xi. 7.)

And therefore some rich men are foolishly profuse, who build rooms big enough for thirty tables or more at once; for such a preparation certainly is for unsociable and unfriendly entertainments, and such as are fit for a panegyriarch rather than a symposiarch to preside over. But this may be pardoned in those; for wealth would not he wealth, it would be really blind and imprisoned, unless it had witnesses, as tragedies would be devoid of spectators. Let us entertain few and often, and make that a remedy against having a crowd at once. For those that invite but seldom are forced to have all their friends, and all that upon any account they are acquainted with together; but those that invite frequently, and but three or four, render their entertainments like little barks, light and nimble. Besides, the very reason why we ask friends teaches us to select some out of the number. For as when we are in want we do not call all together, but only those that can best afford, help in that particular case, — when we would be advised, the wiser part; and when we are to have a trial, the best pleaders; and when we are to go a journey, those that can live pleasantly and are at leisure, — thus to our entertainments we should only call those that are at the present agreeable. Agreeable, for instance, to a prince’s entertainment will be the magistrates, if they are his friends, or chiefest of the city; to marriage or birthday feasts, all their kindred, and such as are under the protection of the same Jupiter the guardian of consanguinity; and to such feasts and merry-makings as this those are to be invited whose tempers are most suitable to the occasion. When we offer sacrifice to one god, we do not worship all the others that belong to the same temple and altar at the same time; but suppose we have three bowls, out of the first we pour oblations to some, out of the second to others and out of the third to the rest, and none of the gods take distaste. And in this a company of friends may be likened to the company of gods; none takes distaste at the order of the invitation, if it be prudently managed and every one allowed a turn.

QUESTION VI.

What is the Reason that the Same Room Which at the Beginning of a Supper Seems Too Narrow Appears Wide Enough Afterwards.

After this it was presently asked, why the room which at the beginning of supper seems too narrow for the guest is afterwards wide enough; when the contrary is most likely, after they are filled with the supper. Some said the posture of our sitting was the cause; for they sit when they eat, with their full breadth to the table, that they may command it with their right hand; but after they have supped, they sit more sideways, and make an acute figure with their bodies, and do not touch the place according to the superficies, if I may so say, but the line. Now as cockal bones do not take up as much room when they fall upon one end as when they fall flat, so every one of us at the beginning sitting broadwise, and with a full face to the table, afterwards changes the figure, and turns his depth, not his breadth, to the board. Some attribute it to the beds whereon we sat, for those when pressed stretch; as strait shoes after a little wearing have their pores widened, and grow fit for — sometimes too big for — the foot. An old man in the company merrily said, that the same feast had two very different presidents and directors; in the beginning, Hunger, that is not in the least skilled in ordering and disposing, but afterward Bacchus, whom all acknowledge to be the best orderer of an army in the world. As therefore Epaminondas, when the unskilful captains had led their forces into narrow disadvantageous straits, relieved the phalanx that was fallen foul on itself and all in disorder, and brought it into good rank and file again; thus we in the beginning, being like greedy hounds confused and disordered by hunger, the god (hence named the looser and the dancesetter) settles us in a friendly and agreeable order.

QUESTION VII.

Concerning Those that are Said to Bewitch.

METRIUS FLORUS, PLUTARCH, SOCLARUS, PATROCLES, CAIUS.

A discourse happening at supper concerning those that are said to bewitch or have a bewitching eye, most of the company looked upon it as a whim, and laughed at it. But Metrius Florus, who then gave us a supper, said that the strange events wonderfully confirmed the report; and because we cannot give a reason for the thing, therefore to disbelieve the relation was absurd, since there are a thousand things which evidently are, the reasons of which we cannot readily assign. And, in short, he that requires everything should be probable destroys all wonder and admiration; and where the cause is not obvious, there we begin to doubt, that is, to philosophize. So that they who disbelieve all wonderful relations do in some measure take away all philosophy. The cause why anything is so, reason must find out; but that a thing is so, testimony is a sufficient evidence; and we have a thousand instances of this sort attested. We know that some men by looking upon young children hurt them very much, their weak and soft temperature being wrought upon and perverted, whilst those that are strong and firm are not so liable to be wrought upon. And Phylarchus tells us that the Thibians, the old inhabitants about Pontus, were destructive not only to little children, but to some also of riper years; for those upon whom they looked or breathed, or to whom they spake, would languish and grow sick. And this, likely, those of other countries perceived who bought slaves there. But perhaps this is not so much to be wondered at, for in touching and handling there is some apparent principle and cause of the effect. And as when you mix other birds’ wings with the eagles’, the plumes waste and suddenly consume; so there is no reason to the contrary, but that one man’s touch may be good and advantageous, and another’s hurtful and destructive. But that some, by being barely looked upon, are extremely prejudiced is certain; though the stories are disbelieved, because the reason is hard to be given.

True, said I, but methinks there is some small track to the cause of this effect, if you come to the effluvia of bodies. For smell, voice, breath, and the like, are effluvia from animal bodies, and material parts that move the senses, which are wrought upon by their impulse. Now it is very likely that such effluvia must continually part from animals, by reason of their heat and motion; for by that the spirits are agitated, and the body, being struck by those, must continually send forth effluvia. And it is probable that these pass chiefly through the eye. For the sight, being very vigorous and active, together with the spirit upon which it depends, sends forth a strange fiery power; so that by it men act and suffer very much, and are always proportionably pleased or displeased, according as the visible objects are agreeable or not. Love, that greatest and most violent passion of the soul, takes its beginning from the eye; so that a lover, when he looks upon the fair, flows out as it were, and seems to mix with her. And therefore why should any one, that believes men can be affected and prejudiced by the sight, imagine that they cannot act and hurt is well? For the mutual looks of mature beauties, and that which comes from the eye, whether light or a stream of spirits, melt and dissolve the lovers with a pleasing pain, which they call the bittersweet of love. For neither by touching or hearing the voice of their beloved are they so much wounded and wrought upon, as by looking and being looked upon again. There is such a communication, such a flame raised by one glance, that those must be altogether unacquainted with love that wonder at the Median naphtha, that takes fire at a distance from the flame. For the glances of a fair one, though at a great distance, quickly kindle a fire in the lover’s breast. Besides every body knows the remedy for the jaundice; if they look upon the bird called charadrios they are cured. For that animal seems to be of that temperature and nature as to receive and draw away the disease, that like a stream flows out through the eyes; so that the charadrios will not look on one that hath the jaundice; he cannot endure it, but turns away his head and shuts his eyes, not envying (as some imagine) the cure he performs, but being really hurt by the effluvia of the patient. And of all diseases, soreness of the eyes is the most infectious; so strong and vigorous is the sight, and so easily does it cause infirmities in another.

Very right, said Patrocles, and you reason well as to changes wrought upon the body; but as to the soul, which in some measure exercises the power of witchcraft, how can this cause any disturbance by the eye? Sir, I replied, do not you consider that the soul, when affected, works upon the body? Ideas of love excite lust, and rage often blinds dogs as they fight with wild beasts. Sorrow, covetousness, or jealousy makes us change color, and destroys the habit of the body; and envy more than any passion, when fixed in the soul, fills the body full of ill humors, and makes it pale and ugly; which deformities good painters in their pictures of envy endeavor to represent. Now, when men thus perverted by envy fix their eyes upon another, and these, being nearest to the soul, easily draw the venom from it, and send out as it were poisoned darts, it is no wonder, in my mind, if he that is looked upon is hurt. Thus the biting of a dog when mad is most dangerous; and then the seed of a man is most prolific, when he embraces one that he loves; and in general the affections of the mind strengthen and invigorate the powers of the body. And therefore people imagine that those amulets that are preservative against witchcraft are likewise good and efficacious against envy; the sight by the strangeness of the spectacle being diverted, so that it cannot make so strong an impression upon the patient. This, Florus, is what I can say; and pray sir, accept it as my club for this entertainment.

Well, said Soclarus, but let us try whether the money be all good or no; for, in my mind some of it seems brass. But if we admit the general report about these matters to be true, you know very well that it is commonly supposed that some have friends, acquaintance, and even fathers, that have such evil eyes; so that the mothers will not show their children to them, nor for a long time suffer them to be looked upon by such; and how can the effects wrought by these proceed from envy? But what, for God’s sake, wilt thou say to those that are reported to bewitch themselves? — for I am sure you have heard of such, or at least read these lines: —

Curls once on Eutel’s head in order stood;
But when he viewed his figure in a flood,
He overlooked himself, and now they fall . . .

For they say that this Eutelidas, appearing very delicate and beauteous to himself, was affected with that sight and grew sick upon it, and lost his beauty and his health. Now, pray sir, what reason can you find for these wonderful effects?

At any other time, I replied, I question not but I shall give you full satisfaction. But now, sir, after such a large pot as you have seen me take, I boldly affirm, that all passions which have been fixed in the soul a long time raise ill humors in the body, which by continuance growing strong enough to be, as it were, a new nature, being excited by any intervening accident, force men, though unwilling, to their accustomed passions. Consider the timorous, they are afraid even of those things that preserve them. Consider the pettish, they are angry with their best and dearest friends. Consider the amorous and lascivious, in the height of their fury they dare violate a Vestal. For custom is very powerful to draw the temper of the body to anything that is suitable to it; and he that is apt to fall will stumble at everything that lies in his way. So it is no wonder that those that have raised in themselves an envious and bewitching habit, if according to the peculiarity of their passion they are carried on to suitable effects; for when they are once moved, they do that which the nature of the thing, not which their will, leads them to. For as a sphere must necessarily move spherically, and a cylinder cylindrically, according to the difference of their figures; thus his disposition makes an envious man move enviously to all things; and it is likely they should chiefly hurt their most familiar acquaintance and best beloved. And that fine fellow Eutelidas you mentioned, and the rest that are said to overlook themselves, may be easily and upon good rational grounds accounted for; for, according to Hippocrates, a good habit of body, when at height, is easily perverted, and bodies come to their full maturity do not stand at a stay there, but fall and waste down to the contrary extreme. And therefore when they are in very good plight, and see themselves look much better than they expected, they gaze and wonder; but then their body being nigh to change, and their habit declining into a worse condition, they overlook themselves. And this is done when the effluvia are stopped and reflected by the water rather than by any other reflecting body; for this exhales upon them whilst they look upon it, so that the very same particles which would hurt others must hurt themselves. And this perchance often happens to young children, and the cause of their diseases is falsely attributed to those that look upon them.

When I had done, Caius, Florus’s son-inlaw, said: Then it seems you make no more reckoning or account of Democritus’s images, than of those of Aegium or Megara; for he delivers that the envious send out images which are not altogether void of sense or force, but full of the disturbing and poisonous qualities of those from whom they come. Now these being mixed with such qualities, and remaining with and abiding in those persons that injure them both in mind and body; for this, I think, is the meaning of that philosopher, a man in his opinion and expressions admirable and divine. Very true, said I, and I wonder that you did not observe that I took nothing from those effluvia and images but life and will; lest you should imagine that, now it is almost midnight, I brought in spectres and wise and understanding images to terrify and fright you; but in the morning, if you please, we will talk of those things.

QUESTION VIII.

Why Homer Calls the Apple-Tree [Greek Omitted], And Empedocles Calls Apples [GREEK OMITTED].

PLUTARCH, TRYPHO, CERTAIN GRAMMARIANS, LAMPRIAS THE ELDER.

As we were at supper in Chaeronea, and had all sorts of fruit at the table, one of the company chanced to speak these verses,

The fig-trees sweet, the apple-trees that bear
Fair fruit, and olives green through all the year.
(“Odyssey,” vii. 115.)

Upon this there arose a question, why the poet calls apple-trees particularly [Greek omitted], BEARING FAIR FRUIT. Trypho the physician said that this epithet was given comparatively in respect of the tree, because, it being small and no goodly tree to look upon, bears fair and large fruit. Somebody else said, that the particular excellencies scattered amongst all other fruits are united in this alone. As to the touch, it is smooth and polished, so that it makes the hand that toucheth it odorous without defiling it; it is sweet to the taste, and to the smell and sight very pleasing; and therefore there is reason that it should be duly praised, as being that which congregates and allures all the senses together.

This discourse pleased us indifferently well. But whereas Empedocles has thus written,

Why pomegranates so late do thrive,
And apples give a lovely show [Greek omitted];

I guess the epithet to be given to pomegranates, because that at the end of autumn, and when the heats begin to decrease, they ripen the fruit; for the sun will not suffer the weak and thin moisture to thicken into a consistence until the air begins to wax colder; therefore, says Theophrastus, this only tree ripens its fruit best and soonest in the shade. But in what sense the philosopher gives the epithet [Greek omitted], to apples, I much question, since it is not his custom to try to adorn his verses with varieties of epithets, as with gay and florid colors. But in every verse he gives some description of the substance and virtue of the subject which he treats; as when he calls the body encircling the soul the mortal-surrounding earth; as also when he calls the air cloud-gathering, and the liver much blooded.

When now I had said these things myself, certain grammarians affirmed, that those apples were called [Greek omitted] by reason of their vigor and florid manner of growing; for to blossom and flourish after an extraordinary manner is by the poets expressed by the word [Greek omitted]. In this sense, Antimachus calls the city of Cadmeans flourishing with fruit; and Aratus, speaking of the dog-star Sirius, says that he

To some gave strength, but others did ruin,
Their bloom;

calling the greenness of the trees and the blossoming of the fruit by the name of [Greek omitted]. Nay, there are some of the Greeks also who sacrifice to Bacchus surnamed [Greek omitted]. And therefore, seeing the verdure and floridness chiefly recommend this fruit, philosophers call it [Greek omitted]. But Lamprias our grandfather used to say that the word [Greek omitted] did not only denote excess and vehemency, but external and supernal; thus we call the upper frame of a door [Greek omitted], and the upper portion of the house [Greek omitted]; and the poet calls the outward parts of the victim the upper-flesh, as he calls the entrails the inner-flesh. Let us see therefore, says he, whether Empedocles did not make use of this epithet in this sense, seeing that other fruits are encompassed with an outward rind and with certain coatings and membranes, but the only cortex rind that the apple has is a glutinous and smooth tunic (or core) containing the seed, so that the part which can be eaten, and lies without, was properly called [Greek omitted], that IS OVER or OUTSIDE OF THE HUSK.

QUESTION IX.

What is the Reason that the Fig-Tree, Being Itself of a Very Sharp and Bitter Taste, Bears So Sweet Fruit?

LAMPRIAS THE ELDER, and OTHERS.

This discourse ended, the next question was about fig-trees, how so luscious and sweet fruit should come from so bitter a tree. For the leaf from its roughness is called [Greek omitted]. The wood of it is full of sap, and as it burns sends forth a very biting smoke; and the ashes of it thoroughly burnt are so acrimonious, that they make a lye extremely detersive. And, which is very strange, all other trees that bud and bear fruit put forth blossoms too; but the fig-tree never blossoms. And if (as some say) it is never thunderstruck, that likewise may be attributed to the sharp juices and bad temper of the stock; for such things are as secure from thunder as the skin of a sea calf or hyena. Then said the old man: It is no wonder that when all the sweetness is separated and employed in making the fruit, that which is left should be bitter and unsavory. For as the liver, all the gall being gathered in its proper place, is itself very sweet; so the fig-tree having parted with its oil and sweet particles to the fruit, reserves no portion for itself. For that this tree hath some good juice, I gather from what they say of rue, which growing under a fig-tree is sweeter than usual, and hath a sweeter and more palatable juice, as if it drew some sweet particles from the tree which mollified its offensive and corroding qualities; unless perhaps, on the contrary, the fig-tree robbing it of its nourishment draws likewise some of its sharpness and bitterness away.

QUESTION X.

What are Those that are Said to Be [Greek Omitted], And Why Homer Calls Salt Divine?

FLORUS, APOLLOPHANES, PLUTARCH, PHILINUS.

Florus, when we were entertained at his house, put this question, What are those in the proverb who are said to be about the salt and cummin? Apollophanes the grammarian presently satisfied him, saying, by that proverb were meant intimate acquaintance, who could sup together on salt and cummin. Thence we proceeded to inquire how salt should come to be so much honored as it is; for Homer plainly says,

And after that he strewed his salt divine
(“Iliad,” ix. 214.)

and Plato delivers that by man’s laws salt is to be accounted most sacred. And this difficulty was increased by the customs of the Egyptian priests, who professing chastity eat no salt, no, not so much as in their bread. For if it be divine and holy, why should they avoid it?

Florus bade us not mind the Egyptians, but speak according to the Grecian custom on the present subject. But I replied: The Egyptians are not contrary to the Greeks in this matter; for the profession of purity and chastity forbids getting children, laughter, wine, and many other very commendable and lawful things; and perhaps these priests avoid salt, as being, according to some men’s opinions, by its heat provocative and apt to raise lust. Or they refuse it as the most pleasant of all sauces, for indeed salt may be called the sauce of all sauces; and therefore some call salt [Greek omitted]; because it makes food, which is necessary for life, to be relishing and pleasant.

What then, said Florus, shall we say that salt is termed divine for that reason? Indeed that is very considerable, for men for the most part deify those common things that are exceeding useful to their necessities and wants, as water, light, the seasons of the year; and the earth they do not only think to be divine, but a very god. Now salt is as useful as either of these, protecting in a way the food as it comes into the body, and making it palatable and agreeable to the appetite. But consider farther, whether its power of preserving dead bodies from rotting a long time be not a divine property, and opposite to death; since it preserves part, and will not suffer that which is mortal wholly to be destroyed. But as the soul, which is our diviner part, connects the limbs of animals, and keeps the composure from dissolution; thus salt applied to dead bodies, and imitating the work of the soul, stops those parts that were falling to corruption, binds and confines them, and so makes them keep their union and agreement with one another. And therefore some of the Stoics say, that swine’s flesh then deserves the name of a body, when the soul like salt spreads through it and keeps the parts from dissolution. Besides, you know that we account lightning to be sacred and divine, because the bodies that are thunderstruck do not rot for a long time; what wonder is it then, that the ancients called salt as well as lightning divine, since it hath the same property and power?

I making no reply, Philinus subjoined: Do you not think that that which is generative is to be esteemed divine, seeing God is the principle of all things? And I assenting, he continued: Salt, in the opinion of some men, for instance the Egyptians you mentioned, is very operative that way; and those that breed dogs, when they find their bitches not apt to be hot, give them salt and seasoned flesh, to excite and arouse their sleeping lechery and vigor. Besides, the ships that carry salt breed abundance of mice; the females, as some imagine, conceiving without the help of the males, only by licking the salt. But it is most probable that the salt raiseth an itching in animals, and so makes them salacious and eager to couple. And perhaps for the same reason they call a surprising and bewitching beauty, such as is apt to move and entice, [Greek omitted], SALTISH. And I think the poets had a respect to this generative power of salt in their fable of Venus springing from the sea. And it may be farther observed, that they make all the sea gods very fruitful, and give them large families. And besides, there are no land animals so fruitful as the sea ones; agreeable to which observation is that verse of Empedocles,

Leading the foolish race of fruitful fish.

Book VI.

Timotheus the son of Conon, Sossius Senecio, after a full enjoyment of luxurious campaign diet, being entertained by Plato in his Academy, at a neat, homely, and (as Ion says) no surfeiting feast (such an one as is constantly attended by sound sleep, and by reason of the calm and pleasant state the body enjoys, rarely interrupted with dreams and apparitions), the next day, being sensible of the difference, said that those that supped with Plato were well treated, even the day after the feast. For such a temper of a body not overcharged, but expedite and fitted for the ready execution of all its enterprises, is without all doubt a great help for the more comfortable passing away of the day. But there is another benefit not inferior to the former, which does usually accrue to those that sup with Plato, namely, the recollection of those points that were debated at the table. For the remembrance of those pleasures which arise from meat and drink is ungenteel, and short-lived withal, and nothing but the remains of yesterday’s smell. But the subjects of philosophical queries and discourses, being always fresh after they are imparted, are equally relished by all, as well by those that were absent as by those that were present at them; insomuch that learned men even now are as much partakers of Socrates’s feasts as those who really supped with him. But if things pertaining to the body had afforded any pleasure, Xenophon and Plato should have left us an account not of the discourse, but of the great variety of dishes, sauces, and other costly compositions that were prepared in the houses of Callias and Agatho. Yet there is not the least mention made of any such things, though questionless they were as sumptuous as possible; but whatever things were treated of and learnedly discussed by their guests were left upon record and transmitted to posterity as precedents, not only for discoursing at table, but also for remembering the things that were handled at such meetings.

QUESTION I.

What is the Reason that Those that are Fasting are More Thirsty Than Hungry?

PLUTARCH and OTHERS.

I present you with this Sixth Book of Table Discourses, wherein the first thing that cometh to be discussed is an inquiry into the reason why those that are fasting are more inclinable to drink than to eat. For the assertion carries in it a repugnancy to the standing rules of reason; forasmuch as the decayed stock of dry nourishment seems more naturally to call for its proper supplies. Whereupon I told the company, that of those things whereof our bodies are composed, heat only — or, however, above all the rest — stands in continual need of such accessions; for the truth of which this may be urged as a convincing argument: neither air, water, nor earth requires any matter to feed upon, or devours whatsoever lies next it; but fire alone doth. Hence it comes to pass that young men, by reason of their greater share of natural heat, have commonly greater stomachs than old men; whereas on the contrary, old men can endure fasting much better, for this only reason, because their natural heat is grown weaker and decayed. Just so we see it fares with bloodless animals, which by reason of the want of heat require very little nourishment. Besides, every one of us finds by experience, that bodily exercises, clamors, and whatever other actions by violent motion occasion heat, commonly sharpen our stomachs and get us a better appetite. Now, as I take it, the most natural and principal nourishment of heat is moisture, as it evidently appears from flames, which increase by the pouring in of oil, and from ashes, which are of the driest things in nature; for after the humidity is consumed by the fire, the terrene and grosser parts remain without any moisture at all. Add to these, that fire separates and dissolves bodies by extracting that moisture which should keep them close and compact. Therefore, when we are fasting, the heat first of all forces the moisture out of the relics of the nourishment that remain in the body, and then, pursuing the other humid parts, preys upon the natural moisture of the flesh itself. Hence the body like clay becoming dry, wants drink more than meat; till the heat, receiving strength and vigor by our drinking, excites an appetite for more substantial food.

QUESTION II.

Whether Want of Nourishment Causeth Hunger and Thirst or the Change in the Figures of the Pores.

PHILO, PLUTARCH.

After these things were spoke, Philo the physician started the first question, asserting that thirst did not arise from the want of nourishment, but from the different transfiguration of certain passages. For, says he, this may be made evident, partly from what we see happens to those that thirst in the night, who, if sleep chance to steal upon them, though they did not drink before, are yet rid of their thirst; partly from persons in a fever, who, as soon as the disease abates or is removed, thirst no more. Nay, a great many men, after they have bathed or vomited, perceive presently that their thirst is gone; yet none of these add anything to their former moisture, but only the transfiguration of the pores causeth a new order and disposition. And this is more evident in hunger; for many sick persons, at the same time when they have the greatest need of meat, have no stomach. Others, after they have filled their bellies, have the same stomachs, and their appetites are rather increased than abated. There are a great many besides who loathe all sorts of diet, yet by taking of a pickled olive or caper recover and confirm their lost appetites. This doth clearly evince, that hunger proceeds from some change in the pores, and not from any want of sustenance, forasmuch as such kind of food lessens the defect by adding food, but increases the hunger; and the pleasing relish and poignancy of such pickles, by binding and straitening the mouth of the ventricle, and again by opening and loosening of it, beget in it a convenient disposition to receive meat, which we call by the name of appetite.

I must confess this discourse seemed to carry in it some shadow of reason and probability; but in the main it is directly repugnant to the chief end of nature, to which appetite directs every animal. For that makes it desire a supply of what they stand in need of, and avoid a defect of their proper food. For to deny what especially makes a living creature differ from an inanimate object as given to us for our preservation and conservation (being as it were the receiver of what supplements and agrees with the nature of our body) is the argument of one who takes no account of natural law, especially when he would add that the characteristic proceeds from the great or small size of the pores. Besides, it is absurd to think that a body through the want of natural heat should be chilled, and should not in like manner hunger and thirst through the want of natural moisture and nourishment. And yet this is more absurd, that Nature when overcharged should desire to disburden herself, and yet should not require to be supplied on account of emptiness, but on account of some condition or other, I know not what. Moreover, these needs and supplies in relation to animals have some resemblance to those we see in husbandry. There are a great many like qualities and like provisions on both sides. For in a drought we water our grounds, and in case of excessive heat, we frequently make use of moderate coolers; and when our fruits are too cold, we endeavor to preserve and cherish them, by covering and making fences about them. And for such things as are out of the reach of human power, we implore the assistance of the gods, that is, to send us softening dews, and sunshines qualified with moderate winds; that so Nature, being always desirous of a due mixture, may have her wants supplied. And for this reason I presume it was that nourishment is called [Greek omitted] (from [Greek omitted]), because it observes and preserves Nature. Now Nature is preserved in plants, which are destitute of sense, by the favorable influence of the circumambient air (as Empedocles says), moistening them in such a measure as is most agreeable to their nature. But as for us men, our appetites prompt us on to the chase and pursuance of whatsoever is wanting to our natural temperament.

But now let us pass to the examination of the truth of the arguments that seem to favor the contrary opinion. And for the first, I suppose that those meats that are palatable and of a quick and sharp taste do not beget in us an appetite, but rather bite and fret those parts that receive the nourishment, as we find that scratching the skin causes itching. And supposing we should grant that this affection or disposition is the very thing which we call the appetite, it is probable that, by the operation of such kind of food as this, the nourishment may be made small, and so much of it as is convenient for Nature severed from the rest, so that the indigency proceeds not from the transmutation, but from the evacuation and purgation of the passages. For sharp, tart, and salt things grate the inward matter, and by dispersing of it cause digestion, so that by the concoctions of the old there may arise an appetite for new. Nor does the cessation of thirst after bathing spring from the different position of the passages, but from a new supply of moisture received into the flesh, and conveyed from thence to them also. And vomiting, by throwing off whatever is disagreeable to Nature, puts her in a capacity of enjoying what is most suitable for her. For thirst does not call for a superfluity of moisture, but only for so much as sufficeth Nature; and therefore, though a man had plenty of disagreeable and unnatural moisture, yet he wants still, for that stops the course of the natural, which Nature is desirous of, and hinders a due mixture and temperament, till it be cast out and the pores receive what is most proper and convenient for them. Moreover, a fever forces all the moisture downward; and the middle parts being in combustion, it all retires thither, and there is shut up and forcibly detained. And therefore it is usual with a great many to vomit, by reason of the density of the inward parts squeezing out the moisture, and likewise to thirst, by reason of the poor and dry state the rest of the body is in. But after the violence of the distemper is once abated, and the raging heat hath left the middle parts, the moisture begins to disperse itself again; and according to its natural motion, by a speedy conveyance into all the parts, it refreshes the entrails, softens and makes tender the dry and parched flesh. Very often also it causes sweat, and then the defect which occasioned thirst ceases; for the moisture leaving that part of the body wherein it was forcibly detained, and out of which it hardly made an escape, retires to the place where it is wanted. For as it fares with a garden wherein there is a large well, — if nobody draw thereof and water it, the herbs must needs wither and die, — so it fares with a body; if all the moisture be contracted into one part, it is no wonder if the rest be in want and dry, till it is diffused again over the other limbs. Just so it happens to persons in a fever, after the heat of the disease is over, and likewise to those who go to sleep thirsty. For in these, sleep draws the moisture to the middle parts, and equally distributes it amongst the rest, satisfying them all. But, I pray, what kind of transfiguration of the passages is this which causes hunger and thirst? For my part, I know no other distinction of the pores but in respect of their number or that some of them are shut, others open. As for those that are shut, they can neither receive meat nor drink; and as for those that are open, they make an empty space, which is nothing but a want of that which Nature requires. Thus, sir, when men dye cloth, the liquor in which they dip it hath very sharp and abstersive particles; which, consuming and scouring off all the matter that filled the pores, make the cloth more apt to receive the dye, because its pores are empty and want something to fill them up.

QUESTION III.

What is the Reason that Hunger is Allayed by Drinking, But Thirst Increased by Eating?

THE HOST, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

After we had gone thus far, the master of the feast told the company that the former points were reasonably well discussed; and waiving at present the discourse concerning the evacuation and repletion of the pores, he requested us to fall upon another question, that is, how it comes to pass that hunger is stayed by drinking, when, on the contrary, thirst is more violent after eating. Those who assign the reason to be in the pores seem with a great deal of ease and probability, though not with so much truth, to explain the thing. For seeing the pores in all bodies are of different sorts and sizes, the more capacious receive both dry and humid nourishment, the lesser take in drink, not meat; but the vacuity of the former causes hunger, of the latter thirst. Hence it is that men that thirst are never better after they have eaten, the pores by reason of their straitness denying admittance to grosser nourishment, and the want of suitable supply still remaining. But after hungry men have drunk, the moisture enters the greater pores, fills the empty spaces, and in part assuages the violence of the hunger.

Of this effect, said I, I do not in the least doubt, but I do not approve of the reason they give for it. For if any one should admit these pores (which some are so unreasonably fond of) to be in the flesh, he must needs make it a very soft, loose, flabby substance; and that the same parts do not receive the meat and drink, but that they run through different canals and strainers in them, seems to me to be a very strange and unaccountable opinion. For the moisture mixes with the dry food, and by the assistance of the natural heat and spirits cuts the nourishment far smaller than any cleaver or chopping-knife, to the end that every part of it may be exactly fitted to each part of the body, not applied, as they would have it, to little vessels and pores, but united and incorporated with the whole substance. And unless the thing were explained after this manner, the hardest knot in the question would still remain unsolved. For a man that has a thirst upon him, supposing he eats and doth not drink, is so far from quenching, that he does highly increase it. This point is yet undiscussed. But mark, said I, whether the positions on my side be clear and evident or not. In the first place, we take it for granted that moisture is wasted and destroyed by heat, that the drier parts of the nourishment qualified and softened by moisture, are diffused and fly away in vapors. Secondly, we must by no means suppose that all hunger is a total privation of dry, and thirst of humid nutriment, but only a moderate one, and such as is sufficient to cause the one or the other; for whoever are wholly deprived of either of these, they neither hunger nor thirst, but die instantly. These things being laid down as a foundation, it will be no hard matter to find out the cause. For thirst is increased by eating for this reason, because that meat by its natural siccity contracts and destroys all that small quantity of moisture which remained scattered here and there through the body; just as happens in things obvious to our senses; we see the earth, dust, and the like presently suck in the moisture that is mixed with them. Now, on the contrary, drink must of necessity assuage hunger; for the moisture watering and diffusing itself through the dry and parched relics of the meat we ate last, by turning them into thin juices, conveys them through the whole body, and succors the indigent parts. And therefore with very good reason Erasistratus called moisture the vehicle of the meat; for as soon as this is mixed with things which by reason of their dryness, or some other quality, are slow and heavy, it raises them up and carries them aloft. Moreover, several men, when they have drunk nothing at all, but only washed themselves, all on a sudden are freed from a very violent hunger, because the extrinsic moisture entering the pores makes the meat within more succulent and of a more nourishing nature, so that the heat and fury of the hunger declines and abates; and therefore a great many of those who have a mind to starve themselves to death live a long time only by drinking water; that is, as long as the siccity does not quite consume whatever may be united to and nourish the body.

QUESTION IV.

What is the Reason that a Bucket of Water Drawn Out of a Well, If It Stands All Night in the Air that is in the Well, Is, More Cold in the Morning Than the Rest of the Water?

A GUEST, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

One of the strangers at the the table, who took wonderful great delight in drinking of cold water, had some brought to him by the servants, cooled after this manner; they had hung in the well a bucket full of the same water, so that it could not touch the sides of the well, and there let it remain, all night: the next day, when it was brought to table, it was colder than the water that was newdrawn. Now this gentleman was an indifferent good scholar, and therefore told the company that he had learned this from Aristotle, who gives the reason of it. The reason which he assigned was this. All water, when it hath been once hot, is afterwards more cold; as that which is prepared for kings, when it hath boiled a good while upon the fire, is afterwards put into a vessel set round with snow, and so made colder; just as we find our bodies more cool after we have bathed, because the body, after a short relaxation from heat, is rarefied and more porous, and therefore so much the more fitted to receive a larger quantity of air, which causes the alteration. Therefore the water, when it is drawn out of the well, being first warmed in the air, grows presently cold.

Whereupon we began to commend the man very highly for his happy memory; but we called in question the pretended reason. For if the air wherein the vessel hangs be cold, how, I pray, does it heat the water? If hot, how does it afterwards make it cold? For it is absurd to say, that the same thing is affected by the same thing with contrary qualities, no difference at all intervening. While the gentleman held his peace, as not knowing what to say; there is no cause, said I, that we should raise any scruple concerning the nature of the air, forasmuch as we are ascertained by sense that it is cold, especially in the bottom of a well; and therefore we can never imagine that it should make the water hot. But I should rather judge this to be the reason: the cold air, though it cannot cool the great quantity of water which is in the well, yet can easily cool each part of it, separate from the whole.

QUESTION V.

What is the Reason that Pebble Stones and Leaden Bullets Thrown Into the Water Make It More Cold?

A GUEST, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

I suppose you may remember that what Aristotle says in his problems, of little stones and pieces of iron, how it hath been observed by some that being thrown into the water they temper and cool it. This is no more than barely asserted by him; but we will go farther and inquire into the reason of it, the discovery of which will be a matter of difficulty. Yes, says I, it will so, and it is much if we hit upon it; for do but consider, first of all, do not you suppose that the air which comes in from without cools the water? But now air has a great deal more power and force, when it beats against stones and pieces of iron. For they do not, like brazen and earthen vessels, suffer it to pass through; but, by reason of their solid bulk, beat it back and reflect it into the water, so that upon all parts the cold works very strongly. And hence it comes to pass that rivers in the winter are colder than the sea, because the cold air has a power over them, which by reason of its depth it has not over the sea, where it is scattered without any reflection. But it is probable that for another reason thinner waters may be made colder by the air than thicker, because they are not so strong to resist its force. Now whetstones and pebbles make the water thinner by drawing to them all the mud and other grosser substances that be mixed with it, that so by taking the strength from it may the more easily be wrought upon by the cold. But besides, lead is naturally cold, as that which, being dissolved in vinegar, makes the coldest of all poisons, called white-lead; and stones, by reason of their density, raise cold in the bottom of the water. For every stone is nothing else but a congealed lump of frozen earth, though some more or less than others; and therefore it is no absurdity to say that stones and lead, by reflecting the air, increase the coldness of the water.

QUESTION VI

What is the Reason that Men Preserve Snow by Covering It with Chaff and Cloths?

A GUEST, PLUTARCH.

Then the stranger, after he had made a little pause, said: Men in love are ambitious to be in company with their sweethearts; when that is denied them, they desire at least to talk of them. This is my case in relation to snow; and, because I cannot have it at present, I am desirous to learn the reason why it is commonly preserved by the hottest things. For, when covered with chaff and cloth that has never been at the fuller’s, it is preserved a long time. Now it is strange that the coldest things should be preserved by the hottest.

Yes, said I, it is a very strange thing, if true. But it is not so; and we cozen ourselves by presently concluding a thing to be hot if it have a faculty of causing heat, when as yet we see that the same garment causes heat in winter, and cold in summer. Thus the nurse in the tragedy,

In garments thin doth Niobe’s children fold,
And sometimes heats and sometimes cools the babes.

The Germans indeed make use of clothes only against the cold, the Ethiopians only against the heat; but they are useful to us upon both accounts. Why therefore should we rather say the clothes are hot, because they cause heat, than cold, because they cause cold? Nay, if we must be tried by sense, it will be found that they are more cold than hot. For at the first putting on of a coat it is cold, and so is our bed when we lie down; but afterwards they grow hot with the heat of our bodies, because they both keep in the heat and keep out the cold. Indeed, feverish persons and others that have a violent heat upon them often change their clothes, because they perceive that fresh ones at the first putting on are much colder; but within a very little time their bodies make them as hot as the others. In like manner, as a garment heated makes us hot, so a covering cooled keeps snow cold. Now that which causes this cold is the continual emanations of a subtile spirit the snow has in it, which spirit, as long as it remains in the snow, keeps it compact and close; but, after once it is gone, the snow melts and dissolves into water, and instantly loses its whiteness, occasioned by a mixture of this spirit with a frothy moisture. Therefore at the same time, by the help of these clothes, the cold is kept in, and the external air is shut out, lest it should thaw the concrete body of the snow. The reason why they make use of cloth that has not yet been at the fuller’s is this, because that in such cloth the hair and coarse flocks keep it off from pressing too hard upon the snow, and bruising it. So chaff lying lightly upon it does not dissolve the body of the snow, besides the chaff lies close and shuts out the warm air, and keeps in the natural cold of the snow. Now that snow melts by the evaporating of this spirit, we are ascertained by sense; for when snow melts it raises a vapor.

QUESTION VII.

Whether Wine Ought to Be Strained or Not.

NIGER, ARISTIO.

Niger, a citizen of ours, was lately come from school, after he had spent some time under the discipline of a celebrated philosopher, but had absorbed nothing but those faults by which his master was odious to others, especially his custom of reproving and of carping at whatever upon any occasion chanced to be discussed in company. And therefore, when we were at supper one time at Aristio’s, not content to assume to himself a liberty to rail at all the rest of the preparations as too profuse and extravagant, he had a pique at the wine too, and said that it ought not to be brought to table strained, but that, observing Hesiod’s rule, we ought to drink it new out of the vessel. Moreover, he added that this way of purging wine takes the strength from it, and robs it of its natural heat, which, when wine is poured out of one vessel into another, evaporates and dies. Besides he would needs persuade us that it showed too much of a vain curiosity, effeminacy, and luxury, to convert what is wholesome into that which is palatable. For as the riotous, not the temperate, use to cut cocks and geld pigs, to make their flesh tender and delicious, even against Nature; just so (if we may use a metaphor, says he) those that strain wine geld and emasculate it, whilst their squeamish stomachs will neither suffer them to drink pure wine, nor their intemperance to drink moderately. Therefore they make use of this expedient, to the end that it may render the desire they have of drinking plentifully more excusable. So they take all the strength from the wine, leaving the palatableness still: as we use to deal with those with whose constitution cold water does not agree, to boil it for them. For they certainly take off all the strength from the wine, by straining of it. And this is a great argument, that the wine deads, grows flat, and loses its virtue, when it is separated from the lees, as from its root and stock; for the ancients for very good reason called wine lees, as we use to signify a man by his head or soul, as the principal part of him. So in Greek, grape-gatherers are said [Greek omitted], the word being derived from [Greek omitted], which signifies lees; and Homer in one place calls the fruit of the wine [Greek omitted], and the wine itself high-colored and red, — not pale and yellow, such as Aristio gives us to supper, after all the goodness is purged out of it.

Then Aristio smiling presently replied: Sir, the wine I bring to table does not look so pale and lifeless as you would have it: but it appears only in the cup to be mild and well qualified. But for your part, you would glut yourself with night wine, which raises melancholy vapors; and upon this account you cry out against purgation, which, by carrying off whatever might cause melancholy or load men’s stomachs, and make them drunk or sick, makes it mild and pleasant to those that drink it, such as heroes (as Homer tells us) were formerly wont to drink. And it was not dark wine which he called [Greek omitted], but clear and transparent; for otherwise he would never have named brass [Greek omitted], after characterizing it as man-exalting and resplendent. Therefore as the wise Anacharsis, discommending some things that the Grecians enjoined, commended their coals, because they leave the smoke without doors, and bring the fire into the house; so you judicious men might blame me for some other reason than this. But what hurt, I pray, have I done to the wine, by taking from it a turbulent and noisome quality, and giving it a better taste, though a paler color? Nor have I brought you wine to the table which, like a sword, hath lost its edge and vigorous relish, but such as is only purged of its dregs and filth. But you will say that wine not strained hath a great deal more strength. Why so, my friend? One that is frantic and distracted has more strength than a man in his wits; but when, by the help of hellebore or some other fit diet, he is come to himself, that rage and frenzy leave him and quite vanish, and the true use of his reason and health of body presently comes into its place. In like manner, purging of wine takes from it all the strength that inflames and enrages the mind, and gives it instead thereof a mild and wholesome temper; and I think there is a great deal of difference between gaudiness and cleanliness. For women, while they paint, perfume, and adorn themselves with jewels and purple robes, are accounted gaudy and profuse; yet nobody will find fault with them for washing their faces, anointing themselves, or platting their hair. Homer very neatly expresses the difference of these two habits, where he brings in Juno dressing herself: —

With sweet ambrosia first she washed her skin,
And after did anoint herself with oil.
(“Iliad,” xiv. 170.)

So much was allowable, being no more than a careful cleanliness. But when she comes to call for her golden buttons, her curiously wrought earrings, and last of all puts on her bewitching girdle, this appears to be an extravagant and idle curiosity, and betrays too much of wantonness, which by no means becomes a married woman. Just so they that sophisticate wine by mixing it with aloes, cinnamon, or saffron bring it to the table like a gorgeous-apparelled woman, and there prostitute it. But those that only take from it what is nasty and no way profitable do only purge it and improve it by their labor. Otherwise you may find fault with all things whatsoever as vain and extravagant, beginning at the house you live in. As first, you may say, why is it plastered? Why does it open especially on that side where it may have the best convenience for receiving the purest air, and the benefit of the evening sun? What is the reason that our cups are washed and made so clean that they shine and look bright? Now if a cup ought to have nothing that is nasty or loathsome in it, ought that which is drunk out of the cup to be full of dregs and filth? What need is there for mentioning anything else? The making corn into bread is a continual cleansing; and yet what a great ado there is before it is effected! There is not only threshing, winnowing, sifting, and separating the bran, but there must be kneading the dough to soften all parts alike, and a continual cleansing and working of the mass till all the parts become edible alike. What absurdity is it then by straining to separate the lees, as it were the filth of the wine, especially since the cleansing is no chargeable or painful operation?

QUESTION VIII.

What is the Cause of Bulimy or the Greedy Disease?

PLUTARCH, SOCLARUS, CLEOMENES, and OTHERS.

There is a certain sacrifice of very ancient institution, which the chief magistrate or archon performs always in the common-hall, and every private person in his own house. ‘Tis called the driving out of bulimy; for they whip out of doors some one of their servants with a bunch of willow rods, repeating these words, Get out of doors, bulimy; and enter riches and health. Therefore in my year there was a great concourse of people present at the sacrifice; and, after all the rites and ceremonies of the sacrifice were over, when we had seated ourselves again at the table, there was an inquiry made first of all into the signification of the word bulimy, then into the meaning of the words which are repeated when the servant is turned out of doors. But the principal dispute was concerning the nature of it, and all its circumstances. First, as for the word bulimy, it was agreed upon by all to denote a great and public famine, especially among us who use the Aeolic dialect, putting [Greek omitted] for [Greek omitted]. For it was not called by the ancients [Greek omitted] but [Greek omitted], that is, [Greek omitted], much hunger. We concluded that it was not the same with the disease called Bubrostis, by an argument fetched out of Metrodorus’s Ionics. For the said Metrodorus informs us that the Smyrnaeans, who were once Aeolians, sacrificed to Bubrostis a black bull cut into pieces with the skin on, and so burnt it. Now, forasmuch as every species of hunger resembles a disease, but more particularly Bulimy, which is occasioned by an unnatural disposition of the body, these two differ as riches and poverty, health and sickness. But as the word NAUSEATE [Greek omitted] first took its name from men who were sea-sick in a ship, and afterwards custom prevailed so far that the word was applied to all persons that were any way in like sort affected; so the word BULIMY, rising at first from hence, was at last extended to a more large and comprehensive signification. What has been hitherto said was a general club of the opinions of all those who were at table.

But after we began to inquire after the cause of this disease, the first thing that puzzled us was to find out the reason why bulimy seizes upon those that travel in the snow. As Brutus, one time marching from Dyrrachium to Apollonia in a deep snow, was endangered of his life by bulimy, whilst none of those that carried the provisions for the army followed him; just when the man was ready to faint and die, some of his soldiers were forced to run to the walls of the enemies’ city, and beg a piece of bread of the sentinels, by the eating of which he was presently refreshed; for which cause, after Brutus had made himself master of the city, he treated all the inhabitants very mercifully. Asses and horses are frequently troubled with bulimy, especially when they are laden with dry figs and apples; and, which is yet more strange, of all things that are eaten, bread chiefly refreshes not only men but beasts; so that, by taking a little quantity of bread, they regain their strength and go forward on their journey.

After all were silent, I (who had observed that dull fellows and those of a less piercing judgment were satisfied with and did acquiesce in the reasons the ancients gave for bulimy, but to men of ingenuity and industry they only pointed out the way to a more clear discovery of the truth of the business) mentioned Aristotle’s opinion, who says, that extreme cold without causes extreme heat and consumption within; which, if it fall into the legs, makes them lazy and heavy, but if it come to the fountain of motion and respiration, occasions faintings and weakness. When I had said that, some of the company opposed it, others held with me.

At length says Soclarus: I like the beginning of this reason very well, for the bodies of travellers in a great snow must of necessity be surrounded and condensed with cold; but that from the heat within there should arise such a consumption as invades the principle of respiration, I can no way imagine. I rather think, says he, that abundance of heat penned up in the body consumes the nourishment, and that failing, the fire as it were goes out. Here it comes to pass, that men troubled with this bulimy, when they are ready to starve with hunger, if they eat never so little meat, are presently refreshed. The reason is, because meat digested is like fuel for the heat to feed upon.

But Cleomenes the physician would have the word [Greek omitted] (which signifies hunger) to be added to the making up of the word [Greek omitted] without sufficient reason; as [Greek omitted], to drink, is added to [Greek omitted], to swallow; and [Greek omitted] to incline, into [Greek omitted] to raise the head. Nor is bulimy, as it seems, a kind of hunger, but an affection in the stomach causing a faintness on account of the concourse of heat. Therefore as things that have a good smell recall the spirits of those that are faint, so bread affects those that are almost overcome with a bulimy; not that they have any need of food (for the least piece of it restores them their strength), but the bread calls back their vigor and languishing spirits. Now that bulimy is not hunger but a faintness, is manifest from all laboring beasts, which are seized with it very often through the smell of dry figs and apples; for a smell does not cause any want of food, but rather a pain and agitation in the stomach.

These things seemed to be reasonably well urged; and yet it seemed that much might be said for the contrary opinion, and that it was possible enough to maintain that bulimy ariseth not from condensation but rarefication of the stomach. For the spirit which flows from the snow is nothing but the aether and finest fragment of the frozen substance, endued with a virtue of cutting and dividing not only the flesh, but also silver and brazen vessels; for we see that these are not able to keep in the snow, for it dissolves and evaporates, and glazes over the outmost superficies of the vessels with a thin dew, not unlike to ice, which this spirit leaves as it secretly passes through the pores. Therefore this piercing spirit, like a flame, seizing upon those that travel in the snow, seems to burn their outsides, and like fire to enter and penetrate the flesh. Hence it is that the flesh is more rarefied, and the heat is extinguished by the cold spirit that lies upon the superficies of the body; therefore the body evaporates a dewy thin sweat, which melts away and decays the strength. Now if a man should sit still at such a time, there would not much heat fly out of his body. But when the motion of the body doth quickly heat the nourishment, and that heat bursts through the thin skin, there must necessarily be a great loss of strength. Now we know by experience, that cold hath a virtue not only to condense but also to loosen bodies; for in extreme cold winters pieces of lead are found to sweat. And when we see that a bulimy happens where there is no hunger, we may conclude that at that time the body is rather in a fluid than condensed state. The reason that bodies are rarefied in winter is because of the subtility of the spirit; especially when the moving and tiring of the body stir the heat, which, as soon as it is subtilized and agitated, flies apace, and spreads itself through the whole body. Lastly, it is very possible that apples and dry figs exhale some such thing as this, which rarefies and attenuates the heat of the beasts; for some things have a natural tendency as well to weaken as to refresh different creatures.

QUESTION IX.

Why Does Homer Appropriate a Certain Peculiar Epithet to Each Particular Liquid, and Call Oil Only Liquid?

PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

It was the subject once of a discourse, why, when there are several sorts of liquids, the poet should give every one of them a peculiar epithet, calling milk white, honey yellow, wine red, and yet for all this bestow no other upon oil but what it hath in common with all other liquids. To this it was answered that, as that is said to be most sweet which is perfectly sweet, and to be most white which is perfectly white (I mean here by perfectly that which hath nothing of a contrary quality mixed with it), so that ought to be called perfectly humid whereof never a part is dry; and this is proper to oil.

For first of all, its smoothness shows the evenness of its parts; for touch it where you please, it is all alike. Besides, you may see your face in it as perfectly as in a mirror; for there is nothing rough in it to hinder the reflection, but by reason of its humidity it reflects to the eye the least particle of light from every portion. As, on the contrary, milk, of all other liquids, does not return our images, because it hath too many terrene and gross parts mixed with it; again, oil of all other liquids makes the least noise when moved, for it is perfectly humid. When other liquids are moved or poured out, their hard and grosser parts fall and dash one against another, and so make a noise by reason of their roughness. Moreover, oil only is pure and unmixed; for it is of all other liquids most compact, nor has it any empty spaces and pores between the dry and earthy parts to receive what chances to fall upon it. Besides, because of the similitude of its parts, it is closely joined together, and unfit to be joined to anything else. When oil froths, it does not let any wind in, by reason of the contiguity and subtility of its parts; and this is also the cause why fire is nourished by it. For fire feeds upon nothing but what is moist, for nothing is combustible but what is so; for when the fire is kindled, the air turns to smoke, and the terrene and grosser parts remain in the ashes. Fire only preys upon the moisture, which is its natural nourishment. Indeed, water, wine, and other liquors, having abundance of earthy and heavy parts in them, by falling into fire part it, and by their roughness and weight smother and extinguish it. But oil, because purely liquid, by reason of its subtility, is overcome by the fire, and so changed into flame.

It is the greatest argument that can be of its humidity, that the least quantity of it spreads itself a great way; for so small a drop of honey, water, or any other liquid does not extend itself so far, but very often, by reason of the dry mixed parts, is presently wasted. Because oil is ductile and soft, men are wont to make use of it for anointing their bodies; for it runs along and spreads itself through all the parts, and sticks so firmly to them that it is not easily washed off. We find by experience, that a garment wet with water is presently dried again; but it is no easy matter to wash out the spots and stain of oil, for it enters deep, because of its most subtile and humid nature. Hence it is that Aristotle says, that the drops of diluted wine are the hardest to be got out of clothes, because they are most subtile, and run farther into the pores of the cloth.

QUESTION X.

What is the Reason that Flesh of Sacrificed Beasts, After Being Hung a While Upon a Fig-Tree is More Tender Than Before?

ARISTIO, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

At supper we were commanding Aristio’s cook, who, amongst other dishes that he had dressed very curiously, brought a cock to table just killed as a sacrifice to Hercules, as tender as though it had been killed a day or two before. When Aristio told us that this was no wonder, — seeing such a thing might very easily be done, if the cock, as soon as he was killed, was hung upon a fig-tree, — we began to inquire into the reason of what he asserted. Indeed, I must confess, our eye assures us that a fig-tree sends out a fierce and strong spirit; which is yet more evident, from what we have heard said of bulls. That is, a bull, after he is tied to a fig-tree, though never so mad before, grows presently tame, and will suffer you to touch him, and on a sudden all his rage and fury cool and die. But the chiefest cause that works this change is the sharp acrimonious quality of the tree. For this tree is the fullest of sap, and so are its figs, wood, and bark; and hence it comes to pass, that the smoke of fig-wood is most offensive to the eyes; and when it is burned, its ashes make the best lye to scour withal. But all these effects proceed from heat. Now there are some that say, when the sap of this tree thrown into milk curds it, that this effect does not arise from the irregular figures of the parts of the milk, which the sap joins and (as it were) sticks together, the smooth and globose parts being squeezed out, but that by its heat it loosens the unstable and watery parts of the liquid body. And we may use as a proof the unprofitableness of the sap of this tree, which, though it is very sweet, yet makes the worst liquor in the world. For it is not the inequality in the parts that affects the smooth part, but what is cold and raw is stopped by heat. And salt help to do this; for it is hot, and works contrary to the uniting of the parts just mentioned, causing rather a dissolution; for to it, above all other things, Nature has given a dissolving faculty. Therefore the fig-tree sends forth a hot and sharp spirit, which cuts and boils the flesh of the bird. The very same thing may be effected by placing the flesh upon a heap of corn, or near nitre; the heat will produce the same that the fig-tree did. Now it may be made manifest that wheat is naturally hot, in that wine, put into a hogshead and placed among wheat, is presently consumed.

Book VII.

The Romans, Sossius Senecio, remember a pretty saying of a pleasant man and good companion, who supping alone said that he had eaten today, but not supped; as if a supper always wanted company and agreement to make it palatable and pleasing. Evenus said that fire was the sweetest of all sauces in the world. And Homer calls salt [Greek omitted], divine; and most call it [Greek omitted], graces, because, mixed with most part of our food, it makes it palatable and agreeable to the taste. Now indeed the best and most divine sauce that can be at an entertainment or a supper is a familiar and pleasant friend; not because he eats and drinks with a man, but because he participates of and communicates discourse, especially if the talk be profitable, pertinent, and instructive. For commonly loose talk over a glass of wine raiseth passions and spoils company, and therefore it is fit that we should be as critical in examining what discourses as what friends are fit to be admitted to a supper; not following either the saying or opinion of the Spartans, who, when they entertained any young man or a stranger in their public halls, showed him the door, with these words, “No discourse goes out this way.” What we use to talk of may be freely disclosed to everybody, because we have nothing in our discourses that tends to looseness, debauchery, debasing of ourselves, or back-biting others. Judge by the examples, of which this seventh book contains ten.

QUESTION I.

Against Those Who Find Fault with Plato for Saying that Drink Passeth Through the Lungs.

NICIAS, PLUTARCH, PROTOGENES, FLORUS.

At a summer entertainment, one of the company pronounced that common verse,

Now drench thy lungs with wine, the Dog appears.

And Nicias of Nicopolis, a physician, presently subjoined: It is no wonder that Alcaeus, a poet, should be ignorant of that of which Plato the philosopher was. Though Alcaeus may be defended; for it is probable that the lungs, lying near the stomach, may participate of the steam of the liquor, and be drenched with it. But the philosopher, expressly delivering that most part of our drink passeth through the lungs, hath precluded all ways of excuse to those that would be willing to defend him. For it is a very great and complicated ignorance; for first, it being necessary that our liquid and dry food should be mixed, it is very probable that the stomach is the vessel for them both, which throws out the dry food after it is grown soft and moist into the guts. Besides, the lungs being a dense and compacted body, how is it possible that, when we sup gruel or the like, the thicker parts should pass through them? And this was the objection which Erasistratus rationally made against Plato. Besides, when he considered for what end every part of the body was made, and what use Nature designed in their contrivance, it was easy to perceive that the epiglottis was framed on purpose that when we drink the windpipe should be shut, and nothing be suffered to fall upon the lungs. For if anything by chance gets down that way, we are troubled with retching and coughing till it is thrown up again. And this epiglottis being framed so that it may fall on either side, whilst we speak it shuts the weasand, but when we eat or drink it falls upon the windpipe, and so secures the passage for our breath. Besides, we know that those who drink by little and little are looser than those who drink greedily and large draughts; for in the latter the very force drives it into their bladders, but in the former it stays, and by its stay is mixed with and moistens the meat thoroughly. Now this could not be, if in the very drinking the liquid was separated from the dry food; but the effect follows, because we mix and convey them both together, using (as Erasistratus phraseth it) the liquid as a vehicle for the dry.

Nicias having done, Protogenes the grammarian subjoined, that Homer was the first that observed the stomach was the vessel of the food, and the windpipe (which the ancients called [Greek omitted] of the breath, and upon the same account they called those who had loud voices [Greek omitted]. And when he describes how Achilles killed Hector, he says,

He pierced his weasand, where death enters soon;

and adds,

But not his windpipe, so that he could speak,
(“Iliad,” xxii. 325–329.)

taking the windpipe for the proper passage of the speech and breath. . . .

Upon this, all being silent, Florus began thus: What, shall we tamely suffer Plato to be run down? By no means, said I, for if we desert him, Homer must be in the same condition, for he is so far from denying the windpipe to be the passage for our drink, that the dry food, in his opinion, goes the same way. For these are his words: —

From his gullet [Greek omitted] flowed
The clotted wine and undigested flesh.
(“Odyssey,” ix. 373.)

Unless perchance you will say that the Cyclops, as he had but one eye, so had but one passage for his food and voice; or would have [Greek omitted] to signify weasand, not windpipe, as both all the ancients and moderns use it. I produce this because it is really his meaning, not because I want other testimonies, for Plato hath store of learned and sufficient men to join with him. For not to mention Eupolis, who in his play called the “Flatterers” says,

Protagoras bids us drink a lusty bowl,
That when the Dog appears our lungs may still be moist;

or elegant Eratosthenes, who says,

And having drenched his lungs with purest wine;

even Euripides, somewhere expressly saying,

The wine passed through the hollows of the lungs,

shows that he saw better and clearer than Erasistratus. For he saw that the lungs have cavities and pores, through which the liquids pass. For the breath in expiration hath no need of pores, but that the liquids and those things which pass with them might go through, it is made like a strainer and full of pores. Besides, sir, as to the example of gruel which you proposed, the lungs can discharge themselves of the thicker parts together with the thin, as well as the stomach. For our stomach is not, as some fancy, smooth and slippery, but full of asperities, in which it is probable that the thin and small particles are lodged, and so not taken quite down. But neither this nor the other can we positively affirm; for the curious contrivance of Nature in her operation is too hard to be explained; nor can we be particularly exact upon those instruments (I mean the spirit and the heat) which she makes use of in her works. But besides those we have mentioned to confirm Plato’s opinion, let us produce Philistion of Locri, very ancient and very famous physician, and Hippocrates too, with his disciple Dioxippus; for they thought of no other passage but that which Plato mentions. Dioxippus knew very well that precious talk of the epiglottis, but says, that when we feed, the moist parts are about that separated from the dry, and the first are carried down the windpipe, the other down the weasand; and that the windpipe receives no parts of the food, but the stomach, together with the dry parts, receives some portion of the liquids. And this is probable, for the epiglottis lies over the windpipe, as a fence and strainer, that the drink may get in by little and little, lest descending in a large full stream, it stop the breath and endanger the life. And therefore birds have no epiglottis, because they do not sup or lap when they drink, but take up a little in their beak, and let it run gently down their windpipe.

These testimonies I think are enough; and reason confirms Plato’s opinion by arguments drawn first from sense. For when the windpipe is wounded, no drink will go down; but as if the pipe were broken it runs out, though the weasand be whole and unhurt. And all know that in the inflammation of the lungs the patient is troubled with extreme thirst; the heat or dryness or some other cause, together with the inflammation, making the appetite intense. But a stronger evidence than all these follows. Those creatures that have very small lungs, or none at all, neither want nor desire drink, because to some parts there belongs a natural appetite to drink, and those that want those parts have no need to drink, nor any appetite to be supplied by it. But more, the bladder would seem unnecessary; for, if the weasand receives both meat and drink and conveys it to the belly, the superfluous parts of the liquids would not want a proper passage, one common one would suffice as a canal for both that were conveyed to the same vessel by the same passage. But now the bladder is distinct from the guts, because the drink goes from the lungs, and the meat from the stomach; they being separated as we take them down. And this is the reason that in our water nothing can be found that either in smell or color resembles dry food. But if the drink were mixed with the dry meat in the belly, it must be impregnant with its qualities, and not come forth so simple and untinged. Besides, a stone is never found in the stomach, though it is likely that the moisture should be coagulated there as well as in the bladder, if all the liquor were conveyed through the weasand then into the belly. But it is probable at the weasand robs the windpipe of a sufficient quantity of liquor as it is going down, and useth it to soften and concoct the meat. And therefore its excrement is never purely liquid; and the lungs, disposing of the moisture, as of the breath, to all of the parts that want it, deposit the superfluous portion in the bladder. And I am sure that this is a much more probable opinion than the other. But which is the truth cannot perhaps be discovered, and therefore it is not fit so peremptorily to find fault with the most acute and most famed philosopher, especially when the matter is so obscure, and the Platonists can produce such considerable reasons for their position.

QUESTION II.

What Humored Man is He that Plato Calls [Greek omitted]? And Why Do Those Seeds that Fall on the Oxen’s Horns Become [Greek omitted]?

PLUTARCH, PATROCLES, EUTHYDEMUS, FLORUS.

We had always some difficulty started about [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted], not what humor those words signified (for it is certain that some, thinking that those seeds which fall on the oxen’s horns bear fruit which is very hard, did by a metaphor call a stiff untractable fellow by these names), but what was the cause that seeds falling on the oxen’s horns should bear hard fruit. I had often desired my friends to search no farther, most of all fearing the passage of Theophrastus, in which he has collected many things whose causes we cannot discover. Such are the hen’s using a straw to purify herself with after she has laid, the seal’s consuming her rennet when she is caught, the deer’s burying his horns, and the goat’s stopping the whole herd by holding a branch of sea-holly in his mouth; and among the rest he reckoned this is a thing of which we are certain, but whose cause it is very difficult to find. But once at supper at Delphi, some of my companions — as if we were not only better counsellors when our bellies are full (as one hath it), but wine would make us brisker in our inquiries and bolder in our resolutions desired me to speak somewhat to that problem.

I refused, though I had some excellent men on my side, namely, Euthydemus my fellow-priest, and Patrocles my relative, who brought several the like instances, which they had gathered both from husbandry and hunting; for instance, that those officers that are appointed to watch the coming of the hail avert the storm by offering a mole’s blood or a woman’s cloths; that a wild fig being bound to a garden fig-tree will keep the fruit from falling and promote their ripening; that deer when they are taken shed salt tears, and boars sweet. But if you have a mind to such questions, Euthydemus will presently desire you to give an account of smallage and cummin; one of the which, if trodden down as it springs, will grow the better, and the other men curse and blaspheme whilst they sow it.

This last Florus thought to be an idle foolery; but he said, that we should not forbear to search into the causes of the other things as if they were incomprehensible. I have found, said I, your design to draw me on to this discourse, that you yourself may afterward give us a solution of the other proposed difficulties.

In my opinion it is cold that causes this hardness in corn and pulse, by contracting and constipating their parts till the substance becomes close and extremely rigid; while heat is a dissolving and softening quality. And therefore those that cite this verse against Homer,

The season, not the field, bears fruit,

do not justly reprehend him. For fields that are warm by nature, the air being likewise temperate, bear more mellow fruit than others. And therefore those seeds that fall immediately on the earth out of the sower’s hand, and are covered presently, and cherished by being covered, partake more of the moisture and heat that is in the earth. But those that strike against the oxen’s horns do not enjoy what Hesiod names the best position, but seem to be scattered rather than sown; and therefore the cold either destroys them quite, or else, lighting upon them as they lie naked, condenseth their moisture, and makes them hard and woody. Thus stones that lie under ground and, plant-animals have softer parts than those that lie above; and therefore stone-cutters bury the stones they would work, as if they designed to have them prepared and softened by the heat; but those that lie above ground are by the cold made hard, rigid, and very hurtful to the tools. And if corn lies long upon the floor, the grains become much harder than that which is presently carried away. And sometimes too a cold wind blowing whilst they winnow spoils the corn, as it hath happened at Philippi in Macedonia; and the chaff secures the grains whilst on the floor. For is it any wonder that as husband-men affirm, one ridge will bear soft and fruitful, and the very next to it hard and unfruitful corn or — which is stranger — that in the same bean-cod some beans are of this sort, some of the other, as more or less wind and moisture falls upon this or that?

QUESTION III.

Why the Middle of Wine, the Top of Oil, and the Bottom of Honey is Best.

ALEXION, PLUTARCH, and OTHERS.

My father-inlaw Alexion laughed at Hesiod, for advising us to drink freely when the barrel is newly broached or almost out, but moderately when it is about the middle, since there is the best wine. For who, said he, doth not know, that the middle of wine, the top of oil, and the bottom of honey is the best? Yet he bids us spare the middle, and stay till worse wine runs, when the barrel is almost out. This said, the company minded Hesiod no more, but began to inquire into the cause of this difference. We were not at all puzzled about the honey, everybody almost knowing that that which is lightest is so because it is rare, and that the heaviest parts are dense and compact, and by reason of their weight settle below the others. So, if you turn the vessel, each in a little time will recover its proper place, the heavier subsiding, and the lighter rising above the rest. And as for the wine, probable solutions presently appeared; for its strength consisting in heat, it is reasonable that it should be contained chiefly in the middle, and there best preserved; for the lower parts the lees spoil, and the upper are impaired by the neighboring air. For that the air will impair wine no man doubts, and therefore we usually bury or cover our barrels, that as little air as can be might come near them. And besides (which is an evident sign) a barrel when full is not spoiled so soon as when it is half empty; because a great deal of air getting into the empty space troubles and disturbs the liquor, whereas the wine that is in the unemptied cask is preserved and defended by itself, not admitting much of the external air, which is apt to injure and corrupt it.

But the oil gave us the most difficulty. One thought that the bottom of the oil was affected, because it was foul and troubled with the lees; and that the top was not really better than the rest, but only seemed so, because it was farthest removed from those corrupting particles. Others thought the thickness of the liquor to be the reason, which thickness keeps it from mixing with other humids, unless blended together and shaken violently; and therefore it will not mix with air, but keeps it off by its smoothness and close contexture, so that it hath no power to corrupt it. But Aristotle seems to be against this opinion, who hath observed that oil grows sweeter by being kept in vessels not exactly filled, and afterwards ascribes this melioration to the air; for more air, and therefore more powerful to produce the effect, flows into a vessel not well filled.

Well then! said I, the same quality in the air may spoil wine, and better oil. For long keeping improves wine, but spoils oil. Now the air keeps oil from growing old; for that which is cooled continues fresh and new, but that which is kept close up, having no way to exhale its corrupting parts, presently decays, and grows old. Therefore it is probable that the air coming upon the superficies of the oil keepeth it fresh and new. And this is the reason that the top of wine is worst, and of oil best; because age betters the one, and spoils the other.

QUESTION IV.

What Was, the Reason of that Custom of the Ancient Romans to Remove the Table Before All the Meat Was Eaten, and Not to Put Out the Lamp?

FLORUS, EUSTROPHUS, CAESERNIUS, LUCIUS.

Florus, who observed the ancient manners, would not let the table be removed quite empty, but always left some meat upon it; declaring likewise that his father and grandfather were not only curious in this matter, but would never suffer the lamp after supper to be put out, — a thing about which the ancient Romans were very careful, — while those of today put it out immediately after supper, that they may lose no oil. Eustrophus the Athenian being present said: What could they get by that, unless they knew the cunning trick of our Polycharmus, who, after long deliberation how to find out a way to prevent the servants’ stealing of the oil, at last with a great deal of difficulty happened upon this: As soon as you have put out the lamp, fill it up, and the next morning look carefully whether it remains full. Then Florus with a smile replied: Well, since we are agreed about that, let us inquire for what reason the ancients were so careful about their tables and their lamps.

First, about the lamps. And his son-inlaw Caesernius was of opinion that the ancients abominated all extinction of fire, because of the relation that it had to the sacred and eternal flame. Fire, like man, may be destroyed two ways, either when it is violently quenched, or when it naturally decays. The sacred fire was secured against both ways, being always watched and continually supplied; but the common fire they permitted to go out of itself, not forcing or violently extinguishing it, but not supplying it with nourishment, like a useless beast, that they might not feed it to no purpose.

Lucius, Florus’s son, subjoined, that all the rest of the discourse was very good, but that they did not reverence and take care of this holy fire because they thought it better or more venerable than other fire; but, as amongst the Egyptians some worship the whole species of dogs, wolves, or crocodiles, yet keep but one wolf, dog, or crocodile (for all could not be kept), so the particular care which the ancients took of the sacred fire was only a sign of the respect they had for all fires. For nothing bears such a resemblance to an animal as fire. It is moved and nourished by itself, and by its brightness, like the soul, discovers and makes everything apparent; but in its quenching it principally shows some power that seems to proceed from our vital principle, for it makes a noise and resists, like an animal dying or violently slaughtered. And can you (looking upon me) offer any better reason?

I can find fault, replied I, with no part of the discourse, yet I would subjoin, that this custom is an instruction for kindness and good-will. For it is not lawful for any one that hath eaten sufficiently to destroy the remainder of the food; nor for him that hath supplied his necessities from the fountain to stop it up; nor for him that hath made use of any marks, either by sea or land, to ruin or deface them; but every one ought to leave those things that may be useful to those persons that afterwards may have need of them. Therefore it is not fit, out of a saving covetous humor, to put out a lamp as soon as we need it not; but we ought to preserve and let it burn for the use of those that perhaps want its light. Thus, it would be very generous to lend our ears and eyes, nay, if possible, our reason and understanding, to others, whilst we are idle or asleep. Besides, consider whether to stir up men to gratitude these minute observances were practised. The ancients did not act absurdly when they highly reverenced an oak. The Athenians called one fig-tree sacred, and forbade any one to cut down an olive. For such observances do not (as some fancy) make men prone to superstition, but persuade us to be communicative and grateful to one another, by being accustomed to pay this respect to these senseless and inanimate creatures. Upon the same reason Hesiod, methinks, adviseth well, who would not have any meat or broth set on the table out of those pots out of which there had been no portion offered, but ordered the first-fruits to be given to the fire, as a reward for the service it did in preparing it. And the Romans, dealing well with the lamps, did not take away the nourishment they had once given, but permitted them to live and shine by it.

When I had said thus, Eustrophus subjoined: This gives us some light into that query about the table; for they thought that they ought to leave some portion of the supper for the servants and waiters, for those are not so well pleased with a supper provided for them apart, as with the relics of their master’s table. And upon this account, they say, the Persian king did not only send portions from his own table to his friends, captains, and gentlemen of his bed-chamber, but had always what was provided for his servants and his dogs served up to his own table; that as far as possible all those creatures whose service was useful might seem to be his guests and companions. For, by such feeding in common and participation, the wildest of beasts might be made tame and gentle.

Then I with a smile said: But, sir, that fish there, that according to the proverb is laid up, why do not we bring out into play together with Pythagoras’s choenix, which he forbids any man to sit upon, thereby teaching us that we ought to leave something of what we have before us for another time, and on the present day be mindful of the morrow? We Boeotians use to have that saying frequently in our mouths, “Leave something for the Medes,” ever since the Medes overran and spoiled Phocis and the marches of Boeotia; but still, and upon all occasions, we ought to have that ready, “Leave something for the guests that may come.” And therefore I must needs find fault with that always empty and starving table of Achilles; for, when Ajax and Ulysses came ambassadors to him, he had nothing ready, but was forced out of hand to dress a fresh supper. And when he would entertain Priam, he again bestirs himself, kills a white ewe, joints and dresses it, and in that work spent a great part of the night. But Eumaeus (a wise scholar of a wise master) had no trouble upon him when Telemachus came home, but presently desired him to sit down, and feasted him, setting before him dishes of boiled meat,

The cleanly reliques of the last night’s feast.

But if this seems trifling, and a small matter, I am sure it is no small matter to command and restrain appetite while there are dainties before you to satisfy and please it. For those that are used to abstain from what is present are not so eager for absent things as others are.

Lucius subjoining said, that he had heard his grandmother say, that the table was sacred, and nothing that is sacred ought to be empty. Besides, continued he, in my opinion, the table hath some resemblance of the earth; for, besides nourishing us, it is round and stable, and is fitly called by some Vesta [Greek omitted] from [Greek omitted]. Therefore as we desire that the earth should always have and bear something that is useful for us, so we think that we should not let the table be altogether empty and void of all provision.

QUESTION V.

That We Ought Carefully to Preserve Ourselves From Pleasures Arising From Bad Music and How It May Be Done.

CALLISTRATUS, LAMPRIAS.

At the Pythian games Callistratus, procurator of the Amphictyons, forbade a piper, his citizen and friend, who did not give in his name in due time, to appear in the solemnity, according to the law. But afterwards entertaining us, he brought him into the room with the chorus, finely dressed in his robes and with chaplets on his head, as if he was to contend for the prize. And at first indeed he played a very fine tune; but afterwards, having tickled and sounded the humor of the whole company, and found that most were inclined to pleasure and would suffer him to play what effeminate and lascivious tunes he pleased, throwing aside all modesty, he showed that music was more intoxicating than wine to those that wantonly and unskilfully use it. For they were not content to sit still and applaud and clap, but many at last leaped from their seats, danced lasciviously, and made such gentle steps as became such effeminate and mollifying tunes. But after they had done, and the company, as it were recovered of its madness, began to come to itself again, Lamprias would have spoken to and severely chid the young men; but as fearing he would be too harsh and give offence, Callistratus gave him a hint, and drew him on by this discourse: —

For my part, I absolve all lovers of shows and music from intemperance; yet I cannot altogether agree with Aristoxenus, who says that those pleasures alone deserve the approbation “fine.” For we call viands and ointments fine; and we say we have finely dined, when we have been splendidly entertained. Nor, in my opinion, doth Aristotle free those complacencies we take in shows and songs upon good reason from the charge of excess, saying, that those belong peculiarly to man, and of other pleasures beasts have a share. For I am certain that a great many irrational creatures are delighted with music, as deer with pipes; and to mares, whilst they are horsing, they play a tune called [Greek omitted]. And Pindar says, that his songs make him move,

As brisk as Dolphins, whom a charming tune
Hath raised from th’ bottom of the quiet flood.

And certain fish are taken by means of dancing; for as the dance goes on they lift up their heads above water, being much pleased and delighted with the sight, and twisting their backs this way and that way, in imitation of the dancers. Therefore I see nothing peculiar in those pleasures, that they should be accounted proper to the mind, and all others to belong to the body, so far as to end there. But music, rhythm, dancing, song, passing through the sense, fix a pleasure and titilation in the sportive part of the soul and therefore none of these pleasures is enjoyed in secret, nor wants darkness nor walls about it, according to the women’s phrase; but circuses and theatres are built for them. And to frequent shows and music-meetings with company is both more delightful and more genteel; because we take a great many witnesses, not of a luxurious and intemperate, but of a pleasant and respectable, manner of passing away our time.

Upon this discourse of Callistratus, my father Lamprias, seeing the musicians grow bolder, said: That is not the reason, sir, and, in my opinion, the ancients were much out when they named Bacchus the son of Forgetfulness. They ought to have called him his father; for it seems he hath made you forget that of those faults which are committed about pleasures some proceed from a loose intemperate inclination, and others from heedlessness or ignorance. Where the ill effect is very plain, there intemperate inclination captivates reason, and forces men to sin; but where the just reward of intemperance is not directly and presently inflicted, there ignorance of the danger and heedlessness make men easily wrought oil and secure. Therefore those that are vicious, either in eating, drinking, or venery, which diseases, wasting of estates, and evil reports usually attend, we call intemperate. For instance, Theodectes, who having sore eyes, when his mistress came to see him, said,

All hail, delightful light;

or Anaxarchus the Abderite,

A wretch who knew what evils wait on sin,
Yet love of pleasure drove him back again.
Once almost free, he sank again to vice,
That terror and disturber of the wise.

Now those that take all care possible to secure themselves from all those pleasures that assault them either at the smelling, touch, or taste, are often surprised by those that make their treacherous approaches either at the eye or ear. But such, though as much led away as the others, we do not in like manner call incontinent and intemperate, since they are ruined through ignorance and want of experience. For they imagine they are far from being slaves to pleasures, if they can stay all day in the theatre without meat or drink; as if a pot forsooth should be mighty proud that a man cannot take it up by the bottom or the belly and carry it away, though he can easily do it by the ears. And therefore Agesilaus said, it was all one whether a man were a CINOEDUS before or behind. We ought principally to dread those softening delights that please and tickle through the eyes and ears, and not think that city not taken which hath all its other gates secured by bars, portcullises, and chains, if the enemies are already entered through one and have taken possession; or fancy ourselves invincible against the assaults of pleasure, because stews will not provoke us, when the music-meeting or theatre prevails. For we in one case as much as the other resign up our souls to the impetuousness of pleasures, which pouring in those potions of songs, cadences, and tunes, more powerful and bewitching than the best mixtures of the most skilful cook or perfumer, conquer and corrupt us; and in the meantime, by our own confession as it were, the fault is chiefly ours. Now, as Pindar saith, nothing that the earth and sea hath provided for our tables can be justly blamed; but neither our meat nor broth, nor this excellent wine which we drink, hath raised such a noisy tumultous pleasure as those songs and tunes did, which not only filled the house with clapping and shouting, but perhaps the whole town. Therefore we ought principally to secure ourselves against such delights, because they are more powerful than others; as not being terminated in the body, like those which allure the touch, taste, or smelling, but affecting the very intellectual and judging faculties. Besides, from most other delights, though reason doth not free us, yet other passions very commonly divert us. Sparing niggardliness will keep a glutton from dainty fish, and covetousness will confine a lecher from a costly whore. As in one of Menander’s plays, where every one of the company was to be enticed by the bawd who brought out a surprising whore, but each of them, though all boon companions,

Sat sullenly, and fed upon his cates.

For to pay interest for money is a severe punishment that follows intemperance, and to open our purses is no easy matter. But these pleasures that are called genteel, and solicit the ears or eyes of those that are frantic after shows and music, may be had without any charge at all, in every place almost, and upon every occasion; they may be enjoyed at the prizes, in the theatre, or at entertainments, at others cost. And therefore those that have not their reason to assist and guide them may be easily spoiled.

Silence following upon this, What application, said I, shall reason make, or how shall it assist? For I do not think it will apply those ear-covers of Xenocrates, or force us to rise from the table as soon as we hear a harp struck or a pipe blown. No indeed, replied Lamprias, but as soon as we meet with the foresaid intoxications, we ought to make our application to the Muses, and fly to the Helicon of the ancients. To him that loves a costly strumpet, we cannot bring a Panthea or Penelope for cure; but one that delights in mimics and buffoons, loose odes, or debauched songs, we can bring to Euripides, Pindar, and Menander, that he might wash (as Plato phraseth it) his salt hearing with fresh reason. As the exorcists command the possessed to read over and pronounce Ephesian letters, so we in those possessions, during the madness of music and the dance, when

We toss our hands with noise, and madly shout,

remembering those venerable and sacred writings, and comparing with them those odes, poems, and vain empty compositions, shall not be altogether cheated by them, or permit ourselves to be carried away sidelong, as by a smooth and undisturbed stream.

QUESTION VI.

Concerning Those Guests that are Called Shadows, and Whether Being Invited by Some to Go to Another’s House, They Ought To Go; and When, and to Whom.

PLUTARCH, FLORUS, CAESERNIUS.

Homer makes Menelaus come uninvited to his brother Agamemnon’s treat, when he feasted the commanders;

For well he knew great cares his brother vexed.
(“Iliad,” ii. 409.)

He did not take notice of the plain and evident omission of his brother, or show his resentments by not coming, as some surly testy persons usually do upon such oversights of their best friends; yet they had rather be overlooked than particularly invited, that they may have some color for their pettish anger. But about the introduced guests (which we call shadows) who are not invited by the entertainer, but by some others of the guests, a question was started, from whom that custom began. Some thought from Socrates, who persuaded Aristodemus, who was not invited, to go along with him to Agatho’s, where there happened a pretty jest. For Socrates by chance staying somewhat behind, Aristodemus went in first; and this seemed very appropriate, for, the sun shining on their backs, the shadow ought to go before the body. Afterwards it was thought necessary at all entertainments, especially of great men, when the inviter did not know their favorites and acquaintance, to desire the invited to bring his company, appointing such a set number, lest they should be put to the same shifts which he was put to who invited King Philip to his country-house. The king came with a numerous attendance, but the provision was not equal to the company. Therefore, seeing his entertainer much cast down, he sent some about to tell his friends privately, that they should keep one corner of their bellies for a large cake that was to come. And they, expecting this, fed sparingly on the meat that was set before them, so that the provision seemed sufficient for them all.

When I had talked thus waggishly to the company Florus had a mind to talk gravely concerning these shadows, and have it discussed whether it was fit for those that were so invited to go, or no. His son-inlaw Caesernius was positively against it. We should, says he, following Hesiod’s advice,

Invite a friend to feast,
(“Works and Days,” 342.)

or at least we should have our acquaintance and familiars to participate of our entertainments, mirth, and discourse over a glass of wine; but now, as ferry-men permit their passengers to bring in what fardel they please, so we permit others to fill our entertainments with any persons, let them be good companions or not. And I should wonder that any man of breeding being so (that is, not at all) invited, should go; since, for the most part, he must be unacquainted with the entertainer, or if he was acquainted, was not thought worthy to be bidden. Nay, he should be more ashamed to go to such a one, if he considers that it will look like an upbraiding of his unkindness, and yet a rude intruding into his company against his will. Besides, to go before or after the guest that invites him must look unhandsomely, nor is it creditable to go and stand in need of witnesses to assure the guests that he doth not come as a principally invited person, but such a one’s shadow. Besides, to attend others bathing or anointing, to observe his hour, whether he goes early or late, is servile and gnathonical (for there never was such an excellent fellow as Gnatho to feed at another man’s table). Besides, if there is no more proper time and place to say,

Speak, tongue, if thou wilt utter jovial things,

than at a feast, and freedom and raillery is mixed with everything that is either done or said over a glass of wine, how should he behave himself, who is not a true principally invited guest, but as it were a bastard and supposititious intruder? For whether he is free or not, he lies open to the exception of the company. Besides, the very meanness and vileness of the name is no small evil to those who do not resent it but can quietly endure to be called and answer to the name of shadows. For, by enduring such base names, men are insensibly accustomed and drawn on to base actions. Therefore, when I make an invitation, for it is hard to break the custom of a place, I give my guests leave to bring shadows; but when I myself am invited as a shadow, I assure you I refuse to go.

A short silence followed this discourse; then Florus began thus: This last thing you mentioned, sir, is a greater difficulty than the other. For it is necessary when we invite our friends to give them liberty to choose their own shadows, as was before hinted; for to entertain them without their friends is not very obliging, nor is it very easy to know whom the person we invite would be most pleased with. Then said I to him: Consider therefore whether those that give their friends this license to invite do not at the same time give the invited license to accept the invitation and come to the entertainment. For it is not fit either to allow or to desire another to do that which is not decent to be done, or to urge and persuade to that which no one ought to be persuaded or to consent to do. When we entertain a great man or stranger, there we cannot invite or choose his company, but must receive those that come along with him. But when we feast a friend, it will be more acceptable if we ourselves invite all, as knowing his acquaintance and familiars; for it tickles him extremely to see that others take notice that he hath chiefly a respect for such and such, loves their company most, and is well pleased when they are honored and invited as well as he. Yet sometimes we must deal with our friend as petitioners do when they make addresses to a god; they offer vows to all that belong to the same altar and the same shrine, though they make no particular mention of their names. For no dainties, wine, or ointment can incline a man to merriment, as much as a pleasant agreeable companion. For as it is rude and ungenteel to inquire and ask what sort of meat, wine, or ointment the person whom we are to entertain loves best; so it is neither disobliging nor absurd to desire him who hath a great many acquaintance to bring those along with him whose company he likes most, and in whose conversation he can take the greatest pleasure. For it is not so irksome and tedious to sail in the same ship, to dwell in the same house, or be a judge upon the same bench, with a person whom we do not like, as to be at the same table with him; and the contrary is fully as pleasant. An entertainment is a communion of serious or merry discourse or actions; and therefore, to make a merry company, we should not pick up any person at a venture, but take only such as are known to one another and sociable. Cooks, it is true, mix sour and sweet juices, rough and oily, to make their sauces; but there never was an agreeable table or pleasant entertainment where the guests were not all of a piece, and all of the same humor. Now, as the Peripatetics say, the first mover in nature moves only and is not moved, and the last moved is moved only but does not move, and between these there is that which moves and is moved by others; so there is the same analogy between those three sorts of persons that make up a company, — there is the simple inviter, the simple invited and the invited that invites another. We have spoken already concerning the inviter, and it will not be improper, in my opinion, to deliver my sentiments about the other two. He that is invited and invites others, should, in my opinion, be sparing in the number that he brings. He should not, as if he were to forage in an enemy’s country, carry all he can with him; or, like those who go to possess a new-found land, by the excessive number of his own friends, incommode or exclude the friends of the inviter, so that the inviter must be in the same case with those that set forth suppers to Hecate and the gods who turn away evil, of which neither they nor any of their family partake, except of the smoke and trouble. It is true they only speak in waggery that say,

He that at Delphi offers sacrifice
Must after meat for his own dinner buy.

But the same thing really happens to him who entertains ill-bred guests or acquaintances, who with a great many shadows, as it were harpies, tear and devour his provision. Besides, he should not take anybody that he may come upon along with him to another’s entertainment, but chiefly the entertainer’s acquaintance, as it were contending with him and preceding him in the invitation. But if that cannot be effected, let him carry such of his own friends as the entertainer would choose himself; to a civil modest man, some of complaisant humor; to a learned man, ingenuous persons; to a man that hath borne office, some of the same rank; and, in short, such whose acquaintance he hath formerly sought and would be now glad of. For it will be extremely pleasing and obliging to bring such into company together; but one who brings to a feast men who have no likeness at all with the feast-maker, but who are entire aliens and strangers to him, — as hard drinkers to a sober man, — gluttons and sumptuous persons to a temperate thrifty entertainer, — or to a young, merry, boon companion, grave old philosophers solemnly speaking in their beards, — will be very disobliging, and turn all the intended mirth into an unpleasant sourness. The entertained should be as obliging to the entertainer as the entertainer to the entertained; and then he will be most obliging, when not only he himself, but all those that come by his means, are pleasant and agreeable.

The last of the three which remains to be spoken of is he that is invited by one man to another’s feast. Now he that disdains and is so much offended at the name of a shadow will appear to be afraid of a mere shadow. But in this matter there is need of a great deal of caution, for it is not creditable readily to go along with every one and to everybody. But first you must consider who it is that invites; for if he is not a very familiar friend, but a rich or great man, such who, as if upon a stage, wants a large or splendid retinue, or such who thinks that he puts a great obligation upon you and does you a great deal of honor by this invitation, you must presently deny. But if he is your friend and particular acquaintance, you must not yield upon the first motion: but if there seems a necessity for some conversation which cannot be put off till another time, or if he is lately come from a journey or designs to go on one, and out of mere good-will and affection seems desirous of your company, and doth not desire to carry a great many, or strangers, but only some few friends along with him; or, besides all this, if he designs to bring you thus invited acquainted with the principal inviter, who is very worthy of your acquaintance, then consent and go. For as to ill-humored persons, the more they seize and take hold of us like thorns, we should endeavor to free ourselves from them or leap over them the more. If he that invites is a civil and well-bred person, yet doth not design to carry you to one of the same temper, you must refuse, lest you should take poison in honey, that is, get the acquaintance of a bad man by an honest friend. It is absurd to go to one you do not know, and with whom you never had any familiarity, unless, as I said before, the person be an extraordinary man, and, by a civil waiting, upon him at another man’s invitation, you design to begin an acquaintance with him. And those friends you should chiefly go to as shadows, who would come to you again in the same quality. To Philip the jester, indeed, he seemed more ridiculous that came to a feast of his own accord than he that was invited; but to well-bred and civil friends it is more obliging for men of the same temper to come at the nick of time with other friends, when uninvited and unexpected; at once pleasing both to those that invite and those that entertain. But chiefly you must avoid going to rulers, rich or great men, lest you incur the deserved censure of being impudent, saucy, rude, and unseasonably ambitious.

QUESTION VII.

Whether Flute-Girls are to Be Allowed at a Feast?

DIOGENIANUS, A SOPHIST, PHILIP.

At Chaeronea, Diogenianus the Pertamenian being present, we had a long discourse once at an entertainment about music; and we had a great deal of trouble to hold out against a great bearded sophister of the Stoic sect, who quoted Plato as blaming a company that admitted flute-girls and were not able to entertain one another with discourse. And Philip the Prusian, of the same sect, said: Those guests of Agatho, whose discourse was more sweet than the sound of any pipe in the world, were no good authority in this case; for it was no wonder that in their company the flute-girl was not regarded; but it is strange that, in the midst of the entertainment, the extreme pleasantness of the discourse had not made them forget their meat and drink. Yet Xenophon thought it not indecent to bring in to Socrates, Antisthenes, and the like the jester Philip; as Homer doth an onion to make the wine relish. And Plato brought in Aristophanes’s discourse of love, as a comedy, into his entertainment; and at the last, as it were drawing all the curtains, he shows a scene of the greatest variety imaginable, — Alcibiades drunk, frolicking, and crowned. Then follows that pleasant raillery between him and Socrates concerning Agatho, and the encomium of Socrates; and when such discourse was going on, good gods! Had it not been allowable, if Apollo himself had come in with his harp ready to desire the god to forbear till the argument was out? These men, having such a pleasant way of discoursing, used these arts and insinuating methods, and graced their entertainment’s by such facetious raillery. But shall we, being mixed with tradesmen and merchants, and some (as it now and then happens) ignorants and rustics, banish out of our entertainments this ravishing delight, or fly the musicians, as if they were Sirens, as soon as we see them coming? Clitomachus the wrestler, rising and getting away when any one talked of love, was much wondered at; and should not a philosopher that banisheth music from a feast, and is afraid of a musician, and bids his link boy presently light his link and be gone, be laughed at, since he seems to abominate the most innocent pleasures, as beetles do ointment? For, if at any time, certainly over a glass of wine, music should be permitted, and then chiefly the harmonious god should have the direction of our souls; so that Euripides, though I like him very well in other things, shall never persuade me that music, as he would have it, should be applied to melancholy and grief. For there sober and serious reason, like a physician, should take care of the diseased men; but those pleasures should be mixed with Bacchus, and serve to increase our mirth and frolic. Therefore it was a pleasant saying of that Spartan at Athens, who, when some new tragedians were to contend for the prize, seeing the preparations of the masters of the dances, the hurry and busy diligence of the instructors, said, the city was certainly mad which sported with so much pains. He that designs to sport should sport, and not buy his case and pleasure with great expense, or the loss of that time which might be useful to other things; but whilst he is feasting and free from business, those should be enjoyed. And it is advisable to try amidst our mirth, whether any profit is to be gotten from our delights.

QUESTION VIII.

What Sort of Music is Fittest for an Entertainment?

DIOGENIANUS, A SOPHIST, PHILIP.

When Philip had ended, I hindered the sophister from returning an answer to the discourse, and said: Let us rather inquire, Diogenianus, since there are a great many sorts of music, which is fittest for an entertainment. And let us beg this learned man’s judgment in this case; for since he is not prejudiced or apt to be biased by any sort, there is no danger that he should prefer that which is pleasantest before that which is best. Diogenianus joining with me in this request, he presently began. All other sorts I banish to the theatre and playhouse, and can only allow that which hath been lately admitted into the entertainments at Rome, and with which everybody is not yet acquainted. You know, continued he, that some of Plato’s dialogues are purely narrative, and some dramatic. The easiest of this latter sort they teach their children to speak by heart; making them to imitate the actions of those persons they represent, and to form their voice and affections to be agreeable to the words. This all the grave and well-bred men exceedingly admire; but soft and effeminate fellows, whose ears ignorance and ill-breeding hath corrupted, and who, as Aristoxenus phraseth it, are ready to vomit when they hear excellent harmony, reject it; and no wonder, when effeminacy prevails.

Philip, perceiving some of the company uneasy at this discourse, said: Pray spare us, sir, and be not so severe upon us; for we were the first that found fault with that custom when it first began to be countenanced in Rome, and reprehended those who thought Plato fit to entertain us whilst we were making merry, and who would hear his dialogues whilst they were eating cates and scattering perfumes. When Sappho’s songs or Anaereon’s verses are recited, I protest I think it decent to set aside my cup. But should I proceed, perhaps you would think me much in earnest, and designing to oppose you, and therefore, together with this cup which I present my friend, I leave it to him to wash your salt ear with fresh discourse.

Then Diogenianus, taking the cup, said: Methinks this is very sober discourse, which makes me believe that the wine doth not please you, since I see no effect of it; so that I fear I ought to be corrected. Indeed, many sorts of music are not to be rejected; first, tragedy, as having nothing familiar enough for an entertainment, and being a representation of actions attended with grief and extremity of passion. I reject the sort of dancing which is called Pyladean from Pylades, because it is full of pomp, very pathetical, and requires a great many persons; but if we would admit any of those sorts that deserve those encomiums which Socrates mentions in his discourse about dancing, I like that sort called Bathyllean, which requires not so high a motion, but hath something of the character of the Cordax, and resembles the motion of an Echo, a Pan, or a Satyr frolicking with love. Old comedy is not fit for men that are making merry, by reason of the excuses that appear in it; for that vehemency which they use in the parabasis is loud and indecent, and the liberty they take to scoff and abuse is very surfeiting, too open, and full of filthy words and lewd expressions. Besides, as at great men’s tables every man hath a servant waiting at his elbow, so each of his guests would need a grammarian to sit by him, and explain who is Laespodias in Eupolis, Cinesias in Plato, and Lampo in Cratinus, and who is each person that is jeered in the play. Concerning new comedy there is no need of any long discourse. It is so fitted, so interwoven with entertainments, that it is easier to have a regular feast without wine, than without Menander. Its phrase is sweet and familiar, the Humor innocent and easy, so that there is nothing for men whilst sober to despise, or when merry to be troubled at. The sentiments are so natural and unstudied, that midst wine, as it were in fire, they soften and bend the rigidest temper to be pliable and easy. And the mixture of gravity and jests seems to be contrived for nothing so aptly as for the pleasure and profit of those that are frolicking and making merry. The love-scenes in Menander are convenient for those who have already drunk their cups, and who in a short time must retire home to their wives; for in all his plays there is no love of boys mentioned, and all rapes committed on virgins and decently in marriages at last. As for misses, if they are impudent and jilting, they are bobbed, the young gallants turning sober, and repenting of their lewd courses. But if they are kind and constant, either their true parents are discovered, or a time is determined for intrigue, which brings them at last to obliging modesty and civil kindness. These things to men busied about other matters may seem scarce worth taking notice of; but whilst they are making merry, it is no wonder that the pleasantness and smoothness of the parts should work a neat conformity and distinction in the hearers and make their manners like the pattern they have from those genteel characters.

Diogenianus, either designedly or for want of breath ended thus. And when the sophister attacked him again, and contended that some of Aristophanes’s verses should be read, Philip speaking to me said: Diogenianus hath had his wish in praising his beloved Menander, and seems not to care for any of the rest. There are a great many sorts which we have not at all considered, concerning which I should be very glad to have your opinion; and the prize for the carvers we will set up tomorrow, when we are sober, if Diogenianus and this stranger think fit. Of representations, said I, some are allegorical, and some are farces; neither of these are fit for an entertainment; the first by reason of their length and cost, and the latter being so full of filthy discourse and lewd actions, that they are not fit to be seen by the foot-boys that wait on civil masters. Yet the rabble, even with their wives and young sons, sit quietly to be spectators of such representations as are apt to disturb the soul more than the greatest debauch in drink. The harp ever since Homer’s time was well acquainted with feasts and entertainments, and therefore it is not fitting to dissolve such an ancient friendship and acquaintance; but we should only desire the harpers to forbear their sad notes and melancholy tunes, and play only those that are delighting, and fit for such as are making merry. The pipe, if we would, we cannot reject, for the libation in the beginning of the entertainment requires that as well as the garland. Then it insinuates and passeth through the ears, spreading even to the very soul a pleasant sound, which produceth serenity and calmness; so that, if the wine hath not quite dissolved or driven away all vexing solicitous anxiety this, by the softness and delightful agreeableness of its sound, smooths and calms the spirits, if so be that it keeps within due bounds, and doth not elevate too much, and, by its numerous surprising divisions, raise an ecstasy in the soul which wine hath weakened and made easy to be perverted. For as brutes do not understand a rational discourse, yet lie down or rise up at the sound of a shell or whistle, or of a chirp or clap; so the brutish part of the soul, which is either incapable of understanding or obeying reason, men conquer by songs and tunes, and by music reduce it to tolerable order. But to speak freely what I think, no pipe nor harp simply played upon, and without a song with it, can be very fit for an entertainment. For we should still accustom ourselves to take our chiefest pleasure from discourse, and spend our leisure time in profitable talk, and use tunes and airs as a sauce for the discourse, and not singly by themselves, to please the unreasonable delicacy of our palate. For as nobody is against pleasure that ariseth from sauce or wine going in with our necessary food, but Socrates flouts and refuseth to admit that superfluous and vain pleasure which we take in perfumes and odors at a feast; thus the sound of a pipe or harp, when singly applied to our ears, we utterly reject, but if it accompanies words, and together with an ode feasts and delights our reason, we gladly introduce it. And we believe the famed Marsyas was punished by Apollo for pretending, when he had nothing but his single pipe, and his muzzle to apply to his lips, to contend with the harp and song of the god. Let us only take care that, when we have such guests as are able to cheer one another with philosophy and good discourse we do not introduce anything that may rather prove an uneasy hindrance to the conversation than promote it. For not only those are fools, who, as Euripides says, having safety at home and in their own power, yet would hire some from abroad; but those too who, having pleasantness enough within, are eager after some external pastimes to comfort and delight them. That extraordinary piece of honor which the Persian king showed Antalcidas the Spartan seemed rude and uncivil, when he dipped a garland composed of crocus and roses in ointment, and sent it him to wear, by that dipping putting a slight upon and spoiling the natural sweetness and beauty of the flowers. He doth as bad, who having a Muse in his own breast, and all the pleasantness that would fit an entertainment, will have pipes and harps play, and by that external adventitious noise destroy all the sweetness that was proper and his own. But in short, all ear-delights are fittest then, when the company begins to be disturbed, to fall out, and quarrel, for then they may prevent raillery and reproach, and stop the dispute that is running on to sophistical and unpleasant wrangling, and bridle all babbling declamatory altercations, so that the company may be freed of noise and quietly composed.

QUESTION IX.

That It Was the Custom of the Greeks As Well As Persians to Debate of State Affairs at Their Entertainments.

NICOSTRATUS, GLAUCIAS.

At Nicostratus’s table we discoursed of those matters which the Athenians were to debate of in their next assembly. And one of the company saying, It is the Persian fashion, sir, to debate midst your cups; And why, said Glaucias rejoining, not the Grecian fashion? For it was a Greek that said,

After your belly’s full, your counsel’s best.

And they were Greeks who with Agamemnon besieged Troy, to whom, whilst they were eating and drinking,

Old Nestor first began a grave debate;
(“Iliad,” vii. 324.)

and he himself advised the king before to call the commanders together for the same purpose: —

For the commanders, sir, a feast prepare,
And see who counsels best, and follow him.
(Ibid, ix. 70 and 74.)

Therefore Greece, having a great many excellent institutions, and zealously following the customs of the ancients, hath laid the foundations of her polities in wine. For the assemblies in Crete called Andria, those in Sparta called Phiditia, were secret consultations and aristocratical assemblies; such, I suppose, as the Prytaneum and Thesmothesium here at Athens. And not different from these is that night-meeting, which Plato mentions, of the best and most polite men, to which the greatest, the most considerable and puzzling matters are assigned. And those

Who, when they do design to seek their rest,
To Mercury their just libations pour,
(“Odyssey,” vii. 138.)

do they not join reason and wine together, since, when they are about to retire, they make their vows to the wisest god, as if he was present and particularly president over their actions? But the ancients indeed call Bacchus the good counsellor, as if he had no need of Mercury; and for his sake they named the night [Greek omitted] as it were, GOOD ADVISER.

QUESTION X.

Whether They Did Well Who Deliberated Midst Their Cups.

GLAUCIAS, NICOSTRATUS.

Whilst Glaucias was discoursing thus, the former tumultuous talk seemed to be pretty well lulled; and that it might be quite forgotten, Nicostratus started another question, saying, he never valued the matter before, whilst he thought it a Persian custom, but since it was discovered to be the Greek fashion too, it wanted (he thought) some reason to excuse or defend its seeming absurdity. For our reason (said he), like our eye, whilst it floats in too much moisture, is hard to be moved, and unable to perform its operations. And all sorts of troubles and discontents, like insects to the sun, creeping forth, and being agitated by a glass of wine, make the mind irresolute and inconstant. Therefore as a bed is more convenient for a man whilst making merry than a chair, because it contains the whole body and keeps it from all disturbing motion, so it is best to have the soul perfectly at quiet; or, if that cannot be, we must give it, as to children that will be doing, not a sword or spear, but a rattle or a ball, — in this following the example of the god himself, who puts into the hands of those that are making merry a ferula, the lightest and softest of all weapons, that, when they are most apt to strike, they may hurt least. Over a glass of wine men should make only ridiculous slips, and not such as may prove tragical, lamentable, or of any considerable concern. Besides, in serious debates, it is chiefly to be considered, that persons of mean understanding and unacquainted with business should be guided by the wise and experienced; but wine destroys this order. Insomuch that Plato says, wine is called [Greek omitted] because it makes those that drink it [Greek omitted] think that they have wit; for none over a glass of wine thinks himself so noble, beauteous, or rich (though he fancies himself all these), as wise; and therefore wine is babbling, full of talk, and of a dictating humor; so that we are rather for being heard than hearing, for leading than being led. But a thousand such objections may be raised, for they are very obvious. But let us hear which of the company, either old or young, can allege anything for the contrary opinion.

Then said my brother cunningly: And do you imagine that any, upon a sudden, can produce any probable reasons? And Nicostratus replying, Yes, no doubt, there being so many learned men and good drinkers in company; he with a smile continued: Do you think, sir, you are fit to treat of these matters, when wine hath disabled you to discourse of politics and state affairs? Or is not this all the same as to think that a man in his liquor doth not see very well nor understand those that talk and discourse with him, yet hears the music and the pipers very well? For as it is likely that useful and profitable things draw and affect the sense more than fine and gaudy; so likewise they do the mind too. And I shall not wonder that the nice philosophical speculation should escape a man who hath drunk freely; but yet, I think, if he were called to political debates, his wisdom would become more strong and vigorous. Thus Philip at Chaeronea, being well heated, talked very foolishly, and was the sport of the whole company; but as soon as they began to discourse of a truce and peace, he composed his countenance, contracted his brows, and dismissing all vain, empty and dissolute thoughts, he gave an excellent, wise, and sober answer to the Athenians. To drink freely is different from being drunk, and those that drink till they grow foolish ought to retire to bed. But as for those that drink freely and are otherwise men of sense, why should we fear that they will fail in their understanding or lose their skill, when we see that musicians play as well at a feast as in a theatre? For when skill and art are found in the soul, they make the body correct and proper in its operations, and obedient to the motions of the spirit. Besides, wine inspirits some men, and raises a confidence and assurance in them, but not such as is haughty and odious, but pleasing and agreeable. Thus they say that Aeschylus composed his tragedies over a bottle, and that all his plays (though Gorgias thought that one of them, the “Seven against Thebes,” was full of Mars) were Bacchus’s. For wine (according to Plato), heating the soul together with the body, makes the body pliable, quick, and active, and opens the passages; while the fancies draw in discourse with boldness, and daring.

For some have a good natural invention, yet whilst they are sober are too diffident and too close, but midst their wine, like frankincense, exhale and open at the heat. Besides, wine expels all fear, which is the greatest hindrance to all consultations, and quencheth many other degenerate and lazy passions; it opens the rancor and malice, as it were, the two-leaved doors of the soul, and displays the whole disposition and qualities of any person in his discourse. Freedom of speech, and, through that, truth it principally produceth; which it once wanting, neither quickness of wit nor experience availeth anything; and many proposing that which comes next rather hit the matter, than if they warily and designedly conceal their present sentiments. Therefore there is no reason to fear that wine will stir up our affections; for it never stirs up the bad, unless in the worst men, whose judgment is never sober. But as Theophrastus used to call the barbers’ shops wineless entertainments; so there is a kind of an uncouth wineless drunkenness always excited either by anger, malice, emulation, or clownishness in the souls of the unlearned. Now wine, blunting rather than sharpening many of these passions, doth not make them sots and foolish, but simple and ingenuous; not negligent of what is profitable, but desirous of what is good and honest. Now those that think craft to be cunning, and vanity or closeness to be wisdom, have reason to think those that over a glass of wine plainly and ingenuously deliver their opinions to be fools. But, on the contrary, the ancients called the god the Freer and Loosener, and thought him considerable in divination; not, as Euripides says, because he makes men raging mad, but because he looseth and frees the soul from all base distrustful fear, and puts them in a condition to speak truth freely to one another.

Book VIII.

Those, my Sossius Senecio, who throw philosophy out of entertainments do worse than those who take away a light. For the candle being removed, the temperate and sober guests will not become worse than they were before, being more concerned to reverence than to see one another. But if dulness and disregard to good learning wait upon the wine, Minerva’s golden lamp itself could not make the entertainment pleasing and agreeable. For a company to sit silent and only cram themselves is, in good truth, swinish and almost impossible. But he that permits men to talk, yet doth not allow set and profitable discourses, is much more ridiculous than he who thinks that his guests should eat and drink, yet gives them foul wine, unsavory and nastily prepared meat. For no meat nor drink which is not prepared as it ought to be is so hurtful and unpleasant as discourse which is carried round in company insignificantly and out of season. The philosophers, when they would give drunkenness a vile name, call it doting by wine. Now doting is to use vain and trifling discourse; and when such babbling is accompanied by wine, it usually ends in most disagreeable and rude contumely and reproach. It is a good custom therefore of our women, who in their feasts called Agrionia seek after Bacchus as if he were run away, but in a little time give over the search, and cry that he is fled to the Muses and lurks with them; and some time after, when supper is done, put riddles and hard questions to one another. For this mystery teaches us, that midst our entertainments we should use learned and philosophical discourse, and such as hath a Muse in it; and that such discourse being applied to drunkenness, everything that is brutish and outrageous in it is concealed, being pleasingly restrained by the Muses.

This book, being the eighth of my Symposiacs, begins with that discourse in which about a year ago, on Plato’s birthday, I was concerned.

QUESTION I.

Concerning Those Days in Which Some Famous Men Were Born; and Also Concerning the Generation of the Gods.

DIOGENIANUS, PLUTARCH, FLORUS, TYNDARES.

On the sixth day of May we celebrated Socrates’s birthday, and on the seventh Plato’s; and that first prompted us to such discourse as was suitable to the meeting, which Diogenianus the Pergamenian began thus: Ion, said he, was happy in his expression, when he said that Fortune, though much unlike Wisdom, yet did many things very much like her; and that she seemed to have some order and design, not only in placing the nativities of these two philosophers so near together, but in setting the birthday of the most famous of the two first, who was also the master of the other. I had a great deal to say to the company concerning some notable things that fell out on the same day, as concerning the time of Euripides’s birth and death; for he was born the same day that the Greeks beat Xerxes by sea at Salamis, and died the same day that Dionysius the elder, the Sicilian tyrant, was born, — Fortune (as Timaeus hath it) at the same time taking out of the world a representer, and bringing into it a real actor, of tragedies. Besides, we remembered that Alexander the king and Diogenes the Cynic died upon the same day. And all agreed that Attalus the king died on his own birthday. And some said, that Pompey the great was killed in Egypt on his birthday, or, as others will have it, a day before. We remember Pindar also, who, being born at the time of the Pythian games, made afterwards a great many excellent hymns in honor of Apollo.

To this Florus subjoined: Now we are celebrating Plato’s nativity, why should we not mention Carneades, the most famous of the whole Academy, since both of them were born on Apollo’s feast; Plato, whilst they were celebrating the Thargelia at Athens, Carneades, whilst the Cyrenians kept their Carnea; and both these feasts are, upon the same day. Nay, the god himself you (he continued), his priests and prophets, call Hebdomagenes, as if he were born on the seventh day. And therefore those who make Apollo Plato’s father do not, in my opinion, dishonor the god; since by Socrates’s as by another Chiron’s instructions he is become a physician for the diseases of the mind. And together with this, he mentioned that vision and voice which forbade Aristo, Plato’s father, to come near or lie with his wife for ten months.

To this Tyndares the Spartan subjoined: It is very fit we should apply that to Plato,

He seemed not sprung from mortal man, but God.
(“Iliad,” xxiv. 258.)

But, for my part, I am afraid to beget, as well as to be begotten, is repugnant to the incorruptibility of the deity. For that implies a change and passion; as Alexander imagined, when he said that he knew himself to be mortal as often as he lay with a woman or slept. For sleep is a relaxation of the body, occasioned by the weakness of our nature; and all generation is a corruptive parting with some of our own substance. But yet I take heart again, when I hear Plato call the eternal and unbegotten deity the father and maker of the world and all other begotten things; not as if he parted with any seed, but as if by his power he implanted a generative principle in matter, which acts upon, forms, and fashions it. Winds passing through a hen will on occasions impregnate her; and it seems no incredible thing, that the deity, though not after the fashion of a man, but by some other certain communication, fills a mortal creature with some divine conception. Nor is this my sense; but the Egyptians who say Apis was conceived by the influence of the moon, and make no question but that an immortal god may have communication with a mortal woman. But on the contrary, they think that no mortal can beget anything on a goddess, because they believe the goddesses are made of thin air, and subtle heat and moisture.

QUESTION II.

What is Plato’s Meaning, When He Says that God Always Plays the Geometer?

DIOGENIANUS, TYNDARES, FLORUS, AUTOBULUS.

Silence following this discourse, Diogenianus began again and said: Since our discourse is about the gods, shall we, especially on his own birthday, admit Plato to the conference, and inquire upon what account he says (supposing it to be his sentence) that God always plays the geometer? I said that this sentence was not plainly set down in any of his books; yet there are good arguments that it is his, and it is very much like his expression. Tyndares presently subjoining said: Perhaps, Diogenianus, you imagine that this sentence intimates some curious and difficult speculation, and not that which he hath so often mentioned, when he praiseth geometry as a science that takes off men from sensible objects, and makes them apply themselves to the intelligible and eternal Nature, the contemplation of which is the end of philosophy, as the view of the initiatory mysteries into holy rites. For the nail of pain and pleasure, that fastens the soul to the body, seems to do us the greatest mischief, by making sensible things more powerful over us than intelligible, and by forcing the understanding to determine the rather according to passion than reason. For this faculty, being accustomed by the vehemency of pain or pleasure to be intent on the mutable and uncertain body, as if it really and truly were, grows blind as to that which really is, and loses that instrument and light of the soul, which is worth a thousand bodies, and by which alone the deity can be discovered. Now in all sciences, as in plain and smooth mirrors, some marks and images of the truth of intelligible objects appear, but in geometry chiefly; which, according to Philo, is the chief and principal of all, and doth bring back and turn the understanding, as it were, purged and gently loosened from sense. And therefore Plato himself dislikes Eudoxus, Archytas, and Menaechmus for endeavoring to bring down the doubling the cube to mechanical operations; for by this means all that was good in geometry would be lost and corrupted, it falling back again to sensible things, and not rising upward and considering immaterial and immortal images, in which God being versed is always God.

After Tyndares, Florus, a companion of his, and who always jocosely pretended to be his admirer, said thus: Sir, we are obliged to you for making your discourse not proper to yourself, but common to us all; for you have made it possible to disprove it by demonstrating that geometry is not necessary to the gods, but to us. Now the deity doth not stand in need of science, as an instrument to withdraw his intellect from things created and to turn it to the real things; for these are all in him, with him, and about him. But pray consider whether Plato, though you do not apprehend it, doth not intimate something that is proper and peculiar to you, mixing Lycurgus with Socrates, as much as Dicaearchus thought he did Pythagoras. For Lycurgus, I suppose you know, banished out of Sparta all arithmetical proportion, as being democratical and favoring the crowd; but introduced the geometrical, as agreeable to an oligarchy and kingly government that rules by law; for the former gives an equal share to every one according to number, but the other gives according to the proportion of the deserts. It doth not huddle all things together, but in it there is a fair discretion of good and bad, every one having what is fit for him, not by lot or weight, but according as he is virtuous or vicious. The same proportion, my dear Tyndares, God introduceth, which is called [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted], and which teacheth us to account that which is just equal, and not that which is equal just. For that equality which many affect, being often the greatest injustice, God, as much as possible, takes away; and useth that proportion which respects every man’s deserts, geometrically defining it according to law and reason.

This exposition we applauded; and Tyndares, saying he envied him, desired Autobulus to engage Florus and confute his discourse. That he refused to do, but produced another opinion of his own. Geometry, said he, considers nothing else but the accidents and properties of the extremities of bodies; neither did God make the world any other way than by terminating matter, which was infinite before. Not that matter was actually without limits as to either magnitude or multitude; but the ancients used to call that infinite which by reason of its confusion and disorder is undetermined and unconfined. Now the terms of everything that is formed or figured are the form and figure of that thing, and without which the thing would be formless and unfigured. Now numbers and proportions being applied to matter, it is circumscribed and as it were bound up by lines, and through lines by surfaces and solids; and so were settled the first types and differences of bodies, as foundations from which to create the four elements, fire, air, water, and earth. For it was impossible that, out of an unsteady and confused matter, the equality of the sides, the likeness of the angles, and the exact proportion of octahedrons, icosahedrons, pyramids, and cubes should be deduced, unless by some power that terminated and shaped every particle of matter. Therefore, terms being fixed to that which was undetermined or infinite before, the whole became and still continues agreeable in all parts, and excellently terminated and mixed; the matter indeed always affecting an indeterminate state, and flying all geometrical confinement, but proportion terminating and circumscribing it, and dividing it into several differences and forms, out of which all things that arise are generated and subsist.

When he had said this, he desired me to contribute something to the discourse; and I applauded their conceits as their own devices, and very probable. But lest you despise yourselves (I continued) and altogether look for some external explication, attend to an exposition upon this sentence, which your masters very much approve. Amongst the most geometrical theorems, or rather problems, this is one: Two figures being given, to describe a third, which shall be equal to one and similar to the other. And it is reported that Pythagoras, upon the discovery of this problem, offered a sacrifice to the gods; for this is a much more exquisite theorem than that which lays down, that the square of the hypothenuse in a right-angled triangle is equal to the squares of the two sides. Right, said Diogenianus, but what is this to the present question? You will easily understand, I replied, if you call to mind how Timaeus divides that which gave the world its beginning into three parts. One of which is justly called God, the other matter, and the third form. That which is called matter is the most confused subject, the form the most beautiful pattern, and God the best of causes. Now this cause, as far as possible, would leave nothing infinite and indeterminate, but adorn Nature with number, measure, and proportion making one thing of all the subjects together, equal to the matter, and similar to the form. Therefore proposing to himself this problem, he made and still makes a third, and always preserves it equal to the matter, and like the form; and that is the world. And this world, being in constant changes and alterations because of the natural necessity of body, is helped and preserved by the father and maker of all things, who by proportion terminates the substance according to the pattern.

QUESTION III.

Why Noises are Better Heard in the Night Than the Day.

AMMONIUS, BOETHUS, PLUTARCH, THRASYLLUS, ARISTODEMUS.

When we supped with Ammonius at Athens, who was then the third time captain of the city-bands, there was a great noise about the house, some without doors calling, Captain! Captain! After he had sent his officers to quiet the tumult, and had dispersed the crowd, we began to inquire what was the reason that those that are within doors hear those that are without, but those that are without cannot hear those that are within as well. And Ammonius said, that Aristotle had given a reason for that already; for the sound of those within, being carried without into a large tract of air, grows weaker presently and is lost; but that which comes in from without is not subject to the like casualty, but is kept close, and is therefore more easy to be heard. But that seemed a more difficult question, Why sounds seem greater in the night than in the day, and yet altogether as clear. For my own part (continued he) I think Providence hath very wisely contrived that our hearing should be quickest when our sight can do us very little or no service; for the air of the “blind and solitary Night,” as Empedocles calls it, being dark, supplies in the ears that defect of sense which it makes in the eyes. But since of natural effects we should endeavor to find the causes, and to discover what are the material and mechanical principles of things is the proper task of a natural philosopher, who shall first give us a rational account hereof?

Boethus began, and said: When I was a novice in letters, I then made use of geometrical postulates, and assumed as undoubted truths some undemonstrated suppositions; and now I shall make use of some propositions which Epicurus hath demonstrated already. Bodies move in a vacuum, and there are a great many spaces interspersed among the atoms of the air. Now when the air being rarefied is more extended, so as to fill the vacant space, there are only a few vacuities scattered and interspersed among the particles of matter; but when the atoms of air are condensed and laid close together, they leave a vast empty space, convenient and sufficient for other bodies to pass through. Now the coldness of the night makes such a constipation. Heat opens and separates parts of condensed bodies, and therefore bodies that boil, grow soft, or melt, require a greater space than before; but, on the contrary, the parts of the body that are condensed or freeze are contracted closer to one another, and leave those vessels and places from which they retired partly empty. Now the sound, meeting and striking against a great many bodies in its way, is either altogether lost or scattered, and very much and very frequently hindered in its passage; but when it hath a plain and smooth way through an empty space, and comes to the ear uninterrupted, the passage is so sudden, that it preserves its articulate distinctness, as well as the words it carries. You may observe that empty vessels, when knocked, answer presently, send out a noise to a great distance, and oftentimes the sound whirled round in the hollow breaks out with a considerable force; whilst a vessel that is filled either with a liquid or a solid body will not answer to a stroke, because the sound hath no room or passage to come through. And among solid bodies themselves, gold and stone, because they want pores, can hardly be made to sound; and when a noise is made by a stroke upon them, it is very flat, and presently lost. But brass is sounding, it being a porous, rare, and light metal, not consisting of parts tightly compacted, but being mixed with a yielding and uncompacted substance, which gives free passage to other motions, and kindly receiving the sound sends it forward; till some touching the instrument do, as it were, seize on it in the way, and stop the hollow; for then, by reason of the hindering force, it stops and goes no further. And this, in my opinion, is the reason why the night is more sonorous, and the day less; since in the day, the heat rarefying the air makes the empty spaces between the particles to be very little. But, pray, let none argue against the suppositions I assumed.

And I (Ammonius bidding me oppose him) said: Sir, your suppositions which demand a vacuum to be granted I shall admit; but you err in supposing that a vacuum is conducive either to the preservation or conveyance of sound. For that which cannot be touched, acted upon, or struck is peculiarly favorable to silence. But sound is a stroke of a sounding body; and a sounding body is that which has homogeneousness and uniformity, and is easy to be moved, light, smooth, and, by reason of its tenseness and continuity, it is obedient to the stroke; and such is the air. Water, earth, and fire are of themselves soundless; but each of them makes a noise when air falls upon or gets into it. And brass hath no vacuum; but being mixed with a smooth and gentle air it answers to a stroke, and is sounding. If the eye may be judge, iron must be reckoned to have a great many vacuities, and to be porous like a honey-comb, yet it is the dullest, and sounds worse than any other metal.

Therefore there is no need to trouble the night to contract and condense its air, that in other parts we may leave vacuities and wide spaces; as if the air would hinder and corrupt the substance of the sounds, whose very substance, form, and power itself is. Besides, if your reason held, misty and extreme cold nights would be more sonorous than those which are temperate and clear, because then the atoms in our atmosphere are constipated, and the spaces which they left remain empty; and, what is more obvious, a cold day should be more sonorous than a warm summer’s night; neither of which is true. Therefore, laying aside that explication, I produce Anaxagoras, who teacheth that the sun makes a tremulous motion in the air, as is evident from those little motes which are seen tossed up and down and flying in the sunbeams. These (says he), being in the day-time whisked about by the heat, and making a humming noise, lessen or drown other sounds; but at night their motion, and consequently their noise, ceaseth.

When I had thus said, Ammonius began: Perhaps it will look like a ridiculous attempt in us, to endeavor to confute Democritus and correct Anaxagoras. Yet we must not allow that humming noise to Anaxagoras’s little motes, for it is neither probable nor necessary. But their tremulous and whirling motion in the sunbeams is oftentimes sufficient to disturb and break a sound. For the air (as hath been already said), being itself the body and substance of sound, if it be quiet and undisturbed, makes a straight, easy, and continuous way to the particles or the motions which make the sound. Thus sounds are best heard in calm still weather; and the contrary is seen in stormy weather, as Simonides hath it: —

No tearing tempests rattled through the skies,
Which hinder sweet discourse from mortal ears.

For often the disturbed air hinders the articulateness of a discourse from coming to the ears, though it may convey something of the loudness and length of it. Now the night, simply considered in itself, hath nothing that may disturb the air; though the day hath, — namely the sun, according to the opinion of Anaxagoras.

To this Thrasyllus, Ammonius’s son, subjoining said: What is the matter, for God’s sake, that we endeavor to solve this difficulty by the unintelligible fancied motion of the air, and neglect the tossing and divulsion thereof, which are evident? For Jupiter, the great ruler above, doth not covertly and silently move the little particles of air; but as soon as he appears, he stirs up and moves everything.

He sends forth lucky signs,
And stirs up nations to their proper work,

And they obey; and (as Democritus saith) with fresh thoughts for each new day, as if newly born again, they fall to their worldly concerns with noisy and effectual contrivances. And upon this account, Ibycus oppositely calls the dawning [Greek omitted] (from [Greek omitted], TO HEAR), because then men first begin to hear and speak. Now at night, all things being at rest, the air being quiet and undisturbed must therefore probably transmit the voice better, and convey it whole and unbroken to our ears.

Aristodemus the Cyprian, being then in the company, said: But consider, sir, whether battles or the marches of great armies by night do not confute your reason; for the noise they make seems as loud as otherwise, though then the air is broken and very much disturbed. But the reason is partly in ourselves; for our voice at night is usually vehement, we either commanding others to do something or asking short questions with heat and concern. For that, at the same time when Nature requires rest, we should stir to do or speak anything, there must be some great and urgent necessity for it; and thence our voices become more vehement and loud.

QUESTION IV.

Why, When in the Sacred Games One Sort of Garland Was Given in One, and Another in Another, the Palm Was Common to All. And Why They Call the Great Dates [Greek omitted].

SOSPIS, HERODES, PROTOGENES, PRAXITELES, CAPHISUS.

The Isthmian games being celebrated, when Sospis was the second time director of the solemnity, we avoided other entertainments, — he treating a great many strangers and often all his fellow-citizens, — but once, when he entertained his nearest and most learned friends at his own house, I was one of the company. After the first course, one coming to Herodes the rhetorician brought a palm and a wreathed crown, which one of his acquaintance, who had won the prize for an encomiastic exercise, sent him. This Herodes received very kindly, and sent it back again, but added that he could not tell the reason why, since each of the games gave a particular garland, yet all of them bestowed the palm. For those do not satisfy me (said he) who say that the equality of the leaves is the reason, which growing out one against another seem to resemble some striving for the prize, and that victory is called [Greek omitted] from [Greek omitted], not to yield. For a great many other trees, almost by measure and weight dividing the nourishment to their leaves growing opposite to one another, show a decent order and wonderful equality. They seem to speak more probably who say the ancients were pleased with the beauty and figure of the tree. Thus Homer compares Nausicaa to a palm-branch. For you all know very well, that some threw roses at the victors, and others pomegranates and apples, to honor and reward them. But now the palm hath nothing evidently more taking than many other things, since here in Greece it bears no fruit that is good to eat, it not ripening and growing mature enough. But if, as in Syria and Egypt, it bore a fruit that is the most pleasant to the eyes of anything in the world, and the sweetest to the taste, then I must confess nothing could compare with it. And the Persian monarch (as the story goes), being extremely taken with Nicolaus the Peripatetic philosopher, who was a very sweet-humored man, tall and slender, and of a ruddy complexion, called the greatest and fairest dates Nicolai.

This discourse of Herodes seemed to give occasion for a query about Nicolaus, which would be as pleasant as the former. Therefore, said Sospis, let every one carefully give his sentiments of the matter before us. I begin, and think that, as far as possible, the honor of the victor should remain fresh and immortal. Now a palm-tree is the longest lived of any, as this line of Orpheus testifies: —

They lived like branches of a leafy palm.

And this almost alone has the privilege (though it is said to belong to many besides) of having always fresh and the same leaves. For neither the laurel nor the olive nor the myrtle, nor any other of those trees named evergreen, is always to be seen with the very same leaves; but as the old fall, new ones grow. So cities continue the same, where new parts succeed those that decay. But the palm, never shedding a leaf, is continually adorned with the same green. And this power of the tree, I believe, men think agreeable to, and fit to represent, the strength of victory.

When Sospis had done, Protogenes the grammarian, calling Praxiteles the commentator by his name, said. What then, shall we suffer those rhetoricians to be thought to have hit the mark when they bring arguments only from probabilities and conjectures? And can we produce nothing from history to club to this discourse? Lately, I remember, reading in the Attic annals, I found that Theseus first instituted games in Delos, and tore off a branch from the sacred palm-tree, which was called spadix (from [Greek omitted] TO TEAR).

And Praxiteles said: This is not certain; but perhaps some will demand of Theseus himself, upon what account when he instituted the game, he broke off a branch of palm rather than of laurel or of olive. But consider whether this be not a prize proper to the Pythian games, as appropriate to Amphictyon. For there they first, in honor of the god, crowned the victors with laurel and palm, as consecrating to the god, not the laurel or olive, but the palm. So Nicias did, who defrayed the charges of the solemnity in the name of the Athenians at Delos the Athenians themselves at Delphi; and before these, Cypselus the Corinthian. For this god is a lover of games, and delights in contending for the prize at harping, singing, and throwing the bar, and, as some say, at cuffing; and assists men when contending, as Homer witnesseth, by making Achilles speak thus,

Let two come forth in cuffing stout, and try
To which Apollo gives the victory.
(“Iliad,” xxiii. 659.)

And amongst the archers, he that made his address to Apollo made the best shot, and he that forgot to pray to him missed the mark. And besides, it is not likely that the Athenians would rashly, and upon no grounds, dedicate their place of exercise to Apollo. But they thought that the god which bestows health gives likewise a vigorous constitution, and strength for the encounter. And since some of the encounters are light and easy, others laborious and difficult, the Delphians offered sacrifices to Apollo the cuffer; the Cretans and Spartans to Apollo the racer; and the dedication of spoils taken in the wars and trophies to Apollo Pythias show that he is of great power to give victory in war.

Whilst he was speaking, Caphisus, Theon’s son, interrupted him, and said: This discourse smells neither of history nor comment, but is taken out of the common topics of the Peripatetics, and endeavors to persuade; besides, you should, like the tragedians, raise your machine, and fright all that contradict you with the god. But the god, as indeed it is requisite he should be, is equally benevolent to all. Now let us, following Sospis (for he fairly leads the way), keep close to our subject, the palm-tree, which affords us sufficient scope for our discourse. The Babylonians celebrate this tree, as being useful to them three hundred and sixty several ways. But to us Greeks it is of very little use, but its lack of fruit makes it appropriate for contenders in the games. For being the fairest, greatest, and best proportioned of all sorts of trees, it bears no fruit amongst us; but by reason of its strong nature it exhausts all its nourishment (like an athlete) upon its body, and so has very little, and that very bad, left for seed. Besides all this, it hath something peculiar, which cannot be attributed to any other tree. The branch of a palm, if you put a weight upon it, doth not yield and bend downwards, but turns the contrary way as if it resisted the pressing force. The like is to be observed in these exercises. For those who, through weakness or cowardice, yield to them, their adversaries oppress; but those who stoutly endure the encounter have not only their bodies, but their minds too, strengthened and increased.

QUESTION V.

Why Those that Sail Upon the Nile Take Up the Water They are to Use Before Day.

One demanded a reason why the sailors take up the water for their occasions out of the river Nile by night, and not by day. Some thought they feared the sun, which heating the liquid would make it more liable to putrefaction. For everything that is warmed becomes more easy to be changed, having already suffered when its natural quality was remitted. And cold constipating the parts seems to preserve everything in its natural state, and water especially. For that the cold of water is naturally constringent is evident from snow, which keeps flesh from corrupting a long time. And heat, as it destroys the proper quality of other things, so of honey, for it being boiled is itself corrupted, though when raw it preserves other bodies from corruption. And that this is the cause, I have a very considerable evidence from standing pools; for in winter they are as wholesome as other water, but in summer they grow bad and noxious. Therefore the night seeming in some measure to resemble the winter, and the day the summer, they think the water that is taken up at night is less subject to be vitiated and changed.

To these seemingly probable reasons another was added, which confirmed the ingenuity of the sailors by a very strong proof. For some said that they took up their water by night because then it was clear and undisturbed; but at day-time, when a great many fetched water together, and many boats were sailing and many beasts swimming upon the Nile, it grew thick and muddy, and in that condition it was more subject to corruption. For mixed bodies are more easily corrupted than simple and unmixed; for from mixture proceeds disagreement of the parts, from that disagreement a change, and corruption is nothing else but a certain change; and therefore painters call the mixing of their colors [Greek omitted], corrupting; and Homer expresseth dyeing by [Greek omitted] (TO STAIN OR CONTAMINATE). Commonly we call anything that is simple and unmixed incorruptible and immortal. Now earth being mixed with water soonest corrupts its proper qualities, and makes it unfit for drinking; and therefore standing water stinks soonest, being continually filled with particles of earth, whilst running waters preserve themselves by either leaving behind or throwing off the earth that falls into them. And Hesiod justly commends

The water of a pure and constant spring.

For that water is wholesome which is not corrupted, and that is not corrupted which is pure and unmixed. And this opinion is very much confirmed from the difference of earths; for those springs that run through a mountainous, rocky ground are stronger than those which are cut through plains or marshes, because they do not take off much earth. Now the Nile running through a soft country, like the blood mingled with the flesh, is filled with sweet juices that are strong and very nourishing; yet it is thick and muddy, and becomes more so if disturbed. For motion mixeth the earthly particles with the liquid, which, because they are heavier, fall to the bottom as soon as the water is still and undisturbed. Therefore the sailors take up the water they are to use at night, by that means likewise preventing the sun, which always exhales and consumes the subtler and lighter particles of the liquid.

QUESTION VI.

Concerning Those Who Come Late to an Entertainment; and From Whence These Words, [Greek omitted] and, [Greek omitted] are Derived.

PLUTARCH’S SONS, THEON’S SONS, THEON, PLUTARCH, SOCLARUS.

My younger sons staying too long at the plays, and coming in too late to supper, Theon’s sons waggishly and jocosely called them supper hinderers, night-suppers, and the like; and they in reply called their runners-to-supper. And one of the old men in the company said [Greek omitted] signified one that was too late for supper; because, when he found himself tardy, he mended his pace, and made more than common haste. And he told us a jest of Battus, Caesar’s jester, who called those that came late supper-lovers, because out of their love to entertainments, though they had business, they would not desire to be excused.

And I said, that Polycharmus, a leading orator at Athens, in his apology for his way of living before the assembly, said: Besides a great many things which I could mention, fellow-citizens, when I was invited to supper, I never came the last man. For this is more democratical; and on the contrary, those that are forced to stay for others that come late are offended at them as uncivil and of an oligarchical temper.

But Soclarus, in defence of my sons, said: Alcaeus (as the story goes) did not call Pittacus a night-supper for supping late, but for delighting in base and scandalous company. Heretofore to eat early was accounted scandalous, and such a meal was called [Greek omitted], from [Greek omitted] INTEMPERANCE.

Then Theon interrupting him said: Not at all, if we must trust those who have delivered down to us the ancients way of living. For they say that those being used to work, and very temperate in a morning, ate a bit of bread dipped in wine, and nothing else, and that they called that meal [Greek omitted] from the [Greek omitted] (WINE). Their supper they called [Greek omitted], because returning from their business they took it [Greek omitted] (LATE). Upon this we began to inquire whence those two meals [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] took their names. In Homer [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] seem to be the same meal. For he says that Eumaeus provided [Greek omitted] by the break of day; and it is probable that [Greek omitted] was so called from [Greek omitted], because provided in the morning; and [Greek omitted] was so named from [Greek omitted], EASING FROM THEIR LABOR. For men used to take their [Greek omitted] after they had finished their business, or whilst they were about it. And this may be gathered from Homer, when he says,

Then when the woodman doth his supper dress.
(“Iliad,” xi. 86.)

But some perhaps will derive [Greek omitted] from [Greek omitted], EASIEST PROVIDED, because that meal is usually made upon what is ready and at hand; and [Greek omitted] from [Greek omitted], LABORED, because of the pains used in dressing it.

My brother Lamprias, being of a scoffing, jeering nature, said: Since we are in a trifling humor, I can show that the Latin names of these meals are a thousand times more proper than the Greek; [Greek omitted] SUPPER, they call coena ([Greek omitted]) from community; because they took their [Greek omitted] by themselves, but their coena with their friends. [Greek omitted] DINNER, they call prandium, from the time of the dry; for [Greek omitted] signifies NOON-TIDE, and to rest after dinner is expressed by [Greek omitted]; or else by prandium they denote a bit taken in the morning, [Greek omitted], Before THEY HAVE NEED OF ANY. And not to mention stragula, from [Greek Omitted], vinum from [Greek omitted], oleum from [Greek omitted], mel from [Greek omitted], gustare from [Greek omitted], propinare from [Greek omitted], and a great many more words which they have plainly borrowed from the Greeks, — who can deny but that they have taken their comessatio, BANQUETING, from our [Greek omitted] and miscere, TO MINGLE, from the Greeks too? Thus in Homer,

She in a bowl herself mixt ([Greek omitted]) generous wine.
(“Odyssey,” x. 356.)

They call a table mensam, from [Greek omitted], PLACING IT IN THE MIDDLE; bread, panem, from satisfying [Greek omitted], HUNGER; a garland, coronam, from [Greek omitted], THE HEAD; — and Homer somewhat likens [Greek omitted], a HEAD-PIECE, to a garland; — caedere, TO BEAT, from [Greek omitted]; and dentes, TEETH, from [Greek omitted]; lips they call labra, from [Greek omitted], TAKING OUR VICTUALS WITH THEM. Therefore we must either listen to such fooleries as these without laughing, or not give them so ready entrance by means of words. . . .

QUESTION VII.

Concerning Pythagoras’s Symbols, in Which He Forbids Us to Receive a Swallow Into Our House, and Bids Us As Soon As We are Risen to Ruffle the Bedclothes.

SYLLA, LUCIUS, PLUTARCH, PHILINUS.

Sylla the Carthaginian, upon my return to Rome after a long absence, gave me a welcoming supper, as the Romans call it, and invited some few other friends, and among the rest, one Lucius an Etrurian, the scholar of Moderatus the Pythagorean. He seeing my friend Philinus ate no flesh, began (as the opportunity was fair) to talk of Pythagoras; and affirmed that he was a Tuscan, not because his father, as others have said, was one, but because he himself was born, bred, and taught in Tuscany. To confirm this, he brought considerable arguments from such symbols as these: — As soon as you are risen, ruffle the bedclothes; leave not the print of the pot in the ashes; receive not a swallow into your house; never step over a besom; nor keep in your house creatures that have hooked claws. For these precepts of the Pythagoreans the Tuscans only, as he said, carefully observe.

Lucius, having thus said, that precept about the swallow seemed to be most unaccountable, it being a harmless and kind animal; and therefore it seemed strange that that should be forbid the house, as well as the hooked-clawed animals, which are ravenous, wild, and bloody. Nor did Lucius himself approve that only interpretation of the ancients, who say, this symbol aims directly at backbiters and tale-bearing whisperers. For the swallow whispers not at all; it chatters indeed, and is noisy, but not more than a pie, a partridge, or a hen. What then, said Sylla, is it upon the old fabulous account of killing her son, that they deny the swallow entertainment, by that means showing their dislike to those passions which (as the story goes) made Tereus and Procne and Philomel both act and suffer such wicked and abominable things? And even to this day they call the birds Daulides. And Gorgias the sophister, when a swallow muted upon him, looked upon her and said, Philomel, this was not well done. Or perhaps this is all without foundation; for the nightingale, though concerned in the same tragedy, we willingly receive.

Perhaps, sir, said I, what you have alleged may be some reason; but pray consider whether first they do not hate the swallow upon the same account that they abhor hook-clawed animals. For the swallow feeds on flesh; and grasshoppers, which are sacred and musical, they chiefly devour and prey upon. And, as Aristotle observes, they fly near the surface of the earth to pick up the little animals. Besides, that alone of all house-animals makes no return for her entertainment. The stork, though she is neither covered, fed, nor defended by us, yet pays for the place where she builds, going about and killing the efts, snakes, and other venomous creatures. But the swallow, though she receives all those several kindnesses from us, yet, as soon as her young are fledged, flies away faithless and ungrateful; and (which is the worst of all) of all house-animals, the fly and the swallow only never grow tame, suffer a man to touch them, keep company with or learn of him. And the fly is so shy because often hurt and driven away; but the swallow naturally hates man, suspects, and dares not trust any that would tame her. And therefore, — if we must not look on the outside of these things, but opening them view the representations of some things in others, — Pythagoras, setting the swallow for an example of a wandering, unthankful man, adviseth us not to take those who come to us for their own need and upon occasion into our familiarity, and let them partake of the most sacred things, our house and fire.

This discourse of mine gave the company encouragement to proceed, so they attempted other symbols, and gave moral interpretations of them. For Philinus said, that the precept of blotting out the print of the pot instructed us not to leave any plain mark of anger, but, as soon as ever the passion hath done boiling, to lay aside all thoughts of malice and revenge. That symbol which adviseth us to ruffle the bedclothes seemed to some to have no secret meaning, but to be in itself very evident; for it is not decent that the mark and (as it were) stamped image should remain to be seen by others, in the place where a man hath lain with his wife. But Sylla thought the symbol was rather intended to prevent men’s sleeping in the day-time, all the conveniences for sleeping being taken away in the morning as soon as we are up. For night is the time for sleep, and in the day we should rise and follow our affairs, and not suffer so much as the print of our body in the bed, since a man asleep is of no more use than one dead. And this interpretation seems to be confirmed by that other precept, in which the Pythagoreans advise their followers not to take off any man’s burthen from him, but to lay on more, as not countenancing sloth and laziness in any.

QUESTION VIII.

Why the Pythagoreans Command Fish Not to Be Eaten, More Strictly Than Other Animals.

EMPEDOCLES, SYLLA, LUCIUS, TYNDARES, NESTOR.

Our former discourse Lucius neither reprehended nor approved, but, sitting silent and musing, gave us the hearing. Then Empedocles addressing his discourse to Sylla, said: If our friend Lucius is displeased with the discourse, it is time for us to leave off; but if these are some of their mysteries which ought to be concealed, yet I think this may be lawfully divulged, that they more cautiously abstain from fish than from other animals. For this is said of the ancient Pythagoreans; and even now I have met with Alexicrates’s scholars, who will eat and kill and even sacrifice some of the other animals, but will never taste fish. Tyndares the Spartan said, they spared fish because they had so great a regard for silence, and they called fish [Greek omitted], because they had their voice SHUT UP ([Greek omitted]); and my namesake Empedocles advised one who had been expelled from the school of Pythagoras to shut up his mind like a fish, and they thought silence to be divine, since the gods without any voice reveal their meaning to the wise by their works.

Then Lucius gravely and composedly saying, that perhaps the true reason was obscure and not to be divulged, yet they had liberty to venture upon probable conjectures, Theon the grammarian began thus: To demonstrate that Pythagoras was a Tuscan is a great and no easy task. But it is confessed that he conversed a long time with the wise men of Egypt, and imitated a great many of the rites and institutions of the priests, for instance, that about beans. For Herodotus delivers, that the Egyptians neither set nor eat beans, nay, cannot endure to see them; and we all know, that even now the priests eat no fish; and the stricter sort eat no salt, and refuse all meat that is seasoned with it. Various reasons are offered for this; but the only true reason is hatred to the sea, as being a disagreeable, or rather naturally a destructive element to man. For they do not imagine that the gods, as the Stoics did that the stars, were nourished by it. But, on the contrary, they think that the father and preserver of their country, whom they call the deflux of Osiris, is lost in it; and when they bewail him as born on the left hand, and destroyed in the right-hand parts, they intimate to us the ending and corruption of their Nile by the sea, and therefore they do not believe that its water is wholesome, or that any creature produced or nourished in it can be clean or wholesome food for man, since it breathes not the common air, and feeds not on the same food with him. And the air that nourisheth and preserves all other things is destructive to them, as if their production and life were unnecessary and against Nature; nor should we wonder that they think animals bred in the sea to be disagreeable to their bodies, and not fit to mix with their blood and spirits, since when they meet a pilot they will not speak to him, because he gets his living by the sea.

Sylla commended this discourse, and added concerning the Pythagoreans, that they then chiefly tasted flesh when they sacrificed to the gods. Now no fish is ever offered in sacrifice. I, after they had done, said that many, both philosophers and unlearned, considering with how many good things it furnisheth and makes our life more comfortable, take the sea’s part against the Egyptians. But that the Pythagoreans should abstain from fish because they are not of the same kind, is ridiculous and absurd; nay, to butcher and feed on other animals, because they bear a nearer relation to us, would be a most inhuman and Cyclopean return. And they say that Pythagoras bought a draught of fishes, and presently commanded the fishers to let them all out of the net; and this shows that, he did not hate or not mind fishes, as things of another kind and destructive to man, but that they were his dearly beloved creatures, since he paid a ransom for their freedom.

Therefore the tenderness and humanity of those philosophers suggest a quite contrary reason, and I am apt to believe that they spare fishes to instruct men, or to accustom themselves to acts of justice; for other creatures generally give men cause to afflict them, but fishes neither do nor are capable of doing us any harm. And it is easy to show, both from the writings and religion of the ancients, that they thought it a great sin not only to eat but to kill an animal that did them no harm. But afterwards, being necessitated by the spreading multitude of men, and commanded (as they say) by the Delphic oracle to prevent the total decay of corn and fruit, they began to sacrifice, yet they were so disturbed and concerned at the action, that they called it [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] (TO DO), as if they did some strange thing in killing an animal; and they are very careful not to kill the beast before the wine has been cast upon his head and he nods in token of consent. So very cautious are they of injustice. And not to mention other considerations, were no chickens (for instance) or hares killed, in a short time they would so increase that there could be no living. And now it would be a very hard matter to put down the eating of flesh, which necessity first introduced, since pleasure and luxury hath espoused it. But the water-animals neither consuming any part of our air or water, or devouring the fruit, but as it were encompassed by another world, and having their own proper bounds, which it is death for them to pass, they afford our belly no pretence at all for their destruction; and therefore to catch or be greedy after fish is plain deliciousness and luxury, which upon no just reason unsettle the sea and dive into the deep. For we cannot call the mullet corn-destroying, the trout grape-eating, nor the barbel or seapike seed-gathering, as we do some land-animals, signifying their hurtfulness by these epithets. Nay, those little mischiefs which we complain of in these house-creatures, a weasel or fly, none can justly lay upon the greatest fish. Therefore the Pythagoreans, confining themselves not only by the law which forbids them to injure men, but also by Nature, which commands them to do violence to nothing, fed on fish very little, or rather not at all. But suppose there were no injustice in this case, yet to delight in fish would argue daintiness and luxury; because they are such costly and unnecessary diet. Therefore Homer doth not only make the Greeks whilst encamped near the Hellespont, eat no fish, but he mentions not any sea-provision that the dissolute Phaeacians or luxurious wooers had, though both islanders. And Ulysses’s mates, though they sailed over so much sea, as long as they had any provision left, never let down a hook or net.

But when the victuals of their ship was spent,
(“Odyssey,” xii. 329–332.)

little before they fell upon the oxen of the Sun, they caught fish, not to please their wanton appetite, but to satisfy their hunger, —

With crooked hooks, for cruel hunger gnawed.

The same necessity therefore forced them to catch fish and devour the oxen of the Sun. Therefore not only among the Egyptian and Syrians but Greeks too, to abstain from fish was a piece of sanctity, they avoiding (as I think), a superfluous curiosity in diet, as well as being just.

To this Nestor subjoining said: But sir, of my citizens as of the Megarians in the proverb, you make no account; although you have heard me often say that our priests of Neptune (whom we call Hieromnemons) never eat fish. For Neptune himself is called the Breeder. And the race of Hellen sacrificed to Neptune as the first father, imagining, as likewise the Syrians did, that man rose from a liquid substance. And therefore they worship a fish as of the same production and breeding with themselves, in this matter being more happy in their philosophy than Anaximander; for he says that fish and men were not produced in the same substances, but that men were first produced in fishes, and, when they were grown up and able to help themselves, were thrown out, and so lived upon the land. Therefore, as the fire devours its parents, that is, the matter out of which it was first kindled, so Anaximander, asserting that fish were our common parents, condemneth our feeding on them.

QUESTION IX.

Whether There Can Be New Diseases, and How Caused.

PHILO, DIOGENIANUS, PLUTARCH.

Philo the physician stoutly affirmed that the elephantiasis was a disease but lately known; since none of the ancient physicians speak one word of it, though they oftentimes enlarge upon little, frivolous and obscure trifles. And I, to confirm it, cited Athenodorus the philosopher, who in his first book of Epidemical Diseases says, that not only that disease, but also the hydrophobia or water-dread (occasioned by the biting of a mad dog), were first discovered in the time of Asclepiades. At this the whole company were amazed, thinking it very strange that such diseases should begin then, and yet as strange that they should not be taken notice of in so long a time; yet most of them leaned to this last opinion, as being most agreeable to man, not in the least daring to imagine that Nature affected novelties, or would in the body of man, as in a city, create new disturbances and tumults.

And Diogenianus added, that even the passions and diseases of the mind go on in the same old road that formerly they did; and yet the viciousness of our inclination is exceedingly prone to variety, and our mind is mistress of itself, and can, if it please, easily change and alter. Yet all her inordinate motions have some sort of order, and the soul hath bounds to her passions, as the sea to her overflowings. And there is no sort of vice now among us which was not practised by the ancients. There are a thousand differences of appetites and various motions of fear; the schemes of grief and pleasure are innumerable.

Yet are not they of late or now produced,
And none can tell from whence they first arose.
(Sophocles, “Antigone,” 456.)

How then should the body be subject to new diseases, since it hath not, like the soul, the principle of its own alteration in itself, but by common causes is joined to Nature, and receives a temperature whose infinite variety of alterations is confined to certain bounds, like a ship moving and tossing in a circle about its anchor. Now there can be no disease without some cause, it being against the laws of Nature that anything should be without a cause. Now it will be very hard to find a new cause, unless we fancy some strange air, water, or food never tasted by the ancients, should out of other worlds or intermundane spaces descend to us. For we contract diseases from those very things which preserve our life; since there are no peculiar seeds of diseases, but the disagreement of their juices to our bodies, or our excess in using them, disturbs Nature. These disturbances have still the very same differences, though now and then called by new names. For names depend on custom, but the passions on Nature; and these being constant and those variable, this error has arisen. As, in the parts of a speech and the syntax of the words, some new sort of barbarism or solecism can suddenly arise; so the temperature of the body hath certain deviations and corruptions into which it may fall, those things which are against and hurtful to Nature being in some sort existent in Nature herself. The mythographers are in this particular very ingenious, for they say that monstrous uncouth animals were produced in the time of the Giants war, the moon being out of its course, and not rising where it used to do. And those who think Nature produces new diseases like monsters, and yet give neither likely nor unlikely reasons of the change, err, as I imagine, my dear Philo, in taking a less or a greater degree of the same disease to be a different disease. The intension or increase of a thing makes it more or greater, but does not make the subject of another kind. Thus the elephantiasis, being an intense scabbiness, is not a new kind; nor is the water-dread distinguished from other melancholic and stomachical affections but only by the degree. And I wonder we did not observe that Homer was acquainted with this disease, for it is evident that he calls a dog rabid from the very same rage with which when men are possessed they are said to be mad.

Against this discourse of Diogenianus Philo himself made some objections, and desired me to be the old physicians’ patron; who must be branded with inadvertency and ignorance, unless it appears that those diseases began since their time. First then Diogenianus, methinks, very precariously desires us to think that the intenseness or remissness of degrees is not a real difference, and does not alter the kind. For, were this true, then we should hold that downright vinegar is not different from pricked wine, nor a bitter from a rough taste, darnel from wheat, nor garden-mint from wild mint. For it is evident that these differences are only the several degrees of the same qualities, in some being more intense, in some more remiss. So we should not venture to affirm that flame is different from a white spirit, sunshine from flame, hoarfrost from dew, or hail from rain; but that the former have only more intense qualities than the latter. Besides, we should say that blindness is of the same kind with short-sightedness, violent vomiting (or cholera) with weakness of the stomach, and that they differ only in degree. Though what they say is nothing to the purpose; for if they allow the increase in intensity and strength, but assert that this came but now of late, — the novelty showing itself in the quantity rather than the quality, — the same difficulties which they urged against the other opinion oppress them. Sophocles says very well concerning those things which are not believed to be now, because they were not heretofore, —

Once at the first all things their being had.

And it is probable that not all diseases, as in a race, the barrier being let down, started together; but that one rising after another, at some certain time, had its beginning and showed itself. It is rational to conclude (continued I) that all the diseases that rise from want, heat, or cold bear the same date with our bodies; but afterwards overeating, luxury, and surfeiting, encouraged by ease and plenty, raised bad and superfluous juices, and those brought various new diseases, and their perpetual complications and mixtures still create more new. Whatever is natural is determined and in order; for Nature is order, or the work of order. Disorder, like Pindar’s sand, cannot be comprised by number, and that which is beside Nature is straight called indeterminate and infinite. Thus truth is simple, and but one; but falsities innumerable. The exactness of motions and harmony are definite, but the errors either in playing upon the harp, singing, or dancing, who can comprehend? Indeed Phrynichus the tragedian says of himself,

As many figures dancing doth propose
As waves roll on the sea when tempests toss.

And Chrysippus says that the various complications of ten single axioms amount to 1,000,000. But Hipparchus hath confuted that account, showing that the affirmative contains 101,049 complicated propositions, and the negative 310,952. And Xenocrates says, the number of syllables which the letters will make is 100,200,000. How then is it strange that the body, having so many different powers in itself, and getting new qualities every day from its meat and drink, and using those motions and alterations which are not always in the same time nor in the same order, should upon the various complications of all these be affected with new diseases? Such was the plague at Athens described by Thucydides, who conjectures that it was new because that birds and beasts of prey would not touch the dead carcasses. Those that fell sick about the Red Sea, if we believe Agatharcides, besides other strange and unheard diseases, had little serpents in their legs and arms, which did eat their way out, but when touched shrunk in again, and raised intolerable inflammations in the muscles; and yet this kind of plague, as likewise many others, never afflicted any beside, either before or since. One, after a long stoppage of urine, voided a knotty barley straw. And we know that Ephebus, with whom we lodged at Athens, threw out, together with a great deal of seed, a little hairy, many-footed, nimble animal. And Aristotle tells us, that Timon’s nurse in Cilicia every year for two months lay in a cave, without any vital operation besides breathing. And in the Menonian books it is delivered as a symptom of a diseased liver carefully to observe and hunt after mice and rats, which we see now nowhere practised.

Therefore let us not wonder if something happens which never was before, or if something doth not appear among us with which the ancients were acquainted; for the cause of those accidents is the nature of our body, whose temperature is subject to be changed. Therefore, if Diogenianus will not introduce a new kind of water or air, we, having no need of it, are very well content. Yet we know some of Democritus’s scholars affirm that, other worlds being dissolved, some strange effluvia fall into ours, and are the principle of new plagues and uncommon diseases. But let us not now take notice of the corruption of some parts of this world by earthquake, droughts, and floods, by which both the vapors and fountains rising out of the earth must be necessarily corrupted. Yet we must not pass by that change which must be wrought in the body by our meat, drink, and other exercises in our course of life. For many things which the ancients did not feed on are now accounted dainties; for instance, mead and swine’s belly. Heretofore too, as I have heard, they hated the brain of animals so much, that they detested the very name of it; as when Homer says, “I esteem him at a brain’s worth.” And even now we know some old men, not bearing to taste cucumber, melon, orange, or pepper. Now by these meats and drinks it is probable that the juices of our bodies are much altered, and their temperature changed, new qualities arising from this new sort of diet. And the change of order in our feeding having a great influence on the alteration of our bodies, the cold courses, as they were called formerly, consisting of oysters, polyps, salads, and the like, being (in Plato’s phrase) transferred “from tail to mouth,” now make the first course, whereas they were formerly the last. Besides, the glass which we usually take before supper is very considerable in this case; for the ancients never drank so much as water before they ate, but now we drink freely before we sit down, and fall to our meat with a full and heated body, using sharp sauces and pickles to provoke appetite, and then we fall greedily on the other meat. But nothing conduceth more to alterations and new diseases in the body than our different baths; for here the flesh, like iron in the fire, grows soft and loose, and is presently constipated and hardened by the cold. For, in my opinion, if any of the last age had looked into our baths, he might have justly said,

There burning Phlegethon meets Acheron.

For they used such mild gentle baths, that Alexander the Great being feverish slept in one. And the Gauls’ wives carry their pots of pulse to eat with their children whilst they are in the bath. But our baths now inflame, vellicate, and distress; and the air which we draw is a mixture of air and water, disturbs the whole body, tosses and displaces every atom, till we quench the fiery particles and allay their heat. Therefore, Diogenianus, you see that this account requires no new strange causes, no intermundane spaces; but the single alteration of our diet is enough to raise new diseases and abolish old.

QUESTION X.

Why We Give Least Credit to Dreams in Autumn.

FLORUS, PLUTARCH, PLUTARCH’S SONS, FAVORINUS.

Florus reading Aristotle’s physical problems, which were brought to him to Thermopylae, was himself (as philosophical wits used to be) filled with a great many doubts, and communicated them to others; thereby confirming Aristotle’s saying, that much learning raises many doubts. Other topics made our walks every day very pleasant, but the common saying concerning dreams, — that those in autumn are the vainest, — I know not how, whilst Favorinus was engaged in other matters, was started after supper. Your friends and my sons thought Aristotle had given sufficient satisfaction in this point, and that no other cause was to be sought after or allowed but that which he mentions, the fruit. For the fruit, being new and flatulent, raises many disturbing vapors in the body; for it is not likely that only wine ferments, or new oil only makes a noise in the lamp, the heat agitating its vapor; but new corn and all sorts of fruit are plump and distended, till the unconcocted flatulent vapor is broke away. And that some sorts of food disturb dreams they said, was evident from beans and the polypus’s head, from which those who would divine by their dreams are commanded to abstain.

But Favorinus himself, though in all other things he admires Aristotle exceedingly and thinks the Peripatetic philosophy to be most probable, yet in this case resolved to scour up an old musty opinion of Democritus. He first laid down that known principle of his, that images pass through the pores into the inmost parts of the body, and being carried upward cause dreams; and that these images fly from everything, vessels, garments, plants, but especially from animals, because of their heat and the motion of their spirits; and that these images not only carry the outward shape and likeness of the bodies (as Epicurus thinks, following Democritus so far and no farther), but the very designs, motions, and passions of the soul; and with those entering into the bodies, as if they were living things, discover to those that receive them the thoughts and inclinations of the persons from whom they come, if so be that they preserve their frame and order entire. And that is especially preserved when the air is calm and clear, their passage then being quick and undisturbed. Now the autumnal air, when trees shed their leaves, being very uneven and disturbed, ruffles and disorders the images, and, hindering them in their passage, makes them weak and ineffectual; when, on the contrary, if they rise from warm and vigorous subjects, and are presently applied, the notices which they give and the impressions they make are clear and evident.

Then with a smile looking upon Autobulus, he continued: But, sir, I perceive you design to have an airy skirmish with these images, and try the excellence of this old opinion, as you would a picture, by your nail. And Autobulus replied: Pray, sir, do not endeavor to cheat us any longer; for we know very well that you, designing to make Aristotle’s opinion appear the better, have used this of Democritus only as its shade. Therefore I shall pass by that, and impugn Aristotle’s opinion, which unjustly lays the blame on the new fruit. For both the summer and the early autumn witness in its favor, when, as Antimachus says, the fruit is most fresh and juicy; for then, though we eat the new fruit, yet our dreams are not so vain as at other times. And the months when the leaves fall, being next to winter, so concoct the corn and remaining fruit, that they grow shrivelled and less, and lose all their brisk agitating spirit. As for new wine, those that drink it soonest forbear till February, which is after winter; and the day on which we begin we call the day of the Good Genius, and the Athenians the day of cask-opening. For whilst wine is working, we see that even common, laborers will not venture on it. Therefore no more accusing the gifts of the gods, let us seek after another cause of vain dreams, to which the name of the season will direct us. For it is called LEAF-SHEDDING, because the leaves then fall off by reason of their dryness and coldness; except the leaves of hot and oily trees, as of the olive, the laurel, or the palm; or of the moist, as of the myrtle and the ivy. But the temperature of these preserves them, though not others; because in others the vicious humor that holds the leaves is constipated by the cold, or being weak and little is dried up. Now moisture and heat are necessary for the growth and preservation of plants, but especially of animals; and on the contrary, coldness and dryness are very noxious to both. And therefore Homer elegantly calls men moist and juicy: to rejoice he calls to be warmed; and anything that is grievous and frightful he calls cold and icy. Besides, the words [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] are applied to the dead, those names intimating their extreme dryness. But more, our blood, the principal thing in our whole body, is moist and hot. And old age hath neither of those two qualities. Now the autumn seems to be as it were the old age of the decaying year; for the moisture doth not yet fall, and the heat decays. And its inclining the body to diseases is an evident sign of its cold and dryness. Now it is necessary that the souls should be indisposed with the bodies and that, the subtile spirit being condensed, the divining faculty of the soul, like a glass that is breathed upon, should be sullied; and therefore it cannot represent anything plain, distinct, and clear, as long as it remains thick, dark, and condensed.

Book IX

This ninth book, Sossius Senecio, contains the discourses we held at Athens at the Muses feast, for this number nine is agreeable to the number of the Muses. Nor must you wonder when you find more than ten questions (which number I have observed in my other books) in it; for we ought to give the Muses all that belongs to them, and be as careful of robbing them as of a temple, since we owe them much more and much better things than these.

QUESTION I.

Concerning Verses Seasonably and Unseasonably Applied.

AMMONIUS, PLUTARCH, ERATO, CERTAIN SCHOOLMASTERS, and FRIENDS OF AMMONIUS.

Ammonius, captain of the militia at Athens, would show Diogenianus the proficiency of those youths that learned grammar, geometry, rhetoric, and music; and invited the chief masters of the town to supper. There were a great many scholars at the feast, and almost all his acquaintance. Achilles invited only the single combatants to his feast, intending (as the story goes) that, if in the heat of the encounter they had conceived any anger or ill-will against one another, they might then lay it aside, being made partakers of one common entertainment. But the contrary happened to Ammonius, for the contentions of the masters increased and grew more sharp midst their cups and merriment; and all was disorder and confused babbling.

Therefore Ammonius commanded Erato to sing to his harp, and he sang some part of Hesiod’s Works beginning thus,

Contention to one sort is not confined;
(“Works and Days,” 11.)

and I commended him for choosing so apposite a song. Then he began to discourse about the seasonable use of verse, that it was not only pleasant but profitable. And straight every one’s mouth was full of that poet who began Ptolemy’s epithalamium (when he married his sister, a wicked and abominable match) thus,

Jove Juno called his sister and his wife;
(“Iliad,” xviii. 356.)

and another, who refused to sing after supper to Demetrius the king, but after he sent him his young son Philip to be educated sang thus,

Breed thou the boy as doth become
Both Hercules’s race and us;

and Anaxarchus who, being pelted with apples by Alexander at supper, rose up and said,

Some god shall wounded be by mortal hand.
(Euripides, “Orestes,” 271.)

But that Corinthian captive boy excelled all, who, when the city was destroyed, and Mummius, taking a survey of all the free-born children that understood letters, commanded each to write a verse, wrote thus: —

Thrice, four times blest, the happy Greeks that fell.
(“Odyssey,” v. 306.)

For they say that Mummius was affected with it, wept and gave all the free-born children that were allied to the boy their liberty. And some mentioned the wife of Theodorus the tragedian, who refused his embraces a little before he contended for the prize; but, when he was conqueror and came in unto her, clasped him and said,

Now, Agamemnon’s son, you freely may
(Sophocles “Electra,” 2.)

After this a great many sayings were mentioned as unseasonably spoken, it being fit that we should know such and avoid them; — as that to Pompey the Great, to whom, upon his return from a dangerous war, the schoolmaster brought his little daughter, and, to show him what a proficient she was, called for a book, and bade her begin at this line,

Returned from war; but hadst thou there been slain,
My wish had been complete;
(“Iliad,” iii. 428.)

and that to Cassius Longinus, to whom a flying report of his son’s dying abroad being brought, and he no ways appearing either to know the certain truth or to clear the doubt, an old senator came and said: Longinus, will you not despise the flying uncertain rumor, as if you did not know nor had read this line,

For no report is wholly false?
(Hesiod, “Works and Days,” 763.)

And he that at Rhodes, to a grammarian demanding a line upon which he might show his skill in the theatre, proposed this,

Fly from the island, worst of all mankind,
(“Odyssey,” x. 72.)

either slyly put a trick upon him, or unwittingly blundered. And this discourse quieted the tumult.

QUESTIONS II. and III.

What is the Reason that Alpha is Placed First in the Alphabet, and What is the Proportion Between the Number of Vowels And Semi-Vowels?

AMMONIUS, HERMEAS, PROTOGENES, PLUTARCH, ZOPYRION.

It being the custom of the Muses’ feast to draw lots, and those that were matched to propose curious questions to one another, Ammonius, fearing that two of the same profession might be matched together, ordered, without drawing lots, a geometrician to propose questions to a grammarian, and a master of music to a rhetorician.

First, therefore, Hermeas the geometrician demanded of Protogenes the grammarian a reason why Alpha was the first letter of the alphabet. And he returned the common answer of the schools, that it was fit the vowels should be set before the mutes and semi-vowels. And of the vowels, some being long, some short, some both long and short, it is just that the latter should be most esteemed. And of these that are long and short, that is to be set first which is usually placed before the other two, but never after either; and that is Alpha. For that put after either Iota or Upsilon will not be pronounced, will not make one syllable with them, but as it were resenting the affront and angry at the position, seeks the first as its proper place. But if you place Alpha before either of those, they are obedient, and quietly join in one syllable, as in these words, [Greek omitted] and a thousand others. In these three respects therefore, as the conquerors in all the five exercises, it claims the precedence, — that of most other letters by being a vowel, that of other vowels by being dichronous, and lastly, that of these double-timed vowels themselves because it is its nature to go before and never after them.

Protogenes making a pause, Ammonius, speaking to me, said: What! have you, being a Boeotian, nothing to say for Cadmus, who (as the story goes) placed Alpha the first in order, because a cow is called Alpha by the Phoenicians, and they account it not the second or third (as Hesiod doth) but the first of their necessary things? Nothing at all, I replied, for it is just that, to the best of my power, I should rather assist my own than Bacchus’s grandfather. For Lamprias my grandfather said, that the first articulate sound that is made is Alpha; for the air in the mouth is formed and fashioned by the motion of the lips; now as soon as those are opened, that sound breaks forth, being very plain and simple, not requiring or depending upon the motion of the tongue, but gently breathed forth whilst that lies still. And therefore that is the first sound that children make. Thus [Greek omitted], TO HEAR, [Greek omitted], TO SING, [Greek omitted], TO PIPE, [Greek omitted], TO HOLLOW, begin with the letter Alpha; and I think that [Greek omitted], TO LIFT UP, and [Greek omitted], TO OPEN, were fitly taken from that opening and lifting up of the lips when his voice is uttered. Thus all the names of the mutes besides one have an Alpha, as it were a light to assist their blindness; for Pi alone wants it, and Phi and Chi are only Pi and Kappa with an aspirate.

Hermeas saying that he approved both reasons, why then (continued I) do not you explain the proportion, if there be any, of the number of the letters; for, in my opinion, there is; and I think so, because the number of mutes and semi-vowels, compared between themselves or with the vowels, doth not seem casual and undesigned, but to be according to the first proportion which you call arithmetical. For their number being nine, eight, and seven, the middle exceeds the last as much as it wants of the first. And the first number being compared with the last, hath the same proportion that the Muses have to Apollo; for nine is appropriated to them, and seven to him. And these two numbers tied together double the middle; and not without reason, since the semi-vowels partake the power of both.

And Hermeas replied: It is said that Mercury was the first god that discovered letters in Egypt; and therefore the Egyptians make the figure of an Ibis, a bird dedicated to Mercury, for the first letter. But it is not fit, in my opinion, to place an animal that makes no noise at the head of the letters. Amongst all the numbers the fourth is peculiarly dedicated to Mercury, because, as some say, the god was born on the fourth day of the month. And the first letters called Phoenician from Cadmus are four times four, or sixteen; and of those that were afterward added, Palamedes found four, and Simonides four more. Now amongst numbers, three is the first perfect, as consisting of a first, a middle, and a last; and after that six, as being equal the sum of its own divisors (1+2+3). Of these, six multiplied by four makes twenty-four; and also the first perfect number, three, multiplied by the first cube, eight, make the same.

Whilst he was discoursing thus, Zopyrion the grammarian sneered and muttered between his teeth; and, as soon as he had done, cried out that he most egregiously trifled; for it was mere chance, and not design, that gave such a number and order to the letters, as it was mere chance that the first and last verses of Homer’s Iliads have just as many syllables as the first and last of his Odysseys.

QUESTION IV.

Which of Venus’s Hands Diomedes Wounded.

HERMEAS, ZOPYRION, MAXIMUS.

Hermeas would have replied to Zopyrion, but we desired him to hold; and Maximus the rhetorician proposed to him this far-fetched question out of Homer, Which of Venus’s hands Diomedes wounded. And Zopyrion presently asking him again, of which leg was Philip lame? — Maximus replied, It is a different case, for Demosthenes hath left us no foundation upon which we may build our conjecture. But if you confess your ignorance in this matter, others will show how the poet sufficiently intimates to an understanding man which hand it was. Zopyrion being at a stand, we all, since he made no reply, desired Maximus to tell us.

And he began: The verses running thus

Then Diomedes raised his mighty spear,
And leaping towards her just did graze her hand;
(“Iliad,” v. 335. It is evident from what follows that
Plutarch interprets [Greek omitted] in this passage HAVING
LEAPED TO ONE SIDE. (G.))

it is evident that, if he designed to wound her left hand, there had been no need of leaping, since her left hand was opposite to his right. Besides, it is probable that he would endeavor to wound the strongest hand, and that with which she drew away Aeneas; and which being wounded, it was likely she would let him go. But more, after she returned to Heaven, Minerva jeeringly said,

No doubt fair Venus won a Grecian dame,
To follow her beloved Trojan youths,
And as she gently stroked her with her hand,
Her golden buckler scratched this petty wound.
(“Iliad”, v. 422.)

And I suppose, you sir, when you stroke any of your scholars, you use your right hand, and not your left; and it is likely that Venus, the most skilful of all the goddesses, soothed the heroines after the same manner.

QUESTION V.

Why Plato Says that Ajax’s Soul Came to Draw Her Lot in the Twentieth Place in Hell.

HYLAS, SOSPIS, AMMONIUS, LAMPRIAS.

These discourses made all the other company merry; but Sospis the rhetorician, seeing Hylas the grammarian sit silent and discomposed (for he had not been very happy in his exercises), cried out,

But Ajax’s soul stood far apart;

and raising his voice repeated the rest to him,

But sit, draw near, and patiently attend,
Hear what I say, and tame, your violent rage.

To this Hylas, unable to contain, returned a scurvy answer saying that Ajax’s soul, taking her lot in the twentieth place in hell, changed her nature, according to Plato, for a lion’s; but, for his part, he could not but often think upon the saying of the old comedian,

‘Tis better far to be an ass than see
Unworthwhile men in greater honor shine

At this Sospis, laughing heartily, said: But in the meantime, before we have the pack-saddles on, if you have any regard for Plato, tell us why he makes Ajax’s soul, after the lots drawn, to have the twentieth choice. Hylas, with great indignation, refused, thinking that this was a jeering reflection on his former miscarriage. And therefore my brother began thus: What, was not Ajax counted the second for beauty, strength, and courage, and the next to Achilles in the Grecian army? And twenty is the second ten, and ten is the chiefest of numbers, as Achilles of the Greeks. We laughing at this, Ammonius said: Well, Lamprias, let this suffice for a joke upon Hylas; but since you have voluntarily taken upon you to give an account of this matter, leave off jesting, and seriously proceed.

This startled Lamprias a little, but, after a short pause, he continued thus: Plato often tells merry stories under borrowed names, but when he puts any fable into a discourse concerning the soul, he hath some considerable meaning in it. The intelligent nature of the heavens he calls a flying chariot, intimating the harmonious whirl of the world. And here he introduceth one Er, the son of Harmonius, a Pamphylian, to tell what he had seen in hell; intimating that our souls are begotten according to harmony, and are agreeably united to our bodies, and that, when they are separated, they are from all parts carried together into the air, and from thence return to second generations. And what hinders but that [Greek omitted] twentieth should intimate that this was not a true story, but only probable and fictitious [Greek omitted], and that the lot fell casually [Greek omitted]. For Plato always toucheth upon three causes, he being the first and chiefest philosopher that knew how fate accords with fortune, and how our free-will is mixed and complicated with both. And now he hath admirably discovered what influence each hath upon our affairs. The choice of our life he hath left to our free-will, for virtue and vice are free. But that those who have made a good choice should live religiously, and those who have made an ill choice should lead a contrary life, he leaves to the necessity of fate. But the chances of lots thrown at a venture introduce fortune into the several conditions of life in which we are brought up, and which pre-occupates and perverts our own choice. Now consider whether it is not irrational to inquire after a cause of those things that are done by chance. For if the lot seems to be disposed of by design, it ceaseth to be chance and fortune, and becomes fate and providence.

Whilst Lamprias was speaking, Marcus the grammarian seemed to be counting to himself, and when he had done, he began thus: Amongst the souls which Homer mentions in his [Greek omitted], Elpenor’s is not to be reckoned as mixed with those in hell, but, his body being not buried, as wandering about the banks of the river Styx. Nor is it fit that we should reckon Tiresias’s soul amongst the rest, —

On whom alone, when deep in hell beneath,
Wisdom Proserpina conferred,

to discourse and converse with the living even before he drank the sacrifice’s blood. Therefore, Lamprias, if you subtract these two, you will find that Ajax was the twentieth that Ulysses saw, and Plato merrily alludes to that place in Homer’s [Greek omitted].

QUESTION VI.

What is Signified by the Fable About the Defeat of Neptune? And Also, Why Do the Athenians Omit the Second Day of the Month Boedromion?

MENEPHYLUS, HYLAS, LAMPRIAS.

While all were making a disturbance, Menephylus, a Peripatetic philosopher, addressing Hylas: You see, he said, how this investigation is no foolery nor insolence. But leave now, my dear fellow, that obstinate Ajax, whose name is ill-omened, as Sophocles says, and side with Poseidon, whom you yourself are wont to tell has often been overcome, once by Athene here, in Delphi by Apollo, in Argos by Here, in Aegina by Zeus, in Naxos by Bacchus, yet in his misfortunes has always been mild and amiable. Here at least he shares a temple in common with Athene, in which there is an altar dedicated to Lethe. And Hylas, as if he had become better tempered: One thing has escaped you, Menephylus, that we have given up the second day of September, not on account of the moon, but because on that day the gods seemed to have contended for the country. By all means, said Lamprias, by as much as Poseidon was more civilized than Thrasybulus, since not like him a winner but a loser. . . .

(The rest of this book to Question XIII is lost; with the exception of the titles that follow, and the fragment of Question XII.)

QUESTION VII.

Why the Accords in Music are Separated Into Three.

QUESTION VIII.

Wherein the Intervals Melodious Differ From Those that are Harmonic.

QUESTION IX.

What is the Cause of Accord? And Also, Why, When Two Accordant Strings are Touched Together, is the Melody Ascribed to The Base?

QUESTION X.

Why, When the Ecliptic Periods of the Sun and the Moon are Equal in Number, the Moon Appears Oftener Eclipsed Than the Sun.

QUESTION XI.

That We Continue Not Always the Same, in Regard of the Deflux of Our Substance.

QUESTION XII.

Is It More Probable that the Number of the Stars is Even or Odd?

Men must be cheated by oaths. And Glaucias said: I have heard this saying used against Polycrates the tyrant; probably too it was said against others: but why do you ask these questions? Because, by Zeus, said Sospis, I see the children playing odd and even with jackstones and the Academics with words. For such tempers as these differ in no way from those who ask whether they hold clutched in their hands odd or even. Then Protogenes stood up and called me by name: What is the matter with us that we allow these rhetoricians to he so conceited, and to laugh down others while they are asked nothing, and contribute nothing in the way of argument, — unless they swear that they have no part in the wine as admirers and disciples of Demosthenes, a man who in his whole life never drank wine. That is not the cause of this, said I; but we have never asked them anything. But unless you have something more useful, I think I can put before them from Homer’s poetry a case of antinomy in rhetorical theses.

QUESTION XIII.

A Moot-Point Out of the Third Book of Homer’s Iliads.

PLUTARCH, PROTOGENES, GLAUCIAS, SOSPIS.

What question will you put them, said Protogenes? I will tell you, continued I, and let them carefully attend. Paris makes his challenge in these express words: —

Let me and valiant Menelaus fight
For Helen, and for all the goods she brought;
And he that shall o’ercome, let him enjoy
The goods and woman; let them be his own.

And Hector afterwards publicly proclaiming this challenge in these plain words: —

He bids the Trojans and the valiant Greeks
To fix their arms upon the fruitful ground;
Let Menelaus and stout Paris fight
For all the goods; and he that beats have all.

Menelaus accepted the challenge, and the conditions were sworn to, Agamemnon dictating thus: —

If Paris valiant Menelaus kills,
Let him have Helen, and the goods possess;
If youthful Menelaus Paris kills,
The woman and the goods shall all be his.
(See “Iliad,” iii. 68, 88, 255, and 281.)

Now since Menelaus only overcame but did not kill Paris, each party hath somewhat to say for itself, and against the other. The one may demand restitution, because Paris was overcome; the other deny it, because he was not killed. Now how to determine this case and clear the seeming repugnancies doth not belong to philosophers or grammarians, but to rhetoricians, that are well skilled both in grammar and philosophy.

Then Sospis said: The challenger’s word decides; for the challenger proposed the conditions, and when they were accepted, the opposite party had no power to make additions. Now the condition proposed in this challenge was not killing, but overcoming; and there was reason that it should be so, for Helen ought to be the wife of the bravest. Now the bravest is he that overcomes; for it often happens that an excellent soldier might be killed by a coward, as is evident in what happened afterward, when Achilles was shot by Paris. For I do not believe that you will affirm, that Achilles was not so brave a man as Paris because he was killed by him, and that it should be called the victory, and not rather the unjust good fortune, of him that shot him. But Hector was overcome before he was killed by Achilles, because he would not stand, but trembled and fled at his approach. For he that refuseth the combat or flies cannot palliate his defeat, and plainly grants that his adversary is the better man. And therefore Iris tells Helen beforehand,

In single combat they shall fight for you,
And you shall be the glorious victor’s wife.
(2 Ibid. iii. 137.)

And Jupiter afterwards adjudges the victory to Menelaus in these words:

The conquest leans to Menelaus’s side.
(3 Ibid. iv. 13.)

For it would be ridiculous to call Menelaus a conqueror when he shot Podes, a man at a great distance, before he thought of or could provide against his danger, and yet not allow him the reward of conquest over him whom he made fly and sneak into the embraces of his wife, and whom he spoiled of his arms whilst he was yet alive, and who had himself offered the challenge, by the articles of which Menelaus now appeared to be the conqueror.

Glaucias subjoined: in all laws, decrees, contracts, and promises, those latest made are always accounted more valid than the former. Now the later contract was Agamemnon’s, the condition of which was killing, and not only overcoming. Besides the former was mere words, the latter confirmed by oath; and, by the consent of all, those were cursed that broke them; so that this latter was properly the contract, and the other a bare challenge. And this Priam at his going away, after he had sworn to the conditions, confirms by these words: —

But Jove and other gods alone do know,
Which is designed to see the shades below;
(“Iliad,” iii. 308.)

for he understood that to be the condition of the contract. And therefore a little after Hector says,

But Jove hath undetermined left our oaths,
(Ibid. vii. 69.)

for the combat had not its designed and indisputable determination, since neither of them fell. Therefore this question doth not seem to me to contain any contrariety of law, since the former contract is comprised and overruled by the latter; for he that kills certainly overcomes, but he that overcomes doth not always kill. But, in short, Agamemnon did not annul, but only explain the challenge proposed by Hector. He did not change anything, but only added the most principal part, placing victory in killing; for that is a complete conquest, but all others may be evaded or disputed, as this of Menelaus, who neither wounded nor pursued his adversary. Now as, where there are laws really contrary, the judges take that side which is plain and indisputable, and mind not that which is obscure; so in this case, let us admit that contract to be most valid which contained killing, as a known and undeniable evidence of victory. But (which is the greatest argument) he that seems to have had the victory, not being quiet, but running up and down the army, and searching all about,

To find neat Paris in the busy throng,
(Ibid. iii. 450.)

sufficiently testifies that he himself did not imagine that the conquest was perfect and complete. For when Paris had escaped he did not forget his own words: —

And which of us black fate and death design,
Let him be lost; the others cease from war.
(Iliad, iii. 101,)

Therefore it was necessary for him to seek after Paris, that he might kill him and complete the combat; but since he neither killed nor took him, he had no right to the prize. For he did not conquer him, if we may guess by what he said when he expostulated with Jove and bewailed his unsuccessful attempt: —

Jove, Heaven holds no more spiteful god than thou.
Now would I punish Paris for his crimes;
But oh! my sword is broke, my mighty spear,
Stretched out in vain, flies idly from my hand!
(Ibid. iii, 365.)

For in these words he confessed that it was to no purpose to pierce the shield or take the head-piece of his adversary, unless he likewise wounded or killed him.

QUESTION XIV.

Some Observations About the Number of the Muses, Not Commonly Known.

HERODES, AMMONIUS, LAMPRIAS, TRYPHON, DIONYSIUS, MENEPHYLUS, PLUTARCH.

This discourse ended, we poured out our offerings to the Muses, and together with a hymn in honor of Apollo, the patron of the Muses, we sung with Erato, who played upon the harp, the generation of the Muses out of Hesiod. After the song was done, Herod the rhetorician said: Pray, sirs, hearken. Those that will not admit Calliope to be ours say that she keeps company with kings, not such, I suppose, as are busied in resolving syllogisms or disputing, but such who do those things that belong to rhetoricians and statesmen. But of the rest of the Muses, Clio abets encomiums, for praises are called [Greek omitted]; and Polymnia history, for her name signifies the remembrance of many things; and it is said that all the Muses were somewhere called Remembrances. And for my part, I think Euterpe hath some relation to us too, if (as Chrysippus says) her lot be agreeableness in discourse and pleasantness in conversation. For it belongs to an orator to converse, as well as plead or give advice; since it is his part to gain the favor of his auditors, and to defend or excuse his client. To praise or dispraise is the commonest theme; and if we manage this artfully, it will turn to considerable account; if unskilfully, we are lost. For that saying,

Gods! how he is honored and beloved by all,
(“Odyssey,” x. 38.)

chiefly, in my opinion, belongs to those men who have a pleasing and persuasive faculty in discourse.

Then said Ammonius to Herod: We have no reason to be angry with you for grasping all the Muses, since the goods that friends have are common, and Jove hath begotten a great many Muses, that every man may be plentifully supplied; for we do not all need skill in hunting, military arts, navigation, or any mechanical trades; but learning and instruction is necessary for every one that

Consumes the fruits of the spacious earth.
(From Simonides.)

And therefore Jove made but one Minerva, one Diana, one Vulcan, but many Muses. But why there should be nine, and no more nor less, pray acquaint us; for you, so great a lover of, and so well acquainted with, the Muses, must certainly have considered this matter. What difficulty is there in that? replied Herod. The number nine is in everybody’s mouth, as being the first square of the first odd number; and as doubly odd, since it may be divided into three equal odd numbers. Ammonius with a smile subjoined: Boldly said; and pray add, that this number is composed of the two first cubes, one and eight, and according to another composition of two triangles, three and six, each of which is itself perfect. But why should this belong to the Muses more than any other of the gods? For we have nine Muses, but not nine Cereses, nine Minervas or Dianas. For I do not believe that you take it for a good argument, that the Muses must be so many, because their mother’s name (Mnemosyne) consists of just so many letters. Herod smiling, and everybody being silent, Ammonius desired our opinions.

My brother said, that the ancients celebrated but three Muses, and that to bring proofs for this assertion would be pedantic and uncivil in such a company. The reason of this number was (not as some say) the three different sorts of music, the diatonic, the chromatic, and harmonic, nor those stops that make the intervals nete, mese, and hypate, though the Delphians gave the Muses this name erroneously, in my opinion, appropriating it to one science, or rather to a part of one single science, the harmoniac part of music. But, as I think, the ancients, reducing all arts and sciences which are executed and performed by reason or discourse to three heads, philosophy, rhetoric, and mathematics, accounted them the gifts of three gods, and named them the Muses. Afterwards, about Hesiod’s time, the sciences being better and more thoroughly looked into, and men subdividing them found that each science contained three different parts. In mathematics are comprehended music, arithmetic, and geometry; in philosophy are logic, ethics, and physics. In rhetoric, they say the first part was demonstrative or encomiastic, the second deliberative, the third judicial. None of all which they believed to be without a god or a Muse or some superior power for its patron, and did not, it is probable, make the Muses equal in number to these divisions, but found them to be so. Now, as you may divide nine into three threes, and each three into as many units; so there is but one rectitude of reason, which is employed about the highest truth, and which belongs to the whole in common, while each of the three kinds of science is assigned three Muses, and each of these has her distinct faculty assigned to her, which she disposes and orders. And I do not think the poets and astrologers will find fault with us for passing over their professions in silence, since they know, as well as we, that astrology is comprehended in geometry, and poetry in music.

As soon as he had said this, Trypho the physician subjoined: How hath our art offended you, that you have shut the Museum against us? And Dionysius of Melite added: Sir, you have a great many that will side with you in the accusation; for we farmers think Thalia to be ours, assigning her the care of springing and budding seeds and plants. But I interposing said: Your accusation is not just; for you have bountiful Ceres, and Bacchus who (as Pindar phraseth it) increaseth the trees, the chaste beauty of the fruits; and we know that Aesculapius is the patron of the Physicians, and they make their address to Apollo as Paean, but never as the Muses’ leader. All men (as Homer says) stand in need of the gods, but all stand not in need of all. But I wonder Lamprias did not mind what the Delphians say in this matter; for they affirm that the Muses amongst them were not named so either from the strings or sounds in music; but the universe being divided into three parts, the first portion was of the fixed stars, the second of the planets, the third of those things that are under the concave of the moon; and all these are ordered according to harmonical proportions, and of each portion a Muse takes care; Hypate of the first, Nete of the last, and Mese in the middle, combining as much as possible, and turning about mortal things with the gods and earthly with heavenly. And Plato intimates the same thing under the names of the Fates, calling one Atropos, the other Lachesis, and the other Clotho. For he hath committed the revolutions of the eight spheres to so many Sirens, and not Muses.

Then Menephylus the Peripatetic subjoined: The Delphians’ opinion hath indeed somewhat of probability in it; but Plato is absurd in committing the eternal and divine revolutions not to the Muses but to the Sirens, Daemons that neither love nor are benevolent to mankind, wholly passing by the Muses, or calling them by the names of the Fates, the daughters of Necessity. For Necessity is averse to the Muses; but Persuasion being more agreeable and better acquainted with them, in my opinion, than the grace of Empedocles,

Intolerable Necessity abhors.

No doubt, said Ammonius, as it is in us a violent and involuntary cause; but in the gods Necessity is not intolerable, uncontrollable, or violent, unless it be to the wicked; as the law in a commonwealth to the best man is its best gift, not to be violated or transgressed, not because they have no power, but because they have no will, to change it. And Homer’s Sirens give us no just reason to be afraid; for he in that fable rightly intimates the power of their music not to be hurtful to man, but delightfully charming, and detaining the souls which pass from hence thither and wander after death; working in them a love for heavenly and divine things, and a forgetfulness of everything on earth; and they extremely pleased follow and attend them. And from thence some imperfect sound, and as it were echo of that music, coming to us by the means of reason and good precepts, rouseth our souls, and restores the notice of those things to our minds, the greatest part of which lie encumbered with and entangled in disturbances of the flesh and distracting passions. But the generous soul hears and remembers, and her affection for those pleasures riseth up to the most ardent passion, whilst she eagerly desires but is not able to free herself from the body.

It is true, I do not approve what he says; but Plato seems to me, as he hath strangely and unaccountably called the axes spindles and distaffs, and the stars whirls, so to have named the Muses Sirens, as delivering divine things to the ghosts below, as Ulysses in Sophocles says of the Sirens,

I next to Phorcus’s daughters came,
Who fix the sullen laws below.

Eight of the Muses take care of the spheres, and one of all about the earth. The eight who govern the motions of the spheres maintain the agreement of the planets with the fixed stars and one another. But that one who looks after the place betwixt the earth and moon and takes care of mortal things, by means of discourse and song introduceth persuasion, aiding our natural consent to community and agreement, and giveth men as much harmony, grace, and order as is possible for them to take; introducing this persuasion to appease and quiet our disturbances, and as it were to recall our wandering desires out of the wrong way, and to set us in the right path. But, as Pindar says,

Whom Jove abhors, he starts to hear
The Muses sounding in his ear.
(Pindar, “Pythian,” i. 25.)

To this discourse Ammonius, as he used to do, subjoined that verse of Xenophanes,

This fine discourse seems near allied to truth,

and desired every one to deliver his opinion. And I after a short silence, said: As Plato thinks by the name, as it were by tracks, to discover the powers of the gods, so let us place in heaven and over heavenly things one of the Muses, Urania. And it is likely that those require no distracting variety of cares to govern them, since they have the same single nature for the cause of all their motions. But where are a great many irregularities and disorders, there we must place the eight Muses, that we may have one to correct each particular irregularity and miscarriage. There are two parts in a man’s life, the serious and the merry; and each must be regulated and methodized. The serious role, which instructs us in the knowledge and contemplation of the gods, Calliope, Clio, and Thalia appear chiefly to look after and direct. The other Muses govern our weak part, which changes presently into wantonness and folly; they do not neglect our brutish and violent passions and let them run their own course, but by appropriate dancing, music, song, and orderly motion mixed with reason, bring them down to a moderate temper and condition. For my part, since Plato admits two principles of every action, viz, the natural desire after pleasure, and acquired opinion which covets and wishes for the best, and calls one reason and the other passion, and since each of these is manifold, I think that each requires a considerable and, to speak the truth, a divine direction. For instance, one faculty of our reason is said to be political or imperial, over which Hesiod says Calliope presides; Clio’s province is the noble and aspiring; and Polymnia’s that faculty of the soul which inclines to attain and keep knowledge (and therefore the Sicyonians call one of their three Muses Polymathia); to Euterpe everybody allows the searches into nature and physical speculations, there being no greater, no sincerer pleasure belonging to any other sort of speculation in the world. The natural desire to meat and drink Thalia reduceth from brutish and uncivil to be sociable and friendly; and therefore we say [Greek omitted] of those that are friendly, merry, and sociable over their cups, and not of those that are quarrelsome and mad. Erato, together with Persuasion, that brings along with it reason and opportunity, presides over marriages; she takes away and extinguisheth all the violent fury of pleasure, and makes it tend to friendship, mutual confidence, and endearment, and not to effeminacy, lust, or discontent. The delight which the eye or ear receives is a sort of pleasure, either appropriate to reason or to passion, or common to them both. This the two other Muses, Terpsichore and Melpomene, so moderate, that the one may only tickle and not charm, the other only please and not bewitch.

QUESTION XV.

That There are Three Parts in Dancing: [Greek omitted], Motion, [Greek omitted], Gesture, and [Greek omitted], Representation.

What Each of Those is and What is Common to Both Poetry and Dancing.

AMMONIUS and THRASYBULUS.

After this, a match of dancing was proposed, and a cake was the prize. The judges were Meniscus the dancing-master, and my brother Lamprias; for he danced the Pyrrhic very well, and in the Palaestra none could match him for the graceful motion of his hands and arms in dancing. Now a great many dancing with more heat than art, some desired two of the company who seemed to be best skilled and took most care to observe their steps, to dance in the kind called [Greek omitted]. Upon this Thrasybulus, the son of Ammonius, demanded what [Greek omitted] signified, and gave Ammonius occasion to run over most of the parts of dancing.

He said they were three, — [Greek omitted], [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted]. For dancing is made up of motion and manner [Greek omitted] as a song of sounds and stops; stops are the ends of motion. Now the motions they call [Greek omitted], and the gestures and likeness to which the motions tend, and in which they end, they call [Greek omitted]: as, for instance, when by their own motions they represent the figure of Apollo, Pan, or any of the raging Bacchae. The third is [Greek omitted]; which is not an imitation, but a plain downright indication of the things represented. For as the poets, when they would speak of Achilles, Ulysses, the earth, or heaven, use their proper names, and such as the vulgar usually understand. But for the more lively representation, they use such words as by their very sound express some eminent quality in the thing, or metaphors; as when they say that streams do “babble and flash”; that arrows fly “desirous the flesh to wound”; or when they describe an equal battle by saying “the fight had equal heads.” They have likewise a great many significative compositions in their verses. Thus Euripides of Perseus,

He that Medusa slew, and flies in air;

and Pindar of a horse,

When by the smooth Alpheus’s banks
He ran the race, and never felt the spur;

and Homer of a race,

The chariots, overlaid with tin and brass,
By fiery horses drawn ran swiftly on.
(Euripedes, Frag. 975; Pindar, “Olympian,” i. 31;
“Iliad,” xxiii. 503.)

So in dancing, the [Greek omitted] represents the shape and figure, the [Greek omitted] shows some action, passion, or power; but by the [Greek omitted] are properly and significatively shown the things themselves, for instance, the heaven, earth, or the company. Which, being done in a certain order and method, resembles the proper names used in poetry, decently clothed and attended with suitable epithets. As in these lines,

Themis the venerable and admired,
And Venus beauteous with her bending brows,
Fair Dione, and June crowned with gold.
(Hesiod, “Theogony,” 16.)

And in these,

From Hellen kings renowned for giving laws,
Great Dorus and the mighty Xuthus sprang,
And Aeolus, whose chief delight was horse.

For if poets did not take this liberty, how mean, how grovelling and flat, would be their verse! As suppose they wrote thus,

From this sprung Hercules, from the other Iphitus.
Her father, husband, and her son were kings,
Her brother and forefathers were the same;
And she in Greece Olympias was called.

The same faults may be committed in that sort of dancing called [Greek omitted] unless the representation be lively and graceful, decent and unaffected. And, in short, we may aptly transfer what Simonides said of painting to dancing, and call dancing mute poetry, and poetry speaking dancing; for poesy doth not properly belong to painting, nor painting to poesy, neither do they any way make use of one another. But poesy and dancing share much in common especially in that type of song called Hyporchema, in which is the most lively representation imaginable, dancing doing it by gesture, and poesy by words. So that poesy may bear some resemblance to the colors in painting, while dancing is like the lines which mark out the features. And therefore he who was the most famous writer of Hyporchemes, who here even surpassed himself, sufficiently proveth that these two arts stand in need of one another he shows what tendency poetry hath to dancing; whilst the sound excites the hands and feet, or rather as it were by some cords distends and raiseth every member of the whole body; so that, whilst such songs are recited or sung, they cannot be quiet. But nowadays no sort of exercise hath such bad depraved music applied to it as dancing; and so it suffers that which Ibyeus as to his own concerns was fearful of, as appears by these lines,

I fear lest, losing fame amongst the gods,
I shall receive respect from men alone.

For having associated to itself a mean paltry sort of music, and falling from that divine sort of poetry with which it was formerly acquainted, it rules now and domineers amongst foolish and inconsiderate spectators, like a tyrant, it hath subjected nearly all music, but hath lost all its honor with excellent and wise men.

These, my Sossius Senecio, were almost the last discourses which we had at Ammonius’s house during the festival of the Muses.

BOOK IX

Dialogue on love

FLAVIANUS AND AUTOBULUS, SONS OF PLUTARCH.

1. Flavianus.

Was it not in Helicon, dear Autobulus, that those discourses were held concerning Love, which — whether thou hast already set them down in writing, or still carriest them in thy memory, as having often desired them from thy father — we are now in expectation that thou wilt recite to us, at our importunate request?

Autobulus.

I was in Helicon, dear Flavianus, among the Muses, at what time the Thespians performed the Erotic solemnities. For they celebrate every four years certain games and festivals very magnificent and splendid in honor of Cupid, as well as of the Muses.

Flav.

Know’st thou then what it is we all desire at thy hands, as many as are gathered here together to be thy auditors?

Autob.

No; but I shall know, when I am once by you informed.

Flav.

Curtail, we beseech ye, your discourse at present, forbearing the descriptions of meadows and shades, together with the crawling ivy, and whatever else poets are so studious to add to their descriptions, imitating with more curiosity than grace Plato’s Ilissus, with the chaste tree and the gentle rising hillock covered with green grass.

Autob.

What needed my relation, dearest Flavianus, such a proem as this? The occasion that gave birth to these discourses of itself (as it were) asks for a chorus, and it requires a theatre; otherwise there is nothing wanting of a complete drama. Therefore let us only beseech Memory, the mother of the Muses, to be propitious and assist us in the discovery of the fable.

2. For a long time before we were born, when our father had newly espoused our mother, an unlucky variance that fell out between their parents caused him to take a journey to Thespiae, with an intention to sacrifice to the God of Love; and he carried my mother also to the feast (for that it properly belonged to her as well to make the feast as to perform the sacrifice), besides several of his familiar acquaintance that accompanied him from his house. Now being arrived at Thespiae, he met with Daphnaeus, the son of Archidamus, who was in love with Lysandra, the daughter of Simon, and who was, above all her suitors, chiefly the most welcome and acceptable to her. There he also found Soclarus, the son of Aristion, who was come from Tithorea; together with Protogenes of Tarsus and Zeuxippus the Lacedaemonian, by whom he had been several times kindly entertained; and he said that most of the chief men among the Boeotians were there also. Thus they stayed for two or three days in the city, entertaining each other with learned discourses, one while in the common wrestling-places, sometimes in the theatres, still keeping company together. After that, avoiding the troublesome contest of the harpers and musicians, — it being found out that all had been settled beforehand by favor and intrigue, — the greatest part brake company, as if they had been discamping out of an enemy’s country, retired to Helicon, and took up their lodgings among the Muses. Thither the next morning came to them Anthemion and Pisias, persons of eminent nobility, and both allied to Baccho, surnamed the Fair, and in some way at difference one with another, by reason of the affection which they severally bore to him. For there was at Thespiae, Is menodora, of an illustrious family, and wealthy withal; and indeed in all other respects discreet and modest; and moreover she had continued a widow no little time, without spot or stain to her reputation, though both young and beautiful.

Now it happened that while this brisk widow was endeavoring to make up a match between Baccho, who was the son of her intimate friend, and a certain just blooming virgin nearly allied to herself, by often talking with the young gentleman and much frequenting his company, she began to feel some sparks of kindness kindled for him in her own breast. Afterwards hearing him highly commended by others, and speaking many things in his praise herself, and finding him beloved by a great number of persons of the best rank, by degrees she fell desperately in love with the youth; nevertheless with a resolution to do nothing unbeseeming her birth and quality, but after public wedlock to acknowledge him as her husband. But as the match seemed impracticable by reason of the distance of their years, so the mother of the young man suspected the nobility and grandeur of her house not to be correspondent to her son’s condition, which rendered him incapable of such a preferment. Moreover, his companions that were wont to go a hunting with him, weighing the difference between his and the age of Ismenodora, filled his head with several scruples, and scaring him with continual frumps and scoffs, more effectually hindered the match than they who labored industriously and seriously to prevent it. And the young man himself felt ashamed at his age to be married to a widow. At last, however, shaking off all others, he applies himself to Pisias and Anthemion for their advice in a matter of so great concernment. The elder of these two, Anthemion, was his cousin, and Pisias the most earnest of his lovers. The latter therefore withstood the match with all his might, and upbraided Anthemion, as one that went about to betray the young man to Ismenodora. On the other side, Anthemion told Pisias, that he did not well to do as he did, having the reputation of a worthy honest man, to imitate those lewd lovers, and endeavor to deprive his friend of a noble house, a rich wife, and other great conveniences, that he might have the pleasure to see him frequently naked in the wrestling-places, fresh and smooth, and a stranger to female sports.

3. However, to prevent the growing of any quarrel between them, through long and passionate disputes, they chose for umpires of the controversy my father and those friends that were with him. And beside them, as if they had been chosen on purpose, Daphnaeus pleaded for Pisias, and for Anthemion, Protogenes; who bitterly inveighing against Ismenodora, O Hercules, cried Daphnaeus, what may we not expect, when Protogenes bids defiance to love? he that all along has spent as well the serious as sportive hours of his life both in love and for love, without regard either to learning or his country; nor like to Laius, who was but five days’ journey distant from home, — for his was a slow sort of love upon the dry land, — whereas your Cupid, Protogenes,

With nimble wings displayed,

crossed the seas from Cilicia to Athens, merely to visit and straggle up and down with lovely boys. And indeed, such at first was the true cause of Protogenes’s peregrination.

4. At which the company falling into a loud laughter; How! said Protogenes, can you believe that I at this time wage war against love, and that I do not rather fight for love against intemperate desire and lascivious wantonness, which, under the shelter of the most honest and fairest names that are, let themselves loose into the most shameful acts of inordinate lust and concupiscence? Then Daphnaeus: Do ye number wedlock and the conjunction of man and wife (than which there is no tie more sacred in this life) among the vile and dishonest actions of the world? Why truly, replied Protogenes, this same bond of wedlock, as being necessary for generation, is not undeservedly perhaps extolled by our grave politicians and lawgivers, and by them recommended to the multitude. But I must tell ye, if you mean true love, there is not a farthing’s worth of it to be found among women. Nor do I believe that either you yourselves, or any other that dote so much as you pretend to do upon women and virgins, love them any otherwise than as flies love milk, or bees love honey-combs; or as cooks and butchers fat up calves and poultry in the dark, not out of any extraordinary affection which they bear to these creatures, but for the gain which they make of them. But as Nature prompts all men to the use of bread and meat with moderation and so far as may suffice the appetite, the excess of which becomes a vice, under the name of gluttony or gormandizing; thus it is natural for men and women to desire the pleasures of mutual enjoyment, but as for that impetuous concupiscence that hurries the greatest part of mankind with so much strength and violence, it is not properly called love. For love that is bred in a young and truly generous heart, by means of friendship, terminates in virtue; whereas all our desires towards women, let them be taken in the best sense he can, serve us only to reap the fruit of pleasure, and to assist us in the fruition of youth and beauty. As Aristippus testified to one that would have put him out of conceit with Lais, for that, as he said, she did not truly love him; no more, said he, am I beloved by pure wine or good fish, and yet I willingly make use of both. For the end of desire is pleasure and enjoyment. But love, having once lost the hopes of friendship, will neither tarry, nor cherish for beauty’s sake that which is irksome, though never so gaudy in the flower of youth, if it bring not forth the fruit of a disposition propense to friendship and virtue. And therefore it is that you hear a certain husband in a tragedy thus talking to his wife:

Thou hat’st me? True; — and I thy proud disdain

Will brook with patience, careless of the pain,

So long as my dishonor gives me gain.

Now I take him to be not at all a more amorous man than this, that can endure, for the sake of his carnal pleasure, and not for gain, the plague of a curst ill-natured shrew, that is always scolding. The first of which love-martyrs Philippides the comedian thus derided in the person of Stratocles the rhetorician:

She lowers and growls and turns her tail

With, fury so unkind,

The wittol blest would think himself,

To kiss her coif behind.

Now if this be the passion you talk of which is to be called Love, it is a spurious and effeminate love that sends us to the women’s chambers, as it were to the Cynosarges at Athens. Or rather, as they say there is a sort of generous and true bred mountain eagle, which Homer calls the black eagle and eagle of prey, and then again there is another sort of bastard eagle, that takes fish and birds that are lazy and slow of flight, and wanting food makes a shrill and mournful noise for hunger; thus the true genuine love is that of boys, not flaming with concupiscence, as according to Anacreon the love of maids and virgins does, neither besmeared with odoriferous ointments, nor alluring with smiles and rolling glances; but you shall find him plain and simple and undebauched with pleasures in the schools of the philosophers, or in the wrestling-lists and places of public exercise, smart and generous in the chase of youth, and exhorting to virtue all that he finds to be fit objects of his diligence; whereas that other love, nice and effeminate, and always nestling in the bosoms and beds of women, pursuing soft pleasures, and wasted with unmanly delights, that have no gust of friendship or heavenly ravishment of mind, is to be despised and rejected of all mankind. This indeed Solon did, when he forbade slaves and servants the use of male familiarity and of dry ointment, but granted them the liberty to accompany with women; as looking upon friendship to be laudable and civil, but pleasure to be a vulgar thing and unbecoming a man born free. Whence it appears that to make love to a slave boy is ignoble and unworthy of a freeman; for this is mere mischievous love of copulation, like the affection toward women.

5. Now while Protogenes was desirous to say more, Daphnaeus interrupting him said: Truly you have done well to put us in mind of Solon, and we may make use of him as the judge of a person addicted to love. Hear what he says:

Then dote upon the flowery youth of boys,

Their fragrant breath admiring and soft thighs.

Add to this of Solon that other of Aeschylus:

Ungrateful, for the kisses of my lips,

Not to revere the glory of my hips.

These are proper judges of love; but others there are who deride all those that would have lovers inspect thighs and haunches, like so many sacrificers and diviners. And for my part I draw from hence a very strong argument on the behalf of the women. For if male converse, which is altogether against nature, neither extinguishes nor is any ways noxious to amorous affection, much more probable is it that the love of women, which is according to nature, should reach to the consummation of friendship, by virtue of that obsequious beauty which attends it. For I must tell you, Protogenes, the submission of the female to the male was by the ancients expressed by the word χάϱις (grace or favor). For which reason Pindar observes that Vulcan was by Juno brought forth without the graces; and Sappho tells a young virgin, not yet ripe for matrimony,

A little child thou seem’st, and without grace.

And a certain person puts the question to Hercules,

By force or by persuasion did the maid

Her favors yield?

But the submission of males to males, whether it be by compulsion and strength, like a violent and forcible rape, or whether it be voluntary, — men suffering themselves weakly and effeminately to be covered by each other, like four-footed beasts, and counterfeiting the act of generation in defiance of nature (as Plato says), — is void of all grace, brutish, and contrary to the end of venereal pleasure. Wherefore I am apt to believe that Solon wrote those lines when he was young, brisk, and full of seed (as Plato phrases it), but when he was grown into years, he sang another note:

The sports of Venus, now, are my delight,

Or else with Bacchus to carouse;

At other times the Muses’ charms invite;

These are the chiefest pleasures mankind knows; —

as if he had altered his course of life, and retired from the storms and tempests of pederastic fury into the calms of wedlock and philosophy. Now then, Protogenes, let us but consider the truth of the matter, we shall find the passion of lovers to be the same, whether it be for boys or for women; or if, out of a contentious humor, you will distinguish them, you shall find that this affection for boys does not keep itself within bounds, but like a late-born issue, clandestinely brought forth in the dark and out of season, it strives to expel the truly genuine and legitimate love, which is much the more ancient. For give me leave to tell ye, my dear friend, it is but (as it were) of yesterterday’s standing or of the day before — since young boys began to strip and show themselves naked in the public places of exercise — that this frenzy, getting in by degrees and crowding in there, afterwards by little and little became better fledged and gathered strength of wings in the wrestling-rings, so that now the insolence of it can no longer be so restrained but that still it will be affronting and adulterating conjugal love, which is the coadjutrix of Nature and helps to immortalize mortal mankind, raising up and immediately restoring again by generation our human nature when it has been extinguished by death. But this same Protogenes denies there is any pleasure in male concupiscence, for he is ashamed and afraid to acknowledge it. Therefore there must be some decent pretence for the feeling and handling these adult and lovely youths. And truly he has found out a very clever excuse, alleging it to be for the sake of friendship and virtue. Therefore he rolls himself in the dust, washes with cold water, erects his brows, and outwardly pretends to philosophy and chastity, for fear of the law; but when darkness covers the earth, and all people have betaken themselves to their rest,

Sweet the ripe fruit he finds, its keeper gone.

Now if it be as Protogenes says, that no carnal conjunction attends these masculine familiarities, how can it be love, when Venus is absent; seeing that of all the Goddesses, she it is that Cupid is bound to obey and attend, and that he has no honor or power but what she confers upon him? But if there be a sort of love without Venus, as a man may be drunk without wine by drinking the decoctions of figs or barley, the disturbance of such a love must prove fruitless and to no end, and consequently loathsome and offensive.

6. These things thus said, it was apparent that Pisias found himself touched to the quick, and much concerned for what Daphnaeus had spoken. But after he had been silent awhile, O Hercules, said he, what a strange impudence and levity is this in men, to acknowledge themselves tied to women by their generating parts, like dogs to bitches; by this means expelling and banishing love from the places of exercise, from the public porticos, and from conversing under the open sky and sunshine, to the stews, poniards, philters, and sorceries of lascivious women; for it is not convenient for the chaste either to love or to be beloved. At which words, as my father told me, he took Protogenes by the hand, and repeated to him these verses:

Words such as these the Argive courage warm;

And the affronted youth provoke to arm.

For surely (he added) the exorbitant language of Pisias gives us good reason to take Daphnaeus’s part, while he introduces over the head of wedlock a society void of love, and utterly a stranger to that same friendship which descends and is inspired from above; which, if real affection and submission be wanting, can hardly be restrained by all the curbs and yokes of shame and fear. Then Pisias: For my part, said he, I give little heed to this argument; for as for Daphnaeus, I find him in the same condition with brass. For as brass is not so easily melted by the fire as by the force of the same melted and liquid metal being poured upon it, which mollifies both alike, and causes them to run and mix together; so it is not the beauty of Lysandra that inflames him, but the conversing along with one that is already inflamed and full of fire, that sets him all in a flame himself; and it is apparent that, unless he makes haste to us, he will suddenly be melted with his own heat. But I perceive, said he, the same thing will befall me which Anthemion has most reason to desire, that I too shall offend the judges; and therefore I shall say no more. Then Anthemion: ‘Tis very true indeed, your fear is just; for you ought at the first to have spoken to the purpose, and what was proper to the argument in hand.

7. To this Pisias replied: I am willing enough that every woman should have her lover; but withal, it very much concerns Baccho to have a care how he entangles himself in Ismenodora’s wealth; lest, while we match him with so much grandeur and magnificence, we consume him to nothing, like tin among brass. For I must tell you, it would be a hard matter for so young a stripling as he is, though he should marry a plain and ordinary woman, to keep the upper hand, like wine mixed with water. But we see her already design superiority and command; else why should she refuse so many suitors of great wealth and noble extraction that court her daily, to woo herself a mere boy, that has but newly assumed the robes of manhood and is more fit to go to school than to marry. And therefore those husbands that are wise, without any admonition, out of their own foresight, clip their wives’ wings themselves; that is, they prune away their riches, that prompt them to luxury and vanity, and render them inconstant and foolish. For many times, by the help of these wings, they soar out of their husbands’ reach and fly quite away; or if they stay at home, better it were for a man to be chained with fetters of gold, as they chain their prisoners in Ethiopia, than to be tied to the riches of a wife.

8. However, said Protogenes, he has not hinted to us in the least the hazard we run of inverting absurdly and ridiculously the counsel of Hesiod, whose words are these:

Take to thy home a woman for thy bride

When in the ripeness of thy manhood’s pride:

Thrice ten thy sum of years, the nuptial prime;

Nor far fall short, nor far exceed the time.

Four years the ripening virgin should consume,

And wed the fifth of her expanded bloom.

Quite contrary to this precept, we are going about to couple a young lad, scarce ripe for marriage, to a lady much older than himself; like those that graft the tender scions of dates and fig-trees upon old stocks, to make them bear fruit before their season. But you will say, The woman is in love up to the ears, and burns with desire. Who is he that will hinder her from masquerading before his doors, from singing her amorous lamentations at his windows, from adorning his statues with chaplets and garlands of flowers, from duelling her rivals, and winning him from them all by feats of arms? For these are acts that demonstrate the height of a passionate affection. Let her knit her brows, refrain all manner of pomp of luxury; let her put on a garb and countenance suitable to such a violent passion. But if bashful and modest, let her sit at home, expecting her suitors and gallants to come and court her there. But who would not fly and abominate a woman that professes love, and loathe the idea of taking one to wife who makes such an impudent incontinence the first step to future nuptials?

9. When Protogenes had thus concluded; Do you not see, Anthemion, saith my father, how they again make common cause against us, enforcing us still to continue our discourse of nuptial love, who deny not ourselves to be the upholders of it, nor ever avoided the being one of that celebrated chorus? Most certainly I do, replied Anthemion; therefore proceed in the defence of conjugal affection; and let us have also your assistance in maintaining the argument about riches, with which Pisias chiefly seems to scare us. ‘Tis the least we can do, said my father; for what in the world will not be made a reproach to womankind, should we reject Ismenodora because she is in love and wealthy to boot? Grant that she is imperious as well as rich. What then if she is beautiful and young? What if she is somewhat stately and haughty, by reason of her illustrious birth? There is nothing of crabbedness, nothing scornful, nothing sour, nothing troublesome, in women truly chaste and modest. And yet their very chastity gains them the name of shrews and furies. But you will say, since it may be a man’s misfortune to be so hampered, would it not be better to marry some Thracian Abrotonon or some Milesian Bacchis, whom he can get in the market for money and a handful of nuts? And yet we have known some men that have been miserably henpecked by this sort of underlings. The Samian minstrels and morrisdancers, such as were Aristonica, Oenanthe with her tabor and pipe, and Agathoclia, insulted over the diadems of sovereigns. The Syrian Semiramis was a poor wench, kept by one of Ninus’s slaves, partly as his servant, partly as his harlot, till Ninus, meeting her and taking a fancy to her, at length doted upon her to that degree, that she not only governed him as she pleased herself, but contemned him; so that, finding she had got the absolute mastery over him, she became so bold as to desire him to do her the favor to see her sit but one day upon his throne, with the royal diadem upon her head, dispatching the public business. To which the king consenting, and giving order to all his officers to yield her the same obedience as to himself, at first she was very moderate in her commands, only to make trial of the guards about her; but when she saw that they obeyed her without the least hesitation or murmuring, she commanded them first to lay hold of Ninus himself, then to bind him, at length to kill him. Which being done, she took the government upon herself, and reigned victoriously over all Asia with great splendor and renown.

And was not Belestiche a barbarian courtesan bought in the market, in whose honor the Alexandrians erected temples and altars, with inscriptions to Venus Belestiche as marks of the king’s affection to her? And as for her who is in this very city enshrined in the same temple and honored with the same solemnities as Cupid, and whose gilded statue stands among kings and queens at Delphi, — I would fain know what dowry of hers it was that brought so many lovers into such subjection to her. But as those great men, through their softness and effeminacy, became a prey to those women; so on the other side, men of low and mean condition, having married women both wealthy and of splendid extraction, neither lowered sail nor abated any thing of their courage and greatness of mind, but lived together with their wives, always honoring them, and keeping that superiority over them which was their right and due. But he that contracts and reduces his wife within a narrow compass, and makes her less, like a ring that is too big for the finger, to prevent her from dropping off, is like to those that dock off their mares’ tails and clip their manes, and then lead them to a river or pond; for it is reported, that when those mares perceive themselves so ill favoredly shorn and disfigured, they lose their natural courage, and will afterwards suffer themselves to be covered by asses.

Now, as it is a base thing to prefer the riches of a woman above her virtue or nobility, so is it as great folly to reject wealth, when accompanied with virtue and illustrious parentage. Antigonus writing to a captain of his, whom he had ordered to fortify the hill Munychia, bade him not only make the collar strong but keep the dog lean; intimating thereby that he should take care to impoverish the Athenians. But there is no necessity for the husband of a rich and beautiful wife to make her poor or to disfigure her; but by self-control and prudence, and by seeming not to admire any thing extravagantly in her, to carry himself so that she may perceive that, as he designs not to be a tyrant, so she must not expect him to be her subject; giving his own character that weight in the balance, that the scale may be turned without offence and for the good of both. Now, as for Ismenodora, her years are fit for marriage, and she is a woman most likely to bear children; nay, I am informed that she is now in her prime. For, continued he, smiling upon Pisias, she is not elder than any of her rivals; neither has she any gray hairs, as some that keep company with Baccho. Now if those people think their converse with the young gentleman no way misbecoming their gravity, what hinders but that she may affect and cherish him better than any young virgin whatever? For I must needs say, it is a difficult matter many times rightly to mix and blend the tempers of young people; in regard it will require some time to make them sensible of several extravagancies which they may commit, until they have laid aside the pride and wantonness which is incident to youth. For many a blustering tempest will happen between the new-married couple before they can be brought to endure the yoke, and draw quietly together, more especially if the God of Love appear among them; and youthful wantonness — like the wind in the absence of the pilot — will disturb and confuse the happiness of the match, while the one has not skill to govern and the other refuses to be governed. Now then, if it be so that nurses are sought for to look after sucking infants, and schoolmasters to teach children; if masters of exercise direct young striplings, and the lover his youth; if the law and the captain-general govern those that are of age, so that no man can be said to be at his own liberty to do what he list; where is the absurdity for a wife, that has wit and discretion and the advantage of years, to govern and direct the life and conversation of a youthful husband, profitable to him as exceeding him in wisdom, and augmenting the pleasure of her society by the sweetness of her disposition and reality of affection? To conclude, said he, we that are Boeotians ourselves ought to reverence Hercules, and not to be offended with those that marry women elder than themselves; knowing, as we do, that even Hercules himself gave his own wife Megara, being then three and thirty years old, to Iolaus his son, being no more than sixteen years of age.

10. While they were in the midst of these discourses, one of Pisias’s companions and friends, as my father reported, came galloping towards them out of the city, whip and spur, to bring the news of a strange and wonderful accident. For Ismenodora, believing that Baccho no way disliked being married to her, but only was deterred by the importunities of his friends that dissuaded him from the match, resolved not to let the young man escape her. To this purpose she sent for certain sparks of her acquaintance, whom she knew to be stout and resolute young gentlemen, and some women that were well-wishers to her amours, and observing the hour that Baccho was wont to pass by her house to the wrestling-place, well attended and decently garbed, one day when he came near the outermost door, anointed as he was for the exercise, with two or three more in the same posture, she met him in the street, and gently twitched his upper coat. This signal being given, her friends rushed forth, and fairly and softly catching him up in his mandilion and doublet, in a huddle together they carried him into the house, and locked the door fast after them. Then came the women also, and pulling off his mandilion, threw about him a costly nuptial garment. The servants likewise, running up and down from one place to another, adorned the posts not only of Ismenodora’s but of Baccho’s house with olive and laurel boughs; and a minstrel likewise was ordered to pipe along the street. The story thus related, the Thespians and strangers some of them laughed, some others were heinously offended, and did what they could to exasperate the presidents of the public exercises. For they have a great command over the young gentlemen, and keep a severe and vigilant eye upon all their actions. And now there was not a word said of the sports that were intended; but all the people, forsaking the theatre, flocked to Ismenodora’s house, discoursing and debating the matter one among another.

11. But when Pisias’s friend, with his horse all foaming and in a sweat, as if he had brought intelligence from the army in time of war, had delivered his news, being hardly able to speak for want of breath, and concluding his story with saying that Ismenodora had ravished Baccho; my father told me, that Zeuxippus fell a laughing, and as he was a great admirer of that poet, repeated the verses of Euripides:

Wanton with wealth, fair lady, thou hast done

No more than nature teaches every one.

But Pisias, starting up out of his seat, made a great exclamation, crying out: O ye Gods! when will ye put an end to this licentiousness, that will in the end subvert our city? For now all things are running into disorder through violation of the laws; but perhaps it is now looked upon as a slight matter to transgress the law and violate justice, for even the law of nature is transgressed and broken by the insolent anarchy of the female sex. Was ever there any such thing committed in the island of Lemnos? Let us go, said he, let us go and deliver up the wrestling-place and the council house to the women, if the city be so effeminate as to put up with these indignities. Thus Pisias brake from the company in a fury; nor would Protogenes leave him, partly offended at what had happened, and partly to assuage and mollify his friend. But Anthemion: ‘Twas a juvenile bold attempt, said he, and a truly Lemnian one — I venture to say so since we are now by ourselves — of a lady warmly in love. To whom Soclarus smiling: Do you then believe, said he, that this was a real ravishment and force, and not rather a stratagem of the young man’s own contrivance (for he has wit at will), to the end he might escape out of the hands of his ruder male lovers into the embraces of a fair and rich widow? Never say so, said Anthemion, nor have such a suspicion of Baccho. For were he not naturally, as he is, of a plain and open temper, he would still never have concealed this thing from me, to whom he has always imparted his secrets, and whom he knew to be always a favorer of Ismenodora’s design. But, according to the saying of Heraclitus, it is a hard matter to withstand love, not anger; for whatever love has a desire to, it will purchase with the hazard of life, fortune, and reputation. Now where is there a more modest and orderly woman in all our city than Ismenodora? When did you ever hear an ill word spoken of her? Or when did ever any thing done in her house give the least suspicion of an ill act? Rather we may say that she seems to be inspired beyond other women with something above human reason.

12. Then Pemptides smiling: Truly, said he, there is a certain disease of the body, which they call sacred; so that it is no wonder if some men give the appellation of sacred and divine to the most raging and vehement passion of the mind. But as in Egypt once I saw two neighbors hotly contending about a serpent which crept before them in the road, while both concluded it to be good luck, and each assumed the happy omen to himself; so seeing some of you at this time haling love into the chambers of men, others into the cabinets of the women, as a divinely transcendent good, I do not wonder, since it is a passion so powerful and greatly esteemed, that it is magnified and held in greatest veneration by those that have most reason to clip its wings and expel and drive it from them. Hitherto therefore I have been silent, perceiving the debate to be rather about a particular concern, than any thing for the public good. But now that Pisias is gone, I would willingly understand from one of you, upon what account it was that they who first discoursed of love were so fond to deify it.

13. So soon as Pemptides had done, and my father was about to say something in answer to his question, another messenger came from the city in Ismenodora’s name, requesting Anthemion to come to her; for that the tumult increased, and the presidents of the games could not agree, while one was of opinion that Baccho was to be demanded and delivered into their hands, and the other thought it an impertinence to meddle with that which nothing concerned them.

Thus Anthemion being gone, my father addressed himself to Pemptides by name, and so entered into the following discourse: You seem to me, sir, to have hit upon a very strange and nice point, or rather, as I may so say, to have endeavored to stir things which are not to be moved, in reference to the opinion which we have of the Gods, while you demand a reason and demonstration of every thing in particular. For it is sufficient to believe according to the faith of our forefathers and the instructions of the country where we have been bred and born, than which we cannot utter or invent a more certain argument;

For surely all the wit of human brain

This part of knowledge never could attain.

For this is a foundation and basis common to all piety and religion; of which if the steady rule and decreed maxims be once disordered and shaken, all the rest must totter and become suspected. And no question but you have heard what a clamor was raised against Euripides when he made this beginning of his Melanippe:

Jupiter, if his name be so;

‘Tis only by hearsay that I know.

But when he exhibited the tragedy a second time, he seems to have had such a confidence in the lofty style and elaborate eloquence of his work, that he thus altered the verse:

Jove, for we own he has received that name

From truth alone, and not from common fame.

What difference then is there between calling in question the name of Jupiter and Minerva, and doubting of the name of Cupid or Love? For it is not of late that Love has challenged altars and sacrifices, neither is he a foreigner started up out of any barbarian superstition, as were the Attae and the Adonii, introduced by I know not what sort of hermaphrodites and idle women. Nor has he clandestinely crept into honors no way becoming him, to avoid the accusation of bastardy and being unduly enrolled in the catalogue of the Gods. But when you hear Empedocles thus saying,

And friendship too (observe my song)

Is like to these, both broad and long;

But this thou must not think to find

With eyes of body, but of mind,

you ought to believe all this to be said of Love. For Love is no more visible than any of the rest of the ancient Deities, but apprehended only by opinion and belief; for every one of which if you require a reason and demonstrative argument, by enquiring after every temple and making a sophistical doubt upon every altar, you shall find nothing free from inquisition and malicious slander. For, that I may go no farther, observe but these:

I do not Venus see with mortal eyes,

The Goddess unto whom we sacrifice;

Yet this is she that mighty Cupid bare,

Whose offspring all terrestrial beings are.

Therefore Empedocles gives her the epithet of the Giver of Life, and Sophocles calls her Fruitful; both very aptly and pertinently. For indeed the great and wonderful work of generation is properly the work of Venus, where Love is only an assistant when present with Venus; but his absence renders the act itself altogether irksome, dishonorable, harsh, and ungrateful. For the conjunction of man and woman without true affection, like hunger and thirst, terminates in satiety, and produces nothing truly noble or commendable; but when the Goddess by means of Love puts away all loathsome glut of pleasure, she perpetuates delight by a continual supply of friendship and harmony of temper. Therefore Parmenides asserts Love to be the most ancient of all the works of Venus, writing thus in his Cosmogony:

Of all the Gods that rule above,

She first brought forth the mighty Love.

But Hesiod, in my opinion, seems more philosophically to make Love the eldest of all the Gods, as from whom all the other Deities derive their beginning. Therefore, should we deprive Love of the honors which are decreed him, the ceremonies we ascribe to Venus will be no longer in request. For it is not sufficient to say, that some men reproach Love and load him with contumelies, but abstain from giving her an ill word; for upon the same theatre we hear these scandals fixed upon both:

Love, idle of himself, takes up his rest

And harbors only in the slothful breast.

And in another place thus upon Venus:

She does not the name of Cypris only own,

But by a hundred other names is known:

She’s hell on earth, continued violence,

And rage subduing all the force of sense.

As indeed we may say of the rest of the Gods, that there is not one that has escaped the scandalous jibes of illiterate scurrility. Look upon Mars, as in a brazen sculpture, possessing the place just opposite to Love, how highly has he been honored, how lowly degraded by men?

Swine-snouted Mars, and as a beetle blind, -

‘Tis he, fair dames, disorders all mankind.

Homer also gives him the epithets of murderous and Jack-a-both-sides. Moreover, Chrysippus, explaining the name of this Deity, fixes a villanous accusation upon him. For, says he, Ares is derived from ἀναιϱεῖν, which signifies to destroy; thereby affording an occasion for some to give the name of Ares or Mars to that some proneness and perverse inclination of men to wrath and passion, and to quarrel and fight one with another. Others affirm Venus to be nothing but our concupiscence; that Mercury is no more than the faculty of speech; that the Muses are only the names for the arts and sciences; and that Minerva is only a fine word for prudence. And thus you see into what an abyss of atheism we are like to plunge ourselves, while we go about to range and distribute the Gods among the various passions, faculties, and virtues of men.

14. I plainly perceive it, replied Pemptides; for I neither believe it lawful to make the Gods to be passions, nor on the other side, to make the passions to be Deities. To whom my father: Well then, said he, do you believe Mars to be a God, or a passion of ours? To which when Pemptides replied, that he thought Mars to be the Deity that rectified the angry and courageous part of man; my father presently retorted upon him: Why then? said he, shall our passionate part, and those wrathful inclinations within us that provoke us to mischief and bloodshed, have a Deity to overrule and govern them; and will you not allow the same guardianship over our better propensities to love, friendship, society, and peace? Is there a Deity called Enyalius and Stratius that presides and has the superintendence over those that kill and are slain, a Deity that bears rule in matters of arms, all warlike preparations, assaults of cities, and depredations of countries, and distributes rewards as he sees occasion; and shall there be no Deity to be a witness and overseer, a supreme governor and director, of conjugal affection, which terminates in concord and happy society? Nay, do we find that they who make it their sport to hunt wild goats, hares, and deer, are not without their forest Deity to encourage them; and they that make it their business to trepan wolves and bears into snares and pitfalls, pray for good luck to Aristaeus,

Who first of all for the wild beasts of prey

With gins and snares in secret ambush lay;

and that Hercules, having bent his bow, before he let fly at the bird which he intended to hit, invoked another Deity, as we find in Aeschylus,

Hunter Apollo, and to hunters kind,

Direct this arrow to the mark designed;

but for men that hunt the most noble game of love and friendship, is there no God nor so much as one Daemon to assist and prosper so laudable an enterprise? Truly, Daphnaeus, for my part, I cannot believe a man to be a more inconsiderable plant than an oak or mulberry tree or the vine which Homer reverently calls by the name of Hemeris, considering that man in his due season also is endued with a powerful faculty to bud and pleasantly put forth the beauties both of his body and mind.

15. To whom Daphnaeus: In the name of all the Gods, who ever thought otherwise? All those must certainly, replied my father, who believe the care of ploughing, sowing, and planting is an employment becoming the Gods (and have they not for this purpose certain Nymphs attending them, called Dryads,

Who with the trees they cherish live and die? —

and does not

The joyous Bacchus send increase of fruit,

The chaste autumnal light, to every tree? —

as Pindar sings), and who yet will not allow that the nourishment and growth of children and young people, who in the flower of their age are to be formed and shaped into several varieties of beauty, is under the care and tuition of any Deity; or that there is any Divinity to take care that man, being once born, may be guided and conducted in the true paths of virtue, and to prevent the tender plant from being bowed and bent the wrong way for want of a good instructor, or by the depraved conversation of those with whom he lives. For my part, I look upon it as a heinous piece of indignity and ingratitude thus to say, while we are all the time enjoying the bounty and benignity of God, which he is ready to disperse and diffuse over all, and which never abandons the distresses and needs of mortals. And yet in many of these needs the duty to be performed is rather necessary than pleasant. Thus our being delivered from the mother’s womb is no such delightful thing, as being attended with pain and issues of blood; and yet there is a celestial midwife and overseer that takes particular care of that necessity, which is Lucina. And indeed a man had better never be born, than to be made bad and wicked for want of a good tutor and guardian. Nay, we find that the divine power does not desert us in our sickness, nor after we are dead; there being still some Deity or other who claims some certain peculiar employment or function, even upon those occasions. Among the rest, there is one that helps to convey the souls of such as have ended this life into the other world, and lays them asleep, according to this of the poet:

For shady night ne’er brought me forth to play

With artful touch upon the tuneful lyre,

Nor to be mistress of prophetic fire,

Nor pains of rude distempers to allay;

But to convey the souls of the deceased

Each one to their appointed place of rest.

Nevertheless these ministerial functions have many difficulties and troubles which attend them; whereas we cannot imagine any employment more holy, any exercise more sacred, or any contention for prize and glory more becoming a Deity, than to direct and assist the lawful endeavors and pursuits of lovers in their prime of years and beauty. There is nothing dishonorable, nothing of forced necessity in this; but gentle persuasion and alluring grace, rendering labor delightful, leads to virtue and friendship, which never attains the true accomplishment of the end it aims at without some divine assistance, nor can have any other conductor and master than Cupid himself, who is the friend and companion of the Muses, the Graces, and Venus his own mother. For, according to Melannippides,

Great Love it is, that in the heart of man

Sows the sweet harvest of unstained desire;

and he always mingles those things that are sweetest with those that are fairest. What do you say, Zeuxippus? Can we believe it to be otherwise?

16. In truth, I judge it so, replied Zeuxippus; and I think it would be absurd to affirm the contrary. And would it not be absurd indeed, said my father, since there are four sorts of friendships, according to the determination of the ancients, — the first, say they, is natural, the next is that of kindred and relations, the third is that of friends and acquaintance, and last is that of lovers, — if three of these have their several tutelar Deities, under the names of the patron of friendship, the patron of hospitality, and he who knits affection between those of the same race and family; while only amorous affection, as if it were unhallowed and under interdiction, is left without any guardian or protector, which indeed requires the greatest care and government above all the rest? All that you say, replied Zeuxippus, is undeniable.

By the way, replied my father, we may here take notice of what Plato says upon this subject, as pertinent to our discourse. For he says, that there is a certain madness transmitted from the body to the soul, proceeding from a malignant mixture of ill-humors, or a noxious vapor or rather pernicious spirit that possesses the heart; which madness is a rugged and terrible disease. The other is a kind of fury, partaking something of divine inspiration; neither is it engendered within, but is an insufflation from without, and a disturbance of the rational and considerative faculty, deriving its beginning and motion from some stronger power; the common affection of which is called the enthusiastic passion. For as ἔμπνοος signifies filled with breath, and ἔμφϱων denotes replete with prudence; so this commotion of the soul is called enthusiasm (from ἔνϑεος) by reason it participates of a more divine power. Now the prophetic part of enthusiasm derives itself from the inspiration of Apollo possessing the intellect of the soothsayer; but Bacchanal fury proceeds from Father Bacchus.

And with the Corybantes ye shall dance,

says Sophocles. For as for the extravagancies of the priests of Cybele, the mother of the Gods, and those which are called panic terrors and ejaculations, they are all of the same nature with the Bacchanal orgies. There is also a third sort of enthusiasm, proper to the Muses, which, possessing an even tempered and placid soul, excites and rouses up the gifts of poetry and music. But as for that same warlike fury which is called Arimanian, it is well known to descend from the God of War; a sort of fury, wherein there is no grace nor musical sweetness, calling forth tearful Mars, and rousing up the people to discord and tumult.

There remains yet one sort more of alienation of the understanding in man, the same neither obscure, nor yet altogether calm and quiet; concerning which I would fain ask Pemptides,

Which of the Gods it is who shakes the spear

That beareth fruit so lovely and so fair.

But without expecting a resolution of this question, I mean that erotic fury that possesses lovely youths and chaste women, yet a hot and vehement transport. For do we not see how the warrior lays down his arms, and submits to this more prevalent rage?

His grooms, o’erjoyed he had the war forsook,

His ponderous arms from off his shoulders took;

and thus having renounced the hazards of battle, he sits down a quiet spectator of other men’s dangers. As for these Bacchanalian motions and frisking of the Corybantes, there is a way to allay those extravagant transports, by changing the measure from the Trochaic and the tone from the Phrygian. And the Pythian prophetess, descending from her tripos and quitting the prophetic exhalation, becomes sedate and calm again. Whereas the fury of love, wherever it seizes either man or woman, sets them in a flame; no music, no appeasing incantations, no changes of place are able to quench or put a stop to it; but being in presence, they love; being absent, they desire; by day they prosecute their importunate visits; by night they serenade at the windows; sober, they are continually calling upon their loves; and when they are fuddled, are always teasing the company with their love songs and madrigals. Neither, as one was pleased to say, are poetical fancies, by reason of their lively expressions, rightly called waking dreams; but the dialogues of persons enamored, discoursing with their absent loves, and dallying, embracing, and expostulating with them as if they were present, much rather deserve this name. For the sight seems to delineate other fancies in the water, that quickly glide away and slip out of the mind; whereas the imaginations of lovers, being as it were enamelled by fire, leave the images of things imprinted in the memory, moving, living, speaking, and remaining for a long time. So that Cato the Roman was wont to say, that the soul of a lover dwelt in the soul of the person beloved, for that there is settled and fixed in the one the form, shape, manners, conversation and actions of the other; by which being led, the lover quickly dispatches a long journey, — as the Cynics say they have found a compendious and direct road to virtue, — and he is carried from love to friendship, as it were with wind and tide, the God of Love assisting his passion. In short then I say, that the enthusiasm of lovers is neither void of divine inspiration, neither is it under the guardianship and conduct of any other Deity but him whose festivals we solemnize, and to whom we offer our oblations. Nevertheless, in regard we measure the excellency of a Deity by his puissance and by the benefit which we receive at his hands, and esteem power and virtue to be the two chiefest and most divine of all human blessings, it may not be unseasonable to consider whether Love be inferior in power to any other of the Gods. For, according to Sophocles,

Great is the puissance of the Cyprian Queen,

And great the honor which her triumphs win.

Great is also the dominion of Mars; and indeed we see the power of all the rest of the Gods divided in some measure between these two, — the one being most naturally allied to the beautiful, the other most mighty in the resistance of evil, and both being originally bred in the soul, as Plato says of his ideas.

Now then let us consider, the venereal delight is a thing that may be purchased for a drachm, and there is no man that ever underwent any pain or danger for the sake of venereal enjoyments, unless he were inflamed with the fires of love. Insomuch, that not to mention such courtesans as either Phryne or Lais, we find that the harlot Gnathaenion,

By lanthorn-light, at evening late,

Waiting and calling for some mate,

is often passed by and neglected;

But if some spirit blow the fire,

Kindled by love’s extreme desire,

this makes the pleasure equally esteemed and valued with the treasures of Tantalus and all his vast dominions. So faint and so soon cloyed is venereal desire, unless rendered grateful by the charms and inspiration of love. Which is more evidently confirmed by this; for that many men admit others to partake of their venereal pleasures, prostituting not only their mistresses and concubines, but also their own wives, to the embraces of their friends; as it is reported of the Roman Gabba, who inviting Maecenas to his house, and perceiving him winking and nodding upon his wife, turned away his head upon his pillow, as if he had been asleep, while they dallied together; yet at the same time, when one of the servants came creeping out of the next room, to steal a bottle of wine from the cupboard, presently turning about with his eyes open, Varlet, said he, ‘tis only to pleasure Maecenas that I sleep. But this perhaps is not so strange, considering that Gabba was a low buffoon.

At Argos there was a great animosity between Nicostratus and Phayllus, so that they always opposed each other and quarrelled at the council-board. Now when King Philip made a visit to that city, Phayllus bethought himself, that he could not miss the highest preferment the government could afford, if he could but oblige the king with the company of his wife, who was both beautiful and young. Nicostratus, smelling this design, walked to and fro before Phayllus’s house with some of his servants, to observe who went in and out. They had not stayed long, but out came Phayllus’s wife, whom he had dressed up in high shoes, with a mantle and cap after the Macedonian fashion, like one of the king’s pages, in which disguise she secretly passed in to the king’s lodgings. Since then there ever were and still are so many lovers, did you ever know of any one that ever prostituted his particular male friend, though it were to gain the honors ascribed to Jupiter himself? Truly, I believe there never was any such. For why? There never was any one that would pretend to oppose and contend with a tyrant; but there are many rivals and competitors, that will quarrel and fight for boys that are beautiful and in the prime of their years. It is reported of Aristogiton the Athenian, Antileon of Metapontum, and Melanippus of Agrigentum, that they never contested with tyrants, though they wasted and ruined the commonwealth and indulged the impetuosity of their lust, until they found them attempting their own male concubines: then they withstood them with the utmost peril of their lives, as if they had been to defend their temples and their most sacred sanctuaries. Alexander also is said to have sent to Theodorus, the brother of Proteas, in these words: Send me that musical girl that plays and sings so well, and take ten talents for her, unless thou lovest her thyself. Another time, when one of his minions, Antipatridas, came to be jovial with him, and brought a minstrel in his company to complete the mirth, being greatly affected with the girl’s playing and singing, he asked Antipatridas whether he had any extraordinary kindness for her? He answered, that he loved her as his eyes. Then all the plagues of mankind light upon thee, quoth the prince. However, he would not so much as touch the girl.

17. Consider also what vast power love has over martial men and warriors, not slothful, as Euripides will have it to be, nor unwarlike, nor

Slumbering on a girl’s soft cheek.

For a man that is once inflamed with love wants not Mars himself to be his second, when he is to engage with his enemies; but confiding in the Deity that is within him,

Ventures through fire and seas, and blustering storms,

While love of friend his daring courage warms;

and breaks through all opposition, if his mistress require any proof of his valor. Therefore we read in Sophocles, that the daughters of Niobe being wounded with arrows to death, one of them, as she lay wallowing in blood, calls out for no other help or succor to assist her in her revenge, but her lover.

Where is my love? she cried;

Were I but armed with that,

I yet would be revenged

For my untimely fate.

You know the reason why Cleomachus the Pharsalian fell in battle. I am a stranger to the story, replied Pemptides, and would willingly therefore hear it. Certainly it is very well worth your knowledge, said my father.

In the heat of the war between the Chalcidians and the Eretrians, Cleomachus went with the Thessalian force to aid the Chalcidians; at what time it was evident that the Chalcidians were the stronger in foot, but they found it a difficult thing to withstand the force of the enemies’ horse. Thereupon they requested Cleomachus, being their confederate and a man signalized for his courage, to give the first onset upon the enemies’ cavalry. Presently the youth whom he most entirely loved being present, he asked him whether he would stay and be a spectator of the combat. To which when the lad gave his consent, and after many tender kisses and embraces had put on his helmet, Cleomachus’s love redoubling his courage, being surrounded with some few of the flower of the Thessalian horse, he charged into the thickest of the enemy and put them to the rout; which the heavy-armed infantry seeing, they betook themselves also to flight, so that the Chalcidians obtained a noble victory. However, Cleomachus was there slain, and the Chalcidians show his monument erected in the market-place, with a fair pillar standing upon it to this day; and whereas they abominated pederasty before, after that they admired and affected it above all other pleasures. Nevertheless, Aristotle tells us that Cleomachus indeed lost his life after the victorious battle which he gained from the Eretrians, but as for that Cleomachus who was thus kissed by his male concubine, that he was of Chalcis in Thrace, and sent to aid the Chalcidians in Euboea. Which is the reason of that same ballad generally sung among them:

Fair youths, whose mothers brought you forth

Lovely in form, and noble for your birth;

Envy not men of courage, prompt in arms,

The kind fruition of your tempting charms.

For softest love with daring valor reigns

In equal honor through Chalcidian plains.

Dionysius the poet, in his poem entitled Causes, informs us that the name of the lover was Anton, and that the youth beloved was called Philistus.

And is it not a custom among you Thebans, Pemptides, for the lover to present the beloved with a complete suit of armor when he is come of age? And Pammenes, a very great soldier but very amorously given, quite altered the method of embattling the heavy-armed infantry, and blames Homer, as one that knew not what belonged to love, for marshalling the several divisions of the Achaeans according to their tribes and clans, and not placing the lover by his beloved, so that the close order which he afterwards describes might have been the consequence, in which

Spears lean on spears, on targets targets throng,

Helms stuck to helms, and man drove man along;

the only way to render a battalion invincible. For men will desert those of the same tribe or family, nay, their very children and parents; but never any enemy could pierce or penetrate between a lover and his darling minion, in whose sight many times when there is no necessity the lover delights to show his courage and contempt of danger; like Thero the Thessalian, who clapping his left hand to the wall, and then drawing his sword, struck off his thumb, thereby challenging his rival to do the same. Or like another, who falling in battle upon his face, as his enemy was about to follow his blow, desired him to stay till he could turn, lest his male concubine should see that he had been wounded in the back.

And therefore we find that the most warlike of nations are most addicted to love, as the Boeotians, Lacedaemonians, and Cretans. And among the most ancient heroes none were more amorous than Meleager, Achilles, Aristomenes, Cimon, and Epaminondas; the latter of which had for his male concubines Asopichus and Caphisodorus, who was slain with him at the battle of Mantinea and lies buried very near him. And when . . . had rendered himself most terrible to the enemy and most resolute, Eucnamus the Amphissean, that first made head against him and slew him, had heroic honors paid him by the Phocians. It would be a task too great to enumerate the amours of Hercules; but among the rest, Iolaus is honored and adored to this day by many, because he is thought to have been the darling of that hero; and upon his tomb it is that lovers plight their troths and make reciprocal vows of their affection. Moreover, Hercules, being skilled in physic, is said to have recovered Alcestis from death’s door in kindness to Admetus, who, as he had a great love for his wife, so was greatly beloved by the hero. For it is said that even Apollo, doting upon Admetus,

Became his slave for a long weary year.

And here, methinks, we have very opportunely mentioned Alcestis; for although the temper of women has little to do with Mars, Love many times drives them to daring attempts beyond their own nature, even to death. And if there be any credit to be given to the fables of the poets, the stories of Alcestis, Protesilaus, and Eurydice the wife of Orpheus, plainly evince us that Pluto himself obeys no other God but Love. For, as Sophocles says,

To others — be their fame or birth whate’er —

Nor equity nor favor will he show;

But rigorous, and without remorse severe,

His downright justice only makes them know;

but to lovers he pays a reverence: to them alone is he neither implacable nor inexorable. And therefore, although it is a very good thing to be initiated into the Eleusinian ceremonies, still I find the condition of those much better in hell who are admitted into the mysteries of love; which I speak as neither altogether confiding in fables, nor altogether misbelieving them. For they speak a great deal of sense, and many times, by a certain kind of divine good hap, hit upon the truth, when they say that lovers are permitted to return from hell to sunlight again; but which way and how, they know not, as wandering from the right path, which Plato, first of all men, by the assistance of philosophy found out. For there are several slender and obscure emanations of truth dispersed among the mythologies of the Egyptians; only they want an acute and experienced huntsman, who is skilled in tracing out great mysteries by small tracks. And therefore let them go.

And now, since we find the power of love to be so great, let us take a little notice of that which we call the benevolence and favor of it towards men; not whether it confers many benefits upon those that are addicted to it, — for that is a thing apparent to all men, — but whether the blessings that men receive by it are more and greater than any other. And here Euripides, notwithstanding that he was a person so amorous as he was, admires the meanest gift it has; for, says he,

Love into men poetic fire infuses,

Though ne’er before acquainted with the Muses.

And he might well have said, that love makes a man wise and prudent that was a fool and sottish before, and a coward bold and daring, as we have already shown; as when we heat wood in the fire to make it strong, when before it was weak. In like manner, he that was a sordid miser before, falling once in love, becomes liberal and lofty-minded, his covetous and pinching humor being mollified by love, like iron in the fire, so that he is more pleased with being liberal to the objects of his love, than before delighted to receive from others. For ye all know that Anytus, the son of Anthemion, fell in love with Alcibiades; who, understanding that Anytus had invited several of his friends to a noble and splendid banquet, came into the room in masquerade, and going to the table, after he had taken one half of the silver cups and other plate, went his way. Which when some of the guests took very ill, and told Anytus that the young lad had demeaned himself very rudely and saucily; Not so, said Anytus, but very civilly, since, when it was in his power to have taken all the rest, he was so civil as to leave me some.

18. Pleased with this story, O Hercules, quoth Zeuxippus, how have you almost raced out of mind that hereditary hatred which I had conceived against Anytus, for his ill opinion of Socrates and philosophy, since he was become so gentle and generous in his amours. Be it so, said my father; but let us proceed. Love is of that nature, that it renders those that were severe and morose before both affable and pleasant in their humor. For as

The burning tapers make the house more light,

And all things look more glorious to the sight;

so the heat of love renders the soul of man more lively and cheerful. But most men go quite contrary to reason in this particular. For when they behold a glittering light in a house by night, they admire and look upon it as something celestial; but when they see a narrow, pitiful, abject soul of a sudden replenished with understanding, generosity, sense of honor, courtesy, and liberality, they do not believe themselves constrained to say, as Telemachus in Homer,

Surely some God within this house resides.

For the love of the Graces, tell me, said Daphnaeus, is it not a thing altogether as much savoring of divinity, that a man who contemns all other things, not only his friends and familiar acquaintance, but also the laws, the magistrates, even kings and princes themselves, who fears nothing, is astonished at nothing, cares for nothing, but thinks himself able to defy the “barbed lightning,” yet, so soon as he beholds the object of his burning love,

As dunghill cravens, by a sudden blow,

Hang their loose wings with little list to crow,

should presently lose all his prowess, and that all his bravery should fail him, as if his heart were quite sunk to the bottom of his body? And it were not impertinent to make mention of Sappho here among the Muses. For the Romans report in their stories that Cacus, the son of Vulcan, vomited fire and flames out of his mouth. And indeed Sappho speaks as if her words were mixed with fire, and in her verses plainly discovers the violent heat of her heart, according to that of Philoxenus,

Seeking for cure of love-inflicted wounds,

From pleasing numbers and melodious sounds.

And here, Daphnaeus, if the love of Lysandra have not buried in oblivion your former sportive dalliances, I would desire you to call to mind and oblige us with the repetition of those elegant raptures of Sappho, wherein she tells us how that, when the person beloved by her appeared, her speech forsook her, her body was all over in a sweat; how she grew pale and wan, and was surprised with a sudden trembling and dizziness. To this Daphnaeus consented; and so soon as he had recited the verses, said my father: So Jupiter help me, is not this an apparent seizure of something more than human upon the soul? Can this be other than some celestial rapture of the mind? What do we find equal to it in the Pythian prophetess, when she sits upon the tripod? Where do we find the flutes which are used in the Bacchanalian orgies, or the tabors played upon in the ceremonies of the Mother of the Gods, rouse up such noble transports among that fanatic sort of enthusiasts? Many there are that behold the same body and the same beauty, but the lover only admires and is ravished with it. And what is the reason, do ye think? For we do not perceive or understand it from Menander, when he says:

‘Tis the occasion that infects the heart,

For only he that’s wounded feels the smart.

But it is the God of Love that gives the occasion, seizing upon some, and letting others go free. What therefore had been more seasonable for me to have spoken before, since it is now chopped into my mouth (as Aeschylus says), I think I will not even now let go, as being a matter of great importance. For it may be, my dear friend, there is not any thing in the world which was not made perceptible by sense, but what gained credit and authority at the first either from fables, or from the law, or else from rational discourse. And therefore poets, lawgivers, and in the third place philosophers, were all along the first that instructed and confirmed us in our opinion of the Gods. For all agree that there are Gods; but concerning their number, their order, their essence and power, they vastly differ one among another. For the philosophers’ Deities are subject neither to age nor diseases, neither do they undergo any labor or pain,

Exempted from the noise and hurry

Of busy Acherontic ferry.

And therefore they will not admit poetical Deities, like Strife and Prayers; nor will they acknowledge Fear and Terror to be Gods or the sons of Mars. They also differ from the lawgivers in many things. Thus Xenophanes told the Egyptians not to worship Osiris as a God if they thought him to be mortal, and if they thought him to be a God not to bewail him. Then again, the poets and lawgivers vary from the philosophers, and will not so much as hear them, while they deify certain ideas, numbers, unities, and spirits; such is the wild variety and vast difference of opinions among this sort of people. Therefore, as there were at Athens the three factions of the Parali, Epacrii, and Pedieis, that could never agree but were always at variance one with another, yet when they were assembled, gave their suffrages unanimously for Solon, and chose him with one consent for their peacemaker, governor, and lawgiver, as to whom the highest reward of virtue was, without all doubt or question, due; so the three different sects or factions in reference to the Gods, in giving their opinions some for one and some for another, as being by no means willing to subscribe one to another, are all positive in their consent as to the God of Love. Him the most famous of the poets, and the numerous acclamations of the philosophers and lawgivers, have enrolled in the catalogue of the Gods “with loud praises and harmonious acclaim,” as Alcaeus says of the Mitylenaeans when they chose Pittacus for their prince. So Hesiod, Plato, and Solon bring forth Cupid out of Helicon, and conduct him in pomp and state into the Academy, to be our king, governor, and director, drawn in by friendship and intercourse with all their pairs of horses, — not the friendship which, as Euripides says, is

With fetters bound, but not of brass,

as if the bonds of love were only the cold and ponderous chains of necessity, made use of as a colorable pretence to excuse and qualify shame, but such friendship as is carried upon winged chariots to the most lovely objects that exist, and to sights more divine than this earth affords. But on this point others have better discoursed.

19. After my father had thus delivered himself; Do you not perceive, said Soclarus, how, being fallen a second time into the same matter, you have as it were by force constrained yourself, and unjustly deprived us — if I may speak what I think — of that same sacred discourse which you were entering into? For as before you gave us a hint concerning Plato and the Egyptians, but passed them over as if it had been done against your will; so you do now again. Now as to what has been notably uttered by Plato, or rather by our Goddesses here (the Muses) through Plato’s mouth, do not trouble yourself to tell us this, even although we should request it. But whereas you have obscurely hinted that the fables of the Egyptians accord with Plato’s opinion concerning love, we know you have too great kindness for us to conceal your knowledge from us; and though it be but a little of those important matters, it shall suffice us. Thereupon the rest of the company declaring their readiness to give attention, my father thus began: The Egyptians, said he, and also the Grecians set up two Deities of love; the one vulgar, the other celestial; to which they add a third, which they believe to be the sun; and as for Venus, they pay her a very great veneration. We ourselves also do find that there is a great affinity and resemblance between the sun and the God of Love. For neither of them is material fire, as some conjecture. All that we acknowledge is only this, that there is a certain soft and generative heat and warmth proceeding from the sun, which affords to the body nourishment, light, and relaxation of cold; whereas that warmth which comes from love works the same effects in the soul. And as the sun breaking forth from the clouds and after a thick fog is much hotter; so love, after passionate anger and jealousies are over, and the beloved one is again reconciled, grows more delightful and fervent. Moreover, as some believe the sun to be kindled and extinguished, they also imagine the same things concerning love, as being mortal and unstable. For neither can a constitution not enured to exercise endure the sun, nor the disposition of an illiterate and ill-tutored soul brook love without trouble and pain; for both are alike distempered and diseased, for which they lay the blame upon the power of the God, and not their own weakness. Herein only there may seem to be some difference between them; for that the sun displays to the sight upon the earth both beauty and deformity at once, but love is a luminary that affords us the view of beautiful objects only, and persuades lovers to cast their eyes only upon what is pleasing and delightful, and with a careless eye to overlook all other things. On the other side, they that attribute the name of Venus to the moon, although they have no convincing proof, still have hit upon a certain similarity. For that the moon is celestial and divine, and the region of mixture between mortal and immortal; but it is weak of itself, obscure and dark without the presence of the sun; as Venus is where love is absent. Therefore more properly and with more probability the moon is likened to Venus, and the sun to Love, rather than to any other of the Gods.

Nevertheless, we must not therefore say they are all one. For neither are the soul and body the same, but distinct; as the sun is visible, but love is perceptible only by sense. And if it might not be thought too harsh a saying, a man might affirm that the sun and love act contrary to one another. For the sun diverts the understanding from things intelligible to sensible objects, alluring and fascinating the sight with the grace and splendor of his rays, and persuading us to search for other things, and even for truth itself, within and about himself, and nowhere else. And we appear to be passionately in love with the sun, because, as Euripides says,

He always on the earth displays

The glory of his burning rays,

for want of our knowledge of another life, or rather, through our forgetfulness of those things which love calls to our remembrance. For as, when we are newly awaked and come into a bright and dazzling light, we forget whatever appeared to the soul in our dreams; so the sun seems to stupefy our recollection and impoison our understanding, when we change from the former life and enter this world, so that in our pleasure and admiration we forget all other considerations besides that of the present life. Though there indeed are the real substances proper for the contemplation of the soul; here, as in sleep, it embraces only dreams, and gazes in admiration and astonishment at what appears to it most beautiful and divine, while

Fallacious charming dreams about it fly; —

it being persuaded that here every thing is goodly and highly to be prized, unless it happens upon some divine and chaste love to be its physician and preserver. This love, entering through the body, becomes a guide to lead the soul from the world below to truth and the fields of truth, where full, pure, deceitless beauty dwells; and leading forth and guiding upward those that now after a long time are eager to embrace and live with such beauty, it stands by them, like a friendly mystagogue at the sacred ceremonies of initiation. But no sooner is the soul sent from thence again, but love is no longer able to make her approaches of herself, but by the body. And therefore as geometricians, when children are not able of themselves to apprehend the intelligible ideas of incorporeal and impassible substance, form and set before their eyes the tangible and visible imitations of spheres, cubes, and dodecahedrons; in like manner celestial love, having framed lovely mirrors to represent lovely objects, — things mortal and passible to represent things divine, and sensible objects to represent those perceptible only to the eye of reason, — shows them to us glittering in the forms, colors, and shape of youth in its prime, and first insensibly moves the memory inflamed by the sight of these objects.

Whence it comes to pass that some, through the stupidity of their friends and acquaintance, endeavoring by force and against reason to extinguish that flame, have enjoyed nothing of true benefit thereby, but only either disquieted themselves with smoke and trouble, or else rushing headlong into obscure and irregular pleasures, obstinately cast themselves away. But as many as by sober and modest ratiocination have sincerely extinguished the raging heat of the fire, and left behind only a warm and glowing heat in the soul, — which causes no violent earthquake, as it was once called, rousing the seed and causing a gliding of atoms compressed by smoothness and titillation, but a wonderful and engendering diffusion, as in a blossoming and well-nourished plant, which opens the pores of obedience and affection, — these, I say, in a short time passing by the bodies of those whom they love, penetrate more inwardly and fall to admire their manners and dispositions; and calling off their eyes from the body, they converse together, and contemplate one another in their discourses and in their actions, provided there be but the least scrip or appearance of beauty in the understanding. If not, they let them go, and turn their affections upon others, like bees that will not fasten upon many plants and flowers, because they cannot gather honey from them. But where they find any footstep, any emanation, any resemblance of a divinity, ravished with delight and admiration as they recall it to memory, they attract it to themselves, and are revived by striving to attain to what is truly amiable, happy, and beloved by all mankind.

20. True it is, that the poets, according to their sportive humor, seem to write many things in merriment concerning this Deity, and to make him the subject of their lascivious songs in the height of their revelling jollity, making but little serious mention of him; whether out of judgment and reason, or being assured of the truth by divine inspiration, is the question. Among the rest, there is one thing which they say very oddly concerning the birth and generation of this God:

Young Zephyr, doting on his golden hair,

At last the silver-slippered Iris won;

And thus embraced, at length she bore a son,

Of all the Gods the shrewdest and most fair:

unless the grammarians have likewise persuaded you, by saying that this fable was invented to set forth the variety and gay diversity of passions that attend on love.

To whom Daphnaeus: To what other end or purpose could it be? Hear me then, said my father; for ‘tis no more than what the celestial meteor constrains us to say. The affection of the sight in the case of the rainbow (or Iris) is caused by reflection. For when the sight lights upon a cloud somewhat of a dewy substance, but smooth, and moderately thick withal, and we behold the repercussion of the sunbeams upon it, together with the light and splendor about the sun, it begets an opinion in us that the apparition is in the cloud. In like manner, this same subtle invention of love-sophistry in generous and noble souls causes a repercussion of the memory from objects that here appear and are called beautiful, to the beauty really divine, truly amiable and happy, and by all admired. But most people pursuing and taking hold of the fancied image of this beauty in boys and women, as it were seen in a mirror, reap nothing more assured and certain than a little pleasure mixed with pain. But this seems to be no more than a delirium or dizziness of the vulgar sort, beholding their empty and unsatisfied desires in the clouds, as it were in so many shadows; like children who, thinking to catch the rainbow in their hands, snatch at the apparition that presents itself before their eyes. But a generous and modest lover observes another method; for his contemplations reflect only on that beauty which is divine and perceptible by the understanding; but lighting upon the beauty of a visible body, and making use of it as a kind of organ of the memory, he embraces and loves, and by conversation argumenting his joy and satisfaction still more and more inflames his understanding. But neither do these lovers conversing with bodies rest satisfied in this world with a desire and admiration of this same light; neither when they are arrived at another world after death, do they return hither again as fugitives, to hover about the doors and mansions of new-married people and disturb their dreams with ghosts and visions; which sort of visions really come only from men and women given to pleasure and corporeal delights, who by no means deserve the name and characters of true lovers. Whereas a lover truly chaste and amorous, being got to the true mansion of beauty, and there conversing with it as much as it is lawful for him to do, mounted upon the wings of chaste desire, becomes pure and hallowed; and being initiated into sacred orders, continues dancing and sporting about his Deity, till returning again to the meadows of the Moon and Venus, and there laid asleep, he becomes ready for a new nativity. But these are points too high for the discourse which we have proposed to ourselves.

To return therefore to our purpose; Love, according to Euripides, with all the rest of the Gods, delights

When mortals here his honored name invoke;

on the other side, he is no less offended when any affront or contempt is put upon him, as he is most kind and benign to those that entertain him with proper respect. For neither does Jupiter surnamed the Hospitable so severely prosecute injuries done to strangers and suppliants, nor is Jupiter Genitalis so rigorous in accomplishing the curses of parents disobeyed, as Love is to listen to the complaints of injured lovers; being the scourger and punisher of-proud, ill-natured, and ill-bred people. For, not to mention Euxynthetus and Leucomantis, at this day in Cyprus called the Peeper, ‘tis a hundred to one but you have heard of the punishment inflicted upon Gorgo the Cretan, not much unlike to that of Leucomantis, only that Gorgo was turned into a stone as she looked out of a window to see her love going to his grave. With this Gorgo Asander fell in love, a young gentleman virtuous and nobly descended, but reduced from a flourishing estate to extremity of poverty. However, he did not think so meanly of himself but that, being her kinsman, he courted this Gorgo for a wife, though she had many suitors at the same time by reason of her great fortune; and he so carried this business that, notwithstanding his numerous and wealthy rivals, he had gained the good-will of all her guardians and nearest relations.

21. Now as for those things which they say are the causes that beget love, they are not peculiar to this or the other sex, but common to both. For it cannot be that those images that enter into amorous persons and whisk about from one part to another, by their various forms moving and tickling the mass of atoms that slide into the seed, can come from young boys, and that the same cannot come from young women. But as to these noble and sacred remembrances with which the soul is winged, recalling that same divine, real, and Olympic beauty, what should hinder but that these may pass from boys and young men, and also from virgins and young women, whenever a disposition chaste and good-natured appears united with bloom of youth and grace of body? For, as a handsome and well-made shoe shows the proportion of the foot (as Ariston says), so they that have judgment in these matters can discern the splendid, upright, and uncorrupted footsteps of a noble and generous soul in beautiful forms and features, and bodies undefiled. For, if a voluptuous person, who when the question was put to him,

To which are your hot passions most inclined,

Or to the male, or to the female kind?

answered thus,

‘Tis the same thing to me

Where’er I beauty see,

was thought to have returned a proper and pertinent answer and one that accorded with his passions, is it possible that a noble and generous lover directs his amours not to loveliness and good-nature, but only to the parts that distinguish the sex? For certainly a man that delights in horses will no less value the mettle and swiftness of Podargus, than of Aetha that was Agamemnon’s mare; and he that is a good huntsman does not only delight in dogs, but mixes with his cry the bitches of Crete and Laconia; and shall he that is a lover as well as of civil behavior carry himself with an inequality more to one than to another, and make a distinction, as of garments, between the love of men and women? But some say that beauty is the flower of virtue. Will they then affirm, that the female sex never blossoms nor makes any show of tendency to virtue? It were absurd to think so. Therefore was Aeschylus in the right when he said, that he could never mistake the fire in the eye of a young woman who had once known a man. Now then are those signs and marks of lasciviousness, wantonness, and impudence to be discovered in the visages of women, and shall there be no light shining in their faces for the discovery of modesty and chastity? Nay, shall there be many such signs, and those apparent, and shall they not be able to allure and provoke love? Both are contrary to reason, and dissonant from truth. But every one of these things is common to both sexes, as we have showed.

Now then, Daphnaeus, let us confute the reason that Zeuxippus has but now alleged, by making love to be all one with inordinate desire that hurries the soul to intemperance. Not that it is his opinion, but only what he has frequently heard from men morose and no way addicted to love. Of this class there are some who, marrying poor silly women for the sake of some petty portion, and having nothing to do with them and their money but to make them perpetual drudges in pitiful mechanic employments, are every day brawling and quarrelling with them. Others, more desirous of children than of wives, like cicadae that spill their seed upon squills or some such like herb, discharge their lust in haste upon the next they meet with; and having reaped the fruit they sought for, bid marriage farewell or else regard it not at all, neither caring to love nor to be beloved. And in my opinion, the words στέϱγειν and στέϱγεσθαι, which signify dearly to love and dearly to be beloved again, differing but one letter from στέγειν, which signifies to contain or endure, seem to me to import and denote that mutual kindness called conjugal, which is intermixed by time and custom with necessity. But in that wedlock which love supports and inspires, in the first place, as in Plato’s Commonwealth, there will be no such language as “thine” and “mine.” For properly to speak, there is not community of goods among all friends; but only where two friends, though severed in body, yet have their souls joined and as it were melted together, and neither desire to be two nor believe themselves to be separate persons. And, in the second place, there will be that mutual respect and reverence, which is the chiefest happiness of wedlock. Now as to that respect that comes from without, carrying with it more force of law than voluntary and reciprocal duty, or that comes by fear and shame,

And many other curbs, that loose desire

And lawless frisks of wanton heat require,

these are always present with those who are coupled in matrimony. Whereas in love there is so much continency, so much modesty, and so much of loyal affection, that even if it happen upon an intemperate and lascivious soul, it is thereby diverted from all other amours, by cutting off all malapert boldness and bringing down the insolence of imperious pride; instead of which it introduces modest bashfulness, silence, and submission, and adorning it with decent and becoming behavior, makes it for ever after the obedient observer of one lover. Most certainly you have heard of that celebrated and highly courted courtesan Lais, how her beauty inflamed all Greece, or rather how two seas strove for her. This famous beauty, being seized with an ardent affection for Hippolochus the Thessalian, leaving the Acrocorinthus, as the poet describes it,

With sea-green water all encompassed round,

and privately avoiding the great army (as I may call it) of those that courted her favor, withdrew herself modestly to the enjoyment of him only; but the women, incensed with jealousy and envying her surpassing beauty, dragged her into the temple of Venus, and there stoned her to death; for which reason it is called to this day the temple of Venus the Murderess. We ourselves have known several young damsels, mere slaves, who never would submit to the embraces of their masters, and private men who have disdained the company of queens, when love had the absolute dominion of their hearts. For, as in Rome, when there is a dictator chosen, all other chief magistrates lay down their offices; so all such persons, where love is truly predominant, are immediately free and manumitted from all other lords and masters, and afterwards live like servants in the temple of Love. And indeed a virtuous and generous lady, once linked to her lawful husband by an unfeigned affection, will sooner choose the embraces of bears and dragons, than to be the bed-fellow of any other person whatsoever but her only spouse.

22. Of this although we might produce examples without number, yet among you, that are now joined (as it were) in the same dance and festival with Love, it will not be from the purpose to relate the story of Camma the Galatian. For she being a woman of transcendent beauty, and married to Sinatus the tetrarch. Synorix, one of the most powerful men in all Galatia, fell desperately in love with her; and that he might enjoy her, murdered her husband Sinatus, since he could not prevail with her either by force or persuasion, while her husband was alive. Thereupon Camma, having no other sanctuary for the preservation of her chastity nor consolation in her affliction, retired to the temple of Diana, where she remained a votaress to the Goddess, not admitting any person so much as to speak to her, though she had many suitors that sought her in wedlock. But when Synorix boldly presumed to put the question to her, she neither seemed to reject his motion, neither did she upbraid him with the crime he had committed; as if he had been induced to perpetrate so vile an act, not out of any malicious intent to Sinatus, but merely out of a pure and ardent love and affection to her. Thereupon he came with greater confidence, and demanded her in marriage. She, on the other side, met him no less cheerfully; and leading him by the hand to the altar of the Goddess, after she had poured forth a small quantity of hydromel well tempered with a rank poison, as it were an atonement offering to the Goddess, she drank off the one half of that which remained herself, and gave the other half to the Galatian. And then, so soon as she saw he had drunk it off, she gave a loud groan, and calling her deceased husband by his name; This day, said she, my most dear and beloved husband, I have long expected, as having lived, deprived of thee, a desolate and comfortless life. But now receive me joyfully; for for thy sake I have revenged myself upon the most wicked among men, willing to have lived with thee, and now no less rejoicing to die with him. Thus Synorix, being carried out of the temple, soon after expired; but Camma, surviving him a day and a night, is reported to have died with an extraordinary resolution and cheerfulness of spirit.

23. Now in regard there have been many such, as well among us as among the barbarians, who can bear with those that reproach Venus that, being coupled and present with Love, she becomes a hindrance of friendship? Whereas any sober and considerate person may rather revile the company of male with male, and justly call it intemperance and lasciviousness,

A vile affront to Nature, no effect

Of lovely Venus or of chaste respect.

And therefore, as for those that willingly prostitute their bodies, we look upon them to be the most wicked and flagitious persons in the world, void of fidelity, neither endued with modesty nor any thing of friendship; and but too truly and really, according to Sophocles,

They who ne’er had such friends as these,

Believe their blessing double;

And they that have them, pray the Gods

To rid them of the trouble.

And as for those who, not being by nature lewd and wicked, were circumvented and forced to prostitute themselves, there are no men whom these always look upon with greater suspicion and more perfect hatred than those that deluded and flattered them into so vile an act, and they bitterly revenge themselves when they find an opportunity. For Crateas killed Archelaus, who had rid him in his youth; and Pytholaus slew Alexander of Pherae. Periander tyrant of the Ambraciotes asked his minion, whether he were not yet with child; which the lad took so heinously that he stabbed him.

On the other hand, among women that are married, these are but the beginnings of friendship, as it were, a communicating and imparting of great and sacred mysteries. The pleasure of coition is the least thing; but the honor, the submission to mutual love and fidelity which daily germinates from this, convince us that neither the Delphians raved, who gave the name of Arma (union) to Venus, nor that Homer was in an error, who called the conjunction of man and woman by the name of friendship; but that Solon was a lawgiver the most experienced in conjugal affairs, who decreed that a husband should lie with his wife thrice a month at least, — not for pleasure’s sake, but that, as cities renew their treaties one with another at such a time, so the alliance of matrimony might be renewed by this enjoyment, after the jars which may have arisen in the mean time. But you will say, there are many men in love with women that act amiss and furiously. But are there not more enormities committed by those that are enamored upon boys?

So often as these eyes of mine behold

That beardless youth, that smooth and lovely boy,

I faint and fall; then wish I him to hold

Within mine arms, and so to die with joy;

And that on tomb were set, where I do lie,

An epigram, mine end to testify.

But though there is this raging passion after boys, as well as a dotage upon women, yet can neither be said to be truly love. And therefore it is an absurdity to aver that women are not capable even of other virtues. For why speak of so many signals of their chastity, prudence, justice, and fidelity, when we find others no less eminent for their fortitude, resolution, and magnanimity; after all which, to tax them of being naturally incapable of friendship only — not to mention the other virtues — is a hard case. For they are naturally lovers of their children, affectionate to their husbands; and this same natural affection of theirs, like a fertile soil, as it is capable of friendship, so is no less pliable to persuasion, nor less accompanied with all the graces. But as poetry, adapting to speech the conditements of melody, measure, and rhythm, renders the wholesome and instructive part of it so much the more moving, and the noxious part so much the more apt to corrupt the mind; so, Nature having adorned a woman with the charms of beauty and persuasive language, a lascivious woman makes use of these perfections to please herself and deceive others, but in a modest and sober woman they work wonders towards the gaining and fixing the good will and favor of her husband. Therefore Plato exhorted Xenocrates, otherwise generous and brave, but very morose in his humor, to sacrifice to the Graces; but he would have exhorted a virtuous and modest woman to sacrifice to Love, for his propitious favor to her marriage, in ordering it so that her behavior may prove a sufficient charm to keep her husband at home, . . . and that he may not ramble after other women, and then be forced to exclaim, as in the comedy,

Curse to this rage of mine, so given to roam;

What a good wife do I abuse at home!

For in wedlock to love is a far greater blessing than to be beloved; since it preserves and keeps people from falling into many errors, nay, all those that corrupt and ruin matrimony.

24. As for those passionate affections which at the beginning of conjugal love raise certain fits, which are somewhat sharp and biting, most fortunate Zeuxippus, I would not have you fear them, like an ulcer or scarification. Though perhaps it would not be amiss, if it should cost you some small wound to be joined to a virtuous woman, like trees that grow together when grafted by incision upon a proper stock. The beginning of conception itself is a kind of exulceration; for there can be no mixture of things that are not affected reciprocally one by the other. The very mathematical rudiments do not a little perplex little children at the first, and philosophy troubles the brains of young beginners; but this corroding humor is not lasting, either to these or to lovers. Insomuch that a man would think that love at first resembled the mixture of two liquors, which, when once they begin to incorporate, by their ebullition discover some little disgusts; for so love at the beginning bubbles up with a kind of effervency, till being settled and purified it acquires a firm and stable constitution. For this indeed is properly that kind of mixture which is called a thorough mixture; whereas the love of other friends, conversing and living together, is like the touches and interweavings of Epicurus’s atoms, subject to raptures and separations, but can never compose such a union as proceeds from love assisting conjugal society. For neither are the pleasures received from any other source so great, nor the benefits conferred on others so lasting, nor is the glory and beauty of any other friendship so noble and desirable,

As when the man and wife at board and bed

Under one roof a life of concord lead.

Moreover, it is a thing warranted by law; while Nature shows us that even the Gods themselves stood in need of love for the sake of common procreation. Thus the poets tell us that earth is in love with the showers, and heaven with the earth; and the natural philosophers are of opinion that the sun is in love with the moon, that they copulate every month, and that the moon conceives by virtue of that conjunction. And it would of necessity follow that the earth, which is the common mother of all mankind, of all animals, and of all manner of plants, would one day cease and be extinguished, should that same ardent love and desire infused by the God forsake matter, and matter cease to pursue and lust after the principles and motions of generation.

But that we may not seem to wander too far or spend our time in trifles, you yourselves are not ignorant that these pederasties are by many said to be the most uncertain and least durable things in the world, and that they are derided by those that make use of them, who affirm that the love of boys, like an egg, may be destroyed by a hair; and the lovers themselves are like the wandering Scythians, who, having spent their spring in flowery and verdant pastures, presently dislodge from thence, as out of an enemy’s country. And Bion the Sophister was yet more sharp and satirical, when he called the beards of young and beautiful striplings by the names of Harmodii and Aristogitons (i.e. tyrant-killers), since by that budding show of manhood their lovers are delivered from their pleasant tyranny. But these imputations are not justly charged upon true lovers. Elegant therefore was that which was said by Euripides. For as he was clasping and embracing the fair Agatho, after the down began to sprout forth upon his chin, he cried that the very autumn of lovely youths was pleasing and delightful. But I say more than this, that the love of virtuous women does not decay with the wrinkles that appear upon their faces, but remains and endures to their graves and monuments. Then again, we shall find but few male couples of true lovers, but thousands of men and women conjoined together in wedlock, who have reciprocally and inviolably observed a community of affection and loyalty to the end of their lives. I shall instance only one example, which happened in our time, during the reign of Caesar Vespasian.

25. Julius, who was the first that occasioned the revolt in Galatia, among many other confederates in the rebellion had one Sabinus, a young gentleman of no mean spirit, and for fame and riches inferior to none. But having undertaken a very difficult enterprise, they miscarried; and therefore expecting nothing but death by the hand of justice, some of them killed themselves, others made their escapes as well as they could. As for Sabinus, he had all the opportunities that could be to save himself by flying to the barbarians; but he had married a lady, the best of women, which they called by the name of Empone, as much as to say a heroess. This woman it was not in his power to leave, neither could he carry her conveniently along with him. Having therefore in the country certain vaults or cellars under ground, where he had hid his treasures and movables of greatest value, which were only known to two of his freed bondmen, he dismissed all the rest of his servants, as if he had intended to poison himself. And taking along with him his two faithful and trusty servants, he hid himself in one of the vaults, and sent another of his enfranchised attendants, whose name was Martalius, to tell his wife that her husband had poisoned himself and that the house and his corpse were both burnt together, designing by the lamentation and unfeigned grief of his wife to make the report of his death the more easily believed; which fell out according to his wish. For the lady, so soon as she heard the news, threw herself upon the floor, and continued for three days together without meat or drink, making the most bitter outcries, and bewailing her loss with all the marks of a real and unfeigned anguish; which Sabinus understanding, and fearing her sorrow might prevail with her to lay violent hands upon herself, he ordered the same Martalius to tell her that he was yet alive and lay hid in such a place; however, that she should for a while continue her mourning, and be sure so to counterfeit her grief that she should not be discovered. And indeed in all other things the lady acted her part so well, and managed her passion to that degree, that no woman could do it better. But having still a longing desire to see her husband, she went to him in the night and returned again so privately that nobody took any notice of her. And thus she continued keeping him company for seven months together, that it might be said to differ very little from living in hell itself. Where after she had so strangely disguised Sabinus with a false head of hair, and such odd sort of habit, that it was impossible for him to be known, she carried him to Rome along with her undiscovered to several that met him. But not being able to obtain his pardon, she returned with him back to his den, and for many years lived with him under ground; only between whiles she went to the city, and there showed herself in public to several ladies, her friends and familiar acquaintance. But that which was the most incredible of all things, she so ordered her business that none of the ladies perceived her being with child, though she bathed at the same time with them. For such is the nature of that same ointment wherewith the women anoint their hair to make it of a red-golden color, that by its fatness and oiliness it plumps and swells up the flesh of the body, and brings it up to an embonpoint. So that the lady, no less liberal of her ointment than diligent to chafe and rub her body limb by limb, by the proportionable rising and swelling of her flesh in every part, concealed the swelling of her belly. And when she came to be delivered, she endured the pains of her child-bearing alone by herself, like a lioness, hiding herself in her den with her husband; and there, as I may say, she bred up in private her two male whelps. For at that time she was delivered of two boys, of which there was one who was slain in Egypt; the other, whose name was also Sabinus, was but very lately with us at Delphi.

For this reason Caesar put the lady to death; but dearly paid for the murder by the utter extirpation of his whole posterity, which in a short time after was utterly cut off from the face of the earth. For during his whole reign, there was not a more cruel and savage act committed; neither was there any other spectacle which in all probability the Gods and Daemons more detested, or any from which they more turned away their eyes in abomination of the sight. Besides, she abated the compassion of the spectators by the stoutness of her behavior and the grandeur of her utterance, than which there was nothing that more exasperated Vespasian; when, despairing of her husband’s pardon, she did as it were challenge the emperor to exchange her life for his, telling him withal, that she accounted it a far greater pleasure to live in darkness under ground as she had done, than to reign in splendor like him.

26. Here, as my father told me, ended the discourse concerning Love in the neighborhood of Thespiae; at what time they saw one of Pisias’s friends, by name Diogenes, coming at a good round pace towards them; to whom when Soclarus, while he was yet at a distance, cried out, No tidings of war, Diogenes, I hope? No, no, said he, that ne’er can be at a wedding; and therefore mend your pace, for the nuptial sacrifice stays only for your coming. All the rest of the company were exceeding glad, only Zeuxippus asked whether Pisias were still angry. On the contrary, said Diogenes, as he before opposed the match, so now he was the first to approve what Ismenodora had done; and at the same time, putting on a garland upon his head and throwing a white nuptial robe about his shoulders, he is to march before all the company through the market-place, to give thanks to the God of Love.

Well done, by Jupiter, come away, come away then, cried my father, that we may laugh and be merry with our friend, and adore the Deity. For there is no doubt that he is propitiously present with his favor and approbation.

BOOK X

Love stories

(771 e) At Haliartus, in Boeotia, there was a girl of remarkable beauty, named Aristocleia, the daughter of Theophanes. She was wooed by Strato of Orchomenus and Callisthenes of Haliartus. Strato was the richer and was rather the more violently in love with the maiden; for he had seen her in Lebadeia bathing at the fountain called Hercynê in preparation for carrying a basket in a sacred procession in honour of Zeus the King. 772 But Callisthenes had the advantage, for he was a blood-relation of the girl. Theophanes was much perplexed about the matter, for he was afraid of Strato, who excelled nearly all the Boeotians in wealth and in family connexions, and he wished to submit the choice to Trophonius; but Strato had been persuaded by the maiden’s servants that she was more inclined towards him, so he asked that the choice be left to the bride-to be herself. But when Theophanes in the presence of everyone asked the maiden, and she chose Callisthenes, Bit was plain at once that Strato found the slight hard to bear. But he let two days go by and came to Theophanes and Callisthenes asking that the friendship between him and them be preserved, even though he had been deprived of the marriage by some jealous divinity. And they approved of what he said, so that they even invited him to the wedding-feast. But before he came he got ready a crowd of his friends and a considerable number of servants, who were scattered among the others present and were not noticed; but when the girl went, according to the ancestral custom, to the spring called Cissoessa to make the preliminary sacrifice to the nymphs, then his men who were in ambush all rushed out at once and seized her. Strato also had hold of the maiden; and naturally Callisthenes and his supporters in turn took hold of her and held on until, although they did not know it at the time, she died in their hands as they pulled against each other. Callisthenes immediately disappeared, whether by committing suicide or by going away as an exile from Boeotia; at any rate nobody could tell what had happened to him. But Strato slew himself in sight of all upon the body of the maiden.

II

DA man named Pheidon, who was striving to make himself ruler of the Peloponnesians and wished his own native city of Argos to be the leader of all the other states, plotted first against the Corinthians. He sent and asked of them the thousand young men who were the best in vigour and valour; and they sent the thousand, putting Dexander in command of them. Now Pheidon intended to make an onslaught upon these young men, that Corinth might be weakened and he might have the city in his power, for he considered that it would be the most advantageous bulwark of the whole Peloponnesus, and he confided this matter to some of his friends, Eamong whom was Habron. Now he was a friend of Dexander and told him of the plot, so before the onslaught was made the thousand young men escaped safely to Corinth; but Pheidon tried to discover the betrayer of his plot and searched for him with great care. So Habron was frightened and fled to Corinth with his wife and his servants, settling in Melissus, a village in Corinthian territory. There he begot a son whom he called Melissus from the name of the place. This Melissus had a son named Actaeon, the handsomest and most modest youth of his age, who had many lovers, chief of whom was Archias, of the family of the Heracleidae, in wealth and general influence the most outstanding man in Corinth. Now when he could not gain the boy by persuasion, he determined to carry him off by force. So he got together a crowd of friends and servants, went as in a drunken frolic to the house of Melissus, and tried to take the boy away. But his father and his friends resisted, the neighbours also ran out and pulled against the assailants, 773 and so Actaeon was pulled to pieces and killed; the assailants thereupon went away. But Melissus took his son’s body and exhibited it in the market-place of the Corinthians, demanding the punishment of the men who had done the deed; but the Corinthians merely pitied him and did nothing further. So, being unsuccessful, he went away and waited for the Isthmian festival, when he went up upon the temple of Poseidon, shouted accusations against the Bacchiadae, and reminded the people of his father Habron’s benefactions, whereupon, calling upon the gods to avenge him, he threw himself down from the rocks. Not long afterwards the city was afflicted by drought and pestilence, and when the Corinthians consulted the oracle concerning relief, the god replied that the wrath of Poseidon would not relax until they inflicted punishment for the death of Actaeon. Archias knew of this, for he was himself one of those sent to consult the oracle, and voluntarily refrained from returning to Corinth. Instead he sailed to Sicily and founded Syracuse. There he became the father of two daughters, Ortygia and Syracusa, and was treacherously murdered by Telephus, who had been his beloved and had sailed with him to Sicily in command of a ship.

III

There was a poor man named Scedasus who lived at Leuctra; that is a village of the country of the Thespians. This man had two daughters, called Hippo and Miletia, or, as some say, Theano and Euxippê. Now Scedasus was a worthy man and friendly to strangers, though he was not very well off. So when two Spartan youths came to his house he received them gladly. They fell in love with the maidens, but were restrained from overboldness by the worthy character of Scedasus, and the next day went away to Delphi, for that was the place for which they were bound. And when they had consulted the god about the matters which concerned them, they went back again towards home, and passing through Boeotia they stopped again at the house of Scedasus. Now he, as it happened, was not at Leuctra; but his daughters, in accordance with their usual custom, received the strangers, who, finding the maidens unprotected, ravished them; and then, seeing that they were exceedingly distressed by the violent wrong they had suffered, they killed them, threw their bodies into a well, and went away. When Scedasus came home, he missed the girls, but found everything that he had left in the house undisturbed, and so he did not know what to make of it all until, because his dog kept whimpering and often running up to him and from him to the well, he guessed the truth, and so drew up the bodies of his daughters. And finding out from his neighbours that on the previous day they had seen going into his house the Lacedaemonians who had been entertained there shortly before, he guessed that they had done the deed, because during their previous visit they had constantly been praising the girls and talking of the happiness of their future husbands.

Scedasus set out for Lacedaemon to see the ephors, and when he was in the territory of Argos night came upon him, so he put up at an inn, and at the same inn was another elderly man, a native of the city of Oreus in the territory of Hestiaea. Scedasus heard him groaning and uttering curses against the Lacedaemonians, so he asked him what harm the Lacedaemonians had done him. Then he proceeded to tell that he was a subject of Sparta and that Aristodemus, who had been sent by the Lacedaemonians to Oreus as governor, had shown himself very lawless and cruel. “For,” said he, “he fell in love with my young son and, when he could not gain him by persuasion, he tried to take him from the palaestra by force. But the teacher of gymnastics interfered, and many young fellows came out to help, so for the time being Aristodemus went away; but the next day he manned a ship of war, seized the boy, sailed from Oreus to the opposite shore, and tried to rape him; then when the boy would not submit, he cut his throat and killed him, after which he went back to Oreus and gave a dinner-party. 774 But as for me,” he said, “I learned of the deed, performed the funeral rites over the body, then went to Sparta and had an audience with the ephors; but they paid no attention to me.” When Scedasus heard this he was disheartened, for he suspected that the Spartans would pay no attention to him either; and he in turn told the stranger of his own misfortune. Then the stranger advised him not even to go to see the ephors, but to turn back to Boeotia and build his daughters’ tomb. Scedasus, however, did not take this advice, but went to Sparta and spoke with the ephors. They paid no attention to him, so he hurried to the kings, and from them he went up to every one of the citizens and told his tale of woe. And when nothing did any good, he ran through the midst of the city stretching up his hands towards the sun, and again he beat upon the ground and summoned up the Erinyes, and finally he put an end to his life.

Later, however, the Lacedaemonians certainly paid the penalty. For when they were rulers of all the Greeks and had placed their garrisons in the cities, Epaminondas the Theban first slaughtered the garrison of the Lacedaemonians in his own city, and when thereupon the Lacedaemonians made war upon the Thebans, the latter met them at Leuctra, thinking it a place of good omen, because at an earlier time they had gained their freedom there, when Amphictyon, having been driven into exile by Sthenelus, came to the city of the Thebans and, finding them tributaries of the Chalcidians, freed them from the tribute by killing Chalcodon, king of the Euboeans. Now it happened that the utter defeat of the Lacedaemonians took place precisely in the vicinity of the tombstone of the daughters of Scedasus. And the story goes that before the battle Pelopidas, one of the generals of the Theban army, was disturbed by some omens which were considered unfavourable and that in his sleep Scedasus came and stood over him and told him to be of good courage, for the Lacedaemonians were coming to Leuctra to pay the penalty to him and his daughters; and he enjoined upon him one day before fighting the Lacedaemonians to make ready a white colt and sacrifice it at the tomb of the maidens. So Pelopidas, while the Lacedaemonians were still in camp at Tegea, sent some men to Leuctra to find out about this tomb, and when he learned about it from the inhabitants of the place, he led out his army with confidence and was victorious.

IV

Phocus was by birth a Boeotian, for he was from the town of Glisas, and he was the father of Callirhoë, who excelled in beauty and modesty. She was wooed by thirty young men, the most highly esteemed in Boeotia; but Phocus found one reason after another for putting off her marriage, for he was afraid that violence would be done to him; at last, however, he yielded to their demands, but asked to leave the choice to the Pythian oracle. The suitors were incensed by the proposal, rushed upon Phocus, and killed him. In the confusion the maiden got away and fled through the country, but the young men pursued her. She came upon some farmers making a threshing-floor, and found safety with them, for the farmers hid her in the grain, and so her pursuers passed by. But she waited in safety until the festival of the Pamboeotia, when she went to Coroneia, took her seat on the altar of Athena Itonia, and told of the lawless act of the suitors, giving the name and birthplace of each. So the Boeotians pitied the maid and were angry with the young men. When they learned of this, they fled for refuge to Orchomenus, and when the Orchomenians refused to receive them, they forced their way into Hippotae, 775 a village lying on the slope of Mount Helicon between Thisbê and Coroneia. There they were received. Then the Thebans sent and demanded the slayers of Phocus, and when the people of Hippotae refused to deliver them, the Thebans, along with the rest of the Boeotians, took the field under the command of Phoedus, who at that time administered the government of Thebes. They besieged the village, which was well fortified, and when they had overcome the inhabitants by thirst, they took the murderers and stoned them to death and made slaves of the villagers; then they pulled down the walls and the houses and divided the land between the people of Thisbê and of Coroneia. It is said that in the night, before the capture of Hippotae, there was heard many times from Helicon a voice of someone saying “I am here,” and that the thirty suitors recognized the voice as that of Phocus. It is said also that on the day when they were stoned to death the old man’s monument at Glisas ran with saffron; and that as Phoedus, the ruler and general of the Thebans, was returning from the battle, he received the news of the birth of a daughter and, thinking it of good omen, he named her Nicostrata.

V

Alcippus was a Lacedaemonian by birth; he married Damocrita and became the father of two daughters. Now since he was a most excellent counsellor to the state and conducted affairs to the satisfaction of the Lacedaemonians, he was envied by his political opponents, who misled the ephors by false statements to the effect that Alcippus wished to destroy the constitution, and they thereby brought about his exile. So he departed from Sparta, but when his wife Damocrita, with their daughters, wished to follow her husband, she was prevented from doing so, and moreover his property was confiscated, that the girls might not be provided with dowries. And when even so there were some suitors who wooed the girls on account of their father’s high character, his enemies got a bill passed forbidding anyone to woo the girls, saying that their mother Damocrita had often prayed that her daughters might speedily bear sons who should grow up to be their father’s avengers. Damocrita, being harassed on all sides, waited for a general festival in which married women along with unmarried girls, slaves, and infant children took part, and the wives of those in authority passed the whole night in a great hall by themselves. Then she buckled a sword about her waist, took the girls, and went by night into the sacred place, waiting for the moment when all the women were performing the mysteries in the hall. Then, after the entrances had all been closed, she heaped a great quantity of wood against the doors (this had been prepared by the others for the sacrifice belonging to the festival) and set it on fire. And when the men came running up to save their wives, Damocrita killed her daughters with the sword and then herself over their dead bodies. But the Lacedaemonians, not knowing how to vent their anger, threw the bodies of Damocrita and her daughters out beyond the boundaries; and they say that because the god was offended by this the great earthquake came upon the Lacedaemonians.

A philosopher ought to converse especially with men in power

776 1 1 In clasping Sorcanus to your bosom, in prizing, pursuing, welcoming, and cultivating his friendship — a friendship which will prove useful and fruitful to many in private and to many in public life — you are acting like a man who loves what is noble, who is public-spirited and is a friend of mankind, not, as some people say, like one who is merely ambitious for himself. No, on the contrary, the man who is ambitious for himself and afraid of every whisper is just the one who avoids and fears being called a persistent and servile attendant on those in power. For what does a man say who is an attendant upon philosophy and stands in need of it? “Let me change from Pericles or Cato and become Simo the cobbler or Dionysius the schoolmaster, in order that the philosopher may converse with me and sit beside me as Socrates did with Pericles.” And while it is true that Ariston of Chios, when the sophists spoke ill of him for talking with all who wished it, said, “I wish even the beasts could understand words which incite to virtue,” yet as for us, shall we avoid becoming intimate with powerful men and rulers, as if they were wild and savage?

The teaching of philosophy is not, if I may use the words of Pindar, “a sculptor to carve statues doomed to stand idly on their pedestals and no more”; no, it strives to make everything that it touches active and efficient and alive, it inspires men with impulses which urge to action, with judgements that lead them towards what is useful, with preferences for things that are honourable, with wisdom and greatness of mind joined to gentleness and conservatism, and because they possess these qualities, men of public spirit are more eager to converse with the prominent and powerful. Certainly if a physician is a man of high ideals, he will be better pleased to cure the eye which sees for many and watches over many, and a philosopher will be more eager to attend upon a soul which he sees is solicitous for many and is under obligation to be wise and self-restrained and just in behalf of many. For surely, if he were skilled in discovering and collecting water, as they say Heracles and many of the ancients were, he would not delight in digging the swineherd’s fount of Arethusa in a most distant spot “by the Crow’s Rock,” but in uncovering the unfailing sources of some river for cities and camps and the plantations of kings and sacred groves. So we hear Homer calling Minos “the great god’s oaristes,” which means, according to Plato, “familiar friend and pupil.” For they did not think that pupils of the gods should be plain citizens or stay-at homes or idlers, but kings, from whose good counsel, justice, goodness, and high-mindedness, if those qualities were implanted in them, all who had to do with them would receive benefit and profit. Of the plant eryngium they say that if one goat take it in its mouth, first that goat itself and then the entire herd stands still until the herdsman comes and takes the plant out, such pungency, like a fire which spreads over everything near it and scatters itself abroad, is possessed by the emanations of its potency. Certainly the teachings of the philosopher, if they take hold of one person in private station who enjoys abstention from affairs and circumscribes himself by his bodily comforts, as by a circle drawn with geometrical compasses, 777 do not spread out to others, but merely create calmness and quiet in that one man, then dry up and disappear. But if these teachings take possession of a ruler, a statesman, and a man of action and fill him with love of honour, through one he benefits many, as Anaxagoras did by associating with Pericles, Plato with Dion, and Pythagoras with the chief men of the Italiote Greeks. Cato himself sailed from his army to visit Athenodorus; and Scipio sent for Panaetius when he himself was sent out by the senate

to view the violence and lawfulness of men,

as Poseidonius says. Now what should Panaetius have said? “If you were Bato or Polydeuces or some other person in private station who wished to run away from the midst of cities and quietly in some corner solve or quibble over the syllogisms of philosophers, I would gladly welcome you and consort with you; but since you are the son of Aemilius Paulus, who was twice consul, and the grandson of Scipio Africanus who overcame Hannibal the Carthaginian, shall I, therefore, not converse with you?”

2 1 But the statement that there are two kinds of speech, one residing in the mind, the gift of Hermes the Leader, and the other residing in the utterance, merely an attendant and instrument, is threadbare; we will let it come under the heading

Yes, this I knew before Theognis’ birth.

But that would not disturb us, because the aim and end of both the speech in the mind and the speech in the utterance is friendship, towards oneself and towards one’s neighbour respectively; for the former, ending through philosophy in virtue, makes a man harmonious with himself, free from blame from himself, and full of peace and friendliness towards himself.

Faction is not, nor is ill-starred strife, to be found in his members,

there is no passion disobedient to reason, no strife of impulse with impulse, no opposition of argument to argument, there is no rough tumult and pleasure on the border-line, as it were, between desire and repentance, but everything is gentle and friendly and makes each man gain the greatest number of benefits and be pleased with himself. But Pindar says that the Muse of oral utterance was “not greedy of gain, nor toilsome” formerly, and I believe she is not so now either, but because of lack of education and of good taste the “common Hermes” has become venal and ready for hire. For it cannot be that, whereas Aphroditê was angry with the daughters of Propoetus because

First they were to devise for young men a shower of abominations,

yet Urania, Calliopê, and Clio are pleased with those who pollute speech for money. No, I think the works and gifts of the Muses are more conducive to friendship than are those of Aphroditê. For approbation, which some consider the end and purpose of speech, is admired as the beginning and seed of friendship; but most people rather bestow reputation altogether by goodwill, believing that we praise those only whom we love. But just as Ixion slipped into the cloud when he was pursuing Hera, so these people seize upon a deceptive, showy, and shifting appearance in lieu of friendship. But the man of sense, if he is engaged in active political life, will ask for so much reputation as will inspire confidence and thereby give him power for affairs; for it is neither pleasant nor easy to benefit people if they are unwilling, and confidence makes them willing. For just as light is more a blessing to those who see than to those who are seen, so reputation is more a blessing to those who are aware of it than to those who are not overlooked. But he who has withdrawn from public affairs, who communes with himself and thinks happiness is in quiet and uninterrupted leisure, he, “being chaste, worships afar off” the reputation which is popular and widespread in crowds and theatres, 778 even as Hippolytus worshipped Aphroditê, but even he does not despise reputation among the right-minded and estimable; but wealth, reputation as a leader, or power in his friendships he does not pursue, however neither does he avoid these qualities if they are associated with a temperate character; nor, for that matter, does he pursue those among the youths who are fine-looking and handsome, but those who are teachable and orderly and fond of learning; nor does the beauty of those whom he sees endowed with freshness, charm, and the flower of youth frighten the philosopher or scare him off and drive him away from those who are worthy of his attention. So, then, if the dignity that befits leadership and power are associated with a man of moderation and culture, the philosopher will not hold aloof from making him a friend and cherishing him, nor will he be afraid of being called a courtier and a toady.

For those of men who too much Cypris shun

Are mad as those who follow her too much;

and so are those who take that attitude towards friendship with famous men and leaders. Hence, while the philosopher who abstains from public affairs will not avoid such men, yet one who is interested in public life will even go to them with open arms; he will not annoy them against their will, nor will he pitch his camp in their ears with inopportune sophistical disquisitions, but when they wish it, he will be glad to converse and spend his leisure with them and eager to associate with them.

3 1 The field I sow is twelve days’ journey round;

Berecynthian land; if this speaker was not merely a lover of agriculture but also a lover of his fellow men, he would find more pleasure in sowing the field which could feed so many men than in sowing that left plot of Antisthenes’ which would hardly have been big enough for Autolycus to wrestle in; but if [he meant]: “I sow all this in order that I may subjugate the whole inhabited world,” I deprecate the sentiment. And yet Epicurus, who places happiness in the deepest quiet, as in a sheltered and landlocked harbour, says that it is not only nobler, but also pleasanter, to confer than to receive benefits.

For chiefest joy doth gracious kindness give.

Surely he was wise who gave the Graces the names Aglaïa (Splendour), Euphrosynê (Gladness), and Thalia (Good-cheer); for the delight and joy are greater and purer for him who does the gracious act. And therefore people are often ashamed to receive benefits, but are always delighted to confer them; and they who make those men good upon whom many depend confer benefits upon many; and, on the contrary, the slanderers, backbiters, and flatterers who constantly corrupt rulers or kings or tyrants, are driven away and punished by everyone, as if they were putting deadly poison, not into a single cup, but into the public fountain which, as they see, everyone uses. Therefore, just as people laugh when the flatterers of Callias are ridiculed in comedy, those flatterers of whom Eupolis says

No fire, no, and no weapon,

Be it of bronze or of iron,

Keeps them from flocking to dinner,

but the friends and intimates of the tyrant Apollodorus, of Phalaris, and of Dionysius they bastinadoed, tortured, and burned, and made them for ever polluted and accursed, since the former had done harm to one man, but the latter through one, the ruler, to many. So the philosophers who associate with persons in private station make those individuals inoffensive, harmless, and gentle towards themselves, but he who removes evil from the character of a ruler, For directs his mind towards what is right, philosophizes, as it were, in the public interest and corrects the general power by which all are governed. States pay reverence and honour to their priests because they ask blessings from the gods, not for themselves, their friends, and their families alone, but for all the citizens in common; and yet the priests do not make the gods givers of blessings, for they are such by nature; the priests merely invoke them. But philosophers who associate with rulers do make them more just, more moderate, and more eager to do good, so that it is very likely that they are also happier.

4 1 779 And I think a lyre-maker would be more willing and eager to make a lyre if he knew that the future owner of that lyre was to build the walls of the city of Thebes, as Amphion did, or, like Thales, was to put an end to faction among the Lacedaemonians by the music of his charms and his exhortations; and a carpenter likewise in making a tiller would be more pleased if he knew that it would steer the flagship of Themistocles fighting in defence of Hellas, or that of Pompey when he overcame the pirates. What, then, do you imagine the philosopher thinks about his teaching, when he reflects that the statesman or ruler who accepts it will be a public blessing by dispensing justice, making laws, punishing the wicked, and making the orderly and the good to prosper? And I imagine that a clever shipbuilder, too, would take greater pleasure in making a tiller if he knew that it was to steer the Argo, “the concern of all,” and a carpenter would not be so eager to make a plough or a wagon as the axones on which the laws of Solon were to be engraved. And surely the teachings of philosophers, if they are firmly engraved in the souls of rulers and statesmen and control them, acquire the force of laws; and that is why Plato sailed to Sicily, in the hope that his teachings would produce laws and actions in the government of Dionysius; but he found Dionysius, like a book which is erased and written over, already befouled with stains and incapable of losing the dye of his tyranny, since by length of time it had become deeply fixed and hard to wash out. No, it is while men are still at their best that they should accept the worthy teachings.

To an uneducated ruler

(779 d) 1 1 Plato was asked by the Cyrenaeans to compose a set of laws and leave it for them and to give them a well-ordered government; but he refused, saying that it was difficult to make laws for the Cyrenaeans because they were so prosperous.

For nothing is so haughty

harsh, and ungovernable

by nature as a man,

when he possesses what he regards as prosperity. And that is why it is difficult to give advice to rulers in matters of government, for they are afraid to accept reason as a ruler over them, lest it curtail the advantage of their power by making them slaves to duty. For they are not familiar with the saying of Theopompus, the King of Sparta who first made the Ephors associates of the Kings; then, when his wife reproached him because he would hand down to his children a less powerful office than that which he had received he said: “Nay, more powerful rather, inasmuch as it is more secure.” For by giving up that which was excessive and absolute in it he avoided both the envy and the danger. And yet Theopompus, by diverting to a different body the vast stream of his royal authority, deprived himself of as much as he gave to others. But when philosophical reason derived from philosophy has been established as the ruler’s coadjutor and guardian, it removes the hazardous element from his power, as a surgeon removes that which threatens a patient’s health and leaves that which is sound.

2 1 But most kings and rulers are so foolish as to act like unskilful sculptors, who think their colossal figures look large and imposing if they are modelled with their feet far apart, their muscles tense, and their mouths wide open. 780 For these rulers seem by heaviness of voice, harshness of expression, truculence of manner, and unsociability in their way of living to be imitating the dignity and majesty of the princely station, although in fact they are not at all different from colossal statues which have a heroic and godlike form on the outside, but inside are full of clay, stone, and lead, — except that in the case of the statues the weight of those substances keeps them permanently upright without leaning, whereas uneducated generals and rulers are often rocked and capsized by the ignorance within them; for since the foundation upon which they have built up their lofty power is not laid straight, they lean with it and lose their balance. But just as a rule, if it is made rigid and inflexible, makes other things straight when they are fitted to it and laid alongside it, in like manner the sovereign must first gain command of himself, must regulate his own soul and establish his own character, then make his subjects fit his pattern. For one who is falling cannot hold others up, nor can one who is ignorant teach, nor the uncultivated impart culture, nor the disorderly make order, nor can he rule who is under no rule. But most people foolishly believe that the first advantage of ruling is freedom from being ruled. And indeed the King of the Persians used to think that everyone was a slave except his own wife, whose master he ought to have been most of all.

3 1 Who, then, shall rule the ruler? The

Law, the king of all,

Both mortals and immortals,

as Pindar says — not law written outside him in books or on wooden tablets or the like, but reason endowed with life within him, always abiding with him and watching over him and never leaving his soul without its leadership. For example, the King of the Persians had one of his chamberlains assigned to the special duty of entering his chamber in the morning and saying to him: “Arise, O King, and consider matters which the great Oromasdes wished you to consider.” But the educated and wise ruler has within him the voice which always thus speaks to him and exhorts him. Indeed Polemo said that love was “the service of the gods for the care and the preservation of the young”; one might more truly say that rulers serve god for the care and preservation of men, in order that of the glorious gifts which the gods give to men they may distribute some and safeguard others.

Dost thou behold this lofty, boundless sky

Which holds the earth enwrapped in soft embrace?

The sky sends down the beginnings of the appropriate seeds, and the earth causes them to sprout up; some are made to grow by showers and some by winds, and some by the warmth of stars and moon; but it is the sun which adorns all things and mingles in all things what men call the “love charm” which is derived from himself. But these gifts and blessings, so excellent and great, which the gods bestow cannot be rightly enjoyed nor used without law and justice and a ruler. Now justice is the aim and end of law, but law is the work of the ruler, and the ruler is the image of God who orders all things. Such a ruler needs no Pheidias nor Polycleitus nor Myron to model him, but by his virtue he forms himself in the likeness of God and thus creates a statue most delightful of all to behold and most worthy of divinity. Now just as in the heavens God has established as a most beautiful image of himself the sun and the moon, so in states a ruler

who in God’s likeness

Righteous decisions upholds,

that is to say, one who, possessing God’s wisdom, establishes, as his likeness and luminary, intelligence in place of sceptre or thunderbolt or trident, with which attributes some rulers represent themselves in sculpture and painting, thus causing their folly to arouse hostile feelings, because they claim what they cannot attain. For God visits his wrath upon those who imitate his thunders, lightnings, and sunbeams, 781 but with those who emulate his virtue and make themselves like unto his goodness and mercy he is well pleased and therefore causes them to prosper and gives them a share of his own equity, justice, truth, and gentleness, than which nothing is more divine, — nor fire, nor light, nor the course of the sun, nor the risings and settings of the stars, nor eternity and immortality. For God enjoys felicity, not through the length of his life, but through the ruling quality of his virtue; for this is divine; and excellent also is that part of virtue which submits to rule.

4 1 And it is true that Anaxarchus, trying to console Alexander in his agony of mind over his killing of Cleitus, said that the reason why Justice and Right are seated by the side of Zeus is that men may consider every act of a king as righteous and just; but neither correct nor helpful were the means he took in endeavouring to heal the king’s remorse for his sin, by encouraging him to further acts of the same sort. But if a guess about this matter is proper, I should say that Zeus does not have Justice to sit beside him, but is himself Justice and Right and the oldest and most perfect of laws; but the ancients state it in that way in their writings and teachings, to imply that without Justice not even Zeus can rule well. “She is a virgin,” according to Hesiod, uncorrupted, dwelling with reverence, self-restraint, and helpfulness; and therefore kings are called “reverend,” for it is fitting that those be most revered who have least to fear. But the ruler should have more fear of doing than of suffering evil; for the former is the cause of the latter; and that kind of fear on the part of the ruler is humane and not ignoble to be afraid on behalf of his subjects lest they may without his knowledge suffer harm,

Just as the dogs keep their watch, toiling hard for the flocks in the sheepfold,

When they have heard a ferocious wild beast,

not for their own sake but for the sake of those whom they are guarding. Epameinondas, when all the Thebans crowded to a certain festival and gave themselves utterly to drink, went alone and patrolled the armouries and the walls, saying that he was keeping sober and awake that the others might be free to be drunk and asleep. And Cato at Utica issued a proclamation to send all the other survivors of the defeat to the seashore; he saw them aboard ship, prayed that they might have a good voyage, then returned home and killed himself; thereby teaching us in whose behalf the ruler ought to feel fear and what the ruler ought to despise. But Clearchus, tyrant of Pontus, used to crawl into a chest like a snake and sleep there, and Aristodemus of Argos would mount to an upper room entered by a trap-door, then put his bed on the door and sleep in it with his mistress; and the girl’s mother would take the ladder away from below and set it up again in the morning. How do you imagine he must have shuddered at the theatre, the city hall, the senate-chamber, the convivial feast, he who had made his bedchamber a prison cell? For in reality kings fear for their subjects, but tyrants fear their subjects; and therefore they increase their fear as they increase their power, for when they have more subjects they have more men to fear.

5 1 For it is neither probable nor fitting that God is, as some philosophers say, mingled with matter, which is altogether passive, and with things, which are subject to countless necessities, chances, and changes. On the contrary, somewhere up above in contact with that nature which, in accordance with the same principles, remains always as it is, established, as Plato says, upon pedestals of holiness, proceeding in accordance with nature in his straight course, he reaches his goal. And as the sun, his most beautiful image, appears in the heavens as his mirrored likeness to those who are able to see him in it, just so he has established in states the light of justice and of knowledge of himself 782 as an image which the blessed and the wise copy with the help of philosophy, modelling themselves after the most beautiful of all things. But nothing implants this disposition in men except the teachings of philosophy, to keep us from having the same experience as Alexander, who, seeing Diogenes at Corinth, admiring him for his natural gifts, and being astonished by his spirit and greatness, said: “If I were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes,” by which he almost said that he was weighed down by his good fortune, glory, and power which kept him from virtue and left him no leisure, and that he envied the cynic’s cloak and wallet because Diogenes was invincible and secure against capture by means of these, not, as he was himself, by means of arms, horses, and pikes. So by being a philosopher he was able to become Diogenes in disposition and yet to remain Alexander in outward fortunes, and to become all the more Diogenes because he was Alexander, since for his great ship of fortune, tossed by high winds and surging sea, he needed heavy ballast and a great pilot.

6 1 For in weak and lowly private persons folly is combined with lack of power and, therefore, results in no wrongdoing, just as in bad dreams a feeling of distress disturbs the spirit, and it cannot rouse itself in accordance with its desires; but power when wickedness is added to it brings increased vigour to the passions. For the saying of Dionysius is true; he said, namely, that he enjoyed his power most when he did quickly what he wished. There is indeed great danger that he who can do what he wishes may wish what he ought not to do:

Straightway then was the word, and the deed was forthwith accomplished.

Wickedness, when by reason of power it possesses rapid speed, forces every passion to emerge, making of anger murder, of love adultery, of covetousness confiscation.

Straightway then was the word,

and the offender is done away with; suspicion arises, the man who is slandered is put to death. But as the physicists say that the lightning breaks forth later than the thunder, as the flowing of blood is later than the wound, but is seen sooner, since the hearing waits for the sound, whereas the sight goes to meet the light; so in governments punishments come before the accusations and convictions are pronounced before the proofs are given.

For now the spirit yields and holds no longer firm,

As yields the anchor’s fluke in sand when waves are high,

unless the weight of reason presses upon power and holds it down, and the ruler imitates the sun, which, when it mounts up in the northern sky and reaches its greatest altitude, has the least motion, thus by greater slowness ensuring the safety of its course.

7 1 Nor is it possible in positions of power for vices to be concealed. Epileptics, if they go up to a high place and move about, grow dizzy and reel, which makes their disease evident, and just so Fortune by such things as riches, reputations, or offices exalts uneducated and uncultured men a little and then, as soon as they have risen high, gives them a conspicuous fall; or, to use a better simile, just as in a number of vessels you could not tell which is whole and which is defective, but when you pour liquid into them the leak appears, just so corrupt souls cannot contain power, but leak out in acts of desire, anger, imposture, and bad taste. But what is the use of saying these things, when even the slightest shortcomings in men of conspicuous reputation are made the subject of calumny? Too much wine caused slander against Cimon, too much sleep against Scipio, Lucullus was ill spoken of because his dinners were too expensive . . .

Whether an old man should engage in public affairs

(783 b) 1 1 We are well aware, Euphanes, that you, who are an outspoken admirer of Pindar, often repeat, as well and convincingly expressed, these lines of his,

When contests are before us, an excuse

Casts down our manhood into abysmal gloom.

But inasmuch as our shrinking from the contests of political life and our various infirmities furnish innumerable excuses and offer us finally, like “the move from the sacred line” in draughts, old age; and since it is more especially because of this last that these excuses seem to blunt and baffle our ambition and begin to convince us that there is a fitting limit of age, not only to the athlete’s career, but to the statesman’s as well, CI therefore think it my duty to discuss with you the thoughts which I am continually going over in my own mind concerning the activity of old men in public affairs, that neither of us shall desert the long companionship in the journey which we have thus far made together, and neither shall renounce public life, which is, as it were, a familiar friend of our own years, only to change and adopt another which is unfamiliar and for becoming familiar with which and making it our own time does not suffice, but that we shall abide by the choice which we made in the beginning when we fixed the same end and aim for life as for honourable life — unless indeed we were in the short time remaining to us to prove that the long time we have lived was spent in vain and for no honourable purpose.

For the fact is that tyranny, as someone said to Dionysius, is not an honourable winding-sheet; no, and in his case its continuance made his unjust monarchy a more complete misfortune. And at a later time, at Corinth, when Diogenes saw the son of Dionysius no longer a tyrant but a private citizen, he very aptly said, “How little you deserve your present fate, Dionysius! For you ought not to be living here with us in freedom and without fear, but you should pass your life to old age over yonder walled up in the royal palace, as your father did.” But a democratic and legal government, by a man who has accustomed himself to be ruled for the public good no less than to rule, gives to his death the fair fame won in life as in very truth an honourable winding-sheet; for this, as Simonides says,

last of all descends below the ground,

except in the case of those whose love of mankind and of honour dies first, and whose zeal for what is noble fails before their desire for material necessities, as if the active and divine qualities of the soul were less enduring than the passive and physical. And it is not right to say, or to accept when said by others, that the only time when we do not grow weary is when we are making money. On the contrary, we ought even to emend the saying of Thucydides and believe, not only that “the love of honour never grows old,” but that the same is even truer of the spirit of service to the community and the State, which persists to the end even in ants and bees. For no one ever saw a bee that had on account of age become a drone, as some people claim that public men, when they have passed their prime, should sit down in retirement at home and be fed, allowing their worth in action to be extinguished by idleness as iron is destroyed by rust. 784 Cato, for example, used to say that we ought not voluntarily to add to the many evils of its own which belong to old age the disgrace that comes from baseness. And of the many forms of baseness none disgraces an aged man more than idleness, cowardice, and slackness, when he retires from public offices to the domesticity befitting women or to the country where he oversees the harvesters and the women who work as gleaners.

But Oedipus, where is he and his riddles famed?

For as to beginning public life in old age and not before (as they say that Epimenides slept while a youth and awoke as an aged man after fifty years), and then, after casting off such a long-familiar state of repose, throwing oneself into strife and time-absorbing affairs when one is unaccustomed to them and without practice and is conversant neither with public affairs nor with public men; that might give a fault-finder a chance to quote the Pythia and say, “Too late you have come” seeking for office and public leadership, and you are knocking unseasonably at the door of the praetorium, like some ignorant man who comes by night in festive condition or a stranger exchanging, not your place of residence or your country, but your mode of life for one in which you have had no experience. For the saying of Simonides, “the State teaches a man,” is true for those who still have time to unlearn what they have been taught and to learn a new subject which can hardly be acquired through many struggles and labours, even if it encounters at the proper time a nature capable of bearing toil and misery with ease. Such are the remarks which one may believe are fittingly addressed to a man who begins public life in his old age.

2 1 And yet, on the other hand, we see that the mere lads and young men are turned away from public affairs by those who are wise; and the laws which are proclaimed by the heralds in the assemblies bear witness to this, when they call up first to the platform, not the young men like Alcibiades and Pytheas, but men over fifty years of age, and invite them to speak and offer advice. For such men are not incited by lack of the habit of daring or by want of practice to try to score a victory over their political opponents. And Cato, when after eighty years he was defendant in a law-suit, said it was difficult when he had lived with one generation to defend himself before another. In the case of the Caesar who defeated Antony, all agree that his political acts towards the end of his life became much more kingly and more useful to the people. And he himself, when the young men made a disturbance as he was rebuking them severely for their manners and customs, said, “Listen, young men, to an old man to whom old men listened when he was young.” And the government of Pericles gained its greatest power in his old age, which was the time when he persuaded the Athenians to engage in the war; and when they were eager to fight at an unfavourable time against sixty thousand heavy-armed men, he interposed and prevented it; indeed he almost sealed up the arms of the people and the keys of the gates. But what Xenophon has written about Agesilaüs certainly deserves to be quoted word for word: “For what youth” he says, “did not his old age manifestly surpass? For who in the prime of life was so terrible to his enemies as Agesilaüs at the extreme of old age? At whose removal were the enemy more pleased than at that of Agesilaüs, although his end came when he was aged? Who inspired more courage in his allies than Agesilaüs, although he was already near the limit of life? And what young man was more missed by his friends than Agesilaüs, who was aged when he died?”

3 1 Time, then, did not prevent those men from doing such great things; and shall we of the present day, who live in luxury in states that are free from tyranny or any war or siege, be such cowards as to shirk unwarlike contests and rivalries which are for the most part terminated justly by law and argument in accordance with justice, confessing that we are inferior, 785 not only to the generals and public men of those days, but to the poets, teachers, and actors as well? Yes, if Simonides in his old age won prizes with his choruses, as the inscription in its last lines declares:

But for his skill with the chorus great glory Simonides followed,

Octogenarian child sprung from Leoprepes’ seed.

And it is said that Sophocles, when defending himself against the charge of dementia brought by his sons, read aloud the entrance song of the chorus in the Oedipus at Colonus, which begins:

Of this region famed for horses

Thou hast, stranger, reached the fairest

Dwellings in the land,

Bright Colonus, where the sweet-voiced

Nightingale most loves to warble

In the verdant groves;

Band the song aroused such admiration that he was escorted from the court as if from the theatre, with the applause and shouts of those present. And here is a little epigram of Sophocles, as all agree:

Song for Herodotus Sophocles made when the years of his age were

Five in addition to fifty.

But Philemon the comic dramatist and Alexis were overtaken by death while they were on the stage acting and being crowned with garlands. And Polus the tragic actor, as Eratosthenes and Philochorus tell us, when he was seventy years old Cacted in eight tragedies in four days shortly before his death.

4 1 Is it, then, not disgraceful that the old men of the public platform are found to be less noble than those of the stage, and that they withdraw from the truly sacred contests, put off the political rôle, and assume I do not know what in its stead? For surely after the rôle of a king that of a farmer is a mean one. For when Demosthenes says that the Paralus, being the sacred galley, was unworthily treated when it was used to transport beams, stakes, and cattle for Meidias, will not a public man who gives up such offices as superintendent of public games, Boeotian magistrate, and president of the Amphictyonic council, and is thereafter seen busying himself with measuring flour and olive cakes and with tufts of sheep’s wool — will not he be thought to be bringing upon himself “the old age of a horse,” as the saying is, when nobody forces him to do so? Surely taking up menial work fit only for the market-place after holding public offices is like stripping a freeborn and modest woman of her gown, putting a cook’s apron on her, and keeping her in a tavern; for just so the dignity and greatness of high ability in public life is destroyed when it is turned to household affairs and money-making. But if — the only thing left — they give to self-indulgence and luxury the names of rest and recreation, and urge the statesman quietly to waste away and grow old in them, I do not know which of two disgraceful pictures his life will seem to resemble more closely, that of sailors who desert their ship, when they have not brought it into the harbour but it is still under sail, and devote themselves to sexual indulgence for all time to come, or that of Heracles, as some painters playfully, but with evil influence, represent him in Omphalê’s palace wearing a yellow gown and giving himself up to her Lydian maids to be fanned and have his hair curled. Shall we in like manner strip the statesman of his lion’s skin and make him constantly recline at banquets to the music of harps and flutes? And shall we not be deterred by the words addressed by Pompey the Great to Lucullus? For Lucullus gave himself up after his military activities to baths, banquets, sexual intercourse in the daytime, great listlessness, and the erection of new-fangled buildings and he reproached Pompey for his love of office and of honour as unsuited to his age. Then Pompey said that it was more untimely for an old man to indulge in luxury than to hold office. 786 And once when he was ill and the physician prescribed a thrush (which was hard to get and out of season), and some said that Lucullus had plenty of them in his breeding-place, Pompey refused to send and get one, saying, “Could Pompey, then, not live if Lucullus were not luxurious?”

5 1 For granted that nature seeks in every way pleasure and enjoyment, old men are physically incapacitated for all pleasures except a few necessary ones, and not only

Aphroditê with old men is wroth,

as Euripides says, but their appetites also for food and drink are for the most part blunted and toothless, so that they can, if I may say so, hardly whet and sharpen them. They ought to prepare for themselves pleasures in the mind, not ignoble and illiberal ones like that of Simonides, who said to those who reproached him for his avarice that, since old age had deprived him of all other pleasures, he was comforting his declining years with the only one left, the pleasure of gain. Public life, on the other hand, possesses pleasures most noble and great, those in fact from which the gods themselves, as we may reasonably suppose, derive their only or their chief enjoyment. These are the pleasures that spring from good deeds and noble actions. For if Nicias the painter took such delight in the labours of his art that he often had to ask his servants whether he had had his bath and his breakfast; and if Archimedes when intent upon his drawing-tablet had to be dragged away by force, stripped and anointed by his servants, and then drew diagrams upon his anointed body; and if Canus the flute-player, with whom you are also acquainted, used to say that people did not know how much greater pleasure he gave to himself than to others when he played, for if they did, those who wished to hear him would receive pay instead of giving it. In view of these examples, do we not perceive how great are the pleasures the virtues provide, for those who practise them, as the result of the noble deeds they do and their works for the good of the community and of mankind; and that too without tickling or enervating them as do the smooth and gentle motions made on the body? Those have a frantic, unsteady titillation mixed with convulsive throbbing, but the pleasures given by noble works, such as those of which the man who rightly serves the State is the author, not like the golden wings of Euripides but like those heavenly Platonic pinions, bear the soul on high as it acquires greatness and lofty spirit mingled with joy.

6 1 And recall to your mind stories you have often heard. For Epameinondas, when asked what was the pleasantest thing that had happened to him, replied that it was winning the battle of Leuctra while his father and mother were still living. And Sulla, when he first entered Rome after freeing Italy of its civil wars, did not sleep at all that night, he was so borne aloft in spirit by great joy and gladness as by a blast of wind. This he has written about himself in his memoirs. For granted that, as Xenophon says, there is no sound sweeter than praise, yet there is no sight, reminder, or perception in the world which brings such great pleasure as the contemplation of one’s own acts in offices and positions of State in which one may be said to be in places flooded with light and in view of all the people. Yes, and moreover kindly gratitude, bearing witness to the acts, and praise, competing with gratitude and ushering in deserved goodwill, add, as it were, a light and brilliance to the joy that comes from virtue. And it is a man’s duty not to allow his reputation to become withered in his old age like an athlete’s garland, but by adding constantly something new and fresh to arouse the sense of gratitude for his previous actions and make it better and lasting; just as the artisans who were responsible for keeping the Delian ship in good condition, by inserting and fastening in new timbers to take the place of those which were becoming weak, seemed to keep the vessel from those ancient times everlasting and indestructible. 787 Now the preservation and maintenance of reputation, as of fire, is not difficult and demands little fuel, but no one can without trouble rekindle either of them when it has gone out and grown cold. And just as Lampis the sea captain, when asked how he acquired his wealth, said, “My great wealth easily, but the small beginnings of it slowly and with toil,” so political reputation and power are not easy to attain at first, but when once they have grown great it is easy to augment them and keep them great by taking advantage of casual opportunities. For when a man has once become a friend, he does not require many and great services that he may remain a friend, but constancy shown by small tokens always preserves his goodwill, and so likewise the friendship and confidence of the people do not constantly demand that a man pay for choruses, plead causes, or hold offices; no, they are maintained by his mere readiness to serve and by not failing or growing weary in care and concern for the people. For even wars do not consist entirely of pitched battles, fighting, and sieges, but they admit of occasional sacrifices, social gatherings in between, and abundant leisure for games and foolishness. Why, then, forsooth, is public life feared as inexorable, toilsome, and burdensome, when theatrical exhibitions, festive processions, distributions of food, “choruses and the Muse and Aglaïa,” and constantly the worship of some god, smooth the brows of legislators in every senate and assembly and repay its troubles many times over with pleasure and enjoyment?

7 1 Now the greatest evil attendant upon public life, envy, is least likely to beset old age, “for dogs do indeed bark at whom they do not know,” according to Heracleitus, and envy fights against a man as he begins his public career, at the doorway, as it were, of the orator’s platform, and tries to refuse him access, but familiar and accustomed reputation it does not savagely and roughly resent but puts up with mildly. For this reason envy is sometimes likened to smoke, for in the case of those who are beginning their public career it pours out before them in great volume because they are enkindled, but when they burst into full flame it disappears. And whereas men attack other kinds of eminence and themselves lay claim to good character, good birth, and honour, as though they were depriving themselves of so much of these as they grant to others; yet the primacy which comes from time, for which there is the special word presbeion or “the prerogative due to seniority in age,” arouses no jealousy and is freely conceded; for of no honour is it so true that it adorns the giver more than the receiver as of that which is paid to old age. Moreover, not all men expect that the power derived from wealth, eloquence, or wisdom will accrue to them, but no one who takes part in public life is without hope of attaining the reverence and repute to which old age leads. So there is no difference between the pilot who has sailed in great danger against adverse winds and waves, and, after clear weather and fair winds have come, seeks his moorings, and the man who has struggled in the ship of state a long time against the billows of envy, and then, when they have ceased and become smooth, backs water and withdraws from public life, giving up his political affiliations and clubs along with his public activities. For the longer the time has been the greater the number of those whom he has made his friends and fellow-workers, and he cannot take them all out with him, as a trainer leads out his chorus, nor is it fair to leave them in the lurch. But a long public career is, like old trees, hard to pull up, for it has many roots and is interwoven with affairs which cause more troubles and torments to those who withdraw from them than to those who remain in them. And if any remnant of envy or jealousy does continue against old men from their political contests, they should rather extinguish this by power than turn their backs and go away naked and unarmed. For people do not attack them so much because of envy if they maintain the contest as because of contempt if they have given up.

8 1 788 Testimony to the point is what Epameinondas the Great said to the Thebans when in winter weather the Arcadians invited them to come into the city and be quartered in their houses. He forbade it, saying “Now they admire you and gaze at you as you do your military exercises and wrestle, but if they see you sitting by the fire and sipping your bean porridge, they will think you are no better than are.” Just so an old man active in word and deed and held in honour is a sight to arouse reverence, but one who spends the day in bed or sits in the corner of the porch chattering and wiping his nose is an object of contempt. And undoubtedly Homer also teaches this to those who hear aright; for Nestor, who went to the war at Troy, was revered and highly honoured, but Peleus and Laërtes, who stayed at home, were put aside and despised. For the habit of prudence does not last so well in those who let themselves become slack, but, being gradually lost and dissipated by inactivity, it always calls for what may be called exercise of the thought, since thought rouses and purifies the power of reason and action;

For when in use it gleams like beauteous bronze.

For the evil caused by their physical weakness to the public activities of those who step into civil or military office when beyond the usual age is not so great as the advantage they possess in their caution and prudence and in the fact that they do not, borne along sometimes because of past failures and sometimes as the result of vain opinion, dash headlong upon public affairs, dragging the mob along with them in confusion like the storm-tossed sea, but manage gently and moderately the matters which arise. And that is why States when they are in difficulties or in fear yearn for the rule of the elder men; and often they have brought from his field some aged man, not by his request and even contrary to his wish, and have forced him to take the helm, as it were, and steer affairs into safety, and in so doing they pushed aside generals and politicians who were able to shout loud and to speak without pausing for breath and, by Zeus, even men who were able, planting their feet firmly, to fight bravely against the enemy. So, for example, the politicians at Athens grooming Chares, son of Theochares, a powerful man at the height of his physical strength, to be the opponent of Timotheüs and Iphicrates, declared that the general of the Athenians ought to be such as he, but Timotheüs said, “No, by the gods, but such should be the man who is to carry the general’s bedding. The general should be one who sees at the same time ‘that which is before and behind’ and does not let anything that happens disturb his reasoning as to what is for the best.” Sophocles indeed said that he was glad to have escaped, now that he was old, from sexual love, as from a cruel and raging tyrant; but in public life one must escape, not from one tyrant, the love of boys or women, but from many loves which are more insane than that: love of contention, love of fame, the desire to be first and greatest, which is a disease most prolific of envy, jealousy, and discord. Some of these old age does slacken and dull, but others it quenches and cools entirely, not so much by withdrawing a man from the impulse to action as by keeping him from excessive and fiery passions, so as to bring sober and slighted reasoning to bear upon his thoughts.

9 1 However, let us grant that the word

Bide still, poor wretch, in thine own bedding wrapped

are and appear to be deterrent when addressed to a man who begins to act young when his hair is grey and that they rebuke the old man who gets up from long continued home-keeping, as from a long illness, and sets out towards the office of general or of civil administrator; 789 but the words which forbid a man who has spent his life in public affairs and contests to go on to the funeral torch and the end of his life, and which call him back and tell him, as it were, to leave the road he has travelled so long and take a new one, — those words are altogether unkind and not at all like those we have quoted. For just as he is perfectly reasonable who tries to dissuade an old man who is garlanded and perfumed in preparation for his wedding, and says to him what was said to Philoctetes,

What bride, what virgin in her youth, you wretch,

Would take you? You’re a pretty one to wed!”

Bfor old men themselves crack many such jokes on themselves, saying

I’m marrying old, I know — and for my neighbours, too;

so he who thinks that a man who has for a long time shared his life and his home blamelessly with his wife ought on account of his age to dismiss her and live alone or take on a paramour in place of his wedded spouse has reached the height of perversity. There is some sense in admonishing in that way and confining to his accustomed inactivity an old man such as Chlidon the farmer or Lampon the ship-captain or one of the philosophers of the Garden, if he comes forward for popular favour; but anyone who buttonholes a Phocion or a Cato or a Pericles and says, “My Athenian (or Roman) friend,

With withered age bedecked for funeral rites,

bring action for divorce from public life, give up your haunting the speakers’ platform and the generals’ office and your cares of State, and hurry away to the country to dwell with agriculture as your handmaid or to devote the rest of your time to some sort of domestic management and keeping accounts,” is urging the statesman to do what is wrong and unseemly.

10 1 “What then?” someone may say; “do we not hear a soldier say in a comedy

My white hair grants me henceforth full discharge?”

Certainly, my friend, for the servants of Ares should properly be young and in their prime, as practising

war and war’s practices baneful,

Din which even if an old man’s hoary hair is covered by a helmet,

Yet are his limbs by unseen weight oppressed,

and though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak; but from the servants of Zeus, god of the Council, the Market-place, and the State, we do not demand deeds of hands and feet, but of counsel, foresight, and speech — not such speech as makes a roar and a clamour among the people, but that which contains good sense, prudent thought, and conservatism; and in these the hoary hair and the wrinkles that people make fun of appear as witnesses to a man’s experience and strengthen him by the aid of persuasiveness and the reputation for character. For youth is meant to obey and old age to rule, and that State is most secure

Where old men’s counsels and the young men’s spears

Hold highest rank;

and the lines

First he established a council of old men lofty in spirit

Hard by the vessel of Nestor

meet with wonderful approval. And therefore the Pythian Apollo named the aristocracy which was coupled with the kingship at Lacedaemon “Ancients” (Presbygeneas), and Lycurgus named it “Elders” (Gerontes), and the council at Rome is still called the Senate (“body of elders”). And just as the law places diadem and crown upon the head, so nature puts grey hair upon it as an honourable symbol of the high dignity of leadership. And the words geras (“honour,” also “reward”) and gerairein (“venerate”) retain, I believe, a meaning of veneration derived from old men (gerontes), not because they bathe in warm water or sleep in softer beds than other men, but because they hold royal rank in the States in accordance with their wisdom, the proper and perfect fruit of which, as of a late-bearing plant, nature produces after long effort in old age. At any rate when the king of kings prayed to the gods:

Would that I had ten such advisers among the Achaeans

790 as Nestor was, not one of the “martial” and “might-breathing Achaeans” found fault with him, but all conceded that, not in civil affairs alone, but in war as well, old age has great weight;

For one wise counsel over many hands

Is victor,

and one sensible and persuasive expression of opinion accomplishes the greatest and most excellent public measures.

11 Certainly the office of king, the most perfect and the greatest of all political offices, has the most cares, labours, and occupations. At any rate Seleucus, they used to tell us, constantly repeated that if people in general knew what a task it was merely to read and write so many letters, they would not even pick up a crown that had been thrown away. And Philip, we are told, when he heard, as he was on the point of encamping in a suitable place, that there was no fodder for the beasts of draught, exclaimed: “O Heracles, what a life is mine, if I must needs live to suit the convenience even of my asses!” There is, then, a time to advise even a king when he has become an old man to lay aside the crown and the purple, to assume a cloak and a crook, and to live in the country, lest it be thought, if he continues to rule when his hair is grey, that he is busying himself with superfluous and unseasonable occupations. But if it is not fitting to say this about an Agesilaüs or a Numa or a Dareius, let us neither remove a Solon from the Council of the Areopagus nor a Cato from the Senate on account of old age, and let us not advise a Pericles to leave the democracy in the lurch. For anyhow it is absurd that a man when he is young should prance about upon the platform and then, after having poured out upon the public all those insane ambitions and impulses, when the age arrives which brings wisdom through experience, should give up public life and desert it like a woman of whom he has had all the use.

12 1 Aesop’s fox, we recall, would not let the hedgehog, although he offered to do so, remove the ticks from her: “For if you remove these,” she said, “which are full, other hungry ones will come on”; and the State which always discards the old men must necessarily be filled up with young men who are thirsty for reputation and power, but do not possess a statesmanlike mind. And where should they acquire it, if they are not to be pupils or even spectators of any old man active in public life? Treatises on navigation do not make ship-captains of men who have not often stood upon the stern and been spectators of the struggles against wind and wave and wintry night,

When yearning for the twin Tyndaridae

Doth strike the sailor driven o’er the sea;

and can a youngster manage a State rightly and persuade an assembly or a senate after reading a book or writing in the Lyceum a school exercise about political science, if he has not stood many a time by the driver’s rein or the pilot’s steering-oar, leaning this way and that with the politicians and generals as they contend with the aid of their experiences and their fortunes, thus amid dangers and troubles acquiring the knowledge they need? No one can assert that. But if for no other reason, old men should engage in affairs of State for the education and instruction of the young. For just as the teachers of letters or of music themselves first play the notes or read to their pupils and thus show them the way, so the statesman, not only by speech or by making suggestions from the outside, but by action in administering the affairs of the community, directs the young man, whose character is moulded and formed by the old man’s actions and words alike. For he who is trained in this way, — not in the wrestling-schools or training-rings of masters of the arts of graceful speech where no danger is, but, we may say, in truly Olympic and Pythian games, —

Keeps pace as foal just weaned runs with the mare,

to quote Simonides. So Aristeides ran in the footsteps of Cleisthenes and Cimon in those of Aristeides, 791 Phocion followed Chabrias, Cato had Fabius Maximus as his guide, Pompey had Sulla, and Polybius had Philopoemen; for these men, coming when young in contact with older men and then, as it were, sprouting up beside them and growing up with their policies and actions, gained experience and familiarity with public affairs and at the same time reputation and power.

13 1 Aeschines the Academic philosopher, when some sophists declared that he pretended to have been a pupil of Carneades although he had not been so, replied, “Oh, but I did listen to Carneades at the time when his speech had given up noisy declamation on account of his old age and had reduced itself to what is useful and of common interest.” But the public activity of old men is not only in speech but also in actions, free from ostentation and desire for popularity, and, therefore, just as they say that the iris, when it has grown old and has blown off its fetid and foul smell, acquires a more fragrant odour, so no opinion or counsel of old men is turbulent, but they are all weighty and composed. Therefore it is also for the sake of the young, as has been said above, that old men ought to engage in affairs of State, in order that, as Plato said in reference to pure wine mixed with water, that an insane god was made reasonable when chastised by another who was sober, so the discretion of old age, when mixed in the people with boiling youth drunk with reputation and ambition, may remove that which is insane and too violent.

14 1 But apart from all this, they are mistaken who think that engaging in public affairs is, like going to sea or to a war, something undertaken for an object distinct from itself and ceasing when that object is attained; for engaging in public affairs is not a special service which is ended when the need ends, but is a way of life of a tamed social animal living in an organized society, intended by nature to live throughout its allotted time the life of a citizen and in a manner devoted to honour and the welfare of mankind. Therefore it is fitting that men should be engaged, not merely have ceased to be engaged, in affairs of State, just as it is fitting that they should be, not have ceased to be, truthful, that they should do, not have ceased to do, right, and that they should love, not have ceased to love, their native land and their fellow-citizens. For to these things nature leads, and these words she suggests to those who are not entirely ruined by idleness and effeminacy:

Your sire begets you of great worth to men

and

Let us ne’er cease for doing mortals good.

15 1 But those who adduce weakness and disability are accusing disease and infirmity rather than old age. For there are many sickly young men and vigorous old men, so that the proper course is to dissuade, not the aged, but the disabled, and to summon into service, not the young, but those who are competent to serve. Aridaeus, for example, was young and Antigonus an old man, but the latter gained possession of almost all Asia, whereas the former, like a mute guardsman on the stage, was the mere name and figure of a king, exposed to the wanton insults of those who happened to have the real power. As, therefore, he is a fool who would demand that a person like Prodicus the sophist or a person like Philetas the poet should take part in the affairs of State, — they who were young, to be sure, but thin, sickly, and for the most part bedridden on account of sickness, — so he is foolish who would hinder from being rulers or generals such old men as were Phocion, the Libyan Masinissa, and the Roman Cato. For Phocion, when the Athenians were rushing into war at an unfavourable time, gave orders that all citizens up to sixty years of age should take their weapons and follow him; and when they were indignant he said: “There is nothing terrible about it, for I shall be with you as general, and I am eighty years old.” And Polybius tells us that Masinissa died at the age of ninety years, leaving a child of his own but four years old, and that a little before his end, on the day after defeating the Carthaginians in a great battle, 792 he was seen in front of his tent eating a dirty piece of bread, and that when some expressed surprise at this he said that he did it [to keep in practice],

For when in use it gleams like beauteous bronze;

An unused house through time in ruin falls,

as Sophocles says; but we say that this is true of that brilliance and light of the soul, by means of which we reason, remember, and think.

16 1 For that reason kings are said to grow better among wars and campaigns than when they live at leisure. Attalus certainly, the brother of Eumenes, because he was completely enfeebled by long inactivity and peace, was actually kept and fattened like a sheep by Philopoemen, one of his courtiers; so that even the Romans used in jest to ask those who came from Asia if the king had any influence with Philopoemen. And it would be impossible to find many abler generals among the Romans than Lucullus, when he combined thought with action; but when he gave himself up to a life of inactivity and to a home-keeping and thought-free existence, he became a wasted skeleton, like sponges in calm seas, and then when he committed his old age to the care and nursing of one of his freedmen named Callisthenes, Cit seemed as if he were being drugged by him with potions and quackeries, until his brother Marcus drove the fellow away and himself managed and tended him like a child the rest of his life, which was not long. Dareius the father of Xerxes used to say that when dangers threatened he excelled himself in wisdom, and Ateas the Scythian said that he considered himself no better than his grooms when he was idle; and Dionysius the Elder, when someone asked if he was at leisure, replied: “May that never happen to me!” For a bow, they say, breaks when too tightly stretched, but a soul when too much relaxed. In fact musicians, if they give up listening to music, and geometricians if they give up solving problems, and arithmeticians if they give up the practice of calculating, impair, as they advance in age, their habits of mind as well as their activities, although the studies which they pursue are not concerned with action but with contemplation; but the mental habit of public men — deliberation, wisdom, and justice, and, besides these, experience, which hits upon the proper moments and words and is the power that creates persuasion — is maintained by constantly speaking, acting, reasoning, and judging; and it would be a crime if, by deserting these activities, it should allow such great and so many virtues to leak out from the soul; for it is reasonable to suppose that love of humanity, public spirit, and graciousness would waste away, none of which ought to have any end or limit.

17 1 Certainly if you had Tithonus as your father, who was immortal but always needed much care on account of old age, I do not believe you would avoid or grow weary of attending to him, speaking to him, and helping him on the ground that you had performed those duties for a long time; and your fatherland or, as the Cretans call it, your mother country, which has earlier and greater rights than your parents, Fis long lived, to be sure, but by no means ageless or self-sufficient; on the contrary, since it always needs much consideration and assistance and anxious thought, it draws the statesman to itself and holds him,

Grasping him fast by the cloak, and restrains him though hastening onward.

Now surely you know that I have been serving the Pythian Apollo for many Pythiads, but you would not say: “Plutarch, you have done enough sacrificing, marching in processions, and dancing in choruses, and now that you are older it is time to put off the garland and to desert the oracle on account of your age.” And so do not imagine that you yourself, being a leader and interpreter of the sacred rites of civic life, ought to give up the worship of Zeus of the State and of the Forum, rites to which you have for a long time been consecrated.

18 1 793 But let us now, if you please, leave the argument which tries to withdraw the aged man from civic activities and turn to the examination and discussion of the question how we may assign to old age only what is appropriate without imposing upon it any burdensome struggle, since political activity has many parts fitting and suitable for men of such years. For just as, if it were fitting for us to continue singing to the end, we ought, since there are many underlying tones and modes of the voice, which musical people call harmonies, we ought, I say, when we have grown old, not to attempt that which is high pitched and intense, but that which is easy and also possesses the fitting ethical quality; just so, since it is more natural for human beings to act and speak to the end than for swans to sing, we must not give up activity as if it were a lyre too tightly strung, but we should relax the activity and adapt it to those public services which are light and moderate and attuned to old men. For we do not let our bodies be entirely without motion and exercise when we are unable to wield the mattock or use jumping-weights or throw the discus or fight in armour as we used to do, but by swinging and walking, and in some instances by light ball-playing and by conversation, old men accelerate their breathing and revive the body’s heat. Let us, then, neither allow ourselves to be entirely frozen and chilled by inaction nor, on the other hand, by again burdening ourselves with every office and engaging in every kind of public activity, force our old age, convicted of its weakness, to descend to words like these:

O my right hand, thou yearn’st to seize the spear,

But weakness brings thy yearning all to naught.

For even a man at the height of his powers is not commended if he takes upon himself, in a word, all public activities at once and is unwilling to leave, Das the Stoics say of Zeus, anything to anyone else, intruding and mixing himself in everything through insatiable desire for reputation or through envy of those who obtain any share whatsoever of honour and power in the State. But for a very aged man that love of office which invariably offers itself as a candidate at every election, that busy restlessness which lies in wait for every opportunity offered by court of justice or council of State, and that ambition which snatches at every ambassadorship and at every precedence in legal matters, are, even if you eliminate the discredit attached to them, toilsome and miserable. For to do these things even with the goodwill of others is too burdensome for advanced age, but, in fact, the result is the very opposite; for such old men are hated by the young, who feel that they do not allow them opportunities for public activity and do not permit them to come before the public, and by people in general their love of precedence and of office is held in no less disrepute than is other old men’s love of wealth and pleasure.

19 1 And just as Alexander, wishing not to work Bucephalus too hard when he was old, used to ride other horses before the battle in reviewing the phalanx and drawing it up in line, and then, after giving the watchword and mounting him, immediately charged the enemy, and fought the battle to its end; so the statesman, if he is sensible, will curb himself when he has grown old, will keep away from unnecessary activities and allow the State to employ men in their prime for lesser matters, but in important affairs will himself take part vigorously. For athletes keep their bodies untouched by necessary tasks and in full force for useless toils, but we, on the contrary, letting petty and worthless matters go, will save ourselves for things that are seriously worth while. For perhaps, as Homer says, “to a young man everything is becoming,” and people accept and love him, calling the one who does many things a friend of the common folk and hard-working, 794 and the one who does brilliant and splendid things noble and high-minded; and under some conditions even contentiousness and rashness have a certain timeliness and grace becoming to men of that age. But the old man in public life who undertakes subordinate services, such as the farming of taxes and the supervision of harbours and of the market-place, and who moreover works his way into diplomatic missions and trips abroad to visit commanders and potentates, in which there is nothing indispensable or dignified, but which are merely flattery to curry favour, seems to me, my friend, a pitiable and unenviable object, and to some people, perhaps, a burdensome and vulgar one.

20 1 For it is not seasonable for an aged man even to be occupied in public offices, except in those which possess some grandeur and dignity, such as that which you are now administering at Athens, the presidency of the Senate of the Areopagus, and, by Zeus, the honour of membership in the Amphictyonic Council, which your native State bestowed upon you for life and which entails “a pleasant labour and untoilsome toil.” But even these offices aged men ought not to seek; they should exercise them though trying to avoid them, not asking for them but asking to be excused from them, as men who do not take office to themselves, but give themselves to office. For it is not, as the Emperor Tiberius said, Ca disgrace for a man over sixty years of age to hold out his hand to the physician; but rather is it a disgrace to hold out the hand to the people asking for a ballot or a viva voce vote; for this is ignoble and mean, whereas the contrary possesses a certain dignity and honour, when an aged man’s country chooses him, calls him, and waits for him, and he comes down amid honour and friendly applause to welcome and accept a distinction which is truly revered and respected.

21 1 And in somewhat the same way a man who has grown old ought to treat speech-making in the assembly; he should not be constantly jumping up on the platform, nor always, like a cock, crowing in opposition to what is said; nor should he, by getting involved in controversy, loose the curb of reverence for him in the young men’s minds and instil into them the practice and custom of disobedience and unwillingness to listen to him; but he should sometimes both slacken the reins and allow them to throw up their heads boldly to oppose his opinion and to show their spirit, without even being present or interfering except when the matter at stake is important for the common safety or for honour and decorum. But in such cases he ought, even when no one calls him, to run at a speed beyond his strength, letting himself be led by attendants who support him or having himself carried in a litter, as we are told that Appius Claudius did in Rome; for after the Romans had been defeated by Pyrrhus in a great battle, when he heard that the senate was admitting proposals for a truce and peace, he found that intolerable, and although he had lost the sight of both his eyes, had himself carried through the Forum to the Senate-house. He went in, took his stand in the midst of the senate, and said that hitherto he had been grieved by the loss of his eyes, but now he could pray not even to have ears to hear them discussing and doing things so disgraceful and ignoble. And thereupon, partly by rebuking them, partly by instructing and inciting them, he persuaded them to rush to arms forthwith and fight it out with Pyrrhus for the rule of Italy. And Solon, when it became clear that the popular leadership of Peisistratus was a contrivance to make him tyrant, since no one dared to oppose or prevent it, brought out his own arms, stacked them in front of his house, and called upon the citizens to come to the aid of their country; then, when Peisistratus sent and asked him what gave him confidence to do this, he replied, “My age.”

22 1 However, matters of such urgent necessity do kindle and arouse aged men whose fire is quite extinct, provided they merely have breath; yet in other matters the aged man will sometimes, as has been said, act fittingly by declining mean and petty offices 795 which bring more trouble to those who administer them than profit and advantage to those for whom they are administered; and sometimes by waiting for the citizens to call for him, long for him, and send for him at his house, he will, when he comes, be received with greater confidence by those who begged for his presence. And for the most part he will, even when present, be silent and let younger men speak, acting as a kind of umpire at the contest of political ambition; and if the contest passes the bounds of moderation, by administering a mild and kindly rebuke, he will endeavour to do away with contention, opprobrious language, and anger, will correct and instruct without fault-finding him who errs in his opinions, but will fearlessly praise him who is right; and he will voluntarily suffer defeat and will often give up success Bin persuading the people to his will in order that the young may grow in power and courage, and for some of them he will supply what is lacking with kindly words, as Nestor said,

No one of all the Achaeans will blame the words thou hast spoken,

Nor will oppose them in speech; and yet thou hast reached no conclusion.

Truly thou art a young man, and thou mightest e’en be my own offspring.

23 1 But more statesmanlike than this it is, not merely to avoid, when rebuking them openly and in public, any biting speech which violently represses and humiliates them, but rather in kindly spirit to suggest and inculcate in private to those who have natural ability for public affairs advantageous words and policies, urging them on towards that which is noble, adding brilliancy to their minds, and, after the manner of riding-teachers, enabling them at first to mount the populace when it is tractable and gentle; then, if the young man fails in any way, not letting him be discouraged, but setting him on his feet and encouraging him, as Aristeides raised up and encouraged Cimon and Mnesiphilus did the like for Themistocles when they were at first disliked and decried in the city as being rash and unrestrained. And there is also a story that when Demosthenes had met with a reverse in the assembly and was disheartened thereby, Dan aged man who had formerly heard Pericles speak touched him with his hand and told him that he resembled that great man in natural ability and, therefore, had been unjust in condemning himself. And so also when Timotheüs was hissed for being new-fangled and was said to be committing sacrilege upon music, Euripides told him to be of good courage, for in a little while the theatres would be at his feet.

24 1 And in general, just as at Rome the Vestal Virgins have a definite time allotted them, first for learning, then for performing the traditional rites, and thirdly and lastly for teaching them, and as at Ephesus they call each one of the servants of Artemis first a novice, then a priestess, and thirdly an ex priestess, so the perfect statesman engages in public affairs, first while still a learner and a neophyte and finally as a teacher and initiator. For although it is impossible for the overseer of other athletes to engage in contests himself, yet he who trains a young man in affairs of the community and political struggles and prepares him for the service of his country

Speaker of speeches to be and also a doer of actions,

is useful to the State in no small or mean degree, but helps towards that for which Lycurgus first and especially exerted himself when he accustomed the young always to obey every old man as if he were a lawgiver. For what had Lysander in mind when he said that men grow old most nobly in Lacedaemon? Was it because there the older men are more than elsewhere allowed to live in idleness and to lend money or sit together and throw dice or get together betimes for drinking-parties? You could not say that. No, it was because all men of advanced age hold more or less the position of magistrates, fatherly counsellors, or instructors, and not only oversee public affairs, 796 but also make it their business to learn all details about the gymnasia, the sports, and the daily lives of the young men, and, therefore, they are feared by those who do wrong but revered and desired by the good; for the young men always cultivate and follow them, since they enhance and encourage the decorum and innate nobility of the young without arousing their envy.

25 1 For the emotion of envy is not fitting for any time of life, but nevertheless it has among young people plenty of fine names, being called “competition,” “zeal,” and “ambition”; but in old men it is totally unseasonable, uncultured, and ignoble. Therefore the aged statesman, being far beyond the feeling of envy, should not, as envious old tree trunks clearly do, try to destroy and prevent the sprouting growth of the plants which spring up beside them and grow under them, but he should receive kindly those who claim his attention and attach themselves to him; he should offer himself to direct, guide, and support them, not only with good instructions and advice, but also by giving up to them public offices which bring honour and reputation, or certain public services which will do no harm to the people, but will be pleasing to it, and will make them popular. But as for such things as arouse opposition and are difficult and, like certain medicines, smart and hurt at first but produce an excellent and profitable result afterwards, he should not force young men into these and subject them to popular outcries while they are still unaccustomed to the inconsiderate mob; but he should himself assume the unpopularity arising from advantageous measures, for in this way he will make the young more well-disposed towards him and more eager in performing other services.

26 1 But above all things we must remind them that statesmanship consists, not only in holding office, being ambassador, vociferating in the assembly, and ranting round the speakers’ platform proposing laws and making motions. Most people think all this is part of statesmanship, just as they think of course that those are philosophers who sit in a chair and converse and prepare their lectures over their books; but the continuous practice of statesmanship and philosophy, which is every day alike seen in acts and deeds, they fail to perceive. For, as Dicaearchus used to remark, those who circulate in the porticoes are said to be “promenading,” but those who walk into the country or to see a friend are not. Now being a statesman is like being a philosopher. Socrates at any rate was a philosopher, although he did not set out benches or seat himself in an armchair or observe a fixed hour for conversing or promenading with his pupils, but jested with them, when it so happened, and drank with them, served in the army or lounged in the market-place with some of them, and finally was imprisoned and drank the poison. He was the first to show that life at all times and in all parts, in all experiences and activities, universally admits philosophy. So this is what we must understand concerning statesmanship also: that foolish men, even when they are generals or secretaries or public orators, do not act as statesmen, but court the mob, deliver harangues, arouse factions, or under compulsion perform public services; but that the man who is really public-spirited and who loves mankind and the State and is careful of the public welfare and is truly statesmanlike, that man, although he never puts on a uniform, is always acting as a statesman by urging those on who have power, guiding those who need guidance, assisting those who are deliberating, reforming those who act wrongly, encouraging those who are right-minded, making it plain that he is not just casually interested in public affairs and that he goes to the assembly or the council, not for the sake of getting the first seat when there is something serious in prospect or he is summoned, but that when he goes there he goes not merely for amusement as if to see or hear a performance, 797 and that even when he is not there in person he is present in thought and through inquiry, thus approving of some of the proceedings and disapproving of others.

27 1 For not even Aristeides was often ruler of the Athenians, nor Cato of the Romans, but they spent their whole lives in active service to their native States. And Epameinondas as general gained many great successes, but one deed of his equal to any of them is recorded, which he performed in Thessaly when he was neither general nor magistrate. The generals had led the phalanx into difficult ground and were in confusion B(for the enemy were pressing them hard with missile weapons), when he was called out from his place among the infantry; and first by encouraging the army he put an end to confusion and fear, then, after arranging the broken phalanx and putting it in order, he easily led it out and drew it up to face the enemy, so that they changed front and withdrew. And when King Agis, in Arcadia, was already leading against the enemy his army drawn up for battle, one of the elder Spartiates called out to him that he was planning to cure evil with evil, pointing out that his present unseasonable eagerness was an attempt to atone for his culpable retreat from Argos, as Thucydides says. And when Agis heard this, he took the advice and retreated. For Menecrates a chair was placed every day by the door of the house of government, and often the ephors rose up from their session and went to him for information and advice on the most important matters; for he was considered to be a wise man and an intelligent one to be consulted. And therefore, after his physical strength had become utterly exhausted and he had to spend most of the day in bed, when the ephors sent for him to come to the market-place, he got up and set out to walk, but proceeded slowly and with difficulty; then, meeting some boys on the way, he asked them if they knew of anything stronger than the necessity of obeying one’s master, and they replied, “Not being able to.” Accounting this as the limit of his service, he turned round and went home. For a man’s zeal ought not to fail before his strength, but when it is deserted by strength, it should not be forced. Certainly Scipio, both as general and as statesman, always made use of Gaius Laelius as his adviser, so that some people even said that Scipio was the actor, but Gaius the author, of his deeds. And Cicero himself confesses that the noblest and greatest of the plans through which as consul he restored his country to safety were devised with the help of the philosopher Publius Nigidius.

28 1 There are, then, many kinds of political activity by which old men may readily benefit the commonwealth by giving of their best, namely reason, judgement, frankness, and “sapience profound,” as poets say; for not only do our hands or our feet or the strength of our body constitute a possession and a part of the State, but first of all our soul and the beauties of the soul — justice, moderation, and wisdom. And since these acquire their proper quality late and slowly, it is absurd that house, farm, and other property or possessions should derive all the benefit from aged men but that they should be no longer of use to their country in general and their fellow-citizens by reason of their age, for age does not so much diminish our power to perform inferior services as it increases our power for leading and governing. And that is the reason why they make the older Hermae without hands or feet, but with their private parts stiff, indicating figuratively that there is no need whatsoever of old men who are active by their body’s use, if they keep their mind, as it should be, active and fertile.

Precepts of statecraft

798 1 1 If, Menemachus, it is suitable to apply to anything at all the saying

No one of all the Achaeans finds fault with the words thou hast uttered,

Nor will oppose them in speech; and yet thou hast reached no conclusion,

Bit may be applied to those philosophers who urge people to take lessons from them, but give no real instruction or advice; for they are like those who trim the lamps, but fail to pour in oil. Therefore, seeing that the desire has been aroused in you a

Speaker of speeches to be, and also a doer of actions

in your native State, as befits your noble birth, since you have not time to gain an understanding of a philosopher’s life in the open among affairs of State and public conflicts or to be a spectator of examples worked out in deed, not merely in word, and since you ask for some precepts of statecraft, I think it is not at all fitting that I should refuse, and I pray that the result may be worthy of your zeal and of my goodwill; and, as you requested, I have made use of a rather large variety of examples.

2 1 First, then, at the base of political activity there must be, as a firm and strong foundation, a choice of policy arising from judgement and reason, not from mere impulse due to empty opinion or contentiousness or lack of other activities. For just as those who have no useful occupation at home spend most of their time in the market-place, even if there is nothing they need there, just so some men, because they have no business of their own that is worth serious attention, throw themselves into public affairs, treating political activity as a pastime, and many who have become engaged in public affairs by chance and have had enough of them are no longer able to retire from them without difficulty; they are in the same predicament as persons who have gone aboard a vessel to be rocked a bit and then have been driven out into the open sea; they turn their gaze outside, seasick and much disturbed, but obliged to stay where they are and endure their present plight.

Over the bright calm sea

The fair-faced loves went past them to the mad

Outrage of the ship’s oars that plough the deep.

These men cast the greatest discredit upon public life by regretting their course and being unhappy when, after hoping for glory, they have fallen into disgrace or, after expecting to be feared by others on account of their power, they are drawn into affairs which involve dangers and popular disorders. But the man who has entered upon public life from conviction and reasoning, as the activity most befitting him and most honourable, is not frightened by any of these things, nor is his conviction changed. For neither is it right to enter upon public life as a gainful trade, as Stratocles and Dromocleides and their set used to invite each other to come to the golden harvest (for so they called the orators’ platform in jest); nor ought we to enter upon it as if we were suddenly seized by an onset of strong emotion, as Gaius Gracchus did, who, when his brother’s misfortunes were still fresh, withdrew so far as possible from public affairs and then, inflamed by anger because certain persons insulted and reviled him, rushed into public life. And although he was quickly satiated with public affairs and fame, yet when he tried to stop and wished for a change and a quiet life, 799 he found that his power was too great to be laid down but before he could lay it down he perished. And those who make themselves up for political competition or the race for glory, as actors do for the stage, must necessarily regret their action, since they must either serve those whom they think they should rule or offend those whom they wish to please. On the contrary, I believe that those who, like men who fall into a well, stumble into public life by mere chance and unexpectedly must be cast into confusion and regret their course, whereas those who enter into it quietly, as the result of preparation and reflection, will be moderate in their conduct of affairs and will not be discomposed by anything, inasmuch as they have honour itself and nothing else as the purpose of their actions.

3 1 So, after thus determining their choice in their own minds and making it invariable and unchangeable, statesmen must apply themselves to the understanding of the character of the citizens, which shows itself as in the highest degree a compound of all their individual characters and is powerful. For any attempt on the part of the statesman to produce by himself at the very outset a change of character and nature in the people will not easily succeed, nor is it safe, but it is a matter that requires a long space of time and great power. But just a wine is at first controlled by the character of the drinker but gradually, as it warms his whole body and becomes mingled therewith, itself forms the drinker’s character and changes him, just so the statesman, until he has by his reputation and by public confidence in him built up his leadership, must accommodate himself to the people’s character as he finds it and make that the object of his efforts, knowing by what things the people is naturally pleased and led. For example, the Athenian populace is easily moved to anger, easily turned to pity, more willing to suspect quickly than to be informed at leisure; as they are readier to help humble persons of no reputation, so they welcome and especially esteem facetious and amusing speeches; while they take most delight in those who praise them, they are least inclined to be angry with those who make fun of them; they are terrible even to their chief magistrates, then kindly even to their enemies. Quite different is the character of the Carthaginian people; it is bitter, sullen, subservient to their magistrates, harsh to their subjects, most abject when afraid, most savage when enraged, stubborn in adhering to its decisions, disagreeable and hard in its attitude towards playfulness and urbanity. Never would these people, if a Cleon had asked them to postpone the meeting of the assembly on the ground that he had made sacrifice and had guests to entertain, have adjourned the meeting amid laughter and the clapping of hands; nor would they, when a quail escaped from Alcibiades’ cloak while he was speaking, have joined eagerly in hunting it down and then have given it back to him; no, they would have put them both to death for their insolence and their flippancy, seeing that they banished Hanno on the charge of aspiring to be tyrant, because he used a lion on his campaigns to carry his luggage! And I do not believe that the Thebans either, if they had obtained control of their enemies’ letters, would have refrained from reading them, as the Athenians, when they captured Philip’s mail-carriers with a letter addressed to Olympias, refrained from breaking the seal and making known an affectionate private message of an absent husband to his wife. Nor, on the other hand, do I believe that the Athenians would have borne with good temper the contemptuous pride of Epameinondas, when he refused to reply to the accusation against him but rose from his seat and went out from the theatre through the assembly to the gymnasium. And I think, too, that the Spartans would have been far from enduring the insolence and buffoonery of Stratocles, who persuaded the Athenians to make sacrifices on the ground that they had won a victory, and then, after a true report of their defeat had been received, when they were angry with him, 800 asked the people what wrong he had done them seeing that, thanks to him, they had been happy for three days. Now court flatterers, like bird-catchers, by imitating the voices of kings and assimilating themselves to them, insinuate themselves deeply into their good graces and decoy them by deceit; but for the statesman it is fitting, not to imitate the character of his people, but to understand it and to employ for each type those means by which it can be brought under his control. For ignorance of their characters leads to no less serious mistakes and failures in free States than in the friendships of kings.

4 1 So, then, the statesman who already has attained to power and has won the people’s confidence should try to train the character of the citizens, leading them gently towards that which is better and treating them with mildness; for it is a difficult task to change the multitude. But do you yourself, since you are henceforth to live as on an open stage, educate your character and put it in order; and if it is not easy wholly to banish evil from the soul, at any rate remove and repress those faults which are most flourishing and conspicuous. For you know the story that Themistocles, when he was thinking of entering upon public life, withdrew from drinking-parties and carousals; he was wakeful at night, was sober and deeply thoughtful, explaining to his friends that Miltiades’ trophy would not let him sleep. And Pericles also changed his personal habits of life, so that he walked slowly, spoke gently, always showed a composed countenance, kept his hand under his cloak, and trod only one path — that which led to the assembly and the senate. For a populace is not a simple and easy thing for any chance person to subject to that control which is salutary; but one must be satisfied if the multitude accept authority without shying, like a suspicious and capricious beast, at face or voice. Since, then, the statesman must not treat even these matters carelessly, ought he to neglect the things which affect his life and character, that they may be clear of blame and ill report of every kind? For not only are men in public life held responsible for their public words and actions, but people busy themselves with all their concerns: dinner, love affair, marriage, amusement, and every serious interest. What need is there, for instance, to speak of Alcibiades, who, though he was most active of all the citizens in public affairs and was undefeated as general, was ruined by his audacious and dissolute habits in private life, and, because of his extravagance and lack of restraint, deprived the State of the benefit of his other good qualities? Why, the Athenians blamed Cimon for wine-drinking, and the Romans, having nothing else to say, blamed Scipio for sleeping; and the enemies of Pompey the Great, observing that he scratched his head with one finger, reviled him for it. For, just as a mole or a wart on the face is more unpleasant than brand-marks, mutilations, or scars on other parts of the body, so small faults appear great when observed in the lives of leaders and statesmen on account of the opinion which the majority has of governing and public office, regarding it as a great thing which ought to be clean of all eccentricities and errors. With good reason, therefore, did Livius Drusus the tribune gain in reputation because, when many parts of his house were exposed to the view of his neighbours and an artisan promised to turn them the other way and change their position for only five talents, Drusus replied, “Take ten and make the whole house open to view, that all the citizens may see how I live.” For he was a man of temper and well-ordered life. And perhaps he had no need of that exposure to the public view; for the people see through 801 the characters, counsels, acts, and lives of public men, even those that seem to be very thickly cloaked; they love and admire one man and dislike and despise another quite as much for his private as for his public practices.

“But,” you say, “do not States put in office men who live licentiously and wantonly?” They do, and pregnant women often long for stones, and seasick persons for salt pickles and the like, which then a little later they spew out and detest. So the people of democracies, because of the luxury of their own lives or through sheer perversity, or for lack of better leaders, make use of those who happen to turn up, though they loathe and despise them, then take pleasure in hearing such things said about them as the comic poet Plato puts into the mouth of the People itself:

Take, take my hand as quickly as you can;

I’m going to choose Agyrrhius general;

and again, when he makes the People ask for a basin and a feather in order to vomit and then say,

Beside my platform Mantias takes his stand,

And

It feeds foul Cephalus, most hateful pest.

And the Roman people, when Carbo promised something and confirmed his promise with an oath and a curse, unanimously took a counter-oath that it did not trust him. And at Lacedaemon, when a dissolute man named Demosthenes made a desirable motion, the people rejected it, but the ephors chose by lot one of the elders and told him to make that same motion, in order that it might be made acceptable to the people, thus pouring, as it were, from a dirty vessel into a clean one. So great is the importance, in a free State, of confidence or lack of confidence in a man’s character.

5 1 However, we should not on this account neglect the charm and power of eloquence and ascribe everything to virtue, but, considering oratory to be, not the creator of persuasion but certainly its co worker, we should correct Menander’s line,

The speaker’s nature, not his speech, persuades,

for both his nature and his speech do so; unless, indeed, one is to affirm that just as the helmsman, not the tiller, steers the ship, and the rider, not the rein, turns the horse, so political virtue, employing, not speech, but the speaker’s character as tiller or rein, sways a State, laying hold of it and directing it, as it were, from the stern, which is, in fact, as Plato says, the easiest way of turning an animal about. For those great and, as Homer calls them, “Zeus-descended” kings pad themselves out with purple robes and sceptres and guards and divine oracles, and although they enslaved the multitude by their grandeur, as if they were superior beings, they wished nevertheless to be “speakers of words” and they did not neglect the charm of speech,

Nor the assemblies in which men make themselves greatly distinguished,

and they worshipped not only Zeus of the Council, Ares Enyalius, and Athena of War, but they invoked also Calliopê,

who accompanies revered monarchs,

softening by persuasion and overcoming by charms the fierce and violent spirit of the people. How, then, is it possible that a private person of ordinary costume and mien who wishes to lead a State may gain power and rule the multitude unless he possesses persuasion and attractive speech? Now the pilots of ships employ others to give orders to the rowers, but the statesman needs to have in himself the mind that steers and also in himself the speech that gives orders, that he may not require some other man’s voice and be obliged to say, as Iphicrates did when defeated through the eloquence of Aristophon’s orators, “My opponents’ actor is better, but superior my play,” and may not often need these lines of Euripides,

Oh that the seed of wretched men were mute,

802 and

Ah, would that deeds of men possessed a voice,

That clever speakers might become as naught;

for these sayings ought perhaps to be granted as a refuge to Alcamenes, Nesiotes, Ictinus, and all artisans and craftsmen if they take an oath that they are not speakers; as once at Athens, when two architects were being questioned with a view to a public work, one of them, a wheedling and elegant speaker, moved the people by declaiming a prepared speech about the construction of it, but the other, who was a better architect but lacked the power of speech, came forward and said: “Men of Athens, what he has said, I will do.” For, as Sophocles says, only those are servants of the goddess of artistry who “on the anvil with a heavy hammer” and with blows work the yielding and innate material of their art. But the spokesman for Athena of the City and Themis of Counsel,

She who dismisses assemblies of men and who also convenes them,

employing speech as his only instrument, moulding and adapting some things and softening and smoothing off those which are hindrances to his work, such as would be knots in wood or flaws in iron, is an ornament to the city. For this reason the government in Pericles’ time was “in name” as Thucydides says, “a democracy, but in fact the rule of the foremost man,” because of his power of speech. For Cimon also was a good man, as were Ephialtes and Thucydides, but when the last named was asked by Archidamus King of the Spartans whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he replied, “Nobody can tell; for whenever I throw him in wrestling, he says he was not thrown and wins by persuading the onlookers.” And this brought not only reputation to Pericles but safety to the State; for while it was swayed by him it preserved its existing prosperity and refrained from foreign entanglements. But Nicias, whose policy was the same, but who lacked such power of persuasion and tried to rein in the people with speech as easy as a snaffle, could not restrain or master it, but against his will went off to Sicily on its back and together with it came a cropper. The wolf, they say, cannot be held by the ears; but one must lead a people or a State chiefly by the ears, not, as some do who have no practice in speaking and seek uncultured and inartistic holds upon the people, pulling them by the belly by means of banquets or gifts of money or arranging ballet-dances or gladiatorial shows, by which they lead the common people or rather curry favour with them. For leadership of a people is leadership of those who are persuaded by speech; but enticing the mob by such means as have just been mentioned is exactly like catching and herding irrational beasts.

6 1 The speech of the statesman, however, must not be juvenile and theatrical, as if he were making a speech for show and weaving a garland of delicate and flowery words; on the other hand it must not, as Pytheas said of the speech of Demosthenes, smell of the lamp and elaborate literary labour, with sharp arguments and with periods precisely measured by rule and compass. No, just as musicians demand that the touch upon the strings exhibit feeling, not mere technique, so the speech of the statesman, counsellor, and ruler must not exhibit shrewdness or subtlety, and it must not be to his credit to speak fluently or artistically or distributively, but his speech must be full of unaffected character, true high-mindedness, a father’s frankness, foresight, and thoughtful concern for others. His speech must also have, in a good cause, a charm that pleases and a winning persuasiveness; 803 in addition to nobility of purpose it must possess grace arising from stately diction and appropriate and persuasive thoughts. And political oratory, much more than that used in a court of law, admits maxims, historical and mythical tales, and metaphors, by means of which those who employ them sparingly and at the proper moment move their audiences exceedingly; as did he who said “Do not make Hellas one-eyed,” and Demades when he said he was “governing the wreck of the State,” and Archilochus saying

Nor let the stone of Tantalus

Hang o’er the head of this our isle,

and Pericles when he bade the Athenians to remove “the eyesore of the Peiraeus,” and Phocion when he said with reference to the victory of Leosthenes that the furlong race of the war was good, but he was fearful about the long-distance race. And in general, loftiness and grandeur of style are more fitting for political speech; examples are the Philippics and among the speeches in Thucydides that of the ephor Sthenelaïdas, that of King Archidamus at Plataea, and that of Pericles after the pestilence. But as for the rhetorical efforts and grand periods of Ephorus, Theopompus, and Anaximenes, which they deliver after they have armed and drawn up the armies, it can be said of them,

None talks so foolishly when near the steel.

7 1 It is true, however, that derision and ridicule are sometimes proper parts of the statesman’s speech if employed, not as insults or buffoonery, but for needful reproof and disparagement. That sort of thing is most laudable in rejoinders and replies; for when employed of set purpose and without provocation, it makes the speaker appear to be a clown and carries with it a suspicion of malice, such as was attached to the ridicule in the speeches of Cicero, Cato the Elder, and Aristotle’s pupil Euxitheüs, all of whom frequently employed ridicule without previous provocation. But for one who employs it in self-defence the occasion makes it pardonable and at the same time pleasing, as when Demosthenes, in reply to a man who was suspected of being a thief and who mocked him for writing at night, said, “I am aware that I offend you by keeping a light burning,” and to Demades who shouted, “Demosthenes would correct me— ‘the sow correcting Athena,’ “ he replied, “Yes, your Athena was caught in adultery last year!” Witty too was Xenaenetus’s rejoinder to the citizens who reviled him for running away when he was general, “Yes, to keep you company, my dears.” But in jesting one must guard against going too far and against offending one’s hearers by jesting at the wrong moment or making the speaker appear ignoble and mean-spirited, as Democrates did; for he went up into the assembly and said that he, like the State, had little strength but much bluster, and at the time of the disaster at Chaeroneia he came forward among the people and said, “I wish the State had not met with so great a misfortune as to make you listen even to me as adviser,” for this remark showed him to be mean-spirited, the other to be crazy, and neither is becoming to a statesman. But in Phocion conciseness of speech was admired. At any rate Polyeuctus declared that Demosthenes was the greatest orator, but Phocion the cleverest in speaking, because his speech contained the most meaning in the fewest words. And Demosthenes though he despised the other orators, used to say when Phocion rose to speak, “The cleaver of my speeches is getting up.”

8 1 Most of all, then, try to employ in addressing the people well-considered, not empty, speech, and to use precaution, knowing that even the great Pericles used to pray before making a public speech that no single utterance foreign to the matter in hand might occur to him. But nevertheless the orator must always keep his speech nimble and in good practice for making apt rejoinders; 804 for occasions arise quickly and often bring with them in public affairs sudden developments. That is why Demosthenes was inferior to many, as they say, because he drew back and hesitated when the occasion called for the opposite course. And Theophrastus tells us that Alcibiades, because he planned, not only to say the right thing, but to say it in the right way, often while actually speaking would search for words and arrange them into sentences, thereby causing hesitation and failure. But the man who is so moved by the events which take place and the opportunities which offer themselves that he springs to his feet is the one who most thrills the crowd, attracts it, and carries it with him. So it was, for example, with Leo of Byzantium; he once came to address the Athenians when they were in political discord, and when they laughed at him because he was a little man, he said, “What if you should see my wife, who hardly comes up to my knee?” Then when they laughed louder, “And yet, “ he said, “little as we are, when we quarrel with each other, the city of Byzantium is not big enough to hold us.” So also when Pytheas the orator was speaking in opposition to the granting of honours to Alexander and someone said to him, “Do you, at your age, dare to speak on such important matters?” he replied: “And yet Alexander is younger than I, and you are voting to make him a god.”

9 1 And the statesman must bring to the struggle of statecraft — a struggle which is not unimportant, but calls for all one’s fighting power — speech which is severely trained in firmness of voice and strength of lungs, that he may not be frequently so weary and burnt out as to be defeated by some

Rapacious brawler with a torrent’s voice.

Cato, when he had no hope of winning his cause by persuasion because the popular assembly or the senate was gained over beforehand by favours and interests, used to get up and speak the whole day, thus destroying his opponents’ opportunity. On the subject, then, of the preparation of one’s speech and the way to use it these remarks are enough for one who has the ability to go on and discover the conclusions to be drawn from them.

10 1 There are two entrances to public life and two paths leading to it: one the quick and brilliant road to reputation, by no means without risk, the other more prosaic and slower, but safer. For some men launch out at once into political life with some conspicuous, great, and daring action, like men who launch a vessel from a promontory that juts out into the sea; they think Pindar is right in saying

To a work’s beginning we needs must set

A front that shines afar,

for the masses are more ready to accept the beginner because they are so palled and surfeited with those to whom they are accustomed, just as spectators at a show are glad to accept a new performer; and authority and power that has a brilliant and rapid growth takes envy’s breath away. For, as Ariston says, fire does not cause smoke, nor reputation envy, if it blazes up quickly at the start, but those who grow great gradually and slowly are attacked one from one side, another from another; hence many men before coming to full bloom as public speakers have withered away. But if, as is said of Ladas,

The noise o’ the barrier’s fall was in his ears

even when he has been crowned for his brilliant success on an embassy, for a notable triumph, or for achievement as a general, in such instances neither those who envy a man nor those who despise him have so much power as before. In this way Aratus arrived at fame, beginning his public life with the destruction of the tyrant Nicocles; so Alcibiades, by making the Mantinean alliance against the Lacedaemonians. Pompey demanded a triumph although he had not yet been admitted to the senate, and when Sulla voted against it, he said, “More worship the rising than the setting sun”; and Sulla, when he heard this, withdrew his opposition. And take the case of Cornelius Scipio; it was not because of any chance beginning that the Roman people suddenly and contrary to law appointed him consul when he was a candidate for the aedileship, 805 but rather because they admired his victorious single combat in Iberia when he was a mere youth, and his deeds a little later at Carthage as military tribune, about which Cato the Elder exclaimed

He and he only has sense, the rest are mere flickering shadows.

Nowadays, then, when the affairs of the cities no longer include leadership in wars, nor the overthrowing of tyrannies, nor acts of alliances, what opening for a conspicuous and brilliant public career could a young man find? There remain the public lawsuits and embassies to the emperor, which demand a man of ardent temperament and one who possesses both courage and intellect. But there are many excellent lines of endeavour that are neglected in our cities which a man may take up, and also many practices resulting from evil custom, that have insinuated themselves to the shame or injury of the city, which a man may remove, and thus turn them to account for himself. Indeed in past times a just verdict gained in a great suit, or good faith in acting as advocate for a weak client against a powerful opponent, or boldness of speech in behalf of the right against a wicked ruler, has opened to some men a glorious entrance into public life. And not a few also have grown great through the enemies they have made by attacking men whose position made them enviable or caused them to be feared; for when such a man is overthrown his power passes at once, and with better reputation, to the man who overcame him. For attacking, through motives of envy, a good man who, on account of his virtue, is leader of the state, as Pericles was attacked by Simmias, Themistocles by Alcmeon, Pompey by Clodius, and Epameinondas by Menecleides the orator, is neither conducive to a good reputation nor advantageous in any other way; for when the people have committed a wrong against a good man and then (which happens quickly) repent of their anger, they think the easiest way to excuse themselves for this offence is the most just, namely, to destroy the man who was the author of it and persuaded them to commit it. On the other hand, to revolt against a bad man who by shameless audacity and cunning has made the city subject to himself, such as Cleon and Cleophon were at Athens, and to pull him down and humble him provides a glorious entrance upon the stage of public life. And I am not ignorant of the fact that some men by curtailing the power of an oppressive and oligarchical senate, as Ephialtes did at Athens and Phormio at Elis, have gained at the same time both power and glory; but to one who is just entering upon public life there is a great risk in this. Therefore Solon made a better beginning, when the State was divided into three factions called the Diacrians (“hill-folk”), the Pedieans (“plainsfolk”), and the Paralians (“coastfolk”); for he entangled himself with none of them, but acted for all in common and said and did everything to bring about concord among them, so that he was chosen lawgiver to reconcile their differences and in this way established his rule. So many, then, and of such kinds are the more conspicuous ways of entering upon a public career.

11 But the safe and leisurely way has been chosen by many famous men — Aristeides, Phocion, Pammenes the Theban, Lucullus at Rome, Cato, the Lacedaemonian Agesilaüs. For just as ivy rises by twining itself about a strong tree, so each of these men, by attaching himself while still young to an older man and while still obscure to a man of reputation, being gradually raised up under the shelter of his power and growing great with him, fixed himself firmly and rooted himself in the affairs of State. For Aristeides was made great by Cleisthenes, Phocion by Chabrias, Lucullus by Sulla, Cato by Maximus, Epameinondas aided Pammenes, and Lysander Agesilaüs. But Agesilaüs through untimely ambition and jealousy of Lysander’s reputation insulted and quickly cast aside the guide of his actions; but the others in noble and statesmanlike fashion cherished their teachers until the end and joined in honouring them, 806 enhancing in turn with their own radiance, and illuminating, like the heavenly bodies that face the sun, that which caused themselves to shine. Certainly Scipio’s detractors said that he was the actor, but his friend Laelius the real author of his deeds; Laelius, however, was not puffed up by any of those sayings but continued always eagerly to exalt Scipio’s virtue and renown. And Pompey’s friend Afranius, even though he was of humble station, nevertheless expected to be elected consul, but when Pompey favoured other candidates, he relinquished his ambition, saying that gaining the consulship would be to him not so much glorious as painful and troublesome, if it were against Pompey’s will and without his co operation; and so after waiting only one year he both gained the office and retained the friendship. Those who are thus led to renown by the hand of others gain favour with many, and at the same time, if anything unpleasant happens, are less disliked; and that is why Philip advised Alexander to gain friends as long as he could while another man was king by having pleasant intercourse with others and maintaining friendly relations with them.

12 1 But anyone who is entering upon a public career should choose as his leader a man who is not merely of established reputation and powerful, but one who is all this on account of real worth. For just as not every tree will accept and support the grape-vine which entwines about it, but some trees stifle and ruin its growth, so in States, the men who are not lovers of what is noble, but merely lovers of honours and of office, do not afford young men opportunities for public activities, but through envy repress them and, to speak figuratively, wither them up by depriving them of glory, their natural nourishment. So Marius, after having achieved many successes in Libya and again in Gaul with the help of Sulla, ceased to employ him and cast him off, being angered by his growth in power, but using the incident of the seal as a pretext. For Sulla, when Marius was general and he was quaestor in Libya, was sent by Marius to Bocchus and took Jugurtha prisoner; being a young man who had just had his first taste of glory, he did not bear his good fortune with moderation, but had a seal engraved with a representation of his deed — Jugurtha surrendering to him — and wore it. Marius threw this up against him and cast him off. And Sulla, transferring his allegiance to Catulus and Metellus, worthy men and opposed to Marius, quickly drove Marius out and broke his power in the civil war after he had almost overthrown Rome. Sulla, however, exalted Pompey from the time of his youth, rising up and uncovering his head when he came near; and also by giving the other young men opportunities for acts of leadership and even by urging some on against their will, he filled his armies with ambition and eagerness; and he gained power over them all by wishing to be, not the only great man, but first and greatest among many great ones. Such, then, are the men to whom young statesmen should attach themselves and cling closely, not snatching glory away from them, like Aesop’s wren who was carried up on the eagle’s shoulders, then suddenly flew out and got ahead of him, but receiving it from them in goodwill and friendship, knowing that no one can ever command well who has not first learned rightly to obey, as Plato says.

13 1 Next after this comes the decision to be made concerning friends, and here we approve neither the idea of Themistocles nor that of Cleon. For Cleon, when he first decided to take up political life, brought his friends together and renounced his friendship with them as something which often weakens and perverts the right and just choice of policy in political life. But he would have done better if he had cast out from his soul avarice and love of strife 807 and had cleansed himself of envy and malice; for the State needs, not men who have no friends or comrades, but good and self-controlled men. As it was, he drove away his friends,

But a hundred heads of cursed flatterers circling fawned

about him, as the comic poets say; and being rough and harsh to the better classes he in turn subjected himself to the multitude in order to win its favour,

Its old age tending, dosing it with pay,

and making the basest and most unsound element of the people his associates against the best. But Themistocles on the other hand, when someone said that he would govern well if he showed himself equally impartial to all, replied: “May I never take my seat on such a throne that my friends shall not have more from me than those who are not my friends!” He also was wrong; for he put the government under pledge to his friendship, subordinating the affairs of the community and the public to private favours and interests. And yet when Simonides asked for something that was not just, he said to him: “Neither is he a good poet who sings contrary to metre, nor is he an equitable ruler who grants favours contrary to law.” For truly it is an outrageous and abominable thing if a pilot selects sailors and a ship-captain selects a pilot

Well knowing how at the stern to hold steady the tiller and also

How to stretch taut the yard ropes when rises the onrushing tempest,

and an architect chooses subordinates and handicraftsmen who will not spoil his work but will co operate to perfect it, whereas the statesman, who is, as Pindar says, the best of craftsmen and the maker of lawfulness and justice, does not immediately choose friends whose convictions are like his own, who will aid him and share his enthusiasm for what is noble, but rather those who are always wrongfully and by violent means trying to divert him to various other uses. Such a statesman will be found to be no better than a builder or a carpenter who through ignorance and error makes use of such squares and rulers and levels as are sure to make his work crooked. For friends are the living and thinking tools of the statesman, and he ought not to slip with them when they go wrong, but he must be on the watch that they do not err even through ignorance. In fact, it was this that disgraced Solon and brought him into disrepute among the citizens; for when he made up his mind to lighten debts and to introduce the Seisachtheia E(that was the nickname for the cancellation of debts), he told his friends about it, and they did a very wrong thing; they secretly borrowed a great deal of money before the law was punished, and a little later, after its publication, they were found to have bought splendid houses and much land with the money they had borrowed, and Solon, who was wronged, was accused of sharing in their wrongdoing. Agesilaüs, too, showed himself very weak and poor-spirited in dealing with his friends’ solicitations and, like Pegasus in Euripides’ drama,

Crouched down and yielded more if more he wished,

and by too great eagerness in aiding them when in misfortunes he made himself seem like them in wrongdoing; for example, when Phoebidas was on trial for seizing the Cadmeia without orders, he got him off by saying that such things were bound to happen of their own accord; and when Sphodrias was being tried for an illegal and frightful act (for he had invaded Attica when the Athenians were friends and allies), he brought about his acquittal, being softened by the amorous pleadings of his son. And a note of his to a certain ruler is quoted as follows: 808”If Nicias is innocent, let him go; if he is guilty, let him go for my sake; anyway, let him go.” But Phocion did not even appear in support of his son-in law Charicles when he was accused in connexion with the Harpalus affair; he merely said: “I made you my son-in law for nothing but what is right” and went away. And Timoleon of Corinth, when he was unable either by instruction or by entreaty to make his brother give up his tyranny, joined with those who destroyed him. For a statesman ought, by stopping short of being a party to perjury, not to be a “friend as far as the altar,” as Pericles once said, but only so far as conforms to any law, equity, or advantage the neglect of which leads to great public injury, as did the failure to punish Sphodrias and Phoebidas, for they did a great deal to make Sparta enter into the Leuctrian war. For the principles that govern a statesman’s conduct do not force him to act with severity against the moderate errors of his friends; on the contrary, they make it possible for him, after he has once made the chief public interests safe, out of his abundant resources to assist his friends, take his stand beside them, and help them out of their troubles. And there are also favours which arouse no ill-will, such as aiding a friend to gain an office, putting into his hands some honourable administrative function or some friendly foreign mission, for example one which includes honours to a ruler or negotiations with a State concerning friendship and concord; and if some public activity be laborious, but conspicuous and important, the statesman can first appoint himself to the post and then choose his friend as assistant, just as Diomedes did:

So if you tell me myself to choose another as comrade,

How in that case could I e’er be forgetful of godlike Odysseus?

And Odysseus again fittingly returns the compliment:

Now these horses, old sir, these new ones, of which thou inquirest,

Thracian they are, but their master was slain by the brave Diomedes.

Slain and beside him his comrades, twelve comrades and all of the noblest.

For such concession to one’s friends adorns those who give praise no less than those who receive it; but self-conceit, says Plato, dwells with loneliness. Then, besides, a man ought to ascribe to his friends a share in his own good and kindly acts of favour; he should tell those who have been benefited to praise and show them affection as the originators and advisers of the favours. But base and absurd requests he should reject, not harshly but gently, informing the askers by way of consolation that the requests are not in accord with their own excellence and reputation. Epameinondas exemplifies this most admirably: after refusing to let the pedlar out of prison at Pelopidas’s request and then letting him out a little later when his mistress asked it, he said, “Favours of that sort, Pelopidas, are fit for courtesans to receive, but not for generals.” But Cato acted harshly and arbitrarily when he was quaestor, and Catulus the censor, one of his most intimate friends, asked for the acquittal of a man who was being tried, by saying: “It is a disgrace that you, whose duty it is to train us young men to honourable conduct, have to be thrown out by our servants.” For he might, while refusing the favour in fact, have avoided harshness and bitterness of speech, by producing the impression that the offensive quality of his action was not due to his own will, but was forced upon him by law and justice. There are also in public life ways which are not dishonourable of helping friends who need money to acquire it; as, for example, when after the battle Themistocles saw a corpse wearing a golden bracelet and necklace, he himself passed it by, but turned to his friend and said, “Take these things, for you are not, as I am, Themistocles.” 809 For the administration of affairs frequently gives the man in public life this sort of chance to help his friends; for not every man is a Menemachus. and over to one friend a case at law which will bring in a good fee as advocate in a just cause, to another introduce a rich man who needs legal oversight and protection, and help another to get some profitable contract or lease. Epameinondas even told a friend to go to a certain rich man and ask for a talent, saying that it was he who bade him give it; and when the man who had been asked for it came and asked him the reason, he replied: “Because this man is a good man and poor, but you are rich since you have appropriated much of the State’s wealth.” And Xenophon says that Agesilaüs delighted in enriching his friends, he being himself above money.

14 1 But since, to quote Simonides, “all larks must grow a crest,” and every public career bears its crop of enmities and disagreements, the public man must give especial consideration to these matters. So most people commend Themistocles and Aristeides who, whenever they went on an embassy or in command of an army, laid down their private enmity at the frontier, then took it up again later. And some people are also immensely pleased by the conduct of Cretinas of Magnesia. He was a political opponent of Hermeias, a man who was not powerful but was of ambitious spirit and brilliant mind, and when the Mithridatic war broke out, seeing that the State was in danger, he told Hermeias to take over the command and manage affairs, while he himself withdrew; or, if Hermeias wished him to be general, then Hermeias should remove himself, that they might not by ambitious strife with one another destroy the State. The challenge pleased Hermeias, and saying that Cretinas was more versed in war than himself, he went away with his wife and children. And as he was departing Cretinas escorted him, first giving him out of his own means such things as were more useful to exiles than to people besieged in a city, after which by his excellent military leadership he saved the State unexpectedly when it was on the brink of destruction. For if it is a noble thing and the mark of an exalted spirit to exclaim

I love my children, but I love my country more,

would it not have been easier for each of them to say, “I hate so-and so and wish to do him harm, but I love my country more”? For to be unwilling to make peace with a personal enemy for the sake of those things for which we ought even to give up a friend is shockingly uncivilized and as low as the beasts. Certainly Phocion and Cato and their like acted much better, for they would allow no personal enmity to have any bearing whatsoever upon political differences, but were stern and inexorable only in public contests against sacrificing what was for the common good; yet in private matters they treated kindly and without anger their political opponents. For the statesman should not regard any fellow-citizen as an enemy, unless some man, such as Aristion, Nabis, or Catiline, should appear who is a pest and a running sore to the State. Those who are in other ways out of harmony he should, like a skilful musician, bring into unison by gently tightening or relaxing the strings of his control, not attacking angrily and insultingly those who err, but making an appeal designed rather to make a moral impression, as Homer does:

Truly, my friend, I did think you surpassed other men in your wisdom;

And

Knowledge thou hast to devise other speech that is better than this was.

But if they say or do anything good, he should not be vexed by their honours, nor should he be sparing of complimentary words for their good actions; for if we act in this way our blame, where it is needed, will be thought justified, and we shall make them dislike evil by exalting virtue and showing through comparison that good actions are more worthy and fitting than the other kind. 810 And I think also that the statesman should give testimony in just causes even for his opponents, should aid them in court against the malicious prosecutors, and should discredit calumnies about them if such accusations are alien to the principles they profess; just as the infamous Nero, a little before he put Thrasea to death, whom he hated and feared intensely, nevertheless when someone accused him of a bad and unjust decision in court, said: “I wish Thrasea were as good a friend to me as he is a most excellent judge.”

And it is not a bad method for confounding persons of a different kind, men who are naturally vicious and prone to evil conduct, to mention to them some enemy of theirs who is of finer character and to say: “He would not have said that or done that.” And some men, too, when they do wrong, should be reminded of their excellent fathers, as Homer says:

Truly not much like his sire is the son who was gotten by Tydeus;

And Appius, when competing with Scipio Africanus in the elections, said: “O Paulus, how you would groan in the lower world if you saw that when your son was standing for the censorship Philonicus the publican acted as his bodyguard!” Such sayings serve at once to rebuke wrongdoers and to add lustre to those who administer the rebuke. And the Nestor of Sophocles, too, made a statesmanlike reply when reviled by Ajax:

I blame thee not; for good thy acts, though ill thy speech.

And Cato, although he had opposed Pompey in the violent measures which he and Caesar applied to the State, when war broke out between them advised handing over the leadership to Pompey, saying: “The men who can bring about great evils can also end them.” For blame which is mingled with praise and contains nothing insulting but merely frankness of speech, and arouses not anger but a pricking of the conscience and repentance, appears both kindly and healing; but abusive speech is not at all fitting for statesmen. Observe the things that were said by Demosthenes against Aeschines and by Aeschines against him and again those which Hypereides wrote against Demades, and ask yourself if a Solon or a Pericles or Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian or Pittacus the Lesbian would have said them. And yet even Demosthenes employs abuse only in his speeches before a court of law; the Philippics are free from all jeering and scurrility. For such things bring disgrace upon the speakers rather than upon those spoken of, and moreover they bring confusion into the conduct of affairs and they disturb councils and assemblies. Therefore Phocion did well when he stopped speaking and yielded the floor to a man who was reviling him, and then, when the fellow had at last become silent, came forward again saying: “Well, then, about the cavalry and the heavy infantry you have heard already; it remains for me to discuss the light infantry and the targeteers.” But since many men find it hard to endure that sort of thing quietly, and abusive speakers are often, and not without general benefit, made to shut their mouths by the retorts they evoke, let the reply be brief in wording, showing no temper and no extreme rancour, but urbanity mingled with playfulness and grace which somehow or other has a sting in it. Retorts which turn his own words back upon the speaker are especially good in this way. For just as things which are thrown and return to the thrower seem to do this because they are driven back by some force and firmness of that against which they are thrown, Fso that which is spoken seems through the force and intellect of him who has been abused to turn back upon those who uttered the abuse. For example, the retort of Epameinondas to Callistratus, who reproached the Thebans and the Argives because Oedipus killed his father and Orestes killed his mother: “When we had driven out the doers of those deeds, you took them in,” and that of Antalcidas the Spartan to the Athenian who said “We have often chased you away from the Cephissus,” “Yes, but we have never had to chase you from the Eurotas.” 811 And Phocion also made a witty retort, when, after Demades had screamed “The Athenians will put you to death,” he replied, “Yes, if they are crazy; but you are the one whom they will execute, if they are sane.” And Crassus the orator, when Domitius said to him, “It was you, was it not, who wept when a lamprey died that you kept in a tank?” retorted with the question, “It was you, was it not, who buried three wives without shedding a tear?” Apt replies of this sort, however, are of some use also in life in general.

15 1 There are men who enter upon every kind of public service, as Cato did, claiming that the good citizen ought, so far as in him lies, to omit no trouble or diligence; and they commend Epameinondas because, when through envy and as an insult he had been appointed telmarch by the Thebans, he did not neglect his duties, but saying that not only does the office distinguish the man, but also the man the office, he advanced the telmarchy to a position of great consideration and dignity, though previously it had been nothing but a sort of supervision of the alleys for the removal of dung and the draining off of water in the streets. And no doubt I myself seem ridiculous to visitors in our town when I am seen in public, as I often am, engaged in such matters. But I am helped by the remark of Antisthenes which has been handed down to memory; for when someone expressed surprise, that he himself carried a dried fish through the market-place, he said, “Yes, but it’s for myself”; but I, on the other hand, say to those who criticize me for standing and watching tiles being measured or concrete or stones being delivered, that I attend to these things, not for myself, but for my native place. Yes, for there are many other things in regard to which a man would be petty and sordid who managed them for himself and attended to them for his own sake, but if he does it for the public and for the State’s sake, he is not ignoble, on the contrary his attention to duty and his zeal are all the greater when applied to little things. But there are others who think the conduct of Pericles was more dignified and splendid, one of whom is Critolaüs the Peripatetic, who claims that just as the Salaminia and the Paralus, ships at Athens, were not sent out to sea for every service, but only for necessary and important missions, so the statesman should employ himself for the most momentous and important matters, as does the King of the Universe,

For God great things doth take in hand,

But small things passing by he leaves to chance,

according to Euripides.

Neither do we commend the ambition and contentiousness of Theagenes who, after being victorious, not only in the circuit of festivals, but in many other contests besides, not only in the pancratium, but also in boxing and long-distance running, at last, when at certain commemorative funeral ceremonies he was partaking of the feast to honour the deceased as a hero, and all present had, as was the custom, their several portions set out before them, sprang up and performed a whole pancratium, as if it were wrong for anyone else to be a victor when he was present; for he had collected by such means twelve hundred head-bands, most of which might be regarded as rubbish. Now there is no difference between him and those who strip for every political activity; they soon cause themselves to be criticized by the multitude; they become unpopular and arouse envy when they are successful, but joy when they meet with failure; and that which was admired in them when they began to hold office results at last in mockery and ridicule. Such are the lines:

Metiochus, you see, is general, Metiochus inspects the roads,

Metiochus inspects the bread, and Metiochus inspects the flour,

Metiochus takes care of all things, Metiochus will come to grief.

He was one of Pericles’ followers and seems to have used the power gained through him in such a way as to arouse odium and disgust. For the statesman ought, as they say, to find the people fond of him when he comes to them and to leave a longing for him when he is not there; which Scipio Africanus accomplished 812 by spending much of his time in the country, thereby at one and the same time removing the weight of envy and giving a breathing-space to those who thought they were oppressed by his glory. But Timesias of Clazomenae was in other respects a good man in his service to the State, but by doing everything himself he had aroused rancour and hatred; but of this he was unaware until the following incident took place: — Some boys were knocking a knuckle-bone out of a hole when he was passing by; and some of them said it was sit in the hole, but the boy who had struck at it said: “I’d like to knock the brains out of Timesias as truly as this has been knocked out of the hole.” Timesias, hearing this and understanding that dislike of him had permeated all the people, returned home and told his wife what had happened; and directing her to pack up and follow him, he went immediately away from his house and out from the city. And it appears that Themistocles, when he meet with some treatment from the Athenians, said, “Why, my dear people, are you tired of receiving repeated benefits?”

Now of such sayings some are well said, others are not. For so far as goodwill and solicitude for the common weal are concerned, a statesman should not hold aloof from any part of public affairs, but should pay attention to them all and inform himself about all details; nor should he, as the ship’s gear called sacred is stowed apart, hold himself aloof, waiting for the extreme necessities and fortunes of the State; but perform other duties by means of different instruments operated by different agents, thus giving a turn or a twist to the instruments while they sit apart, and they make use of sailors, look-out men, and boatswains, some of whom they often call to the stern and entrust with the tiller, just so it is fitting that the statesman should yield office to others and should invite them to the orators’ platform in a gracious and kindly manner, and he should not try to administer all the affairs of the State by his own speeches, decrees, and actions, but should have good, trustworthy men and employ each of them for each particular service according to his fitness. So Pericles made use of Menippus for the position of general, humbled the Council of the Areopagus by means of Ephialtes, passed the decree against the Megarians by means of Charinus, and sent Lampon out as founder of Thurii. For, when power seems to be distributed among many, not only does the weight of hatreds and enmities become less troublesome, but there is also greater efficiency in the conduct of affairs. For just as the division of the hand into fingers does not make it weak, but renders it a more skillful instrument for use, so the statesman who gives to others a share in the government Emakes action more effective by co operation. But he who through insatiable greed of fame or power puts the whole burden of the State upon himself and sets himself even to tasks for which he is not fitted by nature or by training (as Cleon set himself to leading armies, Philopoemen to commanding ships, and Hannibal to haranguing the people) — such a man has no excuse when he makes mistakes, but will have to hear Euripides quoted to boot,

A joiner thou, yet didst a task essay

That was no carpentry.

So, being no persuasive speaker, you went on an embassy, or being easy-going you undertook administration, being ignorant of accounting you were treasurer, or when old and feeble you took command of an army. But Pericles divided the power with Cimon so that he should himself be ruler in the city and Cimon should man the ships and wage war against the barbarians; for one of them was more gifted for civic government, the other for war. And Eubulus the Anaphlystian also is commended because, although few men enjoyed so much confidence and power as he, yet he administered none of the Hellenic affairs and did not take the post of general, but applied himself to the finances, increased the revenues, and did the State much good thereby. But Iphicrates was jeered at when he did exercises in speaking at his home in the presence of many hearers; 813 for even if he had been a good speaker, and not, as he was, a poor one, he ought to have been contented with glory in arms and to have left the school to the sophists.

16 1 But since there is in every democracy a spirit of malice and fault-finding directed against men in public life, and they suspect that many desirable measures, if there is no party opposition and no expression of dissent, are done by conspiracy, and this subjects a man’s associations and friends to calumny, statesmen ought not to let any real enmity or disagreement against themselves subsist, as Onomademuse the popular leader of the Chians did when, after his victory in the factional strife, he refused to have all his opponents banished from the city, “that we may not,” he said, “begin to quarrel with our friends when we have altogether got rid of our enemies.” Now that was silly; but when the populace are suspicious about some important and salutary measure, the statesmen when they come to the assembly ought not all to express the same opinion, as if by previous agreement, but two or three of the friends should dissent and quietly speak on the other side, then change in their position as if they had been convinced; for in this way they draw the people along with them, since they appear to be influenced only by the public advantage. In small matters, however, which do not amount to much, Cit is not a bad thing to let one’s friends really disagree, each following his own reasoning, that in matters of the highest importance their agreement upon the best policy may not seem to be prearranged.

17 1 Now the statesman is always by nature ruler of the State, like the leader bee in the hive, and bearing this in mind he ought to keep public matters in his own hands; but offices which are called “authoritative” and are elective he ought not to seek too eagerly or often, for love of office is neither dignified nor popular; nor should he refuse them, if the people offer them and call him to them in accordance with the law, but even if they be too small for a man of his reputation, he should accept them and exercise them with zeal; for it is right that men who are adorned with the highest offices should in turn adorn the lesser, and that statesmen should show moderation, giving up and yielding some part of the weightier offices, such as the generalship at Athens, the prytany at Rhodes, and the Boeotarchy here, and should add to the minor offices dignity and grandeur, that we may not be despised in connexion with the latter, nor envied on account of the former. And when entering upon any office whatsoever, you must not only call to mind those considerations of which Pericles reminded himself when he assumed the cloak of a general: “Take care, Pericles; you are ruling free men, you are ruling Greeks, Athenian citizens,” but you must also say to yourself: “You who rule are a subject, ruling a State controlled by proconsuls, the agents of peace; ‘these are not the spearmen of the plain,’ nor is this ancient Sardis, nor the famed Lydian power.” You should arrange your cloak more carefully and from the office of the generals keep your eyes upon the orators’ platform, and not have great pride or confidence in your crown, since you see the boots of Roman soldiers just above your head. No, you should imitate the actors, who, while putting into the performance their own passion, character, and reputation, yet listen to the prompter and do not go beyond the degree of liberty in rhythms and metres permitted by those in authority over them. For to fail in one’s part in public life brings not mere hissing or catcalls or stamping of feet, but many have experienced

The dread chastiser, axe that cleaves the neck,

as did your countryman Pardalas and his followers when they forgot their proper limitations. And many another, banished to an island, has become, as Solon says,

Pholegandrian or Sicinete,

814 No more Athenian, having changed his home.

Furthermore when we see little children trying playfully to bind their fathers’ shoes on their feet or fit their crowns upon their heads, we only laugh, but the officials in the cities, when they foolishly urge the people to imitate the deeds, ideals, and actions of their ancestors, however unsuitable they may be to the present times and conditions, stir up the common folk and, though what they do is laughable, what is done to them is no laughing matter, unless they are merely treated with utter contempt. Indeed there are many acts of the Greeks of former times by recounting which the statesman can mould and correct the characters of our contemporaries, for example, at Athens by calling to mind, not deeds in war, but such things as the decree of amnesty after the downfall of the Thirty Tyrants, the fining of Phrynichus for presenting in a tragedy the capture of Miletus, their decking their heads with garlands when Cassander refounded Thebes; how, when they heard of the clubbing at Argos, in which the Argives killed fifteen hundred of their own citizens, they decreed that an expiatory sacrifice be carried about in the assembly; and how, when they were searching the houses at the time of Harpalus’s frauds, they passed by only one, that of a newly married man. By emulating acts like these Cit is even now possible to resemble our ancestors, but Marathon, the Eurymedon, Plataea, and all the other examples which make the common folk vainly to swell with pride and kick up their heels, should be left to the schools of the sophists.

18 1 And not only should the statesman show himself and his native State blameless towards our rulers, but he should also have always a friend among the men of high station who have the greatest power as a firm bulwark, so to speak, of his administration; for the Romans themselves are most eager to promote the political interests of their friends; and it is a fine thing also, when we gain advantage from the friendship of great men, to turn it to the welfare of our community, as Polybius and Panaetius, through Scipio’s goodwill towards them, conferred great benefits upon their native States. And Caesar, when he took Alexandria, drove into the city holding Areius by the hand and conversing with him only of all his friends, then said to the Alexandrians, who were expecting the most extreme measures and were begging for mercy, that he pardoned them on account of the greatness of their city and for the sake of its founder Alexander, “and thirdly,” said he, “as a favour to my friend here.” Is there any comparison between such a favour and the procuratorships and governorships of provinces from which many talents may be gained and in pursuit of which most public men grow old haunting the doors of other men’s houses and leaving their own affairs uncared for? Or should we correct Euripides when he chants the sentiment that if a man must spend sleepless nights and haunt another man’s court and subject himself to an intimacy with a great man, it is best to do so for the sake of his native land, but otherwise it is best to welcome and hold fast friendships based on equality and justice?

19 1 However, the statesman, while making his native State readily obedient to its sovereigns, must not further humble it; nor, when the leg has been fettered, go on and subject the neck to the yoke, as some who do, by referring everything, great or small, to the sovereigns, bring the reproach of slavery upon their country, or rather wholly destroy its constitutional government, making it dazed, timid, and powerless in everything. For just as those who have become accustomed neither to dine nor to bathe except by the physician’s orders do not even enjoy that degree of health which nature grants them, so those who invite the sovereign’s decision on every decree, meeting of a council, granting of a privilege, or administrative measure, 815 force their sovereign to be their master more than he desires. And the cause of this is chiefly the greed and contentiousness of the foremost citizens; for either, in cases in which they are injuring their inferior, they force them into exile from the State, or, in matters concerning which they differ among themselves, since they are unwilling to occupy an inferior position among their fellow-citizens, they call in those who are mightier; and as a result senate, popular assembly, courts, and the entire local government lose their authority. But the statesman should soothe the ordinary citizens by granting them equality and the powerful by concessions in return, thus keeping them within the bounds of the local government and solving their difficulties Bas if they were diseases, making for them, as it were, a sort of secret political medicine; he will prefer to be himself defeated among his fellow-citizens rather than to be successful by outraging and destroying the principles of justice in his own city and he will beg everyone else to do likewise, and will teach them how great an evil is contentiousness. But as it is, not only do they not make honourable and gracious compromises with their fellow-citizens and tribesmen at home and with their neighbours and colleagues in office, but they carry their dissensions outside to the doors of professional orators and put them in the hands of lawyers, to the their own great injury and disgrace. For when physicians cannot entirely eradicate diseases, they turn them outwards to the surface of the body; but the statesman, if he cannot keep the State entirely free from troubles, will at any rate try to cure and control whatever disturbs it and causes sedition, keeping it meanwhile hidden within the State, so that it may have as little need as possible of physicians and medicine drawn from outside. For the policy of the statesman should be that which holds fast to security and avoids the tumultuous and mad impulse of empty opinion, as has been said. In his disposition, however, high spirit and

courage must be, full of daring,

Dauntless, and such as inspires all men who for weal of their country

‘Gainst men of hostile intent

and against difficult conditions and times stand firm in resistance and struggle to the end. For he must not create storms himself, and yet he must not desert the State when storms fall upon it; he must not stir up the State and make it reel perilously, but when it is reeling and in danger, he must come to its assistance and employ his frankness of speech as a sacred anchor heaved over in the greatest perils. Such were the troubles which overtook the Pergamenes under Nero and the Rhodians recently under Domitian and the Thessalians earlier under Augustus, when they burned Petraeus alive.

Then slumb’ring thou never wouldst see him,

nor cowering in fear, the man who is really a statesman, nor would you see how throwing blame upon others and putting himself out of danger, but you will see him serving on embassies, sailing the seas and saying first not only

Here we have come, the slayers; avert thou the plague, O Apollo,

but, even though he had no part in the wrongdoing of the people, taking dangers upon himself in their behalf. For this is noble; and besides being noble, one man’s excellence and wisdom by arousing admiration has often mitigated anger which has been aroused against the whole people and has dissipated the threatened terror and bitterness. Something of that sort seems to have happened to the Persian king in the case of Boulis and Sperchis the Spartans, and happened to Pompey in the case of Sthenno, when, as he was going to punish the Mamertines for revolting, Sthenno told him that he would be doing wrong if he should destroy many innocent men for the fault of one; for, he said, it was he himself who had caused the city to revolt by persuading his friends and compelling his enemies. This so affected Pompey that he let the city go unpunished and also treated Sthenno kindly. But Sulla’s guest-friend, practising virtue of the same sort but not having to do with the same sort of man, met with a noble end. 816 For when Sulla, after the capture of Praeneste, was going to slaughter all the rest of the citizens but was letting that one man go on account of his guest-friendship, he declared that he would not be indebted for his life to the slayer of his fatherland, and then mingled with his fellow-citizens and was cut down with them. However, we must pray to be spared such crises and must hope for better things.

20 1 And deeming every public office to be something great and sacred, we must also pay the highest honour to one who holds an office; but the honour of an office resides in concord and friendship with one’s colleagues much more than in crowns and a purple-bordered robe. But those who consider that serving together in a campaign or in the school for young citizens is the beginning of friendship, but regard joint service in the generalship or other office as the cause of enmity, have failed to avoid one of the three evils; for either they regard their colleagues as their equals and are themselves factious, or they envy them as their superiors, or despise them as their inferiors. But a man ought to conciliate his superior, add prestige to his inferior, honour his equal, and be affable and friendly to all, considering that they have been made

Friends, not of festive board,

nor of tankard,

nor of fireside’s cheer,

but all alike by vote of the people, and that they bear goodwill toward one another as a heritage, so to speak, from their fatherland. At any rate Scipio was criticized in Rome because, when he entertained his friends at the dedication of the temple of Hercules, he did not include his colleague Mummius; for even if in general the two men did not consider themselves friends, on such occasions they usually thought it proper to show honour and friendliness to each other on account of their office. Inasmuch, therefore, as the omission of so slight an act of courtesy brought a reputation for haughtiness to Scipio, a man in other respects admirable, how can anyone be considered honourable and fair-minded who detracts from the dignity of a colleague in office, or maliciously flouts him by actions which reveal ambitious rivalry, or is so self-willed that he arrogates and annexes to himself everything, in short, at the expense of his colleague? I recollect that when I was still a young man I was sent with another as envoy to the proconsul; the other man was somehow left behind. I alone met the proconsul and accomplished the business. Now when I came back and was to make the report of our mission, my father left his seat and told me in private not to say “I went,” but “we went,” not “I said,” but “we said,” and in all other ways to associate my colleague in a joint report. For that sort of thing is not only honourable and kind, but it also takes the sting out of any envy of our reputation. And therefore great men ascribe to God and to Fortune a share in their successes, as Timoleon, who put down the tyrannies in Sicily, founded a sanctuary of Automatia (Chance); and Python, when he was admired and honoured by the Athenians for slaying Cotys, said “God did this, borrowing from me the hand that did the deed.” And Theopompus, King of the Lacedaemonians, replied to the man who said that Sparta was preserved because the kings were fitted to rule, “No, it is rather because the people are fitted to obey.”

21 1 Now both of these arise from each other. Most people say and believe that it is the business of political teaching to cause men to be good subjects; for, they say, the subject class is in every State larger than the ruling class; and each official rules but a short time, whereas he is ruled all the time, if he is a citizen of a democracy; so that it is a most excellent and useful thing to learn to obey those in authority, even if they happen to be deficient in power and reputation. For it is absurd that in a tragedy the chief actor, even though he is a Theodorus or a Polus, often makes his entrance after a hireling who takes third-class parts and addresses in humble fashion, just because the latter wears the diadem and sceptre, 817 but that in real affairs and in government the rich and famous man belittles and despises the official who is plebeian and poor, thereby using his own high standing to insult and destroy that of the State, instead of enhancing it rather and adding to the office the esteem and power derived from himself. So at Sparta the kings gave precedence to the ephors, and if any other Spartan was summoned, he did not walk slowly in obeying the summons, but by running eagerly at full speed through the market-place they exhibited to their fellow-citizens their spirit of obedience, rejoicing in paying honour to their rulers. They did not behave like some uncultured and unmannerly persons who, as if swaggering in the excess of their own power, abuse the umpires at the games, revile the choregi at the Dionysiac festival, and jeer at generals and gymnasiarchs, not knowing and not understanding that it is often more glorious to pay honour than to receive it. For to a man who has great power in the State greater distinction accrues through serving in the bodyguard and the escort of an official than through being so served and escorted by him, or rather the latter brings him dislike and envy, but the former brings true reputation, that which comes from goodwill; and by being seen sometimes at the official’s door, by greeting him first, and by putting him in the middle place in walking a man adds lustre to the State without taking anything from himself.

22 1 And it is also a service to the people sometimes to endure the evil speech and anger of a man in office, repeating to oneself either the words of Diomedes:

For unto him will accrue mighty glory,

or the saying of Demosthenes, that now he is not only Demosthenes, but also one of the thesmothetae, or a choregus, or the wearer of a crown. We should, therefore, put off our requital to the right time; for then either we shall attack him after his term of office is ended or in the delay our gain will be the cessation of anger.

23 1 One should, however, always \L& with every official in zeal, forethought for the common good, and wisdom; if they are worthy men, by voluntarily suggesting and pointing out the things to be done and allowing them to make use of well-considered ideas and to be held in high esteem because they are benefactors of the community. But if there is in them any reluctance, delay, or ill-will as to putting such suggestions into effect, then a man ought to come forward of himself and address the people, and he should not neglect or slight the public interests on the ground that because someone else is in office it is not proper for him to meddle and mix in the administration of affairs. For the law always gives the first rank in the government to him who does what is right and recognizes what is advantageous. “Now there was,” says he, “in the army a man named Xenophon, neither a general nor a captain,” but by perceiving what was needed and daring to do it he put himself in command and saved the Greeks. And of Philopoemen’s deeds the most brilliant is this, that when Nabis had taken Messenê, and the general of the Achaeans was so cowardly that he would not go to the assistance of the place, he himself with the most eager patriots set out and took the city without any decree of the council. Certainly it is well to make innovations, not for the sake of small or casual matters, but in cases of necessity, as Philopoemen did, or for glorious causes, as Epameinondas did when contrary to the law he added four months to the Boeotarchy, in which time he invaded Laconia and carried out his measures at Messenê; so that if any accusation or blame be brought against us on this account we may have necessity as our defence against the charge, or the greatness and glory of the action as a consolation for the risk.

24 1 A saying of Jason, monarch of the Thessalians, is recorded, which he always used to repeat whenever he was taking violent and annoying measures against individuals: 818 “It is inevitable that those should act unjustly in small matters who wish to act justly in great matters.” That is recognized at once as the saying of a despot; but this is a more statesmanlike precept: “Win the favour of the people by giving way in small things in order that in greater matters you may oppose them stubbornly and thus prevent them from committing errors.” For a man who is always very exact and strenuous about everything, not giving way or yielding at all, but always harsh and inexorable, gets the people into the habit of opposing him and being out of temper with him;

But he should let the sheet

Run out a bit before the waves’ great force,

Bsometimes by giving way and playing graciously with them himself, as at sacrifices, public games, and spectacles in the theatre, and sometimes by pretending not to see or hear their errors, just as we treat the errors of the young people in a family, in order that the force of his rebukes and outspoken criticism — like that of a medicine — may not become exhausted or stale, but may in matters of greater importance, retaining its full strength and credit, take a stronger hold upon the people and sting them into obedience. Alexander, for example, when he heard that his sister had had intercourse with a handsome young man, did not burst into a rage, but merely remarked that she also ought to be allowed to get some enjoyment out of her royal station. In making such concessions he did not act rightly or in a manner worthy of himself; for the weakening of a throne and outrageous conduct should not be regarded as mere enjoyment. But to the people the statesman will, so far as is possible, permit no outrageous conduct towards the citizens, no confiscation of others’ property, nor distribution of public funds, but by persuasion, arguments, and threats he will oppose to the bitter end desires of that sort, by nourishing and increasing which Cleon and his partisans produced in the State, as Plato says, a swarm of drones with stings. But if the people, taking an ancestral festival or the worship of some god as a pretext, are bent upon some public spectacle or a slight distribution of funds, or a gift for the general good or some lavish shows prompted by private ambition, for such purposes let them reap the benefit both of their generosity and of their prosperity. Why, among the public acts of Pericles and of Demetrius are many of that sort, and Cimon beautified the market-place by planting plane-trees and laying out walks. And Cato, seeing that the people was being greatly stirred up by Caesar in the affair of Catiline and was dangerously inclined towards a revolution, persuaded the senate to vote a dole to the poor, and the giving of this halted the disturbance and ended the uprising. For just as a physician, after drawing off a great deal of infected blood, Esupplies a little harmless nourishment, so the statesman, after doing away with something big which was discreditable or harmful, appeases the spirit of discontent and fault-finding by some slight and kindly act of favour.

25 1 It is also expedient to divert the people’s interest to other useful things, as Demades did when he had the revenues of the State in his charge; for when the people were eager to send out triremes to aid those who were in revolt against Alexander, and were urging him to furnish funds, “You have,” he said, “funds available, for I have made preparations for the Pitcher Festival so that each of you is to receive a half-mina, but if you had rather apply the funds to this other purpose, use your own money for the festival.” And in this way, since they gave up the expedition in order not to lose the distribution of money, he removed any ground of complaint on Alexander’s part against the people of Athens. For there are many unprofitable measures which the statesman cannot avert by direct means, but he must use some sort of roundabout and circuitous methods, 819 such as Phocion employed when ordered at an inopportune time to invade Boeotia. He immediately issued a proclamation calling all those from the age of military service up to sixty years to join the ranks, and when the older men made a violent protest, he said: “What is there terrible about it? For I, your general, who am eighty years old, shall be with you.” So in this way we should prevent inopportune embassies by listing among the envoys many who are not qualified to go, and useless construction by calling for contributions, and improper lawsuits and missions abroad by ordering the parties to appear in court together and together to go abroad on the missions. And those who propose such measures and incite the people to adopt them should be the first to be haled into court and made to take the responsibility for putting them into effect; for so they will either draw back and appear to be themselves nullifying the measure or they will stick to it and share its unpleasant features.

26 1 When, however, something important and useful but requiring much conflict and serious effort is to be accomplished, then try to select from among your friends those who are most powerful, or from among the most powerful those who are easiest to get along; for they are least likely to act against you and most likely to work with you, since they possess wisdom without contentiousness. And, moreover, you should know your own nature and choose for any purpose for which you are naturally less fitted than others, men who are more able rather than men like yourself, as Diomedes chose to go with him on the scouting expedition the man of prudence and passed over the men of courage. For actions are thus more equally balanced, and contention does not arise among men whose ambitions proceed from different virtues and abilities. So, if you are not a good speaker, take an orator as your assistant in a lawsuit or your colleague in an embassy, as Pelopidas took Epameinondas; and if, like Callicratidas, you are too lofty of speech and not persuasive in addressing the masses, choose a man who is winning in his speech and conciliatory; and if you are physically weak and incapable of hard work, choose a man who is fond of labour and strong, as Nicias chose Lamachus. For on this principle Geryon would have been enviable for having many legs, arms, and eyes, if he had directed them all by one mind. But statesmen, by uniting for one purpose not only men’s persons and funds, but also their fortunes, abilities, and virtues, if they are in agreement, can gain greater reputation in connexion with the same action than by other means, not behaving like the Argonauts, who left Heracles behind and then were forced to work through the women’s quarters and use magic and drugs to save themselves and steal the golden fleece.

When entering some sanctuaries men leave their gold outside; but iron, one may say, they do not at all carry into any sanctuary. And since the orators’ platform is a sanctuary common to Zeus the Counsellor and the Protector of Cities, to Themis and to Justice, do you strip off all love of wealth and of money, as you would iron full of rust and a disease of the soul, cast them straightway at the beginning into the market-place of hucksters and money-lenders,

and turning your back depart from them,

believing that a man who makes money out of public funds is stealing from sanctuaries, from tombs, from his friends, through treason and by false testimony, that he is an untrustworthy adviser, a perjured judge, a venal magistrate, in brief not free from any kind of iniquity. And therefore there is no need of saying much about these evils.

27 1 But ambition, although it is a more pretentious word than “covetousness,” is no less pernicious in the State; for there is more daring in it; since it is innate, not in slothful and abject spirits, but in the most vigorous and impetuous, and the surge which comes from the masses, raising it on the crest of the wave and sweeping it along by shouts of praise, 820 often makes it unrestrained and unmanageable. Therefore, just as Plato said that young people should be told from childhood that it is not proper for them to wear gold on their persons or to possess it, since they have a gold of their own mingled in their souls, — a figurative reference, I believe, to the virtue derived by descent, which permeates their natures, — so let us moderate our ambition, saying that we have in ourselves honour, a gold uncorrupted, undefiled, and unpolluted by envy and fault-finding, which increases along with reasoning and the contemplation of our acts and public measures. Therefore we have no need of honours painted, modelled, or cast in bronze, in which even that which is admired is really the work of another; for the person who receives praise is not the man for whom the “trumpeter” or the “doryphorus,” for example, was made, but the man by whom it was made. Cato, Rome then beginning to be full of portrait statues, refused to let one be made of himself, saying, “I prefer to have people ask why there is not a statue of me rather than why there is one.” Such honours do indeed arouse envy, and the people think that they are themselves under obligations to men who have not received them, but that those who have received them are oppressors of the people, as men who demand payment for their services. Therefore, just as a man who has sailed past the Syrtis and is then capsized at the channel has done nothing so very great or glorious, so the man who has watched over the treasury and the public revenue, but is then found wanting in the presidency or the prytany, is indeed dashed against a lofty promontory, but gets a ducking all the same. No, that man is the best who wants no such things and even avoids and refuses them when offered. But if it is not easy to reject some favour or some kindly sentiment of the people, when it is so inclined, for men engaged in a political struggle for which the prize is not money or gifts, but which is a truly sacred contest worthy of a crown, a mere inscription suffices, a tablet, a decree, or a green branch such as Epimenides received from the Acropolis after purifying the city. And Anaxagoras, giving up the honours which had been granted him, requested that on the day of his death the children be allowed to play and be free from their lessons. And to the seven Persians who killed the magi the privilege was granted that they and their descendants should wear their headdress tilted forward over the forehead; for they made this, so it appears, their secret sign when they undertook their act. And there is something that indicates public spirit, too, about the honour received by Pittacus; for, when he was told to take as much as he wished of the land which he had gained for the citizens, he took only as much as he could throw a javelin over. And the Roman Cocles received as much as he — and he was lame — could plough around in one day. For the honour should not be payment for the action, but a symbol, that it may last for a long time, as those just mentioned have lasted. But of all the three hundred statues of Demetrius of Phalerum not one acquired rust or dirt; they were all destroyed while he was still living; and those of Demades were melted down into chamber-pots. Things like that have happened to many honours, they having become offensive, not only because the recipient was worthless, but also because the gift bestowed was too great. And therefore the best and surest way to ensure the duration of honours is to reduce their cost but those which are great and top-heavy and weighty are, like ill-proportioned statues, quickly overturned.

28 1 And I now give the name “honours” to those which the multitude, to quote Empedocles,

Do not call as is right; and I, too, myself follow custom.

For the statesman will not despise the true honour and favour founded upon the goodwill and disposition of those who remember his actions, 821 nor will he disdain reputation and avoid “pleasing his neighbours,” as Democritus demanded. For not even the greeting of dogs nor the affection of horses is to be spurned by huntsmen and horse-trainers, but it is both advantageous and pleasant to instil into animals which are brought up with us and live with us such a disposition towards us as was exhibited by the dog of Lysimachus and as the poet tells us that Achilles’ horses felt towards Patroclus. And I believe even bees would come off better if they would only welcome and placate their keepers and attendants instead of stinging them and making them angry. But as it is, people punish bees with smoke and lead unruly horses and runaway dogs by force of bits and dog-collars; but nothing makes a man willingly tractable and gentle to another man except trust in his goodwill and belief in his nobility and justice. And therefore Demosthenes is right in declaring that the greatest safeguard States possess against tyrants is distrust; for that part of the soul with which we trust is most easily taken captive. Therefore just as Cassandra’s prophetic power was useless to the citizens because she was held in no esteem, “For God,” she says,

“has made me prophesy in vain,

And those who suffer or have suffered woes

Have called me ‘wise’; but ere they suffer, ‘mad,’ “

so the trust which the citizens reposed in Archytas and their goodwill towards Battus was, on account of their reputation, of great advantage to those who made use of them. The first and most important advantage inherent in the reputation of statesmen is this: the trust in them which affords them an entrance into public affairs; and the second is that the goodwill of the multitude is a weapon of defence for the good against the slanderous and wicked,

as when a mother

Wards off a fly from her child when he lieth asleep in sweet slumber,

keeping off envy and in the matter of power making the low-born equal to the nobles, the poor to the rich, and the private citizen to the office-holders; and in short, when truth and virtue are added to it, such goodwill is a steady fair wind wafting a man into political office. Now consider the contrary disposition and learn of it by examples. For the men of Italy violated the daughters and the wife of Dionysius, killed them, and then burned their bodies and scattered the ashes from a boat over the sea. But when a certain man named Menander, who had been a good king of the Bactrians, died in camp, the cities celebrated his funeral as usual in other respects, but in respect to his remains they put forth rival claims and only with difficulty came to terms, agreeing that they should divide the ashes equally and go away and should erect monuments to him in all their cities. But, on the other hand, the Agrigentines, when they had got rid of Phalaris, decreed that no one should wear a grey cloak; for the tyrant’s servants had worn grey garments. But the Persians, because Cyrus was hook-nosed, Feven to this day love hook-nosed men and consider them the most handsome.

29 1 So of all kinds of love that which is engendered in states and peoples for an individual because of his virtue is at once the strongest and the most divine; but those falsely named and falsely attested honours which are derived from giving theatrical performances, making distributions of money, or offering gladiatorial shows, are like harlots’ flatteries, since the masses always smile upon him who gives to them and does them favours, granting him an ephemeral and uncertain reputation. And so he who first said that the people with ruined by the first man who bought his favour was well aware that the multitude loses its strength when it succumbs to bribe-taking; 822 but those also who give such bribes should bear in mind that they are destroying themselves when they purchase reputation by great expenditures, thus making the multitude strong and bold in the thought that they have power to give and take away something important.

30 1 We ought not, however, on this account to be niggardly as to the customary public contributions, if we are in prosperous circumstances; since the masses are more hostile to a rich man who does not give them a share of his private possessions than to a poor man who steals from the public funds, for they think the former’s conduct is due to arrogance and contempt of them, but the latter’s to necessity. First, then, let the gifts be made without bargaining for anything; for so they surprise and overcome the recipients more completely; and secondly they should be given on some occasion which offers a good and excellent pretext, one which is connected with the worship of a god and leads the people to piety; for at the same time there springs up in the minds of the masses a strong disposition to believe that the deity is great and majestic, when they see the men whom they themselves honour and regard as great so liberally and zealously vying with each other in honouring the divinity. Therefore, just as Plato withheld the Lydian and the Ionian musical modes from the education of the young, because the one arouses that part of the soul which is inclined towards mourning and grief and the other strengthens that part which readily slips into pleasures and grows wanton, so you must, if possible, remove from the State all those free exhibitions which excite and nourish the murderous and brutal or the scurrilous and licentious spirit, or if you cannot do that, avoid them and oppose the multitude when they demand them. But always make the objects of your expenditures useful and moderate, having as their purpose either what is good or what is necessary, or at any rate what is pleasant and agreeable without anything harmful or outrageous in it.

31 1 But if your property is moderate and in relation to your needs strictly circumscribed “as by centre and radius,” it is neither ignoble nor humiliating at all to confess your poverty and to withdraw from among those who have the means for public expenditures, instead of borrowing money and making yourself at once a pitiful and a ridiculous object in the matter of your public contributions; for men are plainly seen to lack resources when they keep annoying their friends or truckling to money-lenders; so that it is not reputation or power, but rather shame and contempt, which they acquire by such expenditures. And therefore it is always desirable in connexion with such things to remember Lamachus and Phocion; for the latter, when the Athenians at a sacrifice called upon him to contribute and repeatedly raised a clamour, said, “I should be ashamed if I gave you a contribution and did not pay Callicles here what I owe him,” pointing to his money-lender. And Lamachus always, when he was general, entered in his accounts money for shoes and a cloak for himself. And when Hermon tried to avoid office on the plea of poverty, the Thessalians voted to give him a flask of wine monthly and a measure of meal every four days. So it is not ignoble to confess poverty, and poor men, if by reason of their virtue they enjoy freedom of speech and public confidence, have no less influence in their cities than those who give public entertainments and exhibitions. The statesman must, then, do his best to control himself in such matters and not go down into the plain on foot to fight with cavalry; if he is poor, he must not produce foot-races, theatrical shows, and banquets in competition with the rich for reputation and power, but he should vie with those who try always to lead the State on the strength of virtue and wisdom, combined with reason, 823 for in such are found not only nobility and dignity but also the power to win and attract the people, a thing “more desirable than gold coins of Croesus.” For the good man is neither presumptuous nor offensive, and the prudent man is not over-blunt in his speech, nor does he

Walk with a mien his townsmen bitter find,

but in the first place he is affable and generally accessible and approachable for all, keeping his house always unlocked as a harbour of refuge for those in need, and showing his solicitude and friendliness, not only by acts of service, but also by sharing the griefs of those who fail and the joys of those who succeed; and he is in no way disagreeable or offensive by reason of the number of the servants who attend him at the bath or by appropriating seats at the theatre, nor is he conspicuous for invidious exhibitions of luxury and extravagance; but he is on an equal level with others in his clothing and daily life, in the bringing up of his children and as regards the servants who wait upon his wife, as one who wishes to live like the masses and be friendly with them. And, moreover, he shows himself a kindly counsellor, an advocate who accepts no fee, and a kind-hearted conciliator when husbands are at variance with their wives or friends with one another. He spends no small part of the day engaged in the public business on the orators’ platform of the senate nor the assembly, and thenceforth all the rest of his life he

Draws to himself as north-east wind draws clouds

services and commissions from every quarter. But since he is always devoting his thoughts to the public weal and regards public office as his life and his work, not, like most people, as an interruption to leisure and a compulsory expense, — by all these and similar qualities he turns and attracts the people towards himself, for they see that the flatteries and enticements of others are spurious and counterfeit when compared with his care and forethought. The flatterers of Demetrius would not address the other monarchs as kings, but called Seleucus “Ruler of Elephants” and Lysimachus “Guardian of the Treasure” and Ptolemy “Admiral of the Fleet” and Agathocles “Lord of the Isles”; but the multitude, even if at first they reject the good and wise man, afterwards, when they have become acquainted with his truthfulness and his character, consider him alone a statesmanlike, public-spirited man and a ruler, whereas they consider and call the others, one a provider of choruses, one a giver of banquets, and one a director of athletics. Then, just as at banquets, though Callias or Alcibiades pay the bill, it is Socrates to whom they listen, and Socrates on whom all eyes are turned, Eso in States in which the conditions are sound Ismenias makes contributions, Lichas gives dinners, and Niceratus provides choruses, but it is Epameinondas, Aristeides, and Lysander who are the rulers, public men, and generals. So, observing these things, we must not be humiliated or overwhelmed by the reputation with the masses gained from theatres, kitchens, and assembly-halls, remembering that it lasts but a short time and ends the minute the gladiatorial and dramatic shows are over, since there is nothing honourable or dignified in it.

32 1 Now those who are skilled in tending and keeping bees think that the hive which hums loudest and is most full of noise is thriving and in good condition; but he to whom God has given the care of the rational and political swarm will judge of its happiness chiefly by the quietness and tranquillity of the people; he will accept and imitate to the best of his ability the other precepts of Solon, but will wonder in great perplexity why that great man prescribed that in case of factional disorder whoever joined neither faction should be deprived of civic rights.k 824 For in a body afflicted with disease the beginning of a change to health does not come from the diseased parts, but it comes when the condition in the healthy parts gains strength and drives out that which is character to nature; and in a people afflicted with faction, if it is not dangerous and destructive but is destined to cease sometime, there must be a strong, permanent, and permeating admixture of sanity and soundness; for to this element there flows from the men of understanding that which is akin to it, and then it permeates the part which is diseased; but States which have fallen into complete disorder are utterly ruined unless they meet with some external necessity and chastisement and are thus forcibly compelled by their misfortunes to be reasonable. Yet certainly it is not fitting in time of disorder to sit without feeling or grief, singing the praises of your own impassiveness and of the inactive and blessed life, and rejoicing in the follies of others; on the contrary, at such times you should by all means put on the buskin of Theramenes, conversing with both parties and joining neither; for you will appear to be, not an outsider by not joining in wrongdoing, but a common partisan of all by coming to their aid; and your not sharing in their misfortunes will not arouse envy, if it is plain that you sympathize with all alike. But the best thing is to see to it in advance that factional discord shall never arise among them and to regard this as the greatest and noblest function of what may be called the art of statesmanship. For observe that of the greatest blessings which States can enjoy, — peace, liberty, plenty, abundance of men, and concord, — so far as peace is concerned the peoples have no need of statesmanship at present; for all war, both Greek and foreign, has been banished from among us and has disappeared; and of liberty the peoples have as great a share as our rulers grant them, and perhaps more would not be better for them; but bounteous productiveness of the soil, kindly tempering of the seasons, that wives may bear “children like to their sires,” and that the offspring may live in safety — these things the wise man will ask the gods in his prayers to grant his fellow-citizens.

There remains, then, for the statesman, of those activities which fall within his province, only this — and it is the equal of any of the other blessings: — always to instil concord and friendship in those who dwell together with him and to remove strifes, discords, and all enmity. He will talk, as in the case of quarrels among friends, first with the persons who think they are the more aggrieved, and will appear to share their feeling of wrong and anger, then he will try in this way to mollify them and teach them that those who let wrongs go unheeded are superior to those who are quarrelsome and try to compel and overcome others, Enot only in reasonableness and character, but also in wisdom and greatness of spirit, and that by yielding in a small thing they gain their point in the best and most important matters. Then he will instruct his people both individually and collectively and will call attention to the weak condition of Greek affairs, in which it is best for wise men to accept one advantage — a life of harmony and quiet — since fortune has left us no prize open for competition. For what dominion, what glory is there for those who are victorious? What sort of power is it which a small edict of a proconsul may annul or transfer to another man and which, even if it last, has nothing in it seriously worth while? But just as a conflagration does not often begin in sacred or public spaces, but some lamp left neglected in a house or some burnt rubbish causes a great flame and works public destruction, 825 so disorder in a State is not always kindled by contentions about public matters, but frequently differences arising from private affairs and offences pass thence into public life and throw the whole State into confusion. Therefore it behoves the statesman above all things to remedy or prevent these, that some of them may not arise at all and some may be quickly ended and others may not grow great and extend to public interests, but may remain merely among the persons who are at odds with one another. He should do this by noticing himself and pointing out to others that private troubles become the causes of public ones and small troubles of great ones, if they are overlooked and do not Bin the beginning receive treatment or soothing counsel.

For example, at Delphi the greatest insurrection is said to have been caused by Crates, whose daughter was to be married to Orsilaüs, the son of Phalis; but then, when at the betrothal the mixing-bowl broke in the middle of its own accord, Orsilaüs regarded that as an omen, left his bride, and went away with his father. But Crates a little later, secretly putting a sacred object of gold into their possession while they were sacrificing, caused Orsilaüs and his brother to be hurled over the precipice without trial and later slew some of their friends and relatives when they were suppliants in the sanctuary of Athena-before-the Temple. But after many such things had taken place the Delphians put Crates and his fellow-partisans to death, and with their property, which had been declared accursed, they built the lower temples. And at Syracuse there were two young men, intimate friends, one of whom, being entrusted with his friend’s beloved for safe-keeping, seduced him while the other was away; then the latter, as if to repay outrage with outrage, committed adultery with the offender’s wife. Thereupon one of the elder men came forward in the senate and moved that both be banished before the State reap the result and be infected with enmity through them. His motion, however, was not carried, and from this beginning disorder arose Dwhich caused great distress and overthrew the most excellent government. And indeed you yourself also no doubt have excellent examples at home in the enmity of Pardalas and Tyrrhenus, which came near to destroying Sardis by involving the State in rebellion and war as the result of petty private matters.

Therefore the statesman should not despise such offences as may, like diseases in a person, spread quickly, but he should take hold of them, suppress them, and cure them. For by attention, as Cato says, the great is made small and the small is reduced to nothing. And for this there is no more persuasive device Ethan for the statesman to show himself in his private differences mild and conciliatory, persisting without anger in his original reasons for disagreement, and treating no one with contentiousness, anger, or any other passion which injects harshness and bitterness into unavoidable disputes. For we put soft gloves on the hands of those who compete in the boxing-school, that the contest may not have a fatal result, its blows being soft and not painful; and in law-suits against one’s fellow-citizens it is better to treat the causes of disagreement pure and simple in one’s pleading, and not, by sharpening and poisoning matters, Fas if they were darts or arrows, with bad words, malice, and threats, to make them incurable, great, and of public importance. For a man who proceeds in this way towards those with whom he himself has to do will find that others also yield to him; and rivalries affecting public interests, if private enmities are done away with, become of slight importance and do no serious or incurable harm.

On monarchy, democracy and oligarchy

(826 a) 1 1 Now as I was myself bringing before this company as a court of judgement the talk that I presented to you yesterday, BI thought I heard, while wide awake, not in a dream, Political Wisdom saying:

Golden foundation is wrought for canticles sacred,

so the speech, which exhorts and encourages you to enter political life has been laid as a basis. “Come, let us now build walls,” building upon the exhortation the teaching which is due. And it is due to anyone who has received the exhortation and the impulse to engage in public affairs that he next hear and receive precepts of statecraft by the use of which he will, so far as is humanly possible, Cbe of service to the people and at the same time manage his own affairs with safety and rightful honour. But as a step towards that which follows and a consequence of that which has been said, we must consider what is the best form of government. For just as there are numerous modes of life for a man, so the government (politeia) is the life of a people, and therefore it is essential for us to take the best form of it; for of all forms the statesman will choose the best or, if he cannot obtain that, then the one of all the rest which is most like it.

2 1 Now the word politeia (citizenship) is defined also as “having a share of the rights in a State,” as we say the Megarians voted Alexander the politeia (citizenship); and when he made fun of their eagerness, they told him that up to that time they had conferred citizenship upon Heracles only and now upon himself. Then Alexander was astonished and accepted the gift, thinking that its rarity gave it value. But the life of a statesman, a man who is occupied in public affairs, is also called politeia (statecraft); as, for example, we commend the politeia (statecraft) of Pericles and of Bias, but condemn that of Hyperbolus and Cleon. And some people even call a single brilliant act for the public benefit a politeia (politic act), such, for example, as a gift of money, the ending of a war, the introduction of a bill in parliament; and accordingly we say nowadays that so and so has performed a politeia if he happens to have put through some needed public measure.

3 1 Besides all these, politeia is defined as an order and constitution of a State, which directs its affairs; and accordingly they say that there are three politeiae (forms of government), monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy, a comparison of which is given by Herodotus in his third book. They appear to be the most typical forms; for the others, as happens in musical scales when the strings of the primary notes are relaxed or tightened, turn out to be errors and corruptions through deficiency or excess. Of these forms of government, which have achieved the widest and greatest power in their periods of dominion, the Persians received as their lot royalty absolute and irresponsible, the Spartans oligarchy aristocratic and uncontrolled, the Athenians democracy self-governing and undiluted. When these forms are not hit exactly, their perversions and exaggerations are what are called 1 tyranny, 2 the predominance of great families, 3 or mob-rule: that is, 1 when royalty breeds violence and irresponsible action; 8272 oligarchy, arrogance and presumptuousness; 3 democracy breeds anarchy, equality, excess, and all of them folly.

4 1 So, just as a real musician will make use of every instrument harmoniously, adapting it skilfully and striking each one with regard to its natural tunefulness, and yet, following Plato’s advice, will give up guitars, banjoes, psalteries with their many sounds, harps and string triangles and prefer the lyre and the cithara; Bin the same way the real statesman will manage successfully the oligarchy that Lycurgus established at Sparta, adapting to himself the colleagues who have equal power and honour and quietly forcing them to do his will; he will also get on well in a democracy with its many sounds and strings by loosening the strings in some matters of government and tightening them in others, relaxing at the proper time and then again holding fast mightily, knowing how to resist the masses and to hold his ground against them. But if he were given the choice among governments, like so many tools, he would follow Plato’s advice and choose no other than monarchy, the only one which is able to sustain that top note of virtue, high in the highest sense, and never let it be tuned down under compulsion or expediency. For the other forms of government in a certain sense, although controlled by the statesman, control him, and although carried along by him, carry him along, since he has no firmly established strength to oppose those from whom his strength is derived, but is often compelled to exclaim in the words of Aeschylus which Demetrius the City-stormer employed against Fortune after he had lost his hegemony,

Thou fanst my flame, methinks thou burnst me up.

That we ought not to borrow

827 1 Plato in the Laws forbids people to take any water from a neighbour’s land unless they have dug on their own land down to a layer of potter’s clay, as it is called, and found that the place will not produce a flow of water; for the potter’s clay, being by nature oily and solid, holds back the water that reaches it and does not let it through; but, he says, those shall have a share of others’ water who cannot get any of their own, for the law gives relief to those in want. Ought there not, then, to be a law about money also, that people shall not borrow from others for resort to other people’s springs who have not first examined their resources at home and brought together, as from little trickles, what is useful and necessary to themselves? But now, because of their luxury and effeminacy or their extravagance, they make no use of what is their own, though they possess it, but take from others at a high rate of interest, though they have no need of doing so. There is strong evidence of this: loans are not made to people in need, but to those who wish to acquire some superfluity for themselves. And a man produces a witness and a surety to aver that, since the man has property, he deserves credit, whereas, since he has it, he ought not to be borrowing.

2 1 Why do you pay court to the banker or broker? 828 Borrow of your own table; you have drinking-cups, silver dishes, bonbonnières. Pawn these for your needs. Beautiful Aulis or Tenedos will adorn their table in their stead with pottery that is cleaner than the silver ware; it does not have the heavy, disagreeable smell of interest defiling every day like rust the surface of your extravagance, nor will it keep reminding you of the first of the month and the new moon, which, though really the holiest day of the month, the money-lenders have made accursed and detested. For as to those who, instead of selling their belongings, give them as security, not even the God of Property could save them. They are ashamed to accept a price, but not ashamed to pay interest on what is their own. And yet the great Pericles made the ornaments of the Goddess, which weighed forty talents of refined gold, so that they could be taken off, “in order,” he said, “that we may use it for the expenses of the war, and then pay back an equal amount.” And so let us likewise, when we are, as it were, besieged by our needs, refuse to admit the garrison of a money-lender, our enemy, or to allow our property to be sold into slavery. No, let us preserve our liberty by taking off what is useless from our table, our bed, our vehicles, and our daily expenses, intending to pay it back if we are fortunate.

3 1 Now the Roman women gave their ornaments as an offering to Pythian Apollo and from them made the golden bowl which was sent to Delphi; and the women of Carthage shore their heads and gave their hair to make ropes for the tension of machines and instruments in defence of their native city. But we, ashamed to be independent, enslave ourselves by mortgages and notes, when we ought to limit and restrict ourselves to actual necessities and from the proceeds of the breaking up or the sale of useless superfluities to found a sanctuary of Liberty for ourselves, our children, and our wives. The goddess Artemis at Ephesus grants to debtors when they take refuge in her sanctuary protection and safety from their debts, but the protecting and inviolable sanctuary of Frugality is everywhere wide open to sensible men, offering them a joyous and honourable expanse of plentiful leisure. For just as the Pythian prophetess in the time of Persian wars told the Athenians that the God offered them a wooden wall, and they, giving up their land, their city, their possessions, and their houses, took refuge in their ships for the sake of liberty, so to us God offers a wooden table, a pottery dish, and a coarse cloak if we wish to live as free men.

Do not abide the attack of the horsemen,

nor of yoked chariots adorned with horn or silver, which rapid interest overtakes and outruns. No, make use of any chance donkey or nag and flee from your enemy and tyrant, the money-lender, who does not, like the Persian, demand earth and water, but attacks your liberty and brings suit against your honour. If you will not pay him, he duns you; if you have funds, he won’t accept payment; if you sell, he beats down the price; if you will not sell, he forces you to do so; if you sue him, he meets you in court; if you take your oath, he orders you to do so; if you go to his door, he shuts it in your face; if you stay at home, he installs himself there and keeps knocking at your door.

4 1 For what good did Solon do the Athenians when he put an end to giving one’s person as security for debt? For debtors are slaves to all the men who ruin them, or rather not to them either (for what would be so terrible in that?), but to outrageous, barbarous, and savage slaves, like those who Plato says stand in Hades as fiery avengers and executioners over those who have been impious in life. 829 For these money-lenders make the market-place a place of the damned for the wretched debtors; like vultures they devour and flay them, “entering into their entrails,” or in other instances they stand over them and inflict on them the tortures of Tantalus by preventing them from tasting their own produce which they reap and harvest. And as Dareius sent Datis and Artaphernes against Athens with chains and fetters in their hands for their captives, in similar fashion these men, bringing against Greece jars full of signatures and notes as fetters, march against and through the cities, bnot, like Triptolemus, sowing beneficent grain, but planting roots of debts, roots productive of much toil and much interest and hard to escape from, which, as they sprout and shoot up round about, press down and strangle the cities. They say that hares at one and the same time give birth to one litter, suckle another, and conceive again;a but the loans of these barbarous rascals give birth to interest before conception; for while they are giving they immediately demand payment, while they lay money down they take it up, and they lend what they receive for money lent.

5 1 There is a saying among the Messenians,

Pylos there is before Pylos, and Pylos, a third, there is also,

but as to the money-lenders we may say

Int’rest there is before int’rest, and int’rest a third there is also.

And then they make a laughing-stock forsooth of the scientists, who say that nothing arises out of nothing; for with these men interest arises out of that which has as yet no being or existence. And they think it is a disgrace to be a tax-collector, which the law allows; for they themselves lend money contrary to law, collecting taxes from their debtors, or rather, if the truth be told, cheating them in the act of lending; for he who receives less than the face value of his note is cheated. And yet the Persians regard lying as the second among wrong-doings and being in debt as the first; for lying is often practised by debtors; but money-lenders lie more than debtors and cheat in their ledgers, when they write that they give so-and so much to so-and so, though they really give less; and the cause of their lie is avarice, not necessity or want, but insatiable greed, which in the end brings neither enjoyment nor profit to them and ruin to those whom they wrong. For they do not till the fields which they take from their debtors, nor do they live in their houses after evicting them, nor do they eat at their tables or wear their clothes, but they ruin one man first, then hunt a second, using the other as bait. For the savage practice spreads like fire, growing by the ruin and destruction of those who fall into it, consuming one after another. And the money-lender who fans and feeds this fire to the ruin of many men gains nothing, except that from time to time he can take his account-books and read how many men he has sold out, how many he has driven from their homes, and, in general, the sources from which his hoard of money, rolling in and piling up, has made such gains.

6 1 And do not think that I say this because I have declared war against the money-lenders;

Ne’er have they harried my cattle, nor ever made off with my horses;

but that I am pointing out to those who are too ready to become borrowers how much disgrace and servility there is in the practice and that borrowing is an act of extreme folly and weakness. Have you money? Do not borrow, for you are not in need. Have you no money? Do not borrow, for you will not be able to pay. Let us look at each of these two alternatives separately. Cato once said to an old man who was behaving wickedly; “Sir, when old age has so many evils of its own, why do you add to them the disgrace of wickedness?” Therefore in your own case do not heap up upon poverty, 830 which has many attendant evils, the perplexities which arise from borrowing and owing, and do not deprive poverty of the only advantage which it possesses over wealth, namely freedom from care; since by doing so you will incur the derision of the proverb,

I am unable to carry the goat, put the ox then upon me.

Being unable to carry the burden of poverty you put the money-lender upon your back, a burden difficult for even the rich to bear. “How, then, am I to live?” Do you ask this, when you have hands and feet and a voice, when you are a man capable of loving and being loved, of doing favours and being grateful for them? Live by teaching letters, by leading children to school, by being a door-keeper, by working as a sailor or a boatman; none of these is so disgraceful or disagreeable as hearing the order “Pay up.”

7 1 The well-known Roman Rutilius went up to Musonius and said, “Musonius, Zeus the Saviour, whom you imitate and emulate, is no borrower”; and Musonius answered with a smile, “He is no lender, either.” For Rutilius, who was himself a lender, was finding fault with Musonius for borrowing. This is an example of the vanity of the Stoics; for why should you bring in Zeus the Saviour, when you can use as examples things that are here before your eyes? Swallows do not borrow, ants do not borrow, creatures upon which nature has bestowed neither hands, reason, nor art; but men, with their superior intellect, support through their ingenuity horses, dogs, partridges, hares, and jackdaws in addition to themselves. Why, then, have you come to the poor opinion of yourself, that you are less persuasive than a jackdaw, more dumb than a partridge, less well-born than a dog, so that you can obtain no help from any human being by waiting on him, entertaining him, guarding him, or fighting for him? Do you not see how many opportunities are offered on land and on the sea?

Lo, even Miccylus I beheld,

says Crates,

Carding the wool, and his wife too carding the wool along with him,

Striving in terrible conflict to ‘scape from the onslaught of famine.

King Antigonus asked Cleanthes, when he met him in Athens after not seeing him for a while, “Are you still grinding corn, Cleanthes?” d”Yes, Your Majesty,” he replied; “I do it in order not to be a deserter from Zeno’s instruction, nor from philosophy either.” What a great spirit the man had who came from the mill and the kneading-trough, and with the hand which ground the flour and baked the bread wrote about the gods, the moon, the stars, and the sun! But to us such labours seem slavish. And therefore, in order to be free, we contract debts and pay court to men who are ruiners of homes, we act as bodyguard to them, dine them, make them presents, and pay them tribute, not because of our poverty (for no one lends to poor men), but because of our extravagance. For if we were content with the necessaries of life, the race of money-lenders would be as non-existent as that of Centaurs and Gorgons; but luxury produced money-lenders just as it did goldsmiths, silversmiths, perfumers, and dyers in gay colours; for our debts are incurred, not to pay for bread or wine, but for country-seats, slaves, mules, banquet-halls, and tables,b and because we give shows to the cities with unrestrained expenditure, contending in fruitless and thankless rivalries. But the man who is once involved remains a debtor all his life, exchanging, like a horse that has once been bridled, one rider for another. And there is no escape to those former pastures and meadows, but they wander like the spirits described by Empedocles, who have been expelled by the gods and thrown out from heaven:

Into the waves of the sea they are driv’n by the might of the ether;

Then on the floor of the earth the sea vomits them; earth then ejects them

Into the untiring sun’s rays; and he hurls them to eddying ether.

831 And so “one after another takes over” the borrower, first a usurer or broker of Corinth, then one of Patrae, then an Athenian, until, attacked on all sides by all of them, he is dissolved and chopped up into the small change of interest payments. For just as a man who has fallen into the mire must either get up or stay where he is, but he who turns and rolls over covers his wet and drenched person with more dirt; so in their transfers and changes of loans, by assuming additional interest payments band plastering themselves with them, they weigh themselves down more and more; and they are much like persons ill with cholera, who do not accept treatment, but vomit up the prescribed medicine and then continue constantly to collect more disease.c Similarly these borrowers refuse to be purged, and always, at every season of the year, when painfully and with convulsions they cough up the interest while another payment immediately accrues and presses upon them, they suffer a fresh attack of nausea and headache. What they ought to do is to get rid of debts and become healthy and free again.

8 1 From now on my words are addressed to those who are more well-to do and accustomed to a softer way of living, those who say “Am I, then, to be without slaves, without hearth and home?”, cas if a sick man who is swollen up with dropsy should say to his physician “Am I, then, to be made thin and empty?” Why not, to make you get well? And so you should do without slaves, that you may not be a slave yourself, and without property, that you may not be the property of another. Hear the tale of the vultures: One of them had an attack of vomiting and said he was spewing out bowels, but the other, who was there, said “What harm is there in that? For you are not spewing out your own bowels, but those of the corpse we tore to pieces a little while ago.” So any man in debt sells, not his own plot of land, nor his own house, but those of his creditor whom by law he has made their owner. d”Not so, by Zeus,” he says; “why, my father left me this field.” Yes, and your father left you your liberty and your civil rights, which you ought to to value more. So, too, he who begat you made your foot and your hand, but when it is mortified, you pay a surgeon for cutting it off. Calypso clothed Odysseus in her garment, “putting fragrant raiment upon him” that breathed of her divine person, as a gift and a memento of her love; but when he was capsized and engulfed by the waves and could hardly keep himself up since the garment had become soaked and heavy, he took it off and threw it from him, then, binding a wimple about his naked breast,

Long-shore he swam looking landward,

and when he reached safety he had no lack of garment or food. Well, then, is it not a tempest that arises about debtors when the lender after a while comes up to them saying “Pay”?

Thus having spoken he gathered the clouds and stirred up the great waters;

East wind and South wind and West with furious blasts raged together,

as interest rolled upon interest; and the debtor, overwhelmed, continues to clutch them as they weigh him down, for he cannot swim away and escape; no, he sinks down to the bottom and disappears along with the friends who have endorsed his notes. Crates the Theban, when he was not pressed for payment and did not even owe anything, because he disliked the mere administration of property, its cares and distractions, abandoned an estate valued at eight talents and, donning cloak and wallet, took refuge in philosophy and poverty. Anaxagoras also left his land to be grazed over by sheep. But what need is there of mentioning these men, when Philoxenus the lyric poet, who shared in the allotment of lands in a colony in Sicily, which ensured him a livelihood and a household furnished with abundant resources, when he saw that luxury, indulgence in a life of pleasure, and lack of culture were prevalent there, said, “By the Gods, these good things shall not make me lose myself; I will rather lose them,” and leaving his allotment to others, he sailed away. 832 But people in debt are content to be dunned, mulcted of tribute, enslaved, and cheated; they endure, like Phineus, to feed winged harpies which carry off their food and devour it, buying their grain, not at the proper season, but before it is harvested, and purchasing the oil before the olives have been plucked. And “I have wine,” says the borrower, “at such and such a price,” and he gives its note for its value; but the cluster still hangs clinging on the vine and waiting for the rising of Arcturus.

Lives of the ten orators

832 1.  ANTIPHON, the son of Sophilus, from the deme of Rhamnus, was his father’s pupil; for Sophilus kept a rhetoric school, to which it is reported that Alcibiades himself had recourse in his youth. Having attained to competent measure of knowledge and eloquence, - and that, as some believe, from his own natural ingenuity, - he dedicated his study chiefly to affairs of state. And yet he was for some time conversant in the schools, and had a controversy with Socrates the philosopher about the art of disputing, - not so much for the sake of contention as for the profit of arguing, as Xenophon tells us in his Commentaries of Socrates. At the request of some citizens, he wrote orations by which they defended their suits at law. Some say that he was the first that ever did any thing of this nature. For it is certain there is not one judicial oration extant written by any orator that lived before him, nor by his contemporaries either, as Themistocles, Aristeides, and Pericles; though the times gave them opportunity, and there was need enough of their labour in such business. Not that we are to impute it to their lack of ability that they did nothing in this way, for we may inform ourselves of the contrary from what historians relate of each of them. Besides, if we inspect the most ancient of those known in history who had the same form and method in their pleadings, such as Alcibiades, Critias, Lysias, and Archinous, we shall find that they all followed Antiphon when he was old. For being a man of incomparable sagacity, he was the first that published instructions about oratory; and by reason of his profound learning, he was surnamed Nestor. Caecilius, in a tract which he wrote about him, supposes him to have been Thucydides’ pupil, from what Antiphon delivered in praise of him. He is most accurate in his orations, in invention subtle; and he would frequently baffle his adversary unawares, by a covert sort of pleading; in troublesome and intricate matters he was acute and sharp; and as he was a great admirer of ornamental speaking, he would always adapt his orations to both law and reason.

He was born the time of the Persian war and of Gorgias the rhetorician, being somewhat younger than him. And he lived to see the subversion of the popular government in the commonwealth which was wrought by the four hundred [411 B.C.], in which he himself is thought to have had the chiefest hand, being sometimes commander of two ships, and sometimes general, and having by the many and great victories he obtained gained them many allies, he armed the young men, manned out sixty triremes, and on every occasion went ambassador to Lacedaemon at the time when Eetioneia was fortified. 833 But when those Four Hundred were overthrown, he with Archeptolemus, who was likewise one of the same number, was accused of the conspiracy, condemned, and sentenced to the punishment due to traitors, his body cast out unburied, and all his posterity infamous on record. But there are some who tell us, that he was put to death by the Thirty Tyrants; and among the rest, Lysias, in his oration for Antiphon’s daughter, says the same; for he left a little daughter, whom Callaeschrus claimed for his wife by the law of propinquity. And Theopompus likewise, in his Fifteenth Book of Philippics, tells us the same thing. But this must have been another Antiphon, son of Lysidonides, whom Cratinus mentions in his Pytine as a rascal. But how could he be executed in the time of the Four Hundred, and afterward live to be put to death by the Thirty Tyrants? There is likewise another story of the manner of his death: that when he was old, he sailed to Syracuse, when the tyranny of Dionysius the First was most famous; and being at table, a question was put, what sort of brass was best. When others had answered as they thought most proper, he replied, That is the best brass, of which the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton were made. The tyrant hearing this, and taking it as a tacit exhortation to his subjects to contrive his ruin, he commanded Antiphon to be put to death; and some say that he put him to death for deriding his tragedies.

This orator is reported to have written sixty orations; but Caecilius supposes twenty-five of them to be spurious and none of his. Platon, in his comedy called Peisander, traduces him as a greedy man. He is reported to have composed some of his tragedies alone, and others with Dionysius the tyrant. While he was poetically inclined, he invented an art of curing distress of the mind, as physicians can provide cures of bodily diseases. And having at Corinth built him a little house, in or near the market, he set a notice over the gate, to this effect: that he had a way to cure distress of men’s minds by words; and let him but know the cause of their malady, he would immediately prescribe the remedy, to their comfort. But after some time, thinking that art not worth his while, he betook himself to the study and teaching of oratory. There are some who ascribe the book of Glaucus of Rhegium concerning Poets to him as author. His orations concerning Herodes, against Erasistratus concerning Peacocks, are very much commended, and also that which, when he was accused, he penned for himself against a public indictment, and that against Demosthenes the general for moving an illegal measure. He likewise wrote another speech against Hippocrates the general; who did not appear on the day appointed for his trial, and was condemned in his absence.

Caecilius has recorded the decree of the senate for the judicial trial of Antiphon, passed in the year in which Theopompus was archon of Athens [411 B.C.], the same in which the Four Hundred were overthrown, - in these words:

“Enacted by the senate on the twenty-first day of the prytany. Demonicus of Alopece was clerk; Philostratus of Pallene was president.
Andron moved in regard to those men, - Archeptolemus, Onomacles, and Antiphon, whom the generals had declared against, for that they went on an embassy to Lacedaemon, to the great damage of the city of Athens, and departed from the camp in an enemies’ ship, and went through Deceleia by land, - that they should be apprehended and brought before the court for a legal trial.
Therefore let the generals, with others of the senate, to the number of ten, whom it shall please the generals to name and choose, look after these men to present them before the court, that they may be present during the proceedings. Then let the Thesmothetes summon the defendants to appear on the morrow, and let them open the proceedings in court at the time at which the summonses shall be returnable. Then let the chosen advocates, with the generals and any others who may have any thing to say, accuse the defendants of treason; and if any one of them shall be found guilty, let sentence be passed upon him as a traitor, according to the law in such case made and provided.”

834 At the bottom of this decree was subscribed the sentence :-

“Archeptolemus son of Hippodamus, the Agrylian, and Antiphon son of Sophilus, the Rhamnusian, being both present in court, are condemned of treason. And this was to be their punishment: that they should be delivered to the eleven executioners, their goods confiscated, the tenth part of them being first consecrated to Athene; their houses to be levelled with the ground, and in the places where they stood this inscription to be engraved on brass, ‘[The houses] of Archeptolemus and Antiphon, traitors.’
That Archeptolemus and Antiphon should neither of them be buried in Athens, nor anywhere else under that government. And besides all this, that their posterity should be accounted infamous, bastards as well as their lawful descendants; and he too should be held infamous who should adopt any one of their descendants for his son. And that all this should be engraved on a brass tablet, and that tablet should be placed where that stands on which is engraved the decree concerning Phrynichus.”

2.  ANDOCIDES, the son of Leogoras, [and grandson of that Andocides] who once made a peace between the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians, from either the Cydathenian or the Thorian deme, of a noble family, and, as Hellanicus tells us, the offspring of Hermes himself, for the race of Heralds belongs to him. On this account he was chosen by the people to go with Glaucon, with twenty sail of ships, to aid the Corcyraeans against the Corinthians [433 B.C.]. But in process of time he was accused of some notorious acts of impiety, as that he was of the number of those who defaced the statues of Hermes and divulged the sacred mysteries of Demeter. And besides, he had been before this time wild and intemperate, and had once been seen in night-time revelry to break one of the statues of Hermes; and when on his trial he refused to bring his slave to examination whom his accusers named, he not only remained under this reproach, but was also on this account very much suspected to be guilty of the second crime too. This later action was laid to his charge soon after the expedition of the navy sent by the Athenians into Sicily [415 B.C.]. For, as Cratippus informs us, when the Corinthians sent the Leontines and Egestians to the Athenians, who hesitated to lend them assistance, they in the night defaced and broke all the statues of Hermes which were erected in the market. To which offence Andocides added another, that of divulging the mysteries of Demeter. He was brought to his trial, but was acquitted on condition he would reveal who were companions with him in the crime. In which affair being very diligent, he found out who they were that had been guilty, and among the rest he accused his own father. He proved all guilty, and caused them all to be put to death except his father, whom he saved, though in prison, by a promise of some eminent service he would do to the commonwealth. Nor did he fail of what he promised; for Leogoras accused many who had acted in several matters against the interest of the commonwealth, and for this was acquitted of his own crime.

Now, though Andocides was very much esteemed of for his skill in the management of the affairs of the commonwealth, yet his inclinations led him rather to traffic by sea; and by this means he contracted friendship with the kings of Cyprus and other great princes. At which time he secretly stole a girl from the city, the daughter of Aristeides, and his own niece, and sent her as a present to the king of Cyprus. But suspecting he should be called in question for it, he again stole her from Cyprus, for which the king of Cyprus took him and locked him up in prison; whence he broke loose, and returned to Athens, just at that time when the four hundred conspirators had usurped the government. By whom being confined, he again escaped when the oligarchic government was broken up. . . . . But when the Thirty Tyrants were uppermost, he withdrew to Elis, 835 and there lived till Thrasybulus and his faction returned into the city [403 B.C.], and then he also repaired thither. And after some time, being sent to Lacedaemon to conciliate a peace, he was again suspected of wrongdoing, and on that suspicion banished.

He himself has given an account of all these transactions, in his orations, which he has left behind him. For some of them contain his defence of himself in regard to the mysteries; others his petition for restoration from exile; there is one extant on Endeixis (or information laid against a criminal); also a defence against Phaeax, and one on the peace. He flourished at the same time as Socrates the philosopher. He was born in the seventy-eighth Olympiad, when Theogenides was archon of Athens [468 B.C.], so that he should seem to be about ten years before Lysias. There is an image of Hermes, called from his name, being given by the tribe Aegeis; and it stood near the house where Andocides dwelt, and was therefore called by his name. This Andocides himself was at the charge of a cyclic chorus for the tribe Aegeis, at the performance of a dithyramb. And having gained a victory, he erected a tripod on a high point opposite to the limestone statue of Silenus. His style in his orations is plain and easy, without the least affectation or any thing of a figurative ornament.

3.  LYSIAS was the son of Cephalus, grandson of Lysanias, and great-grandson of Cephalus. His father was by birth a Syracusan; but partly for the love he had to the city, and partly in condescension to the persuasions of Pericles the son of Xanthippus, who entertained him as his friend and guest, he went to live at Athens, being a man of great wealth. Some say that he was banished from Syracuse when the city was under the tyranny of Gelon. Lysias was born at Athens when Philocles, the successor of Phrasicles, was archon [459 B.C.], in the second year of the eightieth Olympiad. At his first coming, he was educated among the most noble of the Athenians. But when the city sent a colony to Sybaris, which was afterwards called Thurii, he went thither with his other brother Polemarchus, his father being now dead (for he had two other brothers, Euthydemus and Brachyllus), that he might receive his portion of his father’s estate. This was done in the fifteenth year of his age, when Praxiteles was archon [444 B.C.]. There then he stayed, and was brought up under Nicias and Teisias, both Syracusans. And having purchased a house and received his estate, he lived as a citizen for thirty-three years, till the year of Cleocritus [413 B.C.]. In the year following, when Callias was archon [412 B.C.], in the ninety-second Olympiad, the Athenians met with their disasters in Sicily, and others of their allies revolted, and especially the Italians. Lysias, being accused of favouring the Athenians, was banished with three others of his association; and coming to Athens, in the year wherein Callias succeeded Cleocritus [412 B.C.], the city then labouring under the tyranny of the four hundred conspirators, he remained there. But after the fight at Aegospotami, when the Thirty Tyrants had usurped the government, he was banished thence, after he had remained in Athens seven years. His goods were confiscated; and having likewise lost his brother Polemarchus, he himself escaped by a back door of the house in which he was kept for execution, fled to Megara and there lived. But when the citizens endeavoured to return from Phyle, he also behaved himself very well, and appeared very active in the affair, having, to forward this great enterprise, deposited two thousand drachmas of silver and two hundred shields, and being commissioned with Hermas, he maintained three hundred men in arms, and prevailed with Thrasylaeus the Elean, his old friend and host, to contribute two talents. Upon entering the city, Thrasybulus proposed that, for a consideration of his good service to the public, he should receive the rights of citizenship: this was during the so-called time of anarchy before Eucleides [403 B.C.]. Which proposal being ratified by the people, Archinus objected that it was against the laws, and a decree without authority of the senate. 836 The decree was thereupon declared void, and Lysias lost his citizenship. He led the remainder of his life in the rank of an Isoteles (or citizen who had no right to vote or hold office), and died at last at Athens, being eighty-three years old, or as some would have it, seventy-six; and others again say, that he lived above eighty years, till after the birth of Demosthenes. It is supposed he was born in the year of Philocles [459 B.C.].

There are four hundred and twenty-five orations which bear his name, of which Dionysius and Caecilius affirm only two hundred and thirty to be genuine, and he is said to have been overcome but twice in all. There is extant also the oration which he made in defence of the forementioned decree against Archinus, who challenged it and thereby prevented Lysias from receiving the citizenship, as also another against the Thirty Tyrants. He was very persuasive, and was always very brief in what he delivered. He would commonly give orations to private persons. There are likewise his textbooks of oratory, his public harangues, his letters, his eulogies, funeral orations, love speeches, and his defence of Socrates, accommodated to the minds of the judges. His style seems plain and easy, though difficult to imitate. Demosthenes, in his oration against Neaera, says that he was in love with one Metaneira, Neaera’s serving-maid, but afterwards married his brother Brachyllus’s daughter. Plato in his Phaedrus makes mention of him, as a most eloquent orator and older than Isocrates. Philiscus, his companion, and Isocrates’s pupil, composed an epigram concerning him, which agrees with what we have urged from Plato; and it is to this effect:

“Calliope’s witty daughter, Phrontis, show
If anything of wit or eloquence you have;
For ‘tis decreed that you shall bear a son,
Lysias by name, to spread the name of him
Whose great and generous acts do fill the world,
And are received for glorious above.
Let him who sings those praises of the dead,
Let him, my friend, too, praise our fellowship.”

He likewise wrote two orations for Iphicrates, - one against Harmodius, and another accusing Timotheus of treason, - in both which he was successful. But when Iphicrates made himself responsible for Timotheus’s actions, and would purge himself of the allegation of treason made also against him, Lysias wrote an oration for him to deliver in his defence; upon which he was acquitted, but Timotheus was fined a considerable sum of money. He likewise delivered an oration at the Olympic games, in which he endeavoured to convince the Greeks of how great advantage it would be to them, if they could but unanimously join to pull down the tyrant Dionysius.

4.  ISOCRATES was the son of Theodorus, of Erchia, reckoned among the middle class of citizens, and a man who kept servants under him to make flutes, by which he got so much money as enabled him not only to bring up his children after the most genteel manner, but likewise to maintain a choir. For besides Isocrates, he had other sons, Telesippus and Diomnestus, and one daughter. And hence, we may suppose, those two comic poets, Aristophanes and Stratis, took occasion to bring him on the stage. He was born in the eighty-sixth Olympiad, Lysimachus being archon [436 B.C.], about two and twenty years after Lysias, and seven before Plato. When he was a boy, he was as well educated as any of the Athenian children, being under the tuition of Prodicus the Cean, Gorgias the Leontine, Teisias the Syracusan, and Theramenes the rhetorician. And when Theramenes was to be apprehended by the order of the Thirty Tyrants, and fled for protection to the altar of Hestia of the senate, only Isocrates stood by his friend, when all others were struck with terror. For a long time he stood silent; 837 but after some time Theramenes advised him to desist, because, he told him, it would be an aggravation of his grief, if any of his friends should come into trouble through him. And it is said that he made use of certain textbooks of rhetoric composed by Theramenes, when he was slandered in court; which textbooks have since borne Boton’s name.

When Isocrates was come to man’s estate, he meddled with nothing of state affairs, both because he had a very weak voice and because he was something timorous; and besides these two impediments, his estate was much impaired by the loss of a great part of his patrimony in the war with the Lacedaemonians. It is evident that he composed orations for others to use, but delivered only one; that concerning Exchange of Property. Having set up a school, he gave himself much to writing and the study of philosophy, and then he wrote his Panegyrical oration, and others which were used for advice, some of which he delivered himself, and others he gave to others to deliver for him; aiming thereby to persuade the Greeks to the study and practice of such things as were of most immediate concern to them. But his endeavours in that way proving to no purpose, he gave those things over, and opened a school in Chios first, as some will have it, having for a beginning nine pupils; and when they came to him to pay him for their schooling, he weeping said, “Now I see plainly that I am sold to my pupils.” He admitted all into his acquaintance who desired it. He was the first that made a separation between contentious pleas and political arguments, to which latter he rather addicted himself. He instituted a form of magistracy in Chios, much the same as that at Athens. No schoolmaster ever got so much; so that he maintained a trireme at his own charge. He had more than a hundred pupils, and among others Timotheus the son of Conon was one, with whom he visited many cities, and composed the letters which Timotheus sent to the Athenians; who for his pains gave him a talent out of that which he got at Samos [365 B.C.]. Likewise Theopompus of Chios, Ephorus of Cyme, Asclepiades who composed arguments for tragedies, and Theodectes of Phaselis, who afterwards wrote tragedies, were all Isocrates’ pupils. The last of these had a monument in the way to the shrine of Cyamites, as we go to Eleusis by the Sacred Way, of which now remains only ruins. There also he set up with his own the statues of other famous poets, of all which only Homerus’ is to be seen. Leodamas also the Athenian, and Lacritus who gave laws to the Athenians, were both his pupils; and some say, Hypereides and Isaeus too. They add likewise, that Demosthenes also was very desirous to learn of him, and because he could not give the full rate, which was a thousand drachmas, he offered him two hundred, the fifth part, if he would teach him but the fifth part of his art in proportion: to whom Isocrates answered, We do not use, Demosthenes, to impart our skill by halves, but as men sell good fish whole, or altogether, so if you have a desire to learn, we will teach you our full art, and not a piece of it. He died in the year when Charondas was archon [338 B.C.], when, being at Hippocrates’s public exercise, he received the news of the slaughter at Chaeroneia; for he was the cause of his own death by a four days’ fast, which he then made, pronouncing just at his departure the three verses which begin three tragedies of Euripides:

“Danaus, father of the fifty sisters, -
Pelops, son of Tantalus, in quest of Pisa, -
Cadmus, in time past, going from Sidon.”

He lived ninety-eight years, or, as some say, a hundred, not being able to behold Greece the fourth time brought into slavery. The year (or, as some say, four years) before he died, he wrote his Panathenaic oration. He laboured upon his Panegyric oration ten years, or, as some tell us, fifteen, which he is supposed to have borrowed out of Gorgias the Leontine and Lysias. His oration concerning Exchange of Property he wrote when he was eighty-two years old, and those to Philippus a little before his death. 838 When he was old, he adopted Aphareus, the youngest of the three sons of Plathane, the daughter of Hippias the orator. He was very rich, both in respect of the great sums of money he exacted of his pupils, and besides that, received at one time twenty talents from Nicocles, king of Cyprus, for an oration which he dedicated to him. By reason of his riches he suffered the envy of others, and was three times named to maintain a trireme; which he evaded twice by the assistance of his son and a counterfeit sickness, but the third time he undertook it, though the expense proved very great. A father telling him that he had allowed his son no other companion than one slave, Isocrates replied, Go your way then, for one slave you shall have two. He strove for the prize which Aretemisia dedicated to the honour and memory of her husband Mausolus; but that oration is lost. He wrote also another oration in praise of Helen, and one called Areopagiticus. Some say that he died when he had fasted nine days, - some again, at four days’ end, - and his death took its date from the funeral solemnities of those that lost their Lives at Chaeroneia. His son Aphareus likewise wrote several orations.

He lies buried with all his family near Cynosarges, on the left hand of the hill. There are interred Isocrates and his father Theodorus, his mother and her sister Anaco, his adoptive son Aphareus, Socrates the son of Anaco, Theodorus his brother, bearing his father’s name, his grandsons, the sons of his adopted Aphareus, and his wife Plathane, the mother of Aphareus. On these tombs were erected six tables, which are now demolished. And upon the tomb of Isocrates himself was placed a column thirty cubits high, and on that a mermaid of seven cubits, which was an emblem of his eloquence; of which nothing now remains. There was also near it a tablet, having poets and his schoolmasters on it; and among the rest, Gorgias inspecting a celestial globe, and Isocrates standing by him. There is likewise a statue of his of bronze in Eleusis; dedicated by Timotheus the son of Conon, before the entry of the porch, with this inscription:

“To the fame and honour of Isocrates,
This statue’s sacred to the Goddesses:
The gift of Timotheus.”

This statue was made by Leochares. There are sixty orations which bear his name; of which, if we credit Dionysius, only twenty-five are genuine; but according to Caecilius, twenty-eight; and the rest are accounted spurious. He was an utter stranger to ostentation, insomuch that, when there came at one time three persons to hear him declaim, he admitted but two of them, desiring the third to come the next day, for that two at once were to him as a full theatre. He used to tell his pupils that he taught his art for ten minas; but he would give any man ten thousand, that could teach him to be bold and give him a good utterance. And being once asked how he, who was not very eloquent himself, could make others so, he answered, Just as a whetstone cannot cut, yet it will sharpen knives for that purpose. Some say that he wrote textbooks of oratory; others are of opinion that he had no method of teaching, but only exercise. He would never ask any thing of a free-born citizen. He used to enjoin his pupils being present at public assemblies to repeat to him what was there delivered. He conceived no little sorrow for the death of Socrates, insomuch that the next day he put himself in mourning. Being asked what was the use and force of rhetoric, he answered, To make great matters small, and small great. At a feast with Nicocreon, the tyrant of Cyprus, being desired by some of the company to declaim upon some theme, he made answer, that it was not the time for him to speak what he knew, and he knew nothing that was fitted to that time. Happening once to see Sophocles the tragedian amorously following a comely boy, he said to him, It will become you, Sophocles, 839 to restrain not only your hands, but your eyes. When Ephorus of Cyme left his school before he had arrived at any good proficiency, his father Demophilus sent him again with a second sum of money in his hand; at which Isocrates jokingly called him Diphorus, that is, twice bringing his fee. However, he took a great deal of pains and care with him, and went so far as to put him in the way of writing history.

He was wantonly given; and used to keep a mattress alongside his bed, and his pillow was commonly made moist with saffron. He never married while he was young; but in his old age he kept a mistress, whose name was Lagisce, and by her he had a daughter, who died in the twelfth year of her age, before she was married. He afterwards married Plathane, the wife of Hippias the rhetorician, who had three sons, the youngest of which, Aphareus by name, he adopted for his own, as we said before. This Aphareus erected a bronze statue to him near the temple of Zeus, as may be seen from the inscription:

“In veneration of the mighty Zeus,
His noble parents, and the Gods above,
Aphareus this statue here has set,
The statue of Isocrates his father.”

He is said to have run a race on a swift horse, when he was but a boy; for he is to be seen in this posture in a statue on the Acropolis, in the ball-court of the Arrhephoroi. There were but two suits commenced against him in his whole life. One of these was Megacleides, who challenged him to exchange of property; at the trial of which he could not be personally present, by reason of sickness; but sending Aphareus, he nevertheless won his case. The other suit was commenced against him by Lysimachus, who would have him come to an exchange or be at the charge of maintaining a trireme for the commonwealth. In this case he was defeated, and forced to perform the service. There was likewise a painting of him in the Pompeium.

Aphareus also wrote a few orations, both judicial and deliberative; as also tragedies to the number of thirty-seven, of which two are contested. He began to make his works public in the year of Lysistratus [369 B.C.], and continued it to the year of Sosigenes [342 B.C.], that is, twenty eight years. In these years he exhibited dramas six times at the city Dionysiac festivals, and twice went away with the prize through the director Dionysius; he also gained two other victories at the Lenaean festival through other directors.

There were to be seen in the Acropolis the statues of the mother of Isocrates, of Theodorus, and of Anaco his mother’s sister. That of the mother is placed just by the image of Health, the inscription being changed; that of Anaco is no longer there. [Anaco] had two sons, Alexander by Coenes, and Lysicles by Lysias.

5.  ISAEUS was born in Chalcis. When he came to Athens, he read Lysias’s works, whom he imitated so well, both in his style and in his skill in managing causes, that he who was not very well acquainted with their manner of writing could not tell which of the two was author of many of their orations. He flourished after the Peloponnesian war, as we may conjecture from his orations, and was in repute till the reign of Philippus. He taught Demosthenes - not at his school, but privately - who gave him ten thousand drachmas, by which business he became very famous. Some say that he composed orations for Demosthenes, which he delivered in opposition to his guardians. He left behind him sixty-four orations, of which fifty are his own; as likewise a personal textbook of rhetoric. He was the first that used to speak or write figuratively, and that addicted himself to civil matters; which Demosthenes chiefly followed. Theopompus the comedian makes mention of him in his Theseus.

840 6.  AESCHINES was the son of Atrometus - who, being banished by the Thirty Tyrants, was thereby a means of restoring the commonwealth to the government of the people - and of his wife Glaucothea; by birth a Cothocidian. He was neither nobly born nor rich; but in his youth, being strong and well set, he addicted himself to all sorts of bodily exercises; and afterwards, having a very clear voice, he took to playing of tragedies, and if we may credit Demosthenes, he was a petty clerk, and also served Aristodemus as a player of third parts at the Dionysiac festivals, in his times of leisure rehearsing the ancient tragedies. When he was but a boy, he was assisting to his father in teaching little children their letters, and when he was grown up, he listed himself a private soldier. Some think he was brought up under Socrates and Plato; but Caecilius will have it that Leodamas was his master. Being concerned in the affairs of the commonwealth, he openly acted in opposition to Demosthenes and his faction; and was employed in several embassies, and especially in one to Philippus, to treat about articles of peace [346 B.C.]. For which Demosthenes accused him for being the cause of the overthrow and ruin of the Phocians, and the inflamer of war; which part he would have him thought to have acted when the Amphictyons chose him one of their deputies to the Amphissians who were building up the harbour [of Crissa]. Upon which the Amphictyons put themselves under Philippus’ protection, who, being assisted by Aeschines, took the affair in hand, and soon conquered all Phocis. But Aeschines, notwithstanding all that Demosthenes could do, being favoured by Eubulus the son of Spintharus, a Probalisian, who pleaded on his behalf, carried his cause by thirty voices, and so was cleared. Though some tell us, that there were orations prepared by the orators, but the news of the defeat at Chaeroneia put a stop to the present proceedings, and so the suit lapsed.

Some time after this, Philippus being dead, and his son Alexander marching into Asia, Aeschines impeached Ctesiphon for acting against the laws, in passing a decree in favour of Demosthenes. But he had less than one-fifth of the votes of the jury on his side, and was forced to go in exile to Rhodes, because he would not pay his fine of a thousand drachmas. Others say, that he incurred disfranchisement also, because he would not depart the city, and that he went to Alexander at Ephesus. But upon the death of Alexander [323 B.C.], when a tumult had been excited, he went to Rhodes, and there opened a school and taught. And once, when he declaimed the oration which he had formerly made against Ctesiphon, to please the Rhodians, he did it with such grace, that they wondered how he could fail of carrying his cause if he pleaded so well for himself. But you would not wonder, said he, that I was defeated, if you had heard Demosthenes pleading against me. He left a school behind him at Rhodes, which was later called the Rhodian school. Thence he sailed to Samos, and died there soon afterwards. He had a very good voice, as both Demosthenes and Demochares testified of him.

Four orations bear his name, one of which was against Timarchus, another concerning a false embassy, and a third against Ctesiphon, which three are really his own; but the fourth, called Deliaca, is none of his; for though he was named to plead the cause of the temple at Delos, yet Demosthenes tells us that Hypereides was chosen in his stead. He says himself, that he had two brothers, Aphobetus and Philochares. He was the first that brought the Athenians the news of the victory obtained at Tamynae, for which he was crowned for the second time. Some report that Aeschines was never any man’s pupil, but having passed his time chiefly in the administration of justice, he raised himself from the office of clerk to that of orator. His first public appearance was in a speech against Philippus; with which the people being pleased, he was immediately chosen to go ambassador to the Arcadians; and when he came there, he excited the Ten Thousand against Philippus. He indicted Timarchus for profligacy; who, fearing the issue, deserted his cause and hanged himself, 841 as Demosthenes somewhere informs us. Being employed with Ctesiphon and Demosthenes in an embassy to Philippus to treat of peace, he appeared the most accomplished of the three. Another time also he was one of ten men sent in embassy to conclude a peace; and being afterwards called to answer for it, he was acquitted, as we said.

7.  LYCURGUS was the son of Lycophron, and grandson of that Lycurgus whom the Thirty Tyrants put to death, at the prompting of Aristodemus of Bate, who, also being treasurer of the Greeks, was banished in the time of the popular government. He was from the Butadian deme, and belonged to the family of the Eteobutades. He received his first instruction in philosophy from Plato the philosopher. But afterwards, making himself a pupil to Isocrates the orator, he employed his study about affairs of the commonwealth. And to his care was committed the disposal and management of the city funds, and so he executed the office of treasurer-general for the space of twelve years; in which time there went through his hands fourteen thousand talents, or (as some will have it) eighteen thousand six hundred and fifty. It was the orator Stratocles that procured him this appointment. At first he was chosen in his own name; but afterwards he nominated one of his friends to the office, while he himself performed the duties; for there was a law just passed, that no man should be chosen treasurer for above the term of four years. But Lycurgus plied his business closely, both summer and winter, in the administration of public affairs. And being entrusted to make provision of all necessaries for the wars, he reformed many abuses that were crept into the commonwealth. He built four hundred triremes for the use of the state, and prepared and fitted a place for public exercises in Lyceium, and planted trees before it; he likewise built a wrestling-court, and being made surveyor of the theatre of Dionysus, he finished this building. He was likewise of so great repute among all sorts, that he was entrusted with two hundred and fifty talents of private citizens. He adorned and beautified the city with gold and silver vessels of state, and golden images of victory. He likewise finished many things that were as yet imperfect, as the dockyards and the arsenal. He built a wall also about the spacious Panathenaic race-course, and made level a piece of uneven ground, given by one Deinias to Lycurgus for the use of the city.

The keeping of the city was committed wholly to his care, and power to apprehend malefactors, of whom he cleared the city utterly; so that some sophists were wont to say, that Lycurgus did not dip his pen in ink, but in blood. And therefore it was, that when Alexander demanded him of the people, they would not deliver him up. When Philippus made the second war upon the Athenians, he was employed with Demosthenes and Polyeuctus in an embassy to the Peloponnese and other cities. He was always in great repute and esteem with the Athenians, and looked upon as a man of such justice and integrity, that in the courts of law his good word was at all times prevalent on the behalf of those persons for whom he undertook to speak. He was the author of several laws; one of which was, that there should be certain comedies played at the Chytrian festival, and whoever of the poets or players should come off victor, he should thereby be invested with the freedom of the city, which before was not lawful; and so he revived a tradition which for want of encouragement had for some time before been out of use. Another of his laws was, that the city should erect statues to the memory of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and that their tragedies, being fairly written out, should be preserved in the public depository, and that the public clerks should read these copies as the plays were acted, that nothing might be changed by the players; and that otherwise it should be unlawful to act them. A third law proposed by him was, 842 that no Athenian, nor any person inhabiting in Athens, should be permitted to buy a captive, who was once free, to be a slave, without the consent of his former master. Further, that in the Peiraeus there should be at least three circular dances played to Poseidon; and that to the victor in the first should be given not less than ten minas; in the second, eight; in the third, six. Also, that no woman should go to Eleusis in a carriage, lest the poor should appear more despicable than the rich, and so be dejected and cast down; and that whoever should ride in a carriage contrary to this law should be fined six thousand drachmas. And when even his own wife was found to be in the violation of the law, he paid to the informers a whole talent; for which being afterwards called in question by the people: See therefore, said he, I am called to answer for giving, and not for receiving money.

As he was walking one day in the streets, he saw an tax-collector lay hands on Xenocrates the philosopher, and lead him away to prison, because he had not paid the tax due from strangers. Lycurgus with his staff struck the tax-collector on the head for his unmannerly roughness toward a person of that character, and freeing Xenocrates, cast the other into prison in his stead. And not many days after, Xenocrates meeting with the children of Lycurgus said: I have returned thanks unto your father right speedily, my good children, for his friendship towards me, for I hear his kindness commended by all people where I go. He made likewise several decrees, in which he made use of the help of an Olynthian named Euclides, one very expert in such matters. Though he was rich enough, yet he was used to wear the same coat every day, both summer and winter; but he wore shoes only when he was compelled to do it. Because he was not adept at speaking extempore, he used to practice and study day and night. And in order that he might not at any time oversleep himself and so lose time from his study, he used to cover himself on his bed only with a sheepskin with the wool on, and to lay a hard bolster under his head. When someone reproached him for paying rhetoricians when he worked on his orations, he answered, that, if a man would promise to make his sons better, he would give him not only a thousand drachmas, but half what he was worth. He took the liberty of speaking boldly upon all occasions, by reason of his greatness; as when once the Athenians interrupted him in his speaking, he cried out, O Corcyraean whip, how many talents art thou worth? And another time, when some would rank Alexander among the Gods, What manner of God, said he, must he be, when all that go out of his temple had need to be dipped in water to purify themselves?

After his death Menesaechmus accused his sons according to an indictment drawn by Thracycles, and they were delivered to the eleven executioners of Justice. But Demosthenes, being in exile, wrote to the Athenians, to let them know that they were wrongfully accused, and that therefore they did not well to hear their accusers; upon which they recanted what they had done, and set them at liberty again, - Democles, who was Theophrastus’ pupil, likewise pleading in their defence. Lycurgus and some of his posterity were buried publicly, at or near the temple of Athene Paeonia, where their monuments stand in the garden of Melanthius the philosopher, on which are inscriptions to Lycurgus and his children, which are yet extant. The greatest thing he did while he lived was to increase the public revenue wholly from sixty talents, as he found it, to twelve hundred. When he found he must die, he was by his own appointment carried into the temple of the Mother of the Gods, and into the senate-house, being willing before his death to give an account of his administration. And no man daring to accuse him of any thing except Menesaechmus, he cleared himself of those false accusations, and was carried home again, where shortly afterwards he ended his life. He was always accounted honest; his orations were commended for the eloquence they carried in them; and though he was often accused, yet he never was defeated in any suit.

He had three children by Callisto, the daughter of Abron, and sister of Callias, Abron’s son, by descent a Batesian, - I mean, of him who, when Chaerondas was archon [338 B.C.], was paymaster to the army. 843 Deinarchus speaks of this relationship in his oration against Pastius. He left behind him three sons, Abron, Lycurgus, and Lycophron; of which, Abron and Lycurgus died without issue, though the first, Abron, did for some time act very acceptably and worthily in affairs of the commonwealth. Lycophron marrying Callistomacha, the daughter of Philippus of Aexone, had a daughter Callisto, who married Cleombrotus the son of Deinocrates the Acharnian, to whom she bare Lycophron, who, being adopted by his grandfather, died without issue. He being dead, Socrates married Callisto, of whom he had his son Symmachus. To him was born Aristonymus; to Aristonymus, Charmides, who was the father of Philippe. Of her and Lysander came Medeius, who also was an interpreter, one of the Eumolpids. He married Timothea, the daughter of Glaucus, and they had three children, Laodameia and Medeius, who were priests of Poseidon Erechtheus, and also Philippe a daughter, who was afterward priestess of Athene; for before, she was married to Diocles of Melite, to whom she bare a son named Diocles, who commanded the hoplite soldiers. He married Hediste, the daughter of Abron, and they had two children, Philippides and Nicostrata, whom Themistocles the torch-bearer, son of Theophrastus, married, and by her had Theophrastus and Diocles; and he likewise controlled the priesthood of Poseidon Erechtheus.

It is said that he penned fifteen orations. He was often crowned by the people, and had statues dedicated to him. His image in brass was set up in Cerameicus by order of the public, in the year of Anaxicrates [307 B.C.]; in whose time also it was ordered that he and his eldest son should be provided for with maintenance in the Prytaneium; but he being dead, Lycophron his eldest son applied for that privilege. This Lycurgus also was used frequently to plead on religious matters; and accused Autolycus the Areopagite, Lysicles the general, Demades the son of Demeas, Menesaechmus, and many others, all whom he caused to be condemned as guilty. Diphilus also was called in question by him, for impairing and diminishing the props of the metal mines, and unjustly making himself rich therefrom; and he caused him to be condemned to die, according to the provision made by the laws in that case. He gave out of his own funds fifty drachmas to every citizen, the sum total of which donation amounted to one hundred and sixty talents; but some say he gave a mina of silver to each. He likewise accused Aristogeiton, Leocrates, and Autolycus for cowardice. He was called the Ibis :-

“The ibis to Lycurgus, to Chaerephon the bat.”

His ancestors derived their pedigree from Erechtheus, the son of the Gaea and of Hephaestus; but he was nearest to Lycomedes and Lycurgus, whom the people honoured with public solemnities. There is a succession of those members of the family who were priests of Poseidon, in a complete table placed in the Erechtheium, painted by Ismenias the Chalcidian; in the same place stood wooden images of Lycurgus, and of his sons, Abron, Lycurgus, and Lycophron; made by Timarchus and Cephisodotus, the sons of Praxiteles. His son Abron dedicated the table; and coming to the priesthood by right of succession, he resigned to his brother Lycophron, and hence he is painted as giving a trident. But Lycurgus had made a record of all his actions, and hung it on a tablet before the wrestling-court built by himself, that all might read that would; and no man could accuse him of any misappropriation. He likewise proposed to the people to crown Neoptolemus, the son of Anticles, and to dedicate statues to him, because he had promised and undertaken to cover the altar of Apollo in the market with gold, 844 according to the order of the oracle. He decreed honours likewise to Diotimus, the son of Diopeithes of Euonymus, in the year when Ctesicles was archon [334 B.C.].

844 8.  DEMOSTHENES, the son of Demosthenes by Cleobule, the daughter of Gylon, was from the deme of Paeania. He was left an orphan by his father, when he was but seven years old, together with a sister of the age of five. Being kept by his mother during his childhood, he went to school to Isocrates, say some; but most are of the opinion that he was pupil to Isaeus the Chalcidian, who lived in Athens and was Isocrates’ pupil. He imitated Thucydides and Plato, and some affirm that he more especially attended the school of Plato. Hegesias of Magnesia writes, that he entreated his master’s leave to go to hear Callistratus of Aphidna, the son of Empaedus, a noble orator, and sometime commander of a troop of horse, who had dedicated an altar to Hermes Agoraeos, and was to make an oration to the people. And when he heard him, he became a lover of oratory, and so long as he continued at Athens, remained his disciple.

But Callistratus was soon banished to Thrace, and when Demosthenes arrived at maturity, he joined with Isocrates and Plato. After this, he took Isaeus into his house, and for the space of four years laboured very hard in imitation of his orations. Though Ctesibius in his book of philosophy affirms that, by the help of Callias of Syracuse, he got the orations of Zoilus of Amphipolis, and by the assistance of Charicles of Carystus those also of Alcidamas, and devoted himself to the imitation of them. When he came to age, in the year of Timocrates [364 B.C.], he called his tutors and guardians to account for their maladministration, in not allowing him what was fitting and requisite out of his estate. And these tutors or guardians were three, Aphobus, Therippides, and Demophon (or Demeas), the last of whom, being his uncle, he charged more severely than the other two. He accused each of them for a penalty of ten talents, and convicted them, but did not exact of them what the law had given him, releasing some for money, and others for favour.

When Aristophon, by reason of his age, could not hold the office any longer, he was chosen choregus, or overseer of the dances. During the execution of which office, Meidias of Anagyrus struck him as he was acting as choregus in the theatre, and he sued him upon it, but let fall his suit upon Meidias’s paying him three thousand drachmas.

It is reported of him that, while he was a youth, he confined himself to a den or cave, and there studied his orations, and shaved half of his head that he might not be tempted to divert himself from it; and that he lay upon a very narrow bed, that he might awake and rise the sooner. And for that he could not very well pronounce the letter R, he accustomed himself very much to that, that he might master it if possible; and likewise because he made an unseemly motion of his shoulder when he spoke at any time, he remedied that by a spit (or, as some say, a sword) stuck in the ceiling just over his shoulder, that the fear of being pricked with it might break him of that indecent gesture. They report of him further that, when he could declaim pretty well, he had a sort of mirror made as big as himself, and used always in declaiming to look in that, to the end that he might see and correct what was amiss. He used likewise at some certain times to go down to the shore at Phalerum, to the end that, being accustomed to the surges and noise of the waves, he might not be daunted by the clamours of the people, when he should at any time declaim in public. And being naturally short-winded, he gave Neoptolemus a player ten thousand drachmas to teach him to pronounce long sentences in one breath.

Afterwards, betaking himself to the affairs of the commonwealth, and finding the people divided into two different factions, one in favour of Philippus, and the other standing for the liberty of the people, he took part with them that opposed Philippus, and always persuaded the citizens to help those who were in danger and trouble by Philippus’ oppression; taking for his companions in council Hypereides, Nausicles, Polyeuctus, and Diotimus; 845 and then he drew the Thebans, Euboeans, Corcyraeans, Corinthians, Boeotians, and many more into a league with the Athenians. Being in the assembly one day and his memory failing him, his oration was hissed; which made him return home very heavy and melancholy; and being met by Eunomus the Thriasian, an old man, by him he was comforted and encouraged. But he was chiefly animated by Andronicus the player, who told him that his orations were excellent, but that he wanted something of action, thereupon rehearsing certain places out of his oration which he had delivered in that same assembly. Unto which Demosthenes gave good ear and credit, and he then betook himself to Andronicus. And therefore, when he was afterwards asked what was the first part of oratory, he answered, “Action;” and which was the second, he replied, “Action;” and which was the third, he still answered, “Action.” Another time, declaiming publicly, and using expressions too youthful for one of his years and gravity, he was laughed at, and ridiculed by the comedians, Antiphanes and Timocles, who in derision used to repeat such phrases as these, as uttered by him

“By the earth, by the fountains, by the rivers, by the floods!”

For having sworn thus in presence of the people, he raised a tumult about him. He likewise used to swear by Asclepius, and accented the second syllable through some mistake, and yet afterwards defended it; for this Asclepius, he said, was called hêpios, that is a mild God. This also often caused him to be interrupted. But all these things he reformed in time, being sometime conversant with Eubulides, the Milesian philosopher. Being on a time present at the Olympic games, and hearing Lamachus of Tereina sound the praises of Philippus and of Alexander the Great, his son, and decry the cowardice of the Thebans and Olynthians, he stood up in their defence against him, and from the ancient poets he proclaimed the great and noble achievements of the Thebans and Olynthians; and so elegantly he behaved himself in this affair, that he at once silenced Lamachus, and made him convey himself immediately out of the assembly. And even Philippus himself, when he had heard what harangues he made against him, replied, that if he had heard him, he should have chosen him general in the war against himself. He was used to compare Demosthenes’s orations to soldiers, for the force they carried along with them; but the orations of Isocrates to athletes, because of the theatrical delight that accompanied them.

Being about the age of thirty-seven, reckoning from Dexitheus [385 B.C.] to Callimachus [349 B.C.], - in whose time the Olynthians sent to beg aid of the Athenians against Philippus, who then made war upon them, - he persuaded them to answer the Olynthians’ request; but in the following year, in which Plato died, Philippus overthrew and destroyed the Olynthians. Xenophon also, the pupil of Socrates, had some knowledge of Demosthenes, either at his first rise, or at least when he was most famous and flourishing; for he wrote the History of the Greeks, ending with the battle of Mantineia, in the year of Charicleides [363 B.C.]; our Demosthenes having sometime before overthrown his guardians in a suit he had commenced against them, in the year of Timocrates [364 B.C.]. When Aeschines, being condemned, fled from Athens, Demosthenes hearing of it took horse and rode after him; which Aeschines understanding, and fearing to be apprehended again, he came out to meet Demosthenes, and fell at his feet, covered his face, and begged his mercy; upon which Demosthenes bid him stand up, be assured of his favour, and as a pledge of it, gave him a talent of silver. He advised the people to maintain a company of mercenary soldiers in Thasos, and thither sailed himself as captain of a trireme. Another time, being entrusted to buy corn, he was accused of defrauding the city, but cleared himself of the accusation and was acquitted. When Philippus had seized upon Elateia, Demosthenes with others went to the war of Chaeroneia [338 B.C.], where he is said to have deserted his colours; and flying away, a bramble caught hold of his cloak behind, when turning about in haste, thinking an enemy had overtaken him, he cried out, Save my life, and say what shall be my ransom. On his shield he had engraved for his motto, To Good Fortune. And it was he that made the oration at the funerals of such as died in that battle.

After these things, he bent his whole care and study for the improvement of the city and wall; and being chosen commissioner for repairing the walls, besides what money he expended out of the city funds, 846 he laid out of his own at least a hundred minas. And besides this, he gave ten thousand drachmas to the festival fund; and taking ship, he sailed from coast to coast to collect money of the allies; for which he was often by Demotelus, Aristonicus, and Hypereides crowned with golden crowns, and afterwards by Ctesiphon. Which last decree would have been retracted, Diodotus and Aeschines endeavouring to prove it to be contrary to the laws; but he defended himself so well against their allegations, that he overcame all difficulties, his enemies not having the fifth part of the votes of the jury.

After this, when Alexander the Great made his expedition into Asia, and Harpalus fled to Athens with a great sum of money [324 B.C.], at first he would not let him be entertained; but afterwards, Harpalus disembarked and gave him a thousand darics, so that he was of another mind; and when the Athenians determined to deliver Harpalus up to Antipater, he opposed it, proposing to deposit the money in the Acropolis, still without declaring the amount to the people. Thereupon Harpalus declared that he had brought with him from Asia seven hundred talents, and that this sum had been deposited in the Acropolis; but only three hundred and fifty or a little more could be found, as Philochorus relates. But when Harpalus broke out of the prison wherein he was kept till some person should come from Alexander, and was escaped into Crete, - or, as some will have it, into Taenarum in Laconia, - Demosthenes was accused that he had received from him a sum of money, and that therefore he had not given a true account of the sum delivered to him, nor had impeached the negligence of the keepers. So he was brought to trial by Hypereides, Pytheus, Menesaechmus, Himeraeus, and Patrocles, who prosecuted him so severely as to cause him to be condemned in the court of Areopagus; and being condemned, he went into exile, not being able to pay fivefold; for he was accused of receiving thirty talents. Others say, that he would not run the risk of a trial, but went into banishment before the day came. After this tempest was over, the Athenians sent Polyeuctus to the republic of Arcadia to draw them off from the alliance with the Macedonians. He was unsuccessful, but Demosthenes appeared to second him, where he reasoned so effectively that he easily prevailed. Which procured him so much credit and esteem, that after some time a trireme was dispatched to call him home again. And the Athenians decreed that, whereas he owed the state a fine of thirty talents, he should be excused of the fine if only he built an altar to Zeus the Saviour in the Peiraeus; which decree was first proposed by Demon his near kinsman. This being agreed on, he returned to the administration of affairs in the commonwealth again.

But when Antipater was blocked up in Lamia [323 B.C.], and the Athenians offered sacrifices for the happy news, he happened, being talking with Agesistratus, one of his intimate friends, to say, that his judgement concerning the state of affairs did not jump with other men’s, for that he knew the Greeks were brisk and ready enough to run a short course but not to hold on a long race. When Antipater had taken Pharsalus, and threatened to besiege Athens itself if they refused to deliver up such orators as had declaimed against him, Demosthenes, suspecting himself to be one of the number, left the city, and fled first into Aegina, that he might take sanctuary in the temple of Aeacus; but being afraid to trust himself long there, he went over to Calauria; and when the Athenians had decreed to deliver up those orators, and him especially as one of them, he continued a suppliant in the temple of Poseidon. When Archias came thither, - who, from his office of pursuing fugitives, was called Phygadotheres and was the pupil of Anaximenes the orator, - when he, I say, came to him, and persuaded him to go with him, telling him that no doubt he should be received by Antipater as a friend, he replied: When you played a part in a tragedy, you could not persuade me to believe you the person you represented; no more shall you now persuade me by your counsel. And when Archias endeavoured to force him thence, the townsmen would not suffer it. And Demosthenes told them, that he did not flee to Calauria to save his life, but that he might convince the Macedonians of their violence committed even against the Gods themselves. 847 And with that he called for a writing-table; and if we may credit Demetrius the Magnesian, on that he wrote a distich, which afterwards the Athenians caused to be affixed to his statue; and it was to this purpose:

“Had you, Demosthenes, an outward force
Great as your inward magnanimity,
Greece should not wear the Macedonian yoke.”

This statue, made by Polyeuctus, is placed near the cloister where the altar of the twelve Gods is erected. Some say this writing was found: “Demosthenes to Antipater, Greeting.” Philochorus tells us that he died by drinking of poison; and Satyrus the historian will have it, that the pen was poisoned with which he wrote his letter, and putting it into his mouth, soon after he tasted it he died. Eratosthenes is of another opinion, that being in continual fear of the Macedonians, he wore a poisoned bracelet on his arms. Others say again, that he died with holding his breath; and others, lastly, say that he carried strong poison in his signet. He lived to the age of seventy, according to those who give the highest number, - of sixty-seven, according to other statements. And he was in public life twenty-two years.

When King Philippus died [336 B.C.], he appeared publicly in a glorious robe or mantle, as rejoicing for his death, though he but just before mourned for his daughter. He assisted the Thebans likewise against Alexander, and animated all the other Greeks. So that when Alexander had conquered Thebes, he demanded Demosthenes of the Athenians, threatening them if they refused to deliver him. When he went against Persia, demanding ships of the Athenians, Demosthenes opposed it, saying, who can assure us that he will not use those ships we should send him against ourselves?

He left behind him two sons by one wife, the daughter of one Heliodorus, a noble citizen. He had but one daughter, who died unmarried, being but a child. A sister too he had, who married Laches of Leuconoe, his kinsman, and to him bore Demochares, who proved inferior to none in his time for eloquence, conduct, and courage. His statue is still standing in the Prytaneium, the first on the right as you approach the altar, clothed with a mantle and girt with a sword, because in this habit he delivered an oration to the people, when Antipater demanded of them their orators.

Afterwards, in due course, the Athenians decreed maintenance to be given to the family of Demosthenes in the Prytaneium, and likewise set up a statue to his memory, when he was dead, in the market, in the year of Gorgias [280 B.C.], which honours were paid him at the request of Demochares his sister’s son. And ten years after, Laches, the son of Demochares of Leuconoe, in the year of Pytharatus [271 B.C.], required the same honour for himself, that his statue should be set up in the market, and that both he and the eldest of his line for the future should have their allowance in the Prytaneium, and the seat of honour at all public shows. These decrees concerning both of them are inscribed, and to be found among the statute laws. The statue of Demochares, of which we have spoken before, was afterwards removed out of the market into the Prytaneium.

There are extant sixty-five orations which are truly his. Some report of him, that he lived a very dissolute and vicious life, appearing often in women’s apparel, and being frequently conversant at masks and revellings, whence he was surnamed Batalus; though others say, that this was a pet name given him by his nurse, and that from this he was called Batalus in derision. Diogenes the Cynic seeing him one day in a tavern, he was very much ashamed, and to shun him, went to withdraw; but Diogenes called after him, and told him, The more you shrink inward, the more you will be in the tavern. The same Diogenes once jeered at him, saying that in his orations he was a Scythian, but in fighting a delicate nice citizen. He was one of them who received gold of Ephialtes, one of the popular orators, who, being sent in an embassy to the king of Persia, took money secretly, and distributed it among the orators of Athens, that they might use their utmost endeavours to kindle and inflame the war against Philippus; 848 and it is said of Demosthenes, that he for his part had at once three thousand darics of the king. He apprehended one Anaxilas of Oreus, who had been his friend, and caused him to be tortured for a spy; and when he would confess nothing, he procured a decree that he should be delivered to the eleven executioners.

When once at a meeting of the Athenians they would not suffer him to speak, he told them he had but a short story to tell them. Upon which all being silent, thus he began: A certain youth, said he, hired an ass in summer time, to go from hence to Megara. About noon, when the sun was very hot, and both he that hired the ass and the owner were desirous of sitting in the shade of the ass, they each thrust the other away, - the owner arguing that he let him only his ass and not the shadow, and the other replying that, since he had hired the ass, all that belonged to him was at his dispose. Having said thus, he seemed to go his way. But the Athenians willing now to hear his story out, called him back, and desired him to proceed. To whom he replied: How comes it to pass that you are so desirous of hearing a story of the shadow of an ass, and refuse to give ear to matters of greater moment? Polus the player boasting to him that he had got a whole talent by playing but two days, he answered, and I have got five talents by being silent but one day. One day his voice failing him when he was declaiming publicly, being hissed, he cried out to the people, saying, You are to judge of players, indeed, by their voice, but of orators by the gravity of their sentences.

Epicles upbraiding him for his premeditating what he was to say, he replied, I should be ashamed to speak what comes uppermost to so great an assembly. They say of him that he never put out his lamp - that is, never ceased polishing his orations - until he was fifty years old. He says of himself, that he drank always fair water. Lysias the orator was acquainted with him; and Isocrates knew him concerned in the management of public affairs till the battle of Chaeroneia; as also some of the Socratic philosophers. [He delivered most of his orations extempore, Nature having well qualified him for it.] The first that proposed the crowning him with a coronet of gold was Aristonicus, the son of Nicophanes, the Anagyrasian; though Diondas prevented it with an affidavit.

9.  HYPEREIDES was son of Glaucippus, and grandson of Dionysius, of the borough of Colyttus. He had a son, who bore the same name as his father Glaucippus; the younger Glaucippus was an orator, who wrote many orations, and he had a son named Alphinous. At the same time as Lycurgus, he had been a pupil of the philosopher Plato and of the orator Isocrates. In Athens his concern in the commonwealth was at that time when Alexander threatened Greece, and he vigorously opposed Alexander’s demands made of the Athenians for the generals as well as for triremes. He advised the people not to discharge the garrison of Taenarum, and this he did for the sake of a friend of his, Chares, who was commander of it. At first he used to plead causes for a fee. He was suspected to have received part of the money which Ephialtes brought out of Persia, and was chosen to command a trireme, and was sent to assist the Byzantines, when Philippus was besieging their city. Nevertheless, in the same year he took the charge of defraying the expense of the solemn dances, whereas the rest of the captains were exempt from all such public burdens for that year. He obtained a decree for some honours to be paid to Demosthenes; and when that decree challenged by Diondas, as being contrary to the laws, he, being called in question upon it, cleared himself. He did not continue his friendship with Demosthenes, Lysicles, and Lycurgus to the last; for, Lysicles and Lycurgus being dead, and Demosthenes being accused of having received money of Harpalus, he, among all the rest, was pitched upon, as the only person who was not corrupted with bribery, to draw up his indictment, which he accordingly did. Being once accused at the instance of Aristogeiton of publishing acts contrary to the laws after the battle of Chaeroneia [338 B.C.], - 849 that all foreign inhabitants of Athens should be accounted citizens, that slaves should be made free, that all sacred things, children, and women should be confined to the Peiraeus, - he cleared himself of all and was acquitted. And being blamed by some, who wondered how he could be ignorant of the many laws that were directly repugnant to those decrees, he answered, that the arms of the Macedonians darkened his sight, and it was not he but the battle of Chaeroneia that made that decree. But Philippus, being somewhat frightened, gave leave to carry away their dead out of the field, which before he had denied to the heralds from Lebadeia.

After this, following the defeat at Crannon [322 B.C.], being demanded by Antipater, and the people being resolved to deliver him up, he fled out of the city with others who were under the same condemnation to Aegina; where meeting with Demosthenes, he excused himself for the breach of friendship between them. Going from thence, he was apprehended by Archias, surnamed Phygadotheres, by country a Thurian, formerly an actor, but at that time in the service of Antipater; by this man, I say, he was apprehended, even in the very temple of Poseidon, though he grasped the image of that God in his arms. He was brought before Antipater, who was then at Corinth; where being put upon the rack, he bit out his tongue, because he would not divulge the secrets of his country, and so died, on the ninth day of the month of Pyanepsion. Hermippus tells us that, as he went into Macedonia, his tongue was cut out and his body cast forth unburied; but Alphinous his cousin (or, according to the opinion of others, his grandson, by his son Glaucippus) obtained leave, by means of one Philopeithes a physician, to take up his body, which he burnt, and carried the ashes to Athens to his kinsfolk there, contrary to the edicts both of the Athenians and Macedonians, which not only banished them, but likewise forbade the burial of them anywhere in their own country. Others say, that he was carried to Cleonae with others, and there died, having his tongue cut out, as above; however, his relations and friends took his bones, when his body was burned, and buried them among his ancestors before the gate Hippades, as Heliodorus relates in his Third Book of Monuments. His monument is now altogether unknown and lost, being thrown down with age and long standing.

He is said to have excelled all others in his way of delivering himself in his orations to the people. And there are some who prefer him even to Demosthenes himself. There are seventy-seven orations which bear his name, of which only two and fifty are genuine and truly his. He was much given to sexual indulgence, insomuch that he turned his son out of doors, to entertain that famous courtesan Myrrhina. In Peiraeus he had another, whose name was Aristagora; and at Eleusis, where part of his estate lay, he kept another, Phila, a Theban girl whom he ransomed for twenty minas. His usual walk was in the fish-market.

It is thought that he was accused of impiety with one Phryne, a courtesan likewise, and so was sought after to be apprehended, as he himself seems to intimate in the beginning of an oration; and it is said, that when sentence was just ready to be passed upon her, he produced her in court, opened her clothes before, and revealed her naked breasts, which were so very white, that for her beauty’s sake the judges acquitted her. He at leisure times drew up several declamations against Demosthenes, which were thus discovered: Hypereides being sick, Demosthenes came one day to visit him, and caught him with a book in his hand written against him; at which seeming somewhat displeased, Hypereides told him: This book shall hurt no man that is my friend; but as a curb, it may serve to restrain my enemy from offering me any injury. He obtained a decree for some honours to be paid to Iolas, who gave the poisoned cup to Alexander. He joined with Leosthenes in the Lamian war, and made an admirable oration at the funerals of those who lost their lives therein.

When Philippus was prepared to embark for Euboea, and the Athenians heard the news of it with no little consternation, Hypereides in a very short time, by the voluntary contributions of the citizens, fitted out forty triremes, and was the first that set an example, by sending out two triremes, one for himself and another for his son, at his own charge.

850 When there was a controversy between the Delians and the Athenians, who should have the pre-eminence in the temple at Delos; Aeschines being chosen on the behalf of the Athenians for their advocate, the Areopagites refused to ratify the choice and elected Hypereides; and his oration is yet extant, and bears the name of the Deliac oration.

He likewise went as ambassador to Rhodes; where meeting other ambassadors from Antipater, who commended their master very highly for his goodness and virtue, We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we have no need of a good master at present.

It is said of him, that he never affected much action in his orations to the people, his chief aim being to lay down the matter plainly, and make the case as obvious to the judges as he could.

He was sent likewise to the Eleans, to plead the cause of the athlete Callippus, who was accused of carrying away the prize at the public games unfairly; in which cause he was successful. But when he opposed the sentence of paying honours to Phocion, obtained by Meidias the son of Meidias the Anagyrasian, he was in that cause defeated. This cause was pleaded on the twenty-fourth day of Gamelion, in the year when (?) Xenius was archon.

10.  DEINARCHUS, the son of Socrates or Sostratus, - born, as some think, at Athens, but according to others, at Corinth, - came to Athens very young, and there took up his dwelling, at that time when Alexander made his expedition into Asia. He used to hear Theophrastus, who succeeded Aristotle in his school; and he also frequently attended Demetrius of Phalerum. He betook himself more especially to the affairs of the commonwealth after the death of Antipater [319 B.C.], when some of the orators were killed and others banished. Having contracted friendship with Cassander, he became in a short time vastly rich, by exacting great rates for his orations of those for whom he wrote them. He opposed himself to the greatest and most noble orators of his time, not by being zealous to declaim publicly - for his faculty did not lie that way, - but by composing orations for their adversaries. And when Harpalus had broken out of prison, be wrote several orations, which he gave to their accusers to pronounce against those that were suspected to have taken bribes from him.

Some time after, being accused of a conspiracy with Antipater and Cassander about the matter of Munychia, when it was surprised by Antigonus and Demetrius, who put a garrison into it, in the year of Anaxicrates [307 B.C.], he turned the greatest part of his estate into money, and fled to Chalcis, where he lived in exile about fifteen years, and increased his stock; but afterwards, by the mediation of Theophrastus, he and some other banished persons returned to Athens. Then he took up his abode in the house of one Proxenus, his intimate friend; where, being very aged and also dim-sighted, he lost his money. And because Proxenus refused to make inquiry after the thief, he apprehended him; and this was the first time that ever he appeared in court. That oration against Proxenus is extant; and there are sixty-four that bear his name, whereof some are believed to be Aristogeiton’s. He imitated Hypereides; or, as some incline to judge, rather Demosthenes, because of that vigour and force to move the affections, and the rhetorical ornaments that are evident in his style.

DECREES PROPOSED TO THE ATHENIANS :-

1.  Demochares, the son of Laches of Leuconoe, requires that a statue of brass be set up for Demosthenes, the son of Demosthenes the Paeanian, in the market-place, as likewise that maintenance be provided in the Prytaneium for himself and the eldest of his descendants successively, and the chief seat in all public shows; for that he had done many good offices for the Athenians, had on most occasions been a good counsellor, and had spent his own wealth in the service of the state; had expended eight talents for the fitting out and maintenance of one trireme, when they delivered Euboea, another, when Cephisodorus sailed into the Hellespont, 851 and a third, when Chares and Phocion were commissioned by the people to go as generals to Byzantium; that he at his own charge had redeemed many who had been taken prisoners by Philippus at Pydna, Methone, and Olynthus; that himself had maintained a chorus of men, when no provision had been made therefor through the neglect of the tribe Pandionis; that he had furnished many indigent citizens with arms; that being chosen by the people to oversee the city works, he had laid out three talents of his own funds towards the repairing of the walls, besides all that he gave for making two trenches about the Peiraeus; that after the battle of Chaeroneia he deposited one talent for the use of the public, and after that, another to buy corn in time of scarcity and want; that by his beneficence, wholesome counsels and effectual persuasions, he allured the Thebans, Euboeans, Corinthians, Megarians, Achaeans, Locrians, Byzantines, and Messenians to a league with the Athenians; that he raised an army of ten thousand foot and a thousand horse, and contracted plenty to the people and their allies; that being ambassador, he had persuaded the allies to the contribution of above five hundred talents; that in the same quality, by his influence and the free gift of money, he obtained of the Peloponnesians that they should not send aid to Alexander against the Thebans; and in consideration of many other good offices performed by him, either as to his counsels, or his personal administration of affairs in the commonwealth, in which, and in defending the rights and liberties of the people, no man in his time had done more or deserved better; and in regard of his sufferings when the commonwealth was ruined, being banished by the insolence of the oligarchy, and at last dying at Calauria for his good-will to the public, there being soldiers sent from Antipater to apprehend him; and that notwithstanding his being in the hands of his enemies, in so great and imminent danger, his hearty affection to his countrymen was still the same, insomuch that he never to the last offered any unworthy thing to the injury of his people.

2.  In the magistracy of Pytharatus [271 B.C.], Laches, the son of Demochares of Leuconoe requires of the Athenian senate that a statue of brass be set up for Demochares, the son of Laches of Leuconoe, in the market-place, and table and diet in the Prytaneium for himself and the eldest of his progeny successively, and the first seat at all public shows; for that he had always been a benefactor and good counsellor to the people, and had done these and the like good offices to the public: he had gone in embassies in his own person; had proposed and carried in bills relating to his embassy; had been chief manager of public matters; had repaired the walls, prepared arms and machines; had fortified the city in the time of the four years’ war, and composed a peace, truce, and alliance with the Boeotians; for which things he was banished by those who overturned and usurped the government; - and being called home again by a decree of the people, in the year of Diocles [288 B.C.], he had reduced the expenses, and spared the public funds; and going in embassy to Lysimachus, he had at one time gained thirty, and at another time a hundred talents of silver, for the use of the public; he had moved the people to send an embassy to Ptolemaeus, by which means the people got fifty talents; he went ambassador to Antipater, and by that got twenty talents, and brought it to Eleusis to the people, - all which measures he persuaded the people to adopt while he himself carried them out; furthermore, he was banished for his love for the commonwealth, and would never take part with usurpers against the popular government; neither did he, after the overthrow of that government, bear any public office in the state; he was the only man, of all that had to do in the public administration of affairs in his time, who never promoted or consented to any other form of government but that of the people; by his prudence and conduct, all the judgements and decrees, the laws, courts, and all things else belonging to the Athenians, were preserved safe and inviolate; and, in a word, he never said or did any thing to the prejudice of the popular government.

3.  Lycophron, the son of Lycurgus of Butadae, requires that he may have maintenance in the Prytaneium, according to a donation of the people to Lycurgus. In the year of Anaxicrates [307 B.C.], in the sixth prytany, - which was that of the tribe Antiochis, - 852 Stratocles, the son of Euthydemus of Diomeia, proposed; that, - since Lycurgus, the son of Lycophron of Butadae, had (as it were) an inherited good-will in him towards the people of Athens; and since his ancestors Diomedes and Lycurgus lived in honour and esteem of all people, and when they died were honoured for their virtue so far as to be buried at the public charge in the Cerameicus; and since Lycurgus himself, while he had the management of public affairs, was the author of many good and wholesome laws, and was the city treasurer for twelve years together, during which time there passed through his own hands eighteen thousand and nine hundred talents, besides other great sums of money that he was entrusted with by private citizens for the public good, to the sum of six hundred and fifty talents; in all which concerns he behaved himself so justly, that he was often crowned by the city for his fidelity; besides, being chosen by the people to that purpose, he brought much money into the Acropolis, and provided ornaments, golden images of victory, and vessels of gold and silver for the Goddess Athene, and gold ornaments for a hundred Canephoroe; since, being put in charge of military equipment, he brought into the stores a great number of arms and at least fifty thousand missiles, and set out four hundred triremes, some new built, and others only repaired; since, finding many buildings half finished, as the dock-yards, the arsenal, and the theatre of Dionysus, he completed them; and finished the Panathenaic stadium, and the court for public exercises at the Lyceium, and adorned the city with many fair new buildings; since, when Alexander, having conquered Asia, and assuming the empire of all Greece, demanded Lycurgus as the principal man that confronted and opposed him in his affairs, the people refused to deliver him up, notwithstanding the terror inspired by Alexander; and since, being often called to account for his management of affairs in so free a city, which was wholly governed by the people, he never was found faulty or corrupt in any particular; - that all people, therefore, may know, not only that the people do highly esteem all such as act in defence of their liberties and rights while they live, but likewise that they pay them honours after death, in the name of Good Fortune it is decreed by the people, that such honours be paid to Lycurgus, the son of Lycophron of Butadae, for his justice and magnanimity, as that a statue of brass be erected in memory of him in any part of the market which the laws do not prohibit; as likewise that maintenance be provided in the Prytaneium for every eldest son of his descendants, successively for ever. Also, that all his decrees be ratified, and engraved by the public secretary on tablets of stone, and set up in the Acropolis next to the gifts consecrated to Athene; and that the city treasurer shall deposit fifty drachmas for the engraving of them, out of the money set apart for such uses.

Comparison between Aristophanes and Menander

853 1 1 . . . . In general he much prefers Menander, and in particular he adds what follows:

“Coarseness,” he says, “in words, vulgarity and ribaldry are present in Aristophanes, but not at all in Menander; obviously, for the uneducated, ordinary person is captivated by what the former says, but the educated man will be displeased. I refer to antitheses and similar endings and plays on words. For of these Menander does make use with proper consideration and rarely, believing that they should be treated with care, but Aristophanes employs them frequently, inopportunely, and frigidly; for his punning is applauded,” he says, “in

because he soused the bankers —

Though they never were that but damn curs,

and

This fellow blows an ill north-east or calumny,

and

Give him a belly-punch in his bowels and guts,

and

By laughter driven I soon shall be in Laughter-town,

and

Whatever shall I do to you, you wretched pot,

When gone the way of pots?

and

Since, women, what he does to us are evils wild,

For one who e’en himself in the wild-greens market grew,

and

But look, the moths have eaten up my plumes entire,

and

Lam. I say, bring here my shield’s round orb all Gorgon-faced.

Dic. I say, hand me a flat-cake’s orb all faced with cheese,

and many things of the same sort. Moreover, in his diction there are tragic, comic, pompous, and prosaic elements, obscurity, vagueness, dignity, and elevation, loquacity and sickening nonsense. And with all these differences and dissimilarities his use of words does not give to each kind its fitting and appropriate use; I mean, for example, to a king his dignity, to an orator his eloquence, to a woman her artlessness, to an ordinary man his prosaic speech, to a market-lounger his vulgarity; but he assigns to his characters as if by lot such words as happen to turn up, and you could not tell whether the speaker is son or father, a rustic or a god, or an old woman or a hero.

2 1 “But Menander’s diction is so polished and its ingredients mingled into so consistent a whole that, although it is employed in connexion with many emotions and many types of character and adapts itself to persons of every kind, it nevertheless appears as one and preserves its uniformity in common and familiar words in general use; but if the action should anywhere call for strange and deceptive language and for bluster, he opens, as it were, all the stops of his flute, but then quickly and plausibly clothes them and brings the sound back to its natural quality. And although there have been many noted artisans, no shoemaker ever made the same shoe, no mask-maker the same mask, and no tailor the same cloak, that would be appropriate at the same time for man and woman and youth and old man and domestic slave; but Menander so blended his diction that it comports with every nature, disposition, and age, and he did this although he entered upon his career while still a young man and died at the height of his powers as playwright and poet, when, as Aristotle says, writers make the greatest progress in the matter of diction. If, therefore, we were to compare Menander’s earliest dramas with those of his middle and final periods, we should perceive from them how many qualities he would, had he lived longer, have added to these.

3 1 854”Some dramatists write for the common people, and others for the few, but it is not easy to say which of them all is capable of adapting his work to both classes. Now Aristophanes is neither pleasing to the many nor endurable to the thoughtful, but his poetry is like a harlot who has passed her prime and then takes up the rôle of a wife, whose presumption the many cannot endure and whose licentiousness and malice the dignified abominate. But Menander, along with his charm, shows himself above all satisfying. He has made his poetry, of all the beautiful works Greece has produced, the most generally accepted subject in theatres, in discussions, and at banquets, for readings, for instruction, and for dramatic competitions. For he shows, indeed, what the essence and nature of skill in the use of language really are, approaching all subjects with a persuasiveness from which there is no escape, and controlling every sound and meaning which the Greek language affords. For what reason, in fact, is it truly worth while for an educated man to go to the theatre, except to enjoy Menander? And when else are theatres filled with men of learning, if a comic character has been brought upon the stage? And at banquets for whom is it more proper for the festive board to yield its place and for Dionysus to waive his rights? And just as painters, when their eyes are tired, turn to the colours of flowers and grass, Cso to philosophers and men of learning Menander is a rest from their concentrated and intense studies, inviting the mind, as it were, to a meadow flowery, shady, and full of breezes.

4 1 “Although the city produced in that whole period many excellent performers of comedy, only Menander’s comedies contain an abundance of salty wit and merriment, which seem like the salt derived from that sea out of which Aphroditê was born. But the witticisms of Aristophanes are bitter and rough and possess a sharpness which wounds and bites. And I do not know wherein his vaunted cleverness resides, whether in his words or his characters. Certainly even whatever he imitates he makes worse; for with him roguishness is not urbane but malicious, rusticity not simple but silly, facetiousness not playful but ridiculous, and love not joyous but licentious. For the fellow seems to have written his poetry, not for any decent person, but the indecent and wanton lines for the licentious, the slanderous and bitter passages for the envious and malicious.”

BOOK XI

On the malice of Herodotus

1 The style, O Alexander , of Herodotus, as being simple, free, and easily suiting itself to its subject, has deceived many; but more, a persuasion of his dispositions being equally sincere. For it is not only (as Plato says) an extreme injustice, to make a show of being just when one is not so; but it is also the highest malignity, to pretend to simplicity and mildness and be in the meantime really most malicious. Now since he principally exerts his malice against the Boeotians and Corinthians, though without sparing any other, I think myself obliged to defend our ancestors and the truth against this part of his writings, since those who would detect all his other lies and fictions would have need of many books. But, as Sophocles has it, the face of persuasion, is prevalent, especially when delivered in the good language, and such as has power to conceal both the other absurdities and the ill-nature of the writer. King Philip told the Greeks who revolted from him to Titus Quinctius that they had got a more polished, but a longer lasting yoke. So the malice of Herodotus is indeed more polite and delicate than that of Theopompus, yet it pinches closer, and makes a more severe impression, — not unlike to those winds which, blowing secretly through narrow chinks, are sharper than those that are more diffused. Now it seems to me very convenient to delineate, as it were, in the rough draught, those signs and marks that distinguish a malicious narration from a candid and unbiassed one, applying afterwards every point we shall examine to such as appertain to them.

2 First then, whoever in relating a story shall use the odious terms when gentler expressions might do as well, is it not to be esteemed impartial, but an enjoyer of his own fancy, in putting the worst construction on things; as if any one, instead of saying Nicias is too superstitious, should call him fanatic, or should accuse Cleon of presumption and madness rather than of inconsiderateness in speech.

3 Secondly, when a writer, catching hold of a fault which has no reference to his story, shall draw it into the relation of such affairs as need it not, extending his narrative with cicumlocutions, only that he may insert a man’s misfortune, offence, or discommendable action, it is manifest that he delights in speaking evil. Therefore Thucydides would not clearly relate the faults of Cleon, which were very numerous; and as for Hyperbolus the orator, having touched at him in a word and called him an ill man, he let him go. Philistus also passed over all those outrages committed by Dionysius on the barbarians which had no connection with the Grecian affairs. For the excursions and digressions of history are principally allowed for fables and antiquities, and sometimes also for encomiums. But he who makes reproaches and detractions an addition to his discourse seems to incur the tragedian’s curse on the “collector of men’s calamities.”

4 Now the opposite to this is known to every one, as the omitting to relate some good and laudable action, which, though it may seem not to be reprehensible, yet is then done maliciously when the omission happens in a place that is pertinent to the history. For to praise unwillingly is so far from being more civil than to dispraise willingly, that it is perhaps rather more uncivil.

5 The fourth sign of a partial disposition in writing of history I take to be this: When a matter is related in two or more several manners, and the historian shall embrace the worst. Sophisters indeed are permitted, for the obtaining either of profit or reputation, to undertake the defence of the worst cause; for they neither create any firm belief of the matter, nor yet do they deny that they are often pleased in maintaining paradoxes and making incredible things appear probable. But an historian is then just, when he asserts such things as he knows to be true, and of those that are uncertain reports rather the better than the worse. Nay, there are many writers who wholly omit the worse. Thus Ephorus writes of Themistocles, that he was acquainted with the treason of Pausanias and his negotiations with the King’s lieutenants, but that he neither consented to it, nor hearkened to Pausanias’s proffers of making him partaker of his hopes; and Thucydides left the whole matter out of his story, as judging it to be false.

6 Moreover, in things confessed to have been done, but for doing which the cause and intention is unknown, he who casts his conjectures on the worst side is partial and malicious. Thus do the comedians, who affirm the Peloponnesian war to have been kindled by Pericles for the love of Aspasia or the sake of Phidias, and not through any desire of honor, or ambition of pulling down the Peloponnesian pride and giving place in nothing to the Lacedaemonians. For those who suppose a bad cause for laudable works and commendable actions, endeavoring by calumnies to insinuate sinister suspicions of the actor when they cannot openly discommend the act, — as they that impute the killing of Alexander the tyrant by Theba not to any magnanimity or hatred of vice, but to a certain feminine jealousy and passion, and those that say Cato slew himself for fear Caesar should put him to a more shameful death, — such as these are manifestly in the highest degree envious and malicious.

7 An historical narration is also more or less guilty of malice, according as it relates the manner of the action; as if one should be said to have performed an exploit rather by money than bravery, as some affirm of Philip; or else easily and without any labor, as it is said of Alexander; or else not by prudence, but by Fortune, as the enemies of Timotheus painted cities falling into his nets as he lay sleeping. For they undoubtedly diminish the greatness and beauty of the actions, who deny the performer of them to have done them generously, industriously, virtuously, and by themselves.

8 Moreover, those who will directly speak ill of any one incur the reproach of moroseness, rashness, and madness, unless they keep within measure. But they who send forth calumnies obliquely, as if they were shooting arrows out of corners, and then stepping back think to conceal themselves by saying they do not believe what they most earnestly desire to have believed, whilst they disclaim all malice, condemn themselves also of farther disingenuity.

9 Next to these are they who with their reproaches intermix some praises, as did Aristoxenus, who, having termed Socrates unlearned, ignorant, and libidinous, added, Yet was he free from injustice. For, as they who flatter artificially and craftily sometimes mingle light reprehensions with their many and great praises, joining this liberty of speech as a sauce to their flattery; so malice, that it may gain belief to its accusations, adds also praise.

10 We might here also reckon up more notes; but these are sufficient to let us understand the nature and manners of Herodotus.

11 First therefore, — beginning, as the proverb is, with Vesta, — whereas all the Grecians affirm Io, daughter to Inachus, to have been worshipped with divine honor by the barbarians, and by her glory to have left her name to many seas and principal ports, and to have given a source and original to most noble and royal families; this famous author says of her, that she gave herself to certain Phoenician merchants, having been not unwillingly deflowered by a mariner, and fearing lest she should be found by her friends to be with child (Herodotus, i, 5). And he belies the Phoenicians as having delivered these things of her, and says that the Persian stories testify of her being carried away by the Phoenicians with other women (Herodotus, i, 1). Presently after, he gives sentence on the bravest and greatest exploits of Greece, saying that the Trojan war was foolishly undertaken for an ill woman. For it is manifest, says he, that had they not been willing they had never been ravished (Herodotus, i, 4). Let us then say, that the gods also acted foolishly, in inflicting their indignation on the Spartans for abusing the daughters of Scedasus the Leuctrian, and in punishing Ajax for the violation of Cassandra. For it is manifest, if we believe Herodotus, that if they had not been willing they had never been defiled. And yet he himself said that Aristomenes was taken alive by the Spartans; and the same afterwards happened to Philopoemen, general of the Achaeans; and the Carthaginians took Regulus, the consul of the Romans; than whom there are not easily to be found more valiant and warlike men. Nor is it to be wondered, since even leopards and tigers are taken alive by men. But Herodotus blames the poor women that have been abused by violence, and patronizes their ravishers.

12 Nay, he is so favorable to the barbarians, that, acquitting Busiris of those human sacrifices and that slaughter of his guests for which he is accused, and attributing by his testimony to the Egyptians much religion and justice, he endeavors to cast that abominable wickedness and those impious murders on the Grecians. For in his Second Book he says, that Menelaus, having received Helen from Proteus and having been honored by him with many presents, showed himself a most unjust and wicked man; for wanting a favorable wind to set sail, he found out an impious device, and having taken two of the inhabitants’ boys, consulted their entrails; for which villany being hated and persecuted, he fled with his ships directly into Libya (Herodotus, ii, 45). From what Egyptian this story proceeds, I know not. For, on the contrary, many honors are even at this day given by the Egyptians to Helen and Menelaus.

13 The same Herodotus, that he may still be like himself, says that the Persians learned the defiling of the male sex from the Greeks (Herodotus, i, 135). And yet how could the Greeks have taught this impurity to the Persians, amongst whom, as is confessed by many, boys had been castrated before ever they arrived in the Grecian seas? He writes also, that the Greeks were instructed by the Egyptians in their pomps, solemn festivals, and worship of the twelve gods; that Melampus also learned of the Egyptians the name of Dionysus (or Bacchus) and taught it the other Greeks; that the mysteries likewise and rites of Ceres were brought out of Egypt by the daughters of Danaus; and that the Egyptians were wont to beat themselves and make great lamentation, but yet he himself refused to tell the names of their deities, but concealed them in silence. As to Hercules and Bacchus, whom the Egyptians named gods, and the Greeks very aged men, he nowhere has such scruples and hesitation; although he places also the Egyptian Hercules amongst the gods of the second rank, and Bacchus amongst those of the third, as having had some beginning of their being and not being eternal, and yet he pronounces those to be gods; but to the gods Bacchus and Hercules, as having been mortal and being now demi-gods, he thinks we ought to perform anniversary solemnities, but not to sacrifice to them as to gods. The same also he said of Pan, overthrowing the most venerable and purest sacrifices of the Greeks by the proud vanities and mythologies of the Egyptians. (For the passages referred to in this chapter, see Herodotus, ii, 48, 51, 145, 146, 171.)

14 Nor is this impious enough; but moreover, deriving the pedigree of Hercules from Perseus, he says that Perseus was an Assyrian, as the Persians affirm. “But the leaders,” says he, “of the Dorians may appear to be descended in a right line from the Egyptians, reckoning their ancestors from before Danae and Acrisius.” (Herodotus, vi. 53, 54). Here he has wholly passed by Epaphus, Io, Iasus, and Argus, being ambitious not only to make the other Herculeses Egyptians and Phoenicians but to carry this also, whom himself declares to have been the third, out of Greece to the barbarians. But of the ancient learned writers, neither Homer, nor Hesiod, nor Archilochus, nor Pisander, nor Stesichorus, nor Alcman, nor Pindar, makes any mention of the Egyptian or the Phoenician Hercules, but all acknowledge this our own Boeotian and Argive Hercules.

15 Now of the seven sages, whom he calls Sophisters, he affirms Thales to have been a barbarian, descended of the Phoenicians (Herodotus, i, 170). Speaking ill also of the gods under the person of Solon, he has these words: “Thou, O Croesus, askest me concerning human affairs, who know that every one of the deities envious and tumultuous.” (Herodotus, i, 32) Thus attributing to Solon what himself thinks of the gods, he joins malice to blasphemy.

Having made use also of Pittacus in some trivial matters, not worth the mentioning, he has passed over the greatest and gallantest action that was ever done by him. For when the Athenians and Mitylenaeans were at war about Sigaeum, Phrynon, the Athenian general, challenging whoever would come forth to a single combat, Pittacus advanced to meet him, and catching him in a net, slew that stout and giant-like man; for which when the Mitylaenans offered him great presents, darting his javelin as far as he could out of his hand, he desired only so much ground as he should reach with that throw; and the place is to this day called Pittacium. Now what does Herodotus, when he comes to this? Instead of Pittacus’s valiant act, he tells us the fight of Alcaeus the poet, who throwing away his arms ran out of the battle; by thus not writing of honorable deeds and not passing over such as are dishonorable, he offers his testimony to those who say, that from one and the same malice proceed both envy and a rejoicing at other men’s harms (Herodotus v. 95) .

16 After this, he accuses of treason the Alcmaeonidae who showed themselves generous men, and delivered their country from tyranny (Herodotus, i, 61). He says, that they received Pisistratus after his banishment and got him called home, on condition he should marry the daughter of Megacles; but the damsel saying to her mother, Do you see, mother, how I am known by Pisistratus contrary to nature? The Alcmaeonidae were so offended at this villany, that they expelled the tyrant.

17 Now that the Lacedaemonians might have no less share of his malice than the Athenians, behold how he bespatters Othryadas, the man most admired and honored by them. “He only,” says Herodotus, “remaining alive of the three hundred, and ashamed to return to Sparta, his companions being lost, slew himself on the spot at Thyreae.” (Herodotus, i, 82). For having before said the victory was doubtful on both sides, he here, by making Othryadas ashamed, witnesses that the Lacedaemonians were vanquished. For it was shameful for him to survive, if conquered; but glorious, if conqueror.

18 I pass by now, that having, represented Croesus as foolish, vainglorious, and ridiculous in all things, he makes him, when a prisoner, to have taught and instructed Cyrus, who seems to have excelled all other kings in prudence, virtue, and magnanimity (Herodotus, i, 155, 156, 207, and 208). Having testified of the same Croesus nothing else that was commendable but his honoring the gods with many and great oblations, he shows that very act of his to have been the most impious of all. For he says, that he and his brother Pantoleon contended for the kingdom while their father was yet alive; and that Croesus, having obtained the crown, caused a companion and familiar friend of Pantoleon’s to be torn in pieces in a fulling-mill, and sent presents to the gods from his property (Herodotus, i, 92). Of Deioces also, the Median, who by virtue and justice obtained the government, he says that he got it not by real but pretended justice (Herodotus, i, 96).

19 But I let pass the barbarian examples, since he has offered us plenty enough in the Grecian affairs. He says, that the Athenians and many other Ionians were so ashamed of that name that they wholly refused to be called Ionians; and that those who esteemed themselves the noblest among them, and who had come forth from the very Prytaneum of Athens, begat children on barbarian wives whose parents, husbands, and former children they had slain; that the women had therefore made a law among themselves, confirmed it by oath, and delivered it to be kept by their daughters, never to eat with their husbands, nor to call any of them by his name; and that the present Milesians are descended from these women. Having afterwards added that those are true Ionians who celebrate the feast called Apaturia; they all, says he, keep it except the Ephesians and Colophonians (Herodotus, i, 143–148). In this manner does he deprive these two states of their nobility.

20 He says moreover, that the Cumaeans and Mitylenaeans agreed with Cyrus to deliver up to him for a price Pactyas, who had revolted from him. I know not indeed, says he, for how much; since it is not certain what it was. Bravo! — not to know what it was, and yet to cast such an infamy on a Grecian city, without an assured knowledge! He says farther, that the Chians took Pactyas, who was brought to them out of the temple of Minerva Poliuchus (or Guardianess of the city), and delivered him up, having received the city Atarneus for their recompense. And yet Charon the Lampsacenian, a more ancient writer, relating this matter concerning Pactyas, charges neither the Mitylenaeans nor the Chians with any such action. These are his very words: “Pactyas, hearing that the Persian army drew near, fled first to Mitylene, then to Chios, and there fell into the hands of Cyrus.” (See Herodotus, i, 157 etc.)

21 Our author in his Third Book, relating the expedition of the Lacedaemonians against the tyrant Polycrates, affirms, that the Samians think and say that the Spartans, to recompense them for their former assistance against the Messenians, both brought back the Samians that were banished, and made war on the tyrant; but that the Lacedaemonians deny this, and say, they undertook this design not to help or deliver the Samians, but to punish them for having taken away a cup sent by them to Croesus, and besides, a breastplate sent them by Amasis (Herodotus, iii, 47, 48). And yet we know that there was not at that time any city so desirous of honor, or such an enemy to tyrants, as Sparta. For what breastplate or cup was the cause of their driving the Cypselidae out of Corinth and Ambracia, Lygdamis out of Naxos, the children of Pisistratus out of Athens, Aeschines out of Sicyon, Symmachus out of Thasus, Aulis out of Phocis, and Aristogenes out of Miletus; and of their overturning the domineering powers of Thessaly, pulling down Aristomedes and Angelus by the help of King Leotychides? — which facts are elsewhere more largely described. Now, if Herodotus says true, they were in the highest degree guilty both of malice and folly, when, denying a most honorable and most just cause of their expedition, they confessed that in remembrance of a former injury, and too highly valuing an inconsiderable matter, they invaded a miserable and afflicted people.

22 Now perhaps he gave the Lacedaemonians this stroke, as directly falling under his pen; but the city of Corinth, which was wholly out of the course of his story, he has brought in-going out of his way (as they say) to fasten upon it — and has bespattered it with a most filthy crime and most shameful calumny. “The Corinthians,” says he, “studiously helped this expedition of the Lacedaemonians to Samos, as having themselves also been formerly affronted by the Samians.” The matter was this. Periander tyrant of Corinth sent three hundred boys, sons to the principal men of Corcyra, to King Alyattes, to be gelt. These, going ashore in the island of Samos, were by the Samians taught to sit as suppliants in the temple of Diana, where they preserved them, setting before them for their food sesame mingled with honey. This our author calls an affront put by the Samians on the Corinthians, who therefore instigated the Lacedaemonians against them, to wit, because the Samians had saved three hundred children of the Greeks from being unmanned. By attributing this villany to the Corinthians, he makes the city more wicked than the tyrant. He indeed was revenging himself on those of Corcyra who had slain his son; but what had the Corinthians suffered, that they should punish the Samians for putting an obstacle to so great a cruelty and wickedness? — and this, after three generations, reviving the memory of an old quarrel for the sake of that tyranny, which they found so grievous and intolerable that they are still endlessly abolishing all the monuments and marks of it, though long since extinct. Such then was the injury done by the Samians to the Corinthians. Now what a kind of punishment was it the Corinthians would have inflicted on them? Had they been indeed angry with the Samians, they should not have incited the Lacedaemonians, but rather diverted them from their war against Polycrates, that the Samians might not by the tyrant’s overthrow recover liberty, and be freed from their slavery. But (what is most to be observed) why were the Corinthians so offended with the Samians, that desired indeed but were not able to save the Corcyraeans children, and yet were not displeased with the Cnidians, who both preserved them and restored them to their friends? Nor indeed have the Corcyraeans any great esteem for the Samians on this account; but of the Cnidians they preserve a grateful recollection, having granted them several honors and privileges, and made decrees in their favor. For these, sailing to Samos, drove away Periander’s guards from the temple, and taking the children aboard their ships, carried them safe to Corcyra; as it is recorded by Antenor the Cretan, and by Dionysius the Chalcidian in his foundations. Now that the Spartans undertook not this war on any design of punishing the Samians, but to save them by delivering them from the tyrant, we have the testimony of the Samians themselves. For they affirm that there is in Samos a monument erected at the public charge, and honors there done to Archias a Spartan, who fell fighting valiantly in that quarrel; for which cause also his posterity still keep a familiar and friendly correspondence with the Samians, as Herodotus himself witnesses. (See Herodotus, iii. 48.)

23 In his Fifth Book, he says, that Clisthenes, one of the best and noblest men in Athens, persuaded the priestess Pythia to be a false prophetess, and always to exhort the Lacedaemonians to free Athens from the tyrants; calumniating this most excellent and just action by the imputation of so great a wickedness and imposture, and taking from Apollo the credit of that true and good prophecy, beseeming even Themis herself, who is also said to have joined with him. He says farther, that Isagoras prostituted his wife to Cleomenes, who came to her (Herodotus, v. 63, 70). Then, as his manner is, to gain credit by mixing some praises with his reproaches, he says: Isagoras the son of Tisander was of a noble family, but I cannot tell the original of it; his kinsmen, however, sacrifice to the Carian Jupiter (Herodotus, v. 66). O this pleasant and cunning scoffer of a writer, who thus disgracefully sends Isagoras to the Carians, as it were to the ravens. As for Aristogiton, he puts him not forth at the back door, but thrusts him directly out of the gate into Phoenicia, saying that he had his original from the Gephyraeans, and that the Gephyraeans were not, as some think, Euboeans or Eretrians, but Phoenicians, as himself has heard by report (Herodotus, v. 58). And since he cannot altogether take from the Lacedaemonians the glory of having delivered the Athenians from the tyrants, he endeavors to cloud and disgrace that most honorable act by as foul a passion. For he says, they presently repented of it, as not having done well, in that they had been persuaded by spurious and deceitful oracles to drive the tyrants, who were their allies and had promised to put Athens into their hands, out of their country, and had restored the city to an ungrateful people. He adds, that they were about to send for Hippias from Sigeum, and bring him back to Athens; but that they were opposed by the Corinthians, Sosicles telling them how much the city of Corinth had suffered under the tyranny of Cypselus and Periander (Herodotus, v. 90, 91). And yet there was no outrage of Periander’s more abominable and cruel than his sending the three hundred children to be emasculated, for the delivering and saying of whom from that contumely the Corinthians, he says, were angry and bore a grudge against the Samians, as having put an affront upon them. With so much repugnance and contradiction is that malice of his discourse filled, which on every occasion insinuates itself into his narrations.

24 After this, relating the action of Sardis, he, as much as in him lies, diminishes and discredits the matter; being so audacious as to call the ships which the Athenians sent to the assistance of the Ionians, who had revolted from the King the beginning of evils, because they endeavored to deliver so many and so great Grecian cities from the barbarians (Herodotus, v. 97). As to the Eretrians, making mention of them only by the way, he passes over in silence a great, gallant, and memorable action of theirs. For when all Ionia was in a confusion and uproar, and the King’s fleet drew nigh, they, going forth to meet him, overcame in a sea-fight the Cyprians in the Pamphylian Sea. Then turning back and leaving their ships at Ephesus, they invaded Sardis and besieged Artaphernes, who was fled into the castle, that so they might raise the siege of Miletus. And this indeed they effected, causing the enemies to break up their camp and remove thence in a wonderful fright, and then seeing themselves in danger to be oppressed by a multitude, retired. This not only others, but Lysanias of Mallus also in his history of Eretria relates, thinking it convenient, if for no other reason, yet after the taking and destruction of the city, to add this valiant and heroic act. But this writer of ours says, they were defeated, and pursued even to their ships by the barbarians; though Charon the Lampsacenian has no such thing, but writes thus, word for word: “The Athenians set forth with twenty galleys to the assistance of the Ionians, and going to Sardis, took all thereabouts, except the King’s wall; which having done, they returned to Miletus.”

25 In his Sixth Book, our author, discoursing of the Plataeans, — how they gave themselves to the Lacedaemonians, who exhorted them rather to have recourse to the Athenians, who were nearer to them and no bad defenders, — adds, not as a matter of suspicion or opinion, but as a thing certainly known by him, that the Lacedaemonians gave the Plataeans this advice, not so much for any goodwill, as through a desire to find work for the Athenians by engaging them with the Boeotians (Herodotus, vi. 108). If then Herodotus is not malicious, the Lacedaemonians must have been both fraudulent and spiteful; and the Athenians fools, in suffering themselves to be thus imposed on; and the Plataeans were brought into play, not for any good-will or respect, but as an occasion of war.

26 He is farther manifestly convinced of belying the Lacedaemonians, when he says that, whilst they expected the full moon, they failed of giving their assistance to the Athenians at Marathon. For they not only made a thousand other excursions and fights at the beginning of the month, without staying for the full moon; but wanted so little of being present at this very battle, which was fought the sixth day of the month Boedromion, that at their coming they found the dead still lying in the field. And yet he has written thus of the full moon: “It was impossible for them to do these things at that present, being unwilling to break the law; for it was the ninth of the month, and they said, they could not go forth on the ninth day, the orb of the moon being not yet full. And therefore they stayed for the full moon” (Herodotus, vi. 106). But thou, O Herodotus, transferest the full moon from the middle to the beginning of the month, and at the same time confoundest the heavens, days, and all things; and yet thou dost claim to be the historian of Greece!

And professing to write more particularly and carefully of the affairs of Athens, thou dost not so much as say a word of that solemn procession which the Athenians even at this day send to Agrae, celebrating a feast of thanksgiving to Hecate for their victory. But this helps Herodotus to refel the crime with which he is charged, of having flattered the Athenians for a great sum of money he received of them. For if he had rehearsed these things to them, they would not have omitted or neglected to remark that Philippides, when on the ninth he summoned the Lacedaemonians to the fight, must have come from it himself, since (as Herodotus says) he went in two days from Athens to Sparta; unless the Athenians sent for their allies to the fight after their enemies were overcome. Indeed Diyllus the Athenian, none of the most contemptible as an historian, says, that he received from Athens a present of ten talents, Anytus proposing the decree. Moreover Herodotus, as many say, has in relating the fight at Marathon derogated from the credit of it, by the number he sets down of the slain. For it is said that the Athenians made a vow to sacrifice so many kids to Diana Agrotera, as they should kill barbarians; but that after the fight, the number of the dead appearing infinite, they appeased the goddess by making a decree to immolate five hundred to her every year.

27 But letting this pass, let us see what was done after the fight. “The barbarians,” say he, “retiring back with the rest of their ships, and taking the Eretrian slaves out of the island, where they had left them, doubled the point of Sunium, desiring to prevent the Athenians before they could gain the city. The Athenians suspected this to have been done by a plot of the Alcmaeonidae, who by agreement showed a shield to the Persians when they were got into their ships. They therefore doubled the cape of Sunium.” (Herodotus, vi. 115, 121–124) Let us in this place take no notice of his calling the Eretrians slaves, who showed as much courage and gallantry in this war as any other of the Grecians, and suffered things unworthy their virtue. Nor let us insist much on the calumny with which he defames the Alcmaeonidae, some of whom were both the greatest families and noblest men of the city. But the greatness of the victory itself is overthrown, and the end of that so celebrated action comes to nothing, nor does it seem to have been a fight or any great exploit, but only a light skirmish with the barbarians, as the envious and ill-willers affirm, if they did not after the battle fly away, cutting their cables and giving themselves to the wind, to carry them as far as might be from the Attic coast, but having a shield lifted up to them as a signal of treason, made straight with their fleet for Athens, in hope to surprise it, and having at leisure doubled the point of Sunium, were discovered above the port Phalerum, so that the chief and most illustrious men, despairing to save the city would have betrayed it. For a little after, acquitting the Alcmaeonidae, he charges others with the treason. “For the shield indeed was shown, nor can it be denied,” says he, as if he had seen it himself. But this could no way be, since the Athenians obtained a solid victory; and if it had been done, it could not have been seen by the barbarians, flying in a hurry amidst wounds and arrows into their ships, and leaving every one the place with all possible speed. But when he again pretends to excuse the Alcmaeonidae of those crimes which he first of all men objected against them, and speaks thus: “I cannot credit the report that the Alcmaeonidae by agreement would ever have lifted up a shield to the Persians, and have brought the Athenians under the power of the barbarians and Hippias”; it reminds me of a certain proverbial saving, — Stay and be caught, crab, and I’ll let you go. For why art thou so eager to catch him, if thou wilt let him go when he is caught? Thus you first accuse, then apologize; and you write calumnies against illustrious men, which again you refute. And you discredit yourself; for you heard no one else but yourself say that the Alcmaeonidae lifted up a shield to the vanquished and flying barbarians. And in those very things which you allege for the Alcmaeonidae, you show yourself a sycophant. For if, as here you write, the Alcmaeonidae were more or no less enemies to tyrants than Callias, the son of Phaenippus and father of Hipponicus, where will you place their conspiracy, of which you write in your First Book, that assisting Pisistratus they brought him back from exile to the tyranny and did not drive him away till he was accused of unnaturally abusing his wife? Such then are the repugnances of these things; and by his intermixing the praises of Callias, the son of Phaenippus, amidst the crimes and suspicions of the Alcmaeonidae, and joining to him his son Hipponicus, who was (as Herodotus himself says) one of the richest men in Athens, he confesses that he brought in Callias not for any necessity of the story, but to ingratiate himself and gain favor with Hipponicus.

28 Now, whereas all know that the Argives denied not to enter into the common league of the Grecians, though they thought not fit to follow and be under the command of the Lacedaemonians, who were their mortal enemies, and that this was no otherways, our author subjoins a most malicious cause for it, writing thus: “When they saw they were comprised by the Greeks, knowing that the Lacedaemonians would not admit them into a share of the command, they requested it, that they might have a pretence to lie still.” “And of this,” he says, “the Argive ambassadors afterwards put Artaxerxes in mind, when they attended him at Susa, and the King said, he esteemed no city more his friend than Argos.” Then adding, as his manner is, to cover the matter, he says: “Of these things I know nothing certainly; but this I know, that all men have faults, and that the worst things were not done by the Argives; but I must tell such things as are reported, though I am not bound to believe them all; and let this be understood of all my narrations. For it is farther said that the Argives, when they were not able to sustain the war against the Lacedaemonians, called the Persians into Greece, willing to suffer anything rather than the present trouble.” (Herodotus, vii. 148–152) Therefore, as himself reports the Ethiopian to have said of the ointment and purple, “Deceitful are the beauties, deceitful the garments of the Persians,” (Herodotus, iii, 22.) may not any one say also of him, Deceitful are the phrases, deceitful the figures of Herodotus’s speeches; as being perplexed, unsound, and full of ambiguities? For as painters set off and render more eminent the luminous part of their pictures by adding shadows, so he by his denials extends his calumnies, and by his dubious speeches makes his suspicions take deeper impression. If the Argives joined not with the other Greeks, but stood out through an emulation of the Lacedaemonians command and valor, it cannot be denied but that they acted in a manner not beseeming their nobility and descent from Hercules. For it had been more honorable for the Argives under the leadership of Siphnians and Cythnians to have defended the Grecian liberty, than contending with the Spartans for superiority to have avoided so many and such signal combats. And if it was they who brought the Persians into Greece, because their war against the Lacedaemonians succeeded ill, how came it to pass, that they did not at the coming of Xerxes openly join themselves to the Medes? Or if they would not fight under the King, why did they not, being left at home, make incursions into Laconia or again attempt Thyreae or by some other way disturb and infest the Lacedaemonians? For they might have greatly damaged the Grecians, by hindering the Spartans from going with so great an army to Plataea.

29 But in this place indeed he has highly magnified the Athenians and pronounced them the saviours of Greece, doing herein rightly and justly, if he had not intermixed many reproaches with their praises. But now, when he says (Herodotus, vii. 139) that (but for the Athenians) the Lacedaemonians would have been betrayed by the other Greeks, and then, being left alone and having performed great exploits, they would have died generously; or else, having before seen that the Greeks were favoring the Medes, they would have made terms with Xerxes; it is manifest, he speaks not these things to the commendation of the Athenians, but he praises the Athenians that he may speak ill of all the rest. For how can any one now be angry with him for so bitterly and intemperately upbraiding the Thebans and Phocians at every turn, when he charges even those who exposed themselves to all perils for Greece with a treason which was never acted, but which (as he thinks) might have been. Nay, of the Lacedaemonians themselves, he makes it doubtful whether they might have fallen in the battle or have yielded to the enemy, minimizing the proofs of their valor which were shown at Thermopylae; — and these indeed were small!

30 After this, when he declares the shipwreck that befell the King’s fleet, and how, an infinite mass of wealth being cast away, Aminocles the Magnesian, son of Cresines, was greatly enriched by it, having gotten an immense quantity of gold and silver; he could not so much as let this pass without snarling at it. “For this man,” say she, “who had till then been none of the most fortunate, by wrecks became exceeding rich; for the misfortune he had in killing his son much afflicted his mind” (Herodotus, vii. 190). This indeed is manifest to every one, that he brought this golden treasure and this wealth cast up by the sea into his history, that he might make way for the inserting Aminocles’s killing his son.

31 Now Aristophanes the Boeotian wrote, that Herodotus demanded money of the Thebans but received none and that going about to discourse and reason with the young men, he was prohibited by the magistrates through their clownishness and hatred of learning; of which there is no other argument. But Herodotus bears witness to Aristophanes, whilst he charges the Thebans with some things falsely, with others ignorantly, and with others as hating them and having a quarrel with them. For he affirms that the Thessalians at first upon necessity inclined to the Persians, (Herodotus, vii. 172) in which he says the truth; and prophesying of the other Grecians that they would betray the Lacedaemonians, he added, that they would not do it willingly, but upon necessity, one city being taken after another. But he does not allow the Thebans the same plea of necessity, although they sent to Tempe five hundred men under the command of Mnamias, and to Thermopylae as many as Leonidas desired, who also alone with the Thespians stood by him, the rest leaving him after he was surrounded. But when the barbarian, having possessed himself of the avenues, was got into their confines, and Demaratus the Spartan, favoring in right of hospitality Attaginus, the chief of the oligarchy, had so wrought that he became the King’s friend and familiar, whilst the other Greeks were in their ships, and none came on by land; then at last being forsaken did they accept conditions of peace, to which they were compelled by great necessity. For they had neither the sea and ships at hand, as had the Athenians; nor did they dwell far off, as the Spartans, who inhabited the most remote parts of Greece; but were not above a day and half’s journey from the Persian army, whom they had already with the Spartans and Thespians alone resisted at the entrance of the straits, and were defeated.

But this writer is so equitable, that having said, “The Lacedaemonians, being alone and deserted by their allies, would perhaps have made a composition with Xerxes,” he yet blames the Thebans, who were forced to the same act by the same necessity. But when he could not wholly obliterate this most great and glorious act of the Thebans, yet went he about to deface it with a most vile imputation and suspicion, writing thus: “The confederates who had been sent returned back, obeying the commands of Leonidas; there remained only with the Lacedaemonians the Thespians and the Thebans: of these, the Thebans stayed against their wills, for Leonidas retained them as hostages; but the Thespians most willingly, as they said they would never depart from Leonidas and those that were with him” (Herodotus, vii. 222). Does he not here manifestly discover himself to have a peculiar pique and hatred against the Thebans, by the impulse of which he not only falsely and unjustly calumniated the city, but did not so much as take care to render his contradiction probable, or to conceal, at least from a few men, his being conscious of having knowingly contradicted himself? For having before said that Leonidas, perceiving his confederates not to be in good heart nor prepared to undergo danger, wished them to depart, he a little after adds that the Thebans were against their wills detained by him; whereas, if he had believed them inclined to the Persians, he should have driven them away though they had been willing to tarry. For if he thought that those who were not brisk would be useless, to what purpose was it to mix among his soldiers those that were suspected? Nor was the king of the Spartans and general of all Greece so senseless as to think that four hundred armed Thebans could be detained as hostages by his three hundred, especially the enemy being both in his front and rear. For though at first he might have taken them along with him as hostages; it is certainly probable that at last, having no regard for him, they would have gone away from him, and that Leonidas would have more feared his being encompassed by them than by the enemy. Furthermore, would not Leonidas have been ridiculous, to have sent away the other Greeks, as if by staying they should soon after have died, and to have detained the Thebans, that being himself about to die, he might keep them for the Greeks? For if he had indeed carried them along with him for hostages, or rather for slaves, he should not have kept them with those that were at the point of perishing, but have delivered them to the Greeks that went away. There remained but one cause that might be alleged for Leonidas’s unwillingness to let them go, to wit, that they might die with him; and this our historian himself has taken away, writing thus of Leonidas’s ambition: “Leonidas, considering these things, and desirous that this glory might redound to the Spartans alone, sent away his confederates rather for this than because they differed in their opinions.” (Herodotus, vii. 220) For it had certainly been the height of folly to keep his enemies against their wills, to be partakers of that glory from which he drove away his confederates. But it is manifest from the effects, that Leonidas suspected not the Thebans of insincerity, but esteemed them to be his steadfast friends. For he marched with his army into Thebes, and at his request obtained that which was never granted to any other, to sleep within the temple of Hercules; and the next morning he related to the Thebans the vision that had appeared to him. For he imagined that he saw the most illustrious and greatest cities of Greece irregularly tossed and floating up and down on a very stormy and tempestuous sea; that Thebes, being carried above all the rest, was lifted up on high to heaven, and suddenly after disappeared. And this indeed had a resemblance of those things which long after befell that city.

32 Now Herodotus, in his narration of that fight, hath obscured also the bravest act of Leonidas, saying that they all fell in the straits near the hill (Herodotus, vii. 225). But the affair was otherwise managed. For when they perceived by night that they were encompassed by the barbarians, they marched straight to the enemies’ camp, and got very near the King’s pavilion, with a resolution to kill him and leave their lives about him. They came then to his tent, killing or putting to flight all they met; but when Xerxes was not found there, seeking him in that vast camp and wandering about, they were at last with much difficulty slain by the barbarians, who surrounded them on every side. What other acts and sayings of the Spartans Herodotus has omitted, we will write in the Life of Leonidas ; yet that hinders not but we may here set down also some few. Before Leonidas went forth to that war, the Spartans exhibited to him funeral spectacles, at which the fathers and mothers of those that went along with him were spectators. Leonidas himself, when one said to him, You lead very few with you to the battle, answered, There are many to die there. When his wife, at his departure, asked him what commands he had for her; he, turning to her, said, I command you to marry a good man, and bring him good children. After he was enclosed by the enemy at Thermopylae, desiring to save two that were related to him, he gave one of them a letter and sent him away; but he rejected it, saying angrily, I followed you as a soldier, not as a postman. The other he commanded to go on a message to the magistrates of Sparta; but he, answering, that is a messenger’s business, took his shield, and stood up in his rank. Who would not have blamed another that should have omitted these things? But he who has collected and recorded the fart of Amasis, the coming of the thief’s asses, and the giving of bottles, and many such like things, cannot seem to have omitted these gallant acts and these remarkable sayings by negligence and oversight, but as bearing ill-will and being unjust to some.

33 He says that the Thebans, being at the first with the Greeks, fought compelled by necessity. (Herodotus, vii. 233) For belike not only Xerxes, but Leonidas also, had whipsters following his camp, by whom the Thebans were scourged and forced against their wills to fight. And what more ruthless libeller could there be than Herodotus, when he says that they fought upon necessity, who might have gone away and fled, and that they inclined to the Persians, whereas not one came in to help them. After this, he writes that, the rest making to the hill, the Thebans separated themselves from them, lifted up their hands to the barbarian, and coming near, cried with a most true voice, that they had favored the Persians, had given earth and water to the King, that now being forced by necessity they were come to Thermopylae, and that they were innocent of the King’s wound. Having said these things, they obtained quarter; for they had the Thessalians for witnesses of all they said. Behold, how amidst the barbarians, exclamations, tumults of all sorts, flights and pursuits, their apology was heard, the witnesses examined; and the Thessalians, in the midst of those that were slain and trodden under foot, all being done in a very narrow passage, patronized the Thebans, to wit, because the Thebans had but a little before driven away them, who were possessed of all Greece as far as, Thespiae, having conquered them in a battle, and slain their leader Lattamyas! For thus at that time stood matters between the Boeotians and the Thessalians, without any friendship or good-will. But yet how did the Thebans escape, the Thessalians helping them with their testimonies? Some of them, says he, were slain by the barbarians; many of them were by command of Xerxes marked with the royal mark, beginning with their leader Leontiades (Herodotus, vii. 233). Now the captain of the Thebans at Thermopylae was not Leontiades, but Anaxander, as both Aristophanes, out of the Commentaries of the Magistrates, and Nicander the Colophonian have taught us. Nor did any man before Herodotus know that the Thebans were stigmatized by Xerxes; for otherwise this would have been an excellent plea for them against his calumny, and this city might well have gloried in these marks, that Xerxes had punished Leonidas and Leontiades as his greatest enemies, having outraged the body of the one when he was dead, and caused the other to be tormented whilst living. But as to a writer who makes the barbarian’s cruelty against Leonidas when dead a sign that he hated him most of all men when living, (Herodotus, vii. 238) and yet says that the Thebans, though favoring the Persians, were stigmatized by them at Thermopylae, and having been thus stigmatized, again cheerfully took their parts at Plataea, it seems to me that such a man — like that Hippoclides (See Herodotus, vi. 126–130) who gesticulating with his limbs by standing on his head on a table — would dance away the truth and say, It makes no difference to Herodotus.

34 In the Eighth Book our author says, that the Greeks being frighted designed to fly from Artemisium into Greece, and that, being requested by the Euboeans to stay a little till they could dispose of their wives and families, they regarded them not, till such time as Themistocles, having taken money of them, divided it between Eurybiades and Adimantus, the captain of the Corinthians, and that then they stayed and had a sea-fight with the barbarians (Herodotus, viii. 4.) Yet Pindar, who was not a citizen of any of the confederate cities, but of one that was suspected to take part with the Medians, having made mention of Artemisium, brake forth into this exclamation: “This is the place where the sons of the Athenians laid the glorious foundation of liberty.” But Herodotus, by whom, as some will have it, Greece is honored, makes that victory a work of bribery and theft, saying that the Greeks, deceived by their captains, who had to that end taken money, fought against their wills. Nor does he here put an end to his malice. All men in a manner confess that, although the Greeks got the better at sea, they nevertheless abandoned Artemisium to the barbarians after they had received the news of the overthrow at Thermopylae. For it was to no purpose for them to stay there and keep the sea, the war being already within Thermopylae, and Xerxes having possessed himself of the avenues. But Herodotus makes the Greeks contriving to fly before they heard anything of Leonidas’s death. For thus he says: “But they having been ill-treated, and especially the Athenians, half of whose ships were sorely shattered, consulted to take their flight into Greece” (Herodotus, viii, 18). But let him be permitted so to name (or rather reproach) this retreat of theirs before the fight; but having before called it a flight, he both now styles it a flight, and will again a little after term it a flight; so bitterly does he adhere to this word “flight.” “Presently after this,” says he, “there came to the barbarians in the pinnace a man of Hestiaea, who acquainted them with the flight of the Grecians from Artemisium. They, because the thing seemed incredible, kept the messenger in custody, and sent forth some light galleys to discover the truth” (Herodotus, viii, 23). But what is this you say? That they fled as conquered, whom the enemies after the fight could not believe to have fled, as having got much the better? Is then this a fellow fit to be believed when he writes of any man or city, who in one word deprives Greece of the victory, throws down the trophy, and pronounces the inscriptions they had set up to Diana Proseoa (EASTWARD-FACING) to be nothing but pride and vain boasting? The tenor of the inscription was as follows: —

When Athens youth had in a naval fight
All Asia’s forces on this sea o’erthrown,
And all the Persian army put to flight,
Than which a greater scare was ever known,
To show how much Diana they respected,
This trophy to her honor they erected.

Moreover, not having described any order of the Greeks, nor told us what place every city of theirs held during the sea-fight, he says that in this retreat, which he calls their flight, the Corinthians sailed first and the Athenians last. (Herodotus, viii, 21.)

35 He indeed ought not to have too much insulted over the Greeks that took part with the Persians, who, being by others thought a Thurian, reckons himself among the Halicarnassians, who, being Dorians by descent, went with their wives and children to the war against the Greeks. But he is so far from giving first an account of the straits they were in who revolted to the Persians, that, having related how the Thessalians sent to the Phocians, who were their mortal enemies, and promised to preserve their country free from all damage if they might receive from them a reward of fifty talents, he writ thus of the Phocians: “For the Phocians were the only people in these quarters who inclined not to the Persians, and that, as far as I upon due consideration can find, for no other reason but because they hated the Thessalians; for if the Thessalians had been affected to the Grecian affairs, I suppose the Phocians would have joined themselves to the Persians.” And yet, a little after he would say that thirteen cities of the Phocians were burned by the barbarians, their country laid waste, and the temple which was in Abae set on fire, and all of both sexes put to the sword, except those that by flight escaped to Parnassus (Herodotus, viii, 30–33 Compare ix. 17). Nevertheless, he puts those who suffered all extremities rather than lose their honesty in the same rank with those who most affectionately sided with the Persians. And when he could not blame the Phocians actions, writing at his desk invented false causes and got up suspicions against them, and bids us judge them not by what they did, but by what they would have done if the Thessalians had not taken the same side, as if they had been prevented from treason because they found the place already occupied by others! Now if any one, going about to excuse the revolt of the Thessalians to the Persians, should say that they would not have done it but for the hatred they bare the Phocians, — whom when they saw joined to the Greeks, they against their inclinations followed the party of the Persians, — would not such a one be thought most shamefully to flatter, and for the sake of others to pervert the truth, by reigning good causes for evil actions? Indeed, I think, he would. Why then would not he be thought openly to calumniate, who says that the Phocians chose the best, not for the love of virtue, but because they saw the Thessalians on the contrary side? For neither does he refer this device to other authors, as he is elsewhere wont to do, but says that himself found it out by conjecture. He should therefore have produced certain arguments, by which he was persuaded that they, who did things like the best, followed the same counsels with the worst. For what he alleges of their hatreds is ridiculous. For neither did the difference between the Aeginetans and the Athenians, nor that between the Chalcidians and the Eretrians, nor yet that between the Corinthians and the Megarians, hinder them from fighting together for Greece. Nor did the Macedonians, their most bitter enemies, turn the Thessalians from their friendship with the barbarians, by joining the Persian party themselves. For the common danger did so bury their private grudges, that banishing their other passions, they applied their minds either to honesty for the sake of virtue, or to profit through the impulse of necessity. And indeed, after that necessity which compelled them to obey the Persians was over, they returned again to the Greeks, as Lacrates the Spartan has openly testified of them. And Herodotus, as constrained to it, in his relation of the affairs at Plataea, confessed that the Phocians took part with the Greeks (Herodotus, ix. 31).

36 Neither ought it to seem strange to any, if he thus bitterly inveighs against the unfortunate; since he reckons amongst enemies and traitors those who were present at the engagement, and together with the other Greeks hazarded their safety. For the Naxians, says he, sent three ships to the assistance of the barbarians; but Democritus, one of their captains, persuaded the others to take the party of the Greeks (Herodotus, viii, 46). So unable he is to praise without dispraising, that if he commends one man he must condemn a whole city or people. But in this there give testimony against him, of the more ancient writers Hellanicus, and of the later Ephorus, one of which says that the Naxians came with six ships to aid the Greeks, and the other with five. And Herodotus convinces himself of having feigned these things. For the writers of the Naxian annals say, that they had before beaten back Megabates, who came to their island with two hundred ships, and after that had put to flight the general Datis who had set their city on fire. Now if, as Herodotus has elsewhere said, the barbarians burned their city so that the men were glad to save themselves by flying into the mountains, had they not just cause rather to send aid to the destroyers of their country than to help the protectors of the common liberty? But that he framed this lie not so much to honor Democritus, as to cast infamy on the Naxians, is manifest from his omitting and wholly passing over in silence the valiant acts then performed by Democritus, of which Simonides gives us an account in this epigram: —

When as the Greeks at sea the Medes did meet,
And had near Salamis a naval fight,
Democritus as third led up the fleet,
Charging the enemy with all his might;
He took five of their ships, and did another,
Which they had taken from the Greeks, recover.

37 But why should any one be angry with him about the Naxians? If we have, as some say, antipodes inhabiting the other hemisphere, I believe that they also have heard of Themistocles and his counsel, which he gave to the Greeks, to fight a naval battle before Salamis, on which, the barbarian being overcome, he built in Melite a temple to Diana the Counsellor. This gentle writer, endeavoring, as much as in him lies, to deprive Themistocles of the glory of this, and transfer it to another, writes thus word for word: “Whilst things were thus, Mnesiphilus, an Athenian, asked Themistocles, as he was going aboard his ship, what had been resolved on in council. And being answered, that it was decreed the ships should be brought back to Isthmus, and a battle fought at sea before Peloponnesus; he said, If then they remove the navy from Salamis, you will no longer be fighting for one country for they will return every one to his own city. Wherefore, if there be any way left, go and endeavor to break this resolution; and, if it be possible, persuade Eurybiades to change his mind and stay here.” Then adding that this advice pleased Themistocles, who, without making any reply, went straight to Eurybiades, he has these very expressions: “And sitting by him he related what he had heard from Mnesiphilus, feigning as if it came from himself, and adding other things” (Herodotus, viii, 57 — 58). You see how he accuses Themistocles of disingenuity in arrogating to himself the counsel of Mnesiphilus.

38 And deriding the Greeks still further, he says, that Themistocles, who was called another Ulysses for his wisdom, was so blind that he could not foresee what was fit to be done; but that Artemisia, who was of the same city with Herodotus, without being taught by any one, but by her own consideration, said thus to Xerxes: “The Greeks will not long be able to hold out against you, but you will put them to flight, and they will retire to their own cities; nor is it probable, if you march your army by land to Peloponnesus, that they will sit still, or take care to fight at sea for the Athenians. But if you make haste to give them a naval battle, I fear lest your fleets receiving damage may prove also very prejudicial to your land-forces” (Herodotus, viii, 68). Certainly Herodotus wanted nothing but verses to make Artemisia another Sibyl, so exactly prophesying of things to come. Therefore Xerxes also delivered his sons to her to be carried to Ephesus for he had (it seems) forgot to bring women with him from Susa, if indeed the children wanted a train of female attendants.

39 But it is not our design to search into the lies of Herodotus; we only make inquiry into those which he invented to detract from the glory of others. He says: “It is reported by the Athenians that Adimantus, captain of the Corinthians, when the enemies were now ready to join battle, was struck with such fear and astonishment that he fled; not thrusting his ship backward by the stern, or leisurely retreating through those that were engaged, but openly hoisting up his sails, and turning the heads of all his vessels. And about the farther part of the Salaminian coast, he was met by a pinnace, out of which one spake thus to him: Thou indeed, Adimantus, fliest, having betrayed the Grecians; yet they overcome, and according to their desires have the better of their enemies” (Herodotus, viii. 94.). This pinnace was certainly let down from heaven. For what should hinder him from erecting a tragical machine, who by his boasting excelled the tragedians in all other things? Adimantus then crediting him (he adds) “returned to the fleet, when the business was already done.” “This report,” says he, “is believed by the Athenians; but the Corinthians deny it, and say, they were the first at the sea-fight, for which they have the testimony of all the other Greeks.” Such is this man in many other places. He spreads different calumnies and accusations of different men, that he may not fail of making some one appear altogether wicked. And it has succeeded well with him in this place; for if the calumny is believed, the Corinthians — if it is not, the Athenians — are rendered infamous. But in reality the Athenians did not belie the Corinthians, but he hath belied them both. Certainly Thucydides, bringing in an Athenian ambassador contesting with a Corinthian at Sparta, and gloriously boasting of many things about the Persian war and the sea-fight at Salamis, charges not the Corinthians with any crime of treachery or leaving their station. Nor was it likely the Athenians should object any such thing against Corinth, when they saw her engraven in the third place after the Lacedaemonians and themselves on those spoils which, being taken from the barbarians, were consecrated to the gods. And in Salamis they had permitted them to bury the dead near the city, as being men who had behaved themselves gallantly, and to write over them this elegy: —

Well-watered Corinth, stranger, was our home;
Salamis, Ajax’s isle, is now our grave;
Here Medes and Persians and Phoenician ships
We fought and routed, sacred Greece to save.

And their honorary sepulchre at the Isthmus has on it this epitaph: —

When Greece upon the point of danger stood,
We fell, defending her with our life-blood.

Moreover, on the offerings of Diodorus, one of the Corinthian sea-captains, reserved in the temple of Latona, there is this inscription: —

Diodorus’s seamen to Latona sent
These arms, of hostile Medes the monument

And as for Adimantus himself, against whom Herodotus frequently inveighs, — saying, that he was the only captain who went about to fly from Artemisium, and would not stay the fight, — behold in how great honor he is: —

Here Adimantus rests: the same was he,
Whose counsels won for Greece the crown of liberty.

For neither is it probable, that such honor would have been shown to a coward and a traitor after his decease; nor would he have dared to give his daughters the names of Nausinica, Acrothinius, and Alexibia, and his son that of Aristeas, if he had not performed some illustrious and memorable action in that fight. Nor is it credible that Herodotus was ignorant of that which could not be unknown even to the meanest Carian, that the Corinthian women alone made that glorious and divine prayer, by which they besought the Goddess Venus to inspire their husbands with a love of fighting against the barbarians. For it was a thing divulged abroad, concerning which Simonides made an epigram to be inscribed on the brazen image set up in that temple of Venus which is said to have been founded by Medea, when she desired the goddess, as some affirm, to deliver her from loving her husband Jason, or, as others say, to free him from loving Thetis. The tenor of the epigram follows: —

For those who, fighting on their country’s side,
Opposed th’ imperial Mede’s advancing tide,
We, votaresses, to Cythera pray’d;
Th’ indulgent power vouchsafed her timely aid,
And kept the citadel of Hellas free
From rude assaults of Persia’s archery.

These things he should rather have written and recorded, than have inserted Aminocles’s killing of his son.

40 After he had abundantly satisfied himself with the accusations brought against Themistocles, — of whom he says that, unknown to the other captains, he incessantly robbed and spoiled the islands, — (Herodotus, viii, 112) he at length openly takes away the crown of victory from the Athenians, and sets it on the head of the Aeginetans, writing thus: “The Greeks having sent the first-fruits of their spoils to Delphi, asked in general of the god, whether he had a sufficient part of the booty and were contented with it. He answered, that he had enough of all the other Greeks, but not of the Aeginetans for he expected a donary of them, as having won the greatest honor in the battle at Salamis.” (Herodotus, viii, 122) See here how he attributes not his fictions to the Scythians, to the Persians, or to the Egyptians, as Aesop did his to the ravens and apes; but using the very person of the Pythian Apollo, he takes from Athens the chief honor of the battle at Salamis. And the second place in honor being given to Themistocles at the Isthmus by all the other captains, — every one of which attributed to himself the first degree of valor, but give the next to Themistocles, — and the judgment not coming to a determination, when he should have reprehended the ambition of the captains, he said, that all the Greeks weighed anchor from thence through envy, not being willing to give the chief honor of the victory to Themistocles (Herodotus, viii, 123 — 124).

41 In his ninth and last book, having nothing left to vent his malice on but the Lacedaemonians and their glorious action against the barbarians at Plataea, he writes, that the Spartans at first feared lest the Athenians should suffer themselves to be persuaded by Mardonius to forsake the other Greeks; but that now, the Isthmus being fortified, they, supposing all to be safe at Peloponnesus, slighted the rest, feasting and making merry at home, and deluding and delaying the Athenian ambassadors. (Herodotus, ix. 8. See also viii. 141.) How then did there go forth from Sparta to Plataea a thousand and five men, having every one of them with him seven Helots? Or how came it that, exposing themselves to so many dangers, they vanquished and overthrew so many thousand barbarians? Hear now his probable cause of it. “It happened,” says he, “that there was then at Sparta a certain stranger of Tegea, named Chileus, who had some friends amongst the Ephori, between whom and him there was mutual hospitality. He then persuaded them to send forth the army, telling them that the fortification on the Isthmus, by which they had fenced in Peloponnesus, would be of no avail if the Athenians joined themselves with Mardonius” (Herodotus, ix. 9). This counsel then drew Pausanias with his army to Plataea; but if any private business had kept that Chileus at Tegea, Greece had never been victorious.

42 Again, not knowing what to do with the Athenians, he tosses to and fro that city, sometimes extolling it, and sometimes debasing it. He says that, contending for the second place with the Tegeatans they made mention of the Heraclidae, alleged their acts against the Amazons, and the sepulchres of the Peloponnesians that died under the walls of Cadmea, and at last brought down their discourse to the battle of Marathon, saying, however, that they would be satisfied with the command of the left wing. (Herodotus, ix. 26, 27) A little after, he says, Pausanias and the Spartans yielded them the first place, desiring them to fight in the right wing against the Persians and give them the left, who excused themselves as not skilled in fighting against the barbarians. (Herodotus, ix. 46) Now it is a ridiculous thing, to be unwilling to fight against an enemy unless one has been used to him. But he says farther, that the other Greeks being led by their captains to encamp in another place, as soon as they were moved, the horse fled with joy towards Plataea, and in their flight came as far as Juno’s temple. (Herodotus, ix. 52) In which place indeed he charges them all in general with disobedience, cowardice, and treason. At last he says, that only the Lacedaemonians and the Tegeates fought with the barbarians, and the Athenians with the Thebans; equally defrauding all the other cities of their part in the honor of the victory, whilst he affirms that none of them joined in the fight, but that all of them, sitting still hard by in their arms, betrayed and forsook those who fought for them; that the Phliasians and Megarians indeed, when they heard Pausanias had got the better, came in later, and falling on the Theban horse, were all cut off; that the Corinthians were not at the battle, and that after the victory, by hastening on over the hills, they escaped the Theban cavalry. (See the account of the battle of Plataea, Herodotus, ix, 59–70) For the Thebans, after the barbarians were overthrown, going before with their horse, affectionately assisted them in their flight; to return them thanks (forsooth) for the marks they had stigmatized them with at Thermopylae! Now what rank the Corinthians had in the fight at Plataea against the barbarians, and how they performed their duty, you may hear from Simonides in these verses:

I’ th’ midst were men, in warlike feats excelling,
Who Ephyre full of springs, inhabited,
And who in Corinth, Glaucus’ city, dwelling,
Great praise by their great valor merited;
Of which they to perpetuate the fame,
To th’ gods of well-wrought gold did offerings frame.

For he wrote not these things, as one that taught at Corinth or that made verses in honor of the city, but only as recording these actions in elegiac verses. But Herodotus, whilst he desires to prevent that objection by which those might convince him of lying who should ask, Whence then are so many mounts, tombs, and monuments of the dead, at which the Plataeans, even to this day, celebrate funeral solemnities in the presence of the Greeks? — has charged, unless I am mistaken, a fouler crime than that of treason on their posterity. For these are his words: “As for the other sepulchres that are seen in Plataea, I have heard that their successors, being ashamed of their progenitors’ absence from this battle, erected every man a monument for posterity’s sake” (Herodotus, ix. 85). Of this treacherous deserting the battle Herodotus was the only man that ever heard. For if any Greeks withdrew themselves from the battle, they must have deceived Pausanias, Aristides, the Lacedaemonians, and the Athenians. Neither yet did the Athenians exclude the Aeginetans who were their adversaries from the inscription, nor convince the Corinthians of having fled from Salamis before the victory, Greece bearing witness to the contrary. Indeed Cleadas, a Plataean, ten years after the Persian war, to gratify, as Herodotus says, the Aeginetans, erected a mount bearing their name. Now came it then to pass that the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, who were so jealous of each other that they were presently after the war ready to go together by the ears about the setting up a trophy, did not yet repel those Greeks who fled in a fear from the battle from having a share in the honor of those that behaved themselves valiantly, but inscribed their names on the trophies and colossuses, and granted them part of the spoils? Lastly they set up an altar, on which was engraven this epigram:

The Greeks, by valor having put to flight
The Persians and preserved their country’s right,
Erected here this altar which you see,
To Jove, preserver of their liberty.

Did Cleadas, O Herodotus, or some other, write this also, to oblige the cities by flattery? What need had they then to employ fruitless labor in digging up the earth, to make tombs and erect monuments for posterity’s sake, when they saw their glory consecrated in the most illustrious and greatest donaries? Pausanias, indeed, when he was aspiring to the tyranny, set up this inscription in Delphi: —

Pausanias, of Greeks the general
When he the Medes in fight had overthrown,
Offered to Phoebus a memorial
Of victory, this monumental stone.

In which he gave the glory to the Greeks, whose general he professed himself to be. Yet the Greeks not enduring but utterly misliking it, the Lacedaemonians, sending to Delphi, caused this to be cut out, and the names of the cities, as it was fit, to be engraven instead of it. Now how is it possible that the Greeks should have been offended that there was no mention made of them in the inscription, if they had been conscious to themselves of deserting the fight? or that the Lacedaemonians would have erased the name of their leader and general, to insert deserters and such as withdrew themselves from the common danger? For it would have been a great indignity, that Sophanes, Aeimnestus, and all the rest who showed their valor in that fight, should calmly suffer even the Cythnians and Melians to be inscribed on the trophies; and that Herodotus, attributing that fight only to three cities, should raze all the rest out of those and other sacred monuments and donaries.

43 There having been then four fights with the barbarians; he says, that the Greeks fled from Artemisium; that, whilst their king and general exposed himself to danger at Thermopylae, the Lacedaemonians sat negligent at home, celebrating the Olympian and Carnean feasts; and discoursing of the action at Salamis, he uses more words about Artemisia than he does in his whole narrative of the naval battle. Lastly, he says, that the Greeks sat still at Plataea, knowing no more of the fight, till it was over, than if it had been a skirmish between mice and frogs (like that which Pigres, Artemisia’s fellow countryman, merrily and scoffingly related in a poem), and it had been agreed to fight silently, lest they should be heard by others; and that the Lacedaemonians excelled not the barbarians in valor, but only got the better, as fighting against naked and unarmed men. To wit, when Xerxes himself was present, the barbarians were with much difficulty compelled by scourges to fight with the Greeks; but at Plataea, having taken other resolutions, as Herodotus says, “they were no way inferior in courage and strength; but their garments being without armor was prejudicial to them, since being naked they fought against a completely armed enemy.” What then is there left great and memorable to the Grecians of those fights, if the Lacedaemonians fought with unarmed men, and the other Greeks, though present, were ignorant of the battle; if empty monuments are set up everywhere, and tripods and altars full of lying inscriptions are placed before the gods; if, lastly, Herodotus only knows the truth, and all others that give any account of the Greeks have been deceived by the fame of those glorious actions, as the effect of an admirable prowess? But he is an acute writer, his style is pleasant, there is a certain grace, force, and elegancy in his narrations; and he has, like a musician, elaborated his discourse, though not knowingly, still clearly and elegantly. These things delight, please, and affect all men. But as in roses we must beware of the venomous flies called cantharides; so must we take heed of the calumnies and envy lying hid under smooth and well-couched phrases and expressions, lest we imprudently entertain absurd and false opinions of the most excellent and greatest cities and men of Greece.

On the opinions of the philosophers

CONTENTS

Book I.

Book II.

Book III.

Book IV.

Book V.

Book I.

It being our determination to discourse of Natural Philosophy, we judge it necessary, in the first place and chiefly, to divide the body of philosophy into its proper members, so that we may know what is that which is called philosophy, and what part of it is physical, or the explanation of natural things. The Stoics affirm that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine; that philosophy is the pursuit of that art which is convenient to this knowledge; that virtue is the sole and sovereign art which is thus convenient; and this distributes itself into three general parts — natural, moral, and logical. By which just reason (they say) philosophy is tripartite; of which one natural, the other moral, the third logical. The natural when our inquiries are concerning the world and all things contained in it; the ethical is the employment of our minds in those things which concern the manners of man’s life; the logical (which they also call dialectical) regulates our conversation with others in speaking. Aristotle, Theophrastus, and after them almost all the Peripatetics give the same division of philosophy. It is absolutely requisite that the complete person he contemplator of things which have a being, and the practiser of those thing which are decent; and this easily appears by the following instances. If the question be proposed, whether the sun, which is so conspicuous to us, be informed of a soul or inanimate, he that makes this disquisition is the thinking man; for he proceeds no farther than to consider the nature of that thing which is proposed. Likewise, if the question be propounded, whether the world be infinite, or whether beyond the system of this world there is any real being, all these things are the objects about which the understanding of man is conversant. But if these be the questions, — what measures must be taken to compose the well-ordered life of man, what are the best methods to govern and educate children, or what are the exact rules whereby sovereigns may command and establish laws, — all these queries are proposed for the sole end of action, and the man skilled therein is the moral and practical man.

Chapter I.

What is Nature?

Since we have undertaken to make a diligent search into Nature, I cannot but conclude it necessary to declare what Nature is. It is very absurd to attempt a discourse of the essence of natural things, and not to understand what is the power and sphere of Nature. If Aristotle be credited, Nature is the principle of motion and rest, in that thing in which it exists as a principle and not by accident. For all things that are conspicuous to our eyes, which are neither fortuitous nor necessary, nor have a divine original, nor acknowledge any such like cause, are called natural and enjoy their proper nature. Of this sort are earth, fire, water, air, plants, animals; to these may be added all things produced from them, such as showers, hail, thunders, hurricanes, and winds. All these confess they had a beginning, none of these were from eternity, but had something as the origin of them; and likewise animals and plants have a principle whence they are produced. But Nature, which in all these things hath the priority, is not only the principle of motion but of repose; whatsoever enjoys the principle of motion, the same has a possibility to find a dissolution. Therefore on this account it is that Nature is the principle of motion and rest.

Chapter II.

What is the Difference Between a Principle and an Element?

The followers of Aristotle and Plato conclude that elements are discriminated from principles. Thales the Milesian supposeth that a principle and the elements are one and the same thing, but it is evident that they vastly differ one from another. For the elements are things compounded; but we do pronounce that principles admit not of a composition, nor are the effects of any other being. Those which we call elements are earth, water, air, and fire. But we call those principles which have nothing prior to them out of which they are produced; for otherwise not these themselves, but rather those things whereof they are produced, would be the principles. Now there are some things which have a pre-existence to earth and water, from which they are begotten; to wit, matter, which is without form or shape; then form, which we call [Greek omitted] (actuality); and lastly, privation. Thales therefore is most in error, by affirming that water is both an element and a principle.

Chapter III.

What are Principles?

Thales the Milesian doth affirm that water is the principle from whence all things in the universe spring. This person appears to be the first of philosophers; from him the Ionic sect took its denomination, for there are many families and successions amongst philosophers. After he had professed philosophy in Egypt, when he was very old, he returned to Miletus. He pronounced, that all things had their original from water, and into water all things are resolved. His first ground was, that whatsoever was the prolific seed of all animals was a principle, and that is moist; so that it is probable that all things receive their original from humidity. His second reason was, that all plants are nourished and fructified by that thing which is moist, of which being deprived they wither away. Thirdly, that that fire of which the sun and stars are made is nourished by watery exhalations, — yea, and the world itself; which moved Homer to sing that the generation of it was from water: —

The ocean is
Of all things the kind genesis.
(Iliad, xiv. 246.)

Anaximander, who himself was a Milesian, assigns the principle of all things to the Infinite, from whence all things flow, and into the same are corrupted; hence it is that infinite worlds are framed, and those dissolve again into that whence they have their origin. And thus he farther proceeds, For what other reason is there of an Infinite but this, that there may be nothing deficient as to the generation or subsistence of what is in Nature? There is his error, that he doth not acquaint us what this Infinite is, whether it be air, or water, or earth, or any other such like body. Besides he is mistaken, in that, giving us the material cause, he is silent as to the efficient cause of beings; for this thing which he makes his Infinite can be nothing but matter; but operation cannot come about in the sphere of matter, except an efficient cause be annexed. Anaximenes his fellow-citizen pronounceth, that air is the principle of all beings; from it all receive their original, and into it all return. He affirms that our soul is nothing but air; it is that which constitutes and preserves; the whole world is invested with spirit and air. For spirit and air are synonymous. This person is in this deficient, in that he concludes that of pure air, which is a simple body and is made of one only form, all animals are composed. It is not possible to think that a single principle should be the matter of all things, from whence they receive their subsistence; besides this there must be an operating cause. Silver (for example) is not of itself sufficient to frame a drinking cup; an operator also is required, which is the silversmith. The like may be applied to vessels made of wood, brass, or any other material.

Anaxagoras the Clazomenian asserted Homoeomeries (or parts similar or homogeneous) to be the original cause of all beings; it seemed to him impossible that anything could arise of nothing or be dissolved into nothing. Let us therefore instance in nourishment, which appears simple and uniform, such as bread which we owe to Ceres and water which we drink. Of this very nutriment, our hair, our veins, our arteries, nerves, bones, and all our other parts are nourished. These things thus being performed, it must be granted that the nourishment which is received by us contains all those things by which these of us are produced. In it there are those particles which are producers of blood, bones, nerves, and all other parts; these particles (he thought) reason discovers for us. For it is not necessary that we should reduce all things under the objects of sense; for bread and water are fitted to the senses, yet in them there are those particles latent which are discoverable only by reason. It being therefore plain that there are particles in the nourishment similar to what is produced by it, he terms these homogeneous parts, averring that they are the principles of beings. Matter is according to him these similar parts, and the efficient cause is a Mind, which orders all things that have an existence. Thus he begins his discourse: “All things were confused one among another; but Mind divided and brought them to order.” In this he is to be commended, that he yokes together matter and an intellectual agent.

Archelaus the son of Apollodorus, the Athenian, pronounceth, that the principles of all things have their origin from an infinite air rarefied or condensed. Air rarefied is fire, condensed is water.

These philosophers, the followers of Thales, succeeding one another, made up that sect which takes to itself the denomination of the Ionic.

Pythagoras the Samian, the son of Mnesarchus, from another origin deduces the principles of all things; it was he who first called philosophy by its name. He thought the first principles to be numbers, and those symmetries in them which he styles harmonies; and the composition of both he terms elements, called geometrical. Again, he places unity and the indefinite binary number amongst the principles. One of these principles ends in an efficient and forming cause, which is Mind, and that is God; the other to the passive and material part, and that is the visible world. Moreover, the nature of number (he saith) consists in the ten; for all people, whether Grecians or barbarians, reckon from one to ten, and thence return to one again. Farther he avers the virtue of ten consists in the quaternion; the reason whereof is this, — if any person start from one, and add numbers so as to take in the quaternary, he shall complete the number ten; if he passes the four, he shall go beyond the ten; for one, two, three, and four being added up together make ten. The nature of numbers, therefore, if we regard the units, abideth in the ten; but if we regard its power, in the four. Therefore the Pythagoreans say that their most sacred oath is by that god who delivered to them the quaternary.

By th’ founder of the sacred number four,
Eternal Nature’s font and source, they swore.

Of this number the soul of man is composed; for mind, knowledge, opinion, and sense are the four that complete the soul, from which all sciences, all arts, all rational faculties derive themselves. For what our mind perceives, it perceives after the manner of a thing that is one, the soul itself being a unity; as for instance, a multitude of persons are not the object of our sense nor are comprehended by us, for they are infinite; our understanding gives the general concept of A MAN, in which all individuals agree. The number of individuals is infinite; the generic or specific nature of all being is a unit, or to be apprehended as one only thing; from this one conception we give the genuine measures of all existence, and therefore we affirm that a certain class of beings are rational and discoursive. But when we come to give the nature of a horse, it is that animal which neighs; and this being common to all horses, it is manifest that the understanding, which hath such like conceptions, is in its nature unity. It follows that the number called the infinite binary must be science; in every demonstration or belief belonging to science, and in every syllogism, we draw that conclusion which is in dispute from those propositions which are by all granted, by which means another proposition is obtained from the premises. The comprehension of these we call knowledge; for which reason science is the binary number. But opinion is the ternary; for that rationally follows from comprehension. The objects of opinion are many things, and the ternary number denotes a multitude, as “Thrice happy Grecians”; for which reason Pythagoras admits the ternary. This sect of philosophers is called the Italic, by reason Pythagoras started his school in Italy; his hatred of the tyranny of Polycrates enforced him to abandon his native country Samos. Heraclitus and Hippasus of Metapontum suppose that fire gives the origination to all beings, that they all flow from fire, and in fire they all conclude; for of fire when first quenched the world was constituted. The first part of the world, being most condensed and contracted within itself, made the earth; but part of that earth being loosened and made thin by fire, water was produced; afterwards this water being exhaled and rarefied into vapors became air; after all this the world itself, and all other corporeal beings, shall be dissolved by fire in the universal conflagration. By them therefore it appears that fire is what gives beginning to all things, and is that in which all things receive their period.

Epicurus the son of Neocles, the Athenian, his philosophical sentiments being the same with those of Democritus, affirms that the principles of all being are bodies which are only perceptible by reason; they admit not of a vacuity, nor of any original, but being of a self-existence are eternal and incorruptible; they are not liable to any diminution, they are indestructible, nor is it possible for them to receive any transformation of parts, or admit of any alterations; of these reason is only the discoverer; they are in a perpetual motion in vacuity, and by means of the empty space; for the vacuum itself is infinite, and the bodies that move in it are infinite. Those bodies acknowledge these three accidents, figure, magnitude, and gravity. Democritus acknowledged but two, magnitude and figure. Epicurus added the third, to wit, gravity; for he pronounced that it is necessary that bodies receive their motion from that impression which springs from gravity, otherwise they could not be moved. The figures of atoms cannot be incomprehensible, but they are not infinite. These figures are neither hooked nor trident-shaped nor ring-shaped, such figures as these being exposed to collision; but the atoms are impassible, impenetrable; they have indeed figures of their own, which are conceived only by reason. It is called an atom, by reason not of its smallness but of its indivisibility; in it no vacuity, no passible affection is to be found. And that there is an atom is perfectly clear; for there are elements which have a perpetual duration, and there are animals which admit of a vacuity, and there is a unity.

Empedocles the Agrigentine, the son of Meton, affirms that there are four elements, fire, air, earth, and water, and two powers which bear the greatest command in nature, concord and discord, of which one is the union, the other the division of beings. Thus he sings,

Hear first the four roots of all created things: —
Bright shining Jove, Juno that beareth life,
Pluto beneath the earth, and Nestis who
Doth with her tears water the human fount.

By Jupiter he understands fire and ether, by Juno that gives life he means the air, by Pluto the earth, by Nestis and the spring of all mortals (as it were) seed and water.

Socrates the son of Sophroniscus, and Plato son of Ariston, both natives of Athens, entertain the same opinion concerning the universe; for they suppose three principles, God, matter, and the idea. God is the universal understanding; matter is that which is the first substratum, accommodated for the generation and corruption of beings; the idea is an incorporeal essence, existing in the cogitations and apprehensions of God; for God is the soul and mind of the world.

Aristotle the son of Nichomachus, the Stagirite, constitutes three principles; Entelecheia (which is the same with form), matter, and privation. He acknowledges four elements, and adds a certain fifth body, which is ethereal and not obnoxious to mutation.

Zeno son of Mnaseas, the native of Citium, avers these to be principles, God and matter, the first of which is the efficient cause, the other the passible and receptive. Four more elements he likewise confesses.

Chapter IV.

How Was This World Composed in that Order and After that Manner it is?

The world being broken and confused, after this manner it was reduced into figure and composure as now it is. The insectible bodies or atoms, by a wild and fortuitous motion, without any governing power, incessantly and swiftly were hurried one amongst another, many bodies being jumbled together; upon this account they have a diversity in the figures and magnitude. These therefore being so jumbled together, those bodies which were the greatest and heaviest sank into the lowest place; they that were of a lesser magnitude, being round, smooth, and slippery, these meeting with those heavier bodies were easily broken into pieces, and were carried into higher places. But when that force whereby these variously particles figured particles fought with and struck one another, and forced the lighter upwards, did cease, and there was no farther power left to drive them into superior regions, yet they were wholly hindered from descending downwards, and were compelled to reside in those places capable to receive them; and these were the heavenly spaces, unto which a multitude of these small bodies were hurled, and these being thus shivered fell into coherence and mutual embraces, and by this means the heaven was produced. Then a various and great multitude of atoms enjoying the same nature, as it is before asserted, being hurried aloft, did form the stars. The multitude of these exhaled bodies, having struck and broke the air in shivers, forced a passage through it; this being turned into wind invested the stars, as it moved, and whirled them about, by which means to this present time that circulary motion which these stars have in the heavens is maintained. Much after the same manner the earth was made; for by those little particles whose gravity made them to reside in the lower places the earth was formed. The heaven, fire, and air were constituted of those particles which were carried aloft. But a great deal of matter remaining in the earth, this being condensed by the driving of the winds and the air from the stars, every little part and form of it was compressed, which created the element of water; but this being fluidly disposed did run into those places which were hollow, and these places were those that were capable to receive and protect it; or the water, subsisting by itself, did make the lower places hollow. After this manner the principal parts of the world were constituted.

Chapter V.

Whether the Universe is One Single Thing.

The Stoics pronounce that the world is one thing, and this they say is the universe and is corporeal.

But Empedocles’s opinion is, that the world is one; yet by no means the system of this world must be styled the universe, but that it is a small part of it, and the remainder is inactive matter.

What to Plato seems the truest he thus declares, that there is one world, and that world is the universe; and this he endeavors to evince by three arguments. First, that the world could not be complete and perfect, if it did not within itself include all beings. Secondly, nor could it give the true resemblance of its original and exemplar, if it were not the one only begotten thing. Thirdly, it could not be incorruptible, if there were any being out of its compass to whose power it might be obnoxious. But to Plato it may be thus returned. First, that the world is not complete and perfect, nor doth it contain all things within itself. And if man is a perfect being, yet he doth not encompass all things. Secondly, that there are many exemplars and originals of statues, houses, and pictures. Thirdly, how is the world perfect, if anything beyond it is possible to be moved about it? But the world is not incorruptible, nor can it be so conceived, because it had an original. To Metrodorus it seems absurd, that in a large field one only stalk should grow, and in an infinite space one only world exist; and that this universe is infinite is manifest by this, that there is an infinity of causes. Now if this world be finite and the causes producing it infinite, it follows that the worlds likewise be infinite; for where all causes concur, there the effects also must appear, let the causes be what they will, either atoms or elements.

Chapter VI.

Whence Did Men Obtain the Knowledge of the Existence and Essence of a Deity?

The Stoics thus define the essence of a god. It is a spirit intellectual and fiery, which acknowledges no shape, but is continually changed into what it pleases, and assimilates itself to all things. The knowledge of this deity they first received from the pulchritude of those things which so visibly appeared to us; for they concluded that nothing beauteous could casually or fortuitously be formed, but that it was framed from the art of a great understanding that produced the world. That the world is very resplendent is made perspicuous from the figure, the color, the magnitude of it, and likewise from the wonderful variety of those stars which adorn this world. The world is spherical; the orbicular hath the pre-eminence above all other figures, for being round itself it hath its parts like itself. (On this account, according to Plato, the understanding, which is the most sacred part of man, is in the head.) The color of it is most beauteous; for it is painted with blue; which, though little blacker than purple, yet hath such a shining quality, that by reason of the vehement efficacy of its color it cuts through such a space of air; whence it is that at so great a distance the heavens are to be contemplated. And in this very greatness of the world the beauty of it appears. View all things: that which contains the rest carries a beauty with it, as an animal or a tree. Also things which are visible to us accomplish the beauty of the world. The oblique circle called the Zodiac in heaven is with different images painted and distinguished: —

There’s Cancer, Leo, Virgo, and the Claws;
Scorpio, Arcitenens, and Capricorn;
Amphora, Pisces, then the Ram, and Bull;
The lovely pair of Brothers next succeed.
(From Aratus.)

There are a thousand others that give us the suitable reflections of the beauty of the world. Thus Euripides: —

The starry splendor of the skies,
The beautiful and varied work of that wise
Creator, Time.

From this the knowledge of a god is conveyed to man; that the sun, the moon, and the rest of the stars, being carried under the earth, rise again in their proper color, magnitude, place, and times. Therefore they who by tradition delivered to us the knowledge and veneration of the gods did it by these three manner of ways: — first, from Nature; secondly, from fables; thirdly, from the testimony supplied by the laws of commonwealths. Philosophers taught the natural way; poets, the fabulous; and the political way is to be had from the constitutions of each commonwealth. All sorts of this learning are distinguished into these seven parts. The first is from things that are conspicuous, and the observation of those bodies which are in places superior to us. To men the heavenly bodies that are so visible did give the knowledge of the deity; when they contemplated that they are the causes of so great an harmony, that they regulate day and night, winter and summer, by their rising and setting, and likewise considered those things which by their influences in the earth do receive a being and do likewise fructify. It was manifest to men that the Heaven was the father of those things, and the Earth the mother; that the Heaven was the father is clear, since from the heavens there is the pouring down of waters, which have their spermatic faculty; the Earth the mother, because she receives them and brings forth. Likewise men considering that the stars are running (Greek omitted) in a perpetual motion, that the sun and moon give us the stimulus to view and contemplate (Greek omitted), they call them all gods (Greek omitted). In the second and third place, they thus distinguished the deities into those which are beneficial and those that are injurious to mankind. Those which are beneficial they call Jupiter, Juno, Mercury, Ceres; those who are mischievous the Dirae, Furies, and Mars. These, which threaten dangers and violence, men endeavor to appease and conciliate by sacred rites. The fourth and the fifth order of gods they assign to things and passions; to passions, Love, Venus, and Desire; the deities that preside over things, Hope, Justice, and Eunomia.

The sixth order of deities are the ones made by the poets; Hesiod, willing to find out a father for those gods that acknowledge an original, invented their progenitors, —

Hyperion, Coeus, and Iapetus,
With Creius:
(Hesiod, “Theogony,” 134.)

upon which account this is called the fabulous. The seventh rank of the deities added to the rest are those which, by their beneficence to mankind, were honored with a divine worship, though they were born of mortal race; of this sort were Hercules, Castor and Pollux, and Bacchus. These are reputed to be of a human species; for of all beings that which is divine is most excellent, and man amongst all animals is adorned with the greatest beauty, is also the best, being adorned by virtue above the rest because of the gift of intellect: therefore it was thought that those who were admirable for excellence should resemble that which is the best and most beautiful.

Chapter VII.

What is God?

Some of the philosophers, such as Diagoras the Melian, Theodorus the Cyrenean, and Euemerus the Tegeatan, did deny unanimously that there were any gods; and Callimachus the Cyrenean discovered his mind concerning Euemerus in these Iambic verses, thus writing: —

To th’ ante-mural temple flock apace,
Where he that long ago composed of brass
Great Jupiter, Thrasonic old bald pate,
Now scribbles impious books, — a boastful ass!

meaning books which prove there are no gods. Euripides the tragedian durst not openly declare his sentiment; the court of Areopagus terrified him. Yet he sufficiently manifested his thoughts by this method. He presented in his tragedy Sisyphus, the first and great patron of this opinion, and introduced himself as one agreeing with him: —

Disorder in those days did domineer,
And brutal power kept the world in fear.

Afterwards by the sanction of laws wickedness was suppressed; but by reason that laws could prohibit only public villanies, yet could not hinder many persons from acting secret impieties, some wise persons gave this advice, that we ought to blind truth with lying disguises, and persuade men that there is a God: —

There’s an eternal God does hear and see
And understand every impiety;
Though it in dark recess or thought committed be.

But this poetical fable ought to be rejected, he thought, along with Callimachus, who thus saith: —

If you believe a God, it must be meant
That you conceive this God omnipotent.

But God cannot do everything; for, if it were so, then a God could make snow black, and the fire cold, and him that is in a posture of sitting to be upright, and so on the contrary. The brave-speaking Plato pronounceth that God formed the world after his own image; but this smells rank of the old dotages, old comic writers would say; for how did God, casting his eye upon himself, frame this universe? Or how can God be spherical, and be inferior to man?

Anaxagoras avers that bodies did consist from all eternity, but the divine intellect did reduce them into their proper orders, and effected the origination of all beings. But Plato did not suppose that the primary bodies had their consistence and repose, but that they were moved confusedly and in disorder; but God, knowing that order was better than confusion, did digest them into the best methods. Both these were equally peccant; for both suppose God to be the great moderator of human affairs and for that cause to have formed this present world; when it is apparent that an immortal and blessed being, replenished with all his glorious excellencies, and not at all obnoxious to any sort of evil, but being wholly occupied with his own felicity and immortality, would not employ himself with the concerns of men; for certainly miserable is the being which, like a laborer or artificer, is molested by the troubles and cares which the forming and governing of this world must give him. Add to this, that the God whom these men profess was either not at all existing before this present world (when bodies were either reposed or in a disordered motion), or that at that time God did either sleep, or else was in a constant watchfulness, or that he did neither of these. Now neither the first nor the second can be entertained, because they suppose God to be eternal; if God from eternity was in a continual sleep, he was in an eternal death, — and what is death but an eternal sleep? — but no sleep can affect a deity, for the immortality of God and alliance to death are vastly different. But if God was in a continual vigilance, either there was something wanting to make him happy, or else his beatitude was perfectly complete; but according to neither of these can God be said to be blessed; not according to the first, for if there be any deficiency there is no perfect bliss; not according to the second, for, if there be nothing wanting to the felicity of God, it must be a needless enterprise for him to busy himself in human affairs. And how can it be supposed that God administers by his own providence human concerns, when to vain and trifling persons prosperous things happen, to great and high adverse? Agamemnon was both

A virtuous prince, for warlike acts renowned,
(“Iliad,” iii. 179.)

and by an adulterer and adulteress was vanquished and perfidiously slain. Hercules, after he had freed the life of man from many things that were pernicious to it, perished by the witchcraft and poison of Deianira.

Thales said that the intelligence of the world was God.

Anaximander concluded that the stars were heavenly deities.

Democritus said that God, being a globe of fire, is the intelligence and the soul of the world.

Pythagoras says that, of his principles, unity is God; and the good, which is indeed the nature of a unity, is mind itself; but the binary number, which is infinite, is a daemon, and evil, — about which the multitude of material beings and this visible world are related.

Socrates and Plato agree that God is that which is one, hath its original from its own self, is of a singular subsistence, is one only being perfectly good; all these various names signifying goodness do all centre in mind; hence God is to be understood as that mind and intellect, which is a separate idea, that is to say, pure and unmixed of all matter, and not mingled with anything subject to passions.

Aristotle’s sentiment is, that God hath his residence in superior regions, and hath placed his throne in the sphere of the universe, and is a separate idea; which sphere is an ethereal body, which is by him styled the fifth essence or quintessence. For there is a division of the universe into spheres, which are contiguous by their nature but appear to reason to be separated; and he concludes that each of the spheres is an animal, composed of a body and soul; the body of them is ethereal, moved orbicularly, the soul is the rational form, which is unmoved, and yet is the cause that the sphere is in motion.

The Stoics affirm that God is a thing more common and obvious, and is a mechanic fire which every way spreads itself to produce the world; it contains in itself all seminal virtues, and by this means all things by a fatal necessity were produced. This spirit, passing through the whole world, received different names from the mutations in the matter through which it ran in its journey. God therefore is the world, the stars, the earth, and (highest of all) the mind in the heavens. In the judgment of Epicurus all the gods are anthropomorphites, or have the shape of men; but they are perceptible only by reason, for their nature admits of no other manner of being apprehended, their parts being so small and fine that they give no corporeal representations. The same Epicurus asserts that there are four other natural beings which are immortal: of this sort are atoms, the vacuum, the infinite, and the similar parts; and these last are called Homoeomeries and likewise elements.

Chapter VIII.

Of Those that are Called Geniuses and Heroes

Having treated of the essence of the deities in a just order, it follows that we discourse of daemons and heroes. Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics do conclude that daemons are essences endowed with souls; that the heroes are the souls separated from their bodies, some are good, some are bad; the good are those whose souls are good, the evil those whose souls are wicked. All this is rejected by Epicurus.

Chapter IX.

Of Matter.

Matter is that first being which is substrate for generation, corruption, and all other alterations.

The disciples of Thales and Pythagoras, with the Stoics, are of opinion that matter is changeable, mutable, convertible, and sliding through all things.

The followers of Democritus aver that the vacuum, the atom, and the incorporeal substance are the first beings, and not obnoxious to passions.

Aristotle and Plato affirm that matter is of that species which is corporeal, void of any form, species, figure, and quality, but apt to receive all forms, that she may be the nurse, the mother, and origin of all other beings. But they that do say that water, earth, air, and fire are matter do likewise say that matter cannot be without form, but conclude it is a body; but they that say that individual particles and atoms are matter do say that matter is without form.

Chapter X.

Of Ideas.

An idea is a being incorporeal, not subsisting by itself, but gives figure unto shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of its phenomena.

Socrates and Plato conjecture that these ideas are beings separate from matter, subsisting in the understanding and imagination of the deity, that is, of mind.

Aristotle accepted forms and ideas; but he doth not believe them separated from matter, or patterns of the things God has made.

Those Stoics, that are of the school of Zeno, profess that ideas are nothing else but the conceptions of our own mind.

Chapter XI.

Of Causes.

A cause is that by which anything is produced, or by which anything is effected.

Plato gives this triple division of causes, — the material, the efficient, and the final cause; the principal cause he judges to be the efficient, which is the mind and intellect.

Pythagoras and Aristotle judge the first causes are incorporeal beings, but those that are causes by accident or participation become corporeal substances; by this means the world is corporeal.

The Stoics grant that all causes are corporeal, inasmuch as they are physical.

Chapter XII.

Of Bodies.

A body is that being which hath these three dimensions, breadth, depth, and length; — or a bulk which makes a sensible resistance; — or whatsoever of its own nature possesseth a place.

Plato saith that it is neither heavy nor light in its own nature, when it exists in its own place; but being in the place where another should be, then it has an inclination by which it tends to gravity or levity.

Aristotle saith that, if we simply consider things in their own nature, the earth only is to be judged heavy, and fire light; but air and water are on occasions heavy and at other times light.

The Stoics think that of the four elements two are light, fire and air; two ponderous, earth and water; that which is naturally light doth by its own nature, not by any inclination, recede from its own centre; but that which is heavy doth by its own nature tend to its centre; for the centre is not a heavy thing in itself.

Epicurus thinks that bodies are not limited; but the first bodies, which are simple bodies, and all those composed of them, all acknowledge gravity; that all atoms are moved, some perpendicularly, some obliquely; some are carried aloft either by immediate impulse or with vibrations.

Chapter XIII.

Of Those Things that are Least in Nature.

Empedocles, before the four elements, introduceth the most minute bodies which resemble elements; but they did exist before the elements, having similar parts and orbicular.

Heraclitus brings in the smallest fragments, and those indivisible.

Chapter XIV.

Of Figures.

A figure is the exterior appearance, the circumscription, and the boundary of a body.

The Pythagoreans say that the bodies of the four elements are spherical, fire being in the supremest place only excepted, whose figure is conical.

Chapter XV.

Of Colors.

Color is the visible quality of a body.

The Pythagoreans called color the external appearance of a body. Empedocles, that which is consentaneous to the passages of the eye. Plato, that they are fires emitted from bodies, which have parts harmonious for the sight. Zeno the Stoic, that colors are the first figurations of matter. The Pythagoreans, that colors are of four sorts, white and black, red and pale; and they derive the variety of colors from the mixtures of the elements, and that seen in animals also from the variety of food and the air.

Chapter XVI.

Of the Division of Bodies.

The disciples of Thales and Pythagoras grant that all bodies are passible and divisible into infinity. Others hold that atoms and indivisible parts are there fixed, and admit not of a division into infinity. Aristotle, that all bodies are potentially but not actually divisible into infinity.

Chapter XVII.

How Bodies are Mixed and Contemperated One with Another.

The ancient philosophers held that the mixture of elements proceeded from the alteration of qualities; but the disciples of Anaxagoras and Democritus say it is done by apposition. Empedocles composes the elements of still minuter bulks, those which are the most minute and may be termed the element of elements. Plato assigns three bodies (but he will not allow these to be elements, nor properly so called), air, fire, and water, which are mutable into one another; but the earth is mutable into none of these.

Chapter XVIII.

Of a Vacuum.

All the natural philosophers from Thales to Plato rejected a vacuum. Empedocles says that there is nothing of a vacuity in Nature, nor anything superabundant. Leucippus, Democritus, Demetrius, Metrodorus, Epicurus, that the atoms are in number infinite; and that a vacuum is infinite in magnitude. The Stoics, that within the compass of the world there is no vacuum, but beyond it the vacuum is infinite. Aristotle, that the vacuum beyond the world is so great that the heaven has liberty to breathe into it, for the heaven is fiery.

Chapter XIX.

Of Place.

Plato, to define place, calls it that thing which in its own bosom receives forms and ideas; by which metaphor he denotes matter, being (as it were) a nurse or receptacle of beings. Aristotle, that it is the ultimate superficies of the circumambient body, contiguous to that which it doth encompass.

Chapter XX.

Of Space.

The Stoics and Epicureans make a place, a vacuum, and space to differ. A vacuum is that which is void of anything that may be called a body; place is that which is possessed by a body; a space that which is partly filled with a body, as a cask with wine.

Chapter XXI.

Of Time.

In the sense of Pythagoras, time is that sphere which encompasses the world. Plato says that it is a movable image of eternity, or the interval of the world’s motion.

Eratosthenes, that it is the solar motion.

Chapter XXII.

Of the Substance and Nature of Time.

Plato says that the heavenly motion is time. Most of the Stoics that motion is time. Most philosophers think that time had no commencement; Plato, that time had only in intelligence a beginning.

Chapter XXIII.

Of Motion.

Plato and Pythagoras say that motion is a difference and alteration in matter. Aristotle, that it is the actual operation of that which may be moved. Democritus, that there is but one sort of motion, and it is that which is vibratory. Epicurus, that there are two species of motion, one perpendicular, and the other oblique. Herophilus, that one species of motion is obvious only to reason, the other to sense. Heraclitus utterly denies that there is anything of quiet or repose in nature; for that is the state of the dead; one sort of motion is eternal, which he assigns to beings eternal, the other perishable, to those things which are perishable.

Chapter XXIV.

Of Generation and Corruption.

Parmenides Melissus, and Zeno deny that there are any such things as generation and corruption, for they suppose that the universe is unmovable. Empedocles, Epicurus, and other philosophers that combine in this, that the world is framed of small corporeal particles meeting together, affirm that corruption and generation are not so properly to be accepted; but there are conjunctions and separations, which do not consist in any distinction according to their qualities, but are made according to quantity by coalition or disjunction. Pythagoras, and all those who take for granted that matter is subject to mutation, say that generation and corruption are to be accepted in their proper sense, and that they are accomplished by the alteration, mutation, and dissolution of elements.

Chapter XXV.

Of Necessity.

Thales says that necessity is omnipotent, and that it exerciseth an empire over everything. Pythagoras, that the world is invested by necessity. Parmenides and Democritus, that there is nothing in the world but what is necessary, and that this same necessity is otherwise called fate, justice, providence, and the architect of the world.

Chapter XXVI.

Of the Nature of Necessity.

But Plato distinguisheth and refers some things to Providence, others to necessity. Empedocles makes the nature of necessity to be that cause which employs principles and elements. Democritus makes it to be a resistance, impulse, and force of matter. Plato sometimes says that necessity is matter; at other times, that it is the habitude or respect of the efficient cause towards matter.

Chapter XXVII.

Of Destiny or Fate.

Heraclitus, who attributes all things to fate, makes necessity to be the same thing with it. Plato admits of a necessity in the minds and the acts of men, but yet he introduceth a cause which flows from ourselves. The Stoics, in this agreeing with Plato, say that necessity is a cause invincible and violent; that fate is the ordered complication of causes, in which there is an intexture of those things which proceed from our own determination, so that certain things are to be attributed to fate, others not.

Chapter XXVIII.

Of the Nature of Fate.

According to Heraclitus, the essence of fate is a certain reason which penetrates the substance of all being; and this is an ethereal body, containing in itself that seminal faculty which gives an original to every being in the universe. Plato affirms that it is the eternal reason and the eternal law of the nature of the world. Chrysippus, that it is a spiritual faculty, which in due order doth manage and rule the universe. Again, in his book styled the “Definitions,” that fate is the reason of the world, or that it is that law whereby Providence rules and administers everything that is in the world; or it is that reason by which all things have been, all things are, and all things will be produced. The Stoics say that it is a chain of causes, that is, it is an order and connection of causes which cannot be resisted. Posidonius, that it is a being the third in degree from Jupiter; the first of beings is Jupiter, the second Nature, and the third Fate.

Chapter XXIX.

Of Fortune.

Plato says, that it is an accidental cause and a casual consequence in things which proceed from the election and counsel of men. Aristotle, that it is an accidental cause in those things done by an impulse for a certain end; and this cause is uncertain and unstable: there is a great deal of difference betwixt that which flows from chance and that which falls out by Fortune; for that which is fortuitous allows also chance, and belongs to things practical; but what is by chance cannot be also by Fortune, for it belongs to things without action: Fortune, moreover, pertains to rational beings, but chance to rational and irrational beings alike, and even to inanimate things. Epicurus, that it is a cause not always consistent, but various as to persons, times, and manners. Anaxagoras and the Stoics, that it is that cause which human reason cannot comprehend; for there are some things which proceed from necessity, some things from Fate, some from choice and free-will, some from Fortune, some from chance.

Chapter XXX.

Of Nature.

Empedocles affirms that Nature is nothing else but the mixture and separation of the elements; for thus he writes in the first book of his natural philosophy: —

Nature gives neither life nor death,
Mutation makes us die or breathe.
The elements first are mixed, then each
Do part: this Nature is in mortal speech.

Anaxagoras is of the same opinion, that Nature is coalition and separation, that is, generation and corruption.

Book II.

Having finished my dissertation concerning principles and elements and those things which chiefly appertain to them, I will turn my pen to discourse of those things which are produced by them, and will take my beginning from the world, which contains and encompasseth all beings.

Chapter I.

Of the World.

Pythagoras was the first philosopher that called the world [Greek omitted], from the order and beauty of it; for so that word signifies. Thales and his followers say the world is one. Democritus, Epicurus, and their scholar Metrodorus affirm that there are infinite worlds in an infinite space, for that infinite vacuum in its whole extent contains them. Empedocles, that the circle which the sun makes in its motion circumscribes the world, and that circle is the utmost bound of the world. Seleucus, that the world knows no limits. Diogenes, that the universe is infinite, but this world is finite. The Stoics make a difference between that which is called the universe, and that which is called the whole world; — the universe is the infinite space considered with the vacuum, the vacuity being removed gives the right conception of the world; so that the universe and the world are not the same thing.

Chapter II.

Of the Figure of the World.

The Stoics say that the figure of the world is spherical, others that it is conical, others oval. Epicurus, that the figure of the world may be globular, or that it may admit of other shapes.

Chapter III.

Whether the World be an Animal.

Democritus, Epicurus, and those philosophers who introduced atoms and a vacuum, affirm that the world is not an animal, nor governed by any wise Providence, but that it is managed by a nature which is void of reason. All the other philosophers affirm that the world is informed with a soul, and governed by reason and Providence. Aristotle is excepted, who is somewhat different; he is of opinion, that the whole world is not acted by a soul in every part of it, nor hath it any sensitive, rational, or intellectual faculties, nor is it directed by reason and Providence in every part of it; of all which the heavenly bodies are made partakers, for the circumambient spheres are animated and are living beings; but those things which are about the earth are void of those endowments; and though those terrestrial bodies are of an orderly disposition, yet that is casual and not primogenial.

Chapter IV.

Whether the World is Eternal and Incorruptible.

Pythagoras [and Plato], agreeing with the Stoics, affirm that the world was framed by God, and being corporeal is obvious to the senses, and in its own nature is obnoxious to destruction; but it shall never perish, it being preserved by the providence of God. Epicurus, that the world had a beginning, and so shall have an end, as plants and animals have. Xenophanes, that the world never had a beginning, is eternal and incorruptible. Aristotle, that the part of the world which is sublunary is subject to change, and there terrestrial beings find a decay.

Chapter V.

Whence Does the World Receive its Nutriment?

Aristotle says that, if the world be nourished, it will likewise be dissolved; but it requires no aliment, and will therefore be eternal. Plato, that this very world prepares for itself a nutriment, by the alteration of those things which are corruptible in it. Philolaus affirms that a destruction happens to the world in two ways; either by fire failing from heaven, or by the sublunary water being poured down through the whirling of the air; and the exhalations proceeding from thence are aliment of the world.

Chapter VI.

From what Element God Did Begin to Raise the Fabric of the World.

The natural philosophers pronounce that the forming of this world took its original from the earth, it being its centre, for the centre is the principal part of the globe. Pythagoras, from the fire and the fifth element. Empedocles determines, that the first and principal element distinct from the rest was the aether, then fire, after that the earth, which earth being strongly compacted by the force of a potent revolution, water springs from it, the exhalations of which water produce the air; the heaven took its origin from the aether, and fire gave a being to the sun; those things nearest to the earth are condensed from the remainders. Plato, that the visible world was framed after the exemplar of the intellectual world; the soul of the visible world was first produced, then the corporeal figure, first that which proceeded from fire and earth, then that which came from air and water. Pythagoras, that the world was formed of five solid figures which are called mathematical; the earth was produced by the cube, the fire by the pyramid, the air by the octahedron, the water by the icosahedron, and the globe of the universe by the dodecahedron. In all these Plato hath the same sentiments with Pythagoras.

Chapter VII.

In what Form and Order the World Was Composed.

Parmenides maintains that there are small coronets alternately twisted one within another, some made up of a thin, others of a condensed, matter; and there are others between mixed mutually together of light and of darkness, and around them all there is a solid substance, which like a firm wall surrounds these coronets. Leucippus and Democritus cover the world round about, as with a garment and membrane. Epicurus says that that which abounds some worlds is thin, and that which limits others is gross and condensed; and of these spheres some are in motion, others are fixed. Plato, that fire takes the first place in the world, the second the aether, after that the air, under that the water; the last place the earth possesseth: sometimes he puts the aether and the fire in the same place. Aristotle gives the first place to the aether, as that which is impassible, it being a kind of a fifth body after which he placeth those that are passible, fire, air, and water, and last of all the earth. To those bodies that are accounted celestial he assigns a motion that is circular, but to those that are seated under them, if they be light bodies, an ascending, if heavy, a descending motion. Empedocles, that the places of the elements are not always fixed and determined, but they all succeed one another in their respective stations.

Chapter VIII.

What is the Cause of the World’s Inclination.

Diogenes and Anaxagoras state that, after the world was composed and had produced living creatures, the world out of its own propensity made an inclination toward the south. Perhaps this may be attributed to a wise Providence (they affirm), that thereby some parts of the world may be habitable, others uninhabitable, according as the various climates are affected with a rigorous cold, or a scorching heat, or a just temperament of cold and heat. Empedocles, that the air yielding to the impetuous force of the solar rays, the poles received an inclination; whereby the northern parts were exalted and the southern depressed, by which means the whole world received its inclination.

Chapter IX.

Of that Thing which is Beyond the World, and Whether it be a Vacuum or Not.

Pythagoras and his followers say that beyond the world there is a vacuum, into which and out of which the world hath its respiration. The Stoics, that there is a vacuum into which infinite space by a conflagration shall be dissolved. Posidonius, not an infinite vacuum, but as much as suffices for the dissolution of the world; and this he asserts in his first book concerning the Vacuum. Aristotle affirms, that a vacuum does not exist. Plato concludes that neither within nor without the world there is any vacuum.

Chapter X.

What Parts of the World are on the Right Hand, and what on the Left.

Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle declare that the eastern parts of the world, from whence motion commences, are of the right, those of the western are of the left hand of the world. Empedocles, that those that are of the right hand face the summer solstice, those of the left the winter solstice.

Chapter XI.

Of Heaven, what is its Nature and Essence.

Anaximenes affirms that the circumference of heaven makes the limit of the earth’s revolution. Empedocles, that the heaven is a solid substance, and hath the form and hardness of crystal, it being composed of the air compacted by fire, and that in both hemispheres it invests the elements of air and fire. Aristotle, that it is formed by the fifth body, and by the mixture of extreme heat and cold.

Chapter XII

Into How Many Circles is the Heaven Distinguished; Or, of the Division of Heaven.

Thales, Pythagoras, and the followers of Pythagoras do distribute the universal globe of heaven into five circles, which they denominate zones; one of which is called the arctic circle, which is always conspicuous to us, another is the summer tropic, another is the solstice, another is the winter tropic, another is the antarctic circle, which is always out of sight. The circle called the zodiac is placed under the three that are in the midst, and is oblique, gently touching them all. Likewise, they are all divided in right angles by the meridian, which goes from pole to pole. It is supposed that Pythagoras made the first discovery of the obliquity of the zodiac, but one Oenopides of Chios challenges to himself the invention of it.

Chapter XIII.

What is the Essence of the Stars, and How They are Composed.

Thales affirms that they are globes of earth set on fire. Empedocles, that they are fiery bodies arising from that fire which the aether embraced within itself, and did shatter in pieces when the elements were first separated one from another. Anaxagoras, that the circumambient aether is of a fiery substance, which, by a vehement force in its whirling about, did tear stones from the earth, and by its own power set them on fire, and establish them as stars in the heavens. Diogenes thinks they resemble pumice stones, and that they are the breathings of the world; again he supposeth that there are some invisible stones, which fall sometimes from heaven upon the earth, and are there quenched; as it happened at Aegos-potami, where a stony star resembling fire did fall. Empedocles, that the fixed stars fastened to the crystal, but the planets are loosened. Plato, that the stars for the most part are of a fiery nature, but they are made partakers of another element, with they are mixed after the resemblance of glue. Zenophanes, that they are composed of inflamed clouds, which in the daytime are quenched, and in the night are kindled again. The like we see in coals; for the rising and setting of the stars is nothing else but the quenching and kindling of them. Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans, that every star is a world in an infinite aether, and encompasseth air, earth, and aether; this opinion is current among the disciples of Orpheus, for they suppose that each of the stars does make a world. Epicurus condemns none of these opinions, for he embraces anything that is possible.

Chapter XIV.

Of what Figure the Stars are.

The Stoics say that the stars are of a circular form, like as the sun, the moon, and the world. Cleanthes, that they are of a conical figure. Anaximenes, that they are fastened as nails in the crystalline firmament; some others, that they are fiery plates of gold, resembling pictures.

Chapter XV.

Of the Order and Place of the Stars.

Xenocrates says that the stars are moved in one and the same superficies. The other Stoics say that they are moved in various superficies, some being superior, others inferior. Democritus, that the fixed stars are in the highest place; after those the planets; after these the sun, Venus, and the moon, in order. Plato, that the first after the fixed stars that makes its appearance is Phaenon, the star of Saturn; the second Phaeton, the star of Jupiter; the third the fiery, which is the star of Mars; the fourth the morning star, which is the star of Venus; the fifth the shining star, and that is the star of Mercury; in the sixth place is the sun, in the seventh the moon. Plato and some of the mathematicians conspire in the same opinion; others place the sun as the centre of the planets. Anaximander, Metrodorus of Chios, and Crates assign to the sun the superior place, after him the moon, after them the fixed stars and planets.

Chapter XVI.

Of the Motion and Circulation of the Stars.

Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Cleanthes say that all the stars have their motion from east to west. Alcmaeon and the mathematicians, that the planets have a contrary motion to the fixed stars, and in opposition to them are carried from the west to the east. Anaximander, that they are carried by those circles and spheres on which they are placed. Anaximenes, that they are turned under and about the earth. Plato and the mathematicians, that the sun, Venus, and Mercury hold equal measures in their motions.

Chapter XVII.

Whence do the Stars Receive Their Light?

Metrodorus says that all the fixed stars derive their light from the sun. Heraclitus and the Stoics, that earthly exhalations are those by which the stars are nourished. Aristotle, that the heavenly bodies require no nutriment, for they being eternal cannot be obnoxious to corruption. Plato and the Stoics, that the whole world and the stars are fed by the same things.

Chapter XVIII.

What are Those Stars which are Called the Dioscuri, the Twins, or Castor and Pollux?

Xenophanes says that those which appear as stars in the tops of ships are little clouds brilliant by their peculiar motion. Metrodorus, that the eyes of frighted and astonished people emit those lights which are called the Twins.

Chapter XIX.

How Stars Prognosticate, and what is the Cause of Winter and Summer.

Plato says that the summer and winter indications proceed from the rising and setting of the stars, that is, from the rising and setting of the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars. Anaximenes, that the rest in this are not at all concerned, but that it is wholly performed by the sun. Eudoxus and Aratus assign it in common to all the stars, for thus Aratus says: —

Thund’ring Jove stars in heaven hath fixed,
And them in such beauteous order mixed,
Which yearly future things predict.

Chapter XX.

Of the Essence of the Sun.

Anaximander says, that the sun is a circle eight and twenty times bigger than the earth, and has a circumference very much like that of a chariot-wheel, which is hollow and full of fire; the fire of which appears to us through its mouth, as by an aperture in a pipe; and this is the sun. Xenophanes, that the sun is constituted of small bodies of fire compacted together and raised from a moist exhalation, which condensed make the body of the sun; or that it is a cloud enfired. The Stoics, that it is an intelligent flame proceeding from the sea. Plato, that it is composed of abundance of fire. Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Metrodorus, that it is an enfired stone, or a burning body. Aristotle, that it is a sphere formed out of the fifth body. Philolaus the Pythagorean, that the sun shines as crystal, which receives its splendor from the fire of the world and so reflecteth its light upon us; so that first, the body of fire which is celestial is in the sun; and secondly, the fiery reflection that comes from it, in the form of a mirror; and lastly, the rays spread upon us by way of reflection from that mirror; and this last we call the sun, which is (as it were) an image of an image. Empedocles, that there are two suns; the one the prototype, which is a fire placed in the other hemisphere, which it totally fills, and is always ordered in a direct opposition to the reflection of its own light; and the sun which is visible to us, formed by the reflection of that splendor in the other hemisphere (which is filled with air mixed with heat), the light reflected from the circular sun in the opposite hemisphere falling upon the crystalline sun; and this reflection is borne round with the motion of the fiery sun. To give briefly the full sense, the sun is nothing else but the light and brightness of that fire which encompasseth the earth. Epicurus, that it is an earthy bulk well compacted, with ores like a pumice-stone or a sponge, kindled by fire.

Chapter XXI.

Of the Magnitude of the Sun.

Anaximander says, that the sun itself in greatness is equal to the earth, but that the circle from whence it receives its respiration and in which it is moved is seven and twenty times larger than the earth. Anaxagoras, that it is far greater than Peloponnesus. Heraclitus, that it is no broader than a man’s foot. Epicurus, that he equally embraceth all the foresaid opinions, — that the sun may be of magnitude as it appears, or it may be somewhat greater or somewhat less.

Chapter XXII.

What is the Figure or Shape of the Sun.

Anaximenes affirms that in its dilatation it resembles a leaf. Heraclitus, that it hath the shape of a boat, and is somewhat crooked. The Stoics, that it is spherical, and it is of the same figure with the world and the stars. Epicurus, that the recited dogmas may be defended.

Chapter XXIII.

Of the Turning and Returning of the Stars, or the Summer and Winter Solstice.

Anaximenes believes that the stars are forced by a condensed and resisting air. Anaxagoras, by the repelling force of the northern air, which is violently pushed on by the sun, and thus rendered more condensed and powerful. Empedocles, that the sun is hindered from a continual direct course by its spherical vehicle and by the two circular tropics. Diogenes, that the sun, when it comes to its utmost declination, is extinguished, a rigorous cold damping the heat. The Stoics, that the sun maintains its course only through that space in which its sustenance is seated, let it be the ocean or the earth; by the exhalations proceeding from these it is nourished. Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle, that the sun receives a transverse motion from the obliquity of the zodiac, which is guarded by the tropics; all these the globe clearly manifests.

Chapter XXIV.

Of the Eclipse of the Sun.

Thales was the first who affirmed that the eclipse of the sun was caused by the moon’s running in a perpendicular line between it and the world; for the moon in its own nature is terrestrial. And by mirrors it is made perspicuous that, when the sun is eclipsed, the moon is in a direct line below it. Anaximander, that the sun is eclipsed when the fiery mouth of it is stopped and hindered from respiration. Heraclitus, that it is after the manner of the turning of a boat, when the concave seems uppermost to our sight, and the convex nethermost. Xenophanes, that the sun is eclipsed when it is extinguished; and that a new sun is created and rises in the east. He gives a farther account of an eclipse of the sun which remained for a whole month, and again of an eclipse which changed the day into night. Some declare that the cause of an eclipse is the invisible concourse of condensed clouds which cover the orb of the sun. Aristarchus placeth the sun amongst the fixed stars, and believeth that the earth [the moon?] is moved about the sun, and that by its inclination and vergency it intercepts its light and shadows its orb. Xenophanes, that there are many suns and many moons, according as the earth is distinguished by climates, circles, and zones. At some certain times the orb of the sun, falling upon some part of the world which is untenanted, wanders in a vacuum and becomes eclipsed. The same person affirms that the sun proceeding in its motion in the infinite space, appears to us to move orbicularly, taking that representation from its infinite distance from us.

Chapter XXV.

Of the Essence of the Moon.

Anaximander affirms that the circle of the moon is nineteen times bigger than the earth, and resembles the sun, its orb being full of fire; and it suffers an eclipse when the wheel makes a revolution, — which he describes by the divers turnings of a chariot-wheel, in the midst of it there being a hollow nave replenished with fire, which hath but one way of expiration. Xenophanes, that it is a condensed cloud. The Stoics, that it is mixed of fire and air. Plato, that it is a body of the greatest part fiery. Anaxagoras and Democritus, that it is a solid, condensed, and fiery body, in which there are flat countries, mountains, and valleys. Heraclitus, that it is an earth covered with a bright cloud. Pythagoras, that the body of the moon was of a nature resembling a mirror.

Chapter XXVI.

Of the Size of the Moon.

The Stoics declare, that in magnitude it exceeds the earth, just as the sun itself doth. Parmenides, that it is equal to the sun, from whom it receives its light.

Chapter XXVII.

Of the Figure of the Moon.

The Stoics believe that it is of the same figure with the sun, spherical. Empedocles, that the figure of it resembles a quoit. Heraclitus, a boat. Others, a cylinder.

Chapter XXVIII.

From Whence is it that the Moon Receives Her Light?

Anaximander thinks that she gives light to herself, but it is very slender and faint. Antiphon, that the moon shines by its own proper light; but when it absconds itself, the solar beams darting on it obscure it. Thus it naturally happens, that a more vehement light puts out a weaker; the same is seen in other stars. Thales and his followers, that the moon borrows all her light of the sun. Heraclitus, that the sun and moon are after the same manner affected; in their configurations both are shaped like boats, and are made conspicuous to us by receiving their light from moist exhalations. The sun appears to us more refulgent, by reason it is moved in a clearer and purer air; the moon appears more duskish, it being carried in an air more troubled and gross.

Chapter XXIX.

Of the Eclipse of the Moon.

Anaximenes believes that the mouth of the wheel, about which the moon is turned, being stopped is the cause of an eclipse. Berasus, that it proceeds from the turning of the dark side of the lunar orb towards us. Heraclitus, that it is performed just after the manner of a boat turned upside downwards. Some of the Pythagoreans say, that the splendor arises from the earth, its obstruction from the Antichthon (or counter-earth). Some of the later philosophers, that there is such a distribution of the lunar flame, that it gradually and in a just order burns until it be full moon; in like manner, that this fire decays by degrees, until its conjunction with the sun totally extinguisheth it. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and all the mathematicians agree, that the obscurity with which the moon is every month affected ariseth from a conjunction with the sun, by whose more resplendent beams she is darkened; and the moon is then eclipsed when she falls upon the shadow of the earth, the earth interposing between the sun and moon, or (to speak more properly) the earth intercepting the light of the moon.

Chapter XXX.

Of the Phases of the Moon, or the Lunar Aspects; or How it Comes to Pass that the Moon Appears to Us Terrestrial.

The Pythagoreans say, that the moon appears to us terraneous, by reason it is inhabited as our earth is, and in it there are animals of a larger size and plants of a rarer beauty than our globe affords; that the animals in their virtue and energy are fifteen degrees superior to ours; that they emit nothing excrementitious; and that the days are fifteen times longer. Anaxagoras, that the reason of the inequality ariseth from the commixture of things earthy and cold; and that fiery and caliginous matter is jumbled together, whereby the moon is said to be a star of a counterfeit aspect. The Stoics, that on account of the diversity of her substance the composition of her body is subject to corruption.

Chapter XXXI.

How Far the Moon is Removed from the Sun.

Empedocles declares, that the distance of the moon from the sun is double her remoteness from the earth. The mathematicians, that her distance from the sun is eighteen times her distance from the earth. Eratosthenes, that the sun is remote from the earth seven hundred and eighteen thousand furlongs.

Chapter XXXII.

Of the Year, and How Many Circulations Make Up the Great Year of Every Planet.

The year of Saturn is completed when he has had his circulation in the space of thirty solar years; of Jupiter in twelve; of Mars in two, of the sun in twelve months; in so many Mercury and Venus, the spaces of their circulation being equal; of the moon in thirty days, in which time her course from her prime to her conjunction is finished. As to the great year, some make it to consist of eight years solar, some of nineteen, others of fifty-nine. Heraclitus, of eighteen thousand. Diogenes, of three hundred and sixty-five such years as Heraclitus assigns. Others there are who lengthen it to seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven years.

Book III.

In my two precedent treatises having in due order taken a compendious view and given an account of the celestial bodies, and of the moon which stands between them and the terrestrial, I must now convert my pen to discourse in this third book of Meteors, which are beings above the earth and below the moon, and are extended to the site and situation of the earth, which is supposed to be the centre of the sphere of this world; and from thence will I take my beginning.

Chapter I.

Of the Galaxy, or the Milky Way.

It is a cloudy circle, which continually appears in the air, and by reason of the whiteness of its colors is called the galaxy, or the milky way. Some of the Pythagoreans say that, when Phaeton set the world on fire, a star falling from its own place in its circular passage through the region caused an inflammation. Others say that originally it was the first course of the sun; others, that it is an image as in a looking-glass, occasioned by the sun’s reflecting its beams towards the heavens, and this appears in the clouds and in the rainbow. Metrodorus, that it is merely the solar course, or the motion of the sun in its own circle. Parmenides, that the mixture of a thick and thin substance gives it a color which resembles milk. Anaxagoras, that the sun moving under the earth and not being able to enlighten every place, the shadow of the earth, being cast upon the part of the heavens, makes the galaxy. Democritus, that it is the splendor which ariseth from the coalition of many small bodies, which, being firmly united amongst themselves, do mutually enlighten one another. Aristotle, that it is the inflammation of dry, copious, and coherent vapor, by which the fiery mane, whose seat is beneath the aether and the planets, is produced. Posidonius, that it is a combination of fire, of finer substance than the stars, but denser than light.

Chapter II.

Of Comets and Shooting Fires, and Those which Resemble Beams.

Some of the Pythagoreans say, that a comet is one of those stars which do not always appear, but after they have run through their determined course, they then rise and are visible to us. Others, that it is the reflection of our sight upon the sun, which gives the resemblance of comets much after the same manner as images are reflected in mirrors. Anaxagoras and Democritus, that two or more stars being in conjunction by their united light make a comet. Aristotle, that it is a fiery coalition of dry exhalations. Strato, that it is the light of the star darting through a thick cloud that hath invested it; this is seen in light shining through lanterns. Heraclides, native of Pontus, that it is a lofty cloud inflamed by a sublime fire. The like causes he assigns to the bearded comet, to those circles that are seen about the sun or stars, or those meteors which resemble pillars or beams, and all others which are of this kind. This way unanimously go all the Peripatetics, holding that these meteors, being formed by the clouds, do differ according to their various configurations. Epigenes, that a comet arises from a rising of spirit or wind, mixed with an earthy substance and set on fire. Boethus, that it is a phantasy presented to us by fiery air. Diogenes, that comets are stars. Anaxagoras, that those styled shooting stars descend from the aether like sparks, and therefore are soon extinguished. Metrodorus, that it is a forcible illapse of the sun upon clouds which makes them to sparkle as fire. Xenophanes, that all such fiery meteors are nothing else but the conglomeration of the enfired clouds, and the flashing motions of them.

Chapter III.

Of Violent Eruption of Fire Out of the Clouds. of Lightning. of Thunder. of Hurricanes. of Whirlwinds.

Anaximander affirms that all these are produced by the wind after this manner: the wind being enclosed by condensed clouds, on account of its minuteness and lightness violently endeavors to make a passage; and in breaking through the cloud gives noise; and the tearing the cloud, because of the blackness of it, gives a resplendent flame. Metrodorus, that when the wind falls upon a cloud whose densing firmly compacts it, by breaking the cloud it causeth a great noise, and by striking and rending the cloud it gives the flame; and in the swiftness of its motion, the sun imparting heat to it, it throws out the bolt. The weak declining of the thunderbolt ends in a violent tempest. Anaxagoras, that when heat and cold meet and are mixed together (that is, ethereal parts with airy), thereby a great noise of thunder is produced, and the color observed against the blackness of the cloud occasions the flashing of fire; the full and great splendor is lightning, the more enlarged and embodied fire becomes a whirlwind, the cloudiness of it gives the hurricane. The Stoics, that thunder is the clashing of clouds one upon another, the flash of lightning is their fiery inflammation; their more rapid splendor is the thunderbolt, the faint and weak the whirlwind. Aristotle, that all these proceed from dry exhalations, which, if they meet with moist vapors, forcing their passage, the breaking of them gives the noise of thunder; they, being very dry, take fire and make lightning; tempests and hurricanes arise from the plenitude of matter which each draw to themselves, the hotter parts attracted make the whirlwinds, the duller the tempests.

Chapter IV.

Of Clouds, Rain, Snow, and Hail.

Anaximenes thinks that the air by being very much condensed clouds are formed; this air being more compacted, rain is compressed through it; when water in its falling down freezeth, then snow is generated; when it is encompassed with a moist air, it is hail. Metrodorus, that a cloud is composed of a watery exhalation carried into a higher place. Epicurus, that they are made of vapors; and that hail and snow are formed in a round figure, being in their long descent pressed upon by the circumambient air.

Chapter V.

Of the Rainbow.

Those things which affect the air in the superior places of it are of two sorts. Some have a real subsistence, such are rain and hail; others not. Those which enjoy not a proper subsistence are only in appearance; of this sort is the rainbow. Thus the continent to us that sail seems to be in motion.

Plato says, that men admiring it feigned that it took origination from one Thaumas, which word signifies admiration. Homer sings: —

Jove paints the rainbow with a purple dye,
Alluring man to cast his wandering eye.
(Iliad, xvii. 547.)

Others therefore fabled that the bow hath a head like a bull, by which it swallows up rivers.

But what is the cause of the rainbow? It is evident that what apparent things we see come to our eyes in right or in crooked lines, or by refraction: these are incorporeal and to sense obscure, but to reason they are obvious. Those which are seen in right lines are those which we see through the air or horn or transparent stones, for all the parts of these things are very fine and tenuous; but those which appear in crooked lines are in water, the thickness of the water presenting them bended to our sight. This is the reason that oars in themselves straight, when put into the sea, appear to us crooked. The third manner of our seeing is by refraction, and this is perspicuous in mirrors. After this third sort the rainbow is affected. We conceive it is a moist exhalation converted into a cloud, and in a short space it is dissolved into small and moist drops. The sun declining towards the west, it will necessarily follow that the whole bow is seen opposite to the sun; for the eye being directed to those drops receives a refraction, and by this means the bow is formed. The eye doth not consider the figure and form, but the color of these drops; the first of which colors is a shining red, the second a purple, the third is blue and green. Let us consider whether the reason of this red shining color be the splendor of the sun falling upon these small drops, the whole body of light being refracted, by which this bright red color is produced; the second part being troubled and the light languishing in the drops, the color becomes purple (for the purple is the faint red); but the third part, being more and more troubled, is changed into the green color. And this is proved by other effects of Nature; if any one shall put water in his mouth and spit it out so opposite to the sun, that its rays may be refracted on the drops, he shall see the resemblance of a rainbow; the same appears to men that are blear-eyed, when they fix their watery eyes upon a candle. Anaximenes thinks the bow is thus formed; the sun casting its splendor upon a thick, black, and gross cloud, and the rays not being in a capacity to penetrate beyond the superficies. Anaxagoras, that, the solar rays being reflected from a condensed cloud, the sun being placed directly opposite to it forms the bow after the mode of the repercussion of a mirror; after the same manner he assigns the natural cause of the Parhelia or mock-suns, which are often seen in Pontus. Metrodorus, that when the sun casts its splendor through a cloud, the cloud gives itself a blue, and the light a red color.

Chapter VI.

Of Meteors which Resemble Rods, or of Rods.

These rods and the mock-suns are constituted of a double nature, a real subsistence, and a mere appearance; — of a real subsistence, because the clouds are the object of our eyes; of a mere appearance, for their proper color is not seen, but that which is adventitious. The like affections, natural and adventitious, in all such things do happen.

Chapter VII.

Of Winds.

Anaximander believes that wind is a fluid air, the sun putting into motion or melting the moist subtle parts of it. The Stoics, that all winds are a flowing air, and from the diversity of the regions whence they have their origin receive their denomination; as, from darkness and the west the western wind; from the sun and its rising the eastern; from the north the northern, and from the south the southern winds. Metrodorus, that moist vapors heated by the sun are the cause of the impetuousness of violent winds. The Etesian, or those winds which annually commence about the rising of the Little Dog, the air about the northern pole being more compacted, blow violently following the sun when it returns from the summer solstice.

Chapter VIII.

Of Winter and Summer.

Empedocles and the Stoics believe that winter is caused by the thickness of the air prevailing and mounting upwards; and summer by fire, it falling downwards.

This description being given by me of Meteors, or those things that are above us, I must pass to those things which are terrestrial.

Chapter IX.

Of the Earth, what is its Nature and Magnitude.

Thales and his followers say that there is but one earth. Hicetes the Pythagorean, that there are two earths, this and the Antichthon, or the earth opposite to it. The Stoics, that this earth is one, and that finite and limited. Xenophanes, that the earth, being compacted of fire and air, in its lowest parts hath laid a foundation in an infinite depth. Metrodorus, that the earth is mere sediment and dregs of water, as the sun is of the air.

Chapter X.

Of the Figure of the Earth.

Thales, the Stoics, and their followers say that the earth is globular. Anaximander, that it resembles a smooth stony pillar. Anaximenes, that it hath the shape of a table. Leucippus, of a drum. Democritus, that it is like a quoit externally, and hollow in the middle.

Chapter XI.

Of the Site and Position of the Earth.

The disciples of Thales say that the earth is the centre of the universe. Xenophanes, that it is first, being rooted in the infinite space. Philolaus the Pythagorean gives to fire the middle place, and this is the source fire of the universe; the second place to the Antichthon; the third to that earth which we inhabit, which is placed in opposition unto and whirled about the opposite, — which is the reason that those which inhabit that earth cannot be seen by us. Parmenides was the first that confined the habitable world to the two solstitial (or temperate) zones.

Chapter XII.

Of the Inclination of the Earth.

Leucippus affirms that the earth vergeth towards the southern parts, by reason of the thinness and fineness that is in the south; the northern parts are more compacted, they being congealed by a rigorous cold, but those parts of the world that are opposite are enfired. Democritus, because, the southern parts of the air being the weaker, the earth as it enlarges bends towards the south; the northern parts are of an unequal, the southern of an equal temperament; and this is the reason that the earth bends towards those parts where the earth is laden with fruits and its own increase.

Chapter XIII.

Of the Motion of the Earth.

Most of the philosophers say that the earth remains fixed in the same place. Philolaus the Pythagorean, that it is moved about the element of fire, in an oblique circle, after the same manner of motion that the sun and moon have. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean assign a motion to the earth, but not progressive, but after the manner of a wheel being carried on its own axis; thus the earth (they say) turns itself upon its own centre from west to east. Democritus, that when the earth was first formed it had a motion, the parts of it being small and light; but in process of time the parts of it were condensed, so that by its own weight it was poised and fixed.

Chapter XIV.

Into How Many Zones is the Earth Divided?

Pythagoras says that, as the celestial sphere is distributed into five zones, into the same number is the terrestrial; which zones are the arctic and antarctic, the summer and winter tropics (or temperate zones), and the equinoctial; the middle of which zones equally divides the earth and constitutes the torrid zone; but that portion which is in between the summer and winter tropics is habitable, by reason the air is there temperate.

Chapter XV.

Of Earthquakes.

Thales and Democritus assign the cause of earthquakes to water. The Stoics say that it is a moist vapor contained in the earth, making an irruption into the air, that causes the earthquake. Anaximenes, that the dryness and rarity of the earth are the cause of earthquakes, the one of which is produced by extreme drought, the other by immoderate showers. Anaxagoras, that the air endeavoring to make a passage out of the earth, meeting with a thick superficies, is not able to force its way, and so shakes the circumambient earth with a trembling. Aristotle, that a cold vapor encompassing every part of the earth prohibits the evacuation of vapors; for those which are hot, being in themselves light, endeavor to force a passage upwards, by which means the dry exhalations, being left in the earth, use their utmost endeavor to make a passage out, and being wedged in, they suffer various circumvolutions and shake the earth. Metrodorus, that whatsoever is in its own place is incapable of motion, except it be pressed upon or drawn by the operation of another body; the earth being so seated cannot naturally be moved, yet divers parts and places of the earth may move one upon another. Parmenides and Democritus, that the earth being so equally poised hath no sufficient ground why it should incline more to one side than to the other; so that it may be shaken, but cannot be removed. Anaximenes, that the earth by reason of its latitude is borne upon by the air which presseth upon it. Others opine that the earth swims upon the waters, as boards and broad planks, and by that reason is moved. Plato, that motion is by six manner of ways, upwards, downwards, on the right hand and on the left, behind and before; therefore it is not possible that the earth should be moved in any of these modes, for it is altogether seated in the lowest place; it therefore cannot receive a motion, since there is nothing about it so peculiar as to cause it to incline any way; but some parts of it are so rare and thin that they are capable of motion. Epicurus, that the possibility of the earth’s motion ariseth from a thick and aqueous air under the earth, that may, by moving or pushing it, be capable of quaking; or that being so compassed, and having many passages, it is shaken by the wind which is dispersed through the hollow dens of it.

Chapter XVI.

Of the Sea, and How it is Composed, and How it Becomes to the Taste Bitter.

Anaximander affirms that the sea is the remainder of the primogenial humidity, the greatest part of which being dried up by the fire, the influence of the great heat altered its quality. Anaxagoras that in the beginning water did not flow, but was as a standing pool; and that it was burnt by the movement of the sun about it, by which the oily part of the water being exhaled, the residue became salt. Empedocles, that the sea is the sweat of the earth heated by the sun. Antiphon, that the sweat of that which was hot was separated from the rest which were moist; these by seething and boiling became bitter, as happens in all sweats. Metrodorus, that the sea was strained through the earth, and retained some part of its density; the same is observed in all those things which are strained through ashes. The schools of Plato, that the element of water being compacted by the rigor of the air became sweet, but that part which was expired from the earth, being enfired, became of a brackish taste.

Chapter XVII.

Of Tides, or of the Ebbing and Flowing of the Sea.

Aristotle and Heraclides say, they proceed from the sun, which moves and whirls about the winds; and these falling with a violence upon the Atlantic, it is pressed and swells by them, by which means the sea flows; and their impression ceasing, the sea retracts, hence they ebb. Pytheas the Massilian, that the fulness of the moon gives the flow, the wane the ebb. Plato attributes it all to a certain balance of the sea, which by means of a mouth or orifice causes the tide; and by this means the seas do rise and flow alternately. Timaeus believes that those rivers which fall from the mountains of the Celtic Gaul into the Atlantic produce a tide. For upon their entering upon that sea, they violently press upon it, and so cause the flow; but they disemboguing themselves, there is a cessation of the impetuousness, by which means the ebb is produced. Seleucus the mathematician attributes a motion to the earth; and thus he pronounceth that the moon in its circumlation meets and repels the earth in its motion; between these two, the earth and the moon, there is a vehement wind raised and intercepted, which rushes upon the Atlantic Ocean, and gives us a probable argument that it is the cause the sea is troubled and moved.

Chapter XVIII.

Of the Aurea, or a Circle About a Star.

The aurea or circle is thus formed. A thick and dark air intervening between the moon or any other star and our eye, by which means our sight is dilated and reflected, when now our sight falls upon the outward circumference of the orb of that star, there presently seems a circle to appear. This circle thus appearing is called the [Greek omitted] or halo; and there is constantly such a circle seen by us, when such a density of sight happens.

Book IV.

Having taken a survey of the general parts of the world, I will take a view of the particular members of it.

Chapter I.

Of the Overflowing of the Nile.

Thales conjectures that the Etesian or anniversary northern winds blowing strongly against Egypt heighten the swelling of the Nile, the mouth of that river being obstructed by the force of the sea rushing into it. Euthymenes the Massilian concludes that the Nile is filled by the ocean and that sea which is outward from it, the last being naturally sweet. Anaxagoras, that the snow in Ethiopia which is frozen in winter is melted in summer, and this makes the inundation. Democritus, that the snows which are in the northern climates when the sun enters the summer solstice are dissolved and diffused; from those vapors clouds are compacted, and these are forcibly driven by the Etesian winds into the southern parts and into Egypt, from whence violent showers are poured; and by this means the fens of Egypt are filled with water, and the river Nile hath its inundation. Herodotus the historian, that the waters of the Nile receive from their fountain an equal portion of water in winter and in summer; but in winter the water appears less, because the sun, making its approach nearer to Egypt, draws up the rivers of that country into exhalation. Ephorus the historiographer, that in summer all Egypt seems to be melted and sweats itself into water, to which the thin and sandy soils of Arabia and Lybia contribute. Eudoxus relates that the Egyptian priests affirm that, when it is summer to us who dwell under the northern tropic, it is winter with them that inhabit under the southern tropic; by this means there is a various contrariety and opposition of the seasons in the year, which cause such showers to fall as make the water to overflow the banks of the Nile and diffuse itself throughout all Egypt.

Chapter II.

Of the Soul.

Thales first pronounced that the soul is that being which is in a perpetual motion, or that whose motion proceeds from itself. Pythagoras, that it is a number moving itself; he takes a number to be the same thing with a mind. Plato, that it is an intellectual substance moving itself, and that motion is in a numerical harmony. Aristotle, that it is the first actuality [Greek ommitted] of a natural organical body which has life potentially; and this actuality must be understood to be the same thing with energy or operation. Dicaearchus, that it is the harmony of the four elements. Asclepiades the physician, that it is the concurrent exercitation of the senses.

Chapter III.

Whether the Soul be a Body, and what is the Nature and Essence of It.

All those named by me do affirm that the soul itself is incorporeal, and by its own nature is in a motion, and in its own self is an intelligent substance, and the living actuality of a natural organical body. The followers of Anaxagoras, that it is airy and a body. The Stoics, that it is a hot exhalation. Democritus, that it is a fiery composition of things which are perceptible by reason alone, the same having their forms spherical and without an inflaming faculty; and it is a body. Epicurus, that it is constituted of four qualities, of a fiery quality, of an aerial quality, a pneumatical, and of a fourth quality which hath no name, but it contains the virtue of the sense. Heraclitus, that the soul of the world is the exhalation which proceeds from the moist parts of it; but the soul of animals, arising from exhalations that are exterior and from those that are within them, is homogeneous to it.

Chapter IV.

Of the Parts of the Soul.

Plato and Pythagoras, according to their first account, distribute the soul into two parts, the rational and irrational. By a more accurate and strict account the soul is branched into three parts; they divide the unreasonable part into the concupiscible and the irascible. The Stoics say the soul is constituted of eight parts; five of which are the senses, hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, smelling, the sixth is the faculty of speaking, the seventh of generating, the eighth of commanding; this is the principal of all, by which all the other are guided and ordered in their proper organs, as we see the eight arms of a polypus aptly disposed. Democritus and Epicurus divide the soul into two parts, the one rational, which bath its residence in the breast, and the irrational, which is diffused through the whole structure of the body. Democritus, that the quality of the soul is communicated to everything, yea, to the dead corpses; for they are partakers of heat and some sense, when the most of both is expired out of them.

Chapter V.

What is the Principal Part of the Soul, and in what Part of the Body it Resides.

Plato and Democritus place its residence in the whole head. Strato, in that part of the forehead where the eyebrows are separated. Erasiatratus, in the Epikranis, or membrane which involves the brain. Herophilus, in that sinus of the brain which is the basis of it. Parmenides, in the breast; which opinion is embraced by Epicurus. The Stoics are generally of this opinion, that the seat of the soul is throughout the heart, or in the spirit about it. Diogenes, in the arterial ventricle of the heart, which is also full of vital spirit. Empedocles, in the mass of the blood. There are that say it is in the neck of the heart, others in the pericardium, others in the midriff. Certain of the Neoterics, that the seat of the soul is extended from the head to the diaphragm. Pythagoras, that the animal part of the soul resides in the heart, the intellectual in the head.

Chapter VI.

Of the Motion of the Soul.

Plato believes that the soul is in perpetual motion, but that it is immovable as regards motion from place to place. Aristotle, that the soul is not naturally moved, but its motion is accidental, resembling that which is in the forms of bodies.

Chapter VII.

Of the Soul’s Immortality.

Plato and Pythagoras say that the soul is immortal; when it departs out of the body, it retreats to the soul of the world, which is a being of the same nature with it. The Stoics, when the souls leave the bodies, they are carried to divers places; the souls of the unlearned and ignorant descend to the coagmentation of earthly things, but the learned and vigorous last till the general fire. Epicurus and Democritus, the soul is mortal, and it perisheth with the body. Plato and Pythagoras, that part of the soul of man which is rational is eternal; for though it be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity; but that part of the soul which is divested of reason dies.

Chapter VIII.

Of the Senses, and of Those Things which are Objects of the Senses,

The Stoics give this definition of sense: Sense is the Apprehension or comprehension of an object by means of an organ of sensation. There are several ways of expressing what sense is; it is either a habit, a faculty, an operation, or an imagination which apprehends by means of an organ of sense, — and also the eighth principal thing, from whence the senses originate. The instruments of sense are intelligent exhalations, which from the said commanding part extend unto all the organs of the body. Epicurus, that sense is a faculty, and that which is perceived by the sense is the product of it; so that sense hath a double acceptation, — sense which is the faculty, and the thing received by the sense, which is the effect. Plato, that sense is that commerce which the soul and body have with those things that are exterior to them; the power of which is from the soul, the organ by which is from the body; but both of them apprehend external objects by means of the imagination. Leucippus and Democritus, that sense and intelligence arise from external images; so neither of them can operate without the assistance of image falling upon us.

Chapter IX.

Whether what Appears to Our Senses and Imaginations be True or Not.

The Stoics say that what the senses represent is true; what the imagination, is partly false, partly true. Epicurus that every impression of the sense or imagination is true, but of those things that fall under the head of opinion, some are true, some false: sense gives us a false presentation of those things only which are the objects of our understanding; but the imagination gives us a double error, both of things sensible and things intellectual. Empedocles and Heraclides, that the senses act by a just accommodation of the pores in every case; everything that is perceived by the sense being congruously adapted to its proper organ.

Chapter X.

How Many Senses are There?

The Stoics say that there are five senses properly so called, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting. and touching. Aristotle indeed doth not add a sixth sense; but he assigns a common sense, which is the judge of all compounded species; into this each sense casts its proper representation, in which is discovered a transition of one thing into another, like as we see in figure and motion where there is a change of one into another. Democritus, that there are divers species of senses, which appertain to beings destitute of reason, to the gods, and to wise men.

Chapter XI.

How the Actions of the Senses, the Conceptions of Our Minds, and the Habit of Our Reason are Formed.

The Stoics affirm that every man, as soon as he is born, has a principal and commanding part of his soul, which is in him like a sheet of writing-paper, to which he commits all his notions. The first manner of his inscribing is by denoting those notions which flow from the senses. Suppose it be of a thing that is white; when the present sense of it is vanished, there is yet retained the remembrance; when many memorative notions of the same similitude do concur, then he is said to have an experience; for experience is nothing more than the abundance of notions that are of the same form met together. Some of these notions are naturally begotten according to the aforesaid manner, without the assistance of art; the others are produced by discipline, learning, and industry; these only are justly called notions, the others are prenotions. But reason, which gives us the denomination of rational, is completed by prenotions in the first seven years. The conception of the mind is the vision that the intelligence of a rational animal hath received; when that vision falls upon the rational soul, then it is called the conception of the mind, for it hath derived its name from the mind [Greek omitted] from [Greek omitted]. Therefore these visions are not to be found in any other animals; they only are appropriated to gods and to us men. If these we consider generally, they are phantasms; if specifically, they are notions. As pence or staters, if you consider them according to their own value, are simply pence and staters; but if you give them as a price for a naval voyage, they are called not merely pence, etc., but your freight.

Chapter XII.

What is the Difference Between Imagination [Greek Omitted], The Imaginable [GREEK OMITTED], Fancy [GREEK OMITTED], and Phantom [Greek Omitted]?

Chrysippus affirms, these four are different one from another. Imagination is that passion raised in the soul which discovers itself and that which was the efficient of it; to use example, after the eye hath looked upon a thing that is white, the sight of which produceth in the mind a certain impression, this gives us reason to conclude that the object of this impression is white, which affecteth us. So with touching and smelling Phantasy or imagination is denominated from [Greek omitted] which denotes light; for as light discovers itself and all other things which it illuminates, so this imagination discovers itself and that which is the cause of it. The imaginable is the efficient cause of imagination; as anything that is white, or anything that is cold, or everything that may make an impression upon the imagination. Fancy is a vain impulse upon the mind of man, proceeding from nothing which is really conceivable; this is experienced in those that whirl about their idle hand and fight with shadows; for to the imagination there is always some real imaginable thing presented, which is the efficient cause of it; but to the fancy nothing. A phantom is that to which we are brought by such a fanciful and vain attraction; this is to be seen in melancholy and distracted persons. Of this sort was Orestes in the tragedy, pronouncing these words:

Mother, these maids with horror me affright;
Oh bring them not, I pray, into my sight!
They’re smeared with blood, and cruel, dragon-like,
Skipping about with deadly fury strike.

These rave as frantic persons, they see nothing, and yet imagine they see. Thence Electra thus returns to him:

0 wretched man, securely sleep in bed;
Nothing thou seest, thy fancy’s vainly led.
(Euripides, “Orestes”, 255.)

After the same manner Theoclymenus in Homer.

Chapter XIII.

Of Our Sight, and by what Means We See.

Democritus and Epicurus suppose that sight is caused by the insertion of little images into the visive organ, and by the reception of certain rays which return to the eye after meeting the object. Empedocles supposes that images are mixed with the rays of the eye; these he styles the rays of images. Hipparchus, that the visual rays extend from both the eyes to the superficies of bodies, and give to the sight the apprehension of those same bodies, after the same manner in which the hand touching the extremity of bodies gives the sense of feeling. Plato, that the sight is the splendor of united rays; there is a light which reaches some distance from the eyes into a cognate air, and there is likewise a light shed from bodies, which meets and joins with the fiery visual light in the intermediate air (which is liquid and mutable); and the union of these rays gives the sense of seeing. This is Plato’s corradiancy, or splendor of united rays.

Chapter XIV.

Of Those Images which are Presented to Our Eyes in Mirrors.

Empedocles says that these images are caused by certain effluxes which, meeting together and resting upon the superficies of the mirror, are perfected by that fiery element emitted by the said mirror, which transforms withal the air that surrounds it. Democritus and Epicurus, that the specular appearances are made by the subsistence of the images which flow from our eyes; these fall upon the mirror and remain, while the light returns to the eye. The followers of Pythagoras explain it by the reflection of the sight; for our sight being extended (as it were) to the brass, and meeting with the smooth dense surface thereof it is forced back, and caused to return upon itself: the same takes place in the hand, when it is stretched out and then brought back again to the shoulder. Any one may use these instances to explain the manner of seeing.

Chapter XV.

Whether Darkness Can be Visible to Us.

The Stoics say that darkness is seen by us, for out of our eyes there issues out some light into it; and our eyes do not impose upon us, for they really perceive there is darkness. Chrysippus says that we see darkness by the striking of the intermediate air; for the visual spirits which proceed from the principal part of the soul and reach to the ball of the eye pierce this air, which, after they have made those strokes upon it, extend conically on the surrounding air, where this is homogeneous in quality. For from the eyes those rays are poured forth which are neither black nor cloudy. Upon this. account darkness is visible to us.

Chapter XVI.

Of Hearing.

Empedocles says that hearing is formed by the insidency of the air upon the cochlea, which it is said hangs within the ear as a bell, and is beat upon by the air. Alcmaeon, that the vacuity that is within the ear makes us to have the sense of hearing, for the air forcing a vacuum gives the sound; every inanity affords a ringing. Diogenes the air which exists in the head, being struck upon by the voice gives the hearing. Plato and his followers, the air which exists in the head being struck upon, is reflected to the principal part of the soul, and this causeth the sense of hearing.

Chapter XVII.

Of Smelling.

Alcmaeon believes that the principal part of the soul, residing in the brain, draws to itself odors by respiration. Empedocles, that scents insert themselves into the breathing of the lungs; for, when there is a great difficulty in breathing, odors are not perceived by reason of the sharpness; and this we experience in those who have the defluxion of rheum.

Chapter XVIII.

Of Taste.

Alcmaeon says that a moist warmth in the tongue, joined with the softness of it, gives the difference of taste. Diogenes, that by the softness and sponginess of the tongue, and because the veins of the body are joined in it, tastes are diffused by the tongue; for they are attracted from it to that sense and to the commanding part of the soul, as from a sponge.

Chapter XIX.

Of the Voice.

Plato thus defines a voice, — that it is a breath drawn by the mind through the mouth, and a blow impressed on the air and through the ear, brain, and blood transmitted to the soul. Voice is abusively attributed to irrational and inanimate beings; thus we improperly call the neighing of horses or any other sound by the name of voice. But properly a voice [Greek omitted] is an articulate sound, which illustrates [Greek omitted] the understanding of man. Epicurus says that it is an efflux emitted from things that are vocal, or that give sounds or great noises; this is broken into those fragments which are after the same configuration. Like figures are round figures with round, and irregular and triangular with those of the same kind. These falling upon the ears produce the sense of hearing. This is seen in leaking vessels, and in fullers when they fan or blow their cloths. Democritus, that the air is broken into bodies of similar configuration, and these are rolled up and down with the fragments of the voice; as it is proverbially said, One daw lights with another, or, God always brings like to like. Thus we see upon the seashore, that stones like to one another are found in the same place, in one place the long-shaped, in another the round are seen. So in sieves, things of the same form meet together, but those that are different are divided; as pulse and beans falling from the same sieve are separated one from another. To this it may be objected: How can some fragments of air fill a theatre in which there is an infinite company of persons. The Stoics, that the air is not composed of small fragments, but is a continued body and nowhere admits a vacuum; and being struck with the air, it is infinitely moved in waves and in right circles, until it fill that air which surrounds it; as we see in a fish-pool which we smite by a falling stone cast upon it; yet the air is moved spherically, the water orbicularly. Anaxagoras says a voice is then formed when upon a solid air the breath is incident, which being repercussed is carried to the ears; after the same manner the echo is produced.

Chapter XX.

Whether the Voice is Incorporeal. what is it that the Gives Echo?

Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle declare that the voice is incorporeal; for it is not the air that causes the voice, but the figure which compasseth the air and its superficies having received a stroke, give the voice. But every superficies of itself is incorporeal. It is true that it move with the body but itself it hath no body; as we observe in a staff that is bended, the matter only admits of an inflection, while the superficies doth not. According to the Stoics a voice is corporeal since everything that is an agent or operates is a body; a voice acts and operates, for we hear it and are sensible of it; for it falls and makes an impression on the ear, as a seal of a ring gives its similitude upon the wax. Besides, everything that creates a delight or injury is a body; harmonious music affects with delight, but discord is tiresome. And everything that moved is a body; and the voice moves, and having its illapse upon smooth places is reflected, as when a ball is cast against a wall it rebounds. A voice spoken in the Egyptian pyramids is so broken, that it gives four or five echoes.

Chapter XXI.

By what Means the Soul is Sensible, and what is the Principal and Commanding Part of It.

The Stoics say that the highest part of the soul is the commanding part of it: this is the cause of sense, fancy, consents, and desires; and this we call the rational part. From this principal and commander there are produced seven parts of the soul, which are spread through the body, as the seven arms in a polypus. Of these seven parts, five are assigned to the senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. Sight is a spirit which is extended from the commanding part of the eyes; hearing is that spirit which from the principle reacheth to the ears; smelling a spirit drawn from the principal to the nostrils; tasting a spirit extended from the principle to the tongue; touching is a spirit which from the principal is drawn to the extremity of those bodies which are obnoxious to a sensible touch. Of the rest, the one called the spermatical is a spirit which reacheth from the principal to the generating vessels; the other, which is the vocal and termed the voice, is a spirit extended from the principal to the throat, tongue, and other proper organs of speaking. And this principal part itself hath that place in our spherical head which God hath in the world.

Chapter XXII.

Of Respiration or Breathing.

Empedocles thinks, that the first breath the first animal drew was when the moisture in the embryo was separated, and by that means an entrance was given to the external air into the gaping vessels, the moisture in them being evacuated. After this the natural heat, in a violent force pressing upon the external air for a passage, begets an expiration; but this heat returning to the inward parts, and the air giving way to it, causeth a respiration. The respiration that now is arises when the blood is borne to the exterior surface, and by this movement drives the airy substance through the nostrils; thus in its recess it causeth expiration, but the air being again forced into those places which are emptied of blood, it causeth an inspiration. To explain which, he proposeth the instance of a water-clock, which gives the account of time by the running of water.

Asclepiades supposeth the lungs to be in the manner of a funnel, and the cause of breathing to be the fineness of the inward parts of the breast; for thither the outward air which is more gross hastens, but is forced backward, the breast not being capable either to receive or want it. But there being always some of the more tenuous parts of the air left, so that all of it is not exploded, to that which there remains the more ponderous external air with equal violence is forced; and this he compares to cupping-glasses. All spontaneous breathings are formed by the contracting of the smaller pores of the lungs, and to the closing of the pipe in the neck; for these are at our command.

Herophilus attributes a moving faculty to the nerves, arteries, and muscles, but thinks that the lungs are affected only with a natural desire of enlarging and contracting themselves. Farther, there is the first operation of the lungs by attraction of the outward air, which is drawn in because of the abundance of the external air. Next to this, there is a second natural appetite of the lungs; the breast, pouring in upon itself the breath, and being filled, is no longer able to make an attraction, and throws the superfluity of it upon the lungs, whereby it is then sent forth in expiration; the parts of the body mutually concurring to this function by the alternate participation of fulness and emptiness. So that to lungs pertain four motions — first, when the lungs receive the outward air; secondly, when the outward air thus entertained is transmitted to the breast; thirdly, when the lungs again receive that air which they imparted to the breast; fourthly, when this air then received from the breast is thrown outwards. Of these four processes two are dilatations, one when the lungs attract the air, another when the breast dischargeth itself of it upon the lungs; two are contractions, one when the breast draws into itself the air, the second when it expels this which was insinuated into it. The breast admits only of two motions — of dilatation, when it draws from the lungs the breath, and of contraction, when it returns what it did receive.

Chapter XXIII.

Of the Passions of the Body, and Whether the Soul Hath a Sympathetical Condolency with It.

The Stoics say that all the passions are seated in those parts of the body which are affected, the senses have their residence in the commanding part of the soul. Epicurus, that all the passions and all the senses are in those parts which are affected, but the commanding part is subject to no passion. Strato, that all the passions and senses of the soul are in the rational or commanding part of it, and are not fixed in those places which are affected; for in this place patience takes its residence, and this is apparent in terrible and dolorous things, as also in timorous and valiant individuals.

Book V.

Chapter I.

Of Divination.

Plato and the Stoics introduce divination as a godlike enthusiasm, the soul itself being of a divine constitution, and this prophetic faculty being inspiration, or an illapse of the divine knowledge into man; and so likewise they account for interpretation by dreams. And these same allow many divisions of the art of divination. Xenophanes and Epicurus utterly refuse any such art of foretelling future contingencies. Pythagoras rejects all manner of divination which is by sacrifices. Aristotle and Dicaearchus admit only these two kinds of it, a fury by a divine inspiration, and dreams; they deny the immortality of the soul, yet they affirm that the mind of man hath a participation of something that is divine.

Chapter II.

Whence Dreams do Arise.

Democritus says that dreams are formed by the illapse of adventitious representations. Strato, that the irrational part of the soul in sleep becoming more sensible is moved by the rational part of it. Herophilus, that dreams which are caused by divine instinct have a necessary cause; but dreams which have their origin from a natural cause arise from the soul’s forming within itself the images of those things which are convenient for it, and which will happen; those dreams which are of a constitution mixed of both these have their origin from the fortuitous appulse of images, as when we see those things which please us; thus it happens many times to those persons who in their sleep imagine they embrace their mistresses.

Chapter III.

Of the Nature of Generative Seed.

Aristotle says, that seed is that thing which contains in itself a power of moving, whereby it is enabled to produce a being like unto that from whence it was emitted. Pythagoras, that seed is the sediment of that which nourisheth us, the froth of the purest blood, of the same nature of the blood and marrow of our bodies. Alcmaeon, that it is part of the brain. Plato, that it is the deflux of the spinal marrow. Epicurus, that it is a fragment torn from the body and soul. Democritus, that it proceeds from all the parts of the body, and chiefly from the principal parts, as the tissues and muscles.

Chapter IV.

Whether the Sperm be a Body.

Leucippus and Zeno say, that it is a body and a fragment of the soul. Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, that the spermatic faculty is incorporeal, as the mind is which moves the body; but the effused matter is corporeal. Strato and Democritus, that the essential power is a body; for it is like spirit.

Chapter V.

Whether Women do Give a Spermatic Emission As Men Do.

Pythagoras, Epicurus, and Democritus say, that women have a seminal projection, but their spermatic vessels are inverted; and it is this that makes them have a venereal appetite. Aristotle and Plato, that they emit a material moisture, as sweat we see produced by exercise and labor; but that moisture has no spermatic power. Hippo, that women have a seminal emission, but not after the mode of men; it contributes nothing to generation, for it falls outside of the matrix; and therefore some women without coition, especially widows, give the seed. They also assert that from men the bones, from women the flesh proceed.

Chapter VI.

How it is that Conceptions are Made.

Aristotle says, that conception takes place when the womb is drawn down by the natural purgation, and the monthly terms attract from the whole mass part of the purest blood, and this is met by the seed of man. On the contrary, there is a failure by the impurity and inflation of the womb, by fear and grief, by the weakness of women, or the decline of strength in men.

Chapter VII.

After what Manner Males and Females are Generated.

Empedocles affirms, that heat and cold give the difference in the generation of males and females. Hence is it, as histories acquaint us, that the first men originated from the earth in the eastern and southern parts, and the first females in the northern parts. Parmenides is of opinion perfectly contrariant. He affirms that men first sprouted out of the northern earth, for their bodies are more dense; women out of the southern, for theirs are more rare and fine. Hippo, that the more compacted and strong sperm, and the more fluid and weak, discriminate the sexes. Anaxagoras and Parmenides, that the seed of the man is naturally cast from his right side into the right side of the womb, or from the left side of the man into the left side of the womb; there is an alteration in this course of nature when females are generated. Cleophanes, whom Aristotle makes mention of, assigns the generation of men to the right testicle, of women to the left. Leucippus gives the reason of it to the alteration or diversity of parts, according to which the man hath a yard, the female the matrix; as to any other reason he is silent. Democritus, that the parts common to both sexes are engendered indifferently; but the peculiar parts by the one that is more powerful. Hippo, that if the spermatic faculty be more effectual, the male, if the nutritive aliment, the female is generated.

Chapter VIII.

By what Means it is that Monstrous Births are Effected.

Empedocles believes that monsters receive their origination from the abundance or defect of seed, or from its division into parts which are superabundant, or from some disturbance in the motion, or else that there is an error by a lapse into an unsuitable receptacle; and thus he presumes he hath given all the causes of monstrous conceptions. Strato, that it comes through addition, subtraction, or transposition of the seed, or the distension or inflation of the matrix. And some physicians say that the matrix suffers distortion, being distended with wind.

Chapter IX.

How it Comes to Pass that a Woman’s Too Frequent Conversation with a Man Hinders Conception.

Diocles the physician says that either no genital sperm is projected, or, if there be, it is in a less quantity than nature requires, or there is no prolific faculty in it; or there is a deficiency of a due proportion of heat, cold, moisture, and dryness; or there is a resolution of the generative parts. The Stoics attribute sterility to the obliquity of the yard, by which means it is not able to ejaculate in a due manner, or to the unproportionable magnitude of the parts, the matrix being so contracted as not to have a capacity to receive. Erasistratus assigns it to the womb’s being more callous or more carneous, thinner or smaller, than nature does require.

Chapter X.

Whence it is that One Birth Gives Two or Three Children.

Empedocles affirms, that the superabundance of sperm and the division of it causes the bringing forth of two or three infants. Asclepiades, that it is performed from the excellent quality of the sperm, after the manner that from the root of one barleycorn two or three stalks do grow; sperm that is of this quality is the most prolific. Erasistratus, that superfetation may happen to women as to irrational creatures; for, if the womb be well purged and very clean, then there can be divers births. The Stoics, that it ariseth from the various receptacles that are in the womb: when the seed illapses into the first and second of them at once, then there are conceptions upon conception; and so two or three infants are born.

Chapter XI.

Whence it is that Children Represent Their Parents and Progenitors.

Empedocles says, that the similitude of children to their parents proceeds from the vigorous prevalency of the generating sperm; the dissimilitude from the evaporation of the natural heat it contains. Parmenides, that when the sperm falls on the right side of the womb, then the infant gives the resemblance of the father; if from the left, it is stamped with the similitude of the mother. The Stoics, that the whole body and soul give the sperm; and hence arise the likenesses in the characters and faces of the children, as a painter in his copy imitates the colors in a picture before him. Women have a concurrent emission of seed; if the feminine seed have the predominancy, the child resembles the mother; if the masculine, the father.

Chapter XII.

How it Comes to Pass that Children Have a Greater Similitude with Strangers Than with Their Parents.

The greatest part of physicians affirm, that this happens casually and fortuitously; for, when the sperm of the man and woman is too much refrigerated, then children carry a dissimilitude to their parents. Empedocles, that a woman’s imagination in conception impresses a shape upon the infant; for women have been enamoured with images and statues, and the children which were born of them gave their similitudes. The Stoics, that the resemblances flow from the sympathy and consent of minds, through the insertion of effluvias and rays, not of images or pictures.

Chapter XIII.

Whence Ariseth Barrenness in Women, and Impotency in Men?

The physicians maintain, that sterility in women can arise from the womb; for if it be after any ways thus affected, there will be a barrenness, — if it be more condensed, or more thin, or more hardened, or more callous, or more carneous; or it may be from languor, or from an atrophy or vicious condition of body; or, lastly, it may arise from a twisted or distorted position. Diocles holds that the sterility in men ariseth from some of these causes, — either that they cannot at all ejaculate any sperm, or if they do, it is less than nature doth require, or else there is no generative faculty in the sperm, or the genital members are flagging; or from the obliquity of the yard. The Stoics attribute the cause of sterility to the contrariant qualities and dispositions of those who lie with one another; but if it chance that these persons are separated, and there happen a conjunction of those who are of a suitable temperament, then there is a commixture according to nature, and by this means an infant is formed.

Chapter XIV.

How it Arises that Mules are Barren.

Alcmaeon says, that the barrenness of the male mules ariseth from the thinness of the genital sperm, that is, the seed is too chill; the female mules are barren, because the womb does not open its mouth (as he expresses it). Empedocles, the matrix of the mule is so small, so depressed, so narrow, so invertedly growing to the belly, that the sperm cannot be regularly ejaculated into it, and if it could, there would be no capacity to receive it. Diocles concurs in this opinion with him; for, saith he, in our anatomical dissection of mules we have seen that their matrices are of such configurations; and it is possible that there may be the same reason why some women are barren.

Chapter XV.

Whether the Infant in the Mother’s Womb be an Animal.

Plato says, that the embryo is an animal; for, being contained in the mother’s womb, motion and aliment are imparted to it. The Stoics say that it is not an animal, but to be accounted part of the mother’s belly; like as we see the fruit of trees is esteemed part of the trees, until it be full ripe; then it falls and ceaseth to belong to the tree; thus it is with the embryo. Empedocles, that the embryo is not an animal, yet whilst it remains in the belly it breathes. The first breath that it draws as an animal is when the infant is newly born; then the child having its moisture separated, the extraneous air making an entrance into the empty places, a respiration is caused in the infant by the empty vessels receiving of it. Diogenes, that infants are nurtured in the matrix inanimate, yet they have a natural heat; but presently, when the infant is cast into the open air, its heat brings air into the lungs, and so it becomes an animal. Herophilus acknowledgeth that a natural, but not an animal motion, and that the nerves are the cause of that motion; that then they become animals, when being first born they suck in something of the air.

Chapter XVI.

How Embryos are Nourished, or How the Infant in the Belly Receives its Aliment.

Democritus and Epicurus say, that the embryos in the womb receive their aliment by the mouth, for we perceive, as soon as ever the infant is born, it applies its mouth to the breast; in the wombs of women (our understanding concludes) there are little dugs, and the embryos have small mouths by which they receive their nutriment. The Stoics, that by the secundines and navel they partake of aliment, and therefore the midwife instantly after their birth ties the navel, and opens the infant’s mouth, that it may receive another sort of aliment. Alcmaeon, that they receive their nourishment from every part of the body; as a sponge sucks in water.

Chapter XVII.

What Part of the Body is First Formed in the Womb.

The Stoics believe that the whole is formed at the same time. Aristotle, as the keel of a ship is first made, so the first part that is formed is the loins. Alcmaeon, the head, for that is the commanding and the principal part of the body. The physicians, the heart, in which are the veins and arteries. Some think the great toe is first formed; others affirm the navel.

Chapter XVIII

Whence is it that Infants Born in the Seventh Month are Born Alive.

Empedocles says, that when the human race took first its original from the earth, the sun was so slow in its motion that then one day in its length was equal to ten months, as now they are; in process of time one day became as long as seven months are; and there is the reason that those infants which are born at the end of seven months or ten months are born alive, the course of nature so disposing that the infant shall be brought to maturity in one day after that night in which it is begotten. Timaeus says, that we count not ten months but nine, by reason that we reckon the first conception from the stoppage of the menstruas; and so it may generally pass for seven months when really there are not seven; for it sometimes occurs that even after conception a woman is purged to some extent. Polybus, Diocles, and the Empirics, acknowledge that the eighth month gives a vital birth to the infant, though the life of it is more faint and languid; many therefore we see born in that month die out of mere weakness. Though we see many born in that month arrive at the state of man, yet (they affirm) if children be born in that month, none wish to rear them.

Aristotle and Hippocrates, that if the womb is full in seven months, then the child falls from the mother and is born alive, but if it falls from her but is not nourished, the navel being weak on account of the weight of the infant, then it doth not thrive; but if the infant continues nine months in the womb, and then comes forth from the woman, it is entire and perfect. Polybus, that a hundred and eighty-two days and a half suffice for the bringing forth of a living child; that is, six months, in which space of time the sun moves from one tropic to the other; and this is called seven months, for the days which are over plus in the sixth are accounted to give the seventh month. Those children which are born in the eighth month cannot live, for, the infant then falling from the womb, the navel, which is the cause of nourishment, is thereby too much wrenched; and is the reason that the infant languishes and hath an atrophy. The astrologers, that eight months are enemies to every birth, seven are friends and kind to it. The signs of the zodiac are then enemies, when they fall upon those stars which are lords of houses; whatever infant is then born will have a life short and unfortunate. Those signs of the zodiac which are malevolent and injurious to generation are those pairs of which the final is reckoned the eighth from the first, as the first and the eighth, the second and the ninth, etc; so is the Ram unsociable with Scorpio, the Bull with Sagittarius, the Twins with the Goat, the Crab with Aquarius, the Lion with Pisces, the Virgin with the Ram. Upon this reason those infants that are born in the seventh or tenth months are like to live, but those in the eighth month will die.

Chapter XIX.

Of the Generation of Animals, How Animals are Begotten, and Whether They are Obnoxious to Corruption.

Those philosophers who entertain the opinion that the world had an original do likewise assert that all animals are generated and corruptible. The followers of Epicurus, who gives an eternity to the world, affirm the generation of animals ariseth from the various permutation of parts mutually among themselves, for they are parts of this world. With them Anaxagoras and Euripides concur:

Nothing dies,
Different changes give their various forms.

Anaximander’s opinion is, that the first animals were generated in moisture, and were enclosed in bark on which thorns grew; but in process of time they came upon dry land, and this thorny bark with which they were covered being broken, they lived only for a short space of time. Empedocles says, that the first generation of animals and plants was by no means completed, for the parts were disjoined and would not admit of a union; the second preparation and for their being generated was when their parts were united and appeared in the form of images; the third preparation for generation was when their parts mutually amongst themselves gave a being to one another; the fourth, when there was no longer a mixture of like elements (as earth and water), but a union of animals among themselves, — in some the nourishment being made dense, in others female beauty provoking a desire of spermatic motion. All sorts of animals are discriminated by their proper temperament and constitution; some are carried by a proper appetite and inclination to water, some, which partake of a more fiery quality, to live in the air those that are heavier incline to the earth; but those animals whose parts are of a just temperament are fitted equally for all places.

Chapter XX.

How Many Species of Animals There are, and Whether All Animals Have the Endowments of Sense and Reason.

There is a certain treatise of Aristotle, in which animals are distributed into four kinds, terrestrial, aqueous, fowl, and heavenly; and he calls the stars and the world too animals, yea, and God himself he posits to be an animal gifted with reason and immortal. Democritus and Epicurus consider all animals rational which have their residence in the heavens. Anaxagoras says that animals have only that reason which is operative, but not that which is passive, which is justly styled the interpreter of the mind, and is like the mind itself. Pythagoras and Plato, that the souls of all those who are styled brutes are rational; but by the evil constitution of their bodies, and because they have a want of a discoursive faculty, they do not conduct themselves rationally. This is manifested in apes and dogs, which have inarticulate voice but not speech. Diogenes, that this sort of animals are partakers of intelligence and air, but by reason of the density in some parts of them, and by the superfluity of moisture in others, they neither enjoy understanding nor sense; but they are affected as madmen are, the commanding rational part being defectuous and injured.

Chapter XXI.

What Time is Required to Shape the Parts of Animals in the Womb.

Empedocles believes, that the joints of men begin to be formed from the thirty-sixth day, and their shape is completed in the nine and fortieth. Asclepiades, that male embryos, by reason of a greater natural heat, have their joints begun to be formed in the twenty-sixth day, — many even sooner, — and that they are completed in all their parts on the fiftieth day; the parts of the females are articulated in two months, but by the defect of heat are not consummated till the fourth; but the members of brutes are completed at various times, according to the commixture of the elements of which they consist.

Chapter XXII.

Of what Elements Each of the Members of Us Men is Composed.

Empedocles says, that the fleshy parts of us are constituted by the contemperation of the four elements in us; earth and fire mixed with a double proportion of water make nerves; but when it happens that the nerves are refrigerated where they come in contact with the air, then the nails are made; the bones are produced by two parts of water and the same of air, with four parts of fire and the same of earth, mixed together; sweat and tears flow from liquefaction of bodies.

Chapter XXIII.

What are the Causes of Sleep and Death?

Alcmaeon says, that sleep is caused when the blood retreats to the concourse of the veins, but when the blood diffuses itself then we awake and when there is a total retirement of the blood, then men die. Empedocles, that a moderate cooling of the blood causeth sleep, but a total remotion of heat from blood causeth death. Diogenes, that when all the blood is so diffused as that it fills all the veins, and forces the air contained in them to the back and to the belly that is below it, the breast being thereby more heated, thence sleep arises, but if everything that is airy in the breast forsakes the veins, then death succeeds. Plato and the Stoics, that sleep ariseth from the relaxation of the sensitive spirit, it not receiving such total relaxing as if it fell to the earth, but so that that spirit is carried about the intestine, parts of the eyebrows, in which the principal part has its residence; but when there is a total relaxing of the sensitive spirit, death ensues.

Chapter XXIV.

When and from Whence the Perfection of a Man Commences.

Heraclitus and the Stoics say, that men begin their completeness when the second septenary of years begins, about which time the seminal serum is emitted. Trees first begin their perfection when they give their seeds; till then they are immature, imperfect, and unfruitful. After the same manner a man is completed in the second septenary of years, and is capable of learning what is good and evil, and of discipline therein.

Chapter XXV.

Whether Sleep or Death Appertains to the Soul or Body.

Aristotle’s opinion is, that both the soul and body sleep; and this proceeds from the evaporation in the breast, which doth steam and arise into the head, and from the aliment in the stomach, whose proper heat is cooled in the heart. Death is the perfect refrigeration of all heat in body; but death is only of the body, and not of the soul, for the soul is immortal. Anaxagoras thinks, that sleep makes the operations of the body to cease; it is a corporeal passion and affects not the soul. Death is the separation of the soul from the body. Leucippus, that sleep is only of the body; but when the smaller particles cause excessive evaporation from the soul’s heat, this makes death; but these affections of death and sleep are of the body, not of the soul. Empedocles, that death is nothing else but separation of those fiery parts by which man is composed, and according to this sentiment both body and soul die; but sleep is only a smaller separation of the fiery qualities.

Chapter XXVI.

How Plants Increase.

Plato and Empedocles believe, that plants are animals, and are informed with a soul; of this there are clear arguments, for they have tossing and shaking, and their branches are extended; when the woodmen bend them they yield, but they return to their former straightness and strength again when they are let loose, and even carry up weights that are laid upon them. Aristotle doth grant that they live, but not that they are animals; for animals are affected with appetite, sense, and reason. The Stoics and Epicureans deny that they are informed with a soul; by reason that all sorts of animals have either sense, appetite, or reason; but plants act fortuitously, and not by means of any soul. Empedocles, that the first of all animals were trees, and they sprang from the earth before the sun in its motion enriched the world, and before day and night were distinguished; but by the harmony which is in their constitution they partake of a masculine and feminine nature; and they increase by that heat which is exalted out of the earth, so that they are parts belonging to it, as embryos in the womb are parts of the womb. Fruits in plants are excrescences proceeding from water and fire; but the plants which lack water, when this is dried up by the heat of summer, shed their leaves; whereas they that have plenty thereof keep their leaves on, as the olive, laurel, and palm. The differences of their moisture and juice arise from the difference of particles and various other causes, and they are discriminated by the various particles that feed them. And this is apparent in vines for the excellence of wine flows not from the difference in the vines, but from the soil from whence they receive their nutriment.

Chapter XXVII

Of Nutrition and Growth.

Empedocles believes, that animals are nourished by the remaining in them of that which is proper to their own nature; they are augmented by the application of heat; and the subtraction of either of these makes them to languish and decay. The stature of men in this present age, if compared with the magnitude of those men which were first produced, is only a mere infancy.

Chapter XXVIII.

Whence it is that in Animals There are Appetites and Pleasures.

Empedocles says that the want of those elements which compose animals gives to them appetite, and pleasures spring from humidity. As to the motions of dangers and such like things as perturbations, etc. . . .

Chapter XXIX

What is the Cause of a Fever, or Whether it is an Affection of the Body Annexed to a Primary Passion

Erasistratus gives this definition of a fever: A fever is a quick motion of blood, not produced by our consent, which enters into the vessels, the seat of the vital spirits. This we see in the sea; it is in a serene calm when nothing disturbs it, but is in motion when a violent preternatural wind blows upon it, and then it rageth and is circled with waves. After this manner it is in the body of man; when the blood is in a nimble agitation, then it falls upon those vessels in which the spirits are, and there being in an extraordinary heat, it fires the whole body. The opinion that a fever is an appendix to a preceding affection pleaseth him. Diocles proceeds after this manner: Those things which are internal and latent are manifested by those which externally break forth and appear; and it is clear to us that a fever is annexed to certain outward affections, for example, to wounds, inflaming tumors, inguinary abscesses.

Chapter XXX.

Of Health, Sickness, and Old Age.

Alcmaeon says that the preserver of health is an equal proportion of the qualities of heat, moisture, cold, dryness, bitterness, sweetness, and the other qualities; on the contrary, the prevailing empire of one above the rest is the cause of diseases and author of destruction. The direct cause of disease is the excess of heat or cold, the formal cause is excess or defect, the place is the blood or brain. But health is the harmonious commixture of the elements. Diocles, that sickness for the most part proceeds from the irregular disposition of the elements in the body, for that makes an ill habit or constitution of it. Erasistratus, that sickness is caused by the excess of nourishment, indigestion, and corruptions; on the contrary, health is the moderation of the diet, and the taking that which is convenient and sufficient for us. It is the unanimous opinion of the Stoics that the want of heat brings old age, for (they say) those persons in whom heat more abounds live the longer. Asclepiades, that the Ethiopians soon grow old, and at thirty years of age are ancient men, their bodies being excessively heated and scorched by the sun; in Britain persons live a hundred and twenty years, on account of the coldness of the country, and because the people keep the fiery element within their bodies; the bodies of the Ethiopians are more fine and thin, because they are relaxed by the sun’s heat, while they who live in northern countries are condensed and robust, and by consequence are more long lived.

Causes of natural phenomena

I. What is the Reason that Sea-water nourishes not Trees?

Is it not for the same reason that it nourishes not earthly animals? For Plato, Anaxagoras, and Democritus think plants are earthly animals. Nor, though sea-water be aliment to marine plants, as it is to fishes, will it therefore nourish earthly plants, since it can neither penetrate the roots, because of its grossness, nor ascend, by reason of its weight; for this, among many other things, shows sea-water to be heavy and terrene, because it more easily bears up ships and swimmers. Or is it because drought is a great enemy to trees? For sea-water is of a drying faculty; upon which account salt resists putrefaction, and the bodies of such as wash in the sea are presently dry and rough. Or is it because oil is destructive to earthly plants, and kills things anointed with it? But sea-water participates of much fatness; for it burns together with it. Wherefore, when men would quench fire, we forbid them to throw on sea-water. Or is it because sea-water is not fit to drink and bitter (as Aristotle says) through a mixture of burnt earth? For a lye is made by the falling of ashes into sweet water, and the dissolution ejects and corrupts what was good and potable, as in us men fevers convert the humors into bile. As for what woods and plants men talk of growing in the Red Sea, they bear no fruit, but are nourished by rivers casting up much mud; therefore they grow not at any great distance from land, but very near to it.

II. Why do Trees and Seeds thrive better with Rain than with Watering?

Whether is it because (as Laitus thinks) showers, parting the earth by the violence of their fall, make passages, whereby the water may more easily penetrate to the root? Or cannot this be true; and did Laitus never consider that marsh-plants (as cat’s-tail, pond-weeds, and rushes) neither thrive nor sprout when the rains fall not in their season; but it is true, as Aristotle said, rain-water is new and fresh, that of lakes old and stale? And what if this be rather probable than true? For the waters of fountains and rivers are ever fresh, new always arriving; therefore Heraclitus said well, that no man could go twice into the same river. And yet these very waters nourish worse than rain-water. But water from the heavens is light and aerial, and, being mixed with spirit, is the quicker passed and elevated into the plant, by reason of its tenuity. And for this very reason it makes bubbles when mixed with the air. Or does that nourish most which is soonest altered and overcome by the thing nourished? — for this very thing is concoction. On the contrary, inconcoction is when the aliment is too strong to be affected by the thing nourished. Now thin, simple, and insipid things are the most easily altered, of which number is rain-water, which is bred in the air and wind, and falls pure and sincere. But fountain-water, being assimilated to the earth and places through which it passes, is filled with many qualities which render it less nutritive and slower in alteration to the thing nourished. Moreover, that rain-water is easily alterable is an argument; because it sooner putrefies than either spring or river-water. For concoction seems to be putrefaction, as Empedocles says, —

•When in vine wood the water putrefies,

•It turns to wine, while under bark it lies.

Or, which may most readily be assigned for a reason, is it because rain is sweet and mild, when it is presently sent by the wind? For this reason cattle drink it most greedily, and frogs in expectation of it raise their voice, as if they were calling for rain to sweeten the marsh and to be sauce to the water in the pools. For Aratus makes this a sign of approaching rain,

•When father frogs, to watery snakes sweet food,

•Do croak and sing in mud, a wretched brood.

III. Why do Herdsmen set Salt before Cattle?

Whether (as many think) to nourish them the more, and fatten them the better? For salt by its acrimony sharpens the appetite, and by opening the passages brings meat more easily to digestion. Therefore Apollonius, Herophilus’s scholar, would not have lean persons, and such as did not thrive, be fed with sweet things and gruel, but ordered them to use pickles and salt things for their food, whose tenuity, serving instead of frication or sifting, might apply the aliment through the passages of the body. Or is it for health’s sake that men give sheep salt to lick, to cut off the redundance of nutriment? For when they are over fat, they grow sick; but salt wastes and melts the fat. And this they observe so well, that they can more easily flay them; for the fat, which agglutinates and fastens the skin, is made thin and weak by the acrimony. The blood also of things that lick salt is attenuated; nor do things within the body stick together when salts are mixed with them. Moreover, consider this, whether the cattle grow more fruitful and more inclined to coition; for bitches do sooner conceive when they are fed with salt victuals, and ships which carry salt are more pestered with mice, by reason of their frequent coition.

IV. Why is the Water of Showers which falls in Thunder and Lightning fitter to Water Seeds? And they are therefore called Thunder-showers.

Is it because they contain much spirit, by reason of their confusion and mixture with the air? And the spirit moving the humor sends it more upwards. Or is it because heat fighting against cold causes thunder and lightning? Whence it is that it thunders very little in winter, but in spring and autumn very much, because of the inequality of temper; and the heat, concocting the humor, renders it friendly and commodious for plants. Or does it thunder and lighten most in the spring for the aforesaid cause, and do the seeds have greater occasion for the vernal rains before summer? Therefore that country which is best watered with rain in spring, as Sicily is, produces abundance of good fruit.

V. How comes it to pass, that since there be Eight Kinds of Tastes, we find the Salt in no Fruit whatever?

Indeed, at first the olive is bitter, and the grape acid; one whereof afterward turns fat, and the other vinous. But the harshness in dates and the austere in pomegranates turn sweet. Some pomegranates and apples have only a simple acid taste. The pungent taste is frequent in roots and seeds.

Is it because a salt taste is never natural, but arises when the rest are corrupt? Therefore such plants and seeds as are nourished receive no nourishment from salt; it serves indeed some instead of sauce, by preventing a surfeit of other nourishment. Or, as men take away saltness and bitingness from the sea-water by distilling, is saltness so abolished in hot things by heat? Or indeed does the taste (as Plato says) arise from water percolated through a plant, and does even sea-water percolated lose its saltness, being terrene and of gross parts? Therefore people that dig near the sea happen upon wells fit to drink. Several also that draw the sea-water into waxen buckets receive it sweet and potable, the salt and earthy matter being strained out. And straining through clay renders sea-water potable, since the clay retains the earthy parts and does not let them pass through. And since things are so, it is very probable either that plants receive no saltness extrinsically, or, if they do, they put it not forth into fruit; for things terrene and consisting of gross parts cannot pass, by reason of the straitness of the passages. Or may saltness be reckoned a sort of bitterness? For so Homer says:

•Out of his mouth the bitter brine did flow,

•And down his body from his head did go.

Plato also says that both these tastes have an abstersive and colliquative faculty; but the salt does it less, nor is it rough. And the bitter seems to differ from the salt in abundance of heat, since the salt has also a drying quality.

VI. What is the Reason that, if a Man frequently pass along Dewy Trees, those Limbs that touch the Wood are seized with a Leprosy?

Whether (as Laitus said) that by the tenuity of the dew the moisture of the skin is fretted away? Or, as smut and mildew fall upon moistened seeds, so, when the green and tender parts on the superficies are fretted and dissolved by the dew, is a certain noxious taint carried and imparted to the most bloodless parts of the body, as the legs and feet, which there eats and frets the superficies? For that by Nature there is a corrosive faculty in dew sufficiently appears, in that it makes fat people lean; and gross women gather it, either with wool or on their clothes, to take down their flesh.

VII. Why in Winter do Ships sail slower in Rivers, but do not so in the Sea?

Whether, because the river-air, which is at all times heavy and slow, being in winter more condensed by the cold, does more resist sailing? Or is it long of the water rather than the air? For the piercing cold makes the water heavy and thick, as one may perceive in a waterclock; for the water passes more slowly in winter than in summer. Theophrastus talks of a well about Pangaeum in Thrace, how that a vessel filled with the water of it weighs twice as much in winter as it does in summer. Besides, hence it is apparent that the grossness of the water makes ships sail slower, because in winter river-vessels carry greater burthens. For the water, being made more dense and heavy, makes the more renitency; but the heat hinders the sea from being condensed or frozen.

VIII. Why, since all other Liquors upon moving and stirring about grow cold, does the Sea by being tossed in Waves grow hot?

Whether that motion expels and dissipates the heat of other liquors as a thing adscititious, and the winds do rather excite and increase the innate heat of the sea? Its transparentness is an argument of heat; and so is its not being frozen, though it is terrene and heavy.

IX. Why in Winter is the Sea least salt and bitter to the Taste? For they say that Dionysius the Hydragogue reported this.

Is it that the bitterness of the sea is not devoid of all sweetness, as receiving so many rivers into it; but, since the sun exhales the sweet and potable water thereof, arising to the top by reason of its levity, and since this is done in summer more than in winter, when it affects the sea more weakly by reason of the debility of its heat, that so in winter a great deal of sweetness is left, which tempers and mitigates its excessive poisonous bitterness? And the same thing befalls potable waters; for in summer they are worse, the sun wasting the lightest and sweetest part of them. And a fresh sweetness returns in winter, of which the sea must needs participate, since it moves, and is carried with the rivers into the sea.

X. Why do Men pour Sea-water upon Wine, and say the Fishermen had an Oracle given them, whereby they were bid to dip Bacchus into the Sea? And why do they that live far from the Sea cast in some Zacynthian Earth toasted?

Whether that heat is good against cold? Or that it quenches heat, by diluting the wine and destroying its strength? Or that the aqueous and aerial part of wine (which is therefore prone to mutation) is stayed by the throwing in of terrene parts, whose nature it is to constipate and condense? Moreover, salts with the sea-water, attenuating and colliquating whatever is foreign and superfluous, suffer no fetidness or putrefaction to breed. Besides, the gross and terrene parts, being entangled with the heavy and sinking together, make a sediment or lees, and so make the wine fine.

XI. Why are they Sicker that Sail on the Sea than they that Sail in fresh Rivers, even in Calm Weather?

Of all the senses, smelling causes nauseousness the most, and of all the passions of the mind, fear. For men tremble and shake and bewray themselves upon apprehension of great danger. They that sail in a river are troubled with neither of these. And the smell of sweet and potable water is familiar to all, and the voyage is without danger. On the sea an unusual smell is troublesome; and men are afraid, not knowing what the issue may be. Therefore tranquillity abroad avails not, while an estuating and disturbed mind disorders the body.

XII. Why does pouring Oil on the Sea make it Clear and Calm?

Is it for that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no force, nor cause any waves? This may be probably said in respect of things external; but they say that divers take oil in their mouths, and when they spout it out they have light at the bottom, and it makes the water transparent; so that the slipping of the winds will not hold good here for an argument. Therefore it is to be considered, whether the sea, which is terrene and uneven, is not compacted and made smooth by the dense oil; and so the sea, being compact in itself, leaves passes, and a pellucidity penetrable by the sight. Or whether that the air, which is naturally mixed with the sea, is lucid, but by being troubled grows unequal and shady; and so by the oil’s density, smoothing its inequality, the sea recovers its evenness and pellucidity.

XIII. Why do Fishermen’s Nets rot more in Winter than in Summer, since other things rot more in Summer?

Is not that the cause which Theophrastus assigns, — that heat (to wit) shuns the cold, and is constrained by it on every side? Hence the waters are hottest in the bottom of the sea. And so it is on land; for springs are hotter in winter, and then lakes and rivers send up most vapors, because the heat is compelled to the bottom by the prevailing cold. Or it may be, nets do not rot at that time more than at another; but being frozen and dried in the cold, since they are therefore the more easily broken by the waves, they are liable to something like putrefaction and rottenness. And they suffer most in the cold (as strained cords are aptest to break in such a season), because then there be most frequent storms at sea. Therefore fishermen guard their nets with certain tinctures, for fear they should break. Otherwise a net, neither tinged nor daubed with any thing, might more easily deceive the fish; since line is of an air color, and is not easily discerned in the sea.

XIV. Why do the Dorians pray for bad making of their hay?

Is it because hay rained upon is never well made? For the grass is cut down green and not dry, wherefore it putrefies when wet with rain water. But when before harvest it rains upon corn, this is a help to it against the hot south winds; which otherwise would not let the grain fill in the ear, but by their heat would hinder and destroy all coalition, unless by watering the earth there came a moisture to cool and moisten the ear.

XV. Why is a fat and deep Soil fruitful of Wheat, and a lean Soil of Barley?

Is it because a stronger grain needs more nourishment, and a weaker a light and thin one? Now barley is weaker and laxer than wheat, therefore it affords but little nourishment. And, as a farther testimony to this reason, wheat, that is ripe in three months, grows in dryer ground; because it is juiceless, and stands in need of less nourishment, and therefore is more easily brought to perfection.

XVI. Why do Men say, Sow wheat in Clay and Barley in Dust?

Is the reason (as we said) because wheat takes up more nourishment; and barley cannot bear so much, but is choked with it? Or does wheat, because it is hard and ligneous, thrive better when it is softened and loosened in a moist soil; and barley at the first in a dry soil, because of its rarity? Or is the one temperament congruous and harmless to wheat, because it is hot; and the other to barley, because it is cold? Or are men afraid to sow wheat in a dry soil, because of the ants, which presently lie in wait for it; but they cannot so easily deal with barley nor carry it away, because it is a larger grain?

XVII. Why do Men use the Hair of Horses rather than of Mares for Fishing-Lines?

Is it that the males are stronger in those parts, as well as in others, than the females? Or is it that the females spoil the hair of their tails by their staling?

XVIII. Why is the Sight of a Cuttle-fish a Sign of a great Storm?

Is it because all fishes of the soft kind cannot endure cold, by reason of their nakedness and tenderness? For they are covered neither with shell, skin, or scale, though within they have hard and bony parts. Hence the Greeks call them soft fish. Therefore they easily perceive a storm coming, since they are so soon affected by the cold. When the polypus gets to shore and embraces the rocks, it is a sign the wind is rising; but the cuttle-fish jumps up, to shun the cold and the trouble of the bottom of the sea; for, of all soft fishes, she is the tenderest and soonest hurt.

XIX. Why does the Polypus change Color?

Whether, as Theophrastus writes, because it is an animal by nature timorous; and therefore, being disturbed, it changes color with its spirit, as some men do, of whom it is said, an ill man ever changes color? But though this may serve as a reason for changing its color, it will not for the imitation of colors. For the polypus does so change its color, that it is of the color of every stone it comes nigh. Hence that of Pindar, Mind the color of the marine beast, and so converse cunningly in all cities; and that of Theognis:

•Put on a mind like th’ polyp fish, —

•And learn so to dissemble, —

•Which of the rock whereto it sticks

•The color doth resemble.

And they say, that such as are excellent at craftiness and juggling have this in their eye, — that they may the better cheat them they have to deal withal, — ever to imitate the polypus. Some think the polypus can use her skin as a garment, and can put it on or off at pleasure. But if fear occasions this change in the polypus, is not something else more properly the cause? Let us consider what Empedocles says, that effluvia proceed from all things whatever. For not only animals, plants, the earth and sea, but stones, and even brass and iron, do continually send out many effluvia. For all things corrupt and smell, because there runneth always something from them, and they wear continually; insomuch that it is thought that by these effluvia come all attractions and insultations, some supposing embraces, others blows, some impulses, others circuitions. But especially about the sea rocks, when they are wet and cool by the waves (as is most likely), constantly some small particles are washed off, which do not incorporate with other bodies, but either pass by the smaller passages, or pass through the larger. Now the flesh of the polypus, as one may judge by the eye, is hollow, full of pores, and capable of effluvia. When therefore she is afraid, as her spirit changes she changes herself, and by straitening and contracting her body, she encloses the neighboring effluvia. And, as a good token of this argument, the polypus cannot imitate the color of every thing he comes near, nor the chameleon of any thing that is white; but each of these creatures is assimilated only to those things to whose effluvia it has pores proportionable.

XX. What is the Reason, that the Tears of wild Boars are sweet, and the Tears of the Hart salt and hurtful?

The reason seems to be the heat and cold of these animals. For the hart is cold, and the boar is very hot and fiery; therefore the one flies from, the other defends himself against, his pursuers. Now when great store of heat comes to the eyes (as Homer says, with horrid bristles, and eyes darting fire), tears are sweet. Some are of Empedocles’s opinion, who thought that tears proceed from the disturbance of the blood, as whey does from the churning of milk; since therefore boar’s blood is harsh and black, and hart’s blood thin and watery, it is consentaneous that the tears, which the one sheds when excited to anger, and the other when dejected with fear, should be of the same nature.

XXI. Why do tame Sows farrow often, some at one time and others at another; and the wild but once a Year, and all of them about the same time at the beginning of summer, whence it is said, —

The wild sow farrowing, that night falls no rain?

Is it because of plentiful feeding, as in very truth fulness doth produce wantonness? For abundance of nourishment breeds abundance of seed both in animals and plants. Now wild sows live by their own toil, and that with fear; the tame have always food enough, either by nature or given them. Or may it not be ascribed to their rest and exercise? For the tame do rest and go not far from their keepers; the wild get to the mountains, and run about, by which means they waste the nutriment, and consume it upon the whole body. Therefore either through continual converse, or abundance of seed, or because the females feed in herds with the males, the tame sows call to mind coition and stir up lust, as Empedocles talks of men. But in wild sows, which feed apart, desire is cold and dull for want of love and conversation. Or is it true, what Aristotle says, that Homer called the wild boar χλούνης, because he had but one stone? For most boars spoil their stones (he says) by rubbing them against stumps of trees.

XXII. Why are the Paws of Bears the sweetest and pleasantest Food?

Because the flesh of those parts of the body which concoct aliment the best is sweetest; and that concocts best which transpires most by motion and exercise. But the bear uses the fore-feet most in going and running, and in managing of things, as it were with hands.

XXIII. Why are the Steps of wild Beasts most difficultly Traced in Spring-time?

Whether the dogs, as Empedocles says, “with noses find the steps of all wild beasts,” and draw in those effluvia which the beasts leave in the ground; but the various smells of plants and flowers lying over the footsteps do in spring-time obscure and confound them, and put the dogs to a loss at winding them? Therefore about Etna in Sicily no man keeps any hunting dogs, because abundance of wild marjoram flourishes and grows there the year round, and the perpetual fragrancy of the place destroys the scent of the wild beasts. There is also a tale, how Proserpine, as she was gathering flowers thereabout, was ravished by Pluto; therefore people, revering that place as an asylum, do not catch any creature that feeds thereabout.

XXIV. Why are the Tracks of Wild Beasts worse Scented about the Full Moon?

Whether for the foresaid cause? For the full moons bring down the dews; and therefore Alcman calls dew the daughter of Jove and Luna in a verse of his,

Fed by the dew, bred by the Moon and Jove.

For dew is a weak and languid rain, and there is but little heat in the moon; which draws water from the earth, as the sun does; but because it cannot raise it on high, it soon lets it fall.

XXV. Why does Frost make Hunting difficult?

Whether is it because the wild beasts leave off going far abroad by reason of the cold, and so leave but few signs of themselves? Therefore some say, beasts spare the neighboring places, that they may not be sore put to it by going far abroad in winter, but may always have food ready at hand. Or is it because that for hunting the track alone is not sufficient, but there must be scent also? And things gently dissolved and loosened by heat afford a smell, but too violent cold binds up the scent, and will not let it reach the sense. Therefore they say that unguents and wine smell least in winter and cold weather; for the then concrete air keeps the scent in, and suffers it not to disperse.

XXVI. What is the Reason that Brutes, when they ail any thing, seek and pursue Remedies, and are often cured by the use of them?

Dogs eat grass, to make them vomit bile. Swine seek craw-fish, because the eating of them cures the headache. The tortoise, when he has eaten a viper, feeds on wild marjoram. They say, when a bear has surfeited himself and his stomach grows nauseous, he licks up ants, and by devouring them is cured. These creatures know such things neither by experience nor by chance.

Whether, as wax draws the bee, and carcasses the vulture afar off by the scent, do craw-fish so draw swine, wild marjoram the tortoise, and ants the bear, by smells and effluvia accommodated to their nature, they being prompted altogether by sense, without any assistance from reason? Or do not the temperaments of the body create appetites in animals, while diseases create these, producing divers acrimonies, sweetnesses, and other unusual and absurd qualities, the humors being altered; as is plain in women with child, who eat stones and earth? Therefore skilful physicians take their prognostic of recovery or death from the appetites of the sick. For Mnesitheus the physician says that, in the beginning of a disease of the lungs, he that craves onions recovers, and he that craves figs dies; because appetites follow the temperament, and the temperament follows diseases. It is therefore probable that beasts, if they fall not into mortal diseases, have such a disposition and temper, that by following their temper they light on their remedies.

XXVII. Why does Must, if the Vessel stand in the Cold, continue long sweet?

Is it because the changing of the sweet must into wine is concoction, but cold hinders concoction, because this is caused by heat? Or, on the contrary, is the proper taste of the grape sweet, and is it then said to be ripe, when the sweetness is equally diffused all over it; but does cold, not suffering the heat of the grape to exhale, and keeping it in, conserve the sweetness of the grape? And this is the reason that, in a rainy vintage, must ferments but little; for fermentation proceeds from heat, which the cold does check.

XXVIII. Why, of all Wild Beasts, does not the Boar bite the Toil, although both Wolves and Foxes do this?

Is it because his teeth stand so far within his head, that he cannot well come at the thread? For his lips, by reason of their thickness and largeness, meet close before. Or does he rather rely on his paws and mouth, and with those rend the toil, and with this defend himself against the hunters? His chief refuge is rolling and wallowing; therefore, rather than stand gnawing the toil, he rolls often about, and so clears himself, having no occasion for his teeth.

XXIX. What is the Reason that we admire Hot Waters (i. e.Baths) and not Cold; since it is plain that Cold is as much the cause of one sort as Heat is of the other?

It is not (as some are of opinion) that heat is a quality, and cold only a privation of that quality, and so that an entity is even less a cause than a non-entity. But we do it because Nature has attributed admiration to what is rare, and she puts men upon enquiry how any thing comes to pass that seldom happens. As Euripides saith,

•Behold the boundless Heaven on high,

•Bearing the earth in his moist arms, —

what wonders he brings out by night, and what beauty he shows forth by day! . . . The rainbow and the varied beauty of the clouds by day, and the lights which burst forth by night . . .

XXX. Why are Vines which are rank of leaves, but otherwise fruitless, said τϱαγᾶν?

Is it because very fat goats (τϱάγοι) are less able to procreate, nay, scarce able to use coition, by reason of their fatness? Seed is the superfluity of the aliment which is allotted to the body: now, when either an animal or a plant is of a very strong constitution and grows fat, it is a sign that all the nourishment is spent within, and that there is little and base excrement, or none at all.

XXXI. Why does the Vine irrigated with Wine die, especially the very Wine made from its own Grapes?

Is it as baldness happens to great wine-bibbers, the heat of the wine evaporating the moisture? Or, as Empedocles saith, “the putrefied water in the wood becomes wine beneath the bark,” . . . thus, when the vine is outwardly irrigated with wine, it is as fire to the vine, and destroys the nutritive faculty. Or, because wine is obstructive, it gets into the roots, stops the passages, and so hinders any moisture from coming to the plant to make it grow and thrive. Or, it may seem contrary to Nature that that should return into the vine which came out of it; for whatsover moisture comes from plants can neither nourish nor be again a part of the plant.

XXXII.

Why doth the Palm alone of all trees bend Upward when a weight is laid thereupon?

Is it that the fiery and spiritual power which it hath, being once provoked and (as it were) angered, putteth forth itself so much the more, and mounteth upward? Or is it because the weight, forcing the boughs suddenly, oppresseth and keepeth down the airy substance which they have, and driveth all of it inward; but the same afterwards, having resumed strength again, maketh head afresh, and more eagerly withstandeth the weight? Or, lastly, is it that the softer and more tender branches, not able to sustain the violence at first, so soon as the burden resteth quiet, by little and little lift up themselves, and make a show as if they rose up against it?

XXXIII. What is the Reason that Pit-water is less nutritive than either that which ariseth out of Springs or that which falleth down from Heaven?

Is it because it is more cold, and withal hath less air in it? Or because it containeth much salt from the earth mingled therewith? — now it is well known that salt above all other things causeth leanness. Or because standing still, and not exercised with running and stirring, it getteth a certain malignant quality, which is hurtful to both plants and animals, and is the cause that it is neither well concocted nor able to feed and nourish any thing? Hence it is that all dead waters of pools are unwholesome, for that they cannot digest and despatch those harmful qualities which they borrow of the evil property of the air or of the earth.

XXXIV. Why is the West Wind held commonly to be the Swiftest, according to this Verse of Homer:

•Let us likewise bestir our feet,

•As fast as Western winds do fleet.

Is it not because this wind is wont to blow when the sky is very well cleansed, and the air is exceeding clear and without all clouds? — for the thickness and impurity of the air doth not a little impeach and interrupt the course of the winds. Or is it rather because the sun, striking through a cold wind with his beams, is the cause that it passeth the faster away? — for whatsoever of cold is drawn in by the force of the winds, when the same is overcome by heat, as it were its enemy, we must think, is driven and set forward further and with greater celerity.

XXXV. Why cannot Bees abide Smoke?

Whether is it because the passages of their vital spirits are exceeding strait, and, if it chance that smoke be gotten into them and there kept in and intercepted, it is enough to stop the poor bees’ breath, — yea, and to strangle them quite? Or is not the acrimony and bitterness (think you) of the smoke in cause? — for bees are delighted with sweet things, and in very truth they have no other nourishment; and therefore no marvel if they detest and abhor smoke, as a thing for the bitterness most adverse and contrary unto them. Therefore honey-masters, when they make a smoke for to drive away bees, are wont to burn bitter herbs, as hemlock, centaury, &c.

XXXVI. Why will Bees sooner Sting those who newly before have committed Whoredom?

Is it not because it is a creature that wonderfully delighteth in purity, cleanliness, and elegancy, and withal hath a marvellous quick sense of smelling? Because therefore such unclean dealings between man and woman are wont to leave behind much filthiness and impurity, the bees both sooner find them out and also conceive the greater hatred against them. Hereupon it is that in Theocritus the shepherd pleasantly sendeth Venus away unto Anchises to be well stung with bees for her adultery:

•Now to mount Ida, to Anchises go,

•Where mighty oaks and cypresses do grow;

•Where hives and trees with honey sweet abound,

•And both with humming noise of bees resound.

And Pindar saith: “Thou little creature, who honey-combs dost frame, and with thy sting hast pricked false impure Rhoecus for his lewd villanies.”

XXXVII. Why do Dogs follow after a Stone that is thrown at them and bite it, letting the Man alone who flung it?

Is it because he can comprehend nothing by imagination nor call a thing to mind, which are gifts and virtues proper to man alone; and therefore, seeing he cannot discern the party that offered him injury, he supposeth that to be his enemy which seemeth in his eye to threaten him, and of it he goes about to be revenged? Or is it that he thinks the stone, while it runs along the ground, to be some wild beast, and according to his nature he intendeth to catch it first; but afterwards, when he seeth himself deceived and put besides his reckoning, he setteth upon the man? Or rather, doth he not hate the man and the stone both alike, but pursueth that only which is next unto him?

XXXVIII. Why at a certain time of the year do all She-wolves Whelp within the compass of twelve days?

Antipater in his History of Animals affirms, that shewolves exclude forth their young ones about the time that mast trees shed their blossoms, for upon the taste thereof their wombs open; but if there be none of such blooms to be had, then their young die within the body and never come to light. Moreover, he saith, those countries which bring not forth oaks and mast are never troubled nor spoiled with wolves. Some attribute all this to a tale that goes of Latona; who being with child, and finding no abiding place of rest and safety by reason of Juno for the space of twelve days, went to Delos, and, being transmuted by Jupiter into a wolf, obtained at his hands that all wolves for ever after might within that time be delivered of their young.

XXXIX. How cometh it that Water, seeming White aloft, showeth to be Black in the bottom?

Is it because depth is the mother of darkness, so that it doth dim and mar the sunbeams before they can descend so low as it? As for the uppermost superficies of the water, because it is immediately affected by the sun, it must needs receive the white brightness of the light; the which Empedocles verily approveth in these verses:

•A river in the bottom seems

•By shade of color black;

•The like is seen in caves and holes,

•By depth, where light they lack.

Or, since the bottom of the sea and of great rivers is often full of mud, doth it by reflection of the sunbeams represent the like color that the said mud hath? Or is it more probable that the water toward the bottom is not pure and sincere, but corrupted with an earthy quality, — as continually carrying with it somewhat of that by which it runneth and wherewith it is stirred, — and the same settling once to the bottom causeth it to be more troubled and less transparent?

BOOK XII

On the face which appears in the orb of the moon

920 1 . . . These were Sulla’s words. “For it concerns my story and that is its source; but I think that I should first like to learn whether there is any need to put back for a fresh start to those opinions concerning the face of the moon which are current and on the lips of everyone. “What else would you expect us to have done,” I said, “since it was the difficulty in these opinions that drove us from our course upon those others? As people with chronic diseases when they have despaired of ordinary remedies and customary regimens turn to expiations and amulets and dreams, just so in obscure and perplexing speculations, when the ordinary and reputable and customary accounts are not persuasive, it is necessary to try those that are more out of the way and not scorn them but literally to chant over ourselves the charms of the ancients and use every means to bring the truth to test.

2 1 Well, to begin with, you see that it is absurd to call the figure seen in the moon an affection of vision in its feebleness giving way to brilliance, a condition which we call bedazzlement. Anyone who asserts this does not observe that this phenomenon should rather have occurred in relation to the sun, since the sun lights upon us keen and violent (as Empedocles too somewhere not infelicitously renders the difference of the two:

The sun keen-shafted and the gentle moon,

referring in this way to her allurement and cheerfulness and harmlessness), and moreover does not explain why dull and weak eyes discern no distinction of shape in the moon but her orb for them has an even and full light, whereas those of keen and robust vision make out more precisely and distinctly the pattern of facial features and more clearly perceive the variations. In fact the contrary, I think, should have been the case if the image resulted from an affection of the eye when it is overpowered: the weaker the subject affected, the clearer should be the appearance of the image. The unevenness also entirely refutes the hypothesis, for the shadow that one sees is not continuous and confused but is not badly depicted by the words of Agesianax:

She gleams with fire encircled, but within

Bluer than lapis show a maiden’s eye

And dainty brow, a visage manifest.

In truth, the dark patches submerge beneath the bright ones which they encompass and confine them, being confined and curtailed by them in turn; and they are thoroughly intertwined with each other fso as to make the delineation of the figure resemble a painting. This, Aristotle, seemed to be a point not without cogency against your Clearchus also. For the man is yours, since he was an associate of the ancient Aristotle, although he did pervert many doctrines of the School.”

3 1 Apollonides broke in and inquired what the opinion of Clearchus was. “You are the last person,” I said, “who has any right not to know a theory of which geometry is, as it were, the very hearth and home. The man, you see, asserts that what is called the face consists of mirrored likenesses, that is images of the great ocean reflected in the moon, 921 for the visual ray when reflected naturally reaches from many points objects which are not directly visible and the full moon is itself in uniformity and lustre the finest and clearest of all mirrors. Just as you think, then, that the reflection of the visual ray to the sun accounts for the appearance of the rainbow in a cloud where the moisture has become somewhat smooth and condensed, so Clearchus thought bthat the outer ocean is seen in the moon, not in the place where it is but in the place whence the visual ray has been deflected to the ocean and the reflection of the ocean to us. So Agesianax again has somewhere said:

Or swell of ocean surging opposite

Be mirrored in a looking-glass of flame.”

4 1 Apollonides was delighted. “What an original and absolutely novel contrivance the hypothesis is,” he said, “the work of a man of daring and culture; but how did you proceed to bring your counter-argument against it?” “In the first place,” I said, “in that, although the outer ocean is a single thing, a confluent and continuous sea, the dark spots in the moon do not appear as one but having something like isthmuses between them, the brilliance dividing and delimiting the shadow. Hence, since each part is separated and has its own boundary, the layers of light upon shadow, assuming the semblance of height and depth, have produced a very close likeness of eyes and lips. Therefore, one must assume the existence of several outer oceans separated by isthmuses and mainlands, which is absurd and false; or, if the ocean is single, it is not plausible that its reflected image be thus discontinuous. Tell me whether — for in your presence it is safer to put this as a question than as an assertion — whether it is possible, though the inhabited world has length and breadth, that every visual ray when reflected from the moon should in like manner reach the ocean, even the visual rays of those who are sailing in the great ocean itself, yes and who dwell in it as the Britons do, and that too even though the earth, as you say, does not have the relation of centre to the orbit of the moon. Well, this,” I said, “it is your business to consider; but the reflection of vision either in respect to the moon or in general is beyond your province and that of Hipparchus too. Although Hipparchus was industrious, still many find him unsatisfactory in his explanation of the nature of vision itself, which is more likely to involve a sympathetic compound and fusion than any impacts and rebounds such as those of the atoms that Epicurus invented. Moreover, Clearchus, I think, would refuse to assume with us that the moon is a body of weight and solidity instead of an ethereal and luminiferous star as you say; and such a moon ought to shatter and divert the visual ray so that reflection would be out of the question. But if anyone dismisses our objections, we shall ask how it is that the reflection of the ocean exists as a face only in the moon and is seen in none of all the many other stars, although reason requires that all or none of them should affect the visual ray in this fashion. But let us have done with this; and do you,” I said with a glance at Lucius, “recall to me what part of our position was stated first.”

5 1 Whereat Lucius said: “Nay, lest we give the impression of flatly insulting Pharnaces by thus passing over the Stoic opinion unnoticed, do now by all means address some remark to the gentleman who, supposing the moon to be a mixture of air and gentle fire, then says that what appears to be a figure is the result of the blackening of the air as when in a calm water there runs a ripple under the surface.” “You are very nice, Lucius,” I said, “to dress up the absurdity in respectable language. Not so our comrade; but he said what is true, that they blacken the Moon’s eye defiling her with blemishes and bruises, 922 at one and the same time addressing her as Artemis and Athena and making her a mass compounded of murky air and smouldering fire neither kindling nor shining of herself, an indiscriminate kind of body, forever charred and smoking like the thunderbolts that are darkling and by the poets called lurid. Yet a smouldering fire, such as they suppose that of the moon to be, cannot persist or subsist at all unless it get solid fuel that shelters and at the same time nourishes it; this some philosophers, I believe, see less clearly than do those who say in jest that Hephaestus is said to be lame because fire without wood, like the lame without a stick, makes no progress. If the moon really is fire, whence came so much air in it? For the region that we see revolving above us is the place not of air but of a superior substance, the nature of which is to rarefy all things and set them afire; and, if air did come to be there, why has it not been etherealized by the fire and in this transformation disappeared but instead has been preserved as a housemate of fire this long time, as if nails had fixed it forever to the same spots and riveted it together? Air is tenuous and without configuration, and so it naturally slips and does not stay in place; and it cannot have become solidified if it is commingled with fire and partakes neither of moisture nor of earth by which all air can be solidified. Moreover, velocity ignites the air in stones and in cold lead, not to speak of the air enclosed in fire that is whirling about with such great speed. Why, they are vexed by Empedocles because he represents the moon to be a hail-like congelation of air encompassed by the sphere of fire; but they themselves say that the moon is a sphere of fire containing air dispersed about it here and there, and a sphere moreover that has neither clefts nor depths and hollows, such as are allowed by those who make it an earthy body, but has the air evidently resting upon its convex surface. That it should so remain is both contrary to reason and impossible to square with what is observed when the moon is full. On that assumption there should have been no distinction of dark and shadowy air; but all the air should become dark when occulted, or when the moon is caught by the sun it should all shine out with an even light. For with us too, while the air in the depths and hollows of the earth, wherever the sun’s rays do not penetrate, remains shadowy and unlit, that which suffuses the earth outside takes on brilliance and a luminous colour. The reason is that air, because of its subtility, is delicately attuned to every quality and influence; and, especially if it touches light or, to use your phrase, merely is tangent to it, it is altered through and through and entirely illuminated. So this same point seems right handsomely to re-enforce those who pack the air on the moon into depths of some kind and chasms, even as it utterly refutes you who make her globe an unintelligible mixture or compound of air and fire, — for it is not possible that a shadow remain upon the surface when the sun casts his light upon all of the moon that is within the compass of our vision.”

6 1 Even while I was still speaking Pharnaces spoke: “Here we are faced again with that stock manoeuvre of the Academy: on each occasion that they engage in discourse with others they will not offer any accounting of their own assertions but must keep their interlocutors on the defensive lest they become the prosecutors. Well, me you will not to day entice into defending the Stoics against your charges until I have called you people to account for turning the universe upside down.” Thereupon Lucius laughed and said: 923”Oh sir, just don’t bring suit against us for impiety as Cleanthes thought that the Greeks ought to lay an action for impiety against Aristarchus the Samian on the ground that he was disturbing the hearth of the universe because he sought to save the phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis. We express no opinion of our own now; but those who suppose that the moon is earth, why do they, my dear sir, turn things upside down any more than you do who station the earth here suspended in the air? Yet the earth is a great deal larger than the moon according to the mathematicians who during the occurrence of eclipses and the transits of the moon through the shadow calculate her magnitude by the length of time that she is obscured. For the shadow of the earth grows smaller the further it extends, because the body that cast the light is larger than the earth; and that the upper part of the shadow itself is taper and narrow was recognized, as they say, even by Homer, who called night ‘nimble’ because of the ‘sharpness’ of the shadow. Yet captured by this part in eclipses the moon barely escapes from it in a space thrice her own magnitude. Consider then how many times as large as the moon the earth is, if the earth casts a shadow which at its narrowest is thrice as broad as the moon. All the same, you fear for the moon lest it fall; whereas concerning the earth perhaps Aeschylus has persuaded you that Atlas

Stands, staying on his back the prop of earth

And sky no tender burden to embrace.

Or, while under the moon there stretches air unsubstantial and incapable of supporting a solid mass, the earth, as Pindar says, is encompassed by ‘steel-shod pillars’; and therefore Pharnaces is himself without any fear that the earth may fall but is sorry for the Ethiopians or Taprobanians, who are situated under the circuit of the moon, lest such a great weight fall upon them. Yet the moon is saved from falling by its very motion and the rapidity of its revolution, just as missiles placed in slings are kept from falling by being whirled around in a circle. For each thing is governed by its natural motion unless it be diverted by something else. That is why the moon is not governed by its weight: the weight has its influence frustrated by the rotatory motion. Nay, there would be more reason perhaps to wonder if she were absolutely unmoved and stationary like the earth. As it is, while the moon has good cause for not moving in this direction, the influence of weight alone might reasonably move the earth, since it has no part in any other motion; and the earth is heavier than the moon not merely in proportion to its greater size but still more, inasmuch as the moon has, of course, become light through the action of heat and fire. In short, your own statements seem to make the moon, if it is fire, stand in greater need of earth, that is of matter to serve it as a foundation, as something to which to adhere, as something to lend it coherence, and as something that can be ignited by it, for it is impossible to imagine fire being maintained without fuel, but you people say that earth does abide without root or foundation.” “Certainly it does,” said Pharnaces, “in occupying the proper and natural place that belongs to it, the middle, for this is the place about which all weights in their natural inclination press against one another and towards which they move and converge from every direction, whereas all the upper space, even if it receive something earthy which has been forcibly hurled up into it, straightway extrudes it into our region or rather lets it go where its proper inclination causes it naturally to descend.”

7 1 At this — for I wished Lucius to have time to collect his thoughts — I called to Theon. “Which of the tragic poets was it, Theon,” I asked, “who said that physicians

With bitter drugs the bitter bile purge?”

Theon replied that it was Sophocles. “Yes,” I said, “and we have of necessity to allow them this procedure; but to philosophers one should not listen if they desire to repulse paradoxes with paradoxes and in struggling against opinions that are amazing fabricate others that are more amazing and outlandish, as these people do in introducing their ‘motion to the centre.’ What paradox is not involved in this doctrine? Not the one that the earth is a sphere although it contains such great depths and heights and irregularities? Not that people live on the opposite hemisphere clinging to the earth like wood-worms or geckos turned bottomside up? — and that we ourselves in standing remain not at right angles to the earth but at an oblique angle, leaning from the perpendicular like drunken men? Not that incandescent masses of forty tons falling through the depth of the earth stop when they arrive at the centre, though nothing encounter or support them; and, if in their downward motion the impetus should carry them past the centre, they swing back again and return of themselves? Not that pieces of meteors burnt out on either side of the earth do not move downwards continually but falling upon the surface of the earth force their way into it from the outside and conceal themselves about the centre? Not that a turbulent stream of water, if in flowing downwards should reach the middle point, which they themselves call incorporeal, stops suspended or moves round about it, oscillating in an incessant and perpetual see-saw? Some of these a man could not even mistakenly force himself to conceive as possible. For this amounts to ‘upside down’ and ‘all things topsy-turvy,’ everything as far as the centre being ‘down’ and everything under the centre in turn being ‘up.’ The result is that, if a man should so coalesce with the earth that its centre is at his navel, the same person at the same time has his head up and his feet up too. Moreover, if he dig through the further side, his bottom in emerging is up, and the man digging himself ‘up’ is pulling himself ‘down’ from ‘above’; and, if someone should then be imagined to have gone in the opposite direction to this man, the feet of both of them at the same time turn out to be ‘up’ and are so called.

8 1 Nevertheless, though of tall tales of such a kind and number they have shouldered and lugged in — not a wallet-full, by heaven, but some juggler’s pack and hotchpotch, still they say that others are playing the buffoon by placing the moon, though it is earth, on high and not where the centre is. Yet if all heavy body converges to the same point and is compressed in all its parts upon its own centre, it is no more as centre of the sum of things than as a whole that the earth would appropriate to herself the heavy bodies that are parts of herself; and the downward tendency of falling bodies proves not that the earth is in the centre of the cosmos but that those bodies which when thrust away from the earth fall back to her again have some affinity and cohesion with her. For as the sun attracts to itself the parts of which it consists so the earth too accepts as her own the stone that has properly a downward tendency, and consequently every such thing ultimately unites and coheres with her. If there is a body, however, that was not originally allotted to the earth or detached from it but has somewhat independently a constitution and nature of its own, as those men would say of the moon, what is to hinder it from being permanently separate in its own place, compressed and bound together by its own parts? For it has not been proved that the earth is the centre of the sum of things, and the way in which things in our region press together and concentrate upon the earth suggests how in all probability things in that region converge upon the moon and remain there. The man who drives together into a single region all earthy and heavy things and makes them part of a single body — I do not see for what reason he does not apply the same compulsion to light objects in their turn but allows so many separate concentrations of fire and, since he does not collect all the stars together, clearly does not think that there must also be a body common to all things that are fiery and have an upward tendency.

9 1 Now,” said I, “my dear Apollonides, you mathematicians say that the sun is an immense distance from the upper circumference and that above the sun Venus and Mercury and the other planets revolved lower than the fixed stars and at great intervals from one another; but you think that in the cosmos there is provided no scope and extension for heavy and earthy objects. You see that it is ridiculous for us to deny that the moon is earth because she stands apart from the nether region and yet to call her a star although we see her removed so many thousands of miles from the upper circumference as if plunged into a pit. So far beneath the stars is she that the distance cannot be expressed, but you mathematicians in trying to calculate it run short of numbers; she practically grazes the earth and revolving close to it

Whirls like a chariot’s axle-box about,

Empedocles says,

That skims the post in passing.

Frequently she does not even surmount the earth’s shadow, though it extends but a little way because the illuminating body is very large; but she seems to revolve so close, almost within arm’s reach of the earth, as to be screened by it from the sun unless she rises above this shadowy, terrestrial, and nocturnal place which is the earth’s estate. Therefore we must boldly declare, I think, that the moon is within the confines of the earth inasmuch as she is occulted by its extremities.

10 1 Dismiss the fixed stars and the other planets and consider the demonstrations of Aristarchus in his treatise, On Sizes and Distances, that ‘the distance of the sun is more than 18 times and less than 20 times the distance of the moon,’ that is its distance from us. According to the highest estimate, however, the moon’s distance from us is said to be 56 times the radius of the earth. Even according to the mean calculations this radius is 40,000 stades; and, if we reckon from this, the sun is more than 40,300,000 stades distant from the moon. She has migrated so far from the sun on account of her weight and has moved so close to the earth that, if properties are to be determined by locations, the lot, I mean the position, of earth lays an action against the moon and she is legally assignable by right of propinquity and kinship to the chattels real and personal of earth. We do not err at all, I think, if granting such altitude and extension to the things called ‘upper’ we leave what is ‘down below’ also some room to move about in and so much latitude as there is from earth to moon. For as he is immoderate who calls only the outermost surface of the heaven ‘up’ and all else ‘down,’ so is he intolerable who restricts ‘down’ to the earth or rather to the centre; but both there and here some extension must be granted since the magnitude of the universe permits it. The claim that everything away from the earth is ipso facto ‘up’ and ‘on high’ is answered by a counter-claim that what is away from the circuit of the fixed stars is ipso facto ‘down.’

11 After all, in what sense is earth situated in the middle and in the middle of what? The sum of things is infinite; and the infinite, having neither beginning nor limit, cannot properly have a middle, for the middle is a kind of limit too but infinity is a negation of limits. He who asserts that the earth is in the middle not of the sum of things but of the cosmos is naïve if he supposes that the cosmos itself is not also involved in the same difficulties. In fact, in the sum of things no middle has been left for the cosmos either, but it is without hearth and habitation, moving in infinite void to nothing of its own; or, if it has come to rest because it has found some other reason for abiding, not because of the nature of its location, similar inferences are permissible in the cases of both earth and moon, that the former is stationary here and the latter is in motion there by reason of a different soul or nature rather than a difference of location. Besides this, consider whether they have not overlooked an important point. If anything in any way at all off the centre of the earth is ‘up,’ no part of the cosmos is ‘down’; but it turns out that the earth and the things on the earth and absolutely all body surrounding or enclosing the centre are ‘up’ and only one thing is ‘down,’ that incorporeal point which must be in opposition to the entire nature of the cosmos, if in fact ‘down’ and ‘up’ are natural opposites. This, moreover, does not exhaust the absurdity. The cause of the descent of heavy objects and of their motion to this region is also abolished, for there is no body that is ‘down’ towards which they are in motion and it is neither likely nor in accordance with the intention of these men that the incorporeal should have so much influence as to attract all these objects and keep them together around itself. On the contrary, it proves to be entirely unreasonable and inconsistent with the facts for the whole cosmos to be ‘up’ and nothing but an incorporeal and unextended limit to be ‘down’; but that statement of ours is reasonable, that ample space and broad has been divided between ‘up’ and ‘down.’

12 1 All the same, let us assume, if you please, that the motions of earthy objects in the heaven are contrary to nature; and then let us calmly observe without any histrionics and quite dispassionately that this indicates not that the moon is not earth but that she is earth in an ‘unnatural’ location. For the fire of Aetna too is below earth ‘unnaturally,’ but it is fire; and the air confined in skins, though by nature it is light and has an upward tendency, has been constrained to occupy an ‘unnatural’ location. As to the soul herself,” I said, “by Zeus, is her confinement in body not contrary to nature, swift as she is and fiery, as you say, and invisible in a sluggish, cold, and sensible vehicle? Shall we then on this account deny that there is a soul in body or that mind, a divine thing, though it traverses instantaneously in its flight all heaven and earth and sea, has passed into flesh and sinew and marrow under the influence of weight and density and countless qualities that attend liquefaction? This Zeus of yours too, is it not true that, while in his own nature he is single, a great and continuous fire, at present he is slackened and subdued and transformed, having become and continuing to become everything in the course of his mutations? So look out and reflect, good sir, lest in rearranging and removing each thing to its ‘natural’ location you contrive a dissolution of the cosmos and bring upon things the ‘Strife’ of Empedocles — or rather lest you arouse against nature the ancient Titans and Giants and long to look upon that legendary and dreadful disorder and discord when you have separated all that is heavy and all that is light.

The sun’s bright aspect is not there descried,
No, nor the shaggy might of earth, nor sea

as Empedocles says. Earth had no part in heat, water no part in air; there was not anything heavy above or anything light below; but the principles of all things were untempered and unamiable and solitary, not accepting combination or association with one another, but avoiding and shunning one another and moving with their own peculiar and arbitrary motions they were in the state in which, according to Plato, everything is from which God is absent, that is to say in which bodies are when mind or soul is wanting. So they were until desire came over nature providentially, for Affection arose or Aphrodite or Eros, as Empedocles says and Parmenides and Hesiod, in order that by changing position and interchanging functions and by being constrained some to motion and some to rest and compelled to give way and shift from the ‘natural’ to the ‘better’ the bodies might produce a universal concord and community.

13 1 If not a single one of the parts of the cosmos ever got into an ‘unnatural’ condition but each one is ‘naturally’ situated, requiring no transposition or rearrangement and having required none in the beginning either, I cannot make out what use there is of providence or of what Zeus, ‘the master-craftsman’ is maker and father-creator. In an army, certainly, tacticians are useless if each one of the soldiers should know of himself his post and position and the moment when he must take and keep them. Gardeners and builders are useless too if here water all of itself ‘naturally’ moves to the things that require it and irrigates them with its stream, and there bricks and timbers and stones by following their ‘natural’ inclinations and tendencies assume of themselves their appropriate position and arrangement. If, however, this notion eliminates providence forthwith and if the arrangement of existing things pertains to God and the distributing of them too, what wonder is there that nature has been so marshalled and disposed that here in our region there is fire but the stars are yonder and again that earth is here but the moon is established on high, held fast by the bonds of reason which are firmer than the bonds of nature? For, if all things really must follow their ‘natural’ inclinations and move with their ‘natural’ motions, you must order the sun not to revolve and Venus too and every other star as well, for light and fiery bodies move ‘naturally’ upwards and not in a circle. If, however, nature includes such variation in accordance with location that fire, though it is seen to move upwards here, as soon as it has reached the heavens revolves along with their rotation, what wonder is there that the same thing has happened to heavy and earthy bodies that have got there and that they too have been reduced by the environment to a different kind of motion? For it certainly cannot be that heaven ‘naturally’ deprives light objects of their upward motion but is unable to master objects that are heavy and have a downward inclination; on the contrary, by whatever influence it rearranged the former it rearranged the latter too and employed the nature of both of them for the better.

14 1 What is more, if we are finally to throw off the habits and opinions that have held our minds in thrall and fearlessly to say what really appears to be the case, no part of a whole all by itself seems to have any order, position, or motion of its own which could be called unconditionally ‘natural.’ On the contrary, each and every such part, whenever its motion is usefully and properly accommodated to that for the sake of which the part has come to be and which is the purpose of its growth or production, and whenever it acts or is affected or disposed so that it contributes to the preservation or beauty or function of that thing, then, I believe, it has its ‘natural’ position and motion and disposition. In man, at any rate, who is the result of ‘natural’ process if any being is, the heavy and earthy parts are above, chiefly in the region of the head, and the hot and fiery parts are in the middle regions; some of the teeth grow from above and some from below, and neither set is ‘contrary to nature’; and it cannot be said that the fire which flashes in the eyes above is ‘natural’ whereas that in the bowels and heart is ‘contrary to nature,’ but each has been assigned its proper and useful station. Observe, as Empedocles says, the nature of

Tritons and tortoises with hides of stone

and of all testaceans,

Thou’lt see earth there established over flesh;

and the stony matter does not oppress or crush the constitution on which it is superimposed, nor on the other hand does the heat by reason of lightness fly off to the upper region and escape, but they have been somehow intermingled and organically combined in accordance with the nature of each.

15 1 Such is probably the case with the cosmos too, if it really is a living being: in many places it has earth and in many fire and water and breath as the result not of forcible expulsion but of rational arrangement. After all, the eye has its present position in the body not because it was extruded thither as a result of its lightness, and the heart is in the chest not because its heaviness has caused it to slip and fall thither but because it was better that each of them should be so located. Let us not then believe with regard to the parts of the cosmos that earth is situated here because its weight has caused it to subside or that the sun, as Metrodorus of Chios once thought, was extruded into the upper region like an inflated skin by reason of its lightness or that the other stars got into their present positions because they tipped the balance, as it were, at different weights. On the contrary, the rational principle is in control; and that is why the stars revolve fixed like ‘radiant eyes’ in the countenance of the universe, the sun in the heart’s capacity transmits and disperses out of himself heat and light as if it were blood and breath, and earth and sea ‘naturally’ serve the cosmos to the ends that bowels and bladder do an animal. The moon, situate between sun and earth as the liver or another of the soft viscera is between heart and bowels, transmits hither the warmth from above and sends upwards the exhalations from our region, refining them in herself by a kind of concoction and purification. It is not clear to us whether her earthiness and solidity have any use suitable to other ends also. Nevertheless, in everything the better has control of the necessary. Well, what probability can we thus conceive in the statements of the Stoics? They say that the luminous and tenuous part of the ether by reason of its subtility became sky and the part which was condensed or compressed became stars, and that of these the most sluggish and turbid is the moon. Yet all the same anyone can see that the moon has not been separated from the ether but that there is still a large amount of it about her in which she moves and much of it beneath her in which they themselves as that the bearded stars and comets whirl. So it is not the inclinations consequent upon weight and lightness that have circumscribed the precincts of each of the bodies, but their arrangement is the result of a different principle.”

18 1 With these remarks I was about to yield the floor to Lucius, since the proofs of our position were next in order; but Aristotle smiled and said: “The company is my witness that you have directed your entire refutation against those who suppose that the moon is for her part semi-igneous and yet assert of all bodies in common that of themselves they incline either upwards or downwards. Whether there is anyone, however, who says that the stars move naturally in a circle and are of a substance far superior to the four substances here did not even accidentally come to your notice, so that I at any rate have been spared trouble.” And Lucius broke in and said” “. . . good friend, probably one would not for the moment quarrel with you and your friends, dispute the countless difficulties involved, when you ascribe to the other stars and the whole heaven a nature pure and undefiled and free from qualitative change and moving in a circle whereby it is possible to have the nature of endless revolution too; but let this doctrine descend and touch the moon, and in her it no longer preserves the impassivity and beauty of that body. Not to mention her other irregularities and divergencies, this very face which she displays is the result of some alteration of her substance or of the admixture somehow of another substance. That which is subjected to mixture, however, is the subject of some affection too, for it loses its purity, since it is perforce infected by what is inferior to it. The moon’s sluggishness and slackness of speed and the feebleness and faintness of her heat which, in the words of Ion,

ripes not the grape to duskiness,

to what shall we ascribe them except to her weakness and alteration, if an eternal and celestial body can have any part in alteration? The fact is in brief, my dear Aristotle, that regarded as earth the moon has the aspect of a very beautiful, august, and elegant object; but as a star or luminary or a divine and heavenly object she is, I am afraid, misshapen, ugly, and a disgrace to the noble title, if it is true that of all the host in heaven she alone goes about in need of alien light, as Parmenides says

Fixing her glance forever on the sun.

Our comrade in his discourse won approval by his demonstration of this very proposition of Anaxagoras’s that ‘the sun imparts to the moon her brilliance’; for my part, I shall not speak about these matters that I learned from you or in your company but gladly proceed to what remains. Well then, it is plausible that the moon is illuminated not by the sun’s irradiating and shining through her in the manner of glass or ice nor again as the result of some sort of concentration of brilliance or aggregation of rays, the light increasing as in the case of torches. Were that true, we should see the moon at the full on the first of the month no less than in the middle of the month, if she does not conceal and obstruct the sun but because of her subtility let his light through or as a result of combining with it flashes forth and joins in kindling the light in herself. Certainly her deviations or aversions cannot be alleged as the cause of her invisibility when she is in conjunction, as they are when she is at the half and gibbous or crescent; then, rather, ‘standing in a straight line with her illuminant,’ says Democritus, ‘she sustains and receives the sun,’ so that it would be reasonable for her to be visible and to let him shine thru. Far from doing this, however, she is at that time invisible herself and often has concealed and obliterated him

His beams she put to flight,

as Empedocles says,

From heaven above as far as to the earth,

Whereof such breadth as had the bright-eyed moon

She cast in shade,

just as if the light had fallen into night and darkness and not upon another star. As for the explanation of Posidonius that the profundity of the moon prevents the light of the sun from passing through her to us, this is obviously refuted by the fact that the air, though it is boundless and has many times the profundity of the moon, is in its entirety illumined and filled with sunshine by the rays. There remains then the theory of Empedocles that the moonlight which we see comes from the moon’s reflection of the sun. That is why there is neither warmth nor brilliance in it when it reaches us, as we should expect there to be if there had been a kindling or mixture of the lights of sun and moon. To the contrary, just as voices when they are reflected produce an echo which is fainter than the original sound and the impact of missiles after a ricochet is weaker,

Thus, having struck the moon’s broad disk, the ray

comes to us in a refluence weak and faint because the deflection slackens its force.”

17 1 Sulla then broke in and said: “No doubt this position has its plausible aspects; but what tells most strongly on the other side, did our comrade explain that away or did he fail to notice it?” “What’s that?” said Lucius, “or do you mean the difficulty with respect to the half-moon?” “Exactly,” said Sulla, “for there is some reason in the contention that, since all reflection occurs at equal angles, whenever the moon at the half is in mid-heaven the light cannot move earthwards from her but must glance off beyond the earth. The ray that then touches the moon comes from the sun on the horizon and therefore, being reflected at equal angles, would be produced to the point on the opposite horizon and would not shed its light upon us, or else there would be great distortion and aberration of the angle, which is opposite.” “Yes, by Heaven,” said Lucius, “there was talk of this too”; and, looking at Menelaus the mathematician as he spoke, he said: “In your presence, my dear Menelaus, I am ashamed to confute a mathematical proposition, the foundation, as it were, on which rests the subject of catoptrics. Yet it must be said that the proposition, ‘all reflection occurs at equal angles,’ is neither self-evident nor an admitted fact. It is refuted in the case of convex mirrors when the point of incidence of the visual ray produces images that are magnified in one respect; and it is refuted by folding mirrors, either plane of which, when they have been inclined to each other and have formed an inner angle, exhibits a double image, so that four likenesses of a single object are produced, two reversed on the outer surfaces and two dim ones not reversed in the depth of the mirrors. The reason for the production of these images Plato explains, for he has said that when the mirror is elevated on both sides the visual rays interchange their reflection because they shift from one side to the other. So, if of the visual rays some revert straight to us from the plane surfaces while others glance off to the opposite sides of the mirrors and thence return to us again, it is not possible that all reflections occur at equal angles. Consequently some people take direct issue with the mathematicians and maintain that they confute the equality of the angles of incidence and reflection by the very streams of light that flow from the moon upon the earth, for they deem this fact to be much more credible than that theory. Nevertheless, suppose that this must be conceded as a favour to geometry, the dearly beloved! In the first place, it is likely of the occur only in mirrors that have been polished to exact smoothness; but the moon is very uneven and rugged, with the result that the rays from a large body striking against considerable heights which receive reflections and diffusions of light from one another are multifariously reflected and intertwined and the refulgence itself combines with itself, coming to us, as it were, from many mirrors. In the second place, even if we assume that the reflections on the surface of the moon occur at equal angles, it is not impossible that the rays as they travel through such a great interval get fractured and deflected so as to be blurred and to bend their light. Some people even give a geometrical demonstration that the moon sheds many of her beams upon the earth along a line extended from the surface that is bent away from us; but I could not construct a geometrical diagram while talking, and talking to many people too.

18 1 Speaking generally,” he said, “I marvel that they adduce against us the moon’s shining upon the earth at the half and at the gibbous and the crescent phases too. After all, if the mass of the moon that is illumined by the sun were ethereal or fiery, the sun would not leave her a hemisphere that to our perception is ever in shadow and unilluminated; on the contrary, if as he revolves he grazed her ever so slightly, she should be saturated in her entirety and altered through and through by the light proceeding easily in all directions. Since wine that just touches water at its surface or a drop of blood fallen into liquid at the moment of contact stains all the liquid red, and since they say that the air itself is filled with sunshine not by having any effluences or rays commingled with it but by an alteration and change that results from impact or contact of the light, how do they imagine that a star can come in contact with a star or light with light and instead of blending and producing a thorough mixture and change merely illumine those portions of the surface which it touches? In fact, the circle which the sun in its revolution describes and causes to turn about the moon now coinciding with the circle that divides her visible and invisible parts and now standing at right angles to it so as to intersect it and be intersected by it, by different inclinations and relations of the bright part to the dark producing in her the gibbous and crescent phases, conclusively demonstrates that her illumination is the result not of combination but of contact, not of a concentration of light within her but of light shining upon her from without. In that she is not only illumined herself, however, but also transmits to us the semblance of her illumination, she gives us all the more confidence in our theory of her substance. There are no reflections from anything rarefied or tenuous in texture, and it is not easy even to imagine light rebounding from light or fire from fire; but whatever is to cause a repercussion or a reflection must be compact and solid, in order that it may stop a blow and repel it. At any rate, the same sunlight that the air lets pass without impediment or resistance is widely reflected and diffused from wood and stone and clothing exposed to its rays. The earth too we see illumined by the sun in this fashion. It does not let the light penetrate its depths as water does or pervade it through and through as air does; but such as is the circle of the sun that moves around the moon and so great as is the part of her that it intercepts, just such a circle in turn moves around the earth, always illuminating just so much and leaving another part unlimited, for the illumined portion of either body appears to be slightly greater than a hemisphere. Give me leave then to put it in geometrical fashion in terms of a proportion. Given three things approached by the light from the sun: earth, moon, air; if we see that the moon is illumined not as the air is rather than as the earth, the things upon which the same agent produces the same effects must be of a similar nature.”

19 1 When all had applauded Lucius, I said: “Congratulations upon having added to an elegant account an elegant proportion, for you must not be defrauded of what belongs to you.” He smiled thereat and said: “Well then proportion must be used a second time, in order that we may prove the moon to be like the earth not only because the effects of the same agent are the same on both but also because the effects of have on the same patient are the same. Now, grant me that nothing that happens to the sun is so like its setting as a solar eclipse. You will if you call to mind this conjunction recently which, beginning just after noonday, made many stars shine out from my parts of the sky and tempered the air in the manner of twilight. If you do not recall it, Theon here will cite us Mimnermus and Cydias and Archilochus and Stesichorus besides and Pindar, who during eclipses bewail ‘the brightest star bereft’ and ‘at midday falling’ and say that the beam of the sun ‘is sped the path of shade’; and to crown all he will cite Homer, who says ‘the faces of men are covered with night and gloom’ and ‘the sun has perished out of heaven’ speaking with reference to the moon and hinting that this naturally occurs

When waning month to waxing month gives way.

For the rest, I think that it has been reduced by the precision of mathematics to the clear and certain formula that night is the shadow of earth and the eclipse of the sun is the shadow of the moon whenever the visual ray encounters it. The fact is that in setting the sun is screened from our vision by the earth and in eclipse by the moon; but are cases of occultation, but the vespertine is occultation by the earth and the ecliptic by the moon with her shadow intercepting the visual ray. What follows from this is easy to perceive. If the effect is similar, the agents are similar, for it must be the same agents that cause the same things to happen to the same subject. Nor should we marvel if the darkness of eclipses is not so deep or so oppressive of the air as night is. The reason is that the body which produces night and that which produces the eclipse while the same in substance are not equal in size. In fact the Egyptians, I think, say that the moon is one seventy-second part (of the earth), and Anaxagoras that it is the size of the Peloponnesus; and Aristarchus demonstrates that the ratio of the earth’s diameter to the diameter of the moon is smaller than 60 to 19 and greater than 108 to 43. Consequently the earth because of its size removes the sun from sight entirely, for the obstruction is large and its duration is that of the night. even if the moon, however, does sometimes cover the sun entirely, the eclipse does not have duration or extension; but a kind of light is visible about the rim which keeps the shadow from being profound and absolute. The ancient Aristotle gives this as a reason besides some others why the moon is observed in eclipse more frequently than the sun, saying that the sun is eclipse by interposition of the moon but the moon by that of the earth, which is much larger. Posidonius gave this definition: ‘The following condition is an eclipse of the sun, conjunction of the moon’s shadow with whatever parts of the earth it may obscure, for there is an eclipse only for those whose visual ray the shadow of the moon intercepts and screens from the sun’; — since he concedes then that a shadow of the moon falls upon us, he has left himself nothing to say that I can see. Of a star there can be no shadow, for shadow means the unlighted and light does not produce shadow but naturally destroys it.

20 1 Well now,” he said, “which of the proofs came for this?” And I replied, “That the moon is subject to the same eclipse.” “Thank you,” he said, “for reminding me; but now shall I assume that you have been persuaded and do hold the moon to be eclipsed by being caught in the shadow and so turn straightway to my argument, or do you prefer that I give you a lecture and demonstration in which each of the arguments is enumerated?” “By heaven,” said Theon, “do give these gentlemen a lecture. As for me, I want some persuasion as well, since I have only heard it put this way: when the three body, earth and sun and moon, get into a straight line, eclipses take place because the earth deprives the moon or the moon, on the other hand, deprives the earth of the sun, the sun being eclipsed when the moon and the moon when the earth takes the middle position of the three, the former of which cases occurs at conjunction and the latter at the middle of the month.” Whereupon Lucius said, “Those soldier roughly the main points, though, of what is said on the subject. Add thereto first, if you will, the argument from the shape of the shadow. It is a cone, as is natural when a large fire or light that is spherical circumfuses a smaller but spherical mass. This is the reason why in eclipses of the moon the darkened parts are outlined against the bright in segments that are curved, for whenever two round bodies come into contact the lines by which either intersects the other turn out to be circular since they have everywhere a uniform tendency. Secondly, I think that you are aware that of the moon the eastward parts are first eclipsed and of the sun the westward parts and that, while the shadow of the earth moves from east to west, the sun and the moon move contrariwise towards the east. This is made visible to sense-perception by the phenomena and needs no very lengthy explanations to be understood, and these Philadelphia confirm the cause of the eclipse. Since the sun is eclipsed by being overtaken and the moon by encountering that which produces the eclipse, it is reasonable or rather it is necessary that the sun be caught first from behead and the moon from the front, for the obstruction begins from that point which the intercepting body first assails. The sun is assailed from the west by the moon that is striving after him, and she is assailed from the east by the earth’s shadow that is sweeping down as it were in the opposite direction. Thirdly, moreover, consider the matter of the duration and the magnitude of lunar eclipses. If the moon is eclipsed when she is high and far from the earth, she is concealed for a little time; but, if the survey thing happens to her when she is low and near the earth, se is strongly curbed and is slow to get out of the shadow, although when she is low her exertions of motion are greatest and when she is high they are least. The reason for the difference lies in the shadow, which being broadest at the base, as cones are, and gradually contracting terminates at the vertex in a sharp and fine tip. Consequently the moon, if she has met the shadow when she is low, is involved by it in its largest circles and traverses its deep and darkest part; but above as it were in shallow water by reason of the fineness of the shadow she is just grazed and quickly gets clean away. I pass over all that was said besides with particular reference to the phases and variations, for these too, in so far as is possible, admit the cause alleged; and instead I revert to the argument before us which has its basis in the evidence of the senses. We see that from a shadowy place fire glows and shines forth more intensely, whether because the dark air being dense does not admit its effluences and diffusions but confines and concentrates the substance in a single place or because this is an affection of our senses that as hot things appear to be hotter in comparison with cold and pleasures more intense in comparison with pains so bright things appear conspicuous when compared with dark, their appearance being intensified by contrast to the different impressions. The former explanation seems to be the more plausible, for in sunlight fire of every kind not only loses its brilliance but by giving way becomes ineffective and less keen, the reason being that the heat of the sun disperses and dissipates its potency. If, then, as the Stoics themselves assert, the moon, being a rather turbid star, has a faint and feeble fire of her own, she ought to have none of the things happen to her that now obviously do but the very opposite; she ought to be revealed when she is hidden and hidden whenever she is now revealed, that is hidden all the rest of the time when she is bedimmed by the circumambient ether but shining forth and becoming brilliantly clear at intervals of six months or again at intervals of five when she sinks under the shadow of the earth, since of 465 ecliptic full moons 404 occur in cycles of six months and the rest in cycles of five months. It ought to have been at such intervals of time then that the moon is revealed resplendent in the shadow, whereas in the shadow she is eclipsed and loses her light but regains it again as soon as she escapes the shadow and is revealed often even by day, which implies that she is anything but a fiery and star-like body.”

21 1 When Lucius said this, almost while he was speaking Pharnaces and Apollonides sprang forth together. Then, Apollonides having yielded, Pharnaces said that this very point above all proves the moon to be a star or fire, since she is not entirely invisible in her eclipses but displays a colour smouldering and grim which is peculiar to her. Apollonides raised an objection concerning the “shadow” on the ground that the scientists always give this name to the region that is without light and the heaven does not admit shadow. “This,” I said, “is the objection of one who speaks captiously to the name rather than like a natural scientist and mathematician to the fact. If one refuses to call the region screened by the earth ‘shadow’ and insists upon calling it ‘lightless space,’ nevertheless when the moon gets into it she must be obscured since she is deprived of the solar light. Speaking generally too, it is silly,” I said, “to deny that the shadow of the earth reaches that point from which on its part the shadow of the moon by impinging upon the sight and extending to the earth produces an eclipse of the sun. Now I shall turn to you, Pharnaces. That smouldering and glowing colour of the moon which you say is peculiar to her is characteristic of a body that is compact and a solid, for no remnant or trace of flame will remain in tenuous things nor is incandescence possible unless there is a hard body that has been ignited through and through and sustains the ignition. So Homer too has somewhere said:

But when fire’s bloom had flown and flame had ceased

He smoothed the embers. . . .

The reason probably is that what is igneous is not fire but body that has been ignited and subjected to the action of fire, which adheres to a solid and stable mass and continues to occupy itself with it, whereas flames are the kindling and flux of tenuous nourishment or matter which because of its feebleness is swiftly dissolved. Consequently there would be no other proof of the moon’s earthy and compact nature so manifest as the smouldering colour, if it really were her own. But it is not so, my dear Pharnaces, for as she is eclipsed she exhibits many changes of colour which scientists have distinguished as follows, delimiting them according to time or hour. If the eclipse occurs between eventide and half after the third hour, she appears terribly black; if at midnight, then she gives of this reddish and fiery colour; from half after the seventh hour a blush arises on her face; and finally, if she is eclipsed when the dawn is already near, she takes on a bluish or azure hue, from which especially it is that the poets and Empedocles give her the epithet ‘bright-eyed.’ Now, when one sees the moon take on so many hues in the shadow, it is a mistake to settle upon the smouldering colour alone, the very one that might especially be called alien to her and rather an admixture or remnant of the light shining round about through the shadow, while the black or earthy colour could be called her own. Since here on earth places near lakes and rivers open to the sun take on the colour and brilliance of the purple and red awnings that shade them, by reason of the reflections giving off many various effulgences, what wonder if a great flood of shade debouching as it were into a heavenly sea of light, not calm or at rest but undergoing all sorts of combinations and alterations as it is churned about by countless stars, takes from the moon at different times the stain of different hues and presents them to our sight? A star or fire could not in shadow shine out black or glaucous or bluish; but over mountains, plains, and sea flit many kinds of colours from the sun, and blended with the shadows and mists his brilliance induces such tints as brilliance does when blended with a painter’s pigments. Those of the sea Homer has endeavoured somehow or other to designate, using the terms ‘violet’ and ‘wine-dark deep’ and again ‘purple swell’ and elsewhere ‘glaucous sea’ and ‘white calm’; but he passed over as being an endless multitude the variations of the colours that appear differently at different times about the land. It is likely, however, that the moon has not a single plane surface like the sea but closely resembles in constitution the earth that the ancient Socrates made the subject of a myth, whether he really was speaking in riddles about this earth or was giving a description of some other. It is in fact not incredible or wonderful that the moon, if she has nothing corrupted or slimy in her but garners pure light from heaven and is filled with width, which is fire not glowing or raging but moist and harmless and in its natural state, has got open regions of marvellous beauty and mountains flaming bright and has zones of royal purple with gold and silver not scattered in her depths but bursting forth in abundance on the plains or openly visible on the smooth heights. If through the shadow there comes to us a glimpse of these, different at different times because of some variation and difference of the atmosphere, the honourable repute of the moon is surely not impaired nor is her divinity because she is held by men to be a celestial and holy earth rather than, as the Stoics say, a fire turbid and dreggish. Fire, to be sure, is given barbaric honours among the Medes and Assyrians, who from fear by way of propitiation worship the maleficent rather than the reverend; but to every Greek, of course, the name of earth is dear and honourable, and it is our ancestral tradition to revere her like any other god. As men we are far from thinking that the moon, because she is a celestial earth, is a body without soul and mind and without share in the first-fruits that it beseems us to offer to the gods according to custom requiting them for the goods we have received and naturally revering what is better and more honourable in virtue and power. Consequently let us not think it an offence to suppose that she is earth and that for this which appears to be her face, just as our earth has certain great gulfs, so that earth yawns with great depths and clefts which contain water or murky air; the interior of these the light of the sun does not plumb or even touch, but it fails and the reflection which it sends back here is discontinuous.”

22 1 Here Apollonides broke in. “Then by the moon herself,” he said, “do you people think it possible that any clefts and chasms cast shadows which from the moon reach our sight here’ or do you not reckon the consequence and shall I tell you what it is? Please listen then, though it is not anything unknown to you. The diameter of the moon measures twelve digits in apparent size at her mean distance; and each of the black and shadowy spots appears greater than half a digit and consequently would be greater than one twenty-fourth of her diameter. Well then, if we should suppose that the circumference of the moon is only thirty thousand stades and her diameter ten thousand each of the shadowy spots on her would in accordance with the assumption measure not less than five hundred stades. Consider now in the first place whether it is possible for the moon to have depths and corrugations so great as to cast such a large shadow; in the second place why, if they are of such great magnitude, we do not see them.” Then I said to him with a smile: “Congratulations for having discovered such a demonstration, Apollonides. It would enable you to prove that both you and I are taller than the famous sons of Aloeus, not at every time of day to be sure but early in the morning particularly and in late afternoon if, when the sun makes our shadows enormous, you intend to supply sensation with this lovely reasoning that, if the shadow cast is large, what casts the shadow is immense. I am well aware that neither of us has been in Lemnos; we have both, however, often heard this line that is on everyone’s lips:

Athos will veil the Lemnian heifer’s flank.

The point of this apparently is that the shadow of the mountain, extending not less than seven hundred stades over the sea, falls upon a left bronze heifer; but it is not necessary, I presume, that what casts the shadow be size stades high, for the reason that shadows are made many times the size of the objects that cast them by the remoteness of the light from the objects. Come then, observe that, when the moon is at the full and because of the shadow’s depth exhibits most articulately the appearance of the face, the sun is at his maximum distance from her. The reason is that the remoteness of the light alone and not the magnitude of the irregularities on the surface of the moon has made the shadow large. Besides, even in the case of mountains the dazzling beams of the sun prevent their crags from being discerned in broad daylight, although their depths and hollows and shadowy parts are visible from afar. So it is not at all strange that in the case of the moon too it is not possible to discern accurately the reflection and illumination, whereas the juxtapositions of the shadowy and brilliant parts by reason of the contrast do not escape our sight.

23 1 There is this, however,” I said, “which seems to be a stronger objection to the alleged reflection from the moon. It happens that those who have placed themselves in the path of reflected rays see not only the object illumined but also what illuminates it. For example, if when a ray rebounds from water to a wall the eye is situated in the place that is itself illumined by the reflection, the eye discerns all three things, the reflected ray and the water that causes the reflection and the sun itself, the source of the light which has been reflected by impinging upon the water. On the basis of these admitted and apparent facts those who maintain that the moon illuminates the earth with reflected light are bidden (by their adversaries) to point out in the moon at night an appearance of the sun such as there is in water by day whenever there is a reflection of the sun from it. Since there is no such appearance, (these adversaries) think that the illumination comes about in another way and not by reflection and that, if there is not reflection, neither is the moon an earth.” “What response must be made to them then?” said Apollonides, “for the characteristics of reflection seem to present us with a problem in common.” “In common in a way certainly,” said I, “but in another way not in common either. In the first place consider the matter of the image, how topsy-turvy and like ‘rivers flowing uphill’ they conceive it. The fact is that water is on earth and below, and the moon above the earth and on high; and hence the angles produced by the reflected rays are the converse of each other, the one having its apex above at the moon, the other below at the earth. So they must not demand that every kind of mirror or a mirror at every distance produce a similar reflection, since (in doing so) they are at variance with the manifest facts. Those, on the other hand, who declare that the moon is not a tenuous or smooth body as water is but a heavy and earthy one, I do not under why it is required of them that the sun be manifest to vision in her. For milk does not return such mirrorings either or produce reflections of the visual ray, and the reason is the irregularity and roughness of its particles; how in the world then is it possible for the moon to cast the visual ray back from herself in the way that the smoother mirrors do? Yet even these, of course, are occluded if a scratch or speck of dirt or roughness covers the point from which the visual ray is naturally reflected, and while the mirrors themselves are seen they do not return the customary reflection. One who demands that the moon either reflect our vision from herself to the sun as well or else not reflect the sun from herself to us either is naïve, for he is demanding that the eye be a sun, the vision light, and the human being a heaven. Since the light of the sun because of its intensity and brilliance arrives at the moon with a shock, it is reasonable that its reflection should reach to us; but the visual ray, since it is weak and tenuous and many times slighter, what wonder if it does not have an impact that produces recoil or if in rebounding it does not maintain its continuity but is dispersed and exhausted, not having light enough to keep it from being scattered about the irregularities and corrugations (of the moon)? From water, to be sure, and from mirrors of other kinds it is not impossible for the reflection (of the visual ray) to rebound to the sun, since it is still strong because it is near to its point of origin; but from the moon, even if the visual rays do in some cases glance off, they will be weak and dim and prematurely exhausted because of the magnitude of the distance. What is more too, whereas mirrors that are concave make the ray of light more intense after reflection than it was before so as often even to send off flames, convex and spherical mirrors by not exerting counter-pressure upon it from all points give it off weak and faint. You observe, I presume, whenever two rainbows appear, as one cloud encloses another, that the encompassing rainbow produces colours that are faint and indistinct. The reason for this is that the outer cloud, being situated further off from the eye, returns reflection that is not intense or strong. Nay, what need of further arguments? When the light of the sun by being reflected from the moon loses all its heat and of its brilliance there barely reaches us a slight and feeble remnant, is it really possible that of the visual ray travelling the same double-course any fraction of a remnant should from the moon arrive at the sun? For my part, I think not; and do you too,” I said, “consider this. If the visual ray were affected in the same way by warm water and by the moon, the full moon ought to show such reflections of the earth and plants and human beings and stars as all other mirrors do; but, if there occur no reflections of the visual ray to these objects either because of the weakness of the ray or the ruggedness of the moon, let us not require that there be such reflection to the sun either.

24 1 So we for our part,” said I, “have now reported as much of that conversation as has not slipped our mind; and it is high time to summon Sulla or rather to demand his narrative as the agreed condition upon which he was admitted as a listener. So, if it is agreeable, let us stop our promenade and sit down upon the benches, that we may provide him with a settled audience.” To this then they agreed; and, when we had sat down, Theon said: “Though, as you know, Lamprias, I am as eager as any of you to hear what is going to be said, I should like before that to hear about that beings that are said to dwell on the moon — not whether any really do inhabit it but whether habitation there is possible. If it is not possible, the assertion that the moon is an earth is itself absurd, for she would then appear to have come into existence vainly and to no purpose, neither bringing forth fruit nor providing for men of some kind an origin, an abode, and a means of life, the purposes for which this earth of ours came into being, as we say with Plato, ‘our nurse, strict guardian and artificer of day and night.’ You see that there is much talk about these things both in jest and seriously. It is said that those who dwell under the moon have her suspended overhead like the stone of Tantalus and on the other hand that those who dwell upon her, fast bound like so many Ixions by such great velocity, Fare kept from falling by being whirled round in a circle. Yet it is not with a single motion that she moves; but she is, as somewhere she is in fact called, the goddess of three ways, for she moves on the zodiac against the signs in longitude and latitude and in depth at the same time. Of these movements the mathematicians call the first ‘revolution,’ the second ‘spiral,’ and the third, I know not why ‘anomaly,’ although they see that she has no motion at all that is uniform and fixed by regular recurrences. There is reason to wonder then not that the velocity caused a lion to fall on the Peloponnesus but how it is that we are not forever seeing countless

Men falling headlong and lives spurned away,

tumbling off the moon, as it were, and turned head over heels. It is moreover ridiculous to raise the question how the inhabitants of the moon remain there, if they cannot come to be or exist. Now, when Egyptians and Troglodytes, for whom the sun stands in the zenith one moment of one day at the solstice and then departs, are all but burnt to a cinder by the dryness of the atmosphere, is it really likely that the men on the moon endure twelve summers every year, the sun standing fixed vertically above them each month at the full moon? Yet winds and clouds and rains, without which plants can neither arise nor having arisen be preserved, because of the heat and tenuousness of the atmosphere cannot possibly be imagined as forming there, for not even here on earth do the lofty mountains admit fierce and continual storms but the air, being tenuous already and having a rolling swell as a result of its lightness, escapes this compaction and condensation. otherwise, by Heaven, we shall have to say that, as Athena when Achilles was taking no food instilled into him some nectar and ambrosia, so the moon, which is Athena in name and fact, nourishes her men by sending up ambrosia for them day by day, the food of the gods themselves as the ancient Pherecydes believes. For even the Indian root which according to Megasthenes the Mouthless Men, who neither eat nor drink, kindle and cause to smoulder and inhale for their nourishment, how could it be supposed to grow there if the moon is not moistened by rain?”

25 1 When Theon had so spoken, I said “Bravo, you have most excellently smoothed our brows by the sport of your speech, wherefore we have been inspired with boldness to reply, since we anticipate no very sharp or bitter scrutiny. It is, moreover, a fact that there really is no difference between those who in such matters are firm believers and those who are violently annoyed by them and firmly disbelieve and refuse to examine calmly what can be and what might be. So, for example, in the first place, if the moon is not inhabited by men, it is not necessary that she have come to be in vain and to no purpose, for we see that this earth of ours is not productive and inhabited throughout its while extent either but only a small part of it is fruitful of animals and plants on the peaks, as it were, and peninsulas rising out of the dee, while of the rest some parts are desert and from less with winter-storms and summer-droughts and the most are sunk in the great sea. You, however, because of your constant fondness and admiration for Aristarchus, give no heed to the text that Crates read:

Ocean, that is the universal source

Of men and gods, spreads over most of earth.

Yet it is by no means for nothing that these parts have come to be. The sea gives off gentle exhalations, and the most pleasant winds when summer is at its height are released and dispersed from the uninhabited and frozen region by the snows that are gradually melting there. ‘A strict guardian and artificer of day and night’ has according to Plato been stationed in the centre. Nothing then prevents the moon too, while destitute of living beings, from providing reflections for the light that is diffused about her and for the rays of the stars a point of confluence in herself and a blending whereby she digests the exhalations from the earth and at the same time slackens the excessive torridity and harshness of the sun. Moreover, conceding a point perhaps to ancient tradition also, we shall say that she was held to be Artemis on the ground that the she is a virgin and sterile but is helpful and beneficial to other females. In the second place, my dear Theon, nothing that has been said proves impossible the alleged inhabitation of the moon. As to the rotation, since it is very gentle and serene, it smooths the air and distributes it in settled order, so that there is no danger of falling and slipping off for those who stand there. And if it is not simple either, even this complication and variation of the motion is not attributable to irregularity or confusion; but in them astronomers demonstrate a marvellous order and progression, making her revolve with circles that unroll about other circles, some assuming that she is herself motion less and others that she retrogresses smoothly and regularly with ever constant velocity, for these superpositions of the circles and their rotations and relations to one another and to us combine most harmoniously to produce the apparent variations of her motion in altitude and the deviations in latitude at the same time as her revolutions in longitude. As to the great hear and continual scorching of the sun, you will cease to fear it, if first of all you set the conjunctions over against the universe summery full-moons and suppose that the continuousness of the change produces in the extremes, which do not last a long time, a suitable tempering and removes the excess from either. Between these then, as is likely, they have a season most nearly approaching spring. In the second place, upon us the sun sends, through air which is turbid and nourished by the exhalations, whereas there the air being tenuous and translucent scatters and diffuses the sun’s light, which has no tinder or body to sustain it. The fruits of tree and field here in our region are nourished by rains; but elsewhere, as up in your home around Thebes and Syene, the land drinking water that springs from earth instead of rain-water and enjoying breezes and dews would refuse, I think, to adapt itself to the fruitfulness that attends the most abundant rainfall, and that because of a certain excellence and temperament that it has. Plants of the same kind, which in our region if sharply nipped in by winter bear good fruit in abundance, in Libya and in your home in Egypt are very sensitive to cold and afraid of winter. And, while Gedrosia and Ethiopia which comes down to the ocean is barren and entirely treeless because of the aridity, in the adjacent and surrounding sea there grow and thrive down in the deep plants of great magnitude, some of which are called olives, some laurels, and some tresses of Isis; and the plants here called ‘love-restorers’ when lifted out of the earth and hung up not only live as long as you wish but sprout <. . .>. Some plants are sown towards winter, and some at the height of summer as sesame and millet. Thyme or centaury, if sown in good, rich soil and wetted and watered, departs from its natural quality and loses its strength, whereas drought delights it and causes it to reach its proper stature; and some plants, as they say, cannot stand even dew, as is true of the majority of Arabian plants, but are blighted and destroyed by being moistened. What wonder t 90 if on the moon there grow roots and seeds and trees that have no need of rain nor yet of snow but are naturally adapted to a summery and rarefied air? And why is it unlikely that winds arise warmed by the moon and that breezes steadily accompany the rolling swell of her revolution by scattering off and diffusing dews and light moisture suffice for the vegetation and that she herself is not fiery or dry in temperament but soft and humidifying? After all, no influence of dry and comes to us from her but much of moistness and femininity: the growth of plants, the decay of meats, the souring and flattening of wine, the softening of timbers, the easy delivery of women. Now that Pharnaces is quiet I am afraid of provoking and arousing him again if I cite, in the words of his own school, the flood-tides of Ocean and the swelling of the straits when they are increased and poured abroad by the liquefying action of the moon. Therefore I shall rather turn to you, my dear Theon, for when you expound these words of Alcman’s,

Such as are nourished by Dew, daughter of Zeus and of divine Selene,

you tell us that at this point he calls the air ‘Zeus’ and says that it is liquefied by the moon and turns to dew-drops. It is in fact probable, my friend, that the moon’s nature is contrary to that of the sun, if of herself she not only naturally softens and dissolves all that he condenses and dries but liquefies and cools even the heat that he casts upon her and imbues her with. They err then who believe the moon to be a fiery and glowing body; and those who demand that living beings there be equipped just as those here are for generation, nourishment, and livelihood seem blind to the diversities of nature, among which one can discover more and greater differences and dissimilarities between living beings than between them and inanimate objects. Let there not be mouthless men nourished by odours who Megasthenes thinks do exist; yet the Hungerbane, the virtue of which he was himself trying to explain to us, Hesiod hinted at when he said

Nor what great profit mallow has and squill

and Epimenides made manifest in fact when he showed that with a very little fuel nature kindles and sustains the living creature, which needs no further nourishment if it gets as much as the size of an olive. It is plausible that the men on the moon, if they do exist, are slight of body and capable of being nourished by whatever comes their way. After all, they say that the moon herself, like the sun which is an animate being of fire many times as large as the earth, is nourished by the moisture on the earth, as are the rest of the stars too, though they are countless; so light and frugal of requirements they do conceive the creatures to be that inhabit the upper region. We have no comprehension of these beings, however, nor of the king that a different place and nature and temperature are suitable to them. Just as, assuming that we were unable to approach the sea or touch it but only had a view of it from afar and the information that it is bitter, unpotable, and salty water, if someone said that it supports in its depths many large animals of multifarious shapes and is full of beasts that use water for all the ends that we use air, his statements would seem to us like a tissue of myths and marvels, such appears to be our relation to the moon and our attitude towards her is apparently the same when we disbelieve that any men dwell there. Those men, I think, would be much more amazed at the earth, when they look out at the sediment and dregs of the universe, as it were, obscurely visible in moisture, mists, and clouds as a light less, low, and motionless spot, to think that it engenders and nourishes animate beings which partake of motion, breath, and warmth. If they should chance to hear somewhere these Homeric words,

Dreadful and dank, which even gods abhor

and

Deep under Hell as far as Earth from Heaven,

these you would say are simply a description of this place and Hell and Tartarus have been relegated hither while the moon alone is earth, since it is equally distant from those upper regions and these lower ones.”

(940 F) 26 1 Almost before I had finished, Sulla broke in. “Hold on, Lamprias,” he said, “and put to the wicket of your discourse lest you unwittingly run the myth aground, as it were, and confound my drama, which has a different setting and a different disposition. 941 Well, I am but the actor of the piece, but first I shall say that its author began for our sake — if there be no objection — with a quotation from Homer:

An isle, Ogygia, lies far out at sea,

run of five days off from Britain as you sail westward; and three other islands equally distant from it and from one another lie out from it in the general direction of the summer sunset. In one of these, according to the tale told by the natives, Cronus is confined by Zeus, and the antique Briareus, holding watch and ward over those islands and the sea that they call the Cronian main, has been settled close beside him. The great mainland, by which the great ocean is encircled, while not so far from the other islands, is about five thousand stades from Ogygia, the voyage being made by oar, for the main is slow to traverse and muddy as a result of the multitude of streams. The streams are discharged by the great land-mass and produce alluvial deposits, thus giving density and earthiness to the sea, which has been thought actually to be congealed. On the coast of the mainland Greeks dwell about a gulf which is not smaller than the Maeotis and the mouth of the Caspian sea. These people consider and call themselves continentals and the inhabitants of this land islanders because the sea flows around it on all sides; and they believe that with the peoples of Cronus there mingled at a later time those who arrived in the train of Heracles and were left behind by him and that these latter so to speak rekindled again to a strong, high flame the Hellenic spark there which was already being quenched and overcome by the tongue, the laws, and the manners of the barbarians. Therefore Heracles has the highest honours and Cronos the second. Now when at intervals of thirty years the star of Cronus, which we call ‘Splendent’ but they, our author said, call ‘Night-watchman,’ enters the sign of the Bull, they, having spent a long time in preparation for the sacrifice and the expedition, choose by lot and send forth a sufficient number of envoys in a correspondingly sufficient number of ships, putting aboard a large retinue and the provisions necessary for men who are going to cross so much sea by oar and live such a long time in a foreign land. Now when they have put to sea the several voyagers meet with various fortunes as one might expect; but those who survive the voyage first put in at the outlying islands, which are inhabited by Greeks, and see the sun pass out of sight for less than an hour over a period of thirty days, — and this is night, though it has a darkness that is slight and twilight glimmering from the west. There they spend ninety days regarded with honour and friendliness as holy men and so addressed, and then winds carry them across to their appointed goal. Nor do any others inhabit it but themselves and those who have been dispatched before them, for, while those who have served the god together for the stint of thirty years are allowed to sail off home, most of them usually choose to settle in the spot, some out of habit and others because without toil or trouble they have all things in abundance while they constantly employ their time in sacrifices and celebrations or with various discourse and philosophy, for the nature of the island is marvellous as is the softness of the circumambient air. Some when they intend to sail away are even hindered by the divinity which presents itself to them as to intimates and friends not in dreams only or by means of omens, but many also come upon the visions and the voices of spirits manifest. For Cronus himself sleeps confined in a deep cave of rock that shines like gold — the sleep that Zeus has contrived like a bond for him — , and birds flying in over the summit of the rock bring ambrosia to him, and all the island is suffused with fragrance 942 scattered from the rock as from a fountain; and those spirits mentioned before tend and serve Cronus, having been his comrades what time he ruled as king over gods and men. Many things they do foretell of themselves, for they are oracular; but the prophecies that are greatest and of the greatest matters they come down and report as dreams of Cronus, for all that Zeus premeditates Cronus sees in his dreams and the titanic affections and motions of his soul make him rigidly tense until sleep restores his repose once more and the royal and divine element is all by itself, pure and unalloyed. Here then the stranger was conveyed, as he said, and while he served the god became at his leisure acquainted with astronomy, in which he made as much progress as one can by practising geometry, and with the rest of philosophy by dealing with so much of it as is possible for the natural philosopher. Since he had a strange desire and longing to observe the Great Island (for so, it seems, they call our part of the world), when the thirty years had elapsed, the relief-party having arrived from home, he saluted his friends and sailed away, lightly equipped for the rest but carrying a large viaticum in golden beakers. Well, all his experiences and all the men whom he visited, encountering sacred writings and being initiated in all rites — to recount all this as he reported it to us, relating it thoroughly and in detail, is not a task for a single day; but listen to so much as is pertinent to the present discussion. He spent a great deal of time in Carthage inasmuch as Cronus receives great honour in our country, and he discovered certain sacred parchments that had been secretly spirited off to safety when the earlier city was being destroyed and had lain unnoticed in the ground for a long time. Among the visible gods he said that one should especially honour the moon, and so he kept exhorting me to do, inasmuch as she is sovereign over life and death, bordering as she does upon the meads of Hades.

27 1 When I expressed surprise at this and asked for a clearer account, Dhe said: ‘Many assertions about the gods, Sulla, are current among the Greeks, but not all tom are right. So, for example, although they give the right names to Demeter and Cora, they are wrong in believing that both are together in the same region. The fact is that the former is in the region of earth and is sovereign over terrestrial things, and the latter is in the moon and mistress of lunar things. She has been called both Cora and Phersephonê, the latter as being a bearer of light and Cora because that is what we call the part of the eye in which is reflected the likeness of him who looks into it as the light of the sun is seen in the moon. The tales told of the wandering and the quest of these goddesses Econtain the truth <spoken covertly>, for they long for each other when they are apart and they often embrace in the shadow. The statement concerning Cora that now she is in the light of heaven and now in darkness and night is not false but has given rise to error in the computation of the time, for not throughout six months but every six months we see her being wrapped in shadow by the earth as it were by her mother, and infrequently we see this happen to her at intervals of five months, for she cannot abandon Hades since she is the boundary of Hades, as Homer too has rather well put it in veiled terms:

But to Elysium’s plain, the bourne of earth.

Where the range of the earth’s shadow ends, this he set as the term and boundary of the earth. To this point rises no one who is evil or unclean, but the good are conveyed thither after death and there continue to lead a life most easy to be sure though not blesséd or divine until their second death.

28 1 And what is this, Sulla? Do not ask about these things, for I am going to give a full explanation myself. 943 Most people rightly hold man to be composite but wrongly hold him to be composed of only two parts. The reason is that they suppose mind to be somehow part of soul, thus erring no less than those who believe soul to be part of body, for in the same degree as soul is superior to body so is mind better and more divine than soul. The result of soul and body commingled is the irrational or the affective factor, whereas of mind and soul the conjunction produces reason; and of these the former is source of pleasure and pain, the latter of virtue and vice. In the composition of these three factors earth furnishes the body, the moon the soul, and the sun furnishes mind to man for the purpose of his generation even as it furnishes light to the moon herself. As to the death we die, one death reduces man from three factors to two and another reduces him from two to one; and the former takes place in the earth that belongs to Demeter (wherefore “to make an end” is called “to render one’s life to her” and Athenians used in olden times to call the dead “Demetrians”), the latter in the moon that belongs to Phersephonê, and associated with the former is Hermes the terrestrial, with the latter Hermes the celestial. While the goddess here dissociates the soul from the body swiftly and violently, Phersephonê gently and by slow degrees detaches the mind from the soul and has therefore been called “single-born” because the best part of man is “born single” when separated off by her. Each of the two separations naturally occurs in this fashion: All soul, whether without mind or with it, when it has issued from the body is destined to wander in the region between earth and moon but not for an equal time. Unjust and licentious souls pay penalties for their offences; but the good souls must in the gentlest part of the air, which they call “the meads of Hades,” pass a certain set time sufficient to purge and blow away the pollutions contracted from the body as from an evil odour. Then, as if brought home from banishment abroad, they savour joy most like that of initiates, which attended by glad expectation is mingled with confusion and excitement. For many, even as they are in the act of clinging to the moon, she thrusts off and sweeps away; and some of those souls too that are on the moon they see turning upside down as if sinking again into the deep. Those that have got up, however, and have found a firm footing first go about like victors crowned with wreaths of feathers called wreaths of steadfastness, because in life they had made the irrational or affective element of the soul orderly and tolerably tractable to reason; secondly, in appearance resembling a ray of light but in respect of their nature, which in the upper region is buoyant as it is here in ours, resembling the ether about the moon, they get from it both tension and strength as edged instruments get a temper, for what laxness and diffuseness they still have is strengthened and becomes firm and translucent. In consequence they are nourished by any exhalation that reaches them, and Heraclitus was right in saying: “Souls employ the sense of smell in Hades.”

29 1 First they behold the moon as she is in herself: her magnitude and beauty and nature, which is not simple and unmixed but a blend as it were of star and earth. Just as the earth has become soft by having been mixed with breath and moisture and as blood gives rise to sense-perception in the flesh with which it is commingled, so the moon, they say, because it has been permeated through and through by ether is at once animated and fertile and at the same time Fhas the proportion of lightness to heaviness in equipoise. In fact it is in this way too, they say, that the universe itself has entirely escaped local motion, because it has been constructed out of the things that naturally move upwards and those that naturally move downwards. This was also the conception of Xenocrates who, taking his start from Plato, seems to have reached it by a kind of superhuman reasoning. Plato is the one who declared that each of the stars as well was constructed of earth and fire bound together in a proportion by means of the two intermediate natures, for nothing, as he said, attains perceptibility that does not contain an admixture of earth and light; but Xenocrates says that the stars and the sun are composed of fire and the first density, the moon of the second density and air that is proper to her, and the earth of water and air and the third kind of density and that in general neither density all by itself nor subtility is receptive of soul. So much for the moon’s substance. As to her breadth or magnitude, it is not what the geometers say but many times greater. She measures off the earth’s shadow with few of her own magnitudes not because it is small but she more ardently hastens her motion in order that she may quickly pass through the gloomy place bearing away the souls of the good which cry out and urge her one because when they are in the shadow they no longer catch the sound of the harmony of heaven. At the same time too with wails and cries the souls of the chastised then approach through the shadow from below. That is why most people have the custom of beating brasses during eclipses and of raising a din and clatter against the souls, which are frightened off also by the so called face when they get near it, for it has a grim and horrible aspect. It is no such thing, however; but just as our earth contains gulfs that are deep and extensive, one here pouring in towards us through the Pillars of Heracles and outside the Caspian and the Red Sea with its gulfs, so those features are depths and hollows of the moon. The largest of them is called “Hecatê’s Recess,” where the souls suffer and exact penalties for whatever they have endured or committed after having already become Spirits; and the two long ones are called “the Gates”, for through them pass the souls now to the side of the moon that faces heaven and now back to the side that faces earth. The side of the moon towards heaven is named “Elysian plain,” the hither side “House of counter-terrestrial Phersephonê.”

30 1 Yet not forever do the Spirits tarry upon the moon; they descend hither to take charge of oracles, they attend and participate in the highest of the mystic rituals, they act as warders against misdeeds and chastisers of them, and they flash forth as saviour a manifest in war and on the sea. For any act that they perform in these matters not fairly but inspired by wrath or for an unjust end or out of envy they are penalized, for they are cast out upon earth again confined in human bodies. To the former class of better Spirits the attendants of Cronos said that they belong themselves as did aforetime the Idaean Dactyls in Crete and the Corybants in Phrygia as well as the Boeotian Trophoniads in Udora and thousands of others in many parts of the world whose rites, honours, and titles persist but whose powers tended to another place as they achieved the ultimate alteration. They achieve it, some sooner and some later, once the mind has been separated from the soul. It is separated by love for the image in the sun through which shines forth manifest the desirable and fair and divine and blessed towards which all nature in one way or another yearns, for it must be out of love for the sun that the moon herself goes her rounds and gets into conjunction with him in her yearning to receive from him what is most fructifying. The substance of the soul is left upon the moon and retains certain vestiges and dreams of life as it were; it is this that you must properly take to be the subject of the statement

Soul like a dream has taken wing and sped,

for it is not straightway nor once it has been released from the body that it reaches this state but later when, divorced from the mind, it is deserted and alone. Above all else that Homer said his words concerning those in Hades appear to have been divinely inspired

Thereafter marked I mighty Heracles —

His shade; but he is with the deathless god. . . .

In fact the self of each of us is not anger or fear or desire just as it is not bits of flesh or fluids either but is that which we reason and understand; and the soul receives the impression of its shape through being moulded by the mind and moulding in turn and enfolding the body on all sides, so that, even if it be separated from either one for a long time, since it preserves the likeness and the imprint it is correctly called an image. Of these, as has been said, the moon is the element, for they are resolved into it as the bodies of the dead are resolved into earth. This happens quickly to the temperate souls who had been fond of a leisurely, unmeddlesome, and philosophical life, for abandoned by the mind and no longer exercising the passions for anything they quickly wither away. Of the ambitious and the active, the irascible and those who are enamoured of the body, however, some pass their time as it were in sleep with the memories of their lives for dreams as did the soul of Endymion; but, when they are excited by restlessness and emotion and drawn away from the moon to another birth, she forbids them <to sink towards earth> and keeps conjuring them back and binding them with charms, for it is no slight, quiet, or harmonious business when with the affective faculty apart from reason they seize upon a body. Creatures like Tityus and Typho and the Python that with insolence and violence occupied Delphi and confounded the oracle belonged to this class of souls, void of reason and subject to the affective element gone astray through delusion; but even these in time the moon took back to herself and reduced to order. Then when the sun with his vital force has again sowed mind in her she receives it and produces new souls, and earth in the third place furnishes body. In fact, the earth gives nothing in giving back after death all that she takes for generation, and the sun takes nothing but takes back the mind that he gives, whereas the moon both takes and gives and joins together and divides asunder in virtue of her different powers, of which the one that joins together is called Ilithyia and that which divides asunder Artemis. Of the three Fates too Atropos enthroned in the sun initiates generation, Clotho in motion on the moon mingles and binds together, and finally upon the earth Lachesis too puts her hand to the task, she who has the largest share in chance. For the inanimate is itself powerless and susceptible to alien agents, and the mind is impassable and sovereign; but the soul is a mixed and intermediate thing, even as the moon has been created by god a compound and blend of the things above and below and therefore stands to the sun in the relation of earth to moon.’

This,” said Sulla, “I heard the stranger relate; and he had the account, as he said himself, from the chamberlains and servitors of Cronus. You and your companions, Lamprias, may make what you will of the tale.”

On the principle of cold

(945 F) 1 1 Is there, then, Favorinus, an active principle or substance of Cold (as fire is of Heat) through the presence of which and through participation in which everything else becomes cold? Or is coldness rather a negation of warmth, as they say darkness is of light and rest of motion? 946 Cold, indeed, seems to have the quality of being stationary, as heat has that of motion; while the cooling off of hot things is not caused by the presence of any force, but merely by the displacement of heat, for it can be seen to depart completely at the same time as the remainder cools off. The steam, for example, which boiling water emits, is expelled in company with the departing heat; that is why the amount becomes less by cooling off; for this removes the heat and nothing else takes place.

2 1 First of all, must we not be wary of one point in this argument? It eliminates many obvious forces by considering them not to be qualities or properties, but merely the negation of qualities or properties, weight being the negation of lightness and hardness that of softness, black that of white, and bitter that of sweet, and so in any other case where there is a natural opposition of forces rather than a relation of positive and negative. Another point is that all negation is inert and unproductive: blindness, for example, and deafness, silence or death. Here you have the defection of a definite form and the annihilation of a reality, not something that is in itself a part of nature or reality. It is the nature of coldness, however, to produce affects and alterations in bodies that it enters no less than those caused by heat. Many objects can be frozen solid, or become condensed or made viscous, by cold. Moreover, the property whereby coldness promotes rest and resists most is not inert, but acts by pressure and resistance, being constrictive and preservative because of its strength. This explains how, though negation is a disappearance and departure of the contrary force, many things may yet become cold while all the time containing within themselves considerable warmth. There are even some objects which cold solidifies and consolidates the more readily the hotter they are: steel, for example, plunged in water. The Stoics also affirm that in the bodies of infant children the breath is tempered by cooling and, from being a physical substance, becomes a soul. This, however, is debatable; yet since there are many other effects which may be seen to be produced through the agency of cold, we are not justified in regarding it as a negation.

3 1 Besides, a negation does not permit degrees of less or more. Surely nobody will affirm that one blind man is blinder than another, or one dumb man more silent than another, or one corpse deader than its fellow; but among cold things there is a wide range of deviation from much to little, from very cold to not very, and, generally speaking, in degrees of intensity and remission, just as there is in hot things. This occurs because the matter involved is in different cases acted upon by the opposing forces with more or less intensity; it thus exhibits degrees of one or the other, and so of hot and cold. There is, in fact, no such thing as a blending of positive qualities with negative ones, nor may any positive force accept the assault of the negation that corresponds to it or take it into partnership; instead it gives place to it. Now hot things do admit a blending with cold up to a point, just as do black with white, high notes with low, sweet tastes with sour; and this harmonious association of colours and sounds, drugs and sauces, produces many combinations that are pleasant and grateful to the senses.

For the opposition of a negation to a positive quality is an irreconcilable hostility, since the existence of the one is the annihilation of the other. The other opposition, however, of positive forces, if it occurs in due measure, is often operative in the arts, and very often indeed in various phenomena of nature, especially in connexion with the weather and the seasons and those matters from which the god derives his title of harmonizer and musician, because he organizes and regulates them. He does not receive these names merely for bringing sounds of high and low pitch, or black and white colours, into harmonious fellowship, but because he has authority over the association and disunion of heat and cold in the universe, to see that they observe due measure in their combination and separation, and because, by eliminating the excess of either, he brings both into proper order.

4 1 947 Furthermore, we find that cold can be perceived as well as heat; but mere negation cannot be seen or heard or touched or recognized by the other senses. Perception, in fact, must be of something existent; but where nothing existent is observed, privation may be inferred, being the negation of existence, as blindness is of sight, silence of sound, void and emptiness of matter. We cannot perceive a void by touch; but where no matter can be touched, void is inferred. Nor can we hear silence; yet, even though we hear nothing, we infer silence. Nor, in the same way, is sense active when things are unseen or bare; there is, rather, inference from the negation of perception. If, therefore, cold were a privation of warmth, we ought not to be able to feel it, but only to infer it from the deficiency in warmth; but if cold is perceived by the contraction and condensation of our flesh (just as heat is by the warming and loosening of it), clearly there is some special first principle and source of coldness, just as there is of heat.

5 1 And yet another point: privation of any sort is something simple and uncomplicated, whereas substances have many differences and powers. Silence, for example, is of only one kind, while sound varies, sometimes annoying, at other times delighting, the perception. Both colours and figures show the same variation, for they produce different effects on different occasions when they meet the eye; but that which cannot be touched and is without colour or any quality whatever, admits no difference, but is always the same.

6 1 Is cold, then, so like this sort of privation that it produces no effects that differ? Or is the contrary true: Do not great and useful pleasures accrue to our bodies from the presence of cold, as well as mighty detriments and pains and depressions, before which the heat does not always depart and quit the field? Often, rather, though cut off within, it makes a stand and gives battle. This struggle of hot and cold is called shivering or shaking; and if heat is overcome, freezing and torpor set in; but if cold is defeated, there is diffused through the body a relaxed and pleasantly warm sensation which Homer calls “to be aglow.” Surely these facts are obvious to everyone; and it is chiefly by these effects that cold is shown to be in opposition to heat, not as a negation or privation, but as one substance or one state to another: it is not a mere destruction or abolition of heat, but a positive substance or force. Otherwise we might just as well exclude winter from the list of seasons or the northerly blasts from that of winds, on the pretext that they are only a deficiency of hot weather or southerly gales and have no proper origin of their own.

7 1 Furthermore, given four primary bodies in the universe which, because of their quantity, simplicity, and potentiality, most judges regard as being the elements or first principles of everything else — I mean fire, water, air, and earth — the number of primary, simple qualities must be the same. And what should these be but warmth and cold, dryness and moisture, which by their very nature cause all the elements to act and be acted upon? Just as in grammar we have elements long and short and in music elements high and low in pitch — and in neither case is one element merely a negation of the other — so also in physical bodies we must assume an elementary opposition of wet to dry and cold to hot, and in this way we shall be faithful both to logic and to experience. Or are we, as old Anaximenes maintained, to leave neither hot nor cold in the realm of being, but to treat them as states belonging equally to any matter and occurring as a result of changes within it? He affirms, in fact, that anything which undergoes contraction and condensation of matter is cold, while anything that suffers rarefaction and distention — this comes close to his phrasing — is hot. So there is no contradiction in the remark that the man blew both hot and cold, for breath grows cold when it is compressed and condensed by the lips; 948 but when it is expelled from the mouth left slack, it becomes hot through rarefaction. Aristotle, however, holds that in this Anaximenes were mistaken: when the mouth is slack, what is exhaled is warm air from our own bodies; but when we compress the lips and blow, it is not air from ourselves, but the cold air in front of the mouth that is propelled forward and makes contact.

8 1 Perhaps we should now leave the question whether heat and cold are substances; if so, let us advance the argument to the next point and inquire what sort of substance coldness has, and what is its first principle and nature. Now those who affirm that there are certain uneven, triangular formations in our bodies and that shivering and trembling, shuddering and the like manifestations, proceed from this rough irregularity, even if they are wrong in the particulars, at least derive the first principle from the proper place; for the investigation should begin as it were from the very hearth, from the substance of all things. This is, it would seem, the great difference between a philosopher and a physician or a farmer or a flute-player; for the latter are content to examine the causes most remote from the first cause, since as soon as the most immediate cause of an effect is grasped — that fever is brought about by exertion or an overflow of blood, that rusting of grain is caused by days of blazing sun after a rain, that a low note is produced by the angle and construction of the pipes — that is enough to enable a technician to do his proper job. But when the natural philosopher sets out to find the truth as a matter of speculative knowledge, the discovery of immediate causes is not the end, but the beginning of his journey to the first and highest causes. This is the reason why Plato and Democritus, when they were inquiring into the causes of heat and heaviness, were right not to stop their investigation with earth and fire, but to go on carrying back sensible phenomena to rational origins until they reached, as it were, the minimum number of seeds.

9 1 Nevertheless it is better for us first to attack things perceptible to the senses, in which Empedocles and Strato and the Stoics locate the substances that underlie the qualities, the Stoics ascribing the primordially cold to the air, Empedocles and Strato to water; and someone else may, perhaps, be found to affirm that earth is the original substance of coldness. But let us examine Stoic doctrine before the others.

Since fire is not only warm but bright, the opposite natural entity (they say) must be both cold and dark: as gloomy is the opposite of bright, so is cold of hot. Besides, as darkness confounds the sight, so cold confuses the sense of touch. Heat, on the other hand, transmits the sensation of touching, as brightness does that of seeing. It follows, then, that in nature the primordially dark is also the primordially cold; and that it is air which is primordially dark does not, in fact, escape the notice of the poets since they use the term “air” for “darkness”:

Thick air lay all about the ships, nor could

The moon shine forth from heaven.

and another instance:

So clad in air they visit all the earth.

And another:

The air at once he scattered and dispelled the mist;

The sun shone forth and all the battle came in view.

They also call the lightless air knephas, being as it were, kenon phaous “void of light”; and collected and condensed air has been termed nephos “cloud” because it is a negation of light. Flecks in the sky and mist and fog and anything else that does not provide a transparent medium for light to reach our senses are merely variations of air; and its invisible and colourless part is called Hades and Acheron. In the same way, then, as air is dark when light is gone, so when heat departs the residue is cold air and nothing else. And this is the reason why it has been termed Tartarus because of its coldness. Hesiod makes this obvious when he writes “murky Tartarus”; and to shake and shiver with cold is to “tartarize.” Such, then, is the reason for these names.

10 1 949 Since corruption, in each case, is a change of the things that are corrupted into their opposites, let us see whether the saying holds good that “the death of fire is the birth of air.” Fire, indeed, perishes like a living creature, being either extinguished by main force or dying out of itself. Now if it is extinguished, that makes the change of fire into air more conspicuous. Smoke, in fact, is a form of air, as is reek and exhalation, which, to quote Pindar,

Stabs at the air with unctuous smoke.

Nevertheless, even when fire goes out for lack of nourishment, one may see, as for instance in the case of lamps, the apex of the flame passing off into murky, dusky air. Moreover, the vapour ascending from our bodies when, after a bath or sweat, cold water is poured on them, sufficiently illustrates the change of heat, as it were, into the air; and this implies that it is the natural opposite of fire. From this the Stoics drew the conclusion that air was primordially dark and cold.

11 Moreover, freezing, which is the most extreme and violent effect of cold in bodies, is a condition of water, but a function of air. For water of itself is fluid, uncongealed and not cohesive; but when it is compressed by air because of its cold state, it becomes taut and compact. This is the reason for the saying

If Southwind challenges North, instantly snow will appear.

For after the Southwind has collected the moisture as raw material, the Boreal air takes over and congeals it. This is particularly evident in snowfields: when they have discharged a preliminary exhalation of air that is thin and cold, they melt. Aristotle also declares that whetstones of lead will melt and become fluid in the wintertime through excess of cold when no water is anywhere near them; it seems probable that the air with its coldness forces the bodies together until it crushes and breaks them.

12 1 Furthermore, portions of water will freeze sooner than the spring from which they are drawn, for the air more readily masters the smaller amount. If you will draw from a cold well cold water in a jar and let it down again into the well in such a way that the jar does not touch the water, but is suspended in the air, and if you wait a short time, you will find that the water has become colder. This is very good evidence that the First Cause of coldness is not water but air. Certainly, none of the great rivers freezes through its entire depth; for the air does not penetrate down into the whole, but merely renders stationary as much as, by contact and proximity, it includes within the range of its coldness. And this is the reason why barbarians do not cross frozen rivers until they have tried them out with foxes: if the ice is not thick, but merely superficial, the foxes perceive this by the sound of the current running underneath and return to the bank. Some even catch fish by weakening and softening the ice with hot water — enough of the ice, at least, to admit their lines; so the cold has no effect at a depth. Yet the water near the surface undergoes so great a change through freezing that ships are crushed by it when it is forced in on itself and squeezed tight, as those relate who recently passed the winter with Caesar on the Danube. Nevertheless, what happens in our own case is ample testimony: after warm baths and sweats we are cooler, since our bodies are relaxed and porous, so that we take in a good deal of cold along with the air. The same thing happens to water, too: it freezes faster when it has first been heated, thus becoming more susceptible to air; and those who draw off boiling water and suspend it in the air do this, surely, only to secure the admixture of great quantities of air. So now, Favorinus, the argument that attributes the primal force of cold to the air depends on such plausibilities as these.

13 1 But the argument which attributes it to water finds in the same way facts to support it; Empedocles says something like this:

Behold the sun, everywhere bright and warm;

And then the rain, to all men dark and cold.

By thus setting cold against hot, as he does dark against bright, he has given us to understand that dark and cold belong to the same substance, as do also bright and hot. 950 And our senses bear witness that darkness is an attribute of water, not of air, since nothing, to put it simply, is blackened by air and everything is by water. For if you throw the whitest wool or the whitest garment into the water, it will come out black and it will remain black until the moisture is evaporated by heat or is squeezed out by some sort of wringing or pressure. When a patch of ground is sprinkled, the pots which are covered by the drops turn black, but the rest remains as it was. In fact, of water itself the deepest looks the darkest because there is so much of it, while those parts that lie near the air flash and sparkle; and of the other liquids oil is the most transparent, as containing the most air. A proof of this is its lightness, by reason of which it maintains itself on the surface of all other things, buoyed up by the air. If it is sprinkled upon the waves, it will calm the sea, not because it is so smooth that the winds slip off it, as Aristotle affirmed; but because the waves are dissipated when they are struck by any moist substance. But it is peculiar to oil that it provides light and sight at the bottom since the moist elements are interspersed with air; it is, in fact, not only on the surface that it provides light for those who pass the night at sea; Cit does so also for sponge-divers below the surface when it is blown out of their mouths. Air, therefore, has no greater proportion of darkness than water has, and it has less cold. Certainly oil, which has more air than any other moist substance, is least cold; and when it freezes, it forms a soft jelly: the air that is intermixed does not permit it to freeze hard. They dip needles, iron clasps, and all delicate artifacts in oil rather than in water, fearing that the water’s excessive frigidity may distort them. It is, in fact, fairer to judge the argument by this evidence than by that of colour, since snow and hail and ice are at their brightest when they are coldest. Moreover, pitch is both hotter and darker than honey.

14 1 I am surprised, nevertheless, when those who maintain that the air is cold because it is dark do not perceive that others think it must be hot because it is light. For darkness is not so closely connected and akin to cold as heaviness and stability are; many things, in fact, which have no heat are bright, but nothing cold is buoyant, light, and soaring. Why, the very clouds, as long as they are akin to the substance of air, float aloft; but as soon as they change to moisture, they fall at once and lose their lightness no less than their warmth as coldness grows within them. Contrariwise, when heat supervenes, they reverse the movement again, for their substance begins to soar as soon as it has changed to air.

Nor is the argument from destruction true either; for when anything is destroyed, it does not perish by becoming its opposite, though it does perish by the action of its opposite, as fire, for instance, is changed by water into air. For of water Aeschylus speaks in tragic style, but accurately, as

The riot-quelling justicer of fire.

And when Homer matched Hephaestus against the river and Apollo against Poseidon in the battle, he did it rather as a philosopher than as a poet. And Archilochus expressed himself well on a woman who was of two minds:

With guileful thoughts she bore

In one hand water, in the other fire.

Among the Persians it was the most compelling plea to gain an end, one which would admit no refusal, if the suppliant took fire, stood in a river, and threatened that if he lost his suit, he would drop the fire into the water. Now he got how he asked, but though he did so, he was punished for the threat, on the ground that it was contrary to law and against nature. Again, the familiar proverb that is on everyone’s lips, “to mix fire with water,” as an example of the impossible, seems to bear witness that water is hostile to fire, which is destroyed by it and so is punished by being extinguished; 951 it is not so affected by air, which, on the contrary, supports fire and welcomes it in its changed form. For if anything into which the thing destroyed changes is its opposite, why will fire, any more than water, seem opposite to air? For air changes into water by condensation, and into fire by rarefaction just as, on the other hand, water vanishes into air by rarefaction, but into earth by condensation. Now these processes take place, in my opinion, not because these elements are contrary or hostile to one another, but because they are in close affinity and relationship. But my opponents, whichever way they state their case, ruin their proof. Certainly it is perfectly absurd for them to say that water is frozen by air when they have never seen air itself freezing. For clouds, mists, and flecks in the sky are not congelations, but condensations and thickenings of air that is moist and vaporous. But waterless, dry air never admits loss of heat to the point where such a change might occur. There are, in fact, mountains which do not know clouds or dew or mist because their peaks reach a region of pure air that has no humidity at all. From this fact it is especially obvious that it is the condensation and density below that contribute to air the cold, moist element that is found in combination with it.

15 1 It is reasonable that the lower portion of large rivers should not freeze; for the upper portion, being frozen, does not transmit the exhalation which is, accordingly, shut in and turned back, and so provides heat for the deep waters. A demonstration of this is the fact that when the ice melts again a great quantity of vapour rises from the waters. This is also the reason why the bodies of animals are warmer in the winter, because the heat is driven inwards by the cold from without and they keep it within them.

Now drawing off water and suspending it in the air not only takes away its warmth, but its coldness also; those, therefore, who want a very cold drink take care not to disturb the snowpacks or the wet matter that is formed from them by compression, for movement expels both heat and cold.

That such a function of cold belongs not to air, but to water, may be demonstrated as follows from a fresh start. In the first place, it is improbable that air, which lies adjacent to the aether and touches and is touched by the revolving fiery substance, should have a force that is contrary to that of aether. For one thing, it is impossible for two substances whose boundaries touch and are contiguous not to be acted upon by each other — and if acted upon, for the weaker not to be contaminated by the force that resides in the stronger. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that Nature has placed side by side destroyer and victim, as though she were the author of strife and dissension, not of union and harmony. She does, indeed, make use of opposites to constitute the universe; yet she does not employ them without a tempering element, or where they will collide. She disposes them rather so that a space is skipped and an inserted strip duly assigned whereby they will not destroy one another, but may enjoy communication and co-operation. And this strip is occupied by air, suffused as it is through a space under the fire between it and water. It makes distribution both ways and receives contributions from both, being itself neither hot nor cold, but a blending and union of the two. When these are so fused, they meet without injury and the fused matter sends forth or takes to itself the opposing extremes without violence.

16 1 Then, too, air is everywhere equal, though neither winter nor cold is identical everywhere. It is no accident that some parts of the world are cold and damp, while others are hot and dry; it is due to the existence of a single substance that includes coldness and wetness in one. The greater part of Africa is hot and without water; while those who have travelled through Scythia, Thrace, and Pontus report that these regions have great lakes or marshes and are traversed by many deep rivers. As for the regions that lie between, those that are near lakes and marshes are especially cold because of the exhalations from the water. Posidonius, then, in affirming that the freshness and moistness of marsh air is the reason for the cold, has done nothing to disturb the plausibility of the argument; he has, rather, made it more plausible. For fresh air would not always seem colder if cold did not take its origin from moisture. So Homer spoke more truly when he affirmed

952 The river-air blows chill before the dawn,

thereby indicating the source of coldness.

Our senses, moreover, often deceive us and we imagine, when we touch cold garments or cold wool, that we are touching moist objects: this is because wet and cold have a common substance and their natures have a close affinity and relationship. In very cold climates the low temperature often breaks vessels whether they are of bronze or of clay — not, of course, when they are empty, but only when they are full and the water exerts pressure by means of its coldness. Theophrastus, to be sure, declares that the air breaks these vessels, using the liquid as a spike. But take care that there isn’t more wit than truth in such a remark! For if it were so, vessels full of pitch or of milk would more readily be broken by the air.

Water, however, seems to be cold of itself, and primordially so. It is the antithesis, in its coldness, to the heat of fire, just as in its wetness to the dryness of fire, and in its heaviness to the other’s lightness. To sum up: fire is of a disintegrating and separative nature, while water is adhesive and retentive, holding and gluing together by means of its moistness. Empedocles alluded to this, when, as often as he mentioned them, he termed Fire a “Destructive Strife” and Water “Tenacious Love.” For the nourishment of fire is that which can be changed into fire and only things that have affinity and a close relationship to it can be so changed; while its opposites, like water, are not easily changed to fire. Water itself is practically incombustible, and it renders matter such as damp grass and moist timber very hard to consume; the greenness in them produces a dusky, dull flame because, by dint of cold, it struggles against heat as against its natural enemy.

17 1 Now you must pursue the subject by comparing these arguments with those of my opponents. For Chrysippus, thinking that the air is primordially cold because it is also dark, merely mentioned those who affirm that water is at a greater distance from the aether than is air; and, wishing to make them some answer, he said, “If so, we might as well declare that even earth is primordially cold because it is at the greatest distance from the aether” — tossing off this argument as if it were utterly inadmissible and absurd. But I have a mind to maintain the thesis that earth too is not destitute of probable and convincing arguments, and I shall start with the one that Chrysippus has found most serviceable for air. And what is this? Why, that it is primordially dark and cold. For if he takes these two pairs of opposing forces and assumes that one must of necessity accompany the other, there are, surely, innumerable oppositions and antipathies between the aether and the earth with which one might suppose this to be consistent. For it is not only opposed as heavy to light and as moving by gravity downwards, not upwards, or as dense to rare or as slow and stable to mobile and active, but as heaviest to lightest and as densest to rarest and, finally, as immovable of itself to self-moving, and as occupying the central position in the universe to revolving forever around a centre. It is not absurd, then, if oppositions so numerous and important carry with them the opposition of cold and heat as well. “Yes,” Chrysippus may say, “but fire is bright.” Is not the earth, then, dark? Why, it is the darkest and most unilluminated of all things. Certainly air is first of all to participate in light; it is instantly altered and when it is saturated, it distributes illumination everywhere, lending itself to light as a body in which to reside. For when the sun arises, as one of the dithyrambic writers has said,

It straightway fills the mighty home of the air-borne winds.

Next the air, moving downward, infuses a part of its brightness into the lakes and the sea, and the depths of the rivers flash brightly, to the extent that air is able to penetrate them. Of all bodies only the earth remains constantly without light, impenetrable to the illumination of sun or moon; yet it is warmed by them and permits the heat to sink in and warm it up to a slight depth. 953 But because it is solid, earth does not give passage to light, but is encircled by light on its surface only, while the inner parts are called Darkness and Chaos and Hades — so that Erebus turns out to be the subterranean and interior darkness. Then, too, the poets tell us that Night was born of Earth and mathematicians demonstrate that night is the shadow of Earth blocking the light of the sun. The air, indeed, is saturated with darkness by the earth, just as it is with light by the sun. The unlighted portion of the air is the area of night, amounting to the space occupied by the earth’s shadow. This is the reason why men make use of the air out of doors even when it is night, as well as many beasts which do their pasturing in the darkness, since it retains some vestiges of light and dispersed glimmerings of radiance; but the house-bound man who is under a roof is utterly blind and without light inasmuch as there the earth envelops him from all directions. Whole skins, furthermore, and horns of animals do not let light pass through them because of their solidity; yet if sections are sawed off and polished, they become translucent when once the air has been mixed with them. It is also my opinion that the earth is called black by the poets, whenever they have occasion to do so, because of its murky and lightless characteristics. The result, then, of these considerations is that the much-prized antithesis of light and darkness belongs to earth rather than to air.

18 1 This, however, has no relevance to the question under discussion; for it has been shown that there are many cold objects which are bright and many hot which are dull and dark. Yet there are qualities more closely connected that belong to coldness; heaviness, stability, solidity, and resistance to change. Air has no part at all in them, while earth has a greater share in all of them than water has. Cold, moreover, is perceptibly one of the hardest of things and it makes things hard and unyielding. Theophrastus, for instance, tells us that when frozen fish are dropped on the ground, they are broken and smashed to bits just like objects of glass or earthenware. And at Delphi you yourself heard, in the case of those who climbed Parnassus to rescue the Thyiades when they were trapped by a fierce gale and snowstorm, that their capes were frozen so stiff and wooden that when they were opened out, they broke and split apart. Excessive cold, because of its hardness and immobility, also stiffens the muscles and renders the tongue speechless, for it congeals the moist and tender parts of the body.

19 1 In view of these considerations, regard the facts in the following light: every force, presumably, whenever it prevails, by a law of nature changes and turns into itself whatever it overcomes. What is mastered by heat is reduced to flames, what is mastered by wind turns to air; and anything that falls into the water, unless it gets out quickly, dissolves and liquefies. It follows, then, that whatever is completely frozen must turn into primordial cold. Now freezing is extreme refrigeration that terminates in a complete alteration and petrifaction when, since the cold has obtained complete mastery, the moist elements are frozen solid and the heat is squeezed out. This is the reason why the earth at its bottom-most point is practically all solid frost and ice. For there undiluted and unmitigated cold abides at bay, thrust back to the point farthest removed from the flaming aether. As for these features that are visible, cliffs and crags and rocks, Empedocles thinks that they have been fixed in place and are upheld by resting on the fire that burns in the depths of the earth; but the indications are rather that all these things from which the heat was squeezed out and evaporated were completely frozen by the cold; and for this reason they are called pagoi. So also the peaks of many of them have a black crust where the heat has been expelled and have the appearance of debris from a conflagration. For the cold freezes substances to a varying degree, but hardest those of which it is naturally a primary constituent. 954 Thus, if it is the nature of heat to lighten, the lightest object will have most heat, and if it is the nature of humidity to soften, the softest will have the most humidity; so, if it is also true that the nature of cold is to harden, then it must also follow that the hardest object will have the most cold — that is to say, just as the earth has. But what is coldest by nature is surely also primarily cold, so that the earth is in fact cold both primordially and naturally; and, of course, this is obvious even to the senses. Mud, in fact, is a colder thing than water; and men extinguish a fire by dumping earth upon it. Blacksmiths, when their iron becomes fiery and begins to melt, sprinkle on it marble chips and gypsum to check and cool it off before it melts too much. It is also true that dust cools the bodies of athletes and dries up their sweat.

20 1 And what is the meaning of our demand for a yearly change of habitation? In winter we retreat to the loftiest parts of our homes, those farthest from the earth, while in summer we require the lowest parts, submerging ourselves and going in quest of comfortable retreats, as we make the best of a life in the embrace of mother earth. Since we do this, are we not guided to the earth by our perception of its coldness? Do we not acknowledge it as the natural seat of primordial cold? And surely our living by the sea in the winter is, in a way, an escape from the earth, since we abandon the land as far as possible because of the frost and wrap ourselves in salt sea air because it is warm. Then again, in the summer by reason of the heat, we long for the earth-born, upland air, not because it is itself chilly, but because it has sprung from the naturally and primordially cold and has been imbued with its earthy power, as steel is tempered by being plunged in water. And of flowing waters, also, the coldest are those that fall from rocks or mountains, and of well waters the deepest are the coldest; the air from outside does not, in the case of these wells, affect the water, so deep are they, while any such streams burst forth through pure unmixed earth, like the one at Taenarum, which they call the water of Styx: it flows from the rock in a trickle, but so cold that no vessel except an ass’s hoof can contain it — all others it bursts and breaks apart.

21 1 We are, further, informed by physicians that generically earth is by nature astringent and cold, and they enumerate many metals that provide a styptic, staying effect for medicinal use. The element of earth is not sharp or mobile or slender or prickly or soft or ductile, but solid and compact like a cube. This is how it came to have weight; and the cold, which is its true power, by thickening, compressing, and squeezing out the humidity of bodies, induces shivering and shaking through its inequality; and if it becomes complete master and expels or extinguishes all the heat, it fixes the body in a frozen and corpselike condition. This is the reason why earth does not burn at all, or burns only grudgingly and with difficulty. Air, on the other hand, often shoots forth flames from itself and, turning into fire, makes streams and flashes of lightning. Heat feeds on moisture, for it is not the solid part of wood, but the damp part, that is combustible; and when this is distilled, the solid, dry part remains behind, reduced to ashes. Those who emulously strive to prove that this too is changed and consumed, sprinkling it, perhaps, with oil or kneading it with suet and setting it alight, accomplish nothing; for when the oily part is consumed, the earthy remains as a permanent residue, do what they may. Not only, therefore, because the earth is physically immovable from its station, but also because it is unalterable in essence, it was quite appropriately called Hestia by the ancients — in as much as she “remains in the home of the gods” — because of its stationary and compact nature; and coldness is what binds it together, as Archelaüs the natural philosopher declared, since nothing can relax or soften it, as a substance that is subject to heating or warming might be loosened.

955 As for those who suppose that they feel cold air and water, but are less sensible of earth’s coldness, what they perceive is that portion of earth which is closest to them and has come to be a medley, a congeries, abounding in air and water, sun and heat. There is no difference between such people and those who declare that the aether is not naturally and primordially hot, but rather that scalding water or red hot iron ore are — because they can feel and touch these, but are unable to touch and feel the primordially pure and heavenly fire. Nor likewise are these persons able to touch and feel the earth at its bottom-most, which is what we particularly mean by earth — earth set off alone by itself, without admixture of any other element. But we can see a sample of such earthiness in that statement about the cliffs that display from deep down so intense a cold that it can scarcely be endured. Then, too, those who want a colder drink throw pebbles into the water, which becomes thicker and denser through the coldness the streams upward, fresh and undiluted, from the stones.

22 1 We must, therefore, believe that the reason why ancient learned men held that there is no commerce between earthly and celestial things was not that they distinguished up and down by relative position, as we do in the case of scales; but rather it was the difference in powers that led them to assign such things as are hot and bright, swift and buoyant, to the eternal and imperishable part of nature, while darkness and cold and slowness they considered the unhappy heritage of transitory and submerged beings. Then too, the body of a living creature, as long as it breathes and flourishes, does, as the poets say, enjoy both warmth and life; but when these forsake it and it is abandoned in the realm of earth alone, immediately frigidity and congelation seize upon it, since warmth naturally resides in anything else rather than in the earthy.

23 1 Compare these statements, Favorinus, with the pronouncements of others; and if these notions of mine are neither less probable nor much more plausible than those of others, say farewell to dogma, being convinced as you are that it is more philosophic to suspend judgement when the truth is obscure than to take sides.

Whether fire or water is more useful

955) 1 1 Water is best, but gold is a flaming fire,

says Pindar. He, therefore, bluntly assigns the second place to fire; and Hesiod agrees with him in the words

And first of all came Chaos into being;

for most people believe that this is his name for water because it flows (chysis). Yet the balance of witnesses on both sides seems to be equal. There are, in fact, some who state that fire is the first principle of the universe and, like a seed, creates everything out of itself and receives all things into itself when the conflagration occurs. Ignoring the authors, let us examine the arguments on both sides and see where they will lead us.

2 1 Is not that element the more useful of which most of all, everywhere, invariably, we stand in need as a household tool and, I swear, a friend, ready to help us at any time, in any emergency? Yet fire is not always useful; sometimes, indeed, we find it too much and interrupt our use of it. But water is used both winter and summer, sick and well, night and day: 956 there is no time when a man does not need it. That, of course, is the reason why the dead are called alibantes, meaning that they are without libas, “moisture,” and for lack of that deprived of life. Man has often existed without fire, but without water never. Besides, that which, from the beginning, was coincidental with the inception of man is more useful than that which was discovered later; for it is obvious that Nature bestowed the one as vitally necessary, while the other was brought to light by luck or contrivance for a superfluous use. Now, none may tell of a time when water was unknown to man, nor is any god or hero said to be its discoverer; it was, in fact, at hand instantly when man appeared and was itself the cause of his appearance. But the use of fire, they say, was discovered only a day or two ago by Prometheus; <consequently all our preceding life was deprived of> fire, though it was not without water. And that this is no poetic fiction is proved by present modes of living; for there are certain races of man who live without fire, with no house or hearth, under the open sky. And Diogenes the Cynic reduced the use of fire to a minimum, so that he even swallowed a squid raw, remarking, “Thus, gentlemen, do I risk my life for you.” But without water no one ever thought it good, or even possible, to live.

3 1 And why do I split hairs by discussing merely human nature? For though there are many, or rather countless, sorts of creatures, man is practically the only one that knows the use of fire, while all the others live and feed without it: they subsist, whether they range abroad or fly or crawl, upon roots or produce or flesh, all without fire; but without water no creature of the sea or land or air ever existed. For even flesh-eating animals, some of which Aristotle says do not drink, nevertheless keep alive by using the fluids in the flesh. That element, therefore, without which no living nature can subsist or endure is more useful.

4 1 Let us pass from the people who use fire to the things that we use, namely plants and produce, of which some are completely devoid of heat, while others have an infinitesimal and uncertain amount. Moisture, however, is the element in nature that makes them all burgeon, growing and bearing fruit. And why should I enumerate honey and wine and oil and all the rest that come to us from the vintage, the milking of herds, or taking off of honey — and it is obvious where they belong — when even wheat itself, though it is classed as a dry food, moves into the category of liquids by alteration, fermentation, and deliquescence?

5 1 Moreover, what is never detrimental is more useful. Now fire, when it forms a stream, is most destructive; but the nature of water is never harmful. Then again, of two elements that is more beneficial which is cheaper and provides its help without any preparation. Now the use of fire requires a supply of fuel, for which reason rich people have more of it than poor, and kings than private persons; but water has another merit in service to man, that of equality, with no discrimination. For it needs no tools or implements, being a self-sufficient, self-fulfilling good.

6 1 Then, too, that which by multiplication destroys its own contribution is the less useful. Such a thing is fire which, like an all-devouring beast, consumes everything near, so that it is useful rather by skilful handling and craft and moderation in use than by its own nature; but water is never dangerous. Further, of two things the one which may be joined with its fellow is more useful. Now fire does not admit moisture and is of no use when in conjunction with it; but water is of service when combined with fire, for hot water is healing and well adapted to medicinal purposes. A watery fire you will never see; but water is as useful to mankind when hot as when cold.

7 1 Furthermore, though there are but four elements, water provides from itself a fifth, so to say, the sea, 957 one no less beneficial than the others, especially for commerce among other things. This element, therefore, when our life was savage and unsociable, linked it together and made it complete, redressing defects by mutual assistance and exchange and so bringing about co operation and friendship. Now Heraclitus declares, “If there were no sun, it would be perpetual night”; in the same way we may say that if there were no sea, man would be the most savage and destitute of all creatures. But as it is, the sea brought the Greeks the vine from India, from Greece transmitted the use of grain across the sea, from Phoenicia imported letters Bas a memorial against forgetfulness, thus preventing the greater part of mankind from being wineless, grainless, and unlettered. How, then, should water not be more useful when it has the advantage over fire of one more element?

8 1 What could anyone find to say on the other side from this point on? This, that God, the master workman, had as material four elements from which to construct the universe. Among these, again, there is a simple mutual distinction, namely, that earth and water are a foundation at the bottom of the universe, being, like raw material, the substance of which things are constructed and moulded, having just so much form and organization, and indeed of capacity for growth and procreation, as is imparted to them by the other elements, air and fire, which are makers and artisans and rouse them, lying lifeless as they were until then, to the act of creation. Between these two, again, fire and air, there is the distinction that fire assumes the rule and leadership. This is clear by induction: earth without warmth is barren and unfruitful, but fire, when it takes possession and inflames, causes it to swell to the point of generation; and it is impossible to find any other reason why rocks and the bare bones of mountains are barren except that they have either no part at all, or very little share, in fire.

9 1 And, in general, water is so far from being self-sufficient for the preservation or generation of other things that the want of fire is water’s destruction. For heat maintains everything in its proper being and keeps it in its proper substance, water itself as well as everything else. When fire withdraws and fails, water putrefies: the dearth of heat is the death and destruction of water. It is, of course, marsh waters and such as are stagnant, some too that have drained into depressions with no outlet, that are bad and finally putrefy because they have very little motion, which preserves everything by stirring up its heat. This is the reason why we commonly say that those waters are “living” which have most motion and the strongest current; the heat is maintained by their motion. How, then, should that not be the more useful of two things which has provided what is necessary for the other’s existence, as fire does for water? And surely that is the more useful, the lack of which, if it be entirely taken away, causes the living creature to die. For it is obvious that anything without which a creature cannot live must have been a necessary cause of its existence, while it did exist. Now even corpses have moisture which does not entirely vanish; otherwise dead bodies would not putrefy, since putrefaction is not a change from dry to moist, but rather a corruption of the moisture in flesh. Death, then, is nothing but the total disappearance of heat and so dead men are extremely cold; if you attack them with a razor-blade, you will blunt the edge of it through excess of cold. In the living creature itself, too, the parts that have the least heat are the least sensitive, like bones and hair and the parts that are a long way from the heart. And, in general, the presence of fire makes a greater difference than that of moisture; for it is not mere moisture that produces plants and fruits, but warm moisture; cold water, of course, is either less productive or not productive at all. Yet if by its own nature water were fruitful, it would always bear fruit by itself; 958 but on the contrary it is even harmful.

10 1 To begin again: for the use of fire as fire we do not need water; on the contrary, it would be in our way since it extinguishes and destroys it. But in most circumstances it is impossible to use water without fire. When water is heated, it is more useful; otherwise it is harmful. And it is heat which has made the sea more beneficial, its waters being warmer, since it differs from other waters in no other respect. So that of two things, that is better which of itself lends us its use without need of the other. Besides, water is solely beneficial to the touch, when you wash or bathe in it; but fire is profitable to all the senses. It can, in fact, both be touched and seen from a distance, so that in addition to its other uses, there is also its variegated character.

11 For to say that man ever exists without fire is absurd, nor can he exist at all without it; but there are differences in kind as in other things. As for men who have no need of fire from without, they have this experience not because they do not need it, but because their own heat more than suffices. This must be predicated also of other animals which do not need fire. So that in this respect, too, the use of fire is probably superior. Water is never in such a condition as to need no external support, but fire is self-sufficient because of its great excellence. As, then, a general is better who manages the affairs of his city so that it needs no allies from without, so also an element is superior which does not often need external assistance.

Yet, to take the opposite point of view, that is more useful which we alone make great use of, since by the powers of our reason we are able to choose what is better. For what is more useful and more profitable to man than reason? But brute beasts do not have it. What then? Is what has been discovered by the foresight of our better part for this reason less useful?

12 1 And since we have arrived at this point in our argument: What is more profitable to life than Art? And it was fire that discovered and still preserves all the arts. That is why they make Hephaestus the first of artificers. Man has been granted but a little time to live and, as Ariston says, sleep, like a tax-collector, takes away half of that. But I would rather say that it is a question of darkness; for although a man might stay awake all night, yet no good would come of his wakefulness if fire did not give him the benefits of day and remove the difference between day and night. If, then, there is nothing more advantageous to man than life and life is many times increased by fire, how should fire not be the most useful of all things?

13 1 And, to be sure, will not that be the most advantageous of which each of the senses has the greatest proportion? Do you not perceive, then, that there is no one of the senses which uses moisture by itself without an admixture of air or fire; and that every sense partakes of fire inasmuch as it supplies the vital energy; and especially that sight, the keenest of the physical senses, is an ignited mass of fire and is that which has made us believe in the gods? And further, through sight, as Plato says, we are able to conform our souls to the movements of the celestial bodies.

Whether land or sea animals are cleverer

(The speakers in the dialogue are Autobulus, Soclarus, Optatus, Aristotimus, Phaedimus, and Heracleon.)

959 1 1 Autobulus. When Leonidas was asked what sort of a person he considered Tyrtaeus to be, he replied, “A good poet to whet the souls of young men,” on the ground that by means of verses the poet inspired in young men keenness, accompanied by ardour and ambition whereby they sacrificed themselves freely in battle. And I am very much afraid, my friends, that the Praise of Hunting which was read aloud to us yesterday may so immoderately inflame our young men who like the sport that they will come to consider all other occupations as of minor, or of no, importance and concentrate on this. As a matter of fact, I myself caught the old fever all over again in spite of my years and longed, like Euripides’ Phaedra,

To halloo the hounds and chase the dappled deer;

so moved was I by the discourse as it brought its solid and convincing arguments to bear.

Soclarus. Exactly so, Autobulus. That reader yesterday seems to have roused his rhetoric from its long disuse to gratify the young men and share their vernal mood. I was particularly pleased with his introduction of gladiators and his argument that it is as good a reason as any to applaud hunting that after diverting to itself most of our natural or acquired pleasure in armed combats between human beings it affords an innocent spectacle of skill and intelligent courage pitted against witless force and violence. It agrees with that passage of Euripides:

Slight is the strength of men;

But through his mind’s resource

He subdues the dread

Tribes of the deep and races

Bred on earth and in the air.

2 1 Autobulus. Yet that is the very source, my dear Soclarus, from which they say insensibility spread among men and the sort of savagery that learned the taste of slaughter on its hunting trips and has grown accustomed to feel no repugnance for the wounds and gore of beasts, but to take pleasure in their violent death. The next step is like what happened at Athens: the first man put to death by the Thirty was a certain informer who was said to deserve it, and so was the second and the third; but after that they went on, step by step, until they were laying hands on honest men and eventually did not spare even the best of the citizens. Just so the first man to kill a bear or a wolf won praise; and perhaps some cow or pig was condemned as suitable to slay because it had tasted the sacred meal placed before it. So from that point, as they now went on to eat the flesh of deer and hare and antelope, men were introduced to the consumption of sheep and, in some places, of dogs and horses.

The tame goose and the dove upon the hearth,

as Sophocles says, were dismembered and carved for food — not that hunger compelled men as it does weasels and cats, but for pleasure and as an appetizer. Thus the brute and the natural lust to kill in man were fortified and rendered inflexible to pity, while gentleness was, for the most part, deadened. It was in this way, on the contrary, that the Pythagoreans, to inculcate humanity and compassion, made a practice of kindness to animals; for habituation has a strange power to lead men onward by 960 a gradual familiarization of the feelings.

Well, we have somehow fallen unawares into a discussion not unconnected with what we said yesterday nor yet with the argument that is presently to take place to day. Yesterday, as you know, we proposed the thesis that all animals partake in one way or another of reason and understanding, and thereby offered our young hunters a field of competition not lacking in either instruction or pleasure: the question whether land or sea animals have superior intelligence. This argument, it seems, we shall to day adjudicate if Aristotimus and Phaedimus stand by their challenges; for Aristotimus put himself at his comrades’ disposal to advocate the land as producer of animals with superior intelligence, while the other will be pleader for the sea.

Soclarus. They’ll stand by their word, Autobulus; they’ll be here any minute now. Early this morning I observed them both preparing for the fray. But, if you like, before the contest begins, let us review the discussion of whatever topics are germane to our conversation of yesterday, but were not then discussed, either because no occasion offered, or, since we were in our cups, were treated too lightly. I thought, in fact, that I caught the reverberation of a material objection from the Stoa: just as the immortal is opposed to the mortal and the imperishable to the perishable, and, of course, the incorporeal to the corporeal; just so, if there is rationality, the irrational must exist as its opposite and counterpart. This alone, among all these pairings, must not be left incomplete and mutilated.

3 1 Autobulus. But who ever, my dear Soclarus, maintained that, while rationality exists in the universe, there is nothing irrational? For there is a plentiful abundance of the irrational in all things that are not endowed with a soul; we need no other sort of counterpart for the rational: everything that is soulless, since it has no reason or intelligence, is by definition in opposition to that which, together with a soul, possesses also reason and understanding. Yet suppose some were to maintain that nature must not be left maimed, but that that part of nature which is endowed with a soul should have its irrational as well as its rational aspect, someone else is bound to maintain that nature endowed with a soul must have both an imaginative and an unimaginative part, and both a sentient part and an insentient. They want nature, they say, to have these counteractive and contraposed positives and negatives of the same kind counterbalanced, as it were. But if it is ridiculous to require an antithesis of sentient and insentient within the class of living things, or an antithesis of imaginative and unimaginative, seeing that it is the nature of every creature with a soul to be sentient and imaginative from the hour of its birth, so he, also, is unreasonable who demands a division of the living into a rational and an irrational part — and that, too, when he is arguing with men who believe that nothing is endowed with sensation which does not also partake of intelligence and that there is no living thing which does not naturally possess both opinion and reason, just as it has sensation and appetite. For nature, which, they rightly say, does everything with some purpose and to some end, did not create the sentient creature merely to be sentient when something happens to it. No, for there are in the world many things friendly to it, many also hostile; and it could not survive for a moment if it had not learned to give the one sort a wide berth while freely mixing with the other. It is, to be sure, sensation that enables each creature to recognize both kinds; but the acts of seizing or pursuing that ensue upon the perception of what is beneficial, as well as the eluding or fleeing of what is destructive or painful, could by no means occur in creatures naturally incapable of some sort of reasoning and judging, remembering and attending. Those beings, then, which you deprive of all expectation, memory, design, or preparation, and of all hopes, fears, desires, or griefs — they will have no use for eyes or ears either, even though they have them. Indeed, it would be better to be rid of all sensation and imagination that has nothing to make use of it, 961 rather than to know toil and distress and pain while not possessing any means of averting them.

There is, in fact, a work of Strato, the natural philosopher, which proves that it is impossible to have sensation at all without some action of the intelligence. Often, it is true, while we are busy reading, the letters may fall on our eyes, or words may fall on our ears, which escape our attention since our minds are intent on other things; but later the mind recovers, shifts its course, and follows up every detail that had been neglected; and this is the meaning of the saying:

Mind has sight and Mind has hearing;

Everything else is deaf and blind,

indicating that the impact on eyes and ears brings no perception if the understanding is not present. For this reason also King Cleomenes, when a recital made at a banquet was applauded and he was asked if it did not seem excellent, replied that the others must judge, for his mind was in the Peloponnesus. So that, if we are so constituted that to have sensation we must have understanding, then it must follow that all creatures which have sensation can also understand.

But let us grant that sensation needs no help of intelligence to perform its own function; nevertheless, when the perception that has caused an animal to distinguish between what is friendly and what is hostile is gone, what is it that from this time on remembers the distinction, fears the painful, and wants the beneficial? And, if what it wants is not there, what is there in animals that devises means of acquiring it and providing lairs and hiding-places — both traps for prey and places of refuge from attackers? And yet those very authors rasp our ears by repeatedly defining in their Introductions “purpose” as “an indication of intent to complete,” “design” as “an impulse before an impulse,” “preparation” as “an act before an act,” and “memory” as “an apprehension of a proposition in the past tense of which the present tense has been apprehended by perception.” For there is not one of these terms that does not belong to logic; and the acts are all present in all animals as, of course, are cognitions which, while inactive, they call “notions,” but when they are once put into action, “concepts.” And though they admit that emotions one and all are “false judgements and seeming truths,” it is extraordinary that they obviously fail to note many things that animals do and many of their movements that show anger or fear or, so help me, envy or jealousy. They themselves punish dogs and horses that make mistakes, not idly but to discipline them; they are creating in them through pain a feeling of sorrow, which we call repentance.

Now pleasure that is received through the ears is a means of enchantment, while that which comes through the eyes is a kind of magic: they use both kinds against animals. For deer and horses are bewitched by pipes and flutes, and crabs are involuntarily lured from their holes by lotus pipes; it is also reported that shad will rise to the surface and approach when there is singing and clapping. The horned owl, again, can be caught by the magic of movement, as he strives to twist his shoulders in delighted rhythm to the movements of men dancing before him.

As for those who foolishly affirm that animals do not feel pleasure or anger or fear or make preparations or remember, but that the bee “as it were” remembers and the swallow “as it were” prepares her nest and the lion “as it were” grows angry and the deer “as it were” is frightened — FI don’t know what they will do about those who say that beasts do not see or hear, but “as it were” hear and see; that they have no cry but “as it were”; nor do they live at all but “as it were.” For these last statements (or so I believe) are no more contrary to plain evidence than those that they have made.

4 1 Soclarus. Well, Autobulus, you may count me also as one who believes your statements; yet on comparing the ways of beasts with human customs and lives, 962 with human actions and manner of living, I find not only many other defects in animals, but this especially: they do not explicitly aim at virtue, for which purpose reason itself exists; nor do they make any progress in virtue or have any bent for it; so that I fail to see how Nature can have given them even elementary reason, seeing that they cannot achieve its end.

Autobulus. But neither does this, Soclarus, seem absurd to those very opponents of ours; for while they postulate that love of one’s offspring is the very foundation of our social life and administration of justice, and observe that animals possess such love in a very marked degree, yet they assert and hold that animals have no part in justice. Now mules are not deficient in organs; they have, in fact, genitals and wombs and are able to use them with pleasure, yet cannot attain the end of generation. Consider another approach: is it not ridiculous to keep affirming that men like Socrates and Plato are involved in vice no less vicious than that of any slave you please, that they are just as foolish and intemperate and unjust, and at the same time to stigmatize the alloyed and imprecise virtue of animals as absence of reason rather than as its imperfection or weakness? And this, though they acknowledge that vice is a fault of reason and that all animals are infected with vice: many, in fact, we observe to be guilty of cowardice and intemperance, injustice and malice. He, then, who holds that what is not fitted by nature to receive the perfection of reason does not even receive any reason at all is, in the first place, no better than one who asserts that apes are not naturally ugly or tortoises naturally slow for the reason that they are not capable of possessing beauty or speed. In the second place, he fails to observe the distinction which is right before his eyes: mere reason is implanted by nature, but real and perfect reason is the product of care and education. And this is why every living creature has the faculty of reasoning; but if what they seek is true reason and wisdom, not even man may be said to possess it. For as one capacity for seeing or flying differs from another D(hawks and cicadas do not see alike, nor do eagles and partridges fly alike), so also not every reasoning creature has in the same way a mental dexterity or acumen that has attained perfection. For just as there are many examples in animals of social instincts and bravery and ingenuity in ways and means and in domestic arrangements, so, on the other hand, there are many examples of the opposite: injustice, cowardliness, stupidity. And the very factor which brought about our young men’s contest to day provides confirmation. It is on an assumption of difference that the two sides assert, one that land animals, the other that sea animals, are naturally more advanced toward virtue. This is clear also if you contrast hippopotamuses with storks: the latter support their fathers, while the former kill them in order to consort with their mothers. The same is true if you compare doves with partridges; for the partridge cock steals the eggs and destroys them since the female will not consort with him while she is sitting, whereas male doves assume a part in the care of the nest, taking turns at keeping the eggs warm and being themselves the first to feed the fledglings; and if the female happens to be away for too long a time, the male strikes her with his beak and drives her back to her eggs or squabs. And while Antipater was reproaching asses and sheep for their neglect of cleanliness, I don’t know how he happened to overlook lynxes and swallows; for lynxes dispose of their excrement by concealing and doing away with it, while swallows teach their nestlings to turn tail and void themselves outward.

Why, moreover, do we not say that one tree is less intelligent than another, as a sheep is by comparison with a dog; or one vegetable more cowardly than another, as a stag is by comparison with a lion? 963 Is the reason not that, just as it is impossible to call one immovable object slower than another, so among all creatures to whom Nature has not given the faculty of understanding, we cannot say that one is more cowardly or more slothful or more intemperate? Whereas it is the presence of understanding, of one kind in one animal, of another kind in another, and in varying degree, that has produced the observable differences.

5 1 Soclarus. Yet it is astonishing how greatly man surpasses the animals in his capacity for learning and in sagacity and in the requirements of justice and social life.

Autobulus. There are in fact, my friend, many animals which surpass all men, not only in bulk and swiftness, but also in keen sight and sharp hearing; but for all that man is not blind or crippled or earless. We can run, if less swiftly than deer; and see, if less keenly than hawks; nor has Nature deprived us of strength and bulk even though, by comparison with the elephant and the camel, we amount to nothing in these matters. In the same way, then, let us not say of beasts that they are completely lacking in intellect and understanding and do not possess reason even though their understanding is less acute and their intellect inferior to ours; what we should say is that their intellect is feeble and turbid, like a dim and clouded eye. And if I did not expect that our young men, learned and studious as they are, would very shortly present us here, one with a large collection of examples drawn from the land, the other with his from the sea, I should not have denied myself the pleasure of giving you countless examples of the docility and native capacity of beasts — of which fair Rome has provided us a reservoir from which to draw in pails and buckets, as it were, from the imperial spectacles. Let us leave this subject, therefore, fresh and untouched for them to exercise their art upon in discourse.

There is, however, one small matter which I should like to discuss with you quietly. It is my opinion that each part and faculty has its own particular weakness or defect or ailment which appears in nothing else, as blindness in the eye, lameness in the leg, stuttering in the tongue. There can be no blindness in an organ which was not created to see, or lameness in a part which was not designed for walking; nor would you ever describe an animal without a tongue as stuttering, or one voiceless by nature as inarticulate. And in the same way you would not call delirious or witless or mad anything that was not endowed by Nature with reason or intelligence or understanding; for it is impossible to ail where you have no faculty of which the ailment is a deficiency or loss or some other kind of impairment. Yet certainly you have encountered mad dogs, and I have also known of mad horses; and there are some who say that cattle and foxes also go mad. But dogs will do, since no one questions the fact in their case, which provides evidence that the creature possesses reason and a by no means despicable intellectual faculty. What is called rabies and madness is an ailment of that faculty when it becomes disturbed and disordered. For we observe no derangement either of the dogs’ sight or of their hearing; yet, just as when a human being suffers from melancholy or insanity, anyone is absurd who does not admit that it is the organ that thinks and reasons and remembers which has been displaced or damaged (we habitually say, in fact, of madmen that they “are not themselves,” but have “fallen out of their wits”), just so, whoever believes that rabid dogs have any other ailment than an affliction of their natural organ of judgement and reason and memory so that, when this has become infected with disorder and insanity, they no longer recognized beloved faces and shun their natural haunts — such a man, I say, either must be disregarding the evidence or, if he does take note of the conclusion to which it leads, must be quarrelling with the truth.

6 1 Soclarus. Your inference seems quite justified. For the Stoics and Peripatetics strenuously agree on the other side, to the effect that justice could not then come into existence, but would remain completely without form or substance, 964 if all the beasts partake of reason. For either we are necessarily unjust if we do not spare them; or, if we do not take them for food, life becomes impracticable or impossible; in a sense we shall be living the life of beasts once we give up the use of beasts. I omit the numberless hosts of Nomads and Troglodytes who know no other food but flesh. As for us who believe our lives to be civilized and humane, it is hard to say what pursuit on land or sea, what aerial art, what refinement of living, is left to us if we are to learn to deal innocently and considerately with all creatures, Bas we are bound to if they possess reason and are of one stock with us. So we have no help or cure for this dilemma which either deprives us of life itself or of justice, unless we do preserve that ancient limitation and law by which, according to Hesiod, he who distinguished the natural kinds and gave each class its special domain:

To fish and beasts and winged birds allowed

Licence to eat each other, for no right

Exists among them; right, he gave to men

for dealing with each other. Those who know nothing of right action toward us can receive no wrong from us either. For those who have rejected this argument have left no path, either broad or narrow, by which any may slip in.

7 1 Autobulus. This, my friend, has been spoken “from the heart.” We certainly must not allow philosophers, as though they were women in difficult labour, to put about their necks a charm for speedy delivery so that they may bring justice to birth for us easily and without hard labour. For they themselves do not concede to Epicurus, for the sake of the highest considerations, a thing so small and trifling as the slightest deviation of a single atom — which would permit the stars and living creatures to slip in by chance and would preserve from destruction the principle of free will. But, seeing that they bid him demonstrate whatever is not obvious or take as his starting-point something that is obvious, how are they in any position to make this statement about animals a basis of their own account of justice, when it is neither generally accepted nor otherwise demonstrated by them? For justice has another way to establish itself, a way which is neither so treacherous nor so precipitous, nor is it a route lined with the wreckage of obvious truths. It is the road which, under the guidance of Plato, my son and your companion, Soclarus, points out to those who have no love of wrangling, but are willing to be led and to learn. For certain it is that Empedocles and Heraclitus accept as true the charge that man is not altogether innocent of injustice when he treats animals as he does; often and often do they lament and exclaim against Nature, declaring that she is “Necessity” and “War,” that she contains nothing unmixed and free from tarnish, that her progress is marked by many unjust inflictions. As an instance, say, even birth itself springs from injustice, since it is a union of mortal with immortal, and the offspring is nourished unnaturally on members torn from the parent.

These strictures, however, seem to be unpalatably strong and bitter; for there is an alternative, an inoffensive formula which does not, on the one hand, deprive beasts of reason, yet does, on the other, preserve the justice of those who make fit use of them. When the wise men of old had introduced this, gluttony joined luxury to cancel and annul it; Pythagoras, however, reintroduced it, teaching us how to profit without injustice. There is no injustice, surely, in punishing and slaying animals that are anti-social and merely injurious, while taming those that are gentle and friendly to man and making them our helpers in the tasks for which they are severally fitted by nature:

Offspring of horse and ass and seed of bulls

which Aeschylus’ Prometheus says that he bestowed on us

965 To serve us and relieve our labours;

and thus we make use of dogs as sentinels and keep herds of goats and sheep that are milked and shorn. For living is not abolished nor life terminated when a man has no more platters of fish or pâté de foie gras or mincemeat of beef or kids’ flesh for his banquets — or when he no longer, idling in the theatre or hunting for sport, compels some beasts against their will to stand their ground and fight, while he destroys others which have not the instinct to fight back even in their own defence. For I think sport should be joyful and between playmates who are merry on both sides, not the sort Bof which Bion spoke when he remarked that boys throw stones at frogs for fun, but the frogs don’t die for “fun,” but in sober earnest. Just so, in hunting and fishing, men amuse themselves with the suffering and death of animals, even tearing some of them piteously from their cubs and nestlings. The fact is that it is not those who make use of animals who do them wrong, but those who use them harmfully and heedlessly and in cruel ways.

8 1 Soclarus. Restrain yourself, Autobulus, and turn off the flow of these accusations. I see a good many gentlemen approaching who are all hunters; you will hardly convert them and you needn’t hurt their feelings.

Autobulus. Thanks for the warning. Eubiotus, however, I know quite well and my cousin Ariston, and Aeacides and Aristotimus here, the sons of Dionysius of Delphi, and Nicander, the son of Euthydamus, all of them “expert,” as Homer expresses it, in the chase by land — and for this reason they will be on Aristotimus’ side. So too yonder comes Phaedimus with the islanders and coast-dwellers about him, Heracleon from Megara and the Euboean Philostratus,

Whose hearts are on deeds of the sea.

And here is my contemporary Optatus: like Diomedes, it is

Hard to tell the side on which he ranges,

for “with many a trophy from the sea, many likewise from the chase on the mountain, he has glorified” the goddess who is at once the Huntress and Dictynna. It is evident that he is coming to join us with no intention of attaching himself to either side. Or am I wrong, my dear Optatus, in supposing that you will be an impartial and neutral umpire between the young men?

Optatus. It is just as you suppose, Autobulus. Solon’s law, which used to punish those who adhered to neither side in a factious outbreak, has long since fallen into disuse.

Autobulus. Come over here, then, and take your place beside us so that, if we need evidence, we shall not have to disturb the tomes of Aristotle, but may follow you as expert and return a true verdict on the arguments.

Soclarus. Well then, my young friends, have you reached any agreement on procedure?

Phaedimus. We have, Soclarus, though it occasioned considerable controversy; but at length, as Euripides has it,

The lot, the child of chance,

made arbiter, admits into court the case of the land animals before that of creatures from the sea.

Soclarus. The time has come, then, Aristotimus, for you to speak and us to hear.

965 9 1 Aristotimus. The court is open for the litigants . . . And there are some fish that waste their milt by pursuing the female while she is laying her eggs.

There is also a type of mullet called the grayfish which feeds on its own slime; and the octopus sits through the winter devouring himself,

In fireless home and domicile forlorn,

so lazy or insensible or gluttonous, or guilty of all of these charges, is he. So this also is the reason, again, why Plato in his Laws enjoined, For rather prayed, that his young men might not be seized by “a love for sea hunting.” For there is no exercise in bravery or training in skill or anything that contributes to strength or fleetness or agility when men endure toil in contests with bass or conger or parrot-fish; 966 whereas, in the chase on land, brave animals give play to the courageous and danger-loving qualities of those matched against them, crafty animals sharpen the wits and cunning of their attackers, while swift ones train the strength and perseverance of their pursuers. These are the qualities which have made hunting a noble sport, whereas there is nothing glorious about fishing. And, and there’s not a god, my friend, who has allowed himself to be called “conger-killer,” as Apollo is “wolf-slayer,” or “surmullet-slayer,” as Artemis is “deer-slaying.” And what is surprising in this when it’s a more glorious thing for a man to have caught a boar or a stag, or, so help me, a gazelle or a hare than to have bought one? As for your tunny and your mackerel and your bonito! They’re more honourable to buy than to catch oneself. B For their lack of spirit or of any kind of resource or cunning has made the sport dishonourable, unfashionable, and illiberal.

10 1 In general, then, the evidence by which the philosophers demonstrate that beasts have their share of reason is their possession of purpose and preparation and memory and emotions and care for their young and gratitude for benefits and hostility to what has hurt them; to which may be added their ability to find what they need and their manifestations of good qualities, such as courage and sociability and continence and magnanimity. Let us ask ourselves if marine creatures exhibit any of these traits, or perhaps some suggestion of them, that is extremely faint and difficult to discern (the observer only coming at long last to the opinion that it may be descried); whereas in the case of terrestrial and earth-born animals it is easy to find remarkably plain and unanswerable proofs of every one of the points I have mentioned.

In the first place, then, behold the purposeful demonstrations and preparations of bulls stirring up dust when intent on battle, and wild boars whetting their tusks. Since elephants’ tusks are blunted by wear when, by digging or chopping, they fell the trees that feed them, they use only one tusk for this purpose and keep the other always pointed and sharp for defence. Lions always walk with paws clenched and claws retracted so that these may not be dulled by wear at the point or leave a plain trail for trackers; for it is not easy to find any trace of a lion’s claw; on the contrary, any sign of a track that is found is so slight and obscure that hunters lose the trail and go astray. You have heard, I am sure, how the ichneumon girds itself for battle as thoroughly as any soldier putting on his armour, such a quantity of mud does it don and plaster about its body when it plans to attack the crocodile. Moreover, we see house-martins preparing for procreation: how well they lay the solid twigs at the bottom to serve as a foundation, then mould the lighter bits about them; and if they perceive that the nest needs a lump of mud to glue it together, they skim over a pond or lake, touching the water with only the tips of their feathers to make them moist, yet not heavy with dampness; then they scoop up dust and so smear over and bind together any parts that begin to sag or loosen. As for the shape of their work, it has no angles nor many sides, but is as smooth and circular as they can make it; such a shape is, in fact, both stable and capacious and provides no hold on the outside for scheming animals.

There is more than one reason for admiring spiders’ webs, the common model for both women’s looms and fowlers’ nets; for there is the fineness of the thread and the evenness of the weaving, which has no disconnected threads and nothing like a warp, but is wrought with the even continuity of a thin membrane and a tenacity that comes from a viscous substance inconspicuously worked in. Then too, there is the blending of the colours that gives it an airy, misty look, the better to let it go undetected; and most notable of all is the art itself, like a charioteer’s or a helmsman’s, with which the spinner handles her artifice. When a possible victim is entangled, she perceives it, and uses her wits, like a skilled handler of nets, to close the trap suddenly and make it tight. 967 Since this is daily under our eyes and observation, my account is confirmed. Otherwise it would seem a mere fiction, as I formerly regarded the tale of the Libyan crows which, when they are thirsty, throw stones into a pot to fill it and raise the water until it is within their reach; but later when I saw a dog on board ship, since the sailors were away, putting pebbles into a half empty jar of oil, I was amazed at its knowing that lighter substances are forced upward when the heavier settle to the bottom.

Similar tales are told of Cretan bees and of geese in Cilicia. When the bees are going to round some windy promontory, they ballast themselves with little stones so as not to be carried out to sea; while the geese, in fear of eagles, take a large stone in their beaks whenever they cross Mt. Taurus, as it were reining in and bridling their gaggling loquacity that they may pass over in silence unobserved. It is well known, too, how cranes behave when they fly. Whenever there is a high wind and rough weather they do not fly, as on fine days, in line abreast or in a crescent-shaped curve; but they form at once a compact triangle with the point cleaving the gale that streams past, so that there is no break in the formation. When they have descended to the ground, the sentinels that stand watch at night support themselves on one foot and with the other grasp a stone and hold it firmly; the tension of grasping this keeps them awake for a long time; but when they do relax, the stone escapes and quickly rouses the culprit. So that I am not at all surprised that Heracles tucked his bow under his arm:

Embracing it with mighty arm he sleeps,

Keeping his right hand gripped about the club.

Nor, again, am I surprised at the man who first guessed how to open an oyster when I read of the ingenuity of herons. For they swallow a closed mussel and endure the discomfort until they know that it has been softened and relaxed by their internal heat; then they disgorge it wide open and unfolded and extract the meat.

11 It is impossible to relate in full detail all the methods of production and storage practised by ants, but it would be careless to omit them entirely. Nature has, in fact, nowhere else so small a mirror of greater and nobler enterprises. Just as you may see greater things reflected in a drop of clear water, so among ants there exists the delineation of every virtue.

Love and affection are found,

namely their social life. You may see, too, the reflection of courage in their persistence in hard labour. There are many seeds of temperance and many of prudence and justice. Now Cleanthes, even though he declared that animals are not endowed with reason, says that he witnessed the following spectacle: some ants came to a strange anthill carrying a dead ant. Other ants then emerged from the hill and seemed, as it were, to hold converse with the first party and then went back again. This happened two or three times until at last they brought up a grub to serve as the dead ant’s ransom, whereupon the first party picked up the grub, handed over the corpse, and departed.

A matter obvious to everyone is the consideration ants show when they meet: those that bear no load always give way to those who have one and let them pass. Obvious also is the manner in which they gnaw through and dismember things that are difficult to carry or to convey past an obstacle, in order that they may make easy loads for several. And Aratus takes it to be a sign of rainy weather when they spread out their eggs and cool them in the open:

When from their hollow nest the ants in haste

Bring up their eggs;

and some do not write “eggs” here, but “provisions,” in the sense of stored grain which, when they notice that it is growing mildewed and fear 968 that it may decay and spoil, they bring up to the surface. But what goes beyond any other conception of their intelligence is their anticipation of the germination of wheat. You know, of course, that wheat does not remain permanently dry and stable, but expands and lactifies in the process of germination. In order, then, to keep it from running to seed and losing its value as food, and to keep it permanently edible, the ants eat out the germ from which springs the new shoot of wheat.

I do not approve of those who, to make a complete study of anthills, inspect them, as it were, anatomically. But, be that as it may, they report that the passage leading downward from the opening is not at all straight or easy for any other creature to traverse; it passes through turns and twists with branching tunnels and connecting galleries and terminates in three hollow cavities. One of these is their common dwelling-place, another serves as storeroom for provisions, while in the third they deposit the dying.

12 1 I don’t suppose that you will think it out of order if I introduce elephants directly on top of ants in order that we may concurrently scrutinize the nature of understanding in both the smallest and the largest of creatures, for it is neither suppressed in the latter nor deficient in the former. Let others, then, be astonished that elephants learn, or are taught, to exhibit in the theatre all the many postures and variations of movement that they do, these being so varied and so complicated to memorize and retain that they are not at all easy even for human artists. For my part, I find the beast’s understanding better manifested in his own spontaneous and uninstructed feelings and movements, in a pure, as it were, and undiluted state.

Well, not very long ago at Rome, where a large number of elephants were being trained to assume dangerous stances and wheel about in complicated patterns, one of them, who was the slowest to learn and was always being scolded and often punished, was seen at night, alone by himself in the moonlight, voluntarily rehearsing his lessons and practising them.

Formerly in Syria, Hagnon tells us, an elephant was brought up in its master’s house and every day the keeper, when he received a measure of barley, would filch away and appropriate half of it; but on one occasion, when the master was present and watching, the keeper poured out the whole measure. The elephant gave a look, raised its trunk, and made two piles of the barley, setting aside half of it and thus revealing as eloquently as could be the dishonesty of its keeper. And another elephant, whose keeper used to mix stones and dirt in its barley ration, when the keeper’s meat was cooking, scooped up some ashes and threw them into the pot. And another in Rome, being tormented by little boys who pricked its proboscis with their writing styluses, grabbed one of them and raised him into the air as first to dash him to death; but when the spectators cried out, it gently set the child down on the ground again and passed along, thinking it sufficient punishment for one so young to have been frightened.

Concerning wild elephants who are self-governing they tell many wonderful tales, particularly the one about the fording of rivers: the youngest and smallest volunteers his services to go first into the stream. The others wait on the bank and observe the result, for if his back remains above water, those that are larger than he will have a wide margin of safety to give them confidence.

13 1 At this point in my discourse, I imagine that I shall do well not to omit the case of the fox, since it is so similar. Now the story-books tell us that when Deucalion released a dove from the ark, as long as she returned, it was a certain sign that the storm was still raging; but as soon as she flew away, it was a harbinger of fair weather. So even to this day the Thracians, whenever they propose crossing a frozen river, make use of a fox as an indicator of the solidity of the ice. 969 The fox moves ahead slowly and lays her ear to the ice; if she perceives by the sound that the stream is running close underneath, judging that the frozen part has no great depth, but is only thin and insecure, she stands stock still and, if she is permitted, returns to the shore; but if she is reassured by the absence of noise, she crosses over. And let us not declare that this a nicety of perception unaided by reason; it is, rather, a syllogistic conclusion developed from the evidence of perception: “What makes noise must be in motion; what is in motion is not frozen; what is not frozen is liquid; what is liquid gives way.” So logicians assert that a dog, at a point where many paths split off, makes use of a multiple disjunctive argument and reasons with himself: “Either the wild beast has taken this path, or this, or this. But surely it has not taken this, or this. Then it must have gone by the remaining road.” Perception here affords nothing but the minor premiss, while the force of reason gives the major premisses and adds the conclusion to the premisses. A dog, however, does not need such a testimonial, which is both false and fraudulent; for it is perception itself, by means of track and spoor, which indicates the way the creature fled; it does not bother with disjunctive and copulative propositions. The dog’s true capacity may be discerned from many other acts and reactions and the performance of duties, which are neither to be smelled out nor seen by the eye, but can be carried out or perceived only by the use of intelligence and reason. I should only make myself ridiculous if I described the dog’s self-control and obedience and sagacity on hunting parties to you who see and handle these matters every day.

There was a Roman named Calvus slain in the Civil Wars, but no one was able to cut off his head until they encircled and stabbed to death the dog who guarded his master and defended him. And King Pyrrhus on a journey chanced upon a dog guarding the body of a murdered man; in answer to his questions he was told that the dog had remained there without eating for three days and refused to leave. Pyrrhus gave orders for the corpse to be buried and the dog cared for and brought along in his train. A few days later there was an inspection of the soldiers, who marched in front of the king seated on his throne, while the dog lay quietly by his side. But when it saw its master’s murderers filing past, it rushed at them with furious barking and, as it voiced its accusation, turned to look at the king so that not only he, but everyone present, became suspicious of the men. They were at once arrested and when put to the question, with the help of some bits of external evidence as well, they confessed the murder and were punished.

The same thing is said to have been done by the poet Hesiod’s dog, which convicted the sons of Ganyctor the Naupactian, by whom Hesiod had been murdered. But a matter which came to the attention of our fathers when they were studying at Athens is even plainer than anything so far mentioned. A certain fellow slipped into the temple of Asclepius, took such gold and silver offerings as were not bulky, and made his escape, thinking that he had not been detected. But the watchdog, whose name was Capparus, when none of the sacristans responded to its barking, pursued the escaping temple-thief. First the man threw stones at it, but could not drive it away. When day dawned, the dog did not approach close, but followed the man, always keeping him in sight, and refused the food he offered. When he stopped to rest, the dog passed the night on guard; when he struck out again, the dog got up and kept following, fawning on the other people it met on the road and barking at the man and sticking to his heels. When those who were investigating the robbery learned this from men who had encountered the pair and were told the colour and size of the dog, they pursued all the more vigorously and overtook the man and brought him back from Crommyon. 970 On the return the dog led the procession, capering and exultant, as though it claimed for itself the credit for pursuing and capturing the temple-thief. The people actually voted it a public ration of food and entrusted the charge of this to the priests in perpetuity, thereby imitating the ancient Athenian kindness to the mule. For when Pericles was building the Hecatompedon on the Acropolis, stones were naturally brought by numerous teams of draught-animals every day. Now one of the mules who had assisted gallantly in the work, but had now been discharged because of old age, used to go down every day to the Ceramicus and meet the beasts which brought the stones, turning back with them and trotting along by their side, as though to encourage and cheer them on. So the people of Athens, admiring its enterprise, gave orders for it to be maintained at the public expense, voting it free meals, as though to an athlete who had succumbed to old age.

14 Therefore those who deny that there is any kind of justice owed to animals by us must be conceded to be right so far as marine and deep-sea creatures are concerned; for these are completely lacking in amiability, apathetic, and devoid of all sweetness of disposition. And well did Homer say

The gray-green sea bore you,

with reference to a man regarded as uncivilized and unsociable, implying that the sea produces nothing friendly or gentle. But a man who would use such speech in regard to land animals is himself cruel and brutal. Or perhaps you will not admit that there was a bond of justice between Lysimachus and the Hyrcanian dog which alone stood guard by his corpse and, when his body was cremated, rushed into the flames and hurled itself upon him. The same is reported to have been done by the eagle which was kept by Pyrrhus, not the king, but a certain private citizen; when he died, it kept vigil by his body; at the funeral it hovered about the bier and finally folded its wings, settled on the pyre and was consumed with its master’s body.

The elephant of King Porus, when he was wounded in the battle against Alexander, gently and solicitously pulled out with its trunk many of the javelins sticking in its master. Though it was in a sad state itself, it did not give up until it perceived that the king had lost much blood and was slipping off; then, fearing that he would fall, it gently kneeled and afforded its master a painless glide.

Bucephalas unsaddled would permit his groom to mount him; but when he was all decked out in his royal accoutrements and collars, he would let no one approach except Alexander himself. If any others tried to come near, he would charge at them loudly neighing and rear and trample any of them who were not quick enough to rush far away and escape.

15 1 I am not unaware that you will think that my examples are rather a hodge-podge; but it is not easy to find naturally clever animals doing anything which illustrates merely one of their virtues. Their probity, rather, is revealed in their love of offspring and their cleverness in their nobility; then, too, their craftiness and intelligence is inseparable from their ardour and courage. Those, nevertheless, who are intent on classifying and defining each separate occasion will find that dogs give the impression of a mind that is at once civil and superior when they turn away from those who sit on the ground — which is presumably referred to in the lines

The dogs barked and rushed up, but wise Odysseus

Cunningly crouched; the staff slipped from his hand;

for dogs cease attacking those who have thrown themselves down and taken on an attitude that resembles humility.

They relate further that the champion of the Indian dogs, one greatly admired by Alexander, when a stag was let loose and a boar and a bear, lay quiet and still and disregarded them; but when a lion appeared, it sprang up at once to prepare for the fray, showing clearly 971 that it chose to match itself with the lion and scorned all the others.

Hounds that hunt hares, if they themselves kill them, enjoy pulling them to pieces and eagerly lap up the blood; but if, as frequently happens, a hare in desperation exhausts all its breath in a final sprint and expires, the hounds, when they come upon it dead, will not touch it at all, but stand there wagging their tails, as much as to say that they do not strive for food, but for victory and the honour of winning.

16 1 There are many examples of cunning, but I shall dismiss foxes and wolves and the tricks of crane and daw (for they are obvious), and shall take for my witness Thales, the most ancient of the Wise Men, not the least of whose claims to admiration, they say, was his getting the better of a mule by a trick. For one of the mules that were used to carry salt, on entering a river, accidentally stumbled and, since the salt melted away, it was free of its burden when it got up. It recognized the cause of this and bore it in mind. The result was that every time it crossed the river, it would deliberately lower itself and wet the bags, crouching and bending first to one side, then to the other. When Thales heard of this, he gave orders to fill the bags with wool and sponges instead of salt and to drive the mule laden in this manner. So when it played its customary trick and soaked its burden with water, it came to know that its cunning was unprofitable and thereafter was so attentive and cautious in crossing the river that the water never touched the slightest portion of its burden even by accident.

Partridges exhibit another piece of cunning, combined with affection for their young. They teach their fledglings, who are not yet able to fly, to lie on their backs when they are pursued and to keep above them as a screen some piece of turf or rubbish. The mothers meanwhile lure the hunters in another direction and divert attention to themselves, fluttering along at their feet and rising only briefly until, by making it seem that they are on the point of being captured, they draw them far away from their young.

When hares return for repose, they put to sleep their leverets in quite different places, often as much as a hundred feet apart, so that, if man or dog comes near, they shall not all be simultaneously in danger. The hares themselves run to and fro and leave tracks in many places, but last of all with a great leap they leave their traces far behind, and so to bed.

The she-bear, just prior to the state called hibernation, before she becomes quite torpid and heavy and finds it difficult to move, cleans out her lair and, when about to enter, approaches it as lightly and inconspicuously as possible, treading on tiptoe, then turns around and backs into the den.

Hinds are inclined to bear their young beside a public road where carnivorous animals do not come; and stags, when they observe that they have grown heavy by reason of their fat and surplus flesh, vanish and preserve themselves by hiding when they do not trust to their heels.

The way in which hedgehogs defend and guard themselves has occasioned the proverb:

The fox knows many tricks, but the hedgehog one big one;

for when the fox approaches, as Ion says, it,

Curling its spiny body in a coil,

Lies still, impregnable to touch or bite.

But the provision that the hedgehog makes for its young is even more ingenious. When autumn comes, it creeps under the vines and with its paws shakes down to the ground grapes from the bunches and, having rolled about in them, gets up with them attached to its quills. 972 Once when I was a child I saw one, like a creeping or walking bunch of grapes! Then it goes down into its hole and delivers its load to its young for them to enjoy and draw rations from. Their lair has two openings, one facing the south, the other the north; when they perceive that the wind will change, like good skippers who shift sail, they block up the entrance which lies to the wind and open the other. And a man in Cyzicus observing this acquired a reputation for being able to predict unaided which way the wind would blow.

17 1 Elephants, as Juba declares, exhibit a social capacity joined with intelligence. Hunters dig pits for them, covering them with slender twigs and light rubbish; when, accordingly, any elephant of a number travelling together falls in, the others bring wood and stones and throw them in to fill up the excavation so that their comrade can easily get out. He also relates that, without any instruction, elephants pray to the gods, purifying themselves in the sea and, when the sun rises, worshipping it by raising their trunks, as if they were hands of supplication. For this reason they are the animal most loved of the gods, as Ptolemy Philopator has testified; for when he had vanquished Antiochus and wished to honour the gods in a really striking way, among many other offerings to commend his victory in battle, he sacrificed four elephants. Thereafter, since he had dreams by night in which the deity angrily threatened him because of that strange sacrifice, he employed many rites of appeasement and set up as a votive offering four bronze elephants to match those he had slaughtered.

Social usages are to be found no less among lions. For young lions take along with them to the hunt the old and slow; when the latter are tired out, they rest and wait, while the young lions hunt on. When they have taken anything, they summon the others by a raring like the bleat of a calf; the old ones hear it at once and come to partake in common of the prey.

18 1 The loves of some animals are wild and furious, while others have a refinement which is not far from human and an intercourse conducted with much grace. Such was the elephant which at Alexandria played the rival to Aristophanes the grammarian. They were, in fact, in love with the same flower-girl; nor was the elephant’s love less manifest: as he passed by the market, he always brought her fruit and stood beside her for a long time and would insert his trunk, like a hand, within her garments and gently caress her fair breasts.

The serpent that fell in love with an Aetolian woman used to visit her at night and slip under some part of her body next the skin and coil about her without doing her any harm at all, either intentional or accidental; but always at daybreak it was decent enough to glide away. And this it did constantly until the kinsmen of the woman removed her to a house at some distance. The serpent did not come to her for three or four nights; but all the time, we may suppose, it was going about in search of her and missing its goal. At last, when it had somehow found her with difficulty, it embraced her, not with that former gentleness it had used, but rather more roughly, its coils binding her hands to her body, and with the end of its tail it lashed the calves of her legs, displaying a light and tender anger that had in it more indulgence than punishment.

As for the goose in Aegium that loved a boy and the ram that set his heart on Glauce the harp-player, since these are famous tales and I rather imagine you have had enough of such to spoil your appetite for more, I omit them.

19 1 As for starlings and crows and parrots which learn to talk and afford their teachers so malleable and imitative a vocal current to train and discipline, 973 they seem to me to be champions and advocates of the other animals in their ability to learn, instructing us in some measure that they too are endowed both with rational utterance and with articulate voice; for which reason it is quite ridiculous to admit a comparison of them with creatures who have not enough voice even to howl or groan. And what music, what grace do we not find in the natural, untaught warbling of birds! To this the most eloquent and musical of our poets bear witness when they compare their sweetest songs and poems to the singing of swans and nightingales. Now since there is more reason in teaching than in learning, we must yield assent to Aristotle when he says that animals do teach: a nightingale, in fact, has been observed instructing her young how to sing. A further proof that supports him is the fact that birds which have been taken young from the nest and bred apart from their mothers sing the worse for it; for the birds that are bred with their mothers are taught and learn, not for pay or glory, but for the joy of rivalling each other in song and because they cherish the beautiful in their utterance rather than the useful.

On this subject I have a story to tell you which I heard myself from many Greeks and Romans who were eye-witnesses. A certain barber at Rome had his shop directly opposite the precinct which they call the Market of the Greeks. He bred up a wonderful prodigy of a jay with a huge range of tones and expressions, which could reproduce the phrases of human speech and the cries of beasts and the sound of instruments — under no compulsion, but making it a rule and point of honour to let nothing go unrepeated or unimitated. Now it happened that a certain rich man was buried from that quarter to the blast of many trumpets and, as is customary, there was a halt in front of the barber-shop while the trumpeters, who were applauded and encored, played for a long time. From that day on the jay was speechless and mute, not letting out even a peep to request the necessities of life; so those who habitually passed the place and had formerly wondered at her voice, were now even more astonished at her silence. Some suspected that she had been poisoned by rival bird-trainers, but most conjectured that the trumpets had blasted her hearing and that her voice had been simultaneously extinguished. Now neither of these guesses was correct: it was self-discipline, it would seem, and her talent for mimicry that had sought an inner retreat as she refitted and prepared her voice like a musical instrument. For suddenly her mimicry returned and there blazed forth none of those old familiar imitations, but only the music of the trumpets, reproduced with its exact sequences and every change of pitch and rhythm and tone. I conclude, as I said before, that self-instruction implies more reason in animals than does readiness to learn from others.

Still, I believe that I should not pass over one example at least of a dog’s learning, of which I myself was a spectator at Rome. The dog appeared in a pantomime with a dramatic plot and many characters and conformed in its acting at all points with the acts and reactions required by the text. In particular, they experimented on it with a drug that was really soporific, but supposed in the story to be deadly. The dog took the bread that was supposedly drugged, swallowed it, and a little later appeared to shiver and stagger and nod until it finally sprawled out and lay there like a corpse, letting itself be dragged and hauled about, as the plot of the play prescribed. But when it recognized from the words and the action that the time had come, at first it began to stir slightly, as though recovering from a profound sleep, and lifted its head and looked about. 974 Then to the amazement of the spectators it got up and proceeded to the right person and fawned on him with joy and pleasure so that everyone, and even Caesar himself (for the aged Vespasian was present in the Theatre of Marcellus), was much moved.

20 Yet perhaps it is ridiculous for us to make a parade of animals distinguished for learning when Democritus declares that we have been their pupils in matters of fundamental importance: of the spider in weaving and mending, of the swallow in home-building, of the sweet-voiced swan and nightingale in our imitation of their song. Further, of the three divisions of medicine, we can discern in animals a generous portion of each; for it is not cure by drugs alone of which they make use. After devouring a serpent tortoises take a dessert of marjoram, and weasels of rue. Dogs purge themselves when bilious by a certain kind of grass. The snake sharpens and restores its fading sight with fennel. When the she-bear comes forth from her lair, the first thing she eats is wild arum; for its acridity opens her gut which has become constricted. At other times, when she suffers from nausea, she resorts to anthills and sits, holding out her tongue all running and juicy with sweet liquor until it is covered with ants; these she swallows and is alleviated. The Egyptians declare that they have observed and imitated the ibis’ clyster-like purging of herself with brine; and the priests make use of water from which an ibis has drunk to purify themselves; for if the water is tainted or unhealthy in any way, the ibis will not approach it.

Then, too, some beasts cure themselves by a short fast, like wolves and lions who, when they are surfeited with flesh, lie still for a while, basking in the sun. And they say a tigress, if a kid is given her, will keep fasting for two days without eating; on the third, she grows hungry and asks for some other food. She will even pull her cage to pieces, but will not touch the kid which she has now come to regard as a fellow-boarder and room mate.

Yet again, they relate that elephants employ surgery: they do, in fact, bring aid to the wounded by easily and harmlessly drawing out spars and javelins and arrows without any laceration of the flesh. And Cretan goats, when they eat dittany, easily expel arrows from their bodies and so have presented an easy lesson for women with child to take to heart, that the herb has an abortive property; for there is nothing except dittany that the goats, when they are wounded, rush to search for.

21 1 These matters, though wonderful, are less surprising than are those creatures which have cognition of number and can count, as do the cattle near Susa. At that place they irrigate the royal park with water raised in buckets by wheels, and the number of bucketfuls is prescribed. For each cow raises one hundred bucketfuls each day, and more you could not get from her, even if you wanted to use force. In fact, they often try to add to the number to see; but the cow balks and will not continue when once she has delivered her quota, so accurately does she compute and remember the sum, as Ctesias of Cnidus has related.

The Libyans laugh at the Egyptians for telling a fabulous tale about the oryx, that it lets out a cry at that very day and hour when the star rises that they call Sothis, which we call the Dog Star or Sirius. At any rate, when this star rises flush with the sun, practically all the goats turn about and look toward the east; and this is the most certain sign of its return and agrees most exactly with the tables of mathematical calculation.

22 1 975 But that my discourse may add its finishing touch and terminate, let me “make the move from the sacred line” and say a few words about the divine inspiration and the mantic power of animals. It is, in fact, no small or ignoble division of divination, but a great and very ancient one, which takes its name from birds; for their quickness of apprehension and their habit of responding to any manifestation, so easily are they diverted, serves as an instrument for the god, who directs their movements, their calls or cries, and their formations which are sometimes contrary, sometimes favouring, as winds are; so that he uses some birds to cut short, others to speed enterprises and inceptions to the destined end. It is for this reason that Euripides calls birds in general “heralds of the gods”; and, in particular, Socrates says that he considers himself a “fellow-slave of the swans.” So again, among monarchs Pyrrhus liked to be called an Eagle and Antiochus a Hawk. But when we deride, or rail at, stupid and ignorant people we call them “fish.” Really, we can produce cases by the thousand of signs and portents manifested to us by the gods through creatures of land and air, but not one such can the advocate for aquatic creatures name. No, they are all “deaf and blind” so far as foreseeing anything goes, and so have been cast aside into the godless and titanic region, as into a Limbo of the Unblessed, where the rational and intelligent part of the soul has been extinguished. Having, however, only a last remnant of sensation that is clogged with mud and deluged with water, they seem to be at their last gasp rather than alive.

975 23 1 Heracleon. Raise your brows, dear Phaedimus, and rouse yourself to defend us the sea folk, the island-dwellers! This bout of argument has become no child’s play, but a hard-fought contest, a debate which lacks only the actual bar and platform.

Phaedimus. Not so, Heracleon, but an ambush laid with malice aforethought has been disclosed. While we are still tipsy and soused from yesterday’s bout, this gentleman, as you see, has attacked us with premeditation, cold sober. Yet there can be no begging off. Devotee of Pindar though I am, I do not want to be addressed with the quotation

To excuse oneself when combat is offered

Has consigned valour to deep obscurity;

for we have much leisure; and it is not our discourse that will be idle, but our dogs and horses, our nets and seines of all kinds, for a truce is granted for to day because of our argument to every creature both on land and sea. Yet do not fear: I shall use it with moderation, introducing no opinions of philosophers or Egyptian fables or unattested tales of Indians or Libyans. But those facts that may be observed everywhere and have as witnesses the men who exploit the sea and acquire their credit from direct observation, of these I shall present a few. Yet there is nothing to impede illustrations drawn from land animals: the land is wide open for investigation by the senses. The sea, on the other hand, grants us but a few dubious glimpses. She draws a veil over the birth and growth, the attacks and reciprocal defences, of most of her denizens. Among these there are no few feats of intelligence and memory and community spirit that remain unknown to us and so obstruct our argument. Then too, land animals by reason of their close relationship and their cohabitation have to some extent been imbued with human manners; they have the advantage of their breeding and teaching and imitation, which sweetens all their bitterness and sullenness, like fresh water mixed with brine, while their lack of understanding and dullness are roused to life by human contacts. Whereas the life of sea creatures, being set apart by mighty bounds from intercourse with men and having nothing adventitious or acquired from human usage, 976 is peculiar to itself, indigenous and uncontaminated by foreign ways, not by distinction of Nature, but of location. For their Nature is such as to welcome and retain such instruction as reaches them. This it is that renders many eels tractable, like those that are called sacred in Arethusa; and in many places there are fish which will respond to their own names, as the story goes of Crassus’ moray, upon the death of which he wept. And once when Domitius said to him, “Isn’t it true that you wept when a moray died?” he answered, “Isn’t it true that you buried three wives and didn’t weep?’

The priests’ crocodiles not only recognize the voice of those who summon them and allow themselves to be handled, but open their mouths to let their teeth be cleaned by hand and wiped with towels. Recently our excellent Philinus came back from a trip to Egypt and told us that he had seen in Antaeopolis an old woman sleeping on a low bed beside a crocodile, which was stretched out beside her in a perfectly decorous way.

They have long been telling the tale that when King Ptolemy summoned the sacred crocodile and it would not heed him or obey in spite of his entreaties and requests, it seemed to the priests an omen of his death, which came about not long after; whence it appears that the race of water creatures is not wholly unendowed with your precious gift of divination. Indeed, I have heard that near Sura, a village in Lycia between Phellus and Myra, men sit and watch the gyrations and flights and pursuits of fish and divine from them by a professional and rational system, as others do with birds.

24 1 But let these examples suffice to show that sea animals are not entirely unrelated to us or cut off from human fellowship. Of their uncontaminated and native intelligence their caution is strong evidence. For nothing that swims and does not merely stick or cling to rocks is easily taken or captured without trouble by man as are asses by wolves, bees by bee-eaters, cicadas by swallows, and snakes by deer, which easily attract them. This, in fact, is why deer are called elaphoi, not from their swiftness, but from their power of attracting snakes. So too the ram draws the wolf by stamping and they say that very many creatures, and particularly apes, are attracted to the panther by their pleasure in its scent. But in practically all sea-creatures any sensation is suspect and evokes an intelligently inspired defensive reaction against attack, so that fishing has been rendered no simple or trivial task, but needs all manner of implements and clever and deceitful tricks to use against the fish.

This is perfectly clear from ready examples: no one wants to have an angler’s rod too thick, though it needs elasticity to withstand the thrashing of such fish as are caught; men select, rather, a slender rod so that it may not cast a broad shadow and arouse suspicion. In the next place, they do not thicken the line with many plies when they attach the loop and do not make it rough; for this, too, betrays the lure to the fish. They also contrive that the hairs which form the leader shall be as white as possible; for in this way they are less conspicuous in the sea because of the similarity of colour. The remark of the Poet:

Like lead she sank into the great sea depths,

Like lead infixed in horn of rustic ox

Which brings destruction to the ravenous fish —

some misunderstand this and imagine that the ancients used ox-hair for their lines, alleging that keras means “hair” and for this reason keirasthai means “to have one’s hair cut” and koura is a “haircut” and the keroplastes in Archilochus is one who is fond 977 of trimming and beautifying the hair. But this is not so: they use horse-hair which they take from males, for mares by wetting the hair with their urine make it weak. Aristarchus declares that there is nothing erudite or subtle in these lines; the fact is that a small piece of horn was attached to the line in front of the hook, since the fish, when they are confronted by anything else, chew the line in two. They use rounded hooks to catch mullets and bonitos, whose mouths are small; for they are wary of a broader hook. Often, indeed, the mullet suspects even a rounded hook and swims around it, flipping the bait with its tail and snatching up bits it has dislodged; or if it cannot do this, it closes its mouth and purses it up and with the tips of its lips nibbles away at the bait.

The sea-bass is braver than your elephant: it is not from another, but from himself without assistance, that he extracts the barb when he is caught by the hook; he swings his head from side to side to widen the wound, enduring the pain of tearing his flesh until he can throw off the hook. The fox-shark does not often approach the hook and shuns the lure; but if he is caught, he immediately turns himself inside out, for by reason of the elasticity and flexibility of his body he can naturally shift and twist it about, so that when he is inside out, the hook falls away.

25 1 Now the examples I have given indicate intelligence and an ingenious, subtle use of it for opportune profit; but there are others that display, in combination with understanding, a social sense and mutual affection, as is the case with the barbier and the parrot-fish. For if one parrot-fish swallows the hook, the others present swarm upon the line and nibble it away; and the same fish, when any of their kind have fallen into the net, give them their tails from outside; when they eagerly fix their teeth in these, the others pull on them and bring them through in tow. And barbiers are even more strenuous in rescuing their fellows: getting under the line with their backs, they erect their sharp spines and try to saw the line through and cut if off with the rough edge.

Yet we know of no land animal that has the courage to assist another in danger — not bear or boar or lioness or panther. True it is that in the arena those of the same kind draw close together and huddle in a circle; yet they have neither knowledge nor desire to help each other. Instead, each ones flees to get as far as possible from a wounded or dying fellow. That tale of the elephants carrying brushwood to the pits and giving their fallen comrade a ramp to mount is monstrous and far-fetched and dictates, as it were, that we are to believe it on a king’s prescription — that is, on the writs of Juba. Suppose it to be true: it merely proves that many sea creatures are in no way inferior in community spirit and intelligence to the wisest of the land animals. As for their sociability, I shall soon make a special plea on that topic.

26 1 Now fishermen, observing that most fish evade the striking of the hook by such countermoves as wrestlers use, resorted, like the Persians, to force and used the dragnet, since for those caught in it there could be no escape with the help of reason or cleverness. For mullet and rainbow-wrasse are caught by casting-nets and round nets, as are also the bream and the sargue and the goby and the sea-bass. The so called net fish, that is surmullet and gilthead and sculpin, are caught in seines by trawling: accordingly it was quite correct for Homer to call this kind of net a “catch-all.” Codfish, like bass, have devices even against these. For when the bass perceives that the trawl is approaching, it forces the mud apart and hammers a hollow in the bottom. When it has made room enough to allow the net to overrun it, it thrusts itself in and waits until the danger is past.

Now when the dolphin is caught and perceives itself to be trapped in the net, it bides its time, not at all disturbed but well pleased, for it feasts without stint on the fish that have been gathered with no trouble to itself. But as soon as it comes near the shore, it bites its way through the net and makes its escape. 978 Yet if it should not get away in time, on the first occasion it suffers no harm: the fishermen merely sew rushes to its crest and let it go. But if it is taken a second time, they recognize it from the seam and punish it with a beating. This, however, rarely occurs: most dolphins are grateful for their pardon in the first instance and take care to do no harm in the future.

Further, among the many examples of wariness, precaution, or evasion, we must not pass over that of the cuttlefish: it has the so called mytis beside the neck full of black liquid, which they call “ink.” When it is come upon, it discharges the liquid to the purpose that the sea shall be inked out and create darkness around it while it slips through and eludes the fisherman’s gaze. In this it imitates Homer’s gods who often “in a dark cloud” snatch up and smuggle away those whom they are pleased to save. But enough of this.

27 1 As for cleverness in attacking and catching prey, we may perceive subtle examples of it in many different species. The starfish, for example, knowing that everything with which it comes in contact dissolves and liquefies, offers its body and is indifferent to the contact of those that overtake or meet it. You know, of course, the property of the torpedo: not only does it paralyse all those who touch it, but even through the net creates a heavy numbness in the hands of the trawlers. And some who have experimented further with it report that if it is washed ashore alive and you pour water on it from above, you may perceive the numbness mounting to the hand and dulling your sense of touch by way of the water which, so it seems, suffers a change and is first infected. Having, therefore, an innate sense of this power, it never makes a frontal attack or endangers itself; rather, it swims in a circle around its prey and discharges its shocks as if they were darts, thus poisoning first the water, then through the water the creature which can neither defend itself nor escape, being held fast as if by chains and frozen stiff.

The so called fisherman is known to many; he gets his name from his actions. Aristotle says that the cuttlefish also makes use of this stratagem: he lets down, like a fishing line, a tentacle from his neck which is naturally designed to extend to a great length when it is released, or to be drawn to him when it is pulled in. So when he espies a little fish, he gives it the feeler to bite and then by degrees imperceptibly draws it back toward himself until the prey attached to the arm is within reach of his mouth.

As for the octopus’ change of colour, Pindar has made it celebrated in the words

To all the cities to which you resort

Bring a mind like the changing skin of the seabeast;

and Theognis likewise:

Be minded like the octopus’ hue:

The colour of its rock will meet the view.

The chameleon, to be sure, is metachromatic, but not from any design or desire to conceal itself; it changes colour uselessly from fear, being naturally timid and cowardly. And this is consistent with the abundance of air in it, as Theophrastus says; for nearly the whole body of the creature is occupied by its lungs, which shows it to be full of air and for this reason easily moved to change colour. But this same action on the part of the octopus is not an emotional response, but a deliberate change, since it uses this device to escape what it fears and to capture what it feeds on: by this deceit it can both seize the latter, which does not try to escape, and avoid the former, which proceeds on its way. Now the story that it eats its own tentacles is a lie, but it is true that it fears the moray and the conger. It is, in fact, maltreated by them; for it cannot do them harm, since they slip from its grasp. 979 On the other hand, when the crawfish has once got them in its grasp, it wins the victory easily, for smoothness is no aid against roughness; yet when the octopus has once thrust its tentacles inside the crawfish, the latter succumbs. And so Nature has created this cycle and succession of mutual pursuit and flight as a field for the exercise and competitive practice of adroitness and intelligence.

28 1 We have, to be sure, heard Aristotimus telling us about the hedgehog’s foreknowledge of the winds; and our friend also admired the V shaped flight of cranes. I can produce no hedgehog of Cyzicus or Byzantium, but instead the whole body of sea-hedgehogs, which, when they perceive that storm and surf are coming, ballast themselves with little stones in order that they may not be capsized by reason of their lightness or be swept away by the swell, but may remain fixed in position through the weight of their little rocks.

Again, the cranes’ change of flight against the wind is not merely the action of one species: all fish generally have the same notion and always swim against wave and current, taking care that a blast from the rear does not fold back their scales and expose and roughen their bodies. For this reason they always present the prow of their bodies to the waves, for in that way head first they cleave the sea, which depresses their gills and, flowing smoothly over the surface, keeps down, instead of ruffling up, the bristling kin. Now this, as I have said, is common to all fish except the sturgeon, which, they say, swims with wind and tide and does not fear the harrowing of its scales since the overlaps are not in the direction of the tail.

29 1 The tunny is so sensitive to equinox and solstice that it teaches even men themselves without the need of astronomical tables; for wherever it may be when the winter solstice overtakes it, in that same place it stands and stays until the equinox. As for that clever device of the crane, the grasping of the stone by night so that if it falls, she may awake from sleep — how much cleverer, my friend, is the artifice of the dolphin, for whom it is illicit to stand still or to cease from motion. For its nature is to be ever active: the termination of its life and its movement is one and the same. When it needs sleep, it rises to the surface of the sea and allows itself to sink deeper and deeper on its back, lulled to rest by the swinging motion of the ground swell until it touches the bottom. Thus roused, it goes whizzing up, and when it reaches the surface, again goes slack, devising for itself a kind of rest combined with motion. And they say that tunnies do the same thing for the same reason.

Having just a moment ago given you an account of the tunny’s mathematical foreknowledge of the reversal of the sun, of which Aristotle is a witness, I beg you to hear the tale of their arithmetical learning. But first, I swear, I must mention their knowledge of optics, of which Aeschylus seems not to have been ignorant, for these are his words:

Squinting the left eye like a tunny fish.

They seem, indeed, to have poor sight in one eye. And it is for this reason that when they enter the Black Sea, they hug one bank on the right, and the other when they are going out, it being very prudent and sagacious of them always to entrust the protection of themselves to the better eye. Now since they apparently need arithmetic to preserve their consociation and affection for each other, they have attained such perfection of learning that, since they take great pleasure in feeding and schooling together, they always form the school into a cube, making it an altogether solid figure with a surface of six equal solid plane sides; then they swim on their way preserving their formation, a square that faces both ways. 980 Certainly a hooer watching for tunnies who counts the exact number of the surface at once makes known the total number of the shoal, since he knows that the depth is equal one to one with the breadth and the length.

30 1 Schooling together has also given the bonitos their name of amia and I think this is true of year-old tunnies as well. As for the other kinds which are observed to live in shoals in mutual society, it is impossible to state their number. Let us rather, therefore, proceed to examine those that have a special partnership, that is, symbiosis. One of these is the pinna-guard, over which Chrysippus spilled a very great deal of ink; indeed it has a reserved seat in every single book of his, whether ethical or physical. Chrysippus has obviously not investigated the sponge-guard; otherwise he could hardly have left it out. Now the pinna-guard is a crab-like creature, so they say, who lives with the pinna and sits in front of the shell guarding the entrance. It allows the pinna to remain wide open and agape until one of the little fish that are their prey gets within; then the guard nips the flesh of the pinna and slips inside; the shell is closed and together they feast on the imprisoned prey.

The sponge is governed by a little creature not resembling a crab, but much like a spider. Now the sponge is no lifeless, insensitive, bloodless thing; though it clings to the rocks, as many other animals do, Cit has a peculiar movement outward and inward which needs, as it were, admonition and supervision. In any case it is loose in texture and its pores are relaxed because of its sloth and dullness; but when anything edible enters, the guard gives the signal, and it closes up and consumes the prey. Even more, if a man approaches or touches it, informed by the scratching of the guard, it shudders, as it were, and so closes itself up by stiffening and contracting that it is not an easy, but a very difficult, matter for the hunters to undercut it.

The purplefish lives in colonies which build up a comb together, like bees. In this the species is said to propagate; they catch at edible bits of oyster-green and seaweed that stick to shells, and furnish each other with a sort of periodic rotating banquet, as they feed one after another in series.

31 1 And why should anyone be surprised at the community life of these when the most unsociable and brutal of all creatures bred in river, lake, or sea, the crocodile, shows himself marvellously proficient at partnership and goodwill in his dealings with the Egyptian plover? The plover is a bird of the swamps and river banks and it guards the crocodile, not supplying its own food, but as a boarder making a meal of the crocodile’s scraps. Now when it perceives that, during the crocodile’s sleep, the ichneumon is planning to attack it, smearing itself with mud like an athlete dusting himself for the fray, the bird awakes the crocodile by crying and pecking at it. And the crocodile becomes so gentle with it that it will open its mouth and let it in and is pleased that the bird quietly pecks out, with its bill, bits of flesh which are caught in the teeth and cleans them up. When it is now satisfied and wants to close its mouth, it tilts its snout upward as an indication of its desire and does not let it down until the plover, at once perceiving the intention, flies out.

The so called “guide” is a small fish, in size and shape like a goby; but by reason of the roughness of its scales it is said to resemble a ruffled bird. It always accompanies one of the great whales, swimming in front of it and directing its course so that it may not go aground in shallows or be cut off in some lagoon or strait from which exit may be difficult. 981 The whale follows it, as a ship obeys the helm, changing course with great docility. And whatever else, creature or boat or stone, it embraces in its gaping jaws is at once destroyed and goes to its ruin completely engulfed; but the little fish it knows and receives inside its mouth as in a haven. While the fish sleeps within, the whale remains motionless and lies by; but when it comes out again, the beast accompanies it and does not depart from it day or night; or, if it does, it gets lost and wanders at random. Many, indeed, have been cast up on the land and perished, being, as it were, without a pilot. We, in fact, were witnesses of such a mishap near Anticyra not long ago; and they relate that some time ago, when a whale came aground not far from Boulis and rotted, a plague ensued.

Is it, then, justifiable to compare with these associations and companionships those friendships which Aristotle says exist between foxes and snakes because of their common hostility to the eagle; or those between bustards and horses because the former like to approach and pick over the dung? As for me, I perceive even in ants or bees no such concern for each other. It is true that every one of them promotes the common task, yet none of them has any interest in or regard for his fellow individually.

32 1 And we shall observe this difference even more clearly when we turn our attention to the oldest and most important of social institutions and duties, those concerned with generation and procreation. Now in the first place those fish that inhabit a sea that borders on lagoons or receives rivers resort to these when they are ready to deposit their eggs, seeking the tranquillity and smoothness of fresh water, since calm is a good midwife. Besides, lagoons and rivers are devoid of sea monsters, so that the eggs and fry may survive. This is the reason why the Black Sea is most favoured for spawning by very many fish. It breeds no large sea beasts at all except an infrequent seal and a small dolphin; besides, the influx of rivers — and those which empty into the Black Sea are numerous and very large — creates a gentle blend conducive to the production of offspring. The most wonderful tale is told about the anthias, which Homer calls “Sacred Fish.” Yet some think that “sacred” means “important,” just as we call the important bone os sacrum and epilepsy, an important disease, the sacred disease. Others interpret it in the ordinary sense as meaning “dedicated” or “consecrated.” Eratosthenes seems to refer to the gilthead when he says

Swift courser golden-browed, the sacred fish.

Many say that this is the sturgeon, which is rare and hard to catch, though it is often seen off the coast of Pamphylia. If any ever do succeed in catching it, they put on wreaths themselves and wreathe their boats; and, as they sail past, they are welcomed and honoured with shouts and applause. But most authorities hold that it is the anthias that is and is called “sacred,” for wherever this fish appears there are no sea monsters. Sponge-fishers may dive in confidence and fish may spawn without fear, as though they had a guarantor of their immunity. The reason for this is a puzzle: whether the monsters avoid the anthias as elephants do a pig and lions a cock, or whether there are indications of places free from monsters, which the fish comes to know and frequents, being an intelligent creature with a good memory.

33 1 Then again the care of the young is shared by both parents: the males do not eat their own young, but stand by the spawn to guard the eggs, as Aristotle relates. Some follow the female and sprinkle the eggs gradually with milt, for otherwise the spawn will not grow, but remains imperfect and undeveloped. In particular the wrasse makes a sort of nest of seaweed, envelops the spawn in it, and shelters it from the waves.

982 The affection of the dogfish for its young is not inferior in warmth and kindliness to that of any of the tamest animals; for they lay the egg, then sustain and carry the newly hatched young, not without, but within themselves, as if from a second birth. When the young grow larger, the parents let them out and teach them to swim close by; then again they collect them through their mouths and allow their bodies to be used as dwelling-places, affording at once room and board and sanctuary until the young become strong enough to shift for themselves.

Wonderful also is the care of the tortoise for the birth and preservation of her young. To bear them she comes out of the sea to the shore near at hand; but since she is unable to incubate the eggs or to remain on dry land for long, she deposits them on the strand and heaps over them the smoothest and softest part of the sand. When she has buried and concealed them securely, some say that she scratches and scribbles the place with her feet, making it easy for her to recognize; others affirm that it is because she has been turned on her back by the male that she leaves peculiar marks and impressions about the place. But what is more remarkable than this, she waits for the fortieth day (for that is the number required to develop and hatch out the eggs) and then approaches. And each tortoise recognizes her own treasure and opens it more joyously and eagerly than a man does a deposit of gold.

34 1 The accounts given of the crocodile are similar in other respects, but the animal’s ability to estimate the right place goes beyond man’s power to guess or calculate the cause. Hence they affirm that this creature’s foreknowledge is divine and not rational. For neither to a greater or a less distance, but just so far as the Nile will spread that season and cover the land in flood, just so far does she go to deposit her eggs, with such accuracy that any farmer finding the eggs may know himself and predict to others how far the river will advance. And her purpose in being so exact is to prevent either herself or her eggs getting wet when she sits on them. When they are hatched, the one which, upon emerging, does not immediately seize in its mouth anything that comes along, fly or midge or worm or straw or plant, the mother tears to pieces and bites to death; but those that are bold and active she loves and tends, thus bestowing her affection by judgement, as the wisest of men think right, not by emotion.

Furthermore, seals too bear their young on dry land and little by little induce their offspring to try the sea, then quickly take them out again. This they do often at intervals until the young are conditioned in this way to feel confidence and enjoy life in the sea.

Frogs in their coupling use a call, the so called ololygon, a cry of wooing and mating. When the male has thus attracted the female, they wait for the night together, for they cannot consort in the water and during the day they are afraid to do so on land; but when the darkness falls, they come out and embrace with impunity. On other occasions when their cry is shrill, it is because they expect rain. And this is among the surest of signs.

35 1 But, dear Poseidon! What an absurd and ridiculous error I have almost fallen into: while I am spending my time on seals and frogs, FI have neglected and omitted the wisest of sea creatures, the most beloved of the gods! For what nightingales are to be compared with the halcyon for its love of sweet sound, or what swallows for its love of offspring, or what doves for its love of its mate, or what bees for its skill in construction? What creature’s procreation and birth pangs has the god so honoured? For Leto’s parturition, so they say, only one island was made firm to receive her; but when the halcyon lays her eggs, about the time of the winter solstice, the god brings the whole sea to rest, without a wave, without a swell. 983 And this is the reason why there is no other creature that men love more. Thanks to her they sail the sea without a fear in the dead of winter for seven days and seven nights. For the moment, journey by sea is safer for them than by land. If it is proper to speak briefly of her several virtues, she is so devoted to her mate that she keeps him company, not for a single season, but throughout the year. Yet it is not through wantonness that she admits him to her company, for she never consorts at all with any other male; it is through friendship and affection, as with any lawful wife. When by reason of old age the male becomes too weak and sluggish to keep up with her, she takes the burden on herself, carries him and feeds him, never forsaking, never abandoning him; but mounting him on her own shoulders, she conveys him everywhere she goes and looks after him, abiding with him until the end.

As for love of her offspring and care for their preservation, as soon as she perceives herself to be pregnant, she applies herself to building the nest, not making pats of mud or cementing it on walls and roofs like the house-martin; nor does she use the activity of many different members of her body, as when the bee employs its whole frame to enter and open the wax, with all six feet pressing at the same time to fashion the whole mass into hexagonal cells. But the halcyon, having but one simple instrument, one piece of equipment, one tool — her bill and nothing else, co operating with her industry and ingenuity — what she contrives and constructs would be hard to believe without ocular evidence, seeing the object that she moulds — or rather the ship that she builds. Of many possible forms, this alone cannot be capsized or even wet its cargo. She collects the spines of garfish and binds and weaves them together, some straight, others transverse, as if she were thrusting woven threads through the warp, adding such bends and knots of one with another that a compact, round unit is formed, slightly prolate in shape, like a fisherman’s weel. When it is finished, she brings and deposits it beside the surging waves, where the sea beats gently upon it and instructs her how to mend and strengthen whatever is not yet good and tight, as she observes it loosened by the blows. She so tautens and secures the joints that it is difficult even for stones or iron to break or pierce it. The proportions and shape of the hollow interior are as admirable as anything about it; for it is so constructed as to admit herself only, while the entrance remains wholly hidden and invisible to others — with the result that not even a drop of water can get in. Now I presume that all of you have seen this nest; as for me, since I have often seen and touched it, it comes to my mind to chant the words

Once such a thing in Delos near Apollo’s shrine

I saw, the Altar of Horn, celebrated as one of the Seven Wonders of the World because it needs no glue or any other binding, but is joined and fastened together, made entirely of horns taken from the right side of the head. Now may the god be propitious to me while I sing of the Sea Siren — and indeed, being both a musician and an islander, he should laugh good-naturedly at my opponents’ scoffing questions. Why should he not be called a “conger-slayer” or Artemis be termed a “surmullet-slayer”? Since he well knows that Aphrodite, born of the sea, regards practically all sea creatures as sacred and related to herself and relishes the slaughter of none of them. In Leptis, you know, the priests of Poseidon refrain entirely from any sea food, and those initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis hold the surmullet in veneration, while the priestess of Hera at Argos abstains from this fish to pay it honour. For surmullets are particularly good at killing and eating the sea-hare, which is lethal to man. It is for this reason that surmullets possess this immunity, as being friendly and life-saving creatures.

36 1 984 Furthermore, many of the Greeks have temples and altars to Artemis Dictynna and Apollo Delphinios; and that place which the god had chosen for himself the poet says was settled by Cretans under the guidance of a dolphin. It was not, however, the god who changed his shape and swam in front of the expedition, as tellers of tales relate; instead, he sent a dolphin to guide the men and bring them to Cirrha. They also relate that Soteles and Dionysius, the men sent by Ptolemy Soter to Sinope to bring back Serapis, were driven against their will by a violent wind out of their course beyond Malea, Bwith the Peloponnesus on their right. When they were lost and discouraged, a dolphin appeared by the prow and, as it were, invited them to follow and led them into such parts as had safe roadsteads with but a gentle swell until, by conducting and escorting the vessel in this manner, it brought them to Cirrha. Whence it came about that when they had offered thanksgiving for their safe landing, they came to see that of the two statues they should take away the one of Pluto, but should merely take an impress of that of Persephone and leave it behind.

Well might the god be fond of the music-loving character of the dolphin, to which Pindar likens himself, saying that he is roused

Like a dolphin of the sea

Who on the waveless deep of ocean

Is moved by the lovely sound of flutes.

Yet it is even more likely that its affection for men renders it dear to the gods; for it is the only creature who loves man for his own sake. Of the land animals, some avoid man altogether, others, the tamest kind, pay court for utilitarian reasons only to those who feed them, as do dogs and horses and elephants to their familiars. Martins take to houses to get what they need, darkness and a minimum of security, but avoid and fear man as a dangerous wild beast. To the dolphin alone, beyond all others, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage. Though it has no need at all of any man, yet it is a genial friend to all and has helped many. The story of Arion is familiar to all and widely known; and you, my friend, opportunely put us in mind of the tale of Hesiod,

But you failed to reach the end of the tale.

When you told of the dog, you should not have left out the dolphins, for the information of the dog that barked and rushed with a snarl on the murderers would have been meaningless if the dolphins had not taken up the corpse as it was floating on the sea near the Nemeon and zealously passed it from group to group until they put it ashore at Rhium and so made it clear that the man had been stabbed.

Myrsilus of Lesbos tells the tale of Enalus the Aeolian who was in love with that daughter of Smintheus who, in accordance with the oracle of Amphitrite, was cast into the sea by the Penthilidae, whereupon Enalus himself leaped into the sea and was brought out safe on Lesbos by a dolphin.

And the goodwill and friendship of the dolphin for the lad of Iasus was thought by reason of its greatness to be true love. For it used to swim and play with him during the day, allowing itself to be touched; and when the boy mounted upon its back, it was not reluctant, but used to carry him with pleasure wherever he directed it to go, while all the inhabitants of Iasus flocked to the shore each time this happened. Once a violent storm of rain and hail occurred and the boy slipped off and was drowned. The dolphin took the body and threw both it and itself together on the land and would not leave until it too had died, thinking it right to share a death for which it imagined that it shared the responsibility. And in memory of this calamity the inhabitants of Iasus have minted their coins with the figure of a boy riding a dolphin.

From this the wild tales about Coeranus gained credence. 985 He was a Parian by birth who, at Byzantium, bought a draught of dolphins which had been caught in a net and were in danger of slaughter, and set them all free. A little later he was on a sea voyage in a penteconter, so they say, with fifty pirates aboard; in the strait between Naxos and Paros the ship capsized and all the others were lost, while Coeranus, they relate, because a dolphin sped beneath him and buoyed him up, was put ashore at Sicinus, near a cave which is pointed out to this day and bears the name of Coeraneum. It is on this man that Archilochus is said to have written the line

Out of fifty, kindly Poseidon left only Coeranus.

When later he died, his relatives were burning the body near the sea when a large shoal of dolphins appeared off shore as though they were making it plain that they had come for the funeral, and they waited until it was completed.

That the shield of Odysseus had a dolphin emblazoned on it, Stesichorus also has related; and the Zacynthians perpetuate the reason for it, as Critheus testifies. For when Telemachus was a small boy, so they say, he fell into the deep inshore water and was saved by dolphins who came to his aid and swam with him to the beach; and that was the reason why his father had a dolphin engraved on his ring and emblazoned on his shield, Cmaking this requital to the animal.

Yet since I began by saying that I would not tell you any tall tales and since, without observing what I was up to, I have now, besides the dolphins, run aground on both Odysseus and Coeranus to a point beyond belief, I lay this penalty upon myself: to conclude here and now.

37 1 Aristotimus. So, gentlemen of the jury, you may now cast your votes.

Soclarus. As for us, we have for some time held the view of Sophocles:

It is a marvel how of rival sides

The strife of tongues welds both so close together.

For by combining what you have said against each other, you will together put up a good fight against those who would deprive animals of reason and understanding.

Beasts are rational

985 1 1 Odysseus. These facts, Circe, I believe I have learned and shall not forget them; yet I should be happy to learn from you further whether there are any Greeks among those whom you have changed from the shape of men into wolves and lions.

Circe. Quite a few, beloved Odysseus. But what is your reason for asking this question?

Odysseus. It is, I swear, because it would bring me noble glory among the Greeks if by your favour I should restore comrades of mine to their original humanity and not allow them to grow old in the unnatural guise of beasts, leading an existence that is so piteous and shameful

Circe. Here’s a lad who finds it appropriate that not only himself and his companions, but even total strangers should, through his stupidity, find his ambition their ruin.

Odysseus. This is a new potion of words that you are stirring and drugging for me, Circe. It will certainly transform me literally into a beast if I am to take your word for it that changing from beast to man spells ruin.

Circe. Haven’t you already worked a stranger magic than this on yourself? You who refused an ageless, immortal life at my side and would struggle through a thousand new dangers to a woman who is mortal and, I can assure you, no longer so very young — 986 and this for no other object than to make yourself more gaped at and renowned than you already are, pursuing an empty phantom instead of what is truly good.

Odysseus. All right, let it be as you say, Circe. Why must we quarrel again and again about the same matters? Now please just grant me the favour of letting the men go free.

Circe. By the Black Goddess, it’s not so simple as that. These creatures are no run of the mill. You must ask them first if they are willing. If they say no, my hero, you’ll have to argue with them and convince them. And if you don’t, and they win the argument, then you must be content with having exercised poor judgement about yourself and your friends.

Odysseus. Dear lady, why are you making fun of me? How can they argue with me or I with them so long as they are asses and hogs and lions?

Circe. Courage, courage, my ambitious friend. I’ll see to it that you shall find them both receptive and responsive. Or rather, one of the number will be enough to thrust and parry for them all. Presto! You may talk with this one.

Odysseus. And how am I to address him, Circe? Who in the world was he?

Circe. What’s that to do with the issue? Call him Gryllus, if you like. I’ll retire now to avoid any suggestion that he is arguing against his own convictions to curry favour with me.

2 1 Gryllus. Hello, Odysseus.

Odysseus. And you too, Gryllus, for heaven’s sake!

Gryllus. What do you want to ask?

Odysseus. Since I am aware that you have been men, I feel sorry for all of you in your present plight; yet it is only natural that I should be more concerned for those of you who were Greeks before you fell into this misfortune. So now I have asked Circe to remove the spell from any Greek who chooses and restore him to his original shape and let him go back home with us.

Gryllus. Stop, Odysseus! Not a word more! You see, we don’t any of us think much of you either, for evidently it was a farce, that talk of your cleverness and your fame as one whose intelligence far surpassed the rest — a man who boggles at the simple matter of changing from worse to better because he hasn’t considered the matter. For just as children dread the doctor’s doses and run from lessons, the very things that, by changing them from invalids and fools, will make them healthier and wiser, just so you have shied away from the change from one shape to another. At this very moment you are not only living in fear and trembling as a companion of Circe, frightened that she may, before you know it, turn you into a pig or a wolf, but you are also trying to persuade us, who live in an abundance of good things, to abandon them, and with them the lady who provides them, and sail away with you, when we have again become men, the most unfortunate of all creatures!

Odysseus. To me, Gryllus, you seem to have lost not only your shape, but your intelligence also under the influence of that drug. You have become infected with strange and completely perverted notions. Or was it rather an inclination to swinishness that conjured you into this shape?

Gryllus. Neither of these, king of Cephallenians. But if it is your pleasure to discuss the matter instead of hurling abuse, I shall quickly make you see that we are right to prefer our present life in place of the former one, now that we have tried both.

Odysseus. Go on. I should like to hear you.

3 1 Gryllus. And I, in that case, to instruct you. Let us begin with the virtues, which, we note, inspire you with pride; for you rate yourselves as far superior to animals in justice and wisdom and courage and all the rest of them. But answer me this, wisest of men! Once I heard you telling Circe about the land of Cyclopes, that though it is not ploughed at all nor does anyone sow there, yet it is naturally so fertile and fecund that it produces spontaneously every kind of crops. 987 Do you, then, rate this land higher than rugged, goat-pasturing Ithaca, which barely yields the tiller a meagre, churlish, trifling crop after great efforts and much toil? And see that you don’t lose your temper and give me a patriotic answer that isn’t what you really believe.

Odysseus. I have no need to lie; for though I love and cherish my native soil more, the other wins my approval and admiration.

Gryllus. Then this, we shall say, is the situation: the wisest of men thinks fit to commend and approve one thing while he loves and prefers another. Now I assume that your answer applies to the spiritual field also, for the situation is the same as with the land: that spiritual soil is better which produces a harvest of virtue as a spontaneous crop without toil.

Odysseus. Yes, this too you may assume.

Gryllus. At this moment, then, you are conceding the point that the soul of beasts has a greater natural capacity and perfection for the generation of virtue; for without command or instruction, “unsown and unploughed,” as it were, it naturally brings forth and develops such virtue as is proper in each case.

Odysseus. And what sort of virtue, Gryllus, is ever found in beasts?

4 1 Gryllus. Ask rather what sort of virtue is not found in them more than in the wisest of men? Take first, if you please, courage, in which you take great pride, not even pretending to blush when you are called “valiant” and “sacker of cities.” Yet you, you villain, are the man who by tricks and frauds have led astray men who knew only a straightforward, noble style of war and were unversed in deceit and lies; while on your freedom from scruple you confer the name of the virtue that is least compatible with such nefariousness. Wild beasts, however, you will observe, are guileless and artless in their struggles, whether against one another or against you, and conduct their battles with unmistakably naked courage under the impulse of genuine valour. No edict summons them, nor do they fear a writ of desertion. No, it is their nature to flee subjection; with a stout heart they maintain an indomitable spirit to the very end. Nor are they conquered even when physically overpowered; they never give up in their hearts, even while perishing in the fray. In many cases, when beasts are dying, their valour withdraws together with the fighting spirit to some point where it is concentrated in one member and resists the slayer with convulsive movements and fierce anger until, like a fire, it is completely extinguished and departs.

Beasts never beg or sue for pity or acknowledge defeat: lion is never slave to lion, or horse to horse through cowardice, as man is to man when he unprotestingly accepts the name whose root is cowardice. And when men have subdued beasts by snares and tricks, such of them as are full grown refuse food and endure the pangs of thirst until they induce and embrace death in place of slavery. But nestlings and cubs, which by reason of age are tender and docile, are offered many beguiling allurements and enticements that act as drugs. These give them a taste for unnatural pleasures and modes of life, and in time make them spiritless to the point where they accept and submit to their so called “taming,” which is really Fan emasculation of their fighting spirit.

These facts make it perfectly obvious that bravery is an innate characteristic of beasts, while in human beings an independent spirit is actually contrary to nature. The point that best proves this, gentle Odysseus, is the fact that in beasts valour is naturally equal in both sexes and the female is in no way inferior to the male. She takes her part both in the struggle for existence and in the defence of her brood. You have heard, I suppose, of the sow of Crommyon which, though a female beast, caused so much trouble to Theseus. 988 That famous Sphinx would have got no good of her wisdom as she sat on the heights of Mt. Phicium, weaving her riddles and puzzles, if she had not continued to surpass the Thebans greatly in power and courage. Somewhere thereabouts lived also the Teumesian vixen, a “thing atrocious”; and not far away, they say, was the Pythoness who fought with Apollo for the oracle at Delphi. Your king received Aethe from the Sicyusn as a recompense for excusing him from military service, making a very wise choice when he preferred a fine, spirited mare to a cowardly man. You yourself have often observed in panthers and lionesses that the female in no way yields to the male in spirit and valour. Yet, while you are off at the wars, your wife sits at home by the fire and troubles herself not so much as a swallow to ward off those who come against herself and her home — and this though she is a Spartan born and bred. So why should I go on to mention Carian or Maeonian women? Surely from what has been said it is perfectly obvious that men have no natural claim to courage; if they did, women would have just as great a portion of valour. It follows that your practice of courage is brought about by legal compulsion, which is neither voluntary nor intentional, but in subservience to custom and censure and moulded by extraneous beliefs and arguments. When you face toils and dangers, you do so not because you are courageous, but because you are more afraid of some alternative. For just as that one of your companions who is the first to board ship stands up to the light oar, not because he thinks nothing of it, but because he fears and shuns the heavier one; just so he who accepts the lash to escape the sword, or meets a foe in battle rather than be tortured or killed, does so not from courage to face the one situation, but from fear of the other. So it is clear that all your courage is merely the cowardice of prudence and all your valour merely fear that has the good sense to escape one course by taking another. And, to sum up, if you think that you are better in courage than beasts, why do your poets call the doughtiest fighters “wolf-minded” and “lion-hearted” and “like a boar in valour,” though no poet ever called a lion “man-hearted” or a boar “like a man in valour”? But, I imagine, just as when those who are swift are called “wind-footed” and those who are handsome are called “godlike,” there is exaggeration in the imagery; just so the poets bring in a higher ideal when they compare mighty warriors to something else. And the reason is that the spirit of anger is, as it were, the tempering or the cutting edge of courage. Now beasts use this undiluted in their contests, whereas you men have it mixed with calculation, as wine with water, so that it is displaced in the presence of danger and fails you when you need it most. Some of you even declare that anger should not enter at all into fighting, but be dismissed in order to make use of sober calculation; their contention is correct so far as self-preservation goes, but is disgracefully false as regards valorous defence. For surely it is absurd for you to find fault with Nature because she did not equip your bodies with natural stings, or place fighting tusks among your teeth, or give you nails like curved claws, while you yourselves remove or curb the emotional instrument that Nature has given.

5 1 Odysseus. Bless me, Gryllus, you must once have been a very clever sophist, one may judge, since even as things are, and speaking from your swinishness, you can attack the subject with such fervent ardour. But why have you failed to discuss temperance, the next in order?

Gryllus. Because I thought that you would first wish to take exception to what I have said. But you are eager to hear about temperance since you are the husband of a model of chastity and believe that you yourself have given a proof of self-control by rejecting the embraces of Circe. And in this you are no more continent than any of the beasts; for neither do they desire to consort with their betters, 989 but pursue both pleasure and love with mates of like species. So it is no wonder that, like the Mendesian goat in Egypt which, when shut up with many beautiful women, is said not to be eager to consort with them, but is far more excited about nannies, you likewise are contented with the kind of love that is familiar to you and, being a mortal, are not eager to sleep with a goddess. As for the chastity of Penelope, the cawing of countless crows will pour laughter and contempt upon it; for every crow, if her mate dies, remains a widow, not merely for a short time, but for nine generations of men. It follows that your fair Penelope is nine times inferior in chastity to any crow you please.

6 1 Now since you are not unaware that I am a sophist, let me marshal my arguments in some order by defining temperance and analysing the desires according to their kinds. Temperance, then, is a curtailment and an ordering of the desires that eliminate those that are extraneous or superfluous and discipline in modest and timely fashion those that are essential. You can, of course, observe countless differences in the desires . . . and the desire to eat and drink is at once natural and essential, while the pleasures of love, which, though they find their origin in nature, yet may be forgone and discarded without much inconvenience, have been called natural, but not essential. But there are desires of another kind, neither essential nor natural, that are imported in a deluge from without as a result of your inane illusions and because you lack true culture. So great is their multitude that the natural desires are, every one of them, all but overwhelmed, as though an alien rabble were overpowering the native citizenry. But beasts have souls completely inaccessible and closed to these adventitious passions and live their lives as free from empty illusions as though they dwelt far from the sea. They fall short in the matter of delicate and luxurious living, but solidly protect their sobriety and the better regulation of their desires since those that dwell within them are neither numerous nor alien.

Certainly there was a time when I myself, no less than you now, was dazzled by gold and held it to be an incomparable possession; so likewise I was caught by the lure of silver and ivory and the man who had most property of this sort seemed to me to be a blissful favourite of the gods, whether he was a Phrygian or a Carian, one more villainous than Dolon or more unfortunate than Priam. In that situation, constantly activated by these desires, I reaped no joy or pleasure from the other things of life, which I had sufficiently and to spare. EI grumbled at my life, finding myself destitute of the most important things and a loser in the lottery of fortune. This is the reason why, as I recall, when I saw you once in Crete tricked out in holiday attire, it was not your intellect or your virtue that I envied, but the softness of the elegantly woven garment and the beautiful wool of your purple cloak that I admired and gaped at (the clasp, I believe, was of gold and had some frivolity worked on it in exquisitely fine intaglio). I followed you about as enchanted as a woman. But now I am rid and purified of all those empty illusions. I have no eyes for gold and silver and can pass them by just like any common stone; and as for your fine robes and tapestries, I swear there’s nothing sweeter for me to rest in when I’m full than deep, soft mud. None, then, of such adventitious desires has a place in our souls; our life for the most part is controlled by the essential desires and pleasures. As for those that are non-essential, but merely natural, we resort to them without either irregularity or excess.

7 1 990 Let us, in fact, first describe these pleasures. Our pleasure in fragrant substances, those that by their nature stimulate our sense of smell, besides the fact that our enjoyment of this is simple and costs nothing, also contributes to utility by providing a way for us to tell good food from bad. For the tongue is said to be, and is, a judge of what is sweet or bitter or sour, when liquid flavours combine and fuse with the organ of taste; but our sense of smell, even before we taste, is a judge that can much more critically distinguish the quality of each article of food than any royal taster in the world. It admits what is proper, rejects what is alien, and will not let it touch or give pain to the taste, but informs on and denounces what is bad before any harm is done. And in other respects smell is no nuisance to us, as it is to you, forcing to collect and mix together incense of one kind or another and cinnamon and nard and malobathrum and Arabian aromatic reeds, with the aid of a formidable dyer’s or witch’s art, of the sort to which you give the name of unguentation, thus buying great price an effeminate, emasculating luxury which has absolutely no real use. Yet, though such is its nature, it has depraved not only every woman, but lately the greater part of men as well, so that they refuse to sleep even with their own wives unless they come to bed Creeking with myrrh and scented powders. But sows attract boars and nannies bucks and other female creatures their consorts by means of their own special odours; scented, as they are, with pure dew and grassy meadows, they are attracted to the nuptial union by mutual affection. The females are not coy and do not cloak their desires with deceits or trickeries or denials; nor do the males, driven on by the sting of mad lust, purchase the act of procreation by money or toil or servitude. No! Both parties celebrate at the proper time a love without deceit or hire, a love which in the season of spring awakens, like the burgeoning of plants and trees, the desire of animals, and then immediately extinguishes it. Neither does the female continue to receive the male after she has conceived, nor does the male attempt her. So slight and feeble is the regard we have for pleasure: our whole concern is with Nature. Whence it comes about that to this very day the desires of beasts have encompassed no homosexual mating. But you have a fair amount of such trafficking among your high and mighty nobility, to say nothing of the baser sort. Agamemnon came to Boeotia hunting for Argynnus, who tried to elude him, and slandering the sea and winds . . . then he gave his noble self a noble bath in Lake Copaïs to drown his passion there and get rid of his desire. Just so Heracles, pursuing a beardless lad, lagged behind the other heroes and deserted the expedition. On the Rotunda of Ptoian Apollo one of your men secretly inscribed fair is Achilles — when Achilles already had a son. And I hear that the inscription is still in place. But a cock that mounts another for the lack of a female is burned alive because some prophet or seer declares that such an event is an important and terrible omen. On this basis even men themselves acknowledge that beasts have a better claim to temperance and the non-violation of nature in their pleasures. Not even Nature, with Law for her ally, can keep within bounds the unchastened vice of your hearts; but as though swept by the current of their lusts beyond the barrier at many points, men do such deeds as wantonly outrage Nature, upset her order, and confuse her distinctions. For men have, in fact, attempted to consort with goats and sows and mares, and women have gone mad with lust for male beasts. 991 From such unions your Minotaurs and Aegipans, and, I suppose, your Sphinxes and Centaurs have arisen. Yet it is through hunger that dogs have occasionally eaten a man; and birds have tasted of human flesh through necessity; but no beast has ever attempted a human body for lustful reasons. But the beasts I have mentioned and many others have been victims of the violent and lawless lusts of man.

8 1 Though men are so vile and incontinent where the desires I have spoken of are concerned, they can be proved to be even more so in the case of essential desires, being here far inferior to animals in temperance. These are the desires for food and drink, Bin which we beasts always take our pleasure along with some sort of utility; whereas you, in your pursuit of pleasure rather than natural nourishment, are punished by many serious ailments which, welling up from one single source, the surfeit of your bodies, fill you with all manner of flatulence that is difficult to purge. In the first place each species of animal has one single food proper to it, grass or some root or fruit. Those that are carnivorous resort to no other kind of nourishment, nor do they deprive those weaker than themselves of sustenance; but the lion lets the deer, and the wolf lets the sheep, feed in its natural pasture. But man in his pleasures is led astray by gluttony to everything edible; he tries and tastes everything as if he had not yet come to recognize what is suitable and proper for him; alone of all creatures he is omnivorous.

In the first place his eating of flesh is caused by no lack of means or methods, for he can always in season harvest and garner and gather in such a succession of plants and grains as will all but tire him out with their abundance; but driven on by luxurious desires and satiety with merely essential nourishment, he pursues illicit food, made unclean by the slaughter of beasts; and he does this in a much more cruel way than the most savage beasts of prey. Blood and gore and raw flesh are the proper diet of kite and wolf and snake; to man they are an appetizer. Then, too, man makes use of every kind of food and does not, like beasts abstain from most kinds and consequently make war on a few only that he must have for food. In a word, nothing that flies or swims or moves on land has escaped your so called civilized and hospitable tables.

9 1 Well, then. It is admitted that you use animals as appetizers to sweeten your fare. Why, therefore . . . Animal intelligence, on the contrary, allows no room for useless and pointless arts; and in the case of essential ones, Ewe do not make one man with constant study cling to one department of knowledge and rivet him jealously to that; nor do we receive our arts as alien products or pay to be taught them. Our intelligence produces them on the spot unaided, as its own congenital and legitimate skills. I have heard that in Egypt everyone is a physician; and in the case of beasts each one is not only his own specialist in medicine, but also in the providing of food, in warfare and hunting as well as in self-defence and music, in so far as any kind of animal has a natural gift for it. From whom have we swine learned, when we are sick, to resort to rivers to catch crabs? Who taught tortoises to devour marjoram after eating the snake? And who instructed Cretan goats, when they are pierced by an arrow, to look for dittany, after eating which the arrowhead falls out? For if you speak the truth and say that Nature is their teacher, you are elevating the intelligence of animals to the most sovereign and wisest of first principles. If you do not think that it should be called either reason or intelligence, it is high time for you to cast about for some fairer and even more honourable term to describe it, since certainly the faculty that it brings to bear in action is better and more remarkable. 992 It is no uninstructed or untrained faculty, but rather self-taught and self-sufficient — and not for lack of strength. It is just because of the health and completeness of its native virtue that it is indifferent to the contributions to its intelligence supplied by the lore of others. Such animals, at any rate, as man for amusement or easy living induces to accept instruction and training have understanding to grasp what they are taught even when it goes contrary to their physical endowment, so superior are their mental powers. I say nothing of puppies that are trained as hunters, or colts schooled to keep time in their gait, or crows that are taught to talk, or dogs, to jump through revolving hoops. In the theatres horses and steers go through an exact routine in which they lie down or dance or hold a precarious pose or perform movements not at all easy even for men; and they remember what they have been taught, these exhibitions of docility which are not in the least useful for anything else. If you are doubtful that we can learn arts, then let me tell you that we can even teach them. When partridges are making their escape, they accustom their fledglings to hide by falling on their backs and holding a lump of earth over themselves with their claws. You can observe storks on the roof, the adults showing the art of flying to the young as they make their trial flights. Nightingales set the example for their young to sing; while nestlings that are caught young and brought up by human care are poorer singers, as though they had left the care of their teacher too early. . . . and since I have entered into this new body of mine, I marvel at those arguments by which the sophists brought me to consider all creatures except man irrational and senseless.

Odysseus. So now, Gryllus, you are transformed. Do you attribute reason even to the sheep and the ass?

Gryllus. From even these, dearest Odysseus, it is perfectly possible to gather that animals have a natural endowment of reason and intellect. For just as one tree is not more nor less inanimate than another, but they are all in the same state of insensibility, since none is endowed with soul, in the same way one animal would not be thought to be more sluggish or indocile mentally than another if they did not all possess reason and intellect to some degree — though some have a greater or less proportion than others. Please note that cases of dullness and stupidity in some animals are demonstrated by the cleverness and sharpness of others — as when you compare an ass and a sheep with a fox or a wolf or a bee. It is like comparing Polyphemus to you or that dunce Coroebus to your grandfather Autolycus. EI scarcely believe that there is such a spread between one animal and another as there is between man and man in the matter of judgement and reasoning and memory.

Odysseus. But consider, Gryllus: it is not a fearful piece of violence to grant reason to creatures that have no inherent knowledge of God?

Gryllus. Then shall we deny, Odysseus, that so wise and remarkable a man as you had Sisyphus for a father?

On the eating of flesh

I

993 1 1 Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man who did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?

The skins shivered; and upon the spits the flesh bellowed,

Both cooked and raw; the voice of kine was heard.

Though this is an invention and a myth, yet that sort of dinner is really portentous — when a man craves the meat that is still bellowing, giving instructions which tell us on what animals we are to feed while they are still alive uttering their cries, and organizing various methods of seasoning and roasting and serving. It is the man who first began these practices that one should seek out, not him who all too late desisted.

2 1 Or would everyone declare that the reason for those who first instituted flesh-eating was the necessity of their poverty? It was not while they passed their time in lawful desires nor when they had necessaries in abundance that after indulgence in unnatural and antisocial pleasures they resorted to such a practice. If, at this moment, they could recover feelings and voice, they might, indeed, remark: “Oh blessed and beloved of the gods, you who live now, what an age has fallen to your lot wherein you enjoy and assimilate a heritage abounding in good things! How many plants grow for you! What vintages you gather! What wealth you may draw from the plains and what pleasant sustenance from trees! Why, you may even live luxuriously without the stain of blood. But as for us, it was a most dismal and fearful portion of the world’s history the confronted us, falling as we did into great and unbearable poverty brought on by our first appearance among the living. As yet the heavens and the stars were concealed by dense air that was contaminated with turbid moisture, not easily to be penetrated, and fire and furious wind. Not yet was the sun established undeviating

In his firm course,

Dividing day and night; he brought them back

Again and crowned them with the fruitful hours

All wreathed with bloom, while violence

had been done to earth by rivers pouring forth their floods at random and most parts were deformed by pools. Earth was made a wilderness by deep quagmires and the unfruitful growth of thickets and forests; nor was there as yet any agricultural production or professional tool or any resource of skill. Our hunger gave us no respite nor was there any seed at that time awaiting the annual season of sowing. What wonder if, contrary to nature, we made use of the flesh of beasts when even mud was eaten and the bark of trees devoured, and to light on sprouting grass or the root of a rush was a piece of luck? When we had tasted and eaten acorns we danced for joy around some oak, calling it “life-giving” and “mother” and “nurse.” 994 This was the only festival that those times had discovered; all else was a medley of anguish and gloom. But you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution of shedding blood, you who have such a superfluity of necessities? Why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you? Why impiously offend law-giving Demeter and bring shame upon Dionysus, lord of the cultivated vine, the gracious one, as if you did not receive enough from their hands? Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughters, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, yours is a mere appetizer.”

3 1 It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defence; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. . . .

[It is as though one, seeing the Nile overflow its banks, filling the landscape with its fertile and productive stream, should not marvel at this, its nourishing of plants and its fruitfulness in such crops as are most to be cultivated and contribute most to the support of life, but should espy a crocodile swimming there somewhere or an asp being swept along or a thousand other savage creatures and should cite them as the reasons for his censure and this compulsion to do as he does. Or, I swear, it is as though one fixed one’s gaze on this land and its soil covered with cultivated crops and heavy with ears of wheat, and then, looking beneath these rich harvests, one were to catch sight somewhere of a growth of darnel or broom-rape and, without more ado, ceasing to reap the benefit and claim the booty of the good crops, burst into a tirade about the weeds. Another example: if one should see an orator making a speech at some trial where he was advocate, a speech in which his eloquence in full flood was advancing to the succour of someone in jeopardy or (so help me) to the conviction or denunciation of rash acts or defaults — a flood of eloquence not simple or jejune, but charged with many (or rather all kinds of) emotional appeals for the simultaneous influencing of the many different kinds of minds in the audience or jury, which must either be roused and won over or (by heaven!) soothed and made gentle and calm — then if one neglected to observe and take into account this main point and issue of the matter, but merely picked out flaws of style that the flood of oratory, as it moved to its goal, had swept along by the momentum of its current, flaws that came rushing out and slipped by with the rest — and seeing . . . of some popular leader. . . .]

4 1 But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being. Then we go on to assume that when they utter cries and squeaks their speech is inarticulate, that they do not, begging for mercy, entreating, seeking justice, each one of them say, “I do not ask to be spared in case of necessity; only spare me your arrogance! Kill me to eat, but not to please your palate!” Oh, the cruelty of it! What a terrible thing it is to look on when the tables of the rich are spread, men who employ cooks and spicers to groom the dead! And it is even more terrible to look on when they are taken away, for more is left than has been eaten. So the beasts died for nothing! There are others who refuse when the dishes are already set before them and will not have them cut into or sliced. Though they bid spare the dead, they did not spare the living.

5 1 We declare, then, that it is absurd for them to say that the practice of flesh-eating is based on Nature. For that man is not naturally carnivorous is, in the first place, obvious from the structure of his body. A man’s frame is in no way similar to those creatures who were made for flesh-eating: he has no hooked beak or sharp nails or jagged teeth, 995 no strong stomach or warmth of vital fluids able to digest and assimilate a heavy diet of flesh. It is from this very fact, the evenness of our teeth, the smallness of our mouths, the softness of our tongues, our possession of vital fluids too inert to digest meat that Nature disavows our eating of flesh. If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of axe. Rather, just as wolves and bears and lions themselves slay what they eat, so you are to fell an ox with your fangs or a boar with your jaws, or tear a lamb or hare in bits. Fall upon it and eat it still living, as animals do. But if you wait for what you eat to be dead, if you have qualms about enjoying the flesh while life is still present, why do you continue, contrary to nature, to eat what possesses life? Even when it is lifeless and dead, however, no one eats the flesh just as it is; men boil it and roast it, altering it by fire and drugs, recasting and diverting and smothering with countless condiments the taste of gore so that the palate may be deceived and accept what is foreign to it.

It was, indeed, a witty remark of the Spartan who bought a little fish in an inn and gave it to the innkeeper to prepare. When the latter asked for cheese and vinegar and oil, the Spartan said, “If I had those, I should not have bought a fish. “But we are so refined in our blood-letting that we term flesh a supplementary food; and then we need “supplements” for the flesh itself, mixing oil, wine, honey, fish paste, vinegar, with Syrian and Arabian spices, as though we were really embalming a corpse for burial. The fact is that meat is so softened and dissolved and, in a way, predigested that it is hard for digestion to cope with it; and if digestion loses the battle, the meats affect us with dreadful pains and malignant forms of indigestion.

6 1 Diogenes ventured to eat a raw octopus Din order to put an end to the inconvenience of preparing cooked food. In the midst of a large throng he veiled his head and, as he brought the flesh to his mouth, said, “It is for you that I am risking my life.” Good heavens, a wondrous fine risk! Just like Pelopidas for the liberty of the Thebans or Harmodius and Aristogiton for that of the Athenians, this philosopher risked his life struggling with a raw octopus — in order to brutalize our lives!

Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit. “For wine and indulgence in meat make at body strong and vigorous, but the soul weak.” And in order that I may not offend athletes, I shall take my own people as examples. It is a fact that the Athenians used to call us Boeotians beef-witted and insensitive and foolish, precisely because we stuffed ourselves. “These men are swine”; . . . and Menander says, “Who have jaws; and Pindar “And then to learn . . .”; “A dry soul is wisest” according to Heraclitus. Empty jars make a noise when struck, but full ones do not resound to blows. Thin bronze objects will pass the sounds from one to another in a circle until you dampen and deaden the noise with your hand as the beat goes round. The eye when it is flooded by an excess of moisture grows dim and weakened for its proper task. When we examine the sun through dank atmosphere and a fog of gross vapours, we do not see it clear and bright, but submerged and misty, with elusive rays. In just the same way, then, when the body is turbulent and surfeited and burdened with improper food, the lustre and light of the soul inevitably come through it blurred and confused, aberrant and inconstant, since the soul lacks the brilliance and intensity to penetrate to the minute and obscure issues of active life.

7 1 But apart from these considerations, do you not find here a wonderful means of training in social responsibility? Who could wrong a human being 996 when he found himself so gently and humanely disposed ªtoward other non-human creatures? Two days ago in a discussion I quoted the remark of Xenocrates, that the Athenians punished the man who had flayed a ram while it was still alive; yet, as I think, he who tortures a living creature is no worse than he who slaughters it outright. But it seems that we are more observant of acts contrary to convention than of those that are contrary to nature. In that place, then, I made my remarks in a popular vein. I still hesitate, however, to attempt a discussion of the principle underlying my opinion, great as it is, and mysterious and incredible, as Plato says, with merely clever men of mortal opinions, just as a steersman hesitates to shift his course in the midst of a storm, or a playwright to raise his god from the machine in the midst of a play. Yet perhaps it is not unsuitable to set the pitch and announce the theme by quoting some verses of Empedocles. . . . By these lines he means, though he does not say so directly, that human souls are imprisoned in mortal bodies as a punishment for murder, the eating of animal flesh, and cannibalism. This doctrine, however, seems to be even older, for the stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of Dionysus and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood — all this is a myth which in its inner meaning has to do with rebirth. For to that faculty in us which is unreasonable and disordered and violent, and does not come from the gods, but from evil spirits, the ancients gave the name Titans, that is to say, those that are punished and subjected to correction. . . .

II

996 1 1 Reason urges us with fresh ideas and fresh zeal to attack again our yesterday’s discourse on the eating of flesh. It is indeed difficult, as Cato remarked, to talk to bellies which have no ears. And the potion of familiarity has been drunk, like that of Circe

Commingling pains and pangs, tricks and tears;

nor is it easy to extract the hook of flesh-eating, entangled as it is and embedded in the love of pleasure. And, like the Egyptians who extract the viscera of the dead and cut them open in view of the sun, then throw them away as being the cause of every single sin that the man had committed, it would be well for us to excise our own gluttony and lust to kill and become pure for the remainder of our lives, since it is not so much our belly that drives us to the pollution of slaughter; it is itself polluted by our incontinence. Yet if, for heavens sake, it is really impossible for us to be far from error because we are on such terms of familiarity with it, let us at least be ashamed of our ill doing and resort to it only in reason. We shall eat flesh, but from hunger, not as a luxury. We shall kill an animal, but in pity and sorrow, not degrading or torturing it — which is the current practice in many cases, some thrusting red-hot spits into the throats of swine 997 so that by the plunging in of the iron the blood may be emulsified and, as it circulates through the body, may make the flesh tender and delicate. Others jump upon the udders of sows about to give birth and kick them so that, when they have blended together blood and milk and gore (Zeus the Purifier!) and the unborn young have at the same time been destroyed at the moment of birth, they may eat the most inflamed part of the creature. Still others sew up the eyes of cranes and swans, shut them up in darkness and fatten them, making flesh appetizing with strange compounds and spicy mixtures.

2 1 From these practices it is perfectly evident that it is not for nourishment or need or necessity, but out of satiety and insolence and luxury that they have turned this lawless custom into a pleasure. Then, just as with women who are insatiable in seeking pleasure, their lust tries everything, goes astray, and explores the gamut of profligacy until at last it ends in unspeakable practices; so intemperance in eating passes beyond the necessary ends of nature and resorts to cruelty and lawlessness to give variety to appetite. For it is in their own company that organs of sense are infected and won over and become licentious when they do not keep to natural standards. Just so the art of hearing has fallen sick, corrupting musical taste. From this our luxury and debauchery conceives a desire for shameful caresses and effeminate titillations. These taught the sight not to take pleasure in warlike exercises or gesticulations or refined dances or statues and paintings, but to regard the slaughter and death of men, their wounds and combats, as the most precious sort of spectacle. Just so intemperate intercourse follows a lawless meal, inharmonious music follows a shameful debauch, barbarous spectacles follow shameless songs and sounds, insensitivity and cruelty toward human kind follow savage exhibitions in the theatre. It was for this reason that the godlike Lycurgus gave directions in certain rhetrae that the doors and roofs of houses should be fashioned by saw and axe alone and no other tool should be used — not of course because he had a quarrel with gimlets and adzes and other instruments for delicate work. It was because he knew that through such rough-hewn work you will not be introducing a gilded couch, nor will you be so rash as to bring silver tables and purple rugs and precious stones into a simple house. The corollary of such a house and couch and table and cup is a dinner which is unpretentious and a lunch which is truly democratic; but all manner of luxury and extravagance follow the lead of an evil way of life

As new-weaned foal beside his mother runs.

3 1 For what sort of dinner is not costly for which a living creature loses its life? Do we hold a life cheap? EI do not yet go so far as to say that it may well be the life of your mother or father or some friend or child, as Empedocles declared. Yet it does, at least, possess some perception, hearing, seeing, imagination, intelligence, which last every creature receives from Nature to enable it to acquire what is proper for it and to evade what is not. Do but consider which are the philosophers who serve the better to humanize us: those who bid us eat our children and friends and fathers and wives after their death, or Pythagoras and Empedocles who try to accustom us to act justly towards other creatures also? You ridicule a man who abstains from eating mutton. But are we, they will say, to refrain from laughter when we see you slicing off portions from a dead father or mother and sending them to absent friends and inviting those who are at hand, heaping their plates with flesh? But as it is, perhaps we commit a sin when we touch these books of theirs without cleansing our hands and faces, our feet and ears — unless, by Heaven, it is a purification of those members to speak on such a subject as this, “washing,” as Plato says, 998”the brine from one’s ears with the fresh water of discourse.” If one should compare these two sets of books and doctrines, the former may serve as philosophy for the Scyths and Sogdians and the Black Cloaks, whose story as told by Herodotus gains no credit; but the precepts of Pythagoras and Empedocles were the laws for the ancient Greeks, along with their diet of wheat. . . . [Because there is no question of justice between us and the irrational animals.]

4 1 Who, then, were they who later decreed this?

The first to forge the highway’s murderous sword,

And first to eat the flesh of ploughing ox.

This is the way, you may be sure, in which tyrants begin their course of bloody slaughters. Just as, for instance, at Athens they put to death initially the worst of the sycophants, and likewise in the second and third instances; but next, having become accustomed to bloodshed they allowed Niceratus, the son of Nicias, to be killed and the general Theramenes and the philosopher Polemarchus. Just so, at the beginning it was some wild and harmful animal that was eaten, then a bird or fish that had its flesh torn. And so when our murderous instincts had tasted blood and grew practised on wild animals, they advanced to the labouring ox and the well-behaved sheep and the housewarding cock; thus, little by little giving a hard edge to our insatiable appetite, we have advanced to wars and the slaughter and murder of human beings. Yet if someone once demonstrates that souls in their rebirths make use of common bodies and that what is now rational reverts to the irrational, and again what is now wild becomes tame, and that Nature changes everything and assigns new dwellings

Clothing souls with unfamiliar coat of flesh;

will not this deter the unruly element in those who have adopted the doctrine from implanting disease and indigestion in our bodies and perverting our souls to an ever more cruel lawlessness, as soon as we are broken of the habit of not entertaining a guest or celebrating a marriage or consorting with our friends without bloodshed and murder?

5 1 Yet even if the argument of the migration of souls from body to body is not demonstrated to the point of complete belief, there is enough doubt to make us quite cautious and fearful. It is as though in a clash of armies by night you had drawn your sword and were rushing at a man whose fallen body was hidden by his armour and should hear someone remarking that he wasn’t quite sure, but that he thought and believed that the prostrate figure was that of your son or brother or father or tent-mate — which would be the better course: to approve a false suspicion and spare your enemy as your friend, or to disregard an uncertain authority and kill your friend as your foe? The latter course you will declare to be shocking. Consider also Merope in the play raising her axe against her son himself because she believes him to be that son’s murderer and saying

This blow I give you is more costly yet —

what a stir she rouses in the theatre as she brings them to their feet in terror lest she wound the youth before the old man can stop her! Now suppose one old man stood beside her saying, “Hit him! He’s your enemy,” and another who said, “Don’t strike! He is your son”: which would be the greater misdeed, to omit the punishment of an enemy because of the son, or to slay a child under the impulse of anger against an enemy? In a case, then, where it is not hate or anger or self-defence or fear for ourselves that induces us to murder, but the motive of pleasure, and the victim stands there under our power with its head bent back and one of our philosophers says, “Kill it! It’s only a brute beast”; but the other says, “Stop! What if the soul of some relative or friend has found its way into this body?” — Good God! Of course the risk is equal or much the same in the two cases — if I refuse to eat flesh, or if I, disbelieving, kill my child or some other relative!

999 6 1 There remains yet another contention with the Stoics about flesh-eating, and this is not “equal,” either. For what is this great “tension” on the belly and the kitchen? Why, when they count pleasure effeminate and denounce it as being neither a good nor an “advanced principle “ nor “commensurate with Nature,” are they so concerned with these pleasures? It would certainly be consistent for them, since they banish perfume and cakes from their banquets, to be more squeamish about blood and flesh. But as it is, confining as it were their philosophy to their ledgers, they economize on their dinners in trivial and needless details while they do not deprecate this inhuman and murderous item of expense. “Of course,” they say, “we human beings have no compact of justice with irrational animals.” Nor, one might reply, have you with perfume or exotic sweetmeats either. Refrain from animals also, if you are expelling the useless and unnecessary element in pleasure from all its lurking-places.

7 1 Let us, however, now examine the point whether we really have no compact of justice with animals; and let us do so in no artificial or sophistical manner, but fixing our attention on our own emotions and conversing like human beings with ourselves and weighing . . .

BOOK XIII

Platonic questions

Question I.

Why Did God Command Socrates to Act the Midwife’s Part to Others, but Charged Himself Not to Generate; as he Affirms in Theaetetus?

(See Plato, “Theaetetus,” p. 149 B.)

For he would never have used the name of God in such a merry, jesting manner, though Plato in that book makes Socrates several times to talk with great boasting and arrogance, as he does now. “There are many, dear friend, so affected towards me, that they are ready even to snap at me, when I offer to cure them of the least madness. For they will not be persuaded that I do it out of goodwill, because they are ignorant that no god bears ill-will to man, and that therefore I wish ill to no man; but I cannot allow myself either to stand in a lie or to stifle the truth.” (Ibid. p. 151 C.) Whether therefore did he style his own nature, which was of a very strong and pregnant wit, by the name of God, — as Menander says, “For our mind is God,” and as Heraclitus, “Man’s genius is a Deity”? Or did some divine cause or some daemon or other impart this way of philosophizing to Socrates, whereby constantly interrogating others, he cleared them of pride, error, and ignorance, and of being troublesome both to themselves and to others? For about that time there happened to be in Greece several sophists; to these some young men paid great sums of money, for which they purchased a strong opinion of learning and wisdom, and of being stout disputants; but this sort of disputation spent much time in trifling squabblings, which were of no credit or profit. Now Socrates, using an argumentative discourse by way of a purgative remedy procured belief and authority to what he said, because in refuting others he himself affirmed nothing; and he the sooner gained upon people, because he seemed rather to be inquisitive after the truth as well as they, than to maintain his own opinion.

Now, however useful a thing judgment is, it is mightily infected By the begetting of a man’s own fancies. For the lover is blinded with the thing loved; and nothing of a man’s own is so beloved as is the opinion and discourse he has begotten. And the distribution of children said to be the justest, in respect of discourses is the unjustest; for there a man must take his own, but here a man must choose the best, though it be another man’s. Therefore he that has children of his own, is a worse judge of other men’s; it being true, as the sophister said well, “The Eleans would be the most proper judges of the Olympic games, were no Eleans gamesters.” So he that would judge of disputations cannot be just, if he either seeks the bays for himself, or is himself antagonist to either of the antagonists. For as the Grecian captains, when they were to settle by their suffrages who had behaved himself the best, every man of them voted for himself; so there is not a philosopher of them all but would do the like, besides those that acknowledge, like Socrates, that they can say nothing that is their own; and these only are the pure uncorrupt judges of the truth. For as the air in the ears, unless it be still and void of noise in itself, without any sound or humming, does not exactly take sounds so the philosophical judgment in disputations, if it be disturbed and obstreperous within, is hardly comprehensive of what is said without. For our familiar and inbred opinion will not allow that which disagrees with itself, as the number of sects and parties shows, of which philosophy — if she deals with them in the best manner — must maintain one to be right, and all the others to be contrary to the truth in their positions.

Furthermore, if men can comprehend and know nothing, God did justly interdict Socrates the procreation of false and unstable discourses, which are like wind-eggs, and did him convince others who were of any other opinion. And reasoning, which rids us of the greatest of evils, error and vanity of mind, is none of the least benefit to us; “For God has not granted this to the Esculapians.” (Theognis, vs. 432,) Nor did Socrates give physic to the body; indeed he purged the mind of secret corruption. But if there be any knowledge of the truth, and if the truth be one, he has as much that learns it of him that invented it, as the inventor himself. Now he the most easily attains the truth, that is persuaded he has it not; and he chooses best, just as he that has no children of his own adopts the best. Mark this well, that poetry, mathematics, oratory, and sophistry, which are the things the Deity forbade Socrates to generate, are of no value; and that of the sole wisdom about what is divine and intelligible (which Socrates called amiable and eligible for itself), there is neither generation nor invention by man, but reminiscence. Wherefore Socrates taught nothing, but suggesting principles of doubt, as birth-pains, to young men, he excited and at the same time confirmed the innate notions. This he called his Art of Midwifery, which did not (as others professed) extrinsically confer intelligence upon his auditors; but demonstrated it to be innate, yet imperfect and confused, and in want of a nurse to feed and fortify it.

Question II.

Why Does he Call the Supreme God Father and Maker of All Things? (Plato, “Timaeus,” p. 28 C.)

Is it because he is (as Homer calls him) of created gods and men the Father, and of brutes and things that have no soul the maker? If Chrysippus may be believed, he is not properly styled the father of the afterbirth who supplied the seed, although it arose from the seed. Or has Plato figuratively called the maker of the world the father of it? In his Convivium he calls Phaedrus the father of the amatorious discourse which he had commenced; and so in his Phaedrus (“Phaedrus,” p. 261 A.) he calls him “father of noble children,” when he had been the occasion of many pre-eminent discourses about philosophical questions. Or is there any difference between a father and a maker? Or between procreation and making? For as what is procreated is also made, but not the contrary recreated did also make, for the procreation of an animal is the making of it. Now the work of a maker — as of a builder, a weaver, a musical-instrument maker, or a statuary — is altogether apart and separate from its author; but the principle and power of the procreator is implanted in the progeny, and contains his nature, the progeny being a piece pulled off the procreator. Since therefore the world is neither like a piece of potter’s work nor joiner’s work, but there is a great share of life and divinity in it, which God from himself communicated to and mixed with matter, God may properly be called Father of the world — since it has life in it — and also the maker of it.

And since these things come very near to Plato’s opinion, consider, I pray, whether there may not be some probability in them. Whereas the world consists of two parts, body and soul, God indeed made not the body; but matter being at hand, he formed and fitted it, binding up and confirming what was infinite within proper limits and figures. But the soul, partaking of mind, reason, and harmony, was not only the work of God, but part of him not only made by him, but begot by him.

Question III.

In the Republic, (“Republic,” vi. pp. 509 D-511 E.) he assumes the universe, as one line to be cut into two unequal parts; again he cuts each of these parts in two after the same manner, and supposes the two sections first made to form the two genera of things sensible and things intelligible. The first stands for the genus of intelligibles, comprehending in the first subdivision the primitive forms, in the second the mathematics. Of sensibles, the first subdivision comprehends solid bodies, the second comprehends the images and representations of them. Moreover, to every one of these four he has assigned its proper criterion; — to the first reason; to the mathematics, the understanding; to sensibles, belief; to images and likenesses, conjecture.

But what Does he Mean by Dividing the Universe into Unequal Parts? And which of the Sections, the Intelligible or the Sensible, is the Greater? For in this he has Not Explained Himself.

At first glance it will appear that the sensible is the greater portion. For the essence of intelligibles being indivisible, and in the same respect ever the same, is contracted into a little, and pure; but an essence divisible and running through bodies constitutes the sensible part. Now what is immaterial is limited; but body in respect of matter is infinite and unlimited, and it becomes sensible only when it is limited by partaking of the intelligible. Besides, as every sensible has many images, shadows, and representations, and from one and the same original several copies may be taken both by nature and art; so the latter must surpass the former in number, according to Plato, who makes things of the intellect to be patterns or ideas of things sensible, as if the last were images and reflections. Further, Plato derives the knowledge of ideas by abstraction and cutting away of body, leading us by mathematical discipline from arithmetic to geometry, thence to astronomy, and placing harmony above them all. For things become geometrical by the accession of magnitude to quantity; solid, by the accession of profundity to magnitude; astronomical, by the accession of motion to solidity; harmonical, by the accession of sound to motion. Take then sound from moving bodies, motion from solids, profundity from superficies, magnitude from quantity, we then reach pure intelligible ideas, which have no difference among themselves as regards the one single intelligible essence. For unity makes no number unless joined by the infinite binary; then it makes a number. And thence we proceed to points, thence to lines, from them to superficies, and solids, and bodies, and to the qualities of the bodies so and so affected. Now the reason is the only criterion of intelligibles; and the understanding is the reason in the mathematics, where intelligibles appear as if in mirrors. But as to the knowledge of bodies, because of their multitude, Nature has given us five powers or distinctions of senses; nor are all bodies discerned by them, many escaping sense by reason of their smallness. And though every one of us consists of a body and soul, yet the hegemonic and intellectual faculty is small, being hid in the huge mass of flesh. And the case is the same in the universe, as to sensible and intelligible. For intelligibles are the principles of bodily things, but everything is greater than the principle whence it came.

Yet, on the contrary, some will say that, by comparing sensibles with intelligibles, we match things mortal with divine, in some measure; for God is in intelligibles. Besides, the thing contained is ever less than the containing, and the nature of the universe contains the sensible in the intelligible. For God, having placed the soul in the middle, hath extended it through all, and hath covered it all round with bodies. The soul is invisible, and cannot be perceived by any of the senses, as Plato says in his Book of Laws; therefore every man must die, but the world shall never die. For mortality and dissolution surround every one of our vital faculties. The case is quite otherwise in the world; for the corporeal part, contained in the middle by the more noble and unalterable principle, is ever preserved. And a body is said to be without parts and indivisible for its minuteness; but what is incorporeal and intelligible is so, as being simple and sincere, and void of all firmness and difference. Besides, it were folly to think to judge of incorporeal things by corporeal. The present, or now, is said to be without parts and indivisible, since it is everywhere and no part of the world is void of it. But all affections and actions, and all corruptions and generations in the world, are contained by this same now. But the mind is judge only of what is intelligible, as the sight is of light, by reason of its simplicity and similitude. But bodies, having several differences and diversities, are comprehended, some by one judicatory function, others by another, as by several organs. Yet they do not well who despise the discriminative faculty in us; for being great, it comprehends all sensibles, and attains to things divine. The chief thing he himself teaches in his Banquet, where he shows us how we should use amatorious matters, turning our minds from sensible goods to things discernible only by the mind, that we ought not to be enslaved by the beauty of any body, study, or learning, but laying aside such weakness, should turn to the vast ocean of beauty. (See Plato’s “Symposium,” p. 210 D.)

Question IV.

What is the Reason That, Though Plato Always Says that the Soul is Ancienter than the Body, and that it is the Cause and Principle of its Rise, Yet he Likewise Says, that Neither Could the Soul Exist Without the Body, Nor the Reason Without the Soul, but the Soul in the Body and the Reason in the Soul? For 80 the Body Will Seem to Be and Not to Be, Because it Both Exists with the Soul, and is Begot by the Soul.

Perhaps what we have often said is true; viz., that the soul without reason and the body without form did mutually ever coexist, and neither of them had generation or beginning. But after the soul did partake of reason and harmony, and being through consent made wise, it wrought a change in matter, and being stronger than the other’s motions, it drew and converted these motions to itself. So the body of the world drew its original from the soul, and became conformable and like to it. For the soul did not make the nature of the body out of itself, or out of nothing; but it wrought an orderly and pliable body out of one disorderly and formless. Just as if a man should say that the virtue of the seed is with the body, and yet that the body of the fig-tree or olive-tree was made of the seed, he would not be much out; for the body, its innate motion and mutation proceeding from the seed, grew up and became what it is. So, when formless and indefinite matter was once formed by the inbeing soul, it received such a form and disposition.

Question V.

Why, Since Bodies and Figures are Contained Partly by Rectilinears and Partly by Circles, Does he Make Isosceles Triangles and Triangles of Unequal Sides the Principles of Rectilinears; of which the Isosceles Triangle Constitutes the Cube, the Element of the Earth; and a Scalene Triangle Forms the Pyramid, the Octahedron the Seed of Fire, Air and Water Respectively, and the Icosahedron; — While he Passes Over Circulars, Though he Does Mention the Globe, where he Says that Each of the Afore-Reckoned Figures Divides a Round Body that Circumscribes it into Equal Parts. (See “Timaeus,” pp. 53–56.)

Is their opinion true who think that he ascribed a dodecahedron to the globe, when he says that God made use of it in delineating the universe? For upon account of the multitude of its bases and the obtuseness of its angles, avoiding all rectitude, it is flexible, and by circumtension, like globes made of twelve skins, it becomes circular and comprehensive. For it has twenty solid angles, each of which is contained by three obtuse planes, and each of these contains one and the fifth part of a right angle. Now it is made up of twelve equilateral and equangular quinquangles (or pentagons), each of which consists of thirty of the first scalene triangles. Therefore it seems to resemble both the Zodiac and the year, it being divided into the same number of parts as these.

Or is a right line in Nature prior to circumference; or is circumference but an accident of rectilinear? For a right line is said to bend; and a circle is described by a centre and distance, which is the place of a right line from which a circumference is measured, this being everywhere equally distant from the middle. And a cone and a cylinder are made by rectilinears; a cone by keeping one side of a triangle fixed and carrying another round with the base, — a cylinder, by doing the like with a parallelogram. Further, that is nearest to principle which is less; but a right is the least of all lines, as it is simple; whereas in a circumference one part is convex without, another concave within. Besides, numbers are before figures, as unity is before a point, which is unity in position. But indeed unity is triangular; for every triangular number (Triangular numbers are those of which

equilateral triangles can be formed in this way:

             .

        .     . .

   .    . .    . . . .   . .   . . .   . . . . . .  . . .  . . . .  . . . . .

Such are: 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, etc.; that is, numbers formed by adding the digits in regular order. (G.)) taken eight times, by adding unity, becomes quadrate; and this happens to unity. Therefore a triangle is before a circle, whence a right line is before a circumference. Besides, no element is divided into things compounded of itself; indeed there is a dissolution of all other things into the elements. Now a triangle is divided into no circumference, but two diameters cut a circle into four triangles; therefore a rectilinear figure is before a circular, and has more of the nature of an element. And Plato himself shows that a rectilinear is in the first place, and a circular is only consequential and accidental. For when he says the earth consists of cubes, each of which is contained with rectilinear superficies, he says the earth is spherical and round. Therefore there was no need of making a peculiar element for round things, since rectilinears, fitted after a certain manner among themselves, do make up this figure.

Besides, a right line, whether great or little, preserves the same rectitude; but as to the circumference of a circle, the less it is, the crookeder it is; the larger, the straighter. Therefore if a convex surface stands on a plane, it sometimes touches the under plane in a point, sometimes in a line. So that a man may imagine that a circumference is made up of little right lines.

But observe whether this be not true, that no circle or sphere in this world is exactly drawn; but since by the tension and circumtension of the straight lines, or by the minuteness of the parts, the difference is hidden, the figure seems circular and round. Therefore no corruptible body moves circularly, but altogether in a right line. To be truly spherical is not in a sensible body, but is the element of the soul and mind, to which he has given circular motion, as being agreeable to their nature.

Question VI.

How Comes it to Pass that in Phaedrus it is Said, that the Nature of a Wing, by which Anything that is Heavy is Carried Upwards, Participates Most of the Body of God? (See “Phaedrus,” p. 246 D.)

Is it because the discourse is of love, and love is of beauty inherent in a body? Now beauty, by similitude to things divine, moves and reminds the soul. Or it may be (without too much curiosity) he may be understood in plain meaning, to wit, that the several faculties of the soul being employed about bodies, the power of reasoning and understanding partakes most about divine and heavenly things; which he did not improperly call a wing, it raising the soul from mean and mortal things to things above.

Question VII.

In what Sense Does Plato Say, that the Antiperistasis (Or Reaction) Of Motion — By Reason There is No Vacuum — Is the Cause Of the Phenomena in Physicians’ Cupping-Glasses, in Swallowing, in Casting Weights, in the Running of Water, in Thunder, in The Attraction of the Loadstone, and in the Harmony of Sounds? (See “Timaeus,” pp. 79–81.)

For it seems unreasonable to ascribe the reason of such different effects to the selfsame cause.

How respiration is made by the reaction of the air, he has sufficiently shown. But the others, he says, seem to be effected miraculously, but really the bodies force each other aside and change places with one another; while he has left for us to discover how each is particularly done.

As to cupping-glasses, the case is thus: the air next to the flesh being comprehended and inflamed by the heat, and being made more rare than the pores of the brass, does not go into a vacuum (for there is no such thing), but into the air that is without the cupping-glass, and has an impulse upon it. This air drives that before it; and each, as it gives way, strives to succeed into the place which was vacuated by the cession of the first. And so the air approaching the flesh comprehended by the cupping-glass, and attracting it, draws the humors into the cupping-glass.

Swallowing takes place in the same way. For the cavities about the mouth and stomach are full of air; when therefore the meat is squeezed down by the tongue and tonsils, the elided air follows what gives way, and also forces down the meat.

Weights also thrown cleave the air and dissipate it, as they fall with force; the air recoiling back, according to its proper tendency to rush in and fill the vacuum, follows the impulse, and accelerates the motion.

The fall also of thunderbolts is like to darting anything. For by the blow in the cloud, the fiery matter exploded breaks into the air; and it being broken gives way, and again being contracted above, by main force it presses the thunderbolt downwards contrary to Nature.

And neither amber nor the loadstone draws anything to it which is near, nor does anything spontaneously approach them. But this stone emits strong exhalations, by which the surrounding air being impelled forceth that which is before it; and this being drawn round in the circle, and returning into the vacuated place, forcibly draws the iron in the same movement. In amber there is a flammeous and spirituous nature, and this by rubbing on the surface is emitted by recluse passages, and does the same that the loadstone does. It also draws the lightest and driest of adjacent bodies, by reason of their tenuity and weakness; for it is not so strong nor so endued with weight and strength as to force much air and to act with violence and to have power over great bodies, as the magnet has. But what is the reason the air never draws a stone, nor wood, but iron only, to the loadstone? This is a common question both by those who think the coition of these bodies is made by the attraction of the loadstone, and by such as think it done by the incitement of the iron. Iron is neither so rare as wood, nor altogether so solid as gold or a stone; but has certain pores and asperities, which as far as inequality is concerned are proportionable to the air; and the air being received in certain positions, and having (as it were) certain stays to hang to, does not slip off; but when it is carried up to the stone and is forced against it, it draws the iron by force along with it to the stone. Such then may be the reason of this.

But the manner of the waters running over the earth is not so evident. But it is observable that the waters of lakes and ponds stand immovable, because the air about them stagnates immovable and admits of no vacuity. For the water on the surface of lakes and seas is troubled and fluctuates as the air is moved, it following the motion of the air, and moving as it is moved. For the force from below causes the hollowness of the wave, and from above the swelling thereof; until the air ambient and containing the water is still. Therefore the flux of such waters as follow the motion of the receding air, and are impelled by that which presses behind, is continued without end. And this is the reason that the stream increases with the waters, and is slow where the water is weak, the air not giving way, and therefore enduring less reaction. So the water of fountains must needs go upwards, the extrinsic air succeeding into the vacuity and throwing the water out. In a close house, that keeps in the air and wind, the floor sprinkled with water causes an air or wind, because, as the sprinkled water falls, the air gives way. For it is so provided by Nature that air and water force one another and give way to one another; because there is no vacuity in which one can be fixed without experiencing the change and alteration in the other.

Concerning symphony, he shows how sounds harmonize. A quick sound is acute, a slow is grave. Therefore acute sounds move the senses the quicker; and these dying and grave sounds supervening, what arises from the contemperation of one with the other causes pleasure to the ear, which we call harmony. And by what has been said, it may easily be understood that air is the instrument of these things. For sound is the stroke upon the sense of the hearer, caused by the air; and the air strikes as it is struck by the thing moving, — if violent, acutely, — if languid, softly. The violent stroke comes quick to the ear; then the circumambient air receiving a slower, it affects and carries the sense along with it.

Question VIII.

What Means Timaeus (See “Timaeus,” p. 42 D.) When he Says that Souls are Dispersed into the Earth, the Moon, and into Other Instruments of Time?

Does the earth move like the sun, moon, and five planets, which for their motions he calls organs or instruments of time? Or is the earth fixed to the axis of the universe; yet not so built as to remain immovable, but to turn and wheel about, as Aristarchus and Seleucus have shown since; Aristarchus only supposing it, Seleucus positively asserting it? Theophrastus writes how that Plato, when he grew old, repented him that he had placed the earth in the middle of the universe, which was not its place.

Or is this contradictory to Plato’s opinion elsewhere, and in the Greek instead of [Greek omitted] should it be written [Greek omitted], taking the dative case instead of the genitive, so that the stars will not be said to be instruments, but the bodies of animals? So Aristotle has defined the soul to be “the actualization of a natural organic body, having the power of life.” The sense then must be this, that souls are dispersed into meet organical bodies in time. But this is far besides his opinion. For it is not once, but several times, that he calls the stars instruments of time; as when he says, the sun was made, as well as other planets, for the distinction and conservation of the numbers of time.

It is therefore most proper to understand the earth to be here an instrument of time; not that the earth is moved, as the stars are; but that, they being carried about it, it standing still makes sunset and sunrising, by which the first measures of time, nights and days, are circumscribed. Wherefore he called it the infallible guard and artificer of night and day. For the gnomons of dials are instruments and measures of time, not in being moved with the shadows, but in standing still; they being like the earth in closing out the light of the sun when it is down, — as Empedocles says that the earth makes night by intercepting light. This therefore may be Plato’s meaning.

And so much the rather might we consider whether the sun is not absurdly and without probability said to be made for the distinction of time, with the moon and the rest of the planets. For as in other respects the dignity of the sun is great; so by Plato in his Republic (Plato, “Republic.” vi. pp. 508, 509.) the sun is called the king and lord of the whole sensible nature, as the Chief Good is of the intelligible. For it is said to be the offspring of Good, it supplying both generation and appearance to things visible; as it is from Good that things intelligible both are and are understood. But that this God, having such a nature and so great power, should be only an instrument of time, and a sure measure of the difference that happens among the eight orbs, as they are slow or swift in motion, seems neither decent nor highly rational. It must therefore be said to such as are startled at these things, that it is their ignorance to think that time is the measure of motion in respect of sooner or later, as Aristotle calls it; or quantity in motion, as Speusippus; or an interval of motion and nothing else, as some of the Stoics define it, by an accident, not comprehending its essence and power, which Pindar has not ineptly expressed in these words: Time, who surpasses all in the seats of the blest. Pythagoras also, when he was asked what time was, answered, it was the soul of the universe. For time is no affection or accident of motion, but the cause, power, and principle of that symmetry and order that confines all created beings, by which the animated nature of the universe is moved. Or rather, this order and symmetry itself — so far as it is motion — is called time. For this,

Walking by still and silent ways,
Mortal things with justice leads.
(Euripides, “Troades,” 887.)

According to the ancients, the principle of the soul is a number moving itself. Therefore Plato says that time and heaven were coexistent, but that motion was before heaven had being. But time was not. For then there neither was order, nor measure, nor determination; but indefinite motion, as it were, the formless and rude matter of time. . . . But when matter was informed with figures, and motion with circuitions, from that came the world, from this time. Both are representations of God; the world, of his essence; time, of his eternity in the sphere of motion, as the world is God in creation. Therefore they say heaven and motion, being bred together, will perish together, if ever they do perish. For nothing is generated without time, nor is anything intelligible without eternity; if this is to endure forever, and that never to die when once bred. Time, therefore, having a necessary connection and affinity with heaven, cannot be called simple motion, but (as it were) motion in order having terms and periods; whereof since the sun is prefect and overseer, to determine, moderate, produce, and observe changes and seasons, which (according to Heraclitus) produce all things, he is coadjutor to the governing and chief God, not in trivial things, but in the greatest and most momentous affairs.

Question IX.

Since Plato in his Commonwealth, discoursing of the faculties of the soul, has very well compared the symphony of reason and of the irascible and the concupiscent faculties to the harmony of the middle, lowest, and highest chord, (See “Republic,” iv. p. 443.) some men may properly inquire: —

Did Plato Place the Rational or the Irascible Faculty in the Middle? For he is Not Clear in the Point.

Indeed, according to the natural system of the parts, the place of the irascible faculty must be in the middle, and of the rational in the highest, which the Greeks call hypate. For they of old called the chief and supreme [Greek omitted]. So Xenocrates calls Jove, in respect of immutable things, [Greek omitted] (or HIGHEST), in respect of sublunary things [Greek omitted] (or LOWEST). And long before him, Homer calls the chief God [Greek omitted], HIGHEST OF RULERS. And Nature has of due given the highest place to what is most excellent, having placed reason as a steersman in the head, and the appetitive faculty at a distance, last of all and lowest. And the lowest place they call [Greek omitted], as the names of the dead, [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted], do show. And some say, that the south wind, inasmuch as it blows from a low and obscure place, is called [Greek omitted]. Now since the appetitive faculty stands in the same opposition to reason in which the lowest stands to the highest and the last to the first, it is not possible for the reason to be uppermost and first, and yet for any other part to be the one called [Greek omitted] (or HIGHEST). For they that ascribe the power of the middle to it, as the ruling power, are ignorant how they deprive it of a higher power, namely, of the highest, which is compatible neither to the irascible nor to the concupiscent faculty; since it is the nature of them both to be governed by and obsequious to reason, and the nature of neither of them to govern and lead it. And the most natural place of the irascible faculty seems to be in the middle of the other two. For it is the nature of reason to govern, and of the irascible faculty both to govern and be governed, since it is obsequious to reason, and commands the appetitive faculty when this is disobedient to reason. And as in letters the semi-vowels are middling between mutes and vowels, having something more than those and less than these; so in the soul of man, the irascible faculty is not purely passive, but hath often an imagination of good mixed with the irrational appetite of revenge. Plato himself, after he had compared the soul to a pair of horses and a charioteer, likened (as every one knows) the rational faculty to the charioteer, and the concupiscent to one of the horses, which was resty and unmanageable altogether, bristly about the ears, deaf and disobedient both to whip and spur; and the irascible he makes for the most part very obsequious to the bridle of reason, and assistant to it. As therefore in a chariot, the middling one in virtue and power is not the charioteer, but that one of the horses which is worse than his guider and yet better than his fellow; so in the soul, Plato gives the middle place not to the principal part, but to that faculty which has less of reason than the principal part and more than the third. This order also keeps the analogy of the symphonies, i.e. the proportion of the irascible to the rational (which is placed as hypate) making the diatessaron (or fourth), that of the irascible to the concupiscent (or nete) making the diapente (or fifth), and that of the rational to the concupiscent (as hypate to nete) making an octave or diapason. But should you place the rational in the middle, you would make the irascible farther from the concupiscent; though some of the philosophers have taken the irascible and the concupiscent faculty for the selfsame, by reason of their likeness.

But it may be ridiculous to describe the first, middle, and last by their place; since we see hypate highest in the harp, lowest in the pipe; and wheresoever you place the mese in the harp, provided it is tunable, it sounds more acute than hypate, and more grave than nete. Nor does the eye possess the same place in all animals; but whereever it is placed, it is natural for it to see. So a pedagogue, though he goes not foremost but follows behind, is said to lead ([Greek omitted]), as the general of the Trojan army,

Now in the front, now in the rear was seen,
And kept command;
(“Iliad,” xi. 64.)

but wherever he was, he was first and chief in power. So the faculties of the soul are not to be ranged by mere force in order of place or name, but according to their power and analogy. For that in the body of man reason is in the highest place, is accidental. But it holds the chief and highest power, as mese to hypate, in respect of the concupiscent; as mese to nete, in respect of the irascible; insomuch as it depresses and heightens, — and in fine makes a harmony, — by abating what is too much and by not suffering them to flatten and grow dull. For what is moderate and symmetrous is defined by mediocrity. Still more is it the end of the rational faculty to bring the passions to moderation, which is called sacred, as making a harmony of the extremes with reason, and through reason with each other. For in chariots the best of the team is not in the middle; nor is the skill of driving to be placed as an extreme, but it is a mean between the inequality of the swiftness and the slowness of the horses. So the force of reason takes up the passions irrationally moved, and reducing them to measure, constitutes a mean betwixt too much and too little.

Question X.

Why Said Plato, that Speech was Composed of Nouns and Verbs?

(Plato’s “Sophist,” p. 262 A.)

For he seems to make no other parts of speech but them. But Homer in a playful humor has comprehended them all in one verse: —

[Greek omitted] (“Iliad”, i. 185.)

For in it there is pronoun, participle, noun, preposition, article, conjunction, adverb, and verb, the particle — [Greek omitted] being put instead of the preposition [Greek omitted]; for [Greek omitted], TO THE TENT, is said in the same sense as [Greek omitted], TO ATHENS. What then shall we say for Plato?

Is it that at first the ancients called that [Greek omitted], or speech, which once was called protasis and now is called axiom or proposition, — which as soon as a man speaks, he speaks either true or false? This consists of a noun and verb, which logicians call the subject and predicate. For when we hear this said, “Socrates philosphizeth” or “Socrates is changed,” requiring nothing more, we say the one is true, the other false. For very likely in the beginning men wanted speech and articulate voice, to enable them to express clearly at once the passions and the patients, the actions and the agents. Now, since actions and affections are adequately expressed by verbs, and they that act and are affected by nouns, as he says, these seem to signify. And one may say, the rest signify not. For instance, the groans and shrieks of stage players, and even their smiles and silence, make their discourse more emphatic. But they have no absolute power to signify anything, as a noun and verb have, but only an ascititious power to vary speech; just as they vary letters who mark spirits and quantities upon letters, these being the accidents and differences of letters. This the ancients have made manifest, whom sixteen letters sufficed to speak and write anything.

Besides, we must not fail to observe, that Plato says that speech is composed OF these, not BY these; nor must we find fault with Plato for omitting conjunctions, prepositions, and the rest, any more than we should criticise a man who should say such a medicine is composed of wax and galbanum, because fire and utensils are omitted, without which it cannot be produced. For speech is not composed of these; yet by their means, and not without them, speech must be composed. As, if a man says BEATS or IS BEATEN, and adds Socrates and Pythagoras to the same, he gives us something to conceive and understand. But if a man pronounce INDEED or FOR or ABOUT and no more, none can conceive any notion of a body or matter; and unless such words as these be uttered with verbs and nouns, they are but empty noise and chattering. For neither alone nor joined one with another do they signify anything. And join and confound together conjunctions, articles, and prepositions, supposing you would make something of them; yet you will be taken to babble, and not to speak sense. But when there is a verb in construction with a noun, the result is speech and sense. Therefore some do with justice make only these two parts of speech; and perhaps Homer is willing to declare himself of this mind, when he says so often,

[Greek omitted]

For by [Greek omitted] he usually means a verb, as in these verses.

[Greek omitted],

and,

[Greek omitted] (“Odyssey,” xxiii. 183; viii. 408.)

For neither conjunction, article, nor preposition could be said to be [Greek omitted] (TERRIBLE) or [Greek omitted] (SOUL GRIEVING), but only a verb signifying a base action or a foolish passion of the mind. Therefore, when we would praise or dispraise poets or writers, we are wont to say, such a man uses Attic nouns and good verbs, or else common nouns and verbs; but none can say that Thucydides or Euripides used Attic or common articles.

What then? May some say, do the rest of the parts conduce nothing to speech? I answer, They conduce, as salt does to victuals; or water to barley cakes. And Euenus calls fire the best sauce. Though sometimes there is neither occasion for fire to boil, nor for salt to season our food, which we have always occasion for. Nor has speech always occasion for articles. I think I may say this of the Latin tongue, which is now the universal language; for it has taken away all prepositions, saving a few, nor does it use any articles, but its nouns are (as it were) without skirts and borders. Nor is it any wonder, since Homer, who in fineness of epic surpasses all men, has put articles only to a few nouns, like handles to cans, or crests to helmets. Therefore these verses are remarkable wherein the articles are suppressed. —

[Greek omitted] (“Iliad,” xiv. 459.)

and,

[Greek omitted] (Ibid. xx. 147.)

and some few besides. But in a thousand others, the omission of the articles hinders neither perspicuity nor elegance of phrase.

Now neither an animal nor an instrument nor arms nor anything else is more fine, efficacious, or pleasanter, for the loss of a part. Yet speech, by taking away conjunctions, often becomes more persuasive, as here: —

One rear’d a dagger at a captive’s breast;
One held a living foe, that freshly bled
With new-made wounds, another dragg’d a dead.
(Ibid. xviii. 536.)

And this of Demosthenes: —

“A bully in an assault may do much which his victim cannot even report to another person, — by his attitude, his look, his voice, — when he insults, when he attacks as an enemy, when he smites with his fist, when he strikes a blow on the face. These rouse a man; these make a man beside himself who is unused to such foul abuse.”

And again: —

“Not so with Midias; but from the very day, he talks, he abuses, he shouts. Is there an election of magistrates? Midias the Anagyrrasian is nominated. He is the advocate of Plutarchus; he knows state secrets; the city cannot contain him.” (“Demosthenes against Midias,” p. 537,25, and p. 578, 29.)

Therefore the figure asyndeton, whereby conjunctions are omitted, is highly commended by writers of rhetoric. But such as keep overstrict to the law, and (according to custom) omit not a conjunction, rhetoricians blame for using a dull, flat, tedious style, without any variety in it. And inasmuch as logicians mightily want conjunctions for the joining together their axioms, as much as charioteers want yokes, and Ulysses wanted withs to tie Cyclop’s sheep; this shows they are not parts of speech, but a conjunctive instrument thereof, as the word conjunction imports. Nor do conjunctions join all, but only such as are not spoken simply; unless you will make a cord part of the burthen, glue a part of a book, or distribution of money part of the government. For Demades says, that money which is given to the people out of the exchequer for public shows is the glue of a democracy. Now what conjunction does so of several propositions make one, by fitting and joining them together, as marble joins iron that is incited with it in the fire? Yet the marble neither is nor is said to be part of the iron; although in this case the substances compose the mixture and are melted together, so as to make a common substance from several and to be mutually affected. But there be some who think that conjunctions do not make anything one, but that this kind of speech is merely an enumeration, as when magistrates or days are reckoned in order.

Moreover, as to the other parts of speech, a pronoun is manifestly a sort of noun; not only because it has cases, but because some pronouns, when they are used of objects already defined, by their mere utterance give the most distinct designation of them. Nor do I know whether he that says SOCRATES or he that says THIS ONE does more by name declare the person.

The thing we call a participle, being a mixture of a verb and noun is nothing of itself, as are not the common names of male and female qualities (i.e, adjectives), but in construction it is put with others, in regard of tenses belonging to verbs, in regard of cases to nouns. Logicians call them [Greek omitted], (i.e., REFLECTED), — as [Greek omitted], comes from [Greek omitted], and from [Greek omitted], — having the force both of nouns and appellatives.

And prepositions are like to the crests of a helmet, or footstools and pedestals, which (one may rather say) do belong to words than are words themselves. See whether they rather be not pieces and scraps of words, as they that are in haste write but dashes and points for letters. For it is plain that [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] are abbreviations of the whole words [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted]. As undoubtedly for haste and brevity’s sake, instead of [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] men first said [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted].

Therefore every one of these is of some use in speech; but nothing is a part or element of speech (as has been said) except a noun and a verb, which make the first juncture allowing of truth or falsehood, which some call a proposition or protasis, others an axiom, and which Plato called speech.

On the birth of the spirit in Timaeus

THE FATHER TO AUTOBULUS AND PLUTARCH WISHETH HEALTH.

1. Since it is your opinion that it would be requisite for me to collect together what I have discoursed and written dispersedly in several treatises explaining, as we apprehended his sense and meaning, what opinion Plato had concerning the soul, as requiring a particular commentary by itself; therefore I have compiled this discourse, which asks for your consideration and pardon not only because the matter itself is by no means easy to be handled, but also because the doctrines herein contained are somewhat contrary to those held by most of the Platonic philosophers. And I will first rehearse the words as they run originally in the text itself of Timaeus.

“There being one substance not admitting of division, but continuing still the same, and another liable to be divided among several bodies, out of both these he produced for a middle mixture a third sort of Substance, partaking of the nature of the Same and of the nature of the Other, and placed it in the midst between that which was indivisible and that which was subject to be corporeally divided. Then taking all three, he blended them into one form, forcibly adapting to the Same the nature of the Other, not readily condescending to a mixture. Now when he had thus mixed them with the Substance, and reduced the three into one, he again divided this whole matter into so many parts as were thought to be necessary; every one of these parts being composed of the Same, the Other, and the Substance And thus he began his division.”

By the way, it would be an endless toil to recite the contentions and disputes that have from hence arisen among his interpreters, and to you indeed superfluous, who are not ignorant yourselves of the greatest part.

But seeing that Xenocrates won to his opinions several of the most eminent philosophers, while he defined the substance of the soul to be number moved by itself; and that many adhered to Crantor the Solian, who affirmed the soul to consist partly of an essence perceptible to the mind, partly of a nature concerned with sensible things and subject to opinions; I am apt to believe that the perspicuity of these matters clearly dilucidated will afford you a fair entrance into the knowledge of the rest.

2. Nor does either of the two conjectures require many words of explanation. For the one side pretends that by the mixture of the divisible and indivisible substance no other thing is meant than the generation or original of number, seeing that the unit is undividable but multitude is subject to division; however, that out of these is begot number, unity terminating plurality and putting a period to infinity, which they call the unlimited binary. This binary Zaratas, the scholar of Pythagoras, named the mother, but the unit the father of number; and therefore he believed those numbers were the best which approached nearest in resemblance to the unit. Nevertheless, this number cannot be said to be the soul; for it neither has the power to move, neither can it be moved. But the Same and the Other being blended together, of which one is the original of motion and mutation, the other of rest and stability, from these two springs the soul, which is no less active or passive itself to stay or to be stayed, than to move or to be moved.

But the followers of Crantor, supposing the proper function of the soul to consist in judging of those things which are discernible to the understanding and those which are liable to sense, as also of the differences and similitudes of these things, as well in themselves as in reference one to another, allege the soul to be composed of all, to the end she may have a true knowledge of the whole. Now the things of which the All is composed are fourfold, — the intelligible nature, always immutable and still the same, and the sensitive nature, which is passive and subject to alteration; and also the nature of the Same, and the nature of the Other, in regard the two former in some measure participate also of diversity and identity.

3. All these philosophers likewise equally hold that the soul neither derives its beginning from time nor is the product of generation, but that it is endued with several faculties and virtues, into which Plato, as it were, melting and dissolving its substance for contemplation’s sake, supposes it in his discourse to have had its original from procreation and mixture.

The same was his opinion concerning the world; for he knew it to be uncreated and without end, but not perceiving it so easy to apprehend how the structure was reared, or by what order and government supported, unless by admitting its beginning and the causes thereto concurring, he followed that method to instruct himself. These things being thus generally by them laid down, Eudorus will allow to neither side any share of probability; and indeed to me they both seem to have wandered from the opinion of Plato, if we intend to make the most likely rule our guide, — which is not to advance our own conceits, but to come as close as we can to his sense and meaning. Now as to this same mixture (as they call it) of the intelligible and sensitive substance, no reason appears why it should be more the original of the soul than of any other thing that ye can name. For the whole world itself and every one of its parts pretend to no other composition than of a sensitive and an intelligible substance, of which the one affords matter and foundation, the other form and figure to the whole mass. And then again, whate’er there is of material substance, framed and structured by participation and assimilation of the intelligible nature is not only to be felt but visible to the eye; when as the soul still soars above the reach of all natural apprehension. Neither did Plato ever assert the soul to be number, but a perpetually self-moving nature, the fountain and principle of motion. Only he embellished and adorned the substance of it with number, proportion, and harmony; as being a subject capable of receiving the most goodly form which those ornaments could produce. So that I cannot believe it to be the same thing to compose the soul according to number, and to affirm the soul to be number itself. Nor can it be said to be harmony because harmoniously composed, as he has clearly demonstrated in his Treatise of the Soul. But plain it is, that those philosophers understood not the meaning of the Same and the Other. For they tell us how the Same contributes rest, the Other motion toward the generation of the soul. Though Plato himself, in his treatise entitled the Sophist, disposes and distinguishes Essence, the Same, the Other, together with Motion and Rest, as being five things altogether differing one from another and void of mutual affinity.

4. But these men are generally, as the most part of Plato’s readers, timorous and vainly perplexed, using all their endeavors by wresting and tormenting his sense to conceal and hide what he has written, as if it were some terrible novelty not fit for public view, that the world and the soul neither had their beginning and composition from eternity, nor had their essence from a boundless immensity of time, — of which we have particularly spoken already. So that now it shall suffice to say no more than this, that these writers confound and smother (if they do not rather utterly abolish) his eager contest and dispute in behalf of the Gods, wherein Plato confesses himself to have been transported with an ambitious zeal, even beyond the strength of his years, against the atheists of his time. For if the world had no beginning, Plato’s opinion vanishes, — that the soul, much elder than the body, is the principle of all motion and alteration, or (to use his own words) their chieftain and first efficient cause, whose mansion is in Nature’s secret retirements. But what the soul is, what the body, and why the soul is said to have been elder than the body, shall be made appear in the progress of this discourse. The ignorance of this seems to have been the occasion of much doubt and incredulity in reference to the true opinion.

5. First therefore, I shall propose my own sentiments concerning these things, desiring to gain credit no otherwise than by the most probable strength of arguments, explaining and reconciling to the utmost of my ability truth and paradox together; after which I shall apply both the explication and demonstration to the words of the text. In my opinion then the business lies thus. The world, saith Heraclitus, neither did any one of all the Gods nor any mortal man create, — as if he had been afraid that, not being able to make out the creation by a Deity, we should be constrained to acknowledge some man to have been the architect of the universe. But certainly far better it is, in submission to Plato’s judgment, to avow, both in discourse and in our songs of praise, that the glory of the structure belongs to God, — for the frame itself is the most beautiful of all masterpieces, and God the most illustrious of all causes, — but that the substance and materials were not created, but always ready at the ordering and disposal of the Omnipotent Builder, to give it form and figure, as near as might be, approaching to his own resemblance. For the creation was not out of nothing, but out of matter wanting beauty and perfection, like the rude materials of a house, a garment, or a statue, lying first in shapeless confusion. For before the creation of the world there was nothing but a confused heap; yet was that confused heap neither without a body, without motion, nor without a soul. The corporeal part was without form or consistence, and the moving part stupid and headlong; and this was the disorder of a soul not guided by reason. God neither incorporated that which is incorporeal, nor conveyed a soul into that which had none before; like a person either musical or poetical, who does not make either the voice or the movement, but only reduces the voice with harmony, and graces the movement with proper measures. Thus God did not make the tangible and resistant solidity of the corporeal substance, nor the imaginative or moving faculties of the soul; but taking these two principles as they lay ready at hand, — the one obscure and dark, the other turbulent and senseless, both imperfect without the bounds of order and decency, — he disposed, digested, and embellished the confused mass, so that he brought to perfection a most absolute and glorious creature. Therefore the substance of the body is no other than that all-receiving Nature, the seat and nurse of all created beings.

6. But the substance of the soul, in Philebus, he called an infinite being, the privation of number and proportion; having neither period nor measure either of diminution or excess or distinction or dissimilitude. But as to that order which he alleges in Timaeus to be the mixture of nature with the indivisible substance, but which being applied to bodies becomes liable to division, — he would not have it thought to be a bulk made up by units or points, nor longitude and breadth, which are qualities more consentaneous to bodies than to the soul, but that disorderly unlimited principle, moving both itself and other substances, that which he frequently calls necessity, and which within his treatise of laws he openly styles the disorderly, ill-acting, or harm-doing soul. For such was this soul of herself; but at length she came to partake of understanding, ratiocination, and harmony, that she might be the soul of the world. Now that all-receiving principle of matter enjoyed both magnitude, space, and distance; but beauty, form, and measure of proportion it had none. However, all these it obtained, to the end that, when it came to be thus embellished and adorned, it might assume the form of all the various bodies and organs of the earth, the sea, the heavens, the stars, and of all those infinite varieties of plants and living creatures. Now as for those who attribute to this matter, and not to the soul, that which in Timaeus is called necessity, in Philebus vast disproportion and unlimited exorbitancy of diminution and excess, — they can never maintain it to be the cause of disorder, since Plato always alleges that same matter to be without any form or figures, and altogether destitute of any quality or effectual virtue properly belonging to it; comparing it to such oils as have no scent at all, which the perfumers mix in their tinctures. For there is no likelihood that Plato would suppose that to be the cause and principle of evil which is altogether void of quality in itself, sluggish, and never to be roused on to action, and yet at the same time brand this immensity with the harsh epithets of base and mischievous, and call it necessity repugnant and contumaciously rebellious against God. For this same necessity, which renverses heaven (to use his own phrase in his Politicus) and turns it the quite contrary way from decency and symmetry, together with innate concupiscence, and that inbred confusion of ancient nature, hurly-burly’d with all manner of disorder, before they were wrought and kneaded into the graceful decorum of the world, — whence came they to be conveyed into several varieties of forms and beings, if the subject, which is the first matter, were void of all quality whatsoever and deprived of all efficient cause; more especially the Architect being so good of himself, and intending a frame the nearest approaching to his own perfections? For besides these there is no third principle. And indeed, we should stumble into the perplexed intricacies of the Stoics, should we advance evil into the world out of nonentity, without either any preceding cause or effect of generation, in regard that among those principles that have a being, it is not probable that either real good or that which is destitute of all manner of quality should afford birth or substance to evil. But Plato escaped those pitfalls into which they blundered who came after him; who, neglecting what he carefully embraced, the third principle and energetic virtue in the middle between God and the first matter, maintain the most absurd of arguments, affirming the nature of evils to have crept in spontaneously and adventitiously, I know not how nor by what strange accidents. And yet they will not allow an atom of Epicurus so much as a moment’s liberty to shift in its station, which, as they say, would infer motion out of nonentity without any impulsive cause; nevertheless themselves presuming all this while to affirm that vice and wickedness, together with a thousand other incongruities and vexations afflicting the body, of which no cause can be ascribed to any of the principles, came into being (as it were) “by consequence.”

7. Plato however does not so; who, despoiling the first matter of all manner of distinction, and separating from God, as far as it is possible, the causes of evil, has thus delivered himself concerning the world, in his Politicus. “The world,” saith he, “received from the Illustrious Builder all things beautiful and lovely; but whatsoever happens to be noxious and irregular in heaven, it derives from its ancient habit and disposition, and conveys them into the several creatures.” And a little farther in the same treatise he saith: “In process of time, when oblivion had encroached upon the world, the distemper of its ancient confusion more prevailed, and the hazard is, lest being dissolved it should again be sunk and plunged into the immense abyss of its former irregularity.” But there can be no dissimilitude in the first matter, as being void of quality and distinction.

Of which when Eudemus with several others was altogether ignorant, he seems deridingly to cavil with Plato, and taxes him with asserting the first matter to be the cause, the root, and principle of all evil, which he had at other times so frequently dignified with the tender appellations of mother and nurse. Whereas Plato gives to matter only the titles of the mother and nurse; but the cause of evil he makes to be the moving force residing within it, not governed by order and reason though not without a soul neither, which, in his treatise of the Laws, he calls expressly the soul repugnant and in hostility with that other propitiously and kindly acting. For though the soul be the principle of motion, yet is it the understanding and intelligence which measures that motion by order and harmony, and is the cause of both. For God could not have brought to rest mere sleepy and sluggish matter, but he brought it to rest when it had been troubled and disquieted by a senseless and stupid cause. Neither did he infuse into nature the principles of alteration and affections; but when it was under the pressure of those unruly disorders and alterations, he discharged it of its manifold enormities and irregularities, making use of symmetry, proportion, and number. For these are the most proper instruments, not by alteration and lawless motion to distract the several beings with passions and distinctions, but rather to render them fixed and stable, and nearest in their composition to those things that in themselves continue still the same upon the equal poise of diuturnity. And this, in my judgment, is the sense and meaning of Plato.

8. Of which the easy reconciliation of his seeming incongruities and contradiction of himself may serve for the first proof. For indeed no men of judgment would have objected to the most Bacchanalian sophister, more especially to Plato, the guilt of so much inconvenience and impudent rashness in a discourse by him so elaborately studied, as to affirm the same nature in one place never to have been created, in another to have been the effects of generation; — in Phaedrus to assert the soul eternal, in Timaeus to subject it to procreation. The words in Phaedrus need no repetition, as being familiar to nearly every one, wherein he proves the soul to be incorruptible in regard it never had a beginning, and to have never had a beginning because it moves itself. But in Timaeus, “God,” saith he, “did not make the soul a junior to the body, as now we labor to prove it to have been subsequent to the body. For he would never have suffered the more ancient, because linked and coupled with the younger, to have been governed by it; only we, guided I know not how by chance and inconsiderate rashness, frame odd kind of notions to ourselves. But God most certainly composed the soul excelling the body both in seniority of origin and in power, to be mistress and governess of her inferior servant.” And then again he adds, how that the soul, being turned upon herself, began the divine beginning of an eternal and prudent life. “Now,” saith he, “the body of heaven became visible; but the soul being invisible, nevertheless participating of ratiocination and harmony, by the best of intelligible and eternal beings she was made the best of things created.” Here then he determines God to be the best of sempiternal beings, the soul to be the most excellent of temporal existences. By which apparent distinction and antithesis he denies that the soul is eternal, and that it never had a beginning.

9. And now what other or better reconciliation of these seeming contrarieties than his own explanation, to those that are willing to apprehend it? For he declares to have been without beginning the never procreated soul, that moved all things confusedly and in an irregular manner before the creation of the world. But as for that which God composed out of this and that other permanent and choicest substance, making it both prudent and orderly, and adding of his own, as if it were for form and beauty’s sake, intellect to sense, and order to motion, and which he constituted prince and chieftain of the whole, — that he acknowledges to have had a beginning and to have proceeded from generation. Thus he likewise pronounces the body of the world in one respect to be eternal and without beginning, in another sense to be the work of creation. To which purpose, where he says that the visible structure, never in repose at first but restless in a confused and tempestuous motion, was at length by the hand of God disposed and ranged into majestic order, — where he says that the four elements, fire and water, earth and air, before the stately pile was by them embellished and adorned, caused a prodigious fever and shivering ague in the whole mass of matter, that labored under the combats of their unequal mixtures, — by his urging these things, he gives those bodies room in the vast abyss before the fabric of the universe.

Again, when he says that the body was younger than the soul, and that the world was created, as being of a corporeal substance that may be seen and felt, — which sort of substances must necessarily have a beginning and be created, — it is evidently demonstrable from thence that he ascribes original creation to the nature of bodies. But he is far from being repugnant or contradictory to himself in these sublimest mysteries. For he does not contend, that the same body was created by God or after the same manner, and yet that it was before it had a being, — which would have been to act the part of a juggler; but he instructs us what we ought to understand by generations and creation. Therefore, says he, at first all these things were void of measure and proportion; but when God first began to beautify the whole, the fire and water, earth and air, having perhaps some prints and footsteps of their forms, lay in a huddle jumbled all together, — as probable it is that all things are, where God is absent, — which then he reduced to a comely perfection varied by number and order. Moreover, having told us before that it was a work not of one but of a twofold proportion to bind and fasten the bulky immensity of the whole, which was both solid and of a prodigious profundity, he then comes to declare how God, after he had placed the water and the earth in the midst between the fire and the air, incontinently closed up the heavens into a circular form. Out of these materials, saith he, being four in number, was the body of the world created, agreeing in proportion, and so amicably corresponding together, that being thus embodied and confined within their proper bounds, it is impossible that any dissolution should happen from their own contending force, unless he that riveted the whole frame should go about again to rend it in pieces; — most apparently teaching us, that God was not the parent and architect of the corporeal substance only, or of the bulk and matter, but of the beauty and symmetry and similitude that adorned and graced the whole. The same we are to believe, he thought, concerning the soul; that there is one which neither was created by God nor is the soul of the world, but a certain self-moving and restless efficacy of a giddy and disorderly agitation and impetuosity, irrational and subject to opinion; while the other is that which God himself, having accoutred and adorned it with suitable numbers and proportions, has made queen regent of the created world, herself the product of creation also.

10. Now that Plato had this belief concerning these things, and did not for contemplation’s sake lay down these suppositions concerning the creation of the world and the soul, — this, among many others, seems to be an evident signification that, as to the soul, he avers it to be both created and not created, but as to the world, he always maintains that it had a beginning and was created, never that it was uncreated and eternal. What necessity therefore of bringing any testimonies out of Timaeus? For the whole treatise, from the beginning to the end, discourses of nothing else but of the creation of the world. As for the rest, we find that Timaeus, in his Atlantic, addressing himself in prayer to the Deity, calls God that being which of old existed in his works, but now was apparent to reason. In his Politicus, his Parmenidean guest acknowledges that the world, which was the handiwork of God, is replenished with several good things, and that, if there be any thing in it which is vicious and offensive, it comes by mixture of its former incongruous and irrational habit. But Socrates, in the Politics, beginning to discourse of number, which some call by the name of wedlock, says: “The created Divinity has a circular period, which is, as it were, enchased and involved in a certain perfect number;” meaning in that place by created Divinity no other than the world itself.

11. The first pair of these numbers consists of one and two, the second of three and four, the third of five and six; neither of which pairs make a tetragonal number, either by themselves or joined with any other figures. The fourth consists of seven and eight, which, being added all together, produce a tetragonal number of thirty-six. But the quaternary of numbers set down by Plato have a more perfect generation, of even numbers multiplied by even distances, and of odd by uneven distances. This quaternary contains the unit, the common original of all even and odd numbers. Subsequent to which are two and three, the first plane numbers; then four and nine, the first squares; and next eight and twenty-seven, the first cubical numbers (not counting the unit). Whence it is apparent, that his intention was not that the numbers should be placed in a direct line one above another, but apart and oppositely one against the other, the even by themselves, and the odd by themselves, according to the scheme here given. In this manner similar numbers will be joined together, which will produce other remarkable numbers, as well by addition as by multiplication.

12. By addition thus: two and three make five, four and nine make thirteen, eight and twenty-seven make thirty-five. Of all which numbers the Pythagoreans called five the nourisher, that is to say, the breeding or fostering sound, believing a fifth to be the first of all the intervals of tones which could be sounded. But as for thirteen, they called it the remainder, despairing, as Plato himself did, of being ever able to divide a tone into equal parts. Then five and thirty they named harmony, as consisting of the two cubes eight and twenty-seven, the first that rise from an odd and an even number, as also of the four numbers, six, eight, nine, and twelve, comprehending both harmonical and arithmetical proportion. Which nevertheless will be more conspicuous, being made out in a scheme to the eye.

Admit a right-angled parallelogram, A B C D, the lesser side of which A B consists of five, the longer side A C contains seven squares. Let the lesser division be unequally divided into two and three squares, marked by E; and the larger division in two unequal divisions more of three and four squares, marked by F. Thus A E F G comprehends six, E B G I nine, F G C H eight, and G I H D twelve. By this means the whole parallelogram, containing thirty-five little square areas, comprehends all the proportions of the first concords of music in the number of these little squares. For six is exceeded by eight in a sesquiterce proportion (3:4), wherein the diatessaron is comprehended. And six is exceeded by nine in a sesquialter proportion (2:3), wherein also is included the fifth. Six is exceeded by twelve in duple proportion (1:2), containing the octave; and then lastly, there is the sesquioctave proportion of a tone in eight to nine. And therefore they call that number which comprehends all these proportions harmony. This number is 35, which being multiplied by 6, the product is 210, which is the number of days, they say, which brings those infants to perfection that are born at the seventh month’s end.

13. To proceed by way of multiplication, — twice 3 make 6, and 4 times 9 thirty-six, and 8 times 27 produce 216. Thus six appears to be a perfect number, as being equal in its parts; and it is called matrimony, by reason of the mixture of the first even and odd. Moreover it is composed of the original number, which is one, of the first even number, which is two, and the first odd number, which is three. Then for 36, it is the first number which is as well quadrangular as triangular, being quadrangular from 6, and triangular from 8. The same number arises from the multiplication of the first two square numbers, 4 and 9; as also from the addition of the three cubical numbers, 1, 8, and 27, which being put together make up 36. Lastly, you have a parallelogram with unequal sides, by the multiplication of 12 by 3, or 9 by 4. Take then the numbers of the sides of all these figures, the 6 of the square, the 8 of the triangle, the 9 for the one parallelogram, and the 12 for the other; and there you will find the proportions of all the concords. For 12 to 9 will be a fourth, as nete to paramese. To eight it will prove a fifth, as nete to mese. To six it will be an octave, as nete to hypate. And the two hundred and sixteen is the cubical number proceeding from six which is its root, and so equal to its own perimeter.

14. Now these numbers aforesaid being endued with all these properties, the last of them, which is 27, has this peculiar to itself, that it is equal to all those that precede together; besides, that it is the periodical number of the days wherein the moon finishes her monthly course; the Pythagoreans make it to be the tone of all the harmonical intervals. On the other side, they call thirteen the remainder, in regard it misses a unit to be half of twenty-seven. Now that these numbers comprehend the proportions of harmonical concord, is easily made apparent. For the proportion of 2 to 1 is duple, which contains the diapason; as the proportion of 3 to 2 sesquialter, which embraces the fifth; and the proportion of 4 to 3 sesquiterce, which comprehends the diatessaron; the proportion of 9 to 3 triple, including the diapason and diapente; and that of 8 to 2 quadruple, comprehending the double diapason. Lastly, there is the sesquioctave in 8 to 9, which makes the interval of a single tone. If then the unit, which is common, be counted as well to the even as the odd numbers, the whole series will be equal to the sum of the decade. For the even numbers (1 + 2 + 4 + 8) give 15, the triangular number of five. On the other side, take the odd numbers, 1, 3, 9, and 27, and the sum is 40; by which numbers the skilful measure all musical intervals, of which they call one a diesis, and the other a tone. Which number of 40 proceeds from the force of the quaternary number by multiplication. For every one of the first four numbers being by itself multiplied by four, the products will be 4, 8, 12, 16, which being added all together make 40, comprehending all the proportions of harmony. For 16 is a sesquiterce to 12, duple to 8, and quadruple to 4. Again, 12 holds a sesquialter proportion to 8, and triple to 4. In these proportions are contained the intervals of the diatessaron, diapente, diapason, and double diapason. Moreover, the number 40 is equal to the two first tetragons and the two first cubes being taken both together. For the first tetragons are 1 and 4, the first cubes are 8 and 27, which being added together make 40. Whence it appears that the Platonic quaternary is much more perfect and fuller of variety than the Pythagoric.

15. But since the numbers proposed did not afford space sufficient for the middle intervals, therefore there was a necessity to allow larger bounds for the proportions. And now we are to tell you what those bounds and middle spaces are. And first, concerning the medieties (or mean terms); of which that which equally exceeds and is exceeded by the same number is called arithmetical; the other, which exceeds and is exceeded by the same proportional part of the extremes, is called sub-contrary. Now the extremes and the middle of an arithmetical mediety are 6, 9, 12. For 9 exceeds 6 as it is exceeded by 12, that is to say, by the number three. The extremes and middle of the sub-contrary are 6, 8, 12, where 8 exceeds 6 by 2, and 12 exceeds 8 by 4; yet 2 is equally the third of 6, as 4 is the third of 12. So that in the arithmetical mediety the middle exceeds and is exceeded by the same number; but in the sub contrary mediety, the middle term wants of one of the extremes, and exceeds the other by the same part of each extreme; for in the first 3 is the third part of the mean; but in the latter 4 and 2 are third parts each of a different extreme. Whence it is called sub-contrary. This they also call harmonic, as being that whose middle and extremes afford the first concords; that is to say, between the highest and lowermost lies the diapason, between the highest and the middle lies the diapente, and between the middle and lowermost lies the fourth or diatessaron. For suppose the highest extreme to be placed at nete and the lowermost at hypate, the middle will fall upon mese, making a fifth to the uppermost extreme, but a fourth to the lowermost. So that nete answers to 12, mese to 8, and hypate to 6.

16. Now the more readily to find out these means Eudorus hath taught us an easy method. For after you have proposed the extremities, if you take the half part of each and add them together, the product shall be the middle, alike in both duple and triple proportions, in arithmetical mediety. But as for sub-contrary mediety, in duple proportion, first having fixed the extremes, take the third part of the lesser and the half of the larger extreme, and the addition of both together shall be the middle; in triple proportion, the half of the lesser and the third part of the larger extreme shall be the mean. As for example, in triple proportion, let 6 be the least extreme, and 18 the biggest; if you take 3 which is the half of 6, and 6 which is the third part of 18, the product by addition will be 9, exceeding and exceeded by the same proportional parts of the extremes. In this manner the mediums are found out; and these are so to be disposed and placed as to fill up the duple and triple intervals. Now of these proposed numbers, some have no middle space, others have not sufficient. Being therefore so augmented that the same proportions may remain, they will afford sufficient space for the aforesaid mediums. To which purpose, instead of a unit they choose the six, as being the first number including in itself a half and third part, and so multiplying all the figures below it and above it by 6, they make sufficient room to receive the mediums, both in double and triple distances, as in the example below: —

Now Plato laid down this for a position, that the intervals of sesquialters, sesquiterces, and sesquioctaves having once arisen from these connections in the first spaces, the Deity filled up all the sesquiterce intervals with sesquioctaves, leaving a part of each, so that the interval left of the part should bear the numerical proportion of 256 to 243. From these words of Plato they were constrained to enlarge their numbers and make them bigger. Now there must be two numbers following in order in sesquioctave proportion. But the six does not contain a sesquioctave; and if it should be cut up into parts and the units bruised into fractions, this would strangely perplex the study of these things. Therefore the occasion itself advised multiplication; so that, as in changes in the musical scale, the whole scheme was extended in agreement with the first (or base) number. Eudorus therefore, imitating Crantor, made choice of 384 for his first number, being the product of 64 multiplied by 6; which way of proceeding the number 64 led them to, having for its sesquioctave 72. But it is more agreeable to the words of Plato to introduce the half of 384. For the remainder of that will bear a sesquioctave proportion in those numbers which Plato mentions, 256 and 243, if we make use of 192 for the first number. But if the same number be made choice of doubled, the remainder (or leimma) will have the same proportion, but the numbers will be doubled, i.e. 512 and 486. For 256 is in sesquiterce proportion to 192, as 512 to 384. Neither was Crantor’s reduction of the proportions to this number without reason, which made his followers willing to pursue it; in regard that 64 is both the square of the first cube, and the cube of the first square; and being multiplied by 3, the first odd and trigonal, and the first perfect and sesquialter number, it produces 192, which also has its sesquioctave, as we shall demonstrate.

17. But first of all, we shall better understand what this leimma or remainder is and what was the opinion of Plato, if we do but call to mind what was frequently bandied in the Pythagorean schools. For interval in music is all that space which is comprehended by two sounds varied in pitch. Of which intervals, that which is called a tone is the full excess of diapente above diatessaron; and this being divided into two parts, according to the opinion of the musicians, makes two intervals, both which they call a semitone. But the Pythagoreans, despairing to divide a tone into equal parts, and therefore perceiving the two divisions to be unequal, called the lesser leimma (or defect), as being lesser than the half. Therefore some there are who make the diatessaron, which is one of the concords, to consist of two tones and a half; others, of two tones and leimma. In which case sense seems to govern the musicians, and demonstration the mathematicians. The proof by demonstration is thus made out. For it is certain from the observation of instruments that the diapason has double proportion, the diapente a sesquialter, the diatessaron a sesquiterce, and the tone a sesquioctave proportion. Now the truth of this will easily appear upon examination, by hanging two weights double in proportion to two strings, or by making two pipes of equal hollowness double in length, the one to the other. For the bigger of the pipes will yield the deep sound, as hypate to nete; and of the two strings, that which is extended by the double weight will be acuter than the other, as nete to hypate; and this is a diapason. In the same manner two longitudes or ponderosities, being taken in the proportion of 3: 2, will produce a diapente; and three to four will yield a diatessaron; of which the latter carries a sesquiterce, the former a sesquialter proportion. But if the same inequality of weight or length be so ordered as nine to eight, it will produce a tonic interval, no perfect concord, but harmonical enough; in regard the strings being struck one after another will yield so many musical and pleasing sounds, but all together a dull and ungrateful noise. But if they are touched in consort, either single or together, thence a delightful melody will charm the ear. Nor is all this less demonstrable by reason. For in music, the diapason is composed of the diapente and diatessaron. But in numbers, the duple is compounded of the sesquialter and sesquiterce. For 12 is a sesquiterce to 9, but a sesquialter to 8, and a duple to 6. Therefore is the duple proportion composed of the sesquialter and sesquiterce, as the diapason of the diapente and diatessaron. For here the diapente exceeds the diatessaron by a tone; there the sesquialter exceeds the sesquiterce by a sesquioctave. Whence it is apparent that the diapason carries a double proportion, the diapente a sesquialter, the diatessaron a sesquiterce, and the tone a sesquioctave.

18. This being thus demonstrated, let us see whether the sesquioctave will admit a division into two equal parts; which if it will not do, neither will a tone. However, in regard that 9 and 8, which make the first sesquioctave, have no middle interval, but both being doubled, the space that falls between causes two intervals, thence it is apparent that, if those distances were equal, the sesquioctave also might be divided into equal parts. Now the double of 9 is 18, that of 8 is 16, the intermedium 17; by which means one of the intervals becomes larger, the other lesser; for the first is that of 18 to 17, the second that of 17 to 16. Thus the sesquioctave proportion not being to be otherwise than unequally divided, consequently neither will the tone admit of an equal division. So that neither of these two sections of a divided tone is to be called a semitone, but according as the mathematicians name it, the remainder. And this is that which Plato means, when he says, that God, having filled up the sesquiterces with sesquioctaves, left a part of each; of which the proportion is the same as of 256 to 243. For admit a diatessaron in two numbers comprehending sesquiterce proportion, that is to say, in 256 and 192; of which two numbers, let the lesser 192 be applied to the lowermost extreme, and the bigger number 256 to the uppermost extreme of the tetrachord. Whence we shall demonstrate that, this space being filled up by two sesquioctaves, such an interval remains as lies between the numbers 256 and 243. For the lower string being forced a full tone upward, which is a sesquioctave, it makes 216; and being screwed another tone upward it makes 243. Which 243 exceeds 216 by 27, and 216 exceeds 192 by 24. And then again of these two numbers, 27 is the eighth of 216, and 24 the eighth of 192. So the biggest of these two numbers is a sesquioctave to the middle, and the middle to the least; and the distance from the least to the biggest, that is from 192 to 243, consists of two tones filled up with two sesquioctaves. Which being subtracted, the remaining interval of the whole between 243 and 256 is 13, for which reason they called this number the remainder. And thus I am apt to believe the meaning and opinion of Plato to be most exactly explained in these numbers.

19. Others, placing the two extremes of the diatessaron, the acute part in 288, and the lower sound in 216, in all the rest observe the same proportions, only that they take the remainder between the two middle intervals. For the base, being forced up a whole tone, makes 243; and the upper note, screwed downward a full tone, begets 256. Moreover 243 carries a sesquioctave proportion to 216, and 288 to 256; so that each of the intervals contains a full tone, and the residue is that which remains between 243 and 256, which is not a semitone, but something less. For 288 exceeds 256 by 32, and 243 exceeds 216 by 27; but 256 exceeds 243 by 13. Now this excess is less than half of the former. So it is plain that the diatessaron consists of two tones and the residue, not of two tones and a half. Let this suffice for the demonstration of these things. Nor is it a difficult thing to believe, by what has been already said, wherefore Plato, after he had asserted that the intervals of sesquialter, sesquiterce, and sesquioctave had arisen, when he comes to fill up the intervals of sesquiterces with sesquioctaves, makes not the least mention of sesquialters; for that the sesquialter is soon filled up, by adding the sesquiterce to the sesquioctave, or the sesquioctave to the sesquiterce.

20. Having therefore shown the manner how to fill up the intervals, and to place and dispose the medieties, had never any person taken the same pains before, I should have recommended the further consideration of it to the recreation of your fancies; but in regard that several most excellent musicians have made it their business to unfold these mysteries with a diligence more than usually exact, — more especially Crantor, Clearchus, and Theodorus, all born in Soli, — it shall suffice only to show how these men differed among themselves. For Theodorus, varying from the other two, and not observing two distinct files or rows of numbers, but placing the duples and triples in a direct line one before another, grounds himself upon that division of the substance which Plato calls the division in length, making two parts (as it were) out of one, not four out of two. Then he says, that the interposition of the mediums ought to take place in that manner, to avoid the trouble and confusion which must arise from transferring out of the first duple into the first triple the intervals which are ordained for the supplement of both. . . . But as for those who take Crantor’s part, they so dispose their numbers as to place planes with planes, tetragons with tetragons, cubes with cubes, opposite to one another, not taking them in file, but alternatively odd to even. [Here is some great defect in the original.]

21. . . . Which, being in themselves permanently the same, afford the form and species; but being subject to corporeal division, they become the matter and subject to receive the other’s impression, the common mixture being completed out of both. Now the indivisible substance, which is always one and the same, is not to be thought to be incapable of division by reason of its smallness, like the most minute of bodies, called atoms. But as it is unmixed, and not to be any way affected, but pure and altogether of one sort, it is said not to consist of parts, but to be indivisible. By means of which purity, when it comes in any manner whatsoever to approach and gently touch compounded divisible and differing substances, all their variety ceases and they crowd together into one habit by sympathy and similitude. If now any one will call that substance which admits corporeal separation matter, as a nature subject to the former and partaking of it, the use of that equivocal term will nothing disadvantage our discourse. But they are under a mistake that believe the corporeal to be blended with the indivisible matter. First, for that Plato does not here make use of any one of its names; whereas in other places he calls it the receptacle and nurse, capable of both receiving and fostering the vast infinity of created beings; not divisible among bodies, but rather the body itself parted and divided into single individuals. Then again, what difference would there be between the creation of the world and that of the soul, if the composition of each proceeded from both matter and the intelligible essence? Certainly Plato, as endeavoring to separate the generation of the body from that of the soul, tells us that the corporeal part was by God seated and deposited within it, and that it was outwardly covered and enveloped by it; and after he had thus wrought the soul to its perfection out of proportion, he then proceeds to this argument concerning matter, of which he had no occasion to make mention before when he was producing the soul, as being that which had not its existence from matter.

22. The same may be said against the followers of Posidonius. For they seem not altogether to separate the soul from matter; but imagining the essence of limitations to be divisible in reference to bodies, and intermixing it with the intelligible essence, they defined the soul to be an idea (or essential form) of that which has extension in every direction, subsisting in an harmonical proportion of numbers. For (they say) all mathematical objects are disposed between the first intelligible and sensible beings; and since the soul contains the sempiternal nature of things intelligible and the pathetic nature of things subjected to sense, it seems but rational that it should consist of a substance between both. But they were ignorant that God, when the soul was already brought to perfection, afterwards making use of the limitations of bodies to form and shape the matter, confined and environed the dissipated and fleeting substance within the compass of certain surfaces composed of triangles adapted together. And it is even more absurd to make the soul an idea. For the soul is always in motion; the idea is incapable of motion; the one never to be mixed with that which is subjected to sense, the other wrought into the substance of the body. Moreover, God could be said only to imitate an idea, as his pattern; but he was the artificer of the soul, as of a work of perfection. Now enough has been already said to show that Plato does not assert number to be the substance of the soul, only that it is ordered and proportioned by number.

23. However this is a common argument against both the former opinions, that neither in corporeal limits nor in numbers there is the least footstep or appearance of that power by which the soul assumes to itself to judge of what is subject to sense. For it was the participation of the intelligible principle that endued it with understanding and the perceiving faculty. But as for opinion, belief, imagination, and its being affected with qualities relating to the body, no man could ever dream that they proceeded simply either from units, or lines, or surfaces. For not only the souls of mortals have a power to judge of what is subject to sense; but the soul of the world also, says Plato, “when it revolves upon itself, and happens once to touch upon any fluid and roving substance or upon any thing indivisible, then being moved throughout its whole self, it gives notice with what this or that thing is identical, to what heterogeneal, and in what relations especially and in what manner it happens to be and to be affected towards each created thing.” Here he gives at the same time an intimation of the ten Categories or Predicaments; but afterwards he gives us a clearer manifestation of these things. “For when true reason,” says he, “is fixed upon what is subject to sense, and the circle of the Other, observing a just and equal motion, conveys its intelligence to the whole soul, then both opinion and belief become steadfast and certain; on the other side, when it is settled upon ratiocination, and the circle of the Same, turning readily and easily, furnishes its intimations, then of necessity knowledge arrives to perfection. And indeed, whoever shall affirm that any thing in which these two operations take place is any thing besides a soul, may deservedly be thought to speak any thing rather than the truth.”

From whence then does the soul enjoy this motion whereby it comprehends what is subject to sense, different from that other intelligible motion which ends in knowledge? This is a difficult task to resolve, unless we steadfastly assert that Plato here did not compose the soul, so singly considered, but the soul of the world also, of the parts above mentioned, — of the more worthy indivisible substance, and of the less worthy divisible in reference to bodies. And this soul of the world is no other than that motion which gives heat and vigor to thought and fancy, and sympathizes with what is subject to sense, not created, but existing from eternity, like the other soul. For Nature, which had the power of understanding, had also the power of opining. But the intelligible power is subject neither to motion nor affection, being established upon a substance that is still the same. The other is movable and fleeting, as being engaged to an unstable, fluctuating, and disunited matter. In regard the sensible substance was so far from any order, that it was without shape and boundless. So that the power which is fixed in this was capable of producing no clear and well-grounded notions and no certain or well-ordered movements, but only sleepy dreams and deliriums, which amuse and trouble corporeal stupidity; unless by accident they lighted upon the more worthy substance. For it was in the middle between the sensible and discerning faculty, and had a nature conformable and agreeable to both; from the sensible apprehending substance, and borrowing from judgment its power of discerning things intelligible.

24. And this the express words of Plato declare. “For this is my opinion,” saith he, “in short, that being, place, and generation were three distinct things even before the heavens were created.” By place he means matter, as being the seat and receptacle; by being or existence, the intelligible nature; and by generation, the world not being yet created, he designs only that substance which was subject to change and motion, disposed between the forming cause and the thing formed, transmitting hither those shapes and figures which were there contrived and moulded. For which reason it was called divisible; there being a necessity of distributing sense to the sensitive, and imagination to the imaginative faculty. For the sensitive motion, being proper to the soul, directs itself to that which is outwardly sensible. As for the understanding, it was fixed and immovable of itself, but being settled in the soul and becoming its lord and governor, it turns upon itself, and accomplishes a circular motion about that which is always permanent, chiefly laboring to apply itself to the eternally durable substance. With great difficulty therefore did they admit a conjunction, till the divisible at length intermixing with the indivisible, and the restlessly hurried with the sleepy and motionless, constrained the Other to meet and join with the Same. Yet the Other was not motion, as neither was the Same stability, but the principle of distinction and diversity. For both the one and the other proceed from a different principle; the Same from the unit, the Other from the duad; and these were first intermixed with the soul, being fastened and bound together by number, proportion, and harmonical mediums; so that the Other being riveted into the Same begets diversity and disagreement; and the Same being fermented into the Other produces order. And this is apparent from the first powers of the soul, which are judgment and motion. Motion immediately shows itself in the heavens, giving us an example of diversity in identity by the circumvolution of the fixed stars, and of identity in diversity by the order of the planets. For in them the Same bears the chiefest sway; in terrestrial bodies, the contrary principle. Judgment has two principles, — understanding from the Same, to judge of things in general, and sense from the Other, to judge of things in particular. Reason is a mixture of both, becoming intellect in reference to things intelligible, and opinion in things subject to sense; making use of the interdisposed organs of imagination and memory, of which these in the Same produce the Other, and those in the Other make the Same. For understanding is the motion of the considerative faculty about that which is permanent and stable. Opinion is a continuance of the perceptive faculty upon that which is continually in motion. But as for fancy or imagination, being a connection of opinion with sense, the Same has placed it in the memory; and the Other moves it again in the difference between past and present, touching at the same time upon diversity and identity.

25. But now let us take a draught of the corresponding composition of the soul from the structure of the body of the universe. There we find fire and earth, whose nature is such as not to admit of mixture one with another but with great difficulty, or rather is altogether obstinately refractory to mixture and constancy. God therefore, placing air and water in the middle between both, — the air next the fire, the water next the earth, — first of all tempered the middlemost one with another, and next, by the assistance of these two, he brought the two extreme elements not only to mix with the middlemost, but also to a mutual closure or conjunction between themselves. Then he drew together those contrary powers and opposing extremes, the Same and the Other, not immediately, the one adjoining to the other, but placing other substances between; the indivisible next the Same, and the divisible next the Other, disposing each to each in convenient order, and mixing the extremes with the middlemost. After which manner he interweaved and tissued the whole into the form and composition of the soul, completing, as far as it was possible, similitude out of things different and various, and one out of many. Therefore it is alleged by some, that Plato erroneously affirmed the nature of the Other to be an enemy to mixture, as being not only capable to receive it, but a friend of change. Whereas that should have been rather said of the nature of the Same; which, being stable and an utter adversary to mutability, is so far from an easy and willing condescension to mixture, that it flies and abhors it, to the end it may preserve itself pure and free from alteration. But they who make these objections against Plato betray their own ignorance, not understanding that the Same is the idea (or essential form) of those things that always continue in the same state and condition, and that the Other is the idea of those things which are subject to be variously affected; and that it is the peculiar nature of the one to disjoin and separate into many parts whatever it happens to lay hold upon, and of the other to cement and assimilate scattered substances, till they resume one particular form and efficacy.

26. And these are the powers and virtues of the soul of the universe. And when they once enter into the organs of corruptible bodies, being themselves incorruptible, there the form of the binary and boundless principle shows itself most briskly, while that of the unmixed and purer principle lies as it were dormant in obscurity. And thus it happens, that a man shall rarely observe any human passion or motion of the understanding, void of reason, where there shall not something appear either of desire or emulation, joy or grief. Several philosophers therefore will have the passions to be so many sorts of reasonings, seeing that desire, grief, and anger are all the effects of judgment. Others allege the virtues themselves to be derived from passions; fortitude depending on fear, temperance on voluptuousness, and justice on love of gain. Now the soul being both speculative and practical, contemplating as well generals as particulars, and seeming to comprehend the one by the assistance of the intellect and the other by the aid of sense, common reason, which encounters the Same in the Other and the Other in the Same, endeavors by certain limits and distinctions to separate one from many and the divisible from the indivisible; but she cannot accomplish her design nor be purely in one or the other, in regard the principles are so oddly interwoven and intermixed and confusedly huddled together.

For this reason did God constitute a receptacle for the Same and the Other, out of the indivisible and divisible substance, to the end there might be order in variety. Now this was generation. For without this the Same could have no variety, and therefore no motion or generation; and the Other could have no order, and therefore no consistence or generation. For should we grant the Same to be different from the Other, and the Other to be the Same with itself, such a commixture would produce nothing generative, but would want a third something, like matter, to receive both and be disposed of by both. And this is that matter which God first composed, when he bounded the movable nature of bodies by the steadfastness of things intelligible.

27. Now then, as voice, merely voice, is only an insignificant and brutish noise, but speech is the expression of the mind by significant utterance; as harmony consists of sounds and intervals, — a sound being always one and the same, and an interval being the difference and diversity of sounds, while both being mixed together produce air and melody; — thus the passive nature of the soul was without limits and unstable, but afterwards became determinate, when limits were set and a certain form was given to the divisible and manifold variety of motion. Thus having comprised the Same and the Other, by the similitudes and dissimilitudes of numbers which produce concord out of disagreement, it becomes the life of the world, sober and prudent, harmony itself, and reason overruling necessity mixed with persuasion. This necessity is by most men called fate or destiny, by Empedocles friendship and discord, by Heraclitus the opposite straining harmony of the world, as of a bow or harp, by Parmenides light and darkness, by Anaxagoras mind and infinity, by Zoroaster God and Daemon, naming one Oromasdes, the other Arimanius. Though as for Euripides, he makes use of the disjunctive erroneously for the copulative, where he says,

•Jove, whether he be

•Necessity, that Nature’s force controls,

•Or the intelligence of human souls.

For, indeed, the powers which bear dominion over the universe are necessity and wisdom. This is that therefore which the Egyptians intimate in their fables, feigning that, when Horus was punished and dismembered, he bequeathed his spirit and blood to his father, but his flesh and his fat to his mother. There is no part of the soul which remains pure and unmixed, or separate from the rest; for, according to the opinion of Heraclitus, “harmony latent is of greater value than that which is visible,” as being that wherein the blending Deity concealed and sunk all varieties and dissimilitudes. Nevertheless, there appears in the irrational part a turbulent and boisterous temerity; in the rational part, an orderly and well-marshalled prudence; in the sensitive part, the constraint of necessity; but in the understanding, entire and perfect command of itself. The limiting and bounding power sympathizes with the whole and the indivisible, by reason of the nearness of their relations; on the other side, the dividing power fixes itself upon particulars, by virtue of the divisible substance; and the whole rejoices at the mutation of the Same by means of the Other, as occasion requires. In the like manner, the various inclinations of men to virtue and vice, to pleasure and toil, as also the enthusiasms and raptures of lovers, the combats of honor with lustful desires, plainly demonstrate the mixture of the divine and impassible with the moral and corporeal part; of which Plato himself calls the one concupiscence of pleasures, natural to ourselves; the other an opinion introduced from without, aspiring to the chiefest good. For passible qualities of the soul arise from herself; but she participates of understanding, as being infused from without, by the more worthy principle.

28. Nor is the celestial nature privileged from this double society and communion. For sometimes it is seen to incline one way or the other, but it is set right again by the more powerful revolution of the Same, and governs the world. Nay, there shall come a time, as it has happened already, when the world’s moving wisdom shall grow dull and drowsy, drowned in oblivion of its own duty; while that which is familiar and agreeable to the body from the beginning draws and winds back the righthand motion of the universe, causing the wheels to go slow and heavy. Yet shall it not be able to dash in pieces the whole movement, for that the better part, rousing and recollecting herself and observing the pattern and exemplar of God, shall with his aid reduce all things again into their former order. Thus it is demonstrable by many proofs, that the soul was not altogether the workmanship of the Deity, but that having in itself a certain portion of innate evil, it was by him digested and beautified who limited infinity by unity, to the end it might be a substance within the compass of certain limits; intermixing order and mutation, variety and resemblance, by the force of the Same and the Other; and lastly working into all these, as far as it was possible, a mutual community and friendship by the assistance of numbers and harmony.

29. Concerning which things, although you have heard frequent discourses, and have likewise read several arguments and disputes committed to writing upon the same subjects, it will not be amiss for me also to give a short account, after a brief repetition of Plato’s own words. “God,” said he, “in the first place withdrew one part from the whole; which done, he took away the double of that; then a third part, sesquialter in proportion to the second, and triple to the first; then a fourth part, double to the second; next a fifth part, being the triple of the third; then a sixth, eight times the first; and lastly a seventh, being twenty-seven times the first. This done, he filled up the duple and triple intervals, retrenching also from thence certain other particles, and placing them in the midst of those intervals; so that in every interval there might be two medieties, the one exceeding and being exceeded by one and the same part of the extremes, the other exceeding and being exceeded by the same number. Now in regard that from these connections in the first spaces there arose the intervals of sesquialters, sesquiterces, and sesquioctaves, he filled up all the sesquiterce intervals with sesquioctaves, leaving a part of each, so that the interval left of the part might bear the numerical proportion of 256 to 243.”

Here the question will be first concerning the quantity, next concerning the order, and in the third place concerning the force and virtue of the numbers. As to the quantity, we are to consider which he takes in the double and triple intervals. As to the order, whether they are to be placed in one row, according to the direction of Theodorus, or (as Crantor will have them) in the form of a Λ, placing the unit at the top, and the duples and triples apart by themselves in two several files. Lastly, we are to examine of what use and virtue they are in the structure and composition of the soul.

30. As to the first, we shall relinquish the opinion of those who affirm that it is enough, in proportions, to consider the nature of the intervals, and of the medieties which fill up their vacancies; and that the demonstration can be made out for any numbers whatsoever that have spaces sufficient to receive the aforesaid proportions. For this being granted, it makes the demonstration obscure, without the help of schemes, and drives us from another theory, which carries with it a delight not unbecoming philosophy.

Beginning therefore from the unit, let us place the duples and triples apart; and there will be on the one side, 2, 4, 8; on the other 3, 9, 27; — seven numbers in all, proceeding forward by multiplication four steps from the unit, which is assumed as the common base. . . . For not only here, but upon other occasions, the sympathy of the quaternary number with the septenary is apparent. There is this peculiar to that tetractys or quaternary number thirty six, so much celebrated by the Pythagoreans, which is more particularly worthy admiration, — that it is composed of the first four even numbers and the first four odd numbers; and it is the fourth connection made of numbers put together in order. The first connection is of one and two; the second of odd numbers. . . . For placing the unit, which is common to both, before, he first takes eight and then twenty-seven, as it were pointing out with the finger where to place each particular sort.

[These places are so depraved in the original, that the sense is lost.]

But it belongs to others to explain these things more accurately and distinctly; while we content ourselves with only what remains, as peculiarly proper to the subject in hand.

31. For it was not out of vain-glory, to boast his skill in the mathematical sciences, that Plato inserted in a treatise of natural philosophy this discourse of harmonical and arithmetical medieties, but believing them both apt and convenient to demonstrate the structure and composition of the soul. For some there are who seek these proportions in the swift motions of the spheres of the planets; others rather in the distances, others in the magnitude of the stars; others, more accurate and nice in their enquiry, seek for the same proportions in the diameters of the epicycles; as if the Supreme Architect, for the sake of these, had adapted the soul, divided into seven parts, to the celestial bodies. Many also there are, who hither transfer the inventions of the Pythagoreans, tripling the distances of bodies from the middle. This is done by placing the unit next the fire; three next the Antichthon, or earth which is opposite to our earth; nine next the Earth; 27 next the Moon; 81 next to Mercury; 243 upon Venus; and 729 upon the Sun. The last 729 is both a tetragonal and cubical number, whence it is, that they also call the sun a tetragon and a cube. By this way of tripling they also reduce the other stars to proportion. But these people may be thought to dote and to wander very much from reason, if there by any use of geometrical demonstration, since by their mistakes we find that the most probable proofs proceed from thence; and although geometers do not always make out their positions exactly, yet they approach the nearest to truth when they say that the diameter of the sun, compared with the diameter of the earth, bears the proportion of 12 to 1; while the diameter of the earth to that of the moon carries a triple proportion. And for that which appears to be the least of the fixed stars, the diameter of it is no less than the third part of the diameter of the earth, and the whole globe of the earth to the whole globe of the moon is as twenty-seven to one. The diameters of Venus and the earth bear a duple, the globes or spheres of both an octave proportion. The width of the shadow which causes an eclipse holds a triple proportion to the diameter of the moon; and the deviation of the moon from the middle of the signs, either to the one or the other side, is a twelfth part. Her positions as to the sun, either in triangular or quadrangular distances, give her the form when she appears as in the first quarter and gibbous; but when she comes to be quite round, that is, when she has run through half the signs, she then makes (as it were) a kind of diapason harmony with six notes. But in regard the motions of the sun are slowest when he arrives at the solstices, and swiftest when he comes to the equinoxes, by which he takes from the day or adds to the night, the proportion holds thus. For the first thirty days after the winter solstice, he adds to the day a sixth part of the length whereby the longest night exceeds the shortest; the next thirty days he adds a third part; to all the rest till the equinox he adds a half; and so by sextuple and triple distances he makes even the irregularity of time.

Moreover, the Chaldaeans make the spring to hold the proportion of a diatessaron to autumn; of a diapente to the winter, and of a diapason to the summer. But if Euripides rightly divides the year, where he says,

•Four months the parching heats of summer reign,

•And four of hoary winter’s cold complain;

•Two months doth vernal pride the fields array,

•And two months more to autumn tribute pay,

then the seasons shall be said to change in octave proportion.

Others there are, who fancy the earth to be in the lowest string of the harp, called proslambanomenos; and so proceeding, they place the moon in hypate, Mercury and Venus in the diatoni and lichani; the sun they likewise place in mese, as in the midst of the diapason, a fifth above the earth and a fourth from the sphere of the fixed stars.

32. But neither doth this pleasant conceit of the latter come near the truth, neither do the former attain perfect accuracy. However, they who will not allow the latter to depend upon Plato’s sentiments will yet grant the former to partake of musical proportions; so that, there being five tetrachords, called ὑπάτων, μέσων, συνημμένων, διεζευγμένων, and ὑπεϱβολαίων, in these five distances they place all the planets; making the first tetrachord from the Moon to the Sun and the planets which move with the Sun, that is, Mercury and Venus; the next from the Sun to the fiery planet of Mars; the third between this and Jupiter; the fourth from thence to Saturn; and the fifth from Saturn to the sphere of the fixed stars. So that the sounds and notes which bound the five tetrachords bear the same proportion with the intervals of the planets. Still further, we know that the ancient musicians had two notes called hypate, three called nete, one mese, and one paramese, thus confining their scale to seven standing notes, equal in number to the number of the planets. But the moderns, adding the proslambanomenos, which is a full tone in descent from hypate, have multiplied the scheme into the double diapason, and thereby confounded the natural order of the concords; for the diapente happens to be before the diatessaron, with the addition of the whole tone in the bass. Whereas Plato makes his addition in the upper part; for in his Republic he says, that every one of the eight spheres rolls about a Siren which is fixed upon each of the tuneful globes, and that they all sing one counterpoint without diversity of modulation, taking every one their peculiar concords, which together complete a melodious consort.

These Sirens sing for their pleasure divine and heavenly tunes, and accompany their sacred circuit and dance with an harmonious song of eight notes. Nor was there necessity of a fuller chorus, in regard that within the confines of eight notes lay the first bounds and limits of all duple and triple proportions; the unit being added to both the even and odd numbers. And certainly from hence it was that the ancients raised their invention of nine Muses; of which eight were employed in celestial affairs, as Plato said; the ninth was to take care of things terrestrial, and to reduce and reform the inequality and confusion of error and jarring variance.

33. Now then consider whether the soul does not roll and turn and manage the heavens and the celestial bodies by means of those harmonious concords and equal motions that are wrought and fermented within her, being herself most wise and most just. And such she became by virtue of harmonical proportions, whose images representing things incorporeal are imprinted into the discernible and visible parts and bodies of the world. But the chief and most predominating power is visibly mixed in the soul, which renders her harmonious and obedient to herself, the other parts unanimously yielding to her as the most supreme and the divinest part of all. For the Sovereign Artificer and Creator finding a strange disorder and erroneous confusion in the motions of the decomposed and unruly soul, which was still at variance with herself, some things he divided and separated, others he brought together and reconciled to a mutual sympathy, making use of harmony and numbers. By virtue of which, the slightest and meanest of insensible substances, even stocks and stones, the rinds of trees, and sometimes even the rennets of beasts, by various mixtures, compositions, and temperatures, may become the charming objects of the sight, or afford most pleasing perfumes and wholesome medicaments for the relief of mankind, or be wrought and hollowed to send forth pleasing musical sounds. And for this reason it was that Zeno of Citium encouraged and persuaded youth to frequent the theatres, there to observe the variety of melodious sounds that proceeded from horns or cornets, wooden hautboys, flutes and reeds, or any other musical instruments to which the contrivance of art had rightly applied the reason of number and proportion. Not that we will here maintain, with the Pythagoreans, that all things resemble number, for that requires a long discourse to prove it. But where mutual society and sympathy arise out of discord and dissimilitude, that the cause of this is moderation and order, produced by the power of harmony and number, was a thing not concealed even from the poets. And these give to what is friendly and kind the epithet “evenly fitted;” while, on the other side, men of rugged and malicious dispositions they called “unevenly tempered,” as if enmity and discord were nothing but a sort of a disproportion. For this reason, he who writes Pindar’s elegy gives him this encomium,

To foreigners agreeable, to citizens a friend;

the poet plainly inferring complacency of humor and the aptitude of a person to fit himself to all tempers to be an excellency aspiring to virtue itself. Which Pindar himself also testifies, saying of Cadmus, that he listened to true music from Apollo himself. Nor must we believe that the theologists, who were the most ancient philosophers, ordered the pictures and statues of the Gods to be made with musical instruments in their hands because they thought the Gods no better than pipers or harpers, but to signify that no work was so becoming to the Gods as accord and harmony.

Now then, as it would be absurd and ridiculous for any man to search for sesquiterces, sesquialters, and duples in the neck, or belly, or sides of a lute or harp, — though every one of these must also be allowed their symmetry of length and thickness, — the harmony and proportion of concords being to be sought for in the sound; so it is most probable that the bodies of the stars, the distances of spheres, and the swiftness of the motions and revolutions, have their sundry proportions, as well one to another as to the whole fabric, like instruments of music well set and tuned, though the measure of the quantity be unknown to us. However, we are to imagine that the principal effect and efficacy of these numbers and proportions, which the Supreme Architect made use of, is that same agreement, harmony, and consent of the soul with itself, by means of which she replenished the heavens themselves, when she came to actuate and perform her office there, with so many infinite beauties, and by which she governs the earth by virtue of the several seasons, and other alterations wisely and artificially measured and varied as well for the generation as preservation of all terrestrial productions.

Summary of the birth of the spirit

1. The treatise entitled On the Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus reports what all the contentions of Plato and the Platonists have been and also introduces certain geometrical proportions and similarities pertaining, as he thinks, to his theory of the soul and particularly musical and arithmetical speculations.

2. He asserts, moreover, that matter was shaped by soul and ascribes a soul to the universe but ascribes to each living being also the one that manages it; and he represents this as being in one way ungenerated and in another subject to generation but matter as everlasting and given shape by the divinity through the agency of the soul and evil as being in origin an excrescence of matter, in order, he says, that the divinity might not be thought responsible for evil things.

3. He says that Posidonius and his followers did not remove the soul far from matter but, having taken divisible in the case of bodies to mean the being of the limits and having mixed these with the intelligible, they declared the soul to be the idea of what is everyway extended, herself constituted according to number that embraces concord, for (they said) the mathematicals have been ranked between the primary intelligibles and the perceptibles and it is an appropriate thing for the soul likewise, possessing as she does everlastingness with the intelligible and passivity with the perceptive, to have her being in the middle. In fact these people too failed to notice that only later, after the soul has already been produced, does god use the limits of the bodies for the shaping of matter by bounding and circumscribing its dispersiveness and incoherence with the surfaces made of the triangles fitted together. What is more absurd, however, is to make the soul an idea, for the former is perpetually in motion but the latter is immobile and the latter cannot mix with the perceptible but the former has been coupled with body; and, besides, gods relation to the idea is that of imitator to pattern but his relation to the soul is that of artificer to finished product. As to number, however, it has been stated above that Plato regards the substance of soul not as number either but as being ordered by number.

4. Besides both of these, moreover, there is equally the argument that neither in limits nor in numbers is there any trace of that faculty with which the soul naturally forms judgments of what is perceptible. Intelligence and intelligibility have been produced in her by participation in the intelligible principle; but opinions and beliefs, that is to say what is imaginative and impressionable by the qualities in body, one could not conceive [...] as arising in her simply from units or from lines or surfaces. Now, not only do the souls of mortal beings have a faculty that is cognizant of the perceptible; but he says that the soul of the circle also as she is revolving upon herself, whenever she touches anything that has being either dispersed or indivisible, is moved throughout herself and states of anything’s being the same and different with regard to whatever it is so precisely the respect and context and manner in which even the things that come to be happen to be or to have as attribute either of these in relation to each. As in these words he is simultaneously giving an outline of the ten categories too, in those that follow he states the case more clearly still, for he says: “Whenever true discourse is concerning itself about the perceptible and the circle of difference running aright conveys the message through all its soul, there arise opinions and beliefs steadfast and true; but, whenever on the other hand again it is concerned about the rational and the circle of sameness running smoothly gives the information, knowledge is of necessity produced; and, if anyone ever calls by another name than soul that one of existing things in which these two come to be, he will be speaking anything but the truth.” Whence, then, did the soul get this motion that can apprehend what is perceptible and form opinions of it, a motion different from that which is intelligible and issues in knowledge? It is difficult to say without steadfastly maintaining that in the present passage he is constructing not soul in the absolute sense but the soul of the universe out of being that is already available, the superior, that is to say indivisible, and the inferior, which he has called divisible in the case of bodies, this latter being none other than the opinionative and imaginative motion sensitive of the perceptibles, not brought into being but having subsisted everlastingly just like the former. For nature possessing intellectuality possessed the opinionative faculty also, the former, however, immobile and impassive and settled about the being that always remains fixed but the latter divisible and erratic inasmuch as it was in contact with matter which was in motion and dispersion. The fact is that the perceptible had not got any portion of order but was amorphous and indefinite; and the faculty stationed about this was one having neither articulate opinions nor motions that were all orderly, but most of them were dreamlike and deranged and were disturbing corporeality save in so far as it would by chance encounter that which is the better, for it was intermediate between the two and had a nature sensitive and akin to both, with its perceptivity laying hold on matter and with its discernment on the intelligibles.

5. In terms that go something like this Plato too states the case clearly, for he says: “Let this be the account rendered in summation as reckoned from my calculation, that real existence and space and becoming were three and distinct even before heaven came to be.” Now, it is matter that he also calls space, as he sometimes calls it abode and receptacle, and the intelligible that he calls real existence; and what he calls becoming, the universe not yet having come to be, is nothing other than that being involved in changes and motions which, ranged between what makes impressions and what receives them, disperses in this world the semblances from that world yonder. For this very reason it was called divisible and also because it is necessary for that which is perceiving and that which is forming mental images to be divided in correspondence with what is perceptible and with what is imaginable and to be coextensive with them, for the motion of sense-perception, which is the soul’s own, moves towards what is perceptible without but the intelligence, while it was abiding and immobile all by itself, upon having got into the soul and taken control makes her turn around to him and with her accomplishes about that which always remains fixed the circular motion most closely in contact with real existence. This is also why the union of them proved to be a difficult fusion, mixing the divisibility of the indivisibles and the thorough transience of the utterly immobile and constraining difference to unite with sameness. Difference is not motion, however, as sameness is not rest either, but the principle of differentiation and dissimilitude. In fact, each of the two derives from another of two principles, sameness from the one and difference from the dyad; and it is first here in the soul that they have been commingled, bound together by numbers and ratios and harmonious means, and that difference come to be in sameness produces differentiation but sameness in difference order, as is clear in the case of the soul’s primary faculties. These are the faculties of discernment and motivity. Now, directly in the heaven motion exhibits diversity in identity by the revolution of the fixed stars and identity in diversity by the order of the planets, for in the former sameness predominates but its opposite in the things about the earth. Discernment, however, has two principles, intelligence proceeding from sameness to uni versais and sense-perception from difference to particulars; and reason is a blend of both, becoming intellection in the case of the intelligibles and opinion in the case of the perceptibles and employing between them mental images and memories as instruments, of which the former are produced by difference in sameness and the latter by sameness in difference. For intellection is motion of the mover about what remains fixed, and opinion fixity of what is perceiving about what is in motion; but mental imagining, which is a combination of opinion with sense-perception, is brought to a stop in memory by sameness and by difference again set moving in the distinction of past and present, being in contact with diversity and identity at once.

6. The construction that was carried out in the case of the body of the universe must be taken as a likeness of the proportion with which he regulated the soul. In the former case, because there were extremes, fire and earth, of a nature difficult to blend together or rather utterly immiscible and incohesive, he accordingly put between them air in front of the fire and water in front of the earth and blended these with each other first and then by means of these commingled and conjoined those extremes with them and each other. And in the latter case again he united sameness and difference, contrary forces and antagonistic extremes, not just by themselves; but by first interposing other beings, the indivisible in front of sameness and in front of difference the divisible, as each of the one pair is in a way akin to one of the other, and by then making an additional blend with those between after they had been commingled he thus fabricated the whole structure of the soul, from what were various making it as nearly uniform and from what were many as nearly single as was feasible.

On Stoic self-contradictions

I first lay this down for an axiom, that there ought to be seen in men’s lives an agreement with their doctrines. For it is not so necessary that the pleader (as Aeschines has it) and the law speak one and the same thing, as that the life of a philosopher be consonant to his speech. For the speech of a philosopher is a law of his own and voluntarily imposed on himself, unless they esteem philosophy to be a game, or an acuteness in disputing invented for the gaining of applause, and not — what it really is — a thing deserving our greatest study.

Since, then, there are in their discourses many things written by Zeno himself, many by Cleanthes, and most of all by Chrysippus, concerning policy, governing, and being governed, concerning judging and pleading, and yet there is not to be found in any of their lives either leading of armies, making of laws, going to parliament, pleading before the judges, fighting for their country, travelling on embassies, or making of public gifts, but they have all, feeding (if I may so say) on rest as on the lotus, led their whole lives, and those not short but very long ones, in foreign countries, amongst disputations, books, and walkings; it is manifest that they have lived rather according to the writings and sayings of others than their own professions, having spent all their days in that repose which Epicurus and Hieronymus so much commend.

Chrysippus indeed himself, in his Fourth Book of Lives, thinks there is no difference between a scholastic life and a voluptuous one. I will set down here his very words: “They who are of opinion that a scholastic life is from the very beginning most suitable to philosophers seem to me to be in an error, thinking that men ought to follow this for the sake of some recreation or some other thing like to it, and in that manner to spin out the whole course of their life; that is, if it may be explained, to live at ease. For this opinion of theirs is not to be concealed, many of them delivering it clearly, and not a few more obscurely.” Who therefore did more grow old in this scholastic life than Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Zeno, and Antipater, who left their countries not out of any discontent but that they might quietly enjoy their delight, studying, and disputing at their leisure. To verify which, Aristocreon, the disciple and intimate friend of Chrysippus, having erected his statue of brass upon a pillar, engraved on it these verses: —

This brazen statue Aristocreon
To’s friend Chrysippus newly here has put,
Whose sharp-edged wit, like sword of champion,
Did Academic knots in sunder cut.

Such a one then was Chrysippus, an old man, a philosopher, one who praised the regal and civil life, and thought there was no difference between a scholastic and voluptuous one.

But those others of them who intermeddle in state affairs act yet more contradictorily to their own doctrines. For they govern, judge, consult, make laws, punish, and honor, as if those were indeed cities in the government of which they concern themselves, those truly counsellors and judges who are at any time allotted to such offices, those generals who are chosen by suffrages, and those laws which were made by Clisthenes, Lycurgus, and Solon, whom they affirm to have been vicious men and fools. Thus even over the management of state affairs are they at variance with themselves. Indeed Antipater, in his writings concerning the difference between Cleanthes and Chrysippus, has related that Zeno and Cleanthes would not be made citizens of Athens, lest they might seem to injure their own countries. I shall not much insist upon it, that, if they did well, Chrysippus acted amiss in suffering himself to be enrolled as a member of that city. But this is very contradictory and absurd, that, removing their persons and their lives so far off amongst strangers, they reserved their names for their countries; which is the same thing as if a man, leaving his wife, and cohabiting and bedding with another, and getting children on her, should yet refuse to contract marriage with the second, lest he might seem to wrong the former.

Again, Chrysippus, writing in his treatise of Rhetoric, that a wise man will so plead and so act in the management of a commonwealth, as if riches, glory, and health were really good, confesses that his speeches are inextricable and impolitic, and his doctrines unsuitable for the uses and actions of human life.

It is moreover a doctrine of Zeno’s, that temples are not to be built to the gods; for that a temple is neither a thing of much value nor holy; since no work of carpenters and handicrafts-men can be of much value. And yet they who praise these things as well and wisely said are initiated in the sacred mysteries, go up to the Citadel (where Minerva’s temple stands), adore the shrines, and adorn with garlands the sacraries, being the works of carpenters and mechanical persons. Again, they think that the Epicureans, who sacrifice to the gods and yet deny them to meddle with the government of the world, do thereby refute themselves; whereas they themselves are more contrary to themselves, sacrificing on altars and in temples, which they affirm ought not to stand nor to have been built.

Moreover, Zeno admits (as Plato does) several virtues having various distinctions — to wit, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice — as being indeed inseparable, but yet divers and different from one another. But again, defining every one of them, he says that fortitude is prudence in executing, justice prudence in distributing, as being one and the same virtue, but seeming to differ in its relation to different affairs when it comes to action. Nor does Zeno alone seem to contradict himself in these matters; but Chrysippus also, who blames Ariston for saying that the other virtues are different habits of one and the same virtue, and yet defends Zeno, who in this manner defines every one of the virtues. And Cleanthes, having in his Commentaries concerning Nature said, that vigor is the striking of fire, which, if it is sufficient in the soul to perform the duties presented to it, is called force and strength; subjoins these very words: “Now this force and strength, when it is in things apparent and to be persisted in, is continence; when in things to be endured, it is fortitude; when about worthiness, it is justice; and when about choosing or refusing, it is temperance.” Against him, who said,

Give not thy judgment till both sides are heard,
(In the “Pseudo–Phocylidea,” vs. 87 (Bergk).)

Zeno on the contrary made use of such an argument as this: “If he who spake first has plainly proved his cause, the second is not to be heard, for the question is at an end; and if he has not proved it, it is the same case as if being cited he did not appear, or appearing did nothing but wrangle; so that, whether he has proved or not proved his cause, the second is not to be heard.” And yet he who made this dilemma has written against Plato’s Commonweal, dissolved sophisms, and exhorted his scholars to learn logic, as enabling them to do the same. Now Plato has either proved or not proved those things which he writ in his Commonweal; but in neither case was it necessary to write against him, but wholly superfluous and vain. The same may be said concerning sophisms.

Chrysippus is of opinion, that young students should first learn logic, secondly, ethics, and after these, physics, and likewise in this to meddle last of all with the disputes concerning the gods. Now these things having been often said by him, it will suffice to set down what is found in his Fourth Book of Lives, being thus word for word: “First, then, it seems to me, according as it has been rightly said by the ancients, that there are three kinds of philosophical speculations, logical, ethical, and physical, and that of these, the logical ought to be placed first, the ethical second, and the physical third, and that of the physical, the discourse concerning the gods ought to be the last; wherefore also the traditions concerning this have been styled [Greek omitted], or the ENDINGS.” But that very discourse concerning the gods, which he says ought to be placed the last, he usually places first and sets before every moral question. For he is seen not to say anything concerning the ends, or concerning justice, or concerning good and evil, or concerning marriage and the education of children, or concerning the law and the commonwealth; but, as those who propose decrees to states set before them the words To Good Fortune, so he also premises something of Jupiter, Fate, Providence, and of the world’s being one and finite and maintained by one power. None of which any one can be persuaded to believe, who has not penetrated deeply into the discourses of natural philosophy. Hear what he says of this in his Third Book of the Gods: “For there is not to be found any other beginning or any other generation of Justice, but what is from Jupiter and common Nature. From thence must every such thing have its beginning, if we will say anything concerning good and evil.” And again, in his Natural Positions he says: “For one cannot otherwise or more properly come to the discourse of good and evil, to the virtues, or to felicity, than from common Nature and the administration of the world.” And going farther on, he adds: “For to these we must annex the discourse concerning good and evil, there being no other better beginning or relation thereof, and the speculation of Nature being learned for nothing else, but to understand the difference between good and evil.” According to Chrysippus, therefore, the natural science is both before and after the moral; or rather, it is an inversion of order altogether absurd, if this must be put after those things none of which can be comprehended without this; and his contradicting himself is manifest, when he asserts the discourse of Nature to be the beginning of that concerning good and evil, and yet commands it to be delivered, not before, but after it.

Now, if any one shall say that Chrysippus in his book concerning the Use of Speech has written, that he who applies himself to logic first needs not absolutely to abstain from the rest, but should take as much of them as shall fall in his way, he will indeed say the truth, but will withal confirm the fault. For he oppugns himself, one while commanding that the science concerning God should be taken last and for a conclusion, as being therefore also called [Greek omitted], and again, another while saying that this is to be learned together with the very first. For order is at an end, if all things must be used at all times. But this is more, that having made the science concerning the gods the beginning of that concerning good and evil, he bids not those who apply themselves to the ethics to begin with that; but learning these, to take of that also as it shall come in their way, and then to go from these to that, without which, he says, there is no beginning or entrance upon these.

As for disputing on both sides, he says, that he does not universally reject it, but exhorts us to use it with caution, as is done in pleadings, not with the aim really to disprove, but to dissolve their probability. “For to those,” says he, “who endeavor a suspension of assent concerning all things, it is convenient to do this, and it co-operates to what they desire; but as for those who would work and constitute in us a certain science according to which we shall professedly live, they ought, on the contrary, to state the first principles, and to direct their novices who are entered from the beginning to the end; and where there is occasion to make mention of contrary discourses, to dissolve their probability, as is done in pleadings.” For this he hath said in express words. Now that it is absurd for philosophers to think that they ought to set down the contrary opinion, not with all its reasons, but like pleaders, disabling it, as if they contended not for truth but victory, we have elsewhere spoken against him. But that he himself has, not in one or two places in his disputations, but frequently, confirmed the discourses which are contrary to his own opinions, and that stoutly, and with so much earnestness and contention that it was not for every one to understand what he liked, — the Stoics themselves affirm, who admire the man’s acuteness, and think that Carneades said nothing of his own, but that catching hold of those arguments which Chrysippus alleged for the contrary opinion, he assaulted with them his positions, and often cried out,

Wretch, thy own strength will thee undo,
(“Iliad”, vi. 407.)

as if Chrysippus had given great advantages against himself to those who would disturb and calumniate his doctrines.

But of those things which he has written against Custom they are so proud and boastful, that they fear not to affirm, that all the sayings of all the Academics together, if they were collected into one body, are not comparable to what Chrysippus has writ in disparagement of the senses. Which is an evident sign of the ignorance or self-love of the speakers; but this indeed is true, that being afterwards desirous to defend custom and the senses, he was inferior to himself, and the latter treatise was much weaker than the former. So that he contradicts himself; for having always directed the proposing of an adversary’s opinions not with approbation, but with a demonstration of their falsity, he has showed himself more acute in opposing than defending his own doctrines; and having admonished others to take heed of contrary arguments, as withdrawing comprehension, he has been more sedulous in framing such proofs as take away comprehension, than such as confirm it. And yet he plainly shows that he himself feared this, writing thus in his Fourth Book of Lives: “Repugnant arguments and probabilities on the contrary side are not rashly to be proposed, but with caution, lest the hearers distracted by them should let go their conceptions, not being able sufficiently to apprehend the solutions, but so weakly that their comprehensions may easily be shaken. For even those who have, according to custom, preconceived both sensible phenomena and other things depending on the senses quickly forego them, being distracted by Megarian interrogatories and by others more numerous and forcible.” I would willingly therefore ask the Stoics, whether they think these Megarian interrogatories to be more forcible than those which Chrysippus has written in six books against custom; or rather this should be asked of Chrysippus himself. For observe what he has written about the Megarian reason, in his book concerning the Use of Speech, thus: “Some such things fell out in the discourse of Stilpo and Menedemus; for, whereas they were renowned for wisdom, their disputing has turned to their reproach, their arguments being part clumsy, and the rest plainly sophistical.” And yet, good sir, you fear lest those arguments which you deride and term the disgrace of their proposers, as having a manifest faultiness, should divert some from comprehension. And did not you yourself, writing so many books against custom, in which you have added whatever you could invent, ambitiously striving to exceed Arcesilaus, expect that you should perplex some of your readers? For neither does he use slender arguments against custom; but as if he were pleading, he with some passion in himself stirs up the affections of others, telling his opponent that he talks foolishly and labors in vain. And that he may leave no room to deny his speaking of contradictions, he has in his Natural Positions written thus: “It may be lawful for those who comprehend a thing to argue on the contrary side, applying to it that kind of defence which the subject itself affords; and sometimes, when they comprehend neither, to discourse what is alleged for either.” And having said in his book concerning the Use of Speech, that we ought no more to use the force of reason than of arms for such things as are not fitting, he subjoins this: “For they are to be employed for the finding out of truths and for the alliance of them, and not for the contrary, though many men do it.” By “many” perhaps he means those who withhold their assent. But these teachers, understanding neither, dispute on both sides, believing that, if anything is comprehensible, thus only or chiefly does truth afford a comprehension of itself. But you, who accuse them, and do yourself write contrary to those things which you understood concerning custom, and exhort others under your authority to do the same, confess that you wantonly use the faculty of disputing, out of vain ambition, even on useless and hurtful things.

They say, that a good deed is the command, and sin the prohibition of the law; and therefore that the law forbids the wicked many things, but commands them nothing, because they cannot do a good deed. But who is ignorant that he who cannot do a good deed cannot also sin? Therefore they make the law to contradict itself, commanding men those things which they cannot perform, and forbidding them those things from which they cannot abstain. For a man who cannot be temperate cannot but act intemperately; and he who cannot be wise cannot but act foolishly. And they themselves affirm, that those who forbid say one thing, forbid another and command another. For he who says “Thou shalt not steal” at the same time that he says these words, “Thou shalt not steal, forbids also to steal and directs not to steal. The law therefor bids the wicked nothing, unless it also commands them something. And they say, that the physician bids his disciple to cut and cauterize, omitting to add these words, “seasonably and moderately”; and the musician commands his scholar to play on the harp and sing, omitting “tunably” and “keeping time.” Wherefore also they punish those who do these things unskilfully and faultily; for that they were commanded to do them well, and they have done them ill. If therefore a wise man commands his servant to say or do something, and punishes him for doing it unseasonably or not as he ought, is it not manifest that he commanded him to do a good action and not an indifferent one? But if wise men command wicked ones indifferent things, what hinders but the commands of the law may be also such? Moreover, the impulse (called [Greek omitted]) is, according to him, the reason of a man commanding him to do something, as he has written in his book of the law. Is not therefore also the aversion (called [Greek omitted]) a prohibiting reason, and a disinclination, a disinclination agreeable to reason? Caution therefore is also reason prohibiting a wise man; for to be cautious is proper only to the wise, and not to the wicked. If, then, the reason of a wise man is one thing and the law another, wise men have caution contrary to the law; but if the law is nothing else but the reason of a wise man, the law is found to forbid wise men the doing of those things of which they are cautious.

Chrysippus says, that nothing is profitable to the wicked, that the wicked have neither use nor need of anything. Having said this in his First Book of Good Deeds, he says again, that both commodiousness and grace pertain to mean or indifferent things, none of which according to them, is profitable. In the same place he affirms, that there is nothing proper, nothing convenient for a vicious man, in these words: “On the same principle we declare that there is nothing foreign or strange to the good man, and nothing proper or rightfully belonging to the bad man, since the one is good and the other bad.” Why, then, does he break our heads, writing particularly in every one of his books, as well natural as moral, that as soon as we are born we are appropriated to ourselves, our parts, and our offspring? And why in his First Book of Justice does he say that the very brutes, proportionably to the necessity of their young, are appropriated to them, except fishes, whose young are nourished by themselves? For neither have they sense who have nothing sensible, nor they appropriation who have nothing proper; for appropriation seems to be the sense and perception of what is proper.

And this opinion is consequent to their principal ones. It is moreover manifest that Chrysippus, though he has also written many things to the contrary, lays this for a position, that there is not any vice greater or any sin more grievous than another, nor any virtue more excellent or any good deed better than another; so that he says in his Third Book of Nature: “As it well beseems Jupiter to glory in himself and his life, to magnify himself, and (if we may so say) to bear up his head, have an high conceit of himself, and speak big, for that he leads a life worthy of lofty speech; so the same things do not misbeseem all good men, since they are in nothing exceeded by Jupiter.” And yet himself, in his Third Book of Justice, says, that they who make pleasure the end destroy justice, but they who say it is only a good do not destroy it. These are his very words: “For perhaps, if we leave this to pleasure, that it is a good but not the end, and that honesty is one of those things which are eligible for themselves, we may preserve justice, making the honest and the just a greater good than pleasure.” But if that only is good which is honest, he who affirms pleasure to be a good is in an error, but he errs less than he who makes it also the end; for the one destroys justice, the other preserves it; and by the one human society is overthrown, but the other leaves a place to goodness and humanity. Now I let pass his saying farther in his book concerning Jupiter, that the virtues increase and go on, lest I may seem to catch at words; though Chrysippus is indeed in this kind very sharp upon Plato and others. But when he forbids the praising of everything that is done according to virtue, he shows that there is some difference between good deeds. Now he says thus in his book concerning Jupiter: “For since each virtue has its own proper effects, there are some of these that are to be praised more highly than others; for he would show himself to be very frigid, that should undertake to praise and extol any man for holding out the finger stoutly, for abstaining continently from an old woman ready to drop into the grave, and patiently hearing it said that three are not exactly four.” What he says in his Third Book of the Gods is not unlike to this: “For I moreover think that the praises of such things as to abstain from an old woman who has one foot in the grave, and to endure the sting of a fly, though proceeding from virtue, would be very impertinent.” What other reprehender of his doctrines does this man then expect? For if he who praises such things is frigid, he who asserts every one of them to be a great — nay, a very great good deed — is much more frigid. For if to endure a fly is equal to being valiant, and to abstain from an old woman now at the edge of the grave is equal to being temperate, there is, I think, no difference whether a virtuous man is prized for these or for those. Moreover, in his Second Book of Friendship, teaching that friendships are not for every fault to be dissolved, he has these very expressions: “For it is meet that some faults should be wholly passed by, others lightly reprehended, others more severely, and others deemed worthy a total dissolution of friendship.” And which is more, he says in the same book, that we will converse with some more and some less, so that some shall be more and some less friends; and this diversity extending very far, some are worthy of such an amity, others of a greater; and these will deserve to be so far trusted, those not so far, and the like. For what else has he done in these places, but shown the great diversity there is between these things? Moreover, in his book concerning Honesty, to demonstrate that only to be good which is honest, he uses these words: “What is good is eligible; what is eligible is acceptable; what is acceptable is laudable; and what is laudable is honest.” And again: “What is good is joyous; what is joyous is venerable; what is venerable is honest.” But these speeches are repugnant to himself; for either all good is commendable, and then the abstaining chastely from an old woman is also commendable; or all good is neither venerable nor joyous, and his reasoning falls to the ground. For how can it possibly be frigid in others to praise any for such things, and not ridiculous for him to rejoice and glory in them?

Such indeed he frequently is; but in his disputations against others he takes not the least care of speaking things contrary and dissonant to himself. For in his books of Exhorting, reprehending Plato, who said, that to him who has neither learned nor knows how to live it is profitable not to live, he speaks in this manner: “For this speech is both repugnant to itself, and not at all conclusive. For first insinuating that it is best for us not to live, and in a sort counselling us to die, he will excite us rather to anything else than to be philosophers; for neither can he who does not live philosophize, nor he who shall live long wickedly and ignorantly become wise.” And going on, he says that it is convenient for the wicked also to continue in life. And afterwards thus, word for word: “First, as virtue, barely taken, has nothing towards our living, so neither has vice anything to oblige us to depart.” Nor is it necessary to turn over other books, that we may show Chrysippus’s contradictoriness to himself; but in these same, he sometimes with commendation brings forth this saying of Antisthenes, that either understanding or a halter is to be provided, as also that of Tyrtaeus,

Come nigh the bounds of virtue or of death.

Now what else will this show, but that to wicked men and fools not to live is more profitable than to live? And sometimes correcting Theognis, he says, that the poet should not have written,

From poverty to fly; —

but rather thus,

From wickedness to fly, into the deep
Throw thyself, Cyrnus, or from rocks so steep.
(See “Theognis,” vs. 175.)

What therefore else does he seem to do, but to set down himself those things and doctrines which, when others write them, he expunges; condemning, indeed, Plato for showing that not to live is better than to live viciously and ignorantly; and yet advising Theognis to let a man break his neck or throw himself into the sea, that he may avoid vice? For having praised Antisthenes for directing fools to an halter, he again blames him, saying that vice has nothing that should oblige us to depart out of life.

Moreover, in his books against the same Plato, concerning Justice, he immediately at the very beginning leaps into a discourse touching the gods, and says, that Cephalus did not rightly avert men from injustice by the fear of the gods, and that his teaching is easily refuted, and that it affords to the contrary many arguments and probabilities impugning the discourse concerning divine punishments, as nothing differing from the tales of Acco and Alphito (or Raw–Head and Bloody–Bones), with which women are wont to frighten little children from their unlucky pranks. Having thus traduced Plato, he in other places again praises him, and often alleges this saying of Euripides: —

Howe’er you may deride it, there’s a Jove,
With other gods, who sees men’s ills above.

And likewise, in his First Book of Justice citing these verses of Hesiod,

Then Jove from heaven punishments did send,
And plague and famine brought them to their end,
(“Works and Days,” 242.)

he says, the gods do these things, that the wicked being punished, others admonished by these examples may less dare to attempt the doing of such things.

Again, in his book of Justice, subjoining, that it is possible for those who make pleasure a good but not the end to preserve also justice, he said in express terms: “For perhaps if we leave this to pleasure, that it is a good but not the end, and that honesty is one of those things which are eligible for themselves, we may preserve justice, making the honest and the just a greater good than pleasure.” So much he says in this place concerning pleasure. But in his book against Plato, accusing him for seeming to make health a good, he says, that not only justice, but also magnanimity, temperance, and all the other virtues will be taken away, if we make pleasure, health, or anything else which is not honest, to be a good. What therefore is to be said for Plato, we have elsewhere written against him. But here his contradicting himself is manifest, when he says in one place, that if a man supposes that with honesty pleasure also is a good, justice is preserved, and in another, accuses those who make anything besides honesty to be a good of taking away all the virtues. But that he may not leave any means of making an apology for his contradictions, writing against Aristotle concerning justice, he affirms him not to have spoken rightly when he said, that pleasure being made the end, justice is taken away, and together with justice, every one also of the other virtues. For justice (he says) will indeed be taken away; but there is nothing to hinder the other virtues from remaining and being, though not eligible for themselves, yet good and virtues. Then he reckons up every one of them by name. But it will be better to set down his own words. “For pleasure,” says he, “appearing according to this discourse to be made the end, yet all this seems not to me to be contained in it. Wherefore we must say, that neither any of the virtues is eligible nor any of the vices to be avoided for itself, but that all these things are to be referred to the proposed scope. Yet nothing, according to their opinion, will hinder but that fortitude, prudence, continence, and patience may be good, and their contraries to be avoided.” Has there ever then been any man more peevish in his disputes than he, who has blamed two of the principal philosophers, the one for taking away all virtue, by not making that only to be good which is honest, and the other for not thinking all the virtues except justice to be preserved, though pleasure is made the end? For it is a wonderful licentiousness that, discoursing of the same matters, he should when accusing Plato take away again those very things which himself sets down when reprehending Aristotle. Moreover, in his demonstrations concerning justice, he says expressly, that every good deed is both a lawful action and a just operation; but that everything which is done according to continence, patience, prudence, or fortitude is a good deed, and therefore also a just operation. Why, then, does he not also leave justice to them to whom he leaves prudence, fortitude, and continence; since whatever they do well according to the said virtue, they do also justly?

Moreover, Plato having said, that injustice, as being the corruption and sedition of the soul, loses not its power even in those who have it within them, but sets the wicked man against himself, and molests and disturbs him; Chrysippus, blaming this, affirms that it is absurdly said, “A man injures himself”; for that injustice is to another, and not to one’s self. But forgetting this, he again says, in his demonstrations concerning justice, that the unjust man is injured by himself and injures himself when he injures another, becoming to himself the cause of transgressing, and undeservedly hurting himself. In his books indeed against Plato, contending that we cannot talk of injustice against one’s self, but as concerns another, he has these words: “For men cannot be unjust by themselves; injustice requires several on different sides, speaking contrary one unto another and the injustice must be taken in different ways. But no such thing extends to one alone, except inasmuch as he is affected towards his neighbor.” But in his demonstrations he has such discourses as these, concerning the unjust man’s being injurious also to himself: “The law forbids the being any way the author of transgression, and to act unjustly will be transgression. He therefore who is to himself the author of acting unjustly transgresses against himself. Now he that transgresses against any one also injures him; therefore he who is injurious to any one whomsoever is injurious also to himself.” Again: “Sin is a hurt, and every one who sins sins against himself; every one therefore who sins hurts himself undeservedly, and if so, is also unjust to himself.” And farther thus: “He who is hurt by another hurts himself, and that undeservedly. Now that is to be unjust. Every one therefore that is injured, by whomsoever it is, is unjust also to himself.”

He says, that the doctrine concerning good and evil which himself introduces and approves is most agreeable to life, and does most of all reach the inbred prenotions; for this he has affirmed in his Third Book of Exhortations. But in his First Book he says, that this doctrine takes a man off from all other things, as being nothing to us, nor co-operating anything towards felicity. See, now, how consonant he is to himself, when he asserts a doctrine which takes us off from life, health, indolence, and integrity of the senses, and says that those things we beg of the gods are nothing to us, though most agreeable to life and to the common presumptions. But that there may be no denial of his speaking contradictions, in his Third Book of Justice he has said thus: “Wherefore also, from the excellence of their greatness and beauty, we seem to speak things like to fictions, and not according to man or human nature.” Is it then possible that any one can more plainly confess his speaking things contrary to himself than this man does, who affirms those things which (he says) for their excellency seem to be fictions and to be spoken above man and human nature, to be agreeable to life, and most of all to reach the inbred prenotions?

In every one of his natural and ethical books, he asserts vice to be the very essence of unhappiness; writing and contending that to live viciously is the same thing as to live unhappily. But in his Third Book of Nature, having said that it is profitable for a fool to live rather than to die, though he is never to become wise, he subjoins: “For such is the nature of good things among mortals, that evil things are in some sort chosen before indifferent ones.” I let pass therefore, that having elsewhere said that nothing is profitable to fools, he here says that to live foolishly is profitable to them. Now those things being by them called indifferent which are neither bad nor good, when he says that bad things precede them, he says nothing else but that evil things precede those that are not evil, and that to be unhappy is more profitable than not to be unhappy; and if so, he esteems not to be unhappy to be more unprofitable — and if more unprofitable, more hurtful — than to be unhappy. Desiring therefore to mitigate this absurdity, he adds concerning evils: “But it is not these evils that have precedence, but reason; with which it is more convenient to live, though we shall be fools.” First therefore he says that vice and things participating of vice are evil, and that nothing else is so. Now vice is something reasonable, or rather depraved reason. For those therefore who are fools to live with reason, is nothing else but to live with vice. Thence to live being fools is to live being unhappy. In what then is this to be preferred to indifferent things? For he surely will not say that with regard to happiness unhappiness is to be preferred. But neither, say they, does Chrysippus altogether think that the remaining in life is to be reckoned amongst good things, or the going out of it amongst bad; but both of them amongst indifferent ones, according to Nature. Wherefore also it sometimes becomes meet for the happy to make themselves away, and again for the unhappy to continue in life. Now what greater repugnance can there be than this in the choice and avoiding of things, if it is convenient for those who are in the highest degree happy to forsake those good things that are present, for the want of some one indifferent thing? And yet they esteem none of the indifferent things either desirable or to be avoided; but only good desirable, and only evil to be avoided. So that it comes to pass, according to them, that the reasoning about actions regards neither things desirable nor things refusable; but that aiming at other things, which they neither shun nor choose, they make life and death to depend on these.

Chrysippus confesses that good things are totally different from bad; and it must of necessity be so, if these make them with whom they are present miserable to the very utmost point, and those render their possessors in the highest degree happy. Now he says, that good and evil things are sensible, writing thus in his First Book of the End: “That good and evil things are perceptible by sense, we are by these reasons forced to say; for not only the passions, with their species, as sorrow, fear, and such others, are sensible; but we may also have a sense of theft, adultery, and the like, and generally, of folly, cowardice, and other vices not a few; and again, not only of joy, beneficence, and many other dependences on good deeds, but also of prudence, fortitude, and the other virtues.” Let us pass by the other absurdities of these things; but that they are repugnant to those things which are delivered by him concerning “the wise man that knows nothing of his being so,” who does not confess? For good, when present, being sensible and having a great difference from evil, is it not most absurd, that he who is of bad become good should be ignorant of it, and not perceive virtue when present, but think that vice is still within him? For either none who has all virtues can be ignorant and doubt of his having them; or the difference of virtue from vice, of happiness from misery, and of a most honest life from a most shameful one, is little and altogether difficult to be discerned, if he who has taken the one in exchange for the other does not perceive it.

He has written one volume of lives divided into four books; in the fourth of these he says, that a wise man meddles with no business but his own, and is employed about his own affairs. His words are these: “For I am of opinion, that a prudent man shuns affairs, meddles little, and at the same time minds his own occasions; civil persons being both minders of their own affairs and meddlers with little else.” He has said almost the same in his book of Things eligible for Themselves, in these very words: “For indeed a quiet life seems to have in it a certain security and freedom from danger, though there are not very many who can comprehend it.” It is manifest that he does not much dissent from Epicurus, who takes away Providence that he may leave God in repose. But the same Chrysippus in his First Book of Lives says, that a wise man willingly takes upon him a kingdom, making his profit by it; and if he cannot reign himself, will dwell with a king, and go to the wars with a king like Hydanthyrsus the Scythian or Leucon the Pontic. But I will here also set down his very discourse, that we may see whether, as from the treble and the base strings there arises a symphony in music, so the life of a man who chooses quietness and meddling with little accords with him who, upon any necessity, rides along with the Scythians and manages the affairs of the tyrants in the Bosphorus: “For that a wise man will both go to the wars and live with potentates, we will again consider this hereafter; some indeed upon the like arguments not so much as suspecting this, and we for semblable reasons admitting it.” And a little after: “Not only with those who have proceeded well, and are become proficients in discipline and good manners, as with Leucon and Hydanthyrsus.”

Some there are who blame Callisthenes for sailing to Alexander in hopes to obtain the rebuilding of Olynthus, as Aristotle had procured that of Stagira; and commend Ephorus, Xenocrates, and Menedemus, who rejected Alexander’s solicitation. But Chrysippus thrusts his wise man headforwards for the sake of gain, as far as Panticapaeum and the desert of the Scythians. And that he does this for the sake of profit and gain, he has showed before, supposing three ways of gaining most suitable for a wise man, — the first by a kingdom, the second by his friends, and the third, besides these, by teaching philosophy. And yet he frequently even tires us with his praises of this saying: —

What need have men of more than these two things?

And in his books of Nature he says, that a wise man, if he has lost the greatest wealth imaginable, seems to have lost but a single groat. But having there thus elevated and puffed him up, he again here throws him down to mercenariness and sophistry; nay, to asking money and even to receiving it beforehand, sometimes at the very entrance of his scholar, and otherwhiles after some time past. The last, he says indeed, is the more polite, but to receive beforehand the more sure; delay allowing of injuries. Now he says thus: “All who are well advised do not require their salary in the same manner, but differently; a multitude of them, as opportunity offers, not promising to make their scholars good men, and that within a year, but to do this, as far as in them lies, within a time agreed on.” And again going on, he says: “But he will know his opportunity, whether he ought to receive his recompense presently at the very entrance (as many have done), or to give them time, this manner being more liable to injuries, but withal, seeming the more courteous.” And how is the wise man a contemner of wealth, who upon a contract delivers virtue for money, and if he has not delivered it, yet requires his reward, as having done what is in him? Or how is he above being endamaged, when he is so cautious lest he be wronged of his recompense? For no man is wronged who is not endamaged. Therefore, though he has elsewhere asserted that a wise man cannot be injured, he here says, that this manner of dealing is liable to injury.

In his book of a Commonweal he says, that his citizens will neither act nor prepare anything for the sake of pleasure, and praises Euripides for having uttered this sentence: —

What need have men of more than these two things,
The fruits of Ceres, and thirst-quenching springs?

And yet a little after this, going on, he commends Diogenes, who forced his nature to pass from himself in public, and said to those that were present: I wish I could in the same manner drive hunger also out of my belly. What reason then is there to praise in the same books him who rejects all pleasure, and withal, him who for the sake of pleasure does such things, and proceeds to such a degree of filthiness? Moreover, having in his book of Nature written, that Nature has produced many creatures for the sake of beauty, delighting in pulchritude and pleasing herself with variety, and having added a most absurd expression, that the peacock was made for the sake of his tail and for the beauty of it; he has, in his treatise of a Commonweal, sharply reprehended those who bred peacocks and nightingales, as if he were making laws contrary to the lawgiver of the world, and deriding Nature for pleasing herself in the beauty of animals to which a wise man would not give a place in his city. For how can it but be absurd to blame those who nourish these creatures, if he commends Providence which created them? In his Fifth Book of Nature, having said, that bugs profitably awaken us out of our sleep, that mice make us cautious not to lay up everything negligently, and that it is probable that Nature, rejoicing in variety, takes delight in the production of fair creatures, he adds these words: “The evidence of this is chiefly shown in the peacock’s tail; for here she manifests that this animal was made for the sake of his tail, and not the contrary; so, the male being made, the female follows.” In his book of a Commonweal, having said that we are ready to paint even dunghills, a little after he adds, that some beautify their cornfields with vines climbing up trees, and myrtles set in rows, and keep peacocks, doves, and partridges, that they may hear them cry and coo, and nightingales. Now I would gladly ask him, what he thinks of bees and honey? For it was of consequence, that he who said bugs were created profitably should also say that bees were created unprofitably. But if he allows these a place in his city, why does he drive away his citizens from things that are pleasing and delight the ear? To be brief, — as he would be very absurd who should blame the guests for eating sweetmeats and other delicacies and drinking of wine, and at the same time commend him who invited them and prepared such things for them; so he that praises Providence, which has afforded fishes, birds, honey, and wine, and at the same time finds fault with those who reject not these things, nor content themselves with

The fruits of Ceres and thirst-quenching springs,

which are present and sufficient to nourish us, seems to make no scruple of speaking things contradictory to himself.

Moreover, having said in his book of Exhortations, that the having carnal commerce with our mothers, daughters, or sisters, the eating forbidden food, and the going from a woman’s bed or a dead carcass to the temple, have been without reason blamed, he affirms, that we ought for these things to have a regard to the brute beasts, and from what is done by them conclude that none of these is absurd or contrary to Nature; for that the comparisons of other animals are fitly made for this purpose, to show that neither their coupling, bringing-forth, nor dying in the temples pollutes the Divinity. Yet he again in his Fifth Book of Nature says, that Hesiod rightly forbids urinating into rivers and fountains, and that we should rather abstain from doing this against any altar, or statue of the gods; and that it is not to be admitted for an argument, that dogs, asses, and young children do it, who have no discretion or consideration of such things. It is therefore absurd to say in one place, that the savage example of irrational animals is fit to he considered, and in another, that it is unreasonable to allege it.

To give a solution to the inclinations, when a man seems to be necessitated by exterior causes, some philosophers place in the principal faculty of the soul a certain adventitious motion, which is chiefly manifested in things differing in no way from one another. For when, with two things altogether alike and of equal importance, there is a necessity to choose the one, there being no cause inclining to either, for that neither of them differs from the other, this adventitious power of the soul, seizing on its inclination, determines the doubt. Chrysippus, discoursing against these men, as offering violence to Nature by imagining an effect without a cause, in many places alleges the die and the balance, and several other things, which cannot fall or incline either one way or the other without some cause or difference, either wholly within them or coming to them from without; for that what is causeless (he says) is wholly insubsistent, as also what is fortuitous; and in those motions devised by some and called adventitious, there occur certain obscure causes, which, being concealed from us, move our inclinations to one side or other. These are some of those things which are most evidently known to have been frequently said by him; but what he has said contrary to this, not lying so exposed to every one’s sight, I will set down in his own words. For in his book of Judging, having supposed two running for a wager to have exactly finished their race together, he examines what is fit for the judge in this case to do. “Whether,” says he, “may the judge give the palm to which of them he will, since they both happen to be so familiar to him, that he would in some sort appear to bestow on them somewhat of his own? Or rather, since the palm is common to both, may it be, as if lots had been cast, given to either, according to the inclination he chances to have? I say the inclination he chances to have, as when two groats, every way else alike, being presented to us, we incline to one of them and take it.” And in his Sixth Book of Duties, having said that there are some things not worthy of much study or attention, he thinks we ought, as if we had cast lots, to commit the choice of those things to the casual inclination of the mind: “As if,” says he, “of those who try the same two drams in a certain time, some should approve this and others that, and there being no more cause for the taking of one than the other, we should leave off making any farther investigation and take that which chances to come first; thus casting the lot (as it were) according to some uncertain principle, and being in danger of choosing the worse of them.” For in these passages, the casting of lots and the casual inclining of the mind, which is without any cause, introduce the choice of indifferent things.

In his Third Book of Dialectics, having said that Plato, Aristotle, and those who came after them, even to Polemon and Straton, but especially Socrates, diligently studied dialectics, and having cried out that one would even choose to err with such and so great men as these, he brings in these words: “For if they had spoken of these things cursorily, one might perhaps have cavilled at this place; but having treated of dialectic skill as one of the greatest and most necessary faculties, it is not probable they should have been so much mistaken, having been such in all the parts of philosophy as we esteem them.” Why, then (might some one say to him), do you never cease to oppose and argue against such and so great men, as if you thought them to err in the principal and greatest matters? For it is not probable that they writ seriously of dialectics, and only transitorily and in sport of the beginning, end, gods, and justice, in which you affirm their discourse to be blind and contradictory to itself, and to have a thousand other faults.

In one place he says, that the vice called [Greek omitted], or the rejoicing at other men’s harms, has no being; since no good man ever rejoiced at another’s evils. But in his Second Book of Good, having declared envy to be a sorrow at other men’s good, — to wit, in such as desire the depression of their neighbors that themselves may excel, he joins to it this rejoicing at other men’s harms, saying thus: “To this is contiguous the rejoicing at other men’s harms, in such as for like causes desire to have their neighbors low; but in those that are turned according to other natural motions, is engendered mercy.” For he manifestly admits the joy at other men’s harms to be subsistent, as well as envy and mercy; though in other places he affirms it to have no subsistence; as he does also the hatred of wickedness, and the desire of dishonest gain.

Having in many places said, that those who have a long time been happy are nothing more so, but equally and in like manner with those who have but a moment been partakers of felicity, he has again in many other places affirmed, that it is not fit to stretch out so much as a finger for the obtaining momentary prudence, which flies away like a flash of lightning. It will be sufficient to set down what is to this purpose written by him in his Sixth Book of Moral Questions. For having said, that neither does every good thing equally cause joy, nor every good deed the like glorying, he subjoins these words: “For if a man should have wisdom only for a moment of time or the final minute of life, he ought not so much as to stretch out his finger for such a shortlived prudence.” And yet men are neither more happy for being longer so, nor is eternal felicity more eligible than that which lasts but a moment. If he had indeed held prudence to be a good, producing felicity, as Epicurus thought, one should have blamed only the absurdity and the paradoxicalness of this opinion; but since prudence of itself is not another thing differing from felicity, but felicity itself, how is it not a contradiction to say, that momentary happiness is equally desirable with eternal, and yet that momentary happiness is nothing worth?

Chrysippus also says, that the virtues follow one another, and that not only he who has one has all, but also that he who acts according to any one of them acts according to them all; and he affirms, that there is not any man perfect who is not possessed of all the virtues, nor any action perfect to the doing of which all the virtues do not concur. But yet in his Sixth Book of Moral Questions he says, that a good man does not always act valiantly, nor a vicious man always fearfully; for certain objects being presented to the fancies, the one must persist in his judgments, and the other depart from them; and he says that it is not probable a wicked man should be always indulging his lust. If then to act valiantly is the same thing as to use fortitude; and to act timorously as to yield to fear, they cannot but speak contradictions who say, that he who is possessed of either virtue or vice acts at she same time according to all the virtues or all the vices, and yet that a valiant man does not always act valiantly nor a vicious man timorously.

He defines Rhetoric to be an art concerning the ornament and the ordering of a discourse that is pronounced. And farther in his First Book he has written thus: “And I am of opinion not only that a regard ought to be had to a liberal and simple adorning of words, but also that care is to be taken for proper delivery, as regards the right elevation of the voice and the compositions of the countenance and hands.” Yet he, who is in this place so curious and exact, again in the same book, speaking of the collision of the vowels, says: “We ought not only to let these things pass, minding somewhat that is better, but also to neglect certain obscurities and defects, nay, solecisms also, of which others, and those not a few, would be ashamed.” Certainly, in one place to allow those who would speak eloquently so carefully to dispose their speech as even to observe a decorum in the very composition of their mouth and hands, and in another place to forbid the taking care of defects and inelegancies, and the being ashamed even of committing solecisms, is the property of a man who little cares what he says, but rashly utters whatever comes first into his mouth.

Moreover, in his Natural Positions having warned us not to trouble ourselves but to be at quiet about such things as require experience and scientific investigation, he says: “Let us not think after the same manner with Plato, that liquid nourishment is conveyed to the lungs, and dry to the stomach; nor let us embrace other errors like to these.” Now it is my opinion, that to reprehend others, and then not to keep one’s self from falling into those things which one has reprehended, is the greatest of contradictions and shamefullest of errors. But he says, that the connections made by ten axioms amount to above a million in number, having neither searched diligently into it by himself nor attained to the truth by men experienced in it. Yet Plato had to testify for him the most renowned of the physicians, Hippocrates, Philistion, and Dioxippus the disciple of Hippocrates; and of the poets, Euripides, Aleaeus, Eupolis, and Eratosthenes, who all say that the drink passes through the lungs. But all the arithmeticians refute Chrysippus, amongst whom also is Hipparchus, demonstrating that the error of his computation is very great; since the affirmative makes of the ten axioms one hundred and three thousand forty and nine connections, and the negative three hundred and ten thousand nine hundred fifty and two.

Some of the ancients have said, that the same befell Zeno which befalls him who has sour wine which he can sell neither for vinegar nor wine; for his “things preferable,” as he called them, cannot be disposed of, either as good or as indifferent. But Chrysippus has made the matter yet far more intricate; for he sometimes says, that they are mad who make no account of riches, health, freedom from pain, and integrity of the body, nor take any care to attain them; and having cited that sentence of Hesiod,

Work hard, O God-born Perses,
(“Works and Days,” 299.)

he cries out, that it would be a madness to advise the contrary and say,

Work not, O God-born Perses.

And in his book of Lives he affirms, that a wise man will for the sake of gain live with kings, and teach for money, receiving from some of his scholars his reward beforehand, and making contract with others of them; and in his Seventh Book of Duties he says, that he will not scruple to turn his heels thrice over his head, if for so doing he may have a talent. In his First Book of Good Things, he yields and grants to those that desire it to call these preferable things good and their contraries evil, in these very words: “Any one who likes, according to these permutations, may call one thing good and another evil, if he has a regard to the things themselves, not wandering elsewhere, not failing in the understanding of the thing signified, and in the rest accommodating himself to custom in the denomination.” Having thus in this place set his things preferable so near to good, and mixed them therewith, he again says, that none of these things belongs at all to us, but that reason withdraws and averts us from all such things; for he has written thus in his First Book of Exhortations. And in his Third Book of Nature he says, that some esteem those happy who reign and are rich, which is all one as if those should be reputed happy who make water in golden chamber-pots and wear golden fringes; but to a good man the losing of his whole estate is but as the losing of one groat, and the being sick no more than if he had stumbled. Wherefore he has not filled virtue only, but Providence also, with these contradictions. For virtue would seem to the utmost degree sordid and foolish, if it should busy itself about such matters, and enjoin a wise man for their sake to sail to Bosphorus or tumble with his heels over his head. And Jupiter would be very ridiculous to be styled Ctesius, Epicarpius, and Charitodotes, because forsooth he gives the wicked golden chamber-pots and golden fringes, and the good such things as are hardly worth a groat, when through Jupiter’s providence they become rich. And yet much more ridiculous is Apollo, if he sits to give oracles concerning golden fringes and chamber-pots and the recovering of a stumble.

But they make this repugnancy yet more evident by their demonstration. For they say, that what may be used both well and ill, the same is neither good nor bad; but fools make an ill use of riches, health, and strength of body; therefore none of these is good. If therefore God gives not virtue to men, — but honesty is eligible of itself, — and yet bestows on them riches and health without virtue, he confers them on those who can use them not well but ill, that is hurtfully, shamefully, and perniciously. Now, if the gods can bestow virtue and do not, they are not good; but if they cannot make men good, neither can they help them, for outside of virtue nothing is good and advantageous. Now to judge those who are otherwise made good according to virtue and strength . . . is nothing to the purpose, for good men also judge the gods according to virtue and strength; so that they do no more aid men than they are aided by them.

Now Chrysippus neither professes himself nor any one of his disciples and teachers to be virtuous. What then do they think of others, but those things which they say, — that they are all mad fools, impious, transgressors of laws, and in the most degree of misery and unhappiness? And yet they say that our affairs, though we act thus miserably, are governed by the providence of the gods. Now if the gods, changing their minds, should desire to hurt, afflict, overthrow, and quite crush us, they could not put us in a worse condition than we already are; as Chrysippus demonstrates that life can admit only one degree either of misery or of unhappiness; so that if it had a voice, it would pronounce these words of Hercules:

I am so full of miseries, there is
No place to stow them in.
(Euripides, “Hercules Furens,” 1245.)

Now who can imagine any assertions more repugnant to one another than chat of Chrysippus concerning the gods and that concerning men; when he says, that the gods do in the best manner possible provide for men, and yet men are in the worst condition imaginable?

Some of the Pythagoreans blame him for having in his book of Justice written concerning cocks, that they are usefully procreated, because they awaken us from our sleep, hunt out scorpions, and animate us to battle, breeding in us a certain emulation to show courage; and yet that we must eat them, lest the number of chickens should be greater than were expedient. But he so derides those who blame him for this, that he has written thus concerning Jupiter the Saviour and Creator, the father of justice, equity, and peace, in his Third Book of the Gods: “As cities overcharged with too great a number of citizens send forth colonies into other places and make war upon some, so does God give the beginnings of corruption.” And he brings in Euripides for a witness, with others who say that the Trojan war was caused by the gods, to exhaust the multitude of men.

But letting pass their other absurdities (for our design is not to inquire what they have said amiss, but only what they have said dissonantly to themselves), consider how he always attributes to the gods specious and kind appellations, but at the same time cruel, barbarous, and Galatian deeds. For those so great slaughters and earnages, as were the productions of the Trojan war and again of the Persian and Peloponnesian, were no way like to colonies unless these men know of some cities built in hell and under the earth. But Chrysippus makes God like to Deiotarus, the Galatian king, who having many sons, and being desirous to leave his kingdom and house to one of them, killed all the rest; as he that cuts and prunes away all the other branches from the vine, that one which he leaves remaining may grow strong and great. And yet the vine-dresser does this, the sprigs being slender and weak; and we, to favor a bitch, take from her many of her new-born puppies, whilst they are yet blind. But Jupiter, having not only suffered and seen men to grow up, but having also both created and increased them, plagues them afterwards, devising occasions of their destruction and corruption; whereas he should rather not have given them any causes and beginnings of generation.

However, this is but a small matter; but that which follows is greater. For there is no war amongst men without vice. But sometimes the love of pleasure, sometimes the love of money, and sometimes the love of glory and rule is the cause of it. If therefore God is the author of wars, he must be also of sins, provoking and perverting men. And yet himself says in his treatise of Judgment and his Second Book of the Gods, that it is no way rational to say that the Divinity is in any respect the cause of dishonesty. For as the law can in no way be the cause of transgression, so neither can the gods of being impious; therefore neither is it rational that they should be the causes of anything that is filthy. What therefore can be more filthy to men than the mutual killing of one another? — to which Chrysippus says that God gives beginnings. But some one perhaps will say, that he elsewhere praises Euripides for saying,

If gods do aught dishonest, they’re no gods;

and again,

‘Tis a most easy thing t’ accuse the gods;
(From the “Bellerophontes” of Euripides, Frag. 294;
and the “Archelaus,” Frag. 256.)

as if we were now doing anything else than setting down such words and sentences of his as are repugnant to one another. Yet that very thing which is now praised may be objected, not once or twice or thrice, but even ten thousand times, against Chrysippus: —

‘Tis a most easy thing t’ accuse the gods.

For first having in his book of Nature compared the eternity of
motion to a drink made of divers species confusedly mixed together,
turning and jumbling the things that are made, some this way,
others that way, he goes on thus: “Now the administration of the
universe proceeding in this manner, it is of necessity we should be
in the condition we are, whether contrary to our own nature we are
sick or maimed, or whether we are grammarians or musicians.”
And again a little after, “According to this reason we shall say
the like of our virtue and vice, and generally of arts or the
ignorance of arts, as I have said.” And a little after, taking
away all ambiguity, he says: “For no particular thing, not even the
least, can be otherwise than according to common Nature and its
reason.” But that common Nature and the common reason of Nature
are with him Fate and Providence and Jupiter, is not unknown even
to the antipodes. For these things are everywhere inculcated in
the Stoic system; and Chrysippus affirms that Homer said very well,

Jove’s purposes were ripening,
(“Iliad,” i. 5.)

having respect to Fate and the Nature of the universe, according to which everything is governed. How then do these agree, both that God is no way the cause of any dishonest thing, and again, that not even the least thing imaginable can be otherwise done than according to common Nature and its reason? For amongst all things that are done, there must of necessity be also evil things attributed to the gods. And though Epicurus indeed turns himself every way, and studies artifices, devising how to deliver and set loose our voluntary free will from this eternal motion, that he may not leave vice irreprehensible; yet Chrysippus gives vice a most absolute liberty, as being done not only of necessity or according to Fate, but also according to the reason of God and best Nature. And these things are yet farther seen in what he says afterwards, being thus word for word: “For common Nature extending to all things, it will be of necessity that everything, howsoever done in the whole or in any one soever of its parts, must be done according to this common Nature and its reason, proceeding on regularly without any impediment. For there is nothing without that can hinder the administration, nor is there any of the parts that can be moved or habituated otherwise than according to common Nature.” What, then, are these habits and motions of the parts? It is manifest, that the habits are vices and diseases, covetousness, luxury, ambition, cowardice, injustice; and that the motions are adulteries, thefts, treasons, murders, parricides. Of these Chrysippus thinks, that no one, either little or great, is contrary to the reason of Jupiter, or to his law, justice, and providence; so neither is the transgressing of the law done against the law, nor the acting unjustly against justice, nor the committing of sin against Providence.

And yet he says, that God punishes vice, and does many things for the chastising of the wicked. And in his Second Book of the Gods he says, that many adversities sometimes befall the good, not as they do the wicked, for punishment, but according to another dispensation, as it is in cities. And again in these words: “First we are to understand of evils in like manner as has been said before: then that these things are distributed according to the reason of Jupiter, whether for punishment, or according to some other dispensation, having in some sort respect to the universe.” This therefore is indeed severe, that wickedness is both done and punished according to the reason of Jupiter. But he aggravates this contradiction in his Second Book of Nature, writing thus: “Vice in reference to grievous accidents, has a certain reason of its own. For it is also in some sort according to the reason of Nature, and, as I may so say, is not wholly useless in respect of the universe. For otherwise also there would not be any good.” Thus does he reprehend those that dispute indifferently on both sides, who, out of a desire to say something wholly singular and more exquisite concerning everything, affirms, that men do not unprofitably cut purses, calumniate, and play madmen, and that it is not unprofitable there should be unprofitable, hurtful, and unhappy persons. What manner of god then is Jupiter, — I mean Chrysippus’s Jupiter, — who punishes an act done neither willingly nor unprofitably? For vice is indeed, according to Chrysippus’s discourse, wholly reprehensible; but Jupiter is to be blamed, whether he has made vice which is an unprofitable thing, or, having made it not unprofitable, punishes it.

Again, in his First Book of Justice, having spoken of the gods as resisting the injustices of some, he says: “But wholly to take away vice is neither possible nor expedient.” Whether it were not better that law-breaking, injustice, and folly should be taken away, is not the design of this present discourse to inquire. But he himself, as much as in him lies, by his philosophy taking away vice, which it is not expedient to take away, does something repugnant both to reason and God. Besides this, saying that God resists some injustices, he again makes plain the impiety of sins.

Having often written that there is nothing reprehensible, nothing to be complained of in the world, all things being finished according to a most excellent nature, he again elsewhere leaves certain negligences to be reprehended, and those not concerning small or base matters. For having in his Third Book of Substance related that some such things befall honest and good men, he says: “May it not be that some things are not regarded, as in great families some bran — yea, and some grains of corn also — are scattered, the generality being nevertheless well ordered; or maybe there are evil Genii set over those things in which there are real and faulty negligence?” And he also affirms that there is much necessity intermixed. I let pass, how inconsiderate it is to compare such accidents befalling honest and good men, as were the condemnation of Socrates, the burning of Pythagoras, whilst he was yet living, by the Cyloneans, the putting to death — and that with torture — of Zeno by the tyrant Demylus, and of Antiphon by Dionysius, with the letting of bran fall. But that there should be evil Genii placed by Providence over such charges, — how can it but be a reproach to God, as it would be to a king, to commit the administration of his provinces to evil and rash governors and captains, and suffer the best of his subjects to be despised and ill-treated by them? And furthermore, if there is much necessity mixed amongst affairs, then God has not power over them all, nor are they all administered according to his reason.

He contends much against Epicurus and those that take away providence from the conceptions we have of the gods, whom we esteem beneficial and gracious to men. And these things being frequently said by them, there is no necessity of setting down the words. Yet all do not conceive the gods to be good and favorable to us. For see what the Jews and Syrians think of the gods; consider also with how much superstition the poets are filled. But there is not any one, in a manner to speak of, that imagines God to be corruptible or to have been born. And to omit all others, Antipater the Tarsian, in his book of the gods writes thus, word for word: “At the opening of our discourse we will briefly repeat the opinion we have concerning God. We understand therefore God to be an animal, blessed and incorruptible, and beneficial to men.” And then expounding every one of these terms he says: “And indeed all men esteem the gods to be incorruptible.” Chrysippus therefore is, according to Antipater, not one of “all men”; for he thinks none of the gods, except Fire, to be incorruptible, but that they all equally were born and will die. These things are, in a manner, everywhere said by him. But I will set down his words out of his Third Book of the Gods: “It is otherwise with the gods. For some of them are born and corruptible, but others not born. And to demonstrate these things from the beginning will be more fit for a treatise of Nature. For the Sun, the Moon, and other gods who are of a like nature, were begotten; but Jupiter is eternal.” And again going on: “But the like will be said concerning dying and being born, both concerning the other gods and Jupiter. For they indeed are corruptible, but his past incorruptible.” With these I compare a few of the things said by Antipater: “Whosoever they are that take away from the gods beneficence, they affect in some part our conception of them; and according to the same reason they also do this, who think they participate of generation and corruption.” If, then, he who esteems the gods corruptible is equally absurd with him who thinks them not to be provident and gracious to men, Chrysippus is no less in an error than Epicurus. For one of them deprives the gods of beneficence, the other of incorruptibility. ============ And moreover, Chrysippus, in his Third Book of the Gods treating of the other gods being nourished, says thus: “The other gods indeed use nourishment, being equally sustained by it; but Jupiter and the World are maintained after another manner from those who are consumed and were engendered by fire.” Here indeed he declares, that all the other gods are nourished except the World and Jupiter; but in his First Book of Providence he says: “Jupiter increases till he has consumed all things into himself. For since death is the separation of the soul from the body, and the soul of the World is not indeed separated, but increases continually till it has consumed all matter into itself, it is not to be said that the World dies.” Who can therefore appear to speak things more contradictory to himself than he who says that the same god is now nourished and again not nourished? Nor is there any need of gathering this by argument: for himself has plainly written in the same place: “But the World alone is said to be self-sufficient, because it alone has in itself all things it stands in need of, and is nourished and augmented of itself, the other parts being mutually changed into one another.” He is then repugnant to himself, not only by declaring in one place that all the gods are nourished except the World and Jupiter, and saying in another, that the World also is nourished; but much more, when he affirms that the World increases by nourishing itself. Now the contrary had been much more probable, to wit, that the World alone does not increase, having its own destruction for its food; but that addition and increase are incident to the other gods, who are nourished from without, and the World is rather consumed into them, if so it is that the World feeds on itself, and they always receive something and are nourished from that.

Secondly, the conception of the gods contains in it felicity, blessedness, and self-perfection. Wherefore also Euripides is commanded for saying: —

For God, if truly God, does nothing want,
So all these speeches are the poets’ cant.
(“Hercules Furens,” 1345.)

But Chrysippus in the places I have alleged says, that the World only is self-sufficient, because this alone has in itself all things it needs. What then follows from this, that the World alone is self-sufficient? That neither the Sun, Moon, nor any other of the gods is self-sufficient, and not being self-sufficient, they cannot be happy or blessed.

He says, that the infant in the womb is nourished by Nature, like a plant; but when it is brought forth, being cooled and hardened by the air, it changes its spirit and becomes an animal; whence the soul is not unfitly named Psyche because of this refrigeration [Greek omitted]. But again he esteems the soul the more subtile and fine spirit of Nature, therein contradicting himself; for how can a subtile thing be made of a gross one, and be rarefied by refrigeration and condensation? And what is more, how does he, declaring an animal to be made by refrigeration, think the sun to be animated, which is of fire and made of an exhalation changed into fire? For he says in his Third Book of Nature: “Now the change of fire is such, that it is turned by the air into water; and the earth subsiding from this, the air exhales; the air being subtilized, the ether is produced round about it; and the stars are, with the sun, kindled from the sea.” Now what is more contrary to kindling than refrigeration, or to rarefaction than condensation? For the one makes water and earth of fire and air, and the other changes that which is moist and earthy into fire and air. But yet in one place he makes kindling, in another cooling, to be the beginning of animation. And he moreover says, that when the inflammation is throughout, it lives and is an animal, but being again extinct and thickened, it is turned into water and earth and corporeity. Now in his First Book of Providence he says: “For the world, indeed, being wholly set on fire, is presently also the soul and guide of itself; but when it is changed into moisture, and has altered the soul remaining within it by some method into a body and soul, so as to consist of these two it exists then after another manner.” Here, forsooth, he plainly says, that the inanimate parts of the world are by inflammation turned into an animated thing, and that again by extinction the soul is relaxed and moistened, being changed into corporeity. He seems therefore very absurd, one while by refrigeration making animals of senseless things, and again, by the same changing the greatest part of the world’s soul into senseless and inanimate things.

But besides this, his discourse concerning the generation of the soul has a demonstration contrary to his own opinion; or he says, that the soul is generated when the infant is already brought forth, the spirit being changed by refrigeration, as by hardening. Now for the soul’s being engendered, and that after the birth, he chiefly uses this demonstration, that the children are for the most part in manners and inclinations like to their parents. Now the repugnancy of these things is evident. For it is not possible that the soul, which is not generated till after the birth, should have its inclination before the birth; or it will fall out that the soul is like before it is generated; that is, it will be in likeness, and yet not be, because it is not yet generated. But if any one says that, the likeness being bred in the tempers of the bodies, the souls are changed when they are generated, he destroys the argument of the soul’s being generated. For thus it may come to pass, that the soul, though not generated, may at its entrance into the body be changed by the mixture of likeness.

He says sometimes, that the air is light and mounts upwards, and sometimes, that it is neither heavy nor light. For in his Second Book of Motion he says, that the fire, being without gravity, ascends upwards, and the air like to that; the water approaching more to the earth, and the air to the fire. But in his Physical Arts he inclines to the other opinion, that the air of itself has neither gravity nor levity.

He says that the air is by nature dark, and uses this as an argument of its being also the first cold; for that its darkness is opposite to the brightness, and its coldness to the heat of fire. Moving this in his First Book of Natural Questions, he again in his treatise of Habits says, that habits are nothing else but airs; for bodies are contained by these, and the cause that every one of the bodies contained in any habit is such as it is, is the containing air, which they call in iron hardness, in stone solidness, in silver whiteness. These words have in them much absurdity and contradiction. For if the air remains such as it is of its own nature, how comes black, in that which is not white, to be made whiteness; and soft, in that which is not hard, to be made hardness; and rare, in that which is not thick, to be made thickness? But if, being mixed with these, it is altered and made like to them, how is it a habit or power or cause of these things by which it is subdued? For such a change, by which it loses its own qualities, is the property of a patient, not of an agent, and not of a thing containing, but of a thing languishing. Yet they everywhere affirm, that matter, being of its own nature idle and motionless, is subjected to qualities, and that the qualities are spirits, which, being also aerial tensions, give a form and figure to every part of matter to which they adhere. These things they cannot rationally say, supposing the air to be such as they affirm it. For if it is a habit and tension, it will assimilate every body to itself, so that it shall be black and soft. But if by the mixture with these things it receives forms contrary to those it has, it will be in some sort the matter, and not the cause or power of matter.

It is often said by Chrysippus, that there is without the world an infinite vacuum, and that this infinity has neither beginning, middle, nor end. And by this the Stoics chiefly refute that spontaneous motion of the atoms downward, which is taught by Epicurus; there not being in infinity any difference according to which one thing is thought to be above, another below. But in his Fourth Book of Things Possible, having supposed a certain middle place and middle region, he says that the world is situated there. The words are these: “Wherefore, if it is to be said of the world that it is corruptible, this seems to want proof; yet nevertheless it rather appears to me to be so. However, its occupation of the place wherein it stands cooperates very much towards its immunity from corruption, because it is in the midst; since if it were conceived to be anywhere else, corruption would absolutely happen to it.” And again, a little after: “For so also in a manner has essence happened eternally to possess the middle place, being immediately from the beginning such as it is; so that both by another manner and through this chance it admits not any corruption, and is therefore eternal.” These words have one apparent and visible contradiction, to wit, his admitting a certain middle place and middle region infinity. They have also a second, more obscure indeed, but withal more absurd than this. For thinking that the world would not have remained incorruptible if its situation had happened to have been in any other part of the vacuum, he manifestly appears to have feared lest, the parts of essence moving towards the middle, there should be a dissolution and corruption of the world. Now this he would not have feared, had he not thought that bodies do by nature tend from every place towards the middle, not of essence, but of the region containing essence; of which also he has frequently spoken, as of a thing impossible and contrary to Nature; for that (as he says) there is not in the vacuum any difference by which bodies are drawn rather this way than that way, but the construction of the world is the cause of motion, bodies inclining and being carried from every side to the centre and middle of it. It is sufficient to this purpose, to set down the text out of his Second Book of Motion; for having discoursed, that the world indeed is a perfect body, but that the parts of the world are not perfect, because they have in some sort respect to the whole and are not of themselves; and going forward concerning its motion, as having been framed by Nature to be moved by all its parts towards compaction and cohesion, and not towards dissolution and breaking, he says thus: “But the universe thus tending and being moved to the same point, and the arts having the same motion from the nature of the body, it is probable that all bodies have this first motion according to Nature towards the centre of the world, — the world being thus moved as concerns itself, and the parts being moved as being its parts.” What, then, ailed you, good sir (might some one say to him), that you have so far forgotten those words, as to affirm that the world, if it had not casually possessed the middle place, would have been dissoluble and corruptible? For if it is by nature so framed as always to incline towards the middle, and its parts from every side tend to the same, into what place soever of the vacuum it should have been transposed, — thus containing and (as it were) embracing itself, — it would have remained incorruptible and without danger of breaking. For things that are broken and dissipated suffer this by the separation and dissolution of their parts, every one of them hasting to its own place from that which it had contrary to Nature. But you, being of opinion that, if the world should have been seated in any other place of the vacuum, it would have been wholly liable to corruption, and affirming the same, and therefore asserting a middle in that which naturally can have no middle, — to wit, in that which is infinite, — have indeed dismissed these tensions, coherences, and inclinations, as having nothing available to its preservation, and attributed all the cause of its permanency to the possession of place. And, as if you were ambitious to confute yourself, to the things you have said before you join this also: “In whatsoever manner every one of the parts moves, being coherent to the rest, it is agreeable to reason that in the same also the whole should move by itself; yea, though we should, for argument’s sake, imagine and suppose it to be in some vacuity of this world; for as, being kept in on every side, it would move towards the middle, so it would continue in the same motion, though by way of disputation we should admit that there were on a sudden a vacuum round about it.” No part then whatsoever, though encompassed by a vacuum, loses its inclination moving it towards the middle of the world; but the world itself, if chance had not prepared it a place in the middle, would have lost its containing vigor, the parts of its essence being carried some one way, some another.

And these things indeed contain great contradictions to natural reason; but this is also repugnant to the doctrine concerning God and Providence, that assigning to them the least causes, he takes from them the most principal and greatest. For what is more principal than the permanency of the world, or that its essence, united in its parts, is contained in itself? But this, as Chrysippus says, fell out casually. For if the possession of place is the cause of incorruptibility, and this was the production of chance, it is manifest that the preservation of the universe is a work of chance, and not of Fate and Providence.

Now, as for his doctrine of possibles, how can it but be repugnant to his doctrine of Fate? For if that is not possible which either is true or shall be true, as Diodorus has it, but everything which is capable of being, though it never shall be, is possible, there will be many things possible which will never be according to invincible, inviolable, and all-conquering Fate. And thus either Fate will lose its power; or if that, as Chrysippus thinks, has existence, that which is susceptible of being will often fall out to be impossible. And everything indeed which is true will be necessary, being comprehended by the principal of all necessities; and everything that is false will be impossible, having the greatest cause to oppose its ever being true. For how is it possible that he should be susceptible of dying on the land, who is destined to die at sea? And how is it possible for him who is at Megara to come to Athens, if he is prohibited by Fate?

But moreover, the things that are boldly asserted by him concerning fantasies or imaginations are very opposite to Fate. For desiring to show that fantasy is not of itself a perfect cause of consent, he says, that the Sages will prejudice us by imprinting false imaginations in our minds, if fantasies do of themselves absolutely cause consent; for wise men often make use of falsity against the wicked, representing a probable imagination, — which is yet not the cause of consent, for then it would be also a cause of false apprehension and error. Any one therefore, transferring these things from the wise man to Fate, may say, that consents are not caused by Fate; for if they were, false consents and opinions and deceptions would also be by Fate. Thus the reason which exempts the wise man from doing hurt also demonstrates at the same time that Fate is not the cause of all things. For if men neither opine nor are prejudiced by Fate, it is manifest also that they neither act rightly nor are wise nor remain firm in their sentiments nor have utility by Fate, but that there is an end of Fate’s being the cause of all things. Now if any one shall say that Chrysippus makes not Fate the absolute cause of all things, but only a PROCATARCLICAL (or antecedent) one, he will again show that he is contradictory to himself, since he excessively praises Homer for saying of Jupiter,

Receive whatever good or ill
He sends to each of you;

as also Euripides for these words,

O Jove, how can I say that wretched we,
Poor mortals, aught do understand? On thee
We all depend, and nothing can transact,
But as thy sacred wisdom shall enact.
(Euripides, “Suppliants,” 734.)

And himself writes many things agreeable to these. In fine, he says that nothing, be it never so little, either rests or is moved otherwise than according to the reason of Jupiter, which is the same thing with Fate. Moreover, the antecedent cause is weaker than the absolute one, and attains not to its effect when it is subdued by others that rise up against it. But he himself declaring Fate to be an invincible, unimpeachable, and inflexible cause, calls it Atropos, (That is, Unchangeable.) Adrasteia, (That is, Unavoidable.) Necessity, and Pepromene (as putting a limit to all things). Whether then shall we say, that neither consents nor virtues nor vices nor doing well nor doing ill is in our power? Or shall we affirm, that Fate is deficient, that terminating destiny is unable to determine, and that the motions and habits of Jupiter cannot be effective? For the one of these two consequences will follow from Fate’s being an absolute, the other from its being only an antecedent cause. For if it is an absolute cause, it takes away our free will and leaves nothing in our control; and if it is only antecedent, it loses its being unimpeachable and effectual. For not once or ten times, but everywhere, especially in his Physics, he has written, that there are many obstacles and impediments to particular natures and motions, but none to that of the universe. And how can the motion of the universe, extending as it does to particular ones, be undisturbed and unimpeached, if these are stopped and hindered? For neither can the nature of man be free from impediment, if that of the foot or hand is not so; nor can the motion of a ship but be hindered, if there are any obstacles about the sails or the operation of the oars.

Besides all this, if the fantasies are not according to Fate, neither are they causes of consents; but if, because it imprints fantasies leading to consent, the consents are said to be according to Fate, how is it not contrary to itself, imprinting in the greatest matters different imaginations and such as draw the understanding contrary ways? For (they say) those who adhere to one of them, and withhold not their consent, do amiss: if they yield to obscure things, they stumble; if to false, they are deceived; if to such as are not commonly comprehended, they opine. And yet one of these three is of necessity, — either that every fantasy is not the work of Fate, or that every receipt and consent of fantasy is faultless, or that Fate itself is not irreprehensible. For I do not know how it can be blameless, proposing to us such fantasies that not the resisting or going against them, but the following and yielding to them, is blamable. Moreover, both Chrysippus and Antipater, in their disputes against the Academics, take not a little pains to prove that we neither act nor are incited without consent, saying, that they build on fictions and false suppositions who think that, a proper fantasy being presented, we are presently incited, without having either yielded or consented. Again, Chrysippus says, that God imprints in us false imaginations, as does also the wise man; not that they would have us consent or yield to them, but only that we should act and be incited with regard to that which appears; but we, being evil, do through infirmity consent to such fantasies. Now, the perplexity and discrepancy of these discourses among themselves are not very difficult to be discerned. For he that would not have men consent but only act according to the fantasies which he offers unto them — whether he be God or a wise man — knows that the fantasies are sufficient for acting, and that consents are superfluous. For if, knowing that the imagination gives us not an instinct to work without consent, he ministers to us false and probable fantasies, he is the voluntary cause of our falling and erring by assenting to incomprehensible things.

The Stoics speak more paradoxically than the poets

Pinder’s Caeneus hath been taken to task by several, for being improbably feigned, impenetrable by steel and impassible in his body, and so

Descending, into hell without a wound.
And with sound foot parting in two the ground.

But the Stoics’ Lapithes, as if they had carved him out of the very adamantine matter of impassibility itself, though he is not invulnerable, nor exempt from either sickness or pain, yet remains fearless, regretless, invincible, and unconstrainable in the midst of wounds, dolors, and torments, and in the very subversions of the walls of his native city, and other such like great calamities. Again, Pindar’s Caeneus is not wounded when struck; but the Stoics’ wise man is not detained when shut up in a prison, suffers no compulsion by being thrown down a precipice, is not tortured when on the rack, takes no hurt by being maimed, and when he catches a fall in wrestling he is still unconquered; when he is encompassed with a rampire, he is not besieged; and when sold by his enemies, he is still not made a prisoner. The wonderful man is like to those ships that have inscribed upon them A PROSPEROUS VOYAGE, OR PROTECTING PROVIDENCE, or A PRESERVATIVE AGAINST DANGERS, and yet for all that endure storms, and are miserably shattered and overturned. Euripides’s Iolaus of a feeble, superannuated old man, by means of a certain prayer, became on a sudden youthful and strong for battle; but the Stoics wise man was yesterday most detestable and the worst of villains, but today is changed on a sudden into a state of virtue, and is become of a wrinkled, pale fellow, and as Aeschylus speaks,

Of an old sickly wretch with stitch in ‘s back,
Distent with rending pains as on a rack,

gallant, godlike, and beauteous person.

The goddess Minerva took from Ulysses his wrinkles, baldness, and deformity, to make him appear a handsome man. But these men’s wise man, though old age quits not his body, but contrariwise still lays on and heaps more upon it, though he remains (for instance) humpbacked, toothless, one-eyed, is yet neither deformed, disfigured, nor ill-favored. For as beetles are said to relinquish perfumes and to pursue after ill scents; so Stoical love, having used itself to the most foul and deformed persons, if by means of philosophy they change into good form and comeliness, becomes presently disgusted.

He that in the Stoics’ account was in the forenoon (for example) the worst man in the world is in the afternoon the best of men; and he that falls asleep a very sot, dunce, miscreant, and brute, nay, by Jove, a slave and a beggar to boot, rises up the same day a prince, a rich and a happy man, and (which is yet more) a continent, just, determined, and unprepossessed person; — not by shooting forth out of a young and tender body a downy beard or the sprouting tokens of mature youth, but by having in a feeble, soft, unmanful, and undetermined mind, a perfect intellect, a consummate prudence, a godlike disposition, an unprejudiced science, and an unalterable habit. All this time his viciousness gives not the least ground in order to it, but he becomes in an instant, I had almost said, of the vilest brute, a sort of hero, genius, or god. For he that receives his virtue from the Stoics portico may say,

Ask what thou wilt, it shall be granted thee.
(From Menander)

It brings wealth along with it, it contains kingship in it, it confers fortune; it renders men prosperous, and makes them to want nothing and to have a sufficiency of everything, though they have not one drachm of silver in the house.

The fabular relations of the poets are so careful of decorum, that they never leave a Hercules destitute of necessaries; but those still spring, as out of some fountain, as well for him as for his companions. But he that hath received of the Stoics Amalthaea becomes indeed a rich man, but he begs his victuals of other men; he is a king, but resolves syllogisms for hire; he is the only man that hath all things, but yet he pays rent for the house he lives in, and oftentimes buys bread with borrowed money, or else begs it of those that have nothing themselves.

The king of Ithaca begs with a design that none may know who he is, and makes himself

As like a dirty sorry beggar
(“Odyssey,” xvi. 273.)

as he can. But he that is of the Portico, while he bawls and cries out, It is I only that am a king, It is I only that am a rich man, is yet many times seen at other people’s doors saying: —

On poor Hipponax, pray, some pity take,
Bestow an old cast coat for heaven’s sake;
I’m well-nigh dead with cold, and all o’er quake.

Against the Stoics, on common conceptions

LAMPRIAS, DIADUMENUS

LAMPRIAS. You, O Diadumenus, seem not much to care, if any one thinks that you philosophize against the common notions; since you confess that you contemn also the senses, from whence the most part of these notions in a manner proceed, having for their seat and foundation the belief of such things as appear to us. But I beseech you, with what speed you can, either by reasons, incantations, or some other manner of discourse, to cure me, who come to you full, as I seem to myself, of great and strange perturbations; so much have I been shaken, and into such a perplexity of mind have I been brought, by certain Stoics, in other things indeed very good men and my familiar friends, but most bitterly and hostility bent against the Academy. These, for some few words modestly spoken by me, have (for I will tell you no lie) rudely and unkindly reprehended me; angrily censuring and branding the ancient philosophers as Sophists and corrupters of philosophy, and subverters of regular doctrines; and saying things yet more absurd than these, they fell at last upon the conceptions, into which (they contend) the Academics had brought a certain confusion and disturbance. At length one of them said, that he thought it was not by fortune, but by the providence of the gods, that Chrysippus came into the world after Arcesilaus and before Carneades; of which the one was the author of the contumelies and injuries done to custom, and the other flourished most of all the Academics. Chrysippus then, coming between them, by his writings against Arcesilaus, stopped also the way against the eloquence of Carneades, leaving indeed many things to the senses, as provisions against a siege, but wholly taking away the trouble about anticipations and conceptions, directing every one of them and putting it in its proper place; so that they who will again embroil and disquiet matters should gain nothing, but be convinced of being malicious and deceitful Sophists. I, having been this morning set on fire by these discourses, want some cooling remedies to extinguish and take away this doubting, as an inflammation, out of my mind.

DIADUMENUS. You perhaps have suffered the same things with some of the vulgar. But if you believe the poets, who say that the ancient city Sipylus was overthrown by the providence of the gods when they punished Tantalus, believe also the companions of the Stoa saying that Nature, not by chance but by divine providence, brought forth Chrysippus, when she had a mind to turn things upside down and alter the course of life; for which purpose never any man was fitter than he. But as Cato said of Caesar, that never any but he came to the management of public affairs sober and considerately resolved on the ruin of the state; so does this man seem to me with the greatest diligence and eloquence to overturn and demolish custom, as those who magnify the man testify, when they dispute against him concerning the sophism called Pseudomenos (or the Liar). For to say, my best friend, that a conclusion drawn from contrary positions is not manifestly false, and again to say that some arguments having true premises and true inductions may yet moreover have the contrary to their conclusions true, what conception of demonstration or what assumption of confidence does it not overthrow? They say, that the polypus in the winter gnaws his own claws; but the logic of Chrysippus, taking away and cutting off its own chiefest parts and principles, — what other notion has it left unsuspected of falsehood? For the superstructures cannot be steady and sure, if the foundations remain not firm but are shaken with so many doubts and troubles. But as those who have dust or dirt upon their bodies, if they touch or rub the filth that is upon them, seem rather to increase than remove it; so some men blame the Academics, and think them guilty of the faults with which they show themselves to be burdened. For who do more subvert the common conceptions than the Stoic school? But if you please, let us leave accusing them, and defend ourselves from the things with which they charge us.

LAMPRIAS. Methinks, Diadumenus, I am this day become a various and unconstant man. For erewhile I came dejected and trembling, as one that wanted an apology; and now I am changed to an accuser, and desire to enjoy the pleasure of revenge, in seeing them all convicted of philosophizing against the common conceptions and presumptions, on which they think chiefly their doctrine is founded, whence they say that it alone agrees with Nature.

DIADUMENUS. Shall we then first attack those common and celebrated doctrines of theirs which themselves, gently admitting their absurdity, style paradoxes; as that only wise men are kings, that they only are rich and fair, they only citizens and judges? Or shall we send all this to the brokers, as old decayed frippery, and make our inquiry into such things as are most practical and with the greatest earnestness delivered by them?

LAMPRIAS. I indeed like this best. For who is there that is not already full of the arguments brought against those paradoxes?

DIADUMENUS. First, then, consider this, whether, according to the common conceptions, they can be said to agree with Nature, who think all natural things indifferent, and esteem neither health, strength of body, beauty, nor strength as desirable, commodious, profitable, or any way contributory to the completing of natural perfection; nor consider that their contraries, as maims, pains, disgraces, and diseases, are hurtful or to be shunned? To the latter of these they themselves say that Nature gives us an abhorrence, and an inclination to the former. Which very thing is not a little repugnant to common understanding, that Nature should incline us to such things as are neither good nor available, and avert us from such as are neither ill nor hurtful, and which is more, that she should render this inclination and this aversion so violent, that they who either possess not the one or fall into the other detest their life with good reason, and withdraw themselves out of it.

I think also that this is said by them against common sense, that Nature herself is indifferent, and yet that it is good to agree with Nature. For it is not our duty either to follow the law or be persuaded by argument, unless the law and argument be good and honest. And this indeed is the least of their errors. But if, as Chrysippus has written in his First Book concerning Exhortation, a happy life consists only in living according to virtue, other things (as he says) being nothing to us, nor cooperating any ways towards it, Nature is not only indifferent, but foolish also and stupid, in inclining us to such things as belong nothing to us; and we also are fools in thinking felicity to be an agreeing with Nature, which draws us after such things as contribute nothing to happiness. For what can be more agreeable to common sense, than that, as desirable things are requisite to live commodiously, so natural things are necessary that we may live according to Nature? Now these men say not so; but having settled the living according to Nature for their end, do nevertheless hold those things which are according to Nature to be indifferent.

Nor is this less repugnant to common sense, that an intelligent and prudent man should not be equally affected to equal good things, but should put no value on some, and be ready to undergo and suffer anything for others, though the things themselves are neither greater nor less one than another. For they say, It is the same thing to abstain from the enjoyment of an old woman that is about to die as to take part in the greatest actions with moderation . . . since in both cases we do what duty requires. And yet for this, as a great and glorious thing, they should be ready to die; when as to boast of the other would be shameful and ridiculous. And even Chrysippus himself in his commentary concerning Jupiter, and in the Third Book of the Gods, says, that it were a poor, absurd, and impertinent thing to glory in such acts, as proceeding from virtue, as bearing valiantly the stinging of a wasp, or abstaining chastely from an old woman that lies a dying. Do not they then philosophize against the common conception, who profess nothing to be more commendable than those things which yet themselves are ashamed to praise? For how can that be desirable or to be approved, which is worthy neither of praise nor admiration, but the praisers and admirers of which they esteem absurd and ridiculous?

And yet this will (I suppose) appear to you more against common sense, that a wise man should take no care whether he enjoys or not enjoys the greatest good things, but should carry himself after the same manner in these things, as in those that are indifferent both in their management and administration. For all of us, “whoever we are that eat the fruit of the broad earth,” judge that desirable, good, and profitable, which being present we use, and absent we want and desire. But that which no man thinks worth his concern, either for his profit or delight, is indifferent. For we by no other means distinguish a laborious man from a trifler, who is for the most part also employed in action, but that the one busies himself in useless matters and indifferently, and the other in things commodious and profitable. But these men act quite contrary; for with them, a wise and prudent man, being conversant in many comprehensions and memories of comprehension, esteems few of them to belong to him; and not caring for the rest, he thinks he has neither more or less by remembering that he lately had the comprehension of Dion sneezing or Theon playing at ball. And yet every comprehension in a wise man, and every memory having assurance and firmness, is a great, yea, a very great good. When therefore his health fails, when some organ of his senses is disordered, or when his wealth is lost, is a wise man so careless as to think that none of these things concern him? Or does he, “when sick, give fees to the physicians: for the gaining of riches sail to Leucon, governor in the Bosphorus, or travel to Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians,” as Chrysippus says? And being deprived of some of his senses, does he not become weary even of life? How then do they not acknowledge that they philosophize against the common notions, employing so much care and diligence on things indifferent, and not minding whether they have or have not great good things?

But this is also yet against the common conceptions, that he who is a man should not rejoice when coming from the greatest evils to the greatest goods. Now their wise men suffer this. Being changed from extreme viciousness to the highest virtue, and at the same time escaping a most miserable life and attaining to a most happy one, he shows no sign of joy, nor does this so great change lift him up or yet move him, being delivered from all infelicity and vice, and coming to a certain sure and firm perfection of virtue. This also is repugnant to common sense, to hold that the being immutable in one’s judgments and resolutions is the greatest of goods, and yet that he who has attained to the height wants not this, nor cares for it when he has it, nay, many times will not so much as stretch forth a finger for this security and constancy, which nevertheless themselves esteem the sovereign and perfect good. Nor do the Stoics say only these things, but they add also this to them, — that the continuance of time increases not any good thing; but if a man shall be wise but a minute of an hour, he will not be any way inferior in happiness to him who has all his time practised virtue and led his life happily in it. Yet, whilst they thus boldly affirm these things, they on the contrary also say, that a short-lived virtue is nothing worth; “For what advantage would the attainment of wisdom be to him who is immediately to be swallowed up by the waves or tumbled down headlong from a precipice? What would it have benefited Lichas, if being thrown by Hercules, as from a sling into the sea, he had been on a sudden changed from vice to virtue?” These therefore are the positions of men who not only philosophize against the common conceptions but also confound their own, if the having been but a little while endued with virtue is no way short of the highest felicity, and at the same time nothing worth. Nor is this the strangest thing you will find in their doctrine; but their being of opinion that virtue and happiness, when present, are frequently not perceived by him who enjoys them, nor does he discern that, having but a little before been most miserable and foolish, he is of a sudden become wise and happy. For it is not only childish to say that he who is possessed of wisdom is ignorant of this thing alone, that he is wise, and knows not that he is delivered from folly; but, to speak in general, they make goodness to have very little weight or strength, if it does not give so much as a feeling of it when it is present. For according even to them, it is not by nature imperceptible; nay, even Chrysippus in his books of the End expressly says that good is sensible, and demonstrates it also, as he maintains. It remains, then, that by its weakness and littleness it flies the sense, when being present it is unknown and concealed from the possessors. It were moreover absurd to imagine that the sight, perceiving those things which are but a little whitish or inclining to white, should not discern such as are white in perfection; or that the touch, feeling those things which are but warm or moderately hot, should be insensible of those that are hot in the highest degree. And yet more absurd it is, that a man who perceives what is commonly according to Nature — as are health and good constitution of body — should yet be ignorant of virtue when it is present, which themselves hold to be most of all and in the highest degree according to Nature. For how can it but be against sense, to conceive the difference between health and sickness, and yet so little to comprehend that between wisdom and folly as to think the one to be present when it is gone, and possessing the other to be ignorant that one has it? Now because there is from the highest progress a change made to felicity and virtue, one of these two things must of necessity follow; either that this progress is not vice and infelicity, or that virtue is not far distant from vice, nor happiness from misery, but that the difference between good and evil is very small and not to be perceived by sense; for otherwise they who have the one for the other could not be ignorant of it.

Since, then, they will not depart from any of these contrarieties, but confess and hold them all, — that those who are proceeding towards virtue are fools and vicious, that those who are become good and wise perceive not this change in themselves, and that there is a great difference between folly and wisdom, — they must assuredly seem to you wonderfully to preserve an agreement in their doctrines, and yet more so in their conduct, when affirming all men who are not wise to be equally wicked, unjust, faithless, and fools, they on the other side abhor and detest some of them, — nay, sometimes to such a degree that they refuse even to speak to them when they meet them, — while others of them they trust with their money, choose to offices, and take for husbands to their daughters. Now if they say these things in jest, let them smooth their brows; but if in earnest and as philosophers, it is against the common notions to reprove and blame all men alike in words, and yet to deal with some of them as moderate persons and with others as very wicked; and exceedingly to admire Chrysippus, to deride Alexinus, and yet to think neither of them more or less mad than the other. “‘Tis so,” say they; “but as he who is not above a cubit under the superficies of the sea is no less drowned than he who is five hundred fathom deep, so they that are coming towards virtue are no less in vice their those that are farther off. And as blind men are still blind, though they shall perhaps a little after recover their sight; so these that have proceeded towards virtue, till such time as they have attained to it, continue foolish and wicked.” But that they who are in the way towards virtue resemble not the blind, but such as see less clearly, nor are like to those who are drowned, but — those which swim, and that near the harbor — they themselves testify by their actions. For they would not use counsellors and generals and lawgivers as blind leaders, nor would they imitate the works and actions and words and lives of some, if they saw them all equally drowned in folly and wickedness. But leaving this, wonder at the men in this behalf, that they are not taught by their own examples to give up the doctrine that these men are wise being ignorant of it themselves, and neither knowing nor being sensible that they are recovered from being drowned and see the light, and that being gotten above vice, they fetch breath again.

This also is against common sense, that it should be convenient for a man who has all good things, and wants nothing requisite to felicity and happiness, to make away himself; and much more this, that for him who neither has nor ever shall have any good thing, but who is and ever shall be accompanied with all adversities, difficulties, and mishaps, it should not be fitting to quit this life unless some of the indifferent things befall him. These laws are enacted in the Stoa; and by these they incite many wise men to kill themselves, as if they would be thereby more happy; and they prevent many foolish men, as if it were proper for them to live on in misery. Although the wise man is fortunate, blessed, every way happy, secure, and free from danger; but the vicious and foolish man is “full, as I may say, of evils, so that there is not room to put them in”; and yet they think that continuing in life is fit for the latter, and departing out of it for the former. And not without cause, says Chrysippus, for we are not to measure life by good things or evil, but by those that are according to Nature. In this manner do they maintain custom, and philosophize according to the common conceptions. What do you say? — that he who enters upon a deliberation of life and death has no right to consider

What good or ill in his own house there is;

or to weigh, as in a balance, what things have the greatest sign of serving to felicity or infelicity; but must argue whether he should live or die from those things which are neither profitable nor prejudicial, and follow such principles and sentences as command the choosing of a life full of all things to be avoided, and the shunning of one which wants nothing of all those things that are desirable? For though it is an absurd thing, friend Lamprias, to shun a life in which there is no evil, it is yet more absurd, if any one should leave what is good because he is not possessed of what is indifferent, as these men do who leave present felicity and virtue for want of riches and health which they have not.

Satumian Jove from Glaucus took his wits,

when he went about to change his suit of golden armor for a brazen one, and to give what was worth a hundred oxen for that which was worth but nine. And yet the brazen armor was no less useful for fight than the golden; whereas beauty and health of body, as the Stoics say, contribute not the least advantage so far as happiness is concerned. And yet they seek health in exchange for wisdom. For they say, it would well enough have become Heraclitus and Pherecydes to have parted with their virtue and wisdom, if the one of them could have thereby been freed from his lousy disease, and the other from his dropsy; and if Circe had used two sorts of magical drinks, one to make wise men fools, and the other to make fools wise, Ulysses would rather have drunk that of folly, than have changed his shape for the form of a beast, though having with it wisdom, and consequently also happiness. And, they say, wisdom itself dictates to them these things, exhorting them thus: Let me go, and value not my being lost, if I must be carried about in the shape of an ass. But this, some will say, is an ass-like wisdom which teacheth thus; granting that to be wise and enjoy felicity is good, and to wear the shape of an ass is indifferent. They say, there is a nation of the Ethiopians where a dog reigns, is called king, and has all regal honors and services done to him; but men execute the offices of magistrates and governors of cities. Do not the Stoics act in the very same manner? They give the name and appearance of good to virtue, saying that it alone is desirable, profitable, and available; but in the meantime they act these things, they philosophize, they live and die, as at the command of things indifferent. And yet none of the Ethiopians kill that dog; but he sits in state, and is revered by all. But these men destroy and corrupt their virtue, that they may obtain health and riches.

But the corollary which Chrysippus himself has given for a conclusion to his doctrines seems to free us from the trouble of saying anything more about it. For there being, says he, in Nature some things good, some things bad, and some things between them both, which we call indifferent; there is no man but would rather have the good than the indifferent, and the indifferent than the bad. And of this we call the gods to witness, begging of them by our prayers principally the possession of good things, and if that may not be, deliverance from evil; not desiring that which is neither good nor bad instead of good, but willing to have it instead of evil. But this man, changing Nature and inverting its order, removes the middle out of its own place into the last, and brings back the last into the middle, — not unlike to those tyrants who give the first place to the wicked, — and he gives us a law, first to seek the good, and secondly the evil, and lastly to judge that worst which is neither good nor evil; as if any one should place infernal things next to celestial, thrusting the earth and earthly things into Tartarus,

Where very far from hence, deep under ground,
Lies a vast gulf.
(Iliad, viii. 14.)

Having therefore said in his Third Book concerning Nature, that it is more expedient for a fool to live than not, though he should never attain to wisdom, he adds these words: “For such are the good things of men, that even evil things do in a manner precede other things that are in the middle place; not that these things themselves really precede, but reason, which makes us choose rather to live, though we were to be fools.” Therefore also, though we were to be unjust, wicked, hated of the gods, and unhappy; for none of these things are absent from those that live foolishly. Is it then convenient rather to live miserably than not to live miserably, and better to be hurt than not hurt, to be unjust than not unjust, to break the laws than not to break them? That is, is it convenient to do things that are not convenient, and a duty to live even against duty? Yes indeed, for it is worse to want sense and reason than to be a fool. What then ails them, that they will not confess that to be evil which is worse than evil? Why do they say that folly alone is to be avoided, if it is not less but rather more convenient to shun that disposition which is not capable of folly?

But who can complain of this, that shall remember what he has written in his Second Book of Nature, declaring that vice was not unprofitably made for the universe? But it is meet I should set down his doctrine in his own words, that you may understand in what place those rank vice, and what discourses they hold of it, who accuse Xenocrates and Speusippus for not reckoning health indifferent and riches useless. “Vice,” saith he, “has its limit in reference to other accidents. For it is also in some sort according to the reason of Nature, and (as I may so say) is not wholly useless in respect of the universe; for other wise there would not be any good.” Is there then no good among the gods, because there is no evil? And when Jupiter, having resolved all matter into himself, shall be alone, other differences being taken away, will there then be no good, because there will be no evil? But is there melody in a choir though none in it sings faultily, and health in the body though no member is sick; and yet cannot virtue have its existence without vice? But as the poison of a serpent or the gall of an hyena is to be mixed with some medicines, was it also of necessity that there must have been some conjunction of the wickedness of Meletus with the justice of Socrates, and the dissolute conduct of Cleon with the probity of Pericles? And could not Jupiter have found a means to bring into the world Hercules and Lycurgus, if he had not also made for us Sardanapalus and Phalaris? It is now time for them to say that the consumption was made for the sound constitution of men’s bodies, and the gout for the swiftness of their feet; and that Achilles would not have had a good head of hair if Thersites had not been bald. For what difference is there between such triflers and ravers, and those who say that intemperance was not brought forth unprofitably for continence, nor injustice for justice, so that we must pray to the gods, there may be always wickedness,

Lies, fawning speeches, and deceitful manners,
(Hesiod, “Works and Days,” 78.)

if, when these are taken away, virtue will also vanish and be lost?

Or do you desire to understand the greatest sweetness of his eloquence and persuasion? “For,” says he, “as comedies have in them sometimes ridiculous epigrams, which, though bad in themselves, give nevertheless a certain grace to the whole poem; so, though you may blame vice in itself, yet is it not useless to other things.” First, then, to say that vice was made by the providence of God, as a wanton epigram by the will of the poet, transcends in absurdity all imagination. For this being granted, how will the gods be rather givers of good than evil? How will wickedness be displeasing to them, and hated by them? And what shall we have to oppose against these ill-sounding sentences of the poets. —

A cause to men God sends,
When to chastise some house his wrath intends;
(From the “Niobe” of Aeschylus, Frag. 151.)

and again,

What God those seeds of strife ‘twixt them did sow?
(Iliad, i. 8.)

Moreover, a lewd epigram adorns the comedy and contributes to its end, which is to delight the spectators and make them laugh. But Jupiter, who is surnamed fatherly, supreme, just, and (as Pindar has it) the most perfect artist, framing the world, not as a great interlude, full of variety and great learning, but as a common city of Gods and men, living together in concord and happiness with justice and virtue, — what need had he, for the attaining to this excellent end, of thieves, murderers, parricides, and tyrants? For vice entered not as a morris-dance, pleasing and delightful to the Divinity; nor was it brought in amongst the affairs of men, to cause mirth and laughter by its raillery and facetiousness, since there is not to be seen in it so much as a dream of that celebrated agreement with Nature. Besides, that foolish epigram is a very small part of the poem, and takes up but a very little place in the comedy; neither do such things abound in it, nor do they corrupt any of those things which seem to have been well done, or spoil their grace. But all human affairs are replete with vice, and the whole life, from the very prologue and beginning to the end, being disordered, depraved, and disturbed, and having no part of it pure or irreprehensible (as these men say), is the most filthy and most unpleasant of all farces.

Wherefore I would willingly ask, in what vice is profitable to the universe. Not surely in respect of heavenly things, and such as are divine by nature. For it would be ridiculous to say, that if there had not arisen, or were not amongst men, malice and covetousness and lying, or that if we did not rob, plunder, slander, and murder one another, the sun would not run his appointed course, the world enjoy its seasons and periods of time, or the earth, which is seated in the midst of the universe, afford the principles of the wind and rain. It remains, then, that the existence of vice must be profitable for us and our affairs; and that perhaps these men mean. Are we more healthy for being vicious, or do we more abound with necessaries? Or does vice contribute anything to our beauty and strength? They say, no. But where on earth is virtue to be met with? Is it then only a base name, and a visionary opinion of night-walking Sophists, and not an actual thing lying conspicuous to all, like vice, so that we cannot partake of anything as profitable, . . . but least, O ye gods! of virtue, for which we were created? Is it not then absurd, that the utensils of the husbandman, mariner, and charioteer should be serviceable and aiding towards his intended end, whilst that which was by God made for virtue destroys and corrupts virtue? But perhaps it is time now to leave this point, and pass to another.

LAMPRIAS. Not for my sake, my dear friend, I beseech you; for I desire to understand, in what manner these men bring in evil things before the good, and vice before virtue.

DIADUMENUS. It is indeed, sir, a thing worth knowing. They babble indeed much; but in conclusion they say that prudence, being the knowledge of good and evil, would be wholly taken away if there were no evil. For as, if there are truths, it is impossible but there must be some lies also near to them; so it stands with reason, that if there are good things, there must also be evil things.

LAMPRIAS. One of these things is not said amiss; and I think also that the other is not unapprehended by me. For I see a difference here: that which is not true must immediately be false; but that is not of necessity evil which is not good; because that between true and false there is no medium, but between good and evil there is the indifferent. Nor is it of necessity that the one must subsist with the other. For Nature may have good without having any need of evil, but only having that which is neither good nor evil. But if there is anything to be said by you to the former reason, let us hear it.

DIADUMENUS. Many things indeed are said; but at present we shall make use only of what is most necessary. In the first place, it is a folly to imagine that good and evil have their existence for the sake of prudence. For good and evil being already extant, prudence came afterwards; as the art of physic was invented, there being already things wholesome and unwholesome. For good and evil are not therefore extant that there may be prudence; but the faculty by which we judge good and evil that are already in being is named prudence. As sight is a sense distinguishing white from black; which colors were not therefore made that we might have sight, but we rather wanted sight to discern these things. Secondly, when the world shall be set on fire (as the Stoics hold), there will then no evil be left, but all will then be prudent and wise. There is therefore prudence, though there is no evil; nor is it of necessity for evil to exist that prudence may have a being. But supposing that prudence must always be a knowledge of good and evil, what inconvenience would it be if, evil being taken away, prudence should no longer subsist; but instead of this we should have another virtue, not being the knowledge of good and evil, but of good only? So, if black should be wholly lost from among the colors, and any one should therefore contend that sight is also lost, for that there is no more the sense of discerning black and white, what should hinder us from answering him: It is no prejudice to us, if we have not what you call sight, but in lieu of that have another sense and faculty, by which we apprehend colors that are white and not white. For I indeed think that neither our taste would be lost, if bitter things were wanting, nor our feeling, if pain were taken away, nor prudence, if evil had no being; but that these senses would remain, to apprehend things sweet and grateful and those that are not so, and prudence to be the science of things good and not good. But let those who think otherwise take the name to themselves, leaving us the thing.

Besides all this, what should hinder but there may be an understanding of evil, and an existence of good? As the gods, I believe, enjoy health, but understand the fever and pleurisy. Since even we, who, as they say, have abundance of evils but no good, are not yet destitute of the knowledge what prudence, what goodness, and what happiness is. And this also would be remarkable, that if virtue were absent, there should be those who could teach us what it is and give us a comprehension of it, when if vice were not extant, it should be impossible to have any understanding of it. For see what these men persuade us who philosophize against the conceptions, — that by folly indeed we comprehend prudence, but prudence without folly cannot so much as comprehend folly itself.

And if Nature had absolutely stood in need of the generation of evil, yet might one or two examples of vice have been sufficient; or if you will, it might have been requisite that ten, a thousand, or ten thousand vicious men should be brought forth, and not that the multitude of vices should be so great as “to exceed in number the sands of the sea, the dust of the earth, and the feathers of all the various kinds of birds in the world,” and yet that there should not be so much all this while as a dream of virtue. Those who in Sparta had the charge of the public halls or eating places called Phiditia were wont to bring forth two or three Helots drunken and full of wine, that the young men, seeing what drunkenness was, might learn to keep sobriety. But in human life there are many such examples of vice. For there is not any one sober to virtue; but we all stagger up and down, acting shamefully and living miserably. Thus does reason inebriate us, and with so much trouble and madness does it fill us, that we fall in nothing short of those dogs of whom Aesop says, that seeing certain skins swimming in the water, they endeavored to gulp down the sea, but burst before they could get at them. For reason also, by which we hope to gain reputation and attain to virtue, does, ere we can reach to it, corrupt and destroy us, being before filled with abundance of heady and bitter vice; — if indeed, as these men say, they who are got even to the uppermost step have no ease, cessation, or breathing from folly and infelicity.

But let us see what manner of thing he shows vice to be who says that it was not brought forth unprofitably, and of what use and what a thing he makes it to be to those who have it, writing in his book of right conduct, that a wicked man wants nothing, has need of nothing, nothing is useful to him, nothing proper, nothing fit for him. How then is vice useful, with which neither health nor abundance of riches nor advancement in virtue is profitable? Who then does not want these things, of which some are “preferable” and “acceptable” and therefore highly useful, and others are “according to Nature,” as themselves term them? But (they affirm) no one has need of them, unless he become wise. So the vicious man does not even stand in want of being made wise. Nor are men hungry and thirsty before they become wise. When thirsty, therefore, they have no need of water, nor when hungry, of bread.

Be like to courteous guests, and him
Who asks only fire and shelter:

does this man now not need entertainment? Nor had he need of a cloak, who said,

Give Hipponax a cloak, for I’m stiff with cold.

But will you speak a paradox indeed, both extravagant and singular? Say then that a wise man has need of nothing, that he wants nothing, he is fortunate, he is free from want, he is self-sufficient, blessed, perfect. Now what madness is this, that he to whom nothing is wanting has need of the goods he has, but that the vicious indeed wants many things, and stands in need of nothing. For thus indeed says Chrysippus, that the vicious wants but stands not in need; removing the common notions, like chessmen, backwards and forwards. For all men think that having need precedes wanting, esteeming him who stands in need of things that are not at hand or easy to be got, to want them. For no man wants horns or wings, because no one has need of them. But we say that those want arms and money and clothes who are destitute of them, when they have occasion for them. But these men are so desirous of seeming always to say something against the common notions, that for the love of novelty they often depart from their own opinions, as they do here.

Recall yourself to the consideration of what has been said a little above. This is one of their assertions against the common conception, that no vicious man receives any utility. And yet many being instructed profit, many being slaves are made free; many being besieged are delivered, being lame are led by the hand, and being sick are cured. “But possessing all these things, they are never the better, neither do receive benefits, nor have they any benefactors, nor do they slight them.” Vicious men then are not ungrateful, no more than are wise men. Ingratitude therefore has no being; because the good receiving a benefit fail not to acknowledge it, and the bad are not capable of receiving any. Behold, now, what they say to this, — that benefit is ranked among mean or middle things, and that to give and receive utility belongs only to the wise, but the bad also receive a benefit. Then they who partake of the benefit partake not also of its use; and whither a benefit extends, there is nothing useful or commodious. Now what else is there that makes a kind office a benefit, but that the bestower of it is, in some respect, useful to the needy receiver?

LAMPRIAS. But let these things pass. What, I beseech you, is this so highly venerated utility, which preserving as some great and excellent thing for the wise, they permit not so much as the name of it to the vicious?

DIADUMENUS. If (say they) one wise man does but any way prudently stretch out his finger, all the wise men all the world over receive utility by it. This is the work of their amity; in this do the virtues of the wise man terminate by their common utilities. Aristotle then and Xenocrates doted, saving that men receive utility from the gods, from their parents, from their masters, being ignorant of that wonderful utility which wise men receive from one another, being moved according to virtue, though they neither are together nor yet know it. Yet all men esteem, that laying up, keeping, and bestowing are then useful and profitable, when some benefit or profit is recovered by it. The thriving man buys keys, and diligently keeps his stores,

With ‘s hand unlocking wealth’s sweet treasury.
(From the “Bellerophontes” of Euripides, Frag. 287, vs. 8.)

But to store up and to keep with diligence and labor such things as are for no use is not seemly or honorable, but ridiculous. If Ulysses indeed had tied up with the knot which Circe taught him, not the gifts he had received from Alcinous, — tripods, caldrons, cloths, and gold, — but heaping up trash, stones, and such like trumpery, should have thought his employment about such things, and the possession and keeping of them, a happy and blessed work, would any one have imitated this foolish providence and empty care? Yet this is the beauty, gravity, and happiness of the Stoical consent, being nothing else but a gathering together and keeping of useless and indifferent things. For such are things according to Nature, and more exterior things; if indeed they compare the greatest riches to fringes and golden chamberpots, and sometimes also, as it happens, to oil-cruets. Then, as those who seem proudly to have affronted and railed at some gods or demigods presently changing their note, fall prostrate and sit humbly on the ground, praising and magnifying the Divinity; so these men, having met with punishment of this arrogancy and vanity, again exercise themselves in these indifferent things and such as pertain nothing to them, crying out with a loud voice that there is only one thing good, specious, and honorable, the storing up of these things and the communication of them, and that it is not meet for those to live who have them not, but to despatch out of the way and famish themselves, bidding a long farewell to virtue.

They esteem indeed Theognis to have been a man altogether of a base and abject spirit, for saying, as one overfearful in regard to poverty, which is an indifferent thing: —

From poverty to fly, into the deep
Throw thyself, Cyrnus, or from rocks so steep.

Yet they themselves exhort the same thing in prose, and affirm that a man, to free himself from some great disease or exceedingly acute pain, if he have not at hand sword or hemlock, ought to leap into the sea or throw himself headlong from a precipice; neither of which is hurtful, or evil, or incommodious, or makes them who fall into it miserable.

With what, then, says he, shall I begin? And what shall I take for the principle of duty and matter of virtue, leaving Nature and that which is according to Nature?

With what, O good sir, do Aristotle and Theophrastus begin? What beginnings do Xenocrates and Polemo take? Does not also Zeno follow these, who hold Nature and that which is according to Nature to be the elements of happiness? But they indeed persisted in these things, as desirable, good, and profitable; and joining to them virtue, which employs them and uses every one of them according to its property, thought to complete and consummate a perfect life and one every way absolute, producing that concord which is truly suitable and consonant to Nature. For these men did not run into confusion, like those who leap up from the ground and presently fall down again upon it, terming the same things acceptable and not desirable, proper and not good, unprofitable and yet useful, nothing to us and yet the principles of duties. But their life was such as their speech, and they exhibited actions suitable and consonant to their sayings. But they who are of the Stoic sect — not unlike to that woman in Archilochus, who deceitfully carried in one hand water, in the other fire — by some doctrines draw Nature to them, and by others drive her from them. Or rather, by their deeds and actions they embrace those things which are according to Nature, as good and desirable, but in words and speeches they reject and contemn them, as indifferent and of no use to virtue for the acquiring felicity.

Now, forasmuch as all men esteem the sovereign good to be joyous, desirable, happy, of the greatest dignity, self-sufficient, and wanting nothing; compare their good, and see how it agrees with this common conception. Does the stretching out a finger prudently produce this joy? Is a prudent torture a thing desirable? Is he happy, who with reason breaks his neck? Is that of the greatest dignity, which reason often chooses to let go for that which is not good? Is that perfect and self-sufficient, by enjoying which, if they possess not too indifferent things, they neither can nor will endure to live? There is also another tenet of the Stoics, by which custom is still more injured, taking and plucking from her genuine notions, which are as her legitimate children, and supposing other bastardly, wild, and illegitimate ones in their room, and necessitating her to nourish and cherish the one instead of the other; and that too in those principles which concern things good and bad, desirable and avoidable, proper and strange, the energy of which ought to be more clearly distinguished than that of hot and cold, black and white. For the imaginations of these things are brought in by the senses from without; but those have their original bred from the good things which we have within us. But these men entering with their logic upon the topic of felicity, as on the sophism called Pseudomenos, or that named Kyrieuon, have removed no ambiguities, but brought in very many.

Indeed, of two good things, of which the one is the end and the other belongs to the end, none is ignorant that the end is the greater and perfecter good. Chrysippus also acknowledges this difference, as is manifest from his Third Book of Good Things. For he dissents from those who make science the end, and sets it down. . . . In his Treatise of Justice, however, he does not think that justice can be preserved, if any one makes pleasure to be the end; but allows it may, if pleasure is not said to be the end, but simply a good. Nor do I think that you need now to hear me repeat his words, since his Third Book of Justice is everywhere to be had. When, therefore, O my friend, they elsewhere say that no one good is greater or less than another, and that what is not the end is equal to the end, they contradict not only the common conceptions, but even their own words. Again, if of two evils, the one when it is present renders us worse, and the other hurts us but renders us not worse, it is against reason not to say that the evil which by its presence renders us worse is greater than that which hurts us but renders us not worse. Now Chrysippus indeed confesses, that there are some fears and sorrows and errors which hurt us, but render us not worse. Read his First Book of Justice against Plato; for in respect of other things, it is worth the while to note the babbling of the man in that place, expounding indifferently all matters and doctrines, as well proper to his own sect as foreign to it.

It is likewise against common sense when he says that there may be two ends or scopes proposed of life, and that all the things we do are not to be referred to one; and yet this is more against common sense, to say that there is an end, and yet that every action is to be referred to another. Nevertheless they must of necessity endure one of these. For if those things which are first according to Nature are not eligible for themselves, but the choice and taking of them agreeably to reason is, and if every one therefore does all his actions for the acquiring the first things according to Nature, then all things which are done must have their reference to this, that the principal things according to Nature may be obtained. But they think that they who aim and aspire to get these things do not have the things themselves as the end, but that to which they must make reference, namely, the choice and not the things. For the end indeed is to choose and receive these things prudently. But the things themselves and the enjoying of them are not the end, but the material ground, having its value only from the choice. For it is my opinion that they both use and write this very expression, to show the difference.

LAMPRIAS. You have exactly related both what they say and in what manner they deliver it.

DIADUMENUS. But observe how it fares with them, as with those that endeavor to leap over their own shadow; for they do not leave behind, but always carry along with them in their speech some absurdity most remote from common sense. For as, if any one should say that he who shoots does all he can, not that he may hit the mark, but that he may do all he can, such a one would rightly be esteemed to speak enigmatically and prodigiously; so these doting dreamers, who contend that the obtaining of natural things is not the end of aiming after natural things, but the taking and choosing them is, and that the desire and endeavor after health is not in every one terminated in the enjoyment of health, but on the contrary, the enjoyment of health is referred to the desire and endeavor after it, and that certain walkings and contentions of speech and suffering incisions and taking of medicines, so they are done by reason, are the end of health, and not health of them, they, I say, trifle like to those who say, Let us sup, that we may offer sacrifice, that we may bathe. But this rather changes order and custom, and all things which these men say carry with them the total subversion and confusion of affairs. Thus, we do not desire to take a walk in fit time that we may digest our meat; but we digest our meat that we may take a walk in fit time. Has Nature also made health for the sake of hellebore, instead of producing hellebore for the sake of health? For what is wanting to bring them to the highest degree of speaking paradoxes, but the saying of such things? What difference is there between him who says that health was made for the sake of medicines and not medicines for the sake of health, and him who makes the choice of medicines and their composition and use more desirable than health itself? — or rather who esteems health not at all desirable, but placing the end in the negotiation about these things, prefers desire to enjoyment, and not enjoyment to desire? For to desire, forsooth (they affirm), is joined the proceeding wisely and discreetly. It is true indeed, we will say, if respect be had to the end, that is, the enjoyment and possession of the things it pursues; but otherwise, it is wholly void of reason, if it does all things for the obtaining of that the enjoyment of which is neither honorable nor happy.

Now, since we are fallen upon this discourse, anything may rather be said to agree with common sense, than that those who have neither received nor have any conception of good do nevertheless desire and pursue it. For you see how Chrysippus drives Ariston into this difficulty, that he should understand an indifference in things inclining neither to good nor to bad, before either good or bad is itself understood; for so indifference will appear to have subsisted even before itself, if the understanding of it cannot be perceived unless good be first understood, while the good is nothing else than this very indifference. Understand now and consider this indifference which the Stoa refutes and calls consent, whence and in what manner it gives us the knowledge of good. For if without good the indifference to that which is not good cannot be understood, much less does the knowing of good things give any intelligence of itself to those who had not before some notion of the good. But as there can be no knowledge of the art of things wholesome and unwholesome in those who have not first some knowledge of the things themselves; so they cannot conceive any notion of the science of good and evil who have not some fore-knowledge of good and evil.

LAMPRIAS. What then is good? DIADUMENUS. Nothing but prudence. LAMPRIAS. And what is prudence? DIADUMENUS. Nothing but the science of good.

LAMPRIAS. There is much then of “Jupiter’s Corinth” (that is, much begging the question) admitted into their reasoning. For I would have you let alone the saying about the turning of the pestle, lest you should seem to mock them; although an accident like to that has insinuated itself into their discourse. For it seems that, to the understanding of good, one has need to understand prudence, and to seek for prudence in the understanding of good, being forced always to pursue the one by the other, and thus failing of both; since to the understanding of each we have need of that which cannot be known without the other be first understood.

DIADUMENUS. But there is yet another way, by which you may perceive not only the perversion but the eversion of their discourse, and the reduction of it entirely to nothing. They hold the essence of good to be the reasonable election of things according to Nature. Now the election is not reasonable which is not directed to some end, as has been said before. What, then, is this end? Nothing else, say they, but to reason rightly in the election of things according to Nature. First, then, the conception of good is lost and gone. For to reason rightly in election is an operation proceeding from an habit of right reasoning, and therefore being constrained to get this from the end; and the end not without this, we fail of understanding either of them. Besides, which is more, this reasonable election ought strictly to be a choice of things good and useful, and cooperating to the end; for how can it be reasonable to choose things which are neither convenient nor honorable nor at all eligible? For be it, as they say, a reasonable election of things having a fitness for the causing felicity; see then to what a beautiful and solemn conclusion their discourse brings them. For the end is (it seems), according to them, to reason rightly in the choice of things which are useful in causing us to reason rightly.

LAMPRIAS. When I hear these words, my friend, what is laid down seems to me strangely extravagant; and I farther want to know how this happens.

DIADUMENUS. You must then be more attentive; for it is not for every one to understand this riddle. Hear therefore and answer. Is not the end, according to them, to reason rightly in the election of things according to Nature?

LAMPRIAS. So they say.

DIADUMENUS. And are these things according to Nature chosen as good, or as having some fitness or preferences . . . either for this end or for something else?

LAMPRIAS. I think not for anything else but for this end.

DIADUMENUS. Now, then, having discovered the matter, see what befalls them. They affirm that the end is to reason rightly in the selection of things which are of value in causing us to reason rightly, for they say that we neither have nor understand any other principle either of good or of felicity but this precious rectitude of reasoning in the election of things that are of worth. But there are some who think that this is spoken against Antipater, and not against the whole sect; for that he, being pressed by Carneades, fell into these fooleries.

But as for those things that are against the common conceptions taught in the Stoa concerning love, they are all of them concerned in the absurdity. They say youths are deformed who are vicious and foolish, and that the wise are fair; and yet that none of these beautiful ones is either beloved or worthy of being beloved. Nor yet is this the worst; but they add, that those who love the deformed ones cease to do so when they are become fair. Now whoever knew such a love as is kindled and has its being at the sight of the body’s deformity joined with that of the soul, and is quenched and decays at the accession of beauty joined with prudence, justice, and temperance? These men are not unlike to those gnats which love to settle on the dregs of wine, or on vinegar, but shun and fly away from potable and pleasant wine. As for that which they call and term an appearance of beauty, saying that it is the inducement of love, — first, it has no probability, for in those who are very foul and highly wicked there cannot be an appearance of beauty, if indeed (as is said) the wickedness of the disposition fills the face with deformity. And secondly, it is absolutely against all common experience for the deformed to be worthy of love because he one day will be fair and expects to have beauty, but that when he has got it and is become fair and good, he is to be beloved of none.

LAMPRIAS. Love, they say, is a certain hunting after a young person who is as yet indeed undeveloped, but naturally well disposed towards virtue.

DIADUMENUS. And what do we now else, O my best friend, but demonstrate that their sect perverts and destroys all our common conceptions with improbable things and unusual expressions? For none would hinder the solicitude of these wise men towards young persons, if it were free from all passionate affection, from being named hunting or love of instruction; but they ought to call love what all men and women understand and call by this name, like that which Penelope’s suitors in Homer seem to acknowledge,

Who all desired to lie with her;
(“Odyssey,” i. 366)

or as Jupiter in another place says to Juno,

For neither goddess yet nor mortal dame
E’er kindled in my heart so great a flame.
(“Iliad.” xiv. 315.)

Thus casting moral philosophy into these matters, in which all is

A mazy whirl, with nothing sound, and all perplexed,
(Euripides, “Andromache,” 448.)

they contemn and deride it, as if boasting themselves to be the only men who observe nature and custom as it ought to be, and who at the same time adapted reason to each man by means of aversions, desires, appetites, pursuits, and impulses. But custom has received no good from their logic, but, like the ear diseased by vain sounds, is filled with difficulty and obscurity, — of which, if you think good, we will elsewhere begin a new discourse. But now we will run through the chief and principal heads of their natural philosophy, which no less confounds the common conceptions than that other concerning ends. ============= First, this is altogether absurd and against sense, to say that is which is not, and things which are not are. But above all that is most absurd which they say of the universe. For, putting round about the circumference of the world an infinite vacuum, they say that the universe is neither a body nor bodiless. It follows then from this that the universe has no being, since with them body only has a being. Since therefore it is the part of that which has a being both to do and suffer, and the universe has no being, it follows that the universe will neither do nor suffer. Neither will it be in a place; for that which takes up place is a body, and the universe is not a body, therefore the universe exists nowhere. And since that only rests which continues in one and the same place, the universe rests not, because it takes not up place. Neither yet is it moved, for what is moved must have a place and space in which to move. Moreover, what is moved either moves itself, or suffers motion from another. Now, that which is moved by itself has some bents and inclinations proceeding from its gravity or levity; and gravity and levity are either certain habits or faculties or differences of bodies. But the universe is not a body. It follows then of necessity, that the universe is neither, heavy nor light, and consequently, that it has not in itself any principle of motion. Nor yet will the universe be moved by any other; for there is nothing else besides the universe. Thus are they necessitated to say as they do, that the universe neither rests nor is moved. Lastly since according to their opinion it must not be said that the universe is a body, and yet the heaven, the earth, animals, plants, men, and stones are bodies, it follows that that which is no body will have bodies for its parts, and things which have existence will be parts of that which has no existence, and that which is not heavy will have parts that are heavy, and what is not light will have parts that are light; — than which there cannot be any dreams imagined more repugnant to the common conceptions.

Moreover, there is nothing so evident or so agreeing to common sense as this, that what is not animate is inanimate, and what is not inanimate is animate. And yet they overthrow also this evidence, confessing the universe to be neither animate nor inanimate. Besides this, none thinks the universe, of which there is no part wanting to be imperfect; but they deny the universe to be perfect, saying that what is perfect may be defined, but the universe because of its infiniteness cannot be defined. Therefore, according to them, there is something which is neither perfect nor imperfect. Moreover, the universe is neither a part, since there is nothing greater than it; nor the whole, for the whole (they say) is predicated only of that which is digested into order; but the universe is, through its infiniteness, undetermined and unordered. Moreover, there is no other thing which can be the cause of the universe, there being nothing besides the universe; nor is the universe the cause of other things or even of itself; for its nature suffers it not to act, and a cause is understood by its acting. Suppose, now, one should ask all men what they imagine NOTHING to be, and what notion they have of it. Would they not answer, that it neither is a cause nor has a cause, that it is neither the whole nor a part that it is neither perfect nor imperfect, that it is neither animate nor inanimate, that it neither is moved nor rests nor subsists, that it is neither corporeal nor incorporeal; and that this and no other thing is meant by NOTHING? Since, then, they alone predicate that of the universe which all others do of NOTHING, it seems plain that they make the universe and NOTHING to be the same. Time must then be said to be nothing; the same also must be said of predicate, axiom, junction, conjunction, which terms they use more than any of the other philosophers, yet they say that they have no existence. But farther, to say that what is true has no being or subsistence but is comprehended, and that that is comprehensible and credible which no way partakes of the essence of being, — does not this exceed all absurdity?

But lest these things should seem to have too much of logical difficulty, let us proceed to such as pertain more to natural philosophy. Since, then, as themselves say,

Jove is of all beginning, midst, and end,
(See “Orphic Fragments,” vi. 10 (Herm.).)

they ought chiefly to have applied themselves to remedy, redress, and reduce to the best order the conceptions concerning the gods, if there were in them anything confused or erroneous; or if not, to have left every one in those sentiments which they had from the laws and custom concerning the Divinity:-

For neither now nor yesterday
But always these things lived,
No one knows from whence they came.
(Sophocles, “Antigone,” 456.)

But these men, having begun (as it were) “from Vesta” to disturb the opinions settled and received in every country concerning the gods, have not (to speak sincerely) left anything entire and uncorrupted. For what man is there or ever was, except these, who does not believe the Divinity to be immortal and eternal? Or what in the common anticipations is more unanimously chanted forth concerning the gods than such things as these: —

There the blest gods eternally enjoy
Their sweet delights;
(“Odyssey,” vi. 46.)

and again,

Both gods immortal, and earth-dwelling men;
(“Iliad,” v. 442.)

and again,

Exempt from sickness and old age are they,
And free from toil, and have escaped the stream
Of roaring Acheron?
(From Pindar.)

One may perhaps light upon some nations so barbarous and savage as not to think there is a God; but there was never found any man who, believing a God, did not at the same time believe him immortal and eternal. Certainly, those who were called Atheists, like Theodorus, Diagoras, and Hippo, durst not say that the Divinity is corruptible, but they did not believe that there is anything incorruptible; not indeed admitting the subsistence of an incorruptibility, but keeping the notion of a God. But Chrysippus and Cleanthes, having filled (as one may say) heaven, earth, air, and sea with gods, have not yet made any one of all these gods immortal or eternal, except Jupiter alone, in whom they consume all the rest; so that it is no more suitable for him to consume others than to be consumed himself. For it is alike an infirmity to perish by being resolved into another, and to be saved by being nourished by the resolution of others into himself. Now these are not like other of their absurdities, gathered by argument from their suppositions or drawn by consequence from their doctrines; but they themselves proclaim it aloud in their writings concerning the gods, Providence, Fate, and Nature, expressly saying that all the other gods were born, and shall die by the fire, melting away, in their opinion, as if they were of wax or tin. It is indeed as much against common sense that God should be mortal as the man should be immortal; nay, indeed, I do not see what the difference between God and man will be, if God also is a reasonable and corruptible animal. For if they oppose us with this subtle distinction, that man is mortal, and God not mortal but corruptible, see what they get by it. For they will say either that God is at the same time both immortal and corruptible, or else that he neither is mortal nor immortal; the absurdity of which even those cannot exceed who set themselves industriously to devise positions repugnant to common sense. I speak of others; for these men have left no one of the absurdest things unspoken or unattempted.

To these things Cleanthes, contending for the conflagration of the world, says, that the sun will make the moon and all the other stars like to himself, and will change them into himself. Indeed, if the stars, being gods, should contribute anything to the sun towards their own destruction by adding to its conflagration, it would be very ridiculous for us to make prayers to them for our salvation, and to think them the saviours of men, whose nature it is to accelerate their own corruption and dissolution.

And yet these men leave nothing unsaid against Epicurus, crying out, Fie, fie upon him, as confounding their presumption concerning God by taking away Providence; for God (they say) is presumed and understood to be not only immortal and happy, but also a lover of men and careful of them and beneficial to them, and herein they say true. Now if they who abolish Providence take away the preconception concerning God, what do they who say that the gods indeed have care of us, but deny them to be helpful to us, and make them not bestowers of good things but of indifferent ones, giving, to wit, not virtue, but wealth, health, children, and such like things, none of which is helpful, profitable, desirable, or available? Or shall we not rather think, that Epicurus does not take away the conceptions concerning the gods; but that these Stoics scoff at the gods and deride them, saying one is a god of fruits, another of marriage, another a physician, and another a diviner, while yet health, issue, and plenty of fruits are not good things, but indifferent things and unprofitable to those who have them?

The third point of the conception concerning the gods is, that the gods do in nothing so much differ from men as in happiness and virtue. But according to Chrysippus, they have not so much as this difference. For he says that Jupiter does not exceed Dion in virtue, but that Jupiter and Dion, being both wise, are equally aided by one another, when one comes into the motion of the other. For this and none else is the good which the gods do to men, and likewise men to the gods when they are wise. For they say, that a man who falls not short in virtue comes not behind them in felicity, and that he who, tormented with diseases and being maimed in the body, makes himself away, is equally happy with Jupiter the Saviour, provided he be but wise. But this man neither is nor ever was upon the earth; but there are infinite millions of men unhappy to the highest degree in the state and government of Jupiter, which is most excellently administered. Now what can be more against sense than that, when Jupiter governs exceedingly well, we should be exceedingly miserable? But if (which it is unlawful even to say) he would desire no longer to be a saviour, nor a deliverer, nor a protector, but the contrary to all these glorious appellations, there can no goodness be added to the things that are, either as to their multitude or magnitude, since, as these men say, all men live to the height miserably and wickedly, neither vice receiving addition, nor unhappiness increase.

Nor is this the worst; but they are angry with Menander for saying upon the stage,

The chief beginning of men’s miseries
Are things exceeding good;

for that this is against sense. And yet they make God, who is good, the beginning of evils. “For matter,” they contend, “produced not any evil of itself; for it is without quality, and whatever differences it has, it has received them all from that which moves and forms it.” But that which moves and forms it is the reason dwelling in it, since matter is not made to move and form itself. So that of necessity evil, if it come by nothing, must have been produced from that which has no being; but if by some moving principle, from God. But if they think that Jupiter has not the command of his parts nor uses every one of them according to his reason, they speak against common sense, and imagine an animal, many of whose parts are not subservient to his will but use their own operations and actions, to which the whole gives no incitation nor begins their motion. For there is nothing which has life so ill compacted as that, against its will, its feet shall go, its tongue speak, its horns push, or its teeth bite. The most of which things God must of necessity suffer, if the wicked, being parts of him, do against his will lie, cheat, rob, and murder one another. But if, as Chrysippus says, the very least part cannot possibly behave itself otherwise than according to Jupiter’s pleasure, and if every living thing is so framed by Nature as to rest and move according as he inclines it and as he turns, stays, and disposes it,

This saying is more impious than the first.
(See Nauck’s “Tragic Fragments,” p. 704 (No. 345).)

For it were more tolerable to say that many parts of Jupiter are, through his weakness and want of power, hurried on to do many absurd things against his nature and will, than that there is not any intemperance or wickedness of which Jupiter is not the cause. Moreover, since they affirm the world to be a city and the stars citizens, if this be so, there must be also tribes-men and magistrates, the sun must be some consul, and the evening star a praetor or mayor of a city. Now I know not whether any one that shall go about to disprove such things will not show himself more ridiculous than those who assert and affirm them.

Is it not therefore against sense to say that the seed is more and greater than that which is produced of it? For we see that Nature in all animals and plants, even those that are wild, has taken small, slender, and scarce visible things for principles of generation to the greatest. For it does not only from a grain of wheat produce an ear-bearing stalk, or a vine from the stone of a grape; but from a small berry or acorn which has escaped being eaten by the bird, kindling and setting generation on fire (as it were) from a little spark, it sends forth the stock of a bush, or the tall body of an oak, palm, or pine tree. Whence also they say that seed is in Greek called [Greek omitted], as it were, the [Greek omitted] or the WINDING UP of a great mass in a little compass; and that Nature has the name of [Greek omitted], as if it were the INFLATION [Greek omitted] and diffusion of reason and numbers opened and loosened by it. But now, in opposition to this, they hold that fire is the seed of the world, which shall after the conflagration change into seed the world, which will then have a copious nature from a smaller body and bulk, and possess an infinite space of vacuum filled by its increase; and the world being made, the form again recedes and settles, the matter being after the generation gathered and contracted into itself.

You may hear them and read many of their writings, in which they jangle with the Academics, and cry out against them as confounding all things with their paradox of indistinguishable identity, and as vehemently contending that there is but one quality in two substances. And yet there is no man who understands not this, and would not on the contrary think it wonderful and extremely strange if there should not in all time be found one kind of dove exactly and in all respects like to another dove, a bee to a bee, a grain of wheat to a grain of wheat, or (as the proverb has it) one fig to another. But these things are plainly against common sense which the Stoics say and feign, — that there are in one substance two individual qualities, and that the same substance, which has particularly one quality, when another quality is added, receives and equally conserves them both. For if there may be two, there may be also three, four, and five, and even more than you can name, in one and the same substance; I say not in its different parts, but all equally in the whole, though even infinite in number. For Chrysippus says, that Jupiter and the world are like to man, as is also Providence to the soul; when therefore the conflagration shall be, Jupiter, who alone of all the gods is incorruptible, will retire into Providence, and they being together, will both perpetually remain in the one substance of the ether.

But leaving now the gods, and beseeching them to give these Stoics common sense and a common understanding, let us look into their doctrines concerning the elements. It is against the common conceptions that one body should be the place of another, or that a body should penetrate through a body, neither of them containing any vacuity, but the full passing into the full, and in which there is no vacuity — but is full and has no place by reason of its continuity — receiving the mixture. But these men, not thrusting one thing into one, nor yet two or three or ten together, but jumbling all the parts of the world, being cut piecemeal, into any one thing which they shall first light on, and saying that the very least which is perceived by sense will contain the greatest that shall come unto it, boldly frame a new doctrine, proving themselves here, as in many other things, to be holding for their suppositions things repugnant to common sense. And presently upon this they are forced to admit into their discourse many monstrous and strange positions, mixing whole bodies with whole; of which this also is one, that three are four. For this others put as an example of those things which cannot be conceived even in thought. But to the Stoics it is a matter of truth, that when one cup of wine is mixed with two of water, if it is not to disappear and if the mixture is to be equalized, it must be spread through the whole and be confounded therewith, so as to make that which was one two by the equalization of the mixture. For the one remains, but is extended as much as two, and thus is equal to the double of itself. Now if it happens in the mixture with two to take the measure of two in the diffusion, this is together the measure both of three and four, — of three because one is mixed with two, and of four because, being mixed with two, it has an equal quantity with those with which it is mixed. Now this fine subtilty is a consequence of their putting bodies into a body, and so likewise is the unintelligibleness of the manner how one is contained in the other. For it is of necessity that, of bodies passing one into another by mixture, the one should not contain and the other be contained, nor the one receive and the other be received within; for this would not be a mixture, but a contiguity and touching of the superficies, the one entering in, and the other enclosing it without, and the rest of the parts remaining unmixed and pure, and so it would be merely many different things. But there being a necessity, according to their axiom of mixture, that the things which are mixed should be mingled one within the other, and that the same things should together be contained by being within, and by receiving contain the other, and that neither of them could possibly exist again as it was before, it comes to pass that both the subjects of the mixture mutually penetrate each other, and that there is not any part of either remaining separate, but that they are necessarily all filled with each other.

Here now that famed leg of Arcesilaus comes in, with much laughter insulting over their absurdities; for if these mixtures are through the whole, what should hinder but that, a leg being cut off and putrefied and cast into the sea and diffused, not only Antigonus’s fleet (as Arcesilaus said) might sail through it, but also Xerxes’s twelve hundred ships, together with the Grecians’ three hundred galleys, might fight in it? For the progress will not henceforth fail, nor the lesser cease to be in the greater; or else the mixture will be at an end, and the extremity of it, touching where it shall end, will not pass through the whole, but will give over being mingled. But if the mixture is through the whole, the leg will not indeed of itself give the Greeks room for the sea-fight, for to this there is need of putrefaction and change; but if one glass or but one drop of wine shall fall from hence into the Aegean or Cretan Sea, it will pass into the Ocean or main Atlantic Sea, not lightly touching its superficies, but being spread quite through it in depth, breadth, and length. And this Chrysippus admits, saying immediately in his First Book of Natural Questions, that there is nothing to hinder one drop of wine from being mixed with the whole sea. And that we may not wonder at this, he says that this one drop will by mixtion extend through the whole world; than which I know not anything that can appear more absurd.

And this also is against sense, that there is not in the nature of bodies anything either supreme or first or last, in which the magnitude of the body may terminate; but that there is always some phenomenon beyond the body, still going on which carries the subject to infinity and undeterminateness. For one body cannot be imagined greater or less than another, if both of them may by their parts proceed IN INFINITUM; but the nature of inequality is taken away. For of things that are esteemed unequal, the one falls short in its last parts, and the other goes on and exceeds. Now if there is no inequality, it follows that there is no unevenness nor roughness of bodies; for unevenness is the inequality of the same superficies with itself, and roughness is an unevenness joined with hardness; neither of which is left us by those who terminate no body in its last part, but extend them all by the multitude of their parts unto an infinity. And yet is it not evident that a man consists of more parts than a finger, and the world of more than a man? This indeed all men know and understand, unless they become Stoics; but if they are once Stoics, they on the contrary say and think that a man has no more parts than a finger, nor the world than a man. For division reduces bodies to an infinity; and of infinites neither is more or less or exceeds in multitude, or the parts of the remainder will cease to be divided and to afford a multitude of themselves.

LAMPRIAS. How then do they extricate themselves out of these difficulties?

DIADUMENUS. Surely with very great cunning and courage. For Chrysippus says: “If we are asked, if we have any parts, and how many, and of what and how many parts they consist, we are to use a distinction, making it a position that the whole body is compacted of the head, trunk, and legs, as if that were all which is inquired and doubted of. But if they extend their interrogation to the last parts, no such thing is to be undertaken, but we are to say that they consist not of any certain parts, nor yet of so many, nor of infinite, nor of finite.” And I seem to myself to have used his very words, that you may perceive how he maintains the common notions, forbidding us to think of what or how many parts every body is compacted, and whether of infinite or finite. For if there were any medium between finite and infinite, as the indifferent is between good and evil, he should, by telling us what that is, have solved the difficulty. But if — as that which is not equal is presently understood to be unequal, and that which is not mortal to be immortal — we also understand that which is not finite to be immediately infinite, to say that a body consists of parts neither finite nor infinite is, in my opinion, the same thing as to affirm that an argument is compacted of positions neither true nor false. . . .

To this he with a certain youthful rashness adds, that in a pyramid consisting of triangles, the sides inclining to the juncture are unequal, and yet do not exceed one another in that they are greater. Thus does he keep the common notions. For if there is anything greater and not exceeding, there will be also something less and not deficient, and so also something unequal which neither exceeds nor is deficient; that is, there will be an unequal thing equal, a greater not greater, and a less not less. See it yet farther, in what manner he answered Democritus, inquiring philosophically and to the point, if a cone is divided by a plane parallel with its base, what is to be thought of the superficies of its segments, whether they are equal or unequal; for if they are unequal, they will render the cone uneven, receiving many steplike incisions and roughnesses; but if they are equal, the sections will be equal, and the cone will seem to have the same qualities as the cylinder, to wit, to be composed not of unequal but of equal circles; which is most absurd. Here, that he may convince Democritus of ignorance, he says, that the superficies are neither equal or unequal, but that the bodies are unequal, because the superficies are neither equal nor unequal. Indeed to assert this for a law, that bodies are unequal while the superficies are not unequal, is the part of a man who takes to himself a wonderful liberty of writing whatever comes into his head. For reason and manifest evidence, on the contrary, give us to understand, that the superficies of unequal bodies are unequal, and that the bigger the body is, the greater also is the superficies, unless the excess, by which it is the greater, is void of a superficies. For if the superficies of the greater bodies do not exceed those of the less, but sooner fail, a part of that body which has an end will be without an end and infinite. For if he says that he is compelled to this. For those rabbeted incisions, which he suspects in a cone, are made by the inequality of the body, and not of the superficies. It is ridiculous therefore not to reckon the superficies, and to leave the inequality in the bodies themselves. But to persist still in this matter, what is more repugnant to sense than the imagining of such things? For if we admit that one superficies is neither equal nor unequal to another, we may say also of magnitude and of number, that one is neither equal nor unequal to another; and this, not having anything that we can call or think to be a neuter or medium between equal and unequal. Besides, if there are superficies neither equal nor unequal, what hinders but there may be also circles neither equal nor unequal? For indeed these superficies of conic sections are circles. And if circles, why may not also their diameters be neither equal nor unequal? And if so, why not also angles, triangles, parallelograms, parallelopipeds, and bodies? For if the longitudes are neither equal nor unequal to one another, so will the weight, percussion, and bodies be neither equal nor unequal. How then dare these men inveigh against those who introduce vacuums, and suppose that there are indivisible atoms, and who say that motion and rest are not incompatible with each other, when they themselves affirm such axioms as these to be false: If any things are not equal to one another, they are unequal to one another; and the same things are not equal and unequal to one another? But when he says that there is something greater and yet not exceeding, it were worth the while to ask, whether these things quadrate with one another. For if they quadrate, how is either the greater? And if they do not quadrate, how can it be but the one must exceed and the other fall short? For if neither of these are true, the other both will and will not quadrate with the greater. For those who keep not the common conceptions must of necessity fall into such perplexities.

It is moreover against sense to say that nothing touches another; nor is this less absurd, that bodies touch one another, but touch by nothing. For they are necessitated to admit these things, who allow not the least parts of a body, but assume something before that which appears to touch, and never ceases to proceed still farther. What, therefore, these men principally object to the patrons of those indivisible bodies called atoms is this, that there is neither a touching of the whole by the whole, nor of the parts by the parts; for that the one makes not a touching but a mixture, and that the other is not possible, these individuals having no parts. How then do not they themselves fall into the same inconvenience, leaving no first or last part, whilst they say, that whole bodies mutually touch one another by a term or extremity and not by a part? But this term is not a body; therefore one body shall touch one another by that which is incorporeal, and again shall not touch, that which is incorporeal coming between them. And if it shall touch, the body shall both do and suffer something by that which is incorporeal. For it is the nature of bodies mutually to do and suffer, and to touch. But if the body has a touching by that which is incorporeal, it will have also a contact, and a mixture, and a coalition. Again, in these contacts and mixtures the extremities of the bodies must either remain, or not remain but be corrupted. Now both of these are against sense. For neither do they themselves admit corruptions and generations of incorporeal things; nor can there be a mixture and coalition of bodies retaining their own extremities. For the extremity determines and constitutes the nature of the body; and mixtions, unless the mutual laying of parts by parts are thereby understood, wholly confound all those that are mixed. And, as these men say, we must admit the corruption of extremities in mixtures, and their generation again in the separation of them. But this none can easily understand. Now by what bodies mutually touch each other, by the same they press, thrust, and crush each other. Now that this should be done or take place in things that are incorporeal, is impossible and not so much as to be imagined. But yet this they would constrain us to conceive. For if a sphere touch a plane by a point, it is manifest that it may be also drawn over the plane upon a point; and if the superficies of it is painted with vermilion, it will imprint a red line on the plane; and if it is fiery hot, it will burn the plane. Now for an incorporeal thing to color, or a body to be burned by that which is incorporeal, is against sense. But if we should imagine an earthen or glassy sphere to fall from on high upon a plane of stone, it were against reason to think it would not be broken, being struck against that which is hard and solid; but it would be more absurd that it should be broken, falling upon an extremity or point that is incorporeal. So that the presumptions concerning things incorporeal and corporeal are wholly disturbed, or rather taken away, by their joining to them many impossibilities.

It is also against common sense, that there should be a time future and past, but no time present; and that EREWHILE and LATELY subsist, but NOW is nothing at all. Yet this often befalls the Stoics, who admit not the least time between, nor will allow the present to be indivisible; but whatsoever any one thinks to take and understand as present, one part of that they say to be future, and the other part past; so that there is no part remaining or left of the present time: but of that which is said to be present, one part is distributed to the future, the other to the past. Therefore one of these two things follows: either that, holding there was a time and there will be a time, we must deny there is a time; or we must hold that there is a time present, part of which has already been and part will be, and say that of that which now is, one part is future and the other past; and that of NOW, one part is before and the other behind; and that now is that which is neither yet now nor any longer NOW; for that which is past is no longer now, and that which is to come is not yet NOW. And dividing thus the present, they must needs say of the year and of the day, that part of it was of the year or day past, and part will be of the year or day to come; and that of what is together, there is a part before and a part after. For no less are they perplexed, confounding together these terms, NOT YET and ALREADY and NO LONGER and NOW and NOT NOW. But all other men suppose, esteem, and think EREWHILE and AWHILE HENCE to be different parts of time from NOW, which is followed by the one and preceded by the other. But Archedemus, saying that now is the beginning and juncture of that which is past and that which is near at hand, has (as it seems) without perceiving it thereby destroyeth all time. For if NOW is no time, but only a term or extremity of time, and if every part of time is such as now, all time seems to have no parts, but to be wholly dissolved into terms, joints, and beginnings. But Chrysippus, desiring to show more artifice in his division, in his book of Vacuity and some others, says, that the past and future time are not, but have subsisted (or will subsist), and that the present only is; but in his third, fourth, and fifth books concerning Parts, he asserts, that of the present time one part is past, the other to come. Thus it comes to pass, that he divides subsisting time into non-subsisting parts of a subsisting total, or rather leaves nothing at all of time subsisting, if the present has no part but what is either future or past.

These men’s conception therefore of time is not unlike the grasping of water, which, the harder it is held, all the more slides and runs away. As to actions and motions, all evidence is utterly confounded. For if NOW is divided into past and future, it is of necessity that what is now moved partly has been moved and partly shall be moved, that the end and beginning of motion have been taken away, that nothing of any work has been done first, nor shall anything be last, the actions being distributed with time. For as they say that of present time, part is past and part to come; so of that which is doing, it will be said that part is done and part shall be done. When therefore had TO DINE, TO WRITE, TO WALK, a beginning, and when shall they have an end, if every one who is dining has dined and shall dine, and every one who is walking has walked and shall walk? But this is, as it is said, of all absurdities the most absurd, that if he who now lives has already lived and shall live, then to live neither had beginning nor shall have end; but every one of us, as it seems, was born without commencing to live, and shall die without ceasing to live. For if there is no last part, but he who lives has something of the present still remaining for the future, to say “Socrates shall live” will never be false so long as it shall be true to say “Socrates lives”; and so long also will it be false to say “Socrates is dead.” So that, if “Socrates shall live” is true in infinite parts of time, it will in no part of time be true to say “Socrates is dead.” And verily what end will there be of a work, and where will you terminate an action, if, as often as it is true to say “This is doing,” it is likewise true to say “This shall be doing”? For he will lie who shall say, there will be an end of Plato’s writing and disputing; since Plato will never give over writing and disputing, if it is never false to say of him who disputes that he shall dispute, and of him who writes that he shall write. Moreover, there will be no part of that which now is, but either has been or is to be, and is either past or future; but of what has been and is to be, of past and future, there is no sense; wherefore there is absolutely no sense of anything. For we neither see what is past and future, nor do we hear or have any other sense of what has been or is to be. Nothing, then, even what is present, is to be perceived by sense, if of the present, part is always future and part past, — if part has been and part is to be.

Now they indeed say, that Epicurus does intolerable things and violates the conceptions, in moving all bodies with equal celerity, and admitting none of them to be swifter than another. And yet it is much more intolerable and farther remote from sense, that nothing can be overtaken by another: —

Not though Adrastus’s swift-footed steed
Should chase the tortoise slow,

as the proverb has it. Now this must of necessity fall out, if things move according to PRIUS and POSTERIUS, and the intervals through which they pass are (as these men’s tenet is) divisible IN INFINITUM; for if the tortoise is but a furlong before the horse, they who divide this furlong in infinitum, and move them both according to PRIUS and POSTERIUS, will never bring the swiftest to the slowest; the slower always adding some interval divisible into infinite spaces. Now to affirm that, water being poured from a bowl or cup, it will never be all poured out, is it not both against common sense, and a consequence of what these men say? For no man can understand the motion according to PRIUS of things infinitely divisible to be consummated; but leaving always somewhat divisible, it will make all the effusion, all the running and flux of a liquid, motion of a solid, and fall of an heavy thing imperfect.

I pass by many absurdities of theirs, touching only such as are against sense. The dispute concerning increase is indeed ancient; for the question, as Chrysippus says, was put by Epicharmus. Now, whereas those of the Academy think that the doubt is not very easy and ready all of a sudden to be cleared, these men have mightily exclaimed against them, and accused them of taking away the fixed ideas, and yet themselves are so far from preserving the common notions, that they pervert even sense itself. For the discourse is simple, and these men grant the suppositions, — that all particular substances flow and are carried, some of them emitting forth somewhat from themselves, and others receiving things coming from elsewhere; and that the things to which there is made an accession or from which there is a decession by numbers and multitudes, do not remain the same, but become others by the said accessions, the substance receiving a change; and that these changes are not rightly called by custom increasings or diminutions, but it is fitter they should be styled generations and corruptions, because they drive by force from one state to another, whereas to increase and be diminished are passions of a body that is subject and permanent. These things being thus in a manner said and delivered, what would these defenders of evidence and canonical masters of common conceptions have? Every one of us (they say) is double, twin-like, and composed of a double nature; not as the poets feigned of the Molionidae, that they in some parts grow together and in some parts are separated, — but every one of us has two bodies, having the same color, the same figure, the same weight and place. . . . These things were never before seen by any man; but these men alone have discerned this composition, doubleness, and ambiguity, how every one of us is two subjects, the one substance, the other quality; and the one is in perpetual flux and motion, neither increasing nor being diminished nor remaining altogether; the other remains and increases and is diminished, and suffers all things contrary to the former, with which it is so concorporated, conjoined, and confounded, that it exhibits not any difference to be perceived by sense. Indeed, Lynceus is said to have penetrated stones and oaks with his sight; and a certain man sitting on a watch-tower in Sicily beheld the ships of the Carthaginians setting forth from their harbor, which was a day and a night’s sail from thence. Callicrates and Myrmecides are said to have made chariots that might be covered with the wings of a fly, and to have engraved verses of Homer on a sesame seed. But none ever discerned or discovered this diversity in us; nor have we perceived ourselves to be double, in one part always flowing, and in the other remaining the same from our birth even to our death. But I make the discourse more simple, since they make four subjects in every one, or rather every one of us to be four. But two are sufficient to show their absurdity. For if, when we hear Pentheus in the tragedy affirm that he sees two suns and two cities of Thebes, (Euripides, “Bacchae,” 918.) we say that he does not see, but that his sight is dazzled, he being transported and troubled in his head; why do we not bid those farewell, who assert not one city alone, but all men and animals, and all trees, vessels, instruments, and clothes, to be double and composed of two, as men who constrain us to dote rather than to understand? But this feigning other natures of subjects must perhaps be pardoned them; for there appears no other invention by which they can maintain and uphold the augmentations of which they are so fond.

But by what cause moved, or for the adorning of what other suppositions, they frame in a manner innumerable differences and forms of bodies in the soul, there is none can say, unless it be that they remove, or rather wholly abdicate and destroy, the common and usual notions, to introduce other foreign and strange ones. For it is very absurd that, making all virtues and vices — and with them all arts, memories, fancies, passions, impulses, and assents — to be bodies, they should affirm that they neither lie nor subsist in any subject, leaving them for a place one only hole, like a prick in the heart, where they crowd the principal part of the soul, enclosed with so many bodies, that a very great number of them lie hid even from those who think they can spare and distinguish them one from another. Nay that they should not only make them bodies, but also intelligent beings, and even a swarm of such creatures, not friendly or mild, but a multitude rebellious and having a hostile mind, and should so make of each one of us a park or menagerie or Trojan horse, or whatever else we may call their inventions, — this is the very height of contempt and contradiction to evidence and custom. But they say, that not only the virtues and vices, not only the passions, as anger, envy, grief, and maliciousness, not only comprehensions, fancies, and ignorances, not only arts, as shoemaking and working in brass, are animals; but besides these, also they make even the operations bodies and animals, saying that walking is an animal, as also dancing, supposing, saluting, and railing. The consequence of this is that laughing and weeping are also animals; and if so, then also are coughing, sneezing, groaning, spitting, blowing the nose, and other such like things sufficiently known. Neither have they any cause to take it ill that they are by reason, proceeding leisurely, reduced to this, if they shall call to mind how Chrysippus, in his First Book of Natural Questions, argues thus: “Is not night a body? And are not then the evening, dawning, and midnight bodies? Or is not a day a body? Is not then the first day of the month a body? And the tenth, the fifteenth, and the thirtieth, are they not bodies? Is not a month a body? Summer, autumn, and the year, are they not bodies?”

These things they maintain against the common conceptions; but those which follow they hold also against their own, engendering that which is most hot by refrigeration, and that which is most subtile by condensation. For the soul, to wit, is a substance most hot and most subtile. But this they make by the refrigeration and condensation of the body, changing, as it were, by induration the spirit, which of vegetative is made animal. Moreover, they say that the sun became animated, his moisture changing into intellectual fire. Behold how the sun is imagined to be engendered by refrigeration! Xenophanes indeed, when one told him that he had seen eels living in hot water, answered, We will boil them then in cold. But if these men engender heat by refrigeration and lightness by condensation, it follows, they must also generate cold things by heat, thick things by dissolution, and heavy things by rarefaction, that so they may keep some proportion in their absurdity.

And do they not also determine the substance and generation of conception itself, even against the common conceptions? For conception is a certain imagination, and imagination an impression in the soul. Now the nature of the soul is an exhalation, in which it is difficult for an impression to be made because of its tenuity, and for which it is impossible to keep an impression it may have received. For its nutriment and generation, consisting of moist things, have continual accession and consumption. And the mixture of respiration with the air always makes some new exhalation which is altered and changed by the flux of the air coming from abroad and again going out. For one may more easily imagine that a stream of running water can retain figures, impressions, and images, than that a spirit can be carried in vapors and humors, and continually mingled with another idle and strange breath from without. But these men so far forget themselves, that, having defined the conceptions to be certain stored-up intelligences, and memoirs to be constant and habitual impressions, and having wholly fixed the sciences, as having stability and firmness, they presently place under them a basis and seat of a slippery substance, easy to be dissipated and in perpetual flux and motion.

Now the common conception of an element and principle, naturally imprinted in almost all men, is this, that it is simple, unmixed, and uncompounded. For that is not an element or principle which is mixed; but those things are so of which it is mixed. But these men, making God, who is the principle of all things, to be an intellectual body and a mind seated in matter, pronounce him to be neither simple nor uncompounded, but to be composed of and by another; matter being of itself indeed without reason and void of quality, and yet having simplicity and the propertv of a principle. If, then, God is not incorporeal and immaterial, he participates of matter as a principle. For if matter and reason are one and the same thing, they have not rightly defined matter to be reasonless; but if they are different things, then is God constituted of them both, and is not a simple but compound thing, having to the intellectual taken the corporeal from matter.

Moreover, calling these four bodies, earth, water, air, and fire, the first elements, they do (I know not how) make some of them simple and pure, and others compound and mixed. For they maintain that earth and water hold together neither themselves nor other things, but preserve their unity by the participation of air and force of fire; but that air and fire do both fortify themselves by their own strength, or being mixed with the other two, give them force, permanence, and subsistence. How, then, is either earth or water an element, if neither of them is either simple, or first or self-sufficient, but if each one wants somewhat from without to contain and keep it in its being? For they have not left so much as a thought of their substance; but this discourse concerning the earth has much confusion and uncertainty, when they say that it subsists of itself; for if the earth is of itself, how has it need of the air to fix and contain it? But neither the earth nor water can any more be said to be of itself; but the air, drawing together and thickening the matter, has made the earth, and again dissolving and mollifying it, has produced the water. Neither of these then is an element, since something else has contributed being and generation to them both.

Moreover, they say that subsistence and matter are subject to qualities, and do so in a manner define them; and again, they make the qualities to be also bodies. But these things have much perplexity. For if qualities have a peculiar substance, for which they both are and are called bodies, they need no other substance; for they have one of their own. But if they have under them in common only that which the Stoic school calls essence and matter, it is manifest they do but participate of the body; for they are not bodies. But the subject and recipient must of necessity differ from those things which it receives and to which it is subject. But these men see by halves; for they say indeed that matter is void of quality, but they will not call qualities immaterial. Now how can they make a body without quality, who understand no quality without a body? For the reason which joins a body to all quality suffers not the understanding to comprehend any body without some quality. Either, therefore, he who oppugns incorporeal quality seems also to oppugn unqualified matter; or separating the one from the other, he mutually parts them both. As for the reason which some pretend, that matter is called unqualified not because it is void of all quality, but because it has all qualities, it is most of all against sense. For no man calls that unqualified which is capable of every quality, nor that impassible which is by nature always apt to suffer all things, nor that immovable which is moved every way. And this doubt is not solved, that, however matter is always understood with quality, yet it is understood to be another thing and differing from quality.

BOOK XIV

That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible

PLUTARCH, ZEUXIPPUS, THEON, ARISTODEMUS.

Epicurus’s great confidant and familiar, Colotes, set forth a book with this title to it, that according to the tenets of the other philosophers it is impossible to live. Now what occurred to me then to say against him, in the defence of those philosophers, hath been already put into writing by me. But since upon breaking up of our lecture several things have happened to be spoken afterwards in the walks in further opposition to his party, I thought it not amiss to recollect them also, if for no other reason, yet for this one, that those who will needs be contradicting other men may see that they ought not to run cursorily over the discourses and writings of those they would disprove, nor by tearing out one word here and another there, or by falling foul upon particular passages without the books, to impose upon the ignorant and unlearned.

Now as we were leaving the school to take a walk (as our manner is) in the gymnasium, Zeuxippus began to us: In my opinion, said he, the debate was managed on our side with more softness and less freedom than was fitting. I am sure, Heraclides went away disgusted with us, for handling Epicurus and Aletrodorus more roughly than they deserved. Yet you may remember, replied Theon, how you told them that Colotes himself, compared with the rhetoric of those two gentlemen, would appear the complaisantest man alive; for when they have raked together the lewdest terms of ignominy the tongue of man ever used, as buffooneries, trollings, arrogancies, whorings, assassinations, whining counterfeits, black-guards, and blockheads, they faintly throw them in the faces of Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras, Protagoras, Theophrastus, Heraclides, Hipparchus, and which not, even of the best and most celebrated authorities. So that, should they pass for very knowing men upon all other accounts, yet their very calumnies and reviling language would bespeak them at the greatest distance from philosophy imaginable. For emulation can never enter that godlike consort, nor such fretfulness as wants resolution to conceal its own resentments. Aristodemus then subjoined: Heraclides, you know, is a great philologist; and that may be the reason why he made Epicurus those amends for the poetic din (so, that party style poetry) and for the fooleries of Homer; or else, it may be, it was because Metrodorus had libelled that poet in so many books. But let us let these gentlemen pass at present, Zeuxippus, and rather return to what was charged upon the philosophers in the beginning of our discourse, that it is impossible to live according to their tenets. And I see not why we two may not despatch this affair betwixt us, with the good assistance of Theon; for I find this gentleman (meaning me) is already tired. Then Theon said to him,

Our fellows have that garland from us won;

therefore, if you please,

Let’s fix another goal, and at that run.
(“Odyssey,” xxii, 6)

We will even prosecute them at the suit of the philosophers, in the following form: We’ll prove, if we can, that it is impossible to live a pleasurable life according to their tenets. Bless me! said I to him, smiling, you seem to me to level your foot at the very bellies of the men, and to design to enter the list with them for their lives, whilst you go about to rob them thus of their pleasure, and they cry out to you,

“Forbear, we’re no good boxers, sir;

no, nor good pleaders, nor good senators, nor good magistrates either;

“Our proper talent is to eat and drink.”
(“Odyssey,” viii, 246, 248)

and to excite such tender and delicate motions in our bodies as may chafe our imaginations to some jolly delight or gayety.” And therefore you seem to me not so much to take off (as I may say) the pleasurable part, as to deprive the men of their very lives, while you will not leave them to live pleasurably. Nay then, said Theon, if you approve so highly of this subject, why do you not set in hand to it? By all means, said I, I am for this, and shall not only hear but answer you too, if you shall insist. But I must leave it to you to take the lead.

Then, after Theon had spoken something to excuse himself, Aristodemus said: When we had so short and fair a cut to our design, how have you blocked up the way before us, by preventing us from joining issue with the faction at the very first upon the single point of propriety! For you must grant, it can be no easy matter to drive men already possessed that pleasure is their utmost good yet to believe a life of pleasure impossible to be attained. But now the truth is, that when they failed of living becomingly they failed also of living pleasurably; for to live pleasurably without living becomingly is even by themselves allowed inconsistent.

Theon then said: We may probably resume the consideration of that in the process of our discourse; in the interim we will make use of their concessions. Now they suppose their last good to lie about the belly and such other conveyances of the body as let in pleasure and not pain; and are of opinion, that all the brave and ingenious inventions that ever have been were contrived at first for the pleasure of the belly, or the good hope of compassing such pleasure, — as the sage Metrodorus informs us. By which, my good friend, it is very plain, they found their pleasure in a poor, rotten, and unsure thing, and one that is equally perforated for pains, by the very passages they receive their pleasures by; or rather indeed, that admits pleasure but by a few, but pain by all its parts. For the whole of pleasure is in a manner in the joints, nerves, feet, and hands; and these are oft the seats of very grievous and lamentable distempers, as gouts, corroding rheums, gangrenes, and putrid ulcers. And if you apply to yourself the exquisitest of perfumes or gusts, you will find but some one small part of your body is finely and delicately touched, while the rest are many times filled with anguish and complaints. Besides, there is no part of us proof against fire, sword, teeth, or scourges, or insensible of dolors and aches; yea, heats, colds, and fevers sink into all our parts alike. But pleasures, like gales of soft wind, move simpering, one towards one extreme of the body and another towards another, and then go off in a vapor. Nor are they of any long durance, but, as so many glancing meteors, they are no sooner kindled in the body than they are quenched by it. As to pain, Aeschylus’s Philoctetes affords us a sufficient testimony: —

The cruel viper ne’er will quit my foot;
Her dire envenomed teeth have there ta’en root.

For pain will not troll off as pleasure doth, nor imitate it in its pleasing and tickling touches. But as the clover twists its perplexed and winding roots into the earth, and through its coarseness abides there a long time; so pain disperses and entangles its hooks and roots in the body, and continues there, not for a day or a night, but for several seasons of years, if not for some revolutions of Olympiads, nor scarce ever departs unless struck out by other pains, as by stronger nails. For who ever drank so long as those that are in a fever are a-dry? Or who was ever so long eating as those that are besieged suffer hunger? Or where are there any that are so long solaced with the conversation of friends as tyrants are racking and tormenting? Now all this is owing to the baseness of the body and its natural incapacity for a pleasurable life; for it bears pains better than it doth pleasures, and with respect to those is firm and hardy, but with respect to these is feeble and soon palled. To which add, that if we are minded to discourse on a life of pleasure, these men won’t give us leave to go on, but will presently confess themselves that the pleasures of the body are but short, or rather indeed but of a moment’s continuance; if they do not design to banter us or else speak out of vanity, when Metrodorus tells us, We many times spit at the pleasures of the body, and Epicurus saith, A wise man, when he is sick, many times laughs in the very extremity of his distemper.

For Ithaca is no fit place
For mettled steeds to run a race.
(“Odyssey,” iv. 605.)

Neither can the joys of our poor bodies be smooth and equal; but on the contrary they must be coarse and harsh, and immixed with much that is displeasing and inflamed.

Zeuxippus then said: And do you not think then they take the right course to begin at the body, where they observe pleasure to have its first rise, and thence to pass to the mind as the more stable and sure part, there to complete and crown the whole?

They do, by Jove, I said; and if, after removing thither they have indeed found something more consummate than before, a course too as well agreeing with nature as becoming men adorned with both contemplative and civil knowledge. But if after all this you still hear them cry out, and protest that the mind of man can receive no satisfaction or tranquillity from anything under Heaven but the pleasures of the body either in possession or expectance, and that these are its proper and only good, can you forbear thinking they make use of the soul but as a funnel for the body, while they mellow their pleasure by shifting it from one vessel to another, as they rack wine out of an old and leaky vessel into a new one and there let it grow old, and then imagine they have performed some extraordinary and very fine thing? True indeed, a fresh pipe may both keep and recover wine that hath thus been drawn off; but the mind, receiving but the remembrance only of past pleasure, like a kind of scent, retains that and no more. For as soon as it hath given one hiss in the body, it immediately expires, and that little of it that stays behind in the memory is but flat and like a queasy fume: as if a man should lay up and treasure in his fancy what he either ate or drank yesterday, that he may have recourse to that when he wants fresh fare. See now how much more temperate the Cyrenaics are, who, though they have drunk out of the same bottle with Epicurus, yet will not allow men so much as to practise their amours by candlelight, but only under the covert of the dark, for fear seeing should fasten too quick an impression of the images of such actions upon the fancy and thereby too frequently inflame the desire. But these gentlemen account it the highest accomplishment of a philosopher to have a clear and retentive memory of all the various figures, passions, and touches of past pleasure. We will not now say, they present us with nothing worthy the name of philosophy, while they leave the refuse of pleasure in their wise man’s mind, as if it could be a lodging for bodies; but that it is impossible such things as these should make a man live pleasurably, I think is abundantly manifest from hence. For it will not perhaps seem strange if I assert, that the memory of pleasure past brings no pleasure with it if it appeared but little in the very enjoyment, or to men of such abstinence as to account it for their benefit to retire from its first approaches; when even the most amazed and sensual admirers of corporeal delights remain no longer in their gaudy and pleasant humor than their pleasure lasts them. What remains is but an empty shadow and dream of that pleasure that hath now taken wing and is fled from them, and that serves but for fuel to foment their untamed desires. Like as in those that dream they are a-dry or in love, their unaccomplished pleasures and enjoyments do but excite the inclination to a greater keenness. Nor indeed can the remembrance of past enjoyments afford them any real contentment at all, but must serve only, with the help of a quick desire, to raise up very much of outrage and stinging pain out of the remains of a feeble and befooling pleasure. Neither doth it befit men of continence and sobriety to exercise their thoughts about such poor things, or to do what one twitted Carneades with, to reckon, as out of a diurnal, how oft they have lain with Hedia or Leontion, or where they last drank Thasian wine, or at what twentieth-day feast they had a costly supper. For such transport and captivatedness of the mind to its own remembrances as this is would show a detestable and bestial restlessness and raving towards the present and hoped-for acts of pleasure. And therefore I cannot but look upon the sense of these inconveniences as the true cause of their retiring at last to a freedom from pain and a firm state of body; as if living pleasurably could lie in bare imagining this either past or future to some persons. True indeed it is, “that a sound state of body and a good assurance of its continuing must needs afford a most transcending and solid satisfaction to all men capable of reasoning.”

But yet look first what work they make, while they course this same thing — whether it be pleasure, exemption from pain, or good health — up and down, first from the body to the mind, and then back again from the mind to the body, being compelled to return it to its first origin, lest it should run out and so give them the slip. Thus they place the pleasure of the body (as Epicurus says) upon the complacent joy in the mind, and yet conclude again with the good hopes that complacent joy hath in bodily pleasure. Indeed what wonder is it if, when the foundation shakes, the superstructure totter? Or that there should be no sure hope nor unshaken joy in a matter that suffers so great concussion and changes as continually attend a body exposed to so many violences and strokes from without, and having within it the origins of such evils as human reason cannot avert? For if it could, no understanding man would ever fall under stranguries, gripes, consumptions, or dropsies; with some of which Epicurus himself did conflict and Polyaenus with others, while others of them were the deaths of Neocles and Agathobulus. And this we mention not to disparage them, knowing very well that Pherecydes and Heraclitus, both very excellent persons, labored under very uncouth and calamitous distempers. We only beg of them, if they will own their own diseases and not by noisy rants and popular harangues incur the imputation of false bravery, either not to take the health of the whole body for the ground of their content, or else not to say that men under the extremities of dolors and diseases can yet rally and be pleasant. For a sound and hale constitution of body is indeed a thing that often happens, but a firm and steadfast assurance of its continuance can never befall an intelligent mind. But as at sea (according to Aeschylus)

Night to the ablest pilot trouble brings,
(Aechylus, “Suppliants,” 770.)

and so will a calm too, for no man knows what will be, — so likewise is it impossible for a soul that dwells in a healthful body, and that places her good in the hopes she hath of that body, to perfect her voyage here without frights or waves. For man’s mind hath not, like the sea, its tempests and storms only from without it, but it also raises up from within far more and greater disturbances. And a man may with more reason look for constant fair weather in the midst of winter than for perpetual exemption from afflictions in his body. For what else hath given the poets occasion to term us ephemeral creatures, uncertain and unfixed, and to liken our lives to leaves that both spring and fall in the lapse of a summer, but the unhappy, calamitous, and sickly condition of the body, whose very utmost good we are warned to dread and prevent? For an exquisite habit, Hippocrates saith, is slippery and hazardous. And

He that but now looked jolly, plump, and stout,
Like a star shot by Jove, is now gone out;

as it is in Euripides. And it is a vulgar persuasion, that very handsome persons, when looked upon, oft suffer damage by envy and an evil eye; for a body at its utmost vigor will through delicacy very soon admit of changes.

But now that these men are miserably unprovided for an undisturbed life, you may discern even from what they themselves advance against others. For they say that those who commit wickedness and incur the displeasure of the laws live in constant misery and fear, for, though they may perhaps attain to privacy, yet it is impossible they should ever be well assured of that privacy; whence the ever impending fear of the future will not permit them to have either complacency or assurance in their present circumstances. But they consider not how they speak all this against themselves. For a sound and healthy state of body they may indeed oftentimes possess, but that they should ever be well assured of its continuance is impossible; and they must of necessity be in constant disquiet and pain for the body with respect to futurity, never being able to reach that firm and steadfast assurance which they expect. But to do no wickedness will contribute nothing to our assurance; for it is not suffering unjustly but suffering in itself that is dismaying. Nor can it be a matter of trouble to be engaged in villanies one’s self, and not afflictive to suffer by the villanies of others. Neither can it be said that the tyranny of Lachares was less, if it was not more, calamitous to the Athenians, and that of Dionysius to the Syracusans, than they were to the tyrants themselves; for it was disturbing that made them be disturbed; and their first oppressing and pestering of others gave them occasion to expect to suffer ill themselves. Why should a man recount the outrages of rabbles, the barbarities of thieves, or the villanies of inheritors, or yet the contagions of airs and the concursions of seas, by which Epicurus (as himself writeth) was in his voyage to Lampsacus within very little of drowning? The very composition of the body — it containing in it the matter of all diseases, and (to use a pleasantry of the vulgar) cutting thongs for the beast out of its own hide, I mean pains out of the body — is sufficient to make life perilous and uneasy, and that to the good as well as to the bad, if they have learned to set their complacence and assurance in the body and the hopes they have of it, and in nothing else; as Epicurus hath written, as well in many other of his discourses as in that of Man’s End. They therefore assign not only a treacherous and unsure ground of their pleasurable living, but also one in all respects despicable and little, if the escaping of evils be the matter of their complacence and last good. But now they tell us, nothing else can be so much as imagined, and nature hath no other place to bestow her good in but only that out of which her evil hath been driven; as Metrodorus speaks in his book against the Sophists. So that this single thing, to escape evil, he says, is the supreme good; for there is no room to lodge this good in where no more of what is painful and afflicting goes out. Like unto this is that of Epicurus, where he saith: The very essence of good arises from the escaping of bad, and a man’s recollecting, considering, and rejoicing within himself that this hath befallen him. For what occasions transcending joy (he saith) is some great impending evil escaped; and in this lies the very nature and essence of good, if a man consider it aright, and contain himself when he hath done, and not ramble and prate idly about it. Oh, the rare satisfaction and felicity these men enjoy, that can thus rejoice for having undergone no evil and endured neither sorrow nor pain! Have they not reason, think you, to value themselves for such things as these, and to speak as they are wont when they style themselves immortals and equals to gods? — and when, through the excessiveness and transcendency of the blessed things they enjoy, they rave even to the degree of whooping and hollowing for very satisfaction that, to the shame of all mortals, they have been the only men that could find out this celestial and divine good that lies in an exemption from all evil? So that their beatitude differs little from that of swine and sheep, while they place it in a mere tolerable and contented state, either of the body, or of the mind upon the body’s account. For even the more prudent and more ingenious sort of brutes do not esteem escaping of evil their last end; but when they have taken their repast, they are disposed next by fullness to singing, and they divert themselves with swimming and flying; and their gayety and sprightliness prompt them to entertain themselves with attempting to counterfeit all sorts of voices and notes; and then they make their caresses to one another, by skipping and dancing one towards another; nature inciting them, after they have escaped evil, to look after some good, or rather to shake off what they find uneasy and disagreeing, as an impediment to their pursuit of something better and more congenial.

For what we cannot be without deserves not the name of good; but that which claims our desire and preference must be something beyond a bare escape from evil. And so, by Jove, must that be too that is either agreeing or congenial to us, according to Plato, who will not allow us to give the name of pleasures to the bare departures of sorrows and pains, but would have us look upon them rather as obscure draughts and mixtures of agreeing and disagreeing, as of black and white, while the extremes would advance themselves to a middle temperament. But oftentimes unskilfulness and ignorance of the true nature of extreme occasions some to mistake the middle temperament for the extreme and outmost part. Thus do Epicurus and Metrodorus, while they make avoiding of evil to be the very essence and consummation of good, and so receive but as it were the satisfaction of slaves or of rogues newly discharged the jail, who are well enough contented if they may but wash and supple their sores and the stripes they received by whipping, but never in their lives had one taste or sight of a generous, clean, unmixed and unulcerated joy. For it follows not that, if it be vexatious to have one’s body itch or one’s eyes to run, it must be therefore a blessing to scratch one’s self, and to wipe one’s eye with a rag; nor that, if it be bad to be dejected or dismayed at divine matters or to be discomposed with the relations of hell, therefore the bare avoiding of all this must be some happy and amiable thing. The truth is, these men’s opinion, though it pretends so far to outgo that of the vulgar, allows their joy but a straight and narrow compass to toss and tumble in, while it extends it but to an exemption from the fear of hell, and so makes that the top of acquired wisdom which is doubtless natural to the brutes. For if freedom from bodily pain be still the same, whether it come by endeavor or by nature, neither then is an undisturbed state of mind the greater for being attained to by industry than if it came by nature. Though a man may with good reason maintain that to be the more confirmed habit of the mind which naturally admits of no disorder, than that which by application and judgment eschews it.

But let us suppose them both equal; they will yet appear not one jot superior to the beasts for being unconcerned at the stories of hell and the legends of the gods, and for not expecting endless sorrows and everlasting torments hereafter. For it is Epicurus himself that tells us that, had our surmises about heavenly phenomena and our foolish apprehensions of death and the pains that ensue it given us no disquiet, we had not then needed to contemplate nature for our relief. For neither have the brutes any weak surmises of the gods or fond opinion about things after death to disorder themselves with; nor have they as much as imagination or notion that there is anything in these to be dreaded. I confess, had they left us the benign providence of God as a presumption, wise men might then seem, by reason of their good hopes from thence, to have something towards a pleasurable life that beasts have not. But now, since they have made it the scope of all their discourses of God that they may not fear him, but may be eased of all concern about him, I much question whether those that never thought at all of him have not this in a more confirmed degree than they that have learned to think he can do no harm. For if they were never freed from superstition, they never fell into it; and if they never laid aside a disturbing conceit of God, they never took one up. The like may be said as to hell and the future state. For though neither the Epicurean nor the brute can hope for any good thence; yet such as have no forethought of death at all cannot but be less amused and scared with what comes after it than they that betake themselves to the principle that death is nothing to us. But something to them it must be, at least so far as they concern themselves to reason about it and contemplate it; but the beasts are wholly exempted from thinking of what appertains not to them; and if they fly from blows, wounds, and slaughters, they fear no more in death than is dismaying to the Epicurean himself.

Such then are the things they boast to have attained by their philosophy. Let us now see what those are they deprive themselves of and chase away from them. For those diffusions of the mind that arise from the body, and the pleasing condition of the body, if they be but moderate, appear to have nothing in them that is either great or considerable; but if they be excessive, besides their being vain and uncertain, they are also importune and petulant; nor should a man term them either mental satisfactions or gayeties, but rather corporeal gratifications, they being at best but the simperings and effeminacies of the mind. But now such as justly deserve the names of complacencies and joys are wholly refined from their contraries, and are immixed with neither vexation, remorse, nor repentance; and their good is congenial to the mind and truly mental and genuine, and not superinduced. Nor is it devoid of reason, but most rational, as springing either from that in the mind that is contemplative and inquiring, or else from that part of it that is active and heroic. How many and how great satisfactions either of these affords us, no one can ever relate. But to hint briefly at some of them. We have the historians before us, which, though they find us many and delightful exercises, still leave our desire after truth insatiate and uncloyed with pleasure, through which even lies are not without their grace. Yea, tales and poetic fictions, while they cannot gain upon our belief, have something in them that is charming to us.

For do but think with yourself, with what a sting we read Plato’s “Atlantic” and the conclusion of the “Iliad,” and how we hanker and gape after the rest of the tale, as when some beautiful temple or theatre is shut up. But now the informing of ourselves with the truth herself is a thing so delectable and lovely as if our very life and being were for the sake of knowing. And the darkest and grimmest things in death are its oblivion, ignorance, and obscurity. Whence, by Jove, it is that almost all mankind encounter with those that would destroy the sense of the departed, as placing the very whole of their life, being, and satisfaction solely in the sensible and knowing part of the mind. For even the things that grieve and afflict us yet afford us a sort of pleasure in the hearing. And it is often seen that those that are disordered by what is told them, even to the degree of weeping, notwithstanding require the telling of it. So he in the tragedy who is told,

Alas I now the very worst must tell,
replies,
I dread to hear it too, but I must hear.
(Sophocles, “Pedipus Tyrannus,” 1169, 1170.)

But this may seem perhaps a sort of intemperateness of delight in knowing everything, and as it were a stream violently bearing down the reasoning faculty. But now, when a story that hath in it nothing that is troubling and afflictive treats of great and heroic enterprises with a potency and grace of style such as we find in Herodotus’s Grecian and in Xenophon’s Persian history, or in what,

Inspired by heavenly gods, sage Homer sung,

or in the Travels of Euxodus, the Foundations and Republics of Aristotle, and the Lives of Famous Men compiled by Aristoxenus; these will not only bring us exceeding much and great contentment, but such also as is clean and secure from repentance. And who could take greater satisfaction either in eating when a-hungry or drinking when a-dry amongst the Phaeacians, than in going over Ulysses’s relation of his own voyage and rambles? And what man could be better pleased with the embraces of the most exquisite beauty, than with sitting up all night to read over what Xenophon hath written of Panthea, or Aristobulus of Timoclea, or Theopompus of Thebe?

But now these appertain all solely to the mind. But they chase away from them the delights that accrue from the mathematics also. Though the satisfactions we receive from history have in them something simple and equal; but those that come from geometry, astronomy, and music inveigle and allure us with a sort of nimbleness and variety, and want nothing that is tempting and engaging; their figures attracting us as so many charms, whereof whoever hath once tasted, if he be but competently skilled, will run about chanting that in Sophocles,

I’m mad; the Muses with new rage inspire me.
I’ll mount the hill; my lyre, my numbers fire me.
(From the “Thamyras” of Sophocles, Frag. 225)

Nor doth Thamyras break out into poetic raptures upon any other score; nor, by Jove, Euxodus, Aristarchus, or Archimedes. And when the lovers of the art of painting are so enamoured with the charmingness of their own performances, that Nicias, as he was drawing the Evocation of Ghosts in Homer, often asked his servants whether he had dined or no, and when King Ptolemy had sent him threescore talents for his piece, after it was finished, he neither would accept the money nor part with his work; what and how great satisfactions may we then suppose to have been reaped from geometry and astronomy by Euclid when he wrote his Dioptrics, by Philippus when he had perfected his demonstration of the figure of the moon, by Archimedes when with the help of a certain angle he had found the sun’s diameter to make the same part of the largest circle that that angle made of four right angles, and by Apollonius and Aristarchus who were the inventors of some other things of the like nature? The bare contemplating and comprehending of all these now engender in the learners both unspeakable delights and a marvellous height of spirit. And it doth in no wise beseem me, by comparing with these the fulsome debauchees of victualling-houses and stews, to contaminate Helicon and the Muses, —

Where swain his flock ne’er fed,
Nor tree by hatchet bled.
(Euripides, “Hippolytus,” 75.)

But these are the verdant and untrampled pastures of ingenious bees; but those are more like the mange of lecherous boars and he-goats. And though a voluptuous temper of mind be naturally erratic and precipitate, yet never any yet sacrificed an ox for joy that he had gained his will of his mistress; nor did any ever wish to die immediately, might he but once satiate himself with the costly dishes and comfits at the table of his prince. But now Eudoxus wished he might stand by the sun, and inform himself of the figure, magnitude, and beauty of that luminary, though he were, like Phaethon, consumed by it. And Pythagoras offered an ox in sacrifice for having completed the lines of a certain geometric diagram; as Apollodotus tells us,

When the famed lines Pythagoras devised,
For which a splendid ox he sacrificed.

Whether it was that by which he showed that the line that regards the right angle in a triangle is equivalent to the two lines that contain that angle, or the problem about the area of the parabolic section of a cone. And Archimedes’s servants were forced to hale him away from his draughts, to be anointed in the bath; but he notwithstanding drew the lines upon his belly with his strigil. And when, as he was washing (as the story goes of him), he thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero’s crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool, he leaped up as one possessed or inspired, crying, “I have found it;” which after he had several times repeated, he went his way. But we never yet heard of a glutton that exclaimed with such vehemence, “I have eaten,” or of an amorous gallant that ever cried, “I have kissed,” among the many millions of dissolute debauchees that both this and preceding ages have produced. Yea, we abominate those that make mention of their great suppers with too luscious a gust, as men overmuch taken with mean and abject delights. But we find ourselves in one and the same ecstasy with Eudoxus, Archimedes, and Hipparchus; and we readily give assent to Plato when he saith of the mathematics, that while ignorance and unskilledness make men despise them, they still thrive notwithstanding by reason of their charmingness, in despite of contempt.

These then so great and so many pleasures, that run like perpetual springs and rills, these men decline and avoid; nor will they permit those that put in among them so much as to take a taste of them, but bid them hoist up the little sails of their paltry cock-boats and fly from them. Nay, they all, both he and she philosophers, beg and entreat Pythocles, for dear Epicurus’s sake, not to affect or make such account of the sciences called liberal. And when they cry up and defend one Apelles, they write of him that he kept himself clean by refraining himself all along from the mathematics. But as to history — to pass over their aversedness to other kinds of compositions — I shall only present you with the words of Metrodorus, who in his treatise of the Poets writes thus: Wherefore let it never disturb you, if you know not either what side Hector was of, or the first verses in Homer’s Poem, or again what is in its middle. But that the pleasures of the body spend themselves like the winds called Etesian or Anniversary, and utterly determine when once age is past its vigor, Epicurus himself was not insensible; and therefore he makes it a problematic question, whether a sage philosopher, when he is an old man and disabled for enjoyment, may not still be recreated with having handsome girls to feel and grope him, being not, it seems, of the mind of old Sophocles, who thanked God he had at length escaped from this kind of pleasure, as from an untamed and furious master. But, in my opinion, it would be more advisable for these sensual lechers, when they see that age will dry up so many of their pleasures, and that, as Euripides saith,

Dame Venus is to ancient men a foe,
(Euripides, “Aeolus,” Frag. 23.)

in the first place to collect and lay up in store, as against a siege, these other pleasures, as a sort of provision that will not impair and decay; that then, after they have celebrated the venereal festivals of life, they may spend a cleanly after-feast in reading over the historians and poets, or else in problems of music and geometry. For it would never have come into their minds so much as to think of these purblind and toothless gropings and spurtings of lechery, had they but learned, if nothing more, to write comments upon Homer or Euripides, as Aristotle, Heraclides, and Dicaerchus did. But I verily persuade myself that their neglecting to take care for such provisions as these, and finding all the other things they employed themselves in (as they use to say of virtue) but insipid and dry, and being wholly set upon pleasure, and the body no longer supplying them with it, give them occasion to stoop to do things both mean and shameful in themselves and unbecoming their age; as well when they refresh their memories with their former pleasures and serve themselves of old ones (as it were) long since dead and laid up in pickle for the purpose, when they cannot have fresh ones, as when again they offer violence to nature by suscitating and inflaming in their decayed bodies, as in cold embers, other new ones equally senseless, they having not, it seems, their minds stored with any congenial pleasure that is worth the rejoicing at. As to the other delights of the mind, we have already treated of them, as they occurred to us. But their aversedness and dislike to music, that affords us so great delights and such charming satisfactions, a man could not forget if he would, by reason of the inconsistency of what Epicurus saith, when he pronounceth in his book called his Doubts that his wise man ought to be a lover of public spectacles and to delight above any other man in the music and shows of the Bacchanals; and yet he will not admit of music problems or of the critical inquiries of philologists, no, not so much as at a compotation. Yea, he advises such princes as are lovers of the Muses rather to entertain themselves at their feasts either with some narration of military adventures or with the importune scurrilities of drolls and buffoons, than to engage in disputes about music or in questions of poetry. For this very thing he had the face to write in his treatise of Monarchy, as if he were writing to Sardanapalus, or to Nanarus ruler of Babylon. For neither would a Hiero nor an Attalus nor an Archelaus be persuaded to make a Euripides, a Simonides, a Melanippides, a Crates, or a Diodotus rise up from their tables, and to place such scaramuchios in their rooms as a Cardax, an Agrias, or a Callias, or fellows like Thrasonides and Thrasyleon, to make people disorder the house with hollowing and clapping. Had the great Ptolemy, who was the first that formed a consort of musicians, but met with these excellent and royal admonitions, would he not, think you, have thus addressed himself to the Samians: —

O Muse, whence art thou thus maligned?

For certainly it can never belong to any Athenian to be in such enmity and hostility with the Muses. But

No animal accurst by Jove
Music’s sweet charms can ever love.
(Pindar, “Pythian,” i. 25.)

What sayest thou now, Epicurus? Wilt thou get thee up betimes in the morning, and go to the theatre to hear the harpers and flutists play? But if a Theophrastus discourse at the table of Concords, or an Aristoxenus of Varieties, or if an Aristophanes play the critic upon Homer, wilt thou presently, for very dislike and abhorrence, clap both thy hands upon thy ears? And do they not hereby make the Scythian king Ateas more musical than this comes to, who, when he heard that admirable flutist Ismenias, detained then by him as a prisoner of war, playing upon the flute at a compotation, swore he had rather hear his own horse neigh? And do they not also profess themselves to stand at an implacable and irreconcilable defiance with whatever is generous and becoming? And indeed what do they ever embrace or affect that is either genteel or regardable, when it hath nothing of pleasure to accompany it? And would it not far less affect a pleasurable way of living, to abhor perfumes and odors, like beetles and vultures, than to shun and abhor the conversation of learned, critics and musicians? For what flute or harp ready tuned for a lesson, or

What sweetest concerts e’er with artful noise,
Warbled by softest tongue and best tuned voice,

ever gave Epicurus and Metrodorus such content as the disputes and precepts about concerts gave Aristotle, Theophrastus, Hieronymus, and Dicaerchus? And also the problems about flutes, rhythms, and harmonies; as, for instance, why the longer of two flutes of the same longitude should speak flatter? — why, if you raise the pipe, will all its notes be sharp; and flat again, if you depress it? — and why, when clapped to another, will it sound flatter; and sharper again, when taken from it? — why also, if you scatter chaff or dust about the orchestra of a theatre, will the sound be deadened? — and why, when one would have set up a bronze Alexander for a frontispiece to a stage at Pella, did the architect advise to the contrary, because it would spoil the actors’ voices? and why, of the several kinds of music, will the chromatic diffuse and the harmonic compose the mind? But now the several humors of poets, their differing turns and forms of style, and the solutions of their difficult places, have conjoined with a sort of dignity and politeness somewhat also that is extremely agreeable and charming; insomuch that to me they seem to do what was once said by Xenophon, to make a man even forget the joys of love, so powerful and overcoming is the pleasure they bring us. In this investigation these gentlemen have not the least share, nor do they so much as pretend or desire to have any. But while they are sinking and depressing their contemplative part into the body, and dragging it down by their sensual and intemperate appetites, as by so many weights of lead, they make themselves appear little better than hostlers or graziers that still ply their cattle with hay, straw, or grass, looking upon such provender as the properest and meetest food for them. And is it not even thus they would swill the mind with the pleasures of the body, as hogherds do their swine, while they will not allow it can be gay any longer than it is hoping, experiencing, or remembering something that refers to the body; but will not have it either to receive or seek for any congenial joy or satisfaction from within itself? Though what can be more absurd and unreasonable than — when there are two things that go to make up the man, a body and a soul, and the soul besides hath the perogative of governing — that the body should have its peculiar, natural, and proper good, and the soul none at all, but must sit gazing at the body and simper at its passions, as if she were pleased and affected with them, though indeed she be all the while wholly untouched and unconcerned, as having nothing of her own to choose, desire, or take delight in? For they should either pull off the vizor quite, and say plainly that man is all body (as some of them do, that take away all mental being), or, if they will allow us to have two distinct natures, they should then leave to each its proper good and evil, agreeable and disagreeable; as we find it to be with our senses, each of which is peculiarly adapted to its own sensible, though they all very strangely intercommune one with another. Now the intellect is the proper sense of the mind; and therefore that it should have no congenial speculation, movement, or affection of its own, the attaining to which should be matter of complacency to it, is the most irrational thing in the world, if I have not, by Jove, unwittingly done the men wrong, and been myself imposed upon by some that may perhaps have calumniated them. Then I said to him: If we may be your judges, you have not; yea, we must acquit you of having offered them the least indignity; and therefore pray despatch the rest of your discourse with assurance. How! said I, and shall not Aristodemus then succeed me, if you are tired out yourself? Aristodemus said: With all my heart, when you are as much tired as he is; but since you are yet in your vigor, pray make use of yourself, my noble friend, and don’t think to pretend weariness. Theon then replied: What is yet behind, I must confess, is very easy; it being but to go over the several pleasures contained in that part of life that consists in action. Now themselves somewhere say that there is far more satisfaction in doing than in receiving good; and good may be done many times, it is true, by words, but the most and greatest part of good consists in action, as the very name of beneficence tells us and they themselves also attest. For you may remember, continued he, we heard this gentleman tell us but now what words Epicurus uttered, and what letters he sent to his friends, applauding and magnifying Metrodorus, — how bravely and like a spark he quitted the city and went down to the port to relieve Mithrus the Syrian, — and this, though Metrodorus did not then do anything at all. What and how great then may we presume the pleasures of Plato to have been, when Dion by the measures he gave him deposed the tyrant Dionysius and set Sicily at liberty? And what the pleasures of Aristotle, when he rebuilt his native city Stagira, then levelled with the ground, and brought back its exiled inhabitants? And what the pleasures of Theophrastus and of Phidias, when they cut off the tyrants of their respective countries? For what need a man recount to you, who so well know it, how many particular persons they relieved, not by sending them a little wheat or a measure of meal (as Epicurus did to some of his friends), but by procuring restoration to the banished, liberty to the imprisoned, and restitution of wives and children to those that had been bereft of them? But a man could not, if he were willing, pass by the sottish stupidity of the man who, though he tramples under foot and vilifies the great and generous actions of Themistocles and Miltiades, yet writes these very words to his friends about himself: “You have given a very gallant and noble testimony of your care of me in the provision of corn you have made for me, and have declared your affection to me by signs that mount to the very skies.” So that, should a man but take that poor parcel of corn out of the great philosopher’s epistle, it might seem to be the recital of some letter of thanks for the delivery or preservation of all Greece or of the commons of Athens. We will now forbear to mention that Nature requires very large and chargeable provisions to be made for accomplishing the pleasures of the body; nor can the height of delicacy be had in black bread and lentil pottage. But voluptuous and sensual appetites expect costly dishes, Thasian wines, perfumed unguents, and varieties of pastry works,

And cakes by female hands wrought artfully,
Well steep’d in th’ liquor of the gold-wing’d bee;

and besides all this, handsome young lassies too, such as Leontion, Boidion, Hedia, and Nicedion, that were wont to roam about in Epicurus’s philosophic garden. But now such joys as suit the mind must undoubtedly be grounded upon a grandeur of actions and a splendor of worthy deeds, if men would not seem little, ungenerous, and puerile, but on the contrary, bulky, firm, and brave. But for a man to be elated by happiness, as Epicurus is, like sailors upon the festivals of Venus, and to vaunt himself that, when he was sick of an ascites, he notwithstanding called his friends together to certain collations and grudged not his dropsy the addition of good liquor, and that, when he called to remembrance the last words of Neocles, he was melted with a peculiar sort of joy intermixed with tears, — no man in his right senses would call these true joys or satisfactions. Nay, I will be bold to say that, if such a thing as that they call a sardonic or grinning laughter can happen to the mind, it is to be found in these artificial and crying laughters. But if any will needs have them still called by the name of joys and satisfactions, let him but yet think how far they are exceeded by the pleasures that here ensue: —

Our counsels have proud Sparta’s glory clipt;
and
Stranger, this is his country Rome’s great star;

and again this,

I know not which to guess thee, man or god.

Now when I set before my eyes the brave achievements of Thrasybulus and Pelopidas, of Aristides engaged at Platea and Miltiades at Marathon, I am here constrained with Herodotus to declare it my opinion, that in an active state of life the pleasure far exceeds the glory. And Epaminondas herein bears me witness also, when he saith (as is reported of him), that the greatest satisfaction he ever received in his life was that his father and mother had lived to see the trophy set up at Leuctra when himself was general. Let us then compare with Epaminondas’s Epicurus’s mother, rejoicing that she had lived to see her son cooping himself up in a little garden, and getting children in common with Polyaenus upon the strumpet of Cyzicus. As for Metrodorus’s mother and sister, how extravagantly rejoiced they were at his nuptials appears by the letters he wrote to his brother in answer to his; that is, out of his own books. Nay, they tell us bellowing that they have not only lived a life of pleasure, but also exult and sing hymns in the praise of their own living. Though, when our servants celebrate the festivals of Saturn or go in procession at the time of the rural bacchanals, you would scarcely brook the hollowing and din they make, if the intemperateness of their joy and their insensibleness of decorum should make them act and speak such things as these: —

Lean down, boy! why dost sit I let’s tope like mad!
Here’s belly-timber store; ne’er spare it, lad.
Straight these huzza like wild. One fills up drink;
Another plaits a wreath, and crowns the brink
O’ th’ teeming bowl. Then to the verdant bays
All chant rude carols in Apollo’s praise;
While one the door with drunken fury smites,
Till he from bed his loving consort frights.

And are not Metrodorus’s words something like to these when he writes to his brother thus: It is none of our business to preserve the Greeks, or to get them to bestow garlands upon us for our wit, but to eat well and drink good wine, Timocrates, so as not to offend but pleasure our stomachs. And he saith again, in some other place in the same epistles: How gay and how assured was I, when I had once learned of Epicurus the true way of gratifying my stomach; for, believe me, philosopher Timocrates, our prime good lies at the stomach.

In brief, these men draw out the dimensions of their pleasures like a circle, about the stomach as a centre. And the truth is, it is impossible for those men ever to participate of generous and princely joy, such as enkindles a height of spirit in us and sends forth to all mankind an unmade hilarity and calm serenity, that have taken up a sort of life that is confined, unsocial, inhuman, and uninspired towards the esteem of the world and the love of mankind. For the soul of man is not an abject, little, and ungenerous thing, nor doth it extend its desires (as polyps do their claws) unto eatables only, — yea, these are in an instant of time taken off by the least plenitude, but when its efforts towards what is brave and generous and the honors and caresses that accrue therefrom are now in their consummate vigor this life’s duration cannot limit them, but the desire of glory and the love of mankind grasp at whole eternity, and wrestle with such actions and charms as bring with them an ineffable pleasure, and such as good men, though never so fain, cannot decline, they meeting and accosting them on all sides and surrounding them about, while their being beneficial to many occasions joy to themselves.

As he passes through the throngs in the city,
All gaze upon him as some deity.
(“Odyssey,” viii. 173.)

For he that can so affect and move other men as to fill them with joy and rapture, and to make them long to touch him and salute him, cannot but appear even to a blind man to possess and enjoy very extraordinary satisfactions in himself. And hence it comes that such men are both indefatigable and undaunted in serving the public, and we still hear some such words from them

Thy father got thee for the common good;
and
Let’s not give off to benefit mankind.

But what need I instance in those that are consummately good? For if to one of the middling rank of bad men, when he is just a-dying, he that hath the power over him (whether his god or prince) should but allow one hour more, upon condition that, after he hath spent that either in some generous action or in sensual enjoyment, he should then presently die, who would in this time choose rather to accompany with Lais or drink Ariusion wine, than to despatch Archias and restore the Athenians to their liberties? For my part I believe none would. For I see that even common sword-players, if they are not utter brutes and savages, but Greek born, when they are to enter the list, though there be many and very costly dishes set before them, yet take more content in employing their time in commanding their poor wives to some of their friends, yea, and in conferring freedom on their slaves, than in gratifying their stomachs. But should the pleasures of the body be allowed to have some extraordinary matter in them, this would yet be common to men of action and business.

For they can eat good meat, and red wine drink,
(See “Iliad,” v. 341.)

aye, and entertain themselves with their friends, and perhaps with a greater relish too, after their engagements and hard services, — as did Alexander and Agesilaus, and (by Jove) Phocion and Epaminondas too, — than these gentlemen who anoint themselves by the fireside, and are gingerly rocked about the streets in sedans. Yea, those make but small account of such pleasures as these, as being comprised in those greater ones. For why should a man mention Epaminondas’s denying to sup with one, when he saw the preparations made were above the man’s estate, but frankly saying to his friend, “I thought you had intended a sacrifice and not a debauch,” when Alexander himself refused Queen Ada’s cooks, telling her he had better ones of his own, to wit, travelling by night for his dinner, and a light dinner for his supper, and when Philoxenus writing to him about some handsome boys, and desiring to know of him whether he would have him buy them for him, was within a small matter of being discharged his office for it? And yet who might better have them than he? But as Hippocrates saith that of two pains the lesser is forgot in the greater, so the pleasures that accrue from action and the love of glory, while they cheer and refresh the mind, do by their transcendency and grandeur obliterate and extinguish the inferior satisfactions of the body.

If, then, the remembering of former good things (as they affirm) be that which most contributes to a pleasurable living, not one of us will then credit Epicurus when he, tells us that, while he was dying away in the midst of the strongest agonies and distempers, he yet bore himself up with the memory of the pleasures he formerly enjoyed. For a man may better see the resemblance of his own face in a troubled deep or a storm, than a smooth and smiling remembrance of past pleasure in a body tortured with such lancing and rending pains. But now the memories of past actions no man can put from him that would. For did Alexander, think you, (or indeed could he possibly) forget the fight at Arbela? Or Pelopidas the tyrant Leontiadas? Or Themistocles the engagement at Salamis? For the Athenians to this very day keep an annual festival for the battle at Marathon, and the Thebans for that at Leuctra; and so, by Jove, do we ourselves (as you very well know) for that which Daiphantus gained at Hyampolis, and all Phocis is filled with sacrifices and public honors. Nor is there any of us that is better satisfied with what himself hath either eaten or drunk than he is with what they have achieved. It is very easy then to imagine what great content, satisfaction, and joy accompanied the authors of these actions in their lifetime, when the very memory of them hath not yet after five hundred years and more lost its rejoicing power. The truth is, Epicurus himself allows there are some pleasures derived from fame. And indeed why should he not, when he himself had such a furious lechery and wriggling after glory as made him not only to disown his masters and scuffle about syllables and accents with his fellow-pedant Democritus (whose principles he stole verbatim), and to tell his disciples there never was a wise man in the world besides himself, but also to put it in writing how Colotes performed adoration to him, as he was one day philosophizing, by touching his knees, and that his own brother Neocles was used from a child to say, “There neither is, nor ever was in the world, a wiser man than Epicurus,” and that his mother had just so many atoms within her as, when coming together, must have produced a complete wise man? May not a man then — as Callicratidas once said of the Athenian admiral Conon, that he whored the sea as well say of Epicurus that he basely and covertly forces and ravishes Fame, by not enjoying her publicly but ruffling and debauching her in a corner? For as men’s bodies are oft necessitated by famine, for want of other food, to prey against nature upon themselves, a like mischief to this does vainglory create in men’s minds, forcing them, when they hunger after praise and cannot obtain it from other men, at last to commend themselves. And do not they then that stand so well affected towards applause and fame themselves own they cast away very extraordinary pleasures, when they decline, magistrature, public offices, and the favor and confidences of princes, from whom Democritus once said the grandest blessings of human life are derived? For he will never induce any mortal to believe, that he that could so highly value and please himself with the attestation of his brother Neocles and the adoration of his friend Colotes would not, were he clapped by all the Greeks at the Olympiads, go quite out of his wits and even hollow for joy, or rather indeed be elated in the manner spoken of by Sophocles,

Puffed like the down of a gray-headed thistle.

If it be a pleasing thing then to be of a good fame, it is on the contrary afflictive to be of an ill one; and it is most certain that nothing in the world can be more infamous than want of friendship, idleness, atheism, debauchery, and negligence. Now these are looked upon by all men except themselves as inseparable companions of their party. But unjustly, some one may say. Be it so then; for we consider not now the truth of the charge, but what fame and reputation they are of in the world. And we shall forbear at present to mention the many books that have been written to defame them, and the blackening decrees made against them by several republics; for that would look like bitterness. But if the answers of oracles, the providence of the gods, and the tenderness and affection of parents to their issue, — if civil policy, military order, and the office of magistracy be things to be looked upon as deservedly esteemed and celebrated, it must of necessity then be allowed also, that they that tell us it is none of their business to preserve the Greeks, but they must eat and drink so as not to offend but pleasure their stomachs, are base and ignominious persons, and that their being reputed such must needs extremely humble them and make their lives untoward to them, if they take honor and a good name for any part of their satisfaction. When Theon had thus spoken, we thought good to break up our walk to rest us awhile (as we were wont to do) upon the benches. Nor did we continue any long space in our silence at what was spoken; for Zeuxippus, taking his hint from what had been said, spake to us: Who will make up that of the discourse which is yet behind? For it hath not yet received its due conclusion; and this gentleman, by mentioning divination and providence, did in my opinion suggest as much to us; for these people boast that these very things contribute in no way to the providing of their lives with pleasure, serenity, and assurance; so that there must be something said to these too. Aristodemus subjoined then and said: As to pleasure, I think there hath been enough said already to evince that, supposing their doctrine to be successful and to attain its own design, it yet doth but ease us of fear and a certain superstitious persuasion but helps us not to any comfort or joy from the gods at all; nay, while it brings us to such a state as to be neither disquieted nor pleased with them, it doth but render us in the same manner affected towards them as we are towards the Scythians or Hyrcanians, from whom we look for neither good nor harm. But if something more must be added to what hath been already spoken, I think I may very well take it from themselves. And in the first place, they quarrel extremely with those that would take away all sorrowing, weeping, and sighing for the death of friends, and tell them that such unconcernedness as arrives to an insensibility proceeds from some other worse cause, to wit, inhumanity, excessive vainglory, or prodigious fierceness, and that therefore it would be better to be a little concerned and affected, yea, and to liquor one’s eyes and be melted, with other pretty things of the like kind, which they use artificially to affect and counterfeit, that they may be thought tender and loving-hearted people. For just in this manner Epicurus expressed himself upon the occasion of the death of Hegesianax, when he wrote to Dositheus the father and to Pyrson the brother of the deceased person; for I fortuned very lately to run over his epistles. And I say, in imitation of them, that atheism is no less an evil than inhumanity and vainglory, and into this they would lead us who take away with God’s anger the comfort we might derive from him. For it would be much better for us to have something of the unsuiting passion of dauntedness and fear conjoined and intermixed with our sentiments of a deity, than while we fly from it, to leave ourselves neither hope, content, nor assurance in the enjoyment of our good things nor any recourse to God in our adversity and misfortunes.

We ought, it is true, to remove superstition from the persuasion we have of the gods, as we would the gum from our eyes; but if that be impossible, we must not root out and extinguish with it the belief which the most have of the gods; nor is that a dismaying and sour one either, as these gentlemen feign, while they libel and abuse the blessed Providence, representing her as a witch or as some fell and tragic fury. Yea, I must tell you, there are some in the world that fear God in an excess, for whom yet it would not be better not so to fear him. For, while they dread him as a governor that is gentle to the good and severe to the bad, and are by this one fear, which makes them not to need many others, freed from doing ill and brought to keep their wickedness with them in quiet and (as it were) in an enfeebled languor, they come hereby to have less disquiet than those that indulge the practice of it and are rash and daring in it, and then presently after fear and repent of it. Now that disposition of mind which the greater and ignorant part of mankind, that are not utterly bad, are of towards God, hath, it is very true, conjoined with the regard and honor they pay him, a kind of anguish and astonished dread, which is also called superstition; but ten thousand times more and greater is the good hope, the true joy, that attend it, which both implore and receive the whole benefit of prosperity and good success from the gods only. And this is manifest by the greatest tokens that can be; for neither do the discourses of those that wait at the temples, nor the good times of our solemn festivals, nor any other actions or sights more recreate and delight us than what we see and do about the gods ourselves, while we assist at the public ceremonies, and join in the sacred balls, and attend at the sacrifices and initiations. For the mind is not then sorrowful depressed, and heavy, as if she were approaching certain tyrants or cruel torturers; but on the contrary, where she is most apprehensive and fullest persuaded the divinity is present, there she most of all throws off sorrows, tears, and pensiveness, and lets herself loose to what is pleasing and agreeable, to the very degree of tipsiness, frolic, and laughter. In amorous concerns, as the poet said once,

When old man and old wife think of love’s fires,
Their frozen breasts will swell with new desires;

but now in the public processions and sacrifices not only the old man and the old wife, nor yet the poor and mean man only, but also

The dusty thick-legged drab that turns the mill,

and household-slaves and day-laborers, are strangely elevated and transported with mirth and joviality. Rich men as well as princes are used at certain times to make public entertainments and to keep open houses; but the feasts they make at the solemnities and sacrifices, when they now apprehend their minds to approach nearest the divinity, have conjoined with the honor and veneration they pay him a much more transcending pleasure and satisfaction. Of this, he that hath renounced God’s providence hath not the least share; for what recreates and cheers us at the festivals is not the store of good wine and roast meat, but the good hope and persuasion that God is there present and propitious to us, and kindly accepts of what we do. From some of our festivals we exclude the flute and garland; but if God be not present at the sacrifice, as the solemnity of the banquet, the rest is but unhallowed, unfeast-like, and uninspired. Indeed the whole is but ungrateful and irksome to such a man; for he asks for nothing at all, but only acts his prayers and adorations for fear of the public, and utters expressions contradictory to his philosophy. And when he sacrifices, he stands by and looks upon the priest as he kills the offering but as he doth upon a butcher; and when he hath done, he goes his way, saying with Menander,

To bribe the gods I sacrificed my best,
But they ne’er minded me nor my request.

For so Epicurus would have us arrange ourselves, and neither to envy nor to incur the hatred of the common herd by doing ourselves with disgust what others do with delight. For, as Evenus saith,

No man can love what he is made to do.

For which very reason they think the superstitious are not pleased in their minds but in fear while they attend at the sacrifices and mysteries; though they themselves are in no better condition, if they do the same things our of fear, and partake not either of as great good hope as the others do, but are only fearful and uneasy lest they should come to be discovered as cheating and abusing the public, upon whose account it is that they compose the books they write about the gods and the divine nature,

Involved, with nothing truly said.
But all around enveloped;

hiding out of fear the real opinions they contain.

And now, after the two former ranks of ill and common men, we will in the third place consider the best sort and most beloved of the gods, and what great satisfactions they receive from their clean and generous sentiments of the deity, to wit, that he is the prince of all good things and the parent of all things brave, and can no more do an unworthy thing than he can be made to suffer it. For he is good, and he that is good can upon no account fall into envy, fear, anger, or hatred; neither is it proper to a hot thing to cool, but to heat; nor to a good thing to do harm. Now anger is by nature at the farthest distance imaginable from complacency, and spleenishness from placidness, and animosity and turbulence from humanity and kindness. For the latter of these proceed from generosity and fortitude, but the former from impotency and baseness. The deity is not therefore constrained by either anger or kindnesses; but that is because it is natural to it to be kind and aiding, and unnatural to be angry and hurtful. But the great Jove, whose mansion is in heaven, is the first that descends downwards and orders all things and takes the care of them. But of the other gods one is surnamed the Distributor, and another the Mild, and a third the Averter of Evil. And according to Pindar,

Phoebus was by mighty Jove designed
Of all the gods to be to man most kind.

And Diogenes saith, that all things are the gods’, and friends have all things common, and good men are the gods’ friends; and therefore it is impossible either that a man beloved of the gods should not he happy, or that a wise and a just man should not be beloved of the gods. Can you think then that they that take away Providence need any other chastisement, or that they have not a sufficient one already, when they root out of themselves such vast satisfaction and joy as we that stand thus affected towards the deity have? Metrodorus, Polyaenus, and Aristobulus were the confidence and rejoicing of Epicurus; the better part of whom he all his lifetime either attended upon in their sicknesses or lamented at their deaths. As did Lycurgus, when he was saluted by the Delphic prophetess,

Dear friend to heavenly Jove and all the gods.

And did Socrates when he believed that a certain divinity was used out of kindness to discourse him, and Pindar when he heard Pan sing one of the sonnets he had composed, but a little rejoice, think you? Or Phormio, when he thought he had treated Castor and Pollux at his house? Or Sophocles, when he entertained Aesculapius, as both he himself believed, and others too, that thought the same with him by reason of the apparition that then happened? What opinion Hermogenes had of the gods is well worth the recounting in his very own words. “For these gods,” saith he, “who know all things and can do all things, are so friendly and loving to me that, because they take care of me, I never escape them either by night or by day, wherever I go or whatever I am about. And because they know beforehand what issue everything will have, they signify it to me by sending angels, voices, dreams, and presages.” Very amiable things must those be that come to us from the gods; but when these very things come by the gods too, this is what occasions vast satisfaction and unspeakable assurance, a sublimity of mind and a joy that, like a smiling brightness, doth as it were gild over our good things with a glory. But now those that are persuaded otherwise obstruct the very sweetest part of their prosperity, and leave themselves nothing to turn to in their adversity; but when they are in distress, look only to this one refuge and port, dissolution and insensibility; just as if in a storm or tempest at sea, some one should, to hearten the rest, stand up and say to them: Gentlemen, the ship hath never a pilot in it, nor will Castor and Pollux come themselves to assuage the violence of the beating waves or to lay the swift careers of the winds; yet I can assure you there is nothing at all to be dreaded in all this, for the vessel will be immediately swallowed up by the sea, or else will very quickly fall off and be dashed in pieces against the rocks. For this is Epicurus’s way of discourse to persons under grievous distempers and excessive pains. Dost thou hope for any good from the gods for thy piety? It is thy vanity; for the blessed and incorruptible Being is not constrained by either angers or kindnesses. Dost thou fancy something better after this life than what thou hast here? Thou dost but deceive thyself; for what is dissolved hath no sense, and that which hath no sense is nothing to us. Aye; but how comes it then, my good friend, that you bid me eat and be merry? Why, by Jove, because he that is in a great storm cannot be far off a shipwreck; and your extreme danger will soon land you upon Death’s strand. Though yet a passenger at sea, when he is got off from a shattered ship, will still buoy himself up with some little hope that he may drive his body to some shore and get out by swimming; but now the poor soul, according to these men’s philosophy,

Is ne’er more seen without the hoary main.
(“Odyssey,” v. 410.)

Yea, she presently evaporates, disperses, and perishes, even before the body itself; so that it seems her great and excessive rejoicing must be only for having learned this one sage and divine maxim, that all her misfortunes will at last determine in her own destruction, dissolution, and annihilation.

But (said he, looking upon me) I should be impertinent, should I say anything upon this subject, when we have heard you but now discourse so fully against those that would persuade us that Epicurus’s doctrine about the soul renders men more disposed and better pleased to die than Plato’s doth. Zeuxippus therefore subjoined and said: And must our present debate be left then unfinished because of that? Or shall we be afraid to oppose that divine oracle to Epicurus? No, by no means, I said; and Empedocles tells us that

What’s very good claims to be heard twice.

Therefore we must apply ourselves again to Theon; for I think he was present at our former discourse; and besides, he is a young man, and needs not fear being charged by these young gentlemen with having a bad memory.

Then Theon, like one constrained, said: Well then, if you will needs have me to go on with the discourse, I will not do as you did, Aristodemus. For you were shy of repeating what this gentleman spoke, but I shall not scruple to make use of what you have said; for I think indeed you did very well divide mankind into three ranks; the first of wicked and very bad men, the second of the vulgar and common sort, and the third of good and wise men. The wicked and bad sort then, while they dread any kind of divine vengeance and punishment at all, and are by this deterred from doing mischief, and thereby enjoy the greater quiet, will live both in more pleasure and in less disturbance for it. And Epicurus is of opinion that the only proper means to keep men from doing ill is the fear of punishments. So that we should cram them with more and more superstition still, and raise up against them terrors, chasms, frights, and surmises, both from heaven and earth, if their being amazed with such things as these will make them become the more tame and gentle. For it is more for their benefit to be restrained from criminal actions by the fear of what comes after death, than to commit them and then to live in perpetual danger and fear.

As to the vulgar sort, besides their fear of what is in hell, the hope they have conceived of an eternity from the tales and fictions of the ancients, and their great desire of being, which is both the first and the strongest of all, exceed in pleasure and sweet content of mind that childish dread. And therefore, when they lose their children, wives, or friends, they would rather have them be somewhere and still remain, though in misery, than that they should be quite destroyed, dissolved, and reduced to nothing. And they are pleased when they hear it said of a dying person, that he goes away or departs, and such other words as intimate death to be the soul’s remove and not destruction. And they sometimes speak thus:

But I’ll even there think on my dearest friend;
(“Iliad,” xxii. 390.)

and thus: —

What’s your command to Hector? Let me know;
And to your dear old Priam shall I go?
(Euripides, “Hecuba,” 422.)

And (there arising hereupon an erroneous deviation) they are the better pleased when they bury with their departed friends such arms, implements, or clothes as were most familiar to them in their lifetime; as Minos did the Cretan flutes with Glaucus,

Made of the shanks of a dead brindled fawn.

And if they do but imagine they either ask or desire anything of them, they are glad when they give it them. Thus Periander burnt his queen’s attire with her, because he thought she had asked for it and complained she was a-cold. Nor doth an Aeacus, an Ascalaphus, or an Acheron much disorder them whom they have often gratified with balls, shows, and music of every sort. But now all men shrink from that face of death which carries with it insensibility, oblivion, and extinction of knowledge, as being dismal, grim, and dark. And they are discomposed when they hear it said of any one, he is perished, or he is gone or he is no more; and they show great uneasiness when they hear such words as these: —

Go to the wood-clad earth he must,
And there lie shrivelled into dust,
And ne’er more laugh or drink, or hear
The charming sounds of flute or lyre;

and these: —

But from our lips the vital spirit fled
Returns no more to wake the silent dead.
(“Iliad,” ix. 408.)

Wherefore they must needs cut the very throats of them that shall with Epicurus tell them, We men were born once for all, and we cannot be born twice, but our not being must last forever. For this will bring them to slight their present good as little, or rather indeed as nothing at all compared with everlastingness, and therefore to let it pass unenjoyed and to become wholly negligent of virtue and action, as men disheartened and brought to a contempt of themselves, as being but as it were of one day’s continuance and uncertain, and born for no considerable purpose. For insensibility, dissolution, and the conceit that what hath no sense is nothing to us, do not at all abate the fear of death, but rather help to confirm it; for this very thing is it that nature most dreads, —

But may you all return to mould and wet,
(Ibid. vii. 99.)

to wit, the dissolution of the soul into what is without knowledge or sense. Now, while Epicurus would have this to be a separation into atoms and void, he doth but further cut off all hope of immortality; to compass which (I can scarce refrain from saying) all men and women would be well contented to be worried by Cerberus, and to carry water into the tub full of holes, so they might but continue in being and not be exterminated. Though (as I said before) there are not very many that stand in fear of these things, they being but the tenets of old women and the fabulous stories of mothers and nurses, — and even they that do fear them yet believe that certain rites of initiation and purgation will relieve them, by which after they are cleansed they shall play and dance in hell forever, in company with those that have the privilege of a bright light, clear air, and the use of speech, — yet to be deprived of living disturbs all both young and old. We

Impatient love the light that shines on earth,
(Euripides, “Hippolytus,” 193)

as Euripides saith. Nor are we easy or without regret when we hear this: —

Him speaking thus th’ eternal brightness leaves,
Where night the wearied steeds of day receives.

And therefore it is very plain that with the belief of immortality they take away the sweetest and greatest hopes the vulgar sort have. And what shall we then think they take away from the good and those that have led pious and just lives, who expect no ill after dying, but on the contrary most glorious and divine things? For, in the first place, athletes are not used to receive the garland before they have performed their exercises, but after they have contested and proved victorious; in like manner is it with those that are persuaded that good men have the prize of their conquests after this life is ended; it is marvellous to think to what a pitch of grandeur their virtue raises their spirits upon the contemplation of those hopes, among the which this is one, that they shall one day see those men that are now insolent by reason of their wealth and power, and that foolishly flout at their betters, undergo just punishment. In the next place, none of the lovers of truth and the contemplation of being have here their fill of them; they having but a watery and puddled reason to speculate with, as it were, through the fog and mist of the body; and yet they still look upwards like birds, as ready to take their flight to the spacious and bright region, and endeavor to make their souls expedite and light from things mortal, using philosophy as a study for death. Thus I account death a truly great and accomplished good thing; the soul being to live there a real life, which here lives not a waking life, but suffers things most resembling dreams. If then (as Epicurus saith) the remembrance of a dead friend be a thing every way complacent; we may easily from thence imagine how great a joy they deprive themselves of who think they do but embrace and pursue the phantoms and shades of their deceased familiars, that have in them neither knowledge nor sense, but who never expect to be with them again, or to see their dear father and dear mother and sweet wife, nor have any hopes of that familiarity and dear converse they have that think of the soul with Pythagoras, Plato, and Homer. Now what their sort of passion is like to was hinted at by Homer, when he threw into the midst of the soldiers, as they were engaged, the shade of Aeneas, as if he had been dead, and afterwards again presented his friends with him himself,

Coming alive and well, as brisk as ever;

at which, he saith,

They all were overjoyed.
(“Iliad,” v. 514 and 515)

And should not we then, — when reason shows us that a real converse with persons departed this life may be had, and that he that loves may both feel and be with the party that affects and loves him, — relinquish these men that cannot so much as cast off all those airy shades and outside barks for which they are all their time in lamentation and fresh afflictions?

Moreover, they that look upon death as the commencement of another and better life, if they enjoy good things, are the better pleased with them, as expecting much greater hereafter; but if they have not things here to their minds, they do not much grumble at it, but the hopes of those good and excellent things that are after death contain in them such ineffable pleasures and expectances, that they wipe off and wholly obliterate every defect and every offence from the mind, which, as on a road or rather indeed in a short deviation out of the road, bears whatever befalls it with great ease and indifference. But now, as to those to whom life ends in insensibility and dissolution, — death brings to them no removal of evils, though it is afflicting in both conditions, yet is it more so to those that live prosperously than to such as undergo adversity? For it cuts the latter but from an uncertain hope of doing better hereafter; but it deprives the former of a certain good, to wit, their pleasurable living. And as those medicinal potions that are not grateful to the palate but yet necessary give sick men ease, but rake and hurt the well; just so, in my opinion, doth the philosophy of Epicurus; it promises to those that live miserably no happiness in death, and to those that do well an utter extinction and dissolution of the mind, while it quite obstructs the comfort and solace of the grave and wise and those that abound with good things, by throwing them down from a happy living into a deprivation of both life and being. From hence then it is manifest, that the contemplation of the loss of good things will afflict us in as great a measure as either the firm hope or present enjoyment of them delights us.

Yea, themselves tell us, that the thought of future dissolution leaves them one most assured and complacent good, freedom from anxious surmises of incessant and endless evils, and that Epicurus’s doctrine effects this by stopping the fear of death through the soul’s dissolution. If then deliverance from the expectation of infinite evils be a matter of greatest complacence, how comes it not to be afflictive to be bereft of eternal good things and to miss of the highest and most consummate felicity? For not to be can be good for neither condition, but is on the contrary both against nature and ungrateful to all that have a being. But those being eased of the evils of life through the evils of death have, it is very true, the want of sense to comfort them, while they, as it were, make their escape from life. But, on the other hand, they that change from good things to nothing seem to me to have the most dismaying end of all, it putting a period to their happiness. For Nature doth not fear insensibility as the entrance upon some new thing, but because it is the privation of our present good things. For to declare that the destruction of all that we call ours toucheth us not is untrue for it toucheth us already by the very anticipation. And insensibility afflicts not those that are not, but those that are, when they think what damage they shall sustain by it in the loss of their being and in being suffered never to emerge from nothingness. Wherefore it is neither the dog Cerberus nor the river Cocytus that has made our fear of death boundless; but the threatened danger of not being, representing it as impossible for such as are once extinct to shift back again into being. For we cannot be born twice, and our not being must last forever; as Epicurus speaks. For if our end be in not being, and that be infinite and unalterable, then hath privation of good found out an eternal evil, to wit, a never ending insensibleness. Herodotus was much wiser, when he said that God, having given men a taste of the delights of life, seems to be envious, (Herodotus, vii. 46) and especially to those that conceit themselves happy, to whom pleasure is but a bait for sorrow, they being but permitted to taste of what they must be deprived of. For what solace or fruition or exultation would not the perpetual injected thought of the soul’s being dispersed into infinity, as into a certain huge and vast ocean, extinguish and quell in those that found their amiable good and beatitude in pleasure? But if it be true (as Epicurus thinks it is) that most men die in very acute pain, then is the fear of death in all respects inconsolable; it bringing us through evils unto a deprivation of good.

And yet they are never wearied with their brawling and dunning of all persons to take the escape of evil for a good, no longer to repute privation of good for an evil. But they still confess what we have asserted, that death hath in it nothing of either good hope or solace, but that all that is complacent and good is then wholly extinguished; at which time those men look for many amiable, great, and divine things, that conceive the minds of men to be unperishable and immortal, or at least to go about in certain long revolutions of times, being one while upon earth and another while in heaven, until they are at last dissolved with the universe and then, together with the sun and moon, sublimed into an intellective fire. So large a field and one of so great pleasures Epicurus wholly cuts off, when he destroys (as hath been said) the hopes and graces we should derive from the gods, and by that extinguishes both in our speculative capacity the desire of knowledge, and in our active the love of glory, and confines and abases our nature to a poor narrow thing, and that not cleanly neither, to wit, the content the mind receives by the body, as if it were capable of no higher good than the escape of evil.

Reply to Colotes, in defence of other philosophers  - Adversus Colotem

COLOTES, whom Epicurus was wont diminutively and by way of familiarity or fondness to call Colotaras and Colotarion, composed, O Saturninus, and published a little book which he entitled, “That according to the opinions of the other philosophers one cannot so much as live.” This was dedicated to King Ptolemy. Now I suppose that it will not be unpleasant for you to read, when set down in writing, what came into my mind to speak against this Colotes, since I know you to be a lover of all elegant and honest treatises, and particularly of such as regard the science of antiquity, and to esteem the bearing in memory and having (as much as possible may be) in hand the discourses of the ancient sages to be the most royal of all studies and exercises.

Not long since, therefore, as this book was being read, Aristodemus of Aegium, a familiar friend of ours (whom you well know to be one of the Academy, and not a mere thyrsus-bearer, but one of the most frantic celebrators of Plato’s name), did, I know not how, keep himself contrary to his custom very still all the while, and patiently gave ear to it even to the end. But the reading was scarce well over when he said: Well, then, whom shall we cause to rise up and fight against this man, in defence of the philosophers? For I am not of Nestor’s opinion, who, when the most valiant of those nine warriors that presented themselves to enter into combat was to be chosen, committed the election to the fortune of a lot.

Yet, answered I, you see he so disposed himself in reference to the lot, that the choice might pass according to the arbitrament of the wisest man;

And th’ lot drawn from the helmet, as they wished,
On Ajax fell.

But yet since you command me to make the election,

How can I think a better choice to make
Than the divine Ulysses?
(“Iliad,” vii. 182; x. 243.)

Consider therefore, and be well advised, in what manner you will chastise this man.

But you know, replied Aristodemus, that Plato, when highly offended with his boy that waited on him, would not himself beat him, but requested Speusippus to do it for him, saying that he himself was angry. As much therefore may I say to you; Take this fellow to you, and treat him as you please; for I am in a fit of choler.

When therefore all the rest of the company desired me to undertake this office; I must then, said I, speak, since it is your pleasure. But I am afraid that I also shall seem more vehemently transported than is fitting against this book, in the defending and maintaining Socrates against the rudeness, scurrility, and insolence of this man; who, because Socrates affirmed himself to know nothing certainly, instead of bread (as one would say) present him hay, as if he were a beast, and asks him why he puts meat into his mouth and not into his ear. And yet perhaps some would make but a laughing matter of this, considering the mildness and gentleness of Socrates; “but for the whole host of the Greeks,” that is, of the other philosophers, amongst which are Democritus, Plato, Stilpo, Empedocles, Parmenides, and Melissus, who have been basely traduced and reviled by him, it were not only a shame to be silent, but even a sacrilege in the least point to forbear or recede from freedom of speech in their behalf, who have advanced philosophy to that honor and reputation it has gotten.

And our parents indeed have, with the assistance of the gods, given us our life; but to live well comes to us from reason, which we have learned from the philosophers, which favors law and justice, and restrains our concupiscence. Now to live well is to live sociably, friendly, temperately, and justly; of all which conditions they leave us not one, who cry out that man’s sovereign good lies in his belly, and that they would not purchase all the virtues together at the expense of a cracked farthing, if pleasure were totally and on every side removed from them. And in their discourses concerning the soul and the gods, they hold that the soul perishes when it is separated from the body, and that the gods concern not themselves in our affairs. Thus the Epicureans reproach the other philosophers, that by their wisdom they bereave man of his life; whilst the others on the contrary accuse them of teaching men to live degenerately and like beasts.

Now these things are scattered here and there in the writings of Epicurus, and dispersed through all his philosophy. But this Colotes, by having extracted from them certain pieces and fragments of discourses, destitute of any arguments whatever to render them credible and intelligible, has composed his book, being like a shop or cabinet of monsters and prodigies; as you better know than any one else, because you have always in your hands the works of the ancients. But he seems to me, like the Lydian, to open not only one gate against himself, but to involve Epicurus also in many and those the greatest doubts and difficulties. For he begins with Democritus, who receives of him an excellent and worthy reward for his instruction; it being certain that Epicurus for a long time called himself a Democritean, which as well others affirm, as Leonteus, a principal disciple of Epicurus, who in a letter which he writ to Lycophron says, that Epicurus honored Democritus, because he first attained, though a little at a distance, the right and sound understanding of the truth, and that in general all the treatise concerning natural things was called Democritean, because Democritus was the first who happened upon the principles and met with the primitive foundations of Nature. And Metrodorus says openly of philosophy, If Democritus had not gone before and taught the way, Epicurus had never attained to wisdom. Now if it be true, as Colotes holds, that to live according to the opinions of Democritus is not to live, Epicurus was then a fool in following Democritus, who led him to a doctrine which taught him not to live.

Now the first thing he lays to his charge is, that, by supposing everything to be no more individual than another, he wholly confounds human life. But Democritus was so far from having been of this opinion, that he opposed Protagoras the philosopher who asserted it, and writ many excellent arguments concluding against him, which this fine fellow Colotes never saw nor read, nor yet so much as dreamed of; but deceived himself by misunderstanding a passage which is in his works, where he determines that [Greek omitted] is no more than [Greek omitted], naming in that place the body by [Greek omitted], and the void by [Greek omitted], and meaning that the void has its own proper nature and subsistence, as well as the body.

But he who is of opinion that nothing has more of one nature than another makes use of a sentence of Epicurus, in which he says that all the apprehensions and imaginations given us by the senses are true. For if of two saying, the one, that the wine is sour, and the other, that it is sweet, neither of them shall be deceived by his sensation, how shall the wine be more sour than sweet? And we may often see that some men using one and the same bath find it to be hot, and others find it to be cold; because those order cold water to be put into it, as these do hot. It is said that, a certain lady going to visit Berenice, wife to King Deiotarus, as soon as ever they approached each other, they both immediately turned their backs, the one, as it seemed, not being able to bear the smell of perfume, nor the other of butter. If, then, the sense of one is no truer than the sense of another, it is also probable, that water is no more cold than hot, nor sweet ointment or butter better or worse scented one than the other. For if any one shall say that it seems the one to one, and the other to another, he will, before he is aware, affirm that they are both the one and the other.

And as for these symmetries and proportions of the pores, or little passages in the organs of the senses, about which they talk so much, and those different mixtures of seeds, which, they say, being dispersed through all savors, odors, and colors, move the senses of different persons to perceive different qualities, do they not manifestly drive them to this, that things are no more of one nature than another? For to pacify those who think the sense is deceived and lies because they see contrary events and passions in such as use the same objects, and to solve this objection, they teach, — that when almost everything was confused and mixed up together, since it has been arranged by Nature that one thing shall fit another thing, it was not the contact or the apprehension of the same quality nor were all parts affected in the same way by what was influencing them. But those only coalesced with anything to which they had a characteristic, symmetrical in a corresponding proportion; so that they are in error so obstinately to insist that a thing is either good or bad, white or not white, thinking to establish their own senses by destroying those of others; whereas they ought neither to combat the senses, — because they all touch some quality, each one drawing from this confused mixture, as from a living and large fountain, what is suitable and convenient, — nor to pronounce of the whole, by touching only the parts, nor to think that all ought to be affected after one and the same manner by the same thing, seeing that one is affected by one quality and faculty of it, and another by another. Let us investigate who those men are which bring in this opinion that things are not more of one quality than another, if they are not those who affirm that every sensible object is a mixture, compounded of all sorts of qualities, like a mixture of new wine fermenting, and who confess that all their rules are lost and their faculty of judging quite gone, if they admit any sensible object that is pure and simple, and do not make each one thing to be many?

See now to this purpose, what discourse and debate Epicurus makes Polyaenus to have with him in his Banquet concerning the heat of wine. For when he asked, “Do you, Epicurus, say, that wine does not heat?” some one answered, “It is not universally to be affirmed that wine heats.” And a little after: “For wine seems not to be universally a heater; but such a quantity may be said to heat such a person.” And again subjoining the cause, to wit, the compressions and disseminations of the atoms, and having alleged their commixtures and conjunctions with others when the wine comes to be mingled in the body, he adds this conclusion: “It is not universally to be said that wine is endued with a faculty of heating; but that such a quantity may heat such a nature and one so disposed, while such a quantity to such a nature is cooling. For in such a mass there are such natures and complexions of which cold might be composed, and which, united with others in proper measure, would yield a refrigerative virtue. Wherefore some are deceived, who say that wine is universally a heater; and others, who say that it is universally a cooler.” He then who says that most men are deceived and err, in holding that which is hot to be heating and that which is cold to be cooling, is himself in an error, unless he should allow that his assertion ends in the doctrine that one thing is not more of one nature than another. He farther adds afterwards that oftentimes wine entering into a body brings with it thither neither a calefying nor refrigerating virtue, but, the mass of the body being agitated and disturbed, and a transposition made of the parts, the heat-effecting atoms being assembled together do by their multitude cause a heat and inflammation in the body, and sometimes on the contrary disassembling themselves cause a refrigeration.

But it is moreover wholly evident, that we may employ this argument to all those things which are called and esteemed bitter, sweet, purging, dormitive, and luminous, not any one of them having an entire and perfect quality to produce such effects, nor to act rather than to be acted on when they are in the bodies, but being there susceptible, of various temperatures and differences. For Epicurus himself, in his Second Book against Theophrastus, affirming that colors are not connatural to bodies, but are engendered there according to certain situations and positions with respect to the sight of man, says: “For this reason a body is no more colored than destitute of color.” And a little above he writes thus, word for word: “But apart from this, I know not how a man may say that those bodies which are in the dark have color; although very often, an air equally dark being spread about them, some distinguish diversities of colors, others perceive them not through the weakness of their sight. And moreover, going into a dark house or room, we at our first entrance see no color, but after we have stayed there awhile, we do. Wherefore we are to say that every body is not more colored than not colored. Now, if color is relative and has its being in regard to something else, so also then is white, and so likewise blue; and if colors are so, so also are sweet and bitter. So that it may truly be affirmed of every quality, that it cannot more properly be said to exist than not to exist. For to those who are in a certain manner disposed, they will be; but to those who are not so disposed, they will not be.” Colotes therefore has bedashed and bespattered himself and his master with that dirt, in which he says those lie who maintain that things are not more of one quality than another.

But is it in this alone, that this excellent man shows himself —

To others a physician, whilst himself
Is full of ulcers?
(Euripides, Frag. 1071.)

No indeed; but yet much farther in his second reprehension, without any way minding it, he drives Epicurus and Democritus out of this life. For he affirms that the statement of Democritus — that the atoms are to the senses color by a certain human law or ordinance, that they are by the same law sweetness, and by the same law concretion — is at war with our senses, and that he who uses this reason and persists in this opinion cannot himself imagine whether he is living or dead. I know not how to contradict this discourse; but this I can boldly affirm, that this is as inseparable from the sentences and doctrines of Epicurus as they say figure and weight are from atoms. For what is it that Democritus says? “There are substances, in number infinite, called atoms (because they cannot be divided), without difference, without quality, and passibility, which move, being dispersed here and there, in the infinite voidness; and that when they approach one another, or meet and are conjoined, of such masses thus heaped together, one appears water, another fire, another a plant, another a man; and that all things are thus properly atoms (as he called them), and nothing else; for there is no generation from what does not exist; and of those things which are nothing can be generated, because these atoms are so firm, that they can neither change, alter, nor suffer; wherefore there cannot be made color of those things which are without color, nor nature or soul of those things which are without quality and impassible.” Democritus then is to be blamed, not for confessing those things that happen upon his principles, but for supposing principles upon which such things happen. For he should not have supposed immutable principles; or having supposed them, he should have seen that the generation of all quality is taken away; but having seen the absurdity, to deny it is most impudent. But Epicurus says, that he supposes the same principles with Democritus, but that he says not that color, sweet, white, and other qualities, are by law and ordinance. If therefore NOT TO SAY is the same as NOT TO CONFESS, he does merely what he is wont to do. For it is as when, taking away divine Providence, he nevertheless says that he leaves piety and devotion towards the gods; and when, choosing friendship for the sake of pleasure, that he suffers most grievous pains for his friends; and supposing the universe to be infinite, that he nevertheless takes not away high and low. . . . Indeed having taken the cup, one may drink what he pleases, and return the rest. But in reasoning one ought chiefly to remember this wise apothegm, that where the principles are not necessary, the ends and consequences are necessary. It was not then necessary for him to suppose or (to say better) to steal from Democritus, that atoms are the principles of the universe; but having supposed this doctrine, and having pleased and glorified himself in the first probable and specious appearances of it, he must afterwards also swallow that which is troublesome in it, or must show how bodies which have not any quality can bring all sorts of qualities to others only by their meetings and joining together. As — to take that which comes next to hand — whence does that which we call heat proceed, and how is it engendered in the atoms, if they neither had heat when they came, nor are become hot after their being joined together? For the one presupposes that they had some quality, and the other that they were fit to receive it. And you affirm, that neither the one nor the other must be said to be congruous to atoms, because they are incorruptible.

How then? Do not Plato, Aristotle, and Xenocrates produce gold from that which is not gold, and stone from that which is not stone, and many other things from the four simple first bodies? Yes indeed; but with those bodies immediately concur also the principles for the generation of everything, bringing with them great contributions, that is, the first qualities which are in them; then, when they come to assemble and join in one the dry with the moist, the cold with the hot, and the solid with the soft, — that is, active bodies with such as are fit to suffer and receive every alteration and change, — then is generation wrought by passing from one temperature to another. Whereas the atom, being alone, is alone, is deprived and destitute of all quality and generative faculty, and when it comes to meet with the others, it can make only a noise and sound because of its hardness and firmness, but nothing more. For they always strike and are stricken, not being able by this means to compose or make an animal, a soul, or a nature, nay, not so much as a mass or heap of themselves; for that as they beat upon one another, so they fly back again asunder.

But Colotes, as if he were speaking to some ignorant and unlettered king, again attacks Empedocles for expressing the same thought: —

I’ve one thing more to say. ‘Mongst mortals there
No Nature is; nor that grim thing men fear
So much, called death. There only happens first
A mixture, and mixt things asunder burst
Again, when them disunion does befall.
And this is that which men do Nature call.

For my part, I do not see how this is repugnant and contrary to life or living, especially amongst those who hold that there is no generation of that which is not, nor corruption of that which is, but that the assembling and union of the things which are is called generation, and their dissolution and disunion named corruption and death. For that he took Nature for generation, and that this is his meaning, he has himself declared, when he opposed Nature to death. And if they neither live nor can live who place generation in union and death in disunion, what else do these Epicureans? Yet Empedocles, gluing, (as it were) and conjoining the elements together by heats, softnesses, and humidifies, gives them in some sort a mixtion and unitive composition; but these men who hunt and drive together the atoms, which they affirm to be immutable and impassible, compose nothing proceeding from them, but indeed make many and continual percussions of them.

For the interlacement, hindering the dissolution, more and more augments the collision and concussion; so that there is neither mixtion nor adhesion and conglutination, but only a discord and combat, which according to them is called generation. And if the atoms do now recoil for a moment by reason of the shock they have given, and then return again after the blow is past, they are above double the time absent from one another, without either touching or approaching, so as nothing can be made of them, not even so much as a body without a soul. But as for sense, soul, understanding, and prudence, there is not any man who can in the least conceive or imagine how it is possible they should be made in a voidness, and atoms which neither when separate and apart have any quality, nor any passion or alteration when they are assembled and joined together, especially seeing this their meeting together is not an incorporation or congress, making a mixture or coalition, but rather percussions and repercussions. So that, according to the doctrine of these people, life is taken away, and the existence of an animal denied, since they posit principles void, impassible, godless, and soulless, and such as cannot allow or receive any mixture or commingling whatever.

How then is it, that they admit and allow Nature, soul, and living creature? Even in the same manner as they do an oath, prayer, and sacrifice, and the adoration of the gods. Thus they adore by word and mouth, only naming and feigning that which by their principles they totally take away and abolish. If now they call that which is born Nature, and that which is engendered generation, — as those who are accustomed to call wood wood-work and the voices that accord and sound together symphony, — whence came it into his mind to object these words against Empedocles? “Why,” says he, “do we tire ourselves in taking such care of ourselves, in desiring and longing after certain things, and shunning and avoiding others? For we neither are ourselves, nor do we live by making use of others.” But be of good cheer, my dear little Colotes, may one perhaps say to him: there is none who hinders you from taking care of yourself by teaching that the nature of Colotes is nothing else but Colotes himself, or who forbids you to make use of things (now things with you are pleasures) by showing that there is no nature of tarts and marchpanes, of sweet odors, or of venereal delights, but that there are tarts, marchpanes, perfumes, and women. For neither does the grammarian who says that the “strength of Hercules” is Hercules himself deny the being of Hercules; nor do those who say that symphonies and roofings are but absolute derivations affirm that there are neither sounds nor timbers; since also there are some who, taking away the soul and intelligence, do not yet seem to take away either living or being intelligent.

And when Epicurus says that the nature of things is to be found in bodies and their place, do we so comprehend him as if he meant that Nature were something else than the things which are, or as if he insinuated that it is merely the things which are, and nothing else? — as, to wit, he is wont to call voidness itself the nature of voidness, and the universe, by Jupiter, the nature of the universe. And if any one should thus question him; What sayst thou, Epicurus, that this is voidness, and that the nature of voidness? No, by Jupiter, would he answer; but this transference of names is in use by law and custom. I grant it is. Now what has Empedocles done else, but taught that Nature is nothing else save that which is born, and death no other thing but that which dies? But as the poets very often, forming as it were an image, say thus in figurative language,

Strife, tumult, noise, placed by some angry god,
Mischief, and malice there had their abode;
(“Iliad,” xvii. 525.)

so do some authors attribute generation and corruption to things that are contracted together and dissolved. But so far has he been from stirring and taking away that which is, or contradicting that which evidently appears, that he casts not so much as one single word out of the accustomed use; but taking away all figurative fraud that might hurt or endamage things, he again restored the ordinary and useful signification to words in these verses:-

When from mixed elements we sometimes see
A man produced, sometimes a beast, a tree,
Or bird, this birth and geniture we name;
But death, when this so well compacted frame
And juncture is dissolved.

And yet I myself say that Colotes, though he alleged these verses,
did not understand that Empedocles took not away men, beasts,
trees, or birds, which he affirmed to be composed of the elements
mixed together; and that, by teaching how much they are deceived
who call this composition Nature and life, and this dissolution
unhappy destruction and miserable death, he did not abrogate the
using of the customary expressions in this respect.

And it seems to me, indeed, that Empedocles did not aim in this place at the disturbing the common manner of expression, but that he really, as it has been said, had a controversy about generation from things that have no being, which some call Nature. Which he manifestly shows by these verses: —

Fools, and of little thought, we well may deem
Those, who so silly are as to esteem
That what ne’er was may now engendered be,
And that what is may perish utterly.

For these are the words of one who cries loud enough to those which have ears, that he takes not away generation, but procreation from nothing; nor corruption, but total destruction that is, reduction to nothing. For to him who would not so savagely and foolishly but more gently calumniate, the following verses might give a colorable occasion of charging Empedocles with the contrary, when he says: —

No prudent man can e’er into his mind
Admit that, whilst men living here on earth
(Which only life they call) both fortunes find,
They being have, but that before the birth
They nothing were, nor shall be when once dead.

For these are not the expressions of a man who denies those that
are born to be, but rather of him who holds those to be that are
not yet born or that are already dead. And Colotes also does not
altogether accuse him of this, but says that according to his
opinion we shall never be sick, never wounded. But how is it
possible, that he who affirms men to have being both before their
life and after their death, and during their life to find both
fortunes (or to be accompanied both by good and evil), should not
leave them the power to suffer? Who then are they, O Colotes, that
are endued with this privilege never to be wounded, never to be
sick? Even you yourselves, who are composed of atoms and voidness,
neither of which, you say, has any sense. Now there is no great
hurt in this; but the worst is, you have nothing left that can
cause you pleasure, seeing an atom is not capable to receive those
things which are to effect it, and voidness cannot be affected
by them.

But because Colotes would, immediately after Democritus, seem to inter and bury Parmenides, and I have passed over and a little postponed his defence, to bring in between them that of Empedocles, as seeming to be more coherent and consequent to the first reprehensions, let us now return to Parmenides. Him, then, does Colotes accuse of having broached and set abroad certain shameful and villanous sophistries; and yet by these his sophisms he has neither rendered friendship less honorable, nor voluptuousness or the desire of pleasures more audacious and unbridled. He has not taken from honesty its attractive property or its being venerable or recommendable of itself, nor has he disturbed the opinions we ought to have of the gods. And I do not see how, by saying that the All (or the universe) is one, he hinders or obstructs our living. For when Epicurus himself says that the All is infinite, that it is neither engendered nor perishable, that it can neither increase nor be diminished, he speaks of the universe as of one only thing. And having in the beginning of his treatise concerning this matter said, that the nature of those things which have being consists of bodies and of vacuum, he makes a division (as it were) of one thing into two parts, one of which has in reality no subsistence, being, as you yourselves term it, impalpable, void, and incorporeal; so that by this means, even with you also, all comes to be one; unless yon desire, in speaking of voidness, to use words void of sense, and to combat the ancients, as if you were fighting against a shadow.

But these atomical bodies, you will say, are, according to the opinion of Epicurus, infinite in number, and everything which appears to us is composed of them. See now, therefore, what principles of generation you suppose, infinity and voidness; one of which, to wit, voidness, is inactive, impassible, and incorporeal; the other, to wit, infinity, is disorderly, unreasonable, and unintelligible, dissolving and confounding itself, because it cannot for its multitude be contained, circumscribed, or limited. But Parmenides has neither taken away fire, nor water, nor precipices, nor yet cities (as Colotes says) which are inhabited as well in Europe as in Asia; since he has both constructed an order of the world, and mixing the elements, to wit, light and dark, does of them and by them arrange and finish all things that appear in the world. For he has written very largely of the earth, heaven, sun, moon, and stars, and has spoken of the generation of man; and being, as he was, an ancient author in physiology, and one who in writing sought to save his own and not to destroy another’s doctrine, he has overlooked none of the essential things in Nature. Moreover, Plato, and before him Socrates himself, understood that in Nature there is one part subject to opinion, and another subject to intelligence. As for that which is subject to opinion, it is always unconstant, wandering, and carried away with several passions and changes, liable to diminution and increase, and to be variously disposed to various men, and not always appearing after one manner even to the same individual. But as to the intelligible part, it is quite of another kind,

Constant, entire, and still engenerable,

as himself says, always like to itself, and perdurable in its being.

Here Colotes, sycophant-like, catching at his expressions and drawing the discourse from things to words, flatly affirms that Parmenides in one word destroys the existence of all things by supposing ENS (or that which is) to be one. But, on the contrary, he takes away neither the one nor the other part of Nature; but rendering to each of them what belongs to it and is convenient for it, he places the intelligible in the idea of one and of “that which is,” calling it ENS because it is eternal and incorruptible, and one because it is always like itself and admits no diversity. And as for that part which is sensible, he places it in the rank of uncertain, disorderly, and always moving. Of which two parts, we may see the distinct judgment: —

One certain truth and sincere knowledge is,

as regarding that which is intelligible, and always alike and of the same sort;

The other does on men’s opinions rest,
Which breed no true belief within our breast,

because it is conversant in things which receive all sorts of changes, passions, and inequalities. Now how he could have left sense and opinion, if he had not also left any sensible and opinable object, it is impossible for any man to say. But because to that which truly IS it appertains to continue in its being, and because sensible things sometimes are, sometimes are not, continually passing from one being to another and perpetually changing their state, he thought they required some other name than that of ENTIA, or things which always are. This speech therefore concerning ENS (or that which is), that it should be but one, is not to take away the plurality of sensible things, but to show how they differ from that which is intelligible. Which difference Plato in his discussion of Ideas more fully declaring, has thereby afforded Colotes an opportunity of cavilling.

Therefore it seems not unfitting to me to take next into our consideration, as it were all in a train, what he has also said against him. But first let us contemplate a little the diligence — together with the manifold and profound knowledge — of this our philosopher, who says, that Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, and all the Peripateties have followed these doctrines of Plato. For in what corner of the uninhabitable world have you, O Colotes, written your book, that, composing all these accusations against such personages, you never have lighted upon their works, nor have taken into your hands the books of Aristotle concerning Heaven and the Soul, nor those of Theophrastus against the Naturalists, nor the Zoroaster of Heraclides, nor his books of Hell, nor that of Natural Doubts and Difficulties, nor the book of Dicaearchus concerning the Soul; in all which books they are in the highest degree contradictory and repugnant to Plato about the principal and greatest points of natural philosophy? Nay, Strato himself, the very head and prince of the other Peripatetics, agrees not in many things with Aristotle, and holds opinions altogether contrary to Plato, concerning motion, the understanding, the soul, and generation. In fine, he says that the world is not an animal, and that what is according to Nature follows what is according to Fortune; for that Chance gave the beginning, and so every one of the natural effects was afterwards finished.

Now as to the ideas, — for which he quarrels with Plato, — Aristotle, by moving this matter at every turn, and alleging all manner of doubts concerning them, in his Ethics, in his Physics, and in his Exoterical Dialogues seems to some rather obstinately than philosophically to have disputed against these doctrines, as having proposed to himself the debasing and undervaluing of Plato’s philosophy; so far he was from following it. What an impudent rashness then is this, that having neither seen nor understood what these persons have written and what were their opinions, he should go and devise such things as they never imagined; and persuading himself that he reprehends and refutes others, he should produce a proof, written with his own hand, arguing and convincing himself of ignorance, licentiousness, and shameful impudence, in saying that those who contradict Plato agree with him, and that those who oppose him follow him.

Plato, says he, writes that horses are in vain by us considered horses, and men men. And in which of Plato’s commentaries has he found this hidden? For as to us, we read in all his books, that horses are horses, that men are men, and that fire is by him esteemed fire, because he holds that every one of these things is sensible and subject to opinion. But this Colotes, as if he were not a hair’s breadth distance from wisdom, takes it to be one and the same thing to say, “Man is not” and “Man is a NON ENS.”

Now to Plato there seems to be a wonderful great difference between not being at all and being a NON ENS; because the first imports an annihilation and abolishment of all substance, and the other shows the diversity there is between that which is participated and that which participates. Which diversity those who came after distinguished only into the difference of genus and species, and certain common and proper qualities or accidents, as they are called, but ascended no higher, falling into more logical doubts and difficulties. Now there is the same proportion between that which is participated and that which participates, as there is between the cause and the matter, the original and the image, the faculty and the result. Wherein that which is by itself and always the same principally differs from that which is by another and never remains in one and the same manner; because the one never was nor ever shall be non-existent, and is therefore totally and essentially an ENS; but to the other that very being, which it has not of itself but happens to take by participation from another, does not remain firm and constant, but it goes out of it by its imbecility, — the matter always gliding and sliding about the form, and receiving several functions and changes in the image of the substance, so that it is continually moving and shaking. As therefore he who says that the image of Plato is not Plato takes not away the sense and substance of the image, but shows the difference of that which is of itself from that which is only in regard to some other, so neither do they take away the nature, use, or sense of men, who affirm that every one of us, by participating in a certain common substratum, that is, in the idea, is become the image of that which afforded the likeness for our generation. For neither does he who says that a red-hot iron is not fire, or that the moon is not the sun, but, as Parmenides has it,

A torch which round the earth by night
Does bear about a borrowed light,

take away therefore the use of iron, or the nature of the moon. But if he should deny it to be a body, or affirm that it is not illuminated, he would then contradict the senses, as one who admitted neither body, animal, generation, nor sense. But he who by his opinion imagines that these things subsist only by participation, and reflects how far remote and distant they are from that which always is and which communicates to them their being, does not reject the sensible, but affirms that the intelligible is; nor does he take away and abolish the results which are wrought and appear in us; but he shows to those who follow him that there are other things, firmer and more stable than these in respect of their essence, because they are neither engendered, nor perish, nor suffer anything; and he teaches them, more purely touching the difference, to express it by names, calling these [Greek omitted] or [Greek omitted] (THINGS THAT HAVE BEING), and those [Greek omitted] or FIENTIA (THINGS ENGENDERED). And the same also usually befalls the moderns; for they deprive many — and those great things — of the appellation of ENS or BEING; such as are voidness, time, place, and simply the entire genus of things spoken, in which are comprised all things true. For these things, they say, are not ENTIA but SOME THINGS; and they perpetually treat of them in their lives and in their philosophy, as of things having subsistence and existence.

But I would willingly ask this our fault-finder, whether themselves do not in their affairs perceive this difference, by which some things are permanent and immutable in their substances, — as they say of their atoms, that they are at all times and continually after one and the same manner, because of their impassibility and hardness, — but that all compound things are fluxible, changeable, generated, and perishing; forasmuch as infinite images are always departing and going from them, and infinite others as it is probable, repair to them from the ambient air, filling up what was diminished from the mass, which is much diversified and transvasated, as it were, by this change, since those atoms which are in the very bottom of the said mass can never cease stirring and reciprocally beating upon one another; as they themselves affirm. There is then in things such a diversity of substance. But Epicurus is in this wiser and more learned than Plato, that he calls them all equally ENTIA, — to wit, the impalable voidness, the solid and resisting body, the principles, and the things composed of them, — and thinks that the eternal participates of the common substance with that which is generated, the immortal with the corruptible, and the natures that are impassible, perdurable, unchangeable, and that can never fall from their being, with those which have their essence in suffering and changing, and can never continue in one and the same state. But though Plato had with all the justness imaginable deserved to be condemned for having offended in this, yet should he have been sentenced by these gentlemen, who use Greek more elegantly and discourse more correctly than he, only as having confounded the terms, and not as having taken away the things and driven life from us, because he named them FIENTIA (or things engendered), and not ENTIA (things that have being), as these men do.

But because we have passed over Socrates, who should have come next after Parmenides, we must now turn back our discourse to him. Him therefore has Colotes begun at the very first to remove, as the common proverb has it, from the sacred line; and having mentioned how Chaerephon brought from Delphi an oracle, well known to us all, concerning Socrates, he says thus: “Now as to this narration of Chaerephon’s, because it is odious and entirely sophistical, we will overpass it.” Plato, then, that we may say nothing of others, is also odious, who has committed it to writing; and the Lacedaemonians are yet more odious, who keep the oracle of Lycurgus amongst their most ancient and most authentic inscriptions. The oracle also of Themistocles, by which he persuaded the Athenians to quit their town, and in a naval fight defeated the barbarous Xerxes, was a sophistical fiction. Odious also were all the ancient legislators and founders of Greece who established the most part of their temples, sacrifices, and solemn festivals by the answer of the Pythian Oracle. But if the oracle brought from Delphi concerning Socrates, a man ravished with a divine zeal to virtue, by which he is styled and declared wise, is odious, fictitious, and sophistical, by what name shall we call your cries, noises, and shouts, your applauses, adorations and canonizations, with which you extol and celebrate him who incites and exhorts you to frequent and continual pleasures? For thus has he written in his epistle to Anaxarchus: “I for my part incite and call you to continual pleasures, and not to vain and empty virtues, which have nothing but turbulent hopes of uncertain fruits.” And yet Metrodorus, writing to Timarchus, says: “Let us do some extraordinarily excellent thing, not suffering ourselves to be plunged in reciprocal affections, but retiring from this low and terrestrial life, and elevating ourselves to the truly holy and divinely revealed ceremonies and mysteries of Epicurus.” And even Colotes himself, hearing one day Epicurus discoursing of natural things, fell suddenly at his feet and embraced his knees, as Epicurus himself, glorying in it, thus writes: “For as if you had adored what we were then saying, you were suddenly taken with a desire, proceeding not from any natural cause, to come to us, prostrate yourself on the ground, embrace our knees, and use all those gestures to us which are ordinarily practised by those who adore and pray to the gods. So that you made us also,” says he, “reciprocally sanctify and adore you.” Those, by Jupiter, well deserve to be pardoned, who say, they would willingly give any money for a picture in which should be presented to the life this fine story of one lying prostrate at the knees and embracing the legs of another, who mutually again adores him and makes his devout prayers to him. Nevertheless this devout service, how well soever it was ordered and composed by Colotes, received not the condign fruit he expected; for he was not declared wise; but it was only said to him: Go they ways, and walk immortal; and understand that we also are in like manner immortal.

These men, knowing well in their consciences that they have used such foolish speeches, have had such motions, and such passions, dare nevertheless call others odious. And Colotes, having shown us these fine first-fruits and wise positions touching the natural senses, — that we eat meat, and not hay or forage; and that when rivers are deep and great, we pass them in boats, but when shallow and easily fordable, on foot, — cries out, “You use vain and arrogant speeches, O Socrates; you say one thing to those who come to discourse with you, and practise another.” Now I would fain know what these vain and arrogant speeches of Socrates were, since he ordinarily said that he knew nothing, that he was always learning, and that he went inquiring and searching after the truth. But if, O Colotes, you had happened on such expressions of Socrates as are those which Epicurus writ to Idomeneus, “Send me then the first-fruits for the entertainment of our sacred body, for ourself and for our children: for so it comes upon me to speak;” what more arrogant and insolent words could you have used? And yet that Socrates spake otherwise than he lived, you have wonderful proofs in his gests at Delium, at Potidaea, in his behavior during the time of the Thirty Tyrants, towards Archelaus, towards the people of Athens, in his poverty, and in his death. For are not these things beseeming and answerable to the doctrine of Socrates? They would indeed, good sir, have been indubitable testimonies to show that he acted otherwise than he taught, if, having proposed pleasure for the end of life, he had led such a life as this.

Thus much for the calumnies he has uttered against Socrates. Colotes besides perceives not that he is himself found guilty of the same offences in regard to theory and practice which he objects against Socrates. For this is one of the sentences and propositions of Epicurus, that none but the wise man ought irrevocably and unchangeably to be persuaded of anything. Since then Colotes, even after those adorations he performed to Epicurus, became not one of the sages, let him first make these questions and interrogatories his own: How is it that being hungry he eats meat and not hay, and that he puts a robe about his body and not about a pillar, since he is not indubitably persuaded either that a robe is a robe or that meat is meat? But if he not only does these things, but also passes not over rivers, when they are great and high, on foot, and flies from wolves and serpents, not being irrevocably persuaded that any of these things is such as it seems, but yet doing everything according to what appears to him; so likewise the opinion of Socrates concerning the senses was no obstacle to him, but that he might in like manner make use of things as they appeared to him. For it is not likely that bread appeared bread and hay hay to Colotes, because he had read those holy rules of Epicurus which came down from heaven, while Socrates on account of his vanity imagined that hay was bread and bread hay. For these wise men use better opinions and reasons than we; but to have sense, and to receive an impression from objects as they appear, is common as well to the ignorant as to the wise, as proceeding from causes where there needs not the discourse of reason. And the proposition which affirms that the natural senses are not perfect, nor certain enough to cause an entire belief, hinders not that everything may appear to us; but leaving us to make use of our senses in our actions according to that which appears, it permits us not so to give credit to them as if they were exactly true and without error. For it is sufficient that in what is necessary and commodious for use there is nothing better. But as for the science and knowledge which the soul of a philosopher desires to have concerning everything, the senses have it not.

But as to this, Colotes will farther give us occasion to speak of it hereafter, for he brings this objection against several others. Furthermore, whereas he profusely derides and despises Socrates for asking what man is, and in a youthful bravery (as he terms it) affirming that he was ignorant of it, it is manifest that he himself, who scoffs at it, never so much as thought of this matter; but Heraclitus on the contrary, as having done some great and worthy thing, said, I have been seeking myself. And of the sentences that were written in Apollo’s temple at Delphi, the most excellent and most divine seems to have been this, Know thyself. And this it was which gave Socrates an occasion and beginning of doubting and inquiring into it, as Aristotle says in his Platonics. And yet this appears to Colotes ridiculous and fit to be scoffed at. And I wonder that he derides not also his master himself, who does as much whenever he writes concerning the substance of the soul and the creation of man. For if that which is compounded of both, as they themselves hold, — of the body, to wit, and the soul, — is man, he who searches into the nature of the soul consequently also searches into the nature of man, beginning from his chiefest principle. Now that the soul is very difficult to be comprehended by reason, and altogether incomprehensible by the exterior senses, let us not learn from Socrates, who is a vainglorious and sophistical disputer, but let us take it from these wise men, who, having forged and framed the substance of the soul of somewhat hot, spiritual, and aerial, as far as to the faculties of the flesh, by which she gives heat, softness and strength to the body, proceed not to that which is the principal, but give over faint and tired by the way. For that by which she judges, remembers, loves, hates, — in a word, that which is prudent and rational, is, — say they, made afterwards of I know not what nameless quality. Now we well know, that this nameless thing is a confession of their shameful ignorance, whilst they pretend they cannot name what they are not able to understand or comprehend. But let this, as they say, be pardoned them. For it seems not to be a light and easy matter, which every one can at the first attempt find out and attain to, but has retired itself to the bottom of some very remote place, and there lies obscurely concealed. So that there is not, amongst so many words and terms as are in use, any one that can explain or show it. Socrates therefore was not a fool or blockhead for seeking and searching what himself was; but they are rather to be thought shallow coxcombs, who inquire after any other thing before this, the knowledge of which is so necessary and so hard to find. For how could he expect to gain the knowledge of other things, who has not been able to comprehend the principal element even of himself?

But granting a little to Colotes, that there is nothing so vain, useless, and odious as the seeking into one’s self, let us ask him, what confession of human life is in this, and how it is that a man cannot continue to live, when he comes once thus to reason and discourse in himself: “Go to now, what am I? Am I a composition, made up of soul and body; or rather a soul, serving itself and making use of the body, as an horseman using his horse is not a subject composed of horse and man? Or is every one of us the principal part of the soul, by which we understand, infer, and act; and are all the other parts, both of soul and body, only organs and utensils of this power? Or, to conclude, is there no proper substance of the soul at all apart, but is only the temperature and complexion of the body so disposed, that it has force and power to understand and live?” But Socrates does not by these questions overthrow human life, since all natural philosophers treat of the same matter. But those perhaps are the monstrous questions and inquiries that turn everything upside down, which are in Phaedrus, (Plato, “Phaedrus,” p. 230 A.) where he says, that every one ought to examine and consider himself, whether he is a savage beast, more cautelous, outrageous, and furious than ever was the monster Typhon; or on the contrary, an animal more mild and gentle, partaking by Nature of a certain divine portion, and such as is free from pride. Now by these discourses and reasonings he overturns not the life of man, but drives from it presumption and arrogance, and those haughty and extravagant opinions and conceits he has of himself. For this is that monster Typhon, which your teacher and master has made to be so great in you by his warring against the gods and divine men.

Having done with Socrates and Plato, he next attacks Stilpo. Now as for those his true doctrines and good discourses, by which he managed and governed himself, his country, his friends, and such kings and princes as loved him and esteemed him, he has not written a word; nor yet what prudence and magnanimity was in his heart, accompanied with meekness, moderation, and modesty. But having made mention of one of those little sentences he was wont in mirth and raillery to object against the sophisters, he does, without alleging any reason against it or solving the subtlety of the objection, stir up a terrible tragedy against Stilpo, saying that the life of man is subverted by him, inasmuch as he affirms that one thing cannot be predicated of another. “For how,” says he, “shall we live, if we cannot style a man good, nor a man a captain, but must separately name a man a man, good good, and a captain a captain; nor can say ten thousand horsemen, or a fortified town, but only call horsemen horsemen, and ten thousand ten thousand, and so of the rest?” Now what man ever was there that lived the worse for this? Or who is there that, hearing this discourse, does not immediately perceive and understand it to be the speech of a man who rallies gallantly, and proposes to others this logical question for the exercise of their wits? It is not, O Colotes, a great and dangerous scandal not to call any man good, or not to say ten thousand horsemen; but not to call God God, and not to believe him to be God, — as you and the rest do, who will not confess that there is a Jupiter presiding over generation, or a Ceres giving laws, or a Neptune nourishing the plants, — it is this separation of names that is pernicious, and fills our life with audaciousness and an atheistical contempt of the gods. When you pluck from the gods the names and appellations that are tied to them, you abolish also the sacrifices, mysteries, processions, and feasts. For to whom shall we offer the sacrifices preceding the tilling of the ground? To whom those for the obtaining of preservation? How shall we celebrate the Phosphoria or torch-festivals, the Bacchanals, and the ceremonies that go before marriage, if we admit neither Bacchantes, gods of light, gods who protect the sown field, nor preservers of the state? For this it is that touches the principal and greatest points, being an error in things, — not in words, in the structure of propositions, or use of terms.

Now if these are the things that disturb and subvert human life, who are there that more offend in speech than you? For you take utterly away the whole category of namable things, which constitute the substance of language; and leave only words and their accidental objects, while you take away in the meantime the things particularly signfied by them, by which are wrought disciplines, doctrines, preconceptions, intelligences, inclination, and assent, which you hold to be nothing at all.

But as for Stilpo, thus his reasoning proceeds. “If of a man we predicate good, and of an horse running, the predicate or thing predicated is not the same with the subject or that of which it is predicated, but the essential definition of man is one, and of good another. And again, to be a horse differs from to be running. For being asked the definition of the one and of the other, we do not give the same for them both; and therefore those err who predicate the one of the other. For if good is the same with man, and to run the same with a horse, how is good affirmed also of food and medicine, and again (by Jupiter) to run of a lion and a dog? But if the predicate is different, then we do not rightly say that a man is good, and a horse runs.” Now if Stilpo is in this exorbitant and grossly mistaken, not admitting any copulation of such things as are in the subject, or affirmed of the subject, with the subject itself; but holding that every one of them, if it is not absolutely one and the same thing with that to which it happens or of which it is spoken, ought not to be spoken or affirmed of it, — no, not even as an accident; it is nevertheless manifest, that he was only offended with some words, and opposed the usual and accustomed manner of speaking, and not that he overthrew man’s life, and turned his affairs upside down.

Colotes, then, having got rid of the old philosophers, turns to those of his own time, but without naming any of them; though he would have done better either to have reproved by name these moderns, as he did the ancients, or else to have named neither of them. But he who has so often employed his pen against Socrates, Plato, and Parmenides, evidently demonstrates that it is through cowardice he dares not attack the living, and not for any modesty or reverence, of which he showed not the least sign to those who were far more excellent than these. But his meaning is, as I suspect, to assault the Cyrenaics first, and afterwards the Academics, who are followers of Arcesilaus. For it was these who doubted of all things; but those, placing the passions and imaginations in themselves, were of opinion that the belief proceeding from them is not sufficient for the assuring and affirming of things but, as if it were in the siege of a town, abandoning what is without, they have shut themselves up in the passions, using only it seems, and not asserting it is, of things without. And therefore they cannot, as Colotes says of them, live or have the use of things. And then speaking comically of them, he adds: “These deny that there is a man, a horse, a wall; but say that they themselves (as it were) become walls, horses, men,” or “take on the images of walls, horses, or men.” In which he first maliciously abuses the terms, as caluminators are usually wont to do. For though these things follow from the sayings of the Cyrenaics, yet he ought to have declared the fact as they themselves teach it. For they affirm that things then become sweet, bitter, lightsome, or dark, when each thing has in itself the natural unobstructed operation of one of these impressions. But if honey is said to be sweet, an olive-branch bitter, hail cold, wine hot, and the nocturnal air dark, there are many beasts, things, and men that testify the contrary. For some have an aversion for honey, others feed on the branches of the olive-tree; some are scorched by hail, others cooled with wine; and there are some whose sight is dim in the sun but who see well by night. Wherefore opinion, containing itself within these sensations, remains safe and free from error; but when it goes forth and attempts to be curious in judging and pronouncing concerning exterior things, it often deceives itself, and opposes others, who from the same objects receive contrary sensations and different imaginations.

And Colotes seems properly to resemble those young children who are but beginning to learn their letters. For, being accustomed to learn them where they see them in their own horn-books and primers, when they see them written anywhere else, they doubt and are troubled; so those very discourses, which he praises and approves in the writings of Epicurus, he neither understands nor knows again, when they are spoken by others. For those who say that the sense is truly informed and moulded when there is presented one image round and another broken, but nevertheless permit us not to pronounce that the tower is round and the oar broken, confirm their own sensations and imaginations, but they will not acknowledge and confess that the things without are so affected. But as the Cyrenaics must say that they are imprinted with the figure of a horse or of a wall, but refuse to speak of the horse or the wall; so also it is necessary to say that the sight is imprinted with a figure round or with three unequal sides, and not that the tower is in that manner triangular or round. For the image by which the sight is affected is broken; but the oar whence that image proceeds is not broken. Since, then, there is a difference between the sensation and the external subject, the belief must either remain in the sensation, or else — if it maintains the being in addition to the appearing — be reproved and convinced of untruth. And whereas they cry out and are offended in behalf of the sense, because the Cyrenaics say not that the thing without is hot, but that the effect made on the sense is such; is it not the same with what is said touching the taste, when they say that the thing without is not sweet, but that some function and motion about the sense is such? And for him who says that he has received the apprehension of an human form, but perceives not whether it is a man, whence has he taken occasion so to say? Is it not from those who affirm that they receive an apprehension of a bowed figure and form, but that the sight pronounces not that the thing which was seen is bowed or round, but that a certain image of it is such? Yes, by Jupiter, will some one say; but I, going near the tower or touching the oar, will pronounce and affirm that the one is straight and the other has many angles and faces; but he, when he comes near it, will confess that it seems and appears so to him, and no more. Yes, certainly, good sir, and more than this, when he sees and observes the consequence, that every imagination is equally worthy of belief for itself, and none for another; but that they are all in like condition. But this your opinion is quite lost, that all the imaginations are true and none false or to be disbelieved, if you think that these ought to pronounce positively of that which is without, but those you credit no farther than that they are so affected. For if they are in equal condition as to their being believed, when they are near or when they are far off, it is just that either upon all of them, or else not upon these, should follow the judgment pronouncing that a thing is. But if there is a difference in the being affected between those that are near and those that are far off, it is then false that one sense and imagination is not more express and evident than another. Therefore those they call attestations and counter-attestations are nothing to the sense, but are concerned only with opinion. So, if they would have us following these to pronounce concerning exterior things, making being a judgment of opinion, and what appears an affection of sense, they transfer the judicature from which is totally true to that which often fails.

But how full of trouble and contradictions in respect of one another these things are, what need is there to say at present? But the reputation of Arcesilaus, who was the best beloved and most esteemed of all the philosophers in his time, seems to have been no small eyesore to Epicurus; who says of him that delivering nothing peculiar to himself or of his own invention, he imprinted in illiterate men the opinion and esteem of his being very knowing and learned. Now Arcesilaus was so far from desiring any glory by being a bringer-in of new opinions, and from arrogating to himself those of the ancients, that the sophisters of that time blamed him for attributing to Socrates, Plato, Parmenides, and Heraclitus the doctrines concerning the retention of assent, and the incomprehensibility of things; having no need so to do, but only that he might strengthen them and render them recommendable by ascribing them such illustrious personages. For this, therefore, thanks to Colotes, and to every one who declares that the academic doctrine was from a higher times derived to Arcesilaus. Now as for retention of assent and the doubting of all things, not even those who have much labored in the manner, and strained themselves to compose great books and large treatises concerning it, were ever able to stir it; but bringing at last out of the Stoa itself the cessation from all actions, as the Gorgon to frighten away the objections that came against them, they were at last quite tired and gave over. For they could not, what attempts and stirs soever they made, obtain so much from the instinct by which the appetite is moved to act, as to suffer itself to be called an assent, or to acknowledge sense for the origin and principle of its propension, but it appeared of its own accord to present itself to act, as having no need to be joined with anything else. For against such adversaries the combat and dispute is lawful and just. And

Such words as you have spoke, the like you may
Expect to hear.
(“Iliad,” xx. 250.)

For to speak to Colotes of instinct and consent is, I suppose, all one as to play on the harp before an ass. But to those who can give ear and conceive, it is said that there are in the soul three sorts of motions, — the imaginative, the appetitive, and the consenting. As to the imaginative or the apprehension, it cannot be taken away, though one would. For one cannot, when things approach, avoid being informed and (as it were) moulded by them, and receiving an impression from them. The appetite, being stirred up by the imaginative, effectually moves man to that which is proper and agreeable to his nature, just as when there is made a propension. and inclination in the principal and reasonable part. Now those who withhold their assent and doubt of all things take not away this, but make use of the appetition or instinct naturally conducting every man to that which seems convenient for him. What, then, is the only thing that they shun? That in which is bred falsehood and deceit, — that is, opining, and haste in giving consent, — which is a yielding through weakness to that which appears, and has not any true utility. For action stands in need of two things, to wit, the apprehension or imagination of what is agreeable to Nature, and the instinct or appetition driving to that which is so imagined; of which, neither the one nor the other is repugnant to the retention of assent. For reason withdraws us from opinion, and not from appetition or imagination. When, therefore, that which is delectable seems to us to be proper for us, there is no need of opinion to move and carry us to it, but appetition immediately exerts itself, which is nothing else but the motion and inclination of the soul.

It is their own axiom, that a man must only have sense and be flesh and blood and pleasure will appear to be good. Wherefore also it will seem good to him who withholds his assent. For he also participates of sense, and is made of flesh and blood, and as soon as he has conceived an imagination of good, desires it and does all things that it may not escape from him; but as much as possibly he can, he will keep himself with that which is agreeable to his nature, being drawn by natural and not by geometrical constraints. For these goodly, gentle, and tickling motions of the flesh are, without any teacher, attractive enough of themselves — even as these men forget not to say — to draw even him who will not in the least acknowledge and confess that he is softened and rendered pliable by them. “But how comes it to pass,” perhaps you will say, “that he who is thus doubtful and withholds his assent hastens not away to the mountain, instead of going to the bath? Or that, rising up to go forth into the market-place, he runs not his head against the wall, but takes his way directly to the door?” Do you ask this, who hold all the senses to be infallible, and the apprehensions of the imagination certain and true? It is because the bath appears to him not a mountain, but a bath; and the door seems not a wall, but a door; and the same is to be said of every other thing. For the doctrine of retention does not pervert the sense, nor by absurd passions and motions work in it an alteration disturbing the imaginative faculty; but it only takes away opinions, and for the rest, makes use of other things according to their nature.

But it is impossible, you will say, not to consent to things that are evident; for to deny such things as are believed is more absurd than neither to deny nor affirm. Who then are they that call in question things believed, and contend against things that are evident? They who overthrow and take away divination, who say that there is not any government of Divine Providence, who deny the sun and the moon — to whom all men offer sacrifices and whom they honor and adore — to be animated. And do not you take away that which is apparent to all the world, that the young are contained in the nature of their parents? Do you not, contrary to the sense of all men, affirm that there is no medium between pleasure and pain, saying that not to be in pain is to be in the fruition of pleasure, that not to do is to suffer, and that not to rejoice is to be grieved?

But to let pass all the rest, what is more evident and more generally believed by all men, than that those who are seized with melancholy distempers, and whose brain is troubled and whose wits are distracted, do, when the fit is on them and their understanding altered and transported, imagine that they see and hear things which they neither see nor hear? Whence they frequently cry out: —

Women in black arrayed bear in their hands,
To burn mine eyes, torches and fiery brands.

And again: —

See, in her arms she holds my mother dear.
(Euripides, “Iphigenia in Tauris,” 289.)

These, and many other illusions more strange and tragical than these, — resembling those mormos and bugbears which they themselves laugh at and deride, as they are described by Empedocles to be, “with sinuous feet and undeveloped hands, bodied like ox and faced like man,” — with certain other prodigious and unnatural phantoms, these men have gathered together out of dreams and the alienations of distracted minds, and affirm that none of them is a deception of the sight, a falsity, or inconsistence; but that all these imaginations are true, being bodies and figures that come from the ambient air. What thing then is there so impossible in Nature as to be doubted of, if it is possible to believe such reveries as these? For these men, supposing that such things as never any mask-maker, potter, designer of wonderful images, or skilful and all-daring painter durst join together, to deceive or make sport for the beholders, are seriously and in good earnest existent, — nay, which is more, affirming that, if they are not really so, all firmness of belief, all certainty of judgment and truth, is forever gone, — do by these their suppositions and affirmations cast all things into obscurity, and bring fears into our judgments, and suspicions into our actions, — if the things which we apprehend, do, are familiarly acquainted with, and have at hand are grounded on the same imagination and belief with these furious, absurd, and extravagant fancies. For the equality which they suppose to be in all apprehensions rather derogates from the credit of such as are usual and rational, than adds any belief to those that are unusual and repugnant to reason. Wherefore we know many philosophers who would rather and more willingly grant that no imagination is true than that all are so, and that would rather simply disbelieve all the men they never had conversed with, all the things they had not experimented, and all the speeches they had not heard with their own ears, than persuade themselves that any one of these imaginations, conceived by these frantic, fanatical, and dreaming persons, is true. Since then there are some imaginations which may, and others which may not be rejected, it is lawful for us to retain our assent concerning them, though there were no other cause but this discordance, which is sufficient to work in us a suspicion of things, as having nothing certain and assured, but being altogether full of obscurity and perturbation. For in the disputes about the infinity of worlds and the nature of atoms and individuums and their inclinations, although they trouble and disturb very many, there is yet this comfort, that none of all these things that are in question is near us, but rather every one of them is far remote from sense. But as to this diffidence, perplexity, and ignorance concerning sensible things and imaginations, found even in our eyes, our ears, and our hands, what opinion does it not shock? What consent does it not turn upside down? For if men neither drunk, intoxicated, nor otherwise disturbed in their senses, but sober, sound in mind, and professedly writing of the truth and of the canons and rules by which to judge it, do in the most evident passions and motions of the senses set down either that which has no existence for true, or that which is existent for false, it is not strange that a man should be silent about all things, but rather that he assent to anything; nor is it incredible that he should have no judgment about things which appear, but rather that he should have contrary judgments. For it is less to be wondered, that a man should neither affirm the one nor the other but keep himself in a mean between two opposite things, than that he should set down things repugnant and contrary to one another. For he that neither affirms nor denies, but keeps himself quiet, is less repugnant to him who affirms an opinion than he who denies it, and to him who denies an opinion than he who affirms it. Now if it is possible to withhold one’s assent concerning these things, it is not impossible also concerning others, at least according to your opinion, who say that one sense does not exceed another, nor one imagination another.

The doctrine then of retaining the assent is not, as Colotes thinks, a fable or an invention of rash and light-headed young men who please themselves in babbling and prating; but a certain habit and disposition of men who desire to keep themselves from falling into error, not leaving the judgment at a venture to such suspected and inconstant senses, nor suffering themselves to be deceived by those who hold that in doubtful matters things which do not appear to the senses are credible and ought to be believed, when they see so great obscurity and uncertainty in things which do appear. But the infinity you assert is a fable, and so indeed are the images you dream of: and he breeds in young men rashness and self-conceitedness who writ of Pythocles, not yet eighteen years of age, that there was not in all Greece a better or more excellent nature, that he admirably well expressed his convictions, and that he was in other respects behaved like a women, — praying that all these extraordinary endowments of the young man might not work him hatred and envy. But these are sophists and arrogant, who write so impudently and proudly against great and excellent personages. I confess indeed, that Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus and Democritus contradicted those who went before them; but never durst any man besides Colotes set forth with such an insolent title as this against all at once.

Whence it comes to pass that, like to such as have offended some Divinity, confessing his fault, he says thus towards the end of His book: “Those who have established laws and ordinances and instituted monarchies and other governments in towns and cities, have placed human life in great repose and security and delivered it from many troubles; and if any one should go about to take this away, we should lead the life of savage beasts, and should be every one ready to eat up one another as we meet.” For these are the very words of Colotes, though neither justly nor truly spoken. For if any one, taking away the laws, should leave us nevertheless the doctrines of Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Heraclitus, we should be far from mutually devouring one another and leading the life of beasts. For we should fear dishonest things, and should for honesty alone venerate justice, the gods our superiors, and magistrates, believing that we have spirits and daemons who are the guardians and superintendents of human life, esteeming all the gold that is upon and within the earth not to be equivalent to virtue; and doing that willingly by reason, as Xenocrates says, which we now do by force and through fear of the law. When then will our life become savage, uncivilized, and bestial? When, the laws being taken away, there shall be left doctrines inciting men to pleasure; when the world shall bethought not to be ruled and governed by Divine Providence; when those men shall be esteemed wise who spit at honesty if it is not joined with pleasure; and when such discourses and sentences as these shall be scoffed at and derided: —

For Justice has an eye which all things sees;

and again: —

God near us stands, and views whate’er we do;

and once more: “God, as antiquity has delivered to holding the beginning, middle, and end of the universe, makes a direct line, walking according to Nature. After him follows Justice, a punisher of those who have been deficient in their duties by transgressing the divine law.”

For they who contemn these things as if they were fables, and think that the sovereign good of man consists about the belly, and in those other passages by which pleasure is admitted, are such as stand in need of the law, and fear, and stripes, and some king, prince, or magistrate, having in his hand the sword of justice; to the end that they may not devour their neighbors through their gluttony, rendered confident by their atheistical impiety. For this is the life of brutes, because brute beasts know nothing better nor more honest than pleasure, understand not the justice of the gods, nor revere the beauty of virtue; but if Nature has bestowed on them any point of courage, subtlety, or activity, they make use of it for the satisfaction of their fleshly pleasure and the accomplishment of their lusts. And the sapient Metrodorus believes that this should be so, for he says: “All the fine, subtle, and ingenious inventions of the soul have been found out for the pleasure and delight of the flesh, or for the hopes of attaining to it and enjoying it, and every act which tends not to this end is vain and unprofitable.” The laws being by such discourses and philosophical reasons as these taken away, there wants nothing to a beast-like life but lions’ paws, wolves’ teeth, oxen’s paunches, and camels’ necks; and these passions and doctrines do the beasts themselves, for want of speech and letters, express by their bellowings, neighings, and brayings, all their voice being for their belly and the pleasure of their flesh, which they embrace and rejoice in either present or future; unless it be perhaps some animal which naturally takes delight in chattering and garrulity.

No sufficient praise therefore or equivalent to their deserts can be given those who, for the restraining of such bestial passions, have set down laws, established policy and government of state, instituted magistrates and ordained good and wholesome laws. But who are they that utterly confound and abolish this? Are they not those who withdraw themselves and their followers from all part in the government? Are they not those who say that the garland of tranquillity and a reposed life are far more valuable than all the kingdoms and principalities in the world? Are they not those who declare that reigning and being a king is a mistaking the path and straying from the right way of felicity? And they write in express terms: “We are to treat how a man may best keep and preserve the end of Nature, and how he may from the very beginning avoid entering of his own free will and voluntarily upon offices of magistracy, and government over the people.” And yet again, these other words are theirs: “There is no need at all that a man should tire out his mind and body to preserve the Greeks, and to obtain from them a crown of wisdom; but to eat and drink well, O Timocrates, without prejudicing, but rather pleasing the flesh.” And yet in the constitution of laws and policy, which Colotes so much praises, the first and most important article is the belief and persuasion of the gods. Wherefore also Lycurgus heretofore consecrated the Lacedaemonians, Numa the Romans, the ancient Ion the Athenians, and Deucalion universally all the Greeks, through prayers, oaths, oracles, and omens, making them devout and affectionate to the gods by means of hopes and fears at once. And if you will take the pains to travel through the world, you may find towns and cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without houses, without wealth, without money, without theatres and places of exercise; but there was never seen nor shall be seen by man any city without temples and gods, or without making use of prayers, oaths, auguries, and sacrifices for the obtaining of blessings and benefits, and the averting of curses and calamities. Nay, I am of opinion, that a city might sooner be built without any ground to fix it on, than a commonweal be constituted altogether void of any religion and opinion of the gods, — or being constituted, be preserved. But this, which is the foundation and ground of all laws, do these men, not going circularly about, nor secretly and by enigmatical speeches, but attacking it with the first of their most principal opinions. directly subvert and overthrow; and then afterwards, as if they were haunted by the Furies, they come and confess that they have grievously offended in thus taking away the laws, and confounding the ordinances of justice and policy, that they may not be capable of pardon. For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human; but to impute to others the errors and offences they commit themselves, how can any one declare what it is, if he forbears to give it the name it deserves?

For if, in writing against Antidorus or Bion the sophister, he had made mention of laws, policy, order, and justice, might not either of them have said to him, as Electra did to her mad brother Orestes: —

Lie still at ease, poor wretch; keep in thy bed,
(Euripides, “Orestes,” 258.)

and there cherish thy bit of body, leaving those to expostulate and find fault with me who have themselves lived the life of a citizen and householder? Now such are all those whom Colotes has reviled and railed at in his book. Amongst whom, Democritus in his writings advises and exhorts to the learning of the science of politics, as being the greatest of all, and to the accustoming one’s self to bear fatigues, by which men attain to great wealth and honor. And as for Parmenides, he beautified and adorned his native country with most excellent laws which he there established, so that even to this day the officers every year, when they enter first on the exercise of their charges, are obliged to swear that they will observe the laws and ordinances of Parmenides. Empedocles brought to justice some of the principal of his city, and caused them to be condemned for their insolent behavior and embezzling of the public treasure, and also delivered his country from sterility and the plague — to which calamities it was before subject — by immuring and stopping up the holes of certain mountains, whence there issued an hot south wind, which overspread all the plain country and blasted it. And Socrates, after he was condemned, when his friends offered him, if he pleased, an opportunity of making his escape, absolutely refused to make use of it, that he might maintain the authority of the laws, choosing rather to die unjustly than to save himself by disobeying the laws of his country. Melissus, being captain general of his country, vanquished the Athenians in a battle at sea. Plato left in his writings excellent discourses concerning the laws, government, and policy of a commonweal; and yet he imprinted much better in the hearts and minds of his disciples and familiars, which caused Sicily to be freed by Dion, and Thrace to be set at liberty by Pytho and Heraclides, who slew Cotys. Chabrias also and Phocion, those two great generals of the Athenians, came out of the Academy. As for Epicurus, he indeed sent certain persons into Asia to chide Timocrates, and caused him to be removed out of the king’s palace, because he had offended his brother Metrodorus; and this is written in their own books. But Plato sent of his disciples and friends, Aristonymus to the Arcadians, to set in order their commonweal, Phormio to the Eleans, and Menedemus to the Pyrrhaeans. Eudoxus gave laws to the Cnidians, and Aristotle to the Stagirites, who were both of them the intimates of Plato. And Alexander the Great demanded of Xenocrates rules and precepts for reigning well. And he who was sent to the same Alexander by the Grecians dwelling in Asia, and who most of all inflamed and stimulated him to embrace and undertake the war against the barbarian king of Persia, was Delius the Ephesian, one of Plato’s familiars. Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides, having attempted to kill the tyrant Demylus, and failing in his design, maintained the doctrine of Parmenides, like pure and fine gold tried in the fire, that there is nothing which a magnanimous man ought to dread but dishonor, and that there are none but children and women, or effeminate and women-hearted men, who fear pain. For, having with his own teeth bitten off his tongue, he spit it in the tyrant’s face.

But out of the school of Epicurus, and from among those who follow his doctrine, I will not ask what tyrant-killer has proceeded, nor yet what man valiant and victorious in feats of arms, what lawgiver, what prince, what counsellor, or what governor of the people; neither will I demand, who of them has been tormented or has died for supporting right and justice. But which of all these sages has for the benefit and service of his country undertaken so much as one voyage at sea, gone of an embassy, or expended a sum of money? What record is there extant of one civil action in matter of government, performed by any of you? And yet, because Metrodorus went down one day from the city as far as the haven of Piraeus, taking a journey of forty stadia to assist Mithres a Syrian, one of the king of Persia’s court who had been arrested and taken prisoner, he writ of it to every one and in all his letters, Epicurus also highly magnifying and extolling this wonderful voyage. What value then, think you, would they have put upon it, if they had done such an act as Aristotle did, who procured the restoration and rebuilding of Stagira, the town of his nativity, after it had been destroyed by King Philip? Or as Theophrastus, who twice delivered his city, when possessed and held by tyrants? Would not the river Nile sooner have given over to bear the paper-reed, than they have been weary of writing their brave exploits?

And it is not the greatest dishonor, that, of so many sects of philosophers as have existed, they alone should enjoy the benefits that are in cities, without having ever contributed to them anything of their own; but far more serious is it that, while there are not even any tragical or comical poets who do not always endeavor to do or say some good thing or other in defence of the laws and policy these men, if peradventure they write, write of policy, that we may not concern ourselves in the government of the commonweal, — of rhetoric, that we may not perform an act of eloquence, — and of royalty, that we may shun the living and conversing with kings. Nor do they ever name any of those great personages who have intermeddled in civil affairs, but only to scoff at them and abolish their glory. Thus they say that Epaminondas had something of good, but that infinitesimal, or [Greek omitted], for that is the very word they use. They moreover call him iron-hearted, and ask what ailed him that he went marching his army through all Peloponnesus, and why he did not rather keep himself quiet at home with a garland on his head, employed only in cherishing and making much of his body. But methinks I ought not in this place to omit what Metrodorus writ in his book of Philosophy, when, utterly abjuring all meddling in the management of the state, he said thus: “Some, through an excess of vanity and arrogance, have so deep a comprehension into the business of it, that in discussing the precepts of good life and virtue, they allow themselves to be carried away with the very same desires as were Lycurgus and Solon.” What is this? Was it then vanity and abundance of vanity, to set free the city of Athens, to render Sparta well-policied and governed by wholesome laws, that young men might do nothing licentiously, nor get children upon common courtesans and whores, and that riches, delights, intemperance, and dissolution might no longer bear sway and have command in cities, but law and justice? For these were the desires of Solon. To this Metrodorus, by way of scorn and contumely, adds this conclusion: “It is then very well beseeming a native born gentleman to laugh heartily, as at other men, so especially at these Solons and Lycurguses. “But such a one, O Metrodorus, is not a gentleman, but a servile and dissolute person, and deserves to be scourged, not with that whip which is for free-born persons, but with that scourge made with ankle-bones, with which those eunuch sacrificers called Galli were wont to be chastised, when they failed of performing their duty in the ceremonies and sacrifices of the Goddess Cybele, the great Mother of the Gods.

But that they made war not against the lawgivers but against the laws themselves, one may hear and understand from Epicurus. For in his questions, he asks himself, whether a wise man, being assured that it will not be known, will do anything that the laws forbid. To which he answers: “That is not so easy to settle simply,” — that is “I will do it indeed, but I am not willing to confess it.” And again, I suppose writing to Idomeneus, he exorts him not to make his life a slave to the laws or to the options of men, unless it be to avoid the trouble they prepare, by the scourge and chastisement, so near at hand. If those who abolish laws, governments, and polices of men subvert and destroy human life, and if Metrodorus and Epicurus do this, by dehorting and withdrawing their friends from concerning themselves in public affairs, by hating those who intermeddle in them, by reviling the first most wise lawgivers, and by advising contempt of the laws provided there is no fear and danger of the whip punishment. I do not see that Colotes has brought so many false accusations against the other philosophers as he has alleged and advanced true ones against the writings and doctrines of Epicurus.

Is “live unknown” a wise precept?

1.It is sure, he that said it had no mind to live concealed, for he spoke it out of a design of being taken notice of for his very saying it, as if he saw deeper into things than every vulgar eye, and of purchasing to himself a reputation, how unjustly soever, by inveigling others into obscurity and retirement. But the poet says right:

•I hate the man who makes pretence to wit,

•Yet in his own concerns waives using it.

For they tell us of one Philoxenus the son of Eryxis, and Gnatho the Sicilian, who were so over greedy after any dainties set before them, that they would blow their nose in the dish, whereby, turning the stomachs of the other guests, they themselves went away fuller crammed with the rarities. Thus fares it with all those whose appetite is always lusting and insatiate after glory. They bespatter the repute of others, as their rivals in honor, that they themselves may advance smoothly to it and without a rub. They do like watermen, who look astern while they row the boat ahead, still so managing the strokes of the oar that the vessel may make on to its port. So these men who recommend to us such kind of precepts row hard after glory, but with their face another way. To what purpose else need this have been said? — why committed to writing and handed down to posterity? Would he live incognito to his contemporaries, who is so eager to be known to succeeding ages?

2. But besides, doth not the thing itself sound ill, to bid you keep all your lifetime out of the world’s eye, as if you had rifled the sepulchres of the dead, or done such like detestable villany which you should hide for? What! is it grown a crime to live, unless you can keep all others from knowing you do so? For my part, I should pronounce that even an ill-liver ought not to withdraw himself from the converse of others. No; let him be known, let him be reclaimed, let him repent; so that, if you have any stock of virtue, let it not lie unemployed, or if you have been viciously bent, do not by flying the means continue unreclaimed and uncured. Point me out therefore and distinguish me the man to whom you adopt this admonition. If to one devoid of sense, goodness, or wit, it is like one that should caution a person under a fever or raving madness not to let it be known where he is, for fear the physicians should find him, but rather to skulk in some dark corner, where he and his diseases may escape discovery. So you who labor under that pernicious, that scarce curable disease, wickedness, are by parity of reason bid to conceal your vices, your envyings, your superstitions, like some disorderly or feverous pulse, for fear of falling into the hands of them who might prescribe well to you and set you to rights again. Whereas, alas! in the days of remote antiquity, men exhibited the sick to public view, when every charitable passenger who had labored himself under the like malady, or had experienced a remedy on them that did, communicated to the diseased all the receipts he knew; thus, say they, skill in physic was patched up by multiplied experiments, and grew to a mighty art. At the same rate ought all the infirmities of a dissolute life, all the irregular passions of the soul, to be laid open to the view of all, and undergo the touch of every skilful hand, that all who examine into the temper may be able to prescribe accordingly. For instance, doth anger transport you? The advice in that case is, Shun the occasions of it. Doth jealousy torment you? Take this or that course. Art thou love-sick? It hath been my own case and infirmity to be so too; but I saw the folly of it, I repented, I grew wiser. But for those that lie, denying, hiding, mincing, and palliating their vices, it makes them but take the deeper dye, it rivets their faults into them.

3. Again, if on the other hand this advice be calculated for the owners of worth and virtue, if they must be condemned to privacy and live unknown to the world, you do in effect bid Epaminondas lay down his arms, you bid Lycurgus rescind his laws, you bid Thrasybulus spare the tyrants, in a word, you bid Pythagoras forbear his instructions, and Socrates his reasonings and discourses; nay, you lay injunctions chiefly upon yourself, Epicurus, not to maintain that epistolary correspondence with your Asiatic friends, not to entertain your Egyptian visitants, not to be tutor to the youth of Lampsacus, not to present and send about your books to women as well as men, out of an ostentation of some wisdom in yourself more than vulgar, not to leave such particular directions about your funeral. And in fine, to what purpose, Epicurus, did you keep a public table? Why that concourse of friends, that resort of fair young men, at your doors? Why so many thousand lines so elaborately composed and writ upon Metrodorus, Aristobulus, and Chaeredemus, that death itself might not rob us of them; if virtue must be doomed to oblivion, art to idleness and inactivity, philosophy to silence, and all a man’s happiness must be forgotten?

4. But if indeed, in the state of life we are under, you will needs seclude us from all knowledge and acquaintance with the world (as men shut light from their entertainments and drinking-bouts, for which they set the night apart), let it be only such who make it the whole business of life to heap pleasure upon pleasure; let such live recluses all their days. Were I, in truth, to wanton away my days in the arms of your miss Hedeia, or spend them with Leontium, another dear of yours, — were I to bid defiance to virtue, or to place all that’s good in the gratification of the flesh or the ticklings of a sensual pleasure, — these accursed actions and rites would need darkness and an eternal night to veil them; and may they ever be doomed to oblivion and obscurity. But what should they hide their heads for, who with regard to the works of nature own and magnify a God, who celebrate his justice and providence, who in point of morality are due observers of the law, promoters of society and community among all men, and lovers of the public-weal, and who in the administration thereof prefer the common good before private advantage? Why should such men cloister up themselves, and live recluses from the world? For would you have them out of the way, for fear they should set a good example, and allure others to virtue out of emulation of the precedent? If Themistocles’s valor had been unknown at Athens, Greece had never given Xerxes that repulse. Had not Camillus shown himself in defence of the Romans, their city Rome had no longer stood. Sicily had not recovered her liberty, had Plato been a stranger to Dion. Truly (in my mind) to be known to the world under some eminent character not only carries a reputation with it, but makes the virtues in us become practical like light, which renders us not only visible but useful to others. Epaminondas, during the first forty years of his life, in which no notice was taken of him, was an useless citizen to Thebes; but afterwards, when he had once gained credit and the government amongst the Thebans, he both rescued them from present destruction, and freed even Greece herself from imminent slavery, exhibiting (like light, which is in its own nature glorious, and to others beneficial at the same time) a valor seasonably active and serviceable to his country, yet interwoven with his own laurels. For

Virtue, like finest brass, by use grows bright.

And not our houses alone, when (as Sophocles has it) they stand long untenanted, run the faster to ruin; but men’s natural parts, lying unemployed for lack of acquaintance with the world, contract a kind of filth or rust and craziness thereby. For sottish ease, and a life wholly sedentary and given up to idleness, spoil and debilitate not only the body but the soul too. And as close waters shadowed over by bordering trees, and stagnated in default of springs to supply current and motion to them, become foul and corrupt; so, methinks, is it with the innate faculties of a dull unstirring soul, — whatever usefulness, whatever seeds of good she may have latent in her, yet when she puts not these powers into action, when once they stagnate, they lose their vigor and run to decay.

5. See you not how on night’s approach a sluggish drowsiness oft-times seizes the body, and sloth and inactiveness surprise the soul, and she finds herself heavy and quite unfit for action? Have you not then observed how a man’s reason (like fire scarce visible and just going out) retires into itself, and how by reason of its inactivity and dulness it is gently agitated by divers fantastical imaginations, so that nothing remains but some obscure indications that the man is alive.

•But when the orient sun brings back the day,

•It chases night and dreamy sleep away.

It doth, as it were, bring the world together again, and with his returned light call up and excite all mankind to thought and action; and, as Democritus tells us, men setting themselves every new-spring day to endeavors of mutual beneficence and service one towards another, as if they were fastened in the straitest tie together, do all of them, some from one, some from another quarter of the world, rouse up and awake to action.

6. For my own part, I am fully persuaded that life itself, and our being born at the rate we are, and the origin we share in common with all mankind, were vouchsafed us by God to the intent we should be known to one another. It is true, whilst man, in that little part of him, his soul, lies struggling and scattered in the vast womb of the universe, he is an obscure and unknown being; but, when once he gets hither into this world and puts a body on, he grows illustrious, and from an obscure becomes a conspicuous being; from an hidden, an apparent one. For knowledge does not lead to essence (or being), as some maintain; but the essence of things rather conducts us into the knowledge and understanding thereof. For the birth or generation of individuals gives not any being to them which they had not before, but brings that individual into view; as also the corruption or death of any creature is not its annihilation or reduction into mere nothing, but rather a sending the dissolved being into an invisible state. Hence is it that many persons (conformably to their ancient country laws), taking the Sun to be Apollo, gave him the names of Delius and Pythius (that is, conspicuous and known). But for him, be he either God or Daemon, who hath dominion over the opposite portion, the infernal regions, they call him Hades (that is, invisible),

Emperor of gloomy night and lazy sleep,

for that at our death and dissolution we pass into a state of invisibility and beyond the reach of mortal eyes. I am indeed of opinion, that the ancients called man Phos (that is, light), because from the affinity of their natures strong desires are bred in mankind of continually seeing and being seen to each other. Nay, some philosophers hold the soul itself to be essentially light; which they would prove by this among other arguments, that nothing is so insupportable to the mind of man as ignorance and obscurity. Whatever is destitute of light she avoids, and darkness, the harbor of fears and suspicions, is uneasy to her; whereas, on the other hand, light is so delicious, so desirable a thing, that without that, and wrapped in darkness, none of the delectables in nature are pleasing to her. This makes all our very pleasures, all our diversions and enjoyments, charming and grateful to us, like some universal relishing ingredients mixed with the others to make them palatable. But he that casts himself into obscure retirements, he that sits surrounded in darkness and buries himself alive, seems, in my mind, to repine at his own birth and grudge he ever had a being.

7. And yet it is certain, in the regions prepared for pious souls, they conserve not only an existence in (or agreeable to) nature, but are encircled with glory.

•There the sun with glorious ray,

•Chasing shady night away,

•Makes an everlasting day;

•Where souls in fields of purple roses play;

•Others in verdant plains disport,

•Crowned with trees of every sort,

•Trees that never fruit do bear,

•But always in the blossom are.

The rivers there without rude murmurs gently glide, and there they meet and bear each other company, passing away their time in commemorating and running over things past and present.

A third state there is of them who have led vicious and wicked lives, which precipitates souls into a kind of hell and miserable abyss,

•Where sluggish streams of sable night

•Spout floods of darkness infinite.

This is the receptacle of the tormented; here lie they hid under the veils of eternal ignorance and oblivion. For vultures do not everlastingly gorge themselves upon the liver of a wicked man, exposed by angry Gods upon the earth, as poets fondly feign of Prometheus. For either rottenness or the funeral pile hath consumed that long ago. Nor do the bodies of the tormented undergo (as Sisyphus is fabled to do) the toil and pressure of weighty burdens;

For strength no longer flesh and bone sustains.

There are no reliques of the body in dead men which stripes and tortures can make impressions on; but in very truth the sole punishment of ill-livers is an inglorious obscurity, or a final abolition, which through oblivion hurls and plunges them into deplorable rivers, bottomless seas, and a dark abyss, involving all in uselessness and inactivity, absolute ignorance and obscurity, as their last and eternal doom.

On music

ONESICRATES, SOTERICHUS, LYSIAS.

1. The wife of Phocion the just was always wont to maintain that her chiefest glory consisted in the warlike achievements of her husband. For my part, I am of opinion that all my glory, not only that peculiar to myself, but also what is common to all my familiar friends and relations, flows from the care and diligence of my master that taught me learning. For the most renowned performances of great commanders tend only to the preservation of some few private soldiers or the safety of a single city or nation, but make neither the soldiers nor the citizens nor the people any thing the better. But true learning, being the essence and body of felicity and the source of prudence, we find to be profitable and beneficial, not only to one house or city or nation, but to all the race of men. Therefore by how much the more the benefit and advantage of learning transcends the profits of military performances, by so much the more is it to be remembered and mentioned, as most worthy your study and esteem.

2. For this reason, upon the second day of the Saturnalian festival, the famous Onesicrates invited certain persons, the best skilled in music, to a banquet; by name Soterichus of Alexandria, and Lysias, one of those to whom he gave a yearly pension. After all had done and the table was cleared, — To dive, said he, most worthy friends, into the nature and reason of the human voice is not an argument proper for this merry meeting, as being a subject that requires a more sober scrutiny. But because our chiefest grammarians define the voice to be a percussion of the air made sensible to the ear, and for that we were yesterday discoursing of Grammar, — which is an art that can give the voice form and shape by means of letters, and store it up in the memory as a magazine, — let us consider what is the next science to this which may be said to relate to the voice. In my opinion, it must be music. For it is one of the chiefest and most religious duties belonging to man, to celebrate the praise of the Gods, who gave to him alone the most excelling advantage of articulate discourse, as Homer has observed in the following verses: —

•With sacred hymns and songs that sweetly please,

•The Grecian youth all day the Gods appease;

•Their lofty paeans bright Apollo hears,

•And still the charming sounds delight his ears.

Now then, you that are of the grand musical chorus, tell your friends, who was the first that brought music into use; what time has added for the advantage of the science; who have been the most famous of its professors; and lastly, for what and how far it may be beneficial to mankind.

3. This the scholar propounded; to which Lysias made reply. Noble Onesicrates, said he, you desire the solution of a hard question, that has been by many already proposed. For of the Platonics the most, of the Peripatetic philosophers the best, have made it their business to compile several treatises concerning the ancient music and the reasons why it came to lose its pristine perfection. Nay, the very grammarians and musicians themselves who arrived to the height of education have expended much time and study upon the same subject, whence has arisen great variety of discording opinions among the several writers. Heraclides in his Compendium of Music asserts, that Amphion, the son of Jupiter and Antiope, was the first that invented playing on the harp and lyric poesy, being first instructed by his father; which is confirmed by a small manuscript, preserved in the city of Sicyon, wherein is set down a catalogue of the priests, poets, and musicians of Argos. In the same age, he tells us, Linus the Euboean composed several elegies; Anthes of Anthedon in Boeotia was the first author of hymns, and Pierus of Pieria the first that wrote in the praise of the Muses. Philammon also, the Delphian, set forth in verse a poem in honor of the nativity of Latona, Diana, and Apollo, and was the first that instituted dancing about the temple of Delphi. Thamyras, of Thracian extraction, had the best voice and the neatest manner of singing of any of his time; so that the poets feigned him to be a contender with the Muses. He is said to have described in a poem the Titans’ war against the Gods. There was also Demodocus the Corcyraean, who is said to have written the Destruction of Troy, and the Nuptials of Vulcan and Venus; and then Phemius of Ithaca composed a poem, entitled The Return of those who came back with Agamemnon from Troy. Not that any of these stories before cited were complied in a style like prose without metre; they were rather like the poems of Stesichorus and other ancient lyric poets, who composed in heroic verse and added a musical accompaniment. The same Heraclides writes that Terpander, the first that instituted the lyric nomes, set verses of Homer as well as his own to music according to each of these nomes, and sang them at public trials of skill. He also was the first to give names to the lyric nomes. In imitation of Terpander, Clonas, an elegiac and epic poet, first instituted nomes for flute-music, and also the songs called Prosodia. And Polymnestus the Colophonian in later times used the same measure in his compositions.

4. Now the measures appointed by these persons, noble Onesicrates, in reference to such songs as are to be sung to the flutes or pipes, were distinguished by these names, — Apothetus, Elegiac, Comarchius, Schoenion, Cepion, Tenedius, and Trimeles (or of three parts).

To these succeeding ages added another sort, which were called Polymnastia. But the measures set down for those that played and sung to the harp, being the invention of Terpander, were much more ancient than the former. To these he gave the several appellations of Boeotian, Aeolian, Trochaean, the Acute, Cepion, Terpandrian, and Tetraoedian. And Terpander made preludes to be sung to the lyre in heroic verse. Besides, Timotheus testifies how that the lyric nomes were anciently appropriated to epic verses. For Timotheus merely intermixed the dithyrambic style with the ancient nomes in heroic measure, and thus sang them, that he might not seem to make too sudden an innovation upon the ancient music. But as for Terpander, he seems to have been the most excellent composer to the harp of his age, for he is recorded to have been four times in succession a victor at the Pythian games. And certainly he was one of the most ancient musicians in the world; for Glaucus the Italian in his treatise of the ancient poets and musicians asserts him to have lived before Archilochus, affirming him to be the second next to those that first invented wind-music.

5. Alexander in his Collections of Phrygia says, that Olympus was the first that brought into Greece the manner of touching the strings with a quill; and next to him were the Idaean Dactyli; Hyagnis was the first that sang to the pipe; after him his son Marsyas, then Olympus; that Terpander imitated Homer in his verses and Orpheus in his musical compositions; but that Orpheus never imitated any one, since in his time there were none but such as composed to the pipe, which was a manner quite different from that of Orpheus. Clonas, a composer of nomes for flute-music, and somewhat later than Terpander, as the Arcadians affirm, was born in Tegea or, as the Boeotians allege, at Thebes. After Terpander and Clonas flourished Archilochus; yet there are some writers who affirm, that Ardalus the Troezenian taught the manner of composing to wind-music before Clonas. There was also the poet Polymnestus, the son of Meles the Colophonian, who invented the Polymnestian measures. They farther write that Clonas invented the nomes Apothetus and Schoenion. Of Polymnestus mention is made by Pindar and Alcman, both lyric poets; but of several of the lyric nomes said to be instituted by Terpander they make Philammon (the ancient Delphian) author.

6. Now the music appropriated to the harp, such as it was in the time of Terpander, continued in all its simplicity, till Phrynis grew into esteem. For it was not the ancient custom to make lyric poems in the present style, or to intermix measures and rhythms. For in each nome they were careful to observe its own proper pitch; whence came the expression nome (from νόμος, law), because it was unlawful to alter the pitch appointed for each one. At length, falling from their devotion to the Gods, they began to sing the verses of Homer and other poets. This is manifest by the proems of Terpander. Then for the form of the harp, it was such as Cepion, one of Terpander’s scholars, first caused to be made, and it was called the Asian harp, because the Lesbian harpers bordering upon Asia always made use of it. And it is said that Periclitus, a Lesbian by birth, was the last harper who won a prize by his skill, which he did at one of the Spartan festivals called Carneia; but he being dead, that succession of skilful musicians, which had so long continued among the Lesbians, expired. Some there are who erroneously believe that Hipponax was contemporary with Terpander, when it is plain that Hipponax lived after Periclitus.

7. Having thus discoursed of the several nomes appropriated to the stringed as well as to the wind instruments, we will now speak something in particular concerning those peculiar to the wind instruments. First they say, that Olympus, a Phrygian player upon the flute, invented a certain nome in honor of Apollo, which he called Polycephalus, or of many heads. This Olympus, they say, was descended from the first Olympus, the scholar of Marsyas, who invented several forms of composition in honor of the Gods; and he, being a boy beloved of Marsyas, and by him taught to play upon the flute, first brought into Greece the laws of harmony. Others ascribe the Polycephalus to Crates, the scholar of Olympus; though Pratinas will have Olympus the younger to be the author of it. The Harmatian nome is also said to be invented by Olympus, the scholar of Marsyas. This Marsyas was by some said to be called Masses; which others deny, not allowing him any other name but that of Marsyas, the son of that Hyagnis who invented the art of playing upon the pipe. But that Olympus was the author of the Harmatian nome is plainly to be seen in Glaucus’s treatise of the ancient poets; and that Stesichorus of Himera imitated neither Orpheus nor Terpander nor Antilochus nor Thales, but Olympus, and that he made use of the Harmatian nome and the dactylic dance, which some rather apply to the Orthian mood, while others aver it to have been the invention of the Mysians, for that some of the ancient pipers were Mysians.

8. There was also another mood in use among the ancients, called Cradias, which Hipponax says Mimnermus always delighted in. For formerly they that played upon the flute sang also elegies at the same time set to notes. Which the description of the Panathenaea concerning the musical combat makes manifest. Among the rest, Sacadas of Argos set several odes and elegies to music, he himself being also a good flute-player and thrice a victor at the Pythian games. Of him Pindar makes mention. Now whereas in the time of Polymnestus and Sacadas there existed three musical moods, the Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian, it is said that Sacadas composed a strophe in every one of those moods, and then taught the choruses to sing the first after the Dorian manner, the second according to the Phrygian, and the third after the Lydian manner; and this nome was called Trimeres (or threefold) by reason of the shifting of the moods, although in the Sicyonian catalogue of the poets Clonas is said to be the inventor of this name.

9. Music then received its first constitution from Terpander at Sparta. Of the second constitution, Thaletas the Gortinean, Xenodamus the Cytherean, Xenocritus the Locrian, Polymnestus the Colophonian, and Sacadas the Argive were deservedly acknowledged to be the authors. For these, having introduced the Gymnopaediae into Lacedaemon, settled the so-called Apodeixeis (or Exhibitions) among the Arcadians, and the Endymatia in Argos. Now Thaletas, Xenodamus, and Xenocritus, and their scholars, were poets that addicted themselves altogether to making of paeans; Polymnestus was all for the Orthian or military strain, and Sacadas for elegies. Others, and among the rest Pratinas, affirm Xenodamus to have been a maker of songs for dances (Hyporchemes), and not of paeans; and a tune of Xenodamus is preserved, which plainly appears to have been composed for a dance. Now that a paean differs from a song made for a dance is manifest from the poems of Pindar, who made both.

10. Polymnestus also composed nomes for flute-music; but in the Orthian nome he made use of his lyric vein, as the students in harmony declare. But in this we cannot be positive, because we have nothing of certainty concerning it from antiquity; and whether Thaletas of Crete was a composer of hymns is much doubted. For Glaucus, asserting Thaletas to be born after Archilochus, says that he imitated the odes of Archilochus, only he made them longer, and used the Paeonic and Cretic rhythm, which neither Archilochus nor Orpheus nor Terpander ever did; for Thaletas learned these from Olympus, and became a good poet besides. As for Xenocritus the Locrian from Italy, it is much questioned whether he was a maker of paeans or not, as being one that always took heroic subjects with dramatic action for his verses, for which reason some there were who called his arguments Dithyrambic. Moreover, Glaucus asserts Thaletas to have preceded him in time.

11. Olympus, by the report of Aristoxenus, is supposed by the musicians to have been the inventor of the enharmonic species of music; for before him there was no other than the diatonic and chromatic. And it is thought that the invention of the enharmonic species was thus brought to pass: for that Olympus before altogether composing and playing in the diatonic species, and having frequent occasion to shift to the diatonic parhypate, sometimes from the paramese and sometimes from the mese, skipping the diatonic lichanos, he found the beauty that appeared in the new character; and thus, admiring a conjunction or scheme so agreeable to proportion, he made this new species in the Doric mood. For now he held no longer to what belonged either to the diatonic or to the chromatic, but he was already come to the enharmonic. And the first foundations of enharmonic music which he laid were these: in enharmonics the first thing that appears is the spondiasmus, to which none of the divisions of the tetrachord seems properly to belong, unless any one will take the more intense spondiasmus to be diatonic. But he that maintained this would maintain a falsehood and an absurdity in harmony; a falsehood, because it would be less by a diesis than is required by the leading note; an absurdity in harmony, because, even if we should place the proper nature of the more intense spondiasmus in the simple chromatic, it would then come to pass, that two double tones would follow in order, the one compounded, the other uncompounded. For the thick enharmonic now used in the middle notes does not seem to be the invention of the fore-mentioned author. But this is more easily understood by hearing any musician play in the ancient style; for then you shall find the semi-tone in the middle parts to be uncompounded.

These were the beginnings of enharmonic music; afterwards the semitone was also divided, as well in the Phrygian as Lydian moods. But Olympus seems to have advanced music by producing something never known or heard of before, and to have gained to himself the honor of being the most excellent, not only in the Grecian but in all other music.

12. Let us now proceed to rhythms; for there were several varieties of these, as well in musical as in rhythmical composition. And here Terpander, among all those novelties with which he adorned music, introduced an elegant manner, that gave it much life. After him, beside the Terpandrian, which he did not relinquish, Polymnestus brought in use another of his own, retaining however the former elegant manner, as did also Thaletas and Sacadas. Other innovations were also made by Alkman and Stesichorus, who nevertheless receded not from the ancient forms. But Crexus, Timotheus, and Philoxenus, and those other poets of the same age, growing more arrogant and studious of novelty, affected those other manners now called Philanthropic and Thematic. For now the fewness of strings and the plainness and majesty of the old music are looked upon as absolutely out of date.

13. And now, having discoursed to the best of my ability of the ancient music and the first inventors of it, and how succeeding ages brought it to more and more perfection, I shall make an end, and give way to my friend Soterichus, not only greatly skilled in music but in all the rest of the sciences. For we have always labored rather on the practical than the contemplative part. Which when Lysias had said, he forbare speaking any farther; but then Soterichus thus began.

14. Most noble Onesicrates, said he, since you have engaged us to speak our knowledge concerning the most venerable excellencies of music, which is most pleasing to the Gods, I cannot but approve the learning of our master Lysias, and his great memory in reciting all the inventors of the ancient music, and those who have written concerning it. But I must needs say, that he has given us this account, trusting only to what he has found recorded. We on the other side have not heard of any man that was the inventor of the benefits of music, but of the God Apollo, adorned with all manner of virtue. The flute was neither the invention of Marsyas nor Olympus nor Hyagnis; nor was the harp Apollo’s invention only, but as a God he was the inventor of all the music both of the flute and harp. This is manifest from the dances and sacrifices which were solemnized to Apollo, as Alcaeus and others in their hymns relate. His statue also placed in the Temple of Delos holds in his right hand a bow; at his left the Graces stand, with every one a musical instrument in her hands, one carrying a harp, another a flute, another with a shepherd’s pipe set to her lips. And that this is no conceit of mine appears from this, that Anticles and Ister have testified the same in their commentaries upon these things. And the statue is reported to be so ancient, that the artificers were said to have lived in the time of Hercules. The youth also that carries the Tempic laurel into Delphi is accompanied by one playing upon the flute. And the sacred presents of the Hyperboreans were sent of old to Delos, attended with flutes, pipes, and harps. Some have thought that the God himself played upon the flute, as the best of lyrics, Alcman, relates. Corinna also asserts that Apollo was by Minerva taught to pipe. Venerable is therefore music altogether, as being the invention of the Gods.

15. The ancients made use of it for its worth, as they did all other beneficial sciences. But our men of art, contemning its ancient majesty, instead of that manly, grave, heaven-born music, so acceptable to the Gods, have brought into the theatres a sort of effeminate musical tattling, mere sound without substance; which Plato utterly rejects in the third book of his commonwealth, refusing the Lydian harmony as fit only for lamentations. And they say that this was first instituted for doleful songs. Aristoxenus, in his first book of music, tells us how that Olympus sang an elegy upon the death of Python in the Lydian mood, though some will have Menalippides to be the author of that song. Pindar, in his paean on the nuptials of Niobe, asserts that the Lydian harmony was first used by Anthippus. Others affirm, that Torebus was the first that made use of that sort of harmony; among the rest, Dionysius the iambic writer.

16. The mixed Lydian moves the affections, and is fit for tragedies. This mood, as Aristoxenus alleges, was invented by Sappho, from whom the tragedians learned it and joined it with the Doric. The one becomes a majestic, lofty style, the other mollifies and stirs to pity; both which are the properties of tragedy. The history of music, however, made Pythoclides the flute-player to be the author of it; and Lysis reports that Lamprocles the Athenian, finding that the diazeuxis (or separation of two tetrachords) was not where almost all others thought it had been, but toward the treble, made such a scheme as is now from paramese to the highest hypate. But for the softer Lydian, being contrary to the mixed Lydian and like the Ionian, they say it was invented by Damon the Athenian.

17. But as for those sorts of harmony, the one being sad and doleful, the other loose and effeminate, Plato deservedly rejected them, and made choice of the Dorian, as more proper for sober and warlike men; not being ignorant, however (as Aristoxenus discourses in his second book of music), that there might be something advantageous in the rest to a circumspect and wary commonwealth. For Plato gave much attention to the art of music, as being the hearer of Draco the Athenian and Metellus the Agrigentine; but considering, as we have intimated before, that there was much more majesty in the Dorian mood, it was that he preferred. He knew moreover that Alcman, Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides had composed several Parthenia in the Doric mood; and that several Prosodia (or supplications to the Gods), several hymns and tragical lamentations, and now and then love verses, were composed to the same melody. But he contented himself with such songs as were made in honor of Mars or Minerva, or else such as were to be sung at solemn offerings, called Spondeia. For these he thought sufficient to fortify and raise the mind of a sober person; not being at all ignorant in the mean time of the Lydian and Ionian, of which he knew the tragedians made use.

18. Moreover, the ancients well understood all the sorts of styles, although they used but few. For it was not their ignorance that confined them to such narrow instruments and so few strings; nor was it out of ignorance that Olympus and Terpander and those that came after them would not admit of larger instruments and more variety of strings. This is manifest from the poems of Olympus and Terpander and all those that were their imitators. For, being plain and without any more than three strings, these so far excelled those that were more numerously strung, insomuch that none could imitate Olympus’s play; and they were all inferior to him when they betook themselves to their polychords.

19. Then again, that the ancients did not through ignorance abstain from the third string in the spondaic style, their use of it in play makes apparent. For had they not known the use of it, they would never have struck it in harmony with parhypate; but the elegancy and gravity that attended the spondaic style by omitting the third string induced them to transfer the music to paranete. The same reason may serve for nete; for this in play they struck in concord to mese, but in discord to paranete, although in song it did not seem to them proper to the slow spondaic motion. And not only did they do this, but they did the same with nete of the conjunct heptachords; for in play they struck it in concord to mese and lichanos, and in discord to paranete and parhypate; but in singing those touches were no way allowable, as being ungrateful to the ear and shaming the performer. As certain it is from the Phrygians that Olympus and his followers were not ignorant of the third string; for they made use of it not only in pulsation, but in their hymns to the Mother of the Gods and several other Phrygian songs. Nor is it less apparent, with regard to the ὑπάται, that they never abstained for want of skill from that tetrachord in the Dorian mood; indeed in other moods they knowingly made use of it, but removed it from the Dorian mood to preserve its elegant gravity.

20. The same thing was done also by the tragedians. For the tragedians have never to this day used either the chromatic or the enharmonic scale; while the lyre, many generations older than tragedy, used them from the very beginning. Now that the chromatic was more ancient than the enharmonic is plain. For we must necessarily account it of greater antiquity, according to the custom and use of men themselves; otherwise it cannot be said that any of the differences and distinctions were ancienter the one than the other. Therefore, if any one should allege that Aeschylus or Phrynichus abstained from the chromatic out of ignorance, would he not be thought to maintain a very great absurdity? Such a one might as well aver that Pancrates lay under the same blindness, who avoided it in most, but made use of it in some things; therefore he forebore not out of ignorance, but judgment, imitating Pindar and Simonides and that which is at present called the ancient manner.

21. The same may be said of Tyrtaeus the Mantinean, Andreas the Corinthian, Thrasyllus the Phliasian, and several others, who, as we well know, abstained by choice from the chromatic, from transition, from the increased number of strings, and many other common forms of rhythms, tunes, diction, composition, and expression. Telephanes of Megara was so great an enemy to the pipe made of reed (called syrinx), that he would not suffer the instrument maker to join it to the flute (pipe made of wood or horn), and chiefly for that reason forbore to go to the Pythian games. In short, if a man should be thought to be ignorant of that which he makes no use of, there would be found a great number of ignorant persons in this age. For we see that the admirers of the Dorian composition make no use of the Antiginedian; the followers of the Antiginedian reject the Dorian; and other musicians refuse to imitate Timotheus, being almost all bewitched with the trifles and the idle poems of Polyidus. On the other side, if we dive into the business of variety and compare antiquity with the present times, we shall find there was great variety then, and that frequently made use of. For then the variation of rhythm was more highly esteemed, and the change of their manner of play more frequent. We are now lovers of fables, they were then lovers of rhythm. Plain it is therefore, that the ancients did not refrain from broken measures out of ignorance, but out of judgment. And yet what wonder is this, when there are so many other things necessary to human life which are not unknown, though not made use of by those who have no occasion to use them? But they are refused, and the use of them is altogether neglected, as not being found proper on many occasions.

22. Having already shown that Plato neither for want of skill nor for ignorance blamed all the other moods and casts of composition, we now proceed to show that he really was skilled in harmony. For in his discourse concerning the procreation of the soul, inserted into Timaeus, he has made known his great knowledge in all the sciences, and of music among the rest, in this manner: “After this,” saith he, “he filled up the double and treble intervals, taking parts from thence, and adding them to the midst between them, so that there were in every interval two middle terms.” This proem was the effect of his experience in music, as we shall presently make out. The means from whence every mean is taken are three, arithmetical, enharmonical, geometrical. Of these the first exceeds and is exceeded in number, the second in proportion, the third neither in number nor proportion. Plato therefore, desirous to show the harmony of the four elements in the soul, and harmonically also to explain the reason of that mutual concord arising from discording and jarring principles, undertakes to make out two middle terms of the soul in every interval, according to harmonical proportion. Thus in a musical octave there happen to be two middle distances, whose proportion we shall explain. As for the octaves, they keep a double proportion between their two extremes. For example, let the double arithmetical proportion be 6 and 12, this being the interval between the ὑπάτη μέσων and the νήτη διεζευγμένων; 6 therefore and 12 being the two extremes, the former note contains the number 6, and the latter 12. To these are to be added the intermediate numbers, to which the extremes must hold the proportion, the one of one and a third, and the other of one and a half. These are the numbers 8 and 9. For as 8 contains one and a third of 6, so 9 contains one and a half of 6; thus you have one extreme. The other is 12, containing 9 and a third part of 9, and 8 and half 8. These then being the numbers between 6 and 12, and the interval of the octave consisting of a diatessaron and diapente, it is plain that the number 8 belongs to mese, and the number 9 to paramese; which being so, it follows that hypate is to mese as paramese to nete of the disjunct tetrachords; for it is a fourth from the first term to the second of this proportion, and the same interval from the third term to the fourth. The same proportion will be also found in the numbers. For as 6 is to 8, so is 9 to 12; and as 6 is to 9, so is 8 to 12. For 8 is one and a third part of 6, and 12 of 9; while 9 is one and a half part of 6, and 12 of 8. What has been said may suffice to show how great was Plato’s zeal and learning in the liberal sciences.

23. Now that there is something of majesty, something great and divine in music, Aristotle, who was Plato’s scholar, thus labors to convince the world: “Harmony,” saith he, “descended from heaven, and is of a divine, noble, and angelic nature; but being fourfold as to its efficacy, it has two means, — the one arithmetical, the other enharmonical. As for its members, its dimensions, and its excesses of intervals, they are best discovered by number and equality of measure, the whole art being contained in two tetrachords.” These are his words. The body of it, he saith, consists of discording parts, yet concording one with another; whose means nevertheless agree according to arithmetical proportion. For the upper string being fitted to the lowest in the ratio of two to one produces a perfect diapason. Thus, as we said before, nete consisting of twelve units, and hypate of six, the paramese accords with hypate according to the sesquialter proportion, and has nine units, whilst mese has eight units. So that the chiefest intervals through the whole scale are the diatessaron (which is the proportion of 4:3), the diapente (which is the proportion of 3:2), and the diapason (which is the proportion of 2:1); while the proportion of 9:8 appears in the interval of a tone. With the same inequalities of excess or diminution, all the extremes are differenced one from another, and the means from the means, either according to the quantity of the numbers or the measure of geometry; which Aristotle thus explains, observing that nete exceeds mese by a third part of itself, and hypate is exceeded by paramese in the same proportion, so that the excesses stand in proportion. For by the same parts of themselves they exceed and are exceeded; that is, the extremes (nete and hypate) exceed and are exceeded by mese and paramese in the same proportions, those of 4:3 and of 3:2. Now these excesses are in what is called harmonic progression. But the distances of nete from mese and of paramese from hypate, expressed in numbers, are in the same proportion (12:8 = 9:6); for paramese exceeds mese by one-eighth of the latter. Again, nete is to hypate as 2:1; paramese to hypate as 3:2; and mese to hypate as 4:3. This, according to Aristotle, is the natural constitution of harmony, as regards its parts and its numbers.

24. But, according to natural philosophy, both harmony and its parts consist of even, odd, and also even-odd. Altogether it is even, as consisting of four terms; but its parts and proportions are even, odd, and even-odd. So nete is even, as consisting of twelve units; paramese is odd, of nine; mese even, of eight; and hypate even-odd, of six (i.e., 2×3). Whence it comes to pass, that music — herself and her parts — being thus constituted as to excesses and proportion, the whole accords with the whole, and also with each one of the parts.

25. But now as for the senses that are created within the body, such as are of celestial and heavenly extraction, and which by divine assistance affect the understanding of men by means of harmony, — namely, sight and hearing, — do by the very light and voice express harmony. And others which are their attendants, so far as they are senses, likewise exist by harmony; for they perform none of their effects without harmony; and although they are inferior to the other two, they are not independent of them. Nay, those two also, since they enter into human bodies at the very same time with God himself, claim by reason a vigorous and incomparable nature.

26. Manifest from hence therefore it is, why the ancient Greeks, with more reason than others, were so careful to teach their children music. For they deemed it requisite by the assistance of music to form and compose the minds of youth to what was decent, sober, and virtuous; believing the use of music beneficially efficacious to incite to all serious actions, especially to the adventuring upon warlike dangers. To which purpose they made use of pipes or flutes when they advanced in battle array against their enemies; like the Lacedaemonians, who upon the same occasion caused the Castorean melody to be played before their battalions. Others inflamed their courage with harps, playing the same sort of harmony when they went to look danger in the face, as the Cretans did for a long time. Others, even to our own times, continue to use the trumpet. The Argives made use of flutes at their wrestling matches called Stheneia; which sort of sport was first instituted in honor of Danaus, but afterwards consecrated to Jupiter Sthenius, or Jupiter the Mighty. And now at this day it is the custom to make use of flutes at the games called Pentathla, although there is now nothing exquisite or antique, nothing like what was customary among men of old time, like the song composed by Hierax for this very game; still, even though it is sorry stuff and nothing exquisite, it is accompanied by flute-music.

27. But among the more ancient Greeks, music in theatres was never known, for they employed their whole musical skill in the worship of the Gods and the education of youth; at which time, there being no theatres erected, music was yet confined within the walls of their temples, as being that with which they worshipped the supreme Deity and sang the praises of virtuous men. And it is probable that the word θέατϱον, at a later period, and θεωϱεῖν (to behold) much earlier, were derived from θεός (God). But in our age is such another face of new inventions, that there is not the least remembrance or care of that use of music which related to education; for all our musicians make it their business to court the theatre Muses, and study nothing but compositions for the stage.

28. But some will say, Did the ancients invent nothing themselves? Yes, say I, they did invent, but their inventions were grave and decent. For they who have written the history of music attribute to Terpander the addition of the Dorian nete, which before was not in use. Even the whole Mixolydian mood is a new invention. Such were also the Orthian manner of melody with Orthian rhythms, and also the Trochaeus Semantus. And if we believe Pindar, Terpander was the inventor of the Scolion (or roundelay). Archilochus also invented the rhythmic composition of the iambic trimeter, the change to rhythms of different character, the melo-dramatic delivery, and the accompaniment proper to each of these. He is also presumed to be the author of epodes, tetrameters, the Cretic and the prosodiac rhythms, and the augmentation of the heroic verse. Some make him author also of the elegiac measure, as likewise of the extending the iambic to the paeon epibatus, the prolonged and heroic to the prosodiac and Cretic. And Archilochus is first said to have taught how iambics could be partly recited to the stroke of the lyre and partly sung; from him the tragedians learned it, and from them Crexus took it, and made use of it in dithyrambics. It is thought that he invented also playing on the lyre at intervals in the song, whereas the ancients played only during the singing.

29. Of the Hypolydian mood they make Polymnestus the inventor, and the first that taught the lowering and raising of the voice (ἔϰλυσις and ἐϰβολή). To the same Olympus to whom they also ascribe the first invention of Grecian and well-regulated nomic music they attribute likewise the finding out the enharmonic music, the prosodiac measure to which is composed the hymn to Mars, and the chorean measure which he used in the hymns to the Mother of the Gods. Some report him to be the author also of the bacchius. And every one of the ancient songs show that this is so. But Lasus of Hermione, transferring the rhythms to suit the dithyrambic time, and making use of an instrument with many notes, made an absolute innovation upon the ancient music, by the use of more notes, and those more widely distributed.

Aristophanes the comic poet, making mention of Philoxenus, complains of his introducing lyric verses among the cyclic choruses, where he brings in Music thus speaking: —

•He filled me with discordant measures airy,

•Wicked Hyperbolaei and Niglari;

•And to uphold the follies of his play,

•Like a lank radish bowed me every way.

Other comedians have since set forth the absurdity of those who have been slicers and manglers of music.

31. Now that the right moulding or ruin of ingenuous manners and civil conduct lies in a well-grounded musical education, Aristoxenus has made apparent. For, of those that were contemporary with him, he gives an account of Telesias the Theban, who in his youth was bred up in the noblest excellences of music, and moreover studied the works of the most famous lyrics, Pindar, Dionysius the Theban, Lamprus, Pratinas, and all the rest who were accounted most eminent; who played also to perfection upon the flute, and was not a little industrious to furnish himself with all those other accomplishments of learning; but being past the prime of his age, he was so bewitched with the theatre’s new fangles and the innovations of multiplied notes, that despising those noble precepts and that solid practice to which he had been educated, he betook himself to Philoxenus and Timotheus, and among those delighted chiefly in such as were most depraved with diversity of notes and baneful innovation. And yet, when he made it his business to make verses and labor both ways, as well in that of Pindar as that of Philoxenus, he could have no success in the latter. And the reason proceeded from the truth and exactness of his first education.

32. Therefore, if it be the aim of any person to practise music with skill and judgment, let him imitate the ancient manner; let him also adorn it with those other sciences, and make philosophy his tutor, which is sufficient to judge what is in music decent and useful. For music being generally divided into three parts, diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonie, it behooves one who comes to learn music to understand poetry, which uses these three parts, and to know how to express his poetical inventions in proper musical form.

First therefore we are to consider that all musical learning is a sort of habituation, which does not teach the reason of her precepts at one and the same time to the learner. Moreover, we are to understand that to such an education there is not requisite an enumeration of its several divisions, but every one learns by chance what either the master or scholar, according to the authority of the one and the liberty of the other, has most affection for. But the more prudent sort reject this chance-medley way of learning, as the Lacedaemonians of old, the Mantineans, and Pallenians, who, making choice either of one single method or else but very few styles, used only that sort of music which they deemed most proper to regulate the inclinations of youths.

33. This will be apparent, if any one shall examine every one of the parts, and see what is the subject of their several contemplations. For harmony takes cognizance of intervals, systems, classes of harmonious sounds, notes, tones, and systematical transmutations. Farther than this it goes not. And therefore it would be in vain to enquire of harmony, whether the poet have rightly and (so to speak) musically chosen the Dorian for the beginning, the mixed Lydian and Dorian for the end, or the Hypophrygian and Phrygian for the middle. For the industry of harmony reaches not to these, and it is defective in many other things, as not understanding the force and extent of elegant aptness and proper concinnity. Neither did ever the chromatic or enharmonic species arrive to such force of aptitude as to discover the nature and genius of the poem; for that is the work of the poet. It is as plain, that the sound of the system is different from the sound of the descant sung in the same system; which, however, does not belong to the consideration of harmonical studies. There is the same to be said concerning rhythms, for no rhythm can claim to itself the force of perfect aptitude. For we call a thing apt and proper when we consider the nature of it. The reason of this, we say, is either a certain plain and mixed composure, or both; like the enharmonic species of Olympus, by him set in the Phrygian mood and mixed with the paeon epibatos, which rendered the beginning of the key naturally elegant in what is called the nome of Minerva. For having made choice of his key and measure, he only changed the paeon epibatos for the trochee, which produced his enharmonic species. However, the enharmonic species and Phrygian tone remaining together with the whole system, the elegancy of the character was greatly altered. For that which was called harmony in the nome of Minerva was quite another thing from that in the introduction. He then that has both judgment as well as skill is to be accounted the most accurate musician. For he that understands the Dorian mood, not being able withal to discern by his judgment what is proper to it and when it is fit to be made use of, shall never know what he does; nay, he shall quite mistake the nature and custom of the key. Indeed it is much questioned among the Dorians themselves, whether the enharmonic composers be competent judges of the Dorian songs. The same is to be said concerning the knowledge of rhythm. For he that understands a paeon may not understand the proper use of it, though he know the measure of which it consists. Because it is much doubted among those that make use of paeons, whether the bare knowledge make a man capable to determine concerning the proper use of those rhythms; or, as others say, whether it aspire to presume so far. Therefore it behooves that person to have two sorts of knowledge, who will undertake to judge of what is proper and what improper; first, of the custom and manner of elegancy for which such a composition was intended, and next of those things of which the composition consists. And thus, that neither the bare knowledge of harmony, nor of rhythm, nor of any other things that singly by themselves are but a part of the whole body of music, is sufficient to judge and determine either of the one or the other, what has been already said may suffice to prove.

34. [Now then, there being three species into which all harmony is divided, equal in the magnitude of systems or intervals and force of notes and tetrachords, we find that the ancients never disputed about any more than one; for they never troubled themselves with the chromatic or diatonic, but differed only about the enharmonic; and there no farther than about the great interval called the diapason. The further subdivision indeed caused some little variance, but they nearly all agreed that harmony itself is but one. ] Therefore he must never think to be a true artist in the understanding and practice of music, who advances no farther than the single knowledge of this or that particular: but it behooves him to trace through all the particular members of it, and so to be master of the whole body, by understanding how to mix and join all the divided members. For he that understands only harmony is confined to a single manner. Wherefore, in short, it is requisite that the sense and understanding concur in judging the parts of music; and that they should neither be too hasty, like those senses which are rash and forward, nor too slow, like those which are dull and heavy; though it may happen sometimes, through the inequality of Nature, that the same senses may be too slow and too quick at the same time. Which things are to be avoided by a sense and judgment that would run an equal course.

35. For there are three things at least that at the same instant strike the ear, — the note, the time, and the word or syllable. By the note we judge of the harmony, by the time of the rhythm, and by the word of the matter or subject of the song. As these proceed forth altogether, it is requisite the sense should give them entrance at the same moment. But this is certain, where the sense is not able to separate every one of these and consider the effects of each apart, there it can never apprehend what is well or what is amiss in any. First therefore let us discourse concerning coherence. For it is necessary that coherence accompany the discerning faculty. For judgment of good or bad is not to be made from notes disjoined, broken time, and shattered words, but from coherence. For there is in practice a certain commixture of parts which commonly are not compounded. So much as to coherence.

36. We are next to consider whether the masters of music are sufficiently capable of being judges of it. Now I aver the negative. For it is impossible to be a perfect musician and a good judge of music by the knowledge of those things that seem to be but parts of the whole body, as by excellency of hand upon the instrument, or singing readily at first sight, or exquisiteness of the ear, so far as this extends to the understanding of harmony and time. Neither does the knowledge of time and harmony, pulsation or elocution, or whatever else falls under the same consideration, perfect their judgment. Now for the reasons why a musician cannot gain a perfect judgment from any of these, we must endeavor to make them clear. First then it must be granted that, of things about which judgment is to be made, some are perfect and others imperfect. Those things which are perfect are the compositions in general, whether sung or played, and the expression of those, whether upon the instruments or by the voice, with the rest of the same nature. The imperfect are the things to these appertaining, and for whose sake they are made use of. Such are the parts of expression. A second reason may be found in poetry, with which the case is the same. For a man that hears a consort of voices or instruments can judge whether they sing or play in tune, and whether the language be plain or not. But every one of these are only parts of instrumental and vocal expression; not the end itself, but for the sake of the end. For by these and things of the same nature shall the elegancy of elocution be judged, whether it be proper to the poem which the performer undertakes to sing. The same is to be said of the several passions expressed in the poetry.

37. The ancients now made principal account of the moral impression, and therefore preferred that fashion of the antique music which was grave and least affected. Therefore the Argives are said to have punished deviation from the ancient music, and to have imposed a fine upon such as first adventured to play with more than seven strings, and to introduce the Mixolydian mood. Pythagoras, that grave philosopher, rejected the judging of music by the senses, affirming that the virtue of music could be appreciated only by the intellect. And therefore he did not judge of music by the ear, but by the harmonical proportion, and thought it sufficient to fix the knowledge of music within the compass of the diapason.

38. But our musicians nowadays have so utterly exploded the most noble of all the moods, which the ancients greatly admired for its majesty, that hardly any among them make the least account of enharmonic distances. And so negligent and lazy are they grown, as to believe the enharmonic diesis to be too contemptible to fall under the apprehension of sense, and they therefore exterminate it out of their compositions, deeming those to be triflers that have any esteem for it or make use of the mood itself. For proof of which they think they bring a most powerful argument, which rather appears to be the dulness of their own senses; as if whatever fled their apprehensions were to be rejected as useless and of no value. And then again they urge that its magnitude cannot be perceived through its concord, like that of the semitone, tone, and other distances; not understanding, that at the same time they throw out the third, fifth, and seventh, of which the one consists of three, the other of five, and the last of seven dieses. And on the same principle all the intervals that are odd should be rejected as useless, inasmuch as none of them is perceptible through concord; and this would include all which by means of even the smallest diesis are measured by odd numbers. Whence it necessarily follows, that no division of the tetrachord would be of use but that which is to be measured by all even intervals, as in the syntonic diatonic, and in the toniaean chromatic.

39. But these opinions are not only contrary to appearance, but repugnant one to another. For they themselves chiefly make use of those divisions of tetrachords in which most of the intervals are either unequal or irrational. To which purpose they always soften both lichanos and paranete, and lower even some of the standing sounds by an irrational interval, bringing the trite and paranete to approach them. And especially they applaud the use of those systems in which most of the intervals are irrational, by relaxing not only those tones which are by nature movable, but also some which are properly fixed; as it is plain to those that rightly understand these things.

40. Now for the advantages that accrue to men from the use of music, the famous Homer has taught it us, introducing Achilles, in the height of his fury toward Agamemnon, appeased by the music which he learned from Chiron, a person of great wisdom. For thus says he: —

•Amused at ease, the god-like man they found,

•Pleased with the solemn harp’s harmonious sound.

•The well-wrought harp from conquered Thebe came;

•Of polished silver was its costly frame.

•With this he soothes his angry soul, and sings

•The immortal deeds of heroes and of kings.

Learn, says Homer, from hence the true use of music. For it became Achilles, the son of Peleus the Just, to sing the famous acts and achievements of great and valiant men. Also, in teaching the most proper time to make use of it, he found out a profitable and pleasing pastime for one’s leisure hours. For Achilles, being both valiant and active, by reason of the disgust he had taken against Agamemnon withdrew from the war. Homer therefore thought he could not do better than by the laudable incitements of music and poetry to inflame the hero’s courage for those achievements which he afterwards performed. And this he did, calling to mind the great actions of former ages. Such was then the ancient music, and such the advantages that made it profitable. To which end and purpose we read that Hercules, Achilles, and many others made use of it; whose master, wisest Chiron, is recorded to have taught not only music, but morality and physic.

41. In brief therefore, a rational person will not blame the sciences themselves, if any one make use of them amiss, but will adjudge such a failing to be the error of those that abuse them. So that whoever he be that shall give his mind to the study of music in his youth, if he meet with a musical education, proper for the forming and regulating his inclinations, he will be sure to applaud and embrace that which is noble and generous, and to rebuke and blame the contrary, as well in other things as in what belongs to music. And by that means he will become clear from all reproachful actions, for now having reaped the noblest fruit of music, he may be of great use, not only to himself but to the commonwealth: while music teaches him to abstain from every thing indecent both in word and deed, and to observe decorum, temperance, and regularity.

42. Now that those cities which were governed by the best laws took care always of a generous education in music, many testimonies may be produced. But for us it shall suffice to have instanced Terpander, who appeased a sedition among the Lacedaemonians, and Thaletas the Cretan, of whom Pratinas writes that, being sent for by the Lacedaemonians by advice of the oracle, he freed the city from a raging pestilence. Homer tells that the Grecians stopped the fury of another noisome pestilence by the power and charms of the same noble science: —

•With sacred hymns and songs that sweetly please,

•The Grecian youth all day the Gods appease.

•Their lofty paeans bright Apollo hears,

•And still the charming sounds delight his ears.

These verses, most excellent master, I thought requisite to add as the finishing stone to my musical discourse, which were by you cited before to show the force of harmony. For indeed the chiefest and sublimest end of music is the graceful return of our thanks to the Gods, and the next is to purify and bring our minds to a sober and harmonious temper. Thus, said Soterichus, most excellent master, I have given you what may be called an encyclic discourse of music.

43. Nor was Soterichus a little admired for what he had spoken, as one that both by his countenance and speech had shown his zeal and affection for that noble science. After all, said Onesicrates, I must needs applaud this in both of you, that you have kept within your own spheres and observed your proper limits. For Lysias, not insisting any further, undertook only to show us what was necessary to the making a good hand, as being an excellent performer himself. But Soterichus has feasted us with a discovery of the benefit, the theory, the force, and right end of music. But one thing I think they have willingly left for me to say; for I cannot think them guilty of so much bashfulness that they should be ashamed to bring music into banquets, where certainly, if anywhere, it cannot but be very useful, which Homer also confirms to be true: —

Song and the merry dance, the joy of feasts.

Not that I would have any one believe from these words, that Homer thought music useful only for pleasure and delight, there being a profounder meaning concealed in the verse. For he brought in music to be present at the banquets and revels of the ancients, as believing it then to be of greatest use and advantage to repel and mitigate the inflamming power of the wine. To which our Aristoxenus agrees, who alleges that music was introduced at banquets for this reason, that as wine intemperately drunk weakens both the body and mind, so music by its harmonious order and symmetry assuages and reduces them to their former constitution. And therefore it was that Homer reports that the ancients made use of music at their solemn festivals.

44. But for all this, my most honored friends, methinks you have forgot the chiefest thing of all, and that which renders music most majestic. For Pythagoras, Archytas, Plato, and many others of the ancient philosophers, were of opinion, that there could be no motion of the world or rolling of the spheres without the assistance of music, since the Supreme Deity created all things harmoniously. But it would be unseasonable now to enter upon such a discourse, especially at this time, when it would be absurd for Music to transgress her highest and most musical office, which is to give the laws and limits of time and measure to all things. Therefore after he had sung a paean, and offered to Saturn and his offspring, with all the other Gods and the Muses, he dismissed the company.

No one will attempt to study this treatise on music, without some previous knowledge of the principles of Greek music, with its various moods, scales, and combinations of tetrachords. The whole subject is treated by Boeckh, De Metris Pindari (in Vol. I. 2 of his edition of Pindar); and more at length in Westphal’s Harmonik und Melopöie der Griechen (in Rossbach and Westphal’s Metrik, Vol. II. 1).

An elementary explanation of the ordinary scale and of the names of the notes (which are here retained without any attempt at translation) may be of use to the reader.

The most ancient scale is said to have had only four notes, corresponding to the four strings of the tetrachord. But before Terpander’s time two forms of the heptachord (with seven strings) were already in use. One of these was enlarged to an octachord (with eight strings) by adding the octave (called νήτη). This addition is ascribed to Terpander by Plutarch (§ 28); but he is said to have been unwilling to increase the number of strings permanently to eight, and to have therefore omitted the string called τρίτη, thus reducing the octachord again to a heptachord. The notes of the full octachord in this form, in the ordinary diatonic scale, are as follows: —

•1. ὑπάτη e

•2. παρυπάτη f

•3. λιχανός g

•4. μέση a

•5. παραμέση b

•6. τρίτη c

•7. παρανήτη d

•8. νήτη e (octave)

The note called ὑπάτη (hypate, or highest) is the lowest in tone, being named from its position. So νήτη or νεάτη (nete, or lowest) is the highest in tone.

The other of the two heptachords mentioned above contained the octave, but omitted the παραμέση and had other changes in the higher notes. The scale is as follows: —

•1. ὑπάτη e

•2. παρυπάτη f

•3. λιχανός g

•4. μέση a

•5. τρίτη b

•6. παρανήτη c

•7. νήτη d

This is not to be confounded with the reduced octachord of Terpander. This heptachord includes two tetrachords so united that the lowest note of one is identical with the highest note of the other; while the octachord includes two tetrachords entirely separated, with each note distinct. The former connection is called κατὰ συναϕήν, the latter κατὰ διάζευξιν. Of the eight notes of the octachord, the first four (counting from the lowest), ὑπάτη, παρυπάτη, λιχανός, and μέση, are the same in the heptachord; παραμέση is omitted in the heptachord; while τρίτη, παρανήτη, and νήτη in the heptachord are designated as τρίτη συνημμένων, παρανήτη συνημμένων, and νήτη συνημμένων, to distinguish them from the notes of the same name in the octachord, which sometimes have the designation διεζευγμένων, but generally are written simply τρίτη, &c.

These simple scales were enlarged by the addition of higher and lower notes, four at the bottom of the scale (i.e. before ὑπάτη), called προσλαμβανόμενος, ὑπάτη ὑπατῶν, παρυπάτη ὑπατῶν, λιχανός ὑπατῶν; and three at the top (above νήτη), called νήτη, παρανήτη, τρίτη, each with the designation ὑπερβολαίων. The lowest three notes of the ordinary octachord are here designated by μέσων, when the simple names are not used. Thus a scale of fifteen notes was made; and we have one of eighteen by including the two classes of τρίτη, παρανήτη, and νήτη designated by συνημμένων and διεζευγμένων.

The harmonic intervals, discovered by Pythagoras, are the Octave (διὰ πασῶν), with its ratio of 2:1; the Fifth (διὰ πέντε), with its ratio of 3:2 (λόγος ἡμιόλιος or Sesquialter); the Fourth (διὰ τεσσάρων), with its ratio of 4:3 (λόγος ἐπίτριτος or Sesquiterce); and the Tone (τόνος), with its ratio of 9:8 (λόγος ἐπόγδοος or Sesquioctave). (G.)

The Greek Texts

Archaeological site of Plato’s Academy, north of Athens, where Plutarch studied mathematics and philosophy under Ammonius, from 66 to 67 AD.

LIST OF GREEK TEXTS

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CONTENTS

VITE PARALLELE - Βίοι Παράλληλοι

Theseus

Romulus

Comparison Thesei et Romuli

Lycurgus

Numa

Comparison Lycurgi et Numae

Solon

Publicola

Comparison Solonis et Publicolae

Themistocles

Camillus

Pericles

Fabius Maximus

Comparison Periclis et Fabii Maximi

Alcibiades

Marcius Coriolanus

Comparison Alcibiadis et Marcii Coriolani

Timoleon

Aemilius Paullus

Comparison Aemilii Paulli et Timoleontis

Pelopidas

Marcellus

Comparison Pelopidae et Marcelli

Aristides

Cato Maior

Comparison Aristidis et Catonis

Philopoemen

Titus Flamininus

Comparison Philopoemenis et Titi Flaminini

Pyrrus

Marius

Lysander

Sulla

Comparison Lysandri et Sullae

Cimon

Lucullus

Comparison Cimonis et Luculli

Nicias

Crassus

Comparison Niciae et Crassi

Eumenes

Sertorius

Comparison Eumenis et Sertorii

Agesilaus

Pompeius

Comparison Agesilai et Pompeii

Alexander

Caesar

Phocion

Cato Minor

Agis et Cleomenes

Tiberius et Gaius Gracchus

Comparison Agidis et Cleomenis cum Tiberio et Gaio Graccho

Demosthenes

Cicero

Comparison Demosthenis et Ciceronis

Demetrius

Antonius

Comparison Demetrii et Antonii

Dion

Brutus

Comparison Dionis et Bruti

Aratus

Artaxerxes

Galba

Otho

MORALIA - Ηθικά

De liberis educandis

Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat

De recta ratione audiendi

Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur

Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus

De capienda ex inimicis utilitate

De amicorum multitudine

De fortuna

De virtute et vitio

Consolatio ad Apollonium

De tuenda sanitate praecepta

Conjugalia praecepta

Septem sapientium convivium

De superstitione

Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

Apophthegmata Laconica

Mulierum virtutes

Aetia Romana et Graeca

Parallela minora

De fortuna Romanorum

De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute

De gloria Atheniensium

De Iside et Osiride

De E apud Delphos

De Pythiae oraculis

De defectu oraculorum

An virtus doceri possit

De virtute morali

De cohibenda ira

De tranquillitate animi

De fraterno amore

De amore prolis

An vitiositas ad infelicitatem sufficiat

Animine an corporis affectiones sint peiores

De garrulitate

De curiositate

De cupiditate divitiarum

De vitioso pudore

De invidia et odio

De laude ipsius

De sera numinis vindicta

De fato

De genio Socratis

De exilio

Consolatio ad uxorem

Quaestiones convivales

Amatorius

Amatoriae narrationes

Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum

Ad principem ineruditum

An seni respublica gerenda sit

Praecepta gerendae reipublicae

De unius in republica dominatione, populari statu, et paucorum imperio

De vitando aere alieno

Vitae decem oratorum

Comparisonnis Aristophanis et Menandri compendium

De Herodoti malignitate

Aetia physica

De facie in orbe lunae

De primo frigido

Aquane an ignis sit utilior

De sollertia animalium

Bruta animalia ratione uti

De esu carnium I

De esu carnium II

Platonicae quaestiones

De animae procreatione in Timaeo

Epitome libri de animae procreatione in Timaeo

De Stoicorum repugnantiis

Stoicos absurdiora poetis dicere

De communibus notitiis adversus Stoicos

Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum

Adversus Colotem

De latenter vivendo

De libidine et aegritudine

Parsne an facultas animi sit vita passiva

Fragmenta

Παροιμίαι αἷς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς ἐχρῶντο

Ἐκλογὴ περὶ τῶν ἀδυνάτων

De proverbiis Alexandrinorum

VITE PARALLELE - Βίοι Παράλληλοι

Theseus

[1] Ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς γεωγραφίαις, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, οἱ ἱστορικοὶ τὰ διαφεύγοντα τὴν γνῶσιν αὐτῶν τοῖς ἐσχάτοις μέρεσι τῶν πινάκων πιεζοῦντες, αἰτίας παραγράφουσιν ὅτι ‘τὰ δ’ ἐπέκεινα θῖνες ἄνυδροι καὶ θηριώδεις’, ἢ ‘πηλὸς ἀιδνής’, ἢ ‘Σκυθικὸν κρύος’, ἢ [2] ‘πέλαγος πεπηγός’, οὕτως ἐμοὶ περὶ τὴν τῶν βίων τῶν παραλλήλων γραφὴν τὸν ἐφικτὸν εἰκότι λόγῳ καὶ βάσιμον ἱστορίᾳ πραγμάτων ἐχομένῃ χρόνον διελθόντι, περὶ [3] τῶν ἀνωτέρω καλῶς εἶχεν εἰπεῖν ‘τὰ δ’ ἐπέκεινα τερατώδη καὶ τραγικά, ποιηταὶ καὶ μυθογράφοι νέμονται, [4] καὶ οὐκέτ’ ἔχει πίστιν οὐδὲ σαφήνειαν.’ ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸν περὶ Λυκούργου τοῦ νομοθέτου καὶ Νομᾶ τοῦ βασιλέως λόγον ἐκδόντες, ἐδοκοῦμεν οὐκ ἂν ἀλόγως τῷ Ῥωμύλῳ προσαναβῆναι, πλησίον τῶν χρόνων αὐτοῦ τῇ ἱστορίᾳ γεγονότες, σκοποῦντι δέ μοι

τοιῷδε φωτὶ (κατ’ Αἰσχύλον) τίς ξυμβήσεται; (Sept. 435)

τίν’ ἀντιτάξω τῷδε; τίς φερέγγυος; (Sept. 395, 396)

[5] ἐφαίνετο τὸν τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀοιδίμων οἰκιστὴν Ἀθηνῶν ἀντιστῆσαι καὶ παραβαλεῖν τῷ πατρὶ τῆς ἀνικήτου καὶ μεγαλοδόξου Ῥώμης. εἴη μὲν οὖν ἡμῖν ἐκκαθαιρόμενον λόγῳ τὸ μυθῶδες ὑπακοῦσαι καὶ λαβεῖν ἱστορίας ὄψιν· ὅπου δ’ ἂν αὐθαδῶς τοῦ πιθανοῦ περιφρονῇ καὶ μὴ δέχηται τὴν πρὸς τὸ εἰκὸς μεῖξιν, εὐγνωμόνων ἀκροατῶν δεησόμεθα καὶ πρᾴως τὴν ἀρχαιολογίαν προσδεχομένων.

[2] [1] Ἐδόκει δ’ οὖν ὁ Θησεὺς τῷ Ῥωμύλῳ κατὰ πολλὰς ἐναρμόττειν ὁμοιότητας; ἄμφω μὲν γὰρ ἀνεγγύω καὶ σκοτίω γενόμενοι δόξαν ἔσχον ἐκ θεῶν γεγονέναι,

ἄμφω δ’ αἰχμητά, τό γε δὴ καὶ ἴδμεν ἅπαντες (Il. 7, 281),

[2] καὶ μετὰ τοῦ δυνατοῦ τὸ ξυνετὸν ἔχοντες· πόλεων δὲ τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων ὁ μὲν ἔκτισε τὴν Ῥώμην, ὁ δὲ συνῴκισε τὰς Ἀθήνας· ἁρπαγὴ δὲ γυναικῶν ἑκατέρῳ [3] πρόσεστιν· οὐδέτερος δὲ δυστυχίαν περὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ νέμεσιν ἐγγενῆ διέφυγεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τελευτῶντες ἀμφότεροι λέγονται τοῖς ἑαυτῶν προσκροῦσαι πολίταις, εἴ τι τῶν ἥκιστα τραγικῶς εἰρῆσθαι δοκούντων ὄφελός ἐστι πρὸς ἀλήθειαν.

[3] [1] Θησέως τὸ μὲν πατρῷον γένος εἰς Ἐρεχθέα καὶ τοὺς πρώτους αὐτόχθονας ἀνήκει, τῷ δὲ μητρῴῳ Πελοπίδης [2] ἦν. Πέλοψ γὰρ οὐ χρημάτων πλήθει μᾶλλον ἢ παίδων μέγιστον ἴσχυσε τῶν ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ βασιλέων, πολλὰς μὲν ἐκδόμενος θυγατέρας τοῖς ἀρίστοις, πολλοὺς δὲ ταῖς πόλεσιν υἱοὺς ἐγκατασπείρας ἄρχοντας· ὧν εἷς γενόμενος Πιτθεὺς ὁ Θησέως πάππος πόλιν μὲν οὐ μεγάλην τὴν Τροιζηνίων ᾤκισε, δόξαν δὲ μάλιστα πάντων ὡς ἀνὴρ λόγιος ἐν τοῖς τότε καὶ σοφώτατος ἔσχεν.

[3] ἦν δὲ τῆς σοφίας ἐκείνης τοιαύτη τις ὡς ἔοικεν ἰδέα καὶ δύναμις, οἵᾳ χρησάμενος Ἡσίοδος εὐδοκιμεῖ μάλιστα [4] περὶ τὰς ἐν τοῖς Ἔργοις γνωμολογίας, καὶ μίαν γε τούτων ἐκείνην λέγουσι Πιτθέως εἶναι (Hes. Erg. 370)·

Μισθὸς δ’ ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ εἰρημένος ἄρκιος ἔστω.

τοῦτο μὲν οὖν καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης ὁ φιλόσοφος (fr. 556) εἴρηκεν, ὁ δ’ Εὐριπίδης (Hipp. 11) τὸν Ἱππόλυτον ‘ἁγνοῦ Πιτθέως παίδευμα’ προσειπὼν ἐμφαίνει τὴν περὶ τὸν Πιτθέα δόξαν.

[5] Αἰγεῖ δὲ παίδων δεομένῳ τὴν Πυθίαν ἀνελεῖν λέγουσι τὸν θρυλούμενον χρησμόν, διακελευομένην μηδεμιᾷ γυναικὶ συγγενέσθαι πρὶν ἐλθεῖν εἰς Ἀθήνας, οὐ πάνυ δὲ τοῦτο φράζειν εὐδήλως δοκοῦσαν. ὅθεν εἰς Τροιζῆνα παρελθὼν ἀνεκοινοῦτο Πιτθεῖ τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ φωνὴν οὕτως ἔχουσαν (Hendess 20)·

Ἀσκοῦ τὸν προὔχοντα πόδα, μέγα φέρτατε λαῶν,

μὴ λύσῃς πρὶν δῆμον Ἀθηνέων εἰσαφικέσθαι·

ἄδηλον οὖν ὅ τι νοήσας ὁ Πιτθεὺς ἔπεισεν αὐτὸν ἢ διηπάτησε [6] τῇ Αἴθρᾳ συγγενέσθαι. συνελθὼν δὲ καὶ γνοὺς ἐκεῖνος ὅτι τῇ Πιτθέως θυγατρὶ συγγέγονε, καὶ κύειν αὐτὴν ὑπονοήσας, ἀπέλιπε ξίφος καὶ πέδιλα κρύψας ὑπὸ πέτραν μεγάλην ἐντὸς ἔχουσαν κοιλότητα συμμέτρως [7] ἐμπεριλαμβάνουσαν τὰ κείμενα· φράσας δὲ πρὸς μόνην ἐκείνην καὶ διακελευσάμενος, ἂν υἱὸς ἐξ αὐτοῦ γένηται καὶ λαβὼν ἀνδρὸς ἡλικίαν δυνατὸς ᾖ τὴν πέτραν ἀναστῆσαι καὶ ὑφελεῖν τὰ καταλειφθέντα, πέμπειν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔχοντα ταῦτα μηδενὸς εἰδότος, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔνεστι μάλιστα λανθάνοντα πάντας - ἰσχυρῶς γὰρ ἐδεδοίκει τοὺς Παλλαντίδας ἐπιβουλεύοντας αὐτῷ καὶ διὰ τὴν ἀπαιδίαν καταφρονοῦντας· ἦσαν δὲ πεντήκοντα παῖδες ἐκ Πάλλαντος γεγονότες - ἀπῄει.

[4] [1] Τεκούσης δὲ τῆς Αἴθρας υἱὸν οἱ μὲν εὐθὺς ὀνομασθῆναι Θησέα λέγουσι διὰ τὴν τῶν γνωρισμάτων θέσιν, οἱ δ’ ὕστερον Ἀθήνησι παῖδα θεμένου τοῦ Αἰγέως αὐτόν· τρεφόμενον δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Πιτθέως ἐπιστάτην ἔχειν καὶ παιδαγωγὸν ὄνομα Κοννίδαν, ᾧ μέχρι νῦν Ἀθηναῖοι μιᾷ πρότερον ἡμέρᾳ τῶν Θησείων κριὸν ἐναγίζουσι, μεμνημένοι καὶ τιμῶντες πολὺ δικαιότερον ἢ Σιλανίωνα τιμῶσι καὶ Παρράσιον, εἰκόνων Θησέως γραφεῖς καὶ πλάστας γενομένους.

[5] Ἔθους δ’ ὄντος ἔτι τότε τοὺς μεταβαίνοντας ἐκ παίδων ἐλθόντας εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀπάρχεσθαι τῷ θεῷ τῆς κόμης, ἦλθε μὲν εἰς Δελφοὺς ὁ Θησεύς (καὶ τόπον ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν Θησείαν ἔτι νῦν ὀνομάζεσθαι λέγουσιν), ἐκείρατο δὲ τῆς κεφαλῆς τὰ πρόσθεν μόνον, ὥσπερ Ὅμηρος (Il. 2, 542) ἔφη τοὺς Ἄβαντας· καὶ τοῦτο τῆς [2] κουρᾶς τὸ γένος Θησηὶς ὠνομάσθη δι’ ἐκεῖνον. οἱ δ’ Ἄβαντες ἐκείραντο πρῶτοι τὸν τρόπον τοῦτον, οὐχ ὑπ’ Ἀράβων διδαχθέντες, ὡς ἔνιοι νομίζουσιν, οὐδὲ Μυσοὺς ζηλώσαντες, ἀλλ’ ὄντες πολεμικοὶ καὶ ἀγχέμαχοι καὶ μάλιστα δὴ πάντων εἰς χεῖρας ὠθεῖσθαι τοῖς ἐναντίοις μεμαθηκότες, ὡς μαρτυρεῖ καὶ Ἀρχίλοχος (fr. 3 D.) ἐν τούτοις·

[3] Οὔ τοι πόλλ’ ἐπὶ τόξα τανύσσεται οὐδὲ θαμειαὶ

σφενδόναι, εὖτ’ ἂν δὴ μῶλον Ἄρης συνάγῃ

ἐν πεδίῳ, ξιφέων δὲ πολύστονον ἔσσεται ἔργον·

ταύτης γὰρ κεῖνοι δαίμονές εἰσι μάχης

δεσπόται Εὐβοίας δουρικλυτοί.

[4] ὅπως οὖν μὴ παρέχοιεν ἐκ τῶν τριχῶν ἀντίληψιν τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἀπεκείραντο. τοῦτο δ’ ἀμέλει καὶ Ἀλέξανδρον τὸν Μακεδόνα ἐννοήσαντά φασι προστάξαι τοῖς στρατηγοῖς ξυρεῖν τὰ γένεια τῶν Μακεδόνων, ὡς λαβὴν ταύτην ἐν ταῖς μάχαις οὖσαν προχειροτάτην.

[6] [1] Τὸν μὲν οὖν ἄλλον χρόνον ἔκρυπτεν Αἴθρα τὴν ἀληθινὴν τοῦ Θησέως γένεσιν· ἦν δὲ λόγος ὑπὸ τοῦ Πιτθέως διαδοθεὶς ὡς ἐκ Ποσειδῶνος τεκνωθείη. Ποσειδῶνα γὰρ Τροιζήνιοι σέβονται διαφερόντως, καὶ θεὸς οὗτός ἐστιν αὐτοῖς πολιοῦχος, ᾧ καὶ καρπῶν ἀπάρχονται, [2] καὶ τρίαιναν ἐπίσημον ἔχουσι τοῦ νομίσματος. ἐπεὶ δὲ μειράκιον ὢν ἅμα τῇ τοῦ σώματος ῥώμῃ διέφαινεν ἀλκὴν καὶ φρόνημα μετὰ νοῦ καὶ συνέσεως βέβαιον, οὕτως αὐτὸν ἡ Αἴθρα πρὸς τὴν πέτραν προσαγαγοῦσα, καὶ φράσασα περὶ τῆς γενέσεως τἀληθές, ἐκέλευσεν ὑφελεῖν [3] τὰ πατρῷα σύμβολα καὶ πλεῖν εἰς Ἀθήνας. ὁ δὲ τὴν μὲν πέτραν ὑπέδυ καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἀνέωσε, πλεῖν δ’ ἀπέγνω, καίπερ οὔσης ἀσφαλείας καὶ δεομένων τοῦ τε πάππου καὶ τῆς μητρός. χαλεπὸν γὰρ ἦν πεζῇ πορεύεσθαι τὴν εἰς Ἀθήνας ὁδόν, οὐδὲν μέρος καθαρὸν οὐδ’ ἀκίνδυνον ὑπὸ [4] λῃστῶν καὶ κακούργων ἔχουσαν. ὁ γὰρ δὴ χρόνος ἐκεῖνος ἤνεγκεν ἀνθρώπους χειρῶν μὲν ἔργοις καὶ ποδῶν τάχεσι καὶ σωμάτων ῥώμαις ὡς ἔοικεν ὑπερφυεῖς καὶ ἀκαμάτους, πρὸς οὐδὲν δὲ τῇ φύσει χρωμένους ἐπιεικὲς οὐδ’ ὠφέλιμον, ἀλλ’ ὕβρει τε χαίροντας ὑπερηφάνῳ καὶ ἀπολαύοντας τῆς δυνάμεως ‹τὸ› ὠμότητι καὶ πικρίᾳ καὶ τῷ κρατεῖν βιάζεσθαι καὶ διαφθείρειν τὸ παραπῖπτον, αἰδῶ δὲ καὶ δικαιοσύνην καὶ τὸ ἴσον καὶ τὸ φιλάνθρωπον, ὡς ἀτολμίᾳ τοῦ ἀδικεῖν καὶ φόβῳ τοῦ ἀδικεῖσθαι τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐπαινοῦντας, οὐδὲν οἰομένους προσήκειν τοῖς πλέον [5] ἔχειν δυναμένοις. τούτων Ἡρακλῆς τοὺς μὲν ἐξέκοπτε καὶ ἀνῄρει περιιών, οἱ δὲ λανθάνοντες ἐκείνου παριόντος ἔπτησσον καὶ ἀνεδύοντο καὶ παρημελοῦντο ταπεινὰ πράττοντες.

[6] ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἡρακλῆς ἐχρήσατο συμφορᾷ, καὶ κτείνας Ἴφιτον εἰς Λυδίαν ἀπῆρε, καὶ συχνὸν ἐκεῖ χρόνον ἐδούλευε παρ’ Ὀμφάλῃ, δίκην τοῦ φόνου ταύτην ἐπιθεὶς αὑτῷ, τότε τὰ μὲν Λυδῶν πράγματα πολλὴν ἔσχεν εἰρήνην καὶ ἄδειαν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς περὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα τόποις αὖθις ἐξήνθησαν αἱ κακίαι καὶ ἀνερράγησαν, οὐδενὸς [7] πιεζοῦντος οὐδὲ κατείργοντος. ἦν οὖν ὀλέθριος ἡ πορεία τοῖς Ἀθήναζε πεζῇ βαδίζουσιν ἐκ Πελοποννήσου, καὶ τῶν λῃστῶν καὶ κακούργων ἕκαστον ἐξηγούμενος ὁ Πιτθεύς, ὁποῖος εἴη καὶ ὁποῖα δρῴη περὶ τοὺς ξένους, [8] ἔπειθε τὸν Θησέα κομίζεσθαι διὰ θαλάττης. τὸν δὲ πάλαι μὲν ὡς ἔοικε λεληθότως διέκαιεν ἡ δόξα τῆς Ἡρακλέους ἀρετῆς, καὶ πλεῖστον ἐκείνου λόγον εἶχε, καὶ προθυμότατος ἀκροατὴς ἐγίνετο τῶν διηγουμένων ἐκεῖνον οἷος εἴη, μάλιστα δὲ τῶν αὐτὸν ἑωρακότων καὶ [9] πράττοντι καὶ λέγοντι προστετυχηκότων· τότε δὲ παντάπασιν ἦν φανερὸς πεπονθὼς ὅπερ ὕστερον χρόνοις πολλοῖς Θεμιστοκλῆς ἔπαθε καὶ εἶπεν, ὡς καθεύδειν αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐῴη τὸ Μιλτιάδου τρόπαιον· οὕτως ἐκείνῳ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους θαυμάζοντι τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ νύκτωρ ὄνειρος ἦσαν αἱ πράξεις, καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐξῆγεν αὐτὸν ὁ ζῆλος καὶ ἀνηρέθιζε, ταὐτὰ πράττειν διανοούμενον.

[7] [1] Ἐτύγχανον δὲ καὶ γένους κοινωνοῦντες, ἐξ ἀνεψιῶν ὄντες. Αἴθρα μὲν γὰρ ἦν Πιτθέως θυγάτηρ, Ἀλκμήνη δὲ Λυσιδίκης, Λυσιδίκη δὲ καὶ Πιτθεὺς ἀδελφοὶ γεγονότες [2] ἐξ Ἱπποδαμείας καὶ Πέλοπος. δεινὸν οὖν ἐποιεῖτο καὶ οὐκ ἀνεκτὸν, ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἐπὶ τοὺς πανταχοῦ πονηροὺς βαδίζοντα καθαίρειν γῆν καὶ θάλατταν, αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς ἐμποδὼν ἄθλους ἀποδιδράσκειν, τὸν μὲν λόγῳ καὶ δόξῃ πατέρα καταισχύνων διὰ θαλάττης φυγῇ κομιζόμενος, τῷ δ’ ὄντι προσφέρων γνωρίσματα πέδιλα καὶ ξίφος ἀναίμακτον, οὐκ ἔργοις εὐθὺς ἀγαθοῖς καὶ πράξεσι παρέχων ἐμφανῆ χαρακτῆρα τῆς εὐγενείας.

[3] Τοιούτῳ φρονήματι καὶ τοιούτοις λογισμοῖς ἐξώρμησεν, ὡς ἀδικήσων μὲν οὐδένα, τοὺς δ’ ὑπάρχοντας βίας ἀμυνούμενος.

[8] [1] Καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐν τῇ Ἐπιδαυρίᾳ Περιφήτην, ὅπλῳ χρώμενον κορύνῃ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο Κορυνήτην ἐπικαλούμενον, ἁπτόμενον αὐτοῦ καὶ κωλύοντα προάγειν, συμβαλὼν ἀπέκτεινεν· ἡσθεὶς δὲ τῇ κορύνῃ, λαβὼν ὅπλον ἐποιήσατο καὶ διετέλει χρώμενος ὥσπερ ὁ Ἡρακλῆς [2] τῷ δέρματι τοῦ λέοντος. ἐκείνῳ μὲν οὖν ἐπίδειξις ἦν φορούμενον ἡλίκου τὸ μέγεθος θηρίου κρατήσειεν, οὗτος δὲ τὴν κορύνην ἐπεδείκνυεν, ἡττημένην μὲν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, μετ’ αὐτοῦ δ’ ἀήττητον οὖσαν.

[3] Ἐν δ’ Ἰσθμῷ Σίνιν τὸν πιτυοκάμπτην, ᾧ τρόπῳ πολλοὺς ἀνῄρει, τούτῳ διέφθειρεν, αὐτὸς οὐ μεμελετηκὼς οὐδ’ εἰθισμένος, ἐπιδείξας δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν ὅτι καὶ τέχνης περίεστι καὶ μελέτης ἁπάσης. ἦν δὲ τῷ Σίνιδι καλλίστη [4] καὶ μεγίστη θυγάτηρ ὄνομα Περιγούνη. ταύτην τοῦ πατρὸς ἀνῃρημένου φυγοῦσαν ἐζήτει περιιὼν ὁ Θησεύς. ἡ δ’ εἰς τόπον ἀπελθοῦσα λόχμην ἔχοντα πολλὴν στοιβήν τε πλείστην καὶ ἀσφάραγον, ἀκάκως πάνυ καὶ παιδικῶς ὥσπερ αἰσθανομένων δεομένη προσεύχετο μεθ’ ὅρκων, ἂν σώσωσιν αὐτὴν καὶ ἀποκρύψωσι, μηδέποτε λυμανεῖσθαι [5] μηδὲ καύσειν. ἀνακαλουμένου δὲ τοῦ Θησέως καὶ πίστιν διδόντος ὡς ἐπιμελήσεται καλῶς αὐτῆς καὶ οὐδὲν ἀδικήσει, προῆλθε, καὶ τῷ μὲν Θησεῖ συγγενομένη Μελάνιππον ἔτεκε, Δηιονεῖ δὲ τῷ Εὐρύτου τοῦ Οἰχαλιέως ὕστερον [6] συνῴκησε Θησέως δόντος. ἐκ δὲ Μελανίππου τοῦ Θησέως γενόμενος Ἴωξος Ὀρνύτῳ τῆς εἰς Καρίαν ἀποικίας μετέσχεν· ὅθεν Ἰωξίδαις καὶ Ἰωξίσι πάτριον κατέστη μήτ’ ἄκανθαν ἀσφαράγου μήτε στοιβὴν καίειν, ἀλλὰ σέβεσθαι καὶ τιμᾶν.

[9] [1] Ἡ δὲ Κρομμυωνία σῦς, ἣν Φαιὰν προσωνόμαζον, οὐ φαῦλον ἦν θηρίον, ἀλλὰ μάχιμον καὶ χαλεπὸν κρατηθῆναι.

[2] Ταύτην ὁδοῦ πάρεργον, ὡς μὴ δοκοίη πάντα πρὸς ἀνάγκην ποιεῖν, ὑποστὰς ἀνεῖλε, καὶ ἅμα τῶν μὲν ἀνθρώπων τοῖς πονηροῖς ἀμυνόμενον οἰόμενος δεῖν τὸν ἀγαθὸν προσφέρεσθαι, τῶν δὲ θηρίων καὶ προεπιχειροῦντα τοῖς γενναίοις μάχεσθαι καὶ διακινδυνεύειν. ἔνιοι δέ φασι τὴν Φαιὰν λῃστρίδα γενέσθαι γυναῖκα φονικὴν καὶ ἀκόλαστον, αὐτόθι κατοικοῦσαν ἐν Κρομμυῶνι, σῦν δ’ ἐπονομασθεῖσαν διὰ τὸ ἦθος καὶ τὸν βίον, εἶθ’ ὑπὸ Θησέως ἀποθανεῖν.

[10] [1] Σκείρωνα δὲ πρὸ τῆς Μεγαρικῆς ἀνεῖλε ῥίψας κατὰ τῶν πετρῶν, ὡς μὲν ὁ πολὺς λόγος λῃστεύοντα τοὺς παριόντας, ὡς δ’ ἔνιοι λέγουσιν ὕβρει καὶ τρυφῇ προτείνοντα τὼ πόδε τοῖς ξένοις καὶ κελεύοντα νίπτειν, εἶτα λακτίζοντα καὶ ἀπωθοῦντα νίπτοντας εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν.

[2] οἱ δὲ Μεγαρόθεν συγγραφεῖς (FGrH 487 F 1) ὁμόσε τῇ φήμῃ βαδίζοντες καὶ ‘τῷ πολλῷ χρόνῳ’, κατὰ Σιμωνίδην (fr. 193 B4`4), ‘πολεμοῦντες’, οὔθ’ ὑβριστὴν οὔτε λῃστὴν γεγονέναι τὸν Σκείρωνά φασιν, ἀλλὰ λῃστῶν μὲν κολαστήν, ἀγαθῶν δὲ καὶ δικαίων οἰκεῖον ἀνδρῶν καὶ [3] φίλον. Αἰακόν τε γὰρ Ἑλλήνων ὁσιώτατον νομίζεσθαι, καὶ Κυχρέα τιμὰς θεῶν ἔχειν Ἀθήνησι τὸν Σαλαμίνιον, τὴν δὲ Πηλέως καὶ Τελαμῶνος ἀρετὴν ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἀγνοεῖσθαι· Σκείρωνα τοίνυν Κυχρέως μὲν γενέσθαι γαμβρόν, Αἰακοῦ δὲ πενθερόν, Πηλέως δὲ καὶ Τελαμῶνος πάππον, ἐξ Ἐνδηίδος γεγονότων τῆς Σκείρωνος καὶ [4] Χαρικλοῦς θυγατρός· οὔκουν εἰκὸς εἶναι τῷ κακίστῳ τοὺς ἀρίστους εἰς κοινωνίαν γένους ἐλθεῖν, τὰ μέγιστα καὶ τιμιώτατα λαμβάνοντας καὶ διδόντας. ἀλλὰ Θησέα φασὶν οὐχ ὅτε τὸ πρῶτον ἐβάδιζεν εἰς Ἀθήνας, ἀλλ’ ὕστερον Ἐλευσῖνά τε λαβεῖν Μεγαρέων ἐχόντων, παρακρουσάμενον Διοκλέα τὸν ἄρχοντα, καὶ Σκείρωνα ἀποκτεῖναι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔχει τοιαύτας ἀντιλογίας.

[11] [1] Ἐν δ’ Ἐλευσῖνι Κερκυόνα τὸν ἐξ Ἀρκαδίας καταπαλαίσας ἀνεῖλε, καὶ μικρὸν προελθὼν Δαμάστην ἐν Ἐρινεῷ τὸν Προκρούστην, ἀναγκάσας αὑτὸν ἀπισοῦν τοῖς κλιντῆρσιν, ὥσπερ τοὺς ξένους ἐκεῖνος. ἔπραττε δὲ ταῦτα [2] μιμούμενος τὸν Ἡρακλέα. καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος οἷς ἐπεβουλεύετο τρόποις ἀμυνόμενος τοὺς προεπιχειροῦντας, ἔθυσε τὸν Βούσιριν καὶ κατεπάλαισε τὸν Ἀνταῖον καὶ τὸν Κύκνον κατεμονομάχησε καὶ τὸν Τέρμερον συρρήξας [3] τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀπέκτεινεν. ἀφ’ οὗ δὴ καὶ τὸ Τερμέρειον κακὸν ὀνομασθῆναι λέγουσι· παίων γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε τῇ κεφαλῇ τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας ὁ Τέρμερος ἀπώλλυεν. οὕτω δὴ καὶ Θησεὺς κολάζων τοὺς πονηροὺς ἐπεξῆλθεν, οἷς μὲν ἐβιάζοντο τοὺς ἄλλους ὑπ’ ἐκείνου καταβιαζομένους, ἐν δὲ τοῖς τρόποις τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἀδικίας τὰ δίκαια πάσχοντας.

[12] [1] Προϊόντι δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ γενομένῳ κατὰ τὸν Κηφισὸν ἄνδρες ἐκ τοῦ Φυταλιδῶν γένους ἀπαντήσαντες ἠσπάσαντο πρῶτοι, καὶ δεομένου καθαρθῆναι τοῖς νενομισμένοις ἁγνίσαντες καὶ μειλίχια θύσαντες εἱστίασαν οἴκοι, μηδενὸς πρότερον αὐτῷ φιλανθρώπου καθ’ ὁδὸν ἐντυχόντος.

[2] Ἡμέρᾳ μὲν οὖν ὀγδόῃ λέγεται Κρονίου μηνός, ὃν νῦν Ἑκατομβαιῶνα καλοῦσι, κατελθεῖν. κατελθὼν δ’ εἰς τὴν πόλιν εὗρε τά τε κοινὰ ταραχῆς μεστὰ καὶ διχοφροσύνης, καὶ τὰ περὶ τὸν Αἰγέα καὶ τὸν οἶκον ἰδίᾳ νοσοῦντα.

[3] Μήδεια γὰρ ἐκ Κορίνθου φυγοῦσα φαρμάκοις ὑποσχομένη τῆς ἀτεκνίας ἀπαλλάξειν Αἰγέα συνῆν αὐτῷ. προαισθομένη δὲ περὶ τοῦ Θησέως αὕτη, τοῦ δ’ Αἰγέως ἀγνοοῦντος, ὄντος δὲ πρεσβυτέρου καὶ φοβουμένου πάντα διὰ τὴν στάσιν, ἔπεισεν αὐτὸν ὡς ξένον ἑστιῶντα φαρμά[4]κοις ἀνελεῖν. ἐλθὼν οὖν ὁ Θησεὺς ἐπὶ τὸ ἄριστον, οὐκ ἐδοκίμαζε φράζειν αὑτὸν ὅστις εἴη πρότερος, ἐκείνῳ δὲ βουλόμενος ἀρχὴν ἀνευρέσεως παρασχεῖν, κρεῶν παρακειμένων σπασάμενος τὴν μάχαιραν ὡς ταύτῃ τεμῶν [5] ἐδείκνυεν ἐκείνῳ. ταχὺ δὲ καταμαθὼν ὁ Αἰγεύς, τὴν μὲν κύλικα τοῦ φαρμάκου κατέβαλε, τὸν δ’ υἱὸν ἀνακρίνας ἠσπάζετο καὶ συναγαγὼν τοὺς πολίτας ἐγνώριζεν, [6] ἡδέως δεχομένους διὰ τὴν ἀνδραγαθίαν. λέγεται δὲ τῆς κύλικος πεσούσης ἐκχυθῆναι τὸ φάρμακον ὅπου νῦν ἐν Δελφινίῳ τὸ περίφρακτόν ἐστιν· ἐνταῦθα γὰρ ὁ Αἰγεὺς ᾤκει, καὶ τὸν Ἑρμῆν τὸν πρὸς ἕω τοῦ ἱεροῦ καλοῦσιν ἐπ’ Αἰγέως πύλαις.

[13] [1] Οἱ δὲ Παλλαντίδαι πρότερον μὲν ἤλπιζον αὐτοὶ τὴν βασιλείαν καθέξειν Αἰγέως ἀτέκνου τελευτήσαντος· ἐπεὶ δὲ Θησεὺς ἀπεδείχθη διάδοχος, χαλεπῶς φέροντες εἰ βασιλεύει μὲν Αἰγεὺς θετὸς γενόμενος Πανδίονι καὶ μηδὲν Ἐρεχθείδαις προσήκων, βασιλεύσει δ’ ὁ Θησεὺς πάλιν ἔπηλυς ὢν καὶ ξένος, εἰς πόλεμον καθίσταντο, [2] καὶ διελόντες ἑαυτούς, οἱ μὲν ἐμφανῶς Σφηττόθεν ἐχώρουν ἐπὶ τὸ ἄστυ μετὰ τοῦ πατρός, οἱ δὲ Γαργηττοῖ κρύψαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐνήδρευον, ὡς διχόθεν ἐπιθησόμενοι τοῖς ὑπεναντίοις. ἦν δὲ κῆρυξ μετ’ αὐτῶν ἀνὴρ Ἁγνούσιος [3] ὄνομα Λεώς. οὗτος ἐξήγγειλε τῷ Θησεῖ τὰ βεβουλευμένα τοῖς Παλλαντίδαις. ὁ δ’ ἐξαίφνης ἐπιπεσὼν τοῖς ἐνεδρεύουσι, πάντας διέφθειρεν. οἱ δὲ μετὰ τοῦ Πάλλαντος [4] πυθόμενοι διεσπάρησαν. ἐκ τούτου φασὶ τῷ Παλληνέων δήμῳ πρὸς τὸν Ἁγνουσίων ἐπιγαμίαν μὴ εἶναι, μηδὲ κηρύττεσθαι τοὐπιχώριον παρ’ αὐτοῖς ‘ἀκούετε λεῴ’· μισοῦσι γὰρ τοὔνομα διὰ τὴν προδοσίαν τοῦ ἀνδρός.

[14] [1] Ὁ δὲ Θησεὺς ἐνεργὸς εἶναι βουλόμενος, ἅμα δὲ καὶ δημαγωγῶν, ἐξῆλθεν ἐπὶ τὸν Μαραθώνιον ταῦρον, οὐκ ὀλίγα πράγματα τοῖς οἰκοῦσι τὴν Τετράπολιν παρέχοντα, καὶ χειρωσάμενος ἐπεδείξατο ζῶντα διὰ τοῦ ἄστεος ἐλάσας, εἶτα τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι τῷ Δελφινίῳ κατέθυσεν.

[2] Ἡ δ’ Ἑκάλη καὶ τὸ περὶ αὐτὴν μυθολόγημα τοῦ ξενισμοῦ καὶ τῆς ὑποδοχῆς ἔοικε μὴ πάσης ἀμοιρεῖν ἀληθείας. ἔθυον γὰρ Ἑκαλῆσιν οἱ πέριξ δῆμοι συνιόντες Ἑκαλείῳ Διί, καὶ τὴν Ἑκάλην ἐτίμων, Ἑκαλίνην ὑποκοριζόμενοι διὰ τὸ κἀκείνην νέον ὄντα κομιδῇ τὸν Θησέα ξενίζουσαν ἀσπάσασθαι πρεσβυτικῶς καὶ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι [3] τοιούτοις ὑποκορισμοῖς. ἐπεὶ δ’ εὔξατο μὲν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ τῷ Διὶ βαδίζοντος ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, εἰ σῶς παραγένοιτο θύσειν, ἀπέθανε δὲ πρὶν ἐκεῖνον ἐπανελθεῖν, ἔσχε τὰς εἰρημένας ἀμοιβὰς τῆς φιλοξενίας τοῦ Θησέως κελεύσαντος, ὡς Φιλόχορος (FGrH 328 F 109) ἱστόρηκεν.

[15] [1] Ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἧκον ἐκ Κρήτης τὸ τρίτον οἱ τὸν δασμὸν ἀπάξοντες. ὅτι μὲν οὖν Ἀνδρόγεω περὶ τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἀποθανεῖν δόλῳ δόξαντος ὅ τε Μίνως πολλὰ κακὰ πολεμῶν εἰργάζετο τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, καὶ τὸ δαιμόνιον ἔφθειρε τὴν χώραν - ἀφορία τε γὰρ καὶ νόσος ἐνέσκηψε πολλὴ καὶ ἀνέδυσαν οἱ ποταμοί - καὶ τοῦ θεοῦ προδείξαντος ἱλασαμένοις τὸν Μίνω καὶ διαλλαγεῖσι λωφήσειν τὸ μήνιμα καὶ τῶν κακῶν ἔσεσθαι παῦλαν, ἐπικηρυκευσάμενοι καὶ δεηθέντες ἐποιήσαντο συνθήκας, ὥστε πέμπειν δι’ ἐννέα ἐτῶν δασμὸν ἠιθέους ἑπτὰ καὶ παρθένους τοσαύτας, ὁμολογοῦσιν οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν συγγραφέων· [2] τοὺς δὲ παῖδας εἰς Κρήτην κομιζομένους ὁ μὲν τραγικώτατος μῦθος ἀποφαίνει τὸν Μινώταυρον ἐν τῷ Λαβυρίνθῳ διαφθείρειν, ἢ πλανωμένους αὐτοὺς καὶ τυχεῖν ἐξόδου μὴ δυναμένους ἐκεῖ καταθνῄσκειν, τὸν δὲ Μινώταυρον, ὥσπερ Εὐριπίδης (fr. 996 N²) φησί,

Σύμμεικτον εἶδος καὶ ἀποφώλιον βρέφος

γεγονέναι καὶ (fr. 997 N²)

Ταύρου μεμεῖχθαι καὶ βροτοῦ διπλῇ φύσει.

[16] [1] Φιλόχορος (FGrH 328 F 17a) δέ φησιν οὐ ταῦτα συγχωρεῖν Κρῆτας, ἀλλὰ λέγειν ὅτι φρουρὰ μὲν ἦν ὁ Λαβύρινθος οὐθὲν ἔχων κακὸν ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸ μὴ διαφυγεῖν τοὺς φυλαττομένους, ἀγῶνα δ’ ὁ Μίνως ἐπ’ Ἀνδρόγεῳ γυμνικὸν ἐποίει καὶ τοὺς παῖδας ἆθλα τοῖς νικῶσιν ἐδίδου, τέως ἐν τῷ Λαβυρίνθῳ φυλαττομένους· ἐνίκα δὲ τοὺς προτέρους ἀγῶνας ὁ μέγιστον παρ’ αὐτῷ δυνάμενος τότε καὶ στρατηγῶν ὄνομα Ταῦρος, ἀνὴρ οὐκ ἐπιεικὴς καὶ ἥμερος τὸν τρόπον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς παισὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων [2] ὑπερηφάνως καὶ χαλεπῶς προσφερόμενος. Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 443) δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν τῇ Βοττιαίων πολιτείᾳ δῆλός ἐστιν οὐ νομίζων ἀναιρεῖσθαι τοὺς παῖδας ὑπὸ τοῦ Μίνω, ἀλλὰ θητεύοντας ἐν τῇ Κρήτῃ καταγηράσκειν· καί ποτε Κρῆτας εὐχὴν παλαιὰν ἀποδιδόντας ἀνθρώπων ἀπαρχὴν εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀποστέλλειν, τοῖς δὲ πεμπομένοις ἀναμειχθέντας ἐκγόνους ἐκείνων συνεξελθεῖν· ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἦσαν ἱκανοὶ τρέφειν ἑαυτοὺς αὐτόθι, πρῶτον μὲν εἰς Ἰταλίαν διαπερᾶσαι κἀκεῖ κατοικεῖν περὶ τὴν Ἰαπυγίαν, ἐκεῖθεν δ’ αὖθις εἰς Θρᾴκην κομισθῆναι καὶ κληθῆναι [3] Βοττιαίους· διὸ τὰς κόρας τῶν Βοττιαίων θυσίαν τινὰ τελούσας ἐπᾴδειν· ‘ἴωμεν εἰς Ἀθήνας’. ἔοικε γὰρ ὄντως χαλεπὸν εἶναι φωνὴν ἐχούσῃ πόλει καὶ μοῦσαν ἀπεχθάνεσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Μίνως ἀεὶ διετέλει κακῶς ἀκούων καὶ λοιδορούμενος ἐν τοῖς Ἀττικοῖς θεάτροις, καὶ οὔθ’ Ἡσίοδος (fr. 103 Rz.) αὐτὸν ὤνησε ‘βασιλεύτατον’ οὔθ’ Ὅμηρος (Od. 19, 179) ‘ὀαριστὴν Διὸς’ προσαγορεύσας, ἀλλ’ ἐπικρατήσαντες οἱ τραγικοὶ πολλὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ λογείου καὶ τῆς σκηνῆς ἀδοξίαν αὐτοῦ κατεσκέδασαν ὡς χαλεποῦ [4] καὶ βιαίου γενομένου. καίτοι φασὶ τὸν μὲν Μίνω βασιλέα καὶ νομοθέτην, δικαστὴν δὲ τὸν Ῥαδάμανθυν εἶναι καὶ φύλακα τῶν ὡρισμένων ὑπ’ ἐκείνου δικαίων.

[17] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὖν καθῆκεν ὁ χρόνος τοῦ τρίτου δασμοῦ, καὶ παρέχειν ἔδει τοὺς πατέρας ἐπὶ τὸν κλῆρον οἷς ἦσαν ἠίθεοι παῖδες, αὖθις ἀνεφύοντο τῷ Αἰγεῖ διαβολαὶ πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας, ὀδυρομένους καὶ ἀγανακτοῦντας, ὅτι πάντων αἴτιος ὢν ἐκεῖνος οὐδὲν μέρος μετέχει τῆς κολάσεως μόνος, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ νόθῳ καὶ ξένῳ παιδὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν πεποιημένος, αὐτοὺς περιορᾷ γνησίων ἐρήμους καὶ ἄπαιδας [2] ἀπολειπομένους. ταῦτ’ ἠνία τὸν Θησέα, καὶ δικαιῶν μὴ ἀμελεῖν ἀλλὰ κοινωνεῖν τῆς τύχης τοῖς πολίταις, ἐπέδωκεν ἑαυτὸν ἄνευ κλήρου προσελθών. καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις τό τε φρόνημα θαυμαστὸν ἐφάνη, καὶ τὸ δημοτικὸν ἠγάπησαν, ὁ δ’ Αἰγεὺς ἐπεὶ δεόμενος καὶ καθικετεύων ἀμετάπειστον ἑώρα καὶ ἀμετάτρεπτον, ἀπεκλήρωσε τοὺς [3] ἄλλους παῖδας. Ἑλλάνικος (FGrH 323a F 14) δέ φησιν οὐ τοὺς λαχόντας ἀπὸ κλήρου καὶ τὰς λαχούσας ἐκπέμπειν τὴν πόλιν, αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Μίνω παραγενόμενον ἐκλέγεσθαι, καὶ τὸν Θησέα πάντων ἑλέσθαι πρῶτον ἐπὶ τοῖς ὁρισθεῖσιν· ὡρισμένον δ’ εἶναι τὴν μὲν ναῦν Ἀθηναίους παρέχειν, ἐμβάντας δὲ πλεῖν σὺν αὐτῷ τοὺς ἠιθέους μηδὲν ‘ὅπλον ἀρήιον’ ἐπιφερομένους, ἀπολομένου δὲ τοῦ Μινωταύρου πέρας ἔχειν τὴν ποινήν.

[4] Πρότερον μὲν οὖν οὐδεμία σωτηρίας ἐλπὶς ὑπέκειτο· διὸ καὶ μέλαν ἱστίον ἔχουσαν ὡς ἐπὶ συμφορᾷ προδήλῳ τὴν ναῦν ἔπεμπον· τότε δὲ τοῦ Θησέως τὸν πατέρα θαρρύνοντος καὶ μεγαληγοροῦντος ὡς χειρώσεται τὸν Μινώταυρον, ἔδωκεν ἕτερον ἱστίον λευκὸν τῷ κυβερνήτῃ, κελεύσας ὑποστρέφοντα σῳζομένου τοῦ Θησέως ἐπάρασθαι τὸ λευκόν, εἰ δὲ μὴ, τῷ μέλανι πλεῖν καὶ ἀποσημαίνειν [5] τὸ πάθος. ὁ δὲ Σιμωνίδης (fr. 33 D.) οὐ λευκόν φησιν εἶναι τὸ δοθὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ Αἰγέως, ἀλλὰ ‘φοινίκεον ἱστίον ὑγρῷ πεφυρμένον πρίνου ἄνθει ἐριθαλοῦς’· καὶ τοῦτο τῆς σωτηρίας αὐτῶν ποιήσασθαι σημεῖον. ἐκυβέρνα δὲ τὴν ναῦν Ἀμαρσυάδας Φέρεκλος, ὥς φησι Σιμωνίδης [6] (fr. 56 B4`4). Φιλόχορος (FGrH 328 F 111) δὲ παρὰ Σκίρου φησὶν ἐκ Σαλαμῖνος τὸν Θησέα λαβεῖν κυβερνήτην μὲν Ναυσίθοον, πρωρέα δὲ Φαίακα, μηδέπω τότε τῶν Ἀθηναίων προσεχόντων τῇ θαλάσσῃ· καὶ γὰρ εἶναι τῶν [7] ἠιθέων ἕνα Μενέσθην Σκίρου θυγατριδοῦν· μαρτυρεῖν δὲ τούτοις ἡρῷα Ναυσιθόου καὶ Φαίακος εἱσαμένου Θησέως Φαληροῖ πρὸς τῷ τοῦ Σκίρου [ἱερῷ], καὶ τὴν ἑορτὴν τὰ Κυβερνήσιά φησιν ἐκείνοις τελεῖσθαι.

[18] [1] Γενομένου δὲ τοῦ κλήρου, παραλαβὼν τοὺς λαχόντας ὁ Θησεὺς ἐκ τοῦ πρυτανείου καὶ παρελθὼν εἰς Δελφίνιον, ἔθηκεν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι τὴν ἱκετηρίαν. ἦν δὲ κλάδος ἀπὸ τῆς ἱερᾶς ἐλαίας ἐρίῳ λευκῷ [2] κατεστεμμένος. εὐξάμενος δὲ κατέβαινεν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ἕκτῃ μηνὸς ἱσταμένου Μουνυχιῶνος, ᾗ καὶ νῦν ἔτι τὰς [3] κόρας πέμπουσιν ἱλασομένας εἰς Δελφίνιον. λέγεται δ’ αὐτῷ τὸν μὲν ἐν Δελφοῖς ἀνελεῖν θεὸν Ἀφροδίτην καθηγεμόνα ποιεῖσθαι καὶ παρακαλεῖν συνέμπορον, θύοντι δὲ πρὸς θαλάσσῃ τὴν αἶγα θήλειαν οὖσαν αὐτομάτως τράγον γενέσθαι· διὸ καὶ καλεῖσθαι τὴν θεὸν Ἐπιτραγίαν.

[19] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ κατέπλευσεν εἰς Κρήτην, ὡς μὲν οἱ πολλοὶ γράφουσι καὶ ᾄδουσι, παρὰ τῆς Ἀριάδνης ἐρασθείσης τὸ λίνον λαβών, καὶ διδαχθεὶς ὡς ἔστι τοῦ λαβυρίνθου τοὺς ἑλιγμοὺς διεξελθεῖν, ἀπέκτεινε τὸν Μινώταυρον καὶ ἀπέπλευσε [2] τὴν Ἀριάδνην ἀναλαβὼν καὶ τοὺς ἠιθέους. Φερεκύδης (FGrH 3 F 150) δὲ καὶ τὰ ἐδάφη τῶν Κρητικῶν νεῶν φησιν ἐκκόψαι τὸν Θησέα, τὴν δίωξιν ἀφαιρούμενον.

[3] Δήμων (FGrH 327 F 5) δὲ καὶ τὸν Ταῦρον ἀναιρεθῆναί φησι τὸν τοῦ Μίνω στρατηγόν, ἐν τῷ λιμένι διαναυμαχοῦντα [4] τοῦ Θησέως ἐκπλέοντος. Ὡς δὲ Φιλόχορος (FGrH 328 F 17a) ἱστόρηκε, τὸν ἀγῶνα τοῦ Μίνω συντελοῦντος ἐπίδοξος ὢν ἅπαντας πάλιν νικήσειν ὁ Ταῦρος [5] ἐφθονεῖτο. καὶ γὰρ ἡ δύναμις αὐτοῦ διὰ τὸν τρόπον ἦν ἐπαχθής, καὶ διαβολὴν εἶχεν ὡς τῇ Πασιφάῃ πλησιάζων. διὸ καὶ τοῦ Θησέως ἀξιοῦντος ἀγωνίσασθαι συνεχώρησεν [6] ὁ Μίνως. ἔθους δ’ ὄντος ἐν Κρήτῃ θεᾶσθαι καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας, Ἀριάδνη παροῦσα πρός τε τὴν ὄψιν ἐξεπλάγη τοῦ Θησέως, καὶ τὴν ἄθλησιν ἐθαύμασε πάντων κρατήσαντος.

[7] ἡσθεὶς δὲ καὶ ὁ Μίνως μάλιστα τοῦ Ταύρου καταπαλαισθέντος καὶ προπηλακισθέντος, ἀπέδωκε τῷ Θησεῖ τοὺς παῖδας καὶ ἀνῆκε τῇ πόλει τὸν δασμόν.

[8] Ἰδίως δέ πως καὶ περιττῶς ὁ Κλείδημος (FGrH 323 F 17) ἀπήγγειλε περὶ τούτων, ἄνωθέν ποθεν ἀρξάμενος ὅτι δόγμα κοινὸν ἦν Ἑλλήνων μηδεμίαν ἐκπλεῖν τριήρη μηδαμόθεν ἀνδρῶν †πέντε πλείονας δεχομένην· τὸν δ’ ἄρχοντα τῆς Ἀργοῦς Ἰάσονα μόνον ..... περιπλεῖν, ἐξείργοντα τῆς θαλάττης τὰ λῃστήρια. Δαιδάλου δὲ πλοίῳ φυγόντος εἰς Ἀθήνας, Μίνως παρὰ τὰ δόγματα μακραῖς ναυσὶ διώκων ὑπὸ χειμῶνος εἰς Σικελίαν ἀπηνέχθη, [9] κἀκεῖ κατέστρεψε τὸν βίον. ἐπεὶ δὲ Δευκαλίων ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ πολεμικῶς ἔχων πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἔπεμψεν ἐκδιδόναι Δαίδαλον αὑτῷ κελεύων, ἢ τοὺς παῖδας ἀποκτενεῖν ἀπειλῶν οὓς ἔλαβεν ὁμήρους ὁ Μίνως, τούτῳ μὲν ἀπεκρίνατο πρᾴως ὁ [δὲ] Θησεὺς, παραιτούμενος ἀνεψιὸν ὄντα Δαίδαλον κἀκείνῳ κατὰ γένος προσήκοντα, μητρὸς ὄντα Μερόπης τῆς Ἐρεχθέως, αὐτὸς δὲ ναυπηγίαν ἐπεβάλλετο, τὴν μὲν ἐν Θυμαιταδῶν αὐτόθι μακρὰν τῆς ξενικῆς ὁδοῦ, τὴν δὲ διὰ Πιτθέως ἐν Τροιζῆνι, [10] βουλόμενος λανθάνειν. γενομένων δ’ ἑτοίμων ἐξέπλευσε, τόν τε Δαίδαλον ἔχων καὶ φυγάδας ἐκ Κρήτης καθηγεμόνας· οὐδενὸς δὲ προειδότος, ἀλλὰ ναῦς φιλίας οἰομένων τῶν Κρητῶν προσφέρεσθαι, τοῦ λιμένος κρατήσας καὶ ἀποβὰς ἔφθασεν εἰς τὴν Κνωσσὸν παρελθών, καὶ μάχην ἐν πύλαις τοῦ Λαβυρίνθου συνάψας ἀπέκτεινε τὸν Δευκαλίωνα καὶ τοὺς δορυφόρους. ἐν δὲ τοῖς πράγμασι τῆς Ἀριάδνης γενομένης, σπεισάμενος πρὸς αὐτὴν τούς τ’ ἠιθέους ἀνέλαβε καὶ φιλίαν ἐποίησε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις πρὸς τοὺς Κρῆτας, ὀμόσαντας μηδέποτε πολέμου κατάρξειν.

[20] [1] Πολλοὶ δὲ λόγοι καὶ περὶ τούτων ἔτι λέγονται καὶ περὶ τῆς Ἀριάδνης, οὐδὲν ὁμολογούμενον ἔχοντες. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἀπάγξασθαί φασιν αὐτὴν ἀπολειφθεῖσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Θησέως, οἱ δ’ εἰς Νάξον ὑπὸ ναυτῶν κομισθεῖσαν Ὠνάρῳ τῷ ἱερεῖ τοῦ Διονύσου συνοικεῖν· ἀπολειφθῆναι δὲ τοῦ Θησέως ἐρῶντος ἑτέρας·

Δεινὸς γάρ μιν ἔτειρεν ἔρως Πανοπηίδος Αἴγλης.

[2] τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ ἔπος ἐκ τῶν Ἡσιόδου (fr. 105 Rz.) Πεισίστρατον ἐξελεῖν φησιν Ἡρέας ὁ Μεγαρεύς (FGrH 486 F 1), ὥσπερ αὖ πάλιν ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν Ὁμήρου νέκυιαν (Od. 11, 631) τὸ

Θησέα Πειρίθοόν τε θεῶν ἀριδείκετα τέκνα

χαριζόμενον Ἀθηναίοις· ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τεκεῖν ἐκ Θησέως Ἀριάδνην Οἰνοπίωνα καὶ Στάφυλον· ὧν καὶ ὁ Χῖος Ἴων ἐστί, περὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ πατρίδος λέγων (fr. 4 D.; 29 B.)·

Τήν ποτε Θησείδης ἔκτισεν Οἰνοπίων.

[3]ἃ δ’ ἐστὶν εὐφημότατα ‹τῶν› μυθολογουμένων, πάντες ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν διὰ στόματος ἔχουσιν. ἴδιον δέ τινα περὶ τούτων λόγον ἐκδέδωκε Παίων ὁ Ἀμαθούσιος (FHG IV [4] 371). τὸν γὰρ Θησέα φησὶν ὑπὸ χειμῶνος εἰς Κύπρον ἐξενεχθέντα, καὶ τὴν Ἀριάδνην ἔγκυον ἔχοντα, φαύλως δὲ διακειμένην ὑπὸ τοῦ σάλου καὶ δυσφοροῦσαν, ἐκβιβάσαι μόνην, αὐτὸν δὲ τῷ πλοίῳ βοηθοῦντα πάλιν εἰς [5] τὸ πέλαγος ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς φέρεσθαι. τὰς οὖν ἐγχωρίους γυναῖκας τὴν Ἀριάδνην ἀναλαβεῖν καὶ περιέπειν ἀθυμοῦσαν ἐπὶ τῇ μονώσει, καὶ γράμματα πλαστὰ προσφέρειν ὡς τοῦ Θησέως γράφοντος αὐτῇ, καὶ περὶ τὴν ὠδῖνα συμπονεῖν καὶ βοηθεῖν, ἀποθανοῦσαν δὲ θάψαι μὴ τεκοῦσαν.

[6] ἐπελθόντα δὲ τὸν Θησέα καὶ περίλυπον γενόμενον, τοῖς μὲν ἐγχωρίοις ἀπολιπεῖν χρήματα, συντάξαντα θύειν τῇ Ἀριάδνῃ, δύο δὲ μικροὺς ἀνδριαντίσκους ἱδρύσασθαι, [7] τὸν μὲν ἀργυροῦν, τὸν δὲ χαλκοῦν. ἐν δὲ τῇ θυσίᾳ τοῦ Γορπιαίου μηνὸς ἱσταμένου δευτέρᾳ κατακλινόμενόν τινα τῶν νεανίσκων φθέγγεσθαι καὶ ποιεῖν ἅπερ ὠδίνουσαι γυναῖκες· καλεῖν δὲ τὸ ἄλσος Ἀμαθουσίους, ἐν ᾧ τὸν τάφον δεικνύουσιν, Ἀριάδνης Ἀφροδίτης.

[8] Καὶ Ναξίων δέ τινες ἰδίως ἱστοροῦσι δύο Μίνωας γενέσθαι καὶ δύο Ἀριάδνας, ὧν τὴν μὲν Διονύσῳ γαμηθῆναί φασιν ἐν Νάξῳ καὶ τοὺς περὶ Στάφυλον τεκεῖν, τὴν δὲ νεωτέραν ἁρπασθεῖσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Θησέως καὶ ἀπολειφθεῖσαν εἰς Νάξον ἐλθεῖν, καὶ τροφὸν μετ’ αὐτῆς [9] ὄνομα Κορκύνην, ἧς δείκνυσθαι τάφον· ἀποθανεῖν δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἀριάδνην αὐτόθι καὶ τιμὰς ἔχειν οὐχ ὁμοίως τῇ προτέρᾳ· τῇ μὲν γὰρ ἡδομένους καὶ παίζοντας ἑορτάζειν, τὰς δὲ ταύτῃ δρωμένας θυσίας εἶναι πένθει τινὶ καὶ στυγνότητι μεμειγμένας.

[21] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τῆς Κρήτης ἀποπλέων εἰς Δῆλον κατέσχε, καὶ τῷ θεῷ θύσας καὶ ἀναθεὶς τὸ Ἀφροδίσιον ὃ παρὰ τῆς Ἀριάδνης ἔλαβεν, ἐχόρευσε μετὰ τῶν ἠιθέων χορείαν ἣν ἔτι νῦν ἐπιτελεῖν Δηλίους λέγουσι, μίμημα τῶν ἐν τῷ Λαβυρίνθῳ περιόδων καὶ διεξόδων ἔν τινι ῥυθμῷ [2] παραλλάξεις καὶ ἀνελίξεις ἔχοντι γιγνομένην. καλεῖται δὲ τὸ γένος τοῦτο τῆς χορείας ὑπὸ Δηλίων γέρανος, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Δικαίαρχος (fr. 85 Wehrli). ἐχόρευσε δὲ περὶ τὸν Κερατῶνα βωμόν, ἐκ κεράτων συνηρμοσμένον εὐωνύμων [3] ἁπάντων. ποιῆσαι δὲ καὶ ἀγῶνά φασιν αὐτὸν ἐν Δήλῳ, καὶ τοῖς νικῶσι τότε πρῶτον ὑπ’ ἐκείνου φοίνικα δοθῆναι.

[22] [1] Τῇ δ’ Ἀττικῇ προσφερομένων, ἐκλαθέσθαι μὲν αὐτόν, ἐκλαθέσθαι δὲ τὸν κυβερνήτην ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ἐπάρασθαι τὸ ἱστίον, ᾧ τὴν σωτηρίαν αὐτῶν ἔδει γνώριμον τῷ Αἰγεῖ γενέσθαι, τὸν δ’ ἀπογνόντα ῥῖψαι κατὰ τῆς [2] πέτρας ἑαυτὸν καὶ διαφθαρῆναι. καταπλεύσας δ’ ὁ Θησεὺς ἔθυε μὲν αὐτὸς ἃς ἐκπλέων θυσίας εὔξατο τοῖς θεοῖς Φαληροῖ, κήρυκα δ’ ἀπέστειλε τῆς σωτηρίας ἄγγελον εἰς ἄστυ. οὗτος ἐνέτυχεν ὀδυρομένοις τε πολλοῖς τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως τελευτήν, καὶ χαίρουσιν ὡς εἰκὸς ἑτέροις καὶ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι καὶ στεφανοῦν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῇ [3] σωτηρίᾳ προθύμοις οὖσι. τοὺς μὲν οὖν στεφάνους δεχόμενος τὸ κηρύκειον ἀνέστεφεν. ἐπανελθὼν δ’ ἐπὶ θάλασσαν, οὔπω πεποιημένου σπονδὰς τοῦ Θησέως, ἔξω περιέμεινε, μὴ βουλόμενος τὴν θυσίαν ταράξαι. γενομένων δὲ τῶν σπονδῶν, ἀπήγγειλε τὴν τοῦ Αἰγέως τελευτήν.

[4] οἱ δὲ σὺν κλαυθμῷ καὶ θορύβῳ σπεύδοντες ἀνέβαινον εἰς τὴν πόλιν. ὅθεν καὶ νῦν ἐν τοῖς Ὠσχοφορίοις στεφανοῦσθαι μὲν οὐ τὸν κήρυκα λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ κηρύκειον, ἐπιφωνεῖν δ’ ἐν ταῖς σπονδαῖς ‘ἐλελεῦ ἰοὺ ἰοὺ’ τοὺς παρόντας, ὧν τὸ μὲν σπένδοντες ἀναφωνεῖν καὶ παιωνίζοντες εἰώθασι, τὸ δ’ ἐκπλήξεως καὶ ταραχῆς ἐστι.

Θάψας δὲ τὸν πατέρα, τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι τὴν εὐχὴν ἀπεδίδου τῇ ἑβδόμῃ τοῦ Πυανεψιῶνος ἱσταμένου· ταύτῃ γὰρ [5] ἀνέβησαν εἰς ἄστυ σωθέντες. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἕψησις τῶν ὀσπρίων λέγεται γίνεσθαι διὰ τὸ σωθέντας αὐτοὺς εἰς ταὐτὸ συμμεῖξαι τὰ περιόντα τῶν σιτίων, καὶ μίαν χύτραν [6] κοινὴν ἑψήσαντας συνεστιαθῆναι καὶ συγκαταφαγεῖν ἀλλήλοις. τὴν δ’ εἰρεσιώνην ἐκφέρουσι, κλάδον ἐλαίας ἐρίῳ μὲν ἀνεστεμμένον, ὥσπερ τότε τὴν ἱκετηρίαν, παντοδαπῶν δ’ ἀνάπλεων καταργμάτων διὰ τὸ λῆξαι τὴν ἀφορίαν, ἐπᾴδοντες·

[7] Εἰρεσιώνη, σῦκα φέρειν καὶ πίονας ἄρτους

καὶ μέλι ἐν κοτύλῃ καὶ ἔλαιον ἀναψήσασθαι

καὶ κύλικ’ εὔζωρον, ὡς ἂν μεθύουσα καθεύδῃ.

καίτοι ταῦτά τινες ἐπὶ τοῖς Ἡρακλείδαις γίνεσθαι λέγουσιν οὕτως διατρεφομένοις ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων· οἱ δὲ πλείονες ὡς προείρηται.

[23] [1] Τὸ δὲ πλοῖον ἐν ᾧ μετὰ τῶν ἠιθέων ἔπλευσε καὶ πάλιν ἐσώθη, τὴν τριακόντορον, ἄχρι τῶν Δημητρίου τοῦ Φαληρέως χρόνων διεφύλαττον οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι, τὰ μὲν παλαιὰ τῶν ξύλων ὑφαιροῦντες, ἄλλα δ’ ἐμβάλλοντες ἰσχυρὰ καὶ συμπηγνύντες οὕτως, ὥστε καὶ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις εἰς τὸν αὐξόμενον λόγον ἀμφιδοξούμενον παράδειγμα τὸ πλοῖον εἶναι, τῶν μὲν ὡς τὸ αὐτό, τῶν δ’ ὡς οὐ τὸ αὐτὸ διαμένοι λεγόντων.

[2] Ἄγουσι δὲ καὶ τὴν τῶν Ὠσχοφορίων ἑορτὴν Θησέως [3] καταστήσαντος. οὐ γὰρ ἁπάσας αὐτὸν ἐξαγαγεῖν τὰς λαχούσας τότε παρθένους, ἀλλὰ τῶν συνήθων νεανίσκων δύο, θηλυφανεῖς μὲν ὀφθῆναι καὶ νεαρούς, ἀνδρώδεις δὲ ταῖς ψυχαῖς καὶ προθύμους, λουτροῖς τε θερμοῖς καὶ σκιατροφίαις καὶ ταῖς περὶ τὴν κόμην καὶ λειότητα καὶ χροιὰν ἀλοιφαῖς καὶ κοσμήσεσιν ὡς ἔστιν ἐξαλλάξαντα κομιδῇ, καὶ διδάξαντα φωνὴν καὶ σχῆμα καὶ βάδισιν ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα παρθένοις ὁμοιοῦσθαι καὶ μηδὲν φαίνεσθαι διαφέροντας, ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὸν τῶν παρθένων ἀριθμὸν καὶ διαλαθεῖν ἅπαντας· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐπανῆλθεν, αὐτόν τε πομπεῦσαι καὶ τοὺς νεανίσκους, οὕτως ἀμπεχομένους [4] ὡς νῦν ἀμπέχονται τοὺς ὠσχοὺς φέροντες. φέρουσι δὲ Διονύσῳ καὶ Ἀριάδνῃ χαριζόμενοι διὰ τὸν μῦθον, ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι συγκομιζομένης ὀπώρας ἐπανῆλθον. αἱ δὲ δειπνοφόροι παραλαμβάνονται καὶ κοινωνοῦσι τῆς θυσίας, ἀπομιμούμεναι τὰς μητέρας ἐκείνων τῶν λαχόντων· ἐπεφοίτων γὰρ αὐτοῖς ὄψα καὶ σιτία κομίζουσαι· καὶ μῦθοι λέγονται διὰ τὸ κἀκείνας εὐθυμίας ἕνεκα καὶ παρηγορίας [5] μύθους διεξιέναι τοῖς παισί. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν καὶ Δήμων (FGrH 327 F 6) ἱστόρηκεν.

Ἐξῃρέθη δὲ καὶ τέμενος αὐτῷ, καὶ τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν παρασχόντων τὸν δασμὸν οἴκων ἔταξαν εἰς θυσίαν αὐτῷ τελεῖν ἀποφοράς, καὶ τῆς θυσίας ἐπεμελοῦντο Φυταλίδαι, Θησέως ἀποδόντος αὐτοῖς ἀμοιβὴν τῆς φιλοξενίας.

[24] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν Αἰγέως τελευτὴν μέγα καὶ θαυμαστὸν ἔργον εἰς νοῦν βαλόμενος, συνῴκισε τοὺς τὴν Ἀττικὴν κατοικοῦντας εἰς ἓν ἄστυ, καὶ μιᾶς πόλεως ἕνα δῆμον ἀπέφηνε, τέως σποράδας ὄντας καὶ δυσανακλήτους πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν πάντων συμφέρον, ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ διαφερομένους [2] ἀλλήλοις καὶ πολεμοῦντας. ἐπιὼν οὖν ἔπειθε κατὰ δήμους καὶ γένη, τῶν μὲν ἰδιωτῶν καὶ πενήτων ἐνδεχομένων ταχὺ τὴν παράκλησιν αὐτοῦ, τοῖς δὲ δυνατοῖς ἀβασίλευτον πολιτείαν προτείνων καὶ δημοκρατίαν, αὐτῷ μόνον ἄρχοντι πολέμου καὶ νόμων φύλακι χρησομένην, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων παρέξουσαν ἅπασιν ἰσομοιρίαν, τοὺς μὲν ταῦτ’ ἔπειθεν, οἱ δὲ τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ δεδιότες, μεγάλην οὖσαν ἤδη, καὶ τὴν τόλμαν, ἐβούλοντο πειθόμενοι [3] μᾶλλον ἢ βιαζόμενοι ταῦτα συγχωρεῖν. καταλύσας οὖν τὰ παρ’ ἑκάστοις πρυτανεῖα καὶ βουλευτήρια καὶ ἀρχάς, ἓν δὲ ποιήσας ἅπασι κοινὸν ἐνταῦθα πρυτανεῖον καὶ βουλευτήριον ὅπου νῦν ἵδρυται τὸ ἄστυ, τήν τε πόλιν Ἀθήνας προσηγόρευσε, καὶ Παναθήναια θυσίαν ἐποίησε [4] κοινήν. ἔθυσε δὲ καὶ Μετοίκια τῇ ἕκτῃ ἐπὶ δέκα τοῦ Ἑκατομβαιῶνος, ἣν ἔτι νῦν θύουσι, καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν ἀφεὶς ὥσπερ ὡμολόγησε, διεκόσμει τὴν πολιτείαν ἀπὸ θεῶν ἀρχόμενος· ἧκε γὰρ αὐτῷ χρησμὸς ἐκ Δελφῶν μαντευομένῳ περὶ τῆς πόλεως (Hendess 22)·

[5] Αἰγείδη Θησεῦ, Πιτθηίδος ἔκγονε κούρης,

πολλαῖς τοι πολίεσσι πατὴρ ἐμὸς ἐγκατέθηκε

τέρματα καὶ κλωστῆρας ἐν ὑμετέρῳ πτολιέθρῳ.

ἀλλὰ σὺ μή τι λίην πεπονημένος ἔνδοθι θυμὸν

βουλεύειν· ἀσκὸς γὰρ ἐν οἴδματι ποντοπορεύσεις.

[6] τοῦτο δὲ καὶ Σίβυλλαν ὕστερον ἀποστοματίσαι πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ἱστοροῦσιν, ἀναφθεγξαμένην (Hendess 23)·

Ἀσκὸς βαπτίζῃ· δῦναι δέ τοι οὐ θέμις ἐστίν.

[25] [1] Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον αὐξῆσαι τὴν πόλιν βουλόμενος, ἐκάλει πάντας ἐπὶ τοῖς ἴσοις, καὶ τὸ ‘δεῦρ’ ἴτε πάντες λεῴ’ κήρυγμα Θησέως γενέσθαι φασί, πανδημίαν τινὰ [2] καθιστάντος. οὐ μὴν ἄτακτον οὐδὲ μεμειγμένην περιεῖδεν ὑπὸ πλήθους ἐπιχυθέντος ἀκρίτου γενομένην τὴν δημοκρατίαν, ἀλλὰ πρῶτος ἀποκρίνας χωρὶς Εὐπατρίδας καὶ Γεωμόρους καὶ Δημιουργούς, Εὐπατρίδαις δὲ γινώσκειν τὰ θεῖα καὶ παρέχειν ἄρχοντας ἀποδοὺς καὶ νόμων διδασκάλους εἶναι καὶ ὁσίων καὶ ἱερῶν ἐξηγητάς, τοῖς ἄλλοις πολίταις ὥσπερ εἰς ἴσον κατέστησε, δόξῃ μὲν Εὐπατριδῶν, χρείᾳ δὲ Γεωμόρων, πλήθει δὲ Δημιουργῶν [3] ὑπερέχειν δοκούντων. ὅτι δὲ πρῶτος ἀπέκλινε πρὸς τὸν ὄχλον, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 346) φησί, καὶ ἀφῆκε τὸ μοναρχεῖν, ἔοικε μαρτυρεῖν καὶ Ὅμηρος, ἐν νεῶν καταλόγῳ (Il. 2, 547) μόνους Ἀθηναίους δῆμον προσαγορεύσας. ἔκοψε δὲ καὶ νόμισμα, βοῦν ἐγχαράξας ἢ διὰ τὸν Μαραθώνιον ταῦρον ἢ διὰ τὸν Μίνω στρατηγόν, ἢ πρὸς γεωργίαν τοὺς πολίτας παρακαλῶν. ἀπ’ ἐκείνου δέ φασι τὸ ἑκατόμβοιον καὶ τὸ δεκάβοιον ὀνομασθῆναι.

[4] Προσκτησάμενος δὲ τῇ Ἀττικῇ τὴν Μεγαρικὴν βεβαίως, τὴν θρυλουμένην ἐν Ἰσθμῷ στήλην ἔστησεν, ἐπιγράψας τὸ διορίζον ἐπίγραμμα τὴν χώραν δυσὶ τριμέτροις, ὧν ἔφραζε τὸ μὲν πρὸς ἕω·

Τάδ’ οὐχὶ Πελοπόννησος, ἀλλ’ Ἰωνία,

τὸ δὲ πρὸς ἑσπέραν·

Τάδ’ ἐστὶ Πελοπόννησος, οὐκ Ἰωνία.

[5] καὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα πρῶτος ἔθηκε κατὰ ζῆλον Ἡρακλέους, ὡς δι’ ἐκεῖνον Ὀλύμπια τῷ Διί, [καὶ] δι’ αὐτὸν Ἴσθμια τῷ Ποσειδῶνι φιλοτιμηθεὶς ἄγειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας. ὁ γὰρ ἐπὶ Μελικέρτῃ τεθεὶς αὐτόθι νυκτὸς ἐδρᾶτο, τελετῆς [6] ἔχων μᾶλλον ἢ θέας καὶ πανηγυρισμοῦ τάξιν. ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ἐπὶ Σκείρωνι τὰ Ἴσθμια τεθῆναι, τοῦ Θησέως ἀφοσιουμένου τὸν φόνον διὰ τὴν συγγένειαν· Σκείρωνα γὰρ υἱὸν εἶναι Κανήθου καὶ Ἡνιόχης τῆς Πιτθέως. οἱ δὲ Σίνιν, οὐ Σκείρωνα, καὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα τεθῆναι διὰ τοῦτον [7] ὑπὸ Θησέως, οὐ δι’ ἐκεῖνον. ἔταξεν οὖν καὶ διωρίσατο πρὸς τοὺς Κορινθίους, Ἀθηναίων τοῖς ἀφικνουμένοις ἐπὶ τὰ Ἴσθμια παρέχειν προεδρίαν, ὅσον ἂν τόπον ἐπίσχῃ καταπετασθὲν τὸ τῆς θεωρίδος νεὼς ἱστίον, ὡς Ἑλλάνικος (FGrH 323a F 15) καὶ Ἄνδρων ὁ Ἁλικαρνασσεὺς (FGrH 10 F 6) ἱστορήκασιν.

[26] [1] Εἰς δὲ τὸν πόντον ἔπλευσε τὸν Εὔξεινον, ὡς μὲν Φιλόχορος (FGrH 328 F 110) καί τινες ἄλλοι λέγουσι, μεθ’ Ἡρακλέους ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀμαζόνας συστρατεύσας, καὶ γέρας [ἀριστεῖον] Ἀντιόπην ἔλαβεν· οἱ δὲ πλείους, ὧν ἐστι καὶ Φερεκύδης (FGrH 3 F 151) καὶ Ἑλλάνικος (FGrH 323a F 16) καὶ Ἡρόδωρος (FGrH 31 F 25a) ὕστερόν φασιν Ἡρακλέους ἰδιόστολον πλεῦσαι τὸν Θησέα καὶ τὴν Ἀμαζόνα λαβεῖν αἰχμάλωτον, πιθανώτερα λέγοντες.

[2] οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἄλλος ἱστόρηται τῶν μετ’ αὐτοῦ στρατευσάντων Ἀμαζόνα λαβεῖν αἰχμάλωτον. Βίων (FGrH 14 F 2) δὲ καὶ ταύτην παρακρουσάμενον οἴχεσθαι λαβόντα· φύσει γὰρ οὔσας τὰς Ἀμαζόνας φιλάνδρους οὐ[τε] φυγεῖν τὸν Θησέα προσβάλλοντα τῇ χώρᾳ, ἀλλὰ καὶ ξένια πέμπειν· τὸν δὲ τὴν κομίζουσαν ἐμβῆναι παρακαλεῖν εἰς τὸ [3] πλοῖον, ἐμβάσης δ’ ἀναχθῆναι. Μενεκράτης (FHG II 345) δέ τις, ἱστορίαν περὶ Νικαίας τῆς ἐν Βιθυνίᾳ πόλεως ἐκδεδωκώς, Θησέα φησὶ τὴν Ἀντιόπην ἔχοντα διατρῖψαι περὶ τούτους τοὺς τόπους· τυγχάνειν δὲ συστρατεύοντας αὐτῷ τρεῖς νεανίσκους ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν ἀδελφοὺς ἀλλήλων, [4] Εὔνεων καὶ Θόαντα καὶ Σολόεντα. τοῦτον οὖν ἐρῶντα τῆς Ἀντιόπης καὶ λανθάνοντα τοὺς ἄλλους, ἐξειπεῖν πρὸς ἕνα τῶν συνήθων· ἐκείνου δὲ περὶ τούτων ἐντυχόντος τῇ Ἀντιόπῃ, τὴν μὲν πεῖραν ἰσχυρῶς ἀποτρίψασθαι, τὸ δὲ πρᾶγμα σωφρόνως ἅμα καὶ πρᾴως ἐνεγκεῖν καὶ πρὸς τὸν [5] Θησέα μὴ κατηγορῆσαι. τοῦ δὲ Σολόεντος ὡς ἀπέγνω ῥίψαντος ἑαυτὸν εἰς ποταμόν τινα καὶ διαφθαρέντος, ᾐσθημένον τότε τὴν αἰτίαν καὶ τὸ πάθος τοῦ νεανίσκου τὸν Θησέα βαρέως ἐνεγκεῖν, καὶ δυσφοροῦντα λόγιόν τι πυθόχρηστον ἀνενεγκεῖν πρὸς ἑαυτόν· εἶναι γὰρ αὐτῷ προστεταγμένον ἐν Δελφοῖς ὑπὸ τῆς Πυθίας, ὅταν ἐπὶ ξένης ἀνιαθῇ μάλιστα καὶ περίλυπος γένηται, πόλιν ἐκεῖ κτίσαι [6] καὶ τῶν ἀμφ’ αὐτόν τινας ἡγεμόνας καταλιπεῖν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου τὴν μὲν πόλιν ἣν ἔκτισεν ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ Πυθόπολιν προσαγορεῦσαι, Σολόεντα δὲ τὸν πλησίον ποταμὸν [7] ἐπὶ τιμῇ τοῦ νεανίσκου, καταλιπεῖν δὲ καὶ αὐτοῦ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς οἷον ἐπιστάτας καὶ νομοθέτας, καὶ σὺν αὐτοῖς Ἕρμον ἄνδρα τῶν Ἀθήνησιν Εὐπατριδῶν· ἀφ’ οὗ καὶ τόπον Ἑρμοῦ καλεῖν οἰκίαν τοὺς Πυθοπολίτας, οὐκ ὀρθῶς τὴν δευτέραν συλλαβὴν περισπῶντας καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἐπὶ θεὸν ἀφ’ ἥρωος μετατιθέντας.

[27] [1] Πρόφασιν μὲν οὖν ταύτην ὁ τῶν Ἀμαζόνων πόλεμος ἔσχε, φαίνεται δὲ μὴ φαῦλον αὐτοῦ μηδὲ γυναικεῖον γενέσθαι τὸ ἔργον. οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἐν ἄστει κατεστρατοπέδευσαν οὐδὲ τὴν μάχην συνῆψαν ἐν χρῷ περὶ τὴν Πνύκα καὶ τὸ Μουσεῖον, εἰ μὴ κρατοῦσαι τῆς χώρας [2] ἀδεῶς τῇ πόλει προσέμειξαν. εἰ μὲν οὖν, ὡς Ἑλλάνικος (FGrH 323a F 17) ἱστόρηκε, τῷ Κιμμερικῷ Βοσπόρῳ παγέντι διαβᾶσαι περιῆλθον, ἔργον ἐστὶ πιστεῦσαι· τὸ δ’ ἐν τῇ πόλει σχεδὸν αὐτὰς ἐνστρατοπεδεῦσαι μαρτυρεῖται καὶ τοῖς ὀνόμασι τῶν τόπων καὶ ταῖς θήκαις τῶν πεσόντων. πολὺν δὲ χρόνον ὄκνος ἦν καὶ μέλλησις ἀμφοτέροις τῆς ἐπιχειρήσεως, τέλος δὲ Θησεὺς κατά τι λόγιον [3] τῷ Φόβῳ σφαγιασάμενος συνῆψεν αὐταῖς. ἡ μὲν οὖν μάχη Βοηδρομιῶνος ἐγένετο μηνός, ἐφ’ ᾗ τὰ Βοηδρόμια μέχρι νῦν Ἀθηναῖοι θύουσιν. ἱστορεῖ δὲ Κλείδημος (FGrH 323 F 18), ἐξακριβοῦν τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα βουλόμενος, τὸ μὲν εὐώνυμον τῶν Ἀμαζόνων κέρας ἐπιστρέφειν πρὸς τὸ νῦν καλούμενον Ἀμαζόνειον, τῷ δὲ δεξιῷ [4] πρὸς τὴν Πνύκα κατὰ τὴν Χρύσαν ἥκειν. μάχεσθαι δὲ πρὸς τοῦτο τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἀπὸ τοῦ Μουσείου ταῖς Ἀμαζόσι συμπεσόντας, καὶ τάφους τῶν πεσόντων περὶ τὴν πλατεῖαν εἶναι τὴν φέρουσαν ἐπὶ τὰς πύλας παρὰ τὸ [5] Χαλκώδοντος ἡρῷον, ἃς νῦν Πειραϊκὰς ὀνομάζουσι. καὶ ταύτῃ μὲν ἐκβιασθῆναι μέχρι τῶν Εὐμενίδων καὶ ὑποχωρῆσαι ταῖς γυναιξίν, ἀπὸ δὲ Παλλαδίου καὶ Ἀρδηττοῦ καὶ Λυκείου προσβαλόντας ὤσασθαι τὸ δεξιὸν αὐτῶν ἄχρι τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ πολλὰς καταβαλεῖν. τετάρτῳ δὲ μηνὶ συνθήκας γενέσθαι διὰ τῆς Ἱππολύτης· Ἱππολύτην γὰρ οὗτος ὀνομάζει τὴν τῷ Θησεῖ συνοικοῦσαν, [6] οὐκ Ἀντιόπην. ἔνιοι δέ φασι μετὰ τοῦ Θησέως μαχομένην πεσεῖν τὴν ἄνθρωπον ὑπὸ Μολπαδίας ἀκοντισθεῖσαν, καὶ τὴν στήλην τὴν παρὰ τὸ τῆς Γῆς τῆς Ὀλυμπίας ἱερὸν ἐπὶ ταύτῃ κεῖσθαι. καὶ θαυμαστὸν οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπὶ πράγμασιν οὕτω παλαιοῖς πλανᾶσθαι τὴν ἱστορίαν, ἐπεὶ καὶ τὰς τετρωμένας φασὶ τῶν Ἀμαζόνων ὑπ’ Ἀντιόπης εἰς Χαλκίδα λάθρα διαπεμφθείσας τυγχάνειν ἐπιμελείας, καὶ ταφῆναί τινας ἐκεῖ περὶ τὸ νῦν Ἀμαζόνειον καλούμενον.

[7] ἀλλὰ τοῦ γε τὸν πόλεμον εἰς σπονδὰς τελευτῆσαι μαρτύριόν ἐστιν ἥ τε τοῦ τόπου κλῆσις τοῦ παρὰ τὸ Θησεῖον, ὅνπερ Ὁρκωμόσιον καλοῦσιν, ἥ τε γινομένη [8] πάλαι θυσία ταῖς Ἀμαζόσι πρὸ τῶν Θησείων. δεικνύουσι δὲ καὶ Μεγαρεῖς Ἀμαζόνων θήκην παρ’ αὑτοῖς ἐπὶ τὸν καλούμενον Ῥοῦν βαδίζουσιν ἐξ ἀγορᾶς, ὅπου τὸ Ῥομβοειδές. λέγεται δὲ καὶ περὶ Χαιρώνειαν ἑτέρας ἀποθανεῖν καὶ ταφῆναι παρὰ τὸ ῥευμάτιον, ὃ πάλαι μὲν ὡς ἔοικε Θερμώδων, Αἵμων δὲ νῦν καλεῖται· περὶ ὧν ἐν τῷ Δημοσθένους [9] βίῳ (cap. 19) γέγραπται. φαίνονται δὲ μηδὲ Θεσσαλίαν ἀπραγμόνως αἱ Ἀμαζόνες διελθοῦσαι· τάφοι γὰρ αὐτῶν ἔτι καὶ νῦν δείκνυνται περὶ τὴν Σκοτουσσαίαν καὶ τὰς Κυνὸς κεφαλάς.

[28] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἄξια μνήμης περὶ τῶν Ἀμαζόνων. ἣν γὰρ ὁ τῆς Θησηίδος ποιητὴς (EGF p. 217 Kink.) Ἀμαζόνων ἐπανάστασιν γέγραφε, Θησεῖ γαμοῦντι Φαίδραν τῆς Ἀντιόπης ἐπιτιθεμένης καὶ τῶν μετ’ αὐτῆς Ἀμαζόνων ἀμυνομένων καὶ κτείνοντος αὐτὰς Ἡρακλέους, περιφανῶς [2] ἔοικε μύθῳ καὶ πλάσματι. τῆς δ’ Ἀντιόπης ἀποθανούσης ἔγημε Φαίδραν, ἔχων υἱὸν Ἱππόλυτον ἐξ Ἀντιόπης, ὡς δὲ Πίνδαρός (fr. 176 Sn.) φησι, Δημοφῶντα.

[3] τὰς δὲ περὶ ταύτην καὶ τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ δυστυχίας, ἐπεὶ μηδὲν ἀντιπίπτει παρὰ τῶν ἱστορικῶν τοῖς τραγικοῖς, οὕτως ἔχειν θετέον ὡς ἐκεῖνοι πεποιήκασιν ἅπαντες.

[29] [1] Εἰσὶ μέντοι λόγοι περὶ γάμων Θησέως καὶ ἕτεροι, τὴν σκηνὴν διαπεφευγότες, οὔτ’ ἀρχὰς εὐγνώμονας οὔτ’ εὐτυχεῖς τελευτὰς ἔχοντες. καὶ γὰρ Ἀναξώ τινα Τροιζηνίαν ἁρπάσαι λέγεται, καὶ Σίνιν ἀποκτείνας καὶ Κερκυόνα συγγενέσθαι βίᾳ ταῖς θυγατράσιν αὐτῶν, γῆμαι δὲ καὶ Περίβοιαν τὴν Αἴαντος μητέρα καὶ Φερέβοιαν αὖθις [2] καὶ Ἰόπην τὴν Ἰφικλέους, καὶ διὰ τὸν Αἴγλης ἔρωτα τῆς Πανοπέως ὥσπερ εἴρηται τὴν Ἀριάδνης ἀπόλειψιν αἰτιῶνται μὴ καλὴν γενέσθαι μηδὲ πρέπουσαν· ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ τὴν Ἑλένης ἁρπαγὴν πολέμου μὲν ἐμπλῆσαι τὴν Ἀττικήν, αὐτῷ δ’ εἰς φυγὴν καὶ ὄλεθρον τελευτῆσαι· περὶ ὧν ὀλίγον ὕστερον εἰρήσεται.

[3] Πολλῶν δὲ τότε τοῖς ἀρίστοις ἄθλων γενομένων Ἡρόδωρος (FGrH 31 F 26) μὲν οὐδενὸς οἴεται τὸν Θησέα μετασχεῖν, ἀλλὰ μόνοις Λαπίθαις τῆς Κενταυρομαχίας· ἕτεροι δὲ καὶ μετ’ Ἰάσονος ἐν Κόλχοις γενέσθαι καὶ Μελεάγρῳ συνεξελεῖν τὸν κάπρον, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο παροιμίαν εἶναι τὴν ‘οὐκ ἄνευ Θησέως’· αὐτὸν μέντοι μηδενὸς συμμάχου δεηθέντα πολλοὺς καὶ καλοὺς ἄθλους κατεργάσασθαι, καὶ τὸν ‘ἄλλος οὗτος Ἡρακλῆς’ λόγον ἐπ’ ἐκείνου [4] κρατῆσαι. συνέπραξε δὲ καὶ Ἀδράστῳ τὴν ἀναίρεσιν τῶν ὑπὸ τῇ Καδμείᾳ πεσόντων, οὐχ ὡς Εὐριπίδης ἐποίησεν ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ, μάχῃ τῶν Θηβαίων κρατήσας (Suppl. 560 sqq.), ἀλλὰ πείσας καὶ σπεισάμενος· οὕτω γὰρ οἱ πλεῖστοι λέγουσι· Φιλόχορος (FGrH 328 F 112) δὲ καὶ σπονδὰς περὶ νεκρῶν ἀναιρέσεως γενέσθαι πρώτας ἐκείνας.

[5] ὅτι δ’ Ἡρακλῆς πρῶτος ἀπέδωκε νεκροὺς τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἐν τοῖς περὶ Ἡρακλέους (mor. VII 144 Bern.) γέγραπται. ταφαὶ δὲ τῶν μὲν πολλῶν ἐν Ἐλευθεραῖς δείκνυνται, τῶν δ’ ἡγεμόνων περὶ Ἐλευσῖνα, καὶ τοῦτο Θησέως Ἀδράστῳ χαρισαμένου. καταμαρτυροῦσι δὲ τῶν Εὐριπίδου Ἱκετίδων ‹καὶ› οἱ Αἰσχύλου Ἐλευσίνοι (fr. p. 18 N²), ἐν οἷς [καὶ] ταῦτα λέγων ὁ Θησεὺς πεποίηται.

[30] [1] Τὴν δὲ πρὸς Πειρίθουν φιλίαν τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον αὐτῷ γενέσθαι λέγουσι. δόξαν εἶχεν ἐπὶ ῥώμῃ καὶ ἀνδρείᾳ μεγίστην. βουλόμενος οὖν ὁ Πειρίθους ἐξελέγξαι καὶ λαβεῖν διάπειραν, ἠλάσατο βοῦς ἐκ Μαραθῶνος αὐτοῦ, καὶ πυθόμενος διώκειν μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἐκεῖνον, [2] οὐκ ἔφυγεν, ἀλλ’ ἀναστρέψας ἀπήντησεν. ὡς δ’ εἶδεν ἅτερος τὸν ἕτερον καὶ τὸ κάλλος ἐθαύμασε καὶ τὴν τόλμαν ἠγάσθη, μάχης μὲν ἔσχοντο, Πειρίθους δὲ πρότερος τὴν δεξιὰν προτείνας ἐκέλευσεν αὐτὸν γενέσθαι δικαστὴν τὸν Θησέα τῆς βοηλασίας· ἑκὼν γὰρ ὑφέξειν ἣν ἂν ὁρίσῃ δίκην ἐκεῖνος. Θησεὺς δὲ καὶ τὴν δίκην ἀφῆκεν αὐτῷ, καὶ προὐκαλεῖτο φίλον εἶναι καὶ σύμμαχον, ἐποιήσαντο [3] δὲ τὴν φιλίαν ἔνορκον. ἐκ δὲ τούτου γαμῶν ὁ Πειρίθους Δηιδάμειαν, ἐδεήθη τοῦ Θησέως ἐλθεῖν καὶ τὴν χώραν ἱστορῆσαι καὶ συγγενέσθαι τοῖς Λαπίθαις. ἐτύγχανε δὲ καὶ τοὺς Κενταύρους κεκληκὼς ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον. ὡς δ’ ἠσέλγαινον ὕβρει καὶ μεθύοντες οὐκ ἀπείχοντο τῶν γυναικῶν, ἐτράποντο πρὸς ἄμυναν οἱ Λαπίθαι, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἔκτειναν αὐτῶν, τοὺς δὲ πολέμῳ κρατήσαντες ὕστερον ἐξέβαλον ἐκ τῆς χώρας, τοῦ Θησέως [4] αὐτοῖς συμμαχομένου καὶ συμπολεμοῦντος. Ἡρόδωρος (FGrH 31 F 27) δὲ ταῦτα πραχθῆναί φησιν οὐχ οὕτως, ἀλλὰ τοῦ πολέμου συνεστῶτος ἤδη τὸν Θησέα βοηθοῦντα τοῖς Λαπίθαις παραγενέσθαι, καὶ τότε πρῶτον ὄψει γνωρίσαι τὸν Ἡρακλέα, ποιησάμενον ἔργον ἐντυχεῖν αὐτῷ περὶ Τραχῖνα, πεπαυμένῳ πλάνης ἤδη καὶ ἄθλων, γενέσθαι δὲ μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ φιλοφροσύνης καὶ πολλῶν [5] ἐπαίνων ἀμφοτέροις τὴν ἔντευξιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἄν τις πρόσσχοι τοῖς πολλάκις ἐντυχεῖν αὐτοὺς ἀλλήλοις ἱστοροῦσι, καὶ τὴν μύησιν Ἡρακλεῖ γενέσθαι Θησέως σπουδάσαντος καὶ τὸν πρὸ τῆς μυήσεως καθαρμὸν ὡς δεομένῳ διά τινας πράξεις ἀβουλήτους.

[31] [1] Ἤδη δὲ πεντήκοντα ἔτη γεγονώς, ὥς φησιν Ἑλλάνικος (FGrH 323a F 18), ἔπραξε τὰ περὶ τὴν Ἑλένην, οὐ καθ’ ὥραν. ὅθεν ὡς δὴ μέγιστον ἐπανορθούμενοι τοῦτο τῶν ἐγκλημάτων ἔνιοι λέγουσιν, οὐκ αὐτὸν ἁρπάσαι τὴν Ἑλένην, ἀλλ’ Ἴδα καὶ Λυγκέως ἁρπασάντων παρακαταθήκην λαβόντα τηρεῖν καὶ μὴ προΐεσθαι τοῖς Διοσκούροις ἀπαιτοῦσιν, ἢ νὴ Δία Τυνδάρεω παραδόντος αὐτοῦ, φοβηθέντος Ἐναρσφόρον τὸν Ἱπποκόωντος, ἔτι νηπίαν [2] οὖσαν βιαζόμενον τὴν Ἑλένην λαβεῖν. τὰ δ’ εἰκότα καὶ πλείστους ἔχοντα μάρτυρας τοιαῦτ’ ἐστιν. ἦλθον μὲν εἰς Σπάρτην ἀμφότεροι, καὶ τὴν κόρην ἐν ἱερῷ Ἀρτέμιδος Ὀρθίας χορεύουσαν ἁρπάσαντες ἔφυγον. τῶν δὲ πεμφθέντων ἐπὶ τὴν δίωξιν οὐ πορρωτέρω Τεγέας ἐπακολουθησάντων, ἐν ἀδείᾳ γενόμενοι καὶ διελθόντες τὴν Πελοπόννησον ἐποιήσαντο συνθήκας, τὸν μὲν λαχόντα κλήρῳ τὴν Ἑλένην ἔχειν γυναῖκα, συμπράττειν δὲ θατέρῳ γάμον [3] ἄλλον. ἐπὶ ταύταις δὲ κληρουμένων ταῖς ὁμολογίαις, ἔλαχε Θησεύς, καὶ παραλαβὼν τὴν παρθένον οὔπω γάμων ὥραν ἔχουσαν εἰς Ἀφίδνας ἐκόμισε, καὶ τὴν μητέρα καταστήσας μετ’ αὐτῆς Ἀφίδνῳ παρέδωκεν ὄντι φίλῳ, διακελευσάμενος [4] φυλάττειν καὶ λανθάνειν τοὺς ἄλλους. αὐτὸς δὲ Πειρίθῳ τὴν ὑπουργίαν ἀποδιδοὺς εἰς Ἤπειρον συναπεδήμησεν ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀιδωνέως θυγατέρα τοῦ Μολοσσῶν βασιλέως, ὃς τῇ γυναικὶ Φερσεφόνην ὄνομα θέμενος, Κόρην δὲ τῇ θυγατρί, τῷ δὲ κυνὶ Κέρβερον, ἐκέλευε τούτῳ διαμάχεσθαι τοὺς μνωμένους τὴν παῖδα, καὶ λαβεῖν τὸν [5] κρατήσαντα. τοὺς μέντοι περὶ τὸν Πειρίθουν οὐ μνηστῆρας ἥκειν ἀλλ’ ἁρπασομένους πυνθανόμενος, συνέλαβε, καὶ τὸν μὲν Πειρίθουν εὐθὺς ἠφάνισε διὰ τοῦ κυνός, τὸν δὲ Θησέα καθείρξας ἐφύλαττεν.

[32] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ Μενεσθεὺς ὁ Πετεὼ τοῦ Ὀρνέως τοῦ Ἐρεχθέως, πρῶτος ὥς φασιν ἀνθρώπων ἐπιθέμενος τῷ δημαγωγεῖν καὶ πρὸς χάριν ὄχλῳ διαλέγεσθαι, τούς τε δυνατοὺς συνίστη καὶ παρώξυνε, πάλαι βαρυνομένους τὸν Θησέα καὶ νομίζοντας ἀρχὴν καὶ βασιλείαν ἀφῃρημένον ἑκάστου τῶν κατὰ δῆμον εὐπατριδῶν εἰς ἓν ἄστυ συνείρξαντα πάντας ὑπηκόοις χρῆσθαι καὶ δούλοις, τούς τε πολλοὺς διετάραττε καὶ διέβαλλεν, ὡς ὄναρ ἐλευθερίας ὁρῶντας, ἔργῳ δ’ ἀπεστερημένους πατρίδων καὶ ἱερῶν, ὅπως ἀντὶ πολλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ γνησίων βασιλέων πρὸς ἕνα δεσπότην ἔπηλυν καὶ ξένον [2] ἀποβλέπωσι. ταῦτα δ’ αὐτοῦ πραγματευομένου, μεγάλην ῥοπὴν ὁ πόλεμος τῷ νεωτερισμῷ προσέθηκε τῶν Τυνδαριδῶν ἐπελθόντων· οἱ δὲ καὶ ὅλως φασὶν ὑπὸ τούτου πεισθέντας ἐπελθεῖν. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον οὐδὲν ἠδίκουν, [3] ἀλλ’ ἀπῄτουν τὴν ἀδελφήν. ἀποκριναμένων δὲ τῶν ἐν ἄστει μήτ’ ἔχειν μήτε γινώσκειν ὅπου καταλέλειπται, πρὸς πόλεμον ἐτράποντο. φράζει δ’ αὐτοῖς Ἀκάδημος, ᾐσθημένος ᾧ δή τινι τρόπῳ, τὴν ἐν Ἀφίδναις κρύψιν [4] αὐτῆς. ὅθεν ἐκείνῳ τε τιμαὶ ζῶντι παρὰ τῶν Τυνδαριδῶν ἐγένοντο, καὶ πολλάκις ὕστερον εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἐμβαλόντες Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ πᾶσαν ὁμοῦ τὴν χώραν τέμνοντες, τῆς Ἀκαδημείας ἀπείχοντο διὰ τὸν Ἀκάδημον.

[5] ὁ δὲ Δικαίαρχος (fr. 66 Wehrli) Ἐχεδήμου φησὶ καὶ Μαράθου συστρατευσάντων τότε τοῖς Τυνδαρίδαις ἐξ Ἀρκαδίας, ἀφ’ οὗ μὲν Ἐχεδημίαν προσαγορευθῆναι τὴν νῦν Ἀκαδήμειαν, ἀφ’ οὗ δὲ Μαραθῶνα τὸν δῆμον, ἐπιδόντος ἑαυτὸν ἑκουσίως κατά τι λόγιον σφαγιάσασθαι [6] πρὸ τῆς παρατάξεως. ἐλθόντες οὖν ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀφίδνας καὶ μάχῃ κρατήσαντες, ἐξεῖλον τὸ χωρίον. ἐνταῦθά φασι καὶ Ἁλυκὸν πεσεῖν τὸν Σκείρωνος υἱόν, συστρατευόμενον τότε τοῖς Διοσκούροις, ἀφ’ οὗ καὶ τόπον τῆς Μεγαρικῆς Ἁλυκὸν [7] καλεῖσθαι τοῦ σώματος ἐνταφέντος. Ἡρέας (FGrH 486 F 2) δ’ ὑπὸ Θησέως αὐτοῦ περὶ Ἀφίδνας ἀποθανεῖν τὸν Ἁλυκὸν ἱστόρηκε, καὶ μαρτύρια ταυτὶ τὰ ἔπη παρέχεται περὶ τοῦ Ἁλυκοῦ·

τὸν ἐν εὐρυχόρῳ ποτ’ Ἀφίδνῃ

μαρνάμενον Θησεὺς Ἑλένης ἕνεκ’ ἠυκόμοιο

κτεῖνεν.

οὐ μὴν εἰκὸς αὐτοῦ Θησέως παρόντος ἁλῶναι τήν τε μητέρα καὶ τὰς Ἀφίδνας.

[33] [1] Ἐχομένων δ’ οὖν τῶν Ἀφιδνῶν καὶ τῶν ἐν ἄστει δεδιότων, ἔπεισε τὸν δῆμον ὁ Μενεσθεὺς δέχεσθαι τῇ πόλει καὶ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι τοὺς Τυνδαρίδας, ὡς μόνῳ Θησεῖ βίας ὑπάρξαντι πολεμοῦντας, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων εὐεργέτας ὄντας ἀνθρώπων καὶ σωτῆρας. ἐμαρτύρει δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ τὰ παρ’ ἐκείνων· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἠξίωσαν ἁπάντων κρατοῦντες ἀλλ’ ἢ μυηθῆναι, μηδὲν ἧττον Ἡρακλέους τῇ πόλει προσήκοντες.

[2] καὶ τοῦτ’ οὖν ὑπῆρξεν αὐτοῖς, Ἀφίδνου ποιησαμένου παῖδας ὡς Πύλιος Ἡρακλέα, καὶ τιμὰς ἰσοθέους ἔσχον, Ἄνακες προσαγορευθέντες ἢ διὰ τὰς γενομένας ἀνοχάς, ἢ διὰ τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ κηδεμονίαν τοῦ μηδένα κακῶς παθεῖν στρατιᾶς τοσαύτης ἔνδον οὔσης· ἀνακῶς γὰρ ἔχειν τοὺς ἐπιμελομένους ἢ φυλάττοντας ὁτιοῦν· καὶ τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἴσως ἄνακτας διὰ τοῦτο καλοῦσιν.

[3] εἰσὶ δ’ οἱ λέγοντες διὰ τὴν τῶν ἀστέρων ἐπιφάνειαν Ἄνακας ὀνομάζεσθαι· τὸ γὰρ ἄνω τοὺς Ἀττικοὺς ἀνέκας ὀνομάζειν, καὶ ἀνέκαθεν τὸ ἄνωθεν.

[34] [1] Αἴθραν δὲ τὴν Θησέως μητέρα γενομένην αἰχμάλωτον ἀπαχθῆναι λέγουσιν εἰς Λακεδαίμονα, κἀκεῖθεν εἰς Τροίαν μεθ’ Ἑλένης, καὶ μαρτυρεῖν Ὅμηρον (Il. 3, 144), ἕπεσθαι τῇ Ἑλένῃ φάμενον

Αἴθρην Πιτθῆος θύγατρα Κλυμένην τε βοῶπιν.

[2] οἱ δὲ καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ἔπος διαβάλλουσι καὶ τὴν περὶ Μουνύχου μυθολογίαν, ὃν ἐκ Δημοφῶντος Λαοδίκης κρύφα τεκούσης ἐν Ἰλίῳ συνεκθρέψαι τὴν Αἴθραν λέγουσιν.

[3] ἴδιον δέ τινα καὶ παρηλλαγμένον ὅλως λόγον ὁ Ἴστρος (FGrH 334 F 7) ἐν τῇ τρισκαιδεκάτῃ τῶν Ἀττικῶν ἀναφέρει περὶ Αἴθρας, ὡς ἐνίων λεγόντων, Ἀλέξανδρον μὲν τὸν [ἐν Θεσσαλίᾳ] Πάριν ὑπ’ Ἀχιλλέως καὶ Πατρόκλου μάχῃ κρατηθῆναι παρὰ τὸν Σπερχειόν, Ἕκτορα δὲ τὴν Τροιζηνίων πόλιν λαβόντα διαρπάσαι, καὶ τὴν Αἴθραν ἀπάγειν ἐκεῖ καταληφθεῖσαν. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ἔχει πολλὴν ἀλογίαν.

[35] [1] Ἀιδωνέως δὲ τοῦ Μολοσσοῦ ξενίζοντος Ἡρακλέα, καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Θησέα καὶ Πειρίθουν κατὰ τύχην μνησθέντος, ἅ τε πράξοντες ἦλθον καὶ ἃ φωραθέντες ἔπαθον, βαρέως ἤνεγκεν ὁ Ἡρακλῆς, τοῦ μὲν ἀπολωλότος ἀδόξως, τοῦ δ’ ἀπολλυμένου. καὶ περὶ Πειρίθου μὲν [2] οὐδὲν ᾤετο ποιήσειν πλέον ἐγκαλῶν, τὸν δὲ Θησέα παρῃτεῖτο, καὶ χάριν ἠξίου ταύτην αὐτῷ δοθῆναι. συγχωρήσαντος [3] δὲ τοῦ Ἀιδωνέως, λυθεὶς ὁ Θησεὺς ἐπανῆλθε μὲν εἰς τὰς ἀθήνας, οὐδέπω παντάπασι τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ κεκρατημένων, καὶ ὅσ’ ὑπῆρχε τεμένη πρότερον αὐτῷ τῆς πόλεως ἐξελούσης, ἅπαντα καθιέρωσεν Ἡρακλεῖ καὶ προσηγόρευσεν ἀντὶ Θησείων Ἡράκλεια, πλὴν τεσσάρων, [4] ὡς Φιλόχορος (FGrH 328 F 18a) ἱστόρηκεν· αὖθις δὲ βουλόμενος ὡς πρότερον ἄρχειν καὶ καθηγεῖσθαι τοῦ πολιτεύματος, εἰς στάσεις ἐνέπεσε καὶ ταραχάς, οὓς μὲν ἀπέλιπε μισοῦντας αὐτὸν εὑρίσκων τὸ μὴ φοβεῖσθαι τῷ μισεῖν προσειληφότας, ἐν δὲ τῷ δήμῳ πολὺ τὸ διεφθαρμένον ὁρῶν καὶ θεραπεύεσθαι βουλόμενον ἀντὶ τοῦ [5] ποιεῖν σιωπῇ τὸ προσταττόμενον. ἐπιχειρῶν οὖν βιάζεσθαι, κατεδημαγωγεῖτο καὶ κατεστασιάζετο, καὶ τέλος ἀπογνοὺς τὰ πράγματα, τοὺς μὲν παῖδας εἰς Εὔβοιαν ὑπεξέπεμψε πρὸς Ἐλεφήνορα τὸν Χαλκώδοντος, αὐτὸς δὲ Γαργηττοῖ κατὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀρὰς θέμενος, οὗ νῦν ἔστι τὸ καλούμενον Ἀρατήριον, εἰς Σκῦρον ἐξέπλευσεν, οὔσης αὐτῷ πρὸς τοὺς ἐκεῖ φιλίας ὡς ᾤετο καὶ χωρίων ἐν τῇ [6] νήσῳ πατρῴων. ἐβασίλευε δὲ Λυκομήδης τότε τῶν Σκυρίων. πρὸς τοῦτον οὖν ἀφικόμενος ἐζήτει τοὺς ἀγροὺς ἀπολαβεῖν, ὡς αὐτόθι κατοικήσων· ἔνιοι δέ φασι παρακαλεῖν αὐτὸν βοηθεῖν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους. ὁ δὲ Λυκομήδης, εἴτε δείσας τὴν δόξαν τοῦ ἀνδρός, εἴτε τῷ Μενεσθεῖ χαριζόμενος, ἐπὶ τὰ ἄκρα τῆς χώρας ἀναγαγὼν αὐτόν, ὡς ἐκεῖθεν ἐπιδείξων τοὺς ἀγρούς, ὦσε κατὰ τῶν [7] πετρῶν καὶ διέφθειρεν. ἔνιοι δ’ ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ πεσεῖν φασι σφαλέντα, μετὰ δεῖπνον ὥσπερ εἰώθει περιπατοῦντα. καὶ παραυτίκα μὲν οὐδεὶς ἔσχεν αὐτοῦ λόγον οὐδένα τεθνηκότος, ἀλλὰ τῶν μὲν Ἀθηναίων ἐβασίλευσε Μενεσθεύς, οἱ δὲ παῖδες ἰδιωτεύοντες Ἐλεφήνορι συνεστράτευσαν [8] εἰς Ἴλιον. ἐκεῖ‹θεν› δὲ Μενεσθέως ἀποθανόντος ἐπανελθόντες αὐτοὶ τὴν βασιλείαν ἀνεκομίσαντο. χρόνοις δ’ ὕστερον Ἀθηναίους ἄλλα τε παρέστησεν ὡς ἥρωα τιμᾶν Θησέα, καὶ τῶν ἐν Μαραθῶνι πρὸς Μήδους μαχομένων ἔδοξαν οὐκ ὀλίγοι φάσμα Θησέως ἐν ὅπλοις καθορᾶν πρὸ αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους φερόμενον.

[36] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὰ Μηδικὰ Φαίδωνος ἄρχοντος μαντευομένοις τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἀνεῖλεν ἡ Πυθία τὰ Θησέως ἀναλαβεῖν ὀστᾶ καὶ θεμένους ἐντίμως παρ’ αὑτοῖς φυλάττειν. ἦν δὲ καὶ λαβεῖν ἀπορία καὶ γνῶναι τὸν τάφον [2] ἀμειξίᾳ καὶ χαλεπότητι τῶν ἐνοικούντων Δολόπων. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ [καὶ] Κίμων ἑλὼν τὴν νῆσον, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γέγραπται (cap. 8), καὶ φιλοτιμούμενος ἐξανευρεῖν, ἀετοῦ τινα τόπον βουνοειδῆ κόπτοντος ὥς φασι τῷ στόματι καὶ διαστέλλοντος τοῖς ὄνυξι θείᾳ τινὶ τύχῃ, συμφρονήσας ἀνέσκαψεν. εὑρέθη δὲ θήκη τε μεγάλου [3] σώματος αἰχμή τε παρακειμένη χαλκῆ καὶ ξίφος. κομισθέντων δὲ τούτων ὑπὸ Κίμωνος ἐπὶ τῆς τριήρους, ἡσθέντες οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι πομπαῖς τε λαμπραῖς ἐδέξαντο καὶ [4] θυσίαις ὥσπερ αὐτὸν ἐπανερχόμενον εἰς τὸ ἄστυ. καὶ κεῖται μὲν ἐν μέσῃ τῇ πόλει παρὰ τὸ νῦν γυμνάσιον, ἔστι δὲ φύξιμον οἰκέταις καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς ταπεινοτέροις καὶ δεδιόσι κρείττονας, ὡς καὶ τοῦ Θησέως προστατικοῦ τινος καὶ βοηθητικοῦ γενομένου καὶ προσδεχομένου φιλανθρώπως τὰς τῶν ταπεινοτέρων δεήσεις. θυσίαν δὲ ποιοῦσιν αὐτῷ τὴν μεγίστην ὀγδόῃ Πυανεψιῶνος, ἐν ᾗ [5] μετὰ τῶν ἠιθέων ἐκ Κρήτης ἐπανῆλθεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις ὀγδόαις τιμῶσιν αὐτόν, ἢ διὰ τὸ πρῶτον ἐκ Τροιζῆνος ἀφικέσθαι τῇ ὀγδόῃ τοῦ Ἑκατομβαιῶνος, ὡς ἱστόρηκε Διόδωρος ὁ περιηγητής (FGrH 372 F 38), ἢ νομίζοντες ἑτέρου μᾶλλον ἐκείνῳ προσήκειν τὸν ἀριθμὸν τοῦτον, ἐκ Ποσειδῶνος γεγονέναι λεγομένῳ· [6] καὶ γὰρ Ποσειδῶνα ταῖς ὀγδόαις τιμῶσιν. ἡ γὰρ ὀγδοὰς κύβος ἀπ’ ἀρτίου πρῶτος οὖσα καὶ τοῦ πρώτου τετραγώνου διπλασία, τὸ μόνιμον καὶ δυσκίνητον οἰκεῖον ἔχει τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ δυνάμεως, ὃν Ἀσφάλιον καὶ Γαιήοχον προσονομάζομεν.

Romulus

[1] Τὸ μέγα τῆς Ῥώμης ὄνομα καὶ δόξῃ διὰ πάντων ἀνθρώπων κεχωρηκὸς ἀφ’ ὅτου καὶ δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν τῇ πόλει γέγονεν, οὐχ ὡμολόγηται παρὰ τοῖς συγγραφεῦσιν, ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν Πελασγούς, ἐπὶ πλεῖστα τῆς οἰκουμένης πλανηθέντας ἀνθρώπων τε πλείστων κρατήσαντας, αὐτόθι κατοικῆσαι, καὶ διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ῥώμην οὕτως ὀνομάσαι τὴν πόλιν, οἱ δὲ Τροίας ἁλισκομένης διαφυγόντας ἐνίους καὶ πλοίων ἐπιτυχόντας ὑπὸ πνευμάτων τῇ Τυρρηνίᾳ προσπεσεῖν φερομένους, καὶ περὶ τὸν Θύμβριν [7] ποταμὸν ὁρμίσασθαι· ταῖς δὲ γυναιξὶν αὐτῶν, ἀπορουμέναις ἤδη καὶ δυσανασχετούσαις πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν, ὑποθέσθαι μίαν, ἣ καὶ γένει προὔχειν καὶ φρονεῖν ἐδόκει μάλιστα, Ῥώμην ὄνομα, καταπρῆσαι τὰ πλοῖα. πραχθέντος δὲ τούτου, πρῶτον μὲν ἀγανακτεῖν τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἔπειτα δι’ ἀνάγκην ἱδρυνθέντας περὶ τὸ Παλλάντιον, ὡς ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ κρεῖττον ἐλπίδος ἔπραττον, ἀγαθῆς τε πειρώμενοι χώρας καὶ δεχομένων αὐτοὺς τῶν προσοίκων, ἄλλην τε τιμὴν ἀπονέμειν τῇ Ῥώμῃ καὶ τὴν πόλιν [8] ἀπ’ αὐτῆς ὡς αἰτίας προσαγορεύειν. ἐξ ἐκείνου τε παραμένειν λέγουσι τὸ τοὺς συγγενεῖς τὰς γυναῖκας καὶ οἰκείους ἄνδρας ἀσπάζεσθαι τοῖς στόμασι· καὶ γὰρ ἐκείνας, ὅτε τὰ πλοῖα κατέπρησαν, οὕτως ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας, δεομένας αὐτῶν καὶ παραιτουμένας τὴν ὀργήν.

[2] [1] Ἄλλοι δὲ Ῥώμην, Ἰταλοῦ θυγατέρα καὶ Λευκαρίας (οἱ δὲ Τηλέφου τοῦ Ἡρακλέους), Αἰνείᾳ γαμηθεῖσαν (οἱ δ’ Ἀσκανίῳ τῷ Αἰνείου), λέγουσι τοὔνομα θέσθαι τῇ πόλει· οἱ δὲ Ῥωμανόν, Ὀδυσσέως παῖδα καὶ Κίρκης, οἰκίσαι τὴν πόλιν· οἱ δὲ Ῥῶμον ἐκ Τροίας ὑπὸ Διομήδους ἀποσταλέντα τὸν Ἠμαθίωνος, οἱ δὲ Ῥῶμιν Λατίνων τύραννον, ἐκβαλόντα Τυρρηνοὺς τοὺς εἰς Λυδίαν μὲν ἐκ Θετταλίας, ἐκ δὲ Λυδίας εἰς Ἰταλίαν παραγενομένους.

[2] οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ οἱ Ῥωμύλον τῷ δικαιοτάτῳ τῶν λόγων ἀποφαίνοντες ἐπώνυμον τῆς πόλεως ὁμολογοῦσι περὶ τοῦ γένους [αὐτοῦ]. οἱ μὲν γὰρ Αἰνείου καὶ Δεξιθέας τῆς Φόρβαντος υἱὸν ὄντα νήπιον εἰς Ἰταλίαν κομισθῆναι καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ Ῥῶμον· ἐν δὲ τῷ ποταμῷ πλημμύραντι τῶν ἄλλων σκαφῶν διαφθαρέντων, ἐν ᾧ δ’ ἦσαν οἱ παῖδες εἰς μαλακὴν ἀποκλινθέντος ὄχθην ἀτρέμα, σωθέντας ἀπροσδοκήτως ὄνομα θεῖναι Ῥώμην.

[3] οἱ δὲ Ῥώμην, θυγατέρα τῆς Τρωάδος ἐκείνης, Λατίνῳ τῷ Τηλεμάχου γαμηθεῖσαν τεκεῖν τὸν Ῥωμύλον· οἱ δ’ Αἰμυλίαν τὴν Αἰνείου καὶ Λαβινίας, Ἄρει συγγενομένην.

[4] Οἱ δὲ μυθώδη παντάπασι περὶ τῆς γενέσεως διεξίασι. Ταρχετίῳ γάρ, Ἀλβανῶν βασιλεῖ παρανομωτάτῳ καὶ ὠμοτάτῳ, φάσμα δαιμόνιον οἴκοι γενέσθαι· φαλλὸν γὰρ ἐκ τῆς ἑστίας ἀνασχεῖν καὶ διαμένειν ἐπὶ πολλὰς ἡμέρας. εἶναι δὲ Τηθύος ἐν Τυρρηνίᾳ χρηστήριον, ἀφ’ οὗ κομισθῆναι τῷ Ταρχετίῳ χρησμόν, ὥστε συμμεῖξαι τῷ φάσματι παρθένον· ἔσεσθαι γὰρ ἐξ αὐτῆς παῖδα κλεινότατον, [5] ἀρετῇ καὶ τύχη καὶ ῥώμῃ διαφέροντα. φράσαντος οὖν τὸ μάντευμα τοῦ Ταρχετίου μιᾷ τῶν θυγατέρων καὶ συγγενέσθαι τῷ φαλλῷ προστάξαντος, αὐτὴν μὲν ἀπαξιῶσαι, θεράπαιναν δ’ εἰσπέμψαι. τὸν δὲ Ταρχέτιον ὡς ἔγνω χαλεπῶς φέροντα συλλαβεῖν μὲν ἀμφοτέρας ἐπὶ θανάτῳ, τὴν δ’ Ἑστίαν ἰδόντα κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ἀπαγορεύουσαν αὐτῷ τὸν φόνον, ἱστόν τινα παρεγγυῆσαι ταῖς κόραις ὑφαίνειν δεδεμέναις, ὡς ὅταν ἐξυφήνωσι, τότε [6] δοθησομένας πρὸς γάμον. ἐκείνας μὲν οὖν δι’ ἡμέρας ὑφαίνειν, ἑτέρας δὲ νύκτωρ τοῦ Ταρχετίου κελεύοντος ἀναλύειν τὸν ἱστόν. ἐκ δὲ τοῦ φαλλοῦ τῆς θεραπαινίδος τεκούσης δίδυμα, δοῦναί τινι Τερατίῳ τὸν Ταρχέτιον, [7] ἀνελεῖν κελεύσαντα. τὸν δὲ θεῖναι φέροντα τοῦ ποταμοῦ πλησίον, εἶτα λύκαιναν μὲν ἐπιφοιτᾶν μαστὸν ἐνδιδοῦσαν, ὄρνιθας δὲ παντοδαποὺς ψωμίσματα κομίζοντας ἐντιθέναι τοῖς βρέφεσιν, ἄχρι οὗ βουκόλον ἰδόντα καὶ θαυμάσαντα τολμῆσαι προσελθεῖν καὶ ἀνελέσθαι τὰ παιδία.

[8] τοιαύτης δὲ τῆς σωτηρίας αὐτοῖς γενομένης, ἐκτραφέντας ἐπιθέσθαι τῷ Ταρχετίῳ καὶ κρατῆσαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Προμαθίων τις (FHG III 203), ἱστορίαν Ἰταλικὴν συντεταγμένος, εἴρηκε.

[3] [1] Τοῦ δὲ πίστιν ἔχοντος λόγου μάλιστα καὶ πλείστους μάρτυρας τὰ μὲν κυριώτατα πρῶτος εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐξέδωκε Διοκλῆς Πεπαρήθιος (FHG III 74), ᾧ καὶ Φάβιος ὁ Πίκτωρ (HRR I 7) ἐν τοῖς πλείστοις ἐπηκολούθηκε. γεγόνασι δὲ καὶ περὶ τούτων ἕτεραι διαφοραί· [2] τύπῳ δ’ εἰπεῖν τοιοῦτός ἐστι. τῶν ἀπ’ Αἰνείου γεγονότων ἐν Ἄλβῃ βασιλέων εἰς ἀδελφοὺς δύο, Νομήτορα καὶ Ἀμούλιον, ἡ διαδοχὴ καθῆκεν. Ἀμουλίου δὲ νείμαντος τὰ πάντα δίχα, τῇ δὲ βασιλείᾳ τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὸν ἐκ Τροίας κομισθέντα χρυσὸν ἀντιθέντος, εἵλετο τὴν βασιλείαν [3] ὁ Νομήτωρ. ἔχων οὖν ὁ Ἀμούλιος τὰ χρήματα καὶ πλέον ἀπ’ αὐτῶν δυνάμενος τοῦ Νομήτορος, τήν τε βασιλείαν ἀφείλετο ῥᾳδίως, καὶ φοβούμενος ἐκ τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ γενέσθαι παῖδας, ἱέρειαν τῆς Ἑστίας ἀπέδειξεν, ἄγαμον καὶ παρθένον ἀεὶ βιωσομένην. ταύτην οἱ μὲν [4] Ἰλίαν, οἱ δὲ Ῥέαν, οἱ δὲ Σιλουίαν ὀνομάζουσι. φωρᾶται δὲ μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον κυοῦσα παρὰ τὸν καθεστῶτα ταῖς Ἑστιάσι νόμον, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἀνήκεστα μὴ παθεῖν αὐτὴν ἡ τοῦ βασιλέως θυγάτηρ Ἀνθὼ παρῃτήσατο, δεηθεῖσα τοῦ πατρός, εἵρχθη δὲ καὶ δίαιταν εἶχεν ἀνεπίμεικτον, ὅπως μὴ λάθοι τεκοῦσα τὸν Ἀμούλιον. ἔτεκε δὲ δύο [5] παῖδας ὑπερφυεῖς μεγέθει καὶ κάλλει. δι’ ὃ καὶ μᾶλλον ὁ Ἀμούλιος φοβηθείς, ἐκέλευσεν αὐτοὺς ὑπηρέτην λαβόντα ῥῖψαι. τοῦτον ἔνιοι Φαιστύλον ὀνομάζεσθαι λέγουσιν, οἱ δ’ οὐ τοῦτον, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἀνελόμενον. ἐνθέμενος οὖν εἰς σκάφην τὰ βρέφη, κατέβη μὲν ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμὸν ὡς ῥίψων, ἰδὼν δὲ κατιόντα πολλῷ ῥεύματι καὶ τραχυνόμενον, ἔδεισε προσελθεῖν, ἐγγὺς δὲ τῆς ὄχθης [6] καταθεὶς ἀπηλλάσσετο. τοῦ δὲ ποταμοῦ κατακλύζοντος ἡ πλημμύρα τὴν σκάφην ὑπολαβοῦσα καὶ μετεωρίσασα πρᾴως κατήνεγκεν εἰς χωρίον ἐπιεικῶς μαλθακόν, ὃ νῦν Κερμαλὸν καλοῦσι, πάλαι δὲ Γερμανόν, ὡς ἔοικεν ὅτι καὶ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς γερμανοὺς ὀνομάζουσιν.

[4] [1] Ἦν δὲ πλησίον ἐρινεός, ὃν Ῥωμινάλιον ἐκάλουν, ἢ διὰ τὸν Ῥωμύλον ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσιν, ἢ διὰ τὸ τὰ μηρυκώμενα τῶν θρεμμάτων ἐκεῖ διὰ τὴν σκιὰν ἐνδιάζειν, ἢ μάλιστα διὰ τὸν τῶν βρεφῶν θηλασμόν, ὅτι τήν τε θηλὴν ῥοῦμαν ὠνόμαζον οἱ παλαιοί, καὶ θεόν τινα τῆς ἐκτροφῆς τῶν νηπίων ἐπιμελεῖσθαι δοκοῦσαν ὀνομάζουσι Ῥουμῖναν, καὶ θύουσιν αὐτῇ νηφάλια, καὶ γάλα τοῖς ἱεροῖς [2] ἐπισπένδουσιν. ἐνταῦθα δὴ τοῖς βρέφεσι κειμένοις τήν τε λύκαιναν ἱστοροῦσι θηλαζομένην καὶ δρυοκολάπτην τινὰ παρεῖναι συνεκτρέφοντα καὶ φυλάττοντα. νομίζεται δ’ Ἄρεως ἱερὰ τὰ ζῷα, τὸν δὲ δρυοκολάπτην καὶ διαφερόντως Λατῖνοι σέβονται καὶ τιμῶσιν· ὅθεν οὐχ ἥκιστα πίστιν ἔσχεν ἡ τεκοῦσα τὰ βρέφη τεκεῖν ἐξ Ἄρεως [3] φάσκουσα. καίτοι τοῦτο παθεῖν αὐτὴν ἐξαπατηθεῖσαν λέγουσιν, ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀμουλίου διαπαρθενευθεῖσαν, ἐν ὅπλοις ἐπιφανέντος αὐτῇ καὶ συναρπάσαντος. οἱ δὲ τοὔνομα τῆς τροφοῦ δι’ ἀμφιβολίαν ἐπὶ τὸ μυθῶδες ἐκτροπὴν τῇ [4] φήμῃ παρασχεῖν· λούπας γὰρ ἐκάλουν οἱ Λατῖνοι τῶν τε θηρίων τὰς λυκαίνας καὶ τῶν γυναικῶν τὰς ἑταιρούσας· εἶναι δὲ τοιαύτην τὴν Φαιστύλου γυναῖκα τοῦ τὰ βρέφη [5] θρέψαντος, Ἄκκαν Λαρεντίαν ὄνομα. ταύτῃ δὲ καὶ θύουσι Ῥωμαῖοι, καὶ χοὰς ἐπιφέρει τοῦ Ἀπριλίου μηνὸς [αὐτῇ] ὁ τοῦ Ἄρεως ἱερεύς, καὶ Λαρενταλίαν καλοῦσι τὴν ἑορτήν.

[5] [1] Ἑτέραν δὲ τιμῶσι Λαρεντίαν ἐξ αἰτίας τοιαύτης. ὁ νεωκόρος τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ἀλύων ὡς ἔοικεν ὑπὸ σχολῆς, προὔθετο πρὸς τὸν θεὸν διακυβεύειν, ὑπειπὼν ὅτι νικήσας μὲν αὐτὸς ἕξει τι παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ χρηστόν, ἡττηθεὶς δὲ τῷ θεῷ τράπεζαν ἄφθονον παρέξει καὶ γυναῖκα [2] καλὴν συναναπαυσομένην. ἐπὶ τούτοις τὰς μὲν ὑπὲρ τοῦ θεοῦ θείς, τὰς δ’ ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ ψήφους, ἀνεφάνη νικώμενος. εὐσυνθετεῖν δὲ βουλόμενος καὶ δικαιῶν ἐμμένειν τοῖς ὁρισθεῖσι, δεῖπνόν τε τῷ θεῷ παρεσκεύασε, καὶ τὴν Λαρεντίαν οὖσαν ὡραίαν, οὔπω δ’ ἐμφανῶς ‹ἑταιροῦσαν› μισθωσάμενος, εἱστίασεν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ κλίνην ὑποστορέσας, καὶ μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον συνεῖρξεν, ὡς δὴ τοῦ θεοῦ ἕξοντος [3] αὐτήν. καὶ μέντοι καὶ τὸν θεὸν ἐντυχεῖν λέγεται τῇ γυναικί, καὶ κελεῦσαι βαδίζειν ἕωθεν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν καὶ τὸν ἀπαντήσαντα πρῶτον ἀσπασαμένην ποιεῖσθαι φίλον. ἀπήντησεν οὖν αὐτῇ τῶν πολιτῶν ἀνὴρ ἡλικίᾳ τε προήκων καὶ συνειλοχὼς οὐσίαν ἱκανήν, ἄπαις δὲ καὶ βεβιωκὼς ἄνευ γυναικός, ὄνομα Ταρρούτιος. οὗτος ἔγνω τὴν Λαρεντίαν καὶ ἠγάπησε, καὶ τελευτῶν ἀπέλιπε κληρονόμον ἐπὶ πολλοῖς καὶ καλοῖς κτήμασιν, ὧν ἐκείνη τὰ [4] πλεῖστα τῷ δήμῳ κατὰ διαθήκας ἔδωκε. λέγεται δ’ αὐτὴν ἔνδοξον οὖσαν ἤδη καὶ θεοφιλῆ νομιζομένην ἀφανῆ γενέσθαι περὶ τοῦτον τὸν τόπον, ἐν ᾧ καὶ τὴν προτέραν ἐκείνην Λαρεντίαν κεῖσθαι. καλεῖται δὲ νῦν ὁ τόπος Βήλαβρον, ὅτι τοῦ ποταμοῦ πολλάκις ὑπερχεομένου διεπεραιοῦντο πορθμείοις κατὰ τοῦτο τὸ χωρίον εἰς ἀγοράν· [5] τὴν δὲ πορθμείαν βηλατούραν καλοῦσιν. ἔνιοι δὲ λέγουσι τὴν εἰς τὸν ἱππόδρομον φέρουσαν ἐξ ἀγορᾶς πάροδον ἱστίοις καταπεταννύναι τοὺς τὴν θέαν παρέχοντας, ἐντεῦθεν ἀρχομένους· ῥωμαϊστὶ δὲ τὸ ἱστίον βῆλον ὀνομάζουσι. διὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἔχει τιμὰς ἡ δευτέρα Λαρεντία παρὰ Ῥωμαίοις.

[6] [1] Τὰ δὲ βρέφη Φαιστύλος Ἀμουλίου συφορβὸς ἀνείλετο λαθὼν ἅπαντας, ὡς δ’ ἔνιοί φασι τῶν εἰκότων ἐχόμενοι μᾶλλον, εἰδότος τοῦ Νομήτορος καὶ συγχορηγοῦντος [2] τροφὰς κρύφα τοῖς τρέφουσι. καὶ γράμματα λέγονται καὶ τἆλλα μανθάνειν οἱ παῖδες εἰς Γαβίους κομισθέντες, ὅσα χρὴ τοὺς εὖ γεγονότας. κληθῆναι δὲ καὶ τούτους ἀπὸ τῆς θηλῆς ἱστοροῦσι Ῥωμύλον καὶ Ῥέμον, ὅτι θηλάζοντες [3] ὤφθησαν τὸ θηρίον. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἐν τοῖς σώμασιν εὐγένεια καὶ νηπίων ὄντων εὐθὺς ἐξέφαινε μεγέθει καὶ ἰδέᾳ τὴν φύσιν, αὐξόμενοι δὲ θυμοειδεῖς ἦσαν ἀμφότεροι καὶ ἀνδρώδεις καὶ φρόνημα πρὸς τὰ φαινόμενα δεινὰ καὶ τόλμαν ὅλως ἀνέκπληκτον ἔχοντες· ὁ δὲ Ῥωμύλος γνώμῃ τε χρῆσθαι μᾶλλον ἐδόκει καὶ πολιτικὴν ἔχειν σύνεσιν, ἐν ταῖς περὶ νομὰς καὶ κυνηγίας πρὸς τοὺς γειτνιῶντας ἐπιμειξίαις πολλὴν ἑαυτοῦ παρέχων κατανόησιν ἡγεμονικοῦ μᾶλλον ἢ πειθαρχικοῦ φύσει [4] γεγονότος. διὸ τοῖς μὲν ὁμοδούλοις ἢ ταπεινοτέροις προσφιλεῖς ἦσαν, ἐπιστάτας δὲ καὶ διόπους βασιλικοὺς καὶ ἀγελάρχας ὡς μηδὲν αὐτῶν ἀρετῇ διαφέροντας ὑπερφρονοῦντες, [5] οὔτ’ ἀπειλῆς ἐφρόντιζον οὔτ’ ὀργῆς. ἐχρῶντο δὲ διαίταις καὶ διατριβαῖς ἐλευθερίοις, οὐ τὴν σχολὴν ἐλευθέριον ἡγούμενοι καὶ τὴν ἀπονίαν, ἀλλὰ γυμνάσια καὶ θήρας καὶ δρόμους καὶ τὸ λῃστὰς ἀλέξασθαι καὶ κλῶπας ἑλεῖν καὶ βίας ἐξελέοθαι τοὺς ἀδικουμένους. ἦσαν δὴ διὰ ταῦτα περιβόητοι.

[7] [1] Γενομένης δέ τινος πρὸς τοὺς Νομήτορος βουκόλους τοῖς Ἀμουλίου διαφορᾶς καὶ βοσκημάτων ἐλάσεως, οὐκ ἀνασχόμενοι συγκόπτουσι μὲν αὐτοὺς καὶ τρέπονται, ἀποτέμνονται δὲ τῆς ἀγέλης συχνήν. ἀγανακτοῦντος δὲ τοῦ Νομήτορος ὠλιγώρουν, συνῆγον δὲ καὶ προσεδέχοντο πολλοὺς μὲν ἀπόρους, πολλοὺς δὲ δούλους, θράσους ἀποστατικοῦ [2] καὶ φρονήματος ἀρχὰς ἐνδιδόντες. τοῦ δὲ Ῥωμύλου πρός τινα θυσίαν ἀποτραπομένου (καὶ γὰρ ἦν φιλοθύτης καὶ μαντικός), οἱ τοῦ Νομήτορος βοτῆρες τῷ Ῥέμῳ μετ’ ὀλίγων βαδίζοντι προστυχόντες ἐμάχοντο, καὶ γενομένων πληγῶν καὶ τραυμάτων ἐν ἀμφοτέροις, ἐκράτησαν οἱ τοῦ Νομήτορος καὶ συνέλαβον ζῶντα τὸν [3] Ῥέμον. ἀναχθέντος οὖν αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὸν Νομήτορα καὶ κατηγορηθέντος, αὐτὸς μὲν οὐκ ἐκόλασε, χαλεπὸν ὄντα δεδιὼς τὸν ἀδελφόν, ἐλθὼν δὲ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἐδεῖτο τυχεῖν δίκης, ἀδελφὸς ὢν καὶ καθυβρισμένος ὑπ’ οἰκετῶν [4] ἐκείνου βασιλέως ὄντος. συναγανακτούντων δὲ τῶν ἐν Ἄλβῃ καὶ δεινὰ πάσχειν οἰομένων τὸν ἄνδρα παρ’ ἀξίαν, κινηθεὶς ὁ Ἀμούλιος αὐτῷ παραδίδωσι τῷ Νομήτορι τὸν [5] Ῥέμον, ὅ τι βούλοιτο χρήσασθαι. παραλαβὼν δ’ ἐκεῖνος, ὡς ἧκεν οἴκαδε, θαυμάζων μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος τὸν νεανίσκον, ὑπερφέροντα μεγέθει καὶ ῥώμῃ πάντας, ἐνορῶν δὲ τῷ προσώπῳ τὸ θαρραλέον καὶ ἰταμὸν τῆς ψυχῆς ἀδούλωτον καὶ ἀπαθὲς ὑπὸ τῶν παρόντων, ἔργα δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ πράξεις ὅμοια τοῖς βλεπομένοις ἀκούων, τὸ δὲ μέγιστον ὡς ἔοικε θεοῦ συμπαρόντος καὶ συνεπευθύνοντος ἀρχὰς μεγάλων πραγμάτων, ἁπτόμενος ὑπονοίᾳ ‹καὶ› τύχῃ τῆς ἀληθείας, ἀνέκρινεν ὅστις εἴη καὶ ὅπως γένοιτο, φωνῇ τε πρᾳείᾳ καὶ φιλανθρώπῳ βλέμματι πίστιν [6] αὐτῷ μετ’ ἐλπίδος ἐνδιδούς. ὁ δὲ θαρρῶν ἔλεγεν· ‘ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἀποκρύψομαί σε· καὶ γὰρ εἶναι δοκεῖς Ἀμουλίου βασιλικώτερος. ἀκούεις γὰρ καὶ ἀνακρίνεις πρὶν ἢ κολάζειν· ὁ δ’ ἀκρίτους ἐκδίδωσι. πρότερον μὲν ἑαυτοὺς οἰκετῶν βασιλέως Φαιστύλου καὶ Λαρεντίας ἠπιστάμεθα παῖδας, ἐσμὲν δὲ δίδυμοι, γενόμενοι δ’ ἐν αἰτίᾳ πρὸς σὲ καὶ διαβολαῖς καὶ τοῖς περὶ ψυχῆς ἀγῶσιν, ἀκούομεν μεγάλα περὶ ἑαυτῶν· εἰ δὲ πιστά, κρινεῖν ἔοικε νῦν ὁ [7] κίνδυνος. γοναὶ μὲν γὰρ ἡμῶν ἀπόρρητοι λέγονται, τροφαὶ δὲ καὶ τιθηνήσεις ἀτοπώτεραι νεογνῶν, οἷς ἐρρίφημεν οἰωνοῖς καὶ θηρίοις, ὑπὸ τούτων τρεφόμενοι, μαστῷ λυκαίνης καὶ δρυοκολάπτου ψωμίσμασιν, ἐν σκάφῃ τινὶ [8] κείμενοι παρὰ τὸν μέγαν ποταμόν. ἔστι δ’ ἡ σκάφη καὶ σῴζεται, χαλκοῖς ὑποζώσμασι γραμμάτων ἀμυδρῶν ἐγκεχαραγμένων, ἃ γένοιτ’ ἂν ὕστερον ἴσως ἀνωφελῆ γνωρίσματα [9] τοῖς τοκεῦσιν ἡμῶν ἀπολομένων.’ ὁ μὲν οὖν Νομήτωρ ἔκ τε τῶν λόγων τούτων καὶ πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν εἰκάζων τὸν χρόνον, οὐκ ἔφευγε τὴν ἐλπίδα σαίνουσαν, ἀλλ’ ἐφρόντιζεν ὅπως τῇ θυγατρὶ περὶ τούτων κρύφα συγγενόμενος φράσειεν· ἐφρουρεῖτο γὰρ ἔτι καρτερῶς.

[8] [1] Ὁ δὲ Φαιστύλος ἀκούσας τήν τε σύλληψιν τοῦ Ῥέμου καὶ τὴν παράδοσιν, τὸν μὲν Ῥωμύλον ἠξίου βοηθεῖν, τότε σαφῶς διδάξας περὶ τῆς γενέσεως· πρότερον δ’ ὑπῃνίττετο καὶ παρεδήλου τοσοῦτον ὅσον προσέχοντας μὴ μικρὸν φρονεῖν· αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν σκάφην κομίζων ἐχώρει πρὸς τὸν Νομήτορα, σπουδῆς καὶ δέους μεστὸς [2] ὢν διὰ τὸν καιρόν. ὑποψίαν οὖν τοῖς περὶ τὰς πύλας φρουροῖς τοῦ βασιλέως παρέχων, καὶ ὑφορώμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν καὶ ταραττόμενος πρὸς τὰς ἀνακρίσεις, οὐκ ἔλαθε τὴν σκάφην τῷ χλαμυδίῳ περικαλύπτων. ἦν δέ τις ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀπὸ τύχης τῶν τὰ παιδάρια ῥῖψαι λαβόντων καὶ [3] γεγονότων περὶ τὴν ἔκθεσιν. οὗτος ἰδὼν τὴν σκάφην τότε καὶ γνωρίσας τῇ κατασκευῇ καὶ τοῖς γράμμασιν, ἔτυχεν ὑπονοίᾳ τοῦ ὄντος καὶ οὐ παρημέλησεν, ἀλλὰ φράσας [4] τὸ πρᾶγμα τῷ βασιλεῖ κατέστησεν εἰς ἔλεγχον. ἐν δὲ πολλαῖς καὶ μεγάλαις ἀνάγκαις ὁ Φαιστύλος οὔτ’ ἀήττητον ἑαυτὸν διεφύλαξεν, οὔτε παντάπασιν ἐκβιασθείς, σῴζεσθαι μὲν ὡμολόγησε τοὺς παῖδας, εἶναι δ’ ἄπωθεν τῆς Ἄλβης ἔφη νέμοντας· αὐτὸς δὲ τοῦτο πρὸς τὴν Ἰλίαν φέρων βαδίζειν, πολλάκις ἰδεῖν καὶ θιγεῖν ἐπ’ ἐλπίδι [5] βεβαιοτέρᾳ τῶν τέκνων ποθήσασαν. ὅπερ οὖν οἱ ταραττόμενοι καὶ μετὰ δέους ἢ πρὸς ὀργὴν πράττοντες ὁτιοῦν ἐπιεικῶς πάσχουσι, συνέπεσε παθεῖν τὸν Ἀμούλιον. ἄνδρα γὰρ ἄλλῃ τε χρηστὸν καὶ τοῦ Νομήτορος φίλον ὑπὸ σπουδῆς ἔπεμψε, διαπυθέσθαι τοῦ Νομήτορος κελεύσας, εἴ τις ἥκοι λόγος εἰς αὐτὸν ὑπὲρ τῶν παίδων [6] ὡς περιγενομένων. ἀφικόμενος οὖν ὁ ἄνθρωπος καὶ θεασάμενος ὅσον οὔπω τὸν Ῥέμον ἐν περιβολαῖς καὶ φιλοφροσύναις τοῦ Νομήτορος, τήν τε πίστιν ἰσχυρὰν ἐποίησε τῆς ἐλπίδος, καὶ παρεκελεύσατο τῶν πραγμάτων ὀξέως ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι, καὶ συνῆν αὐτοῖς ἤδη καὶ συνέπραττεν.

[7] ὁ δὲ καιρὸς οὐδὲ βουλομένοις ὀκνεῖν παρεῖχεν. ὁ γὰρ Ῥωμύλος ἐγγὺς ἦν ἤδη, καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐξέθεον οὐκ ὀλίγοι τῶν πολιτῶν μίσει καὶ φόβῳ τοῦ Ἀμουλίου. πολλὴν δὲ καὶ σὺν αὑτῷ δύναμιν ἦγε συλλελοχισμένην εἰς ἑκατοστύας· ἑκάστης δ’ ἀνὴρ ἀφηγεῖτο χόρτου καὶ ὕλης ἀγκαλίδα κοντῷ περικειμένην ἀνέχων· μανίπλα ταύτας Λατῖνοι καλοῦσιν· ἀπ’ ἐκείνου δὲ καὶ νῦν ἐν τοῖς στρατεύμασι [8] τούτους μανιπλαρίους ὀνομάζουσιν. ἅμα δὲ τοῦ μὲν Ῥέμου τοὺς ἐντὸς ἀφιστάντος, τοῦ δὲ Ῥωμύλου προσάγοντος ἔξωθεν, οὔτε πράξας οὐδὲν ὁ τύραννος οὔτε βουλεύσας σωτήριον ἑαυτῷ διὰ τὸ ἀπορεῖν καὶ ταράττεσθαι, [9] καταληφθεὶς ἀπέθανεν. ὧν τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ Φαβίου λέγοντος (HRR I 17) καὶ τοῦ Πεπαρηθίου Διοκλέους (FHG III 78), ὃς δοκεῖ πρῶτος ἐκδοῦναι Ῥώμης κτίσιν, ὕποπτον μὲν ἐνίοις ἐστὶ τὸ δραματικὸν καὶ πλασματῶδες, οὐ δεῖ δ’ ἀπιστεῖν τὴν τύχην ὁρῶντας οἵων ποιημάτων δημιουργός ἐστι, καὶ τὰ Ῥωμαίων πράγματα λογιζομένους, ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἐνταῦθα προὔβη δυνάμεως, μὴ θείαν τιν’ ἀρχὴν λαβόντα καὶ μηδὲν μέγα μηδὲ παράδοξον ἔχουσαν.

[9] [1] Ἀμουλίου δ’ ἀποθανόντος καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων καταστάντων, Ἄλβην μὲν οὔτ’ οἰκεῖν μὴ ἄρχοντες οὔτ’ ἄρχειν ἐβούλοντο τοῦ μητροπάτορος ζῶντος, ἀποδόντες δὲ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἐκείνῳ καὶ τῇ μητρὶ τιμὰς πρεπούσας, ἔγνωσαν οἰκεῖν καθ’ ἑαυτούς, πόλιν ἐν οἷς χωρίοις ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐνετράφησαν κτίσαντες· αὕτη γὰρ εὐπρεπεστάτη τῶν αἰτιῶν [2] ἐστιν. ἦν δ’ ἴσως ἀναγκαῖον, οἰκετῶν καὶ ἀποστατῶν πολλῶν ἠθροισμένων πρὸς αὐτούς, ἢ καταλυθῆναι παντάπασι τούτων διασπαρέντων, ἢ συνοικεῖν ἰδίᾳ μετ’ αὐτῶν. ὅτι γὰρ οὐκ ἠξίουν οἱ τὴν Ἄλβην οἰκοῦντες ἀναμειγνύναι τοὺς ἀποστάτας ἑαυτοῖς οὐδὲ προσδέχεσθαι πολίτας, ἐδήλωσε πρῶτον μὲν τὸ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἔργον, οὐχ ὕβρει τολμηθὲν ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀνάγκην, ἑκουσίων ἀπορίᾳ γάμων· ἐτίμησαν γὰρ αὐτὰς ἁρπάσαντες περιττῶς.

[3] ἔπειτα τῆς πόλεως τὴν πρώτην ἵδρυσιν λαμβανούσης, ἱερόν τι φύξιμον τοῖς ἀφισταμένοις κατασκευάσαντες, ὃ Θεοῦ Ἀσυλαίου προσηγόρευον, ἐδέχοντο πάντας, οὔτε δεσπόταις δοῦλον οὔτε θῆτα χρήσταις οὔτ’ ἄρχουσιν ἀνδροφόνον ἐκδιδόντες, ἀλλὰ μαντεύματι πυθοχρήστῳ πᾶσι βεβαιοῦν τὴν ἀσυλίαν φάσκοντες, ὥστε πληθῦσαι ταχὺ τὴν πόλιν, ἐπεὶ τάς γε πρώτας ἑστίας λέγουσι τῶν χιλίων μὴ πλείονας γενέσθαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον.

[4] Ὁρμήσασι δὲ πρὸς τὸν συνοικισμὸν αὐτοῖς εὐθὺς ἦν διαφορὰ περὶ τοῦ τόπου. Ῥωμύλος μὲν οὖν τὴν καλουμένην Ῥώμην κουαδράταν (ὅπερ ἐστὶ τετράγωνον) ἔκτισε, καὶ ἐκεῖνον ἐβούλετο πολίζειν τὸν τόπον, Ῥέμος δὲ χωρίον τι τοῦ Ἀβεντίνου καρτερόν, ὃ δι’ ἐκεῖνον μὲν [5] ὠνομάσθη Ῥεμωρία, νῦν δὲ Ῥιγνάριον καλεῖται. συνθεμένων δὲ τὴν ἔριν ὄρνισιν αἰσίοις βραβεῦσαι, καὶ καθεζομένων χωρίς, ἕξ φασι τῷ Ῥέμῳ, διπλασίους δὲ τῷ Ῥωμύλῳ προφανῆναι γῦπας· οἱ δὲ τὸν μὲν Ῥέμον ἀληθῶς ἰδεῖν, ψεύσασθαι δὲ τὸν Ῥωμύλον, ἐλθόντος δὲ τοῦ Ῥέμου, τότε τοὺς δώδεκα τῷ Ῥωμύλῳ φανῆναι· διὸ καὶ νῦν μάλιστα χρῆσθαι γυψὶ Ῥωμαίους οἰωνιζομένους.

[6] Ἡρόδωρος δ’ ὁ Ποντικὸς (FGrH 31 F 22b) ἱστορεῖ καὶ τὸν Ἡρακλέα χαίρειν γυπὸς ἐπὶ πράξει φανέντος. ἔστι μὲν γὰρ ἀβλαβέστατον ζῴων ἁπάντων, μηδὲν ὧν σπείρουσιν ἢ φυτεύουσιν ἢ νέμουσιν ἄνθρωποι σινόμενον, τρέφεται δ’ ἀπὸ νεκρῶν σωμάτων, ἀποκτίννυσι δ’ οὐδὲν οὐδὲ λυμαίνεται ψυχὴν ἔχον, πτηνοῖς δὲ διὰ συγγένειαν οὐδὲ νεκροῖς πρόσεισιν. ἀετοὶ δὲ καὶ γλαῦκες καὶ ἱέρακες ζῶντα κόπτουσι τὰ ὁμόφυλα καὶ φονεύουσι· καίτοι κατ’ Αἰσχύλον (Suppl. 223)

ὄρνιθος ὄρνις πῶς ἂν ἁγνεύοι φαγών;

[7] ἔτι τἆλλα μὲν ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἀναστρέφεται καὶ παρέχει διὰ παντὸς αἴσθησιν ἑαυτῶν, ὁ δὲ γὺψ σπάνιόν ἐστι θέαμα, καὶ νεοσσοῖς γυπὸς οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἴσμεν ἐντετυχηκότες, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρέσχεν ἐνίοις ἄτοπον ὑπόνοιαν, ἔξωθεν αὐτοὺς ἀφ’ ἑτέρας τινὸς γῆς καταίρειν ἐνταῦθα, τὸ σπάνιον καὶ μὴ συνεχές, οἷον οἱ μάντεις ἀξιοῦσιν εἶναι τὸ μὴ κατὰ φύσιν μηδ’ ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ, πομπῇ δὲ θείᾳ φαινόμενον.

[10] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἔγνω τὴν ἀπάτην ὁ Ῥέμος, ἐχαλέπαινε, καὶ τοῦ Ῥωμύλου τάφρον ὀρύττοντος ᾗ τὸ τεῖχος ἔμελλε κυκλοῦσθαι, τὰ μὲν ἐχλεύαζε τῶν ἔργων, τοῖς δ’ ἐμποδὼν [2] ἐγένετο. τέλος δὲ διαλλόμενον αὐτὸν οἱ μὲν αὐτοῦ Ῥωμύλου πατάξαντος, οἱ δὲ τῶν ἑταίρων τινὸς Κέλερος, ἐνταῦθα πεσεῖν λέγουσιν. ἔπεσε δὲ καὶ Φαιστύλος ἐν τῇ μάχῃ καὶ Πλειστῖνος, ὃν ἀδελφὸν ὄντα Φαιστύλου συνεκθρέψαι [3] τοὺς περὶ τὸν Ῥωμύλον ἱστοροῦσιν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Κέλερ εἰς Τυρρηνίαν μετέστη, καὶ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου τοὺς ταχεῖς οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ ὀξεῖς κέλερας ὀνομάζουσι· καὶ Κόιντον Μέτελλον, ὅτι τοῦ πατρὸς ἀποθανόντος ἀγῶνα μονομάχων ἡμέραις ὀλίγαις ἐποίησε, θαυμάσαντες τὸ τάχος τῆς παρασκευῆς Κέλερα προσηγόρευσαν.

[11] [1] Ὁ δὲ Ῥωμύλος ἐν τῇ Ῥεμωρίᾳ θάψας τὸν Ῥέμον ὁμοῦ καὶ τοὺς τροφεῖς, ᾤκιζε τὴν πόλιν, ἐκ Τυρρηνίας μεταπεμψάμενος ἄνδρας ἱεροῖς τισι θεσμοῖς καὶ γράμμασιν ὑφηγουμένους ἕκαστα καὶ διδάσκοντας ὥσπερ ἐν [2] τελετῇ. βόθρος γὰρ ὠρύγη περὶ τὸ νῦν Κομίτιον κυκλοτερής, ἀπαρχαί τε πάντων, ὅσοις νόμῳ μὲν ὡς καλοῖς ἐχρῶντο, φύσει δ’ ὡς ἀναγκαίοις, ἀπετέθησαν ἐνταῦθα. καὶ τέλος ἐξ ἧς ἀφῖκτο γῆς ἕκαστος ὀλίγην κομίζων μοῖραν ἔβαλλον εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ συνεμείγνυον. καλοῦσι δὲ τὸν βόθρον τοῦτον ᾧ καὶ τὸν ὄλυμπον ὀνόματι μοῦνδον. εἶθ’ [3] ὥσπερ κύκλον κέντρῳ περιέγραψαν τὴν πόλιν. ὁ δ’ οἰκιστὴς ἐμβαλὼν ἀρότρῳ χαλκῆν ὕνιν, ὑποζεύξας δὲ βοῦν ἄρρενα καὶ θήλειαν, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐπάγει περιελαύνων αὔλακα βαθεῖαν τοῖς τέρμασι, τῶν δ’ ἑπομένων ἔργον ἐστίν, ἃς ἀνίστησι βώλους τὸ ἄροτρον, καταστρέφειν [4] εἴσω καὶ μηδεμίαν ἔξω περιορᾶν ἐκτρεπομένην. τῇ μὲν οὖν γραμμῇ τὸ τεῖχος ἀφορίζουσι, καὶ καλεῖται κατὰ συγκοπὴν πωμήριον, οἷον ὄπισθεν τείχους ἢ μετὰ τεῖχος· ὅπου δὲ πύλην ἐμβαλεῖν διανοοῦνται, τὴν ὕνιν ἐξελόντες [5] καὶ τὸ ἄροτρον ὑπερθέντες διάλειμμα ποιοῦσιν. ὅθεν ἅπαν τὸ τεῖχος ἱερὸν πλὴν τῶν πυλῶν νομίζουσι· τὰς δὲ πύλας ἱερὰς νομίζοντας οὐκ ἦν ἄνευ δεισιδαιμονίας τὰ μὲν δέχεσθαι, τὰ δ’ ἀποπέμπειν τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ μὴ καθαρῶν.

[12] [1] Ὅτι μὲν οὖν ἡ κτίσις ἡμέρᾳ γένοιτο τῇ πρὸ ἕνδεκα καλανδῶν Μαΐων, ὁμολογεῖται, καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ταύτην ἑορτάζουσι Ῥωμαῖοι, γενέθλιον τῆς πατρίδος ὀνομάζοντες. ἐν ἀρχῇ δ’ ὥς φασιν οὐδὲν ἔμψυχον ἔθυον, ἀλλὰ καθαρὰν καὶ ἀναίμακτον ᾤοντο δεῖν τῇ πατρίδι [2] τὴν ἐπώνυμον τῆς γενέσεως ἑορτὴν φυλάττειν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸ τῆς κτίσεως βοτηρική τις ἦν αὐτοῖς ἑορτὴ κατὰ ταύτην τὴν ἡμέραν, καὶ Παρίλια προσηγόρευον αὐτήν. νῦν μὲν οὖν οὐδὲν αἱ Ῥωμαϊκαὶ νουμηνίαι πρὸς τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς ὁμολογούμενον ἔχουσιν· ἐκείνην δὲ τὴν ἡμέραν, ᾗ τὴν πόλιν ὁ Ῥωμύλος ἔκτιζεν, ἀτρεκῆ τριακάδα τυχεῖν λέγουσι, καὶ σύνοδον ἐκλειπτικὴν ἐν αὐτῇ γενέσθαι σελήνης πρὸς ἥλιον, ἣν εἰδέναι καὶ Ἀντίμαχον οἴονται τὸν Τήιον ἐποποιόν, ἔτει τρίτῳ τῆς ἕκτης ὀλυμπιάδος συμπεσοῦσαν.

[3] Ἐν δὲ τοῖς κατὰ Βάρρωνα τὸν φιλόσοφον χρόνοις, ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων ἐν ἱστορίᾳ βυβλιακώτατον, ἦν Ταρούτιος ἑταῖρος αὐτοῦ, φιλόσοφος μὲν ἄλλως καὶ μαθηματικός, ἁπτόμενος δὲ τῆς περὶ τὸν πίνακα μεθόδου θεωρίας [4] ἕνεκα καὶ δοκῶν ἐν αὐτῇ περιττὸς εἶναι. τούτῳ προὔβαλεν ὁ Βάρρων ἀναγαγεῖν τὴν Ῥωμύλου γένεσιν εἰς ἡμέραν καὶ ὥραν, ἐκ τῶν λεγομένων ἀποτελεσμάτων περὶ τὸν ἄνδρα ποιησάμενον τὸν συλλογισμόν, ὥσπερ αἱ τῶν γεωμετρικῶν ὑφηγοῦνται προβλημάτων ἀναλύσεις· τῆς γὰρ αὐτῆς θεωρίας εἶναι, χρόνον τε λαβόντας ἀνθρώπου γενέσεως βίον προειπεῖν, καὶ βίῳ δοθέντι θηρεῦσαι χρόνον.

[5] ἐποίησεν οὖν τὸ προσταχθὲν ὁ Ταρούτιος, καὶ τά τε πάθη καὶ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐπιδών, καὶ χρόνον ζωῆς καὶ τρόπον τελευτῆς καὶ πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα συνθείς, εὖ μάλα τεθαρρηκότως καὶ ἀνδρείως ἀπεφήνατο, τὴν μὲν ἐν τῇ μητρὶ τοῦ Ῥωμύλου γεγονέναι σύλληψιν ἔτει πρώτῳ τῆς δευτέρας ὀλυμπιάδος ἐν μηνὶ κατ’ Αἰγυπτίους Χοιὰκ τρίτῃ καὶ εἰκάδι τρίτης ὥρας, καθ’ ἣν ὁ ἥλιος ἐξέλιπε παντελῶς, τὴν δ’ ἐμφανῆ γέννησιν ἐν μηνὶ Θωὺθ [6] ἡμέρᾳ πρώτῃ μετ’ εἰκάδα περὶ ἡλίου ἀνατολάς· κτισθῆναι δὲ τὴν Ῥώμην ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τῇ ἐνάτῃ Φαρμουθὶ μηνὸς ἱσταμένου μεταξὺ δευτέρας ὥρας καὶ τρίτης. ἐπεὶ καὶ πόλεως τύχην ὥσπερ ἀνθρώπου κύριον ἔχειν οἴονται χρόνον, ἐκ τῆς πρώτης γενέσεως πρὸς τὰς τῶν ἀστέρων ἐποχὰς θεωρούμενον. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἴσως καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῷ ξένῳ καὶ περιττῷ προσάξεται μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ τὸ μυθῶδες ἐνοχλήσει τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας αὐτοῖς.

[13] [1] Κτισθείσης δὲ τῆς πόλεως, πρῶτον μὲν ὅσον ἦν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ πλῆθος εἰς συντάγματα στρατιωτικὰ διεῖλεν. ἕκαστον δὲ σύνταγμα πεζῶν τρισχιλίων ἦν καὶ τριακοσίων ἱππέων. ἐκλήθη δὲ λεγεὼν τῷ λογάδας εἶναι τοὺς [2] μαχίμους ἐκ πάντων. ἔπειτα τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἐχρῆτο δήμῳ, καὶ ποπούλους ὠνομάσθη τὸ πλῆθος· ἑκατὸν δὲ τοὺς ἀρίστους ἀπέδειξε βουλευτάς, καὶ αὐτοὺς μὲν πατρικίους, [3] τὸ δὲ σύστημα σενᾶτον προσηγόρευσεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν σενᾶτος ἀτρεκῶς γερουσίαν σημαίνει· πατρικίους δὲ τοὺς βουλευτὰς κληθῆναι λέγουσιν οἱ μὲν ὅτι παίδων γνησίων πατέρες ἦσαν, οἱ δὲ μᾶλλον ὡς αὐτοὺς ἔχοντας ἑαυτῶν ἀποδεῖξαι πατέρας, ὅπερ οὐ πολλοῖς ὑπῆρξε τῶν πρώτων εἰς τὴν πόλιν συρρεόντων· οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς πατρωνείας· [4] οὕτω γὰρ ἐκάλουν τὴν προστασίαν καὶ καλοῦσιν ἄχρι νῦν, οἰόμενοι Πάτρωνά τινα τῶν σὺν Εὐάνδρῳ παραγενομένων, κηδεμονικὸν τῶν ὑποδεεστέρων ὄντα καὶ βοηθητικόν, ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ τῷ πράγματι ταύτην τὴν προσηγορίαν [5] ἀπολιπεῖν. μάλιστα δ’ ἄν τις τυγχάνοι τοῦ εἰκότος, εἰ νομίζοι τὸν Ῥωμύλον ἀξιοῦντα τοὺς πρώτους καὶ δυνατωτάτους πατρικῇ κηδεμονίᾳ καὶ φροντίδι προσήκειν ἐπιμελεῖσθαι τῶν ταπεινοτέρων, ἅμα δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους διδάσκοντα μὴ δεδιέναι μηδ’ ἄχθεσθαι ταῖς τῶν κρειττόνων τιμαῖς, ἀλλὰ χρῆσθαι μετ’ εὐνοίας καὶ νομίζοντας [6] καὶ προσαγορεύοντας πατέρας, οὕτως ὀνομάσαι. καὶ γὰρ ἄχρι νῦν τοὺς ἐν συγκλήτῳ τελοῦντας οἱ μὲν ἔξωθεν ἄνδρας ἡγεμόνας καλοῦσιν, αὐτοὶ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι πατέρας συγγεγραμμένους, τῷ μέγιστον μὲν ἀξίωμα καὶ τιμήν, ἥκιστα δὲ φθόνον ἔχοντι χρώμενοι τῶν ὀνομάτων. ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν οὖν πατέρας αὐτοὺς μόνον, ὕστερον δὲ πλειόνων προσαναλαμβανομένων πατέρας συγγεγραμμένους [7] προσηγόρευσαν. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἦν ὄνομα σεμνότερον αὐτῷ τῆς πρὸς τὸ δημοτικὸν τοῦ βουλευτικοῦ διαφορᾶς· ἑτέροις δὲ τοὺς δυνατοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν πολλῶν διῄρει, πάτρωνας ὀνομάζων, ὅπερ ἐστὶ προστάτας, ἐκείνους δὲ κλίεντας, ὅπερ ἐστὶ πελάτας· ἅμα δὲ πρὸς ἀλλήλους θαυμαστὴν εὔνοιαν αὐτοῖς καὶ μεγάλων δικαίων ὑπάρξουσαν [8] ἐνεποίησεν. οὗτοι μὲν γὰρ ἐξηγητάς τε τῶν νομίμων καὶ προστάτας δικαζομένοις συμβούλους τε πάντων καὶ κηδεμόνας ἑαυτοὺς παρεῖχον, ἐκεῖνοι δὲ τούτους ἐθεράπευον, οὐ μόνον τιμῶντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ πενομένοις θυγατέρας συνεκδιδόντες καὶ χρέα συνεκτίνοντες, καταμαρτυρεῖν τε πελάτου προστάτην ἢ προστάτου πελάτην οὔτε νόμος οὐδεὶς οὔτ’ ἄρχων ἠνάγκαζεν.

[9] ὕστερον δὲ τῶν ἄλλων δικαίων μενόντων, τὸ λαμβάνειν χρήματα τοὺς δυνατοὺς παρὰ τῶν ταπεινοτέρων αἰσχρὸν ἐνομίσθη καὶ ἀγεννές. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν περὶ τούτων.

[14] [1] Τετάρτῳ δὲ μηνὶ μετὰ τὴν κτίσιν, ὡς Φάβιος (HRR I 19) ἱστορεῖ, τὸ περὶ τὴν ἁρπαγὴν ἐτολμήθη τῶν γυναικῶν. καὶ λέγουσι μὲν ἔνιοι τὸν Ῥωμύλον αὐτὸν τῇ φύσει φιλοπόλεμον ὄντα, καὶ πεπεισμένον ἔκ τινων ἄρα λογίων ὅτι τὴν Ῥώμην πέπρωται πολέμοις τρεφομένην καὶ αὐξομένην γενέσθαι μεγίστην, βίας ὑπάρξαι πρὸς τοὺς Σαβίνους· οὐδὲ γὰρ πολλάς, ἀλλὰ τριάκοντα μόνας παρθένους λαβεῖν αὐτόν, ἅτε δὴ πολέμου μᾶλλον [2] ἢ γάμων δεόμενον. τοῦτο δ’ οὐκ εἰκός· ἀλλὰ τὴν μὲν πόλιν ὁρῶν ἐποίκων εὐθὺς ἐμπιπλαμένην, ὧν ὀλίγοι γυναῖκας εἶχον, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ μιγάδες ἐξ ἀπόρων καὶ ἀφανῶν ὄντες ὑπερεωρῶντο καὶ προσεδοκῶντο μὴ συμμενεῖν βεβαίως, ἐλπίζων δὲ πρὸς τοὺς Σαβίνους τρόπον τινὰ συγκράσεως καὶ κοινωνίας ἀρχὴν αὐτοῖς τὸ ἀδίκημα ποιήσειν ὁμηρευσαμένοις τὰς γυναῖκας, ἐπεχείρησε τῷ [3] ἔργῳ τόνδε τὸν τρόπον. διεδόθη λόγος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πρῶτον, ὡς θεοῦ τινος ἀνευρήκοι βωμὸν ὑπὸ γῆς κεκρυμμένον. ὠνόμαζον δὲ τὸν θεὸν Κῶνσον, εἴτε βουλαῖον ὄντα (κωνσίλιον γὰρ ἔτι νῦν τὸ συμβούλιον καλοῦσι καὶ τοὺς ὑπάτους κώνσουλας οἷον προβούλους), εἴθ’ ἵππιον [4] Ποσειδῶ. καὶ γὰρ ὁ βωμὸς ἐν τῷ μείζονι τῶν ἱπποδρόμων ἐστίν, ἀφανὴς τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἱππικοῖς ἀγῶσιν ἀνακαλυπτόμενος. οἱ δὲ καὶ ὅλως φασί, τοῦ βουλεύματος ἀπορρήτου καὶ ἀφανοῦς ὄντος, ὑπόγειον οὐκ ἀλόγως τῷ θεῷ βωμὸν γενέσθαι ‹καὶ› κεκρυμμένον.

[5] ὡς δ’ ἀνεφάνη, θυσίαν τε λαμπρὰν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ καὶ ἀγῶνα καὶ θέαν ἐκ καταγγελίας ἐπετέλει πανηγυρικήν. καὶ πολλοὶ μὲν ἄνθρωποι συνῆλθον, αὐτὸς δὲ προὐκάθητο μετὰ τῶν ἀρίστων, ἁλουργίδι κεκοσμημένος. ἦν δὲ τοῦ καιροῦ τῆς ἐπιχειρήσεως σύμβολον, ἐξαναστάντα τὴν ἁλουργίδα ‹δια›πτύξαι καὶ περιβαλέσθαι πάλιν.

[6] ἔχοντες οὖν ξίφη πολλοὶ προσεῖχον αὐτῷ, καὶ τοῦ σημείου γενομένου, σπασάμενοι τὰ ξίφη καὶ μετὰ βοῆς ὁρμήσαντες, ἥρπαζον τὰς θυγατέρας τῶν Σαβίνων, αὐτοὺς [7] δὲ φεύγοντας εἴων καὶ παρίεσαν. ἁρπασθῆναι δέ φασιν οἱ μὲν τριάκοντα μόνας, ἀφ’ ὧν καὶ τὰς φρατρίας ὀνομασθῆναι· Οὐαλέριος δ’ Ἀντίας (HRR I 238) ἑπτὰ καὶ εἴκοσι καὶ πεντακοσίας, Ἰόβας (FGrH 275 F 23) δὲ τρεῖς καὶ ὀγδοήκοντα καὶ ἑξακοσίας, παρθένους. ὃ μέγιστον ἦν ἀπολόγημα τῷ Ῥωμύλῳ· γυναῖκα γὰρ οὐ λαβεῖν ἀλλ’ ἢ μίαν Ἑρσιλίαν, διαλαθοῦσαν αὐτούς, ἅτε δὴ μὴ μεθ’ ὕβρεως μηδ’ ἀδικίας ἐλθόντας ἐπὶ τὴν ἁρπαγήν, ἀλλὰ συμμεῖξαι καὶ συναγαγεῖν εἰς ταὐτὸ τὰ γένη ταῖς [8] μεγίσταις ἀνάγκαις διανοηθέντας. τὴν δ’ Ἑρσιλίαν οἱ μὲν Ὁστίλιον γῆμαι λέγουσιν, ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων ἐπιφανέστατον, οἱ δ’ αὐτὸν Ῥωμύλον, καὶ γενέσθαι καὶ παῖδας αὐτῷ, μίαν μὲν θυγατέρα Πρίμαν, τῇ τάξει τῆς γενέσεως οὕτω προσαγορευθεῖσαν, ἕνα δ’ υἱὸν μόνον, ὃν Ἀόλλιον μὲν ἐκεῖνος ἀπὸ τῆς γενομένης ἀθροίσεως ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τῶν πολιτῶν ὠνόμασεν, οἱ δ’ ὕστερον Ἀβίλλιον. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἱστορῶν Ζηνόδοτος ὁ Τροιζήνιος (FHG IV 531) πολλοὺς ἔχει τοὺς ἀντιλέγοντας.

[15] [1] Ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἁρπάζουσι τὰς παρθένους τότε τυχεῖν λέγουσι τῶν οὐκ ἐπιφανῶν τινας ἄγοντας κόρην τῷ τε [2] κάλλει πολὺ καὶ τῷ μεγέθει διαφέρουσαν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀπαντῶντες ἔνιοι τῶν κρειττόνων ἐπεχείρουν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι, βοᾶν τοὺς ἄγοντας, ὡς Ταλασίῳ κομίζοιεν αὐτήν, ἀνδρὶ νέῳ μέν, εὐδοκίμῳ δὲ καὶ χρηστῷ· τοῦτ’ οὖν ἀκούσαντας εὐφημεῖν καὶ κροτεῖν ἐπαινοῦντας, ἐνίους δὲ καὶ παρακολουθεῖν ἀναστρέψαντας εὐνοίᾳ καὶ χάριτι τοῦ Ταλασίου, [3] μετὰ βοῆς τοὔνομα φθεγγομένους. ἀφ’ οὗ δὴ τὸν Ταλάσιον ἄχρι νῦν, ὡς Ἕλληνες τὸν Ὑμέναιον, ἐπᾴδουσι Ῥωμαῖοι τοῖς γάμοις· καὶ γὰρ εὐτυχίᾳ φασὶ χρήσασθαι περὶ τὴν γυναῖκα τὸν Ταλάσιον. Σέξτιος δὲ Σύλλας ὁ Καρχηδόνιος, οὔτε μουσῶν οὔτε χαρίτων ἐπιδεὴς ἀνήρ, ἔλεγεν ἡμῖν ὅτι τῆς ἁρπαγῆς σύνθημα τὴν φωνὴν [4] ἔδωκε ταύτην ὁ Ῥωμύλος· ἅπαντες οὖν ἐβόων τὸν Ταλάσιον οἱ τὰς παρθένους κομίζοντες, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τοῖς γάμοις παραμένει τὸ ἔθος. οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι νομίζουσιν, ὧν καὶ ὁ Ἰόβας (FGrH 275 F 90) ἐστί, παράκλησιν εἶναι καὶ παρακέλευσιν εἰς φιλεργίαν καὶ ταλασίαν, οὔπω τότε τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς ὀνόμασι τῶν Ἰταλικῶν ἐπικεχυμένων. εἰ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ λέγεται κακῶς, ἀλλ’ ἐχρῶντο Ῥωμαῖοι τότε τῷ ὀνόματι τῆς ταλασίας καθάπερ ἡμεῖς, ἑτέραν ἄν τις [5] αἰτίαν εἰκάσειε πιθανωτέραν. ἐπεὶ γὰρ οἱ Σαβῖνοι πρὸς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους πολεμήσαντες διηλλάγησαν, ἐγένοντο συνθῆκαι περὶ τῶν γυναικῶν, ὅπως μηδὲν ἄλλο ἔργον τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἢ τὰ περὶ τὴν ταλασίαν ὑπουργῶσι. παρέμεινεν οὖν καὶ τοῖς αὖθις γαμοῦσι τοὺς διδόντας ἢ παραπέμποντας ἢ ὅλως παρόντας ἀναφωνεῖν τὸν Ταλάσιον μετὰ παιδιᾶς, μαρτυρομένους ὡς ἐπ’ οὐδὲν ἄλλο ὑπούργημα [6] τῆς γυναικὸς ἢ ταλασίαν εἰσαγομένης. διαμένει δὲ μέχρι νῦν τὸ τὴν νύμφην αὐτὴν ἀφ’ αὑτῆς μὴ ὑπερβαίνειν τὸν οὐδὸν εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον, ἀλλ’ αἰρομένην εἰσφέρεσθαι, διὰ τὸ καὶ τότε κομισθῆναι βιασθείσας, μὴ [7] ‹αὐτὰς› εἰσελθεῖν. ἔνιοι δὲ λέγουσι καὶ τὸ τὴν κόμην τῆς γαμουμένης αἰχμῇ διακρίνεσθαι δορατίου σύμβολον εἶναι τοῦ μετὰ μάχης καὶ πολεμικῶς τὸν πρῶτον γάμον γενέσθαι· περὶ ὧν ἐπὶ πλέον ἐν τοῖς Αἰτίοις (mor. 285b) εἰρήκαμεν.

Ἐτολμήθη μὲν οὖν ἡ ἁρπαγὴ περὶ τὴν ὀκτωκαιδεκάτην ἡμέραν τοῦ τότε Σεξτιλίου μηνός, Αὐγούστου δὲ νῦν, ἐν ᾗ τὴν τῶν Κωνσαλίων ἑορτὴν ἄγουσιν.

[16] Οἱ δὲ Σαβῖνοι πολλοὶ μὲν ἦσαν καὶ πολεμικοί, κώμας δ’ ᾤκουν ἀτειχίστους, ὡς προσῆκον αὐτοῖς μέγα φρονεῖν καὶ μὴ φοβεῖσθαι, Λακεδαιμονίων ἀποίκοις οὖσιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὁρῶντες αὑτοὺς ἐνδεδεμένους μεγάλοις ὁμηρεύμασι, καὶ δεδιότες περὶ τῶν θυγατέρων, πρέσβεις ἀπέστειλαν ἐπιεικῆ καὶ μέτρια προκαλούμενοι, τὸν Ῥωμύλον ἀποδόντα τὰς κόρας αὐτοῖς καὶ λύσαντα τὸ τῆς βίας ἔργον, εἶτα πειθοῖ καὶ νόμῳ πράττειν τοῖς γένεσι [8] φιλίαν καὶ οἰκειότητα. τοῦ δὲ Ῥωμύλου τὰς μὲν κόρας μὴ προιεμένου, παρακαλοῦντος δὲ τὴν κοινωνίαν δέχεσθαι τοὺς Σαβίνους, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι βουλευόμενοι καὶ παρασκευαζόμενοι διέτριβον, Ἄκρων δ’ ‹ὁ› βασιλεὺς Καινινητῶν, ἀνὴρ θυμοειδὴς καὶ δεινὸς ἐν τοῖς πολεμικοῖς, τά τε πρῶτα τολμήματα τοῦ Ῥωμύλου δι’ ὑποψίας εἶχε, καὶ τῷ πραχθέντι περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἤδη φοβερὸν ἡγούμενος πᾶσιν εἶναι καὶ οὐκ ἀνεκτὸν εἰ μὴ κολασθείη, προεξανέστη τῷ πολέμῳ καὶ μετὰ πολλῆς ἐχώρει δυνάμεως [9] ἐπ’ αὐτόν, καὶ ὁ Ῥωμύλος ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον. γενόμενοι δ’ ἐν ὄψει καὶ κατιδόντες ἀλλήλους προὐκαλοῦντο μάχεσθαι, τῶν στρατευμάτων ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἀτρεμούντων. εὐξάμενος οὖν ὁ Ῥωμύλος, εἰ κρατήσειε καὶ καταβάλοι, τῷ Διὶ φέρων ἀναθήσειν αὐτὸς τὰ ὅπλα τοῦ ἀνδρός, αὐτόν τε καταβάλλει κρατήσας, καὶ τρέπεται τὸ στράτευμα μάχης γενομένης, αἱρεῖ δὲ καὶ τὴν πόλιν. οὐ μὴν ἠδίκησε τοὺς ἐγκαταληφθέντας, ἀλλ’ ἢ τὰς οἰκίας ἐκέλευσε καθελόντας ἀκολουθεῖν εἰς Ῥώμην, ὡς πολίτας ἐπὶ τοῖς ἴσοις ἐσομένους. τούτου μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἔστιν ὅ τι μᾶλλον ηὔξησε τὴν Ῥώμην, ἀεὶ προσποιοῦσαν ἑαυτῇ καὶ συννέμουσαν ὧν κρατήσειεν.

[10] Ὁ δὲ Ῥωμύλος, ὡς ἂν μάλιστα τὴν εὐχὴν τῷ τε Διὶ κεχαρισμένην καὶ τοῖς πολίταις ἰδεῖν ἐπιτερπῆ παράσχοι σκεψάμενος, ἐπὶ στρατοπέδου δρῦν ἔτεμεν ὑπερμεγέθη καὶ διεμόρφωσεν ὥσπερ τρόπαιον, καὶ τῶν ὅπλων τοῦ Ἄκρωνος ἕκαστον ἐν τάξει περιήρμοσε καὶ κατήρτησεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν μὲν ἐσθῆτα περιεζώσατο, δάφνῃ δ’ ἐστέψατο [11] τὴν κεφαλὴν κομῶσαν. ὑπολαβὼν δὲ τῷ δεξιῷ τὸ τρόπαιον ὤμῳ προσερειδόμενον ὀρθόν, ἐβάδιζεν ἐξάρχων ἐπινικίου παιᾶνος ἐν ὅπλοις ἑπομένῃ τῇ στρατιᾷ, δεχομένων τῶν πολιτῶν μετὰ χαρᾶς καὶ θαύματος. ἡ μὲν οὖν πομπὴ τῶν αὖθις θριάμβων ἀρχὴν καὶ ζῆλον παρέσχε, [12] τὸ δὲ τρόπαιον ἀνάθημα Φερετρίου Διὸς ἐπωνομάσθη - τὸ γὰρ πλῆξαι φερῖρε Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν, εὔξατο δὲ πλῆξαι τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ καταβαλεῖν - , ὀπίμια δὲ τὰ σκῦλα, φησὶ Βάρρων (fr. 439), καθότι καὶ τὴν περιουσίαν ὄπεμ λέγουσι. πιθανώτερον δ’ ἄν τις εἴποι διὰ τὴν πρᾶξιν· ὄπους γὰρ ὀνομάζεται τὸ ἔργον, αὐτουργῷ δ’ ἀριστείας στρατηγῷ, στρατηγὸν ἀνελόντι, δέδοται καθιέρωσις ὀπιμίων, [13] καὶ τρισὶ μόνοις τούτου τυχεῖν ὑπῆρξε Ῥωμαίοις ἡγεμόσι, πρώτῳ Ῥωμύλῳ κτείναντι τὸν Καινινήτην Ἄκρωνα, δευτέρῳ Κορνηλίῳ Κόσσῳ Τυρρηνὸν ἀνελόντι Τολούμνιον, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ Κλαυδίῳ Μαρκέλλῳ Βριτομάρτου κρατήσαντι Γαλατῶν βασιλέως. Κόσσος μὲν οὖν καὶ Μάρκελλος ἤδη τεθρίπποις εἰσήλαυνον, αὐτοὶ τὰ τρόπαια φέροντες· Ῥωμύλον δ’ οὐκ ὀρθῶς φησιν ἅρματι [14] χρήσασθαι Διονύσιος (AR 2, 35). Ταρκύνιον γὰρ ἱστοροῦσι τὸν Δημαράτου τῶν βασιλέων πρῶτον εἰς τοῦτο τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὸν ὄγκον ἐξᾶραι τοὺς θριάμβους· ἕτεροι δὲ πρῶτον ἐφ’ ἅρματος θριαμβεῦσαι Ποπλικόλαν. τοῦ δὲ Ῥωμύλου τὰς εἰκόνας ὁρᾶν ἔστιν ἐν Ῥώμῃ τὰς τροπαιοφόρους πεζὰς ἁπάσας.

[17] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν Καινινητῶν ἅλωσιν ἔτι τῶν ἄλλων Σαβίνων ἐν παρασκευαῖς ὄντων, συνέστησαν οἱ Φιδήνην καὶ Κρουστουμέριον καὶ Ἀντέμναν οἰκοῦντες ἐπὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, καὶ μάχης γενομένης ἡττηθέντες ὁμοίως, τάς τε πόλεις Ῥωμύλῳ παρῆκαν ἑλεῖν καὶ τὴν χώραν δάσασθαι [2] καὶ μετοικίσαι σφᾶς αὐτοὺς εἰς Ῥώμην. ὁ δὲ Ῥωμύλος τὴν μὲν ἄλλην κατένειμε χώραν τοῖς πολίταις, ὅσην δ’ εἶχον οἱ τῶν ἡρπασμένων παρθένων πατέρες, αὐτοὺς ἔχειν ἐκείνους εἴασεν.

Ἐπὶ τούτοις βαρέως φέροντες οἱ λοιποὶ Σαβῖνοι Τάτιον ἀποδείξαντες στρατηγὸν ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ἐστράτευσαν. ἦν δὲ δυσπρόσοδος ἡ πόλις, ἔχουσα πρόβλημα τὸ νῦν Καπιτώλιον, ἐν ᾧ φρουρὰ καθειστήκει καὶ Ταρπήιος ἡγεμὼν αὐτῆς, οὐχὶ Ταρπηία παρθένος, ὡς ἔνιοι λέγουσιν, εὐήθη τὸν Ῥωμύλον ἀποδεικνύοντες· ἀλλὰ θυγάτηρ ἡ Ταρπηία τοῦ ἄρχοντος οὖσα προὔδωκε τοῖς Σαβίνοις, ἐπιθυμήσασα τῶν χρυσῶν βραχιονιστήρων οὓς εἶδε περικειμένους, καὶ ᾔτησε μισθὸν τῆς προδοσίας ἃ φοροῖεν [3] ἐν ταῖς ἀριστεραῖς χερσί. συνθεμένου δὲ τοῦ Τατίου, νύκτωρ ἀνοίξασα πύλην μίαν, ἐδέξατο τοὺς Σαβίνους. οὐ μόνος οὖν ὡς ἔοικεν Ἀντίγονος ἔφη προδιδόντας μὲν φιλεῖν, προδεδωκότας δὲ μισεῖν, οὐδὲ Καῖσαρ, εἰπὼν ἐπὶ τοῦ Θρᾳκὸς Ῥοιμητάλκου, φιλεῖν μὲν προδοσίαν, προδότην δὲ μισεῖν, ἀλλὰ κοινόν τι τοῦτο πάθος ἐστὶ πρὸς τοὺς πονηροὺς τοῖς δεομένοις αὐτῶν, ὥσπερ ἰοῦ καὶ χολῆς ἐνίων θηρίων δέονται· τὴν γὰρ χρείαν ὅτε λαμβάνουσιν ἀγαπῶντες, ἐχθαίρουσι τὴν κακίαν ὅταν τύχωσι. [4] τοῦτο καὶ πρὸς τὴν Ταρπηίαν τότε παθὼν ὁ Τάτιος, ἐκέλευσε μεμνημένους τῶν ὁμολογιῶν τοὺς Σαβίνους μηδενὸς αὐτῇ φθονεῖν ὧν ἐν ταῖς ἀριστεραῖς ἔχουσι, καὶ πρῶτος ἅμα τὸν βραχιονιστῆρα τῆς χειρὸς περιελὼν καὶ τὸν θυρεὸν ἐπέρριψε. πάντων δὲ τὸ αὐτὸ ποιούντων, βαλλομένη τε τῷ χρυσῷ καὶ καταχωσθεῖσα τοῖς θυρεοῖς, [5] ὑπὸ πλήθους καὶ βάρους ἀπέθανεν. ἑάλω δὲ καὶ Ταρπήιος προδοσίας ὑπὸ Ῥωμύλου διωχθείς, ὡς Ἰόβας (FGrH 275 F 24) φησὶ Γάλβαν Σουλπίκιον (HRR II 41) ἱστορεῖν. τῶν δ’ ἄλλα περὶ Ταρπηίας λεγόντων ἀπίθανοι μέν εἰσιν οἱ Τατίου θυγατέρα τοῦ ἡγεμόνος τῶν Σαβίνων οὖσαν αὐτήν, Ῥωμύλῳ δὲ βίᾳ συνοικοῦσαν, ἱστοροῦντες ταῦτα ποιῆσαι καὶ παθεῖν ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός· ὧν καὶ Ἀντίγονός [6] (FHG IV 305) ἐστι. Σιμύλος δ’ ὁ ποιητὴς καὶ παντάπασι ληρεῖ, μὴ Σαβίνοις οἰόμενος, ἀλλὰ Κελτοῖς τὴν Ταρπηίαν προδοῦναι τὸ Καπιτώλιον, ἐρασθεῖσαν αὐτῶν τοῦ βασιλέως. λέγει δὲ ταῦτα (Anthol. lyr. 6, 102 D.²)·

Ἡ δ’ ἀγχοῦ Τάρπεια παραὶ Καπιτώλιον αἶπος

ναίουσα Ῥώμης ἔπλετο τειχολέτις,

Κελτῶν ἣ στέρξασα γαμήλια λέκτρα γενέσθαι

σκηπτούχῳ, πατέρων οὐκ ἐφύλαξε δόμους.

[7] καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγα περὶ τῆς τελευτῆς·

Τὴν δ’ οὔτ’ ἄρ’ Βόιοί τε καὶ ἔθνεα μυρία Κελτῶν

χηράμενοι ῥείθρων ἐντὸς ἔθεντο Πάδου,

ὅπλα δ’ ἐπιπροβαλόντες ἀρειμανέων ἀπὸ χειρῶν

κούρῃ ἐπὶ στυγερῇ κόσμον ἔθεντο φόνου.

[18] [1] Τῆς μέντοι Ταρπηίας ἐκεῖ ταφείσης, ὁ λόφος ὠνομάζετο Ταρπήιος, ἄχρι οὗ Ταρκυνίου βασιλέως Διὶ τὸν τόπον καθιεροῦντος ἅμα τά τε λείψανα μετηνέχθη, καὶ τοὔνομα τῆς Ταρπηίας ἐξέλιπε· πλὴν πέτραν ἔτι νῦν ἐν τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ Ταρπηίαν καλοῦσιν, ἀφ’ ἧς ἐρρίπτουν τοὺς κακούργους.

[2] Ἐχομένης δὲ τῆς ἄκρας ὑπὸ τῶν Σαβίνων, ὅ τε Ῥωμύλος ὑπ’ ὀργῆς εἰς μάχην αὐτοὺς προὐκαλεῖτο, καὶ ὁ Τάτιος ἐθάρρει, καρτερὰν εἰ βιασθεῖεν ἀναχώρησιν ὁρῶν [3] αὐτοῖς ὑπάρχουσαν. ὁ γὰρ μεταξὺ τόπος, ἐν ᾧ συμπίπτειν ἔμελλον, ὑπὸ πολλῶν λόφων περιεχόμενος, ἀγῶνα μὲν ὀξὺν ἐδόκει καὶ χαλεπὸν ὑπὸ δυσχωρίας ἀμφοτέροις παρέξειν, [4] φυγὰς δὲ καὶ διώξεις ἐν στενῷ βραχείας. ἔτυχε δὲ τοῦ ποταμοῦ λιμνάσαντος οὐ πολλαῖς πρότερον ἡμέραις ἐγκαταλελεῖφθαι τέλμα βαθὺ καὶ τυφλὸν ἐν τόποις ἐπιπέδοις κατὰ τὴν νῦν οὖσαν ἀγοράν, ὅθεν οὐκ ἦν ὄψει πρόδηλον οὐδ’ εὐφύλακτον, ἄλλως δὲ χαλεπὸν καὶ ὕπουλον. ἐπὶ τοῦτο τοῖς Σαβίνοις ἀπειρίᾳ φερομένοις εὐτύχημα γίγνεται.

[5] Κούρτιος γάρ, ἀνὴρ ἐπιφανὴς δόξῃ καὶ φρονήματι γαῦρος, ἵππον ἔχων πολὺ πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἐχώρει· δεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ βαράθρου τὸν ἵππον, ἄχρι μέν τινος ἐπειρᾶτο πληγῇ καὶ παρακελεύσει χρώμενος ἐξελαύνειν, ὡς δ’ ἦν [6] ἀμήχανον, ἐάσας τὸν ἵππον ἑαυτὸν ἔσῳζεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν τόπος δι’ ἐκεῖνον ἔτι νῦν Κούρτειος λάκκος ὀνομάζεται· φυλαξάμενοι δὲ τὸν κίνδυνον οἱ Σαβῖνοι μάχην καρτερὰν ἐμαχέσαντο, κρίσιν οὐ λαβοῦσαν, καίτοι πολλῶν πεσόντων, ἐν οἷς ἦν καὶ Ὁστίλιος. τοῦτον Ἑρσιλίας ἄνδρα καὶ πάππον Ὁστιλίου τοῦ μετὰ Νομᾶν βασιλεύσαντος γενέσθαι [7] λέγουσιν. αὖθις δὲ πολλῶν ἀγώνων ἐν βραχεῖ συνισταμένων ὡς εἰκός, ἑνὸς μάλιστα τοῦ τελευταίου μνημονεύουσιν, ἐν ᾧ Ῥωμύλου τὴν κεφαλὴν πληγέντος λίθῳ καὶ πεσεῖν ὀλίγον δεήσαντος τοῦ τ’ ἀντέχειν ὑφεμένου, τοῖς Σαβίνοις ἐνέδωκαν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ φυγῇ πρὸς τὸ Παλάτιον ἐχώρουν, ἐξωθούμενοι τῶν ἐπιπέδων.

[8] ἤδη δ’ ὁ Ῥωμύλος ἐκ τῆς πληγῆς ἀναφέρων, ἐβούλετο μὲν εἰς τὰ ὅπλα χωρεῖν τοῖς φεύγουσιν ἐναντίως, καὶ μέγα βοῶν ἵστασθαι καὶ μάχεσθαι παρεκάλει. πολλῆς δὲ τῆς φυγῆς αὐτῷ περιχεομένης, καὶ μηδενὸς ἀναστρέφειν τολμῶντος, ἀνατείνας εἰς οὐρανὸν τὰς χεῖρας ηὔξατο τῷ Διὶ στῆσαι τὸ στράτευμα καὶ τὰ Ῥωμαίων [9] πράγματα πεσόντα μὴ περιιδεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὀρθῶσαι. γενομένης δὲ τῆς εὐχῆς, αἰδώς τε τοῦ βασιλέως ἔσχε πολλούς, καὶ θάρσος ἐκ μεταβολῆς παρέστη τοῖς φεύγουσιν. ἔστησαν οὖν πρῶτον οὗ νῦν ὁ τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Στάτορος ἵδρυται νεώς, ὃν Ἐπιστάσιον ἄν τις ἑρμηνεύσειεν, εἶτα συνασπίσαντες πάλιν ἔωσαν ὀπίσω τοὺς Σαβίνους ἐπὶ τὴν νῦν Ῥήγιαν προσαγορευομένην καὶ τὸ τῆς Ἑστίας ἱερόν.

[19] [1] Ἐνταῦθα δ’ αὐτοὺς ὥσπερ ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς μάχεσθαι παρασκευαζομένους ἐπέσχε δεινὸν ἰδεῖν θέαμα καὶ λόγου [2] κρείττων ὄψις. αἱ γὰρ ἡρπασμέναι θυγατέρες τῶν Σαβίνων ὤφθησαν ἀλλαχόθεν ἄλλαι μετὰ βοῆς καὶ ἀλαλαγμοῦ διὰ τῶν ὅπλων φερόμεναι καὶ τῶν νεκρῶν ὥσπερ ἐκ θεοῦ κάτοχοι, πρός τε τοὺς ἄνδρας αὑτῶν καὶ τοὺς πατέρας, αἱ μὲν παιδία κομίζουσαι νήπια πρὸς ταῖς ἀγκάλαις, αἱ δὲ τὴν κόμην προϊσχόμεναι λελυμένην, πᾶσαι δ’ ἀνακαλούμεναι τοῖς φιλτάτοις ὀνόμασι ποτὲ μὲν τοὺς [3] Σαβίνους, ποτὲ δὲ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους. ἐπεκλάσθησαν οὖν ἀμφότεροι, καὶ διέσχον αὐταῖς ἐν μέσῳ καταστῆναι τῆς παρατάξεως, καὶ κλαυθμὸς ἅμα διὰ πάντων ἐχώρει, καὶ πολὺς οἶκτος ἦν πρός τε τὴν ὄψιν καὶ τοὺς λόγους ἔτι μᾶλλον, εἰς ἱκεσίαν καὶ δέησιν ἐκ δικαιολογίας καὶ παρρησίας [4] τελευτῶντας. ‘τί γάρ’, ἔφασαν, ‘ὑμᾶς δεινὸν ἢ λυπηρὸν ἐργασάμεναι, τὰ μὲν ἤδη πεπόνθαμεν, τὰ δὲ πάσχομεν τῶν σχετλίων κακῶν; ἡρπάσθημεν ὑπὸ τῶν νῦν ἐχόντων βίᾳ καὶ παρανόμως, ἁρπασθεῖσαι δ’ ἠμελήθημεν ὑπ’ ἀδελφῶν καὶ πατέρων καὶ οἰκείων χρόνον τοσοῦτον, ὅσος ἡμᾶς πρὸς τὰ ἔχθιστα κεράσας ταῖς μεγίσταις ἀνάγκαις πεποίηκε νῦν ὑπὲρ τῶν βιασαμένων καὶ παρανομησάντων δεδιέναι μαχομένων καὶ κλαίειν θνῃσκόντων.

[5] οὐ γὰρ ἤλθετε τιμωρήσοντες ἡμῖν παρθένοις οὔσαις ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀδικοῦντας, ἀλλὰ νῦν ἀνδρῶν ἀποσπᾶτε γαμετὰς καὶ τέκνων μητέρας, οἰκτροτέραν βοήθειαν ἐκείνης τῆς ἀμελείας καὶ προδοσίας βοηθοῦντες ἡμῖν ταῖς [6] ἀθλίαις. τοιαῦτα μὲν ἠγαπήθημεν ὑπὸ τούτων, τοιαῦτα δ’ ὑφ’ ὑμῶν ἐλεούμεθα. καὶ γὰρ εἰ δι’ ἄλλην αἰτίαν ἐμάχεσθε, παύσασθαι δι’ ἡμᾶς πενθεροὺς γεγονότας καὶ [7] πάππους καὶ οἰκείους ὄντας ἐχρῆν. εἰ δ’ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ὁ πόλεμός ἐστι, κομίσασθε ἡμᾶς μετὰ γαμβρῶν καὶ τέκνων, καὶ ἀπόδοτε ἡμῖν πατέρας καὶ οἰκείους, μηδ’ ἀφέλησθε παῖδας καὶ ἄνδρας. ἱκετεύομεν ὑμᾶς μὴ πάλιν αἰχμάλωτοι γενέσθαι.’ τοιαῦτα πολλὰ τῆς Ἑρσιλίας προαγορευούσης καὶ τῶν ἄλλων δεομένων, ἐσπείσθησαν ἀνοχαί, [8] καὶ συνῆλθον εἰς λόγους οἱ ἡγεμόνες. αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες ἐν τούτῳ τοῖς πατράσι καὶ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς τοὺς ἄνδρας προσῆγον καὶ ‹τὰ› τέκνα, προσέφερόν τε τροφὴν καὶ ποτὸν τοῖς δεομένοις, καὶ τοὺς τετρωμένους ἐθεράπευον οἴκαδε κομίζουσαι, καὶ παρεῖχον ὁρᾶν ἀρχούσας μὲν αὑτὰς τοῦ οἴκου, προσέχοντας δὲ τοὺς ἄνδρας αὐταῖς καὶ μετ’ εὐνοίας τιμὴν [9] ἅπασαν νέμοντας. ἐκ τούτου συντίθενται, τῶν μὲν γυναικῶν τὰς βουλομένας συνοικεῖν τοῖς ἔχουσιν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται παντὸς ἔργου καὶ πάσης λατρείας πλὴν ταλασίας ἀφειμένας, οἰκεῖν δὲ κοινῇ τὴν πόλιν Ῥωμαίους καὶ Σαβίνους, καὶ καλεῖσθαι μὲν Ῥώμην ἐπὶ Ῥωμύλῳ τὴν πόλιν, Κυρίτας δὲ Ῥωμαίους ἅπαντας ἐπὶ τῇ Τατίου πατρίδι, βασιλεύειν δὲ κοινῇ καὶ στρατηγεῖν ἀμφοτέρους.

[10] ὅπου δὲ ταῦτα συνέθεντο, μέχρι νῦν Κομίτιον καλεῖται· κομῖρε γὰρ Ῥωμαῖοι τὸ συνελθεῖν καλοῦσι.

[20] [1] Διπλασιασθείσης δὲ τῆς πόλεως, ἑκατὸν μὲν ἐκ Σαβίνων πατρίκιοι προσκατελέχθησαν, αἱ δὲ λεγεῶνες ἐγένοντο πεζῶν μὲν ἑξακισχιλίων, ἱππέων δ’ ἑξακοσίων.

[2] φυλὰς δὲ τρεῖς καταστήσαντες, ὠνόμασαν τοὺς μὲν ἀπὸ Ῥωμύλου Ῥαμνήνσης, τοὺς δ’ ἀπὸ Τατίου Τατιήνσης, τρίτους δὲ Λουκερήνσης διὰ τὸ ἄλσος εἰς ὃ πολλοὶ καταφυγόντες ἀσυλίας δεδομένης τοῦ πολιτεύματος μετέσχον· τὰ δ’ ἄλση λούκους ὀνομάζουσιν. ὅτι δ’ ἦσαν αἱ φυλαὶ τοσαῦται, τοὔνομα μαρτυρεῖ· τρίβους γὰρ ἔτι νῦν τὰς [3] φυλὰς καλοῦσι καὶ τριβούνους τοὺς φυλάρχους. ἑκάστη δὲ φυλὴ δέκα φρατρίας εἶχεν, ἃς ἔνιοι λέγουσιν ἐπωνύμους ἐκείνων εἶναι τῶν γυναικῶν. τοῦτο δὲ δοκεῖ ψεῦδος εἶναι· πολλαὶ γὰρ ἔχουσιν ἀπὸ χωρίων τὰς προσηγορίας.

[4] ἄλλα μέντοι πολλὰ ταῖς γυναιξὶν εἰς τιμὴν ἀπέδωκαν, ὧν καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐστιν· ἐξίστασθαι μὲν ὁδοῦ βαδιζούσαις, αἰσχρὸν δὲ μηδένα μηδὲν εἰπεῖν παρούσης γυναικός, μηδ’ ὀφθῆναι γυμνόν, ἢ δίκην φεύγειν παρὰ τοῖς ἐπὶ τῶν φονικῶν καθεστῶσι, φορεῖν δὲ καὶ τοὺς παῖδας αὐτῶν τὴν καλουμένην βοῦλλαν ἀπὸ τοῦ σχήματος, ὅμοιον πομφόλυγι περιδέραιόν τι, καὶ περιπόρφυρον.

[5] Ἐβουλεύοντο δ’ οἱ βασιλεῖς οὐκ εὐθὺς ἐν κοινῷ μετ’ ἀλλήλων, ἀλλ’ ἑκάτερος πρότερον ἰδίᾳ μετὰ τῶν ἑκατόν, εἶθ’ οὕτως εἰς ταὐτὸν ἅπαντας συνῆγον. ᾤκει δὲ Τάτιος μὲν ὅπου νῦν ὁ τῆς Μονήτης ναός ἐστι, Ῥωμύλος δὲ παρὰ τοὺς λεγομένους βαθμοὺς σκάλης Κακίης. οὗτοι δ’ εἰσὶ περὶ τὴν εἰς τὸν ἱππόδρομον τὸν μέγαν ἐκ Παλατίου [6] κατάβασιν. ἐνταῦθα δὲ καὶ τὴν κράνειαν ἔφασαν τὴν ἱερὰν γεγονέναι, μυθολογοῦντες ὅτι πειρώμενος ὁ Ῥωμύλος αὑτοῦ λόγχην ἀκοντίσειεν ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀουεντίνου, τὸ ξυστὸν ἔχουσαν κρανείας· καταδύσης δὲ τῆς αἰχμῆς εἰς βάθος, ἀνασπάσαι μὲν οὐδεὶς πειρωμένων πολλῶν ἴσχυσε, τὸ δὲ ξύλον ἔστεξεν ἡ γῆ ζώφυτος οὖσα, καὶ βλαστοὺς [7] ἀνῆκε καὶ στέλεχος εὐμέγεθες κρανείας ἔθρεψε. τοῦτο δ’ οἱ μετὰ Ῥωμύλον ὡς ἕν τι τῶν ἁγιωτάτων ἱερῶν φυλάττοντες καὶ σεβόμενοι περιετείχισαν. ὅτῳ δὲ προσιόντι δόξειε μὴ θαλερὸν εἶναι μηδὲ χλωρόν, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἀτροφεῖν καὶ φθίνειν, ὁ μὲν εὐθὺς ἔφραζε κραυγῇ τοῖς προστυγχάνουσιν, οἱ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐμπρησμῷ βοηθοῦντες ἐβόων ὕδωρ, καὶ συνέτρεχον πανταχόθεν ἀγγεῖα πλήρη [8] κομίζοντες ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον. Γαΐου δὲ Καίσαρος ὥς φασι τὰς ἀναβάσεις ἐπισκευάζοντος, καὶ τῶν τεχνιτῶν περιορυττόντων τὰ πλησίον, ἔλαθον αἱ ῥίζαι κακωθεῖσαι παντάπασι, καὶ τὸ φυτὸν ἐμαράνθη.

[21] [1] Μῆνας μὲν οὖν οἱ Σαβῖνοι τοὺς Ῥωμαίων ἐδέξαντο, καὶ περὶ αὐτῶν ὅσα καλῶς εἶχεν, ἐν τῷ Νομᾶ βίῳ (cap. 19) γέγραπται· θυρεοῖς δὲ τοῖς ἐκείνων ὁ Ῥωμύλος ἐχρήσατο, καὶ μετέβαλε τὸν ὁπλισμὸν ἑαυτοῦ τε καὶ τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Ἀργολικὰς πρότερον ἀσπίδας φορούντων. ἑορτῶν δὲ καὶ θυσιῶν ἀλλήλοις μετεῖχον, ἃς μὲν ἦγε τὰ γένη πρότερον οὐκ ἀνελόντες, ἑτέρας δὲ θέμενοι καινάς, ὧν ἥ τε τῶν Ματρωναλίων ἐστί, δοθεῖσα ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἐπὶ τῇ τοῦ πολέμου καταλύσει, καὶ ἡ τῶν Καρμενταλίων.

[2] τὴν δὲ Καρμένταν οἴονταί τινες Μοῖραν εἶναι κυρίαν ἀνθρώπων γενέσεως· διὸ καὶ τιμῶσιν αὐτὴν αἱ μητέρες· οἱ δὲ τὴν [τοῦ] Εὐάνδρου τοῦ Ἀρκάδος γυναῖκα, μαντικήν τινα καὶ φοιβαστικὴν ἐμμέτρων χρησμῶν γενομένην, Καρμένταν ἐπονομασθῆναι (τὰ γὰρ ἔπη κάρμενα [3] καλοῦσι)· Νικοστράτη δ’ ἦν ὄνομα κύριον αὐτῇ. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ὁμολογεῖται· τὴν δὲ Καρμένταν ἔνιοι πιθανώτερον ἀφερμηνεύουσιν οἷον ἐστερημένην νοῦ διὰ τὰς ἐν τοῖς ἐνθουσιασμοῖς παραφροσύνας. τὸ μὲν γὰρ στέρεσθαι καρῆρε, μέντεμ δὲ τὸν νοῦν ὀνομάζουσι. περὶ δὲ τῶν Παριλίων προείρηται (c. 12, 2).

[4] Τὰ δὲ Λουπερκάλια τῷ μὲν χρόνῳ δόξειεν ἂν εἶναι καθάρσια· δρᾶται γὰρ ἐν ἡμέραις ἀποφράσι τοῦ Φεβρουαρίου μηνός, ὃν καθάρσιον ἄν τις ἑρμηνεύσειε, καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην τὸ παλαιὸν ἐκάλουν Φεβράτην. τοὔνομα δὲ τῆς ἑορτῆς ἑλληνιστὶ σημαίνει Λύκαια, καὶ δοκεῖ διὰ τοῦτο παμπάλαιος ἀπ’ Ἀρκάδων εἶναι τῶν περὶ [5] Εὔανδρον. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν κοινόν ἐστι· δύναται γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς λυκαίνης γεγονέναι τοὔνομα. καὶ γὰρ ἀρχομένους τῆς περιδρομῆς τοὺς Λουπέρκους ὁρῶμεν ἐντεῦθεν, ὅπου [6] τὸν Ῥωμύλον ἐκτεθῆναι λέγουσι. τὰ δὲ δρώμενα τὴν αἰτίαν ποιεῖ δυστόπαστον· σφάττουσι γὰρ αἶγας, εἶτα μειρακίων δυοῖν ἀπὸ γένους προσαχθέντων αὐτοῖς, οἱ μὲν ᾑμαγμένῃ μαχαίρᾳ τοῦ μετώπου θιγγάνουσιν, ἕτεροι δ’ ἀπομάττουσιν εὐθύς, ἔριον βεβρεγμένον γάλακτι προσφέροντες· γελᾶν δὲ δεῖ τὰ μειράκια μετὰ τὴν ἀπόμαξιν.

[7] ἐκ δὲ τούτου τὰ δέρματα τῶν αἰγῶν κατατεμόντες, διαθέουσιν ἐν περιζώσμασι γυμνοί, τοῖς σκύτεσι τὸν ἐμποδὼν παίοντες. αἱ δ’ ἐν ἡλικίᾳ γυναῖκες οὐ φεύγουσι τὸ παίεσθαι, νομίζουσαι πρὸς εὐτοκίαν καὶ κύησιν συνεργεῖν.

[8] ἴδιον δὲ τῆς ἑορτῆς τὸ καὶ κύνα θύειν τοὺς Λουπέρκους. Βούτας δέ τις, αἰτίας μυθώδεις ἐν ἐλεγείοις περὶ τῶν Ῥωμαϊκῶν ἀναγράφων, φησὶ τοῦ Ἀμουλίου τοὺς περὶ τὸν Ῥωμύλον κρατήσαντας ἐλθεῖν δρόμῳ μετὰ χαρᾶς ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον, ἐν ᾧ νηπίοις οὖσιν αὐτοῖς ἡ λύκαινα θηλὴν ὑπέσχε, καὶ μίμημα τοῦ τότε δρόμου τὴν ἑορτὴν ἄγεσθαι, καὶ τρέχειν τοὺς ἀπὸ γένους τοὺς (Anthol. lyr. 6, 102 D².)

Ἐμποδίους τύπτοντας, ὅπως τότε φάσγαν’ ἔχοντες

ἐξ Ἄλβης ἔθεον Ῥωμύλος ἠδὲ Ῥέμος.

[9] καὶ τὸ μὲν ξίφος ᾑμαγμένον προσφέρεσθαι τῷ μετώπῳ τοῦ τότε φόνου καὶ κινδύνου σύμβολον, τὴν δὲ διὰ τοῦ γάλακτος ἀποκάθαρσιν ὑπόμνημα τῆς τροφῆς αὐτῶν εἶναι. Γάιος δ’ Ἀκίλιος (HRR I 44) ἱστορεῖ πρὸ τῆς κτίσεως τὰ θρέμματα τῶν περὶ τὸν Ῥωμύλον ἀφανῆ γενέσθαι· τοὺς δὲ τῷ Φαύνῳ προσευξαμένους ἐκδραμεῖν γυμνοὺς ἐπὶ τὴν ζήτησιν, ὅπως ὑπὸ τοῦ ἱδρῶτος μὴ ἐνοχλοῖντο· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο γυμνοὺς περιτρέχειν τοὺς Λουπέρκους.

[10] τὸν δὲ κύνα φαίη τις ἄν, εἰ μὲν ἡ θυσία καθαρμός ἐστι, θύεσθαι καθαρσίῳ χρωμένων αὐτῷ· καὶ γὰρ Ἕλληνες ἔν τε τοῖς καθαρσίοις σκύλακας ἐκφέρουσι καὶ πολλαχοῦ χρῶνται τοῖς λεγομένοις περισκυλακισμοῖς· εἰ δὲ τῇ λυκαίνῃ χαριστήρια ταῦτα καὶ τροφεῖα καὶ σωτήρια Ῥωμύλου τελοῦσιν, οὐκ ἀτόπως ὁ κύων σφάττεται· λύκοις γάρ ἐστι πολέμιος· εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία κολάζεται τὸ ζῷον ὡς παρενοχλοῦν τοὺς Λουπέρκους ὅταν περιθέωσι.

[22] [1] Λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὴν περὶ τὸ πῦρ ἁγιστείαν Ῥωμύλον καταστῆσαι πρῶτον, ἀποδείξαντα παρθένους ἱερὰς Ἑστιάδας προσαγορευομένας. οἱ δὲ τοῦτο μὲν εἰς Νομᾶν ἀναφέρουσι, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα τὸν Ῥωμύλον θεοσεβῆ διαφερόντως, ἔτι δὲ μαντικὸν ἱστοροῦσι γενέσθαι, καὶ φορεῖν ἐπὶ μαντικῇ τὸ καλούμενον λίτυον· ἔστι δὲ καμπύλη ῥάβδος, ᾗ τὰ πλινθία καθεζομένους ἐπ’ οἰωνῶν διαγράφειν.

[2] τοῦτο δ’ ἐν Παλατίῳ φυλαττόμενον ἀφανισθῆναι, περὶ τὰ Κελτικὰ τῆς πόλεως ἁλούσης· εἶτα μέντοι τῶν βαρβάρων ἐκπεσόντων εὑρεθῆναι κατὰ τέφρας βαθείας, ἀπαθὲς ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀπολωλόσι καὶ διεφθαρμένοις.

[3] Ἔθηκε δὲ καὶ νόμους τινάς, ὧν σφοδρὸς μέν ἐστιν ὁ γυναικὶ μὴ διδοὺς ἀπολείπειν ἄνδρα, γυναῖκα δὲ διδοὺς ἐκβάλλειν ἐπὶ φαρμακείᾳ τέκνων ἢ κλειδῶν ὑποβολῇ καὶ μοιχευθεῖσαν· εἰ δ’ ἄλλως τις ἀποπέμψαιτο, τῆς οὐσίας αὐτοῦ τὸ μὲν τῆς γυναικὸς εἶναι, τὸ δὲ τῆς Δήμητρος ἱερὸν κελεύων· τὸν δ’ ἀποδόμενον γυναῖκα [4] θύεσθαι χθονίοις θεοῖς. ἴδιον δὲ τὸ μηδεμίαν δίκην κατὰ πατροκτόνων ὁρίσαντα, πᾶσαν ἀνδροφονίαν πατροκτονίαν προσειπεῖν, ὡς τούτου μὲν ὄντος ἐναγοῦς, ἐκείνου δ’ ἀδυνάτου.

[5] καὶ μέχρι χρόνων πολλῶν ἔδοξεν ὀρθῶς ἀπογνῶναι τὴν τοιαύτην ἀδικίαν· οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἔδρασε τοιοῦτον οὐδὲν ἐν Ῥώμῃ σχεδὸν ἐτῶν ἑξακοσίων διαγενομένων, ἀλλὰ πρῶτος μετὰ τὸν Ἀννιβιακὸν πόλεμον ἱστορεῖται Λεύκιος Ὅστιος πατροκτόνος γενέσθαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἱκανὰ περὶ τούτων.

[23] [1] Ἔτει δὲ πέμπτῳ τῆς Τατίου βασιλείας οἰκεῖοί τινες αὐτοῦ καὶ συγγενεῖς πρέσβεσιν ἀπὸ Λαυρέντου βαδίζουσιν εἰς Ῥώμην ἐντυχόντες καθ’ ὁδόν, ἐπεχείρουν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τὰ χρήματα βίᾳ, καὶ μὴ προϊεμένους ἀλλ’ ἀμυνομένους [2] ἀνεῖλον. ἔργου δὲ δεινοῦ τολμηθέντος, ὁ μὲν Ῥωμύλος εὐθὺς δεῖν ᾤετο κολάζεσθαι τοὺς ἀδικήσαντας, ὁ δὲ Τάτιος ἐξέκρουε καὶ παρῆγε. καὶ τοῦτο μόνον αὐτοῖς ὑπῆρξεν αἴτιον ἐμφανοῦς διαφορᾶς· τὰ δ’ ἄλλα κατακοσμοῦντες ἑαυτούς, ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα κοινῶς ἐχρῶντο καὶ [3] μεθ’ ὁμονοίας τοῖς πράγμασιν. οἱ δὲ τῶν ἀνῃρημένων οἰκεῖοι πάσης ἐξειργόμενοι δίκης νομίμου διὰ τὸν Τάτιον, ἀποκτιννύουσιν αὐτὸν ἐν Λαβινίῳ θύοντα μετὰ Ῥωμύλου προσπεσόντες, τὸν δὲ Ῥωμύλον ὡς δίκαιον ἄνδρα προὔπεμψαν εὐφημοῦντες. ὁ δὲ τὸ μὲν σῶμα τοῦ Τατίου κομίσας ἐντίμως ἔθαψε, καὶ κεῖται περὶ τὸ καλούμενον Ἀρμιλούστριον ἐν Ἀουεντίνῳ, τῆς δὲ δίκης τοῦ φόνου [4] παντάπασιν ἠμέλησεν. ἔνιοι δὲ τῶν συγγραφέων ἱστοροῦσι, τὴν μὲν πόλιν τῶν Λαυρεντίων φοβηθεῖσαν ἐκδιδόναι τοὺς αὐτόχειρας Τατίου, τὸν δὲ Ῥωμύλον ἀφεῖναι, [5] φήσαντα φόνον φόνῳ λελύσθαι. τοῦτο δὲ λόγον μέν τινα παρέσχε καὶ ὑποψίαν, ὡς ἀσμένῳ γέγονεν αὐτῷ τὸ τοῦ συνάρχοντος ἀπαλλαγῆναι, τῶν δὲ πραγμάτων οὐδὲν διετάραξεν, οὐδὲ διεστασίασε τοὺς Σαβίνους, ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν εὐνοίᾳ τῇ πρὸς αὐτόν, οἱ δὲ φόβῳ τῆς δυνάμεως, οἱ δ’ ὡς θεῶν χρώμενον εἰς πᾶν εὐνοίᾳ θαυμάζοντες διετέλουν.

[6] Ἐθαύμαζον δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ τῶν ἐκτὸς ἀνθρώπων τὸν Ῥωμύλον, οἱ δὲ προγενέστεροι Λατῖνοι πέμψαντες αὐτῷ φιλίαν ἐποιήσαντο καὶ συμμαχίαν. Φιδήνας δ’ εἷλεν, ἀστυγείτονα τῆς Ῥώμης πόλιν, ὡς μὲν ἔνιοί φασιν, ἐξαίφνης τοὺς ἱππέας πέμψας καὶ κελεύσας ὑποτεμεῖν τῶν πυλῶν τοὺς στρόφιγγας, εἶτ’ ἐπιφανεὶς αὐτὸς ἀπροσδοκήτως· ἕτεροι δὲ λέγουσι προτέρους ἐκείνους ἐμβαλόντας ἐλάσασθαί τε λείαν καὶ καθυβρίσαι πολλὰ τὴν χώραν καὶ τὸ προάστειον, ἐνέδρας δὲ τὸν Ῥωμύλον θέμενον αὐτοῖς καὶ [7] διαφθείραντα πολλοὺς λαβεῖν τὴν πόλιν. οὐ μὴν ἀνεῖλεν οὐδὲ κατέσκαψεν, ἀλλὰ Ῥωμαίων ἐποίησεν ἀποικίαν, δισχιλίους καὶ πεντακοσίους ἀποστείλας οἰκήτορας εἰδοῖς Ἀπριλίαις.

[24] [1] Ἐκ τούτου λοιμὸς ἐμπίπτει ‹τῇ πόλει›, θανάτους μὲν αἰφνιδίους ἀνθρώποις ἄνευ νόσων ἐπιφέρων, ἁπτόμενος δὲ καὶ καρπῶν ἀφορίαις καὶ θρεμμάτων ἀγονίαις. ὕσθη δὲ καὶ σταγόσιν αἵματος ἡ πόλις, ὥστε πολλὴν [2] προσγενέσθαι τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις πάθεσι δεισιδαιμονίαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τοῖς τὸ Λαύρεντον οἰκοῦσιν ὅμοια συνέβαινεν, ἤδη παντάπασιν ἐδόκει τῶν ἐπὶ Τατίῳ συγκεχυμένων δικαίων ἐπί τε τοῖς πρέσβεσι φονευθεῖσι μήνιμα δαιμόνιον ἀμφοτέρας ἐλαύνειν τὰς πόλεις. ἐκδοθέντων δὲ τῶν φονέων καὶ κολασθέντων παρ’ ἀμφοτέροις, ἐλώφησεν ἐπιδήλως τὰ δεινά, καὶ καθαρμοῖς ὁ Ῥωμύλος ἥγνισε τὰς πόλεις, οὓς ἔτι νῦν ἱστοροῦσιν ἐπὶ τῆς Φερεντίνης πύλης συντελεῖσθαι.

[3] πρὶν δὲ λῆξαι τὸν λοιμόν, ἐπέθεντο Καμέριοι Ῥωμαίοις καὶ κατέδραμον τὴν χώραν, ὡς ἀδυνάτων ἀμύνεσθαι [4] διὰ τὸ πάθος. εὐθὺς οὖν ὁ Ῥωμύλος ἐστράτευσεν ἐπ’ αὐτούς, καὶ μάχῃ κρατήσας ἑξακισχιλίους ἀπέκτεινε, καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἑλών, τοὺς μὲν ἡμίσεις τῶν περιγενομένων εἰς Ῥώμην ἐξῴκισε, τῶν δ’ ὑπομενόντων διπλασίους ἐκ Ῥώμης μετῴκισεν εἰς τὴν Καμερίαν Σεξτιλίαις καλάνδαις.

[5] τοσοῦτον αὐτῷ περιῆν πολιτῶν ἑκκαίδεκα ἔτη σχεδὸν οἰκοῦντι τὴν Ῥώμην. ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις λαφύροις καὶ χαλκοῦν ἐκόμισε τέθριππον ἐκ Καμερίας· τοῦτο δ’ ἀνέστησεν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τοῦ Ἡφαίστου, ποιησάμενος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὸ Νίκης στεφανούμενον.

[25] [1] Οὕτω δὲ ῥωννυμένοις τοῖς πράγμασιν οἱ μὲν ἀσθενέστεροι τῶν προσοίκων ὑπεδύοντο καὶ τυγχάνοντες ἀδείας ἠγάπων, οἱ δὲ δυνατοὶ δεδιότες καὶ φθονοῦντες, οὐκ ᾤοντο δεῖν περιορᾶν, ἀλλ’ ἐνίστασθαι τῇ αὐξήσει [2] καὶ κολούειν τὸν Ῥωμύλον. πρῶτοι δὲ Τυρρηνῶν Βήιοι, χώραν κεκτημένοι πολλὴν καὶ πόλιν μεγάλην οἰκοῦντες, ἀρχὴν ἐποιήσαντο πολέμου ‹τὸ› Φιδήνην ἀπαιτεῖν ὡς προσήκουσαν αὐτοῖς. τὸ δ’ οὐκ ἄδικον ἦν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ γελοῖον, ὅτι κινδυνεύουσι τότε καὶ πολεμουμένοις οὐ προσαμύναντες, ἀλλ’ ἐάσαντες ἀπολέσθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας, [3] οἰκίας καὶ γῆν ἀπαιτοῖεν ἄλλων ἐχόντων. καθυβρισθέντες οὖν ὑπὸ τοῦ Ῥωμύλου [ἐν] ταῖς ἀποκρίσεσι, δίχα διεῖλον ἑαυτούς, καὶ τῷ μὲν ἐπέκειντο τῷ Φιδηνατῶν στρατεύματι, τῷ δὲ πρὸς Ῥωμύλον ἀπήντων. πρὸς μὲν οὖν Φιδήναις δισχιλίους Ῥωμαίων κρατήσαντες ἀπέκτειναν, ὑπὸ Ῥωμύλου δὲ νικηθέντες ὑπὲρ ὀκτακισχιλίους [4] ἀπέβαλον. αὖθις δὲ περὶ Φιδήνην ἐμαχέσαντο, καὶ τὸ μὲν πλεῖστον ἔργον αὐτοῦ Ῥωμύλου γενέσθαι, τέχνην τε μετὰ τόλμης πᾶσαν ἐπιδειξαμένου, ῥώμῃ τε καὶ ποδωκείᾳ πολὺ δόξαντος ἀνθρωπίνης κρείττονι κεχρῆσθαι, πάντες ὁμολογοῦσι, τὸ δ’ ὑπ’ ἐνίων λεγόμενον κομιδῇ μυθῶδές ἐστι, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἄπιστον, ὅτι μυρίων καὶ τετρακισχιλίων πεσόντων ὑπερημίσεις ἦσαν οὓς αὐτὸς ἰδίᾳ χειρὶ Ῥωμύλος ἔκτεινεν, ὅπου καὶ Μεσσήνιοι κόμπῳ χρήσασθαι δοκοῦσι περὶ Ἀριστομένους λέγοντες, ὡς τρὶς [5] ἑκατομφόνια θύσειεν ἀπὸ Λακεδαιμονίων. γενομένης δὲ τῆς τροπῆς, ἀφεὶς φεύγειν τοὺς περιόντας ὁ Ῥωμύλος ἐπ’ αὐτὴν ἐχώρει τὴν πόλιν· οἱ δ’ οὐκ ἠνέσχοντο μεγάλης συμφορᾶς γενομένης, ἀλλὰ δεηθέντες ὁμολογίαν ἐποιήσαντο καὶ φιλίαν εἰς ἔτη ἑκατόν, χώραν τε πολλὴν προέμενοι τῆς ἑαυτῶν, ἣν Σεπτεμπάγιον καλοῦσιν, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἑπταμόριον, καὶ τῶν παρὰ τὸν ποταμὸν ἐκστάντες ἁλοπηγίων, καὶ πεντήκοντα τῶν ἀρίστων ὁμήρους ἐγχειρίσαντες.

[6] ἐθριάμβευσε δὲ καὶ ἀπὸ τούτων εἰδοῖς Ὀκτωβρίαις, ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς αἰχμαλώτους ἔχων καὶ τὸν ἡγεμόνα τῶν Βηίων, ἄνδρα πρεσβύτην, ἀφρόνως δόξαντα [7] καὶ παρ’ ἡλικίαν ἀπείρως τοῖς πράγμασι κεχρῆσθαι. διὸ καὶ νῦν ἔτι θύοντες ἐπινίκια, γέροντα μὲν ἄγουσι δι’ ἀγορᾶς εἰς Καπιτώλιον ἐν περιπορφύρῳ, βοῦλλαν αὐτῷ παιδικὴν ‹ἐν›άψαντες, κηρύττει δ’ ὁ κῆρυξ Σαρδιανοὺς ὠνίους. Τυρρηνοὶ γὰρ ἄποικοι Σαρδιανῶν λέγονται, Τυρρηνικὴ δὲ πόλις οἱ Βήιοι.

[26] [1] Τοῦτον ἔσχατον πόλεμον ὁ Ῥωμύλος ἐπολέμησεν. εἶθ’ ὃ πολλοί, μᾶλλον δὲ πλὴν ὀλίγων πάσχουσι πάντες οἱ μεγάλαις καὶ παραλόγοις ἀρθέντες εὐτυχίαις εἰς δύναμιν καὶ ὄγκον, οὐδ’ αὐτὸς διέφυγε παθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐκτεθαρρηκὼς τοῖς πράγμασι καὶ βαρυτέρῳ φρονήματι χρώμενος, ἐξίστατο τοῦ δημοτικοῦ, καὶ παρήλλαττεν εἰς μοναρχίαν ἐπαχθῆ καὶ λυποῦσαν ἀπὸ τοῦ σχήματος πρῶτον [2] ᾧ κατεσχημάτιζεν ἑαυτόν. ἁλουργῆ μὲν γὰρ ἐνεδύετο χιτῶνα καὶ τήβεννον ἐφόρει περιπόρφυρον, ἐν θρόνῳ δ’ ἀνακλίτῳ καθήμενος ἐχρημάτιζεν. ἦσαν δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν ἀεὶ τῶν νέων οἱ καλούμενοι Κέλερες ἀπὸ τῆς περὶ τὰς [3] ὑπουργίας ὀξύτητος. ἐβάδιζον δὲ πρόσθεν ἕτεροι βακτηρίαις ἀνείργοντες τὸν ὄχλον, ὑπεζωσμένοι δ’ ἱμάντας ὥστε συνδεῖν εὐθὺς οὓς προστάξειε. τὸ δὲ δῆσαι Λατῖνοι πάλαι μὲν λιγᾶρε, νῦν δ’ ἀλλιγᾶρε καλοῦσιν· ὅθεν οἵ τε ῥαβδοῦχοι λικτώρεις αἵ τε ῥάβδοι βάκιλα καλοῦνται διὰ [4] τὸ χρῆσθαι τότε βακτηρίαις. εἰκὸς δὲ λικτώρεις ἐντιθεμένου τοῦ κάππα νῦν ὀνομάζεσθαι, πρότερον [γὰρ] λιτώρεις, ἑλληνιστὶ δὲ λειτουργοὺς ὄντας· λήιτον γὰρ τὸ δημόσιον ἔτι νῦν Ἕλληνες καὶ λαὸν τὸ πλῆθος ὀνομάζουσιν.

[27] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ πάππου Νομήτορος ἐν Ἄλβῃ τελευτήσαντος, αὐτῷ βασιλεύειν προσῆκον, εἰς μέσον ἔθηκε τὴν πολιτείαν δημαγωγῶν, καὶ κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἀπεδείκνυεν ἄρχοντα τοῖς Ἀλβανοῖς, ἐδίδαξε δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἐν Ῥώμῃ δυνατοὺς ἀβασίλευτον ζητεῖν καὶ αὐτόνομον πολιτείαν, [2] ἀρχομένους ἐν μέρει καὶ ἄρχοντας. οὐδὲ γὰρ οἱ καλούμενοι πατρίκιοι πραγμάτων μετεῖχον, ἀλλ’ ὄνομα καὶ σχῆμα περιῆν ἔντιμον αὐτοῖς, ἔθους ἕνεκα μᾶλλον ἢ γνώμης ἀθροιζομένοις εἰς τὸ βουλευτήριον· εἶτα σιγῇ προστάττοντος ἠκροῶντο, καὶ τῷ πρότεροι τὸ δεδογμένον ἐκείνῳ πυθέσθαι τῶν πολλῶν πλέον ἔχοντες ἀπηλλάττοντο.

[3] καὶ τἆλλα μὲν ἦν ἐλάττονα· τῆς δὲ γῆς τὴν δορίκτητον αὐτὸς ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ δασάμενος τοῖς στρατιώταις, καὶ τοὺς ὁμήρους τοῖς Βηίοις ἀποδούς, οὔτε πεισθέντων οὔτε βουλομένων ἐκείνων, ἔδοξε κομιδῇ τὴν γερουσίαν προπηλακίζειν. ὅθεν εἰς ὑποψίαν καὶ διαβολὴν ἐνέπεσε [4] παραλόγως ἀφανισθέντος αὐτοῦ μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον. ἠφανίσθη δὲ νώναις Ἰουλίαις ὡς νῦν ὀνομάζουσιν, ὡς δὲ τότε, Κυντιλίαις, οὐδὲν εἰπεῖν βέβαιον οὐδ’ ὁμολογούμενον πυθέσθαι περὶ τῆς τελευτῆς ἀπολιπών, ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸν χρόνον, ὡς προείρηται. δρᾶται γὰρ ἔτι νῦν ὅμοια τῷ [5] τότε πάθει πολλὰ κατὰ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην. οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν τὴν ἀσάφειαν, ὅπου Σκηπίωνος Ἀφρικανοῦ μετὰ δεῖπνον οἴκοι τελευτήσαντος οὐκ ἔσχε πίστιν οὐδ’ ἔλεγχον ὁ τρόπος τῆς τελευτῆς, ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν αὐτομάτως ὄντα φύσει νοσώδη καμεῖν λέγουσιν, οἱ δ’ αὐτὸν ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ φαρμάκοις ἀποθανεῖν, οἱ δὲ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς τὴν ἀναπνοὴν ἀπολαβεῖν αὐτοῦ νύκτωρ παρεισπεσόντας. καίτοι Σκηπίων ἔκειτο νεκρὸς ἐμφανὴς ἰδεῖν πᾶσι, καὶ τὸ σῶμα παρεῖχε πᾶσιν ὁρώμενον ὑποψίαν τινὰ τοῦ πάθους καὶ [6] κατανόησιν· Ῥωμύλου δ’ ἄφνω μεταλλάξαντος οὔτε μέρος ὤφθη σώματος οὔτε λείψανον ἐσθῆτος. ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν εἴκαζον ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τοῦ Ἡφαίστου τοὺς βουλευτὰς ἐπαναστάντας αὐτῷ καὶ διαφθείραντας, νείμαντας τὸ σῶμα καὶ μέρος ἕκαστον ἐνθέμενον εἰς τὸν κόλπον ἐξενεγκεῖν· ἕτεροι δ’ οἴονται μήτ’ ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τοῦ Ἡφαίστου μήτε μόνων τῶν βουλευτῶν παρόντων γενέσθαι τὸν ἀφανισμόν, ἀλλὰ τυχεῖν μὲν ἔξω περὶ τὸ καλούμενον αἰγὸς [ἢ ζορκὸς] ἕλος ἐκκλησίαν ἄγοντα τὸν Ῥωμύλον, ἄφνω δὲ θαυμαστὰ καὶ κρείττονα λόγου περὶ τὸν ἀέρα πάθη γενέσθαι καὶ [7] μεταβολὰς ἀπίστους· τοῦ μὲν γὰρ ἡλίου τὸ φῶς ἐκλιπεῖν, νύκτα δὲ κατασχεῖν οὐ πρᾳεῖαν οὐδ’ ἥσυχον, ἀλλὰ βροντάς τε δεινὰς καὶ πνοὰς ἀνέμων ζάλην ἐλαυνόντων πανταχόθεν ἔχουσαν· ἐν δὲ τούτῳ τὸν μὲν πολὺν ὄχλον σκεδασθέντα φυγεῖν, τοὺς δὲ δυνατοὺς συστραφῆναι [8] μετ’ ἀλλήλων· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἔληξεν ἡ ταραχὴ καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐξέλαμψε, καὶ τῶν πολλῶν εἰς ταὐτὸ πάλιν συνερχομένων ζήτησις ἦν τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ πόθος, οὐκ ἐᾶν τοὺς δυνατοὺς ἐξετάζειν οὐδὲ πολυπραγμονεῖν, ἀλλὰ τιμᾶν παρακελεύεσθαι πᾶσι καὶ σέβεσθαι Ῥωμύλον, ὡς ἀνηρπασμένον εἰς θεοὺς καὶ θεὸν εὐμενῆ γενησόμενον αὐτοῖς [9] ἐκ χρηστοῦ βασιλέως. τοὺς μὲν οὖν πολλοὺς ταῦτα πειθομένους καὶ χαίροντας ἀπαλλάττεσθαι, μετ’ ἐλπίδων ἀγαθῶν προσκυνοῦντας· εἶναι δέ τινας οἳ τὸ πρᾶγμα πικρῶς καὶ δυσμενῶς ἐξελέγχοντες ἐτάραττον τοὺς πατρικίους καὶ διέβαλλον, ὡς ἀβέλτερα τὸν δῆμον ἀναπείθοντας, αὐτοὺς δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως αὐτόχειρας ὄντας.

[28] [1] Οὕτως οὖν ἄνδρα τῶν πατρικίων γένει πρῶτον ἤθει τε δοκιμώτατον αὐτῷ τε Ῥωμύλῳ πιστὸν καὶ συνήθη, τῶν ἀπ’ Ἄλβης ἐποίκων, Ἰούλιον Πρόκλον, εἰς ἀγορὰν παρελθόντα καὶ τῶν ἁγιωτάτων ἔνορκον ἱερῶν ἁψάμενον εἰπεῖν ἐν πᾶσιν, ὡς ὁδὸν αὐτῷ βαδίζοντι Ῥωμύλος ἐξ ἐναντίας προσιὼν φανείη, καλὸς μὲν ὀφθῆναι καὶ μέγας ὡς οὔποτε πρόσθεν, ὅπλοις δὲ λαμπροῖς καὶ φλέγουσι κεκοσμημένος. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ἐκπλαγεὶς πρὸς [2] τὴν ὄψιν ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ’ φάναι, ‘τί δὴ παθὼν ἢ διανοηθείς, ἡμᾶς μὲν ἐν αἰτίαις ‹πεποίηκας› ἀδίκοις καὶ πονηραῖς, πᾶσαν δὲ τὴν πόλιν ὀρφανὴν ἐν μυρίῳ πένθει προλέλοιπας;’ ἐκεῖνον δ’ ἀποκρίνασθαι· ‘θεοῖς ἔδοξεν ὦ Πρόκλε τοσοῦτον ἡμᾶς γενέσθαι μετ’ ἀνθρώπων χρόνον, καὶ πόλιν ἐπ’ ἀρχῇ καὶ δόξῃ μεγίστῃ κτίσαντας, αὖθις οἰκεῖν [3] οὐρανόν, ἐκεῖθεν ὄντας. ἀλλὰ χαῖρε καὶ φράζε Ῥωμαίοις, ὅτι σωφροσύνην μετ’ ἀνδρείας ἀσκοῦντες ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀνθρωπίνης ἀφίξονται δυνάμεως. ἐγὼ δ’ ὑμῖν εὐμενὴς ἔσομαι δαίμων Κυρῖνος.’ ταῦτα πιστὰ μὲν εἶναι τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἐδόκει διὰ τὸν τρόπον τοῦ λέγοντος καὶ διὰ τὸν ὅρκον· οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ δαιμόνιόν τι συνεφάψασθαι πάθος ὅμοιον ἐνθουσιασμῷ· μηδένα γὰρ ἀντειπεῖν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν ὑπόνοιαν καὶ διαβολὴν ἀφέντας εὔχεσθαι Κυρίνῳ καὶ θεοκλυτεῖν ἐκεῖνον.

[4] Ἔοικε μὲν οὖν ταῦτα τοῖς ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων περί τ’ Ἀριστέου τοῦ Προικοννησίου καὶ Κλεομήδους τοῦ Ἀστυπαλαιέως μυθολογουμένοις. Ἀριστέαν μὲν γὰρ ἔν τινι κναφείῳ τελευτῆσαί φασι, καὶ τὸ σῶμα μετιόντων αὐτοῦ τῶν φίλων ἀφανὲς οἴχεσθαι· λέγειν δέ τινας εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀποδημίας ἥκοντας ἐντυχεῖν Ἀριστέᾳ τὴν ἐπὶ Κρότωνος πορευομένῳ.

[5] Κλεομήδη δὲ ῥώμῃ καὶ μεγέθει σώματος ὑπερφυᾶ γενόμενον, ἔμπληκτόν τε τῷ τρόπῳ καὶ μανικὸν ὄντα, πολλὰ δρᾶν βίαια, καὶ τέλος ἔν τινι διδασκαλείῳ παίδων τὸν ὑπερείδοντα τὴν ὀροφὴν κίονα πατάξαντα τῇ [6] χειρὶ κλάσαι μέσον καὶ τὴν στέγην καταβαλεῖν. ἀπολομένων δὲ τῶν παίδων διωκόμενον, εἰς κιβωτὸν καταφυγεῖν μεγάλην καὶ τὸ πῶμα κατακλείσαντα συνέχειν ἐντός, ὥστ’ ἀποσπάσαι μὴ δύνασθαι πολλοὺς ὁμοῦ βιαζομένους· κατασχίσαντας δὲ τὴν κιβωτόν, οὔτε ζῶντα τὸν ἄνθρωπον εὑρεῖν οὔτε νεκρόν. ἐκπλαγέντας οὖν ἀποστεῖλαι θεοπρόπους εἰς Δελφούς, οἷς τὴν Πυθίαν εἰπεῖν

Ἔσχατος ἡρώων Κλεομήδης Ἀστυπαλαιεύς.

[7] λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἀλκμήνης ἐκκομιζομένης νεκρὸν ἄδηλον γενέσθαι, λίθον δὲ φανῆναι κείμενον ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης, καὶ ὅλως πολλὰ τοιαῦτα μυθολογοῦσι, παρὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἐκθειάζοντες τὰ θνητὰ τῆς φύσεως ἅμα τοῖς θείοις. ἀπογνῶναι μὲν οὖν παντάπασι τὴν θειότητα τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀνόσιον καὶ ἀγεννές, οὐρανῷ δὲ μειγνύειν γῆν ἀβέλτερον.

[8] φατέον οὖν, ἐχομένοις τῆς ἀσφαλείας, κατὰ Πίνδαρον (fr. 131b Sn.), ὡς

σῶμα μὲν πάντων ἕπεται θανάτῳ περισθενεῖ,

ζῳὸν δ’ ἔτι λείπεται αἰῶνος εἴδωλον·

τὸ γάρ ἐστι μόνον ἐκ θεῶν.

ἥκει γὰρ ἐκεῖθεν, ἐκεῖ δ’ ἄνεισιν, οὐ μετὰ σώματος, ἀλλ’ ἐὰν ὅτι μάλιστα σώματος ἀπαλλαγῇ καὶ διακριθῇ καὶ γένηται καθαρὸν παντάπασι καὶ ἄσαρκον καὶ ἁγνόν.

[9] αὕτη γὰρ ψυχὴ ξηρὴ ‹καὶ› ἀρίστη καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (fr. 118 D4`5.), ὥσπερ ἀστραπὴ νέφους διαπταμένη τοῦ σώματος. ἡ δὲ σώματι πεφυρμένη καὶ περίπλεως σώματος, οἷον ἀναθυμίασις ἐμβριθὴς καὶ ὁμιχλώδης, δυσέξαπτός [10] ἐστι καὶ δυσανακόμιστος. οὐδὲν οὖν δεῖ τὰ σώματα τῶν ἀγαθῶν συναναπέμπειν παρὰ φύσιν εἰς οὐρανόν, ἀλλὰ τὰς ἀρετὰς καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς παντάπασιν οἴεσθαι κατὰ φύσιν καὶ δίκην θείαν ἐκ μὲν ἀνθρώπων εἰς ἥρωας, ἐκ δ’ ἡρώων εἰς δαίμονας, ἐκ δὲ δαιμόνων, ἂν τέλεον ὥσπερ ἐν τελετῇ καθαρθῶσι καὶ ὁσιωθῶσιν, ἅπαν ἀποφυγοῦσαι τὸ θνητὸν καὶ παθητικόν, οὐ νόμῳ πόλεως, ἀλλ’ ἀληθείᾳ καὶ κατὰ τὸν εἰκότα λόγον εἰς θεοὺς ἀναφέρεσθαι, τὸ κάλλιστον καὶ μακαριώτατον τέλος ἀπολαβούσας.

[29] [1] Τὴν δὲ γενομένην ἐπωνυμίαν τῷ Ῥωμύλῳ τὸν Κυρῖνον οἱ μὲν Ἐνυάλιον προσαγορεύουσιν, οἱ δ’ ὅτι καὶ τοὺς πολίτας Κυρίτας ὠνόμαζον, οἱ δὲ τὴν αἰχμὴν ἢ τὸ δόρυ τοὺς παλαιοὺς κύριν ὀνομάζειν, καὶ Κυρίτιδος Ἥρας ἄγαλμα καλεῖν ἐπ’ αἰχμῆς ἱδρυμένον, ἐν δὲ τῇ Ῥηγίᾳ δόρυ καθιδρυμένον Ἄρεα προσαγορεύειν καὶ δόρατι τοὺς ἐν πολέμοις ἀριστεύοντας γεραίρειν· ὡς οὖν ἀρήιόν τινα τὸν Ῥωμύλον ἢ αἰχμητὴν θεὸν ὀνομασθῆναι [2] Κυρῖνον. ἱερὸν μὲν οὖν αὐτοῦ κατεσκευασμένον ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ λόφῳ τῷ Κυρίνᾳ προσαγορευομένῳ δι’ ἐκεῖνον· ᾗ δ’ ἡμέρᾳ μετήλλαξεν, ὄχλου φυγὴ καλεῖται καὶ νῶναι Καπρατῖναι διὰ τὸ θύειν εἰς τὸ τῆς αἰγὸς ἕλος ἐκ πόλεως [3] κατιόντας· τὴν γὰρ αἶγα κάπραν ὀνομάζουσιν. ἐξιόντες δὲ πρὸς τὴν θυσίαν πολλὰ τῶν ἐπιχωρίων ὀνομάτων φθέγγονται μετὰ βοῆς, οἷον Μάρκου, Λουκίου, Γαΐου, μιμούμενοι τὴν τότε τροπὴν καὶ ἀνάκλησιν ἀλλήλων [4] μετὰ δέους καὶ ταραχῆς. ἔνιοι μέντοι τὸ μίμημα τοῦτό φασι μὴ φυγῆς, ἀλλ’ ἐπείξεως εἶναι καὶ σπουδῆς, εἰς αἰτίαν τοιαύτην ἀναφέροντες τὸν λόγον. ἐπεὶ Κελτοὶ τὴν Ῥώμην καταλαβόντες ἐξεκρούσθησαν ὑπὸ Καμίλλου, καὶ δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἡ πόλις οὐκέτι ῥᾳδίως ἑαυτὴν ἀνελάμβανεν, ἐστράτευσαν ἐπ’ αὐτὴν πολλοὶ τῶν Λατίνων, ἄρχοντα [5] Λίβιον Ποστούμιον ἔχοντες. οὗτος δὲ καθίσας τὸν στρατὸν οὐ πρόσω τῆς Ῥώμης ἔπεμπε κήρυκα, βούλεσθαι λέγων τοὺς Λατίνους ἐκλιποῦσαν ἤδη τὴν παλαιὰν οἰκειότητα καὶ συγγένειαν ἐκζωπυρῆσαι, καιναῖς αὖθις [6] ἀνακραθέντων ἐπιγαμίαις τῶν γενῶν. ἂν οὖν πέμψωσι παρθένους τε συχνὰς καὶ γυναικῶν τὰς ἀνάνδρους, εἰρήνην ἔσεσθαι καὶ φιλίαν αὐτοῖς, ὡς ὑπῆρξε πρὸς Σαβίνους πρότερον ἐκ τῶν ὁμοίων. ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι τόν τε πόλεμον ἐφοβοῦντο, καὶ τὴν παράδοσιν τῶν γυναικῶν οὐδὲν αἰχμαλωσίας ἐπιεικέστερον ἔχειν ἐνόμιζον.

[7] ἀποροῦσι δ’ αὐτοῖς θεράπαινα Φιλωτίς, ὡς δ’ ἔνιοι λέγουσι Τουτόλα καλουμένη, συνεβούλευσε μηδέτερα ποιεῖν, ἀλλὰ χρησαμένους δόλῳ διαφυγεῖν ἅμα τὸν πόλεμον καὶ τὴν ἐξομήρευσιν. ἦν δ’ ὁ δόλος, αὐτήν τε τὴν Φιλωτίδα καὶ σὺν αὐτῇ θεραπαινίδας εὐπρεπεῖς κοσμήσαντας ὡς ἐλευθέρας ἀποστεῖλαι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους· εἶτα νύκτωρ τὴν Φιλωτίδα πυρσὸν ἆραι, τοὺς δὲ Ῥωμαίους ἐπελθεῖν μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ χρήσασθαι κοιμωμένοις [8] τοῖς πολεμίοις. ταῦτα δ’ ἐδρᾶτο πεισθέντων τῶν Λατίνων, καὶ τὸν πυρσὸν ἀνέσχεν ἡ Φιλωτὶς ἔκ τινος ἐρινεοῦ, περισχοῦσα προκαλύμμασι καὶ παραπετάσμασιν ὄπισθεν, ὥστε τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀόρατον εἶναι τὸ φῶς, τοῖς δὲ Ῥωμαίοις κατάδηλον. ὡς οὖν ἐπεῖδον, εὐθὺς ἐξῄεσαν ἐπειγόμενοι καὶ διὰ τὴν ἔπειξιν ἀλλήλους περὶ [9] τὰς πύλας ἀνακαλοῦντες πολλάκις. ἐμπεσόντες δὲ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀπροσδοκήτως καὶ κρατήσαντες, ἐπινίκιον ἄγουσι τὴν ἑορτήν. καὶ Καπρατῖναι μὲν αἱ νῶναι καλοῦνται διὰ τὸν ἐρινεόν, καπρίφικον ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ὀνομαζόμενον. ἑστιῶσι δὲ τὰς γυναῖκας ἔξω συκῆς κλάδοις [10] σκιαζομένας· αἱ δὲ θεραπαινίδες ἀγείρουσι περιιοῦσαι καὶ παίζουσιν, εἶτα πληγαῖς καὶ βολαῖς λίθων χρῶνται πρὸς ἀλλήλας, ὡς καὶ τότε τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις παραγενόμεναι [11] καὶ συναγωνισάμεναι μαχομένοις. ταῦτ’ οὐ πολλοὶ προσίενται τῶν συγγραφέων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ μεθ’ ἡμέραν χρῆσθαι τῇ ἀνακλήσει τῶν ὀνομάτων καὶ τὸ πρὸς τὸ ἕλος τὸ τῆς αἰγὸς ὡς ἐπὶ θαλίαν βαδίζειν ἔοικε τῷ προτέρῳ λόγῳ προστίθεσθαι μᾶλλον, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρας ἐν χρόνοις ἑτέροις ἀμφότερα τὰ πάθη συνέτυχε γενέσθαι.

[12] Λέγεται δὲ Ῥωμύλος τέσσαρα μὲν ἔτη καὶ πεντήκοντα γεγονώς, ὄγδοον δὲ βασιλεύων ἐκεῖνο καὶ τριακοστόν, ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀφανισθῆναι.

Comparison Thesei et Romuli

[1] [1] Ἃ μὲν οὖν ἄξια μνήμης πυθέσθαι περὶ Ῥωμύλου καὶ Θησέως συμβέβηκεν ἡμῖν, ταῦτ’ ἐστί. φαίνεται δὲ πρῶτον ὁ μὲν ἐκ προαιρέσεως, οὐδενὸς ἀναγκάζοντος, ἀλλ’ ἐξὸν ἀδεῶς ἐν Τροιζῆνι βασιλεύειν, διαδεξάμενον ἀρχὴν οὐκ ἄδοξον, αὐτὸς ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ μεγάλων ὀρεχθείς· ὁ δὲ δουλείας φυγῇ παρούσης καὶ τιμωρίας ἐπιφερομένης, ἐκεῖνο τὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος (Phaed. 68d), ἀτεχνῶς ὑπὸ δέους ἀνδρεῖος γενόμενος, καὶ φόβῳ τοῦ τὰ ἔσχατα παθεῖν ἐπὶ τὸ δρᾶν μεγάλα δι’ ἀνάγκην παραγενόμενος.

[2] ἔπειτα τούτου μὲν ἔργον ἐστὶ τὸ μέγιστον ἀνελεῖν ἕνα τὸν Ἄλβης τύραννον, ἐκείνου δὲ πάρεργα καὶ προάγωνες ἦσαν ὁ Σκείρων, ὁ Σίνις, ὁ Προκρούστης, ὁ Κορυνήτης· οὓς ἀναιρῶν καὶ κολάζων ἀπήλλαττε τὴν Ἑλλάδα δεινῶν τυράννων, πρὶν ὅστις ἐστὶ γινώσκειν τοὺς [3] ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ σῳζομένους. καὶ τῷ μὲν παρῆν ἀπραγμόνως κομίζεσθαι διὰ θαλάττης, ἀδικουμένῳ μηδὲν ὑπὸ τῶν λῃστῶν, Ῥωμύλῳ δ’ οὐ παρῆν μὴ πράγματα ἔχειν Ἀμουλίου ζῶντος. μέγα δὲ τούτου τεκμήριον· ὁ μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν αὐτὸς ἀδικούμενος ὥρμησεν ὑπὲρ ἄλλων ἐπὶ τοὺς πονηρούς, οἱ δ’ ὅσον αὐτοὶ κακῶς οὐκ ἔπασχον ὑπὸ τοῦ τυράννου, [4] περιεώρων ἀδικοῦντα πάντας. καὶ μὴν εἰ μέγα τὸ τρωθῆναι μαχόμενον Σαβίνοις καὶ ἀνελεῖν Ἄκρωνα καὶ πολλῶν μάχῃ κρατῆσαι πολεμίων, τούτοις μὲν ἔστι τοῖς ἔργοις κενταυρομαχίαν καὶ τὰ πρὸς Ἀμαζόνας παραβάλλειν.

[5] Ὃ δ’ ἐτόλμησε Θησεὺς περὶ τὸν Κρητικὸν δασμόν, εἴτε τινὶ θηρίῳ βοράν, εἴτε πρόσφαγμα τοῖς Ἀνδρόγεω τάφοις, εἴθ’ - ὃ κουφότατόν ἐστι τῶν λεγομένων - λατρεύειν παρ’ ἀνδράσιν ὑβρισταῖς καὶ δυσμενέσιν ἀκλεῆ λατρείαν καὶ ἄτιμον ἐπιδοὺς ἑαυτόν, ἑκουσίως μετὰ παρθένων πλεύσας καὶ παίδων νέων, οὐκ ἂν εἴποι τις ἡλίκης ἐστὶ τόλμης ἢ μεγαλοφροσύνης ἢ δικαιοσύνης περὶ τὸ [6] κοινὸν ἢ πόθου δόξης καὶ ἀρετῆς. ὥστ’ ἔμοιγε φαίνεται μὴ κακῶς ὁρίζεσθαι τοὺς φιλοσόφους τὸν ἔρωτα θεῶν ὑπηρεσίαν πρὸς ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ σωτηρίαν νέων. ὁ γὰρ Ἀριάδνης ἔρως παντὸς μᾶλλον ἔοικεν ἔργον θεοῦ καὶ [7] μηχανὴ γενέσθαι σωτηρίας ἕνεκα τοῦ ἀνδρός, καὶ οὐκ ἄξιον αἰτιᾶσθαι τὴν ἐρασθεῖσαν, ἀλλὰ θαυμάζειν εἰ μὴ πάντες οὕτω καὶ πᾶσαι διετέθησαν· εἰ δ’ ἐκείνη μόνη τοῦτ’ ἔπαθεν, εἰκότως ἔγωγε φαίην ἂν αὐτὴν ἀξιέραστον θεῷ γεγονέναι, φιλόκαλον καὶ φιλάγαθον καὶ τῶν ἀρίστων ἐρωτικὴν οὖσαν.

[2] [1] Ἀμφοτέρων τοίνυν τῇ φύσει πολιτικῶν γεγονότων οὐδέτερος διεφύλαξε τὸν βασιλικὸν τρόπον, ἐξέστη δὲ καὶ μετέβαλε μεταβολὴν ὁ μὲν δημοτικήν, ὁ δὲ τυραννικήν, [2] ταὐτὸν ἀπ’ ἐναντίων παθῶν ἁμαρτόντες. δεῖ γὰρ τὸν ἄρχοντα σῴζειν πρῶτον αὐτὴν τὴν ἀρχήν· σῴζεται δ’ οὐχ ἧττον ἀπεχομένη τοῦ μὴ προσήκοντος ἢ [3] περιεχομένη τοῦ προσήκοντος. ὁ δ’ ἐνδιδοὺς ἢ ἐπιτείνων οὐ μένει βασιλεὺς οὐδ’ ἄρχων, ἀλλ’ ἢ δημαγωγὸς ἢ δεσπότης γιγνόμενος, ἐμποιεῖ τὸ μισεῖν ἢ καταφρονεῖν τοῖς ἀρχομένοις. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο μὲν ἐπιεικείας δοκεῖ καὶ φιλανθρωπίας εἶναι, τοῦτο δὲ φιλαυτίας ἁμάρτημα καὶ χαλεπότητος.

[3] [1] Εἰ δὲ δεῖ καὶ τὰ δυστυχηθέντα μὴ παντάπασι ποιεῖσθαι δαίμονος, ἀλλ’ ἠθικὰς καὶ παθητικὰς ζητεῖν ἐν αὐτοῖς διαφοράς, θυμοῦ μὲν ἀλογίστου καὶ τάχος ἐχούσης ἄβουλον ὀργῆς μήτε τις ἐκεῖνον ἐν τοῖς πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀπολυέτω μήτε τοῦτον ἐν τοῖς πρὸς τὸν υἱόν. ἡ δὲ κινήσασα τὸν θυμὸν ἀρχὴ μᾶλλον παραιτεῖται τὸν ὑπὸ μείζονος αἰτίας ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πληγῆς χαλεπωτέρας [2] ἀνατραπέντα· Ῥωμύλῳ μὲν γὰρ ἐκ βουλῆς καὶ σκέψεως περὶ κοινῶν συμφερόντων διαφορᾶς γενομένης οὐκ ἂν ἠξίωσέ τις ἄφνω τὴν διάνοιαν ἐν τηλικούτῳ πάθει γενέσθαι· Θησέα δὲ πρὸς τὸν υἱόν, ἃ πάμπαν ὀλίγοι τῶν ὄντων διαπεφεύγασιν, ἔρως καὶ ζηλοτυπία καὶ διαβολαὶ [3] γυναικὸς ἔσφηλαν. ὃ δὲ μεῖζόν ἐστιν, ὁ μὲν Ῥωμύλου θυμὸς εἰς ἔργον ἐξέπεσε καὶ πρᾶξιν οὐκ εὐτυχὲς ἔχουσαν τέλος, ἡ δὲ Θησέως ὀργὴ μέχρι λόγου καὶ βλασφημίας καὶ κατάρας πρεσβυτικῆς προῆλθε, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα φαίνεται τῇ τύχῃ χρήσασθαι τὸ μειράκιον· ὥστε ταύτας μὲν ἄν τις ἀποδοίη τῷ Θησεῖ τὰς ψήφους.

[4] [1] Ἐκείνῳ δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ὑπάρχει μέγα τὸ μικροτάτας [2] λαβεῖν ἀρχὰς ἐπὶ τὰ πράγματα. δοῦλοι γὰρ δὴ καὶ συφορβῶν παῖδες ὀνομαζόμενοι, πρὶν ἐλεύθεροι γενέσθαι, πάντας ὀλίγου δεῖν ἠλευθέρωσαν Λατίνους, ἑνὶ χρόνῳ τῶν καλλίστων ὀνομάτων ἅμα τυχόντες, φονεῖς ἐχθρῶν καὶ σωτῆρες οἰκείων καὶ βασιλεῖς ἐθνῶν καὶ οἰκισταὶ πόλεων, οὐ μετοικισταὶ καθάπερ ἦν ὁ Θησεύς, ἐκ πολλῶν συντιθεὶς καὶ συνοικοδομῶν ἓν οἰκητήριον, ἀναιρῶν δὲ πολλὰς πόλεις ἐπωνύμους βασιλέων καὶ [3] ἡρώων παλαιῶν. Ῥωμύλος δὲ ταῦτα μὲν ὕστερον ἔδρα, τοὺς πολεμίους ἀναγκάζων τὰ οἰκεῖα καταβάλλοντας καὶ ἀφανίζοντας τοῖς νενικηκόσι προσνέμεσθαι· τὸ δὲ πρῶτον οὐ μετατιθεὶς οὐδ’ αὔξων τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν, ἀλλὰ ποιῶν ἐξ οὐχ ὑπαρχόντων καὶ κτώμενος ἑαυτῷ χώραν ὁμοῦ πατρίδα, βασιλείαν, γένη, γάμους, οἰκειότητας, ἀνῄρει μὲν οὐδένα οὐδ’ ἀπώλλυεν, εὐεργέτει δὲ τοὺς ἐξ ἀοίκων καὶ ἀνεστίων δῆμον ἐθέλοντας εἶναι καὶ πολίτας.

[4] λῃστὰς δὲ καὶ κακούργους οὐκ ἀπέκτεινεν, ἀλλ’ ἔθνη προσηγάγετο πολέμῳ καὶ πόλεις κατεστρέψατο καὶ βασιλεῖς ἐθριάμβευσε καὶ ἡγεμόνας.

[5] [1] Καὶ τὸ μὲν Ῥέμου πάθος ἀμφισβητούμενον ἔχει τὸν αὐτόχειρα, καὶ τὸ πλεῖστον εἰς ἑτέρους τῆς αἰτίας· τρέπουσι· τὴν δὲ μητέρα διολλυμένην ἔσωσε περιφανῶς, καὶ τὸν πάππον ἀκλεῶς δουλεύοντα καὶ ἀτίμως εἰς τὸν Αἰνείου θρόνον ἐκάθισε, καὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἑκὼν εὐεργέτησεν, [2] ἔβλαψε δ’ αὐτὸν οὐδ’ ἄκων. τὴν δὲ Θησέως λήθην καὶ ἀμέλειαν τῆς περὶ τὸ ἱστίον ἐντολῆς μόλις ἂν οἶμαι μακρᾷ τινι παραιτήσει καὶ ἐν ῥᾳθύμοις δικασταῖς αἰτίαν ἀποφυγεῖν πατροκτονίας. ὃ δὴ καὶ συνιδών τις Ἀττικὸς ἀνὴρ ὡς παγχάλεπόν ἐστι βουλομένοις ἀπολογεῖσθαι, πλάττει τὸν Αἰγέα τῆς νεὼς προσφερομένης ὑπὸ σπουδῆς ἀνατρέχοντα πρὸς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν θέας ἕνεκα ‹τῆς ἐπὶ θάλατταν ὁδοῦ› καὶ σφαλλόμενον καταπεσεῖν, ὥσπερ ὀπαδῶν ἔρημον ἢ [τῆς ἐπὶ θάλατταν ὁδοῦ] σπεύδοντι μὴ παρούσης τινὸς θεραπείας.

[6] [1] Καὶ μὴν τὰ περὶ τὰς ἁρπαγὰς τῶν γυναικῶν ἡμαρτημένα Θησεῖ μὲν εὐσχήμονος ἐνδεᾶ προφάσεως γέγονε. πρῶτον μὲν ὅτι πολλάκις· ἥρπασε γὰρ Ἀριάδνην καὶ Ἀντιόπην καὶ Ἀναξὼ τὴν Τροιζηνίαν, ἐπὶ πάσαις δὲ τὴν Ἑλένην, παρηκμακὼς οὐκ ἀκμάζουσαν, ἀλλὰ νηπίαν καὶ ἄωρον αὐτὸς ὥραν ἔχων ἤδη γάμων πεπαῦσθαι καὶ νομίμων· ἔπειτα διὰ τὴν αἰτίαν· οὐ γὰρ ἀξιώτεραί γε παιδοποιοὶ τῶν Ἀθήνησιν Ἐρεχθηίδων καὶ Κεκροπίδων αἱ Τροιζηνίων καὶ Λακώνων καὶ Ἀμαζόνων [2] ἀνέγγυοι θυγατέρες ἦσαν, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὑποψίαν ἔχει πρὸς ὕβριν καὶ καθ’ ἡδονὴν πεπρᾶχθαι. Ῥωμύλος δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ὀκτακοσίων ὀλίγον ἀριθμῷ δεούσας ἁρπάσας, οὐ πάσας, ἀλλὰ μίαν ὥς φασιν Ἑρσιλίαν ἔλαβε, τὰς δ’ ἄλλας διένειμε τοῖς ἀγάμοις τῶν πολιτῶν· ἔπειτα τῇ μετὰ ταῦτα τιμῇ καὶ ἀγαπήσει καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἀπέδειξε τὴν βίαν ἐκείνην καὶ τὴν ἀδικίαν κάλλιστον ἔργον καὶ πολιτικώτατον εἰς κοινωνίαν γενομένην.

[3] οὕτω συνέμειξεν ἀλλήλοις καὶ συνέπηξε τὰ γένη, καὶ παρέσχε πηγὴν τῆς εἰς αὖθις εὐροίας καὶ δυνάμεως τοῖς πράγμασιν. αἰδοῦς δὲ καὶ φιλίας καὶ βεβαιότητος, ἣν [4] εἰργάσατο περὶ τοὺς γάμους, ὁ χρόνος ἐστὶ μάρτυς. ἐν γὰρ ἔτεσι τριάκοντα καὶ διακοσίοις οὔτ’ ἀνὴρ ἐτόλμησε γυναικὸς οὔτε γυνὴ κοινωνίαν ἀνδρὸς ἐγκαταλιπεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν Ἕλλησιν οἱ σφόδρα περιττοὶ τὸν πρῶτον ἔχουσιν εἰπεῖν πατροκτόνον ἢ μητροφόνον, οὕτω Ῥωμαῖοι πάντες ἴσασιν, ὅτι Καρβίλιος Σπόριος ἀπεπέμψατο [5] γυναῖκα πρῶτος, ἀπαιδίαν αἰτιασάμενος. τῷ δὲ τοσούτῳ χρόνῳ συμμαρτυρεῖ καὶ τὰ ἔργα. καὶ γὰρ ἀρχῆς ἐκοινώνησαν οἱ βασιλεῖς καὶ πολιτείας τὰ γένη διὰ τὴν ἐπιγαμίαν ἐκείνην· ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν Θησέως γάμων Ἀθηναίοις φιλικὸν μὲν οὐδὲν οὐδὲ κοινωνικὸν ὑπῆρξε πρὸς οὐδένα συμβόλαιον, ἔχθραι δὲ καὶ πόλεμοι καὶ φόνοι πολιτῶν καὶ τέλος Ἀφίδνας ἀπολέσαι ‹καὶ› μόλις ὑπ’ οἴκτου τῶν πολεμίων, προσκυνήσαντας καὶ θεοὺς ἀνειπόντας, ‹μὴ› [6] παθεῖν ἃ Τρῶες ἔπαθον δι’ Ἀλέξανδρον. ἡ μέντοι μήτηρ ἡ Θησέως οὐκ ἐκινδύνευσεν, ἀλλ’ ἔπαθε τὰ τῆς Ἑκάβης, ἐγκαταλιπόντος καὶ προεμένου τοῦ παιδός, εἴγε μὴ πέπλασται τὰ τῆς αἰχμαλωσίας, ὡς ἔδει γε καὶ τοῦτο [7] ψεῦδος εἶναι καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἄλλων. ἐπεὶ καὶ τὰ περὶ τοῦ θείου μυθολογούμενα πολλὴν ποιεῖ διαφοράν. Ῥωμύλῳ μὲν γὰρ ἡ σωτηρία μετὰ πολλῆς ὑπῆρξε θεῶν εὐμενείας, ὁ δ’ Αἰγεῖ δοθεὶς χρησμός, ἀπέχεσθαι γυναικὸς ἐπὶ ξένης, ἔοικεν ἀποφαίνειν παρὰ γνώμην θεῶν γεγονέναι τὴν Θησέως τέκνωσιν.

Lycurgus

[1] [1] Περὶ Λυκούργου τοῦ νομοθέτου καθόλου μὲν οὐδὲν ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ἀναμφισβήτητον, οὗ γε καὶ γένος καὶ ἀποδημία καὶ τελευτὴ καὶ πρὸς ἅπασιν ἡ περὶ τοὺς νόμους αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν πολιτείαν πραγματεία διαφόρους ἔσχηκεν ἱστορίας, ἥκιστα δὲ οἱ χρόνοι καθ’ οὓς γέγονεν ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁμολογοῦνται. οἱ μὲν γὰρ Ἰφίτῳ συνακμάσαι καὶ συνδιαθεῖναι τὴν Ὀλυμπιακὴν ἐκεχειρίαν λέγουσιν αὐτόν, ὧν ἐστι καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης ὁ φιλόσοφος, τεκμήριον προσφέρων τὸν Ὀλυμπίασι δίσκον ἐν ᾧ τοὔνομα [2] τοῦ Λυκούργου διασώζεται καταγεγραμμένον· οἱ δὲ ταῖς διαδοχαῖς τῶν ἐν Σπάρτῃ βεβασιλευκότων ἀναλεγόμενοι τὸν χρόνον, ὥσπερ Ἐρατοσθένης καὶ Ἀπολλόδωρος, οὐκ ὀλίγοις ἔτεσι πρεσβύτερον ἀποφαίνουσι τῆς πρώτης Ὀλυμπιάδος. Τίμαιος δὲ ὑπονοεῖ, δυεῖν ἐν Σπάρτῃ γεγονότων Λυκούργων οὐ κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν χρόνον, τῷ ἑτέρῳ τὰς ἀμφοῖν πράξεις διὰ τὴν δόξαν ἀνακεῖσθαι· καὶ τόν γε πρεσβύτερον οὐ πόρρω τῶν Ὁμήρου γεγονέναι χρόνων, ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ κατ’ ὄψιν ἐντυχεῖν Ὁμήρῳ. [3] δίδωσι δὲ καὶ Ξενοφῶν ὑπόνοιαν ἀρχαιότητος ἐν οἷς τὸν ἄνδρα λέγει γεγονέναι κατὰ τοὺς Ἡρακλείδας. γένει μὲν γὰρ Ἡρακλεῖδαι δήπουθεν ἦσαν καὶ οἱ νεώτατοι τῶν ἐν Σπάρτῃ βασιλέων, ὁ δὲ ἔοικε βουλομένῳ τοὺς πρώτους ἐκείνους καὶ σύνεγγυς Ἡρακλέους ὀνομάζειν Ἡρακλείδας.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτως πεπλανημένης τῆς ἱστορίας, πειρασόμεθα τοῖς βραχυτάτας ἔχουσιν ἀντιλογίας ἢ γνωριμωτάτους μάρτυρας ἑπόμενοι τῶν γεγραμμένων περὶ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀποδοῦναι τὴν [4] διήγησιν. ἐπεὶ καὶ Σιμωνίδης ὁ ποιητὴς οὐκ Εὐνόμου λέγει τὸν Λυκοῦργον πατρός, ἀλλὰ Πρυτάνιδος καὶ τὸν Λυκοῦργον καὶ τὸν Εὔνομον, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι σχεδὸν οὐχ οὕτω γενεαλογοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ Προκλέους μὲν τοῦ Ἀριστοδήμου γενέσθαι Σόον, Σόου δὲ Εὐρυπῶντα, τούτου δὲ Πρύτανιν, ἐκ τούτου δὲ Εὔνομον, Εὐνόμου δὲ Πολυδέκτην ἐκ προτέρας γυναικός, Λυκοῦργον δὲ νεώτερον ἐκ Διωνάσσης, ὡς Διευτυχίδας ἱστόρηκεν, ἕκτον μὲν ἀπὸ Προκλέους, ἑνδέκατον δὲ ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους.

[2] [1] Τῶν δὲ προγόνων αὐτοῦ μάλιστα μὲν ἐθαυμάσθη Σόος, ἐφ’ οὗ καὶ τοὺς εἵλωτας ἐποιήσαντο δούλους οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται καὶ χώραν προσεκτήσαντο πολλὴν Ἀρκάδων ἀποτεμόμενοι. λέγεται δὲ τὸν Σόον ἐν χωρίῳ χαλεπῷ καὶ ἀνύδρῳ πολιορκούμενον ὑπὸ Κλειτορίων, ὁμολογῆσαι τὴν δορίκτητον γῆν αὐτοῖς ἀφήσειν, εἰ πίοι καὶ αὐτὸς καὶ οἱ μετ’ [2] αὐτοῦ πάντες ἀπὸ τῆς πλησίον πηγῆς. γενομένων δὲ τῶν ὁρκίων συναγαγόντα τοὺς μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ διδόναι τῷ μὴ πιόντι τὴν βασιλείαν· οὐδενὸς δὲ καρτερήσαντος, ἀλλὰ πάντων πιόντων, αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσι καταβάντα καὶ περιρρανάμενον ἔτι τῶν πολεμίων παρόντων ἀπελθεῖν καὶ τὴν χώραν κατασχεῖν, ὡς μὴ πάντων πιόντων.

Ἀλλὰ καίπερ ἐπὶ τούτοις θαυμάζοντες αὐτὸν οὐκ ἀπὸ τούτου τὴν οἰκίαν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ παιδὸς αὐτοῦ προσηγόρευσαν Εὐρυπωντίδας, ὅτι δοκεῖ πρῶτος Εὐρυπῶν τὸ ἄγαν μοναρχικὸν ἀνεῖναι τῆς βασιλείας, δημαγωγῶν καὶ χαριζόμενος τοῖς πολλοῖς.

[3] ἐκ δὲ τῆς τοιαύτης ἀνέσεως τοῦ μὲν δήμου θρασυνομένου, τῶν δ’ ὕστερον βασιλέων τὰ μὲν ἀπεχθανομένων τῷ βιάζεσθαι τοὺς πολλούς, τὰ δὲ πρὸς χάριν ἢ δι’ ἀσθένειαν ὑποφερομένων, ἀνομία καὶ ἀταξία κατέσχε τὴν Σπάρτην ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον· ὑφ’ ἧς καὶ τὸν πατέρα τοῦ Λυκούργου βασιλεύοντα συνέβη τελευτῆσαι. διερύκων γὰρ ἁψιμαχίαν τινά, μαγειρικῇ κοπίδι πληγεὶς ἀπέθανε, τῷ πρεσβυτέρῳ παιδὶ Πολυδέκτῃ καταλιπὼν τὴν βασιλείαν.

[3] [1] Ἀποθανόντος δὲ καὶ τούτου μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον ἔδει βασιλεύειν, ὡς πάντες ᾤοντο, τὸν Λυκοῦργον· καὶ πρίν γε τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ φανερὰν γενέσθαι κύουσαν ἐβασίλευεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦτο τάχιστα ᾔσθετο, τὴν μὲν βασιλείαν ἀπέφηνε τοῦ παιδὸς οὖσαν, ἄνπερ ἄρρην γένηται, τὴν δὲ ἀρχὴν αὐτὸς ὡς ἐπίτροπος διεῖπε. τοὺς δὲ τῶν ὀρφανῶν βασιλέων ἐπιτρόπους Λακεδαιμόνιοι [2] προδίκους ὠνόμαζον. ὡς δὲ ἡ γυνὴ προσέπεμπε κρύφα καὶ λόγους ἐποιεῖτο, βουλομένη διαφθεῖραι τὸ βρέφος ἐπὶ τῷ συνοικεῖν ἐκείνῳ βασιλεύοντι τῆς Σπάρτης, τὸ μὲν ἦθος αὐτῆς ἐμίσησε, πρὸς δὲ τὸν λόγον αὐτὸν οὐκ ἀντεῖπεν, ἀλλ’ ἐπαινεῖν καὶ δέχεσθαι προσποιούμενος, οὐκ ἔφη δεῖν ἀμβλίσκουσαν αὐτὴν καὶ φαρμακευομένην διαλυμαίνεσθαι τὸ σῶμα καὶ κινδυνεύειν· αὐτῷ γὰρ μελήσειν ὅπως εὐθὺς ἐκποδὼν [3] ἔσται τὸ γεννηθέν. οὕτω δὲ παραγαγὼν ἄχρι τοῦ τόκου τὴν ἄνθρωπον, ὡς ᾔσθετο τίκτουσαν, εἰσέπεμψε παρέδρους ταῖς ὠδῖσιν αὐτῆς καὶ φύλακας, οἷς ἦν προστεταγμένον, ἐὰν μὲν θῆλυ τεχθῇ, παραδοῦναι ταῖς γυναιξίν, ἐὰν δὲ ἄρρεν, κομίσαι πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ὅ τι ἂν τύχῃ πράττων. ἔτυχε δὲ δειπνοῦντος αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῶν ἀρχόντων ἀποκυηθὲν ἄρρεν· καὶ παρῆσαν οἱ ὑπηρέται [4] τὸ παιδάριον αὐτῷ κομίζοντες. ὁ δὲ δεξάμενος, ὡς λέγεται, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας εἰπών, “Βασιλεὺς ὑμῖν γέγονεν, ὦ Σπαρτιᾶται,” κατέκλινεν ἐν τῇ βασιλικῇ χώρᾳ καὶ Χαρίλαον ὠνόμασε διὰ τὸ τοὺς πάντας εἶναι περιχαρεῖς, ἀγαμένους αὐτοῦ τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην. ἐβασίλευσε δὲ μῆνας ὀκτὼ τὸ σύμπαν. ἦν δὲ καὶ τἆλλα περίβλεπτος ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν, καὶ πλείονες ἐγένοντο τῶν ὡς ἐπιτρόπῳ βασιλέως καὶ βασιλικὴν ἐξουσίαν ἔχοντι πειθομένων οἱ δι’ ἀρετὴν προσέχοντες αὐτῷ καὶ ποιεῖν ἐθέλοντες ἑτοίμως τὸ προσταττόμενον.

[5] Ἦν δέ τι καὶ τὸ φθονοῦν καὶ πρὸς τὴν αὔξησιν ὄντι νέῳ πειρώμενον ἐνίστασθαι, μάλιστα μὲν οἱ συγγενεῖς καὶ οἰκεῖοι τῆς τοῦ βασιλέως μητρὸς ὑβρίσθαι δοκούσης, ὁ δὲ ἀδελφὸς αὐτῆς Λεωνίδας καὶ θρασύτερόν ποτε τῷ Λυκούργῳ λοιδορηθείς, ὑπεῖπεν ὡς εἰδείη σαφῶς μέλλοντα βασιλεύειν αὐτόν, ὑπόνοιαν διδοὺς καὶ προκαταλαμβάνων διαβολῇ τὸν Λυκοῦργον, εἴ τι συμβαίη τῷ βασιλεῖ παθεῖν, ὡς ἐπιβεβουλευκότα. τοιοῦτοι δέ τινες λόγοι καὶ παρὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ἐξεφοίτων· ἐφ’ οἷς βαρέως φέρων καὶ δεδοικὼς τὸ ἄδηλον, ἔγνω φυγεῖν ἀποδημίᾳ τὴν ὑπόνοιαν, καὶ πλανηθῆναι μέχρις ἂν ὁ ἀδελφιδοῦς ἐν ἡλικίᾳ γενόμενος τεκνώσῃ διάδοχον τῆς βασιλείας.

[4] [1] Οὕτως ἀπάρας πρῶτον μὲν εἰς Κρήτην ἀφίκετο· καὶ τὰς αὐτόθι πολιτείας κατανοήσας καὶ συγγενόμενος τοῖς πρωτεύουσι κατὰ δόξαν ἀνδράσι, τὰ μὲν ἐζήλωσε καὶ παρέλαβε τῶν νόμων, ὡς οἴκαδε μετοίσων καὶ χρησόμενος, ἔστι δ’ ὧν κατεφρόνησεν. ἕνα δὲ τῶν νομιζομένων ἐκεῖ σοφῶν καὶ πολιτικῶν χάριτι καὶ φιλίᾳ πείσας ἀπέστειλεν εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην, Θάλητα, ποιητὴν μὲν δοκοῦντα λυρικῶν μελῶν καὶ πρόσχημα τὴν τέχνην ταύτην πεποιημένον, ἔργῳ δὲ ἅπερ οἱ κράτιστοι τῶν νομοθετῶν διαπραττόμενον.

[2] λόγοι γὰρ ἦσαν αἱ ᾠδαὶ πρὸς εὐπείθειαν καὶ ὁμόνοιαν ἀνακλητικοί, διὰ μελῶν ἅμα καὶ ῥυθμῶν πολὺ τὸ κόσμιον ἐχόντων καὶ καταστατικόν, ὧν ἀκροώμενοι κατεπραΰνοντο λεληθότως τὰ ἤθη καὶ συνῳκειοῦντο τῷ ζήλῳ τῶν καλῶν ἐκ τῆς ἐπιχωριαζούσης τότε πρὸς ἀλλήλους κακοθυμίας, ὥστε τρόπον τινὰ τῷ Λυκούργῳ προοδοποιεῖν τὴν παίδευσιν αὐτῶν ἐκεῖνον.

[3] Ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς Κρήτης ὁ Λυκοῦργος ἐπὶ Ἀσίαν ἔπλευσε, βουλόμενος, ὡς λέγεται, ταῖς Κρητικαῖς διαίταις, εὐτελέσιν οὔσαις καὶ αὐστηραῖς, τὰς Ἰωνικὰς πολυτελείας καὶ τρυφάς, ὥσπερ ἰατρὸς σώμασιν ὑγιεινοῖς ὕπουλα καὶ νοσώδη, παραβαλὼν ἀποθεωρῆσαι τὴν διαφορὰν τῶν βίων καὶ [4] τῶν πολιτειῶν. ἐκεῖ δὲ καὶ τοῖς Ὁμήρου ποιήμασιν ἐντυχὼν πρῶτον, ὡς ἔοικε, παρὰ τοῖς ἐκγόνοις τοῖς Κρεοφύλου διατηρουμένοις, καὶ κατιδὼν ἐν αὐτοῖς τῆς πρὸς ἡδονὴν καὶ ἀκρασίαν διατριβῆς τὸ πολιτικὸν καὶ παιδευτικὸν οὐκ ἐλάττονος ἄξιον σπουδῆς ἀναμεμιγμένον, ἐγράψατο προθύμως καὶ συνήγαγεν ὡς δεῦρο κομιῶν. ἦν γάρ τις ἤδη δόξα τῶν ἐπῶν ἀμαυρὰ παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἐκέκτηντο δὲ οὐ πολλοὶ μέρη τινά, σποράδην τῆς ποιήσεως, ὡς ἔτυχε, διαφερομένης· γνωρίμην δὲ αὐτὴν καὶ μάλιστα πρῶτος ἐποίησε Λυκοῦργος.

[5] Αἰγύπτιοι δὲ καὶ πρὸς αὑτοὺς ἀφικέσθαι τὸν Λυκοῦργον οἴονται, καὶ τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων γενῶν τοῦ μαχίμου διάκρισιν μάλιστα θαυμάσαντα μετενεγκεῖν εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην, καὶ χωρίσαντα τοὺς βαναύσους καὶ χειροτέχνας ἀστεῖον ὡς ἀληθῶς τὸ πολίτευμα καὶ καθαρὸν ἀποδεῖξαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Αἰγυπτίοις ἔνιοι καὶ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν [6] συγγραφέων μαρτυροῦσιν· ὅτι δὲ καὶ Λιβύην καὶ Ἰβηρίαν ἐπῆλθεν ὁ Λυκοῦργος καὶ περὶ τὴν Ἰνδικὴν πλανηθεὶς τοῖς Γυμνοσοφισταῖς ὡμίλησεν, οὐδένα πλὴν Ἀριστοκράτη τὸν Ἱππάρχου Σπαρτιάτην εἰρηκότα γινώσκομεν.

[5] [1] Οἱ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τὸν Λυκοῦργον ἐπόθουν ἀπόντα καὶ μετεπέμποντο πολλάκις, ὡς τοὺς μὲν βασιλεῖς ὄνομα καὶ τιμήν, ἄλλο δὲ μηδὲν διαφέρον τῶν πολλῶν ἔχοντας, ἐν ἐκείνῳ δὲ φύσιν ἡγεμονικὴν καὶ δύναμιν ἀνθρώπων ἀγωγὸν οὖσαν. οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν ἦν ἀβούλητος ἡ παρουσία τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἀλλ’ ἤλπιζον ἐκείνου συμπαρόντος ἧττον ὑβρίζουσι χρῆσθαι τοῖς πολλοῖς.

[2] ἐπανελθὼν οὖν πρὸς οὕτω διακειμένους εὐθὺς ἐπεχείρει τὰ παρόντα κινεῖν καὶ μεθιστάναι τὴν πολιτείαν, ὡς τῶν κατὰ μέρος νόμων οὐδὲν ἔργον οὐδὲ ὄφελος, εἰ μή τις ὥσπερ σώματι πονηρῷ καὶ γέμοντι παντοδαπῶν νοσημάτων τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν ἐκτήξας καὶ μεταβαλὼν κρᾶσιν ὑπὸ φαρμάκων καὶ καθαρμῶν ἑτέρας ἄρξεται καινῆς διαίτης.

[3] διανοηθεὶς δὲ ταῦτα πρῶτον μὲν ἀπεδήμησεν εἰς Δελφούς· καὶ τῷ θεῷ θύσας καὶ χρησάμενος ἐπανῆλθε τὸν διαβόητον ἐκεῖνον χρησμὸν κομίζων, ᾧ θεοφιλῆ μὲν αὐτὸν ἡ Πυθία προσεῖπε καὶ θεὸν μᾶλλον ἢ ἄνθρωπον, εὐνομίας δὲ χρῄζοντι διδόναι καὶ καταινεῖν ἔφη τὸν θεὸν ἣ πολὺ κρατίστη τῶν ἄλλων ἔσται πολιτειῶν.

[4] Ἐπαρθεὶς δὲ τούτοις προσήγετο τοὺς ἀρίστους καὶ συνεφάπτεσθαι παρεκάλει, κρύφα διαλεγόμενος τοῖς φίλοις πρῶτον, εἶτα οὕτως κατὰ μικρὸν ἁπτόμενος πλειόνων καὶ συνιστὰς ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν. ὡς δ’ ὁ καιρὸς ἧκε, τριάκοντα τοὺς πρώτους ἐκέλευσε μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἕωθεν εἰς ἀγορὰν προελθεῖν ἐκπλήξεως ἕνεκα καὶ φόβου πρὸς τοὺς ἀντιπράττοντας. ὧν εἴκοσι τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους Ἕρμιππος ἀνέγραψε· τὸν δὲ μάλιστα τῶν Λυκούργου ἔργων κοινωνήσαντα πάντων καὶ συμπραγματευσάμενον τὰ περὶ τοὺς νόμους Ἀρθμιάδαν [5] ὀνομάζουσιν. ἀρχομένης δὲ τῆς ταραχῆς ὁ βασιλεὺς Χαρίλαος φοβηθεὶς ὡς ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὅλης τῆς πράξεως συνισταμένης, κατέφυγε πρὸς τὴν Χαλκίοικον· εἶτα πεισθεὶς καὶ λαβὼν ὅρκους ἀνέστη καὶ μετεῖχε τῶν πραττομένων, φύσει πρᾷος ὤν· ὥς που καὶ λέγεται συμβασιλεύοντα τὸν Ἀρχέλαον αὐτῷ πρὸς τοὺς ἐγκωμιάζοντας τὸν νεανίσκον εἰπεῖν· “Πῶς δ’ ἂν εἴη Χαρίλαος ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός, ὃς οὐδὲ τοῖς πονηροῖς χαλεπός ἐστι;”

[6] Πλειόνων δὲ καινοτομουμένων ὑπὸ τοῦ Λυκούργου πρῶτον ἦν καὶ μέγιστον ἡ κατάστασις τῶν γερόντων, ἥν φησιν ὁ Πλάτων τῇ τῶν βασιλέων ἀρχῇ φλεγμαινούσῃ μιχθεῖσαν καὶ γενομένην ἰσόψηφον εἰς τὰ μέγιστα σωτηρίαν ἅμα καὶ σωφροσύνην παρασχεῖν. αἰωρουμένη γὰρ ἡ πολιτεία καὶ ἀποκλίνουσα νῦν μὲν ὡς τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἐπὶ τυραννίδα, νῦν δὲ ὡς τὸ πλῆθος ἐπὶ [7] δημοκρατίαν, οἷον ἕρμα τὴν τῶν γερόντων ἀρχὴν ἐν μέσῳ θεμένη καὶ ἰσορροπήσασα τὴν ἀσφαλεστάτην τάξιν ἔσχε καὶ κατάστασιν, ἀεὶ τῶν ὀκτὼ καὶ εἴκοσι γερόντων τοῖς μὲν βασιλεῦσι προστιθεμένων ὅσον ἀντιβῆναι πρὸς δημοκρατίαν, αὖθις δὲ ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ γενέσθαι τυραννίδα τὸν δῆμον ἀναρρωννύντων. τοσούτους δέ φησι κατασταθῆναι τοὺς γέροντας Ἀριστοτέλης, ὅτι τριάκοντα τῶν πρώτων μετὰ Λυκούργου γενομένων δύο τὴν πρᾶξιν ἐγκατέλιπον ἀποδειλιάσαντες.

[8] ὁ δὲ Σφαῖρος ἐξ ἀρχῆς φησι τοσούτους γενέσθαι τοὺς τῆς γνώμης μετασχόντας. εἴη δ’ ἄν τι καὶ τὸ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ δι’ ἑβδομάδος τετράδι πολλαπλασιασθείσης ἀποτελούμενον, καὶ ὅτι τοῖς αὑτοῦ μέρεσιν ἴσος ὢν μετὰ τὴν ἑξάδα τέλειός ἐστιν. ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκεῖ μάλιστα τοσούτους ἀποδεῖξαι τοὺς γέροντας ὅπως οἱ πάντες εἶεν τριάκοντα, τοῖς ὀκτὼ καὶ εἴκοσι τοῖν δυοῖν βασιλέοιν προστιθεμένοιν.

[6] [1] Οὕτω δὲ περὶ ταύτην ἐσπούδασε τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁ Λυκοῦργος ὥστε μαντείαν ἐκ Δελφῶν κομίσαι περὶ αὐτῆς, ἣν ῥήτραν καλοῦσιν. ἔχει δὲ οὕτως· “Διὸς Συλλανίου καὶ Ἀθανᾶς Συλλανίας ἱερὸν ἱδρυσάμενον, φυλὰς φυλάξαντα καὶ ὠβὰς ὠβάξαντα, τριάκοντα γερουσίαν σὺν ἀρχαγέταις καταστήσαντα, ὥρας ἐξ ὥρας ἀπελλάζειν μεταξὺ Βαβύκας τε καὶ Κνακιῶνος, οὕτως εἰσφέρειν τε καὶ ἀφίστασθαι· δάμῳ δὲ τὰν κυρίαν ἦμεν καὶ [2] κράτος.” ἐν τούτοις τὸ μὲν φυλὰς φυλάξαι καὶ ὠβὰς ὠβάξαι διελεῖν ἐστι καὶ κατανεῖμαι τὸ πλῆθος εἰς μερίδας, ὧν τὰς μὲν φυλάς, τὰς δὲ ὠβὰς προσηγόρευκεν. ἀρχαγέται δὲ οἱ βασιλεῖς λέγονται, τὸ δὲ ἀπελλάζειν ἐκκλησιάζειν· ὅτι τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς πολιτείας εἰς τὸν Πύθιον ἀνῆψε. τὴν δὲ Βαβύκαν Χείμαρρος, καὶ τὸν Κνακιῶνα νῦν Οἰνοῦντα προσαγορεύουσιν· Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ τὸν μὲν Κνακιῶνα ποταμόν, τὴν δὲ [3] Βαβύκαν γέφυραν. ἐν μέσῳ δὲ τούτων τὰς ἐκκλησίας ἦγον, οὔτε παστάδων οὐσῶν οὔτε ἄλλης τινὸς κατασκευῆς. οὐθὲν γὰρ ᾤετο ταῦτα πρὸς εὐβουλίαν εἶναι, μᾶλλον δὲ βλάπτειν, φλυαρώδεις ἀπεργαζόμενα καὶ χαύνους φρονήματι κενῷ τὰς διανοίας τῶν συμπορευομένων, ὅταν εἰς ἀγάλματα καὶ γραφὰς ἢ προσκήνια θεάτρων ἢ στέγας βουλευτηρίων ἠσκημένας περιττῶς ἐκκλησιάζοντες ἀποβλέπωσι. τοῦ δὲ πλήθους ἀθροισθέντος εἰπεῖν μὲν οὐδενὶ γνώμην τῶν ἄλλων ἐφεῖτο, τὴν δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν γερόντων καὶ τῶν βασιλέων προτεθεῖσαν [4] ἐπικρῖναι κύριος ἦν ὁ δῆμος. ὕστερον μέντοι τῶν πολλῶν ἀφαιρέσει καὶ προσθέσει τὰς γνώμας διαστρεφόντων καὶ παραβιαζομένων, Πολύδωρος καὶ Θεόπομπος οἱ βασιλεῖς τάδε τῇ ῥήτρᾳ παρενέγραψαν· “Αἰ δὲ σκολιὰν ὁ δᾶμος ἕλοιτο, τοὺς πρεσβυγενέας καὶ ἀρχαγέτας ἀποστατῆρας ἦμεν,” τοῦτ’ ἔστι μὴ κυροῦν, ἀλλ’ ὅλως ἀφίστασθαι καὶ διαλύειν τὸν δῆμον, ὡς ἐκτρέποντα καὶ μεταποιοῦντα [5] τὴν γνώμην παρὰ τὸ βέλτιστον. ἔπεισαν δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ τὴν πόλιν ὡς τοῦ θεοῦ ταῦτα προστάσσοντος, ὥς που Τυρταῖος ἐπιμέμνηται διὰ τούτων·

Φοίβου ἀκούσαντες Πυθωνόθεν οἴκαδ’ ἔνεικαν

μαντείας τε θεοῦ καὶ τελέεντ’ ἔπεα·

ἄρχειν μὲν βουλῆς θεοτιμήτους βασιλῆας,

οἷσι μέλει Σπάρτας ἱμερόεσσα πόλις,

πρεσβύτας τε γέροντας, ἔπειτα δὲ δημότας ἄνδρας,

εὐθείαις ῥήτραις ἀνταπαμειβομένους.

[7] [1] Οὕτω τὸ πολίτευμα τοῦ Λυκούργου μίξαντος, ὅμως ἄκρατον ἔτι τὴν ὀλιγαρχίαν καὶ ἰσχυρὰν οἱ μετ’ αὐτὸν ὁρῶντες σπαργῶσαν καὶ θυμουμένην, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, οἷον ψάλιον ἐμβάλλουσιν αὐτῇ τὴν τῶν ἐφόρων δύναμιν, ἔτεσί που μάλιστα τριάκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν μετὰ Λυκοῦργον πρώτων τῶν περὶ Ἔλατον ἐφόρων κατασταθέντων [2] ἐπὶ Θεοπόμπου βασιλεύοντος· ὃν καί φασιν ὑπὸ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ γυναικὸς ὀνειδιζόμενον ὡς ἐλάττω παραδώσοντα τοῖς παισὶ τὴν βασιλείαν ἢ παρέλαβε, “Μείζω μὲν οὖν,” εἰπεῖν, “ὅσῳ χρονιωτέραν.” τῷ γὰρ ὄντι τὸ ἄγαν ἀποβαλοῦσα μετὰ τοῦ φθόνου διέφυγε τὸν κίνδυνον, ὥστε μὴ παθεῖν ἃ Μεσσήνιοι καὶ Ἀργεῖοι τοὺς παρ’ αὐτοῖς βασιλεῖς ἔδρασαν, μηδὲν ἐνδοῦναι μηδὲ χαλάσαι τῆς ἐξουσίας ἐπὶ τὸ δημοτικὸν ἐθελήσαντας. ὃ καὶ μάλιστα τὴν Λυκούργου σοφίαν καὶ πρόνοιαν ἐποίησε φανερὰν εἰς τὰς Μεσσηνίων καὶ Ἀργείων, συγγενῶν καὶ γειτόνων, δήμων καὶ βασιλέων στάσεις [3] καὶ κακοπολιτείας ἀφορῶσιν, οἳ τῶν ἴσων ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς τετυχηκότες, ἐν δὲ τῷ κλήρῳ καὶ πλέον ἔχειν ἐκείνων δόξαντες, οὐκ ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον εὐδαιμόνησαν, ἀλλ’ ὕβρει μὲν τῶν βασιλέων, οὐκ εὐπειθείᾳ δὲ τῶν ὄχλων, τὰ καθεστῶτα συνταράξαντες ἔδειξαν ὅτι θεῖον ἦν ὡς ἀληθῶς εὐτύχημα τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις ὁ τὴν πολιτείαν ἁρμοσάμενος καὶ κεράσας παρ’ αὐτοῖς. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον.

[8] [1] Δεύτερον δὲ τῶν Λυκούργου πολιτευμάτων καὶ νεανικώτατον ὁ τῆς γῆς ἀναδασμός ἐστι. δεινῆς γὰρ οὔσης ἀνωμαλίας καὶ πολλῶν ἀκτημόνων καὶ ἀπόρων ἐπιφερομένων τῇ πόλει, τοῦ δὲ πλούτου παντάπασιν εἰς ὀλίγους συνερρυηκότος, ὕβριν καὶ φθόνον καὶ κακουργίαν καὶ τρυφὴν καὶ τὰ τούτων ἔτι πρεσβύτερα καὶ μείζω νοσήματα [2] πολιτείας, πλοῦτον καὶ πενίαν, ἐξελαύνων, συνέπεισε τὴν χώραν ἅπασαν εἰς μέσον θέντας ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἀναδάσασθαι, καὶ ζῆν μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἅπαντας ὁμαλεῖς καὶ ἰσοκλήρους τοῖς βίοις γενομένους, τὸ δὲ πρωτεῖον ἀρετῇ μετιόντας, ὡς ἄλλης ἑτέρῳ πρὸς ἕτερον οὐκ οὔσης διαφορᾶς οὐδὲ ἀνισότητος, πλὴν ὅσην αἰσχρῶν ψόγος ὁρίζει καὶ καλῶν ἔπαινος.

[3] Ἐπάγων δὲ τῷ λόγῳ τὸ ἔργον ἔνειμε τὴν μὲν ἄλλην τοῖς περιοίκοις Λακωνικὴν τρισμυρίους κλήρους, τὴν δὲ εἰς τὸ ἄστυ τὴν Σπάρτην συντελοῦσαν ἐνακισχιλίους· τοσοῦτοι γὰρ ἐγένοντο κλῆροι Σπαρτιατῶν· ἔνιοι δέ φασι τὸν μὲν Λυκοῦργον ἑξακισχιλίους νεῖμαι, τρισχιλίους δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα προσθεῖναι Πολύδωρον· οἱ δὲ τοὺς μὲν ἡμίσεις τῶν ἐνακισχιλίων τοῦτον, τοὺς δὲ [4] ἡμίσεις Λυκοῦργον. ὁ δὲ κλῆρος ἦν ἑκάστου τοσοῦτος ὥστε ἀποφορὰν φέρειν ἀνδρὶ μὲν ἑβδομήκοντα κριθῶν μεδίμνους, γυναικὶ δὲ δώδεκα, καὶ τῶν ὑγρῶν καρπῶν ἀναλόγως τὸ πλῆθος. ἀρκέσειν γὰρ ᾤετο τοσοῦτον αὐτοῖς, τῆς τροφῆς πρὸς εὐεξίαν καὶ ὑγείαν ἱκανῆς, ἄλλου δὲ μηδενὸς δεησομένοις. λέγεται δ’ αὐτὸν ὕστερόν ποτε χρόνῳ τὴν χώραν διερχόμενον ἐξ ἀποδημίας ἄρτι τεθερισμένην, ὁρῶντα τοὺς σωροὺς παραλλήλους καὶ ὁμαλεῖς, μειδιᾶσαι, καὶ εἰπεῖν πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ὡς ἡ Λακωνικὴ φαίνεται πᾶσα πολλῶν ἀδελφῶν εἶναι νεωστὶ νενεμημένων.

[9] [1] Ἐπιχειρήσας δὲ καὶ τὰ ἔπιπλα διαιρεῖν, ὅπως παντάπασιν ἐξέλοι τὸ ἄνισον καὶ ἀνώμαλον, ἐπεὶ χαλεπῶς ἑώρα προσδεχομένους τὴν ἄντικρυς ἀφαίρεσιν, ἑτέρᾳ περιῆλθεν ὁδῷ καὶ κατεπολιτεύσατο τὴν ἐν τούτοις πλεονεξίαν. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἀκυρώσας πᾶν νόμισμα χρυσοῦν καὶ ἀργυροῦν μόνῳ χρῆσθαι τῷ σιδηρῷ προσέταξε· καὶ τούτῳ δὲ ἀπὸ πολλοῦ σταθμοῦ καὶ ὄγκου δύναμιν ὀλίγην ἔδωκεν, ὥστε δέκα μνῶν ἀμοιβὴν ἀποθήκης τε μεγάλης ἐν οἰκίᾳ [2] δεῖσθαι καὶ ζεύγους ἄγοντος. τούτου δὲ κυρωθέντος ἐξέπεσεν ἀδικημάτων γένη πολλὰ τῆς Λακεδαίμονος. τίς γὰρ ἢ κλέπτειν ἔμελλεν ἢ δωροδοκεῖν ἢ ἀποστερεῖν ἢ ἁρπάζειν ὃ μήτε κατακρύψαι δυνατὸν ἦν μήτε κεκτῆσθαι ζηλωτόν, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ κατακόψαι λυσιτελές· ὄξει γάρ, ὡς λέγεται, διαπύρου σιδήρου τὸ στόμωμα κατασβέσας ἀφείλετο τὴν εἰς τἆλλα χρείαν καὶ δύναμιν, ἀδρανοῦς καὶ δυσέργου γενομένου.

[3] Μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο τῶν ἀχρήστων καὶ περισσῶν ἐποιεῖτο τεχνῶν ξενηλασίαν. ἔμελλον δέ που καὶ μηδενὸς ἐξελαύνοντος αἱ πολλαὶ τῷ κοινῷ νομίσματι συνεκπεσεῖσθαι, διάθεσιν τῶν ἔργων οὐκ ἐχόντων. τὸ γὰρ σιδηροῦν ἀγώγιμον οὐκ ἦν πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους Ἕλληνας οὐδ’ εἶχε τιμὴν καταγελώμενον, ὥστε οὐδὲ πρίασθαί τι τῶν ξενικῶν καὶ ῥωπικῶν ὑπῆρχεν, οὐδ’ εἰσέπλει φόρτος ἐμπορικὸς εἰς τοὺς λιμένας, οὐδὲ ἐπέβαινε τῆς Λακωνικῆς οὐ σοφιστὴς λόγων, οὐ μάντις ἀγυρτικός, οὐχ ἑταιρῶν τροφεύς, οὐ χρυσῶν τις, οὐκ ἀργυρῶν καλλωπισμάτων δημιουργός, ἅτε δὴ νομίσματος [4] οὐκ ὄντος. ἀλλὰ οὕτως ἀπερημωθεῖσα κατὰ μικρὸν ἡ τρυφὴ τῶν ζωπυρούντων καὶ τρεφόντων αὐτὴ δι’ αὑτῆς ἐμαραίνετο· καὶ πλεῖον οὐδὲν ἦν τοῖς πολλὰ κεκτημένοις, ὁδὸν οὐκ ἐχούσης εἰς μέσον τῆς εὐπορίας, ἀλλ’ ἐγκατῳκοδομημένης καὶ ἀργούσης. διὸ καὶ τὰ πρόχειρα τῶν σκευῶν καὶ ἀναγκαῖα ταῦτα, κλιντῆρες καὶ δίφροι καὶ τράπεζαι, βέλτιστα παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἐδημιουργεῖτο, καὶ κώθων ὁ Λακωνικὸς εὐδοκίμει μάλιστα πρὸς τὰς στρατείας, [5] ὥς φησι Κριτίας. τὰ γὰρ ἀναγκαίως πινόμενα τῶν ὑδάτων καὶ δυσωποῦντα τὴν ὄψιν ἀπεκρύπτετο τῇ χρόᾳ, καὶ τοῦ θολεροῦ προσκόπτοντος ἐντὸς καὶ προσισχομένου τοῖς ἄμβωσι, καθαρώτερον ἐπλησίαζε τῷ στόματι τὸ πινόμενον. αἴτιος δὲ καὶ τούτων ὁ νομοθέτης· ἀπηλλαγμένοι γὰρ οἱ δημιουργοὶ τῶν ἀχρήστων ἐν τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις ἐπεδείκνυντο τὴν καλλιτεχνίαν.

[10] [1] Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐπιθέσθαι τῇ τρυφῇ καὶ τὸν ζῆλον ἀφελέσθαι τοῦ πλούτου διανοηθείς, τὸ τρίτον πολίτευμα καὶ κάλλιστον ἐπῆγε, τὴν τῶν συσσιτίων κατασκευήν, ὥστε δειπνεῖν μετ’ ἀλλήλων συνιόντας ἐπὶ κοινοῖς καὶ τεταγμένοις ὄψοις καὶ σιτίοις, οἴκοι δὲ μὴ διαιτᾶσθαι κατακλινέντας εἰς στρωμνὰς πολυτελεῖς καὶ τραπέζας, χερσὶ δημιουργῶν καὶ μαγείρων ὑπὸ σκότος, ὥσπερ [2] ἀδηφάγα ζῷα, πιαινομένους, καὶ διαφθείροντας ἅμα τοῖς ἤθεσι τὰ σώματα πρὸς πᾶσαν ἐπιθυμίαν ἀνειμένα καὶ πλησμονήν, μακρῶν μὲν ὕπνων, θερμῶν δὲ λουτρῶν, πολλῆς δὲ ἡσυχίας καὶ τρόπον τινὰ νοσηλείας καθημερινῆς δεομένην. μέγα μὲν οὖν καὶ τοῦτο ἦν, μεῖζον δὲ τὸ τὸν πλοῦτον ἄζηλον, ὥς φησι Θεόφραστος, καὶ ἄπλουτον ἀπεργάσασθαι τῇ κοινότητι τῶν δείπνων καὶ τῇ περὶ [3] τὴν δίαιταν εὐτελείᾳ. χρῆσις γὰρ οὐκ ἦν οὐδὲ ἀπόλαυσις οὐδὲ ὄψις ὅλως ἢ ἐπίδειξις τῆς πολλῆς παρασκευῆς, ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ δεῖπνον τῷ πένητι τοῦ πλουσίου βαδίζοντος· ὥστε τοῦτο δὴ τὸ θρυλούμενον ἐν μόνῃ τῶν ὑπὸ τὸν ἥλιον πόλεων τῇ Σπάρτῃ βλέπεσθαι, τυφλὸν ὄντα τὸν πλοῦτον καὶ κείμενον ὥσπερ γραφὴν ἄψυχον καὶ ἀκίνητον. οὐδὲ γὰρ οἴκοι προδειπνήσαντας ἐξῆν βαδίζειν ἐπὶ τὰ συσσίτια πεπληρωμένους, ἀλλ’ ἐπιμελῶς οἱ λοιποὶ παραφυλάττοντες τὸν μὴ πίνοντα μηδὲ ἐσθίοντα μετ’ αὐτῶν ἐκάκιζον ὡς ἀκρατῆ καὶ πρὸς τὴν κοινὴν ἀπομαλακιζόμενον δίαιταν.

[11] [1] Διὸ καὶ μάλιστά φασι τῷ Λυκούργῳ πρὸς τοῦτο τὸ πολίτευμα χαλεποὺς γενέσθαι τοὺς εὐπόρους, καὶ συστάντας ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἀθρόους καταβοᾶν καὶ ἀγανακτεῖν· τέλος δὲ βαλλόμενος ὑπὸ πολλῶν ἐξέπεσε τῆς ἀγορᾶς δρόμῳ. καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἔφθασεν εἰς ἱερὸν καταφυγών· εἷς δέ τις νεανίσκος, ἄλλως μὲν οὐκ ἀφυής, ὀξὺς δὲ καὶ θυμοειδής, Ἄλκανδρος, ἐπικείμενος καὶ διώκων ἐπιστραφέντος αὐτοῦ τῇ βακτηρίᾳ πατάξας [2] τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν ἐξέκοψεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Λυκοῦργος οὐδὲν ἐνδοὺς πρὸς τὸ πάθος, ἀλλὰ στὰς ἐναντίος ἔδειξε τοῖς πολίταις τὸ πρόσωπον ᾑμαγμένον καὶ διεφθαρμένην τὴν ὄψιν· αἰδὼς δὲ πολλὴ καὶ κατήφεια τοὺς ἰδόντας ἔσχεν, ὥστε παραδοῦναι τὸν Ἄλκανδρον αὐτῷ καὶ προπέμψαι μέχρι τῆς οἰκίας συναγανακτοῦντας. ὁ δὲ Λυκοῦργος ἐκείνους μὲν ἐπαινέσας ἀφῆκε, τὸν δὲ Ἄλκανδρον εἰσαγαγὼν οἴκαδε κακὸν μὲν οὐδὲν οὔτ’ ἐποίησεν οὔτ’ εἶπεν, ἀπαλλάξας δὲ τοὺς συνήθεις ὑπηρέτας καὶ θεραπευτῆρας ἐκεῖνον ἐκέλευσεν ὑπηρετεῖν.

[3] ὁ δὲ οὐκ ὢν ἀγεννὴς ἐποίει τὸ προσταττόμενον σιωπῇ, καὶ παραμένων ἅμα τῷ Λυκούργῳ καὶ συνδιαιτώμενος ἐν τῷ κατανοεῖν τὴν πρᾳότητα καὶ τὸ ἀπαθὲς αὐτοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τὸ περὶ τὴν δίαιταν αὐστηρὸν καὶ τὸ πρὸς τοὺς πόνους ἄκαμπτον, αὐτός τε δεινῶς διετέθη περὶ τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς συνήθεις καὶ φίλους ἔλεγεν ὡς οὐ σκληρὸς οὐδ’ αὐθάδης ὁ Λυκοῦργος, ἀλλὰ [4] μόνος ἥμερος καὶ πρᾷός ἐστι τοῖς ἄλλοις. οὕτω μὲν οὖν οὗτος ἐκεκόλαστο καὶ τοιαύτην ὑπεσχήκει δίκην, ἐκ πονηροῦ νέου καὶ αὐθάδους ἐμμελέστατος ἀνὴρ καὶ σωφρονικώτατος γενόμενος. τοῦ δὲ πάθους ὑπόμνημα Λυκοῦργος ἱδρύσατο τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ἱερόν, ἣν Ὀπτιλῖτιν προσηγόρευσε· τοὺς γὰρ ὀφθαλμοὺς ὀπτίλους οἱ τῇδε Δωριεῖς καλοῦσιν. ἔνιοι μέντοι τὸν Λυκοῦργον, ὧν καὶ Διοσκορίδης ἐστὶν ὁ συντεταγμένος τὴν Λακωνικὴν πολιτείαν, πληγῆναι μέν φασιν, οὐ τυφλωθῆναι δὲ τὸν ὀφθαλμόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τῇ θεῷ τῆς ἀκέσεως χαριστήριον ἱδρύσασθαι. τὸ μέντοι φέρειν βακτηρίαν ἐκκλησιάζοντες οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται μετὰ τὴν συμφορὰν ἐκείνην ἀπέμαθον.

[12] [1] Τὰ δὲ συσσίτια Κρῆτες μὲν ἀνδρεῖα, Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ φιδίτια προσαγορεύουσιν, εἴτε ὡς φιλίας καὶ φιλοφροσύνης ὑπαρχόντων, ἀντὶ τοῦ λ τὸ δ λαμβάνοντες, εἴτε ὡς πρὸς εὐτέλειαν καὶ φειδὼ συνεθιζόντων. οὐδὲν δὲ κωλύει καὶ τὸν πρῶτον ἔξωθεν ἐπικεῖσθαι φθόγγον, ὥσπερ ἔνιοί φασιν, ἐδιτίων παρὰ τὴν δίαιταν καὶ τὴν [2] ἐδωδὴν λεγομένων. συνήρχοντο δὲ ἀνὰ πεντεκαίδεκα καὶ βραχεῖ τούτων ἐλάττους ἢ πλείους. ἔφερε δὲ ἕκαστος κατὰ μῆνα τῶν συσσίτων ἀλφίτων μέδιμνον, οἴνου χόας ὀκτώ, τυροῦ πέντε μνᾶς, σύκων ἡμιμναῖα πέντε, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις εἰς ὀψωνίαν μικρόν τι κομιδῇ νομίσματος. ἄλλως δὲ καὶ θύσας τις ἀπαρχὴν καὶ θηρεύσας μέρος ἔπεμψεν εἰς τὸ συσσίτιον. ἐξῆν γὰρ οἴκοι δειπνεῖν ὁπότε θύσας τις ἢ κυνηγῶν ὀψίσειε, τοὺς [3] δὲ ἄλλους ἔδει παρεῖναι. καὶ μέχρι γε πολλοῦ τὰς συσσιτήσεις ἀκριβῶς διεφύλαττον. Ἄγιδος γοῦν τοῦ βασιλέως, ὡς ἐπανῆλθεν ἀπὸ τῆς στρατείας καταπεπολεμηκὼς Ἀθηναίους, βουλομένου παρὰ τῇ γυναικὶ δειπνεῖν καὶ μεταπεμπομένου τὰς μερίδας, οὐκ ἔπεμψαν οἱ πολέμαρχοι, τοῦ δὲ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς μὴ θύσαντος ἣν ἔδει θυσίαν, ἐζημίωσαν αὐτόν.

[4] Εἰς δὲ τὰ συσσίτια καὶ παῖδες ἐφοίτων, ὥσπερ εἰς διδασκαλεῖα σωφροσύνης ἀγόμενοι, καὶ λόγων ἠκροῶντο πολιτικῶν καὶ παιδευτὰς ἐλευθερίας ἑώρων, αὐτοί τε παίζειν εἰθίζοντο καὶ σκώπτειν ἄνευ βωμολοχίας καὶ σκωπτόμενοι μὴ δυσχεραίνειν. σφόδρα γὰρ ἐδόκει καὶ τοῦτο Λακωνικὸν εἶναι, σκώμματος ἀνέχεσθαι· μὴ φέροντα δὲ ἐξῆν [5] παραιτεῖσθαι, καὶ ὁ σκώπτων ἐπέπαυτο. τῶν δ’ εἰσιόντων ἑκάστῳ δείξας ὁ πρεσβύτατος τὰς θύρας, “Διὰ τούτων,” φησίν, “ἔξω λόγος οὐκ ἐκπορεύεται.” δοκιμάζεσθαι δὲ τὸν βουλόμενον τοῦ συσσιτίου μετασχεῖν οὕτω φασί. λαβὼν τῶν συσσίτων ἕκαστος ἀπομαγδαλίαν εἰς τὴν χεῖρα, τοῦ διακόνου φέροντος ἀγγεῖον ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς, ἔβαλλε σιωπῇ καθάπερ ψῆφον, ὁ μὲν δοκιμάζων ἁπλῶς, ὁ δ’ ἐκκρίνων σφόδρα τῇ χειρὶ πιέσας.

[6] ἡ γὰρ πεπιεσμένη τὴν τῆς τετρημένης ἔχει δύναμιν. κἂν μίαν εὕρωσι τοιαύτην, οὐ προσδέχονται τὸν ἐπεισιόντα, βουλόμενοι πάντας ἡδομένους ἀλλήλοις συνεῖναι. τὸν δὲ οὕτως ἀποδοκιμασθέντα κεκαδδίσθαι λέγουσι· κάδδιχος γὰρ καλεῖται τὸ ἀγγεῖον εἰς ὃ τὰς ἀπομαγδαλίας ἐμβάλλουσι. τῶν δὲ ὄψων εὐδοκίμει μάλιστα παρ’ αὐτοῖς ὁ μέλας ζωμός, ὥστε μηδὲ κρεαδίου δεῖσθαι τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους, ἀλλὰ παραχωρεῖν τοῖς νεανίσκοις, αὐτοὺς δὲ τοῦ ζωμοῦ καταχεομένους [7] ἑστιᾶσθαι. λέγεται δέ τινα τῶν Ποντικῶν βασιλέων ἕνεκα τοῦ ζωμοῦ καὶ πρίασθαι Λακωνικὸν μάγειρον· εἶτα γευσάμενον δυσχερᾶναι· καὶ τὸν μάγειρον εἰπεῖν· “Ὦ βασιλεῦ, τοῦτον δεῖ τὸν ζωμὸν ἐν τῷ Εὐρώτᾳ λελουμένους ἐποψᾶσθαι.” πιόντες δὲ μετρίως ἀπίασι δίχα λαμπάδος. οὐ γὰρ ἔξεστι πρὸς φῶς βαδίζειν, οὔτε ταύτην οὔτε ἄλλην ὁδόν, ὅπως ἐθίζωνται σκότους καὶ νυκτὸς εὐθαρσῶς καὶ ἀδεῶς ὁδεύειν. τὰ μὲν οὖν συσσίτια τοιαύτην ἔχει τάξιν.

[13] [1] Νόμους δὲ γεγραμμένους ὁ Λυκοῦργος οὐκ ἔθηκεν, ἀλλὰ μία τῶν καλουμένων ῥητρῶν ἐστιν αὕτη. τὰ μὲν γὰρ κυριώτατα καὶ μέγιστα πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν πόλεως καὶ ἀρετήν, ἐν τοῖς ἤθεσιν ᾤετο καὶ ταῖς ἀγωγαῖς τῶν πολιτῶν ἐγκατεστοιχειωμένα, μένειν ἀκίνητα καὶ βέβαια, ἔχοντα τὴν προαίρεσιν δεσμὸν ἰσχυρότερον τῆς ἀνάγκης, ἣν ἡ παίδευσις ἐμποιεῖ τοῖς νέοις, νομοθέτου διάθεσιν ἀπεργαζομένη περὶ ἕκαστον αὐτῶν.

[2] τὰ δὲ μικρὰ καὶ χρηματικὰ συμβόλαια καὶ μεταπίπτοντα ταῖς χρείαις ἄλλοτε ἄλλως, βέλτιον ἦν μὴ καταλαμβάνειν ἐγγράφοις ἀνάγκαις μηδὲ ἀκινήτοις ἔθεσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐᾶν ἐπὶ τῶν καιρῶν, προσθέσεις λαμβάνοντα καὶ ἀφαιρέσεις, ἃς ἂν οἱ πεπαιδευμένοι δοκιμάσωσι. τὸ γὰρ ὅλον καὶ πᾶν τῆς νομοθεσίας ἔργον εἰς τὴν παιδείαν ἀνῆψε.

[3] Μία μὲν οὖν τῶν ῥητρῶν ἦν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, μὴ χρῆσθαι νόμοις ἐγγράφοις. ἑτέρα δὲ πάλιν κατὰ τῆς πολυτελείας, ὅπως οἰκία πᾶσα τὴν μὲν ὀροφὴν ἀπὸ πελέκεως εἰργασμένην ἔχῃ, τὰς δὲ θύρας ἀπὸ πρίονος μόνου καὶ μηδενὸς τῶν ἄλλων ἐργαλείων. ὅπερ γὰρ ὕστερον Ἐπαμεινώνδαν εἰπεῖν λέγουσιν ἐπὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ τραπέζης, ὡς τὸ τοιοῦτον ἄριστον οὐ χωρεῖ προδοσίαν, τοῦτο πρῶτος ἐνόησε Λυκοῦργος, ὡς οἰκία τοιαύτη τρυφὴν [4] οὐ χωρεῖ καὶ πολυτέλειαν, οὐδ’ ἔστιν οὐδεὶς οὕτως ἀπειρόκαλος καὶ ἀνόητος ὥστε εἰς οἰκίαν ἀφελῆ καὶ δημοτικὴν εἰσφέρειν κλίνας ἀργυρόποδας καὶ στρωμνὰς ἁλουργεῖς καὶ χρυσᾶς κύλικας καὶ τὴν τούτοις ἑπομένην πολυτέλειαν, ἀλλ’ ἀνάγκη συναρμόζεσθαι καὶ συνεξομοιοῦν τῇ μὲν οἰκίᾳ τὴν κλίνην, τῇ δὲ κλίνῃ τὴν ἐσθῆτα, ταύτῃ δὲ τὴν [5] ἄλλην χορηγίαν καὶ κατασκευήν. ἐκ δὲ ταύτης τῆς συνηθείας φασὶ καὶ Λεωτυχίδην τὸν πρεσβύτερον ἐν Κορίνθῳ δειπνοῦντα, καὶ θεασάμενον τῆς στέγης τοῦ οἴκου τὴν κατασκευὴν πολυτελῆ καὶ φατνωματικήν, ἐρωτῆσαι τὸν ξένον εἰ τετράγωνα παρ’ αὐτοῖς τὰ ξύλα φύεται.

Τρίτην δὲ ῥήτραν διαμνημονεύουσι τοῦ Λυκούργου, τὴν κωλύουσαν ἐπὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς πολεμίους πολλάκις στρατεύειν, ἵνα μὴ πολλάκις ἀμύνεσθαι [6] συνεθιζόμενοι πολεμικοὶ γένωνται. καὶ τοῦτό γε μάλιστα κατηγοροῦσιν Ἀγησιλάου τοῦ βασιλέως ὕστερον, ὡς ταῖς συνεχέσι καὶ πυκναῖς εἰς τὴν Βοιωτίαν ἐμβολαῖς καὶ στρατείαις τοὺς Θηβαίους ἀντιπάλους τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις κατασκευάσαντος. διὸ καὶ τετρωμένον αὐτὸν ἰδὼν Ἀνταλκίδας, “Καλά,” ἔφη, “τὰ διδασκάλια παρὰ Θηβαίων ἀπολαμβάνεις, μὴ βουλομένους αὐτοὺς μηδὲ εἰδότας μάχεσθαι διδάξας.” τὰ μὲν οὖν τοιαῦτα νομοθετήματα ῥήτρας ὠνόμασεν, ὡς παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ κομιζόμενα καὶ χρησμοὺς ὄντα.

[14] [1] Τῆς δὲ παιδείας, ἣν μέγιστον ἡγεῖτο τοῦ νομοθέτου καὶ κάλλιστον ἔργον εἶναι, πόρρωθεν ἀρχόμενος εὐθὺς ἐπεσκόπει τὰ περὶ τοὺς γάμους καὶ τὰς γενέσεις. οὐ γάρ, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησίν, ἐπιχειρήσας σωφρονίζειν τὰς γυναῖκας, ἐπαύσατο μὴ κρατῶν τῆς πολλῆς ἀνέσεως καὶ γυναικοκρατίας διὰ τὰς πολλὰς στρατείας τῶν ἀνδρῶν, ἐν αἷς ἠναγκάζοντο κυρίας ἀπολείπειν ἐκείνας, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μᾶλλον τοῦ προσήκοντος αὐτὰς ἐθεράπευον καὶ δεσποίνας προσηγόρευον· ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτων τὴν ἐνδεχομένην ἐπιμέλειαν ἐποιήσατο.

[2] τὰ μέν γε σώματα τῶν παρθένων δρόμοις καὶ πάλαις καὶ βολαῖς δίσκων καὶ ἀκοντίων διεπόνησεν, ὡς ἥ τε τῶν γεννωμένων ῥίζωσις ἰσχυρὰν ἐν ἰσχυροῖς σώμασιν ἀρχὴν λαβοῦσα βλαστάνοι βέλτιον, αὐταί τε μετὰ ῥώμης τοὺς τόκους ὑπομένουσαι καλῶς ἅμα καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἀγωνίζοιντο πρὸς τὰς ὠδῖνας. ἀφελὼν δὲ θρύψιν καὶ σκιατραφίαν καὶ θηλύτητα πᾶσαν οὐδὲν ἧττον εἴθισε τῶν κόρων τὰς κόρας γυμνάς τε πομπεύειν καὶ πρὸς ἱεροῖς τισιν ὀρχεῖσθαι καὶ ἄδειν τῶν νέων παρόντων [3] καὶ θεωμένων. ἔστι δὲ ὅτε καὶ σκώμματα λέγουσαι πρὸς ἕκαστον εὐχρήστως ἐπελαμβάνοντο τῶν ἁμαρτανομένων· καὶ πάλιν εἰς τοὺς ἀξίους αὐτῶν ἐγκώμια μετ’ ᾠδῆς πεποιημένα διεξιοῦσαι, φιλοτιμίαν πολλὴν καὶ ζῆλον ἐνεποίουν τοῖς νεανίσκοις. ὁ γὰρ ἐγκωμιασθεὶς ἐπ’ ἀνδραγαθίᾳ καὶ κλεινὸς ἐν ταῖς παρθένοις γεγονὼς ἀπῄει μεγαλυνόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπαίνων· αἱ δὲ μετὰ παιδιᾶς καὶ σκωμμάτων δήξεις οὐδὲν ἀμβλύτεραι τῶν μετὰ σπουδῆς νουθετημάτων ἦσαν, ἅτε δὴ πρὸς τὴν θέαν ὁμοῦ τοῖς ἄλλοις πολίταις καὶ τῶν βασιλέων καὶ τῶν γερόντων συμπορευομένων.

[4] Ἡ δὲ γύμνωσις τῶν παρθένων οὐδὲν αἰσχρὸν εἶχεν, αἰδοῦς μὲν παρούσης, ἀκρασίας δὲ ἀπούσης, ἀλλ’ ἐθισμὸν ἀφελῆ καὶ ζῆλον εὐεξίας ἐνειργάζετο, καὶ φρονήματος τὸ θῆλυ παρέγευεν οὐκ ἀγεννοῦς, ὡς μηδὲν ἧττον αὐτῷ καὶ ἀρετῆς καὶ φιλοτιμίας μετουσίαν οὖσαν. ὅθεν αὐταῖς καὶ λέγειν ἐπῄει καὶ φρονεῖν οἷα καὶ περὶ Γοργοῦς ἱστόρηται τῆς Λεωνίδου γυναικός. εἰπούσης γάρ τινος, ὡς ἔοικε, ξένης πρὸς αὐτὴν ὡς “Μόναι τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἄρχετε ὑμεῖς αἱ Λάκαιναι,” “Μόναι γάρ,” ἔφη, “τίκτομεν ἄνδρας.”

[15] [1] Ἦν μὲν οὖν καὶ ταῦτα παρορμητικὰ πρὸς γάμον· λέγω δὲ τὰς πομπὰς τῶν παρθένων καὶ τὰς ἀποδύσεις καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας ἐν ὄψει τῶν νέων, ἀγομένων οὐ γεωμετρικαῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐρωτικαῖς, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, ἀνάγκαις· οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀτιμίαν τινὰ προσέθηκε τοῖς ἀγάμοις. εἴργοντο γὰρ ἐν ταῖς γυμνοπαιδίαις τῆς θέας· τοῦ δὲ χειμῶνος οἱ μὲν ἄρχοντες αὐτοὺς ἐκέλευον ἐν κύκλῳ [2] γυμνοὺς περιϊέναι τὴν ἀγοράν, οἱ δὲ περιϊόντες ᾖδον εἰς αὑτοὺς ᾠδήν τινα πεποιημένην, ὡς δίκαια πάσχοιεν, ὅτι τοῖς νόμοις ἀπειθοῦσι· τιμῆς δὲ καὶ θεραπείας ἣν νέοι πρεσβυτέροις παρεῖχον, ἐστέρηντο. ὅθεν καὶ τὸ πρὸς Δερκυλλίδαν ῥηθὲν οὐδεὶς ἐμέμψατο, καίπερ εὐδόκιμον ὄντα στρατηγόν. ἐπιόντι γὰρ αὐτῷ τῶν νεωτέρων τις ἕδρας οὐχ ὑπεῖξεν, εἰπών, “Οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐμοὶ σὺ τὸν ὑπείξοντα γεγέννηκας.”

[3] Ἐγάμουν δὲ δι’ ἁρπαγῆς, οὐ μικρὰς οὐδὲ ἀώρους πρὸς γάμον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀκμαζούσας καὶ πεπείρους. τὴν δὲ ἁρπασθεῖσαν ἡ νυμφεύτρια καλουμένη παραλαβοῦσα, τὴν μὲν κεφαλὴν ἐν χρῷ περιέκειρεν, ἱματίῳ δὲ ἀνδρείῳ καὶ ὑποδήμασιν ἐνσκευάσασα κατέκλινεν ἐπὶ στιβάδα μόνην ἄνευ φωτός. ὁ δὲ νυμφίος οὐ μεθύων οὐδὲ θρυπτόμενος, ἀλλὰ νήφων, ὥσπερ ἀεί, δεδειπνηκὼς ἐν τοῖς φιδιτίοις, παρεισελθὼν ἔλυε τὴν ζώνην καὶ [4] μετήνεγκεν ἀράμενος ἐπὶ τὴν κλίνην. συνδιατρίψας δὲ χρόνον οὐ πολὺν ἀπῄει κοσμίως οὗπερ εἰώθει τὸ πρότερον, καθευδήσων μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων νέων. καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν οὕτως ἔπραττε, τοῖς μὲν ἡλικιώταις συνδιημερεύων καὶ συναναπαυόμενος, πρὸς δὲ τὴν νύμφην κρύφα μετ’ εὐλαβείας φοιτῶν, αἰσχυνόμενος καὶ δεδοικὼς μή τις αἴσθοιτο τῶν ἔνδον, ἅμα καὶ τῆς νύμφης ἐπιτεχνωμένης καὶ συνευπορούσης ὅπως ἂν ἐν καιρῷ καὶ λανθάνοντες [5] ἀλλήλοις συμπορεύοιντο. καὶ τοῦτο ἔπραττον οὐκ ὀλίγον χρόνον, ἀλλ’ ὥστε καὶ παῖδας γενέσθαι ἐνίοις πρὶν ἐς ἡμέραν θεάσασθαι τὰς ἑαυτῶν γυναῖκας. ἡ δὲ τοιαύτη σύνοδος οὐ μόνον ἐγκρατείας καὶ σωφροσύνης ἄσκησις ἦν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς τε σώμασι γονίμους καὶ τῷ φιλεῖν ἀεὶ καινοὺς καὶ προσφάτους ἦγεν ἐπὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν, οὐ διακορεῖς οὐδ’ ἐξιτήλους ταῖς ἀνέδην κοινωνίαις, ἀλλ’ ἀεί τι λείψανον καὶ ὑπέκκαυμα πόθου καὶ χάριτος ἐναπολείποντας ἀλλήλοις.

[6] Τοσαύτην δὲ τοῖς γάμοις ἐπιστήσας αἰδῶ καὶ τάξιν, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐξέβαλε τὴν κενὴν καὶ γυναικώδη ζηλοτυπίαν, ἐν καλῷ καταστήσας ὕβριν μὲν καὶ ἀναξίαν πᾶσαν εἴργειν ἀπὸ τοῦ γάμου, παίδων δὲ καὶ τεκνώσεως κοινωνεῖν τοῖς ἀξίοις, καταγελῶντας τῶν ὡς ἄμικτα καὶ ἀκοινώνητα [7] ταῦτα μετιόντων σφαγαῖς καὶ πολέμοις. ἐξῆν μὲν γὰρ ἀνδρὶ πρεσβυτέρῳ νέας γυναικός, εἰ δή τινα τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀσπάσαιτο νέων καὶ δοκιμάσειεν, εἰσαγαγεῖν παρ’ αὐτὴν καὶ πλήσαντα γενναίου σπέρματος ἴδιον αὑτοῖς ποιήσασθαι τὸ γεννηθέν. ἐξῆν δὲ πάλιν ἀνδρὶ χρηστῷ, τῶν εὐτέκνων τινὰ καὶ σωφρόνων θαυμάσαντι γυναικῶν ἑτέρῳ γεγαμημένην, πεῖσαι τὸν ἄνδρα συνελθεῖν, ὥσπερ ἐν χώρᾳ καλλικάρπῳ φυτεύοντα καὶ ποιούμενον παῖδας ἀγαθούς, ἀγαθῶν [8] ὁμαίμους καὶ συγγενεῖς ἐσομένους. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἰδίους ἡγεῖτο τῶν πατέρων τοὺς παῖδας, ἀλλὰ κοινοὺς τῆς πόλεως ὁ Λυκοῦργος, ὅθεν οὐκ ἐκ τῶν τυχόντων, ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῶν ἀρίστων ἐβούλετο γεγονότας εἶναι τοὺς πολίτας. ἔπειτα πολλὴν ἀβελτερίαν καὶ τῦφον ἐνεώρα τοῖς περὶ ταῦτα τῶν ἄλλων νομοθετήμασιν, οἳ κύνας μὲν καὶ ἵππους ὑπὸ τοῖς κρατίστοις τῶν ὀχείων βιβάζουσι χάριτι πείθοντες ἢ μισθῷ τοὺς κυρίους, τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας ἐγκλεισάμενοι φρουροῦσιν, ἐξ αὐτῶν μόνων τίκτειν ἀξιοῦντες, κἂν ἄφρονες [9] ὦσι, κἂν παρήλικες, κἂν νοσώδεις, ὡς οὐχὶ πρώτοις τοῖς κεκτημένοις καὶ τρέφουσι τῶν παίδων γινομένων πονηρῶν, ἐὰν ἐκ πονηρῶν γένωνται, καὶ τοὐναντίον χρηστῶν, ἂν τοιαύτης τύχωσι γενέσεως. ταῦτα δὲ οὕτως πραττόμενα φυσικῶς καὶ πολιτικῶς τότε τοσοῦτον ἀπεῖχε τῆς ὕστερον λεγομένης γενέσθαι περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας εὐχερείας ὥστε ὅλως ἄπιστον εἶναι τὸ τῆς μοιχείας παρ’ [10] αὐτοῖς. καὶ λόγος ἀπομνημονεύεται Γεράδα τινὸς Σπαρτιάτου τῶν σφόδρα παλαιῶν, ὃς ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπὸ ξένου τί πάσχουσιν οἱ μοιχοὶ παρ’ αὐτοῖς, εἶπεν· “Ὦ ξένε, οὐδεὶς γίνεται μοιχὸς παρ’ ἡμῖν.” ἐκείνου δὲ ὑπολαβόντος, “Ἐὰν οὖν γένηται;” “Ταῦρον,” ἔφη ὁ Γεράδας, “ἐκτίνει μέγαν, ὃς ὑπερκύψας τὸ Ταΰγετον ἀπὸ τοῦ Εὐρώτα πίεται.” θαυμάσαντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ φήσαντος· “Πῶς δὲ ἂν γένοιτο βοῦς τηλικοῦτος;” γελάσας ὁ Γεράδας, “Πῶς δ’ ἄν,” ἔφη, “ἐν Σπάρτῃ μοιχὸς γένοιτο;” ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἱστόρηται περὶ τῶν γάμων.

[16] [1] Τὸ δὲ γεννηθὲν οὐκ ἦν κύριος ὁ γεννήσας τρέφειν, ἀλλ’ ἔφερε λαβὼν εἰς τόπον τινὰ λέσχην καλούμενον, ἐν ᾧ καθήμενοι τῶν φυλετῶν οἱ πρεσβύτατοι καταμαθόντες τὸ παιδάριον, εἰ μὲν εὐπαγὲς εἴη καὶ ῥωμαλέον, τρέφειν ἐκέλευον, κλῆρον αὐτῷ τῶν ἐνακισχιλίων προσνείμαντες· εἰ δ’ ἀγεννὲς καὶ ἄμορφον, ἀπέπεμπον εἰς τὰς λεγομένας Ἀποθέτας, παρὰ Ταΰγετον βαραθρώδη [2] τόπον, ὡς οὔτε αὐτῷ ζῆν ἄμεινον ὂν οὔτε τῇ πόλει τὸ μὴ καλῶς εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς πρὸς εὐεξίαν καὶ ῥώμην πεφυκός. ὅθεν οὐδὲ ὕδατι τὰ βρέφη, ἀλλ’ οἴνῳ περιέλουον αἱ γυναῖκες, βάσανόν τινα ποιούμεναι τῆς κράσεως αὐτῶν. λέγεται γὰρ ἐξίστασθαι τὰ ἐπιληπτικὰ καὶ νοσώδη πρὸς τὸν ἄκρατον ἀποσφακελίζοντα, τὰ δ’ ὑγιεινὰ μᾶλλον στομοῦσθαι καὶ κρατύνεσθαι τὴν [3] ἕξιν. ἦν δὲ περὶ τὰς τροφοὺς ἐπιμέλειά τις μετὰ τέχνης, ὥστ’ ἄνευ σπαργάνων ἐκτρεφούσας τὰ βρέφη τοῖς μέλεσι καὶ τοῖς εἴδεσιν ἐλευθέρια ποιεῖν, ἔτι δὲ εὔκολα ταῖς διαίταις καὶ ἄσικχα καὶ ἀθαμβῆ σκότου καὶ πρὸς ἐρημίαν ἄφοβα καὶ ἄπειρα δυσκολίας ἀγεννοῦς καὶ κλαυθμυρισμῶν. διὸ καὶ τῶν ἔξωθεν ἔνιοι τοῖς τέκνοις Λακωνικὰς ἐωνοῦντο τίτθας· καὶ τήν γε τὸν Ἀθηναῖον Ἀλκιβιάδην τιτθεύσασαν Ἀμύκλαν ἱστοροῦσι γεγονέναι Λάκαιναν.

[4] Ἀλλὰ τούτῳ μέν, ὡς Πλάτων φησί, Ζώπυρον ἐπέστησε παιδαγωγὸν Περικλῆς, οὐδέν τι τῶν ἄλλων διαφέροντα δούλων· τοὺς δὲ Σπαρτιατῶν παῖδας οὐκ ἐπὶ ὠνητοῖς οὐδὲ μισθίοις ἐποιήσατο παιδαγωγοῖς ὁ Λυκοῦργος, οὐδ’ ἐξῆν ἑκάστῳ τρέφειν οὐδὲ παιδεύειν ὡς ἐβούλετο τὸν υἱόν, ἀλλὰ πάντας εὐθὺς ἑπταετεῖς γενομένους παραλαμβάνων αὐτὸς εἰς ἀγέλας κατελόχιζε, καὶ συννόμους ποιῶν καὶ συντρόφους μετ’ ἀλλήλων [5] εἴθιζε συμπαίζειν καὶ συσχολάζειν. ἄρχοντα δ’ αὐτοῖς παρίστατο τῆς ἀγέλης τὸν τῷ φρονεῖν διαφέροντα καὶ θυμοειδέστατον ἐν τῷ μάχεσθαι· καὶ πρὸς τοῦτον ἀφεώρων καὶ προστάττοντος ἠκροῶντο καὶ κολάζοντος ἐκαρτέρουν, ὥστε τὴν παιδείαν εἶναι μελέτην εὐπειθείας. ἐπεσκόπουν δὲ οἱ πρεσβύτεροι παίζοντας αὐτούς, καὶ τὰ πολλὰ μάχας τινὰς ἐμβάλλοντες ἀεὶ καὶ φιλονεικίας, οὐ παρέργως κατεμάνθανον ὁποῖός ἐστι τὴν φύσιν ἕκαστος αὐτῶν πρὸς τὸ τολμᾶν καὶ μὴ φυγομαχεῖν ἐν ταῖς ἁμίλλαις.

[6] Γράμματα μὲν οὖν ἕνεκα τῆς χρείας ἐμάνθανον· ἡ δ’ ἄλλη πᾶσα παιδεία πρὸς τὸ ἄρχεσθαι καλῶς ἐγίνετο καὶ καρτερεῖν πονοῦντα καὶ νικᾶν μαχόμενον. διὸ καὶ τῆς ἡλικίας προερχομένης ἐπέτεινον αὐτῶν τὴν ἄσκησιν, ἐν χρῷ τε κείροντες καὶ βαδίζειν ἀνυποδήτους παίζειν τε γυμνοὺς ὡς τὰ πολλὰ συνεθίζοντες. γενόμενοι δὲ δωδεκαετεῖς ἄνευ χιτῶνος ἤδη διετέλουν, ἓν ἱμάτιον εἰς τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν λαμβάνοντες, αὐχμηροὶ τὰ σώματα καὶ λουτρῶν καὶ ἀλειμμάτων ἄπειροι· πλὴν ὀλίγας ἡμέρας τινὰς τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ τῆς τοιαύτης φιλανθρωπίας [7] μετεῖχον. ἐκάθευδον δὲ ὁμοῦ κατ’ ἴλην καὶ ἀγέλην ἐπὶ στιβάδων, ἃς αὑτοῖς συνεφόρουν, τοῦ παρὰ τὸν Εὐρώταν πεφυκότος καλάμου τὰ ἄκρα ταῖς χερσὶν ἄνευ σιδήρου κατακλάσαντες. ἐν δὲ τῷ χειμῶνι τοὺς λεγομένους λυκόφονας ὑπεβάλλοντο καὶ κατεμίγνυσαν ταῖς στιβάσι, θερμαντικὸν ἔχειν τι τῆς ὕλης δοκούσης.

[17] [1] Ἤδη δὲ τοῖς τηλικούτοις ἐρασταὶ τῶν εὐδοκίμων νέων συνανεστρέφοντο· καὶ προσεῖχον οἱ πρεσβύτεροι, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπιφοιτῶντες εἰς τὰ γυμνάσια, καὶ μαχομένοις καὶ σκώπτουσιν ἀλλήλους παρατυγχάνοντες, οὐ παρέργως, ἀλλὰ τρόπον τινὰ πάντες οἰόμενοι πάντων καὶ πατέρες εἶναι καὶ παιδαγωγοὶ καὶ ἄρχοντες, ὥστε μήτε καιρὸν ἀπολείπεσθαι μήτε χωρίον ἔρημον τοῦ νουθετοῦντος τὸν ἁμαρτάνοντα καὶ κολάζοντος.

[2] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ παιδονόμος ἐκ τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐτάττετο, καὶ κατ’ ἀγέλας αὐτοὶ προΐσταντο τῶν λεγομένων εἰρένων ἀεὶ τὸν σωφρονέστατον καὶ μαχιμώτατον. εἴρενας δὲ καλοῦσι τοὺς ἔτος ἤδη δεύτερον ἐκ παίδων γεγονότας, μελλείρενας δὲ τῶν παίδων τοὺς πρεσβυτάτους. οὗτος οὖν ὁ εἴρην, εἴκοσι ἔτη γεγονώς, ἄρχει τε τῶν ὑποτεταγμένων ἐν ταῖς μάχαις, καὶ κατ’ [3] οἶκον ὑπηρέταις χρῆται πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον. ἐπιτάσσει δὲ τοῖς μὲν ἁδροῖς ξύλα φέρειν, τοῖς δὲ μικροτέροις λάχανα. καὶ φέρουσι κλέπτοντες, οἱ μὲν ἐπὶ τοὺς κήπους βαδίζοντες, οἱ δὲ εἰς τὰ τῶν ἀνδρῶν συσσίτια παρεισρέοντες εὖ μάλα πανούργως καὶ πεφυλαγμένως· ἂν δ’ ἁλῷ, πολλὰς λαμβάνει πληγὰς τῇ μάστιγι, ῥᾳθύμως δοκῶν κλέπτειν καὶ ἀτέχνως. κλέπτουσι δὲ καὶ τῶν σιτίων ὅ τι ἂν δύνωνται, μανθάνοντες εὐφυῶς ἐπιτίθεσθαι τοῖς καθεύδουσιν ἢ ῥᾳθύμως φυλάττουσι.

[4] τῷ δὲ ἁλόντι ζημία πληγαὶ καὶ τὸ πεινῆν. γλίσχρον γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἐστι δεῖπνον, ὅπως δι’ αὑτῶν ἀμυνόμενοι τὴν ἔνδειαν ἀναγκάζωνται τολμᾶν καὶ πανουργεῖν.

Καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἔργον τῆς ὀλιγοσιτίας· παρέργον δέ φασι τὴν τῶν σωμάτων αὔξησιν. φέρεται γὰρ εἰς μῆκος, ὅταν τὸ πνεῦμα μὴ πολλὴν σχῇ διατριβὴν καὶ ἀσχολίαν ὑπὸ πλήθους τροφῆς εἰς βάθος καὶ πλάτος πιεζόμενον, ἀλλ’ ἄνω βαδίζῃ διὰ κουφότητα, τοῦ σώματος ἐκλύτως καὶ [5] ῥᾳδίως ἐπιδιδόντος. τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτο καὶ καλοὺς δοκεῖ ποιεῖν· αἱ γὰρ ἰσχναὶ καὶ διάκενοι μᾶλλον ἕξεις ὑπακούουσι πρὸς τὴν διάρθρωσιν, αἱ δὲ ὀγκώδεις καὶ πολύτροφοι διὰ βάρος ἀντιβαίνουσιν, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ κύειν καθαιρομένων γυναικῶν ἰσχνὰ μέν, εὐειδῆ δὲ καὶ γλαφυρὰ γίνεται τὰ βρέφη, διὰ τὴν ἐλαφρότητα τῆς ὕλης κρατουμένης μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τοῦ τυποῦντος. ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἡ μὲν αἰτία τοῦ συμβαίνοντος ἐν μέσῳ προκείσθω σκοπεῖν.

[18] [1] Οὕτω δὲ κλέπτουσι πεφροντισμένως οἱ παῖδες, ὥστε λέγεταί τις ἤδη σκύμνον ἀλώπεκος κεκλοφὼς καὶ τῷ τριβωνίῳ περιστέλλων, σπαρασσόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ θηρίου τὴν γαστέρα τοῖς ὄνυξι καὶ τοῖς ὀδοῦσιν, ὑπὲρ τοῦ λαθεῖν ἐγκαρτερῶν ἀποθανεῖν. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν οὐδὲ ἀπὸ τῶν νῦν ἐφήβων ἄπιστόν ἐστιν, ὧν πολλοὺς ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τῆς Ὀρθίας ἑωράκαμεν ἐναποθνήσκοντας ταῖς πληγαῖς.

[2] Δειπνήσας δὲ ὁ εἴρην κατακείμενος τῷ μὲν ᾆσαι προσέταξε τῶν παίδων, τῷ δὲ ἐρώτημά τι προὔβαλε πεφροντισμένης δεόμενον ἀποκρίσεως· οἷον, ὅστις ἄριστος ἐν τοῖς ἀνδράσιν, ἢ ποία τις ἡ τοῦδε πρᾶξις. ἐκ τούτου δὲ καὶ κρίνειν τὰ καλὰ καὶ πολυπραγμονεῖν εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς εἰθίζοντο περὶ τῶν πολιτῶν. τὸ γὰρ ἐρωτηθέντα, τίς πολίτης ἀγαθός, ἢ τίς οὐκ εὐδόκιμος, ἀπορεῖν τοῦ ἀποκρίνασθαι, νωθρᾶς ἐποιοῦντο καὶ πρὸς [3] ἀρετὴν ἀφιλοτίμου ψυχῆς σημεῖον. ἔδει δὲ τὴν ἀπόκρισιν καὶ μετ’ αἰτίας εἶναι καὶ ἀποδείξεως εἰς βραχύν τινα συνηγμένης λόγον καὶ σύντομον· ὁ δὲ πλημμελῶς ἀποκρινάμενος ἐκολάζετο δῆγμα λαμβάνων ὑπὸ τοῦ εἴρενος εἰς τὸν ἀντίχειρα. πολλάκις δὲ καὶ πρεσβυτέρων παρόντων καὶ ἀρχόντων ὁ εἴρην ἐκόλαζε τοὺς παῖδας, ἀπόδειξιν διδοὺς εἰ μετὰ λόγου καὶ ὡς δεῖ κολάζει. καὶ κολάζων μὲν οὐκ ἐκωλύετο, τῶν δὲ παίδων ἀπελθόντων εὐθύνας ὑπεῖχεν, εἰ τραχύτερον τοῦ δέοντος ἐπετίμησεν ἢ τοὐναντίον ἐκλελυμένως καὶ ἀτόνως.

[4] Ἐκοινώνουν δὲ οἱ ἐρασταὶ τοῖς παισὶ τῆς δόξης ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα· καὶ λέγεταί ποτε παιδὸς ἐν τῷ μάχεσθαι φωνὴν ἀγεννῆ προεμένου ζημιωθῆναι τὸν ἐραστὴν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχόντων. οὕτω δὲ τοῦ ἐρᾶν ἐγκεκριμένου παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ὥστε καὶ τῶν παρθένων ἐρᾶν τὰς καλὰς καὶ ἀγαθὰς γυναῖκας, τὸ ἀντερᾶν οὐκ ἦν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀρχὴν ἐποιοῦντο φιλίας πρὸς ἀλλήλους οἱ τῶν αὐτῶν ἐρασθέντες, καὶ διετέλουν κοινῇ σπουδάζοντες ὅπως ἄριστον ἀπεργάσαιντο τὸν ἐρώμενον.

[19] [1] Ἐδίδασκον δὲ τοὺς παῖδας καὶ λόγῳ χρῆσθαι πικρίαν ἔχοντι μεμιγμένην χάριτι καὶ πολλὴν ἀπὸ βραχείας λέξεως ἀναθεώρησιν. τὸ μὲν γὰρ σιδηροῦν νόμισμα μικρὰν ἔχειν ἐποίησεν ἀπὸ πολλοῦ σταθμοῦ δύναμιν ὁ Λυκοῦργος, ὡς εἴρηται, τὸ δὲ τοῦ λόγου νόμισμα τοὐναντίον ἀπ’ εὐτελοῦς καὶ ὀλίγης λέξεως εἰς πολλὴν καὶ περιττὴν κατεσκεύασε διάνοιαν, τῇ πολλῇ σιωπῇ τοὺς παῖδας ἀποφθεγματικοὺς καὶ πεπαιδευμένους πρὸς τὰς ἀποκρίσεις μηχανώμενος. ὡς γὰρ τὸ σπέρμα τῶν πρὸς τὰς συνουσίας ἀκολάστων ἄγονον ὡς τὰ πολλὰ καὶ ἄκαρπόν ἐστιν, οὕτως ἡ πρὸς τὸ λαλεῖν ἀκρασία κενὸν τὸν λόγον ποιεῖ [2] καὶ ἀνόητον. Ἆγις μὲν οὖν ὁ βασιλεύς, σκώπτοντος Ἀττικοῦ τινος τὰς Λακωνικὰς μαχαίρας εἰς τὴν μικρότητα, καὶ λέγοντος ὅτι ῥᾳδίως αὐτὰς οἱ θαυματοποιοὶ καταπίνουσιν ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις, “Καὶ μὴν μάλιστα,” εἶπεν, “ἡμεῖς ἐφικνούμεθα τοῖς ἐγχειριδίοις τῶν πολεμίων·” ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ τὸν λόγον ὁρῶ τὸν Λακωνικὸν βραχὺν μὲν εἶναι δοκοῦντα, μάλιστα δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων ἐφικνούμενον, καὶ τῆς διανοίας ἁπτόμενον τῶν ἀκροωμένων.

[3] Καὶ γὰρ ὁ Λυκοῦργος αὐτὸς βραχυλόγος τις ἔοικε γενέσθαι καὶ ἀποφθεγματικός, εἰ δεῖ τεκμαίρεσθαι τοῖς ἀπομνημονεύμασιν· οἷόν ἐστι τὸ περὶ τὰς πολιτείας πρὸς τὸν ἀξιοῦντα ποιεῖν δημοκρατίαν ἐν τῇ πόλει· “Σὺ γάρ,” ἔφη, “πρῶτος ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ σου ποίησον δημοκρατίαν.” καὶ περὶ τῶν θυσιῶν πρὸς τὸν πυθόμενον διὰ τί μικρὰς οὕτω καὶ εὐτελεῖς ἔταξεν, “Ἵνα μή ποτε,”

[4] ἔφη, “τιμῶντες τὸ θεῖον διαλίπωμεν.” καὶ περὶ τῶν ἀθλημάτων, ταῦτα μόνα μὴ κωλύσαντος ἀγωνίζεσθαι τοὺς πολίτας ἐν οἷς χεὶρ οὐκ ἀνατείνεται. φέρονται δὲ αὐτοῦ καὶ δι’ ἐπιστολῶν ἀποκρίσεις τοιαῦται πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας. πῶς ἂν πολεμίων ἔφοδον ἀλεξοίμεθα; “Ἂν πτωχοὶ μένητε καὶ μὴ μέσδων ἅτερος θατέρω ἐρᾶτε ἦμεν.” καὶ πάλιν περὶ τῶν τειχῶν· “Οὐκ ἂν εἴη ἀτείχιστος πόλις ἅτις ἄνδρεσσι, καὶ οὐ πλίνθοις ἐστεφάνωται.” περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων καὶ τῶν τοιούτων ἐπιστολῶν οὔτε ἀπιστῆσαι ῥᾴδιον οὔτε πιστεῦσαι.

[20] [1] Τῆς δὲ πρὸς τὰ μήκη τῶν λόγων διαβολῆς δείγματα τοιαῦτα τῶν ἀποφθεγμάτων ἐστί. Λεωνίδας ὁ βασιλεὺς ἀκαίρως τινὸς περὶ πραγμάτων οὐκ ἀχρήστων διαλεχθέντος, “Ὦ ξένε,” εἶπεν, “οὐκ ἐν δέοντι χρέῃ τῷ δέοντι.” Χαρίλαος δὲ ὁ ἀδελφιδοῦς τοῦ Λυκούργου περὶ τῆς ὀλιγότητος αὐτοῦ τῶν νόμων ἐρωτηθείς, εἶπεν ὡς οἱ λόγοις μὴ χρώμενοι πολλοῖς οὐδὲ νόμων δέονται πολλῶν.

[2] Ἀρχιδαμίδας δὲ μεμφομένων τινῶν Ἑκαταῖον τὸν σοφιστὴν ὅτι παραληφθεὶς εἰς τὸ συσσίτιον οὐδὲν ἔλεγεν, “Ὁ εἰδώς,” ἔφη, “λόγον καὶ καιρὸν οἶδεν.” ἃ δὲ τῶν πικρῶν ἔφην ἀπομνημονευμάτων οὐκ ἀμοιρεῖν χάριτος, τοιαῦτ’ ἐστί. Δημάρατος ἀνθρώπου πονηροῦ κόπτοντος αὐτὸν ἀκαίροις ἐρωτήμασι καὶ δὴ τοῦτο πολλάκις ἐρωτῶντος, “Τίς ἄριστος Σπαρτιατῶν;” ἔφη· “Ὁ τὶν ἀνομοιότατος.”

[3] Ἆγις δέ, ἐπαινούντων τινῶν τοὺς Ἠλείους ὡς καλῶς τὰ Ὀλύμπια καὶ δικαίως ἄγοντας, “Καὶ τί μέγα,” ἔφη, “Ἠλεῖοι ποιοῦντι δι’ ἐτῶν πέντε ἁμέρᾳ μιᾷ χρώμενοι τᾷ δικαιοσύνᾳ;” Θεόπομπος δὲ ξένου τινὸς εὔνοιαν ἐνδεικνυμένου, καὶ φάσκοντος ὡς παρὰ τοῖς αὑτοῦ πολίταις φιλολάκων καλεῖται, “Κάλλιον ἦν τοι,” εἶπεν, “ὦ ξένε, φιλοπολίταν [4] καλεῖσθαι.” Πλειστῶναξ δὲ ὁ Παυσανίου, ῥήτορος Ἀθηναίου τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἀμαθεῖς ἀποκαλοῦντος, “Ὀρθῶς,” ἔφη, “λέγεις· μόνοι γὰρ Ἑλλάνων ἄμμες οὐδὲν κακὸν μεμαθήκαμεν παρ’ ὑμῶν.” Ἀρχιδαμίδας δὲ πρὸς τὸν πυθόμενον πόσοι εἰσὶ Σπαρτιᾶται, “Ἱκανοί,” εἶπεν, “ὦ ξένε, τοὺς κακοὺς ἀπερύκειν.”

[5] Ἔστι δὲ καὶ τοῖς μετὰ παιδιᾶς εἰρημένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν τεκμήρασθαι τὸν ἐθισμόν. εἰθίζοντο γὰρ μηδέποτε χρῆσθαι τῷ λόγῳ παρέργως, μηδὲ ἀφιέναι φωνὴν ἥτις οὐκ ἁμῶς γέ πως εἶχέ τινος θεωρίας ἀξίαν διάνοιαν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἀκοῦσαι τοῦ μιμουμένου τὴν ἀηδόνα παρακαλούμενος, “Αὐτᾶς,” ἔφη, “ἄκουκα τήνας.” ὁ δὲ ἀναγνοὺς τὸ ἐπίγραμμα τοῦτο·

 Σβεννύντας ποτὲ τούσδε τυραννίδα χάλκεος Ἄρης

εἷλε· Σελινοῦντος δ’ ἀμφὶ πύλας ἔθανον,

“Δικαίως,” εἶπε, “τεθνάκαντι τοὶ ἄνδρες· ἔδει γὰρ [6] ἀφέμεν ὅλαν αὐτὰν κατακαᾶμεν.” νεανίσκος δὲ πρὸς τὸν ἐπαγγελλόμενον αὐτῷ δώσειν ἀλεκτρυόνας ἀποθνήσκοντας ἐν τῷ μάχεσθαι, “Μὴ σύ γε,” εἶπεν, “ἀλλὰ δός μοι τῶν ἀποκτεινόντων ἐν τῷ μάχεσθαι.” ἕτερος δέ τις ἰδὼν ἐν ἀποχωρήσει θακεύοντας ἐπὶ δίφρων ἀνθρώπους, “Μὴ γένοιτο,” εἶπεν, “ἐνταῦθα καθίσαι ὅθεν οὐκ ἔστιν ὑπεξαναστῆναι πρεσβυτέρῳ.” τὸ μὲν οὖν τῶν ἀποφθεγμάτων εἶδος ἦν τοιοῦτον ὥστε καὶ λέγειν τινὰς οὐκ ἀτόπως ὅτι μᾶλλόν ἐστι τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν ἢ τὸ φιλογυμναστεῖν λακωνίζειν.

[21] [1] Ἡ δὲ περὶ τὰς ᾠδὰς καὶ τὰ μέλη παίδευσις οὐχ ἧττον ἐσπουδάζετο τῆς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις εὐζηλίας καὶ καθαριότητος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ μέλη κέντρον εἶχεν ἐγερτικὸν θυμοῦ καὶ παραστατικὸν ὁρμῆς ἐνθουσιώδους καὶ πραγματικῆς, καὶ ἡ λέξις ἦν ἀφελὴς καὶ ἄθρυπτος ἐπὶ πράγμασι σεμνοῖς καὶ ἠθοποιοῖς. ἔπαινοι γὰρ ἦσαν ὡς τὰ πολλὰ τῶν τεθνηκότων ὑπὲρ τῆς Σπάρτης εὐδαιμονιζομένων, καὶ ψόγοι τῶν τρεσάντων, ὡς ἀλγεινὸν καὶ κακοδαίμονα βιούντων βίον, ἐπαγγελία τε καὶ μεγαλαυχία πρὸς ἀρετὴν πρέπουσα ταῖς ἡλικίαις· [2] ὧν ἕνεκα δείγματος οὐ χεῖρόν ἐστιν ἕν τι προενέγκασθαι. τριῶν γὰρ χορῶν κατὰ τὰς τρεῖς ἡλικίας συνισταμένων ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς, ὁ μὲν τῶν γερόντων ἀρχόμενος ᾖδεν·

Ἄμμες πόκ’ ἦμες ἄλκιμοι νεανίαι.

ὁ δὲ τῶν ἀκμαζόντων ἀμειβόμενος ἔλεγεν·

Ἄμμες δέ γ’ εἰμέν· αἰ δὲ λῇς, αὐγάσδεο.

ὁ δὲ τρίτος ὁ τῶν παίδων·

Ἄμμες δέ γ’ ἐσσόμεσθα πολλῷ κάρρονες.

[3] Ὅλως δὲ ἄν τις ἐπιστήσας τοῖς Λακωνικοῖς ποιήμασιν, ὧν ἔτι καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἔνια διεσώζετο, καὶ τοὺς ἐμβατηρίους ῥυθμοὺς ἀναλαβών, οἷς ἐχρῶντο πρὸς τὸν αὐλὸν ἐπάγοντες τοῖς πολεμίοις, οὐ κακῶς ἡγήσαιτο καὶ τὸν Τέρπανδρον καὶ τὸν Πίνδαρον τὴν ἀνδρείαν τῇ μουσικῇ συνάπτειν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ οὕτως πεποίηκε περὶ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων·

Ἔνθ’ αἰχμά τε νέων θάλλει καὶ μοῦσα λίγεια

καὶ δίκα εὐρυάγυια - -

[4] Πίνδαρος δέ φησιν·

Ἔνθα βουλαὶ γερόντων

καὶ νέων ἀνδρῶν ἀριστεύοντι αἰχμαὶ

καὶ χοροὶ καὶ Μοῦσα καὶ ἀγλαΐα.

Μουσικωτάτους γὰρ ἅμα καὶ πολεμικωτάτους ἀποφαίνουσιν αὐτούς·

Ῥέπει γὰρ ἄντα τῶ σιδάρω τὸ καλῶς κιθαρίσδεν,

ὡς ὁ Λακωνικὸς ποιητὴς εἴρηκε. καὶ γὰρ ἐν ταῖς μάχαις προεθύετο ταῖς Μούσαις ὁ βασιλεύς, ἀναμιμνήσκων, ὡς ἔοικε, τῆς παιδείας καὶ τῶν κρίσεων, ἵνα ὦσι πρόχειροι παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ καὶ λόγου τινὸς ἀξίας παρέχωσι τὰς πράξεις τῶν μαχομένων.

[22] [1] Τότε δὲ καὶ τοῖς νέοις τὰ σκληρότατα τῆς ἀγωγῆς ἐπανιέντες, οὐκ ἐκώλυον καλλωπίζεσθαι περὶ κόμην καὶ κόσμον ὅπλων καὶ ἱματίων, χαίροντες, ὥσπερ ἵπποις, γαυριῶσι καὶ φρυαττομένοις πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας. διὸ κομῶντες εὐθὺς ἐκ τῆς τῶν ἐφήβων ἡλικίας, μάλιστα περὶ τοὺς κινδύνους ἐθεράπευον τὴν κόμην λιπαράν τε φαίνεσθαι καὶ διακεκριμένην, ἀπομνημονεύοντές τινα καὶ Λυκούργου λόγον περὶ τῆς κόμης, ὅτι τοὺς μὲν καλοὺς εὐπρεπεστέρους ποιεῖ, τοὺς δὲ αἰσχροὺς [2] φοβερωτέρους. ἐχρῶντο δὲ καὶ γυμνασίοις μαλακωτέροις παρὰ τὰς στρατείας, καὶ τὴν ἄλλην δίαιταν οὐχ οὕτω κεκολασμένην οὐδ’ ὑπεύθυνον τοῖς νέοις παρεῖχον, ὥστε μόνοις ἀνθρώπων ἐκείνοις τῆς εἰς τὸν πόλεμον ἀσκήσεως ἀνάπαυσιν εἶναι τὸν πόλεμον. ἤδη δὲ συντεταγμένης τῆς φάλαγγος αὐτῶν καὶ τῶν πολεμίων παρόντων, ὁ βασιλεὺς ἅμα τήν τε χίμαιραν ἐσφαγιάζετο καὶ στεφανοῦσθαι παρήγγελλε πᾶσι καὶ τοὺς αὐλητὰς αὐλεῖν ἐκέλευε τὸ Καστόρειον μέλος· [3] ἅμα δ’ ἐξῆρχεν ἐμβατηρίου παιᾶνος, ὥστε σεμνὴν ἅμα καὶ καταπληκτικὴν τὴν ὄψιν εἶναι, ῥυθμῷ τε πρὸς τὸν αὐλὸν ἐμβαινόντων καὶ μήτε διάσπασμα ποιούντων ἐν τῇ φάλαγγι μήτε ταῖς ψυχαῖς θορυβουμένων, ἀλλὰ πρᾴως καὶ ἱλαρῶς ὑπὸ τοῦ μέλους ἀγομένων ἐπὶ τὸν κίνδυνον. οὔτε γὰρ φόβον οὔτε θυμὸν ἐγγίνεσθαι πλεονάζοντα τοῖς οὕτω διακειμένοις εἰκός ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ εὐσταθὲς φρόνημα μετ’ ἐλπίδος καὶ θράσους, ὡς τοῦ θεοῦ συμπαρόντος.

[4] Ἐχώρει δὲ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους ἔχων μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ στεφανίτην ἀγῶνα νενικηκότα. καί φασί γέ τινα χρημάτων πολλῶν ἐν Ὀλυμπίοις διδομένων αὐτῷ μὴ δεξάμενον, ἀλλὰ πολλῷ πόνῳ καταπαλαίσαντα τὸν ἀνταγωνιστήν, ὥς τις εἶπεν αὐτῷ, “Τί σοι πλέον, ὦ Λάκων, γέγονε διὰ τῆς νίκης;” φάναι μειδιάσαντα, “Πρὸ τοῦ βασιλέως [5] τεταγμένος μαχοῦμαι τοῖς πολεμίοις.” τρεψάμενοι δὲ καὶ νικήσαντες ἐδίωκον ὅσον ἐκβεβαιώσασθαι τὸ νίκημα τῇ φυγῇ τῶν πολεμίων, εἶτα εὐθὺς ἀνεχώρουν, οὔτε γενναῖον οὔτε Ἑλληνικὸν ἡγούμενοι κόπτειν καὶ φονεύειν ἀπολεγομένους καὶ παρακεχωρηκότας. ἦν δὲ οὐ μόνον καλὸν τοῦτο καὶ μεγαλόψυχον, ἀλλὰ καὶ χρήσιμον. εἰδότες γὰρ οἱ μαχόμενοι πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὅτι τοὺς ὑφισταμένους ἀναιροῦσι, φείδονται δὲ τῶν ἐνδιδόντων, τοῦ μένειν τὸ φεύγειν ἡγοῦντο λυσιτελέστερον.

[23] [1] Αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Λυκοῦργον Ἱππίας μὲν ὁ σοφιστὴς πολεμικώτατόν φησι γενέσθαι καὶ πολλῶν ἔμπειρον στρατειῶν, Φιλοστέφανος δὲ καὶ τὴν κατ’ οὐλαμοὺς τῶν ἱππέων διανομὴν Λυκούργῳ προστίθησιν· εἶναι δὲ τὸν οὐλαμόν, ὡς ἐκεῖνος συνέστησεν, ἱππέων πεντήκοντα πλῆθος ἐν τετραγώνῳ σχήματι τεταγμένων. ὁ δὲ Φαληρεὺς Δημήτριος, οὐδεμιᾶς ἁψάμενον πολεμικῆς πράξεως ἐν εἰρήνῃ καταστήσασθαι τὴν πολιτείαν.

[2] ἔοικε δὲ καὶ τῆς Ὀλυμπιακῆς ἐκεχειρίας ἡ ἐπίνοια πρᾴου καὶ πρὸς εἰρήνην οἰκείως ἔχοντος ἀνδρὸς εἶναι. καίτοι φασί τινες, ὡς Ἕρμιππος μνημονεύει, τὸν Λυκοῦργον οὐ προσέχειν οὐδὲ κοινωνεῖν ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἴφιτον, ἀλλὰ τυγχάνειν ἄλλως ἐπιδημοῦντα καὶ θεώμενον· ἀκοῦσαι δὲ φωνὴν ὥσπερ ἀνθρώπου τινὸς ἐξόπισθεν ἐπιτιμῶντος αὐτῷ καὶ θαυμάζοντος ὅτι τοὺς πολίτας οὐ προτρέπεται κοινωνεῖν τῆς πανηγύρεως· ὡς δὲ μεταστραφέντος οὐδαμοῦ φανερὸς ὁ φθεγξάμενος ἦν, θεῖον ἡγησάμενον, οὕτω πρὸς τὸν Ἴφιτον τραπέσθαι καὶ συνδιακοσμήσαντα τὴν ἑορτὴν ἐνδοξοτέραν καὶ βεβαιοτέραν καταστῆσαι.

[24] [1] Ἡ δὲ παιδεία μέχρι τῶν ἐνηλίκων διέτεινεν. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἦν ἀφειμένος ὡς ἐβούλετο ζῆν, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐν στρατοπέδῳ τῇ πόλει καὶ δίαιταν ἔχοντες ὡρισμένην καὶ διατριβὴν περὶ τὰ κοινά, καὶ ὅλως νομίζοντες οὐχ αὑτῶν, ἀλλὰ τῆς πατρίδος εἶναι διετέλουν, εἰ μή τι πράττειν ἕτερον εἴη προστεταγμένον, ἐπισκοποῦντες τοὺς παῖδας, καὶ διδάσκοντές τι τῶν χρησίμων ἢ μανθάνοντες [2] αὐτοὶ παρὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων. καὶ γὰρ ἕν τι τοῦτο τῶν καλῶν ἦν καὶ μακαρίων ἃ παρεσκεύασε τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πολίταις ὁ Λυκοῦργος, ἀφθονία σχολῆς, οἷς τέχνης μὲν ἅψασθαι βαναύσου τὸ παράπαν οὐκ ἐφεῖτο, χρηματισμοῦ δὲ συναγωγὴν ἔχοντος ἐργώδη καὶ πραγματείαν οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν ἔδει, διὰ τὸ κομιδῇ τὸν πλοῦτον ἄζηλον γεγονέναι καὶ [3] ἄτιμον. οἱ δὲ εἵλωτες αὐτοῖς εἰργάζοντο τὴν γῆν, ἀποφορὰν τὴν εἰρημένην τελοῦντες. ἐπιδημῶν δέ τις Ἀθήνησι δικαστηρίων ὄντων, καὶ πυθόμενός τινα δίκην ἀργίας ὠφληκότα βαδίζειν ἀθυμοῦντα καὶ προπεμπόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων συναχθομένων καὶ βαρέως φερόντων, ἐδεῖτο δεῖξαι τοὺς συμπαρόντας αὐτῷ τίς ἐστιν ὁ τὴν ἐλευθερίας ἑαλωκὼς δίκην. οὕτω δουλοπρεπὲς ἡγοῦντο τὴν περὶ τὰς [4] τέχνας καὶ τὸν χρηματισμὸν ἀσχολίαν. δίκαι δέ, ὡς εἰκός, ἐξέλιπον ἅμα τῷ νομίσματι, μήτε πλεονεξίας μήτε ἀπορίας αὐτοῖς παρούσης, ἰσότητος δὲ ἐν εὐπορίᾳ καὶ ῥᾳστώνης δι’ εὐτέλειαν γεγενημένης. χοροὶ δὲ καὶ θαλίαι καὶ εὐωχίαι καὶ διατριβαὶ περί τε θήρας καὶ γυμνάσια καὶ λέσχας τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον ἐπεχωρίαζον, ὅτε μὴ στρατευόμενοι τύχοιεν.

[25] [1] Οἱ μέν γε νεώτεροι τριάκοντα ἐτῶν τὸ παράπαν οὐ κατέβαινον εἰς ἀγοράν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τῶν συγγενῶν καὶ τῶν ἐραστῶν ἐποιοῦντο τὰς ἀναγκαίας οἰκονομίας. τοῖς δὲ πρεσβυτέροις αἰσχρὸν ἦν συνεχῶς ὁρᾶσθαι περὶ ταῦτα διατρίβουσιν, ἀλλὰ μὴ τὸ πλεῖστον τῆς ἡμέρας περὶ τὰ γυμνάσια καὶ τὰς καλουμένας λέσχας ἀναστρέφεσθαι. καὶ γὰρ εἰς ταύτας συνιόντες ἐπιεικῶς ἐσχόλαζον μετ’ ἀλλήλων, οὐδενὸς μεμνημένοι τῶν πρὸς χρηματισμὸν ἢ χρείαν ἀγοραῖον συντελούντων· [2] ἀλλὰ τὸ πλεῖστον ἦν τῆς τοιαύτης διατριβῆς ἔργον ἐπαινεῖν τι τῶν καλῶν, ἢ τῶν αἰσχρῶν ψέγειν, μετὰ παιδιᾶς καὶ γέλωτος, ἐλαφρῶς ὑποφέροντος εἰς νουθεσίαν καὶ διόρθωσιν. οὐδὲ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἦν ἀκράτως αὐστηρὸς ὁ Λυκοῦργος· ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ τοῦ Γέλωτος ἀγαλμάτιον ἐκεῖνον ἱδρύσασθαι Σωσίβιος ἱστορεῖ, τὴν παιδιὰν ὥσπερ ἥδυσμα τοῦ πόνου καὶ τῆς διαίτης ἐμβαλόντα κατὰ καιρὸν εἰς τὰ συμπόσια καὶ τὰς τοιαύτας διατριβάς.

[3] Τὸ δὲ ὅλον εἴθιζε τοὺς πολίτας μὴ βούλεσθαι μηδὲ ἐπίστασθαι κατ’ ἰδίαν ζῆν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τὰς μελίττας τῷ κοινῷ συμφυεῖς ὄντας ἀεὶ καὶ μετ’ ἀλλήλων εἱλουμένους περὶ τὸν ἄρχοντα, μικροῦ δεῖν ἐξεστῶτας ἑαυτῶν ὑπ’ ἐνθουσιασμοῦ καὶ φιλοτιμίας, ὅλους εἶναι τῆς πατρίδος· ὡς ἔστι καὶ φωναῖς τισιν αὐτῶν ἀποθεωρῆσαι τὴν διάνοιαν.

[4] ὁ μὲν γὰρ Παιδάρητος οὐκ ἐγκριθεὶς εἰς τοὺς τριακοσίους ἀπῄει μάλα φαιδρός, ὥσπερ χαίρων ὅτι βελτίονας αὐτοῦ τριακοσίους ἡ πόλις ἔχει· Πολυκρατίδας δὲ ὁ πρεσβεύων πρὸς τοὺς βασιλέως στρατηγοὺς μεθ’ ἑτέρων, ἐρομένων αὐτῶν πότερον ἰδίᾳ πάρεισιν ἢ δημοσίᾳ πεμφθέντες, εἶπεν, “Αἴκα τύχωμεν, δημοσίᾳ, αἴκα ἀποτύχωμεν, [5] ἰδίᾳ.” ἡ δὲ Βρασίδου μήτηρ Ἀργιλεωνίς, ὡς ἀφικόμενοί τινες εἰς Λακεδαίμονα τῶν ἐξ Ἀμφιπόλεως εἰσῆθλον πρὸς αὐτήν, ἠρώτησεν εἰ καλῶς ὁ Βρασίδας ἀπέθανε καὶ τᾶς Σπάρτας ἀξίως· μεγαλυνόντων δὲ ἐκείνων τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ λεγόντων ὡς οὐκ ἔχει τοιοῦτον ἄλλον ἡ Σπάρτη· “Μὴ λέγετε,” εἶπεν, “ὦ ξένοι· καλὸς μὲν γὰρ ἦν καὶ ἀγαθὸς ὁ Βρασίδας, πολλοὺς δὲ ἄνδρας Λακεδαίμων ἔχει τήνου κάρρονας.”

[26] [1] Τοὺς δὲ γέροντας αὐτὸς μέν, ὡς εἴρηται, κατέστησε τὸ πρῶτον ἐκ τῶν μετασχόντων τοῦ βουλεύματος· ὕστερον δὲ ἀντὶ τοῦ τελευτῶντος ἔταξε καθιστάναι τὸν ἄριστον ἀρετῇ κριθέντα τῶν ὑπὲρ ἑξήκοντα ἔτη γεγονότων. καὶ μέγιστος ἐδόκει τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἀγώνων οὗτος εἶναι καὶ περιμαχητότατος· οὐ γὰρ ἐν ταχέσι τάχιστον οὐδ’ ἐν ἰσχυροῖς ἰσχυρότατον, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἀγαθοῖς καὶ σώφροσιν ἄριστον καὶ σωφρονέστατον ἔδει κριθέντα νικητήριον ἔχειν τῆς ἀρετῆς διὰ βίου τὸ σύμπαν, ὡς εἰπεῖν, κράτος ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ, κύριον ὄντα καὶ θανάτου καὶ ἀτιμίας καὶ ὅλως τῶν [2] μεγίστων. ἐγίνετο δὲ ἡ κρίσις τόνδε τὸν τρόπον. ἐκκλησίας ἀθροισθείσης ἄνδρες αἱρετοὶ καθείργνυντο πλησίον εἰς οἴκημα, τὴν μὲν ὄψιν οὐχ ὁρῶντες οὐδὲ ὁρώμενοι, τὴν δὲ κραυγὴν μόνον ἀκούοντες ἐκκλησιαζόντων. βοῇ γὰρ ὡς τἆλλα καὶ τοὺς ἁμιλλωμένους ἔκρινον, οὐχ ὁμοῦ πάντων, ἀλλ’ ἑκάστου κατὰ κλῆρον εἰσαγομένου καὶ σιωπῇ [3] διαπορευομένου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν. ἔχοντες οὖν οἱ κατάκλειστοι γραμματεῖα, καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐπεσημαίνοντο τῆς κραυγῆς τὸ μέγεθος, οὐκ εἰδότες ὅτῳ γένοιτο, πλὴν ὅτι πρῶτος ἢ δεύτερος ἢ τρίτος ἢ ὁποστοσοῦν εἴη τῶν εἰσαγομένων. ὅτῳ δὲ πλείστη γένοιτο καὶ μεγίστη, τοῦτον ἀνηγόρευον. ὁ δὲ στεφανωσάμενος περιῄει τοὺς θεούς· εἵποντο δὲ πολλοὶ νέοι ζηλοῦντες τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ μεγαλύνοντες, πολλαί τε γυναῖκες ἐγκωμιάζουσαι δι’ ᾠδῆς τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὸν βίον εὐδαιμονίζουσαι.

[4] τῶν δὲ ἐπιτηδείων ἕκαστος αὐτῷ δεῖπνον παρατιθεὶς ἔλεγεν ὅτι ἡ πόλις ταύτῃ τιμᾷ τῇ τραπέζῃ. περιελθὼν δὲ εἰς τὸ συσσίτιον ἀπῄει· καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα ἐγίνετο συνήθως, δευτέρας δὲ μερίδος αὐτῷ παρατεθείσης ἐφύλαττεν ἀράμενος· καὶ μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ἐπὶ ταῖς θύραις τοῦ φιδιτίου τῶν οἰκείων παρουσῶν γυναικῶν, ἣν μάλιστα τυγχάνοι τιμῶν προσεκαλεῖτο, καὶ διδοὺς τὴν μοῖραν ἔλεγεν ὅτι ταύτην αὐτὸς λαβὼν ἀριστεῖον ἐκείνῃ δίδωσιν, ὥστε κἀκείνην ζηλουμένην ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων προπέμπεσθαι γυναικῶν.

[27] [1] Καὶ μὴν καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ταφὰς ἄριστα διεκόσμησεν αὐτοῖς. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἀνελὼν δεισιδαιμονίαν ἅπασαν ἐν τῇ πόλει θάπτειν τοὺς νεκρούς, καὶ πλησίον ἔχειν τὰ μνήματα τῶν ἱερῶν οὐκ ἐκώλυσε, συντρόφους ποιῶν ταῖς τοιαύταις ὄψεσι καὶ συνήθεις τοὺς νέους, ὥστε μὴ ταράττεσθαι μηδ’ ὀρρωδεῖν τὸν θάνατον ὡς μιαίνοντα τοὺς ἁψαμένους νεκροῦ σώματος ἢ διὰ τάφων διελθόντας. ἔπειτα συνθάπτειν οὐδὲν εἴασεν, ἀλλὰ ἐν φοινικίδι καὶ φύλλοις ἐλαίας [2] θέντες τὸ σῶμα περιέστελλον. ἐπιγράψαι δὲ τοὔνομα θάψαντας οὐκ ἐξῆν τοῦ νεκροῦ, πλὴν ἀνδρὸς ἐν πολέμῳ καὶ γυναικὸς τῶν ἱερῶν ἀποθανόντων. χρόνον δὲ πένθους ὀλίγον προσώρισεν, ἡμέρας ἕνδεκα· τῇ δὲ δωδεκάτῃ θύσαντας ἔδει Δήμητρι λύειν τὸ πάθος. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἦν ἀργὸν οὐδὲ ἀφειμένον, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι κατεμίγνυε τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις ἀρετῆς τινα ζῆλον ἢ κακίας διαβολήν· καὶ κατεπύκνου παραδειγμάτων πλήθει τὴν πόλιν, οἷς ἀναγκαῖον ἦν ἐντυγχάνοντας ἀεὶ καὶ συντρεφομένους ἄγεσθαι καὶ κατασχηματίζεσθαι ἰόντας πρὸς τὸ καλόν.

[3] Ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἀποδημεῖν ἔδωκε τοῖς βουλομένοις καὶ πλανᾶσθαι, ξενικὰ συνάγοντας ἤθη καὶ μιμήματα βίων ἀπαιδεύτων καὶ πολιτευμάτων διαφόρων. ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἀθροιζομένους ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ χρησίμῳ καὶ παρεισρέοντας εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἀπήλαυνεν, οὐχ, ὡς Θουκυδίδης φησί, δεδιὼς μὴ τῆς πολιτείας μιμηταὶ γένωνται καὶ πρὸς ἀρετήν τι χρήσιμον ἐκμάθωσιν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὅπως μὴ [4] διδάσκαλοι κακοῦ τινος ὑπάρξωσιν. ἅμα γὰρ ξένοις σώμασιν ἀνάγκη λόγους ἐπεισιέναι ξένους· λόγοι δὲ καινοὶ κρίσεις καινὰς ἐπιφέρουσιν. ἐξ ὧν ἀνάγκη πάθη πολλὰ φύεσθαι καὶ προαιρέσεις ἀπᾳδούσας πρὸς τὴν καθεστῶσαν πολιτείαν, ὥσπερ ἁρμονίαν. διὸ μᾶλλον ᾤετο χρῆναι φυλάττειν τὴν πόλιν ὅπως ἠθῶν οὐκ ἀναπλησθήσεται πονηρῶν ἢ σωμάτων νοσερῶν ἔξωθεν ἐπεισιόντων.

[28] [1] Ἐν μὲν οὖν τούτοις οὐδέν ἐστιν ἀδικίας ἴχνος οὐδὲ πλεονεξίας, ἣν ἐγκαλοῦσιν ἔνιοι τοῖς Λυκούργου νόμοις, ὡς ἱκανῶς ἔχουσι πρὸς ἀνδρείαν, ἐνδεῶς δὲ πρὸς δικαιοσύνην. ἡ δὲ καλουμένη κρυπτεία παρ’ αὐτοῖς, εἴ γε δὴ τοῦτο τῶν Λυκούργου πολιτευμάτων ἕν ἐστιν, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης ἱστόρηκε, ταύτην ἂν εἴη καὶ τῷ Πλάτωνι περὶ τῆς πολιτείας καὶ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς [2] ἐνειργασμένη δόξαν. ἦν δὲ τοιαύτη· τῶν νέων οἱ ἄρχοντες διὰ χρόνου τοὺς μάλιστα νοῦν ἔχειν δοκοῦντας εἰς τὴν χώραν ἄλλως ἐξέπεμπον, ἔχοντας ἐγχειρίδια καὶ τροφὴν ἀναγκαίαν, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδέν· οἱ δὲ μεθ’ ἡμέραν μὲν εἰς ἀσυνδήλους διασπειρόμενοι τόπους, ἀπέκρυπτον ἑαυτοὺς καὶ ἀνεπαύοντο, νύκτωρ δὲ κατιόντες εἰς τὰς ὁδοὺς [3] τῶν εἱλώτων τὸν ἁλισκόμενον ἀπέσφαττον. πολλάκις δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἀγροῖς ἐπιπορευόμενοι τοὺς ῥωμαλεωτάτους καὶ κρατίστους αὐτῶν ἀνῄρουν. ὥσπερ καὶ Θουκυδίδης ἐν τοῖς Πελοποννησιακοῖς ἱστορεῖ τοὺς ἐπ’ ἀνδρείᾳ προκριθέντας ὑπὸ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν στεφανώσασθαι μὲν ὡς ἐλευθέρους γεγονότας καὶ περιελθεῖν τὰ τῶν θεῶν ἱερά, μικρὸν δὲ ὕστερον ἅπαντας ἀφανεῖς γενέσθαι, πλείονας ἢ δισχιλίους ὄντας, ὡς μήτε παραχρῆμα μήτε ὕστερον ἔχειν τινὰ λέγειν ὅτῳ τρόπῳ [4] διεφθάρησαν. Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ μάλιστά φησι καὶ τοὺς ἐφόρους, ὅταν εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν καταστῶσι πρῶτον, τοῖς εἵλωσι καταγγέλλειν πόλεμον, ὅπως εὐαγὲς ᾖ τὸ ἀνελεῖν.

Καὶ τἆλλα δὲ τραχέως προσεφέροντο καὶ σκληρῶς αὐτοῖς, ὥστε καὶ πίνειν ἀναγκάζοντες πολὺν ἄκρατον εἰς τὰ συσσίτια παρεισῆγον, ἐπιδεικνύμενοι τὸ μεθύειν οἷόν ἐστι τοῖς νέοις. καὶ ᾠδὰς ἐκέλευον ᾄδειν καὶ χορείας χορεύειν ἀγεννεῖς καὶ καταγελάστους, ἀπέχεσθαι δὲ τῶν ἐλευθέρων.

[5] διὸ καί φασιν ὕστερον ἐν τῇ Θηβαίων εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν στρατείᾳ τοὺς ἁλισκομένους εἵλωτας κελευομένους ᾄδειν τὰ Τερπάνδρου καὶ Ἀλκμᾶνος καὶ Σπένδοντος τοῦ Λάκωνος παραιτεῖσθαι, φάσκοντας οὐκ ἐθέλειν τοὺς δεσποσύνους. ὥστε τοὺς λέγοντας, ἐν Λακεδαίμονι καὶ τὸν ἐλεύθερον μάλιστα ἐλεύθερον εἶναι καὶ τὸν δοῦλον μάλιστα δοῦλον, οὐ φαύλως τεθεωρηκέναι τὴν διαφοράν.

[6] τὰς μὲν οὖν τοιαύτας χαλεπότητας ὕστερον ἐγγενέσθαι τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις νομίζω, μάλιστα μετὰ τὸν μέγαν σεισμόν, ᾧ συνεπιθέσθαι τοὺς εἵλωτας μετὰ Μεσσηνίων ἱστοροῦσι, καὶ πλεῖστα κακὰ τὴν χώραν ἐργάσασθαι καὶ μέγιστον τῇ πόλει περιστῆσαι κίνδυνον. οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἔγωγε προσθείην Λυκούργῳ μιαρὸν οὕτω τῆς κρυπτείας ἔργον ἀπὸ τῆς ἄλλης αὐτοῦ πρᾳότητος καὶ δικαιοσύνης τεκμαιρόμενος τὸν τρόπον, ᾧ καὶ τὸ δαιμόνιον ἐπεμαρτύρησε.

[29] [1] Κατειλημμένων δὲ τοῖς ἐθισμοῖς ἤδη τῶν κυριωτάτων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, καὶ τῆς πολιτείας ἐκτεθραμμένης ἱκανῶς καὶ δυναμένης φέρειν ἑαυτὴν καὶ σώζειν δι’ ἑαυτῆς, ὥσπερ ὁ Πλάτων φησὶν ἐπὶ τῷ κόσμῳ γενομένῳ καὶ κινηθέντι τὴν πρώτην κίνησιν εὐφρανθῆναι τὸν θεόν, οὕτως ἀγασθεὶς καὶ ἀγαπήσας τὸ τῆς νομοθεσίας κάλλος καὶ μέγεθος ἐν ἔργῳ γενομένης καὶ ὁδῷ βαδιζούσης, ἐπεθύμησεν, ὡς ἀνυστὸν ἐξ ἀνθρωπίνης προνοίας, ἀθάνατον αὐτὴν ἀπολιπεῖν καὶ ἀκίνητον [2] εἰς τὸ μέλλον. συναγαγὼν οὖν ἅπαντας εἰς ἐκκλησίαν, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα μετρίως ἔχειν ἔφη καὶ ἱκανῶς πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ ἀρετὴν τῆς πόλεως, ὃ δὲ κυριώτατόν ἐστι καὶ μέγιστον οὐκ ἂν ἐξενεγκεῖν πρότερον πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἢ χρήσασθαι τῷ θεῷ. δεῖν οὖν ἐκείνους ἐμμένειν τοῖς καθεστῶσι νόμοις καὶ μηδὲν ἀλλάσσειν μηδὲ μετακινεῖν ἕως ἐπάνεισιν ἐκ Δελφῶν αὐτός· ἐπανελθὼν γὰρ ὅ τι [3] ἂν τῷ θεῷ δοκῇ ποιήσειν. ὁμολογούντων δὲ πάντων καὶ κελευόντων βαδίζειν, ὅρκους λαβὼν παρὰ τῶν βασιλέων καὶ τῶν γερόντων, ἔπειτα παρὰ τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν, ἐμμενεῖν καὶ χρήσεσθαι τῇ καθεστώσῃ πολιτείᾳ μέχρις ἂν ἐπανέλθῃ ὁ Λυκοῦργος, ἀπῆρεν εἰς Δελφούς.

Παραγενόμενος δὲ πρὸς τὸ μαντεῖον καὶ τῷ θεῷ θύσας, ἠρώτησεν εἰ καλῶς οἱ νόμοι καὶ ἱκανῶς πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ ἀρετὴν πόλεως κείμενοι [4] τυγχάνουσιν. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοὺς νόμους καλῶς κεῖσθαι καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐνδοξοτάτην διαμενεῖν τῇ Λυκούργου χρωμένην πολιτείᾳ, τὸ μάντευμα γραψάμενος εἰς Σπάρτην ἀπέστειλεν. αὐτὸς δὲ τῷ θεῷ πάλιν θύσας καὶ τοὺς φίλους ἀσπασάμενος καὶ τὸν υἱόν, ἔγνω μηκέτι τοῖς πολίταις ἀφεῖναι τὸν ὅρκον, αὐτοῦ δὲ καταλῦσαι τὸν βίον ἑκουσίως, ἡλικίας γεγονὼς ἐν ᾗ καὶ βιοῦν ἔτι καὶ πεπαῦσθαι βουλομένοις ὡραῖόν ἐστι, καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἱκανῶς πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν ἔχειν δοκούντων.

[5] ἐτελεύτησεν οὖν ἀποκαρτερήσας, ἡγούμενος χρῆναι τῶν πολιτικῶν ἀνδρῶν μηδὲ τὸν θάνατον ἀπολίτευτον εἶναι μηδὲ ἀργὸν τὸ τοῦ βίου τέλος, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἀρετῆς μερίδι καὶ πράξεως γενόμενον. αὑτῷ τε γὰρ ἐξειργασμένῳ τὰ κάλλιστα τὴν τελευτὴν ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐπιτελείωσιν εἶναι τῆς εὐδαιμονίας, καὶ τοῖς πολίταις ὧν διὰ τοῦ βίου παρεσκεύασε καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν φύλακα τὸν θάνατον ἀπολείψειν, ὀμωμοκόσι χρῆσθαι τῇ πο[6]λιτείᾳ μέχρις ἂν ἐκεῖνος ἐπανέλθῃ. καὶ οὐ διεψεύσθη τῶν λογισμῶν· τοσοῦτον ἐπρώτευσεν ἡ πόλις τῆς Ἑλλάδος εὐνομίᾳ καὶ δόξῃ, χρόνον ἐτῶν πεντακοσίων τοῖς Λυκούργου χρησαμένη νόμοις, οὓς δεκατεσσάρων βασιλέων μετ’ ἐκεῖνον εἰς Ἆγιν τὸν Ἀρχιδάμου γενομένων οὐδεὶς ἐκίνησεν. ἡ γὰρ τῶν ἐφόρων κατάστασις οὐκ ἄνεσις ἦν, ἀλλ’ ἐπίτασις τῆς πολιτείας, καὶ δοκοῦσα πρὸς τοῦ δήμου γεγονέναι σφοδροτέραν ἐποίησε τὴν ἀριστοκρατίαν.

[30] [1] Ἄγιδος δὲ βασιλεύοντος εἰσερρύη νόμισμα πρῶτον εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην, καὶ μετὰ τοῦ νομίσματος πλεονεξία καὶ πλούτου ζῆλος ἐπέβη διὰ Λύσανδρον, ὃς αὐτὸς ὢν ἀνάλωτος ὑπὸ χρημάτων, ἐνέπλησε τὴν πατρίδα φιλοπλουτίας καὶ τρυφῆς, χρυσὸν καὶ ἄργυρον ἐκ τοῦ πολέμου καταγαγὼν καὶ τοὺς Λυκούργου καταπολιτευσάμενος [2] νόμους. ὧν ἐπικρατούντων πρότερον οὐ πόλεως ἡ Σπάρτη πολιτείαν, ἀλλ’ ἀνδρὸς ἀσκητοῦ καὶ σοφοῦ βίον ἔχουσα, μᾶλλον δ’, ὥσπερ οἱ ποιηταὶ τὸν Ἡρακλέα μυθολογοῦσι δέρμα καὶ ξύλον ἔχοντα τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐπιπορεύεσθαι, κολάζοντα τοὺς παρανόμους καὶ θηριώδεις τυράννους, οὕτως ἡ πόλις ἀπὸ σκυτάλης μιᾶς καὶ τρίβωνος ἄρχουσα τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἑκούσης καὶ βουλομένης, κατέλυε τὰς ἀδίκους δυναστείας καὶ τυραννίδας ἐν τοῖς πολιτεύμασι, καὶ πολέμους ἐβράβευε καὶ στάσεις κατέπαυε, πολλάκις οὐδ’ ἀσπίδα κινήσασα μίαν, ἀλλ’ ἕνα πέμψασα πρεσβευτήν, ᾧ πάντες εὐθὺς ἐποίουν τὸ προστασσόμενον, ὥσπερ αἱ μέλισσαι φανέντος ἡγεμόνος, συντρέχοντες καὶ κατακοσμούμενοι. τοσοῦτον περιῆν εὐνομίας τῇ πόλει καὶ δικαιοσύνης.

[3] Ὅθεν ἔγωγε θαυμάζω τῶν λεγόντων ὡς ἄρχεσθαι μὲν ᾔδεσαν, ἄρχειν δὲ οὐκ ἠπίσταντο Λακεδαιμόνιοι, καὶ τὸν Θεοπόμπου τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπαινούντων λόγον, ὅς, εἰπόντος τινὸς σώζεσθαι τὴν Σπάρτην διὰ τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἀρχικοὺς γεγονότας, “Μᾶλλον,” εἶπε, “διὰ τοὺς πολίτας πειθαρχικοὺς [4] ὄντας·” οὐ γὰρ ἀκούειν ὑπομένουσι τῶν προστατεῖν μὴ δυναμένων, ἀλλ’ ἡ πειθαρχία μάθημα μέν ἐστιν τοῦ ἄρχοντος (ἐμποιεῖ γὰρ ὁ καλῶς ἄγων τὸ καλῶς ἕπεσθαι· καὶ καθάπερ ἱππικῆς τέχνης ἀποτέλεσμα πρᾷον ἵππον καὶ πειθήνιον παρασχεῖν, οὕτω βασιλικῆς ἐπιστήμης ἔργον ἀνθρώποις εὐπείθειαν ἐνεργάσασθαι), Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ οὐκ εὐπείθειαν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιθυμίαν ἐνειργάζοντο τοῖς ἄλλοις τοῦ ἄρχεσθαι καὶ ὑπακούειν [5] αὐτοῖς. ᾔτουν γὰρ οὐ ναῦς οὐδὲ χρήματα παρ’ αὐτῶν οὐδὲ ὁπλίτας πέμποντες, ἀλλὰ ἕνα Σπαρτιάτην ἡγεμόνα· καὶ λαβόντες ἐχρῶντο μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ δέους, ὥσπερ Γυλίππῳ Σικελιῶται καὶ Βρασίδᾳ Χαλκιδεῖς, Λυσάνδρῳ δὲ καὶ Καλλικρατίδᾳ καὶ Ἀγησιλάῳ πάντες οἱ τὴν Ἀσίαν οἰκοῦντες Ἕλληνες, τοὺς μὲν ἄνδρας ἁρμοστὰς καὶ σωφρονιστὰς τῶν ἑκασταχοῦ δήμων καὶ ἀρχόντων ὀνομάζοντες, πρὸς δὲ σύμπασαν τὴν τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν πόλιν ὥσπερ παιδαγωγὸν ἢ διδάσκαλον εὐσχήμονος βίου καὶ τεταγμένης [6] πολιτείας ἀποβλέποντες. εἰς ὃ καὶ Στρατόνικος ἐπισκῶψαι δοκεῖ, μετὰ παιδιᾶς νομοθετῶν καὶ κελεύων Ἀθηναίους ἄγειν μυστήρια καὶ πομπάς, Ἠλείους δὲ ἀγωνοθετεῖν, ὡς κάλλιστα τοῦτο ποιοῦντας, Λακεδαιμονίους δέ, ἂν ἁμαρτάνωσιν οὗτοι, δέρεσθαι. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν εἴρηται χάριν τοῦ γελοίου· Ἀντισθένης δὲ ὁ Σωκρατικὸς ἀπὸ τῆς ἐν Λεύκτροις μάχης ὁρῶν τοὺς Θηβαίους μέγα φρονοῦντας, οὐδὲν αὐτοὺς ἔφη διαφέρειν παιδαρίων ἐπὶ τῷ συγκόψαι τὸν παιδαγωγὸν γαυριώντων.

[31] [1] Οὐ μὴν τοῦτό γε τῷ Λυκούργῳ κεφάλαιον ἦν τότε, πλείστων ἡγουμένην ἀπολιπεῖν τὴν πόλιν· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς βίῳ καὶ πόλεως ὅλης νομίζων εὐδαιμονίαν ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς ἐγγίνεσθαι καὶ ὁμονοίας τῆς πρὸς αὑτήν, πρὸς τοῦτο συνέταξε καὶ συνήρμοσεν, ὅπως ἐλευθέριοι καὶ αὐτάρκεις γενόμενοι καὶ σωφρονοῦντες ἐπὶ [2] πλεῖστον χρόνον διατελῶσι. ταύτην καὶ Πλάτων ἔλαβε τῆς πολιτείας ὑπόθεσιν καὶ Διογένης καὶ Ζήνων καὶ πάντες ὅσοι τι περὶ τούτων ἐπιχειρήσαντες εἰπεῖν ἐπαινοῦνται, γράμματα καὶ λόγους ἀπολιπόντες μόνον. ὁ δὲ οὐ γράμματα καὶ λόγους, ἀλλ’ ἔργῳ πολιτείαν ἀμίμητον εἰς φῶς προενεγκάμενος, καὶ τοῖς ἀνύπαρκτον εἶναι τὴν λεγομένην περὶ τὸν σοφὸν διάθεσιν ὑπολαμβάνουσιν ἐπιδείξας ὅλην τὴν πόλιν φιλοσοφοῦσαν, εἰκότως ὑπερῆρε τῇ δόξῃ τοὺς πώποτε πολιτευσαμένους ἐν [3] τοῖς Ἕλλησι. δι’ ὅπερ καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης ἐλάττονας σχεῖν φησι τιμὰς ἢ προσῆκον ἦν αὐτὸν ἔχειν ἐν Λακεδαίμονι, καίπερ ἔχοντα τὰς μεγίστας. ἱερόν τε γάρ ἐστιν αὐτοῦ, καὶ θύουσι καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν ὡς θεῷ. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τῶν λειψάνων αὐτοῦ κομισθέντων οἴκαδε κεραυνὸν εἰς τὸν τάφον κατασκῆψαι· τοῦτο δὲ οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἑτέρῳ τινὶ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν πλὴν Εὐριπίδῃ συμπεσεῖν ὕστερον, τελευτήσαντι καὶ ταφέντι τῆς Μακεδονίας περὶ Ἀρέθουσαν. ὥστε ἀπολόγημα καὶ μαρτύριον μέγα εἶναι τοῖς ἀγαπῶσι τὸν Εὐριπίδην τὸ μόνῳ συμπεσεῖν αὐτῷ μετὰ τελευτὴν ἃ τῷ θεοφιλεστάτῳ καὶ ὁσιωτάτῳ πρότερον συνέπεσε.

[4] Τελευτῆσαι δὲ τὸν Λυκοῦργον οἱ μὲν ἐν Κίρρᾳ λέγουσιν, Ἀπολλόθεμις δὲ εἰς Ἦλιν κομισθέντα, Τίμαιος δὲ καὶ Ἀριστόξενος ἐν Κρήτῃ καταβιώσαντα· καὶ τάφον Ἀριστόξενος αὐτοῦ δείκνυσθαί φησιν ὑπὸ Κρητῶν τῆς Περγαμίας περὶ τὴν ξενικὴν ὁδόν. υἱὸν δὲ λέγεται μονογενῆ καταλιπεῖν Ἀντίωρον· οὗ τελευτήσαντος ἀτέκνου τὸ γένος [5] ἐξέλιπεν. οἱ δ’ ἑταῖροι καὶ οἰκεῖοι διαδοχήν τινα καὶ σύνοδον ἐπὶ πολλοὺς χρόνους διαμείνασαν κατέστησαν, καὶ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐν αἷς συνήρχοντο Λυκουργίδας προσηγόρευσαν. Ἀριστοκράτης δὲ ὁ Ἱππάρχου φησὶ τοὺς ξένους τοῦ Λυκούργου τελευτήσαντος ἐν Κρήτῃ καῦσαι τὸ σῶμα καὶ διασπεῖραι τὴν τέφραν εἰς τὴν θάλατταν, αὐτοῦ δεηθέντος καὶ φυλαξαμένου μή ποτε ἄρα τῶν λειψάνων εἰς Λακεδαίμονα κομισθέντων, ὡς ἐπανήκοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν ὅρκων λελυμένων, μεταβάλωσι τὴν πολιτείαν. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν περὶ τοῦ Λυκούργου.

Numa

[1] [1]  Ἔστι δὲ καὶ περὶ τῶν Νομᾶ τοῦ βασιλέως χρόνων, καθ’ οὓς γέγονε, νεανικὴ διαφορά, καίπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς εἰς τοῦτον κατάγεσθαι τῶν στεμμάτων ἀκριβῶς δοκούντων. ἀλλὰ Κλώδιός τις ἐν ἐλέγχῳ χρόνων (οὕτω γάρ πως ἐπιγέγραπται τὸ βιβλίον) ἰσχυρίζεται τὰς μὲν ἀρχαίας ἐκείνας ἀναγραφὰς ἐν τοῖς Κελτικοῖς πάθεσι τῆς πόλεως ἠφανίσθαι, τὰς δὲ νῦν φαινομένας οὐκ ἀληθῶς συγκεῖσθαι δι’ ἀνδρῶν χαριζομένων τισὶν εἰς τὰ πρῶτα γένη καὶ τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους οἴκους ἐξ οὐ προσηκόντων [2] εἰσβιαζομένοις. λεγομένου δ’ οὖν ὡς Νομᾶς γένοιτο Πυθαγόρου συνήθης, οἱ μὲν ὅλως ἀξιοῦσι μηδὲν Ἑλληνικῆς παιδεύσεως Νομᾷ μετεῖναι, καθάπερ ἢ φύσει δυνατὸν καὶ αὐτάρκη γενέσθαι πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἢ βελτίονι Πυθαγόρου βαρβάρῳ τινὶ τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως ἀποδοῦναι παίδευσιν· οἱ δὲ Πυθαγόραν μὲν ὀψὲ γενέσθαι, τῶν Νομᾶ χρόνων [3] ὁμοῦ τι πέντε γενεαῖς ἀπολειπόμενον, Πυθαγόραν δὲ τὸν Σπαρτιάτην Ὀλύμπια νενικηκότα στάδιον ἐπὶ τῆς ἑκκαιδεκάτης Ὀλυμπιάδος, ἧς ἔτει τρίτῳ Νομᾶς εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν κατέστη, πλανηθέντα περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν συγγενέσθαι τῷ Νομᾷ καὶ συνδιακοσμῆσαι τὴν πολιτείαν, ὅθεν οὐκ ὀλίγα τοῖς Ῥωμαϊκοῖς ἐπιτηδεύμασι τῶν Λακωνικῶν ἀναμεμῖχθαι Πυθαγόρου διδάξαντος. ἄλλως δὲ Νομᾶς γένος μὲν ἦν ἐκ Σαβίνων, Σαβῖνοι δὲ βούλονται [4] Λακεδαιμονίων ἑαυτοὺς ἀποίκους γεγονέναι. τοὺς μὲν οὖν χρόνους ἐξακριβῶσαι χαλεπόν ἐστι, καὶ μάλιστα τοὺς ἐκ τῶν Ὀλυμπιονικῶν ἀναγομένους, ὧν τὴν ἀναγραφὴν ὀψέ φασιν Ἱππίαν ἐκδοῦναι τὸν Ἠλεῖον, ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ὁρμώμενον ἀναγκαίου πρὸς πίστιν· ἃ δὲ παρειλήφαμεν ἡμεῖς ἄξια λόγου περὶ Νομᾶ, διέξιμεν ἀρχὴν οἰκείαν λαβόντες.

[2] [1] Ἕβδομον ἐνιαυτὸν ἡ Ῥώμη καὶ τριακοστὸν ἤδη Ῥωμύλου βασιλεύοντος ᾠκεῖτο· πέμπτῃ δὲ ἱσταμένου μηνός, ἣν νῦν ἡμέραν νώνας Καπρατίνας καλοῦσι, θυσίαν τινὰ δημοτελῆ πρὸ τῆς πόλεως ὁ Ῥωμύλος ἔθυε περὶ τὸ καλούμενον Αἰγὸς ἕλος, καὶ παρῆν ἥ τε βουλὴ καὶ τοῦ δήμου [2] τὸ πλεῖστον. ἐξαίφνης δὲ μεγάλης περὶ τὸν ἀέρα τροπῆς γενομένης καὶ νέφους ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν ἐρείσαντος ἅμα πνεύματι καὶ ζάλῃ, τὸν μὲν ἄλλον ὅμιλον ἐκπλαγέντα συνέβη φυγεῖν καὶ σκεδασθῆναι, τὸν δὲ Ῥωμύλον ἀφανῆ γενέσθαι, καὶ μήτε αὐτὸν ἔτι μήτε σῶμα τεθνηκότος εὑρεθῆναι, χαλεπὴν δέ τιν’ ὑπόνοιαν ἅψασθαι τῶν πατρικίων, καὶ ῥυῆναι λόγον ἐν τῷ δήμῳ κατ’ αὐτῶν ὡς πάλαι βαρυνόμενοι τὸ βασιλεύεσθαι καὶ μεταστῆσαι τὸ κράτος εἰς αὑτοὺς θέλοντες ἀνέλοιεν τὸν βασιλέα. καὶ γὰρ ἐδόκει τραχύτερον ἤδη [3] προσφέρεσθαι καὶ μοναρχικώτερον αὐτοῖς. ἀλλὰ ταύτην μὲν τὴν ὑποψίαν ἐθεράπευον εἰς θεῶν τιμὰς ἀνάγοντες ὡς οὐ τεθνηκότα τὸν Ῥωμύλον, ἀλλὰ κρείττονος ὄντα μοίρας· καὶ Πρόκλος, ἀνὴρ ἐπιφανής, διωμόσατο Ῥωμύλον ἰδεῖν εἰς οὐρανὸν σὺν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἀναφερόμενον, καὶ φωνῆς ἀκοῦσαι κελεύοντος αὐτὸς ὀνομάζεσθαι Κυρῖνον.

[4] Ἑτέρα δὲ ταραχὴ καὶ στάσις κατελάμβανε τὴν πόλιν ὑπὲρ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἀποδειχθήσεσθαι βασιλέως, οὔπω τῶν ἐπηλύδων κομιδῇ τοῖς πρώτοις συγκεκραμένων πολίταις, ἀλλ’ ἔτι τοῦ τε δήμου πολλὰ κυμαίνοντος ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ τῶν πατρικίων ἐν ὑποψίαις ἐκ τοῦ διαφόρου πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὄντων. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ βασιλεύεσθαι μὲν ἐδόκει πᾶσιν, ἤρισαν δὲ καὶ διέστησαν οὐχ ὑπὲρ ἀνδρὸς μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ γένους, ὁπότερον [5] παρέξει τὸν ἡγεμόνα. καὶ γὰρ οἱ μετὰ Ῥωμύλου πρῶτοι συνοικίσαντες τὴν πόλιν οὐκ ἀνασχετὸν ἐποιοῦντο πόλεως καὶ χώρας τοὺς Σαβίνους μεταλαβόντας ἄρχειν βιάζεσθαι τῶν ἐπὶ ταῦτα δεξαμένων, καὶ τοῖς Σαβίνοις ἦν τις εὐγνώμων λόγος, ἐπεὶ Τατίου τοῦ βασιλέως αὐτῶν ἀποθανόντος οὐκ ἐστασίασαν πρὸς Ῥωμύλον, ἀλλ’ εἴασαν ἄρχειν μόνον, αὖθις ἀξιούντων τὸν ἄρχοντα γενέσθαι παρ’ αὑτῶν. οὔτε γὰρ ἐκ ταπεινοτέρων κρείττοσι προσγενέσθαι, καὶ προσγενόμενοι πλήθει τε ῥῶσαι καὶ προαγαγεῖν εἰς ἀξίωμα πόλεως ἐκείνους μεθ’ ἑαυτῶν. ὑπὲρ μὲν οὖν τούτων ἐστασίαζον.

[6] Ὅπως δὲ μὴ σύγχυσιν ἐκ τῆς ἀναρχίας ἡ στάσις ἀπεργάσεται, μετεώρου τοῦ πολιτεύματος ὄντος, ἔταξαν οἱ πατρίκιοι, πεντήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν ὄντων αὐτῶν, ἕκαστον ἐν μέρει τοῖς βασιλικοῖς παρασήμοις κοσμούμενον θύειν τε τοῖς θεοῖς τὰ νενομισμένα καὶ χρηματίζειν ἓξ μὲν ὥρας [7] τῆς νυκτός, ἓξ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας. καὶ γὰρ ἡ διανομὴ τῶν καιρῶν ἑκατέρου πρὸς ἱσότητα καλῶς ἔχειν ἐδόκει τοῖς ἄρχουσι, καὶ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἡ μεταβολὴ τῆς ἐξουσίας ἀφαιρεῖν τὸν φθόνον, ὁρῶντα τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς τὸν αὐτὸν ἰδιώτην ἐκ βασιλέως γινόμενον. τὸ δὲ σχῆμα τοῦτο τῆς ἀρχῆς μεσοβασιλείαν Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν.

[3] [1] Ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτω πολιτικῶς καὶ ἀνεπαχθῶς ἀφηγεῖσθαι δοκοῦντες, ὑπονοίαις καὶ θορύβοις περιέπιπτον, ὡς μεθιστάντες εἰς ὀλιγαρχίαν τὰ πράγματα καὶ διαπαιδαγωγοῦντες ἐν σφίσιν αὐτοῖς τὴν πολιτείαν, βασιλεύεσθαι δὲ οὐκ ἐθέλοιεν. ἐκ τούτου συνέβησαν ἀμφότεραι πρὸς ἀλλήλας αἱ στάσεις, ὥστε τὴν ἑτέραν ἐκ [2] τῆς ἑτέρας ἀποδεῖξαι βασιλέα· μάλιστα γὰρ ἂν οὕτως ἔν τε τῷ παρόντι παύσασθαι τὴν φιλονεικίαν, καὶ τὸν ἀποδειχθέντα πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους ἴσον γενέσθαι, τοὺς μὲν ὡς ἑλομένους ἀγαπῶντα, τοῖς δὲ εὔνουν ὄντα διὰ συγγένειαν. ἐπιτρεψάντων δὲ προτέροις τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις τῶν Σαβίνων τὴν αἵρεσιν, ἔδοξε μᾶλλον ἑλέσθαι Σαβῖνον αὐτοὺς ἀποδείξαντας ἢ παρασχεῖν Ῥωμαῖον ἐκείνων [3] ἑλομένων. καὶ βουλευσάμενοι καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἀποδεικνύουσιν ἐκ Σαβίνων Νομᾶν Πομπίλιον, ἄνδρα τῶν μὲν εἰς Ῥώμην ἀπῳκισμένων οὐ γενόμενον, γνώριμον δ’ οὕτω δι’ ἀρετὴν ὄντα πᾶσιν ὥστε τῶν ἑλομένων προθυμότερον ὀνομασθέντος αὐτοῦ δέξασθαι τοὺς Σαβίνους. φράσαντες οὖν τῷ δήμῳ τὰ δεδογμένα, πρέσβεις ἐκπέμπουσι πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα κοινῇ τοὺς πρωτεύοντας ἀπ’ ἀμφοτέρων, ἥκειν δεησομένους καὶ παραλαβεῖν τὴν βασιλείαν.

[4] Ἦν δὲ πόλεως μὲν ὁ Νομᾶς ἐπιφανοῦς ἐν Σαβίνοις τῆς Κύρεων, ἀφ’ ἧς καὶ Κυρίτας Ῥωμαῖοι σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ἅμα τοῖς ἀνακραθεῖσι Σαβίνοις προσηγόρευσαν, υἱὸς δὲ Πόμπωνος, ἀνδρὸς εὐδοκίμου, τεσσάρων ἀδελφῶν νεώτατος· ἡμέρᾳ δὲ γεγονὼς κατὰ δή τινα θείαν τύχην ἐν ᾗ τὴν Ῥώμην ἔκτισαν οἱ περὶ Ῥωμύλον· αὕτη δέ [5] ἐστι πρὸ δεκαμιᾶς καλανδῶν Μαΐων. φύσει δὲ πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν εὖ κεκραμένος τὸ ἦθος, ἔτι μᾶλλον αὑτὸν ἐξημέρωσε διὰ παιδείας καὶ κακοπαθείας καὶ φιλοσοφίας, οὐ μόνον τὰ λοιδορούμενα πάθη τῆς ψυχῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν εὐδοκιμοῦσαν ἐν τοῖς βαρβάροις βίαν καὶ πλεονεξίαν ἐκποδὼν ποιησάμενος, ἀνδρείαν δὲ ἀληθῆ τὴν ὑπὸ λόγου τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν ἐν αὑτῷ κάθειρξιν ἡγούμενος.

[6] ἐκ δὲ τούτου πᾶσαν οἴκοθεν ἅμα τρυφὴν καὶ πολυτέλειαν ἐξελαύνων, παντὶ δὲ πολίτῃ καὶ ξένῳ χρῆσθαι παρέχων ἑαυτὸν ἄμεμπτον δικαστὴν καὶ σύμβουλον, αὐτὸς δ’ ἑαυτῷ σχολάζοντι χρώμενος οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡδυπαθείας καὶ πορισμούς, ἀλλὰ θεραπείαν θεῶν καὶ θεωρίαν διὰ λόγου φύσεώς τε αὐτῶν καὶ δυνάμεως, ὄνομα μέγα καὶ δόξαν εἶχεν, ὥστε καὶ Τάτιον τὸν ἐν Ῥώμῃ συμβασιλεύσαντα Ῥωμύλῳ, μιᾶς αὐτῷ θυγατρὸς [7] οὔσης Τατίας, ποιήσασθαι γαμβρὸν ἐκεῖνον. οὐ μὴν ἐπήρθη γε τῷ γάμῳ μετοικίσασθαι πρὸς τὸν πενθερόν, ἀλλ’ αὐτοῦ περιέπων πατέρα γηραιὸν ἐν Σαβίνοις ὑπέμενεν, ἅμα καὶ τῆς Τατίας ἑλομένης τὴν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἰδιωτεύοντος ἡσυχίαν πρὸ τῆς ἐν Ῥώμῃ διὰ τὸν πατέρα τιμῆς καὶ δόξης. αὕτη μὲν οὖν λέγεται τρίτῳ καὶ δεκάτῳ μετὰ τὸν γάμον ἔτει τελευτῆσαι.

[4] [1] Ὁ δὲ Νομᾶς ἐκλείπων τὰς ἐν ἄστει διατριβὰς ἀγραυλεῖν τὰ πολλὰ καὶ πλανᾶσθαι μόνος ἤθελεν, ἐν ἄλσεσι θεῶν καὶ λειμῶσιν ἱεροῖς καὶ τόποις ἐρήμοις ποιούμενος τὴν δίαιταν. ὅθεν οὐχ ἥκιστα τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁ περὶ τῆς θεᾶς ἔλαβε λόγος, ὡς ἄρα Νομᾶς ἐκεῖνος οὐκ ἀδημονίᾳ τινὶ ψυχῆς καὶ πλάνῃ τὸν μετὰ ἀνθρώπων ἀπολέλοιπε [2] βίον, ἀλλὰ σεμνοτέρας γεγευμένος ὁμιλίας καὶ γάμων θείων ἠξιωμένος, Ἠγερίᾳ δαίμονι συνὼν ἐρώσῃ καὶ συνδιαιτώμενος, εὐδαίμων ἀνὴρ καὶ τὰ θεῖα πεπνυμένος γέγονεν. ὅτι μὲν οὖν ταῦτα πολλοῖς τῶν πάνυ παλαιῶν μύθων ἔοικεν, οὓς οἱ Φρύγες τε περὶ Ἄττεω καὶ Βιθυνοὶ περὶ Ἡροδότου καὶ περὶ Ἐνδυμίωνος Ἀρκάδες ἄλλοι τε περὶ ἄλλων εὐδαιμόνων δή τινων καὶ θεοφιλῶν γενέσθαι δοκούντων παραλαβόντες ἠγάπησαν, [3] οὐκ ἄδηλόν ἐστι. καί που λόγον ἔχει τὸν θεόν, οὐ φίλιππον οὐδὲ φίλορνιν, ἀλλὰ φιλάνθρωπον ὄντα, τοῖς διαφερόντως ἀγαθοῖς ἐθέλειν συνεῖναι, καὶ μὴ δυσχεραίνειν μηδὲ ἀτιμάζειν ἀνδρὸς ὁσίου καὶ σώφρονος ὁμιλίαν. ὡς δὲ καὶ σώματος ἀνθρωπίνου καὶ ὥρας ἐστί τις θεῷ καὶ δαίμονι κοινωνία καὶ χάρις, ἔργον ἤδη καὶ τοῦτο πεισθῆναι.

[4] Καίτοι δοκοῦσιν οὐκ ἀπιθάνως Αἰγύπτιοι διαιρεῖν ὡς γυναικὶ μὲν οὐκ ἀδύνατον πνεῦμα πλησιάσαι θεοῦ καί τινας ἐντεκεῖν ἀρχὰς γενέσεως, ἀνδρὶ δὲ οὐκ ἔστι σύμμιξις πρὸς θεὸν οὐδὲ ὁμιλία σώματος. ἀγνοοῦσι δὲ ὅτι τὸ μιγνύμενον ᾧ μίγνυται τὴν ἴσην ἀνταποδίδωσι κοινωνίαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ φιλίαν γε πρὸς ἄνθρωπον εἶναι θεῷ καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ ταύτῃ λεγόμενον ἔρωτα καὶ φυόμενον εἰς ἐπιμέλειαν ἤθους καὶ ἀρετῆς, πρέπον ἂν εἴη.

[5] καὶ οὐ πλημμελοῦσιν οἱ τὸν Φόρβαντα καὶ τὸν Ὑάκινθον καὶ τὸν Ἄδμητον ἐρωμένους Ἀπόλλωνος γεγονέναι μυθολογοῦντες, ὥσπερ αὖ καὶ τὸν Σικυώνιον Ἱππόλυτον, ᾧ δὴ καί φασιν, ὁσάκις τύχοι διαπλέων εἰς Κίρραν ἐκ Σικυῶνος, τὴν Πυθίαν, οἷον αἰσθανομένου τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ χαίροντος, ἀποθεσπίζειν τόδε τὸ ἡρῷον·

Καὶ δ’ αὖθ’ Ἱππολύτοιο φίλον κάρα εἰς ἅλα βαίνει.

[6] Πινδάρου δὲ καὶ τῶν μελῶν ἐραστὴν γενέσθαι τὸν Πᾶνα μυθολογοῦσιν. ἀπέδωκε δέ τινα τιμὴν καὶ Ἀρχιλόχῳ καὶ Ἡσιόδῳ τελευτήσασι διὰ τὰς Μούσας τὸ δαιμόνιον. Σοφοκλεῖ δὲ καὶ ζῶντι τὸν Ἀσκληπιὸν ἐπιξενωθῆναι λόγος ἐστὶ πολλὰ μέχρι δεῦρο διασώζων τεκμήρια, καὶ τελευτήσαντι τυχεῖν ταφῆς ἄλλος θεός, ὡς λέγεται, παρέσχεν.

[7] ἆρα οὖν ἄξιόν ἐστι, ταῦτα συγχωροῦντας ἐπὶ τούτων, ἀπιστεῖν εἰ Ζαλεύκῳ καὶ Μίνῳ καὶ Ζωροάστρῃ καὶ Νομᾷ καὶ Λυκούργῳ βασιλείας κυβερνῶσι καὶ πολιτείας διακοσμοῦσιν εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ ἐφοίτα τὸ δαιμόνιον, ἢ τούτοις μὲν εἰκός ἐστι καὶ σπουδάζοντας θεοὺς ὁμιλεῖν ἐπὶ διδασκαλίᾳ καὶ παραινέσει τῶν βελτίστων, ποιηταῖς δὲ καὶ λυρικοῖς μινυρίζουσιν, εἴπερ ἄρα, χρῆσθαι παίζοντας; [8] εἰ δὲ λέγει τις ἄλλως, κατὰ Βακχυλίδην, “Πλατεῖα κέλευθος.” οὐδὲ γὰρ ἅτερος λόγος ἔχει τι φαῦλον, ὃν περὶ Λυκούργου καὶ Νομᾶ καὶ τοιούτων ἄλλων ἀνδρῶν λέγουσιν, ὡς δυσκάθεκτα καὶ δυσάρεστα πλήθη χειρούμενοι καὶ μεγάλας ἐπιφέροντες ταῖς πολιτείαις καινοτομίας, προσεποιήσαντο τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ δόξαν, αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις πρὸς οὓς ἐσχηματίζοντο σωτήριον οὖσαν.

[5] [1] Ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἔτος ἤδη διατελοῦντι τῷ Νομᾷ τεσσαρακοστὸν ἧκον ἀπὸ Ῥώμης οἱ πρέσβεις παρακαλοῦντες ἐπὶ τὴν βασιλείαν. τοὺς δὲ λόγους ἐποιήσατο Πρόκλος καὶ Οὐέλεσος, ὧν πρότερον ἐπίδοξος ἦν ὁ δῆμος αἱρήσεσθαι τὸν ἕτερον βασιλέα, Πρόκλῳ μὲν τῶν Ῥωμύλου λαῶν, Οὐελέσῳ δὲ τῶν Τατίου μάλιστα προσεχόντων. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν βραχέα διελέχθησαν, οἰόμενοι τῷ [2] Νομᾷ τὴν συντυχίαν ἀσπαζομένῳ γεγονέναι· ἦν δ’ οὐ μικρόν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἔργον, ἀλλὰ καὶ λόγων πολλῶν καὶ δεήσεως τὸ πεῖσαι καὶ μεταστῆσαι γνώμην ἀνδρὸς ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ καὶ εἰρήνῃ βεβιωκότος εἰς ἀρχὴν πόλεως τρόπον τινὰ καὶ γεγενημένης πολέμῳ καὶ συνηυξημένης. ἔλεγεν οὖν τοῦ τε πατρὸς αὐτοῦ παρόντος καὶ Μαρκίου, τῶν συγγενῶν ἑνός, ὡς “Πᾶσα μὲν ἀνθρωπίνου βίου μεταβολὴ σφαλερόν· ᾧ δὲ μήτ’ ἄπεστί τι τῶν ἱκανῶν μήτε μεμπτόν ἐστι τῶν παρόντων, τοῦτον οὐδὲν ἄλλο πλὴν ἄνοια μετακοσμεῖ καὶ μεθίστησιν ἐκ τῶν συνήθων· οἷς κἂν εἰ μηδὲν ἕτερον προσείη, [3] τῷ βεβαιοτέρῳ διαφέρει τῶν ἀδήλων. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ ἄδηλα τὰ τῆς βασιλείας τοῖς Ῥωμύλου τεκμαιρομένῳ παθήμασιν, ὡς πονηρὰν μὲν αὐτὸς ἔλαβε δόξαν ἐπιβουλεῦσαι τῷ συνάρχοντι Τατίῳ, πονηρὰν δὲ τοῖς ὁμοτίμοις περιεποίησεν ὡς ἀνῃρημένος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν. καίτοι Ῥωμύλον μὲν οὗτοι παῖδα θεῶν ὑμνοῦσι φήμαις, καὶ τροφήν τινα δαιμόνιον αὐτοῦ καὶ σωτηρίαν ἄπιστον ἔτι νηπίου λέγουσιν· ἐμοὶ δὲ καὶ γένος θνητόν ἐστι καὶ τροφὴ καὶ παίδευσις ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων ὧν οὐκ [4] ἀγνοεῖτε γεγενημένη· τὰ δ’ ἐπαινούμενα τοῦ τρόπου βασιλεύειν πόρρω μέλλοντος ἀνδρός, ἡσυχία τε πολλὴ καὶ διατριβὴ περὶ λόγους ἀπράγμονας, ὅ τε δεινὸς οὗτος καὶ σύντροφος εἰρήνης ἔρως καὶ πραγμάτων ἀπολέμων καὶ ἀνθρώπων ἐπὶ τιμῇ θεῶν καὶ φιλοφροσύναις εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συνιόντων, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς γεωργούντων ἢ [5] νεμόντων. ὑμῖν δέ, ὦ Ῥωμαῖοι, πολλοὺς μὲν ἴσως ἀβουλήτους ἀπολέλοιπε πολέμους Ῥωμύλος, οἷς ἀντερείδοντος ἡ πόλις ἐμπείρου δεῖται βασιλέως καὶ ἀκμάζοντος· πολλὴ δὲ καὶ συνήθεια καὶ προθυμία δι’ εὐτυχίαν γέγονε τῷ δήμῳ, καὶ οὐδένα λέληθεν αὔξεσθαι καὶ κρατεῖν ἑτέρων βουλόμενος, ὥστε καὶ γέλως ἂν εἴη τἀμά, θεραπεύοντος θεούς, καὶ δίκην τιμᾶν, βίαν δὲ καὶ πόλεμον ἐχθαίρειν διδάσκοντος πόλιν στρατηλάτου μᾶλλον ἢ βασιλέως δεομένην.”

[6] [1] Τοιούτοις λόγοις ἀφοσιουμένου τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ ἀνδρός, οἵ τε Ῥωμαῖοι πᾶσαν ἐποιοῦντο σπουδὴν ἀντιβολοῦντες καὶ δεόμενοι μὴ σφᾶς αὖθις εἰς στάσιν ἐμβαλεῖν καὶ πόλεμον ἐμφύλιον, οὐκ ὄντος ἑτέρου πρὸς ὃν ἀμφότεραι συννεύσουσιν αἱ στάσεις, ὅ τε πατὴρ καὶ ὁ Μάρκιος ἐκείνων μεταστάντων ἰδίᾳ προσκείμενοι τὸν Νομᾶν ἔπειθον [2] δέχεσθαι μέγα καὶ θεῖον δῶρον. “Εἰ δὲ αὐτὸς οὔτε πλούτου δέῃ δι’ αὐτάρκειαν οὔτε δόξαν ἀρχῆς καὶ δυναστείας ἐζήλωκας κρείσσονα τὴν ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς ἔχων, ἀλλ’ ὑπηρεσίαν γε θεοῦ τὸ βασιλεύειν ἡγούμενος, ὅς γε ἀνίστησι καὶ οὐκ ἐᾷ κεῖσθαι καὶ ἀργεῖν τὴν ἐν σοὶ τοσαύτην δικαιοσύνην, μὴ φεῦγε μηδὲ ἀποδίδρασκε τὴν ἀρχήν, ἀνδρὶ φρονίμῳ πράξεων καλῶν καὶ μεγάλων οὖσαν χώραν, ἐν ᾗ καὶ θεραπεῖαι θεῶν μεγαλοπρεπεῖς εἰσι καὶ πρὸς εὐσέβειαν ἀνθρώπων ἡμερώσεις ῥᾷστα καὶ τάχιστα μετακοσμουμένων ὑπὸ [3] τοῦ κρατοῦντος. οὗτοι καὶ Τάτιον ἔστερξαν ἔπηλυν ἡγεμόνα, καὶ τὴν Ῥωμύλου μνήμην ἀποθεοῦσι ταῖς τιμαῖς. τίς δὲ οἶδεν εἰ καὶ νικῶντι δήμῳ πολέμου κόρος ἐστί, καὶ μεστοὶ θριάμβων καὶ λαφύρων γεγονότες ἡγεμόνα πρᾷον καὶ δίκης ἑταῖρον ἐπ’ εὐνομίᾳ καὶ εἰρήνῃ ποθοῦσιν; εἰ δὲ δὴ καὶ παντάπασιν ἀκρατῶς ἔχουσι καὶ μανικῶς πρὸς πόλεμον, ἆρ’ οὐχὶ βέλτιον ἀλλαχόσε τὴν ὁρμὴν αὐτῶν τρέπειν, διὰ χειρὸς ἔχοντα τὰς ἡνίας, τῇ δὲ πατρίδι καὶ παντὶ τῷ Σαβίνων ἔθνει σύνδεσμον εὐνοίας καὶ φιλίας πρὸς πόλιν ἀκμάζουσαν [4] καὶ δυνατὴν γενέσθαι;” τούτοις προσῆν, ὡς λέγεται, σημεῖά τε χρηστὰ καὶ σπουδὴ τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ ζῆλος, ὡς ἐπύθοντο τὴν πρεσβείαν, δεομένων βαδίζειν καὶ παραλαμβάνειν τὴν βασιλείαν ἐπὶ κοινωνίᾳ καὶ συγκράσει τῶν πολιτῶν.

[7] [1] Ὡς οὖν ἐδέδοκτο, θύσας τοῖς θεοῖς προῆγεν εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην. ἀπήντα δὲ ἡ βουλὴ καὶ ὁ δῆμος ἔρωτι θαυμαστῷ τοῦ ἀνδρός, εὐφημίαι τε πρέπουσαι γυναικῶν ἐγίνοντο καὶ θυσίαι πρὸς ἱεροῖς καὶ χαρὰ πάντων, ὥσπερ οὐ βασιλέα τῆς πόλεως, ἀλλὰ βασιλείαν δεχομένης. ἐπεὶ δὲ εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν κατέστησαν, ὁ μὲν ταῖς ὥραις ἐκείναις συνειληχὼς μεσοβασιλεὺς Σπόριος Οὐέττιος ψῆφον ἐπέδωκε τοῖς πολίταις καὶ πάντες ἤνεγκαν, προσφερομένων δ’ αὐτῷ τῶν βασιλικῶν παρασήμων ἐπισχεῖν κελεύσας ἔφη δεῖσθαι καὶ θεοῦ [2] τὴν βασιλείαν ἐμπεδοῦντος αὐτῷ. παραλαβὼν δὲ μάντεις καὶ ἱερεῖς ἀνέβαινεν εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον· Ταρπήϊον αὐτὸ λόφον οἱ τότε Ῥωμαῖοι προσηγόρευον. ἐνταῦθα τῶν μάντεων ὁ πρωτεύων τὸν μὲν εἰς μεσημβρίαν τρέψας ἐγκεκαλυμμένον, αὐτὸς δὲ παραστὰς ἐξόπισθεν καὶ τῇ δεξιᾷ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἐφαπτόμενος αὐτοῦ κατεύξατο, καὶ περιεσκόπει τὰ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν ἐν οἰωνοῖς ἢ συμβόλοις προφαινόμενα, πανταχόσε τὰς ὄψεις [3] περιφέρων. σιγὴ δὲ ἄπιστος ἐν πλήθει τοσούτῳ τὴν ἀγορὰν κατεῖχε καραδοκούντων καὶ συναιωρουμένων τῷ μέλλοντι, μέχρι οὗ προὐφάνησαν ὄρνιθες ἀγαθοὶ καὶ δεξιοὶ ἐπέτρεψαν. οὕτω δὲ τὴν βασιλικὴν ἀναλαβὼν ἐσθῆτα κατέβαινε Νομᾶς εἰς τὸ πλῆθος ἀπὸ τῆς ἄκρας. τότε δὲ καὶ φωναὶ καὶ δεξιώσεις ἦσαν ὡς εὐσεβέστατον καὶ θεοφιλέστατον δεχομένων.

[4] Παραλαβὼν δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν πρῶτον μὲν τὸ τῶν τριακοσίων σύστημα διέλυσεν, οὓς Ῥωμύλος ἔχων ἀεὶ περὶ τὸ σῶμα Κέλερας προσηγόρευσεν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ ταχεῖς· οὔτε γὰρ ἀπιστεῖν πιστεύουσιν οὔτε βασιλεύειν ἀπιστούντων ἠξίου. δεύτερον δὲ τοῖς οὖσιν ἱερεῦσι Διὸς καὶ Ἄρεως τρίτον Ῥωμύλου προσκατέστησεν, ὃν Φλάμινα Κυρινάλιον [5] ὠνόμασεν. ἐκάλουν δὲ καὶ τοὺς προγενεστέρους Φλάμινας ἀπὸ τῶν περικρανίων πίλων οὓς περὶ ταῖς κεφαλαῖς φοροῦσι, πιλαμένας τινὰς ὄντας, ὡς ἱστοροῦσι, τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ὀνομάτων τότε μᾶλλον ἢ νῦν τοῖς Λατίνοις ἀνακεκραμένων. καὶ γὰρ ἃς ἐφόρουν οἱ ἱερεῖς λαίνας ὁ Ἰόβας χλαίνας φησὶν εἶναι, καὶ τὸν ὑπηρετοῦντα τῷ ἱερεῖ τοῦ Διὸς ἀμφιθαλῆ παῖδα λέγεσθαι Κάμιλλον, ὡς καὶ τὸν Ἑρμῆν οὕτως ἔνιοι τῶν Ἑλλήνων Κάμιλλον ἀπὸ τῆς διακονίας προσηγόρευον.

[8] [1] Ταῦτα δὲ ὁ Νομᾶς ἐπ’ εὐνοίᾳ καὶ χάριτι τοῦ δήμου πολιτευσάμενος εὐθὺς ἐπεχείρει τὴν πόλιν, ὥσπερ σίδηρον, ἐκ σκληρᾶς καὶ πολεμικῆς μαλακωτέραν ποιῆσαι καὶ δικαιοτέραν. ἀτεχνῶς γὰρ ἣν Πλάτων ἀποκαλεῖ φλεγμαίνουσαν πόλιν ἐκείνη τότ’ ἦν, συστᾶσα μὲν εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς τόλμῃ τινὶ καὶ παραβόλῳ θρασύτητι τῶν θρασυτάτων καὶ μαχιμωτάτων ἐκεῖ πανταχόθεν [2] ὠσαμένων, ταῖς δὲ πολλαῖς στρατείαις καὶ τοῖς συνεχέσι πολέμοις τροφῇ χρησαμένη καὶ αὐξήσει τῆς δυνάμεως, καὶ καθάπερ τὰ καταπηγνύμενα τῷ σείεσθαι μᾶλλον ἑδράζεται, ῥώννυσθαι δοκοῦσα διὰ τῶν κινδύνων. οὕτω δὴ μετέωρον καὶ τετραχυμένον δῆμον οὐ μικρᾶς οὐδὲ φαύλης οἰόμενος εἶναι πραγματείας μεταχειρίσασθαι καὶ μετακοσμῆσαι πρὸς εἰρήνην, ἐπηγάγετο [3] τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν θεῶν βοήθειαν, τὰ μὲν πολλὰ θυσίαις καὶ πομπαῖς καὶ χορείαις, ἃς αὐτὸς ὠργίασε καὶ κατέστησεν, ἅμα σεμνότητι διαγωγὴν ἐπίχαριν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ἡδονὴν ἐχούσαις, δημαγωγῶν καὶ τιθασεύων τὸ θυμοειδὲς καὶ φιλοπόλεμον· ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ φόβους τινὰς ἀπαγγέλλων παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ φάσματα δαιμόνων ἀλλόκοτα καὶ φωνὰς οὐκ εὐμενεῖς, ἐδούλου καὶ ταπεινὴν ἐποίει τὴν διάνοιαν αὐτῶν ὑπὸ δεισιδαιμονίας.

[4] ἐξ ὧν καὶ μάλιστα λόγον ἔσχεν ἡ σοφία καὶ ἡ παίδευσις τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὡς Πυθαγόρᾳ συγγεγονότος. μέγα γὰρ ἦν μέρος, ὡς ἐκείνῳ τῆς φιλοσοφίας, καὶ τούτῳ τῆς πολιτείας ἡ περὶ τὸ θεῖον ἁγιστεία καὶ διατριβή. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸν ἔξωθεν ὄγκον καὶ σχηματισμὸν ἀπὸ τῆς [5] αὐτῆς Πυθαγόρᾳ διανοίας περιβαλέσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ἀετόν τε δοκεῖ πραῦναι, φωναῖς τισιν ἐπιστήσας καὶ καταγαγὼν ὑπεριπτάμενον, τόν τε μηρὸν ὑποφῆναι χρυσοῦν Ὀλυμπίασι διαπορευόμενος τὴν πανήγυριν· ἄλλας τε τερατώδεις μηχανὰς αὐτοῦ καὶ πράξεις ἀναγγέλλουσιν, ἐφ’ αἷς καὶ Τίμων ὁ Φλιάσιος ἔγραψε·

Πυθαγόρην δὲ γόητας ἀποκλίνοντ’ ἐπὶ δόξας

θήρῃ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπων, σεμνηγορίης ὀαριστήν·

[6] τῷ δὲ Νομᾷ δρᾶμα θεᾶς τινος ἢ νύμφης ὀρείας ἔρως ἦν καὶ συνουσία πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀπόρρητος, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, καὶ κοιναὶ μετὰ Μουσῶν διατριβαί. τὰ γὰρ πλεῖστα τῶν μαντευμάτων εἰς Μούσας ἀνῆγε, καὶ μίαν Μοῦσαν ἰδίως καὶ διαφερόντως ἐδίδαξε σέβεσθαι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, Τακίταν προσαγορεύσας, οἷον σιωπηλὴν ἢ ἐνεάν· ὅπερ εἶναι δοκεῖ τὴν Πυθαγόρειον ἀπομνημονεύοντος ἐχεμυθίαν καὶ τιμῶντος.

[7] Ἔστι δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τῶν ἀφιδρυμάτων νομοθετήματα παντάπασιν ἀδελφὰ τῶν Πυθαγόρου δογμάτων. οὔτε γὰρ ἐκεῖνος αἰσθητὸν ἢ παθητόν, ἀόρατον δὲ καὶ ἄκτιστον καὶ νοητὸν ὑπελάμβανεν εἶναι τὸ πρῶτον, οὗτός τε διεκώλυσεν ἀνθρωποειδῆ καὶ ζῳόμορφον εἰκόνα θεοῦ Ῥωμαίους νομίζειν. οὐδ’ ἦν παρ’ αὐτοῖς οὔτε γραπτὸν [8] οὔτε πλαστὸν εἶδος θεοῦ πρότερον, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἑκατὸν ἑβδομήκοντα τοῖς πρώτοις ἔτεσι ναοὺς μὲν οἰκοδομούμενοι καὶ καλιάδας ἱερὰς ἱστῶντες, ἄγαλμα δὲ οὐδὲν ἔμμορφον ποιούμενοι διετέλουν, ὡς οὔτε ὅσιον ἀφομοιοῦν τὰ βελτίονα τοῖς χείροσιν οὔτε ἐφάπτεσθαι θεοῦ δυνατὸν ἄλλως ἢ νοήσει. κομιδῆ δὲ καὶ τὰ τῶν θυσιῶν ἔχεται τῆς Πυθαγορικῆς ἁγιστείας· ἀναίμακτοι γὰρ ἦσαν αἵ γε πολλαί, δι’ ἀλφίτου καὶ σπονδῆς καὶ τῶν εὐτελεστάτων πεποιημέναι.

[9] Χωρὶς δὲ τούτων ἑτέροις ἔξωθεν ἐπαγωνίζονται τεκμηρίοις οἱ τὸν ἄνδρα τῷ ἀνδρὶ συνοικειοῦντες. ὧν ἓν μέν ἐστιν ὅτι Πυθαγόραν Ῥωμαῖοι τῇ πολιτείᾳ προσέγραψαν, ὡς ἱστόρηκεν Ἐπίχαρμος ὁ κωμικὸς ἔν τινι λόγῳ πρὸς Ἀντήνορα γεγραμμένῳ, παλαιὸς ἀνὴρ καὶ τῆς Πυθαγορικῆς διατριβῆς μετεσχηκώς· ἕτερον δὲ ὅτι τεσσάρων υἱῶν βασιλεῖ Νομᾷ γενομένων ἕνα Μάμερκον ἐπὶ τῷ [10] Πυθαγόρου παιδὶ προσηγόρευσεν. ἀπ’ ἐκείνου δὲ καὶ τὸν Αἰμιλίων οἶκον ἀναμιχθέντα τοῖς πατρικίοις ὀνομασθῆναί φασιν, οὕτως ὑποκοριζομένου τοῦ βασιλέως τὴν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αἱμυλίαν καὶ χάριν. αὐτοὶ δ’ ἀκηκόαμεν πολλῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ διεξιόντων ὅτι χρησμοῦ ποτε Ῥωμαίοις γενομένου τὸν φρονιμώτατον καὶ τὸν ἀνδρειότατον Ἑλλήνων ἱδρύσασθαι παρ’ αὑτοῖς, ἔστησαν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς εἰκόνας χαλκᾶς δύο, τὴν μὲν Ἀλκιβιάδου, τὴν δὲ Πυθαγόρου. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἀμφισβητήσεις ἔχοντα πολλὰς καὶ τὸ κινεῖν διὰ μακροτέρων καὶ τὸ πιστοῦσθαι μειρακιώδους ἐστὶ φιλονεικίας.

[9] [1] Νομᾷ δὲ καὶ τὴν τῶν ἀρχιερέων, οὓς Ποντίφικας καλοῦσι, διάταξιν καὶ κατάστασιν ἀποδιδόασι, καί φασιν αὐτὸν ἕνα τούτων τὸν πρῶτον γεγονέναι. κεκλῆσθαι δὲ τοὺς Ποντίφικας οἱ μὲν ὅτι τοὺς θεοὺς θεραπεύουσι δυνατοὺς καὶ κυρίους ἁπάντων ὄντας· ὁ γὰρ δυνατὸς ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ὀνομάζεται [2] πότηνς· ἕτεροι δέ φασι πρὸς ὑπεξαίρεσιν γεγονέναι τοὔνομα τῶν δυνατῶν, ὡς τοῦ νομοθέτου τὰς δυνατὰς ἐπιτελεῖν ἱερουργίας τοὺς ἱερεῖς κελεύοντος, ἂν δὲ ᾖ τι κώλυμα μεῖζον, οὐ συκοφαντοῦντος. οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι μάλιστα καὶ τὸ γελώμενον τῶν ὀνομάτων δοκιμάζουσιν, ὡς οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ γεφυροποιοὺς τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπικληθέντας ἀπὸ τῶν ποιουμένων περὶ τὴν γέφυραν ἱερῶν, ἁγιωτάτων καὶ παλαιοτάτων ὄντων· πόντεμ γὰρ οἱ Λατῖνοι [3] τὴν γέφυραν ὀνομάζουσιν. εἶναι μέντοι καὶ τὴν τήρησιν αὐτῆς καὶ τὴν ἐπισκευήν, ὥσπερ ἄλλο τι τῶν ἀκινήτων καὶ πατρίων ἱερῶν, προσήκουσαν τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν. οὐ γὰρ θεμιτόν, ἀλλ’ ἐπάρατον ἡγεῖσθαι Ῥωμαίους τὴν κατάλυσιν τῆς ξυλίνης γεφύρας. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸ πάμπαν ἄνευ σιδήρου κατὰ δή τι λόγιον συγγεγομφῶσθαι διὰ τῶν ξύλων. ἡ δὲ λιθίνη πολλοῖς ὕστερον ἐξειργάσθη [4] χρόνοις ὑπ’ Αἰμιλίου ταμιεύοντος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ξυλίνην τῶν Νομᾶ χρόνων ἀπολείπεσθαι λέγουσιν, ὑπὸ Μαρκίου τοῦ Νομᾶ θυγατριδοῦ βασιλεύοντος ἀποτελεσθεῖσαν.

Ὁ δὲ μέγιστος τῶν Ποντιφίκων οἷον ἐξηγητοῦ καὶ προφήτου, μᾶλλον δὲ ἱεροφάντου τάξιν εἴληχεν, οὐ μόνον τῶν δημοσίᾳ δρωμένων ἐπιμελούμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἰδίᾳ θύοντας ἐπισκοπῶν καὶ κωλύων παρεκβαίνειν τὰ νενομισμένα, καὶ διδάσκων ὅτου τις δέοιτο πρὸς θεῶν τιμὴν ἢ παραίτησιν.

[5] ἦν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν παρθένων ἐπίσκοπος, ἃς Ἑστιάδας προσαγορεύουσι. Νομᾷ γὰρ δὴ καὶ τὴν τῶν Ἑστιάδων παρθένων καθιέρωσιν καὶ ὅλως τὴν περὶ τὸ πῦρ τὸ ἀθάνατον, ὃ φυλάττουσιν αὗται, θεραπείαν τε καὶ τιμὴν ἀποδιδόασιν, εἴτε ὡς καθαρὰν καὶ ἄφθαρτον τὴν τοῦ πυρὸς οὐσίαν ἀκηράτοις καὶ ἀμιάντοις παρατιθεμένου σώμασιν, εἴτε τὸ ἄκαρπον καὶ ἄγονον τῇ παρθενίᾳ συνοικειοῦντος. ἐπεί τοι τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὅπου πῦρ ἄσβεστόν ἐστιν, ὡς Πυθοῖ καὶ Ἀθήνησιν, οὐ παρθένοι, γυναῖκες δὲ πεπαυμέναι γάμων ἔχουσι [6] τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν· ἐὰν δὲ ὑπὸ τύχης τινὸς ἐκλίπῃ, καθάπερ Ἀθήνησι μὲν ἐπὶ τῆς Ἀριστίωνος λέγεται τυραννίδος ἀποσβεσθῆναι τὸν ἱερὸν λύχνον, ἐν Δελφοῖς δὲ τοῦ ναοῦ καταπρησθέντος ὑπὸ Μήδων, περὶ δὲ τὰ Μιθριδατικὰ καὶ τὸν ἐμφύλιον Ῥωμαίων πόλεμον ἅμα τῷ βωμῷ τὸ πῦρ ἠφανίσθη, οὔ φασι δεῖν ἀπὸ ἑτέρου πυρὸς ἐναύεσθαι, καινὸν δὲ ποιεῖν καὶ νέον, ἀνάπτοντας ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου φλόγα καθαρὰν καὶ ἀμίαντον.

[7] ἐξάπτουσι δὲ μάλιστα τοῖς σκαφείοις, ἃ κατασκευάζεται μὲν ἀπὸ πλευρᾶς ἰσοσκελοῦς ὀρθογωνίου τριγώνου κοιλαινόμενα, συννεύει δ’ εἰς ἓν ἐκ τῆς περιφερείας κέντρον. ὅταν οὖν θέσιν ἐναντίαν λάβῃ πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον, ὥστε τὰς αὐγὰς πανταχόθεν ἀνακοπτομένας ἀθροίζεσθαι καὶ συμπλέκεσθαι περὶ τὸ κέντρον, αὐτόν τε διακρίνει τὸν ἀέρα λεπτυνόμενον, καὶ τὰ κουφότατα καὶ ξηρότατα τῶν προστιθεμένων ὀξέως ἀνάπτει κατὰ τὴν ἀντέρεισιν, σῶμα καὶ πληγὴν πυρώδη τῆς [8] αὐγῆς λαβούσης. ἔνιοι μὲν οὖν οὐδὲν ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν παρθένων ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸ ἄσβεστον ἐκεῖνο φρουρεῖσθαι πῦρ νομίζουσιν· ἔνιοι δὲ εἶναί τινά φασιν ἀθέατα τοῖς ἄλλοις ἱερὰ κρυπτόμενα, περὶ ὧν ὅσα καὶ πυθέσθαι καὶ φράσαι θεμιτὸν ἐν τῷ Καμίλλου βίῳ γέγραπται.

[10] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ὑπὸ Νομᾶ καθιερωθῆναι λέγουσι Γεγανίαν καὶ Βερηνίαν, δεύτερον δὲ Κανουληΐαν καὶ Ταρπηΐαν· ὕστερον δὲ Σερβίου δύο προσθέντος ἄλλας τῷ ἀριθμῷ διατηρεῖσθαι μέχρι τῶν χρόνων τούτων τὸ πλῆθος. ὡρίσθη δὲ ταῖς ἱεραῖς παρθένοις ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως ἁγνεία τριακονταέτις, ἐν ᾗ τὴν μὲν πρώτην δεκαετίαν ἃ χρὴ δρᾶν μανθάνουσι, τὴν δὲ μέσην ἃ μεμαθήκασι δρῶσι, τὴν δὲ τρίτην ἑτέρας αὐταὶ διδάσκουσιν.

[2] εἶτα ἀνεῖται τῇ βουλομένῃ μετὰ τὸν χρόνον τοῦτον ἤδη καὶ γάμου μεταλαμβάνειν καὶ πρὸς ἕτερον τραπέσθαι βίον, ἀπαλλαγείσῃ τῆς ἱερουργίας. λέγονται δὲ οὐ πολλαὶ ταύτην ἀσπάσασθαι τὴν ἄδειαν, οὐδὲ ἀσπασαμέναις χρηστὰ πράγματα συντυχεῖν, ἀλλὰ μετανοίᾳ καὶ κατηφείᾳ συνοῦσαι τὸν λοιπὸν βίον ἐμβαλεῖν τὰς ἄλλας εἰς δεισιδαιμονίαν, ὥστε μέχρι γήρως καὶ θανάτου διατελεῖν ἐγκαρτερούσας καὶ παρθενευομένας.

[3] Τιμὰς δὲ μεγάλας ἀπέδωκεν αὐταῖς, ὧν ἔστι καὶ τὸ διαθέσθαι ζῶντος ἐξεῖναι πατρὸς καὶ τἆλλα πράττειν ἄνευ προστάτου διαγούσας, ὥσπερ αἱ τρίπαιδες. ῥαβδουχοῦνται δὲ προϊοῦσαι· κἂν ἀγομένῳ τινὶ πρὸς θάνατον αὐτομάτως συντύχωσιν, οὐκ ἀναιρεῖται. δεῖ δὲ ἀπομόσαι τὴν παρθένον ἀκούσιον καὶ τυχαίαν καὶ οὐκ ἐξεπίτηδες γεγονέναι τὴν ἀπάντησιν. ὁ δὲ ὑπελθὼν κομιζομένων [4] ὑπὸ τὸ φορεῖον ἀποθνήσκει. κόλασις δὲ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ἁμαρτημάτων πληγαὶ ταῖς παρθένοις, τοῦ μεγίστου Ποντίφικος κολάζοντος ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ γυμνὴν τὴν πλημμελήσασαν, ὀθόνης ἐν παλινσκίῳ παρατεινομένης· ἡ δὲ τὴν παρθενίαν καταισχύνασα ζῶσα κατορύττεται παρὰ τὴν Κολλίνην λεγομένην πύλην· ἐν ᾗ τις ἔστιν ἐντὸς τῆς πόλεως ὀφρὺς γεώδης παρατείνουσα πόρρω· [5] καλεῖται δὲ χῶμα διαλέκτῳ τῇ Λατίνων. ἐνταῦθα κατασκευάζεται κατάγειος οἶκος οὐ μέγας, ἔχων ἄνωθεν κατάβασιν. κεῖται δὲ ἐν αὐτῷ κλίνη τε ὑπεστρωμένη καὶ λύχνος καιόμενος, ἀπαρχαί τε τῶν πρὸς τὸ ζῆν ἀναγκαίων βραχεῖαί τινες, οἷον ἄρτος, ὕδωρ ἐν ἀγγείῳ, γάλα, ἔλαιον, ὥσπερ ἀφοσιουμένων τὸ μὴ λιμῷ διαφθείρειν σῶμα ταῖς [6] μεγίσταις καθιερωμένον ἁγιστείαις. αὐτὴν δὲ τὴν κολαζομένην εἰς φορεῖον ἐνθέμενοι καὶ καταστεγάσαντες ἔξωθεν καὶ καταλαβόντες ἱμᾶσιν, ὡς μηδὲ φωνὴν ἐξάκουστον γενέσθαι, κομίζουσι δι’ ἀγορᾶς. ἐξίστανται δὲ πάντες σιωπῇ καὶ παραπέμπουσιν ἄφθογγοι μετά τινος δεινῆς κατηφείας· οὐδὲ ἐστὶν ἕτερον θέαμα φρικτότερον, οὐδ’ ἡμέραν [7] ἡ πόλις ἄλλην ἄγει στυγνοτέραν ἐκείνης. ὅταν δὲ πρὸς τὸν τόπον κομισθῇ τὸ φορεῖον, οἱ μὲν ὑπηρέται τοὺς δεσμοὺς ἐξέλυσαν, ὁ δὲ τῶν ἱερέων ἔξαρχος εὐχάς τινας ἀπορρήτους ποιησάμενος καὶ χεῖρας ἀνατείνας θεοῖς πρὸ τῆς ἀνάγκης, ἐξάγει συγκεκαλυμμένην καὶ καθίστησιν ἐπὶ κλίμακος εἰς τὸ οἴκημα κάτω φερούσης. εἶτα αὐτὸς μὲν ἀποτρέπεται μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἱερέων· τῆς δὲ καταβάσης ἥ τε κλίμαξ ἀναιρεῖται καὶ κατακρύπτεται τὸ οἴκημα γῆς πολλῆς ἄνωθεν ἐπιφορουμένης, ὥστε ἰσόπεδον τῷ λοιπῷ χώματι γενέσθαι τὸν τόπον. οὕτω μὲν αἱ προέμεναι τὴν ἱερὰν παρθενίαν κολάζονται.

[11] [1] Νομᾶς δὲ λέγεται καὶ τὸ τῆς Ἑστίας ἱερὸν ἐγκύκλιον περιβαλέσθαι τῷ ἀσβέστῳ πυρὶ φρουράν, ἀπομιμούμενος οὐ τὸ σχῆμα τῆς γῆς ὡς Ἑστίας οὔσης, ἀλλὰ τοῦ σύμπαντος κόσμου, οὗ μέσον οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ τὸ πῦρ ἱδρῦσθαι νομίζουσι, [2] καὶ τοῦτο Ἑστίαν καλοῦσι καὶ μονάδα· τὴν δὲ γῆν οὔτε ἀκίνητον οὔτε ἐν μέσῳ τῆς περιφορᾶς οὖσαν, ἀλλὰ κύκλῳ περὶ τὸ πῦρ αἰωρουμένην οὐ τῶν τιμιωτάτων οὐδὲ τῶν πρώτων τοῦ κόσμου μορίων ὑπάρχειν. ταῦτα δὲ καὶ Πλάτωνά φασι πρεσβύτην γενόμενον διανενοῆσθαι περὶ τῆς γῆς ὡς ἐν ἑτέρᾳ χώρᾳ καθεστώσης, τὴν δὲ μέσην καὶ κυριωτάτην ἑτέρῳ τινὶ κρείττονι προσήκουσαν.

[12] [1] Οἱ δὲ Ποντίφικες καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ταφὰς πάτρια τοῖς χρῄζουσιν ἀφηγοῦνται, Νομᾶ διδάξαντος μηδὲν ἡγεῖσθαι μίασμα τῶν τοιούτων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἐκεῖ θεοὺς σέβεσθαι τοῖς νενομισμένοις, ὡς τὰ κυριώτατα τῶν ἡμετέρων ὑποδεχομένους· ἐξαιρέτως δὲ τὴν προσαγορευομένην Λιβίτιναν, ἐπίσκοπον τῶν περὶ τοὺς θνήσκοντας ὁσίων θεὸν οὖσαν, εἴτε Περσεφόνην εἴτε μᾶλλον, ὡς οἱ λογιώτατοι Ῥωμαίων ὑπολαμβάνουσιν, Ἀφροδίτην, οὐ κακῶς εἰς μιᾶς δύναμιν θεοῦ τὰ περὶ τὰς γενέσεις καὶ τὰς τελευτὰς ἀνάπτοντες.

[2] αὐτὸς δὲ καὶ τὰ πένθη καθ’ ἡλικίας καὶ χρόνους ἔταξεν· οἷον παῖδα μὴ πενθεῖν νεώτερον τριετοῦς, μηδὲ πρεσβύτερον πλείονας μῆνας ὧν ἐβίωσεν ἐνιαυτῶν μέχρι τῶν δέκα, καὶ περαιτέρω μηδεμίαν ἡλικίαν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ μακροτάτου πένθους χρόνον εἶναι δεκαμηνιαῖον, ἐφ’ ὅσον καὶ χηρεύουσιν αἱ τῶν ἀποθανόντων γυναῖκες. ἡ δὲ πρότερον γαμηθεῖσα βοῦν ἐγκύμονα κατέθυεν ἐκείνου νομοθετήσαντος.

[3] Πολλὰς δὲ καὶ ἄλλας Νομᾶ καταδείξαντος ἱερωσύνας ἔτι δυεῖν μνησθήσομαι, τῆς τε Σαλίων καὶ τῆς τῶν Φιτιαλέων, αἳ μάλιστα τὴν εὐσέβειαν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐμφαίνουσιν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ Φιτιαλεῖς εἰρηνοφύλακές τινες ὄντες, ὡς δ’ ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ, καὶ τοὔνομα λαβόντες ἀπὸ τῆς πράξεως, λόγῳ τὰ νείκη κατέπαυον, οὐκ ἐῶντες στρατεύειν πρότερον ἢ πᾶσαν ἐλπίδα δίκης ἀποκοπῆναι.

[4] καὶ γὰρ εἰρήνην Ἕλληνες καλοῦσιν ὅταν λόγῳ, μὴ βίᾳ, πρὸς ἀλλήλους χρώμενοι λύσωσι τὰς διαφοράς. οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαίων Φιτιαλεῖς πολλάκις μὲν ἐβάδιζον ὡς τοὺς ἀδικοῦντας αὐτοὶ πείθοντες εὐγνωμονεῖν· ἀγνωμονούντων δὲ μαρτυράμενοι θεούς, καὶ κατευξάμενοι πολλὰ καὶ δεινὰ καθ’ αὑτῶν αὐτοὶ καὶ τῆς πατρίδος εἰ μὴ δικαίως ἐπεξίασιν, οὕτω κατήγγελλον αὐτοῖς τὸν πόλεμον.

[5] κωλυόντων δὲ τούτων ἢ μὴ συναινούντων, οὔτε στρατιώτῃ θεμιτὸν οὔτε βασιλεῖ Ῥωμαίων ὅπλα κινεῖν, ἀλλὰ παρὰ τούτων ἔδει τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ πολέμου δεξάμενον ὡς δικαίου τὸν ἄρχοντα, τότε σκοπεῖν περὶ τοῦ συμφέροντος. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸ Κελτικὸν ἐκεῖνο πάθος τῇ πόλει γενέσθαι τούτων τῶν ἱερέων παρανομηθέντων.

[6] Ἔτυχον μὲν γὰρ οἱ βάρβαροι Κλουσίνους πολιορκοῦντες· ἐπέμφθη δὲ πρεσβευτὴς Φάβιος Ἄμβουστος εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον διαλύσεις πράξων ὑπὲρ τῶν πολιορκουμένων. λαβὼν δὲ ἀποκρίσεις οὐκ ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ πέρας σχεῖν αὑτῷ τὴν πρεσβείαν οἰόμενος, ἐνεανιεύσατο πρὸ τῶν Κλουσίνων ὅπλα λαβὼν προκαλέσασθαι τὸν ἀριστεύοντα [7] τῶν βαρβάρων. τὰ μὲν οὖν τῆς μάχης εὐτυχεῖτο καὶ καταβαλὼν ἐσκύλευσε τὸν ἄνδρα· γνωρίσαντες δὲ οἱ Κελτοὶ πέμπουσιν εἰς Ῥώμην κήρυκα τοῦ Φαβίου κατηγοροῦντες ὡς ἐκσπόνδου καὶ ἀπίστου καὶ ἀκατάγγελτον ἐξενηνοχότος πρὸς αὐτοὺς πόλεμον. ἐνταῦθα τὴν μὲν σύγκλητον οἱ Φιτιαλεῖς ἔπειθον ἐκδιδόναι τὸν ἄνδρα τοῖς Κελτοῖς, καταφυγὼν δὲ ἐκεῖνος εἰς τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ τῷ δήμῳ σπουδάζοντι χρησάμενος διεκρούσατο τὴν δίκην. μετ’ ὀλίγον δὲ ἐπελθόντες οἱ Κελτοὶ τὴν Ῥώμην πλὴν τοῦ Καπιτωλίου διεπόρθησαν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Καμίλλου μᾶλλον ἀκριβοῦται.

[13] Τοὺς δὲ Σαλίους ἱερεῖς ἐκ τοιαύτης λέγεται συστήσασθαι προφάσεως. ἔτος ὄγδοον αὐτοῦ βασιλεύοντος λοιμώδης νόσος περιϊοῦσα τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἐστρόβησε καὶ τὴν Ῥώμην. ἀθυμούντων δὲ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἱστορεῖται χαλκῆν πέλτην ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καταφερομένην εἰς τὰς Νομᾶ πεσεῖν χεῖρας. ἐπὶ δὲ αὐτῇ θαυμάσιόν τινα λόγον λέγεσθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως, ὃν Ἠγερίας [8] τε καὶ τῶν Μουσῶν πυθέσθαι. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ὅπλον ἥκειν ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ τῆς πόλεως, καὶ δεῖν αὐτὸ φρουρεῖσθαι γενομένων ἄλλων ἕνδεκα καὶ σχῆμα καὶ μέγεθος καὶ μορφὴν ἐκείνῳ παραπλησίων, ὅπως ἄπορον εἴη τῷ κλέπτῃ δι’ ὁμοιότητα τοῦ διοπετοῦς ἐπιτυχεῖν· ἔτι δὲ χρῆναι Μούσαις καθιερῶσαι τὸ χωρίον ἐκεῖνο καὶ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸ λειμῶνας, ὅπου τὰ πολλὰ φοιτῶσαι συνδιατρίβουσιν αὐτῷ. τὴν δὲ πηγὴν ἣ κατάρδει τὸ χωρίον, ὕδωρ ἱερὸν ἀποδεῖξαι ταῖς Ἑστιάσι παρθένοις, ὅπως λαμβάνουσαι καθ’ ἡμέραν ἁγνίζωσι [9] καὶ ῥαίνωσι τὸ ἀνάκτορον. τούτοις μὲν οὖν μαρτυρῆσαι λέγουσι καὶ τὰ τῆς νόσου παραχρῆμα παυσάμενα. τὴν δὲ πέλτην προθέντος αὐτοῦ καὶ κελεύσαντος ἁμιλλᾶσθαι τοὺς τεχνίτας ὑπὲρ τῆς ὁμοιότητος, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἀπειπεῖν, Οὐετούριον δὲ Μαμούριον ἕνα τῶν ἄκρων δημιουργῶν οὕτως ἐφικέσθαι τῆς ἐμφερείας, καὶ κατασκευάσαι πάσας ὁμοίας, ὥστε μηδ’ αὐτὸν ἔτι τὸν Νομᾶν διαγινώσκειν. τούτων οὖν φύλακας καὶ ἀμφιπόλους ἀπέδειξε τοὺς Σαλίους [10] ἱερεῖς. Σάλιοι δὲ ἐκλήθησαν, οὐχ, ὡς ἔνιοι μυθολογοῦσι, Σαμόθρᾳκος ἀνδρὸς ἢ Μαντινέως, ὄνομα Σαλίου, πρώτου τὴν ἐνόπλιον ἐκδιδάξαντος ὄρχησιν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀπὸ τῆς ὀρχήσεως αὐτῆς, ἁλτικῆς οὔσης, ἣν ὑπορχοῦνται διαπορευόμενοι τὴν πόλιν, ὅταν τὰς ἱερὰς πέλτας ἀναλάβωσιν ἐν τῷ Μαρτίῳ μηνί, φοινικοῦς μὲν ἐνδεδυμένοι χιτωνίσκους, μίτραις δὲ χαλκαῖς ἐπεζωσμένοι πλατείαις καὶ κράνη χαλκᾶ φοροῦντες, ἐγχειριδίοις [11] δὲ μικροῖς τὰ ὅπλα κρούοντες. ἡ δὲ ἄλλη τῆς ὀρχήσεως ποδῶν ἔργον ἐστί· κινοῦνται γὰρ ἐπιτερπῶς, ἑλιγμούς τινας καὶ μεταβολὰς ἐν ῥυθμῷ τάχος ἔχοντι καὶ πυκνότητα μετὰ ῥώμης καὶ κουφότητος ἀποδιδόντες.

Αὐτὰς δὲ τὰς πέλτας ἀγκύλια καλοῦσι διὰ τὸ σχῆμα· κύκλος γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲ ἀποδίδωσιν, ὡς πέλτη, τὴν περιφέρειαν, ἀλλ’ ἐκτομὴν ἔχει γραμμῆς ἑλικοειδοῦς, ἧς αἱ κεραῖαι καμπὰς ἔχουσαι καὶ συνεπιστρέφουσαι τῇ πυκνότητι πρὸς [12] ἀλλήλας ἀγκύλον τὸ σχῆμα ποιοῦσιν· ἢ διὰ τὸν ἀγκῶνα περὶ ὃν περιφέρονται. ταῦτα γὰρ ὁ Ἰόβας εἴρηκε γλιχόμενος ἐξελληνίσαι τοὔνομα. δύναιτο δ’ ἂν τῆς ἀνέκαθεν φορᾶς πρῶτον ἐπώνυμον γεγονέναι, καὶ τῆς ἀκέσεως τῶν νοσούντων, καὶ τῆς τῶν αὐχμῶν λύσεως, ἔτι δὲ τῆς τῶν δεινῶν ἀνασχέσεως, καθ’ ὃ καὶ τοὺς Διοσκούρους Ἄνακας Ἀθηναῖοι προσηγόρευσαν, εἴ γε δεῖ πρὸς τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν διάλεκτον ἐξάγειν τοὔνομα.

[13] Τῷ δὲ Μαμουρίῳ λέγουσι μισθὸν γενέσθαι τῆς τέχνης ἐκείνης μνήμην τινὰ δι’ ᾠδῆς ὑπὸ τῶν Σαλίων ἅμα τῷ πυρρίχῃ διαπεραινομένης. οἱ δὲ οὐ Οὐετούριον Μαμούριον εἶναί φασι τὸν ᾀδόμενον, ἀλλὰ οὐετέρεμ μεμορίαμ, ὅπερ ἐστί, παλαιὰν μνήμην.

[14] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ διεκόσμησε τὰς ἱερωσύνας, ἐδείματο πλησίον τοῦ τῆς Ἑστίας ἱεροῦ τὴν καλουμένην Ῥηγίαν, οἷόν τι βασίλειον οἴκημα· καὶ τὸ πλεῖστον αὐτόθι τοῦ χρόνου διέτριβεν ἱερουργῶν ἢ διδάσκων τοὺς ἱερεῖς ἢ πρὸς ἐννοίᾳ τινὶ τῶν θείων πρὸς αὑτὸν σχολάζων. οἰκίαν δ’ εἶχεν ἑτέραν περὶ τὸν Κυρίνου λόφον, ἧς ἔτι νῦν τὸν τόπον ἐπιδεικνύουσιν. ἐν δὲ ταῖς προπομπαῖς καὶ ὅλως τῶν ἱερέων ταῖς πομπαῖς προηγοῦντο κήρυκες ἀνὰ τὴν πόλιν ἐλινύειν κελεύοντες καὶ [2] τὰ ἔργα καταπαύοντες. ὡς γάρ φασι τοὺς Πυθαγορικοὺς οὐκ ἐᾶν ἐκ παρόδου προσκυνεῖν καὶ προσεύχεσθαι τοῖς θεοῖς, ἀλλ’ οἴκοθεν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τοῦτο γνώμῃ παρεσκευασμένους βαδίζειν, οὕτως ᾤετο Νομᾶς χρῆναι τοὺς πολίτας μήτε ἀκούειν τι τῶν θείων μήτε ὁρᾶν ἐν παρέργῳ καὶ ἀμελῶς, ἀλλὰ σχολὴν ἄγοντας ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων καὶ προσέχοντας τὴν διάνοιαν ὡς πράξει μεγίστῃ τῇ περὶ τὴν εὐσέβειαν, ψόφων τε καὶ πατάγων καὶ στεναγμῶν, καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις καὶ βαναύσοις πόνοις ἕπεται, καθαρὰς τὰς ὁδοὺς ταῖς ἱερουργίαις παρέχοντας. ὧν ἴχνος τι μέχρι νῦν διασώζοντες, ὅταν ἄρχων πρὸς ὄρνισιν ἢ θυσίαις διατρίβῃ, βοῶσιν “Ὃκ ἄγε·” σημαίνει δὲ ἡ φωνὴ “Τοῦτο πρᾶσσε,” συνεπιστρέφουσα καὶ κατακοσμοῦσα τοὺς προστυγχάνοντας.

[3] Ἦν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων παραγγελμάτων αὐτοῦ πολλὰ τοῖς Πυθαγορικοῖς ἐοικότα. ὡς γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι παρῄνουν ἐπὶ χοίνικος μὴ καθῆσθαι, καὶ μαχαίρᾳ πῦρ μὴ σκαλεύειν, καὶ βαδίζοντας εἰς ἀποδημίας μὴ μεταστρέφεσθαι, καὶ τοῖς μὲν οὐρανίοις περισσὰ θύειν, ἄρτια δὲ τοῖς χθονίοις, ὧν ἑκάστου τὴν διάνοιαν ἀπεκρύπτοντο πρὸς τοὺς πολλούς, οὕτως ἔνια τῶν Νομᾶ πατρίων ἀπόρρητον ἔχει τὸν λόγον· οἷον τὸ μὴ σπένδειν θεοῖς ἐξ ἀμπέλων ἀτμήτων μηδὲ θύειν ἄτερ ἀλφίτων· καὶ τὸ προσκυνεῖν περιστρεφομένους [4] καὶ τὸ καθῆσθαι προσκυνήσαντας. τὰ μὲν οὖν πρῶτα δύο τὴν γῆς ἐξημέρωσιν ἔοικε διδάσκειν, ὡς μόριον εὐσεβείας οὖσαν· ἡ δὲ περιστροφὴ τῶν προσκυνούντων λέγεται μὲν ἀπομίμησις εἶναι τῆς τοῦ κόσμου περιφορᾶς, δόξειε δ’ ἂν μᾶλλον ὁ προσκυνῶν, ἐπεὶ πρὸς ἕω τῶν ἱερῶν βλεπόντων ἀπέστραπται τὰς ἀνατολάς, μεταβάλλειν ἑαυτὸν ἐνταῦθα καὶ περιστρέφειν ἐπὶ τὸν θεόν, κύκλον ποιῶν καὶ συνάπτων τὴν ἐπιτελείωσιν τῆς εὐχῆς [5] δι’ ἀμφοῖν· εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοις τροχοῖς αἰνίττεταί τι καὶ διδάσκει παραπλήσιον ἡ μεταβολὴ τοῦ σχήματος, ὡς οὐδενὸς ἑστῶτος τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων, ἀλλ’ ὅπως ἂν στρέφῃ καὶ ἀνελίττῃ τὸν βίον ἡμῶν ὁ θεός, ἀγαπᾶν καὶ δέχεσθαι προσῆκον. τὸ δὲ καθέζεσθαι προσκυνήσαντας οἰωνισμὸν εἶναι λέγουσι τοῦ βεβαιότητα ταῖς εὐχαῖς καὶ διαμονὴν τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἐπιγίνεσθαι. λέγουσι δὲ καὶ πράξεων διορισμὸν εἶναι τὴν [6] ἀνάπαυσιν· ὡς οὖν τῇ προτέρᾳ πράξει πέρας ἐπιτιθέντας καθέζεσθαι παρὰ τοῖς θεοῖς, ἵνα ἑτέρας πάλιν ἀρχὴν παρ’ ἐκείνων λάβωσι. δύναται δὲ καὶ τοῦτο τοῖς εἰρημένοις ὁμολογεῖν, ἐθίζοντος ἡμᾶς τοῦ νομοθέτου μὴ ποιεῖσθαι τὰς πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἐντεύξεις ἐν ἀσχολίᾳ καὶ παρέργως οἷον σπεύδοντας, ἀλλ’ ὅταν χρόνον ἔχωμεν καὶ σχολὴν ἄγωμεν.

[15] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τῆς τοιαύτης παιδαγωγίας πρὸς τὸ θεῖον οὕτως ἡ πόλις ἐγεγόνει χειροήθης καὶ κατατεθαμβημένη τὴν τοῦ Νομᾶ δύναμιν, ὥστε μύθοις ἐοικότας τὴν ἀτοπίαν λόγους παραδέχεσθαι, καὶ νομίζειν μηδὲν ἄπιστον εἶναι μηδὲ [2] ἀμήχανον ἐκείνου βουληθέντος. λέγεται γοῦν ποτε καλέσας ἐπὶ τὴν τράπεζαν οὐκ ὀλίγους τῶν πολιτῶν, σκεύη τε φαῦλα καὶ δεῖπνον εὐτελὲς πάνυ προθέσθαι καὶ δημοτικόν· ἀρξαμένων δὲ δειπνεῖν ἐμβαλὼν λόγον ὡς ἡ θεὸς ᾗ σύνεστιν ἥκοι πρὸς αὐτόν, αἰφνίδιον ἐπιδεῖξαι τόν τε οἶκον ἐκπωμάτων πλήρη πολυτελῶν καὶ τὰς τραπέζας ὄψων τε παντοδαπῶν καὶ παρασκευῆς δαψιλοῦς [3] γεμούσας. πᾶσαν δὲ ὑπερβέβληκεν ἀτοπίαν τὸ ὑπὲρ τῆς τοῦ Διὸς ὁμιλίας ἱστορούμενον. μυθολογοῦσι γὰρ εἰς τὸν Ἀβεντῖνον λόφον οὔπω μέρος ὄντα τῆς πόλεως οὐδὲ συνοικούμενον, ἀλλ’ ἔχοντα πηγάς τε δαψιλεῖς ἐν αὑτῷ καὶ νάπας σκιεράς, φοιτᾶν δύο δαίμονας, Πῖκον καὶ Φαῦνον· οὓς τὰ μὲν ἄλλα Σατύρων ἄν τις ἢ Πανῶν γένει προσεικάσειε, δυνάμει δὲ φαρμάκων καὶ δεινότητι τῆς περὶ τὰ θεῖα γοητείας λέγονται ταὐτὰ τοῖς ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων προσαγορευθεῖσιν Ἰδαίοις Δακτύλοις [4] σοφιζόμενοι περιϊέναι τὴν Ἰταλίαν. τούτους φασὶ χειρώσασθαι τὸν Νομᾶν, οἴνῳ καὶ μέλιτι κεράσαντα τὴν κρήνην ἀφ’ ἧς ἔπινον συνήθως. ληφθέντας δὲ πολλὰς μὲν ἰδέας τρέπεσθαι καὶ μετεκδύεσθαι τὴν αὑτῶν φύσιν, ἀλλόκοτα φάσματα καὶ φοβερὰ τῆς ὄψεως προβαλλομένους· ἐπεὶ δὲ ἔγνωσαν ἑαλωκότες ἰσχυρὰν καὶ ἄφυκτον ἅλωσιν, ἄλλα τε προθεσπίσαι πολλὰ τῶν μελλόντων καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς κεραυνοῖς ἐκδιδάξαι καθαρμόν, ὃς ποιεῖται μέχρι νῦν διὰ κρομμύων [5] καὶ τριχῶν καὶ μαινίδων. ἔνιοι δὲ οὐ τοὺς δαίμονάς φασιν ὑποθέσθαι τὸν καθαρμόν, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνους μὲν καταγαγεῖν τὸν Δία μαγεύσαντας, τὸν δὲ θεὸν ὀργιζόμενον τῷ Νομᾷ προστάσσειν ὡς χρὴ γενέσθαι τὸν καθαρμὸν κεφαλαῖς· ὑπολαβόντος δὲ τοῦ Νομᾶ, “κρομμύων;” εἰπεῖν, “ἀνθρώπων·” τὸν δὲ αὖθις ἐκτρέποντα τὸ τοῦ προστάγματος δεινὸν ἐπερέσθαι, “θριξίν;” ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Διός, “ἐμψύχοις,” ἐπαγαγεῖν τὸν Νομᾶν, “μαινίσι;” ταῦτα λέγειν ὑπὸ τῆς [6] Ἠγερίας δεδιδαγμένον. καὶ τὸν μὲν θεὸν ἀπελθεῖν ἵλεω γενόμενον, τὸν δὲ τόπον Ἰλίκιον ἀπ’ ἐκείνου προσαγορευθῆναι καὶ τὸν καθαρμὸν οὕτω συντελεῖσθαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τὰ μυθώδη καὶ γελοῖα τὴν τῶν τότε ἀνθρώπων ἐπιδείκνυται διάθεσιν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον, ἣν ὁ ἐθισμὸς αὐτοῖς ἐνεποίησεν. αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Νομᾶν οὕτω φασὶν εἰς τὸ θεῖον ἀνηρτῆσθαι ταῖς ἐλπίσιν, ὥστε καὶ προσαγγελίας αὐτῷ ποτε γενομένης ὡς ἐπέρχονται πολέμιοι, μειδιᾶσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν· “Ἐγὼ δὲ θύω.”

[16] [1] Πρῶτον δέ φασι καὶ Πίστεως καὶ Τέρμονος ἱερὸν ἱδρύσασθαι. καὶ τὴν μὲν Πίστιν ὅρκον ἀποδεῖξαι Ῥωμαίοις μέγιστον, ᾧ χρώμενοι μέχρι νῦν διατελοῦσιν· ὁ δὲ Τέρμων ὅρος ἄν τις εἴη, καὶ θύουσιν αὐτῷ δημοσίᾳ καὶ ἰδίᾳ κατὰ τοὺς τῶν ἀγρῶν περιορισμούς, νῦν μὲν ἔμψυχα, τὸ παλαιὸν δὲ ἀναίμακτος ἦν ἡ θυσία, Νομᾶ φιλοσοφήσαντος ὡς χρὴ τὸν ὅριον θεὸν εἰρήνης φύλακα καὶ δικαιοσύνης μάρτυν ὄντα φόνου [2] καθαρὸν εἶναι. δοκεῖ δὲ καὶ ὅλως οὗτος ὁρίσαι τὴν χώραν ὁ βασιλεύς, Ῥωμύλου μὴ βουληθέντος ἐξομολογήσασθαι τῷ μέτρῳ τοῦ οἰκείου τὴν ἀφαίρεσιν τοῦ ἀλλοτρίου· δεσμὸν γὰρ εἶναι τῆς δυνάμεως τὸν ὅρον, ἂν φυλάττηται, μὴ φυλαττόμενον δὲ τῆς ἀδικίας ἔλεγχον. οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ ἦν δαψιλὴς χώρα τῇ πόλει κατ’ ἀρχάς, ἀλλὰ [3] τὴν πολλὴν αἰχμῇ προσεκτήσατο Ῥωμύλος· καὶ ταύτην πᾶσαν ὁ Νομᾶς διένειμε τοῖς ἀπόροις τῶν πολιτῶν, ὡς ἀνάγκην τῆς ἀδικίας ἀφαιρῶν τὴν ἀπορίαν, καὶ τρέπων ἐπὶ γεωργίαν τὸν δῆμον ἅμα τῇ χώρᾳ συνεξημερούμενον. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄλλο τῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων οὕτως ἔρωτα δριμὺν εἰρήνης ἐργάζεται καὶ ταχὺν ὡς ὁ ἀπὸ γῆς βίος, ἐν ᾧ καὶ τῆς πολεμικῆς εὐτολμίας τὸ μὲν ὑπερμαχητικὸν τοῦ οἰκείου διαμένει καὶ πάρεστι, τὸ δὲ εἰς ἀδικίαν καὶ πλεονεξίαν ἀνειμένον ἐκκέκοπται.

[4] διὸ καὶ τὴν γεωργίαν ὁ Νομᾶς οἷον εἰρήνης φίλτρον ἐμμίξας τοῖς πολίταις καὶ μᾶλλον ὡς ἠθοποιὸν ἢ πλουτοποιὸν ἀγαπήσας τέχνην, εἰς μέρη τὴν χώραν διεῖλεν, ἃ πάγους προσηγόρευσε, καὶ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐπισκόπους ἔταξε καὶ περιπόλους. ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ αὐτὸς ἐφορῶν καὶ τεκμαιρόμενος ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων τοὺς τρόπους τῶν πολιτῶν τοὺς μὲν εἰς τιμὰς καὶ πίστεις ἀνῆγε, τοὺς δὲ ῥᾳθύμους καὶ ἀμελεῖς ψέγων καὶ κακίζων ἐσωφρόνιζε.

[17] [1] Τῶν δὲ ἄλλων αὐτοῦ πολιτευμάτων ἡ κατὰ τέχνας διανομὴ τοῦ πλήθους μάλιστα θαυμάζεται. τῆς γὰρ πόλεως ἐκ δυεῖν γενῶν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, συνεστάναι δοκούσης, διεστώσης δὲ μᾶλλον καὶ μηδενὶ τρόπῳ μιᾶς γενέσθαι βουλομένης μηδὲ οἷον ἐξαλεῖψαι τὴν ἑτερότητα καὶ διαφοράν, ἀλλὰ συγκρούσεις ἀπαύστους καὶ φιλονεικίας τῶν μερῶν ἐχούσης, διανοηθεὶς ὅτι καὶ τῶν σωμάτων τὰ φύσει δύσμικτα καὶ σκληρὰ καταθραύοντες καὶ διαιροῦντες ἀναμιγνύουσιν, ὑπὸ μικρότητος ἀλλήλοις συμβαίνοντα μᾶλλον, [2] ἔγνω κατατεμεῖν τομὰς πλείονας τὸ σύμπαν πλῆθος· ἐκ δὲ τούτων εἰς ἑτέρας ἐμβαλὼν διαφορὰς τὴν πρώτην ἐκείνην καὶ μεγάλην ἀφανίσαι ταῖς ἐλάττοσιν ἐνδιασπαρεῖσαν. ἦν δὲ ἡ διανομὴ κατὰ τὰς τέχνας, αὐλητῶν, χρυσοχόων, τεκτόνων, βαφέων, σκυτοτόμων, σκυτοδεψῶν, χαλκέων, κεραμέων. τὰς δὲ λοιπὰς τέχνας εἰς ταὐτὸ συναγαγὼν ἓν αὐτῶν ἐκ πασῶν ἀπέδειξε σύστημα.

[3] κοινωνίας δὲ καὶ συνόδους καὶ θεῶν τιμὰς ἀποδοὺς ἑκάστῳ γένει πρεπούσας, τότε πρῶτον ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἀνεῖλε τὸ λέγεσθαι καὶ νομίζεσθαι τοὺς μὲν Σαβίνους, τοὺς δὲ Ῥωμαίους, καὶ τοὺς μὲν Τατίου, τοὺς δὲ Ῥωμύλου πολίτας, ὥστε τὴν διαίρεσιν εὐαρμοστίαν καὶ ἀνάμιξιν πάντων γενέσθαι πρὸς πάντας.

[4] Ἐπαινεῖται δὲ τῶν πολιτικῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ περὶ τὸν νόμον διόρθωμα τὸν διδόντα τοῖς πατράσι τοὺς παῖδας πιπράσκειν, ὑπεξελομένου τοὺς γεγαμηκότας, εἰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἐπαινοῦντος καὶ κελεύοντος ὁ γάμος γένοιτο. δεινὸν γὰρ ἡγεῖτο τὴν ὡς ἐλευθέρῳ γεγαμημένην γυναῖκα δούλῳ συνοικεῖν.

[18] [1] Ἥψατο δὲ καὶ τῆς περὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν πραγματείας οὔτε ἀκριβῶς οὔτε παντάπασιν ἀθεωρήτως. Ῥωμύλου γὰρ βασιλεύοντος ἀλόγως ἐχρῶντο τοῖς μησὶ καὶ ἀτάκτως, τοὺς μὲν οὐδὲ εἴκοσιν ἡμερῶν, τοὺς δὲ πέντε καὶ τριάκοντα, τοὺς δὲ πλειόνων λογιζόμενοι, τῆς δὲ γινομένης ἀνωμαλίας περὶ τὴν σελήνην καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἔννοιαν οὐκ ἔχοντες, ἀλλ’ ἓν φυλάττοντες μόνον, ὅπως ἑξήκοντα καὶ τριακοσίων ἡμερῶν ὁ ἐνιαυτὸς [2] ἔσται. Νομᾶς δὲ τὸ παράλλαγμα τῆς ἀνωμαλίας ἡμερῶν ἕνδεκα γίνεσθαι λογιζόμενος, ὡς τοῦ μὲν σεληνιακοῦ τριακοσίας πεντήκοντα τέσσαρας ἔχοντος ἡμέρας, τοῦ δὲ ἡλιακοῦ τριακοσίας ἑξήκοντα πέντε, τὰς ἕνδεκα ταύτας ἡμέρας διπλασιάζων ἐπήγαγε παρ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐπὶ τῷ Φεβρουαρίῳ μηνὶ τὸν ἐμβόλιμον, ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων Μερκηδῖνον καλούμενον, εἴκοσι καὶ δυοῖν ἡμερῶν ὄντα.

[3] καὶ τοῦτο μὲν αὐτῷ τὸ ἴαμα τῆς ἀνωμαλίας μειζόνων ἔμελλεν ἰαμάτων δεήσεσθαι.

Μετεκίνησε δὲ καὶ τὴν τάξιν τῶν μηνῶν· τὸν γὰρ Μάρτιον πρῶτον ὄντα τρίτον ἔταξε, πρῶτον δὲ τὸν Ἰανουάριον, ὃς ἦν ἑνδέκατος ἐπὶ Ῥωμύλου, δωδέκατος δὲ καὶ τελευταῖος ὁ Φεβρουάριος, ᾧ νῦν δευτέρῳ χρῶνται. πολλοὶ δέ εἰσιν οἳ καὶ προστεθῆναι τούτους ὑπὸ Νομᾶ τοὺς μῆνας λέγουσι, τόν τε Ἰανουάριον καὶ τὸν Φεβρουάριον, [4] ἐξ ἀρχῆς δὲ χρῆσθαι δέκα μόνον εἰς τὸν ἐνιαυτόν, ὡς ἔνιοι τῶν βαρβάρων τρισί, καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων Ἀρκάδες μὲν τέσσαρσιν, ἓξ δὲ Ἀκαρνᾶνες, Αἰγυπτίοις δὲ μηνιαῖος ἦν ὁ ἐνιαυτός, εἶτα τετράμηνος, ὥς φασι. διὸ καὶ νεωτάτην χώραν οἰκοῦντες ἀρχαιότατοι δοκοῦσιν εἶναι καὶ πλῆθος ἀμήχανον ἐτῶν ἐπὶ ταῖς γενεαλογίαις καταφέρουσιν, ἅτε δὴ τοὺς μῆνας εἰς ἐτῶν ἀριθμὸν τιθέμενοι.

[19] [1] Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ ὅτι μὲν δέκα μῆνας εἰς τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν ἔταττον, οὐ δώδεκα, τεκμήριον ἡ τοῦ τελευταίου προσηγορία· δέκατον γὰρ αὐτὸν ἄχρι νῦν καλοῦσιν· ὅτι δὲ τὸν Μάρτιον πρῶτον, ἡ τάξις· τὸν γὰρ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου πέμπτον ἐκάλουν πέμπτον· ἕκτον δὲ τὸν ἕκτον καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἑξῆς ὁμοίως ἕκαστον, ἐπεὶ τὸν Ἰανουάριον καὶ τὸν Φεβρουάριον πρὸ τοῦ Μαρτίου τιθεμένοις συνέβαινεν αὐτοῖς τὸν εἰρημένον μῆνα πέμπτον [2] μὲν ὀνομάζειν, ἕβδομον δὲ ἀριθμεῖν. ἄλλως δὲ καὶ λόγον εἶχε τὸν Μάρτιον Ἄρει καθιερωμένον ὑπὸ τοῦ Ῥωμύλου πρῶτον ὀνομάζεσθαι· δεύτερον δὲ τὸν Ἀπρίλλιον, ἐπώνυμον ὄντα τῆς Ἀφροδίτης, ἐν ᾧ θύουσί τε τῇ θεῷ καὶ ταῖς καλάνδαις αἱ γυναῖκες ἐστεφανωμέναι μυρσίνῃ λούονται. τινὲς δὲ οὐ διὰ τὴν Ἀφροδίτην τὸν Ἀπρίλλιόν φασιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἔχει τοὔνομα ψιλόν, Ἀπρίλλιον κεκλῆσθαι τὸν μῆνα τῆς ἐαρινῆς ὥρας ἀκμαζούσης ἀνοίγοντα καὶ ἀνακαλύπτοντα τοὺς βλαστοὺς τῶν φυτῶν· τοῦτο γὰρ ἡ γλῶττα σημαίνει.

[3] τῶν δ’ ἐφεξῆς τὸν μὲν Μάϊον καλοῦσιν ἀπὸ Μαίας· Ἑρμῇ γὰρ ἀνιέρωται· τὸν δὲ Ἰούνιον ἀπὸ τῆς Ἥρας. εἰσὶ δέ τινες οἱ τούτους ἡλικίας ἐπωνύμους εἶναι λέγοντες πρεσβυτέρας καὶ νεωτέρας· μαϊώρεις γὰρ οἱ πρεσβύτεροι παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ἰουνιώρεις δὲ οἱ νεώτεροι καλοῦνται. τῶν δὲ λοιπῶν ἕκαστον ἀπὸ τῆς τάξεως, ὥσπερ ἀριθμοῦντες, ὠνόμαζον πέμπτον, ἕκτον, ἕβδομον, ὄγδοον, ἔνατον, δέκατον· [4] εἶτα ὁ πέμπτος ἀπὸ Καίσαρος τοῦ καταγωνισαμένου Πομπήϊον Ἰούλιος· ὁ δὲ ἕκτος Αὔγουστος ἀπὸ τοῦ δευτέρου μὲν ἄρξαντος, Σεβαστοῦ δὲ ἐπικληθέντος, ὠνομάσθη. τοὺς δὲ ἐφεξῆς Δομετιανὸς εἰσεποίησε ταῖς αὑτοῦ προσωνυμίαις οὐ πολὺν χρόνον, ἀλλὰ τὰς αὑτῶν ἀναλαβόντες πάλιν ἐκείνου σφαγέντος ὁ μὲν ἕβδομος, ὁ δὲ ὄγδοος καλοῦνται. μόνοι δ’ οἱ τελευταῖοι δύο τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς τάξεως κλῆσιν, ὥσπερ ἔσχον ἐξ ἀρχῆς, διεφύλαξαν.

[5] Τῶν δὲ ὑπὸ Νομᾶ προστεθέντων ἢ μετατεθέντων ὁ μὲν Φεβρουάριος οἷον καθάρσιος ἄν τις εἴη· καὶ γὰρ ἡ λέξις ἔγγιστα τοῦτο σημαίνει, καὶ τοῖς φθιτοῖς ἐναγίζουσι τότε καὶ τὴν τῶν Λουπερκαλίων ἑορτὴν εἰς τὰ πολλὰ καθαρμῷ προσεοικυῖαν τελοῦσιν· ὁ δὲ πρῶτος Ἰανουάριος ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἰανοῦ. δοκεῖ δέ μοι τὸν Μάρτιον ὁ Νομᾶς ἐπώνυμον ὄντα τοῦ Ἄρεως ἐκ τῆς προεδρίας μεταστῆσαι, βουλόμενος ἐν παντὶ τῆς πολεμικῆς [6] δυνάμεως προτιμᾶσθαι τὴν πολιτικήν. ὁ γὰρ Ἰανὸς ἐν τοῖς πάνυ παλαιοῖς εἴτε δαίμων εἴτε βασιλεὺς γενόμενος πολιτικὸς καὶ κοινωνικὸς ἐκ τοῦ θηριώδους καὶ ἀγρίου λέγεται μεταβαλεῖν τὴν δίαιταν. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πλάττουσιν αὐτὸν ἀμφιπρόσωπον, ὡς ἑτέραν ἐξ ἑτέρας τῷ βίῳ περιποιήσαντα τὴν μορφὴν καὶ διάθεσιν.

[20] [1] Ἔστι δὲ αὐτοῦ καὶ νεὼς ἐν Ῥώμῃ δίθυρος, ὃν πολέμου πύλην καλοῦσι. νομίζεται γὰρ ἀνεῷχθαι μὲν αὐτὸν ὅταν ᾖ πόλεμος, κεκλεῖσθαι δὲ εἰρήνης γενομένης. ὃ δὲ χαλεπὸν ἦν καὶ σπανίως γινόμενον, ἀεί τινι συνηρτημένης πολέμῳ τῆς ἡγεμονίας, διὰ μέγεθος τοῖς κύκλῳ περικεχυμένοις γένεσι βαρβάροις ἀντερειδούσης.

[2] πλὴν ἐπί γε τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ Καίσαρος ἐκλείσθη καθελόντος Ἀντώνιον· καὶ πρότερον ὑπατευόντων Μάρκου Ἀτιλίου καὶ Τίτου Μαλλίου χρόνον οὐ πολύν· εἶτα εὐθὺς ἀνεῴχθη πολέμου συρραγέντος. ἀλλ’ ἐπί γε τῆς Νομᾶ βασιλείας οὐδεμίαν ἡμέραν ἀνεῳγμένος ὤφθη, τρία δὲ καὶ τετταράκοντα ἔτη συνεχῶς ἔμεινε κεκλεισμένος· οὕτως ἐξῄρητο παντελῶς τὰ τοῦ πολέμου καὶ [3] πανταχόθεν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ὁ Ῥωμαίων ἡμέρωτο καὶ κατεκεκήλητο τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ πρᾳότητι τοῦ βασιλέως δῆμος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς κύκλῳ πόλεις, ὥσπερ αὔρας τινὸς ἐκεῖθεν ἢ πνεύματος ὑγιεινοῦ φέροντος, ἀρχὴ μεταβολῆς ἔλαβε καὶ πόθος εἰσερρύη πάντας εὐνομίας καὶ εἰρήνης καὶ γῆν φυτεύειν καὶ τέκνα τρέφειν ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ καὶ [4] σέβεσθαι θεούς. ἑορταὶ δὲ καὶ θαλίαι καὶ παρ’ ἀλλήλους ἀδεῶς ἰόντων καὶ ἀναμιγνυμένων ὑποδοχαὶ καὶ φιλοφροσύναι τὴν Ἰταλίαν κατεῖχον, οἷον ἐκ πηγῆς τῆς Νομᾶ σοφίας τῶν καλῶν καὶ δικαίων ἐπεισρεόντων εἰς ἅπαντας καὶ διαχεομένης τῆς περὶ ἐκεῖνον γαλήνης· ὥστε καὶ τὰς ποιητικὰς ὑπερβολὰς ἐνδεῖν πρὸς τὴν τότε κατάστασιν [5] λέγουσιν· “Ἐν δὲ σιδαροδέτοις πόρπαξιν αἰθᾶν ἀραχνᾶν ἔργα·” καί, “εὐρὼς δάμναται ἔγχεά τε λογχωτὰ ξίφεά τ’ ἀμφήκεα, χαλκεᾶν δὲ οὐκέτι σαλπίγγων κτύπος, οὐδὲ συλᾶται μελίφρων ὕπνος ἀπὸ βλεφάρων.” οὔτε γὰρ πόλεμος οὔτε στάσις οὔτε νεωτερισμὸς περὶ πολιτείαν ἱστόρηται Νομᾶ βασιλεύοντος· οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον ἔχθρα τις ἢ φθόνος ἢ δι’ ἔρωτα [6] βασιλείας ἐπιβουλὴ καὶ σύστασις ἀνδρῶν, ἀλλ’ εἴτε φόβος θεῶν προκήδεσθαι δοκούντων τοῦ ἀνδρὸς εἴτε τῆς ἀρετῆς αἰδὼς εἴτε δαιμόνιος τύχη, πάσης κακίας ἄθικτον ἐπ’ ἐκείνου καὶ καθαρὸν διαφυλάττουσα τὸν βίον, ἐναργὲς ἐξήνεγκε παράδειγμα καὶ τεκμήριον τῆς Πλατωνικῆς φωνῆς, ἣν ὕστερον ἐκεῖνος οὐκ ὀλίγοις χρόνοις [7] γενόμενος ἐτόλμησεν ἀφεῖναι περὶ πολιτείας, ὡς μία κακῶν παῦλα καὶ λύσις ἀνθρώποις ἐστίν, ἔκ τινος τύχης θείας εἰς ταὐτὸ διανοίᾳ φιλοσόφῳ βασιλικὴν συμπεσοῦσαν δύναμιν ἐγκρατῆ καὶ ὑπερδέξιον τῆς κακίας τὴν ἀρετὴν καταστῆσαι. “Μακάριος μὲν γὰρ αὐτὸς” ὁ σώφρων ὡς ἀληθῶς, “μακάριοι δὲ οἱ συνήκοοι τῶν ἐκ τοῦ σωφρονοῦντος [8] στόματος ἰόντων λόγων.” τάχα γὰρ οὐδὲ ἀνάγκης τινὸς δεῖ πρὸς τοὺς πολλοὺς οὐδὲ ἀπειλῆς, αὐτοὶ δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐν εὐδήλῳ παραδείγματι καὶ λαμπρῷ τῷ βίῳ τοῦ ἄρχοντος ὁρῶντες, ἑκουσίως σωφρονοῦσι καὶ συμμετασχηματίζονται πρὸς τὸν ἐν φιλίᾳ καὶ ὁμονοίᾳ τῇ πρὸς αὐτοὺς μετὰ δικαιοσύνης καὶ μετριότητος ἀμύμονα καὶ μακάριον βίον, ἐν ᾧ τὸ κάλλιστον ἁπάσης πολιτείας τέλος ἐστί, καὶ βασιλικώτατος ἁπάντων ὁ τοῦτον τὸν βίον καὶ ταύτην τὴν διάθεσιν τοῖς ὑπηκόοις ἐνεργάσασθαι δυνάμενος. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Νομᾶς παντὸς μᾶλλον φαίνεται συνεωρακώς.

[21] [1] Περὶ δὲ παίδων αὐτοῦ καὶ γάμων ἀντιλογίαι γεγόνασι τοῖς ἱστορικοῖς. οἱ μὲν γὰρ οὔτε γάμον ἄλλον ἢ τὸν Τατίας λαβεῖν αὐτὸν οὔτε παιδὸς ἑτέρου γενέσθαι πατέρα πλὴν μιᾶς θυγατρὸς Πομπιλίας λέγουσιν· οἱ δὲ πρὸς ταύτῃ τέσσαρας υἱοὺς ἀναγράφουσιν αὐτοῦ, Πόμπωνα, Πῖνον, Κάλπον, Μάμερκον, ὧν ἕκαστον οἴκου [2] διαδοχὴν καὶ γένους ἐντίμου καταλιπεῖν. εἶναι γὰρ ἀπὸ μὲν τοῦ Πόμπωνος τοὺς Πομπωνίους, ἀπὸ δὲ Πίνου τοὺς Πιναρίους, ἀπὸ δὲ Κάλπου τοὺς Καλπουρνίους, ἀπὸ δὲ Μαμέρκου τοὺς Μαμερκίους, οἷς διὰ τοῦτο καὶ Ῥῆγας γενέσθαι παρωνύμιον, ὅπερ ἐστὶ βασιλέας. τρίτοι δέ εἰσιν οἱ τούτων μὲν κατηγοροῦντες ὡς χαριζομένων τοῖς γένεσι καὶ προστιθέντων οὐκ ἀληθῆ στέμματα τῆς ἀπὸ Νομᾶ διαδοχῆς, τὴν δὲ Πομπιλίαν οὐκ ἐκ Τατίας γεγονέναι λέγοντες, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἑτέρας γυναικός, [3] ἣν ἤδη βασιλεύων ἔγημε, Λουκρητίας· πάντες δ’ οὖν ὁμολογοῦσι τὴν Πομπιλίαν Μαρκίῳ γαμηθῆναι. παῖς δὲ ἦν ὁ Μάρκιος ἐκείνου Μαρκίου τοῦ Νομᾶν παρορμήσαντος ἐπὶ τὴν βασιλείαν· καὶ γὰρ συμμετῴκησεν εἰς Ῥώμην αὐτῷ καὶ τῆς συγκλήτου μετέσχε τιμώμενος, καὶ μετὰ τὴν Νομᾶ τελευτὴν Ὁστιλίῳ περὶ τῆς βασιλείας εἰς ἀγῶνα καταστὰς καὶ ἡττηθεὶς ἀπεκαρτέρησεν. ὁ δὲ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ Μάρκιος ἔχων τὴν Πομπιλίαν κατέμεινεν ἐν Ῥώμῃ καὶ Μάρκιον Ἄγκον ἐγέννησεν, ὃς μετὰ Τύλλον Ὁστίλιον ἐβασίλευσε.

[4] τοῦτον, ὡς λέγεται, πενταετῆ καταλιπὼν ὁ Νομᾶς ἐτελεύτησεν, οὐ ταχείας οὐδ’ αἰφνιδίου γενομένης αὐτῷ τῆς τελευτῆς, ἀλλὰ κατὰ μικρὸν ὑπὸ γήρως καὶ νόσου μαλακῆς ἀπομαραινόμενος, ὡς ἱστόρηκε Πείσων. ἐτελεύτησε δὲ χρόνον οὐ πολὺν τοῖς ὀγδοήκοντα προσβιώσας.

[22] [1] Ζηλωτὸν δὲ αὐτοῦ καὶ τῷ τάφῳ τὸν βίον ἐποίησαν οἵ τε σύμμαχοι καὶ φίλοι δῆμοι, συνελθόντες ἐπὶ τὰς ταφὰς ἅμα δημοσίαις ἐπιφοραῖς καὶ στεφάνοις, οἵ τε πατρίκιοι τὸ λέχος ἀράμενοι, καὶ συμπαρόντες οἱ τῶν θεῶν ἱερεῖς καὶ παραπέμποντες, ὁ δ’ ἄλλος ὅμιλος ἀναμεμιγμένων καὶ γυναικῶν καὶ παίδων οὐχ ὡς βασιλέως ταφαῖς γηραιοῦ παρόντες, ἀλλ’ ὥς τινα τῶν φιλτάτων ἕκαστος ἐν ἀκμῇ βίου ποθούμενον θάπτων, μετ’ οἰμωγῆς [2] καὶ κλαυθμῶν ἑπόμενοι. πυρὶ μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἔδοσαν τὸν νεκρὸν αὐτοῦ κωλύσαντος, ὡς λέγεται, δύο δὲ ποιησάμενοι λιθίνας σοροὺς ὑπὸ τὸ Ἰάνοκλον ἔθηκαν, τὴν μὲν ἑτέραν ἔχουσαν τὸ σῶμα, τὴν δὲ ἑτέραν τὰς ἱερὰς βίβλους ἃς ἐγράψατο μὲν αὐτός, ὥσπερ οἱ τῶν Ἑλλήνων νομοθέται τοὺς κύρβεις, ἐκδιδάξας δὲ τοὺς ἱερεῖς ἔτι ζῶν τὰ γεγραμμένα καὶ πάντων ἕξιν τε καὶ γνώμην ἐνεργασάμενος αὐτοῖς, ἐκέλευσε συνταφῆναι μετὰ τοῦ σώματος, ὡς οὐ καλῶς ἐν ἀψύχοις γράμμασι φρουρουμένων [3] τῶν ἀπορρήτων. ᾧ λογισμῷ φασι μηδὲ τοὺς Πυθαγορικοὺς εἰς γραφὴν κατατίθεσθαι τὰ συντάγματα, μνήμην δὲ καὶ παίδευσιν αὐτῶν ἄγραφον ἐμποιεῖν τοῖς ἀξίοις. καὶ τῆς γε περὶ τὰς ἀπόρους καὶ ἀρρήτους λεγομένας ἐν γεωμετρίᾳ μεθόδους πραγματείας πρός τινα τῶν ἀναξίων ἐκδοθείσης, ἔφασαν ἐπισημαίνειν τὸ δαιμόνιον μεγάλῳ τινὶ καὶ κοινῷ κακῷ τὴν γεγενημένην [4] παρανομίαν καὶ ἀσέβειαν ἐπεξερχόμενον. ὥστε συγγνώμην ἔχειν πολλὴν τοῖς εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ Πυθαγόρᾳ Νομᾶν φιλοτιμουμένοις συνάγειν ἐπὶ τοσαύταις ὁμοιότησιν.

Οἱ δὲ περὶ Ἀντίαν ἱστοροῦσι δώδεκα μὲν εἶναι βίβλους ἱεροφαντικάς, δώδεκα δὲ ἄλλας Ἑλληνικὰς φιλοσόφους τὰς εἰς τὴν σορὸν συντεθείσας. τετρακοσίων δέ που διαγενομένων ἐτῶν ὕπατοι μὲν ἦσαν Πόπλιος Κορνήλιος καὶ Μάρκος Βαίβιος· ὄμβρων δὲ μεγάλων ἐπιπεσόντων καὶ χώματος περιρραγέντος ἐξέωσε τὰς σοροὺς τὸ [5] ῥεῦμα· καὶ τῶν ἐπιθημάτων ἀποπεσόντων ἡ μὲν ἑτέρα κενὴ παντάπασιν ὤφθη καὶ μέρος οὐδὲν οὐδὲ λείψανον ἔχουσα τοῦ σώματος, ἐν δὲ τῇ ἑτέρᾳ τῶν γραμμάτων εὑρεθέντων ἀναγνῶναι μὲν αὐτὰ λέγεται Πετίλιος στρατηγῶν τότε, πρὸς δὲ τὴν σύγκλητον κομίσαι, μὴ δοκεῖν αὐτῷ θεμιτὸν εἶναι λέγων μηδὲ ὅσιον ἔκπυστα πολλοῖς τὰ γεγραμμένα γενέσθαι· διὸ καὶ κομισθείσας εἰς τὸ Κομίτιον τὰς βίβλους κατακαῆναι.

[6] Πᾶσι μὲν οὖν ἕπεται τοῖς δικαίοις καὶ ἀγαθοῖς ἀνδράσι μείζων ὁ κατόπιν καὶ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ἔπαινος, τοῦ φθόνου πολὺν χρόνον οὐκ ἐπιζῶντος, ἐνίων δὲ καὶ προαποθνήσκοντος· οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐκείνου γε τὴν δόξαν αἱ τῶν ὕστερον βασιλέων τύχαι λαμπροτέραν ἐποίησαν. πέντε γὰρ γενομένων μετ’ αὐτὸν ὁ μὲν ἔσχατος ἐκπεσὼν τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐν φυγῇ κατεγήρασε, τῶν δὲ τεσσάρων οὐδεὶς κατὰ φύσιν ἐτελεύτησεν, ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν τρεῖς [7] ἐπιβουλευθέντες ἐσφάγησαν, Ὁστίλιος δὲ Τύλλος, ὃς μετὰ Νομᾶν ἐβασίλευσε, καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἐκείνου καλῶν, ἐν δὲ πρώτοις καὶ μάλιστα τὴν περὶ τὸ θεῖον εὐλάβειαν, ἐπιχλευάσας καὶ καθυβρίσας ὡς ἀργοποιὸν καὶ γυναικώδη, πρὸς πόλεμον ἔτρεψε τοὺς πολίτας, οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ἐνέμεινε τοῖς νεανιεύμασι τούτοις, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ νόσου χαλεπῆς καὶ πολυτρόπου τὴν γνώμην ἀλλασσόμενος εἰς δεισιδαιμονίαν ἐνέδωκεν οὐδέν τι τῇ κατὰ Νομᾶν εὐσεβείᾳ προσήκουσαν, ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐνεποίησε τοῖς ἄλλοις τὸ τοιοῦτον πάθος, ὡς λέγεται, καταφλεχθεὶς ὑπὸ κεραυνῶν.

Comparison Lycurgi et Numae

[1] [1] Ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ τὸν Νομᾶ καὶ Λυκούργου διεληλύθαμεν βίον, ἐκκειμένων ἀμφοῖν, εἰ καὶ χαλεπὸν ἔργον, οὐκ ἀποκνητέον συναγαγεῖν τὰς διαφοράς. αἱ μὲν γὰρ κοινότητες ἐπιφαίνονται ταῖς πράξεσιν, οἷον ἡ σωφροσύνη τῶν ἀνδρῶν, ἡ εὐσέβεια, τὸ πολιτικόν, τὸ παιδευτικόν, τὸ μίαν ἀρχὴν παρὰ τῶν θεῶν ἀμφοτέρους λαβεῖν τῆς νομοθεσίας· τῶν δὲ ἰδίᾳ ἑκατέρου καλῶν πρῶτόν ἐστι Νομᾷ μὲν ἡ παράληψις τῆς βασιλείας, Λυκούργῳ δὲ ἡ [2] παράδοσις. ὁ μὲν γὰρ οὐκ αἰτῶν ἔλαβεν, ὁ δὲ ἔχων ἀπέδωκε. καὶ τὸν μὲν ἕτεροι κύριον αὑτῶν κατέστησαν ἰδιώτην καὶ ξένον ὄντα, ὁ δὲ αὐτὸς αὑτὸν ἰδιώτην ἐκ βασιλέως ἐποίησε. καλὸν μὲν οὖν τὸ κτήσασθαι δικαιοσύνῃ τὴν βασιλείαν, καλὸν δὲ τὸ προτιμῆσαι τὴν δικαιοσύνην τῆς βασιλείας. ἡ γὰρ ἀρετὴ τὸν μὲν οὕτως ἔνδοξον κατέστησεν ὥστε βασιλείας ἀξιωθῆναι, τὸν δὲ οὕτω μέγαν ἐποίησεν ὥστε βασιλείας καταφρονῆσαι.

[3] Δεύτερον τοίνυν, ἐπεὶ καθάπερ ἁρμονικοὶ λύρας, ὁ μὲν ἐκλελυμένην καὶ τρυφῶσαν ἐπέτεινε τὴν Σπάρτην, ὁ δὲ τῆς Ῥώμης τὸ σφοδρὸν ἀνῆκε καὶ σύντονον, ἡ μὲν χαλεπότης τοῦ ἔργου τῷ Λυκούργῳ πρόσεστιν. οὐ γὰρ θώρακας ἐκδῦναι καὶ ξίφη τοὺς πολίτας καταθέσθαι ἔπειθεν, ἀλλὰ χρυσὸν καὶ ἄργυρον ἀφεῖναι καὶ στρωμνὰς ἐκβαλεῖν πολυτελεῖς καὶ τραπέζας, οὐδὲ παυσαμένους πολέμων ἑορτάζειν καὶ θύειν, ἀλλὰ δεῖπνα καὶ πότους ἐάσαντας ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις καὶ ταῖς [4] παλαίστραις διαπονεῖσθαι καὶ ἀσκεῖν. ὅθεν ὁ μὲν δι’ εὐνοίας καὶ τιμῆς ἅπαντα πείθων ἔπραξεν, ὁ δὲ κινδυνεύων καὶ βαλλόμενος μόγις ἐπεκράτησεν.

Ἥμερος μέντοι καὶ φιλάνθρωπος ἡ τοῦ Νομᾶ μοῦσα πρὸς εἰρήνην καὶ δικαιοσύνην μεθαρμοσαμένου καὶ καταπραΰναντος ἐξ ἀκρατῶν καὶ διαπύρων ἠθῶν τοὺς πολίτας. εἰ δὲ καὶ τὸ περὶ τοὺς Εἵλωτας ἀναγκάσει τις ἡμᾶς εἰς τὴν [5] Λυκούργου θέσθαι πολιτείαν, ὠμότατον ἔργον καὶ παρανομώτατον, μακρῷ τινι τὸν Νομᾶν ἑλληνικώτερον γεγονέναι νομοθέτην φήσομεν, ὅς γε καὶ τοὺς ὡμολογημένους δούλους ἔγευσε τιμῆς ἐλευθέρας, ἐν τοῖς Κρονίοις ἑστιᾶσθαι μετὰ τῶν δεσποτῶν ἀναμεμιγμένους ἐθίσας. καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο τῶν Νομᾶ πατρίων ἓν εἶναι λέγουσιν, ἐπὶ τὰς τῶν ἐτησίων ἀπολαύσεις καρπῶν τοὺς συνεργοὺς παραλαμβάνοντος. ἔνιοι δὲ τοῦτο ὑπόμνημα τῆς Κρονικῆς ἐκείνης ἰσονομίας ἀποσώζεσθαι μυθολογοῦσιν, ὡς μηδενὸς δούλου μηδὲ δεσπότου, πάντων δὲ συγγενῶν καὶ ἰσοτίμων νομιζομένων.

[2] [1] Ὅλως δὲ φαίνονται πρὸς τὴν αὐτάρκειαν ἀμφότεροι καὶ σωφροσύνην ὁμοίως ἄγοντες τὰ πλήθη, τῶν δὲ ἄλλων ἀρετῶν ὁ μὲν τὴν ἀνδρείαν μᾶλλον, ὁ δὲ τὴν δικαιοσύνην ἠγαπηκώς· εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία διὰ τὴν ὑποκειμένην τῶν πολιτευμάτων ἑκατέρου φύσιν ἢ συνήθειαν, οὐχ ὁμοίαν οὖσαν, [2] ἀνομοίας ἔδει παρασκευῆς. οὔτε γὰρ Νομᾶς διὰ δειλίαν κατέλυσε τὸ πολεμεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ ἀδικεῖν, οὔτε Λυκοῦργος εἰς ἀδικίαν κατεσκεύασε πολεμικούς, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ ἀδικεῖσθαι. τὰς οὖν ὑπερβολὰς ἀφαιροῦντες ἀμφότεροι καὶ τὰς ἐνδείας ἀναπληροῦντες τῶν ὑπαρχόντων περὶ τοὺς πολίτας, ἠναγκάζοντο μεγάλαις χρῆσθαι μεταβολαῖς.

[3] Καὶ μὴν τῆς τε διατάξεως καὶ τῆς διαιρέσεως τῶν πολιτευμάτων ὀχλικὴ μὲν ἀκράτως ἡ τοῦ Νομᾶ καὶ θεραπευτικὴ τοῦ πλήθους, ἐκ χρυσοχόων καὶ αὐλητῶν καὶ σκυτοτόμων συμμιγῆ τινα καὶ παμποίκιλον ἀποφαίνοντος δῆμον, αὐστηρὰ δὲ ἡ Λυκούργειος καὶ ἀριστοκρατική, τὰς μὲν βαναύσους ἀποκαθαίρουσα τέχνας εἰς οἰκετῶν καὶ μετοίκων χεῖρας αὐτοὺς δὲ τοὺς πολίτας εἰς τὴν ἀσπίδα καὶ τὸ δόρυ συνάγουσα, πολέμου χειροτέχνας καὶ θεράποντας Ἄρεως ὄντας, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδὲν εἰδότας οὐδὲ μελετῶντας ἢ πείθεσθαι τοῖς [4] ἄρχουσι καὶ κρατεῖν τῶν πολεμίων. Οὐδὲ γὰρ χρηματίζεσθαι τοῖς ἐλευθέροις ἐξῆν, ἵνα ἐλεύθεροι παντελῶς καὶ καθάπαξ ὦσιν, ἀλλ’ ἦν ἡ περὶ τὰ χρήματα κατασκευὴ δεδομένη δούλοις καὶ Εἵλωσιν, ὥσπερ ἡ περὶ τὸ δεῖπνον καὶ ὄψον διακονία. Νομᾶς δὲ οὐδὲν διέκρινε τοιοῦτον, ἀλλὰ τὰς μὲν στρατιωτικὰς ἔπαυσε πλεονεξίας, τὸν δὲ ἄλλον οὐκ ἐκώλυσε χρηματισμόν, οὐδὲ τὴν [5] τοιαύτην κατεστόρεσεν ἀνωμαλίαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πλούτῳ προϊέναι μέχρι παντὸς ἐφῆκε, καὶ πενίας πολλῆς ἀθροιζομένης καὶ ὑπορρεούσης εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἠμέλησε, δέον εὐθὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ, μηδέπω πολλῆς μηδὲ μεγάλης ἀνισότητος οὔσης, ἀλλ’ ἔτι τοῖς βίοις ὁμαλῶν καὶ παραπλησίων ὄντων, ἐνστῆναι πρὸς τὴν πλεονεξίαν, ὥσπερ Λυκοῦργος, καὶ φυλάξασθαι τὰς ἀπ’ αὐτῆς βλάβας, οὐ μικρὰς γενομένας, ἀλλὰ τῶν πλείστων καὶ μεγίστων κακῶν, ὅσα συνηνέχθη, σπέρμα καὶ ἀρχὴν παρασχούσας.

[6] ὁ δὲ τῆς γῆς ἀναδασμὸς οὔτε τὸν Λυκοῦργον, ἐμοὶ δοκεῖν, ποιεῖ ψεκτὸν γενόμενος οὔτε τὸν Νομᾶν μὴ γενόμενος. τῷ μὲν γὰρ ἕδραν καὶ κρηπῖδα τῆς πολιτείας ἡ ἰσότης αὕτη παρέσχε, τὸν δὲ προσφάτου τῆς κληρουχίας οὔσης οὐδὲν ἤπειγεν ἄλλον ἐμβαλεῖν ἀναδασμὸν οὐδὲ κινεῖν τὴν πρώτην νέμησιν, ὡς εἰκός ἐστι, κατὰ χώραν μένουσαν.

[3] [1] Τῆς δὲ περὶ τοὺς γάμους καὶ τὰς τεκνώσεις κοινωνίας τὸ ἀζηλότυπον ὀρθῶς καὶ πολιτικῶς ἐμποιοῦντες ἀμφότεροι τοῖς ἀνδράσιν οὐ κατὰ πᾶν εἰς τοῦτο συνηνέχθησαν, ἀλλ’ ὁ Ῥωμαῖος μὲν ἀνὴρ ἱκανῶς ἔχων παιδοτροφίας, ὑφ’ ἑτέρου δὲ πεισθεὶς δεομένου τέκνων, ἐξίστατο τῆς γυναικός, ἐκδόσθαι καὶ μετεκδόσθαι κύριος ὑπάρχων, ὁ δὲ Λάκων, οἴκοι τῆς γυναικὸς οὔσης παρ’ αὐτῷ καὶ τοῦ γάμου μένοντος ἐπὶ τῶν ἐξ ἀρχῆς δικαίων, μετεδίδου τῷ πείσαντι [2] τῆς κοινωνίας εἰς τέκνωσιν. πολλοὶ δέ, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, καὶ παρακαλοῦντες εἰσῆγον ἐξ ὧν ἂν ἐδόκουν μάλιστα παῖδας εὐειδεῖς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς γενέσθαι. τίς οὖν ἡ διάκρισις τῶν ἐθισμῶν; ἢ ταῦτα μὲν ἰσχυρὰ καὶ ἄκρατος ἀπάθεια πρὸς γαμετὴν καὶ τὰ ταράττοντα καὶ κατακαίοντα ζηλοτυπίαις τοὺς πολλούς, ἐκεῖνα δὲ ὥσπερ αἰσχυνομένη ἀτυφία τις, παρακάλυμμα τὴν ἐγγύην ἐφελκομένη καὶ τὸ δυσκαρτέρητον ἐξομολογουμένη τῆς κοινωνίας;

[3] Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἡ περὶ τὰς παρθένους φυλακὴ κατέσταλται τῷ Νομᾷ πρὸς τὸ θῆλυ καὶ κόσμιον· ἡ δὲ τοῦ Λυκούργου παντάπασιν ἀναπεπταμένη καὶ ἄθηλυς οὖσα τοῖς ποιηταῖς λόγον παρέσχηκε. φαινομηρίδας τε γὰρ αὐτὰς ἀποκαλοῦσιν, ὡς Ἴβυκος, καὶ ἀνδρομανεῖς λοιδοροῦσιν, ὡς Εὐριπίδης, λέγων·

Αἳ σὺν νέοισιν ἐξερημοῦσιν δόμους

γυμνοῖσι μηροῖς καὶ πέπλοις ἀνειμένοις.

[4]τῷ γὰρ ὄντι τοῦ παρθενικοῦ χιτῶνος αἱ πτέρυγες οὐκ ἦσαν συνερραμμέναι κάτωθεν, ἀλλ’ ἀνεπτύσσοντο καὶ συνανεγύμνουν ὅλον ἐν τῷ βαδίζειν τὸν μηρόν. καὶ σαφέστατα τὸ γινόμενον εἴρηκε Σοφοκλῆς ἐν τούτοις·

Καὶ τὰν νέορτον, ἇς ἔτ’ ἄστολος χιτὼν

θυραῖον ἀμφὶ μηρὸν

πτύσσεται, Ἑρμιόναν.

[5] διὸ καὶ θρασύτεραι λέγονται γενέσθαι καὶ πρὸς αὐτοὺς πρῶτον ἀνδρώδεις τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἅτε δὴ τῶν μὲν οἴκων ἄρχουσαι κατὰ κράτος, ἐν δὲ τοῖς δημοσίοις πράγμασι καὶ γνώμης μεταλαμβάνουσαι καὶ παρρησίας περὶ τῶν μεγίστων. ὁ δὲ Νομᾶς ταῖς γαμεταῖς τὸ μὲν ἀξίωμα καὶ τὴν τιμὴν ἐτήρησε πρὸς τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἣν εἶχον ἀπὸ Ῥωμύλου θεραπευόμεναι διὰ τὴν ἁρπαγήν, αἰδῶ δὲ πολλὴν ἐπέστησεν αὐταῖς καὶ πολυπραγμοσύνην ἀφεῖλε καὶ νήφειν ἐδίδαξε καὶ σιωπᾶν εἴθισεν, οἴνου μὲν ἀπεχομένας τὸ πάμπαν, λόγῳ δὲ μηδὲ ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἀνδρὸς ἄνευ χρωμένας.

[6] λέγεται γοῦν ποτε γυναικὸς εἰπούσης δίκην ἰδίαν ἐν ἀγορᾷ πέμψαι τὴν σύγκλητον εἰς θεοῦ, πυνθανομένην τίνος ἄρα τῇ πόλει σημεῖον εἴη τὸ γεγενημένον. καὶ τῆς ἄλλης εὐπειθείας καὶ πρᾳότητος αὐτῶν μέγα τεκμήριον ἡ μνήμη τῶν χειρόνων. ὡς γὰρ παρ’ ἡμῖν οἱ ἱστορικοὶ γράφουσι τοὺς πρώτους ἢ φόνον ἐμφύλιον ἐργασαμένους ἢ πολεμήσαντας ἀδελφοῖς ἢ πατρὸς αὐτόχειρας ἢ μητρὸς [7] γενομένους, οὕτω Ῥωμαῖοι μνημονεύουσιν ὅτι πρῶτος μὲν ἀπεπέμψατο γυναῖκα Σπόριος Καρβίλιος, μετὰ τὴν Ῥώμης κτίσιν ἔτεσι τριάκοντα καὶ διακοσίοις οὐδενὸς τοιούτου γεγονότος, πρώτη δὲ γυνὴ Πιναρίου Θαλαία τοὔνομα διηνέχθη πρὸς ἑκυρὰν αὑτῆς Γεγανίαν Ταρκυνίου Σουπέρβου βασιλεύοντος. οὕτω καλῶς καὶ κοσμίως τεταγμένα τὰ τῶν γάμων ἦν ὑπὸ τοῦ νομοθέτου.

[4] [1] Τῇ δὲ ἄλλῃ τῶν παρθένων ἀγωγῇ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ἐκδόσεις ὁμολογεῖ, τοῦ μὲν Λυκούργου πεπείρους καὶ ὀργώσας νυμφεύοντος, ὅπως ἥ τε ὁμιλία, δεομένης ἤδη τῆς φύσεως, χάριτος ᾖ καὶ φιλίας ἀρχὴ μᾶλλον ἢ μίσους καὶ φόβου παρὰ φύσιν βιαζομένων, καὶ τὰ σώματα ῥώμην ἔχῃ πρὸς τὸ τὰς κυήσεις ἀναφέρειν καὶ τὰς ὠδῖνας, ὡς ἐπ’ οὐδὲν ἄλλο γαμουμένων ἢ τὸ τῆς τεκνώσεως ἔργον, τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων δωδεκαετεῖς καὶ νεωτέρας ἐκδιδόντων· οὕτω γὰρ ἂν μάλιστα καὶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὸ ἦθος καθαρὸν καὶ ἄθικτον ἐπὶ [2] τῷ γαμοῦντι γίνεσθαι. δῆλον οὖν ὅτι τὸ μὲν φυσικώτερον πρὸς τέκνωσιν, τὸ δὲ ἠθικώτερον πρὸς συμβίωσιν.

Ἀλλὰ μὴν ἐπιστασίαις τε παίδων καὶ συναγελασμοῖς καὶ παιδαγωγίαις καὶ κοινωνίαις, περί τε δεῖπνα καὶ γυμνάσια καὶ παιδιὰς αὐτῶν ἐμμελείαις καὶ διακοσμήσεσιν, οὐδέν τι τοῦ προστυχόντος νομοθέτου βελτίονα τὸν Νομᾶν ὁ Λυκοῦργος ἀποδείκνυσιν, ἐπὶ ταῖς τῶν πατέρων ποιησάμενον ἐπιθυμίαις ἢ χρείαις τὰς τῶν νέων ἀγωγάς, [3] εἴτε τις ἐργάτην γῆς βούλοιτο ποιεῖν τὸν υἱὸν εἴτε ναυπηγὸν ἢ χαλκέα διδάσκειν ἢ αὐλητήν, ὥσπερ οὐ πρὸς ἓν τέλος ὀφείλοντας ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἄγεσθαι καὶ συνεπιστρέφεσθαι τοῖς ἤθεσιν, ἀλλ’ οἷον εἰς ναῦν ἐπιβάτας ἕτερον ἐξ ἑτέρας ἥκοντα χρείας καὶ προαιρέσεως ἐν τοῖς κινδύνοις μόνον φόβῳ τοῦ ἰδίου συνίστασθαι πρὸς τὸ κοινόν, [4] ἄλλως δὲ τὸ καθ’ αὑτὸν σκοπεῖν ἕκαστον. καὶ τοῖς μὲν πολλοῖς οὐκ ἄξιον ἐγκαλεῖν νομοθέταις ἐλλείπουσιν ἢ δι’ ἄγνοιαν ἢ δι’ ἀσθένειαν· ἀνδρὶ δὲ σοφῷ βασιλείαν παραλαβόντι δήμου νεωστὶ συνισταμένου καὶ πρὸς μηδὲν ἀντιτείνοντος, περὶ τί πρῶτον ἦν σπουδάσαι προσῆκον ἢ παίδων ἐκτροφὴν καὶ νέων ἄσκησιν, ὅπως μὴ διάφοροι μηδὲ ταραχώδεις γένοιντο τοῖς ἤθεσιν, ἀλλ’ εἰς ἕν τι κοινὸν ἀρετῆς ἴχνος εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς πλαττόμενοι [5] καὶ τυπούμενοι συμβαίνοιεν ἀλλήλοις; ὃ δὴ πρός τε τὰ ἄλλα καὶ σωτηρίαν νόμων ὠφέλησε τὸν Λυκοῦργον. μικρὸς γὰρ ἦν ὁ τῶν ὅρκων φόβος, εἰ μὴ διὰ τῆς παιδείας καὶ τῆς ἀγωγῆς οἷον ἀνέδευσε τοῖς ἤθεσι τῶν παίδων τοὺς νόμους, καὶ συνῳκείωσε τῇ τροφῇ τὸν ζῆλον τῆς πολιτείας, ὥστε πεντακοσίων ἐτῶν πλείω χρόνον τὰ κυριώτατα καὶ μέγιστα διαμεῖναι τῆς νομοθεσίας, ὥσπερ βαφῆς ἀκράτου καὶ ἰσχυρῶς καθαψαμένης.

[6] Νομᾷ δὲ ὅπερ ἦν τέλος τῆς πολιτείας, ἐν εἰρήνῃ καὶ φιλίᾳ τὴν Ῥώμην ὑπάρχειν, εὐθὺς συνεξέλιπε· καὶ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ἐκείνου τὸν ἀμφίθυρον οἶκον, ὃν κεκλεισμένον αὐτὸς συνεῖχεν, ὥσπερ ὄντως ἐν αὐτῷ τιθασεύων καθειργμένον τὸν πόλεμον, ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων ἀναπετάσαντες αἵματος καὶ νεκρῶν τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἐνέπλησαν· καὶ οὐδὲ ὀλίγον χρόνον ἡ καλλίστη καὶ δικαιοτάτη κατάστασις ἔμεινεν, ἅτε δὴ καὶ τὸ συνδετικὸν ἐν αὑτῇ, τὴν παιδείαν, οὐκ ἔχουσα.

[7] “Τί οὖν,” φήσει τις, “οὐκ ἐπὶ τὸ βέλτιον ἡ Ῥώμη προῆλθε τοῖς πολεμικοῖς;” ἐρωτῶν ἐρώτημα μακρᾶς ἀποκρίσεως δεόμενον πρὸς ἀνθρώπους τὸ βέλτιον ἐν πλούτῳ καὶ τρυφῇ καὶ ἡγεμονίᾳ μᾶλλον ἢ σωτηρίᾳ καὶ πρᾳότητι καὶ τῇ μετὰ δικαιοσύνης αὐταρκείᾳ τιθεμένους. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο Λυκούργῳ που δόξει βοηθεῖν, τὸ Ῥωμαίους μὲν τὴν ἐπὶ Νομᾶ κατάστασιν ἐξαλλάξαντας [8] ἐπιδοῦναι τοῖς πράγμασι τοσοῦτον, Λακεδαιμονίους δὲ ἅμα τῷ πρῶτον ἐκβῆναι τὴν Λυκούργου διάταξιν, ἐκ μεγίστων ταπεινοτάτους γενέσθαι καὶ τὴν τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἡγεμονίαν ἀποβαλόντας κινδυνεῦσαι περὶ ἀναστάσεως. ἐκεῖνο μέντοι τῷ Νομᾷ μέγα καὶ θεῖον ὡς ἀληθῶς ὑπάρχει, τὸ ξένῳ τε μεταπέμπτῳ γενέσθαι καὶ πάντα πειθοῖ μεταβαλεῖν, καὶ κρατῆσαι πόλεως οὔπω συμπεπνευκυίας, μήτε ὅπλων δεηθέντα μήτε βίας τινός, ὡς Λυκοῦργος ἐπὶ τὸν δῆμον ἦγε τοὺς ἀρίστους, ἀλλὰ σοφίᾳ καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ πάντας προσαγαγόμενον καὶ συναρμόσαντα.

Solon

[1] Δίδυμος ὁ γραμματικὸς (p. 399 Schmidt) ἐν τῇ περὶ τῶν ἀξόνων τῶν Σόλωνος ἀντιγραφῇ πρὸς Ἀσκληπιάδην Φιλοκλέους τινὸς τέθεικε λέξιν, ἐν ᾗ τὸν Σόλωνα πατρὸς Εὐφορίωνος ἀποφαίνει παρὰ τὴν τῶν [2] ἄλλων δόξαν ὅσοι μέμνηνται Σόλωνος. Ἐξηκεστίδου γὰρ αὐτὸν ἅπαντες ὁμαλῶς γεγονέναι λέγουσιν, ἀνδρὸς οὐσίᾳ μὲν ὥς φασι καὶ δυνάμει μέσου τῶν πολιτῶν, οἰκίας δὲ [3] πρώτης κατὰ γένος· ἦν γὰρ Κοδρίδης ἀνέκαθεν. τὴν δὲ μητέρα τοῦ Σόλωνος Ἡρακλείδης ὁ Ποντικὸς (fr. 147 Wehrli) ἱστορεῖ τῆς Πεισιστράτου μητρὸς ἀνεψιὰν γενέσθαι, [4] καὶ φιλία τὸ πρῶτον ἦν αὐτοῖς πολλὴ μὲν διὰ τὴν συγγένειαν, πολλὴ δὲ διὰ τὴν εὐφυΐαν καὶ ὥραν, ὡς ἔνιοί φασιν ἐρωτικῶς τὸν Πεισίστρατον ἀσπαζομένου [5] τοῦ Σόλωνος. ὅθεν ὕστερον ὡς ἔοικεν εἰς διαφορὰν αὐτῶν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ καταστάντων, οὐδὲν ἤνεγκεν ἡ ἔχθρα σκληρὸν οὐδ’ ἄγριον πάθος, ἀλλὰ παρέμεινεν ἐκεῖνα τὰ δίκαια ταῖς ψυχαῖς καὶ παρεφύλαξε ‘τυφόμενα Δίου πυρὸς ἔτι ζῶσαν φλόγα’ (Eur. Bacch. 8), τὴν ἐρωτικὴν [6] μνήμην καὶ χάριν. ὅτι δὲ πρὸς τοὺς καλοὺς οὐκ ἦν ἐχυρὸς ὁ Σόλων οὐδ’ ἔρωτι θαρραλέος ἀνταναστῆναι ‘πύκτης ὅπως ἐς χεῖρας’ (Soph. Trach. 441), ἔκ τε τῶν ποιημάτων αὐτοῦ λαβεῖν ἔστι, καὶ νόμον ἔγραψε διαγορεύοντα δούλῳ μὴ ξηραλοιφεῖν μηδὲ παιδεραστεῖν, εἰς τὴν τῶν καλῶν μερίδα καὶ σεμνῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων τιθέμενος τὸ πρᾶγμα, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τοὺς ἀξίους προκαλούμενος ὧν [7] τοὺς ἀναξίους ἀπήλαυνε. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Πεισίστρατος ἐραστὴς Χάρμου γενέσθαι, καὶ τὸ ἄγαλμα τοῦ Ἔρωτος ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ καθιερῶσαι, ὅπου τὸ πῦρ ἀνάπτουσιν οἱ τὴν ἱερὰν λαμπάδα διαθέοντες.

[2] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Σόλων, τὴν οὐσίαν τοῦ πατρὸς ἐλαττώσαντος εἰς φιλανθρωπίας τινάς, ὥς φησιν Ἕρμιππος (FHG III 38), καὶ χάριτας, οὐκ ἂν ἀπορήσας τῶν βουλομένων ἐπαρκεῖν, αἰδούμενος δὲ λαμβάνειν παρ’ ἑτέρων ἐξ οἰκίας γεγονὼς εἰθισμένης ἑτέροις βοηθεῖν, ὥρμησε νέος ὢν ἔτι πρὸς ἐμπορίαν. καίτοι φασὶν ἔνιοι πολυπειρίας ἕνεκα μᾶλλον καὶ ἱστορίας ἢ χρηματισμοῦ πλανηθῆναι [2] τὸν Σόλωνα. σοφίας μὲν γὰρ ἦν ὁμολογουμένως ἐραστής, ὅς γε καὶ πρεσβύτερος ὢν ἔλεγε (fr. 22 D.) [3] ‘γηράσκειν αἰεὶ πολλὰ διδασκόμενος’· πλοῦτον δ’ οὐκ ἐθαύμαζεν, ἀλλὰ καί φησιν ὁμοίως πλουτεῖν ᾧ τε (fr. 14 D.)

πολὺς ἄργυρός ἐστι

καὶ χρυσὸς καὶ γῆς πυροφόρου πεδία

ἵπποι θ’ ἡμίονοί τε, καὶ ᾧ μόνα ταῦτα πάρεστι,

γαστρί τε καὶ πλευρῇ καὶ ποσὶν ἁβρὰ παθεῖν,

παιδός τ’ ἠδὲ γυναικός, ἐπὴν καὶ ταῦτ’ ἀφίκηται,

ἥβῃ, σὺν δ’ ὥρῃ γίνεται ἁρμόδια.

[4] ἀλλ’ ἑτέρωθι λέγει (fr. 1, 7 D.)·

χρήματα δ’ ἱμείρω μὲν ἔχειν, ἀδίκως δὲ πεπᾶσθαι

οὐκ ἐθέλω· πάντως ὕστερον ἦλθε δίκη.

[5] κωλύει δ’ οὐδὲν τὸν ἀγαθὸν καὶ πολιτικὸν ἄνδρα, μήτε τῶν περιττῶν τὴν κτῆσιν ἐν σπουδῇ τινι τίθεσθαι, μήτε [6] τῆς χρείας τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ ἱκανῶν καταφρονεῖν. ἐν δὲ τοῖς τότε χρόνοις καθ’ Ἡσίοδον (Erg. 311) ‘ἔργον οὐδὲν ἦν ὄνειδος’, οὐδὲ τέχνη διαβολὴν ἔφερεν, ἐμπορία δὲ καὶ δόξαν εἶχεν, οἰκειουμένη τὰ βαρβαρικὰ καὶ προξενοῦσα φιλίας βασιλέων καὶ πραγμάτων ἐμπείρους ποιοῦσα [7] πολλῶν. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ πόλεων γεγόνασιν οἰκισταὶ μεγάλων, ὡς καὶ Μασσαλίας Πρῶτις, ὑπὸ Κελτῶν τῶν [8] περὶ τὸν Ῥοδανὸν ἀγαπηθείς. καὶ Θαλῆν δέ φασιν ἐμπορίᾳ χρήσασθαι καὶ Ἱπποκράτη τὸν μαθηματικόν, καὶ Πλάτωνι τῆς ἀποδημίας ἐφόδιον ἐλαίου τινὸς ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ διάθεσιν γενέσθαι.

[3] [1] Τὸ δ’ οὖν εὐδάπανον τῷ Σόλωνι καὶ ὑγρὸν πρὸς τὴν δίαιταν καὶ τὸ φορτικώτερον ἢ φιλοσοφώτερον ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασι διαλέγεσθαι περὶ τῶν ἡδονῶν τὸν ἐμπορικὸν οἴονται βίον προστετρῖφθαι· πολλοὺς γὰρ ἔχοντα κινδύνους καὶ μεγάλους ἀνταπαιτεῖν πάλιν εὐπαθείας [2] τινὰς καὶ ἀπολαύσεις. ὅτι δ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐν τῇ τῶν πενήτων μερίδι μᾶλλον ἢ τῇ τῶν πλουσίων ἔταττε, δῆλόν ἐστιν ἐκ τούτων (fr. 4, 9 D.)·

[3] πολλοὶ γὰρ πλουτοῦσι κακοί, ἀγαθοὶ δὲ πένονται·

ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς αὐτοῖς οὐ διαμειψόμεθα

τῆς ἀρετῆς τὸν πλοῦτον· ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν ἔμπεδόν ἐστιν,

χρήματα δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἄλλοτε ἄλλος ἔχει.

[4 ]τῇ δὲ ποιήσει κατ’ ἀρχὰς μὲν εἰς οὐδὲν ἄξιον σπουδῆς, ἀλλὰ παίζων ἔοικε προσχρήσασθαι καὶ τέρπων ἑαυτὸν ἐν τῷ σχολάζειν· ὕστερον δὲ καὶ γνώμας ἐνέτεινε φιλοσόφους, καὶ τῶν πολιτικῶν πολλὰ συγκατέπλεκε τοῖς ποιήμασιν, οὐχ ἱστορίας ἕνεκεν καὶ μνήμης, ἀλλ’ ἀπολογισμοὺς τῶν πεπραγμένων ἔχοντα καὶ προτροπὰς ἐνιαχοῦ καὶ νουθεσίας καὶ ἐπιπλήξεις πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους.

[5] ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ὅτι καὶ τοὺς νόμους ἐπεχείρησεν ἐντείνας εἰς ἔπος ἐξενεγκεῖν, καὶ διαμνημονεύουσι τὴν ἀρχὴν οὕτως ἔχουσαν (fr. 28 D.)·

πρῶτα μὲν εὐχώμεσθα Διὶ Κρονίδῃ βασιλῆι

θεσμοῖς τοῖσδε τύχην ἀγαθὴν καὶ κῦδος ὀπάσσαι.

[6] φιλοσοφίας δὲ τοῦ ἠθικοῦ μάλιστα τὸ πολιτικόν, ὥσπερ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν τότε σοφῶν, ἠγάπησεν. ἐν δὲ τοῖς φυσικοῖς ἁπλοῦς ἐστι λίαν καὶ ἀρχαῖος, ὡς δῆλον ἐκ τούτων (fr. 10. 11 D.)·

[7] ἐκ νεφέλης πέλεται χιόνος μένος ἠδὲ χαλάζης,

βροντὴ δ’ ἐκ λαμπρᾶς γίνεται ἀστεροπῆς.

ἐξ ἀνέμων δὲ θάλασσα ταράσσεται· ἢν δέ τις αὐτὴν

μὴ κινῇ, πάντων ἐστὶ δικαιοτάτη.

[8] καὶ ὅλως ἔοικεν ἡ Θάλεω μόνου σοφία τότε περαιτέρω τῆς χρείας ἐξικέσθαι τῇ θεωρίᾳ· τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις ἀπὸ τῆς πολιτικῆς ἀρετῆς τοὔνομα τῆς σοφίας ὑπῆρξε.

[4] [1] Γενέσθαι δὲ μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἔν τε Δελφοῖς ὁμοῦ λέγονται καὶ πάλιν ἐν Κορίνθῳ, Περιάνδρου σύλλογόν [2] τινα κοινὸν αὐτῶν καὶ συμπόσιον κατασκευάσαντος. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον εἰς ἀξίωμα καὶ δόξαν αὐτοὺς κατέστησεν ἡ τοῦ τρίποδος περίοδος καὶ διὰ πάντων ἀνακύκλησις καὶ [3] ἀνθύπειξις μετ’ εὐμενείας φιλοτίμου γενομένη. Κῴων γὰρ ὥς φασι καταγόντων σαγήνην, καὶ ξένων ἐκ Μιλήτου πριαμένων τὸν βόλον οὔπω φανερὸν ὄντα, χρυσοῦς ἐφάνη τρίπους ἑλκόμενος, ὃν λέγουσιν Ἑλένην πλέουσαν ἐκ Τροίας αὐτόθι καθεῖναι, χρησμοῦ τινος ἀναμνησθεῖσαν [4] παλαιοῦ. γενομένης δὲ τοῖς ξένοις πρῶτον ἀντιλογίας πρὸς τοὺς ἁλιέας περὶ τοῦ τρίποδος, εἶτα τῶν πόλεων ἀναδεξαμένων τὴν διαφοράν, ἄχρι πολέμου προελθοῦσαν, ἀνεῖλεν ἀμφοτέροις ἡ Πυθία τῷ σοφωτάτῳ τὸν τρίποδα [5] ἀποδοῦναι. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἀπεστάλη πρὸς Θαλῆν εἰς Μίλητον, ἑκουσίως τῶν Κῴων ἑνὶ δωρουμένων ἐκείνῳ περὶ οὗ πρὸς ἅπαντας ὁμοῦ Μιλησίους ἐπολέμησαν. Θάλεω δὲ Βίαντα σοφώτερον ἀποφαίνοντος αὑτοῦ, πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἧκεν, ὑπ’ ἐκείνου δ’ αὖθις ἀπεστάλη πρὸς ἄλλον [6] ὡς σοφώτερον. εἶτα περιιὼν καὶ ἀναπεμπόμενος, οὕτως ἐπὶ Θαλῆν τὸ δεύτερον ἀφίκετο, καὶ τέλος εἰς Θήβας ἐκ Μιλήτου κομισθεὶς τῷ Ἰσμηνίῳ Ἀπόλλωνι καθιερώθη.

[7] Θεόφραστος δέ φησι πρῶτον μὲν εἰς Πριήνην Βίαντι τὸν τρίποδα πεμφθῆναι, δεύτερον δ’ εἰς Μίλητον Θαλῇ Βίαντος ἀποπέμψαντος· οὕτω δὲ διὰ πάντων πάλιν εἰς Βίαντα περιελθεῖν, καὶ τέλος εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀποσταλῆναι.

[8] ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὑπὸ πλειόνων τεθρύληται, πλὴν ὅτι τὸ δῶρον ἀντὶ τοῦ τρίποδος οἱ μὲν φιάλην ὑπὸ Κροίσου πεμφθεῖσαν, οἱ δὲ ποτήριον Βαθυκλέους ἀπολιπόντος εἶναι λέγουσιν.

[5] [1] Ἰδίᾳ δ’ Ἀναχάρσεώς τε πρὸς Σόλωνα καὶ πάλιν Θάλεω συνουσίαν τινὰ καὶ λόγους ἀναγράφουσι τοιούτους.

[2] Ἀνάχαρσιν μὲν εἰς Ἀθήνας φασὶν ἐπὶ τὴν Σόλωνος οἰκίαν ἐλθόντα κόπτειν καὶ λέγειν, ὡς ξένος ὢν ἀφῖκται φιλίαν ποιησόμενος καὶ ξενίαν πρὸς αὐτόν. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Σόλωνος ὡς οἴκοι βέλτιόν ἐστι ποιεῖσθαι φιλίας, ‘οὐκοῦν’ φάναι τὸν Ἀνάχαρσιν ‘αὐτὸς ὢν οἴκοι [3] σὺ ποίησαι φιλίαν καὶ ξενίαν πρὸς ἡμᾶς.’ οὕτω δὴ θαυμάσαντα τὴν ἀγχίνοιαν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς τὸν Σόλωνα δέξασθαι φιλοφρόνως καὶ χρόνον τινὰ παρ’ αὑτῷ κατασχεῖν, ἤδη τὰ δημόσια πράττοντα καὶ συνταττόμενον τοὺς νόμους.

[4] τὸν οὖν Ἀνάχαρσιν πυθόμενον, καταγελᾶν τῆς πραγματείας τοῦ Σόλωνος, οἰομένου γράμμασιν ἐφέξειν τὰς ἀδικίας καὶ πλεονεξίας τῶν πολιτῶν, ἃ μηδὲν τῶν ἀραχνίων διαφέρειν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐκεῖνα τοὺς μὲν ἀσθενεῖς καὶ λεπτοὺς τῶν ἁλισκομένων καθέξειν, ὑπὸ δὲ τῶν δυνατῶν καὶ [5] πλουσίων διαρραγήσεσθαι. τὸν δὲ Σόλωνα φασὶ πρὸς ταῦτ’ εἰπεῖν, ὅτι καὶ συνθήκας ἄνθρωποι φυλάττουσιν ἃς οὐδετέρῳ λυσιτελές ἐστι παραβαίνειν τῶν θεμένων, καὶ τοὺς νόμους αὐτὸς οὕτως ἁρμόζεται τοῖς πολίταις, ὥστε πᾶσι τοῦ παρανομεῖν βέλτιον ἐπιδεῖξαι τὸ δικαιοπραγεῖν.

[6] ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὡς Ἀνάχαρσις εἴκαζεν ἀπέβη μᾶλλον ἢ κατ’ ἐλπίδα τοῦ Σόλωνος. ἔφη δὲ κἀκεῖνο θαυμάζειν ὁ Ἀνάχαρσις ἐκκλησίᾳ παραγενόμενος, ὅτι λέγουσι μὲν οἱ σοφοὶ παρ’ Ἕλλησι, κρίνουσι δ’ οἱ ἀμαθεῖς.

[6] [1] Πρὸς Θαλῆν δ’ εἰς Μίλητον ἐλθόντα τὸν Σόλωνα θαυμάζειν, ὅτι γάμου καὶ παιδοποιίας τὸ παράπαν ἠμέληκε, καὶ τὸν Θαλῆν τότε μὲν σιωπῆσαι, διαλιπόντα δ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας ἄνδρα παρασκευάσαι ξένον, ἀρτίως [2] ἥκειν φάσκοντα δεκαταῖον ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν. πυθομένου δὲ τοῦ Σόλωνος εἰ δή τι καινὸν ἐν ταῖς Ἀθήναις, δεδιδαγμένον ἃ χρὴ λέγειν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ‘οὐδὲν’ εἰπεῖν ‘ἕτερον εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία νεανίσκου τινὸς ἦν ἐκφορὰ καὶ προὔπεμπεν [3] ἡ πόλις. ἦν γὰρ υἱὸς ὡς ἔφασαν ἀνδρὸς ἐνδόξου καὶ πρωτεύοντος ἀρετῇ τῶν πολιτῶν· οὐ παρῆν δ’ ἀλλ’ ἀποδημεῖν [4] ἔφασαν αὐτὸν ἤδη πολὺν χρόνον’. ‘ὦ δυστυχὴς ἐκεῖνος’ φάναι τὸν Σόλωνα· ‘τίνα δ’ ὠνόμαζον αὐτόν;’ ‘ἤκουσα’ φάναι ‘τοὔνομα’ τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ μνημονεύω· πλὴν ὅτι πολὺς λόγος ἦν αὐτοῦ σοφίας καὶ [5] δικαιοσύνης’. οὕτω δὴ καθ’ ἑκάστην ἀπόκρισιν τῷ φόβῳ προσαγόμενον τὸν Σόλωνα καὶ τέλος ἤδη συντεταραγμένον, αὐτὸν ὑποβαλεῖν τοὔνομα τῷ ξένῳ, πυνθανόμενον [6] μὴ Σόλωνος ὁ τεθνηκὼς ὠνομάζετο. φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, τὸν μὲν ὁρμῆσαι παίειν τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ τἆλλα ποιεῖν καὶ λέγειν ἃ συμβαίνει τοῖς περιπαθοῦσι, τὸν δὲ Θαλῆν ἐπιλαβόμενον αὐτοῦ καὶ γελάσαντα, ‘ταῦτά τοι’ φάναι ‘ὦ Σόλων ἐμὲ γάμου καὶ παιδοποιίας ἀφίστησιν, ἃ καὶ σὲ κατερείπει τὸν ἐρρωμενέστατον. ἀλλὰ [7] θάρρει τῶν λόγων ἕνεκα τούτων· οὐ γάρ εἰσιν ἀληθεῖς.’ ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Ἕρμιππος (FHG III 39) ἱστορεῖν φησι Πάταικον, ὃς ἔφασκε τὴν Αἰσώπου ψυχὴν ἔχειν.

[7] [1] Ἄτοπος δὲ καὶ ἀγεννὴς ὁ τῷ φόβῳ τῆς ἀποβολῆς τὴν κτῆσιν ὧν χρὴ προϊέμενος· οὕτω γὰρ ἄν τις οὐ πλοῦτον, οὐ δόξαν, οὐ σοφίαν ἀγαπήσειε παραγενομένην, [2] δεδιὼς στέρεσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ἀρετήν, ἧς κτῆμα μεῖζον οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἥδιον, ἐξισταμένην ὑπὸ νόσων καὶ φαρμάκων ὁρῶμεν, αὐτῷ τε Θαλῇ μὴ γήμαντι πλέον οὐδὲν εἰς ἀφοβίαν, εἰ μὴ καὶ φίλων κτῆσιν ἔφυγε καὶ οἰκείων καὶ πατρίδος. ἀλλὰ καὶ παῖδα θετὸν ἔσχε ποιησάμενος αὐτὸς [3] τὸν τῆς ἀδελφῆς ὥς φασι Κύβισθον. ἐχούσης γάρ τι τῆς ψυχῆς ἀγαπητικὸν ἐν ἑαυτῇ, καὶ πεφυκυίας, ὥσπερ αἰσθάνεσθαι καὶ διανοεῖσθαι καὶ μνημονεύειν, οὕτω καὶ φιλεῖν, ἐνδύεταί τι τούτῳ καὶ προσφύεται τῶν ἐκτὸς οἷς οἰκεῖον οὐδέν ἐστι, καὶ καθάπερ οἶκον ἢ χώραν γνησίων ἔρημον διαδόχων τὸ φιλόστοργον ἀλλότριοι καὶ νόθοι καὶ θεράποντες εἰσοικισάμενοι καὶ καταλαβόντες, ἅμα τῷ φιλεῖν τὸ φροντίζειν καὶ δεδιέναι περὶ αὐτῶν ἐνεποίησαν.

[4] ὥστ’ ἴδοις ἂν ἀνθρώπους στερροτέρᾳ τῇ φύσει περὶ γάμου καὶ γενέσεως παίδων διαμαχομένους, εἶτα τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ παισὶν οἰκοτρίβων ἢ θρέμμασι παλλακῶν νοσοῦσι καὶ θνῄσκουσι παρατεινομένους πόθῳ καὶ φωνὰς ἀγεννεῖς ἀφιέντας. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ κυνῶν θανάτῳ καὶ ἵππων αἰσχρῶς καὶ ἀβιώτως ὑπ’ ὀδύνης διετέθησαν.

[5] ἀλλ’ ἕτεροί γε καὶ παῖδας ἀγαθοὺς ἀπολέσαντες οὐδὲν ἔπαθον δεινὸν οὐδ’ ἐποίησαν αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ χρώμενοι τῷ λοιπῷ βίῳ κατὰ λόγον διετέλεσαν. ἀσθένεια γάρ, οὐκ εὔνοια, λύπας ἀπεράντους ἐπάγεται καὶ φόβους ἀνθρώποις ἀνασκήτοις ὑπὸ λόγου πρὸς τύχην, οἷς οὐδ’ ἀπόλαυσις ἐγγίνεται τοῦ ποθουμένου παρόντος, τοῦ μέλλοντος ὠδῖνας ἀεὶ καὶ τρόμους καὶ ἀγωνίας, εἰ στερήσονται, παρέχοντος [6] αὐτοῖς. δεῖ δὲ μήτε πενίᾳ πρὸς χρημάτων πεφράχθαι στέρησιν, μήτ’ ἀφιλίᾳ πρὸς φίλων ἀποβολήν, μήτ’ ἀπαιδίᾳ πρὸς τέκνων θάνατον, ἀλλὰ τῷ λογισμῷ πρὸς πάντα. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ὡς ἐν τῷ παρόντι πλείονα τῶν ἱκανῶν.

[8] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ μακρόν τινα καὶ δυσχερῆ πόλεμον οἱ ἐν ἄστει περὶ τῆς Σαλαμινίων νήσου Μεγαρεῦσι πολεμοῦντες ἐξέκαμον, καὶ νόμον ἔθεντο μήτε γράψαι τινὰ μήτ’ εἰπεῖν αὖθις ὡς χρὴ τὴν πόλιν ἀντιποιεῖσθαι τῆς Σαλαμῖνος, ἢ θανάτῳ ζημιοῦσθαι, βαρέως φέρων τὴν ἀδοξίαν ὁ Σόλων, καὶ τῶν νέων ὁρῶν πολλοὺς δεομένους ἀρχῆς ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον, αὐτοὺς δὲ μὴ θαρροῦντας ἄρξασθαι διὰ τὸν νόμον, ἐσκήψατο μὲν ἔκστασιν τῶν λογισμῶν, καὶ λόγος εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας διεδόθη παρακινητικῶς ἔχειν αὐτόν· ἐλεγεῖα δὲ κρύφα συνθεὶς καὶ μελετήσας ὥστε λέγειν ἀπὸ στόματος, ἐξεπήδησεν εἰς [2] τὴν ἀγορὰν ἄφνω, πιλίδιον περιθέμενος. ὄχλου δὲ πολλοῦ συνδραμόντος, ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸν τοῦ κήρυκος λίθον, ἐν ᾠδῆ διεξῆλθε τὴν ἐλεγείαν ἧς ἐστιν ἀρχή (fr. 2 D.)

αὐτὸς κῆρυξ ἦλθον ἀφ’ ἱμερτῆς Σαλαμῖνος,

κόσμον ἐπέων ᾠδὴν ἀντ’ ἀγορῆς θέμενος.

τοῦτο τὸ ποίημα Σαλαμὶς ἐπιγέγραπται καὶ στίχων ἑκατόν [3] ἐστι, χαριέντως πάνυ πεποιημένων. τότε δ’ ᾀσθέντος αὐτοῦ, καὶ τῶν φίλων τοῦ Σόλωνος ἀρξαμένων ἐπαινεῖν, μάλιστα δὲ τοῦ Πεισιστράτου τοῖς πολίταις ἐγκελευομένου καὶ παρορμῶντος πείθεσθαι τῷ λέγοντι, λύσαντες τὸν νόμον αὖθις ἥπτοντο τοῦ πολέμου, προστησάμενοι τὸν Σόλωνα.

[4] Τὰ μὲν οὖν δημώδη τῶν λεγομένων τοιαῦτ’ ἐστιν, ὅτι πλεύσας ἐπὶ Κωλιάδα μετὰ τοῦ Πεισιστράτου, καὶ καταλαβὼν αὐτόθι πάσας τὰς γυναῖκας τῇ Δήμητρι τὴν πάτριον θυσίαν ἐπιτελούσας, ἔπεμψεν ἄνδρα πιστὸν εἰς Σαλαμῖνα προσποιούμενον αὐτόμολον εἶναι, κελεύσοντα τοὺς Μεγαρεῖς, εἰ βούλονται τῶν Ἀθηναίων τὰς πρώτας λαβεῖν γυναῖκας, ἐπὶ Κωλιάδα πλεῖν μετ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν ταχίστην.

[5] ὡς δὲ πεισθέντες οἱ Μεγαρεῖς ἄνδρας ἐξέπεμψαν ἐνόπλους, καὶ κατεῖδεν ὁ Σόλων πλοῖον ἐλαυνόμενον ἀπὸ τῆς νήσου, τὰς μὲν γυναῖκας ἐκποδὼν ἀπελθεῖν ἐκέλευσε, τῶν δὲ νεωτέρων τοὺς μηδέπω γενειῶντας ἐνδύμασι καὶ μίτραις καὶ ὑποδήμασι τοῖς ἐκείνων σκευασαμένους καὶ λαβόντας ἐγχειρίδια κρυπτὰ παίζειν καὶ χορεύειν προσέταξε πρὸς τῇ θαλάττῃ, μέχρι ἂν ἀποβῶσιν οἱ πολέμιοι καὶ γένηται τὸ πλοῖον ὑποχείριον.

[6] οὕτω δὴ τούτων πραττομένων, ὑπαχθέντες οἱ Μεγαρεῖς τῇ ὄψει καὶ προσμείξαντες ἐγγύς, ἐξεπήδων ὡς ἐπὶ γυναῖκας ἁμιλλώμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ......, ὥστε μηδένα διαφυγεῖν, ἀλλὰ πάντας ἀπολέσθαι, καὶ τὴν νῆσον ἐπιπλεύσαντας εὐθὺς ἔχειν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους.

[9] [1] Ἄλλοι δέ φασιν οὐ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον γενέσθαι τὴν κατάληψιν, ἀλλὰ πρῶτον μὲν αὐτῷ τὸν ἐν Δελφοῖς θεὸν χρῆσαι·

ἀρχηγοὺς χώρας θυσίαις ἥρωας ἐνοίκους

ἵλασο, τοὺς κόλποις Ἀσωπιὰς ἀμφικαλύπτει,

οἳ φθίμενοι δέρκονται ἐς ἠέλιον δύνοντα·

τὸν δὲ Σόλωνα διαπλεύσαντα νυκτὸς εἰς τὴν νῆσον ἐντεμεῖν [2] σφάγια Περιφήμῳ καὶ Κυχρεῖ τοῖς ἥρωσιν. εἶτα παρὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐθελοντὰς λαβεῖν πεντακοσίους, δόγματος γενομένου τούτους, ἂν κατασχῶσι τὴν νῆσον, [3] κυρίους εἶναι τοῦ πολιτεύματος. ἀναχθέντα δὲ συχναῖς ἁλιάσιν, ἅμα τριακοντόρου συμπλεούσης, ὑφορμίσασθαι τῇ Σαλαμῖνι κατὰ χηλήν τινα πρὸς τὴν †Εὔβοιαν ἀποβλέπουσαν.

[4] πυθομένους δὲ τοὺς ἐν Σαλαμῖνι Μεγαρεῖς ἔκ τινος φήμης οὐδὲν βέβαιον ‹ἐχούσης›, αὐτοὺς μὲν εἰς τὰ ὅπλα θορυβουμένους βαδίζειν, ναῦν δ’ ἀποστεῖλαι κατασκεψομένην τὰ τῶν πολεμίων· ἧς ἐγγὺς ἐλθούσης κρατῆσαι τὸν Σόλωνα καὶ καθεῖρξαι τοὺς Μεγαρεῖς, [5] ἐμβιβάσαι δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων τοὺς κρατίστους, κελεύσαντα πλεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν, ὡς ἂν ἐνδέχηται μάλιστα κρύπτοντας ἑαυτούς· ἅμα δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους Ἀθηναίους ἀναλαβόντα πεζῇ συμφέρεσθαι τοῖς Μεγαρεῦσι, καὶ τῆς μάχης ἔτι συνεστώσης, φθάσαι τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς νεὼς καταλαβόντας [6] τὴν πόλιν. ἔοικε δὲ τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ καὶ τὰ δρώμενα μαρτυρεῖν. ναῦς γάρ τις Ἀττικὴ προσέπλει σιωπῇ τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα κραυγῇ καὶ ἀλαλαγμῷ προσφερομένων, εἷς ἀνὴρ ἔνοπλος ἐξαλλόμενος μετὰ βοῆς ἔθει πρὸς [7] ἄκρον τὸ Σκιράδιον ...... ἐκ γῆς προσαγόμενος. πλησίον δὲ τοῦ Ἐνυαλίου τὸ ἱερόν ἐστιν ἱδρυσαμένου Σόλωνος. ἐνίκησε γὰρ τοὺς Μεγαρέας, καὶ ὅσοι μὴ διεφθάρησαν ἐν τῇ μάχῃ, πάντας ὑποσπόνδους ἀφῆκεν.

[10] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῶν Μεγαρέων ἐπιμενόντων, πολλὰ κακὰ καὶ δρῶντες ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ καὶ πάσχοντες, ἐποιήσαντο [2] Λακεδαιμονίους διαλλακτὰς καὶ δικαστάς. οἱ μὲν οὖν πολλοὶ τῷ Σόλωνι συναγωνίσασθαι λέγουσι τὴν Ὁμήρου δόξαν· ἐμβαλόντα γὰρ αὐτὸν ἔπος εἰς νεῶν κατάλογον ἐπὶ τῆς δίκης ἀναγνῶναι (Il. 2. 557)·

Αἴας δ’ ἐκ Σαλαμῖνος ἄγεν δυοκαίδεκα νῆας,

στῆσε δ’ ἄγων ἵν’ Ἀθηναίων ἵσταντο φάλαγγες.

[3]αὐτοὶ δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι ταῦτα μὲν οἴονται φλυαρίαν εἶναι, τὸν δὲ Σόλωνά φασιν ἀποδεῖξαι τοῖς δικασταῖς, ὅτι Φιλαῖος καὶ Εὐρυσάκης οἱ Αἴαντος υἱοί, ‹τῆς› Ἀθήνησι πολιτείας μεταλαβόντες, παρέδοσαν τὴν νῆσον αὐτοῖς καὶ κατῴκησαν ὁ μὲν ἐν Βραυρῶνι τῆς Ἀττικῆς, ὁ δ’ ἐν Μελίτῃ, καὶ δῆμον ἐπώνυμον Φιλαίου τὸν Φιλαϊδῶν ἔχουσιν, [4] ὅθεν ἦν Πεισίστρατος. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐξελέγξαι τοὺς Μεγαρέας βουλόμενον, ἰσχυρίσασθαι περὶ τῶν νεκρῶν ὡς οὐχ ὃν τρόπον ἐκεῖνοι θάπτουσι κεκηδευμένων, ἀλλ’ ὃν αὐτοί· θάπτουσι δὲ Μεγαρεῖς πρὸς ἕω τοὺς [5] νεκροὺς βλέποντας, Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ πρὸς ἑσπέραν. Ἡρέας δ’ ὁ Μεγαρεὺς (FGrH 486 F 4) ἐνιστάμενος λέγει καὶ Μεγαρεῖς πρὸς ἑσπέραν τετραμμένα τὰ σώματα τῶν νεκρῶν τιθέναι, καὶ μεῖζον ἔτι τούτων· μίαν ἕκαστον Ἀθηναίων ἔχειν θήκην, Μεγαρέων δὲ καὶ τρεῖς καὶ τέτταρας [6] ἐν μιᾷ κεῖσθαι. τῷ μέντοι Σόλωνι καὶ Πυθικούς τινας βοηθῆσαι λέγουσι χρησμούς, ἐν οἷς ὁ θεὸς Ἰαονίαν τὴν Σαλαμῖνα προσηγόρευσε. ταύτην τὴν δίκην ἐδίκασαν Σπαρτιατῶν πέντε ἄνδρες, Κριτολαΐδας, Ἀμομφάρετος, Ὑψιχίδας, Ἀναξίλας, Κλεομένης.

[11] [1] Ἤδη μὲν οὖν καὶ ἀπὸ τούτων ἔνδοξος ἦν ὁ Σόλων καὶ μέγας. ἐθαυμάσθη δὲ καὶ διεβοήθη μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν εἰπὼν ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τοῦ ἐν Δελφοῖς, ὡς χρὴ βοηθεῖν καὶ μὴ περιορᾶν Κιρραίους ὑβρίζοντας εἰς τὸ μαντεῖον, ἀλλὰ προσαμύνειν ὑπὲρ τοῦ θεοῦ Δελφοῖς. πεισθέντες γὰρ ὑπ’ ἐκείνου πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ὥρμησαν οἱ Ἀμφικτύονες, ὡς ἄλλοι τε πολλοὶ μαρτυροῦσι καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 572) ἐν τῇ τῶν Πυθιονικῶν ἀναγραφῇ [2] Σόλωνι τὴν γνώμην ἀνατιθείς. οὐ μέντοι στρατηγὸς ἐπὶ τοῦτον ἀπεδείχθη τὸν πόλεμον, ὡς λέγειν φησὶν Ἕρμιππος (FHG III 39) Εὐάνθη τὸν Σάμιον· οὔτε γὰρ Αἰσχίνης ὁ ῥήτωρ τοῦτ’ εἴρηκεν, ἔν τε τοῖς τῶν Δελφῶν ὑπομνήμασιν Ἀλκμαίων, οὐ Σόλων, Ἀθηναίων στρατηγὸς ἀναγέγραπται.

[12] [1] Τὸ δὲ Κυλώνειον ἄγος ἤδη μὲν ἐκ πολλοῦ διετάραττε τὴν πόλιν, ἐξ οὗ τοὺς συνωμότας τοῦ Κύλωνος ἱκετεύοντας τὴν θεὸν Μεγακλῆς ὁ ἄρχων ἐπὶ δίκῃ κατελθεῖν ἔπεισεν, ἐξάψαντας δὲ τοῦ ἕδους κρόκην κλωστὴν καὶ ταύτης ἐχομένους, ὡς ἐγένοντο περὶ τὰς Σεμνὰς θεὰς καταβαίνοντες, αὐτομάτως τῆς κρόκης ῥαγείσης, ὥρμησε συλλαμβάνειν ὁ Μεγακλῆς καὶ οἱ συνάρχοντες, ὡς τῆς θεοῦ τὴν ἱκεσίαν ἀπολεγομένης, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἔξω κατέλευσαν, οἱ δὲ τοῖς βωμοῖς προσφυγόντες ἀπεσφάγησαν, μόνοι δ’ ἀφείθησαν οἱ τὰς γυναῖκας αὐτῶν [2] ἱκετεύσαντες. ἐκ τούτου δὲ κληθέντες ἐναγεῖς ἐμισοῦντο, καὶ τῶν Κυλωνείων οἱ περιγενόμενοι πάλιν ἦσαν ἰσχυροί, καὶ στασιάζοντες ἀεὶ διετέλουν πρὸς τοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ Μεγακλέους.

[3] ἐν δὲ τῷ τότε χρόνῳ τῆς στάσεως ἀκμὴν λαβούσης μάλιστα, καὶ τοῦ δήμου διαστάντος, ἤδη δόξαν ἔχων ὁ Σόλων παρῆλθεν εἰς τὸ μέσον ἅμα τοῖς πρώτοις τῶν Ἀθηναίων, καὶ δεόμενος καὶ διδάσκων ἔπεισε τοὺς ἐναγεῖς λεγομένους δίκην ὑποσχεῖν καὶ κριθῆναι τριακοσίων [4] ἀριστίνδην δικαζόντων. Μύρωνος δὲ τοῦ Φλυέως κατηγοροῦντος ἑάλωσαν οἱ ἄνδρες, καὶ μετέστησαν οἱ ζῶντες, τῶν δ’ ἀποθανόντων τοὺς νεκροὺς ἀνορύξαντες ἐξέρριψαν [5] ὑπὲρ τοὺς ὅρους. ταύταις δὲ ταῖς ταραχαῖς καὶ Μεγαρέων συνεπιθεμένων, ἀπέβαλόν τε Νίσαιαν οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι, [6] καὶ Σαλαμῖνος ἐξέπεσον αὖθις, καὶ φόβοι τινὲς ἐκ δεισιδαιμονίας ἅμα καὶ φάσματα κατεῖχε τὴν πόλιν, οἵ τε μάντεις ἄγη καὶ μιασμοὺς δεομένους καθαρμῶν προφαίνεσθαι [7] διὰ τῶν ἱερῶν ἠγόρευον. οὕτω δὴ μετάπεμπτος αὐτοῖς ἧκεν ἐκ Κρήτης Ἐπιμενίδης ὁ Φαίστιος, ὃν ἕβδομον ἐν τοῖς σοφοῖς καταριθμοῦσιν ἔνιοι τῶν οὐ προσιεμένων τὸν Περίανδρον. ἐδόκει δέ τις εἶναι θεοφιλὴς καὶ σοφὸς περὶ τὰ θεῖα τὴν ἐνθουσιαστικὴν καὶ τελεστικὴν σοφίαν· διὸ καὶ παῖδα νύμφης ὄνομα Βλάστης καὶ Κούρητα νέον αὐτὸν οἱ τότ’ ἄνθρωποι προσηγόρευον.

[8] ἐλθὼν δὲ καὶ τῷ Σόλωνι χρησάμενος φίλῳ, πολλὰ προϋπειργάσατο καὶ προωδοποίησεν αὐτῷ τῆς νομοθεσίας. καὶ γὰρ εὐσταλεῖς ἐποίησε ταῖς ἱερουργίαις καὶ περὶ τὰ πένθη πρᾳοτέρους, θυσίας τινὰς εὐθὺς ἀναμείξας πρὸς τὰ κήδη, καὶ τὸ σκληρὸν ἀφελὼν καὶ τὸ βαρβαρικόν, [9] ᾧ συνείχοντο πρότερον αἱ πλεῖσται γυναῖκες. τὸ δὲ μέγιστον· ἱλασμοῖς τισι καὶ καθαρμοῖς καὶ ἱδρύσεσι κατοργιάσας καὶ καθοσιώσας τὴν πόλιν, ὑπήκοον τοῦ δικαίου [10] καὶ μᾶλλον εὐπειθῆ πρὸς ὁμόνοιαν κατέστησε. λέγεται δὲ τὴν Μουνυχίαν ἰδὼν καὶ καταμαθὼν πολὺν χρόνον, εἰπεῖν πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ὡς τυφλόν ἐστι τοῦ μέλλοντος ἅνθρωπος· ἐκφαγεῖν γὰρ ἂν Ἀθηναίους τοῖς αὑτῶν ὀδοῦσιν, εἰ προῄδεσαν ὅσα τὴν πόλιν ἀνιάσει τὸ χωρίον.

[11] ὅμοιον δέ τι καὶ Θαλῆν εἰκάσαι λέγουσι· κελεῦσαι γὰρ αὑτὸν ἔν τινι τόπῳ τῆς Μιλησίας φαύλῳ καὶ παρορωμένῳ τελευτήσαντα θεῖναι, προειπὼν ὡς ἀγορά ποτε [12] τοῦτο Μιλησίων ἔσται τὸ χωρίον. Ἐπιμενίδης μὲν οὖν μάλιστα θαυμασθείς, καὶ χρήματα διδόντων πολλὰ καὶ τιμὰς μεγάλας τῶν Ἀθηναίων, οὐδὲν ἢ θαλλὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ἱερᾶς ἐλαίας αἰτησάμενος καὶ λαβών, ἀπῆλθεν.

[13] [1] Αἱ δ’ Ἀθῆναι τῆς Κυλωνείου διαπεπαυμένης ταραχῆς, καὶ μεθεστώτων ὥσπερ εἴρηται τῶν ἐναγῶν, τὴν παλαιὰν αὖθις στάσιν ὑπὲρ τῆς πολιτείας ἐστασίασαν, ὅσας ἡ χώρα διαφορὰς εἶχεν, εἰς τοσαῦτα μέρη τῆς πόλεως [2] διεστώσης. ἦν γὰρ τὸ μὲν τῶν Διακρίων γένος δημοκρατικώτατον, ὀλιγαρχικώτατον δὲ τὸ τῶν Πεδιέων, τρίτοι δ’ οἱ Πάραλοι μέσον τινὰ καὶ μεμειγμένον αἱρούμενοι πολιτείας τρόπον, ἐμποδὼν ἦσαν καὶ διεκώλυον [3] τοὺς ἑτέρους κρατῆσαι. τότε δὲ τῆς τῶν πενήτων πρὸς τοὺς πλουσίους ἀνωμαλίας ὥσπερ ἀκμὴν λαβούσης, παντάπασιν ἐπισφαλῶς ἡ πόλις διέκειτο, καὶ μόνως ἂν ἐδόκει καταστῆναι καὶ παύσασθαι ταραττομένη τυραννίδος [4] γενομένης. ἅπας μὲν γὰρ ὁ δῆμος ἦν ὑπόχρεως τῶν πλουσίων. ἢ γὰρ ἐγεώργουν, ἐκείνοις ἕκτα τῶν γινομένων τελοῦντες, ἑκτημόριοι προσαγορευόμενοι καὶ θῆτες, ἢ χρέα λαμβάνοντες ἐπὶ τοῖς σώμασιν, ἀγώγιμοι τοῖς δανείζουσιν ἦσαν, οἱ μὲν αὐτοῦ δουλεύοντες, οἱ δ’ ἐπὶ [5] τὴν ξένην πιπρασκόμενοι. πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ παῖδας ἰδίους ἠναγκάζοντο πωλεῖν - οὐδεὶς γὰρ νόμος ἐκώλυε - καὶ τὴν πόλιν φεύγειν διὰ τὴν χαλεπότητα τῶν δανειστῶν.

[6] οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι καὶ ῥωμαλεώτατοι συνίσταντο καὶ παρεκάλουν ἀλλήλους μὴ περιορᾶν, ἀλλ’ ἑλομένους ἕνα προστάτην ἄνδρα πιστὸν ἀφελέσθαι τοὺς ὑπερημέρους, καὶ τὴν γῆν ἀναδάσασθαι, καὶ ὅλως μεταστῆσαι τὴν πολιτείαν.

[14] [1] Ἐνταῦθα δὴ τῶν Ἀθηναίων οἱ φρονιμώτατοι συνορῶντες τὸν Σόλωνα μόνον ‹ἢ› μάλιστα τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἐκτὸς ὄντα, καὶ μήτε τοῖς πλουσίοις κοινωνοῦντα τῆς ἀδικίας, μήτε ταῖς τῶν πενήτων ἀνάγκαις ἐνεχόμενον, ἐδέοντο τοῖς κοινοῖς προσελθεῖν καὶ καταπαῦσαι τὰς [2] διαφοράς. καίτοι Φανίας ὁ Λέσβιος (FHG II 294) αὐτὸν ἱστορεῖ τὸν Σόλωνα, χρησάμενον ἀπάτῃ πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ τῆς πόλεως, ὑποσχέσθαι κρύφα τοῖς μὲν ἀπόροις γῆς νέμησιν, τοῖς δὲ χρηματικοῖς βεβαίωσιν [3] τῶν συμβολαίων. ἀλλ’ αὐτός φησιν ὁ Σόλων ὀκνῶν τὸ πρῶτον ἅψασθαι τῆς πολιτείας, καὶ δεδοικὼς τῶν μὲν τὴν φιλοχρηματίαν, τῶν δὲ τὴν ὑπερηφανίαν. ᾑρέθη δ’ ἄρχων μετὰ Φιλόμβροτον ὁμοῦ καὶ διαλλακτὴς καὶ νομοθέτης, δεξαμένων προθύμως αὐτὸν ὡς μὲν εὔπορον τῶν πλουσίων, ὡς δὲ χρηστὸν τῶν πενήτων.

[4] λέγεται δὲ καὶ φωνή τις αὐτοῦ περιφερομένη, πρότερον εἰπόντος ὡς τὸ ἴσον πόλεμον οὐ ποιεῖ, καὶ τοῖς κτηματικοῖς ἀρέσκειν καὶ τοῖς ἀκτήμοσι, τῶν μὲν ἀξίᾳ καὶ ἀρετῇ, τῶν δὲ μέτρῳ καὶ ἀριθμῷ τὸ ἴσον ἕξειν προσδοκώντων· ὅθεν ἐπ’ ἐλπίδος μεγάλης ἑκατέρων γενομένων, οἱ προϊστάμενοι προσέκειντο τῷ Σόλωνι, τυραννίδα προξενοῦντες καὶ ἀναπείθοντες εὐτολμότερον ἅψασθαι [5] τῆς πόλεως ἐγκρατῆ γενόμενον. πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ τῶν διὰ μέσου πολιτῶν, τὴν ὑπὸ λόγου καὶ νόμου μεταβολὴν ὁρῶντες ἐργώδη καὶ χαλεπὴν οὖσαν, οὐκ ἔφευγον ἕνα τὸν δικαιότατον καὶ φρονιμώτατον ἐπιστῆσαι τοῖς πράγμασιν.

[6] ἔνιοι δέ φασι καὶ μαντείαν γενέσθαι τῷ Σόλωνι Πυθοῖ τοιαύτην (Hendess 90)·

ἧσο μέσην κατὰ νῆα, κυβερνητήριον ἔργον

εὐθύνων· πολλοί τοι Ἀθηναίων ἐπίκουροι.

[7] μάλιστα δ’ οἱ συνήθεις ἐκάκιζον, εἰ διὰ τοὔνομα δυσωπεῖται τὴν μοναρχίαν, ὥσπερ οὐκ ἀρετῇ τοῦ λαβόντος εὐθὺς ἂν βασιλείαν γενομένην, ἢ γεγενημένην πρότερον μὲν Εὐβοεῦσι Τυννώνδαν, νῦν δὲ Μιτυληναίοις Πιττακὸν [8] ἑλομένοις τύραννον. τούτων οὐδὲν ἐξέκρουσε τὸν Σόλωνα τῆς αὑτοῦ προαιρέσεως, ἀλλὰ πρὸς μὲν τοὺς φίλους εἶπεν, ὡς λέγεται, καλὸν μὲν εἶναι τὴν τυραννίδα χωρίον, οὐκ ἔχειν δ’ ἀπόβασιν, πρὸς δὲ Φῶκον ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασι γράφων (fr. 23, 8 D.)·

εἰ δὲ γῆς (φησίν) ἐφεισάμην

πατρίδος, τυραννίδος δὲ καὶ βίης ἀμειλίχου

οὐ καθηψάμην, μιάνας καὶ καταισχύνας κλέος,

οὐδὲν αἰδεῦμαι· πλέον γὰρ ὧδε νικήσειν δοκέω

πάντας ἀνθρώπους.

ὅθεν εὔδηλον ὅτι καὶ πρὸ τῆς νομοθεσίας μεγάλην δόξαν [9] εἶχεν. ἃ δὲ φυγόντος αὐτοῦ τὴν τυραννίδα πολλοὶ καταγελῶντες ἔλεγον, γέγραφεν οὕτως (fr. 23, 1 D.)·

οὐκ ἔφυ Σόλων βαθύφρων οὐδὲ βουλήεις ἀνήρ·

ἐσθλὰ γὰρ θεοῦ διδόντος, αὐτὸς οὐκ ἐδέξατο.

περιβαλὼν δ’ ἄγραν, ἀασθεὶς οὐκ ἐπέσπασεν μέγα

δίκτυον, θυμοῦ θ’ ἁμαρτῇ καὶ φρενῶν ἀποσφαλείς.

ἤθελον γάρ κεν κρατήσας, πλοῦτον ἄφθονον λαβὼν

καὶ τυραννεύσας Ἀθηνῶν μοῦνον ἡμέραν μίαν,

ἀσκὸς ὕστερον δεδάρθαι καὶ ἐπιτετρῖφθαι γένος.

[15] [1] Ταῦτα τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ φαύλους περὶ αὐτοῦ πεποίηκε λέγοντας. οὐ μὴν ἀπωσάμενός γε τὴν τυραννίδα τὸν πρᾳότατον ἐχρήσατο τρόπον τοῖς πράγμασιν, οὐδὲ μαλακῶς οὐδ’ ὑπείκων τοῖς δυναμένοις οὐδὲ πρὸς ἡδονὴν τῶν ἑλομένων ἔθετο τοὺς νόμους· ἀλλ’ ᾗ μὲν ἀρεστὸν ἦν, οὐκ ἐπήγαγεν ἰατρείαν οὐδὲ καινοτομίαν, φοβηθεὶς μὴ ‘συγχέας παντάπασι καὶ ταράξας τὴν πόλιν, ἀσθενέστερος γένηται τοῦ καταστῆσαι πάλιν’ (fr. 23, 13 D.) καὶ διαρμόσασθαι πρὸς τὸ ἄριστον· ἃ δὲ καὶ λέγων ἤλπιζε πειθομένοις καὶ προσάγων ἀνάγκην ὑπομένουσι χρήσεσθαι, ταῦτ’ ἔπραττεν, ὥς φησιν αὐτός (fr. 24, 16 D.)·

ὁμοῦ βίην τε καὶ δίκην συναρμόσας.

[2] Ὅθεν ὕστερον ἐρωτηθείς, εἰ τοὺς ἀρίστους Ἀθηναίοις νόμους ἔγραψεν, ‘ὧν ἄν’ ἔφη ‘προσεδέξαντο τοὺς ἀρίστους.’ ἃ δ’ οὖν οἱ νεώτεροι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους λέγουσι τὰς τῶν πραγμάτων δυσχερείας ὀνόμασι χρηστοῖς καὶ φιλανθρώποις ἐπικαλύπτοντας ἀστείως ὑποκορίζεσθαι, τὰς μὲν πόρνας ἑταίρας, τοὺς δὲ φόρους συντάξεις, φυλακὰς δὲ τὰς φρουρὰς τῶν πόλεων, οἴκημα δὲ τὸ δεσμωτήριον καλοῦντας, πρώτου Σόλωνος ἦν ὡς ἔοικε σόφισμα, τὴν τῶν χρεῶν ἀποκοπὴν σεισάχθειαν ὀνομάσαντος. τοῦτο γὰρ ἐποιήσατο πρῶτον πολίτευμα, γράψας τὰ μὲν ὑπάρχοντα τῶν χρεῶν ἀνεῖσθαι, πρὸς δὲ τὸ λοιπὸν ἐπὶ [3] τοῖς σώμασι μηδένα δανείζειν. καίτοι τινὲς ἔγραψαν, ὧν ἐστιν Ἀνδροτίων (FGrH 324 F 34), οὐκ ἀποκοπῇ χρεῶν, ἀλλὰ τόκων μετριότητι κουφισθέντας ἀγαπῆσαι τοὺς πένητας, καὶ σεισάχθειαν ὀνομάσαι τὸ φιλανθρώπευμα τοῦτο καὶ τὴν ἅμα τούτῳ γενομένην τῶν τε μέτρων ἐπαύξησιν [4] καὶ τοῦ νομίσματος τιμῆς. ἑκατὸν γὰρ ἐποίησε δραχμῶν τὴν μνᾶν, πρότερον ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ τριῶν οὖσαν, ὥστ’ ἀριθμῷ μὲν ἴσον, δυνάμει δ’ ἔλαττον ἀποδιδόντων, ὠφελεῖσθαι μὲν τοὺς ἐκτίνοντας μεγάλα, μηδὲν [5] δὲ βλάπτεσθαι τοὺς κομιζομένους. οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι πάντων ὁμοῦ φασι τῶν συμβολαίων ἀναίρεσιν γενέσθαι τὴν σεισάχθειαν, καὶ τούτοις συνᾴδει μᾶλλον τὰ ποιήματα.

[6] σεμνύνεται γὰρ ὁ Σόλων ἐν τούτοις, ὅτι τῆς θ’ ὑποκειμένης γῆς (fr. 24, 6 D.)·

ὅρους ἀνεῖλε πολλαχῇ πεπηγότας·

πρόσθεν δὲ δουλεύουσα, νῦν ἐλευθέρα,

καὶ τῶν ἀγωγίμων πρὸς ἀργύριον γεγονότων πολιτῶν τοὺς μὲν ἀνήγαγεν ἀπὸ ξένης (fr. 24, 11 D.),

γλῶσσαν οὐκέτ’ Ἀττικὴν

ἱέντας ὡς ἂν πολλαχῇ πλανωμένους·

τοὺς δ’ ἐνθάδ’ αὐτοῦ δουλίην ἀεικέα

ἔχοντας

[7] ἐλευθέρους φησὶ ποιήσασθαι. πρᾶγμα δ’ αὐτῷ συμπεσεῖν λέγεται πάντων ἀνιαρότατον ἀπὸ τῆς πράξεως ἐκείνης. ὡς γὰρ ὥρμησεν ἀνιέναι τὰ χρέα καὶ λόγους ἁρμόττοντας ἐζήτει καὶ πρέπουσαν ἀρχήν, ἐκοινώσατο τῶν φίλων οἷς μάλιστα πιστεύων καὶ χρώμενος ἐτύγχανε, τοῖς περὶ Κόνωνα καὶ Κλεινίαν καὶ Ἱππόνικον, ὅτι γῆν μὲν οὐ [8] μέλλει κινεῖν, χρεῶν δὲ ποιεῖν ἀποκοπὰς ἔγνωκεν. οἱ δὲ προλαβόντες εὐθὺς καὶ φθάσαντες, ἐδανείσαντο συχνὸν ἀργύριον παρὰ τῶν πλουσίων, καὶ μεγάλας συνωνήσαντο χώρας. εἶτα τοῦ δόγματος ἐξενεχθέντος, τὰ μὲν κτήματα καρπούμενοι, τὰ δὲ χρήματα τοῖς δανείσασιν οὐκ ἀποδιδόντες, εἰς αἰτίαν τὸν Σόλωνα μεγάλην καὶ διαβολὴν ὥσπερ οὐ συναδικούμενον, ἀλλὰ συναδικοῦντα κατέστησαν.

[9] ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν εὐθὺς ἐλύθη τὸ ἔγκλημα τοῖς πέντε ταλάντοις· τοσαῦτα γὰρ εὑρέθη δανείζων, καὶ ταῦτα πρῶτος ἀφῆκε κατὰ τὸν νόμον. ἔνιοι δὲ πεντεκαίδεκα λέγουσιν, ὧν καὶ Πολύζηλος ὁ Ῥόδιός (FGrH 521 F 8) ἐστι. τοὺς μέντοι φίλους αὐτοῦ χρεοκοπίδας καλοῦντες διετέλεσαν.

[16] [1] Ἤρεσε δ’ οὐδετέροις, ἀλλ’ ἐλύπησε καὶ τοὺς πλουσίους ἀνελὼν τὰ συμβόλαια, καὶ μᾶλλον ἔτι τοὺς πένητας, ὅτι γῆς ἀναδασμὸν οὐκ ἐποίησεν ἐλπίσασιν αὐτοῖς, οὐδὲ παντάπασιν ὥσπερ ὁ Λυκοῦργος ὁμαλοὺς τοῖς βίοις [2] καὶ ἴσους κατέστησεν. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος μὲν ἑνδέκατος ὢν ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους καὶ βεβασιλευκὼς ἔτη πολλὰ τῆς Λακεδαίμονος, ἀξίωμα μέγα καὶ φίλους καὶ δύναμιν οἷς ἔγνω καλῶς περὶ τῆς πολιτείας ὑπηρετοῦσαν εἶχε, καὶ βίᾳ μᾶλλον ἢ πειθοῖ χρησάμενος, ὥστε καὶ τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν ἐκκοπῆναι, κατειργάσατο τὸ μέγιστον εἰς σωτηρίαν πόλεως καὶ ὁμόνοιαν, μηδένα πένητα μηδὲ πλούσιον εἶναι τῶν πολιτῶν· Σόλων δὲ τούτου μὲν οὐκ ἐφίκετο τῇ πολιτείᾳ, δημοτικὸς ὢν καὶ μέσος, ἐνδεέστερον δὲ τῆς ὑπαρχούσης δυνάμεως οὐδὲν ἔπραξεν, ὁρμώμενος ἐκ μόνου τοῦ ‹εὖ› βουλεύεσθαι καὶ πιστεύειν αὐτῷ τοὺς [3] πολίτας. ὅτι δ’ οὖν προσέκρουσε τοῖς πλείστοις ἕτερα προσδοκήσασιν, αὐτὸς εἴρηκε περὶ αὐτῶν, ὡς (fr. 23, 16 D.)

χαῦνα μὲν τότ’ ἐφράσαντο, νῦν δέ μοι χολούμενοι

λοξὸν ὀφθαλμοῖς ὁρῶσι πάντες ὥστε δήιον.

[4] καίτοι φησίν, ὡς εἴ τις ἄλλος ἔσχε τὴν αὐτὴν δύναμιν, (fr. 25, 6 D.)

οὔτ’ ἂν κατέσχε δῆμον οὔτ’ ἐπαύσατο,

πρὶν ἂν ταράξας πῖαρ ἐξέλῃ γάλα.

ταχὺ μέντοι τοῦ συμφέροντος αἰσθόμενοι καὶ τὰς ἰδίας [5] αὑτῶν μέμψεις ἀφέντες, ἔθυσάν τε κοινῇ, Σεισάχθεια τὴν θυσίαν ὀνομάσαντες, καὶ τὸν Σόλωνα τῆς πολιτείας διορθωτὴν καὶ νομοθέτην ἀπέδειξαν, οὐ τὰ μέν, τὰ δ’ οὐχί, πάντα δ’ ὁμαλῶς ἐπιτρέψαντες, ἀρχάς, ἐκκλησίας, δικαστήρια, βουλάς, καὶ τίμημα τούτων ἑκάστου καὶ ἀριθμὸν καὶ καιρὸν ὁρίσαι, λύοντα καὶ φυλάττοντα τῶν ὑπαρχόντων καὶ καθεστώτων ὅ τι δοκοίη.

[17] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τοὺς Δράκοντος νόμους ἀνεῖλε πλὴν τῶν φονικῶν ἅπαντας διὰ τὴν χαλεπότητα καὶ τὸ [2] μέγεθος τῶν ἐπιτιμίων. μία γὰρ ὀλίγου δεῖν ἅπασιν ὥριστο ζημία τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι θάνατος, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς ἀργίας ἁλόντας ἀποθνῄσκειν, καὶ τοὺς λάχανα κλέψαντας ἢ ὀπώραν ὁμοίως κολάζεσθαι τοῖς ἱεροσύλοις καὶ ἀνδροφόνοις.

[3] διὸ Δημάδης (II p. 443 M.) ὕστερον εὐδοκίμησεν εἰπών, ὅτι δι’ αἵματος, οὐ διὰ μέλανος, τοὺς νόμους ὁ [4] Δράκων ἔγραψεν. αὐτὸς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ὥς φασιν ἐρωτώμενος, διὰ τί τοῖς πλείστοις ἀδικήμασι ζημίαν ἔταξε θάνατον, ἀπεκρίνατο, τὰ μὲν μικρὰ ταύτης ἄξια νομίζειν, τοῖς δὲ μεγάλοις οὐκ ἔχειν μείζονα.

[18] [1] Δεύτερον δὲ Σόλων τὰς μὲν ἀρχὰς ἁπάσας ὥσπερ ἦσαν τοῖς εὐπόροις ἀπολιπεῖν βουλόμενος, τὴν δ’ ἄλλην μεῖξαι πολιτείαν, ἧς ὁ δῆμος οὐ μετεῖχεν, ἔλαβε τὰ τιμήματα τῶν πολιτῶν, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἐν ξηροῖς ὁμοῦ καὶ ὑγροῖς μέτρα πεντακόσια ποιοῦντας πρώτους ἔταξε καὶ πεντακοσιομεδίμνους προσηγόρευσε· δευτέρους δὲ τοὺς ἵππον τρέφειν δυναμένους ἢ μέτρα ποιεῖν τριακόσια, καὶ τούτους ἱππάδα τελοῦντας ἐκάλουν· ζευγῖται δ’ οἱ τοῦ τρίτου τιμήματος ὠνομάσθησαν, ὃ μέτρων ἦν συναμφοτέρων [2] διακοσίων. οἱ δὲ λοιποὶ πάντες ἐκαλοῦντο θῆτες, οἷς οὐδεμίαν ἄρχειν ἔδωκεν ἀρχήν, ἀλλὰ τῷ συνεκκλησιάζειν [3] καὶ δικάζειν μόνον μετεῖχον τῆς πολιτείας. ὃ κατ’ ἀρχὰς μὲν οὐδέν, ὕστερον δὲ παμμέγεθες ἐφάνη· τὰ γὰρ πλεῖστα τῶν διαφόρων ἐνέπιπτεν εἰς τοὺς δικαστάς· καὶ γὰρ ὅσα ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ἔταξε κρίνειν, ὁμοίως καὶ περὶ ἐκείνων εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον ἐφέσεις ἔδωκε τοῖς [4] βουλομένοις. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τοὺς νόμους ἀσαφέστερον γράψας καὶ πολλὰς ἀντιλήψεις ἔχοντας αὐξῆσαι τὴν τῶν δικαστηρίων ἰσχύν. μὴ δυναμένους γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν νόμων διαλυθῆναι περὶ ὧν διεφέροντο, συνέβαινεν ἀεὶ δεῖσθαι δικαστῶν καὶ πᾶν ἄγειν ἀμφισβήτημα πρὸς ἐκείνους, [5] τρόπον τινὰ τῶν νόμων κυρίους ὄντας. ἐπισημαίνεται δ’ αὐτὸς αὑτῷ τὴν ἀξίωσιν οὕτως (fr. 5 D.)·

δήμῳ μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκα τόσον κράτος ὅσσον ἀπαρκεῖ,

τιμῆς οὔτ’ ἀφελὼν οὔτ’ ἐπορεξάμενος·

οἳ δ’ εἶχον δύναμιν καὶ χρήμασιν ἦσαν ἀγητοί,

καὶ τοῖς ἐφρασάμην μηδὲν ἀεικὲς ἔχειν.

ἔστην δ’ ἀμφιβαλὼν κρατερὸν σάκος ἀμφοτέροισι,

νικᾶν δ’ οὐκ εἴασ’ οὐδετέρους ἀδίκως.

[6] ἔτι μέντοι μᾶλλον οἰόμενος δεῖν ἐπαρκεῖν τῇ τῶν πολλῶν ἀσθενείᾳ, παντὶ λαβεῖν δίκην ὑπὲρ τοῦ κακῶς πεπονθότος ἔδωκε. καὶ γὰρ καὶ πληγέντος ἑτέρου καὶ βιασθέντος ἢ βλαβέντος, ἐξῆν τῷ δυναμένῳ καὶ βουλομένῳ γράφεσθαι τὸν ἀδικοῦντα καὶ διώκειν, ὀρθῶς ἐθίζοντος τοῦ νομοθέτου τοὺς πολίτας ὥσπερ ἑνὸς μέρη ‹σώματος› [7] συναισθάνεσθαι καὶ συναλγεῖν ἀλλήλοις. τούτῳ δὲ τῷ νόμῳ συμφωνοῦντα λόγον αὐτοῦ διαμνημονεύουσιν. ἐρωτηθεὶς γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἥτις οἰκεῖται κάλλιστα τῶν πόλεων, ἐκείνην εἶπεν ἐν ᾗ τῶν ἀδικουμένων οὐχ ἧττον οἱ μὴ ἀδικούμενοι προβάλλονται καὶ κολάζουσι τοὺς ἀδικοῦντας.

[19] [1] Συστησάμενος δὲ τὴν ἐν Ἀρείῳ πάγῳ βουλὴν ἐκ τῶν κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἀρχόντων, ἧς διὰ τὸ ἄρξαι καὶ αὐτὸς μετεῖχεν, ἔτι δ’ ὁρῶν τὸν δῆμον οἰδοῦντα καὶ θρασυνόμενον τῇ τῶν χρεῶν ἀφέσει, δευτέραν προσκατένειμε βουλήν, ἀπὸ φυλῆς ἑκάστης (τεσσάρων οὐσῶν) ἑκατὸν ἄνδρας ἐπιλεξάμενος, οὓς προβουλεύειν ἔταξε τοῦ δήμου καὶ μηδὲν ἐᾶν ἀπροβούλευτον εἰς ἐκκλησίαν εἰσφέρεσθαι.

[2] τὴν δ’ ἄνω βουλὴν ἐπίσκοπον πάντων καὶ φύλακα τῶν νόμων ἐκάθισεν, οἰόμενος ἐπὶ δυσὶ βουλαῖς ὥσπερ ἀγκύραις ὁρμοῦσαν, ἧττον ἐν σάλῳ τὴν πόλιν ἔσεσθαι καὶ [3] μᾶλλον ἀτρεμοῦντα τὸν δῆμον παρέξειν. οἱ μὲν οὖν πλεῖστοι τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλήν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, Σόλωνα συστήσασθαί φασι, καὶ μαρτυρεῖν αὐτοῖς δοκεῖ μάλιστα τὸ μηδαμοῦ τὸν Δράκοντα λέγειν μηδ’ ὀνομάζειν Ἀρεοπαγίτας, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἐφέταις ἀεὶ διαλέγεσθαι [4] περὶ τῶν φονικῶν. ὁ δὲ τρισκαιδέκατος ἄξων τοῦ Σόλωνος τὸν ὄγδοον ἔχει τῶν νόμων οὕτως αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασι γεγραμμένον· ‘ἀτίμων ὅσοι ἄτιμοι ἦσαν πρὶν ἢ Σόλωνα ἄρξαι, ἐπιτίμους εἶναι, πλὴν ὅσοι ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου ἢ ὅσοι ἐκ τῶν ἐφετῶν ἢ ἐκ πρυτανείου καταδικασθέντες ὑπὸ τῶν βασιλέων ἐπὶ φόνῳ ἢ σφαγαῖσιν ἢ [5] ἐπὶ τυραννίδι ἔφευγον ὅτε ὁ θεσμὸς ἐφάνη ὅδε.’ ταῦτα δὴ πάλιν ὡς πρὸ τῆς Σόλωνος ἀρχῆς καὶ νομοθεσίας τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴν οὖσαν ἐνδείκνυται. τίνες γὰρ ἦσαν οἱ πρὸ Σόλωνος ἐν Ἀρείῳ πάγῳ καταδικασθέντες, εἰ πρῶτος Σόλων ἔδωκε τῇ ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλῇ τὸ κρίνειν; εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία γέγονέ τις ἀσάφεια τοῦ γράμματος ἢ ἔκλειψις, ὥστε τοὺς ἡλωκότας ἐπ’ αἰτίαις αἷς κρίνουσι νῦν Ἀρεοπαγῖται καὶ ἐφέται καὶ πρυτάνεις [ὅτε ὁ θεσμὸς ἐφάνη ὅδε], μένειν ἀτίμους, τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιτίμων γενομένων. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπισκόπει.

[20] [1] Τῶν δ’ ἄλλων αὐτοῦ νόμων ἴδιος μὲν μάλιστα καὶ παράδοξος ὁ κελεύων ἄτιμον εἶναι τὸν ἐν στάσει μηδετέρας μερίδος γενόμενον. βούλεται δ’ ὡς ἔοικε μὴ ἀπαθῶς μηδ’ ἀναισθήτως ἔχειν πρὸς τὸ κοινόν, ἐν ἀσφαλεῖ τιθέμενον τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ τῷ μὴ συναλγεῖν μηδὲ συννοσεῖν τῇ πατρίδι καλλωπιζόμενον, ἀλλ’ αὐτόθεν τοῖς τὰ βελτίω καὶ δικαιότερα πράττουσι προσθέμενον συγκινδυνεύειν καὶ βοηθεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ περιμένειν ἀκινδύνως τὰ τῶν κρατούντων.

[2] Ἄτοπος δὲ δοκεῖ καὶ γελοῖος ὁ τῇ ἐπικλήρῳ διδούς, ἂν ὁ κρατῶν καὶ κύριος γεγονὼς κατὰ τὸν νόμον αὐτὸς μὴ δυνατὸς ᾖ πλησιάζειν, ὑπὸ τῶν ἔγγιστα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὀπύεσθαι. καὶ τοῦτο δ’ ὀρθῶς ἔχειν τινές φασι πρὸς τοὺς μὴ δυναμένους συνεῖναι, χρημάτων δ’ ἕνεκα λαμβάνοντας ἐπικλήρους καὶ τῷ νόμῳ καταβιαζομένους τὴν [3] φύσιν. ὁρῶντες γὰρ ᾧ βούλεται τὴν ἐπίκληρον συνοῦσαν, ἢ προήσονται τὸν γάμον, ἢ μετ’ αἰσχύνης καθέξουσι, φιλοπλουτίας καὶ ὕβρεως δίκην διδόντες. εὖ δ’ ἔχει καὶ τὸ μὴ πᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ τῶν συγγενῶν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ᾧ βούλεται διαλέγεσθαι τὴν ἐπίκληρον, ὅπως οἰκεῖον ᾖ καὶ μετέχον [4] τοῦ γένους τὸ τικτόμενον. εἰς τοῦτο δὲ συντελεῖ καὶ τὸ τὴν νύμφην τῷ νυμφίῳ συγκαθείργνυσθαι μήλου κυδωνίου [συγ]κατατραγοῦσαν, καὶ τὸ τρὶς ἑκάστου μηνὸς [5] ἐντυγχάνειν πάντως τῇ ἐπικλήρῳ τὸν λαβόντα. καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ γένοιντο παῖδες, ἀλλὰ τιμή τις ἀνδρὸς αὕτη πρὸς σώφρονα γυναῖκα καὶ φιλοφροσύνη, πολλὰ τῶν συλλεγομένων ἑκάστοτε δυσχερῶν ἀφαιροῦσα καὶ ταῖς διαφοραῖς [6] οὐκ ἐῶσα παντάπασιν ἀποστραφῆναι. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων γάμων ἀφεῖλε τὰς φερνάς, ἱμάτια τρία καὶ σκεύη μικροῦ τιμήματος ἄξια κελεύσας, ἕτερον δὲ μηδέν, ἐπιφέρεσθαι τὴν γαμουμένην. οὐ γὰρ ἐβούλετο μισθοφόρον οὐδ’ ὤνιον εἶναι τὸν γάμον, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τεκνώσει καὶ χάριτι καὶ φιλότητι γίνεσθαι τὸν ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς συνοικισμόν.

[7] ὁ μὲν γὰρ Διονύσιος, ἀξιούσης τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ δοθῆναί τινι τῶν πολιτῶν πρὸς γάμον, ἔφη τοὺς μὲν τῆς πόλεως νόμους λελυκέναι τυραννῶν, τοὺς δὲ τῆς φύσεως οὐκ εἶναι δυνατὸς βιάζεσθαι, γάμους νυμφαγωγῶν παρ’ ἡλικίαν· ἐν δὲ ταῖς πόλεσι τὴν ἀταξίαν ταύτην οὐ δοτέον, οὐδὲ περιοπτέον ἀώρους καὶ ἀχαρίστους ἐπιπλοκὰς καὶ μηδὲν ἔργον γαμήλιον ἐχούσας μηδὲ τέλος, [8] ἀλλὰ γέροντι νέαν ἀγομένῳ φαίη τις ἂν ἐμμελὴς ἄρχων ἢ νομοθέτης τὸ πρὸς τὸν Φιλοκτήτην (fr. adesp. 10 N²),

εὖ γοῦν ὡς γαμεῖν ἔχεις τάλας,

καὶ νέον ἐν δωματίῳ πλουσίας πρεσβύτιδος ὥσπερ οἱ πέρδικες ἀπὸ συνουσίας παχυνόμενον ἐξανευρὼν μετοικίσειε πρὸς παρθένον νύμφην ἀνδρὸς δεομένην. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν περὶ τούτων.

[21] [1] Ἐπαινεῖται δὲ τοῦ Σόλωνος καὶ ὁ κωλύων νόμος τὸν τεθνηκότα κακῶς ἀγορεύειν. καὶ γὰρ ὅσιον τοὺς μεθεστῶτας ἱεροὺς νομίζειν, καὶ δίκαιον ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν οὐχ ὑπαρχόντων, καὶ πολιτικὸν ἀφαιρεῖν τῆς ἔχθρας τὸ [2] ἀίδιον. ζῶντα δὲ κακῶς λέγειν ἐκώλυσε πρὸς ἱεροῖς καὶ δικαστηρίοις καὶ ἀρχείοις καὶ θεωρίας οὔσης ἀγώνων, ἢ τρεῖς δραχμὰς τῷ ἰδιώτῃ, δύο δ’ ἄλλας ἀποτίνειν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον ἔταξε. τὸ γὰρ μηδαμοῦ κρατεῖν ὀργῆς ἀπαίδευτον καὶ ἀκόλαστον, τὸ δὲ πανταχοῦ χαλεπόν, ἐνίοις δ’ ἀδύνατον· δεῖ δὲ πρὸς τὸ δυνατὸν γράφεσθαι τὸν νόμον, εἰ βούλεται χρησίμως ὀλίγους, ἀλλὰ μὴ πολλοὺς ἀχρήστως κολάζειν.

[3] Εὐδοκίμησε δὲ καὶ τῷ περὶ διαθηκῶν νόμῳ. πρότερον γὰρ οὐκ ἐξῆν, ἀλλ’ ἐν τῷ γένει τοῦ τεθνηκότος ἔδει τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὸν οἶκον καταμένειν· ὁ δ’ ᾧ βούλεταί τις ἐπιτρέψας, εἰ μὴ παῖδες εἶεν αὐτῷ, δοῦναι τὰ αὑτοῦ, φιλίαν τε συγγενείας ἐτίμησε μᾶλλον καὶ χάριν ἀνάγκης, [4] καὶ τὰ χρήματα κτήματα τῶν ἐχόντων ἐποίησεν. οὐ μὴν ἀνέδην γε πάλιν οὐδ’ ἁπλῶς τὰς δόσεις ἐφῆκεν, ἀλλ’ εἰ μὴ νόσων οὕνεκεν ἢ φαρμάκων ἢ δεσμῶν ἢ ἀνάγκῃ κατασχεθεὶς ἢ γυναικὶ πειθόμενος, εὖ πάνυ καὶ προσηκόντως τὸ πεισθῆναι παρὰ τὸ βέλτιστον οὐδὲν ἡγούμενος τοῦ βιασθῆναι διαφέρειν, ἀλλ’ εἰς ταὐτὸ τὴν ἀπάτην τῇ ἀνάγκῃ καὶ τῷ πόνῳ τὴν ἡδονὴν θέμενος, ὡς οὐχ ἧττον ἐκστῆσαι λογισμὸν ἀνθρώπου δυναμένων.

[5] Ἐπέστησε δὲ καὶ ταῖς ἐξόδοις τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ τοῖς πένθεσι καὶ ταῖς ἑορταῖς νόμον ἀπείργοντα τὸ ἄτακτον καὶ ἀκόλαστον, ἐξιέναι μὲν ἱματίων τριῶν μὴ πλέον ἔχουσαν κελεύσας, μηδὲ βρωτὸν ἢ ποτὸν πλείονος ἢ ὀβολοῦ φερομένην, μηδὲ κάνητα πηχυαίου μείζονα, μηδὲ νύκτωρ πορεύεσθαι πλὴν ἁμάξῃ κομιζομένην λύχνου προφαίνοντος.

[6] ἀμυχὰς δὲ κοπτομένων καὶ τὸ θρηνεῖν πεποιημένα καὶ τὸ κωκύειν ἄλλον ἐν ταφαῖς ἑτέρων ἀφεῖλεν. ἐναγίζειν δὲ βοῦν οὐκ εἴασεν, οὐδὲ συντιθέναι πλέον ἱματίων τριῶν, οὐδ’ ἐπ’ ἀλλότρια μνήματα βαδίζειν χωρὶς ἐκκομιδῆς.

[7] ὧν τὰ πλεῖστα κἀν τοῖς ἡμετέροις νόμοις ἀπηγόρευται· πρόσκειται δὲ τοῖς ἡμετέροις ζημιοῦσθαι τοὺς τὰ τοιαῦτα ποιοῦντας ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικονόμων, ὡς ἀνάνδροις καὶ γυναικώδεσι τοῖς περὶ τὰ πένθη πάθεσι καὶ ἁμαρτήμασιν ἐνεχομένους.

[22] [1] Ὁρῶν δὲ τὸ μὲν ἄστυ πιμπλάμενον ἀνθρώπων ἀεὶ συρρεόντων πανταχόθεν ἐπ’ ἀδείας εἰς τὴν Ἀττικήν, τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα τῆς χώρας ἀγεννῆ καὶ φαῦλα, τοὺς δὲ χρωμένους τῇ θαλάττῃ μηδὲν εἰωθότας εἰσάγειν τοῖς μηδὲν ἔχουσιν ἀντιδοῦναι, πρὸς τὰς τέχνας ἔτρεψε τοὺς πολίτας, καὶ νόμον ἔγραψεν, υἱῷ τρέφειν πατέρα μὴ διδαξάμενον [2] τέχνην ἐπάναγκες μὴ εἶναι. τῷ μὲν γὰρ Λυκούργῳ καὶ πόλιν οἰκοῦντι καθαρὰν ὄχλου ξενικοῦ καὶ χώραν κεκτημένῳ

πολλοῖσι πολλήν, δὶς τόσοις δὲ πλείονα

κατ’ Εὐριπίδην (fr. 995 N²), καὶ τὸ μέγιστον, εἱλωτικοῦ πλήθους, ὃ βέλτιον ἦν μὴ σχολάζειν, ἀλλὰ τριβόμενον ἀεὶ καὶ πονοῦν ταπεινοῦσθαι, περικεχυμένου τῇ Λακεδαίμονι, καλῶς εἶχεν ἀσχολιῶν ἐπιπόνων καὶ βαναύσων ἀπαλλάξαντα τοὺς πολίτας συνέχειν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις, μίαν [3] τέχνην ταύτην ἐκμανθάνοντας καὶ ἀσκοῦντας. Σόλων δὲ τοῖς πράγμασι τοὺς νόμους μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ πράγματα τοῖς νόμοις προσαρμόζων, καὶ τῆς χώρας τὴν φύσιν ὁρῶν γλίσχρως τοῖς γεωργοῦσι διαρκοῦσαν, ἀργὸν δὲ καὶ σχολαστὴν ὄχλον οὐ δυναμένην τρέφειν, ταῖς τέχναις ἀξίωμα περιέθηκε, καὶ τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴν ἔταξεν ἐπισκοπεῖν ὅθεν ἕκαστος ἔχει τὰ ἐπιτήδεια, καὶ τοὺς ἀργοὺς [4] κολάζειν. ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἤδη σφοδρότερον, τὸ μηδὲ τοῖς ἐξ ἑταίρας γενομένοις ἐπάναγκες εἶναι τοὺς πατέρας τρέφειν, ὡς Ἡρακλείδης ἱστόρηκεν ὁ Ποντικός (fr. 146 Wehrli). ὁ γὰρ ἐν γάμῳ παρορῶν τὸ καλὸν οὐ τέκνων ἕνεκα δῆλός ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἡδονῆς ἀγόμενος γυναῖκα, τόν τε μισθὸν ἀπέχει, καὶ παρρησίαν αὑτῷ πρὸς τοὺς γενομένους οὐκ ἀπολέλοιπεν, οἷς αὐτὸ τὸ γενέσθαι πεποίηκεν ὄνειδος.

[23] [1] Ὅλως δὲ πλείστην ἔχειν ἀτοπίαν οἱ περὶ τῶν γυναικῶν νόμοι τῷ Σόλωνι δοκοῦσι. μοιχὸν μὲν γὰρ ἀνελεῖν τῷ λαβόντι δέδωκεν· ἐὰν δ’ ἁρπάσῃ τις ἐλευθέραν γυναῖκα καὶ βιάσηται, ζημίαν ἑκατὸν δραχμὰς ἔταξε, κἂν προαγωγεύῃ, δραχμὰς εἵκοσι, πλὴν ὅσαι πεφασμένως πωλοῦνται, λέγων τὰς ἑταίρας· αὗται γὰρ ἐμφανῶς φοιτῶσι [2] πρὸς τοὺς διδόντας. ἔτι δ’ οὔτε θυγατέρας πωλεῖν οὔτ’ ἀδελφὰς δίδωσι, πλὴν ἂν μὴ λάβῃ παρθένον ἀνδρὶ συγγεγενημένην. τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ πρᾶγμα ποτὲ μὲν πικρῶς καὶ ἀπαραιτήτως κολάζειν, ποτὲ δ’ εὐκόλως καὶ παίζοντα, πρόστιμον ζημίαν τὴν τυχοῦσαν ὁρίσαντα, ἄλογόν ἐστι· πλὴν εἰ μὴ σπανίζοντος τότε τοῦ νομίσματος ἐν τῇ πόλει μεγάλας ἐποίει τὰς ἀργυρικὰς ζημίας τὸ δυσπόριστον.

[3] εἰς μέν γε τὰ τιμήματα τῶν θυσιῶν λογίζεται πρόβατον καὶ δραχμὴν ἀντὶ μεδίμνου, τῷ δ’ Ἴσθμια νικήσαντι δραχμὰς ἑκατὸν ἔταξε δίδοσθαι, τῷ δ’ Ὀλυμπιονίκῃ πεντακοσίας, λύκον δὲ τῷ κομίσαντι πέντε δραχμάς, λυκιδέα δὲ μίαν, ὧν φησιν ὁ Φαληρεὺς Δημήτριος [4] (fr. 147 Wehrli) τὸ μὲν βοὸς εἶναι, τὸ δὲ προβάτου τιμήν. ἃς γὰρ ἐν τῷ ἑκκαιδεκάτῳ τῶν ἀξόνων ὁρίζει τιμὰς τῶν ἐκκρίτων ἱερείων, εἰκὸς μὲν εἶναι πολλαπλασίας, ἄλλως δὲ κἀκεῖναι πρὸς τὰς νῦν εὐτελεῖς εἰσιν. ἀρχαῖον δὲ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις τὸ πολεμεῖν τοῖς λύκοις, βελτίονα νέμειν ἢ [5] γεωργεῖν χώραν ἔχουσι. καὶ τὰς φυλὰς εἰσὶν οἱ λέγοντες οὐκ ἀπὸ τῶν Ἴωνος υἱῶν, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τῶν γενῶν εἰς ἃ διῃρέθησαν οἱ βίοι τὸ πρῶτον ὠνομάσθαι, τὸ μὲν μάχιμον Ὅπλητας, τὸ δ’ ἐργατικὸν Ἀργαδεῖς, δυεῖν δὲ τῶν λοιπῶν Γελέοντας μὲν τοὺς γεωργούς, Αἰγικορεῖς δὲ τοὺς ἐπὶ νομαῖς καὶ προβατείαις διατρίβοντας.

[6] Ἐπεὶ δὲ πρὸς ὕδωρ οὔτε ποταμοῖς ἐστιν ἀεννάοις οὔτε λίμναις τισὶν οὔτ’ ἀφθόνοις πηγαῖς ἡ χώρα διαρκής, ἀλλ’ οἱ πλεῖστοι φρέασι ποιητοῖς ἐχρῶντο, νόμον ἔγραψεν, ὅπου μέν ἐστι δημόσιον φρέαρ ἐντὸς ἱππικοῦ, χρῆσθαι τούτῳ· τὸ δ’ ἱππικὸν διάστημα τεσσάρων ἦν σταδίων· ὅπου δὲ πλεῖον ἀπέχει, ζητεῖν ὕδωρ ἴδιον· ἐὰν δ’ ὀρύξαντες ὀργυιῶν δέκα βάθος παρ’ ἑαυτοῖς μὴ εὕρωσι, τότε λαμβάνειν παρὰ τοῦ γείτονος, ἑξάχουν ὑδρίαν δὶς ἑκάστης ἡμέρας πληροῦντας· ἀπορίᾳ γὰρ ᾤετο δεῖν [7] βοηθεῖν, οὐκ ἀργίαν ἐφοδιάζειν. ὥρισε δὲ καὶ φυτειῶν μέτρα μάλ’ ἐμπείρως, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλο τι φυτεύοντας ἐν ἀγρῷ πέντε πόδας ἀπέχειν τοῦ γείτονος κελεύσας, τοὺς δὲ συκῆν ἢ ἐλαίαν ἐννέα· πορρωτέρω γὰρ ἐξικνεῖται ταῦτα ταῖς ῥίζαις καὶ οὐ πᾶσι γειτνιᾷ τοῖς φυτοῖς ἀσινῶς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τροφὴν παραιρεῖται καὶ βλάπτουσαν ἐνίοις [8] ἀπορροὴν ἀφίησι. βόθρους δὲ καὶ τάφρους τὸν βουλόμενον ἐκέλευσεν ὀρύσσειν, ὅσον ἐμβάλλει βάθος ἀφιστάμενον μῆκος τἀλλοτρίου, καὶ μελισσῶν σμήνη καθιστάμενον, ἀπέχειν τῶν ὑφ’ ἑτέρου πρότερον ἱδρυμένων πόδας τριακοσίους.

[24] [1] Τῶν δὲ γινομένων διάθεσιν πρὸς ξένους ἐλαίου μόνον ἔδωκεν, ἄλλα δ’ ἐξάγειν ἐκώλυσε, καὶ κατὰ τῶν ἐξαγόντων ἀρὰς τὸν ἄρχοντα ποιεῖσθαι προσέταξεν, ἢ [2] τίνειν αὐτὸν ἑκατὸν δραχμὰς εἰς τὸ δημόσιον· καὶ πρῶτος ἄξων ἐστὶν ὁ τοῦτον περιέχων τὸν νόμον. οὐκ ἂν οὖν τις ἡγήσαιτο παντελῶς ἀπιθάνους τοὺς λέγοντας, ὅτι καὶ σύκων ἐξαγωγὴ τὸ παλαιὸν ἀπείρητο, καὶ τὸ φαίνειν ἐνδεικνύμενον τοὺς ἐξάγοντας κληθῆναι συκοφαντεῖν.

[3] Ἔγραψε δὲ καὶ βλάβης τετραπόδων νόμον, ἐν ᾧ καὶ κύνα δάκνοντα παραδοῦναι κελεύει κλοιῷ τριπήχει δεδεμένον· τὸ μὲν ἐνθύμημα χάριεν πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν.

[4] Παρέχει δ’ ἀπορίαν καὶ ὁ τῶν δημοποιήτων νόμος, ὅτι γενέσθαι πολίτας οὐ δίδωσι πλὴν τοῖς φεύγουσιν ἀειφυγίᾳ τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἢ πανεστίοις Ἀθήναζε μετοικιζομένοις ἐπὶ τέχνῃ. τοῦτο δὲ ποιῆσαί φασιν αὐτὸν οὐχ οὕτως ἀπελαύνοντα τοὺς ἄλλους, ὡς κατακαλούμενον Ἀθήναζε τούτους ἐπὶ βεβαίῳ τῷ μεθέξειν τῆς πολιτείας, καὶ ἅμα πιστοὺς νομίζοντα τοὺς μὲν ἀποβεβληκότας τὴν ἑαυτῶν διὰ τὴν ἀνάγκην, τοὺς δ’ ἀπολελοιπότας διὰ τὴν γνώμην.

[5] Ἴδιον δὲ τοῦ Σόλωνος καὶ τὸ περὶ τῆς ἐν δημοσίῳ σιτήσεως, ὅπερ αὐτὸς παρασιτεῖν κέκληκε. τὸν γὰρ αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐᾷ σιτεῖσθαι πολλάκις, ἐὰν δ’ ᾧ καθήκει μὴ βούληται, κολάζει, τὸ μὲν ἡγούμενος πλεονεξίαν, τὸ δ’ ὑπεροψίαν τῶν κοινῶν.

[25] [1] Ἰσχὺν δὲ τοῖς νόμοις πᾶσιν εἰς ἑκατὸν ἐνιαυτοὺς ἔδωκε, καὶ κατεγράφησαν εἰς ξυλίνους ἄξονας ἐν πλαισίοις †περιέχουσι στρεφομένους, ὧν ἔτι καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐν Πρυτανείῳ λείψανα μικρὰ διεσῴζετο, καὶ προσηγορεύθησαν, [2] ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης (Ἀθπ. 7, 1) φησί, κύρβεις. καὶ Κρατῖνος ὁ κωμικὸς εἴρηκέ που (fr. 274 K.)·

πρὸς τοῦ Σόλωνος καὶ Δράκοντος, οἷσι νῦν

φρύγουσιν ἤδη τὰς κάχρυς τοῖς κύρβεσιν.

ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ἰδίως, ἐν οἷς ἱερὰ καὶ θυσίαι περιέχονται, [3] κύρβεις, ἄξονας δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ὠνομάσθαι. κοινὸν μὲν οὖν ὤμνυεν ὅρκον ἡ βουλὴ τοὺς Σόλωνος νόμους ἐμπεδώσειν, ἰδίως δ’ ἕκαστος τῶν θεσμοθετῶν ἐν ἀγορᾷ πρὸς τῷ λίθῳ, καταφατίζων, εἴ τινα παραβαίη τῶν θεσμῶν, ἀνδριάντα χρυσοῦν ἰσομέτρητον ἀναθήσειν ἐν Δελφοῖς.

[4] Συνιδὼν δὲ τοῦ μηνὸς τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν, καὶ τὴν κίνησιν τῆς σελήνης οὔτε δυομένῳ τῷ ἡλίῳ πάντως οὔτ’ ἀνίσχοντι συμφερομένην, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρας καὶ καταλαμβάνουσαν καὶ παρερχομένην τὸν ἥλιον, αὐτὴν μὲν ἔταξε ταύτην ἕνην καὶ νέαν καλεῖσθαι, τὸ μὲν πρὸ συνόδου μόριον αὐτῆς τῷ παυομένῳ μηνί, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν ἤδη τῷ ἀρχομένῳ προσήκειν ἡγούμενος, πρῶτος ὡς ἔοικεν ὀρθῶς ἀκούσας Ὁμήρου (Od. 14, 162. 19, 307) λέγοντος·

τοῦ μὲν φθίνοντος μηνός, τοῦ δ’ ἱσταμένοιο·

[5] τὴν δ’ ἐφεξῆς ἡμέραν νουμηνίαν ἐκάλεσε. τὰς δ’ ἀπ’ εἰκάδος οὐ προστιθείς, ἀλλ’ ἀφαιρῶν καὶ ἀναλύων, ὥσπερ τὰ φῶτα τῆς σελήνης ἑώρα, μέχρι τριακάδος ἠρίθμησεν.

[6] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν νόμων εἰσενεχθέντων ἔνιοι τῷ Σόλωνι καθ’ ἑκάστην προσῄεσαν ἡμέραν, ἐπαινοῦντες ἢ ψέγοντες ἢ συμβουλεύοντες ἐμβάλλειν τοῖς γεγραμμένοις ὅ τι τύχοιεν ἢ ἀφαιρεῖν, πλεῖστοι δ’ ἦσαν οἱ πυνθανόμενοι καὶ ἀνακρίνοντες καὶ κελεύοντες αὐτόν, ὅπως ἕκαστον ἔχει καὶ πρὸς ἣν κεῖται διάνοιαν ἐπεκδιδάσκειν καὶ σαφηνίζειν, ὁρῶν ὅτι ταῦτα καὶ τὸ μὴ πράττειν ἄτοπον καὶ τὸ πράττειν ἐπίφθονον, ὅλως δὲ ταῖς ἀπορίαις ὑπεκστῆναι βουλόμενος καὶ διαφυγεῖν τὸ δυσάρεστον καὶ τὸ φιλαίτιον τῶν πολιτῶν (‘ἔργμασι’ γὰρ ‘ἐν μεγάλοις πᾶσιν ἁδεῖν χαλεπόν’, ὡς αὐτὸς (fr. 5, 11 D.) εἴρηκε), πρόσχημα τῆς πλάνης τὴν ναυκληρίαν ποιησάμενος ἐξέπλευσε, δεκαετῆ παρὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀποδημίαν αἰτησάμενος. ἤλπιζε γὰρ ἐν τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ καὶ τοῖς νόμοις αὐτοὺς ἔσεσθαι συνήθεις.

[26] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἀφίκετο, καὶ διέτριψεν, ὡς [καὶ πρότερον] αὐτός φησι (fr. 6 D.),

Νείλου ἐπὶ προχοῇσι Κανωβίδος ἐγγύθεν ἀκτῆς.

χρόνον δέ τινα καὶ τοῖς περὶ Ψένωπιν τὸν Ἡλιοπολίτην καὶ Σῶγχιν τὸν Σαΐτην, λογιωτάτοις οὖσι τῶν ἱερέων, συνεφιλοσόφησε· παρ’ ὧν καὶ τὸν Ἀτλαντικὸν ἀκούσας λόγον, ὡς Πλάτων (Tim. 21 sq. Critias 108d) φησίν, ἐπεχείρησε διὰ ποιήματος ἐξενεγκεῖν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας.

[2] ἔπειτα πλεύσας εἰς Κύπρον, ἠγαπήθη διαφερόντως ὑπὸ Φιλοκύπρου τινὸς τῶν ἐκεῖ βασιλέων, ὃς εἶχεν οὐ μεγάλην πόλιν, ᾠκισμένην ὑπὸ Δημοφῶντος τοῦ Θησέως περὶ τὸν Κλάριον ποταμὸν ἐν χωρίοις ὀχυροῖς μέν, ἄλλως δὲ [3] δυσχερέσι καὶ φαύλοις κειμένην. ἔπεισεν οὖν αὐτὸν ὁ Σόλων, ὑποκειμένου καλοῦ πεδίου, μεταθέντα τὴν πόλιν ἡδίονα καὶ μείζονα κατασκευάσαι, καὶ παρὼν ἐπεμελήθη τοῦ συνοικισμοῦ καὶ διεκόσμησε πρός τε διαγωγὴν ἄριστα καὶ πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν, ὥστε πολλοὺς μὲν οἰκήτορας τῷ Φιλοκύπρῳ προσελθεῖν, ζηλῶσαι δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους βασιλεῖς. διὸ καὶ τῷ Σόλωνι τιμὴν ἀποδιδούς, Αἰπεῖαν τὴν πόλιν καλουμένην πρότερον ἀπ’ ἐκείνου Σόλους προσηγόρευσε.

[4] καὶ αὐτὸς δὲ μέμνηται τοῦ συνοικισμοῦ· προσαγορεύσας γὰρ ἐν ταῖς ἐλεγείαις τὸν Φιλόκυπρον (fr. 7 D.),

νῦν δὲ (φησὶ) σὺ μὲν Σολίοισι πολὺν χρόνον ἐνθάδ’ ἀνάσσων

τήνδε πόλιν ναίοις καὶ γένος ὑμέτερον·

αὐτὰρ ἐμὲ ξὺν νηὶ θοῇ κλεινῆς ἀπὸ νήσου

ἀσκηθῆ πέμποι Κύπρις ἰοστέφανος,

οἰκισμῷ δ’ ἐπὶ τῷδε χάριν καὶ κῦδος ὀπάζοι

ἐσθλὸν καὶ νόστον πατρίδ’ ἐς ἡμετέρην.

[27] [1] Τὴν δὲ πρὸς Κροῖσον ἔντευξιν αὐτοῦ δοκοῦσιν ἔνιοι τοῖς χρόνοις ὡς πεπλασμένην ἐξελέγχειν. ἐγὼ δὲ λόγον ἔνδοξον οὕτω καὶ τοσούτους μάρτυρας ἔχοντα καὶ (ὃ μεῖζόν ἐστι) πρέποντα τῷ Σόλωνος ἤθει καὶ τῆς ἐκείνου μεγαλοφροσύνης καὶ σοφίας ἄξιον, οὔ μοι δοκῶ προήσεσθαι χρονικοῖς τισι λεγομένοις κανόσιν, οὓς μυρίοι διορθοῦντες, ἄχρι σήμερον εἰς οὐδὲν αὑτοῖς ὁμολογούμενον [2] δύνανται καταστῆσαι τὰς ἀντιλογίας. τὸν δ’ οὖν Σόλωνά φασιν εἰς Σάρδεις δεηθέντι τῷ Κροίσῳ παραγενόμενον παθεῖν τι παραπλήσιον ἀνδρὶ χερσαίῳ κατιόντι [3] πρῶτον ἐπὶ θάλασσαν. ἐκεῖνός τε γὰρ ὁρῶν ἄλλον ἐξ ἄλλου ποταμὸν ᾤετο τὴν θάλασσαν εἶναι, καὶ τῷ Σόλωνι, τὴν αὐλὴν διαπορευομένῳ καὶ πολλοὺς ὁρῶντι τῶν βασιλικῶν κεκοσμημένους πολυτελῶς καὶ σοβοῦντος ἐν ὄχλῳ προπομπῶν καὶ δορυφόρων, ἕκαστος ἐδόκει Κροῖσος εἶναι, μέχρι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἤχθη, πᾶν ὅσον ἐν λίθοις, ἐν βαφαῖς ἐσθῆτος, ἐν τέχναις χρυσοῦ περὶ κόσμον ἐκπρεπὲς ἔχειν ἢ περιττὸν ἢ ζηλωτὸν ἐδόκει περικείμενον, [4] ὡς δὴ θέαμα σεμνότατον ὀφθείη καὶ ποικιλώτατον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Σόλων ἄντικρυς καταστὰς οὔτ’ ἔπαθεν οὐδὲν οὔτ’ εἶπε πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν ὧν ὁ Κροῖσος προσεδόκησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δῆλος ἦν τοῖς εὖ φρονοῦσι τῆς ἀπειροκαλίας καὶ μικροπρεπείας καταφρονῶν, ἐκέλευσεν αὐτῷ τούς τε θησαυροὺς ἀνοῖξαι τῶν χρημάτων καὶ τὴν ἄλλην ἄγοντας ἐπιδεῖξαι μηδὲν δεομένῳ κατασκευὴν καὶ πολυτέλειαν.

[5] ἤρκει γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοῦ τρόπου κατανόησιν παρασχεῖν.

[6] ὡς δ’ οὖν αὖθις ‹εἰς›ήχθη γεγονὼς ἁπάντων θεατής, ἠρώτησεν αὐτὸν ὁ Κροῖσος, εἴ τινα οἶδεν ἀνθρώπων ἑαυτοῦ μακαριώτερον. ἀποφηναμένου δὲ τοῦ Σόλωνος ὅτι οἶδε Τέλλον αὑτοῦ πολίτην, καὶ διεξελθόντος ὅτι χρηστὸς ἀνὴρ ὁ Τέλλος γενόμενος καὶ παῖδας εὐδοκίμους καταλιπὼν καὶ βίον οὐδενὸς ἐνδεᾶ τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἐτελεύτησεν ἐνδόξως ἀριστεύσας ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος, ἤδη μὲν ἀλλόκοτος ἐδόκει [εἶναι] τῷ Κροίσῳ καὶ ἄγροικος, εἰ μὴ πρὸς ἀργύριον πολὺ μηδὲ χρυσίον τῆς εὐδαιμονίας ποιεῖται τὴν ἀναμέτρησιν, ἀλλὰ δημοτικοῦ καὶ ἰδιώτου βίον καὶ θάνατον ἀνθρώπου μᾶλλον ἢ τοσαύτην ἀγαπῴη [7] δύναμιν καὶ ἀρχήν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πάλιν ἠρώτησεν αὐτόν, εἰ μετὰ Τέλλον ἄλλον ἔγνωκεν ἀνθρώπων εὐδαιμονέστερον. πάλιν δὲ τοῦ Σόλωνος εἰπόντος εἰδέναι καὶ Κλέοβιν καὶ Βίτωνα, φιλαδέλφους καὶ φιλομήτορας διαφερόντως ἄνδρας, οἳ τὴν μητέρα τῶν βοῶν βραδυνόντων ὑποδύντες αὐτοὶ τῷ ζυγῷ τῆς ἁμάξης ἐκόμισαν πρὸς τὸ τῆς Ἥρας ἱερόν, εὐδαιμονιζομένην ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ χαίρουσαν, εἶτα θύσαντες καὶ πιόντες οὐκέτι μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἀνέστησαν, ἀλλὰ τεθνηκότες ἀναλγῆ καὶ ἄλυπον ἐπὶ δόξῃ τοσαύτῃ θάνατον ὤφθησαν, ‘ἡμᾶς δ’’ εἶπεν ἤδη πρὸς ὀργὴν ὁ Κροῖσος ‘εἰς οὐδένα τίθης εὐδαιμόνων [8] ἀριθμὸν ἀνθρώπων;’ καὶ ὁ Σόλων, οὔτε κολακεύειν βουλόμενος αὐτὸν οὔτε περαιτέρω παροξύνειν, ‘Ἕλλησιν’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ Λυδῶν, πρός τε τἆλλα μετρίως ἔχειν ἔδωκεν ὁ θεός, καὶ σοφίας τινὸς ἀθαρσοῦς ὡς ἔοικε καὶ δημοτικῆς, οὐ βασιλικῆς οὐδὲ λαμπρᾶς, ὑπὸ μετριότητος ἡμῖν μέτεστιν, ἣ τύχαις ὁρῶσα παντοδαπαῖς χρώμενον ἀεὶ τὸν βίον, οὐκ ἐᾷ τοῖς παροῦσιν ἀγαθοῖς μέγα φρονεῖν οὐδὲ θαυμάζειν ἀνδρὸς εὐτυχίαν μεταβολῆς χρόνον [9] ἔχουσαν. ἔπεισι γὰρ ἑκάστῳ ποικίλον ἐξ ἀδήλου τὸ μέλλον. ᾧ δ’ εἰς τέλος ὁ δαίμων ἔθετο τὴν εὐπραξίαν, τοῦτον εὐδαίμονα νομίζομεν. ὁ δὲ ζῶντος ἔτι καὶ κινδυνεύοντος ἐν τῷ βίῳ μακαρισμὸς ὥσπερ ἀγωνιζομένου κήρυγμα καὶ στέφανος ἐστὶν ἀβέβαιος καὶ ἄκυρος.’ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ὁ Σόλων ἀπηλλάττετο, λυπήσας μέν, οὐ νουθετήσας δὲ τὸν Κροῖσον.

[28] [1] Ὁ δὲ λογοποιὸς Αἴσωπος, ἐτύγχανε γὰρ εἰς Σάρδεις μετάπεμπτος γεγονὼς ὑπὸ Κροίσου καὶ τιμώμενος, ἠχθέσθη τῷ Σόλωνι μηδεμιᾶς τυχόντι φιλανθρωπίας, καὶ προτρέπων αὐτόν ‘ὦ Σόλων’ ἔφη, ‘τοῖς βασιλεῦσι δεῖ ὡς ἥκιστα ἢ ὡς ἥδιστα ὁμιλεῖν.’ καὶ ὁ Σόλων ‘μὰ Δία’ εἶπεν, ‘ἀλλ’ ὡς ἥκιστα ἢ ὡς ἄριστα.’

[2] Τότε μὲν οὖν ὁ Κροῖσος οὕτω τοῦ Σόλωνος κατεφρόνησεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ Κύρῳ συμβαλὼν ἐκρατήθη μάχῃ, καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀπώλεσε, καὶ ζῶν ἁλοὺς αὐτὸς ἔμελλε καταπίμπρασθαι, καὶ γενομένης πυρᾶς ἀνεβιβάσθη δεδεμένος, θεωμένων Περσῶν ἁπάντων καὶ Κύρου παρόντος, ἐφ’ ὅσον ἐξικνεῖτο καὶ δυνατὸς ἦν τῇ φωνῇ φθεγξάμενος [3] ἀνεβόησε τρὶς ‘ὦ Σόλων’. θαυμάσας οὖν ὁ Κῦρος ἔπεμψε τοὺς ἐρησομένους, ὅστις ἀνθρώπων ἢ θεῶν οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Σόλων, ὃν ἐν τύχαις ἀπόροις μόνον ἀνακαλεῖται.

[4] καὶ ὁ Κροῖσος οὐδὲν ἀποκρυψάμενος εἶπεν ὅτι ‘τῶν παρ’ Ἕλλησι σοφῶν εἷς οὗτος ἦν ὁ ἀνήρ, ὃν ἐγὼ μετεπεμψάμην, οὐκ ἀκοῦσαί τι βουλόμενος οὐδὲ μαθεῖν ὧν ἐνδεὴς ἤμην, ἀλλ’ ὡς δή μοι θεατὴς γένοιτο καὶ μάρτυς ἀπίοι τῆς εὐδαιμονίας ἐκείνης, ἣν ἀποβαλεῖν ἄρα μεῖζον [5] ἦν κακὸν ἢ λαβεῖν ἀγαθόν. λόγος γὰρ ἦν καὶ δόξα τἀγαθὸν παρούσης· αἱ μεταβολαὶ δέ μοι αὐτῆς εἰς πάθη δεινὰ καὶ συμφορὰς ἀνηκέστους ἔργῳ τελευτῶσι. καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἀνήρ, ἐκ τῶν τότε τὰ νῦν τεκμαιρόμενος, ἐκέλευε τὸ τέλος τοῦ βίου σκοπεῖν, καὶ μὴ θρασυνόμενον [6] ἀβεβαίοις ὑπονοίαις ὑβρίζειν.’ ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῦτ’ ἀνηνέχθη πρὸς τὸν Κῦρον, ἅτε δὴ σοφώτερος ὢν τοῦ Κροίσου, καὶ τὸν λόγον τοῦ Σόλωνος ἰσχυρὸν ἐν τῷ παραδείγματι βλέπων, οὐ μόνον ἀφῆκε τὸν Κροῖσον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τιμῶν ἐφ’ ὅσον ἔζη διετέλεσε, καὶ δόξαν ἔσχεν ὁ Σόλων, ἑνὶ λόγῳ τὸν μὲν σώσας, τὸν δὲ παιδεύσας τῶν βασιλέων.

[29] [1] Οἱ δ’ ἐν ἄστει πάλιν ἐστασίαζον ἀποδημοῦντος τοῦ Σόλωνος, καὶ προειστήκει τῶν μὲν Πεδιέων Λυκοῦργος, τῶν δὲ Παράλων Μεγακλῆς ὁ Ἀλκμαίωνος, Πεισίστρατος δὲ τῶν Διακρίων, ἐν οἷς ἦν ὁ θητικὸς ὄχλος καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς πλουσίοις ἀχθόμενος, ὥστε χρῆσθαι μὲν ἔτι τοῖς νόμοις τὴν πόλιν, ἤδη δὲ πράγματα νεώτερα προσδοκᾶν καὶ ποθεῖν ἅπαντας ἑτέραν κατάστασιν, οὐκ ἴσον ἐλπίζοντας, ἀλλὰ πλέον ἕξειν ἐν τῇ μεταβολῇ [2] καὶ κρατήσειν παντάπασι τῶν διαφερομένων. οὕτω δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων ἐχόντων ὁ Σόλων παραγενόμενος εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας, αἰδῶ μὲν εἶχε καὶ τιμὴν παρὰ πᾶσιν, ἐν δὲ κοινῷ λέγειν καὶ πράσσειν ὁμοίως οὐκέτ’ ἦν δυνατὸς οὐδὲ πρόθυμος ὑπὸ γήρως, ἀλλ’ ἐντυγχάνων ἰδίᾳ τοῖς προεστῶσι τῶν στάσεων ἀνδράσιν, ἐπειρᾶτο διαλύειν καὶ συναρμόττειν, μάλιστα τοῦ Πεισιστράτου προσέχειν δοκοῦντος [3] αὐτῷ. καὶ γὰρ αἱμύλον τι καὶ προσφιλὲς εἶχεν ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι, καὶ βοηθητικὸς ἦν τοῖς πένησι καὶ [4] πρὸς τὰς ἔχθρας ἐπιεικὴς καὶ μέτριος. ἃ δὲ φύσει μὴ προσῆν αὐτῷ, καὶ ταῦτα μιμούμενος ἐπιστεύετο μᾶλλον τῶν ἐχόντων, ὡς εὐλαβὴς καὶ κόσμιος ἀνὴρ καὶ μάλιστα δὴ τὸ ἴσον ἀγαπῶν καὶ δυσχεραίνων, εἴ τις τὰ παρόντα κινοίη καὶ νεωτέρων ὀρέγοιτο· τούτοις γὰρ ἐξηπάτα τοὺς [5] πολλούς. ὁ δὲ Σόλων ταχὺ τὸ ἦθος ἐφώρασεν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν πρῶτος ἐγκατεῖδεν· οὐ μὴν ἐμίσησεν, ἀλλ’ ἐπειρᾶτο πραΰνειν καὶ νουθετεῖν, καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔλεγε καὶ πρὸς ἑτέρους, ὡς εἴ τις ἐξέλοι τὸ φιλόπρωτον αὐτοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἰάσαιτο τῆς τυραννίδος, οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλος εὐφυέστερος πρὸς ἀρετὴν οὐδὲ βελτίων πολίτης.

[6] Ἀρχομένων δὲ τῶν περὶ Θέσπιν ἤδη τὴν τραγῳδίαν κινεῖν, καὶ διὰ τὴν καινότητα τοὺς πολλοὺς ἄγοντος τοῦ πράγματος, οὔπω δ’ εἰς ἅμιλλαν ἐναγώνιον ἐξηγμένου, φύσει φιλήκοος ὢν καὶ φιλομαθὴς ὁ Σόλων, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐν γήρᾳ σχολῇ καὶ παιδιᾷ καὶ νὴ Δία πότοις καὶ μουσικῇ παραπέμπων ἑαυτόν, ἐθεᾶτο τὸν Θέσπιν αὐτὸν ὑποκρινόμενον, [7] ὥσπερ ἔθος ἦν τοῖς παλαιοῖς. μετὰ δὲ τὴν θέαν προσαγορεύσας αὐτὸν ἠρώτησεν, εἰ τοσούτων ἐναντίον οὐκ αἰσχύνεται τηλικαῦτα ψευδόμενος. φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Θέσπιδος, μὴ δεινὸν εἶναι τὸ μετὰ παιδιᾶς λέγειν τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ πράσσειν, σφόδρα τῇ βακτηρίᾳ τὴν γῆν ὁ Σόλων πατάξας ‘ταχὺ μέντοι τὴν παιδιάν’ ἔφη ‘ταύτην ἐπαινοῦντες οὕτω καὶ τιμῶντες εὑρήσομεν ἐν τοῖς σπουδαίοις.’

[30] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ κατατρώσας αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ὁ Πεισίστρατος καθῆκεν εἰς ἀγορὰν ἐπὶ ζεύγους κομιζόμενος, καὶ παρώξυνε τὸν δῆμον ὡς διὰ τὴν πολιτείαν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἐπιβεβουλευμένος, καὶ πολλοὺς εἶχε ‹τοὺς συν›αγανακτοῦντας καὶ βοῶντας, προσελθὼν ἐγγὺς ὁ Σόλων καὶ παραστάς ‘οὐ καλῶς’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ παῖ Ἱπποκράτους ὑποκρίνῃ τὸν Ὁμηρικὸν Ὀδυσσέα· ταὐτὰ γὰρ ποιεῖς τοὺς πολίτας παρακρουόμενος, οἷς ἐκεῖνος τοὺς πολεμίους [2] ἐξηπάτησεν, αἰκισάμενος ἑαυτόν.’ ἐκ τούτου τὸ μὲν πλῆθος ἦν ἕτοιμον ὑπερμαχεῖν τοῦ Πεισιστράτου, [3] καὶ συνῆλθεν εἰς ἐκκλησίαν ὁ δῆμος. Ἀρίστωνος δὲ γράψαντος ὅπως δοθῶσι πεντήκοντα κορυνηφόροι τῷ Πεισιστράτῳ φυλακὴ τοῦ σώματος, ἀντεῖπεν ὁ Σόλων ἀναστάς, καὶ πολλὰ διεξῆλθεν ὅμοια τούτοις οἷς διὰ τῶν ποιημάτων γέγραφεν (fr. 8, 7. 5. 6 D.)·

εἰς γὰρ γλῶσσαν ὁρᾶτε καὶ εἰς ἔπη αἱμύλου ἀνδρός.

ὑμῶν δ’ εἷς μὲν ἕκαστος ἀλώπεκος ἴχνεσι βαίνει,

σύμπασιν δ’ ὑμῖν χαῦνος ἔνεστι νόος.

[4] ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς μὲν πένητας ὡρμημένους χαρίζεσθαι τῷ Πεισιστράτῳ καὶ θορυβοῦντας, τοὺς δὲ πλουσίους ἀποδιδράσκοντας καὶ ἀποδειλιῶντας, ἀπῆλθεν εἰπὼν ὅτι τῶν μέν ἐστι σοφώτερος, τῶν δ’ ἀνδρειότερος· σοφώτερος μὲν τῶν μὴ συνιέντων τὸ πραττόμενον, ἀνδρειότερος δὲ τῶν συνιέντων μέν, ἐναντιοῦσθαι δὲ τῇ τυραννίδι φο[5]βουμένων. τὸ δὲ ψήφισμα κυρώσας ὁ δῆμος οὐδὲ περὶ τοῦ πλήθους ἔτι τῶν κορυνηφόρων διεμικρολογεῖτο πρὸς τὸν Πεισίστρατον, ἀλλ’ ὅσους ἐβούλετο τρέφοντα καὶ συνάγοντα φανερῶς περιεώρα, μέχρι τὴν ἀκρόπολιν κατέσχε.

[6] γενομένου δὲ τούτου καὶ τῆς πόλεως συνταραχθείσης, ὁ μὲν Μεγακλῆς εὐθὺς ἔφυγε μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων Ἀλκμαιωνιδῶν, ὁ δὲ Σόλων ἤδη μὲν ἦν σφόδρα γέρων καὶ τοὺς βοηθοῦντας οὐκ εἶχεν, ὅμως δὲ προῆλθεν εἰς ἀγορὰν καὶ διελέχθη πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας, τὰ μὲν κακίζων τὴν ἀβουλίαν αὐτῶν καὶ μαλακίαν, τὰ δὲ παροξύνων ἔτι καὶ παρακαλῶν μὴ προέσθαι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν· ὅτε καὶ τὸ μνημονευόμενον εἶπεν, ὡς πρώην μὲν ἦν αὐτοῖς εὐμαρέστερον τὸ κωλῦσαι τὴν τυραννίδα συνισταμένην, νῦν δὲ μεῖζόν ἐστι καὶ λαμπρότερον ἐκκόψαι καὶ [7] ἀνελεῖν συνεστῶσαν ἤδη καὶ πεφυκυῖαν. οὐδενὸς δὲ προσέχοντος αὐτῷ διὰ τὸν φόβον, ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ, καὶ λαβὼν τὰ ὅπλα καὶ πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν θέμενος εἰς τὸν στενωπόν, ‘ἐμοὶ μέν’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς δυνατὸν [8] ἦν βεβοήθηται τῇ πατρίδι καὶ τοῖς νόμοις.’ καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν ἡσυχίαν ἦγε, καὶ τῶν φίλων φεύγειν παραινούντων οὐ προσεῖχεν, ἀλλὰ ποιήματα γράφων ὠνείδιζε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις (fr. 8, 14 D.)·

εἰ δὲ πεπόνθατε λυγρὰ δι’ ὑμετέρην κακότητα,

μὴ θεοῖσιν τούτων μῆνιν ἐπαμφέρετε.

αὐτοὶ γὰρ τούτους ηὐξήσατε ῥύματα δόντες,

καὶ διὰ ταῦτα κακὴν ἔσχετε δουλοσύνην.

[31] [1] Ἐπὶ τούτοις δὲ πολλῶν νουθετούντων αὐτὸν ὡς ἀποθανούμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ τυράννου, καὶ πυνθανομένων [2] τίνι πεποιθὼς οὕτως ἀπονοεῖται, ‘τῷ γήρᾳ’ εἶπεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὁ Πεισίστρατος ἐγκρατὴς γενόμενος τῶν πραγμάτων οὕτως ἐξεθεράπευσε τὸν Σόλωνα τιμῶν καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος καὶ μεταπεμπόμενος, ὥστε καὶ σύμβουλον [3] εἶναι καὶ πολλὰ τῶν πρασσομένων ἐπαινεῖν. καὶ γὰρ ἐφύλαττε τοὺς πλείστους νόμους τῶν Σόλωνος, ἐμμένων πρῶτος αὐτὸς καὶ τοὺς φίλους ἀναγκάζων· ὅς γε καὶ φόνου προσκληθεὶς εἰς Ἄρειον πάγον ἤδη τυραννῶν, ἀπήντησε κοσμίως ἀπολογησόμενος, ὁ δὲ κατήγορος οὐχ ὑπήκουσε· καὶ νόμους αὐτὸς ἑτέρους ἔγραψεν, ὧν ἐστι καὶ ὁ τοὺς πηρωθέντας ἐν πολέμῳ δημοσίᾳ τρέφεσθαι [4] κελεύων. τοῦτο δέ φησιν Ἡρακλείδης (fr. 149 Wehrli) καὶ πρότερον ἐπὶ Θερσίππῳ πηρωθέντι τοῦ Σόλωνος ψηφισαμένου [5] μιμήσασθαι τὸν Πεισίστρατον. ὡς δ’ ὁ Θεόφραστος (fr. 99 W.) ἱστόρηκε, καὶ τὸν τῆς ἀργίας νόμον οὐ Σόλων ἔθηκεν, ἀλλὰ Πεισίστρατος, ᾧ τήν τε χώραν ἐνεργοτέραν καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἠρεμαιοτέραν ἐποίησεν.

[6] Ὁ δὲ Σόλων ἁψάμενος μεγάλης τῆς περὶ τὸν Ἀτλαντικὸν λόγον ἢ μῦθον πραγματείας, ὃν διήκουσε τῶν περὶ Σάιν λογίων προσήκοντα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ἐξέκαμεν, οὐ δι’ ἀσχολίας, ὡς Πλάτων (Tim. 21c) φησίν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον [7] ὑπὸ γήρως, φοβηθεὶς τὸ μέγεθος τῆς γραφῆς. ἐπεὶ σχολῆς γε περιουσίαν αὐτοῦ μηνύουσιν αἱ τοιαῦται φωναί·

γηράσκω δ’ αἰεὶ πολλὰ διδασκόμενος

(fr. 22, 7 D.), καὶ (fr. 20 D.)·

ἔργα δὲ Κυπρογενοῦς νῦν μοι φίλα καὶ Διονύσου

καὶ Μουσέων, ἃ τίθησ’ ἀνδράσιν εὐφροσύνας.

[32] [1] Ὡς δὲ χώρας καλῆς ἔδαφος ὁ Πλάτων ἔρημον, αὐτῷ δέ πως κατὰ συγγένειαν προσῆκον, ἐξεργάσασθαι καὶ διακοσμῆσαι φιλοτιμούμενος τὴν Ἀτλαντικὴν ὑπόθεσιν, πρόθυρα μὲν μεγάλα καὶ περιβόλους καὶ αὐλὰς τῇ ἀρχῇ περιέθηκεν, οἷα λόγος οὐδεὶς ἄλλος ἔσχεν οὐδὲ μῦθος οὐδὲ ποίησις, ὀψὲ δ’ ἀρξάμενος προκατέλυσε τοῦ ἔργου τὸν βίον, ὅσῳ μᾶλλον εὐφραίνει τὰ γεγραμμένα, [2] τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον τοῖς ἀπολειφθεῖσιν ἀνιάσας. ὡς γὰρ ἡ πόλις τῶν Ἀθηναίων τὸ Ὀλυμπίειον, οὕτως ἡ Πλάτωνος σοφία τὸ Ἀτλαντικὸν ἐν πολλοῖς ‹καὶ› καλοῖς μόνον ἔργον ἀτελὲς ἔσχηκεν.

[3] Ἐπεβίωσε δ’ οὖν ὁ Σόλων ἀρξαμένου τοῦ Πεισιστράτου τυραννεῖν, ὡς μὲν Ἡρακλείδης ὁ Ποντικὸς (fr. 148 Wehrli) ἱστορεῖ, συχνὸν χρόνον, ὡς δὲ Φανίας ὁ Ἐρέσιος (FHG II 294) ἐλάττονα δυεῖν ἐτῶν. ἐπὶ Κωμίου μὲν γὰρ ἤρξατο τυραννεῖν Πεισίστρατος, ἐφ’ Ἡγεστράτου δὲ Σόλωνά φησιν ὁ Φανίας ἀποθανεῖν τοῦ μετὰ Κωμίαν [4] ἄρξαντος. ἡ δὲ διασπορὰ κατακαυθέντος αὐτοῦ τῆς τέφρας περὶ τὴν Σαλαμινίων νῆσόν ἐστι μὲν διὰ τὴν ἀτοπίαν ἀπίθανος παντάπασι καὶ μυθώδης, ἀναγέγραπται δ’ ὑπό τ’ ἄλλων ἀνδρῶν ἀξιολόγων καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους τοῦ φιλοσόφου (fr. 354).

Publicola

[1] [1] Τοιούτῳ δὲ γενομένῳ τῷ Σόλωνι τὸν Ποπλικόλαν παραβάλλομεν, ᾧ τοῦτο μὲν ὕστερον ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος ἐξεῦρεν ἐπὶ τιμῇ τοὔνομα, πρὸ τοῦ δὲ Πόπλιος Οὐαλέριος ἐκαλεῖτο, Οὐαλερίου δοκῶν ἀπόγονος εἶναι τῶν παλαιῶν, ἀνδρὸς αἰτιωτάτου γενομένου Ῥωμαίους καὶ Σαβίνους ἐκ πολεμίων ἕνα γενέσθαι δῆμον· ὁ γὰρ μάλιστα τοὺς βασιλεῖς εἰς ταὐτὸ πείσας συνελθεῖν καὶ διαλλάξας [2] ἐκεῖνός ἐστι. τούτῳ δὴ κατὰ γένος προσήκων ὁ Οὐαλέριος ὥς φασι, βασιλευομένης μὲν ἔτι τῆς Ῥώμης ἐπιφανὴς ἦν διὰ λόγον καὶ πλοῦτον, ὧν τῷ μὲν ὀρθῶς καὶ μετὰ παρρησίας ἀεὶ χρώμενος ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίων, ἀφ’ οὗ δὲ τοῖς δεομένοις ἐλευθερίως καὶ φιλανθρώπως ἐπαρκῶν, δῆλος ἦν εὐθύς, εἰ γένοιτο δημοκρατία, [3] πρωτεύσων. ἐπεὶ δὲ Ταρκύνιον Σούπερβον, οὔτε λαβόντα τὴν ἀρχὴν καλῶς, ἀλλ’ ἀνοσίως καὶ παρανόμως, οὔτε χρώμενον αὐτῇ βασιλικῶς, ἀλλ’ ὑβρίζοντα καὶ τυραννοῦντα, μισῶν ὁ δῆμος καὶ βαρυνόμενος ἀρχὴν ἀποστάσεως ἔλαβε τὸ Λουκρητίας πάθος, ἑαυτὴν ἐπὶ τῷ βιασθῆναι διεργασαμένης, καὶ Λεύκιος Βροῦτος ἁπτόμενος τῶν πραγμάτων τῆς μεταβολῆς ἐπὶ πρῶτον ἦλθε τὸν Οὐαλέριον, καὶ χρησάμενος αὐτῷ προθυμοτάτῳ συνεξέβαλε τοὺς βασιλεῖς, μέχρι μὲν ἐπίδοξος ἦν ὁ δῆμος ἕνα χειροτονήσειν ἀντὶ τοῦ βασιλέως στρατηγόν, ὁ Οὐαλέριος ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν, ὡς τῷ Βρούτῳ μᾶλλον ἄρχειν προσῆκον, [4] ἡγεμόνι τῆς ἐλευθερίας γεγενημένῳ· δυσχεραινομένου δὲ τοῦ τῆς μοναρχίας ὀνόματος, καὶ δοκοῦντος ἂν ἀλυπότερον τοῦ δήμου μερισθεῖσαν ὑπομεῖναι τὴν ἀρχήν, καὶ δύο προβαλλομένου καὶ καλοῦντος, ἐλπίζων μετὰ τὸν Βροῦτον αἱρεθήσεσθαι καὶ συνυπατεύσειν διήμαρτεν.

[5] ᾑρέθη γὰρ ἄκοντι τῷ Βρούτῳ συνάρχων ἀντὶ τοῦ Οὐαλερίου Ταρκύνιος Κολλατῖνος ὁ Λουκρητίας ἀνήρ, οὐδὲν ἀρετῇ Οὐαλερίου διαφέρων ἀλλ’ οἱ δυνατοί, δεδιότες τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἔτι πολλὰ πειρῶντας ἔξωθεν καὶ μαλάσσοντας τὴν πόλιν, ἐβούλοντο τὸν ἐντονώτατον αὐτοῖς ἐχθρὸν ἔχειν στρατηγὸν ὡς οὐχ ὑφησόμενον.

[2] [1] Ἀγανακτῶν οὖν ὁ Οὐαλέριος, εἰ μὴ πιστεύεται πάντα πράττειν ἕνεκα τῆς πατρίδος, ὅτι μηδὲν ἰδίᾳ κακῶς ὑπὸ τῶν τυράννων πέπονθε, τῆς τε βουλῆς ἀπέστη, καὶ τὰς συνηγορίας ἀπεῖπε, καὶ τὸ πράττειν τὰ κοινὰ παντελῶς ἐξέλιπεν, ὥστε καὶ λόγον τοῖς πολλοῖς παρασχεῖν καὶ φροντίδα, φοβουμένοις μὴ δι’ ὀργὴν προσθέμενος τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν ἀνατρέψῃ τὰ πράγματα καὶ τὴν πόλιν, [2] ἐπισφαλῶς ἔχουσαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ πρὸς ἑτέρους τινὰς ὑποψίαν ἔχων ὁ Βροῦτος ἐβούλετο διὰ σφαγίων ὁρκῶσαι τὴν βουλὴν καὶ προεῖπεν ἡμέραν, καταβὰς μάλα φαιδρὸς εἰς ἀγορὰν ὁ Οὐαλέριος, καὶ πρῶτος ὀμόσας μηδὲν ἐνδώσειν μηδ’ ὑφήσεσθαι Ταρκυνίοις, ἀλλὰ πολεμήσειν κατὰ κράτος ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας, ἡδονήν τε τῇ βουλῇ καὶ [3] θάρσος ἅμα τοῖς ἄρχουσι παρέσχεν. εὐθὺς δὲ καὶ τὰ ἔργα τὸν ὅρκον ἐβεβαίου. πρέσβεις γὰρ ἧκον ἀπὸ Ταρκυνίου, γράμματα κομίζοντες ἐπαγωγὰ τοῦ δήμου καὶ λόγους ἐπιεικεῖς, οἷς μάλιστα τοὺς πολλοὺς ᾤοντο διαφθερεῖν, λεγομένοις παρὰ βασιλέως ἀφεικέναι τὸ φρόνημα [4] καὶ μετρίων δεῖσθαι δοκοῦντος. τούτους εἰς τὸ πλῆθος οἰομένων δεῖν τῶν ὑπάτων προαγαγεῖν, οὐκ εἴασεν ὁ Οὐαλέριος, ἀλλ’ ἐνέστη καὶ διεκώλυσεν ἀνθρώποις πένησι καὶ βαρυνομένοις μᾶλλον τῆς τυραννίδος τὸν πόλεμον ἀρχὰς καὶ προφάσεις νεωτερισμῶν ἐγγενέσθαι.

[3] [1] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα πρέσβεις ἧκον ἕτεροι, τῆς τε βασιλείας ἀφίστασθαι καὶ πολεμοῦντα παύεσθαι τὸν Ταρκύνιον λέγοντες, ἀπαιτεῖν δὲ τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὰς οὐσίας αὑτῷ καὶ φίλοις καὶ οἰκείοις, ἀφ’ ὧν διαβιώσονται φεύγοντες.

[2] ἐπικλωμένων δὲ πολλῶν καὶ μάλιστα τοῦ Κολλατίνου συναγορεύοντος, ἄτρεπτος ὢν ἀνὴρ καὶ τραχὺς ὀργὴν ὁ Βροῦτος ἐξέδραμεν εἰς ἀγοράν, προδότην ἀποκαλῶν τὸν συνάρχοντα, πολέμου καὶ τυραννίδος ἀφορμὰς χαριζόμενον οἷς δεινὸν ἦν ὄντως ἐφόδια φυγῆς ψηφίσασθαι.

[3] συνελθόντων δὲ τῶν πολιτῶν, πρῶτος ἰδιώτης ἀνὴρ εἶπεν ἐν δήμῳ τότε Γάιος Μινούκιος, τῷ τε Βρούτῳ διακελευόμενος καὶ τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις παραινῶν ὁρᾶν, ὅπως τὰ χρήματα μετ’ αὐτῶν ὄντα πολεμοίη πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους μᾶλλον ἢ μετ’ ἐκείνων πρὸς αὐτούς. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἔδοξε τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις, τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἔχουσιν ὑπὲρ ἧς ἐπολέμουν, μὴ προέσθαι τὴν εἰρήνην ἕνεκα χρημάτων, [4] ἀλλὰ συνεκβαλεῖν καὶ ταῦτα τοῖς τυράννοις. ἦν δ’ ἄρα Ταρκυνίῳ λόγος μὲν ἐλάχιστος τῶν χρημάτων, ἡ δ’ ἀπαίτησις ἅμα πεῖρα τοῦ δήμου καὶ κατασκευὴ προδοσίας. καὶ ταῦτ’ ἔπραττον οἱ πρέσβεις, ὑπομένοντες ἐπὶ τῇ τῶν χρημάτων προφάσει, τὰ μὲν ἀποδίδοσθαι, τὰ δὲ φυλάττειν, τὰ δ’ ἀποπέμπειν φάσκοντες, ἄχρι οὗ διέφθειραν οἴκους δύο τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν νομιζομένων, τὸν Ἀκυιλλίων, τρεῖς ἔχοντα βουλευτάς, καὶ δύο τὸν Οὐιτελλίων.

[5] οὗτοι πάντες ἦσαν ἀπὸ μητέρων ἀδελφιδοῖ Κολλατίνου τοῦ ὑπατεύοντος, ἰδίᾳ δ’ Οὐιτελλίοις ἑτέρα πρὸς Βροῦτον οἰκειότης ὑπῆρχεν. ἀδελφὴν γὰρ αὐτῶν ὁ Βροῦτος εἶχε καὶ παῖδας ἐξ αὐτῆς πλείονας· ὧν δύο τοὺς ἐν ἡλικίᾳ συγγενεῖς ὄντας ἅμα καὶ συνήθεις οἱ Οὐιτέλλιοι προσηγάγοντο καὶ συνέπεισαν ἐν τῇ προδοσίᾳ γενέσθαι, καὶ καταμείξαντας ἑαυτοὺς εἰς γένος μέγα τὸ Ταρκυνίων καὶ βασιλικὰς ἐλπίδας ἀπαλλαγῆναι τῆς τοῦ πατρὸς ἀβελτερίας καὶ χαλεπότητος· χαλεπότητα μὲν τὸ ἀπαραίτητον αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοὺς πονηροὺς λέγοντες· τῇ δ’ ἀβελτερίᾳ προσποιήματι καὶ παρακαλύμματι πολὺν χρόνον ὡς ἔοικε χρησάμενος ἀσφαλείας ἕνεκα πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους, οὐδ’ ὕστερον ἔφυγεν αὐτῆς τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν.

[4] [1] Ὡς οὖν συνεπείσθη τὰ μειράκια καὶ τοῖς Ἀκυιλλίοις εἰς λόγους ἦλθεν, ὅρκον ὀμόσαι μέγαν ἔδοξε πᾶσι καὶ δεινόν, ἀνθρώπου σφαγέντος ἐπισπείσαντας αἷμα καὶ τῶν σπλάγχνων θιγόντας. ἐπὶ τούτοις εἰς τὴν Ἀκυιλλίων [2] οἰκίαν συνῆλθον. ἦν δ’ ὁ οἶκος ἐν ᾧ ταῦτα δράσειν ἔμελλον οἷον εἰκὸς ὑπέρημος καὶ σκοτώδης. ἔλαθεν οὖν αὐτοὺς οἰκέτης ὄνομα Οὐινδίκιος ἔνδον ἀποκρύψας ἑαυτόν, οὐ κατ’ ἐπιβουλὴν ἢ προαίσθησίν τινα τοῦ μέλλοντος, ἀλλ’ ἔνδον ὢν ἔτυχε, καὶ προσιοῦσιν αὐτοῖς μετὰ σπουδῆς ὀφθῆναι φοβηθείς, ὑπέστη λάρνακα κενὴν πρὸ αὑτοῦ ποιησάμενος, ὥστε καὶ τῶν πραττομένων θεατὴς γενέσθαι [3] καὶ τῶν βουλευμάτων ἐπήκοος. ἔδοξε δ’ αὐτοῖς τοὺς ὑπάτους ἀναιρεῖν, καὶ ταῦτα δηλούσας γράψαντες ἐπιστολὰς πρὸς τὸν Ταρκύνιον ἔδοσαν τοῖς πρέσβεσι· καὶ γὰρ ᾤκουν αὐτόθι, τῶν Ἀκυιλλίων ξένοι γεγονότες, [4] καὶ τότε τῇ συνωμοσίᾳ παρῆσαν. ὡς δὲ ταῦτα πράξαντες ἀπηλλάγησαν, ὑπεξελθὼν ὁ Οὐινδίκιος λάθρα χρήσασθαι τοῖς προσπεσοῦσιν οὐκ εἶχεν, ἀλλ’ ἠπορεῖτο, δεινὸν μὲν ἡγούμενος, ὥσπερ ἦν, πρὸς πατέρα Βροῦτον υἱῶν ἐξάγιστα κατηγορεῖν, ἢ πρὸς θεῖον ἀδελφιδῶν τὸν Κολλατῖνον, ἰδιώτην δὲ Ῥωμαίων οὐδένα νομίζων ἐχέγγυον [5] ἀπορρήτων τηλικούτων. πᾶν δ’ αὖ μᾶλλον ἢ δυνατὸς ὢν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, ἐλαυνόμενος δὲ τῷ συνειδότι τοῦ πράγματος, ὥρμησε πρὸς τὸν Οὐαλέριον, μάλιστά πως τοῖς κοινοῖς καὶ φιλανθρώποις ἐπαχθεὶς τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὅτι πᾶσιν εὐπρόσοδος ἦν τοῖς δεομένοις, καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ἀνεῳγμένην ἀεὶ παρεῖχε, καὶ λόγον οὐδενὸς οὐδὲ χρείαν ἀπερρίπτει τῶν ταπεινῶν.

[5] [1] Ὡς οὖν ἀνέβη πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Οὐινδίκιος καὶ κατεῖπε πάντα, Μάρκου τε τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ παρόντος αὐτῷ μόνου καὶ τῆς γυναικός, ἐκπλαγεὶς καὶ δείσας ὁ Οὐαλέριος οὐκέτι προήκατο τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἀλλὰ κατακλείσας εἰς τι οἴκημα, καὶ φύλακα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα ταῖς θύραις ἐπιστήσας, τὸν μὲν ἀδελφὸν ἐκέλευσε τὴν βασιλικὴν ἔπαυλιν περισχόντα τὰ γράμματα λαβεῖν, ἂν δυνατὸν ᾖ, καὶ τοὺς οἰκέτας παραφυλάττειν· αὐτὸς δέ, πελατῶν τε πολλῶν καὶ φίλων ἀεὶ περὶ αὐτὸν ὄντων καὶ θεραπείας συχνῆς, ἐβάδιζε πρὸς τὴν οἰκίαν τῶν Ἀκυιλλίων, οὐκ [2] ἔνδον ὄντων. διὸ μηδενὸς ἂν προσδοκήσαντος ὠσάμενος διὰ θυρῶν, ἐπιτυγχάνει τοῖς γράμμασι, κειμένοις ὅπου κατέλυον οἱ πρέσβεις. ταῦτα δ’ αὐτοῦ πράττοντος, οἱ Ἀκυίλλιοι δρόμῳ προσεφέροντο, καὶ περὶ τὰς θύρας συμμείξαντες, [3] ἐζήτουν ἀφελέσθαι τὰς ἐπιστολάς· οἱ δ’ ἠμύνοντο καὶ τὰ ἱμάτια περιβαλόντες αὐτῶν τοῖς τραχήλοις, ὑπὸ βίας καὶ μόλις ὠθούμενοι καὶ ὠθοῦντες, διὰ τῶν [4] στενωπῶν εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἐνέβαλον. τὰ δ’ αὐτὰ καὶ περὶ τὴν ἔπαυλιν ἅμα τὴν βασιλικὴν ἐγίνετο, τοῦ Μάρκου γραμμάτων ἑτέρων ἐν τοῖς σκεύεσι κομιζομένων ἐπιλαμβανομένου καὶ τῶν βασιλικῶν ὅσους δυνατὸς ἦν ἕλκοντος εἰς τὴν ἀγοράν.

[6] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸν θόρυβον κατέπαυσαν οἱ ὕπατοι, καὶ τοῦ Οὐαλερίου κελεύσαντος ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας ὁ Οὐινδίκιος προήχθη, καὶ γενομένης κατηγορίας ἀνεγνώσθη τὰ γράμματα, καὶ πρὸς οὐδὲν ἐτόλμησαν ἀντειπεῖν οἱ ἄνδρες, ἦν μὲν κατήφεια καὶ σιωπὴ τῶν ἄλλων, ὀλίγοι δὲ βουλόμενοι [2] τῷ Βρούτῳ χαρίζεσθαι φυγῆς ἐμέμνηντο. καί τι καὶ Κολλατῖνος αὐτοῖς ἐλπίδος ἐπιεικοῦς ἐνεδίδου δεδακρυμένος καὶ Οὐαλέριος σιωπῶν. ὁ δὲ Βροῦτος ὀνομαστὶ τῶν υἱῶν ἑκάτερον προσειπών, ‘ἄγ’ ὦ Τίτε’ εἶπεν, ‘ἄγ’ ὦ [3] Τιβέριε, τί οὐκ ἀπολογεῖσθε πρὸς τὴν κατηγορίαν;’ ὡς δ’ οὐδὲν ἀπεκρίναντο τρὶς ἐρωτηθέντες, οὕτως πρὸς τοὺς ὑπηρέτας ἀποστρέψας τὸ πρόσωπον, ‘ὑμέτερον’ [4] εἶπεν ‘ἤδη τὸ λοιπὸν ἔργον.’ οἱ δ’ εὐθὺς συλλαβόντες τοὺς νεανίσκους περιερρήγνυον τὰ ἱμάτια, τὰς χεῖρας ἀπῆγον ὀπίσω, ῥάβδοις κατέξαινον τὰ σώματα, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων οὐ δυναμένων προσορᾶν οὐδὲ καρτερούντων, ἐκεῖνον δὲ λέγεται μήτε τὰς ὄψεις ἀπαγαγεῖν ἀλλαχόσε, μήτ’ οἴκτῳ τι τρέψαι τῆς περὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ὀργῆς καὶ βαρύτητος, ἀλλὰ δεινὸν ἐνορᾶν κολαζομένοις τοῖς παισίν, ἄχρι οὗ κατατείναντες αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ τοὔδαφος πελέκει [5] τὰς κεφαλὰς ἀπέκοψαν. οὕτω δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐπὶ τῷ συνάρχοντι ποιησάμενος, ᾤχετ’ ἐξαναστάς, ἔργον εἰργασμένος οὔτ’ ἐπαινεῖν βουλομένοις ἀξίως οὔτε ψέγειν ἐφικτόν. ἢ γὰρ ἀρετῆς ὕψος εἰς ἀπάθειαν ἐξέστησεν ‹αὐτοῦ› τὴν ψυχήν, ἢ πάθους μέγεθος εἰς ἀναλγησίαν. οὐδέτερον δὲ μικρὸν οὐδ’ ἀνθρώπινον, ἀλλ’ ἢ θεῖον ἢ θηριῶδες.

[6] δίκαιον δὲ τῇ δόξῃ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς τὴν κρίσιν ἕπεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀσθενείᾳ τοῦ κρίνοντος ἀπιστεῖσθαι. Ῥωμαῖοι γὰρ οὐ τοσοῦτον ἔργον οἴονται Ῥωμύλου γενέσθαι τῆς πόλεως τὴν ἵδρυσιν, ὅσον Βρούτου τὴν κτίσιν τῆς πολιτείας καὶ κατάστασιν.

[7] [1] Ὡς δ’ οὖν ἀπῆλθεν ἐξ ἀγορᾶς τότε, πολὺν μὲν χρόνον ἔκπληξις εἶχε καὶ φρίκη καὶ σιωπὴ πάντας ἐπὶ τοῖς διαπεπραγμένοις· πρὸς δὲ τὴν τοῦ Κολλατίνου μαλακίαν καὶ μέλλησιν ἀνεθάρρησαν οἱ Ἀκυίλλιοι, καὶ χρόνον ἠξίουν λαβόντες ἀπολογήσασθαι, καὶ τὸν Οὐινδίκιον αὐτοῖς ἀποδοθῆναι δοῦλον ὄντα, καὶ μὴ παρὰ τοῖς κατη[2]γόροις εἶναι. βουλομένου δὲ ταῦτα συγχωρεῖν καὶ διαλύοντος ἐπὶ τούτοις τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, ὁ Οὐαλέριος οὔτε τὸν ἄνθρωπον οἷός τ’ ἦν ἀφεῖναι τῷ περὶ αὐτὸν ὄχλῳ καταμεμειγμένον, οὔτε τὸν δῆμον εἴα προέμενον τοὺς προδότας [3] ἀπελθεῖν. τέλος δὲ τοῖς σώμασιν ἐπιβαλὼν τὰς χεῖρας, ἐπεκαλεῖτο τὸν Βροῦτον, καὶ τὸν Κολλατῖνον ἐβόα δεινὰ ποιεῖν, εἰ τῷ συνάρχοντι παιδοφονίας ἀνάγκην προστριψάμενος, αὐτὸς οἴεται δεῖν καταχαρίζεσθαι ταῖς [4] γυναιξὶ τοὺς προδότας καὶ πολεμίους τῆς πατρίδος. ἀγανακτοῦντος δὲ τοῦ ὑπάτου καὶ κελεύοντος ἀπάγεσθαι τὸν Οὐινδίκιον, οἱ μὲν ὑπηρέται διωσάμενοι τὸν ὄχλον ἥπτοντο τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ τοὺς ἀφαιρουμένους ἔτυπτον, οἱ δὲ φίλοι τοῦ Οὐαλερίου προέστησαν ἀμυνόμενοι, καὶ [5] ὁ δῆμος ἐβόα κελεύων παρεῖναι τὸν Βροῦτον. ἧκεν οὖν αὖθις ὑποστρέψας, καὶ γενομένης αὐτῷ σιωπῆς, εἶπεν ὅτι τοῖς μὲν υἱοῖς αὐτὸς ἀποχρῶν ἦν δικαστής, περὶ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων τοῖς πολίταις ἐλευθέροις οὖσι ψῆφον δίδωσι· λεγέτω δ’ ὁ βουλόμενος καὶ πειθέτω τὸν δῆμον. οὐκέτι μέντοι λόγων ἐδέησεν, ἀλλὰ τῆς ψήφου δοθείσης, πάσαις [6] ἁλόντες ἐπελεκίσθησαν. ὁ δὲ Κολλατῖνος ἦν μὲν ὡς ἔοικεν ἐν ὑποψίᾳ τινὶ καὶ διὰ συγγένειαν τῶν βασιλέων, ἤχθοντο δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τῷ δευτέρῳ τῶν ὀνομάτων, ἀφοσιούμενοι τὸν Ταρκύνιον. ὡς δὲ καὶ ταῦτα συνέβη, παντάπασι προσκρούσας ἀφῆκε τὴν ἀρχὴν ἑκὼν καὶ τῆς πόλεως [7] ὑπεξῆλθεν. οὕτω δὴ πάλιν ἀρχαιρεσιῶν γενομένων, ὕπατος ἀπεδείχθη λαμπρῶς ὁ Οὐαλέριος, ἀξίαν ἀπολαβὼν τῆς προθυμίας χάριν· ἧς οἰόμενός τι δεῖν ἀπολαῦσαι τὸν Οὐινδίκιον, ἐψηφίσατο πρῶτον ἀπελεύθερον ἐκεῖνον ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ γενέσθαι πολίτην καὶ φέρειν ψῆφον, ᾗ βούλοιτο [8] φρατρίᾳ προσνεμηθέντα. τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις ἀπελευθέροις ὀψὲ καὶ μετὰ πολὺν χρόνον ἐξουσίαν ψήφου δημαγωγῶν ἔδωκεν Ἄππιος. ἡ δὲ παντελὴς ἀπελευθέρωσις ἄχρι νῦν οὐινδίκτα λέγεται δι’ ἐκεῖνον ὥς φασι τὸν Οὐινδίκιον.

[8] [1] Ἐκ τούτου τὰ μὲν χρήματα τῶν βασιλέων διαρπάσαι τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἔδωκαν, τὴν δ’ οἰκίαν κατέσκαψαν καὶ τὴν ἔπαυλιν. τοῦ δ’ Ἀρείου πεδίου τὸ ἥδιστον ἐκέκτητο [2] Ταρκύνιος, καὶ τοῦτο τῷ θεῷ καθιέρωσαν. ἔτυχε δὲ τεθερισμένον ἄρτι, καὶ κειμένων ἔτι τῶν δραγμάτων, οὐκ ᾤοντο δεῖν ἀλοᾶν οὐδὲ χρῆσθαι διὰ τὴν καθιέρωσιν, ἀλλὰ συνδραμόντες ἐφόρουν τὰς ἀμάλλας εἰς τὸν ποταμόν.

[3] ὣς δ’ αὕτως καὶ τὰ δένδρα κόπτοντες ἐνέβαλλον, ἀργὸν παντάπασι τὸ χωρίον ἀνιέντες τῷ θεῷ καὶ ἄκαρπον.

[4] ὠθουμένων δὲ πολλῶν ἐπ’ ἀλλήλοις καὶ ἀθρόων, ὑπήγαγεν ὁ ῥοῦς οὐ πολὺν τόπον, ἀλλ’ ὅπου τὰ πρῶτα συνενεχθέντα καὶ περιπεσόντα τοῖς στερεοῖς ὑπέστη, τῶν ἐπιφερομένων διέξοδον οὐκ ἐχόντων, ἀλλ’ ἐνισχομένων καὶ περιπλεκομένων, ἐλάμβανεν ἡ σύμπηξις ἰσχὺν καὶ ῥίζωσιν, [5] αὐξανομένην ὑπὸ τοῦ ῥεύματος. ἰλύν τε γὰρ ἐπήγαγε πολλήν, ἣ προσισταμένη τροφὴν παρεῖχεν ἅμα καὶ κόλλησιν, αἵ τε πληγαὶ σάλον οὐκ ἐποίουν, ἀλλὰ μαλακῶς πιέζουσαι συνήλαυνον εἰς ταὐτὸ πάντα καὶ συνέπλαττον.

[6] ὑπὸ δὲ μεγέθους καὶ στάσεως ἕτερον αὑτῷ μέγεθος ἐκτᾶτο καὶ χώραν ἀναδεχομένην τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ καταφρομένων. τοῦτο νῦν νῆσός ἐστιν ἱερὰ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν, ἔχει δὲ καὶ ναοὺς θεῶν καὶ περιπάτους, καλεῖται δὲ φωνῇ τῇ Λατίνων Μέσον δυεῖν γεφυρῶν.

[7] ἔνιοι δὲ τοῦτο συμπεσεῖν ἱστοροῦσιν οὐχ ὅτε τὸ Ταρκυνίου καθιερώθη πεδίον, ἀλλὰ χρόνοις ὕστερον ἄλλο χωρίον [8] ὁμοροῦν ἐκείνῳ Ταρκυνίας ἀνείσης. ἡ δὲ Ταρκυνία παρθένος ἦν ἱέρεια, μία τῶν Ἑστιάδων, ἔσχε δὲ τιμὰς ἀντὶ τούτου μεγάλας, ἐν αἷς ἦν καὶ τὸ μαρτυρίαν αὐτῆς δέχεσθαι μόνης γυναικῶν· τὸ δ’ ἐξεῖναι γαμεῖσθαι ψηφισαμένων οὐ προσεδέξατο. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν οὕτω γενέσθαι μυθολογοῦσι.

[9] [1] Ταρκύνιον δὲ τὴν ἐκ προδοσίας ἀπογνόντα τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀνάληψιν ἐδέξαντο Τυρρηνοὶ προθύμως, καὶ μεγάλῃ [2] δυνάμει κατῆγον. ἀντεξῆγον δὲ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους οἱ ὕπατοι καὶ παρέταξαν ἐν χωρίοις ἱεροῖς, ὧν τὸ μὲν Ὁράτιον ἄλσος, τὸ δὲ Ναιούιον λειμῶνα προσαγορεύουσιν.

[3] ἀρχομένων δ’ αὐτῶν συνάγειν εἰς χεῖρας, Ἄρρων ὁ Ταρκυνίου παῖς καὶ Βροῦτος ὁ Ῥωμαίων ὕπατος, οὐ κατὰ τύχην ἀλλήλοις περιπεσόντες, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ἔχθους καὶ ὀργῆς, ὁ μὲν ὡς ἐπὶ τύραννον καὶ πολέμιον τῆς πατρίδος, ὁ δὲ [4] τῆς φυγῆς ἀμυνόμενος, ὥρμησαν ὁμόσε τοῖς ἵπποις. θυμῷ δὲ μᾶλλον ἢ λογισμῷ προσμείξαντες, ἠφείδησαν αὑτῶν καὶ συναπέθανον ἀλλήλοις. οὕτω δὲ δεινοῦ γενομένου τοῦ προάγωνος, οὐκ ἔσχεν ὁ ἀγὼν τέλος ἐπιεικέστερον, ἀλλὰ καὶ δράσαντες ἴσα καὶ παθόντες οἱ στρατοὶ [5] διεκρίθησαν ὑπὸ χειμῶνος. ἦν οὖν ἐν ἀπόροις ὁ Οὐαλέριος, οὐκ εἰδὼς τὸ τῆς μάχης πέρας, ἀλλὰ τοὺς στρατιώτας ὁρῶν τοῖς μὲν αὑτῶν νεκροῖς ἀθυμοῦντας, ἐπαιρομένους δὲ τοῖς τῶν πολεμίων· οὕτως ἄκριτος ἦν καὶ [6] παράλληλος ὑπὸ πλήθους ὁ φόνος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἑκατέροις ἐγγύθεν ὁρώμενα τὰ οἰκεῖα μᾶλλον ἐβεβαίου τὴν ἧτταν ἢ τὴν νίκην εἰκαζόμενα τὰ τῶν πολεμίων. ἐπελθούσης δὲ νυκτὸς οἵαν εἰκὸς οὕτω μεμαχημένοις, καὶ γενομένων ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ τῶν στρατοπέδων, λέγουσι σεισθῆναι τὸ ἄλσος, ἐκ δ’ αὐτοῦ φωνὴν ἐκπεσεῖν μεγάλην, φράζουσαν ὡς ἑνὶ πλείους ἐν τῇ μάχῃ τεθνήκασι Τυρρηνῶν [7] ἢ Ῥωμαίων. ἦν δ’ ἄρα θεῖόν τι τὸ φθεγξάμενον εὐθὺς [τε] γὰρ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῖς μὲν ἀλαλάξαι παρέστη μέγα καὶ θαρσαλέον, οἱ δὲ Τυρρηνοὶ περίφοβοι γενόμενοι καὶ συνταραχθέντες ἐξέπεσον τοῦ στρατοπέδου, καὶ διεσπάρησαν οἱ πλεῖστοι. τοὺς δὲ καταλειφθέντας ὀλίγῳ πεντακισχιλίων ἐλάσσους ἐπελθόντες εἷλον οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, καὶ [8] τἆλλα διήρπασαν. οἱ δὲ νεκροὶ διαριθμηθέντες εὑρέθησαν τριακόσιοι μὲν ἐπὶ χιλίοις καὶ μυρίοις οἱ τῶν πολεμίων, οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαίων παρ’ ἕνα τοσοῦτοι. ταύτην τὴν μάχην λέγουσι γενέσθαι πρὸ μιᾶς καλανδῶν Μαρτίων.

[9] ἐθριάμβευσε δ’ ἀπ’ αὐτῆς Οὐαλέριος, εἰσελάσας τεθρίππῳ πρῶτος ὑπάτων, καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα σεμνὴν καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῆ παρέσχεν ὄψιν, οὐκ ἐπίφθονον οὐδ’ ἀνιάσασαν. ὡς ἔνιοι λέγουσι, τοὺς ὁρῶντας· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἔσχε ζῆλον τοσοῦτον οὐδὲ φιλοτιμίαν εἰς ἔτη πάμπολλα διαμένουσαν.

[10] ἀπεδέξαντο δὲ τοῦ Οὐαλερίου καὶ τὰς εἰς τὸν συνάρχοντα τιμάς, αἷς ἐκκομιζόμενον καὶ θαπτόμενον ἐκόσμησε, καὶ λόγον ἐπ’ αὐτῷ διεξῆλθεν ἐπιτάφιον, ὃς οὕτως ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ἠγαπήθη καὶ τοσαύτην ἔσχε χάριν, ὥστε πᾶσι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς καὶ μεγάλοις ὑπάρχειν ἐξ ἐκείνου [11] τελευτήσασιν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρίστων ἐγκωμιάζεσθαι. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἐπιταφίων ἐκεῖνος γενέσθαι πρεσβύτερος, εἴγε μὴ καὶ τοῦτο Σόλωνός ἐστιν, ὡς Ἀναξιμένης ὁ ῥήτωρ (fr. 5 M.) ἱστόρηκεν.

[10] [1] Ἀλλὰ δι’ ἐκεῖνα μᾶλλον ἤχθοντο τῷ Οὐαλερίῳ καὶ προσέκρουον, ὅτι Βροῦτος μέν, ὃν πατέρα τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἐνόμιζεν ὁ δῆμος, οὐκ ἠξίωσε μόνος ἄρχειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρῶτον αὑτῷ συνάρχοντα προσείλετο καὶ δεύτερον· ‘οὑτοσὶ δ’’, ἔφασαν, ‘εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἅπαντα συνενεγκάμενος, οὐκ ἔστι τῆς Βρούτου κληρονόμος ὑπατείας μηδὲν αὐτῷ [2] προσηκούσης, ἀλλὰ τῆς Ταρκυνίου τυραννίδος. καίτοι τί δεῖ λόγῳ μὲν Βροῦτον ἐγκωμιάζειν, ἔργῳ δὲ μιμεῖσθαι Ταρκύνιον, ὑπὸ ῥάβδοις ὁμοῦ πάσαις καὶ πελέκεσι κατιόντα μόνον ἐξ οἰκίας τοσαύτης τὸ μέγεθος, ὅσην οὐ [3] καθεῖλε τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως;’ καὶ γὰρ ὄντως ὁ Οὐαλέριος ᾤκει τραγικώτερον ὑπὲρ τὴν καλουμένην Οὐελίαν οἰκίαν ἐπικρεμαμένην τῇ ἀγορᾷ καὶ καθορῶσαν ἐξ ὕψους ἅπαντα, δυσπρόσοδον δὲ πελάσαι καὶ χαλεπὴν ἔξωθεν, ὥστε καταβαίνοντος αὐτοῦ τὸ σχῆμα μετέωρον εἶναι καὶ βασιλικὸν [4] τῆς προπομπῆς τὸν ὄγκον. ὅσον οὖν ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ πράγμασι μεγάλοις ἀγαθὸν ἦν ἔχειν ὦτα παρρησίαν ἀντὶ [5] κολακείας προσιέμενα καὶ λόγους ἀληθεῖς, ἔδειξεν. ἀκούσας γὰρ ὅτι τοῖς πολλοῖς ἁμαρτάνειν ἐδόκει τῶν φίλων διεξιόντων, οὐκ ἐφιλονίκησεν οὐδ’ ἠγανάκτησεν, ἀλλὰ ταχὺ πολλοὺς συναγαγὼν τεχνίτας, ἔτι νυκτὸς οὔσης κατέβαλε τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ κατέσκαψεν εἰς ἔδαφος πᾶσαν, ὥστε μεθ’ ἡμέραν τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ὁρῶντας καὶ συνισταμένους, τοῦ μὲν ἀνδρὸς ἀγαπᾶν καὶ θαυμάζειν τὴν μεγαλοφροσύνην, ἄχθεσθαι δὲ τῆς οἰκίας καὶ ποθεῖν τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ κάλλος, ὥσπερ ἀνθρώπου διὰ φθόνον οὐ δικαίως καταλελυμένης, τοῦ δ’ ἄρχοντος ὥσπερ ἀνεστίου [6] παρ’ ἑτέροις οἰκοῦντος. ἐδέχοντο γὰρ οἱ φίλοι τὸν Οὐαλέριον, ἄχρι οὗ τόπον ἔδωκεν ὁ δῆμος αὐτῷ καὶ κατεσκεύασεν οἰκίαν ἐκείνης μετριωτέραν, ὅπου νῦν ἱερόν [7] ἐστιν Οὐίκας Πότας ὀνομαζόμενον. βουλόμενος δὲ μὴ μόνον ἑαυτόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀντὶ φοβερᾶς χειροήθη καὶ προσφιλῆ ποιεῖν τοῖς πολλοῖς, τούς τε πελέκεις ἀπέλυσε τῶν ῥάβδων, αὐτάς τε τὰς ῥάβδους εἰς ἐκκλησίαν παριὼν ὑφῆκε τῷ δήμῳ καὶ κατέκλινε, μέγα ποιῶν τὸ πρόσχημα τῆς δημοκρατίας. καὶ τοῦτο μέχρι [8] νῦν διαφυλάττουσιν οἱ ἄρχοντες. ἐλάνθανε δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς οὐχ ἑαυτὸν ὡς ᾤοντο ποιῶν ταπεινόν, ἀλλὰ τὸν φθόνον τῇ μετριότητι ταύτῃ καθαιρῶν καὶ κολούων, ἑαυτῷ δὲ προστιθεὶς τοσοῦτον μέγεθος δυνάμεως, ὅσον ἀφαιρεῖν ἐδόκει τῆς ἐξουσίας, ὑποδυομένου μεθ’ ἡδονῆς [9] αὐτῷ τοῦ δήμου καὶ φέροντος ἑκουσίως, ὥστε καὶ Ποπλικόλαν ἀνηγόρευσεν αὐτόν· σημαίνει δὲ τοὔνομα δημοκηδῆ· καὶ τοῦτο μᾶλλον ἴσχυσε τῶν ἀρχαίων ὀνομάτων, ᾧ καὶ ἡμεῖς χρησόμεθα, τὸν λοιπὸν βίον τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἱστοροῦντες.

[11] [1] Ὑπατείαν μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκε μετιέναι καὶ παραγγέλλειν τοῖς βουλομένοις· πρὸ δὲ τῆς καταστάσεως τοῦ συνάρχοντος οὐκ εἰδὼς τὸν γενησόμενον, ἀλλὰ δεδιὼς ἀντίπραξιν ὑπὸ φθόνου τινὸς ἢ ἀγνοίας, ἐχρήσατο τῇ μοναρχίᾳ πρὸς τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν πολιτευμάτων.

[2] πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἀνεπλήρωσε τὴν βουλὴν ὀλιγανδροῦσαν· ἐτεθνήκεσαν γὰρ οἱ μὲν ὑπὸ Ταρκυνίου πρότερον, οἱ δ’ ἔναγχος ἐν τῇ μάχῃ. τοὺς δ’ ἐγγραφέντας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λέγουσιν ἑκατὸν καὶ ἑξήκοντα τέσσαρας γενέσθαι.

[3] μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα νόμους ἔγραψεν, ὧν μάλιστα μὲν ἰσχυροὺς ἐποίησε τοὺς πολλοὺς ὁ τὸν δῆμον ἀπὸ τῶν ὑπάτων τῷ φεύγοντι δίκην ἐπικαλεῖσθαι διδούς· δεύτερος ὁ τοὺς ἀρχὴν ἀναλαβόντας, ἣν ὁ δῆμος οὐκ ἔδωκεν, ἀποθνῄσκειν κελεύων· τρίτος δὲ μετὰ τούτους, ὃς ἐβοήθησε τοῖς πένησιν, ᾧ τὰ τέλη τῶν πολιτῶν ἀφεῖλε καὶ προθυμότερον ἅπτεσθαι τῶν ἐργασιῶν ἐποίησεν ἅπαντας.

[4] ὁ δὲ γραφεὶς κατὰ τῶν ἀπειθούντων τοῖς ὑπάτοις οὐχ ἧττον ἔδοξε δημοτικὸς εἶναι καὶ πρὸς τῶν πολλῶν μᾶλλον ἢ δυνατῶν γεγράφθαι. ζημίαν γὰρ ἀπειθείας [5] ἔταξε βοῶν πέντε καὶ δυεῖν προβάτων ἀξίαν. ἦν δὲ τιμὴ προβάτου μὲν ὀβολοὶ δέκα, βοὸς δ’ ἑκατόν, οὔπω νομίσματι χρωμένων πολλῷ τότε Ῥωμαίων, ἀλλὰ προβατείαις [6] καὶ κτηνοτροφίαις εὐθενούντων. διὸ καὶ τὰς οὐσίας ἄχρι νῦν ἀπὸ τῶν προβάτων πεκούλια καλοῦσι, καὶ τῶν νομισμάτων τοῖς παλαιοτάτοις βοῦν ἐνεχάραττον ἢ πρόβατον [7] ἢ σῦν. ἐτίθεντο δὲ καὶ παισὶν αὑτῶν Συΐλλους καὶ Βουβούλκους καὶ Καπραρίους ὀνόματα καὶ Πορκίους, κάπρας μὲν τὰς αἶγας, πόρκους δὲ τοὺς χοίρους ὀνομάζοντες.

[12] [1] Οὕτω δὲ περὶ ταῦτα δημοτικὸς γενόμενος νομοθέτης καὶ μέτριος, ἐν τῷ †μετρίῳ τὴν τιμωρίαν ὑπερέτεινεν. ἔγραψε γὰρ νόμον ἄνευ κρίσεως κτείνειν διδόντα τὸν βουλόμενον τυραννεῖν, κτείναντα δὲ φόνου καθαρὸν ἐποίησεν, εἰ παράσχοιτο τοῦ ἀδικήματος τοὺς ἐλέγχους.

[2] ἐπεὶ γὰρ οὐ δυνατὸν ἐπιχειροῦντα τηλικούτοις λαθεῖν ἅπαντας, οὐκ ἀδύνατον δὲ τὸ μὴ λαθόντα τοῦ κριθῆναι φθάσαι κρείττονα γενόμενον, ἣν ἀναιρεῖ τὸ ἀδίκημα κρίσιν προλαβεῖν ἔδωκε τῷ δυναμένῳ κατὰ τοῦ ἀδικοῦντος.

[3] Ἐπῃνέθη δὲ καὶ διὰ τὸν ταμιευτικὸν νόμον. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἔδει χρήματα πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον εἰσενεγκεῖν ἀπὸ τῶν οὐσιῶν τοὺς πολίτας, οὔτ’ αὐτὸς ἅψασθαι τῆς οἰκονομίας οὔτε τοὺς φίλους ἐᾶσαι βουλόμενος, οὔθ’ ὅλως εἰς οἶκον ἰδιώτου παρελθεῖν δημόσια χρήματα, ταμιεῖον μὲν ἀπέδειξε τὸν τοῦ Κρόνου ναόν, ᾧ μέχρι νῦν χρώμενοι διατελοῦσι, ταμίας δὲ τῷ δήμῳ δύο τῶν νέων ἔδωκεν ἀποδεῖξαι· καὶ ἀπεδείχθησαν οἱ πρῶτοι Πούπλιος Οὐετούριος καὶ Μινούκιος Μᾶρκος, καὶ χρήματα συνήχθη [4] πολλά· τρισκαίδεκα γὰρ ἀπεγράψαντο μυριάδες, ὀρφανοῖς παισὶ καὶ χήραις γυναιξὶν ἀνεθείσης τῆς εἰσφορᾶς.

[5] Ταῦτα δὲ διοικήσας, ἀπέδειξεν ἑαυτῷ συνάρχοντα τὸν Λουκρητίας πατέρα Λουκρήτιον, ᾧ τῆς ἡγεμονικωτέρας ἐξιστάμενος ὄντι πρεσβυτέρῳ τάξεως παρέδωκε τοὺς καλουμένους φάσκης· καὶ τοῦτο διέμεινεν εἰς ἡμᾶς τὸ πρεσβεῖον ἀπ’ ἐκείνου τοῖς γεραιτέροις φυλαττόμενον.

[6] ἐπεὶ δ’ ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις ὕστερον ἐτελεύτησεν ὁ Λουκρήτιος, πάλιν ἀρχαιρεσιῶν γενομένων ᾑρέθη Μᾶρκος Ὁράτιος, καὶ συνῆρχε τῷ Ποπλικόλᾳ τὸν ὑπολειπόμενον χρόνον τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ.

[13] [1] Ταρκυνίου δὲ Ῥωμαίοις δεύτερον πόλεμον ἐν Τυρρηνίᾳ κινοῦντος, μέγα σημεῖον λέγεται γενέσθαι. βασιλεύων γὰρ ἔτι καὶ τὸν νεὼν τοῦ Καπιτωλίου Διὸς ἔχων ὁ Ταρκύνιος ὅσον οὔπω συντετελεσμένον, εἴτε μαντείας γενομένης, εἴτ’ αὐτῷ δόξαν ἄλλως, ἅρμα κατὰ κορυφὴν ἐπιστῆσαι κεραμεοῦν ἐξέδωκε Τυρρηνοῖς τισιν ἐξ Οὐηίων δημιουργοῖς, εἶτ’ ὀλίγον ὕστερον ἐξέπεσε τῆς ἀρχῆς.

[2] τῶν δὲ Τυρρηνῶν διαπεπλασμένον τὸ τέθριππον ἐμβαλόντων εἰς κάμινον, οὐκ ἔπαθεν ἃ προσήκει πάσχειν πηλὸν ἐν πυρί, πυκνοῦσθαι καὶ συνιζάνειν ἐκτηκομένης τῆς ὑγρότητος, ἀλλ’ ἐξέστη καὶ ᾤδησε καὶ μέγεθος ἔσχεν ἅμα ῥώμῃ καὶ σκληρότητι τοσοῦτον, ὥστε μόλις ἐξαιρεθῆναι, τὴν ὀροφὴν ἀποσκευασαμένων τῆς καμίνου καὶ [3] τῶν τοίχων περιαιρεθέντων. ὡς οὖν ἐδόκει τοῖς μάντεσι θεῖον εἶναι σημεῖον εὐτυχίας καὶ δυνάμεως παρ’ οἷς ἔσοιτο τὸ τέθριππον, ἔγνωσαν οἱ Οὐήιοι μὴ προέσθαι τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἀπαιτοῦσι, καὶ ἀπεκρίναντο τοῦτο Ταρκυνίοις, [4] οὐ τοῖς Ταρκυνίους ἐκβαλοῦσι προσήκειν. ὀλίγαις δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέραις ἦσαν ἵππων ἀγῶνες αὐτοῖς, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα θέαν καὶ σπουδὴν ‹τὴν› εἰωθυῖαν παρεῖχε, τὸ δὲ νικῆσαν τέθριππον ὁ μὲν ἡνίοχος ἐξήλαυνε τοῦ ἱπποδρόμου σχέδην ἐστεφανωμένος, οἱ δ’ ἵπποι πτοηθέντες ἀπ’ οὐδεμιᾶς ἐμφανοῦς προφάσεως, ἀλλὰ κατὰ δή τι δαιμόνιον ἢ τυχαῖον, ἵεντο παντὶ τάχει πρὸς τὴν Ῥωμαίων πόλιν ἔχοντες τὸν ἡνίοχον, ὡς [δ’] οὐδὲν ἦν ἔργον αὐτοῦ κατατείνοντος οὐδὲ παρηγοροῦντος, ἀλλ’ ἥρπαστο, δόντα τῇ ῥύμῃ καὶ φερόμενον, μέχρι οὗ τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ προσμείξαντες ἐξέβαλον αὐτὸν ἐνταῦθα περὶ τὴν [5] πύλην ἣν νῦν Ῥατουμέναν καλοῦσι. γενομένου δὲ τούτου θαυμάσαντες οἱ Οὐήιοι καὶ φοβηθέντες, ἐπέτρεψαν ἀποδοῦναι τὸ ἅρμα τοῖς τεχνίταις.

[14] [1] Τὸν δὲ νεὼν τοῦ Καπιτωλίου Διὸς εὔξατο μὲν ἀναθήσειν Ταρκύνιος ὁ Δημαράτου πολεμῶν Σαβίνοις, ᾠκοδόμησε δὲ Ταρκύνιος ὁ Σούπερβος, υἱὸς ὢν ἢ υἱωνὸς τοῦ εὐξαμένου, καθιερῶσαι δ’ οὐκ ἔφθασεν, ἀλλὰ μικρὸν ἀπελείπετο τοῦ τέλος ἔχειν, ὅτε Ταρκύνιος ἐξέπιπτεν.

[2] ὡς οὖν ἀπείργαστο τελέως καὶ τὸν προσήκοντα κόσμον ἀπεῖχεν, ἦν τῷ Ποπλικόλᾳ φιλοτιμία πρὸς τὴν [3] καθιέρωσιν. ἐφθόνουν δὲ πολλοὶ τῶν δυνατῶν, καὶ ἤχθοντο ταῖς μὲν ἄλλαις τιμαῖς ἧττον, ἃς νομοθετῶν καὶ στρατηγῶν ἐκ προσηκόντων εἶχε, ταύτην δ’ οὖσαν ἀλλοτρίαν οὐκ ᾤοντο δεῖν αὐτῷ προσγενέσθαι, καὶ τὸν Ὁράτιον προετρέποντο καὶ παρώξυνον ἀντιποιεῖσθαι τῆς καθιερώσεως.

[4] γενομένης οὖν τῷ Ποπλικόλᾳ στρατείας ἀναγκαίας, ψηφισάμενοι τὸν Ὁράτιον καθιεροῦν ἀνήγαγον εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον, ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἐκείνου περιγενόμενοι [5] παρόντος. ἔνιοι δέ φασι κλήρῳ τῶν ὑπάτων λαχεῖν ἐκεῖνον ἐπὶ τὴν στρατείαν ἄκοντα, τοῦτον δ’ ἐπὶ τὴν καθιέρωσιν. ἔξεστι δὲ περὶ τούτων ὅπως ἔσχεν εἰκάζειν [6] τοῖς πραχθεῖσι περὶ τὴν καθιέρωσιν. εἰδοῖς οὖν Σεπτεμβρίαις - ὃ συντυγχάνει περὶ τὴν πανσέληνον μάλιστα τοῦ Μεταγειτνιῶνος - συνηθροισμένων ἁπάντων εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον, ὁ μὲν Ὁράτιος σιωπῆς γενομένης τά τ’ ἄλλα δράσας καὶ τῶν θυρῶν ἁψάμενος, ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστίν, ἐπεφθέγγετο τὰς νενομισμένας ἐπὶ τῇ καθιερώσει φωνάς· ὁ δ’ ἀδελφὸς τοῦ Ποπλικόλα Μᾶρκος, ἐκ πολλοῦ παρὰ τὰς θύρας ὑφεστὼς καὶ παραφυλάττων τὸν καιρόν, ‘ὦ ὕπατε’ εἶπεν, ‘ὁ υἱός σου τέθνηκεν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ [7] νοσήσας.’ τοῦτο πάντας ἠνίασε τοὺς ἀκούσαντας· ὁ δ’ Ὁράτιος οὐδὲν διαταραχθείς, ἀλλ’ ἢ τοσοῦτον μόνον εἰπών, ‘ῥίψατε τοίνυν ὅπου βούλεσθε τὸν νεκρόν, ἐγὼ γὰρ οὐ προσίεμαι τὸ πένθος,’ ἐπέραινε τὴν λοιπὴν καθιέρωσιν.

[8] ἦν δὲ τὸ προσηγγελμένον οὐκ ἀληθές, ἀλλ’ ὁ Μᾶρκος ὡς ἀποστήσων τὸν Ὁράτιον ἐψεύσατο. θαυμαστὸς οὖν ὁ ἀνὴρ τῆς εὐσταθείας, εἴτε τὴν ἀπάτην ἐν καιρῷ βραχεῖ συνεῖδεν, εἴτε πιστευθεὶς ὁ λόγος οὐκ ἐκίνησεν αὐτόν.

[15] [1] Ἔοικε δὲ καὶ περὶ τὸν δεύτερον ναὸν ὁμοία τύχη γενέσθαι τῆς καθιερώσεως. τὸν μὲν γὰρ πρῶτον ὡς εἴρηται Ταρκυνίου κατασκευάσαντος, Ὁρατίου δὲ καθιερώσαντος, ἐν τοῖς ἐμφυλίοις πολέμοις πῦρ ἀπώλεσε. τὸν δὲ δεύτερον ἀνέστησε μὲν Σύλλας, ἐπεγράφη δὲ τῇ [2] καθιερώσει Κάτουλος Σύλλα προαποθανόντος. τούτου δὲ πάλιν ἐν ταῖς κατὰ Οὐιτέλλιον στάσεσι διαφθαρέντος, τὸν τρίτον, τῇ πρὸς τὰ ἄλλα κἀν τούτῳ χρησάμενος εὐποτμίᾳ, Οὐεσπασιανὸς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἄχρι τέλους ἀναγαγὼν ἐπεῖδε γενόμενον, καὶ φθειρόμενον μετ’ ὀλίγον οὐκ ἐπεῖδεν, ἀλλὰ τοσοῦτον εὐτυχίᾳ Σύλλαν παρῆλθεν, ὅσον ἐκεῖνον μὲν τῆς ἀφιερώσεως τοῦ ἔργου, τοῦτον δὲ τῆς [3] ἀναιρέσεως προαποθανεῖν. ἅμα γὰρ τῷ τελευτῆσαι Οὐεσπασιανὸν ἐνεπρήσθη τὸ Καπιτώλιον. ὁ δὲ τέταρτος οὗτος ὑπὸ Δομετιανοῦ καὶ συνετελέσθη καὶ καθιερώθη. λέγεται δὲ Ταρκύνιον εἰς τοὺς θεμελίους ἀναλῶσαι λίτρας ἀργυρίου τετρακισμυρίας, τούτου δὲ τοῦ καθ’ ἡμᾶς τὸν μέγιστον ‹ἂν› ἐν Ῥώμῃ τῶν ἰδιωτικῶν πλούτων ἐκλογισθέντα μὴ τελέσαι τὸ τῆς χρυσώσεως ἀνάλωμα, [4] πλέον ἢ δισχιλίων καὶ μυρίων ταλάντων γενόμενον. οἱ δὲ κίονες ἐκ τοῦ Πεντελῆσιν ἐτμήθησαν λίθου, κάλλιστα τῷ πάχει πρὸς τὸ μῆκος ἔχοντες· εἴδομεν γὰρ αὐτοὺς Ἀθήνησιν. ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ πληγέντες αὖθις καὶ ἀναξεσθέντες, οὐ τοσοῦτον ἔσχον γλαφυρίας, ὅσον ἀπώλεσαν συμμετρίας [5] τοῦ καλοῦ, διάκενοι καὶ λαγαροὶ φανέντες. ὁ μέντοι θαυμάσας τὴν τοῦ Καπιτωλίου πολυτέλειαν, εἰ μίαν εἶδεν ἐν οἰκίᾳ Δομετιανοῦ στοὰν ἢ βασιλικὴν ἢ βαλανεῖον ἢ παλλακίδων δίαιταν, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ λεγόμενον Ἐπιχάρμου πρὸς τὸν ἄσωτον (CGF 1, 1 p. 142 fr. 274 Kaibel)·

οὐ φιλάνθρωπος τύ γ’ ἐσσ’· ἔχεις νόσον· χαίρεις

διδούς,

[6] τοιοῦτον ἄν τι πρὸς Δομετιανὸν εἰπεῖν προήχθη· οὐκ εὐσεβὴς οὐδὲ φιλότιμος τύ γ’ ἐσσί· ἔχεις νόσον· χαίρεις κατοικοδομῶν, ὥσπερ ὁ Μίδας ἐκεῖνος ἅπαντά σοι χρυσᾶ καὶ λίθινα βουλόμενος γενέσθαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν περὶ τούτων.

[16] [1] Ὁ δὲ Ταρκύνιος μετὰ τὴν μεγάλην μάχην, ἐν ᾗ καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἀπώλεσε μονομαχήσαντα Βρούτῳ, καταφυγὼν εἰς τὸ Κλούσιον ἱκέτευσε Λάραν Πορσίνναν, ἄνδρα καὶ δύναμιν ἔχοντα μεγίστην τῶν Ἰταλικῶν βασιλέων, καὶ δοκοῦντα χρηστὸν εἶναι καὶ φιλότιμον· ὁ δ’ ὑπέσχετο [2] βοηθήσειν, καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἔπεμψεν εἰς Ῥώμην κελεύων δέχεσθαι τὸν Ταρκύνιον· ὡς δ’ οὐχ ὑπήκουσαν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, καταγγείλας αὐτοῖς πόλεμον καὶ χρόνον ἐν ᾧ καὶ τόπον εἰς ὃν ἔμελλεν ἐμβαλεῖν, ἀφίκετο μετὰ [3] πολλῆς δυνάμεως. Ποπλικόλας δ’ ᾑρέθη μὲν ἀπὼν ὕπατος τὸ δεύτερον, καὶ σὺν αὐτῷ Τίτος Λουκρήτιος· ἐπανελθὼν δ’ εἰς Ῥώμην καὶ βουλόμενος τῷ φρονήματι πρῶτον ὑπερβαλέσθαι τὸν Πορσίνναν, ἔκτιζε πόλιν Σιγνουρίαν, ἤδη πλησίον ὄντος αὐτοῦ, καὶ τειχίσας μεγάλοις ἀναλώμασιν, ἑπτακοσίους ἀποίκους ἀπέστειλεν, ὡς [4] ῥᾳδίως φέρων καὶ ἀδεῶς τὸν πόλεμον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ προσβολῆς ὀξείας τῷ Ἰανούκλῳ γενομένης, ἐξεώσθησαν μὲν οἱ φύλακες ὑπὸ τοῦ Πορσίννα, καὶ φεύγοντες ὀλίγου [5] συνεπεσπάσαντο τοὺς πολεμίους εἰς τὴν πόλιν. ἔφθη δὲ πρὸ τῶν πυλῶν ἐκβοηθήσας ὁ Ποπλικόλας, καὶ μάχην συνάψας παρὰ τὸν ποταμόν, ἀντεῖχε πλήθει βιαζομένοις τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἄχρι οὗ τραύμασι νεανικοῖς περιπεσὼν [6] ἀπεκομίσθη φοράδην ἐκ τῆς μάχης. τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ καὶ Λουκρητίου τοῦ συνάρχοντος αὐτῷ παθόντος, ἀθυμία τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἐνέπεσε, καὶ φυγῇ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ἔσῳζον ἑαυτούς. ὠθουμένων δὲ τῶν πολεμίων διὰ τῆς ξυλίνης γεφύρας, ἐκινδύνευσεν ἡ Ῥώμη κατὰ κράτος ἁλῶναι. πρῶτος δὲ Κόκλης Ὁράτιος καὶ σὺν αὐτῷ δύο τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων ἀνδρῶν, Ἑρμίνιος καὶ Λάρκιος, ἀντέστησαν [7] περὶ τὴν ξυλίνην γέφυραν. ὁ δ’ Ὁράτιος τὸν Κόκλην ἐπωνύμιον ἔσχεν, ἐν πολέμῳ τῶν ὀμμάτων θάτερον ἐκκοπείς· ὡς δ’ ἕτεροι λέγουσι, διὰ σιμότητα τῆς ῥινὸς ἐνδεδυκυίας, ὥστε μηδὲν εἶναι τὸ διορίζον τὰ ὄμματα καὶ τὰς ὀφρῦς συγκεχύσθαι, Κύκλωπα βουλόμενοι καλεῖν αὐτὸν οἱ πολλοὶ τῆς γλώσσης ὀλισθανούσης †ἐκράτησαν [8] ὑπὸ πλήθους †εἰς τὸ Κόκλην καλεῖσθαι. οὗτος ἑστὼς πρὸ τῆς γεφύρας ἠμύνετο τοὺς πολεμίους, ἄχρι οὗ διέκοψαν οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ κατόπιν τὴν γέφυραν. οὕτω δὲ μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἀφεὶς ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὸν ποταμόν, ἀπενήξατο καὶ προσέμειξε τῇ πέραν ὄχθῃ, δόρατι Τυρρηνικῷ βεβλημένος [9] τὸν γλουτόν. ὁ δὲ Ποπλικόλας τὴν ἀρετὴν θαυμάσας, παραυτίκα μὲν εἰσηγήσατο Ῥωμαίους ἅπαντας, ὅσην ἕκαστος ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τροφὴν ἀνήλισκε, δοῦναι συνεισενεγκόντας, ἔπειτα τῆς χώρας ὅσην αὐτὸς ἐν ἡμέρᾳ περιαρόσειεν. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις εἰκόνα χαλκῆν ἀνέστησαν [αὐτῷ] ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τοῦ Ἡφαίστου, τὴν γενομένην ἐκ τοῦ τραύματος χωλότητα τῷ ἀνδρὶ μετὰ τιμῆς παρηγοροῦντες.

[17] [1] Ἐπικειμένου δὲ τοῦ Πορσίννα τῇ πόλει, καὶ λιμὸς ἥπτετο τῶν Ῥωμαίων, καὶ Τυρρηνῶν ἕτερος στρατὸς αὐτὸς καθ’ αὑτὸν εἰς τὴν χώραν ἐνέβαλε. Ποπλικόλας δὲ τὸ τρίτον ὑπατεύων, Πορσίννᾳ μὲν ἀτρεμῶν καὶ φυλάττων τὴν πόλιν ᾤετο δεῖν ἀντέχειν, τοῖς δὲ Τυρρηνοῖς ἐπεξῆλθε καὶ συμβαλὼν ἐτρέψατο καὶ πεντακισχιλίους αὐτῶν ἀνεῖλε.

[2] Τὸ δὲ περὶ Μούκιον εἴρηται μὲν ὑπὸ πολλῶν καὶ διαφόρως, λεκτέον δ’ ᾗ μάλιστα πεπίστευται καὶ ἡμῖν. ἦν ἀνὴρ εἰς πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν ἀγαθός, ἐν δὲ τοῖς πολεμικοῖς ἄριστος. ἐπιβουλεύων δὲ τὸν Πορσίνναν ἀνελεῖν, παρεισῆλθεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, Τυρρηνίδα φορῶν ἐσθῆτα καὶ [3] φωνῇ χρώμενος ὁμοία. περιελθὼν δὲ τὸ βῆμα τοῦ βασιλέως καθεζομένου, καὶ σαφῶς μὲν αὐτὸν οὐκ εἰδώς, ἐρέσθαι δὲ περὶ αὐτοῦ δεδιώς, ὃν ᾠήθη μάλιστα τῶν συγκαθεζομένων ἐκεῖνον εἶναι, σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος ἀπέκτεινεν.

[4] ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ συλληφθεὶς ἀνεκρίνετο, καί τινος ἐσχαρίδος πῦρ ἐχούσης μέλλοντι τῷ Πορσίννᾳ θύειν κεκομισμένης, ὑπερσχὼν τὴν δεξιὰν καιομένης τῆς σαρκὸς εἱστήκει πρὸς τὸν Πορσίνναν ἀποβλέπων ἰταμῷ καὶ ἀτρέπτῳ τῷ προσώπῳ, μέχρι οὗ θαυμάσας ἀφῆκεν αὐτὸν [5] καὶ τὸ ξίφος ἀποδιδοὺς ὤρεξεν ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος· ὁ δὲ τὴν εὐώνυμον προτείνας ἐδέξατο, καὶ διὰ τοῦτό φασιν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τὸν Σκαιόλαν ἐπίκλησιν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ Λαιόν. ἔφη δὲ τὸν φόβον τοῦ Πορσίννα νενικηκὼς ἡττᾶσθαι τῆς ἀρετῆς, καὶ χάριτι μηνύειν ἃ πρὸς ἀνάγκην οὐκ ἂν [6] ἐξηγόρευσε. ‘τριακόσιοι γὰρ Ῥωμαίων’ ἔφη ‘τὴν αὐτὴν ἐμοὶ γνώμην ἔχοντες ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ σου πλανῶνται, καιρὸν ἐπιτηροῦντες· ἐγὼ δὲ κλήρῳ λαχὼν καὶ προεπιχειρήσας, οὐκ ἄχθομαι τῇ τύχῃ, διαμαρτὼν ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ καὶ φίλου μᾶλλον ἢ πολεμίου Ῥωμαίοις εἶναι πρέποντος.’ [7] ταῦθ’ ὁ Πορσίννας ἀκούσας ἐπίστευσε καὶ πρὸς τὰς διαλύσεις ἥδιον ἔσχεν, οὐ τοσοῦτόν μοι δοκεῖ φόβῳ τῶν τριακοσίων, ὅσον ἀγασθεὶς καὶ θαυμάσας τὸ φρόνημα [8] καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν τῶν Ῥωμαίων. τοῦτον τὸν ἄνδρα Μούκιον ὁμοῦ τι πάντων καὶ Σκαιόλαν καλούντων, Ἀθηνόδωρος ὁ Σάνδωνος (FHG III 487) ἐν τῷ πρὸς Ὀκταουίαν τὴν Καίσαρος ἀδελφὴν καὶ Ὀψίγονον ὠνομάσθαι φησίν.

[18] [1] Ὁ μέντοι Ποπλικόλας αὐτός, οὐχ οὕτω πολέμιον ὄντα τὸν Πορσίνναν βαρὺν ἡγούμενος, ὡς ἄξιον πολλοῦ τῇ πόλει φίλον γενέσθαι καὶ σύμμαχον, οὐκ ἔφευγεν ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ δίκῃ κριθῆναι πρὸς Ταρκύνιον, ἀλλ’ ἐθάρρει καὶ προὐκαλεῖτο πολλάκις, ὡς ἐξελέγξων κάκιστον ἀνδρῶν [2] καὶ δικαίως ἀφαιρεθέντα τὴν ἀρχήν. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Ταρκυνίου τραχύτερον, οὐδένα ποιεῖσθαι δικαστήν, ἥκιστα δὲ Πορσίνναν, εἰ σύμμαχος ὢν μεταβάλλεται, δυσχεράνας καὶ καταγνοὺς ὁ Πορσίννας, ἅμα δὲ τοῦ παιδὸς Ἄρροντος δεομένου καὶ σπουδάζοντος ὑπὲρ τῶν Ῥωμαίων, κατελύσατο τὸν πόλεμον, ἐξισταμένοις ἧς ἀπετέμοντο τῆς Τυρρηνίδος χώρας καὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους ἀποπέμπουσι, κομιζομένοις δὲ τοὺς αὐτομόλους.

[3] ἐπὶ τούτοις ὁμήρους ἔδωκαν ἐξ εὐπατριδῶν περιπορφύρους δέκα καὶ παρθένους τοσαύτας, ὧν ἦν καὶ Ποπλικόλα θυγάτηρ Οὐαλερία.

[19] [1] Πραττομένων δὲ τούτων, τοῦ τε Πορσίννα πᾶσαν ἤδη τὴν πολεμικὴν ἀνεικότος παρασκευὴν διὰ πίστιν, αἱ παρθένοι τῶν Ῥωμαίων κατῆλθον ἐπὶ λουτρόν, ἔνθα δὴ μηνοειδής τις ὄχθη περιβάλλουσα τὸν ποταμὸν ἡσυχίαν [2] μάλιστα καὶ γαλήνην τοῦ κύματος παρεῖχεν. ὡς δ’ οὔτε τινὰ φυλακὴν ἑώρων οὔτε παριόντας ἄλλως ἢ διαπλέοντας, ὁρμὴν ἔσχον ἀπονήξασθαι πρὸς ῥεῦμα πολὺ καὶ δίνας βαθείας. ἔνιοι δέ φασι μίαν αὐτῶν ὄνομα Κλοιλίαν ἵππῳ διεξελάσαι τὸν πόρον, ἐγκελευομένην ταῖς ἄλλαις [3] νεούσαις καὶ παραθαρρύνουσαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ σωθεῖσαι πρὸς τὸν Ποπλικόλαν ἧκον, οὐκ ἐθαύμασεν οὐδ’ ἠγάπησεν, ἀλλ’ ἠνιάθη, ὅτι Πορσίννα κακίων ἐν πίστει φανεῖται, καὶ τὸ τόλμημα τῶν παρθένων αἰτίαν ἕξει κακούργημα [4] Ῥωμαίων γεγονέναι. διὸ καὶ συλλαβὼν αὐτὰς πάλιν ἀπέστειλε πρὸς τὸν Πορσίνναν. ταῦτα δ’ οἱ περὶ τὸν Ταρκύνιον προαισθόμενοι, καὶ καθίσαντες ἐνέδραν τοῖς ἄγουσι τὰς παῖδας, ἐν τῷ περᾶν ἐπέθεντο πλείονες ὄντες.

[5] ἐκείνων δ’ ὅμως ἀμυνομένων, ἡ Ποπλικόλα θυγάτηρ Οὐαλερία διὰ μέσων ὁρμήσασα τῶν μαχομένων ἀπέφυγε, καὶ τρεῖς τινες οἰκέται συνδιεκπεσόντες ἔσῳζον αὐτήν.

[6] τῶν δ’ ἄλλων οὐκ ἀκινδύνως ἀναμεμειγμένων τοῖς μαχομένοις, αἰσθόμενος Ἄρρουν ὁ Πορσίννα υἱὸς ὀξέως προσεβοήθησε, καὶ φυγῆς γενομένης τῶν πολεμίων περιεποίησε [7] τοὺς Ῥωμαίους. ὡς δὲ τὰς παρθένους κομισθείσας ὁ Πορσίννας εἶδεν, ἐζήτει τὴν καταρξαμένην τῆς πράξεως καὶ παρακελευσαμένην ταῖς ἄλλαις. ἀκούσας δὲ τὸ ὄνομα τῆς Κλοιλίας, προσέβλεψεν αὐτὴν ἵλεῳ καὶ φαιδρῷ τῷ προσώπῳ, καὶ κελεύσας ἵππον ἀχθῆναι τῶν [8] βασιλικῶν κεκοσμημένον εὐπρεπῶς ἐδωρήσατο. τοῦτο ποιοῦνται μαρτύριον οἱ μόνην τὴν Κλοιλίαν λέγοντες ἵππῳ διεξελάσαι τὸν ποταμόν. οἱ δ’ οὔ φασιν, ἀλλὰ τιμῆσαι τὸ ἀνδρῶδες αὐτῆς τὸν Τυρρηνόν. ἀνάκειται δὲ τὴν ἱερὰν ὁδὸν πορευομένοις εἰς Παλάτιον ἀνδριὰς αὐτῆς ἔφιππος, ὅν τινες οὐ τῆς Κλοιλίας, ἀλλὰ τῆς Οὐαλερίας εἶναι λέγουσιν.

[9] Ὁ δὲ Πορσίννας διαλλαγεὶς τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἄλλην τε πολλὴν ἑαυτοῦ μεγαλοφροσύνην ἐπεδείξατο τῇ πόλει, καὶ τὰ ὅπλα τοὺς Τυρρηνοὺς ἀναλαβεῖν κελεύσας, ἄλλο δὲ μηδέν, ἀλλ’ ἐκλιπεῖν τὸν χάρακα σίτου τε πολλοῦ καὶ χρημάτων γέμοντα παντοδαπῶν, παρέδωκε τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις.

[10] διὸ καὶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἔτι πωλοῦντες τὰ δημόσια πρῶτα κηρύττουσι τὰ Πορσίννα χρήματα, τιμὴν τῷ ἀνδρὶ τῆς χάριτος ἀίδιον [ἐν] τῇ μνήμῃ διαφυλάττοντες. εἱστήκει δὲ καὶ χαλκοῦς ἀνδριὰς αὐτοῦ παρὰ τὸ βουλευτήριον, ἁπλοῦς καὶ ἀρχαϊκὸς τῇ ἐργασίᾳ.

[20] [1] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα Σαβίνων ἐμβαλόντων εἰς τὴν χώραν, ὕπατος μὲν ἀπεδείχθη Μᾶρκος Οὐαλέριος, ἀδελφὸς Ποπλικόλα, καὶ Ποστούμιος Τούβερτος. πραττομένων δὲ τῶν μεγίστων γνώμῃ καὶ παρουσίᾳ Ποπλικόλα, δυσὶ μάχαις μεγάλαις ὁ Μᾶρκος ἐνίκησεν, ὧν ἐν τῇ δευτέρᾳ μηδένα Ῥωμαίων ἀποβαλὼν τρισχιλίους ἐπὶ μυρίοις τῶν [2] πολεμίων ἀνεῖλε, καὶ γέρας ἔσχεν ἐπὶ τοῖς θριάμβοις, οἰκίαν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι δημοσίοις ἀναλώμασιν ἐν Παλατίῳ.

[3] τῶν δ’ ἄλλων τότε θυρῶν εἴσω τῆς οἰκίας εἰς τὸ κλισίον ἀνοιγομένων, ἐκείνης μόνης τῆς οἰκίας ἐποίησαν ἐκτὸς ἀνάγεσθαι τὴν αὔλειον, ὡς δὴ κατὰ τὸ συγχώρημα [4] τῆς τιμῆς ἀεὶ τοῦ δημοσίου προσεπιλαμβάνοι. τὰς δ’ Ἑλληνικὰς πρότερον οὕτως ἔχειν ἁπάσας λέγουσιν, ἀπὸ τῶν κωμῳδιῶν λαμβάνοντες, ὅτι κόπτουσι καὶ ψοφοῦσι τὰς αὑτῶν θύρας ἔνδοθεν οἱ προϊέναι μέλλοντες, ὅπως αἴσθησις ἔξω γίνοιτο τοῖς παρερχομένοις ἢ προσεστῶσι, καὶ μὴ καταλαμβάνοιντο προϊούσαις ταῖς κλισιάσιν εἰς τὸν στενωπόν.

[21] [1] Τῷ δ’ ἑξῆς ἔτει πάλιν ὑπάτευε Ποπλικόλας τὸ τέταρτον· ἦν δὲ προσδοκία πολέμου Σαβίνων καὶ Λατίνων [2] συνισταμένων. καί τις ἅμα δεισιδαιμονία τῆς πόλεως ἥψατο· πᾶσαι γὰρ αἱ κυοῦσαι τότε γυναῖκες ἐξέβαλλον [3] ἀνάπηρα, καὶ τέλος οὐδεμία γένεσις ἔσχεν. ὅθεν ἐκ τῶν Σιβυλλείων ὁ Ποπλικόλας ἱλασάμενος τὸν Ἅιδην, καί τινας ἀγῶνας πυθοχρήστους ἀγαγών, καὶ ταῖς ἐλπίσι πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἡδίονα καταστήσας τὴν πόλιν, ἤδη τοῖς ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων φοβεροῖς προσεῖχε. μεγάλη γὰρ ἐφαίνετο [4] κατασκευὴ τῶν πολεμίων καὶ σύστασις. ἦν οὖν Ἄππιος Κλαῦσος ἐν Σαβίνοις ἀνὴρ χρήμασί τε δυνατὸς καὶ σώματος ῥώμῃ πρὸς ἀλκὴν ἐπιφανής, ἀρετῆς δὲ δόξῃ μάλιστα [5] καὶ λόγου δεινότητι πρωτεύων. ὃ δὲ πᾶσι συμβαίνει τοῖς μεγάλοις, οὐ διέφυγε παθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐφθονεῖτο, καὶ τοῖς φθονοῦσιν αἰτίαν παρέσχε καταπαύων τὸν πόλεμον αὔξειν τὰ Ῥωμαίων ἐπὶ τυραννίδι καὶ δουλώσει [6] τῆς πατρίδος. αἰσθόμενος δὲ τοὺς λόγους τούτους βουλομένῳ τῷ πλήθει λεγομένους καὶ προσκρούοντα τοῖς πολλοῖς καὶ πολεμοποιοῖς καὶ στρατιωτικοῖς ἑαυτόν, ἐφοβεῖτο τὴν κρίσιν, ἑταιρείαν δὲ καὶ δύναμιν φίλων καὶ [7] οἰκείων ἔχων ἀμύνουσαν περὶ αὑτὸν ἐστασίαζε. καὶ τοῦτ’ ἦν τοῦ πολέμου διατριβὴ καὶ μέλλησις τοῖς Σαβίνοις. ταῦτ’ οὖν ὁ Ποπλικόλας οὐ μόνον εἰδέναι ποιούμενος ἔργον, ἀλλὰ καὶ κινεῖν καὶ συνεξορμᾶν τὴν στάσιν, εἶχεν ἄνδρας ἐπιτηδείους οἳ τῷ Κλαύσῳ διελέγοντο παρ’ αὐτοῦ τοιαῦτα· ‘σὲ Ποπλικόλας ἄνδρα χρηστὸν ὄντα καὶ δίκαιον οὐδενὶ κακῷ δεῖν οἴεται τοὺς σεαυτοῦ πολίτας ἀμύνεσθαι [8] καίπερ ἀδικούμενον· εἰ δὲ βούλοιο σῴζων σεαυτὸν μεταστῆναι καὶ φυγεῖν τοὺς μισοῦντας, ὑποδέξεταί σε δημοσίᾳ καὶ ἰδίᾳ τῆς τε σῆς ἀρετῆς ἀξίως καὶ τῆς [9] Ῥωμαίων λαμπρότητος.’ ταῦτα πολλάκις διασκοποῦντι τῷ Κλαύσῳ βέλτιστα τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἐφαίνετο, καὶ τοὺς φίλους συμπαρακαλῶν, ἐκείνων τε πολλοὺς ὁμοίως συναναπειθόντων, πεντακισχιλίους οἴκους ἀναστήσας μετὰ παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν, ὅπερ ἦν ἐν Σαβίνοις ἀθόρυβον μάλιστα καὶ βίου πρᾴου καὶ καθεστῶτος οἰκεῖον, εἰς Ῥώμην ἦγε, προειδότος τοῦ Ποπλικόλα καὶ δεχομένου [10] φιλοφρόνως καὶ προθύμως ἐπὶ πᾶσι δικαίοις. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ οἴκους εὐθὺς ἀνέμειξε τῷ πολιτεύματι, καὶ χώραν ἀπένειμεν ἑκάστῳ δυεῖν πλέθρων περὶ τὸν Ἀνίωνα ποταμόν, τῷ δὲ Κλαύσῳ πλέθρα πέντε καὶ εἴκοσι γῆς ἔδωκεν, αὐτὸν δὲ τῇ βουλῇ προσέγραψεν, ἀρχὴν πολιτείας λαμβάνοντα ταύτην, ᾗ χρώμενος ἐμφρόνως ἀνέδραμεν εἰς τὸ πρῶτον ἀξίωμα, καὶ δύναμιν ἔσχε μεγάλην, καὶ γένος οὐδενὸς ἀμαυρότερον ἐν Ῥώμῃ τὸ Κλαυδίων ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ κατέλιπε.

[22] [1] Τὰ δὲ Σαβίνων οὕτω διακριθέντα τῷ μετοικισμῷ τῶν ἀνδρῶν οὐκ εἴασαν οἱ δημαγωγοῦντες ἀτρεμῆσαι καὶ καταστῆναι, σχετλιάζοντες εἰ Κλαῦσος, ἃ παρὼν οὐκ ἔπεισε, διαπράξεται φυγὰς γενόμενος καὶ πολέμιος, μὴ [2] δοῦναι δίκην Ῥωμαίους ὧν ὑβρίζουσιν. ἄραντες οὖν στρατῷ μεγάλῳ περὶ Φειδήνας κατηυλίσαντο, καί τινα λόχον θέμενοι πρὸ τῆς Ῥώμης ἐν χωρίοις συνηρεφέσι καὶ κοίλοις δισχιλίους ὁπλίτας, ἔμελλον ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ φανερῶς [3] ἱππεῦσιν ὀλίγοις λείαν ἐλαύνειν. εἴρητο δ’ αὐτοῖς, ὅταν τῇ πόλει προσελάσωσιν, ὑποφεύγειν, ἕως ἐμβάλωσιν εἰς τὴν ἐνέδραν τοὺς πολεμίους. ταῦθ’ ὁ Ποπλικόλας αὐθημερὸν πυθόμενος παρ’ αὐτομόλων, ταχὺ διηρμόσατο [4] πρὸς πάντα καὶ διένειμε τὴν δύναμιν. Ποστούμιος μὲν γὰρ Ἄλβος ὁ γαμβρὸς αὐτοῦ τρισχιλίοις ὁπλίταις ἑσπέρας ἔτι προελθὼν καὶ καταλαβὼν τοὺς ἀκρολόφους ὑφ’ οἷς ἐνήδρευον οἱ Σαβῖνοι, παρεφύλαττεν· ὁ δὲ συνάρχων Λουκρήτιος ἔχων τὸ κουφότατον ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ νεώτατον ἐτάχθη τοῖς ἐλαύνουσι τὴν λείαν ἱππεῦσιν ἐπιχειρεῖν, αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν ἄλλην ἀναλαβὼν στρατιὰν [5] κύκλῳ περιῆλθε τοὺς πολεμίους. καὶ κατὰ τύχην ὁμίχλης βαθείας ἐπιπεσούσης περὶ ὄρθρον, ἅμα Ποστούμιός τε τοὺς ἐνεδρεύοντας ἐμβοήσας ἔβαλεν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων, καὶ τοῖς προϊππασαμένοις ἐφῆκε τοὺς περὶ αὑτὸν ὁ Λουκρήτιος, καὶ Ποπλικόλας προσέβαλε τοῖς στρατοπέδοις [6] τῶν πολεμίων. πάντη μὲν οὖν ἐκακοῦτο τὰ Σαβίνων καὶ διεφθείρετο· τοὺς δ’ ἐνταῦθα μηδ’ ἀμυνομένους, ἀλλὰ φεύγοντας εὐθὺς ἔκτεινον οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, τῆς [7] ἐλπίδος αὐτοῖς ὀλεθριωτάτης γενομένης. σῴζεσθαι γὰρ οἰόμενοι τοὺς ἑτέρους οἱ ἕτεροι τῷ μάχεσθαι καὶ μένειν οὐ προσεῖχον, ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν ἐκ τῶν ἐρυμάτων πρὸς τοὺς ἐνεδρεύοντας, οὗτοι δὲ πάλιν ὡς ἐκείνους εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον θέοντες, ἐναντίοι φεύγουσιν ἐνέπιπτον πρὸς οὓς ἔφευγον, καὶ βοηθείας δεομένοις οὓς ἤλπιζον αὐτοῖς βοηθήσειν.

[8] τὸ δὲ μὴ πάντας ἀπολέσθαι τότε Σαβίνους, ἀλλὰ καὶ περιγενέσθαι τινάς, ἡ Φειδηνατῶν πόλις ἐγγὺς οὖσα παρέσχε, καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς ἐκ τῶν στρατοπέδων ὅθ’ ἡλίσκετο διεκπίπτουσιν. ὅσοι δὲ Φειδηνῶν διήμαρτον, ἢ διεφθάρησαν ἢ ζῶντες ἀπήχθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν λαβόντων.

[23] [1] Τοῦτο τὸ κατόρθωμα Ῥωμαῖοι, καίπερ εἰωθότες ἅπασι τοῖς μεγάλοις ἐπιφημίζειν τὸ δαιμόνιον, ἑνὸς ἔργον ἡγοῦντο τοῦ στρατηγοῦ γεγονέναι, καὶ τῶν μεμαχημένων ἦν ἀκούειν, ὅτι κωφοὺς καὶ τυφλοὺς αὐτοῖς καὶ μόνον οὐ καθείρξας τοὺς πολεμίους Ποπλικόλας παρέδωκε [2] χρῆσθαι τοῖς ξίφεσιν. ἐρρώσθη δὲ καὶ χρήμασιν [3] ὁ δῆμος ἐκ τῶν λαφύρων καὶ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων. ὁ δὲ Ποπλικόλας τόν τε θρίαμβον ἀγαγὼν καὶ τοῖς μετ’ αὐτὸν ἀποδειχθεῖσιν ὑπάτοις παραδοὺς τὴν πόλιν, εὐθὺς ἐτελεύτησεν, ὡς ἐφικτόν ἐστιν ἀνθρώποις μάλιστα τοῖς νενομισμένοις καλοῖς κἀγαθοῖς τὸν ἑαυτοῦ βίον ἐκτελειώσας.

[4] ὁ δὲ δῆμος ὥσπερ οὐδὲν εἰς ζῶντα τῶν ἀξίων πεποιηκώς, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν ὀφείλων χάριν, ἐψηφίσατο δημοσίᾳ ταφῆναι τὸ σῶμα, καὶ τεταρτημόριον ἕκαστος ἐπὶ τιμῇ συνεισήνεγκεν. αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες ἰδίᾳ πρὸς ἑαυτὰς συμφρονήσασαι διεπένθησαν ἐνιαυτὸν ὅλον ἐπὶ τῷ ἀνδρὶ πένθος [5] ἔντιμον καὶ ζηλωτόν. ἐτάφη δέ, καὶ τοῦτο τῶν πολιτῶν ψηφισαμένων, ἐντὸς ἄστεος παρὰ τὴν καλουμένην Οὐελίαν, [6] ὥστε καὶ γένει παντὶ τῆς ταφῆς μετεῖναι. νῦν δὲ θάπτεται μὲν οὐδεὶς τῶν ἀπὸ γένους, κομίσαντες δὲ τὸν νεκρὸν ἐκεῖ κατατίθενται, καὶ δᾷδά τις ἡμμένην λαβὼν ὅσον ὑπήνεγκεν, εἶτ’ ἀναιρεῖται, μαρτυρόμενος ἔργῳ τὸ ἐξεῖναι, φείδεσθαι δὲ τῆς τιμῆς, καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν οὕτως ἀποκομίζουσιν.

Comparison Solonis et Publicolae

[1] [1] Ἆρ’ οὖν ἴδιόν τι περὶ ταύτην τὴν σύγκρισιν ὑπάρχει καὶ μὴ πάνυ συμβεβηκὸς ἑτέρᾳ τῶν ἀναγεγραμμένων, τὸν ἕτερον μιμητὴν γεγονέναι τοῦ ἑτέρου, τὸν ἕτερον δὲ μάρτυν; ὅρα γάρ, ἣν Σόλων ἐξήνεγκε περὶ εὐδαιμονίας ἀπόφασιν πρὸς Κροῖσον, ὡς Ποπλικόλᾳ μᾶλλον [2] ἢ Τέλλῳ προσήκει. Τέλλου μὲν γάρ, ὃν εἶπε γεγονέναι μακαριώτατον δι’ εὐποτμίαν καὶ ἀρετὴν καὶ εὐτεκνίαν, οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασιν ὡς ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ λόγον ἔσχεν, οὐδὲ παῖδες οὐδ’ ἀρχή τις εἰς δόξαν [3] ἦλθεν· Ποπλικόλας δὲ καὶ ζῶν ἐπρώτευσε δυνάμει καὶ δόξῃ δι’ ἀρετὴν Ῥωμαίων, καὶ τεθνηκότος ἐν τοῖς ἐπιφανεστάτοις γένεσι καὶ στέμμασιν ἔτι καὶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς Ποπλικόλαι καὶ Μεσσάλαι καὶ Οὐαλέριοι δι’ ἐτῶν ἑξακοσίων [4] τῆς εὐγενείας τὴν δόξαν ἀναφέρουσι. καὶ Τέλλος μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ὡς ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς ἐν τάξει μένων καὶ μαχόμενος κατέστρεψε· Ποπλικόλας δὲ τοὺς μὲν πολεμίους ἀποκτείνας, ὃ τοῦ πεσεῖν εὐτυχέστερόν ἐστι, τὴν δὲ πατρίδα νικῶσαν ἐπιδὼν δι’ αὑτὸν ἄρχοντα καὶ στρατηγοῦντα, τιμηθεὶς δὲ καὶ θριαμβεύσας, ἔτυχε τῆς ζηλουμένης [5] ὑπὸ Σόλωνος καὶ μακαριζομένης τελευτῆς. ἔτι τοίνυν, οἷς πρὸς Μίμνερμον ἀντειπὼν περὶ χρόνου ζωῆς ἐπιπεφώνηκε, (fr. 22, 5 D.)

 μηδέ μοι ἄκλαυστος θάνατος μόλοι, ἀλλὰ φίλοισι

ποιήσαιμι θανὼν ἄλγεα καὶ στοναχάς,

[6] εὐδαίμονα τὸν Ποπλικόλαν ἄνδρα ποιεῖ. τελευτήσας γὰρ οὐ φίλοις οὐδ’ οἰκείοις μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῇ πόλει πάσῃ, μυριάσι πολλαῖς, δάκρυα καὶ πόθον καὶ κατήφειαν ἐφ’ αὑτῷ παρέσχεν· αἱ γὰρ Ῥωμαίων γυναῖκες ἐπένθησαν αὐτόν, ὥσπερ υἱὸν ἢ ἀδελφὸν ἢ πατέρα κοινὸν ἀποβαλοῦσαι.

[7] ‘χρήματα δ’ ἱμείρειν μὲν ἔχειν’ φησὶν ὁ Σόλων (fr. 1, 7 D.), ‘ἀδίκως δὲ πεπᾶσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλειν’, ὡς δίκης ἐπιούσης· Ποπλικόλᾳ δ’ ὑπῆρχεν οὐ μόνον μὴ κακῶς πλουτεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ καλῶς ἀναλίσκειν εὖ ποιοῦντι [8] τοὺς δεομένους. ὥστ’ εἰ σοφώτατος ἁπάντων ὁ Σόλων, εὐδαιμονέστατος ὁ Ποπλικόλας. ἃ γὰρ εὔξατο τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἐκεῖνος ὡς κάλλιστα καὶ μέγιστα, ταῦτα καὶ κτήσασθαι Ποπλικόλᾳ καὶ φυλάξαι χρωμένῳ μέχρι τέλους ὑπῆρξεν.

[2] [1] Οὕτω μὲν ὁ Σόλων κεκόσμηκε τὸν Ποπλικόλαν, τὸν Σόλωνα δ’ αὖ πάλιν ἐκεῖνος, ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ παραδειγμάτων κάλλιστον ἀνδρὶ κοσμοῦντι δημοκρατίαν θέμενος· τῆς μὲν γὰρ ἀρχῆς τὸν ὄγκον ἀφελών, εὐμενῆ πᾶσι καὶ ἄλυπον κατέστησε, νόμοις δὲ πολλοῖς ἐχρήσατο [2] τῶν ἐκείνου. καὶ γὰρ ἀρχόντων καταστάσεως κυρίους ἐποίησε τοὺς πολλούς, καὶ τοῖς φεύγουσι δίκην ἐπικαλεῖσθαι τὸν δῆμον, ὥσπερ ὁ Σόλων τοὺς δικαστάς, ἔδωκε, καὶ βουλὴν μὲν ἑτέραν οὐκ ἐποίησεν ὥσπερ ὁ Σόλων, τὴν δ’ οὖσαν ηὔξησεν ἀριθμῷ μικροῦ διπλασιάσας, [3] ἥ τε τῶν ταμιῶν ἐπὶ τοῖς χρήμασι κατάστασις ἐκεῖθεν ἦλθεν, ὅπως ὁ ἄρχων μήτ’, εἰ χρηστός ἐστιν, ἀσχολίαν ἔχῃ πρὸς τὰ μείζω, μήτ’ εἰ φαῦλος, ἀφορμὰς τοῦ ἀδικεῖν μᾶλλον, καὶ τῶν πράξεων καὶ τῶν χρημάτων κύριος γενόμενος.

[4] Τὸ δὲ μισοτύραννον ἐν τῷ Ποπλικόλᾳ σφοδρότερον. εἰ γάρ τις ἐπιχειροίη τυραννεῖν, ὁ μὲν ἁλόντι τὴν δίκην ἐπιτίθησιν, ὁ δὲ καὶ πρὸ τῆς κρίσεως ἀνελεῖν δίδωσι.

[5] σεμνυνομένου δὲ τοῦ Σόλωνος ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως, ὅτι καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῷ διδόντων τυραννεῖν καὶ τῶν πολιτῶν οὐκ ἀκουσίως δεχομένων ἀπεῖπεν, οὐχ ἧττον ὑπάρχει καλὸν τῷ Ποπλικόλᾳ τὸ λαβόντα τυραννικὴν ἀρχὴν ποιῆσαι δημοτικωτέραν, καὶ μηδ’ οἷς ἐξῆν ἔχοντα [6] χρήσασθαι. καὶ τοῦτο δ’ ἔοικε συνιδεῖν πρότερος ὁ Σόλων (fr. 5, 7 D.), ὅτι

‘δῆμος ὧδ’ ἂν ἄριστα σὺν ἡγεμόνεσσιν ἕποιτο,

μήτε λίην ἀνεθεὶς μήτε πιεζόμενος’.

[3] [1] Ἴδιον δὲ τοῦ Σόλωνος ἡ τῶν χρεῶν ἄνεσις, ᾗ μάλιστα τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἐβεβαίωσε τοῖς πολίταις. οὐδὲν γὰρ ὄφελος νόμων ἰσότητα παρεχόντων, ἣν ἀφαιρεῖται τὰ χρέα τοὺς πένητας, ἀλλ’ ὅπου μάλιστα χρῆσθαι τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ δοκοῦσι, δουλεύουσι μάλιστα τοῖς πλουσίοις, ἐν τῷ δικάζειν καὶ ἄρχειν καὶ λέγειν ἐπιταττόμενοι καὶ [2] ὑπηρετοῦντες. τούτου δὲ μεῖζον, ὅτι πάσῃ χρεῶν ἀποκοπῇ στάσεως ἑπομένης, ἐκείνῃ μόνῃ καθάπερ φαρμάκῳ παραβόλῳ μέν, ἰσχυρῷ δὲ χρησάμενος, εὐκαίρως καὶ τὴν οὖσαν στάσιν ἔλυσε, τῇ περὶ αὐτὸν ἀρετῇ καὶ δόξῃ τῆς τοῦ πράγματος ἀδοξίας καὶ διαβολῆς περιγενόμενος.

[3] Τῆς δ’ ὅλης πολιτείας τῇ μὲν ἀρχῇ λαμπρότερος ὁ Σόλων· ἡγήσατο γὰρ καὶ οὐκ ἠκολούθησε, καὶ καθ’ αὑτόν, οὐ μεθ’ ἑτέρων, ἔπραξε τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ μέγιστα [4] τῶν κοινῶν. τῷ τέλει δ’ ἅτερος εὐτυχὴς καὶ ζηλωτός· τὴν μὲν γὰρ Σόλωνος πολιτείαν αὐτὸς ἐπεῖδε Σόλων καταλυθεῖσαν, ἡ δὲ Ποπλικόλα μέχρι τῶν ἐμφυλίων πολέμων διεφύλαξεν ἐν κόσμῳ τὴν πόλιν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἅμα τῷ θέσθαι τοὺς νόμους ἀπολιπὼν ἐν γράμμασι καὶ ξύλοις ἐρήμους τοῦ βοηθοῦντος, ᾤχετ’ ἀπιὼν ἐκ τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, ὁ δὲ μένων καὶ ἄρχων καὶ πολιτευόμενος ἵδρυσε καὶ [5] κατέστησεν εἰς ἀσφαλὲς τὴν πολιτείαν. ἔτι δ’ ἐκείνῳ μὲν οὐδὲ μέλλοντα κωλῦσαι προαισθομένῳ Πεισίστρατον ὑπῆρξεν, ἀλλ’ ἡττήθη συνισταμένης τῆς τυραννίδος· οὗτος δὲ βασιλείαν ἰσχύουσαν ἐκ πολλῶν ἤδη χρόνων καὶ κρατοῦσαν ἐξέβαλε καὶ κατέλυσεν, ἀρετὴν μὲν ἴσην καὶ προαίρεσιν ὁμοίαν παρασχόμενος, τύχῃ δὲ καὶ δυνάμει τελεσιουργῷ πρὸς τῇ ἀρετῇ χρησάμενος.

[4] [1] Τῶν μέντοι πολεμικῶν Σόλωνι μὲν οὐδὲ τὰ πρὸς Μεγαρεῖς Δαΐμαχος ὁ Πλαταιεὺς (FGrH 65 F 7) μεμαρτύρηκεν, ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς διεληλύθαμεν· Ποπλικόλας δὲ τοὺς μεγίστους ἀγῶνας αὐτὸς καὶ μαχόμενος καὶ στρατηγῶν [2] κατώρθωσε. καὶ μὴν ἔτι πρὸς τὰς πολιτικὰς πράξεις ὁ μὲν ἐν παιδιᾶς τινι τρόπῳ καὶ προσποίημα μανίας ἀναλαβὼν ὑπὲρ Σαλαμῖνος ἐρῶν προῆλθεν· ὁ δ’ αὐτόθεν ἀναρρίψας τὸν περὶ τῶν μεγίστων κίνδυνον, ἐπανέστη τε Ταρκυνίοις καὶ τὴν προδοσίαν ἐφώρασε, καὶ τοῦ κολασθῆναι καὶ μὴ διαφυγεῖν τοὺς πονηροὺς αἰτιώτατος γενόμενος, οὐ τὰ σώματα μόνον τῶν τυράννων ἐξέβαλε [3] τῆς πόλεως, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ἐλπίδας ἐξέκοψεν. οὕτω δὲ τοῖς δεχομένοις πράγμασιν ἀγῶνα καὶ θυμὸν καὶ ἀντίταξιν ἐρρωμένως καὶ ἀτενῶς ἀπαντήσας, ἔτι βέλτιον ἐχρήσατο τοῖς ὁμιλίας ἀπολέμου καὶ πειθοῦς ὑπεικούσης δεομένοις, ἄνδρα Πορσίνναν ἄμαχον ὄντα καὶ φοβερὸν ἐμμελῶς προσαγαγόμενος καὶ μεταστήσας εἰς φιλίαν.

[4] Καίτοι φήσει τις ἐνταῦθα τὸν μὲν Σόλωνα προεμένοις ἀναλαβεῖν Ἀθηναίοις Σαλαμῖνα, τὸν δὲ Ποπλικόλαν ἧς ἐκέκτηντο Ῥωμαῖοι χώρας ἀποστῆναι. δεῖ δὲ πρὸς τοὺς [5] ὑποκειμένους καιροὺς τὰς πράξεις θεωρεῖν. ποικίλος γὰρ ὢν ὁ πολιτικὸς ᾧ τρόπῳ τῶν ὄντων ἕκαστον εὔληπτόν ἐστι μεταχειρίσασθαι, καὶ μέρους ἀφέσει πολλάκις ἔσωσε τὸ πᾶν, καὶ μικρῶν ἀποστὰς μειζόνων ἔτυχεν, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἀνὴρ τότε τῆς μὲν ἀλλοτρίας χώρας ἀποστὰς ἔσωσε τὴν ἑαυτοῦ βεβαίως ἅπασαν, οἷς δ’ ἦν μέγα τὴν πόλιν διαφυλάξαι προσεκτήσατο τὸ τῶν πολιορκούντων στρατόπεδον, ἐπιτρέψας δὲ τῷ πολεμίῳ δικαστῇ γενέσθαι καὶ περιγενόμενος τῇ δίκῃ, προσέλαβεν ὅσα δόντας [6] ἀγαπητὸν ἦν νικῆσαι· καὶ γὰρ τὸν πόλεμον ἔλυσε, καὶ τὴν παρασκευὴν τοῦ πολέμου κατέλιπεν αὐτοῖς διὰ πίστιν ἀρετῆς καὶ καλοκαγαθίας, ἣν ὁ ἄρχων ὑπὲρ ἁπάντων ἐνεποίησεν αὐτῷ.

Themistocles

[1] [1]  Θεμιστοκλεῖ δὲ τὰ μὲν ἐκ γένους ἀμαυρότερα πρὸς δόξαν ὑπῆρχε· πατρὸς γὰρ ἦν Νεοκλέους οὐ τῶν ἄγαν ἐπιφανῶν Ἀθήνησι, Φρεαρρίου τῶν δήμων ἐκ τῆς Λεωντίδος φυλῆς, νόθος δὲ πρὸς μητρός, ὡς λέγουσιν·

Ἁβρότονον Θρήισσα γυνὴ γένος· ἀλλὰ τεκέσθαι

τὸν μέγαν Ἕλλησίν φημι Θεμιστοκλέα.

[2] Φανίας (FHG II 295) μέντοι τὴν μητέρα τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους οὐ Θρᾷτταν, ἀλλὰ Καρίνην, οὐδ’ Ἁβρότονον ὄνομα, ἀλλ’ Εὐτέρπην ἀναγράφει. Νεάνθης (FGrH 84 F 2 b) δὲ καὶ πόλιν αὐτῇ τῆς Καρίας Ἁλικαρνασσὸν προστίθησι.

[3] διότι καὶ τῶν νόθων εἰς Κυνόσαργες συντελούντων - τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶν ἔξω πυλῶν γυμνάσιον Ἡρακλέους, ἐπεὶ κἀκεῖνος οὐκ ἦν γνήσιος ἐν θεοῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐνείχετο νοθείᾳ διὰ τὴν μητέρα θνητὴν οὖσαν - , ἔπειθέ τινας ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς τῶν εὖ γεγονότων νεανίσκων καταβαίνοντας εἰς τὸ Κυνόσαργες ἀλείφεσθαι μετ’ αὐτοῦ, καὶ τούτου γενομένου δοκεῖ πανούργως τὸν τῶν νόθων καὶ γνησίων διορισμὸν [4] ἀνελεῖν. ὅτι μέντοι τοῦ Λυκομιδῶν γένους μετεῖχε, δῆλόν ἐστι· τὸ γὰρ Φλυῆσι τελεστήριον, ὅπερ ἦν Λυκομιδῶν κοινόν, ἐμπρησθὲν ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων αὐτὸς ἐπεσκεύασε καὶ γραφαῖς ἐκόσμησεν, ὡς Σιμωνίδης (fr. 222 B4`4) ἱστόρηκεν.

[2] [1] Ἔτι δὲ παῖς ὢν ὁμολογεῖται φορᾶς μεστὸς εἶναι, καὶ τῇ μὲν φύσει συνετός, τῇ δὲ προαιρέσει μεγαλοπράγμων καὶ πολιτικός. ἐν γὰρ ταῖς ἀνέσεσι καὶ σχολαῖς ἀπὸ τῶν μαθημάτων γιγνόμενος, οὐκ ἔπαιζεν οὐδ’ ἐρρᾳθύμει καθάπερ οἱ πολλοὶ παῖδες, ἀλλ’ εὑρίσκετο λόγους [2] τινὰς μελετῶν καὶ συνταττόμενος πρὸς ἑαυτόν. ἦσαν δ’ οἱ λόγοι κατηγορία τινὸς ἢ συνηγορία τῶν παίδων. ὅθεν εἰώθει λέγειν πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ διδάσκαλος ὡς ‘οὐδὲν ἔσει, παῖ, σὺ μικρόν, ἀλλὰ μέγα πάντως ἀγαθὸν ἢ κακόν’.

[3] ἐπεὶ καὶ τῶν παιδεύσεων τὰς μὲν ἠθοποιοὺς ἢ πρὸς ἡδονήν τινα καὶ χάριν ἐλευθέριον σπουδαζομένας ὀκνηρῶς καὶ ἀπροθύμως ἐξεμάνθανε, τῶν δ’ εἰς σύνεσιν ἢ πρᾶξιν †λεγομένων δῆλος ἦν ὑπερερῶν παρ’ ἡλικίαν ὡς [4] τῇ φύσει πιστεύων. ὅθεν ὕστερον ἐν ταῖς ἐλευθερίοις καὶ ἀστείαις λεγομέναις διατριβαῖς ὑπὸ τῶν πεπαιδεῦσθαι δοκούντων χλευαζόμενος, ἠναγκάζετο φορτικώτερον ἀμύνεσθαι, λέγων ὅτι λύραν μὲν ἁρμόσασθαι καὶ μεταχειρίσασθαι ψαλτήριον οὐκ ἐπίσταιτο, πόλιν δὲ μικρὰν καὶ ἄδοξον παραλαβὼν ἔνδοξον καὶ μεγάλην ἀπεργάσασθαι.

[5] καίτοι Στησίμβροτος (FGrH 107 F 1) Ἀναξαγόρου τε διακοῦσαι τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα φησὶ καὶ περὶ Μέλισσον σπουδάσαι τὸν φυσικόν, οὐκ εὖ τῶν χρόνων ἁπτόμενος· Περικλεῖ γάρ, ὃς πολὺ νεώτερος ἦν Θεμιστοκλέους, Μέλισσος μὲν ἀντεστρατήγει πολιορκοῦντι Σαμίους, [6] Ἀναξαγόρας δὲ συνδιέτριβε. μᾶλλον οὖν ἄν τις προσέχοι τοῖς Μνησιφίλου τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα τοῦ Φρεαρρίου ζηλωτὴν γενέσθαι λέγουσιν, οὔτε ῥήτορος ὄντος οὔτε τῶν φυσικῶν κληθέντων φιλοσόφων, ἀλλὰ τὴν τότε καλουμένην σοφίαν, οὖσαν δὲ δεινότητα πολιτικὴν καὶ δραστήριον σύνεσιν, ἐπιτήδευμα πεποιημένου καὶ διασῴζοντος ὥσπερ αἵρεσιν ἐκ διαδοχῆς ἀπὸ Σόλωνος· ἣν οἱ μετὰ ταῦτα δικανικαῖς μείξαντες τέχναις καὶ μεταγαγόντες ἀπὸ τῶν πράξεων τὴν ἄσκησιν ἐπὶ τοὺς λόγους, [7] σοφισταὶ προσηγορεύθησαν. τούτῳ μὲν οὖν ἤδη πολιτευόμενος ἐπλησίαζεν. ἐν δὲ ταῖς πρώταις τῆς νεότητος ὁρμαῖς ἀνώμαλος ἦν καὶ ἀστάθμητος, ἅτε τῇ φύσει καθ’ αὑτὴν χρώμενος, ἄνευ λόγου καὶ παιδείας ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα μεγάλας ποιουμένῃ μεταβολὰς τῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων, καὶ πολλάκις ἐξισταμένῃ πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον, ὡς ὕστερον αὐτὸς ὡμολόγει, καὶ τοὺς τραχυτάτους πώλους ἀρίστους ἵππους γίγνεσθαι φάσκων, ὅταν ἧς προσήκει τύχωσι παιδείας [8] καὶ καταρτύσεως. ἃ δὲ τούτων ἐξαρτῶσιν ἔνιοι διηγήματα πλάττοντες, ἀποκήρυξιν μὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ, θάνατον δὲ τῆς μητρὸς ἑκούσιον ἐπὶ τῇ τοῦ παιδὸς ἀτιμίᾳ περιλύπου γενομένης, δοκεῖ κατεψεῦσθαι, καὶ τοὐναντίον εἰσὶν οἱ λέγοντες, ὅτι τοῦ τὰ κοινὰ πράττειν ἀποτρέπων αὐτὸν ὁ πατὴρ ἐπεδείκνυε πρὸς τῇ θαλάττῃ τὰς παλαιὰς τριήρεις ἐρριμμένας καὶ παρορωμένας, ὡς δὴ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς δημαγωγούς, ὅταν ἄχρηστοι γένωνται, τῶν πολλῶν ὁμοίως ἐχόντων.

[3] [1] Ταχὺ μέντοι καὶ νεανικῶς ἔοικεν ἅψασθαι τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους τὰ πολιτικὰ πράγματα καὶ σφόδρα ἡ πρὸς δόξαν ὁρμὴ κρατῆσαι. δι’ ἣν εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς τοῦ πρωτεύειν ἐφιέμενος, ἰταμῶς ὑφίστατο τὰς πρὸς τοὺς δυναμένους ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ πρωτεύοντας ἀπεχθείας, μάλιστα δ’ Ἀριστείδην τὸν Λυσιμάχου, τὴν ἐναντίαν αἰεὶ πορευόμενον [2] αὐτῷ. καίτοι δοκεῖ παντάπασιν ἡ πρὸς τοῦτον ἔχθρα μειρακιώδη λαβεῖν ἀρχήν· ἠράσθησαν γὰρ ἀμφότεροι τοῦ καλοῦ Στησίλεω, Κείου τὸ γένος ὄντος, ὡς Ἀρίστων ὁ φιλόσοφος (fr. 19 W.) ἱστόρηκεν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου διετέλουν [3] καὶ περὶ τὰ δημόσια στασιάζοντες. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἡ τῶν βίων καὶ τῶν τρόπων ἀνομοιότης ἔοικεν αὐξῆσαι τὴν διαφοράν. πρᾷος γὰρ ὢν φύσει καὶ καλοκαγαθικὸς τὸν τρόπον ὁ Ἀριστείδης, καὶ πολιτευόμενος οὐ πρὸς χάριν οὐδὲ πρὸς δόξαν, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ βελτίστου μετ’ ἀσφαλείας καὶ δικαιοσύνης, ἠναγκάζετο τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ τὸν δῆμον ἐπὶ πολλὰ κινοῦντι καὶ μεγάλας ἐπιφέροντι καινοτομίας ἐναντιοῦσθαι πολλάκις, ἐνιστάμενος αὐτῷ πρὸς [4] τὴν αὔξησιν. λέγεται γὰρ οὕτω παράφορος πρὸς δόξαν εἶναι καὶ πράξεων μεγάλων ὑπὸ φιλοτιμίας ἐραστής, ὥστε νέος ὢν ἔτι, τῆς ἐν Μαραθῶνι μάχης πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους γενομένης καὶ τῆς Μιλτιάδου στρατηγίας διαβοηθείσης, σύννους ὁρᾶσθαι τὰ πολλὰ πρὸς ἑαυτῷ καὶ τὰς νύκτας ἀγρυπνεῖν καὶ τοὺς πότους παραιτεῖσθαι τοὺς συνήθεις, καὶ λέγειν πρὸς τοὺς ἐρωτῶντας καὶ θαυμάζοντας τὴν περὶ τὸν βίον μεταβολήν, ὡς καθεύδειν [5] αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐῴη τὸ Μιλτιάδου τρόπαιον. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοι πέρας ᾤοντο τοῦ πολέμου τὴν ἐν Μαραθῶνι τῶν βαρβάρων ἧτταν εἶναι, Θεμιστοκλῆς δ’ ἀρχὴν μειζόνων ἀγώνων, ἐφ’ οὓς ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς ὅλης Ἑλλάδος ἤλειφε καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἤσκει, πόρρωθεν ἤδη προσδοκῶν τὸ μέλλον.

[4] [1] Καὶ πρῶτον μὲν τὴν Λαυρεωτικὴν πρόσοδον ἀπὸ τῶν ἀργυρείων μετάλλων ἔθος ἐχόντων Ἀθηναίων διανέμεσθαι, μόνος εἰπεῖν ἐτόλμησε παρελθὼν εἰς τὸν δῆμον, ὡς χρὴ τὴν διανομὴν ἐάσαντας ἐκ τῶν χρημάτων τούτων κατασκευάσασθαι τριήρεις ἐπὶ τὸν πρὸς Αἰγινήτας πόλεμον. ἤκμαζε γὰρ οὗτος ‹τότ’› ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι μάλιστα, καὶ κατεῖχον οἱ νησιῶται πλήθει νεῶν τὴν θάλατταν.

[2] ᾗ καὶ ῥᾷον ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς συνέπεισεν, οὐ Δαρεῖον οὐδὲ Πέρσας - μακρὰν γὰρ ἦσαν οὗτοι καὶ δέος οὐ πάνυ βέβαιον ὡς ἀφιξόμενοι παρεῖχον - ἐπισείων, ἀλλὰ τῇ πρὸς Αἰγινήτας ὀργῇ καὶ φιλονικίᾳ τῶν πολιτῶν ἀποχρησάμενος [3] εὐκαίρως ἐπὶ τὴν παρασκευήν. ἑκατὸν γὰρ ἀπὸ τῶν χρημάτων ἐκείνων ἐποιήθησαν τριήρεις, αἷς καὶ πρὸς Ξέρξην ἐναυμάχησαν.

[4] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου κατὰ μικρὸν ὑπάγων καὶ καταβιβάζων τὴν πόλιν πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν, ὡς τὰ πεζὰ μὲν οὐδὲ τοῖς ὁμόροις ἀξιομάχους ὄντας, τῇ δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν νεῶν ἀλκῇ καὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀμύνασθαι καὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἄρχειν δυναμένους, ἀντὶ μονίμων ὁπλιτῶν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (leg. 706c), ναυβάτας καὶ θαλασσίους ἐποίησε, καὶ διαβολὴν καθ’ ἑαυτοῦ παρέσχεν, ὡς ἄρα Θεμιστοκλῆς τὸ δόρυ καὶ τὴν ἀσπίδα τῶν πολιτῶν παρελόμενος εἰς ὑπηρέσιον [5] καὶ κώπην συνέστειλε τὸν Ἀθηναίων δῆμον. ἔπραξε δὲ ταῦτα Μιλτιάδου κρατήσας ἀντιλέγοντος, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Στησίμβροτος (FGrH 107 F 2). εἰ μὲν δὴ τὴν ἀκρίβειαν καὶ τὸ καθαρὸν τοῦ πολιτεύματος ἔβλαψεν ἢ μὴ ταῦτα πράξας, ἔστω φιλοσοφώτερον ἐπισκοπεῖν· ὅτι δ’ ἡ τότε σωτηρία τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐκ τῆς θαλάττης ὑπῆρξε καὶ τὴν Ἀθηναίων πόλιν καυθεῖσαν αὖθις ἀνέστησαν αἱ τριήρεις [6] ἐκεῖναι, τά τ’ ἄλλα καὶ Ξέρξης αὐτὸς ἐμαρτύρησε. τῆς γὰρ πεζικῆς δυνάμεως ἀθραύστου διαμενούσης, ἔφυγε μετὰ τὴν τῶν νεῶν ἧτταν ὡς οὐκ ὢν ἀξιόμαχος, καὶ Μαρδόνιον ἐμποδὼν εἶναι τοῖς Ἕλλησι τῆς διώξεως μᾶλλον ἢ δουλωσόμενον αὐτοὺς ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ κατέλιπεν.

[5] [1] Σύντονον δ’ αὐτὸν γεγονέναι χρηματιστὴν οἱ μέν τινές φασι δι’ ἐλευθεριότητα· καὶ γὰρ φιλοθύτην ὄντα καὶ λαμπρὸν ἐν ταῖς περὶ τοὺς ξένους δαπάναις, ἀφθόνου δεῖσθαι χορηγίας· οἱ δὲ τοὐναντίον γλισχρότητα πολλὴν καὶ μικρολογίαν κατηγοροῦσιν, ὡς καὶ τὰ πεμπόμενα [2] τῶν ἐδωδίμων πωλοῦντος. ἐπεὶ δὲ Διφιλίδης ὁ ἱπποτρόφος αἰτηθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πῶλον οὐκ ἔδωκεν, ἠπείλησε τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ ταχὺ ποιήσειν δούρειον ἵππον, αἰνιξάμενος ἐγκλήματα συγγενικὰ καὶ δίκας τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ πρὸς οἰκείους τινὰς ταράξειν.

[3] Τῇ δὲ φιλοτιμίᾳ πάντας ὑπερέβαλεν, ὥστ’ ἔτι μὲν ὢν νέος καὶ ἀφανὴς Ἐπικλέα τὸν ἐξ Ἑρμιόνος κιθαριστὴν σπουδαζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐκλιπαρῆσαι μελετᾶν παρ’ αὐτῷ, φιλοτιμούμενος πολλοὺς τὴν οἰκίαν ζητεῖν καὶ [4] φοιτᾶν πρὸς αὐτόν. εἰς δ’ Ὀλυμπίαν ἐλθὼν καὶ διαμιλλώμενος τῷ Κίμωνι περὶ δεῖπνα καὶ σκηνὰς καὶ τὴν ἄλλην λαμπρότητα καὶ παρασκευήν, οὐκ ἤρεσκε τοῖς Ἕλλησιν. ἐκείνῳ μὲν γὰρ ὄντι νέῳ καὶ ἀπ’ οἰκίας μεγάλης ᾤοντο δεῖν τὰ τοιαῦτα συγχωρεῖν· ὁ δὲ μήπω γνώριμος γεγονώς, ἀλλὰ δοκῶν ἐξ οὐχ ὑπαρχόντων καὶ παρ’ ἀξίαν [5] ἐπαίρεσθαι, προσωφλίσκανεν ἀλαζονείαν. ἐνίκησε δὲ καὶ χορηγῶν τραγῳδοῖς, μεγάλην ἤδη τότε σπουδὴν καὶ φιλοτιμίαν τοῦ ἀγῶνος ἔχοντος, καὶ πίνακα τῆς νίκης ἀνέθηκε τοιαύτην ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα· ‘Θεμιστοκλῆς Φρεάρριος ἐχορήγει, Φρύνιχος ἐδίδασκεν, Ἀδείμαντος ἦρχεν.’ [6] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἐνήρμοττε, τοῦτο μὲν ἑκάστου τῶν πολιτῶν τοὔνομα λέγων ἀπὸ στόματος, τοῦτο δὲ κριτὴν ἀσφαλῆ περὶ τὰ συμβόλαια παρέχων ἑαυτόν, ὥς που καὶ πρὸς Σιμωνίδην τὸν Κεῖον εἰπεῖν, αἰτούμενόν τι τῶν οὐ μετρίων παρ’ αὐτοῦ στρατηγοῦντος, ὡς οὔτ’ ἐκεῖνος ἂν γένοιτο ποιητὴς ἀγαθὸς ᾄδων παρὰ μέλος, [7] οὔτ’ αὐτὸς ἀστεῖος ἄρχων παρὰ νόμον χαριζόμενος. πάλιν δέ ποτε τὸν Σιμωνίδην ἐπισκώπτων ἔλεγε νοῦν οὐκ ἔχειν, Κορινθίους μὲν λοιδοροῦντα μεγάλην οἰκοῦντας πόλιν, αὑτοῦ δὲ ποιούμενον εἰκόνας οὕτως ὄντος αἰσχροῦ τὴν ὄψιν. αὐξόμενος δὲ καὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀρέσκων, τέλος κατεστασίασε καὶ μετέστησεν ἐξοστρακισθέντα τὸν Ἀριστείδην.

[6] [1] Ἤδη δὲ τοῦ Μήδου καταβαίνοντος ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα, καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων βουλευομένων περὶ στρατηγοῦ, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἑκόντας ἐκστῆναι τῆς στρατηγίας λέγουσιν ἐκπεπληγμένους τὸν κίνδυνον, Ἐπικύδην δὲ τὸν Εὐφημίδου, δημαγωγὸν ὄντα δεινὸν μὲν εἰπεῖν, μαλακὸν δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ χρημάτων ἥττονα, τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐφίεσθαι καὶ [2] κρατήσειν ἐπίδοξον εἶναι τῇ χειροτονίᾳ. τὸν οὖν Θεμιστοκλέα, δείσαντα μὴ τὰ πράγματα διαφθαρείη παντάπασι τῆς ἡγεμονίας εἰς ἐκεῖνον ἐμπεσούσης, χρήμασι [3] τὴν φιλοτιμίαν ἐξωνήσασθαι παρὰ τοῦ Ἐπικύδους. ἐπαινεῖται δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ περὶ τὸν δίγλωσσον ἔργον ἐν τοῖς πεμφθεῖσιν ὑπὸ βασιλέως ἐπὶ γῆς καὶ ὕδατος αἴτησιν.

[4] ἑρμηνέα γὰρ ὄντα συλλαβὼν διὰ ψηφίσματος ἀπέκτεινεν, ὅτι φωνὴν Ἑλληνίδα βαρβάροις προστάγμασιν ἐτόλμησε χρῆσαι. ἔτι δὲ καὶ τὸ περὶ Ἄρθμιον τὸν Ζελείτην· Θεμιστοκλέους γὰρ εἰπόντος καὶ τοῦτον εἰς τοὺς ἀτίμους καὶ παῖδας αὐτοῦ καὶ γένος ἐνέγραψαν, ὅτι τὸν ἐκ Μήδων [5] χρυσὸν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐκόμισε. μέγιστον δὲ πάντων τὸ καταλῦσαι τοὺς Ἑλληνικοὺς πολέμους καὶ διαλλάξαι τὰς πόλεις ἀλλήλαις, πείσαντα τὰς ἔχθρας διὰ τὸν πόλεμον ἀναβαλέσθαι· πρὸς ὃ καὶ Χείλεων τὸν Ἀρκάδα μάλιστα συναγωνίσασθαι λέγουσι.

[7] [1] Παραλαβὼν δὲ τὴν ἀρχήν, εὐθὺς μὲν ἐπεχείρει τοὺς πολίτας ἐμβιβάζειν εἰς τὰς τριήρεις, καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἔπειθεν ἐκλιπόντας ὡς προσωτάτω τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀπαντᾶν [2] τῷ βαρβάρῳ κατὰ θάλατταν. ἐνισταμένων δὲ πολλῶν, ἐξήγαγε πολλὴν στρατιὰν εἰς τὰ Τέμπη μετὰ Λακεδαιμονίων, ὡς αὐτόθι προκινδυνεύσων τῆς Θεσσαλίας, οὔπω τότε μηδίζειν δοκούσης· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀνεχώρησαν ἐκεῖθεν ἄπρακτοι, καὶ Θεσσαλῶν βασιλεῖ προσγενομένων ἐμήδιζε τὰ μέχρι Βοιωτίας, μᾶλλον ἤδη τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ προσεῖχον οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι περὶ τῆς θαλάσσης, καὶ πέμπεται μετὰ νεῶν ἐπ’ Ἀρτεμίσιον τὰ στενὰ φυλάξων.

[3] ἔνθα δὴ τῶν μὲν Ἑλλήνων Εὐρυβιάδην καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους ἡγεῖσθαι κελευόντων, τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων, ὅτι πλήθει τῶν νεῶν σύμπαντας ὁμοῦ τι τοὺς ἄλλους ὑπερέβαλλον, οὐκ ἀξιούντων ἑτέροις ἕπεσθαι, συνιδὼν τὸν κίνδυνον ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς αὐτός τε τὴν ἀρχὴν τῷ Εὐρυβιάδῃ παρῆκε, καὶ κατεπράυνε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ὑπισχνούμενος, ἂν ἄνδρες ἀγαθοὶ γένωνται πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ἑκόντας αὐτοῖς [4] παρέξειν εἰς τὰ λοιπὰ πειθομένους τοὺς Ἕλληνας. διὸ καὶ δοκεῖ τῆς σωτηρίας αἰτιώτατος γενέσθαι τῇ Ἑλλάδι, καὶ μάλιστα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους προαγαγεῖν εἰς δόξαν, ὡς ἀνδρείᾳ μὲν τῶν πολεμίων, εὐγνωμοσύνῃ δὲ τῶν συμμάχων περιγενομένους.

[5] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῖς Ἀφεταῖς τοῦ βαρβαρικοῦ στόλου προσμείξαντος, ἐκπλαγεὶς ὁ Εὐρυβιάδης τῶν κατὰ στόμα νεῶν τὸ πλῆθος, ἄλλας δὲ πυνθανόμενος διακοσίας ὑπὲρ Σκιάθου κύκλῳ περιπλεῖν, ἐβούλετο τὴν ταχίστην εἴσω τῆς Ἑλλάδος κομισθεὶς ἅψασθαι Πελοποννήσου καὶ τὸν πεζὸν στρατὸν ταῖς ναυσὶ προσπεριβαλέσθαι, παντάπασιν ἀπρόσμαχον ἡγούμενος τὴν κατὰ θάλατταν ἀλκὴν βασιλέως, δείσαντες οἱ Εὐβοεῖς μὴ σφᾶς οἱ Ἕλληνες πρόωνται, κρύφα τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ διελέγοντο, Πελάγοντα μετὰ [6] χρημάτων πολλῶν πέμψαντες. ἃ λαβὼν ἐκεῖνος, ὡς Ἡρόδοτος (8, 5) ἱστόρηκε, τοῖς περὶ τὸν Εὐρυβιάδην ἔδωκεν. ἐναντιουμένου δ’ αὐτῷ μάλιστα τῶν πολιτῶν Ἀρχιτέλους, ὃς ἦν μὲν ἐπὶ τῆς ἱερᾶς νεὼς τριήραρχος, οὐκ ἔχων δὲ χρήματα τοῖς ναύταις χορηγεῖν ἔσπευδεν ἀποπλεῦσαι, παρώξυνεν ἔτι μᾶλλον ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς τοὺς τριηρίτας ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ὥστε τὸ δεῖπνον ἁρπάσαι συνδραμόντας.

[7] τοῦ δ’ Ἀρχιτέλους ἀθυμοῦντος ἐπὶ τούτῳ καὶ βαρέως φέροντος, εἰσέπεμψεν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν κίστῃ δεῖπνον ἄρτων καὶ κρεῶν, ὑποθεὶς κάτω τάλαντον ἀργυρίου καὶ κελεύσας αὐτόν τε δειπνεῖν ἐν τῷ παρόντι καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπιμεληθῆναι τῶν τριηριτῶν· εἰ δὲ μή, καταβοήσειν αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας ὡς ἔχοντος ἀργύριον παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Φανίας ὁ Λέσβιος (FHG II 294) εἴρηκεν.

[8] [1] Αἱ δὲ γενόμεναι τότε πρὸς τὰς τῶν βαρβάρων ναῦς περὶ τὰ στενὰ μάχαι κρίσιν μὲν εἰς τὰ ὅλα μεγάλην οὐκ ἐποίησαν, τῇ δὲ πείρᾳ μέγιστα τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὤνησαν, ὑπὸ τῶν ἔργων παρὰ τοὺς κινδύνους διδαχθέντας, ὡς οὔτε πλήθη νεῶν οὔτε κόσμοι καὶ λαμπρότητες ἐπισήμων οὔτε κραυγαὶ κομπώδεις ἢ βάρβαροι παιᾶνες ἔχουσί τι δεινὸν ἀνδράσιν ἐπισταμένοις εἰς χεῖρας ἰέναι καὶ μάχεσθαι τολμῶσιν, ἀλλὰ δεῖ τῶν τοιούτων καταφρονοῦντας ἐπ’ αὐτὰ τὰ σώματα φέρεσθαι καὶ πρὸς ἐκεῖνα διαγωνίζεσθαι [2] συμπλακέντας. ὃ δὴ καὶ Πίνδαρος (fr. 77 Sn.) οὐ κακῶς ἔοικε συνιδὼν ἐπὶ τῆς ἐν Ἀρτεμισίῳ μάχης εἰπεῖν

ὅθι παῖδες Ἀθαναίων ἐβάλοντο φαεννὰν

κρηπῖδ’ ἐλευθερίας·

[3] ἀρχὴ γὰρ ὄντως τοῦ νικᾶν τὸ θαρρεῖν. ἔστι δὲ τῆς Εὐβοίας τὸ Ἀρτεμίσιον ὑπὲρ τὴν Ἑστίαιαν αἰγιαλὸς εἰς βορέαν ἀναπεπταμένος, ἀνταίρει δ’ αὐτῷ μάλιστα τῆς [4] ὑπὸ Φιλοκτήτῃ γενομένης χώρας Ὀλιζών. ἔχει δὲ ναὸν οὐ μέγαν Ἀρτέμιδος ἐπίκλησιν Προσηῴας, καὶ δένδρα περὶ αὐτὸν πέφυκε καὶ στῆλαι κύκλῳ λίθου λευκοῦ πεπήγασιν· ὁ δὲ λίθος τῇ χειρὶ τριβόμενος καὶ χρόαν καὶ [5] ὀσμὴν κροκίζουσαν ἀναδίδωσιν. ἐν μιᾷ δὲ τῶν στηλῶν ἐλεγεῖον ἦν τόδε γεγραμμένον (Simon. fr. 109 D.)·

παντοδαπῶν ἀνδρῶν γενεὰς Ἀσίας ἀπὸ χώρας

παῖδες Ἀθηναίων τῷδέ ποτ’ ἐν πελάγει

ναυμαχίᾳ δαμάσαντες, ἐπεὶ στρατὸς ὤλετο Μήδων,

σήματα ταῦτ’ ἔθεσαν παρθένῳ Ἀρτέμιδι.

[6] δείκνυται δὲ τῆς ἀκτῆς τόπος ἐν πολλῇ τῇ πέριξ θινὶ κόνιν τεφρώδη καὶ μέλαιναν ἐκ βάθους ἀναδιδούς, ὥσπερ πυρίκαυστον, ἐν ᾧ τὰ ναυάγια καὶ ‹τοὺς› νεκροὺς καῦσαι δοκοῦσι.

[9] [1] Τῶν μέντοι ‹τὰ› περὶ Θερμοπύλας εἰς τὸ Ἀρτεμίσιον ἀπαγγελλόντων πυθόμενοι Λεωνίδαν τε κεῖσθαι καὶ κρατεῖν Ξέρξην τῶν κατὰ γῆν παρόδων, εἴσω τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀνεκομίζοντο, τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐπὶ πᾶσι τεταγμένων δι’ ἀρετὴν καὶ μέγα τοῖς πεπραγμένοις φρονούντων.

[2] παραπλέων δὲ τὴν χώραν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς, ᾗπερ κατάρσεις ἀναγκαίας καὶ καταφυγὰς ἑώρα τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἐνεχάραττε κατὰ τῶν λίθων ἐπιφανῆ γράμματα, τοὺς μὲν εὑρίσκων ἀπὸ τύχης, τοὺς δ’ αὐτὸς ἱστὰς περὶ τὰ ναυλόχια καὶ τὰς ὑδρείας, ἐπισκήπτων Ἴωσι διὰ τῶν γραμμάτων, εἰ μὲν οἷόν τε, μετατάξασθαι πρὸς αὐτούς, πατέρας ὄντας καὶ προκινδυνεύοντας ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐκείνων ἐλευθερίας, εἰ δὲ μή, κακοῦν τὸ βαρβαρικὸν ἐν ταῖς μάχαις καὶ συνταράττειν. ταῦτα δ’ ἤλπιζεν ἢ μεταστήσειν τοὺς Ἴωνας ἢ ταράξειν ὑποπτοτέρους τοὺς βαρβάρους γενομένους.

[3] Ξέρξου δὲ διὰ τῆς Δωρίδος ἄνωθεν ἐμβαλόντος εἰς τὴν Φωκίδα καὶ τὰ τῶν Φωκέων ἄστη πυρπολοῦντος, οὐ προσήμυναν οἱ Ἕλληνες, καίπερ τῶν Ἀθηναίων δεομένων εἰς τὴν Βοιωτίαν ἀπαντῆσαι πρὸ τῆς Ἀττικῆς, ὥσπερ [4] αὐτοὶ κατὰ θάλατταν ἐπ’ Ἀρτεμίσιον ἐβοήθησαν. μηδενὸς δ’ ὑπακούοντος αὐτοῖς, ἀλλὰ τῆς Πελοποννήσου περιεχομένων καὶ πᾶσαν ἐντὸς Ἰσθμοῦ τὴν δύναμιν ὡρμημένων συνάγειν, καὶ διατειχιζόντων τὸν Ἰσθμὸν εἰς θάλατταν ἐκ θαλάττης, ἅμα μὲν ὀργὴ τῆς προδοσίας εἶχε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ἅμα δὲ δυσθυμία καὶ κατήφεια μεμονωμένους.

[5] μάχεσθαι μὲν γὰρ οὐ διενοοῦντο μυριάσι στρατοῦ τοσαύταις· ὃ δ’ ἦν μόνον ἀναγκαῖον ἐν τῷ παρόντι, τὴν πόλιν ἀφέντας ἐμφῦναι ταῖς ναυσίν, [ὅπερ] οἱ πολλοὶ χαλεπῶς ἤκουον, ὡς μήτε νίκης δεόμενοι μήτε σωτηρίαν ἐπιστάμενοι θεῶν ἱερὰ καὶ πατέρων ἡρῷα προϊεμένων.

[10] [1] Ἔνθα δὴ Θεμιστοκλῆς, ἀπορῶν τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις λογισμοῖς προσάγεσθαι τὸ πλῆθος, ὥσπερ ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ μηχανὴν ἄρας, σημεῖα δαιμόνια καὶ χρησμοὺς ἐπῆγεν αὐτοῖς, σημεῖον μὲν λαμβάνων τὸ τοῦ δράκοντος, ὃς ἀφανὴς ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις ἐκ τοῦ σηκοῦ δοκεῖ γενέσθαι, [2] καὶ τὰς καθ’ ἡμέραν αὐτῷ προτιθεμένας ἀπαρχὰς εὑρίσκοντες ἀψαύστους, οἱ ἱερεῖς ἐξήγγελλον εἰς τοὺς πολλούς, τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους λόγον ‹δια›διδόντος ὡς ἀπολέλοιπε τὴν πόλιν ἡ θεὸς ὑφηγουμένη πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν [3] αὐτοῖς· τῷ δὲ χρησμῷ πάλιν ἐδημαγώγει, λέγων μηδὲν ἄλλο δηλοῦσθαι ξύλινον τεῖχος ἢ τὰς ναῦς· διὸ καὶ τὴν Σαλαμῖνα θείαν, οὐχὶ δεινὴν οὐδὲ σχετλίαν καλεῖν τὸν θεὸν, ὡς εὐτυχήματος μεγάλου τοῖς Ἕλλησιν [4] ἐπώνυμον ἐσομένην. κρατήσας δὲ τῇ γνώμῃ ψήφισμα γράφει, τὴν μὲν πόλιν παρακαταθέσθαι τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ τῇ Ἀθηνῶν μεδεούσῃ, τοὺς δ’ ἐν ἡλικίᾳ πάντας ἐμβαίνειν εἰς τὰς τριήρεις, παῖδας δὲ καὶ γυναῖκας καὶ ἀνδράποδα [5] σῴζειν ἕκαστον ὡς ἂν δύνηται. κυρωθέντος δὲ τοῦ ψηφίσματος οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν Ἀθηναίων ὑπεξέθεντο γενεὰς καὶ γυναῖκας εἰς Τροιζῆνα, φιλοτίμως πάνυ τῶν Τροιζηνίων ὑποδεχομένων· καὶ γὰρ τρέφειν ἐψηφίσαντο δημοσίᾳ, δύο ὀβολοὺς ἑκάστῳ διδόντες, καὶ τῆς ὀπώρας λαμβάνειν ἐξεῖναι τοὺς παῖδας πανταχόθεν, ἔτι δ’ ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν διδασκάλοις τελεῖν μισθούς. τὸ δὲ ψήφισμα Νικαγόρας ἔγραψεν.

[6] Οὐκ ὄντων δὲ δημοσίων χρημάτων τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, Ἀριστοτέλης (Ἀθπ. 23, 1) μέν φησι τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴν πορίσασαν ὀκτὼ δραχμὰς ἑκάστῳ τῶν στρατευομένων αἰτιωτάτην γενέσθαι τοῦ πληρωθῆναι τὰς τριήρεις, Κλείδημος (FGrH 323 F 21) δὲ καὶ τοῦτο τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους [7] ποιεῖται στρατήγημα. καταβαινόντων γὰρ εἰς Πειραιᾶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων φησὶν ἀπολέσθαι τὸ Γοργόνειον ἀπὸ τῆς θεοῦ τοῦ ἀγάλματος· τὸν οὖν Θεμιστοκλέα προσποιούμενον ζητεῖν καὶ διερευνώμενον ἅπαντα, χρημάτων ἀνευρίσκειν πλῆθος ἐν ταῖς ἀποσκευαῖς ἀποκεκρυμμένον, ὧν εἰς μέσον κομισθέντων εὐπορῆσαι τοὺς ἐμβαίνοντας εἰς τὰς ναῦς ἐφοδίων.

[8] Ἐκπλεούσης δὲ τῆς πόλεως τοῖς μὲν οἶκτον τὸ θέαμα, τοῖς δὲ θαῦμα τῆς τόλμης παρεῖχε, γενεὰς μὲν ἄλλῃ προπεμπόντων, αὐτῶν δ’ ἀκάμπτων πρὸς οἰμωγὰς καὶ δάκρυα γονέων καὶ περιβολὰς διαπερώντων εἰς τὴν νῆσον.

[9] καίτοι πολὺν μὲν οἱ διὰ γῆρας ὑπολειπόμενοι τῶν πολιτῶν ἔλεον εἶχον, ἦν δέ τις καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἡμέρων καὶ συντρόφων ζῴων ἐπικλῶσα γλυκυθυμία, μετ’ ὠρυγῆς καὶ πόθου συμπαραθεόντων ἐμβαίνουσι τοῖς ἑαυτῶν τροφεῦσιν.

[10] ἐν οἷς ἱστορεῖται κύων Ξανθίππου τοῦ Περικλέους πατρός, οὐκ ἀνασχόμενος τὴν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ μόνωσιν, ἐναλέσθαι τῇ θαλάττῃ καὶ τῇ τριήρει παρανηχόμενος ἐκπεσεῖν εἰς τὴν Σαλαμῖνα, καὶ λιποθυμήσας ἀποθανεῖν εὐθύς· οὗ καὶ τὸ δεικνύμενον ἄχρι νῦν καὶ καλούμενον Κυνὸς σῆμα τάφον εἶναι λέγουσι.

[11] [1] Ταῦτά τε δὴ μεγάλα τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους, καὶ τοὺς πολίτας αἰσθόμενος ποθοῦντας Ἀριστείδην καὶ δεδιότας μὴ δι’ ὀργὴν τῷ βαρβάρῳ προσθεὶς ἑαυτὸν ἀνατρέψῃ τὰ πράγματα τῆς Ἑλλάδος - ἐξωστράκιστο γὰρ πρὸ τοῦ πολέμου καταστασιασθεὶς ὑπὸ Θεμιστοκλέους - , γράφει ψήφισμα, τοῖς ἐπὶ χρόνῳ μεθεστῶσιν ἐξεῖναι κατελθοῦσι πράττειν καὶ λέγειν τὰ βέλτιστα τῇ Ἑλλάδι μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν.

[2] Εὐρυβιάδου δὲ τὴν μὲν ἡγεμονίαν τῶν νεῶν ἔχοντος διὰ τὸ τῆς Σπάρτης ἀξίωμα, μαλακοῦ δὲ παρὰ τὸν κίνδυνον ὄντος, αἴρειν δὲ βουλομένου καὶ πλεῖν ἐπὶ τὸν Ἰσθμόν, ὅπου καὶ τὸ πεζὸν ἤθροιστο τῶν Πελοποννησίων, [3] ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἀντέλεγεν. ὅτε καὶ τὰ μνημονευόμενα λεχθῆναί φασι· τοῦ γὰρ Εὐρυβιάδου πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος· ‘ὦ Θεμιστόκλεις, ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι τοὺς προεξανισταμένους ῥαπίζουσι’, ‘ναί’ εἶπεν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς, ‘ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἀπολειφθέντας οὐ στεφανοῦσιν’. ἐπαραμένου δὲ τὴν βακτηρίαν ὡς πατάξοντος, ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἔφη· [4] ‘πάταξον μέν, ἄκουσον δέ.’ θαυμάσαντος δὲ τὴν πρᾳότητα τοῦ Εὐρυβιάδου καὶ λέγειν κελεύσαντος, ὁ μὲν Θεμιστοκλῆς [5] ἀνῆγεν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὸν λόγον· εἰπόντος δέ τινος ὡς ἀνὴρ ἄπολις οὐκ ὀρθῶς διδάσκοι τοὺς ἔχοντας ἐγκαταλιπεῖν καὶ προέσθαι τὰς πατρίδας, ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἐπιστρέψας τὸν λόγον ‘ἡμεῖς τοι’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ μοχθηρέ, τὰς μὲν οἰκίας καὶ τὰ τείχη καταλελοίπαμεν, οὐκ ἀξιοῦντες ἀψύχων ἕνεκα δουλεύειν· πόλις δ’ ἡμῖν ἔστι μεγίστη τῶν Ἑλληνίδων, αἱ διακόσιαι τριήρεις, αἳ νῦν μὲν ὑμῖν παρεστᾶσι βοηθοὶ σῴζεσθαι δι’ αὐτῶν βουλομένοις, εἰ δ’ ἄπιτε δεύτερον ἡμᾶς προδόντες, αὐτίκα πεύσεταί τις Ἑλλήνων Ἀθηναίους καὶ πόλιν ἐλευθέραν καὶ χώραν οὐ χείρονα κεκτημένους ἧς ἀπέβαλον.’ ταῦτα τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους εἰπόντος, ἔννοια καὶ δέος ἔσχε τὸν Εὐρυβιάδην [6] τῶν Ἀθηναίων, μὴ σφᾶς ἀπολείποντες οἴχωνται. τοῦ δ’ Ἐρετριέως πειρωμένου τι λέγειν πρὸς αὐτόν, ‘ἦ γάρ’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ὑμῖν περὶ πολέμου τίς ἐστι λόγος, οἳ καθάπερ αἱ τευθίδες μάχαιραν μὲν ἔχετε, καρδίαν δ’ οὐκ ἔχετε;’

[12] [1] Λέγεται δ’ ὑπό τινων τὸν μὲν Θεμιστοκλέα περὶ τούτων ἀπὸ τοῦ καταστρώματος [ἄνωθεν] τῆς νεὼς διαλέγεσθαι, γλαῦκα δ’ ὀφθῆναι διαπετομένην ἐπὶ δεξιᾶς τῶν νεῶν καὶ τοῖς καρχησίοις ἐπικαθίζουσαν· διὸ δὴ καὶ μάλιστα προσέθεντο τῇ γνώμῃ καὶ παρεσκευάζοντο [2] ναυμαχήσοντες. ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ τῶν πολεμίων ὅ τε στόλος τῇ Ἀττικῇ κατὰ τὸ Φαληρικὸν προσφερόμενος τοὺς πέριξ ἀπέκρυψεν αἰγιαλούς, αὐτός τε βασιλεὺς μετὰ τοῦ πεζοῦ στρατοῦ καταβὰς ἐπὶ τὴν θάλατταν ἄθρους ὤφθη, τῶν δυνάμεων ὁμοῦ γενομένων, ἐξερρύησαν οἱ τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους λόγοι τῶν Ἑλλήνων, καὶ πάλιν ἐπάπταινον οἱ Πελοποννήσιοι πρὸς τὸν Ἰσθμόν, εἴ τις ἄλλο τι λέγοι χαλεπαίνοντες. ἐδόκει δὴ τῆς νυκτὸς ἀποχωρεῖν, καὶ παρηγγέλλετο [3] πλοῦς τοῖς κυβερνήταις. ἔνθα δὴ βαρέως φέρων ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς εἰ τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ τόπου καὶ τῶν στενῶν προέμενοι βοήθειαν οἱ Ἕλληνες διαλυθήσονται κατὰ πόλεις, ἐβουλεύετο καὶ συνετίθει τὴν περὶ τὸν Σίκιννον [4] πραγματείαν. ἦν δὲ τῷ μὲν γένει Πέρσης ὁ Σίκιννος αἰχμάλωτος, εὔνους δὲ τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ καὶ τῶν τέκνων αὐτοῦ παιδαγωγός. ὃν ἐκπέμπει πρὸς τὸν Ξέρξην κρύφα, κελεύσας λέγειν ὅτι Θεμιστοκλῆς ὁ τῶν Ἀθηναίων στρατηγὸς αἱρούμενος τὰ βασιλέως ἐξαγγέλλει πρῶτος αὐτῷ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀποδιδράσκοντας, καὶ διακελεύεται μὴ παρεῖναι φυγεῖν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐν ᾧ ταράττονται τῶν πεζῶν χωρὶς ὄντες ἐπιθέσθαι καὶ διαφθεῖραι τὴν ναυτικὴν δύναμιν.

[5] ταῦτα δ’ ὁ Ξέρξης ὡς ἀπ’ εὐνοίας λελεγμένα δεξάμενος, ἥσθη καὶ [τέλος] εὐθὺς ἐξέφερε πρὸς τοὺς ἡγεμόνας τῶν νεῶν, τὰς μὲν ἄλλας πληροῦν καθ’ ἡσυχίαν, διακοσίαις δ’ ἀναχθέντας ἤδη περιβαλέσθαι τὸν πόρον ἐν κύκλῳ πάντα καὶ διαζῶσαι τὰς νήσους, ὅπως ἐκφύγοι [6] μηδεὶς τῶν πολεμίων. τούτων δὲ πραττομένων Ἀριστείδης ὁ Λυσιμάχου πρῶτος αἰσθόμενος ἧκεν ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους, οὐκ ὢν φίλος, ἀλλὰ καὶ δι’ ἐκεῖνον ἐξωστρακισμένος ὥσπερ εἴρηται· προελθόντι δὲ [7] τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ φράζει τὴν κύκλωσιν. ὁ δὲ τήν τ’ ἄλλην καλοκαγαθίαν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς εἰδὼς καὶ τῆς τότε παρουσίας ἀγάμενος λέγει τὰ περὶ τὸν Σίκιννον αὐτῷ καὶ παρεκάλει τῶν Ἑλλήνων συνεπιλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ συμπροθυμεῖσθαι πίστιν ἔχοντα μᾶλλον, ὅπως ἐν τοῖς στενοῖς ναυμαχήσωσιν.

[8] ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀριστείδης ἐπαινέσας τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα τοὺς ἄλλους ἐπῄει στρατηγοὺς καὶ τριηράρχους, ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην παροξύνων. ἔτι δ’ ὅμως ἀπιστούντων, ἐφάνη Τηνία τριήρης αὐτόμολος, ἧς ἐναυάρχει Παναίτιος, ἀπαγγέλλουσα τὴν κύκλωσιν, ὥστε καὶ θυμῷ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὁρμῆσαι μετὰ τῆς ἀνάγκης πρὸς τὸν κίνδυνον.

[13] [1] Ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ Ξέρξης μὲν ἄνω καθῆστο, τὸν στόλον ἐποπτεύων καὶ τὴν παράταξιν, ὡς μὲν Φανόδημός (FGrH 325 F 24) φησιν ὑπὲρ τὸ Ἡράκλειον, ᾗ βραχεῖ πόρῳ διείργεται τῆς Ἀττικῆς ἡ νῆσος, ὡς δ’ Ἀκεστόδωρος (FHG II 464) ἐν μεθορίᾳ τῆς Μεγαρίδος ὑπὲρ τῶν καλουμένων Κεράτων, χρυσοῦν δίφρον θέμενος καὶ γραμματεῖς πολλοὺς παραστησάμενος, ὧν ἔργον ἦν ἀπογράφεσθαι τὰ κατὰ τὴν μάχην πραττόμενα.

[2] Θεμιστοκλεῖ δὲ παρὰ τὴν ναυαρχίδα τριήρη σφαγιαζομένῳ τρεῖς προσήχθησαν αἰχμάλωτοι, κάλλιστοι μὲν ἰδέσθαι τὴν ὄψιν, ἐσθῆτι δὲ καὶ χρυσῷ κεκοσμημένοι διαπρεπῶς. ἐλέγοντο δὲ Σανδάκης παῖδες εἶναι τῆς βασιλέως ἀδελφῆς [3] καὶ Ἀρταΰκτου. τούτους ἰδὼν Εὐφραντίδης ὁ μάντις, ὡς ἅμα μὲν ἀνέλαμψεν ἐκ τῶν ἱερῶν μέγα καὶ περιφανὲς πῦρ, ἅμα δὲ πταρμὸς ἐκ δεξιῶν ἐσήμηνε, τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα δεξιωσάμενος ἐκέλευσε τῶν νεανίσκων κατάρξασθαι καὶ καθιερεῦσαι πάντας ὠμηστῇ Διονύσῳ προσευξάμενον· οὕτω γὰρ ἅμα σωτηρίαν καὶ νίκην ἔσεσθαι τοῖς [4] Ἕλλησιν. ἐκπλαγέντος δὲ τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους ὡς μέγα τὸ μάντευμα καὶ δεινόν, οἷον εἴωθεν ἐν μεγάλοις ἀγῶσι καὶ πράγμασι χαλεποῖς, μᾶλλον ἐκ τῶν παραλόγων ἢ τῶν εὐλόγων τὴν σωτηρίαν ἐλπίζοντες οἱ πολλοὶ τὸν θεὸν ἅμα κοινῇ κατεκαλοῦντο φωνῇ, καὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους τῷ βωμῷ προσαγαγόντες ἠνάγκασαν, ὡς ὁ μάντις [5] ἐκέλευσε, τὴν θυσίαν συντελεσθῆναι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος καὶ γραμμάτων οὐκ ἄπειρος ἱστορικῶν Φανίας ὁ Λέσβιος (FHG II 295) εἴρηκε.

[14] [1] Περὶ δὲ τοῦ πλήθους τῶν βαρβαρικῶν νεῶν Αἰσχύλος ὁ ποιητὴς ὡς ἂν εἰδὼς [καὶ] διαβεβαιούμενος ἐν [τραγῳδίᾳ] Πέρσαις (v. 336) λέγει ταῦτα·

Ξέρξῃ δέ, καὶ γὰρ οἶδα, χιλιὰς μὲν ἦν

ὧν ἦγε πλῆθος· αἱ δ’ ὑπέρκοποι τάχει

ἑκατὸν δὶς ἦσαν ἑπτά θ’· ὧδ’ ἔχει λόγος.

[2] τῶν δ’ Ἀττικῶν ἑκατὸν ὀγδοήκοντα τὸ πλῆθος οὐσῶν ἑκάστη τοὺς ἀπὸ καταστρώματος μαχομένους ὀκτωκαίδεκα εἶχεν, ὧν τοξόται τέσσαρες ἦσαν, οἱ λοιποὶ δ’ ὁπλῖται.

[3] Δοκεῖ δ’ οὐχ ἧττον εὖ τὸν καιρὸν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἢ τὸν τόπον συνιδὼν καὶ φυλάξας, μὴ πρότερον ἀντιπρῴρους καταστῆσαι ταῖς βαρβαρικαῖς τὰς τριήρεις, ἢ τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ὥραν παραγενέσθαι, τὸ πνεῦμα λαμπρὸν ἐκ πελάγους αἰεὶ καὶ κῦμα διὰ τῶν στενῶν κατάγουσαν· ὃ τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς μὲν οὐκ ἔβλαπτε ναῦς, ἁλιτενεῖς οὔσας καὶ ταπεινοτέρας, τὰς δὲ βαρβαρικὰς ταῖς τε πρύμναις ἀνεστώσας καὶ τοῖς καταστρώμασιν ὑψορόφους καὶ βαρείας ἐπιφερομένας ἔσφαλλε προσπῖπτον καὶ παρεδίδου πλαγίας τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ὀξέως προσφερομένοις καὶ τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ προσέχουσιν ὡς ὁρῶντι μάλιστα τὸ συμφέρον· ὅθεν κατ’ ἐκεῖνον ὁ Ξέρξου ναύαρχος Ἀριαμένης ναῦν ἔχων μεγάλην ὥσπερ ἀπὸ τείχους ἐτόξευε καὶ ἠκόντιζεν, ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς ὢν καὶ τῶν βασιλέως ἀδελφῶν πολὺ κράτιστος [4] καὶ δικαιότατος. τοῦτον μὲν οὖν Ἀμεινίας ὁ Δεκελεὺς καὶ Σωκλῆς ὁ †Πελιεὺς ὁμοῦ πλέοντες, ὡς αἱ νῆες ἀντίπρῳροι προσπεσοῦσαι καὶ συνερείσασαι τοῖς χαλκώμασιν ἐνεσχέθησαν, ἐπιβαίνοντα τῆς αὐτῶν τριήρους ὑποστάντες καὶ τοῖς δόρασι τύπτοντες εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ἐξέβαλον, καὶ τὸ σῶμα μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων διαφερόμενον ναυαγίων Ἀρτεμισία γνωρίσασα πρὸς Ξέρξην ἀνήνεγκεν.

[15] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ τοῦ ἀγῶνος ὄντος φῶς μὲν ἐκλάμψαι μέγα λέγουσιν Ἐλευσινόθεν, ἦχον δὲ καὶ φωνὴν τὸ Θριάσιον κατέχειν πεδίον ἄχρι θαλάττης, ὡς ἀνθρώπων ὁμοῦ πολλῶν τὸν μυστικὸν ἐξαγόντων Ἴακχον. ἐκ δὲ τοῦ πλήθους τῶν φθεγγομένων κατὰ μικρὸν ἀπὸ γῆς ἀναφερόμενον νέφος ἔδοξεν αὖθις ὑπονοστεῖν καὶ κατασκήπτειν [2] εἰς τὰς τριήρεις. ἕτεροι δὲ φάσματα καὶ εἴδωλα καθορᾶν ἔδοξαν ἐνόπλων ἀνδρῶν ἀπ’ Αἰγίνης τὰς χεῖρας ἀνεχόντων πρὸ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν τριήρων, οὓς εἴκαζον Αἰακίδας εἶναι παρακεκλημένους εὐχαῖς πρὸ τῆς μάχης [3] ἐπὶ τὴν βοήθειαν. πρῶτος μὲν οὖν λαμβάνει ναῦν Λυκομήδης, ἀνὴρ Ἀθηναῖος τριηραρχῶν, ἧς τὰ παράσημα [4] περικόψας ἀνέθηκεν Ἀπόλλωνι δαφνηφόρῳ Φλυῆσιν. οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι τοῖς βαρβάροις ἐξισούμενοι τὸ πλῆθος ἐν στενῷ κατὰ μέρος προσφερομένους καὶ περιπίπτοντας ἀλλήλοις ἐτρέψαντο μέχρι δείλης ἀντισχόντας, ὥσπερ εἴρηκε Σιμωνίδης (fr. 83 B4`4), τὴν καλὴν ἐκείνην καὶ περιβόητον ἀράμενοι νίκην, ἧς οὔθ’ Ἕλλησιν οὔτε βαρβάροις ἐνάλιον ἔργον εἴργασται λαμπρότερον, ἀνδρείᾳ μὲν καὶ προθυμίᾳ κοινῇ τῶν ναυμαχησάντων, γνώμῃ δὲ καὶ δεινότητι τῇ Θεμιστοκλέους.

[16] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ναυμαχίαν Ξέρξης μὲν ἔτι θυμομαχῶν πρὸς τὴν ἀπότευξιν ἐπεχείρει διὰ χωμάτων ἐπάγειν τὸ πεζὸν εἰς Σαλαμῖνα τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἐμφράξας τὸν [2] διὰ μέσου πόρον· Θεμιστοκλῆς δ’ ἀποπειρώμενος Ἀριστείδου λόγῳ γνώμην ἐποιεῖτο λύειν τὸ ζεῦγμα ταῖς ναυσὶν ἐπιπλεύσαντας εἰς Ἑλλήσποντον, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘τὴν [3] Ἀσίαν ἐν τῇ Εὐρώπῃ λάβωμεν.’ δυσχεραίνοντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀριστείδου καὶ λέγοντος ὅτι ‘νῦν μὲν τρυφῶντι τῷ βαρβάρῳ πεπολεμήκαμεν· ἐὰν δὲ κατακλείσωμεν εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ καταστήσωμεν εἰς ἀνάγκην ὑπὸ δέους ἄνδρα τηλικούτων δυνάμεων κύριον, οὐκέτι καθήμενος ὑπὸ σκιάδι χρυσῇ θεάσεται τὴν μάχην ἐφ’ ἡσυχίας, ἀλλὰ πάντα τολμῶν καὶ πᾶσιν αὐτὸς παρὼν διὰ τὸν κίνδυνον ἐπανορθώσεται τὰ παρειμένα καὶ βουλεύσεται βέλτιον ὑπὲρ [4] τῶν ὅλων. οὐ τὴν οὖσαν οὖν’ ἔφη ‘δεῖ γέφυραν ὦ Θεμιστόκλεις ἡμᾶς ἀναιρεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἑτέραν εἴπερ οἷόν τε προσκατασκευάσαντας ἐκβαλεῖν διὰ τάχους τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐκ τῆς Εὐρώπης’, ‘οὐκοῦν’ εἶπεν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ‘εἰ δοκεῖ ταῦτα συμφέρειν, ὥρα σκοπεῖν καὶ μηχανᾶσθαι πάντας ἡμᾶς, ὅπως ἀπαλλαγήσεται τὴν ταχίστην ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος.’

[5] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῦτ’ ἔδοξεν, ἔπεμπέ τινα τῶν βασιλικῶν εὐνούχων ἐν τοῖς αἰχμαλώτοις ἀνευρὼν Ἀρνάκην ὄνομα, φράζειν βασιλεῖ κελεύσας ὅτι τοῖς μὲν Ἕλλησι δέδοκται τῷ ναυτικῷ κεκρατηκότας ἀναπλεῖν εἰς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ἐπὶ τὸ ζεῦγμα καὶ λύειν τὴν γέφυραν, Θεμιστοκλῆς δὲ κηδόμενος βασιλέως παραινεῖ σπεύδειν ἐπὶ τὴν αὑτοῦ [θάλατταν] καὶ περαιοῦσθαι, μέχρις αὐτὸς ἐμποιεῖ τινας διατριβὰς τοῖς συμμάχοις καὶ μελλήσεις [6] πρὸς τὴν δίωξιν. ταῦθ’ ὁ βάρβαρος ἀκούσας καὶ γενόμενος περίφοβος, διὰ τάχους ἐποιεῖτο τὴν ἀναχώρησιν, καὶ πεῖραν ἡ Θεμιστοκλέους καὶ Ἀριστείδου φρόνησις ἐν Μαρδονίῳ παρέσχεν, εἴγε πολλοστημορίῳ τῆς Ξέρξου δυνάμεως διαγωνισάμενοι Πλαταιᾶσιν εἰς τὸν περὶ τῶν ὅλων κίνδυνον κατέστησαν.

[17] [1] Πόλεων μὲν οὖν τὴν Αἰγινητῶν ἀριστεῦσαί φησιν Ἡρόδοτος (8, 93), Θεμιστοκλεῖ δὲ καίπερ ἄκοντες ὑπὸ [2] φθόνου τὸ πρωτεῖον ἀπέδοσαν ἅπαντες. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἀναχωρήσαντες εἰς τὸν Ἰσθμὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ βωμοῦ τὴν ψῆφον ἔφερον οἱ στρατηγοί, πρῶτον μὲν ἕκαστος αὑτὸν ἀπέφαινεν [3] ἀρετῇ, δεύτερον δὲ μεθ’ αὑτὸν Θεμιστοκλέα. Λακεδαιμόνιοι δ’ εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην αὐτὸν καταγαγόντες, Εὐρυβιάδῃ μὲν ἀνδρείας, ἐκείνῳ δὲ σοφίας ἀριστεῖον ἔδοσαν θαλλοῦ στέφανον, καὶ τῶν κατὰ τὴν πόλιν ἁρμάτων τὸ πρωτεῦον ἐδωρήσαντο καὶ τριακοσίους τῶν νέων [4] πομποὺς ἄχρι τῶν ὅρων συνεξέπεμψαν. λέγεται δ’ Ὀλυμπίων τῶν ἑξῆς ἀγομένων, καὶ παρελθόντος εἰς τὸ στάδιον τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους, ἀμελήσαντας τῶν ἀγωνιστῶν τοὺς παρόντας ὅλην τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκεῖνον θεᾶσθαι καὶ τοῖς ξένοις ἐπιδεικνύειν ἅμα θαυμάζοντας καὶ κροτοῦντας, ὥστε καὶ αὐτὸν ἡσθέντα πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ὁμολογῆσαι τὸν καρπὸν ἀπέχειν τῶν ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος αὐτῷ πονηθέντων.

[18] [1] Καὶ γὰρ ἦν τῇ φύσει φιλοτιμότατος, εἰ δεῖ τεκμαίρεσθαι διὰ τῶν ἀπομνημονευομένων. αἱρεθεὶς γὰρ ναύαρχος ὑπὸ τῆς πόλεως, οὐδὲν οὔτε τῶν ἰδίων οὔτε τῶν κοινῶν κατὰ μέρος ἐχρημάτιζεν, ἀλλὰ πᾶν ἀνεβάλλετο τὸ προσπῖπτον εἰς τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην καθ’ ἣν ἐκπλεῖν ἔμελλεν, ἵν’ ὁμοῦ πολλὰ πράττων πράγματα καὶ παντοδαποῖς ἀνθρώποις ὁμιλῶν μέγας εἶναι δοκῇ καὶ πλεῖστον δύνασθαι.

[2] Τῶν δὲ νεκρῶν τοὺς ἐκπεσόντας ἐπισκοπῶν παρὰ τὴν θάλατταν, ὡς εἶδε περικειμένους ψέλια χρυσᾶ καὶ στρεπτούς, αὐτὸς μὲν παρῆλθε, τῷ δ’ ἑπομένῳ φίλῳ δείξας εἶπεν· ‘ἀνελοῦ σαυτῷ· σὺ γὰρ οὐκ εἶ Θεμιστοκλῆς.’

[3] Πρὸς δέ τινα τῶν καλῶν γεγονότων Ἀντιφάτην, ὑπερηφάνως αὐτῷ κεχρημένον πρότερον, ὕστερον δὲ θεραπεύοντα διὰ τὴν δόξαν ‘ὦ μειράκιον’ εἶπεν, ‘ὀψὲ μέν, ἀμφότεροι δ’ ὁμοῦ νοῦν ἐσχήκαμεν.’

[4] Ἔλεγε δὲ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους οὐ τιμᾶν αὐτὸν οὐδὲ θαυμάζειν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ πλατάνῳ χειμαζομένους μὲν ὑποτρέχειν [κινδυνεύοντας], εὐδίας δὲ περὶ αὐτοὺς γενομένης τίλλειν καὶ κολούειν.

[5] Τοῦ δὲ Σεριφίου πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος ὡς οὐ δι’ αὑτὸν ἔσχηκε δόξαν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν πόλιν, ‘ἀληθῆ λέγεις’ εἶπεν· ‘ἀλλ’ οὔτ’ ἂν ἐγὼ Σερίφιος ὢν ἐγενόμην ἔνδοξος, οὔτε σὺ Ἀθηναῖος.’

[6] Ἑτέρου δέ τινος τῶν στρατηγῶν, ὡς ἔδοξέ τι χρήσιμον διαπεπρᾶχθαι τῇ πόλει, θρασυνομένου πρὸς τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα καὶ τὰς ἑαυτοῦ ταῖς ἐκείνου πράξεσιν ἀντιπαραβάλλοντος, ἔφη τῇ ἑορτῇ τὴν ὑστεραίαν ἐρίσαι, λέγουσαν ὡς ἐκείνη μὲν ἀσχολιῶν τε μεστὴ καὶ κοπώδης ἐστίν, ἐν αὐτῇ δὲ πάντες ἀπολαύουσι τῶν παρεσκευασμένων σχολάζοντες· τὴν δ’ ἑορτὴν πρὸς ταῦτ’ εἰπεῖν· ‘ἀληθῆ λέγεις· ἀλλ’ ἐμοῦ μὴ γενομένης σὺ οὐκ ἂν ἦσθα·’ ‘κἀμοῦ τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘τότε μὴ γενομένου, ποῦ ἂν ἦτε νῦν ὑμεῖς;’

[7] Τὸν δ’ υἱὸν ἐντρυφῶντα τῇ μητρὶ καὶ δι’ ἐκείνην ἑαυτῷ σκώπτων ἔλεγε πλεῖστον τῶν Ἑλλήνων δύνασθαι· τοῖς μὲν γὰρ Ἕλλησιν ἐπιτάσσειν Ἀθηναίους, Ἀθηναίοις δ’ ἑαυτόν, αὑτῷ δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου μητέρα, τῇ μητρὶ δ’ ἐκεῖνον.

[8] Ἴδιος δέ τις ἐν πᾶσι βουλόμενος εἶναι, χωρίον μὲν πιπράσκων ἐκέλευε κηρύττειν ὅτι καὶ γείτονα χρηστὸν [9] ἔχει· τῶν δὲ μνωμένων αὐτοῦ τὴν θυγατέρα τὸν ἐπιεικῆ τοῦ πλουσίου προκρίνας, ἔφη ζητεῖν ἄνδρα χρημάτων δεόμενον μᾶλλον ἢ χρήματα ἀνδρός. ἐν μὲν οὖν τοῖς ἀποφθέγμασι τοιοῦτός τις ἦν.

[19] [1] Γενόμενος δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν πράξεων ἐκείνων, εὐθὺς ἐπεχείρει τὴν πόλιν ἀνοικοδομεῖν καὶ τειχίζειν, ὡς μὲν ἱστορεῖ Θεόπομπος (FGrH 115 F 85) χρήμασι πείσας μὴ ἐναντιωθῆναι τοὺς ἐφόρους, ὡς δ’ οἱ πλεῖστοι, παρακρουσάμενος.

[2] ἧκε μὲν γὰρ εἰς Σπάρτην ὄνομα πρεσβείας ἐπιγραψάμενος· ἐγκαλούντων δὲ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ὅτι τειχίζουσι τὸ ἄστυ, καὶ Πολυάρχου κατηγοροῦντος ἐπίτηδες ἐξ Αἰγίνης ἀποσταλέντος, ἠρνεῖτο καὶ πέμπειν ἐκέλευεν εἰς Ἀθήνας τοὺς κατοψομένους, ἅμα μὲν ἐμβάλλων τῷ τειχισμῷ χρόνον ἐκ τῆς διατριβῆς, ἅμα δὲ βουλόμενος ἀνθ’ αὑτοῦ τοὺς πεμπομένους ὑπάρχειν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις.

[3] ὃ καὶ συνέβη· γνόντες γὰρ οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τὸ ἀληθὲς οὐκ ἠδίκησαν αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἀδήλως χαλεπαίνοντες ἀπέπεμψαν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου τὸν Πειραιᾶ κατεσκεύαζε, τὴν τῶν λιμένων εὐφυΐαν κατανοήσας καὶ τὴν πόλιν ὅλην ἁρμοττόμενος πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τοῖς παλαιοῖς βασιλεῦσι τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀντιπολιτευόμενος.

[4] ἐκεῖνοι μὲν γὰρ ὡς λέγεται πραγματευόμενοι τοὺς πολίτας ἀποσπάσαι τῆς θαλάττης, καὶ συνεθίσαι ζῆν μὴ πλέοντας, ἀλλὰ τὴν χώραν φυτεύοντας, τὸν περὶ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς διέδοσαν λόγον, ὡς ἐρίσαντα περὶ τῆς χώρας Ποσειδῶνα δείξασα τὴν μορίαν τοῖς δικασταῖς ἐνίκησεν. Θεμιστοκλῆς δ’ οὐχ, ὥσπερ Ἀριστοφάνης ὁ κωμικός (eq. 815) φησι, τῇ πόλει ‘τὸν Πειραιᾶ προσέμαξεν’, ἀλλὰ τὴν πόλιν ἐξῆψε τοῦ Πειραιῶς καὶ τὴν γῆν τῆς [5] θαλάττης· ᾧ καὶ τὸν δῆμον ηὔξησε κατὰ τῶν ἀρίστων καὶ θράσους ἐνέπλησεν, εἰς ναύτας καὶ κελευστὰς καὶ [6] κυβερνήτας τῆς δυνάμεως ἀφικομένης. διὸ καὶ τὸ βῆμα τὸ ἐν Πυκνὶ πεποιημένον ὥστ’ ἀποβλέπειν πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν ὕστερον οἱ τριάκοντα πρὸς τὴν χώραν ἀπέστρεψαν, οἰόμενοι τὴν μὲν κατὰ θάλατταν ἀρχὴν γένεσιν εἶναι δημοκρατίας, ὀλιγαρχίᾳ δ’ ἧττον δυσχεραίνειν τοὺς γεωργοῦντας.

[20] [1] Θεμιστοκλῆς δὲ καὶ μεῖζόν τι περὶ τῆς ναυτικῆς διενοήθη δυνάμεως. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ὁ τῶν Ἑλλήνων στόλος ἀπηλλαγμένου Ξέρξου κατῆρεν εἰς Παγασὰς καὶ διεχείμαζε, δημηγορῶν ἐν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἔφη τινα πρᾶξιν ἔχειν ὠφέλιμον μὲν αὐτοῖς καὶ σωτήριον, ἀπόρρητον δὲ [2] πρὸς τοὺς πολλούς. τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων Ἀριστείδῃ φράσαι μόνῳ κελευόντων, κἂν ἐκεῖνος δοκιμάσῃ, περαίνειν, ὁ μὲν Θεμιστοκλῆς ἔφρασε τῷ Ἀριστείδῃ τὸ νεώριον ἐμπρῆσαι διανοεῖσθαι τῶν Ἑλλήνων· ὁ δ’ Ἀριστείδης εἰς τὸν δῆμον προελθὼν ἔφη τῆς πράξεως ἣν διανοεῖται πράττειν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς μηδεμίαν εἶναι μήτε λυσιτελεστέραν μήτ’ ἀδικωτέραν. οἱ μὲν οὖν Ἀθηναῖοι διὰ ταῦτα παύσασθαι τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ προσέταξαν.

[3] Ἐν δὲ τοῖς Ἀμφικτυονικοῖς συνεδρίοις τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων εἰσηγουμένων ὅπως ἀπείργωνται τῆς Ἀμφικτυονίας αἱ μὴ συμμαχήσασαι κατὰ τοῦ Μήδου πόλεις, φοβηθεὶς μὴ Θετταλοὺς καὶ Ἀργείους, ἔτι δὲ Θηβαίους ἐκβαλόντες τοῦ συνεδρίου παντελῶς ἐπικρατήσωσι τῶν ψήφων καὶ γένηται τὸ δοκοῦν ἐκείνοις, συνεῖπε ταῖς πόλεσι καὶ μετέθηκε τὰς γνώμας τῶν πυλαγόρων, διδάξας ὡς τριάκοντα καὶ μία μόναι πόλεις εἰσὶν αἱ τοῦ πολέμου μετασχοῦσαι, καὶ τούτων αἱ πλείους παντάπασι [4] μικραί· δεινὸν οὖν εἰ τῆς ἄλλης Ἑλλάδος ἐκσπόνδου γενομένης ἐπὶ ταῖς μεγίσταις δυσὶν ἢ τρισὶ πόλεσιν ἔσται τὸ συνέδριον. ἐκ τούτου μὲν οὖν μάλιστα τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις προσέκρουσε· διὸ καὶ τὸν Κίμωνα προῆγον ταῖς τιμαῖς, ἀντίπαλον ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ καθιστάντες.

[21] [1] Ἦν δὲ καὶ τοῖς συμμάχοις ἐπαχθὴς περιπλέων τε τὰς νήσους καὶ χρηματιζόμενος ἀπ’ αὐτῶν· οἷα καὶ πρὸς Ἀνδρίους ἀργύριον αἰτοῦντά φησιν αὐτὸν Ἡρόδοτος [2] (8, 111) εἰπεῖν τε καὶ ἀκοῦσαι. δύο γὰρ ἥκειν ἔφη θεοὺς κομίζων, Πειθὼ καὶ Βίαν· οἱ δ’ ἔφασαν εἶναι καὶ παρ’ αὐτοῖς θεοὺς μεγάλους δύο, Πενίαν καὶ Ἀπορίαν, [3] ὑφ’ ὧν κωλύεσθαι δοῦναι χρήματα ἐκείνῳ. Τιμοκρέων δ’ ὁ Ῥόδιος μελοποιὸς ἐν ᾄσματι καθάπτεται πικρότερον τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους, ὡς ἄλλους μὲν ἐπὶ χρήμασι φυγάδας διαπραξαμένου κατελθεῖν, αὐτὸν δὲ ξένον ὄντα καὶ φίλον [4] προεμένου δι’ ἀργύριον. λέγει δ’ οὕτως (fg. 1 D.)·

ἀλλ’ εἰ τύ γα Παυσανίαν ἢ καὶ τύ γα Ξάνθιππον αἰνεῖς

ἢ τύ γα Λευτυχίδαν, ἐγὼ δ’ Ἀριστείδαν ἐπαινέω

ἄνδρ’ ἱερᾶν ἀπ’ Ἀθανᾶν

ἐλθεῖν ἕνα λῷστον· ἐπεὶ Θεμιστοκλέα γ’ ἤχθαρε Λατώ,

ψεύσταν, ἄδικον, προδόταν, ὃς Τιμοκρέοντα ξεῖνον

ἐόντα

ἀργυρίοισι κυβαλικοῖσι πεισθεὶς οὐ κατᾶγεν

εἰς πατρίδα Ἰάλυσον,

λαβὼν δὲ τρί’ ἀργυρίου τάλαντ’ ἔβα πλέων εἰς

ὄλεθρον,

τοὺς μὲν κατάγων ἀδίκως, τοὺς δ’ ἐκδιώκων, τοὺς δὲ

καίνων.

ἀργυρίου δ’ ὑπόπλεως, Ἰσθμοῖ γελοίως πανδόκευε

ψυχρὰ κρέα παρέχων·

οἱ δ’ ἤσθιον κηὔχοντο μὴ ὥραν Θεμιστοκλέος

γενέσθαι.

[5] πολὺ δ’ ἀσελγεστέρᾳ καὶ ἀναπεπταμένῃ μᾶλλον εἰς τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα βλασφημίᾳ κέχρηται μετὰ τὴν φυγὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν καταδίκην ὁ Τιμοκρέων, ᾆσμα ποιήσας οὗ ἐστιν ἀρχή (fg. 2 D.)·

[6] Μοῦσα τοῦδε τοῦ μέλεος

κλέος ἀν’ Ἕλλανας τίθει,

ὡς ἐοικὸς καὶ δίκαιον.

[7] λέγεται δ’ ὁ Τιμοκρέων ἐπὶ μηδισμῷ φυγεῖν συγκαταψηφισαμένου τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους. ὡς οὖν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς αἰτίαν ἔσχε μηδίζειν, ταῦτ’ ἐποίησεν εἰς αὐτόν (fg. 3 D.)·

οὐκ ἄρα Τιμοκρέων μόνος

Μήδοισιν ὁρκιατομεῖ,

ἀλλ’ ἐντὶ κἆλλοι δὴ πονηροί·

οὐκ ἐγὼ μόνα κόλουρις·

ἐντὶ κἆλλαι ἀλώπεκες.

[22] [1] Ἤδη δὲ καὶ τῶν πολιτῶν διὰ τὸ φθονεῖν ἡδέως τὰς διαβολὰς προσιεμένων, ἠναγκάζετο λυπηρὸς εἶναι τῶν αὑτοῦ πράξεων πολλάκις ἐν τῷ δήμῳ μνημονεύων, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς δυσχεραίνοντας ‘τί κοπιᾶτε’ εἶπεν ‘ὑπὸ [2] τῶν αὐτῶν πολλάκις εὖ πάσχοντες;’ ἠνίασε δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ τὸ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος ἱερὸν εἱσάμενος, ἣν Ἀριστοβούλην μὲν προσηγόρευσεν ὡς ἄριστα τῇ πόλει καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησι βουλευσάμενος, πλησίον δὲ τῆς οἰκίας κατεσκεύασεν ἐν Μελίτῃ τὸ ἱερόν, οὗ νῦν τὰ σώματα τῶν θανατουμένων οἱ δήμιοι προβάλλουσι καὶ τὰ ἱμάτια καὶ τοὺς βρόχους τῶν ἀπαγχομένων καὶ καθαιρεθέντων ἐκφέρουσιν.

[3] ἔκειτο δὲ καὶ τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους εἰκόνιον ἐν τῷ ναῷ τῆς Ἀριστοβούλης ἔτι καθ’ ἡμᾶς, καὶ φαίνεταί τις οὐ τὴν ψυχὴν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ὄψιν ἡρωικὸς γενόμενος.

[4] Τὸν μὲν οὖν ἐξοστρακισμὸν ἐποιήσαντο κατ’ αὐτοῦ, κολούοντες τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ τὴν ὑπεροχήν, ὥσπερ εἰώθεσαν ἐπὶ πάντων οὓς ᾤοντο τῇ δυνάμει βαρεῖς καὶ πρὸς [5] ἰσότητα δημοκρατικὴν ἀσυμμέτρους εἶναι. κόλασις γὰρ οὐκ ἦν ὁ ἐξοστρακισμός, ἀλλὰ παραμυθία φθόνου καὶ κουφισμός, ἡδομένου τῷ ταπεινοῦν τοὺς ὑπερέχοντας καὶ τὴν δυσμένειαν εἰς ταύτην τὴν ἀτιμίαν ἀποπνέοντος.

[23] [1] Ἐκπεσόντος δὲ τῆς πόλεως αὐτοῦ καὶ διατρίβοντος ἐν Ἄργει, τὰ περὶ Παυσανίαν συμπεσόντα κατ’ ἐκείνου παρέσχε τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἀφορμάς. ὁ δὲ γραψάμενος αὐτὸν προδοσίας Λεωβώτης ἦν ὁ Ἀλκμαίωνος Ἀγρυλῆθεν, [2] ἅμα συνεπαιτιωμένων τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν. ὁ γὰρ Παυσανίας πράττων ἐκεῖνα δὴ τὰ περὶ τὴν προδοσίαν, πρότερον μὲν ἀπεκρύπτετο τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα καίπερ ὄντα φίλον· ὡς δ’ εἶδεν ἐκπεπτωκότα τῆς πολιτείας καὶ φέροντα χαλεπῶς, ἐθάρρησεν ἐπὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τῶν πρασσομένων παρακαλεῖν, γράμματα τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπιδεικνύμενος αὐτῷ καὶ παροξύνων ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὡς πονηροὺς [3] καὶ ἀχαρίστους. ὁ δὲ τὴν μὲν δέησιν ἀπετρίψατο τοῦ Παυσανίου καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν ὅλως ἀπείπατο, πρὸς οὐδένα δὲ τοὺς λόγους ἐξήνεγκεν οὐδὲ κατεμήνυσε τὴν πρᾶξιν, εἴτε παύσεσθαι προσδοκῶν αὐτόν, εἴτ’ ἄλλως καταφανῆ γενήσεσθαι σὺν οὐδενὶ λογισμῷ πραγμάτων [4] ἀτόπων καὶ παραβόλων ὀρεγόμενον. οὕτω δὲ τοῦ Παυσανίου θανατωθέντος, ἐπιστολαί τινες ἀνευρεθεῖσαι καὶ γράμματα περὶ τούτων εἰς ὑποψίαν ἐνέβαλον τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα, καὶ κατεβόων μὲν αὐτοῦ Λακεδαιμόνιοι, κατηγόρουν δ’ οἱ φθονοῦντες τῶν πολιτῶν, οὐ παρόντος, ἀλλὰ διὰ γραμμάτων ἀπολογουμένου μάλιστα ταῖς προτέραις [5] κατηγορίαις· διαβαλλόμενος γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας ὡς ἄρχειν μὲν αἰεὶ ζητῶν, ἄρχεσθαι δὲ μὴ πεφυκὼς μηδὲ βουλόμενος, οὐκ ἄν ποτε βαρβάροις αὑτὸν οὐδὲ πολεμίοις ἀποδόσθαι μετὰ τῆς [6] Ἑλλάδος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ συμπεισθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν κατηγορούντων ὁ δῆμος ἔπεμψεν ἄνδρας οἷς εἴρητο συλλαμβάνειν καὶ ἀνάγειν αὐτὸν κριθησόμενον ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν.

[24] [1] Προαισθόμενος δ’ ἐκεῖνος εἰς Κέρκυραν διεπέρασεν, οὔσης αὐτῷ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν εὐεργεσίας. γενόμενος γὰρ αὐτῶν κριτὴς πρὸς Κορινθίους ἐχόντων διαφοράν, ἔλυσε τὴν ἔχθραν εἴκοσι τάλαντα κρίνας τοὺς Κορινθίους καταβαλεῖν καὶ Λευκάδα κοινῇ νέμειν ἀμφοτέρων [2] ἄποικον. ἐκεῖθεν δ’ εἰς Ἤπειρον ἔφυγε, καὶ διωκόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων καὶ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, ἔρριψεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἐλπίδας χαλεπὰς καὶ ἀπόρους, καταφυγὼν πρὸς Ἄδμητον, ὃς βασιλεὺς μὲν ἦν Μολοσσῶν, δεηθεὶς δέ τι τῶν Ἀθηναίων καὶ προπηλακισθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους, ὅτ’ ἤκμαζεν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ, δι’ ὀργῆς εἶχεν [3] αὐτὸν αἰεί, καὶ δῆλος ἦν εἰ λάβοι τιμωρησόμενος. ἐν δὲ τῇ τότε τύχῃ μᾶλλον ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς φοβηθεὶς συγγενῆ καὶ πρόσφατον φθόνον ὀργῆς παλαιᾶς καὶ βασιλικῆς, ταύτῃ φέρων ὑπέθηκεν ἑαυτόν, ἱκέτης τοῦ Ἀδμήτου [4] καταστὰς ἴδιόν τινα καὶ παρηλλαγμένον τρόπον. ἔχων γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὸν υἱὸν ὄντα παῖδα πρὸς τὴν ἑστίαν προσέπεσε, ταύτην μεγίστην καὶ μόνην σχεδὸν ἀναντίρρητον [5] ἡγουμένων ἱκεσίαν τῶν Μολοσσῶν. ἔνιοι μὲν οὖν Φθίαν τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ βασιλέως λέγουσιν ὑποθέσθαι τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ τὸ ἱκέτευμα τοῦτο καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἐπὶ τὴν ἑστίαν καθίσαι μετ’ αὐτοῦ· τινὲς δ’ αὐτὸν τὸν Ἄδμητον, ὡς ἀφοσιώσαιτο πρὸς τοὺς διώκοντας τὴν ἀνάγκην δι’ ἣν οὐκ ἐκδίδωσι τὸν ἄνδρα, διαθεῖναι καὶ συντραγῳδῆσαι [6] τὴν ἱκεσίαν. ἐκεῖ δ’ αὐτῷ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τοὺς παῖδας ἐκκλέψας ἐκ τῶν Ἀθηνῶν Ἐπικράτης ὁ Ἀχαρνεὺς ἀπέστειλεν· ὃν ἐπὶ τούτῳ Κίμων ὕστερον κρίνας ἐθανάτωσεν, [7] ὡς ἱστορεῖ Στησίμβροτος (FGrH 107 F 3). εἶτ’ οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως ἐπιλαθόμενος τούτων, ἢ τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα ποιῶν ἐπιλαθόμενον, πλεῦσαί φησιν εἰς Σικελίαν καὶ παρ’ Ἱέρωνος αἰτεῖν τοῦ τυράννου τὴν θυγατέρα πρὸς γάμον, ὑπισχνούμενον αὐτῷ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὑπηκόους ποιήσειν· ἀποτριψαμένου δὲ τοῦ Ἱέρωνος, οὕτως εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν ἀπᾶραι.

[25] [1] Ταῦτα δ’ οὐκ εἰκός ἐστιν οὕτω γενέσθαι. Θεόφραστος (fr. 126 W.) γὰρ ἐν τοῖς Περὶ βασιλείας ἱστορεῖ τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα, πέμψαντος εἰς Ὀλυμπίαν Ἱέρωνος ἵππους ἀγωνιστὰς καὶ σκηνήν τινα κατεσκευασμένην πολυτελῶς στήσαντος, εἰπεῖν ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησι λόγον, ὡς χρὴ τὴν σκηνὴν διαρπάσαι τοῦ τυράννου καὶ κωλῦσαι τοὺς [2] ἵππους ἀγωνίσασθαι. Θουκυδίδης (1, 137, 2) δ’ ἐκπλεῦσαί φησιν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν ἑτέραν καταβάντα θάλατταν ἀπὸ Πύδνης, οὐδενὸς εἰδότος ὅστις εἴη τῶν πλεόντων, μέχρι οὗ πνεύματι τῆς ὁλκάδος εἰς Νάξον καταφερομένης ὑπ’ Ἀθηναίων πολιορκουμένην τότε, φοβηθεὶς ἀναδείξειεν ἑαυτὸν τῷ τε ναυκλήρῳ καὶ τῷ κυβερνήτῃ, καὶ τὰ μὲν δεόμενος, τὰ δ’ ἀπειλῶν καὶ λέγων ὅτι κατηγορήσοι καὶ καταψεύσοιτο πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ὡς οὐκ ἀγνοοῦντες, ἀλλὰ χρήμασι πεισθέντες ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἀναλάβοιεν αὐτόν, οὕτως ἀναγκάσειε παραπλεῦσαι καὶ λαβέσθαι [3] τῆς Ἀσίας. τῶν δὲ χρημάτων αὐτῷ πολλὰ μὲν ὑπεκκλαπέντα διὰ τῶν φίλων εἰς Ἀσίαν ἔπλει, τῶν δὲ φανερῶν γενομένων καὶ συναχθέντων εἰς τὸ δημόσιον Θεόπομπος (FGrH 115 F 86) μὲν ἑκατὸν τάλαντα, Θεόφραστος δ’ ὀγδοήκοντά φησι γενέσθαι τὸ πλῆθος, οὐδὲ τριῶν ἄξια ταλάντων κεκτημένου τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους πρὶν ἅπτεσθαι τῆς πολιτείας.

[26] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ κατέπλευσεν εἰς Κύμην καὶ πολλοὺς ᾔσθετο τῶν ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ παραφυλάττοντας αὐτὸν λαβεῖν, μάλιστα δὲ τοὺς περὶ Ἐργοτέλη καὶ Πυθόδωρον - ἦν γὰρ ἡ θήρα λυσιτελὴς τοῖς γε τὸ κερδαίνειν ἀπὸ παντὸς ἀγαπῶσι, διακοσίων ἐπικεκηρυγμένων αὐτῷ ταλάντων ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως - ἔφυγεν εἰς Αἰγάς, Αἰολικὸν πολισμάτιον, ὑπὸ πάντων ἀγνοούμενος πλὴν τοῦ ξένου Νικογένους, ὃς Αἰολέων πλείστην οὐσίαν ἐκέκτητο καὶ τοῖς [2] ἄνω δυνατοῖς γνώριμος ὑπῆρχε. παρὰ τούτῳ κρυπτόμενος ἡμέρας ὀλίγας διέτριψεν· εἶτα μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ἐκ θυσίας τινὸς Ὄλβιος ὁ τῶν τέκνων τοῦ Νικογένους παιδαγωγὸς ἔκφρων γενόμενος καὶ θεοφόρητος ἀνεφώνησεν ἐν μέτρῳ ταυτί·

Νυκτὶ φωνήν, νυκτὶ βουλήν, νυκτὶ τὴν νίκην δίδου, [3] καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα κατακοιμηθεὶς ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ὄναρ ἔδοξεν ἰδεῖν δράκοντα κατὰ τῆς γαστρὸς αὐτοῦ περιελιττόμενον καὶ προσανέρποντα τῷ τραχήλῳ· γενόμενον δ’ ἀετόν, ὡς ἥψατο τοῦ προσώπου, περιβαλόντα τὰς πτέρυγας ἐξᾶραι καὶ κομίζειν πολλὴν ὁδόν, εἶτα χρυσοῦ τινος κηρυκείου φανέντος, ἐπὶ τούτῳ στῆσαι βεβαίως αὐτόν, ἀμηχάνου δείματος καὶ ταραχῆς ἀπαλλαγέντα.

[4] Πέμπεται δ’ οὖν ὑπὸ τοῦ Νικογένους μηχανησαμένου τι τοιόνδε. τοῦ βαρβαρικοῦ γένους τὸ πολὺ καὶ μάλιστα τὸ Περσικὸν εἰς ζηλοτυπίαν τὴν περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας [5] ἄγριον φύσει καὶ χαλεπόν ἐστιν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον τὰς γαμετάς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ἀργυρωνήτους καὶ παλλακευομένας ἰσχυρῶς παραφυλάττουσιν, ὡς ὑπὸ μηδενὸς ὁρᾶσθαι τῶν ἐκτός, ἀλλ’ οἴκοι μὲν διαιτᾶσθαι κατακεκλειμένας, ἐν δὲ ταῖς ὁδοιπορίαις ὑπὸ σκηναῖς κύκλῳ περιπεφραγμένας [6] ἐπὶ τῶν ἁρμαμαξῶν ὀχεῖσθαι. τοιαύτης τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ κατασκευασθείσης ἀπήνης, καταδὺς ἐκομίζετο, τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἀεὶ τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι καὶ πυνθανομένοις λεγόντων, ὅτι γύναιον Ἑλληνικὸν ἄγουσιν ἀπ’ Ἰωνίας πρός τινα τῶν ἐπὶ θύραις βασιλέως.

[27] [1] Θουκυδίδης (1, 137, 3) μὲν οὖν καὶ Χάρων ὁ Λαμψακηνὸς (FGrH 262 F 11) ἱστοροῦσι τεθνηκότος Ξέρξου πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ γενέσθαι τὴν ἔντευξιν· Ἔφορος (FGrH 70 F 190) δὲ καὶ Δείνων (FGrH 690 F 13) καὶ Κλείταρχος (FGrH 137 F 33) καὶ Ἡρακλείδης (FGrH 689 F 6), ἔτι δ’ ἄλλοι πλείονες πρὸς [2] αὐτὸν ἀφικέσθαι τὸν Ξέρξην. τοῖς δὲ χρονικοῖς δοκεῖ μᾶλλον ὁ Θουκυδίδης συμφέρεσθαι, καίπερ οὐδ’ αὐτοῖς ἀτρέμα συντεταγμένοις. ὁ δ’ οὖν Θεμιστοκλῆς γενόμενος παρ’ αὐτὸ τὸ δεινόν, ἐντυγχάνει πρῶτον Ἀρταβάνῳ τῷ χιλιάρχῳ, λέγων Ἕλλην μὲν εἶναι, βούλεσθαι δ’ ἐντυχεῖν βασιλεῖ περὶ πραγμάτων μεγάλων καὶ πρὸς ἃ [3] τυγχάνοι μάλιστα σπουδάζων ἐκεῖνος. ὁ δέ φησιν· ‘ὦ ξένε, νόμοι διαφέρουσιν ἀνθρώπων· ἄλλα δ’ ἄλλοις καλά· [4] καλὸν δὲ πᾶσι τὰ οἰκεῖα κοσμεῖν καὶ σῴζειν. ὑμᾶς μὲν οὖν ἐλευθερίαν μάλιστα θαυμάζειν καὶ ἰσότητα λόγος· ἡμῖν δὲ πολλῶν νόμων καὶ καλῶν ὄντων κάλλιστος οὗτός ἐστι, τιμᾶν βασιλέα καὶ προσκυνεῖν ὡς εἰκόνα θεοῦ τοῦ [5] τὰ πάντα σῴζοντος. εἰ μὲν οὖν ἐπαινῶν τὰ ἡμέτερα προσκυνήσεις, ἔστι σοι καὶ θεάσασθαι βασιλέα καὶ προσειπεῖν· εἰ δ’ ἄλλο τι φρονεῖς, ἀγγέλοις ἑτέροις χρήσῃ πρὸς αὐτόν. βασιλεῖ γὰρ οὐ πάτριον ἀνδρὸς ἀκροᾶσθαι [6] μὴ προσκυνήσαντος.’ ταῦθ’ ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἀκούσας, λέγει πρὸς αὐτόν· ‘ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ τὴν βασιλέως ὦ Ἀρτάβανε φήμην καὶ δύναμιν αὐξήσων ἀφῖγμαι, καὶ αὐτός τε πείσομαι τοῖς ὑμετέροις νόμοις, ἐπεὶ θεῷ τῷ μεγαλύνοντι Πέρσας οὕτω δοκεῖ, καὶ δι’ ἐμὲ πλείονες τῶν νῦν βασιλέα [7] προσκυνήσουσιν. ὥστε τοῦτο μηδὲν ἐμποδὼν ἔστω τοῖς λόγοις οὓς βούλομαι πρὸς ἐκεῖνον εἰπεῖν.’ ‘τίνα δέ’ εἶπεν ὁ Ἀρτάβανος ‘Ἑλλήνων ἀφῖχθαι φῶμεν; οὐ γὰρ [8] ἰδιώτῃ τὴν γνώμην ἔοικας.’ καὶ ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς· ‘τοῦτ’ οὐκ ἄν’ ἔφη ‘πύθοιτό τις Ἀρτάβανε πρότερος βασιλέως.’ οὕτω μὲν ὁ Φανίας (FHG II 296) φησίν· ὁ δ’ Ἐρατοσθένης ἐν τοῖς Περὶ πλούτου (FGrH 241 F 27) προσιστόρησε, διὰ γυναικὸς Ἐρετρικῆς ἣν ὁ χιλίαρχος εἶχε τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔντευξιν γενέσθαι καὶ σύστασιν.

[28] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὖν εἰσήχθη πρὸς βασιλέα καὶ προσκυνήσας ἔστη σιωπῇ, προστάξαντος τῷ ἑρμηνεῖ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐρωτῆσαι τίς ἐστι, καὶ τοῦ ἑρμηνέως ἐρωτήσαντος [2] εἶπεν· ‘ἥκω σοι βασιλεῦ Θεμιστοκλῆς ὁ Ἀθηναῖος ἐγὼ φυγάς, ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων διωχθείς, ᾧ πολλὰ μὲν ὀφείλουσι Πέρσαι κακά, πλείω δ’ ἀγαθὰ κωλύσαντι τὴν δίωξιν, ὅτε τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐν ἀσφαλεῖ γεγενημένης παρέσχε τὰ [3] οἰκεῖα σῳζόμενα χαρίσασθαί τι καὶ ὑμῖν. ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν πάντα πρέποντα ταῖς παρούσαις συμφοραῖς ἐστι, καὶ παρεσκευασμένος ἀφῖγμαι δέξασθαί τε χάριν εὐμενῶς διαλλαττομένου καὶ παραιτεῖσθαι μνησικακοῦντος ὀργήν· [4] σὺ δὲ τοὺς ἐμοὺς ἐχθροὺς μάρτυρας θέμενος ὧν εὐεργέτησα Πέρσας, νῦν ἀπόχρησαι ταῖς ἐμαῖς τύχαις πρὸς ἐπίδειξιν ἀρετῆς μᾶλλον ἢ πρὸς ἀποπλήρωσιν ὀργῆς. σώσεις μὲν γὰρ ἱκέτην σόν, ἀπολεῖς δ’ Ἑλλήνων πολέμιον [5] γενόμενον.’ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἐπεθείασε τῷ λόγῳ, προσδιελθὼν τὴν ὄψιν ἣν εἶδεν ἐν Νικογένους καὶ τὸ μάντευμα τοῦ Δωδωναίου Διός, ὡς κελευσθεὶς πρὸς τὸν ὁμώνυμον τοῦ θεοῦ βαδίζειν, συμφρονήσειε πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἀναπέμπεσθαι· μεγάλους γὰρ ἀμφοτέρους [6] εἶναί τε καὶ λέγεσθαι βασιλέας. ἀκούσας δ’ ὁ Πέρσης, ἐκείνῳ μὲν οὐδὲν ἀπεκρίνατο, καίπερ θαυμάσας τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὴν τόλμαν αὐτοῦ· μακαρίσας δὲ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ἑαυτὸν ὡς ἐπ’ εὐτυχίᾳ μεγίστῃ, καὶ κατευξάμενος αἰεὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις τοιαύτας φρένας διδόναι τὸν Ἀρειμάνιον, ὅπως ἐλαύνωσι τοὺς ἀρίστους ἐξ ἑαυτῶν, θῦσαί τε τοῖς θεοῖς λέγεται καὶ πρὸς πόσιν εὐθὺς τραπέσθαι καὶ νύκτωρ ὑπὸ χαρᾶς διὰ μέσων τῶν ὕπνων ἐκβοῆσαι τρίς· ‘ἔχω Θεμιστοκλέα τὸν Ἀθηναῖον.’

[29] [1] Ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ συγκαλέσας τοὺς φίλους εἰσῆγεν αὐτόν, οὐδὲν ἐλπίζοντα χρηστὸν ἐξ ὧν ἑώρα τοὺς ἐπὶ θύραις, εὐθὺς ὡς ἐπύθοντο τοὔνομα παριόντος αὐτοῦ, [2] χαλεπῶς διακειμένους καὶ κακῶς λέγοντας. ἔτι δὲ Ῥωξάνης ὁ χιλίαρχος, ὡς κατ’ αὐτὸν ἦν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς προσιών, καθημένου βασιλέως καὶ τῶν ἄλλων σιωπώντων, ἀτρέμα στενάξας εἶπεν· ‘ὄφις Ἕλλην ὁ ποικίλος, [3] ὁ βασιλέως σε δαίμων δεῦρο ἤγαγεν.’ οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ εἰς ὄψιν ἐλθόντος αὐτοῦ καὶ πάλιν προσκυνήσαντος, ἀσπασάμενος καὶ προσειπὼν φιλοφρόνως ὁ βασιλεύς, ἤδη μὲν διακόσια τάλαντα ὀφείλειν ἔφησεν αὐτῷ· κομίσαντα γὰρ αὑτὸν ἀπολήψεσθαι δικαίως τὸ ἐπικηρυχθὲν τῷ ἀγαγόντι· πολλῷ δὲ πλείω τούτων ὑπισχνεῖτο καὶ παρεθάρρυνε καὶ λέγειν ἐδίδου περὶ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἃ βούλοιτο [4] παρρησιαζόμενον. ὁ δὲ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἀπεκρίνατο, τὸν λόγον ἐοικέναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τοῖς ποικίλοις στρώμασιν· ὡς γὰρ ἐκεῖνα καὶ τοῦτον ἐκτεινόμενον μὲν ἐπιδεικνύναι τὰ εἴδη, συστελλόμενον δὲ κρύπτειν καὶ διαφθείρειν· [5] ὅθεν αὐτῷ χρόνου δεῖν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡσθέντος τοῦ βασιλέως τῇ εἰκασίᾳ καὶ λαμβάνειν κελεύσαντος, ἐνιαυτὸν αἰτησάμενος καὶ τὴν Περσίδα γλῶτταν ἀποχρώντως ἐκμαθὼν ἐνετύγχανε βασιλεῖ δι’ αὑτοῦ, τοῖς μὲν ἐκτὸς δόξαν παρέσχε περὶ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν πραγμάτων διειλέχθαι, πολλῶν δὲ καινοτομουμένων περὶ τὴν αὐλὴν καὶ τοὺς φίλους ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ χρόνῳ, φθόνον ἔσχε παρὰ τοῖς δυνατοῖς, ὡς καὶ κατ’ ἐκείνων παρρησίᾳ [6] χρῆσθαι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀποτετολμηκώς. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἦσαν αἱ τιμαὶ ταῖς τῶν ἄλλων ἐοικυῖαι ξένων, ἀλλὰ καὶ κυνηγεσίων βασιλεῖ μετέσχε καὶ τῶν οἴκοι διατριβῶν, ὥστε καὶ μητρὶ τῇ βασιλέως ἐς ὄψιν ἐλθεῖν καὶ γενέσθαι συνήθης, διακοῦσαι δὲ καὶ τῶν μαγικῶν λόγων τοῦ βασιλέως [7] κελεύσαντος. ἐπεὶ δὲ Δημάρατος ὁ Σπαρτιάτης αἰτήσασθαι δωρεὰν κελευσθεὶς ᾐτήσατο τὴν κίταριν ὥσπερ οἱ βασιλεῖς ἐπαράμενος εἰσελάσαι διὰ Σάρδεων, Μιθροπαύστης μὲν ἀνεψιὸς ὢν βασιλέως εἶπε τοῦ Δημαράτου τῆς τιάρας ἁψάμενος· ‘αὕτη μὲν ἡ κίταρις οὐκ ἔχει ἐγκέφαλον ὃν ἐπικαλύψει· σὺ δ’ οὐκ ἔσῃ Ζεὺς ἐὰν λάβῃς κεραυνόν·’ [8] ἀπωσαμένου δὲ τὸν Δημάρατον ὀργῇ διὰ τὸ αἴτημα τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ δοκοῦντος ἀπαραιτήτως ἔχειν πρὸς αὐτόν, ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς δεηθεὶς ἔπεισε καὶ διήλλαξε.

[9] λέγεται δὲ καὶ τοὺς ὕστερον βασιλεῖς, ἐφ’ ὧν μᾶλλον αἱ Περσικαὶ πράξεις ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς ἀνεκράθησαν, ὁσάκις δεηθεῖεν ἀνδρὸς Ἕλληνος, ἐπαγγέλλεσθαι καὶ γράφειν ‹πρὸς› ἕκαστον, ὡς μείζων ἔσοιτο παρ’ αὐτῷ Θεμιστοκλέους.

[10] αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα φασὶν ἤδη μέγαν ὄντα καὶ θεραπευόμενον ὑπὸ πολλῶν, λαμπρᾶς ποτε τραπέζης αὐτῷ παρατεθείσης, πρὸς τοὺς παῖδας εἰπεῖν· [11] ‘ὦ παῖδες, ἀπωλόμεθα ἄν, εἰ μὴ ἀπωλόμεθα.’ πόλεις δ’ αὐτῷ τρεῖς μὲν οἱ πλεῖστοι δοθῆναι λέγουσιν εἰς ἄρτον καὶ οἶνον καὶ ὄψον, Μαγνησίαν καὶ Λάμψακον καὶ Μυοῦντα· δύο δ’ ἄλλας προστίθησιν ὁ Κυζικηνὸς Νεάνθης (FGrH 84 F 17 a) καὶ Φανίας (FHG II 296), Περκώτην καὶ Παλαίσκηψιν εἰς στρωμνὴν καὶ ἀμπεχόνην.

[30] [1] Καταβαίνοντι δ’ αὐτῷ πρὸς τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς πράξεις ἐπὶ θάλατταν Πέρσης ἀνὴρ Ἐπιξύης ὄνομα, σατραπεύων τῆς ἄνω Φρυγίας, ἐπεβούλευσε, παρεσκευακὼς ἔκπαλαι Πισίδας τινὰς ἀποκτενοῦντας, ὅταν ἐν τῇ καλουμένῃ [2] κώμῃ Λεοντοκεφάλῳ γενόμενος καταυλισθῇ. τῷ δὲ λέγεται καθεύδοντι μεσημβρίας τὴν Μητέρα τῶν θεῶν ὄναρ φανεῖσαν εἰπεῖν· ‘ὦ Θεμιστόκλεις, ὑστέρει κεφαλῆς λεόντων, ἵνα μὴ λέοντι περιπέσῃς. ἐγὼ δ’ ἀντὶ τούτου [3] σε αἰτῶ θεράπαιναν Μνησιπτολέμαν.’ διαταραχθεὶς οὖν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς προσευξάμενος τῇ θεῷ τὴν μὲν λεωφόρον ἀφῆκεν, ἑτέρᾳ δὲ περιελθὼν καὶ παραλλάξας τὸν [4] τόπον ἐκεῖνον ἤδη νυκτὸς οὔσης κατηυλίσατο. τῶν δὲ τὴν σκηνὴν κομιζόντων ὑποζυγίων ἑνὸς εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν ἐμπεσόντος, οἱ τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους οἰκέται τὰς αὐλαίας [5] διαβρόχους γενομένας ἐκπετάσαντες ἀνέψυχον· οἱ δὲ Πισίδαι τὰ ξίφη λαβόντες ἐν τούτῳ προσεφέροντο, καὶ τὰ ψυχόμενα πρὸς τὴν σελήνην οὐκ ἀκριβῶς ἰδόντες ᾠήθησαν εἶναι τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους κἀκεῖνον ἔνδον [6] εὑρήσειν ἀναπαυόμενον. ὡς δ’ ἐγγὺς γενόμενοι τὴν αὐλαίαν ἀνέστελλον, ἐπιπίπτουσιν αὐτοῖς οἱ παραφυλάττοντες καὶ συλλαμβάνουσι. διαφυγὼν δὲ τὸν κίνδυνον οὕτω καὶ θαυμάσας τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς θεοῦ, ναόν τε κατεσκεύασεν ἐν Μαγνησίᾳ Δινδυμήνης καὶ τὴν θυγατέρα Μνησιπτολέμαν ἱέρειαν ἀπέδειξεν.

[31] [1] Ὡς δ’ ἦλθεν εἰς Σάρδεις καὶ σχολὴν ἄγων ἐθεᾶτο τῶν ἱερῶν τὴν κατασκευὴν καὶ τῶν ἀναθημάτων τὸ πλῆθος, εἶδε καὶ ἐν Μητρὸς ἱερῷ τὴν καλουμένην ὑδροφόρον κόρην χαλκῆν, μέγεθος δίπηχυν, ἣν αὐτὸς ὅτε τῶν Ἀθήνησιν ὑδάτων ἐπιστάτης ἦν, ἑλὼν τοὺς ὑφαιρουμένους τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ παροχετεύοντας, ἀνέθηκεν ἐκ τῆς ζημίας ποιησάμενος· εἴτε δὴ παθών τι πρὸς τὴν αἰχμαλωσίαν τοῦ ἀναθήματος, εἴτε βουλόμενος ἐνδείξασθαι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ὅσην ἔχει τιμὴν καὶ δύναμιν ἐν τοῖς βασιλέως πράγμασι, λόγον τῷ Λυδίας σατράπῃ προσήνεγκεν, αἰτούμενος ἀποστεῖλαι τὴν κόρην εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας.

[2] χαλεπαίνοντος δὲ τοῦ βαρβάρου καὶ βασιλεῖ γράψειν φήσαντος ἐπιστολήν, φοβηθεὶς ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς εἰς τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν κατέφυγε, καὶ τὰς παλλακίδας αὐτοῦ θεραπεύσας χρήμασιν, ἐκεῖνόν τε κατεπράυνε τῆς ὀργῆς, καὶ πρὸς τἆλλα παρεῖχεν αὑτὸν εὐλαβέστερον, ἤδη καὶ [3] τὸν φθόνον τῶν βαρβάρων δεδοικώς. οὐ γὰρ πλανώμενος περὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν ὥς φησι Θεόπομπος (FGrH 115 F 87), ἀλλ’ ἐν Μαγνησίᾳ μὲν οἰκῶν, καρπούμενος δὲ δωρεὰς μεγάλας καὶ τιμώμενος ὅμοια Περσῶν τοῖς ἀρίστοις, ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἀδεῶς διῆγεν, οὐ πάνυ τι τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς πράγμασι βασιλέως προσέχοντος ὑπ’ ἀσχολιῶν περὶ τὰς ἄνω πράξεις.

[4] Ὡς δ’ Αἴγυπτός τ’ ἀφισταμένη βοηθούντων Ἀθηναίων καὶ τριήρεις Ἑλληνικαὶ μέχρι Κύπρου καὶ Κιλικίας ἀναπλέουσαι καὶ Κίμων θαλασσοκρατῶν ἐπέστρεψεν αὐτὸν ἀντεπιχειρεῖν τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ κολούειν αὐξανομένους ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ἤδη δὲ καὶ δυνάμεις ἐκινοῦντο καὶ στρατηγοὶ διεπέμποντο, καὶ κατέβαινον εἰς Μαγνησίαν ἀγγελίαι πρὸς τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα, τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἐξάπτεσθαι κελεύοντος βασιλέως καὶ βεβαιοῦν τὰς ὑποσχέσεις, [5] οὔτε δι’ ὀργήν τινα παροξυνθεὶς κατὰ τῶν πολιτῶν, οὔτ’ ἐπαρθεὶς τιμῇ τοσαύτῃ καὶ δυνάμει πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ἀλλ’ ἴσως μὲν οὐδ’ ἐφικτὸν ἡγούμενος τὸ ἔργον, ἄλλους τε μεγάλους τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐχούσης στρατηγοὺς τότε καὶ Κίμωνος ὑπερφυῶς εὐημεροῦντος ἐν τοῖς πολεμικοῖς, τὸ δὲ πλεῖστον αἰδοῖ τῆς τε δόξης τῶν πράξεων τῶν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν τροπαίων ἐκείνων, ἄριστα βουλευσάμενος ἐπιθεῖναι τῷ βίῳ τὴν τελευτὴν πρέπουσαν, ἔθυσε τοῖς θεοῖς, καὶ τοὺς φίλους συναγαγὼν καὶ δεξιωσάμενος, [6] ὡς μὲν ὁ πολὺς λόγος αἷμα ταύρειον πιών, ὡς δ’ ἔνιοι φάρμακον ἐφήμερον προσενεγκάμενος, ἐν Μαγνησίᾳ κατέστρεψε, πέντε πρὸς τοῖς ἑξήκοντα βεβιωκὼς ἔτη, καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τούτων ἐν πολιτείαις καὶ ἡγεμονίαις.

[7] τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν τοῦ θανάτου καὶ τὸν τρόπον πυθόμενον βασιλέα λέγουσιν ἔτι μᾶλλον θαυμάσαι τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ τοῖς φίλοις αὐτοῦ καὶ οἰκείοις διατελεῖν χρώμενον φιλανθρώπως.

[32] [1] Ἀπέλιπε δὲ Θεμιστοκλῆς παῖδας ἐκ μὲν Ἀρχίππης τῆς Λυσάνδρου τοῦ Ἀλωπεκῆθεν Ἀρχέπτολιν καὶ Πολύευκτον καὶ Κλεόφαντον, οὗ καὶ Πλάτων ὁ φιλόσοφος (Menon 93d) ὡς ἱππέως ἀρίστου, τἆλλα δ’ οὐδενὸς [2] ἀξίου γενομένου, μνημονεύει. τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων Νεοκλῆς μὲν ἔτι παῖς ὢν ὑφ’ ἵππου δηχθεὶς ἀπέθανε, Διοκλέα δὲ Λύσανδρος ὁ πάππος υἱὸν ἐποιήσατο. θυγατέρας δὲ πλείους ἔσχεν, ὧν Μνησιπτολέμαν μὲν ἐκ τῆς ἐπιγαμηθείσης γενομένην Ἀρχέπτολις ὁ ἀδελφὸς οὐκ ὢν ὁμομήτριος ἔγημεν, Ἰταλίαν δὲ Πανθοίδης ὁ Χῖος, Σύβαριν [3] δὲ Νικόδημος ὁ Ἀθηναῖος. Νικομάχην δὲ Φρασικλῆς ὁ ἀδελφιδοῦς Θεμιστοκλέους, ἤδη τετελευτηκότος ἐκείνου, πλεύσας εἰς Μαγνησίαν ἔλαβε παρὰ τῶν ἀδελφῶν, νεωτάτην δὲ πάντων τῶν τέκνων Ἀσίαν ἔθρεψε.

[4] Καὶ τάφον μὲν αὐτοῦ λαμπρὸν ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ Μάγνητες ἔχουσι· περὶ δὲ τῶν λειψάνων οὔτ’ Ἀνδοκίδῃ προσέχειν ἄξιον, ἐν τῷ Πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους (fr. 4 Or. Att. Did. II p. 248) λέγοντι φωράσαντας τὰ λείψανα διαρρῖψαι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους - ψεύδεται γὰρ ἐπὶ τὸν δῆμον παροξύνων τοὺς ὀλιγαρχικούς - , ἅ τε Φύλαρχος (FGrH 81 F 76), ὥσπερ ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ τῇ ἱστορίᾳ μονονοὺ μηχανὴν ἄρας καὶ προαγαγὼν Νεοκλέα τινὰ καὶ Δημόπολιν, υἱεῖς Θεμιστοκλέους, ἀγῶνα βούλεται κινεῖν καὶ πάθος, [ὃ] οὐδ’ [5] ἂν ὁ τυχὼν ἀγνοήσειεν ὅτι πέπλασται. Διόδωρος δ’ ὁ περιηγητὴς ἐν τοῖς Περὶ μνημάτων (FGrH 372 F 35) εἴρηκεν ὡς ὑπονοῶν μᾶλλον ἢ γιγνώσκων, ὅτι περὶ τὸν μέγαν λιμένα τοῦ Πειραιῶς ἀπὸ τοῦ κατὰ τὸν Ἄλκιμον ἀκρωτηρίου πρόκειταί τις οἷον ἀγκών, καὶ κάμψαντι τοῦτον ἐντός, ᾗ τὸ ὑπεύδιον τῆς θαλάττης, κρηπίς ἐστιν εὐμεγέθης καὶ τὸ ἐπ’ αὐτῇ βωμοειδὲς τάφος τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους.

[6] οἴεται δὲ καὶ Πλάτωνα τὸν κωμικὸν (fr. 183 CAF I 651) αὐτῷ μαρτυρεῖν ἐν τούτοις·

ὁ σὸς δὲ τύμβος ἐν καλῷ κεχωσμένος

τοῖς ἐμπόροις πρόσρησις ἔσται πανταχοῦ,

τούς τ’ ἐκπλέοντας εἰσπλέοντάς τ’ ὄψεται,

χὠπόταν ἅμιλλ’ ᾖ τῶν νεῶν θεάσεται.

τοῖς δ’ ἀπὸ γένους τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους καὶ τιμαί τινες ἐν Μαγνησίᾳ φυλαττόμεναι μέχρι τῶν ἡμετέρων χρόνων ἦσαν, ἃς ἐκαρποῦτο Θεμιστοκλῆς Ἀθηναῖος, ἡμέτερος συνήθης καὶ φίλος παρ’ Ἀμμωνίῳ τῷ φιλοσόφῳ γενόμενος.

Camillus

[1] [1] Περὶ δὲ Φουρίου Καμίλλου πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων λεγομένων ἴδιον εἶναι δοκεῖ μάλιστα καὶ παράδοξον, ὅτι πλεῖστα μὲν ἐν ἡγεμονίαις καὶ μέγιστα κατορθώσας, δικτάτωρ δὲ πεντάκις αἱρεθείς, θριαμβεύσας δὲ τετράκις, κτίστης δὲ τῆς Ῥώμης ἀναγραφεὶς δεύτερος, οὐδ’ ἅπαξ [2] ὑπάτευσε. τούτου δ’ αἴτιον ἡ τῆς τότε πολιτείας κατάστασις, ἐκ διαφορᾶς τοῦ δήμου πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ὑπάτους μὲν ἐρίσαντος μὴ ἀποδείκνυσθαι, χιλιάρχους δὲ χειροτονοῦντος ἐπὶ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, ὧν καίπερ ἀπ’ ἐξουσίας καὶ δυνάμεως ὑπατικῆς ἅπαντα πραττόντων ἧττον [3] ἦν ἐπαχθὴς ἡ ἀρχὴ διὰ τὸ πλῆθος. τὸ γὰρ ἓξ ἄνδρας, ἀλλὰ μὴ δύο, τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐφεστάναι, παρεμυθεῖτο [4] τοὺς βαρυνομένους τὴν ὀλιγαρχίαν. κατὰ τοῦτο δὴ καιροῦ μάλιστα τῇ δόξῃ καὶ τοῖς πράγμασιν ἀκμάσας ὁ Κάμιλλος, ὕπατος μὲν οὐκ ἠξίωσεν ἄκοντι τῷ δήμῳ γενέσθαι, καίπερ ἐν τῷ διὰ μέσου δεξαμένης ὑπατικὰς ἀρχαιρεσίας τῆς πολιτείας πολλάκις, ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἄλλαις ἡγεμονίαις πολλαῖς καὶ παντοδαπαῖς γενομέναις τοιοῦτον αὑτὸν παρέσχεν, ὥστε τὴν μὲν ἐξουσίαν καὶ μοναρχοῦντος εἶναι κοινήν, τὴν δὲ δόξαν ἰδίαν καὶ μεθ’ ἑτέρων στρατηγοῦντος· ὧν τοῦ μὲν ἡ μετριότης αἴτιον ἀνεπιφθόνως ἄρχοντος, τοῦ δ’ ἡ φρόνησις, δι’ ἣν ὁμολογουμένως ἐπρώτευεν.

[2] [1] Οὔπω δὲ τότε περὶ τὸν Φουρίων οἶκον οὔσης μεγάλης ἐπιφανείας, αὐτὸς ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ πρῶτος εἰς δόξαν προῆλθεν, ἐν τῇ μεγάλῃ μάχῃ πρὸς Αἰκανοὺς καὶ Οὐολούσκους ὑπὸ δικτάτορι Ποστουμίῳ Τουβέρτῳ στρατευόμενος.

[2] προϊππεύων γὰρ τοῦ στρατοῦ καὶ πληγῇ περιπεσὼν εἰς τὸν μηρόν, οὐκ ἀνῆκεν, ἀλλ’ ἐγκείμενον τῷ τραύματι παρέλκων τὸ ἀκόντισμα καὶ συμπλεκόμενος [3] τοῖς ἀρίστοις τῶν πολεμίων τροπὴν ἐποίησεν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου τῶν τ’ ἄλλων γερῶν ἔτυχε καὶ τιμητὴς ἀπεδείχθη, μέγα τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀξίωμα ταύτης ἐπὶ τῶν τότε χρόνων [4] ἐχούσης. μνημονεύεται δὲ τιμητοῦ ὄντος αὐτοῦ καλὸν μὲν ἔργον τὸ τοὺς ἀγάμους λόγοις τε πείθοντα καὶ ζημίαις ἀπειλοῦντα συγκαταζεῦξαι ταῖς χηρευούσαις γυναιξί - πολλαὶ δ’ ἦσαν αὗται διὰ τοὺς πολέμους - , ἀναγκαῖον δὲ τὸ καὶ τοὺς ὀρφανοὺς ὑποτελεῖς ποιῆσαι, [5] πρότερον ἀνεισφόρους ὄντας. αἴτιαι δ’ ἦσαν αἱ συνεχεῖς στρατεῖαι, μεγάλων ἀναλωμάτων δεόμεναι, καὶ μάλιστα κατήπειγεν ἡ Βηίων πολιορκία. τούτους ἔνιοι Οὐηιεντανοὺς καλοῦσιν.

[6] Ἦν δὲ πρόσχημα τῆς Τυρρηνίας ἡ πόλις, ὅπλων μὲν ἀριθμῷ καὶ πλήθει τῶν στρατευομένων οὐκ ἀποδέουσα τῆς Ῥώμης, πλούτῳ δὲ καὶ βίων ἁβρότητι καὶ τρυφαῖς καὶ πολυτελείαις ἀγαλλομένη, πολλοὺς καὶ καλοὺς ἀγῶνας ἠγωνίσατο, περὶ δόξης καὶ δυναστείας πολεμοῦσα [7] Ῥωμαίοις. ἐν δὲ τῷ τότε χρόνῳ τῆς μὲν φιλοτιμίας ἀφειστήκει, συντριβεῖσα μεγάλαις μάχαις, ἐπαράμενοι δὲ τείχη μεγάλα καὶ καρτερά, καὶ τὴν πόλιν ὅπλων καὶ βελῶν καὶ σίτου καὶ παρασκευῆς ἁπάσης ἐμπλήσαντες, ἀδεῶς ὑπέμενον τὴν πολιορκίαν, μακρὰν μὲν οὖσαν, οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τοῖς πολιορκοῦσιν ἐργώδη καὶ χαλεπὴν γενομένην.

[8] εἰθισμένοι γὰρ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἅμ’ ὥρᾳ θέρους ἔξω στρατεύειν, οἴκοι δὲ διαχειμάζειν, τότε πρῶτον ἠναγκάσθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν χιλιάρχων φρούρια κατασκευασάμενοι καὶ στρατόπεδον τειχίσαντες ἐν τῇ πολεμίᾳ χειμῶνα καὶ θέρος συνάπτειν, ἤδη σχεδὸν ἔτους ἑβδόμου τῷ πολέμῳ [9] τελευτῶντος, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἐν αἰτίᾳ γενέσθαι καὶ μαλακῶς πολιορκεῖν δοκοῦντας ἀφαιρεθῆναι τὴν ἀρχήν, ἑτέρων αἱρεθέντων ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον· ὧν [10] ἦν καὶ Κάμιλλος, τότε χιλιαρχῶν τὸ δεύτερον. ἔπραξε δὲ περὶ τὴν πολιορκίαν οὐδὲν ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ χρόνῳ, λαχὼν Φαλερίοις καὶ Καπηνάταις πολεμεῖν, οἳ δι’ ἀσχολίαν τότε πολλὰ τὴν χώραν καθυβρίσαντες καὶ παρὰ πάντα τὸν Τυρρηνικὸν πόλεμον ἐνοχλήσαντες, ἐπιέσθησαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Καμίλλου καὶ συνεστάλησαν ἐς τὰ τείχη, πολλοὺς ἀποβαλόντες.

[3] [1] Ἐκ τούτου τὸ περὶ τὴν Ἀλβανίδα λίμνην πάθος ἀκμάζοντι τῷ πολέμῳ συνενεχθέν, οὐδενὸς ἧττον τῶν ἀπίστων πυθέσθαι θαυμάτων αἰτίας κοινῆς ἀπορίᾳ καὶ [2] λόγου φυσικὴν ἔχοντος ἀρχὴν ἐφόβησεν. ἦν μὲν γὰρ ὥρα μετοπωρινή, καὶ τὸ θέρος ἔληγεν, οὔτ’ ἔπομβρον οὔτε πνεύμασι νοτίοις χαλεπὸν ἐπιδήλως γενόμενον· πολλὰς δὲ λίμνας καὶ ποταμοὺς καὶ νάματα παντοδαπὰ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐχούσης, τὰ μὲν ἐξέλιπε κομιδῇ, τὰ δ’ ἀντέσχε γλίσχρως καὶ μόλις, οἱ δὲ ποταμοὶ πάντες ὥσπερ αἰεὶ [3] κοῖλοι καὶ ταπεινοὶ διὰ θέρους ἐρρύησαν. τὸ δὲ τῆς Ἀλβανίδος λίμνης ‹ὕδωρ›, ἀρχὴν ἔχον ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ τελευτήν, ὄρεσιν εὐγείοις περιεχόμενον, ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς αἰτίου (πλὴν εἴ τι θεῖον) αὐξόμενον ἐπιδήλως διωγκοῦτο καὶ προσίστατο ταῖς ὑπωρείαις καὶ τῶν ἀνωτάτω λόφων ἔψαυεν ὁμαλῶς, ἄνευ σάλου καὶ κλύδωνος ἐξιστάμενον.

[4] καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἦν ποιμένων θαῦμα καὶ βοτήρων· ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ διείργοντος ἀπὸ τῆς κάτω χώρας οἷον ἰσθμοῦ τὴν λίμνην ὑπεκραγέντος ὑπὸ πλήθους καὶ βάρους, μέγα ῥεῦμα κατέβαινε διὰ τῶν ἀρουμένων καὶ φυτευομένων ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν, οὐ μόνον αὐτοῖς παρεῖχε Ῥωμαίοις ἔκπληξιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πᾶσιν ἐδόκει τοῖς τὴν Ἰταλίαν κατοικοῦσι [5] μηδενὸς μικροῦ σημεῖον εἶναι. πλεῖστος δ’ αὐτοῦ λόγος ἦν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τῷ πολιορκοῦντι τοὺς Βηίους, ὥστε κἀκείνοις ἔκπυστον γενέσθαι τὸ περὶ τὴν λίμνην πάθος.

[4] [1] Οἷα δ’ ἐν πολιορκίᾳ διὰ χρόνου μῆκος ἐπιμειξίας τε πολλὰς ἐχούσῃ καὶ κοινολογίας πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, ἐγεγόνει τινὶ Ῥωμαίῳ συνήθεια καὶ παρρησία πρὸς ἕνα τῶν πολεμίων, ἄνθρωπον ἔμπειρόν τε λογίων παλαιῶν καί τι καὶ πλέον εἰδέναι τῶν ἄλλων ἀπὸ μαντικῆς δοκοῦντα.

[2] τοῦτον οὖν ὁ Ῥωμαῖος, ὡς ἤκουσε τὴν ἐπίδοσιν τῆς λίμνης, ὁρῶν ὑπερηδόμενόν τε καὶ καταγελῶντα τῆς πολιορκίας, οὐ ταῦτ’ ἔφη μόνον ἐνηνοχέναι θαυμαστὰ τὸν παρόντα χρόνον, ἀλλ’ ἕτερα τούτων ἀτοπώτερα σημεῖα Ῥωμαίοις γεγονέναι, περὶ ὧν ἐθέλειν ἐκείνῳ κοινωσάμενος εἴ τι δύναιτο θέσθαι τῶν ἰδίων ἄμεινον ἐν τοῖς [3] κοινοῖς νοσοῦσιν. ὑπακούσαντος δὲ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου προθύμως καὶ διδόντος ἑαυτὸν εἰς κοινολογίαν ὡς ἀπορρήτων τινῶν ἀκροατὴν ἐσόμενον, κατὰ μικρὸν οὕτω διαλεγόμενος καὶ ὑπάγων αὐτόν, ὡς πορρωτέρω τῶν πυλῶν ἐγεγόνεισαν, αἴρεταί τε μετέωρον εὐρωστότερος ὤν, καὶ πλειόνων ἀπὸ στρατοπέδου προσδραμόντων χειρωσάμενος [4] καὶ κρατήσας παρέδωκε τοῖς στρατηγοῖς. ἐν τούτῳ δ’ ἀνάγκης γεγονὼς ὁ ἄνθρωπος, καὶ μαθὼν ἄρα τὸ πεπρωμένον ὡς ἄφυκτον εἴη, λόγια προὔφαινεν ἀπόρρητα περὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ πατρίδος, ὡς οὐκ οὔσης ἁλωσίμου πρότερον, ἢ τὴν Ἀλβανίδα λίμνην ἐκχυθεῖσαν καὶ φερομένην ὁδοὺς ἑτέρας ὤσαντες ὀπίσω καὶ περισπάσαντες [5] οἱ πολέμιοι κωλύσωσι μείγνυσθαι τῇ θαλάττῃ. ταῦτα τῇ συγκλήτῳ πυθομένῃ καὶ διαπορούσῃ καλῶς ἔχειν ἔδοξε [6] πέμψαντας εἰς Δελφοὺς ἐρέσθαι τὸν θεόν. οἱ δὲ πεμφθέντες ἄνδρες ἔνδοξοι καὶ μεγάλοι, Κόσσος Λικίνιος καὶ Οὐαλέριος Ποτῖτος καὶ Φάβιος Ἄμβουστος, πλῷ τε χρησάμενοι καὶ τῶν παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τυχόντες, ἧκον ἄλλας τε μαντείας κομίζοντες, αἳ πατρίων τινῶν περὶ τὰς καλουμένας Λατίνας ἑορτὰς ὀλιγωρίαν ἔφραζον αὐτοῖς, καὶ τὸ τῆς Ἀλβανίδος ὕδωρ ἐκέλευον εἴργοντας ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστι τῆς θαλάττης ἀνωθεῖν εἰς τὸν ἀρχαῖον πόρον, ἢ τοῦτο μὴ δυναμένους ὀρύγμασι καὶ τάφροις παράγειν εἰς [7] τὸ πεδίον καὶ καταναλίσκειν. ἀπαγγελθέντων δὲ τούτων, οἱ μὲν ἱερεῖς τὰ περὶ τὰς θυσίας ἔπραττον, ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἐχώρει πρὸς τὰ ἔργα καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ ἐξέτρεπεν.

[5] [1] Ἡ δὲ σύγκλητος εἰς τὸ δέκατον ἔτος τοῦ πολέμου καταλύσασα τὰς ἄλλας ἀρχὰς δικτάτορα Κάμιλλον ἀπέδειξεν· ἵππαρχον δ’ ἐκεῖνος αὑτῷ προσελόμενος Κορνήλιον Σκιπίωνα, πρῶτον μὲν εὐχὰς ἐποιήσατο τοῖς θεοῖς ἐπὶ τῷ πολέμῳ τέλος εὐτυχὲς λαβόντι τὰς μεγάλας θέας ἄξειν καὶ νεὼν θεᾶς, ἣν Μητέρα Ματοῦταν καλοῦσι Ῥωμαῖοι, [2] καθιερώσειν. ταύτην ἄν τις ἀπὸ τῶν δρωμένων ἱερῶν μάλιστα Λευκοθέαν νομίσειεν εἶναι. καὶ γὰρ θεράπαιναν εἰς τὸν σηκὸν εἰσάγουσαι ῥαπίζουσιν, εἶτ’ ἐξελαύνουσι καὶ τὰ τῶν ἀδελφῶν τέκνα πρὸ τῶν ἰδίων ἐναγκαλίζονται, καὶ δρῶσι περὶ τὴν θυσίαν ἃ ταῖς Διονύσου τροφαῖς καὶ τοῖς διὰ τὴν παλλακὴν πάθεσι τῆς Ἰνοῦς προσέοικε.

[3] Μετὰ δὲ τὰς εὐχὰς ὁ Κάμιλλος εἰς τὴν Φαλίσκων ἐνέβαλε, καὶ μάχῃ μεγάλῃ τούτους τε καὶ Καπηνάτας [4] προσβοηθήσαντας αὐτοῖς ἐνίκησεν. ἔπειτα πρὸς τὴν πολιορκίαν τραπόμενος τῶν Βηίων, καὶ τὸν ἐκ προσβολῆς ἀγῶνα χαλεπὸν καὶ δύσεργον ὁρῶν, ὑπονόμους ἔτεμνε, τῶν περὶ τὴν πόλιν χωρίων ἐνδιδόντων τοῖς ὀρύγμασι καὶ ταχὺ δεχομένων εἰς βάθος ἄγειν ἄδηλον τοῖς πολεμίοις [5] τὰ ἔργα. διὸ καὶ προϊούσης ὁδῷ τῆς ἐλπίδος, αὐτὸς μὲν ἔξωθεν προσέβαλλεν ἐκκαλούμενος ἐπὶ τὰ τείχη τοὺς πολεμίους. ἄλλοι δ’ ἀδήλως ὑποπορευόμενοι διὰ τῶν ὑπονόμων ἔλαθον ἐντὸς γενόμενοι τῆς ἄκρας κατὰ τὸ τῆς Ἥρας ἱερόν, ὃ μέγιστον ἦν ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ μάλιστα [6] τιμώμενον. ἐνταῦθα λέγεται τυχεῖν κατ’ ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ τὸν ἡγεμόνα τῶν Τυρρηνῶν ἐφ’ ἱεροῖς, τὸν δὲ μάντιν εἰς τὰ σπλάγχνα κατιδόντα καὶ μέγα φθεγξάμενον εἰπεῖν ὅτι νίκην δίδωσιν ὁ θεὸς τῷ κατακολουθήσαντι τοῖς ἱεροῖς ἐκείνοις· ταύτης δὲ τῆς φωνῆς τοὺς ἐν τοῖς ὑπονόμοις Ῥωμαίους ἐπακούσαντας ταχὺ διασπάσαι τὸ ἔδαφος, καὶ μετὰ βοῆς καὶ ψόφου τῶν ὅπλων ἀναδύντας, ἐκπλαγέντων τῶν πολεμίων καὶ φυγόντων, ἁρπάσαντας τὰ σπλάγχνα κομίσαι πρὸς τὸν Κάμιλλον. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἴσως ἐοικέναι δόξει μυθεύμασιν.

[7] Ἁλούσης δὲ τῆς πόλεως κατὰ κράτος καὶ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἀγόντων καὶ φερόντων ἄπειρόν τινα πλοῦτον, ἐφορῶν ὁ Κάμιλλος ἀπὸ τῆς ἄκρας τὰ πραττόμενα, πρῶτον μὲν ἑστὼς ἐδάκρυσεν, εἶτα μακαρισθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν παρόντων ἀνέσχε τὰς χεῖρας τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ προσευχόμενος εἶπε· ‘Ζεῦ μέγιστε καὶ θεοὶ χρηστῶν ἐπίσκοποι καὶ πονηρῶν ἔργων, αὐτοί που σύνιστε Ῥωμαίοις ὡς οὐ παρὰ δίκην, ἀλλὰ κατ’ ἀνάγκην ἀμυνόμενοι μετερχόμεθα δυσμενῶν [8] ἀνδρῶν καὶ παρανόμων πόλιν. εἰ δ’ ἄρα τις’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ἡμῖν ἀντίστροφος ὀφείλεται τῆς παρούσης νέμεσις εὐπραξίας, εὔχομαι ταύτην ὑπέρ τε πόλεως καὶ στρατοῦ Ῥωμαίων εἰς ἐμαυτὸν ἐλαχίστῳ κακῷ τελευτῆσαι.’ [9] ταῦτ’ εἰπών, καθάπερ ἐστὶ Ῥωμαίοις ἔθος ἐπευξαμένοις καὶ προσκυνήσασιν ἐπὶ δεξιὰ ἐξελίττειν, ἐσφάλη περιστρεφόμενος. διαταραχθέντων δὲ τῶν παρόντων, πάλιν ἀναλαβὼν ἑαυτὸν ἐκ τοῦ πτώματος εἶπεν ὡς γέγονεν αὐτῷ κατ’ εὐχὴν σφάλμα μικρὸν ἐπ’ εὐτυχίᾳ μεγίστῃ.

[6] [1] Διαπορθήσας δὲ τὴν πόλιν, ἔγνω τὸ ἄγαλμα τῆς Ἥρας μεταφέρειν εἰς Ῥώμην ὥσπερ εὔξατο. καὶ συνελθόντων ἐπὶ τοῦτο τῶν τεχνιτῶν, ὁ μὲν ἔθυε καὶ προσηύχετο τῇ θεῷ δέχεσθαι τὴν προθυμίαν αὐτῶν καὶ εὐμενῆ γίνεσθαι σύνοικον τοῖς λαχοῦσι τὴν Ῥώμην θεοῖς, τὸ δ’ ἄγαλμά φασιν ὑποφθεγξάμενον εἰπεῖν ὅτι καὶ βούλεται [2] καὶ συγκαταινεῖ. Λίουιος (5, 22) δέ φησιν εὔχεσθαι μὲν τὸν Κάμιλλον ἁπτόμενον τῆς θεοῦ καὶ παρακαλεῖν, ἀποκρίνασθαι δέ τινας τῶν παρόντων ὅτι καὶ [3] βούλεται καὶ συνακολουθεῖ προθύμως. οἱ δ’ ἰσχυριζόμενοι καὶ τῷ παραδόξῳ βοηθοῦντες μεγίστην μὲν ἔχουσι συνήγορον τὴν τύχην τῆς πόλεως, ἣν ἀπὸ μικρᾶς καὶ καταφρονουμένης ἀρχῆς ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως προελθεῖν δίχα θεοῦ πολλαῖς καὶ μεγάλαις ἐπιφανείαις [4] ἑκάστοτε συμπαρόντος ἀμήχανον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ συνάγουσιν ὁμοειδῆ τινα, τοῦτο μὲν ἱδρῶτας ἀγαλμάτων πολλάκις ἐκχυθέντας, τοῦτο δὲ στεναγμοὺς ἀκουσθέντας ἀποστροφάς τε δεικνύντες καὶ καταμύσεις ξοάνων, [5] ἃς ἱστορήκασιν οὐκ ὀλίγοι τῶν πρότερον. πολλὰ δὲ καὶ τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἀκηκοότες ἀνθρώπων λέγειν ἔχομεν [6] ἄξια θαύματος, ὧν οὐκ ἄν τις εἰκῇ καταφρονήσειεν. ἀλλὰ τοῖς τοιούτοις καὶ τὸ πιστεύειν σφόδρα καὶ τὸ λίαν ἀπιστεῖν ἐπισφαλές ἐστι διὰ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην ἀσθένειαν, ὅρον οὐκ ἔχουσαν οὐδὲ κρατοῦσαν αὑτῆς, ἀλλ’ ἐκφερομένην ὅπου μὲν εἰς δεισιδαιμονίαν καὶ τῦφον, ὅπου δ’ εἰς ὀλιγωρίαν τῶν θείων καὶ περιφρόνησιν· ἡ δ’ εὐλάβεια καὶ τὸ μηδὲν ἄγαν ἄριστον.

[7] [1] Ὁ δὲ Κάμιλλος, εἴτε μεγέθει τοῦ ἔργου, πόλιν ἀντίπαλον τῆς Ῥώμης ἔτει δεκάτῳ τῆς πολιορκίας καθῃρηκώς, εἴθ’ ὑπὸ τῶν εὐδαιμονιζόντων αὐτὸν εἰς ὄγκον ἐξαρθεὶς καὶ φρόνημα νομίμου καὶ πολιτικῆς ἀρχῆς ἐπαχθέστερον, τά τ’ ἄλλα σοβαρῶς ἐθριάμβευσε, καὶ τέθριππον ὑποζευξάμενος λευκόπωλον ἐπέβη καὶ διεξήλασε τῆς Ῥώμης, οὐδενὸς τοῦτο ποιήσαντος ἡγεμόνος πρότερον [2] οὐδ’ ὕστερον. ἱερὸν γὰρ ἡγοῦνται τὸ τοιοῦτον ὄχημα, τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ πατρὶ τῶν θεῶν ἐπιπεφημισμένον. ἔκ τε δὴ τούτου διεβλήθη πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας οὐκ εἰθισμένους ἐντρυφᾶσθαι, καὶ δευτέραν ἔλαβεν αἰτίαν ἐνιστάμενος νόμῳ [3] διοικίζοντι τὴν πόλιν. εἰσηγοῦντο γὰρ οἱ δήμαρχοι τόν τε δῆμον καὶ τὴν σύγκλητον εἰς μέρη δύο νεμηθῆναι, καὶ τοὺς μὲν αὐτόθι κατοικεῖν, τοὺς δὲ κλήρῳ λαχόντας εἰς τὴν αἰχμάλωτον μεταστῆναι πόλιν, ὡς εὐπορωτέρων ἐσομένων καὶ δυσὶ μεγάλοις καὶ καλοῖς ἄστεσι τήν τε χώραν ὁμοῦ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην εὐδαιμονίαν φυλαξόντων.

[4] ὁ μὲν οὖν δῆμος, ἤδη πολὺς γεγονὼς καὶ ἀχρήματος, ἄσμενος ἐδέξατο, καὶ συνεχὴς ἦν τοῖς περὶ τὸ βῆμα θορύβοις αἰτῶν τὴν ψῆφον· ἡ δὲ βουλὴ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων οἱ κράτιστοι πολιτῶν, οὐ διαίρεσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀναίρεσιν ἡγούμενοι τῆς Ῥώμης πολιτεύεσθαι τοὺς δημάρχους καὶ δυσανασχετοῦντες, [5] ἐπὶ τὸν Κάμιλλον κατέφυγον. κἀκεῖνος ὀρρωδῶν τὸν ἀγῶνα προφάσεις ἐνέβαλλε τῷ δήμῳ καὶ [6] ἀσχολίας, δι’ ὧν αἰεὶ τὸν νόμον ἐξέκρουεν. ἦν μὲν οὖν διὰ ταῦτα λυπηρός. ἡ δὲ φανερωτάτη καὶ μεγίστη τῶν ἄλλων ἀπεχθειῶν αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἐκ τῆς δεκάτης τῶν λαφύρων ὑπῆρξεν, οὐκ ἄλογον εἰ καὶ μὴ πάνυ δικαίαν ἀρχὴν τῶν πολλῶν λαβόντων. εὔξατο μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἐπὶ τοὺς Βηίους βαδίζων, εἰ τὴν πόλιν ἕλοι, τῷ [7] θεῷ τούτων τὴν δεκάτην καθιερώσειν. ἁλούσης δὲ τῆς πόλεως καὶ διαρπαγείσης, εἴτ’ ὀκνήσας ἐνοχλῆσαι τοῖς πολίταις, εἴτε λήθη τις αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τῶν παρόντων πραγμάτων ἔλαβε τῆς εὐχῆς, περιεῖδεν ὠφεληθέντας. ὕστερον δὲ χρόνῳ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐκείνης ἤδη πεπαυμένος, ἀνήνεγκε περὶ τούτων πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον, οἵ τε μάντεις ἤγγελλον ἐπὶ τοῖς ἱεροῖς προφαίνεσθαι θεῶν μῆνιν, ἱλασμοῦ καὶ χαριστηρίων δεομένην.

[8] [1] Ψηφισαμένης δὲ τῆς βουλῆς τὴν μὲν ὠφέλειαν - χαλεπὸν γὰρ ἦν - ἀνάδαστον μὴ γενέσθαι, τοὺς δὲ λαβόντας αὐτοὺς σὺν ὅρκῳ τὴν δεκάτην ἀναφέρειν εἰς μέσον, ἐγίνετο πολλὰ λυπηρὰ καὶ βίαια περὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας, ἀνθρώπους πένητας καὶ πολλὰ πεπονηκότας, ἀναγκαζομένους ὧν ἐκέκτηντο καὶ κατεκέχρηντο μέρος εἰσφέρειν [2] τοσοῦτον. θορυβουμένῳ δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῶν τῷ Καμίλλῳ καὶ προφάσεως ἀποροῦντι βελτίονος εἰς τὸν ἀτοπώτατον τῶν λόγων συνέβαινε καταφεύγειν, ὁμολογοῦντι λαθέσθαι τῆς εὐχῆς. οἱ δ’ ἐχαλέπαινον εἰ τὰ τῶν πολεμίων δεκατεύσειν εὐξάμενος τότε, νῦν δεκατεύει τὰ τῶν [3] πολιτῶν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πάντων ὅσον ἔδει μέρος εἰσενεγκόντων, ἔδοξε κρατῆρα χρυσοῦν κατασκευάσαντας εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀποστεῖλαι. χρυσίου δ’ ἦν σπάνις ἐν τῇ πόλει, καὶ τῶν ἀρχόντων ὅθεν ἂν πορισθείη σκοπούντων, αἱ γυναῖκες αὐταὶ καθ’ αὑτὰς βουλευσάμεναι τὸν ὄντα χρυσοῦν ἑκάστῃ περὶ τὸ σῶμα κόσμον ἐπέδωκαν εἰς τὸ ἀνάθημα, σταθμῷ χρυσίου γενόμενον ὀκτὼ ταλάντων.

[4] καὶ ταύταις μὲν ἡ σύγκλητος ἀποδιδοῦσα τιμὴν πρέπουσαν, ἐψηφίσατο μετὰ θάνατον ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀνδράσι καὶ ταῖς γυναιξὶ λέγεσθαι τὸν ἄξιον ἔπαινον· οὐ γὰρ ἦν εἰθισμένον πρότερον ἐγκωμιάζεσθαι γυναῖκα δημοσίᾳ τελευτήσασαν· [5] ἑλόμενοι δὲ τρεῖς ἄνδρας ἐκ τῶν ἀρίστων θεωρούς, καὶ ναῦν μακρὰν εὐανδροῦντι πληρώματι καὶ [6] κόσμῳ πανηγυρικῷ κατασκευάσαντες, ἐξέπεμψαν. ἦν δ’ ἄρα καὶ χειμὼν καὶ γαλήνη τῆς θαλάσσης ἀργαλέον, ὡς ἐκείνοις συνέτυχε τότε παρ’ οὐδὲν ἐλθόντας ἀπολέσθαι, διαφυγεῖν αὖθις ἀπροσδοκήτως τὸν κίνδυνον. ἐπέπλευσαν γὰρ αὐτοῖς Λιπαρέων τριήρεις παρὰ τὰς Αἰόλου [7] νήσους τοῦ πνεύματος ἐκλιπόντος ὡς λῃσταῖς. δεομένων δὲ καὶ προϊσχομένων χεῖρας, ἐμβολῆς μὲν ἔσχοντο, τὴν δὲ ναῦν ἀναψάμενοι καὶ καταγαγόντες ἀπεκήρυττον ἅμα καὶ τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὰ σώματα, πειρατικὰ κρίναντες [8] εἶναι, μόλις δ’ ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς ἀρετῇ καὶ δυνάμει Τιμησιθέου τοῦ στρατηγοῦ πεισθέντες μεθῆκαν. ὁ δὲ καὶ προσκαθελκύσας ἰδίᾳ πλοῖα παρέπεμψε καὶ συγκαθιέρωσε τὸ ἀνάθημα· δι’ ὃ καὶ τιμὰς ἔσχεν ἃς εἰκὸς ἦν ἐν Ῥώμῃ.

[9] [1] Τῶν δὲ δημάρχων αὖθις ἐπεγειρόντων τὸν περὶ τοῦ διοικισμοῦ νόμον, ὁ πρὸς Φαλίσκους πόλεμος ἐν καιρῷ παραφανεὶς ἔδωκε τοῖς πρώτοις ἀνδράσιν ἀρχαιρεσιάσαι κατὰ γνώμην καὶ Κάμιλλον ἀποδείξαι μεθ’ ἑτέρων πέντε χιλίαρχον, ὡς τῶν πραγμάτων ἡγεμόνος δεομένων [2] ἀξίωμα καὶ δόξαν μετ’ ἐμπειρίας ἔχοντος. ψηφισαμένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου, λαβὼν δύναμιν ὁ Κάμιλλος εἰς τὴν τῶν Φαλίσκων ἐνέβαλε, καὶ πόλιν ἐρυμνὴν κατεσκευασμένην πᾶσιν εἰς πόλεμον καλῶς Φαλερίους ἐπολιόρκει, τὸ μὲν ἑλεῖν οὐ μικρὸν ἔργον οὐδὲ χρόνου τοῦ τυχόντος ἡγούμενος, ἄλλως δὲ τρίβειν τοὺς πολίτας καὶ περισπᾶν βουλόμενος, ὡς μὴ σχολάζοιεν οἴκοι καθήμενοι [3] δημαγωγεῖσθαι καὶ στασιάζειν. ἐπιεικῶς γὰρ ἀεὶ φαρμάκῳ τούτῳ χρώμενοι διετέλουν, ὥσπερ ἰατροὶ τὰ ταρακτικὰ πάθη τῆς πολιτείας ἔξω τρέποντες.

[10] [1] Οὕτως δὲ τῆς πολιορκίας κατεφρόνουν οἱ Φαλέριοι τῷ πανταχόθεν ἐξωχυρῶσθαι πιστεύοντες, ὥστε πλὴν τῶν τὰ τείχη φυλασσόντων τοὺς ἄλλους ἐν ἱματίοις κατὰ τὴν πόλιν ἀναστρέφεσθαι, τοὺς δὲ παῖδας αὐτῶν εἴς τε τὰ διδασκαλεῖα φοιτᾶν καὶ παρὰ τὰ τείχη περιπατήσοντας καὶ γυμνασομένους ὑπὸ τοῦ διδασκάλου καταβιβάζεσθαι.

[2] κοινῷ γὰρ ἐχρῶντο τῷ διδασκάλῳ πάντων ὥσπερ Ἕλληνες οἱ Φαλέριοι, βουλόμενοι συντρέφεσθαι καὶ συναγελάζεσθαι μετ’ ἀλλήλων εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς τοὺς παῖδας.

[3] οὗτος οὖν ὁ διδάσκαλος ἐπιβουλεύων τοῖς Φαλερίοις διὰ τῶν παίδων, ἐξῆγεν αὐτοὺς ἡμέρας ἑκάστης ὑπὸ τὸ τεῖχος ἐγγὺς τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτ’ ἀπῆγεν αὖθις εἴσω γυμνασαμένους.

[4] ἐκ δὲ τούτου κατὰ μικρὸν ὑπάγων εἴθισε θαρρεῖν ὡς πολλῆς οὔσης ἀδείας, καὶ τέλος ἔχων ἅπαντας εἰς τοὺς προφύλακας τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐνέβαλε καὶ παρέδωκεν, ἄγειν κελεύσας πρὸς τὸν Κάμιλλον. ἀχθεὶς δὲ καὶ καταστὰς εἰς ὄψιν, ἔλεγε παιδευτὴς μὲν εἶναι καὶ διδάσκαλος, τὴν δὲ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον χάριν ἀντὶ τούτων ἑλόμενος τῶν δικαίων, ἥκειν αὐτῷ τὴν πόλιν ἐν τοῖς παισὶ κομίζων.

[5] δεινὸν οὖν ἀκούσαντι τὸ ἔργον ἐφάνη Καμίλλῳ, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας εἰπών, ὡς χαλεπὸν μέν ἐστι πόλεμος καὶ διὰ πολλῆς ἀδικίας καὶ βιαίων περαινόμενος ἔργων, εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ πολέμων ὅμως τινὲς νόμοι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἀνδράσι, καὶ τὸ νικᾶν οὐχ οὕτω διωκτέον ὥστε μὴ φεύγειν τὰς ἐκ κακῶν καὶ ἀσεβῶν ἔργων χάριτας - ἀρετῇ γὰρ οἰκείᾳ τὸν μέγαν στρατηγόν, οὐκ ἀλλοτρίᾳ θαρροῦντα κακίᾳ χρῆναι στρατεύειν - , προσέταξε τοῖς ὑπηρέταις τοῦ μὲν ἀνθρώπου καταρρηγνύναι τὰ ἱμάτια καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ὀπίσω περιάγειν, τοῖς δὲ παισὶ διδόναι ῥάβδους καὶ μάστιγας, ὅπως κολάζοντες τὸν προδότην ἐλαύνωσιν εἰς τὴν πόλιν.

[6] Ἄρτι δὲ τῶν Φαλερίων ᾐσθημένων τὴν τοῦ διδασκάλου προδοσίαν, καὶ τὴν μὲν πόλιν οἷον εἰκὸς ἐπὶ συμφορᾷ τοσαύτῃ θρήνου κατέχοντος, ἀνδρῶν δ’ ὁμοῦ καὶ γυναικῶν ἐπὶ τὰ τείχη καὶ τὰς πύλας σὺν οὐδενὶ λογισμῷ φερομένων, προσῆγον οἱ παῖδες τὸν διδάσκαλον γυμνὸν καὶ δεδεμένον προπηλακίζοντες, τὸν δὲ Κάμιλλον σωτῆρα καὶ πατέρα καὶ θεὸν ἀνακαλοῦντες, ὥστε μὴ μόνον τοῖς γονεῦσι τῶν παίδων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πολίταις ταῦθ’ ὁρῶσι θαῦμα καὶ πόθον ἐμπεσεῖν τῆς τοῦ Καμίλλου [7] δικαιοσύνης. καὶ συνδραμόντες εἰς ἐκκλησίαν πρέσβεις ἔπεμψαν ἐκείνῳ τὰ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἐπιτρέποντες, οὓς ὁ Κάμιλλος ἀπέστειλεν εἰς Ῥώμην. ἐν δὲ τῇ βουλῇ καταστάντες εἶπον, ὅτι Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς νίκης τὴν δικαιοσύνην προτιμήσαντες ἐδίδαξαν αὐτοὺς τὴν ἧτταν ἀγαπῆσαι πρὸ τῆς ἐλευθερίας, οὐ τοσοῦτον τῇ δυνάμει λείπεσθαι δοκοῦντας, ὅσον ἡττᾶσθαι τῆς ἀρετῆς ὁμολογοῦντας.

[8] ἀποδούσης δὲ τῆς βουλῆς πάλιν ἐκείνῳ τὸ κρῖναι καὶ διαιτῆσαι ταῦτα, χρήματα λαβὼν παρὰ τῶν Φαλερίων καὶ φιλίαν πρὸς ἅπαντας Φαλίσκους θέμενος ἀνεχώρησεν.

[11] [1] Οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται διαρπάσειν προσδοκήσαντες τοὺς Φαλερίους, ὡς ἐπανῆλθον εἰς Ῥώμην κεναῖς χερσί, κατηγόρουν τοῦ Καμίλλου πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους πολίτας ὡς μισοδήμου [2] καὶ φθονήσαντος ὠφεληθῆναι τοῖς πένησιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸν περὶ τοῦ διοικισμοῦ νόμον οἱ δήμαρχοι προθέντες αὖθις ἐπὶ τὴν ψῆφον ἐκάλουν τὸν δῆμον, ὁ δὲ Κάμιλλος οὐδεμιᾶς ἀπεχθείας οὐδὲ παρρησίας φεισάμενος ἐφάνη μάλιστα πάντων ἐκβιαζόμενος τοὺς πολλούς, τὸν μὲν νόμον ἄκοντες ἀπεψηφίσαντο, τὸν δὲ Κάμιλλον δι’ ὀργῆς εἶχον, ὥστε καὶ δυστυχήσαντος αὐτοῦ περὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα - τῶν γὰρ υἱῶν ἀπέβαλε τὸν ἕτερον νοσήσαντα - μηδὲν [3] οἴκτῳ τῆς ὀργῆς ὑφέσθαι. καίτοι τὸ πάθος οὐ μετρίως ἤνεγκεν ἀνὴρ ἥμερος φύσει καὶ χρηστός, ἀλλὰ τῆς δίκης προγεγραμμένης αὐτῷ διὰ πένθος οἰκούρει καθειργμένος μετὰ τῶν γυναικῶν.

[12] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν κατήγορος ἦν Λεύκιος Ἀπουλήιος, ἔγκλημα δὲ κλοπῆς περὶ τὰ Τυρρηνικὰ χρήματα, καὶ δῆτα καὶ θύραι τινὲς ἐλέγοντο χαλκαῖ παρ’ αὐτῷ φανῆναι τῶν [2] αἰχμαλώτων. ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἐξηρέθιστο καὶ δῆλος ἦν ἐκ πάσης προφάσεως κατ’ αὐτοῦ τῇ ψήφῳ χρησόμενος. οὕτως οὖν συναγαγὼν τούς τε φίλους καὶ τοὺς συστρατευσαμένους, οὐκ ὀλίγους τὸ πλῆθος ὄντας, ἐδεῖτο μὴ περιιδεῖν αὐτὸν ἀδίκως ἐπ’ αἰτίαις πονηραῖς ὀφλόντα καὶ [3] καταγέλαστον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν γενόμενον. ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ φίλοι βουλευσάμενοι καὶ διαλεχθέντες αὑτοῖς ἀπεκρίναντο, πρὸς μὲν τὴν κρίσιν αὐτῷ μηδὲν οἴεσθαι βοηθήσειν, τὴν δὲ ζημίαν ὀφλόντι συνεκτείσειν, οὐκ ἀνασχόμενος ἔγνω μεταστῆναι καὶ φυγεῖν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως πρὸς ὀργήν.

[4] ἀσπασάμενος οὖν τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκίας προῄει σιωπῇ μέχρι τῆς πύλης· ἐκεῖ δ’ ἐπέστη, καὶ μεταστραφεὶς ὀπίσω καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἀνατείνας πρὸς τὸ Καπιτώλιον ἐπεύξατο τοῖς θεοῖς, εἰ μὴ δικαίως, ἀλλ’ ὕβρει δήμου καὶ φθόνῳ προπηλακιζόμενος ἐκπίπτει, ταχὺ Ῥωμαίους μετανοῆσαι καὶ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις φανεροὺς γενέσθαι δεομένους αὐτοῦ καὶ ποθοῦντας Κάμιλλον.

[13] [1] Ἐκεῖνος μὲν οὖν ὥσπερ ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἀρὰς θέμενος ἐπὶ τοὺς πολίτας καὶ μεταστὰς ὦφλε τὴν δίκην ἐρήμην, τίμημα μυρίων καὶ πεντακισχιλίων ἀσσαρίων ἔχουσαν. ὃ γίνεται πρὸς ἀργυρίου λόγον χίλιαι δραχμαὶ καὶ πεντακόσιαι· ἀσσαρίων γὰρ ἦν τὸ ἀργύριον ‹δέκα›, καὶ τὸ δεκάχαλκον [2] οὕτως ἐκαλεῖτο δηνάριον. οὐδεὶς δ’ ἔστι Ῥωμαίων ὃς οὐ νομίζει τὰς εὐχὰς τοῦ Καμίλλου ταχὺ τὴν Δίκην ὑπολαβεῖν, καὶ γενέσθαι τιμωρίαν αὐτῷ τῆς ἀδικίας οὐχ ἡδεῖαν, ἀλλ’ ἀνιαράν, ὀνομαστὴν δὲ καὶ περιβόητον· τοσαύτη περιῆλθε τὴν Ῥώμην νέμεσις, καὶ τοσοῦτον ἄγων φθόρον καὶ κίνδυνον ἅμα μετ’ αἰσχύνης ἐφάνη καιρὸς ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν, εἴτε τῆς τύχης οὕτω συνελθούσης, εἴτε καὶ θεῶν τινος ἔργον ἐστὶ μὴ παραμελεῖν ἀρετῆς ἀχαριστουμένης.

[14] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἔδοξε σημεῖον γεγονέναι κακοῦ μεγάλου προσιόντος ‹ἡ Γαΐου› Ἰουλίου [μηνὸς ἡ] τοῦ τιμητοῦ τελευτή· μάλιστα γὰρ δὴ Ῥωμαῖοι σέβονται καὶ [2] νομίζουσιν ἱερὰν τὴν τῶν τιμητῶν ἀρχήν. δεύτερον δὲ πρὸ τῆς Καμίλλου φυγῆς ἀνὴρ οὐκ ἐπιφανὴς μὲν οὐδ’ ἐκ τῆς βουλῆς, ἐπιεικὴς δὲ καὶ χρηστὸς εἶναι δοκῶν, Μᾶρκος Καιδίκιος, ἀνήνεγκε πρὸς τοὺς χιλιάρχους πρᾶγμα φροντίδος [3] ἄξιον. ἔφη γὰρ ἐν τῇ παρῳχημένῃ νυκτὶ καθ’ ὁδὸν βαδίζων ἣν Καινὴν ὀνομάζουσι, κληθεὶς ὑπό τινος φθεγξαμένου μεταστραφῆναι, καὶ θεάσασθαι μὲν οὐδένα, φωνῆς δὲ μείζονος ἢ κατ’ ἀνθρωπίνην ἀκοῦσαι τάδε λεγούσης· ‘ἄγε Μᾶρκε Καιδίκιε, λέγε πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἕωθεν ἐλθὼν ὀλίγου χρόνου Γαλάτας προσδέχεσθαι.’ [4] ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντες οἱ χιλίαρχοι γέλωτα καὶ παιδιὰν ἐποιοῦντο, καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγον συνέβη τὰ περὶ Κάμιλλον.

[15] [1] Οἱ δὲ Γαλάται τοῦ Κελτικοῦ γένους ὄντες ὑπὸ πλήθους λέγονται τὴν αὑτῶν ἀπολιπόντες, οὐκ οὖσαν αὐτάρκη τρέφειν πάντας, ἐπὶ γῆς ζήτησιν ἑτέρας ὁρμῆσαι· [2] μυριάδες δὲ πολλαὶ γενόμενοι νέων ἀνδρῶν καὶ μαχίμων, ἔτι δὲ πλείους παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν ἄγοντες, οἱ μὲν ἐπὶ τὸν βόρειον Ὠκεανὸν ὑπερβαλόντες τὰ Ῥιπαῖα ὄρη ῥυῆναι καὶ τὰ ἔσχατα τῆς Εὐρώπης κατασχεῖν, οἱ δὲ μεταξὺ Πυρήνης ὄρους καὶ τῶν Ἄλπεων ἱδρυθέντες ἐγγὺς Σενώνων καὶ Βιτουρίγων κατοικεῖν χρόνον [3] πολύν· ὀψὲ δ’ οἴνου γευσάμενοι τότε πρῶτον ἐξ Ἰταλίας κομισθέντος, οὕτως ἄρα θαυμάσαι τὸ πόμα καὶ πρὸς τὴν καινότητα τῆς ἡδονῆς ἔκφρονες γενέσθαι πάντες, ὥστ’ ἀράμενοι τὰ ὅπλα καὶ γενεὰς ἀναλαβόντες ἐπὶ τὰς Ἄλπεις φέρεσθαι καὶ ζητεῖν ἐκείνην τὴν γῆν ἣ τοιοῦτον καρπὸν ἀναδίδωσι, τὴν δ’ ἄλλην ἄκαρπον ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ ἀνήμερον.

[4] Ὁ δ’ εἰσαγαγὼν τὸν οἶνον πρὸς αὐτοὺς καὶ παροξύνας ἐπὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν μάλιστα καὶ πρῶτος Ἄρρων λέγεται γενέσθαι Τυρρηνός, ἀνὴρ ἐπιφανὴς καὶ φύσει μὲν οὐ πονηρός, συμφορᾷ δὲ τοιαύτῃ χρησάμενος. ἦν ἐπίτροπος παιδὸς ὀρφανοῦ πλούτῳ τε πρώτου τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ [5] θαυμαζομένου κατ’ εἶδος, ὄνομα Λουκούμωνος. οὗτος ἐκ νέου παρὰ τῷ Ἄρρωνι δίαιταν εἶχε, καὶ μειράκιον ὢν οὐκ ἀπέλιπε τὴν οἰκίαν, ἀλλὰ προσεποιεῖτο χαίρειν συνὼν ἐκείνῳ, καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἐλάνθανε διεφθαρκὼς [6] αὐτοῦ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ διεφθαρμένος ὑπ’ ἐκείνης· ἤδη δὲ πόρρω τοῦ πάθους ἀμφοτέρων γεγονότων καὶ μήτ’ ἀφεῖναι τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν μήτε κρύπτειν ἔτι δυναμένων, ὁ μὲν νεανίσκος ἐπεχείρει φανερῶς ἀποσπάσας ἔχειν τὴν ἄνθρωπον, ὁ δ’ ἀνὴρ ἐπὶ δίκην ἐλθὼν καὶ κρατούμενος πλήθει φίλων καὶ χρημάτων δαπάναις ὑπὸ τοῦ Λουκούμωνος, ἐξέλιπε τὴν ἑαυτοῦ, καὶ πυθόμενος τὰ τῶν Γαλατῶν, ἧκεν εἰς αὐτοὺς καὶ καθηγήσατο τῆς εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν στρατείας.

[16] [1] Οἱ δ’ ἐμβαλόντες εὐθὺς ἐκράτουν τῆς χώρας ὅσην τὸ παλαιὸν οἱ Τυρρηνοὶ κατεῖχον, ἀπὸ τῶν Ἄλπεων ἐπ’ ἀμφοτέρας καθήκουσαν τὰς θαλάσσας, ὡς καὶ τοὔνομα [2] μαρτυρεῖ τῷ λόγῳ· τὴν μὲν γὰρ βόρειον θάλασσαν Ἀδρίαν καλοῦσιν ἀπὸ Τυρρηνικῆς πόλεως Ἀδρίας, τὴν δὲ πρὸς νότον κεκλιμένην ἄντικρυς Τυρρηνικὸν πέλαγος. πᾶσα δ’ ἐστὶ δενδρόφυτος αὕτη καὶ θρέμμασιν εὔβοτος [3] καὶ κατάρρυτος ποταμοῖς, καὶ πόλεις εἶχεν ὀκτωκαίδεκα καλὰς καὶ μεγάλας καὶ κατεσκευασμένας πρός τε χρηματισμὸν ἐργατικῶς καὶ πρὸς δίαιταν πανηγυρικῶς, ἃς οἱ Γαλάται τοὺς Τυρρηνοὺς ἐκβαλόντες αὐτοὶ κατέσχον. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἐπράχθη συχνῷ τινι χρόνῳ πρότερον.

[17] [1] Οἱ δὲ Γαλάται τότε πρὸς πόλιν Τυρρηνίδα Κλούσιον στρατεύσαντες ἐπολιόρκουν. οἱ δὲ Κλουσῖνοι καταφυγόντες ἐπὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ᾐτήσαντο πρέσβεις παρ’ αὐτῶν καὶ γράμματα πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους. ἐπέμφθησαν δὲ τοῦ Φαβίων γένους τρεῖς ἄνδρες εὐδόκιμοι καὶ τιμὰς [2] μεγάλας ἔχοντες ἐν τῇ πόλει. τούτους ἐδέξαντο μὲν οἱ Γαλάται φιλανθρώπως διὰ τὸ τῆς Ῥώμης ὄνομα, καὶ παυσάμενοι τῆς πρὸς τὰ τείχη μάχης εἰς λόγους συνῆλθον. πυνθανομένων δ’ αὐτῶν ὅ τι παθόντες ὑπὸ Κλουσίνων ἥκοιεν ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν, γελάσας ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν [3] Γαλατῶν Βρέννος· ‘ἀδικοῦσιν ἡμᾶς’ ἔφη ‘Κλουσῖνοι γῆν καὶ χώραν ὀλίγην μὲν γεωργεῖν δυνάμενοι, πολλὴν δὲ κατέχειν ἀξιοῦντες, καὶ μὴ μεταδιδόντες ἡμῖν ξένοις οὖσι [4] καὶ πολλοῖς καὶ πένησι. ταῦτα δ’ ἄρα καὶ ὑμᾶς ἠδίκουν ὦ Ῥωμαῖοι πρότερον μὲν Ἀλβανοὶ καὶ Φιδηνᾶται καὶ Ἀρδεᾶται, νῦν δὲ Βήιοι καὶ Καπηνᾶται καὶ πολλοὶ Φαλίσκων καὶ Οὐολούσκων· ἐφ’ οὓς ὑμεῖς στρατεύοντες, ἐὰν μὴ μεταδιδῶσιν ὑμῖν τῶν ἀγαθῶν, ἀνδραποδίζεσθε καὶ λεηλατεῖτε καὶ κατασκάπτετε τὰς πόλεις αὐτῶν, οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ὑμεῖς γε δεινὸν οὐδ’ ἄδικον ποιοῦντες, ἀλλὰ τῷ πρεσβυτάτῳ τῶν νόμων ἀκολουθοῦντες, ὃς τῷ κρείττονι τὰ τῶν ἡττόνων δίδωσιν, ἀρχόμενος ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ [5] καὶ τελευτῶν εἰς τὰ θηρία. καὶ γὰρ τούτοις ἐκ φύσεως ἔνεστι τὸ ζητεῖν πλέον ἔχειν τὰ κρείττονα τῶν ὑποδεεστέρων. Κλουσίνους δὲ παύσασθε πολιορκουμένους οἰκτίροντες, ὡς μὴ καὶ Γαλάτας διδάξητε χρηστοὺς καὶ φιλοικτίρμονας γενέσθαι τοῖς ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ἀδικουμένοις.’

[6] Ἐκ τούτων τῶν λόγων ἔγνωσαν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι τὸν Βρέννον ἀσυμβάτως ἔχοντα, καὶ παρελθόντες εἰς τὸ Κλούσιον ἐθάρρυνον καὶ παρώρμων τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπεξελθεῖν τοῖς βαρβάροις μετ’ αὐτῶν, εἴτε τὴν ἐκείνων ἀλκὴν καταμαθεῖν [7] εἴτε τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἐπιδείξασθαι θέλοντες. ἐκδρομῆς δὲ τῶν Κλουοίνων καὶ μάχης παρὰ τὰ τείχη γενομένης, εἷς τῶν Φαβίων, Κόιντος Ἄμβουστος, ἵππον ἔχων ἐξήλασεν ‹ἐν›αντίος ἀνδρὶ μεγάλῳ καὶ καλῷ Γαλάτῃ, πολὺ προϊππεύοντι τῶν ἄλλων, ἀγνοηθεὶς ἐν ἀρχῇ διὰ τὸ τὴν σύνοδον ὀξεῖαν γενέσθαι καὶ τὰ ὅπλα περιλάμποντα τὴν [8] ὄψιν ἀποκρύπτειν· ὡς δ’ ἐπικρατήσας τῇ μάχῃ καὶ καταβαλὼν ἐσκύλευε τὸν ἄνδρα, γνωρίσας ὁ Βρέννος αὐτὸν ἐμαρτύρατο θεούς, ὡς παρὰ τὰ κοινὰ καὶ νενομισμένα πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ὅσια καὶ δίκαια πρεσβευτοῦ μὲν ἥκοντος, [9] πολέμια δ’ εἰργασμένου. καταπαύσας δὲ τὴν μάχην αὐτίκα, Κλουσίνους μὲν εἴα χαίρειν, ἐπὶ δὲ τὴν Ῥώμην τὸν στρατὸν ἦγεν. οὐ βουλόμενος δὲ δόξαι τὴν ἀδικίαν αὐτοῖς ὥσπερ ἀσμένοις γεγονέναι καὶ δεομένοις προφάσεως, ἔπεμπεν ἐξαιτῶν ἐπὶ τιμωρίᾳ τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ προῆγεν ἅμα σχολαίως.

[18] [1] Ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ τῆς βουλῆς συναχθείσης, ἄλλοι τε πολλοὶ τοῦ Φαβίου κατηγόρουν, καὶ τῶν ἱερέων οἱ καλούμενοι φιτιαλεῖς ἐνῆγον ἐπιθειάζοντες καὶ κελεύοντες τὸ τῶν πεπραγμένων ἄγος τὴν σύγκλητον εἰς ἕνα τὸν αἴτιον [2] τρέψασαν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἄλλων ἀφοσιώσασθαι. τούτους τοὺς φιτιαλεῖς Πομπίλιος Νομᾶς, βασιλέων ἡμερώτατος γενόμενος καὶ δικαιότατος, κατέστησε φύλακας μὲν εἰρήνης, ἐπιγνώμονας δὲ καὶ βεβαιωτὰς αἰτιῶν αἳ σὺν δίκῃ πόλεμον [3] συνάπτουσι. τῆς δὲ βουλῆς ἐπὶ τὸν δῆμον ἀνενεγκαμένης τὸ πρᾶγμα, καὶ τῶν ἱερέων ὅμοια τοῦ Φαβίου κατηγορούντων, οὕτω περιύβρισαν οἱ πολλοὶ τὰ θεῖα καὶ κατεγέλασαν, ὥστε καὶ χιλίαρχον ἀποδεῖξαι τὸν Φάβιον [4] μετὰ τῶν ἀδελφῶν. οἱ δὲ Κελτοὶ πυθόμενοι ταῦτα καὶ χαλεπῶς φέροντες, οὐδὲν ἐμποδὼν ἐποιοῦντο τῆς σπουδῆς, ἀλλ’ ἐχώρουν ἅπαντι τάχει, καὶ πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν λαμπρότητα τῆς παρασκευῆς καὶ βίαν καὶ θυμὸν ἐκπεπληγμένων τῶν διὰ μέσου, καὶ τήν τε χώραν ἀπολωλέναι πᾶσαν ἤδη καὶ τὰς πόλεις εὐθὺς ἀπολεῖσθαι δοκούντων, παρ’ ἐλπίδας οὐδὲν ἠδίκουν οὐδ’ ἐλάμβανον ἀπὸ τῶν ἀγρῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρὰ τὰς πόλεις ἐγγὺς παρεξιόντες ἐβόων ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην πορεύεσθαι καὶ μόνοις πολεμεῖν Ῥωμαίοις, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους φίλους ἐπίστασθαι.

[5] Τοιαύτῃ δὲ χρωμένων ὁρμῇ τῶν βαρβάρων, ἐξῆγον οἱ χιλίαρχοι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἐπὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα, πλήθει μὲν οὐκ ἐνδεεῖς - ἐγένοντο γὰρ ὁπλῖται τετρακισμυρίων οὐκ ἐλάττους - , ἀνασκήτους δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ τότε πρῶτον ἁπτομένους ὅπλων. ἔτι δ’ ἐξημέλητο τὰ τῶν θεῶν αὐτοῖς, οὔτε καλλιερήσασιν οὔτε μάντεις ἃ πρὸ κινδύνου [6] καὶ μάχης εἰκὸς ἦν ἐρομένοις. οὐδενὸς δ’ ἧττον ἐπετάραττεν ἡ πολυαρχία τὰ πραττόμενα. καίτοι πρότερόν γε καὶ πρὸς ἐλάττονας ἀγῶνας εἵλοντο πολλάκις μονάρχους, οὓς δικτάτορας καλοῦσιν, οὐκ ἀγνοοῦντες ὅσον ἐστὶν εἰς ἐπισφαλῆ καιρὸν ὄφελος μιᾷ χρωμένους γνώμῃ πρὸς ἀνυπεύθυνον ἀρχὴν ἐν χερσὶ τὴν δίκην ἔχουσαν εὐτακτεῖν.

[7] οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ καὶ Κάμιλλος ἀγνωμονηθεὶς ἔβλαψε τὰ πράγματα, τοῦ μὴ πρὸς χάριν μηδὲ κολακεύοντας ἄρχειν φοβεροῦ γενομένου. προελθόντες οὖν ἀπὸ τῆς πόλεως σταδίους ἐνενήκοντα παρὰ τὸν Ἀλίαν ποταμὸν ηὐλίσθησαν, οὐ πόρρω τοῦ στρατοπέδου τῷ Θύβριδι [8] συμφερόμενον. ἐνταῦθα δὲ τῶν βαρβάρων ἐπιφανέντων, αἰσχρῶς ἀγωνισάμενοι δι’ ἀταξίαν ἐτράποντο, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἀριστερὸν κέρας εὐθὺς ἐμβαλόντες εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν οἱ Κελτοὶ διέφθειραν, τὸ δὲ δεξιὸν ὑπεκκλῖναν τὴν ἐπιφορὰν ἐκ τοῦ πεδίου πρὸς τοὺς λόφους ἧττον ἐξεκόπη, [9] καὶ διεξέπεσον ἀπὸ τούτων εἰς τὴν πόλιν οἱ πολλοί. τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις, ὅσοι τῶν πολεμίων ἀπειπόντων πρὸς τὸν φόνον ἐσώθησαν, εἰς Βηίους αἱ φυγαὶ διὰ νυκτὸς ἦσαν, ὡς τῆς Ῥώμης οἰχομένης καὶ τῶν ἐκεῖ πάντων ἀπολωλότων.

[19] [1] Ἐγένετο δ’ ἡ μάχη μετὰ τροπὰς θερινὰς περὶ τὴν πανσέληνον, ᾗ καὶ πρότερον ἡμέρᾳ μέγα πάθος συνέβη τὸ περὶ τοὺς Φαβίους· τριακόσιοι γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ γένους [2] ἄνδρες ὑπὸ Τυρρηνῶν ἀνῃρέθησαν. ἐκράτησε δὲ τὴν ἡμέραν ἀπὸ τῆς δευτέρας ἥττης Ἀλιάδα μέχρι νῦν καλεῖσθαι [3] διὰ τὸν ποταμόν. περὶ δ’ ἡμερῶν ἀποφράδων, εἴτε χρὴ τίθεσθαί τινας, εἴτε [μὴ] ὀρθῶς Ἡράκλειτος ἐπέπληξεν Ἡσιόδῳ, τὰς μὲν ἀγαθὰς ποιουμένῳ τὰς δὲ φαύλας, ὡς ἀγνοοῦντι φύσιν ἡμέρας ἁπάσης μίαν οὖσαν, [4] ἑτέρωθι (fr. p. 141 Bernard.) διηπόρηται. τῇ δ’ ὑποκειμένῃ γροφῇ τὸ μνημονεῦσαι παραδειγμάτων ὀλίγων ἴσως ἂν ἁρμόσειε. τοῦτο μὲν τοίνυν Βοιωτοῖς Ἱπποδρομίου μηνός, ὡς δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι καλοῦσιν Ἑκατομβαιῶνος, ἱσταμένου πέμπτῃ δύο λαβεῖν συνέβη νίκας ἐπιφανεστάτας, αἷς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἠλευθέρωσαν, τήν τε περὶ Λεῦκτρα καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ Κερησσῷ, ταύτης πρότερον ἔτεσι πλείοσιν ἢ διακοσίοις, ὅτε Λατταμύαν καὶ Θεσσαλοὺς ἐνίκησαν· [5] τοῦτο δ’ αὖ πάλιν Πέρσαι μηνὸς Βοηδρομιῶνος ἕκτῃ μὲν ἐν Μαραθῶνι, τρίτῃ δ’ ἐν Πλαταιαῖς ἅμα καὶ περὶ Μυκάλην ἡττήθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, πέμπτῃ δὲ φθίνοντος [6] ἐν Ἀρβήλοις. οἱ ‹δ’› Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ τὴν περὶ Νάξον ἐνίκων ναυμαχίαν, ἧς Χαβρίας ἐστρατήγει, τοῦ Βοηδρομιῶνος περὶ τὴν πανσέληνον, ἐν δὲ Σαλαμῖνι περὶ τὰς εἰκάδας, ὡς ἡμῖν ἐν τῷ Περὶ ἡμερῶν (fr. p. 141 [7] Bernard.) ἀποδέδεικται. ἐνήνοχε δὲ καὶ ὁ Θαργηλιὼν μὴν τοῖς βαρβάροις ἐπιδήλους ἀτυχίας· καὶ γὰρ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐπὶ Γρανικῷ τοὺς βασιλέως στρατηγοὺς Θαργηλιῶνος ἐνίκησε, καὶ Καρχηδόνιοι περὶ Σικελίαν ὑπὸ Τιμολέοντος ἡττῶντο τῇ ἑβδόμῃ φθίνοντος, περὶ ἣν δοκεῖ καὶ τὸ Ἴλιον ἁλῶναι, τοῦ Θαργηλιῶνος, ὡς Ἔφορος (FGrH 70 F 226) καὶ Καλλισθένης (FGrH 124 F 10b) καὶ Δαμάστης (FGrH 5 F 7) καὶ Μάλακος (FGrH 81 F 74; [8] 552) ἱστορήκασιν. ἔμπαλιν δ’ ὁ Μεταγειτνιών, ὃν Βοιωτοὶ Πάνημον καλοῦσι, τοῖς Ἕλλησιν οὐκ εὐμενὴς γέγονε. τούτου γὰρ τοῦ μηνὸς ἑβδόμῃ καὶ τὴν ἐν Κρανῶνι μάχην ἡττηθέντες ὑπ’ Ἀντιπάτρου τελέως ἀπώλοντο, καὶ πρότερον ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ μαχόμενοι πρὸς Φίλιππον ἠτύχησαν.

[9] τῆς δ’ αὐτῆς ἡμέρας ταύτης ἐν τῷ Μεταγειτνιῶνι κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν ἐνιαυτὸν οἱ μετ’ Ἀρχιδάμου διαβάντες εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐκεῖ βαρβάρων διεφθάρησαν. Καλχηδόνιοι δὲ τὴν ἐνάτην φθίνοντος ὡς τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν ἀτυχημάτων αὐτοῖς ἀεὶ φέρουσαν παραφυλάττουσιν.

[10] οὐκ ἀγνοῶ δ’ ὅτι περὶ τὸν τῶν μυστηρίων καιρὸν αὖθις Θῆβαί τε κατεσκάφησαν ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα φρουρὰν Ἀθηναῖοι Μακεδόνων ἐδέξαντο περὶ αὐτὴν τὴν εἰκάδα τοῦ Βοηδρομιῶνος ᾗ τὸν μυστικὸν Ἴακχον [11] ἐξάγουσιν. ὁμοίως δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρας πρότερον μὲν ὑπὸ Κίμβρων τὸ μετὰ Καιπίωνος ἀπέβαλον στρατόπεδον, ὕστερον δὲ Λευκόλλου στρατηγοῦντος Ἀρμενίους καὶ Τιγράνην ἐνίκησαν. Ἄτταλος δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς καὶ Πομπήιος Μᾶγνος ἐν τοῖς αὑτῶν γενεθλίοις ἀπέθανον, καὶ ὅλως ἐστὶ πολλοὺς ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα ταῖς [12] αὐταῖς χρησαμένους ἀποδεῖξαι περιόδοις. ἀλλὰ Ῥωμαίοις αὕτη μία τῶν μάλιστα ἀποφράδων ἐστί, καὶ διὰ ταύτην ἑκάστου μηνὸς ἕτεραι δύο, τῆς πρὸς τὸ συμβὰν εὐλαβείας καὶ δεισιδαιμονίας ἐπὶ πλέον ὥσπερ εἴωθε ῥυείσης. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐν τῷ Περὶ αἰτίων Ῥωμαϊκῶν (mor. 269e) ἐπιμελέστερον εἴρηται.

[20] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην ἐκείνην εἰ μὲν εὐθὺς ἐπηκολούθησαν οἱ Γαλάται τοῖς φεύγουσιν, οὐδὲν ἂν ἐκώλυσε τὴν Ῥώμην ἄρδην ἀναιρεθῆναι καὶ πάντας ἀπολέσθαι τοὺς ἐν αὐτῇ καταληφθέντας· τοσοῦτον οἱ φεύγοντες ἐνειργάζοντο δεῖμα τοῖς ὑποδεχομένοις, καὶ τοσαύτης [2] πάλιν ἀνεπίμπλαντο ταραχῆς καὶ παραφροσύνης. νυνὶ δ’ ἀπιστίᾳ τοῦ μεγέθους τῆς νίκης οἱ βάρβαροι καὶ πρὸς εὐπάθειαν ἐκ τοῦ περιχαροῦς ἅμα καὶ νεμήσεις τῶν ἑαλωκότων ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ χρημάτων τραπόμενοι, τῷ μὲν ἐκπίπτοντι τῆς πόλεως ὄχλῳ ῥᾳστώνην φυγῆς παρέσχον, ἐλπίσαι δ’ ἔτι καὶ παρασκευάσασθαι τοῖς ὑπομένουσι.

[3] τὴν γὰρ ἄλλην πόλιν προέμενοι, τὸ Καπιτώλιον ἐφράξαντο βέλεσι καὶ διατειχίσμασιν. ἐν πρώτοις δὲ τῶν ἱερῶν ἃ μὲν εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον ἀνεσκευάσαντο, τὰ δὲ τῆς Ἑστίας αἱ παρθένοι μετὰ τῶν ἱερέων ἔφευγον ἁρπασάμεναι.

[4] καίτοι τινὲς οὐδὲν εἶναι τὸ φρουρούμενον ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἕτερον ἢ τὸ πῦρ ἄφθιτον ἱστοροῦσι, Νομᾶ τοῦ βασιλέως καταστήσαντος ὡς ἀρχὴν ἁπάντων σέβεσθαι. κινητικώτατον γὰρ ἐν τῇ φύσει τοῦτο· κίνησις δέ τις ἢ σύν τινι κινήσει πάντως ἡ γένεσις· τὰ δ’ ἄλλα τῆς ὕλης μόρια θερμότητος ἐπιλειπούσης ἀργὰ κείμενα καὶ νεκροῖς ἐοικότα ποθεῖ τὴν τοῦ πυρὸς δύναμιν ὡς ψυχήν, καὶ προσελθούσης ἁμῶς γέ πως ἐπὶ τὸ δρᾶν τι καὶ πάσχειν [5] τρέπεται. τοῦτ’ οὖν ἅτε δὴ περιττὸν ἄνδρα τὸν Νομᾶν καὶ λόγον ἔχοντα ταῖς Μούσαις συνεῖναι διὰ σοφίαν ἐξοσιῶσαι καὶ φρουρεῖν ἀκοίμητον ἐν εἰκόνι τῆς τὰ πάντα κοσμούσης ἀιδίου δυνάμεως. οἱ δὲ τὸ μὲν πῦρ ὥσπερ παρ’ Ἕλλησι πρὸ ἱερῶν αἴθεσθαι καθάρσιον, ἄλλα δὲ τὰ ἐντὸς ἀθέατα κρύπτεσθαι πᾶσι, πλὴν ταῖς παρθένοις [6] ταύταις ἃς Ἑστιάδας ἐπονομάζουσι. καὶ πλεῖστος μὲν λόγος κατέχει τὸ Τρωικὸν ἐκεῖ Παλλάδιον ἀποκεῖσθαι δι’ Αἰνείου κομισθὲν εἰς Ἰταλίαν· εἰσὶ δ’ οἱ τὰ Σαμοθρᾴκια μυθολογοῦντες Δάρδανον μὲν εἰς Τροίαν ἐξενεγκάμενον ὀργιάσαι καὶ καθιερῶσαι κτίσαντα τὴν πόλιν, Αἰνείαν δὲ περὶ τὴν ἅλωσιν ἐκκλέψαντα διασῶσαι μέχρι [7] τῆς ἐν Ἰταλίᾳ κατοικήσεως. οἱ δὲ προσποιούμενοί τι πλέον ἐπίστασθαι περὶ τούτων δύο φασὶν οὐ μεγάλους ἀποκεῖσθαι πίθους, [ὧν] τὸν μὲν ἀνεῳγότα καὶ κενὸν, τὸν δὲ πλήρη καὶ κατασεσημασμένον, ἀμφοτέρους δὲ [8] ταῖς παναγέσι μόναις παρθένοις ὁρατούς. ἄλλοι δὲ τούτους διεψεῦσθαι νομίζουσι τῷ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἱερῶν τότε τὰς κόρας ἐμβαλούσας εἰς πίθους δύο κρύψαι κατὰ γῆς ὑπὸ τὸν νεὼν τοῦ Κυρίνου, καὶ τὸν τόπον ἐκεῖνον ἔτι καὶ νῦν τῶν Πίθων φέρεσθαι τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν.

[21] [1] Τὰ δὲ κυριώτατα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν ἱερῶν αὗται λαβοῦσαι φυγῇ παρὰ τὸν ποταμὸν ἐποιοῦντο τὴν ἀποχώρησιν. ἐνταῦθα Λεύκιος Ἀλβίνιος ἀνὴρ δημοτικὸς ἐν τοῖς φεύγουσιν ἔτυχε τέκνα νήπια καὶ γυναῖκα μετὰ χρημάτων [2] ἀναγκαίων ἐφ’ ἁμάξης ὑπεκκομίζων. ὡς δ’ εἶδε τὰς παρθένους, ἐν τοῖς κόλποις φερούσας τὰ τῶν θεῶν ἱερά, θεραπείας ἐρήμους παραπορευομένας καὶ κακοπαθούσας, ταχὺ τὴν γυναῖκα μετὰ τῶν παίδων καὶ τῶν χρημάτων καθελὼν ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμάξης, ἐκείναις παρέδωκεν ἐπιβῆναι καὶ διαφυγεῖν εἴς τινα τῶν Ἑλληνίδων πόλεων.

[3] τὴν μὲν οὖν Ἀλβινίου πρὸς τὸ θεῖον εὐλάβειαν καὶ τιμὴν ἐν τοῖς ἐπισφαλεστάτοις καιροῖς ἐκφανῆ γενομένην οὐκ [4] ἄξιον ἦν ἀμνημόνευτον παρελθεῖν. οἱ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων θεῶν ἱερεῖς οἵ τε γηραιοὶ τῶν ὑπατικῶν καὶ θριαμβικῶν ἀνδρῶν τὴν μὲν πόλιν ἐκλιπεῖν οὐχ ὑπέμειναν, ἱερὰς δὲ καὶ λαμπρὰς ἀναλαβόντες ἐσθῆτας, ἐξηγουμένου Φαβίου τοῦ ἀρχιερέως, ἐπευξάμενοι τοῖς θεοῖς, ὡς ἑαυτοὺς ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος τῷ δαίμονι καθιεροῦντες, ἐπὶ τῶν ἐλεφαντίνων δίφρων ἐν ἀγορᾷ καθῆντο κεκοσμημένοι, τὴν ἐπιοῦσαν τύχην ὑπομένοντες.

[22] [1] Τρίτῃ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης ἡμέρᾳ παρῆν ὁ Βρέννος ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν ἄγων τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ τάς τε πύλας εὑρὼν ἀνεῳγμένας καὶ τὰ τείχη φυλάκων ἔρημα, πρῶτον μὲν ἔδεισεν ἐνέδραν καὶ λόχον, ἀπιστῶν οὕτω παντάπασιν [2] ἀπειρηκέναι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἔγνω τὸ ἀληθές, εἰσελάσας διὰ τῆς Κολλίνης πύλης ἔσχε τὴν πόλιν, ἑξήκοντα καὶ τριακοσίων ἐτῶν πλείονα βραχεῖ χρόνον ἀπὸ τῆς κτίσεως ἔχουσαν, εἴ τῳ πιστὸν ἀποσῴζεσθαί τινα τῶν χρόνων ἀκρίβειαν, οἷς καὶ περὶ νεωτέρων ἄλλων ἀμφισβήτησιν ἡ σύγχυσις ἐκείνη παρέσχε. τοῦ μέντοι πάθους αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς ἁλώσεως ἔοικεν ἀμυδρά τις εὐθὺς [3] εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα φήμη διελθεῖν. Ἡρακλείδης γὰρ ὁ Ποντικὸς (fg. 102 Wehrli) οὐ πολὺ τῶν χρόνων ἐκείνων ἀπολειπόμενος ἐν τῷ Περὶ ψυχῆς συντάγματί φησιν ἀπὸ τῆς ἑσπέρας λόγον κατασχεῖν, ὡς στρατὸς ἐξ Ὑπερβορέων ἐλθὼν ἔξωθεν ᾑρήκοι πόλιν Ἑλληνίδα Ῥώμην, ἐκεῖ που συνῳκημένην περὶ τὴν μεγάλην θάλασσαν. οὐκ ἂν οὖν θαυμάσαιμι μυθώδη καὶ πλασματίαν ὄντα τὸν Ἡρακλείδην ἀληθεῖ λόγῳ τῷ περὶ τῆς ἁλώσεως ἐπικομπάσαι τοὺς Ὑπερβορέους καὶ τὴν μεγάλην θάλασσαν.

[4] Ἀριστοτέλης δ’ ὁ φιλόσοφος (fr. 568) τὸ μὲν ἁλῶναι τὴν πόλιν ὑπὸ Κελτῶν ἀκριβῶς δῆλός ἐστιν ἀκηκοώς, τὸν δὲ σώσαντα Λεύκιον εἶναί φησιν· ἦν δὲ Μᾶρκος, οὐ [5] Λεύκιος, ὁ Κάμιλλος. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν εἰκασμῷ λέλεκται.

Κατασχὼν δὲ τὴν Ῥώμην ὁ Βρέννος τῷ μὲν Καπιτωλίῳ φρουρὰν περιέστησεν, αὐτὸς δὲ καταβαίνων δι’ ἀγορᾶς ἐθαύμαζε τοὺς προκαθημένους ἄνδρας ἐν κόσμῳ καὶ σιωπῇ θεώμενος, ὡς οὔθ’ ὑπεξανέστησαν ἐπιόντων πολεμίων οὔτ’ ὄψιν ἢ χρόαν ἔτρεψαν, ἀλλὰ ῥᾳθύμως καὶ ἀδεῶς ἐγκεκλιμένοι τοῖς σκίπωσιν, οὓς ἐφόρουν, καὶ [6] προσβλέποντες ἀλλήλοις ἡσύχαζον. ἦν οὖν θαῦμα τοῖς Γαλάταις πρὸς τὴν ἀτοπίαν, καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ὀκνοῦντες ἅψασθαι καὶ προσελθεῖν ὡς κρείττοσι διηπόρουν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τολμήσας τις ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐγγὺς παρέστη Παπειρίῳ Μανίῳ καὶ προσαγαγὼν τὴν χεῖρα πρᾴως ἥψατο τοῦ γενείου καὶ κατῆγε τὴν ὑπήνην βαθεῖαν οὖσαν, ὁ μὲν Παπείριος τῇ βακτηρίᾳ τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ πατάξας συνέτριψεν, ὁ δὲ βάρβαρος ἐκεῖνον σπασάμενος τὴν μάχαιραν [7] ἀπέκτεινεν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου καὶ τοὺς λοιποὺς ἀνῄρουν προσπεσόντες, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅσοις ἐπιτύχοιεν διεχρῶντο, καὶ τὰς οἰκίας ἐπόρθουν ἐφ’ ἡμέρας πολλὰς ἄγοντες καὶ φέροντες, εἶτα κατεπίμπρασαν καὶ κατέσκαπτον, ὀργιζόμενοι τοῖς ἔχουσι τὸ Καπιτώλιον, ὅτι καλούντων αὐτῶν οὐχ ὑπήκουον, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσβάλλουσι πληγὰς [8] ἔδοσαν ἀπὸ τοῦ διατειχίσματος ἀμυνόμενοι. διὰ ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐλυμήναντο τὴν πόλιν καὶ προσδιέφθειραν τοὺς ἁλισκομένους, ὁμοίως μὲν ἄνδρας καὶ γυναῖκας, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ πρεσβύτας καὶ παῖδας.

[23] [1] Τῆς δὲ πολιορκίας μῆκος λαμβανούσης, ἐπισιτισμοῦ τοῖς Γαλάταις ἔδει, καὶ διελόντες αὑτοὺς οἱ μὲν τῷ βασιλεῖ παραμένοντες ἐφρούρουν τὸ Καπιτώλιον, οἱ δὲ τὴν χώραν περιιόντες ἐλεηλάτουν καὶ τὰς κώμας ἐπόρθουν προσπίπτοντες, οὐχ ὁμοῦ πάντες, ἄλλοι δ’ ἄλλῃ καθ’ ἡγεμονίας καὶ συντάγματα, τῷ μέγα φρονεῖν ὑπὸ τῶν εὐτυχημάτων καὶ δεδιέναι μηδὲν ἀποσκιδνάμενοι.

[2] τὸ δὲ πλεῖστον αὐτῶν καὶ μάλιστα συντεταγμένον ἐχώρει πρὸς τὴν Ἀρδεατῶν πόλιν, ἐν ᾗ διέτριβε Κάμιλλος ἀργῶν ταῖς πράξεσι μετὰ τὴν φυγὴν καὶ ἰδιωτεύων, ἐλπίδας δὲ λαμβάνων καὶ διαλογισμοὺς οὐχὶ τὸ λαθεῖν καὶ διαφυγεῖν τοὺς πολεμίους ἀγαπῶντος ἀνδρός, ἀλλ’ ὅπως [3] εἰ παραγένοιτο καιρὸς ἀμυνεῖται σκοποῦντος. διὸ καὶ τοὺς Ἀρδεάτας ὁρῶν πλήθει μὲν ἱκανοὺς ὄντας, ἐνδεεῖς δὲ τόλμης δι’ ἀπειρίαν καὶ μαλακίαν τῶν στρατηγῶν, ἐνέβαλε λόγον εἰς τοὺς νέους πρῶτον, ὡς οὐ χρὴ τὴν Ῥωμαίων ἀτυχίαν ἀνδρείαν Κελτῶν νομίζειν, οὐδ’ ἃ κακῶς φρονήσασι συνέβη παθεῖν ἐκείνοις ἔργα τῶν οὐδὲν εἰς τὸ νικῆσαι παρασχόντων, ἀλλὰ τύχης ἐπίδειξιν ἡγεῖσθαι.

[4] καλὸν μὲν οὖν εἶναι καὶ διὰ κινδύνων ἀπώσασθαι πόλεμον ἀλλόφυλον καὶ βαρβαρικόν, ᾧ τοῦ κρατεῖν πέρας ὥσπερ τῷ πυρὶ διαφθαρῆναι τὸ νικώμενον· οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ θαρροῦσι καὶ προθυμουμένοις αὐτοῖς ἀκίνδυνον [5] ἐν καιρῷ τὴν νίκην παρέξειν. τούτους τοὺς λόγους τῶν νέων δεξαμένων, ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄρχοντας ᾔει καὶ τοὺς προβούλους τῶν Ἀρδεατῶν ὁ Κάμιλλος. ὡς δὲ κἀκείνους συνέπεισεν, ὥπλισε τοὺς ἐν ἡλικίᾳ πάντας καὶ συνεῖχε τοῦ τείχους ἐντός, ἀγνοεῖσθαι βουλόμενος ὑπὸ [6] τῶν πολεμίων ἐγγὺς ὄντων. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν χώραν ἱππασάμενοι καὶ βαρεῖς ὄντες ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν ἀγομένων καὶ φερομένων ἀμελῶς καὶ ὀλιγώρως ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ κατεστρατοπέδευσαν, ἐκ δὲ τούτου νὺξ ἐπῆλθε μεθύουσιν αὐτοῖς καὶ σιωπὴ κατέσχε τὸ στρατόπεδον, πυθόμενος ταῦτα παρὰ τῶν κατασκόπων ὁ Κάμιλλος ἐξῆγε τοὺς Ἀρδεάτας, καὶ διεξελθὼν καθ’ ἡσυχίαν τὸν μεταξὺ τόπον, περὶ μέσας νύκτας προσέμειξε τῷ χάρακι, κραυγῇ τε χρώμενος πολλῇ καὶ ταῖς σάλπιγξι πανταχόθεν ἐκταράττων ἀνθρώπους κακῶς ὑπὸ μέθης καὶ μόγις ἐκ τῶν [7] ὕπνων ἀναφέροντας πρὸς τὸν θόρυβον. ὀλίγοι μὲν οὖν ἀνανήψαντες ἐν τῷ φόβῳ καὶ διασκευασάμενοι τοὺς περὶ τὸν Κάμιλλον ὑπέστησαν, ὥστ’ ἀμυνόμενοι πεσεῖν· τοὺς δὲ πλείστους ἔτι κρατουμένους ὕπνῳ καὶ οἴνῳ καταλαμβάνοντες ἀόπλους ἀπέκτεινον. ὅσοι δὲ νυκτὸς ἀπέδρασαν ἐκ τοῦ χάρακος οὐ πολλοί, τούτους μεθ’ ἡμέραν σποράδας ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ διαφερομένους ἐπελαύνοντες ἱππεῖς διέφθειρον.

[24] [1] Ἡ δὲ φήμη ταχὺ διαγγέλλουσα τὴν πρᾶξιν ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις, ἐξεκαλεῖτο πολλοὺς τῶν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ συνισταμένους, μάλιστα δὲ Ῥωμαίων ὅσοι διαφυγόντες ἐκ τῆς ἐπ’ Ἀλίᾳ μάχης ἐν Βηίοις ἦσαν, καὶ ὠδύροντο κατὰ σφᾶς αὐτούς· ‘οἷον ἡγεμόνα τῆς Ῥώμης ὁ δαίμων ἀφελόμενος Ἀρδεάτας ἐκόσμησε τοῖς Καμίλλου κατορθώμασιν, ἡ δὲ γειναμένη καὶ θρέψασα τοιοῦτον ἄνδρα πόλις [2] οἴχεται καὶ ἀπόλωλεν. ἡμεῖς δ’ ἀπορίᾳ στρατηγῶν ἀλλότρια τείχη περιβαλόμενοι καθήμεθα προέμενοι τὴν Ἰταλίαν. φέρε πέμψαντες Ἀρδεάτας ἀπαιτῶμεν τὸν αὑτῶν στρατηγόν, ἢ λαβόντες αὐτοὶ τὰ ὅπλα πρὸς ἐκεῖνον βαδίζωμεν. οὐκέτι γάρ ἐστι φυγὰς οὐδ’ ἡμεῖς πολῖται, πατρίδος οὐκ οὔσης, ἀλλὰ κρατουμένης ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων.’ [3] ταῦτ’ ἔδοξε, καὶ πέμψαντες ἐδέοντο τοῦ Καμίλλου δέχεσθαι τὴν ἀρχήν. ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἔφη πρότερον ἢ τοὺς ἐν τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ πολίτας ἐπιψηφίσασθαι κατὰ τὸν νόμον· ἐκείνους γὰρ ἡγεῖσθαι πατρίδα σῳζομένους, καὶ κελεύουσι μὲν ὑπακούσειν προθύμως, ἀκόντων δὲ μηδὲν πολυπραγμονήσειν.

[4] τῆς μὲν οὖν εὐλαβείας καὶ καλοκαγαθίας τὸν Κάμιλλον ἐθαύμασαν, ἦν δ’ ἀπορία τοῦ ταῦτα διαγγελοῦντος εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἀδύνατον ἐδόκει, τῶν πολεμίων ἐχόντων τὴν πόλιν, ἄγγελον εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν παρεισελθεῖν.

[25] [1] Ἦν δέ τις ἐν τοῖς νέοις Πόντιος Κομίνιος, τῶν μέσων κατὰ γένος πολιτῶν, δόξης δὲ καὶ τιμῆς ἐραστής.

[2] οὗτος ὑπέστη τὸν ἆθλον ἑκούσιος, καὶ γράμματα μὲν οὐκ ἔλαβε πρὸς τοὺς ἐν τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ, μὴ ληφθέντος αὐτοῦ φωράσωσιν οἱ πολέμιοι δι’ αὐτῶν τοῦ Καμίλλου τὴν διάνοιαν, ἐσθῆτα δὲ φαύλην ἔχων καὶ φελλοὺς ὑπ’ αὐτῇ κομίζων, τὴν μὲν ἄλλην ὁδὸν ἡμέρας ἀδεῶς διῆλθεν, ἐγγὺς δὲ τῆς πόλεως γενόμενος ἤδη σκοταῖος, ἐπεὶ κατὰ γέφυραν οὐκ ἦν τὸν ποταμὸν περᾶσαι τῶν βαρβάρων παραφυλαττόντων, τὴν μὲν ἐσθῆτα τῇ κεφαλῇ περισπειράσας, οὐ πολλὴν οὖσαν οὐδὲ βαρεῖαν, τοῖς δὲ φελλοῖς ἐφεὶς τὸ σῶμα καὶ συνεπικουφίζων ‹ἐν› τῷ περαιοῦσθαι, [3] πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ἐξέβη, καὶ παραλλάττων ἀεὶ τοὺς ἐγρηγορότας, τοῖς φέγγεσι καὶ τῷ θορύβῳ τεκμαιρόμενος, ἐβάδιζε πρὸς τὴν Καρμεντίδα πύλην· ἣ πλείστην εἶχεν ἡσυχίαν, καὶ μάλιστα κατ’ αὐτὴν ὄρθιος ὁ τοῦ Καπιτωλίου λόφος ἀνέστηκε καὶ πέτρα κύκλῳ πολλὴ καὶ τραχεῖα περιπέφυκε· δι’ ἧς ἀνέβη λαθὼν καὶ προσέμειξε τοῖς φυλάττουσι τὸ διατείχισμα χαλεπῶς καὶ μόλις κατὰ [4] τὸ λαγαρώτατον. ἀσπασάμενος δὲ τοὺς ἄνδρας καὶ φράσας ἑαυτὸν ἐξ ὀνόματος, ἀναληφθεὶς ἐχώρει πρὸς τοὺς ἐν τέλει τῶν Ῥωμαίων. ταχὺ δὲ συγκλήτου γενομένης, παρελθὼν τήν τε νίκην ἀπήγγελλε τοῦ Καμίλλου πρότερον οὐ πυθομένοις, καὶ τὰ δοκοῦντα τοῖς στρατιώταις διηγεῖτο, καὶ παρεκάλει βεβαιῶσαι τῷ Καμίλλῳ τὴν ἀρχήν, ὡς μόνῳ πεισομένων ἐκείνῳ τῶν ἔξω πολιτῶν. [5] οἱ δ’ ἀκούσαντες καὶ βουλευσάμενοι τόν τε Κάμιλλον ἀποδεικνύουσι δικτάτορα, καὶ τὸν Πόντιον αὖθις ἀποπέμπουσι, τὴν αὐτὴν ὁδὸν ὁμοίως ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ χρησάμενον· ἔλαθε γὰρ τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ τὰ παρὰ τῆς βουλῆς ἀπήγγελλε τοῖς ἔξω Ῥωμαίοις.

[26] [1] Ἐκείνων δὲ δεξαμένων προθύμως, ἀφικόμενος ὁ Κάμιλλος ἤδη μὲν ἐν ὅπλοις δισμυρίους κατέλαβε, πλείονας δὲ συνῆγεν ἀπὸ τῶν συμμάχων καὶ παρεσκευάζετο πρὸς τὴν ἐπίθεσιν. [οὕτω μὲν ᾑρέθη δικτάτωρ ὁ Κάμιλλος τὸ δεύτερον καὶ πορευθεὶς εἰς Βηίους ἐνέτυχε τοῖς στρατιώταις καὶ συνῆγε πλείους ἀπὸ τῶν συμμάχων [2] ὡς ἐπιθησόμενος τοῖς πολεμίοις.] ἐν δὲ τῇ Ῥώμῃ τῶν βαρβάρων τινὲς ἐκείνῃ κατὰ τύχην παρεξιόντες ᾗ διὰ νυκτὸς ὁ Πόντιος προσέβη τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ, καταμαθόντες πολλαχῇ μὲν ἴχνη τῶν ποδῶν καὶ τῶν χειρῶν, ὡς ἀντελαμβάνετο καὶ περιεδράττετο, πολλαχῇ δὲ τῶν ἐπιπεφυκότων τοῖς κρημνοῖς ἀποτριβὰς καὶ περιολισθήσεις [3] τῶν γεωδῶν, φράζουσι τῷ βασιλεῖ, κἀκεῖνος ἐπελθὼν καὶ θεασάμενος, τότε μὲν ἡσύχαζεν, ἑσπέρας δὲ τοὺς ἐλαφροτάτους τοῖς σώμασι καὶ πεφυκότας ὀρειβατεῖν μάλιστα [4] τῶν Κελτῶν συναγαγών, ‘τὴν μὲν ὁδὸν’ εἶπεν ‘ἡμῖν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἀγνοουμένην οἱ πολέμιοι δεικνύουσιν ὡς οὔτ’ ἀπόρευτος οὔτ’ ἄβατος ἀνθρώποις ἐστίν, αἰσχύνη δὲ πολλὴ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἔχοντας ἐλλείπειν πρὸς τὸ τέλος καὶ προέσθαι τὸν τόπον ὡς ἀνάλωτον, αὐτῶν τῶν πολεμίων [5] ᾗ ληπτός ἐστι διδασκόντων. ᾗ γὰρ ἑνὶ προσβῆναι ῥᾴδιον, οὐδὲ πολλοῖς καθ’ ἕνα δύσκολον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ῥώμη καὶ βοήθεια πολλὴ μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἐπιχειροῦσι. δωρεαὶ δὲ καὶ τιμαὶ πρέπουσαι τῆς ἀνδραγαθίας ἑκάστῳ δοθήσονται.’

[27] [1] Τοιαῦτα τοῦ βασιλέως διαλεχθέντος, ὑπέστησαν οἱ Γαλάται προθύμως, καὶ περὶ μέσας νύκτας ἐπιβάντες ἅμα πολλοὶ τῆς πέτρας ἐχώρουν ἄνω μετὰ σιωπῆς, ἐμφυόμενοι τοῖς χωρίοις ἀποτόμοις οὖσι καὶ χαλεποῖς, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον ἢ προσεδοκήθη πειρωμένων αὐτῶν προσιεμένοις καὶ παρείκουσιν, ὥστε τοὺς πρώτους ἁψαμένους τῶν ἄκρων καὶ διασκευασαμένους ὅσον οὐκ ἤδη τοῦ προτειχίσματος ἅπτεσθαι καὶ τοῖς φύλαξιν ἐπιχειρεῖν κοιμωμένοις· ᾔσθετο γὰρ οὔτ’ ἄνθρωπος οὔτε κύων.

[2] ἀλλὰ χῆνες ἦσαν ἱεροὶ περὶ τὸν νεὼν τῆς Ἥρας, τρεφόμενοι τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον ἀφθόνως, τότε δὲ τῶν σιτίων ἤδη γλίσχρως καὶ μόλις αὐτοῖς διαρκούντων ἀμελούμενοι [3] κακῶς ἔπραττον. ἔστι μὲν οὖν δὴ καὶ φύσει πρὸς αἴσθησιν ὀξὺ καὶ ψοφοδεὲς τὸ ζῷον· ἐκεῖνοι δὲ καὶ διὰ λιμὸν ἀγρυπνητικοὶ καὶ θορυβώδεις γεγονότες, ταχὺ τὴν ἔφοδον ᾔσθοντο τῶν Γαλατῶν, καὶ μετὰ δρόμου καὶ κλαγγῆς φερόμενοι πρὸς αὐτούς, ἐπήγειραν ἅπαντας, ἤδη καὶ τῶν βαρβάρων διὰ τὸ μὴ λανθάνειν ἀφειδούντων [4] θορύβου καὶ βιαιότερον ἐπιτιθεμένων. ἁρπάσαντες οὖν ὑπὸ σπουδῆς ᾧ τις ἕκαστος ὅπλῳ προσετύγχανεν, ἐκ τοῦ παρόντος ἐβοήθουν. πάντων δὲ πρῶτος Μάλλιος, ἀνὴρ ὑπατικὸς, τό τε σῶμα ῥωμαλέος καὶ φρονήματι ψυχῆς ἐπιφανής, ἀπαντήσας δυσὶν ὁμοῦ τῶν πολεμίων, τοῦ μὲν ἔφθασε διηρμένου κοπίδα τῷ ξίφει τὴν δεξιὰν ἀποκόψας, τὸν δὲ τῷ θυρεῷ πατάξας εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον ἔωσεν ὀπίσω [5] κατὰ τῆς πέτρας. ἐπιστὰς δὲ τῷ τείχει μετὰ τῶν συνδραμόντων καὶ γενομένων περὶ αὐτὸν ἀπέστρεψε τοὺς ἄλλους, οὔτε πολλοὺς ἄνω γενομένους οὔτε πράξαντάς [6] τι τῆς τόλμης ἄξιον. οὕτω δὲ τὸν κίνδυνον ἐκφυγόντες, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὸν μὲν ἄρχοντα τῶν φυλάκων ἔρριψαν εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους κατὰ τῆς πέτρας, τῷ δὲ Μαλλίῳ τῆς νίκης ἀριστεῖα πρὸς τιμὴν [μεγάλην] μᾶλλον ἢ χρείαν ψηφισάμενοι συνεισήνεγκαν ὅσον ἡμέρας ἕκαστος ἐλάμβανεν εἰς τροφήν, σίτου μὲν ἡμίλιτρον ἐπιχώριον - οὕτω γὰρ καλοῦσιν αὐτό - , οἴνου δὲ κοτύλης Ἑλληνικῆς τέταρτον.

[28] [1] Ἐκ τούτου τὰ τῶν Κελτῶν ἦν ἀθυμότερα. καὶ γὰρ ἐπιτηδείων ἐσπάνιζον, εἰργόμενοι προνομῆς φόβῳ τοῦ Καμίλλου, καὶ νόσος ὑπῳκούρησεν αὐτοὺς ἐν νεκρῶν πλήθει [καὶ] χύδην καταβεβλημένων σκηνοῦντας ἐν ἐρειπίοις, τό τε βάθος τῆς τέφρας, ἀέρα ξηρότητι καὶ δριμύτητι φαῦλον ὑπὸ πνευμάτων καὶ καυμάτων ἀναθυμιώσης, [2] ἐλυμαίνετο τὰ σώματα διὰ τῆς ἀναπνοῆς. μάλιστα δ’ ἡ μεταβολὴ τῆς συντρόφου διαίτης, ἐκ τόπων σκιερῶν καὶ θέρους καταφυγὰς ἀλύπους ἐχόντων ἐμβαλόντας εἰς χώραν ταπεινὴν καὶ κεκραμένην ἀφυῶς πρὸς μετόπωρον, ἐκίνησεν αὐτούς, ἥ τε πρὸς τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ καθέδρα καὶ σχολὴ γενομένη χρόνιος. ἕβδομον γὰρ ἐκεῖνον ᾠκούρουν [3] μῆνα πολιορκοῦντες. ὥστε φθορὰν εἶναι πολλὴν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, καὶ μηδὲ θάπτεσθαι διὰ πλῆθος ἔτι τοὺς ἀποθνῄσκοντας.

Οὐ μὴν παρὰ τοῦτο βελτίω τὰ πράγματα τοῖς πολιορκουμένοις ἦν. ἐπέτεινε γὰρ ὁ λιμός, ἥ τε τῶν περὶ Κάμιλλον ἄγνοια παρεῖχε δυσθυμίαν· οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἐφοίτα παρ’ αὐτῶν διὰ τὸ φρουρεῖσθαι τὴν πόλιν ἀκριβῶς ὑπὸ [4] τῶν βαρβάρων. ὅθεν οὕτω πράττουσιν ἀμφοτέροις ἐγίνοντο συμβατικοὶ λόγοι διὰ τῶν προφυλάκων τὸ πρῶτον ἀλλήλοις ἐντυγχανόντων· εἶθ’ ὡς ἔδοξε τοῖς κρατίστοις, συνελθόντος εἰς λόγους Βρέννῳ Σουλπικίου τοῦ χιλιάρχου τῶν Ῥωμαίων, ὡμολογήθη τοὺς μὲν χιλίας λίτρας χρυσίου καταβαλεῖν, τοὺς δὲ λαβόντας ἐκ τῆς πόλεως αὐτίκα [5] καὶ τῆς χώρας ἀπελθεῖν. ἐπὶ τούτοις γενομένων ὅρκων καὶ τοῦ χρυσίου κομισθέντος, τῶν δὲ Κελτῶν περὶ τὸν σταθμὸν ἀγνωμονούντων κρύφα τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα καὶ φανερῶς ἀφελκόντων καὶ διαστρεφόντων τὴν [6] ῥοπήν, ἠγανάκτουν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι πρὸς αὐτούς. ὁ δὲ Βρέννος οἷον ἐφυβρίζων καὶ καταγελῶν ἀπολυσάμενος τὴν μάχαιραν ἅμα καὶ τὸν ζωστῆρα προσέθηκε τοῖς σταθμοῖς· πυνθανομένου δὲ τοῦ Σουλπικίου ‘τί τοῦτο;’ ‘τί γὰρ ἄλλο’ εἶπεν ‘ἢ τοῖς νενικημένοις ὀδύνη;’ τοῦτο μὲν [7] οὖν ἤδη παροιμιώδης λόγος γέγονε. τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων οἱ μὲν ἠγανάκτουν καὶ τὸ χρυσίον ᾤοντο δεῖν λαβόντας αὖθις ἀπιέναι καὶ τὴν πολιορκίαν ὑπομένειν, οἱ δὲ συγχωρεῖν ἐκέλευον ἀδικουμένους μέτρια, καὶ μὴ τῷ πλέον διδόναι προσλογίζεσθαι τὸ αἰσχρόν, αὐτό γε τὸ δοῦναι διὰ τὸν καιρὸν οὐ καλῶς ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαίως ὑπομένοντας.

[29] [1] Οὔσης δὲ περὶ τούτων πρός τε τοὺς Κελτοὺς καὶ πρὸς αὑτοὺς διαφορᾶς, ἄγων τὸν στρατὸν ὁ Κάμιλλος ἐν ταῖς πύλαις ἦν, καὶ πυθόμενος τὰ γινόμενα, τοὺς ἄλλους ἐκέλευσεν ἐν τάξει καὶ σχέδην ἐπακολουθεῖν, αὐτὸς δὲ μετὰ τῶν ἀρίστων ἐπειγόμενος εὐθὺς ἐπορεύετο πρὸς [2] τοὺς Ῥωμαίους. διαστάντων δὲ πάντων καὶ δεξαμένων αὐτὸν ὡς αὐτοκράτορα κόσμῳ καὶ σιωπῇ, τὸν μὲν χρυσὸν ἄρας ἀπὸ τοῦ ζυγοῦ τοῖς ὑπηρέταις ἔδωκε, τὸν δὲ ζυγὸν καὶ τὰ σταθμὰ τοὺς Κελτοὺς λαβόντας ἀποχωρεῖν ἐκέλευσεν, εἰπὼν ὡς σιδήρῳ πάτριόν ἐστι Ῥωμαίοις, οὐ [3] χρυσῷ, τὴν πατρίδα σῴζειν. ἀγανακτοῦντος δὲ τοῦ Βρέννου καὶ φάσκοντος ἀδικεῖσθαι λυομένης τῆς ὁμολογίας, ἀντεῖπε μὴ νομίμως γεγονέναι μηδὲ κυρίας εἶναι τὰς συνθήκας· ἤδη γὰρ αὐτοῦ δικτάτορος ᾑρημένου καὶ μηδενὸς ἄρχοντος ἑτέρου νόμῳ, πρὸς οὐκ ἔχοντας ἐξουσίαν [4] ὁμολογηθῆναι. νυνὶ δὲ χρῆναι λέγειν εἴ τι βούλονται· νόμῳ γὰρ ἥκειν κύριος γεγονὼς συγγνώμην τε δοῦναι δεομένοις καὶ δίκην εἰ μὴ μετανοοῦσιν ἐπιθεῖναι τοῖς αἰτίοις. πρὸς ταῦτα θορυβηθεὶς ὁ Βρέννος ἥψατο μὲν ἁψιμαχίας, καὶ προῆλθον ἄχρι ξιφουλκίας ἑκάτεροι καὶ διωθισμῶν, ἀναμεμειγμένοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὥσπερ εἰκός, ἐν οἰκίαις καὶ στενωποῖς ἀναστρεφόμενοι καὶ χωρίοις [5] δέξασθαι παράταξιν οὐ δυναμένοις. ταχὺ δὲ συμφρονήσας ὁ Βρέννος ἀπήγαγε τοὺς Κελτοὺς εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον οὐ πολλῶν πεσόντων, καὶ νυκτὸς ἀναστήσας ἅπαντας ἐξέλιπε τὴν πόλιν, καὶ προελθὼν ἑξήκοντα σταδίους κατεστρατοπέδευσε [6] παρὰ τὴν Γαβινίαν ὁδόν. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ παρῆν ὁ Κάμιλλος ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ὡπλισμένους λαμπρῶς καὶ τεθαρρηκότας ἔχων τότε τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, καὶ γενομένης ἰσχυρᾶς μάχης ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον, αὐτούς τε τρέπεται πολλῷ φόνῳ καὶ λαμβάνει τὸ στρατόπεδον. τῶν δὲ φευγόντων οἱ μὲν εὐθὺς ἀνῃρέθησαν καταδιωχθέντες, τοὺς δὲ πλείστους διασπαρέντας ἐπεκθέοντες ἐκ τῶν πέριξ κωμῶν καὶ πόλεων ἔκτεινον.

[30] [1] Οὕτω μὲν ἡ Ῥώμη παραλόγως ἥλω καὶ παραλογώτερον ἐσώθη, μῆνας ἑπτὰ τοὺς πάντας ὑπὸ τοῖς βαρβάροις γενομένη. παρελθόντες γὰρ εἰς αὐτὴν ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις ὕστερον τῶν Κυϊντιλίων εἰδῶν, περὶ τὰς Φεβρουαρίας [2] εἰδοὺς ἐξέπεσον. ὁ δὲ Κάμιλλος ἐθριάμβευσε μέν, ὡς εἰκὸς ἦν τὸν ἀπολωλυίας πατρίδος σωτῆρα γενόμενον καὶ καταγαγόντα τὴν πόλιν αὐτὴν εἰς ἑαυτήν· [3] οἵ τε γὰρ ἔξωθεν ἅμα παισὶ καὶ γυναιξὶν εἰσελαύνοντος αὐτοῦ συγκατῄεσαν, οἵ τε πολιορκηθέντες ἐν τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ, μικροῦ δεήσαντες ἀπολέσθαι διὰ λιμόν, ἀπήντων περιβάλλοντες ἀλλήλους καὶ δακρύοντες ἀπιστίᾳ τῆς παρούσης ἡδονῆς, ἱερεῖς τε καὶ ζάκοροι θεῶν, ὅσα φεύγοντες αὐτόθι τῶν ἀβεβήλων ἔκρυψαν ἢ σὺν αὑτοῖς ἐξέκλεψαν, ἀνασῳζόμενα καὶ κεκοσμημένα κομίζοντες ἐπεδείκνυντο, ποθουμένας ὄψεις τοῖς πολίταις, δεχομένοις μετὰ χαρᾶς, ὥσπερ αὐτῶν τῶν θεῶν αὖθις εἰς τὴν [4] Ῥώμην συγκατερχομένων. θύσας δὲ τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ καθάρας τὴν πόλιν ἐξηγουμένων τῶν περὶ ταῦτα δεινῶν, τὰ μὲν ὄντα τῶν ἱερῶν κατέστησεν, αὐτὸς δ’ ἱδρύσατο νεὼν Φήμης καὶ Κληδόνος, ἀνευρὼν ἐκεῖνον τὸν τόπον ἐν ᾧ νύκτωρ ἡ καταγγέλλουσα τὴν τῶν βαρβάρων στρατείαν ἐκ θεοῦ τῷ Καιδικίῳ φωνὴ προσέπεσε.

[31] [1] Χαλεπῶς μὲν οὖν καὶ μόλις αἱ τῶν ἱερῶν ἀνεκαλύπτοντο χῶραι φιλοτιμίᾳ τοῦ Καμίλλου καὶ πόνῳ πολλῷ τῶν ἱεροφαντῶν. ὡς δὲ καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀνοικοδομεῖν ἔδει παντάπασι διεφθαρμένην, ἀθυμία πρὸς τὸ ἔργον ἐνέπιπτε τοῖς πολλοῖς, καὶ μέλλησις ἦν ἐστερημένοις ἁπάντων καί τινος ἐν τῷ παρόντι ῥᾳστώνης καὶ ἀναπαύσεως ἐκ κακῶν δεομένοις μᾶλλον ἢ κάμνειν καὶ ἀποτρύχειν ἑαυτούς, [2] οὔτε χρήμασιν οὔτε σώμασιν ἐρρωμένους. οὕτω δ’ ἡσυχῇ πρὸς τοὺς Βηίους αὖθις ἀποστρεφόμενοι, πόλιν ἅπασι κατεσκευασμένην καὶ διαμένουσαν, ἀρχὰς δημαγωγιῶν ἐνέδοσαν τοῖς πρὸς χάριν εἰθισμένοις ὁμιλεῖν, καὶ λόγων ἠκροῶντο στασιαστικῶν πρὸς τὸν Κάμιλλον, ὡς ἐκείνου φιλοτιμίας ἕνεκα καὶ δόξης ἰδίας ἀποστεροῦντος αὐτοὺς πόλεως ἑτοίμης καὶ βιαζομένου κινεῖν ἐρείπια καὶ πυρκαϊὰν τοσαύτην ἐγείρειν, ὅπως μὴ μόνον ἡγεμὼν Ῥώμης καὶ στρατηγός, ἀλλὰ καὶ κτίστης λέγηται, παρώσας Ῥωμύλον.

[3] ἐκ τούτου φοβηθεῖσα τὸν θόρυβον ἡ βουλὴ τὸν μὲν Κάμιλλον οὐκ εἴασε βουλόμενον ἀποθέσθαι τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐντὸς ἐνιαυτοῦ, καίπερ ἓξ μῆνας οὐδενὸς ὑπερβαλόντος ἑτέρου δικτάτορος, αὐτὴ δὲ παρεμυθεῖτο καὶ κατεπράυνε πείθουσα καὶ δεξιουμένη τὸν δῆμον, ἐπιδεικνυμένη μὲν ἡρῷα καὶ τάφους πατέρων, ὑπομιμνῄσκουσα δὲ χωρίων ἱερῶν καὶ τόπων ἁγίων, οὓς Ῥωμύλος ἢ Νομᾶς ἤ τις ἄλλος αὐτοῖς τῶν βασιλέων ἐπιθειάσας [4] παρέδωκεν. ἐν πρώτοις δὲ τῶν θείων τήν τε νεοσφαγῆ κεφαλὴν προὔφερον, ἐν τῇ θεμελιώσει τοῦ Καπιτωλίου φανεῖσαν, ὡς τῷ τόπῳ πεπρωμένον ἐκείνῳ τῆς Ἰταλίας κεφαλῇ γενέσθαι, καὶ τὸ τῆς Ἑστίας πῦρ, ὃ μετὰ τὸν πόλεμον ὑπὸ τῶν παρθένων ἀναπτόμενον αὖθις ἀφανίζειν καὶ σβεννύναι τοὺς προλιπόντας τὴν πόλιν, ὄνειδος αὐτοῖς ἐσόμενον, ἄν θ’ ὑπ’ ἄλλων οἰκουμένην ὁρῶσιν ἐπηλύδων καὶ ξένων ἄν τ’ ἔρημον οὖσαν καὶ μηλόβοτον.

[5] τοιαῦτα καὶ πρὸς ἕκαστον ἰδίᾳ καὶ κοινῇ πολλάκις ἐν τῷ δήμῳ σχετλιάζοντες, ἐπεκλῶντο πάλιν ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν, τὴν παροῦσαν ὀλοφυρομένων ἀμηχανίαν καὶ δεομένων μὴ σφᾶς ὥσπερ ἐκ ναυαγίου γυμνοὺς καὶ ἀπόρους σωθέντας προσβιάζεσθαι τὰ λείψανα τῆς διεφθαρμένης συμπηγνύναι πόλεως, ἑτέρας ἑτοίμης παρούσης.

[32] [1] Ἔδοξεν οὖν βουλὴν προθεῖναι τῷ Καμίλλῳ, καὶ πολλὰ μὲν αὐτὸς διεξῆλθε παρακαλῶν ὑπὲρ τῆς Ῥώμης, πολλὰ δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὁ βουλόμενος. τέλος δὲ τὸν πρῶτον εἰωθότα λέγειν γνώμην Λεύκιον Λουκρήτιον ἀναστήσας ἐκέλευσεν ἀποφαίνεσθαι πρῶτον, εἶτα τοὺς ἄλλους [2] ἐφεξῆς. γενομένης δὲ σιωπῆς καὶ τοῦ Λουκρητίου μέλλοντος ἐνάρχεσθαι, κατὰ τύχην ἔξωθεν ἑκατοντάρχης ἄγων τάγμα φυλακῆς ἡμερινῆς παρεπορεύετο, καὶ τὸν φέροντα [πρῶτον] τὸ σημεῖον μεγάλῃ φωνῇ προσαγορεύσας ἐκέλευσεν αὐτοῦ μένειν καὶ τὸ σημεῖον τίθεσθαι· [3] κάλλιστα γὰρ ἐνταῦθα καθεδεῖσθαι καὶ μενεῖν. ἅμα δὲ τῷ καιρῷ καὶ τῇ περὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἐννοίᾳ καὶ ἀδηλότητι τῆς φωνῆς γενομένης, ὅ τε Λουκρήτιος ἔφη προσκυνήσας τῷ θεῷ προστίθεσθαι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γνώμην, καὶ τῶν [4] ἄλλων ἕκαστος ἐπηκολούθησε. θαυμαστὴ δὲ καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ἔσχε μεταβολὴ τῆς ὁρμῆς, ἀλλήλους παρακαλούντων καὶ προτρεπομένων πρὸς τὸ ἔργον, οὐκ ἐκ διανομῆς τινος ἢ τάξεως, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἕκαστος ἑτοιμότητος ἢ βουλήσεως [5] εἶχε τῶν χωρίων καταλαμβανομένων. διὸ καὶ τεταραγμένην τοῖς στενωποῖς καὶ συμπεφυρμένην ταῖς οἰκήσεσιν ἀνήγαγον τὴν πόλιν ὑπὸ σπουδῆς καὶ τάχους. ἐντὸς γὰρ ἐνιαυτοῦ λέγεται καὶ τοῖς τείχεσι καινὴ καὶ ταῖς ἰδιωτικαῖς οἰκοδομαῖς ἀναστῆναι πάλιν.

[6] Οἱ δὲ τοὺς ἱεροὺς τόπους ἀναλαβεῖν καὶ ὁρίσαι ταχθέντες ὑπὸ τοῦ Καμίλλου, συγκεχυμένων ἁπάντων, ὡς ἧκον ἐπὶ τὴν καλιάδα τοῦ Ἄρεως περιοδεύοντες τὸ Παλάτιον, αὐτὴν μὲν ὡς τἆλλα διεφθαρμένην καὶ κατακεκαυμένην εὗρον ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, σκευωρούμενοι δὲ καὶ καθαίροντες τὸ χωρίον, ἐντυγχάνουσι τῷ μαντικῷ ξύλῳ τοῦ Ῥωμύλου, κατὰ τέφρας πολλῆς καὶ βαθείας [7] καταδεδυκότι. τοῦτο δ’ ἔστι μὲν ἐπικαμπὲς ἐκ θατέρου πέρατος, καλεῖται δὲ λίτυον· χρῶνται δ’ αὐτῷ πρὸς τὰς τῶν πλινθίων ὑπογραφάς, ὅταν ἐπ’ ὄρνισι διαμαντευόμενοι καθέζωνται, ὡς κἀκεῖνος ἐχρῆτο μαντικώτατος ὤν. ἐπειδὴ δ’ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἠφανίσθη, παραλαβόντες οἱ ἱερεῖς τὸ ξύλον ὥσπερ ἄλλο τι τῶν ἱερῶν ἄψαυστον ἐφύλαττον.

[8] τοῦτο δὴ τότε τῶν ἄλλων ἀπολωλότων ἀνευρόντες διαπεφευγὸς τὴν φθοράν, ἡδίους ἐγένοντο ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ὑπὲρ τῆς Ῥώμης, ὡς ἀίδιον αὐτῇ τὴν σωτηρίαν τοῦ σημείου βεβαιοῦντος.

[33] [1] Οὔπω δὲ τῆς περὶ ταῦτα πεπαυμένοις ἀσχολίας αὐτοῖς ἐπιπίπτει πόλεμος, Αἰκανῶν μὲν ἅμα καὶ Οὐολούσκων καὶ Λατίνων εἰς τὴν χώραν ἐμβαλόντων, Τυρρηνῶν δὲ πολιορκούντων Σούτριον, συμμαχίδα Ῥωμαίων [2] πόλιν. ἐπειδὴ δ’ οἱ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἔχοντες χιλίαρχοι στρατοπεδευσάμενοι περὶ τὸ Μαίκιον ὄρος ὑπὸ τῶν Λατίνων ἐπολιορκοῦντο καὶ κινδυνεύοντες ἀποβαλεῖν τὸ στρατόπεδον εἰς Ῥώμην ἔπεμψαν, ἀποδείκνυται τὸ τρίτον Κάμιλλος δικτάτωρ.

Περὶ τούτου τοῦ πολέμου διττοὶ λόγοι λέγονται· δίειμι [3] δὲ τὸν μυθώδη πρότερον. φασὶ τοὺς Λατίνους, εἴτε προφάσει χρωμένους, εἴτε βουλομένους ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀναμείξασθαι τὰ γένη πάλιν ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς, πέμψαντας αἰτεῖν παρὰ τῶν Ῥωμαίων παρθένους ἐλευθέρας καὶ γυναῖκας.

[4] ἀπορούντων δὲ τῶν Ῥωμαίων τί χρὴ ποιεῖν - καὶ γὰρ τὸν πόλεμον ὠρρώδουν οὔπω καθεστῶτες οὐδ’ ἀνειληφότες αὑτούς, καὶ τὴν αἴτησιν τῶν γυναικῶν ὑπώπτευον ἐξομήρευσιν εἶναι, τοῦ δ’ εὐπρεποῦς χάριν ἐπιγαμίαν καλεῖσθαι - , θεραπαινίδα τοὔνομα Τουτούλαν, ὡς δ’ ἔνιοι λέγουσι Φιλωτίδα, τοῖς ἄρχουσι παραινέσαι πέμπειν σὺν αὐτῇ τῶν δμωίδων τὰς ἐν ὥρᾳ μάλιστα καὶ ταῖς ὄψεσιν ἐλευθερίους, κοσμήσαντας ὡς νύμφας εὐγενεῖς, τὰ λοιπὰ [5] δ’ αὐτῇ μελήσειν. πεισθέντας δὲ τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἐπιλέξασθαι τῶν θεραπαινίδων ὅσας ἐκείνη πρὸς τὴν χρείαν ἐδοκίμασε, καὶ κοσμήσαντας ἐσθῆτι καὶ χρυσῷ παραδοῦναι τοῖς Λατίνοις, οὐ πάνυ πρόσω τῆς πόλεως στρατοπεδεύουσι. νύκτωρ δὲ τὰς μὲν ἄλλας ὑφελέσθαι τὰ ἐγχειρίδια τῶν πολεμίων, τὴν δ’ εἴτε Τουτούλαν εἴτε Φιλωτίδα προσβᾶσαν ἐρινεῷ μεγάλῳ καὶ παρατείνασαν ὀπίσω τὸ ἱμάτιον ἆραι πυρσὸν εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην, ὥσπερ ἦν αὐτῇ συγκείμενον πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας, οὐδενὸς ἄλλου [6] τῶν πολιτῶν εἰδότος. δι’ ὃ καὶ θορυβώδη γενέσθαι τὴν τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἔξοδον, ὡς κατήπειγον οἱ ἄρχοντες, ἀλλήλους ἀνακαλούντων καὶ μόλις εἰς τὴν τάξιν καθισταμένων. ἐπελθόντας δὲ τῷ χάρακι τῶν πολεμίων οὐ προσδεχομένων καὶ καθευδόντων, ἑλεῖν τὸ στρατόπεδον [7] καὶ διαφθεῖραι τοὺς πλείστους. τοῦτο δὲ γενέσθαι ταῖς νῦν Ἰουλίαις, τότε δὲ Κυϊντιλίαις νώναις, καὶ τὴν ἀγομένην ἑορτὴν ὑπόμνημα τῆς πράξεως ἐκείνης εἶναι. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἐξιόντες ἀθρόοι διὰ τῆς πύλης πολλὰ τῶν ἐπιχωρίων καὶ κοινῶν ὀνομάτων βοῇ φθέγγονται, Γάιον, Μᾶρκον, Λούκιον καὶ τὰ τούτοις ὅμοια, μιμούμενοι τὴν τότε γενομένην μετὰ σπουδῆς ἀλλήλων ἀνάκλησιν. ἔπειτα κεκοσμημέναι λαμπρῶς αἱ θεραπαινίδες περιίασι παίζουσαι [8] διὰ σκωμμάτων εἰς τοὺς ἀπαντῶντας. γίνεται δὲ καὶ μάχη τις αὐταῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλας, ὡς καὶ τότε τοῦ πρὸς τοὺς Λατίνους ἀγῶνος συνεπιλαμβανομέναις. ἑστιώμεναι δὲ καθέζονται κλάδοις συκῆς σκιαζόμεναι, καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν νώνας Καπρατίνας καλοῦσιν, ὡς οἴονται διὰ τὸν ἐρινεὸν ἀφ’ οὗ τὴν παιδίσκην τὸν πυρσὸν ἆραι· τὸν γὰρ [9] ἐρινεὸν καπρίφικον ὀνομάζουσιν. ἕτεροι δὲ τούτων τὰ πλεῖστα δρᾶσθαι καὶ λέγεσθαί φασιν ἐπὶ τῷ τοῦ Ῥωμύλου πάθει· κατὰ ταύτην γὰρ ἀφανισθῆναι τὴν ἡμέραν αὐτὸν ἔξω πύλης, ζόφου καὶ θυέλλης ἄφνω περισχούσης, [10] ὡς δ’ ἔνιοι νομίζουσιν ἐκλείψεως ἡλίου γενομένης, καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἀπὸ τοῦ τόπου νώνας Καπρατίνας κληθῆναι· τὴν γὰρ αἶγα κάπραν καλοῦσιν, ὁ δὲ Ῥωμύλος ἠφανίσθη δημηγορῶν περὶ τὸ τῆς αἰγὸς ἕλος προσαγορευόμενον, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γέγραπται (Rom. 27).

[34] [1] Τὸν δ’ ἕτερον λόγον οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν συγγραφέων δοκιμάζοντες οὕτω λέγουσιν. ἀποδειχθεὶς δικτάτωρ τὸ τρίτον ὁ Κάμιλλος καὶ πυθόμενος τὸ μετὰ τῶν χιλιάρχων στράτευμα πολιορκούμενον ὑπὸ τῶν Λατίνων καὶ τῶν Οὐολούσκων, ἠναγκάσθη καὶ τοὺς οὐκ ἐν ὥρᾳ τῶν πολιτῶν, [2] ἀλλ’ ἤδη παρηβηκότας καθοπλίσαι. περιελθὼν δὲ μακρὰν περίοδον περὶ τὸ Μαίκιον ὄρος καὶ λαθὼν τοὺς πολεμίους, ἵδρυσε τὴν στρατιὰν κατόπιν αὐτῶν, καὶ πυρὰ πολλὰ καύσας διεσήμηνε τὴν αὑτοῦ παρουσίαν. οἱ μὲν οὖν πολιορκούμενοι θαρρήσαντες ἐπεξιέναι διενοοῦντο καὶ μάχην συνάπτειν· οἱ δὲ Λατῖνοι καὶ Οὐολοῦσκοι συστείλαντες εἴσω τοῦ χάρακος ἑαυτούς, ἀπεσταύρουν ξύλοις πολλοῖς καὶ διεφράγνυντο πανταχόθεν τὸ στρατόπεδον, ἀμφίβολοι γεγονότες ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων καὶ περιμένειν ἐγνωκότες ἑτέραν οἴκοθεν δύναμιν, ἅμα δὲ [3] καὶ Τυρρηνῶν προσδεχόμενοι βοήθειαν. τοῦτο δ’ αἰσθόμενος ὁ Κάμιλλος καὶ δεδοικὼς ταὐτὰ παθεῖν ἅπερ ἐποίησεν αὐτὸς τοὺς πολεμίους κυκλωσάμενος, ἔσπευδε προλαβεῖν τὸν καιρόν. ὄντος δὲ τοῦ περιφράγματος ξυλίνου καὶ πνεύματος μεγάλου κατιόντος ἀπὸ τῶν ὀρῶν ἅμα φάει, πυροβόλα παρασκευασάμενος καὶ περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον ἐξαγαγὼν τὴν δύναμιν, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἐκέλευσε χρῆσθαι βέλεσι καὶ κραυγῇ καθ’ ἕτερον μέρος, αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς τὸ πῦρ ἀφήσειν μέλλοντας ἔχων, ὅθεν εἰώθει μάλιστα προσπίπτειν ὁ ἄνεμος τῷ χάρακι τῶν πολεμίων, [4] ἀνέμενε τὴν ὥραν. ἐπεὶ δὲ συνεστώσης τῆς μάχης ὅ θ’ ἥλιος ἀνῄει καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα λαμπρὸν ἐξέπιπτε, σημήνας ἐπιδρομὴν κατέσπειρε τοῦ χάρακος ἄφθονα τῶν πυροβόλων. ταχὺ δὲ πολλῆς φλογὸς ἐν ὕλῃ πυκνῇ καὶ σταυρώμασι ξυλίνοις ἀνατραφείσης καὶ κύκλῳ περινεμομένης, οὐδὲν ἄκος οὐδὲ σβεστήριον ἔχοντες οἱ Λατῖνοι παρεσκευασμένον, ὡς πλῆρες ἦν ἤδη τὸ στρατόπεδον πυρός, ἐπ’ ὀλίγον συστελλόμενοι τόπον ἐξέπιπτον ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης πρὸς ὡπλισμένους καὶ παρατεταγμένους πρὸ [5] τοῦ χάρακος τοὺς πολεμίους· καὶ τούτων μὲν ὀλίγοι διέφυγον, τοὺς δὲ καταλειφθέντας ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ πάντας διέφθειρε τὸ πῦρ, μέχρι οὗ κατασβέσαντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι τὰ χρήματα διήρπασαν.

[35] [1] Γενομένων δὲ τούτων, ἀπολιπὼν ἐπὶ στρατοπέδου τὸν υἱὸν Λεύκιον φύλακα τῶν ἡλωκότων ἀνθρώπων καὶ χρημάτων, αὐτὸς εἰς τὴν τῶν πολεμίων ἐνέβαλε, καὶ τὴν Αἰκανῶν πόλιν ἐξελὼν καὶ προσαγαγόμενος τοὺς Οὐολούσκους, εὐθὺς ἦγε τὴν στρατιὰν πρὸς τὸ Σούτριον, οὔπω τὰ συμβεβηκότα τοῖς Σουτρίνοις πεπυσμένος, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔτι κινδυνεύουσι καὶ πολιορκουμένοις ὑπὸ [2] τῶν Τυρρηνῶν βοηθῆσαι σπεύδων. οἱ δ’ ἔτυχον ἤδη τὴν μὲν πόλιν τοῖς πολεμίοις παραδεδωκότες, αὐτοὶ δὲ πάντων ἐνδεεῖς ἐν ἱματίοις μόνον ἀφειμένοι, καὶ καθ’ ὁδὸν ὄντι τῷ Καμίλλῳ μετὰ τέκνων καὶ γυναικῶν ἀπήντων, [3] ὀδυρόμενοι τὰς αὑτῶν τύχας. ὁ δὲ Κάμιλλος αὐτός τε πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν ἐπικλασθείς, καὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ὁρῶν ἐμφυομένων αὐτοῖς τῶν Σουτρίνων δακρύοντας καὶ δυσανασχετοῦντας ἐπὶ τοῖς γεγενημένοις, οὐκ ἔγνω ποιεῖσθαι τῆς τιμωρίας ἀναβολήν, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἦγεν ἐπὶ τὸ Σούτριον ἐκείνης τῆς ἡμέρας, λογιζόμενος ἀνθρώπους εὐδαίμονα καὶ πλουσίαν πόλιν ἄρτι κατειληφότας καὶ μηδένα τῶν πολεμίων ὑπολελοιπότας ἐν αὐτῇ μηδὲ προσδεχομένους ἔξωθεν, ἐκλελυμένους παντάπασι καὶ ἀφυλάκτους [4] εὑρήσειν· ὀρθῶς λογισάμενος. οὐ γὰρ μόνον τὴν χώραν ἔλαθε διελθών, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς ταῖς πύλαις γενόμενος καὶ τὰ τείχη καταλαβών· ἐφύλαττε γὰρ οὐδείς, ἀλλ’ ἐν οἴνῳ καὶ συνουσίαις ἦσαν, ἐσκεδασμένοι κατὰ τὰς [5] οἰκίας. ἐπεὶ δ’ ᾔσθοντο τοὺς πολεμίους ἤδη κρατοῦντας, οὕτω διέκειντο μοχθηρῶς ὑπὸ πλησμονῆς καὶ μέθης, ὥστε μηδὲ πρὸς φυγὴν ὁρμῆσαι πολλούς, ἀλλ’ ἐν ταῖς οἰκίαις αἴσχιστα πάντων ὑπομένοντας ἀποθνῄσκειν, ἢ παραδιδόναι σφᾶς αὐτοὺς τοῖς πολεμίοις. τὴν μὲν οὖν Σουτρίνων πόλιν ἐν ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ δὶς ἁλοῦσαν οὕτω συνέβη καὶ τοὺς ἔχοντας ἀποβαλεῖν, καὶ τοὺς ἀφῃρημένους ἀπολαβεῖν διὰ Κάμιλλον.

[36] [1] Ὁ δ’ ἀπὸ τούτων θρίαμβος αὐτῷ χάριν οὐκ ἐλάττονα καὶ κόσμον ἤνεγκε τῶν πρώτων δυεῖν. καὶ γὰρ τοὺς πάνυ βασκαίνοντας τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ πάντα βουλομένους εὐτυχίᾳ τινὶ μᾶλλον ἢ δι’ ἀρετὴν κατωρθῶσθαι τότ’ ἠνάγκαζον αἱ πράξεις τῇ δεινότητι καὶ τῷ δραστηρίῳ [2] τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀποδιδόναι τὴν δόξαν. ἦν δὲ τῶν διαμαχομένων αὐτῷ καὶ προσφθονούντων ἐπιφανέστατος Μᾶρκος Μάλλιος, ὁ πρῶτος ὠσάμενος ἀπὸ τῆς ἄκρας τοὺς Κελτούς, ὅτε τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ νυκτὸς ἐπέθεντο, καὶ [3] διὰ τοῦτο Καπιτωλῖνος ἐπικληθείς. οὗτος γὰρ ἀξιῶν πρῶτος εἶναι τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ μὴ δυνάμενος τὸν Κάμιλλον ἀπὸ τοῦ βελτίστου τρόπου τῇ δόξῃ παρελθεῖν, ἐπίθεσιν τυραννίδος ἐποιήσατο κοινὴν καὶ συνήθη, δημαγωγῶν τοὺς πολλούς, μάλιστα δὲ τῶν ὀφειλόντων χρέα τοῖς μὲν παριστάμενος καὶ συνδικῶν ἐπὶ τοὺς δανειστάς, τοὺς δ’ ἀφαιρούμενος βίᾳ καὶ κωλύων ἄγεσθαι πρὸς τὸν νόμον, ὥστε πολλοὺς ταχὺ τῶν ἀπόρων περὶ αὐτὸν γενέσθαι καὶ πολὺν φόβον παρασχεῖν τοῖς βελτίστοις τῶν πολιτῶν θρασυνομένους καὶ ταράττοντας τὴν ἀγοράν.

[4] ἐπεὶ δὲ κατασταθεὶς ἐπὶ ταῦτα δικτάτωρ Κούιντος Καπιτωλῖνος εἰς τὴν εἱρκτὴν ἐνέβαλε τὸν Μάλλιον, ὁ δὲ δῆμος τούτου γενομένου μετέβαλε τὴν ἐσθῆτα, πρᾶγμα γινόμενον ἐπὶ συμφοραῖς μεγάλαις καὶ δημοσίαις, δείσασα τὸν θόρυβον ἡ σύγκλητος ἐκέλευσεν ἀφεθῆναι τὸν [5] Μάλλιον. ὁ δ’ οὐδὲν ἦν ἀφεθεὶς ἀμείνων, ἀλλὰ σοβαρώτερον ἐδημαγώγει καὶ διεστασίαζε τὴν πόλιν. αἱροῦνται δὴ πάλιν χιλίαρχον τὸν Κάμιλλον. εἰσαγομένων δὲ τῶν κατὰ τοῦ Μαλλίου δικῶν, μεγάλα τοὺς κατηγόρους [6] ἔβλαπτεν ἡ ὄψις. ὁ γὰρ τόπος, ἐφ’ οὗ βεβηκὼς ὁ Μάλλιος ἐνυκτομάχησε πρὸς τοὺς Κελτούς, ὑπερεφαίνετο τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ Καπιτωλίου καὶ παρεῖχεν οἶκτον τοῖς ὁρῶσιν, αὐτός τε τὰς χεῖρας ὀρέγων ἐκεῖ καὶ δακρύων ὑπεμίμνῃσκε τῶν ἀγώνων, ὥστε τοὺς κρίνοντας ἀπορεῖν καὶ πολλάκις ὑπερβάλλεσθαι τὴν δίκην, μήτ’ ἀφεῖναι βουλομένους ἐπὶ τεκμηρίοις φανεροῖς τὸ ἀδίκημα, μήτε χρήσασθαι τῷ νόμῳ δυναμένους ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς τῆς πράξεως [7] οὔσης διὰ τὸν τόπον. τοῦτο δὴ συμφρονήσας ὁ Κάμιλλος μετήγαγεν ἔξω πύλης τὸ δικαστήριον εἰς τὸ Πετηλῖνον ἄλσος· ὅθεν οὐκ ὄντος τοῦ Καπιτωλίου καταφανοῦς, ὅ τε διώκων ἐχρήσατο τῇ κατηγορίᾳ, καὶ τοῖς κρίνουσι παρεχώρησεν ἡ μνήμη τῶν γεγονότων ἀξίαν [8] ἀναλαβεῖν ὀργὴν ἐπὶ τοῖς παροῦσιν ἀδικήμασιν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Μάλλιος ἁλοὺς εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον ἀπήχθη, καὶ κατὰ τῆς πέτρας ὠσθεὶς τὸν αὐτὸν τόπον ἔσχε καὶ τῶν εὐτυχεστάτων ἔργων καὶ τῶν μεγίστων ἀτυχημάτων μνημεῖον.

[9] οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ κατασκάψαντες, ἱερὸν ἱδρύσαντο θεᾶς ἣν Μονῆταν καλοῦσι, καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν ἐψηφίσαντο μηδένα τῶν πατρικίων ἐπὶ τῆς ἄκρας κατοικεῖν.

[37] [1] Ὁ δὲ Κάμιλλος ἐπὶ χιλιαρχίαν ἕκτην καλούμενος παρῃτεῖτο, γεγονὼς μὲν ἡλικίας ἤδη πρόσω, καί πού τινα καὶ φθόνον δεδιὼς καὶ νέμεσιν ἐπὶ δόξῃ τοσαύτῃ καὶ κατορθώμασιν. ἡ δὲ φανερωτάτη τῶν αἰτιῶν ἦν ἀρρωστία σώματος· ἐτύγχανε γὰρ νοσῶν περὶ τὰς ἡμέρας [2] ἐκείνας. οὐ μὴν παρῆκεν αὐτῷ τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁ δῆμος, ἀλλὰ βοῶν μήθ’ ἱππεύοντος αὐτοῦ μήθ’ ὁπλομαχοῦντος ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι δεῖσθαι, βουλευομένου δὲ μόνον καὶ προστάσσοντος, ἠνάγκασεν ὑποστῆναι τὴν στρατηγίαν καὶ μεθ’ ἑνὸς τῶν συναρχόντων Λευκίου Φουρίου τὸν στρατὸν ἄγειν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους. οὗτοι δ’ ἦσαν Πραινεστῖνοι καὶ Οὐολοῦσκοι, μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως τὴν [3] συμμαχίδα τῶν Ῥωμαίων πορθοῦντες. ἐξελθὼν δὲ καὶ παραστρατοπεδεύσας τοῖς πολεμίοις, αὐτὸς μὲν ἠξίου τρίβειν τὸν πόλεμον χρόνῳ, κἂν εἰ μάχης δεήσειε, ῥώσας τὸ σῶμα διαγωνίσασθαι· Λευκίου δὲ τοῦ συνάρχοντος ἐπιθυμίᾳ δόξης φερομένου πρὸς τὸν κίνδυνον ἀκατασχέτως, καὶ συνεξορμῶντος ἅμα ταξιάρχους καὶ λοχαγούς, φοβηθεὶς μὴ φθόνῳ δή τινι δοκῇ κατόρθωμα καὶ φιλοτιμίαν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι νέων ἀνδρῶν, συνεχώρησεν ἄκων ἐκείνῳ παρατάξαι τὴν δύναμιν, αὐτὸς δὲ διὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν [4] ὑπελείφθη μετ’ ὀλίγων ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ. τοῦ δὲ Λευκίου προπετῶς χρησαμένου τῇ μάχῃ καὶ σφαλέντος, αἰσθόμενος τὴν τροπὴν τῶν Ῥωμαίων οὐ κατέσχεν αὑτόν, ἀλλ’ ἀναθορὼν ἐκ τῆς στιβάδος ἀπήντα μετὰ τῶν ὀπαδῶν ἐπὶ τὰς πύλας τοῦ χάρακος, διὰ τῶν φευγόντων ὠθούμενος εἰς τοὺς διώκοντας, ὥστε τοὺς μὲν εὐθὺς ἀναστρέφειν καὶ συνακολουθεῖν, τοὺς δὲ προσφερομένους ἔξωθεν ἵστασθαι πρὸ αὐτοῦ καὶ συνασπίζειν, παρεγγυῶντας [5] ἀλλήλοις μὴ ἀπολείπεσθαι τοῦ στρατηγοῦ. τότε μὲν οὖν οὕτως ἀπετράποντο τῆς διώξεως οἱ πολέμιοι· τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ προαγαγὼν τὴν δύναμιν ὁ Κάμιλλος καὶ συνάψας μάχην αὐτούς τε νικᾷ κατὰ κράτος καὶ τὸν χάρακα λαμβάνει συνεισπεσὼν τοῖς φεύγουσι καὶ διαφθείρας [6] τοὺς πλείστους. ἐκ δὲ τούτου πυθόμενος πόλιν Σατρίαν ὑπὸ τῶν Τυρρηνῶν ἑαλωκέναι καὶ τοὺς οἰκήτορας ἀπεσφάχθαι, Ῥωμαίους ἅπαντας ὄντας, τὴν μὲν πολλὴν καὶ βαρεῖαν τῆς δυνάμεως εἰς Ῥώμην ἀπέστειλεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς ἀκμάζοντας μάλιστα καὶ προθυμοτάτους ἀναλαβών, ἐπέβαλε τοῖς τὴν πόλιν ἔχουσι Τυρρηνοῖς, καὶ κρατήσας τοὺς μὲν ἐξήλασεν αὐτῶν, τοὺς δ’ ἀπέκτεινεν.

[38] [1] Ἐπανελθὼν δὲ μετὰ πολλῶν λαφύρων εἰς Ῥώμην, ἐπέδειξε φρονιμωτάτους ἁπάντων τοὺς μὴ φοβηθέντας ἀσθένειαν καὶ γῆρας ἡγεμόνος ἐμπειρίαν καὶ τόλμαν ἔχοντος, ἀλλ’ ἑλομένους ἐκεῖνον ἄκοντα καὶ νοσοῦντα μᾶλλον ἢ τῶν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ τοὺς δεομένους καὶ σπουδάζοντας [2] ἄρχειν. διὸ καὶ Τουσκλανῶν ἀφεστάναι λεγομένων ἐκέλευον ἐξιέναι τὸν Κάμιλλον ἐπ’ αὐτούς, ἕνα τῶν πέντε συστρατήγων προσελόμενον. ὁ δὲ καίπερ ἁπάντων βουλομένων καὶ δεομένων, ἐάσας τοὺς ἄλλους προσείλετο [3] Λεύκιον Φούριον, οὐδενὸς ἂν προσδοκήσαντος. ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ἦν ὁ παρὰ γνώμην τοῦ Καμίλλου διαγωνίσασθαι προθυμηθεὶς ἔναγχος καὶ δυστυχήσας περὶ τὴν μάχην· ἀλλὰ βουλόμενος ὡς ἔοικεν ἀποκρύψαι τὴν συμφορὰν καὶ τὴν αἰσχύνην ἀπαλλάξαι τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἀντὶ πάντων [4] τοῦτον προῆγεν. οἱ δὲ Τουσκλανοὶ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἐπανορθούμενοι πανούργως, ἤδη βαδίζοντος ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς τοῦ Καμίλλου, τὸ μὲν πεδίον ἀνθρώπων ὡς ἐν εἰρήνῃ γεωργούντων καὶ νεμόντων ἐνέπλησαν, τὰς δὲ πύλας εἶχον ἀνεῳγμένας καὶ τοὺς παῖδας ἐν τοῖς διδασκαλείοις μανθάνοντας, τοῦ δὲ δήμου τὸ μὲν βάναυσον ἐπὶ τῶν ἐργαστηρίων ἑωρᾶτο περὶ τὰς τέχνας, τὸ δ’ ἀστεῖον ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἐν ἱματίοις, οἱ δ’ ἄρχοντες περιῄεσαν σπουδῇ καταλύσεις τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἐπαγγέλλοντες, ὡς οὐδὲν κακὸν [5] προσδοκῶντες οὐδὲ συνειδότες. τούτων δὲ πραττομένων ἀπιστεῖν μὲν οὐκ ἐπῄει τῷ Καμίλλῳ τὴν προδοσίαν, οἰκτίρας δὲ τὴν ἐπὶ τῇ προδοσίᾳ μετάνοιαν αὐτῶν, ἐκέλευσε πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ἐλθόντας παραιτεῖσθαι τὴν ὀργήν, καὶ παραιτουμένους συνέπραξεν αὐτὸς ἀφεθῆναί τε τὴν πόλιν αἰτίας πάσης καὶ μεταλαβεῖν ἰσοπολιτείας. αὗται μὲν οὖν ἐγένοντο τῆς ἕκτης χιλιαρχίας ἐπιφανέσταται πράξεις.

[39] [1] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα Λικιννίου Στόλωνος ἐν τῇ πόλει τὴν μεγάλην στάσιν ἐγείροντος, ἣν ὁ δῆμος ἐστασίασε πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον, βιαζόμενος δυεῖν ὑπάτων καθισταμένων τὸν ἕτερον πάντως ἐκ δημοτῶν εἶναι καὶ μὴ συναμφοτέρους πατρικίους, δήμαρχοι μὲν ᾑρέθησαν, τὰς δ’ ὑπατικὰς ἀρχαιρεσίας ἐπιτελεσθῆναι διεκώλυσαν οἱ [2] πολλοί. καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων δι’ ἀναρχίας φερομένων εἰς μείζονας ταραχάς, ἀποδείκνυται δικτάτωρ ὁ Κάμιλλος ὑπὸ τῆς βουλῆς ἄκοντι τῷ δήμῳ τὸ τέταρτον, οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ὢν πρόθυμος οὐδὲ βουλόμενος ἐναντιοῦσθαι πρὸς ἀνθρώπους παρρησίαν ἔχοντας ἀπὸ πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων ἀγώνων πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς πλείονα μετ’ αὐτῶν διαπεπραγμένος ἐν στρατηγίαις ἢ μετὰ τῶν πατρικίων ἐν πολιτείαις, καὶ νῦν διὰ φθόνον ἐκείνων ᾑρημένος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, ὅπως ἢ καταλύσειε τὸν δῆμον ἰσχύσας, ἢ καταλυθείη [3] μὴ κρατήσας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πειρώμενος ἀμύνειν τοῖς παροῦσι, τὴν ἡμέραν γνοὺς ἐν ᾗ νομοθετεῖν οἱ δήμαρχοι διενοοῦντο, προέγραψε στρατιᾶς κατάλογον καὶ μετεκάλει τὸν δῆμον ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς εἰς τὸ πεδίον, μεγάλας [4] ζημίας ἀπειλῶν κατὰ τοῦ μὴ ὑπακούσαντος. τῶν δὲ δημάρχων ἐκεῖθεν αὖ πάλιν ἀντανισταμένων ταῖς ἀπειλαῖς καὶ διομνυμένων πέντε μυριάσιν ἀργυρίου ζημιώσειν, εἰ μὴ παύσοιτο τοῦ δήμου τὸν νόμον ἀφαιρούμενος καὶ τὴν ψῆφον, εἴτε δείσας φυγὴν ἑτέραν καὶ καταδίκην, ὡς ἀνδρὶ πρεσβύτῃ καὶ κατειργασμένῳ μεγάλα μὴ πρέπουσαν, εἴτε τοῦ πλήθους τὴν βίαν ἄμαχον οὖσαν καὶ δυσνίκητον ὑπερβαλέσθαι μὴ δυνάμενος μηδὲ βουλόμενος, τότε μὲν ἀπεχώρησεν οἴκαδε· ταῖς δ’ ἑξῆς ἡμέραις [5] σκηψάμενος ἀρρωστεῖν ἐξωμόσατο τὴν ἀρχήν. ἡ δὲ σύγκλητος ἕτερον δικτάτορα κατέστησε, κἀκεῖνος ἀποδείξας ἵππαρχον αὐτὸν τὸν ἡγεμόνα τῆς στάσεως Στόλωνα παρῆκεν ἐπικυρῶσαι τὸν νόμον τὸν μάλιστα λυποῦντα τοὺς πατρικίους. ἐκέλευσε δ’ οὗτος μηδένα πλέθρων πεντακοσίων [6] πλείονα χώραν κεκτῆσθαι. τότε μὲν οὖν λαμπρὸς ὁ Στόλων ἐγεγόνει τῇ ψήφῳ κρατήσας· ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον αὐτὸς ἑάλω κεκτημένος ὅσην ἔχειν ἐκώλυεν ἑτέρους, καὶ κατὰ τὸν αὑτοῦ νόμον δίκην ἔδωκεν.

[40] [1] Ὑπολειπομένης δὲ τῆς περὶ τῶν ὑπατικῶν ἀρχαιρεσιῶν φιλονικίας, ὃ δὴ χαλεπώτατον τῆς στάσεως μόριον ἦν καὶ πρῶτον ἦρξε καὶ πλεῖστα πράγματα παρέσχε τῇ βουλῇ διαφερομένῃ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, ἀγγελία προσέπεσε σαφής, Κελτοὺς αὖθις ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀδριατικῆς ἄραντας θαλάσσης μυριάσι πολλαῖς ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ἐλαύνειν.

[2] ἅμα δὲ τῷ λόγῳ καὶ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πολέμου παρῆν, πορθουμένης τῆς χώρας καὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὅσοις οὐ ῥᾴδιον ἦν εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην καταφυγεῖν, ἀνὰ τὰ ὄρη σκεδαννυμένων. οὗτος δ’ ὁ φόβος κατέπαυσε τὴν στάσιν, καὶ συνελθόντες εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ τοῖς πολλοῖς οἱ κράτιστοι καὶ τῇ βουλῇ τὸ δημοτικὸν εἵλοντο πάντες ἐκ μιᾶς γνώμης [3] δικτάτορα τὸ πέμπτον Κάμιλλον, ὁ δ’ ἦν μὲν σφόδρα γέρων καὶ μικρὸν ἀπέλειπεν ὀγδοήκοντα ἔτη γεγονέναι· συνορῶν δὲ τὴν ἀνάγκην καὶ τὸν κίνδυνον, οὔθ’ ὑποτίμησιν ὡς πρότερον εἰπών, οὔτε προφάσει χρησάμενος, ἀλλ’ αὐτόθεν ὑποστὰς τὴν στρατηγίαν, κατέλεγε τοὺς [4] μαχησομένους. εἰδὼς δὲ τῆς τῶν βαρβάρων ἀλκῆς τὴν βιαιοτάτην ἐν ταῖς μαχαίραις οὖσαν, ἃς βαρβαρικῶς καὶ σὺν οὐδεμιᾷ τέχνῃ καταφέροντες ὤμους μάλιστα καὶ κεφαλὰς διέκοπτον, ἐχαλκεύσατο μὲν κράνη τοῖς ὁπλίταις ὁλοσίδηρα καὶ λεῖα ταῖς περιφερείαις, ὡς ἀπολισθάνειν ἢ κατάγνυσθαι τὰς μαχαίρας, τοῖς δὲ θυρεοῖς κύκλῳ περιήρμοσε λεπίδα χαλκῆν, τοῦ ξύλου καθ’ αὑτὸ τὰς πληγὰς μὴ στέγοντος· αὐτοὺς δὲ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἐδίδαξε τοῖς ὑσσοῖς μακροῖς διὰ χειρὸς χρῆσθαι καὶ τοῖς ξίφεσι τῶν πολεμίων ὑποβάλλοντας ἐκδέχεσθαι τὰς καταφοράς.

[41] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ πλησίον ἦσαν οἱ Κελτοί, περὶ τὸν Ἀνίωνα ποταμὸν στρατόπεδον βαρὺ καὶ μεστὸν ἀφθόνου λείας ἔχοντες, ἐξαγαγὼν τὴν δύναμιν ἵδρυσε κατὰ νάπης μαλακῆς καὶ συγκλίσεις πολλὰς ἐχούσης, ὥστε τὸ μὲν πλεῖστον ἀποκρύπτεσθαι, τὸ δ’ ὁρώμενον δοκεῖν ὑπὸ [2] δέους εἰς χωρία προσάντη κατειλεῖσθαι. ταύτην δὲ τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν ὁ Κάμιλλος αὔξειν βουλόμενος, οὐ προσήμυνε τῶν ὑπὸ πόδας πορθουμένων, ἀλλὰ τὸν χάρακα φραξάμενος ἠρέμει, μέχρι οὗ τοὺς μὲν ἐν προνομαῖς ἐσκεδασμένους κατεῖδε, τοὺς δ’ ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ πᾶσαν [3] ὥραν ἐμπιμπλαμένους ἀφειδῶς καὶ μεθύοντας. τότε δὲ νυκτὸς ἔτι τοὺς ψιλοὺς προεκπέμψας ἐμποδὼν εἶναι τοῖς βαρβάροις εἰς τάξιν καθισταμένοις καὶ διαταράττειν εὐθὺς ἐπεξιόντας, κατεβίβαζεν ὄρθρου τοὺς ὁπλίτας καὶ παρέταττεν ἐν τοῖς ἐπιπέδοις, πολλοὺς καὶ προθύμους, οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ βάρβαροι προσεδόκων ὀλίγους καὶ ἀτόλμους [4] φανέντας. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τοῦτο τῶν Κελτῶν ἀνέτρεψε τὰ φρονήματα, παρ’ ἀξίαν ἐπιχειρεῖσθαι δοκούντων. ἔπειτα προσπίπτοντες οἱ ψιλοὶ καὶ πρὶν ἢ τὸν συνήθη λαβεῖν κόσμον καὶ διακριθῆναι κατὰ λόχους κινοῦντες αὐτοὺς καὶ βιαζόμενοι πρὸς τὸ συντυχὸν ἀτάκτους [5] ἠνάγκασαν μάχεσθαι. τέλος δὲ τοῦ Καμίλλου τοὺς ὁπλίτας ἐπάγοντος, οἱ μὲν ἀνατεινάμενοι τὰς μαχαίρας συνδραμεῖν ἔσπευδον, οἱ δὲ τοῖς ὑσσοῖς ἀπαντῶντες καὶ τὰ σεσιδηρωμένα μέρη ταῖς πληγαῖς ὑποφέροντες ἀπέστρεφον τὸν ἐκείνων σίδηρον, μαλακὸν ὄντα καὶ λεπτῶς ἐληλασμένον, ὥστε κάμπτεσθαι ταχὺ καὶ διπλοῦσθαι τὰς μαχαίρας, τοὺς δὲ θυρεοὺς συμπεπάρθαι καὶ βαρύνεσθαι [6] τῶν ὑσσῶν ἐφελκομένων. διὸ καὶ μεθιστάμενοι τῶν ἰδίων ὅπλων, ἐπειρῶντο τοῖς ἐκείνων ἐμπλέκεσθαι καὶ τοὺς ὑσσοὺς παραφέρειν, ἐπιλαμβανόμενοι ταῖς χερσίν. οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι γυμνουμένους ὁρῶντες, ἤδη τοῖς ξίφεσιν ἐχρῶντο, καὶ φόνος μὲν ἦν πολὺς τῶν προτάκτων, φυγὴ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων πανταχόσε τοῦ πεδίου· τοὺς γὰρ λόφους καὶ τὰ ὑψηλὰ προκατειλήφει Κάμιλλος, τὸ δὲ στρατόπεδον διὰ τὸ θαρσεῖν ἄφρακτον ἔχοντες ᾔδεσαν οὐ χαλεπῶς ἁλωσόμενον.

[7] Ταύτην τὴν μάχην ἔτεσιν ὕστερον τρισκαίδεκα γενέσθαι λέγουσι τῆς Ῥώμης ἁλώσεως, καὶ βέβαιον ἐξ αὐτῆς φρόνημα κατὰ τῶν Κελτῶν ἐγγενέσθαι Ῥωμαίοις, σφόδρα δεδοικόσι τοὺς βαρβάρους, ὡς τὸ πρῶτον διὰ νόσους καὶ τύχας παραλόγους, οὐ κατὰ κράτος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν νενικημένους. οὕτω δ’ οὖν ὁ φόβος ἦν ἰσχυρός, ὥστε θέσθαι νόμον ἀφεῖσθαι τοὺς ἱερεῖς στρατείας, χωρὶς ἂν μὴ Γαλατικὸς ᾖ πόλεμος.

[42] [1] Τῶν μὲν οὖν στρατιωτικῶν ἀγώνων οὗτος ἠγωνίσθη τῷ Καμίλλῳ τελευταῖος· τὴν γὰρ Οὐελιτρανῶν πόλιν εἷλεν ἐν παρέργῳ ταύτης τῆς στρατείας, ἀμαχεὶ [2] προσχωρήσασαν αὐτῷ· τῶν δὲ πολιτικῶν ὁ μέγιστος ὑπελείπετο καὶ χαλεπώτατος ‹ὁ› πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, ἰσχυρὸν ἐπανήκοντα τῇ νίκῃ καὶ βιαζόμενον ἐκ δημοτῶν ὕπατον ἀποδεῖξαι παρὰ τὸν καθεστῶτα νόμον, ἀντιταττομένης τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τὸν Κάμιλλον οὐκ ἐώσης ἀποθέσθαι τὴν ἀρχήν, ὡς μετ’ ἰσχυρᾶς καὶ μεγάλης ἐξουσίας τῆς ἐκείνου μαχησομένων ἂν βέλτιον ὑπὲρ τῆς ἀριστοκρατίας.

[3] ἐπεὶ δὲ προκαθημένου τοῦ Καμίλλου καὶ χρηματίζοντος ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ὑπηρέτης πεμφθεὶς παρὰ τῶν δημάρχων ἐκέλευσεν ἀκολουθεῖν καὶ τὴν χεῖρα τῷ σώματι προσῆγεν ὡς ἀπάξων, κραυγὴ δὲ καὶ θόρυβος οἷος οὔπω κατέσχε τὴν ἀγοράν, τῶν μὲν περὶ τὸν Κάμιλλον ὠθούντων ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος τὸν δημόσιον, τῶν δὲ πολλῶν κάτωθεν ἕλκειν ἐπικελευομένων, ἀπορούμενος τοῖς παροῦσι τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν οὐ προήκατο, τοὺς δὲ βουλευτὰς [4] ἀναλαβὼν ἐβάδιζεν εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον, καὶ πρὶν εἰσελθεῖν μεταστραφεὶς εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον ηὔξατο τοῖς θεοῖς κατευθῦναι τὰ παρόντα πρὸς τὸ κάλλιστον τέλος, ὑποσχόμενος ναὸν Ὁμονοίας ἱδρύσειν τῆς ταραχῆς καταστάσης. μεγάλου δ’ ἀγῶνος ἐν τῇ συγκλήτῳ γενομένου πρὸς τὰς ἐναντίας γνώμας, ὅμως ἐνίκησεν ἡ μαλακωτέρα καὶ ὑπείκουσα τῷ δήμῳ καὶ διδοῦσα τῶν ὑπάτων [5] τὸν ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ πλήθους ἀρχαιρεσιάσαι. ταῦτα δ’ ὡς τῇ βουλῇ δοκοῦντα τοῦ δικτάτορος ἀνειπόντος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ, παραχρῆμα μὲν οἷον εἰκὸς ἡδόμενοι τῇ βουλῇ διηλλάττοντο, καὶ τὸν Κάμιλλον οἴκαδε κρότῳ καὶ βοῇ [6] προέπεμπον. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ συνελθόντες ἐψηφίσαντο τῆς μὲν Ὁμονοίας ἱερόν, ὥσπερ ηὔξατο Κάμιλλος, εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν καὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἄποπτον ἐπὶ τοῖς γεγενημένοις ἱδρύσασθαι, ταῖς δὲ καλουμέναις Λατίναις μίαν ἡμέραν προσθέντας ἑορτάζειν τέτταρας, παραυτίκα δὲ θύειν [7] καὶ στεφανηφορεῖν Ῥωμαίους ἅπαντας. τῶν δ’ ἀρχαιρεσίων βραβευθέντων ὑπὸ Καμίλλου, κατεστάθησαν ὕπατοι Μᾶρκος μὲν Αἰμίλιος ἐκ πατρικίων, Λεύκιος δὲ Σέξτιος ἐκ δημοτῶν πρῶτος. καὶ τοῦτο πέρας αἱ Καμίλλου πράξεις ἔσχον.

[43] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῷ κατόπιν ἐνιαυτῷ λοιμώδης νόσος ἐμπεσοῦσα τῇ Ῥώμῃ τὸν μὲν ἄλλον ὄχλον οὐ περιληπτὸν ἀριθμῷ διέφθειρε, τῶν δ’ ἀρχόντων τοὺς πλείστους.

[2] ἐτελεύτησε δὲ καὶ Κάμιλλος, ἡλικίας μὲν οὕνεκα καὶ βίου τελειότητος ὡς εἴ τις ἄλλος ἀνθρώπων ὡραῖος, ἀνιάσας δὲ Ῥωμαίους ὡς οὐδὲ σύμπαντες οἱ τῇ νόσῳ κατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον ἀποθανόντες.

Pericles

[1] [1] Ξένους τινὰς ἐν Ῥώμῃ πλουσίους κυνῶν ἔκγονα καὶ πιθήκων ἐν τοῖς κόλποις περιφέροντας καὶ ἀγαπῶντας ἰδὼν ὁ Καῖσαρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἠρώτησεν, εἰ παιδία παρ’ αὐτοῖς οὐ τίκτουσιν αἱ γυναῖκες, ἡγεμονικῶς σφόδρα νουθετήσας τοὺς τὸ φύσει φιλητικὸν ἐν ἡμῖν καὶ φιλόστοργον εἰς θηρία καταναλίσκοντας, ἀνθρώποις ὀφειλόμενον.

[2] ἆρ’ οὖν, ἐπεὶ [κυνῶν τε καὶ πιθήκων ἔκγονα] φιλομαθές τι κέκτηται καὶ φιλοθέαμον ἡμῶν ἡ ψυχὴ φύσει, λόγον ἔχει ψέγειν τοὺς καταχρωμένους τούτῳ πρὸς τὰ μηδεμιᾶς ἄξια σπουδῆς ἀκούσματα καὶ θεάματα, τῶν δὲ καλῶν καὶ ὠφελίμων παραμελοῦντας; τῇ μὲν γὰρ αἰσθήσει, κατὰ πάθος τὴν πληγὴν ἀντιλαμβανομένῃ τῶν προστυγχανόντων, ἴσως ἀνάγκη πᾶν τὸ φαινόμενον, ἄν τε χρήσιμον ἄν τ’ ἄχρηστον ᾖ, θεωρεῖν, τῷ νῷ δ’ ἕκαστος, εἰ βούλοιτο, χρῆσθαι καὶ τρέπειν ἑαυτὸν ἀεὶ καὶ μεταβάλλειν ῥᾷστα πρὸς τὸ δοκοῦν πέφυκεν, ὥστε χρὴ διώκειν τὸ βέλτιστον, [3] ἵνα μὴ θεωρῇ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τρέφηται τῷ θεωρεῖν. ὡς γὰρ ὀφθαλμῷ χρόα πρόσφορος, ἧς τὸ ἀνθηρὸν ἅμα καὶ τερπνὸν ἀναζωπυρεῖ καὶ τρέφει τὴν ὄψιν, οὕτω τὴν διάνοιαν ἐπάγειν δεῖ θεάμασιν ἃ τῷ χαίρειν πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον [4] αὐτὴν ἀγαθὸν ἐκκαλεῖ. ταῦτα δ’ ἔστιν ἐν τοῖς ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς ἔργοις, ἃ καὶ ζῆλόν τινα καὶ προθυμίαν ἀγωγὸν εἰς μίμησιν ἐμποιεῖ τοῖς ἱστορήσασιν· ἐπεὶ τῶν γ’ ἄλλων οὐκ εὐθὺς ἀκολουθεῖ τῷ θαυμάσαι τὸ πραχθὲν ὁρμὴ πρὸς τὸ πρᾶξαι, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ τοὐναντίον χαίροντες τῷ ἔργῳ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ καταφρονοῦμεν, ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν μύρων καὶ τῶν ἁλουργῶν τούτοις μὲν ἡδόμεθα, τοὺς δὲ βαφεῖς καὶ [5] μυρεψοὺς ἀνελευθέρους ἡγούμεθα καὶ βαναύσους. διὸ καλῶς μὲν Ἀντισθένης ἀκούσας ὅτι σπουδαῖός ἐστιν αὐλητὴς Ἰσμηνίας, ἀλλ’ ἄνθρωπος ἔφη μοχθηρός· οὐ γὰρ ἂν [6] οὕτω σπουδαῖος ἦν αὐλητής· ὁ δὲ Φίλιππος πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν ἐπιτερπῶς ἔν τινι πότῳ ψήλαντα καὶ τεχνικῶς εἶπεν· οὐκ αἰσχύνῃ καλῶς οὕτω ψάλλων; ἀρκεῖ γάρ, ἂν βασιλεὺς ἀκροᾶσθαι ψαλλόντων σχολάζῃ, καὶ πολὺ νέμει ταῖς Μούσαις ἑτέρων ἀγωνιζομένων τὰ τοιαῦτα θεατὴς γιγνόμενος.

[2] [1] Ἡ δ’ αὐτουργία τῶν ταπεινῶν τῆς εἰς τὰ καλὰ ῥᾳθυμίας μάρτυρα τὸν ἐν τοῖς ἀχρήστοις πόνον παρέχεται καθ’ αὑτῆς, καὶ οὐδεὶς εὐφυὴς νέος ἢ τὸν ἐν Πίσῃ θεασάμενος Δία γενέσθαι Φειδίας ἐπεθύμησεν, ἢ τὴν Ἥραν τὴν ἐν Ἄργει Πολύκλειτος, οὐδ’ Ἀνακρέων ἢ Φιλήμων ἢ Ἀρχίλοχος ἡσθεὶς αὐτῶν τοῖς ποιήμασιν. οὐ γὰρ ἀναγκαῖον, εἰ τέρπει τὸ ἔργον ὡς χαρίεν, ἄξιον σπουδῆς εἶναι [2] τὸν εἰργασμένον. ὅθεν οὐδ’ ὠφελεῖ τὰ τοιαῦτα τοὺς θεωμένους, πρὸς ἃ μιμητικὸς οὐ γίνεται ζῆλος οὐδ’ ἀνάδοσις κινοῦσα προθυμίαν καὶ ὁρμὴν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐξομοίωσιν. ἀλλ’ ἥ γ’ ἀρετὴ ταῖς πράξεσιν εὐθὺς οὕτω διατίθησιν, ὥσθ’ ἅμα θαυμάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα καὶ ζηλοῦσθαι τοὺς εἰργασμένους.

[3] τῶν μὲν γὰρ ἐκ τύχης ἀγαθῶν τὰς κτήσεις καὶ ἀπολαύσεις, τῶν δ’ ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς τὰς πράξεις ἀγαπῶμεν, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἡμῖν παρ’ ἑτέρων, τὰ δὲ μᾶλλον ἑτέροις παρ’ [4] ἡμῶν ὑπάρχειν βουλόμεθα. τὸ γὰρ καλὸν ἐφ’ αὑτὸ πρακτικῶς κινεῖ καὶ πρακτικὴν εὐθὺς ὁρμὴν ἐντίθησιν, ἠθοποιοῦν οὐ τῇ μιμήσει τὸν θεατήν, ἀλλὰ τῇ ἱστορίᾳ τοῦ ἔργου τὴν προαίρεσιν παρεχόμενον.

[5] Ἔδοξεν οὖν καὶ ἡμῖν ἐνδιατρῖψαι τῇ περὶ τοὺς βίους ἀναγραφῇ, καὶ τοῦτο τὸ βιβλίον δέκατον συντετάχαμεν, τὸν Περικλέους βίον καὶ τὸν Φαβίου Μαξίμου τοῦ διαπολεμήσαντος πρὸς Ἀννίβαν περιέχον, ἀνδρῶν κατά τε τὰς ἄλλας ἀρετὰς ὁμοίων, μάλιστα δὲ πρᾳότητα καὶ δικαιοσύνην, καὶ τῷ δύνασθαι φέρειν δήμων καὶ συναρχόντων ἀγνωμοσύνας ὠφελιμωτάτων ταῖς πατρίσι γενομένων. εἰ δ’ ὀρθῶς στοχαζόμεθα τοῦ δέοντος, ἔξεστι κρίνειν ἐκ τῶν γραφομένων.

[3] [1] Περικλῆς γὰρ ἦν τῶν μὲν φυλῶν Ἀκαμαντίδης, τῶν δὲ δήμων Χολαργεύς, οἴκου δὲ καὶ γένους τοῦ πρώτου [2] κατ’ ἀμφοτέρους. Ξάνθιππος γὰρ ὁ νικήσας ἐν Μυκάλῃ τοὺς βασιλέως στρατηγοὺς ἔγημεν Ἀγαρίστην Κλεισθένους ἔγγονον, ὃς ἐξήλασε Πεισιστρατίδας καὶ κατέλυσε τὴν τυραννίδα γενναίως καὶ νόμους ἔθετο καὶ πολιτείαν ἄριστα κεκραμένην πρὸς ὁμόνοιαν καὶ σωτηρίαν κατέστησεν.

[3] αὕτη κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ἔδοξε τεκεῖν λέοντα, καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας ἔτεκε Περικλέα, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα τὴν ἰδέαν τοῦ σώματος ἄμεμπτον, προμήκη δὲ τῇ κεφαλῇ καὶ ἀσύμμετρον.

[4] ὅθεν αἱ μὲν εἰκόνες αὐτοῦ σχεδὸν ἅπασαι κράνεσι περιέχονται, μὴ βουλομένων ὡς ἔοικε τῶν τεχνιτῶν ἐξονειδίζειν. οἱ δ’ Ἀττικοὶ ποιηταὶ σχινοκέφαλον αὐτὸν ἐκάλουν· τὴν γὰρ σκίλλαν ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ σχῖνον ὀνομάζουσι.

[5] τῶν δὲ κωμικῶν ὁ μὲν Κρατῖνος ἐν Χείρωσι (fr. 240 CAF I 86) Στάσις δὲ (φησί) καὶ πρεσβυγενὴς Κρόνος ἀλλήλοισι μιγέντε μέγιστον τίκτετον τύραννον, ὃν δὴ Κεφαληγερέταν θεοὶ καλέουσι, καὶ πάλιν ἐν Νεμέσει (fr. 111 CAF I 49)· μόλ’ ὦ Ζεῦ ξένιε καὶ καραϊέ.

[6] Τηλεκλείδης δὲ ποτὲ μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων ἠπορημένον καθῆσθαί φησιν (fr. 44 CAF I 220) αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ πόλει καρηβαροῦντα, ποτὲ δὲ μόνον ἐκ κεφαλῆς ἑνδεκακλίνου [7] θόρυβον πολὺν ἐξανατέλλειν, ὁ δ’ Εὔπολις ἐν τοῖς Δήμοις (fr. 93 CAF I 280) πυνθανόμενος περὶ ἑκάστου τῶν ἀναβεβηκότων ἐξ Ἅιδου δημαγωγῶν, ὡς ὁ Περικλῆς ὠνομάσθη τελευταῖος·

ὅ τί περ κεφάλαιον τῶν κάτωθεν ἤγαγες.

[4] [1] Διδάσκαλον δ’ αὐτοῦ τῶν μουσικῶν οἱ πλεῖστοι Δάμωνα γενέσθαι λέγουσιν, οὗ φασι δεῖν τοὔνομα βραχύνοντας τὴν προτέραν συλλαβὴν ἐκφέρειν, Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 364) δὲ παρὰ Πυθοκλείδῃ μουσικὴν διαπονηθῆναι [2] τὸν ἄνδρα φησίν. ὁ δὲ Δάμων ἔοικεν ἄκρος ὢν σοφιστὴς καταδύεσθαι μὲν εἰς τὸ τῆς μουσικῆς ὄνομα πρὸς τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐπικρυπτόμενος τὴν δεινότητα, τῷ δὲ Περικλεῖ συνῆν καθάπερ ἀθλητῇ τῶν πολιτικῶν ἀλείπτης καὶ διδάσκαλος.

[3] οὐ μὴν ἔλαθεν ὁ Δάμων τῇ λύρᾳ παρακαλύμματι χρώμενος, ἀλλ’ ὡς μεγαλοπράγμων καὶ φιλοτύραννος [4] ἐξωστρακίσθη καὶ παρέσχε τοῖς κωμικοῖς διατριβήν. ὁ γοῦν Πλάτων (fr. 191 CAF I 655) καὶ πυνθανόμενον αὐτοῦ τινα πεποίηκεν οὕτω·

πρῶτον μὲν οὖν μοι λέξον, ἀντιβολῶ· σὺ γὰρ

ὥς φασι [ὦ] Χείρων ἐξέθρεψας Περικλέα.

[5] διήκουσε δὲ Περικλῆς καὶ Ζήνωνος τοῦ Ἐλεάτου πραγματευομένου ‹μὲν› περὶ φύσιν ὡς Παρμενίδης, ἐλεγκτικὴν δέ τινα καὶ δι’ ἀντιλογίας εἰς ἀπορίαν κατακλείουσαν ἐξασκήσαντος ἕξιν, ὥς που καὶ Τίμων ὁ Φλειάσιος εἴρηκε διὰ τούτων (fr. V W.)·

ἀμφοτερογλώσσου τε μέγα σθένος οὐκ ἀλαπαδνὸν

Ζήνωνος, πάντων ἐπιλήπτορος.

[6] ὁ δὲ πλεῖστα Περικλεῖ συγγενόμενος καὶ μάλιστα περιθεὶς ὄγκον αὐτῷ καὶ φρόνημα δημαγωγίας ἐμβριθέστερον, ὅλως τε μετεωρίσας καὶ συνεξάρας τὸ ἀξίωμα τοῦ ἤθους, Ἀναξαγόρας ἦν ὁ Κλαζομένιος, ὃν οἱ τότ’ ἄνθρωποι Νοῦν προσηγόρευον, εἴτε τὴν σύνεσιν αὐτοῦ μεγάλην εἰς φυσιολογίαν καὶ περιττὴν διαφανεῖσαν θαυμάσαντες, εἴθ’ ὅτι τοῖς ὅλοις πρῶτος οὐ τύχην οὐδ’ ἀνάγκην διακοσμήσεως ἀρχήν, ἀλλὰ νοῦν ἐπέστησε καθαρὸν καὶ ἄκρατον, ἐν μεμειγμένοις πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀποκρίνοντα τὰς ὁμοιομερείας.

[5] [1] Τοῦτον ὑπερφυῶς τὸν ἄνδρα θαυμάσας ὁ Περικλῆς καὶ τῆς λεγομένης μετεωρολογίας καὶ μεταρσιολεσχίας ὑποπιμπλάμενος, οὐ μόνον ὡς ἔοικε τὸ φρόνημα σοβαρὸν καὶ τὸν λόγον ὑψηλὸν εἶχε καὶ καθαρὸν ὀχλικῆς καὶ πανούργου βωμολοχίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσώπου σύστασις ἄθρυπτος εἰς γέλωτα καὶ πρᾳότης πορείας καὶ καταστολὴ περιβολῆς πρὸς οὐδὲν ἐκταραττομένη πάθος ἐν τῷ λέγειν καὶ πλάσμα φωνῆς ἀθόρυβον καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα [2] πάντας θαυμαστῶς ἐξέπληττε. λοιδορούμενος γοῦν ποτε καὶ κακῶς ἀκούων ὑπό τινος τῶν βδελυρῶν καὶ ἀκολάστων ὅλην ἡμέραν ὑπέμεινε σιωπῇ κατ’ ἀγοράν, ἅμα τι τῶν ἐπειγόντων καταπραττόμενος, ἑσπέρας δ’ ἀπῄει κοσμίως οἴκαδε παρακολουθοῦντος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ πάσῃ χρωμένου βλασφημίᾳ πρὸς αὐτόν. ὡς δ’ ἔμελλεν εἰσιέναι σκότους ὄντος ἤδη, προσέταξέ τινι τῶν οἰκετῶν φῶς λαβόντι παραπέμψαι καὶ καταστῆσαι πρὸς τὴν οἰκίαν [3] τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ὁ δὲ ποιητὴς Ἴων (FGrH 392 F 15) μοθωνικήν φησι τὴν ὁμιλίαν καὶ ὑπότυφον εἶναι τοῦ Περικλέους, καὶ ταῖς μεγαλαυχίαις αὐτοῦ πολλὴν ὑπεροψίαν ἀναμεμεῖχθαι καὶ περιφρόνησιν τῶν ἄλλων, ἐπαινεῖ δὲ τὸ Κίμωνος ἐμμελὲς καὶ ὑγρὸν καὶ μεμουσωμένον ἐν ταῖς ‹συμ›περιφοραῖς. ἀλλ’ Ἴωνα μὲν ὥσπερ τραγικὴν διδασκαλίαν ἀξιοῦντα τὴν ἀρετὴν ἔχειν τι πάντως καὶ σατυρικὸν μέρος ἐῶμεν, τοὺς δὲ τοῦ Περικλέους τὴν σεμνότητα δοξοκοπίαν τε καὶ τῦφον ἀποκαλοῦντας ὁ Ζήνων παρεκάλει καὶ αὐτούς τι τοιοῦτο δοξοκοπεῖν, ὡς τῆς προσποιήσεως αὐτῆς τῶν καλῶν ὑποποιούσης τινὰ λεληθότως ζῆλον καὶ συνήθειαν.

[6] [1] Οὐ μόνον δὲ ταῦτα τῆς Ἀναξαγόρου συνουσίας ἀπέλαυσε Περικλῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ δεισιδαιμονίας δοκεῖ γενέσθαι καθυπέρτερος, ἣν τὸ πρὸς τὰ μετέωρα θάμβος ἐνεργάζεται τοῖς αὐτῶν τε τούτων τὰς αἰτίας ἀγνοοῦσι καὶ περὶ τὰ θεῖα δαιμονῶσι καὶ ταραττομένοις δι’ ἀπειρίαν αὐτῶν, ἣν ὁ φυσικὸς λόγος ἀπαλλάττων ἀντὶ τῆς φοβερᾶς καὶ φλεγμαινούσης δεισιδαιμονίας τὴν ἀσφαλῆ μετ’ ἐλπίδων [2] ἀγαθῶν εὐσέβειαν ἐνεργάζεται. λέγεται δέ ποτε κριοῦ μονόκερω κεφαλὴν ἐξ ἀγροῦ τῷ Περικλεῖ κομισθῆναι, καὶ Λάμπωνα μὲν τὸν μάντιν, ὡς εἶδε τὸ κέρας ἰσχυρὸν καὶ στερεὸν ἐκ μέσου τοῦ μετώπου πεφυκός, εἰπεῖν ὅτι δυεῖν οὐσῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει δυναστειῶν, τῆς Θουκυδίδου καὶ Περικλέους, εἰς ἕνα περιστήσεται τὸ κράτος παρ’ ᾧ γένοιτο τὸ σημεῖον· τὸν δ’ Ἀναξαγόραν τοῦ κρανίου διακοπέντος ἐπιδεῖξαι τὸν ἐγκέφαλον οὐ πεπληρωκότα τὴν βάσιν, ἀλλ’ ὀξὺν ὥσπερ ᾠὸν ἐκ τοῦ παντὸς ἀγγείου συνωλισθηκότα κατὰ τὸν τόπον ἐκεῖνον ὅθεν ἡ ῥίζα τοῦ κέρατος [3] εἶχε τὴν ἀρχήν. καὶ τότε μὲν θαυμασθῆναι τὸν Ἀναξαγόραν ὑπὸ τῶν παρόντων, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον τὸν Λάμπωνα, τοῦ μὲν Θουκυδίδου καταλυθέντος, τῶν δὲ τοῦ δήμου πραγμάτων ὁμαλῶς ἁπάντων ὑπὸ τῷ Περικλεῖ γενομένων.

[4] ἐκώλυε δ’ οὐδέν, οἶμαι, καὶ τὸν φυσικὸν ἐπιτυγχάνειν καὶ τὸν μάντιν, τοῦ μὲν τὴν αἰτίαν, τοῦ δὲ τὸ τέλος καλῶς ἐκλαμβάνοντος· ὑπέκειτο γὰρ τῷ μέν, ἐκ τίνων γέγονε καὶ πῶς πέφυκε θεωρῆσαι, τῷ δέ, πρὸς τί γέγονε [5] καὶ τί σημαίνει προειπεῖν. οἱ δὲ τῆς αἰτίας τὴν εὕρεσιν ἀναίρεσιν εἶναι τοῦ σημείου λέγοντες οὐκ ἐπινοοῦσιν ἅμα τοῖς θείοις καὶ τὰ τεχνητὰ τῶν συμβόλων ἀθετοῦντες, ψόφους τε δίσκων καὶ φῶτα πυρσῶν καὶ γνωμόνων ἀποσκιασμούς· ὧν ἕκαστον αἰτίᾳ τινὶ καὶ κατασκευῇ σημεῖον εἶναί τινος πεποίηται. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἴσως ἑτέρας ἐστὶ πραγματείας.

[7] [1] Ὁ δὲ Περικλῆς νέος μὲν ὢν σφόδρα τὸν δῆμον εὐλαβεῖτο. καὶ γὰρ ἐδόκει Πεισιστράτῳ τῷ τυράννῳ τὸ εἶδος ἐμφερὴς εἶναι, τήν τε φωνὴν ἡδεῖαν οὖσαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν γλῶτταν εὔτροχον ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι καὶ ταχεῖαν οἱ [2] σφόδρα γέροντες ἐξεπλήττοντο πρὸς τὴν ὁμοιότητα. πλούτου δὲ καὶ γένους προσόντος αὐτῷ λαμπροῦ καὶ φίλων οἳ πλεῖστον ἐδύναντο, φοβούμενος ἐξοστρακισθῆναι τῶν μὲν πολιτικῶν οὐδὲν ἔπραττεν, ἐν δὲ ταῖς στρατείαις ἀνὴρ [3] ἀγαθὸς ἦν καὶ φιλοκίνδυνος. ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀριστείδης μὲν ἀποτεθνήκει καὶ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἐξεπεπτώκει, Κίμωνα δ’ αἱ στρατεῖαι τὰ πολλὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἔξω κατεῖχον, οὕτω δὴ φέρων ὁ Περικλῆς τῷ δήμῳ προσένειμεν ἑαυτόν, ἀντὶ τῶν πλουσίων καὶ ὀλίγων τὰ τῶν πολλῶν καὶ πενήτων ἑλόμενος [4] παρὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ἥκιστα δημοτικὴν οὖσαν. ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔοικε δεδιὼς μὲν ὑποψίᾳ περιπεσεῖν τυραννίδος, ὁρῶν δ’ ἀριστοκρατικὸν τὸν Κίμωνα καὶ διαφερόντως ὑπὸ τῶν καλῶν κἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ἀγαπώμενον, ὑπῆλθε τοὺς πολλούς, ἀσφάλειαν μὲν ἑαυτῷ, δύναμιν δὲ κατ’ ἐκείνου παρασκευαζόμενος.

[5] εὐθὺς δὲ καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὴν δίαιταν ἑτέραν τάξιν ἐπέθηκεν. ὁδόν τε γὰρ ἐν ἄστει μίαν ἑωρᾶτο τὴν ἐπ’ ἀγορὰν καὶ τὸ βουλευτήριον πορευόμενος, κλήσεις τε δείπνων καὶ τὴν τοιαύτην ἅπασαν φιλοφροσύνην καὶ συνήθειαν ἐξέλιπεν, ὡς ἐν οἷς ἐπολιτεύσατο χρόνοις μακροῖς γενομένοις πρὸς μηδένα τῶν φίλων ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἐλθεῖν· πλὴν Εὐρυπτολέμου τοῦ ἀνεψιοῦ γαμοῦντος ἄχρι τῶν [6] σπονδῶν παραγενόμενος εὐθὺς ἐξανέστη. δειναὶ γὰρ αἱ φιλοφροσύναι παντὸς ὄγκου περιγενέσθαι, καὶ δυσφύλακτον ἐν συνηθείᾳ τὸ πρὸς δόξαν σεμνόν ἐστι· τῆς ἀληθινῆς δ’ ἀρετῆς κάλλιστα φαίνεται τὰ μάλιστα φαινόμενα, καὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν οὐδὲν οὕτω θαυμάσιον τοῖς [7] ἐκτὸς ὡς ὁ καθ’ ἡμέραν βίος τοῖς συνοῦσιν. ὁ δὲ καὶ τῷ δήμῳ, τὸ συνεχὲς φεύγων καὶ τὸν κόρον, οἷον ἐκ διαλειμμάτων ἐπλησίαζεν, οὐκ ἐπὶ παντὶ πράγματι λέγων οὐδ’ ἀεὶ παριὼν εἰς τὸ πλῆθος, ἀλλ’ ἑαυτὸν ὥσπερ τὴν Σαλαμινίαν τριήρη, φησὶ Κριτόλαος, πρὸς τὰς μεγάλας χρείας ἐπιδιδούς, τἆλλα δὲ φίλους καὶ ῥήτορας ἑτέρους καθιεὶς [8] ἔπραττεν. ὧν ἕνα φασὶ γενέσθαι τὸν Ἐφιάλτην, ὃς κατέλυσε τὸ κράτος τῆς ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλῆς, πολλὴν κατὰ τὸν Πλάτωνα (respubl. 562c) καὶ ἄκρατον τοῖς πολίταις ἐλευθερίαν οἰνοχοῶν, ὑφ’ ἧς ὥσπερ ἵππον ἐξυβρίσαντα τὸν δῆμον οἱ κωμῳδοποιοὶ λέγουσι (adesp. 41 CAF III 406)

πειθαρχεῖν οὐκέτι τολμᾶν, ἀλλ’ ‹ἐν›δάκνειν τὴν Εὔβοιαν καὶ ταῖς νήσοις ἐπιπηδᾶν.

[8] [1] Τῇ μέντοι περὶ τὸν βίον κατασκευῇ καὶ τῷ μεγέθει τοῦ φρονήματος ἁρμόζοντα λόγον ὥσπερ ὄργανον ἐξαρτυόμενος, παρενέτεινε πολλαχοῦ τὸν Ἀναξαγόραν, οἷον [2] βαφὴν τῇ ῥητορικῇ τὴν φυσιολογίαν ὑποχεόμενος. τὸ γὰρ ὑψηλόνουν τοῦτο καὶ πάντῃ τελεσιουργόν, ὡς ὁ θεῖος Πλάτων (Phaedr. 270a) φησί, πρὸς τῷ εὐφυὴς εἶναι κτησάμενος ἐκ φυσιολογίας, καὶ τὸ πρόσφορον ἑλκύσας [3] ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν λόγων τέχνην, πολὺ πάντων διήνεγκε. διὸ καὶ τὴν ἐπίκλησιν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι λέγουσι· καίτοι τινὲς ἀπὸ τῶν ‹ἀναθημάτων› οἷς ἐκόσμησε τὴν πόλιν, οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ ταῖς στρατηγίαις δυνάμεως Ὀλύμπιον αὐτὸν οἴονται προσαγορευθῆναι· καὶ συνδραμεῖν οὐδὲν ἀπέοικεν ἀπὸ πολλῶν προσόντων τῷ ἀνδρὶ τὴν [4] δόξαν. αἱ μέντοι κωμῳδίαι τῶν τότε διδασκάλων, σπουδῇ τε πολλὰς καὶ μετὰ γέλωτος ἀφεικότων φωνὰς εἰς αὐτόν, ἐπὶ τῷ λόγῳ μάλιστα τὴν προσωνυμίαν γενέσθαι δηλοῦσι, βροντᾶν μὲν αὐτὸν καὶ ἀστράπτειν ὅτε δημηγοροίη, δεινὸν δὲ κεραυνὸν ἐν γλώσσῃ φέρειν λεγόντων (Aristoph. α. . a. ξαφ III 4)

[5] Διαμνημονεύεται δέ τις καὶ Θουκυδίδου τοῦ Μελησίου λόγος εἰς τὴν δεινότητα τοῦ Περικλέους μετὰ παιδιᾶς εἰρημένος. ἦν μὲν γὰρ ὁ Θουκυδίδης τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν, καὶ πλεῖστον ἀντεπολιτεύσατο τῷ Περικλεῖ χρόνον. Ἀρχιδάμου δὲ τοῦ Λακεδαιμονίων βασιλέως πυνθανομένου πότερον αὐτὸς ἢ Περικλῆς παλαίει βέλτιον, ὅταν εἶπεν ἐγὼ καταβάλω παλαίων, ἐκεῖνος ἀντιλέγων ὡς οὐ πέπτωκε, νικᾷ καὶ μεταπείθει τοὺς ὁρῶντας.

[6] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ οὕτως ὁ Περικλῆς περὶ τὸν λόγον εὐλαβὴς ἦν, ὥστ’ ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ βῆμα βαδίζων ηὔχετο τοῖς θεοῖς [μηδὲ] ῥῆμα μηδὲν ἐκπεσεῖν ἄκοντος αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὴν προκειμένην [7] χρείαν ἀνάρμοστον. ἔγγραφον μὲν οὖν οὐδὲν ἀπολέλοιπε πλὴν τῶν ψηφισμάτων, ἀπομνημονεύεται δ’ ὀλίγα παντάπασιν, οἷον τὸ τὴν Αἴγιναν ὡς λήμην τοῦ Πειραιῶς ἀφελεῖν κελεῦσαι, καὶ τὸ τὸν πόλεμον ἤδη φάναι [8] καθορᾶν ἀπὸ Πελοποννήσου προσφερόμενον· καί ποτε τοῦ Σοφοκλέους, ὅτε συστρατηγῶν ἐξέπλευσε μετ’ αὐτοῦ, παῖδα καλὸν ἐπαινέσαντος, οὐ μόνον ἔφη τὰς χεῖρας ὦ Σοφόκλεις δεῖ καθαρὰς ἔχειν τὸν στρατηγόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ [9] τὰς ὄψεις. ὁ δὲ Στησίμβροτός (FGrH 107 F 9) φησιν, ὅτι τοὺς ἐν Σάμῳ τεθνηκότας ἐγκωμιάζων ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος ἀθανάτους ἔλεγε γεγονέναι καθάπερ τοὺς θεούς· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐκείνους αὐτοὺς ὁρῶμεν, ἀλλὰ ταῖς τιμαῖς ἃς ἔχουσι καὶ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἃ παρέχουσιν ἀθανάτους εἶναι τεκμαιρόμεθα· ταὔτ’ οὖν ὑπάρχειν καὶ τοῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἀποθανοῦσιν.

[9] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Θουκυδίδης (2, 65) μὲν ἀριστοκρατικήν τινα τὴν τοῦ Περικλέους ὑπογράφει πολιτείαν, λόγῳ μὲν οὖσαν δημοκρατίαν, ἔργῳ δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ πρώτου ἀνδρὸς ἀρχήν, ἄλλοι δὲ πολλοὶ πρῶτον ὑπ’ ἐκείνου φασὶ τὸν δῆμον ἐπὶ κληρουχίας καὶ θεωρικὰ καὶ μισθῶν διανομὰς προαχθῆναι, κακῶς ἐθισθέντα καὶ γενόμενον πολυτελῆ καὶ ἀκόλαστον ὑπὸ τῶν τότε πολιτευμάτων ἀντὶ σώφρονος καὶ αὐτουργοῦ, θεωρείσθω διὰ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῶν ἡ [2] αἰτία τῆς μεταβολῆς. ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν γὰρ ὥσπερ εἴρηται πρὸς τὴν Κίμωνος δόξαν ἀντιταττόμενος ὑπεποιεῖτο τὸν δῆμον, ἐλαττούμενος δὲ πλούτῳ καὶ χρήμασιν, ἀφ’ ὧν ἐκεῖνος ἀνελάμβανε τοὺς πένητας, δεῖπνόν τε καθ’ ἡμέραν τῷ δεομένῳ παρέχων Ἀθηναίων καὶ τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους ἀμφιεννύων, τῶν τε χωρίων τοὺς φραγμοὺς ἀφαιρῶν ὅπως ὀπωρίζωσιν οἱ βουλόμενοι, τούτοις ὁ Περικλῆς καταδημαγωγούμενος τρέπεται πρὸς τὴν τῶν δημοσίων διανομήν, συμβουλεύσαντος αὐτῷ ‹Δάμωνος τοῦ› Δαμωνίδου τοῦ [3] Οἴηθεν, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 365) ἱστόρηκε. καὶ ταχὺ θεωρικοῖς καὶ δικαστικοῖς λήμμασιν ἄλλαις τε μισθοφοραῖς καὶ χορηγίαις συνδεκάσας τὸ πλῆθος, ἐχρῆτο κατὰ τῆς ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλῆς, ἧς αὐτὸς οὐ μετεῖχε διὰ τὸ μήτ’ ἄρχων μήτε θεσμοθέτης μήτε βασιλεὺς μήτε πολέμαρχος [4] λαχεῖν. αὗται γὰρ αἱ ἀρχαὶ κληρωταί τ’ ἦσαν ἐκ παλαιοῦ, καὶ δι’ αὐτῶν οἱ δοκιμασθέντες ἀνέβαινον [5] εἰς Ἄρειον πάγον. διὸ καὶ μᾶλλον ἰσχύσας ὁ Περικλῆς ἐν τῷ δήμῳ κατεστασίασε τὴν βουλήν, ὥστε τὴν μὲν ἀφαιρεθῆναι τὰς πλείστας κρίσεις δι’ Ἐφιάλτου, Κίμωνα δ’ ὡς φιλολάκωνα καὶ μισόδημον ἐξοστρακισθῆναι, πλούτῳ μὲν καὶ γένει μηδενὸς ἀπολειπόμενον, νίκας δὲ καλλίστας νενικηκότα τοὺς βαρβάρους καὶ χρημάτων πολλῶν καὶ λαφύρων ἐμπεπληκότα τὴν πόλιν, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου (10, 1) γέγραπται. τοσοῦτον ἦν τὸ κράτος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ τοῦ Περικλέους.

[10] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν ἐξοστρακισμὸς ὡρισμένην εἶχε νόμῳ δεκαετίαν τοῖς φεύγουσιν· ἐν δὲ τῷ διὰ μέσου στρατῷ μεγάλῳ Λακεδαιμονίων ἐμβαλόντων εἰς τὴν Ταναγρικὴν καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων εὐθὺς ὁρμησάντων ἐπ’ αὐτούς, ὁ μὲν Κίμων ἐλθὼν ἐκ τῆς φυγῆς ἔθετο μετὰ τῶν φυλετῶν εἰς λόχον τὰ ὅπλα, καὶ δι’ ἔργων ἀπολύεσθαι τὸν Λακωνισμὸν ἐβούλετο συγκινδυνεύσας τοῖς πολίταις, οἱ δὲ φίλοι τοῦ [2] Περικλέους συστάντες ἀπήλασαν αὐτὸν ὡς φυγάδα. διὸ καὶ δοκεῖ Περικλῆς ἐρρωμενέστατα τὴν μάχην ἐκείνην ἀγωνίσασθαι καὶ γενέσθαι πάντων ἐπιφανέστατος, ἀφειδήσας [3] τοῦ σώματος. ἔπεσον δὲ καὶ τοῦ Κίμωνος οἱ φίλοι πάντες ὁμαλῶς οὓς Περικλῆς συνεπῃτίατο τοῦ Λακωνισμοῦ, καὶ μετάνοια δεινὴ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ πόθος ἔσχε τοῦ Κίμωνος, ἡττημένους μὲν ἐπὶ τῶν ὅρων τῆς Ἀττικῆς, προσδοκῶντας δὲ βαρὺν εἰς ἔτους ὥραν πόλεμον.

[4] αἰσθόμενος οὖν ὁ Περικλῆς οὐκ ὤκνησε χαρίσασθαι τοῖς πολλοῖς, ἀλλὰ τὸ ψήφισμα γράψας αὐτὸς ἐκάλει τὸν ἄνδρα, κἀκεῖνος ἐπανελθὼν εἰρήνην ἐποίησε ταῖς πόλεσιν· οἰκείως γὰρ εἶχον οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι πρὸς αὐτόν, ὥσπερ ἀπήχθοντο [5] τῷ Περικλεῖ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις δημαγωγοῖς. ἔνιοι δέ φασιν οὐ πρότερον γραφῆναι τῷ Κίμωνι τὴν κάθοδον ὑπὸ τοῦ Περικλέους, ἢ συνθήκας αὐτοῖς ἀπορρήτους γενέσθαι δι’ Ἐλπινίκης, τῆς Κίμωνος ἀδελφῆς, ὥστε Κίμωνα μὲν ἐκπλεῦσαι λαβόντα ναῦς διακοσίας καὶ τῶν ἔξω στρατηγεῖν καταστρεφόμενον τὴν βασιλέως χώραν, Περικλεῖ δὲ τὴν [6] ἐν ἄστει δύναμιν ὑπάρχειν. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ πρότερον ἡ Ἐλπινίκη τῷ Κίμωνι τὸν Περικλέα πρᾳότερον παρασχεῖν, ὅτε τὴν θανατικὴν δίκην ἔφευγεν. ἦν μὲν γὰρ εἷς τῶν κατηγόρων ὁ Περικλῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου προβεβλημένος, ἐλθούσης δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν τῆς Ἐλπινίκης καὶ δεομένης, μειδιάσας εἶπεν· ὦ Ἐλπινίκη, γραῦς εἶ, γραῦς εἶ, ὡς πράγματα τηλικαῦτα διαπράσσειν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὸν λόγον ἅπαξ ἀνέστη τὴν προβολὴν ἀφοσιούμενος, καὶ τῶν κατηγόρων [7] ἐλάχιστα τὸν Κίμωνα λυπήσας ἀπεχώρησε. πῶς ἂν οὖν τις Ἰδομενεῖ (FGrH 338 F 8) πιστεύσειε κατηγοροῦντι τοῦ Περικλέους, ὡς τὸν δημαγωγὸν Ἐφιάλτην, φίλον γενόμενον καὶ κοινωνὸν ὄντα τῆς ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ προαιρέσεως, δολοφονήσαντος διὰ ζηλοτυπίαν καὶ φθόνον τῆς δόξης; ταῦτα γὰρ οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅθεν συναγαγὼν ὥσπερ χολὴν τἀνδρὶ προσβέβληκε, πάντῃ μὲν ἴσως οὐκ ἀνεπιλήπτῳ, φρόνημα δ’ εὐγενὲς ἔχοντι καὶ ψυχὴν φιλότιμον, οἷς οὐδὲν ἐμφύεται [8] πάθος ὠμὸν οὕτω καὶ θηριῶδες. Ἐφιάλτην μὲν οὖν, φοβερὸν ὄντα τοῖς ὀλιγαρχικοῖς καὶ περὶ τὰς εὐθύνας καὶ διώξεις τῶν τὸν δῆμον ἀδικούντων ἀπαραίτητον, ἐπιβουλεύσαντες οἱ ἐχθροὶ δι’ Ἀριστοδίκου τοῦ Ταναγρικοῦ κρυφαίως ἀνεῖλον, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 367) εἴρηκεν.

Ἐτελεύτησε δὲ Κίμων ἐν Κύπρῳ στρατηγῶν.

[11] [1] Οἱ δ’ ἀριστοκρατικοί, μέγιστον μὲν ἤδη τὸν Περικλέα καὶ πρόσθεν ὁρῶντες γεγονότα τῶν πολιτῶν, βουλόμενοι δ’ ὅμως εἶναί τινα τὸν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀντιτασσόμενον ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἀμβλύνοντα, ὥστε μὴ κομιδῇ μοναρχίαν εἶναι, Θουκυδίδην τὸν Ἀλωπεκῆθεν, ἄνδρα σώφρονα καὶ κηδεστὴν Κίμωνος, ἀντέστησαν ἐναντιωσόμενον, ὃς ἧττον μὲν ὢν πολεμικὸς τοῦ Κίμωνος, ἀγοραῖος δὲ καὶ πολιτικὸς μᾶλλον, οἰκουρῶν ἐν ἄστει καὶ περὶ τὸ βῆμα τῷ Περικλεῖ συμπλεκόμενος, ταχὺ τὴν πολιτείαν εἰς ἀντίπαλον κατέστησεν.

[2] οὐ γὰρ εἴασε τοὺς καλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς καλουμένους ἄνδρας ἐνδιεσπάρθαι καὶ συμμεμεῖχθαι πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ὡς πρότερον, ὑπὸ πλήθους ἠμαυρωμένους τὸ ἀξίωμα, χωρὶς δὲ διακρίνας καὶ συναγαγὼν εἰς ταὐτὸ τὴν πάντων δύναμιν ἐμβριθῆ γενομένην, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ζυγοῦ [3] ῥοπὴν ἐποίησεν. ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἐξ ἀρχῆς διπλόη τις ὕπουλος ὥσπερ ἐν σιδήρῳ, διαφορὰν ὑποσημαίνουσα δημοτικῆς καὶ ἀριστοκρατικῆς προαιρέσεως, ἡ δ’ ἐκείνων ἅμιλλα καὶ φιλοτιμία τῶν ἀνδρῶν βαθυτάτην τομὴν τεμοῦσα τῆς πόλεως, τὸ μὲν δῆμον, τὸ δ’ ὀλίγους ἐποίησε καλεῖσθαι. [4] διὸ καὶ τότε μάλιστα τῷ δήμῳ τὰς ἡνίας ἀνεὶς ὁ Περικλῆς ἐπολιτεύετο πρὸς χάριν, ἀεὶ μέν τινα θέαν πανηγυρικὴν ἢ ἑστίασιν ἢ πομπὴν εἶναι μηχανώμενος ἐν ἄστει, καὶ διαπαιδαγωγῶν οὐκ ἀμούσοις ἡδοναῖς τὴν πόλιν, ἑξήκοντα δὲ τριήρεις καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν ἐκπέμπων, ἐν αἷς πολλοὶ τῶν πολιτῶν ἔπλεον ὀκτὼ μῆνας ἔμμισθοι, μελετῶντες ἅμα καὶ μανθάνοντες τὴν ναυτικὴν ἐμπειρίαν.

[5] πρὸς δὲ τούτοις χιλίους μὲν ἔστειλεν εἰς Χερρόνησον κληρούχους, εἰς δὲ Νάξον πεντακοσίους, εἰς δ’ Ἄνδρον ‹τοὺς› ἡμίσεις τούτων, εἰς δὲ Θρᾴκην χιλίους Βισάλταις συνοικήσοντας, ἄλλους δ’ εἰς Ἰταλίαν ‹ἀν›οικιζομένης [6] Συβάρεως, ἣν Θουρίους προσηγόρευσαν. καὶ ταῦτ’ ἔπραττεν ἀποκουφίζων μὲν ἀργοῦ καὶ διὰ σχολὴν πολυπράγμονος ὄχλου τὴν πόλιν, ἐπανορθούμενος δὲ τὰς ἀπορίας τοῦ δήμου, φόβον δὲ καὶ φρουρὰν τοῦ μὴ νεωτερίζειν τι παρακατοικίζων τοῖς συμμάχοις.

[12] [1] Ὃ δὲ πλείστην μὲν ἡδονὴν ταῖς Ἀθήναις καὶ κόσμον ἤνεγκε, μεγίστην δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἔκπληξιν ἀνθρώποις, μόνον δὲ τῇ Ἑλλάδι μαρτυρεῖ μὴ ψεύδεσθαι τὴν λεγομένην δύναμιν αὐτῆς ἐκείνην καὶ τὸν παλαιὸν ὄλβον, ἡ τῶν ἀναθημάτων κατασκευή, τοῦτο μάλιστα τῶν πολιτευμάτων τοῦ Περικλέους ἐβάσκαινον οἱ ἐχθροὶ καὶ διέβαλλον ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις, βοῶντες ὡς ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἀδοξεῖ καὶ κακῶς ἀκούει, τὰ κοινὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων χρήματα πρὸς αὑτὸν ἐκ Δήλου μεταγαγών, ἣ δ’ ἔνεστιν αὐτῷ πρὸς τοὺς ἐγκαλοῦντας εὐπρεπεστάτη τῶν προφάσεων, δείσαντα τοὺς βαρβάρους ἐκεῖθεν ἀνελέσθαι καὶ φυλάττειν ἐν [2] ὀχυρῷ τὰ κοινά, ταύτην ἀνῄρηκε Περικλῆς, καὶ δοκεῖ δεινὴν ὕβριν ἡ Ἑλλὰς ὑβρίζεσθαι καὶ τυραννεῖσθαι περιφανῶς, ὁρῶσα τοῖς εἰσφερομένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῆς ἀναγκαίως πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ἡμᾶς τὴν πόλιν καταχρυσοῦντας καὶ καλλωπίζοντας ὥσπερ ἀλαζόνα γυναῖκα, περιαπτομένην λίθους πολυτελεῖς καὶ ἀγάλματα καὶ ναοὺς χιλιοταλάντους.

[3] ἐδίδασκεν οὖν ὁ Περικλῆς τὸν δῆμον, ὅτι χρημάτων μὲν οὐκ ὀφείλουσι τοῖς συμμάχοις λόγον, προπολεμοῦντες αὐτῶν καὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀνείργοντες, οὐχ ἵππον, οὐ ναῦν, οὐχ ὁπλίτην, ἀλλὰ χρήματα μόνον τελούντων, ἃ τῶν διδόντων οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλὰ τῶν λαμβανόντων, ἂν παρέχωσιν [4] ἀνθ’ οὗ λαμβάνουσι, δεῖ δὲ τῆς πόλεως κατεσκευασμένης ἱκανῶς τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, εἰς ταῦτα τὴν εὐπορίαν τρέπειν αὐτῆς, ἀφ’ ὧν δόξα μὲν γενομένων ἀίδιος, εὐπορία δὲ γινομένων ἑτοίμη παρέσται, παντοδαπῆς ἐργασίας φανείσης καὶ ποικίλων χρειῶν, αἳ πᾶσαν μὲν τέχνην ἐγείρουσαι, πᾶσαν δὲ χεῖρα κινοῦσαι, σχεδὸν ὅλην ποιοῦσιν ἔμμισθον τὴν πόλιν, ἐξ αὑτῆς ἅμα κοσμουμένην καὶ [5] τρεφομένην. τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ἡλικίαν ἔχουσι καὶ ῥώμην αἱ στρατεῖαι τὰς ἀπὸ τῶν κοινῶν εὐπορίας παρεῖχον, τὸν δ’ ἀσύντακτον καὶ βάναυσον ὄχλον οὔτ’ ἄμοιρον εἶναι λημμάτων βουλόμενος, οὔτε λαμβάνειν ἀργὸν καὶ σχολάζοντα, μεγάλας κατασκευασμάτων ἐπιβολὰς καὶ πολυτέχνους ὑποθέσεις ἔργων διατριβὴν ἐχόντων ἐνέβαλε φέρων εἰς τὸν δῆμον, ἵνα μηδὲν ἧττον τῶν πλεόντων καὶ φρουρούντων καὶ στρατευομένων τὸ οἰκουροῦν ἔχῃ πρόφασιν ἀπὸ τῶν [6] δημοσίων ὠφελεῖσθαι καὶ μεταλαμβάνειν. ὅπου γὰρ ὕλη μὲν ἦν λίθος, χαλκός, ἐλέφας, χρυσός, ἔβενος, κυπάρισσος, αἱ δὲ ταύτην ἐκπονοῦσαι καὶ κατεργαζόμεναι τέχναι τέκτονες, πλάσται, χαλκοτύποι, λιθουργοί, βαφεῖς χρυσοῦ, μαλακτῆρες ἐλέφαντος, ζωγράφοι, ποικιλταί, τορευταί, πομποὶ δὲ τούτων καὶ κομιστῆρες ἔμποροι καὶ ναῦται καὶ κυβερνῆται κατὰ θάλατταν, οἱ δὲ κατὰ γῆν ἁμαξοπηγοὶ καὶ ζευγοτρόφοι καὶ ἡνίοχοι καὶ καλωστρόφοι καὶ λινουργοὶ καὶ σκυτοτόμοι καὶ ὁδοποιοὶ καὶ μεταλλεῖς, ἑκάστη δὲ τέχνη, καθάπερ στρατηγὸς ἴδιον στράτευμα, τὸν θητικὸν ὄχλον καὶ ἰδιώτην συντεταγμένον εἶχεν, ὄργανον καὶ σῶμα τῆς ὑπηρεσίας γινόμενον, εἰς πᾶσαν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἡλικίαν καὶ φύσιν αἱ χρεῖαι διένεμον καὶ διέσπειρον τὴν εὐπορίαν.

[13] [1] Ἀναβαινόντων δὲ τῶν ἔργων ὑπερηφάνων μὲν μεγέθει, μορφῇ δ’ ἀμιμήτων καὶ χάριτι, τῶν δημιουργῶν ἁμιλλωμένων ὑπερβάλλεσθαι τὴν δημιουργίαν τῇ καλλιτεχνίᾳ, [2] μάλιστα θαυμάσιον ἦν τὸ τάχος. ὧν γὰρ ἕκαστον ᾤοντο πολλαῖς διαδοχαῖς καὶ ἡλικίαις μόλις ἐπὶ τέλος ἀφίξεσθαι, ταῦτα πάντα μιᾶς ἀκμῇ πολιτείας ἐλάμβανε τὴν συντέλειαν.

[3] καίτοι ποτέ φασιν Ἀγαθάρχου τοῦ ζωγράφου μέγα φρονοῦντος ἐπὶ τῷ ταχὺ καὶ ῥᾳδίως τὰ ζῷα ποιεῖν ἀκούσαντα [4] τὸν Ζεῦξιν εἰπεῖν· ἐγὼ δ’ ἐν πολλῷ χρόνῳ. ἡ γὰρ ἐν τῷ ποιεῖν εὐχέρεια καὶ ταχύτης οὐκ ἐντίθησι βάρος ἔργῳ μόνιμον οὐδὲ κάλλους ἀκρίβειαν, ὁ δ’ εἰς τὴν γένεσιν τῷ πόνῳ προδανεισθεὶς χρόνος ἐν τῇ σωτηρίᾳ τοῦ γενομένου τὴν ἰσχὺν ἀποδίδωσιν. ὅθεν καὶ μᾶλλον θαυμάζεται τὰ Περικλέους ἔργα, πρὸς πολὺν χρόνον ἐν ὀλίγῳ [5] γενόμενα. κάλλει μὲν γὰρ ἕκαστον εὐθὺς ἦν τότ’ ἀρχαῖον, ἀκμῇ δὲ μέχρι νῦν πρόσφατόν ἐστι καὶ νεουργόν· οὕτως ἐπανθεῖ καινότης ἀεί τις, ἄθικτον ὑπὸ τοῦ χρόνου διατηροῦσα τὴν ὄψιν, ὥσπερ ἀειθαλὲς πνεῦμα καὶ ψυχὴν ἀγήρω καταμεμειγμένην τῶν ἔργων ἐχόντων.

[6] Πάντα δὲ διεῖπε καὶ πάντων ἐπίσκοπος ἦν αὐτῷ Φειδίας, καίτοι μεγάλους ἀρχιτέκτονας ἐχόντων καὶ τεχνίτας [7] τῶν ἔργων. τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἑκατόμπεδον Παρθενῶνα Καλλικράτης εἰργάζετο καὶ Ἰκτῖνος, τὸ δ’ ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι τελεστήριον ἤρξατο μὲν Κόροιβος οἰκοδομεῖν, καὶ τοὺς ἐπ’ ἐδάφους κίονας ἔθηκεν οὗτος καὶ τοῖς ἐπιστυλίοις ἐπέζευξεν· ἀποθανόντος δὲ τούτου Μεταγένης ὁ Ξυπεταιὼν τὸ διάζωσμα καὶ τοὺς ἄνω κίονας ἐπέστησε, τὸ δ’ ὀπαῖον ἐπὶ τοῦ ἀνακτόρου Ξενοκλῆς ὁ Χολαργεὺς ἐκορύφωσε· τὸ δὲ μακρὸν τεῖχος, περὶ οὗ Σωκράτης (Plat. Gorg. 455e) ἀκοῦσαί φησιν αὐτὸς εἰσηγουμένου γνώμην Περικλέους, [8] ἠργολάβησε Καλλικράτης. κωμῳδεῖ δὲ τὸ ἔργον Κρατῖνος (fr. 300 CAF I 100) ὡς βραδέως περαινόμενον·

πάλαι γὰρ αὐτό (φησί)

λόγοισι προάγει Περικλέης, ἔργοισι δ’ οὐδὲ κινεῖ.

[9] τὸ δ’ Ὠιδεῖον, τῇ μὲν ἐντὸς διαθέσει πολύεδρον καὶ πολύστυλον, τῇ δ’ ἐρέψει περικλινὲς καὶ κάταντες ἐκ μιᾶς κορυφῆς πεποιημένον, εἰκόνα λέγουσι γενέσθαι καὶ μίμημα τῆς βασιλέως σκηνῆς, ἐπιστατοῦντος καὶ τούτῳ Περικλέους.

[10] διὸ καὶ πάλιν Κρατῖνος ἐν Θρᾴτταις παίζει πρὸς αὐτόν (fr. 71 CAF I 35)·

ὁ σχινοκέφαλος Ζεὺς ὅδε

προσέρχεται [Περικλέης] τᾠδεῖον ἐπὶ τοῦ κρανίου

ἔχων, ἐπειδὴ τοὔστρακον παροίχεται.

[11] φιλοτιμούμενος δ’ ὁ Περικλῆς τότε πρῶτον ἐψηφίσατο μουσικῆς ἀγῶνα τοῖς Παναθηναίοις ἄγεσθαι, καὶ διέταξεν αὐτὸς ἀθλοθέτης αἱρεθείς, καθότι χρὴ τοὺς ἀγωνιζομένους αὐλεῖν ἢ ᾄδειν ἢ κιθαρίζειν. ἐθεῶντο δὲ καὶ τότε καὶ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον ἐν Ὠιδείῳ τοὺς μουσικοὺς ἀγῶνας.

[12] Τὰ δὲ Προπύλαια τῆς ἀκροπόλεως ἐξειργάσθη μὲν ἐν πενταετίᾳ Μνησικλέους ἀρχιτεκτονοῦντος, τύχη δὲ θαυμαστὴ συμβᾶσα περὶ τὴν οἰκοδομίαν ἐμήνυσε τὴν θεὸν οὐκ ἀποστατοῦσαν, ἀλλὰ συνεφαπτομένην τοῦ ἔργου καὶ [13] συνεπιτελοῦσαν. ὁ γὰρ ἐνεργότατος καὶ προθυμότατος τῶν τεχνιτῶν ἀποσφαλεὶς ἐξ ὕψους ἔπεσε καὶ διέκειτο μοχθηρῶς, ὑπὸ τῶν ἰατρῶν ἀπεγνωσμένος. ἀθυμοῦντος δὲ τοῦ Περικλέους, ἡ θεὸς ὄναρ φανεῖσα συνέταξε θεραπείαν, ᾗ χρώμενος ὁ Περικλῆς ταχὺ καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἰάσατο τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ καὶ τὸ χαλκοῦν ἄγαλμα τῆς Ὑγιείας Ἀθηνᾶς ἀνέστησεν ἐν ἀκροπόλει παρὰ τὸν βωμόν, ὃς καὶ πρότερον ἦν ὡς λέγουσιν.

[14] Ὁ δὲ Φειδίας εἰργάζετο μὲν τῆς θεοῦ τὸ χρυσοῦν ἕδος, καὶ τούτου δημιουργὸς ἐν τῇ στήλῃ [εἶναι] γέγραπται· πάντα δ’ ἦν σχεδὸν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ, καὶ πᾶσιν ὡς εἰρήκαμεν [15] ἐπεστάτει τοῖς τεχνίταις διὰ φιλίαν Περικλέους. καὶ τοῦτο τῷ μὲν φθόνον, τῷ δὲ βλασφημίαν ἤνεγκεν, ὡς ἐλευθέρας τῷ Περικλεῖ γυναῖκας εἰς ταὐτὸ φοιτώσας ὑποδεχομένου τοῦ Φειδίου. δεξάμενοι δὲ τὸν λόγον οἱ κωμικοὶ (adesp. 59 CAF III 410) πολλὴν ἀσέλγειαν αὐτοῦ κατεσκέδασαν, εἴς τε τὴν Μενίππου γυναῖκα διαβάλλοντες, ἀνδρὸς φίλου καὶ ὑποστρατηγοῦντος, εἴς τε τὰς Πυριλάμπους ὀρνιθοτροφίας, ὃς ἑταῖρος ὢν Περικλέους αἰτίαν εἶχε ταῶνας ὑφιέναι [16] ταῖς γυναιξὶν αἷς ὁ Περικλῆς ἐπλησίαζε. καὶ τί ἄν τις ἀνθρώπους σατυρικοὺς τοῖς βίοις καὶ τὰς κατὰ τῶν κρειττόνων βλασφημίας ὥσπερ δαίμονι κακῷ τῷ φθόνῳ τῶν πολλῶν ἀποθύοντας ἑκάστοτε θαυμάσειεν, ὅπου καὶ Στησίμβροτος ὁ Θάσιος (FGrH 107 F 10b) δεινὸν ἀσέβημα καὶ μυσῶδες ἐξενεγκεῖν ἐτόλμησεν εἰς τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ υἱοῦ κατὰ τοῦ Περικλέους; οὕτως ἔοικε πάντῃ χαλεπὸν εἶναι καὶ δυσθήρατον ἱστορίᾳ τἀληθές, ὅταν οἱ μὲν ὕστερον γεγονότες τὸν χρόνον ἔχωσιν ἐπιπροσθοῦντα τῇ γνώσει τῶν πραγμάτων, ἡ δὲ τῶν πράξεων καὶ τῶν βίων ἡλικιῶτις ἱστορία τὰ μὲν φθόνοις καὶ δυσμενείαις, τὰ δὲ χαριζομένη καὶ κολακεύουσα λυμαίνηται καὶ διαστρέφῃ τὴν ἀλήθειαν.

[14] [1] Τῶν δὲ περὶ τὸν Θουκυδίδην ῥητόρων καταβοώντων τοῦ Περικλέους ὡς σπαθῶντος τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὰς προσόδους ἀπολλύντος, ἠρώτησεν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ τὸν δῆμον, εἰ πολλὰ δοκεῖ δεδαπανῆσθαι· φησάντων δὲ πάμπολλα, μὴ τοίνυν εἶπεν ὑμῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐμοὶ δεδαπανήσθω, καὶ τῶν ἀναθημάτων ἰδίαν ἐμαυτοῦ ποιήσομαι τὴν ἐπιγραφήν.

[2] εἰπόντος οὖν ταῦτα τοῦ Περικλέους, εἴτε τὴν μεγαλοφροσύνην αὐτοῦ θαυμάσαντες, εἴτε πρὸς τὴν δόξαν ἀντιφιλοτιμούμενοι τῶν ἔργων, ἀνέκραγον κελεύοντες ἐκ τῶν δημοσίων [3] ἀναλίσκειν καὶ χορηγεῖν μηδενὸς φειδόμενον. τέλος δὲ πρὸς τὸν Θουκυδίδην εἰς ἀγῶνα περὶ τοῦ ὀστράκου καταστὰς καὶ διακινδυνεύσας, ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἐξέβαλε, κατέλυσε δὲ τὴν ἀντιτεταγμένην ἑταιρείαν.

[15] [1] Ὡς οὖν παντάπασι λυθείσης τῆς διαφορᾶς, καὶ τῆς πόλεως οἷον ὁμαλῆς καὶ μιᾶς γενομένης κομιδῇ, περιήνεγκεν εἰς ἑαυτὸν τὰς Ἀθήνας καὶ τὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐξηρτημένα πράγματα, φόρους καὶ στρατεύματα καὶ τριήρεις καὶ νήσους καὶ θάλασσαν καὶ πολλὴν μὲν δι’ Ἑλλήνων, πολλὴν δὲ καὶ διὰ βαρβάρων ἥκουσαν ἰσχὺν καὶ ἡγεμονίαν, ὑπηκόοις ἔθνεσι καὶ φιλίαις βασιλέων καὶ συμμαχίαις πεφραγμένην δυναστῶν, οὐκέθ’ ὁ αὐτὸς ἦν οὐδ’ ὁμοίως χειροήθης τῷ δήμῳ καὶ ῥᾴδιος ὑπείκειν καὶ συνενδιδόναι ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις ὥσπερ πνοαῖς τῶν πολλῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῆς ἀνειμένης ἐκείνης καὶ ὑποθρυπτομένης ἔνια δημαγωγίας ὥσπερ ἀνθηρᾶς καὶ μαλακῆς ἁρμονίας ἀριστοκρατικὴν καὶ βασιλικὴν ἐντεινάμενος πολιτείαν, καὶ χρώμενος αὐτῇ πρὸς τὸ βέλτιστον ὀρθῇ καὶ ἀνεγκλίτῳ, τὰ μὲν πολλὰ βουλόμενον ἦγε πείθων καὶ διδάσκων τὸν δῆμον, ἦν δ’ ὅτε καὶ μάλα δυσχεραίνοντα κατατείνων καὶ προσβιβάζων ἐχειροῦτο τῷ συμφέροντι, μιμούμενος ἀτεχνῶς ἰατρὸν ποικίλῳ νοσήματι καὶ μακρῷ κατὰ καιρὸν μὲν ἡδονὰς ἀβλαβεῖς, κατὰ καιρὸν δὲ δηγμοὺς καὶ φάρμακα προσφέροντα [2] σωτήρια. παντοδαπῶν γὰρ ὡς εἰκὸς παθῶν ἐν ὄχλῳ τοσαύτην τὸ μέγεθος ἀρχὴν ἔχοντι φυομένων, μόνος ἐμμελῶς ἕκαστα διαχειρίσασθαι πεφυκώς, μάλιστα δ’ ἐλπίσι καὶ φόβοις ὥσπερ οἴαξι συστέλλων τὸ θρασυνόμενον αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ δύσθυμον ἀνιεὶς καὶ παραμυθούμενος, ἔδειξε τὴν ῥητορικὴν κατὰ Πλάτωνα (Phaedr. 271c) ψυχαγωγίαν οὖσαν καὶ μέγιστον ἔργον αὐτῆς τὴν περὶ τὰ ἤθη καὶ πάθη μέθοδον, ὥσπερ τινὰς τόνους καὶ φθόγγους ψυχῆς μάλ’ [3] ἐμμελοῦς ἁφῆς καὶ κρούσεως δεομένους. αἰτία δ’ οὐχ ἡ τοῦ λόγου ψιλῶς δύναμις, ἀλλ’, ὡς Θουκυδίδης (2, 65) φησίν, ἡ περὶ τὸν βίον δόξα καὶ πίστις τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἀδωροτάτου περιφανῶς γενομένου καὶ χρημάτων κρείττονος· ὃς τὴν πόλιν ἐκ μεγάλης μεγίστην καὶ πλουσιωτάτην ποιήσας καὶ γενόμενος δυνάμει πολλῶν βασιλέων καὶ τυράννων ὑπέρτερος, ὧν ἔνιοι καὶ ἐπὶ τοῖς υἱέσι διέθεντο ‹τοῖς› ἐκείνου, μιᾷ δραχμῇ μείζονα τὴν οὐσίαν οὐκ ἐποίησεν ἧς ὁ πατὴρ αὐτῷ κατέλιπε.

[16] [1] Καίτοι τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ σαφῶς μὲν ὁ Θουκυδίδης διηγεῖται, κακοήθως δὲ παρεμφαίνουσιν οἱ κωμικοί (adesp. 60 CAF III 411), Πεισιστρατίδας μὲν νέους τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν ἑταίρους καλοῦντες, αὐτὸν δ’ ἀπομόσαι μὴ τυραννήσειν κελεύοντες, ὡς ἀσυμμέτρου πρὸς δημοκρατίαν καὶ βαρυτέρας [2] περὶ αὐτὸν οὔσης ὑπεροχῆς. ὁ δὲ Τηλεκλείδης (fr. 42 CAF I 220) παραδεδωκέναι φησὶν αὐτῷ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους

πόλεών τε φόρους αὐτάς τε πόλεις, τὰς μὲν δεῖν, τὰς δ’ ἀναλύειν,

λάινα τείχη, τὰ μὲν οἰκοδομεῖν τὰ δὲ τἄμπαλιν αὖ καταβάλλειν,

σπονδάς, δύναμιν, κράτος, εἰρήνην, πλοῦτόν τ’ εὐδαιμονίαν τε.

[3] καὶ ταῦτα καιρὸς οὐκ ἦν οὐδ’ ἀκμὴ καὶ χάρις ἀνθούσης ἐφ’ ὥρᾳ πολιτείας, ἀλλὰ τεσσαράκοντα μὲν ἔτη πρωτεύων ἐν Ἐφιάλταις καὶ Λεωκράταις καὶ Μυρωνίδαις καὶ Κίμωσι καὶ Τολμίδαις καὶ Θουκυδίδαις, μετὰ δὲ τὴν Θουκυδίδου κατάλυσιν καὶ τὸν ὀστρακισμὸν οὐκ ἐλάττω τῶν πεντεκαίδεκα ἐτῶν διηνεκῆ καὶ μίαν οὖσαν ἐν ταῖς ἐνιαυσίοις στρατηγίαις ἀρχὴν καὶ δυναστείαν κτησάμενος, ἐφύλαξεν ἑαυτὸν ἀνάλωτον ὑπὸ χρημάτων, καίπερ οὐ παντάπασιν ἀργῶς ἔχων πρὸς χρηματισμόν, ἀλλὰ τὸν πατρῷον καὶ δίκαιον πλοῦτον, ὡς μήτ’ ἀμελούμενος ἐκφύγοι μήτε πολλὰ πράγματα καὶ διατριβὰς ἀσχολουμένῳ παρέχοι, συνέταξεν εἰς οἰκονομίαν ἣν ᾤετο ῥᾴστην καὶ [4] ἀκριβεστάτην εἶναι. τοὺς γὰρ ἐπετείους καρποὺς ἅπαντας ἀθρόους ἐπίπρασκεν, εἶτα τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἕκαστον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς ὠνούμενος διῴκει τὸν βίον καὶ τὰ περὶ τὴν [5] δίαιταν. ὅθεν οὐχ ἡδὺς ἦν ἐνηλίκοις παισὶν οὐδὲ γυναιξὶ δαψιλὴς χορηγός, ἀλλ’ ἐμέμφοντο τὴν ἐφήμερον ταύτην καὶ συνηγμένην εἰς τὸ ἀκριβέστατον δαπάνην, οὐδενὸς οἷον ἐν οἰκίᾳ μεγάλῃ καὶ πράγμασιν ἀφθόνοις περιρρέοντος, ἀλλὰ παντὸς μὲν ἀναλώματος, παντὸς δὲ λήμματος [6] δι’ ἀριθμοῦ καὶ μέτρου βαδίζοντος. ὁ δὲ πᾶσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν τοιαύτην συνέχων ἀκρίβειαν εἷς ἦν οἰκέτης Εὐάγγελος, ὡς ἕτερος οὐδεὶς εὖ πεφυκὼς ἢ κατεσκευασμένος ὑπὸ τοῦ [7] Περικλέους πρὸς οἰκονομίαν. ἀπᾴδοντα μὲν οὖν ταῦτα τῆς Ἀναξαγόρου σοφίας, εἴγε καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ἐκεῖνος ἐξέλιπε καὶ τὴν χώραν ἀνῆκεν ἀργὴν καὶ μηλόβοτον ὑπ’ ἐνθουσιασμοῦ καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνης· οὐ ταὐτὸν δ’ ἐστὶν οἶμαι θεωρητικοῦ φιλοσόφου καὶ πολιτικοῦ βίος, ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ἀνόργανον καὶ ἀπροσδεῆ τῆς ἐκτὸς ὕλης ἐπὶ τοῖς καλοῖς κινεῖ τὴν διάνοιαν, τῷ δ’ εἰς ἀνθρωπείας χρείας ἀναμειγνύντι τὴν ἀρετὴν ἔστιν οὗ γένοιτ’ ἂν οὐ τῶν ἀναγκαίων μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν καλῶν ὁ πλοῦτος, ὥσπερ ἦν καὶ Περικλεῖ, βοηθοῦντι [8] πολλοῖς τῶν πενήτων. καὶ μέντοι γε τὸν Ἀναξαγόραν αὐτὸν λέγουσιν ἀσχολουμένου Περικλέους ἀμελούμενον κεῖσθαι συγκεκαλυμμένον ἤδη γηραιὸν ἀποκαρτεροῦντα, προσπεσόντος δὲ τῷ Περικλεῖ τοῦ πράγματος, ἐκπλαγέντα θεῖν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ δεῖσθαι πᾶσαν δέησιν, ὀλοφυρόμενον οὐκ ἐκεῖνον, ἀλλ’ ἑαυτόν, εἰ τοιοῦτον [9] ἀπολεῖ τῆς πολιτείας σύμβουλον. ἐκκαλυψάμενον οὖν τὸν Ἀναξαγόραν εἰπεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν· ὦ Περίκλεις, καὶ οἱ τοῦ λύχνου χρείαν ἔχοντες ἔλαιον ἐπιχέουσιν.

[17] [1] Ἀρχομένων δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων ἄχθεσθαι τῇ αὐξήσει τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ἐπαίρων ὁ Περικλῆς τὸν δῆμον ἔτι μᾶλλον μέγα φρονεῖν καὶ μεγάλων αὑτὸν ἀξιοῦν πραγμάτων γράφει ψήφισμα, πάντας Ἕλληνας τοὺς ὁποίποτε κατοικοῦντας Εὐρώπης ἢ [τῆς] Ἀσίας παρακαλεῖν, καὶ μικρὰν πόλιν καὶ μεγάλην, εἰς σύλλογον πέμπειν Ἀθήναζε τοὺς βουλευσομένους περὶ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἱερῶν, ἃ κατέπρησαν οἱ βάρβαροι, καὶ τῶν θυσιῶν, ἃς ὀφείλουσιν ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος εὐξάμενοι τοῖς θεοῖς, ὅτε πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους ἐμάχοντο, καὶ τῆς θαλάττης, ὅπως πλέωσι πάντες ἀδεῶς [2] καὶ τὴν εἰρήνην ἄγωσιν. ἐπὶ ταῦτα δ’ ἄνδρες εἴκοσι τῶν ὑπὲρ πεντήκοντα ἔτη γεγονότων ἐπέμφθησαν, ὧν πέντε μὲν Ἴωνας καὶ Δωριεῖς τοὺς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ καὶ νησιώτας ἄχρι Λέσβου καὶ Ῥόδου παρεκάλουν, πέντε δὲ τοὺς ἐν Ἑλλησπόντῳ καὶ Θρᾴκῃ μέχρι Βυζαντίου τόπους ἐπῄεσαν, καὶ πέντε ἐπὶ τούτοις εἰς Βοιωτίαν καὶ Φωκίδα καὶ Πελοπόννησον, ἐκ δὲ ταύτης διὰ Λοκρῶν ἐπὶ τὴν πρόσοικον ἤπειρον ἕως Ἀκαρνανίας καὶ Ἀμβρακίας ἀπεστάλησαν· [3] οἱ δὲ λοιποὶ δι’ Εὐβοίας ἐπ’ Οἰταίους. καὶ τὸν Μαλιέα κόλπον καὶ Φθιώτας [καὶ] Ἀχαιοὺς καὶ Θεσσαλοὺς ἐπορεύοντο, συμπείθοντες ἰέναι καὶ μετέχειν τῶν βουλευμάτων [4] ἐπ’ εἰρήνῃ καὶ κοινοπραγίᾳ τῆς Ἑλλάδος. ἐπράχθη δ’ οὐδὲν οὐδὲ συνῆλθον αἱ πόλεις, Λακεδαιμονίων ὑπεναντιωθέντων, ὡς λέγεται, καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ τῆς πείρας ἐλεγχθείσης. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν παρεθέμην ἐνδεικνύμενος αὐτοῦ τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὴν μεγαλοφροσύνην.

[18] [1] Ἐν δὲ ταῖς στρατηγίαις εὐδοκίμει μάλιστα διὰ τὴν ἀσφάλειαν, οὔτε μάχης ἐχούσης πολλὴν ἀδηλότητα καὶ κίνδυνον ἑκουσίως ἁπτόμενος, οὔτε τοὺς ἐκ τοῦ παραβαλέσθαι χρησαμένους τύχῃ λαμπρᾷ καὶ θαυμασθέντας ὡς μεγάλους ζηλῶν καὶ μιμούμενος στρατηγούς, ἀεί τε λέγων πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας, ὡς ὅσον ἐπ’ αὐτῷ μενοῦσιν [2] ἀθάνατοι πάντα τὸν χρόνον. ὁρῶν δὲ Τολμίδην τὸν Τολμαίου διὰ τὰς πρότερον εὐτυχίας καὶ διὰ τὸ τιμᾶσθαι διαφερόντως ἐκ τῶν πολεμικῶν σὺν οὐδενὶ καιρῷ παρασκευαζόμενον εἰς Βοιωτίαν ἐμβαλεῖν, καὶ πεπεικότα τῶν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ τοὺς ἀρίστους καὶ φιλοτιμοτάτους ἐθελοντὰς στρατεύεσθαι, χιλίους γενομένους ἄνευ τῆς ἄλλης δυνάμεως, κατέχειν ἐπειρᾶτο καὶ παρακαλεῖν ἐν τῷ δήμῳ, τὸ μνημονευόμενον εἰπών, ὡς εἰ μὴ πείθοιτο Περικλεῖ, τόν γε σοφώτατον οὐχ ἁμαρτήσεται σύμβουλον ἀναμείνας, [3] χρόνον. τότε μὲν οὖν μετρίως εὐδοκίμησε τοῦτ’ εἰπών· ὀλίγαις δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέραις ὡς ἀνηγγέλθη τεθνεὼς μὲν αὐτὸς Τολμίδης περὶ Κορώνειαν ἡττηθεὶς μάχῃ, τεθνεῶτες δὲ πολλοὶ κἀγαθοὶ τῶν πολιτῶν, μεγάλην τοῦτο τῷ Περικλεῖ μετ’ εὐνοίας δόξαν ἤνεγκεν ὡς ἀνδρὶ φρονίμῳ καὶ φιλοπολίτῃ.

[19] [1] Τῶν δὲ στρατηγιῶν ἠγαπήθη μὲν ἡ περὶ Χερρόνησον αὐτοῦ μάλιστα, σωτήριος γενομένη τοῖς αὐτόθι κατοικοῦσι τῶν Ἑλλήνων· οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐποίκους Ἀθηναίων χιλίους κομίσας ἔρρωσεν εὐανδρίᾳ τὰς πόλεις, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν αὐχένα διαζώσας ἐρύμασι καὶ προβλήμασιν ἐκ θαλάττης εἰς θάλατταν, ἀπετείχισε τὰς καταδρομὰς τῶν Θρᾳκῶν περικεχυμένων τῇ Χερρονήσῳ, καὶ πόλεμον ἐνδελεχῆ καὶ βαρὺν ἐξέκλεισεν, ᾧ συνείχετο πάντα τὸν χρόνον ἡ χώρα, βαρβαρικαῖς ἀναμεμειγμένη γειτνιάσεσι καὶ γέμουσα [2] λῃστηρίων ὁμόρων καὶ συνοίκων. ἐθαυμάσθη δὲ καὶ διεβοήθη πρὸς τοὺς ἐκτὸς ἀνθρώπους περιπλεύσας Πελοπόννησον, ἐκ Πηγῶν τῆς Μεγαρικῆς ἀναχθεὶς ἑκατὸν τριήρεσιν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐπόρθησε τῆς παραλίας πολλὴν ὡς Τολμίδης πρότερον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πόρρω θαλάττης προελθὼν τοῖς ἀπὸ τῶν νεῶν ὁπλίταις, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους εἰς τὰ τείχη συνέστειλε δείσαντας αὐτοῦ τὴν ἔφοδον, ἐν δὲ Νεμέᾳ Σικυωνίους ὑποστάντας καὶ συνάψαντας μάχην [3] κατὰ κράτος τρεψάμενος, ἔστησε τρόπαιον. ἐκ δ’ Ἀχαΐας φίλης οὔσης στρατιώτας ἀναλαβὼν εἰς τὰς τριήρεις, ἐπὶ τὴν ἀντιπέρας ἤπειρον ἐκομίσθη τῷ στόλῳ, καὶ παραπλεύσας τὸν Ἀχελῷον Ἀκαρνανίαν κατέδραμε καὶ κατέκλεισεν Οἰνιάδας εἰς τὸ τεῖχος, καὶ τεμὼν τὴν γῆν καὶ κακώσας, ἀπῆρεν ἐπ’ οἴκου, φοβερὸς μὲν φανεὶς τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἀσφαλὴς δὲ καὶ δραστήριος τοῖς πολίταις. οὐδὲν γὰρ οὐδ’ ἀπὸ τύχης πρόσκρουσμα συνέβη περὶ τοὺς στρατευομένους.

[20] [1] Εἰς δὲ τὸν Πόντον εἰσπλεύσας στόλῳ μεγάλῳ καὶ κεκοσμημένῳ λαμπρῶς, ταῖς μὲν Ἑλληνίσι πόλεσιν ὧν ἐδέοντο διεπράξατο καὶ προσηνέχθη φιλανθρώπως, τοῖς δὲ περιοικοῦσι βαρβάροις ἔθνεσι καὶ βασιλεῦσιν αὐτῶν καὶ δυνάσταις ἐπεδείξατο μὲν τῆς δυνάμεως τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὴν ἄδειαν καὶ τὸ θάρσος, ᾗ βούλοιντο πλεόντων καὶ πᾶσαν ὑφ’ αὑτοῖς πεποιημένων τὴν θάλασσαν, Σινωπεῦσι δὲ τρισκαίδεκα ναῦς ἀπέλιπε μετὰ Λαμάχου καὶ στρατιώτας [2] ἐπὶ Τιμησίλεων τύραννον. ἐκπεσόντος δὲ τούτου καὶ τῶν ἑταίρων, ἐψηφίσατο πλεῖν εἰς Σινώπην Ἀθηναίων ἐθελοντὰς ἑξακοσίους καὶ συγκατοικεῖν Σινωπεῦσι, νειμαμένους οἰκίας καὶ χώραν ἣν πρότερον οἱ τύραννοι κατεῖχον.

[3] τἆλλα δ’ οὐ συνεχώρει ταῖς ὁρμαῖς τῶν πολιτῶν οὐδὲ συνεξέπιπτεν, ὑπὸ ῥώμης καὶ τύχης τοσαύτης ἐπαιρομένων Αἰγύπτου τε πάλιν ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ κινεῖν [4] τῆς βασιλέως ἀρχῆς τὰ πρὸς θαλάσσῃ. πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ Σικελίας ὁ δύσερως ἐκεῖνος ἤδη καὶ δύσποτμος ἔρως εἶχεν, ὃν ὕστερον ἐξέκαυσαν οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ῥήτορες. ἦν δὲ καὶ Τυρρηνία καὶ Καρχηδὼν ἐνίοις ὄνειρος, οὐκ ἀπ’ ἐλπίδος διὰ τὸ μέγεθος τῆς ὑποκειμένης ἡγεμονίας καὶ τὴν εὔροιαν τῶν πραγμάτων.

[21] [1] Ἀλλ’ ὁ Περικλῆς κατεῖχε τὴν ἐκδρομὴν ταύτην καὶ περιέκοπτε τὴν πολυπραγμοσύνην, καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῆς δυνάμεως ἔτρεπεν εἰς φυλακὴν καὶ βεβαιότητα τῶν ὑπαρχόντων, μέγα ἔργον ἡγούμενος ἀνείργειν Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ ὅλως ὑπεναντιούμενος ἐκείνοις, ὡς ἄλλοις τε πολλοῖς ἔδειξε καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς περὶ τὸν ἱερὸν πραχθεῖσι πόλεμον.

[2] ἐπεὶ γὰρ οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι στρατεύσαντες εἰς Δελφοὺς Φωκέων ἐχόντων τὸ ἱερὸν Δελφοῖς ἀπέδωκαν, εὐθὺς ἐκείνων ἀπαλλαγέντων ὁ Περικλῆς ἐπιστρατεύσας, πάλιν εἰσήγαγε [3] τοὺς Φωκέας, καὶ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἣν ἔδωκαν αὐτοῖς Δελφοὶ προμαντείαν εἰς τὸ μέτωπον ἐγκολαψάντων τοῦ χαλκοῦ λύκου, λαβὼν καὶ αὐτὸς προμαντείαν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν λύκον κατὰ τὴν δεξιὰν πλευρὰν ἐνεχάραξεν.

[22] [1] Ὅτι δ’ ὀρθῶς ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι τὴν δύναμιν τῶν Ἀθηναίων συνεῖχεν, ἐμαρτύρησεν αὐτῷ τὰ γενόμενα. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ Εὐβοεῖς ἀπέστησαν, ἐφ’ οὓς διέβη μετὰ δυνάμεως. εἶτ’ εὐθὺς ἀπηγγέλλοντο Μεγαρεῖς ἐκπεπολεμωμένοι καὶ στρατιὰ Πελοποννησίων ἐπὶ τοῖς ὅροις τῆς Ἀττικῆς οὖσα, Πλειστώνακτος ἡγουμένου βασιλέως Λακεδαιμονίων.

[2] πάλιν οὖν ὁ Περικλῆς κατὰ τάχος ἐκ τῆς Εὐβοίας ἀνεκομίζετο πρὸς τὸν ἐν τῇ Ἀττικῇ πόλεμον, καὶ συνάψαι μὲν εἰς χεῖρας οὐκ ἐθάρσησε πολλοῖς καὶ ἀγαθοῖς ὁπλίταις προκαλουμένοις, ὁρῶν δὲ τὸν Πλειστώνακτα νέον ὄντα κομιδῇ, χρώμενον δὲ μάλιστα Κλεανδρίδῃ τῶν συμβούλων, ὃν οἱ ἔφοροι φύλακα καὶ πάρεδρον αὐτῷ διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν συνέπεμψαν, ἐπειρᾶτο τούτου κρύφα, καὶ ταχὺ διαφθείρας χρήμασιν αὐτὸν ἔπεισεν ἐκ τῆς Ἀττικῆς ἀπαγαγεῖν [3] τοὺς Πελοποννησίους. ὡς δ’ ἀπεχώρησεν ἡ στρατιὰ καὶ διελύθη κατὰ πόλεις, βαρέως φέροντες οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τὸν μὲν βασιλέα χρήμασιν ἐζημίωσαν, ὧν τὸ πλῆθος οὐκ ἔχων ἐκτεῖσαι μετέστησεν ἑαυτὸν ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος, τοῦ δὲ Κλεανδρίδου φεύγοντος θάνατον κατέγνωσαν.

[4] οὗτος δ’ ἦν πατὴρ Γυλίππου τοῦ περὶ Σικελίαν Ἀθηναίους καταπολεμήσαντος. ἔοικε δ’ ὥσπερ συγγενικὸν αὐτῷ προστρίψασθαι νόσημα τὴν φιλαργυρίαν ἡ φύσις, ὑφ’ ἧς καὶ αὐτὸς αἰσχρῶς ἐπὶ κακοῖς ἔργοις ἁλοὺς ἐξέπεσε τῆς Σπάρτης. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Λυσάνδρου (c. 16. 17) δεδηλώκαμεν.

[23] [1] Τοῦ δὲ Περικλέους ἐν τῷ τῆς στρατηγίας ἀπολογισμῷ δέκα ταλάντων ἀνάλωμα γράψαντος ἀνηλωμένων εἰς τὸ δέον, ὁ δῆμος ἀπεδέξατο μὴ πολυπραγμονήσας μηδ’ [2] ἐλέγξας τὸ ἀπόρρητον. ἔνιοι δ’ ἱστορήκασιν, ὧν ἐστι καὶ Θεόφραστος ὁ φιλόσοφος, ὅτι καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην ἐφοίτα δέκα τάλαντα παρὰ τοῦ Περικλέους, οἷς τοὺς ἐν τέλει πάντας θεραπεύων παρῃτεῖτο τὸν πόλεμον, οὐ τὴν εἰρήνην ὠνούμενος, ἀλλὰ τὸν χρόνον ἐν ᾧ παρασκευασάμενος καθ’ ἡσυχίαν ἔμελλε πολεμήσειν βέλτιον.

[3] Εὐθὺς οὖν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀφεστῶτας τραπόμενος καὶ διαβὰς εἰς Εὔβοιαν πεντήκοντα ναυσὶ καὶ πεντακισχιλίοις [4] ὁπλίταις, κατεστρέψατο τὰς πόλεις, καὶ Χαλκιδέων μὲν τοὺς ἱπποβότας λεγομένους πλούτῳ καὶ δόξῃ διαφέροντας ἐξέβαλεν, Ἑστιεῖς δὲ πάντας ἀναστήσας ἐκ τῆς χώρας, Ἀθηναίους κατῴκισε, μόνοις τούτοις ἀπαραιτήτως χρησάμενος, ὅτι ναῦν Ἀττικὴν αἰχμάλωτον λαβόντες ἀπέκτειναν τοὺς ἄνδρας.

[24] Ἐκ τούτου γενομένων σπονδῶν Ἀθηναίοις καὶ Λακεδαιμονίοις εἰς ἔτη τριάκοντα, ψηφίζεται τὸν εἰς Σάμον πλοῦν, αἰτίαν ποιησάμενος κατ’ αὐτῶν ὅτι τὸν πρὸς Μιλησίους κελευόμενοι διαλύσασθαι πόλεμον οὐχ ὑπήκουον.

[5] ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀσπασίᾳ χαριζόμενος δοκεῖ πρᾶξαι τὰ πρὸς Σαμίους, ἐνταῦθ’ ἂν εἴη καιρὸς διαπορῆσαι μάλιστα περὶ τῆς ἀνθρώπου, τίνα τέχνην ἢ δύναμιν τοσαύτην ἔχουσα, τῶν τε πολιτικῶν τοὺς πρωτεύοντας ἐχειρώσατο, καὶ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις οὐ φαῦλον οὐδ’ ὀλίγον ὑπὲρ αὑτῆς παρέσχε [6] λόγον. ὅτι μὲν γὰρ ἦν Μιλησία γένος, Ἀξιόχου θυγάτηρ, ὁμολογεῖται· φασὶ δ’ αὐτὴν Θαργηλίαν τινὰ τῶν παλαιῶν Ἰάδων ζηλώσασαν ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς δυνατωτάτοις ἀνδράσι. [7] καὶ γὰρ ἡ Θαργηλία, τό τ’ εἶδος εὐπρεπὴς γενομένη καὶ χάριν ἔχουσα μετὰ δεινότητος, πλείστοις μὲν Ἑλλήνων συνῴκησεν ἀνδράσι, πάντας δὲ προσεποίησε βασιλεῖ τοὺς πλησιάσαντας αὐτῇ, καὶ ταῖς πόλεσι μηδισμοῦ δι’ ἐκείνων ὑπέσπειρεν ἀρχάς, δυνατωτάτων ὄντων καὶ μεγίστων.

[8] τὴν δ’ Ἀσπασίαν οἱ μὲν ὡς σοφήν τινα καὶ πολιτικὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ Περικλέους σπουδασθῆναι λέγουσι· καὶ γὰρ Σωκράτης ἔστιν ὄτε μετὰ τῶν γνωρίμων ἐφοίτα, καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἀκροασομένας οἱ συνήθεις ἦγον ὡς αὐτήν, καίπερ οὐ κοσμίου προεστῶσαν ἐργασίας οὐδὲ σεμνῆς, ἀλλὰ παιδίσκας [9] ἑταιρούσας τρέφουσαν. Αἰσχίνης (p. 45. 46 Kr.) δέ φησι καὶ Λυσικλέα τὸν προβατοκάπηλον ἐξ ἀγεννοῦς καὶ ταπεινοῦ τὴν φύσιν Ἀθηναίων γενέσθαι πρῶτον Ἀσπασίᾳ [10] συνόντα μετὰ τὴν Περικλέους τελευτήν. ἐν δὲ τῷ Μενεξένῳ τῷ Πλάτωνος (235e), εἰ καὶ μετὰ παιδιᾶς τὰ πρῶτα γέγραπται, τοσοῦτόν γ’ ἱστορίας ἔνεστιν, ὅτι δόξαν εἶχε τὸ γύναιον ἐπὶ ῥητορικῇ πολλοῖς Ἀθηναίων ὁμιλεῖν. φαίνεται μέντοι μᾶλλον ἐρωτική τις ἡ τοῦ Περικλέους [11] ἀγάπησις γενομένη πρὸς Ἀσπασίαν. ἦν μὲν γὰρ αὐτῷ γυνὴ προσήκουσα μὲν κατὰ γένος, συνῳκηκυῖα δ’ Ἱππονίκῳ πρότερον, ἐξ οὗ Καλλίαν ἔτεκε τὸν πλούσιον· ἔτεκε δὲ καὶ παρὰ τῷ Περικλεῖ Ξάνθιππον καὶ Πάραλον. εἶτα τῆς συμβιώσεως οὐκ οὔσης αὐτοῖς ἀρεστῆς, ἐκείνην μὲν ἑτέρῳ βουλομένην συνεξέδωκεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν Ἀσπασίαν [12] λαβὼν ἔστερξε διαφερόντως. καὶ γὰρ ἐξιὼν ὥς φασι καὶ εἰσιὼν ἀπ’ ἀγορᾶς ἠσπάζετο καθ’ ἡμέραν αὐτὴν μετὰ τοῦ καταφιλεῖν. ἐν δὲ ταῖς κωμῳδίαις (adesp. 63 CAF III 63) Ὀμφάλη τε νέα καὶ Δῃάνειρα καὶ πάλιν Ἥρα προσαγορεύεται. Κρατῖνος δ’ ἄντικρυς παλλακὴν αὐτὴν εἴρηκεν ἐν τούτοις (fr. 241 CAF I 86)·

Ἥραν τέ οἱ Ἀσπασίαν τίκτει [καὶ] Καταπυγοσύνη

παλλακὴν κυνώπιδα.

[13] δοκεῖ δὲ καὶ τὸν νόθον ἐκ ταύτης τεκνῶσαι, περὶ οὗ πεποίηκεν Εὔπολις ἐν Δήμοις (fr. 98 CAF I 282) αὐτὸν μὲν οὕτως ἐρωτῶντα·

ὁ νόθος δέ μοι ζῇ;

τὸν δὲ Μυρωνίδην ἀποκρινόμενον·

καὶ πάλαι γ’ ἂν ἦν ἀνήρ,

εἰ μὴ τὸ τῆς πόρνης ὑπωρρώδει κακόν.

[14] οὕτω δὲ τὴν Ἀσπασίαν ὀνομαστὴν καὶ κλεινὴν γενέσθαι λέγουσιν, ὥστε καὶ Κῦρον τὸν πολεμήσαντα βασιλεῖ περὶ τῆς τῶν Περσῶν ἡγεμονίας τὴν ἀγαπωμένην ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ μάλιστα τῶν παλλακίδων Ἀσπασίαν ὀνομάσαι, καλουμένην [15] Μίλτω πρότερον. ἦν δὲ Φωκαῒς τὸ γένος, Ἑρμοτίμου θυγάτηρ· ἐν δὲ τῇ μάχῃ Κύρου πεσόντος ἀπαχθεῖσα πρὸς βασιλέα πλεῖστον ἴσχυσε. ταῦτα μὲν ἐπελθόντα τῇ μνήμῃ κατὰ τὴν γραφὴν ἀπώσασθαι καὶ παρελθεῖν ἴσως ἀπάνθρωπον ἦν.

[25] [1] Τὸν δὲ πρὸς Σαμίους πόλεμον αἰτιῶνται μάλιστα τὸν Περικλέα ψηφίσασθαι διὰ Μιλησίους Ἀσπασίας δεηθείσης. αἱ γὰρ πόλεις ἐπολέμουν τὸν περὶ Πριήνης πόλεμον, καὶ κρατοῦντες οἱ Σάμιοι, παύσασθαι τῶν Ἀθηναίων κελευόντων καὶ δίκας λαβεῖν καὶ δοῦναι παρ’ αὐτοῖς, οὐκ [2] ἐπείθοντο. πλεύσας οὖν ὁ Περικλῆς τὴν μὲν οὖσαν ὀλιγαρχίαν ἐν Σάμῳ κατέλυσεν, τῶν δὲ πρώτων λαβὼν ὁμήρους ‹ἄνδρας› πεντήκοντα καὶ παῖδας ἴσους εἰς Λῆμνον ἀπέστειλε. καίτοι φασὶν ἕκαστον μὲν αὐτῷ τῶν ὁμήρων διδόναι τάλαντον ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ, πολλὰ δ’ ἄλλα τοὺς μὴ θέλοντας [3] ἐν τῇ πόλει γενέσθαι δημοκρατίαν. ἔτι δὲ Πισσούθνης ὁ Πέρσης, ἔχων τινὰ πρὸς Σαμίους εὔνοιαν, ἀπέστειλεν αὐτῷ μυρίους χρυσοῦς, παραιτούμενος τὴν πόλιν. οὐ μὴν ἔλαβε τούτων οὐδὲν ὁ Περικλῆς, ἀλλὰ χρησάμενος ὥσπερ ἐγνώκει τοῖς Σαμίοις καὶ καταστήσας δημοκρατίαν, ἀπέπλευσεν [4] εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας. οἱ δ’ εὐθὺς ἀπέστησαν, ἐκκλέψαντος αὐτοῖς τοὺς ὁμήρους Πισσούθνου, καὶ τἆλλα παρεσκευάσαντο πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον. αὖθις οὖν ὁ Περικλῆς ἐξέπλευσεν ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς οὐχ ἡσυχάζοντας οὐδὲ κατεπτηχότας, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ προθύμως ἐγνωκότας ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι τῆς θαλάττης.

[5] γενομένης δὲ καρτερᾶς ναυμαχίας περὶ νῆσον ἣν Τραγίας καλοῦσι, λαμπρῶς ὁ Περικλῆς ἐνίκα, τέσσαρσι καὶ τεσσαράκοντα ναυσὶν ἑβδομήκοντα καταναυμαχήσας, ὧν εἴκοσι στρατιώτιδες ἦσαν.

[26] [1] Ἅμα δὲ τῇ νίκῃ καὶ τῇ διώξει τοῦ λιμένος κρατήσας, ἐπολιόρκει τοὺς Σαμίους, ἁμῶς γέ πως ἔτι τολμῶντας ἐπεξιέναι καὶ διαμάχεσθαι πρὸ τοῦ τείχους. ἐπεὶ δὲ μείζων ἕτερος στόλος ἦλθεν ἐκ τῶν Ἀθηνῶν καὶ παντελῶς κατεκλείσθησαν οἱ Σάμιοι, λαβὼν ὁ Περικλῆς ἑξήκοντα τριήρεις ἔπλευσεν εἰς τὸν ἔξω πόντον, ὡς μὲν οἱ πλεῖστοι λέγουσι, Φοινισσῶν νεῶν ἐπικούρων τοῖς Σαμίοις προσφερομένων, ἀπαντῆσαι καὶ διαγωνίσασθαι πορρωτάτω βουλόμενος, ὡς δὲ Στησίμβροτος (FGrH 107 F 8), ἐπὶ Κύπρον στελλόμενος· ὅπερ οὐ δοκεῖ πιθανὸν εἶναι.

[2] ὁποτέρῳ δ’ οὖν ἐχρήσατο τῶν λογισμῶν, ἁμαρτεῖν ἔδοξε. πλεύσαντος γὰρ αὐτοῦ, Μέλισσος ὁ Ἰθαγένους, ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος στρατηγῶν τότε τῆς Σάμου, καταφρονήσας τῆς ὀλιγότητος τῶν νεῶν καὶ τῆς ἀπειρίας τῶν στρατηγῶν, [3] ἔπεισε τοὺς πολίτας ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, καὶ γενομένης μάχης νικήσαντες οἱ Σάμιοι καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν αὐτῶν ἄνδρας ἑλόντες, πολλὰς δὲ ναῦς διαφθείραντες, ἐχρῶντο τῇ θαλάσσῃ καὶ παρετίθεντο τῶν ἀναγκαίων πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ὅσα μὴ πρότερον εἶχον. ὑπὸ δὲ τοῦ Μελίσσου καὶ Περικλέα φησὶν αὐτὸν Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 535) ἡττηθῆναι ναυμαχοῦντα [4] πρότερον. οἱ δὲ Σάμιοι τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀνθυβρίζοντες ἔστιζον εἰς τὸ μέτωπον γλαῦκας· καὶ γὰρ ἐκείνους οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι σάμαιναν. ἡ δὲ σάμαινα ναῦς ἐστιν ὑόπρωρος μὲν τὸ σίμωμα, κοιλοτέρα δὲ καὶ γαστροειδής, ὥστε καὶ φορτοφορεῖν καὶ ταχυναυτεῖν. οὕτω δ’ ὠνομάσθη διὰ τὸ πρῶτον ἐν Σάμῳ φανῆναι, Πολυκράτους ‹τοῦ› τυράννου κατασκευάσαντος. πρὸς ταῦτα τὰ στίγματα λέγουσι καὶ τὸ Ἀριστοφάνειον (fr. 64 CAF I 408) ᾐνίχθαι·

Σαμίων ὁ δῆμός ἐστιν ὡς πολυγράμματος.

[27] [1] Πυθόμενος δ’ οὖν ὁ Περικλῆς τὴν ἐπὶ στρατοπέδου συμφοράν, ἐβοήθει κατὰ τάχος, καὶ τοῦ Μελίσσου πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀντιταξαμένου κρατήσας καὶ τρεψάμενος, τοὺς πολεμίους εὐθὺς περιετείχιζε, δαπάνῃ καὶ χρόνῳ μᾶλλον ἢ τραύμασι καὶ κινδύνοις τῶν πολιτῶν περιγενέσθαι καὶ [2] συνελεῖν τὴν πόλιν βουλόμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ δυσχεραίνοντας τῇ τριβῇ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ μάχεσθαι προθυμουμένους ἔργον ἦν κατασχεῖν, ‹εἰς› ὀκτὼ μέρη διελὼν τὸ πᾶν πλῆθος ἀπεκλήρου, καὶ τῷ λαχόντι τὸν λευκὸν κύαμον εὐωχεῖσθαι [3] καὶ σχολάζειν παρεῖχε τῶν ἄλλων τρυχομένων. διὸ καί φασι τοὺς ἐν εὐπαθείαις τισὶ γενομένους λευκὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἀπὸ τοῦ λευκοῦ κυάμου προσαγορεύειν. Ἔφορος (FGrH 70 F 194) δὲ καὶ μηχαναῖς χρήσασθαι τὸν Περικλέα, τὴν καινότητα θαυμασταῖς, Ἀρτέμωνος τοῦ μηχανικοῦ παρ‹ασχ›όντος, ὃν χωλὸν ὄντα καὶ φορείῳ πρὸς τὰ κατεπείγοντα τῶν ἔργων προσκομιζόμενον ὀνομασθῆναι Περι[4]φόρητον. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν Ἡρακλείδης ὁ Ποντικὸς (fr. 60 Wehrli) ἐλέγχει τοῖς Ἀνακρέοντος ποιήμασιν (fr. 16 D.) ἐν οἷς ὁ περιφόρητος Ἀρτέμων ὀνομάζεται πολλαῖς ἔμπροσθεν ἡλικίαις τοῦ περὶ Σάμον πολέμου καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ἐκείνων· τὸν δ’ Ἀρτέμωνά φησι τρυφερόν τινα τῷ βίῳ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς φόβους μαλακὸν ὄντα καὶ καταπλῆγα τὰ πολλὰ μὲν οἴκοι καθέζεσθαι, χαλκῆν ἀσπίδα τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτοῦ δυεῖν οἰκετῶν ὑπερεχόντων, ὥστε μηδὲν ἐμπεσεῖν τῶν ἄνωθεν, εἰ δὲ βιασθείη προελθεῖν, ἐν κλινιδίῳ κρεμαστῷ παρὰ τὴν γῆν αὐτὴν περιφερόμενον κομίζεσθαι καὶ διὰ τοῦτο κληθῆναι περιφόρητον.

[28] [1] Ἐνάτῳ δὲ μηνὶ τῶν Σαμίων παραστάντων, ὁ Περικλῆς τὰ τείχη καθεῖλε καὶ τὰς ναῦς παρέλαβε καὶ χρήμασι πολλοῖς ἐζημίωσεν, ὧν τὰ μὲν εὐθὺς εἰσήνεγκαν οἱ Σάμιοι, τὰ δ’ ἐν χρόνῳ ῥητῷ ταξάμενοι κατοίσειν ὁμήρους ἔδωκαν.

[2] Δοῦρις δ’ ὁ Σάμιος (FGrH 76 F 67) τούτοις ἐπιτραγῳδεῖ, πολλὴν ὠμότητα τῶν Ἀθηναίων καὶ τοῦ Περικλέους κατηγορῶν, ἣν οὔτε Θουκυδίδης ἱστόρηκεν οὔτ’ Ἔφορος οὔτ’ Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 536)· ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἀληθεύειν ἔοικεν, ὡς ἄρα τοὺς τριηράρχους καὶ τοὺς ἐπιβάτας τῶν Σαμίων εἰς τὴν Μιλησίων ἀγορὰν καταγαγὼν καὶ σανίσι προσδήσας ἐφ’ ἡμέρας δέκα κακῶς ἤδη διακειμένους προσέταξεν ἀνελεῖν, ξύλοις τὰς κεφαλὰς συγκόψαντας, εἶτα [3] προβαλεῖν ἀκήδευτα τὰ σώματα. Δοῦρις μὲν οὖν οὐδ’ ὅπου μηδὲν αὐτῷ πρόσεστιν ἴδιον πάθος εἰωθὼς κρατεῖν τὴν διήγησιν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀληθείας, μᾶλλον ἔοικεν ἐνταῦθα δεινῶσαι τὰς τῆς πατρίδος συμφορὰς ἐπὶ διαβολῇ τῶν Ἀθηναίων.

[4] Ὁ δὲ Περικλῆς καταστρεψάμενος τὴν Σάμον ὡς ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας, ταφάς τε τῶν ἀποθανόντων κατὰ τὸν πόλεμον ἐνδόξους ἐποίησε, καὶ τὸν λόγον εἰπών, ὥσπερ [5] ἔθος ἐστίν, ἐπὶ τῶν σημάτων ἐθαυμάσθη. καταβαίνοντα δ’ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος αἱ μὲν ἄλλαι γυναῖκες ἐδεξιοῦντο καὶ στεφάνοις ἀνέδουν καὶ ταινίαις ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴν [6] νικηφόρον, ἡ δ’ Ἐλπινίκη προσελθοῦσα πλησίον, ταῦτ’ ἔφη θαυμαστά ‹σου› Περίκλεις καὶ ἄξια στεφάνων, ὃς ἡμῖν πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἀπώλεσας πολίτας, οὐ Φοίνιξι πολεμῶν οὐδὲ Μήδοις, ὥσπερ οὑμὸς ἀδελφὸς Κίμων, ἀλλὰ σύμμαχον καὶ συγγενῆ πόλιν καταστρεφόμενος.

[7] ταῦτα τῆς Ἐλπινίκης λεγούσης, ὁ Περικλῆς μειδιάσας ἀτρέμα λέγεται τὸ τοῦ Ἀρχιλόχου (fr. 27 D.) πρὸς αὐτὴν εἰπεῖν·

οὐκ ἂν μύροισι γραῦς ἐοῦσ’ ἠλείφεο.

θαυμαστὸν δέ τι καὶ μέγα φρονῆσαι καταπολεμήσαντα τοὺς Σαμίους φησὶν αὐτὸν ὁ Ἴων (FGrH 392 F 16), ὡς τοῦ μὲν Ἀγαμέμνονος ἔτεσι δέκα βάρβαρον πόλιν, αὐτοῦ δὲ μησὶν ἐννέα τοὺς πρώτους καὶ δυνατωτάτους Ἰώνων ἑλόντος.

[8] καὶ οὐκ ἦν ἄδικος ἡ ἀξίωσις, ἀλλ’ ὄντως πολλὴν ἀδηλότητα καὶ μέγαν ἔσχε κίνδυνον ὁ πόλεμος, εἴπερ, ὡς Θουκυδίδης φησί (8, 76, 4), παρ’ ἐλάχιστον ἦλθε Σαμίων ἡ πόλις ἀφελέσθαι τῆς θαλάττης τὸ κράτος Ἀθηναίους.

[29] [1] Μετὰ ταῦτα κυμαίνοντος ἤδη τοῦ Πελοποννησιακοῦ πολέμου, Κερκυραίοις πολεμουμένοις ὑπὸ Κορινθίων ἔπεισε τὸν δῆμον ἀποστεῖλαι βοήθειαν καὶ προσλαβεῖν ἐρρωμένην ναυτικῇ δυνάμει νῆσον, ὡς ὅσον οὐδέπω Πελοποννησίων ἐκπεπολεμωμένων πρὸς αὐτούς. ψηφισαμένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου τὴν βοήθειαν, ἀπέστειλε δέκα ναῦς μόνας ἔχοντα Λακεδαιμόνιον, τὸν Κίμωνος υἱόν, οἷον ἐφυβρίζων· πολλὴ γὰρ ἦν εὔνοια καὶ φιλία τῷ Κίμωνος οἴκῳ πρὸς [2] Λακεδαιμονίους. ὡς ἂν οὖν, εἰ μηδὲν ἔργον μέγα μηδ’ ἐκπρεπὲς ἐν τῇ στρατηγίᾳ τοῦ Λακεδαιμονίου γένοιτο, προσδιαβληθείη μᾶλλον εἰς τὸν λακωνισμόν, ὀλίγας αὐτῷ ναῦς ἔδωκε καὶ μὴ βουλόμενον ἐξέπεμψε, καὶ ὅλως διετέλει κολούων, ὡς μηδὲ τοῖς ὀνόμασι γνησίους, ἀλλ’ ὀθνείους καὶ ξένους, ὅτι τῶν Κίμωνος υἱῶν τῷ μὲν ἦν Λακεδαιμόνιος ὄνομα, τῷ δὲ Θεσσαλός, τῷ δ’ Ἠλεῖος. ἐδόκουν δὲ [3] πάντες ἐκ γυναικὸς Ἀρκαδικῆς γεγονέναι. κακῶς οὖν ὁ Περικλῆς ἀκούων διὰ τὰς δέκα ταύτας τριήρεις, ὡς μικρὰν μὲν βοήθειαν τοῖς δεηθεῖσι, μεγάλην δὲ πρόφασιν τοῖς ἐγκαλοῦσι παρεσχηκώς, ἑτέρας αὖθις ἔστειλε πλείονας [4] εἰς τὴν Κέρκυραν, αἳ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἀφίκοντο. χαλεπαίνουσι δὲ τοῖς Κορινθίοις καὶ κατηγοροῦσι τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐν Λακεδαίμονι προσεγένοντο Μεγαρεῖς, αἰτιώμενοι πάσης μὲν ἀγορᾶς, ἁπάντων δὲ λιμένων ὧν Ἀθηναῖοι κρατοῦσιν εἴργεσθαι καὶ ἀπελαύνεσθαι παρὰ τὰ κοινὰ δίκαια καὶ [5] τοὺς γεγενημένους ὅρκους τοῖς Ἕλλησιν· Αἰγινῆται δὲ κακοῦσθαι δοκοῦντες καὶ βίαια πάσχειν, ἐποτνιῶντο κρύφα πρὸς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, φανερῶς ἐγκαλεῖν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις [6] οὐ θαρροῦντες. ἐν δὲ τούτῳ καὶ Ποτείδαια, πόλις ὑπήκοος Ἀθηναίων, ἄποικος δὲ Κορινθίων, ἀποστᾶσα [7] καὶ πολιορκουμένη μᾶλλον ἐπετάχυνε τὸν πόλεμον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρεσβειῶν πεμπομένων Ἀθήναζε, καὶ τοῦ βασιλέως τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων Ἀρχιδάμου τὰ πολλὰ τῶν ἐγκλημάτων εἰς διαλύσεις ἄγοντος καὶ τοὺς συμμάχους πραΰνοντος, οὐκ ἂν δοκεῖ συμπεσεῖν ὑπό γε τῶν ἄλλων αἰτιῶν ὁ πόλεμος τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, εἰ τὸ ψήφισμα καθελεῖν τὸ Μεγαρικὸν ἐπείσθησαν καὶ διαλλαγῆναι πρὸς αὐτούς.

[8] διὸ καὶ μάλιστα πρὸς τοῦτο Περικλῆς ἐναντιωθεὶς καὶ παροξύνας τὸν δῆμον ἐμμεῖναι τῇ πρὸς τοὺς Μεγαρεῖς φιλονικίᾳ, μόνος ἔσχε τοῦ πολέμου τὴν αἰτίαν.

[30] [1] Λέγουσι δὲ πρεσβείας Ἀθήναζε περὶ τούτων ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος ἀφιγμένης, καὶ τοῦ Περικλέους νόμον τινὰ προβαλομένου κωλύοντα καθελεῖν τὸ πινάκιον ἐν ᾧ τὸ ψήφισμα γεγραμμένον ἐτύγχανεν, εἰπεῖν Πολυάλκη τῶν πρέσβεών τινα· σὺ δὲ μὴ καθέλῃς, ἀλλὰ στρέψον εἴσω τὸ πινάκιον· οὐ γὰρ ἔστι νόμος ὁ τοῦτο κωλύων. κομψοῦ δὲ τοῦ λόγου φανέντος, οὐδέν τι μᾶλλον ὁ Περικλῆς [2] ἐνέδωκεν. ὑπῆν μὲν οὖν τις ὡς ἔοικεν αὐτῷ καὶ ἰδία πρὸς τοὺς Μεγαρεῖς ἀπέχθεια, κοινὴν δὲ καὶ φανερὰν ποιησάμενος αἰτίαν κατ’ αὐτῶν, ἀποτέμνεσθαι τὴν ἱερὰν ὀργάδα, γράφει ψήφισμα κήρυκα πεμφθῆναι πρὸς αὐτοὺς καὶ πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους τὸν αὐτόν, κατηγοροῦντα τῶν [3] Μεγαρέων. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν τὸ ψήφισμα Περικλέους ἐστὶν εὐγνώμονος καὶ φιλανθρώπου δικαιολογίας ἐχόμενον· ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ πεμφθεὶς κῆρυξ Ἀνθεμόκριτος αἰτίᾳ τῶν Μεγαρέων ἀποθανεῖν ἔδοξε, γράφει ψήφισμα κατ’ αὐτῶν Χαρῖνος, ἄσπονδον μὲν εἶναι καὶ ἀκήρυκτον ἔχθραν, ὃς δ’ ἂν ἐπιβῇ τῆς Ἀττικῆς Μεγαρέων, θανάτῳ ζημιοῦσθαι, τοὺς δὲ στρατηγοὺς ὅταν ὀμνύωσι τὸν πάτριον ὅρκον ἐπομνύειν, ὅτι καὶ δὶς ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος εἰς τὴν Μεγαρικὴν εἰσβαλοῦσι· ταφῆναι δ’ Ἀνθεμόκριτον παρὰ τὰς Θριασίας πύλας, αἳ [4] νῦν Δίπυλον ὀνομάζονται. Μεγαρεῖς δὲ τὸν Ἀνθεμοκρίτου φόνον ἀπαρνούμενοι, τὰς αἰτίας εἰς Ἀσπασίαν καὶ Περικλέα τρέπουσι, χρώμενοι τοῖς περιβοήτοις καὶ δημώδεσι τούτοις ἐκ τῶν Ἀχαρνέων στιχιδίοις (v. 524 sq.)·

πόρνην δὲ Σιμαίθαν ἰόντες Μεγάραδε

νεανίαι κλέπτουσι μεθυσοκότταβοι·

κἆθ’ οἱ Μεγαρῆς ὀδύναις πεφυσιγγωμένοι

ἀντεξέκλεψαν Ἀσπασίας πόρνας δύο.

[31] [1] Τὴν μὲν οὖν ἀρχὴν ὅπως ἔσχεν οὐ ῥᾴδιον γνῶναι, τοῦ δὲ μὴ λυθῆναι τὸ ψήφισμα πάντες ὡσαύτως τὴν αἰτίαν ἐπιφέρουσι τῷ Περικλεῖ. πλὴν οἱ μὲν ἐκ φρονήματος μεγάλου μετὰ γνώμης κατὰ τὸ βέλτιστον ἀπισχυρίσασθαί φασιν αὐτόν, πεῖραν ἐνδόσεως τὸ πρόσταγμα καὶ τὴν συγχώρησιν ἐξομολόγησιν ἀσθενείας ἡγούμενον, οἱ δὲ μᾶλλον αὐθαδείᾳ τινὶ καὶ φιλονικίᾳ πρὸς ἔνδειξιν ἰσχύος περιφρονῆσαι Λακεδαιμονίων.

[2] Ἡ δὲ χειρίστη μὲν αἰτία πασῶν, ἔχουσα δὲ πλείστους μάρτυρας, οὕτω πως λέγεται. Φειδίας ὁ πλάστης ἐργολάβος μὲν ἦν τοῦ ἀγάλματος ὥσπερ εἴρηται, φίλος δὲ τῷ Περικλεῖ γενόμενος καὶ μέγιστον παρ’ αὐτῷ δυνηθείς, τοὺς μὲν δι’ αὑτὸν ἔσχεν ἐχθροὺς φθονούμενος, οἱ δὲ τοῦ δήμου ποιούμενοι πεῖραν ἐν ἐκείνῳ ποῖός τις ἔσοιτο τῷ Περικλεῖ κριτής, Μένωνά τινα τῶν Φειδίου συνεργῶν πείσαντες ἱκέτην ἐν ἀγορᾷ καθίζουσιν, αἰτούμενον ἄδειαν ἐπὶ μηνύσει [3] καὶ κατηγορίᾳ τοῦ Φειδίου. προσδεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ γενομένης ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ διώξεως, κλοπαὶ μὲν οὐκ ἠλέγχοντο· τὸ γὰρ χρυσίον οὕτως εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς τῷ ἀγάλματι προσειργάσατο καὶ περιέθηκεν ὁ Φειδίας γνώμῃ τοῦ Περικλέους, ὥστε πᾶν δυνατὸν εἶναι περιελοῦσιν ἀποδεῖξαι τὸν σταθμόν, ὃ καὶ τότε τοὺς κατηγόρους ἐκέλευσε ποιεῖν ὁ Περικλῆς· ἡ δὲ δόξα τῶν ἔργων ἐπίεζε φθόνῳ τὸν Φειδίαν, καὶ μάλισθ’ ὅτι τὴν πρὸς Ἀμαζόνας μάχην ἐν τῇ ἀσπίδι ποιῶν αὑτοῦ τινα μορφὴν ἐνετύπωσε, πρεσβύτου φαλακροῦ πέτρον ἐπηρμένου δι’ ἀμφοτέρων τῶν χειρῶν, καὶ τοῦ Περικλέους εἰκόνα παγκάλην ἐνέθηκε [4] μαχομένου πρὸς Ἀμαζόνα. τὸ δὲ σχῆμα τῆς χειρός, ἀνατεινούσης δόρυ πρὸ τῆς ὄψεως τοῦ Περικλέους, πεποιημένον εὐμηχάνως οἷον ἐπικρύπτειν βούλεται τὴν ὁμοιότητα, [5] παραφαινομένην ἑκατέρωθεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Φειδίας εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον ἀπαχθεὶς ἐτελεύτησε νοσήσας, ὡς δέ φασιν ἔνιοι φαρμάκοις, ἐπὶ διαβολῇ τοῦ Περικλέους τῶν ἐχθρῶν παρασκευασάντων. τῷ δὲ μηνυτῇ Μένωνι γράψαντος Γλαύκωνος ἀτέλειαν ὁ δῆμος ἔδωκε, καὶ προσέταξε τοῖς στρατηγοῖς ἐπιμελεῖσθαι τῆς ἀσφαλείας τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.

[32] [1] Περὶ δὲ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον Ἀσπασία δίκην ἔφευγεν ἀσεβείας, Ἑρμίππου τοῦ κωμῳδιοποιοῦ διώκοντος καὶ προσκατηγοροῦντος, ὡς Περικλεῖ γυναῖκας ἐλευθέρας [2] εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ φοιτώσας ὑποδέχοιτο, καὶ ψήφισμα Διοπείθης ἔγραψεν εἰσαγγέλλεσθαι τοὺς τὰ θεῖα μὴ νομίζοντας ἢ λόγους περὶ τῶν μεταρσίων διδάσκοντας, ἀπερειδόμενος [3] εἰς Περικλέα δι’ Ἀναξαγόρου τὴν ὑπόνοιαν. δεχομένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου καὶ προσιεμένου τὰς διαβολάς, οὕτως ἤδη ψήφισμα κυροῦται Δρακοντίδου γράψαντος, ὅπως οἱ λόγοι τῶν χρημάτων ὑπὸ Περικλέους εἰς τοὺς πρυτάνεις ἀποτεθεῖεν, οἱ δὲ δικασταὶ τὴν ψῆφον ἀπὸ τοῦ βωμοῦ φέροντες [4] ἐν τῇ πόλει κρίνοιεν. Ἅγνων δὲ τοῦτο μὲν ἀφεῖλε τοῦ ψηφίσματος, κρίνεσθαι δὲ τὴν δίκην ἔγραψεν ἐν δικασταῖς χιλίοις καὶ πεντακοσίοις, εἴτε κλοπῆς καὶ δώρων [5] εἴτ’ ἀδικίου βούλοιτό τις ὀνομάζειν τὴν δίωξιν. Ἀσπασίαν μὲν οὖν ἐξῃτήσατο, πολλὰ πάνυ παρὰ τὴν δίκην, ὡς Αἰσχίνης (p. 48 Kr.) φησίν, ἀφεὶς ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς δάκρυα καὶ δεηθεὶς τῶν δικαστῶν, Ἀναξαγόραν δὲ φοβηθεὶς ‹τὸ δικαστήριον› [6] ἐξέκλεψε καὶ προύπεμψεν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως. ὡς δὲ διὰ Φειδίου προσέπταισε τῷ δήμῳ, [φοβηθεὶς τὸ δικαστήριον] μέλλοντα τὸν πόλεμον καὶ ὑποτυφόμενον ἐξέκαυσεν, ἐλπίζων διασκεδάσειν τὰ ἐγκλήματα καὶ ταπεινώσειν τὸν φθόνον, ἐν πράγμασι μεγάλοις καὶ κινδύνοις τῆς πόλεως ἐκείνῳ μόνῳ διὰ τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἀναθείσης ἑαυτήν. αἱ μὲν οὖν αἰτίαι, δι’ ἃς οὐκ εἴασεν ἐνδοῦναι Λακεδαιμονίοις τὸν δῆμον, αὗται λέγονται· τὸ δ’ ἀληθὲς ἄδηλον.

[33] [1] Οἱ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι γινώσκοντες ὡς ἐκείνου καταλυθέντος εἰς πάντα μαλακωτέροις χρήσονται τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ἐκέλευον αὐτοὺς τὸ ἄγος ἐλαύνειν τὸ Κυλώνειον, ᾧ τὸ μητρόθεν γένος τοῦ Περικλέους ἔνοχον ἦν, ὡς Θουκυδίδης [2] (1, 127) ἱστόρηκεν. ἡ δὲ πεῖρα περιέστη τοῖς πέμψασιν εἰς τοὐναντίον· ἀντὶ γὰρ ὑποψίας καὶ διαβολῆς ὁ Περικλῆς ἔτι μείζονα πίστιν ἔσχε καὶ τιμὴν παρὰ τοῖς πολίταις, ὡς μάλιστα μισούντων καὶ φοβουμένων ἐκεῖνον [3] τῶν πολεμίων. διὸ καὶ πρὶν ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν τὸν Ἀρχίδαμον ἔχοντα τοὺς Πελοποννησίους προεῖπε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ἂν ἄρα τἆλλα δῃῶν ὁ Ἀρχίδαμος ἀπέχηται τῶν ἐκείνου διὰ τὴν ξενίαν τὴν οὖσαν αὐτοῖς ἢ διαβολῆς τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἐνδιδοὺς ἀφορμάς, ὅτι τῇ πόλει καὶ τὴν χώραν καὶ τὰς ἐπαύλεις ἐπιδίδωσιν.

[4] Ἐμβάλλουσιν οὖν εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν στρατῷ μεγάλῳ Λακεδαιμόνιοι μετὰ τῶν συμμάχων, Ἀρχιδάμου τοῦ βασιλέως ἡγουμένου, καὶ δῃοῦντες τὴν χώραν προῆλθον εἰς Ἀχαρνὰς καὶ κατεστρατοπέδευσαν, ὡς τῶν Ἀθηναίων οὐκ ἀνεξομένων, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ φρονήματος διαμαχουμένων [5] πρὸς αὐτούς. τῷ δὲ Περικλεῖ δεινὸν ἐφαίνετο πρὸς τοὺς ἑξακισμυρίους Πελοποννησίων καὶ Βοιωτῶν ὁπλίτας - τοσοῦτοι γὰρ ἦσαν οἱ τὸ πρῶτον ἐμβαλόντες - ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς τῆς πόλεως μάχην συνάψαι· τοὺς δὲ βουλομένους μάχεσθαι καὶ δυσπαθοῦντας πρὸς τὰ γιγνόμενα κατεπράυνε, λέγων ὡς δένδρα μὲν τμηθέντα καὶ κοπέντα φύεται ταχέως, ἀνδρῶν δὲ διαφθαρέντων αὖθις τυχεῖν οὐ ῥᾴδιόν [6] ἐστι. τὸν δὲ δῆμον εἰς ἐκκλησίαν οὐ συνῆγε, δεδιὼς βιασθῆναι παρὰ γνώμην, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ νεὼς κυβερνήτης ἀνέμου κατιόντος ἐν πελάγει θέμενος εὖ πάντα καὶ κατατείνας τὰ ὅπλα χρῆται τῇ τέχνῃ, δάκρυα καὶ δεήσεις ἐπιβατῶν ναυτιώντων καὶ φοβουμένων ἐάσας, οὕτως ἐκεῖνος τό τ’ ἄστυ συγκλείσας καὶ καταλαβὼν πάντα φυλακαῖς πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν, ἐχρῆτο τοῖς αὑτοῦ λογισμοῖς, βραχέα [7] φροντίζων τῶν καταβοώντων καὶ δυσχεραινόντων. καίτοι πολλοὶ μὲν αὐτῷ τῶν φίλων δεόμενοι προσέκειντο, πολλοὶ δὲ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἀπειλοῦντες καὶ κατηγοροῦντες, χοροὶ δ’ ᾖδον ᾄσματα καὶ σκώμματα πρὸς αἰσχύνην, ἐφυβρίζοντες αὐτοῦ τὴν στρατηγίαν ὡς ἄνανδρον καὶ προϊεμένην τὰ [8] πράγματα τοῖς πολεμίοις. ἐπεφύετο δὲ καὶ Κλέων ἤδη, διὰ τῆς πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ὀργῆς τῶν πολιτῶν πορευόμενος ἐπὶ τὴν δημαγωγίαν, ὡς τὰ ἀνάπαιστα ταῦτα δηλοῖ ποιήσαντος Ἑρμίππου (fr. 46 CAF I 236)·

βασιλεῦ σατύρων, τί ποτ’ οὐκ ἐθέλεις

δόρυ βαστάζειν, ἀλλὰ λόγους μὲν

περὶ τοῦ πολέμου δεινοὺς παρέχεις,

ψυχὴ δὲ Τέλητος ὕπεστιν;

κἀγχειριδίου δ’ ἀκόνῃ σκληρᾷ

παραθηγομένης βρύχεις κοπίδος,

δηχθεὶς αἴθωνι Κλέωνι.

[34] [1] Πλὴν ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἐκινήθη τῶν τοιούτων ὁ Περικλῆς, ἀλλὰ πρᾴως καὶ σιωπῇ τὴν ἀδοξίαν καὶ τὴν ἀπέχθειαν ὑφιστάμενος, καὶ νεῶν ἑκατὸν ἐπὶ τὴν Πελοπόννησον στόλον ἐκπέμπων, αὐτὸς οὐ συνεξέπλευσεν, ἀλλ’ ἔμεινεν οἰκουρῶν καὶ διὰ χειρὸς ἔχων τὴν πόλιν, ἕως [2] ἀπηλλάγησαν οἱ Πελοποννήσιοι. θεραπεύων δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς [ὅμως] ἀσχάλλοντας ἐπὶ τῷ πολέμῳ, διανομαῖς τε χρημάτων ἀνελάμβανε καὶ κληρουχίας ἔγραφεν· Αἰγινήτας γὰρ ἐξελάσας ἅπαντας, διένειμε τὴν νῆσον Ἀθηναίων τοῖς [3] λαχοῦσιν. ἦν δέ τις παρηγορία καὶ ἀφ’ ὧν ἔπασχον οἱ πολέμιοι. καὶ γὰρ οἱ περιπλέοντες τὴν Πελοπόννησον χώραν τε πολλὴν κώμας τε καὶ πόλεις μικρὰς διεπόρθησαν, καὶ κατὰ γῆν αὐτὸς ἐμβαλὼν εἰς τὴν Μεγαρικὴν [4] ἔφθειρε πᾶσαν. ᾗ καὶ δῆλον ἦν, ὅτι πολλὰ μὲν δρῶντες κατὰ γῆν κακὰ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, πολλὰ δὲ πάσχοντες ὑπ’ ἐκείνων ἐκ θαλάττης, οὐκ ἂν εἰς μῆκος πολέμου τοσοῦτο προὔβησαν, ἀλλὰ ταχέως ἀπεῖπον, ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὁ Περικλῆς προηγόρευσεν, εἰ μή τι δαιμόνιον ὑπηναντιώθη [5] τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις λογισμοῖς. νῦν δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ἡ λοιμώδης ἐνέπεσε φθορὰ καὶ κατενεμήθη τὴν ἀκμάζουσαν ἡλικίαν καὶ δύναμιν, ὑφ’ ἧς καὶ τὰ σώματα κακούμενοι καὶ τὰς ψυχάς, παντάπασιν ἠγριώθησαν πρὸς τὸν Περικλέα, καὶ καθάπερ [πρὸς] ἰατρὸν ἢ πατέρα τῇ νόσῳ παραφρονήσαντες ἀδικεῖν ἐπεχείρησαν, ἀναπεισθέντες ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὡς τὴν μὲν νόσον ἡ τοῦ χωρικοῦ πλήθους εἰς τὸ ἄστυ συμφόρησις ἀπεργάζεται, θέρους ὥρᾳ πολλῶν ὁμοῦ χύδην ἐν οἰκήμασι μικροῖς καὶ σκηνώμασι πνιγηροῖς ἀναγκαζομένων διαιτᾶσθαι δίαιταν οἰκουρὸν καὶ ἀργὴν ἀντὶ καθαρᾶς καὶ ἀναπεπταμένης τῆς πρότερον, τούτου δ’ αἴτιος ὁ τῷ πολέμῳ τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς χώρας ὄχλον εἰς τὰ τείχη καταχεάμενος καὶ πρὸς οὐδὲν ἀνθρώποις τοσούτοις χρώμενος, ἀλλ’ ἐῶν ὥσπερ βοσκήματα καθειργμένους ἀναπίμπλασθαι φθορᾶς ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων καὶ μηδεμίαν μεταβολὴν μηδ’ ἀναψυχὴν ἐκπορίζων.

[35] [1] Ταῦτα βουλόμενος ἰᾶσθαι καί τι παραλυπεῖν τοὺς πολεμίους, ἑκατὸν καὶ πεντήκοντα ναῦς ἐπλήρου, καὶ πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ὁπλίτας καὶ ἱππεῖς ἀναβιβασάμενος, ἔμελλεν ἀνάγεσθαι, μεγάλην ἐλπίδα τοῖς πολίταις καὶ φόβον οὐκ ἐλάττω τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀπὸ τοσαύτης ἰσχύος [2] παρασχών. ἤδη δὲ πεπληρωμένων τῶν νεῶν καὶ τοῦ Περικλέους ἀναβεβηκότος ἐπὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ τριήρη, τὸν μὲν ἥλιον ἐκλιπεῖν συνέβη καὶ γενέσθαι σκότος, ἐκπλαγῆναι δὲ πάντας ὡς πρὸς μέγα σημεῖον. ὁρῶν οὖν ὁ Περικλῆς περίφοβον τὸν κυβερνήτην καὶ διηπορημένον, ἀνέσχε τὴν χλαμύδα πρὸ τῆς ὄψεως αὐτοῦ, καὶ παρακαλύψας ἠρώτησε, μή τι δεινὸν ἢ δεινοῦ τινος οἴεται σημεῖον· ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἔφη, τί οὖν εἶπεν ἐκεῖνο τούτου διαφέρει, πλὴν ὅτι μεῖζόν τι τῆς χλαμύδος ἐστὶ τὸ πεποιηκὸς τὴν ἐπισκότησιν; ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς λέγεται τῶν φιλοσόφων.

[3] Ἐκπλεύσας δ’ οὖν ὁ Περικλῆς οὔτ’ ἄλλο τι δοκεῖ τῆς παρασκευῆς ἄξιον δρᾶσαι, πολιορκήσας τε τὴν ἱερὰν Ἐπίδαυρον ἐλπίδα παρασχοῦσαν ὡς ἁλωσομένην, ἀπέτυχε διὰ τὴν νόσον. ἐπιγενομένη γὰρ οὐκ αὐτοὺς μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ὁπωσοῦν τῇ στρατιᾷ συμμείξαντας προσδιέφθειρεν. ἐκ τούτου χαλεπῶς διακειμένους τοὺς Ἀθηναίους [4] πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐπειρᾶτο παρηγορεῖν καὶ ἀναθαρρύνειν. οὐ μὴν παρέλυσε τῆς ὀργῆς οὐδὲ μετέπεισε πρότερον, ἢ τὰς ψήφους λαβόντας ἐπ’ αὐτὸν εἰς τὰς χεῖρας καὶ γενομένους κυρίους ἀφελέσθαι τὴν στρατηγίαν καὶ ζημιῶσαι χρήμασιν, ὧν ἀριθμὸν οἱ τὸν ἐλάχιστον πεντεκαίδεκα τάλαντα, πεντήκοντα [5] δ’ οἱ τὸν πλεῖστον γράφουσιν. ἐπεγράφη δὲ τῇ δίκῃ κατήγορος, ὡς μὲν Ἰδομενεὺς (FGrH 338 F 9) λέγει, Κλέων, ὡς δὲ Θεόφραστος, Σιμμίας· ὁ δὲ Ποντικὸς Ἡρακλείδης (fr. 47 Wehrli) Λακρατείδην εἴρηκε.

[36] [1] Τὰ μὲν οὖν δημόσια ταχέως ἔμελλε παύσεσθαι, καθάπερ κέντρον εἰς τοῦτον ἅμα ‹τῇ› πληγῇ τὸν θυμὸν ἀφεικότων τῶν πολλῶν· τὰ δ’ οἰκεῖα μοχθηρῶς εἶχεν αὐτῷ, κατὰ τὸν λοιμὸν οὐκ ὀλίγους ἀποβαλόντι τῶν ἐπιτηδείων, [2] καὶ στάσει διατεταραγμένα πόρρωθεν. ὁ γὰρ πρεσβύτερος αὐτοῦ τῶν γνησίων υἱῶν Ξάνθιππος, φύσει τε δαπανηρὸς ὢν καὶ γυναικὶ νέᾳ καὶ πολυτελεῖ συνοικῶν, Τεισάνδρου θυγατρὶ τοῦ Ἐπιλύκου, χαλεπῶς ἔφερε τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς ἀκρίβειαν, γλίσχρα καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν αὐτῷ [3] χορηγοῦντος. πέμψας οὖν πρός τινα τῶν φίλων ἔλαβεν [4] ἀργύριον ὡς τοῦ Περικλέους κελεύσαντος. ἐκείνου δ’ ὕστερον ἀπαιτοῦντος, ὁ μὲν Περικλῆς καὶ δίκην αὐτῷ προσέλαχε, τὸ δὲ μειράκιον ὁ Ξάνθιππος ἐπὶ τούτῳ χαλεπῶς διατεθεὶς ἐλοιδόρει τὸν πατέρα, πρῶτον μὲν ἐκφέρων ἐπὶ γέλωτι τὰς οἴκοι διατριβὰς αὐτοῦ καὶ τοὺς λόγους οὓς [5] ἐποιεῖτο μετὰ τῶν σοφιστῶν. πεντάθλου γάρ τινος ἀκοντίῳ πατάξαντος Ἐπίτιμον τὸν Φαρσάλιον ἀκουσίως καὶ κτείναντος, ἡμέραν ὅλην ἀναλῶσαι μετὰ Πρωταγόρου διαποροῦντα, πότερον τὸ ἀκόντιον ἢ τὸν βαλόντα μᾶλλον ἢ τοὺς ἀγωνοθέτας κατὰ τὸν ὀρθότατον λόγον αἰτίους χρὴ τοῦ [6] πάθους ἡγεῖσθαι. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις καὶ τὴν περὶ τῆς γυναικὸς διαβολὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ Ξανθίππου φησὶν ὁ Στησίμβροτος (FGrH 107 F 11) εἰς τοὺς πολλοὺς διασπαρῆναι, καὶ ὅλως ἀνήκεστον ἄχρι τῆς τελευτῆς τῷ νεανίσκῳ πρὸς τὸν πατέρα διαμεῖναι τὴν διαφοράν· ἀπέθανε γὰρ ὁ Ξάνθιππος [7] ἐν τῷ λοιμῷ νοσήσας. ἀπέβαλε δὲ καὶ τὴν ἀδελφὴν ὁ Περικλῆς τότε καὶ τῶν κηδεστῶν καὶ φίλων τοὺς πλείστους [8] καὶ χρησιμωτάτους πρὸς τὴν πολιτείαν. οὐ μὴν ἀπεῖπεν οὐδὲ προὔδωκε τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τῆς ψυχῆς ὑπὸ τῶν συμφορῶν, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ κλαίων οὔτε κηδεύων οὔτε πρὸς τάφῳ τινὸς ὤφθη τῶν ἀναγκαίων, πρίν γε δὴ καὶ τὸν περίλοιπον αὑτοῦ τῶν γνησίων υἱῶν ἀποβαλεῖν [9] Πάραλον. ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ καμφθείς, ἐπειρᾶτο μὲν ἐγκαρτερεῖν τῷ ἤθει καὶ διαφυλάττειν τὸ μεγαλόψυχον, ἐπιφέρων δὲ τῷ νεκρῷ στέφανον ἡττήθη τοῦ πάθους πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, ὥστε κλαυθμόν τε ῥῆξαι καὶ πλῆθος ἐκχέαι δακρύων, οὐδέποτε τοιοῦτον οὐδὲν ἐν τῷ λοιπῷ βίῳ πεποιηκώς.

[37] [1] Τῆς δὲ πόλεως πειρωμένης τῶν ἄλλων στρατηγῶν εἰς τὸν πόλεμον καὶ ῥητόρων, οὐδεὶς βάρος ἔχων ἰσόρροπον οὐδ’ ἀξίωμα πρὸς τοσαύτην ἐχέγγυον ἡγεμονίαν ἐφαίνετο· ποθούσης δ’ ἐκεῖνον καὶ καλούσης ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὸ στρατήγιον, ἀθυμῶν καὶ κείμενος οἴκοι διὰ τὸ πένθος ὑπ’ Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπείσθη φίλων [2] προελθεῖν. ἀπολογησαμένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου τὴν ἀγνωμοσύνην τὴν πρὸς αὐτόν, ὑποδεξάμενος αὖθις τὰ πράγματα καὶ στρατηγὸς αἱρεθείς, ᾐτήσατο λυθῆναι τὸν περὶ τῶν νόθων νόμον, ὃν αὐτὸς εἰσενηνόχει πρότερον, ὡς μὴ παντάπασιν ἐρημίᾳ διαδοχῆς [τὸν οἶκον] ἐκλίποι τοὔνομα καὶ [3] τὸ γένος. εἶχε δ’ οὕτω τὰ περὶ τὸν νόμον. ἀκμάζων ὁ Περικλῆς ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ πρὸ πάνυ πολλῶν χρόνων καὶ παῖδας ἔχων ὥσπερ εἴρηται γνησίους, νόμον ἔγραψε, μόνους Ἀθηναίους εἶναι τοὺς ἐκ δυεῖν Ἀθηναίων γεγονότας.

[4] ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως τῶν Αἰγυπτίων δωρεὰν τῷ δήμῳ πέμψαντος τετρακισμυρίους πυρῶν μεδίμνους ἔδει διανέμεσθαι τοὺς πολίτας, πολλαὶ μὲν ἀνεφύοντο δίκαι τοῖς νόθοις ἐκ τοῦ γράμματος ἐκείνου τέως διαλανθάνουσι καὶ παρορωμένοις, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ συκοφαντήμασι περιέπιπτον. ἀπεκρίθησαν οὖν ἁλόντες ὀλίγῳ πεντακισχιλίων ἐλάττους, οἱ δὲ μείναντες ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ κριθέντες Ἀθηναῖοι μύριοι καὶ τετρακισχίλιοι καὶ τεσσαράκοντα τὸ πλῆθος [5] ἐξητάσθησαν. ὄντος οὖν δεινοῦ τὸν κατὰ τοσούτων ἰσχύσαντα νόμον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πάλιν λυθῆναι τοῦ γράψαντος, ἡ παροῦσα δυστυχία τῷ Περικλεῖ περὶ τὸν οἶκον, ὡς δίκην τινὰ δεδωκότι τῆς ὑπεροψίας καὶ τῆς μεγαλαυχίας ἐκείνης, ἐπέκλασε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, καὶ δόξαντες αὐτὸν νεμεσητά τε παθεῖν ἀνθρωπίνων τε δεῖσθαι, συνεχώρησαν ἀπογράψασθαι τὸν νόθον εἰς τοὺς φράτορας, ὄνομα θέμενον [6] τὸ αὑτοῦ. καὶ τοῦτον μὲν ὕστερον ἐν Ἀργινούσαις καταναυμαχήσαντα Πελοποννησίους ἀπέκτεινεν ὁ δῆμος μετὰ τῶν συστρατήγων.

[38] [1] Τότε δὲ τοῦ Περικλέους ἔοικεν ὁ λοιμὸς λαβέσθαι λαβὴν οὐκ ὀξεῖαν ὥσπερ ἄλλων οὐδὲ σύντονον, ἀλλὰ βληχρᾷ τινι νόσῳ καὶ μῆκος ἐν ποικίλαις ἐχούσῃ μεταβολαῖς διαχρωμένην τὸ σῶμα σχολαίως καὶ ὑπερείπουσαν τὸ [2] φρόνημα τῆς ψυχῆς. ὁ γοῦν Θεόφραστος (fr. 146 W.) ἐν τοῖς Ἠθικοῖς διαπορήσας, εἰ πρὸς τὰς τύχας τρέπεται τὰ ἤθη καὶ κινούμενα τοῖς τῶν σωμάτων πάθεσιν ἐξίσταται τῆς ἀρετῆς, ἱστόρηκεν ὅτι νοσῶν ὁ Περικλῆς ἐπισκοπουμένῳ τινὶ τῶν φίλων δείξειε περίαπτον ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν τῷ τραχήλῳ περιηρτημένον, ὡς σφόδρα κακῶς ἔχων ὁπότε [3] καὶ ταύτην ὑπομένοι τὴν ἀβελτερίαν. ἤδη δὲ πρὸς τῷ τελευτᾶν ὄντος αὐτοῦ, περικαθήμενοι τῶν πολιτῶν οἱ βέλτιστοι καὶ τῶν φίλων οἱ περιόντες λόγον ἐποιοῦντο τῆς ἀρετῆς καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως, ὅση γένοιτο, καὶ τὰς πράξεις ἀνεμετροῦντο καὶ τῶν τροπαίων τὸ πλῆθος· ἐννέα γὰρ ἦν ἃ στρατηγῶν [4] καὶ νικῶν ἔστησεν ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως. ταῦθ’ ὡς οὐκέτι συνιέντος, ἀλλὰ καθῃρημένου τὴν αἴσθησιν αὐτοῦ, διελέγοντο πρὸς ἀλλήλους· ὁ δὲ πᾶσιν ἐτύγχανε τὸν νοῦν προσεσχηκώς, καὶ φθεγξάμενος εἰς μέσον ἔφη θαυμάζειν ὅτι ταῦτα μὲν ἐπαινοῦσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ μνημονεύουσιν, ἃ καὶ πρὸς τύχης ἐστὶ κοινὰ καὶ γέγονεν ἤδη πολλοῖς στρατηγοῖς, τὸ δὲ κάλλιστον καὶ μέγιστον οὐ λέγουσιν. οὐδεὶς γάρ ἔφη δι’ ἐμὲ τῶν πολιτῶν [Ἀθηναίων] μέλαν ἱμάτιον περιεβάλετο.

[39] [1] Θαυμαστὸς οὖν ὁ ἀνὴρ οὐ μόνον τῆς ἐπιεικείας καὶ πρᾳότητος, ἣν ἐν πράγμασι πολλοῖς καὶ μεγάλαις ἀπεχθείαις διετήρησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ φρονήματος, εἰ τῶν αὑτοῦ καλῶν ἡγεῖτο βέλτιστον εἶναι τὸ μήτε φθόνῳ μήτε θυμῷ χαρίσασθαι μηδὲν ἀπὸ τηλικαύτης δυνάμεως, μηδὲ χρήσασθαί [2] τινι τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὡς ἀνηκέστῳ. καί μοι δοκεῖ τὴν μειρακιώδη καὶ σοβαρὰν ἐκείνην προσωνυμίαν ἓν τοῦτο ποιεῖν ἀνεπίφθονον καὶ πρέπουσαν, οὕτως εὐμενὲς ἦθος καὶ βίον ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμίαντον Ὀλύμπιον προσαγορεύεσθαι, καθάπερ τὸ τῶν θεῶν γένος ἀξιοῦμεν αἴτιον μὲν ἀγαθῶν, ἀναίτιον δὲ κακῶν πεφυκὸς ἄρχειν καὶ βασιλεύειν τῶν ὄντων, οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ ποιηταὶ συνταράττοντες ἡμᾶς ἀμαθεστάταις δόξαις ἁλίσκονται τοῖς αὑτῶν μυθεύμασι, τὸν μὲν τόπον, ἐν ᾧ τοὺς θεοὺς κατοικεῖν λέγουσιν, ἀσφαλὲς ἕδος καὶ ἀσάλευτον καλοῦντες, οὐ πνεύμασιν, οὐ νέφεσι χρώμενον, ἀλλ’ αἴθρᾳ μαλακῇ καὶ φωτὶ καθαρωτάτῳ τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον ὁμαλῶς περιλαμπόμενον, ὡς τοιαύτης τινὸς τῷ μακαρίῳ καὶ ἀθανάτῳ διαγωγῆς μάλιστα πρεπούσης, αὐτοὺς δὲ τοὺς θεοὺς ταραχῆς καὶ δυσμενείας καὶ ὀργῆς ἄλλων τε μεστοὺς παθῶν ἀποφαίνοντες, [3] οὐδ’ ἀνθρώποις νοῦν ἔχουσι προσηκόντων. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἴσως ἑτέρας δόξει πραγματείας εἶναι.

Τοῦ δὲ Περικλέους ταχεῖαν αἴσθησιν καὶ σαφῆ πόθον Ἀθηναίοις ἐνειργάζετο τὰ πράγματα. καὶ γὰρ οἱ ζῶντος βαρυνόμενοι τὴν δύναμιν ὡς ἀμαυροῦσαν αὐτούς, εὐθὺς ἐκποδὼν γενομένου πειρώμενοι ῥητόρων καὶ δημαγωγῶν ἑτέρων, ἀνωμολογοῦντο μετριώτερον ἐν ὄγκῳ καὶ σεμνότερον [4] ἐν πρᾳότητι μὴ φῦναι τρόπον. ἡ δ’ ἐπίφθονος ἰσχὺς ἐκείνη, μοναρχία λεγομένη καὶ τυραννὶς πρότερον, ἐφάνη τότε σωτήριον ἔρυμα τῆς πολιτείας γενομένη· τοσαύτη φορὰ καὶ πλῆθος ἐπέκειτο κακίας τοῖς πράγμασιν, ἣν ἐκεῖνος ἀσθενῆ καὶ ταπεινὴν ποιῶν ἀπέκρυπτε καὶ κατεκώλυεν ἀνήκεστον ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ γενέσθαι.

Fabius Maximus

[1] [1] Τοιούτου δὲ τοῦ Περικλέους ἐν τοῖς ἀξίοις μνήμης γεγονότος, ὡς παρειλήφαμεν, ἐπὶ τὸν Φάβιον τὴν ἱστορίαν μετάγομεν.

[2] Νυμφῶν μιᾶς λέγουσιν, οἱ δὲ γυναικὸς ἐπιχωρίας, Ἡρακλεῖ μιγείσης περὶ τὸν Θύβριν ποταμὸν γενέσθαι Φάβιον, ἄνδρα πολὺ καὶ δόκιμον ἐν Ῥώμῃ τὸ Φαβίων γένος ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ παρασχόντα. τινὲς δὲ τοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ γένους τούτου πρώτους τῇ δι’ ὀρυγμάτων χρησαμένους ἄγρᾳ Φοδίους ἱστοροῦσιν ὀνομάζεσθαι τὸ παλαιόν· οὕτω γὰρ ἄχρι νῦν αἱ διώρυχες φόσσαι καὶ φόδερε τὸ σκάψαι καλεῖται· χρόνῳ δὲ τῶν δυεῖν φθόγγων μεταπεσόντων, Φάβιοι [3] προσηγορεύθησαν. πολλοὺς δὲ ‹καὶ› μεγάλους τῆς οἰκίας ἐξενεγκαμένης ἄνδρας, ἀπὸ Ῥούλλου τοῦ μεγίστου καὶ διὰ τοῦτο Μαξίμου παρὰ Ῥωμαίοις ἐπονομασθέντος τέταρτος [4] ἦν Φάβιος Μάξιμος, περὶ οὗ τάδε γράφομεν. ἦν δ’ αὐτῷ σωματικὸν μὲν παρωνύμιον ὁ Βερρούκωσος· εἶχε γὰρ ἀκροχορδόνα μικρὰν ἐπάνω τοῦ χείλους ἐπιπεφυκυῖαν· ὁ δ’ Ὀβικούλας σημαίνει μὲν προβάτιον, ἐτέθη δὲ πρὸς τὴν πρᾳότητα καὶ βραδυτῆτα τοῦ ἤθους ἔτι παιδὸς ὄντος.

[5] τὸ γὰρ ἡσύχιον αὐτοῦ καὶ σιωπηλὸν καὶ μετὰ πολλῆς μὲν εὐλαβείας τῶν παιδικῶν ἁπτόμενον ἡδονῶν, βραδέως δὲ καὶ διαπόνως δεχόμενον τὰς μαθήσεις, εὔκολον δὲ πρὸς τοὺς συνήθεις καὶ κατήκοον ἀβελτερίας τινὸς καὶ νωθρότητος ὑπόνοιαν εἶχε παρὰ τοῖς ἐκτός· ὀλίγοι δ’ ἦσαν οἱ τὸ δυσκίνητον ὑπὸ βάθους καὶ μεγαλόψυχον καὶ λεοντῶδες ἐν τῇ φύσει καθορῶντες [6] αὐτοῦ. ταχὺ δὲ τοῦ χρόνου προϊόντος ὑπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων ἐγειρόμενος, διεσήμαινε καὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀπάθειαν μὲν οὖσαν τὴν δοκοῦσαν ἀπραγίαν, εὐβουλίαν δὲ τὴν εὐλάβειαν, τὸ δὲ πρὸς μηδὲν ὀξὺ μηδ’ εὐκίνητον ἐν πᾶσι μόνιμον [7] καὶ βέβαιον. ὁρῶν δὲ καὶ τῆς πολιτείας τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τῶν πολέμων τὸ πλῆθος, ἤσκει τὸ μὲν σῶμα πρὸς τοὺς πολέμους ὥσπερ ὅπλον σύμφυτον, τὸν δὲ λόγον ὄργανον πειθοῦς πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, εὖ μάλα τῷ βίῳ πρεπόντως [8] κατακεκοσμημένον. οὐ γὰρ ἐπῆν ὡραϊσμὸς οὐδὲ κενὴ καὶ ἀγοραῖος χάρις, ἀλλὰ νοῦς ἴδιον καὶ περιττὸν ἐν γνωμολογίαις σχῆμα καὶ βάθος ἔχων, ἃς μάλιστα ταῖς [9] Θουκυδίδου προσεοικέναι λέγουσι. διασῴζεται γὰρ αὐτοῦ λόγος ὃν εἶπεν ἐν τῷ δήμῳ, τοῦ παιδὸς αὐτοῦ μεθ’ ὑπατείαν ἀποθανόντος ἐγκώμιον.

[2] [1] Πέντε δ’ ὑπατειῶν ἃς ὑπάτευσεν ἡ πρώτη τὸν ἀπὸ Λιγύων θρίαμβον ἔσχεν. ἡττηθέντες γὰρ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ μάχῃ καὶ πολλοὺς ἀποβαλόντες, εἰς τὰς Ἄλπεις ἀνεστάλησαν, καὶ τὴν πρόσοικον ἐπαύσαντο τῆς Ἰταλίας λῃζόμενοι καὶ κακῶς ποιοῦντες.

[2] Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀννίβας ἐμβαλὼν εἰς Ἰταλίαν καὶ μάχῃ πρῶτον περὶ τὸν Τρεβίαν ποταμὸν ἐπικρατήσας, αὐτὸς μὲν ἤλαυνε διὰ Τυρρηνίας πορθῶν τὴν χώραν, ἔκπληξιν δὲ δεινὴν καὶ φόβον εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην ἐνέβαλλε, σημεῖα δὲ τὰ μὲν συνήθη Ῥωμαίοις ἀπὸ κεραυνῶν, τὰ δ’ ὅλως ἐξηλλαγμένα καὶ πολλὴν ἀτοπίαν ἔχοντα προσέπιπτε - θυρεούς τε γὰρ ἀφ’ αὑτῶν αἵματι γενέσθαι διαβρόχους ἐλέχθη, καὶ θέρη σταχύων περὶ Ἄντιον ἔναιμα κείρεσθαι, καὶ λίθους μὲν ἐκ τοῦ ἀέρος διαπύρους καὶ φλεγομένους φέρεσθαι, τοῦ δ’ ὑπὲρ Φαλερίους οὐρανοῦ ῥαγῆναι δόξαντος ἐκπίπτειν καὶ διασπείρεσθαι πολλὰ γραμματεῖα, καὶ τούτων ἐν ἑνὶ γεγραμμένον φανῆναι κατὰ λέξιν· Ἄρης τὰ [3] ἑαυτοῦ ὅπλα σαλεύει - , τὸν μὲν ὕπατον Γάιον Φλαμίνιον οὐδὲν ἤμβλυνε τούτων, ἄνδρα πρὸς τῷ φύσει θυμοειδεῖ καὶ φιλοτίμῳ μεγάλαις ἐπαιρόμενον εὐτυχίαις, ἃς πρόσθεν εὐτύχησε παραλόγως, τῆς τε βουλῆς ἀποκαλούσης καὶ τοῦ συνάρχοντος ἐνισταμένου βίᾳ συμβαλὼν τοῖς Γαλάταις μάχῃ καὶ κρατήσας, Φάβιον δὲ τὰ μὲν σημεῖα, καίπερ [4] ἁπτόμενα πολλῶν, ἧττον ὑπέθραττε διὰ τὴν ἀλογίαν· τὴν δ’ ὀλιγότητα τῶν πολεμίων καὶ τὴν ἀχρηματίαν πυνθανόμενος, καρτερεῖν παρεκάλει τοὺς Ῥωμαίους καὶ μὴ μάχεσθαι πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἐπ’ αὐτῷ τούτῳ διὰ πολλῶν ἀγώνων ἠσκημένῃ στρατιᾷ χρώμενον, ἀλλὰ τοῖς συμμάχοις ἐπιπέμποντας βοηθείας καὶ τὰς πόλεις διὰ χειρὸς ἔχοντας, αὐτὴν ἐᾶν περὶ αὑτῇ μαραίνεσθαι τὴν ἀκμὴν τοῦ Ἀννίβου, καθάπερ φλόγα λάμψασαν ἀπὸ μικρᾶς καὶ κούφης δυνάμεως.

[3] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἔπεισε τὸν Φλαμίνιον, ἀλλὰ φήσας οὐκ ἀνέξεσθαι προσιόντα τῇ Ῥώμῃ τὸν πόλεμον οὐδ’ ὥσπερ ὁ παλαιὸς Κάμιλλος ἐν τῇ πόλει διαμαχεῖσθαι περὶ αὐτῆς, τὸν μὲν στρατὸν ἐξάγειν ἐκέλευσε τοὺς χιλιάρχους, αὐτὸς δ’ ἐπὶ τὸν ἵππον ἁλάμενος, ἐξ οὐδενὸς αἰτίου προδήλου παραλόγως ἐντρόμου τοῦ ἵππου γενομένου καὶ πτυρέντος, ἐξέπεσε καὶ κατενεχθεὶς ἐπὶ κεφαλὴν ὅμως οὐδὲν ἔτρεψε τῆς γνώμης, ἀλλ’ ὡς ὥρμησεν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἀπαντῆσαι τῷ Ἀννίβᾳ, περὶ τὴν καλουμένην Θρασυνίαν λίμνην τῆς Τυρρηνίας [2] παρετάξατο. τῶν δὲ στρατιωτῶν συμβαλόντων εἰς χεῖρας, ἅμα τῷ καιρῷ τῆς μάχης συνέπεσε σεισμός, ὑφ’ οὗ καὶ πόλεις ἀνετράπησαν καὶ ῥεύματα ποταμῶν ἐξ ἕδρας μετέστη καὶ κρημνῶν ὑπώρειαι παρερράγησαν. ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτω γενομένου βιαίου ‹τοῦ› πάθους οὐδεὶς τὸ παράπαν [3] ᾔσθετο τῶν μαχομένων. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ὁ Φλαμίνιος πολλὰ καὶ τόλμης ἔργα καὶ ῥώμης ἀποδεικνύμενος ἔπεσε, καὶ περὶ αὐτὸν οἱ κράτιστοι· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων τραπέντων πολὺς ἦν ὁ φόνος, καὶ πεντακισχίλιοι πρὸς μυρίοις κατεκόπησαν, καὶ ἑάλωσαν ἕτεροι τοσοῦτοι. τὸ δὲ Φλαμινίου σῶμα φιλοτιμούμενος θάψαι καὶ κοσμῆσαι δι’ ἀρετὴν ὁ Ἀννίβας οὐχ εὗρεν ἐν τοῖς νεκροῖς, ἀλλ’ ἠγνοεῖτο τὸ παρά[4]παν ὅπως ἠφανίσθη. τὴν μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τοῦ Τρεβίου γενομένην ἧτταν οὔθ’ ὁ γράψας στρατηγὸς οὔθ’ ὁ πεμφθεὶς ἄγγελος ἀπ’ εὐθείας ἔφρασεν, ἀλλ’ ἐψεύσαντο τὴν νίκην ἐπίδικον αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀμφίδοξον γενέσθαι· περὶ δὲ ταύτης ὡς πρῶτον ἤκουσεν ὁ στρατηγὸς Πομπώνιος, συναγαγὼν εἰς ἐκκλησίαν τὸν δῆμον οὐ περιπλοκὰς οὐδὲ παραγωγὰς ‹πλασάμενος›, [5] ἀλλ’ ἄντικρυς ἔφη προσελθών· νενικήμεθα ὦ ἄνδρες Ῥωμαῖοι μεγάλῃ μάχῃ, καὶ διέφθαρται τὸ στρατόπεδον, καὶ Φλαμίνιος ὕπατος ἀπόλωλεν. ἀλλὰ βουλεύεσθε [6] περὶ σωτηρίας αὑτῶν καὶ ἀσφαλείας. οὗτος μὲν οὖν ὥσπερ πνεῦμα τὸν λόγον ἐμβαλὼν εἰς πέλαγος τοσοῦτον δῆμον, συνετάραξε τὴν πόλιν, οὐδ’ ἑστάναι πρὸς τοσαύτην [7] ἔκπληξιν οἱ λογισμοὶ καὶ διαμένειν ἐδύναντο, πάντες δ’ εἰς μίαν γνώμην συνηνέχθησαν, ἀνυπευθύνου τε δεῖσθαι τὰ πράγματα μοναρχίας, ἣν δικτατορίαν καλοῦσι, καὶ τοῦ μεταχειριουμένου ταύτην ἀθρύπτως καὶ ἀδεῶς ἀνδρός· εἶναι δὲ τοῦτον ἕνα Φάβιον Μάξιμον, ἰσόρροπον ἔχοντα τῷ μεγέθει τῆς ἀρχῆς τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὸ ἀξίωμα τοῦ ἤθους, ἡλικίας τε κατὰ τοῦτο γεγενημένον ἐν ᾧ συνέστηκεν ἔτι πρὸς τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς βουλεύματα τὸ σῶμα τῇ ῥώμῃ καὶ συγκέκραται τῷ φρονίμῳ τὸ θαρραλέον.

[4] [1] Ὡς οὖν ταῦτ’ ἔδοξεν, ἀποδειχθεὶς δικτάτωρ Φάβιος καὶ ἀποδείξας αὐτὸς ἵππαρχον Μᾶρκον Μινούκιον, πρῶτον μὲν ᾐτήσατο τὴν σύγκλητον ἵππῳ χρῆσθαι παρὰ τὰς [2] στρατείας. οὐ γὰρ ἐξῆν, ἀλλ’ ἀπηγόρευτο κατὰ δή τινα νόμον παλαιόν, εἴτε τῆς ἀλκῆς τὸ πλεῖστον ἐν τῷ πεζῷ τιθεμένων καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὸν στρατηγὸν οἰομένων δεῖν παραμένειν τῇ φάλαγγι καὶ μὴ προλείπειν, εἴθ’, ὅτι τυραννικὸν εἰς ἅπαντα τἆλλα καὶ μέγα τὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς κράτος ἐστίν, ἔν γε τούτῳ βουλομένων τὸν δικτάτορα τοῦ δήμου [3] φαίνεσθαι δεόμενον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Φάβιος εὐθὺς ἐνδείξασθαι θέλων τῆς ἀρχῆς τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸν ὄγκον, ὡς μᾶλλον ὑπηκόοις χρῷτο καὶ πειθηνίοις τοῖς πολίταις, προῆλθε συνενεγκάμενος εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ ῥαβδουχίας εἰκοσιτέσσαρας· καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου τῶν ὑπάτων ἀπαντῶντος αὐτῷ, τὸν ὑπηρέτην πέμψας ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ῥαβδούχους ἀπαλλάξαι καὶ τὰ παράσημα τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀποθέμενον ἰδιώτην ἀπαντᾶν.

[4] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα καλλίστην ἀρχόμενος ‹τὴν› ἐκ θεῶν ἀρχήν, καὶ διδάσκων τὸν δῆμον ὡς ὀλιγωρίᾳ καὶ περιφρονήσει τοῦ στρατηγοῦ πρὸς τὸ δαιμόνιον, οὐ μοχθηρίᾳ τῶν ἀγωνισαμένων σφαλέντα, προὔτρεπε μὴ δεδιέναι τοὺς ἐχθρούς, ἀλλὰ [καὶ] τοὺς θεοὺς ἐξευμενίζεσθαι καὶ τιμᾶν, οὐ δεισιδαιμονίαν ἐνεργαζόμενος, ἀλλὰ θαρρύνων εὐσεβείᾳ τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ ταῖς παρὰ τῶν θεῶν ἐλπίσι τὸν ἀπὸ τῶν [5] πολεμίων φόβον ἀφαιρῶν καὶ παραμυθούμενος. ἐκινήθησαν δὲ τότε καὶ πολλαὶ τῶν ἀπορρήτων καὶ χρησμίων αὐτοῖς βίβλων ἃς Σιβυλλείους καλοῦσι, καὶ λέγεται συνδραμεῖν ἔνια τῶν ἀποκειμένων ἐν αὐταῖς λογίων πρὸς τὰς [6] τύχας καὶ τὰς πράξεις ἐκείνας. καὶ τὸ μὲν ‹ἀνα›γνωσθὲν οὐκ ἦν ἑτέρῳ πυθέσθαι, προελθὼν δ’ ὁ δικτάτωρ εἰς τὸν ὄχλον, εὔξατο τοῖς θεοῖς ἐνιαυτοῦ μὲν αἰγῶν καὶ συῶν καὶ προβάτων καὶ βοῶν ἐπιγονήν, ὅσην Ἰταλίας ὄρη καὶ πεδία καὶ ποταμοὶ καὶ λειμῶνες εἰς ὥραν ἐσομένην θρέψουσι, καταθύσειν ἅπαντα, θέας δὲ μουσικὰς καὶ θυμελικὰς ἄξειν ἀπὸ σηστερτίων τριακοσίων τριάκοντα τριῶν καὶ δηναρίων τριακοσίων τριάκοντα τριῶν, ἔτι τριτημορίου προσόντος. τοῦτο τὸ κεφάλαιόν ἐστιν ὀκτὼ μυριάδες δραχμῶν καὶ δραχμαὶ τρισχίλιαι πεντακόσιαι ὀγδοήκοντα τρεῖς καὶ [7] δύο ὀβολοί. λόγον δὲ τῆς εἰς τοῦτο τοῦ πλήθους ἀκριβείας καὶ διανομῆς χαλεπόν ἐστιν εἰπεῖν, εἰ μή τις ἄρα βούλοιτο τῆς τριάδος ὑμνεῖν τὴν δύναμιν, ὅτι καὶ φύσει τέλειος καὶ πρῶτος τῶν περισσῶν ἀρχήν τε πλήθους ἐν αὑτῷ τάς τε πρώτας διαφορὰς καὶ τὰ παντὸς ἀριθμοῦ στοιχεῖα μείξας καὶ συναρμόσας εἰς ταὐτὸν ἀνείληφε.

[5] [1] Τῶν μὲν οὖν πολλῶν ὁ Φάβιος τὴν γνώμην ἀναρτήσας εἰς τὸ θεῖον, ἡδίω πρὸς τὸ μέλλον ἐποίησεν· αὐτὸς δὲ πάσας θέμενος ἐν αὑτῷ τὰς τῆς νίκης ἐλπίδας, ὡς καὶ τοῦ θεοῦ τὰς εὐπραξίας δι’ ἀρετῆς καὶ φρονήσεως παραδιδόντος, τρέπεται πρὸς Ἀννίβαν, οὐχ ὡς διαμαχούμενος, ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ τὴν ἀκμὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ χρήμασι τὴν ἀπορίαν καὶ πολυανθρωπίᾳ τὴν ὀλιγότητα τρίβειν καὶ ὑπαναλίσκειν [2] βεβουλευμένος. ὅθεν αἰεὶ μετέωρος ἀπὸ τῆς ἵππου τῶν πολεμίων ἐν τόποις ὀρεινοῖς στρατοπεδεύων ἐπῃωρεῖτο, καθημένου μὲν ἡσυχάζων, κινουμένου δὲ κατὰ τῶν ἄκρων κύκλῳ περιιὼν καὶ περιφαινόμενος ἐκ διαστήματος, ὅσον ἀκοντὶ μὴ βιασθῆναι μάχεσθαι καὶ φόβον ὡς μαχησόμενος τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀπὸ τῆς μελλήσεως αὐτῆς [3] παρέχειν. οὕτω δὲ παράγων τὸν χρόνον ὑπὸ πάντων κατεφρονεῖτο, καὶ κακῶς μὲν ἤκουεν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, κομιδῇ δὲ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἄτολμος ἐδόκει καὶ τὸ μηδὲν [4] εἶναι, πλὴν ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς Ἀννίβου. μόνος δ’ ἐκεῖνος αὐτοῦ τὴν δεινότητα καὶ τὸν τρόπον ᾧ πολεμεῖν ἐγνώκει συνιδών, καὶ διανοηθεὶς ὡς πάσῃ τέχνῃ καὶ βίᾳ κινητέος ἐστὶν εἰς μάχην ὁ ἀνὴρ ἢ διαπέπρακται τὰ Καρχηδονίων, οἷς μέν εἰσι κρείττους ὅπλοις χρήσασθαι μὴ δυναμένων, οἷς δὲ λείπονται σώμασι καὶ χρήμασιν ἐλαττουμένων καὶ δαπανωμένων εἰς τὸ μηδέν, ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἰδέαν στρατηγικῶν σοφισμάτων καὶ παλαισμάτων τρεπόμενος καὶ πειρώμενος ὥσπερ δεινὸς ἀθλητὴς λαβὴν ζητῶν, προσέβαλλε καὶ διετάραττε καὶ μετῆγε πολλαχόσε τὸν Φάβιον, ἐκστῆσαι τῶν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἀσφαλείας λογισμῶν [5] βουλόμενος. τῷ δ’ ἡ μὲν κρίσις πίστιν ἔχοντι τοῦ συμφέροντος ἐν αὑτῇ βέβαιος εἱστήκει καὶ ἀμετάπτωτος, ἠνώχλει δ’ αὐτὸν ὁ ἵππαρχος Μινούκιος, φιλομαχῶν ἀκαίρως καὶ θρασυνόμενος καὶ δημαγωγῶν τὸ στράτευμα, μανικῆς φορᾶς καὶ κενῶν ἐλπίδων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πεπληρωμένον· οἳ τὸν μὲν Φάβιον σκώπτοντες καὶ καταφρονοῦντες Ἀννίβου παιδαγωγὸν ἀπεκάλουν, τὸν δὲ Μινούκιον μέγαν ἄνδρα [6] καὶ τῆς Ῥώμης ἄξιον ἡγοῦντο στρατηγόν. ὁ δὲ μᾶλλον εἰς φρόνημα καὶ θράσος ἀνειμένος, ἐχλεύαζε μὲν τὰς ἐπὶ τῶν ἄκρων στρατοπεδείας, ὡς καλὰ θέατρα τοῦ δικτάτορος ἀεὶ παρασκευαζομένου θεωρήσουσι πορθουμένην καὶ φλεγομένην τὴν Ἰταλίαν, ἠρώτα δὲ τοὺς φίλους τοῦ Φαβίου, πότερον εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἄρας ἀναφέρει τὸν στρατὸν ὥσπερ τῆς γῆς ἀπεγνωκώς, ἢ νέφη καὶ ὁμίχλας προβαλλόμενος [7] ἀποδιδράσκει τοὺς πολεμίους. ταῦτα τῶν φίλων πρὸς τὸν Φάβιον ἀπαγγελλόντων καὶ τὴν ἀδοξίαν τῷ κινδύνῳ λῦσαι παραινούντων, οὕτω μέντἄν ἔφη δειλότερος ἢ νῦν εἶναι δοκῶ γενοίμην, εἰ σκώμματα καὶ λοιδορίας φοβηθεὶς [8] ἐκπέσοιμι τῶν ἐμαυτοῦ λογισμῶν. καίτοι τὸ μὲν ὑπὲρ πατρίδος οὐκ αἰσχρὸν δέος, ἡ δὲ πρὸς δόξαν ἀνθρώπων καὶ διαβολὰς καὶ ψόγους ἔκπληξις οὐκ ἀξίου τηλικαύτης ἀρχῆς ἀνδρός, ἀλλὰ δουλεύοντος ὧν κρατεῖν αὐτὸν καὶ δεσπόζειν κακῶς φρονούντων προσήκει.

[6] [1] Μετὰ ταῦτα γίνεται διαμαρτία τοῦ Ἀννίβου. βουλόμενος γὰρ ἀποσπάσαι τοῦ Φαβίου πορρωτέρω τὸ στράτευμα καὶ πεδίων ἐπιλαβέσθαι προνομὰς ἐχόντων, ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ὁδηγοὺς μετὰ δεῖπνον εὐθὺς ἡγεῖσθαι πρὸς τὸ [2] Κασινάτον. οἱ δὲ τῆς φωνῆς διὰ βαρβαρισμὸν οὐκ ἐξακούσαντες ἀκριβῶς, ἐμβάλλουσιν αὐτοῦ τὴν δύναμιν φέροντες εἰς τὰ καταλήγοντα τῆς Καμπανίας εἰς πόλιν Κασιλῖνον, ἣν τέμνει ῥέων διὰ μέσης [ὁ Λοθρόνος] ποταμὸς ὃν Οὐολτοῦρνον [3] οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν. ἔστι δ’ ἡ χώρα τὰ μὲν ἄλλα περιστεφὴς ὄρεσιν, αὐλὼν δ’ ἀναπέπταται πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν, ἔνθα τὰ ἕλη καταδίδωσι τοῦ ποταμοῦ περιχεομένου καὶ θῖνας ἄμμου βαθείας ἔχει καὶ τελευτᾷ πρὸς αἰγιαλὸν [4] κυματώδη καὶ δύσορμον. ἐνταῦθα καταβαίνοντος τοῦ Ἀννίβου, περιελθὼν ἐμπειρίᾳ τῶν ὁδῶν ὁ Φάβιος, τὴν μὲν διέξοδον ὁπλίτας τετρακισχιλίους ἐπιστήσας ἐνέφραξε, τὸν δ’ ἄλλον στρατὸν ὑπὲρ τῶν [ἄλλων] ἄκρων ἐν καλῷ καθίσας, διὰ τῶν ἐλαφροτάτων καὶ προχειροτάτων ἐνέβαλε τοῖς ἐσχάτοις τῶν πολεμίων καὶ συνετάραξεν ἅπαν τὸ [5] στράτευμα, διέφθειρε δὲ περὶ ὀκτακοσίους. ἐκ τούτου βουλόμενος Ἀννίβας ἀπαγαγεῖν τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ τὴν διαμαρτίαν τοῦ τόπου νοήσας καὶ τὸν κίνδυνον, ἀνεσταύρωσε μὲν τοὺς ὁδηγούς, ἐκβιάζεσθαι δὲ τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ προσμάχεσθαι [6] τῶν ὑπερβολῶν ἐγκρατεῖς ὄντας ἀπεγίνωσκε. δυσθύμως δὲ καὶ περιφόβως διακειμένων ἁπάντων καὶ περιεστάναι σφᾶς πάντοθεν ἀφύκτους ἡγουμένων ἀπορίας, ἔγνω δολοῦν ἀπάτῃ τοὺς πολεμίους. ἦν δὲ τοιόνδε. βοῦς ὅσον δισχιλίας ἐκ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων ἐκέλευσε συλλαβόντας ἀναδῆσαι δᾷδα πρὸς ἕκαστον κέρας καὶ λύγων ἢ φρυγάνων αὔων φάκελον· εἶτα νυκτὸς ὅταν ἀρθῇ σημεῖον, ἀνάψαντας ἐλαύνειν ἐπὶ τὰς ὑπερβολὰς παρὰ τὰ στενὰ καὶ τὰς φυλακὰς [7] τῶν πολεμίων. ἅμα δὲ ταῦτα παρεσκεύαζον οἷς προσετέτακτο, καὶ τὸν ἄλλον αὐτὸς ἀναστήσας στρατὸν ἤδη σκότους ὄντος ἦγε σχολαίως. αἱ δὲ βόες ἄχρι μὲν τὸ πῦρ ὀλίγον ἦν καὶ περιέκαιε τὴν ὕλην, ἀτρέμα προσεχώρουν ἐλαυνόμεναι πρὸς τὴν ὑπώρειαν, καὶ θαῦμα τοῖς καθορῶσι νομεῦσιν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων καὶ βουκόλοις ἦσαν αἱ φλόγες, ἄκροις ἐπιλάμπουσαι τοῖς κέρασιν, ὡς στρατοπέδου καθ’ [8] ἕνα κόσμον ὑπὸ λαμπάδων πολλῶν βαδίζοντος. ἐπεὶ δὲ πυρούμενον τὸ κέρας ἄχρι ῥίζης διέδωκε τῇ σαρκὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν, καὶ πρὸς τὸν πόνον διαφέρουσαι καὶ τινάσσουσαι τὰς κεφαλὰς ἀνεπίμπλαντο πολλῆς ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων φλογός, οὐκ ἐνέμειναν τῇ τάξει τῆς πορείας, ἀλλ’ ἔκφοβοι καὶ περιαλγεῖς οὖσαι δρόμῳ κατὰ τῶν ὀρῶν ἐφέροντο, λαμπόμεναι μὲν οὐρὰς ἄκρας καὶ μέτωπα, πολλὴν δὲ τῆς ὕλης δι’ ἧς [9] ἔφευγον ἀνάπτουσαι. δεινὸν οὖν ἦν θέαμα τοῖς παραφυλάττουσι τὰς ὑπερβολὰς Ῥωμαίοις· καὶ γὰρ αἱ φλόγες ἐῴκεσαν ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων θεόντων διαφερομέναις λαμπάσι, καὶ θόρυβος ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς πολὺς καὶ φόβος, ἀλλαχόθεν ἄλλους ἐπιφέρεσθαι τῶν πολεμίων σφίσι καὶ κυκλοῦσθαι πανταχόθεν ἡγουμένων. διὸ μένειν οὐκ ἐτόλμων, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸ [10] μεῖζον ἀνεχώρουν στρατόπεδον, προέμενοι τὰ στενά. [καὶ] κατὰ τοῦτο δὲ καιροῦ προσμείξαντες οἱ ψιλοὶ τοῦ Ἀννίβου τὰς ὑπερβολὰς κατέσχον, ἡ δ’ ἄλλη δύναμις ἤδη προσέβαινεν ἀδεῶς, πολλὴν καὶ βαρεῖαν ἐφελκομένη λείαν.

[7] [1] Τῷ δὲ Φαβίῳ συνέβη μὲν ἔτι νυκτὸς αἰσθέσθαι τὸν δόλον - φεύγουσαι γὰρ ἔνιαι τῶν βοῶν σποράδες ἧκον αὐτῶν εἰς χεῖρας - , ἐνέδρας δὲ δεδιὼς σκοταίους, ἀτρέμα [2] τὴν δύναμιν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις εἶχεν. ὡς δ’ ἦν ἡμέρα, διώκων ἐξήπτετο τῶν ἐσχάτων, καὶ συμπλοκαὶ περὶ τὰς δυσχωρίας ἐγίνοντο καὶ θόρυβος ἦν πολύς, ἕως παρ’ Ἀννίβου τῶν ὀρειβατεῖν δεινῶν Ἰβήρων ἄνδρες ἐλαφροὶ καὶ ποδώκεις πεμφθέντες ἀπὸ τοῦ στόματος εἰς βαρεῖς ὁπλίτας τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἐνέβαλον, καὶ διαφθείραντες οὐκ ὀλίγους [3] ἀπέστρεψαν τὸν Φάβιον. τότε δὴ μάλιστα κακῶς ἀκοῦσαι καὶ καταφρονηθῆναι συνέβη τὸν Φάβιον. τῆς γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις τόλμης ὑφιέμενος ὡς γνώμῃ καὶ προνοίᾳ καταπολεμήσων τὸν Ἀννίβαν, αὐτὸς ἡττημένος τούτοις [4] καὶ κατεστρατηγημένος ἐφαίνετο. βουλόμενος δὲ μᾶλλον ἐκκαῦσαι τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν ὀργὴν τῶν Ῥωμαίων ὁ Ἀννίβας, ὡς ἦλθεν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀγροὺς αὐτοῦ, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα πάντα καίειν καὶ διαφθείρειν ἐκέλευσεν, ἐκείνων δ’ ἀπεῖπεν ἅπτεσθαι μόνων, καὶ παρακατέστησε φυλακὴν οὐδὲν ἐῶσαν [5] ἀδικεῖν οὐδὲ λαμβάνειν ἐκεῖθεν. ταῦτα προσδιέβαλε τὸν Φάβιον εἰς Ῥώμην ἀναγγελθέντα, καὶ πολλὰ μὲν αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὸν ὄχλον οἱ δήμαρχοι κατεβόων, ἐπάγοντος μάλιστα Μετιλίου καὶ παροξύνοντος, οὐ κατὰ τὴν πρὸς Φάβιον ἔχθραν, ἀλλ’ οἰκεῖος ὢν Μινουκίου τοῦ ἱππάρχου, τιμὴν ᾤετο καὶ δόξαν ἐκείνῳ φέρειν τὰς τούτου διαβολάς. ἐγεγόνει δὲ καὶ τῇ βουλῇ δι’ ὀργῆς οὐχ ἥκιστα μεμφομένῃ τὰς περὶ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων πρὸς Ἀννίβαν ὁμολογίας. ὡμολογήκεισαν γὰρ αὑτοῖς ἄνδρα μὲν ἀνδρὶ λύεσθαι τῶν ἁλισκομένων, εἰ δὲ πλείους οἱ ἕτεροι γένοιντο, διδόναι δραχμὰς ὑπὲρ ἑκάστου τὸν κομιζόμενον πεντήκοντα καὶ διακοσίας.

[6] ὡς οὖν γενομένης τῆς κατ’ ἄνδρα διαμείψεως ηὑρέθησαν ὑπόλοιποι Ῥωμαίων παρ’ Ἀννίβᾳ τεσσαράκοντα καὶ διακόσιοι, τούτων ἡ σύγκλητος ἔγνω τὰ λύτρα μὴ πέμπειν, καὶ προσῃτιᾶτο τὸν Φάβιον, ὡς οὐ πρεπόντως οὐδὲ λυσιτελῶς ἄνδρας ὑπὸ δειλίας πολεμίων ἄγραν γενομένους [7] ἀνακομιζόμενον. ταῦτ’ ἀκούσας ὁ Φάβιος τὴν μὲν ὀργὴν ἔφερε πρᾴως τῶν πολιτῶν, χρήματα δ’ οὐκ ἔχων, διαψεύσασθαι δὲ τὸν Ἀννίβαν καὶ προέσθαι τοὺς πολίτας οὐχ ὑπομένων, ἔπεμψε τὸν υἱὸν εἰς Ῥώμην, κελεύσας ἀποδόσθαι τοὺς ἀγροὺς καὶ τὸ ἀργύριον εὐθὺς ὡς αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὸ [8] στρατόπεδον κομίζειν. ἀποδομένου δὲ τοῦ νεανίσκου τὰ χωρία καὶ ταχέως ἐπανελθόντος, ἀπέπεμψε τὰ λύτρα τῷ Ἀννίβᾳ καὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους ἀπέλαβε· καὶ πολλῶν ἀποδιδόντων ὕστερον, παρ’ οὐδενὸς ἔλαβεν, ἀλλ’ ἀφῆκε πᾶσι.

[8] [1] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα τῶν ἱερέων καλούντων αὐτὸν εἰς Ῥώμην ἐπί τινας θυσίας, παρέδωκε τῷ Μινουκίῳ τὴν δύναμιν, ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ μάχεσθαι μηδὲ συμπλέκεσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις οὐ μόνον ὡς αὐτοκράτωρ διαγορεύσας, ἀλλὰ καὶ παραινέσεις καὶ δεήσεις πολλὰς αὐτοῦ ποιησάμενος.

[2] ὧν ἐκεῖνος ἐλάχιστα φροντίσας, εὐθὺς ἐνέκειτο τοῖς πολεμίοις, καί ποτε παραφυλάξας τὸν Ἀννίβαν τὸ πολὺ τῆς στρατιᾶς ἐπὶ σιτολογίας ἀφεικότα, καὶ προσβαλὼν τῷ ὑπολειπομένῳ, κατήραξεν εἰς τὸν χάρακα καὶ διέφθειρεν οὐκ ὀλίγους καὶ φόβον περιέστησε πᾶσιν ὡς πολιορκησομένοις [3] ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, καὶ συλλεγομένης αὖθις εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον τῷ Ἀννίβᾳ τῆς δυνάμεως, ἀσφαλῶς ἀνεχώρησεν, αὑτόν τε μεγαλαυχίας ἀμέτρου καὶ θράσους τὸ στρατιωτικὸν [4] ἐμπεπληκώς. ταχὺ δὲ τοῦ ἔργου λόγος μείζων διεφοίτησεν εἰς Ῥώμην, καὶ Φάβιος μὲν ἀκούσας ἔφη μᾶλλον τοῦ Μινουκίου φοβεῖσθαι τὴν εὐτυχίαν ‹ἢ τὴν ἀτυχίαν›, ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἦρτο καὶ μετὰ χαρᾶς εἰς ἀγορὰν συνέτρεχε, καὶ Μετίλιος ὁ δήμαρχος ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος καταστὰς ἐδημηγόρει μεγαλύνων τὸν Μινούκιον, τοῦ δὲ Φαβίου κατηγορῶν οὐ μαλακίαν οὐδ’ ἀνανδρίαν, ἀλλ’ ἤδη προδοσίαν, συναιτιώμενος ἅμα καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀνδρῶν τοὺς δυνατωτάτους καὶ πρώτους ἐπαγαγέσθαι τὸν πόλεμον ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπὶ καταλύσει τοῦ δήμου τήν τε πόλιν ἐμβαλεῖν εὐθὺς εἰς μοναρχίαν ἀνυπεύθυνον, ἣ διατρίβουσα τὰς πράξεις ἵδρυσιν Ἀννίβᾳ παρέξει καὶ χρόνον, αὖθις ἐκ Λιβύης ἑτέραν δύναμιν προσγενέσθαι ὡς κρατοῦντι τῆς Ἰταλίας.

[9] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Φάβιος προσελθὼν ἀπολογεῖσθαι μὲν οὐδ’ ἐμέλλησε πρὸς τὸν δήμαρχον, ἔφη δὲ τάχιστα τὰς θυσίας καὶ τὰς ἱερουργίας γενέσθαι †ὥστ’ ἐπὶ τὸ στράτευμα βαδιεῖσθαι τῷ Μινουκίῳ δίκην ἐπιθήσων, ὅτι κωλύσαντος αὐτοῦ τοῖς πολεμίοις συνέβαλε, θόρυβος διῇξε τοῦ δήμου πολὺς ὡς κινδυνεύσοντος τοῦ Μινουκίου. καὶ γὰρ εἷρξαι τῷ δικτάτορι καὶ θανατῶσαι πρὸ δίκης ἔξεστι, καὶ τοῦ Φαβίου τὸν θυμὸν ἐκ πολλῆς πρᾳότητος κεκινημένον ᾤοντο [2] βαρὺν εἶναι καὶ δυσπαραίτητον. ὅθεν οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι καταδείσαντες ἡσυχίαν ἦγον, ὁ δὲ Μετίλιος ἔχων τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς δημαρχίας ἄδειαν - μόνη γὰρ αὕτη δικτάτορος αἱρεθέντος ἡ ἀρχὴ τὸ κράτος οὐκ ἀπόλλυσιν, ἀλλὰ μένει τῶν ἄλλων καταλυθεισῶν - , ἐνέκειτο τῷ δήμῳ πολύς, μὴ προέσθαι δεόμενος τὸν Μινούκιον μηδ’ ἐᾶσαι παθεῖν ἃ Μάλλιος Τορκουᾶτος ἔδρασε τὸν υἱόν, ἀριστεύσαντος καὶ στεφανωθέντος ἀποκόψας πελέκει τὸν τράχηλον, ἀφελέσθαι δὲ τοῦ Φαβίου τὴν τυραννίδα καὶ τῷ δυναμένῳ καὶ βουλομένῳ [3] σῴζειν ἐπιτρέψαι τὰ πράγματα. τοιούτοις λόγοις κινηθέντες οἱ ἄνθρωποι τὸν μὲν Φάβιον οὐκ ἐτόλμησαν ἀναγκάσαι καταθέσθαι τὴν μοναρχίαν καίπερ ἀδοξοῦντα, τὸν δὲ Μινούκιον ἐψηφίσαντο τῆς στρατηγίας ὁμότιμον ὄντα διέπειν τὸν πόλεμον ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς ἐξουσίας τῷ δικτάτορι, πρᾶγμα μὴ πρότερον ἐν Ῥώμῃ γεγονός, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον αὖθις γενόμενον μετὰ τὴν ἐν Κάνναις ἀτυχίαν.

[4] καὶ γὰρ τότ’ ἐπὶ τῶν στρατοπέδων Μᾶρκος Ἰούνιος ἦν δικτάτωρ, καὶ κατὰ πόλιν τὸ βουλευτικὸν ἀναπληρῶσαι δεῆσαν, ἅτε δὴ πολλῶν ἐν τῇ μάχῃ συγκλητικῶν ἀπολωλότων, [5] ἕτερον εἵλοντο δικτάτορα Φάβιον Βουτεῶνα. πλὴν οὗτος μὲν ἐπεὶ προῆλθε καὶ κατέλεξε τοὺς ἄνδρας καὶ συνεπλήρωσε τὴν βουλήν, αὐθημερὸν ἀφεὶς τοὺς ῥαβδούχους καὶ διαφυγὼν τοὺς προάγοντας, εἰς τὸν ὄχλον ἐμβαλὼν καὶ καταμείξας ἑαυτὸν ἤδη τι τῶν ἑαυτοῦ διοικῶν καὶ πραγματευόμενος ὥσπερ ἰδιώτης ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἀνεστρέφετο.

[10] [1] Τὸν δὲ Μινούκιον ἐπὶ τὰς αὐτὰς τῷ δικτάτορι πράξεις ἀποδείξαντες, ᾤοντο κεκολοῦσθαι καὶ γεγονέναι ταπεινὸν παντάπασιν ἐκεῖνον, οὐκ ὀρθῶς στοχαζόμενοι τοῦ [2] ἀνδρός· οὐ γὰρ αὑτοῦ συμφορὰν ἡγεῖτο τὴν ἐκείνων ἄγνοιαν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ Διογένης ὁ σοφός, εἰπόντος τινὸς πρὸς αὐτόν οὗτοι σοῦ καταγελῶσιν ἀλλ’ ἐγώ εἶπεν οὐ καταγελῶμαι, μόνους ἡγούμενος καταγελᾶσθαι τοὺς ἐνδιδόντας καὶ πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα διαταραττομένους, οὕτω Φάβιος ἔφερεν ἀπαθῶς καὶ ῥᾳδίως ὅσον ἐπ’ αὐτῷ τὰ γινόμενα, συμβαλλόμενος ἀπόδειξιν τῶν φιλοσόφων τοῖς ἀξιοῦσι μήθ’ ὑβρίζεσθαι μήτ’ ἀτιμοῦσθαι τὸν ἀγαθὸν [3] ἄνδρα καὶ σπουδαῖον· ἠνία δ’ αὐτὸν ἡ τῶν πολλῶν ἀβουλία διὰ τὰ κοινά, δεδωκότων ἀφορμὰς ἀνδρὸς οὐχ ὑγιαινούσῃ [4] φιλοτιμίᾳ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, καὶ δεδοικὼς μὴ παντάπασιν ἐκμανεὶς ὑπὸ κενῆς δόξης καὶ ὄγκου φθάσῃ τι [5] κακὸν ἀπεργασάμενος, λαθὼν ἅπαντας ἐξῆλθε, καὶ παραγενόμενος εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ καταλαβὼν τὸν Μινούκιον οὐκέτι καθεκτόν, ἀλλὰ βαρὺν καὶ τετυφωμένον καὶ παρὰ μέρος ἄρχειν ἀξιοῦντα, τοῦτο μὲν οὐ συνεχώρησε, τὴν δὲ δύναμιν διενείματο πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς μέρους μόνος [6] ἄρξων βέλτιον [τι ὂν] ἢ πάντων παρὰ μέρος. καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον τῶν ταγμάτων καὶ τέταρτον αὐτὸς ἔλαβε, τὸ δὲ δεύτερον καὶ τρίτον ἐκείνῳ παρέδωκεν, ἐπ’ ἴσης καὶ τῶν [7] συμμαχικῶν διανεμηθέντων. σεμνυνομένου δὲ τοῦ Μινουκίου καὶ χαίροντος ἐπὶ τῷ τὸ πρόσχημα τῆς ἀκροτάτης καὶ μεγίστης ἀρχῆς ὑφεῖσθαι καὶ προπεπηλακίσθαι δι’ αὐτόν, ὑπεμίμνῃσκεν ὁ Φάβιος, ὡς οὐκ ὄντος μὲν αὐτῷ πρὸς Φάβιον, ἀλλ’ εἰ σωφρονεῖ πρὸς Ἀννίβαν τοῦ ἀγῶνος· εἰ δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὸν συνάρχοντα φιλονικεῖ, σκοπεῖν ὅπως τοῦ νενικημένου καὶ καθυβρισμένου παρὰ τοῖς πολίταις ὁ τετιμημένος καὶ νενικηκὼς οὐ φανεῖται μᾶλλον ὀλιγωρῶν τῆς σωτηρίας αὐτῶν καὶ τῆς ἀσφαλείας.

[11] [1] Ὁ δὲ ταῦτα μὲν εἰρωνείαν ἡγεῖτο γεροντικήν· παραλαβὼν δὲ τὴν ἀποκληρωθεῖσαν δύναμιν, ἰδίᾳ καὶ χωρὶς ἐστρατοπέδευσεν, οὐδὲν ἀγνοοῦντος τοῦ Ἀννίβου τῶν γινομένων, ἀλλὰ πᾶσιν ἐφεδρεύοντος. ἦν δὲ λόφος κατὰ μέσον, καταληφθῆναι μὲν οὐ χαλεπός, ὀχυρὸς δὲ καταληφθεὶς [2] στρατοπέδῳ καὶ διαρκὴς εἰς ἅπαντα, τὸ δὲ πέριξ πεδίον ὀφθῆναι μὲν ἄπωθεν ὁμαλὸν διὰ ψιλότητα καὶ λεῖον, ἔχον δέ τινας οὐ μεγάλας τάφρους ἐν αὑτῷ καὶ κοιλότητας ἄλλας. διὸ καὶ τὸν λόφον ἐκ τοῦ ῥᾴστου κρύφα κατασχεῖν παρόν, οὐκ ἠθέλησεν ὁ Ἀννίβας, ἀλλ’ ἀπέλιπε [3] μάχης ἐν μέσῳ πρόφασιν. ὡς δ’ εἶδε κεχωρισμένον τοῦ Φαβίου τὸν Μινούκιον, νυκτὸς μὲν εἰς τὰς τάφρους καὶ τὰς κοιλότητας κατέσπειρε τῶν στρατιωτῶν τινας, ἅμα δὲ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ φανερῶς ἔπεμψεν οὐ πολλοὺς καταληψομένους τὸν λόφον, ὡς ἐπάγοιτο συμπεσεῖν περὶ τοῦ τόπου τὸν [4] Μινούκιον. ὃ δὴ καὶ συνέβη. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἀπέστειλε τὴν κούφην στρατιάν, ἔπειτα τοὺς ἱππεῖς, τέλος δ’ ὁρῶν τὸν Ἀννίβαν παραβοηθοῦντα τοῖς ἐπὶ τοῦ λόφου, πάσῃ κατέβαινε [5] τῇ δυνάμει συντεταγμένος, καὶ μάχην καρτερὰν θέμενος ἠμύνετο τοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ λόφου βάλλοντας, συμπλεκόμενος καὶ ἴσα φερόμενος, ἄχρι οὗ καλῶς ἠπατημένον ὁρῶν ὁ Ἀννίβας καὶ γυμνὰ παρέχοντα τοῖς ἐνεδρεύουσι τὰ [6] νῶτα, τὸ σημεῖον αἴρει. πρὸς δὲ τοῦτο πολλαχόθεν ἐξανισταμένων ἅμα καὶ μετὰ κραυγῆς προσφερομένων καὶ τοὺς ἐσχάτους ἀποκτιννύντων, ἀδιήγητος κατεῖχε ταραχὴ καὶ πτοία τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, αὐτοῦ τε τοῦ Μινουκίου τὸ θράσος κατεκέκλαστο, καὶ πρὸς ἄλλον ἄλλοτε τῶν ἡγεμόνων διεπάπταινεν, οὐδενὸς ἐν χώρᾳ μένειν τολμῶντος, ἀλλὰ πρὸς [7] φυγὴν ὠθουμένων οὐ σωτήριον. οἱ γὰρ Νομάδες ἤδη κρατοῦντες κύκλῳ περιήλαυνον τὸ πεδίον καὶ τοὺς ἀποσκιδναμένους ἔκτεινον.

[12] [1] Ἐν τοσούτῳ δὲ κακῷ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ὄντων, οὐκ ἔλαθεν ὁ κίνδυνος τὸν Φάβιον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ μέλλον ὡς ἔοικεν ἤδη προειληφώς, τήν τε δύναμιν συντεταγμένην εἶχεν ἐπὶ τῶν ὅπλων, καὶ τὰ πραττόμενα γινώσκειν ἐφρόντιζεν, οὐ δι’ ἀγγέλων, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ἔχων κατασκοπὴν πρὸ τοῦ [2] χάρακος. ὡς οὖν κατεῖδε κυκλούμενον καὶ ταραττόμενον τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ κραυγὴ προσέπιπτεν οὐ μενόντων, ἀλλ’ ἤδη πεφοβημένων καὶ τρεπομένων, μηρόν τε πληξάμενος καὶ στενάξας μέγα, πρὸς μὲν τοὺς παρόντας εἶπεν· ὦ Ἡράκλεις, ὡς τάχιον μὲν ἢ ἐγὼ προσεδόκων, βράδιον δ’ [3] ἢ αὐτὸς ἔσπευδε Μινούκιος ἑαυτὸν ἀπολώλεκε, τὰς δὲ σημαίας ἐκφέρειν κατὰ τάχος καὶ τὸν στρατὸν ἕπεσθαι κελεύσας ἀνεβόησε· νῦν τις ὦ στρατιῶται Μάρκου Μινουκίου μεμνημένος ἐπειγέσθω· λαμπρὸς γὰρ ἁνὴρ καὶ φιλόπατρις. εἰ δέ τι σπεύδων ἐξελάσαι τοὺς πολεμίους ἥμαρτεν, [4] αὖθις αἰτιασόμεθα. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἐπιφανεὶς τρέπεται καὶ διασκίδνησι τοὺς ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ περιελαύνοντας Νομάδας, εἶτα πρὸς τοὺς μαχομένους καὶ κατὰ νώτου τῶν Ῥωμαίων ὄντας ἐχώρει καὶ τοὺς ἐμποδὼν ἔκτεινεν, οἱ δὲ λοιποί, πρὶν ἀποληφθῆναι καὶ γενέσθαι περιπετεῖς οἷς [5] αὐτοὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἐποίησαν, ἐγκλίναντες ἔφυγον. ὁρῶν δ’ ὁ Ἀννίβας τὴν μεταβολὴν καὶ τὸν Φάβιον εὐρώστως παρ’ ἡλικίαν διὰ τῶν μαχομένων ὠθούμενον ἄνω πρὸς τὸν Μινούκιον εἰς τὸν λόφον, ἐπέσχε τὴν μάχην, καὶ τῇ σάλπιγγι σημήνας ἀνάκλησιν, ἀπῆγεν εἰς τὸν χάρακα τοὺς Καρχηδονίους, ἀσμένως καὶ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἀναστρεφομένων.

[6] λέγεται δ’ αὐτὸν ἀπιόντα περὶ τοῦ Φαβίου πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἰπεῖν τι τοιοῦτον μετὰ παιδιᾶς· οὐκ ἐγὼ μέντοι προὔλεγον ὑμῖν πολλάκις τὴν ἐπὶ τῶν ἄκρων ταύτην καθημένην νεφέλην ὅτι μετὰ χαλάζης ποτὲ καὶ καταιγίδων ὄμβρον ἐκρήξει;

[13] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην Φάβιος μὲν ὅσους ἔκτεινε τῶν πολεμίων σκυλεύσας ἀνεχώρησεν, οὐδὲν ὑπερήφανον οὐδ’ ἐπαχθὲς εἰπὼν περὶ τοῦ συνάρχοντος· Μινούκιος δὲ τὴν [2] αὑτοῦ στρατιὰν ἀθροίσας, ἄνδρες ἔφη συστρατιῶται, τὸ μὲν ἁμαρτεῖν μηδὲν ἐν πράγμασι μεγάλοις μεῖζον ἢ κατ’ ἄνθρωπόν ἐστι, τὸ δ’ ἁμαρτόντα χρήσασθαι τοῖς πταίσμασι διδάγμασι πρὸς τὸ λοιπὸν ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ καὶ νοῦν [3] ἔχοντος. ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν ὁμολογῶ μικρὰ μεμφόμενος τὴν τύχην ‹ἔχειν› περὶ μειζόνων ἐπαινεῖν. ἃ γὰρ οὐκ ᾐσθόμην χρόνον τοσοῦτον, ἡμέρας μέρει μικρῷ πεπαίδευμαι, γνοὺς ἐμαυτὸν οὐκ ἄρχειν ἑτέρων δυνάμενον, ἀλλ’ ἄρχοντος ἑτέρου δεόμενον, [καὶ] μὴ φιλοτιμούμενον νικᾶν ὑφ’ ὧν [4] ἡττᾶσθαι κάλλιον. ὑμῖν δὲ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ἐστὶν ἄρχων ὁ δικτάτωρ, τῆς δὲ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον εὐχαριστίας αὐτὸς ἡγεμὼν ἔσομαι, πρῶτον ἐμαυτὸν εὐπειθῆ καὶ ποιοῦντα τὸ κελευόμενον [5] ὑπ’ ἐκείνου παρεχόμενος. ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν καὶ τοὺς ἀετοὺς ἄρασθαι κελεύσας καὶ πάντας ἀκολουθεῖν, ἦγε πρὸς τὸν χάρακα τοῦ Φαβίου, καὶ παρελθὼν ἐντὸς ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ τὴν στρατηγικὴν σκηνήν, ὥστε θαυμάζειν [6] καὶ διαπορεῖν πάντας. προελθόντος δὲ τοῦ Φαβίου, θέμενος ἔμπροσθεν τὰς σημαίας, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐκεῖνον πατέρα μεγάλῃ φωνῇ, οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται τοὺς στρατιώτας πάτρωνας ἠσπάζοντο· τοῦτο δ’ ἔστι τοῖς ἀπελευθέροις προσφώνημα [7] πρὸς τοὺς ἀπελευθερώσαντας. ἡσυχίας δὲ γενομένης ὁ Μινούκιος εἶπε· δύο νίκας ὦ δίκτατορ τῇ σήμερον ἡμέρᾳ νενίκηκας, ἀνδρείᾳ μὲν Ἀννίβαν, εὐβουλίᾳ δὲ καὶ χρηστότητι τὸν συνάρχοντα, καὶ δι’ ἧς μὲν σέσωκας ἡμᾶς, δι’ ἧς δὲ πεπαίδευκας, ἡττωμένους αἰσχρὰν μὲν [8] ἧτταν ὑπ’ ἐκείνου, καλὴν δὲ καὶ σωτήριον ὑπὸ σοῦ. πατέρα δή σε χρηστὸν προσαγορεύω, τιμιωτέραν οὐκ ἔχων προσηγορίαν, ἐπεὶ τῆς γε τοῦ τεκόντος χάριτος μείζων ἡ παρὰ σοῦ χάρις αὕτη· ἐγεννήθην μὲν γὰρ ὑπ’ ἐκείνου [9] μόνος, σῴζομαι δ’ ὑπὸ σοῦ μετὰ τοσούτων. ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν καὶ περιβαλὼν τὸν Φάβιον ἠσπάζετο, τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἦν ὁρᾶν πράττοντας· ἐνεφύοντο γὰρ ἀλλήλοις καὶ κατεφίλουν, ὥστε μεστὸν εἶναι χαρᾶς καὶ δακρύων ἡδίστων τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[14] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Φάβιος μὲν ἀπέθετο τὴν ἀρχήν, ὕπατοι δ’ αὖθις ἀπεδείκνυντο. καὶ τούτων οἱ μὲν πρῶτοι διεφύλαξαν ἣν ἐκεῖνος ἰδέαν τοῦ πολέμου κατέστησε, μάχεσθαι μὲν ἐκ παρατάξεως φεύγοντες πρὸς Ἀννίβαν, τοῖς δὲ συμμάχοις ἐπιβοηθοῦντες καὶ τὰς ἀποστάσεις κωλύοντες· [2] Τερέντιος δὲ Βάρρων εἰς τὴν ὑπατείαν προαχθεὶς ἀπὸ γένους ἀσήμου, βίου δὲ διὰ δημοκοπίαν καὶ προπέτειαν ἐπισήμου, δῆλος ἦν εὐθὺς ἀπειρίᾳ καὶ θρασύτητι τὸν περὶ τῶν ὅλων ἀναρρίψων κύβον. ἐβόα γὰρ ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις μενεῖν τὸν πόλεμον, ἄχρι οὗ Φαβίοις χρῆται στρατηγοῖς ἡ πόλις, αὐτὸς δὲ τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρας ὄψεσθαί τε καὶ νικήσειν [3] τοὺς πολεμίους. ἅμα δὲ τούτοις τοῖς λόγοις συνῆγε καὶ κατέγραφε δύναμιν τηλικαύτην, ἡλίκῃ πρὸς οὐδένα πώποτε τῶν πολέμων ἐχρήσαντο Ῥωμαῖοι· μυριάδες γὰρ ἐννέα δισχιλίων ἀνδρῶν δέουσαι συνετάχθησαν εἰς τὴν μάχην, μέγα δέος Φαβίῳ καὶ τοῖς νοῦν ἔχουσι Ῥωμαίων· οὐ γὰρ ἤλπιζον ἕξειν ἀναφορὰν τὴν πόλιν ἐν τοσαύτῃ σφαλεῖσαν [4] ἡλικίᾳ. διὸ καὶ τὸν συνάρχοντα τοῦ Τερεντίου Παῦλον Αἰμίλιον, ἄνδρα πολέμων ἔμπειρον, οὐκ ἀρεστὸν δὲ τῷ δήμῳ καὶ καταπλῆγα ‹τῶν› πολλῶν ἔκ τινος καταδίκης πρὸς τὸ δημόσιον αὐτῷ γεγενημένης, ἀνίστη καὶ παρεθάρρυνεν [5] ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι τῆς ἐκείνου μανίας, διδάσκων ὡς οὐ πρὸς Ἀννίβαν αὐτῷ μᾶλλον ἢ πρὸς Τερέντιον ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ὁ ἀγὼν ἔσοιτο· σπεύδειν γὰρ μάχην γενέσθαι τὸν μὲν οὐκ αἰσθανόμενον τῆς ‹αὑτοῦ› δυνάμεως, τὸν [6] δ’ αἰσθανόμενον τῆς περὶ αὑτὸν ἀσθενείας. ἐγὼ δέ εἶπεν ὦ Παῦλε Τερεντίου πιστεύεσθαι δικαιότερός εἰμι περὶ τῶν Ἀννίβου πραγμάτων διαβεβαιούμενος, ὡς εἰ μηδεὶς αὐτῷ μαχεῖται τοῦτον τὸν ἐνιαυτόν, ἀπολεῖται μένων ὁ ἀνὴρ ἢ φεύγων ἄπεισιν, ᾧ γε καὶ νῦν νικᾶν καὶ κρατεῖν δοκοῦντι τῶν μὲν πολεμίων οὐδεὶς προσκεχώρηκε, τῆς δ’ οἴκοθεν δυνάμεως οὐδ’ ἡ τρίτη μοῖρα πάνυ περίεστι.

[7] πρὸς ταῦτα λέγεται τὸν Παῦλον εἰπεῖν· ἐμοὶ μὲν ὦ Φάβιε τὰ ἐμαυτοῦ σκοποῦντι κρεῖττόν ἐστι τοῖς τῶν πολεμίων ὑποπεσεῖν δόρασιν ἢ πάλιν ταῖς ψήφοις τῶν πολιτῶν· εἰ δ’ οὕτως ἔχει τὰ δημόσια πράγματα, πειράσομαι μᾶλλον σοὶ δοκεῖν ἀγαθὸς εἶναι στρατηγὸς ἢ πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐπὶ τἀναντία βιαζομένοις. ταύτην ἔχων τὴν προαίρεσιν ὁ Παῦλος ἐξῆλθεν ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον.

[15] [1] Ἀλλ’ ὁ Τερέντιος ἐμβαλὼν αὑτὸν εἰς τὸ παρ’ ἡμέραν ἄρχειν, καὶ τῷ Ἀννίβᾳ παραστρατοπεδεύσας περὶ τὸν Αὐφίδιον ποταμὸν καὶ τὰς λεγομένας Κάννας, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὸ τῆς μάχης σημεῖον ἐξέθηκεν - ἔστι δὲ χιτὼν κόκκινος ὑπὲρ τῆς στρατηγικῆς σκηνῆς διατεινόμενος - , ὥστε καὶ τοὺς Καρχηδονίους ἐξ ἀρχῆς διαταραχθῆναι, τήν τε τόλμαν τοῦ στρατηγοῦ καὶ τὸ τοῦ στρατοπέδου πλῆθος ὁρῶντας, [2] αὐτοὺς οὐδ’ ἥμισυ μέρος ὄντας. Ἀννίβας δὲ τὴν δύναμιν ἐξοπλίζεσθαι κελεύσας, αὐτὸς ἱππότης μετ’ ὀλίγων ὑπὲρ λόφου τινὸς μαλακοῦ κατεσκόπει τοὺς πολεμίους, ἤδη καθισταμένους εἰς τάξιν. εἰπόντος δέ τινος τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἀνδρὸς ἰσοτίμου τοὔνομα Γίσκωνος, ὡς θαυμαστὸν αὐτῷ φαίνεται τὸ πλῆθος τῶν πολεμίων, συναγαγὼν τὸ πρόσωπον ὁ Ἀννίβας ἕτερον εἶπεν ὦ Γίσκων λέληθέ [3] σε τούτου θαυμασιώτερον. ἐρομένου δὲ τοῦ Γίσκωνος τὸ ποῖον, ὅτι ἔφη τούτων ὄντων τοσούτων οὐδεὶς ἐν αὐτοῖς Γίσκων καλεῖται. γενομένου δὲ παρὰ δόξαν αὐτοῖς τοῦ σκώμματος ἐμπίπτει γέλως πᾶσι, καὶ κατέβαινον ἀπὸ τοῦ λόφου τοῖς ἀπαντῶσιν ἀεὶ τὸ πεπαιγμένον ἀπαγγέλλοντες, ὥστε διὰ πολλῶν πολὺν εἶναι τὸν γέλωτα καὶ μηδ’ ἀναλαβεῖν ἑαυτοὺς δύνασθαι τοὺς περὶ τὸν Ἀννίβαν. [4] τοῦτο τοῖς Καρχηδονίοις ἰδοῦσι θάρσος παρέστη, λογιζομένοις ἀπὸ πολλοῦ καὶ ἰσχυροῦ τοῦ καταφρονοῦντος ἐπιέναι γελᾶν οὕτω καὶ παίζειν τῷ στρατηγῷ παρὰ τὸν κίνδυνον.

[16] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῇ μάχῃ στρατηγήμασιν ἐχρήσατο, πρώτῳ μὲν τῷ ἀπὸ τοῦ τόπου, ποιησάμενος κατὰ νώτου τὸν ἄνεμον· πρηστῆρι γὰρ ἐοικὼς φλέγοντι κατερρήγνυτο, καὶ τραχὺν ἐκ πεδίων ὑφάμμων καὶ ἀναπεπταμένων αἴρων κονιορτὸν ὑπὲρ τὴν φάλαγγα τῶν Καρχηδονίων εἰς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἐώθει καὶ προσέβαλλε τοῖς προσώποις ἀποστρεφομένων [2] καὶ συνταραττομένων· δευτέρῳ δὲ τῷ περὶ τὴν τάξιν· ὃ γὰρ ἦν ἰσχυρότατον αὐτῷ καὶ μαχιμώτατον τῆς δυνάμεως ἑκατέρωσε τοῦ μέσου τάξας, τὸ μέσον αὐτὸ συνεπλήρωσεν ἐκ τῶν ἀχρειοτάτων, ἐμβόλῳ τούτῳ πολὺ προέχοντι τῆς ἄλλης φάλαγγος χρησάμενος· εἴρητο δὲ τοῖς κρατίστοις, ὅταν τούτους διακόψαντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ φερόμενοι πρὸς τὸ εἶκον ἐκβιαζομένου τοῦ μέσου καὶ κόλπον λαμβάνοντος ἐντὸς γένωνται τῆς φάλαγγος, ὀξέως ἑκατέρωθεν ἐπιστρέψαντας ἐμβαλεῖν τε πλαγίοις καὶ περιπτύσσειν [3] ὄπισθεν συγκλείοντας. ὃ δὴ καὶ δοκεῖ τὸν πλεῖστον ἀπεργάσασθαι φόνον. ὡς γὰρ ἐνέδωκε τὸ μέσον καὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἐδέξαντο διώκοντας, ἡ δὲ φάλαγξ τοῦ Ἀννίβου μεταβαλοῦσα τὸ σχῆμα μηνοειδὴς ἐγεγόνει, καὶ τῶν ἐπιλέκτων οἱ ταξίαρχοι ταχὺ τοὺς μὲν ἐπ’ ἀσπίδα, τοὺς δ’ ἐπὶ δόρυ κλίναντες προσέπεσον κατὰ τὰ γυμνά, πάντας, ὅσοι μὴ τὴν κύκλωσιν ὑπεκκλίναντες ἔφθασαν, ἐν [4] μέσῳ κατειργάσαντο καὶ διέφθειραν. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἱππεῦσι τῶν Ῥωμαίων σύμπτωμα παράλογον γενέσθαι. τὸν γὰρ Παῦλον ὡς ἔοικε τρωθεὶς ὁ ἵππος ἀπεσείσατο, καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἄλλος καὶ ἄλλος ἀπολιπὼν τὸν ἵππον [5] πεζὸς τῷ ὑπάτῳ προσήμυνε. τοῦτο δ’ οἱ ἱππεῖς ἰδόντες, ὡς παραγγέλματος κοινοῦ δεδομένου, πάντες ἀποπηδήσαντες πεζοὶ συνεπλέκοντο τοῖς πολεμίοις. ἰδὼν δ’ ὁ Ἀννίβας τοῦτο ἔφη μᾶλλον ἠβουλόμην ἢ εἰ δεδεμένους [6] παρέλαβον. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν οἱ τὰς διεξοδικὰς γράψαντες ἱστορίας ἀπηγγέλκασι. τῶν δ’ ὑπάτων ὁ μὲν Βάρρων ὀλιγοστὸς ἀφίππευσεν εἰς Οὐενουσίαν πόλιν, ὁ δὲ Παῦλος ἐν τῷ βυθῷ καὶ κλύδωνι τῆς φυγῆς ἐκείνης, βελῶν τε πολλῶν [ἐπὶ] τοῖς τραύμασιν ἐγκειμένων ἀνάπλεως τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν πένθει τοσούτῳ βαρυνόμενος, πρός τινι λίθῳ καθῆστο, τὸν ἐπισφάξοντα τῶν πολεμίων ἀναμένων.

[7] ἦν δὲ δι’ αἵματος πλῆθος, ᾧ συνεπέφυρτο τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον, οὐ πολλοῖς διάδηλος, ἀλλὰ καὶ φίλοι καὶ θεράποντες αὐτὸν ὑπ’ ἀγνοίας παρῆλθον. μόνος δὲ Κορνήλιος Λέντλος εὐπατρίδης νέος ἰδὼν καὶ προνοήσας ἀπεπήδησε τοῦ ἵππου, καὶ προσαγαγὼν παρεκάλει χρῆσθαι καὶ σῴζειν αὑτὸν τοῖς πολίταις, ἄρχοντος ἀγαθοῦ τότε [8] μάλιστα χρῄζουσιν. ὁ δὲ ταύτην μὲν ἀπετρίψατο τὴν δέησιν, καὶ τὸ μειράκιον αὖθις ἠνάγκασεν ἐπὶ τὸν ἵππον ἀναβῆναι δακρῦον, εἶτα δὲ τὴν δεξιὰν ἐμβαλὼν καὶ συνεξαναστάς ἀπάγγελλε εἶπεν ὦ Λέντλε Φαβίῳ Μαξίμῳ καὶ γενοῦ μάρτυς αὐτός, ὅτι Παῦλος Αἰμίλιος ἐνέμεινεν αὑτοῦ τοῖς λογισμοῖς ἄχρι τέλους, καὶ τῶν ὁμολογηθέντων πρὸς ἐκεῖνον οὐδὲν ἔλυσεν, ἀλλ’ ἐνικήθη πρότερον ὑπὸ Βάρρωνος, [9] εἶθ’ ὑπ’ Ἀννίβου. τοσαῦτ’ ἐπιστείλας τὸν μὲν Λέντλον ἀπέπεμψεν, αὐτὸς δὲ ῥίψας ἑαυτὸν εἰς τοὺς φονευομένους ἀπέθανε. λέγονται δὲ πεσεῖν μὲν ἐν τῇ μάχῃ Ῥωμαίων πεντακισμύριοι, ζῶντες δ’ ἁλῶναι τετρακισχίλιοι, καὶ μετὰ τὴν μάχην οἱ ληφθέντες ἐπ’ ἀμφοτέροις τοῖς στρατοπέδοις μυρίων οὐκ ἐλάττους.

[17] [1] Τὸν δ’ Ἀννίβαν ἐπὶ τηλικούτῳ κατορθώματι τῶν φίλων παρορμώντων ἅμ’ ἕπεσθαι τῇ τύχῃ καὶ συνεπεισπεσεῖν ἅμα τῇ φυγῇ τῶν πολεμίων εἰς τὴν πόλιν, πεμπταῖον γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς νίκης ἐν Καπιτωλίῳ δειπνήσειν, οὐ ῥᾴδιον εἰπεῖν ὅστις ἀπέτρεψε λογισμός, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον δαίμονος ἢ θεοῦ τινος ἐμποδὼν στάντος ἔοικεν ἔργον ἡ πρὸς [2] τοῦτο μέλλησις αὐτοῦ καὶ δειλίασις γενέσθαι. διὸ καὶ Βάρκαν τὸν Καρχηδόνιον εἰπεῖν μετ’ ὀργῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν λέγουσι· σὺ νικᾶν οἶδας, νίκῃ δὲ χρῆσθαι οὐκ οἶδας.

[3] καίτοι τοσαύτην μεταβολὴν ἡ νίκη περὶ αὐτὸν ἐποίησεν, ὡς πρὸ τῆς μάχης οὐ πόλιν, οὐκ ἐμπόριον, οὐ λιμένα τῆς Ἰταλίας ἔχοντα, χαλεπῶς δὲ καὶ μόλις τὰ ἐπιτήδεια τῇ στρατιᾷ δι’ ἁρπαγῆς κομιζόμενον, ὁρμώμενον ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς βεβαίου πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ λῃστηρίῳ μεγάλῳ τῷ στρατοπέδῳ πλανώμενον καὶ περιφερόμενον, τότε [4] πᾶσαν ὀλίγου δεῖν ὑφ’ αὑτῷ ποιήσασθαι τὴν Ἰταλίαν. τὰ γὰρ πλεῖστα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν ἐθνῶν αὐτῷ προσεχώρησεν ἑκούσια, καὶ Καπύην, ἣ μέγιστον ἔχει μετὰ Ῥώμην ἀξίωμα τῶν πόλεων, προσθεμένην κατέσχεν. οὐ μόνον δ’ ἦν ἄρα τὸ φίλων πεῖραν λαβεῖν, ὡς Εὐριπίδης (fr. 993 N²) φησίν, [5] οὐ σμικρὸν κακόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ φρονίμων στρατηγῶν. ἡ γὰρ πρὸ τῆς μάχης Φαβίου δειλία καὶ ψυχρότης λεγομένη μετὰ τὴν μάχην εὐθὺς οὐδ’ ἀνθρώπινος ἐδόκει λογισμός, ἀλλὰ θεῖόν τι χρῆμα διανοίας καὶ δαιμόνιον, ἐκ τοσούτου τὰ μέλλοντα προορωμένης, ἃ μόλις ἦν πιστὰ πάσχουσιν.

[6] ὅθεν εὐθὺς εἰς ἐκεῖνον ἡ Ῥώμη συνενεγκοῦσα τὰς λοιπὰς ἐλπίδας, καὶ προσφυγοῦσα τῇ γνώμῃ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὥσπερ ἱερῷ καὶ βωμῷ, πρώτην καὶ μεγίστην αἰτίαν ἔσχε τοῦ μεῖναι καὶ μὴ διαλυθῆναι τὴν ἐκείνου φρόνησιν, καθάπερ [7] ἐν τοῖς Κελτικοῖς πάθεσιν. ὁ γὰρ ἐν οἷς οὐδὲν ἐδόκει δεινὸν εἶναι καιροῖς εὐλαβὴς φαινόμενος καὶ δυσέλπιστος, τότε πάντων καταβεβληκότων ἑαυτοὺς εἰς ἀπέραντα πένθη καὶ ταραχὰς ἀπράκτους, μόνος ἐφοίτα διὰ τῆς πόλεως πρᾴῳ βαδίσματι καὶ προσώπῳ καθεστῶτι καὶ φιλανθρώπῳ προσαγορεύσει, κοπετούς τε γυναικείους ἀφαιρῶν καὶ συστάσεις εἴργων τῶν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον ἐπὶ κοινοῖς ὀδυρμοῖς προσφερομένων, βουλήν τε συνελθεῖν ἔπεισε καὶ παρεθάρσυνε τὰς ἀρχάς, αὐτὸς ὢν καὶ ῥώμη καὶ δύναμις ἀρχῆς ἁπάσης πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἀποβλεπούσης.

[18] [1] Ταῖς μὲν οὖν πύλαις ἐπέστησε τοὺς τὸν ἐκπίπτοντα καὶ προλείποντα τὴν πόλιν ὄχλον ἀπείρξοντας, πένθους δὲ καὶ τόπον καὶ χρόνον ὥρισε, κατ’ οἰκίαν ἀποθρηνεῖν κελεύσας ἐφ’ ἡμέρας τριάκοντα τὸν βουλόμενον· μετὰ δὲ ταύτας ἔδει πᾶν πένθος λύεσθαι καὶ καθαρεύειν τῶν [2] τοιούτων τὴν πόλιν· ἑορτῆς τε Δήμητρος εἰς τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας καθηκούσης, βέλτιον ἐφάνη παραλιπεῖν ὅλως τάς τε θυσίας καὶ τὴν πομπήν, ἢ τὸ μέγεθος τῆς συμφορᾶς ὀλιγότητι καὶ κατηφείᾳ τῶν συνερχομένων ἐλέγχεσθαι· καὶ γὰρ τὸ θεῖον ἥδεσθαι τιμώμενον ὑπὸ τῶν εὐτυχούντων.

[3] ὅσα μέντοι πρὸς ἱλασμοὺς θεῶν ἢ τεράτων ἀποτροπὰς συνηγόρευον οἱ μάντεις, ἐπράττετο. καὶ γὰρ εἰς Δελφοὺς ἐπέμφθη θεοπρόπος Πίκτωρ συγγενὴς Φαβίου, καὶ τῶν Ἑστιάδων παρθένων δύο διεφθαρμένας εὑρόντες, τὴν μὲν ὥσπερ ἐστὶν ἔθος ζῶσαν κατώρυξαν, ἡ δ’ ὑφ’ ἑαυτῆς [4] ἀπέθανε. μάλιστα δ’ ἄν τις ἠγάσατο τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὴν πρᾳότητα τῆς πόλεως, ὅτε τοῦ ὑπάτου Βάρρωνος ἀπὸ τῆς φυγῆς ἐπανιόντος, ὡς ἄν τις αἴσχιστα καὶ δυσποτμότατα πεπραχὼς ἐπανίοι, ταπεινοῦ καὶ κατηφοῦς, ἀπήντησεν αὐτῷ περὶ τὰς πύλας ἥ τε βουλὴ καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ἅπαν ἀσπαζόμενον.

[5] οἱ δ’ ἐν τέλει καὶ πρῶτοι τῆς γερουσίας, ὧν καὶ Φάβιος ἦν, ἡσυχίας γενομένης ἐπῄνεσαν, ὅτι τὴν πόλιν οὐκ ἀπέγνω μετὰ δυστυχίαν τηλικαύτην, ἀλλὰ πάρεστιν ἄρξων ἐπὶ τὰ πράγματα καὶ χρησόμενος τοῖς νόμοις καὶ τοῖς πολίταις ὡς σῴζεσθαι δυναμένοις.

[19] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀννίβαν ἐπύθοντο μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἀποτετράφθαι πρὸς τὴν ἄλλην Ἰταλίαν, ἀναθαρρήσαντες ἐξέπεμπον ἡγεμόνας καὶ στρατεύματα. τούτων δ’ ἐπιφανέστατοι Φάβιός τε Μάξιμος καὶ Κλαύδιος Μάρκελλος ἦσαν, ἀπὸ τῆς ἐναντίας σχεδὸν προαιρέσεως θαυμαζόμενοι [2] παραπλησίως. ὁ μὲν γάρ, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς περὶ αὐτοῦ γεγραμμένοις εἴρηται (cap. 9), περιλαμπὲς τὸ δραστήριον ἔχων καὶ γαῦρον, ἅτε δὴ καὶ κατὰ χεῖρα πλήκτης ἀνὴρ καὶ φύσει τοιοῦτος ὢν οἵους Ὅμηρος μάλιστα καλεῖ φιλοπολέμους καὶ ἀγερώχους, ἐν τῷ παραβόλῳ καὶ ἰταμῷ καὶ πρὸς ἄνδρα τολμηρὸν τὸν Ἀννίβαν ἀντιτολμῶντι [τῷ] τρόπῳ [3] πολέμου συνίστατο τοὺς πρώτους ἀγῶνας· Φάβιος δὲ τῶν πρώτων ἐχόμενος λογισμῶν ἐκείνων, ἤλπιζε μηδενὸς μαχομένου μηδ’ ἐρεθίζοντος τὸν Ἀννίβαν αὐτὸν ἐπηρεάσειν ἑαυτῷ καὶ κατατριβήσεσθαι περὶ τὸν πόλεμον, ὥσπερ ἀθλητικοῦ σώματος τῆς δυνάμεως ὑπερτόνου γινομένης [4] καὶ καταπόνου ταχύτατα τὴν ἀκμὴν ἀποβαλόντα. διὸ τοῦτον μὲν ὁ Ποσειδώνιός (FGrH 87 F 42) φησι θυρεόν, τὸν δὲ Μάρκελλον ξίφος ὑπὸ τῶν Ῥωμαίων καλεῖσθαι, κιρναμένην δὲ τὴν Φαβίου βεβαιότητα καὶ ἀσφάλειαν τῇ Μαρκέλλου [5] συντονίᾳ σωτήριον γενέσθαι τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις. ὁ δ’ Ἀννίβας τῷ μὲν ὡς ῥέοντι σφόδρα ποταμῷ πολλάκις ἀπαντῶν, ἐσείετο καὶ παρερρηγνύετο τὴν δύναμιν, ὑφ’ οὗ δ’ ἀψοφητὶ καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ὑπορρέοντος καὶ παρεμπίπτοντος ἐνδελεχῶς ὑπερειπόμενος καὶ δαπανώμενος ἐλάνθανε, καὶ τελευτῶν εἰς ἀπορίαν κατέστη τοσαύτην, ὥστε Μαρκέλλῳ μὲν ἀποκαμεῖν μαχόμενον, Φάβιον δὲ φοβεῖσθαι μὴ [6] μαχόμενον. τὸ γὰρ πλεῖστον ὡς εἰπεῖν τοῦ χρόνου τούτοις διεπολέμησεν ἢ στρατηγοῖς ἢ ἀνθυπάτοις ἢ ὑπάτοις ἀποδεικνυμένοις· ἑκάτερος γὰρ αὐτῶν πεντάκις ὑπάτευσεν. ἀλλὰ Μάρκελλον μὲν ὑπατεύοντα τὸ πέμπτον ἐνέδρᾳ περιβαλὼν ἔκτεινε, Φαβίῳ δὲ πᾶσαν ἀπάτην καὶ διάπειραν ἐπάγων πολλάκις οὐδὲν ἐπέραινε, πλὴν ἅπαξ ὀλίγου παρακρουσάμενος [7] ἔσφηλε τὸν ἄνδρα. συνθεὶς γὰρ ἐπιστολὰς παρὰ τῶν ἐν Μεταποντίῳ δυνατῶν καὶ πρώτων ἔπεμψε πρὸς τὸν Φάβιον, ὡς τῆς πόλεως ἐνδοθησομένης εἰ παραγένοιτο, καὶ τῶν τοῦτο πραττόντων ἐκεῖνον ἐλθεῖν καὶ [8] φανῆναι πλησίον ἀναμενόντων. ταῦτ’ ἐκίνησε τὸν Φάβιον τὰ γράμματα, καὶ λαβὼν μέρος τι τῆς στρατιᾶς ἔμελλεν ὁρμήσειν διὰ νυκτός· εἶτα χρησάμενος ὄρνισιν οὐκ αἰσίοις ἀπετράπη, καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ἐπεγνώσθη τὰ γράμματα πρὸς αὐτὸν ὑπ’ Ἀννίβου δόλῳ συντεθέντα κἀκεῖνος ἐνεδρεύων αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τὴν πόλιν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἄν τις εὐνοίᾳ θεῶν ἀναθείη.

[20] [1] Τὰς δ’ ἀποστάσεις τῶν πόλεων καὶ τὰ κινήματα τῶν συμμάχων ὁ Φάβιος μᾶλλον ᾤετο δεῖν ἠπίως ὁμιλοῦντα καὶ πρᾴως ἀνείργειν καὶ δυσωπεῖν, μὴ πᾶσαν ὑπόνοιαν ἐλέγχοντα καὶ χαλεπὸν ὄντα παντάπασι τοῖς [2] ὑπόπτοις. λέγεται γὰρ ὅτι στρατιώτην ἄνδρα Μάρσον, ἀνδρείᾳ καὶ γένει τῶν συμμάχων πρῶτον, αἰσθόμενος διειλεγμένον τισὶ τῶν ἐν στρατοπέδῳ περὶ ἀποστάσεως οὐ διηρέθισεν, ἀλλ’ ὁμολογήσας ἠμελῆσθαι παρ’ ἀξίαν αὐτόν, νῦν μὲν ἔφη τοὺς ἡγεμόνας αἰτιᾶσθαι πρὸς χάριν μᾶλλον ἢ πρὸς ἀρετὴν τὰς τιμὰς νέμοντας, ὕστερον δ’ ἐκεῖνον αἰτιάσεσθαι μὴ φράζοντα μηδ’ ἐντυγχάνοντα πρὸς αὐτὸν εἴ [3] του δέοιτο. καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἵππον τε πολεμιστὴν ἐδωρήσατο καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀριστείοις ἐκόσμησεν, ὥστε πιστότατον [4] ἐξ ἐκείνου καὶ προθυμότατον εἶναι τὸν ἄνδρα. δεινὸν γὰρ ἡγεῖτο τοὺς μὲν ἱππικοὺς καὶ κυνηγετικοὺς ἐπιμελείᾳ καὶ συνηθείᾳ καὶ τροφῇ μᾶλλον ἢ μάστιξι καὶ κλοιοῖς τὴν χαλεπότητα τῶν ζῴων καὶ τὸ θυμούμενον καὶ τὸ δυσκολαῖνον ἐξαιρεῖν, τὸν δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἄρχοντα μὴ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐν χάριτι καὶ πρᾳότητι τῆς ἐπανορθώσεως τίθεσθαι, σκληρότερον δὲ προσφέρεσθαι καὶ βιαιότερον, ἤπερ οἱ γεωργοῦντες ἐρινεοῖς καὶ ἀχράσι καὶ κοτίνοις προσφέρονται, τὰ μὲν εἰς ἐλαίας, τὰ δ’ εἰς ἀπίους, τὰ δ’ εἰς συκᾶς [5] ἐξημεροῦντες καὶ τιθασεύοντες. ἕτερον τοίνυν τῷ γένει Λευκανὸν ἄνδρα προσήγγειλαν οἱ λοχαγοὶ ῥεμβόμενον ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ τὴν τάξιν ἀπολείποντα πολλάκις. ὁ δ’ ἠρώτησε, τἆλλα ποῖόν τινα τὸν ἄνθρωπον εἰδεῖεν ὄντα.

[6] μαρτυρούντων δὲ πάντων ὅτι ῥᾳδίως ἕτερος οὐκ εἴη στρατιώτης τοιοῦτος, ἅμα τ’ αὐτοῦ τινας ἀνδραγαθίας ἐπιφανεῖς καὶ πράξεις λεγόντων, αἰτίαν τῆς ἀταξίας ζητῶν εὗρεν ἔρωτι παιδίσκης κατεχόμενον τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ κινδυνεύοντα μακρὰς ὁδοὺς ἑκάστοτε, φοιτῶντα πρὸς ἐκείνην ἀπὸ τοῦ [7] στρατοπέδου. πέμψας οὖν τινας ἀγνοοῦντος αὐτοῦ καὶ συλλαβὼν τὸ γύναιον ἔκρυψεν ἐν τῇ σκηνῇ, καὶ καλέσας τὸν Λευκανὸν ἰδίᾳ πρὸς αὑτόν οὐ λέληθας ἔφη παρὰ τὰ Ῥωμαίων πάτρια καὶ τοὺς νόμους ἀπονυκτερεύων τοῦ στρατοπέδου πολλάκις· ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ χρηστὸς ὢν πρότερον [8] ἐλελήθεις. τὰ μὲν οὖν ἡμαρτημένα σοι λελύσθω τοῖς ἠνδραγαθημένοις, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν ἐφ’ ἑτέρῳ ποιήσομαι τὴν φρουράν.

[9] θαυμάζοντος δὲ τοῦ στρατιώτου, προαγαγὼν τὴν ἄνθρωπον ἐνεχείρισεν αὐτῷ καὶ εἶπεν· αὕτη μὲν ἐγγυᾶταί σε μενεῖν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ μεθ’ ἡμῶν· σὺ δ’ ἔργῳ δείξεις, εἰ μὴ δι’ ἄλλην τινὰ μοχθηρίαν ἀπέλειπες, ὁ δ’ ἔρως καὶ αὕτη πρόφασις ἦν λεγομένη. ταῦτα μὲν περὶ τούτων ἱστοροῦσι.

[21] [1] Τὴν δὲ Ταραντίνων πόλιν ἔσχεν ἑαλωκυῖαν ἐκ προδοσίας τὸν τρόπον τοῦτον. ἐστρατεύετο παρ’ αὐτῷ νεανίας Ταραντῖνος ἔχων ἀδελφὴν ἐν Τάραντι πιστῶς πάνυ καὶ [2] φιλοστόργως διακειμένην πρὸς αὐτόν. ἤρα δὲ ταύτης ἀνὴρ Βρέττιος τῶν τεταγμένων ὑπ’ Ἀννίβου τὴν πόλιν φρουρεῖν ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίας. τοῦτο πράξεως ἐλπίδα τῷ Ταραντίνῳ παρέσχε, καὶ τοῦ Φαβίου συνειδότος εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἀφείθη, λόγῳ δ’ ἀποδεδράκει πρὸς τὴν ἀδελφήν. αἱ μὲν οὖν πρῶται τῶν ἡμερῶν ‹δι›ῇσαν, καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ὁ Βρέττιος [3] ἀνεπαύετο, λανθάνειν τὸν ἀδελφὸν οἰομένης ἐκείνης. ἔπειτα λέγει πρὸς αὐτὴν ὁ νεανίας· καὶ μὴν ἐκεῖ λόγος ἐφοίτα πολὺς ἀνδρί σε τῶν δυνατῶν καὶ μεγάλων συνεῖναι. τίς οὗτός ἐστιν; εἰ γὰρ εὐδόκιμός τις ὥς φασιν ἀρετῇ καὶ λαμπρός, ἐλάχιστα φροντίζει γένους ὁ πάντα συμμειγνὺς πόλεμος· αἰσχρὸν δὲ μετ’ ἀνάγκης οὐδέν, ἀλλ’ εὐτυχία τις ἐν καιρῷ τὸ δίκαιον ἀσθενὲς ἔχοντι πρᾳοτάτῳ χρήσασθαι [4] τῷ βιαζομένῳ. ἐκ τούτου μεταπέμπεται μὲν ἡ γυνὴ τὸν Βρέττιον καὶ γνωρίζει τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτῷ, ταχὺ δὲ συμπράττων τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἐκεῖνος καὶ μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον εὔνουν καὶ χειροήθη τῷ βαρβάρῳ παρέχειν δοκῶν τὴν ἀδελφήν, ἔσχε πίστιν, ὥστε μὴ χαλεπῶς ἐρῶντος ἀνθρώπου μισθοφόρου μεταστῆσαι διάνοιαν ἐπ’ ἐλπίσι δωρεῶν μεγάλων [5] ἃς ἐπηγγέλλετο παρέξειν αὐτῷ τὸν Φάβιον. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οἱ πλεῖστοι γράφουσι περὶ τούτων· ἔνιοι δὲ τὴν ἄνθρωπον ὑφ’ ἧς ὁ Βρέττιος μετήχθη φασὶν οὐ Ταραντίνην, ἀλλὰ Βρεττίαν τὸ γένος οὖσαν, τῷ δὲ Φαβίῳ παλλακευομένην, ὡς ᾔσθετο πολίτην καὶ γνώριμον ὄντα τὸν τῶν Βρεττίων ἄρχοντα, τῷ τε Φαβίῳ φράσαι καὶ συνελθοῦσαν εἰς λόγους ὑπὸ τὸ τεῖχος ἐκπεῖσαι καὶ κατεργάσασθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον.

[22] [1] Πραττομένων δὲ τούτων ὁ Φάβιος περισπάσαι τὸν Ἀννίβαν τεχνάζων, ἐπέστειλε τοῖς ἐν Ῥηγίῳ στρατιώταις τὴν Βρεττίαν καταδραμεῖν καὶ Καυλωνίαν ἐξελεῖν κατὰ κράτος στρατοπεδεύσαντας, ὀκτακισχιλίους ὄντας, αὐτομόλους δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ τῶν ἐκ Σικελίας ὑπὸ Μαρκέλλου κεκομισμένων ἀτίμων τοὺς ἀχρηστοτάτους καὶ μετ’ ἐλαχίστης [2] τῇ πόλει λύπης καὶ βλάβης ἀπολουμένους. ἤλπιζε γὰρ τούτους προέμενος τῷ Ἀννίβᾳ καὶ δελεάσας, ἀπάξειν αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ Τάραντος. ὃ καὶ συνέβαινεν· εὐθὺς γὰρ [3] ἐκεῖ διώκων ὁ Ἀννίβας ἐρρύη μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως. ἡμέρᾳ δ’ ἕκτῃ τοὺς Ταραντίνους τοῦ Φαβίου περιστρατοπεδεύσαντος, ὁ προδιελεγμένος τῷ Βρεττίῳ μετὰ τῆς ἀδελφῆς νεανίσκος ἧκε νύκτωρ πρὸς αὐτόν, εἰδὼς ἀκριβῶς καὶ καθεωρακὼς τὸν τόπον ἐφ’ οὗ παραφυλάττων ὁ Βρέττιος ἔμελλεν [4] ἐνδώσειν καὶ παρήσειν τοῖς προσβάλλουσιν. οὐ μὴν ἁπλῶς γε τῆς προδοσίας ἐξήρτησεν ὁ Φάβιος τὴν πρᾶξιν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς μὲν ἐκεῖσε παρελθὼν ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν, ἡ δ’ ἄλλη στρατιὰ προσέβαλλε τοῖς τείχεσιν ἔκ τε γῆς καὶ θαλάττης, ἅμα ποιοῦσα πολλὴν κραυγὴν καὶ θόρυβον, ἄχρι οὗ τῶν πλείστων Ταραντίνων ἐκεῖ βοηθούντων καὶ συμφερομένων τοῖς τειχομαχοῦσιν ἐσήμηνε τῷ Φαβίῳ τὸν καιρὸν ὁ Βρέττιος, καὶ διὰ κλιμάκων [5] ἀναβὰς ἐκράτησε τῆς πόλεως. ἐνταῦθα μέντοι δοκεῖ φιλοτιμίας ἥττων γενέσθαι· τοὺς γὰρ Βρεττίους πρώτους ἀποσφάττειν ἐκέλευσεν, ὡς μὴ προδοσίᾳ τὴν πόλιν ἔχων φανερὸς γένοιτο· καί‹τοι› ταύτης τε διήμαρτε τῆς δόξης καὶ διαβολὴν ἀπιστίας προσέλαβε καὶ ὠμότητος.

[6] Ἀπέθανον δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ τῶν Ταραντίνων, οἱ δὲ πραθέντες ἐγένοντο τρισμύριοι, καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἡ στρατιὰ διήρπασεν, ἀνηνέχθη δ’ εἰς τὸ δημόσιον τρισχίλια τάλαντα.

[7] πάντων δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἀγομένων καὶ φερομένων, λέγεται τὸν γραμματέα πυθέσθαι τοῦ Φαβίου περὶ τῶν θεῶν τί κελεύει, τὰς γραφὰς οὕτω προσαγορεύσαντα καὶ τοὺς ἀνδριάντας· τὸν οὖν Φάβιον εἰπεῖν· ἀπολίπωμεν τοὺς [8] θεοὺς Ταραντίνοις κεχολωμένους. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τὸν κολοσσὸν τοῦ Ἡρακλέους μετακομίσας ἐκ Τάραντος ἔστησεν ἐν Καπιτωλίῳ, καὶ πλησίον ἔφιππον εἰκόνα χαλκῆν ἑαυτοῦ, πολὺ Μαρκέλλου φανεὶς ἀτοπώτερος περὶ ταῦτα, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἐκεῖνον ἄνδρα πρᾳότητι καὶ φιλανθρωπίᾳ θαυμαστὸν ἀποδείξας, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γέγραπται (c. 21, 4).

[23] [1] Ἀννίβαν δὲ λέγεται διώκοντα τεσσαράκοντα μόνοις ἀπολειφθῆναι σταδίοις, καὶ φανερῶς μὲν εἰπεῖν· ἦν ἄρα καὶ Ῥωμαίοις Ἀννίβας τις ἕτερος· ἀπεβάλομεν γὰρ τὴν Ταραντίνων πόλιν ὡς παρελάβομεν, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τό‹τε› πρῶτον αὐτῷ παραστῆναι πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἰπεῖν, ὡς πάλαι μὲν ἑώρα χαλεπὸν αὐτοῖς, νῦν δ’ ἀδύνατον κρατεῖν ἀπὸ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων Ἰταλίας.

[2] Τοῦτον δεύτερον θρίαμβον ἐθριάμβευσε λαμπρότερον τοῦ προτέρου Φάβιος, ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴς ἀγαθὸς ἐπαγωνιζόμενος τῷ Ἀννίβᾳ καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἀπολυόμενος αὐτοῦ τὰς πράξεις, ὥσπερ ἅμματα καὶ λαβὰς οὐκέτι τὸν αὐτὸν ἐχούσας [3] τόνον. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀνεῖτο τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτῷ διὰ τρυφὴν καὶ πλοῦτον, ἡ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐξήμβλυντο καὶ κατατέτριπτο τοῖς ἀλωφήτοις ἀγῶσιν.

Ἦν δὲ Μᾶρκος Λίβιος, οὗ τὸν Τάραντα φρουροῦντος ὁ Ἀννίβας ἀπέστησεν, ὅμως δὲ τὴν ἄκραν κατέχων οὐκ ἐξεκρούσθη καὶ διεφύλαξεν ἄχοι τοῦ πάλιν ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίοις [4] γενέσθαι τοὺς Ταραντίνους. τοῦτον ἠνία Φάβιος τιμώμενος, καί ποτε πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ φιλοτιμίας ἐξενεχθεὶς εἶπεν, ὡς οὐ Φάβιος, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς αἴτιος γένοιτο τοῦ τὴν Ταραντίνων ‹πόλιν› ἁλῶναι. γελάσας οὖν ὁ Φάβιος· ἀληθῆ λέγεις εἶπεν· εἰ μὴ γὰρ σὺ τὴν πόλιν ἀπέβαλες, οὐκ ἂν ἐγὼ παρέλαβον.

[24] [1] Οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι τά τ’ ἄλλα τῷ Φαβίῳ προσεφέροντο λαμπρῶς καὶ τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ Φάβιον ἀνέδειξαν ὕπατον. παραλαβόντος δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ διοικοῦντός τι τῶν πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ὁ πατὴρ εἴτε διὰ γῆρας καὶ ἀσθένειαν, εἴτε διαπειρώμενος τοῦ παιδός, ἀναβὰς ἐφ’ ἵππον προσῄει [2] διὰ τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων καὶ περιεστώτων. ὁ δὲ νεανίας κατιδὼν πόρρωθεν οὐκ ἠνέσχετο, πέμψας δ’ ὑπηρέτην ἐκέλευσε καταβῆναι τὸν πατέρα καὶ δι’ αὑτοῦ προσελθεῖν, [3] εἰ δή τι τυγχάνει τῆς ἀρχῆς δεόμενος. καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἠνίασε τὸ ἐπίταγμα, καὶ σιωπῇ πρὸς τὸν Φάβιον ὡς ἀνάξια πάσχοντα τῆς δόξης ἀπέβλεψαν· αὐτὸς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἀποπηδήσας κατὰ τάχος, θᾶττον ἢ βάδην πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν ἐπειχθεὶς [4] καὶ περιβαλὼν καὶ ἀσπασάμενος· εὖ γε εἶπεν ὦ παῖ φρονεῖς καὶ πράττεις, αἰσθόμενος τίνων ἄρχεις καὶ πηλίκης μέγεθος ἀνείληφας ἀρχῆς. οὕτω καὶ ἡμεῖς καὶ οἱ πρόγονοι τὴν Ῥώμην ηὐξήσαμεν, ἐν δευτέρῳ καὶ γονεῖς [5] καὶ παῖδας ἀεὶ τῶν τῆς πατρίδος καλῶν τιθέμενοι. λέγεται δ’ ὡς ἀληθῶς τοῦ Φαβίου τὸν πρόπαππον ἐν δόξῃ καὶ δυνάμει μεγίστῃ Ῥωμαίων γενόμενον πεντάκις μὲν ὑπατεῦσαι καὶ θριάμβους ἐκ πολέμων μεγίστων ἐπιφανεστάτους καταγαγεῖν, ὑπατεύοντι δ’ υἱῷ πρεσβευτὴν συνεξελθεῖν ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον, ἐν δὲ τῷ θριάμβῳ τὸν μὲν εἰσελαύνειν ἐπὶ τεθρίππῳ, τὸν δ’ ἵππον ἔχοντα μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπακολουθεῖν, ἀγαλλόμενον ὅτι τοῦ μὲν υἱοῦ κύριος, τῶν δὲ πολιτῶν μέγιστος καὶ ὢν καὶ προσαγορευόμενος, ὕστερον [6] αὑτὸν τοῦ νόμου καὶ τοῦ ἄρχοντος τίθησιν. ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος οὐκ ἀπὸ τούτων μόνον θαυμαστὸς ἦν. τοῦ δὲ Φαβίου τὸν υἱὸν ἀποθανεῖν συνέβη, καὶ τὴν μὲν συμφορὰν ὡς ἀνήρ τε φρόνιμος καὶ πατὴρ χρηστὸς ἤνεγκε μετριώτατα, τὸ δ’ ἐγκώμιον ὃ ταῖς ἐκκομιδαῖς τῶν ἐπιφανῶν οἱ προσήκοντες ἐπιτελοῦσιν, αὐτὸς εἶπε καταστὰς ἐν ἀγορᾷ καὶ γράψας τὸν λόγον ἐξέδωκεν.

[25] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Σκιπίων Κορνήλιος εἰς Ἰβηρίαν πεμφθεὶς Καρχηδονίους μὲν ἐξήλασε μάχαις πολλαῖς κρατήσας, ἔθνη δὲ πάμπολλα καὶ πόλεις μεγάλας καὶ πράγματα λαμπρὰ Ῥωμαίοις κτησάμενος εὔνοιαν εἶχε καὶ δόξαν ἐπανελθὼν ὅσην ἄλλος οὐδείς, ὕπατος δὲ κατασταθεὶς καὶ τὸν δῆμον αἰσθόμενος μεγάλην ἀπαιτοῦντα καὶ προσδεχόμενον πρᾶξιν αὐτοῦ, τὸ μὲν αὐτόθι συμπλέκεσθαι πρὸς Ἀννίβαν ἀρχαῖον ἡγεῖτο λίαν καὶ πρεσβυτικόν, αὐτὴν δὲ Καρχηδόνα καὶ Λιβύην εὐθὺς ἐμπλήσας ὅπλων καὶ στρατευμάτων διενοεῖτο πορθεῖν καὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐκεῖ μεθιστάναι, καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο παντὶ τῷ θυμῷ συνεξώρμα [2] τὸν δῆμον, ἐνταῦθα δὴ Φάβιος ἐπὶ πᾶν δέους ἄγων τὴν πόλιν, ὡς ὑπ’ ἀνδρὸς ἀνοήτου καὶ νέου φερομένην εἰς τὸν ἔσχατον καὶ μέγιστον κίνδυνον, οὔτε λόγου φειδόμενος οὔτ’ ἔργου δοκοῦντος ἀποτρέψειν τοὺς πολίτας, τὴν μὲν βουλὴν ἔπεισε, τῷ δὲ δήμῳ διὰ φθόνον ἐδόκει τοῦ Σκιπίωνος εὐημεροῦντος ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ δεδιέναι, μή τι μέγα καὶ λαμπρὸν ἐξεργασαμένου καὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἢ παντάπασιν ἀνελόντος ἢ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐκβαλόντος αὐτὸς ἀργὸς φανῇ καὶ μαλακός, ἐν τοσούτῳ χρόνῳ ‹μὴ› διαπεπολεμηκώς.

[3] ἔοικε δ’ ὁρμῆσαι μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὁ Φάβιος πρὸς τὸ ἀντιλέγειν ὑπὸ πολλῆς ἀσφαλείας καὶ προνοίας, μέγαν ὄντα δεδιὼς τὸν κίνδυνον, ἐντεῖναι δέ πως μᾶλλον ἑαυτὸν καὶ πορρωτέρω προαχθῆναι φιλοτιμίᾳ τινὶ καὶ φιλονικίᾳ κωλύων τοῦ Σκιπίωνος τὴν αὔξησιν, ὅς γε καὶ Κράσσον ἔπειθε, τὸν συνυπατεύοντα τῷ Σκιπίωνι, μὴ παρεῖναι τὴν στρατηγίαν μηδ’ ὑπείκειν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν εἰ δόξειεν ἐπὶ Καρχηδονίους περαιοῦσθαι, καὶ χρήματα δοθῆναι [4] πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον οὐκ εἴασε. χρήματα μὲν οὖν Σκιπίων ἑαυτῷ πορίζειν ἀναγκαζόμενος, ἤγειρε παρὰ τῶν ἐν Τυρρηνίᾳ πόλεων, ἰδίᾳ πρὸς αὐτὸν οἰκείως διακειμένων καὶ χαριζομένων· Κράσσον δὲ τὰ μὲν ἡ φύσις, οὐκ ὄντα φιλόνικον, ἀλλὰ πρᾷον, οἴκοι κατεῖχε, τὰ δὲ καὶ νόμος θεῖος ἱερωσύνην ἔχοντα τὴν μεγίστην.

[26] [1] Αὖθις οὖν καθ’ ἑτέραν ὁδὸν ἀπαντῶν ὁ Φάβιος τῷ Σκιπίωνι, κατεκώλυε τοὺς ὁρμωμένους αὐτῷ συστρατεύεσθαι τῶν νέων καὶ κατεῖχεν, ἔν τε ταῖς βουλαῖς καὶ ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις βοῶν, ὡς οὐκ αὐτὸς Ἀννίβαν ἀποδιδράσκοι μόνον ὁ Σκιπίων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ὑπόλοιπον ἐκπλέοι λαβὼν δύναμιν ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας, δημαγωγῶν ἐλπίσι τοὺς νέους καὶ ἀναπείθων ἀπολιπεῖν γονέας καὶ γυναῖκας καὶ πόλιν, ἧς ἐν θύραις ἐπικρατῶν καὶ ἀήττητος ὁ πολέμιος κάθηται.

[2] καὶ μέντοι ταῦτα λέγων ἐφόβησε τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, καὶ μόνοις αὐτὸν ἐψηφίσαντο χρῆσθαι τοῖς ἐν Σικελίᾳ στρατεύμασι καὶ τῶν ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ γεγονότων μετ’ αὐτοῦ τριακοσίους ἄγειν, οἷς ἐχρῆτο πιστοῖς. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐδόκει [3] πολιτεύεσθαι πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν ὁ Φάβιος. ἐπεὶ δὲ Σκιπίωνος εἰς Λιβύην διαβάντος εὐθὺς ἔργα θαυμαστὰ καὶ πράξεις ὑπερήφανοι τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ κάλλος εἰς Ῥώμην ἀπηγγέλλοντο, καὶ μαρτυροῦντα ταῖς φήμαις εἵπετο λάφυρα πολλὰ καὶ βασιλεὺς ὁ Νομάδων αἰχμάλωτος, καὶ δύο στρατοπέδων ὑφ’ ἕνα καιρὸν ἐμπρήσεις καὶ φθορά, πολλῶν μὲν ἀνθρώπων, πολλῶν δ’ ὅπλων καὶ ἵππων ἐν αὐτοῖς συγκατακεκαυμένων, καὶ πρεσβεῖαι πρὸς Ἀννίβαν ἐπέμποντο παρὰ Καρχηδονίων, καλούντων καὶ δεομένων ἐάσαντα τὰς ἀτελεῖς ἐκείνας ἐλπίδας οἴκαδε βοηθεῖν, ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ πάντων ἐχόντων τὸν Σκιπίωνα διὰ στόματος ἐπὶ τοῖς κατορθώμασι Φάβιος ἠξίου πέμπεσθαι Σκιπίωνι διάδοχον, ἄλλην μὲν οὐκ ἔχων πρόφασιν, εἰπὼν δὲ τὸ μνημονευόμενον, ὡς ἐπισφαλές ἐστι πιστεύειν ἀνδρὸς ἑνὸς τύχῃ τηλικαῦτα πράγματα, χαλεπὸν γὰρ εὐτυχεῖν ἀεὶ τὸν αὐτόν, οὕτω προσέκρουσεν ἤδη πολλοῖς, ὡς δύσκολος ἀνὴρ καὶ βάσκανος ἢ πάμπαν ὑπὸ γήρως ἄτολμος γεγονὼς καὶ δύσελπις, περαιτέρω τε τοῦ μετρίου κατατεθαμβημένος [4] τὸν Ἀννίβαν. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐκπλεύσαντος αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῶν δυνάμεων ἐξ Ἰταλίας εἴασε τὸ χαῖρον καὶ τεθαρρηκὸς τῶν πολιτῶν ἀθόρυβον καὶ βέβαιον, ἀλλὰ τότε δὴ μάλιστα τὰ πράγματα τῇ πόλει θεούσῃ παρὰ τὸν ἔσχατον κίνδυνον ἐπισφαλῶς ἔχειν ἔλεγε· βαρύτερον γὰρ ἐν Λιβύῃ πρὸ Καρχηδόνος αὐτοῖς Ἀννίβαν ἐμπεσεῖσθαι καὶ στρατὸν ἀπαντήσειν Σκιπίωνι πολλῶν ἔτι θερμὸν αὐτοκρατόρων αἵματι καὶ δικτατόρων καὶ ὑπάτων· ὥστε τὴν πόλιν αὖθις ὑπὸ τῶν λόγων τούτων ἀναταράττεσθαι, καὶ τοῦ πολέμου μεθεστῶτος εἰς Λιβύην ἐγγυτέρω τῆς Ῥώμης οἴεσθαι γεγονέναι τὸν φόβον.

[27] [1] Ἀλλὰ Σκιπίων μὲν οὐ μετὰ πολὺν χρόνον αὐτόν τε νικήσας μάχῃ κατὰ κράτος Ἀννίβαν, καὶ καταβαλὼν τὸ φρόνημα καὶ καταπατήσας τῆς Καρχηδόνος ὑποπεσούσης, ἀπέδωκε μείζονα χαρὰν ἁπάσης ἐλπίδος τοῖς πολίταις, καὶ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ὡς ἀληθῶς (Soph. Antig. 163)

πολλῷ σάλῳ σεισθεῖσαν ὤρθωσεν πάλιν·
[2] Φάβιος δὲ Μάξιμος οὐ διήρκεσε τῷ βίῳ πρὸς τὸ τοῦ πολέμου τέλος, οὐδ’ ἤκουσεν Ἀννίβαν ἡττημένον, οὐδὲ τὴν μεγάλην καὶ βέβαιον εὐτυχίαν τῆς πατρίδος ἐπεῖδεν, ἀλλὰ περὶ ὃν χρόνον Ἀννίβας ἀπῆρεν ἐξ Ἰταλίας, νόσῳ καμὼν ἐτελεύτησεν.

[3] Ἐπαμεινώνδαν μὲν οὖν Θηβαῖοι δημοσίᾳ διὰ πενίαν ἣν ἀπέλιπεν ὁ ἀνὴρ ἔθαψαν· οὐδὲν γὰρ οἴκοι τελευτήσαν[4]τος εὑρεθῆναι πλὴν ὀβελίσκον σιδηροῦν λέγουσι· Φάβιον δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι δημοσίᾳ μὲν οὐκ ἐκήδευσαν, ἰδίᾳ δ’ ἑκάστου τὸ σμικρότατον αὐτῷ τῶν νομισμάτων ἐπενεγκόντος, οὐχ ὡς δι’ ἔνδειαν προσαρκούντων, ἀλλ’ ὡς πατέρα τοῦ δήμου θάπτοντος, ἔσχε τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν ὁ θάνατος αὐτοῦ τῷ βίῳ πρέπουσαν.

Comparison Periclis et Fabii Maximi

[1] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν βίοι τῶν ἀνδρῶν τοιαύτην ἔχουσιν ἱστορίαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ πολιτικῆς καὶ πολεμικῆς ἀρετῆς πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ παραδείγματα καταλελοίπασιν ἀμφότεροι, φέρε τῶν πολεμικῶν ἐκεῖνο πρῶτον λάβωμεν, ὅτι Περικλῆς μὲν ἄριστα πράττοντι τῷ δήμῳ καὶ μεγίστῳ καθ’ αὑτὸν ὄντι καὶ μάλιστα πρὸς δύναμιν ἀκμάζοντι χρώμενος ὑπὸ κοινῆς ἂν δόξειεν εὐτυχίας καὶ ῥώμης πραγμάτων ἀσφαλὴς διαγενέσθαι καὶ ἄπταιστος, αἱ δὲ Φαβίου πράξεις ἐν αἰσχίστοις καὶ δυσποτμοτάτοις καιροῖς ἀναδεξαμένου τὴν πόλιν οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀγαθοῖς ἀσφαλῆ διετήρησαν, [2] ἀλλ’ ἐκ κακῶν εἰς βελτίω μετέστησαν. καὶ Περικλεῖ μὲν αἱ Κίμωνος εὐπραξίαι καὶ τὰ Μυρωνίδου καὶ τὰ Λεωκράτους τρόπαια καὶ πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα Τολμίδης κατορθῶν ‹ἐν›εορτάσαι μᾶλλον καὶ ἐμπανηγυρίσαι στρατηγοῦντι τὴν πόλιν ἢ κτήσασθαι πολέμῳ καὶ φυλάξαι παρέδωκε· [3] Φάβιος δ’ ὁρῶν πολλὰς μὲν φυγὰς καὶ ἥττας, πολλοὺς δὲ θανάτους καὶ σφαγὰς αὐτοκρατόρων καὶ στρατηγῶν, λίμνας δὲ καὶ πεδία καὶ δρυμοὺς νεκρῶν στρατοπέδων πλήθοντας, αἵματι δὲ καὶ φόνῳ ποταμοὺς ἄχρι θαλάττης ῥέοντας, [ἐν] τῷ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐρρωμένῳ καὶ βεβηκότι τὴν πόλιν ἀντιλαμβανόμενος καὶ ὑπερείδων οὐκ εἴασε τοῖς [4] ἐκείνων ὑποφερομένην πταίσμασι τελέως ἐκχυθῆναι. καίτοι δόξειεν ἂν οὐχ οὕτω χαλεπὸν εἶναι πόλιν ἐν συμφοραῖς μεταχειρίσασθαι ταπεινὴν καὶ τοῦ φρονοῦντος ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης κατήκοον γενομένην, ὡς δι’ εὐτυχίαν ἐπηρμένῳ καὶ σπαργῶντι [τῷ] δήμῳ χαλινὸν ἐμβαλεῖν ὕβρεως καὶ θρασύτητος· ᾧ δὴ μάλιστα φαίνεται τρόπῳ Περικλῆς Ἀθηναίων [5] περιγενόμενος. ἀλλὰ τῶν Ῥωμαίοις συμπεσόντων τότε κακῶν τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ἰσχυρόν τινα γνώμην καὶ μέγαν ἔδειξεν ἄνδρα τὸν μὴ συγχυθέντα μηδὲ προέμενον τοὺς αὑτοῦ λογισμούς.

[2] [1] Καὶ Σάμῳ μὲν ὑπὸ Περικλέους ἁλούσῃ τὴν Τάραντος ἔστι κατάληψιν ἀντιθεῖναι, καὶ νὴ Δί’ Εὐβοίᾳ τὰς περὶ Καμπανίαν πόλεις· ἐπεὶ αὐτήν γε Καπύην οἱ περὶ Φούλβιον καὶ Ἄππιον ὕπατοι κατέσχον. ἐκ δὲ παρατάξεως Φάβιος οὐ φαίνεται μάχῃ νενικηκώς, πλὴν ἀφ’ ἧς τὸν πρότερον εἰσήλασε θρίαμβον, Περικλῆς δ’ ἐννέα τρόπαια κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν ἔστησεν ἀπὸ τῶν πολεμίων.

[2] οὐ μὴν λέγεται τοιαύτη πρᾶξις Περικλέους οἵαν ἔπραξε Φάβιος Μινούκιον ἐξαρπάσας Ἀννίβου καὶ διασώσας ἐντελὲς στρατόπεδον Ῥωμαίων· καλὸν γὰρ τὸ ἔργον καὶ κοινὸν ἀνδρείας ὁμοῦ καὶ φρονήσεως καὶ χρηστότητος· ὥσπερ αὖ πάλιν οὐδὲ σφάλμα λέγεται Περικλέους οἷον ἐσφάλη Φάβιος διὰ τῶν βοῶν καταστρατηγηθεὶς ὑπ’ Ἀννίβου, λαβὼν μὲν αὐτομάτως καὶ κατὰ τύχην ὑπελθόντα τοῖς στενοῖς τὸν πολέμιον, προέμενος δὲ νυκτὸς λαθόντα καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν βιασάμενον καὶ φθάσαντα μέλλοντος καὶ κρατήσαντα [3] συλλαβόντος. εἰ δὲ δεῖ μὴ μόνον χρῆσθαι τοῖς παροῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τεκμαίρεσθαι περὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος ὀρθῶς τὸν ἀγαθὸν στρατηγόν, Ἀθηναίοις μὲν ὡς Περικλῆς προέγνω καὶ προεῖπεν ἐτελεύτησεν ὁ πόλεμος· πολυπραγμονοῦντες γὰρ ἀπώλεσαν τὴν δύναμιν· Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ παρὰ τοὺς Φαβίου λογισμοὺς ἐκπέμψαντες ἐπὶ Καρχηδονίους Σκιπίωνα πάντων ἐκράτησαν, οὐ τύχῃ, σοφίᾳ δὲ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ καὶ ἀνδρείᾳ κατὰ κράτος νικήσαντος τοὺς πολεμίους· [4] ὥστε τῷ μὲν τὰ πταίσματα τῆς πατρίδος μαρτυρεῖν ὅτι καλῶς ἔγνω, τὸν δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν κατορθωμάτων ἐλέγχεσθαι τοῦ παντὸς ἐσφαλμένον. ἴση δ’ ἁμαρτία στρατηγοῦ κακῷ περιπεσεῖν μὴ προσδοκήσαντα, καὶ κατορθώματος καιρὸν ἀπιστίᾳ προέσθαι· μία γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἀπειρία καὶ θράσος γεννᾷ καὶ θάρσος ἀφαιρεῖται. ταῦτα περὶ τῶν πολεμικῶν.

[3] [1] Τῆς δὲ πολιτείας μέγα μὲν ἔγκλημα τοῦ Περικλέους ὁ πόλεμος. λέγεται γὰρ ἐπακτὸς ὑπ’ ἐκείνου γενέσθαι, Λακεδαιμονίοις ἐρίσαντος μὴ ἐνδοῦναι. δοκῶ δὲ μηδ’ ἂν Φάβιον Μάξιμον ἐνδοῦναί τι Καρχηδονίοις, ἀλλ’ εὐγενῶς [2] ὑποστῆναι τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἡγεμονίας κίνδυνον. ἡ μέντοι πρὸς Μινούκιον ἐπιείκεια τοῦ Φαβίου καὶ πρᾳότης ἐλέγχει τὸν πρὸς Κίμωνα καὶ Θουκυδίδην στασιασμόν, ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς καὶ ἀριστοκρατικοὺς εἰς φυγὴν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τοὔστρακον ἐκπεσόντας. ἀλλ’ ἥ γε δύναμις μείζων ἡ τοῦ [3] Περικλέους καὶ τὸ κράτος. ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἄλλον εἴασεν ἐνδυστυχῆσαι τῇ πόλει κακῶς βουλευσάμενον στρατηγόν, ἀλλ’ ἢ μόνος αὐτὸν ἐκφυγὼν Τολμίδης καὶ διωσάμενος βίᾳ προσέπταισε Βοιωτοῖς· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι προσετίθεντο καὶ κατεκοσμοῦντο πάντες εἰς τὴν ἐκείνου γνώμην ὑπὸ μεγέθους [4] αὐτοῦ τῆς δυνάμεως. Φάβιος δὲ τὸ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀσφαλὴς ὢν καὶ ἀναμάρτητος, τῷ πρὸς τὸ κωλύειν ἑτέρους ἀδυνάτῳ φαίνεται λειπόμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἂν τοσαύταις συμφοραῖς ἐχρήσαντο Ῥωμαῖοι Φαβίου παρ’ αὐτοῖς ὅσον Ἀθήνησι Περικλέους δυνηθέντος.

[5] Καὶ μὴν τήν γε πρὸς χρήματα μεγαλοφροσύνην ὁ μὲν τῷ μηδὲν λαβεῖν παρὰ τῶν διδόντων, ὁ δὲ τῷ προέσθαι πολλὰ τοῖς δεομένοις ἐπεδείξατο, λυσάμενος τοῖς ἰδίοις [6] χρήμασι τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους· πλὴν τούτων μὲν οὐ πολὺς ἦν ἀριθμός, ἀλλ’ ὅσον ἓξ τάλαντα. Περικλῆς δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἴσως εἴποι τις ὅσα καὶ παρὰ συμμάχων καὶ βασιλέων ὠφελεῖσθαι καὶ θεραπεύεσθαι παρόν, τῆς δυνάμεως διδούσης, ἀδωρότατον ἑαυτὸν καὶ καθαρώτατον ἐφύλαξεν.

[7] Ἔργων γε μὴν μεγέθεσι καὶ ναῶν καὶ κατασκευαῖς οἰκοδομημάτων, ἐξ ὧν ἐκόσμησεν ὁ Περικλῆς τὰς Ἀθήνας, οὐκ ἄξιον ὁμοῦ πάντα τὰ πρὸ τῶν Καισάρων φιλοτιμήματα τῆς Ῥώμης παραβαλεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἔξοχόν τι πρὸς ἐκεῖνα καὶ ἀσύγκριτον ἡ τούτων ἔσχε μεγαλουργία καὶ μεγαλοπρέπεια τὸ πρωτεῖον.

Alcibiades

[1] [1] Τὸ Ἀλκιβιάδου γένος ἄνωθεν Εὐρυσάκη τὸν Αἴαντος ἀρχηγὸν ἔχειν δοκεῖ, πρὸς δὲ μητρὸς Ἀλκμαιωνίδης ἦν, ἐκ Δεινομάχης γεγονὼς τῆς Μεγακλέους. ὁ δὲ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ Κλεινίας ἰδιοστόλῳ τριήρει περὶ Ἀρτεμίσιον ἐνδόξως ἐναυμάχησεν, ὕστερον δὲ Βοιωτοῖς μαχόμενος περὶ [2] Κορώνειαν ἀπέθανε. τοῦ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδου Περικλῆς καὶ Ἀρίφρων οἱ Ξανθίππου, προσήκοντες κατὰ γένος, ἐπετρόπευον.

[3] λέγεται δ’ οὐ κακῶς ὅτι τῆς Σωκράτους πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐνοίας καὶ φιλ[ανθρωπ]ίας οὐ μικρὰ πρὸς δόξαν ἀπέλαυεν, εἴγε Νικίου μὲν καὶ Δημοσθένους καὶ Λαμάχου καὶ Φορμίωνος Θρασυβούλου τε καὶ Θηραμένους, ἐπιφανῶν ἀνδρῶν γενομένων κατ’ αὐτόν, οὐδενὸς οὐδ’ ἡ μήτηρ ὀνόματος ἔτυχεν, Ἀλκιβιάδου δὲ καὶ τίτθην, γένος Λάκαιναν, Ἀμύκλαν ὄνομα, καὶ Ζώπυρον παιδαγωγὸν ἴσμεν, ὧν τὸ μὲν Ἀντισθένης, τὸ δὲ Πλάτων (Alcib. 122b) ἱστόρηκε.

[4] περὶ μὲν οὖν τοῦ κάλλους [τοῦ σώματος] οὐδὲν ἴσως δεῖ λέγειν, πλὴν ὅτι καὶ παῖδα καὶ μειράκιον καὶ ἄνδρα πάσῃ συνανθῆσαν [τῇ] ἡλικίᾳ καὶ ὥρᾳ τοῦ σώματος ἐράσμιον [5] καὶ ἡδὺν παρέσχεν. οὐ γάρ, ὡς Εὐριπίδης ἔλεγε, πάντων τῶν καλῶν καὶ τὸ μετόπωρον καλόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτ’ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ μετ’ ὀλίγων ἄλλων δι’ εὐφυΐαν καὶ ἀρετὴν τοῦ [6] σώματος ὑπῆρξε. τῇ δὲ φωνῇ καὶ τὴν τραυλότητα συμπρέψαι λέγουσι καὶ τῷ λάλῳ πιθανότητα παρασχεῖν χάριν [7] ἐπιτρέχουσαν. μέμνηται δὲ καὶ Ἀριστοφάνης (vesp. 44) αὐτοῦ τῆς τραυλότητος ἐν οἷς ἐπισκώπτει Θέωρον·

εἶτ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης εἶπε πρός με τραυλίσας·

ὁλᾷς Θέωλον; τὴν κεφαλὴν κόλακος ἔχει.

ὀρθῶς γε τοῦτ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐτραύλισε.

[8] καὶ Ἄρχιππος (fr. 45 CAF I 688) τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου σκώπτων, ‘βαδίζει’, φησί, ‘διακεχλιδώς, θοἱμάτιον ἕλκων, ὅπως ἐμφερὴς μάλιστα τῷ πατρὶ δόξειεν εἶναι,

κλασαυχενεύεταί τε καὶ τραυλίζεται.’

[2] [1] Τὸ δ’ ἦθος αὐτοῦ πολλὰς μὲν ὕστερον, ὡς εἰκὸς ἐν πράγμασι μεγάλοις καὶ τύχαις πολυτρόποις, ἀνομοιότητας πρὸς αὑτὸ καὶ μεταβολὰς ἐπεδείξατο. φύσει δὲ πολλῶν ὄντων καὶ μεγάλων παθῶν ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ φιλόνικον ἰσχυρότατον ἦν καὶ τὸ φιλόπρωτον, ὡς δῆλόν ἐστι τοῖς [2] παιδικοῖς ἀπομνημονεύμασιν. ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῷ παλαίειν πιεζούμενος, ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ πεσεῖν ἀναγαγὼν πρὸς τὸ στόμα τὰ ἅμματα τοῦ πιεζοῦντος οἷος ἦν διαφαγεῖν τὰς χεῖρας.

[3] ἀφέντος οὖν τὴν λαβὴν ἐκείνου καὶ εἰπόντος· δάκνεις ὦ Ἀλκιβιάδη καθάπερ αἱ γυναῖκες, οὐκ ἔγωγε εἶπεν, ἀλλ’ ὡς οἱ λέοντες. ἔτι δὲ μικρὸς ὢν ἔπαιζεν ἀστραγάλοις ἐν τῷ στενωπῷ, τῆς δὲ βολῆς καθηκούσης εἰς αὐτόν, [4] ἅμαξα φορτίων ἐπῄει. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ἐκέλευσε περιμεῖναι τὸν ἄγοντα τὸ ζεῦγος· ὑπέπιπτε γὰρ ἡ βολὴ τῇ παρόδῳ τῆς ἁμάξης· μὴ πειθομένου δὲ δι’ ἀγροικίαν, ἀλλ’ ἐπάγοντος, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι παῖδες διέσχον, ὁ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης καταβαλὼν ἐπὶ στόμα πρὸ τοῦ ζεύγους καὶ παρατείνας ἑαυτόν, ἐκέλευσεν οὕτως εἰ βούλεται διεξελθεῖν, ὥστε τὸν μὲν ἄνθρωπον ἀνακροῦσαι τὸ ζεῦγος ὀπίσω δείσαντα, τοὺς δ’ ἰδόντας ἐκπλαγῆναι καὶ μετὰ βοῆς συνδραμεῖν [5] πρὸς αὐτόν. ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰς τὸ μανθάνειν ἧκε, τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ὑπήκουε διδασκάλοις ἐπιεικῶς, τὸ δ’ αὐλεῖν ἔφευγεν ὡς ἀγεννὲς καὶ ἀνελεύθερον· πλήκτρου μὲν γὰρ καὶ λύρας χρῆσιν οὐδὲν οὔτε σχήματος οὔτε μορφῆς ἐλευθέρῳ πρεπούσης διαφθείρειν, αὐλοὺς δὲ φυσῶντος ἀνθρώπου στόματι καὶ τοὺς συνήθεις ἂν πάνυ μόλις διαγνῶναι τὸ [6] πρόσωπον. ἔτι δὲ τὴν μὲν λύραν τῷ χρωμένῳ συμφθέγγεσθαι καὶ συνᾴδειν, τὸν δ’ αὐλὸν ἐπιστομίζειν καὶ ἀποφράττειν ἕκαστον, τήν τε φωνὴν καὶ τὸν λόγον ἀφαιρούμενον. αὐλείτωσαν οὖν ἔφη Θηβαίων παῖδες· διαλέγεσθαι γὰρ οὐκ ἴσασιν· ἡμῖν δὲ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ὡς οἱ πατέρες λέγουσιν, ἀρχηγέτις Ἀθηνᾶ καὶ πατρῷος Ἀπόλλων ἐστίν, ὧν ἡ μὲν ἔρριψε τὸν αὐλόν, ὁ δὲ καὶ τὸν αὐλητὴν [7] ἐξέδειρε. τοιαῦτα παίζων ἅμα καὶ σπουδάζων ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης αὑτόν τε τοῦ μαθήματος ἀπέστησε καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους. ταχὺ γὰρ διῆλθε λόγος εἰς τοὺς παῖδας, ὡς εὖ ποιῶν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης βδελύττοιτο τὴν αὐλητικὴν καὶ χλευάζοι τοὺς μανθάνοντας. ὅθεν ἐξέπεσε κομιδῇ τῶν ἐλευθερίων διατριβῶν καὶ προεπηλακίσθη παντάπασιν ὁ αὐλός.

[3] [1] Ἐν δὲ ταῖς Ἀντιφῶντος λοιδορίαις (fr. 66 Bl.) γέγραπται, ὅτι παῖς ὢν ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας ἀπέδρα πρὸς Δημοκράτην τινὰ τῶν ἐραστῶν, βουλομένου δ’ αὐτὸν ἐπικηρύττειν Ἀρίφρονος, Περικλῆς οὐκ εἴασεν εἰπών, εἰ μὲν τέθνηκεν, ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ διὰ τὸ κήρυγμα φανεῖσθαι πρότερον, εἰ δὲ σῶς ἐστιν, ἄσωστον αὐτῷ τὸν λοιπὸν βίον ἔσεσθαι, καὶ ὅτι τῶν ἀκολούθων τινὰ κτείνειεν ἐν τῇ Σιβυρτίου παλαίστρᾳ [2] ξύλῳ πατάξας. ἀλλὰ τούτοις μὲν οὐκ ἄξιον ἴσως πιστεύειν, ἅ γε λοιδορεῖσθαί τις αὐτῷ δι’ ἔχθραν ὁμολογῶν εἶπεν.

[4] [1] Ἤδη δὲ πολλῶν καὶ γενναίων ἀθροιζομένων καὶ περιεπόντων, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι καταφανεῖς ἦσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν λαμπρότητα τῆς ὥρας ἐκπεπληγμένοι καὶ θεραπεύοντες, ὁ δὲ Σωκράτους ἔρως μέγα μαρτύριον ἦν τῆς πρὸς ἀρετὴν εὐφυΐας τοῦ παιδός, ἣν ἐμφαινομένην τῷ εἴδει καὶ διαλάμπουσαν ἐνορῶν, φοβούμενος δὲ τὸν πλοῦτον καὶ τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ τὸν προκαταλαμβάνοντα κολακείαις καὶ χάρισιν ἀστῶν καὶ ξένων καὶ συμμάχων ὄχλον, οἷος ἦν ἀμύνειν καὶ μὴ περιορᾶν ὥσπερ φυτὸν ἐν ἄνθει τὸν οἰκεῖον [2] καρπὸν ἀποβάλλον καὶ διαφθεῖρον. οὐδένα γὰρ ἡ τύχη περιέσχεν ἔξωθεν οὐδὲ περιέφραξε τοῖς λεγομένοις ἀγαθοῖς τοσοῦτον ὥστ’ ἄτρωτον ὑπὸ φιλοσοφίας γενέσθαι καὶ λόγοις ἀπρόσιτον παρρησίαν καὶ δηγμὸν ἔχουσιν· ὡς Ἀλκιβιάδης εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς θρυπτόμενος καὶ ἀποκλειόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πρὸς χάριν ἐξομιλούντων εἰσακοῦσαι τοῦ νουθετοῦντος καὶ παιδεύοντος, ὅμως ὑπ’ εὐφυΐας ἐγνώρισε Σωκράτη καὶ προσήκατο, διασχὼν τοὺς πλουσίους καὶ [3] ἐνδόξους ἐραστάς. ταχὺ δὲ ποιησάμενος συνήθη καὶ λόγων ἀκούσας οὐχ ἡδονὴν ἄνανδρον ἐραστοῦ θηρεύοντος οὐδὲ φιλήματα καὶ ψαύσεις προσαιτοῦντος, ἀλλ’ ἐλέγχοντος τὰ σαθρὰ τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ καὶ πιεζοῦντος τὸν κενὸν καὶ ἀνόητον τῦφον,

ἔπτηξ’ ἀλέκτωρ δοῦλος ὣς κλίνας πτερόν (Phryn. fr. 17 N²).

[4] καὶ τὸ μὲν Σωκράτους ἡγήσατο πρᾶγμα τῷ ὄντι θεῶν ὑπηρεσίαν εἰς νέων ἐπιμέλειαν εἶναι καὶ σωτηρίαν, καταφρονῶν δ’ αὐτὸς ἑαυτοῦ, θαυμάζων δ’ ἐκεῖνον, ἀγαπῶν δὲ τὴν φιλοφροσύνην, αἰσχυνόμενος δὲ τὴν ἀρετήν, ἐλάνθανεν εἴδωλον ἔρωτος, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Phaedr. 255d), ἀντέρωτα κτώμενος, ὥστε θαυμάζειν ἅπαντας ὁρῶντας αὐτὸν Σωκράτει μὲν συνδειπνοῦντα καὶ συμπαλαίοντα καὶ συσκηνοῦντα, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις ἐρασταῖς χαλεπὸν ὄντα καὶ δυσχείρωτον, ἐνίοις δὲ καὶ παντάπασι σοβαρῶς προσφερόμενον, ὥσπερ Ἀνύτῳ τῷ Ἀνθεμίωνος.

[5] ἐτύγχανε μὲν γὰρ ἐρῶν τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου, ξένους δέ τινας ἑστιῶν ἐκάλει κἀκεῖνον ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον. ὁ δὲ τὴν μὲν κλῆσιν ἀπείπατο, μεθυσθεὶς δ’ οἴκοι μετὰ τῶν ἑταίρων, ἐκώμασε πρὸς τὸν Ἄνυτον, καὶ ταῖς θύραις ἐπιστὰς τοῦ ἀνδρῶνος καὶ θεασάμενος ἀργυρῶν ἐκπωμάτων καὶ χρυσῶν πλήρεις τὰς τραπέζας, ἐκέλευσε τοὺς παῖδας τὰ ἡμίση λαβόντας οἴκαδε κομίζειν πρὸς ἑαυτόν, εἰσελθεῖν δ’ οὐκ [6] ἠξίωσεν, ἀλλ’ ἀπῆλθε ταῦτα πράξας. τῶν οὖν ξένων δυσχεραινόντων καὶ λεγόντων, ὡς ὑβριστικῶς καὶ ὑπερηφάνως εἴη τῷ Ἀνύτῳ κεχρημένος ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, ἐπιεικῶς μὲν οὖν ὁ Ἄνυτος ἔφη καὶ φιλανθρώπως· ἃ γὰρ ἐξῆν αὐτῷ λαβεῖν ἅπαντα, τούτων ἡμῖν τὰ ἡμίση καταλέλοιπεν.

[5] [1] Οὕτω δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐρασταῖς ἐχρῆτο, πλὴν ἕνα μετοικικὸν ὥς φασιν ἄνθρωπον, οὐ πολλὰ κεκτημένον, ἀποδόμενον δὲ πάντα καὶ τὸ συναχθὲν εἰς ἑκατὸν στατῆρας τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ προσφέροντα καὶ δεόμενον λαβεῖν, γελάσας [2] καὶ ἡσθεὶς ἐκάλεσεν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον. ἑστιάσας δὲ καὶ φιλοφρονηθεὶς τό τε χρυσίον ἀπέδωκεν αὐτῷ καὶ προσέταξε τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ τοὺς ὠνουμένους τὰ τέλη τὰ δημόσια ταῖς τιμαῖς [3] ὑπερβάλλειν ἀντωνούμενον. παραιτουμένου δὲ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου διὰ τὸ πολλῶν ταλάντων εἶναι τὴν ὠνήν, ἠπείλησε μαστιγώσειν εἰ μὴ ταῦτα πράττοι· καὶ γὰρ ἐτύγχανεν [4] ἐγκαλῶν τι τοῖς τελώναις ἴδιον. ἕωθεν οὖν προελθὼν ὁ μέτοικος εἰς ἀγορὰν ἐπέθηκε τῇ ὠνῇ τάλαντον. ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ τελῶναι συστρεφόμενοι καὶ ἀγανακτοῦντες ἐκέλευον ὀνομάζειν ἐγγυητήν, ὡς οὐκ ἂν εὑρόντος, θορυβουμένου τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ ἀναχωροῦντος ἑστὼς ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἄπωθεν πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἐμὲ γράψατε εἶπεν, ἐμὸς φίλος [5] ἐστίν, ἐγγυῶμαι. τοῦτ’ ἀκούσαντες οἱ τελῶναι πάντες ἐξηπορήθησαν. εἰωθότες γὰρ ἀεὶ ταῖς δευτέραις ὠναῖς χρεωλυτεῖν τὰς πρώτας, οὐχ ἑώρων ἀπαλλαγὴν οὖσαν αὑτοῖς τοῦ πράγματος. ἐδέοντο δὴ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου διδόντες ἀργύριον· ὁ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης οὐκ εἴα λαβεῖν ἔλαττον ταλάντου. διδόντων δὲ τὸ τάλαντον ἐκέλευσεν ἀποστῆναι λαβόντα. κἀκεῖνον μὲν οὕτως ὠφέλησεν.

[6] [1] Ὁ δὲ Σωκράτους ἔρως πολλοὺς ἔχων καὶ μεγάλους ἀνταγωνιστὰς πῇ μὲν ἐκράτει τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου, δι’ εὐφυΐαν ἁπτομένων τῶν λόγων αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν καρδίαν στρεφόντων καὶ δάκρυα ἐκχεόντων, ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ τοῖς κόλαξι πολλὰς ἡδονὰς ὑποβάλλουσιν ἐνδιδοὺς ἑαυτόν, ἀπωλίσθανε τοῦ Σωκράτους καὶ δραπετεύων ἀτεχνῶς ἐκυνηγεῖτο, πρὸς μόνον ἐκεῖνον ἔχων τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι καὶ τὸ φοβεῖσθαι, τῶν [2] δ’ ἄλλων ὑπερορῶν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Κλεάνθης (fr. 614 Arn.) ἔλεγε τὸν ἐρώμενον ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ μὲν ἐκ τῶν ὤτων κρατεῖσθαι, τοῖς δ’ ἀντερασταῖς πολλὰς λαβὰς παρέχειν ἀθίκτους ἑαυτῷ, τὴν γαστέρα λέγων καὶ τὰ αἰδοῖα καὶ τὸν λαιμόν· Ἀλκιβιάδης δ’ ἦν μὲν ἀμέλει καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὰς [3] ἀγώγιμος· ἡ γὰρ ὑπὸ Θουκυδίδου (6, 15, 4) λεγομένη παρανομία κατὰ τὸ σῶμα τῆς διαίτης ὑποψίαν τοιαύτην ‹ἐν›δίδωσιν.

[4] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον αὐτοῦ τῆς φιλοτιμίας ἐπιλαμβανόμενοι καὶ τῆς φιλοδοξίας οἱ διαφθείροντες ἐνέβαλλον οὐ καθ’ ὥραν εἰς μεγαλοπραγμοσύνην, ἀναπείθοντες ὡς ὅταν πρῶτον ἄρξηται τὰ δημόσια πράττειν, οὐ μόνον ἀμαυρώσοντα τοὺς ἄλλους στρατηγοὺς καὶ δημαγωγοὺς εὐθύς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν Περικλέους δύναμιν ἐν τοῖς [5] Ἕλλησι καὶ δόξαν ὑπερβαλούμενον. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ σίδηρος ἐν τῷ πυρὶ μαλασσόμενος αὖθις ὑπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ πυκνοῦται καὶ σύνεισι τοῖς μορίοις εἰς ἑαυτόν, οὕτως ἐκεῖνον ὁ Σωκράτης θρύψεως διάπλεων καὶ χαυνότητος ὁσάκις ἀναλάβοι, πιέζων τῷ λόγῳ καὶ συστέλλων ταπεινὸν ἐποίει καὶ ἄτολμον, ἡλίκων ἐνδεής ἐστι καὶ ἀτελὴς πρὸς ἀρετὴν μανθάνοντα.

[7] [1] Τὴν δὲ παιδικὴν ἡλικίαν παραλλάσσων ἐπέστη γραμματοδιδασκαλείῳ καὶ βιβλίον ᾔτησεν Ὁμηρικόν. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ διδασκάλου μηδὲν ἔχειν Ὁμήρου, κονδύλῳ καθικόμενος [2] αὐτοῦ παρῆλθεν. ἑτέρου δὲ φήσαντος ἔχειν Ὅμηρον ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ διωρθωμένον, εἶτα ἔφη γράμματα διδάσκεις Ὅμηρον ἐπανορθοῦν ἱκανὸς ὤν, οὐχὶ τοὺς νέους [3] παιδεύεις; Περικλεῖ δὲ βουλόμενος ἐντυχεῖν, ἐπὶ θύρας ἦλθεν αὐτοῦ. πυθόμενος δὲ μὴ σχολάζειν, ἀλλὰ σκοπεῖν καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ὅπως ἀποδώσει λόγον Ἀθηναίοις, ἀπιὼν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, εἶτα ἔφη βέλτιον οὐκ ἦν σκοπεῖν αὐτὸν ὅπως οὐκ ἀποδώσει [λόγον Ἀθηναίοις];

Ἔτι δὲ μειράκιον ὢν ἐστρατεύσατο τὴν εἰς Ποτείδαιαν στρατείαν, καὶ Σωκράτη σύσκηνον εἶχε καὶ παραστάτην [4] ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσιν. ἰσχυρᾶς δὲ γενομένης μάχης ἠρίστευσαν μὲν ἀμφότεροι, τοῦ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδου τραύματι περιπεσόντος ὁ Σωκράτης προέστη καὶ ἤμυνε, καὶ μάλιστα δὴ προδήλως [5] ἔσωσεν αὐτὸν μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων. ἐγίνετο μὲν οὖν τῷ δικαιοτάτῳ λόγῳ Σωκράτους τὸ ἀριστεῖον· ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ στρατηγοὶ διὰ τὸ ἀξίωμα τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ σπουδάζοντες ἐφαίνοντο περιθεῖναι τὴν δόξαν, ὁ Σωκράτης βουλόμενος αὔξεσθαι τὸ φιλότιμον ἐν τοῖς καλοῖς αὐτοῦ, πρῶτος ἐμαρτύρει καὶ παρεκάλει στεφανοῦν ἐκεῖνον καὶ διδόναι τὴν [6] πανοπλίαν. ἔτι δὲ τῆς ἐπὶ Δηλίῳ μάχης γενομένης καὶ φευγόντων τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ἔχων ἵππον ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, τοῦ δὲ Σωκράτους πεζῇ μετ’ ὀλίγων ἀποχωροῦντος, οὐ παρήλασεν ἰδών, ἀλλὰ παρέπεμψε καὶ περιήμυνεν, ἐπικειμένων τῶν πολεμίων καὶ πολλοὺς ἀναιρούντων. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ὕστερον ἐπράχθη.

[8] [1] Ἱππονίκῳ δὲ τῷ Καλλίου πατρί, καὶ δόξαν ἔχοντι μεγάλην καὶ δύναμιν ἀπὸ πλούτου καὶ γένους, ἐνέτριψε κόνδυλον, οὐχ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἢ διαφορᾶς τινος προαχθείς, [2] ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ γέλωτι συνθέμενος πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους. περιβοήτου δὲ τῆς ἀσελγείας ἐν τῇ πόλει γενομένης, καὶ συναγανακτούντων ὥσπερ εἰκὸς ἁπάντων, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ παρῆν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ Ἱππονίκου, καὶ τὴν θύραν κόψας εἰσῆλθε πρὸς αὐτόν, καὶ θεὶς τὸ ἱμάτιον παρεδίδου τὸ [3] σῶμα, μαστιγοῦν καὶ κολάζειν κελεύων. ὁ δὲ συνέγνω καὶ τὴν ὀργὴν ἀφῆκεν, ὕστερον δὲ τῆς θυγατρὸς Ἱππαρέτης ἐποιήσατο νυμφίον. ἔνιοι δέ φασιν οὐχ Ἱππόνικον, ἀλλὰ Καλλίαν, τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ, δοῦναι τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ τὴν Ἱππαρέτην ἐπὶ δέκα ταλάντοις· εἶτα μέντοι τεκούσης ἄλλα πάλιν δέκα προσεισπρᾶξαι τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην, ὡς τοῦτο [4] συνθέμενον εἰ γένοιντο παῖδες. ὁ δὲ Καλλίας ἐπιβουλὴν δεδοικὼς προσῆλθε τῷ δήμῳ, τὰ χρήματα διδοὺς καὶ τὸν οἶκον, ἄνπερ αὐτῷ συμπέσῃ μὴ καταλιπόντι γενεὰν ἀποθανεῖν. εὔτακτος δ’ οὖσα καὶ φίλανδρος ἡ Ἱππαρέτη, λυπουμένη δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸν γάμον, ἑταίραις ξέναις καὶ ἀσταῖς συνόντος, ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας ἀπιοῦσα πρὸς τὸν [5] ἀδελφὸν ᾤχετο. τοῦ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδου μὴ φροντίζοντος, ἀλλ’ ἐντρυφῶντος, ἔδει τὸ τῆς ἀπολείψεως γράμμα παρὰ τῷ ἄρχοντι θέσθαι μὴ δι’ ἑτέρων, ἀλλ’ αὐτὴν παροῦσαν. ὡς οὖν παρῆν τοῦτο πράξουσα κατὰ τὸν νόμον, ἐπελθὼν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης καὶ συναρπάσας αὐτὴν ἀπῆλθε δι’ ἀγορᾶς οἴκαδε κομίζων, μηδενὸς ἐναντιωθῆναι [6] μηδ’ ἀφελέσθαι τολμήσαντος. ἔμεινε μέντοι παρ’ αὐτῷ μέχρι τελευτῆς, ἐτελεύτησε δὲ μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον εἰς Ἔφεσον τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου πλεύσαντος. αὕτη μὲν οὖν οὐ παντελῶς ἔδοξεν ἡ βία παράνομος οὐδ’ ἀπάνθρωπος εἶναι· καὶ γὰρ ὁ νόμος δοκεῖ διὰ τοῦτο προάγειν τὴν ἀπολιποῦσαν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον αὐτήν, ὅπως ἐγγένηται τῷ ἀνδρὶ συμβῆναι καὶ κατασχεῖν.

[9] [1] Ὄντος δὲ κυνὸς αὐτῷ θαυμαστοῦ τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ εἶδος, ὃν ἑβδομήκοντα μνῶν ἐωνημένος ἐτύγχανεν, [2] ἀπέκοψε τὴν οὐρὰν πάγκαλον οὖσαν. ἐπιτιμώντων δὲ τῶν συνήθων καὶ λεγόντων ὅτι πάντες ἐπὶ τῷ κυνὶ δάκνονται καὶ λοιδοροῦσιν αὐτόν, ἐπιγελάσας· γίνεται τοίνυν εἶπεν ὃ βούλομαι· βούλομαι γὰρ Ἀθηναίους τοῦτο λαλεῖν, ἵνα μή τι χεῖρον περὶ ἐμοῦ λέγωσι.

[10] [1] Πρώτην δ’ αὐτῷ πάροδον εἰς τὸ δημόσιον γενέσθαι λέγουσι μετὰ χρημάτων ἐπιδόσεως, οὐκ ἐκ παρασκευῆς, ἀλλὰ παριόντα θορυβούντων τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐρέσθαι τὴν αἰτίαν τοῦ θορύβου, πυθόμενον δὲ χρημάτων ἐπίδοσιν γίνεσθαι, παρελθεῖν καὶ ἐπιδοῦναι. τοῦ δὲ δήμου κροτοῦντος καὶ βοῶντος ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς, ἐπιλαθέσθαι τοῦ ὄρτυγος [2] ὃν ἐτύγχανεν ἔχων ἐν τῷ ἱματίῳ. πτοηθέντος οὖν καὶ διαφυγόντος, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐκβοῆσαι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, πολλοὺς δὲ συνθηρᾶν ἀναστάντας, λαβεῖν δ’ αὐτὸν Ἀντίοχον τὸν κυβερνήτην καὶ ἀποδοῦναι· διὸ προσφιλέστατον τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ γενέσθαι.

[3] Μεγάλας δ’ αὐτῷ κλισιάδας ἐπὶ τὴν πολιτείαν ἀνοίγοντος τοῦ τε γένους καὶ τοῦ πλούτου τῆς τε περὶ τὰς μάχας ἀνδραγαθίας, φίλων τε πολλῶν καὶ οἰκείων ὑπαρχόντων, ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ἠξίου μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς τοῦ λόγου χάριτος [4] ἰσχύειν ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς. καὶ ὅτι μὲν δυνατὸς ἦν εἰπεῖν, οἵ τε κωμικοὶ μαρτυροῦσι καὶ τῶν ῥητόρων ὁ δυνατώτατος, ἐν τῷ κατὰ Μειδίου (Demosth. 21, 145) λέγων τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην καὶ δεινότατον εἰπεῖν γενέσθαι πρὸς τοῖς ἄλλοις. εἰ δὲ Θεοφράστῳ (fr. 134 W.) πιστεύομεν, ἀνδρὶ φιληκόῳ καὶ ἱστορικῷ παρ’ ὁντινοῦν τῶν φιλοσόφων, εὑρεῖν μὲν ἦν τὰ δέοντα καὶ νοῆσαι πάντων ἱκανώτατος ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, ζητῶν δὲ μὴ μόνον ἃ δεῖ λέγειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὡς δεῖ τοῖς ὀνόμασι καὶ τοῖς ῥήμασιν, οὐκ εὐπορῶν δέ, πολλάκις ἐσφάλλετο καὶ μεταξὺ λέγων ἀπεσιώπα καὶ διέλειπε λέξεως διαφυγούσης, αὑτὸν ἀναλαμβάνων καὶ διασκοπούμενος.

[11] [1] Αἱ δ’ ἱπποτροφίαι περιβόητοι μὲν ἐγένοντο καὶ τῷ πλήθει τῶν ἁρμάτων· ἑπτὰ γὰρ ἄλλος οὐδεὶς καθῆκεν [2] Ὀλυμπίασιν ἰδιώτης οὐδὲ βασιλεύς, μόνος δ’ ἐκεῖνος, καὶ τὸ νικῆσαι καὶ δεύτερον γενέσθαι καὶ τέταρτον ὡς Θουκυδίδης (6, 16) φησίν, ὡς δ’ Εὐριπίδης τρίτον, ὑπερβάλλει λαμπρότητι καὶ δόξῃ πᾶσαν τὴν ἐν τούτοις φιλοτιμίαν.

[3] λέγει δ’ ὁ Εὐριπίδης (fg. 3 D.) ἐν τῷ ᾄσματι ταῦτα· σὲ δ’ ἀείσομαι ὦ Κλεινίου παῖ. καλὸν ἁ νίκα· κάλλιστον δ’, ὃ μηδεὶς ἄλλος Ἑλλάνων, ἅρματι πρῶτα δραμεῖν καὶ δεύτερα καὶ τρίτα, βῆναί τ’ ἀπονητὶ δὶς στεφθέντ’ ἐλαίᾳ κάρυκι βοὰν παραδοῦναι.

[12] [1] Τοῦτο μέντοι τὸ λαμπρὸν ἐπιφανέστερον ἐποίησεν ἡ τῶν πόλεων φιλοτιμία. σκηνὴν μὲν γὰρ αὐτῷ κεκοσμημένην διαπρεπῶς ἔστησαν Ἐφέσιοι, τροφὰς δ’ ἵπποις καὶ πλῆθος ἱερείων παρεῖχεν ἡ Χίων πόλις, οἶνον δὲ Λέσβιοι καὶ [2] τὴν ἄλλην ὑποδοχὴν ἀφειδῶς ἑστιῶντι πολλούς. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ διαβολή τις ἢ κακοήθεια γενομένη περὶ τὴν [3] φιλοτιμίαν ἐκείνην πλείονα λόγον παρέσχε. λέγεται γάρ, ὡς ἦν Ἀθήνησι Διομήδης, ἀνὴρ οὐ πονηρός, Ἀλκιβιάδου δὲ φίλος, ἐπιθυμῶν δὲ νίκην Ὀλυμπικὴν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι, καὶ πυνθανόμενος ἅρμα δημόσιον Ἀργείοις εἶναι, τὸν δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδην εἰδὼς ἐν Ἄργει μέγα δυνάμενον καὶ φίλους ἔχοντα πολλούς, ἔπεισεν αὐτῷ πρίασθαι τὸ ἅρμα. πριάμενος δ’ ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἴδιον ἀπεγράψατο, τὸν δὲ Διομήδην χαίρειν εἴασε, χαλεπῶς φέροντα καὶ μαρτυρόμενον θεοὺς καὶ ἀνθρώπους. φαίνεται δὲ καὶ δίκη συστᾶσα περὶ τούτου, καὶ λόγος Ἰσοκράτει (Isocr. 16) γέγραπται περὶ τοῦ ζεύγους ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου παιδός, ἐν ᾧ Τεισίας ἐστίν, οὐ Διομήδης, ὁ δικασάμενος.

[13] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀφῆκεν αὑτὸν εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν ἔτι μειράκιον ὤν, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους εὐθὺς ἐταπείνωσε δημαγωγούς, ἀγῶνα δ’ εἶχε πρός τε Φαίακα τὸν Ἐρασιστράτου καὶ Νικίαν τὸν Νικηράτου, τὸν μὲν ἤδη καθ’ ἡλικίαν προήκοντα καὶ στρατηγὸν ἄριστον εἶναι δοκοῦντα, Φαίακα δ’ ἀρχόμενον ὥσπερ αὐτὸς αὐξάνεσθαι τότε καὶ γνωρίμων ὄντα πατέρων, ἐλαττούμενον δὲ τοῖς τ’ ἄλλοις καὶ [2] περὶ τὸν λόγον. ἐντευκτικὸς γὰρ ἰδίᾳ καὶ πιθανὸς ἐδόκει μᾶλλον ἢ φέρειν ἀγῶνας ἐν δήμῳ δυνατός. ἦν γάρ, ὡς Εὔπολίς (fr. 95 CAF I 281) φησι,

λαλεῖν ἄριστος, ἀδυνατώτατος λέγειν.

[3] φέρεται δὲ καὶ λόγος τις κατ’ Ἀλκιβιάδου Φαίακος ἐπιγεγραμμένος, ἐν ᾧ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων γέγραπται καὶ ὅτι τῆς πόλεως πολλὰ πομπεῖα χρυσᾶ καὶ ἀργυρᾶ κεκτημένης, ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐχρῆτο πᾶσιν αὐτοῖς ὥσπερ ἰδίοις πρὸς τὴν καθ’ ἡμέραν δίαιταν.

[4] Ἦν δέ τις Ὑπέρβολος Περιθοΐδης, οὗ μέμνηται μὲν ὡς ἀνθρώπου πονηροῦ καὶ Θουκυδίδης (8, 73, 3), τοῖς δὲ κωμικοῖς ὁμοῦ τι πᾶσι διατριβὴν ἀεὶ σκωπτόμενος ἐν [5] τοῖς θεάτροις παρεῖχεν. ἄτρεπτος δὲ πρὸς τὸ κακῶς ἀκούειν καὶ ἀπαθὴς ὢν ὀλιγωρίᾳ δόξης, ἣν ἀναισχυντίαν καὶ ἀπόνοιαν οὖσαν εὐτολμίαν ἔνιοι καὶ ἀνδρείαν καλοῦσιν, οὐδενὶ μὲν ἤρεσκεν, ἐχρῆτο δ’ αὐτῷ πολλάκις ὁ δῆμος ἐπιθυμῶν προπηλακίζειν τοὺς ἐν ἀξιώματι καὶ [6] συκοφαντεῖν. ἀναπεισθεὶς οὖν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τότε τὸ ὄστρακον ἐπιφέρειν ἔμελλεν, ᾧ κολούοντες ἀεὶ τὸν προὔχοντα δόξῃ καὶ δυνάμει τῶν πολιτῶν ἐλαύνουσι, παραμυθούμενοι [7] τὸν φθόνον μᾶλλον ἢ τὸν φόβον. ἐπεὶ δὲ δῆλον ἦν ὅτι ἑνὶ τῶν τριῶν τὸ ὄστρακον ἐποίσουσι, συνήγαγε τὰς στάσεις εἰς ταὐτὸν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, καὶ διαλεχθεὶς πρὸς τὸν Νικίαν τῷ Ὑπερβόλῳ περικάτω τὴν ὀστρακοφορίαν ἔτρεψεν.

[8] ὡς δ’ ἔνιοί φασιν, οὐ πρὸς Νικίαν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς Φαίακα διαλεχθεὶς καὶ τὴν ἐκείνου προσλαβὼν ἑταιρίαν, ἐξήλασε [9] τὸν Ὑπέρβολον οὐκ ἂν προσδοκήσαντα. φαῦλος γὰρ οὐδεὶς ἐνέπιπτεν εἰς τοῦτον τὸν κολασμὸν οὐδ’ ἄδοξος, ὥς που καὶ Πλάτων ὁ κωμικὸς (fr. 187 CAF I 654) εἴρηκε τοῦ Ὑπερβόλου μνησθείς·

καίτοι πέπραγε τῶν τρόπων μὲν ἄξια,

αὑτοῦ δὲ καὶ τῶν στιγμάτων ἀνάξια.

οὐ γὰρ τοιούτων εἵνεκ’ ὄστραχ’ εὑρέθη.

περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων ἐν ἑτέροις μᾶλλον εἴρηται τὰ ἱστορούμενα.

[14] [1] Τὸν δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδην ὁ Νικίας οὐχ ἧττον ἠνία θαυμαζόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ἢ τιμώμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν. πρόξενος μὲν γὰρ ἦν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, καὶ τοὺς ἁλόντας αὐτῶν περὶ Πύλον ἄνδρας ἐθεράπευσεν· [2] ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐκεῖνοί τε διὰ Νικίου μάλιστα τῆς εἰρήνης τυχόντες καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀπολαβόντες ὑπερηγάπων αὐτόν, ἔν τε τοῖς Ἕλλησι λόγος ἦν, ὡς Περικλέους μὲν συνάψαντος αὐτοῖς, Νικίου δὲ λύσαντος τὸν πόλεμον, οἵ τε πλεῖστοι τὴν εἰρήνην Νικίειον ὠνόμαζον, οὐ μετρίως ἀνιώμενος [3] ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης καὶ φθονῶν ἐβούλευε σύγχυσιν ὁρκίων. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν Ἀργείους αἰσθανόμενος μίσει καὶ φόβῳ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ζητοῦντας ἀποστροφήν, ἐλπίδας αὐτοῖς ἐνεδίδου κρύφα τῆς Ἀθηναίων συμμαχίας, καὶ παρεθάρρυνε πέμπων καὶ διαλεγόμενος τοῖς προεστῶσι τοῦ δήμου μὴ δεδιέναι μηδ’ ὑπείκειν Λακεδαιμονίοις, ἀλλὰ πρὸς Ἀθηναίους τρέπεσθαι καὶ περιμένειν, ὅσον οὐδέπω [4] μεταμελομένους καὶ τὴν εἰρήνην ἀφιέντας. ἐπεὶ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι πρός τε τοὺς Βοιωτοὺς ἐποιήσαντο συμμαχίαν, καὶ Πάνακτον οὐχ ἑστὼς ὥσπερ ἔδει τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις παρέδωκαν, ἀλλὰ καταλύσαντες, ὀργιζομένους λαβὼν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐξετράχυνε, καὶ τὸν Νικίαν ἐθορύβει καὶ διέβαλλεν εἰκότα κατηγορῶν, ὅτι τοὺς ἐν Σφακτηρίᾳ τῶν πολεμίων ἀποληφθέντας αὐτὸς μὲν ἐξελεῖν οὐκ ἠθέλησε στρατηγῶν, ἑτέρων δ’ ἐξελόντων ἀφῆκε καὶ ἀπέδωκε χαριζόμενος Λακεδαιμονίοις· [5] εἶτ’ ἐκείνους μὲν οὐκ ἔπεισε φίλος ὢν Βοιωτοῖς μὴ συνόμνυσθαι μηδὲ Κορινθίοις, Ἀθηναίοις δὲ κωλύει καὶ τὸν βουλόμενον τῶν Ἑλλήνων φίλον εἶναι καὶ σύμμαχον, εἰ [6] μὴ δόξειε Λακεδαιμονίοις. ἐκ δὲ τούτου κακῶς φερομένῳ τῷ Νικίᾳ παρῆσαν ὥσπερ κατὰ τύχην πρέσβεις ἀπὸ τῆς Λακεδαίμονος, αὐτόθεν τε λόγους ἐπιεικεῖς ἔχοντες καὶ πρὸς πᾶν τὸ συμβατικὸν καὶ δίκαιον αὐτοκράτορες ἥκειν [7] φάσκοντες. ἀποδεξαμένης δὲ τῆς βουλῆς, τοῦ δὲ δήμου τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ μέλλοντος ἐκκλησιάζειν, δείσας ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης διεπράξατο τοὺς πρέσβεις ἐν λόγοις γενέσθαι πρὸς [8] αὐτόν. ὡς δὲ συνῆλθον, ἔλεγε· τί πεπόνθατε ἄνδρες Σπαρτιᾶται; πῶς ἔλαθεν ὑμᾶς, ὅτι τὰ τῆς βουλῆς ἀεὶ μέτρια καὶ φιλάνθρωπα πρὸς τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντάς ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ δῆμος μέγα φρονεῖ καὶ μεγάλων ὀρέγεται; κἂν φάσκητε κύριοι πάντων ἀφῖχθαι, προστάττων καὶ βιαζόμενος [9] ἀγνωμονήσει. φέρε δὴ τὴν εὐήθειαν ταύτην ἀφέντες, εἰ βούλεσθε χρήσασθαι μετρίοις ‹τοῖς› Ἀθηναίοις καὶ μηδὲν ἐκβιασθῆναι παρὰ γνώμην, οὕτω διαλέγεσθε περὶ τῶν δικαίων ὡς οὐκ ὄντες αὐτοκράτορες. συμπράξομεν δ’ [10] ἡμεῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις χαριζόμενοι. ταῦτα δ’ εἰπὼν ὅρκους ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς καὶ μετέστησεν ἀπὸ τοῦ Νικίου, παντάπασι πιστεύοντας αὐτῷ καὶ θαυμάζοντας ἅμα τὴν δεινότητα καὶ [11] τὴν σύνεσιν, ὡς οὐ τοῦ τυχόντος ἀνδρὸς οὖσαν. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ συνήχθη μὲν ὁ δῆμος, εἰσῆλθον δ’ οἱ πρέσβεις. ἐρωτώμενοι δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου πάνυ φιλανθρώπως, ἐφ’ οἷς ἀφιγμένοι τυγχάνουσιν, οὐκ ἔφασαν ἥκειν αὐτοκράτορες.

[12] εὐθὺς οὖν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐνέκειτο μετὰ κραυγῆς καὶ ὀργῆς, ὥσπερ οὐκ ἀδικῶν, ἀλλ’ ἀδικούμενος, ἀπίστους καὶ παλιμβόλους ἀποκαλῶν καὶ μηδὲν ὑγιὲς μήτε πρᾶξαι μήτ’ εἰπεῖν ἥκοντας, ἐπηγανάκτει δ’ ἡ βουλὴ καὶ ὁ δῆμος ἐχαλέπαινε, τὸν δὲ Νικίαν ἔκπληξις εἶχε καὶ κατήφεια τῶν ἀνδρῶν τῆς μεταβολῆς, ἀγνοοῦντα τὴν ἀπάτην καὶ τὸν δόλον.

[15] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἐκπεσόντων, στρατηγὸς ἀποδειχθεὶς ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης εὐθὺς Ἀργείους καὶ Μαντινεῖς καὶ Ἠλείους συμμάχους ἐποίησε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις.

[2] καὶ τὸν μὲν τρόπον οὐδεὶς τῆς πράξεως ἐπῄνει, μέγα δ’ ἦν τὸ πεπραγμένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, διαστῆσαι καὶ κραδᾶναι Πελοπόννησον ὀλίγου δεῖν ἅπασαν, καὶ τοσαύτας ἀσπίδας ἐν ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ περὶ Μαντίνειαν ἀντιτάξαι Λακεδαιμονίοις, καὶ πορρωτάτω τῶν Ἀθηνῶν ἀγῶνα κατασκευάσαι καὶ κίνδυνον αὐτοῖς, ἐν ᾧ μέγα μὲν οὐδὲν ἡ νίκη προσέθηκε κρατήσασιν, εἰ δ’ ἐσφάλησαν, ἔργον ἦν [3] τὴν Λακεδαίμονα περιγενέσθαι. μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην εὐθὺς ἐπέθεντο καταλύειν ἐν Ἄργει τὸν δῆμον οἱ χίλιοι καὶ τὴν πόλιν ὑπήκοον ποιεῖν Λακεδαιμονίοις· οἱ δὲ παραγενόμενοι [4] κατέλυσαν τὴν δημοκρατίαν. αὖθις δὲ τῶν πολλῶν ἐξενεγκαμένων τὰ ὅπλα καὶ κρατησάντων, ἐπελθὼν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης τήν τε νίκην ἐβεβαίωσε τῷ δήμῳ, καὶ τὰ μακρὰ τείχη συνέπεισε καθεῖναι καὶ προσμείξαντας τῇ θαλάσσῃ τὴν πόλιν ἐξάψαι παντάπασι τῆς Ἀθηναίων δυνάμεως, [5] καὶ τέκτονας καὶ λιθουργοὺς ἐκ τῶν Ἀθηνῶν ἐκόμισε καὶ πᾶσαν ἐνεδείκνυτο προθυμίαν, οὐχ ἧττον ἑαυτῷ [6] κτώμενος ἢ τῇ πόλει χάριν καὶ ἰσχύν. ἔπεισε δὲ καὶ Πατρεῖς ὁμοίως τείχεσι μακροῖς συνάψαι τῇ θαλάσσῃ τὴν πόλιν. εἰπόντος δέ τινος τοῖς Πατρεῦσιν ὅτι καταπιοῦνται ὑμᾶς Ἀθηναῖοι· ἴσως εἶπεν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης κατὰ μικρὸν καὶ κατὰ τοὺς πόδας, Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ κατὰ τὴν [7] κεφαλὴν καὶ ἀθρόως. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς γῆς συνεβούλευεν ἀντέχεσθαι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις καὶ τὸν ἐν Ἀγραύλου προβαλλόμενον ἀεὶ τοῖς ἐφήβοις ὅρκον ἔργῳ βεβαιοῦν.

[8] ὀμνύουσι γὰρ ὅροις χρήσεσθαι τῆς Ἀττικῆς πυροῖς κριθαῖς ἀμπέλοις σύκαις ἐλαίαις, οἰκείαν ποιεῖσθαι διδασκόμενοι τὴν ἥμερον καὶ καρποφόρον.

[16] [1] Ἐν δὲ τοῖς τοιούτοις πολιτεύμασι καὶ λόγοις καὶ φρονήματι καὶ δεινότητι πολλὴν αὖ πάλιν τὴν τρυφὴν τῆς διαίτης καὶ περὶ πότους καὶ ἔρωτας ὑβρίσματα, καὶ θηλύτητας ἐσθήτων ἁλουργῶν ἑλκομένων δι’ ἀγορᾶς, καὶ πολυτέλειαν ὑπερήφανον, ἐκτομάς τε καταστρωμάτων ἐν ταῖς τριήρεσιν, ὅπως μαλακώτερον ἐγκαθεύδοι, κειρίαις, ἀλλὰ μὴ σανίσι, τῶν στρωμάτων ἐπιβαλλομένων, ἀσπίδος τε διαχρύσου ποίησιν οὐδὲν ἐπίσημον τῶν πατρίων ἔχουσαν, [2] ἀλλ’ Ἔρωτα κεραυνοφόρον [ἅπερ] ὁρῶντες, οἱ μὲν ἔνδοξοι μετὰ τοῦ βδελύττεσθαι καὶ δυσχεραίνειν ἐφοβοῦντο τὴν ὀλιγωρίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ παρανομίαν ὡς τυραννικὰ καὶ ἀλλόκοτα, τοῦ δὲ δήμου τὸ πάθος τὸ πρὸς αὐτὸν οὐ κακῶς ἐξηγούμενος ὁ Ἀριστοφάνης ταῦτ’ εἴρηκε (ran. 1425)·

[3] ποθεῖ μέν, ἐχθαίρει δέ, βούλεται δ’ ἔχειν,

ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον τῇ ὑπονοίᾳ πιέζων (ran. 1432)·

μάλιστα μὲν λέοντα μὴ ‘ν πόλει τρέφειν·

ἢν δ’ ἐκτρέφῃ τις, τοῖς τρόποις ὑπηρετεῖν.

[4] ἐπιδόσεις γὰρ καὶ χορηγίαι καὶ φιλοτιμήματα πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ὑπερβολὴν μὴ ἀπολείποντα καὶ δόξα προγόνων καὶ λόγου δύναμις καὶ σώματος εὐπρέπεια καὶ ῥώμη μετ’ ἐμπειρίας τῶν πολεμικῶν καὶ ἀλκῆς πάντα τἆλλα συγχωρεῖν ἐποίει καὶ φέρειν μετρίως τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ἀεὶ τὰ πρᾳότατα τῶν ὀνομάτων τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι [5] τιθεμένους, παιδιὰς καὶ φιλοτιμίας. οἷον ἦν καὶ τὸ Ἀγάθαρχον εἷρξαι τὸν ζωγράφον, εἶτα γράψαντα τὴν οἰκίαν ἀφεῖναι δωρησάμενον· καὶ Ταυρέαν ἀντιχορηγοῦντα ῥαπίσαι, φιλοτιμούμενον ὑπὲρ τῆς νίκης· καὶ τὸ Μηλίαν γυναῖκα ἐκ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων ἐξελόμενον καὶ συνόντα θρέψαι [6] παιδάριον ἐξ αὐτῆς. καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο φιλάνθρωπον ἐκάλουν, πλὴν ὅτι ‹τοῦ› τοὺς Μηλίους ἡβηδὸν ἀποσφαγῆναι [7] τὴν πλείστην αἰτίαν ἔσχε, τῷ ψηφίσματι συνειπών. Ἀριστοφῶντος δὲ Νεμέαν γράψαντος ἐν ταῖς ἀγκάλαις αὑτῆς καθήμενον Ἀλκιβιάδην ἔχουσαν, ἐθεῶντο καὶ συνέτρεχον χαίροντες· οἱ δὲ πρεσβύτεροι καὶ τούτοις ἐδυσχέραινον [8] ὡς τυραννικοῖς καὶ παρανόμοις. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ Ἀρχέστρατος οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου λέγειν, ὡς ἡ Ἑλλὰς οὐκ ἂν ἤνεγκε δύο [9] Ἀλκιβιάδας. ἐπεὶ δὲ Τίμων ὁ μισάνθρωπος εὐημερήσαντα τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην καὶ προπεμπόμενον ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἐπιφανῶς οὐ παρῆλθεν οὐδ’ ἐξέκλινεν, ὥσπερ εἰώθει τοὺς ἄλλους, ἀλλ’ ἀπαντήσας καὶ δεξιωσάμενος εὖ γε ἔφη ποιεῖς αὐξόμενος ὦ παῖ· μέγα γὰρ αὔξει κακὸν ἅπασι τούτοις, οἱ μὲν ἐγέλων, οἱ δ’ ἐβλασφήμουν, ἐνίους δὲ καὶ πάνυ τὸ λεχθὲν ἐπέστρεφεν. οὕτως ἄκριτος ἦν ἡ δόξα περὶ αὐτοῦ διὰ τὴν τῆς φύσεως ἀνωμαλίαν.

[17] [1] Σικελίας δὲ καὶ Περικλέους ἔτι ζῶντος ἐπεθύμουν Ἀθηναῖοι, καὶ τελευτήσαντος ἥπτοντο, καὶ τὰς λεγομένας βοηθείας καὶ συμμαχίας ἔπεμπον ἑκάστοτε τοῖς ἀδικουμένοις ὑπὸ Συρακουσίων, ἐπιβάθρας τῆς μείζονος στρατείας [2] τιθέντες. ὁ δὲ παντάπασι τὸν ἔρωτα τοῦτον ἀναφλέξας αὐτῶν καὶ πείσας μὴ κατὰ μέρος μηδὲ κατὰ μικρὸν, ἀλλὰ μεγάλῳ στόλῳ πλεύσαντας ἐπιχειρεῖν καὶ καταστρέφεσθαι τὴν νῆσον Ἀλκιβιάδης ἦν, τόν τε δῆμον ἐλπίζειν μεγάλα πείσας, αὐτός τε μειζόνων ὀρεγόμενος. ἀρχὴν γὰρ εἶναι πρὸς ἃ ἠλπίκει διενοεῖτο τῆς στρατείας, οὐ τέλος ὥσπερ οἱ λοιποί, [3] Σικελίαν. καὶ Νικίας μὲν ὡς χαλεπὸν ἔργον ὂν τὰς Συρακούσας ἑλεῖν ἀπέτρεπε τὸν δῆμον, Ἀλκιβιάδης δὲ καὶ Καρχηδόνα καὶ Λιβύην ὀνειροπολῶν, ἐκ δὲ τούτων προσγενομένων Ἰταλίαν καὶ Πελοπόννησον ἤδη περιβαλλόμενος, ὀλίγου δεῖν ἐφόδιον τοῦ πολέμου Σικελίαν ἐποιεῖτο.

[4] καὶ τοὺς μὲν νέους αὐτόθεν εἶχεν ἤδη ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἐπηρμένους, τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων ἠκροῶντο πολλὰ θαυμάσια περὶ τῆς στρατείας περαινόντων, ὥστε πολλοὺς ἐν ταῖς παλαίστραις καὶ τοῖς ἡμικυκλίοις καθέζεσθαι τῆς τε νήσου τὸ σχῆμα καὶ θέσιν Λιβύης καὶ Καρχηδόνος ὑπογράφοντας.

[5] Σωκράτην μέντοι τὸν φιλόσοφον καὶ Μέτωνα τὸν ἀστρολόγον οὐδὲν ἐλπίσαι τῇ πόλει χρηστὸν ἀπὸ τῆς στρατείας ἐκείνης λέγουσιν, ᾧ μὲν ὡς ἔοικε τοῦ συνήθους δαιμονίου γενομένου καὶ προσημαίνοντος, ὁ δὲ Μέτων εἴτε δείσας ἐκ λογισμοῦ τὸ μέλλον, εἴτε μαντικῆς τινι τρόπῳ χρησάμενος, ἐσκήψατο μεμηνέναι, καὶ λαβὼν δᾷδα καιομένην [6] οἷος ἦν αὑτοῦ τὴν οἰκίαν ὑφάπτειν. ἔνιοι δέ φασι προσποίημα μὲν μανίας μηδὲν ἐσκευάσθαι τὸν Μέτωνα, καταπρῆσαι δὲ τὴν οἰκίαν νύκτωρ, εἶθ’ ἕωθεν προελθόντα δεῖσθαι καὶ ἀντιβολεῖν ἐπὶ συμφορᾷ τηλικαύτῃ τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῷ παρεθῆναι τῆς στρατείας. ἐκεῖνος μὲν οὖν ἔτυχεν ὧν ἠξίου, παρακρουσάμενος τοὺς πολίτας.

[18] [1] Ὁ δὲ Νικίας ἄκων μὲν ᾑρέθη στρατηγός, οὐχ ἥιστα τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ διὰ τὸν συνάρχοντα φεύγων· ἐφαίνετο γὰρ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις τὰ τοῦ πολέμου βέλτιον ἕξειν μὴ προιεμένοις τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ἄκρατον, ἀλλὰ μειχθείσης πρὸς [2] τὴν τόλμαν αὐτοῦ τῆς Νικίου προνοίας· καὶ γὰρ ὁ τρίτος στρατηγὸς ὁ Λάμαχος ἡλικίᾳ προήκων ὅμως ἐδόκει μηδὲν ἧττον εἶναι τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου διάπυρος καὶ φιλοκίνδυνος ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι. βουλευομένων δὲ περὶ πλήθους καὶ τρόπου παρασκευῆς, ἐπεχείρησεν αὖθις ὁ Νικίας ἐνίστασθαι καὶ [3] καταπαύειν τὸν πόλεμον. ἀντειπόντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ κρατήσαντος, ἔγραψε τῶν ῥητόρων Δημόστρατος καὶ εἶπεν ὡς χρὴ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς αὐτοκράτορας εἶναι καὶ [4] τῆς παρασκευῆς καὶ τοῦ πολέμου παντός. ἐπιψηφισαμένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου καὶ γενομένων ἑτοίμων πάντων πρὸς [5] τὸν ἔκπλουν, οὐ χρηστὰ παρῆν οὐδὲ τὰ τῆς ἑορτῆς. Ἀδωνίων γὰρ εἰς τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας καθηκόντων, εἴδωλά τε πολλαχοῦ νεκροῖς ἐκκομιζομένοις ὅμοια προὔκειντο ταῖς γυναιξί, καὶ ταφὰς ἐμιμοῦντο κοπτόμεναι καὶ θρήνους [6] ᾖδον. ἡ μέντοι τῶν Ἑρμῶν περικοπή, μιᾷ νυκτὶ τῶν πλείστων ἀκρωτηριασθέντων τὰ πρόσωπα, πολλοὺς καὶ τῶν [7] περιφρονούντων τὰ τοιαῦτα διετάραξεν. ἐλέχθη μὲν οὖν, ὅτι Κορίνθιοι διὰ τοὺς Συρακουσίους ἀποίκους ὄντας, ὡς ἐπισχέσεως ἐσομένης πρὸς τὸν οἰωνὸν ἢ μεταγνώσεως τοῦ [8] πολέμου, ταῦτα δράσειαν. οὐ μὴν ἥπτετό γε τῶν πολλῶν οὔθ’ οὗτος ὁ λόγος οὔθ’ ὁ τῶν σημεῖον δεινὸν εἶναι μηδὲν οἰομένων, ἀλλ’ οἷα φιλεῖ φέρειν ἄκρατος ἀκολάστων νέων εἰς ὕβριν ἐκ παιδιᾶς ὑποφερομένων· ὀργῇ δ’ ἅμα καὶ φόβῳ τὸ γεγονὸς λαμβάνοντες ὡς ἀπὸ συνωμοσίας ἐπὶ πράγμασι μεγάλοις τετολμημένον, ἅπασαν ἐξήταζον ὑπόνοιαν πικρῶς ἥ τε βουλὴ συνιοῦσα περὶ τούτων καὶ ὁ δῆμος ἐν ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις πολλάκις.

[19] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ δούλους τινὰς καὶ μετοίκους προήγαγεν Ἀνδροκλῆς ὁ δημαγωγός, ἄλλων τ’ ἀγαλμάτων περικοπὰς καὶ μυστηρίων παρ’ οἶνον ἀπομιμήσεις τοῦ [2] Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ τῶν φίλων κατηγοροῦντας. ἔλεγον δὲ Θεόδωρον μέν τινα δρᾶν τὰ τοῦ κήρυκος, Πουλυτίωνα δὲ τὰ τοῦ δᾳδούχου, τὰ δὲ τοῦ ἱεροφάντου τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἑταίρους παρεῖναι καὶ θεᾶσθαι, μύστας προσαγορευομένους.

[3] ταῦτα γὰρ ἐν τῇ εἰσαγγελίᾳ γέγραπται Θεσσαλοῦ τοῦ Κίμωνος, εἰσαγγείλαντος Ἀλκιβιάδην ἀσεβεῖν περὶ τὼ θεώ. τραχυνομένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου καὶ πικρῶς πρὸς τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ἔχοντος, καὶ τοῦ Ἀνδροκλέους - ἦν γὰρ ἐχθρὸς οὗτος ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου - παροξύνοντος, ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν ἐταράχθησαν οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην, [4] αἰσθόμενοι δὲ τούς τε ναύτας ὅσοι πλεῖν ἔμελλον εἰς Σικελίαν εὔνους ὄντας αὐτοῖς καὶ τὸ στρατιωτικόν, Ἀργείων δὲ καὶ Μαντινέων χιλίων ὄντων ὁπλιτῶν ἀκούοντες ἀναφανδὸν λεγόντων, ὡς δι’ Ἀλκιβιάδην στρατεύοιντο διαπόντιον καὶ μακρὰν στρατείαν, ἂν δέ τις ἀγνωμονῇ περὶ τοῦτον, εὐθὺς ἀποστήσεσθαι, ἀνεθάρρουν καὶ παρίσταντο τῷ καιρῷ πρὸς τὴν ἀπολογίαν, ὥστε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς πάλιν ἀθυμεῖν καὶ φοβεῖσθαι, μὴ περὶ τὴν κρίσιν ὁ δῆμος ἀμβλύτερος [5] αὐτῷ γένηται διὰ τὴν χρείαν. πρὸς ταῦτ’ οὖν τεχνάζουσι τῶν ῥητόρων τοὺς οὐ δοκοῦντας ἐχθροὺς τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου, μισοῦντας δ’ αὐτὸν οὐχ ἧττον τῶν ὁμολογούντων, ἀνισταμένους ἐν τῷ δήμῳ λέγειν, ὡς ἄτοπόν ἐστιν αὐτοκράτορι στρατηγῷ τηλικαύτης ἀποδεδειγμένῳ δυνάμεως, ἠθροισμένης ‹τῆς› στρατιᾶς καὶ τῶν συμμάχων, μεταξὺ κληροῦντας δικαστήριον καὶ ὕδωρ διαμετροῦντας ἀπολλύναι [6] τὸν καιρόν· ἀλλὰ νῦν μὲν ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ πλεέτω, τοῦ δὲ πολέμου διαπραχθέντος ἐπὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς νόμοις ἀπολογείσθω [7] παρών. οὐκ ἐλάνθανε μὲν οὖν ἡ κακοήθεια τῆς ἀναβολῆς τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην, ἀλλ’ ἔλεγε παριὼν ὡς δεινόν ἐστιν αἰτίας ἀπολιπόντα καθ’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ διαβολὰς ἐκπέμπεσθαι μετέωρον ἐπὶ τοσαύτης δυνάμεως· ἀποθανεῖν γὰρ αὐτῷ προσήκειν μὴ λύσαντι τὰς κατηγορίας, λύσαντι δὲ καὶ φανέντι καθαρῷ τρέπεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους μὴ δεδοικότι τοὺς συκοφάντας.

[20] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐκ ἔπειθεν, ἀλλὰ πλεῖν ἐκέλευον αὐτόν, ἀνήχθη μετὰ τῶν συστρατήγων, ἔχων τριήρεις μὲν οὐ πολλῷ τῶν τεσσαράκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν ἀποδεούσας, ὁπλίτας δὲ πεντακισχιλίους καὶ ἑκατόν, τοξότας δὲ καὶ σφενδονήτας καὶ ψιλοὺς περὶ τριακοσίους καὶ χιλίους καὶ [2] τὴν ἄλλην παρασκευὴν ἀξιόλογον. προσβαλὼν δ’ Ἰταλίᾳ καὶ Ῥήγιον ἑλών, εἰσηγήσατο γνώμην ὅτῳ τρόπῳ πολεμητέον [3] ἐστί, καὶ Νικίου μὲν ἀντιλέγοντος, Λαμάχου δὲ προσθεμένου, πλεύσας εἰς Σικελίαν προσηγάγετο Κατάνην, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν ἔπραξε, μετάπεμπτος ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων [4] ἐπὶ τὴν κρίσιν εὐθὺς γενόμενος. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ὥσπερ εἴρηται τυφλαί τινες ὑποψίαι καὶ διαβολαὶ κατὰ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου [5] προσέπιπτον ἀπὸ δούλων καὶ μετοίκων, ἔπειτα τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἀπόντος αὐτοῦ καθαπτομένων σφοδρότερον, καὶ τοῖς περὶ τοὺς Ἑρμᾶς ὑβρίσμασι καὶ τὰ μυστικὰ συμπλεκόντων, ὡς ἀπὸ μιᾶς ἐπὶ νεωτερισμῷ συνωμοσίας πεπραγμένα, τοὺς μὲν ὁπωσοῦν ἐπαιτιαθέντας ἐνέβαλον ἀκρίτους εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον, ἤχθοντο δὲ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην μὴ λαβόντες ὑπὸ τὰς ψήφους τότε μηδὲ κρίναντες ἐπ’ αἰτίαις [6] τηλικαύταις. ὁ δὲ τῇ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ὀργῇ περιπεσὼν οἰκεῖος ἢ φίλος ἢ συνήθης χαλεπωτέροις αὐτοῖς ἐχρήσατο. τοὺς δὲ μηνύσαντας ὁ μὲν Θουκυδίδης ὀνομάσαι παρῆκεν, ἄλλοι δ’ ὀνομάζουσι Διοκλείδαν καὶ Τεῦκρον, ὧν καὶ Φρύνιχός ἐστιν ὁ κωμικὸς ταυτὶ πεποιηκώς (fr. 58 CAF I 385)·

[7] ὦ φίλταθ’ Ἑρμῆ, καὶ φυλάσσου μὴ πεσὼν

σαυτὸν παρακρούσῃ καὶ παράσχῃς διαβολὴν

ἑτέρῳ Διοκλείδᾳ βουλομένῳ κακόν τι δρᾶν. -

φυλάξομαι· Τεύκρῳ γὰρ οὐχὶ βούλομαι

μήνυτρα δοῦναι τῷ παλαμναίῳ ξένῳ.

[8] καίτοι βέβαιον οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἰσχυρὸν οἱ μηνύοντες ἐδείκνυσαν. εἷς δ’ αὐτῶν ἐρωτώμενος, ὅπως τὰ πρόσωπα τῶν Ἑρμοκοπιδῶν γνωρίσειε, καὶ ἀποκρινόμενος ὅτι πρὸς τὴν σελήνην, ἐσφάλη τοῦ παντός, ἕνης καὶ νέας οὔσης ὅτε ταῦτ’ ἐδρᾶτο, καὶ θόρυβον μὲν παρέσχε τοῖς νοῦν ἔχουσι, τὸν δῆμον δ’ οὐδὲ τοῦτο μαλακώτερον ἐποίησε πρὸς τὰς διαβολάς, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὥρμησεν ἐξ ἀρχῆς, οὐκ ἐπαύσατο φέρων καὶ καταβάλλων εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον, οὗ τις κατείποι.

[21] [1] Τῶν οὖν δεθέντων καὶ φυλαττομένων ἐπὶ κρίσει τότε καὶ Ἀνδοκίδης ἦν ὁ ῥήτωρ, ὃν Ἑλλάνικος ὁ συγγραφεὺς (FGrH 4 F 170b) εἰς τοὺς Ὀδυσσέως ἀπογόνους ἀνήγαγεν.

[2] ἐδόκει δὲ μισόδημος εἶναι καὶ ὀλιγαρχικὸς ὁ Ἀνδοκίδης, ὕποπτον δ’ οὐχ ἥκιστα τῆς τῶν Ἑρμῶν περικοπῆς ἐποίησεν ὁ μέγας Ἑρμῆς ὁ πλησίον αὐτοῦ τῆς [3] οἰκίας ἀνάθημα τῆς Αἰγηίδος φυλῆς ἱδρυμένος· ἐν γὰρ ὀλίγοις πάνυ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν μόνος σχεδὸν ἀκέραιος ἔμεινε· διὸ καὶ νῦν Ἀνδοκίδου καλεῖται, καὶ πάντες οὕτως ὀνομάζουσι, [4] τῆς ἐπιγραφῆς ἀντιμαρτυρούσης. συνέβη δὲ τῷ Ἀνδοκίδῃ μάλιστα τῶν τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν ἐχόντων ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ γενέσθαι συνήθη καὶ φίλον, ἔνδοξον μὲν οὐχ ὁμοίως ἐκείνῳ, συνέσει δὲ καὶ τόλμῃ περιττόν, ὄνομα [5] Τίμαιον. οὗτος ἀναπείθει τὸν Ἀνδοκίδην ἑαυτοῦ τε κατήγορον καί τινων ἄλλων γενέσθαι μὴ πολλῶν· ὁμολογήσαντι γὰρ ἄδειαν εἶναι κατὰ ψήφισμα τοῦ δήμου, τὰ δὲ τῆς κρίσεως ἄδηλα πᾶσι, τοῖς δὲ δυνατοῖς φοβερώτατα· βέλτιον δὲ σωθῆναι ψευδόμενον ἢ μετὰ τῆς αὐτῆς αἰτίας ἀποθανεῖν ἀδόξως, καὶ τὸ κοινῇ σκοποῦντι συμφέρον ὑπάρχειν, ὀλίγους καὶ ἀμφιβόλους προέμενον, πολλοὺς [6] καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἐξελέσθαι τῆς ὀργῆς. ταῦτα τοῦ Τιμαίου λέγοντος καὶ διδάσκοντος, ὁ Ἀνδοκίδης ἐπείσθη, καὶ γενόμενος μηνυτὴς καθ’ αὑτοῦ καὶ καθ’ ἑτέρων, ἔσχε τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ ψηφίσματος ἄδειαν αὐτός, οὓς δ’ ὠνόμασε πάντες πλὴν τῶν φυγόντων ἀπώλοντο. καὶ πίστεως ἕνεκα προσέθηκεν αὐτοῖς οἰκέτας ἰδίους ὁ Ἀνδοκίδης.

[7] Οὐ μὴν ὅ γε δῆμος ἐνταῦθα τὴν ὀργὴν ἅπασαν ἀφῆκεν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀπαλλαγεὶς τῶν Ἑρμοκοπιδῶν, ὥσπερ σχολάζοντι τῷ θυμῷ πρὸς τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ὅλος ἐρρύη, καὶ τέλος ἀπέστειλε τὴν Σαλαμινίαν ἐπ’ αὐτόν, οὐ φαύλως αὐτό γε τοῦτο προστάξας, μὴ βιάζεσθαι μηδ’ ἅπτεσθαι τοῦ σώματος, ἀλλὰ τῷ μετριωτάτῳ λόγῳ χρῆσθαι, κελεύοντας [8] ἀκολουθεῖν ἐπὶ κρίσιν καὶ πείθειν τὸν δῆμον. ἐφοβοῦντο γὰρ ταραχὰς τοῦ στρατεύματος ἐν πολεμίᾳ γῇ καὶ στάσιν, ἣν ῥᾳδίως ἂν ἐξειργάσατο βουληθεὶς ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης. καὶ γὰρ ἠθύμουν ἀπιόντος αὐτοῦ, καὶ πολλὴν τριβὴν προσεδόκων καὶ μῆκος ἀργὸν ἐν τῷ Νικίᾳ τὸν πόλεμον ἕξειν, [9] καθάπερ μύωπος ἀφῃρημένου τῶν πράξεων. ὁ γὰρ Λάμαχος ἦν μὲν πολεμικὸς καὶ ἀνδρώδης, ἀξίωμα δ’ οὐ προσῆν οὐδ’ ὄγκος αὐτῷ διὰ πενίαν.

[22] [1] Εὐθὺς μὲν οὖν ἀποπλέων ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἀφείλετο Μεσσήνην Ἀθηναίους. ἦσαν γὰρ οἱ μέλλοντες ἐνδιδόναι τὴν πόλιν, οὓς ἐκεῖνος εἰδὼς σαφέστατα τοῖς τῶν Συρακουσίων φίλοις ἐμήνυσε, καὶ διέφθειρε τὴν πρᾶξιν. ἐν δὲ Θουρίοις γενόμενος καὶ ἀποβὰς τῆς τριήρους, ἔκρυψεν ἑαυτὸν [2] καὶ διέφυγε τοὺς ζητοῦντας. ἐπιγνόντος δέ τινος καὶ εἰπόντος· οὐ πιστεύεις ὦ Ἀλκιβιάδη τῇ πατρίδι; τὰ μὲν ἄλλ’ ἔφη πάντα· περὶ δὲ τῆς ἐμῆς ψυχῆς οὐδὲ τῇ μητρί, μήπως ἀγνοήσασα τὴν μέλαιναν ἀντὶ τῆς λευκῆς ἐπενέγκῃ [3] ψῆφον. ὕστερον δ’ ἀκούσας ὅτι θάνατον αὐτοῦ κατέγνωκεν [4] ἡ πόλις· ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ εἶπε δείξω αὐτοῖς ὅτι ζῶ. τὴν μὲν οὖν εἰσαγγελίαν οὕτως ἔχουσαν ἀναγράφουσι· Θεσσαλὸς Κίμωνος Λακιάδης Ἀλκιβιάδην Κλεινίου Σκαμβωνίδην εἰσήγγειλεν ἀδικεῖν περὶ τὼ θεώ, [τὴν Δήμητραν καὶ τὴν Κόρην,] ἀπομιμούμενον τὰ μυστήρια καὶ δεικνύοντα τοῖς αὑτοῦ ἑταίροις ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τῇ ἑαυτοῦ, ἔχοντα στολὴν οἵανπερ ὁ ἱεροφάντης ἔχων δεικνύει τὰ ἱερά, καὶ ὀνομάζοντα αὑτὸν μὲν ἱεροφάντην, Πουλυτίωνα δὲ δᾳδοῦχον, κήρυκα δὲ Θεόδωρον Φηγαιᾶ, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἑταίρους μύστας προσαγορεύοντα καὶ ἐπόπτας παρὰ τὰ νόμιμα καὶ τὰ καθεστηκότα ὑπό τ’ Εὐμολπιδῶν καὶ Κηρύκων [5] καὶ τῶν ἱερέων τῶν ἐξ Ἐλευσῖνος. ἐρήμην δ’ αὐτοῦ καταγνόντες καὶ τὰ χρήματα δημεύσαντες, ἔτι καὶ καταρᾶσθαι προσεψηφίσαντο πάντας ἱερεῖς καὶ ἱερείας, ὧν μόνην φασὶ Θεανὼ τὴν Μένωνος Ἀγρυλῆθεν ἀντειπεῖν πρὸς τὸ ψήφισμα, φάσκουσαν εὐχῶν, οὐ καταρῶν ἱέρειαν γεγονέναι.

[23] [1] Τοσούτων δὲ κατεψηφισμένων Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ κατεγνωσμένων, ἐτύγχανε μὲν ἐν Ἄργει διατρίβων, ὡς τὸ πρῶτον ἐκ Θουρίων ἀποδρὰς εἰς Πελοπόννησον διεκομίσθη, φοβούμενος δὲ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς καὶ παντάπασι τῆς πατρίδος ἀπεγνωκώς, ἔπεμψεν εἰς Σπάρτην, ἄδειαν ἀξιῶν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι καὶ πίστιν ἐπὶ μείζοσι χρείαις καὶ ὠφελείαις [2] ὧν πρότερον αὐτοὺς ἀμυνόμενος ἔβλαψε. δόντων δὲ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν καὶ δεξαμένων προθύμως, παραγενόμενος ἓν μὲν εὐθὺς ἐξειργάσατο, μέλλοντας καὶ ἀναβαλλομένους βοηθεῖν Συρακουσίοις ἐγείρας, καὶ παροξύνας πέμψαι Γύλιππον ἄρχοντα, καὶ θραῦσαι τὴν ἐκεῖ τῶν Ἀθηναίων δύναμιν· ἕτερον δέ, κινεῖν τὸν αὐτόθεν πόλεμον ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους· τὸ δὲ τρίτον καὶ μέγιστον, ἐπιτειχίσαι Δεκέλειαν, οὗ μᾶλλον οὐδὲν διειργάσατο καὶ κατοικοφθόρησε [3] τὴν πόλιν. εὐδοκιμῶν δὲ δημοσίᾳ καὶ θαυμαζόμενος, οὐχ ἧττον ἰδίᾳ τοὺς πολλοὺς τότ’ ἐδημαγώγει καὶ κατεγοήτευε τῇ διαίτῃ λακωνίζων, ὥσθ’ ὁρῶντας ἐν χρῷ κουριῶντα καὶ ψυχρολουτοῦντα καὶ μάζῃ συνόντα καὶ ζωμῷ μέλανι χρώμενον, ἀπιστεῖν καὶ διαπορεῖν εἴ ποτε μάγειρον ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας οὗτος ὁ ἀνὴρ ἔσχεν ἢ προσέβλεψε [4] μυρεψὸν ἢ Μιλησίας ἠνέσχετο θιγεῖν χλανίδος. ἦν γὰρ ὥς φασι μία δεινότης αὕτη τῶν πολλῶν ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ μηχανὴ θήρας ἀνθρώπων, συνεξομοιοῦσθαι καὶ συνομοπαθεῖν τοῖς ἐπιτηδεύμασι καὶ ταῖς διαίταις, ὀξυτέρας τρεπομένῳ [5] τροπὰς τοῦ χαμαιλέοντος. πλὴν ἐκεῖνος μὲν ὡς λέγεται πρὸς ἓν ἐξαδυνατεῖ χρῶμα τὸ λευκὸν ἀφομοιοῦν ἑαυτόν· Ἀλκιβιάδῃ δὲ διὰ χρηστῶν ἰόντι καὶ πονηρῶν ὁμοίως οὐδὲν ἦν ἀμίμητον οὐδ’ ἀνεπιτήδευτον, ἀλλ’ ἐν Σπάρτῃ γυμναστικός, εὐτελής, σκυθρωπός, ἐν Ἰωνίᾳ χλιδανός, ἐπιτερπής, ῥᾴθυμος, ἐν Θράκῃ μεθυστικός, ἱππαστικός, Τισσαφέρνῃ δὲ τῷ σατράπῃ συνὼν ὑπερέβαλλεν ὄγκῳ καὶ πολυτελείᾳ τὴν Περσικὴν μεγαλοπρέπειαν, οὐχ αὑτὸν ἐξιστὰς οὕτω ῥᾳδίως εἰς ἕτερον ἐξ ἑτέρου τρόπον, οὐδὲ πᾶσαν δεχόμενος τῷ ἤθει μεταβολήν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τῇ φύσει χρώμενος ἔμελλε λυπεῖν τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας, εἰς πᾶν ἀεὶ τὸ πρόσφορον ἐκείνοις σχῆμα καὶ πλάσμα κατεδύετο καὶ [6] κατέφευγεν. ἐν γοῦν τῇ Λακεδαίμονι πρὸς τὰ ἔξωθεν ἦν εἰπεῖν (TGF adesp. 363 N²)·

οὐ παῖς Ἀχιλλέως, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος αὐτὸς εἶ,

οἷον ὁ Λυκοῦργος ἐπαίδευσε, τοῖς δ’ ἀληθινοῖς ἄν τις ἐπεφώνησεν αὐτοῦ πάθεσι καὶ πράγμασιν (Eurip. Or. 129)·

ἔστιν ἡ πάλαι γυνή.

[7] Τιμαίαν γὰρ τὴν Ἄγιδος γυναῖκα τοῦ βασιλέως στρατευομένου καὶ ἀποδημοῦντος οὕτω διέφθειρεν, ὥστε καὶ κύειν ἐξ Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ μὴ ἀρνεῖσθαι, καὶ τεκούσης παιδίον ἄρρεν ἔξω μὲν Λεωτυχίδην καλεῖσθαι, τὸ δ’ ἐντὸς αὐτοῦ ψιθυριζόμενον ὄνομα πρὸς τὰς φίλας καὶ τὰς ὀπαδοὺς ὑπὸ τῆς μητρὸς Ἀλκιβιάδην εἶναι· τοσοῦτος ἔρως κατεῖχε [8] τὴν ἄνθρωπον. ὁ δ’ ἐντρυφῶν ἔλεγεν οὐχ ὕβρει τοῦτο πράσσειν οὐδὲ κρατούμενος ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς, ἀλλ’ ὅπως Λακεδαιμονίων βασιλεύσωσιν οἱ ἐξ αὐτοῦ γεγονότες. οὕτω πραττόμενα ταῦτα πολλοὶ κατηγόρουν πρὸς τὸν Ἆγιν.

[9] ἐπίστευσε δὲ τῷ χρόνῳ μάλιστα, ὅτι σεισμοῦ γενομένου φοβηθεὶς ἐξέδραμε τοῦ θαλάμου παρὰ τῆς γυναικός, εἶτα δέκα μηνῶν οὐκέτι συνῆλθεν αὐτῇ, μεθ’ οὓς γενόμενον τὸν Λεωτυχίδην ἀπέφησεν ἐξ αὐτοῦ μὴ γεγονέναι. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τῆς βασιλείας ἐξέπεσεν ὕστερον ὁ Λεωτυχίδης.

[24] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐν Σικελίᾳ τῶν Ἀθηναίων δυστυχίαν ἐπρέσβευσαν εἰς Σπάρτην ἅμα Χῖοι καὶ Λέσβιοι καὶ Κυζικηνοὶ περὶ ἀποστάσεως, ‹συμ›πραττόντων Βοιωτῶν [2] μὲν Λεσβίοις, Φαρναβάζου δὲ Κυζικηνοῖς. Ἀλκιβιάδῃ δὲ πεισθέντες εἵλοντο Χίοις πρὸ πάντων βοηθεῖν. ἐκπλεύσας δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς ἀπέστησεν ὀλίγου δεῖν ἅπασαν Ἰωνίαν, καὶ πολλὰ συνὼν τοῖς τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων στρατηγοῖς, [3] ἔβλαπτε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους. ὁ δ’ Ἆγις ἐχθρὸς μὲν ὑπῆρχεν αὐτῷ διὰ τὴν γυναῖκα κακῶς πεπονθώς, ἤχθετο δὲ καὶ τῇ δόξῃ· τὰ γὰρ πλεῖστα γίνεσθαι καὶ προχωρεῖν δι’ Ἀλκιβιάδην λόγος εἶχε· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων Σπαρτιατῶν οἱ δυνατώτατοι καὶ φιλοτιμότατοι τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ἤδη [4] ἐβαρύνοντο διὰ φθόνον. ἴσχυσαν οὖν καὶ διεπράξαντο τοὺς οἴκοθεν ἄρχοντας ἐπιστεῖλαι τοῖς κατ’ Ἰωνίαν, ὅπως ἀποκτείνωσιν αὐτόν. ὁ δ’ ἡσυχῇ προγνοὺς καὶ φοβηθείς, τῶν μὲν πράξεων πασῶν ἐκοινώνει τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις, τὸ δ’ εἰς χεῖρας ἰέναι παντάπασιν ἔφευγε, Τισσαφέρνῃ δὲ τῷ βασιλέως σατράπῃ δοὺς ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ ἀσφαλείας, [5] εὐθὺς ἦν παρ’ αὐτῷ πρῶτος καὶ μέγιστος. τὸ μὲν γὰρ πολύτροπον καὶ περιττὸν αὐτοῦ τῆς δεινότητος, οὐκ ὢν ἁπλοῦς, ἀλλὰ κακοήθης καὶ φιλοπόνηρος, ἐθαύμαζεν ὁ βάρβαρος· ταῖς δὲ καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐν τῷ συσχολάζειν καὶ συνδιαιτᾶσθαι χάρισιν οὐδὲν ἦν ἄτεγκτον ἦθος οὐδὲ φύσις ἀνάλωτος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ‹τοῖς› δεδιόσι καὶ φθονοῦσιν ὅμως τὸ συγγενέσθαι καὶ προσιδεῖν ἐκεῖνον ἡδονήν τινα [6] καὶ φιλοφροσύνην παρεῖχε. τἆλλα γοῦν ὠμὸς ὢν καὶ μισέλλην ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα Περσῶν ὁ Τισσαφέρνης οὕτως ἐνεδίδου τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ κολακευόμενος, ὥσθ’ ὑπερβάλλειν [7] αὐτὸς ἀντικολακεύων ἐκεῖνον. ὧν γὰρ ἐκέκτητο παραδείσων τὸν κάλλιστον λειμώνων καὶ ὑδάτων ὑγιεινῶν ἕνεκα, διατριβὰς ἔχοντα καὶ καταφυγὰς ἠσκημένας βασιλικῶς καὶ περιττῶς, Ἀλκιβιάδην καλεῖν ἔθετο· καὶ πάντες οὕτω καλοῦντες καὶ προσαγορεύοντες διετέλουν.

[25] [1] Ἀπογνοὺς οὖν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης τὰ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ὡς ἄπιστα, καὶ φοβούμενος τὸν Ἆγιν, ἐκάκου καὶ διέβαλλε πρὸς τὸν Τισσαφέρνην, οὐκ ἐῶν βοηθεῖν αὐτοῖς προθύμως οὐδὲ καταλύειν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ἀλλὰ γλίσχρως χορηγοῦντα θλίβειν καὶ ἀποκναίειν ἀτρέμα, καὶ ποιεῖν ἀμφοτέρους βασιλεῖ χειροήθεις καὶ καταπόνους [2] ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων. ὁ δ’ ἐπείθετο ῥᾳδίως καὶ δῆλος ἦν ἀγαπῶν καὶ θαυμάζων, ὥστ’ ἀποβλέπεσθαι τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ἑκατέρωθεν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, τοὺς δ’ Ἀθηναίους καὶ μεταμέλεσθαι τοῖς γνωσθεῖσι περὶ αὐτοῦ κακῶς πάσχοντας, ἄχθεσθαι δὲ κἀκεῖνον ἤδη καὶ φοβεῖσθαι, μὴ παντάπασι τῆς πόλεως ἀναιρεθείσης ἐπὶ Λακεδαιμονίοις γένηται μισούμενος.

[3] Ἐν δὲ τῇ Σάμῳ τότε πάντα τὰ πράγματα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις σχεδὸν ὑπῆρχε, κἀκεῖθεν ὁρμώμενοι τῇ ναυτικῇ δυνάμει τὰ μὲν ἀνεκτῶντο τῶν ἀφεστώτων, τὰ δ’ ἐφύλαττον, ἁμῶς γέ πως ἔτι τοῖς πολεμίοις κατὰ θάλατταν [4] ὄντες ἀξιόμαχοι, Τισσαφέρνην δὲ φοβούμενοι καὶ τὰς λεγομένας ὅσον οὔπω παρεῖναι Φοινίσσας τριήρεις, πεντήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν οὔσας, ὧν ἀφικομένων οὐδεμία σωτηρίας [5] ἐλπὶς ὑπελείπετο τῇ πόλει. ταῦτα δ’ εἰδὼς ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἔπεμπε κρύφα πρὸς τοὺς ἐν Σάμῳ δυνατοὺς τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ἐλπίδας ἐνδιδοὺς παρέξειν τὸν Τισσαφέρνην φίλον, οὐ τοῖς πολλοῖς χαριζόμενος οὐδὲ πιστεύων ἐκείνοις, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἀρίστοις, εἰ τολμήσειαν ἄνδρες ἀγαθοὶ γενόμενοι καὶ παύσαντες ὑβρίζοντα τὸν δῆμον αὐτοὶ [6] δι’ αὑτῶν σῴζειν τὰ πράγματα καὶ τὴν πόλιν. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι σφόδρα προσεῖχον τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ· τῶν δὲ στρατηγῶν εἷς, Φρύνιχος ὁ Δειραδιώτης, ὑποπτεύσας (ὅπερ ἦν) τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην οὐθέν τι μᾶλλον ὀλιγαρχίας ἢ δημοκρατίας δεόμενον, ζητοῦντα δὲ πάντως κατελθεῖν, ἐκ διαβολῆς τοῦ δήμου προθεραπεύειν καὶ ὑποδύεσθαι τοὺς δυνατούς, [7] ἀνθίστατο. κρατούμενος δὲ τῇ γνώμῃ καὶ φανερῶς ἤδη τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου γεγονὼς ἐχθρός, ἐξήγγειλε κρύφα πρὸς Ἀστύοχον τὸν τῶν πολεμίων ναύαρχον, ἐγκελευόμενος φυλάττεσθαι καὶ συλλαμβάνειν ὡς ἐπαμφοτερίζοντα τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην. ἐλελήθει δ’ ἄρα προδότης προδότῃ [8] διαλεγόμενος. τὸν γὰρ Τισσαφέρνην ἐκπεπληγμένος ὁ Ἀστύοχος, καὶ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ὁρῶν παρ’ αὐτῷ μέγαν ὄντα, κατεμήνυσε τὰ τοῦ Φρυνίχου πρὸς αὐτούς.

[9] ὁ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης εὐθὺς εἰς Σάμον ἔπεμψε τοὺς τοῦ Φρυνίχου κατηγορήσοντας. ἀγανακτούντων δὲ πάντων καὶ συνισταμένων ἐπὶ τὸν Φρύνιχον, οὐχ ὁρῶν ἑτέραν διαφυγὴν ἐκ τῶν παρόντων, ἐπεχείρησεν ἰάσασθαι μείζονι [10] κακῷ τὸ κακόν. αὖθις γὰρ ἔπεμψε πρὸς τὸν Ἀστύοχον, ἐγκαλῶν μὲν ὑπὲρ τῆς μηνύσεως, ἐπαγγελλόμενος δὲ τὰς ναῦς καὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν Ἀθηναίων ὑποχείριον αὐτῷ [11] παρέξειν. οὐ μὴν ἔβλαψέ γε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἡ τοῦ Φρυνίχου προδοσία διὰ τὴν Ἀστυόχου παλιμπροδοσίαν· καὶ γὰρ ταῦτα κατεῖπε τοῦ Φρυνίχου πρὸς τοὺς περὶ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην.

[12] ὁ δὲ Φρύνιχος προαισθόμενος καὶ προσδεχόμενος δευτέραν κατηγορίαν παρὰ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου, φθάσας αὐτὸς προεῖπε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ὅτι μέλλουσιν ἐπιπλεῖν οἱ πολέμιοι, καὶ παρῄνεσε πρὸς ταῖς ναυσὶν εἶναι καὶ περιτειχίσαι [13] τὸ στρατόπεδον. ἐπεὶ δὲ πραττόντων ταῦτα τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἧκε γράμματα πάλιν παρὰ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου, φυλάττεσθαι κελεύοντος τὸν Φρύνιχον ὡς προδιδόντα τοῖς πολεμίοις τὸν ναύσταθμον, ἠπίστησαν, οἰόμενοι τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην, εἰδότα σαφῶς τὴν τῶν πολεμίων παρασκευὴν καὶ διάνοιαν, ἀποχρῆσθαι πρὸς τὴν τοῦ Φρυνίχου διαβολὴν [14] οὐκ ἀληθῶς. ὕστερον μέντοι τὸν Φρύνιχον ἑνὸς τῶν περιπόλων Ἕρμωνος ἐν ἀγορᾷ πατάξαντος ἐγχειριδίῳ καὶ διαφθείραντος, οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι δίκης γενομένης τοῦ μὲν Φρυνίχου προδοσίαν κατεψηφίσαντο τεθνηκότος, τὸν δ’ Ἕρμωνα καὶ τοὺς μετ’ αὐτοῦ συστάντας ἐστεφάνωσαν.

[26] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῇ Σάμῳ τότε κρατήσαντες οἱ Ἀλκιβιάδου φίλοι πέμπουσι Πείσανδρον εἰς ἄστυ, κινήσοντα τὴν πολιτείαν καὶ παραθαρρυνοῦντα τοὺς δυνατοὺς τῶν πραγμάτων ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ καταλύειν τὸν δῆμον, ὡς ἐπὶ τούτοις τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου Τισσαφέρνην αὐτοῖς φίλον καὶ σύμμαχον παρέξοντος. αὕτη γὰρ ἦν πρόφασις καὶ [2] τοῦτο πρόσχημα τοῖς καθιστᾶσι τὴν ὀλιγαρχίαν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἴσχυσαν καὶ παρέλαβον τὰ πράγματα, πεντακισχίλιοι λεγόμενοι, τετρακόσιοι δ’ ὄντες, ἐλάχιστα τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ προσεῖχον ἤδη καὶ μαλακώτερον ἥπτοντο τοῦ πολέμου, τὰ μὲν ἀπιστοῦντες ἔτι πρὸς τὴν μεταβολὴν ξενοπαθοῦσι τοῖς πολίταις, τὰ δ’ οἰόμενοι μᾶλλον ἐνδώσειν αὐτοῖς Λακεδαιμονίους, ἀεὶ πρὸς ὀλιγαρχίαν ἐπιτηδείως ἔχοντας. ὁ μὲν οὖν κατὰ πόλιν δῆμος ἄκων ὑπὸ δέους ἡσυχίαν ἦγε· καὶ γὰρ ἀπεσφάγησαν οὐκ ὀλίγοι τῶν ἐναντιουμένων [3] φανερῶς τοῖς τετρακοσίοις· οἱ δ’ ἐν Σάμῳ ταῦτα πυνθανόμενοι καὶ ἀγανακτοῦντες, ὥρμηντο πλεῖν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸν Πειραιᾶ, καὶ μεταπεμψάμενοι τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην καὶ στρατηγὸν ἀποδείξαντες ἐκέλευον ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ καταλύειν [4] τοὺς τυράννους. ὁ δ’ οὐχ, οἷον ἄν τις ἄλλος ἐξαίφνης χάριτι τῶν πολλῶν μέγας γεγονὼς ἔπαθε καὶ ἠγάπησε, πάντα δεῖν εὐθὺς οἰόμενος χαρίζεσθαι καὶ μηδὲν ἀντιλέγειν τοῖς ἐκ πλάνητος καὶ φυγάδος αὐτὸν ἄρτι νεῶν τοσούτων καὶ στρατοπέδου καὶ δυνάμεως τηλικαύτης ἀποδείξασιν ἡγεμόνα καὶ στρατηγόν, ἀλλ’ ὅπερ ἦν ἄρχοντι μεγάλῳ προσῆκον, ἀνθίστασθαι φερομένοις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς, κωλύσας ἐξαμαρτεῖν τότε γοῦν τῇ πόλει τὰ πράγματα [5] περιφανῶς ἔσωσεν. εἰ γὰρ ἄραντες ἀπέπλευσαν οἴκαδε, τοῖς μὲν πολεμίοις εὐθὺς ἔχειν ὑπῆρξεν Ἰωνίαν ἅπασαν ‹καὶ› Ἑλλήσποντον ἀμαχεὶ καὶ τὰς νήσους, Ἀθηναίοις δὲ πρὸς Ἀθηναίους μάχεσθαι, τὸν πόλεμον εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἐμβαλόντας· ὃ μόνος ‹ἢ› μάλιστα μὴ γενέσθαι διεκώλυσεν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, οὐ μόνον πείθων καὶ διδάσκων τὸ πλῆθος, ἀλλὰ καὶ καθ’ ἕνα τοὺς μὲν ἀντιβολῶν, τῶν δ’ [6] ἐπιλαμβανόμενος. συνέπραττε δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ Θρασύβουλος ὁ Στειριεύς, ἅμα παρὼν καὶ κεκραγώς· ἦν γὰρ ὡς λέγεται [7] μεγαλοφωνότατος Ἀθηναίων· ἐκεῖνό τε δὴ καλὸν ἔργον τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ δεύτερον, ὅτι ὑποσχόμενος τὰς Φοινίσσας ναῦς, ἃς προσεδέχοντο Λακεδαιμόνιοι βασιλέως πέμψαντος, ἢ μεταστήσειν πρὸς αὐτούς, ἢ διαπράξεσθαι μηδὲ πρὸς ἐκείνους κομισθῆναι, διὰ ταχέων ἐξέπλευσε.

[8] καὶ τὰς μὲν ναῦς ἐκφανείσας περὶ Ἄσπενδον οὐκ ἤγαγεν ὁ Τισσαφέρνης, ἀλλ’ ἐψεύσατο τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν τοῦ ἀποστρέψαι παρ’ ἀμφοτέροις ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης εἶχε, καὶ μᾶλλον ἔτι παρὰ τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις, ὡς διδάσκων τὸν βάρβαρον αὐτοὺς ὑφ’ ἑαυτῶν [9] περιορᾶν ἀπολλυμένους τοὺς Ἕλληνας. οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἄδηλον, ὅτι τοῖς ἑτέροις δύναμις τοσαύτη προσγενομένη τοὺς ἑτέρους ἀφῃρεῖτο κομιδῇ τὸ κράτος τῆς θαλάττης.

[27] [1] Ἐκ τούτου κατελύθησαν μὲν οἱ τετρακόσιοι, τῶν τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου φίλων προθύμως συλλαμβανομένων τοῖς τὰ τοῦ δήμου φρονοῦσι· βουλομένων δὲ τῶν ἐν ἄστει καὶ κελευόντων κατιέναι τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην, αὐτὸς ᾤετο δεῖν μὴ κεναῖς χερσὶ μηδ’ ἄπρακτος οἴκτῳ καὶ χάριτι τῶν [2] πολλῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐνδόξως κατελθεῖν. διὸ πρῶτον μὲν ὀλίγαις ναυσὶν ἐκ Σάμου περιέπλει τὴν ἐπὶ Κνίδου καὶ Κῶ θάλασσαν· ἐκεῖ δ’ ἀκούσας Μίνδαρον τὸν Σπαρτιάτην εἰς Ἑλλήσποντον ἀναπλεῖν τῷ στόλῳ παντὶ καὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐπακολουθεῖν, ἠπείγετο βοηθῆσαι τοῖς στρατηγοῖς, [3] καὶ κατὰ τύχην εἰς τοῦτο καιροῦ συνήνυσε πλέων ὀκτωκαίδεκα τριήρεσιν, ἐν ᾧ πάσαις ὁμοῦ ταῖς ναυσὶ συμπεσόντες εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ διαναυμαχοῦντες περὶ Ἄβυδον ἀμφότεροι, τοῖς μὲν ἡττώμενοι μέρεσι, τοῖς δὲ νικῶντες, [4] ἄχρι δείλης ἀγῶνι μεγάλῳ συνείχοντο, καὶ παρέσχε μὲν ἐναντίαν δόξαν ἀμφοτέροις ἐπιφανείς, ὥστε θαρρεῖν μὲν τοὺς πολεμίους, θορυβεῖσθαι δὲ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους. ταχὺ δὲ σημεῖον ἄρας ἀπὸ τῆς ναυαρχίδος φίλιον, ὥρμησεν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τοὺς κρατοῦντας καὶ διώκοντας τῶν Πελοποννησίων.

[5] τρεψάμενος δ’ αὐτοὺς ἐξέωσεν εἰς τὴν γῆν, καὶ προσκείμενος ἔκοπτε τὰς ναῦς καὶ συνετίτρωσκε, τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐκνεόντων καὶ Φαρναβάζου πεζῇ προσβοηθοῦντος αὐτοῖς καὶ μαχομένου παρὰ τὴν θάλατταν ὑπὲρ τῶν νεῶν.

[6] τέλος δὲ τῶν μὲν πολεμίων τριάκοντα λαβόντες, ἀνασώσαντες δὲ τὰς αὑτῶν, τρόπαιον ἔστησαν.

Οὕτω δὲ λαμπρᾷ χρησάμενος εὐτυχίᾳ, καὶ φιλοτιμούμενος εὐθὺς ἐγκαλλωπίσασθαι τῷ Τισσαφέρνῃ, ξένια καὶ δῶρα παρασκευασάμενος καὶ θεραπείαν ἔχων ἡγεμονικὴν [7] ἐπορεύετο πρὸς αὐτόν. οὐ μὴν ἔτυχεν ὧν προσεδόκησεν, ἀλλὰ πάλαι κακῶς ἀκούων ὁ Τισσαφέρνης ὑπὸ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, καὶ φοβούμενος αἰτίαν λαβεῖν ἐκ βασιλέως, ἔδοξεν ἐν καιρῷ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ἀφῖχθαι, καὶ συλλαβὼν αὐτὸν εἷρξεν ἐν Σάρδεσιν, ὡς λύσιν ἐκείνης τῆς διαβολῆς τὴν ἀδικίαν ταύτην ἐσομένην.

[28] [1] Τριάκοντα δ’ ἡμερῶν διαγενομένων ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἵππου ποθὲν εὐπορήσας καὶ ἀποδρὰς τοὺς φύλακας, εἰς [2] Κλαζομενὰς διέφυγε, καὶ τὸν μὲν Τισσαφέρνην προσδιέβαλλεν ὡς ὑπ’ ἐκείνου μεθειμένος, αὐτὸς δὲ πλεύσας εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν Ἀθηναίων, καὶ πυθόμενος Μίνδαρον ὁμοῦ καὶ Φαρνάβαζον ἐν Κυζίκῳ γεγονέναι, τοὺς μὲν στρατιώτας παρώρμησεν, ὡς ἀνάγκην οὖσαν αὐτοῖς καὶ ναυμαχεῖν καὶ πεζομαχεῖν καὶ νὴ Δία τειχομαχεῖν πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους· [3] χρήματα γὰρ οὐκ εἶναι μὴ πάντῃ κρατοῦσι· πληρώσας δὲ τὰς ναῦς καὶ κατάρας εἰς Προικόννησον, ἐκέλευσεν ἐντὸς περιβάλλειν τὰ λεπτὰ πλοῖα καὶ παραφυλάσσειν, ὅπως μηδεμία τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐπιπλέοντος αὐτοῦ γένοιτο [4] μηδαμόθεν προαίσθησις. ἔτυχε δὲ καὶ πολὺν ὄμβρον ἐξαίφνης ἐπιπεσόντα καὶ βροντὰς καὶ ζόφον συνεργῆσαι καὶ συνεπικρύψαι τὴν παρασκευήν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον τοὺς πολεμίους ἔλαθεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἀπεγνωκότας [5] ἤδη ἐμβῆναι κελεύσας ἀνήχθη. καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ὅ τε ζόφος διελύθη, καὶ κατώφθησαν αἱ τῶν Πελοποννησίων νῆες [6] αἰωρούμεναι πρὸ τοῦ λιμένος τῶν Κυζικηνῶν. δείσας οὖν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, μὴ διὰ τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῶν προϊδόντες εἰς τὴν γῆν καταφύγωσι, τοὺς μὲν στρατηγοὺς ἐκέλευσεν ἡσυχῇ πλεῖν ὑπολιπομένους, αὐτὸς δὲ τετταράκοντα ναῦς ἔχων [7] ἐφαίνετο καὶ προὐκαλεῖτο τοὺς πολεμίους. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐξηπάτηντο καὶ καταφρονήσαντες ὡς ἐπὶ τοσαύτας ἀντεξήλασαν, αὐτοὶ μὲν εὐθὺς ἐξήπτοντο καὶ συνεπλέκοντο, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἤδη μαχομένοις ἐπιφερομένων, ἐκπλαγέντες [8] ἔφευγον. ὁ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης εἴκοσι ταῖς ἀρίσταις διεκπλεύσας καὶ προσβαλὼν τῇ γῇ καὶ ἀποβάς, ἐνέκειτο τοῖς φεύγουσιν ἐκ τῶν νεῶν καὶ πολλοὺς ἔφθειρε· Μινδάρου δὲ καὶ Φαρναβάζου προσβοηθούντων κρατήσας, τὸν μὲν Μίνδαρον ἀνεῖλεν ἐρρωμένως ἀγωνιζόμενον, ὁ δὲ Φαρνάβαζος [9] ἔφυγε. πολλῶν δὲ καὶ νεκρῶν καὶ ὅπλων κρατήσαντες, τάς τε ναῦς ἁπάσας λαβόντες, χειρωσάμενοι δὲ καὶ Κύζικον, ἐκλιπόντος τοῦ Φαρναβάζου καὶ τῶν Πελοποννησίων διαφθαρέντων, οὐ μόνον τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον εἶχον βεβαίως, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς ἄλλης θαλάττης ἐξήλασαν κατὰ κράτος τοὺς [10] Λακεδαιμονίους. ἑάλω δὲ καὶ γράμματα Λακωνικὰ φράζοντα τοῖς ἐφόροις τὴν γεγενημένην ἀτυχίαν· ἔρρει τὰ κᾶλα· Μίνδαρος ἀπεσσούα· πεινῶντι τὦνδρες· ἀπορίομες τί χρὴ δρᾶν.

[29] [1] Οὕτω δ’ ἐπήρθησαν οἱ μετὰ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου στρατευσάμενοι καὶ τοσοῦτον ἐφρόνησαν, ὥστ’ ἀπαξιοῦν ἔτι τοῖς ἄλλοις καταμειγνύναι στρατιώταις ἑαυτούς, πολλάκις ἡττημένοις [2] ἀηττήτους ὄντας. καὶ γὰρ οὐ πολλῷ πρότερον συνεβεβήκει πταίσαντος περὶ Ἔφεσον τοῦ Θρασύλλου τὸ χαλκοῦν ἀνεστάναι τρόπαιον ὑπὸ τῶν Ἐφεσίων ἐπ’ αἰσχύνῃ [3] τῶν Ἀθηναίων. ταῦτ’ οὖν ὠνείδιζον οἱ μετὰ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου τοῖς μετὰ τοῦ Θρασύλλου, μεγαλύνοντες αὑτοὺς καὶ τὸν στρατηγόν, ἐκείνοις δὲ μήτε γυμνασίων μήτε [4] χώρας ἐν στρατοπέδῳ κοινωνεῖν ἐθέλοντες. ἐπεὶ δὲ Φαρνάβαζος ἱππέας τε πολλοὺς ἔχων καὶ πεζοὺς ἐπῆλθεν αὐτοῖς ἐμβεβληκόσιν εἰς τὴν Ἀβυδηνῶν, ὁ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐκβοηθήσας ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἐτρέψατο καὶ κατεδίωξεν ἄχρι σκότους μετὰ τοῦ Θρασύλλου, καὶ ἀνεμείγνυντο καὶ κοινῇ φιλοφρονούμενοι καὶ χαίροντες ἐπανῄεσαν εἰς τὸ [5] στρατόπεδον. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ στήσας τρόπαιον ἐλεηλάτει τὴν Φαρναβάζου χώραν οὐδενὸς ἀμύνεσθαι τολμῶντος. ἱερεῖς μέντοι καὶ ἱερείας οὓς ἔλαβεν ἀφῆκεν ἄνευ λύτρων.

Χαλκηδονίοις δ’ ἀφεστῶσι καὶ δεδεγμένοις φρουρὰν καὶ ἁρμοστὴν Λακεδαιμονίων ὡρμημένος πολεμεῖν, ἀκούσας δ’ ὅτι τὴν λείαν ἅπασαν ἐκ τῆς χώρας συναγαγόντες εἰς Βιθυνοὺς ὑπεκτίθενται φίλους ὄντας, ἧκεν ἐπὶ τοὺς ὅρους ἄγων τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ κήρυκα προπέμψας ἐνεκάλει τοῖς Βιθυνοῖς. οἱ δὲ δείσαντες τήν τε λείαν ἀπέδοσαν αὐτῷ καὶ φιλίαν ὡμολόγησαν.

[30] [1] Ἀποτειχιζομένης δὲ τῆς Χαλκηδόνος ἐκ θαλάττης εἰς θάλατταν, ὁ Φαρνάβαζος ἧκεν ὡς λύσων τὴν πολιορκίαν, καὶ Ἱπποκράτης ὁ ἁρμοστὴς ἐκ τῆς πόλεως προαγαγὼν [2] τὴν σὺν αὑτῷ δύναμιν, ἐπεχείρει τοῖς πολεμίοις. ὁ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἅμα πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους ἀντιτάξας τὸ στράτευμα, τὸν μὲν Φαρνάβαζον φυγεῖν αἰσχρῶς ἠνάγκαζε, τὸν δ’ Ἱπποκράτην διέφθειρε καὶ συχνοὺς τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν [3] ἡττηθέντας. εἶτ’ αὐτὸς μὲν ἐκπλεύσας εἰς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ἠργυρολόγει καὶ Σηλυβρίαν εἷλεν, ἀφειδήσας ἑαυτοῦ [4] παρὰ τὸν καιρόν. οἱ γὰρ ἐνδιδόντες τὴν πόλιν συνέθεντο μὲν ἀνασχήσειν πυρσὸν αὐτῷ μεσούσης νυκτός, ἠναγκάσθησαν δὲ τοῦτο ποιῆσαι πρὸ τοῦ καιροῦ, τῶν συνωμοτῶν [5] τινα φοβηθέντες ἐξαίφνης μεταβαλόμενον. ἀρθέντος οὖν τοῦ πυρσοῦ μηδέπω τῆς στρατιᾶς οὔσης ἑτοίμης, ἀναλαβὼν ὅσον τριάκοντα ‹τοὺς› περὶ αὑτὸν ἠπείγετο δρόμῳ πρὸς τὰ τείχη, τοὺς ἄλλους ἕπεσθαι κατὰ τάχος κελεύσας.

[6] ἀνοιχθείσης δὲ τῆς πύλης αὐτῷ καὶ προσγενομένων τοῖς τριάκοντα πελταστῶν εἴκοσι, παρεισπεσὼν εὐθὺς ᾔσθετο τοὺς Σηλυβριανοὺς ἐξ ἐναντίας μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἐπιφερομένους.

[7] ἐπεὶ δ’ ὑποστάντι μὲν οὐκ ἐφαίνετο σωτηρία, πρὸς δὲ τὸ φυγεῖν ἀήττητος ἄχρι τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης ἐν ταῖς στρατηγίαις γεγονὼς φιλονικότερον εἶχε, τῇ σάλπιγγι σημήνας σιωπήν, ἐκέλευσεν ἕνα τῶν παρόντων ἀνειπεῖν Σηλυβριανοῖς Ἀθηναίους ἐναντία ‹τὰ› ὅπλα μὴ τίθεσθαι.

[8] τοῦτο τὸ κήρυγμα τοὺς μὲν ἀμβλυτέρους ἐποίησε πρὸς τὴν μάχην, ὡς τῶν πολεμίων ἔνδον ὄντων ἁπάντων, οἱ δὲ ταῖς [9] ἐλπίσιν ἡδίους ἐγένοντο πρὸς τὰς διαλύσεις. ἐν ᾧ δὲ συστάντες ἀλλήλοις μετεδίδοσαν λόγων, ἐπῆλθεν ἡ στρατιὰ τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ, καὶ τεκμαιρόμενος, ὅπερ ἦν, εἰρηνικὰ φρονεῖν τοὺς Σηλυβριανούς, ἔδεισε μὴ τὴν πόλιν οἱ Θρᾷκες [10] διαρπάσωσιν. ἦσαν δὲ πολλοί, χάριτι τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ δι’ εὔνοιαν στρατευόμενοι προθύμως. ἀπέπεμψεν οὖν τούτους ἅπαντας ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, τοὺς δὲ Σηλυβριανοὺς δεηθέντας οὐδὲν ἠδίκησεν, ἀλλὰ χρήματα λαβὼν καὶ φρουρὰν ἐγκαταστήσας ἀπῆλθεν.

[31] [1] Οἱ δὲ πολιορκοῦντες τὴν Χαλκηδόνα στρατηγοὶ σπονδὰς ἐποιήσαντο πρὸς Φαρνάβαζον ἐπὶ τῷ χρήματα λαβεῖν καὶ Χαλκηδονίους ὑπηκόους πάλιν Ἀθηναίοις εἶναι, τὴν δὲ Φαρναβάζου χώραν μηδὲν ἀδικεῖν, Φαρνάβαζον δὲ πρέσβεσιν Ἀθηναίων πρὸς βασιλέα πομπὴν μετ’ ἀσφαλείας [2] παρασχεῖν. ὡς οὖν ἐπανελθόντα τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ὁ Φαρνάβαζος ἠξίου καὶ αὐτὸν ὀμόσαι περὶ τῶν ὡμολογημένων, οὐκ ἔφη πρότερον ἢ κἀκεῖνον αὐτοῖς ὀμόσαι.

[3] γενομένων δὲ τῶν ὅρκων, ἐπὶ Βυζαντίους ἀφεστῶτας ἦλθε καὶ περιετείχιζε τὴν πόλιν. Ἀναξιλάου δὲ καὶ Λυκούργου καί τινων ἄλλων συνθεμένων ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ παραδώσειν τὴν πόλιν, διαδοὺς λόγον ὡς ἀνίστησιν αὐτοὺς πράγματα νεώτερα συνιστάμενα περὶ τὴν Ἰωνίαν, ἡμέρας ἀπέπλει ταῖς ναυσὶ πάσαις, νυκτὸς δ’ ὑποστρέψας, αὐτὸς μὲν ἀπέβη μετὰ τῶν ὁπλιτῶν καὶ προσελθὼν τοῖς τείχεσιν ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν, αἱ δὲ νῆες ἐπὶ τὸν λιμένα πλεύσασαι καὶ βιαζόμεναι κραυγῇ τε πολλῇ καὶ θορύβοις καὶ ψόφοις, ἅμα μὲν ἐξέπληττον τῷ ἀπροσδοκήτῳ τοὺς Βυζαντίους, ἅμα δὲ τοῖς ἀττικίζουσι παρεῖχον ἐπ’ ἀδείας τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην δέχεσθαι, πάντων ἐπὶ τὸν λιμένα καὶ πρὸς τὰς ναῦς [4] βοηθούντων. οὐ μὴν ἀμαχεὶ προσεχώρησαν· οἱ γὰρ παρόντες ἐν τῷ Βυζαντίῳ Πελοποννήσιοι καὶ Βοιωτοὶ καὶ Μεγαρεῖς τοὺς μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν νεῶν ἐτρέψαντο καὶ καθεῖρξαν εἰς τὰς ναῦς πάλιν, τοὺς δ’ Ἀθηναίους ἔνδον ὄντας αἰσθόμενοι, [5] [καὶ] συντάξαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐχώρουν ὁμόσε. καρτερᾶς δὲ μάχης γενομένης ἐνίκησεν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης τὸ δεξιὸν κέρας ἔχων, Θηραμένης δὲ τὸ εὐώνυμον, καὶ τῶν πολεμίων τοὺς περιγενομένους ὅσον τριακοσίους ζῶντας ἔλαβε.

[6] Βυζαντίων δὲ μετὰ τὴν μάχην οὐδεὶς ἀπέθανεν οὐδ’ ἔφυγεν· ἐπὶ τούτοις γὰρ οἱ ἄνδρες παρέδοσαν τὴν πόλιν καὶ ταῦτα [7] συνέθεντο, μηδὲν αὑτοῖς ἴδιον ὑπεξελόμενοι. διὸ καὶ δίκην προδοσίας ἐν Λακεδαίμονι φεύγων ὁ Ἀναξίλαος ἐφάνη [8] τῷ λόγῳ τὸ ἔργον οὐ καταισχύνων. ἔφη γὰρ οὐκ ὢν Λακεδαιμόνιος, ἀλλὰ Βυζάντιος, οὐδὲ τὴν Σπάρτην κινδυνεύουσαν, ἀλλὰ τὸ Βυζάντιον ὁρῶν, τῆς μὲν πόλεως ἀποτετειχισμένης, μηδενὸς δ’ εἰσαγομένου, τὸν δ’ ὄντα σῖτον ἐν τῇ πόλει Πελοποννησίων καὶ Βοιωτῶν ἐσθιόντων, Βυζαντίων δὲ πεινώντων σὺν τέκνοις καὶ γυναιξίν, οὐ προδοῦναι τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἀλλὰ πολέμου καὶ κακῶν ἀπαλλάξαι τὴν πόλιν, μιμούμενος τοὺς ἀρίστους Λακεδαιμονίων, οἷς ἓν καλὸν ἁπλῶς καὶ δίκαιόν ἐστι τὸ τῆς πατρίδος συμφέρον. οἱ μὲν οὖν Λακεδαιμόνιοι ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντες ᾐδέσθησαν καὶ ἀπέλυσαν τοὺς ἄνδρας.

[32] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἰδεῖν τε ποθῶν ἤδη τὰ οἴκοι καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον ὀφθῆναι βουλόμενος τοῖς πολίταις, νενικηκὼς τοὺς πολεμίους τοσαυτάκις, ἀνήχθη, πολλαῖς μὲν ἀσπίσι καὶ λαφύροις κύκλῳ κεκοσμημένων τῶν Ἀττικῶν τριήρων, πολλὰς δ’ ἐφελκόμενος αἰχμαλώτους, ἔτι δὲ πλείω κομίζων ἀκροστόλια τῶν διεφθαρμένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ κεκρατημένων. ἦσαν γὰρ οὐκ ἐλάττους συναμφότεραι [2] διακοσίων. ἃ δὲ Δοῦρις ὁ Σάμιος (FGrH 76 F 76), Ἀλκιβιάδου φάσκων ἀπόγονος εἶναι, προστίθησι τούτοις, αὐλεῖν μὲν εἰρεσίαν τοῖς ἐλαύνουσι Χρυσόγονον τὸν πυθιονίκην, κελεύειν δὲ Καλλιππίδην τὸν τῶν τραγῳδιῶν ὑποκριτήν, στατοὺς καὶ ξυστίδας καὶ τὸν ἄλλον ἐναγώνιον ἀμπεχομένους κόσμον, ἱστίῳ δ’ ἁλουργῷ τὴν ναυαρχίδα προσφέρεσθαι τοῖς λιμέσιν, ὥσπερ ἐκ μέθης ἐπικωμάζοντος, οὔτε Θεόπομπος οὔτ’ Ἔφορος οὔτε Ξενοφῶν γέγραφεν, οὔτ’ εἰκὸς ἦν οὕτως ἐντρυφῆσαι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις μετὰ φυγὴν καὶ συμφορὰς τοσαύτας κατερχόμενον, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος καὶ δεδιὼς κατήγετο, καὶ καταχθεὶς οὐ πρότερον ἀπέβη τῆς τριήρους, ἢ στὰς ἐπὶ τοῦ καταστρώματος ἰδεῖν Εὐρυπτόλεμόν τε τὸν ἀνεψιὸν παρόντα καὶ τῶν ἄλλων φίλων καὶ [3] οἰκείων συχνοὺς ἐκδεχομένους καὶ παρακαλοῦντας. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀπέβη, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους στρατηγοὺς οὐδ’ ὁρᾶν ἐδόκουν ἀπαντῶντες οἱ ἄνθρωποι, πρὸς δ’ ἐκεῖνον συντρέχοντες ἐβόων, ἠσπάζοντο, παρέπεμπον, ἐστεφάνουν προσιόντες, οἱ δὲ μὴ δυνάμενοι προσελθεῖν ἄπωθεν ἐθεῶντο, [4] καὶ τοῖς νέοις ἐδείκνυσαν οἱ πρεσβύτεροι. πολὺ δὲ καὶ ‹τὸ› δακρῦον τῷ χαίροντι τῆς πόλεως ἀνεκέκρατο καὶ μνήμη πρὸς τὴν παροῦσαν εὐτυχίαν τῶν πρόσθεν ἀτυχημάτων λογιζομένοις, ὡς οὔτ’ ἂν Σικελίας διήμαρτον, οὔτ’ ἄλλο τι τῶν προσδοκηθέντων ἐξέφυγεν αὐτοὺς ἐάσαντας Ἀλκιβιάδην ἐπὶ τῶν τότε πραγμάτων καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως ἐκείνης, εἰ νῦν τὴν πόλιν παραλαβὼν ὀλίγου δέουσαν ἐκπεπτωκέναι τῆς θαλάσσης, κατὰ γῆν δὲ μόλις τῶν προαστείων κρατοῦσαν, αὐτὴν δὲ πρὸς ἑαυτὴν στασιάζουσαν, ἐκ λυπρῶν ἔτι λειψάνων καὶ ταπεινῶν ἀναστήσας οὐ μόνον τῆς θαλάσσης τὸ κράτος ἀποδέδωκεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πεζῇ νικῶσαν ἀποδείκνυσι πανταχοῦ τοὺς πολεμίους.

[33] [1] Τὸ μὲν οὖν ψήφισμα τῆς καθόδου πρότερον ἐκεκύρωτο, Κριτίου τοῦ Καλλαίσχρου γράψαντος, ὡς αὐτὸς ἐν ταῖς ἐλεγείαις πεποίηκεν, ὑπομιμνῄσκων τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην τῆς χάριτος ἐν τούτοις (fr. 3 D.)·

γνώμην δ’ ἥ σε κατήγαγ’, ἐγὼ ταύτην ἐν ἅπασιν

εἶπον καὶ γράψας τοὖργον ἔδρασα τόδε.

σφραγὶς δ’ ἡμετέρης γλώσσης ἐπὶ τοῖσδεσι κεῖται·

[2] τότε δὲ τοῦ δήμου συνελθόντος εἰς ἐκκλησίαν παρελθὼν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, καὶ τὰ μὲν αὑτοῦ πάθη κλαύσας καὶ ὀλοφυράμενος, ἐγκαλέσας δὲ μικρὰ καὶ μέτρια τῷ δήμῳ, τὸ δὲ σύμπαν ἀναθεὶς αὑτοῦ τινι τύχῃ πονηρᾷ καὶ φθονερῷ δαίμονι, πλεῖστα δ’ εἰς ἐλπίδας τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ πρὸς τὸ θαρρεῖν διαλεχθεὶς καὶ παρορμήσας, στεφάνοις μὲν ἐστεφανώθη χρυσοῖς, ᾑρέθη δ’ ἅμα καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ [3] θάλατταν αὐτοκράτωρ στρατηγός. ἐψηφίσαντο δὲ ‹καὶ› τὴν οὐσίαν ἀποδοῦναι αὐτῷ καὶ τὰς ἀρὰς ἀφοσιώσασθαι πάλιν Εὐμολπίδας καὶ Κήρυκας, ἃς ἐποιήσαντο τοῦ δήμου προστάξαντος. ἀφοσιουμένων δὲ τῶν ἄλλων Θεόδωρος ὁ ἱεροφάντης ἀλλ’ ἐγώ εἶπεν οὐδὲ κατηρασάμην αὐτῷ κακὸν οὐδέν, εἰ μηδὲν ἀδικεῖ τὴν πόλιν.

[34] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου λαμπρῶς εὐημεροῦντος, ὑπέθραττεν ἐνίους ὅμως ὁ τῆς καθόδου καιρός. ᾗ γὰρ ἡμέρᾳ κατέπλευσεν, ἐδρᾶτο τὰ Πλυντήρια τῇ θεῷ. δρῶσι δὲ τὰ ὄργια Πραξιεργίδαι Θαργηλιῶνος ἕκτῃ φθίνοντος ἀπόρρητα, τόν τε κόσμον ἀφελόντες καὶ τὸ ἕδος κατακαλύψαντες.

[2] ὅθεν ἐν ταῖς μάλιστα τῶν ἀποφράδων τὴν ἡμέραν ταύτην ἄπρακτον Ἀθηναῖοι νομίζουσιν. οὐ φιλοφρόνως οὖν οὐδ’ εὐμενῶς ἐδόκει προσδεχομένη τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ἡ θεὸς παρακαλύπτεσθαι καὶ ἀπελαύνειν ἑαυτῆς.

[3] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πάντων γεγονότων τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ κατὰ γνώμην, καὶ πληρουμένων ἑκατὸν τριήρων αἷς αὖθις ἐκπλεῖν ἔμελλε, φιλοτιμία τις οὐκ ἀγεννὴς προσπεσοῦσα [4] κατέσχεν αὐτὸν μέχρι μυστηρίων. ἀφ’ οὗ γὰρ ἐπετειχίσθη Δεκέλεια καὶ τῶν εἰς Ἐλευσῖνα παρόδων ἐκράτουν οἱ πολέμιοι παρόντες, οὐδένα κόσμον εἶχεν ἡ τελετὴ πεμπομένη κατὰ θάλατταν, ἀλλὰ καὶ θυσίαι καὶ χορεῖαι καὶ πολλὰ τῶν δρωμένων καθ’ ὁδὸν ἱερῶν, ὅταν ἐξελαύνωσι [5] τὸν Ἴακχον, ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ἐξελείπετο. καλὸν οὖν ἐφαίνετο τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ καὶ πρὸς θεῶν ὁσιότητα καὶ πρὸς ἀνθρώπων δόξαν ἀποδοῦναι τὸ πάτριον σχῆμα τοῖς ἱεροῖς, παραπέμψαντα πεζῇ τὴν τελετὴν καὶ δορυφορήσαντα παρὰ τοὺς πολεμίους· ἢ γὰρ ἀτρεμήσαντα κομιδῇ κολούσειν καὶ ταπεινώσειν τὸν Ἆγιν, ἢ μάχην ἱερὰν καὶ θεοφιλῆ περὶ τῶν ἁγιωτάτων καὶ μεγίστων ἐν ὄψει τῆς πατρίδος μαχεῖσθαι, καὶ πάντας ἕξειν μάρτυρας τοὺς πολίτας [6] τῆς ἀνδραγαθίας. ὡς δὲ ταῦτ’ ἔγνω καὶ προεῖπεν Εὐμολπίδαις καὶ Κήρυξι, σκοποὺς μὲν ἐπὶ τῶν ἄκρων ἐκάθισε καὶ προδρόμους τινὰς ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ προεξέπεμψεν, ἱερεῖς δὲ καὶ μύστας καὶ μυσταγωγοὺς ἀναλαβὼν καὶ τοῖς ὅπλοις περικαλύψας, ἦγεν ἐν κόσμῳ καὶ μετὰ σιωπῆς, θέαμα σεμνὸν καὶ θεοπρεπὲς τὴν στρατηγίαν ἐκείνην ἐπιδεικνύμενος, ὑπὸ τῶν μὴ φθονούντων ἱεροφαντίαν [7] καὶ μυσταγωγίαν προσαγορευομένην. μηδενὸς δὲ τῶν πολεμίων ἐπιθέσθαι τολμήσαντος, ἀσφαλῶς ἀπαγαγὼν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἤρθη μὲν αὐτὸς τῷ φρονήματι, καὶ τὴν στρατιὰν ἐπῆρεν ὡς ἄμαχον καὶ ἀήττητον οὖσαν ἐκείνου στρατηγοῦντος, τοὺς δὲ φορτικοὺς καὶ πένητας οὕτως ἐδημαγώγησεν, ὥστ’ ἐρᾶν ἔρωτα θαυμαστὸν ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τυραννεῖσθαι, καὶ λέγειν ἐνίους καὶ προσιέναι παρακελευομένους, ὅπως τοῦ φθόνου κρείττων γενόμενος καὶ καταβαλὼν ψηφίσματα καὶ νόμους καὶ φλυάρους ἀπολλύντας τὴν πόλιν ὡς ἂν πράξῃ καὶ χρήσηται τοῖς πράγμασι, μὴ δεδιὼς τοὺς συκοφάντας.

[35] [1] Αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ἐκεῖνος ἣν εἶχε διάνοιαν περὶ τῆς τυραννίδος, ἄδηλόν ἐστιν· οἱ δὲ δυνατώτατοι τῶν πολιτῶν φοβηθέντες ἐσπούδασαν αὐτὸν ἐκπλεῦσαι τὴν ταχίστην, τά τ’ ἄλλα ψηφισάμενοι καὶ συνάρχοντας οὓς ἐκεῖνος ἠθέλησεν.

[2] Ἐκπλεύσας δὲ ταῖς ἑκατὸν ναυσὶ καὶ προσβαλὼν Ἄνδρῳ, μάχῃ μὲν ἐκράτησεν αὐτῶν καὶ Λακεδαιμονίων ὅσοι παρῆσαν, οὐχ εἷλε δὲ τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο τῶν καινῶν ἐγκλημάτων πρῶτον ὑπῆρξε κατ’ αὐτοῦ τοῖς ἐχθροῖς.

[3] ἔοικε δ’ εἴ τις ἄλλος ὑπὸ τῆς αὑτοῦ δόξης καταλυθῆναι καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδης. μεγάλη γὰρ οὖσα καὶ τόλμης καὶ συνέσεως [γέμουσα] ἀφ’ ὧν κατώρθωσεν, ὕποπτον αὐτοῦ τὸ ἐλλεῖπον ὡς οὐ σπουδάσαντος ἀπιστίᾳ τοῦ μὴ δυνηθῆναι παρεῖχε· σπουδάσαντα γὰρ οὐδὲν ἂν διαφυγεῖν. ἤλπιζον δὲ καὶ Χίους ἑαλωκότας ἀκούσεσθαι καὶ τὴν ἄλλην Ἰωνίαν.

[4] ὅθεν ἠγανάκτουν μὴ ταχὺ πάντα μηδ’ εὐθὺς ὡς ἐβούλοντο πυνθανόμενοι διαπεπραγμένον, οὐχ ὑπολογιζόμενοι τὴν ἀχρηματίαν, ἀφ’ ἧς πολεμῶν πρὸς ἀνθρώπους βασιλέα μέγαν χορηγὸν ἔχοντας, ἠναγκάζετο πολλάκις ἐκπλέων καὶ ἀπολείπων τὸ στρατόπεδον μισθοὺς καὶ τροφὰς πορίζειν.

[5] καὶ γὰρ τὸ τελευταῖον ἔγκλημα διὰ ταύτην ἔλαβε τὴν αἰτίαν. Λυσάνδρου γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν ναυαρχίαν ἀποσταλέντος ὑπὸ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων καὶ τετρώβολον ἀντὶ τριωβόλου τῷ ναύτῃ διδόντος, ἐξ ὧν ἔλαβε παρὰ Κύρου χρημάτων, αὐτὸς ἤδη γλίσχρως χορηγῶν καὶ τὸ τριώβολον, ἀπῆρεν ἀργυρολογήσων [6] ἐπὶ Καρίας. ὁ δ’ ἀπολειφθεὶς ἐπὶ τῶν νεῶν ἐπιμελητὴς Ἀντίοχος ἀγαθὸς μὲν ἦν κυβερνήτης, ἀνόητος δὲ τὰ ἄλλα καὶ φορτικός· ἔχων δὲ πρόσταγμα παρὰ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου μηδ’ ἂν ἐπιπλέωσιν οἱ πολέμιοι διαναυμαχεῖν, οὕτως ἐξύβρισε καὶ κατεφρόνησεν, ὥστε τὴν αὑτοῦ πληρωσάμενος τριήρη καὶ τῶν ἄλλων μίαν, ἐπιπλεῦσαι τῇ Ἐφέσῳ καὶ παρὰ τὰς πρῴρας τῶν πολεμίων νεῶν πολλὰ καὶ πράττων καὶ φθεγγόμενος ἀκόλαστα καὶ [7] βωμολόχα παρεξελαύνειν. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ὁ Λύσανδρος ὀλίγαις ναυσὶν ἐπαναχθεὶς ἐδίωκεν αὐτόν, τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων ἐπιβοηθούντων πάσαις ἀναχθεὶς καὶ κρατήσας, αὐτόν τε διέφθειρε τὸν Ἀντίοχον, καὶ ναῦς ἔλαβε πολλὰς [8] καὶ ἀνθρώπους, καὶ τρόπαιον ἔστησεν. ὡς δὲ ταῦτ’ ἤκουσεν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐπανελθὼν εἰς Σάμον, ἀνήχθη παντὶ τῷ στόλῳ καὶ προὐκαλεῖτο τὸν Λύσανδρον. ὁ δ’ ἠγάπα νενικηκὼς καὶ οὐκ ἀντανήγετο.

[36] [1] Τῶν δὲ μισούντων τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ Θρασύβουλος ὁ Θράσωνος ἐχθρὸς ὢν ἀπῆρεν [2] εἰς Ἀθήνας κατηγορήσων, καὶ τοὺς ἐκεῖ παροξύνας ἔλεγε πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, ὡς Ἀλκιβιάδης διέφθαρκε τὰ πράγματα καὶ τὰς ναῦς ἀπολώλεκεν, ἐντρυφῶν τῇ ἀρχῇ καὶ παραδιδοὺς τὴν στρατηγίαν ἀνθρώποις ἐκ πότων καὶ ναυτικῆς σπερμολογίας δυναμένοις παρ’ αὐτῷ μέγιστον, ὅπως αὐτὸς ἐπ’ ἀδείας χρηματίζηται περιπλέων, καὶ ἀκολασταίνῃ μεθυσκόμενος καὶ συνὼν ἑταίραις Ἀβυδηναῖς καὶ [3] Ἰωνίσιν, ἐφορμούντων δι’ ὀλίγου τῶν πολεμίων. ἐνεκάλουν δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν τῶν τειχῶν κατασκευήν, ἃ κατεσκεύασεν ἐν Θρᾴκῃ περὶ Βισάνθην ἑαυτῷ καταφυγήν, ὡς [4] ἐν τῇ πατρίδι μὴ δυνάμενος βιοῦν ἢ μὴ βουλόμενος. οἱ δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι πεισθέντες ἑτέρους εἵλοντο στρατηγούς, ἐνδεικνύμενοι [5] τὴν πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ὀργὴν καὶ κακόνοιαν. ἃ δὴ πυνθανόμενος ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης καὶ δεδοικώς, ἀπῆλθεν ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου παντάπασι, καὶ συναγαγὼν ξένους ἐπολέμει τοῖς ἀβασιλεύτοις Θρᾳξὶν ἰδίᾳ, καὶ πολλὰ χρήματα συνῆγεν ἀπὸ τῶν ἁλισκομένων, καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἅμα τοῖς προσοικοῦσιν ἄδειαν ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων παρεῖχεν.

[6] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ περὶ Τυδέα καὶ Μένανδρον καὶ Ἀδείμαντον στρατηγοί, πάσας ὁμοῦ τὰς ὑπαρχούσας τότε ναῦς τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἔχοντες ἐν Αἰγὸς ποταμοῖς, εἰώθεσαν ἐπιπλεῖν τῷ Λυσάνδρῳ ναυλοχοῦντι περὶ Λάμψακον ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ προκαλούμενοι, καὶ πάλιν ἀναστρέφειν ὀπίσω καὶ διημερεύειν ἀτάκτως καὶ ἀμελῶς, ἅτε δὴ καταφρονοῦντες, ἐγγὺς ὢν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης οὐ περιεῖδεν οὐδ’ ἠμέλησεν, ἀλλ’ ἵππῳ προσελάσας ἐδίδασκε τοὺς στρατηγούς, ὅτι κακῶς ὁρμοῦσιν ἐν χωρίοις ἀλιμένοις καὶ πόλιν οὐκ ἔχουσιν, ἀλλὰ πόρρωθεν ἐκ Σηστοῦ τὰ ἐπιτήδεια λαμβάνοντες καὶ περιορῶντες τὸ ναυτικόν, ὅταν ἐπὶ γῆς γένηται, πλανώμενον ὅπῃ τις θέλοι καὶ διασπειρόμενον, ἀντεφορμοῦντος αὐτοῖς στόλου μεγάλου, πρὸς ἐπίταγμα μοναρχικὸν εἰθισμένου σιωπῇ πάντα ποιεῖν.

[37] [1] Ταῦτα δὲ λέγοντος τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ παραινοῦντος εἰς Σηστὸν μεθορμίσαι τὸν στόλον, οὐ προσεῖχον οἱ στρατηγοί, Τυδεὺς δὲ καὶ πρὸς ὕβριν ἐκέλευσεν ἀποχωρεῖν· [2] οὐ γὰρ ἐκεῖνον, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρους στρατηγεῖν. ὁ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης ὑπονοήσας τι καὶ προδοσίας ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀπῄει, καὶ τοῖς προπέμπουσι τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατοπέδου γνωρίμων ἔλεγεν, ὅτι μὴ προπηλακισθεὶς οὕτως ὑπὸ τῶν στρατηγῶν ὀλίγαις ἂν ἡμέραις ἠνάγκασε Λακεδαιμονίους διαναυμαχεῖν [3] αὐτοῖς ἄκοντας ἢ τὰς ναῦς ἀπολιπεῖν. ἐδόκει δὲ τοῖς μὲν ἀλαζονεύεσθαι, τοῖς δ’ εἰκότα λέγειν, εἰ Θρᾷκας ἐκ γῆς ἐπαγαγὼν πολλοὺς ἀκοντιστὰς καὶ ἱππεῖς προσμάχοιτο [4] καὶ διαταράττοι τὸ στρατόπεδον αὐτῶν. ὅτι μέντοι τὰς ἁμαρτίας ὀρθῶς συνεῖδε τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ταχὺ τὸ ἔργον ἐμαρτύρησεν. ἄφνω γὰρ αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀπροσδοκήτως τοῦ Λυσάνδρου προσπεσόντος, ὀκτὼ μόναι τριήρεις ὑπεξέφυγον μετὰ Κόνωνος, αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι μικρὸν ἀπολείπουσαι διακοσίων ἀπήχθησαν αἰχμάλωτοι. τῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων τρισχιλίους [5] ἑλὼν ζῶντας ἀπέσφαξεν ὁ Λύσανδρος. ἔλαβε δὲ καὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ καὶ τὰς ναῦς ἐνέπρησε καὶ τὰ μακρὰ τείχη καθεῖλεν.

[6] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου φοβηθεὶς ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἄρχοντας ἤδη καὶ γῆς καὶ θαλάττης τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους εἰς Βιθυνίαν μετέστη, πολλὰ μὲν ἄγων χρήματα, πολλὰ δὲ κομίζων, [7] ἔτι δὲ πλείω καταλιπὼν ἐν οἷς ᾤκει τείχεσιν. ἐν δὲ Βιθυνίᾳ πάλιν οὐκ ὀλίγα τῶν ἰδίων ἀπολέσας καὶ περικοπεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν ἐκεῖ Θρᾳκῶν, ἔγνω μὲν ἀναβαίνειν πρὸς Ἀρταξέρξην, ἑαυτόν τε μὴ χείρονα Θεμιστοκλέους πειρωμένῳ βασιλεῖ [8] φανεῖσθαι νομίζων, καὶ κρείττονα τὴν πρόφασιν· οὐ γὰρ ἐπὶ τοὺς πολίτας ὡς ἐκεῖνον, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους ὑπουργήσειν καὶ δεήσεσθαι τῆς βασιλέως δυνάμεως· εὐπορίαν δὲ τῆς ἀνόδου μετ’ ἀσφαλείας μάλιστα Φαρνάβαζον οἰόμενος παρέξειν, ᾤχετο πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰς Φρυγίαν καὶ συνδιῆγε θεραπεύων ἅμα καὶ τιμώμενος.

[38] [1] Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ χαλεπῶς μὲν ἔφερον τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἀποστερηθέντες· ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀφελόμενος αὐτῶν ὁ Λύσανδρος ἀνδράσι τριάκοντα παρέδωκε τὴν πόλιν, οἷς οὐκ ἐχρήσαντο σῴζεσθαι δυνάμενοι λογισμοῖς ἀπολωλότων ἤδη τῶν πραγμάτων συνίεσαν, ὀλοφυρόμενοι καὶ διεξιόντες τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἑαυτῶν καὶ ἀγνοίας, ὧν μεγίστην ἐποιοῦντο τὴν δευτέραν πρὸς Ἀλκιβιάδην ὀργήν.

[2] ἀπερρίφη γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀδικῶν αὐτός, ἀλλ’ ὑπηρέτῃ χαλεπήναντες ὀλίγας ἀποβαλόντι ναῦς αἰσχρῶς, αἴσχιον αὐτοὶ τὸν κράτιστον καὶ πολεμικώτατον ἀφείλοντο τῆς πόλεως [3] στρατηγόν. ἔτι δ’ οὖν ὅμως ἐκ τῶν παρόντων ἀνέφερέ τις ἐλπὶς ἀμυδρά, μὴ παντάπασιν ἔρρειν τὰ πράγματα τῶν Ἀθηναίων Ἀλκιβιάδου περιόντος· οὔτε γὰρ πρότερον ἠγάπησε φεύγων ἀπραγμόνως ζῆν καὶ μεθ’ ἡσυχίας, οὔτε νῦν, εἰ τὰ κατ’ αὐτὸν ἱκανῶς ἔχει, περιόψεται Λακεδαιμονίους ὑβρίζοντας καὶ τοὺς τριάκοντα παροινοῦντας.

[4] ταῦτα δ’ οὐκ ἦν ἄλογον οὕτως ὀνειροπολεῖν τοὺς πολλούς, ὁπότε καὶ τοῖς τριάκοντα φροντίζειν ἐπῄει καὶ διαπυνθάνεσθαι καὶ λόγον ἔχειν πλεῖστον ὧν ἐκεῖνος ἔπραττε [5] καὶ διενοεῖτο. τέλος δὲ Κριτίας ἐδίδασκε Λύσανδρον, ὡς Ἀθηναίων οὐκ ἔσται δημοκρατουμένων ἀσφαλῶς ἄρχειν Λακεδαιμονίοις τῆς Ἑλλάδος· Ἀθηναίους δέ, κἂν πρᾴως πάνυ καὶ καλῶς πρὸς ὀλιγαρχίαν ἔχωσιν, οὐκ ἐάσει ζῶν [6] Ἀλκιβιάδης ἀτρεμεῖν ἐπὶ τῶν καθεστώτων. οὐ μὴν ἐπείσθη γε πρότερον τούτοις ὁ Λύσανδρος ἢ παρὰ τῶν οἴκοι τελῶν σκυτάλην ἐλθεῖν κελεύουσαν ἐκποδὼν ποιήσασθαι τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην, εἴτε κἀκείνων φοβηθέντων τὴν ὀξύτητα καὶ μεγαλοπραγμοσύνην τοῦ ἀνδρός, εἴτε τῷ Ἄγιδι χαριζομένων.

[39] [1] Ὡς οὖν ὁ Λύσανδρος ἔπεμψε πρὸς τὸν Φαρνάβαζον ταῦτα πράττειν κελεύων, ὁ δὲ Βαγαίῳ τε τῷ ἀδελφῷ καὶ Σουσαμίθρῃ τῷ θείῳ προσέταξε τὸ ἔργον, ἔτυχε μὲν ἐν κώμῃ τινὶ τῆς Φρυγίας ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης τότε διαιτώμενος, ἔχων Τιμάνδραν μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ τὴν ἑταίραν, ὄψιν δὲ κατὰ [2] τοὺς ὕπνους εἶδε τοιαύτην· ἐδόκει περικεῖσθαι μὲν αὐτὸς τὴν ἐσθῆτα τῆς ἑταίρας, ἐκείνην δὲ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐν ταῖς ἀγκάλαις ἔχουσαν αὐτοῦ κοσμεῖν τὸ πρόσωπον ὥσπερ [3] γυναικὸς ὑπογράφουσαν καὶ ψιμυθιοῦσαν. ἕτεροι δέ φασιν ἰδεῖν τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποτέμνοντας αὐτοῦ τοὺς περὶ τὸν Βαγαῖον ἐν τοῖς ὕπνοις καὶ τὸ σῶμα καιόμενον. ἀλλὰ τὴν [4] μὲν ὄψιν οὐ πολὺ γενέσθαι λέγουσι πρὸ τῆς τελευτῆς. οἱ δὲ πεμφθέντες ἐπ’ αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐτόλμησαν εἰσελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ [5] κύκλῳ τὴν οἰκίαν περιστάντες ἐνεπίμπρασαν. αἰσθόμενος δ’ ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, τῶν μὲν ἱματίων τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ τῶν στρωμάτων συναγαγὼν ἐπέρριψε τῷ πυρί, τῇ δ’ ἀριστερᾷ χειρὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ χλαμύδα περιελίξας, τῇ ‹δὲ› δεξιᾷ σπασάμενος τὸ ἐγχειρίδιον, ἐξέπεσεν ἀπαθὴς ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς πρὶν ἢ διαφλέγεσθαι τὰ ἱμάτια, καὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους ὀφθεὶς [6] διεσκέδασεν. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ὑπέμεινεν αὐτὸν οὐδ’ εἰς χεῖρας συνῆλθεν, ἀλλ’ ἀποστάντες ἔβαλλον ἀκοντίοις καὶ [7] τοξεύμασιν. οὕτω δ’ αὐτοῦ πεσόντος καὶ τῶν βαρβάρων ἀπελθόντων, ἡ Τιμάνδρα τὸν νεκρὸν ἀνείλετο, καὶ τοῖς αὑτῆς περιβαλοῦσα καὶ περικαλύψασα χιτωνίσκοις, ἐκ τῶν παρόντων ἐκήδευσε λαμπρῶς καὶ φιλοτίμως.

[8] Ταύτης λέγουσι θυγατέρα γενέσθαι Λαΐδα τὴν Κορινθίαν μὲν προσαγορευθεῖσαν, ἐκ δ’ Ὑκκάρων, Σικελικοῦ πολίσματος, αἰχμάλωτον γενομένην.

[9] Ἔνιοι δὲ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα περὶ τῆς Ἀλκιβιάδου τελευτῆς ὁμολογοῦσι τούτοις, αἰτίαν δέ φασιν οὐ Φαρνάβαζον οὐδὲ Λύσανδρον οὐδὲ Λακεδαιμονίους παρασχεῖν, αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην γνωρίμων τινῶν διεφθαρκότα γύναιον ἔχειν σὺν ἑαυτῷ, τοὺς δ’ ἀδελφοὺς τοῦ γυναίου τὴν ὕβριν οὐ μετρίως φέροντας ἐμπρῆσαί τε τὴν οἰκίαν νύκτωρ, ἐν ᾗ διαιτώμενος ἐτύγχανεν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, καὶ καταβαλεῖν αὐτόν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, διὰ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐξαλλόμενον.

Marcius Coriolanus

[1] [1] Ὁ Μαρκίων οἶκος ἐν Ῥώμῃ τῶν πατρικίων πολλοὺς παρέσχεν ἐνδόξους ἄνδρας, ὧν καὶ Μάρκιος ἦν Ἄγκος ὁ Νομᾶ θυγατριδοῦς καὶ μετὰ Τύλλον Ὁστίλιον βασιλεὺς γενόμενος. Μάρκιοι δ’ ἦσαν καὶ Πόπλιος καὶ Κόιντος οἱ πλεῖστον ὕδωρ καὶ κάλλιστον εἰς Ῥώμην καταγαγόντες, καὶ Κηνσωρῖνος, ὃν δὶς ἀπέδειξε τιμητὴν ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος, εἶθ’ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πεισθεὶς ἐκείνου νόμον ἔθετο καὶ ἐψηφίσατο μηδενὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐκείνην δὶς ἐξεῖναι μετελθεῖν.

[2] Γάιος δὲ Μάρκιος, ὑπὲρ οὗ τάδε γέγραπται, τραφεὶς ὑπὸ μητρὶ χήρᾳ πατρὸς ὀρφανός, ἀπέδειξε τὴν ὀρφανίαν ἄλλα μὲν ἔχουσαν κακά, πρὸς δὲ τὸ γενέσθαι σπουδαῖον ἄνδρα καὶ διαφέροντα τῶν πολλῶν οὐδὲν ἐμποδὼν οὖσαν, ἄλλως δὲ τοῖς φαύλοις αἰτιᾶσθαι καὶ ψέγειν παρέχουσαν αὑτὴν [3] ὡς ἀμελείᾳ διαφθείρουσαν. ὁ δ’ αὐτὸς ἀνὴρ ἐμαρτύρησε καὶ τοῖς τὴν φύσιν ἡγουμένοις, ἐὰν οὖσα γενναία καὶ ἀγαθὴ παιδείας ἐνδεὴς γένηται, πολλὰ τοῖς χρηστοῖς ὁμοῦ φαῦλα συναποτίκτειν, ὥσπερ εὐγενῆ χώραν ἐν γεωργίᾳ [4] θεραπείας μὴ τυχοῦσαν. τὸ γὰρ ἰσχυρὸν αὐτοῦ πρὸς ἅπαντα τῆς γνώμης καὶ καρτερὸν ὁρμάς τε μεγάλας καὶ τελεσιουργοὺς τῶν καλῶν ἐξέφερε, θυμοῖς τε πάλιν αὖ χρώμενον ἀκράτοις καὶ φιλονικίαις ἀτρέπτοις οὐ ῥᾴδιον οὐδ’ εὐάρμοστον ἀνθρώποις συνεῖναι παρεῖχεν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐν ἡδοναῖς καὶ πόνοις καὶ ὑπὸ χρημάτων ἀπάθειαν αὐτοῦ θαυμάζοντες καὶ ὀνομάζοντες ἐγκράτειαν καὶ δικαιοσύνην καὶ ἀνδρείαν, ἐν ταῖς πολιτικαῖς αὖ πάλιν ὁμιλίαις ὡς [5] ἐπαχθῆ καὶ ἄχαριν καὶ ὀλιγαρχικὴν ἐδυσχέραινον. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄλλο Μουσῶν εὐμενείας ἀπολαύουσιν ἄνθρωποι τοσοῦτον, ὅσον ἐξημεροῦσθαι τὴν φύσιν ὑπὸ λόγου καὶ παιδείας, τῷ λόγῳ δεξαμένην τὸ μέτριον καὶ τὸ ἄγαν ἀποβαλοῦσαν. [6] ὅλως μὲν οὖν ἐν τοῖς τότε χρόνοις ἡ Ῥώμη μάλιστα τῆς ἀρετῆς τὸ περὶ τὰς πολεμικὰς καὶ στρατιωτικὰς ἐκύδαινε πράξεις, καὶ μαρτυρεῖ τὸ τὴν ἀρετὴν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἑνὶ τῷ τῆς ἀνδρείας ὀνόματι προσαγορεύεσθαι, καὶ τὸ τοῦ γένους ὄνομα κοινὸν ὑπάρχειν ᾧ τὴν ἀνδρείαν ἰδίᾳ καλοῦσιν.

[2] [1] Ὁ δὲ Μάρκιος ἑτέρων μᾶλλον ἐμπαθὴς γεγονὼς πρὸς τοὺς πολεμικοὺς ἀγῶνας, εὐθὺς ἐκ παιδὸς τὰ ὅπλα διὰ χειρὸς εἶχε, καὶ τῶν ἐπικτήτων οὐδὲν ἔργον οἰόμενος εἶναι τοῖς μὴ τὸ σύμφυτον ὅπλον καὶ συγγενὲς ἐξηρτυμένον ἔχουσι καὶ παρεσκευασμένον, οὕτως ἤσκησε τὸ σῶμα πρὸς ἅπασαν ἰδέαν μάχης, ὥστε καὶ θεῖν ἐλαφρὸν εἶναι καὶ βάρος ἔχειν ἐν λαβαῖς καὶ διαπάλαις πολεμίου δυσεκβίαστον.

[2] οἱ γοῦν ἔριν ἔχοντες εὐψυχίας ἀεὶ καὶ ἀρετῆς πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐν οἷς ἐλείποντο τὴν τοῦ σώματος ᾐτιῶντο ῥώμην, ἄτρυτον οὖσαν καὶ πρὸς μηδένα πόνον ἀπαγορεύουσαν.

[3] [1] Ἐστρατεύσατο δὲ πρώτην στρατείαν ἔτι μειράκιον ὤν, ὅτε Ταρκυνίῳ τῷ βασιλεύσαντι τῆς Ῥώμης, εἶτ’ ἐκπεσόντι μετὰ πολλὰς μάχας καὶ ἥττας ὥσπερ ἔσχατον κύβον ἀφιέντι πλεῖστοι μὲν Λατίνων, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἰταλιωτῶν συνεστράτευον καὶ συγκατῆγον ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην, οὐκ ἐκείνῳ χαριζόμενοι μᾶλλον ἢ φόβῳ τὰ [2] Ῥωμαίων αὐξανόμενα καὶ φθόνῳ καταβάλλοντες. ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ μάχῃ πολλὰς τροπὰς ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα λαμβανούσῃ Μάρκιος ἀγωνιζόμενος εὐρώστως, ἐν ὄψει τοῦ δικτάτορος ἄνδρα Ῥωμαῖον πεσόντα πλησίον ἰδών, οὐκ ἠμέλησεν, ἀλλ’ ἔστη πρὸ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν ἐπιφερόμενον τῶν πολεμίων [3] ἀμυνόμενος ἀπέκτεινεν. ὡς οὖν ἐκράτησεν ὁ στρατηγός, ἐν πρώτοις ἐκεῖνον ἐστεφάνωσε δρυὸς στεφάνῳ. τοῦτον γὰρ ὁ νόμος τῷ πολίτην ὑπερασπίσαντι τὸν στέφανον ἀποδέδωκεν, εἴτε δὴ μάλιστα τιμήσας δι’ Ἀρκάδας τὴν δρῦν, βαλανηφάγους ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ χρησμῷ προσαγορευθέντας, εἴθ’ ὡς ταχὺ καὶ πανταχοῦ δρυὸς οὖσαν εὐπορίαν στρατευομένοις, εἴτε Διὸς Πολιέως ἱερὸν ὄντα τὸν τῆς δρυὸς στέφανον οἰόμενος ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ πολίτου δίδοσθαι πρεπόντως.

[4] ἔστι δ’ ἡ δρῦς τῶν μὲν ἀγρίων καλλικαρπότατον, τῶν δὲ τιθασῶν ἰσχυρότατον. ἦν δὲ καὶ σιτίον ἀπ’ αὐτῆς ἡ βάλανος καὶ ποτὸν τὸ μελίτειον, ὄψον δὲ παρεῖχε τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν [νεμομένων τε καὶ] πτηνῶν, θήρας ὄργανον φέρουσα τὸν [5] ἰξόν. ἐν ἐκείνῃ δὲ τῇ μάχῃ καὶ τοὺς Διοσκόρους ἐπιφανῆναι λέγουσι, καὶ μετὰ τὴν μάχην εὐθὺς ὀφθῆναι ῥεομένοις ἱδρῶτι τοῖς ἵπποις ἐν ἀγορᾷ τὴν νίκην ἀπαγγέλλοντας, οὗ νῦν ὁ παρὰ τὴν κρήνην νεώς ἐστιν αὐτοῖς ἱδρυμένος.

[6] ὅθεν καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἐπινίκιον, οὖσαν ἐν τῷ Ἰουλίῳ μηνὶ τὰς εἰδούς, Διοσκόροις ἀνιερώκασι.

[4] [1] Νέων δ’ ὡς ἔοικεν ἀνδρῶν ἐπιφάνεια καὶ τιμὴ τὰς μὲν ἐλαφρῶς φιλοτίμους φύσεις πρωιαίτερον παραγενομένη σβέννυσι, καὶ ἀποπίμπλησι ταχὺ τὸ διψῶδες αὐτῶν καὶ ἁψίκορον· τὰ δ’ ἐμβριθῆ καὶ βέβαια φρονήματα κινοῦσιν αἱ τιμαὶ καὶ λαμπρύνουσιν, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πνεύματος ἐγειρόμενα [2] πρὸς τὸ φαινόμενον καλόν. οὐ γὰρ ὡς μισθὸν ἀπολαμβάνοντες, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐνέχυρον διδόντες, αἰσχύνονται τὴν δόξαν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν καὶ μὴ τοῖς αὖθις ἔργοις ὑπερβαλέσθαι.

[3] τοῦτο παθὼν καὶ ὁ Μάρκιος αὐτὸς αὑτῷ ζῆλον ἀνδραγαθίας προὔθετο, καινός τ’ ἀεὶ βουλόμενος εἶναι ταῖς πράξεσιν, ἀριστείαις ἀριστείας συνῆπτε καὶ λάφυρα λαφύροις ἐπέφερε, καὶ τοῖς προτέροις ἀεὶ τοὺς ὑστέρους ἡγεμόνας εἶχε [περὶ] τιμὰς τὰς ἐκείνου καὶ μαρτυρίας ἐρίζοντας [4] ὑπερβαλέσθαι. πολλῶν γέ τοι τότε Ῥωμαίοις ἀγώνων καὶ πολέμων γενομένων ἐξ οὐδενὸς ἀστεφάνωτος ἐπανῆλθεν [5] οὐδ’ ἀγέραστος. ἦν δὲ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἡ δόξα τῆς ἀρετῆς τέλος, ἐκείνῳ δὲ τῆς δόξης ἡ τῆς μητρὸς εὐφροσύνη. τὸ γὰρ ἐκείνην ἐπαινούμενον ἀκοῦσαι καὶ στεφανούμενον ἰδεῖν καὶ περιβαλεῖν δακρύουσαν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἐντιμότατον [6] αὑτὸν ἐνόμιζε ποιεῖν καὶ μακαριώτατον. τοῦτο δ’ ἀμέλει καὶ τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν φασὶν ἐξομολογήσασθαι τὸ πάθος, εὐτυχίαν ποιούμενον ἑαυτοῦ μεγίστην, ὅτι τὴν ἐν Λεύκτροις στρατηγίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ νίκην ὁ πατὴρ καὶ ἡ μήτηρ ἔτι ζῶντες [7] ἐπεῖδον. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος μὲν ἀμφοτέρων ἀπέλαυσε τῶν γονέων συνηδομένων καὶ συνευημερούντων, Μάρκιος δὲ τῇ μητρὶ καὶ τὰς τοῦ πατρὸς ὀφείλειν χάριτας οἰόμενος, οὐκ ἐνεπίμπλατο τὴν Οὐολουμνίαν εὐφραίνων καὶ τιμῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ γυναῖκα βουλομένης καὶ δεομένης ἐκείνης ἔγημε, καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ᾤκει γενομένων παίδων ὁμοῦ μετὰ τῆς μητρός.

[5] [1] Ἤδη δὲ καὶ δόξαν αὐτοῦ καὶ δύναμιν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐν τῇ πόλει μεγάλην ἔχοντος, ἡ βουλὴ τοῖς πλουσίοις ἀμύνουσα πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἐστασίασε, πολλὰ καὶ δεινὰ [2] πάσχειν ὑπὸ τῶν δανειστῶν δοκοῦντα. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ κεκτημένους μέτρια πάντων ἀφῃροῦντο τῶν ὄντων ἐνεχυρασμοῖς καὶ πράσεσι, τοὺς δὲ παντελῶς ἀπόρους αὐτοὺς ἀπῆγον, καὶ τὰ σώματα καθείργνυσαν αὐτῶν ὠτειλὰς ἔχοντα τετρωμένων πολλάκις καὶ πεπονηκότων ἐν ταῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος στρατείαις, ὧν τὴν τελευταίαν ἐδέξαντο πρὸς Σαβίνους, τῶν τε πλουσίων ἐπαγγειλαμένων μετριάσειν καὶ τῆς βουλῆς τὸν ἄρχοντα Μάνιον Οὐαλέριον ἐγγυήσασθαι [3] ψηφισαμένης. ἐπεὶ δὲ κἀκείνην ἀγωνισαμένοις τὴν μάχην προθύμως καὶ κρατήσασι τῶν πολεμίων οὐδὲν ἐγίνετο παρὰ τῶν δανειστῶν ἐπιεικές, οὐδ’ ἡ βουλὴ προσεποιεῖτο μεμνῆσθαι τῶν ὡμολογημένων, ἀλλ’ ἀγομένους πάλιν περιεώρα καὶ ῥυσιαζομένους, θόρυβοι δὲ καὶ συστάσεις ἦσαν ἐν τῇ πόλει πονηραί, καὶ τοὺς πολεμίους οὐκ ἔλαθε ταραχωδῶς ἔχων ὁ δῆμος, ἀλλ’ ἐμβαλόντες ἐπυρπόλουν τὴν χώραν, τῶν δ’ ἀρχόντων εἰς τὰ ὅπλα τοὺς ἐν ἡλικίᾳ καλούντων οὐδεὶς ὑπήκουεν, οὕτω διέστησαν αἱ [4] γνῶμαι πάλιν τῶν ἐν τέλει, καί τινες μὲν ᾤοντο δεῖν ὑφέσθαι τοῖς πένησι καὶ χαλάσαι τὸ σύντονον ἄγαν καὶ νόμιμον, ἔνιοι δ’ ἀντέτεινον, ὧν ἦν καὶ Μάρκιος, οὐ τὸ τῶν χρημάτων μέγιστον ἡγούμενος, ἀρχὴν δὲ καὶ πεῖραν ὕβρεως ὄχλου καὶ θρασύτητος ἐπανισταμένου τοῖς νόμοις, εἰ σωφρονοῦσι, παύειν καὶ σβεννύναι παρακελευόμενος.

[6] [1] Συνιούσης δὲ περὶ τούτων πολλάκις ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ τῆς βουλῆς καὶ μηδὲν τέλος ἐκφερούσης, συστάντες οἱ πένητες ἄφνω καὶ παρακαλέσαντες ἀλλήλους ἀπέλιπον τὴν πόλιν, καὶ καταλαβόντες ὄρος ὃ νῦν ἱερὸν καλεῖται παρὰ τὸν Ἀνίωνα ποταμὸν ἐκαθέζοντο, πράττοντες μὲν οὐδὲν βίαιον οὐδὲ στασιαστικόν, ἐκπεπτωκέναι δὲ τῆς πόλεως ὑπὸ τῶν πλουσίων πάλαι βοῶντες, ἀέρα δὲ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ τόπον ἐνταφῆναι πανταχοῦ τὴν Ἰταλίαν αὐτοῖς παρέξειν, ὧν πλέον οὐδὲν οἰκοῦσι τὴν Ῥώμην ὑπάρχειν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλ’ ἢ τιτρώσκεσθαι καὶ ἀποθνῄσκειν ὑπὲρ τῶν πλουσίων [2] στρατευομένοις. ταῦτ’ ἔδεισεν ἡ βουλή, καὶ τοὺς ἐπιεικεῖς μάλιστα καὶ δημοτικοὺς τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἐξαπέστειλε.

[3] προηγόρει δὲ Μενήνιος Ἀγρίππας, καὶ πολλὰ μὲν τοῦ δήμου δεόμενος, πολλὰ δ’ ὑπὲρ τῆς βουλῆς παρρησιαζόμενος, τελευτῶντι τῷ λόγῳ περιῆλθεν εἰς σχῆμα [4] μύθου διαμνημονευόμενον. ἔφη γὰρ ἀνθρώπου τὰ μέλη πάντα πρὸς τὴν γαστέρα στασιάσαι καὶ κατηγορεῖν αὐτῆς, ὡς μόνης ἀργοῦ καὶ ἀσυμβόλου καθεζομένης ἐν τῷ σώματι, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων εἰς τὰς ἐκείνης ὀρέξεις πόνους τε μεγάλους καὶ λειτουργίας ὑπομενόντων· τὴν δὲ γαστέρα τῆς εὐηθείας αὐτῶν καταγελᾶν, ἀγνοούντων ὅτι τὴν τροφὴν ὑπολαμβάνει μὲν εἰς αὑτὴν ἅπασαν, ἀναπέμπει δ’ αὖθις ἐξ [5] αὑτῆς καὶ διανέμει τοῖς ἄλλοις. οὗτος οὖν ἔφη καὶ τῆς συγκλήτου λόγος ἐστὶν ὦ πολῖται πρὸς ὑμᾶς· τὰ γὰρ ἐκεῖ τυγχάνοντα τῆς προσηκούσης οἰκονομίας βουλεύματα καὶ πράγματα πᾶσιν ὑμῖν ἐπιφέρει καὶ διανέμει τὸ χρήσιμον καὶ ὠφέλιμον.

[7] [1] Ἐκ τούτου διηλλάγησαν, αἰτησάμενοι παρὰ τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τυχόντες ἄνδρας αἱρεῖσθαι πέντε προστάτας τῶν δεομένων βοηθείας, τοὺς νῦν δημάρχους καλουμένους.

[2] εἵλοντο δὲ πρώτους οἷς ἐχρήσαντο καὶ τῆς ἀποστάσεως ἡγεμόσι, τοὺς περὶ Βροῦτον Ἰούνιον καὶ Σικίννιον Βελλοῦτον.

[3] ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡ πόλις εἰς ἓν ἦλθεν, εὐθὺς ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἦσαν οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ παρεῖχον αὑτοὺς τοῖς ἄρχουσι χρῆσθαι προθύμως [4] ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον. ὁ δὲ Μάρκιος, οὔτ’ αὐτὸς ἡδόμενος οἷς ὁ δῆμος ἴσχυσεν ἐνδούσης τῆς ἀριστοκρατίας, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων πατρικίων πολλοὺς ὁρῶν τὸ αὐτὸ πεπονθότας, ὅμως παρεκάλει μὴ ἀπολείπεσθαι τῶν δημοτικῶν ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῆς πατρίδος ἀγῶσιν, ἀλλὰ τῇ ἀρετῇ μᾶλλον ἢ τῇ δυνάμει φαίνεσθαι διαφέροντας αὐτῶν.

[8] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῷ Οὐολούσκων ἔθνει, πρὸς οὓς ἐπολέμουν, ἡ Κοριολανῶν πόλις ἀξίωμα μέγιστον εἶχε. ταύτην οὖν τοῦ ὑπάτου Κομινίου περιστρατοπεδεύσαντος, οἱ λοιποὶ Οὐολοῦσκοι δείσαντες ἐπὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους συνεβοήθουν πανταχόθεν, ὡς πρὸς τῇ πόλει ποιησόμενοι μάχην καὶ [2] διχόθεν ἐπιχειρήσοντες αὐτοῖς. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Κομίνιος διελὼν τὴν δύναμιν, αὐτὸς μὲν ἀπήντα τοῖς ἔξωθεν ἐπιοῦσι τῶν Οὐολούσκων, Λάρκιον δὲ Τίτον, ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων ἐν τοῖς ἀρίστοις, ἐπὶ τῆς πολιορκίας κατέλιπε, καταφρονήσαντες οἱ Κοριολανοὶ τῶν παρόντων ἐπεξῆλθον, καὶ προσμαχόμενοι τὸ πρῶτον ἐκράτουν καὶ κατεδίωκον εἰς τὸν χάρακα [3] τοὺς Ῥωμαίους. ἔνθα δὴ Μάρκιος ἐκδραμὼν σὺν ὀλίγοις καὶ καταβαλὼν τοὺς προσμείξαντας αὐτῷ μάλιστα, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους στήσας ἐπιφερομένους, ἀνεκαλεῖτο μεγάλῃ βοῇ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους. καὶ γὰρ ἦν, ὥσπερ ἠξίου τὸν στρατιώτην ὁ Κάτων, οὐ χειρὶ καὶ πληγῇ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τόνῳ φωνῆς καὶ ὄψει προσώπου φοβερὸς ἐντυχεῖν πολεμίῳ καὶ δυσυπόστατος. ἀθροιζομένων δὲ πολλῶν καὶ συνισταμένων [4] περὶ αὐτόν, ἀπεχώρουν οἱ πολέμιοι δείσαντες. ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἠγάπησεν, ἀλλ’ ἐπηκολούθει καὶ συνήλαυνεν ἤδη προτροπάδην [5] φεύγοντας ἄχρι τῶν πυλῶν. ἐκεῖ δ’ ὁρῶν ἀποτρεπομένους τοῦ διώκειν τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, πολλῶν μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ τείχους βελῶν προσφερομένων, τὸ δὲ συνεισπεσεῖν τοῖς φεύγουσιν εἰς πόλιν ἀνδρῶν πολεμικῶν γέμουσαν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ὄντων οὐδενὸς εἰς νοῦν ἐμβαλέσθαι τολμῶντος, ὅμως ἐπιστὰς παρεκάλει καὶ παρεθάρρυνεν, ἀνεῷχθαι βοῶν ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης τοῖς διώκουσι μᾶλλον ἢ [6] τοῖς φεύγουσι τὴν πόλιν. οὐ πολλῶν δὲ βουλομένων ἐπακολουθεῖν, ὠσάμενος διὰ τῶν πολεμίων ἐνήλατο ταῖς πύλαις καὶ συνεισέπεσε, μηδενὸς τὸ πρῶτον ἀντισχεῖν μηδ’ ὑποστῆναι τολμήσαντος· ἔπειτα δ’, ὡς κατεῖδον ὀλίγους παντάπασιν ἔνδον ὄντας, συμβοηθούντων καὶ προσμαχομένων, ἀναμεμειγμένος ὁμοῦ φίλοις καὶ πολεμίοις ἄπιστον ἀγῶνα λέγεται καὶ χειρὸς ἔργοις καὶ ποδῶν τάχεσι καὶ τολμήμασι ψυχῆς ἀγωνιζόμενος ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ κρατῶν ἁπάντων πρὸς οὓς ὀρούσειε, τοὺς μὲν ἐξῶσαι πρὸς τὰ ἔσχατα μέρη, τῶν δ’ ἀπειπαμένων καὶ καταβαλόντων τὰ ὅπλα πολλὴν ἄδειαν τῷ Λαρκίῳ παρασχεῖν, ἔξωθεν ἐπάγοντι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους.

[9] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τῆς πόλεως ἁλούσης καὶ τῶν πλείστων ἐν ἁρπαγαῖς εὐθὺς ὄντων καὶ διαφορήσεσι χρημάτων, ὁ Μάρκιος ἠγανάκτει καὶ ἐβόα, δεινὸν ἡγούμενος, τοῦ ὑπάτου καὶ τῶν σὺν ἐκείνῳ πολιτῶν τάχα που συμπεπτωκότων τοῖς πολεμίοις καὶ διαμαχομένων, αὐτοὺς χρηματίζεσθαι περιιόντας ἢ προφάσει χρηματισμοῦ τὸν κίνδυνον ἀποδιδράσκειν.

[2] ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐ πολλοὶ προσεῖχον αὐτῷ, τοὺς βουλομένους ἀναλαβὼν ἐβάδιζε τὴν ὁδὸν ᾗ τὸ στράτευμα προκεχωρηκὸς ᾐσθάνετο, πολλάκις μὲν ἐποτρύνων τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ καὶ παρακαλῶν μὴ ἐνδιδόναι, πολλάκις δὲ τοῖς θεοῖς εὐχόμενος μὴ ἀπολειφθῆναι τῆς μάχης, ἀλλ’ εἰς καιρὸν ἐλθεῖν ἐν ᾧ συναγωνιεῖται καὶ συγκινδυνεύσει τοῖς [3] πολίταις. ἦν δὲ τότε τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἔθος εἰς τάξιν καθισταμένοις καὶ μέλλουσι τοὺς θυρεοὺς ἀναλαμβάνειν περιζώννυσθαι τὴν τήβεννον ἅμα καὶ διαθήκας ἀγράφους τίθεσθαι, τριῶν ἢ τεσσάρων ἐπακουόντων ὀνομάζοντας [4] τὸν κληρονόμον. ταῦτα δὴ πράττοντας ἤδη τοὺς στρατιώτας ὁ Μάρκιος ἐν ὄψει τῶν πολεμίων ὄντων κατελάμβανε.

[5] καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἐνίους διετάραξεν, ὀφθεὶς μετ’ ὀλίγων αἵματος περίπλεως καὶ ἱδρῶτος· ἐπεὶ δὲ προσδραμὼν τῷ ὑπάτῳ περιχαρὴς τὴν δεξιὰν ἐνέβαλε καὶ τῆς πόλεως ἀπήγγειλε τὴν ἅλωσιν, ὁ δὲ Κομίνιος περιεπτύξατο αὐτὸν καὶ κατησπάσατο, τοῖς μὲν πυθομένοις τὸ γεγενημένον κατόρθωμα, τοῖς δ’ εἰκάσασι, θάρσος παρέστη, [6] καὶ βοῇ παρεκάλουν ἄγειν καὶ συνάπτειν. ὁ δὲ Μάρκιος ἠρώτησε τὸν Κομίνιον, πῶς διακεκόσμηται τὰ τῶν πολεμίων ὅπλα καὶ ποῦ τέτακται τὸ μαχιμώτατον. ἐκείνου δὲ φήσαντος οἴεσθαι τὰς κατὰ μέσον σπείρας Ἀντιατῶν εἶναι, πολεμικωτάτων καὶ μηδενὶ φρονήματος ὑφιεμένων, ἀξιῶ σε τοίνυν ὁ Μάρκιος ἔφη καὶ αἰτοῦμαι, κατὰ τούτους τάξον ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἄνδρας. ἔδωκεν οὖν ὁ [7] ὕπατος, θαυμάσας αὐτοῦ τὸ πρόθυμον. ὡς δ’ ἦσαν ἐμβολαὶ δοράτων καὶ τοῦ Μαρκίου προεκδραμόντος οὐκ ἀντέσχον οἱ κατὰ στόμα τῶν Οὐολούσκων, ἀλλ’ ᾧ προσέμειξε μέρει τῆς φάλαγγος, εὐθὺς διεκέκοπτο, τῶν δ’ ἑκατέρωθεν ἐπιστρεφόντων καὶ περιλαμβανόντων τοῖς ὅπλοις τὸν ἄνδρα, δείσας ὁ ὕπατος τοὺς κρατίστους τῶν περὶ αὑτὸν [8] ἐξέπεμψεν. ἰσχυρᾶς δὲ περὶ τὸν Μάρκιον μάχης γενομένης καὶ πολλῶν ἐν ὀλίγῳ νεκρῶν πεσόντων, ἐγκείμενοι καὶ καταβιαζόμενοι τοὺς πολεμίους ἐώσαντο, καὶ τρεπόμενοι πρὸς δίωξιν αὐτὸν τὸν Μάρκιον ἠξίουν, ὑπό τε καμάτου βαρὺν ὄντα καὶ τραυμάτων, ἀναχωρεῖν ἐπὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[9] εἰπὼν δ’ ἐκεῖνος ὅτι νικώντων οὐκ ἔστι τὸ κάμνειν, ἐφείπετο τοῖς φεύγουσιν. ἡττήθη δὲ καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν στράτευμα, πολλῶν μὲν διαφθαρέντων, πολλῶν δ’ ἁλόντων.

[10] [1] Τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ τοῦ Λαρκίου παραγενομένου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀθροιζομένων πρὸς τὸν ὕπατον, ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς τὴν πρέπουσαν ἀποδοὺς ἐπὶ τηλικούτοις κατορθώμασιν εὐφημίαν, πρὸς τὸν Μάρκιον τρέπεται.

[2] καὶ πρῶτον μὲν αὐτοῦ θαυμαστὸν ἔπαινον εἶπε, τῶν μὲν αὐτὸς ἐν τῇ μάχῃ γεγονὼς θεατής, τὰ δὲ τοῦ [3] Λαρκίου μαρτυροῦντος. ἔπειτα πολλῶν χρημάτων καὶ ὅπλων καὶ ἵππων καὶ ἀνθρώπων γεγονότων αἰχμαλώτων, ἐκέλευσεν αὐτὸν ἐξελέσθαι δέκα πάντα πρὸ τοῦ νέμειν τοῖς ἄλλοις. ἄνευ δ’ ἐκείνων ἀριστεῖον αὐτῷ κεκοσμημένον [4] ἵππον ἐδωρήσατο. τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἐπαινεσάντων, ὁ Μάρκιος προελθών, τὸν μὲν ἵππον ἔφη δέχεσθαι καὶ χαίρειν τοῖς ἐπαίνοις τοῦ ἄρχοντος, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα μισθόν, οὐ τιμὴν ἡγούμενος ἐᾶν, καὶ ἀγαπήσειν ὡς εἷς ἕκαστος τὴν νέμησιν. ἐξαίρετον δὲ μίαν αἰτοῦμαι χάριν ἔφη καὶ [5] δέομαι λαβεῖν. ἦν μοι ξένος ἐν Οὐολούσκοις καὶ φίλος, ἀνὴρ ἐπιεικὴς καὶ μέτριος· οὗτος ἑάλωκε νῦν καὶ γέγονεν ἐκ πλουσίου καὶ μακαρίου δοῦλος. πολλῶν οὖν αὐτῷ κακῶν [6] παρόντων ἓν ἀφελεῖν ἀρκεῖ, τὴν πρᾶσιν. ἐπὶ τούτοις λεχθεῖσι βοή τε μείζων ἀπήντησε τῷ Μαρκίῳ, καὶ πλέονες οἱ θαυμάζοντες ἐγένοντο τὸ μὴ κρατούμενον ὑπὸ χρημάτων τἀνδρὸς ἢ τὴν ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις ἀνδραγαθίαν.

[7] καὶ γὰρ οἷς φθόνου τι καὶ ζήλου πρὸς αὐτὸν ὑπέκειτο τιμώμενον ἐκπρεπῶς, κἀκείνοις τότε τοῦ λαβεῖν μεγάλα τῷ μὴ λαβεῖν ἄξιος ἔδοξε, καὶ μᾶλλον αὐτοῦ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἠγάπησαν, ἀφ’ ἧς κατεφρόνει τηλικούτων, ἢ δι’ ἣν ἠξιοῦτο.

[8] τὸ μὲν γὰρ εὖ χρῆσθαι χρήμασι κάλλιόν ἐστιν ἢ ὅπλοις, τοῦ δὲ χρῆσθαι τὸ μὴ δεῖσθαι χρημάτων σεμνότερον.

[11] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐπαύσατο βοῆς καὶ θορύβου τὸ πλῆθος, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Κομίνιος ἀλλ’ ἐκείνας μέν εἶπεν ὦ συστρατιῶται τὰς δωρεὰς οὐ δύνασθε βιάζεσθαι μὴ δεχόμενον τὸν ἄνδρα μηδὲ βουλόμενον λαβεῖν· ἣν δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπὶ τούτῳ διδομένην ἀπώσασθαι, δῶμεν αὐτῷ καὶ ψηφισώμεθα καλεῖσθαι Κοριολανόν, εἰ μὴ καὶ πρὸ ἡμῶν ἡ [2] πρᾶξις αὐτὴ τοῦτο δέδωκεν. ἐκ τούτου τρίτον ἔσχεν ὄνομα τὸν Κοριολανόν. ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα δῆλόν ἐστιν, ὅτι τῶν ὀνομάτων ἴδιον ἦν ὁ Γάιος, τὸ δὲ δεύτερον οἰκίας ἢ γένους κοινὸν ὁ Μάρκιος· τῷ τρίτῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἐχρήσαντο πράξεώς τινος ἢ τύχης ἢ ἰδέας ἢ ἀρετῆς ἐπιθέτῳ, καθάπερ Ἕλληνες ἐτίθεντο πράξεως μὲν ἐπώνυμον τὸν Σωτῆρα καὶ τὸν Καλλίνικον, ἰδέας δὲ τὸν Φύσκωνα καὶ τὸν Γρυπόν, ἀρετῆς δὲ τὸν Εὐεργέτην καὶ τὸν Φιλάδελφον, εὐτυχίας [3] δὲ τὸν Εὐδαίμονα τῷ δευτέρῳ τῶν Βάττων. ἐνίοις δὲ τῶν βασιλέων καὶ σκώμματα παρέσχεν ἐπικλήσεις, ὡς [4] Ἀντιγόνῳ τὸν Δώσωνα καὶ Πτολεμαίῳ τὸν Λάθυρον. ἐπὶ πλέον δὲ τῷ γένει τούτῳ καὶ Ῥωμαῖοι κέχρηνται, Διαδήματόν τινα τῶν Μετέλλων καλέσαντες, ὅτι πολὺν χρόνον ἕλκος ἔχων περιενόστει διαδεδεμένος τὸ μέτωπον, ἕτερον δὲ Κέλερα, σπεύσαντα μεθ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας τῆς τοῦ πατρὸς τελευτῆς ἐπιταφίους μονομάχων ἀγῶνας παρασχεῖν, τὸ τάχος καὶ τὴν ὀξύτητα τῆς παρασκευῆς θαυμάσαντες.

[5] ἐνίους δ’ ‹ἐπὶ› συντυχίᾳ γενέσεως μέχρι νῦν καλοῦσι, Πρόκλον μέν, ἐὰν ἀποδημοῦντος πατρὸς γένηται, καὶ Πόστουμον, ἂν τεθνηκότος· ᾧ δ’ ἂν διδύμῳ γενομένῳ συμβῇ περιβιῶναι θατέρου τελευτήσαντος, Οὐοπίσκον.

[6] τῶν δὲ σωματικῶν οὐ μόνον Σύλλας οὐδὲ Νίγρους οὐδὲ Ῥούφους, ἀλλὰ καὶ Καίκους καὶ Κλωδίους ἐπωνυμίας τίθενται, καλῶς ἐθίζοντες μήτε τυφλότητα μήτ’ ἄλλην τινὰ σωματικὴν ἀτυχίαν ὄνειδος ἡγεῖσθαι μηδὲ λοιδορίαν, ἀλλ’ ὡς οἰκείοις ὑπακούειν ὀνόμασιν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἑτέρῳ γένει γραφῆς προσήκει.

[12] [1] Παυσαμένῳ δὲ τῷ πολέμῳ τὴν στάσιν ἐπήγειρον αὖθις οἱ δημαγωγοί, καινὴν μὲν οὐδεμίαν αἰτίαν ἔχοντες οὐδ’ ἔγκλημα δίκαιον, ἃ δὲ ταῖς προτέραις αὐτῶν διαφοραῖς καὶ ταραχαῖς ἀναγκαίως ἐπηκολούθησε κακά, ταῦτα [2] ποιούμενοι πρόφασιν ἐπὶ τοὺς πατρικίους. ἄσπορος γὰρ ἡ πλείστη καὶ ἀγεώργητος ἀπελείφθη τῆς χώρας, ἀγορᾶς δ’ ἐπεισάκτου παρασκευὴν διὰ τὸν πόλεμον ὁ καιρὸς [3] οὐκ ἔδωκεν. ἰσχυρᾶς οὖν ἀπορίας γενομένης, ὁρῶντες οἱ δημαγωγοὶ μήτ’ ἀγορὰν ἔχοντα μήτ’, εἰ παρῆν ἀγορά, χρημάτων εὐποροῦντα τὸν δῆμον, ἐνέβαλλον λόγους καὶ διαβολὰς κατὰ τῶν πλουσίων, ὡς ἐκεῖνοι τὸν λιμὸν ἐπάγοιεν [4] αὐτοῖς ὑπὸ μνησικακίας. ἐκ δὲ τῶν Οὐελιτρανῶν ἧκε πρεσβεία, τὴν πόλιν παραδιδόντων καὶ δεομένων ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἀποίκους ἀποστέλλειν. νόσος γὰρ ἐμπεσοῦσα λοιμώδης αὐτοῖς τοσοῦτον ὄλεθρον καὶ φθορὰν ἀπειργάσατο τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὥστε μόλις τὸ δέκατον τοῦ παντὸς ἀπολειφθῆναι [5] μέρος. ἔδοξεν οὖν τοῖς νοῦν ἔχουσιν εἰς δέον γεγονέναι καὶ κατὰ καιρὸν ἡ χρεία τῶν Οὐελιτρανῶν, διά τε τὴν ἀπορίαν κουφισμοῦ δεομένοις, καὶ τὴν στάσιν ἅμα σκεδάσειν ἤλπιζον, εἰ τὸ θορυβοῦν μάλιστα καὶ συνεπηρμένον τοῖς δημαγωγοῖς ὥσπερ περίσσωμα τῆς πόλεως νοσερὸν [6] καὶ ταραχῶδες ἀποκαθαρθείη. τούτους τε δὴ καταλέγοντες εἰς τὴν ἀποικίαν ἐξέπεμπον οἱ ὕπατοι, καὶ στρατείαν ἐπήγγελλον ἑτέροις ἐπὶ τοὺς Οὐολούσκους, ἀσχολίαν τε τῶν ἐμφυλίων μηχανώμενοι θορύβων, καὶ νομίζοντες ἐν ὅπλοις καὶ στρατοπέδῳ καὶ κοινοῖς ἀγῶσιν αὖθις γενομένους πλουσίους ὁμοῦ καὶ πένητας καὶ δημοτικοὺς καὶ πατρικίους ἡμερώτερον διατεθῆναι πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ ἥδιον.

[13] [1] Ἐνίσταντο δ’ οἱ περὶ Σικίννιον καὶ Βροῦτον δημαγωγοί, βοῶντες ἔργον ὠμότατον αὐτοὺς τῷ πρᾳοτάτῳ τῶν ὀνομάτων ἀποικίαν προσαγορεύσαντας ἀνθρώπους πένητας ὥσπερ εἰς βάραθρον ὠθεῖν, ἐκπέμποντας εἰς πόλιν ἀέρος τε νοσεροῦ καὶ νεκρῶν ἀτάφων γέμουσαν, [2] ἀλλοτρίῳ δαίμονι καὶ παλαμναίῳ συνοικιζομένους, εἶθ’, ὥσπερ οὐκ ἀρκουμένους τοὺς μὲν ὑπὸ λιμοῦ διολλύναι τῶν πολιτῶν, τοὺς δὲ λοιμῷ προσβάλλειν, ἔτι καὶ πόλεμον αὐθαίρετον προσάγειν, ὅπως μηδὲν κακὸν ἀπῇ τῆς πόλεως, [3] ὅτι δουλεύουσα τοῖς πλουσίοις ἀπεῖπε. τοιούτων ἀναπιμπλάμενος λόγων ὁ δῆμος οὔτε τῷ καταλόγῳ προσῄει [4] τῶν ὑπάτων, πρός τε τὴν ἀποικίαν διεβέβλητο. τῆς δὲ βουλῆς διαπορουμένης, ὁ Μάρκιος ἤδη μεστὸς ὢν ὄγκου καὶ μέγας γεγονὼς τῷ φρονήματι καὶ θαυμαζόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν κρατίστων, φανερὸς ἦν μάλιστα τοῖς δημαγωγοῖς ἀνθιστάμενος.

[5] καὶ τὴν μὲν ἀποικίαν ἀπέστειλαν, ἐπιτιμίοις μεγάλοις τοὺς λαχόντας ἐξελθεῖν ἀναγκάσαντες· πρὸς δὲ τὴν στρατείαν παντάπασιν ἀπαγορευόντων, αὐτὸς ὁ Μάρκιος τούς τε πελάτας ἀναλαβὼν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅσους [6] ἔπεισε, κατέδραμε τὴν Ἀντιατῶν χώραν, καὶ πολὺν μὲν σῖτον εὑρών, πολλῇ δὲ λείᾳ θρεμμάτων καὶ ἀνδραπόδων περιτυχών, αὑτῷ μὲν οὐδὲν ἐξείλετο, τοὺς δὲ συστρατευσαμένους πολλὰ μὲν ἄγοντας ἔχων, πολλὰ δὲ φέροντας, ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην, ὥστε τοὺς ἄλλους μεταμελομένους καὶ φθονήσαντας τοῖς εὐπορήσασιν ἄχθεσθαι τῷ Μαρκίῳ καὶ βαρύνεσθαι τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ὡς ἐπὶ τὸν δῆμον αὐξομένην.

[14] [1] Ὀλίγου δὲ χρόνου μετῄει μὲν ὑπατείαν ὁ Μάρκιος, ἐκάμπτοντο δ’ οἱ πολλοί, καὶ τὸν δῆμον αἰδώς τις εἶχεν ἄνδρα καὶ γένει καὶ ἀρετῇ πρῶτον ἀτιμάσαι καὶ καταβαλεῖν [2] ἐπὶ τοσούτοις καὶ τηλικούτοις εὐεργετήμασι. καὶ γὰρ ἔθος ἦν τοῖς μετιοῦσι τὴν ἀρχὴν παρακαλεῖν καὶ δεξιοῦσθαι τοὺς πολίτας, ἐν ἱματίῳ κατιόντας εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἄνευ χιτῶνος, εἴτε μᾶλλον ἐκταπεινοῦντας ἑαυτοὺς τῷ σχήματι πρὸς τὴν δέησιν, εἴτε δεικνύντας, οἷς ἦσαν ὠτειλαί, [3] προφανῆ τὰ σύμβολα τῆς ἀνδρείας. οὐ γὰρ ὑποψίᾳ δήπου διανομῆς ἀργυρίου καὶ δεκασμῶν ἄζωστον ἐβούλοντο προσιέναι καὶ ἀχίτωνα τοῖς πολίταις τὸν δεόμενον αὐτῶν· ὀψὲ γὰρ μετὰ πολὺν χρόνον ὠνὴ καὶ πρᾶσις ἐπεισῆλθε καὶ συνεμίγη ταῖς ἐκκλησιαστικαῖς ψήφοις ἀργύριον.

[4] ἐκ δὲ τούτου καὶ δικαστῶν θιγοῦσα καὶ στρατοπέδων ἡ δωροδοκία περιέστησεν εἰς μοναρχίαν τὴν πόλιν, [5] ἐξανδραποδισαμένη τὰ ὅπλα τοῖς χρήμασιν. οὐ γὰρ κακῶς ἔοικεν εἰπεῖν ὁ εἰπὼν ὅτι πρῶτος κατέλυσε τὸν δῆμον ὁ πρῶτος ἑστιάσας καὶ δεκάσας. φαίνεται δὲ κρύφα καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ὑπορρέον οὐκ εὐθὺς ἔκδηλον ἐν Ῥώμῃ γενέσθαι τὸ [6] κακόν. οὐ γὰρ ἴσμεν ὅστις ἦν ὁ δεκάσας πρῶτος ἐν Ῥώμῃ δῆμον ἢ δικαστήριον· Ἀθήνησι δὲ λέγεται πρῶτος ἀργύριον δοῦναι δικασταῖς Ἄνυτος ὁ Ἀνθεμίωνος, προδοσίας περὶ Πύλου κρινόμενος ἐν τοῖς Πελοποννησιακοῖς ἤδη τελευτῶσιν, ὁπηνίκα τὸ χρυσοῦν ἔτι γένος καὶ ἀκήρατον ἐν Ῥώμῃ τὴν ἀγορὰν κατεῖχεν.

[15] [1] Ἀλλὰ τοῦ γε Μαρκίου πολλὰς ὑποφαίνοντος ὠτειλὰς ἀπὸ πολλῶν ἀγώνων, ἐν οἷς ἐπρώτευεν ἑπτακαίδεκα ἔτη συνεχῶς στρατευόμενος, ἐδυσωποῦντο τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ [2] λόγον ἀλλήλοις ἐδίδοσαν ὡς ἐκεῖνον ἀποδείξοντες. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐν ᾗ τὴν ψῆφον ἔδει φέρειν ἐνστάσης ὁ Μάρκιος εἰς ἀγορὰν ἐνέβαλε σοβαρός, ὑπὸ τῆς βουλῆς προπεμπόμενος, καὶ πάντες οἱ πατρίκιοι περὶ αὐτὸν ἐγένοντο φανεροὶ πρὸς μηδέν’ οὕτω μηδέποτε σπουδάσαντες, ἐξέπεσον αὖθις οἱ πολλοὶ τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐνοίας, [3] εἰς τὸ νεμεσᾶν καὶ φθονεῖν ὑποφερόμενοι. προσῆν δὲ τῷ πάθει τούτῳ καὶ δέος, εἰ γένοιτο τῆς ἀρχῆς κύριος ἀνὴρ ἀριστοκρατικὸς καὶ τοσοῦτον ἔχων ἐν τοῖς πατρικίοις ἀξίωμα, μὴ παντάπασιν ἀφέλοιτο τοῦ δήμου τὴν ἐλευθερίαν. οὕτω δὴ φρονήσαντες ἀπεψηφίσαντο τὸν Μάρκιον.

[4] ὡς δ’ ἀνηγορεύθησαν ἕτεροι, βαρέως μὲν ἤνεγκεν ἡ βουλή, δοκοῦσα προπεπηλακίσθαι μᾶλλον ἑαυτὴν ἢ τὸν Μάρκιον, αὐτὸς δ’ ἐκεῖνος οὐ μετρίως ἔσχεν οὐδ’ ἐπιεικῶς πρὸς τὸ συμβεβηκός, ἅτε δὴ πλεῖστα τῷ θυμοειδεῖ καὶ φιλονίκῳ μέρει τῆς ψυχῆς ὡς ἔχοντι μέγεθος καὶ φρόνημα κεχρημένος, τὸ δ’ ἐμβριθὲς καὶ τὸ πρᾷον, οὗ τὸ πλεῖστον ἀρετῇ πολιτικῇ μέτεστιν, ἐγκεκραμένον οὐκ ἔχων ὑπὸ λόγου καὶ παιδείας, οὐδὲ τὴν ἐρημίᾳ σύνοικον, ὡς Πλάτων ἔλεγεν (epist. 321c), αὐθάδειαν εἰδὼς ὅτι δεῖ μάλιστα διαφεύγειν ἐπιχειροῦντα πράγμασι κοινοῖς καὶ ἀνθρώποις ὁμιλεῖν, καὶ γενέσθαι τῆς πολλὰ γελωμένης [5] ὑπ’ ἐνίων ἀνεξικακίας ἐραστήν. ἀλλ’ ἁπλοῦς τις ὢν ἀεὶ καὶ ἀτενής, καὶ τὸ νικᾶν καὶ κρατεῖν πάντων καὶ πάντως ἔργον ἀνδρείας ἡγούμενος, οὐκ ἀσθενείας καὶ μαλακίας, ἐκ τοῦ πονοῦντος καὶ πεπονθότος μάλιστα τῆς ψυχῆς ὥσπερ οἴδημα τὸν θυμὸν ἀναδιδούσης, ἀπῄει ταραχῆς [6] μεστὸς ὢν καὶ πικρίας πρὸς τὸν δῆμον. οἱ δ’ ἐν ἡλικίᾳ τῶν πατρικίων, ὅ τι περ ἦν ἐν τῇ πόλει μάλιστα γαυρούμενον εὐγενείᾳ καὶ ἀνθοῦν, ἀεί τε θαυμαστῶς ἐσπουδάκεσαν περὶ τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ τότε προσκείμενοι καὶ παρόντες οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ, τὸν θυμὸν ἐξερρίπιζον αὐτοῦ τῷ συναγανακτεῖν [7] καὶ συναλγεῖν. ἦν γὰρ ἡγεμὼν αὐτοῖς καὶ διδάσκαλος εὐμενὴς τῶν πολεμικῶν ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις καὶ ζῆλον ἀρετῆς ἄνευ φθόνου πρὸς ἀλλήλους ... γαυρῶσαι τοὺς κατορθοῦντας.

[16] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ σῖτος ἧκεν εἰς Ῥώμην, πολὺς μὲν ὠνητὸς ἐξ Ἰταλίας, οὐκ ἐλάττων δὲ δωρητὸς ἐκ Συρακουσῶν Γέλωνος τοῦ τυράννου πέμψαντος, ὥστε τοὺς πλείστους ἐν ἐλπίσι γενέσθαι χρησταῖς, ἅμα τῆς ἀπορίας καὶ τῆς διαφορᾶς τὴν πόλιν ἀπαλλαγήσεσθαι προσδοκῶντας.

[2] εὐθὺς οὖν βουλῆς ἀθροισθείσης, περιχυθεὶς ἔξωθεν ὁ δῆμος ἐκαραδόκει τὸ τέλος, ἐλπίζων ἀγορᾷ τε χρήσεσθαι φιλανθρώπῳ καὶ προῖκα τὰς δωρεὰς νεμηθήσεσθαι.

[3] καὶ γὰρ ἔνδον ἦσαν οἱ ταῦτα τὴν βουλὴν πείθοντες.

[4] ὁ μέντοι Μάρκιος ἀναστὰς σφόδρα καθήψατο τῶν χαριζομένων τοῖς πολλοῖς, δημαγωγοὺς καὶ προδότας ἀποκαλῶν τῆς ἀριστοκρατίας καὶ σπέρματα πονηρὰ θρασύτητος καὶ ὕβρεως εἰς ὄχλον ἀφειμένα τρέφοντας καθ’ αὑτῶν, ἃ καλῶς μὲν εἶχε μὴ περιιδεῖν ἐν ἀρχῇ φυόμενα μηδ’ ἰσχυρὸν ἀρχῇ τηλικαύτῃ ποιῆσαι τὸν δῆμον, ἤδη δὲ καὶ φοβερὸν εἶναι τῷ πάντα βουλομένοις αὐτοῖς ὑπάρχειν καὶ μηδὲν ἄκοντας βιάζεσθαι, μηδὲ πείθεσθαι τοῖς ὑπάτοις, ἀλλ’ ἀναρχίας ἔχοντας ἡγεμόνας ἰδίους ἄρχοντας [5] προσαγορεύειν. ἐπιδόσεις μὲν οὖν καὶ διανομάς, ὥσπερ Ἑλλήνων οἱ κράτιστα δημοκρατούμενοι, καθίζεσθαι ψηφιζομένους ἔφη παντελῶς ἐστιν εἰς κοινὸν [6] ὄλεθρον τὴν ἀπείθειαν αὐτῶν ἐφοδιάζειν. οὐ γὰρ χάριν γε δήπου φήσουσιν ἀπολαμβάνειν τῶν στρατειῶν ἃς ἐγκατέλιπον, καὶ τῶν ἀποστάσεων αἷς προήκαντο τὴν πατρίδα, καὶ τῶν διαβολῶν ἃς ἐδέξαντο κατὰ τῆς βουλῆς, ἀλλ’ ὑφιεμένους διὰ φόβον καὶ κολακεύοντας ὑμᾶς ταῦτα διδόναι καὶ συγχωρεῖν ἐλπίσαντες, οὐδὲν ἕξουσι πέρας ἀπειθείας, οὐδὲ παύσονται διαφερόμενοι καὶ στασιάζοντες.

[7] ὥστε τοῦτο μέν ἐστι κομιδῇ μανικόν· εἰ δὲ σωφρονοῦμεν, ἀφαιρησόμεθα τὴν δημαρχίαν αὐτῶν, ἀναίρεσιν οὖσαν τῆς ὑπατείας καὶ διάστασιν τῆς πόλεως, οὐκέτι μιᾶς ὡς πρότερον οὔσης, ἀλλὰ δεδεγμένης τομήν, μηδέποτε συμφῦναι μηδ’ ὁμοφρονῆσαι μηδὲ παύσασθαι νοσοῦντας ἡμᾶς καὶ ταρασσομένους ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων ἐάσουσαν.

[17] [1] Πολλὰ τοιαῦτα λέγων ὁ Μάρκιος ὑπερφυῶς εἶχε τοὺς νέους συνενθουσιῶντας αὐτῷ καὶ τοὺς πλουσίους ὀλίγου δεῖν ἅπαντας, μόνον ἐκεῖνον ἄνδρα τὴν πόλιν ἔχειν [2] ἀήττητον καὶ ἀκολάκευτον βοῶντας. ἔνιοι δὲ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἠναντιοῦντο, προορώμενοι τὸ ἀποβησόμενον. ἀπέβη [3] δὲ χρηστὸν οὐδέν. οἱ γὰρ δήμαρχοι παρόντες ὡς ᾔσθοντο τῇ γνώμῃ κρατοῦντα τὸν Μάρκιον, ἐξέδραμον εἰς τὸν ὄχλον, μετὰ βοῆς παρακελευόμενοι συνίστασθαι καὶ βοηθεῖν [4] αὐτοῖς τοὺς πολλούς. ἐκκλησίας δὲ θορυβώδους γενομένης, καὶ τῶν λόγων οὓς ὁ Μάρκιος εἶπεν ἀναγορευθέντων, ὀλίγον ἐδέησεν ἐμπεσεῖν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς φερόμενος εἰς τὴν βουλὴν ὁ δῆμος· οἱ δὲ δήμαρχοι τοῦ Μαρκίου τὴν αἰτίαν ἐποιοῦντο, καὶ πέμποντες ἐκάλουν αὐτὸν ἀπολογησόμενον.

[5] ὡς δὲ πρὸς ὕβριν τοὺς πεμφθέντας ἐξήλασεν ὑπηρέτας, αὐτοὶ μετὰ τῶν ἀγορανόμων ἧκον, ἄξοντες βίᾳ [6] τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ τοῦ σώματος ἐπελαμβάνοντο. συστάντες δ’ οἱ πατρίκιοι τοὺς μὲν δημάρχους ἀπετρίψαντο, τοῖς δ’ [7] ἀγορανόμοις καὶ πληγὰς ἐνέβαλον. τότε μὲν οὖν ἑσπέρα καταλαβοῦσα τὴν ταραχὴν διέλυσεν· ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὸν δῆμον ἐξηγριωμένον ὁρῶντες οἱ ὕπατοι καὶ συντρέχοντα πανταχόθεν εἰς τὴν ἀγοράν, ἔδεισαν ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως, καὶ τὴν βουλὴν ἀθροίσαντες ἐκέλευον σκοπεῖν ὅπως ἐπιεικέσι λόγοις καὶ δόγμασι χρηστοῖς πραΰνωσι καὶ καταστήσωσι τοὺς πολλούς, ὡς οὐ φιλοτιμίας οὖσαν ὥραν οὐδ’ ὑπὲρ δόξης ἅμιλλαν, εἰ σωφρονοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καιρὸν ἐπισφαλῆ καὶ ὀξὺν εὐγνώμονος πολιτείας καὶ φιλανθρώπου [8] δεόμενον. εἰξάντων δὲ τῶν πλείστων, προελθόντες ὡς ἐνῆν μάλιστα τῷ δήμῳ διελέγοντο καὶ κατεπράυνον, ἀπολυόμενοί τε τὰς διαβολὰς ἐπιεικῶς καὶ τῷ νουθετοῦντι καὶ δάκνοντι μετρίως χρώμενοι, περὶ δὲ τιμῆς ὠνίων καὶ ἀγορᾶς οὐδὲν διοίσεσθαι πρὸς αὐτοὺς φάσκοντες.

[18] [1] Ὡς οὖν ἐνεδίδου τὸ πολὺ τοῦ δήμου καὶ φανερὸν ἦν τῶν κοσμίως καὶ σωφρόνως ἀκούειν ἀγόμενον καὶ κηλούμενον, ἀνέστησαν οἱ δήμαρχοι, τῇ μὲν βουλῇ σωφρονούσῃ τὸν δῆμον ἀνθυπείξειν ὅσα καλῶς ἔχει φάσκοντες, τὸν δὲ Μάρκιον ἀπολογεῖσθαι κελεύοντες, εἰ μή φησιν ἐπὶ συγχύσει τῆς πολιτείας καὶ καταλύσει τοῦ δήμου τήν τε βουλὴν παροξῦναι καὶ καλούμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀπειθῆσαι, τέλος δὲ τοὺς ἀγορανόμους τύπτων ἐν ἀγορᾷ καὶ προπηλακίζων ἐμφύλιον, ὅσον ἐφ’ ἑαυτῷ, πόλεμον ἐξεργάσασθαι καὶ [2] προαγαγεῖν εἰς ὅπλα τοὺς πολίτας. ἔλεγον δὲ ταῦτα βουλόμενοι τὸν Μάρκιον ἢ ταπεινὸν ἀποδεῖξαι, παρὰ φύσιν θεραπεύοντα τοὺς πολλοὺς ὑπὸ δέους καὶ παραιτούμενον, ἢ φυλάττοντα τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τῇ φύσει χρώμενον ἀνήκεστον ἀπεργάσασθαι τὴν πρὸς αὑτὸν ὀργήν· ὃ μᾶλλον ἤλπιζον, [3] ὀρθῶς στοχαζόμενοι τοῦ ἀνδρός. ἔστη μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἀπολογησόμενος, καὶ παρέσχεν αὐτῷ σιωπὴν καὶ ἡσυχίαν ὁ δῆμος. ὡς δ’ ἤρξατο πρὸς ἀνθρώπους δεητικόν τινα λόγον προσδεχομένους οὐ μόνον ἐπαχθεῖ παρρησίᾳ χρῆσθαι καὶ πλείονι κατηγορίᾳ τῆς ἀπολογίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τόνῳ φωνῆς καὶ διαθέσει προσώπου τὴν ἐγγὺς ὑπεροψίας καὶ ὀλιγωρίας ἀφοβίαν ἐπιδεικνύμενος, ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἐξετραχύνθη καὶ φανερὸς ἦν δυσανασχετῶν καὶ βαρυνόμενος τοῖς λεγομένοις, τῶν δὲ δημάρχων ὁ θρασύτατος Σικίννιος μικρὰ τοῖς συνάρχουσι διαλεχθείς, εἶτ’ εἰς μέσον ἀναγορεύσας, ὡς θάνατος ὑπὸ τῶν δημάρχων τοῦ Μαρκίου κατέγνωσται, προσέταξε τοῖς ἀγορανόμοις ἀναγαγόντας αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν [4] ἄκραν εὐθὺς ὦσαι κατὰ τῆς ὑποκειμένης φάραγγος. ἁπτομένων δὲ τῶν ἀγορανόμων τοῦ σώματος, ἔδοξε μὲν καὶ τῶν δημοτῶν πολλοῖς φρικτὸν εἶναι τὸ γινόμενον καὶ ὑπερήφανον, οἱ δὲ πατρίκιοι παντάπασιν ἐκστάντες καὶ περιπαθήσαντες ὥρμησαν βοηθεῖν ἀπὸ κραυγῆς, οἱ δὲ καὶ χερσὶ τοὺς ἐπιλαμβανομένους ἀνείργοντες καὶ καταμειγνύντες [5] ἑαυτοῖς τὸν Μάρκιον· ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ὀρέγοντες ἐδέοντο τῶν πολλῶν, ἐπειδὴ λόγου τε καὶ φωνῆς οὐδὲν ἔργον ἦν ἐν ἀκοσμίᾳ τοσαύτῃ καὶ θορύβοις, ἄχρι οὗ συμφρονήσαντες οἱ φίλοι καὶ οἰκεῖοι τῶν δημάρχων, ὡς ἄνευ φόνου πολλοῦ τῶν πατρικίων οὐκ ἔστιν ἐξαγαγεῖν καὶ κολάσαι τὸν Μάρκιον, ἔπεισαν αὐτοὺς ἀφελεῖν τῆς τιμωρίας τὸ ἀλλόκοτον καὶ βαρύ, μὴ βίᾳ μηδ’ ἄκριτον ἀποκτιννύντας, ἀλλὰ τῷ δήμῳ ψῆφον ἐπενεγκεῖν ἀποδόντας.

[6] ἐκ τούτου καταστὰς ὁ Σικίννιος ἠρώτα τοὺς πατρικίους, τί βουλόμενοι τὸν Μάρκιον ἀφαιροῦνται τοῦ [7] δήμου βουλομένου κολάζειν. ἐκείνων δὲ πάλιν ἀντερωτώντων· τί μὲν οὖν διανοεῖσθε καὶ τί βούλεσθε ὑμεῖς, ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων ἐν τοῖς ἀρίστοις ἄνευ κρίσεως ἐπὶ τιμωρίαν [8] ὠμὴν καὶ παράνομον οὕτως ἄγοντες; ἀλλὰ ταύτην μέν εἶπεν ὁ Σικίννιος, ὑμεῖς μὴ ποιεῖσθε πρόφασιν διαφορᾶς καὶ στάσεως πρὸς τὸν δῆμον· ὃ γὰρ ἀξιοῦτε δίδωσιν [9] ὑμῖν, κριθῆναι τὸν ἄνδρα. σοὶ δὲ Μάρκιε προαγορεύομεν εἰς τρίτην ἀγορὰν παρεῖναι καὶ πείθειν τοὺς πολίτας, εἰ μηδὲν ἀδικεῖς, ὡς ψήφῳ κρινοῦντας.

[19] [1] Τότε μὲν οὖν ἠγάπησαν οἱ πατρίκιοι τὴν διάλυσιν, καὶ τὸν Μάρκιον ἔχοντες ἀσμένως ἀπῆλθον. ἐν δὲ τῷ μεταξὺ χρόνῳ τῆς τρίτης ἀγορᾶς - ἀγορὰς δὲ ποιοῦσι Ῥωμαῖοι δι’ ἡμέρας ἐνάτης, νουνδίνας καλοῦντες - ἐλπίδας μὲν αὐτοῖς παρέσχε διακρούσεως στρατεία γενομένη πρὸς Ἀντιάτας, ὡς μῆκος ἕξουσα καὶ χρόνον ἐν ᾧ χειροήθης ὁ δῆμος ἔσται, τῆς ὀργῆς ἀπομαρανθείσης ἢ παντελῶς [2] ἐκπεσούσης δι’ ἀσχολίαν καὶ πόλεμον· ἔπειτα δ’ ὡς ταχὺ διαλυσάμενοι πρὸς τοὺς Ἀντιάτας ἐπανῆλθον, ἐγίνοντο σύνοδοι τῶν πατρικίων πολλάκις, δεδιότων καὶ σκοπούντων ὅπως τόν τε Μάρκιον οὐ προήσονται, τόν τε δῆμον αὖθις [3] οὐ παρέξουσιν ἐκταράττειν τοῖς δημαγωγοῖς. Ἄππιος μὲν οὖν Κλαύδιος, αἰτίαν ἔχων ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα μισόδημος εἶναι, διεμαρτύρετο λέγων τήν τε βουλὴν αὐτοὺς ἀναιρήσειν καὶ προήσεσθαι παντάπασι τὴν πολιτείαν, εἰ κύριον τῆς ψήφου κατὰ τῶν πατρικίων ἀνέξονται γενόμενον τὸν δῆμον· οἱ δὲ πρεσβύτατοι καὶ δημοτικώτατοι τοὐναντίον ἠξίουν οὐ χαλεπὸν οὐδὲ βαρύν, ἀλλὰ πρᾷον καὶ φιλάνθρωπον [4] ὑπὸ τῆς ἐξουσίας ἔσεσθαι τὸν δῆμον· οὐ γὰρ καταφρονοῦντι τῆς βουλῆς, ἀλλ’ οἰομένῳ καταφρονεῖσθαι, τιμὴν καὶ παραμυθίαν γενήσεσθαι τὴν κρίσιν, ὥσθ’ ἅμα τὴν ψῆφον λαβόντας ἀποθήσεσθαι τὴν ὀργήν.

[20] [1] Ὁρῶν οὖν ὁ Μάρκιος εὐνοίᾳ μὲν αὐτοῦ, φόβῳ δὲ τοῦ δήμου τὴν σύγκλητον ἀπορουμένην, ἠρώτησε τοὺς δημάρχους, τί κατηγοροῦσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ περὶ τίνος κριθησόμενον [2] ἐπὶ τὸν δῆμον ἐξάγουσιν. εἰπόντων δ’ ἐκείνων ὅτι τυραννίδος ἐστὶ τὸ ἔγκλημα καὶ τυραννεῖν διανοούμενον ἀποδείξουσιν αὐτόν, οὕτως ἐξαναστὰς αὐτὸς ἔφη πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἤδη βαδίζειν ἀπολογησόμενος καὶ μηδένα τρόπον κρίσεως μηδ’ ἂν ἁλῷ κολάσεως παραιτεῖσθαι· μόνον ὅπως ἔφη τοῦτο κατηγορήσητε καὶ μὴ ψεύσησθε τὴν βουλήν. ὡς [3] δ’ ὡμολόγησαν, ἐπὶ τούτοις ἡ κρίσις ἐγίνετο. συνελθόντος δὲ τοῦ δήμου, πρῶτον μὲν οὐ κατὰ λόχους, ἀλλὰ κατὰ φυλὰς ἐβιάσαντο γίνεσθαι τὴν ψηφοφορίαν, τῶν εὐπόρων καὶ γνωρίμων καὶ στρατευομένων τὸν ἄπορον καὶ πολυπράγμονα καὶ τοῦ καλοῦ φροντίζοντα μηδὲν ὄχλον [4] ἐπίπροσθεν ταῖς ψήφοις ποιοῦντες. ἔπειτα τὴν τυραννίδος ἀφέντες αἰτίαν ἀναπόδεικτον οὖσαν, ἐκείνων πάλιν ἐμέμνηντο τῶν λόγων οὓς ὁ Μάρκιος πρότερον εἶπεν ἐν τῇ βουλῇ, κωλύων μὲν ἐπευωνίσαι τὴν ἀγοράν, ἀφελέσθαι [5] δὲ τὴν δημαρχίαν τοῦ δήμου κελεύων. καινὸν δὲ κατηγόρησαν αὐτοῦ κατηγόρημα τὴν διανομὴν τῶν λαφύρων, ἃ λαβὼν ἐκ τῆς Ἀντιατῶν χώρας οὐκ ἀνήνεγκεν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον, ἀλλὰ διένειμε τοῖς μεθ’ αὑτοῦ στρατευομένοις· ὑφ’ οὗ δὴ [6] καὶ μάλιστα λέγεται διαταραχθῆναι τὸν Μάρκιον. οὐ γὰρ προσεδόκησεν οὐδ’ εὐπόρησε πρὸς τὸν ὄχλον ἐκ τοῦ παραυτίκα λόγων πιθανῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐπαινοῦντι τοὺς στρατευσαμένους ‹ἐπ›εθορύβησαν αὐτῷ πλείονες ὄντες οἱ μὴ στρατευσάμενοι.

[7] τέλος δ’ οὖν ταῖς φυλαῖς τῆς ψήφου δοθείσης, αἱ καθαιροῦσαι τρεῖς ἐγένοντο . ἦν δὲ τίμημα τῆς καταδίκης [8] ἀίδιος φυγή. μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἀναγόρευσιν ὁ μὲν δῆμος οὐδέποτε νικήσας μάχῃ πολεμίους τοσοῦτον ἐφρόνησεν, ὅσον τότε φρονῶν καὶ γεγηθὼς ἀπῄει, τὴν δὲ βουλὴν ἄχος ἔσχε καὶ κατήφεια δεινή, μεταμελομένην καὶ δυσφοροῦσαν ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ πάντα ποιῆσαι καὶ παθεῖν πρότερον ἢ περιιδεῖν ὑβρίσαντα [9] καὶ χρησάμενον ἐξουσίᾳ τοσαύτῃ τὸν δῆμον. οὐδὲν δ’ ἔδει τότε πρὸς διάγνωσιν ἐσθῆτος ἢ παρασήμων ἑτέρων, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἦν δῆλος ὅτι δημότης ὁ χαίρων καὶ ὁ δυσφορῶν ὅτι πατρίκιος.

[21] [1] Πλὴν αὐτὸς ὁ Μάρκιος ἀνέκπληκτος καὶ ἀταπείνωτος καὶ σχήματι καὶ βαδίσματι καὶ προσώπῳ καθεστηκὼς ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐφαίνετο πεπονθόσιν ἀσυμπαθὴς ἑαυτῷ μόνος, οὐχ ὑπὸ λογισμοῦ καὶ πρᾳότητος, οὐδὲ τῷ φέρειν μετρίως τὸ συμβεβηκός, ἀλλ’ ἐμπαθὴς ὢν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ βαρυφροσύνης, ὅπερ ἀγνοοῦσιν οἱ πολλοὶ λύπην οὖσαν.

[2] ὅταν γὰρ εἰς θυμὸν μεταβάλλῃ, καθάπερ ἐκπυρωθεῖσα τὸ ταπεινὸν ἀποβάλλει καὶ ἀργόν· ᾗ καὶ δοκεῖ δραστικὸς ὁ θυμούμενος ὡς θερμὸς ὁ πυρέττων, οἷον ἐν σφυγμῷ καὶ διατάσει καὶ ὄγκῳ γενομένης τῆς ψυχῆς.

[3] Ἐδήλωσε δὲ τοῖς ἔργοις αὐτίκα μάλα τὴν διάθεσιν ταύτην ὁ Μάρκιος. εἰσελθὼν γὰρ οἴκαδε, καὶ τὴν μητέρα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα μετὰ κλαυθμοῦ καὶ βοῆς ὀλοφυρομένας ἀσπασάμενος καὶ κελεύσας φέρειν μετρίως τὸ συμβεβηκός, [4] εὐθὺς ἀπιὼν ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ τὰς πύλας. ἐκεῖ δὲ τῶν πατρικίων ὁμοῦ τι πάντων προπεμπόντων αὐτὸν οὔτε τι λαβὼν οὔτε τινὸς δεηθεὶς ἀπηλλάττετο, τρεῖς ἢ τέτταρας [5] πελάτας ἔχων περὶ αὑτόν. ἡμέρας δ’ ὀλίγας ἔν τισιν ἀγροῖς αὐτὸς καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ὑπὸ πολλῶν διενεχθεὶς διαλογισμῶν, οἵους ὁ θυμὸς ὑπέβαλλεν, ὡς οὔτε καλὸν οὔτε συμφέρον οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸ Ῥωμαίους μετελθεῖν, ἐγίνωσκε πόλεμόν [6] τινα βαρὺν καὶ ὅμορον ἀναστῆσαι ἐπ’ αὐτούς. ὥρμησεν οὖν διαπειρᾶσθαι πρῶτον Οὐολούσκων, ἀκμάζοντας μὲν εἰδὼς ἔτι καὶ σώμασι καὶ χρήμασι, ταῖς δὲ γεγενημέναις ἔναγχος ἥτταις οὐ τοσοῦτον ἀπολωλέναι τῆς δυνάμεως ὅσον ἐγγεγονέναι φιλονικίας αὐτοῖς καὶ ὀργῆς οἰόμενος.

[22] [1] Ἦν δέ τις ἀνὴρ ἐξ Ἀντίου πόλεως διά τε πλοῦτον καὶ ἀνδρείαν καὶ γένους ἐπιφάνειαν ἀξίωμα βασιλικὸν [2] ἔχων ἐν πᾶσιν Οὐολούσκοις, ὄνομα Τύλλος Ἄττιος. ὑπὸ τούτου μισούμενον ὁ Μάρκιος ἑαυτὸν ὡς οὐδένα Ῥωμαίων ἐγίνωσκε· πολλάκις γὰρ ἐν ἀπειλαῖς καὶ προκλήσεσι κατὰ τὰς μάχας γενόμενοι, καὶ κομπάσαντες διὰ τὸ ἐνάμιλλον, οἷα νεανιῶν πολεμικῶν φιλοτιμίαι καὶ ζῆλοι φέρουσιν, ἴδιον προσεκτήσαντο τῷ κοινῷ τὸ κατ’ ἀλλήλων ἔχθος.

[3] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ μέγεθός τι φρονήματος ἔχοντα τὸν Τύλλον ὁρῶν, καὶ μάλιστα δὴ Οὐολούσκων ἐπιθυμοῦντα Ῥωμαίους λαβὴν παρασχόντας ἐν μέρει κολοῦσαι, μαρτυρίαν ἀπέλιπε τῷ εἰπόντι· (Heracl. fr. 85 D4`5)· θυμῷ μάχεσθαι χαλεπόν· [4] ὃ γὰρ ἂν θέλῃ, ψυχῆς ὠνεῖται. λαβὼν γὰρ ἐσθῆτα καὶ σκευὴν ἐν ᾗ μάλιστα μὴ δόξειν ὃς ἦν ἔμελλεν ὁρώμενος, ὥσπερ ὁ Ὀδυσσεὺς (Od. 4, 246)

ἀνδρῶν δυσμενέων κατέδυ πόλιν.

[23] [1] Ἦν δ’ ἑσπέρα, καὶ πολλοὶ μὲν αὐτῷ προσετύγχανον, ἐγνώριζε δ’ οὐδείς. ἐβάδιζεν οὖν ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ Τύλλου, καὶ παρεισελθὼν ἄφνω πρὸς τὴν ἑστίαν ἐκάθισε σιωπῇ, καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐγκαλυψάμενος [2] ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν. οἱ δὲ κατὰ τὴν οἰκίαν θαυμάσαντες, ἀναστῆσαι μὲν οὐκ ἐτόλμησαν - ἦν γάρ τι περὶ αὐτὸν ἀξίωμα καὶ τοῦ σχήματος καὶ τῆς σιωπῆς - , ἔφρασαν δὲ τῷ Τύλλῳ περὶ δεῖπνον ὄντι τὴν ἀτοπίαν τοῦ πράγματος.

[3] ὁ δ’ ἐξαναστὰς ἧκε πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ ἀνέκρινε, τίς ὢν ἀφῖκται καὶ τίνων δεόμενος. οὕτως οὖν ὁ Μάρκιος ἀποκαλυψάμενος καὶ μικρὸν ἀνασχών, εἰ μήπω με γινώσκεις ὦ Τύλλε εἶπεν, ἀλλ’ ὁρῶν ἀπιστεῖς, ἀνάγκη με [4] κατήγορον ἐμαυτοῦ γενέσθαι· Γάιός εἰμι Μάρκιος, ὁ πλεῖστα σὲ καὶ Οὐολούσκους ἐργασάμενος κακά, καὶ τὴν οὐκ ἐῶσαν ἀρνεῖσθαι ταῦτα περιφέρων προσηγορίαν τὸν [5] Κοριολανόν. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄλλο τῶν πολλῶν πόνων καὶ κινδύνων ἐκείνων ἐκτησάμην ἔπαθλον ἢ τὸ παράσημον ὄνομα [6] τῆς πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἔχθρας. καὶ τοῦτό μοι περίεστιν ἀναφαίρετον· τὰ δ’ ἄλλ’ ὁμοῦ πάντα φθόνῳ δήμου καὶ ὕβρει, μαλακίᾳ δὲ καὶ προδοσίᾳ τῶν ἐν τέλει καὶ ἰσοτίμων ἀπεστέρημαι, καὶ φυγὰς ἐλήλαμαι καὶ γέγονα τῆς σῆς ἑστίας ἱκέτης, οὐχ ὑπὲρ ἀδείας καὶ σωτηρίας - τί γὰρ ἔδει με δεῦρο ἥκειν φοβούμενον ἀποθανεῖν; - ἀλλὰ δίκας λαβεῖν χρῄζων, καὶ λαμβάνων ἤδη παρὰ τῶν ἐκβαλόντων τῷ σὲ [7] ποιεῖν ἐμαυτοῦ κύριον. εἰ μὲν οὖν ἐστί σοι θυμὸς ἐπιχειρεῖν τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἴθι ταῖς ἐμαῖς συμφοραῖς ὦ γενναῖε χρῆσαι, καὶ κοινὸν εὐτύχημα ποίησαι Οὐολούσκων τὴν ἐμὴν δυστυχίαν, τοσούτῳ βέλτιον ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν πολεμήσοντος ἢ πρὸς ὑμᾶς, ὅσῳ πολεμοῦσι βέλτιον οἱ γινώσκοντες τὰ παρὰ [8] τοῖς πολεμίοις τῶν ἀγνοούντων. εἰ δ’ ἀπείρηκας, οὔτ’ ἐγὼ βούλομαι ζῆν, οὔτε σοὶ καλῶς ἔχει σῴζειν πάλαι μὲν ἐχθρὸν [9] ἄνδρα καὶ πολέμιον, νῦν δ’ ἀνωφελῆ καὶ ἄχρηστον. ὡς οὖν ταῦθ’ ὁ Τύλλος ἤκουσεν, ἥσθη τε θαυμαστῶς, καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν ἐμβαλών, ἀνάστηθι εἶπεν ὦ Μάρκιε καὶ θάρσει. μέγα μὲν γὰρ ἡμῖν ἀγαθὸν ἥκεις διδοὺς σεαυτόν, ἔλπιζε [10] δὲ μείζονα παρὰ Οὐολούσκων. καὶ τότε μὲν εἱστία φιλοφρονούμενος τὸν Μάρκιον, ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἐπιούσαις ἡμέραις ἐβουλεύοντο περὶ τοῦ πολέμου καθ’ ἑαυτούς.

[24] [1] Τὴν δὲ Ῥώμην ἥ τε τῶν πατρικίων δυσμένεια πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, οὐχ ἥκιστα τὴν τοῦ Μαρκίου καταδίκην αἰτίαν ἐχόντων, ἐτάραττε, καὶ πολλὰ δαιμόνια μάντεις καὶ ἱερεῖς καὶ ἰδιῶται προσήγγελλον ἄξια φροντίδος. ἓν δὲ λέγεται [2] τοιοῦτό τι γενέσθαι. Τίτος ἦν Λατίνιος, ἀνὴρ οὐκ ἄγαν ἐπιφανής, ἀπράγμων δὲ καὶ μέτριος ἄλλως καὶ καθαρὸς [3] δεισιδαιμονίας, ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἀλαζονείας. οὗτος ὄναρ εἶδεν ὡς τοῦ Διὸς εἰς ὄψιν ἥκοντος αὐτῷ καὶ κελεύοντος εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον, ὅτι κάκιστον ὀρχηστὴν ἔστειλαν [4] αὐτῷ πρὸ τῆς πομπῆς καὶ ἀτερπέστατον. ἰδὼν δὲ τὴν ὄψιν ἔλεγε μὴ πάνυ φροντίσαι τὸ πρῶτον· ὡς δὲ καὶ δεύτερον ἰδὼν καὶ τρίτον ἠμέλησε, παιδός τε χρηστοῦ θάνατον ἐπιδεῖν καὶ τοῦ σώματος ἄφνω παραλυθέντος ἀκρατὴς [5] γενέσθαι. ταῦτα δ’ ἐν κλινιδίῳ φοράδην κομισθεὶς εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον ἀπήγγειλεν. ἀπαγγείλας δ’ ὥς φασιν εὐθὺς ᾔσθετο ῥωννύμενον αὑτοῦ τὸ σῶμα, καὶ ἀναστὰς ἀπῄει δι’ αὑτοῦ βαδίζων. θαυμάσαντες οὖν οἱ βουλευταὶ πολλὴν [6] ἐποιήσαντο τοῦ πράγματος ζήτησιν. ἦν δὲ τοιοῦτον· οἰκέτην τις αὑτοῦ παραδοὺς οἰκέταις ἑτέροις ἐκέλευσεν ἐξάγειν δι’ ἀγορᾶς μαστιγοῦντας, εἶτ’ ἀποκτεῖναι. ταῦτα πράττουσιν αὐτοῖς καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον αἰκιζομένοις, στροφάς τε παντοδαπὰς ὑπ’ ὀδύνης στρεφόμενον καὶ κινήσεις ἄλλας ἀτερπεῖς τῷ περιπαθεῖν κινούμενον, ἡ πομπὴ κατὰ [7] τύχην παρηκολουθήκει. καὶ πολλοὶ μὲν ἐδυσχέραινον τῶν παρόντων, οὔτ’ ὄψιν ἱλαρὰν ὁρῶντες οὔτε κινήσεις πρεπούσας, οὐδεὶς δ’ ἐπεξῆλθεν, ἀλλὰ λοιδορίαι μόνον ἐγένοντο [8] καὶ κατάραι τῷ πικρῶς οὕτως κολάζοντι. καὶ γὰρ ἐχρῶντο πολλῇ πρὸς τοὺς οἰκέτας ἐπιεικείᾳ τότε, δι’ αὐτουργίαν καὶ τὸ κοινωνεῖν διαίτης ἡμερώτερον ἔχοντες πρὸς αὐτοὺς [9] καὶ συνηθέστερον. ἦν δὲ μεγάλη κόλασις οἰκέτου πλημμελήσαντος, εἰ ξύλον ἁμάξης, ᾧ τὸν ῥυμὸν ὑπερείδουσιν, ἀράμενος διεξέλθοι παρὰ τὴν γειτνίασιν. ὁ γὰρ τοῦτο παθὼν καὶ ὀφθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν συνοίκων καὶ γειτόνων οὐκέτι [10] πίστιν εἶχεν. ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ φούρκιφερ· ὃ γὰρ οἱ Ἕλληνες ὑποστάτην καὶ στήριγμα, τοῦτο Ῥωμαῖοι φοῦρκαν ὀνομάζουσιν.

[25] [1] Ὡς οὖν ὁ Λατίνιος ἀπήγγειλε τὴν ὄψιν αὐτοῖς καὶ διηπόρουν, ὅστις ἦν ὁ τῆς πομπῆς τότε προηγούμενος ἀτερπὴς καὶ κακὸς ὀρχηστής, ἀνεμνήσθησαν ἔνιοι διὰ τὴν ἀτοπίαν τῆς τιμωρίας ἐκείνου τοῦ θεράποντος, ὃν μαστιγοῦντες ἐξήγαγον δι’ ἀγορᾶς, εἶτ’ ἐθανάτωσαν. συμφωνησάντων οὖν τῶν ἱερέων ὅ τε δεσπότης δίκην ἔδωκε, καὶ τῷ θεῷ τὴν πομπὴν καὶ τὰς θέας αὖθις ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπετέλουν.

[2] ἔοικεν οὖν ὁ Νομᾶς τά τ’ ἄλλα τῶν ἱερῶν σοφώτατος ἐξηγητὴς γεγονέναι, καὶ τοῦτο παγκάλως γε νομοθετῆσαι [3] πρὸς εὐλάβειαν αὐτοῖς. ὅταν γὰρ ἄρχοντες ἢ ἱερεῖς πράττωσί τι τῶν θείων, ὁ κῆρυξ πρόεισι μεγάλῃ φωνῇ βοῶν· [4] ὃκ ἄγε. σημαίνει δ’ ἡ φωνή· τοῦτο πρᾶττε, προσέχειν κελεύουσα τοῖς ἱεροῖς καὶ μηδὲν ἔργον ἐμβάλλειν μεταξὺ μηδὲ χρείαν ἀσχολίας, ὡς τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων [5] ἀναγκαίῳ τινὶ τρόπῳ καὶ διὰ βίας περαινόμενα. θυσίας δὲ καὶ πομπὰς καὶ θέας οὐ μόνον ἐξ αἰτίας τηλικαύτης, ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ μικρὰ Ῥωμαίοις ἔθος ἐστὶν ἀναλαμβάνειν. [6] ἵππου τε γὰρ ἑνὸς τῶν ἀγόντων τὰς καλουμένας θήσσας ἀτονήσαντος, καὶ πάλιν τοῦ ἡνιόχου τῇ ἀριστερᾷ χειρὶ τὰς ἡνίας συλλαβόντος, αὖθις ἐψηφίσαντο τὴν πομπὴν [7] ἐπιτελεῖν. ἐν δὲ τοῖς κάτω χρόνοις μίαν θυσίαν τριακοντάκις ἐποίησαν, ἀεί τινος ἐλλείμματος ἢ προσκρούσματος γίνεσθαι δοκοῦντος. τοιαύτη μὲν ἦν εὐλάβεια Ῥωμαίων πρὸς τὸ θεῖον.

[26] [1] Ὁ δὲ Μάρκιος καὶ Τύλλος ἐν Ἀντίῳ τοῖς δυνατωτάτοις κρύφα διελέγοντο, καὶ παρεκάλουν, ἕως στασιάζουσι πρὸς ἀλλήλους οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, τὸν πόλεμον ἐξενεγκεῖν.

[2] τῶν δὲ δυσωπουμένων, ὅτι σπονδαὶ διέτεις ἦσαν αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀνοχαὶ γεγενημέναι, πρόφασιν αὐτοὶ Ῥωμαῖοι παρέσχον, ἔκ τινος ὑποψίας ἢ διαβολῆς ἐν θέαις καὶ ἀγῶσι κηρύξαντες ἀπιέναι Οὐολούσκους πρὸ ἡλίου δύνοντος ἐκ τῆς πόλεως· [3] ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ἀπάτῃ τοῦ Μαρκίου καὶ δόλῳ γενέσθαι τοῦτο, πέμψαντος εἰς Ῥώμην πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας οὐκ ἀληθῆ κατήγορον τῶν Οὐολούσκων, ὡς ἐν ταῖς θέαις διανοουμένων ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις καὶ τὴν πόλιν [4] ἐμπιπράναι. πάντας μὲν γὰρ αὐτοὺς τὸ κήρυγμα τοῦτο δυσμενεστέρους ἐποίησε τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις· ὁ δὲ Τύλλος ἐπὶ μεῖζον αἴρων τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ παροξύνων, τέλος ἔπεισε πέμψαντας εἰς Ῥώμην τήν τε χώραν ἀπαιτεῖν καὶ τὰς [5] πόλεις ὅσας ἀφῄρηντο πολέμῳ τῶν Οὐολούσκων. οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι τῶν πρέσβεων ἀκούσαντες ἠγανάκτησαν, καὶ ἀπεκρίναντο προτέρους μὲν ἀναλήψεσθαι τὰ ὅπλα Οὐολούσκους, [6] ὑστέρους δὲ καταθήσεσθαι Ῥωμαίους. ἐκ τούτου συναγαγὼν ἐκκλησίαν πάνδημον ὁ Τύλλος, ἐπεὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἐψηφίσαντο, συνεβούλευσε τὸν Μάρκιον καλέσαι μηδὲν αὐτῷ μνησικακοῦντας, ἀλλὰ πιστεύσαντας ὅτι συμμαχῶν ὠφελήσει τὸ ἔθνος ὅσα πολεμῶν ἔβλαψεν.

[27] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ κληθεὶς ὁ Μάρκιος καὶ διαλεχθεὶς πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος οὐχ ἧττον ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων ἢ τῶν ὅπλων ἀνὴρ δεινὸς ἐφάνη [καὶ πολεμικὸς] καὶ τῷ φρονεῖν καὶ τολμᾶν περιττός, ἀποδείκνυται μετὰ Τύλλου στρατηγὸς αὐτοκράτωρ [2] τοῦ πολέμου. δεδιὼς δὲ τὸν χρόνον ἐν ᾧ παρασκευάσασθαι τοὺς Οὐολούσκους ἔδει, μὴ πολὺς γενόμενος τὸν καιρὸν ἀφέληται τῆς πράξεως, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα τοὺς κατὰ πόλιν δυνατοὺς καὶ ἄρχοντας ἐκέλευσε συνάγειν καὶ πορίζειν, αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς προθυμοτάτους ἄνευ καταλόγου πείσας ἑκόντας αὐτῷ συνεξελθεῖν, ἐνέβαλεν εἰς τὴν Ῥωμαίων [3] ἄφνω καὶ μηδενὸς προσδοκῶντος. ὅθεν ηὐπόρησε λείας τοσαύτης, ὅσην ἄγοντας καὶ φέροντας καὶ χρωμένους [4] ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τοὺς Οὐολούσκους ἀπειπεῖν. ἦν δὲ μικρότατον ἔργον αὐτῷ τῆς στρατείας ἐκείνης ἡ εὐπορία καὶ τὸ πολλὰ βλάψαι καὶ κακῶσαι τὴν χώραν· οὗ δ’ ἕνεκα ταῦτ’ ἔπραττε, μέγα· τὸ τοὺς πατρικίους προσδιαβάλλειν [5] τῷ δήμῳ. τὰ γὰρ ἄλλα πάντα λυμαινόμενος καὶ διαφθείρων, τοὺς ἐκείνων ἀγροὺς ἰσχυρῶς ἐφύλαττε, καὶ οὐκ εἴα [6] κακουργεῖν οὐδὲ λαμβάνειν ἐξ ἐκείνων οὐδέν. ὅθεν ἐν διαβολαῖς ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐγένοντο καὶ ταραχαῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλους, οἱ μὲν πατρίκιοι τοῖς πολλοῖς ἐγκαλοῦντες ὡς ἄνδρα δυνατὸν ἀδίκως ἐκβαλοῦσιν, ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἐκείνους ᾐτιᾶτο διὰ μνησικακίαν ἐπαγαγεῖν τὸν Μάρκιον, εἶτα πολεμουμένων ἑτέρων θεατὰς καθῆσθαι, φύλακα τοῦ πλούτου καὶ τῶν [7] χρημάτων ἔξω τὸν πολέμιον αὐτὸν ἔχοντας. ταῦτα διαπραξάμενος ὁ Μάρκιος, καὶ μεγάλα πρὸς τῷ θαρρεῖν καὶ καταφρονεῖν τῶν πολεμίων τοὺς Οὐολούσκους ὠφελήσας, ἀπήγαγεν ἀσφαλῶς.

[28] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ πᾶσα ταχὺ καὶ προθύμως ἡ τῶν Οὐολούσκων δύναμις ἠθροίσθη, πολλὴ φανεῖσα, μέρος μὲν ἔγνωσαν ὑπολιπεῖν ταῖς πόλεσιν ὑπὲρ ἀσφαλείας, μέρει δὲ στρατεύειν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους· ἑλέσθαι δὲ τῶν ἡγεμονιῶν ὁ [2] Μάρκιος ἔδωκε τῷ Τύλλῳ τὴν ἑτέραν. ὁ δὲ Τύλλος εἰπὼν ὡς οὐδὲν ἀρετῇ λειπόμενον αὑτοῦ τὸν Μάρκιον ὁρᾷ, τύχῃ δὲ βελτίονι κεχρημένον ἐν ταῖς μάχαις ἁπάσαις, ἐκέλευσεν ἡγεῖσθαι τῶν ἐξιόντων, αὐτὸς δὲ τάς τε πόλεις ὑπομένων φυλάξειν, καὶ τοῖς στρατευομένοις ὑπουργήσειν τὰ πρόσφορα.

[3] μᾶλλον οὖν ἐπιρρωσθεὶς ὁ Μάρκιος ἐχώρει πρῶτον ἐπὶ Κίρκαιον, πόλιν ἀποικίδα Ῥωμαίων, καὶ ταύτην ἐνδοῦσαν [4] ἑκουσίως οὐδὲν ἠδίκησε. μετὰ δὲ ταύτην ἐπόρθει τὴν Λατίνων χώραν, ἐνταῦθα προσμαχεῖσθαι προσδεχόμενος αὐτῷ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ὑπὲρ τῶν Λατίνων, συμμάχων ὄντων [5] καὶ πολλάκις αὐτοὺς ἐπικαλουμένων. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ἀπρόθυμον ἐγένετο, καὶ τοῖς ὑπάτοις ὀλίγος ἔτι περιῆν τῆς ἀρχῆς χρόνος, ἐν ᾧ κινδυνεύειν οὐκ ἐβούλοντο, καὶ διὰ ταῦτα τοὺς Λατίνους ἀπέπεμψαν, οὕτως ὁ Μάρκιος ἐπ’ αὐτὰς τὰς πόλεις ἦγε, καὶ Τολερίνους μὲν καὶ Λαουικανοὺς καὶ Πεδανούς, ἔτι δὲ Βωλανοὺς ἀντιστάντας αὐτῷ κατὰ κράτος ἑλών, τά τε σώματα λείαν ἐποιήσατο καὶ τὰ [6] χρήματα διήρπασε. τῶν δὲ προστιθεμένων ἐπιμέλειαν ἐποιεῖτο πολλήν, ὅπως μηδ’ ἄκοντος αὐτοῦ βλάπτοιντο, πορρωτάτω στρατοπεδεύων καὶ τῆς χώρας ἀπεχόμενος.

[29] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ Βοΐλλας, πόλιν οὐ πλείους σταδίους ἑκατὸν ἀπέχουσαν τῆς Ῥωμαίων, ἑλὼν χρημάτων τε πολλῶν ἐκράτησε καὶ πάντας ὀλίγου δεῖν τοὺς ἐν ἡλικίᾳ διέφθειρε, τῶν δὲ Οὐολούσκων οὐδ’ οἱ μένειν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι ταχθέντες ἐκαρτέρουν, ἀλλ’ ἐφέροντο σὺν τοῖς ὅπλοις πρὸς τὸν Μάρκιον, ἕνα στρατηγὸν καὶ μόνον ἄρχοντα ἑαυτῶν γινώσκειν ἐκεῖνον [εἶναι] λέγοντες, ἦν ὄνομα κατὰ πᾶσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν Ἰταλίαν μέγα καὶ δόξα θαυμαστὴ τῆς ἀρετῆς, ἑνὸς σώματος μεταθέσει τοσοῦτον ἀπεργασαμένης τὸ παράλογον ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι.

[2] Τὰ δὲ τῶν Ῥωμαίων οὐδένα κόσμον εἶχε, μάχεσθαι μὲν ἀπεγνωκότων, ἐν δὲ συστάσεσι καὶ λόγοις στασιαστικοῖς ὁσημέραι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὄντων, ἄχρι οὗ Λαουΐνιον ἀπηγγέλθη περιτειχιζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, ὅπου καὶ θεῶν ἱερὰ Ῥωμαίοις πατρῴων ἀπέκειτο, καὶ τοῦ γένους ἦσαν αὐτοῖς ἀρχαὶ διὰ τὸ πρώτην πόλιν ἐκείνην [3] κτίσαι τὸν Αἰνείαν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου θαυμαστὴ μὲν ἔσχε καὶ ἀθρόα μεταβολὴ γνώμης τὸν δῆμον, ἄτοπος δὲ κομιδῇ [4] καὶ παράλογος τοὺς πατρικίους. ὁ μὲν γὰρ δῆμος ὥρμησε λύειν τὴν τοῦ Μαρκίου καταδίκην καὶ καλεῖν αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἡ δὲ βουλὴ συναχθεῖσα καὶ σκοποῦσα περὶ τοῦ προβουλεύματος ἀπέγνω καὶ διεκώλυσεν, εἴτε πάντως ἐνίστασθαι φιλονικοῦσα καὶ πᾶσιν οἷς ὁ δῆμος ἐσπούδαζεν, εἴτ’ ἄλλως χάριτι τοῦ δήμου τὸν ἄνδρα μὴ βουλομένη κατελθεῖν, εἴτε κἀκεῖνον αὐτὸν ἤδη πεποιημένη δι’ ὀργῆς, ὅτι πάντας ἐποίει κακῶς οὐχ ὑπὸ πάντων ἀγνωμονηθείς, καὶ τῆς πατρίδος αὑτὸν ὅλης ἀπέδειξεν ἐχθρόν, ἐν ᾗ τὸ κυριώτατον καὶ κράτιστον μέρος ἐγίνωσκε συμπαθοῦν [5] αὐτῷ καὶ συναδικούμενον. ἐξενεχθείσης δὲ τῆς γνώμης εἰς τοὺς πολλούς, ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἄκυρος ἦν τοῦ ψήφῳ καὶ νόμῳ τι ποιεῖν ἄνευ προβουλεύματος.

[30] [1] Ὁ δὲ Μάρκιος ἀκούσας ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐξετραχύνθη, καὶ τὴν πολιορκίαν ἀπολιπὼν ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἐχώρει, καὶ περὶ τὰς λεγομένας Κλοιλίας τάφρους κατεστρατοπέδευσε, τεσσαράκοντα τῆς πόλεως σταδίους ἀφεστώς.

[2] ὀφθεὶς δὲ φοβερὸς καὶ πολὺν θόρυβον παρασχών, ὅμως ἐν τῷ παρόντι τὴν στάσιν ἔπαυσεν· οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἔτι τοῖς πολλοῖς ἐτόλμησεν ἀντειπεῖν οὔτ’ ἄρχων οὔτε βουλευτὴς περὶ τοῦ τὸν Μάρκιον κατάγειν, ἀλλ’ ὁρῶντες ἐν τῇ πόλει διαδρομὰς γυναικῶν καὶ πρὸς ἱεροῖς ἱκεσίας καὶ δάκρυα πρεσβυτῶν καὶ δεήσεις, πάντα δ’ ἐνδεᾶ τόλμης καὶ σωτηρίων λογισμῶν, συνέγνωσαν ὀρθῶς τὸν δῆμον ἐπὶ τὰς διαλλαγὰς τοῦ Μαρκίου τραπέσθαι, τὴν δὲ βουλὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἁμαρτάνειν, ὅτε παύσασθαι καλῶς εἶχεν, ὀργῆς καὶ μνησικακίας [3] ἀρχομένην. ἔδοξεν οὖν πᾶσι πρέσβεις ἀποστεῖλαι πρὸς τὸν Μάρκιον, ἐκείνῳ τε κάθοδον διδόντας εἰς τὴν [4] πατρίδα καὶ τὸν πόλεμον αὐτοῖς λῦσαι δεομένους. οἱ δὲ πεμφθέντες ἀπὸ βουλῆς ἦσαν μὲν ἐπιτήδειοι τῷ Μαρκίῳ, προσεδέχοντο δὲ καὶ πολλὴν περί γε τὰς πρώτας ἀπαντήσεις φιλοφροσύνην παρ’ ἀνδρὸς οἰκείου καὶ συνήθους.

[5] ἐγίνετο δὲ τοιοῦτον οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τοῦ στρατοπέδου τῶν πολεμίων ἀχθέντες, ἐνετύγχανον αὐτῷ μετ’ ὄγκου [6] καθεζομένῳ καὶ βαρύτητος οὐκ ἀνεκτῆς. ἔχων δὲ τοὺς πρώτους τῶν Οὐολούσκων περὶ αὑτόν, ἐκέλευε λέγειν [7] ὧν δεόμενοι τυγχάνουσιν. εἰπόντων δὲ λόγους ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ φιλανθρώπους ἐν ἤθει τῷ πρέποντι καὶ παυσαμένων, ἀπεκρίνατο τὰ μὲν πικρῶς ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν ὧν ἔπαθε, τὰ δ’ ὑπὲρ τῶν Οὐολούσκων ὡς στρατηγός, ἀποδοῦναι τὰς πόλεις καὶ τὴν χώραν ὅσην ἀπετέμοντο πολέμῳ κελεύων, καὶ ψηφίσασθαι Οὐολούσκοις ἰσοπολιτείαν [8] ἥνπερ Λατίνοις· ἄλλην γὰρ οὐκ εἶναι βέβαιον ἢ τὴν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἴσοις καὶ δικαίοις ἀπαλλαγὴν τοῦ πολέμου. χρόνον δὲ βουλῆς ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἡμέρας τριάκοντα, καὶ τῶν πρέσβεων ἀπελθόντων εὐθὺς ἀνέζευξεν ἐκ τῆς χώρας.

[31] [1] Τοῦτο δὴ πρῶτον αἰτίαμα τῶν Οὐολούσκων οἱ πάλαι βαρυνόμενοι τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ καὶ φθονοῦντες ἐλάμβανον· ὧν ἦν καὶ ὁ Τύλλος, ἰδίᾳ μὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ Μαρκίου μηδὲν ἀδικούμενος, ἐν δ’ ἀνθρωπίνῳ πάθει γεγονώς.

[2] ἤχθετο γὰρ ἠμαυρωμένος παντάπασι τῇ δόξῃ καὶ παρορώμενος ὑπὸ τῶν Οὐολούσκων, πάντα μόνον ἡγουμένων αὐτοῖς εἶναι τὸν Μάρκιον, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἀξιούντων, ὅσον ἐκεῖνος αὐτοῖς μεταδώσει δυνάμεως καὶ ἀρχῆς, [3] ἀγαπᾶν ἔχοντας. ὅθεν αἱ πρῶται κατηγορίαι κρύφα διεσπείροντο, καὶ συνιστάμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἠγανάκτουν, καὶ προδοσίαν ἐκάλουν τὴν ἀνάζευξιν, οὐ τειχῶν οὐδ’ ὅπλων, ἀλλὰ καιρῶν, οἷς καὶ τἆλλα πάντα σῴζεσθαι καὶ πάλιν ἀπόλλυσθαι πέφυκεν, ἡμερῶν τριάκοντα τῷ πολέμῳ δεδομένων, οὗ μείζονας οὐδὲν ‹ἐν› ἐλάττονι χρόνῳ [4] λαμβάνειν μεταβολάς. καίτοι τὸν χρόνον τοῦτον ὁ Μάρκιος οὐκ ἀργὸν διῆγεν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς συμμάχους τῶν πολεμίων ἔφθειρεν ἐπιὼν καὶ περιέκοπτε, καὶ πόλεις ἑπτὰ [5] μεγάλας καὶ πολυανθρώπους ἔλαβεν. οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι βοηθεῖν μὲν οὐκ ἐτόλμων, ἀλλ’ ὄκνου πλήρεις ἦσαν αὐτῶν αἱ ψυχαί, καὶ τοῖς ἐκνεναρκηκόσι κομιδῇ καὶ παραλελυμένοις [6] σώμασιν ὁμοίως διέκειντο πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ χρόνος διῆλθε καὶ παρῆν αὖθις ὁ Μάρκιος μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως ἁπάσης, ἐκπέμπουσι πρεσβείαν πάλιν τοῦ Μαρκίου δεησομένην ὑφέσθαι τῆς ὀργῆς καὶ τοὺς Οὐολούσκους ἐκ τῆς χώρας ἀπαγαγόντα πράττειν καὶ λέγειν ὅ τι ἂν ἀμφοτέροις οἴηται βέλτιον εἶναι· φόβῳ μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἐνδώσειν Ῥωμαίους, ἐὰν δέ τινος τῶν ἐπιεικῶν καὶ φιλανθρώπων οἴηται δεῖν τυχεῖν τοὺς Οὐολούσκους, ἅπαν ἂν [7] αὐτοῖς γενέσθαι τὰ ὅπλα καταθεμένοις. πρὸς ταῦθ’ ὁ Μάρκιος ἔφη μηδὲν ὡς Οὐολούσκων ἀποκρίνεσθαι στρατηγός, ὡς δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἔτι πολίτης παραινεῖν καὶ παρακαλεῖν μετριώτερα φρονήσαντας ἐπὶ τοῖς δικαίοις ἥκειν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν ἡμέραις τρισίν, ἃ προκαλεῖται ψηφισαμένους· εἰ δ’ ἕτερα δόξειε, γινώσκειν οὐκ οὖσαν αὐτοῖς ἄδειαν αὖθις μετὰ λόγων κενῶν βαδίζουσιν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[32] [1] Ἐπανελθόντων δὲ τῶν πρέσβεων ἀκούσασα ἡ βουλή, καθάπερ ἐν χειμῶνι πολλῷ καὶ κλύδωνι τῆς πόλεως ἄρασα [2] τὴν ἱερὰν ἀφῆκεν. ὅσοι γὰρ ἦσαν ἱερεῖς θεῶν ἢ μυστηρίων ὀργιασταὶ καὶ φύλακες ἢ τὴν ἀπ’ οἰωνῶν πάτριον οὖσαν ἔκπαλαι μαντικὴν ἔχοντες, τούτους πάντας ἀπιέναι πρὸς τὸν Μάρκιον ἐψηφίσαντο, κεκοσμημένους ὡς ἦν ἑκάστῳ νόμος ἐν ταῖς ἱερουργίαις, λέγειν δὲ ταὐτὰ καὶ παρακαλεῖν ὅπως ἀπαλλάξας τὸν πόλεμον οὕτω διαλέγηται περὶ τῶν [3] Οὐολούσκων τοῖς πολίταις. ἐδέξατο μὲν οὖν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν ἔδωκεν οὐδ’ ἔπραξεν οὐδ’ εἶπε μαλακώτερον, ἀλλ’ ἐφ’ οἷς πρότερον ἐκέλευε [4] ποιεῖσθαι τὰς διαλύσεις ἢ δέχεσθαι τὸν πόλεμον. ἐπανελθόντων οὖν τῶν ἱερέων ἔδοξεν ἀτρεμοῦντας ἐν τῇ πόλει τὰ τείχη φυλάττειν καὶ προσβάλλοντας ἀποκρούεσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους, ἐν τῷ χρόνῳ μάλιστα καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς τύχης παραλόγοις τιθεμένοις τὰς ἐλπίδας, ἐπεὶ δι’ αὑτῶν γε σωτήριον οὐδὲν ἠπίσταντο πράττοντες, ἀλλὰ ταραχὴ καὶ πτοία καὶ φήμη πονηρὰ τὴν πόλιν κατεῖχεν, ἄχρι οὗ συνέβη τι πρᾶγμα τῷ πολλάκις ὑφ’ Ὁμήρου λεγομένῳ, μὴ πάνυ [5] δὲ πείθοντι πολλούς, ὅμοιον. λέγοντος γὰρ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀναφωνοῦντος ἐπὶ ταῖς μεγάλαις πράξεσι καὶ παραλόγοις (Od. 21, 1)

τῇ δ’ ἄρ’ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θῆκε θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη,

καὶ τὸ (Il. 9, 459 sq.)

ἀλλά τις ἀθανάτων τρέψεν φρένας, ὅς ῥ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ

δήμου θῆκε φάτιν,

καὶ τὸ (Od. 9, 339)

ἤ τι ὀισσάμενος ἢ καὶ θεὸς ὣς ἐκέλευε,

καταφρονοῦσιν, ὡς ἀδυνάτοις πλάσμασι καὶ μυθεύμασιν ἀπίστοις τὸν ἑκάστου λογισμὸν τῆς προαιρέσεως †ἄπιστον [6] καθιστάντος. οὐ ποιεῖ δὲ τοῦθ’ Ὅμηρος, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν εἰκότα καὶ συνήθη καὶ κατὰ λόγον περαινόμενα τῷ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν ἀποδίδωσι, καὶ λέγει δήπου πολλάκις·

αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ βούλευσα κατὰ μεγαλήτορα θυμόν,

καὶ (Il. 1, 188)·

ὣς φάτο, Πηλείωνι δ’ ἄχος γένετ’, ἐν δέ οἱ ἦτορ

στήθεσσιν λασίοισι διάνδιχα μερμήριζεν,

καὶ πάλιν (Il. 6, 161)·

  ἀλλὰ τὸν οὔ τι

πεῖθ’ ἀγαθὰ φρονέοντα δαΐφρονα Βελλεροφόντην·

[7] ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἀτόποις καὶ παραβόλοις πράξεσι καὶ φορᾶς τινος ἐνθουσιώδους καὶ παραστάσεως δεομέναις οὐκ ἀναιροῦντα ποιεῖ τὸν θεόν, ἀλλὰ κινοῦντα τὴν προαίρεσιν, οὐδ’ ὁρμὰς ἐνεργαζόμενον, ἀλλὰ φαντασίας ὁρμῶν ἀγωγούς, αἷς οὐδὲ ποιεῖ τὴν πρᾶξιν ἀκούσιον, ἀλλὰ τῷ ἑκουσίῳ δίδωσιν ἀρχήν, καὶ τὸ θαρρεῖν καὶ τὸ ἐλπίζειν προστίθησιν.

[8] ἢ γὰρ ἀπαλλακτέον ὅλως τὰ θεῖα πάσης αἰτίας καὶ ἀρχῆς τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς, ἤ τις ἂν ἄλλος εἴη τρόπος ᾧ βοηθοῦσιν ἀνθρώποις καὶ συνεργοῦσιν, οὐ τὸ σῶμα δήπου πλάττοντες ἡμῶν, οὐδὲ τὰς χεῖρας ὡς δεῖ μετατιθέντες αὐτοὶ καὶ τοὺς πόδας, ἀλλὰ τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ πρακτικὸν καὶ προαιρετικὸν ἀρχαῖς τισι καὶ φαντασίαις καὶ ἐπινοίαις ἐγείροντες, ἢ τοὐναντίον ἀποστρέφοντες καὶ ἱστάντες.

[33] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῇ Ῥώμῃ τότε τῶν γυναικῶν ἄλλαι μὲν πρὸς ἄλλοις ἱεροῖς, αἱ δὲ πλεῖσται καὶ δοκιμώταται περὶ τὸν τοῦ Καπιτωλίου Διὸς βωμὸν ἱκέτευον, ἐν δὲ ταύταις ἡ Ποπλικόλα τοῦ μεγάλα καὶ πολλὰ Ῥωμαίους ἔν τε πολέμοις καὶ [2] πολιτείαις ὠφελήσαντος ἀδελφὴ Οὐαλερία. Ποπλικόλας μὲν οὖν ἐτεθνήκει πρότερον, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γεγραμμένοις (cap. 23) ἱστορήκαμεν, ἡ δὲ Οὐαλερία δόξαν εἶχεν ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ τιμήν, δοκοῦσα τῷ βίῳ μὴ καταισχύνειν [3] τὸ γένος. ὅπερ οὖν λέγω πάθος ἐξαπίνης παθοῦσα, καὶ κατ’ ἐπίνοιαν οὐκ ἀθείαστον ἁψαμένη τοῦ συμφέροντος, αὐτή τ’ ἀνέστη καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἀναστήσασα πάσας ἧκεν [4] ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τῆς τοῦ Μαρκίου μητρὸς Οὐολουμνίας. ὡς δ’ εἰσῆλθε καὶ κατέλαβε μετὰ τῆς νυοῦ καθεζομένην καὶ τὰ παιδία τοῦ Μαρκίου πρὸς τοῖς κόλποις ἔχουσαν, ἐν [5] κύκλῳ περιστήσασα τὰς γυναῖκας αὐτῆς· αὐταί γ’ ἡμεῖς, εἶπεν ὦ Οὐολουμνία καὶ σὺ Οὐεργιλία, γυναῖκες ἥκομεν πρὸς γυναῖκας, οὔτε βουλῆς ψηφισαμένης οὔτ’ ἄρχοντος κελεύσαντος, ἀλλ’ ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν ὡς ἔοικεν οἰκτίρας τὴν ἱκετείαν, ὁρμὴν παρέστησε δευρὶ τραπέσθαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς καὶ δεηθῆναι σωτήρια μὲν αὑταῖς καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πολίταις, ὑμῖν δὲ πεισθείσαις ἐπιφανεστέραν φέροντα δόξαν, ἧς αἱ Σαβίνων θυγατέρες ἔσχον, εἰς φιλίαν καὶ εἰρήνην ἐκ πολέμων [6] συναγαγοῦσαι πατέρας καὶ ἄνδρας. δεῦτε, πρὸς Μάρκιον ἰοῦσαι μεθ’ ἡμῶν συνάψασθε τῆς ἱκετηρίας, καὶ μαρτυρήσατε τῇ πατρίδι μαρτυρίαν ἀληθῆ καὶ δικαίαν, ὅτι πολλὰ πάσχουσα κακῶς οὐδὲν οὔτ’ ἔπραξε δεινὸν οὔτ’ ἐβούλευσε περὶ ὑμῶν δι’ ὀργήν, ἀλλ’ ἀποδίδωσιν ὑμᾶς ἐκείνῳ, κἂν μηδενὸς τυγχάνειν μέλλῃ τῶν ἐπιεικῶν.

[7] ταῦτα τῆς Οὐαλερίας εἰπούσης, ἀνεβόησαν αἱ λοιπαὶ γυναῖκες, ἠμείψατο δ’ ἡ Οὐολουμνία· καὶ τῶν κοινῶν ἡμῖν συμφορῶν, ὦ γυναῖκες, ἴσον μέτεστι, καὶ ἰδίᾳ πράττομεν κακῶς, ἀπολέσασαι τὴν Μαρκίου δόξαν καὶ ἀρετήν, τὸ σῶμα δ’ αὐτοῦ τοῖς τῶν πολεμίων ὅπλοις φρουρούμενον [8] μᾶλλον ἢ σῳζόμενον ἐφορῶσαι. μέγιστον δ’ ἡμῖν τῶν ἀτυχημάτων ἐστίν, εἰ τὰ τῆς πατρίδος οὕτως ἐξησθένηκεν, [9] ὥστ’ ἐν ἡμῖν ἔχειν τὰς ἐλπίδας. οὐκ οἶδα γὰρ εἴ τινα ποιήσεται λόγον ἡμῶν ἐκεῖνος, εἴ γε μηδένα ποιεῖται τῆς πατρίδος, ἣν καὶ μητρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς καὶ τέκνων [10] προετίμησεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ χρῆσθε ἡμῖν καὶ λαβοῦσαι κομίζετε πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο, ταῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἱκεσίαις ἐναποπνεῦσαι δυναμένας.

[34] [1] Ἐκ τούτου τά τε παιδία καὶ τὴν Οὐεργιλίαν ἀναστήσασα, μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων γυναικῶν ἐβάδιζεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον [2] τῶν Οὐολούσκων. ἡ δ’ ὄψις αὐτῶν τό τ’ οἰκτρὸν καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐνεποίησεν αἰδῶ καὶ σιωπήν. ἐδίκαζε δ’ ὁ Μάρκιος, ἐπὶ βήματος καθεζόμενος μετὰ τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν.

[3] ὡς οὖν εἶδε προσιούσας τὰς γυναῖκας, ἐθαύμασεν· ἐπιγνοὺς δὲ τὴν μητέρα πρώτην βαδίζουσαν, ἐβούλετο μὲν ἐμμένειν τοῖς ἀτρέπτοις ἐκείνοις καὶ ἀπαραιτήτοις λογισμοῖς, γενόμενος δὲ τοῦ πάθους ἐλάττων καὶ συνταραχθεὶς πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, οὐκ ἔτλη καθεζομένῳ προσελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ καταβὰς θᾶττον ἢ βάδην καὶ ἀπαντήσας, πρώτην μὲν ἠσπάσατο τὴν μητέρα καὶ πλεῖστον χρόνον, εἶτα δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὰ τέκνα, μήτε δακρύων ἔτι μήτε τοῦ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι φειδόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὑπὸ ῥεύματος φέρεσθαι τοῦ πάθους ἑαυτὸν ἐνδεδωκώς.

[35] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τούτων ἄδην εἶχε καὶ τὴν μητέρα βουλομένην ἤδη λόγων ἄρχειν ᾔσθετο, τοὺς τῶν Οὐολούσκων προβούλους παραστησάμενος, ἤκουσε τῆς Οὐολουμνίας [2] τοιαῦτα λεγούσης· ὁρᾷς μὲν ὦ παῖ, κἂν αὐταὶ μὴ λέγωμεν, ἐσθῆτι καὶ μορφῇ τῶν ἀθλίων σωμάτων τεκμαιρόμενος, οἵαν οἰκουρίαν ἡμῖν ἡ σὴ φυγὴ περιεποίησε· λόγισαι δὲ νῦν, ὡς ἀτυχέσταται πασῶν ἀφίγμεθα γυναικῶν, αἷς τὸ ἥδιστον θέαμα φοβερώτατον ἡ τύχη πεποίηκεν, ἐμοὶ μὲν υἱόν, ταύτῃ δ’ ἄνδρα τοῖς τῆς πατρίδος τείχεσιν [3] ἰδεῖν ἀντικαθήμενον. ὃ δ’ ἔστι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀτυχίας πάσης καὶ κακοπραγίας παραμύθιον, εὔχεσθαι θεοῖς, ἡμῖν ἀπορώτατον γέγονεν. οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε καὶ τῇ πατρίδι νίκην ἅμα καὶ σοὶ σωτηρίαν αἰτεῖσθαι παρὰ τῶν θεῶν, ἀλλ’ ἅ τις ἂν ἡμῖν καταράσαιτο τῶν ἐχθρῶν, ταῦτα ταῖς ἡμετέραις [4] ἔνεστιν εὐχαῖς. ἀνάγκη γὰρ ἢ τῆς πατρίδος ἢ σοῦ στέρεσθαι [5] καὶ γυναικὶ σῇ καὶ τέκνοις. ἐγὼ δ’ οὐ περιμενῶ ταύτην μοι διαιτῆσαι τὴν τύχην ζώσῃ τὸν πόλεμον, ἀλλ’ εἰ μή σε πείσαιμι φιλίαν καὶ ὁμόνοιαν ‹ἀντὶ› διαφορᾶς καὶ κακῶν θέμενον ἀμφοτέρων εὐεργέτην γενέσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ λυμεῶνα τῶν ἑτέρων, οὕτω διανοοῦ καὶ παρασκεύαζε σαυτὸν ὡς τῇ πατρίδι προσμεῖξαι μὴ δυνάμενος πρὶν ἢ [6] νεκρὰν ὑπερβῆναι τὴν τεκοῦσαν. οὐ γὰρ ἐκείνην με δεῖ τὴν ἡμέραν ἀναμένειν, ἐν ᾗ τὸν υἱὸν ἐπόψομαι θριαμβευόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν ἢ θριαμβεύοντα κατὰ τῆς πατρίδος.

[7] εἰ μὲν οὖν ἀξιῶ σε τὴν πατρίδα σῶσαι Οὐολούσκους ἀπολέσαντα, χαλεπή σοι καὶ δυσδιαίτητος ὦ παῖ πρόκειται σκέψις· οὔτε γὰρ διαφθεῖραι τοὺς πολίτας [8] καλόν, οὔτε τοὺς πεπιστευκότας προδοῦναι δίκαιον· νῦν δ’ ἀπαλλαγὴν κακῶν αἰτούμεθα, σωτήριον μὲν ἀμφοτέροις ὁμοίως, ἔνδοξον δὲ καὶ καλὴν μᾶλλον Οὐολούσκοις, ὅτι τῷ κρατεῖν δόξουσι διδόναι τὰ μέγιστα τῶν ἀγαθῶν, οὐχ ἧττον λαμβάνοντες, εἰρήνην καὶ φιλίαν, ὧν μάλιστα μὲν αἴτιος ἔσῃ γενομένων, μὴ γενομένων δὲ μόνος αἰτίαν ἕξεις [9] παρ’ ἀμφοτέροις. ἄδηλος δ’ ὢν ὁ πόλεμος τοῦτ’ ἔχει πρόδηλον, ὅτι σοι νικῶντι μὲν ἀλάστορι τῆς πατρίδος εἶναι περίεστιν, ἡττώμενος δὲ δόξεις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς εὐεργέταις ἀνδράσι καὶ φίλοις τῶν μεγίστων αἴτιος γενέσθαι κακῶν.

[36] [1] Ταῦτα τῆς Οὐολουμνίας λεγούσης ὁ Μάρκιος ἠκροᾶτο μηδὲν ἀποκρινόμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ παυσαμένης εἱστήκει σιωπῶν πολὺν χρόνον, αὖθις ἡ Οὐολουμνία· [2] τί σιγᾷς εἶπεν ὦ παῖ; πότερον ὀργῇ καὶ μνησικακίᾳ πάντα συγχωρεῖν καλόν, οὐ καλὸν δὲ μητρὶ χαρίσασθαι δεομένῃ περὶ τηλικούτων; ἢ τὸ μεμνῆσθαι πεπονθότα κακῶς ἀνδρὶ μεγάλῳ προσήκει, τὸ δ’ εὐεργεσίας ἃς εὐεργετοῦνται παῖδες ὑπὸ τῶν τεκόντων σέβεσθαι καὶ τιμᾶν οὐκ ἀνδρὸς ἔργον ἐστὶ μεγάλου καὶ ἀγαθοῦ; καὶ μὴν οὐδενὶ μᾶλλον ἔπρεπε τηρεῖν χάριν ὡς σοί, πικρῶς οὕτως [3] ἀχαριστίαν ἐπεξιόντι. καίτοι παρὰ τῆς πατρίδος ἤδη μεγάλας δίκας ἀπείληφας, τῇ μητρὶ δ’ οὐδεμίαν χάριν ἀποδέδωκας. ἦν μὲν οὖν ὁσιώτατον ἄνευ τινὸς ἀνάγκης τυχεῖν με παρὰ σοῦ δεομένην οὕτω καλῶν καὶ δικαίων· μὴ πείθουσα [4] δὲ τί φείδομαι τῆς ἐσχάτης ἐλπίδος; καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰποῦσα προσπίπτει τοῖς γόνασιν αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῆς γυναικὸς [5] ἅμα καὶ τῶν παιδίων. ὁ δὲ Μάρκιος ἀναβοήσας· οἷον εἴργασαί μ’ ὦ μῆτερ, ἐξανίστησιν αὐτὴν καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν πιέσας σφόδρα· νενίκηκας εἶπεν εὐτυχῆ μὲν τῇ πατρίδι νίκην, ἐμοὶ δ’ ὀλέθριον· ἄπειμι γὰρ ὑπὸ σοῦ μόνης [6] ἡττημένος. τοσοῦτο δ’ εἰπὼν καὶ βραχέα τῇ μητρὶ καὶ τῇ γυναικὶ διαλεχθεὶς ἰδίᾳ, τὰς μὲν ἀπέπεμψεν εἰς Ῥώμην πάλιν αὐτὰς δεομένας, τῆς δὲ νυκτὸς παρελθούσης ἀπήγαγεν Οὐολούσκους, οὐ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον οὐδ’ ὁμοίως [7] διακειμένους ἅπαντας. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐμέμφοντο καὶ τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν, οἱ δ’ οὐδέτερα, πρὸς διάλυσιν καὶ εἰρήνην οἰκείως ἔχοντες, ἔνιοι δὲ δυσχεραίνοντες τὰ πραττόμενα, τὸν Μάρκιον ὅμως οὐ πονηρὸν ἐνόμιζον, ἀλλὰ συγγνωστόν, ἐπικλασθέντα τηλικαύταις ἀνάγκαις.

[8] ἀντεῖπε δ’ οὐδείς, ἀλλὰ πάντες εἵποντο, τὴν ἀρετὴν αὐτοῦ μᾶλλον θαυμάζοντες ἢ τὴν ἐξουσίαν.

[37] [1] Ὁ δὲ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος ἐν ὅσῳ φόβῳ καὶ κινδύνῳ καθειστήκει τοῦ πολέμου παρόντος, αἴσθησιν παρέσχε [2] μᾶλλον λυθέντος. ἅμα γὰρ ἀφεώρων τοὺς Οὐολούσκους ἀναζευγνύντας οἱ περὶ τὰ τείχη, καὶ πᾶν εὐθὺς ἱερὸν ἀνεῴγει, στεφανηφορούντων ὥσπερ ἐπὶ νίκῃ καὶ θυόντων.

[3] μάλιστα δὲ τῇ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἀγαπήσει καὶ τιμῇ τῆς τε βουλῆς τοῦ τε πλήθους ἅπαντος ἔνδηλος ἦν ἡ χαρὰ τῆς πόλεως, καὶ λεγόντων καὶ νομιζόντων αἰτίας γεγονέναι [4] τῆς σωτηρίας περιφανῶς ἐκείνας. ψηφισαμένης δὲ τῆς βουλῆς, ὅ τι ἂν αὑταῖς ἀξιώσωσι γενέσθαι πρὸς δόξαν ἢ χάριν, τοῦτο ποιῆσαι καὶ παρασχεῖν τοὺς ἄρχοντας, οὐδὲν ἠξίωσαν ἄλλο ἢ Τύχης γυναικείας ἱερὸν ἱδρύσασθαι, τὸ μὲν ἀνάλωμα συμβαλόμεναι παρ’ αὑτῶν, ἱερουργίας δὲ καὶ τιμὰς ὅσαι θεοῖς πρέπουσι δημοσίᾳ τῆς πόλεως [5] ἀναλαβούσης. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡ βουλὴ τὴν μὲν φιλοτιμίαν ἐπῄνεσε, δημοσίαις δὲ δαπάναις ἐποιήσατο τὸν νεὼν καὶ τὸ ἕδος, οὐδὲν ἧττον αὐταὶ χρήματα συνεισενεγκοῦσαι δεύτερον ἄγαλμα κατεσκεύασαν, ὃ δὴ καί φασι Ῥωμαῖοι καθιστάμενον ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ φθέγξασθαί τι τοιοῦτο· θεοφιλεῖ με θεσμῷ γυναῖκες δεδώκατε.

[38] [1] Ταύτην καὶ δὶς γενέσθαι τὴν φωνὴν μυθολογοῦσιν, ἀγενήτοις ὅμοια καὶ χαλεπὰ πεισθῆναι πείθοντες ἡμᾶς.

[2] ἰδίοντα μὲν γὰρ ἀγάλματα φανῆναι καὶ δακρυρροοῦντα καί τινας μεθιέντα νοτίδας αἱματώδεις οὐκ ἀδύνατόν ἐστι· καὶ γὰρ ξύλα καὶ λίθοι πολλάκις μὲν εὐρῶτα συνάγουσι γόνιμον ὑγρότητος, πολλὰς δὲ καὶ χρόας ἀνιᾶσιν ἐξ αὑτῶν, καὶ δέχονται βαφὰς ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος, οἷς ἔνια σημαίνειν τὸ δαιμόνιον οὐδὲν ἂν δόξειε κωλύειν.

[3] δυνατὸν δὲ καὶ μυγμῷ καὶ στεναγμῷ ψόφον ὅμοιον ἐκβαλεῖν ἄγαλμα κατὰ ῥῆξιν ἢ διάστασιν μορίων βιαιοτέραν ἐν βάθει γενομένην. ἔναρθρον δὲ φωνὴν καὶ διάλεκτον οὕτω σαφῆ καὶ περιττὴν καὶ ἀρτίστομον ἐν ἀψύχῳ γενέσθαι παντάπασιν ἀμήχανον, εἰ μηδὲ τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ τὸν θεὸν ἄνευ σώματος ὀργανικοῦ καὶ διηρμοσμένου μέρεσι λογικοῖς [4] γέγονεν ἠχεῖν καὶ διαλέγεσθαι. ὅπου δ’ ἡμᾶς ἡ ἱστορία πολλοῖς ἀποβιάζεται καὶ πιθανοῖς μάρτυσιν, ἀνόμοιον αἰσθήσει πάθος ἐγγινόμενον τῷ φανταστικῷ τῆς ψυχῆς συναναπείθει τὸ δόξαν, ὥσπερ ἐν ὕπνοις ἀκούειν [5] οὐκ ἀκούοντες καὶ βλέπειν οὐ βλέποντες δοκοῦμεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῖς ὑπ’ εὐνοίας καὶ φιλίας πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἄγαν ἐμπαθῶς ἔχουσι καὶ μηδὲν ἀθετεῖν μηδ’ ἀναίνεσθαι τῶν τοιούτων δυναμένοις μέγα πρὸς πίστιν ἐστὶ τὸ θαυμάσιον [6] καὶ μὴ καθ’ ἡμᾶς τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ δυνάμεως. οὐδενὶ γὰρ οὐδαμῶς ἀνθρωπίνῳ προσέοικεν οὔτε φύσιν οὔτε κίνησιν οὔτε τέχνην οὔτ’ ἰσχύν, οὐδ’ εἴ τι ποιεῖ τῶν ἡμῖν ἀποιήτων καὶ μηχανᾶται τῶν ἀμηχάνων, παράλογόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἐν πᾶσι διαφέρων πολύ, μάλιστα τοῖς [7] ἔργοις ἀνόμοιός ἐστι καὶ παρηλλαγμένος. ἀλλὰ τῶν μὲν θείων τὰ πολλά, καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (fr. 86 D4`5), ἀπιστίῃ διαφυγγάνει μὴ γινώσκεσθαι.

[39] [1] Τὸν δὲ Μάρκιον, ὡς ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς τὸ Ἄντιον ἀπὸ τῆς στρατείας, μισῶν πάλαι καὶ βαρυνόμενος διὰ φθόνον ὁ Τύλλος ἐπεβούλευεν ἀνελεῖν εὐθύς, ὡς εἰ νῦν διαφύγοι, [2] λαβὴν ἑτέραν οὐ παρέξοντα. πολλοὺς δὲ συστήσας καὶ παρασκευάσας ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ἐκέλευσεν εὐθύνας ὑποσχεῖν [3] τοῖς Οὐολούσκοις, ἀποδόντα τὴν ἀρχήν. ὁ δὲ φοβούμενος ἰδιώτης γενέσθαι τοῦ Τύλλου στρατηγοῦντος καὶ δυναμένου μέγιστον ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πολίταις, ἔλεγε τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀποδώσειν Οὐολούσκοις ἐὰν κελεύωσι· καὶ γὰρ λαβεῖν πάντων κελευόντων· εὔθυναν δὲ διδόναι καὶ λόγον οὐδὲ νῦν [4] παραιτεῖσθαι τοῖς βουλομένοις Ἀντιατῶν. γενομένης οὖν ἐκκλησίας οἱ παρεσκευασμένοι τῶν δημαγωγῶν ἀνιστάμενοι [5] παρώξυναν τὸ πλῆθος. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀναστάντι τῷ Μαρκίῳ τὸ μὲν ἄγαν θορυβοῦν ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς ἐνεδίδου καὶ παρεῖχεν ἀδεῶς λέγειν, οἱ δὲ βέλτιστοι καὶ μάλιστα χαίροντες τῇ εἰρήνῃ τῶν Ἀντιατῶν ἐγένοντο φανεροὶ μετ’ εὐνοίας ἀκουσόμενοι καὶ δικαίως κρινοῦντες, ἔδεισεν ὁ [6] Τύλλος τὴν ἀπολογίαν τοῦ ἀνδρός. ἦν γὰρ ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα δεινὸς εἰπεῖν, καὶ τὰ πρόσθεν ἔργα μείζονα τὴν χάριν εἶχε τῆς ὕστερον αἰτίας, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως τὸ ἔγκλημα τοῦ [7] μεγέθους τῆς χάριτος ἦν μαρτύριον. οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἔδοξαν ἀδικεῖσθαι τὴν Ῥώμην ὑποχείριον μὴ λαβόντες, εἰ μὴ τοῦ λαβεῖν [8] ἐγγὺς ἐγένοντο διὰ Μάρκιον. οὐκέτ’ οὖν ἔδοξε διαμέλλειν οὐδὲ πειρᾶσθαι τῶν πολλῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐγκραγόντες οἱ θρασύτατοι τῶν συνεστώτων, ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν ἀκουστέον οὐδὲ περιοπτέον Οὐολούσκοις τὸν προδότην τυραννοῦντα καὶ μὴ κατατιθέμενον τὴν ἀρχήν, προσπεσόντες ἀθρόοι διέφθειραν αὐτόν, [9] καὶ προσήμυνεν οὐδεὶς τῶν παρόντων. ὅτι δὲ τοῖς πλείστοις οὐκ ἐπράχθη κατὰ γνώμην, ἐδήλωσαν αὐτίκα συνδραμόντες ἐκ τῶν πόλεων ἐπὶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ θάψαντες ἐντίμως καὶ τὸν τάφον ὅπλοις καὶ λαφύροις κοσμήσαντες ὡς ἀριστέως καὶ στρατηγοῦ.

[10] Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ τὴν τελευτὴν πυθόμενοι, ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν ἀπεδείξαντο σημεῖον οὔτε τιμῆς οὔτ’ ὀργῆς πρὸς αὐτόν, αἰτησαμέναις δὲ ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἐπέτρεψαν ἀποπενθῆσαι δέκα μῆνας, ὥσπερ ἔθος ἦν ἑκάστῃ πατέρα καὶ παῖδα καὶ [11] ἀδελφόν. οὗτος γὰρ ἦν ὅρος τοῦ μακροτάτου πένθους ὃν ὥρισε Νομᾶς Πομπίλιος, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γεγραμμένοις (cap. 12) δεδήλωται.

[12] Τὸν δὲ Μάρκιον εὐθὺς ἐπόθει τὰ Οὐολούσκων πράγματα. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ στασιάσαντες πρὸς Αἰκανοὺς συμμάχους καὶ φίλους ὄντας ὑπὲρ ἡγεμονίας, ἄχρι τραυμάτων καὶ φόνων προῆλθον· ἔπειτα μάχῃ κρατηθέντες [13] ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων, ἐν ᾗ Τύλλος ἀπέθανε καὶ τὸ ἀνθοῦν μάλιστα τῆς δυνάμεως διεφθάρη, διαλύσεις αἰσχίστας ἠγάπησαν, ὑπήκοοι γενόμενοι καὶ τὸ προσταττόμενον αὐτοῖς ποιήσειν ὁμολογήσαντες.

Comparison Alcibiadis et Marcii Coriolani

[1] [1]  Ἐκκειμένων δὲ τῶν πράξεων, ὅσας ἡγούμεθα λόγου καὶ μνήμης ἀξίας εἶναι, τὰς μὲν πολεμικὰς ἐπ’ [2] οὐδέτερον ποιούσας ῥοπὴν μεγάλην ὁρᾶν ἔστιν. ὁμαλῶς γὰρ ἀμφότεροι πολλὰ μὲν στρατιωτικῆς ἔργα τόλμης καὶ ἀνδρείας, πολλὰ δὲ καὶ τέχνης καὶ προνοίας στρατηγοῦντες ἐπεδείξαντο, πλὴν εἰ μή τις θέλοι τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην, ὅτι καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν ἐν πολλοῖς ἀγῶσι νικῶν καὶ κατορθῶν διετέλεσεν, ἀποφαίνειν τελειότερον στρατηγόν· ἐπεὶ τό γε παρόντας καὶ ἄρχοντας ὀρθοῦν ἀεὶ προδήλως τὰ οἰκεῖα, καὶ προδηλότερον αὖ πάλιν βλάπτειν [3] μεθισταμένους ἀμφοτέροις ὑπῆρξε. πολιτείαν δὲ τὴν μὲν Ἀλκιβιάδου τὴν ἄγαν λαμυρὰν καὶ τὸ μὴ καθαρεῦον ἀναγωγίας καὶ βωμολοχίας ἐν τῷ πρὸς χάριν ὁμιλεῖν τοῖς πολλοῖς οἱ σώφρονες ἐβδελύττοντο, τὴν δὲ Μαρκίου παντάπασιν ἄχαριν καὶ ὑπερήφανον καὶ ὀλιγαρχικὴν γενομένην [4] ἐμίσησεν ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος. οὐδετέραν μὲν οὖν ἐπαινετέον· ὁ δὲ δημαγωγῶν καὶ χαριζόμενος τῶν ὅπως οὐ δόξουσι δημαγωγεῖν προπηλακιζόντων τοὺς πολλοὺς ἀμεμπτότερος· αἰσχρὸν μὲν γὰρ τὸ κολακεύειν δῆμον ἐπὶ τῷ δύνασθαι, τὸ δ’ ἰσχύειν ἐκ τοῦ φοβερὸν εἶναι καὶ κακοῦν καὶ πιέζειν πρὸς τῷ αἰσχρῷ καὶ ἄδικόν ἐστιν.

[2] [1] Ὅτι τοίνυν ἁπλοῦς τις ὁ Μάρκιος ὑπείληπται τῷ τρόπῳ γεγονέναι καὶ αὐθέκαστος, ὁ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδης πανοῦργος ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ ἀναλήθης, οὐκ ἄδηλόν ἐστι.

[2] μάλιστα δὲ κατηγοροῦσιν αὐτοῦ κακοήθειαν καὶ ἀπάτην, ᾗ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίων πρέσβεις παρακρουσάμενος, ὡς [3] Θουκυδίδης (5, 45) ἱστόρηκε, τὴν εἰρήνην ἔλυσεν. ἀλλ’ αὕτη μὲν ἡ πολιτεία, καίπερ εἰς πόλεμον αὖθις ἐμβαλοῦσα τὴν πόλιν, ἰσχυρὰν ἐποίησε καὶ φοβερὰν τῇ Μαντινέων καὶ Ἀργείων συμμαχίᾳ δι’ Ἀλκιβιάδου προσγενομένῃ· [4] Μάρκιος δ’ ὅτι μὲν ἀπάτῃ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐξεπολέμωσε Ῥωμαίους καὶ Οὐολούσκους, διαβαλὼν ψευδῶς τοὺς ἥκοντας ἐπὶ τὴν θέαν, Διονύσιος (a. r. 8, 2) ἱστόρηκεν. ἡ δ’ αἰτία [5] φαυλότερον ποιεῖ τὸ ἔργον. οὐ γὰρ ἐκ φιλονικίας οὐδὲ πολιτικῆς μάχης ἢ ἁμίλλης ὡς ἐκεῖνος, ἀλλ’ ὀργῇ χαριζόμενος, παρ’ ἧς οὐδένα φησὶν ὁ Δίων ἀπολαβεῖν χάριν, πολλὰ τῆς Ἰταλίας μέρη συνετάραξε καὶ πολλὰς πόλεις οὐδὲν ἀδικούσας τῷ πρὸς τὴν πατρίδα θυμῷ παρανάλωσε.

[6] καίτοι καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδης δι’ ὀργὴν μεγάλων αἴτιος συμφορῶν κατέστη τοῖς πολίταις. ἀλλ’ ὅτε πρῶτον ἔγνω μεταμελομένους, εὐγνωμόνησε, καὶ πάλιν ἀπορριφείς, οὐκ ἐφήσθη τοῖς στρατηγοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσιν οὐδὲ περιεῖδε βουλευομένους κακῶς καὶ κινδυνεύοντας, ἀλλ’ ὅπερ Ἀριστείδης ἐπαινεῖται μάλιστα πράξας πρὸς Θεμιστοκλέα, τοῦτ’ ἐποίησε, πρὸς τοὺς τότ’ ἄρχοντας οὐ φίλους ὄντας ἐλθὼν καὶ φράσας τὸ [7] δέον καὶ διδάξας. Μάρκιος δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ὅλην κακῶς ἐποίει τὴν πόλιν οὐχ ὑφ’ ὅλης παθών, ἀλλὰ τοῦ βελτίστου καὶ κρατίστου μέρους συναδικηθέντος αὐτῷ καὶ συναλγήσαντος· ἔπειτα πολλαῖς πρεσβείαις καὶ δεήσεσι μίαν ἰωμένων ὀργὴν καὶ ἄγνοιαν οὐ τεγχθεὶς οὐδ’ εἴξας, ἐδήλωσεν ἐπὶ τῷ διαφθεῖραι τὴν πατρίδα καὶ καταβαλεῖν, οὐχ ὅπως ἀπολάβῃ καὶ κατέλθῃ, βαρὺν πόλεμον καὶ ἄσπονδον ἐπανῃρημένος.

[8] ‹καίτοι› τοῦτό γε φήσει τις διαφέρειν· Ἀλκιβιάδην μὲν γὰρ ἐπιβουλευόμενον ὑπὸ Σπαρτιατῶν διὰ δέος ἅμα καὶ μῖσος αὐτῶν μεταστῆναι πρὸς Ἀθηναίους, Μαρκίῳ δὲ πάντα δίκαια ποιοῦντας Οὐολούσκους οὐ καλῶς εἶχεν [9] ἐγκαταλιπεῖν. καὶ γὰρ ἡγεμὼν ἀποδέδεικτο καὶ πίστιν εἶχε μεγίστην μετὰ δυνάμεως, οὐχ ὡς ἐκεῖνος, ἀποχρωμένων μᾶλλον ἢ χρωμένων αὐτῷ Λακεδαιμονίων, ἐν τῇ πόλει περιιών, καὶ κυλινδούμενος αὖθις ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, τέλος εἰς τὰς Τισσαφέρνου χεῖρας ἀφῆκεν αὑτόν· εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία μὴ φθαρῆναι παντάπασι τὰς Ἀθήνας, ποθῶν κατελθεῖν, ἐθεράπευε.

[3] [1] Χρήματα τοίνυν ὁ μὲν Ἀλκιβιάδης καὶ λαβεῖν οὐκ εὖ πολλάκις ἐκ δωροδοκιῶν, καὶ διαθέσθαι κακῶς εἰς τρυφὴν καὶ ἀκολασίαν ἱστόρηται· Μάρκιον δὲ σὺν τιμῇ [2] διδόντες οἱ στρατηγοὶ λαβεῖν οὐκ ἔπεισαν. διὸ καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς πολλοῖς ἦν ἐπαχθὴς ἐν ταῖς περὶ χρεῶν διαφοραῖς πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, ὡς οὐκ ἐπὶ κέρδεσιν, ἀλλὰ δι’ [3] ὕβριν καὶ περιφροσύνην τοῖς πένησιν ἐπηρεάζων. Ἀντίπατρος (FHG II 338) μὲν οὖν ἐν ἐπιστολῇ τινι γράφων περὶ τῆς Ἀριστοτέλους τοῦ φιλοσόφου τελευτῆς πρὸς τοῖς ἄλλοις φησὶν ὁ ἀνὴρ καὶ τὸ πιθανὸν εἶχε· τὰς δὲ Μαρκίου πράξεις καὶ ἀρετὰς τοῦτο μὴ προσὸν ἐπαχθεῖς ἐποίησεν αὐτοῖς τοῖς εὖ παθοῦσι, τὸν ὄγκον αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἐρημίᾳ σύνοικον, ὡς Πλάτων (ep. 4, 321c) εἶπεν, αὐθάδειαν [4] μὴ ὑπομείνασιν. τοῦ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδου τοὐναντίον ἐπισταμένου χρῆσθαι τοῖς προστυγχάνουσιν οἰκείως, οὐδὲν ἦν θαυμαστὸν ἐν οἷς κατώρθου τὴν δόξαν ἀνθεῖν μετ’ εὐνοίας καὶ τιμῆς εὐημεροῦσαν, ὅπου καὶ τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἔνια πολλάκις [5] χάριν εἶχε καὶ ὥραν. ὅθεν οὗτος μέν, οὐ μικρὰ βλάψας οὐδ’ ὀλίγα τὴν πόλιν, ὅμως ἀπεδείκνυτο πολλάκις ἡγεμὼν καὶ στρατηγός, ἐκεῖνος δὲ μετιὼν ἐπὶ πολλαῖς ἀριστείαις καὶ ἀνδραγαθίαις ἀρχὴν προσήκουσαν ἐξέπεσεν. [6] οὕτω τὸν μὲν οὐδὲ πάσχοντες κακῶς ἐδύναντο μισεῖν οἱ πολῖται, τῷ δὲ περιῆν θαυμαζομένῳ μὴ φιλεῖσθαι.

[4] [1] Καὶ γάρ τοι Μάρκιος μὲν οὐδὲν ἀπεδείξατο τῇ πόλει στρατηγῶν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις κατὰ τῆς πατρίδος· Ἀλκιβιάδου δὲ καὶ στρατευομένου πολλάκις καὶ στρατηγοῦντος ἀπέλαυσαν Ἀθηναῖοι· καὶ παρὼν ἐκράτει τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὅσον ἐβούλετο, καὶ μὴ παρόντος ἴσχυσαν αἱ διαβολαί· [2] Μάρκιος δὲ παρὼν μὲν ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων κατεδικάσθη, παρόντα δὲ Οὐολοῦσκοι διέφθειραν, οὐ δικαίως μὲν οὐδ’ ὁσίως, αἰτίαν δ’ [τοῦ] εὔλογον παρέσχεν αὐτός, ὅτι δημοσίᾳ τὰς διαλύσεις μὴ προσδεξάμενος, ἰδίᾳ δὲ πεισθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν, οὐκ ἔλυσε τὴν ἔχθραν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ πολέμου [3] μένοντος ἀπώλεσε τὸν καιρὸν καὶ διέφθειρε. πείσαντα γὰρ ἔδει τοὺς πεπιστευκότας ἀπελθεῖν, εἰ τοῦ πρὸς ἐκείνους [4] δικαίου πλεῖστον ἐποιεῖτο λόγον. εἰ δὲ μηδὲν ἐφρόντιζεν Οὐολούσκων, ἀλλὰ τὴν ὀργὴν ἐμπλῆσαι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ βουλόμενος ἐνῆγε τὸν πόλεμον, εἶτ’ ἔληξεν, οὐ διὰ τὴν μητέρα καλῶς εἶχε φείσασθαι τῆς πατρίδος, ἀλλὰ σὺν τῇ πατρίδι τῆς μητρός· μέρος γὰρ ἦν καὶ ἡ μήτηρ καὶ ἡ γυνὴ τῆς πατρίδος, [5] ἣν ἐπολιόρκει. τὸ δὲ δημοσίαις ἱκεσίαις καὶ δεήσεσι πρεσβευτῶν καὶ λιταῖς ἱερέων ἀπηνῶς χρησάμενον, εἶτα χαρίσασθαι τῇ μητρὶ τὴν ἀναχώρησιν, οὐ τιμὴ τῆς μητρὸς ἦν, ἀλλ’ ἀτιμία τῆς πατρίδος, οἴκτῳ καὶ παραιτήσει διὰ μίαν γυναῖκα σῳζομένης, ὡς οὐκ ἀξίας σῴζεσθαι δι’ [6] αὑτήν. ἐπίφθονος γὰρ ἡ χάρις καὶ ὠμὴ καὶ ἀχάριστος ἀληθῶς καὶ πρὸς οὐδετέρους ἔχουσα τὸ εὔγνωμον· ἀνεχώρησε γὰρ μήτε πεισθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμουμένων, μήτε [7] πείσας τοὺς συμπολεμοῦντας. ὧν αἴτιον ἁπάντων τὸ ἀνομίλητον τοῦ τρόπου καὶ λίαν ὑπερήφανον καὶ αὔθαδες, ὃ καθ’ αὑτὸ μὲν ἐπαχθές ἐστι τοῖς πολλοῖς, τῷ δὲ φιλοτίμῳ [8] προσὸν γίνεται παντάπασιν ἄγριον καὶ ἀπαραίτητον. οὐ γὰρ θεραπεύουσι τοὺς πολλοὺς ὡς μὴ δεόμενοι τιμῆς, εἶτα χαλεπαίνουσι μὴ τυγχάνοντες. ἐπεὶ τό γε μὴ λιπαρῆ μηδὲ θεραπευτικὸν ὄχλων εἶναι καὶ Μέτελλος εἶχε καὶ Ἀριστείδης καὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδας· ἀλλὰ τῷ καταφρονεῖν ἀληθῶς, ὧν δῆμός ἐστι καὶ δοῦναι καὶ ἀφελέσθαι κύριος, ἐξοστρακιζόμενοι καὶ ἀποχειροτονούμενοι καὶ καταδικαζόμενοι πολλάκις οὐκ ὠργίζοντο τοῖς πολίταις ἀγνωμονοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ἠγάπων αὖθις μεταμελομένων, καὶ διηλλάττοντο παρακαλούντων. [9] τὸν γὰρ ἥκιστα θεραπευτικὸν ἥκιστα πρέπει τιμωρητικὸν εἶναι τῶν πολλῶν, ὡς τὸ χαλεπαίνειν σφόδρα μὴ τυγχάνοντα τιμῆς ἐκ τοῦ σφόδρα γλίχεσθαι φυόμενον.

[5] [1] Ἀλκιβιάδης μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἠρνεῖτο τιμώμενος χαίρειν καὶ δυσφορεῖν παρορώμενος, ὅθεν ἐπειρᾶτο προσφιλὴς εἶναι τοῖς παροῦσι καὶ κεχαρισμένος· Μάρκιον δὲ θεραπεύειν μὲν οὐκ εἴα τοὺς τιμᾶν δυναμένους καὶ αὔξειν τὸ ὑπερήφανον, ὀργὴν δὲ καὶ λύπην ἀμελουμένῳ τὸ φιλότιμον [2] παρεῖχε. καὶ ταῦτ’ ἔστιν ἅ τις ἂν αἰτιάσαιτο τοῦ ἀνδρός· τὰ δ’ ἄλλα πάντα λαμπρά. σωφροσύνης δὲ καὶ χρημάτων ἐγκρατείας ἕνεκα τοῖς ἀρίστοις καὶ καθαρωτάτοις τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἄξιον αὐτὸν παραβάλλειν, οὐκ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ μὰ Δία τῷ θρασυτάτῳ περὶ ταῦτα καὶ ὀλιγωροτάτῳ τοῦ καλοῦ γενομένῳ.

Timoleon

[1] [1]  Τὰ δὲ Συρακοσίων πράγματα πρὸ τῆς Τιμολέοντος εἰς Σικελίαν [2] ἀποστολῆς οὕτως εἶχεν. ἐπεὶ Δίων μὲν ἐξελάσας Διονύσιον τὸν τύραννον εὐθὺς ἀνῃρέθη δόλῳ, καὶ διέστησαν οἱ σὺν Δίωνι Συρακοσίους ἐλευθερώσαντες, ἡ δὲ πόλις ἄλλον ἐξ ἄλλου μεταβάλλουσα συνεχῶς τύραννον ὑπὸ [3] πλήθους κακῶν μικρὸν ἀπέλειπεν ἔρημος εἶναι, τῆς δ’ ἄλλης Σικελίας ἡ μὲν ἀνάστατος καὶ ἄπολις παντάπασιν ἤδη διὰ τοὺς πολέμους ὑπῆρχεν, αἱ δὲ πλεῖσται πόλεις ὑπὸ βαρβάρων μιγάδων καὶ στρατιωτῶν ἀμίσθων [4] κατείχοντο, ῥᾳδίως προσιεμένων τὰς μεταβολὰς τῶν δυναστειῶν, Διονύσιος ἔτει δεκάτῳ ξένους συναγαγὼν καὶ τὸν τότε κρατοῦντα τῶν Συρακοσίων Νυσαῖον ἐξελάσας ἀνέλαβε τὰ πράγματα πάλιν καὶ καθειστήκει τύραννος ἐξ ἀρχῆς, παραλόγως μὲν ὑπὸ μικρᾶς δυνάμεως τὴν μεγίστην τῶν πώποτε τυραννίδων ἀπολέσας, παραλογώτερον δ’ αὖθις ἐκ φυγάδος [5] καὶ ταπεινοῦ τῶν ἐκβαλόντων κύριος γενόμενος. οἱ μὲν οὖν ὑπομείναντες ἐν τῇ πόλει τῶν Συρακοσίων ἐδούλευον οὔτ’ ἄλλως ἐπιεικεῖ τυράννῳ καὶ [6] τότε παντάπασιν ὑπὸ συμφορῶν ἀπηγριωμένῳ τὴν ψυχήν, οἱ δὲ βέλτιστοι καὶ γνωριμώτατοι πρὸς Ἱκέτην τραπέντες τὸν δυναστεύοντα τῶν Λεοντίνων, ἐπέτρεψαν αὑτοὺς ἐκείνῳ καὶ στρατηγὸν εἵλοντο τοῦ πολέμου, βελτίω μὲν οὐδενὸς ὄντα τῶν ὁμολογουμένως τυράννων, ἑτέραν δ’ οὐκ ἔχοντες ἀποστροφὴν καὶ πιστεύσαντες Συρακοσίῳ τὸ γένος ὄντι καὶ κεκτημένῳ δύναμιν ἀξιόμαχον πρὸς τὸν τύραννον.

[2] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Καρχηδονίων στόλῳ μεγάλῳ παραγενομένων εἰς Σικελίαν καὶ τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐπαιωρουμένων, φοβηθέντες οἱ Σικελιῶται πρεσβείαν ἐβουλεύοντο πέμπειν εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ παρὰ Κορινθίων βοήθειαν [2] αἰτεῖν, οὐ μόνον διὰ τὴν συγγένειαν οὐδ’ ἀφ’ ὧν ἤδη πολλάκις εὐεργέτηντο πιστεύοντες ἐκείνοις, ἀλλὰ καὶ καθόλου τὴν πόλιν ὁρῶντες φιλελεύθερον καὶ μισοτύραννον οὖσαν ἀεί, καὶ τῶν πολέμων τοὺς πλείστους καὶ μεγίστους πεπολεμηκυῖαν οὐχ ὑπὲρ ἡγεμονίας καὶ πλεονεξίας, ἀλλ’ [3] ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐλευθερίας. ὁ δ’ Ἱκέτης, ἅτε δὴ τῆς στρατηγίας ὑπόθεσιν τὴν τυραννίδα πεποιημένος, οὐ τὴν Συρακοσίων ἐλευθερίαν, κρύφα μὲν ἤδη πρὸς τοὺς Καρχηδονίους διείλεκτο, φανερῶς δὲ τοὺς Συρακοσίους [4] ἐπῄνει καὶ τοὺς πρέσβεις εἰς Πελοπόννησον συνεξέπεμψεν, οὐ βουλόμενος ἐλθεῖν συμμαχίαν ἐκεῖθεν, ἀλλ’ ἐάν, ὅπερ εἰκὸς ἦν, οἱ Κορίνθιοι διὰ τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς ταραχὰς καὶ ἀσχολίας ἀπείπωσι τὴν βοήθειαν, ἐλπίζων ῥᾷον ἐπὶ τοὺς Καρχηδονίους τὰ πράγματα μετάξειν καὶ χρήσεσθαι συμμάχοις καὶ συναγωνισταῖς ἐκείνοις ἐπὶ τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἢ κατὰ τοῦ τυράννου. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὀλίγον ὕστερον ἐξηλέγχθη.

[3] [1] Τῶν δὲ πρέσβεων παραγενομένων οἱ Κορίνθιοι, κήδεσθαι μὲν ἀεὶ τῶν ἀποικίδων πόλεων καὶ μάλιστα τῆς Συρακοσίων εἰωθότες, οὐδενὸς δ’ αὐτοὺς τότε τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν κατὰ τύχην παρενοχλοῦντος, ἀλλ’ ἐν εἰρήνῃ [2] καὶ σχολῇ διάγοντες, ἐψηφίσαντο προθύμως βοηθεῖν. ζητουμένου δὲ στρατηγοῦ, καὶ τῶν ἀρχόντων γραφόντων καὶ προβαλλομένων τοὺς εὐδοκιμεῖν ἐν τῇ πόλει σπουδάζοντας, εἷς ἐκ τῶν πολλῶν ἀναστὰς ὠνόμασε Τιμολέοντα τὸν Τιμοδήμου, μήτε προσιόντα τοῖς κοινοῖς ἔτι μήτ’ ἐλπίδος τοιαύτης γενόμενον ἢ προαιρέσεως, ἀλλὰ θεοῦ τινος ὡς ἔοικεν εἰς νοῦν [3] ἐμβαλόντος τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ· τοσαύτη καὶ περὶ τὴν αἵρεσιν εὐθὺς ‹ἀν›έλαμψε τύχης εὐμένεια, καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις πράξεσιν ἐπηκολούθησε χάρις, ἐπικοσμοῦσα τὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ ἀνδρός.

[4] Ἦν μὲν οὖν γονέων ἐπιφανῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει Τιμοδήμου καὶ Δημαρέτης, φιλόπατρις δὲ καὶ πρᾷος διαφερόντως, ὅσα μὴ σφόδρα μισοτύραννος εἶναι [5] καὶ μισοπόνηρος. ἐν δὲ τοῖς πολέμοις οὕτω καλῶς καὶ ὁμαλῶς ἐκέκρατο τὴν φύσιν, ὥστε πολλὴν μὲν ἐν νέῳ σύνεσιν, οὐκ ἐλάττω δὲ γηρῶντος [6] ἀνδρείαν ἐπιφαίνεσθαι ταῖς πράξεσιν. ἀδελφὸν δ’ εἶχε Τιμοφάνην πρεσβύτερον, οὐδὲν αὐτῷ προσόμοιον, ἀλλ’ ἔμπληκτον καὶ διεφθαρμένον ἔρωτι μοναρχίας ὑπὸ φίλων φαύλων καὶ ξένων στρατιωτικῶν ἀεὶ περὶ αὐτὸν [7] ὄντων, ἔχειν τι δοκοῦντα ῥαγδαῖον ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις καὶ φιλοκίνδυνον. ᾧ καὶ τοὺς πολίτας προσαγόμενος ὡς ἀνὴρ πολεμικὸς καὶ δραστήριος, ἐφ’ ἡγεμονιῶν ἐτάττετο, καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα Τιμολέων αὐτῷ συνήργει, τὰ μὲν ἁμαρτήματα παντάπασιν ἀποκρύπτων ἢ μικρὰ φαίνεσθαι ποιῶν, ἃ δ’ ἡ φύσις ἐξέφερεν ἀστεῖα, ‹συγ›κατακοσμῶν καὶ συναύξων.

[4] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῇ πρὸς Ἀργείους καὶ Κλεωναίους μάχῃ τῶν Κορινθίων ὁ μὲν Τιμολέων ἔτυχεν ἐν τοῖς ὁπλίταις τεταγμένος, τὸν δὲ Τιμοφάνην τῶν ἱππέων [2] ἡγούμενον καταλαμβάνει κίνδυνος ὀξύς. ὁ γὰρ ἵππος αὐτὸν ἀπεσείσατο πληγῇ περιπεσὼν εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ τῶν ἑταίρων οἱ μὲν εὐθὺς ἐσκορπίσθησαν φοβηθέντες, οἱ δὲ παραμείναντες ὀλίγοι πρὸς πολλοὺς [3] μαχόμενοι χαλεπῶς ἀντεῖχον. ὡς οὖν ὁ Τιμολέων κατεῖδε τὸ συμβεβηκός, δρόμῳ προσβοηθήσας καὶ τὴν ἀσπίδα τοῦ Τιμοφάνους κειμένου προθέμενος, καὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἀκοντίσματα, πολλὰς δὲ πληγὰς ἐκ χειρὸς ἀναδεξάμενος εἰς τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὰ ὅπλα, μόλις ἐώσατο τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ διέσωσε τὸν ἀδελφόν.

[4] ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ Κορίνθιοι δεδιότες, μὴ πάθοιεν οἷα καὶ πρότερον ὑπὸ τῶν συμμάχων ἀποβαλόντες τὴν πόλιν, ἐψηφίσαντο τρέφειν ξένους τετρακοσίους καὶ τούτων ἄρχοντα Τιμοφάνην κατέστησαν, ὁ δὲ τῶν καλῶν καὶ δικαίων ὑπεριδὼν εὐθὺς ἐπέραινεν ἐξ ὧν ποιήσεται τὴν πόλιν ὑφ’ αὑτῷ, καὶ συχνοὺς ἀνελὼν ἀκρίτους τῶν πρώτων πολιτῶν ἀνέδειξεν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν τύραννον, [5] βαρέως φέρων ὁ Τιμολέων καὶ συμφορὰν ποιούμενος ἑαυτοῦ τὴν ἐκείνου κακίαν, ἐπεχείρησε μὲν αὐτῷ διαλέγεσθαι καὶ παρακαλεῖν ἀφέντα τὴν μανίαν καὶ δυστυχίαν τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἐκείνης ζητεῖν τινα τῶν ἡμαρτημένων [6] ἐπανόρθωσιν πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας· ἀπωσαμένου δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ καταφρονήσαντος, οὕτω παραλαβὼν τῶν μὲν οἰκείων Αἰσχύλον, ἀδελφὸν ὄντα τῆς Τιμοφάνους γυναικός, τῶν δὲ φίλων τὸν μάντιν ὃν Σάτυρον μὲν Θεόπομπος (FGrH 115 F 334), Ἔφορος (FGrH 70 F 221) δὲ καὶ Τίμαιος (FGrH 566 F 116) Ὀρθαγόραν ὀνομάζουσι, καὶ διαλιπὼν ἡμέρας ὀλίγας, αὖθις [7] ἀνέβη πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφόν· καὶ περιστάντες αὐτὸν οἱ τρεῖς καθικέτευον [8] ἀλλὰ νῦν γε χρησάμενον λογισμῷ μεταβαλέσθαι. τοῦ δὲ Τιμοφάνους πρῶτον μὲν αὐτῶν καταγελῶντος, ἔπειτα δὲ πρὸς ὀργὴν ἐκφερομένου καὶ χαλεπαίνοντος, ὁ μὲν Τιμολέων ἀποχωρήσας μικρὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ συγκαλυψάμενος εἱστήκει δακρύων, ἐκεῖνοι δὲ τὰ ξίφη σπασάμενοι, ταχὺ διαφθείρουσιν αὐτόν.

[5] [1] Τῆς δὲ πράξεως διαβοηθείσης, οἱ μὲν κράτιστοι τῶν Κορινθίων ἐπῄνουν τὴν μισοπονηρίαν καὶ μεγαλοψυχίαν τοῦ Τιμολέοντος, ὅτι χρηστὸς ὢν καὶ φιλοίκειος ὅμως τὴν πατρίδα τῆς οἰκίας καὶ τὸ καλὸν καὶ τὸ δίκαιον προετίμησε τοῦ συμφέροντος, ἀριστεύοντα μὲν ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος διασώσας τὸν ἀδελφόν, ἐπιβουλεύσαντα δ’ αὐτῇ καὶ καταδουλωσάμενον [2] ἀποκτείνας. οἱ δὲ μὴ δυνάμενοι ζῆν ἐν τῇ δημοκρατίᾳ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς δυνάστας ἀποβλέπειν εἰωθότες τῷ μὲν θανάτῳ τοῦ τυράννου προσεποιοῦντο χαίρειν, τὸν δὲ Τιμολέοντα λοιδοροῦντες, ὡς ἀσεβὲς ἐξειργασμένον [3] καὶ μυσῶδες ἔργον, εἰς ἀθυμίαν περιέστησαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν μητέρα δυσφορεῖν πυθόμενος καὶ φωνάς τε δεινὰς καὶ κατάρας ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἀρᾶσθαι φρικώδεις ἐβάδιζε παραμυθησόμενος, ἡ δὲ προσιδεῖν οὐχ ὑπέμεινε τὴν ὄψιν, ἀλλὰ τὴν οἰκίαν ἀπέκλεισε, τότε δὴ παντάπασι περίλυπος γενόμενος καὶ συνταραχθεὶς τὴν διάνοιαν, ὥρμησε μὲν ὡς διαφθερῶν ἑαυτὸν ἀπέχεσθαι [4] τροφῆς· τῶν δὲ φίλων οὐ περιϊδόντων, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν δέησιν καὶ πᾶσαν ἀνάγκην προσενεγκαμένων, ἔγνω ζῆν καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐκ μέσου γενόμενος, καὶ πολιτείαν μὲν ἅπασαν ἀφῆκε, τοὺς δὲ πρώτους χρόνους οὐδὲ κατιὼν εἰς πόλιν, ἀλλ’ ἀδημονῶν καὶ πλανώμενος ἐν τοῖς ἐρημοτάτοις τῶν ἀγρῶν διέτριβεν.

[6] [1] Οὕτως αἱ κρίσεις, ἂν μὴ βεβαιότητα καὶ ῥώμην ἐκ λόγου καὶ φιλοσοφίας προσλάβωσιν, ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις σείονται καὶ παραφέρονται, ῥᾳδίως ὑπὸ τῶν τυχόντων ἐπαίνων καὶ ψόγων ἐκκρουόμεναι τῶν οἰκείων [2] λογισμῶν. δεῖ γὰρ οὐ μόνον ὡς ἔοικε τὴν πρᾶξιν καλὴν εἶναι καὶ δικαίαν, [3] ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἀφ’ ἧς πράττεται μόνιμον καὶ ἀμετάπτωτον, ἵνα πράττωμεν δοκιμάσαντες, μηδ’, ὥσπερ οἱ λίχνοι τὰ πλήσμια τῶν ἐδεσμάτων ὀξυτάτῃ διώκοντες ἐπιθυμίᾳ τάχιστα δυσχεραίνουσιν ἐμπλησθέντες, οὕτως ἡμεῖς ἐπὶ ταῖς πράξεσι συντελεσθείσαις ἀθυμῶμεν δι’ ἀσθένειαν, [4] ἀπομαραινομένης τῆς τοῦ καλοῦ φαντασίας. αἰσχρὸν γὰρ ἡ μετάνοια ποιεῖ καὶ τὸ καλῶς πεπραγμένον, ἡ δ’ ἐξ ἐπιστήμης ὡρμημένη καὶ [5] λογισμοῦ προαίρεσις οὐδ’ ἂν πταίσωσιν αἱ πράξεις μεταβάλλεται. διὸ Φωκίων μὲν ὁ Ἀθηναῖος τοῖς ὑπὸ Λεωσθένους πραττομένοις ἐναντιωθείς, ἐπειδὴ κατορθοῦν ἐκεῖνος ἐδόκει καὶ θύοντας ἑώρα καὶ μεγαλαυχουμένους τῇ νίκῃ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, εἶπεν ὡς ἐβούλετ’ ἂν αὑτῷ ταῦτα μὲν [6] πεπρᾶχθαι, βεβουλεῦσθαι δ’ ἐκεῖνα. σφοδρότερον δ’ Ἀριστείδης ὁ Λοκρός, εἷς ὢν τῶν Πλάτωνος ἑταίρων, αἰτοῦντος μὲν αὐτὸν γυναῖκα Διονυσίου τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου μίαν τῶν θυγατέρων, ἥδιον ἂν ἔφη νεκρὰν ἰδεῖν τὴν [7] κόρην ἢ τυράννῳ συνοικοῦσαν· ἀποκτείναντος δὲ τοὺς παῖδας αὐτοῦ μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον τοῦ Διονυσίου καὶ πυθομένου πρὸς ὕβριν, εἰ τὴν αὐτὴν ἔτι γνώμην ἔχοι περὶ τῆς ἐκδόσεως τῶν θυγατέρων, ἀπεκρίνατο τοῖς μὲν γεγενημένοις λυπεῖσθαι, τοῖς δ’ εἰρημένοις μὴ μεταμελεῖσθαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἴσως μείζονος καὶ τελειοτέρας ἀρετῆς ἐστι.

[7] Τὸ δὲ Τιμολέοντος ἐπὶ τοῖς πεπραγμένοις πάθος, εἴτ’ οἶκτος ἦν τοῦ τεθνηκότος, εἴτε τῆς μητρὸς αἰδώς, οὕτω κατέκλασε καὶ συνέτριψεν αὐτοῦ τὴν διάνοιαν, ὥστ’ εἴκοσι σχεδὸν ἐτῶν διαγενομένων μηδεμιᾶς ἐπιφανοῦς [8] μηδὲ πολιτικῆς ἅψασθαι πράξεως. ἀναγορευθέντος οὖν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τοῦ δήμου προθύμως δεξαμένου καὶ χειροτονήσαντος, ἀναστὰς Τηλεκλείδης, ὁ τότε καὶ δυνάμει καὶ δόξῃ πρωτεύων ἐν τῇ πόλει, παρεκάλει τὸν Τιμολέοντα περὶ τὰς πράξεις ἀγαθὸν ἄνδρα εἶναι καὶ γενναῖον. ἂν μὲν γὰρ νῦν ἔφη καλῶς ἀγωνίσῃ, τύραννον ἀνῃρηκέναι ‹σε› δόξομεν, ἂν δὲ [9] φαύλως, ἀδελφόν. παρασκευαζομένου δὲ τοῦ Τιμολέοντος ‹πρὸς› τὸν ἔκπλουν καὶ στρατιώτας συνάγοντος, ἐκομίσθη γράμματα πρὸς τοὺς Κορινθίους παρ’ Ἱκέτου, μηνύοντα τὴν μεταβολὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ προδοσίαν.

[10] ὡς γὰρ τάχιστα τοὺς πρέσβεις ἐξέπεμψε, τοῖς Καρχηδονίοις προσθέμενος ἀναφανδὸν ἔπραττε μετ’ ἐκείνων, ὅπως Διονύσιον ἐκβαλὼν Συρακουσῶν [11] αὐτὸς ἔσται τύραννος· καὶ δεδοικώς, μὴ πρότερον ἐλθούσης ἐκ Κορίνθου δυνάμεως καὶ στρατηγοῦ διαφύγωσιν αἱ πράξεις αὐτόν, ἔπεμψεν ἐπιστολὴν τοῖς Κορινθίοις φράζουσαν, ὡς οὐδὲν δέοι πράγματα καὶ δαπάνας [12] ἔχειν αὐτούς, πλέοντας εἰς Σικελίαν καὶ κινδυνεύοντας, ἄλλως τε καὶ Καρχηδονίων ἀπαγορευόντων καὶ παραφυλαττόντων ναυσὶ πολλαῖς τὸν στόλον, οὓς αὐτὸς ἀναγκασθεὶς ἐκείνων βραδυνόντων ποιήσαιτο συμμάχους ἐπὶ [13] τὸν τύραννον. τούτων δὲ τῶν γραμμάτων ἀναγνωσθέντων, εἰ καί τις ἠπίως εἶχε πρότερον τῶν Κορινθίων πρὸς τὴν στρατείαν, τότε πάντας ἡ πρὸς τὸν Ἱκέτην ὀργὴ παρώξυνεν, ὥστε συγχορηγῆσαι προθύμως τῷ Τιμολέοντι καὶ συμπαρασκευάσαι τὸν ἔκπλουν.

[8] [1] Γενομένων δὲ τῶν νεῶν ἑτοίμων καὶ τοῖς στρατιώταις ὧν ἔδει πορισθέντων, αἱ μὲν ἱέρειαι τῆς Κόρης ὄναρ ἔδοξαν ἰδεῖν τὰς θεὰς πρὸς ἀποδημίαν τινὰ στελλομένας καὶ λεγούσας ὡς Τιμολέοντι μέλλουσι συμπλεῖν [2] εἰς Σικελίαν. διὸ καὶ τριήρη κατασκευάσαντες ἱερὰν οἱ Κορίνθιοι ταῖν θεαῖν ἐπωνόμασαν. αὐτὸς δ’ ἐκεῖνος εἰς Δελφοὺς πορευθεὶς ἔθυσε [3] τῷ θεῷ, καὶ καταβαίνοντος εἰς τὸ μαντεῖον αὐτοῦ γίνεται σημεῖον. ἐκ γὰρ τῶν κρεμαμένων ἀναθημάτων ταινία τις ἀπορρυεῖσα καὶ φερομένη, στεφάνους ἔχουσα καὶ Νίκας ἐμπεποικιλμένας, περιέπεσε τῇ κεφαλῇ τοῦ Τιμολέοντος, ὡς δοκεῖν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ στεφανούμενον ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις [4] προπέμπεσθαι. ναῦς δὲ Κορινθίας μὲν ἔχων ἑπτά, Κερκυραίας δὲ δύο, [5] καὶ τὴν δεκάτην Λευκαδίων προσπαρασχόντων, ἀνήχθη. καὶ νυκτὸς ἐμβαλὼν εἰς τὸ πέλαγος καὶ πνεύματι καλῷ χρώμενος, ἔδοξεν αἰφνιδίως [6] ῥαγέντα τὸν οὐρανὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς νεὼς ἐκχέαι πολὺ καὶ περιφανὲς πῦρ. ἐκ δὲ τούτου λαμπὰς ἀρθεῖσα ταῖς μυστικαῖς ἐμφερὴς καὶ συμπαραθέουσα τὸν αὐτὸν δρόμον, ᾗ μάλιστα τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐπεῖχον οἱ κυβερνῆται, κατέσκηψεν.

[7] οἱ δὲ μάντεις τὸ φάσμα τοῖς ὀνείρασι τῶν ἱερειῶν μαρτυρεῖν ἀπεφαίνοντο καὶ τὰς θεὰς συνεφαπτομένας τῆς στρατείας προφαίνειν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ τὸ [8] σέλας· εἶναι γὰρ ἱερὰν τῆς Κόρης τὴν Σικελίαν, ἐπεὶ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὴν ἁρπαγὴν αὐτόθι μυθολογοῦσι γενέσθαι, καὶ τὴν νῆσον ἐν τοῖς γάμοις ἀνακαλυπτήριον αὐτῇ δοθῆναι.

[9] [1] Τὰ μὲν οὖν παρὰ τῶν θεῶν οὕτω τὸν στόλον ἐθάρρυνε· καὶ σπεύδοντες [2] ὡς τὸ πέλαγος διαπλέοντες, ἐκομίζοντο παρὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν. τὰ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς Σικελίας ἀγγελλόμενα πολλὴν ἀπορίαν τῷ Τιμολέοντι καὶ δυσθυμίαν [3] τοῖς στρατιώταις παρεῖχεν. ὁ γὰρ Ἱκέτης μάχῃ νενικηκὼς Διονύσιον καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα μέρη τῶν Συρακουσῶν κατειληφώς, ἐκεῖνον μὲν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν [καὶ] τὴν καλουμένην Νῆσον συνεσταλμένον αὐτὸς συνεπολιόρκει [4] καὶ συμπεριετείχιζε, Καρχηδονίους δὲ φροντίζειν ἐκέλευεν, ὅπως οὐκ ἐπιβήσοιτο Τιμολέων Σικελίας, ἀλλ’ ἀπωσθέντων ἐκείνων αὐτοὶ καθ’ [5] ἡσυχίαν διανεμοῦνται πρὸς ἀλλήλους τὴν νῆσον. οἱ δὲ πέμπουσιν εἴκοσι τριήρεις εἰς Ῥήγιον, ἐφ’ ὧν ἐπέπλεον πρεσβευταὶ παρ’ αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὸν [6] Τιμολέοντα, κομίζοντες λόγους τοῖς πραττομένοις ὁμοίους. παραγωγαὶ γὰρ εὐπρεπεῖς καὶ ‹προ›φάσεις ἦσαν ἐπὶ μοχθηροῖς βουλεύμασιν, ἀξιούντων αὐτὸν μὲν εἰ βούλοιτο Τιμολέοντα σύμβουλον ἥκειν παρ’ Ἱκέτην καὶ κοινωνὸν εὖ διαπεπραγμένων ἁπάντων, τὰς δὲ ναῦς καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀποστέλλειν εἰς Κόρινθον, ὡς τοῦ πολέμου μικρὸν ἀπολείποντος συνῃρῆσθαι, Καρχηδονίων δὲ κωλύειν τὴν διάβασιν καὶ μάχεσθαι πρὸς βιαζομένους [7] ἑτοίμων ὄντων. ὡς οὖν καταπλεύσαντες εἰς τὸ Ῥήγιον οἱ Κορίνθιοι τοῖς τε πρεσβεύμασι τούτοις ἐνέτυχον καὶ τοὺς Φοίνικας οὐ πρόσω ναυλοχοῦντας κατεῖδον, ἤχθοντο μὲν ὑβρισμένοι, καὶ παρίστατο πᾶσιν ὀργὴ πρὸς τὸν Ἱκέτην καὶ δέος ὑπὲρ Σικελιωτῶν, οὓς σαφῶς ἑώρων ἆθλα λειπομένους καὶ μισθόν, Ἱκέτῃ μὲν προδοσίας, Καρχηδονίοις δὲ τυραννίδος· [8] ἐδόκει δ’ ἀμήχανον ὑπερβαλέσθαι καὶ τὰς αὐτόθι τῶν βαρβάρων ναῦς διπλασίας ἐφορμούσας, καὶ τὴν ἐκεῖ μεθ’ Ἱκέτου δύναμιν ᾗ ‹συ›στρατεύσοντες ἥκοιεν.

[10] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὁ Τιμολέων τοῖς πρεσβευταῖς καὶ τοῖς ἄρχουσι τῶν Καρχηδονίων ἐντυχὼν ἐπιεικῶς, ἔφη πείθεσθαι μὲν οἷς κελεύουσι (τί γὰρ ἂν καὶ περαίνειν ἀπειθῶν), ἐθέλειν δὲ ταῦτα πόλεως Ἑλληνίδος καὶ φίλης κοινῆς τῆς Ῥηγίνων ἐναντίον ἀκούσας καὶ εἰπὼν ἀπαλλάττεσθαι· [2] καὶ γὰρ αὐτῷ τοῦτο πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν διαφέρειν, κἀκείνους ἐμμενεῖν βεβαιότερον οἷς ἐπαγγέλλονται περὶ Συρακοσίων, δήμῳ μάρτυρι τὰς ὁμολογίας [3] παρακαταθεμένους. ταῦτα δ’ ὑπέτεινεν αὐτοῖς ἀπάτην ἐπὶ τῇ διαβάσει τεχνάζων, καὶ συνετέχναζον οἱ τῶν Ῥηγίνων στρατηγοὶ πάντες, ἐπιθυμοῦντες ἐπὶ Κορινθίοις τὰ πράγματα τῶν Σικελιωτῶν γενέσθαι καὶ [4] φοβούμενοι τὴν τῶν βαρβάρων γειτνίασιν. διὸ συνῆγον ἐκκλησίαν καὶ τὰς πύλας ἀπέκλειον, ὡς μὴ πρὸς ἄλλο τι τρέπεσθαι τοὺς πολίτας, καὶ παρελθόντες εἰς τὸ πλῆθος ἐχρῶντο μήκει λόγων, ἕτερος ἑτέρῳ παραδιδοὺς τὴν αὐτὴν ὑπόθεσιν πρὸς οὐδὲν τέλος, ἀλλὰ διάγοντες ἄλλως τὸν χρόνον, ἕως ‹ἂν› ἀναχθῶσιν αἱ τῶν Κορινθίων τριήρεις, καὶ Καρχηδονίους ἐπὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας κατέχοντες ἀνυπόπτως, ἅτε καὶ τοῦ Τιμολέοντος παρόντος καὶ παρέχοντος δόκησιν ὅσον οὔπω πρὸς τὸν λόγον ἀνίστασθαι καὶ δημηγορεῖν.

[5] ὡς δ’ ἀπήγγειλέ τις αὐτῷ κρύφα τὰς μὲν ἄλλας τριήρεις ἀνῆχθαι, μίαν δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου περιμένειν ὑπολελειμμένην, διεκδὺς τὸν ὄχλον, ἅμα τῶν περὶ τὸ βῆμα Ῥηγίνων συνεπικρυπτόντων, καὶ καταβὰς ἐπὶ θάλασσαν [6] ἐξέπλευσε διὰ ταχέων. καὶ κατήχθησαν εἰς Ταυρομένιον τῆς Σικελίας, ὑποδεχομένου καὶ καλοῦντος αὐτοὺς ἔκπαλαι προθύμως Ἀνδρομάχου τοῦ [7] τὴν πόλιν ἔχοντος καὶ δυναστεύοντος. οὗτος ἦν πατὴρ Τιμαίου τοῦ ἱστορικοῦ, καὶ πολὺ κράτιστος τῶν τότε δυναστευόντων ἐν Σικελίᾳ γενόμενος, τῶν θ’ ἑαυτοῦ πολιτῶν ἡγεῖτο νομίμως καὶ δικαίως, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους [8] φανερὸς ἦν ἀεὶ διακείμενος ἀπεχθῶς καὶ ἀλλοτρίως. διὸ καὶ Τιμολέοντι τότε τὴν πόλιν ὁρμητήριον παρέσχε, καὶ τοὺς πολίτας ἔπεισε συναγωνίζεσθαι τοῖς Κορινθίοις καὶ συνελευθεροῦν τὴν Σικελίαν.

[11] [1] Οἱ δ’ ἐν τῷ Ῥηγίῳ Καρχηδόνιοι, τοῦ Τιμολέοντος ἀνηγμένου καὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας διαλυθείσης, χαλεπῶς φέροντες ἐπὶ τῷ κατεστρατηγῆσθαι, διατριβὴν τοῖς Ῥηγίνοις παρεῖχον, εἰ Φοίνικες ὄντες οὐκ ἀρέσκοιντο [2] τοῖς δι’ ἀπάτης πραττομένοις. πέμπουσι δ’ οὖν εἰς τὸ Ταυρομένιον πρεσβευτὴν ἐπὶ τριήρους, ὃς πολλὰ διαλεχθεὶς πρὸς τὸν Ἀνδρόμαχον, ἐπαχθῶς καὶ βαρβαρικῶς ἀνατεινάμενος, εἰ μὴ τὴν ταχίστην ἐκβάλοι τοὺς Κορινθίους, τέλος ὑπτίαν τὴν χεῖρα δείξας, εἶτ’ αὖθις καταστρέψας, [3] ἠπείλησε τοιαύτην οὖσαν αὐτῷ τὴν πόλιν τοιαύτην ποιήσειν. γελάσας δ’ ὁ Ἀνδρόμαχος ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν ἀπεκρίνατο, τὴν δὲ χεῖρα νῦν μὲν ὑπτίαν ὡς ἐκεῖνος, νῦν δὲ πρηνῆ προτείνας, ἐκέλευσεν ἀποπλεῖν αὐτόν, εἰ μὴ βούλοιτο τὴν ναῦν ἀντὶ τοιαύτης γενέσθαι τοιαύτην.

[4] Ὁ δ’ Ἱκέτης πυθόμενος τὴν τοῦ Τιμολέοντος διάβασιν καὶ φοβηθείς, [5] μετεπέμψατο πολλὰς τῶν Καρχηδονίων τριήρεις. ὅτε καὶ παντάπασι συνέβη τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἀπογνῶναι τὴν σωτηρίαν, ὁρῶντας τοῦ μὲν λιμένος αὐτῶν Καρχηδονίους κρατοῦντας, τὴν δὲ πόλιν Ἱκέτην ἔχοντα, τῆς δ’ ἄκρας κυριεύοντα Διονύσιον, Τιμολέοντα δ’ ὥσπερ ἐκ κρασπέδου τινὸς λεπτοῦ τῆς Ταυρομενιτῶν πολίχνης τῇ Σικελίᾳ προσηρτημένον ἐπ’ ἐλπίδος ἀσθενοῦς καὶ βραχείας δυνάμεως· χιλίων γὰρ αὐτῷ στρατιωτῶν [6] καὶ τροφῆς τούτοις ἀναγκαίας πλέον οὐδὲν ὑπῆρχεν· οὐδ’ ἐπίστευον αἱ πόλεις, διάπλεαι κακῶν οὖσαι καὶ πρὸς ἅπαντας ἀπηγριωμέναι τοὺς ἡγουμένους στρατοπέδων, μάλιστα διὰ τὴν Καλλίππου καὶ Φάρακος ἀπιστίαν, ὧν ὁ μὲν Ἀθηναῖος ὤν, ὁ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιος, ἀμφότεροι δὲ φάσκοντες ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἥκειν καὶ ‹τοῦ› καταλύειν τοὺς μονάρχους, χρυσὸν ‹ἀπέ›δειξαν τῇ Σικελίᾳ τὰς ἐν τῇ τυραννίδι συμφοράς, καὶ μακαριωτέρους δοκεῖν ἐποίησαν τοὺς καταστρέψαντας ἐν τῇ δουλείᾳ τῶν ἐπιδόντων τὴν αὐτονομίαν.

[12] [1] Οὐδὲν οὖν ἐκείνων βελτίονα τὸν Κορίνθιον ἔσεσθαι προσδοκῶντες, ἀλλὰ ταὐτὰ πάλιν ἥκειν ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς σοφίσματα καὶ δελεάσματα, μετ’ ἐλπίδων χρηστῶν καὶ φιλανθρώπων ὑποσχέσεων εἰς μεταβολὴν δεσπότου καινοῦ τιθασευομένους, ὑπώπτευον καὶ διεκρούοντο τὰς τῶν Κορινθίων [2] προκλήσεις, πλὴν Ἀδρανιτῶν· οἳ πόλιν μικρὰν μέν, ἱερὰν δ’ οὖσαν Ἀδρανοῦ, θεοῦ τινος τιμωμένου διαφερόντως ἐν ὅλῃ Σικελίᾳ, κατοικοῦντες, ἐστασίασαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, οἱ μὲν Ἱκέτην προσαγόμενοι καὶ Καρχηδονίους, [3] οἱ δὲ πρὸς Τιμολέοντα διαπεμπόμενοι. καί πως ἀπ’ αὐτομάτου συνέτυχε σπευδόντων ἀμφοτέρων εἰς ἕνα καιρὸν ἀμφοτέροις γενέσθαι τὴν [4] παρουσίαν. ἀλλ’ Ἱκέτης μὲν ἧκε πεντακισχιλίους στρατιώτας ἔχων, [5] Τιμολέοντι δ’ οἱ σύμπαντες ἦσαν οὐ πλείους χιλίων διακοσίων· οὓς ἀναλαβὼν ἐκ τοῦ Ταυρομενίου, σταδίων πρὸς τὸ Ἀδρανὸν ὄντων τετταράκοντα καὶ τριακοσίων, τῇ μὲν πρώτῃ τῶν ἡμερῶν οὐ πολὺ μέρος τῆς ὁδοῦ προέλαβε καὶ κατηυλίσατο, τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ συντόνως ὁδεύσας καὶ χαλεπὰ χωρία διελθών, ἤδη τῆς ἡμέρας καταφερομένης ἤκουσεν ἄρτι προσμειγνύναι [6] τὸν Ἱκέτην τῷ πολιχνίῳ καὶ καταστρατοπεδεύειν. οἱ μὲν οὖν λοχαγοὶ καὶ ταξίαρχοι τοὺς πρώτους ἐπέστησαν, ὡς ἐμφαγοῦσι καὶ διαναπαυσαμένοις χρησόμενοι προθυμοτέροις, ὁ δὲ Τιμολέων ἐπιπορευόμενος ἐδεῖτο ταῦτα μὴ ποιεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἄγειν κατὰ τάχος καὶ συνάπτειν τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀσυντάκτοις οὖσιν, ὡς εἰκὸς ἄρτι παυομένοις ὁδοιπορίας καὶ περὶ [7] σκηνὰς καὶ δεῖπνον ἀσχόλοις οὖσιν. καὶ λέγων ἅμα ταῦτα, τὴν ἀσπίδα λαβὼν ἡγεῖτο πρῶτος ὥσπερ ἐπὶ νίκην πρόδηλον· οἱ δ’ εἵποντο τεθαρρηκότες, [8] ἔλαττον ἢ τριάκοντα σταδίους ἔτι τῶν πολεμίων ἀπέχοντες. ὡς δὲ καὶ τούτους διῆλθον, ἐπιπίπτουσιν αὐτοῖς ταραττομένοις καὶ φεύγουσιν ὡς πρῶτον ᾔσθοντο προσιόντας· ὅθεν ἀνῃρέθησαν μὲν οὐ πολλῷ πλείους τριακοσίων, ἑάλωσαν δὲ δὶς τοσοῦτοι ζῶντες, ἐλήφθη δὲ ‹καὶ› τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[9] οἱ δ’ Ἀδρανῖται τὰς πύλας ἀνοίξαντες προσέθεντο τῷ Τιμολέοντι, μετὰ φρίκης καὶ θαύματος ἀπαγγέλλοντες, ὡς ἐνισταμένης τῆς μάχης οἱ μὲν ἱεροὶ τοῦ νεὼ πυλῶνες αὐτόματοι διανοιχθεῖεν, ὀφθείη δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ τὸ μὲν δόρυ σειόμενον ἐκ τῆς αἰχμῆς ἄκρας, τὸ δὲ πρόσωπον ἱδρῶτι πολλῷ ῥεόμενον.

[13] [1] Ταῦτα δ’ ὡς ἔοικεν οὐ τὴν τότε νίκην ἐσήμαινε μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς [2] μετὰ ταῦτα πράξεις, αἷς ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἀγὼν ἀρχὴν εὐτυχῆ παρέσχε. καὶ γὰρ πόλεις εὐθὺς ἐπιπρεσβευόμεναι προσετίθεντο τῷ Τιμολέοντι, καὶ Μάμερκος ὁ Κατάνης τύραννος, πολεμιστὴς ἀνὴρ καὶ χρήμασιν ἐρρωμένος, ἔδωκεν [3] αὑτὸν εἰς συμμαχίαν. τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, αὐτὸς Διονύσιος, ἀπειρηκὼς ἤδη ταῖς ἐλπίσι καὶ μικρὸν ἀπολείπων ἐκπολιορκεῖσθαι, τοῦ μὲν Ἱκέτου κατεφρόνησεν αἰσχρῶς ἡττημένου, τὸν δὲ Τιμολέοντα θαυμάζων, ἔπεμψεν ἐκείνῳ καὶ Κορινθίοις παραδιδοὺς αὑτὸν καὶ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν. δεξάμενος [4] δ’ ὁ Τιμολέων τὴν ἀνέλπιστον εὐτυχίαν, ἀποστέλλει τοὺς περὶ Εὐκλείδην καὶ Τηλέμαχον, ἄνδρας Κορινθίους, εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν καὶ στρατιώτας τετρακοσίους, οὐκ ὁμοῦ πάντας οὐδὲ φανερῶς (ἀδύνατον γὰρ ἦν ἐφορμούντων [5] ‹τῶν› πολεμίων), ἀλλὰ κρύφα καὶ κατ’ ὀλίγους παρεισπεσόντας. οἱ μὲν οὖν στρατιῶται παρέλαβον τὴν ἀκρόπολιν καὶ τὰ τυραννεῖα μετὰ τῆς [6] παρασκευῆς καὶ τῶν χρησίμων πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον· ἵπποι τε γὰρ ἐνῆσαν οὐκ ὀλίγοι καὶ πᾶσα μηχανημάτων ἰδέα καὶ βελῶν πλῆθος· ὅπλων δ’ [7] ἀπέκειντο μυριάδες ἑπτὰ τεθησαυρισμένων ἐκ παλαιοῦ. στρατιῶται δὲ δισχίλιοι τῷ Διονυσίῳ παρῆσαν, οὓς ἐκεῖνος ὡς τἆλλα τῷ Τιμολέοντι παρέδωκεν, αὐτὸς δὲ χρήματα λαβὼν καὶ φίλων οὐ πολλοὺς ἔλαθεν ἐκπλεύσας [8] τὸν Ἱκέτην. καὶ κομισθεὶς εἰς τὸ τοῦ Τιμολέοντος στρατόπεδον, τότε πρῶτον ἰδιώτης καὶ ταπεινὸς ὀφθείς, ἐπὶ μιᾶς νεὼς καὶ χρημάτων ὀλίγων [9] εἰς Κόρινθον ἀπεστάλη, γεννηθεὶς μὲν καὶ τραφεὶς ἐν τυραννίδι τῇ πασῶν ἐπιφανεστάτῃ καὶ μεγίστῃ, κατασχὼν δὲ ταύτην ἔτη δέκα, δώδεκα δ’ ἄλλα μετὰ τὴν Δίωνος στρατείαν ἐν ἀγῶσι καὶ πολέμοις διαφορηθείς, ἃ δ’ ἔπραξε [10] τυραννῶν οἷς ἔπαθεν ὑπερβαλόμενος. καὶ γὰρ υἱῶν ἐνηλίκων θανάτους καὶ θυγατέρων καταπορνεύσεις παρθένων ἐπεῖδε, καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀδελφὴν καὶ γυναῖκα ζῶσαν μὲν εἰς τὸ σῶμα ταῖς ἀσελγεστάταις ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ἡδοναῖς παρανομηθεῖσαν, βίᾳ δ’ ἀποθανοῦσαν μετὰ τῶν τέκνων, καταποντισθεῖσαν εἰς τὸ πέλαγος. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Δίωνος ἀκριβῶς γέγραπται.

[14] [1] Τοῦ δὲ Διονυσίου καταπλεύσαντος εἰς Κόρινθον, οὐδεὶς ἦν Ἑλλήνων [2] ὃς οὐχὶ θεάσασθαι καὶ προσειπεῖν ἐπόθησεν αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ οἵ τε χαίροντες ἐπὶ ταῖς συμφοραῖς διὰ μῖσος ἄσμενοι συνῆλθον, οἷον ἐρριμμένον ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης πατήσοντες, οἵ τε πρὸς τὴν μεταβολὴν τρεπόμενοι καὶ συμπαθοῦντες ἐθεῶντο πολλὴν ἐν ἀσθενέσι τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις καὶ προδήλοις [3] τὴν τῶν ἀδήλων αἰτιῶν καὶ θείων δύναμιν. οὐδὲν γὰρ οὔτε φύσεως ὁ τότε καιρὸς οὔτε τέχνης ὅσον ἐκεῖνο τύχης ἔργον ἐπεδείξατο, τὸν Σικελίας ὀλίγον ἔμπροσθεν τύραννον ἐν Κορίνθῳ διατρίβοντα περὶ τὸ ὀψοπώλιον, ἢ καθήμενον ἐν μυροπωλίῳ, πίνοντα κεκραμένον ἀπὸ τῶν καπηλείων, καὶ διαπληκτιζόμενον ἐν μέσῳ τοῖς ἀφ’ ὥρας ἐργαζομένοις γυναίοις, τὰς δὲ μουσουργοὺς ἐν δαῖς διδάσκοντα, ‹ Λο›κρικῶν ᾀσμάτων [4] σπουδάζοντα πρὸς ἐκείνας περὶ μέλους ‹καὶ› ἁρμονίας. ταῦτα δ’ οἱ μὲν ἄλλως ἀλύοντα καὶ φύσει ῥᾴθυμον ὄντα καὶ φιλακόλαστον ᾤοντο ποιεῖν τὸν Διονύσιον, οἱ δ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ καταφρονεῖσθαι καὶ μὴ φοβερὸν εἶναι τοῖς Κορινθίοις μηδ’ ὕποπτον, ὡς βαρυνόμενον τὴν μεταβολὴν τοῦ βίου καὶ πραγμάτων ἐφιέμενον, ἐπιτηδεύειν καὶ ὑποκρίνεσθαι παρὰ φύσιν, πολλὴν ἀβελτερίαν ἐπιδεικνύμενον ἐν τῷ σχολάζειν.

[15] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ λόγοι τινὲς αὐτοῦ μνημονεύονται, δι’ ὧν ἐδόκει [2] συμφέρεσθαι τοῖς παροῦσιν οὐκ ἀγεννῶς. τοῦτο μὲν γὰρ εἰς Λευκάδα καταχθείς, πόλιν ἀπῳκισμένην ὑπὸ Κορινθίων ὥσπερ τὴν Συρακοσίων, ταὐτὸν [3] ἔφη πεπονθέναι τοῖς ἐν ἁμαρτήμασι γενομένοις τῶν νεανίσκων· ὡς γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι τοῖς μὲν ἀδελφοῖς ἱλαρῶς συνδιατρίβουσι, τοὺς δὲ πατέρας αἰσχυνόμενοι φεύγουσιν, οὕτως αὐτὸς αἰδούμενος τὴν μητρόπολιν ἡδέως [4] ἂν αὐτόθι μετ’ ἐκείνων κατοικεῖν. τοῦτο δ’ ἐν Κορίνθῳ ξένου τινὸς ἀγροικότερον εἰς τὰς μετὰ τῶν φιλοσόφων διατριβὰς αἷς τυραννῶν ἔχαιρε χλευάζοντος αὐτόν, καὶ τέλος ἐρωτῶντος τί δὴ τῆς Πλάτωνος ἀπολαύσειε σοφίας, οὐδὲν ἔφη σοὶ δοκοῦμεν ὑπὸ Πλάτωνος ὠφελῆσθαι, τύχης μεταβολὴν [5] οὕτω φέροντες; πρὸς δὲ τὸν μουσικὸν Ἀριστόξενον καί τινας ἄλλους πυνθανομένους, ὁπόθεν αὐτῷ καὶ τίς ἡ πρὸς Πλάτωνα γένοιτο μέμψις, πολλῶν ἔφη κακῶν τὴν τυραννίδα μεστὴν οὖσαν οὐδὲν ἔχειν τηλικοῦτον ἡλίκον τὸ μηδένα τῶν λεγομένων φίλων μετὰ παρρησίας διαλέγεσθαι· [6] καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ὑπ’ ἐκείνων ἀποστερηθῆναι τῆς Πλάτωνος εὐνοίας. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν βουλομένων τις εὐφυῶν εἶναι σκώπτων τὸν Διονύσιον ἐξέσειε τὸ ἱμάτιον εἰσιὼν πρὸς αὐτὸν ὡς δὴ πρὸς τύραννον, ἀντισκώπτων ἐκεῖνος ἐκέλευε τοῦτο ποιεῖν ὅταν ἐξίῃ παρ’ αὐτοῦ, μή τι τῶν ἔνδον ἔχων ἀπέλθῃ.

[7] Φιλίππου δὲ τοῦ Μακεδόνος παρὰ πότον τινὰ λόγον μετ’ εἰρωνείας ἐμβαλόντος περὶ τῶν μελῶν καὶ τῶν τραγῳδιῶν ἃς ὁ πρεσβύτερος Διονύσιος κατέλιπε, καὶ προσποιουμένου διαπορεῖν ἐν τίνι χρόνῳ ταῦτα ποιεῖν ἐκεῖνος ἐσχόλαζεν, οὐ φαύλως ἀπήντησεν ὁ Διονύσιος εἰπών· ἐν ᾧ σὺ κἀγὼ καὶ πάντες οἱ μακάριοι δοκοῦντες εἶναι περὶ κώθωνα διατρίβομεν.

[8] Πλάτων μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἐπεῖδεν ἐν Κορίνθῳ Διονύσιον, ἀλλ’ ἔτυχεν ἤδη τεθνηκώς, ὁ δὲ Σινωπεὺς Διογένης ἀναντήσας αὐτῷ πρῶτον, ὡς ἀναξίως [9] ἔφη Διονύσιε ζῇς. ἐπιστάντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ εἰπόντος· εὖ ποιεῖς ὦ Διόγενες συναχθόμενος ἡμῖν ἠτυχηκόσι, τί γάρ; εἶπεν ὁ Διογένης οἴει μέ σοι συναλγεῖν, οὐ διαγανακτεῖν, ὅτι τοιοῦτον ἀνδράποδον ὤν, καὶ τοῖς τυραννείοις ὥσπερ ὁ πατὴρ ἐπιτήδειος ἐγγηράσας ἀποθανεῖν, ἐνταῦθα [10] παίζων καὶ τρυφῶν διάγεις μεθ’ ἡμῶν; ὥστε μοι παραβάλλοντι τούτοις τὰς Φιλίστου φωνάς, ἃς ἀφίησι (FGrH 556 F 60) περὶ τῶν Λεπτίνου θυγατέρων ὀλοφυρόμενος, ὡς ἐκ μεγάλων ἀγαθῶν τῶν τῆς τυραννίδος εἰς ταπεινὴν ἀφιγμένων δίαιταν, φαίνεσθαι θρήνους γυναικὸς ἀλαβάστους [11] καὶ πορφύρας καὶ χρυσία ποθούσης. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἀλλότρια τῆς τῶν βίων ἀναγραφῆς οὐδ’ ἄχρηστα δόξειν οἰόμεθα μὴ σπεύδουσι μηδ’ ἀσχολουμένοις ἀκροαταῖς.

[16] [1] Τῆς δὲ Διονυσίου δυστυχίας παραλόγου φανείσης, οὐχ ἧττον ἡ [2] Τιμολέοντος εὐτυχία τὸ θαυμαστὸν ἔσχεν. ἐπιβὰς γὰρ Σικελίας, ἐν ἡμέραις πεντήκοντα τήν τ’ ἀκρόπολιν τῶν Συρακοσίων παρέλαβε, καὶ Διονύσιον [3] εἰς Πελοπόννησον ἐξέπεμψεν. ὅθεν ἐπιρρωσθέντες οἱ Κορίνθιοι πέμπουσιν αὐτῷ δισχιλίους ὁπλίτας καὶ διακοσίους ἱππεῖς, οἳ κομισθέντες ἄχρι Θουρίων, τὴν ἐκεῖθεν περαίωσιν, ὑπὸ Καρχηδονίων πολλαῖς ναυσὶ κατεχομένης τῆς θαλάσσης, ἄπορον ὁρῶντες, ὡς ἦν ἀνάγκη καιρὸν περιμένοντας ἀτρεμεῖν αὐτόθι, πρὸς κάλλιστον ἔργον ἀπεχρήσαντο τῇ σχολῇ.

[4] Θουρίων γὰρ ‹αὐ›τῶν ἐπὶ Βρεττίους στρατευόντων τὴν πόλιν παραλαβόντες, ὥσπερ πατρίδα καθαρῶς καὶ πιστῶς διεφύλαξαν.

[5] Ὁ δ’ Ἱκέτης τὴν μὲν ἀκρόπολιν τῶν Συρακουσῶν ἐπολιόρκει καὶ σῖτον ἐκώλυεν εἰσπλεῖν τοῖς Κορινθίοις, Τιμολέοντι δὲ δύο ξένους παρασκευάσας δολοφονήσοντας αὐτὸν ὑπέπεμψεν εἰς Ἀδρανόν, οὔτ’ ἄλλως περὶ τὸ σῶμα συντεταγμένην ἔχοντι φυλακήν, καὶ τότε παντάπασι διὰ τὸν θεὸν ἀνειμένως [6] καὶ ἀνυπόπτως σχολάζοντι μετὰ τῶν Ἀδρανιτῶν. οἱ δὲ πεμφθέντες κατὰ τύχην πυθόμενοι μέλλοντα θύειν αὐτόν, ἧκον εἰς τὸ ἱερόν, ὑπὸ τοῖς ἱματίοις ἐγχειρίδια κομίζοντες, καὶ τοῖς περιεστῶσι τὸν βωμὸν ἀναμειχθέντες, [7] ἐγγυτέρω κατὰ μικρὸν ἐπεχώρουν, καὶ ὅσον οὔπω παρακελευομένων ἀλλήλοις ἐνάρχεσθαι, παίει τις αὐτῶν τὸν ἕτερον κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς ξίφει, καὶ πεσόντος οὔθ’ ὁ παίσας ἔμεινεν οὔθ’ ὁ μετὰ τοῦ πληγέντος ἥκων, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος μὲν ὥσπερ εἶχε τὸ ξίφος φεύγων πρός τινα πέτραν ὑψηλὴν ἀνεπήδησεν, ἅτερος δὲ τοῦ βωμοῦ λαβόμενος ἄδειαν ᾐτεῖτο παρὰ [8] τοῦ Τιμολέοντος ἐπὶ τῷ πάντα μηνῦσαι, καὶ λαβὼν ἐμήνυσε καθ’ αὑτοῦ [9] καὶ κατὰ τοῦ τεθνηκότος, ὡς πεμφθεῖεν ἐκεῖνον ἀποκτενοῦντες. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ καὶ τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς πέτρας κατῆγον ἕτεροι, βοῶντα μηδὲν ἀδικεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἀνῃρηκέναι δικαίως τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὑπὲρ πατρὸς τεθνηκότος, ὃν ἐκεῖνος [10] ἀπεκτονήκοι πρότερον ἐν Λεοντίνοις, καὶ μαρτυροῦντας εἶχεν ἐνίους τῶν παρόντων, θαυμάζοντας ἅμα τῆς τύχης τὴν εὐμηχανίαν, ὡς δι’ ἑτέρων ἕτερα κινοῦσα καὶ συνάγουσα πάντα πόρρωθεν καὶ συγκαταπλέκουσα τοῖς πλεῖστον διαφέρειν δοκοῦσι καὶ μηδὲν ἔχειν πρὸς ἄλληλα κοινόν, ἀεὶ τοῖς [11] ἀλλήλων χρῆται καὶ τέλεσι καὶ ἀρχαῖς. τὸν μὲν οὖν ἄνθρωπον ἐστεφάνωσαν οἱ Κορίνθιοι δέκα μναῖς, ὅτι τῷ φυλάττοντι δαίμονι τὸν Τιμολέοντα πάθος ἔχρησε δίκαιον καὶ τὸν ἐκ πολλοῦ παρόντα θυμὸν αὐτῷ πρότερον οὐ κατανάλωσεν, ἀλλὰ μετ’ αἰτίας ἰδίας πρὸς τὴν ἐκείνου σωτηρίαν ἀπὸ [12] τύχης διετήρησεν. ἡ δ’ εἰς τὸν παρόντα καιρὸν εὐτυχία καὶ πρὸς τὰ μέλλοντα ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἐπῆρεν ὁρῶντας ὡς ἱερὸν ἄνδρα καὶ σὺν θεῷ τιμωρὸν ἥκοντα τῇ Σικελίᾳ τὸν Τιμολέοντα σέβεσθαι καὶ φυλάττειν.

[17] [1] Ὡς δὲ ταύτης διήμαρτε τῆς πείρας ὁ Ἱκέτης, καὶ πρὸς Τιμολέοντα πολλοὺς ἑώρα συνισταμένους, μεμψάμενος αὐτὸς ἑαυτόν, ὅτι, τηλικαύτης παρούσης τῆς Καρχηδονίων δυνάμεως, ὥσπερ αἰσχυνόμενος αὐτῇ κατὰ μικρὰ χρῆται καὶ λάθρα, κλέπτων καὶ παρεισάγων τὴν συμμαχίαν, μετεπέμπετο [2] Μάγωνα τὸν στρατηγὸν αὐτῶν μετὰ τοῦ στόλου παντός. ὁ δ’ εἰσέπλει φοβερός, ναυσὶ πεντήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν καταλαμβάνων τὸν λιμένα, πεζῶν δὲ μυριάδας ἓξ ἀποβιβάζων καὶ καταστρατοπεδεύων ἐν τῇ πόλει τῶν Συρακοσίων, ὥστε πάντας οἴεσθαι τὴν πάλαι λεγομένην καὶ [3] προσδοκωμένην ἐκβαρβάρωσιν ἥκειν ἐπὶ τὴν Σικελίαν. οὐδέποτε γὰρ Καρχηδονίοις ὑπῆρξε πρότερον, μυρίους πολεμήσασι πολέμους ἐν Σικελίᾳ, λαβεῖν τὰς Συρακούσας, ἀλλὰ τότε δεξαμένου τοῦ Ἱκέτου καὶ παραδόντος [4] ἦν ὁρᾶν τὴν πόλιν στρατόπεδον βαρβάρων οὖσαν. οἱ δὲ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν τῶν Κορινθίων κατέχοντες ἐπισφαλῶς καὶ χαλεπῶς ἀπήλλαττον, τροφῆς μὲν ἱκανῆς οὐκέτι παρούσης, ἀλλ’ ἐνδεόμενοι διὰ τὸ φρουρεῖσθαι τοὺς λιμένας, ἀεὶ ‹δ’› ἐν ἀγῶσι καὶ μάχαις περὶ τὰ τείχη καὶ πρὸς πᾶν μηχάνημα καὶ πρὸς πᾶσαν ἰδέαν πολιορκίας μερίζοντες αὑτούς.

[18] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὁ Τιμολέων παρεβοήθει, σῖτον ἐκ Κατάνης μικραῖς ἁλιάσι καὶ λεπτοῖς ἀκατίοις ἀποστέλλων, ἃ μάλιστα χειμῶνι παρεισέπιπτε διὰ τῶν βαρβαρικῶν τριήρων ὑποπορευόμενα, πρὸς τὸν κλύδωνα καὶ τὸν [2] σάλον ἐκείνων διϊσταμένων. ἃ δὴ συνορῶντες οἱ περὶ τὸν Μάγωνα καὶ τὸν Ἱκέτην ἐβουλεύοντο τὴν Κατάνην ἑλεῖν, ἐξ ἧς ἔπλει τὰ ἐπιτήδεια τοῖς πολιορκουμένοις, καὶ λαβόντες τῆς δυνάμεως τὴν μαχιμωτάτην, ἐξέπλευσαν [3] ἐκ τῶν Συρακουσῶν. ὁ δὲ Κορίνθιος Νέων (οὗτος γὰρ ἦν ἄρχων τῶν πολιορκουμένων) κατιδὼν ἀπὸ τῆς ἄκρας τοὺς ὑπολελειμμένους τῶν πολεμίων ἀργῶς καὶ ἀμελῶς φυλάττοντας, ἐξαίφνης ἐπέπεσε διεσπαρμένοις [4] αὐτοῖς, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἀνελών, τοὺς δὲ τρεψάμενος, ἐκράτησε καὶ κατέσχε τὴν λεγομένην Ἀχραδινήν, ὃ κράτιστον ἐδόκει καὶ ἀθραυστότατον ὑπάρχειν τῆς Συρακοσίων μέρος πόλεως, τρόπον τινὰ συγκειμένης καὶ [5] συνηρμοσμένης ἐκ πλειόνων πόλεων. εὐπορήσας δὲ καὶ σίτου καὶ χρημάτων, οὐκ ἀφῆκε τὸν τόπον οὐδ’ ἀνεχώρησε πάλιν ἐπὶ τὴν ἄκραν, ἀλλὰ φραξάμενος τὸν περίβολον τῆς Ἀχραδινῆς καὶ συνάψας τοῖς ἐρύμασι πρὸς [6] τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, διεφύλαττε. τοὺς δὲ περὶ τὸν Μάγωνα καὶ τὸν Ἱκέτην ἐγγὺς ἤδη τῆς Κατάνης ὄντας ἱππεὺς ἐκ Συρακουσῶν καταλαβὼν ἀπήγγειλε [7] τὴν ἅλωσιν τῆς Ἀχραδινῆς, καὶ συνταραχθέντες ἀνεχώρησαν διὰ ταχέων, οὔτε λαβόντες ἐφ’ ἣν ἐξῆλθον, οὔτε φυλάξαντες ἣν εἶχον.

[19] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔτι τῇ προνοίᾳ καὶ ἀρετῇ δίδωσί τινα πρὸς τὴν τύχην ἀμφισβήτησιν· τὸ δ’ ἐπὶ τούτοις γενόμενον παντάπασιν ἔοικε [2] συμβῆναι κατ’ εὐτυχίαν. οἱ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς Θουρίοις διατρίβοντες στρατιῶται τῶν Κορινθίων, ἅμα μὲν δεδιότες τὰς Καρχηδονίων τριήρεις, αἳ παρεφύλαττον αὐτοὺς μετ’ Ἄννωνος, ἅμα δ’ ἐφ’ ἡμέρας πολλὰς ἐξηγριωμένης ὑπὸ πνεύματος τῆς θαλάσσης, πεζῇ διὰ Βρεττίων ὥρμησαν πορεύεσθαι· [3] καὶ τὰ μὲν πείθοντες, τὰ δὲ βιαζόμενοι τοὺς βαρβάρους, εἰς Ῥήγιον κατέβαινον, [4] ἔτι πολὺν χειμῶνα τοῦ πελάγους ἔχοντος. ὁ δὲ τῶν Καρχηδονίων ναύαρχος, ὡς οὐ προσεδόκα τοὺς Κορινθίους καὶ μάτην ᾤετο καθῆσθαι, πείσας αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ‹ἐν›νενοηκέναι τι τῶν σοφῶν καὶ πανούργων πρὸς ἀπάτην, στεφανώσασθαι τοὺς ναύτας κελεύσας καὶ κοσμήσας τὰς τριήρεις ἀσπίσιν Ἑλληνικαῖς καὶ φοινικίσιν, ἔπλει πρὸς τὰς Συρακούσας, [5] καὶ παρὰ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν χρώμενος ῥοθίῳ μετὰ κρότου καὶ γέλωτος, ἐβόα τοὺς Κορινθίους ἥκειν νενικηκὼς καὶ κεχειρωμένος, ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ λαβὼν διαπλέοντας, ὡς δή τινα δυσθυμίαν τοῖς πολιορκουμένοις παρέξων.

[6] ἐκείνου δὲ ταῦτα ληροῦντος καὶ φενακίζοντος, ἐκ τῶν Βρεττίων οἱ Κορίνθιοι καταβεβηκότες εἰς τὸ Ῥήγιον, ὡς οὐδεὶς παρεφύλαττε καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα κατεσβεσμένον παραλόγως ἀκύμονα τὸν πόρον ἰδεῖν καὶ λεῖον παρεῖχε, ταχὺ πληρώσαντες τὰ πορθμεῖα καὶ τὰς ἁλιάδας τὰς παρούσας, ἀνήγοντο καὶ διεκομίζοντο πρὸς τὴν Σικελίαν οὕτως ἀσφαλῶς καὶ διὰ τοσαύτης γαλήνης, ὥστε τοὺς ἵππους παρὰ τὰ πλοῖα παρανηχομένους ἐκ ῥυτήρων ἐφέλκεσθαι.

[20] [1] Περαιωθέντων δὲ πάντων, ὁ Τιμολέων δεξάμενος αὐτοὺς τήν τε Μεσσήνην εὐθὺς εἶχε, καὶ συνταξάμενος ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ τὰς Συρακούσας, οἷς εὐτύχει καὶ κατώρθου μᾶλλον ἢ τῇ δυνάμει πεποιθώς· οὐ γὰρ ἦσαν [2] οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ πλείους τετρακισχιλίων. ἀγγελλομένης δὲ τῆς ἐφόδου τῷ Μάγωνι, θορυβούμενος καὶ δεδοικὼς ἔτι μᾶλλον εἰς ὑποψίαν ἦλθεν ἐκ [3] τοιαύτης προφάσεως. ἐν τοῖς περὶ τὴν πόλιν τενάγεσι, πολὺ μὲν ἐκ κρηνῶν πότιμον ὕδωρ, πολὺ δ’ ἐξ ἑλῶν καὶ ποταμῶν καταρρεόντων εἰς τὴν θάλατταν δεχομένοις, πλῆθος ἐγχέλεων νέμεται, καὶ δαψίλεια τῆς ἄγρας [4] τοῖς βουλομένοις ἀεὶ πάρεστι. ταύτας οἱ παρ’ ἀμφοτέροις μισθοῦ στρατευόμενοι [5] σχολῆς οὔσης καὶ ἀνοχῶν συνεθήρευον. οἷα δ’ Ἕλληνες ὄντες καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους οὐκ ἔχοντες ἰδίων ἀπεχθειῶν πρόφασιν, ἐν μὲν ταῖς μάχαις διεκινδύνευον εὐρώστως, ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἀνοχαῖς προσφοιτῶντες ἀλλήλοις [6] διελέγοντο, καὶ τότε κοινὸν περὶ τὴν ἁλιείαν ἔχοντες ἔργον ἐν λόγοις ἦσαν, θαυμάζοντες τῆς θαλάσσης τὴν εὐφυΐαν καὶ τῶν χωρίων [7] τὴν κατασκευήν. καί τις εἶπε τῶν παρὰ τοῖς Κορινθίοις στρατευομένων· τοσαύτην μέντοι τὴν πόλιν τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τοσούτοις ἐξησκημένην καλοῖς ὑμεῖς Ἕλληνες ὄντες ἐκβαρβαρῶσαι προθυμεῖσθε, τοὺς κακίστους καὶ φονικωτάτους Καρχηδονίους ἐγγυτέρω κατοικίζοντες ἡμῶν, πρὸς οὓς [8] ἔδει πολλὰς εὔχεσθαι Σικελίας προκεῖσθαι τῆς Ἑλλάδος. ἢ δοκεῖτε τούτους στρατὸν ἀγείραντας ἀπὸ στηλῶν Ἡρακλείων καὶ τῆς Ἀτλαντικῆς [9] ἥκειν θαλάττης δεῦρο κινδυνεύσοντας ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἱκέτου δυναστείας; ὃς εἰ λογισμὸν εἶχεν ἡγεμόνος, οὐκ ἂν ἐξέβαλλε τοὺς πατέρας οὐδ’ ἐπῆγε τῇ πατρίδι τοὺς πολεμίους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τιμῆς καὶ δυνάμεως ἐτύγχανεν ὅσης [10] πρέπει, Κορινθίους καὶ Τιμολέοντα πείσας. τούτους τοὺς λόγους οἱ μισθοφόροι διεθρόησαν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ καὶ παρέσχον ὑποψίαν τῷ [11] Μάγωνι προδίδοσθαι, χρῄζοντι πάλαι προφάσεως. διὸ καί‹περ› δεομένου τοῦ Ἱκέτου παραμένειν, καὶ διδάσκοντος ὅσῳ πλείονές εἰσι τῶν πολεμίων, μᾶλλον οἰόμενος ἀρετῇ καὶ τύχῃ λείπεσθαι Τιμολέοντος ἢ πλήθει δυνάμεως ὑπερβάλλειν, ἄρας εὐθὺς ἀπέπλευσεν εἰς Λιβύην, αἰσχρῶς κατ’ οὐδένα λογισμὸν ἀνθρώπινον ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν ἀφεὶς Σικελίαν.

[21] [1] Τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ παρῆν ὁ Τιμολέων ἐπὶ μάχην συντεταγμένος. ὡς δὲ τὴν φυγὴν ἐπυνθάνοντο καὶ τὴν ἐρημίαν ἑώρων τῶν νεωρίων, γελᾶν αὐτοῖς ἐπῄει τὴν ἀνανδρίαν τοῦ Μάγωνος, καὶ περιϊόντες ἐκήρυττον ἐν τῇ πόλει μήνυτρα τῷ φράσαντι τὸν Καρχηδονίων στόλον ὅπῃ σφᾶς ἀποδέδρακεν.

[2] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῦ Ἱκέτου φιλομαχοῦντος ἔτι καὶ τὴν λαβὴν οὐ προϊεμένου τῆς πόλεως, ἀλλ’ ἐμπεφυκότος οἷς κατεῖχε μέρεσι, καρτεροῖς οὖσι καὶ δυσπροσμάχοις, διελὼν ὁ Τιμολέων τὴν δύναμιν, αὐτὸς μὲν ᾗ βιαιότατον [3] ἦν παρὰ τὸ ῥεῖθρον τοῦ Ἀνάπου προσέβαλλεν· ἄλλους δ’ ἐκ τῆς Ἀχραδινῆς ἐκέλευεν ἐπιχειρεῖν, ὧν Ἰσίας ἡγεῖθ’ ὁ Κορίνθιος· τοὺς δὲ τρίτους ἐπῆγον ἐπὶ τὰς Ἐπιπολὰς Δείναρχος καὶ Δημάρετος οἱ τὴν ὑστέραν ἀγαγόντες ἐκ [4] Κορίνθου βοήθειαν. ἅμα δὲ καὶ πανταχόθεν τῆς ἐφόδου γενομένης, καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἱκέτην ἀνατραπέντων καὶ φυγόντων, τὸ μὲν ἁλῶναι τὴν πόλιν κατ’ ἄκρας καὶ γενέσθαι ταχέως ὑποχείριον ἐκπεσόντων τῶν πολεμίων δίκαιον ἀναθεῖναι τῇ τῶν μαχομένων ἀνδραγαθίᾳ καὶ τῇ δεινότητι [5] τοῦ στρατηγοῦ· τὸ δὲ μήτ’ ἀποθανεῖν τινα μήτε τρωθῆναι τῶν Κορινθίων ἴδιον ἔργον αὑτῆς ἡ Τιμολέοντος ἐπεδείξατο τύχη, καθάπερ διαμιλλωμένη πρὸς τὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἵνα τῶν ἐπαινουμένων αὐτοῦ τὰ μακαριζόμενα [6] μᾶλλον οἱ πυνθανόμενοι θαυμάζωσιν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον Σικελίαν πᾶσαν οὐδ’ Ἰταλίαν εὐθὺς ἡ φήμη κατέσχεν, ἀλλ’ ἡμερῶν ὀλίγων ἡ Ἑλλὰς διήχει τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ κατορθώματος, ὥστε τὴν τῶν Κορινθίων πόλιν ἀπιστοῦσαν, εἰ διαπέπλευκεν ὁ στόλος, ὁμοῦ καὶ σεσῳσμένους καὶ νενικηκότας [7] ἀκούειν τοὺς ἄνδρας. οὕτως εὐρόησαν αἱ πράξεις, καὶ τοσοῦ‹το› τῷ κάλλει τῶν ἔργων τὸ τάχος ἡ τύχη προσέθηκεν.

[22] [1] Γενόμενος δὲ τῆς ἄκρας κύριος, οὐκ ἔπαθε Δίωνι ταὐτὸ πάθος, οὐδ’ ἐφείσατο τοῦ τόπου διὰ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὴν πολυτέλειαν τῆς κατασκευῆς, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐκεῖνον διαβαλοῦσαν, εἶτ’ ἀπολέσασαν ὑποψίαν φυλαξάμενος, ἐκήρυξε τῶν Συρακοσίων τὸν βουλόμενον παρεῖναι μετὰ σιδήρου καὶ [2] συνεφάπτεσθαι κατασκαπτομένων τῶν τυραννικῶν ἐρυμάτων. ὡς δὲ πάντες ἀνέβησαν, ἀρχὴν ἐλευθερίας ποιησάμενοι βεβαιοτάτην τὸ κήρυγμα καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην, οὐ μόνον τὴν ἄκραν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς οἰκίας καὶ τὰ μνήματα τῶν τυράννων ἀνέτρεψαν καὶ κατέσκαψαν. εὐθὺς δὲ τὸν τόπον [3] συνομαλύνας, ἐνῳκοδόμησε τὰ δικαστήρια, χαριζόμενος τοῖς πολίταις καὶ τῆς τυραννίδος ὑπερτέραν ποιῶν τὴν δημοκρατίαν.

[4] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν πόλιν ἑλὼν οὐκ εἶχε πολίτας, ἀλλὰ τῶν μὲν ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις καὶ ταῖς στάσεσι διαφθαρέντων, τῶν δὲ τὰς τυραννίδας φυγόντων, ἡ μὲν ἐν Συρακούσαις ἀγορὰ δι’ ἐρημίαν οὕτω πολλὴν καὶ βαθεῖαν ἐξέφυσεν ὕλην, ὥστε τοὺς ἵππους ἐν αὐτῇ κατανέμεσθαι, τῶν ἱπποκόμων ἐν τῇ [5] χλόῃ κατακειμένων, αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι πόλεις πλὴν παντελῶς ὀλίγων ἐλάφων ἐγένοντο μεσταὶ καὶ συῶν ἀγρίων, ἐν δὲ τοῖς προαστίοις καὶ περὶ τὰ τείχη [6] πολλάκις οἱ σχολὴν ἄγοντες ἐκυνηγέτουν, ὑπήκουε δ’ οὐδεὶς τῶν ἐν τοῖς ἐρύμασι καὶ φρουρίοις κατοικούντων, οὐδὲ κατέβαινον εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλὰ φρίκη καὶ μῖσος εἶχε πάντας ἀγορᾶς καὶ πολιτείας καὶ βήματος, ἐξ ὧν [7] ἀνέφυσαν αὐτοῖς οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν τυράννων, ἔδοξε τῷ Τιμολέοντι καὶ τοῖς Συρακοσίοις γράψαι πρὸς τοὺς Κορινθίους, ὅπως πέμψωσιν οἰκήτορας [8] εἰς τὰς Συρακούσας ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος. ἥ τε γὰρ χώρα σχολάζειν ἔμελλε, καὶ πολὺν πόλεμον ἐκ Λιβύης προσεδέχοντο, πυνθανόμενοι τοὺς Καρχηδονίους τοῦ μὲν Μάγωνος ἑαυτὸν ἀνελόντος ἀνεσταυρωκέναι τὸ σῶμα, διὰ τὴν στρατηγίαν ὀργισθέντας, αὐτοὺς δὲ συνάγειν μεγάλην δύναμιν, ὡς ἔτους ὥρᾳ διαβησομένους εἰς Σικελίαν.

[23] [1] Τῶν δὲ γραμμάτων τούτων παρὰ τοῦ Τιμολέοντος κομισθέντων, καὶ πρέσβεων ἅμα παρόντων Συρακοσίων καὶ δεομένων ἐπιμεληθῆναι τῆς πόλεως καὶ γενέσθαι πάλιν ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς οἰκιστάς, οὐχ ἥρπασαν οἱ Κορίνθιοι [2] τὴν πλεονεξίαν, οὐδὲ προσεποίησαν ἑαυτοῖς τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλὰ πρῶτον μὲν ἐπιόντες τοὺς ἱεροὺς ἀγῶνας ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι καὶ τὰς μεγίστας τῶν πανηγύρεων, ἀνηγόρευον ὑπὸ κηρύκων, ὅτι Κορίνθιοι καταλελυκότες τὴν ἐν Συρακούσαις τυραννίδα, καὶ τὸν τύραννον ἐξεληλακότες, καλοῦσι Συρακοσίους καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Σικελιωτῶν τὸν βουλόμενον οἰκεῖν τὴν πόλιν ἐλευθέρους καὶ αὐτονόμους, ἐπ’ ἴσοις καὶ δικαίοις τὴν χώραν διαλαχόντας· [3] ἔπειτα διαπέμποντες ἀγγέλους εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν καὶ τὰς νήσους, ὅπου πλείστους ἐπυνθάνοντο τῶν φυγάδων διεσπαρμένους κατοικεῖν, παρεκάλουν ἰέναι πάντας εἰς Κόρινθον, ὡς Κορινθίων ἀσφαλῆ πομπὴν καὶ πλοῖα [4] καὶ στρατηγοὺς παρεξόντων ἰδίοις τέλεσιν εἰς Συρακούσας. κηρυσσομένων δὲ τούτων, ἡ μὲν πόλις τὸν δικαιότατον καὶ κάλλιστον ἀπελάμβανεν ἔπαινον καὶ ζῆλον, ἐλευθεροῦσα μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν τυράννων, σῴζουσα δ’ [5] ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων, ἀποδιδοῦσα δὲ τοῖς πολίταις τὴν χώραν. οἱ δὲ συνελθόντες εἰς Κόρινθον οὐκ ὄντες ἱκανοὶ τὸ πλῆθος, ἐδεήθησαν ἐκ Κορίνθου καὶ τῆς ἄλλης Ἑλλάδος παραλαβεῖν συνοίκους· καὶ γενόμενοι μυρίων οὐκ [6] ἐλάττους, κατέπλευσαν εἰς Συρακούσας. ἤδη δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐξ Ἰταλίας καὶ Σικελίας πολλοὶ τῷ Τιμολέοντι συνεληλύθεισαν, καὶ γενομένοις αὐτοῖς ἑξακισμυρίοις τὸ πλῆθος, ὡς Ἄθανις εἴρηκε (FGrH 562 F 2), τὴν μὲν [7] χώραν διένειμε, τὰς δ’ οἰκίας ἀπέδοτο χιλίων ταλάντων, ἅμα μὲν ὑπολειπόμενος τοῖς ἀρχαίοις Συρακοσίοις ἐξωνεῖσθαι τὰς αὑτῶν, ἅμα δὲ χρημάτων εὐπορίαν τῷ δήμῳ μηχανώμενος, οὕτως πενομένῳ καὶ πρὸς τἆλλα καὶ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς ‹τῶν τυράννων› ἀνδριάντας ἀποδόσθαι, ψήφου διαφερομένης ὑπὲρ ἑκάστου καὶ γινομένης κατηγορίας, [8] ὥσπερ ἀνθρώπων εὐθύνας διδόντων· ὅτε δή φασι τὸν Γέλωνος ἀνδριάντα τοῦ παλαιοῦ τυράννου διατηρῆσαι τοὺς Συρακοσίους, καταχειροτονουμένων τῶν ἄλλων, ἀγαμένους καὶ τιμῶντας τὸν ἄνδρα τῆς νίκης ἣν πρὸς Ἱμέρᾳ Καρχηδονίους ἐνίκησεν.

[24] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τῆς πόλεως ἀναζωπυρούσης καὶ πληρουμένης, ἐπιρρεόντων πανταχόθεν εἰς αὐτὴν τῶν πολιτῶν, βουλόμενος ὁ Τιμολέων καὶ τὰς ἄλλας πόλεις ἐλευθερῶσαι καὶ παντάπασιν ἐκκόψαι τῆς Σικελίας τὰς τυραννίδας, ἐπὶ τὰς χώρας αὐτῶν στρατεύων, Ἱκέτην μὲν ἠνάγκασεν ἀποστάντα Καρχηδονίων ὁμολογῆσαι τὰς ἀκροπόλεις κατασκάψειν καὶ [2] βιοτεύσειν ἰδιώτην ἐν Λεοντίνοις· Λεπτίνου δὲ τοῦ τυραννοῦντος Ἀπολλωνίας καὶ συχνῶν ἄλλων πολιχνίων, ὡς ἐκινδύνευε κατὰ κράτος ἁλῶναι, παραδόντος αὑτόν, φεισάμενος εἰς Κόρινθον ἀπέστειλε, καλὸν ἡγούμενος ἐν τῇ μητροπόλει τοὺς τῆς Σικελίας τυράννους ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀποθεωρεῖσθαι [3] φυγαδικῶς καὶ ταπεινῶς ζῶντας. τοὺς δὲ μισθοφόρους βουλόμενος ἐκ τῆς πολεμίας ὠφελεῖσθαι καὶ μὴ σχολάζειν, αὐτὸς μὲν εἰς τὰς Συρακούσας ἐπανῆλθε, τῇ καταστάσει τῆς πολιτείας προσέξων, καὶ τοῖς ἥκουσιν ἐκ Κορίνθου νομοθέταις Κεφάλῳ καὶ Διονυσίῳ τὰ κυριώτατα [4] καὶ κάλλιστα συνδιαθήσων, τοὺς δὲ περὶ Δείναρχον καὶ Δημάρετον εἰς τὴν τῶν Καρχηδονίων ἐξέπεμψεν ἐπικράτειαν, οἳ πόλεις πολλὰς ἀφιστάντες τῶν βαρβάρων οὐ μόνον αὐτοὶ διῆγον ἐν ἀφθόνοις, ἀλλὰ καὶ χρήματα παρεσκεύαζον εἰς τὸν πόλεμον ἀπὸ τῶν ἁλισκομένων.

[25] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Καρχηδόνιοι καταπλέουσιν εἰς τὸ Λιλύβαιον, ἄγοντες ἑπτὰ μυριάδας στρατοῦ καὶ τριήρεις διακοσίας καὶ πλοῖα χίλια, κομίζοντα μηχανὰς καὶ τέθριππα καὶ σῖτον ἄφθονον καὶ τὴν ἄλλην παρασκευήν, ὡς οὐκέτι ποιησόμενοι κατὰ μέρος τὸν πόλεμον, ἀλλ’ ὁμοῦ πάσης Σικελίας [2] ἐξελάσοντες τοὺς Ἕλληνας· ἦν γὰρ ἡ δύναμις ἐξαρκοῦσα καὶ μὴ νοσοῦντας [3] μηδὲ διεφθαρμένους ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων συλλαβέσθαι Σικελιώτας. πυθόμενοι δὲ πορθεῖσθαι τὴν ἐπικράτειαν αὐτῶν, εὐθὺς ὀργῇ πρὸς τοὺς Κορινθίους [4] ἐχώρουν, Ἀσδρούβα καὶ Ἀμίλκα στρατηγούντων. τῆς δ’ ἀγγελίας ὀξέως εἰς Συρακούσας ἀφικομένης, οὕτω κατεπλάγησαν οἱ Συρακόσιοι πρὸς τὸ μέγεθος τῆς δυνάμεως, ὥστε μόλις τῷ Τιμολέοντι τρισχιλίους ἀπὸ τοσούτων [5] μυριάδων ὅπλα λαβόντας τολμῆσαι συν‹εξ›ελθεῖν. οἱ δὲ μισθοφόροι τετρακισχίλιοι τὸ πλῆθος ἦσαν· καὶ τούτων αὖθις ὅσον χίλιοι καθ’ ὁδὸν ἀποδειλιάσαντες ἀνεχώρησαν, ὡς οὐχ ὑγιαίνοντος τοῦ Τιμολέοντος, ἀλλὰ μαινομένου παρ’ ἡλικίαν, [καὶ] πρὸς ἑπτὰ μυριάδας πολεμίων μετὰ πεντακισχιλίων πεζῶν καὶ χιλίων ἱππέων βαδίζοντος, καὶ διαρτῶντος ὁδὸν ἡμερῶν ὀκτὼ τὴν δύναμιν ἀπὸ τῶν Συρακουσῶν, ὅθεν οὔτε σωθῆναι τοῖς [6] φεύγουσιν οὔτε ταφῆναι τοῖς πεσοῦσιν αὐτῶν ὑπάρξειν. τούτους μὲν οὖν Τιμολέων κέρδος ἡγεῖτο πρὸ τῆς μάχης φανεροὺς γεγονότας, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐπιρρώσας κατὰ τάχος ἦγε πρὸς τὸν Κριμισὸν ποταμόν, ὅπου καὶ τοὺς Καρχηδονίους ἤκουσε συνάπτειν.

[26] [1] Ἀναβαίνοντι δ’ αὐτῷ πρὸς λόφον, ὃν ὑπερβαλόντες ἔμελλον κατόψεσθαι τὸ στράτευμα καὶ τὴν δύναμιν τῶν πολεμίων, ἐμβάλλουσιν ἡμίονοι [2] σέλινα κομίζοντες, καὶ τοῖς στρατιώταις εἰσῆλθε πονηρὸν εἶναι τὸ σημεῖον, ὅτι τὰ μνήματα τῶν νεκρῶν εἰώθαμεν ἐπιεικῶς στεφανοῦν σελίνοις· καὶ παροιμία τις ἐκ τούτου γέγονε, τὸν ἐπισφαλῶς νοσοῦντα δεῖσθαι [3] [τοῦτον] τοῦ σελίνου. βουλόμενος οὖν αὐτοὺς ἀπαλλάξαι τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας καὶ τὴν δυσελπιστίαν ἀφελεῖν, ὁ Τιμολέων ἐπιστήσας τὴν πορείαν ἄλλα τε ‹πολλὰ› πρέποντα τῷ καιρῷ διελέχθη, καὶ τὸν στέφανον αὐτοῖς ἔφη πρὸ τῆς νίκης κομιζόμενον αὐτομάτως εἰς τὰς χεῖρας ἥκειν, ᾧπερ Κορίνθιοι στεφανοῦσι τοὺς Ἴσθμια νικῶντας, ἱερὸν καὶ πάτριον στέμμα [4] ‹τὸ› τοῦ σελίνου νομίζοντες. ἔτι γὰρ τότε τῶν Ἰσθμίων, ὥσπερ νῦν τῶν [5] Νεμείων, τὸ σέλινον ἦν στέφανος, οὐ πάλαι δ’ ἡ πίτυς γέγονεν. ἐντυχὼν οὖν ὁ Τιμολέων ὥσπερ εἴρηται τοῖς στρατιώταις, καὶ λαβὼν τῶν σελίνων, κατεστέψατο πρῶτος αὐτός, εἶθ’ οἱ περὶ αὐτὸν ἡγεμόνες καὶ τὸ πλῆθος.

[6] οἱ δὲ μάντεις κατιδόντες ἀετοὺς δύο προσφερομένους, ὧν ὁ μὲν δράκοντα τοῖς ὄνυξιν ἔφερε διαπεπαρμένον, ὁ δ’ ἵπτατο κεκλαγὼς μέγα καὶ θαρραλέον, ἐπεδείκνυον τοῖς στρατιώταις, καὶ πρὸς εὐχὰς θεῶν καὶ ἀνακλήσεις ἐτράποντο πάντες.

[27] [1] Τὸ μὲν οὖν ἔτος ἱσταμένου θέρους εἶχεν ὥραν καὶ λήγοντι μηνὶ [2] Θαργηλιῶνι πρὸς τὰς τροπὰς ἤδη συνῆπτε τὸν καιρόν· ὁμίχλην δὲ τοῦ ποταμοῦ πολλὴν ἀναδιδόντος, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπεκρύπτετο ζόφῳ τὸ πεδίον, καὶ σύνοπτον οὐδὲν ἦν ἀπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, πλὴν ἠχή τις ἄκριτος καὶ συμμιγὴς ἄνω πρὸς τὸν λόφον ἐχώρει πρόσωθεν, ἀνισταμένης στρατιᾶς τοσαύτης.

[3] ὡς δ’ ἀναβάντες ἐπὶ τὸν λόφον ἔστησαν οἱ Κορίνθιοι καὶ θέμενοι τὰς ἀσπίδας διανεπαύοντο, τοῦ ἡλίου παραφαινομένου καὶ μετεωρίζοντος τὴν ἀναθυμίασιν, ὁ μὲν θολερὸς ἀὴρ ἀθροιζόμενος πρὸς τὰ ὑψηλὰ καὶ [4] συνιστάμενος κατενέφωσε τὰς ἀκρωρείας, τῶν δ’ ὑπὸ πόδας τόπων ἀνακαθαιρομένων ὅ τε Κριμισὸς ἐξεφάνη καὶ διαβαίνοντες αὐτὸν ὤφθησαν οἱ πολέμιοι, πρώτοις μὲν τοῖς τεθρίπποις ἐκπληκτικῶς πρὸς ἀγῶνα κατεσκευασμένοις, [5] κατόπιν δὲ τούτων μυρίοις ὁπλίταις λευκάσπισι. τούτους ἐτεκμαίροντο Καρχηδονίους εἶναι τῇ λαμπρότητι τῆς σκευῆς καὶ τῇ βρα[6]δυτῆτι καὶ τάξει τῆς πορείας. μετὰ δὲ τούτους τῶν λοιπῶν ἐθνῶν ἐπιρρεόντων καὶ τὴν διάβασιν μετ’ ὠθισμοῦ καὶ ταραχῆς ποιουμένων, συνιδὼν ὁ Τιμολέων τὸν ποταμὸν αὐτοῖς ταμιεύοντα τοῦ πλήθους τῶν πολεμίων ἀπολαβεῖν ὅσοις ἐθέλοιεν αὐτοὶ μάχεσθαι, καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας καθορᾶν κελεύσας τὴν φάλαγγα τῷ ῥείθρῳ διαλελυμένην καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἤδη διαβεβηκότας, τοὺς δὲ μέλλοντας, προσέταξε Δημαρέτῳ λαβόντι τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τοὺς Καρχηδονίους καὶ συνταράξαι τὸν διάκοσμον [7] αὐτῶν τῆς παρατάξεως οὔπω καθεστώσης. αὐτὸς δὲ καταβὰς εἰς τὸ πεδίον, τὰ μὲν κέρατα τοῖς ἄλλοις Σικελιώταις ἀπέδωκεν, ἀναμείξας ἑκατέρῳ τῶν ξένων οὐ πολλούς, ἐν μέσῳ δὲ περὶ αὑτὸν λαβὼν τοὺς Συρακοσίους καὶ τοὺς μαχιμωτάτους τῶν μισθοφόρων, βραχὺν μὲν χρόνον ἐπέσχε, [8] τὸ τῶν ἱππέων ἀποθεωρῶν ἔργον· ὡς δ’ ἐκείνους εἶδεν ὑπὸ τῶν ἁρμάτων πρὸ τῆς τάξεως διαθεόντων εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν τοῖς Καρχηδονίοις οὐ δυναμένους, ἀλλ’ ὅπως μὴ συνταραχθεῖεν ἀναγκαζομένους ἐξελίττειν [9] συνεχῶς καὶ πυκνὰς ἐξ ἐπιστροφῆς ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ἐπελάσεις, ἀναλαβὼν τὴν ἀσπίδα καὶ βοήσας ἕπεσθαι καὶ θαρρεῖν τοῖς πεζοῖς, ἔδοξεν ὑπερφυεῖ φωνῇ καὶ μείζονι κεχρῆσθαι τῆς συνήθους, εἴτε τῷ πάθει παρὰ τὸν ἀγῶνα καὶ τὸν ἐνθουσιασμὸν οὕτω διατεινάμενος, εἴτε δαιμονίου τινός, ὡς τοῖς [10] πολλοῖς τότε παρέστη, συνεπιφθεγξαμένου. ταχὺ δὲ τὴν κραυγὴν ἀνταποδόντων καὶ παρεγγυώντων ἄγειν καὶ μὴ μέλλειν, τοῖς μὲν ἱππόταις ἐσήμανεν ἔξω παρὰ τὴν τάξιν τῶν ἁρμάτων παρελάσαι, καὶ κατὰ κέρας προσφέρεσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις, αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς προμάχους πυκνώσας τῷ συνασπισμῷ, καὶ τὴν σάλπιγγα κελεύσας ἐπιφθέγξασθαι, προσέβαλε τοῖς Καρχηδονίοις.

[28] [1] Οἱ δὲ τὴν μὲν πρώτην ἐπιδρομὴν ὑπέστησαν ἐρρωμένως, καὶ τῷ καταπεφράχθαι τὰ σώματα σιδηροῖς θώραξι καὶ χαλκοῖς κράνεσιν ἀσπίδας [2] τε μεγάλας προβεβλῆσθαι διεκρούοντο τὸν δορατισμόν. ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰς ξίφη συνῆλθεν ὁ ἀγών, καὶ τέχνης οὐχ ἧττον ἢ ῥώμης ἐγεγόνει τὸ ἔργον, ἐξαίφνης ἀπὸ τῶν ὀρῶν βρονταί τε φοβεραὶ κατερρήγνυντο καὶ πυρώδεις [3] ἀστραπαὶ συνεξέπιπτον. εἶθ’ ὁ περὶ τοὺς λόφους καὶ τὰς ἀκρωρείας ζόφος ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην κατιών, ὄμβρῳ καὶ πνεύματι καὶ χαλάζῃ συμμεμειγμένος, τοῖς μὲν Ἕλλησιν ἐξόπισθεν καὶ κατὰ νώτου περιεχεῖτο, τῶν δὲ βαρβάρων ἔτυπτε τὰ πρόσωπα καὶ κατήστραπτε τὰς ὄψεις, ἅμα λαίλαπος ὑγρᾶς καὶ [4] φλογὸς συνεχοῦς ἐκ τῶν νεφῶν φερομένης. ἐν οἷς πολλὰ μὲν ἦν τὰ λυποῦντα καὶ μάλιστα τοὺς ἀπείρους, οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ βλάψαι δοκοῦσιν αἱ βρονταὶ καὶ τῶν ὅπλων ὁ πάταγος, κοπτομένων ὕδατι ῥαγδαίῳ καὶ χαλάζῃ, κωλύων [5] ἀκούεσθαι τὰ προστάγματα τῶν ἡγεμόνων. τοῖς δὲ Καρχηδονίοις, οὐκ οὖσιν εὐζώνοις τὸν ὁπλισμόν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ εἴρηται καταπεφραγμένοις, ὅ τε πηλὸς ἐμπόδιος ἦν, οἵ τε κόλποι πληρούμενοι τῶν χιτώνων ὕδατος [6] αὑτοῖς μὲν εἰς τὸν ἀγῶνα χρῆσθαι βαρεῖς ἦσαν καὶ δύσεργοι, ῥᾴδιοι δὲ τοῖς Ἕλλησι περιτρέπεσθαι, καὶ πεσόντες ἀμήχανοι πάλιν ἐκ πηλοῦ [7] μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἀναστῆναι. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Κριμισὸς ὑπὸ τῶν διαβαινόντων ἐκλύσθη, μέγας ἤδη τοῖς ὄμβροις ηὐξημένος, καὶ τὸ πεδίον τὸ περὶ αὐτόν, ὑπὸ πολλὰς συναγκείας καὶ φάραγγας ὑποκείμενον, ἐπίμπλατο ῥευμάτων οὐ κατὰ πόρον φερομένων, οἷς οἱ Καρχηδόνιοι καλινδούμενοι χαλεπῶς [8] ἀπήλλαττον. τέλος δὲ τοῦ ‹τε› χειμῶνος ἐπικειμένου, καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων τὴν πρώτην τάξιν αὐτῶν ἄνδρας τετρακοσίους καταβαλόντων, ἐτράπη [9] τὸ πλῆθος εἰς φυγήν, καὶ πολλοὶ μὲν ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ καταλαμβανόμενοι διεφθείροντο, πολλοὺς δ’ ὁ ποταμὸς τοῖς ἔτι περαιουμένοις συμπίπτοντας ἐμβάλλων καὶ παραφέρων ἀπώλλυε, πλείστους δὲ τῶν λόφων ἐφιεμένους [10] ἐπιθέοντες οἱ ψιλοὶ κατειργάσαντο. λέγονται γοῦν ἐν μυρίοις νεκροῖς τρισχίλιοι [11] Καρχηδονίων γενέσθαι, μέγα τῇ πόλει πένθος. οὔτε γὰρ γένεσιν οὔτε πλούτοις οὔτε δόξαις ἕτεροι βελτίονες ἦσαν ἐκείνων, οὔτ’ ἀποθανόντας ποτὲ μιᾷ μάχῃ πρότερον ἐξ αὐτῶν Καρχηδονίων τοσούτους μνημονεύουσιν, ἀλλὰ Λίβυσι τὰ πολλὰ καὶ Ἴβηρσι καὶ Νομάσι χρώμενοι πρὸς τὰς μάχας, ἀλλοτρίαις βλάβαις ἀνεδέχοντο τὰς ἥττας.

[29] [1] Ἐγνώσθη δὲ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἡ δόξα τῶν πεσόντων ἀπὸ τῶν λαφύρων. ἐλάχιστος γὰρ ἦν χαλκῶν καὶ σιδηρῶν τοῖς σκυλεύουσι λόγος· οὕτως ἄφθονος μὲν παρῆν ἄργυρος, ἄφθονος δὲ χρυσός. καὶ γὰρ τὸ στρατόπεδον [2] μετὰ τῶν ὑποζυγίων διαβάντες ἔλαβον. τῶν δ’ αἰχμαλώτων οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ διεκλάπησαν ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν, εἰς δὲ κοινὸν ἀπεδείχθησαν πεντακισχίλιοι [3] τὸ πλῆθος· ἥλω δὲ καὶ διακόσια τῶν τεθρίππων. καλλίστην δὲ καὶ μεγαλοπρεπεστάτην ὄψιν ἡ Τιμολέοντος ἐπεδείκνυτο σκηνή, περισωρευθεῖσα παντοδαποῖς λαφύροις, ἐν οἷς χίλιοι μὲν θώρακες ἐργασίᾳ καὶ [4] κάλλει διαφέροντες, μύριαι δ’ ἀσπίδες προετέθησαν. ὀλίγοι δὲ πολλοὺς σκυλεύοντες καὶ μεγάλαις ἐντυγχάνοντες ὠφελείαις, τρίτῃ μόλις ἡμέρᾳ [5] μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἔστησαν τρόπαιον. ἅμα δὲ τῇ φήμῃ τῆς νίκης ὁ Τιμολέων εἰς Κόρινθον ἔπεμψε τὰ κάλλιστα τῶν αἰχμαλώτων ὅπλων, βουλόμενος [6] αὐτοῦ τὴν πατρίδα πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ζηλωτὴν εἶναι, θεωμένοις ἐν ἐκείνῃ μόνῃ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν πόλεων τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους ναοὺς οὐχ Ἑλληνικοῖς κεκοσμημένους λαφύροις, οὐδ’ ἀπὸ συγγενῶν φόνου καὶ ὁμοφύλων [ἀναθημάτων] μνήμας ἀτερπεῖς ἔχοντας. ἀλλὰ βαρβαρικὰ σκῦλα, καλλίσταις ἐπιγραφαῖς δηλοῦντα μετὰ τῆς ἀνδρείας τῶν νενικηκότων τὴν δικαιοσύνην, ὅτι ‘Κορίνθιοι καὶ Τιμολέων ὁ στρατηγός, ἐλευθερώσαντες τοὺς Σικελίαν οἰκοῦντας Ἕλληνας ἀπὸ Καρχηδονίων, χαριστήρια θεοῖς ἀνέθηκαν.’

[30] [1] Ἐκ τούτου καταλιπὼν ἐν τῇ πολεμίᾳ τοὺς μισθοφόρους, ἄγοντας καὶ φέροντας τὴν τῶν Καρχηδονίων ἐπικράτειαν, αὐτὸς ἧκεν εἰς Συρακούσας, [2] καὶ τοὺς χιλίους μισθοφόρους ἐκείνους, ὑφ’ ὧν ἐγκατελείφθη πρὸ τῆς μάχης, ἐξεκήρυξε τῆς Σικελίας καὶ πρὶν ἢ δῦναι τὸν ἥλιον ἠνάγκασεν [3] ἐκ Συρακουσῶν ἀπελθεῖν. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν διαπλεύσαντες εἰς Ἰταλίαν ἀπώλοντο παρασπονδηθέντες ὑπὸ Βρεττίων, καὶ δίκην ταύτην τὸ δαιμόνιον αὐτοῖς τῆς προδοσίας ἐπέθηκε.

[4] Τῶν δὲ περὶ [τὸν] Μάμερκον τὸν Κατάνης τύραννον καὶ Ἱκέτην, εἴτε φθόνῳ τῶν κατορθουμένων ὑπὸ Τιμολέοντος, εἴτε φοβουμένων αὐτὸν ὡς ἄπιστον καὶ ἄσπονδον πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους, συμμαχίαν ποιησαμένων πρὸς τοὺς Καρχηδονίους καὶ κελευσάντων πέμπειν δύναμιν καὶ στρατηγόν, [5] εἰ μὴ παντάπασι βούλονται Σικελίας ἐκπεσεῖν, ‹ἐπ›έπλευσε Γέσκων, ναῦς μὲν ἔχων ἑβδομήκοντα, μισθοφόρους δὲ προσλαβὼν Ἕλληνας, οὔπω πρότερον Ἕλλησι χρησαμένων Καρχηδονίων, ἀλλὰ τότε θαυμασάντων ὡς ἀνυποστάτους [6] καὶ μαχιμωτάτους ἀνθρώπων ἁπάντων. συστάντες δὲ κοινῇ μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἅπαντες, ἐν τῇ Μεσσηνίᾳ τετρακοσίους τῶν παρὰ Τιμολέοντος ξένων ἐπικούρους πεμφθέντας ἀπέκτειναν, ἐν δὲ τῇ Καρχηδονίων ἐπικρατείᾳ περὶ τὰς καλουμένας Ἱερὰς ἐνεδρεύσαντες τοὺς μετ’ Εὐθύμου [7] τοῦ Λευκαδίου μισθοφόρους διέφθειραν. ἐξ ὧν καὶ μάλιστα τὴν Τιμολέοντος εὐτυχίαν συνέβη γενέσθαι διώνυμον· ἦσαν μὲν γὰρ οὗτοι τῶν μετὰ Φιλομήλου τοῦ Φωκέως καὶ Ὀνομάρχου Δελφοὺς καταλαβόντων καὶ [8] μετασχόντων ἐκείνοις τῆς ἱεροσυλίας. μισούντων δὲ πάντων αὐτοὺς καὶ φυλαττομένων ἐπαράτους γεγονότας, πλανώμενοι περὶ τὴν Πελοπόννησον [9] ὑπὸ Τιμολέοντος ἐλήφθησαν, ἑτέρων στρατιωτῶν οὐκ εὐποροῦντος. ἀφικόμενοι δ’ εἰς Σικελίαν, ὅσας μὲν ἐκείνῳ συνηγωνίσαντο μάχας, πάσας ἐνίκων, τῶν δὲ πλείστων καὶ μεγίστων ἀγώνων τέλος ἐχόντων, ἐκπεμπόμενοι πρὸς ἑτέρας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ βοηθείας ἀπώλοντο καὶ καταναλώθησαν, οὐχ ὁμοῦ πάντες, ἀλλὰ κατὰ μέρος τῆς δίκης αὐτοῖς †ἀπολογουμένης τῇ Τιμολέοντος εὐτυχίᾳ †ἐπιτιθεμένης, ὅπως μηδεμία τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς [10] τῶν κακῶν κολάσεως βλάβη γένηται. τὴν μὲν οὖν πρὸς Τιμολέοντα τῶν θεῶν εὐμένειαν οὐχ ἧττον ἐν αἷς προσέκρουσε πράξεσιν ἢ περὶ ἃς κατώρθου θαυμάζεσθαι συνέβαινεν.

[31] [1] Οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τῶν Συρακοσίων ἐχαλέπαινον, ὑπὸ τῶν τυράννων προπηλακιζόμενοι. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Μάμερκος, ἐπὶ τῷ ποιήματα γράφειν καὶ τραγῳδίας μέγα φρονῶν, ἐκόμπαζε νικήσας τοὺς μισθοφόρους, καὶ τὰς ἀσπίδας ἀναθεὶς τοῖς θεοῖς ἐλεγεῖον ὑβριστικὸν ἐπέγραψε (115 Preger)·

τάσδ’ ὀστρειογραφεῖς καὶ χρυσελεφαντηλέκτρους

ἀσπίδας ἀσπιδίοις εἵλομεν εὐτελέσιν.

[2] γενομένων δὲ τούτων καὶ τοῦ Τιμολέοντος εἰς Γαλαρίαν στρατεύσαντος, ὁ Ἱκέτης ἐμβαλὼν εἰς τὴν Συρακοσίαν λείαν τε συχνὴν ἔλαβε καὶ πολλὰ λυμηνάμενος καὶ καθυβρίσας ἀπηλλάττετο παρ’ αὐτὴν τὴν Γαλαρίαν, [3] καταφρονῶν τοῦ Τιμολέοντος ὀλίγους στρατιώτας ἔχοντος. ἐκεῖνος δὲ προλαβεῖν ἐάσας ἐδίωκεν, ἱππεῖς ἔχων καὶ ψιλούς· αἰσθόμενος δ’ ὁ Ἱκέτης, τὸν Δαμυρίαν ἤδη διαβεβηκώς, ὑπέστη παρὰ τὸν ποταμὸν ὡς ἀμυνούμενος· καὶ γὰρ αὐτῷ θάρσος ἥ τε τοῦ πόρου χαλεπότης καὶ τὸ κρημνῶδες [4] τῆς ἑκατέρωθεν ὄχθης παρεῖχε. τοῖς δὲ μετὰ τοῦ Τιμολέοντος ἰλάρχαις ἔρις ἐμπεσοῦσα θαυμαστὴ καὶ φιλονικία διατριβὴν ἐποίει τῆς [5] μάχης. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἦν ὁ βουλόμενος ἑτέρου διαβαίνειν ὕστερος ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ἕκαστος ἠξίου πρωταγωνιστεῖν, καὶ κόσμον οὐκ [6] εἶχεν ἡ διάβασις, ἐξωθούντων καὶ παρατρεχόντων ἀλλήλους. βουλόμενος οὖν ὁ Τιμολέων κληρῶσαι τοὺς ἡγεμόνας, ἔλαβε παρ’ ἑκάστου δακτύλιον· ἐμβαλὼν δὲ πάντας εἰς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ χλαμύδα καὶ μείξας, ἔδειξε τὸν πρῶτον [7] κατὰ τύχην γλυφὴν ἔχοντα τῆς σφραγῖδος τρόπαιον. ὡς δὲ τοῦτον εἶδον οἱ νεανίσκοι, μετὰ χαρᾶς ἀνακραγόντες οὐκέτι τὸν ἄλλον ὑπέμειναν κλῆρον, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἕκαστος τάχους εἶχε τὸν ποταμὸν διεξελάσαντες, ἐν χερσὶν ἦσαν [8] τοῖς πολεμίοις. οἱ δ’ οὐκ ἐδέξαντο τὴν βίαν αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ φεύγοντες τῶν μὲν ὅπλων ἅπαντες ὁμαλῶς ἐστερήθησαν, χιλίους δ’ ἀπέβαλον πεσόντας.

[32] [1] Οὐ πολλῷ δ’ ὕστερον εἰς τὴν Λεοντίνων στρατεύσας ὁ Τιμολέων λαμβάνει τὸν Ἱκέτην ζῶντα καὶ τὸν υἱὸν Εὐπόλεμον καὶ τὸν ἱππάρχην Εὔθυμον, ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν συνδεθέντας καὶ κομισθέντας πρὸς αὐτόν.

[2] ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἱκέτης καὶ τὸ μειράκιον ὡς τύραννοι καὶ προδόται κολασθέντες ἀπέθνῃσκον, ὁ δ’ Εὔθυμος, ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς ὢν πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας καὶ τόλμῃ διαφέρων, οὐκ ἔτυχεν οἴκτου διὰ βλασφημίαν τινὰ πρὸς τοὺς Κορινθίους [3] κατηγορηθεῖσαν αὐτοῦ. λέγεται γὰρ ὅτι τῶν Κορινθίων ἐκστρατευσαμένων ἐπ’ αὐτούς, δημηγορῶν ἐν τοῖς Λεοντίνοις οὐδὲν ἔφη γεγονέναι φοβερὸν οὐδὲ δεινόν, εἰ (Eurip. Med. 216)

Κορίνθιαι γυναῖκες ἐξῆλθον δόμων.

[4] οὕτως ὑπὸ λόγων μᾶλλον ἢ πράξεων πονηρῶν ἀνιᾶσθαι πεφύκασιν οἱ πολλοί· χαλεπώτερον γὰρ ὕβριν ἢ βλάβην φέρουσι, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἀμύνεσθαι δι’ ἔργων ὡς ἀναγκαῖον δέδοται τοῖς πολεμοῦσιν, αἱ δὲ βλασφημίαι περιουσίᾳ μίσους ἢ κακίας γίνεσθαι δοκοῦσιν.

[33] [1] Ἐπανελθόντος δὲ τοῦ Τιμολέοντος, οἱ Συρακόσιοι τὰς γυναῖκας τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἱκέτην καὶ τὰς θυγατέρας ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ καταστήσαντες εἰς κρίσιν [2] ἀπέκτειναν. καὶ δοκεῖ τοῦτο τῶν Τιμολέοντος ἔργων ἀχαριστότατον γενέσθαι· μὴ γὰρ ἂν ἐκείνου κωλύοντος οὕτως τὰς ἀνθρώπους ἀποθανεῖν.

[3] δοκεῖ δ’ αὐτὰς ὑπεριδεῖν καὶ προέσθαι τῷ θυμῷ τῶν πολιτῶν, δίκην λαμβανόντων [4] ὑπὲρ Δίωνος τοῦ Διονύσιον ἐκβαλόντος. Ἱκέτης γάρ ἐστιν ὁ τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ Δίωνος Ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν ἀδελφὴν Ἀριστομάχην καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἔτι παῖδα καταποντίσας ζῶντας, περὶ ὧν ἐν τῷ Δίωνος γέγραπται βίῳ (c. 58, 8. 9).

[34] [1] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα στρατεύσας ἐπὶ Μάμερκον εἰς Κατάνην, καὶ περὶ τὸ ῥεῦμα τὴν Ἄβολον ἐκ παρατάξεως ὑποστάντα νικήσας καὶ τρεψάμενος, ὑπὲρ δισχιλίους ἀνεῖλεν, ὧν μέρος οὐκ ὀλίγον ἦσαν οἱ πεμφθέντες ὑπὸ [2] Γέσκωνος ἐπίκουροι Φοίνικες. ἐκ δὲ τούτου Καρχηδόνιοι μὲν εἰρήνην ἐποιήσαντο πρὸς αὐτὸν δεηθέντες, ὥστε τὴν ἐντὸς τοῦ Λύκου χώραν ἔχειν, [καὶ] τοῖς βουλομένοις ἐξ αὐτῆς μετοικεῖν πρὸς Συρακοσίους χρήματα καὶ [3] γενεὰς ἀποδιδόντες, καὶ τοῖς τυράννοις ἀπειπάμενοι τὴν συμμαχίαν. Μάμερκος δὲ δυσθυμῶν ταῖς ἐλπίσιν, ἔπλει μὲν εἰς Ἰταλίαν, ὡς Λευκανοὺς ἐπάξων Τιμολέοντι καὶ Συρακοσίοις· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀποστρέψαντες οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ τὰς τριήρεις καὶ πλεύσαντες εἰς Σικελίαν τῷ Τιμολέοντι τὴν Κατάνην παρέδωκαν, ἀναγκασθεὶς καὶ αὐτὸς εἰς Μεσσήνην κατέφυγε πρὸς Ἵππωνα [4] τὸν τυραννοῦντα τῆς πόλεως. ἐπελθόντος δὲ τοῦ Τιμολέοντος αὐτοῖς καὶ πολιορκοῦντος ἔκ τε γῆς καὶ θαλάττης, ὁ μὲν Ἵππων ἀποδιδράσκων ἐπὶ νεὼς ἥλω, καὶ παραλαβόντες αὐτὸν οἱ Μεσσήνιοι, καὶ τοὺς παῖδας ἐκ τῶν διδασκαλείων ὡς ἐπὶ θέαμα κάλλιστον τὴν τοῦ τυράννου τιμωρίαν [5] ἀγαγόντες εἰς θέατρον, ᾐκίσαντο καὶ διέφθειραν· ὁ δὲ Μάμερκος ἑαυτὸν Τιμολέοντι παρέδωκεν ἐπὶ τῷ δίκην ὑποσχεῖν ἐν Συρακοσίοις μὴ κατηγοροῦντος [6] Τιμολέοντος. ἀχθεὶς δ’ εἰς τὰς Συρακούσας καὶ παρελθὼν εἰς τὸν δῆμον, ἐπεχείρει μέν τινα συγκείμενον ἐκ παλαιοῦ λόγον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ διεξιέναι, θορύβοις δὲ περιπίπτων καὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ὁρῶν ἀπαραίτητον, ἔθει ῥίψας τὸ ἱμάτιον διὰ μέσου τοῦ θεάτρου, καὶ πρός τι τῶν βάθρων δρόμῳ [7] φερόμενος, συνέρρηξε τὴν κεφαλὴν ὡς ἀποθανούμενος. οὐ μὴν ἔτυχέ γε ταύτης τῆς τελευτῆς, ἀλλ’ ἔτι ζῶν ἀπαχθεὶς ἥνπερ οἱ λῃσταὶ δίκην ἔδωκε.

[35] [1] Τὰς μὲν οὖν τυραννίδας ὁ Τιμολέων τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ἐξέκοψε καὶ τοὺς πολέμους ἔλυσε· τὴν δ’ ὅλην νῆσον, ἐξηγριωμένην ὑπὸ κακῶν καὶ διαμεμισημένην ὑπὸ τῶν οἰκητόρων παραλαβών, οὕτως ἐξημέρωσε καὶ ποθεινὴν ἐποίησε πᾶσιν, ὥστε πλεῖν οἰκήσοντας ἑτέρους ὅθεν οἱ πολῖται [2] πρότερον ἀπεδίδρασκον. καὶ γὰρ Ἀκράγαντα καὶ Γέλαν, πόλεις μεγάλας μετὰ τὸν Ἀττικὸν πόλεμον ὑπὸ Καρχηδονίων ἀναστάτους γεγενημένας, τότε κατῴκισαν, τὴν μὲν οἱ περὶ Μέγιλλον καὶ Φέριστον ἐξ Ἐλέας, τὴν δ’ οἱ περὶ Γόργον ἐκ Κέω [ἐκ]πλεύσαντες καὶ συναγαγόντες τοὺς ἀρχαίους [3] πολίτας· οἷς οὐ μόνον ἀσφάλειαν ἐκ πολέμου τοσούτου καὶ γαλήνην ἱδρυομένοις παρασχών, ἀλλὰ καὶ τἆλλα παρασκευάσας καὶ συμπροθυμηθείς, [4] ὥσπερ οἰκιστὴς ἠγαπᾶτο. καὶ τῶν ἄλλων δὲ διακειμένων ὁμοίως ἁπάντων πρὸς αὐτόν, οὐ πολέμου τις λύσις, οὐ νόμων θέσις, οὐ χώρας κατοικισμός, οὐ πολιτείας διάταξις ἐδόκει καλῶς ἔχειν, ἧς ἐκεῖνος μὴ προσάψαιτο μηδὲ κατακοσμήσειεν, ὥσπερ ἔργῳ συντελουμένῳ δημιουργὸς ἐπιθείς τινα χάριν θεοφιλῆ καὶ πρέπουσαν.

[36] [1] Πολλῶν γοῦν κατ’ αὐτὸν Ἑλλήνων μεγάλων γενομένων καὶ μεγάλα κατεργασαμένων, ὧν καὶ Τιμόθεος ἦν καὶ Ἀγησίλαος καὶ Πελοπίδας καὶ ὁ μάλιστα ζηλωθεὶς ὑπὸ Τιμολέοντος Ἐπαμεινώνδας, αἱ μὲν ἐκείνων πράξεις βίᾳ τινὶ καὶ πόνῳ τὸ λαμπρὸν ἐξενηνόχασι μεμειγμένον, ὥστε καὶ [2] μέμψιν ἐνίαις ἐπιγίνεσθαι καὶ μετάνοιαν· τῶν δὲ Τιμολέοντος ἔργων, ἔξω λόγου θεμένοις τὴν περὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀνάγκην, οὐδέν ἐστιν ᾧ μὴ τὰ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους, ὥς φησι Τίμαιος (FGrH 566 F 119b), ἐπιφωνεῖν ἔπρεπεν (fg. 790 N.²)

ὦ θεοί, τις ἆρα Κύπρις ἢ τίς Ἵμερος

τοῦδε ξυνήψατο;

[3] καθάπερ γὰρ ἡ μὲν Ἀντιμάχου ποίησις καὶ τὰ Διονυσίου ζῳγραφήματα τῶν Κολοφωνίων, ἰσχὺν ἔχοντα καὶ τόνον, ἐκβεβιασμένοις καὶ καταπόνοις ἔοικε, ταῖς δὲ Νικομάχου γραφαῖς καὶ τοῖς Ὁμήρου στίχοις μετὰ τῆς ἄλλης δυνάμεως καὶ χάριτος πρόσεστι τὸ δοκεῖν εὐχερῶς καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἀπειργάσθαι, [4] οὕτως παρὰ τὴν Ἐπαμεινώνδου στρατηγίαν καὶ τὴν Ἀγησιλάου, πολυπόνους γενομένας καὶ δυσάγωνας, ἡ Τιμολέοντος ἀντεξεταζομένη καὶ μετὰ τοῦ καλοῦ πολὺ τὸ ῥᾴδιον ἔχουσα, φαίνεται τοῖς εὖ καὶ δικαίως [5] λογιζομένοις οὐ τύχης ἔργον, ἀλλ’ ἀρετῆς εὐτυχούσης. καίτοι πάντα γ’ ἐκεῖνος εἰς τὴν τύχην ἀνῆπτε τὰ καταρθούμενα· καὶ γὰρ γράφων τοῖς οἴκοι φίλοις, καὶ δημηγορῶν πρὸς τοὺς Συρακοσίους, πολλάκις ἔφη τῷ θεῷ χάριν ἔχειν, ὅτι βουλόμενος σῶσαι Σικελίαν ἐπεγράψατο τὴν αὐτοῦ προσηγορίαν.

[6] ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς οἰκίας ἱερὸν ἱδρυσάμενος Αὐτοματίας ἔθυεν, αὐτὴν δὲ [7] τὴν οἰκίαν Ἱερῷ Δαίμονι καθιέρωσεν. ᾤκει δ’ οἰκίαν ἣν ἐξεῖλον αὐτῷ στρατηγίας ἀριστεῖον οἱ Συρακόσιοι, καὶ τῶν ἀγρῶν τὸν ἥδιστον καὶ κάλλιστον· ἐν ᾧ καὶ τὸν πλεῖστον τοῦ χρόνου κατεσχόλαζε, μεταπεμψάμενος [8] οἴκοθεν τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τοὺς παῖδας. οὐ γὰρ ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς Κόρινθον, οὐδὲ κατέμειξε τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς θορύβοις ἑαυτὸν οὐδὲ τῷ πολιτικῷ φθόνῳ παρέδωκεν, εἰς ὃν οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν στρατηγῶν ἀπληστίᾳ τιμῶν καὶ δυνάμεως ἐξοκέλλουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖ κατέμεινε, τοῖς ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ μεμηχανημένοις [9] ἀγαθοῖς χρώμενος· ὧν μέγιστον ἦν τὸ πόλεις τοσαύτας καὶ μυριάδας ἀνθρώπων δι’ ἑαυτὸν ἐφορᾶν εὐδαιμονούσας.

[37] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ χρῆν ὡς ἔοικεν οὐ μόνον πᾶσι κορυδαλλοῖς λόφον ἐγγίνεσθαι, κατὰ Σιμωνίδην (fg. 3 Diehl), ἀλλὰ καὶ πάσῃ δημοκρατίᾳ συκοφάντην, ἐπεχείρησαν καὶ Τιμολέοντι δύο τῶν δημαγωγῶν, Λαφύστιος καὶ [2] Δημαίνετος. ὧν Λαφυστίου μὲν αὐτὸν πρός τινα δίκην κατεγγυῶντος, οὐκ εἴα θορυβεῖν οὐδὲ κωλύειν τοὺς πολίτας· ἑκὼν γὰρ αὐτὸς ὑπομεῖναι τοσούτους πόνους καὶ κινδύνους ὑπὲρ τοῦ τοῖς νόμοις χρῆσθαι τὸν βουλόμενον [3] Συρακοσίων· τοῦ δὲ Δημαινέτου πολλὰ κατηγορήσαντος ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ τῆς στρατηγίας, πρὸς ἐκεῖνον μὲν οὐδὲν ἀντεῖπε, τοῖς δὲ θεοῖς ἔφη χάριν ὀφείλειν, οἷς εὔξατο Συρακοσίους ἐπιδεῖν τῆς παρρησίας κυρίους γενομένους.

[4] Μέγιστα δ’ οὖν καὶ κάλλιστα τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν Ἑλλήνων ὁμολογουμένως διαπραξάμενος ἔργα, καὶ μόνος, ἐφ’ ἃς οἱ σοφισταὶ διὰ τῶν λόγων τῶν πανηγυρικῶν ἀεὶ παρεκάλουν πράξεις τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ἐν ταύταις ἀριστεύσας, [5] καὶ τῶν μὲν αὐτόθι κακῶν, ἃ τὴν ἀρχαίαν Ἑλλάδα κατέσχεν, ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης προεκκομισθεὶς ἀναίμακτος καὶ καθαρός, ἐπιδειξάμενος δὲ δεινότητα μὲν καὶ ἀνδρείαν τοῖς βαρβάροις καὶ τοῖς τυράννοις, δικαιοσύνην δὲ [6] καὶ πρᾳότητα τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ τοῖς φίλοις, τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα τρόπαια τῶν ἀγώνων ἀδάκρυτα καὶ ἀπενθῆ τοῖς πολίταις καταστήσας, καθαρὰν δὲ τὴν Σικελίαν ἐν οὐδ’ ὅλοις ἔτεσιν ὀκτὼ ‹τῶν› ἀϊδίων καὶ συνοίκων [7] κακῶν καὶ νοσημάτων παραδοὺς τοῖς κατοικοῦσιν, ἤδη πρεσβύτερος ὢν ἀπημβλύνθη τὴν ὄψιν, εἶτα τελέως ἐπηρώθη μετ’ ὀλίγον, οὔτ’ αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ πρόφασιν παρασχών, οὔτε παροινηθεὶς ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης, ἀλλὰ συγγενικῆς τινος ὡς ἔοικεν αἰτίας καὶ καταβολῆς ἅμα τῷ χρόνῳ συνεπιθεμένης· [8] λέγονται γὰρ οὐκ ὀλίγοι τῶν κατὰ γένος αὐτῷ προσηκόντων ὁμοίως [9] ἀποβαλεῖν τὴν ὄψιν, ὑπὸ γήρως ἀπομαρανθεῖσαν. ὁ δ’ Ἄθανις (FGrH 562 F 3) ἔτι συνεστῶτος τοῦ πρὸς Ἵππωνα πολέμου καὶ Μάμερκον ἐν Μυλαῖς ἐπὶ στρατοπέδου φησὶν ἀπογλαυκωθῆναι τὴν ὄψιν αὐτοῦ, καὶ πᾶσι φανερὰν γενέσθαι τὴν πήρωσιν, οὐ μὴν ἀποστῆναι διὰ τοῦτο τῆς [10] πολιορκίας, ἀλλ’ ἐμμείναντα τῷ πολέμῳ λαβεῖν τοὺς τυράννους· ὡς δ’ ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς Συρακούσας, εὐθὺς ἀποθέσθαι τὴν μοναρχίαν καὶ παραιτεῖσθαι τοὺς πολίτας, τῶν πραγμάτων εἰς τὸ κάλλιστον ἡκόντων τέλος.

[38] [1] Ἐκεῖνον μὲν οὖν αὐτὸν ὑπομείναντα τὴν συμφορὰν ἀλύπως ἧττον [2] ἄν τις θαυμάσειε· τῶν δὲ Συρακοσίων ἄξιον ἄγασθαι τὴν πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα τιμὴν καὶ χάριν, ἣν ἐπεδείξαντο πεπηρωμένῳ, φοιτῶντες ἐπὶ θύρας αὐτοὶ καὶ τῶν ξένων τοὺς παρεπιδημοῦντας ἄγοντες εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ τὸ χωρίον, [3] ὅπως θεάσαιντο τὸν εὐεργέτην αὐτῶν, ἀγαλλόμενοι καὶ μέγα φρονοῦντες, ὅτι παρ’ αὐτοῖς εἵλετο καταζῆσαι τὸν βίον, οὕτω λαμπρᾶς ἐπανόδου τῆς εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα παρεσκευασμένης αὐτῷ διὰ τῶν εὐτυχημάτων καταφρονήσας.

[4] πολλῶν δὲ καὶ μεγάλων εἰς τὴν ἐκείνου τιμὴν γραφομένων καὶ πραττομένων οὐδενὸς ἧττον ἦν τὸ ψηφίσασθαι τὸν τῶν Συρακοσίων δῆμον, ὁσάκις συμπέσοι πόλεμος αὐτοῖς πρὸς ἀλλοφύλους, Κορινθίῳ χρῆσθαι [5] στρατηγῷ. καλὴν δὲ καὶ τὸ περὶ τὰς ἐκκλησίας γινόμενον ὄψιν εἰς τιμὴν αὐτοῦ παρεῖχε· τὰ γὰρ ἄλλα δι’ αὑτῶν κρίνοντες, ἐπὶ τὰς μείζονας διασκέψεις [6] ἐκεῖνον ἐκάλουν. ὁ δὲ κομιζόμενος δι’ ἀγορᾶς ἐπὶ ζεύγους πρὸς τὸ θέατρον ἐπορεύετο, καὶ τῆς ἀπήνης ‹ἐφ’› ἧσπερ ἐτύγχανε καθήμενος εἰσαγομένης, ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἠσπάζετο μιᾷ φωνῇ προσαγορεύων αὐτόν, ὁ δ’ ἀντασπασάμενος, καὶ χρόνον τινὰ δοὺς ταῖς εὐφημίαις καὶ τοῖς ἐπαίνοις, [7] εἶτα διακούσας τὸ ζητούμενον ἀπεφαίνετο γνώμην. ἐπιχειροτονηθείσης δὲ ταύτης, οἱ μὲν ὑπηρέται πάλιν ἀπῆγον διὰ τοῦ θεάτρου τὸ ζεῦγος, οἱ δὲ πολῖται βοῇ καὶ κρότῳ προπέμψαντες ἐκεῖνον, ἤδη τὰ λοιπὰ τῶν δημοσίων καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἐχρημάτιζον.

[39] [1] Ἐν τοιαύτῃ δὲ γηροτροφούμενος τιμῇ μετ’ εὐνοίας ὥσπερ πατὴρ [2] κοινός, ἐκ μικρᾶς προφάσεως τῷ χρόνῳ συνεφαψαμένης ἐτελεύτησεν. ἡμερῶν δὲ δοθεισῶν, τοῖς μὲν Συρακοσίοις εἰς τὸ παρασκευάσαι τὰ περὶ τὴν ταφήν, τοῖς δὲ περιοίκοις καὶ ξένοις εἰς τὸ συνελθεῖν, τά τ’ ἄλλα λαμπρᾶς χορηγίας ἔτυχε, καὶ τὸ λέχος οἱ ψήφῳ τῶν νεανίσκων προκριθέντες ἔφερον [3] κεκοσμημένον διὰ τῶν Διονυσίου τυραννείων τότε κατεσκαμμένων. προὔπεμπον δὲ πολλαὶ μυριάδες ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν, ὧν ὄψις μὲν ἦν ἑορτῇ πρέπουσα, πάντων ἐστεφανωμένων καὶ καθαρὰς ἐσθῆτας φορούντων, φωναὶ δὲ καὶ δάκρυα, συγκεκραμένα τῷ μακαρισμῷ τοῦ τεθνηκότος, οὐ τιμῆς ἀφοσίωσιν οὐδὲ λειτουργίαν ἐκ προβουλεύματος, ἀλλὰ πόθον δίκαιον [4] ἐπεδείκνυντο καὶ χάριν ἀληθινῆς εὐνοίας. τέλος δὲ τῆς κλίνης ἐπὶ τὴν πυρὰν τεθείσης, Δημήτριος, ὃς ἦν μεγαλοφωνότατος τῶν τότε κηρύκων, [5] γεγραμμένον ἀνεῖπε κήρυγμα τοιοῦτον· ὁ δῆμος τῶν Συρακοσίων Τιμολέοντα Τιμοδήμου Κορίνθιον [τόνδε] θάπτει μὲν ‹ἀπὸ› διακοσίων μνῶν, ἐτίμησε δ’ εἰς τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον ἀγῶσι μουσικοῖς ἱππικοῖς γυμνικοῖς, ὅτι τοὺς τυράννους καταλύσας, καὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους καταπολεμήσας, καὶ τὰς μεγίστας τῶν ἀναστάτων πόλεων ‹ἀν›οικίσας, ἀπέδωκε τοὺς νόμους [6] τοῖς Σικελιώταις. ἐποιήσαντο δὲ τὴν ταφὴν τοῦ σώματος ἐν ἀγορᾷ, καὶ στοὰς ὕστερον περιβαλόντες καὶ παλαίστρας ἐνοικοδομήσαντες, γυμνάσιον [7] τοῖς νέοις ἀνῆκαν καὶ Τιμολεόντειον προσηγόρευσαν. αὐτοὶ δὲ χρώμενοι πολιτείᾳ καὶ νόμοις οὓς ἐκεῖνος κατέστησεν, ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον εὐδαιμονοῦντες διετέλεσαν.

Aemilius Paullus

[1] [1]  Ἐμοὶ [μὲν] τῆς τῶν βίων ἅψασθαι μὲν γραφῆς συνέβη δι’ ἑτέρους, ἐπιμένειν δὲ καὶ φιλοχωρεῖν ἤδη καὶ δι’ ἐμαυτόν, ὥσπερ ἐν ἐσόπτρῳ τῇ ἱστορίᾳ πειρώμενον ἁμῶς γέ πως κοσμεῖν καὶ ἀφομοιοῦν πρὸς τὰς ἐκείνων [2] ἀρετὰς τὸν βίον. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἀλλ’ ἢ συνδιαιτήσει καὶ συμβιώσει τὸ γινόμενον ἔοικεν, ὅταν ὥσπερ ἐπιξενούμενον ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ἐν μέρει διὰ τῆς ἱστορίας ὑποδεχόμενοι καὶ παραλαμβάνοντες ἀναθεωρῶμεν

  ‘ὅσσος ἔην οἷός τε’ (Hom. Il. 24, 630),

τὰ κυριώτατα καὶ κάλλιστα πρὸς γνῶσιν ἀπὸ τῶν πράξεων λαμβάνοντες.

[3] φεῦ φεῦ, τί τούτου χάρμα μεῖζον ἂν λάβοις (Soph. fr. 579)

[4] ‹καὶ› πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν ἠθῶν ἐνεργότερον; Δημόκριτος μὲν γὰρ (DielsKranz, Ϝ. β ) εὔχεσθαί φησι δεῖν, ὅπως εὐλόγχων εἰδώλων τυγχάνωμεν, καὶ τὰ σύμφυλα καὶ τὰ χρηστὰ μᾶλλον ἡμῖν ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἢ τὰ φαῦλα καὶ τὰ σκαιὰ συμφέρηται, λόγον οὔτ’ ἀληθῆ καὶ πρὸς ἀπεράντους [5] ἐκφέροντα δεισιδαιμονίας εἰς φιλοσοφίαν καταβάλλων· ἡμεῖς δὲ τῇ περὶ τὴν ἱστορίαν διατριβῇ καὶ τῆς γραφῆς τῇ συνηθείᾳ παρασκευάζομεν ἑαυτούς, τὰς τῶν ἀρίστων καὶ δοκιμωτάτων μνήμας ὑποδεχομένους ἀεὶ ταῖς ψυχαῖς, εἴ τι φαῦλον ἢ κακόηθες ἢ ἀγεννὲς αἱ τῶν συνόντων ἐξ ἀνάγκης ὁμιλίαι προσβάλλουσιν, ἐκκρούειν καὶ διωθεῖσθαι, πρὸς τὰ κάλλιστα τῶν [6] παραδειγμάτων ἵλεω καὶ πρᾳεῖαν ἀποστρέφοντες τὴν διάνοιαν. ὧν ἐν τῷ παρόντι προκεχειρίσμεθά σοι τὸν Τιμολέοντος τοῦ Κορινθίου καὶ Αἰμιλίου Παύλου βίον, ἀνδρῶν οὐ μόνον ταῖς αἱρέσεσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῖς τύχαις ἀγαθαῖς ὁμοίως κεχρημένων ἐπὶ τὰ πράγματα, καὶ διαμφισβήτησιν παρεξόντων, πότερον εὐποτμίᾳ μᾶλλον ἢ φρονήσει τὰ μέγιστα τῶν πεπραγμένων κατώρθωσαν.

[2] [1] Τὸν Αἰμιλίων οἶκον ἐν Ῥώμῃ τῶν εὐπατριδῶν γεγονέναι καὶ παλαιῶν [2] οἱ πλεῖστοι συγγραφεῖς ὁμολογοῦσιν. ὅτι δ’ ὁ πρῶτος αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ γένει τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν ἀπολιπὼν Μά‹με›ρκος ἦν, Πυθαγόρου παῖς τοῦ σοφοῦ, δι’ αἱμυλίαν λόγου καὶ χάριν Αἰμίλιος προσαγορευθείς, εἰρήκασιν ἔνιοι [3] τῶν Πυθαγόρᾳ τὴν Νομᾶ τοῦ βασιλέως παίδευσιν ἀναθέντων. οἱ μὲν οὖν πλεῖστοι τῶν εἰς δόξαν ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκίας ταύτης προελθόντων δι’ ἀρετὴν ἣν ἐζήλωσαν εὐτύχησαν, Λευκίου δὲ Παύλου τὸ περὶ Κάννας ἀτύχημα τήν [4] τε φρόνησιν ἅμα καὶ τὴν ἀνδρείαν ἔδειξεν. ὡς γὰρ οὐκ ἔπεισε τὸν συνάρχοντα κωλύων μάχεσθαι, τοῦ μὲν ἀγῶνος ἄκων μετέσχεν αὐτῷ, τῆς δὲ φυγῆς οὐκ ἐκοινώνησεν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ συνάψαντος τὸν κίνδυνον ἐγκαταλιπόντος, αὐτὸς ἑστὼς καὶ μαχόμενος τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐτελεύτησε.

[5] Τούτου θυγάτηρ μὲν Αἰμιλία Σκιπίωνι τῷ μεγάλῳ συνῴκησεν, υἱὸς δὲ Παῦλος Αἰμίλιος, περὶ οὗ τάδε γράφεται, γεγονὼς ἐν ἡλικίᾳ κατὰ καιρὸν ἀνθοῦντα δόξαις καὶ ἀρεταῖς ἐπιφανεστάτων ἀνδρῶν καὶ μεγίστων, διέλαμψεν οὐ ταὐτὰ τοῖς εὐδοκιμοῦσι τότε νέοις ἐπιτηδεύματα ζηλώσας, [6] οὐδὲ τὴν αὐτὴν ὁδὸν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πορευθείς. οὔτε γὰρ λόγον ἤσκει περὶ δίκας, ἀσπασμούς τε καὶ δεξιώσεις καὶ φιλοφροσύνας, αἷς ὑποτρέχοντες οἱ πολλοὶ τὸν δῆμον ἐκτῶντο, θεραπευτικοὶ καὶ σπουδαῖοι γενόμενοι, παντάπασιν ἐξέλιπε, πρὸς οὐδέτερον ἀφυῶς ἔχων, ὡς δ’ ἑκατέρου κρείττονα τὴν ἀπ’ ἀνδρείας καὶ δικαιοσύνης καὶ πίστεως δόξαν αὑτῷ περιποιούμενος, οἷς εὐθὺς διέφερε τῶν καθ’ ἡλικίαν.

[3] [1] Πρώτην γοῦν τῶν ἐπιφανῶν ἀρχῶν ἀγορανομίαν μετελθών, προεκρίθη δεκαδυεῖν ἀνδρῶν συναπογραψαμένων, οὓς ὕστερον ἅπαντας ὑπατεῦσαι [2] λέγουσι. γενόμενος δ’ ἱερεὺς τῶν αὐγούρων προσαγορευομένων, οὓς τῆς ἀπ’ ὀρνίθων καὶ διοσημειῶν ἀποδεικνύουσι Ῥωμαῖοι μαντικῆς ἐπισκόπους καὶ φύλακας, οὕτω προσέσχε τοῖς πατρίοις ἔθεσι καὶ κατενόησε [3] τὴν τῶν παλαιῶν περὶ τὸ θεῖον εὐλάβειαν, ὥστε τιμήν τινα δοκοῦσαν εἶναι καὶ ζηλουμένην ἄλλως ἕνεκα δόξης τὴν ἱερωσύνην τῶν ἀκροτάτων μίαν ἀποφῆναι τεχνῶν, καὶ μαρτυρῆσαι τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ὅσοι τὴν εὐσέβειαν [4] ὡρίσαντο θεραπείας θεῶν ἐπιστήμην εἶναι. πάντα γὰρ ἐδρᾶτο μετ’ ἐμπειρίας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ σπουδῆς, σχολὴν τῶν ἄλλων ἄγοντος ὅτε γίγνοιτο πρὸς τούτῳ, καὶ παραλείποντος οὐδὲν οὐδὲ καινοτομοῦντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς συνιερεῦσιν ἀεὶ καὶ περὶ τῶν μικρῶν διαφερομένου, καὶ διδάσκοντος, ὡς εἰ τὸ θεῖον εὔκολόν τις ἡγεῖται καὶ ἀμεμφὲς εἶναι τῶν ἀμελειῶν, ἀλλὰ τῇ γε πόλει χαλεπὸν ἡ περὶ ταῦτα συγγνώμη καὶ παρόρασις· [5] οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἐξ ἀρχῆς εὐθὺς μεγάλῳ παρανομήματι κινεῖ πολιτείαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν τῶν μειζόνων φρουρὰν καταλύουσιν οἱ προϊέμενοι τὴν ἐν τοῖς [6] μικροῖς ἀκρίβειαν. ὅμοιον δὲ καὶ τῶν στρατιωτικῶν ἐθῶν τε καὶ πατρίων ἐξεταστὴν καὶ φύλακα παρεῖχεν ἑαυτόν, οὐ δημαγωγῶν ἐν τῷ στρατηγεῖν, οὐδ’ ὥσπερ οἱ πλεῖστοι τότε δευτέρας ἀρχὰς ταῖς πρώταις μνώμενος διὰ [7] τοῦ χαρίζεσθαι καὶ πρᾷος εἶναι τοῖς ἀρχομένοις, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἱερεὺς †ἄλλων ὀργίων δεινῶν τῶν περὶ τὰς †θυσίας ἐθῶν ἐξηγούμενος ἕκαστα, καὶ φοβερὸς ὢν τοῖς ἀπειθοῦσι καὶ παραβαίνουσιν, ὤρθου τὴν πατρίδα, μικροῦ δεῖν πάρεργον ἡγούμενος τὸ νικᾶν τοὺς πολεμίους τοῦ παιδεύειν τοὺς πολίτας.

[4] [1] Συστάντος δὲ τοῦ πρὸς Ἀντίοχον τὸν μέγαν πολέμου τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις, καὶ τῶν ἡγεμονικωτάτων ἀνδρῶν τετραμμένων πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, ἄλλος ἀπὸ τῆς ἑσπέρας ἐνέστη πόλεμος, ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ κινημάτων μεγάλων γενομένων.

[2] ἐπὶ τοῦτον ὁ Αἰμίλιος ἐξεπέμφθη στρατηγός, οὐχ ἓξ ἔχων πελέκεις, ὅσους ἔχουσιν οἱ στρατηγοῦντες, ἀλλὰ προσλαβὼν ἑτέρους τοσούτους, ὥστε τῆς [3] ἀρχῆς ὑπατικὸν γενέσθαι τὸ ἀξίωμα. μάχῃ μὲν οὖν δὶς ἐκ παρατάξεως ἐνίκησε τοὺς βαρβάρους, περὶ τρισμυρίους ἀνελών - καὶ δοκεῖ τὸ κατόρθωμα τῆς στρατηγίας περιφανῶς γενέσθαι, χωρίων εὐφυΐᾳ καὶ ποταμοῦ τινος διαβάσει ῥᾳστώνην παρασχόντος αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὸ νίκημα τοῖς στρατιώταις - , πόλεις δὲ πεντήκοντα καὶ διακοσίας ἐχειρώσατο, δεξαμένας αὐτὸν [4] ἑκουσίως. εἰρήνῃ δὲ καὶ πίστει συνηρμοσμένην ἀπολιπὼν τὴν ἐπαρχίαν, εἰς Ῥώμην ἐπανῆλθεν, οὐδὲ δραχμῇ μιᾷ γεγονὼς εὐπορώτερος ἀπὸ τῆς [5] στρατείας. ἦν δὲ καὶ περὶ τἆλλα χρηματιστὴς ἀργότερος, εὐδάπανος δὲ καὶ ἀφειδὴς ἐκ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων· οὐ πολλὰ δ’ ἦν, ἀλλὰ καὶ φερνῆς ὀφειλομένης τῇ γυναικὶ μετὰ τὸν θάνατον αὐτοῦ γλίσχρως ἐξήρκεσεν.

[5] [1] Ἔγημε δὲ Παπιρίαν, ἀνδρὸς ὑπατικοῦ Μάσωνος θυγατέρα, καὶ χρόνον συνοικήσας πολύν, ἀφῆκε τὸν γάμον, καίπερ ἐξ αὐτῆς καλλιτεκνότατος γενόμενος· αὕτη γὰρ ἦν ἡ τὸν κλεινότατον αὐτῷ Σκιπίωνα [2] τεκοῦσα καὶ Μάξιμον Φάβιον. αἰτία δὲ γεγραμμένη τῆς διαστάσεως οὐκ ἦλθεν εἰς ἡμᾶς, ἀλλ’ ἔοικεν ἀληθής τις εἶναι λόγος περὶ γάμου λύσεως λεγόμενος, ὡς ἀνὴρ Ῥωμαῖος ἀπεπέμπετο γυναῖκα, τῶν δὲ φίλων νουθετούντων αὐτόν, οὐχὶ σώφρων; οὐκ εὔμορφος; οὐχὶ παιδοποιός; [3] προτείνας τὸ ὑπόδημα (κάλτιον αὐτὸ Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν), εἶπεν· οὐκ εὐπρεπὴς οὗτος; οὐ νεουργής; ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἂν εἰδείη τις ὑμῶν, καθ’ ὅ τι θλίβεται [4] μέρος οὑμὸς πούς. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι μεγάλαι μὲν ἁμαρτίαι ‹καὶ› ἀναπεπταμέναι γυναῖκας ἀνδρῶν †ἄλλας ἀπήλλαξαν, τὰ δ’ ἔκ τινος ἀηδίας καὶ δυσαρμοστίας ἠθῶν μικρὰ καὶ πυκνὰ προσκρούσματα, λανθάνοντα τοὺς ἄλλους, ἀπεργάζεται τὰς ἀνηκέστους ἐν ταῖς συμβιώσεσιν ἀλλοτριότητας.

[5] ὁ δ’ οὖν Αἰμίλιος ἀπαλλαγεὶς τῆς Παπιρίας ἑτέραν ἠγάγετο, καὶ δύο παῖδας ἄρρενας τεκούσης, τούτους μὲν ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας εἶχε, τοὺς δὲ προτέρους εἰσεποίησεν οἴκοις τοῖς μεγίστοις καὶ γένεσι τοῖς ἐπιφανεστάτοις, τὸν μὲν πρεσβύτερον τῷ Μαξίμου Φαβίου τοῦ πεντάκις ὑπατεύσαντος, τὸν δὲ νεώτερον Ἀφρικανοῦ Σκιπίωνος υἱὸς ἀνεψιὸν ὄντα θέμενος [6] Σκιπίωνα προσηγόρευσε. τῶν δὲ θυγατέρων τῶν Αἰμιλίου τὴν μὲν ὁ Κάτωνος υἱὸς ἔγημε, τὴν δ’ Αἴλιος Τουβέρων, ἀνὴρ ἄριστος καὶ μεγαλοπρεπέστατα [7] Ῥωμαίων πενίᾳ χρησάμενος. ἦσαν γὰρ ἑκκαίδεκα συγγενεῖς, Αἴλιοι πάντες, οἰκίδιον δὲ πάνυ μικρὸν ἦν αὐτοῖς καὶ χωρίδιον ἓν [8] ἤρκει πᾶσι, μίαν ἑστίαν νέμουσι μετὰ παίδων πολλῶν καὶ γυναικῶν. ἐν αἷς καὶ ἡ Αἰμιλίου τοῦδε θυγάτηρ ἦν, δὶς ὑπατεύσαντος καὶ δὶς θριαμβεύσαντος, οὐκ αἰσχυνομένη τὴν πενίαν τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἀλλὰ θαυμάζουσα τὴν [9] ἀρετὴν δι’ ἣν πένης ἦν. οἱ δὲ νῦν ἀδελφοὶ καὶ συγγενεῖς, ἂν μὴ κλίμασι καὶ ποταμοῖς καὶ διατειχίσμασιν ὁρίσωσι τὰ κοινά, καὶ πολλὴν εὐρυχωρίαν [10] ἐν μέσῳ λάβωσιν ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων, οὐ παύονται διαφερόμενοι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἡ ἱστορία λογίζεσθαι καὶ παρεπισκοπεῖν δίδωσι τοῖς σῴζεσθαι βουλομένοις.

[6] [1] Ὁ δ’ Αἰμίλιος ὕπατος ἀποδειχθεὶς ἐστράτευσεν ἐπὶ τοὺς παραλπίους Λίγυας, οὓς ἔνιοι καὶ Λιγυστίνους ὀνομάζουσι, μάχιμον καὶ θυμοειδὲς ἔθνος, ἐμπείρως δὲ πολεμεῖν διδασκόμενον ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων διὰ τὴν γειτνίασιν.

[2] τὰ γὰρ ἔσχατα τῆς Ἰταλίας καὶ καταλήγοντα πρὸς τὰς Ἄλπεις αὐτῶν τε τῶν Ἄλπεων τὰ κλυζόμενα τῷ Τυρρηνικῷ πελάγει καὶ πρὸς τὴν Λιβύην ἀνταίροντα νέμονται, μεμειγμένοι Γαλάταις καὶ τοῖς παραλίοις [3] Ἰβήρων. τότε δὲ καὶ τῆς θαλάσσης ἁψάμενοι, σκάφεσι πειρατικοῖς ἀφῃροῦντο καὶ περιέκοπτον τὰς ἐμπορίας, ἄχρι στηλῶν Ἡρακλείων ἀναπλέοντες.

[4] ἐπιόντος οὖν τοῦ Αἰμιλίου, τετρακισμύριοι γενόμενοι τὸ πλῆθος ὑπέστησαν· ὁ δὲ τοὺς σύμπαντας ὀκτακισχιλίους ἔχων πενταπλασίοις οὖσιν αὐτοῖς συνέβαλε, καὶ τρεψάμενος καὶ κατακλείσας εἰς τὰ τείχη, [5] διέδωκε λόγον φιλάνθρωπον καὶ συμβατικόν· οὐ γὰρ ἦν βουλομένοις τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις παντάπασιν ἐκκόψαι τὸ Λιγύων ἔθνος, ὥσπερ ἕρκος ἢ πρόβολον ἐμποδὼν κείμενον τοῖς Γαλατικοῖς κινήμασιν, ἐπαιωρουμένοις ἀεὶ περὶ [6] τὴν Ἰταλίαν. πιστεύσαντες οὖν τῷ Αἰμιλίῳ τάς τε ναῦς καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἐνεχείρισαν. ὁ δὲ τὰς μὲν πόλεις οὐδὲν ἀδικήσας, ἢ μόνον τὰ τείχη περιελών, ἀπέδωκε, τὰς δὲ ναῦς ἁπάσας ἀφείλετο, καὶ πλοῖον οὐδὲν αὐτοῖς [7] τρισκάλμου μεῖζον ἀπέλιπε· τοὺς δ’ ἡλωκότας ὑπ’ αὐτῶν κατὰ γῆν ἢ κατὰ θάλατταν ἀνεσώσατο πολλοὺς καὶ ξένους καὶ Ῥωμαίους εὑρεθέντας. ἐκείνη μὲν οὖν ἡ ὑπατεία τὰς εἰρημένας πράξεις ἐπιφανεῖς ἔσχεν.

[8] Ὕστερον δὲ πολλάκις ποιήσας φανερὸν αὑτὸν αὖθις ὑπατεῦσαι βουλόμενον, καί ποτε καὶ παραγγείλας, ὡς ἀπέτυχε καὶ παρώφθη, τὸ λοιπὸν ἡσυχίαν εἶχε, τῶν ἱερῶν ἐπιμελούμενος, καὶ τοὺς παῖδας ἀσκῶν τὴν μὲν ἐπιχώριον παιδείαν καὶ πάτριον ὥσπερ αὐτὸς ἤσκητο, τὴν δ’ Ἑλληνικὴν [9] φιλοτιμότερον. οὐ γὰρ μόνον γραμματικοὶ καὶ σοφισταὶ καὶ ῥήτορες, ἀλλὰ καὶ πλάσται καὶ ζωγράφοι καὶ πώλων καὶ σκυλάκων ἐπιστάται καὶ διδάσκαλοι [10] θήρας Ἕλληνες ἦσαν περὶ τοὺς νεανίσκους. ὁ δὲ πατήρ, εἰ μή τι δημόσιον ἐμποδὼν εἴη, παρῆν ἀεὶ μελετῶσι καὶ γυμναζομένοις, φιλοτεκνότατος Ῥωμαίων γενόμενος.

[7] [1] Τῶν δὲ δημοσίων πράξεων καιρὸς ἦν ἐκεῖνος τότε καθ’ ὃν Περσεῖ τῷ Μακεδόνων βασιλεῖ πολεμοῦντες, ἐν αἰτίᾳ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς εἶχον ὡς δι’ ἀπειρίαν καὶ ἀτολμίαν αἰσχρῶς καὶ καταγελάστως τοῖς πράγμασι [2] χρωμένους, καὶ πάσχοντας κακῶς μᾶλλον ἢ ποιοῦντας. ἄρτι μὲν γὰρ Ἀντίοχον τὸν ἐπικληθέντα μέγαν εἴξαντα τῆς ἄλλης Ἀσίας ὑπὲρ τὸν Ταῦρον ἐκβαλόντες καὶ κατακλείσαντες εἰς Συρίαν, ἐπὶ μυρίοις καὶ πεντακισχιλίοις [3] ταλάντοις ἀγαπήσαντα τὰς διαλύσεις, ὀλίγῳ δὲ πρόσθεν ἐν Θεσσαλίᾳ συντρίψαντες Φίλιππον, καὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀπὸ Μακεδόνων ἐλευθερώσαντες, ᾧ τε βασιλεὺς οὐδεὶς παραβλητὸς ‹ἦν› εἰς τόλμαν ἢ [4] δύναμιν, Ἀννίβαν καταπολεμήσαντες, οὐκ ἀνεκτὸν ἡγοῦντο Περσεῖ καθάπερ ἀντιπάλῳ τῆς Ῥώμης ἴσον φερόμενοι συμπεπλέχθαι πολὺν ἤδη χρόνον, [5] ἀπὸ τῶν λειψάνων τῆς πατρῴας ἥττης πολεμοῦντι πρὸς αὐτούς, ἀγνοοῦντες ὅτι πολλῷ τὴν Μακεδόνων δύναμιν ἡττηθεὶς Φίλιππος ἐρρωμενεστέραν καὶ μαχιμωτέραν ἐποίησε. περὶ ὧν δίειμι βραχέως ἄνωθεν ἀρξάμενος.

[8] [1] Ἀντίγονος μέγιστον δυνηθεὶς τῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου διαδόχων καὶ στρατηγῶν, κτησάμενος ἑαυτῷ καὶ γένει τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως προσηγορίαν, υἱὸν [2] ἔσχε Δημήτριον, οὗ παῖς Ἀντίγονος ἦν ὁ Γονατᾶς ἐπονομασθείς· τούτου δὲ Δημήτριος, ὃς αὐτός τε βασιλεύσας χρόνον οὐ πολύν, υἱόν τε παῖδα τὴν [3] ἡλικίαν ἀπολιπὼν Φίλιππον, ἐτελεύτησε. δείσαντες δὲ τὴν ἀναρχίαν οἱ πρῶτοι Μακεδόνων Ἀντίγονον ἐπάγονται, τοῦ τεθνηκότος ἀνεψιὸν ὄντα, καὶ συνοικίσαντες αὐτῷ τὴν μητέρα τοῦ Φιλίππου, πρῶτον μὲν ἐπίτροπον καὶ στρατηγόν, εἶτα πειρώμενοι μετρίου καὶ κοινωφελοῦς βασιλέα προσηγόρευσαν· ἐπεκλήθη δὲ Δώσων ὡς ἐπαγγελτικὸς ‹μέν›, οὐ τελεσιουργὸς [4] δὲ τῶν ὑποσχέσεων. μετὰ τοῦτον βασιλεύσας ὁ Φίλιππος ἤνθησεν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα τῶν βασιλέων ἔτι μειράκιον ὤν, καὶ δόξαν ἔσχεν ὡς ἀναστήσων Μακεδονίαν εἰς τὸ παλαιὸν ἀξίωμα, καὶ μόνος ἐπὶ πάντας ἤδη τὴν [5] Ῥωμαίων δύναμιν αἰρομένην καθέξων. ἡττηθεὶς δὲ μεγάλῃ μάχῃ περὶ Σκοτοῦσσαν ὑπὸ Τίτου Φλαμινίνου, τότε μὲν ἔπτηξε καὶ πάντα τὰ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐπέτρεψε Ῥωμαίοις, καὶ τυχὼν ἐπιτιμήσεως μετρίας ἠγάπησεν.

[6] ὕστερον δὲ βαρέως φέρων, καὶ τὸ βασιλεύειν χάριτι Ῥωμαίων ἡγούμενος αἰχμαλώτου τρυφὴν ἀγαπῶντος εἶναι μᾶλλον ἢ φρόνημα καὶ θυμὸν ἔχοντος ἀνδρός, ἐπεῖχε τῷ πολέμῳ τὴν γνώμην καὶ συνετάττετο λάθρα καὶ [7] πανούργως. τῶν γὰρ πόλεων τὰς ἐνοδίους καὶ παραθαλαττίους ἀσθενεῖς γενομένας περιορῶν καὶ ὑπερήμους ὡς καταφρονεῖσθαι, πολλὴν ἄνω συνῆγε δύναμιν, καὶ τὰ μεσόγεια χωρία καὶ φρούρια καὶ πόλεις ὅπλων καὶ χρημάτων πολλῶν καὶ σωμάτων ἀκμαζόντων ἐμπεπληκώς, ἐσωμάσκει [8] τὸν πόλεμον καὶ συνεῖχεν ὥσπερ ἐγκεκρυμμένον ἀδήλως. ὅπλων μὲν γὰρ ἀργούντων ἀπέκειντο τρεῖς μυριάδες, ὀκτακόσιαι δὲ σίτου μεδίμνων ἦσαν ἐγκατῳκοδομημένου τοῖς τείχεσι, χρημάτων δὲ πλῆθος ὅσον ἤρκει μισθοφόρους [9] ἔτη δέκα μυρίους τρέφειν προπολεμοῦντας τῆς χώρας. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος μὲν οὐκ ἔφθη ταῦτα κινῆσαι καὶ προαγαγεῖν εἰς ἔργον, ὑπὸ λύπης καὶ δυσθυμίας προέμενος τὸν βίον· ἔγνω γὰρ ἀδίκως τὸν ἕτερον τῶν υἱῶν Δημήτριον ἐκ διαβολῆς τοῦ χείρονος ἀνῃρηκώς.

[10] Ὁ δ’ ὑπολειπόμενος υἱὸς αὐτοῦ Περσεὺς ἅμα τῇ βασιλείᾳ διεδέξατο τὴν πρὸς Ῥωμαίους ἔχθραν, οὐκ ὢν ἐχέγγυος ‹δι›ενεγκεῖν διὰ μικρότητα καὶ μοχθηρίαν ἤθους, ἐν ᾧ παθῶν τε παντοδαπῶν καὶ νοσημάτων [11] ἐνόντων ἐπρώτευεν ἡ φιλαργυρία. λέγεται δὲ μηδὲ γνήσιος φῦναι, λαβεῖν δ’ αὐτὸν ἡ συνοικοῦσα τῷ Φιλίππῳ νεογνὸν ἀκεστρίας τινὸς Ἀργολικῆς [12] Γναθαινίου τοὔνομα τεκούσης, καὶ λαθεῖν ὑποβαλομένη. δι’ ὃ καὶ μάλιστα δοκεῖ τὸν Δημήτριον φοβηθεὶς ἀποκτεῖναι, μὴ γνήσιον ἔχων ὁ οἶκος διάδοχον ἀποκαλύψῃ τὴν ἐκείνου νοθείαν.

[9] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καίπερ ὢν ἀγεννὴς καὶ ταπεινός, ὑπὸ ῥύμης τῶν πραγμάτων ἀναφερόμενος πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ‹ὑπ›έστη καὶ διηρείσατο πολὺν χρόνον, ἡγεμόνας τε Ῥωμαίων ὑπατικοὺς καὶ στρατεύματα καὶ στόλους μεγάλους [2] ἀποτριψάμενος, ἐνίων δὲ καὶ κρατήσας. Πόπλιόν τε γὰρ Λικίνιον ἐμβαλόντα πρῶτον εἰς Μακεδονίαν τρεψάμενος ἱππομαχίᾳ, δισχιλίους πεντακοσίους ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς ἀπέκτεινε, καὶ ζῶντας ἄλλους ἑξακοσίους [3] ἔλαβε, τοῦ τε ναυστάθμου περὶ Ὠρεὸν ὁρμοῦντος, ἀπροσδόκητον ἐπίπλουν θέμενος εἴκοσι μὲν αὐτοφόρτους ὁλκάδας ἐχειρώσατο, τὰς δ’ ἄλλας σίτου [4] γεμούσας ‹πεν›τηρικὰ τέσσαρα καὶ σεν. τὸν δὲ δεύτερον τῶν ὑπατικῶν Ὁστίλιον ἀπεκρούσατο [καὶ] βιαζόμενον κατὰ τὰς Ἐλιμίας· λάθρα δὲ διὰ Θεσσαλίας ἐμβαλόντα προκαλούμενος εἰς μάχην ἐφόβησε.

[5] πάρεργον δὲ τοῦ πολέμου στρατείαν ἐπὶ Δαρδανεῖς θέμενος, ὡς δὴ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ὑπερορῶν καὶ σχολάζων, μυρίους τῶν βαρβάρων κατέκοψε καὶ [6] λείαν ἠλάσατο πολλήν. ὑπεκίνει δὲ καὶ Γαλάτας τοὺς περὶ τὸν Ἴστρον ᾠκημένους, Βαστέρναι καλοῦνται, στρατὸν ἱππότην καὶ μάχιμον, Ἰλλυριούς τε διὰ Γενθίου τοῦ βασιλέως παρεκάλει συνεφάψασθαι τοῦ πολέμου.

[7] καὶ λόγος κατέσχεν ὡς τῶν βαρβάρων μισθῷ πεπεισμένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ διὰ τῆς κάτω Γαλατίας παρὰ τὸν Ἀδρίαν ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν.

[10] [1] Ταῦτα τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις πυνθανομένοις ἐδόκει τὰς τῶν στρατηγιών‹των› χάριτας καὶ παραγγελίας ἐάσαντας [αὐτοὺς] καλεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἄνδρα νοῦν ἔχοντα καὶ πράγμασι χρῆσθαι μεγάλοις ἐπιστάμενον.

[2] οὗτος ἦν Παῦλος Αἰμίλιος, ἡλικίας μὲν ἤδη πρόσω καὶ περὶ ἑξήκοντα γεγονὼς ἔτη, ῥώμῃ δὲ σώματος ἀκμάζων, πεφραγμένος δὲ κηδεσταῖς καὶ παισὶ νεανίαις καὶ φίλων πλήθει καὶ συγγενῶν μέγα δυναμένων, οἳ πάντες [3] αὐτὸν ὑπακοῦσαι καλοῦντι τῷ δήμῳ πρὸς τὴν ὑπατείαν ἔπειθον. ὁ δὲ κατ’ ἀρχὰς μὲν ἐθρύπτετο πρὸς τοὺς πολλούς, καὶ διέκλινε τὴν φιλοτιμίαν αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν σπουδήν, ὡς μὴ δεόμενος τοῦ ἄρχειν· φοιτώντων δὲ καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπὶ θύρας καὶ προκαλουμένων αὐτὸν εἰς ἀγορὰν καὶ καταβοώντων, [4] ἐπείσθη· καὶ φανεὶς εὐθὺς ἐν τοῖς μετιοῦσι τὴν ὑπατείαν, ἔδοξεν οὐκ ἀρχὴν ληψόμενος, ἀλλὰ νίκην καὶ κράτος πολέμου κομίζων καὶ διδοὺς [5] τοῖς πολίταις καταβαίνειν εἰς τὸ πεδίον· μετὰ τοσαύτης ἐλπίδος καὶ προθυμίας ἐδέξαντο πάντες αὐτὸν καὶ κατέστησαν ὕπατον τὸ δεύτερον, οὐκ ἐάσαντες κλῆρον γενέσθαι καθάπερ εἰώθει περὶ τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς [6] ἐκείνῳ ψηφισάμενοι τοῦ Μακεδονικοῦ πολέμου τὴν ἡγεμονίαν. λέγεται δ’ αὐτόν, ὡς ἀνηγορεύθη κατὰ τοῦ Περσέως στρατηγός, ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου παντὸς οἴκαδε προπεμφθέντα λαμπρῶς, εὑρεῖν τὸ θυγάτριον τὴν Τερτίαν [7] δεδακρυμένην, ἔτι παιδίον οὖσαν· ἀσπαζόμενον οὖν αὐτὴν ἐρωτᾶν ἐφ’ ὅτῳ λελύπηται· τὴν δὲ περιβαλοῦσαν καὶ καταφιλοῦσαν, οὐ γὰρ οἶσθ’ εἰπεῖν ὦ πάτερ ὅτι ἡμῖν ὁ Περσεὺς τέθνηκε; λέγουσαν κυνίδιον σύντροφον [8] οὕτω προσαγορευόμενον· καὶ τὸν Αἰμίλιον ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ φάναι ὦ θύγατερ, καὶ δέχομαι τὸν οἰωνόν. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Κικέρων ὁ ῥήτωρ ἐν τοῖς περὶ μαντικῆς ἱστόρηκεν (de div. 1, 103).

[11] [1] Εἰωθότων δὲ τῶν ὑπατείαν λαβόντων οἷον ἀνθομολογεῖσθαί τινα χάριν καὶ προσαγορεύειν φιλοφρόνως τὸν δῆμον ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος, Αἰμίλιος εἰς ἐκκλησίαν συναγαγὼν τοὺς πολίτας, τὴν μὲν προτέραν ὑπατείαν ἔφη μετελθεῖν αὐτὸς ἀρχῆς δεόμενος, τὴν δὲ δευτέραν ἐκείνων στρατηγοῦ [2] δεομένων· δι’ ὃ μηδεμίαν αὐτοῖς χάριν ἔχειν, ἀλλ’ εἰ νομίζουσι δι’ ἑτέρου βέλτιον ἕξειν τὰ κατὰ τὸν πόλεμον, ἐξίστασθαι τῆς ἡγεμονίας, εἰ δὲ πιστεύουσιν αὐτῷ, μὴ παραστρατηγεῖν μηδὲ λογοποιεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὑπουργεῖν σιωπῇ τὰ δέοντα πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ὡς ἐὰν ἄρχοντος ἄρχειν ζητῶσιν, ἔτι [3] μᾶλλον ἢ νῦν καταγελάστους ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις ἐσομένους. ἀπὸ τούτων τῶν λόγων πολλὴν μὲν αἰδῶ πρὸς αὑτὸν ἐνεποίησε τοῖς πολίταις, μεγάλην δὲ προσδοκίαν τοῦ μέλλοντος, ἡδομένων ἁπάντων, ὅτι τοὺς κολακεύοντας [4] παρελθόντες εἵλοντο παρρησίαν ἔχοντα καὶ φρόνημα στρατηγόν. οὕτως ἐπὶ τῷ κρατεῖν καὶ μέγιστος εἶναι τῶν ἄλλων ἀρετῆς καὶ τοῦ καλοῦ δοῦλος ἦν ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος.

[12] [1] Αἰμίλιον δὲ Παῦλον, ὡς ἐξώρμησεν ἐπὶ στρατείαν, πλοῦ μὲν εὐτυχίᾳ καὶ ῥᾳστώνῃ χρήσασθαι πορείας κατὰ δαίμονα τίθημι, σὺν τάχει [2] καὶ μετ’ ἀσφαλείας ἐπὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον κομισθέντα· τοῦ δὲ πολέμου καὶ τῆς στρατηγίας αὐτοῦ τὸ μὲν τόλμης ὀξύτητι, τὸ δὲ βουλεύμασι χρηστοῖς, τὸ δὲ φίλων ἐκθύμοις ὑπηρεσίαις, τὸ δὲ τῷ παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ θαρρεῖν καὶ χρῆσθαι λογισμοῖς ἀραρόσιν ὁρῶν διαπεπραγμένον, οὐκ ἔχω τῇ λεγομένῃ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς εὐτυχίᾳ λαμπρὸν ἀποδοῦναι καὶ διάσημον ἔργον, οἷον ἑτέρων [3] στρατηγῶν, εἰ μή τις ἄρα τὴν Περσέως φιλαργυρίαν Αἰμιλίῳ τύχην ἀγαθὴν περὶ τὰ πράγματα γενέσθαι φησίν, ᾗ λαμπρὰ καὶ μεγάλα πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ἀρθέντα ταῖς ἐλπίσι τὰ Μακεδόνων ἀνέτρεψε καὶ κατέβαλε, [4] πρὸς ἀργύριον ἀποδειλιάσας. ἧκον μὲν γὰρ αὐτῷ δεηθέντι Βαστέρναι, μύριοι μὲν ἱππεῖς, μύριοι δὲ παραβάται, μισθοφόροι πάντες, ἄνδρες οὐ γεωργεῖν εἰδότες, οὐ πλεῖν, οὐκ ἀπὸ ποιμνίων ζῆν νέμοντες, ἀλλ’ ἓν ἔργον καὶ μίαν τέχνην μελετῶντες ἀεὶ μάχεσθαι καὶ κρατεῖν τῶν ἀντιταττομένων.

[5] ὡς δὲ περὶ τὴν Μαιδικὴν καταστρατοπεδεύσαντες ἐπεμείγνυντο τοῖς παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως, ἄνδρες ὑψηλοὶ μὲν τὰ σώματα, θαυμαστοὶ δὲ τὰς μελέτας, μεγάλαυχοι δὲ καὶ λαμπροὶ ταῖς κατὰ τῶν πολεμίων ἀπειλαῖς, θάρσος παρέστησαν τοῖς Μακεδόσι καὶ δόξαν, ὡς τῶν Ῥωμαίων οὐχ ὑπομενούντων, ἀλλ’ ἐκπλαγησομένων τὴν ὄψιν αὐτὴν καὶ τὴν κίνησιν, [6] ἔκφυλον οὖσαν καὶ δυσπρόσοπτον. οὕτω διαθεὶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ὁ Περσεύς, καὶ τοιούτων ἐμπλήσας ἐλπίδων, αἰτούμενος καθ’ ἕκαστον ἡγεμόνα χιλίους, πρὸς τὸ γιγνόμενον τοῦ χρυσίου πλῆθος ἰλιγγιάσας καὶ παραφρονήσας ὑπὸ μικρολογίας, ἀπείπατο καὶ προήκατο τὴν συμμαχίαν, ὥσπερ οἰκονομῶν, οὐ πολεμῶν Ῥωμαίοις, καὶ λογισμὸν ἀποδώσων ἀκριβῆ τῆς [7] εἰς τὸν πόλεμον δαπάνης οἷς ἐπολέμει· καί‹τοι› διδασκάλους εἶχεν ἐκείνους, οἷ‹ς ἄνευ τῆς› ἄλλης παρασκευῆς τῶν δέκα μυριάδων ἦσαν [8] ἠθροισμέναι καὶ παρεστῶσαι ταῖς χρείαις. ὁ δὲ πρὸς δύναμιν ἀνταίρων τηλικαύτην καὶ πόλεμον, οὗ τοσοῦτον ἦν τὸ παρατρεφόμενον, διεμέτρει [9] καὶ παρεσημαίνετο τὸ χρυσίον, ἅψασθαι δεδιὼς ὥσπερ ἀλλοτρίων. καὶ ταῦτ’ ἔπραττεν οὐ Λυδῶν τινος οὐδὲ Φοινίκων γεγονώς, ἀλλὰ τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ Φιλίππου κατὰ συγγένειαν ἀρετῆς μεταποιούμενος, οἳ τῷ τὰ πράγματα τῶν χρημάτων ὠνητά, μὴ τὰ χρήματα τῶν πραγμάτων ἡγεῖσθαι, [10] πάντων ἐκράτησαν. ἐρρέθη γοῦν ὅτι τὰς πόλεις αἱρεῖ τῶν Ἑλλήνων [11] οὐ Φίλιππος, ἀλλὰ τὸ Φιλίππου χρυσίον. Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ τῆς ἐπ’ Ἰνδοὺς στρατείας ἁπτόμενος, καὶ βαρὺν ὁρῶν καὶ δύσογκον ἤδη τὸν Περσικὸν ἐφελκομένους πλοῦτον τοὺς Μακεδόνας, πρώτας ὑπέπρησε τὰς βασιλικὰς ἁμάξας, εἶτα τοὺς ἄλλους ἔπεισε ταὐτὸ ποιήσαντας ἐλαφροὺς ἀναζεῦξαι [12] πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ὥσπερ λελυμένους. Περσεὺς δὲ τὸν χρυσὸν αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ καὶ τέκνων καὶ βασιλείας καταχεάμενος, οὐκ ἠθέλησε δι’ ὀλίγων σωθῆναι χρημάτων, ἀλλὰ μετὰ πολλῶν κομισθεὶς ὁ πλούσιος αἰχμάλωτος ἐπιδείξασθαι Ῥωμαίοις ὅσα φεισάμενος ἐτήρησεν αὐτοῖς.

[13] [1] Οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἀπέπεμψε τοὺς Γαλάτας ψευσάμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ Γένθιον ἐπάρας τὸν Ἰλλυριὸν ἐπὶ τριακοσίοις ταλάντοις συνεφάψασθαι τοῦ πολέμου, τὰ μὲν χρήματα τοῖς παρ’ αὐτοῦ πεμφθεῖσι προὔθηκεν ἠριθμημένα, [2] καὶ κατασημήνασθαι παρέσχεν· ὡς δὲ πεισθεὶς ἔχειν ἃ ᾔτησεν ὁ Γένθιος ἔργον ἀσεβὲς καὶ δεινὸν ἔδρασε - πρέσβεις γὰρ ἐλθόντας Ῥωμαίων πρὸς αὐτὸν συνέλαβε καὶ κατέδησεν - , ἡγούμενος ὁ Περσεὺς οὐδὲν ἔτι δεῖσθαι τῶν χρημάτων τὴν ἐκπολέμωσιν, ἄλυτα τοῦ Γενθίου προδεδωκότος ἔχθρας ἐνέχυρα καὶ διὰ τηλικαύτης ἀδικίας ἐμβεβληκότος ἑαυτὸν [3] εἰς τὸν πόλεμον, ἀπεστέρησε τὸν κακοδαίμονα τῶν τριακοσίων ταλάντων, καὶ περιεῖδεν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ μετὰ τέκνων καὶ γυναικὸς ὡς ἀπὸ νεοττιᾶς ἀρθέντα τῆς βασιλείας ὑπὸ Λευκίου Ἀνικίου στρατηγοῦ, πεμφθέντος ἐπ’ αὐτὸν μετὰ δυνάμεως.

[4] Ἐπὶ τοιοῦτον ἀντίπαλον ἐλθὼν ὁ Αἰμίλιος, αὐτοῦ μὲν κατεφρόνει, τὴν δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῷ παρασκευὴν καὶ δύναμιν ἐθαύμαζεν· ἦσαν γὰρ ἱππεῖς μὲν τετρακισχίλιοι, πεζοὶ δ’ εἰς φάλαγγα τετρακισμυρίων οὐ πολλοῖς ἀποδέοντες.

[5] ἱδρυμένος δὲ πρὸ τῆς θαλάττης παρὰ τὴν Ὀλυμπικὴν ὑπώρειαν ἐπὶ χωρίων οὐδαμόθεν προσαγωγὴν ἐχόντων καὶ πάντοθεν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ διαπεφραγμένων ἐρύμασι καὶ προτειχίσμασι ξυλίνοις, πολλὴν ἄδειαν ἦγεν, ἀποτρύσειν χρόνῳ καὶ χρημάτων δαπάνῃ τὸν Αἰμίλιον ἡγούμενος.

[6] ὁ δὲ τῇ γνώμῃ μὲν ἦν ἐνεργός, ἐπὶ πᾶν βούλευμα καὶ πᾶσαν τρεπόμενος πεῖραν, ὑπ’ ἀδείας δὲ τῆς πρόσθεν τὸν στρατὸν ὁρῶν δυσανασχετοῦντα καὶ λόγῳ πολλὰ διαστρατηγοῦντα τῶν ἀπράκτων, ἐπετίμησεν αὐτοῖς καὶ παρήγγειλε μηδὲν πολυπραγμονεῖν μηδὲ φροντίζειν ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸ σῶμα τὸ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τὴν πανοπλίαν ἕκαστον, ὅπως ἐνεργὸν παρέξει καὶ χρήσεται [7] Ῥωμαϊκῶς τῇ μαχαίρᾳ, τὸν καιρὸν παραδόντος τοῦ στρατηγοῦ. τὰς δὲ νυκτερινὰς ἐκέλευσε φυλακὰς ἄνευ λόγχης φυλάττειν, ὡς μᾶλλον προσέξοντας καὶ διαμαχουμένους πρὸς τὸν ὕπνον, ἂν ἀμύνασθαι τοὺς πολεμίους μὴ δύνωνται προσιόντας.

[14] [1] Ἐνοχλουμένων δὲ τῶν ἀνθρώπων μάλιστα περὶ τὴν τοῦ ποτοῦ χρείαν - καὶ γὰρ ὀλίγον καὶ πονηρὸν ἐπίδυε καὶ συνελείβετο παρ’ αὐτὴν τὴν θάλατταν - , ὁρῶν ὁ Αἰμίλιος μέγα καὶ κατηρεφὲς δένδρεσιν ὄρος τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἐπικείμενον, καὶ τεκμαιρόμενος τῇ χλωρότητι τῆς ὕλης ναμάτων ἔχειν ἀρχὰς διὰ βάθους ὑποφερομένων, ἀναπνοὰς αὐτοῖς [καὶ] φρέατα [2] πολλὰ παρὰ τὴν ὑπώρειαν ὤρυττε. τὰ δ’ εὐθὺς ἐπίμπλατο ῥευμάτων καθαρῶν, ἐπισυνδιδόντος ὁλκῇ καὶ φορᾷ τοῦ θλιβομένου πρὸς τὸ κενούμενον.

[3] Καίτοι τινὲς οὔ φασιν ὑδάτων ἑτοίμων κεκρυμμένων πηγὰς ἐναποκεῖσθαι τοῖς τόποις ἐξ ὧν ῥέουσιν, οὐδ’ ἀποκάλυψιν οὐδὲ ῥῆξιν εἶναι τὴν ἐκβολὴν αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ γένεσιν καὶ σύστασιν, ἐνταῦθα τῆς ὕλης ἐξυγραινομένης· [4] ἐξυγραίνεσθαι δὲ πυκνότητι καὶ ψυχρότητι τὴν νοτερὰν ἀναθυμίασιν, [5] ὅταν ἐν βάθει καταθλιβεῖσα ῥευστικὴ γένηται. καθάπερ γὰρ οἱ μαστοὶ τῶν γυναικῶν οὐχ ὥσπερ ἀγγεῖα πλήρεις εἰσὶν ἐπιρρέοντος ἑτοίμου γάλακτος, ἀλλὰ μεταβάλλοντες τὴν τροφὴν ἐν αὑτοῖς ἐργάζονται γάλα καὶ [6] διηθοῦσιν, οὕτως οἱ περίψυκτοι καὶ πιδακώδεις τόποι τῆς γῆς ὕδωρ μὲν οὐκ ἔχουσι καλυπτόμενον οὐδὲ κόλπους ῥεύματα καὶ βάθη ποταμῶν τοσούτων ἐξ ἑτοίμης καὶ ὑποκειμένης ἀφιέντας ἀρχῆς, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸν [7] ἀέρα τῷ πιέζειν καὶ καταπυκνοῦν ἀποθλίβοντες εἰς ὕδωρ τρέπουσι. τὰ γοῦν ὀρυττόμενα τῶν χωρίων μᾶλλον ἀναπιδύει καὶ διανάει πρὸς τὴν τοιαύτην ψηλάφησιν, ὥσπερ οἱ μαστοὶ τῶν γυναικῶν πρὸς τὸν θηλασμόν, [8] ἀνυγραίνοντα καὶ μαλάττοντα τὴν ἀναθυμίασιν· ὅσα δ’ ἀργὰ τῆς γῆς συμπέφρακται, τυφλὰ πρὸς γένεσιν ὑδάτων ἐστίν, οὐκ ἔχοντα τὴν ἐργαζομένην [9] τὸ ὑγρὸν κίνησιν. οἱ δὲ ταῦτα λέγοντες ἐπιχειρεῖν δεδώκασι τοῖς ἀπορητικοῖς, ὡς οὐδὲ τὸ αἷμα τοῖς ζῴοις ἔνεστιν, ἀλλὰ γεννᾶται πρὸς τὰ τραύματα πνεύματός τινος ἢ σαρκῶν μεταβολῇ, ῥύσιν ἀπεργασαμένῃ καὶ [10] σύντηξιν. ἐλέγχονται δὲ τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς ὑπονόμους καὶ τὰς μεταλλείας ἀπαντῶσιν εἰς βάθη ποταμοῖς, οὐ κατ’ ὀλίγον συλλεγομένοις, ὥσπερ εἰκός ἐστιν εἰ γένεσιν ἐκ τοῦ παραχρῆμα κινουμένης τῆς γῆς λαμβάνουσιν, [11] ἀλλ’ ἀθρόοις ἀναχεομένοις. †ὀρῶν δὲ καὶ πέτρας πληγῇ ῥαγείσης ἐξεπήδησε ῥεῦμα λάβρον ὕδατος, εἶτ’ ἐπέλιπε. ταῦτα μὲν περὶ τούτων.

[15] [1] Ὁ δ’ Αἰμίλιος ἡμέρας μέν τινας ἠρέμει, καί φασι μήποτε τηλικούτων στρατοπέδων ἐγγὺς οὕτω συνελθόντων ἡσυχίαν γενέσθαι τοσαύτην.

[2] ἐπεὶ δὲ κινῶν ἅπαντα καὶ πειρώμενος ἐπυνθάνετο μίαν εἰσβολὴν ἔτι μόνον ἄφρουρον ἀπολείπεσθαι τὴν διὰ Περραιβίας παρὰ τὸ Πύθιον καὶ τὴν Πέτραν, τῷ μὴ φυλάττεσθαι τὸν τόπον ἐλπίσας μᾶλλον ἢ δι’ ἣν οὐκ [3] ἐφυλάττετο δυσχωρίαν καὶ τραχύτητα δείσας, ἐβουλεύετο. πρῶτος δὲ τῶν παρόντων ὁ Νασικᾶς ἐπικαλούμενος Σκιπίων, γαμβρὸς Ἀφρικανοῦ Σκιπίωνος, ὕστερον δὲ μέγιστον ἐν τῇ συγκλήτῳ δυνηθείς, ὑπεδέξατο τῆς [4] κυκλώσεως ἡγεμὼν γενέσθαι. δεύτερος δὲ Φάβιος Μάξιμος, ὁ πρεσβύτατος τῶν Αἰμιλίου παίδων, ἔτι μειράκιον ὤν, ἀνέστη προθυμούμενος.

[5] ἡσθεὶς οὖν ὁ Αἰμίλιος δίδωσιν αὐτοῖς, οὐχ ὅσους Πολύβιος εἴρηκεν (29, 14), ἀλλ’ ὅσους αὐτὸς ὁ Νασικᾶς λαβεῖν φησι, γεγραφὼς περὶ τῶν πράξεων [6] τούτων ἐπιστόλιον πρός τινα τῶν βασιλέων (HRR I 47). οἱ μὲν ἐκτὸς τάξεως Ἰταλικοὶ τρισχίλιοι τὸ πλῆθος ἦσαν, τὸ δ’ εὐώνυμον κέρας εἰς [7] πεντακισχιλίους. τούτοις προσλαβὼν ὁ Νασικᾶς ἱππεῖς ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι καὶ τῶν παρ’ Ἁρπάλῳ Θρᾳκῶν καὶ Κρητῶν ἀναμεμειγμένων διακοσίους, ἐξώρμησε τῇ πρὸς θάλασσαν ὁδῷ καὶ κατεστρατοπέδευσε παρὰ τὸ Ἡράκλειον, ὡς δὴ ταῖς ναυσὶ μέλλων ἐκπεριπλεῖν καὶ κυκλοῦσθαι τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν πολεμίων.

[8] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐδείπνησαν οἱ στρατιῶται καὶ σκότος ἐγένετο, τοῖς ἡγεμόσι φράσας τὸ ἀληθὲς ἦγε διὰ νυκτὸς τὴν ἐναντίαν ἀπὸ θαλάσσης, καὶ καταλύσας [9] ἀνέπαυε τὴν στρατιὰν ὑπὸ τὸ Πύθιον. ἐνταῦθα τοῦ Ὀλύμπου τὸ ὕψος ἀνατείνει πλέον ἢ δέκα σταδίους· σημαίνεται δ’ ἐπιγράμματι τοῦ μετρήσαντος οὕτως (98 Preger).

[10] Οὐλύμπου κορυφῆς ἐπὶ Πυθίου Ἀπόλλωνος

ἱεροῦ ὕψος ἔχει (πρὸς τὴν κάθετον δ’ ἐμετρήθη)

πλήρη μὲν δεκάδα σταδίων μίαν, αὐτὰρ ἐπ’ αὐτῇ

πλέθρον τετραπέδῳ λειπόμενον μεγέθει.

Εὐμήλου δέ μιν υἱὸς ἐθήκατο μέτρα κελεύθου

Ξειναγόρης· σὺ δ’ ἄναξ χαῖρε καὶ ἐσθλὰ δίδου.

[11] καίτοι λέγουσιν οἱ γεωμετρικοὶ μήτ’ ὄρους ὕψος μήτε βάθος θαλάσσης ὑπερβάλλειν δέκα σταδίους. ὁ μέντοι Ξεναγόρας οὐ παρέργως, ἀλλὰ μεθόδῳ καὶ δι’ ὀργάνων εἰληφέναι δοκεῖ τὴν μέτρησιν.

[16] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Νασικᾶς ἐνταῦθα διενυκτέρευσε· τῷ δὲ Περσεῖ, τὸν Αἰμίλιον ἀτρεμοῦντα κατὰ χώραν ὁρῶντι καὶ μὴ λογιζομένῳ τὸ γινόμενον, ἀποδρὰς ἐκ τῆς ὁδοῦ Κρὴς αὐτόμολος ἧκε μηνύων τὴν περίοδον τῶν [2] Ῥωμαίων. ὁ δὲ συνταραχθείς, τὸ μὲν στρατόπεδον οὐκ ἐκίνησε, μυρίους δὲ μισθοφόρους ξένους καὶ δισχιλίους Μακεδόνας Μίλωνι παραδοὺς ἐξαπέστειλε, παρακελευσάμενος ταχῦναι καὶ καταλαβεῖν τὰς ὑπερβολάς.

[3] τούτοις ὁ μὲν Πολύβιός φησιν (29, 15) ἔτι κοιμωμένοις ἐπιπεσεῖν τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ὁ δὲ Νασικᾶς ὀξὺν ἀγῶνα περὶ τοῖς ἄκροις γενέσθαι καὶ κίνδυνον, αὐτὸς δὲ Θρᾷκα μισθοφόρον εἰς χεῖρας συνδραμόντα τῷ ξυστῷ διὰ τοῦ στήθους πατάξας καταβαλεῖν, ἐκβιασθέντων δὲ τῶν πολεμίων, καὶ τοῦ Μίλωνος αἴσχιστα φεύγοντος ἄνευ τῶν ὅπλων μονοχίτωνος, ἀσφαλῶς [4] ἀκολουθεῖν ἅμα καταβιβάζων εἰς τὴν χώραν τὸ στράτευμα. τούτων δὲ τῷ Περσεῖ προσπεσόντων, κατὰ τάχος ἀναζεύξας ἦγεν ὀπίσω, περίφοβος [5] γεγονὼς καὶ συγκεχυμένος ταῖς ἐλπίσιν. αὐτοῦ δ’ ὅμως πρὸ τῆς Πύδνης ὑπομένοντα πειρᾶσθαι μάχης ἀναγκαῖον ἦν, ἢ τῷ στρατῷ σκεδασθέντι περὶ τὰς πόλεις δέχεσθαι τὸν πόλεμον, ἐπείπερ ἅπαξ ἐμβεβήκει τῇ [6] χώρᾳ, δίχα πολλοῦ φόνου καὶ νεκρῶν ἐκπεσεῖν μὴ δυνάμενον. πλήθει μὲν οὖν ἀνδρῶν αὐτόθεν περιεῖναι, προθυμίαν δὲ πολλὴν ὑπάρχειν ἀμυνομένοις περὶ τέκνων καὶ γυναικῶν, ἐφορῶντος ἕκαστα τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ προκινδυνεύοντος.

[7] ἐκ τούτων ἐθάρσυνον οἱ φίλοι τὸν Περσέα, καὶ βαλόμενος στρατόπεδον συνετάττετο πρὸς μάχην, καὶ τὰ χωρία κατεσκοπεῖτο, καὶ [8] διῄρει τὰς ἡγεμονίας, ὡς εὐθὺς ἐξ ἐφόδου τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἀπαντήσων. ὁ δὲ τόπος καὶ πεδίον ἦν τῇ φάλαγγι, βάσεως ἐπιπέδου καὶ χωρίων ὁμαλῶν δεομένῃ, καὶ λόφοι συνεχεῖς ἄλλος ἐξ ἄλλου, τοῖς γυμνητεύουσι [9] καὶ ψιλοῖς ἀναφυγὰς καὶ περιδρομὰς ἔχοντες. διὰ μέσου δὲ ποταμοὶ ῥέοντες Αἴσων καὶ Λεῦκος, οὐ μάλα βαθεῖς τότε (θέρους γὰρ ἦν ὥρα φθίνοντος), ἐδόκουν τινὰ δυσεργίαν ὅμως τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις παρέξειν.

[17] [1] Ὁ δ’ Αἰμίλιος ὡς εἰς ταὐτὸν συνέμειξε τῷ Νασικᾷ, κατέβαινε [2] συντεταγμένος ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους. ὡς δ’ εἶδε τὴν παράταξιν αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος, θαυμάσας ἐπέστησε τὴν πορείαν, αὐτός τι πρὸς ἑαυτὸν συλλογιζόμενος.

[3] οἱ δ’ ἡγεμονικοὶ νεανίσκοι προθυμούμενοι μάχεσθαι, παρελαύνοντες ἐδέοντο μὴ μέλλειν, καὶ μάλιστα πάντων ὁ Νασικᾶς, τῇ περὶ [4] τὸν Ὄλυμπον εὐτυχίᾳ τεθαρρηκώς. ὁ δ’ Αἰμίλιος μειδιάσας· εἴ γε τὴν σὴν εἶπεν ἡλικίαν εἶχον· αἱ δὲ πολλαί με νῖκαι διδάσκουσαι τὰ τῶν ἡττωμένων ἁμαρτήματα κωλύουσιν ἐξ ὁδοῦ μάχην τίθεσθαι πρὸς φάλαγγα [5] συντεταγμένην ἤδη καὶ συνεστῶσαν. ἐκ τούτου τὰ μὲν πρῶτα καὶ καταφανῆ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ἐκέλευσεν εἰς σπείρας καθιστάμενα ποιεῖν σχῆμα παρατάξεως, τοὺς δ’ ἀπ’ οὐρᾶς στραφέντας ἐν χώρᾳ χάρακα βαλέσθαι [6] καὶ στρατοπεδεύειν. οὕτω δὲ τῶν συνεχῶν τοῖς τελευταίοις καθ’ ὑπαγωγὴν ἐξελιττομένων, ἔλαθε τὴν παράταξιν ἀναλύσας καὶ καταστήσας ἀθορύβως εἰς τὸν χάρακα πάντας.

[7] Ἐπεὶ δὲ νὺξ γεγόνει καὶ μετὰ δεῖπνον ἐτράποντο πρὸς ὕπνον καὶ ἀνάπαυσιν, αἰφνίδιον ἡ σελήνη πλήρης οὖσα καὶ μετέωρος ἐμελαίνετο, καὶ τοῦ φωτὸς ἀπολείποντος αὐτὴν χρόας ἀμείψασα παντοδαπὰς ἠφανίσθη. τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων, ὥσπερ ἐστὶ νενομισμένον, χαλκοῦ τε πατάγοις ἀνακαλουμένων [8] τὸ φῶς αὐτῆς καὶ πυρὰ πολλὰ δαλοῖς καὶ δᾳσὶν ἀνεχόντων πρὸς τὸν οὐρανόν, οὐδὲν ὅμοιον ἔπραττον οἱ Μακεδόνες, ἀλλὰ φρίκη καὶ θάμβος τὸ στρατόπεδον κατεῖχε, καὶ λόγος ἡσυχῇ διὰ ‹τῶν› πολλῶν [9] ἐχώρει, βασιλέως τὸ φάσμα σημαίνειν ἔκλειψιν. ὁ δ’ Αἰμίλιος οὐκ ἦν μὲν ἀνήκοος οὐδ’ ἄπειρος παντάπασι τῶν ἐκλειπτικῶν ἀνωμαλιῶν, αἳ τὴν σελήνην περιφερομένην εἰς τὸ σκίασμα τῆς γῆς ἐμβάλλουσι τεταγμέναις περιόδοις καὶ ἀποκρύπτουσιν, ἄχρι οὗ παρελθοῦσα τὴν ἐπισκοτουμένην [10] χώραν πάλιν ἀναλάμψῃ πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον· οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῷ θείῳ πολὺ νέμων, καὶ φιλοθύτης ὢν καὶ μαντικός, ὡς εἶδε πρῶτον τὴν σελήνην ἀποκαθαιρομένην, [11] ἕνδεκα μόσχους αὐτῇ κατέθυσεν. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ βουθυτῶν οὐκ ἐκαλλιέρει μέχρις εἴκοσι· τῷ δὲ πρώτῳ καὶ εἰκοστῷ παρῆν [12] τὰ σημεῖα, καὶ νίκην ἀμυνομένοις ἔφραζεν. εὐξάμενος οὖν κατὰ βοῶν ἑκατὸν καὶ ἀγῶνος ἱεροῦ τῷ θεῷ, προσέταξε διακοσμεῖν τοῖς ἡγεμόσι [13] τὸν στρατὸν εἰς μάχην· αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν ἀπόκλισιν καὶ περιφορὰν ἀναμένων τοῦ φωτός, ὅπως μὴ κατὰ προσώπου μαχομένοις αὐτοῖς ἕωθεν ὁ ἥλιος ἀντιλάμποι, παρῆγε τὸν χρόνον ἐν τῇ σκηνῇ καθεζόμενος, ἀναπεπταμένῃ πρὸς τὸ πεδίον καὶ τὴν στρατοπεδείαν τῶν πολεμίων.

[18] [1] Περὶ δὲ δείλην οἱ μὲν αὐτοῦ φασι τοῦ Αἰμιλίου τεχνάζοντος ἐκ τῶν πολεμίων γενέσθαι τὴν ἐπιχείρησιν, ἀχάλινον ἵππον ἐξελάσαντας ἐμβαλεῖν αὐτοῖς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, καὶ τοῦτον ἀρχὴν μάχης διωκόμενον παρασχεῖν· [2] οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαϊκῶν ὑποζυγίων χορτάσματα παρακομιζόντων ἅπτεσθαι Θρᾷκας ὧν Ἀλέξανδρος ἡγεῖτο, πρὸς δὲ τούτους ἐκδρομὴν ὀξεῖαν ἑπτακοσίων Λιγύων γενέσθαι· παραβοηθούντων δὲ πλειόνων ἑκατέροις, [3] οὕτω συνάπτεσθαι τὴν μάχην ‹παρ’› ἀμφοτέρων. ὁ μὲν οὖν Αἰμίλιος, ὥσπερ κυβερνήτης τῷ παρόντι σάλῳ καὶ κινήματι τῶν στρατοπέδων τεκμαιρόμενος τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ μέλλοντος ἀγῶνος, ἐκ τῆς σκηνῆς προῆλθε [4] καὶ τὰ τάγματα τῶν ὁπλιτῶν ἐπιὼν παρεθάρρυνεν· ὁ δὲ Νασικᾶς ἐξιππασάμενος πρὸς τοὺς ἀκροβολιζομένους, ὁρᾷ πάντας ὅσον οὔπω τοὺς [5] πολεμίους ἐν χερσὶν ὄντας. πρῶτοι δ’ οἱ Θρᾷκες ἐχώρουν, ὧν μάλιστά φησιν (HRR I 48) ἐκπλαγῆναι τὴν ὄψιν, ἄνδρες ὑψηλοὶ τὰ σώματα, λευκῷ καὶ περιλάμποντι θυρεῶν καὶ περικνημίδων ὁπλισμῷ μέλανας ὑπενδεδυμένοι χιτῶνας, ὀρθὰς δὲ ῥομφαίας βαρυσιδήρους ἀπὸ τῶν δεξιῶν ὤμων [6] ἐπισείοντες. παρὰ δὲ τοὺς Θρᾷκας οἱ μισθοφόροι παρενέβαλλον, ὧν σκευαί [7] τε παντοδαπαὶ καὶ μεμειγμένοι Παίονες ἦσαν. ἐπὶ δὲ τούτοις ἄγημα τρίτον οἱ λογάδες, αὐτῶν Μακεδόνων ἀρετῇ καὶ ἡλικίᾳ τὸ καθαρώτατον, [8] ἀστράπτοντες ἐπιχρύσοις ὅπλοις καὶ νεουργοῖς φοινικίσιν. οἷς καθισταμένοις εἰς τάξιν αἱ τῶν χαλκασπίδων ἐπανατέλλουσαι φάλαγγες ἐκ τοῦ χάρακος ἐνέπλησαν αὐγῆς σιδήρου καὶ λαμπηδόνος χαλκοῦ τὸ [9] πεδίον, κραυγῆς δὲ καὶ θορύβου παρακελευομένων τὴν ὀρεινήν. οὕτω δὲ θρασέως καὶ μετὰ τάχους ἐπῄεσαν, ὥστε τοὺς πρώτους νεκροὺς ἀπὸ δυεῖν σταδίων τοῦ Ῥωμαϊκοῦ χάρακος καταπεσεῖν.

[19] [1] Γιγνομένης δὲ τῆς ἐφόδου, παρῆν ὁ Αἰμίλιος καὶ κατελάμβανεν ἤδη τοὺς ἐν τοῖς ἀγήμασι Μακεδόνας ἄκρας τὰς σαρίσας προσερηρεικότας τοῖς θυρεοῖς τῶν Ῥωμαίων καὶ μὴ προσιεμένους εἰς ἐφικτὸν αὐτῶν τὰς [2] μαχαίρας. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Μακεδόνων τάς τε πέλτας ἐξ ὤμου περισπασάντων καὶ ταῖς σαρίσαις ἀφ’ ἑνὸς συνθήματος κλιθείσαις ὑποστάντων τοὺς θυρεοφόρους εἶδε τήν τε ῥώμην τοῦ συνασπισμοῦ καὶ τὴν τραχύτητα τῆς προβολῆς, ἔκπληξις αὐτὸν ἔσχε καὶ δέος, ὡς οὐδὲν ἰδόντα πώποτε θέαμα φοβερώτερον, καὶ πολλάκις ὕστερον ἐμέμνητο τοῦ πάθους [3] ἐκείνου καὶ τῆς ὄψεως. τότε δὲ πρὸς τοὺς μαχομένους ἐπιδεικνύμενος ἵλεω καὶ φαιδρὸν ἑαυτόν, ἄνευ κράνους καὶ θώρακος ἵππῳ παρήλαυνεν.

[4] ὁ δὲ τῶν Μακεδόνων βασιλεύς, ὥς φησι Πολύβιος (29, 18), τῆς μάχης ἀρχὴν λαμβανούσης ἀποδειλιάσας εἰς πόλιν ἀφιππάσατο, σκηψάμενος Ἡρακλεῖ θύσειν, δειλὰ παρὰ δειλῶν ἱερὰ μὴ δεχομένῳ μηδ’ εὐχὰς ἀθεμίτους [5] ἐπιτελοῦντι. θεμιτὸν γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν οὔτε τὸν μὴ βάλλοντα κατευστοχεῖν, οὔτε τὸν μὴ μένοντα κρατεῖν, οὔθ’ ὅλως τὸν ἄπρακτον εὐπραγεῖν, [6] οὔτε τὸν κακὸν εὐδαιμονεῖν. ἀλλὰ ταῖς Αἰμιλίου παρῆν εὐχαῖς ὁ θεός· εὔχετο γὰρ κράτος πολέμου καὶ νίκην δόρυ κρατῶν, καὶ μαχόμενος παρεκάλει [7] σύμμαχον τὸν θεόν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ Ποσειδώνιός τις, ἐν ἐκείνοις τοῖς χρόνοις καὶ ταῖς πράξεσι γεγονέναι λέγων, ἱστορίαν δὲ γεγραφὼς περὶ Περσέως ἐν πλείοσι βιβλίοις (FGrH 169 F 1), φησὶν αὐτὸν οὐχ ὑπὸ δειλίας οὐδὲ τὴν θυσίαν ποιησάμενον αἰτίαν ἀπελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ τῇ προτεραίᾳ τῆς [8] μάχης τυχεῖν λελακτισμένον ὑφ’ ἵππου τὸ σκέλος, ἐν δὲ τῇ μάχῃ, καίπερ ἔχοντα δυσχρήστως καὶ κωλυόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων, ἵππον αὑτῷ κελεῦσαι τῶν φορέων προσαγαγεῖν καὶ περιβάντα συμμεῖξαι τοῖς ἐπὶ τῆς φάλαγγος [9] ἀθωράκιστον· φερομένων δὲ παντοδαπῶν ἑκατέρωθεν βελῶν, παλτὸν ἐμπεσεῖν ὁλοσίδηρον αὐτῷ, καὶ τῇ μὲν ἀκμῇ μὴ θιγεῖν, ἀλλὰ πλάγιον παρὰ τὴν ἀριστερὰν πλευρὰν παραδραμεῖν, ῥύμῃ δὲ τῆς παρόδου τόν τε χιτῶνα διακόψαι καὶ τὴν σάρκα φοινίξαι τυφλῷ μώλωπι, πολὺν χρόνον διαφυλάξαντι [10] τὸν τύπον. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὁ Ποσειδώνιος ὑπὲρ τοῦ Περσέως ἀπολογεῖται.

[20] [1] Τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων, ὡς ἀντέστησαν τῇ φάλαγγι, μὴ δυναμένων βιάζεσθαι, Σάλουιος ὁ τῶν Πελιγνῶν ἡγούμενος ἁρπάσας τὸ σημεῖον τῶν [2] ὑφ’ αὑτὸν εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους ἔρριψε. τῶν δὲ Πελιγνῶν (οὐ γάρ ἐστιν Ἰταλοῖς θεμιτὸν οὐδ’ ὅσιον ἐγκαταλιπεῖν σημεῖον) ἐπιδραμόντων πρὸς ἐκεῖνον τὸν τόπον, ἔργα δεινὰ καὶ πάθη παρ’ ἀμφοτέρων ἀπήντα συμπεσόντων.

[3] οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐκκρούειν τε τοῖς ξίφεσι τὰς σαρίσας ἐπειρῶντο καὶ πιέζειν [4] τοῖς θυρεοῖς καὶ ταῖς χερσὶν αὐταῖς ἀντιλαμβανόμενοι παραφέρειν· οἱ δὲ τὴν προβολὴν κρατυνάμενοι δι’ ἀμφοτέρων, καὶ τοὺς προσπίπτοντας αὐτοῖς ὅπλοις διελαύνοντες, οὔτε θυρεοῦ στέγοντος οὔτε θώρακος τὴν βίαν τῆς σαρίσης, ἀνερρίπτουν ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς τὰ σώματα τῶν Πελιγνῶν καὶ Μαρρουκινῶν, κατ’ οὐδένα λογισμὸν ἀλλὰ θυμῷ θηριώδει πρὸς ἐναντίας [5] πληγὰς καὶ προὖπτον ὠθουμένων θάνατον. οὕτω δὲ τῶν προμάχων διαφθαρέντων, ἀνεκόπησαν οἱ κατόπιν αὐτῶν ἐπιτεταγμένοι, καὶ φυγὴ [6] μὲν οὐκ ἦν, ἀναχώρησις δὲ πρὸς ὄρος τὸ καλούμενον Ὀλόκρον, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Αἰμίλιον ἰδόντα, φησὶν ὁ Ποσειδώνιος (FGrH 169 F 2), καταρρήξασθαι τὸν χιτῶνα, τούτων μὲν ἐνδιδόντων, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων Ῥωμαίων διατρεπομένων τὴν φάλαγγα, προσβολὴν οὐκ ἔχουσαν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ χαρακώματι [7] τῷ πυκνώματι τῶν σαρισῶν ὑπαντιάζουσαν πάντοθεν ἀπρόσμαχον. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν τε χωρίων ἀνωμάλων ὄντων, καὶ διὰ τὸ μῆκος τῆς παρατάξεως οὐ φυλαττούσης ἀραρότα τὸν συνασπισμόν, κατεῖδε τὴν φάλαγγα τῶν Μακεδόνων κλάσεις τε πολλὰς καὶ διασπάσματα λαμβάνουσαν, ὡς εἰκὸς ἐν μεγάλοις στρατοῖς καὶ ποικίλαις ὁρμαῖς τῶν μαχομένων, τοῖς μὲν ἐκθλιβομένην [8] μέρεσι, τοῖς δὲ προπίπτουσαν, ἐπιὼν ὀξέως καὶ διαιρῶν τὰς σπείρας, ἐκέλευεν εἰς τὰ διαλείμματα καὶ κενώματα τῆς τῶν πολεμίων τάξεως παρεμπίπτοντας καὶ συμπλεκομένους, μὴ μίαν πρὸς ἅπαντας, [9] ἀλλὰ πολλὰς καὶ μεμειγμένας κατὰ μέρος τὰς μάχας τίθεσθαι. ταῦτα τοῦ μὲν Αἰμιλίου τοὺς ἡγεμόνας, τῶν δ’ ἡγεμόνων τοὺς στρατιώτας διδασκόντων, ὡς πρῶτον ὑπέδυσαν καὶ διέσχον εἴσω τῶν ὅπλων, τοῖς μὲν [10] ἐκ πλαγίου κατὰ γυμνὰ προσφερόμενοι, τοὺς δὲ ταῖς περιδρομαῖς ἀπολαμβάνοντες, ἡ μὲν ἰσχὺς καὶ τὸ κοινὸν ἔργον εὐθὺς ἀπωλώλει τῆς φάλαγγος ἀναρρηγνυμένης, ἐν δὲ ταῖς καθ’ ἕνα καὶ κατ’ ὀλίγους συστάσεσιν οἱ Μακεδόνες, μικροῖς μὲν ἐγχειριδίοις στερεοὺς καὶ ποδήρεις θυρεοὺς νύσσοντες, ἐλαφροῖς δὲ πελταρίοις πρὸς τὰς ἐκείνων μαχαίρας, ὑπὸ βάρους καὶ καταφορᾶς διὰ παντὸς ὅπλου χωρούσας ἐπὶ τὰ σώματα, κακῶς ἀντέχοντες, ἐτράποντο.

[21] [1] Κατὰ τούτους δὲ μέγας ἦν ἀγών. ἔνθα δὴ καὶ Μᾶρκος ὁ Κάτωνος υἱός, Αἰμιλίου δὲ γαμβρός, πᾶσαν ἀλκὴν ἐπιδεικνύμενος ἀπέβαλε τὸ ξίφος.

[2] οἷα δὲ νεανίας ἐντεθραμμένος καλλίστοις παιδεύμασι, καὶ μεγάλῳ πατρὶ μεγάλης ἀρετῆς ἀποδείξεις ὀφείλων, οὐ βιωτὸν ἡγησάμενος εἶναι προεμένῳ σκῦλον αὑτοῦ ζῶντος τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἐπέδραμε τὴν μάχην, εἴ τινά που φίλον καὶ συνήθη κατίδοι, φράζων τὸ συμπεσὸν αὐτῷ καὶ δεόμενος [3] βοηθεῖν. οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ ἀγαθοὶ γενόμενοι, καὶ διασχόντες ὁρμῇ μιᾷ τοὺς [4] ἄλλους περὶ αὐτὸν ὑφηγούμενον, ἐμβάλλουσι τοῖς ἐναντίοις. μεγάλῳ δ’ ἀγῶνι καὶ φόνῳ πολλῷ καὶ τραύμασιν ὤσαντες ἐκ χώρας, καὶ τὸν τόπον ἔρημον καὶ γυμνὸν κατασχόντες, ἐπὶ ζήτησιν ἐτράποντο τοῦ ξίφους.

[5] ὡς δὲ μόλις ἐν πολλοῖς ὅπλοις καὶ πτώμασι νεκρῶν κεκρυμμένον ἀνευρέθη, περιχαρεῖς γενόμενοι καὶ παιανίσαντες ἔτι λαμπρότερον ἐνέκειντο [6] τοῖς συνεστῶσιν ἔτι τῶν πολεμίων. καὶ τέλος οἱ τρισχίλιοι λογάδες ἐν τάξει μένοντες καὶ μαχόμενοι κατεκόπησαν ἅπαντες· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων φευγόντων πολὺς ἦν φόνος, ὥστε τὸ μὲν πεδίον καὶ τὴν ὑπώρειαν καταπεπλῆσθαι νεκρῶν, τοῦ δὲ Λεύκου ποταμοῦ τὸ ῥεῦμα τοὺς Ῥωμαίους τῇ [7] μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἡμέρᾳ διελθεῖν ἔτι μεμειγμένον αἵματι. λέγονται γὰρ ὑπὲρ δισμυρίους πεντακισχιλίους ἀποθανεῖν. τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἔπεσον, ὡς μὲν Ποσειδώνιός φησιν (FGrH 169 F 3), ἑκατόν, ὡς δὲ Νασικᾶς (HRR I 48 6 FGrH 233 F 3), ὀγδοήκοντα.

[22] [1] Καὶ κρίσιν μὲν ὀξυτάτην μέγιστος ‹ὁ› ἀγὼν οὗτος ἔσχεν· ἐνάτης γὰρ ὥρας ἀρξάμενοι μάχεσθαι, πρὸ δεκάτης ἐνίκησαν· τῷ δὲ λειπομένῳ τῆς ἡμέρας χρησάμενοι πρὸς τὴν δίωξιν, καὶ μέχρι σταδίων ἑκατὸν καὶ [2] εἴκοσι διώξαντες, ἑσπέρας ἤδη βαθείας ἀπετράποντο. καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους οἱ θεράποντες ὑπὸ λαμπάδων ἀπαντῶντες μετὰ χαρᾶς καὶ βοῆς ἀπῆγον ἐπὶ τὰς σκηνάς, φωτὶ λαμπομένας καὶ κεκοσμημένας κιττοῦ καὶ δάφνης [3] στεφάνοις. αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν στρατηγὸν μέγα πένθος εἶχε· δυεῖν γὰρ υἱῶν αὐτοῦ στρατευομένων ὁ νεώτερος οὐδαμοῦ φανερὸς ἦν, ὃν ἐφίλει τε μάλιστα [4] καὶ πλεῖστον εἰς ἀρετὴν φύσει προὔχοντα τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἑώρα. θυμοειδῆ δὲ καὶ φιλότιμον ὄντα τὴν ψυχήν, ἔτι δ’ ἀντίπαιδα τὴν ἡλικίαν, παντάπασιν ἀπολωλέναι κατεδόξαζεν, ὑπ’ ἀπειρίας ἀναμειχθέντα τοῖς [5] πολεμίοις μαχομένοις. ἀπορουμένου δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ περιπαθοῦντος ᾔσθετο πᾶν τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ μεταξὺ δειπνοῦντες ἀνεπήδων καὶ διέθεον μετὰ λαμπάδων, πολλοὶ μὲν ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ Αἰμιλίου, πολλοὶ δὲ πρὸ τοῦ [6] χάρακος ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις νεκροῖς ζητοῦντες. κατήφεια δὲ τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ κραυγὴ τὸ πεδίον κατεῖχεν ἀνακαλουμένων τὸν Σκιπίωνα· πᾶσι γὰρ ἀγαστὸς ἦν, εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς πρὸς ἡγεμονίαν καὶ πολιτείαν ὡς ἄλλος [7] οὐδεὶς τῶν συγγενῶν κεκραμένος τὸ ἦθος. ὀψὲ δ’ οὖν ἤδη σχεδὸν ἀπεγνωσμένος ἐκ τῆς διώξεως προσῄει μετὰ δύο ἢ τριῶν ἑταίρων, αἵματος καὶ ‹φό›νου πολεμίων ἀνάπλεως, ὥσπερ σκύλαξ γενναῖος ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἀκρατῶς [8] τῇ νίκῃ συνεξενεχθείς. οὗτός ἐστι Σκιπίων ὁ τοῖς ἱκνουμένοις ‹χρόνοις› Καρχηδόνα καὶ Νομαντίαν κατασκάψας, καὶ πολὺ πρῶτος ἀρετῇ [9] τῶν τότε Ῥωμαίων γενόμενος καὶ δυνηθεὶς μέγιστον. Αἰμιλίῳ μὲν οὖν τὴν τοῦ κατορθώματος νέμεσιν εἰς ἕτερον ἡ τύχη καιρὸν ὑπερβαλλομένη, τότε παντελῆ τὴν ἡδονὴν ἀπεδίδου τῆς νίκης.

[23] [1] Περσεὺς δὲ φυγῇ μὲν ἐκ Πύδνης εἰς Πέλλαν ἀπεχώρει, τῶν ἱππέων [2] ἐπιεικῶς πάντων ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης διασεσῳσμένων. ἐπεὶ δὲ καταλαμβάνοντες οἱ πεζοὶ τοὺς ἱππεῖς ὡς ἀνάνδρους καὶ προδεδωκότας λοιδοροῦντες ἀπὸ τῶν ἵππων ὤθουν καὶ πληγὰς ἐδίδοσαν, δείσας τὸν θόρυβον ἐκ τῆς ὁδοῦ παρέκλινε τὸν ἵππον, καὶ τὴν πορφύραν ὡς μὴ διάσημος εἴη περισπάσας ἔθετο πρόσθεν αὑτοῦ, καὶ τὸ διάδημα διὰ χειρῶν εἶχεν.

[3] ὡς δὲ καὶ προσδιαλέγοιτο τοῖς ἑταίροις ἅμα βαδίζων, καταβὰς ἐφείλκετο [4] τὸν ἵππον. τῶν δ’ ὁ μέν τις ὑπόδημα προσποιούμενος λελυμένον συνάπτειν, ὁ δ’ ἵππον ἄρδειν, ὁ δὲ ποτοῦ χρῄζειν, ὑπολειπόμενοι κατὰ μικρὸν ἀπεδίδρασκον, οὐχ οὕτω τοὺς πολεμίους ὡς τὴν ἐκείνου χαλεπότητα δεδοικότες.

[5] κεχαραγμένος γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν κακῶν, εἰς πάντας ἐζήτει τρέπειν [6] ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς ἥττης. ἐπεὶ δὲ νυκτὸς εἰς Πέλλαν εἰσελθὼν Εὖκτον καὶ Εὔλαιον τοὺς ἐπὶ τοῦ νομίσματος ἀπαντήσαντας αὐτῷ, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἐγκαλοῦντας περὶ τῶν γεγονότων, τὰ δὲ παρρησιαζομένους ἀκαίρως καὶ συμβουλεύοντας, ὀργισθεὶς ἀπέκτεινεν αὐτὸς τῷ ξιφιδίῳ παίων ἀμφοτέρους, οὐδεὶς παρέμεινεν αὐτῷ πάρεξ Εὐάνδρου τε τοῦ Κρητὸς καὶ [7] Ἀρχεδάμου τοῦ Αἰτωλοῦ καὶ τοῦ Βοιωτοῦ Νέωνος. τῶν δὲ στρατιωτῶν ἐπηκολούθησαν οἱ Κρῆτες, οὐ δι’ εὔνοιαν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς χρήμασιν ὥσπερ [8] κηρίοις μέλιτται προσλιπαροῦντες. πάμπολλα γὰρ ἐπήγετο, καὶ προὔθηκεν ἐξ αὐτῶν διαρπάσαι τοῖς Κρησὶν ἐκπώματα καὶ κρατῆρας καὶ τὴν ἄλλην [9] ἐν ἀργύρῳ καὶ χρυσῷ κατασκευὴν εἰς πεντήκοντα ταλάντων λόγον. γενόμενος δ’ ἐν Ἀμφιπόλει πρῶτον, εἶτ’ ἐκεῖθεν ἐν Γαληψῷ, καὶ τοῦ φόβου μικρὸν ὑπανέντος, εἰς τὸ συγγενὲς καὶ πρεσβύτατον αὐτοῦ τῶν νοσημάτων τὴν μικρολογίαν αὖθις ὑπενεχθείς, ὠδύρετο πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ὡς τῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ μεγάλου χρυσωμάτων ἔνια τοῖς Κρησὶ διερριφὼς ὑπ’ ἀγνοίας, καὶ παρεκάλει τοὺς ἔχοντας ἀντιβολῶν καὶ δακρύων ἀμείψασθαι [10] πρὸς νόμισμα. τοὺς μὲν οὖν ἐπισταμένους ἀκριβῶς αὐτὸν οὐκ ἔλαθε κρητίζων [11] πρὸς Κρῆτας, οἱ δὲ πεισθέντες καὶ ἀποδόντες ἀπεστερήθησαν. οὐ γὰρ ἀπέδωκε τἀργύριον, ἀλλὰ τριάκοντα τάλαντα κερδάνας ἀπὸ τῶν φίλων, ἃ μικρὸν ὕστερον ἔμελλον οἱ πολέμιοι λήψεσθαι, μετ’ αὐτῶν διέπλευσεν εἰς Σαμοθρᾴκην, καὶ διαφεύγων ἐπὶ τοὺς ‹Καβείρους› ἱκέτευεν.

[24] [1] Ἀεὶ μὲν οὖν λέγονται ‹γεγονέναι› φιλοβασιλεῖς οἱ Μακεδόνες, τότε δ’ ὡς ἐρείσματι κεκλασμένῳ πάντων ἅμα συμπεσόντων, ἐγχειρίζοντες αὑτοὺς τῷ Αἰμιλίῳ δύο ἡμέραις ὅλης κύριον αὐτὸν κατέστησαν [2] Μακεδονίας. καὶ δοκεῖ τοῦτο μαρτυρεῖν τοῖς εὐτυχίᾳ τινὶ τὰς πράξεις [3] ἐκείνας γεγονέναι φάσκουσιν. ἔτι δὲ καὶ τὸ περὶ τὴν θυσίαν σύμπτωμα δαιμόνιον ἦν· ἐν Ἀμφιπόλει ‹γὰρ› θύοντος τοῦ Αἰμιλίου καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν ἐνηργμένων, κεραυνὸς ἐνσκήψας εἰς τὸν βωμὸν ἐπέφλεξε καὶ συγκαθήγισε [4] τὴν ἱερουργίαν. ὑπερβάλλει δὲ θειότητι πάντα καὶ τύχῃ τὰ τῆς φήμης. ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἡμέρα τετάρτη νενικημένῳ Περσεῖ περὶ Πύδναν, ἐν δὲ τῇ Ῥώμῃ τοῦ δήμου θεωροῦντος ἱππικοὺς ἀγῶνας, ἐξαίφνης ἐνέπεσε λόγος εἰς τὸ πρῶτον τοῦ θεάτρου μέρος, ὡς Αἰμίλιος μεγάλῃ μάχῃ νενικηκὼς [5] Περσέα καταστρέφοιτο σύμπασαν Μακεδονίαν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου ταχὺ τῆς φήμης ἀναχεομένης εἰς τὸ πλῆθος, ἐξέλαμψε χαρὰ μετὰ κρότου καὶ βοῆς, [6] τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην κατασχοῦσα τὴν πόλιν. εἶθ’ ὡς ὁ λόγος οὐκ εἶχεν εἰς ἀρχὴν ἀνελθεῖν βέβαιον, ἀλλ’ ἐν πᾶσιν ὁμοίως ἐφαίνετο πλανώμενος, τότε μὲν ἐσκεδάσθη καὶ διερρύη τὰ τῆς φήμης· ὀλίγαις δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέραις πυθόμενοι σαφῶς, ἐθαύμαζον τὴν προδραμοῦσαν ἀγγελίαν, ὡς ἐν τῷ ψεύδει τὸ ἀληθὲς εἶχε.

[25] [1] Λέγεται δὲ καὶ τῆς ἐπὶ Σάγρᾳ ποταμῷ μάχης Ἰταλιωτῶν αὐθημερὸν ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ λόγον γενέσθαι, καὶ Πλαταιᾶσι τῆς ἐν Μυκάλῃ πρὸς [2] Μήδους. ἣν δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι Ταρκυνίους μετὰ Λατίνων ἐπιστρατεύσαντας ἐνίκησαν, αὐτάγγελοι φράζοντες ὤφθησαν ἀπὸ στρατοῦ μικρὸν ὕστερον [3] ἄνδρες δύο καλοὶ καὶ μεγάλοι· τούτους εἴκασαν εἶναι Διοσκούρους. ὁ δ’ ἐντυχὼν πρῶτος αὐτοῖς κατ’ ἀγορὰν πρὸ τῆς κρήνης, ἀναψύχουσι τοὺς ἵππους ἱδρῶτι πολλῷ περιρρεομένους, ἐθαύμαζε τὸν περὶ τῆς νίκης λόγον.

[4] εἶθ’ οἱ μὲν ἐπιψαῦσαι λέγονται τῆς ὑπήνης αὐτοῦ τοῖν χεροῖν ἀτρέμα μειδιῶντες· ἡ δ’ εὐθὺς ἐκ μελαίνης τριχὸς εἰς πυρρὰν μεταβαλοῦσα, τῷ μὲν λόγῳ πίστιν, τῷ δ’ ἀνδρὶ παρασχεῖν ἐπίκλησιν τὸν Ἀηνόβαρβον, ὅπερ [5] ἐστὶ χαλκοπώγωνα. πᾶσι δὲ τούτοις τὸ καθ’ ἡμᾶς γενόμενον πίστιν παρέσχεν. ὅτε γὰρ Ἀντώνιος ἀπέστη Δομετιανοῦ καὶ πολὺς πόλεμος ἀπὸ Γερμανίας προσεδοκᾶτο, τῆς Ῥώμης ταραττομένης ἄφνω καὶ αὐτομάτως ὁ δῆμος ἐξ αὑτοῦ φήμην ἀνέδωκε νίκης, καὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ἐπέδραμε λόγος αὐτόν τε τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἀνῃρῆσθαι, καὶ τοῦ σὺν αὐτῷ στρατεύματος ἡττημένου μηδὲν μέρος λελεῖφθαι· τοσαύτην δὲ λαμπρότητα καὶ ῥύμην ἡ [6] πίστις ἔσχεν, ὥστε καὶ θῦσαι τῶν ἐν τέλει πολλούς. ζητουμένου δὲ τοῦ πρώτου φράσαντος ὡς οὐδεὶς ἦν, ἀλλ’ ὁ λόγος ‹εἰς› ἄλλον ἐξ ἄλλου διωκόμενος ἀνέφευγε καὶ τέλος καταδὺς ὥσπερ εἰς πέλαγος ἀχανὲς τὸν ἄπειρον ὄχλον ἐφάνη μηδεμίαν ἀρχὴν ἔχων βέβαιον, αὕτη μὲν ἡ φήμη ταχὺ τῆς πόλεως ἐξερρύη, πορευομένῳ δὲ τῷ Δομετιανῷ μετὰ δυνάμεως ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἤδη καθ’ ὁδὸν ἀγγελία καὶ γράμματα φράζοντα τὴν νίκην ἀπήντησεν.

[7] ἡ δ’ αὐτὴ τοῦ ‹τε› κατορθώματος ἡμέρα καὶ τῆς φήμης ἐγίγνετο, ἐπὶ πλέον ἢ δισμυρίους σταδίους τῶν τόπων διεστώτων. ταῦτα μὲν οὐδεὶς ἀγνοεῖ τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς.

[26] [1] Γναῖος δ’ Ὀκτάβιος ὁ ναυαρχῶν Αἰμιλίῳ προσορμισάμενος τῇ Σαμοθρᾴκῃ τὴν μὲν ἀσυλίαν παρεῖχε τῷ Περσεῖ διὰ τοὺς θεούς, ἔκπλου [2] δὲ καὶ φυγῆς εἶργεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ λανθάνει πως ὁ Περσεὺς Ὀροάνδην τινὰ [3] Κρῆτα λέμβον ἔχοντα συμπείσας μετὰ χρημάτων ἀναλαβεῖν αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ κρητισμῷ χρησάμενος, τὰ μὲν χρήματα νύκτωρ ἀνέλαβεν, ἐκεῖνον δὲ τῆς ἑτέρας νυκτὸς ἥκειν κελεύσας ἐπὶ τὸν πρὸς τῷ Δημητρείῳ λιμένα μετὰ τῶν τέκνων καὶ θεραπείας ἀναγκαίας, εὐθὺς ἀφ’ ἑσπέρας ἀπέπλευσεν.

[4] ὁ δὲ Περσεὺς οἰκτρὰ μὲν ἔπασχε, διὰ στενῆς θυρίδος παρὰ τὸ τεῖχος ἐκμηρυόμενος αὑτὸν καὶ παιδία καὶ γυναῖκα, πόνων καὶ πλάνης ἀπείρους, οἰκτρότερον δὲ στεναγμὸν ἀφῆκεν, ὥς τις αὐτῷ πλανωμένῳ παρὰ τὸν [5] αἰγιαλὸν ἤδη πελάγιον τὸν Ὀροάνδην θέοντα κατιδὼν ἔφρασεν. ὑπέλαμπε γὰρ ἡμέρα, καὶ πάσης ἐλπίδος ἔρημος ὑπεχώρει φυγῇ πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος, οὐ [6] λαθὼν μέν, ὑποφθάσας δὲ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους μετὰ τῆς γυναικός. τὰ δὲ παιδία συλλαβὼν αὐτοῖς Ἴων ἐνεχείρισεν, ὃς πάλαι μὲν ἐρώμενος ἦν τοῦ Περσέως, τότε δὲ προδότης γενόμενος αἰτίαν παρέσχε τὴν μάλιστα συναναγκάσασαν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὡς θηρίον ἁλισκομένων τῶν τέκνων εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν καὶ [7] παραδοῦναι τὸ σῶμα τοῖς ἐκείνων κρατοῦσιν. ἐπίστευε μὲν οὖν μάλιστα τῷ Νασικᾷ, κἀκεῖνον ἐκάλει· μὴ παρόντος δὲ κατακλαύσας τὴν τύχην καὶ τὴν ἀνάγκην περισκεψάμενος, ἔδωκεν αὑτὸν ὑποχείριον τῷ Γναίῳ, τότε μάλιστα ποιήσας φανερόν, ὅτι τῆς φιλαργυρίας ἦν ἐν αὐτῷ τι κακὸν ἀγεννέστερον ἡ φιλοψυχία, δι’ ἥν, ὃ μόνον ἡ τύχη τῶν ἐπταικότων οὐκ ἀφαιρεῖται, [8] τὸν ἔλεον ἀπεστέρησεν ἑαυτοῦ. δεηθεὶς γὰρ ἀχθῆναι πρὸς τὸν Αἰμίλιον, ὁ μὲν ὡς ἀνδρὶ μεγάλῳ πεπτωκότι πτῶμα νεμεσητὸν καὶ δυστυχὲς [9] ἐξαναστὰς ‹προ›ϋπήντα μετὰ τῶν φίλων δεδακρυμένος, ὁ δ’, αἴσχιστον θέαμα, προβαλὼν αὑτὸν ἐπὶ στόμα, καὶ γονάτων δραξάμενος, ἀνεβάλλετο φωνὰς ἀγεννεῖς καὶ δεήσεις, ἃς οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν οὐδ’ ἤκουσεν ὁ Αἰμίλιος, ἀλλὰ προσβλέψας αὐτὸν ἀλγοῦντι καὶ λελυπημένῳ τῷ προσώπῳ· [10] τί τῆς τύχης εἶπεν ὦ ταλαίπωρε τὸ μέγιστον ἀφαιρεῖς τῶν ἐγκλημάτων, ταῦτα πράττων ἀφ’ ὧν δόξεις οὐ παρ’ ἀξίαν ἀτυχεῖν, οὐδὲ τοῦ νῦν, [11] ἀλλὰ τοῦ πάλαι δαίμονος ἀνάξιος γεγονέναι; τί δέ μου καταβάλλεις τὴν νίκην καὶ τὸ κατόρθωμα ποιεῖς μικρόν, ἐπιδεικνύμενος ἑαυτὸν οὐ γενναῖον [12] οὐδὲ πρέποντα Ῥωμαίοις ἀνταγωνιστήν; ἀρετή τοι δυστυχοῦσι μεγάλην ἔχει μοῖραν αἰδοῦς καὶ παρὰ πολεμίοις, δειλία δὲ Ῥωμαίοις κἂν εὐποτμῇ πάντων ἀτιμότατον.

[27] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῦτον μὲν ἀναστήσας καὶ δεξιωσάμενος Τουβέρωνι παρέδωκεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς παῖδας καὶ τοὺς γαμβροὺς καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἡγεμονικῶν μάλιστα τοὺς νεωτέρους ἔσω τῆς σκηνῆς ἐπισπασάμενος, πολὺν [2] χρόνον ἦν πρὸς αὑτῷ σιωπῇ καθήμενος, ὥστε θαυμάζειν ἅπαντας· ὁρμήσας δὲ περὶ τῆς τύχης καὶ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων διαλέγεσθαι πραγμάτων, ἆρά γ’ εἶπεν ἄξιον εὐπραγίας παρούσης ἄνθρωπον ὄντα θρασύνεσθαι, καὶ μέγα φρονεῖν ἔθνος ἢ πόλιν ἢ βασιλείαν καταστρεψάμενον, ἢ τὴν μεταβολὴν ταύτην ἡ τύχη παράδειγμα τῷ πολεμοῦντι ‹τῆς› κοινῆς ἀσθενείας προθεῖσα παιδεύει μηδὲν ὡς μόνιμον καὶ βέβαιον διανοεῖσθαι; [3] ποῖος γὰρ ἀνθρώποις τοῦ θαρρεῖν καιρός, ὅταν ὁ τοῦ κρατεῖν ἑτέρων μάλιστα δεδοικέναι τὴν τύχην ἀναγκάζῃ, καὶ τῷ χαίροντι δυσθυμίαν ἐπάγῃ τοσαύτην ὁ τῆς περιφερομένης καὶ προσισταμένης ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλοις [4] εἱμαρμένης λογισμός; ἢ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου διαδοχήν, ὃς ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἤρθη δυνάμεως καὶ μέγιστον ἔσχε κράτος, ὥρας μιᾶς μορίῳ πεσοῦσαν ὑπὸ πόδας θέμενοι, καὶ τοὺς ἄρτι μυριάσι πεζῶν καὶ χιλιάσιν ἱππέων τοσαύταις ὁπλοφορουμένους βασιλεῖς ὁρῶντες ἐκ χειρῶν τῶν πολεμίων ἐφήμερα σιτία καὶ ποτὰ λαμβάνοντας, οἴεσθε τὰ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἔχειν τινὰ βεβαιότητα τύχης [5] διαρκῆ πρὸς τὸν χρόνον; οὐ καταβαλόντες ὑμεῖς οἱ νέοι τὸ κενὸν φρύαγμα τοῦτο καὶ γαυρίαμα τῆς νίκης, ταπεινοὶ καταπτήξετε πρὸς τὸ μέλλον, ἀεὶ καραδοκοῦντες εἰς ὅ τι κατασκήψει τέλος ἑκάστῳ τὴν τῆς παρούσης [6] εὐπραγίας ὁ δαίμων νέμεσιν; τοιαῦτά φασι πολλὰ διαλεχθέντα τὸν Αἰμίλιον ἀποπέμψαι τοὺς νέους, εὖ μάλα τὸ καύχημα καὶ τὴν ὕβριν ὥσπερ χαλινῷ τῷ λόγῳ κόπτοντι κεκολασμένους.

[28] [1] Ἐκ τούτου τὴν μὲν στρατιὰν πρὸς ἀνάπαυσιν, αὑτὸν δὲ πρὸς θέαν [2] τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἔτρεψε καὶ διαγωγὴν ἔνδοξον ἅμα καὶ φιλάνθρωπον. ἐπιὼν γὰρ ἀνελάμβανε τοὺς δήμους καὶ τὰ πολιτεύματα καθίστατο, καὶ δωρεὰς [3] ἐδίδου τοῖς μὲν σῖτον ἐκ τοῦ βασιλικοῦ, τοῖς δ’ ἔλαιον. τοσοῦτον γὰρ εὑρεθῆναί φασιν ἀποκείμενον, ὥστε τοὺς λαμβάνοντας καὶ δεομένους [4] ἐπιλιπεῖν πρότερον ἢ καταναλωθῆναι τὸ πλῆθος τῶν εὑρεθέντων. ἐν δὲ Δελφοῖς ἰδὼν κίονα μέγαν τετράγωνον ἐκ λίθων λευκῶν συνηρμοσμένον, ἐφ’ οὗ Περσέως ἔμελλε χρυσοῦς ἀνδριὰς τίθεσθαι, προσέταξε τὸν αὑτοῦ τεθῆναι· τοὺς γὰρ ἡττημένους τοῖς νικῶσιν ἐξίστασθαι χώρας προσήκειν.

[5] ἐν δ’ Ὀλυμπίᾳ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ πολυθρύλητον ἐκεῖνον ἀναφθέγξασθαί [6] φασιν, ὡς τὸν Ὁμήρου Δία (Il. 1, 528 sq.) Φειδίας ἀποπλάσαιτο. τῶν δὲ δέκα πρέσβεων ἐκ Ῥώμης ἀφικομένων, Μακεδόσι μὲν ἀπέδωκε τὴν χώραν καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἐλευθέρας οἰκεῖν καὶ αὐτονόμους, ἑκατὸν τάλαντα Ῥωμαίοις ὑποτελοῦσιν, οὗ πλέον ἢ διπλάσιον τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν εἰσέφερον.

[7] θέας δὲ παντοδαπῶν ἀγώνων καὶ θυσίας ἐπιτελῶν τοῖς θεοῖς, ἑστιάσεις καὶ δεῖπνα προὔθετο, χορηγίᾳ μὲν ἐκ τῶν βασιλικῶν ἀφθόνῳ χρώμενος, τάξιν δὲ καὶ κόσμον καὶ κατακλίσεις καὶ δεξιώσεις καὶ τὴν πρὸς ἕκαστον αὑτοῦ τῆς κατ’ ἀξίαν τιμῆς καὶ φιλοφροσύνης αἴσθησιν οὕτως ἀκριβῆ [8] καὶ πεφροντισμένην ἐνδεικνύμενος, ὥστε θαυμάζειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, εἰ μηδὲ τὴν παιδιὰν ἄμοιρον ἀπολείπει σπουδῆς, ἀλλὰ τηλικαῦτα πράττων [9] ἀνὴρ πράγματα καὶ τοῖς μικροῖς τὸ πρέπον ἀποδίδωσιν. ὁ δὲ καὶ τούτοις ἔχαιρε, ‹καὶ› ὅτι πολλῶν παρεσκευασμένων καὶ λαμπρῶν τὸ ἥδιστον αὐτὸς ἦν ἀπόλαυσμα καὶ θέαμα τοῖς παροῦσι, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς θαυμάζοντας τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν ἔλεγε, τῆς αὐτῆς εἶναι ψυχῆς παρατάξεώς τε προστῆναι καλῶς καὶ συμποσίου, τῆς μὲν ὅπως φοβερωτάτη τοῖς πολεμίοις, τοῦ δ’ ὡς [10] εὐχαριστότατον ᾖ τοῖς συνοῦσιν. οὐδενὸς δ’ ἧττον αὐτοῦ τὴν ἐλευθεριότητα καὶ τὴν μεγαλοψυχίαν ἐπῄνουν οἱ ἄνθρωποι, πολὺ μὲν ἀργύριον πολὺ δὲ χρυσίον ἐκ τῶν βασιλικῶν ἠθροισμένον οὐδ’ ἰδεῖν ἐθελήσαντος, ἀλλὰ [11] τοῖς ταμίαις εἰς τὸ δημόσιον παραδόντος. μόνα τὰ βιβλία τοῦ βασιλέως φιλογραμματοῦσι τοῖς υἱέσιν ἐπέτρεψεν ἐξελέσθαι, καὶ διανέμων ἀριστεῖα τῆς μάχης Αἰλίῳ Τουβέρωνι τῷ γαμβρῷ φιάλην ἔδωκε πέντε λιτρῶν [12] ὁλκήν. οὗτός ἐστι Τουβέρων, ὃν ἔφαμεν (c. 5, 7) μετὰ συγγενῶν οἰκεῖν [13] ἑκκαιδέκατον, ἀπὸ γηδίου μικροῦ διατρεφομένων ἁπάντων. καὶ πρῶτον ἄργυρον ἐκεῖνόν φασιν εἰς τὸν Αἰλίων οἶκον εἰσελθεῖν, ὑπὲρ ἀρετῆς καὶ τιμῆς εἰσαγόμενον, τὸν δ’ ἄλλον χρόνον οὔτ’ αὐτοὺς οὔτε γυναῖκας ἀργύρου χρῄζειν ἢ χρυσοῦ.

[29] [1] Διῳκημένων δὲ πάντων αὐτῷ καλῶς, ἀσπασάμενος τοὺς Ἕλληνας, καὶ παρακαλέσας τοὺς Μακεδόνας μεμνῆσθαι τῆς δεδομένης ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ἐλευθερίας, σῴζοντας αὐτὴν δι’ εὐνομίας καὶ ὁμονοίας, ἀνέζευξεν ἐπὶ τὴν Ἤπειρον, ἔχων δόγμα συγκλήτου τοὺς συμμεμαχημένους αὐτῷ τὴν πρὸς Περσέα μάχην στρατιώτας ἀπὸ τῶν ἐκεῖ πόλεων ὠφελῆσαι.

[2] βουλόμενος δὲ πᾶσιν ἅμα καὶ μηδενὸς προσδοκῶντος ἀλλ’ ἐξαίφνης ἐπιπεσεῖν, μετεπέμψατο τοὺς πρώτους ἐξ ἑκάστης πόλεως ἄνδρας δέκα, καὶ προσέταξεν αὐτοῖς, ὅσος ἄργυρός ἐστι καὶ χρυσὸς ἐν οἰκίαις καὶ ἱεροῖς, [3] ἡμέρᾳ ῥητῇ καταφέρειν. ἑκάστοις δὲ συνέπεμψεν ὡς ἐπ’ αὐτὸ δὴ τοῦτο φρουρὰν στρατιωτῶν καὶ ταξίαρχον, προσποιούμενον ζητεῖν καὶ παραλαμβάνειν [4] τὸ χρυσίον. ἐνστάσης δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας, ὑφ’ ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν ἅμα καιρὸν ὁρμήσαντες ἐτράποντο πρὸς καταδρομὴν καὶ διαρπαγὴν τῶν πόλεων, ὥσθ’ ὥρᾳ μιᾷ πεντεκαίδεκα μὲν ἀνθρώπων ἐξανδραποδισθῆναι [5] μυριάδας, ἑβδομήκοντα δὲ πόλεις πορθηθῆναι, γενέσθαι δ’ ἀπὸ τοσαύτης φθορᾶς καὶ πανωλεθρίας ἑκάστῳ στρατιώτῃ τὴν δόσιν οὐ μείζον’ ἕνδεκα δραχμῶν, φρῖξαι δὲ πάντας ἀνθρώπους τὸ τοῦ πολέμου τέλος, εἰς μικρὸν οὕτω τὸ καθ’ ἕκαστον λῆμμα καὶ κέρδος ἔθνους ὅλου κατακερματισθέντος.

[30] [1] Αἰμίλιος μὲν οὖν τοῦτο πράξας μάλιστα παρὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν, [2] ἐπιεικῆ καὶ χρηστὴν οὖσαν, εἰς Ὠρικὸν κατέβη, κἀκεῖθεν εἰς Ἰταλίαν μετὰ τῶν δυνάμεων περαιωθείς, ἀνέπλει τὸν Θύβριν ποταμὸν ἐπὶ τῆς βασιλικῆς ἑκκαιδεκήρους, κατεσκευασμένης εἰς κόσμον ὅπλοις αἰχμαλώτοις [3] καὶ φοινικίσι καὶ πορφύραις ως καὶ πανηγυρ ἔξωθεν, ὥστε ‹τρόπ›ον τινὰ θριαμβι‹κῆς› πομπῆς προαπολαύειν τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, τῷ ῥοθίῳ σχέδην ὑπάγοντι τὴν ναῦν ἀντιπαρεξάγοντας.

[4] Οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται τοῖς βασιλικοῖς χρήμασιν ἐποφθαλμίσαντες, ὡς οὐχ ὅσων ἠξίουν ἔτυχον, ὠργίζοντο μὲν ἀδήλως διὰ τοῦτο καὶ χαλεπῶς εἶχον πρὸς τὸν Αἰμίλιον, αἰτιώμενοι δὲ φανερῶς ὅτι βαρὺς γένοιτο καὶ δεσποτικὸς αὐτοῖς ἄρχων, οὐ πάνυ προθύμως ἐπὶ τὴν ὑπὲρ τοῦ θριάμβου [5] σπουδὴν ἀπήντησαν. αἰσθόμενος δὲ τοῦτο Σέρβιος Γάλβας, ἐχθρὸς Αἰμιλίου, γεγονὼς δὲ τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτὸν χιλιάρχων, ἐθάρρησεν ἀναφανδὸν [6] εἰπεῖν ὡς οὐ δοτέον εἴη τὸν θρίαμβον. ἐνεὶς δὲ πολλὰς τῷ στρατιωτικῷ πλήθει διαβολὰς κατὰ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ, καὶ τὴν οὖσαν ὀργὴν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐξερεθίσας, ᾐτεῖτο παρὰ τῶν δημάρχων ἄλλην ἡμέραν· ἐκείνην γὰρ οὐκ [7] ἐξαρκεῖν τῇ κατηγορίᾳ, τέσσαρας ἔτι λοιπὰς ὥρας ἔχουσαν. τῶν δὲ δημάρχων λέγειν αὐτὸν εἴ τι βούλεται κελευόντων, ἀρξάμενος μακρῷ καὶ βλασφημίας ἔχοντι παντοδαπὰς χρῆσθαι λόγῳ, τὸν χρόνον ἀνήλωσε τῆς [8] ἡμέρας· καὶ γενομένου σκότους, οἱ μὲν δήμαρχοι τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἀφῆκαν, πρὸς δὲ τὸν Γάλβαν οἱ στρατιῶται συνέδραμον θρασύτεροι γεγονότες, καὶ συγκροτήσαντες αὑτοὺς περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον αὖθις καταλαμβάνονται τὸ Καπετώλιον· ἐκεῖ γὰρ οἱ δήμαρχοι τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἔμελλον ἄξειν.

[31] [1] Ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τῆς ψήφου δοθείσης, ἥ τε πρώτη φυλὴ τὸν θρίαμβον ἀπεψηφίζετο, καὶ τοῦ πράγματος αἴσθησις εἰς τὸν ἄλλον δῆμον καὶ τὴν [2] σύγκλητον κατῄει. καὶ τὸ μὲν πλῆθος ὑπεραλγοῦν τῷ προπηλακίζεσθαι τὸν Αἰμίλιον ἐν φωναῖς ἦν ἀπράκτοις, οἱ δὲ γνωριμώτατοι τῶν ἀπὸ βουλῆς, δεινὸν εἶναι τὸ γινόμενον βοῶντες, ἀλλήλους παρεκάλουν ἐπιλαβέσθαι τῆς τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀσελγείας καὶ θρασύτητος, ἐπὶ πᾶν ἀφιξομένης ἄνομον ἔργον καὶ βίαιον, εἰ μηδὲν ἐμποδὼν αὐτοῖς γένοιτο Παῦλον [3] Αἰμίλιον ἀφελέσθαι τῶν ἐπινικίων τιμῶν. ὠσάμενοι δὲ τὸν ὄχλον καὶ ἀναβάντες ἁθρόοι, τοῖς δημάρχοις ἔλεγον ἐπισχεῖν τὴν ψηφοφορίαν, ἄχρι [4] ἂν διαλεχθῶσιν ἃ βούλονται πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος. ἐπισχόντων δ’ αὐτῶν καὶ γενομένης σιωπῆς, ἀνελθὼν ἀνὴρ ὑπατικὸς καὶ πολεμίους εἴκοσι καὶ τρεῖς ἐκ προκλήσεως ἀνῃρηκώς, Μᾶρκος Σερβίλιος, Αἰμίλιον μὲν ἔφη Παῦλον ἡλίκος αὐτοκράτωρ γένοιτο νῦν μάλιστα γινώσκειν, ὁρῶν ὅσης ἀπειθείας γέμοντι καὶ κακίας στρατεύματι χρησάμενος οὕτω καλὰς [5] κατώρθωσε καὶ μεγάλας πράξεις· θαυμάζειν δὲ τὸν δῆμον, εἰ τοῖς ἀπ’ Ἰλλυριῶν καὶ Λιγύων ἀγαλλόμενος θριάμβοις αὑτῷ φθονεῖ τὸν Μακεδόνων βασιλέα ζῶντα καὶ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ Φιλίππου δόξαν ἐπιδεῖν [6] ὑπὸ τοῖς Ῥωμαίων ὅπλοις ἀγομένην αἰχμάλωτον. πῶς γὰρ οὐ δεινὸν εἶπεν, εἰ φήμης μὲν περὶ νίκης ἀβεβαίου πρότερον εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἐμπεσούσης ἐθύσατε τοῖς θεοῖς, εὐχόμενοι τοῦ λόγου τούτου ταχέως ἀπολαβεῖν τὴν ὄψιν, ἥκοντος δὲ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ μετὰ τῆς ἀληθινῆς νίκης ἀφαιρεῖσθε τῶν μὲν θεῶν τὴν τιμήν, αὑτῶν δὲ τὴν χαράν, ὡς φοβούμενοι θεάσασθαι τὸ μέγεθος τῶν κατορθωμάτων, ἢ φειδόμενοι τοῦ πολεμίου βασιλέως· καίτοι κρεῖττον ἦν τῷ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἐλέῳ, μὴ τῷ πρὸς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα [7] φθόνῳ λυθῆναι τὸν θρίαμβον. ἀλλ’ εἰς τοσαύτην ἔφη τὸ κακόηθες ἐξουσίαν προάγεται δι’ ὑμῶν, ὥστε περὶ στρατηγίας καὶ θριάμβου τολμᾷ λέγειν ἄνθρωπος ἄτρωτος καὶ τῷ σώματι στίλβων ὑπὸ λειότητος καὶ σκιατραφίας πρὸς ἡμᾶς τοὺς τοσούτοις τραύμασι πεπαιδευμένους ἀρετὰς [8] καὶ κακίας κρίνειν στρατηγῶν. ἅμα δὲ τῆς ἐσθῆτος διασχών, ἐξέφηνε κατὰ τῶν στέρνων ὠτειλὰς ἀπίστους τὸ πλῆθος. εἶτα μεταστραφεὶς ἔνια τῶν οὐκ εὐπρεπῶς ἐν ὄχλῳ γυμνοῦσθαι δοκούντων τοῦ σώματος ἀνεκά[9]λυψε, καὶ πρὸς τὸν Γάλβαν ἐπιστρέψας· σὺ μὲν ἔφη, γελᾷς ἐπὶ τούτοις, ἐγὼ δὲ σεμνύνομαι πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας· ὑπὲρ τούτων γὰρ ἡμέραν [10] καὶ νύκτα συνεχῶς ἱππασάμενος ταῦτ’ ἔσχον. ἀλλ’ ἄγε λαβὼν αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ τὴν ψῆφον· ἐγὼ δὲ καταβὰς παρακολουθήσω πᾶσι, καὶ γνώσομαι τοὺς κακοὺς καὶ ἀχαρίστους καὶ δημαγωγεῖσθαι μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις ἢ στρατηγεῖσθαι βουλομένους.

[32] [1] Οὕτω φασὶν ὑπὸ τῶν λόγων τούτων ἀνακοπῆναι καὶ μεταβαλεῖν τὸ στρατιωτικόν, ὥστε πάσαις ταῖς ἐπικυρωθῆναι τῷ Αἰμιλίῳ τὸν θρίαμβον.

[2] Πεμφθῆναι δ’ αὐτὸν οὕτω λέγουσιν. ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἔν τε τοῖς ἱππικοῖς θεάτροις, ἃ κίρκους καλοῦσι, περί τε τὴν ἀγορὰν ἰκρία πηξάμενοι, καὶ τἆλλα τῆς πόλεως μέρη καταλαβόντες, ὡς ἕκαστα παρεῖχε τῆς πομπῆς [3] ἔποψιν, ἐθεῶντο, καθαραῖς ἐσθῆσι κεκοσμημένοι. πᾶς δὲ ναὸς ἀνέῳκτο καὶ στεφάνων καὶ θυμιαμάτων ἦν πλήρης, ὑπηρέται τε πολλοὶ καὶ ῥαβδονόμοι τοὺς ἀτάκτως συρρέοντας εἰς τὸ μέσον καὶ διαθέοντας ἐξείργοντες, [4] ἀναπεπταμένας τὰς ὁδοὺς καὶ καθαρὰς παρεῖχον. τῆς δὲ πομπῆς εἰς ἡμέρας τρεῖς νενεμημένης, ἡ μὲν πρώτη μόλις ἐξαρκέσασα τοῖς αἰχμαλώτοις ἀνδριάσι καὶ γραφαῖς καὶ κολοσσοῖς, ἐπὶ ζευγῶν πεντήκοντα καὶ [5] διακοσίων κομιζομένοις, τούτων ἔσχε θέαν. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ πολυτελέστατα τῶν Μακεδονικῶν ὅπλων ἐπέμπετο πολλαῖς ἁμάξαις, αὐτά τε μαρμαίροντα χαλκῷ νεοσμήκτῳ καὶ σιδήρῳ, τήν τε θέσιν ἐκ τέχνης καὶ συναρμογῆς, ὡς ἂν μάλιστα συμπεφορημένοις χύδην καὶ αὐτομάτως [6] ἐοίκοι, πεποιημένα, κράνη πρὸς ἀσπίσι, καὶ θώρακες ἐπὶ κνημῖσι, καὶ Κρητικαὶ πέλται καὶ Θρᾴκια γέρρα καὶ φαρέτραι μεθ’ ἱππικῶν ἀναμεμειγμέναι χαλινῶν, καὶ ξίφη γυμνὰ διὰ τούτων παρανίσχοντα καὶ σάρισαι [7] παραπεπηγυῖαι, σύμμετρον ἐχόντων χάλασμα τῶν ὅπλων, ὥστε τὴν πρὸς ἄλληλα κροῦσιν ἐν τῷ διαφέρεσθαι τραχὺ καὶ φοβερὸν ὑπηχεῖν, καὶ [8] μηδὲ νενικημένων ἄφοβον εἶναι τὴν ὄψιν. μετὰ δὲ τὰς ὁπλοφόρους ἁμάξας ἄνδρες [ἐπ]ἐπορεύοντο τρισχίλιοι, νόμισμα φέροντες ἀργυροῦν ἐν ἀγγείοις ἑπτακοσίοις πεντήκοντα τριταλάντοις, ὧν ἕκαστον ἀνὰ τέσσαρες ἐκόμιζον· [9] ἄλλοι δὲ κρατῆρας ἀργυροῦς καὶ κέρατα καὶ φιάλας καὶ κύλικας, εὖ διακεκοσμημένα πρὸς θέαν ἕκαστα καὶ περιττὰ τῷ μεγέθει καὶ τῇ παχύτητι τῆς τορείας.

[33] [1] Τῆς δὲ τρίτης ἡμέρας ἕωθεν μὲν εὐθὺς ἐπορεύοντο σαλπιγκταί, μέλος οὐ προσόδιον καὶ πομπικόν, ἀλλ’ οἵῳ μαχομένους ἐποτρύνουσιν [2] αὑτοὺς Ῥωμαῖοι, προσεγκελευόμενοι. μετὰ δὲ τούτους ἤγοντο χρυσόκερῳ τροφίαι βοῦς ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι, μίτραις ἠσκημένοι καὶ στέμμασιν· οἱ δ’ ἄγοντες αὐτοὺς νεανίσκοι περιζώμασιν εὐπαρύφοις ἐσταλμένοι πρὸς ἱερουργίαν [3] ἐχώρουν, καὶ παῖδες ἀργυρᾶ λοιβεῖα καὶ χρυσᾶ κομίζοντες. εἶτα μετὰ τούτους οἱ τὸ χρυσοῦν νόμισμα φέροντες, εἰς ἀγγεῖα τριταλαντιαῖα μεμερισμένον ὁμοίως τῷ ἀργυρῷ· τὸ δὲ πλῆθος ἦν τῶν ἀγγείων ὀγδοήκοντα [4] τριῶν δέοντα. τούτοις ἐπέβαλλον οἵ τε τὴν ἱερὰν φιάλην ἀνέχοντες, ἣν ὁ Αἰμίλιος ἐκ χρυσοῦ δέκα ταλάντων διάλιθον κατεσκεύασεν, οἵ τε τὰς Ἀντιγονίδας καὶ Σελευκίδας καὶ Θηρικλείους καὶ ὅσα περὶ δεῖπνον [5] χρυσώματα τοῦ Περσέως ἐπιδεικνύμενοι. τούτοις ἐπέβαλλε τὸ ἅρμα τοῦ [6] Περσέως καὶ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τὸ διάδημα τοῖς ὅπλοις ἐπικείμενον. εἶτα μικροῦ διαλείμματος ὄντος ἤδη τὰ τέκνα τοῦ βασιλέως ἤγετο δοῦλα, καὶ σὺν αὐτοῖς τροφέων καὶ διδασκάλων καὶ παιδαγωγῶν δεδακρυμένων ὄχλος, αὐτῶν τε τὰς χεῖρας ὀρεγόντων εἰς τοὺς θεατάς, καὶ τὰ παιδία δεῖσθαι καὶ [7] λιτανεύειν διδασκόντων. ἦν δ’ ἄρρενα μὲν δύο, θῆλυ δ’ ἕν, οὐ πάνυ συμφρονοῦντα [8] τῶν κακῶν τὸ μέγεθος διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν· ᾗ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐλεεινὰ πρὸς τὴν μεταβολὴν τῆς ἀναισθησίας ἦν, ὥστε μικροῦ τὸν Περσέα βαδίζειν [9] παρορώμενον· οὕτως ὑπ’ οἴκτου τοῖς νηπίοις προσεῖχον τὰς ὄψεις οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, καὶ δάκρυα πολλοῖς ἐκβάλλειν συνέβη, πᾶσι δὲ μεμειγμένην ἀλγηδόνι καὶ χάριτι τὴν θέαν εἶναι, μέχρι οὗ τὰ παιδία παρῆλθεν.

[34] [1] Αὐτὸς δὲ τῶν τέκνων ὁ Περσεὺς καὶ τῆς περὶ αὐτὰ θεραπείας κατόπιν ἐπορεύετο, φαιὸν μὲν ἱμάτιον ἀμπεχόμενος καὶ κρηπῖδας ἔχων ἐπιχωρίους, ὑπὸ δὲ μεγέθους τῶν κακῶν πάντα θαμβοῦντι καὶ παραπεπληγμένῳ [2] μάλιστα τὸν λογισμὸν ἐοικώς. καὶ τούτῳ δ’ εἵπετο χορὸς φίλων καὶ συνήθων, βεβαρημένων τὰ πρόσωπα πένθει, καὶ τῷ πρὸς Περσέα βλέπειν ἀεὶ καὶ δακρύειν ἔννοιαν παριστάντων τοῖς θεωμένοις, ὅτι τὴν ἐκείνου τύχην ὀλοφύρονται, τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἐλάχιστα φροντίζοντες.

[3] Καίτοι προσέπεμψε τῷ Αἰμιλίῳ, δεόμενος μὴ πομπευθῆναι καὶ παραιτούμενος τὸν θρίαμβον. ὁ δὲ τῆς ἀνανδρίας αὐτοῦ καὶ φιλοψυχίας ὡς ἔοικε καταγελῶν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτό γ’ εἶπε καὶ πρότερον ἦν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ, καὶ νῦν [4] ἐστιν ἂν βούληται, δηλῶν τὸν πρὸ αἰσχύνης θάνατον, ὃν οὐχ ὑπομείνας ὁ δείλαιος, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ἐλπίδων τινῶν ἀπομαλακισθείς, ἐγεγόνει μέρος τῶν αὑτοῦ λαφύρων.

[5] Ἐφεξῆς δὲ τούτοις ἐκομίζοντο χρυσοῖ στέφανοι τετρακόσιοι τὸ πλῆθος, οὓς αἱ πόλεις ἀριστεῖα τῆς νίκης τῷ Αἰμιλίῳ μετὰ πρεσβειῶν ἔπεμψαν· [6] εἶτ’ αὐτὸς ἐπέβαλλεν, ἅρματι κεκοσμημένῳ διαπρεπῶς ἐπιβεβηκώς, ἀνὴρ καὶ δίχα τοσαύτης ἐξουσίας ἀξιοθέατος, ἁλουργίδα χρυσόπαστον ἀμπεχόμενος [7] καὶ δάφνης κλῶνα τῇ δεξιᾷ προτείνων. ἐδαφνηφόρει δὲ καὶ σύμπας ὁ στρατός, τῷ μὲν ἅρματι τοῦ στρατηγοῦ κατὰ λόχους καὶ τάξεις ἑπόμενος, ᾄδων δὲ τὰ μὲν ᾠδάς τινας πατρίους ἀναμεμειγμένας γέλωτι, τὰ δὲ παιᾶνας ἐπινικίους καὶ τῶν διαπεπραγμένων ἐπαίνους εἰς τὸν Αἰμίλιον, περίβλεπτον ὄντα καὶ ζηλωτὸν ὑπὸ πάντων, οὐδενὶ δὲ τῶν ἀγαθῶν [8] ἐπίφθονον, πλὴν εἴ τι δαιμόνιον ἄρα τῶν μεγάλων καὶ ὑπερόγκων εἴληχεν εὐτυχιῶν ἀπαρύτειν καὶ μειγνύναι τὸν ἀνθρώπινον βίον, ὅπως μηδενὶ κακῶν ἄκρατος εἴη καὶ καθαρός, ἀλλὰ καθ’ Ὅμηρον (Il. 24, 525533) ἄριστα δοκῶσι πράττειν, οἷς αἱ τύχαι ῥοπὴν ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα τῶν πραγμάτων ἔχουσιν.

[35] [1] Ἦσαν γὰρ αὐτῷ τέσσαρες υἱοί, δύο μὲν εἰς ἑτέρας ἀπῳκισμένοι συγγενείας, ὡς ἤδη λέλεκται (c. 5, 5), Σκιπίων καὶ Φάβιος, δύο δὲ παῖδες ἔτι τὴν ἡλικίαν, οὓς ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας εἶχε τῆς ἑαυτοῦ, γεγονότας ἐξ ἑτέρας [2] γυναικός. ὧν ὁ μὲν ἡμέραις πέντε πρὸ τοῦ θριαμβεῦσαι τὸν Αἰμίλιον ἐτελεύτησε τεσσαρεσκαιδεκέτης, ὁ δὲ δωδεκέτης μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας θριαμβεύσαντος [3] ἐπαπέθανεν, ὥστε μηδένα γενέσθαι Ῥωμαίων τοῦ πάθους ἀνάλγητον, ἀλλὰ φρῖξαι τὴν ὠμότητα τῆς τύχης ἅπαντας, ὡς οὐκ ᾐδέσατο πένθος τοσοῦτον εἰς οἰκίαν ζήλου καὶ χαρᾶς καὶ θυσιῶν γέμουσαν εἰσάγουσα, καὶ καταμειγνύουσα θρήνους καὶ δάκρυα παιᾶσιν ἐπινικίοις καὶ θριάμβοις.

[36] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὁ Αἰμίλιος, ὀρθῶς λογιζόμενος ἀνδρείας καὶ θαρραλεότητος ἀνθρώποις οὐ πρὸς ὅπλα καὶ σαρίσας χρῆσιν εἶναι μόνον, ἀλλὰ πρὸς πᾶσαν ὁμαλῶς τύχης ἀντίστασιν, οὕτως ἡρμόσατο καὶ κατεκόσμησε τὴν τῶν παρόντων σύγκρασιν, ὥστε τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς τὰ φαῦλα καὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα τοῖς δημοσίοις ἐναφανισθέντα μὴ ταπεινῶσαι τὸ μέγεθος μηδὲ καθυβρίσαι [2] τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς νίκης. τὸν μὲν γὰρ πρότερον τῶν παίδων ἀποθανόντα θάψας εὐθὺς ἐθριάμβευσεν, ὡς λέλεκται· τοῦ δὲ δευτέρου μετὰ τὸν θρίαμβον τελευτήσαντος, συναγαγὼν εἰς ἐκκλησίαν τὸν Ῥωμαίων δῆμον, ἐχρήσατο λόγοις ἀνδρὸς οὐ δεομένου παραμυθίας, ἀλλὰ παραμυθουμένου [3] τοὺς πολίτας, δυσπαθοῦντας ἐφ’ οἷς ἐκεῖνος ἐδυστύχησεν. ἔφη γάρ, ὅτι τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων οὐδὲν οὐδέποτε δείσας, τῶν δὲ θείων ὡς ἀπιστότατον καὶ ποικιλώτατον πρᾶγμα τὴν Τύχην ἀεὶ φοβηθείς, μάλιστα περὶ τοῦτον αὐτῆς τὸν πόλεμον ὥσπερ πνεύματος λαμπροῦ ταῖς πράξεσι παρούσης, [4] διατελοίη μεταβολήν τινα καὶ παλίρροιαν προσδεχόμενος. μιᾷ μὲν γὰρ εἶπεν ἡμέρᾳ τὸν Ἰόνιον ἀπὸ Βρεντεσίου περάσας, εἰς Κέρκυραν κατήχθην· πεμπταῖος δ’ ἐκεῖθεν ἐν Δελφοῖς τῷ θεῷ θύσας, ἑτέραις αὖθις αὖ πέντε τὴν δύναμιν ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ παρέλαβον, καὶ τὸν εἰωθότα συντελέσας καθαρμὸν αὐτῆς καὶ τῶν πράξεων εὐθὺς ἐναρξάμενος, ἐν ἡμέραις ἄλλαις [5] πεντεκαίδεκα τὸ κάλλιστον ἐπέθηκα τῷ πολέμῳ τέλος. ἀπιστῶν δὲ τῇ Τύχῃ διὰ τὴν εὔροιαν τῶν πραγμάτων, ὡς ἄδεια πολλὴ καὶ κίνδυνος οὐδεὶς ἦν ἀπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, μάλιστα κατὰ πλοῦν ἐδεδίειν τὴν μεταβολὴν τοῦ δαίμονος ἐπ’ εὐτυχίᾳ ‹τοσαύτῃ›, τοσοῦτον στρατὸν νενικηκότα καὶ λάφυρα [6] καὶ βασιλεῖς αἰχμαλώτους κομίζων. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ σωθεὶς πρὸς ὑμᾶς, καὶ τὴν πόλιν ὁρῶν εὐφροσύνης καὶ ζήλου καὶ θυσιῶν γέμουσαν, ἔτι τὴν Τύχην δι’ ὑποψίας εἶχον, εἰδὼς οὐδὲν εἰλικρινὲς οὐδ’ ἀνεμέσητον ἀνθρώποις [7] τῶν μεγάλων χαριζομένην. καὶ τοῦτον οὐ πρότερον ἡ ψυχὴ τὸν φόβον ὠδίνουσα καὶ περισκοπουμένη τὸ μέλλον ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως ἀφῆκεν, ἢ τηλικαύτῃ με προσπταῖσαι δυστυχίᾳ περὶ τὸν οἶκον, υἱῶν ἀρίστων, οὓς ἐμαυτῷ μόνους ἐλιπόμην διαδόχους, ταφὰς ἐπαλλήλους ἐν ἡμέραις ἱεραῖς [8] μεταχειρισάμενον. νῦν οὖν ἀκίνδυνός εἰμι τὰ μέγιστα καὶ θαρρῶ, καὶ νομίζω [9] τὴν Τύχην ὑμῖν παραμενεῖν ἀβλαβῆ καὶ βέβαιον. ἱκανῶς γὰρ ἐμοὶ καὶ τοῖς ἐμοῖς κακοῖς εἰς τὴν τῶν κατωρθωμένων ἀποκέχρηται νέμεσιν, οὐκ ἀφανέστερον ἔχουσα παράδειγμα τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ἀσθενείας τοῦ θριαμβευομένου τὸν θριαμβεύοντα· πλὴν ὅτι Περσεὺς μὲν ἔχει καὶ νενικημένος τοὺς παῖδας, Αἰμίλιος δὲ τοὺς αὑτοῦ νικήσας ἀπέβαλεν.

[37] [1] Οὕτω μὲν εὐγενεῖς καὶ μεγάλους λόγους τὸν Αἰμίλιον ἐξ ἀπλάστου [2] καὶ ἀληθινοῦ φρονήματος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ διαλεχθῆναι λέγουσι. τῷ δὲ Περσεῖ, καίπερ οἰκτίρας τὴν μεταβολὴν καὶ μάλα βοηθῆσαι προθυμηθείς, οὐδὲν εὕρετο πλὴν μεταστάσεως ἐκ τοῦ καλουμένου κάρκερε παρ’ αὐτοῖς εἰς τόπον καθαρὸν καὶ φιλανθρωποτέραν δίαιταν, ὅπου φρουρούμενος, ὡς μὲν οἱ πλεῖστοι γεγράφασιν, ἀπεκαρτέρησεν, ἔνιοι δὲ τῆς τελευτῆς ἴδιόν τινα [3] καὶ παρηλλαγμένον τρόπον ἱστοροῦσι. μεμψαμένους γάρ τι καὶ θυμωθέντας αὐτῷ τοὺς περὶ τὸ σῶμα στρατιώτας, ὡς ἕτερον οὐδὲν ἠδύναντο λυπεῖν καὶ κακοῦν αὐτόν, ἐξείργειν τῶν ὕπνων, καὶ προσέχοντας ἀκριβῶς ἐνίστασθαι ταῖς καταφοραῖς καὶ συνέχειν ἐγρηγορότα πάσῃ μηχανῇ, [4] μέχρι οὗ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ἐκπονηθεὶς ἐτελεύτησεν. ἐτελεύτησε δὲ καὶ τῶν παιδίων τὰ δύο· τὸν δὲ τρίτον, Ἀλέξανδρον, εὐφυᾶ μὲν ἐν τῷ τορεύειν καὶ λεπτουργεῖν γενέσθαι φασίν, ἐκμαθόντα δὲ τὰ Ῥωμαϊκὰ γράμματα καὶ τὴν διάλεκτον, ὑπογραμματεύειν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν, ἐπιδέξιον καὶ χαρίεντα περὶ ταύτην τὴν ὑπηρεσίαν ἐξεταζόμενον.

[38] [1] Ταῖς δὲ Μακεδονικαῖς πράξεσι τοῦ Αἰμιλίου δημοτικωτάτην προσγράφουσι χάριν ὑπὲρ τῶν πολλῶν, ὡς τοσούτων εἰς τὸ δημόσιον τότε χρημάτων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τεθέντων, ὥστε μηκέτι δεῆσαι τὸν δῆμον εἰσενεγκεῖν ἄχρι τῶν Ἱρτίου καὶ Πάνσα χρόνων, οἳ περὶ τὸν πρῶτον Ἀντωνίου [2] καὶ Καίσαρος πόλεμον ὑπάτευσαν. κἀκεῖνο δ’ ἴδιον καὶ περιττὸν τοῦ Αἰμιλίου, τὸ σπουδαζόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου καὶ τιμώμενον διαφερόντως ἐπὶ τῆς ἀριστοκρατικῆς μεῖναι προαιρέσεως καὶ μηδὲν εἰπεῖν μηδὲ πρᾶξαι χάριτι τῶν πολλῶν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς πρώτοις καὶ κρατίστοις ἀεὶ συνεξετάζεσθαι [3] περὶ τὴν πολιτείαν. ὃ καὶ χρόνοις ὕστερον Ἄππιος ὠνείδισεν Ἀφρικανῷ Σκιπίωνι. μέγιστοι γὰρ ὄντες ἐν τῇ πόλει τότε τὴν τιμητικὴν ἀρχὴν μετῄεσαν, ὁ μὲν τὴν βουλὴν ἔχων καὶ τοὺς ἀρίστους περὶ αὑτόν (αὕτη γὰρ Ἀππίοις ἡ πολιτεία πάτριος), ὁ δὲ μέγας μὲν ὢν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ, μεγάλῃ [4] δ’ ἀεὶ τῇ παρὰ τοῦ δήμου χάριτι καὶ σπουδῇ κεχρημένος. ὡς οὖν ἐμβάλλοντος εἰς ἀγορὰν τοῦ Σκιπίωνος κατεῖδε παρὰ πλευρὰν ὁ Ἄππιος ἀνθρώπους ἀγεννεῖς καὶ δεδουλευκότας, ἀγοραίους δὲ καὶ δυναμένους ὄχλον συναγαγεῖν καὶ σπουδαρχίᾳ καὶ κραυγῇ πάντα πράγματα βιάσασθαι, [5] μέγα βοήσας ὦ Παῦλε εἶπεν Αἰμίλιε, στέναξον ὑπὸ γῆς, αἰσθόμενος ὅτι σου τὸν υἱὸν Αἰμίλιος ὁ κῆρυξ καὶ Λικίννιος Φιλόνικος ἐπὶ τιμητείαν [6] κατάγουσιν. ἀλλὰ Σκιπίων μὲν αὔξων τὰ πλεῖστα τὸν δῆμον εὔνουν εἶχεν, Αἰμίλιος δὲ καίπερ ὢν ἀριστοκρατικὸς οὐδὲν ἧττον ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν ἠγαπᾶτο τοῦ μάλιστα δημαγωγεῖν καὶ πρὸς χάριν ὁμιλεῖν τοῖς πολλοῖς [7] δοκοῦντος. ἐδήλωσαν δὲ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων καλῶν καὶ τιμητείας αὐτὸν ἀξιώσαντες, ἥτις ἐστὶν ἀρχὴ πασῶν ἱερωτάτη καὶ δυναμένη μέγα πρός τε [8] τἆλλα καὶ πρὸς ἐξέτασιν βίων. ἐκβαλεῖν τε γὰρ ἔξεστι συγκλήτου τὸν ἀπρεπῶς ζῶντα τοῖς τιμηταῖς καὶ προγράψαι τὸν ἄριστον, ἵππου τ’ ἀφαιρέσει τῶν νέων ἀτιμάσαι τὸν ἀκολασταίνοντα, καὶ τῶν οὐσιῶν οὗτοι τὰ [9] τιμήματα καὶ τὰς ἀπογραφὰς ἐπισκοποῦσιν. ἀπεγράψαντο μὲν οὖν κατ’ αὐτὸν μυριάδες ἀνθρώπων τριάκοντα τρεῖς, ἔτι δ’ ἑπτακισχίλιοι τετρακόσιοι πεντήκοντα δύο, τῆς δὲ βουλῆς προέγραψε μὲν Μᾶρκον Αἰμίλιον Λέπιδον, ἤδη τετράκις καρπούμενον ταύτην τὴν προεδρίαν, ἐξέβαλε δὲ τρεῖς συγκλητικοὺς οὐ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν, καὶ περὶ τὴν τῶν ἱππέων ἐξέτασιν ὁμοίως ἐμετρίασεν αὐτός τε καὶ Μάρκιος Φίλιππος ὁ συνάρχων αὐτοῦ.

[39] [1] Διῳκημένων δὲ τῶν πλείστων καὶ μεγίστων, ἐνόσησε νόσον ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν ἐπισφαλῆ, χρόνῳ δ’ ἀκίνδυνον, ἐργώδη δὲ καὶ δυσαπάλλακτον [2] γενομένην. ἐπεὶ δὲ πεισθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν ἰατρῶν ἔπλευσεν εἰς Ἐλέαν τῆς Ἰταλίας καὶ διέτριβεν αὐτόθι πλείω χρόνον ἐν παραλίοις ἀγροῖς καὶ πολλὴν ἡσυχίαν ἔχουσιν, ἐπόθησαν αὐτὸν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, καὶ φωνὰς πολλάκις ἐν [3] θεάτροις οἷον εὐχόμενοι καὶ σπεύδοντες ἰδεῖν ἀφῆκαν. οὔσης δέ τινος ἱερουργίας ἀναγκαίας, ἤδη δὲ καὶ δοκοῦντος ἱκανῶς ἔχειν αὐτῷ τοῦ σώματος, [4] ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς Ῥώμην. κἀκείνην μὲν ἔθυσε μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων τὴν θυσίαν ἱερέων, ἐπιφανῶς τοῦ δήμου περικεχυμένου καὶ χαίροντος· τῇ [5] δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ πάλιν ἔθυσεν αὐτὸς ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ σωτήρια τοῖς θεοῖς. καὶ συμπερανθείσης ὡς προῄρητο τῆς θυσίας, ὑποστρέψας οἴκαδε καὶ κατακλιθείς, πρὶν αἰσθέσθαι καὶ νοῆσαι τὴν μεταβολήν, ἐν ἐκστάσει καὶ παραφορᾷ τῆς διανοίας γενόμενος, τριταῖος ἐτελεύτησεν, οὐδενὸς ἐνδεὴς οὐδ’ ἀτελὴς [6] τῶν πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν νενομισμένων γενόμενος. καὶ γὰρ ἡ περὶ τὴν ἐκφορὰν πομπὴ θαυμασμὸν ἔσχε καὶ ζῆλον, ἐπικοσμοῦντα τὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ [7] ἀνδρὸς τοῖς ἀρίστοις καὶ μακαριωτάτοις ἐνταφίοις. ταῦτα δ’ ἦν οὐ χρυσὸς οὐδ’ ἐλέφας οὐδ’ ἡ λοιπὴ πολυτέλεια καὶ φιλοτιμία τῆς παρασκευῆς, ἀλλ’ εὔνοια καὶ τιμὴ καὶ χάρις οὐ μόνον παρὰ τῶν πολιτῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν [8] πολεμίων. ὅσοι γοῦν κατὰ τύχην παρῆσαν Ἰβήρων καὶ Λιγύων καὶ Μακεδόνων, οἱ μὲν ἰσχυροὶ τὰ σώματα καὶ νέοι διαλαβόντες τὸ λέχος ὑπέδυσαν καὶ παρεκόμιζον, οἱ δὲ πρεσβύτεροι συνηκολούθουν, ἀνακαλούμενοι [9] τὸν Αἰμίλιον εὐεργέτην καὶ σωτῆρα τῶν πατρίδων. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐν οἷς ἐκράτησε καιροῖς ἠπίως πᾶσι καὶ φιλανθρώπως ἀπηλλάγη χρησάμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρὰ πάντα τὸν λοιπὸν βίον ἀεί τι πράττων ἀγαθὸν αὐτοῖς καὶ κηδόμενος ὥσπερ οἰκείων καὶ συγγενῶν διετέλεσε.

[10] Τὴν δ’ οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ μόλις ἑπτὰ καὶ τριάκοντα μυριάδων γενέσθαι λέγουσιν· ἧς αὐτὸς μὲν ἀμφοτέρους τοὺς υἱοὺς ἀπέλιπε κληρονόμους, ὁ δὲ νεώτερος Σκιπίων τῷ ἀδελφῷ πᾶσαν ἔχειν συνεχώρησεν, αὐτὸς εἰς οἶκον [11] εὐπορώτερον τὸν Ἀφρικανοῦ δεδομένος. ‹τοι›οῦτος μὲν ὁ Παύλου Αἰμιλίου τρόπος καὶ βίος λέγεται γενέσθαι.

Comparison Aemilii Paulli et Timoleontis

[1] [1] Τοιούτων δὲ τῶν κατὰ τὴν ἱστορίαν ὄντων, δῆλον ὡς οὐκ ἔχει [2] πολλὰς διαφορὰς οὐδ’ ἀνομοιότητας ἡ σύγκρισις. οἵ τε γὰρ πόλεμοι πρὸς ἐνδόξους γεγόνασιν ἀμφοτέροις ἀνταγωνιστάς, τῷ μὲν Μακεδόνας, τῷ δὲ Καρχηδονίους, αἵ τε νῖκαι περιβόητοι, τοῦ μὲν ἑλόντος Μακεδονίαν καὶ τὴν ἀπ’ Ἀντιγόνου διαδοχὴν ἐν ἑβδόμῳ βασιλεῖ καταπαύσαντος, τοῦ δὲ τὰς τυραννίδας πάσας ἀνελόντος ἐκ Σικελίας καὶ τὴν νῆσον ἐλευθερώσαντος· [3] εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία βούλοιτό τις παρεγχειρεῖν, ὡς Αἰμίλιος μὲν ἐρρωμένῳ Περσεῖ καὶ Ῥωμαίους νενικηκότι, Τιμολέων δὲ Διονυσίῳ παντάπασιν [4] ἀπειρηκότι καὶ κατατετριμμένῳ συνέπεσε· καὶ πάλιν ὑπὲρ Τιμολέοντος, ὅτι πολλοὺς μὲν τυράννους, μεγάλην δὲ τὴν Καρχηδονίων δύναμιν ἀπὸ τῆς τυχούσης στρατιᾶς ἐνίκησεν, οὐχ ὥσπερ Αἰμίλιος ἀνδράσιν ἐμπειροπολέμοις καὶ μεμαθηκόσιν ἄρχεσθαι χρώμενος, ἀλλὰ μισθοφόροις οὖσι καὶ [5] στρατιώταις ἀτάκτοις, πρὸς ἡδονὴν εἰθισμένοις στρατεύεσθαι. τὰ γὰρ ἀπ’ οὐκ ἴσης παρασκευῆς ἴσα κατορθώματα τῷ στρατηγῷ τὴν αἰτίαν περιτίθησι.

[2] [1] Καθαρῶν οὖν καὶ δικαίων ἐν τοῖς πράγμασιν ἀμφοτέρων γεγονότων, Αἰμίλιος μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν νόμων καὶ τῆς πατρίδος οὕτως ἔοικεν εὐθὺς ἀφικέσθαι παρεσκευασμένος, Τιμολέων δὲ τοιοῦτον αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν παρέσχε.

[2] τούτου τεκμήριον, ὅτι Ῥωμαῖοι μὲν ὁμαλῶς ἐν τῷ τότε χρόνῳ πάντες ἦσαν εὔτακτοι καὶ ὑποχείριοι τοῖς ἐθισμοῖς, καὶ τοὺς νόμους δεδιότες καὶ τοὺς ἄρχοντας, Ἑλλήνων δ’ οὐδεὶς ἡγεμών ἐστιν οὐδὲ στρατηγός, ὃς οὐ [3] διεφθάρη τότε Σικελίας ἁψάμενος, ἔξω Δίωνος. καίτοι ‹καὶ› Δίωνα πολλοὶ μοναρχίας ὀρέγεσθαι καὶ βασιλείαν τινὰ Λακωνικὴν ὀνειροπολεῖν [4] ὑπενόουν. Τίμαιος (FGrH 566 F 100c) δὲ καὶ Γύλιππον ἀκλεῶς φησι καὶ ἀτίμως ἀποπέμψαι Συρακοσίους, φιλοπλουτίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀπληστίαν ἐν [5] τῇ στρατηγίᾳ κατεγνωκότας. ἃ δὲ Φάραξ ὁ Σπαρτιάτης καὶ Κάλλιππος ὁ Ἀθηναῖος ἐλπίσαντες ἄρξειν Σικελίας παρενόμησαν καὶ παρεσπόνδησαν, [6] ὑπὸ πολλῶν ἀναγέγραπται. καίτοι τίνες ἢ πηλίκων κύριοι πραγμάτων ὄντες οὗτοι τοιαῦτ’ ἤλπισαν; ὧν ὁ μὲν ἐκπεπτωκότα Συρακουσῶν ἐθεράπευε [7] Διονύσιον, Κάλλιππος δ’ εἷς ἦν τῶν περὶ Δίωνα ξεναγῶν. ἀλλὰ Τιμολέων αἰτησαμένοις καὶ δεηθεῖσιν αὐτοκράτωρ πεμφθεὶς Συρακοσίοις, καὶ δύναμιν οὐ ζητῶν, ἀλλ’ ἔχειν ὀφείλων ἣν ἔλαβε βουλομένων καὶ διδόντων, πέρας ἐποιήσατο τῆς αὑτοῦ στρατηγίας καὶ ἀρχῆς τὴν τῶν παρὰ νόμον [8] ἀρχόντων κατάλυσιν. ἐκεῖνο μέντοι τοῦ Αἰμιλίου θαυμαστόν, ὅτι τηλικαύτην βασιλείαν καταστρεψάμενος οὐδὲ δραχμῇ μείζονα τὴν οὐσίαν ἐποίησεν οὐδ’ εἶδεν οὐδ’ ἥψατο τῶν χρημάτων, καίτοι πολλὰ δοὺς ἑτέροις [9] καὶ δωρησάμενος. οὐ λέγω δ’ ὅτι Τιμολέων μεμπτός ἐστιν οἰκίαν τε καλὴν λαβὼν καὶ χωρίον· οὐ γὰρ τὸ λαβεῖν ἐκ τοιούτων αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ τὸ μὴ λαβεῖν κρεῖττον, καὶ περιουσία τις ἀρετῆς ἐν οἷς ἔξεστιν ἐπιδεικνυμένης τὸ [10] μὴ δεόμενον. ἐπεὶ δ’, ὡς σώματος ῥῖγος ἢ θάλπος φέρειν δυναμένου τὸ πρὸς ἀμφοτέρας εὖ πεφυκὸς ὁμοῦ τὰς μεταβολὰς ῥωμαλεώτερον, οὕτω ψυχῆς ἄκρατος εὐρωστία καὶ ἰσχύς, ἣν οὔτε τὸ εὐτυχεῖν ὕβρει θρύπτει καὶ ἀνίησιν οὔτε συμφοραὶ ταπεινοῦσι, φαίνεται τελειότερος ὁ Αἰμίλιος, ἐν χαλεπῇ τύχῃ καὶ πάθει μεγάλῳ τῷ περὶ τοὺς παῖδας οὐδέν τι μικρότερος [11] οὐδ’ ἀσεμνότερος ἢ διὰ τῶν εὐτυχημάτων ὁραθείς. Τιμολέων δὲ γενναῖα πράξας περὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν οὐκ ἀντέσχε τῷ λογισμῷ πρὸς τὸ πάθος, ἀλλὰ μετανοίᾳ καὶ λύπῃ ταπεινωθεὶς ἐτῶν εἴκοσι τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν ἰδεῖν [12] οὐχ ὑπέμεινε. δεῖ δὲ τὰ αἰσχρὰ φεύγειν καὶ αἰδεῖσθαι· τὸ δὲ πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀδοξίαν εὐλαβὲς ἐπιεικοῦς μὲν ἤθους καὶ ἁπαλοῦ, μέγεθος δ’ οὐκ ἔχοντος.

Pelopidas

[1] [1]  Κάτων ὁ πρεσβύτερος πρός τινας ἐπαινοῦντας ἄνθρωπον ἀλογίστως παράβολον καὶ τολμηρὸν ἐν τοῖς πολεμικοῖς διαφέρειν ἔφη τοῦ πολλοῦ τινα τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀξίαν [καὶ] τὸ μὴ πολλοῦ τὸ ζῆν ἄξιον νομίζειν, ὀρθῶς ἀποφαινόμενος.

[2] ὁ γοῦν παρ’ Ἀντιγόνῳ στρατευόμενος ἰταμός, φαῦλος δὲ τὴν ἕξιν καὶ τὸ σῶμα διεφθορώς, ἐρομένου τοῦ βασιλέως τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς ὠχρότητος, ὡμολόγησέ τινα νόσον [3] τῶν ἀπορρήτων· ἐπεὶ δὲ φιλοτιμηθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς προσέταξε τοῖς ἰατροῖς, ἐάν τις ᾖ βοήθεια, μηδὲν ἐλλιπεῖν τῆς ἄκρας ἐπιμελείας, οὕτω θεραπευθεὶς ὁ γενναῖος ἐκεῖνος οὐκέτ’ ἦν φιλοκίνδυνος οὐδὲ ῥαγδαῖος ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσιν, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον ἐγκαλεῖν καὶ θαυμάζειν τὴν [4] μεταβολήν. οὐ μὴν ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἀπεκρύψατο τὸ αἴτιον, ἀλλ’ εἶπεν· ὦ βασιλεῦ, σύ με πεποίηκας ἀτολμότερον, ἀπαλλάξας ἐκείνων τῶν κακῶν δι’ ἃ τοῦ ζῆν ὠλιγώρουν.

[5] πρὸς τοῦτο δὲ φαίνεται καὶ Συβαρίτης ἀνὴρ εἰπεῖν περὶ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν, ὡς οὐ μέγα ποιοῦσι θανατῶντες ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις ὑπὲρ τοῦ τοσούτους πόνους καὶ τοιαύτην [6] ἀποφυγεῖν δίαιταν. ἀλλὰ Συβαρίταις μέν, ἐκτετηκόσιν ὑπὸ τρυφῆς καὶ μαλακίας τὴν πρὸς τὸ καλὸν ὁρμὴν καὶ φιλοτιμίαν, εἰκότως ἐφαίνοντο μισεῖν τὸν βίον οἱ μὴ [7] φοβούμενοι τὸν θάνατον· Λακεδαιμονίοις δὲ καὶ ζῆν ἡδέως καὶ θνῄσκειν ἀμφότερα ἀρετὴ παρεῖχεν, ὡς δηλοῖ τὸ ἐπικήδειον (Preger 3)· οἵδε γάρ φησιν ἔθανον

οὐ τὸ ζῆν θέμενοι καλὸν οὐδὲ τὸ θνῄσκειν,

ἀλλὰ τὸ ταῦτα καλῶς ἀμφότερ’ ἐκτελέσαι.

[8] οὔτε γὰρ φυγὴ θανάτου μεμπτόν, ἂν ὀρέγηταί τις τοῦ βίου μὴ αἰσχρῶς, οὔθ’ ὑπομονὴ καλόν, εἰ μετ’ ὀλιγωρίας [9] γίνοιτο τοῦ ζῆν. ὅθεν Ὅμηρος μὲν ἀεὶ τοὺς θαρραλεωτάτους καὶ μαχιμωτάτους ἄνδρας εὖ καὶ καλῶς ὡπλισμένους [10] ἐξάγει πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας· οἱ δὲ τῶν Ἑλλήνων νομοθέται τὸν ῥίψασπιν κολάζουσιν, οὐ τὸν ξίφος οὐδὲ λόγχην προέμενον, διδάσκοντες ὅτι τοῦ μὴ παθεῖν κακῶς πρότερον ἢ τοῦ ποιῆσαι τοὺς πολεμίους ἑκάστῳ μέλειν προσήκει, μάλιστα δ’ ἄρχοντι πόλεως ἢ στρατεύματος.

[2] [1] Εἰ γάρ, ὡς Ἰφικράτης διῄρει, χερσὶ μὲν ἐοίκασιν οἱ ψιλοί, ποσὶ δὲ τὸ ἱππικόν, αὐτὴ δ’ ἡ φάλαγξ στέρνῳ καὶ θώρακι, κεφαλῇ δ’ ὁ στρατηγός, οὐχ αὑτοῦ δόξειεν ἂν ἀποκινδυνεύων παραμελεῖν καὶ θρασυνόμενος, ἀλλ’ ἁπάντων, οἷς ἡ σωτηρία γίνεται δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τοὐναντίον.

[2] ὅθεν ὁ Καλλικρατίδας, καίπερ ὢν τἆλλα μέγας, οὐκ εὖ πρὸς τὸν μάντιν εἶπε· δεομένου γὰρ αὐτοῦ φυλάττεσθαι θάνατον, ὡς τῶν ἱερῶν προδηλούντων, ἔφη [3] μὴ παρ’ ἕν’ εἶναι τὰ Σπάρτας. μαχόμενος γὰρ εἷς ἦν καὶ πλέων καὶ στρατευόμενος ὁ Καλλικρατίδας, στρατηγῶν δὲ τὴν ἁπάντων εἶχε συλλαβὼν ἐν αὑτῷ δύναμιν, [4] ὥστ’ οὐκ ἦν εἷς ᾧ τοσαῦτα συναπώλλυτο. βέλτιον δ’ Ἀντίγονος ὁ γέρων, ὅτε ναυμαχεῖν περὶ Ἄνδρον ἔμελλεν, εἰπόντος τινὸς ὡς πολὺ πλείους αἱ τῶν πολεμίων νῆες [5] εἶεν, ἐμὲ δ’ αὐτὸν ἔφη πρὸς πόσας ἀντιστήσεις; μέγα τὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς, ὥσπερ ἐστίν, ἀξίωμα ποιῶν μετ’ ἐμπειρίας καὶ ἀρετῆς ταττόμενον, ἧς πρῶτον ἔργον ἐστὶ σῴζειν [6] τὸν ἅπαντα τἆλλα σῴζοντα. διὸ καλῶς ὁ Τιμόθεος, ἐπιδεικνυμένου ποτὲ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις τοῦ Χάρητος ὠτειλάς τινας ἐν τῷ σώματι καὶ τὴν ἀσπίδα λόγχῃ διακεκομμένην, ἐγὼ δ’ εἶπε καὶ λίαν ᾐσχύνθην, ὅτι μου πολιορκοῦντος Σάμον ἐγγὺς ἔπεσε βέλος, ὡς μειρακιωδέστερον ἐμαυτῷ χρώμενος ἢ κατὰ στρατηγὸν καὶ ἡγεμόνα [7] δυνάμεως τοσαύτης. ὅπου μὲν γὰρ εἰς τὰ ὅλα μεγάλην φέρει ῥοπὴν ὁ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ κίνδυνος, ἐνταῦθα καὶ χειρὶ καὶ σώματι χρηστέον ἀφειδῶς, χαίρειν φράσαντα τοῖς λέγουσιν, ὡς χρὴ τὸν ἀγαθὸν στρατηγὸν μάλιστα [8] μὲν ὑπὸ γήρως, εἰ δὲ μή, γέροντα θνῄσκειν· ὅπου δὲ μικρὸν τὸ περιγιγνόμενον ἐκ τοῦ κατορθώματος, τὸ δὲ πᾶν συναπόλλυται σφαλέντος, οὐδεὶς ἀπαιτεῖ στρατιώτου πρᾶξιν κινδύνῳ πραττομένην στρατηγοῦ.

[9] Ταῦτα δέ μοι παρέστη προαναφωνῆσαι γράφοντι τὸν Πελοπίδου βίον καὶ τὸν Μαρκέλλου, μεγάλων ἀνδρῶν [10] παραλόγως πεσόντων. καὶ γὰρ χειρὶ χρῆσθαι μαχιμώτατοι γενόμενοι, καὶ στρατηγίαις ἐπιφανεστάταις κοσμήσαντες ἀμφότεροι τὰς πατρίδας, ἔτι δὲ τῶν βαρυτάτων ἀνταγωνιστῶν, ὁ μὲν Ἀννίβαν ἀήττητον ὄντα πρῶτος ὡς λέγεται τρεψάμενος, ὁ δὲ γῆς καὶ θαλάττης ἄρχοντας Λακεδαιμονίους [11] ἐκ παρατάξεως νικήσας, ἠφείδησαν ἑαυτῶν σὺν οὐδενὶ λογισμῷ, προέμενοι τὸν βίον ὁπηνίκα μάλιστα τοιούτων καιρὸς ἦν ἀνδρῶν σῳζομένων καὶ ἀρχόντων.

[12] διόπερ ἡμεῖς ἑπόμενοι ταῖς ὁμοιότησι παραλλήλους ἀνεγράψαμεν αὐτῶν τοὺς βίους.

[3] [1] Πελοπίδᾳ τῷ Ἱππόκλου γένος μὲν ἦν εὐδόκιμον ἐν Θήβαις ὥσπερ Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ, τραφεὶς δ’ ἐν οὐσίᾳ μεγάλῃ, καὶ παραλαβὼν ἔτι νέος λαμπρὸν οἶκον, ὥρμησε τῶν δεομένων καὶ τῶν φίλων τοῖς ἀξίοις βοηθεῖν, ἵνα κύριος ἀληθῶς φαίνοιτο χρημάτων γεγονώς, ἀλλὰ μὴ δοῦλος.

[2] τῶν γὰρ πολλῶν, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησίν (fg. 56 Rose), οἱ μὲν οὐ χρῶνται [αὐτῷ] διὰ μικρολογίαν, οἱ δὲ παραχρῶνται δι’ ἀσωτίαν, καὶ δουλεύοντες οὗτοι μὲν ἀεὶ ταῖς ἡδοναῖς, [3] ἐκεῖνοι δὲ ταῖς ἀσχολίαις διατελοῦσιν. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι τῷ Πελοπίδᾳ χάριν ἔχοντες ἐχρῶντο τῇ πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἐλευθεριότητι καὶ φιλανθρωπίᾳ, μόνον δὲ τῶν φίλων τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν [4] οὐκ ἔπειθε τοῦ πλούτου μεταλαμβάνειν· αὐτὸς μέντοι μετεῖχε τῆς ἐκείνου πενίας, ἐσθῆτος ἀφελείᾳ καὶ τραπέζης λιτότητι καὶ τῷ πρὸς τοὺς πόνους ἀόκνῳ [καὶ] [5] κατὰ ‹τὰς› στρατείας [ἀδόλῳ] καλλωπιζόμενος, ὥσπερ ὁ Εὐριπίδου Καπανεύς (Suppl. 861),

ᾧ βίος μὲν ἦν πολύς,

ἥκιστα δ’ ὄλβῳ γαῦρος ἦν,

αἰσχυνόμενος εἰ φανεῖται πλείοσι χρώμενος εἰς τὸ σῶμα [6] τοῦ τὰ ἐλάχιστα κεκτημένου Θηβαίων. Ἐπαμεινώνδας μὲν οὖν συνήθη καὶ πατρῴαν οὖσαν αὐτῷ τὴν πενίαν ἔτι μᾶλλον εὔζωνον καὶ κοῦφον ἐποίησε φιλοσοφῶν καὶ [7] μονότροπον βίον ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἑλόμενος· Πελοπίδᾳ δ’ ἦν μὲν γάμος λαμπρός, ἐγένοντο δὲ καὶ παῖδες, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἧττον ἀμελῶν τοῦ χρηματίζεσθαι καὶ σχολάζων τῇ πόλει [8] τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον, ἠλάττωσε τὴν οὐσίαν. τῶν δὲ φίλων νουθετούντων, καὶ λεγόντων ὡς ἀναγκαίου πράγματος ὀλιγωρεῖ, τοῦ χρήματα ‹συν›άγειν, ἀναγκαίου νὴ Δί’ ‹εἶπε› Νικοδήμῳ τούτῳ, δείξας τινὰ χωλὸν καὶ τυφλόν.

[4] [1] Ἦσαν δὲ καὶ πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν πεφυκότες ὁμοίως, πλὴν ὅτι τῷ γυμνάζεσθαι μᾶλλον ἔχαιρε Πελοπίδας, τῷ δὲ μανθάνειν Ἐπαμεινώνδας, καὶ τὰς διατριβὰς ἐν τῷ σχολάζειν ὁ μὲν περὶ παλαίστρας καὶ κυνηγέσια, ὁ δ’ [2] ἀκούων τι καὶ φιλοσοφῶν ἐποιεῖτο. πολλῶν δὲ καὶ καλῶν ὑπαρχόντων ἀμφοτέροις πρὸς δόξαν, οὐδὲν οἱ νοῦν ἔχοντες ἡγοῦνται τηλικοῦτον, ἡλίκον τὴν διὰ τοσούτων ἀγώνων καὶ στρατηγιῶν καὶ πολιτειῶν ἀνεξέλεγκτον εὔνοιαν [3] καὶ φιλίαν, ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς μέχρι τέλους συμμείνασαν. εἰ γάρ τις ἀποβλέψας τὴν Ἀριστείδου καὶ Θεμιστοκλέους, καὶ Κίμωνος καὶ Περικλέους, καὶ Νικίου καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδου πολιτείαν, ὅσων γέγονε μεστὴ διαφορῶν καὶ φθόνων καὶ ζηλοτυπιῶν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, σκέψαιτο πάλιν τὴν Πελοπίδου πρὸς Ἐπαμεινώνδαν εὐμένειαν καὶ τιμήν, τούτους ἂν ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως προσαγορεύσειε συνάρχοντας καὶ συστρατήγους ἢ ἐκείνους, οἳ μᾶλλον ἀλλήλων ἢ τῶν πολεμίων [4] ἀγωνιζόμενοι περιεῖναι διετέλεσαν. αἰτία δ’ ἀληθινὴ μὲν ἦν ἡ ἀρετή, δι’ ἣν οὐ δόξαν, οὐ πλοῦτον ἀπὸ τῶν πράξεων μετιόντες, οἷς ὁ χαλεπὸς καὶ δύσερις ἐμφύεται φθόνος, ἀλλ’ ἔρωτα θεῖον ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἐρασθέντες ἀμφότεροι τοῦ τὴν πατρίδα λαμπροτάτην καὶ μεγίστην ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν ἰδεῖν γενομένην, ὥσπερ ἰδίοις ἐπὶ τοῦτο τοῖς αὑτῶν [5] ἐχρῶντο κατορθώμασιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ οἵ γε πολλοὶ νομίζουσιν αὐτοῖς τὴν σφοδρὰν φιλίαν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐν Μαντινείᾳ γενέσθαι στρατείας, ἣν συνεστρατεύσαντο Λακεδαιμονίοις ἔτι φίλοις καὶ συμμάχοις οὖσι πεμφθείσης ἐκ [6] Θηβῶν βοηθείας. τεταγμένοι γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ὁπλίταις μετ’ ἀλλήλων καὶ μαχόμενοι πρὸς τοὺς Ἀρκάδας, ὡς ἐνέδωκε τὸ κατ’ αὐτοὺς κέρας τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων καὶ τροπὴ τῶν πολλῶν ἐγεγόνει, συνασπίσαντες ἠμύναντο τοὺς ἐπιφερομένους.

[7] καὶ Πελοπίδας μὲν ἑπτὰ τραύματα λαβὼν ἐναντία, πολλοῖς ἐπικατερρύη νεκροῖς ὁμοῦ φίλοις καὶ πολεμίοις, Ἐπαμεινώνδας δέ, καίπερ ἀβιώτως ἔχειν αὐτὸν ἡγούμενος, ὑπὲρ τοῦ σώματος καὶ τῶν ὅπλων ἔστη προελθών, καὶ διεκινδύνευσε πρὸς πολλοὺς μόνος, ἐγνωκὼς ἀποθανεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ Πελοπίδαν ἀπολιπεῖν κείμενον.

[8] ἤδη δὲ καὶ τούτου κακῶς ἔχοντος, καὶ λόγχῃ μὲν εἰς τὸ στῆθος, ξίφει δ’ εἰς τὸν βραχίονα τετρωμένου, προσεβοήθησεν ἀπὸ θατέρου κέρως Ἀγησίπολις ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν, καὶ περιεποίησεν ἀνελπίστως αὐτοὺς ἀμφοτέρους.

[5] [1] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν λόγῳ μὲν ὡς φίλοις καὶ συμμάχοις προσφερομένων τοῖς Θηβαίοις, ἔργῳ δὲ τὸ φρόνημα τῆς πόλεως καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ὑφορωμένων, καὶ μάλιστα τὴν Ἰσμηνίου καὶ Ἀνδροκλείδου μισούντων ἑταιρείαν, ἧς μετεῖχεν ὁ Πελοπίδας, φιλελεύθερον ἅμα [2] καὶ δημοτικὴν εἶναι δοκοῦσαν, Ἀρχίας καὶ Λεοντίδας καὶ Φίλιππος, ἄνδρες ὀλιγαρχικοὶ καὶ πλούσιοι καὶ μέτριον οὐδὲν φρονοῦντες, ἀναπείθουσι Φοιβίδαν τὸν Λάκωνα μετὰ στρατιᾶς διαπορευόμενον ἐξαίφνης καταλαβεῖν τὴν Καδμείαν, καὶ τοὺς ὑπεναντιουμένους αὐτοῖς ἐκβαλόντα πρὸς τὸ Λακεδαιμονίων ὑπήκοον ἁρμόσασθαι δι’ ὀλίγων [3] τὴν πολιτείαν. πεισθέντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ μὴ προσδοκῶσι τοῖς Θηβαίοις ἐπιθεμένου Θεσμοφορίων ὄντων καὶ τῆς ἄκρας κυριεύσαντος, Ἰσμηνίας μὲν συναρπασθεὶς καὶ κομισθεὶς εἰς Λακεδαίμονα μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἀνῃρέθη, Πελοπίδας δὲ καὶ Φερένικος καὶ Ἀνδροκλείδας [4] μετὰ συχνῶν ἄλλων φεύγοντες ἐξεκηρύχθησαν. Ἐπαμεινώνδας δὲ κατὰ χώραν ἔμεινε τῷ καταφρονηθῆναι διὰ μὲν φιλοσοφίαν ὡς ἀπράγμων, διὰ δὲ πενίαν ὡς ἀδύνατος.

[6] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι Φοιβίδαν μὲν ἀφείλοντο τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ δέκα δραχμῶν μυριάσιν ἐζημίωσαν, τὴν δὲ Καδμείαν οὐδὲν ἧττον φρουρᾷ κατέσχον, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι πάντες Ἕλληνες ἐθαύμαζον τὴν ἀτοπίαν, εἰ τὸν μὲν [2] πράξαντα κολάζουσι, τὴν δὲ πρᾶξιν δοκιμάζουσι· τοῖς δὲ Θηβαίοις, τὴν πάτριον ἀποβεβληκόσι πολιτείαν καὶ καταδεδουλωμένοις ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ Ἀρχίαν καὶ Λεοντίδαν, οὐδ’ ἐλπίσαι περιῆν ἀπαλλαγήν τινα τῆς τυραννίδος, ἣν ἑώρων τῇ Σπαρτιατῶν δορυφορουμένην ἡγεμονίᾳ καὶ καταλυθῆναι μὴ δυναμένην, εἰ μή τις ἄρα παύσειε κἀκείνους [3] γῆς καὶ θαλάττης ἄρχοντας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ οἱ περὶ Λεοντίδαν πυνθανόμενοι τοὺς φυγάδας Ἀθήνησι διατρίβειν, τῷ τε πλήθει προσφιλεῖς ὄντας καὶ τιμὴν ἔχοντας ὑπὸ τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν, ἐπεβούλευον αὐτοῖς κρύφα· καὶ πέμψαντες ἀνθρώπους ἀγνῶτας, Ἀνδροκλείδαν μὲν ἀποκτιννύουσι [4] δόλῳ, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων διαμαρτάνουσιν. ἧκε δὲ καὶ παρὰ Λακεδαιμονίων γράμματα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις προστάσσοντα μὴ δέχεσθαι μηδὲ παρακινεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐξελαύνειν τοὺς φυγάδας, ὡς κοινοὺς πολεμίους ὑπὸ τῶν [5] συμμάχων ἀποδεδειγμένους. οἱ μὲν οὖν Ἀθηναῖοι, πρὸς τῷ πάτριον αὐτοῖς καὶ σύμφυτον εἶναι τὸ φιλάνθρωπον ἀμειβόμενοι τοὺς Θηβαίους, μάλιστα συναιτίους γενομένους τῷ δήμῳ τοῦ κατελθεῖν καὶ ψηφισαμένους, ἐάν τις Ἀθηναίων ἐπὶ τοὺς τυράννους ὅπλα διὰ τῆς Βοιωτίας κομίζῃ, μηδένα Βοιωτὸν ἀκούειν μηδ’ ὁρᾶν, οὐδὲν ἠδίκησαν τοὺς Θηβαίους.

[7] Ὁ δὲ Πελοπίδας, καίπερ ἐν τοῖς νεωτάτοις ὤν, ἰδίᾳ τε καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐξώρμα τῶν φυγάδων, καὶ πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος ἐποιήσατο λόγους, ὡς οὔτε καλὸν οὔθ’ ὅσιον εἴη δουλεύουσαν τὴν πατρίδα καὶ φρουρουμένην περιορᾶν, αὐτοὺς δὲ μόνον τὸ σῴζεσθαι καὶ διαζῆν ἀγαπῶντας ἐκκρέμασθαι τῶν Ἀθήνησι ψηφισμάτων καὶ θεραπεύειν ὑποπεπτωκότας ἀεὶ τοὺς λέγειν δυναμένους καὶ [6] πείθειν τὸν ὄχλον, ἀλλὰ κινδυνευτέον ὑπὲρ τῶν μεγίστων, παράδειγμα θεμένους τὴν Θρασυβούλου τόλμαν καὶ ἀρετήν, ἵν’ ὡς ἐκεῖνος ἐκ Θηβῶν πρότερον ὁρμηθεὶς κατέλυσε τοὺς ἐν Ἀθήναις τυράννους, οὕτως αὐτοὶ πάλιν ἐξ [7] Ἀθηνῶν προελθόντες ἐλευθερώσωσι τὰς Θήβας. ὡς οὖν ἔπεισε ταῦτα λέγων, πέμπουσιν εἰς Θήβας κρύφα πρὸς τοὺς ὑπολελειμμένους τῶν φίλων, τὰ δεδογμένα φράζοντες.

[8] οἱ δὲ συνεπῄνουν· καὶ Χάρων μέν, ὅσπερ ἦν ἐπιφανέστατος, ὡμολόγησε τὴν οἰκίαν παρέξειν, Φυλλίδας δὲ διεπράξατο τῶν περὶ Ἀρχίαν καὶ Φίλιππον γραμματεὺς [9] γενέσθαι πολεμαρχούντων. Ἐπαμεινώνδας δὲ τοὺς νέους πάλαι φρονήματος ἦν ἐμπεπληκώς· ἐκέλευε γὰρ ἐν τοῖς γυμνασίοις ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων καὶ παλαίειν, εἶθ’ ὁρῶν ἐπὶ τῷ κρατεῖν καὶ περιεῖναι γαυρουμένους, ἐπέπληττεν, ὡς αἰσχύνεσθαι μᾶλλον αὐτοῖς προσῆκον, εἰ δουλεύουσι δι’ ἀνανδρίαν ὧν τοσοῦτον ταῖς ῥώμαις διαφέρουσιν.

[8] [1] Ἡμέρας δὲ πρὸς τὴν πρᾶξιν ὁρισθείσης, ἔδοξε τοῖς φυγάσι, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους συναγαγόντα Φερένικον ἐν τῷ Θριασίῳ περιμένειν, ὀλίγους δὲ τῶν νεωτάτων παραβαλέσθαι προεισελθεῖν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἐὰν δέ τι πάθωσιν ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων οὗτοι, τοὺς ἄλλους ἐπιμελεῖσθαι πάντας ὅπως μήτε παῖδες αὐτῶν μήτε γονεῖς ἐνδεεῖς ἔσονται [2] τῶν ἀναγκαίων. ὑφίσταται δὲ τὴν πρᾶξιν Πελοπίδας πρῶτος, εἶτα Μέλων καὶ Δαμοκλείδας καὶ Θεόπομπος, ἄνδρες οἴκων τε πρώτων καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους τὰ ἄλλα μὲν φιλικῶς καὶ πιστ[ικ]ῶς, ὑπὲρ δὲ δόξης καὶ ἀνδρείας ἀεὶ [3] φιλονίκως ἔχοντες. γενόμενοι δ’ οἱ σύμπαντες δώδεκα καὶ τοὺς ἀπολειπομένους ἀσπασάμενοι καὶ προπέμψαντες ἄγγελον τῷ Χάρωνι, προῆγον ἐν χλαμυδίοις, σκύλακάς τε θηρατικὰς καὶ στάλικας ἔχοντες, ὡς μηδ’ εἷς ὑποπτεύοι τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων καθ’ ὁδόν, ἀλλ’ ἀλύοντες ἄλλως [4] πλανᾶσθαι καὶ κυνηγεῖν δοκοῖεν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ πεμφθεὶς παρ’ αὐτῶν ἄγγελος ἧκε πρὸς τὸν Χάρωνα καὶ καθ’ ὁδὸν ὄντας ἔφραζεν, αὐτὸς μὲν ὁ Χάρων οὐδ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ δεινοῦ πλησιάζοντος ἔτρεψέ τι τῆς γνώμης, ἀλλ’ ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς [5] ἦν καὶ παρεῖχε τὴν οἰκίαν. Ἱπποσθενείδας δέ τις, οὐ πονηρὸς μὲν ἀλλὰ καὶ φιλόπατρις καὶ τοῖς φυγάσιν εὔνους ἄνθρωπος, ἐνδεὴς δὲ τόλμης τοσαύτης, ὅσης ὅ τε καιρὸς ὀξὺς ὢν αἵ θ’ ὑποκείμεναι πράξεις ἀπῄτουν, ὥσπερ ἰλιγγιάσας πρὸς τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ ἀγῶνος ἐν χερσὶ γενομένου, καὶ μόλις ποτὲ τῷ λογισμῷ συμφρονήσας, ὅτι τρόπον τινὰ τὴν τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων σαλεύουσιν ἀρχὴν καὶ τῆς ἐκεῖθεν δυνάμεως ὑποβάλλονται κατάλυσιν, πιστεύσαντες [6] ἀπόροις καὶ φυγαδικαῖς ἐλπίσιν, ἀπελθὼν οἴκαδε σιωπῇ πέμπει τινὰ τῶν φίλων πρὸς Μέλωνα καὶ Πελοπίδαν, ἀναβαλέσθαι κελεύων ἐν τῷ παρόντι καὶ περιμένειν βελτίονα καιρόν, αὖθις ἀπαλλαγέντας εἰς Ἀθήνας· [7] Χλίδων ἦν ὄνομα τῷ πεμφθέντι· καὶ κατὰ σπουδὴν οἴκαδε πρὸς αὑτὸν τραπόμενος καὶ τὸν ἵππον ἐξαγαγών, [8] ᾔτει τὸν χαλινόν. ἀπορουμένης δὲ τῆς γυναικὸς ὡς οὐκ εἶχε δοῦναι, ‹καὶ κεχρηκέναι› τινὶ τῶν συνήθων λεγούσης, λοιδορίαι τὸ πρῶτον ἦσαν, εἶτα δυσφημίαι, τῆς γυναικὸς ἐπαρωμένης αὐτῷ τε κακὰς ὁδοὺς ἐκείνῳ καὶ τοῖς πέμπουσιν, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Χλίδωνα πολὺ τῆς ἡμέρας ἀναλώσαντα πρὸς τούτοις, δι’ ὀργήν, ἅμα δὲ καὶ τὸ συμβεβηκὸς οἰωνισάμενον, ἀφεῖναι τὴν ὁδὸν ὅλως καὶ πρὸς ἄλλο τι τραπέσθαι.

[9] παρὰ τοσοῦτον μὲν ἦλθον αἱ μέγισται καὶ κάλλισται τῶν πράξεων εὐθὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ διαφυγεῖν τὸν καιρόν.

[9] [1] Οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Πελοπίδαν ἐσθῆτας γεωργῶν μεταλαβόντες καὶ διελόντες αὑτούς, ἄλλοι κατ’ ἄλλα μέρη [2] τῆς πόλεως παρεισῆλθον ἔθ’ ἡμέρας οὔσης. ἦν δέ τι πνεῦμα καὶ νιφετός, ἀρχομένου τρέπεσθαι τοῦ ἀέρος· ‹ᾧ› καὶ μᾶλλον ἔλαθον, καταπεφευγότων ἤδη διὰ τὸν χειμῶνα [3] τῶν πλείστων εἰς τὰς οἰκίας. οἷς δ’ ἦν ἐπιμελὲς τὰ πραττόμενα γινώσκειν, ἀνελάμβανον τοὺς προσερχομένους καὶ καθίστων εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ Χάρωνος· ἐγένοντο δὲ σὺν τοῖς φυγάσι πεντήκοντα δυοῖν δέοντες.

[4] Τὰ δὲ περὶ τοὺς τυράννους οὕτως εἶχε. Φυλλίδας ὁ γραμματεὺς συνέπραττε μὲν ὥσπερ εἴρηται πάντα καὶ συνῄδει τοῖς φυγάσιν, εἰς δὲ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἐκ παλαιοῦ κατηγγελκὼς τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἀρχίαν πότον τινὰ καὶ συνουσίαν καὶ γύναια τῶν ὑπάνδρων, ἔπραττεν ὅτι μάλιστα ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ἐκλελυμένους καὶ κατοίνους μεταχειρίσασθαι [5] παρέξειν τοῖς ἐπιτιθεμένοις. οὔπω δὲ πάνυ πόρρω μέθης οὖσιν αὐτοῖς προσέπεσέ τις οὐ ψευδὴς μέν, ἀβέβαιος δὲ καὶ πολλὴν ἀσάφειαν ἔχουσα περὶ τῶν [6] φυγάδων μήνυσις, ὡς ἐν τῇ πόλει κρυπτομένων. τοῦ δὲ Φυλλίδου παραφέροντος τὸν λόγον, ὅμως Ἀρχίας ἔπεμψέ τινα τῶν ὑπηρετῶν πρὸς τὸν Χάρωνα, προστάσσων εὐθὺς [7] ἥκειν ‹πρὸς› αὐτόν. ἦν δ’ ἑσπέρα, καὶ συνέταττον ἔνδον αὑτοὺς οἱ περὶ τὸν Πελοπίδαν, ἤδη τεθωρακισμένοι καὶ [8] τὰς μαχαίρας ἀνειληφότες. ἐξαίφνης δὲ κοπτομένης τῆς θύρας, προσδραμών τις καὶ πυθόμενος τοῦ ὑπηρέτου Χάρωνα μετιέναι παρὰ τῶν πολεμάρχων φάσκοντος, ἀπήγγειλεν εἴσω τεθορυβημένος, καὶ πᾶσιν εὐθὺς παρέστη τήν τε πρᾶξιν ἐκμεμηνῦσθαι καὶ σφᾶς ἅπαντας ἀπολωλέναι [9] μηδὲ δράσαντάς τι τῆς ἀρετῆς ἄξιον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἔδοξεν ὑπακοῦσαι τὸν Χάρωνα καὶ παρασχεῖν ἑαυτὸν ἀνυπόπτως τοῖς ἄρχουσιν, ἄλλως μὲν ἀνδρώδη καὶ βαρὺν ὄντα τῷ θαρρεῖν παρὰ τὰ δεινά, τότε δὲ δι’ ἐκείνους ἐκπεπληγμένον καὶ περιπαθοῦντα, μή τις ὑποψία προδοσίας ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἔλθῃ τοσούτων ἅμα καὶ τοιούτων πολιτῶν ἀπολομένων.

[10] ὡς οὖν ἔμελλεν ἀπιέναι, παραλαβὼν ἐκ τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος τὸν υἱόν, ἔτι μὲν ὄντα παῖδα, κάλλει δὲ καὶ ῥώμῃ σώματος πρωτεύοντα τῶν καθ’ ἡλικίαν, ἐνεχείριζε τοῖς περὶ Πελοπίδαν, εἴ τινα δόλον καὶ προδοσίαν αὐτοῦ καταγνοῖεν, ὡς πολεμίῳ [11] χρῆσθαι κελεύων ἐκείνῳ καὶ μὴ φείδεσθαι. πολλοῖς μὲν οὖν αὐτῶν δάκρυα πρὸς τὸ πάθος καὶ τὸ φρόνημα τοῦ Χάρωνος ἐξέπεσε, πάντες δ’ ἠγανάκτουν, εἰ δειλὸν οὕτως εἶναί τινα δοκεῖ καὶ διεφθαρμένον ὑπὸ τοῦ παρόντος, [12] ὥσθ’ ὑπονοεῖν ἐκεῖνον ἢ ὅλως αἰτιᾶσθαι· καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἐδέοντο μὴ καταμειγνύειν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐκποδὼν θέσθαι τοῦ μέλλοντος, ὅπως αὐτός γε τῇ πόλει καὶ τοῖς φίλοις τιμωρὸς ὑποτρέφοιτο, περισωθεὶς καὶ διαφυγὼν τοὺς τυράννους.

[13] ὁ δὲ Χάρων τὸν μὲν υἱὸν ἀπαλλάξειν οὐκ ἔφη· ποῖον γὰρ αὐτῷ βίον ὁρᾶν ἢ τίνα σωτηρίαν καλλίονα τῆς ὁμοῦ μετὰ πατρὸς καὶ φίλων τοσούτων ἀνυβρίστου τελευτῆς; ἐπευξάμενος δὲ τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ πάντας ἀσπασάμενος καὶ παραθαρρύνας ἀπῄει, προσέχων ἑαυτῷ καὶ ῥυθμίζων σχήματι προσώπου καὶ τόνῳ φωνῆς ἀνομοιότατος οἷς ἔπραττε φανῆναι.

[10] [1] Γενομένου δ’ ἐπὶ ταῖς θύραις αὐτοῦ, προῆλθεν ὁ Ἀρχίας καὶ φυγάδας [καὶ] εἶπεν ὦ Χάρων τινὰς ἀκήκοα παρεληλυθότας ἐν τῇ πόλει κρύπτεσθαι, καὶ [2] συμπράττειν αὐτοῖς ἐνίους τῶν πολιτῶν. καὶ ὁ Χάρων διαταραχθεὶς τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτ’ ἐρωτήσας τίνες εἰσὶν οἱ παρεληλυθότες καὶ τίνες οἱ κρύπτοντες αὐτούς, ὡς οὐδὲν ἑώρα σαφὲς εἰπεῖν ἔχοντα τὸν Ἀρχίαν, ὑπονοήσας ἀπ’ [3] οὐδενὸς τῶν ἐπισταμένων γεγονέναι τὴν μήνυσιν, ὁρᾶτε τοίνυν ἔφη μὴ κενός τις ὑμᾶς διαταράττῃ λόγος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ σκέψομαι· δεῖ γὰρ ἴσως μηδενὸς καταφρονεῖν.

[4] ταῦτα καὶ Φυλλίδας παρὼν ἐπῄνει, καὶ τὸν Ἀρχίαν ἀπαγαγὼν αὖθις εἰς ἄκρατον πολὺν κατέβαλε καὶ ταῖς [5] περὶ τῶν γυναικῶν ἐλπίσι διεπαιδαγώγει τὸν πότον. ὡς δ’ ἐπανῆλθεν ὁ Χάρων οἴκαδε καὶ διεσκευασμένους τοὺς ἄνδρας εὗρεν, οὐχ ὡς ἄν τινα νίκην ἢ σωτηρίαν ἐλπίζοντας, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀποθανουμένους λαμπρῶς καὶ μετὰ φόνου πολλοῦ τῶν πολεμίων, τὸ μὲν ἀληθὲς αὐτοῖς ἔφραζε τοῖς περὶ τὸν Πελοπίδαν, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐψεύσατο λόγους τινὰς τοῦ Ἀρχίου περὶ πραγμάτων ἑτέρων πλασάμενος.

[6] Ἔτι δὲ τοῦ πρώτου παραφερομένου, δεύτερον ἐπῆγεν ἡ [7] τύχη χειμῶνα τοῖς ἀνδράσιν. ἧκε γάρ τις ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν παρ’ Ἀρχίου τοῦ ἱεροφάντου πρὸς Ἀρχίαν τὸν ὁμώνυμον, ξένον ὄντα καὶ φίλον, ἐπιστολὴν κομίζων οὐ κενὴν ἔχουσαν οὐδὲ πεπλασμένην ὑπόνοιαν, ἀλλὰ σαφῶς ἕκαστα περὶ τῶν [8] πρασσομένων φάσκουσαν, ὡς ὕστερον ἐπεγνώσθη. τότε δὲ μεθύοντι τῷ Ἀρχίᾳ προσαχθεὶς ὁ γραμματοφόρος καὶ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἐπιδούς ὁ ταύτην ἔφη πέμψας ἐκέλευσεν εὐθὺς ἀναγνῶναι· περὶ σπουδαίων γάρ τινων γεγράφθαι.

[9] καὶ ὁ Ἀρχίας μειδιάσας οὐκοῦν εἰς αὔριον ἔφη τὰ σπουδαῖα, καὶ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν δεξάμενος ὑπὸ τὸ προσκεφάλαιον ὑπέθηκεν, αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν τῷ Φυλλίδᾳ [10] περὶ ὧν ἐτύγχανον διαλεγόμενοι προσεῖχεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν λόγος οὗτος ἐν παροιμίας τάξει περιφερόμενος μέχρι νῦν διασῴζεται παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησι.

[11] [1] Τῆς δὲ πράξεως δοκούσης ἔχειν ἤδη τὸν οἰκεῖον καιρόν, ἐξώρμων δίχα διελόντες αὑτούς, οἱ μὲν περὶ Πελοπίδαν καὶ Δαμοκλείδαν ἐπὶ τὸν Λεοντίδαν καὶ τὸν Ὑπάτην, [2] ἐγγὺς ἀλλήλων οἰκοῦντας. Χάρων δὲ καὶ Μέλων ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀρχίαν καὶ Φίλιππον, ἐσθῆτας ἐπενδεδυμένοι γυναικείας τοῖς θώραξι καὶ δασεῖς στεφάνους ἐλάτης τε καὶ [3] πεύκης περικείμενοι, κατασκιάζοντας τὰ πρόσωπα. διὸ καὶ ταῖς θύραις τοῦ συμποσίου τὸ πρῶτον ἐπιστάντες κρότον ἐποίησαν καὶ θόρυβον, οἰομένων ἃς πάλαι προσεδόκων [4] γυναῖκας ἥκειν. ἐπεὶ δὲ περιβλέψαντες ἐν κύκλῳ τὸ συμπόσιον, καὶ τῶν κατακεκλιμένων ἕκαστον ἀκριβῶς καταμαθόντες, ἐσπάσαντο τὰς μαχαίρας καὶ φερόμενοι διὰ τῶν τραπεζῶν ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀρχίαν καὶ Φίλιππον ἐφάνησαν οἵπερ ἦσαν, ὀλίγους μὲν ὁ Φυλλίδας τῶν κατακειμένων ἔπεισεν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἀμύνεσθαι μετὰ τῶν πολεμάρχων ἐπιχειροῦντας καὶ συνεξανισταμένους διὰ τὴν μέθην οὐ πάνυ χαλεπῶς ἀπέκτειναν.

[5] Τοῖς δὲ περὶ τὸν Πελοπίδαν ἐργωδέστερον ἀπήντα τὸ πρᾶγμα· καὶ γὰρ ἐπὶ νήφοντα καὶ δεινὸν ἄνδρα τὸν Λεοντίδαν ἐχώρουν, καὶ κεκλεισμένην τὴν οἰκίαν εὗρον ἤδη καθεύδοντος, καὶ πολὺν χρόνον κόπτουσιν αὐτοῖς [6] ὑπήκουεν οὐδείς. μόλις δέ ποτε τοῦ θεράποντος αἰσθόμενοι προϊόντος ἔνδοθεν καὶ τὸν μοχλὸν ἀφαιροῦντος, ἅμα τῷ πρῶτον ἐνδοῦναι καὶ χαλάσαι τὰς θύρας ἐμπεσόντες ἀθρόοι καὶ τὸν οἰκέτην ἀνατρέψαντες, ἐπὶ τὸν θάλαμον [7] ὥρμησαν. ὁ δὲ Λεοντίδας αὐτῷ τεκμαιρόμενος τῷ κτύπῳ καὶ δρόμῳ τὸ γιγνόμενον, ἐσπάσατο μὲν τὸ ἐγχειρίδιον ἐξαναστάς, ἔλαθε δ’ αὐτὸν καταβαλεῖν τὰ λύχνα καὶ διὰ σκότους αὐτοὺς ἑαυτοῖς περιπετεῖς ποιῆσαι τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἐν δὲ φωτὶ πολλῷ καθορώμενος ὑπήντα πρὸς τὰς θύρας αὐτοῖς τοῦ θαλάμου, καὶ τὸν πρῶτον εἰσιόντα Κηφισόδωρον [8] πατάξας κατέβαλε. πεσόντος δὲ τούτου, δευτέρῳ συνεπέπλεκτο τῷ Πελοπίδᾳ, καὶ τὴν μάχην χαλεπὴν ἐποίει καὶ δύσεργον ἡ στενότης τῶν θυρῶν καὶ κείμενος ἐμποδὼν [9] ἤδη νεκρὸς ὁ Κηφισόδωρος. ἐκράτησε δ’ οὖν ὁ Πελοπίδας, καὶ κατεργασάμενος τὸν Λεοντίδαν, ἐπὶ τὸν Ὑπάτην [10] εὐθὺς ἐχώρει μετὰ τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ. καὶ παρεισέπεσον μὲν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν ὁμοίως, αἰσθόμενον δὲ ταχέως καὶ καταφεύγοντα πρὸς τοὺς γείτονας ἐκ ποδῶν διώξαντες εἷλον καὶ διέφθειραν.

[12] [1] Διαπραξάμενοι δὲ ταῦτα καὶ τοῖς περὶ Μέλωνα συμβαλόντες, ἔπεμψαν μὲν εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἐπὶ τοὺς ὑπολελειμμένους ἐκεῖ τῶν φυγάδων, ἐκάλουν δὲ τοὺς πολίτας ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, καὶ τοὺς προσιόντας ὥπλιζον, ἀφαιροῦντες ἀπὸ τῶν στοῶν τὰ περικείμενα σκῦλα, καὶ τὰ περὶ τὴν †οἰκίαν ἐργαστήρια δορυξόων καὶ μαχαιροποιῶν [2] ἀναρρηγνύντες. ἧκον δὲ βοηθοῦντες αὐτοῖς μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων οἱ περὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδαν καὶ Γοργίδαν, συνειλοχότες οὐκ ὀλίγους τῶν νέων καὶ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων τοὺς [3] βελτίστους. ἡ δὲ πόλις ἤδη μὲν ἀνεπτόητο πᾶσα, καὶ πολὺς θόρυβος ἦν καὶ φῶτα περὶ τὰς οἰκίας καὶ διαδρομαὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους, οὔπω δὲ συνειστήκει τὸ πλῆθος, ἀλλ’ ἐκπεπληγμένοι πρὸς τὰ γινόμενα καὶ σαφὲς οὐδὲν εἰδότες, [4] ἡμέραν περιέμενον. ὅθεν ἁμαρτεῖν οἱ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἄρχοντες ἔδοξαν, εὐθὺς οὐκ ἐπιδραμόντες οὐδὲ συμβαλόντες, αὐτὴ μὲν ἡ φρουρὰ περὶ χιλίους πεντακοσίους ὄντες, ἐκ δὲ τῆς πόλεως πρὸς αὐτοὺς πολλῶν συντρεχόντων, ἀλλὰ τὴν βοὴν καὶ τὰ πυρὰ καὶ τὸν ψόφον ἄνω χωροῦντα πανταχόθεν πολὺν φοβηθέντες ἡσύχαζον, [5] αὐτὴν τὴν Καδμείαν κατέχοντες. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ παρῆσαν μὲν ἐκ τῆς Ἀττικῆς οἱ φυγάδες ὡπλισμένοι, συνήθροιστο [6] δ’ εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ὁ δῆμος, εἰσῆγον δὲ τοὺς περὶ Πελοπίδαν Ἐπαμεινώνδας καὶ Γοργίδας, ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερέων περιεχομένους, στέμματα προτεινόντων καὶ παρακαλούντων τοὺς πολίτας τῇ πατρίδι καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς βοηθεῖν.

[7] ἡ δ’ ἐκκλησία πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν ὀρθὴ μετὰ κρότου καὶ βοῆς ἐξανέστη, δεχομένων τοὺς ἄνδρας ὡς εὐεργέτας καὶ σωτῆρας.

[13] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου βοιωτάρχης αἱρεθεὶς μετὰ Μέλωνος καὶ Χάρωνος ὁ Πελοπίδας εὐθὺς ἀπετείχιζε τὴν ἀκρόπολιν καὶ προσβολὰς ἐποιεῖτο πανταχόθεν, ἐξελεῖν σπουδάζων τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ τὴν Καδμείαν ἐλευθερῶσαι πρὶν [2] ἐκ Σπάρτης στρατὸν ἐπελθεῖν. καὶ παρὰ τοσοῦτον ἔφθασεν ἀφεὶς ὑποσπόνδους τοὺς ἄνδρας, ὅσον ἐν Μεγάροις οὖσιν αὐτοῖς ἀπαντῆσαι Κλεόμβροτον, ἐπὶ τὰς Θήβας ἐλαύνοντα [3] μετὰ μεγάλης δυνάμεως. οἱ δὲ Σπαρτιᾶται, τριῶν ἁρμοστῶν γενομένων ἐν Θήβαις, Ἡριππίδαν μὲν καὶ Ἄρκεσον ἀπέκτειναν κρίναντες, ὁ δὲ τρίτος Λυσανορίδας χρήμασι πολλοῖς ζημιωθεὶς αὑτὸν ἐκ τῆς Πελοποννήσου μετέστησε.

[4] Ταύτην τὴν πρᾶξιν ἀρεταῖς μὲν ἀνδρῶν καὶ κινδύνοις καὶ ἀγῶσι παραπλησίαν τῇ Θρασυβούλου γενομένην, καὶ βραβευθεῖσαν ὁμοίως ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης, ἀδελφὴν ἐκείνης [5] προσηγόρευον οἱ Ἕλληνες. οὐ γὰρ ἔστι ῥᾳδίως ἑτέρους εἰπεῖν, οἳ πλειόνων ἐλάττους καὶ δυνατωτέρων ἐρημότεροι τόλμῃ καὶ δεινότητι κρατήσαντες, αἴτιοι μειζόνων ἀγαθῶν [6] ταῖς πατρίσι κατέστησαν. ἐνδοξοτέραν δὲ ταύτην ἐποίησεν [7] ἡ μεταβολὴ τῶν πραγμάτων. ὁ γὰρ καταλύσας τὸ τῆς Σπάρτης ἀξίωμα καὶ παύσας ἄρχοντας αὐτοὺς γῆς τε καὶ θαλάττης πόλεμος ἐξ ἐκείνης ἐγένετο τῆς νυκτός, ἐν ᾗ Πελοπίδας οὐ φρούριον, οὐ τεῖχος, οὐκ ἀκρόπολιν καταλαβών, ἀλλ’ εἰς οἰκίαν δωδέκατος κατελθών, εἰ δεῖ μεταφορᾷ ‹χρησάμενον› τὸ ἀληθὲς εἰπεῖν, ἔλυσε καὶ διέκοψε τοὺς δεσμοὺς τῆς τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἡγεμονίας, ἀλύτους καὶ ἀρρήκτους εἶναι δοκοῦντας.

[14] [1] Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν στρατῷ μεγάλῳ Λακεδαιμονίων εἰς τὴν Βοιωτίαν ἐμβαλόντων, οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι περίφοβοι γενόμενοι τήν τε συμμαχίαν ἀπείπαντο τοῖς Θηβαίοις, καὶ τῶν βοιωτιαζόντων εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον παραγαγόντες τοὺς μὲν ἀπέκτειναν, τοὺς δ’ ἐφυγάδευσαν, τοὺς δὲ χρήμασιν ἐζημίωσαν, ἐδόκει δὲ κακῶς ἔχειν τὰ τῶν Θηβαίων πράγματα [2] μηδενὸς αὐτοῖς βοηθοῦντος, ἔτυχε μὲν ὁ Πελοπίδας μετὰ Γοργίδου βοιωταρχῶν, ἐπιβουλεύοντες δὲ συγκροῦσαι πάλιν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις, [3] τοιόνδε τι μηχανῶνται. Σφοδρίας ἀνὴρ Σπαρτιάτης, εὐδόκιμος μὲν ἐν τοῖς πολεμικοῖς καὶ λαμπρός, ὑπόκουφος δὲ τὴν γνώμην, καὶ κενῶν ἐλπίδων καὶ φιλοτιμίας ἀνοήτου μεστός, ἀπελείφθη περὶ Θεσπιὰς μετὰ δυνάμεως, τοὺς ἀφισταμένους τῶν Θηβαίων δέχεσθαι καὶ βοηθεῖν.

[4] πρὸς τοῦτον ὑποπέμπουσιν οἱ περὶ τὸν Πελοπίδαν [ἰδίᾳ] ‹Δι›έμπορόν τινα τῶν φίλων, χρήματα κομίζοντα καὶ λόγους, οἳ τῶν χρημάτων μᾶλλον ἀνέπεισαν αὐτόν, ὡς χρὴ πραγμάτων [μᾶλλον] ἅψασθαι μεγάλων καὶ τὸν Πειραιᾶ καταλαβεῖν, ἀπροσδόκητον ἐπιπεσόντα μὴ φυλαττομένοις [5] τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις· Λακεδαιμονίοις τε γὰρ οὐδὲν οὕτως ἔσεσθαι κεχαρισμένον ὡς λαβεῖν τὰς Ἀθήνας, Θηβαίους τε χαλεπῶς ἔχοντας αὐτοῖς καὶ προδότας [6] νομίζοντας οὐκ ἐπιβοηθήσειν. τέλος δὲ συμπεισθεὶς ὁ Σφοδρίας καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀναλαβών, νυκτὸς εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἐνέβαλε, καὶ μέχρι μὲν Ἐλευσῖνος προῆλθεν, ἐκεῖ δὲ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀποδειλιασάντων, φανερὸς γενόμενος καὶ συνταράξας ‹πόλεμον› οὐ φαῦλον οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιον αὐτοῖς ‹τοῖς› Σπαρτιάταις πολεμεῖν, ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς Θεσπιάς.

[15] [1] Ἐκ τούτου πάλιν προθυμότατα Ἀθηναῖοι τοῖς Θηβαίοις συνεμάχουν, καὶ τῆς θαλάσσης ἀντελαμβάνοντο, καὶ περιϊόντες ἐδέχοντο καὶ προσήγοντο τοὺς ἀποστατικῶς [2] τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἔχοντας. οἱ δὲ Θηβαῖοι καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἐν τῇ Βοιωτίᾳ συμπλεκόμενοι τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις ἑκάστοτε, καὶ μαχόμενοι μάχας αὐτὰς μὲν οὐ μεγάλας, μεγάλην δὲ τὴν μελέτην ἐχούσας καὶ τὴν ἄσκησιν, ἐξερριπίζοντο τοῖς θυμοῖς καὶ διεπονοῦντο τοῖς σώμασιν, ἐμπειρίαν ἅμα τῇ συνηθείᾳ καὶ φρόνημα προσλαμβάνοντες ἐκ τῶν ἀγώνων.

[3] διὸ καί φασιν Ἀνταλκίδαν τὸν Σπαρτιάτην, ὡς Ἀγησίλαος ἐπανῆλθεν ἐκ Βοιωτίας τετρωμένος, εἰπεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν· ἦ καλὰ διδασκάλια παρὰ Θηβαίων ἀπολαμβάνεις, μὴ βουλομένους αὐτοὺς πολεμεῖν καὶ μάχεσθαι [4] διδάξας. ἦν δ’ ὡς ἀληθῶς διδάσκαλος οὐκ Ἀγησίλαος, ἀλλ’ οἱ σὺν καιρῷ καὶ μετὰ λογισμοῦ τοὺς Θηβαίους ὥσπερ σκύλακας ἐμπείρως προσβάλλοντες τοῖς πολεμίοις, εἶτα γευσαμένους νίκης καὶ φρονήματος ἀσφαλῶς ἀπάγοντες· ὧν μεγίστην δόξαν εἶχεν ὁ Πελοπίδας.

[5] ἀφ’ ἧς γὰρ εἵλοντο πρῶτον ἡγεμόνα τῶν ὅπλων, οὐκ [ἀν]ἐπαύσαντο καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν ἄρχοντα χειροτονοῦντες, ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸν ἱερὸν λόχον ἄγων ἢ τὰ πλεῖστα βοιωταρχῶν ἄχρι τῆς τελευτῆς ἔπραττεν.

[6] Ἐγένοντο μὲν οὖν καὶ περὶ Πλαταιὰς καὶ Θεσπιὰς ἧτται καὶ φυγαὶ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, ὅπου καὶ Φοιβίδας ὁ τὴν Καδμείαν καταλαβὼν ἀπέθανε, πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ πρὸς Τανάγρᾳ τρεψάμενος αὐτῶν καὶ Πανθοΐδαν τὸν ἁρμοστὴν [7] ἀνεῖλεν. ἀλλ’ οὗτοι μὲν οἱ ἀγῶνες ὥσπερ τοὺς κρατοῦντας εἰς φρόνημα καὶ θάρσος προῆγον, οὕτως τῶν ἡσσωμένων [8] οὐ παντάπασιν ἐδουλοῦντο τὴν γνώμην· οὐ γὰρ ἐκ παρατάξεως ἦσαν, οὐδὲ μάχας ἐμφανῆ κατάστασιν ἐχούσας καὶ νόμιμον, ἐκδρομὰς δὲ προσκαίρους τιθέμενοι, καὶ ‹κατὰ› φυγὰς ἢ διώξεις ἐπιχειροῦντες αὐτοῖς καὶ συμπλεκόμενοι, κατώρθουν.

[16] [1] Ὁ δὲ περὶ Τεγύρας, τρόπον τινὰ τοῦ Λευκτρικοῦ προαγὼν γενόμενος, μέγαν ἦρε [ἐν] δόξῃ τὸν Πελοπίδαν, οὔτε πρὸς κατόρθωμα τοῖς συστρατήγοις ἀμφισβήτησιν [2] οὔτε τῆς ἥττης πρόφασιν τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀπολιπών. τῇ γὰρ Ὀρχομενίων πόλει, τὰ Σπαρτιατῶν ἑλομένῃ καὶ δύο δεδεγμένῃ μόρας αὐτῶν ὑπὲρ ἀσφαλείας, ἐπεβούλευε μὲν ἀεὶ καὶ παρεφύλαττε καιρόν, ὡς δ’ ἤκουσε τοῖς φρουροῖς εἰς τὴν Λοκρίδα γεγενῆσθαι στρατείαν, ἐλπίσας ἔρημον αἱρήσειν τὸν Ὀρχομενὸν ἐστράτευσεν, ἔχων μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ [3] τὸν ἱερὸν λόχον καὶ τῶν ἱππέων οὐ πολλούς. ἐπεὶ δὲ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν προσαγαγὼν εὗρεν ἥκουσαν ἐκ Σπάρτης διαδοχὴν τῆς φρουρᾶς, ἀπῆγεν ὀπίσω τὸ στράτευμα πάλιν διὰ Τεγυρῶν, ᾗ μόνῃ βάσιμον ἦν κύκλῳ παρὰ τὴν ὑπώρειαν· [4] τὴν γὰρ διὰ μέσου πᾶσαν ὁ Μέλας ποταμός, εὐθὺς ἐκ πηγῶν εἰς ἕλη πλωτὰ καὶ λίμνας διασπειρόμενος ἄπορον ἐποίει.

[5] Μικρὸν δ’ ὑπὸ τὰ ἕλη νεώς ἐστιν Ἀπόλλωνος Τεγυραίου καὶ μαντεῖον ἐκλελειμμένον οὐ πάνυ πολὺν χρόνον, ἀλλ’ ἄχρι τῶν Μηδικῶν ἤκμαζε, τὴν προφητείαν Ἐχεκράτους [6] ἔχοντος. [ἐνταῦθα μυθολογοῦσι τὸν θεὸν γενέσθαι] καὶ τὸ μὲν πλησίον ὄρος Δῆλος καλεῖται, καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸ καταλήγουσιν αἱ τοῦ Μέλανος διαχύσεις, ὀπίσω δὲ τοῦ ναοῦ δύο ῥήγνυνται πηγαὶ γλυκύτητι καὶ πλήθει καὶ ψυχρότητι θαυμαστοῦ νάματος, ὧν τὸ μὲν Φοίνικα, τὸ δ’ Ἐλαίαν ἄχρι νῦν ὀνομάζομεν. ‹ἐνταῦθα μυθολογοῦσι γενέσθαι τὸν θεόν›, οὐ φυτῶν μεταξὺ δυεῖν, ἀλλὰ ῥείθρων τῆς θεοῦ λοχευθείσης.

[7] καὶ γὰρ τὸ Πτῷον ἐγγύς, ὅθεν αὐτὴν ἀναπτοηθῆναι προφανέντος ἐξαίφνης κάπρου λέγουσι, καὶ τὰ περὶ Πύθωνα καὶ Τιτυὸν ὡσαύτως οἱ τόποι τῇ γενέσει τοῦ θεοῦ συνοικειοῦσι· [8] τὰ γὰρ πλεῖστα παραλείπω τῶν τεκμηρίων. οὐ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἐκ μεταβολῆς ἀθανάτοις γενομένοις γεννητοῖς ὁ πάτριος λόγος τὸν θεὸν τοῦτον ἀπολείπει δαίμοσιν, ὥσπερ Ἡρακλέα καὶ Διόνυσον, [ἐκ μεταβολῆς] ἀρετῇ τὸ θνητὸν καὶ παθητὸν ἀποβαλόντας, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἀϊδίων καὶ ἀγεννήτων εἷς ἐστιν, εἰ δεῖ τοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν φρονιμωτάτων καὶ παλαιοτάτων λεγομένοις τεκμαίρεσθαι περὶ τῶν τηλικούτων.

[17] [1] Εἰς δ’ οὖν Τεγύρας οἱ Θηβαῖοι κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν χρόνον ἐκ τῆς Ὀρχομενίας ἀπιόντες καὶ οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι συνέπιπτον, ἐξ ἐναντίας αὐτοῖς ἐκ τῆς Λοκρίδος ἀναζευγνύντες.

[2] ὡς δὲ πρῶτον ὤφθησαν τὰ στενὰ διεκβάλλοντες, καί τις εἶπε τῷ Πελοπίδᾳ προσδραμών· ἐμπεπτώκαμεν εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους, τί μᾶλλον εἶπεν ἢ εἰς ἡμᾶς ἐκεῖνοι; [3] καὶ τὴν μὲν ἵππον εὐθὺς πᾶσαν ἐκέλευσε παρελαύνειν ἀπ’ οὐρᾶς ὡς προεμβαλοῦσαν, αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς ὁπλίτας τριακοσίους ὄντας εἰς ὀλίγον συνήγαγεν, ἐλπίζων καθ’ ὃ προσβάλοι μάλιστα διακόψειν ὑπερβάλλοντας πλήθει τοὺς πολεμίους.

[4] ἦσαν δὲ δύο μόραι Λακεδαιμονίων. τὴν δὲ μόραν Ἔφορος μὲν (FGrH 70 F 210) ἄνδρας εἶναι πεντακοσίους φησί, Καλλισθένης δ’ (FGrH 124 F 18) ἑπτακοσίους, ἄλλοι [5] δέ τινες ἐνακοσίους, ὧν Πολύβιός ἐστι (fg. 60 B.W.). καὶ θαρροῦντες οἱ πολέμαρχοι τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν Γοργολέων καὶ [6] Θεόπομπος ὥρμησαν ἐπὶ τοὺς Θηβαίους. γενομένης δέ πως μάλιστα τῆς ἐφόδου κατ’ αὐτοὺς τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἀπ’ ἀμφοτέρων μετὰ θυμοῦ καὶ βίας, πρῶτον μὲν οἱ πολέμαρχοι τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων τῷ Πελοπίδᾳ συρράξαντες ἔπεσον· [7] ἔπειτα τῶν περὶ ἐκείνους παιομένων καὶ ἀποθνῃσκόντων, ἅπαν εἰς φόβον κατέστη τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ διέσχε μὲν ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα τοῖς Θηβαίοις, ὡς διεκπεσεῖν εἰς τοὔμπροσθεν [8] καὶ διεκδῦναι βουλομένοις. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν δεδομένην ὁ Πελοπίδας ‹χαίρειν ἐάσας› ἡγεῖτο πρὸς τοὺς συνεστῶτας καὶ διεξῄει φονεύων, οὕτω πάντες προτροπάδην ἔφυγον.

[9] ἐγένετο δ’ οὐκ ἐπὶ πολὺν τόπον ἡ δίωξις· ἐφοβοῦντο γὰρ ἐγγὺς ὄντας οἱ Θηβαῖοι τοὺς Ὀρχομενίους καὶ τὴν διαδοχὴν [10] τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων· ὅσον δὲ νικῆσαι κατὰ κράτος καὶ διεξελθεῖν διὰ παντὸς ἡσσωμένου τοῦ στρατεύματος ἐξεβιάσαντο, καὶ στήσαντες τρόπαιον καὶ ‹τοὺς› νεκροὺς σκυλεύσαντες, ἀνεχώρησαν ἐπ’ οἴκου μέγα φρονοῦντες.

[11] Ἐν γὰρ τοσούτοις ὡς ἔοικε πολέμοις Ἑλληνικοῖς καὶ βαρβαρικοῖς πρότερον οὐδέποτε Λακεδαιμόνιοι πλείονες ὄντες ὑπ’ ἐλαττόνων ἐκρατήθησαν, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἴσοι πρὸς [12] ἴσους ἐκ παρατάξεως συμβαλόντες. ὅθεν ἦσαν ἀνυπόστατοι τὰ φρονήματα καὶ τῇ δόξῃ καταπληττόμενοι τοὺς ἀντιπαραταττομένους, οὐδ’ αὐτοὺς ἀξιοῦντας ἀπ’ ἴσης δυνάμεως τὸ ἴσον φέρεσθαι Σπαρτιάταις, εἰς χεῖρας συνέστησαν.

[13] ἐκείνη δ’ ἡ μάχη πρώτη καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐδίδαξεν Ἕλληνας, ὡς οὐχ ὁ Εὐρώτας οὐδ’ ὁ μεταξὺ Βαβύκας καὶ Κνακιῶνος τόπος ἄνδρας ἐκφέρει μαχητὰς καὶ πολεμικούς, ἀλλὰ παρ’ οἷς ἂν αἰσχύνεσθαι τὰ αἰσχρὰ καὶ τολμᾶν ἐπὶ τοῖς καλοῖς ἐθέλοντες [ἐγ]γένωνται νέοι καὶ τοὺς ψόγους τῶν κινδύνων μᾶλλον φεύγοντες, οὗτοι φοβερώτατοι τοῖς ἐναντίοις εἰσί.

[18] [1] Τὸν δ’ ἱερὸν λόχον ὥς φασι συνετάξατο Γοργίδας πρῶτος ἐξ ἀνδρῶν ἐπιλέκτων τριακοσίων, οἷς ἡ πόλις ἄσκησιν καὶ δίαιταν ἐν τῇ Καδμείᾳ στρατοπεδευομένοις παρεῖχε. καὶ διὰ τοῦθ’ ὁ ἐκ πόλεως λόχος ἐκαλοῦντο· τὰς γὰρ ἀκροπόλεις ἐπιεικῶς οἱ τότε πόλεις ὠνόμαζον· [2] ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ἐξ ἐραστῶν καὶ ἐρωμένων γενέσθαι τὸ σύστημα τοῦτο, καὶ Παμμένους ἀπομνημονεύεταί τι μετὰ παιδιᾶς εἰρημένον· οὐ γὰρ ἔφη τακτικὸν εἶναι τὸν Ὁμήρου Νέστορα, κελεύοντα κατὰ φῦλα καὶ φρήτρας συλλοχίζεσθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας (Il. 2, 363),

ὡς φρήτρη φρήτρηφιν ἀρήγῃ, φῦλα δὲ φύλοις,

[3] δέον ἐραστὴν παρ’ ἐρώμενον τάττειν. φυλέτας μὲν γὰρ φυλετῶν καὶ φρατόρων ‹φράτορας› οὐ πολὺν λόγον ἔχειν ἐν τοῖς δεινοῖς, τὸ δ’ ἐξ ἐρωτικῆς φιλίας συνηρμοσμένον στῖφος ἀδιάλυτον εἶναι καὶ ἄρρηκτον, ὅταν οἱ μὲν ἀγαπῶντες τοὺς ἐρωμένους, οἱ δ’ αἰσχυνόμενοι τοὺς ἐρῶντας, [4] ἐμμένωσι τοῖς δεινοῖς ὑπὲρ ἀλλήλων. καὶ τοῦτο θαυμαστὸν οὐκ ἔστιν, εἴγε δὴ καὶ μὴ παρόντας αἰδοῦνται μᾶλλον ἑτέρων παρόντων, ὡς ἐκεῖνος ὁ τοῦ πολεμίου κείμενον αὐτὸν ἐπισφάττειν μέλλοντος δεόμενος καὶ ἀντιβολῶν διὰ τοῦ στέρνου διεῖναι τὸ ξίφος, ὅπως ἔφη μή με νεκρὸν ὁ ἐρώμενος ὁρῶν κατὰ νώτου τετρωμένον [5] αἰσχυνθῇ. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἰόλεων τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ἐρώμενον ὄντα κοινωνεῖν τῶν ἄθλων καὶ παρασπίζειν. Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ (fg. 97 R.) καὶ καθ’ αὑτὸν ἔτι φησὶν ἐπὶ τοῦ τάφου τοῦ Ἰόλεω τὰς καταπιστώσεις ποιεῖσθαι τοὺς ἐρωμένους [6] καὶ τοὺς ἐραστάς. εἰκὸς οὖν καὶ τὸν λόχον ἱερὸν προσαγορεύεσθαι, καθότι καὶ Πλάτων (Phaedr. 255b) ἔνθεον φίλον [7] τὸν ἐραστὴν προσεῖπε. λέγεται δὲ διαμεῖναι μέχρι τῆς ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ μάχης ἀήττητον· ὡς δὲ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἐφορῶν τοὺς νεκροὺς ὁ Φίλιππος ἔστη κατὰ τοῦτο τὸ χωρίον, ἐν ᾧ συνετύγχανε κεῖσθαι τοὺς τριακοσίους, ἐναντίους ἀπηντηκότας ταῖς σαρίσαις ἅπαντας ἐν τοῖς [στενοῖς] ὅπλοις καὶ μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἀναμεμειγμένους, θαυμάσαντα καὶ πυθόμενον, ὡς ὁ τῶν ἐραστῶν καὶ τῶν ἐρωμένων οὗτος εἴη λόχος, δακρῦσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν· ἀπόλοιντο κακῶς οἱ τούτους τι ποιεῖν ἢ πάσχειν αἰσχρὸν ὑπονοοῦντες.

[19] [1] Ὅλως δὲ τῆς περὶ τοὺς ἐραστὰς συνηθείας οὐχ, ὥσπερ οἱ ποιηταὶ λέγουσι, Θηβαίοις τὸ Λαΐου πάθος ἀρχὴν παρέσχεν, ἀλλ’ οἱ νομοθέται τὸ φύσει θυμοειδὲς αὐτῶν καὶ ἄκρατον ἀνιέναι καὶ ἀνυγραίνειν εὐθὺς ἐκ παίδων βουλόμενοι, πολὺν μὲν ἀνεμείξαντο καὶ σπουδῇ καὶ παιδιᾷ πάσῃ τὸν αὐλόν, εἰς τιμὴν καὶ προεδρίαν ἄγοντες, λαμπρὸν δὲ τὸν ἔρωτα ταῖς παλαίστραις ἐνεθρέψαντο, [2] συγκεραννύντες τὰ ἤθη τῶν νέων. ὀρθῶς δὲ πρὸς τοῦτο καὶ τὴν ἐξ Ἄρεως καὶ Ἀφροδίτης γεγονέναι λεγομένην θεὸν τῇ πόλει συνῳκείωσαν, ὡς ὅπου τὸ μαχητικὸν καὶ πολεμικὸν μάλιστα τῷ μετέχοντι πειθοῦς καὶ χαρίτων ὁμιλεῖ καὶ σύνεστιν, εἰς τὴν ἐμμελεστάτην καὶ κοσμιωτάτην πολιτείαν δι’ Ἁρμονίας καθισταμένων ἁπάντων.

[3] Τὸν οὖν ἱερὸν λόχον τοῦτον ὁ μὲν Γοργίδας διαιρῶν εἰς τὰ πρῶτα ζυγά, καὶ παρ’ ὅλην τὴν φάλαγγα τῶν ὁπλιτῶν προβαλλόμενος, ἐπίδηλον οὐκ ἐποίει τὴν ἀρετὴν τῶν ἀνδρῶν οὐδ’ ἐχρῆτο τῇ δυνάμει πρὸς κοινὸν ἔργον, ἅτε δὴ [4] διαλελυμένῃ καὶ πρὸς πολὺ μεμειγμένῃ τὸ φαυλότερον. ὁ δὲ Πελοπίδας, ὡς ἐξέλαμψεν αὐτῶν ἡ ἀρετὴ περὶ Τεγύρας καθαρῶς καὶ περιόπτως ἀγωνισαμένων, οὐκέτι διεῖλεν οὐδὲ διέσπασεν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ σώματι χρώμενος [5] ὅλῳ προεκινδύνευεν ‹ἐν› τοῖς μεγίστοις ἀγῶσιν. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ ἵπποι θᾶσσον ὑπὸ τοῖς ἅρμασιν ἢ καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἐλαυνόμενοι θέουσιν, οὐχ ὅτι μᾶλλον ἐμπίπτοντες ἐκβιάζονται τὸν ἀέρα τῷ πλήθει ῥηγνύμενον, ἀλλ’ ὅτι συνεκκαίει τὸν θυμὸν ἡ μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἅμιλλα καὶ τὸ φιλόνικον, οὕτως ᾤετο τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ζῆλον ἀλλήλοις καλῶν ἔργων ‹ἐμποι›οῦντας ὠφελιμωτάτους εἰς κοινὸν ἔργον εἶναι καὶ προθυμοτάτους.

[20] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι πᾶσι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν εἰρήνην συνθέμενοι πρὸς μόνους Θηβαίους ἐξήνεγκαν τὸν πόλεμον, ἐνεβεβλήκει δὲ Κλεόμβροτος ὁ βασιλεύς, ἄγων ὁπλίτας μυρίους, ἱππεῖς δὲ χιλίους, ὁ δὲ κίνδυνος οὐ περὶ ὧν πρότερον ἦν Θηβαίοις, ἀλλ’ ἄντικρυς ἀπειλὴ καὶ καταγγελία διοικισμοῦ, καὶ φόβος οἷος οὔπω τὴν Βοιωτίαν [2] κατεῖχεν, ἐξιὼν μὲν ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας ὁ Πελοπίδας, καὶ τῆς γυναικὸς ἐν τῷ προπέμπειν δακρυούσης καὶ παρακαλούσης σῴζειν ἑαυτόν, ταῦτ’ εἶπεν ὦ γύναι τοῖς ἰδιώταις [ἀεὶ] χρὴ παραινεῖν, τοῖς δ’ ἄρχουσιν ὅπως τοὺς [3] ἄλλους σῴζωσιν. ἐλθὼν δ’ εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ τοὺς βοιωτάρχας καταλαβὼν οὐχ ὁμογνωμονοῦντας, πρῶτος Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ προσέθετο γνώμην, ψηφιζομένῳ διὰ μάχης ἰέναι τοῖς πολεμίοις, βοιωτάρχης μὲν οὐκ ἀποδεδειγμένος, ἄρχων δὲ τοῦ ἱεροῦ λόχου καὶ πιστευόμενος, ὡς ἦν δίκαιον ἄνδρα τηλικαῦτα δεδωκότα τῇ πατρίδι σύμβολ’ εἰς [4] τὴν ἐλευθερίαν. ὡς οὖν ἐδέδοκτο διακινδυνεύειν καὶ περὶ τὰ Λεῦκτρα τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις ἀντεστρατοπέδευον, ὄψιν εἶδε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ὁ Πελοπίδας εὖ μάλα διαταράξασαν [5] αὐτόν. ἔστι γὰρ ἐν τῷ Λευκτρικῷ πεδίῳ τὰ σήματα τῶν τοῦ Σκεδάσου θυγατέρων, ἃς Λευκτρίδας καλοῦσι διὰ τὸν τόπον· ἐκεῖ γὰρ αὐταῖς ὑπὸ ξένων [6] Σπαρτιατῶν βιασθείσαις συνέβη ταφῆναι. γενομένης δὲ χαλεπῆς οὕτω καὶ παρανόμου πράξεως, ὁ μὲν πατήρ, ὡς οὐκ ἔτυχεν ἐν Λακεδαίμονι δίκης, ἀρὰς κατὰ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ἀρασάμενος ἔσφαξεν ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς τάφοις τῶν [7] παρθένων. χρησμοὶ δὲ καὶ λόγια τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις ἀεὶ προὔφαινον εὐλαβεῖσθαι καὶ φυλάττεσθαι τὸ Λευκτρικὸν μήνιμα, μὴ πάνυ τῶν πολλῶν συνιέντων, ἀλλ’ ἀμφιγνοούντων τὸν τόπον, ἐπεὶ καὶ τῆς Λακωνικῆς πολίχνιον πρὸς τῇ θαλάσσῃ Λεῦκτρον ὀνομάζεται, καὶ πρὸς [8] Μεγάλῃ πόλει τῆς Ἀρκαδίας τόπος ἐστὶν ὁμώνυμος. τὸ μὲν οὖν πάθος τοῦτο πολὺ τῶν Λευκτρικῶν ἦν παλαιότερον.

[21] [1]

Ὁ δὲ Πελοπίδας ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ κατακοιμηθεὶς ἔδοξε τάς τε παῖδας ὁρᾶν περὶ τὰ μνήματα θρηνούσας καὶ καταρωμένας τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις, τόν τε Σκέδασον κελεύοντα ταῖς κόραις σφαγιάσαι παρθένον ξανθήν, [2] εἰ βούλοιτο τῶν πολεμίων ἐπικρατῆσαι. δεινοῦ δὲ καὶ παρανόμου τοῦ προστάγματος αὐτῷ φανέντος, ἐξαναστὰς [3] ἐκοινοῦτο τοῖς τε μάντεσι καὶ τοῖς ἄρχουσιν. ὧν οἱ μὲν οὐκ εἴων παραμελεῖν οὐδ’ ἀπειθεῖν, τῶν μὲν παλαιῶν προφέροντες Μενοικέα τὸν Κρέοντος καὶ Μακαρίαν τὴν Ἡρακλέους, τῶν δ’ ὕστερον Φερεκύδην τε τὸν σοφὸν ὑπὸ Λακεδαιμονίων ἀναιρεθέντα καὶ τὴν δορὰν αὐτοῦ κατά τι λόγιον ὑπὸ τῶν βασιλέων φρουρουμένην, Λεωνίδαν τε τῷ χρησμῷ τρόπον τινὰ προθυσάμενον ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἔτι δὲ τοὺς ὑπὸ Θεμιστοκλέους σφαγιασθέντας Ὠμηστῇ Διονύσῳ πρὸ τῆς ἐν Σαλαμῖνι ναυμαχίας· [4] ἐκείνοις γὰρ ἐπιμαρτυρῆσαι τὰ κατορθώματα· τοῦτο δ’ Ἀγησίλαον, ‹ὃν› ἀπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν Ἀγαμέμνονι τόπων ἐπὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς στρατευόμενον πολεμίους ᾔτησε μὲν ἡ θεὸς τὴν θυγατέρα σφάγιον, καὶ ταύτην εἶδε τὴν ὄψιν ἐν Αὐλίδι κοιμώμενος, ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἔδωκεν, ἀλλ’ ἀπομαλθακισθεὶς [5] κατέλυσε τὴν στρατείαν, ἄδοξον καὶ ἀτελῆ γενομένην. οἱ δὲ τοὐναντίον ἀπηγόρευον, ὡς οὐδενὶ τῶν κρειττόνων καὶ ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς ἀρεστὴν οὖσαν οὕτω βάρβαρον καὶ παράνομον θυσίαν· οὐ γὰρ τοὺς Τυφῶνας ἐκείνους οὐδὲ τοὺς Γίγαντας ἄρχειν, ἀλλὰ τὸν πάντων πατέρα θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων· [6] δαίμονας δὲ χαίροντας ἀνθρώπων αἵματι καὶ φόνῳ πιστεύειν ‹εἶναι› μὲν ἴσως ἐστὶν ἀβέλτερον, ὄντων δὲ τοιούτων ἀμελητέον ὡς ἀδυνάτων· ἀσθενείᾳ γὰρ καὶ μοχθηρίᾳ ψυχῆς ἐμφύεσθαι καὶ παραμένειν τὰς ἀτόπους καὶ χαλεπὰς ἐπιθυμίας.

[22] [1] Ἐν τοιούτοις οὖν διαλόγοις τῶν πρώτων ὄντων, καὶ μάλιστα τοῦ Πελοπίδου διαποροῦντος, πῶλος ἐξ ἀγέλης ἀποφυγοῦσα καὶ φερομένη διὰ τῶν ὅπλων, ὡς ἦν θέουσα [2] κατ’ αὐτοὺς ἐκείνους, ἐπέστη· καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις θέαν παρεῖχεν ἥ τε χρόα στίλβουσα τῆς χαίτης πυρσότατον, ἥ τε γαυρότης καὶ τὸ σοβαρὸν καὶ τεθαρρηκὸς τῆς φωνῆς· [3] Θεόκριτος δ’ ὁ μάντις συμφρονήσας ἀνεβόησε πρὸς τὸν Πελοπίδαν· ἥκει σοι τὸ ἱερεῖον ὦ δαιμόνιε, καὶ παρθένον ἄλλην μὴ περιμένωμεν, ἀλλὰ χρῶ δεξάμενος ἣν ὁ θεὸς [4] δίδωσιν. ἐκ τούτου λαβόντες τὴν ἵππον ἐπὶ τοὺς τάφους ἦγον τῶν παρθένων, καὶ κατευξάμενοι καὶ καταστέψαντες ἐνέτεμον, αὐτοί τε χαίροντες καὶ λόγον εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον περὶ τῆς ὄψεως τοῦ Πελοπίδου καὶ τῆς θυσίας διδόντες.

[23] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῇ μάχῃ τοῦ Ἐπαμεινώνδου τὴν φάλαγγα λοξὴν ἐπὶ τὸ εὐώνυμον ἕλκοντος, ὅπως τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων ἀπωτάτω γένηται τὸ δεξιὸν τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν καὶ τὸν Κλεόμβροτον ἐξώσῃ προσπεσὼν ἀθρόως κατὰ [2] κέρας καὶ βιασάμενος, οἱ μὲν πολέμιοι καταμαθόντες τὸ γινόμενον ἤρξαντο μετακινεῖν τῇ τάξει σφᾶς αὐτοὺς καὶ τὸ δεξιὸν ἀνέπτυσσον καὶ περιῆγον, ὡς κυκλωσόμενοι [3] καὶ περιβαλοῦντες ὑπὸ πλήθους τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν, ὁ δὲ Πελοπίδας ἐν τούτῳ προεξέδραμε, καὶ συστρέψας τοὺς τριακοσίους δρόμῳ φθάνει, πρὶν ἀνατεῖναι τὸν Κλεόμβροτον τὸ κέρας ἢ συναγ‹αγ›εῖν πάλιν εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ συγκλεῖσαι τὴν τάξιν, οὐ καθεστῶσιν ἀλλὰ θορυβουμένοις [4] δι’ ἀλλήλων τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις ἐπιβαλών. καίτοι πάντων ἄκροι τεχνῖται καὶ σοφισταὶ τῶν πολεμικῶν ὄντες οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται πρὸς οὐδὲν οὕτως ἐπαίδευον αὑτοὺς καὶ συνείθιζον, ὡς τὸ μὴ πλανᾶσθαι μηδὲ ταράττεσθαι τάξεως διαλυθείσης, ἀλλὰ χρώμενοι πᾶσι πάντες ἐπιστάταις καὶ ζευγίταις, ὅπου ποτὲ καὶ σὺν οἷστισιν ὁ κίνδυνος καταλαμβάνοι, καὶ συναρμόττειν καὶ μάχεσθαι παραπλησίως.

[5] τότε δ’ ἡ τοῦ Ἐπαμεινώνδου φάλαγξ ἐπιφερομένη μόνοις ἐκείνοις καὶ παραλλάττουσα τοὺς ἄλλους, ὅ τε Πελοπίδας μετὰ τάχους ἀπίστου καὶ τόλμης ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις γενόμενος, συνέχεον τά τε φρονήματα καὶ τὰς ἐπιστήμας αὐτῶν οὕτως, ὥστε φυγὴν καὶ φόνον Σπαρτιατῶν ὅσον [6] οὔπω πρότερον γενέσθαι. διὸ τῷ Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ βοιωταρχοῦντι μὴ βοιωταρχῶν, καὶ πάσης ἡγουμένῳ τῆς δυνάμεως μικροῦ μέρους ἄρχων, ἴσον ἠνέγκατο δόξης τῆς νίκης ἐκείνης καὶ τοῦ κατορθώματος.

[24] [1] Εἰς μέντοι Πελοπόννησον ἀμφότεροι βοιωταρχοῦντες ἐνέβαλον καὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν τὰ πλεῖστα προσήγοντο, Λακεδαιμονίων ἀποστήσαντες Ἦλιν, Ἄργος, Ἀρκαδίαν σύμπασαν, αὐτῆς τῆς Λακωνικῆς τὰ πλεῖστα.

[2] καίτοι χειμῶνος μὲν ἦσαν αἱ περὶ τροπὰς ἀκμαί, μηνὸς δὲ τοῦ τελευταίου φθίνοντος ὀλίγαι περιῆσαν ἡμέραι, καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἔδει παραλαμβάνειν ἑτέρους εὐθὺς ἱσταμένου τοῦ πρώτου μηνός, ἢ θνῄσκειν τοὺς μὴ παραδιδόντας.

[3] οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι βοιωτάρχαι, καὶ τὸν νόμον δεδιότες τοῦτον, καὶ τὸν χειμῶνα φεύγοντες, ἀπάγειν ἔσπευδον ἐπ’ οἴκου τὸ στράτευμα, Πελοπίδας δὲ πρῶτος Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ γενόμενος σύμψηφος καὶ συμπαρορμήσας τοὺς πολίτας, [4] ἦγεν ἐπὶ τὴν Σπάρτην καὶ διεβίβαζε τὸν Εὐρώταν, καὶ πολλὰς μὲν ᾕρει πόλεις αὐτῶν, πᾶσαν δὲ τὴν χώραν ἐπόρθει μέχρι θαλάσσης, ἡγούμενος ἑπτὰ μυριάδων Ἑλληνικῆς στρατιᾶς, ἧς ἔλαττον ἢ δωδέκατον ἦσαν αὐτοὶ [5] Θηβαῖοι μέρος. ἀλλ’ ἡ δόξα τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἄνευ δόγματος κοινοῦ καὶ ψηφίσματος ἐποίει τοὺς συμμάχους ἕπεσθαι [6] σιωπῇ πάντας ἡγουμένοις ἐκείνοις. ὁ γὰρ πρῶτος ὡς ἔοικε καὶ κυριώτατος νόμος τῷ σῴζεσθαι δεομένῳ τὸν [7] σῴζειν δυνάμενον ἄρχοντα κατὰ φύσιν ἀποδίδωσι· κἂν ὥσπερ οἱ πλέοντες εὐδίας οὔσης ἢ παρ’ ἀκτὴν ὁρμοῦντες ἀσελγῶς προσενεχθῶσι τοῖς κυβερνήταις καὶ θρασέως, ἅμα τῷ χειμῶνα καὶ κίνδυνον καταλαμβάνειν πρὸς ἐκείνους [8] ἀποβλέπουσι καὶ τὰς ἐλπίδας ἐν ἐκείνοις ἔχουσι. καὶ γὰρ Ἀργεῖοι καὶ Ἠλεῖοι καὶ Ἀρκάδες, ἐν τοῖς συνεδρίοις ἐρίζοντες καὶ διαφερόμενοι πρὸς τοὺς Θηβαίους ὑπὲρ ἡγεμονίας, ἐπ’ αὐτῶν τῶν ἀγώνων καὶ παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ τοῖς ἐκείνων αὐθαιρέτως πειθόμενοι στρατηγοῖς ἠκολούθουν [9] ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ στρατείᾳ, καὶ πᾶσαν μὲν Ἀρκαδίαν εἰς μίαν δύναμιν συνέστησαν, τὴν δὲ Μεσσηνίαν χώραν νεμομένων Σπαρτιατῶν ἀποτεμόμενοι, τοὺς παλαιοὺς Μεσσηνίους [10] ἐκάλουν καὶ κατῆγον, Ἰθώμην συνοικίσαντες. ἀπιόντες δ’ ἐπ’ οἴκου διὰ Κεγχρεῶν, Ἀθηναίους ἐνίκων, ἐπιχειροῦντας ἁψιμαχεῖν περὶ τὰ στενὰ καὶ κωλύειν τὴν πορείαν.

[25] [1] Ἐπὶ δὲ τούτοις οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι πάντες ὑπερηγάπων τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν τύχην ἐθαύμαζον, ὁ δὲ συγγενὴς καὶ πολιτικὸς φθόνος, ἅμα τῇ δόξῃ τῶν ἀνδρῶν συναυξόμενος, οὐ καλὰς οὐδὲ πρεπούσας ὑποδοχὰς παρεσκεύαζεν αὐτοῖς.

[2] θανάτου γὰρ ἀμφότεροι δίκας ἔφυγον ἐπανελθόντες, ὅτι τοῦ νόμου κελεύοντος ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ μηνὶ παραδοῦναι τὴν βοιωταρχίαν ἑτέροις, ὃν Βουκάτιον ὀνομάζουσι, τέτταρας ὅλους προσεπελάβοντο μῆνας, ἐν οἷς τὰ περὶ Μεσσήνην [3] καὶ Ἀρκαδίαν καὶ τὴν Λακωνικὴν διῴκησαν. εἰσήχθη μὲν οὖν πρότερος εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον Πελοπίδας, δι’ ὃ καὶ [4] μᾶλλον ἐκινδύνευσεν, ἀμφότεροι δ’ ἀπελύθησαν. τὸ δὲ συκοφάντημα καὶ τὴν πεῖραν Ἐπαμεινώνδας ἤνεγκε πρᾴως, μέγα μέρος ἀνδρείας καὶ μεγαλοψυχίας τὴν ἐν τοῖς πολιτικοῖς ἀνεξικακίαν ποιούμενος· Πελοπίδας δὲ καὶ φύσει θυμοειδέστερος ὤν, καὶ παροξυνόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων ἀμύνασθαι τοὺς ἐχθρούς, ἐπελάβετο τοιαύτης αἰτίας.

[5] Μενεκλείδας ὁ ῥήτωρ ἦν μὲν εἷς τῶν μετὰ Πελοπίδου καὶ Μέλωνος εἰς τὴν Χάρωνος οἰκίαν συνελθόντων, ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν ἴσων οὐκ ἠξιοῦτο παρὰ τοῖς Θηβαίοις, δεινότατος μὲν ὢν λέγειν, ἀκόλαστος δὲ καὶ κακοήθης τὸν τρόπον, ἐχρῆτο τῇ φύσει πρὸς τὸ συκοφαντεῖν καὶ διαβάλλειν τοὺς κρείττονας, οὐδὲ μετὰ ‹τὴν› δίκην ἐκείνην παυσάμενος.

[6] Ἐπαμεινώνδαν μὲν οὖν ἐξέκρουσε τῆς βοιωταρχίας καὶ κατεπολιτεύσατο πολὺν χρόνον, Πελοπίδαν δὲ πρὸς μὲν τὸν δῆμον οὐκ ἴσχυσε διαβαλεῖν, ἐπεχείρει δὲ συγκροῦσαι [7] τῷ Χάρωνι· καὶ κοινήν τινα τοῦ φθόνου παραμυθίαν ἔχοντος, ὧν ἂν αὐτοὶ μὴ δύνωνται βελτίους φανῆναι, τούτους ‹ἐὰν› ἁμῶς γέ πως ἑτέρων ἀποδείξωσι κακίους, πολὺς ἦν πρὸς τὸν δῆμον αὔξων τὰ τοῦ Χάρωνος ἔργα, καὶ τὰς [8] στρατηγίας τὰς ἐκείνου καὶ τὰς νίκας ἐγκωμιάζων. τῆς δὲ πρὸς Πλαταιὰς ἱππομαχίας, ἣν πρὸ τῶν Λευκτρικῶν ἐνίκησαν ἡγουμένου Χάρωνος, ἐπεχείρησεν ἀνάθημα [9] τοιόνδε ποιῆσαι. Ἀνδροκύδης ὁ Κυζικηνὸς ἐκλαβὼν παρὰ τῆς πόλεως πίνακα γράψαι μάχης ἑτέρας, ἐπετέλει τὸ [10] ἔργον ἐν Θήβαις. γενομένης δὲ τῆς ἀποστάσεως καὶ τοῦ πολέμου συμπεσόντος, οὐ πολὺ τοῦ τέλος ἔχειν ἐλλείποντα [11] τὸν πίνακα παρ’ ἑαυτοῖς οἱ Θηβαῖοι κατέσχον. τοῦτον οὖν ὁ Μενεκλείδας ἔπειθεν ἀναθέντας ἐπιγράψαι τοὔνομα τοῦ Χάρωνος, ὡς ἀμαυρώσων τὴν Πελοπίδου καὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδου [12] δόξαν. ἦν δ’ ἀβέλτερος ἡ φιλοτιμία, παρὰ τοσούτους καὶ τηλικούτους ἀγῶνας ἑνὸς ἔργου καὶ μιᾶς νίκης ἀγαπωμένης, ἐν ᾗ Γεράδαν τινὰ τῶν ἀσήμων Σπαρτιατῶν καὶ τεσσαράκοντα μετ’ αὐτοῦ πεσεῖν, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν μέγα [13] πραχθῆναι λέγουσι. τοῦτο τὸ ψήφισμα γράφεται Πελοπίδας παρανόμων, ἰσχυριζόμενος ὅτι Θηβαίοις οὐ πάτριον ἦν ἰδίᾳ κατ’ ἄνδρα τιμᾶν, ἀλλὰ τῇ πατρίδι κοινῶς τὸ τῆς [14] νίκης ὄνομα σῴζειν. καὶ τὸν μὲν Χάρωνα παρὰ πᾶσαν τὴν δίκην ἐγκωμιάζων ἀφθόνως διετέλεσε, τὸν δὲ Μενεκλείδαν βάσκανον καὶ πονηρὸν ἐξελέγχων, καὶ τοὺς Θηβαίους [15] ἐρωτῶν, εἰ μηδὲν αὐτοῖς καλὸν πέπρακται †ὃ μὴ Μενεκλείδαν ζημιῶσαι χρήμασιν, ἃ μὴ δυνάμενος ἐκτεῖσαι διὰ πλῆθος, ὕστερον ἐπεχείρησε κινῆσαι καὶ μεταστῆσαι τὴν πολιτείαν. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔχει τινὰ καὶ τοῦ βίου ἀποθεώρησιν.

[26] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Φερῶν τυράννου πολεμοῦντος μὲν ἐκ προδήλου πολλοῖς Θεσσαλῶν, ἐπιβουλεύοντος δὲ πᾶσιν, ἐπρέσβευσαν εἰς Θήβας αἱ πόλεις, στρατηγὸν αἰτούμεναι καὶ δύναμιν, ὁρῶν ὁ Πελοπίδας τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν τὰς ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ πράξεις διοικεῖν, αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐπέδωκε καὶ προσένειμε τοῖς Θεσσαλοῖς, μήτε τὴν ἰδίαν ἐπιστήμην καὶ δύναμιν ἀργοῦσαν περιορᾶν ὑπομένων, μήθ’ ὅπου πάρεστιν Ἐπαμεινώνδας ἑτέρου [2] δεῖσθαι στρατηγοῦ νομίζων. ὡς οὖν ἐστράτευσεν ἐπὶ Θεσσαλίαν μετὰ δυνάμεως, τήν τε Λάρισσαν εὐθὺς παρέλαβε, καὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐλθόντα καὶ δεόμενον διαλλάττειν ἐπειρᾶτο καὶ ποιεῖν ἐκ τυράννου πρᾷον [3] ἄρχοντα τοῖς Θεσσαλοῖς καὶ νόμιμον. ὡς δ’ ἦν ἀνήκεστος καὶ θηριώδης, καὶ πολλὴ μὲν ὠμότης αὐτοῦ, πολλὴ δ’ ἀσέλγεια καὶ πλεονεξία κατηγορεῖτο, τραχυνομένου τοῦ Πελοπίδου πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ χαλεπαίνοντος, ἀποδρὰς ᾤχετο [4] μετὰ τῶν δορυφόρων. ὁ δὲ Πελοπίδας ἄδειάν τε πολλὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ τυράννου τοῖς Θεσσαλοῖς ἀπολιπὼν καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὁμόνοιαν, αὐτὸς εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἀπῆρε, Πτολεμαίου μὲν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τῷ βασιλεύοντι τῶν Μακεδόνων πολεμοῦντος, ἀμφοτέρων δὲ μεταπεμπομένων ἐκεῖνον, ὡς διαλλακτὴν καὶ δικαστὴν καὶ σύμμαχον καὶ βοηθὸν τοῦ [5] δοκοῦντος ἀδικεῖσθαι γενησόμενον. ἐλθὼν δὲ καὶ διαλύσας τὰς διαφορὰς καὶ καταγαγὼν τοὺς φεύγοντας, ὅμηρον ἔλαβε τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ βασιλέως Φίλιππον καὶ τριάκοντα παῖδας ἄλλους τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων καὶ κατέστησεν εἰς Θήβας, ἐπιδειξάμενος τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ὡς πόρρω διήκει τὰ Θηβαίων πράγματα τῇ δόξῃ τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ τῇ [6] πίστει τῆς δικαιοσύνης. οὗτος ἦν Φίλιππος ὁ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ὕστερον πολεμήσας ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας, τότε δὲ παῖς [7] ὢν ἐν Θήβαις παρὰ Παμμένει δίαιταν εἶχεν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου καὶ ζηλωτὴς γεγονέναι ‹τισὶν› ἔδοξεν Ἐπαμεινώνδου, τὸ περὶ τοὺς πολέμους καὶ τὰς στρατηγίας δραστήριον ἴσως [8] κατανοήσασ‹ιν›· ὃ μικρὸν ἦν τῆς τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀρετῆς μόριον· ἐγκρατείας δὲ καὶ δικαιοσύνης καὶ μεγαλοψυχίας καὶ πρᾳότητος, οἷς ἦν ἀληθῶς μέγας ἐκεῖνος, οὐδὲν οὔτε φύσει Φίλιππος οὔτε μιμήσει μετέσχε.

[27] [1] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα πάλιν τῶν Θετταλῶν αἰτιωμένων τὸν Φεραῖον Ἀλέξανδρον ὡς διαταράττοντα τὰς πόλεις, ἀπεστάλη μετ’ Ἰσμηνίου πρεσβεύων ὁ Πελοπίδας, καὶ παρῆν οὔτ’ οἴκοθεν ἄγων δύναμιν, οὔτε πόλεμον προσδοκήσας, αὐτοῖς δὲ τοῖς Θετταλοῖς χρῆσθαι πρὸς τὸ [2] κατεπεῖγον τῶν πραγμάτων ἀναγκαζόμενος. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ πάλιν τῶν κατὰ Μακεδονίαν ταραττομένων, (ὁ γὰρ Πτολεμαῖος ἀνῃρήκει τὸν βασιλέα καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν κατέσχεν, οἱ δὲ φίλοι τοῦ τεθνηκότος ἐκάλουν τὸν Πελοπίδαν), [3] βουλόμενος μὲν ἐπιφανῆναι τοῖς πράγμασιν, ἰδίους δὲ στρατιώτας οὐκ ἔχων, μισθοφόρους τινὰς αὐτόθεν προσλαβόμενος, μετὰ τούτων εὐθὺς ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ τὸν [4] Πτολεμαῖον. ὡς δ’ ἐγγὺς ἀλλήλων ἐγένοντο, τοὺς μὲν μισθοφόρους Πτολεμαῖος χρήμασι διαφθείρας ἔπεισεν ὡς αὐτὸν μεταστῆναι, τοῦ δὲ Πελοπίδου τὴν δόξαν αὐτὴν καὶ τοὔνομα δεδοικώς, ἀπήντησεν ὡς κρείσσονι, καὶ δεξιωσάμενος καὶ δεηθεὶς ὡμολόγησε τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν τοῖς τοῦ τεθνηκότος ἀδελφοῖς διαφυλάξειν, Θηβαίοις δὲ τὸν αὐτὸν ἐχθρὸν ἕξειν καὶ φίλον· ὁμήρους δ’ ἐπὶ τούτοις τὸν υἱὸν Φιλόξενον ἔδωκε καὶ πεντήκοντα τῶν ἑταίρων.

[5] τούτους μὲν οὖν ἀπέστειλεν εἰς Θήβας ὁ Πελοπίδας, αὐτὸς δὲ βαρέως φέρων τὴν τῶν μισθοφόρων προδοσίαν, καὶ πυνθανόμενος τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν χρημάτων αὐτοῖς καὶ παῖδας καὶ γυναῖκας ἀποκεῖσθαι περὶ Φάρσαλον, ὥστε τούτων κρατήσας ἱκανὴν δίκην ὧν καθύβρισται λήψεσθαι, [καὶ] συναγαγὼν τῶν Θεσσαλῶν τινας ἧκεν εἰς [6] Φάρσαλον. ἀρτίως δ’ αὐτοῦ παρεληλυθότος, Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ τύραννος ἐπεφαίνετο μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως, καὶ νομίσαντες οἱ περὶ τὸν Πελοπίδαν ἀπολογησόμενον ἥκειν, ἐβάδιζον αὐτοὶ πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐξώλη μὲν ὄντα καὶ μιαιφόνον εἰδότες, διὰ δὲ τὰς Θήβας καὶ τὸ περὶ αὐτοὺς ἀξίωμα καὶ [7] δόξαν οὐδὲν ἂν παθεῖν προσδοκήσαντες. ὁ δ’ ὡς εἶδεν ἀνόπλους καὶ μόνους προσιόντας, ἐκείνους μὲν εὐθὺς συνέλαβε, τὴν δὲ Φάρσαλον κατέσχε, φρίκην δὲ καὶ φόβον ἐνειργάσατο τοῖς ὑπηκόοις πᾶσιν, ὡς μετά γε τηλικαύτην ἀδικίαν καὶ τόλμαν ἀφειδήσων ἁπάντων, καὶ χρησόμενος οὕτω τοῖς παραπίπτουσιν ἀνθρώποις καὶ πράγμασιν, ὡς τότε γε κομιδῇ τὸν ἑαυτοῦ βίον ἀπεγνωκώς.

[28] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν Θηβαῖοι ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντες ἔφερόν τε βαρέως, καὶ στρατιὰν ἐξέπεμπον εὐθύς, δι’ ὀργήν τινα πρὸς τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ἑτέρους ἀποδείξαντες ἄρχοντας.

[2] τὸν δὲ Πελοπίδαν εἰς τὰς Φερὰς ἀπαγαγὼν ὁ τύραννος, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον εἴα τοὺς βουλομένους αὐτῷ διαλέγεσθαι, νομίζων ἐλεεινὸν γεγονέναι καὶ ταπεινὸν ὑπὸ τῆς συμφορᾶς· [3] ἐπεὶ δὲ τοὺς μὲν Φεραίους ὁ Πελοπίδας ὀδυρομένους παρεκάλει θαρρεῖν, ὡς νῦν μάλιστα δώσοντος τοῦ τυράννου δίκην, πρὸς δ’ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον ἀποστείλας ἔλεγεν, ὡς ἄτοπός ἐστι, τοὺς μὲν ἀθλίους πολίτας καὶ μηδὲν ἀδικοῦντας ὁσημέραι στρεβλῶν καὶ φονεύων, αὐτοῦ δὲ φειδόμενος, ὃν μάλιστα γινώσκει τιμωρησόμενον αὐτὸν ἄνπερ διαφύγῃ, [4] θαυμάσας τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὴν ἄδειαν αὐτοῦ, τί δὲ φησὶ σπεύδει Πελοπίδας ἀποθανεῖν; κἀκεῖνος ἀκούσας ὅπως εἶπε σὺ τάχιον ἀπολῇ, μᾶλλον ἢ νῦν θεομισὴς [5] γενόμενος. ἐκ τούτου διεκώλυσεν ἐντυγχάνειν αὐτῷ τοὺς ἐκτός. ἡ δὲ Θήβη, θυγάτηρ μὲν Ἰάσονος οὖσα, γυνὴ δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου, πυνθανομένη παρὰ τῶν φυλαττόντων Πελοπίδαν τὸ θαρραλέον αὐτοῦ καὶ γενναῖον, ἐπεθύμησεν ἰδεῖν [6] τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ προσειπεῖν. ὡς δ’ ἦλθε πρὸς αὐτόν, ἅτε δὴ γυνὴ τὸ μὲν μέγεθος τοῦ ἤθους οὐκ εὐθὺς ἐν τοσαύτῃ συμφορᾷ κατεῖδε, κουρᾷ δὲ καὶ στολῇ καὶ διαίτῃ τεκμαιρομένη λυπρὰ καὶ μὴ πρέποντα τῇ δόξῃ πάσχειν αὐτόν, [7] ἀπεδάκρυσε. τὸ μὲν ‹οὖν› πρῶτον ἀγνοῶν ὁ Πελοπίδας τίς εἴη γυναικῶν, ἐθαύμαζεν· ὡς δ’ ἔγνω, προσηγόρευσεν αὐτὴν πατρόθεν· ἦν γὰρ τῷ Ἰάσονι συνήθης καὶ φίλος.

[8] εἰπούσης δ’ ἐκείνης ἐλεῶ σου τὴν γυναῖκα, καὶ γὰρ ‹καὶ› ἐγώ σε εἶπεν ὅτι ἄδετος οὖσα ὑπομένεις Ἀλέξανδρον.

[9] οὗτος ἔθιγέ πως ὁ λόγος τῆς γυναικός· ἐβαρύνετο γὰρ τὴν ὠμότητα καὶ τὴν ὕβριν τοῦ τυράννου, μετὰ τῆς ἄλλης ἀσελγείας καὶ τὸν νεώτατον αὐτῆς τῶν ἀδελφῶν [10] παιδικὰ πεποιημένου. διὸ καὶ συνεχῶς φοιτῶσα πρὸς τὸν Πελοπίδαν, καὶ παρρησιαζομένη περὶ ὧν ἔπασχεν, ὑπεπίμπλατο θυμοῦ καὶ φρονήματος καὶ δυσμενείας πρὸς τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον.

[29] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ στρατηγοὶ τῶν Θηβαίων εἰς τὴν Θετταλίαν ἐμβαλόντες ἔπραξαν οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀπειρίαν ἢ δυστυχίαν αἰσχρῶς ἀνεχώρησαν, ἐκείνων μὲν ἕκαστον ἡ πόλις μυρίαις δραχμαῖς ἐζημίωσεν, Ἐπαμεινώνδαν δὲ [2] μετὰ δυνάμεως ἀπέστειλεν. εὐθὺς οὖν κίνησίς τε μεγάλη Θετταλῶν ἦν, ἐπαιρομένων πρὸς τὴν δόξαν τοῦ στρατηγοῦ, καὶ τὰ πράγματα τοῦ τυράννου ῥοπῆς ἐδεῖτο [3] μικρᾶς ἀπολωλέναι· τοσοῦτος ἐνεπεπτώκει φόβος τοῖς περὶ αὐτὸν ἡγεμόσι καὶ φίλοις, τοσαύτη δὲ [πρὸς] τοὺς ὑπηκόους ὁρμὴ πρὸς ἀπόστασιν εἶχε καὶ χαρὰ τοῦ μέλλοντος, ὡς νῦν ἐποψομένους δίκην διδόντα τὸν τύραννον.

[4] οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ Ἐπαμεινώνδας τὴν αὑτοῦ δόξαν ἐν ὑστέρῳ τῆς Πελοπίδου σωτηρίας τιθέμενος, καὶ δεδοικὼς μὴ τῶν πραγμάτων ταραχθέντων ἀπογνοὺς ἑαυτὸν Ἀλέξανδρος [5] ὥσπερ θηρίον τράπηται πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, ἐπῃωρεῖτο τῷ πολέμῳ, καὶ κύκλῳ περιϊὼν τῇ παρασκευῇ καὶ τῇ μελλήσει κατεσκεύαζε καὶ συνέστελλε τὸν τύραννον, ὡς μήτ’ ἐντεῖναι τὸ αὔθαδες αὐτοῦ καὶ θρασυνόμενον, μήτε τὸ πικρὸν [6] καὶ θυμοειδὲς ἐξερεθίσαι, πυνθανόμενος τὴν ὠμότητα καὶ τὴν ὀλιγωρίαν τῶν καλῶν καὶ δικαίων, ὡς ζῶντας μὲν ἀνθρώπους κατώρυττεν, ἑτέροις δὲ δέρματα συῶν ἀγρίων καὶ ἄρκτων περιτιθείς, καὶ τοὺς θηρατικοὺς ἐπάγων κύνας, διέσπα καὶ κατηκόντιζε, παιδιᾷ ταύτῃ χρώμενος, [7] Μελιβοίᾳ δὲ καὶ Σκοτούσσῃ, πόλεσιν ἐνσπόνδοις καὶ φίλαις, ἐκκλησιαζούσαις περιστήσας ἅμα τοὺς δορυφόρους, [8] ἡβηδὸν ἀπέσφαξε, τὴν δὲ λόγχην, ᾗ Πολύφρονα τὸν θεῖον ἀπέκτεινε, καθιερώσας καὶ καταστέψας, ἔθυεν [9] ὥσπερ θεῷ, καὶ Τύχωνα προσηγόρευε. τραγῳδὸν δέ ποτε θεώμενος Εὐριπίδου Τρῳάδας ὑποκρινόμενον, ᾤχετ’ ἀπιὼν ἐκ τοῦ θεάτρου, καὶ πέμψας πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐκέλευε [10] θαρρεῖν καὶ μηδὲν ἀγωνίζεσθαι διὰ τοῦτο χεῖρον. οὐ γὰρ ἐκείνου καταφρονῶν ἀπελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ αἰσχυνόμενος τοὺς πολίτας, εἰ μηδένα πώποτε τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ φονευομένων ἠλεηκώς, ἐπὶ τοῖς Ἑκάβης καὶ Ἀνδρομάχης κακοῖς ὀφθήσεται [11] δακρύων. οὗτος μέντοι τὴν δόξαν αὐτὴν καὶ τοὔνομα καὶ τὸ πρόσχημα τῆς Ἐπαμεινώνδου στρατηγίας καταπλαγείς,

ἔπτηξ’ ἀλέκτωρ δοῦλος ὣς κλίνας πτερόν (Phryn. fr. 17 N²)

[12] καὶ τοὺς ἀπολογησομένους ταχὺ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔπεμπεν. ὁ δὲ συνθέσθαι μὲν εἰρήνην καὶ φιλίαν πρὸς τοιοῦτον ἄνδρα Θηβαίοις οὐχ ὑπέμεινε, σπεισάμενος δὲ τριακονθημέρους ἀνοχὰς τοῦ πολέμου καὶ λαβὼν τὸν Πελοπίδαν καὶ τὸν Ἰσμηνίαν, ἀνεχώρησεν.

[30] [1] Οἱ δὲ Θηβαῖοι παρὰ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων αἰσθόμενοι πρὸς τὸν μέγαν βασιλέα πρέσβεις ἀναβαίνοντας ὑπὲρ συμμαχίας, ἔπεμψαν καὶ αὐτοὶ Πελοπίδαν, ἄριστα βουλευσάμενοι πρὸς τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ.

[2] πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἀνέβαινε διὰ τῶν βασιλέως ἐπαρχιῶν ὀνομαστὸς ὢν καὶ περιβόητος· οὐ γὰρ ἠρέμα διῖκτο τῆς Ἀσίας οὐδ’ ἐπὶ μικρὸν ἡ δόξα τῶν πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους ἀγώνων, ἀλλ’ ὡς πρῶτος ὁ περὶ τῆς ἐν Λεύκτροις μάχης ἐξέδραμε λόγος, ἀεί τινος καινοῦ προστιθεμένου κατορθώματος, αὐξανομένη καὶ ἀναβαίνουσα πορρωτάτω κατέσχεν· [3] ἔπειτα τοῖς ἐπὶ θύραις σατράπαις καὶ στρατηγοῖς καὶ ἡγεμόσιν ὀφθείς, θαῦμα καὶ λόγον παρέσχεν, ὡς οὗτος ἀνήρ ἐστιν ὁ γῆς καὶ θαλάσσης ἐκβαλὼν Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ συστείλας ὑπὸ τὸ Ταΰγετον καὶ τὸν Εὐρώταν [καὶ] τὴν Σπάρτην τὴν ὀλίγον ἔμπροσθεν βασιλεῖ τῷ μεγάλῳ καὶ Πέρσαις δι’ Ἀγησιλάου τὸν περὶ Σούσων καὶ [4] Ἐκβατάνων ἐπαραμένην πόλεμον. ταῦτ’ οὖν ὁ Ἀρταξέρξης ἔχαιρε, καὶ τὸν Πελοπίδαν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐθαύμαζε ‹καὶ συνηῦξε› τῇ δόξῃ καὶ μέγαν ἐποίει ταῖς τιμαῖς, ὑπὸ τῶν μεγίστων εὐδαιμονίζεσθαι καὶ θεραπεύεσθαι βουλόμενος δοκεῖν.

[5] ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν ὄψιν εἶδεν αὐτοῦ καὶ τοὺς λόγους κατενόησε, τῶν μὲν Ἀττικῶν βεβαιοτέρους, τῶν δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων ἁπλουστέρους ὄντας, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἠγάπησε, καὶ πάθος βασιλικὸν παθὼν οὐκ ἀπεκρύψατο τὴν πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα τιμήν, οὐδ’ ἔλαθε τοὺς ἄλλους πρέσβεις πλεῖστον νέμων [6] ἐκείνῳ. καίτοι δοκεῖ μάλιστα τῶν Ἑλλήνων Ἀνταλκίδαν τιμῆσαι τὸν Λακεδαιμόνιον, ᾧ τὸν στέφανον ὃν πίνων [7] περιέκειτο βάψας εἰς μύρον ἀπέστειλε. Πελοπίδᾳ δ’ οὕτω μὲν οὐκ ἐνετρύφησε, δῶρα δὲ λαμπρότατα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν νομιζομένων ἐξέπεμψε καὶ τὰς ἀξιώσεις ἐπεκύρωσεν, αὐτονόμους μὲν εἶναι τοὺς Ἕλληνας, οἰκεῖσθαι δὲ Μεσσήνην, Θηβαίους δὲ πατρικοὺς φίλους νομίζεσθαι [8] βασιλέως. ταύτας ἔχων τὰς ἀποκρίσεις, τῶν δὲ δώρων οὐδὲν ὅ τι μὴ χάριτος ἦν σύμβολον καὶ φιλοφροσύνης δεξάμενος, ἀνέζευξεν· ὃ καὶ μάλιστα τοὺς ἄλλους πρέσβεις [9] διέβαλε. Τιμαγόραν γοῦν Ἀθηναῖοι κρίναντες ἀπέκτειναν, εἰ μὲν ἐπὶ τῷ πλήθει τῶν δωρεῶν, ὀρθῶς καὶ [10] δικαίως· οὐ γὰρ μόνον χρυσίον οὐδ’ ἀργύριον ἔλαβεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ κλίνην πολυτελῆ καὶ στρώτας θεράποντας, ὡς τῶν Ἑλλήνων οὐκ ἐπισταμένων, ἔτι δὲ βοῦς ὀγδοήκοντα καὶ βουκόλους, ὡς δὴ πρὸς ἀρρωστίαν τινὰ γάλακτος [11] βοείου δεόμενος. τέλος δὲ κατέβαινεν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ἐν φορείῳ κομιζόμενος, καὶ τέσσαρα τάλαντα τοῖς κομίζουσι [12] μισθὸς ἐδόθη παρὰ βασιλέως. ἀλλ’ ἔοικεν οὐχ ἡ δωροδοκία μάλιστα παροξῦναι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους· Ἐπικράτους γοῦν ποτε τοῦ σακεσφόρου, μήτ’ ἀρνουμένου δῶρα δέξασθαι παρὰ βασιλέως, ψήφισμά τε γράψειν φάσκοντος ἀντὶ τῶν ἐννέα ἀρχόντων χειροτονεῖσθαι κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐννέα πρέσβεις πρὸς βασιλέα τῶν δημοτικῶν καὶ πενήτων, ὅπως [13] λαμβάνοντες εὐπορῶσιν, ἐγέλασεν ὁ δῆμος· ἀλλ’ ὅτι Θηβαίοις ἐγεγόνει πάντα, χαλεπῶς ἔφερον, οὐ λογιζόμενοι τὴν Πελοπίδου δόξαν, ὅσον ἦν ῥητορειῶν καὶ λόγων κρείττων παρ’ ἀνθρώπῳ θεραπεύοντι τοὺς ‹διὰ› τῶν ὅπλων ἀεὶ κρατοῦντας.

[31] [1] Ἡ μὲν οὖν πρεσβεία τῷ Πελοπίδᾳ προσέθηκεν οὐ μικρὰν εὔνοιαν ἐπανελθόντι διὰ τὸν Μεσσήνης συνοικισμὸν καὶ τὴν τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων αὐτονομίαν.

[2] Ἀλεξάνδρου δὲ τοῦ Φεραίου πάλιν εἰς τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ἀναδραμόντος, καὶ Θεσσαλῶν μὲν οὐκ ὀλίγας περικόπτοντος πόλεις, Φθιώτας δ’ [καὶ] Ἀχαιοὺς ἅπαντας καὶ τὸ Μαγνήτων ἔθνος ἔμφρουρον πεποιημένου, πυνθανόμεναι Πελοπίδαν ἐπανήκειν αἱ πόλεις εὐθὺς ἐπρέσβευον εἰς [3] Θήβας, αἰτούμεναι δύναμιν καὶ στρατηγὸν ἐκεῖνον. ψηφισαμένων δὲ τῶν Θηβαίων προθύμως, καὶ ταχὺ πάντων ἑτοίμων γενομένων, καὶ ‹τοῦ› στρατ[ηγ]οῦ περὶ ἔξοδον ὄντος, ὁ μὲν ἥλιος ἐξέλιπε καὶ σκότος ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τὴν πόλιν [4] ἔσχεν· ὁ δὲ Πελοπίδας ὁρῶν πρὸς τὸ φάσμα συντεταραγμένους ἅπαντας, οὐκ ᾤετο δεῖν βιάζεσθαι καταφόβους καὶ δυσέλπιδας ὄντας, οὐδ’ ἀποκινδυνεύειν ἑπτακισχιλίοις πολίταις, ἀλλ’ ἑαυτὸν μόνον τοῖς Θεσσαλοῖς ἐπιδούς, καὶ τριακοσίους τῶν ἱππέων ἐθελοντὰς ἀναλαβὼν καὶ ξένους, ἐξώρμησεν, οὔτε τῶν μάντεων ἐώντων οὔτε τῶν ἄλλων συμπροθυμουμένων πολιτῶν· μέγα γὰρ ἐδόκει καὶ πρὸς [5] ἄνδρα λαμπρὸν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ γεγονέναι σημεῖον. ὁ δ’ ἦν μὲν καὶ δι’ ὀργὴν ὧν καθύβριστο θερμότερος ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, ἤλπιζε δὲ καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ νοσοῦσαν ἤδη καὶ διεφθαρμένην εὑρήσειν ἐξ ὧν διείλεκτο τῇ Θήβῃ.

[6] μάλιστα δ’ αὐτὸν καὶ παρεκάλει τὸ τῆς πράξεως κάλλος, ἐπιθυμοῦντα καὶ φιλοτιμούμενον, ἐν οἷς χρόνοις Λακεδαιμόνιοι Διονυσίῳ τῷ Σικελίας τυράννῳ στρατηγοὺς καὶ ἁρμοστὰς ἔπεμπον, Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ μισθοδότην Ἀλέξανδρον εἶχον καὶ χαλκοῦν ἵστασαν ὡς εὐεργέτην, τότε τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐπιδεῖξαι Θηβαίους μόνους ὑπὲρ τῶν τυραννουμένων στρατευομένους καὶ καταλύοντας ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησι τὰς παρανόμους καὶ βιαίους δυναστείας.

[32] [1] Ὡς οὖν εἰς Φάρσαλον ἐλθὼν ἤθροισε τὴν δύναμιν, εὐθὺς ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον. ὁ δὲ Θηβαίους μὲν ὀλίγους περὶ τὸν Πελοπίδαν ὁρῶν, αὐτὸς δὲ πλείους ἔχων ἢ διπλασίους ὁπλίτας τῶν Θεσσαλῶν, ἀπήντα πρὸς [2] τὸ Θετίδειον. εἰπόντος δέ τινος τῷ Πελοπίδᾳ πολλοὺς ἔχοντα τὸν τύραννον ἐπέρχεσθαι, βέλτιον ἔφη, πλείονας [3] γὰρ νικήσομεν. ἀντιτεινόντων δὲ πρὸς τὸ μέσον κατὰ τὰς καλουμένας Κυνὸς κεφαλὰς λόφων περικλινῶν καὶ ὑψηλῶν, ὥρμησαν ἀμφότεροι τούτους καταλαβεῖν τοῖς πεζοῖς, τοὺς δ’ ἱππεῖς ὁ Πελοπίδας πολλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς [4] ὄντας ἐφῆκε τοῖς ἱππεῦσι τῶν πολεμίων. ὡς δ’ οὗτοι μὲν ἐκράτουν καὶ συνεξέπεσον εἰς τὸ πεδίον τοῖς φεύγουσιν, ὁ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ἔφθη τοὺς λόφους καταλαβών, τοῖς ὁπλίταις τῶν Θεσσαλῶν ὕστερον ἐπερχομένοις καὶ πρὸς ἰσχυρὰ καὶ μετέωρα χωρία βιαζομένοις ἐμβαλὼν ἔκτεινε τοὺς πρώτους, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι πληγὰς λαβόντες οὐδὲν ἔπρασσον.

[5] κατιδὼν οὖν ὁ Πελοπίδας, τοὺς μὲν ἱππεῖς ἀνεκαλεῖτο καὶ πρὸς τὸ συνεστηκὸς τῶν πολεμίων ἐλαύνειν ἐκέλευεν, αὐτὸς δὲ συνέμειξε δρόμῳ τοῖς περὶ τοὺς λόφους [6] μαχομένοις εὐθὺς τὴν ἀσπίδα λαβών, καὶ διὰ τῶν ὄπισθεν ὠσάμενος εἰς τοὺς πρώτους, τοσαύτην ἐνεποίησε ῥώμην καὶ προθυμίαν ἅπασιν, ὥστε καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἑτέρους δοκεῖν γεγονότας καὶ σώμασι καὶ ψυχαῖς ἐπέρχεσθαι· [7] καὶ δύο μὲν ἢ τρεῖς ἀπεκρούσαντο προσβολάς· ὁρῶντες δὲ καὶ τούτους ἐπιβαίνοντας εὐρώστως, καὶ τὴν ἵππον ἀπὸ τῆς διώξεως ἀναστρέφουσαν, εἶξαν, ἐπὶ σκέλος ποιούμενοι [8] τὴν ἀναχώρησιν. ὁ δὲ Πελοπίδας ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων κατιδὼν ἅπαν τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν πολεμίων, οὔπω μὲν εἰς φυγὴν τετραμμένον, ἤδη δὲ θορύβου καὶ ταραχῆς ἀναπιμπλάμενον, ἔστη καὶ περιεσκόπησεν, αὐτὸν ζητῶν τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον.

[9] ὡς δ’ εἶδεν ἐπὶ τοῦ δεξιοῦ παραθαρρύνοντα καὶ συντάττοντα τοὺς μισθοφόρους, οὐ κατέσχε τῷ λογισμῷ τὴν ὀργήν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὴν βλέψιν ἀναφλεχθείς, καὶ τῷ θυμῷ παραδοὺς τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν τῆς πράξεως, πολὺ πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἐξαλλόμενος ἐφέρετο, βοῶν καὶ προκαλούμενος [10] τὸν τύραννον. ἐκεῖνος μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἐδέξατο τὴν ὁρμὴν οὐδ’ ὑπέμεινεν, ἀλλ’ ἀναφυγὼν πρὸς τοὺς δορυφόρους [11] ἐνέκρυψεν ἑαυτόν. τῶν δὲ μισθοφόρων οἱ μὲν πρῶτοι συμβαλόντες εἰς χεῖρας ἀνεκόπησαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Πελοπίδου, τινὲς δὲ καὶ πληγέντες ἐτελεύτησαν, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τοῖς δόρασι πόρρωθεν διὰ τῶν ὅπλων τύπτοντες αὐτὸν κατετραυμάτιζον, ἕως οἱ Θεσσαλοὶ περιπαθήσαντες ἀπὸ τῶν λόφων δρόμῳ προσεβοήθησαν, ἤδη δὲ πεπτωκότος, οἵ θ’ ἱππεῖς προσελάσαντες ὅλην ἐτρέψαντο τὴν φάλαγγα, καὶ διώξαντες ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐνέπλησαν νεκρῶν τὴν χώραν, πλέον ἢ τρισχιλίους καταβαλόντες.

[33] [1] Τὸ μὲν οὖν Θηβαίων τοὺς παρόντας ἐπὶ τῇ τοῦ Πελοπίδου τελευτῇ βαρέως φέρειν, πατέρα καὶ σωτῆρα καὶ διδάσκαλον τῶν μεγίστων καὶ καλλίστων ἀγαθῶν [2] ἀποκαλοῦντας ἐκεῖνον, οὐ πάνυ θαυμαστὸν ἦν· οἱ δὲ Θεσσαλοὶ καὶ οἱ σύμμαχοι πᾶσαν ἀνθρωπίνῃ πρέπουσαν ἀρετῇ τιμὴν τοῖς ψηφίσμασιν ὑπερβαλόντες, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐπεδείξαντο τοῖς πάθεσι τὴν πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα χάριν.

[3] τοὺς μὲν γὰρ παραγεγονότας τῷ ἔργῳ λέγουσι μήτε θώρακα θέσθαι, μήθ’ ἵππον ἐκχαλινῶσαι, μήτε τραῦμα δήσασθαι πρότερον, ὡς ἐπύθοντο τὴν ἐκείνου τελευτήν, ἀλλὰ μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων θερμοὺς ἰόντας ἐπὶ τὸν νεκρόν, ὥσπερ αἰσθανομένου τὰ τῶν πολεμίων κύκλῳ περὶ τὸ σῶμα σωρεύειν λάφυρα, κεῖραι δ’ ἵππους, κείρασθαι δὲ [4] καὶ αὐτούς, ἀπιόντας δὲ πολλοὺς ἐπὶ σκηνὰς μήτε πῦρ ἀνάψαι μήτε δεῖπνον ἑλέσθαι, σιγὴν δὲ καὶ κατήφειαν εἶναι τοῦ στρατοπέδου παντός, ὥσπερ οὐ νενικηκότων ἐπιφανεστάτην νίκην καὶ μεγίστην, ἀλλ’ ἡττημένων ὑπὸ [5] τοῦ τυράννου καὶ καταδεδουλωμένων. ἐκ δὲ τῶν πόλεων, ὡς ἀπηγγέλθη ταῦτα, παρῆσαν αἵ τ’ ἀρχαὶ καὶ μετ’ αὐτῶν ἔφηβοι καὶ παῖδες καὶ ἱερεῖς πρὸς τὴν ὑποδοχὴν τοῦ σώματος, τρόπαια καὶ στεφάνους καὶ πανοπλίας χρυσᾶς [6] ἐπιφέροντες. ὡς δ’ ἔμελλεν ἐκκομίζεσθαι τὸ σῶμα, προσελθόντες οἱ πρεσβύτατοι τῶν Θεσσαλῶν ᾐτοῦντο τοὺς Θηβαίους δι’ αὑτῶν θάψαι τὸν νεκρόν· εἷς δ’ αὐτῶν [7] ἔλεγεν· ἄνδρες σύμμαχοι, χάριν αἰτοῦμεν παρ’ ὑμῶν, κόσμον ἡμῖν ἐπ’ ἀτυχίᾳ τοσαύτῃ καὶ παραμυθίαν φέρουσαν.

[8] οὐ γὰρ ζῶντα Θεσσαλοὶ Πελοπίδαν προπέμψουσιν, οὐδ’ αἰσθανομένῳ τὰς ἀξίας τιμὰς ἀποδώσουσιν· ἀλλ’ ἐὰν ψαῦσαί τε τοῦ νεκροῦ τύχωμεν καὶ δι’ αὑτῶν κοσμῆσαι καὶ θάψαι τὸ σῶμα, δόξομεν ὑμῖν οὐκ ἀπιστεῖν, ὅτι [9] μείζων ἡ συμφορὰ γέγονε Θετταλοῖς ἢ Θηβαίοις· ὑμῖν μὲν γὰρ ἡγεμόνος ἀγαθοῦ μόνον, ἡμῖν δὲ καὶ τούτου καὶ [10] τῆς ἐλευθερίας στέρεσθαι συμβέβηκε. πῶς γὰρ ‹ἂν› ἔτι τολμήσαιμεν αἰτῆσαι στρατηγὸν ἄλλον παρ’ ὑμῶν, οὐκ ἀποδόντες Πελοπίδαν; ταῦτα μὲν οἱ Θηβαῖοι συμπαρεχώρησαν.

[34] [1] Ἐκείνων δὲ τῶν ταφῶν οὐ δοκοῦσιν ἕτεραι λαμπρότεραι γενέσθαι τοῖς τὸ λαμπρὸν οὐκ ἐν ἐλέφαντι καὶ χρυσῷ καὶ πορφύραις εἶναι νομίζουσιν, ὥσπερ Φίλιστος (FGrH 556 F 40), ὑμνῶν καὶ θαυμάζων τὴν Διονυσίου ταφήν, οἷον τραγῳδίας μεγάλης τῆς τυραννίδος ἐξόδιον θεατρικὸν γενομένην.

[2] Ἀλέξανδρος δ’ ὁ μέγας Ἡφαιστίωνος ἀποθανόντος οὐ μόνον ἵππους ἔκειρε καὶ ἡμιόνους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ἐπάλξεις ἀφεῖλε τῶν τειχῶν, ὡς ἂν δοκοῖεν αἱ πόλεις πενθεῖν, ἀντὶ τῆς πρόσθεν μορφῆς κούριμον σχῆμα καὶ ἄτιμον ἀναλαμβάνουσαι.

[3] ταῦτα μὲν οὖν προστάγματα δεσποτῶν ὄντα, καὶ μετὰ πολλῆς ἀνάγκης περαινόμενα καὶ μετὰ φθόνου τῶν τυχόντων καὶ μίσους τῶν βιαζομένων, οὐδεμιᾶς χάριτος ἦν οὐδὲ τιμῆς, ὄγκου δὲ βαρβαρικοῦ καὶ τρυφῆς καὶ ἀλαζονείας ἐπίδειξις, εἰς κενὰ καὶ ἄζηλα τὴν περιουσίαν [4] διατιθεμένων· ἀνὴρ δὲ δημοτικὸς ἐπὶ ξένης τεθνηκώς, οὐ γυναικός, οὐ παίδων, οὐ συγγενῶν παρόντων, οὐ δεομένου τινός, οὐκ ἀναγκάζοντος, ὑπὸ δήμων τοσούτων καὶ πόλεων ἁμιλλωμένων προπεμπόμενος καὶ συνεκκομιζόμενος καὶ στεφανούμενος, εἰκότως ἐδόκει τὸν τελειότατον [5] ἀπέχειν εὐδαιμονισμόν. οὐ γάρ, ὡς Αἴσωπος ἔφασκε, χαλεπώτατός ἐστιν ὁ τῶν εὐτυχούντων θάνατος, ἀλλὰ μακαριώτατος, εἰς ἀσφαλῆ χώραν τὰς εὐπραξίας κατατιθέμενος τῶν ἀγαθῶν, καὶ ‹τῇ› τύχῃ μεταβάλλεσθαι [6] ‹μὴ› ἀπολιπών. διὸ βέλτιον ὁ Λάκων τὸν Ὀλυμπιονίκην Διαγόραν, ἐπιδόντα μὲν υἱοὺς στεφανουμένους Ὀλυμπίασιν, ἐπιδόντα δ’ υἱωνοὺς καὶ θυγατριδοῦς, ἀσπασάμενος κάτθανε εἶπε Διαγόρα· οὐκ εἰς τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἀναβήσῃ.

[7] τὰς δ’ Ὀλυμπιακὰς καὶ Πυθικὰς νίκας οὐκ ἂν οἶμαί τις εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συνθεὶς ἁπάσας ἑνὶ τῶν Πελοπίδου παραβαλεῖν ἀγώνων ἀξιώσειεν, οὓς πολλοὺς ἀγωνισάμενος καὶ κατορθώσας, καὶ τοῦ βίου τὸ πλεῖστον ἐν δόξῃ καὶ τιμῇ βιώσας, τέλος ἐν τῇ τρισκαιδεκάτῃ βοιωταρχίᾳ, τυραννοκτονίᾳ μεμειγμένην ἀριστείαν ἀριστεύων, ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Θεσσαλῶν ἐλευθερίας ἀπέθανεν.

[35] [1] Ὁ δὲ θάνατος αὐτοῦ μεγάλα μὲν ἐλύπησε τοὺς [2] συμμάχους, μείζονα δ’ ὠφέλησε. Θηβαῖοι γὰρ ὡς ἐπύθοντο τὴν τοῦ Πελοπίδου τελευτήν, οὐδεμίαν ἀναβολὴν ποιησάμενοι τῆς τιμωρίας, κατὰ τάχος ἐστράτευσαν ὁπλίταις ἑπτακισχιλίοις, ἱππεῦσι δ’ ἑπτακοσίοις, ἡγουμένων [3] Μαληκίδου καὶ Διογείτονος. καταλαβόντες δὲ συνεσταλμένον καὶ περικεκομμένον τῆς δυνάμεως Ἀλέξανδρον ἠνάγκασαν, Θεσσαλοῖς μὲν ἀποδοῦναι τὰς πόλεις ἃς εἶχεν αὐτῶν, Μάγνητας δὲ καὶ Φθιώτας [καὶ] Ἀχαιοὺς ἀφεῖναι καὶ τὰς φρουρὰς ἐξαγαγεῖν, ὀμόσαι δ’ αὐτὸν ἐφ’ οὓς ἂν ἡγῶνται Θηβαῖοι καὶ κελεύωσιν ἀκολουθήσειν.

[4] Θηβαῖοι μὲν οὖν τούτοις ἠρκέσθησαν· ἣν δ’ ὀλίγον ὕστερον τοῖς θεοῖς ὑπὲρ Πελοπίδου δίκην ἔδωκε, διηγήσομαι.

[5] Θήβην τὴν συνοικοῦσαν αὐτῷ πρῶτον μὲν ὡς εἴρηται (c. 28, 5 sqq.) Πελοπίδας ἐδίδαξε μὴ φοβεῖσθαι τὴν ἔξω λαμπρότητα καὶ παρασκευὴν τῆς τυραννίδος ἐντὸς τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τῶν [6] φυλακῶν οὖσαν· ἔπειτα δὲ φοβουμένη τὴν ἀπιστίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ μισοῦσα τὴν ὠμότητα, συνθεμένη μετὰ τῶν ἀδελφῶν, τριῶν ὄντων, Τεισιφόνου, Πειθολάου, Λυκόφρονος, ἐπεχείρει [7] τόνδε τὸν τρόπον. τὴν μὲν ἄλλην οἰκίαν τοῦ τυράννου κατεῖχον αἱ φυλακαὶ τῶν παρανυκτερευόντων, ὁ δὲ θάλαμος ἐν ᾧ καθεύδειν εἰώθεσαν ὑπερῷος ἦν, καὶ πρὸ αὐτοῦ φυλακὴν εἶχε κύων δεδεμένος, πᾶσι φοβερὸς πλὴν αὐτοῖς [8] ἐκείνοις καὶ ἑνὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν τῷ τρέφοντι. καθ’ ὃν οὖν ἔμελλε καιρὸν ἐπιχειρεῖν ἡ Θήβη, τοὺς μὲν ἀδελφοὺς ἀφ’ ἡμέρας εἶχε πλησίον ἐν οἴκῳ τινὶ κεκρυμμένους, εἰσελθοῦσα δ’ ὥσπερ εἰώθει μόνη πρὸς τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἤδη καθεύδοντα, καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν πάλιν προελθοῦσα, τῷ μὲν οἰκέτῃ προσέταξεν ἀπάγειν ἔξω τὸν κύνα· βούλεσθαι γὰρ [9] ἀναπαύεσθαι μεθ’ ἡσυχίας ἐκεῖνον· αὐτὴ δὲ τὴν κλίμακα, φοβουμένη μὴ κτύπον παράσχῃ τῶν νεανίσκων ἀναβαινόντων, ἐρίοις κατεστόρεσεν· εἶθ’ οὕτως ἀναγαγοῦσα τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ξιφήρεις καὶ στήσασα πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν, εἰσῆλθεν αὐτή, καὶ καθελοῦσα τὸ ξίφος ὑπὲρ τῆς κεφαλῆς κρεμάμενον, σημεῖον εἶναι τοῦ κατέχεσθαι τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ καθεύδειν, [10] ἔδειξεν. ἐκπεπληγμένων δὲ τῶν νεανίσκων καὶ κατοκνούντων, κακίζουσα καὶ διομνυμένη μετ’ ὀργῆς, αὐτὴ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐξεγείρασα μηνύσειν τὴν πρᾶξιν, αἰσχυνθέντας αὐτοὺς ἅμα καὶ φοβηθέντας εἰσήγαγε καὶ [11] περιέστησε τῇ κλίνῃ, προσφέρουσα τὸν λύχνον. τῶν δ’ ὁ μὲν τοὺς πόδας κατεῖχε πιέσας, ὁ δὲ τὴν κεφαλὴν λαβόμενος τῶν τριχῶν ἀνέκλασεν, ὁ δὲ τρίτος τῷ ξίφει τύπτων [12] αὐτὸν διεχρήσατο, τῷ μὲν τάχει τῆς τελευτῆς πρᾳότερον ἴσως ἢ προσῆκον ἦν ἀποθανόντα, τῷ δὲ μόνον ἢ πρῶτον τυράννων ὑπὸ γυναικὸς ἰδίας ἀπολέσθαι, καὶ τῇ μετὰ θάνατον αἰκίᾳ τοῦ σώματος, ῥιφέντος καὶ πατηθέντος ὑπὸ τῶν Φεραίων, ἄξια πεπονθέναι δόξαντα τῶν παρανομημάτων.

Marcellus

[1] [1] Μᾶρκον δὲ Κλαύδιον τὸν πεντάκις ὑπατεύσαντα Ῥωμαίων Μάρκου μὲν υἱὸν γενέσθαι λέγουσι, κληθῆναι δὲ τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκίας πρῶτον Μάρκελλον, ὅπερ ἐστὶν Ἀρήϊον, [2] ὥς φησι Ποσειδώνιος (FGrH 87 F 41). ἦν γὰρ τῇ μὲν ἐμπειρίᾳ πολεμικός, τῷ δὲ σώματι ῥωμαλέος, τῇ δὲ χειρὶ πλήκτης, τῇ δὲ φύσει φιλοπόλεμος, καὶ τοῦτο δὴ πολὺ τὸ γαῦρον καὶ [3] ἀγέρωχον ἐπιφαίνων ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι· τῷ δ’ ἄλλῳ τρόπῳ σώφρων, φιλάνθρωπος, Ἑλληνικῆς παιδείας καὶ λόγων ἄχρι τοῦ τιμᾶν καὶ θαυμάζειν τοὺς κατορθοῦντας ἐραστής, αὐτὸς δ’ ὑπ’ ἀσχολιῶν ἐφ’ ὅσον ἦν πρόθυμος ἀσκῆσαι καὶ μαθεῖν οὐκ ἐξικόμενος. εἰ γὰρ ἄλλοις τισὶν ἀνθρώποις [4] ὁ θεός, ὥσπερ Ὅμηρος εἴρηκεν (Il. 14, 86),

ἐκ νεότητος ἔδωκε καὶ ἐς γῆρας τολυπεύειν

 ἀργαλέους πολέμους,

[5] καὶ τοῖς τότε πρωτεύουσι Ῥωμαίων, οἳ νέοι μὲν ὄντες περὶ Σικελίαν Καρχηδονίοις, ἀκμάζοντες δὲ Γαλάταις ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς Ἰταλίας ἐπολέμουν, ἤδη δὲ γηρῶντες Ἀννίβᾳ πάλιν συνείχοντο καὶ Καρχηδονίοις, οὐκ ἔχοντες ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ διὰ γῆρας ἀνάπαυσιν στρατειῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ στρατηγίας πολέμων καὶ ἡγεμονίας κατ’ εὐγένειαν καὶ ἀρετὴν ἀγόμενοι.

[2] [1] Μάρκελλος δὲ πρὸς οὐδὲν μὲν ἦν μάχης εἶδος ἀργὸς οὐδ’ ἀνάσκητος, αὐτὸς δ’ ἑαυτοῦ κράτιστος ἐν τῷ μονομαχεῖν γενόμενος, οὐδεμίαν πρόκλησιν ἔφυγε, πάντας [2] δὲ τοὺς προκαλεσαμένους ἀπέκτεινεν. ἐν δὲ Σικελίᾳ τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ὀτακίλιον κινδυνεύοντα διέσωσεν, ὑπερασπίσας [3] καὶ ἀποκτείνας τοὺς ἐπιφερομένους. ἀνθ’ ὧν ὄντι μὲν ἔτι νέῳ στέφανοι καὶ γέρα παρὰ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἦσαν, εὐδοκιμοῦντα δὲ μᾶλλον ἀγορανόμον μὲν ἀπέδειξε τῆς ἐπιφανεστέρας τάξεως ὁ δῆμος, οἱ δ’ ἱερεῖς αὔγουρα.

[4] τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶν ἱερωσύνης εἶδος ᾧ μάλιστα τὴν ἀπ’ οἰωνῶν μαντικὴν ἐπιβλέπειν καὶ παραφυλάττειν ‹ὁ› νόμος [5] δέδωκεν. ἠναγκάσθη δ’ ἀγορανομῶν δίκην ἀβούλητον εἰσενεγκεῖν. ἦν γὰρ αὐτῷ παῖς ὁμώνυμος ἐν ὥρᾳ, τὴν ὄψιν ἐκπρεπής, οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τῷ σωφρονεῖν καὶ πεπαιδεῦσθαι περίβλεπτος ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν· τούτῳ Καπετωλῖνος ὁ τοῦ Μαρκέλλου συνάρχων, ἀσελγὴς ἀνὴρ καὶ θρασύς, ἐρῶν [6] λόγους προσήνεγκε. τοῦ δὲ παιδὸς τὸ μὲν πρῶτον αὐτοῦ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀποτριψαμένου τὴν πεῖραν, ὡς δ’ αὖθις ἐπεχείρησε, κατειπόντος πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, βαρέως ἐνεγκὼν [7] ὁ Μάρκελλος προσήγγειλε τῇ βουλῇ τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ὁ δὲ πολλὰς μὲν ἀποδράσεις καὶ παραγραφὰς ἐμηχανᾶτο, τοὺς δημάρχους ἐπικαλούμενος· ἐκείνων δὲ μὴ προσδεχομένων τὴν ἐπίκλησιν, ἀρνήσει τὴν αἰτίαν ἔφευγε, καὶ μάρτυρος οὐδενὸς τῶν λόγων γεγονότος, ἔδοξε μεταπέμπεσθαι τὸν [8] παῖδα τῇ βουλῇ. παραγενομένου δ’ ἰδόντες ἐρύθημα καὶ δάκρυον καὶ μεμειγμένον ἅμα τῷ θυμουμένῳ τὸ αἰδούμενον, οὐδενὸς ἄλλου δεηθέντες τεκμηρίου κατεψηφίσαντο καὶ χρήμασιν ἐζημίωσαν Καπετωλῖνον, ἐξ ὧν ὁ Μάρκελλος ἀργυρᾶ λοιβεῖα ποιησάμενος τοῖς θεοῖς καθιέρωσεν.

[3] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ πρώτου τῶν Καρχηδονίων πολέμων ἔτει δευτέρῳ καὶ εἰκοστῷ συναιρεθέντος ἀρχαὶ πάλιν Γαλατικῶν ἀγώνων διεδέχοντο τὴν Ῥώμην, οἱ δὲ τὴν ὑπαλπείαν νεμόμενοι τῆς Ἰταλίας Ἴνσομβρες, Κελτικὸν ἔθνος, μεγάλοι καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ὄντες δυνάμει, ‹προς›εκάλουν καὶ μετεπέμποντο Γαλατῶν τοὺς μισθοῦ στρατευομένους, [2] οἳ Γαισάται καλοῦνται, [καὶ] θαυμαστὸν μὲν ἐδόκει καὶ τύχης ἀγαθῆς γενέσθαι τὸ μὴ συρραγῆναι τὸν Κελτικὸν εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ τῷ Λιβυκῷ πόλεμον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐφεδρείαν εἰληφότας τοὺς Γαλάτας, ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως ἀτρεμήσαντας μαχομένων ἐκείνων, οὕτω δὴ τότε τοῖς νενικηκόσιν ἐπαποδύεσθαι [3] καὶ προκαλεῖσθαι σχολὴν ἄγοντας· οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ μέγαν ἥ τε χώρα παρεῖχε ‹φόβον› διὰ τὴν γειτνίασιν, ὁμόρῳ καὶ προσοίκῳ πολέμῳ συνοισομένοις, καὶ τὸ παλαιὸν [4] ἀξίωμα τῶν Γαλατῶν· οὓς μάλιστα Ῥωμαῖοι δεῖσαι δοκοῦσιν, ἅτε δὴ καὶ τὴν πόλιν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀποβαλόντες, ἐξ ἐκείνου δὲ καὶ θέμενοι νόμον ἀτελεῖς εἶναι στρατείας τοὺς ἱερέας πλὴν εἰ μὴ Γαλατικὸς πάλιν ἐπέλθοι πόλεμος.

[5] ἐδήλου δὲ καὶ τὸν φόβον αὐτῶν ἥ τε παρασκευὴ (μυριάδες γὰρ ἐν ὅπλοις ἅμα τοσαῦται Ῥωμαίων οὔτε πρότερον οὔθ’ ὕστερον γενέσθαι λέγονται), καὶ τὰ περὶ [6] τὰς θυσίας καινοτομούμενα· βαρβαρικὸν μὲν ‹γὰρ› οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἔκφυλον ἐπιτηδεύοντες, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα ταῖς δόξαις Ἑλληνικῶς διακείμενοι καὶ πρᾴως πρὸς τὰ θεῖα, τότε τοῦ πολέμου συμπεσόντος ἠναγκάσθησαν, εἴξαντες λογίοις τισὶν ἐκ τῶν Σιβυλλείων, δύο μὲν Ἕλληνας, ἄνδρα καὶ γυναῖκα, δύο δὲ Γαλάτας ὁμοίως ἐν τῇ καλουμένῃ βοῶν [7] ἀγορᾷ κατορύξαι ζῶντας· ‹ἐφ’› οἷς ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἐν τῷ Νοεμβρίῳ μηνὶ δρῶσιν [Ἕλλησι καὶ Γαλάταις] ἀπορρήτους καὶ ἀθεάτους ἱερουργίας.

[4] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν πρῶτοι τῶν ἀγώνων νίκας τε μεγάλας καὶ σφάλματα τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἐνέγκαντες, εἰς οὐδὲν ἐτελεύτησαν [2] πέρας βέβαιον· Φλαμινίου δὲ καὶ Φουρίου τῶν ὑπάτων μεγάλαις ἐκστρατευσάντων δυνάμεσιν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἴνσομβρας, ὤφθη μὲν αἵματι ῥέων ὁ διὰ τῆς Πικηνίδος χώρας ποταμός, ἐλέχθη δὲ τρεῖς σελήνας φανῆναι περὶ [3] πόλιν Ἀρίμινον· οἱ δ’ ἐπὶ ταῖς ὑπατικαῖς ψηφοφορίαις παραφυλάττοντες ‹τοὺς› οἰωνοὺς ἱερεῖς διεβεβαιοῦντο μοχθηρὰς καὶ δυσόρνιθας αὐτοῖς γεγονέναι τὰς τῶν [4] ὑπάτων ἀναγορεύσεις. εὐθὺς οὖν ἔπεμψεν ἡ σύγκλητος ἐπὶ στρατόπεδον γράμματα, καλοῦσα καὶ μεταπεμπομένη τοὺς ὑπάτους, ὅπως ἐπανελθόντες ᾗ τάχιστα τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπείπωνται, καὶ μηδὲν ὡς ὕπατοι φθάσωσι πρᾶξαι πρὸς τοὺς [5] πολεμίους. ταῦτα δεξάμενος τὰ γράμματα Φλαμίνιος οὐ πρότερον ἔλυσεν, ἢ μάχην συνάψας τρέψασθαι τοὺς βαρβάρους [6] καὶ τὴν χώραν αὐτῶν ἐπιδραμεῖν. ὡς οὖν ἐπανῆλθε μετὰ πολλῶν λαφύρων, οὐκ ἀπήντησεν ὁ δῆμος, ἀλλ’ ὅτι καλούμενος οὐκ εὐθὺς ὑπήκουσεν οὐδ’ ἐπείσθη τοῖς γράμμασιν, ἀλλ’ ἐνύβρισε καὶ κατεφρόνησε, μικροῦ μὲν ἐδέησεν ἀποψηφίσασθαι τὸν θρίαμβον αὐτοῦ, θριαμβεύσαντα δ’ ἰδιώτην ἐποίησεν, ἀναγκάσας ἐξομόσασθαι [7] τὴν ὑπατείαν μετὰ τοῦ συνάρχοντος. οὕτω πάντα τὰ πράγματα Ῥωμαίοις εἰς τὸν θεὸν ἀνήγετο, μαντειῶν δὲ καὶ πατρίων ὑπεροψίαν οὐδ’ ἐπὶ ταῖς μεγίσταις εὐπραξίαις ἀπεδέχοντο, μεῖζον ἡγούμενοι πρὸς σωτηρίαν πόλεως τὸ θαυμάζειν τὰ θεῖα τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἢ τὸ κρατεῖν τῶν πολεμίων.

[5] [1] Τιβέριος γοῦν Σεμπρώνιος, ἀνὴρ δι’ ἀνδρείαν καὶ καλοκαγαθίαν οὐδενὸς ἧττον ἀγαπηθεὶς ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων, ἀπέδειξε μὲν ὑπατεύων διαδόχους Σκιπίωνα Νασικᾶν καὶ Γάϊον Μάρκιον· ἤδη δ’ ἐχόντων αὐτῶν ἐπαρχίας καὶ στρατεύματ‹α, μαντ›ικοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν ἐντυχὼν εὗρεν ἠγνοημένον ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ τι τῶν πατρίων. ἦν δὲ τοιοῦτον· [2] ὅταν ἄρχων ἐπ’ ὄρνισι καθεζόμενος ἔξω πόλεως, οἶκον ‹ἔχων› ἢ σκηνὴν μεμισθωμένην, ὑπ’ αἰτίας τινὸς ἀναγκασθῇ μήπω γεγονότων σημείων βεβαίων ἐπανελθεῖν εἰς πόλιν, ἀφεῖναι χρῆν τὸ προμεμισθωμένον οἴκημα καὶ λαβεῖν ἕτερον ἐξ οὗ ποιήσεται τὴν θέαν αὖθις ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς.

[3] τοῦτ’ ἔλαθεν ὡς ἔοικε τὸν Τιβέριον, καὶ δὶς τῷ αὐτῷ χρησάμενος ἀπέδειξε τοὺς εἰρημένους ἄνδρας ὑπάτους· ὕστερον δὲ γνοὺς τὴν ἁμαρτίαν, ἀνήνεγκε πρὸς τὴν [4] σύγκλητον. ἡ δ’ οὐ κατεφρόνησε τοῦ κατὰ μικρὸν οὕτως ἐλλείμματος, ἀλλ’ ἔγραψε τοῖς ἀνδράσι, καὶ ἐκεῖνοι τὰς ἐπαρχίας ἀπολιπόντες ἐπανῆλθον εἰς Ῥώμην ταχὺ καὶ [5] κατέθεντο τὴν ἀρχήν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὕστερον ἐπράχθη· περὶ δὲ τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἐκείνους χρόνους καὶ δύο ἱερεῖς ἐπιφανέστατοι τὰς ἱερωσύνας ἀφῃρέθησαν, Κορνήλιος μὲν Κέθηγος ὅτι τὰ σπλάγχνα τοῦ ἱερείου παρὰ τάξιν ἐπέδωκε, Κούϊντος δὲ Σουλπίκιος ἐπὶ τῷ θύοντος αὐτοῦ τὸν κορυφαῖον ἀπορρυῆναι τῆς κεφαλῆς πῖλον, ὃν οἱ καλούμενοι [6] φλαμίνιοι φοροῦσι. Μινικίου δὲ δικτάτορος ἵππαρχον ἀποδείξαντος Γάϊον Φλαμίνιον, ἐπεὶ τρισμὸς ἠκούσθη μυὸς ὃν σόρικα καλοῦσιν, ἀποψηφισάμενοι τούτους, αὖθις ἑτέρους [7] κατέστησαν. καὶ τὴν ἐν οὕτω μικροῖς ἀκρίβειαν φυλάττοντες, οὐδεμιᾷ προσεμείγνυσαν δεισιδαιμονίᾳ τῷ μηδὲν ἀλλάττειν μηδὲ παρεκβαίνειν τῶν πατρίων.

[6] [1] Ὡς δ’ οὖν ἐξωμόσαντο τὴν ἀρχὴν οἱ περὶ τὸν Φλαμίνιον, διὰ τῶν καλουμένων μεσοβασιλέων ὕπατος ἀποδείκνυται Μάρκελλος, καὶ παραλαβὼν τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀποδείκνυσιν [2] αὑτῷ συνάρχοντα Γναῖον Κορνήλιον. ἐλέχθη μὲν οὖν ὡς πολλὰ συμβατικὰ τῶν Γαλατῶν ‹προτεινάντων›, καὶ τῆς βουλῆς εἰρηναῖα βουλευομένης, ὁ Μάρκελλος [3] ἐξετράχυνε τὸν δῆμον ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον· οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ κἂν γενομένης εἰρήνης ἀνακαινίσαι τὸν πόλεμον οἱ Γαισάται δοκοῦσι, τὰς Ἄλπεις ὑπερβαλόντες καὶ τοὺς Ἰνσόμβρους [4] ἐπάραντες· τρισμύριοι γὰρ ὄντες, προσεγένοντο πολλαπλασίοις ἐκείνοις οὖσι, καὶ μέγα φρονοῦντες εὐθὺς ἐπ’ Ἀκέρρας ὥρμησαν, πόλιν ὑπὲρ ποταμοῦ Πάδου συνῳκισμένην· ἐκεῖθεν δὲ μυρίους τῶν Γαισατῶν ὁ βασιλεὺς Βριτόματος ἀναλαβὼν τὴν περὶ Πάδον χώραν ἐπόρθει.

[5] ταῦτα Μάρκελλος πυθόμενος, τὸν μὲν συνάρχοντα πρὸς Ἀκέρραις ἀπέλιπε, τὴν πεζὴν καὶ βαρεῖαν ὁμοῦ πᾶσαν [6] ἔχοντα δύναμιν καὶ τῶν ἱππέων μέρος τρίτον· αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς λοιποὺς ἱππεῖς ἀναλαβὼν καὶ τοὺς ἐλαφροτάτους τῶν ὁπλιτῶν περὶ ἑξακοσίους ἤλαυνεν, οὔθ’ ἡμέρας οὔτε νυκτὸς ἀνιεὶς τὸν δρόμον, ἕως ἐπέβαλε τοῖς μυρίοις Γαισάταις περὶ τὸ καλούμενον Κλαστίδιον, Γαλατικὴν κώμην οὐ πρὸ πολλοῦ Ῥωμαίοις ὑπήκοον γεγενημένην.

[7] ἀναλαβεῖν δὲ καὶ διαναπαῦσαι τὸν στρατὸν οὐχ ὑπῆρξεν αὐτῷ· ταχὺ γὰρ αἴσθησιν τοῖς βαρβάροις ἀφικόμενος παρέσχε, καὶ κατεφρονήθη, πεζῶν μὲν ὀλίγων παντάπασιν ὄντων σὺν αὐτῷ, τὸ δ’ ἱππικὸν ἐν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ τῶν [8] Κελτῶν τιθεμένων. κράτιστοι γὰρ ὄντες ἱππομαχεῖν καὶ μάλιστα τούτῳ διαφέρειν δοκοῦντες, τότε καὶ πλήθει πολὺ τὸν Μάρκελλον ὑπερέβαλλον. εὐθὺς οὖν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὡς ἀναρπασόμενοι μετὰ βίας πολλῆς καὶ δεινῶν ἀπειλῶν [9] ἐφέροντο, τοῦ βασιλέως προϊππεύοντος. ὁ δὲ Μάρκελλος, ὡς μὴ φθαῖεν αὐτὸν ἐγκυκλωσάμενοι καὶ περιχυθέντες ὀλιγοστὸν ὄντα, τὰς ἴλας ἦγε πόρρω τῶν ἱππέων καὶ παρήλαυνε, λεπτὸν ἐκτείνων τὸ κέρας, ἄχρι οὗ μικρὸν ἀπέσχε τῶν πολεμίων.

[10] Ἤδη δέ πως εἰς ἐμβολὴν ἐπιστρέφοντος αὐτοῦ, συντυγχάνει τὸν ἵππον πτυρέντα τῇ γαυρότητι τῶν πολεμίων ἀποτραπέσθαι καὶ βίᾳ φέρειν ὀπίσω τὸν Μάρκελλον.

[11] ὁ δὲ τοῦτο δείσας μὴ ταραχὴν ἐκ δεισιδαιμονίας τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἐνεργάσηται, ταχὺ περισπάσας ἐφ’ ἡνίαν τῷ χαλινῷ καὶ περιστρέψας τὸν ἵππον ἐναντίον τοῖς πολεμίοις, τὸν ἥλιον [αὐτὸς] προσεκύνησεν, ὡς δὴ μὴ κατὰ τύχην, ἀλλ’ ἕνεκα τούτου τῇ περιαγωγῇ χρησάμενος· [12] οὕτω γὰρ ἔθος ἐστὶ Ῥωμαίοις προσκυνεῖν τοὺς θεοὺς περιστρεφομένοις, αὐτὸν ἤδη προσμειγνύντα τοῖς ἐναντίοις προσεύξασθαι τῷ Φερετρίῳ Διῒ τὰ κάλλιστα τῶν παρὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις ὅπλων καθιερώσειν.

[7] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ κατιδὼν ὁ τῶν Γαλατῶν βασιλεὺς καὶ τεκμηράμενος ἀπὸ τῶν συμβόλων ἄρχοντα τοῦτον εἶναι, πολὺ πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἐξελάσας τὸν ἵππον ὑπηντίασεν, ἅμα τῇ φωνῇ προκλητικὸν ἐπαλαλάζων καὶ τὸ δόρυ κραδαίνων, ἀνὴρ μεγέθει τε σώματος ἔξοχος Γαλατῶν, καὶ πανοπλίᾳ ‹διαφέρων› ἐν ἀργύρῳ καὶ χρυσῷ καὶ βαφαῖς καὶ ποικίλμασι πᾶσιν ὥσπερ ἀστραπῇ [διαφέρων] στιλβούσῃ.

[2] ὡς οὖν ἐπιβλέψαντι τὴν φάλαγγα τῷ Μαρκέλλῳ ταῦτα τῶν ὅπλων ἔδοξε κάλλιστα, καὶ κατὰ τούτων ὑπέλαβε πεποιῆσθαι τῷ θεῷ τὴν κατευχήν, ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ τῷ δόρατι διακόψας τὸν θώρακα, καὶ συνεπερείσας τῇ ῥύμῃ τοῦ ἵππου, ζῶντα μὲν αὐτὸν περιέτρεψε, δευτέραν δὲ καὶ τρίτην πληγὴν ἐνσείσας εὐθὺς [3] ἀπέκτεινεν. ἀποπηδήσας δὲ τοῦ ἵππου καὶ τῶν ὅπλων τοῦ νεκροῦ ταῖς χερσὶν ἐφαψάμενος, ‹ἀναβλέψας› πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν [4] εἶπεν· ὦ μεγάλα στρατηγῶν καὶ ἡγεμόνων ἔργα καὶ πράξεις [καὶ] ἐπιβλέπων ἐν πολέμοις καὶ μάχαις, Φερέτριε Ζεῦ, μαρτύρομαί σε Ῥωμαίων τρίτος ἄρχων ἄρχοντα καὶ βασιλέα στρατηγὸς ἰδίᾳ χειρὶ τόνδε τὸν ἄνδρα κατεργασάμενος καὶ κτείνας, σοὶ καθιεροῦν τὰ πρῶτα καὶ κάλλιστα τῶν λαφύρων. σὺ δὲ [δια]δίδου τύχην ὁμοίαν ἐπὶ [5] τὰ λοιπὰ τοῦ πολέμου προστρεπομένοις. ἐκ τούτου συνέμισγον οἱ ἱππεῖς οὐ διακεκριμένοις τοῖς ἱππεῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς πεζοὺς ὁμοῦ προσφερομένους μαχόμενοι, καὶ νικῶσι νίκην ἰδέᾳ τε καὶ τρόπῳ περιττὴν καὶ παράδοξον· ἱππεῖς γὰρ ἱππέας καὶ πεζοὺς ἅμα τοσοῦτοι τοσούτους οὔτε πρότερον οὔθ’ ὕστερον νικῆσαι λέγονται.

[6] Κτείνας δὲ τοὺς πλείστους καὶ κρατήσας ὅπλων καὶ χρημάτων, ἐπανῆλθε πρὸς τὸν συνάρχοντα, μοχθηρῶς πολεμοῦντα Κελτοῖς περὶ πόλιν μεγίστην καὶ πολυανθρωποτάτην [7] τῶν Γαλατικῶν· Μεδιόλανον καλεῖται, καὶ μητρόπολιν [μὲν] αὐτὴν οἱ τῇδε Κελτοὶ νομίζουσιν· ὅθεν ἐκθύμως μαχόμενοι περὶ αὐτῆς, ἀντεπολιόρκουν τὸν Κορνήλιον.

[8] ἐπελθόντος δὲ τοῦ Μαρκέλλου, καὶ τῶν Γαισατῶν, ὡς ἐπύθοντο τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως ἧτταν καὶ τελευτήν, ἀπελθόντων, τὸ μὲν Μεδιόλανον ἁλίσκεται, τὰς δ’ ἄλλας πόλεις αὐτοὶ παραδιδόασιν οἱ Κελτοὶ καὶ τὰ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἐπιτρέπουσι πάντα Ῥωμαίοις. καὶ τούτοις μὲν ἦν εἰρήνη μετρίων τυχοῦσι.

[8] [1] Ψηφισαμένης δὲ τῆς συγκλήτου μόνῳ Μαρκέλλῳ θρίαμβον, εἰσήλαυνε, τῇ μὲν ἄλλῃ λαμπρότητι καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ λαφύροις καὶ σώμασιν ὑπερφυέσιν αἰχμαλώτων ἐν ὀλίγοις θαυμαστός, ἥδιστον δὲ πάντων θέαμα καὶ καινότατον ἐπιδεικνύμενος αὑτὸν κομίζοντα τῷ θεῷ τὴν [2] τοῦ βαρβάρου πανοπλίαν. δρυὸς γὰρ εὐκτεάνου πρέμνον ὄρθιον καὶ μέγα τεμών, καὶ ἀσκήσας ὥσπερ τρόπαιον, ἀνεδήσατο καὶ κατήρτησεν ἐξ αὐτοῦ τὰ λάφυρα, κόσμῳ [3] διαθεὶς καὶ περιαρμόσας ἕκαστον. προϊούσης δὲ τῆς πομπῆς, ἀράμενος αὐτὸς ἐπέβη τοῦ τεθρίππου, καὶ τροπαιοφόρων ἀγαλμάτων ἐκεῖνο κάλλιστον καὶ διαπρεπέστατον [4] ἐπόμπευε διὰ τῆς πόλεως. ὁ δὲ στρατὸς εἵπετο, καλλίστοις ὅπλοις κεκοσμημένος, ᾄδων ἅμα πεποιημένα μέλη καὶ παιᾶνας ἐπινικίους εἰς τὸν θεὸν καὶ τὸν στρατηγόν.

[5] οὕτω δὲ προβὰς καὶ παρελθὼν εἰς τὸν νεὼν τοῦ Φερετρίου Διός, ἀνέστησε καὶ καθιέρωσε τρίτος καὶ τελευταῖος [6] ἄχρι τοῦ καθ’ ἡμᾶς αἰῶνος. πρῶτος μὲν γὰρ ἀνήνεγκε σκῦλα Ῥωμύλος ἀπ’ Ἄκρωνος τοῦ Καινινήτου, δεύτερος δὲ Κόσσος Κορνήλιος ἀπὸ Τολουμνίου Τυρρηνοῦ, μετὰ δὲ τούτους Μάρκελλος ἀπὸ Βριτομάτου βασιλέως Γαλατῶν, μετὰ δὲ Μάρκελλον οὐδ’ εἷς.

[7] Καλεῖται δ’ ὁ μὲν θεὸς ᾧ πέμπεται Φερέτριος Ζεύς, ὡς μὲν ἔνιοί φασιν, ἀπὸ τοῦ φερετρευομένου τροπαίου κατὰ τὴν Ἑλληνίδα γλῶσσαν, ἔτι πολλὴν τότε συμμεμειγμένην τῇ Λατίνων, ὡς δ’ ἕτεροι, Διός ἐστιν ἡ προσωνυμία κεραυνοβολοῦντος. τὸ γὰρ τύπτειν φέρειν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι [8] καλοῦσιν. ἄλλοι δὲ παρὰ τὴν τοῦ πολεμίου πληγὴν γεγονέναι τοὔνομα λέγουσι· καὶ γὰρ νῦν ἐν ταῖς μάχαις, ὅταν διώκωσι τοὺς πολεμίους, πυκνὸν τὸ φέρε, τουτέστι παῖε, [9] παρεγγυῶσιν ἀλλήλοις. τὰ δὲ σκῦλα σπόλια μὲν κοινῶς, ἰδίως δ’ ὀπίμια ταῦτα καλοῦσι. καίτοι φασὶν ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασι Νομᾶν Πομπίλιον καὶ πρώτων ὀπιμίων καὶ δευτέρων καὶ τρίτων μνημονεύειν, τὰ μὲν πρῶτα ληφθέντα τῷ Φερετρίῳ Διῒ κελεύοντα καθιεροῦν, τὰ δεύτερα δὲ τῷ Ἄρει, τὰ δὲ τρίτα τῷ Κυρίνῳ, καὶ λαμβάνειν γέρας ἀσσάρια τριακόσια τὸν πρῶτον, τὸν δὲ δεύτερον διακόσια, [10] τὸν δὲ τρίτον ἑκατόν. ὁ μέντοι πολὺς οὗτος ἐπικρατεῖ λόγος, ὡς ἐκείνων μόνων ὀπιμίων ὄντων, ὅσα καὶ παρατάξεως οὔσης καὶ πρῶτα καὶ στρατηγοῦ [καὶ] στρατηγὸν ἀνελόντος. περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον.

[11] Οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι τὴν νίκην ἐκείνην καὶ τοῦ πολέμου τὴν κατάλυσιν οὕτως ὑπερηγάπησαν, ὥστε καὶ τῷ Πυθίῳ χρυσοῦν κρατῆρα ἀπὸ λιτρῶν εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀποστεῖλαι χαριστήριον, καὶ τῶν λαφύρων ταῖς τε συμμαχίσι μεταδοῦναι πόλεσι λαμπρῶς, καὶ πρὸς Ἱέρωνα πολλὰ πέμψαι τὸν Συρακοσίων βασιλέα, φίλον ὄντα καὶ σύμμαχον.

[9] [1] Ἀννίβου δ’ ἐμβαλόντος εἰς Ἰταλίαν, ἐπέμφθη μὲν [2] ὁ Μάρκελλος ἐπὶ Σικελίαν στόλον ἄγων· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡ περὶ Κάννας ἀτυχία συνέπεσε, καὶ Ῥωμαίων οὐκ ὀλίγαι μυριάδες ἐν τῇ μάχῃ διεφθάρησαν, ὀλίγοι δὲ σωθέντες εἰς Κανύσιον συνεπεφεύγεσαν, ἦν δὲ προσδοκία τὸν Ἀννίβαν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ἐλᾶν, ὅπερ ἦν κράτιστον τῆς δυνάμεως [3] ἀνῃρηκότα, πρῶτον μὲν ὁ Μάρκελλος ἀπὸ τῶν νεῶν ἔπεμψε τῇ πόλει φυλακὴν πεντακοσίους καὶ χιλίους ἄνδρας, ἔπειτα δόγμα τῆς βουλῆς δεξάμενος, εἰς Κανύσιον παρῆλθε, καὶ τοὺς ἐκεῖ συνειλεγμένους παραλαβὼν ἐξήγαγε τῶν ἐρυμάτων, ὡς οὐ προησόμενος τὴν χώραν.

[4] Ῥωμαίοις δὲ τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν καὶ δυνατῶν ἀνδρῶν οἱ μὲν ἐτεθνήκεσαν ἐν ταῖς μάχαις, Φαβίου δὲ Μαξίμου, τοῦ πλεῖστον ἔχοντος ἀξίωμα πίστεως καὶ συνέσεως, τὸ λίαν ἀπηκριβωμένον ἐν τοῖς ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ παθεῖν λογισμοῖς [5] ὡς ἀργὸν ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις καὶ ἄτολμον ᾐτιῶντο· καὶ νομίζοντες ἀποχρῶντα τοῦτον ἔχειν πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν, οὐ διαρκῆ δὲ πρὸς ἄμυναν στρατηγόν, ἐπὶ τὸν Μάρκελλον [6] ‹κατέφευγον›, καὶ τὸ θαρραλέον αὐτοῦ καὶ δραστήριον πρὸς τὴν ἐκείνου κεραννύντες καὶ ἁρμόττοντες εὐλάβειαν καὶ πρόνοιαν, ποτὲ μὲν ἀμφοτέρους ἅμα χειροτονοῦντες ὑπάτους, ποτὲ δ’ ἐν μέρει, τὸν μὲν ὕπατον τὸν δ’ ἀνθύπατον [7] ἐξέπεμπον. ὁ δὲ Ποσειδώνιός φησι (FGrH 87 F 42) τὸν μὲν Φάβιον θυρεὸν καλεῖσθαι, τὸν δὲ Μάρκελλον ξίφος. αὐτὸς δ’ ὁ Ἀννίβας ἔλεγε, τὸν μὲν Φάβιον ὡς παιδαγωγὸν φοβεῖσθαι, τὸν δὲ Μάρκελλον ὡς ἀνταγωνιστήν· ὑφ’ οὗ μὲν γὰρ κωλύεσθαι κακόν τι ποιεῖν, ὑφ’ οὗ δὲ καὶ πάσχειν.

[10] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἀνέσεως πολλῆς καὶ θρασύτητος ἐκ τοῦ κρατεῖν τοῦ Ἀννίβα τοῖς στρατιώταις ἐγγενομένης, τοὺς ἀποσκιδναμένους τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ κατατρέχοντας τὴν χώραν ἐπιτιθέμενος κατέκοπτε καὶ ὑπανήλισκε [2] τῆς δυνάμεως· ἔπειτα πρὸς Νέαν πόλιν καὶ Νῶλαν βοηθήσας, Νεαπολίτας μὲν ἐπέρρωσεν, αὐτοὺς καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς βεβαίους ὄντας Ῥωμαίοις, εἰς δὲ Νῶλαν εἰσελθὼν στάσιν εὗρε, τῆς βουλῆς τὸν δῆμον ἀννιβίζοντα μεταχειρίσασθαι [3] καὶ καταρτίσαι μὴ δυναμένης. ἦν γάρ τις ἀνὴρ εὐγενείᾳ τε πρωτεύων ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ κατ’ ἀνδρείαν [4] ἐπιφανής, ὄνομα Βάνδιος· τοῦτον ἐν Κάνναις περιόπτως ἀγωνισάμενον, καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν ἀνελόντα τῶν Καρχηδονίων, τέλος δ’ αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς νεκροῖς εὑρεθέντα πολλῶν βελῶν κατάπλεων τὸ σῶμα θαυμάσας ὁ Ἀννίβας οὐ μόνον ἀφῆκεν ἄνευ λύτρων, ἀλλὰ καὶ δῶρα προσέθηκε καὶ [5] φίλον ἐποιήσατο καὶ ξένον. ἀμειβόμενος οὖν ταύτην τὴν χάριν ὁ Βάνδιος εἷς ἦν τῶν ἀννιβιζόντων προθύμως, καὶ [6] τὸν δῆμον ἰσχύων ἐξήγαγε πρὸς ἀπόστασιν. ὁ δὲ Μάρκελλος ἀνελεῖν μὲν ἄνδρα λαμπρὸν οὕτω τὴν ψυχὴν ‹καὶ› κεκοινωνηκότα τῶν μεγίστων Ῥωμαίοις ἀγώνων οὐχ ὅσιον ἡγεῖτο, πρὸς δὲ τῷ φύσει φιλανθρώπῳ καὶ πιθανὸς ὢν ὁμιλίᾳ [καὶ] προσάγεσθαι φιλότιμον ἦθος, ἀσπασάμενόν ποτε τὸν Βάνδιον αὐτὸν ἠρώτησεν ὅστις ἀνθρώπων εἴη, πάλαι μὲν εὖ εἰδώς, ἀρχὴν δὲ καὶ πρόφασιν ἐντεύξεως [7] ζητῶν. ὡς γὰρ εἶπε Λεύκιος Βάνδιος, οἷον ἡσθεὶς καὶ θαυμάσας ὁ Μάρκελλος, ἦ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ἔφη σὺ Βάνδιος, οὗ πλεῖστος ἐν Ῥώμῃ λόγος τῶν ἐν Κάνναις ἀγωνισαμένων, ὡς μόνου Παῦλον Αἰμίλιον τὸν ἄρχοντα μὴ προλιπόντος, ἀλλὰ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ‹εἰς› ἐκεῖνον φερομένων [8] βελῶν ὑποστάντος τῷ σώματι καὶ ἀναδεξαμένου; φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Βανδίου καί τι καὶ παραφήναντος αὐτῷ τῶν τραυμάτων, εἶτ’ ἔφη τηλικαῦτα γνωρίσματα φέρων τῆς πρὸς ἡμᾶς φιλίας, οὐκ εὐθὺς προσῄεις; ἢ κακοί σοι δοκοῦμεν ἀρετὴν ἀμείβεσθαι φίλων, οἷς ἐστι τιμὴ καὶ [9] παρὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις; ταῦτα φιλοφρονηθεὶς καὶ δεξιωσάμενος, ἵππον τε δωρεῖται πολεμιστὴν αὐτῷ καὶ δραχμὰς ἀργυρίου πεντακοσίας.

[11] [1] Ἐκ τούτου βεβαιότατος μὲν ἦν Μαρκέλλῳ παραστάτης καὶ σύμμαχος, δεινότατος δὲ μηνυτὴς καὶ κατήγορος [2] τῶν τἀναντία φρονούντων ὁ Βάνδιος. ἦσαν δὲ πολλοί, καὶ διενοοῦντο τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐπεξιόντων τοῖς πολεμίοις [3] αὐτοὶ διαρπάσαι τὰς ἀποσκευάς. διὸ συντάξας ὁ Μάρκελλος τὴν δύναμιν ἐντός, παρὰ τὰς πύλας ἔστησε τὰ σκευοφόρα καὶ τοῖς Νωλανοῖς διὰ κηρύγματος ἀπεῖπε [4] πρὸς τὰ τείχη προσπελάζειν. ἦν οὖν ὅπλων ἔρημα καὶ τὸν Ἀννίβαν ἐπεσπάσατο προσάγειν ἀτακτότερον, ὡς τῶν [5] ἐν τῇ πόλει ταραττομένων. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τὴν καθ’ αὑτὸν πύλην ἀναπετάσαι κελεύσας ὁ Μάρκελλος ἐξήλασεν, ἔχων μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ τῶν ἱπποτῶν τοὺς λαμπροτάτους, καὶ προσπεσὼν [6] κατὰ στόμα συνείχετο τοῖς πολεμίοις. μετ’ ὀλίγον δ’ οἱ πεζοὶ καθ’ ἑτέραν πύλην ‹ἐξ›εχώρουν μετὰ δρόμου καὶ βοῆς, καὶ πρὸς τούτους αὖθις αὖ τοῦ Ἀννίβα μερίζοντος τὴν δύναμιν, ἡ τρίτη τῶν πυλῶν ἀνεῴγνυτο, καὶ δι’ αὐτῆς ἐξέθεον οἱ λοιποί, καὶ προσέκειντο πανταχόθεν ἐκπεπληγμένοις τῷ ἀπροσδοκήτῳ καὶ κακῶς ἀμυνομένοις τοὺς ἐν χερσὶν ἤδη διὰ τοὺς ὕστερον ἐπιφερομένους.

[7] κἀνταῦθα πρῶτον οἱ σὺν Ἀννίβᾳ Ῥωμαίοις ἐνέδωκαν, ὠθούμενοι φόνῳ πολλῷ καὶ τραύμασι πρὸς τὸ στρατόπεδον. λέγονται γὰρ ὑπὲρ πεντακισχιλίους ἀποθανεῖν, [8] ἀποκτεῖναι δὲ Ῥωμαίων οὐ πλείονας ἢ πεντακοσίους. ὁ δὲ Λίβιος (23, 16, 15 sq.) οὕτω μὲν οὐ διαβεβαιοῦται γενέσθαι μεγάλην ‹τὴν› ἧτταν, οὐδὲ πεσεῖν νεκροὺς τοσούτους τῶν πολεμίων, κλέος δὲ μέγα Μαρκέλλῳ καὶ Ῥωμαίοις ἐκ κακῶν θάρσος ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης ἐκείνης ὑπάρξαι θαυμαστόν, οὐχ ὡς πρὸς ἄμαχον οὐδ’ ἀήττητον, ἀλλά τι καὶ παθεῖν δυνάμενον διαγωνιζομένοις πολέμιον.

[12] Διὸ καὶ θατέρου τῶν ὑπάτων ἀποθανόντος, ἐκάλει Μάρκελλον ὁ δῆμος ἐπὶ τὴν διαδοχὴν ἀπόντα, καὶ βίᾳ τῶν ἀρχόντων ὑπερέθετο τὴν κατάστασιν, ἕως ἐκεῖνος [9] ἦλθεν ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατοπέδου. καὶ πάσαις μὲν ἀπεδείχθη ταῖς ψήφοις ὕπατος, ἐπιβροντήσαντος δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τῶν ἱερέων οὐκ αἴσιον τιθεμένων τὸ σημεῖον, ἐμφανῶς δὲ κωλύειν ὀκνούντων καὶ δεδιότων τὸν δῆμον, αὐτὸς ἐξωμόσατο τὴν ἀρχήν.

[10] Οὐ μέντοι τὴν στρατείαν ἔφυγεν, ἀλλ’ ἀνθύπατος ἀναγορευθεὶς καὶ πάλιν πρὸς Νῶλαν ἐπανελθὼν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, κακῶς ἐποίει τοὺς ᾑρημένους τὰ τοῦ Φοίνικος.

[11] ὡς δ’ ὀξεῖαν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν θέμενος βοήθειαν ἐκεῖνος ἧκε, προκαλουμένῳ μὲν ἐκ παρατάξεως οὐκ ἠβουλήθη διαγωνίσασθαι, τρέψαντι δὲ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐφ’ ἁρπαγὴν τοῦ στρατοῦ καὶ μηκέτι προσδεχομένῳ μάχην ἐπεξῆλθε, διαδοὺς δόρατα τῶν ναυμάχων μεγάλα τοῖς πεζοῖς καὶ διδάξας πόρρωθεν συντιτρώσκειν τοὺς Καρχηδονίους, ἀκοντιστὰς μὲν οὐκ ὄντας, αἰχμαῖς δὲ χρωμένους ἐκ χειρὸς [12] βραχείαις. διὸ καὶ δοκοῦσι τότε δεῖξαι τὰ νῶτα Ῥωμαίοις ὅσοι συνέβαλον καὶ φυγὴν ἀπροφάσιστον φυγεῖν, ἀποβαλόντες ἐξ ἑαυτῶν νεκροὺς μὲν γενομένους πεντακισχιλίους, ‹αἰχμαλώτους δ’ ἑξακοσίους›, καὶ τῶν ἐλεφάντων τέσσαρας [13] μὲν πεσόντας, δύο δὲ ζωοὺς ἁλόντας. ὃ δ’ ἦν μέγιστον, ἡμέρᾳ τρίτῃ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἱππεῖς Ἰβήρων καὶ Νομάδων μιγάδες αὐτομολοῦσιν ὑπὲρ τοὺς τριακοσίους, οὔπω πρότερον Ἀννίβα τοῦτο παθόντος, ἀλλ’ ἐκ ποικίλων καὶ πολυτρόπων συνηρμοσμένον ἐθνῶν βαρβαρικὸν στράτευμα [14] πλεῖστον χρόνον ἐν μιᾷ γνώμῃ διαφυλάξαντος. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν πιστοὶ παρέμειναν εἰς ἅπαν αὐτῷ τε τῷ Μαρκέλλῳ καὶ τοῖς μετ’ αὐτὸν στρατηγοῖς.

[13] [1] Ὁ δὲ Μάρκελλος ἀποδειχθεὶς ὕπατος τὸ τρίτον [2] εἰς Σικελίαν ἔπλευσεν. αἱ γὰρ Ἀννίβου περὶ τὸν πόλεμον εὐπραξίαι Καρχηδονίους ἐπῆραν αὖθις ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι τῆς νήσου, μάλιστα τεταραγμένων τῶν περὶ τὰς Συρακούσας μετὰ τὴν Ἱερωνύμου τοῦ τυράννου τελευτήν.

[3] διὸ καὶ Ῥωμαίων ἦν ἐκεῖ προαπεσταλμένη δύναμις καὶ στρατηγὸς Ἄππιος. ταύτην παραλαμβάνοντι τῷ Μαρκέλλῳ προσπίπτουσι Ῥωμαῖοι πολλοί, συμφορᾷ κεχρημένοι [4] τοιαύτῃ. τῶν περὶ Κάννας παραταξαμένων πρὸς Ἀννίβαν οἱ μὲν ἔφυγον, οἱ δὲ ζῶντες ἥλωσαν, τοσοῦτον πλῆθος, ὡς δοκεῖν Ῥωμαίοις ὑπολελεῖφθαι μηδὲ τοὺς [5] τὰ τείχη διαφυλάξοντας. τοῖς δ’ ἄρα τοσοῦτον [τοῦ] φρονήματος καὶ μεγαλοψυχίας περιῆν, ὥστε τοὺς μὲν αἰχμαλώτους ἐπὶ μικροῖς λύτροις ἀποδιδόντος Ἀννίβου μὴ λαβεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἀποψηφίσασθαι, καὶ περιϊδεῖν τοὺς μὲν ἀναιρεθέντας, [6] τοὺς δὲ πραθέντας ἔξω τῆς Ἰταλίας, τῶν δὲ φυγῇ περιγενομένων τὸ πλῆθος εἰς Σικελίαν ἀποστεῖλαι, διακελευσαμένους Ἰταλίας μὴ ἐπιβαίνειν, ἕως πολεμοῦσι [7] πρὸς Ἀννίβαν. οὗτοι δὴ τῷ Μαρκέλλῳ παραγενομένῳ προσπεσόντες ἀθρόοι καὶ χαμαὶ καταβαλόντες αὑτούς, ᾔτουν τάξιν ἐπιτίμου στρατείας, μετὰ πολλῆς βοῆς καὶ δακρύων ἐπαγγελλόμενοι δείξειν δι’ ἔργων ἀτυχίᾳ τινὶ μᾶλλον ἢ δι’ ἀνανδρίαν αὐτῶν τὴν τροπὴν ἐκείνην γενομένην.

[8] οἰκτίρας οὖν αὐτοὺς ὁ Μάρκελλος ἔγραψε πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον, αἰτούμενος ἐκ τούτων ἀεὶ τῆς στρατιᾶς [9] τὸ ἐπιλεῖπον ἀναπληροῦν. λόγων δὲ πολλῶν γενομένων, ἐποιήσατο γνώμην ἡ βουλή, μηδὲν εἰς δημόσια πράγματα δεῖσθαι Ῥωμαίους ἀνθρώπων ἀνάνδρων· εἰ δὲ βούλεται χρῆσθαι Μάρκελλος αὐτοῖς, [ἴσ] ὡς μηδενὶ τῶν ἐπ’ ἀνδρείᾳ νομιζομένων στεφάνων καὶ γερῶν τυχεῖν ὑπάρχον[τος].

[10] τοῦτο τὸ δόγμα Μάρκελλον ἠνίασε, καὶ μετὰ τὸν ἐν Σικελίᾳ πόλεμον ἐπανελθών, ἐμέμψατο τὴν βουλήν, ὡς ἀντὶ πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων οὐ παρασχοῦσαν αὐτῷ τοσούτων δυστυχίαν ἐπανορθώσασθαι πολιτῶν.

[14] [1] Τότε δ’ ἐν Σικελίᾳ πρῶτον μὲν ἀδικηθεὶς ὑφ’ Ἱπποκράτους στρατηγοῦ Συρακοσίων, ὃς Καρχηδονίοις χαριζόμενος καὶ τυραννίδα κτώμενος αὑτῷ πολλοὺς [2] διέφθειρε Ῥωμαίων πρὸς Λεοντίνοις καὶ εἷλε τὴν τῶν Λεοντίνων πόλιν κατὰ κράτος καὶ Λεοντίνους μὲν οὐκ ἠδίκησε, τῶν δ’ αὐτομόλων ὅσους ἔλαβε μαστιγώσας [3] ἀπέκτεινε. τοῦ δ’ Ἱπποκράτους πρῶτον μὲν λόγον εἰς τὰς Συρακούσας προπέμψαντος, ὡς Λεοντίνους ἡβηδὸν ἀποσφάττει Μάρκελλος, ἔπειτα δὲ τεταραγμένοις ἐπιπεσόντος καὶ τὴν πόλιν καταλαβόντος, ἄρας ὁ Μάρκελλος [4] τῷ στρατῷ παντὶ πρὸς τὰς Συρακούσας ἐχώρει. καὶ καταστρατοπεδεύσας πλησίον, εἰσέπεμψε μὲν πρέσβεις, [5] περὶ τῶν ἐν Λεοντίνοις διδάξοντας. ὡς δ’ οὐδὲν ἦν ὄφελος, μὴ πειθομένων Συρακοσίων (ἐκράτουν γὰρ οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἱπποκράτην), προσβολὰς ἐποιεῖτο κατὰ γῆν ἅμα καὶ κατὰ θάλασσαν, Ἀππίου μὲν τὸν πεζὸν ἐπάγοντος στρατόν, αὐτὸς δὲ πεντήρεις ἔχων ἑξήκοντα παντοδαπῶν [6] ὅπλων καὶ βελῶν πλήρεις. ὑπὲρ δὲ μεγάλου ζεύγματος νεῶν ὀκτὼ πρὸς ἀλλήλας συνδεδεμένων μηχανὴν ἄρας, ἐπέπλει πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος, τῷ πλήθει καὶ τῇ λαμπρότητι τῆς [7] παρασκευῆς καὶ τῇ δόξῃ τῇ περὶ αὑτὸν πεποιθώς· ἧς ἄρα λόγος οὐδεὶς ἦν Ἀρχιμήδει καὶ τοῖς Ἀρχιμήδους μηχανήμασιν.

[8] ὧν ὡς μὲν ἔργον ἄξιον σπουδῆς οὐδὲν ὁ ἀνὴρ προὔθετο, γεωμετρίας δὲ παιζούσης ἐγεγόνει πάρεργα τὰ πλεῖστα, πρότερον φιλοτιμηθέντος Ἱέρωνος τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ πείσαντος Ἀρχιμήδη τρέψαι τι τῆς τέχνης ἀπὸ τῶν νοητῶν ἐπὶ τὰ σωματικά, καὶ τὸν λόγον ἁμῶς γέ πως δι’ αἰσθήσεως μείξαντα ταῖς χρείαις ἐμφανέστερον καταστῆσαι [9] τοῖς πολλοῖς. τὴν γὰρ ἀγαπωμένην ταύτην καὶ περιβόητον ὀργανικὴν ἤρξαντο μὲν κινεῖν οἱ περὶ Εὔδοξον καὶ Ἀρχύταν, ποικίλλοντες τῷ γλαφυρῷ γεωμετρίαν, καὶ λογικῆς καὶ γραμμικῆς ἀποδείξεως οὐκ εὐποροῦντα προβλήματα δι’ αἰσθητῶν καὶ ὀργανικῶν παραδειγμάτων [10] ὑπερείδοντες, ὡς τὸ περὶ δύο μέσας ἀνὰ λόγον πρόβλημα καὶ στοιχεῖον ἐπὶ πολλὰ τῶν γραφομένων ἀναγκαῖον εἰς ὀργανικὰς ἐξῆγον ἀμφότεροι κατασκευάς. μεσογράφους τινὰς ἀπὸ καμπύλων γραμμ[ατ]ῶν καὶ τμημάτων [11] μεθαρμόζοντες· ἐπεὶ δὲ Πλάτων ἠγανάκτησε καὶ διετείνατο πρὸς αὐτούς, ὡς ἀπολλύντας καὶ διαφθείροντας τὸ γεωμετρίας ἀγαθόν, ἀπὸ τῶν ἀσωμάτων καὶ νοητῶν ἀποδιδρασκούσης ἐπὶ τὰ αἰσθητά, καὶ προσχρωμένης αὖθις αὖ σώμασι πολλῆς καὶ φορτικῆς βαναυσουργίας δεομένοις, οὕτω διεκρίθη γεωμετρίας ἐκπεσοῦσα μηχανική, καὶ περιορωμένη πολὺν χρόνον ὑπὸ φιλοσοφίας, μία τῶν στρατιωτίδων [12] τεχνῶν ἐγεγόνει. καὶ μέντοι καὶ Ἀρχιμήδης, Ἱέρωνι τῷ βασιλεῖ συγγενὴς ὢν καὶ φίλος, ἔγραψεν ὡς τῇ δοθείσῃ δυνάμει τὸ δοθὲν βάρος κινῆσαι δυνατόν ἐστι, καὶ νεανιευσάμενος ὥς φασι ῥώμῃ τῆς ἀποδείξεως εἶπεν ὡς εἰ γῆν εἶχεν ἑτέραν, ἐκίνησεν ἂν ταύτην μεταβὰς εἰς [13] ἐκείνην. θαυμάσαντος δὲ τοῦ Ἱέρωνος, καὶ δεηθέντος εἰς ἔργον ἐξαγαγεῖν τὸ πρόβλημα καὶ δεῖξαί τι τῶν μεγάλων κινούμενον ὑπὸ σμικρᾶς δυνάμεως, ὁλκάδα τριάρμενον τῶν βασιλικῶν πόνῳ μεγάλῳ καὶ χειρὶ πολλῇ νεωλκηθεῖσαν, ἐμβαλὼν ἀνθρώπους τε πολλοὺς καὶ τὸν συνήθη φόρτον, αὐτὸς ἄπωθεν καθήμενος, οὐ μετὰ σπουδῆς ἀλλ’ ἠρέμα τῇ χειρὶ σείων ἀρχήν τινα πολυσπάστου, προσηγάγετο, λείως καὶ ἀπταίστως ὥσπερ διὰ θαλάσσης ἐπιθέουσαν.

[14] ἐκπλαγεὶς οὖν ὁ βασιλεὺς καὶ συννοήσας τῆς τέχνης τὴν δύναμιν, ἔπεισε τὸν Ἀρχιμήδην ὅπως αὐτῷ τὰ μὲν ἀμυνομένῳ τὰ δ’ ἐπιχειροῦντι μηχανήματα κατασκευάσῃ [15] πρὸς πᾶσαν ἰδέαν πολιορκίας. οἷς αὐτὸς μὲν οὐκ ἐχρήσατο, τοῦ βίου τὸ πλεῖστον ἀπόλεμον καὶ πανηγυρικὸν βιώσας, τότε δ’ ὑπῆρχε τοῖς Συρακοσίοις εἰς δέον ἡ παρασκευή, καὶ μετὰ τῆς παρασκευῆς ὁ δημιουργός.

[15] [1] Ὡς οὖν προσέβαλον οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι διχόθεν, ἔκπληξις ἦν τῶν Συρακοσίων καὶ σιγὴ διὰ δέος, μηδὲν ἂν [2] ἀνθέξειν πρὸς βίαν καὶ δύναμιν οἰομένων τοσαύτην. σχάσαντος δὲ τὰς μηχανὰς τοῦ Ἀρχιμήδους, ἅμα τοῖς μὲν πεζοῖς ἀπήντα τοξεύματά τε παντοδαπὰ καὶ λίθων ὑπέρογκα μεγέθη, ῥοίζῳ καὶ τάχει καταφερομένων ἀπίστῳ καὶ μηδενὸς ὅλως τὸ βρῖθος στέγοντος ἀθρόους ἀνατρεπόντων [3] τοὺς ὑποπίπτοντας καὶ τὰς τάξεις συγχεόντων· ταῖς δὲ ναυσὶν ἄφνω τῶν τειχῶν ὑπεραιωρούμεναι κεραῖαι, τὰς μὲν ὑπὸ βρίθους στηρίζοντος ἄνωθεν ὠθοῦσαι κατέδυον εἰς βυθόν, τὰς δὲ χερσὶ σιδηραῖς [ἢ] στόμασιν εἰκασμέναις γεράνων ἀνασπῶσαι πρῴραθεν ὀρθὰς ἐπὶ πρύμναν [ἀν]ἐβάπτιζον, ἢ δι’ ἀντιτόνων ἔνδον ἐπιστρεφομένων καὶ περιαγομένων τοῖς ὑπὸ τὸ τεῖχος ἐκπεφυκόσι κρημνοῖς καὶ σκοπέλοις προσήρασσον, ἅμα φθόρῳ πολλῷ [4] τῶν ἐπιβατῶν συντριβομένας. πολλάκις δὲ μετέωρος ἐξαρθεῖσα ναῦς ἀπὸ τῆς θαλάσσης δεῦρο κἀκεῖσε περιδινουμένη καὶ κρεμαμένη θέαμα φρικῶδες ἦν, μέχρι οὗ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἀπορριφέντων καὶ διασφενδονηθέντων κενὴ προσπέσοι τοῖς τείχεσιν ἢ περιολίσθοι τῆς λαβῆς ἀνείσης.

[5] ἣν δ’ ὁ Μάρκελλος ἀπὸ τοῦ ζεύγματος ἐπῆγε μηχανήν, σαμβύκη μὲν ἐκαλεῖτο δι’ ὁμοιότητά τινα σχήματος [6] πρὸς τὸ μουσικὸν ὄργανον. ἔτι δ’ ἄπωθεν αὐτῆς προσφερομένης πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος, ἐξήλατο λίθος δεκατάλαντος ὁλκήν, εἶθ’ ἕτερος ἐπὶ τούτῳ καὶ τρίτος, ὧν οἱ μὲν αὐτῆς ἐμπεσόντες μεγάλῳ κτύπῳ καὶ κλύδωνι [τῆς μηχανῆς] τήν τε βάσιν συνηλόησαν, καὶ τὸ γόμφωμα διέσεισαν [7] καὶ διέσπασαν τοῦ ζεύγματος, ὥστε τὸν Μάρκελλον ἀπορούμενον αὐτόν τε ταῖς ναυσὶν ἀποπλεῖν κατὰ τάχος, καὶ τοῖς πεζοῖς ἀναχώρησιν παρεγγυῆσαι.

[8] Βουλευομένοις δ’ ἔδοξεν αὐτοῖς ἔτι νυκτὸς ἂν δύνωνται προσμεῖξαι τοῖς τείχεσι· τοὺς γὰρ τόνους, οἷς χρῆσθαι τὸν Ἀρχιμήδην, ῥύμην ἔχοντας ὑπερπετεῖς ποιήσεσθαι τὰς τῶν βελῶν ἀφέσεις, ἐγγύθεν δὲ καὶ τελέως ἀπράκτους [9] εἶναι, διάστημα τῆς πληγῆς οὐκ ἐχούσης. ὁ δ’ ἦν ὡς ἔοικεν ἐπὶ ταῦτα πάλαι παρεσκευασμένος ὀργάνων τε συμμέτρους πρὸς πᾶν διάστημα κινήσεις καὶ βέλη βραχέα, καὶ διαδοχὰς οὐ μεγάλων, πολλῶν δὲ καὶ συνεχῶν τρημάτων, οἷς σκορπίοι βραχύτονοι μέν, ἐγγύθεν δὲ πλῆξαι ‹δυνατοὶ› παρεστήκεσαν ἀόρατοι τοῖς πολεμίοις.

[16] [1] Ὡς οὖν προσέμειξαν οἰόμενοι λανθάνειν, αὖθις αὖ βέλεσι πολλοῖς ἐντυγχάνοντες ‹καὶ› πληγαῖς, πετρῶν μὲν ἐκ κεφαλῆς ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς φερομένων ὥσπερ πρὸς κάθετον, τοῦ ‹δὲ› τείχους τοξεύματα πανταχόθεν ἀναπέμποντος, [2] ἀνεχώρουν ὀπίσω. κἀνταῦθα πάλιν αὐτῶν εἰς μῆκος ἐκτεταγμένων, βελῶν ἐκθεόντων καὶ καταλαμβανόντων ἀπιόντας, ἐγίνετο πολὺς μὲν αὐτῶν φθόρος, πολὺς δὲ τῶν νεῶν συγκρουσμός, οὐδὲν ἀντιδρᾶσαι τοὺς πολεμίους [3] δυναμένων. τὰ γὰρ πλεῖστα τῶν ὀργάνων ὑπὸ τὸ τεῖχος ἐσκευοποίητο τῷ Ἀρχιμήδει, καὶ θεομαχοῦσιν ἐῴκεσαν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, μυρίων αὐτοῖς κακῶν ἐξ ἀφανοῦς ἐπιχεομένων.

[17] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὁ Μάρκελλος ἀπέφυγέ τε, καὶ τοὺς σὺν ἑαυτῷ σκώπτων τεχνίτας καὶ μηχανοποιοὺς ἔλεγεν· [2] οὐ παυσόμεθα πρὸς τὸν γεωμετρικὸν τοῦτον Βριάρεων πολεμοῦντες, ὃς ταῖς μὲν ναυσὶν ἡμῶν κυαθίζει πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν, ‹τὰς δὲ σαμβύκας› ῥαπίζων μετ’ αἰσχύνης ἐκβέβληκε, τοὺς δὲ μυθικοὺς ἑκατόγχειρας ὑπεραίρει, [3] τοσαῦτα βάλλων ἅμα βέλη καθ’ ἡμῶν; τῷ γὰρ ὄντι πάντες οἱ λοιποὶ Συρακόσιοι σῶμα τῆς Ἀρχιμήδους παρασκευῆς ἦσαν, ἡ δὲ κινοῦσα πάντα καὶ στρέφουσα ψυχὴ μία, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ὅπλων ἀτρέμα κειμένων, μόνοις δὲ τοῖς ἐκείνου τότε τῆς πόλεως χρωμένης καὶ πρὸς [4] ἄμυναν καὶ πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν. τέλος δὲ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ‹ὁρῶν› οὕτω περιφόβους γεγονότας ὁ Μάρκελλος, ὥστ’ εἰ καλῴδιον ἢ ξύλον ὑπὲρ τοῦ τείχους μικρὸν ὀφθείη προτεινόμενον, τοῦτ’ ἐκεῖνο, μηχανήν τινα κινεῖν ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς Ἀρχιμήδη βοῶντας ἀποτρέπεσθαι καὶ φεύγειν, ἀπέσχετο μάχης ἁπάσης καὶ προσβολῆς, τὸ λοιπὸν ἐπὶ τῷ χρόνῳ τὴν πολιορκίαν θέμενος.

[5] Τηλικοῦτον μέντοι φρόνημα καὶ βάθος ψυχῆς καὶ τοσοῦτον ἐκέκτητο θεωρημάτων πλοῦτον Ἀρχιμήδης, ὥστ’ ἐφ’ οἷς ὄνομα καὶ δόξαν οὐκ ἀνθρωπίνης, ἀλλὰ δαιμονίου τινὸς ἔσχε συνέσεως, μηθὲν ἐθελῆσαι σύγγραμμα περὶ [6] τούτων ἀπολιπεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὴν περὶ τὰ μηχανικὰ πραγματείαν καὶ πᾶσαν ὅλως τέχνην χρείας ἐφαπτομένην ἀγεννῆ καὶ βάναυσον ἡγησάμενος, ‹εἰς› ἐκεῖνα καταθέσθαι μόνα τὴν αὑτοῦ φιλοτιμίαν, οἷς τὸ καλὸν καὶ περιττὸν ἀμιγὲς [7] τοῦ ἀναγκαίου πρόσεστιν, ἀσύγκριτα μὲν ὄντα τοῖς ἄλλοις, ἔριν δὲ παρέχοντα πρὸς τὴν ὕλην τῇ ἀποδείξει, τῆς μὲν τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ κάλλος, τῆς δὲ τὴν ἀκρίβειαν καὶ [8] τὴν δύναμιν ὑπερφυῆ παρεχομένης· οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἐν γεωμετρίᾳ χαλεπωτέρας καὶ βαρυτέρας ὑποθέσεις ἐν ἁπλουστέροις λαβεῖν καὶ καθαρωτέροις στοιχείοις γραφομένας.

[9] καὶ τοῦθ’ οἱ μὲν εὐφυΐᾳ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς προσάπτουσιν, οἱ δ’ ὑπερβολῇ τινι πόνου νομίζουσιν ἀπόνως [10] πεποιημένῳ καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἕκαστον ἐοικὸς γεγονέναι. ζητῶν μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἄν τις εὕροι δι’ αὑτοῦ τὴν ἀπόδειξιν, ἅμα δὲ τῇ μαθήσει παρίσταται δόξα τοῦ κἂν αὐτὸν εὑρεῖν· οὕτω λείαν ὁδὸν ἄγει καὶ ταχεῖαν ἐπὶ τὸ δεικνύμενον.

[11] οὔκουν οὐδ’ ἀπιστῆσαι τοῖς περὶ αὐτοῦ λεγομένοις ἐστίν, ὡς ὑπ’ οἰκείας δή τινος καὶ συνοίκου θελγόμενος ἀεὶ σειρῆνος, ἐλέληστο καὶ σίτου, καὶ θεραπείαν σώματος ἐξέλειπε, βίᾳ δὲ πολλάκις ἑλκόμενος ἐπ’ ἄλειμμα καὶ λουτρόν, ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάραις ἔγραφε σχήματα τῶν γεωμετρικῶν, καὶ τοῦ σώματος ἀληλιμμένου διῆγε τῷ δακτύλῳ γραμμάς, ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς μεγάλης κάτοχος ὢν καὶ μουσόληπτος [12] ἀληθῶς. πολλῶν δὲ καὶ καλῶν εὑρετὴς γεγονώς, λέγεται τῶν φίλων δεηθῆναι καὶ τῶν συγγενῶν, ὅπως αὐτοῦ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ἐπιστήσωσι τῷ τάφῳ τὸν περιλαμβάνοντα τὴν σφαῖραν ἐντὸς κύλινδρον, ἐπιγράψαντες τὸν λόγον τῆς ὑπεροχῆς τοῦ περιέχοντος στερεοῦ πρὸς τὸ περιεχόμενον.

[18] [1] Ἀρχιμήδης μὲν οὖν τοιοῦτος γενόμενος, ἀήττητον ἑαυτόν τε καὶ τὴν πόλιν ὅσον ἐφ’ ἑαυτῷ διεφύλαξε.

[2] Τῆς δὲ πολιορκίας διὰ μέσου Μάρκελλος εἷλε μὲν Μεγαρέας, πόλιν ἐν ταῖς παλαιοτάταις τῶν Σικελιωτίδων, εἷλε δὲ τὸ Ἱπποκράτους πρὸς Ἀκρίλλαις στρατόπεδον, καὶ κατέκτεινεν ὑπὲρ ὀκτακισχιλίους, ἐπιπεσὼν χάρακα βαλλομένοις, ἐπέδραμε δὲ πολλὴν τῆς Σικελίας, καὶ πόλεις ἀπέστησε Καρχηδονίων, καὶ μάχας ἐνίκησε πάσας τοὺς ἀντιταχθῆναι τολμήσαντας.

[3] Χρόνῳ δὲ προϊόντι Δάμιππόν τινα Σπαρτιάτην ἐκ Συρακουσῶν ἐκπλέοντα λαβὼν αἰχμάλωτον, ἀξιούντων ἐπὶ λύτροις τῶν Συρακοσίων κομίσασθαι τὸν ἄνδρα, πολλάκις ὑπὲρ τούτου διαλεγόμενος καὶ συντιθέμενος, πύργον τινὰ κατεσκέψατο, φυλαττόμενον μὲν ἀμελῶς, ἄνδρας δὲ δυνάμενον δέξασθαι κρύφα, τοῦ τείχους ἐπιβατοῦ [4] παρ’ αὐτὸν ὄντος. ὡς οὖν τό θ’ ὕψος ἐκ τοῦ πολλάκις προσιέναι καὶ διαλέγεσθαι πρὸς τὸν πύργον εἰκάσθη καλῶς, καὶ κλίμακες παρεσκευάσθησαν, ἑορτὴν Ἀρτέμιδι τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἄγοντας καὶ πρὸς οἶνον ὡρμημένους καὶ παιδιὰν παραφυλάξας, ἔλαθεν οὐ μόνον τὸν πύργον κατασχών, ἀλλὰ καὶ κύκλῳ τὸ τεῖχος παρεμπλήσας ὅπλων, πρὶν ἡμέραν γενέσθαι, καὶ τὰ Ἑξάπυλα διακόψας.

[5] ἀρχομένων δὲ κινεῖσθαι καὶ ταράττεσθαι τῶν Συρακοσίων πρὸς τὴν αἴσθησιν, ἅμα πανταχόθεν ταῖς σάλπιγξι χρῆσθαι κελεύσας, φυγὴν ἐποίησε πολλὴν καὶ φόβον, [6] ὡς οὐδενὸς μέρους ἀναλώτου μένοντος. ἔμενε δὲ τὸ καρτερώτατον καὶ κάλλιστον καὶ μέγιστον, Ἀχραδινὴ καλεῖται, [καὶ] διὰ τὸ τετειχίσθαι πρὸς τὴν ἔξω πόλιν, ἧς τὸ μὲν Νέαν τὸ δὲ Τύχην ὀνομάζουσι.

[19] [1] Καὶ τούτων ἐχομένων, ἅμα φάει διὰ τῶν Ἑξαπύλων ὁ Μάρκελλος κατῄει, μακαριζόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ὑφ’ [2] ἑαυτὸν ἡγεμόνων. αὐτὸς μέντοι λέγεται κατιδὼν ἄνωθεν, καὶ περισκεψάμενος τῆς πόλεως τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ κάλλος, ἐπὶ πολὺ δακρῦσαι, [καὶ] τῷ μέλλοντι γίνεσθαι συμπαθήσας, ἐννοήσας οἷον ἐξ οἵου σχῆμα[τος] καὶ μορφὴν ἀμείψει μετὰ μικρόν, ὑπὸ τοῦ στρατοπέδου διαφορηθεῖσα.

[3] τῶν γὰρ ἡγεμόνων οὐδεὶς μὲν ἦν ὁ τολμῶν ἐναντιοῦσθαι τοῖς στρατιώταις, αἰτουμένοις δι’ ἁρπαγῆς ὠφεληθῆναι, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ πυρπολεῖν καὶ κατασκάπτειν [4] ἐκέλευον. ἀλλὰ τοῦτον μὲν οὐδ’ ὅλως προσήκατο τὸν λόγον ὁ Μάρκελλος, μάλα δ’ ἄκων βιασθεὶς ἔδωκεν ἀπὸ [5] χρημάτων καὶ ἀνδραπόδων ὠφελεῖσθαι· τῶν δ’ ἐλευθέρων σωμάτων ἀπεῖπεν ἅψασθαι, καὶ διεκελεύσατο μήτ’ ἀποκτεῖναί τινα μήτ’ αἰσχῦναι μήτ’ ἀνδραποδίσασθαι Συρακοσίων.

[6] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτω μετριάσαι δόξας, οἰκτρὰ πάσχειν ἡγεῖτο τὴν πόλιν, καὶ τὸ συμπαθοῦν καὶ τὸ συναλγοῦν ὅμως ἐν τοσούτῳ μεγέθει χαρᾶς ἡ ψυχὴ διέφαινεν, ὁρῶντος ἐν βραχεῖν χρόνῳ πολλῆς καὶ λαμπρᾶς [7] ἀφανισμὸν εὐδαιμονίας. λέγεται γὰρ οὐκ ἐλάττονα τοῦτον ἢ τὸν ὕστερον ἀπὸ Καρχηδόνος διαφορηθέντα πλοῦτον γενέσθαι· καὶ γὰρ τὴν ἄλλην πόλιν οὐ μετὰ πολὺν χρόνον ἁλοῦσαν ἐκ προδοσίας ἐβιάσαντο διαρπάσαι, πλὴν τῶν βασιλικῶν χρημάτων· ταῦτα δ’ εἰς τὸ δημόσιον ἐξῃρέθη.

[8] μάλιστα δὲ τὸ Ἀρχιμήδους πάθος ἠνίασε Μάρκελλον. ἔτυχε μὲν γὰρ αὐτός τι καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀνασκοπῶν ἐπὶ διαγράμματος, καὶ τῇ θεωρίᾳ δεδωκὼς ἅμα τήν τε διάνοιαν καὶ τὴν πρόσοψιν, οὐ προῄσθετο τὴν καταδρομὴν τῶν [9] Ῥωμαίων οὐδὲ τὴν ἅλωσιν τῆς πόλεως· ἄφνω δ’ ἐπιστάντος αὐτῷ στρατιώτου καὶ κελεύοντος ἀκολουθεῖν πρὸς Μάρκελλον, οὐκ ἐβούλετο πρὶν ἢ τελέσαι τὸ πρόβλημα καὶ καταστῆσαι πρὸς τὴν ἀπόδειξιν· ὁ δ’ ὀργισθεὶς καὶ σπασάμενος [10] τὸ ξίφος ἀνεῖλεν αὐτόν. ἕτεροι μὲν οὖν λέγουσιν ἐπιστῆναι μὲν εὐθὺς ὡς ἀποκτενοῦντα ξιφήρη τὸν Ῥωμαῖον, ἐκεῖνον δ’ ἰδόντα δεῖσθαι καὶ ἀντιβολεῖν ἀναμεῖναι βραχὺν χρόνον, ὡς μὴ καταλίπῃ τὸ ζητούμενον ἀτελὲς καὶ [11] ἀθεώρητον, τὸν δ’ οὐ φροντίσαντα διαχρήσασθαι. καὶ τρίτος ‹δ’› ἐστὶ λόγος, ὡς κομίζοντι πρὸς Μάρκελλον αὐτῷ τῶν μαθηματικῶν ὀργάνων σκιόθηρα καὶ σφαίρας καὶ γωνίας, αἷς ἐναρμόττει τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου μέγεθος πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, στρατιῶται περιτυχόντες, καὶ χρυσίον ἐν τῷ τεύχει [12] δόξαντες φέρειν, ἀπέκτειναν. ὅτι μέντοι Μάρκελλος ἤλγησε, καὶ τὸν αὐτόχειρα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀπεστράφη καθάπερ ἐναγῆ, τοὺς δ’ οἰκείους ἀνευρὼν ἐτίμησεν, ὡμολόγηται.

[20] [1] Τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων τοῖς ἐκτὸς ἀνθρώποις δεινῶν μὲν εἶναι πόλεμον μεταχειρίσασθαι καὶ φοβερῶν εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν νομιζομένων, εὐγνωμοσύνης δὲ καὶ φιλανθρωπίας καὶ ὅλως πολιτικῆς ἀρετῆς ὑποδείγματα μὴ δεδωκότων, πρῶτος δοκεῖ τότε Μάρκελλος ὑποδεῖξαι τοῖς [2] Ἕλλησι δικαιοτάτους Ῥωμαίους. οὕτω γὰρ ἐχρῆτο τοῖς συμβάλλουσι, καὶ τοσαῦτα ‹καὶ› πόλεις καὶ ἰδιώτας εὐεργέτησεν, ὥστ’ εἴ τι περὶ Ἔνναν ἢ Μεγαρεῖς ἢ Συρακοσίους ἔργον ἦν εἰργασμένον οὐκ ἐπιεικὲς αὐτοῖς, τοῦτο τῶν πεπονθότων αἰτίᾳ μᾶλλον ἢ τῶν πεποιηκότων δοκεῖν γεγονέναι.

[3] μνησθήσομαι δ’ ἑνὸς ἀπὸ πολλῶν. πόλις γάρ ἐστι τῆς Σικελίας Ἐγγύϊον οὐ μεγάλη, ἀρχαία δὲ πάνυ καὶ διὰ θεῶν ἐπιφάνειαν ἔνδοξος ἃς καλοῦσι Ματέρας.

[4] ἵδρυμα λέγεται Κρητῶν γενέσθαι τὸ ἱερόν, καὶ λόγχας τινὰς ἐδείκνυσαν καὶ κράνη χαλκᾶ, τὰ μὲν ἔχοντα Μηριόνου, τὰ δ’ Οὐλίξου, τουτέστιν Ὀδυσσέως, ἐπιγραφάς, [5] ἀνατεθεικότων ταῖς θεαῖς. ταύτην προθυμότατα καρχηδονίζουσαν Νικίας, ἀνὴρ πρῶτος τῶν πολιτῶν, ἔπειθε μεταθέσθαι πρὸς Ῥωμαίους, ἀναφανδὸν ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις παρρησιαζόμενος καὶ κακῶς φρονοῦντας ἐξελέγχων [6] τοὺς ὑπεναντίους. οἱ δὲ φοβούμενοι τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δόξαν, ἐβουλεύσαντο συναρπάσαι καὶ παραδοῦναι [7] τοῖς Φοίνιξιν. αἰσθόμενος οὖν ὁ Νικίας ἤδη καὶ παραφυλαττόμενον ἀδήλως ἑαυτόν, ἐξέφερεν ἐν φανερῷ λόγους περὶ τῶν Ματέρων ἀνεπιτηδείους, καὶ πολλὰ πρὸς τὴν νομιζομένην ἐπιφάνειαν καὶ δόξαν ὡς ἐπιστῶν καὶ καταφρονῶν ἔπραττεν, ἡδομένων τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὅτι τὴν μεγίστην αἰτίαν αὐτὸς ἐφ’ ἑαυτὸν ὧν πείσεται παρεῖχε.

[8] γεγονότων δὲ τῶν πρὸς τὴν σύλληψιν ἑτοίμων, ἦν μὲν ἐκκλησία τῶν πολιτῶν, ὁ δὲ Νικίας μεταξύ τι λέγων καὶ συμβουλεύων πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, ἐξαίφνης ἀφῆκεν εἰς τὴν γῆν τὸ σῶμα, καὶ μικρὸν διαλιπών, οἷον εἰκὸς ἡσυχίας σὺν ἐκπλήξει γενομένης, τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπάρας καὶ περιενεγκὼν ὑποτρόμῳ φωνῇ καὶ βαρείᾳ, κατὰ μικρὸν συντείνων καὶ παροξύνων τὸν ἦχον, ὡς ἑώρα φρίκῃ καὶ σιωπῇ κατεχόμενον τὸ θέατρον, ἀπορρίψας τὸ ἱμάτιον καὶ περιρρηξάμενος τὸν χιτωνίσκον, ἡμίγυμνος ἀναπηδήσας ἔθεε πρὸς τὴν ἔξοδον τοῦ θεάτρου, βοῶν ὑπὸ τῶν Ματέρων [9] ἐλαύνεσθαι, ‹καὶ› μηδενὸς τολμῶντος ἅψασθαι μηδ’ ἀπαντῆσαι διὰ δεισιδαιμονίαν, ἀλλ’ ἐκτρεπομένων, ἐπὶ τὰς πύλας ἐξέδραμεν, οὔτε φωνῆς τινος οὔτε κινήσεως πρεπούσης [10] δαιμονῶντι καὶ παραφρονοῦντι φεισάμενος. ἡ δὲ γυνὴ συνειδυῖα καὶ συντεχνάζουσα τῷ ἀνδρί, λαβοῦσα τὰ παιδία πρῶτον μὲν ἱκέτις προσεκυλινδεῖτο τοῖς μεγάροις τῶν θεῶν, ἔπειτα πλανώμενον ἐκεῖνον προσποιουμένη ζητεῖν, κωλύοντος οὐδενὸς ἀσφαλῶς ἀπῆλθεν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, καὶ διεσώθησαν μὲν οὕτως εἰς Συρακούσας [11] πρὸς Μάρκελλον· ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλὰ τοὺς Ἐγγυΐνους ὑβρίσαντας καὶ πλημμελήσαντας ἐλθὼν Μάρκελλος ἔδησε πάντας ὡς τιμωρησόμενος, ὁ δὲ Νικίας ἐδάκρυσε παρεστώς, τέλος δὲ χειρῶν καὶ γονάτων ἁπτόμενος παρῃτεῖτο τοὺς πολίτας, ἀπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἀρξάμενος, ἐπικλασθεὶς ἀφῆκε πάντας καὶ τὴν πόλιν οὐδὲν ἠδίκησε, τῷ δὲ Νικίᾳ χώραν τε πολλὴν καὶ δωρεὰς πολλὰς ἔδωκε. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Ποσειδώνιος ὁ φιλόσοφος (FGrH 87 F 43) ἱστόρησε.

[21] [1] Τὸν δὲ Μάρκελλον ἀνακαλουμένων τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐπὶ τὸν ἐγχώριον καὶ σύνοικον πόλεμον, ἐπανερχόμενος τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ κάλλιστα τῶν ἐν Συρακούσαις ἐκίνησεν ἀναθημάτων, ὡς αὐτῷ τε πρὸς τὸν θρίαμβον ὄψις εἴη καὶ [2] τῇ πόλει κόσμος. οὐδὲν γὰρ εἶχεν οὐδ’ ἐγίνωσκε πρότερον τῶν κομψῶν καὶ περιττῶν, οὐδ’ ἦν ἐν αὐτῇ τὸ χάριεν τοῦτο καὶ γλαφυρὸν ἀγαπώμενον, ὅπλων δὲ βαρβαρικῶν καὶ λαφύρων ἐναίμων ἀνάπλεως οὖσα, καὶ περιεστεφανωμένη θριάμβων ὑπομνήμασι καὶ τροπαίοις, οὐχ ἱλαρὸν οὐδ’ [3] ἄφοβον οὐδὲ δειλῶν ἦν θέαμα καὶ τρυφώντων θεατῶν· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ Ἐπαμεινώνδας τὸ Βοιώτιον πεδίον Ἄρεως ὀρχήστραν, Ξενοφῶν (hell. 3, 4, 17) δὲ τὴν Ἔφεσον πολέμου ἐργαστήριον, οὕτως ἄν μοι δοκεῖ τις τότε τὴν Ῥώμην κατὰ Πίνδαρον (Pyth. 2, 1) βαθυπολέμου τέμενος Ἄρεως προσειπεῖν.

[4] διὸ καὶ μᾶλλον εὐδοκίμησε παρὰ μὲν τῷ δήμῳ Μάρκελλος, ἡδονὴν ἐχούσαις καὶ χάριν Ἑλληνικὴν καὶ πιθανότητα διαποικίλας ὄψεσι τὴν πόλιν, παρὰ δὲ τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις [5] Φάβιος Μάξιμος. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐκίνησε τοιοῦτον οὐδὲ μετήνεγκεν ἐκ τῆς Ταραντίνων πόλεως ἁλούσης, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα χρήματα καὶ τὸν πλοῦτον ἐξεφόρησε, τὰ δ’ ἀγάλματα μένειν εἴασεν, ἐπειπὼν τὸ μνημονευόμενον· ἀπολείπωμεν γὰρ ἔφη τοὺς θεοὺς τούτους τοῖς Ταραντίνοις κεχολωμένους.

[6] Μάρκελλον δ’ ᾐτιῶντο, πρῶτον μὲν ὡς ἐπίφθονον ποιοῦντα τὴν πόλιν, οὐ μόνον ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλὰ καὶ θεῶν οἷον αἰχμαλώτων ἀγομένων ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ πομπευομένων, ἔπειθ’ ὅτι τὸν δῆμον εἰθισμένον πολεμεῖν ἢ γεωργεῖν, τρυφῆς δὲ καὶ ῥᾳθυμίας ἄπειρον ὄντα καὶ κατὰ τὸν Εὐριπίδειον Ἡρακλέα (fg. 473 N.²)

φαῦλον, ἄκομψον, τὰ μέγιστ’ [τε] ἀγαθόν,

σχολῆς ἐνέπλησε καὶ λαλιᾶς, περὶ τεχνῶν καὶ τεχνιτῶν ἀστεϊζόμενον καὶ διατρίβοντα πρὸς τούτῳ πολὺ μέρος [7] τῆς ἡμέρας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τούτοις ἐσεμνύνετο καὶ πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὡς τὰ καλὰ καὶ θαυμαστὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος οὐκ ἐπισταμένους τιμᾶν καὶ θαυμάζειν Ῥωμαίους διδάξας.

[22] [1] Ἐνισταμένων δὲ τῶν ἐχθρῶν τῷ Μαρκέλλῳ πρὸς τὸν θρίαμβον, ἐπεὶ καὶ πράξεις τινὲς ὑπολιπεῖς ἦσαν ἔτι περὶ Σικελίαν καὶ φθόνον εἶχεν ὁ τρίτος θρίαμβος, συνεχώρησεν αὐτοῖς τὸν μὲν ἐντελῆ καὶ μέγαν εἰς τὸ Ἀλβανὸν ὄρος ἐξελάσαι, τὸν δ’ ἐλάττω καταγαγεῖν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ὃν εὔαν Ἕλληνες, ὄβαν δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσι.

[2] πέμπει δ’ αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐπὶ τοῦ τεθρίππου βεβηκὼς οὐδὲ δάφνης ἔχων στέφανον οὐδὲ περισαλπιζόμενος, ἀλλὰ πεζὸς ἐν βλαύταις ὑπ’ αὐλητῶν μάλα πολλῶν, καὶ μυρρίνης στέφανον ἐπικείμενος, ὡς ἀπόλεμος καὶ ἡδὺς ὀφθῆναι [3] μᾶλλον ἢ καταπληκτικός. ὃ καὶ μέγιστον ἐμοὶ τεκμήριόν ἐστι τοῦ τρόπῳ πράξεως, ἀλλὰ μὴ μεγέθει, διωρίσθαι [4] τοὺς θριάμβους τὸ παλαιόν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ μετὰ μάχης καὶ φόνου τῶν πολεμίων ἐπικρατήσαντες τὸν Ἀρήϊον ἐκεῖνον ὡς ἔοικε καὶ φοβερὸν εἰσῆγον, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς καθαρμοῖς τῶν στρατοπέδων εἰώθεσαν, δάφνῃ [5] πολλῇ καταστέψαντες τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας· τοῖς δὲ πολέμου μὲν μὴ δεηθεῖσι στρατηγοῖς, ὁμιλίᾳ δὲ καὶ πειθοῖ καὶ διὰ λόγου πάντα θεμένοις καλῶς οἷον ἐπιπαιανίσαι τὴν ἀπόλεμον ταύτην καὶ πανηγυρικὴν ἀπεδίδου [6] πομπὴν ὁ νόμος. καὶ γὰρ ὁ αὐλὸς εἰρήνης μέρος, καὶ τὸ μύρτον Ἀφροδίτης φυτόν, ἣ μάλιστα θεῶν ἀπέχθεται [7] βίᾳ καὶ πολέμοις. ὄβας δ’ οὐ παρὰ τὸν εὐασμόν, ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσιν, ὁ θρίαμβος οὗτος ὀνομάζεται (καὶ γὰρ κἀκεῖνον [ἐφ] εὐάζοντες καὶ ᾄδοντες παραπέμπουσιν), ἀλλ’ ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων εἰς τὸ σύνηθες αὐτοῖς παρῆκται τοὔνομα, πεπεισμένων ἅμα καὶ Διονύσῳ τι τῆς τιμῆς προσήκειν, [8] ὃν Εὔϊον καὶ Θρίαμβον ὀνομάζομεν. οὐχ οὕτω δ’ ἔχει τὸ ἀληθές, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ μὲν τῷ μεγάλῳ θριάμβῳ βουθυτεῖν πάτριον ἦν τοῖς στρατηγοῖς, ἐπὶ δὲ τούτῳ πρόβατον ἔθυον· ὄβα δὲ τὰ πρόβατα Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν· ἐκ τούτου [9] καὶ τὸν θρίαμβον ὄβαν ὠνόμασαν. ἄξιον δὲ καὶ τὸν Λακωνικὸν ἀποθεωρῆσαι νομοθέτην, ὑπεναντίως ‹τῷ› Ῥωμαϊκῷ τάξαντα τὰς θυσίας· θύει γὰρ ἐν Σπάρτῃ τῶν ἀποστρατήγων ὁ μὲν δι’ ἀπάτης ἢ πειθοῦς ὃ βούλεται διαπραξάμενος [10] βοῦν, ὁ δὲ διὰ μάχης ἀλεκτρυόνα. καίπερ γὰρ ὄντες πολεμικώτατοι, μείζονα καὶ μᾶλλον ἀνθρώπῳ πρέπουσαν ἡγοῦντο τὴν διὰ λόγου καὶ συνέσεως πρᾶξιν ἢ τὴν μετὰ βίας καὶ ἀνδρείας. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὅπως ἔχει σκοπεῖν πάρεστι.

[23] [1] Τοῦ δὲ Μαρκέλλου τὸ τέταρτον ὑπατεύοντος, οἱ ἐχθροὶ τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἀνέπεισαν εἰς Ῥώμην ἀφικομένους κατηγορεῖν καὶ καταβοᾶν πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον [2] ὡς δεινὰ καὶ παράσπονδα πεπονθότας. ἔτυχε μὲν οὖν ἐν Καπιτωλίῳ θυσίαν τινὰ συντελῶν ὁ Μάρκελλος· ἔτι δὲ συγκαθεζομένῃ τῇ γερουσίᾳ τῶν Συρακοσίων προσπεσόντων καὶ δεομένων λόγου τυχεῖν καὶ δίκης, ὁ μὲν συνάρχων ἐξεῖργεν αὐτούς, ἀγανακτῶν ὑπὲρ τοῦ Μαρκέλλου μὴ παρόντος, ὁ δὲ Μάρκελλος εὐθὺς ἧκεν ἀκούσας.

[3] καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐπὶ τοῦ δίφρου καθίσας ὡς ὕπατος ἐχρημάτιζεν, ἔπειτα τῶν ἄλλων τέλος ἐχόντων, καταβὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ δίφρου καὶ καταστὰς ὥσπερ ἰδιώτης εἰς τὸν τόπον ἐν ᾧ λέγειν εἰώθασιν οἱ κρινόμενοι, τοῖς Συρακοσίοις [4] ἐλέγχειν αὑτὸν παρεῖχεν. οἱ δὲ δεινῶς μὲν συνεταράχθησαν πρὸς τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ τὸ πεποιθὸς τοῦ ἀνδρός, καὶ τὸ ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἀνυπόστατον ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐν τῇ [5] περιπορφύρῳ φοβερὸν ἡγοῦντο καὶ δυσαντίβλεπτον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ παραθαρρυνόντων αὐτοὺς τῶν διαφερομένων πρὸς τὸν Μάρκελλον, ἤρξαντο τῆς κατηγορίας καὶ διεξῆλθον ὀλοφυρμῷ τινι μεμειγμένην δικαιολογίαν, ἧς ἦν τὸ κεφάλαιον, ὅτι σύμμαχοι καὶ φίλοι Ῥωμαίοις ὄντες πεπόνθασιν ἃ πολλοῖς τῶν πολεμίων ἕτεροι στρατηγοὶ [6] μὴ παθεῖν ἐχαρίσαντο. πρὸς ταῦθ’ ὁ Μάρκελλος ἔλεγεν, ὡς ἀντὶ πολλῶν ὧν δεδράκασι Ῥωμαίους κακῶς, οὐδὲν πεπόνθασι πλὴν ἃ πολέμῳ καὶ κατὰ κράτος ἁλόντας ἀνθρώπους [7] κωλῦσαι παθεῖν οὐ δυνατόν ἐστιν· οὕτω δ’ ἁλῶναι δι’ αὑτούς, πολλὰ προκαλουμένῳ πεισθῆναι μὴ ἐθελήσαντας· οὐ γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν τυράννων πολεμῆσαι βιασθέντας, ἀλλὰ κἀκείνους ἐπὶ τῷ πολεμεῖν ἑλέσθαι [8] τυράννους. λεχθέντων δὲ τῶν λόγων, [καὶ] μεθισταμένοις ὥσπερ εἴωθεν ‹ἐκ› τῆς βουλῆς τοῖς Συρακοσίοις συνεξῆλθε Μάρκελλος, ἐπὶ τῷ συνάρχοντι ποιησάμενος τὴν σύγκλητον, καὶ πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν τοῦ βουλευτηρίου διέτριβεν, οὔτε φόβῳ διὰ τὴν δίκην οὔτε θυμῷ πρὸς τοὺς Συρακοσίους τοῦ συνήθους μεταβαλὼν καταστήματος, ἀλλὰ πρᾴως πάνυ καὶ κοσμίως τὸ τῆς δίκης τέλος ἐκδεχόμενος.

[9] ἐπεὶ δὲ διηνέχθησαν αἱ γνῶμαι καὶ νικῶν ἀπεδείχθη, προσπίπτουσιν αὐτῷ [οἱ] Συρακόσιοι, μετὰ δακρύων δεόμενοι τὴν ὀργὴν [τὴν] εἰς αὐτοὺς ἀφεῖναι τοὺς παρόντας, οἰκτῖραι δὲ τὴν ἄλλην πόλιν, μεμνημένην ὧν [10] ἔτυχεν ἀεὶ καὶ χάριν ἔχουσαν. ἐπικλασθεὶς οὖν ὁ Μάρκελλος τούτοις τε διηλλάγη, καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις Συρακοσίοις ἀεί τι πράττων ἀγαθὸν διετέλει, καὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἣν ἀπέδωκεν αὐτοῖς καὶ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τῶν κτημάτων τὰ [11] περιόντα βέβαια παρέσχεν ἡ σύγκλητος. ἀνθ’ ὧν ἄλλας τε τιμὰς ὑπερφυεῖς ἔσχε παρ’ αὐτοῖς, καὶ νόμον ἔθεντο τοιοῦτον, ὁπόταν ἐπιβῇ Σικελίας Μάρκελλος ἢ τῶν ἐκγόνων τις αὐτοῦ, στεφανηφορεῖν Συρακοσίους καὶ θύειν τοῖς θεοῖς.

[24] [1] Τοὐντεῦθεν ἤδη τρέπεται πρὸς Ἀννίβαν· καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὑπάτων καὶ ἡγεμόνων σχεδὸν ἁπάντων μετὰ τὴν ἐν Κάνναις ‹ἀτυχίαν› ἑνὶ στρατηγήματι τῷ φυγομαχεῖν χρωμένων ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνδρα, παρατάττεσθαι δὲ καὶ συμπλέκεσθαι μηδενὸς τολμῶντος, αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τὴν ἐναντίαν ὥρμησεν [2] ὁδόν, οἰόμενος τῷ δοκοῦντι καταλύσειν Ἀννίβαν χρόνῳ πρότερον ἐκτριβεῖσαν ὑπ’ ἐκείνου λήσεσθαι τὴν Ἰταλίαν, καὶ τὸν Φάβιον ἀεὶ τῆς ἀσφαλείας ἐχόμενον οὐ καλῶς ἐκείν‹ης› ἰᾶσθαι τὸ νόσημα, τῆς πατρίδος περιμένοντα τῇ ῥώμῃ μαραινομένῃ συναποσβῆναι τὸν πόλεμον, ὥσπερ ἰατρῶν τοὺς ἀτόλμους καὶ δειλοὺς πρὸς τὰ βοηθήματα, τῆς νόσου παρακμὴν ‹τὴν› τῆς δυνάμεως ἐξανάλωσιν [3] ἡγουμένους. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν [τὰς] Σαυνιτῶν τινας πόλεις ‹οὐ› μεγάλας ἀφεστώσας ἑλών, σῖτόν τε πολὺν ἀποκείμενον ἐν αὐταῖς καὶ χρήματα καὶ τοὺς φυλάσσοντας [4] Ἀννίβου στρατιώτας τρισχιλίους ὄντας ἔλαβεν· ἔπειτα τοῦ Ἀννίβου Φούλβιον Γναῖον ἀνθύπατον ἐν Ἀπουλίᾳ κατακτείναντος μὲν αὐτὸν σὺν ἕνδεκα χιλιάρχοις, κατακόψαντος δὲ τῆς στρατιᾶς τὸ πλεῖστον, ἔπεμψεν εἰς Ῥώμην γράμματα τοὺς πολίτας παρακαλῶν θαρρεῖν· αὐτὸς γὰρ ἤδη βαδίζειν [5] ὡς ἀφέλοιτο τὴν χαρὰν Ἀννίβου. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ὁ Λίβιός φησιν (27, 2, 2) ἀναγνωσθέντα τὰ γράμματα μὴ τῆς λύπης ἀφελεῖν, ἀλλὰ τῷ φόβῳ προσθεῖναι, τῶν Ῥωμαίων μεῖζον ἡγουμένων τοῦ γεγονότος τὸ κινδυνευόμενον, ὅσῳ [6] Φουλβίου κρείττων ἦν Μάρκελλος· ὁ δ’ ὥσπερ ἔγραψεν εὐθὺς Ἀννίβαν διώκων εἰς τὴν Λευκανίαν ἐνέβαλε, καὶ περὶ πόλιν Νομίστρωνα καθήμενον ὑπὲρ λόφων ὀχυρῶν καταλαβών, αὐτὸς ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ κατεστρατοπέδευσε.

[7] τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ πρότερος εἰς μάχην παρατάξας τὸ στράτευμα, [καὶ] καταβάντος Ἀννίβου συνέβαλε μάχην κρίσιν οὐ λαβοῦσαν, ἰσχυρὰν δὲ καὶ μεγάλην γενομένην· ἀπὸ γὰρ ὥρας τρίτης συμπεσόντες, ἤδη σκότους μόλις διελύθησαν.

[8] ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ προαγαγὼν αὖθις τὸ στράτευμα παρέταξε διὰ τῶν νεκρῶν, καὶ προὐκαλεῖτο διαγωνίσασθαι [9] περὶ τῆς νίκης τὸν Ἀννίβαν. ἀναζεύξαντος δ’ ἐκείνου, σκυλεύσας τοὺς πολεμίους νεκροὺς καὶ θάψας τοὺς φίλους, ἐδίωκεν αὖθις, καὶ πολλὰς μὲν ὑφέντος ἐνέδρας, οὐδεμιᾷ περιπεσών, ἐν δὲ πᾶσι τοῖς ἀκροβολισμοῖς πλεῖον ἔχων, ἐθαυμάζετο.

[10] Διὸ καὶ τῶν ἀρχαιρεσίων ἐπειγόντων, ἔδοξε τῇ βουλῇ μᾶλλον ἐκ Σικελίας τὸν ἕτερον ἐπάγειν ὕπατον ἢ Μάρκελλον Ἀννίβᾳ συνηρτημένον κινεῖν, ἐλθόντα δ’ ἐκέλευεν [11] εἰπεῖν δικτάτορα Κόϊντον Φούλβιον. ὁ γὰρ δικτάτωρ οὐκ ἔστιν ὑπὸ τοῦ πλήθους οὐδὲ τῆς βουλῆς αἱρετός, ἀλλὰ τῶν ὑπάτων τις ἢ τῶν στρατηγῶν προελθὼν εἰς τὸν δῆμον ὃν [12] αὐτῷ δοκεῖ λέγει δικτάτορα. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο δικτάτωρ ὁ ῥηθεὶς καλεῖται· τὸ γὰρ λέγειν δίκερε Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν· ἔνιοι δέ ‹φασι› τὸν δικτάτορα τῷ μὴ προτιθέναι ψῆφον ἢ χειροτονίαν, ἀλλ’ ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ τὰ δόξαντα προστάττειν καὶ [13] λέγειν οὕτως ὠνομάσθαι· καὶ γὰρ τὰ διαγράμματα τῶν ἀρχόντων Ἕλληνες ‹μὲν› διατάγματα, Ῥωμαῖοι δ’ ἔδικτα προσαγορεύουσιν.

[25] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐλθὼν ἀπὸ τῆς Σικελίας ὁ τοῦ Μαρκέλλου συνάρχων ἕτερον ἐβούλετο λέγειν δικτάτορα, καὶ βιασθῆναι παρὰ γνώμην μὴ βουλόμενος ἐξέπλευσε νυκτὸς εἰς Σικελίαν, οὕτως ὁ μὲν δῆμος ὠνόμασε δικτάτορα Κόϊντον Φούλβιον, ἡ βουλὴ δ’ ἔγραψε Μαρκέλλῳ κελεύουσα τοῦτον [2] ‹ἀν›ειπεῖν. ὁ δὲ πεισθεὶς ἀνεῖπε καὶ συνεπεκύρωσε τοῦ δήμου τὴν γνώμην, αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν ἀνθύπατος εἰς τοὐπιὸν ἀπεδείχθη.

[3] Συνθέμενος δὲ πρὸς Φάβιον Μάξιμον, ὅπως ἐκεῖνος μὲν ἐπιχειρῇ Ταραντίνοις, αὐτὸς δὲ συμπλεκόμενος καὶ περιέλκων Ἀννίβαν ἐμποδὼν ᾖ τοῦ βοηθεῖν πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, ἐπέβαλε περὶ Κανύσιον, καὶ πολλὰς ἀλλάσσοντι στρατοπεδείας καὶ φυγομαχοῦντι πανταχόθεν ἐπεφαίνετο, τέλος δ’ ἱδρυνθέντα [4] προσκείμενος ἐξανίστη τοῖς ἀκροβολισμοῖς. ὁρμήσαντος δὲ μάχεσθαι δεξάμενος ὑπὸ νυκτὸς διελύθη· καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν αὖθις ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἑωρᾶτο τὸν στρατὸν ἔχων παρατεταγμένον, ὥστε τὸν Ἀννίβαν περιαλγῆ γενόμενον τοὺς Καρχηδονίους ἀθροῖσαι καὶ δεηθῆναι τὴν μάχην ἐκείνην [5] ὑπὲρ πασῶν ἀγωνίσασθαι τῶν ἔμπροσθεν. ὁρᾶτε γὰρ εἶπεν ὡς οὐδ’ ἀναπνεῦσαι μετὰ νίκας τοσαύτας οὐδὲ σχολὴν ἄγειν κρατοῦσιν ἡμῖν ἔστιν, εἰ μὴ τοῦτον [6] ὠσαίμεθα τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ἐκ τούτου συμβαλόντες ἐμάχοντο, καὶ δοκεῖ παρὰ τὸ ἔργον ἀκαίρῳ στρατηγήματι [7] χρώμενος ὁ Μάρκελλος σφαλῆναι. τοῦ γὰρ δεξιοῦ πονοῦντος, ἐκέλευσεν ‹ἓν› τῶν ταγμάτων εἰς τοὔμπροσθεν προελθεῖν· ἡ δὲ μετακίνησις αὕτη ταράξασα τοὺς μαχομένους παρέδωκε τὸ νίκημα τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἑπτακοσίων [8] ἐπὶ δισχιλίοις Ῥωμαίων πεσόντων. ἀναχωρήσας δ’ ὁ Μάρκελλος εἰς τὸν χάρακα καὶ συναγαγὼν τὸν στρατόν, ὁρᾶν ἔφη Ῥωμαίων ὅπλα πολλὰ καὶ σώματα, Ῥωμαῖον [9] δὲ μηδέν’ ὁρᾶν. αἰτουμένων δὲ συγγνώμην, οὐκ ἔφη διδόναι νενικημένοις, ἐὰν δὲ νικήσωσι, δώσειν· αὔριον δὲ μαχεῖσθαι πάλιν, ὅπως οἱ πολῖται τὴν νίκην πρότερον ἢ [10] τὴν φυγὴν ἀκούσωσι. διαλεχθεὶς δὲ ταῦτα, προσέταξε ταῖς ἡττημέναις σπείραις ἀντὶ πυρῶν κριθὰς μετρῆσαι. δι’ ἃ πολλῶν ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης ἐπικινδύνως καὶ πονήρως ἐχόντων, οὐδένα φασὶν ὃν οἱ Μαρκέλλου λόγοι τῶν τραυμάτων οὐχὶ μᾶλλον ἤλγυναν.

[26] [1] Ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ προὔκειτο μὲν ὁ φοινικοῦς χιτὼν ὡς εἴωθε μάχης ἐσομένης σύμβολον, αἱ δ’ ἠτιμασμέναι σπεῖραι τὴν πρώτην αὐταὶ δεηθεῖσαι τάξιν ἐλάμβανον, τὴν δ’ ἄλλην ἐξάγοντες οἱ χιλίαρχοι στρατιὰν [2] παρενέβαλλον. ἀκούσας δ’ ὁ Ἀννίβας ὦ Ἡράκλεις εἶπε, τί χρήσεταί τις ἀνθρώπῳ μήτε τὴν χείρονα τύχην μήτε τὴν βελτίονα φέρειν εἰδότι; μόνος γὰρ οὗτος οὔτε νικῶν δίδωσιν ἀνάπαυσιν, οὔτε λαμβάνει νικώμενος, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ μαχησόμεθα πρὸς τοῦτον ὡς ἔοικεν, ᾧ τοῦ τολμᾶν ἀεὶ καὶ ‹τὸ› θαρρεῖν εὐτυχοῦντι καὶ σφαλλομένῳ τὸ [3] αἰδεῖσθαι πρόφασίς ἐστιν. ἐκ τούτου συνῄεσαν αἱ δυνάμεις, καὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἴσα φερομένων, ἐκέλευσεν Ἀννίβας τὰ θηρία καταστήσαντας εἰς πρώτην τάξιν ἐπάγειν [4] τοῖς ὅπλοις τῶν Ῥωμαίων· ὠθισμοῦ δὲ μεγάλου καὶ ταραχῆς εὐθὺς ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις γενομένης, εἷς τῶν χιλιάρχων ὄνομα Φλάβιος ἀναρπάσας σημαίαν ὑπηντίαζε, καὶ τῷ στύρακι τὸν πρῶτον ἐλέφαντα τύπτων ἀπέστρεφεν· ὁ δ’ ἐμβαλὼν εἰς τὸν ὀπίσω, συνετάραξε καὶ τοῦτον καὶ [5] τοὺς ἐπιφερομένους. κατιδὼν δὲ τοῦτο Μάρκελλος ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἐλαύνειν ἀνὰ κράτος πρὸς τὸ θορυβούμενον καὶ ποιεῖν ἔτι μᾶλλον αὑτοῖς περιπετεῖς τοὺς [6] πολεμίους. οὗτοί τε δὴ λαμπρῶς ἐμβαλόντες ἀνέκοπτον ἄχρι τοῦ στρατοπέδου τοὺς Καρχηδονίους, καὶ τῶν θηρίων τὰ κτεινόμενα καὶ πίπτοντα τὸν πλεῖστον αὐτῶν [7] φόνον ἀπειργάζετο. λέγονται γὰρ ὑπὲρ ὀκτακισχιλίους ἀποθανεῖν· Ῥωμαίων δὲ νεκροὶ μὲν ἐγένοντο τρισχίλιοι, [8] τραυματίαι δ’ ὀλίγου δεῖν ἅπαντες. καὶ τοῦτο παρέσχεν Ἀννίβᾳ καθ’ ἡσυχίαν ἀναστάντι νυκτὸς ἆραι πορρωτάτω τοῦ Μαρκέλλου· διώκειν γὰρ οὐκ ἦν δυνατὸς ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν τετρωμένων, ἀλλὰ κατὰ σχολὴν εἰς Καμπανίαν ἀνέζευξε, καὶ τὸ θέρος ἐν Σινοέσσῃ διῆγεν, ἀναλαμβάνων τοὺς στρατιώτας.

[27] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἀννίβας ὡς ἀπέρρηξεν ἑαυτὸν τοῦ Μαρκέλλου, χρώμενος ὥσπερ λελυμένῳ τῷ στρατεύματι πᾶσαν ἀδεῶς ἐν κύκλῳ περιϊὼν ἔφλεγε τὴν Ἰταλίαν, καὶ κακῶς [2] ἤκουσεν ἐν Ῥώμῃ Μάρκελλος. οἱ δ’ ἐχθροὶ Πουβλίκιον Βίβλον ἕνα τῶν δημάρχων ἀνέστησαν ἐπὶ τὴν κατηγορίαν [3] αὐτοῦ, δεινὸν εἰπεῖν ἄνδρα καὶ βίαιον· ὃς πολλάκις συναγαγὼν τὸν δῆμον ἔπειθεν ἄλλῳ παραδοῦναι στρατηγῷ τὴν δύναμιν· ἐπεὶ Μάρκελλος ἔφη μικρὰ τῷ πολέμῳ προγεγυμνασμένος, ὥσπερ ἐκ παλαίστρας ἐπὶ θερμὰ [4] λουτρὰ θεραπεύσων ἑαυτὸν τέτραπται. ταῦτα πυνθανόμενος ὁ Μάρκελλος, ἐπὶ μὲν τοῦ στρατοπέδου τοὺς πρεσβευτὰς ἀπέλιπεν, αὐτὸς δὲ πρὸς τὰς διαβολὰς [ἐπ]ἀπολογησόμενος [5] εἰς Ῥώμην ἐπανῆλθεν. ἐκ δὲ τῶν διαβολῶν ἐκείνων δίκην εὗρε παρεσκευασμένην ἐφ’ αὑτόν. ἡμέρας οὖν ὁρισθείσης, καὶ τοῦ δήμου συνελθόντος εἰς τὸν Φλαμίνιον ἱππόδρομον, ὁ μὲν Βίβλος ἀναβὰς κατηγόρησεν, ὁ δὲ Μάρκελλος ἀπελογεῖτο βραχέα μὲν καὶ ἁπλᾶ [6] δι’ ἑαυτοῦ, πολλὴν δὲ καὶ λαμπρὰν οἱ δοκιμώτατοι καὶ πρῶτοι τῶν πολιτῶν παρρησίαν ἦγον, παρακαλοῦντες μὴ χείρονας τοῦ πολεμίου κριτὰς φανῆναι, δειλίαν Μαρκέλλου καταψηφισαμένους, ὃν μόνον φεύγει τῶν ἡγεμόνων ἐκεῖνος καὶ διατελεῖ τούτῳ μὴ μάχεσθαι στρατηγῶν [7] ὡς τοῖς ἄλλοις μάχεσθαι. ῥηθέντων δὲ τῶν λόγων τούτων, τοσοῦτον ἡ τῆς δίκης ἐλπὶς ἐψεύσατο τὸν κατήγορον, ὥστε μὴ μόνον ἀφεθῆναι τῶν αἰτιῶν τὸν Μάρκελλον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ πέμπτον ὕπατον ἀποδειχθῆναι.

[28] [1] Παραλαβὼν δὲ τὴν ἀρχήν, πρῶτον μὲν ἐν Τυρρηνίᾳ μέγα κίνημα πρὸς ἀπόστασιν ἔπαυσε καὶ κατεπράϋνεν, [2] ἐπελθὼν τὰς πόλεις· ἔπειτα ναὸν ἐκ τῶν Σικελικῶν λαφύρων ᾠκοδομημένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ Δόξης καὶ Ἀρετῆς καθιερῶσαι βουλόμενος, καὶ κωλυθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερέων, οὐκ ἀξιούντων ἑνὶ ναῷ δύο θεοὺς περιέχεσθαι, πάλιν ἤρξατο προσοικοδομεῖν ἕτερον, οὐ ῥᾳδίως φέρων τὴν [3] γεγενημένην ἀντίκρουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἰωνιζόμενος. καὶ γὰρ ἄλλα ‹τε› πολλὰ σημεῖα διετάραττεν αὐτόν, ἱερῶν τινων κεραυνώσεις, καὶ μύες τὸν ἐν Διὸς χρυσὸν διαφαγόντες· ἐλέχθη δὲ καὶ βοῦν ἀνθρώπου φωνὴν ἀφεῖναι, καὶ παιδίον ἔχ‹ον› κεφαλὴν ἐλέφαντος γενέσθαι, καὶ [περιγενέσθαι] περὶ τὰς ἐκθύσεις καὶ ἀποτροπὰς δυσιεροῦντες οἱ μάντεις κατεῖχον αὐτὸν ἐν Ῥώμῃ σπαργῶντα [4] καὶ φλεγόμενον. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἔρωτα τοσοῦτον ἠράσθη πράγματος οὐδενός, ὅσον οὗτος ὁ ἀνὴρ τοῦ μάχῃ κριθῆναι [5] πρὸς Ἀννίβαν. τοῦτο καὶ νύκτωρ ὄνειρον ἦν αὐτῷ, καὶ μετὰ φίλων καὶ συναρχόντων ἓν βούλευμα καὶ μία πρὸς [6] θεοὺς φωνή, παραταττόμενον Ἀννίβαν λαβεῖν. ἥδιστα δ’ ἄν μοι δοκεῖ τείχους ἐντὸς ἤ τινος χάρακος ἀμφοτέροις τοῖς στρατεύμασι περιτεθέντος διαγωνίσασθαι, καὶ εἰ μὴ πολλῆς μὲν ἤδη μεστὸς ὑπῆρχε δόξης, πολλὴν δὲ πεῖραν παρεσχήκει τοῦ παρ’ ὁντινοῦν τῶν στρατηγῶν ἐμβριθὴς γεγονέναι καὶ φρόνιμος, κἂν εἶπον, ὅτι μειρακιῶδες αὐτῷ προσπεπτώκει καὶ φιλοτιμότερον πάθος ἢ κατὰ πρεσβύτην τοσοῦτον· ὑπὲρ γὰρ ἑξήκοντα γεγονὼς ἔτη τὸ πέμπτον ὑπάτευεν.

[29] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ θυσιῶν καὶ καθαρμῶν ὧν ὑπηγόρευον οἱ μάντεις γενομένων, ἐξῆλθε μετὰ τοῦ συνάρχοντος ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον, καὶ πολλὰ μεταξὺ Βαντίας πόλεως καὶ [2] Βενυσίας καθήμενον ἠρέθιζε τὸν Ἀννίβαν. ὁ δ’ εἰς μάχην μὲν οὐ κατέβαινεν, αἰσθόμενος δὲ πεμπομένην ὑπ’ αὐτῶν στρατιὰν ἐπὶ Λοκροὺς τοὺς Ἐπιζεφυρίους, κατὰ τὸν περὶ Πετηλίαν λόφον ὑφεὶς ἐνέδρας πεντακοσίους καὶ δισχιλίους [3] ἀπέκτεινε. τοῦτο Μάρκελλον ἐξέφερε τῷ θυμῷ πρὸς [4] τὴν μάχην, καὶ προσῆγεν ἄρας ἐγγυτέρω τὴν δύναμιν. ἦν δὲ μεταξὺ τῶν στρατοπέδων λόφος ἐπιεικῶς μὲν εὐερκής, ὕλης δὲ παντοδαπῆς ἀνάπλεως· εἶχε δὲ καὶ σκοπὰς περικλινεῖς ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα, καὶ ναμάτων ὑπεφαίνοντο πηγαὶ [5] καταρρεόντων. ἐθαύμαζον οὖν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι ‹τὸν› Ἀννίβαν, ὅτι πρῶτος ἐλθὼν εὐφυᾶ τόπον οὕτως οὐ κατέσχεν, ἀλλ’ [6] ἀπέλιπε τοῖς πολεμίοις. τῷ δ’ ἄρα καλὸν μὲν [τῷ] στρατοπεδεῦσαι τὸ χωρίον ἐφαίνετο, πολὺ δὲ κρεῖττον ἐνεδρεῦσαι, καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο μᾶλλον αὐτῷ χρῆσθαι βουλόμενος, ἐνέπλησε τὴν ὕλην καὶ τὰς κοιλάδας ἀκοντιστῶν τε πολλῶν καὶ λογχοφόρων, πεπεισμένος ἐπάξεσθαι δι’ εὐφυΐαν [7] αὐτὰ τὰ χωρία τοὺς Ῥωμαίους. οὐδ’ ἀπεψεύσθη τῆς ἐλπίδος· εὐθὺς γὰρ ἦν πολὺς ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τῶν Ῥωμαίων λόγος, ὡς χρὴ τὸ χωρίον καταλαμβάνειν, καὶ διεστρατήγουν ὅσα πλεονεκτήσουσι τοὺς πολεμίους, μάλιστα μὲν ἐκεῖ στρατοπεδεύσαντες, εἰ δὲ μή, τειχίσαντες τὸν [8] λόφον. ἔδοξεν οὖν τῷ Μαρκέλλῳ μετ’ ὀλίγων ἱπποτῶν ἐπελάσαντι κατασκέψασθαι, καὶ λαβὼν τὸν μάντιν ἐθύετο· καὶ τοῦ πρώτου πεσόντος ἱερείου, δείκνυσιν αὐτῷ [9] τὸ ἧπαρ οὐκ ἔχον κεφαλὴν ὁ μάντις· ἐπιθυσαμένου δὲ τὸ δεύτερον, ἥ τε κεφαλὴ μέγεθος ὑπερφυὴς ἀνέσχε, καὶ τἆλλα φαιδρὰ θαυμαστῶς διεφάνη, καὶ λύσιν ἔχειν ὁ τῶν [10] πρώτων φόβος ἔδοξεν. οἱ δὲ μάντεις ταῦτα μᾶλλον ἔφασαν δεδιέναι καὶ ταράττεσθαι· λαμπροτάτων γὰρ ἐπ’ αἰσχίστοις καὶ σκυθρωποτάτοις ἱεροῖς γενομένων, ὕποπτον [11] εἶναι τῆς μεταβολῆς τὴν ἀτοπίαν. ἀλλὰ γὰρ

τὸ πεπρωμένον οὐ πῦρ οὐ σιδαροῦν σχήσει τεῖχος,

κατὰ Πίνδαρον (fg. 232 Sn.), ἐξῄει τόν τε συνάρχοντα Κρισπῖνον παραλαβὼν καὶ τὸν υἱὸν χιλιαρχοῦντα καὶ τοὺς σύμπαντας [12] ἱππεῖς εἴκοσι καὶ διακοσίους, ὧν Ῥωμαῖος οὐδεὶς ἦν, ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι Τυρρηνοί, τεσσαράκοντα δὲ Φρεγελλανοί, πεῖραν ἀρετῆς καὶ πίστεως ἀεὶ τῷ Μαρκέλλῳ δεδωκότες.

[13] ὑλώδους δὲ τοῦ λόφου καὶ συνηρεφοῦς ὄντος, ἀνὴρ καθήμενος ἄνω σκοπὴν εἶχε τοῖς πολεμίοις, αὐτὸς οὐ συνορώμενος, καθορῶν δὲ τῶν Ῥωμαίων τὸ στρατόπεδον [14] καὶ τὰ γινόμενα. τούτου φράσαντος τοῖς λοχῶσι, προσελαύνοντα τὸν Μάρκελλον ἐάσαντες ἐγγὺς προσ[εξ]ελθεῖν, ἐξαίφνης ἀνέστησαν, καὶ περιχυθέντες ἅμα πανταχόθεν ἠκόντιζον, ἔπαιον, ἐδίωκον τοὺς φεύγοντας, συνεπλέκοντο [15] τοῖς ὑφισταμένοις. οὗτοι δ’ ἦσαν οἱ τεσσαράκοντα Φρεγελλανοί, καὶ τῶν Τυρρηνῶν εὐθὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ διατρεσάντων, αὐτοὶ συστραφέντες ἠμύνοντο πρὸ τῶν ὑπάτων, ἄχρι οὗ Κρισπῖνος μὲν ἀκοντίσμασι δυσὶ βεβλημένος ἐπέστρεψεν εἰς φυγὴν τὸν ἵππον, Μάρκελλον δέ τις λόγχῃ πλατείᾳ διὰ τῶν πλευρῶν διήλασεν, ἣν λαγκίαν [16] καλοῦσιν. οὕτω δὲ καὶ τῶν Φρεγελλανῶν οἱ περιόντες ὀλίγοι παντάπασιν αὐτὸν μὲν πεσόντα λείπουσι, τὸν δ’ υἱὸν ἁρπάσαντες τετρωμένον φεύγουσιν ἐπὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[17] ἐγένοντο δὲ νεκροὶ μὲν οὐ πολλῷ τῶν τεσσαράκοντα πλείους, αἰχμάλωτοι δὲ τῶν μὲν ῥαβδούχων πέντε, [18] τῶν δ’ ἱππέων εἴκοσι δυεῖν δέοντες. ἐτελεύτησε δὲ καὶ Κρισπῖνος ἐκ τῶν τραυμάτων, οὐ πολλὰς ἡμέρας ἐπιβιώσας, καὶ πάθος τοῦτο Ῥωμαίοις συνέπεσε πρότερον οὐ γεγονός, ἀμφοτέρους ἐξ ἑνὸς ἀγῶνος τοὺς ὑπάτους ἀποθανεῖν.

[30] [1] Ἀννίβᾳ δὲ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ἐλάχιστος ἦν λόγος, Μάρκελλον δὲ πεπτωκέναι πυθόμενος, αὐτὸς ἐξέδραμεν ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον, καὶ τῷ νεκρῷ παραστάς, καὶ πολὺν χρόνον τήν τε ῥώμην τοῦ σώματος καταμαθὼν καὶ τὸ εἶδος, οὔτε φωνὴν ἀφῆκεν ὑπερήφανον, οὔτ’ ἀπ’ ὄψεως τὸ χαῖρον, ὡς ἄν τις ἐργώδη πολέμιον καὶ βαρὺν ἀπεκτονώς, ἐξέφηνεν, [2] ἀλλ’ ἐπιθαυμάσας τὸ παράλογον τῆς τελευτῆς, τὸν μὲν δακτύλιον ἀφείλετο, τὸ δὲ σῶμα κοσμήσας πρέποντι κόσμῳ καὶ περιστείλας ἐντίμως ἔκαυσε, καὶ τὰ λείψανα συνθεὶς εἰς κάλπιν ἀργυρᾶν καὶ χρυσοῦν ἐμβαλὼν στέφανον, [3] ἀπέστειλε πρὸς τὸν υἱόν. τῶν δὲ Νομάδων τινὲς περιτυχόντες τοῖς κομίζουσιν ὥρμησαν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τὸ τεῦχος, ἀντιλαμβανομένων δ’ ἐκείνων ἐκβιαζόμενοι καὶ [4] μαχόμενοι, διέρριψαν τὰ ὀστᾶ. πυθόμενος δ’ Ἀννίβας καὶ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας εἰπὼν οὐδὲν ἄρα δυνατὸν γενέσθαι ἄκοντος θεοῦ, τοῖς μὲν Νομάσιν ἐπέθηκε δίκην, οὐκέτι δὲ κομιδῆς ἢ συλλογῆς τῶν λειψάνων ἐφρόντισεν, ὡς δὴ κατὰ θεόν τινα καὶ τῆς τελευτῆς καὶ τῆς ἀταφίας [5] παραλόγως οὕτω τῷ Μαρκέλλῳ γενομένης. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οἱ περὶ Κορνήλιον Νέπωτα (HRR II 35) καὶ Οὐαλέριον Μάξιμον ἱστορήκασι· Λίβιος δὲ καὶ Καῖσαρ ὁ Σεβαστὸς (ORF Meyer 521) κομισθῆναι τὴν ὑδρίαν πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν εἰρήκασι καὶ ταφῆναι λαμπρῶς.

[6] Ἦν δ’ ἀναθήμα‹τα› Μαρκέλλου δίχα τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ γυμνάσιον μὲν ἐν Κατάνῃ τῆς Σικελίας, ἀνδριάντες δὲ καὶ πίνακες τῶν ἐκ Συρακουσῶν ἔν τε Σαμοθρᾴκῃ παρὰ τοῖς θεοῖς οὓς Καβείρους ὠνόμαζον, καὶ περὶ Λίνδον ἐν τῷ [7] ἱερῷ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς. ἐκεῖ δ’ αὐτοῦ τῷ ἀνδριάντι τοῦτ’ ἦν ἐπιγεγραμμένον, ὡς Ποσειδώνιός φησι (FGrH 87 F 44), τὸ ἐπίγραμμα (168 Preger)·

[8] Οὗτός τοι Ῥώμης ὁ μέγας ξένε πατρίδος ἀστός,

Μάρκελλος κλεινῶν Κλαύδιος ἐκ πατέρων,

ἑπτάκι τὰν ὑπάταν ἀρχὰν ἐν Ἄρηϊ φυλάξας,

ᾧ πολὺν ἀντιπάλων ἐγκατέχευε φόνον.

[9] τὴν γὰρ ἀνθύπατον ἀρχήν, ἣν δὶς ἦρξε, ταῖς πέντε προσκατηρίθμησεν ὑπατείαις ὁ τὸ ἐπίγραμμα ποιήσας.

[10] Γένος δ’ αὐτοῦ λαμπρὸν ἄχρι Μαρκέλλου τοῦ Καίσαρος ἀδελφιδοῦ διέτεινεν, ὃς Ὀκταβίας ἦν τῆς Καίσαρος ἀδελφῆς υἱὸς ἐκ Γαΐου Μαρκέλλου γεγονώς, ἀγορανομῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἐτελεύτησε νυμφίος, Καίσαρος θυγατρὶ χρόνον [11] οὐ πολὺν συνοικήσας. εἰς δὲ τιμὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ μνήμην Ὀκταβία μὲν ἡ μήτηρ τὴν βιβλιοθήκην ἀνέθηκε, Καῖσαρ δὲ θέατρον ἐπιγράψας Μαρκέλλου.

Comparison Pelopidae et Marcelli

[1] [1] Ὅσα μὲν οὖν ἔδοξεν ἡμῖν ἀναγραφῆς ἄξια τῶν ἱστορημένων περὶ Μαρκέλλου καὶ Πελοπίδου, ταῦτ’ ἔστι.

[2] τῶν δὲ κατὰ τὰς φύσεις καὶ τὰ ἤθη κοινοτήτων ὥσπερ ἐφαμίλλων οὐσῶν (καὶ γὰρ ἀνδρεῖοι καὶ φιλόπονοι καὶ [3] θυμοειδεῖς καὶ μεγαλόφρονες ἀμφότεροι γεγόνασιν), ἐκεῖνο δόξειεν ἂν διαφορὰν ἔχειν μόνον, ὅτι Μάρκελλος μὲν ἐν πολλαῖς πόλεσιν ὑποχειρίοις γενομέναις σφαγὰς ἐποίησεν, Ἐπαμεινώνδας δὲ καὶ Πελοπίδας οὐδένα πώποτε κρατήσαντες ἀπέκτειναν, οὐδὲ πόλεις ἠνδραποδίσαντο· λέγονται δὲ Θηβαῖοι μηδ’ Ὀρχομενίους ἂν οὕτω μεταχειρίσασθαι [4] παρόντων ἐκείνων. ἐν δὲ ταῖς πράξεσι θαυμαστὰ μὲν καὶ μεγάλα τοῦ Μαρκέλλου τὰ πρὸς Κελτούς, ὠσαμένου τοσοῦτον πλῆθος ἱππέων ὁμοῦ καὶ πεζῶν ὀλίγοις τοῖς περὶ αὐτὸν ἱππεῦσιν, ὃ ῥᾳδίως ὑφ’ ἑτέρου στρατηγοῦ γεγονὸς [4] οὐχ ἱστόρηται, καὶ τὸν ἄρχοντα τῶν πολεμίων ἀνελόντος· [5] ἐν ᾧ τρόπῳ Πελοπίδας ἔπταισεν, ὁρμήσας ἐπὶ ταὐτά, προαναιρεθεὶς δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ τυράννου καὶ παθὼν πρότερον [6] ἢ δράσας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τούτοις μὲν ἔστι παραβαλεῖν τὰ Λεῦκτρα καὶ ‹τὰς› Τεγύρας, ἐπιφανεστάτους καὶ μεγίστους ἀγώνων· κρυφαίῳ δὲ σὺν δόλῳ κατωρθωμένην πρᾶξιν οὐκ ἔχομεν τοῦ Μαρκέλλου παραβαλεῖν, οἷς Πελοπίδας περὶ τὴν ἐκ φυγῆς κάθοδον καὶ ἀναίρεσιν τῶν ἐν Θήβαις τυράννων ἔπραξεν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο πολὺ πάντων ἔοικε πρωτεύειν τῶν ὑπὸ σκότῳ καὶ δι’ ἀπάτης γεγενημένων τὸ [7] ἔργον. ‹καὶ› Ἀννίβας φοβερὸς μὲν καὶ δεινὸς ἐνέκειτο ‹Ῥωμαίοις›, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει Λακεδαιμόνιοι τότε Θηβαίοις· ἐνδοῦναι μέντοι τούτους Πελοπίδᾳ καὶ περὶ Τεγύρας καὶ περὶ Λεῦκτρα βέβαιόν ἐστιν, Ἀννίβαν δὲ Μάρκελλος, ὡς μὲν οἱ περὶ Πολύβιον λέγουσιν (fg. 9), οὐδ’ ἅπαξ ἐνίκησεν, ἀλλ’ [8] ἀήττητος ἁνὴρ δοκεῖ διαγενέσθαι μέχρι Σκιπίωνος· ἡμεῖς δὲ Λιβίῳ ‹καὶ› Καίσαρι (ORF Meyer 521) καὶ Νέπωτι (HRR II 35) καὶ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν Ἰόβᾳ τῷ βασιλεῖ (FGrH 275 F 25) πιστεύομεν ἥττας τινὰς καὶ τροπὰς ὑπὸ Μαρκέλλου [9] τῶν σὺν Ἀννίβᾳ γενέσθαι· μεγάλην δ’ αὗται ῥοπὴν οὐδεμίαν ἐποίησαν, ἀλλ’ ἔοικε ψευδό‹πτω›μά τι γενέσθαι περὶ [10] τὸν Λίβυν ἐν ταῖς συμπλοκαῖς ἐκείναις. ὃ δὴ κατὰ λόγον καὶ προσηκόντως ἐθαυμάσθη, μετὰ τοσαύτας τροπὰς στρατοπέδων καὶ φόνους στρατηγῶν καὶ σύγχυσιν ὅλης ὁμοῦ τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίας εἰς ἀντίπαλα τῷ θαρρεῖν καθισταμένων· [11] ὁ γὰρ ἐκ πολλοῦ τοῦ πάλαι περιδεοῦς καὶ καταπεπληγότος αὖθις ἐμβαλὼν τῷ στρατεύματι ζῆλον καὶ φιλονικίαν πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ μὴ ῥᾳδίως τῆς νίκης ὑφιέμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀμφισβητοῦν τε καὶ φιλοτιμούμενον ἐπάρας καὶ θαρρύνας εἷς ἀνὴρ ἦν [12] Μάρκελλος· εἰθισμένους γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν συμφορῶν, εἰ φεύγοντες ἐκφύγοιεν Ἀννίβαν ἀγαπᾶν, ἐδίδαξεν αἰσχύνεσθαι σῳζομένους μεθ’ ἥττης, αἰδεῖσθαι δὲ παρὰ μικρὸν ἐνδόντας, ἀλγεῖν δὲ μὴ κρατήσαντας.

[2] [1] Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν Πελοπίδας μὲν οὐδεμίαν ἡττήθη μάχην στρατηγῶν, Μάρκελλος δὲ πλείστας τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν Ῥωμαίων ἐνίκησε, δόξειεν ἂν ἴσως τὸ δυσνίκητον πρὸς τὸ ἀήττητον ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν κατωρθωμένων ἐπανισοῦσθαι. καὶ μὴν οὗτος μὲν εἷλε Συρακούσας, ἐκεῖνος [2] δὲ τῆς Λακεδαίμονος ἀπέτυχεν. ἀλλ’ οἶμαι μεῖζον εἶναι τοῦ καταλαβεῖν Σικελίαν τὸ τῇ Σπάρτῃ προσελθεῖν καὶ διαβῆναι πρῶτον ἀνθρώπων πολέμῳ τὸν Εὐρώταν, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία τοῦτο μὲν φήσει τις τὸ ἔργον Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ μᾶλλον ἢ Πελοπίδᾳ προσήκειν, ὥσπερ καὶ τὰ Λεῦκτρα, τῶν δὲ Μαρκέλλῳ διαπεπραγμένων ἀκοινώνητον εἶναι τὴν [3] δόξαν. καὶ γὰρ Συρακούσας μόνος εἷλε, καὶ Κελτοὺς ἄνευ τοῦ συνάρχοντος ἐτρέψατο, καὶ πρὸς Ἀννίβαν μηδενὸς συλλαμβάνοντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντων ἀποτρεπόντων, ἀντιταξάμενος καὶ μεταβαλὼν τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ πολέμου, πρῶτος ἡγεμὼν τοῦ τολμᾶν κατέστη.

[3] [1] Τὴν τοίνυν τελευτὴν ἐπαινῶ μὲν οὐδετέρου τῶν ἀνδρῶν, ἀλλ’ ἀνιῶμαι καὶ ἀγανακτῶ τῷ παραλόγῳ [2] τοῦ συμπτώματος· καὶ θαυμάζω μὲν ἐν μάχαις τοσαύταις, ὅσαις ἀποκάμοι τις ἂν καταριθμῶν, μηδὲ τρωθέντα τὸν Ἀννίβαν, ἄγαμαι δὲ καὶ τὸν ἐν τῇ ‹τοῦ Κύρου› Παιδείᾳ (4, 1, 3) Χρυσάνταν, ὃς διηρμένος κοπίδα καὶ παίειν μέλλων πολέμιον, ὡς ὑπεσήμηνεν ἡ σάλπιγξ ἀνακλητικόν, ἀφεὶς [3] τὸν ἄνδρα μάλα πρᾴως καὶ κοσμίως ἀνεχώρησεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τὸν Πελοπίδαν ποιεῖ συγγνωστὸν ἅμα τῷ τῆς μάχης καιρῷ περίθερμον ὄντα [καὶ] πρὸς τὴν ἄμυναν οὐκ ἀγεννῶς [4] ἐκφέρων ὁ θυμός· ἄριστον μὲν γὰρ νικῶντα σῴζεσθαι τὸν στρατηγόν, εἰ δέ,

θανεῖν εἰς ἀρετὴν καταλύσαντα τὸν βίον,

ὡς Εὐριπίδης (fg. 994 N.²) φησίν· οὕτω γὰρ οὐ πάθος, ἀλλὰ [5] πρᾶξις γίνεται τοῦ τελευτῶντος ὁ θάνατος. πρὸς δὲ τῷ θυμῷ τοῦ Πελοπίδου καὶ τὸ τέλος αὐτὸ τὸ τῆς νίκης ἐν τῷ πεσεῖν τὸν τύραννον ὁρώμενον οὐ παντάπασιν ἀλόγως ἐπεσπάσατο τὴν ὁρμήν· χαλεπὸν γὰρ ἑτέρας οὕτω καλὴν καὶ λαμπρὰν [6] ἐχούσης ὑπόθεσιν ἀριστείας ἐπιλαβέσθαι. Μάρκελλος δὲ μήτε χρείας μεγάλης ἐπικειμένης, μήτε τοῦ παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ πολλάκις ἐξιστάντος τὸν λογισμὸν ἐνθουσιασμοῦ παρεστῶτος, ὠσάμενος ἀπερισκέπτως εἰς κίνδυνον, οὐ στρατηγοῦ πτῶμα, προδρόμου δέ τινος ἢ κατασκόπου πέπτωκεν, ὑπατείας πέντε καὶ τρεῖς θριάμβους καὶ σκῦλα καὶ τροπαιοφορίας ἀπὸ βασιλέων τοῖς προαποθνῄσκουσι [7] Καρχηδονίων Ἴβηρσι καὶ Νομάσιν ὑποβαλών. ὥστε νεμεσῆσαι ‹καὶ› αὐτοὺς ἐκείνους ἑαυτοῖς τοῦ κατορθώματος, ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων ἄριστον ἀρετῇ καὶ δυνάμει μέγιστον καὶ δόξῃ λαμπρότατον ἐν τοῖς Φρεγελλανῶν προδιερευνηταῖς [8] παραναλῶσθαι. χρὴ δὲ ταῦτα μὴ κατηγορίαν εἶναι τῶν ἀνδρῶν νομίζειν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀγανάκτησίν τινα καὶ παρρησίαν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν ἐκείνων πρὸς αὐτοὺς καὶ τὴν ἀνδρείαν αὐτῶν, εἰς ἣν τὰς ἄλλας κατανάλωσαν ἀρετάς, ἀφειδήσαντες τοῦ βίου καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς, ὥσπερ ἑαυτοῖς, οὐ ταῖς πατρίσι μᾶλλον καὶ φίλοις καὶ συμμάχοις, ἀπολλυμένων.

[9] Μετὰ δὲ τὸν θάνατον Πελοπίδας μὲν τοὺς συμμάχους ταφεῖς ἔσχεν ὑπὲρ ὧν ἀπέθανε, Μάρκελλος δὲ τοὺς [10] πολεμίους ὑφ’ ὧν ἀπέθανε. ζηλωτὸν μὲν οὖν ἐκεῖνο καὶ μακάριον, κρεῖττον δὲ καὶ μεῖζον εὐνοίας χάριν ἀμειβομένης ἔχθρα λυποῦσαν ἀρετὴν θαυμάζουσα. τὸ γὰρ καλὸν ἐνταῦθα τὴν τιμὴν ἔχει μόνον, ἐκεῖ δὲ τὸ λυσιτελὲς καὶ ἡ χρεία μᾶλλον ἀγαπᾶται τῆς ἀρετῆς.

Aristides

[1] [1] Ἀριστείδης ὁ Λυσιμάχου φυλῆς μὲν ἦν Ἀντιοχίδος, τῶν δὲ δήμων Ἀλωπεκῆθεν. περὶ δ’ οὐσίας αὐτοῦ λόγοι διάφοροι γεγόνασιν, ὁ μὲν ὡς ἐν πενίᾳ συντόνῳ καταβιώσαντος καὶ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ἀπολιπόντος θυγατέρας δύο πολὺν χρόνον ἀνεκδότους δι’ ἀπορίαν γεγενημένας· [2] πρὸς δὲ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ὑπὸ πολλῶν εἰρημένον ἀντιτασσόμενος ὁ Φαληρεὺς Δημήτριος (FGrH 228 F 43) ἐν τῷ Σωκράτει χωρίον τε Φαληροῖ φησι γινώσκειν Ἀριστείδου γενόμενον ἐν ᾧ τέθαπται, καὶ τεκμήρια τῆς περὶ τὸν οἶκον εὐπορίας ἓν μὲν ἡγεῖται τὴν ἐπώνυμον ἀρχήν, ἣν ἦρξε τῷ κυάμῳ λαχὼν ἐκ τῶν γενῶν τῶν τὰ μέγιστα τιμήματα κεκτημένων, οὓς πεντακοσιομεδίμνους προσηγόρευον, ἕτερον δὲ τὸν ἐξοστρακισμόν· οὐδενὶ γὰρ τῶν πενήτων, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἐξ οἴκων τε μεγάλων καὶ διὰ γένους [3] ὄγκον ἐπιφθόνοις ὄστρακον ἐπιφέρεσθαι· τρίτον δὲ καὶ τελευταῖον, ὅτι νίκης ἀναθήματα χορηγικῆς τρίποδας ἐν Διονύσου καταλέλοιπεν, οἳ καὶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐδείκνυντο, τοιαύτην ἐπιγραφὴν διασῴζοντες ‘Ἀντιοχὶς ἐνίκα, Ἀριστείδης [4] ἐχορήγει, Ἀρχέστρατος ἐδίδασκε.’ τουτὶ μὲν οὖν καίπερ εἶναι δοκοῦν μέγιστον, ἀσθενέστατόν ἐστι. καὶ γὰρ Ἐπαμεινώνδας, ὃν πάντες ἄνθρωποι γιγνώσκουσιν ἐν πενίᾳ καὶ τραφέντα πολλῇ καὶ βιώσαντα, καὶ Πλάτων ὁ φιλόσοφος οὐκ ἀφιλοτίμους ἀνεδέξαντο χορηγίας, ὁ μὲν αὐληταῖς ἀνδράσιν, ὁ δὲ παισὶ κυκλίοις χορηγήσας, τούτῳ μὲν Δίωνος τοῦ Συρακοσίου τὴν δαπάνην παρέχοντος, [5] Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ δὲ τῶν περὶ Πελοπίδαν. οὐ γὰρ ἔστι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἀκήρυκτος καὶ ἄσπονδος πρὸς τὰς παρὰ τῶν φίλων δωρεὰς πόλεμος, ἀλλὰ τὰς εἰς ἀπόθεσιν καὶ πλεονεξίαν ἀγεννεῖς ἡγούμενοι καὶ ταπεινάς, ὅσαι φιλοτιμίας τινὸς ἀκερδοῦς ἔχονται καὶ λαμπρότητος [6] οὐκ ἀπωθοῦνται. Παναίτιος (fr. 131 v. Str.) μέντοι περὶ τοῦ τρίποδος ἀποφαίνει τὸν Δημήτριον ὁμωνυμίᾳ διεψευσμένον· ἀπὸ γὰρ τῶν Μηδικῶν εἰς τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦ Πελοποννησιακοῦ πολέμου δύο μόνους Ἀριστείδας χορηγοὺς ἀναγράφεσθαι νικῶντας, ὧν οὐδέτερον εἶναι τῷ Λυσιμάχου τὸν αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ τὸν μὲν Ξενοφίλου πατρός, τὸν δὲ χρόνῳ πολλῷ νεώτερον, ὡς ἐλέγχει τὰ γράμματα, τῆς μετ’ Εὐκλείδην ὄντα γραμματικῆς, καὶ προσγεγραμμένος ὁ Ἀρχέστρατος, ὃν ἐν τοῖς Μηδικοῖς οὐδείς, ἐν δὲ τοῖς Πελοποννησιακοῖς συχνοὶ χορῶν διδάσκαλον ἀναγράφουσι. τὰ μὲν οὖν τοῦ Παναιτίου βέλτιον ἐπισκεπτέον [7] ὅπως ἔχει. τῷ δ’ ὀστράκῳ πᾶς ὁ διὰ δόξαν ἢ γένος ἢ λόγου δύναμιν ὑπὲρ τοὺς πολλοὺς νομιζόμενος ὑπέπιπτεν· ὅπου καὶ Δάμων ὁ Περικλέους διδάσκαλος, ὅτι τὸ φρονεῖν ἐδόκει τις εἶναι περιττός, ἐξωστρακίσθη. καὶ μὴν [8] ἄρξαι γε τὸν Ἀριστείδην ὁ Ἰδομενεὺς (FGrH 338 F 5) οὐ κυαμευτόν, ἀλλ’ ἑλομένων Ἀθηναίων φησίν. εἰ δὲ καὶ μετὰ τὴν ἐν Πλαταιαῖς μάχην ἦρξεν, ὡς αὐτὸς ὁ Δημήτριος γέγραφε, καὶ πάνυ πιθανόν ἐστιν ἐπὶ δόξῃ τοσαύτῃ καὶ κατορθώμασι τηλικούτοις ἀξιωθῆναι δι’ ἀρετὴν [9] ‹ἀρχῆς› ἧς διὰ πλοῦτον ἐτύγχανον οἱ λαγχάνοντες. ἀλλὰ γὰρ ὁ μὲν Δημήτριος οὐ μόνον Ἀριστείδην, ἀλλὰ καὶ Σωκράτη δῆλός ἐστι τῆς πενίας ἐξελέσθαι φιλοτιμούμενος ὡς μεγάλου κακοῦ· καὶ γὰρ ἐκείνῳ φησὶν οὐ μόνον τὴν οἰκίαν ὑπάρχειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ μνᾶς ἑβδομήκοντα τοκιζομένας ὑπὸ Κρίτωνος.

[2] [1] Ἀριστείδης δὲ Κλεισθένους μὲν τοῦ καταστησαμένου τὴν πολιτείαν μετὰ τοὺς τυράννους ἑταῖρος γενόμενος, ζηλώσας δὲ καὶ θαυμάσας μάλιστα τῶν πολιτικῶν ἀνδρῶν Λυκοῦργον τὸν Λακεδαιμόνιον, ἥψατο μὲν ἀριστοκρατικῆς πολιτείας, ἔσχε δ’ ἀντιτασσόμενον ὑπὲρ τοῦ [2] δήμου Θεμιστοκλέα τὸν Νεοκλέους. ἔνιοι μὲν οὖν φασι παῖδας ὄντας αὐτοὺς καὶ συντρεφομένους ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἐν παντὶ καὶ σπουδῆς ἐχομένῳ καὶ παιδιᾶς πράγματι καὶ λόγῳ διαφέρεσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους, καὶ τὰς φύσεις εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῆς φιλονικίας ἐκείνης ἀνακαλύπτεσθαι, [καὶ] τὴν μὲν εὐχερῆ καὶ παράβολον καὶ πανοῦργον οὖσαν καὶ μετ’ ὀξύτητος ἐπὶ πάντα ῥᾳδίως φερομένην, τὴν δ’ ἱδρυμένην ἐν ἤθει βεβαίῳ καὶ πρὸς τὸ δίκαιον ἀτενῆ, ψεῦδος δὲ καὶ βωμολοχίαν καὶ ἀπάτην οὐδ’ ἐν παιδιᾶς τινι τρόπῳ [3] προσιεμένην. Ἀρίστων δ’ ὁ Κεῖος (fr. 20 W.) ἐξ ἐρωτικῆς ἀρχῆς γενέσθαι φησὶ καὶ προελθεῖν ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον τὴν [4] ἔχθραν αὐτῶν. Στησίλεω γάρ, ὃς ἦν γένει Κεῖος, ἰδέᾳ δὲ καὶ μορφῇ σώματος πολὺ τῶν ἐν ὥρᾳ λαμπρότατος, ἀμφοτέρους ἐρασθέντας οὐ μετρίως ἐνεγκεῖν τὸ πάθος, οὐδ’ ἅμα λήγοντι τῷ κάλλει τοῦ παιδὸς ἀποθέσθαι τὴν φιλονικίαν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐγγυμνασαμένους ἐκείνῃ πρὸς τὴν πολιτείαν εὐθὺς ὁρμῆσαι, διαπύρους ὄντας καὶ διαφόρως [5] ἔχοντας. ὁ μὲν οὖν Θεμιστοκλῆς εἰς ἑταιρείαν ἐμβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν εἶχε πρόβλημα καὶ δύναμιν οὐκ εὐκαταφρόνητον, ὥστε καὶ πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα καλῶς ἄρξειν αὐτὸν Ἀθηναίων, ἄνπερ ἴσος ᾖ καὶ κοινὸς ἅπασι, ‘μηδέποτε’ εἰπεῖν ‘εἰς τοιοῦτον ἐγὼ καθίσαιμι τὸν θρόνον ἐν ᾧ πλέον οὐδὲν ἕξουσιν οἱ φίλοι παρ’ ἐμοὶ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων·’ [6] Ἀριστείδης δὲ καθ’ αὑτὸν ὥσπερ ὁδὸν ἰδίαν ἐβάδιζε διὰ τῆς πολιτείας, πρῶτον μὲν οὐ βουλόμενος συναδικεῖν τοῖς ἑταίροις ἢ λυπηρὸς εἶναι μὴ χαριζόμενος, ἔπειτα τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν φίλων δύναμιν οὐκ ὀλίγους ὁρῶν ἐπαίρουσαν ἀδικεῖν, ἐφυλάττετο, μόνῳ τῷ χρηστὰ καὶ δίκαια πράσσειν καὶ λέγειν ἀξιῶν θαρρεῖν τὸν ἀγαθὸν πολίτην.

[3] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πολλὰ κινουμένου τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους παραβόλως καὶ πρὸς πᾶσαν αὐτῷ πολιτείαν ἐνισταμένου καὶ διακόπτοντος, ἠναγκάζετό που καὶ αὐτὸς τὰ μὲν ἀμυνόμενος τὰ δὲ κολούων τὴν ἐκείνου δύναμιν χάριτι τῶν πολλῶν αὐξομένην ὑπεναντιοῦσθαι παρὰ γνώμην οἷς ἔπραττεν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς, βέλτιον ἡγούμενος παρελθεῖν ἔνια τῶν συμφερόντων τὸν δῆμον ἢ τῷ κρατεῖν [2] ἐκεῖνον ἐν πᾶσιν ἰσχυρὸν γενέσθαι. τέλος δέ ποτε τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους πράττοντός τι τῶν δεόντων, ἀντικρούσας καὶ περιγενόμενος, οὐ κατέσχεν, ἀλλ’ εἶπεν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἀπιών, ὡς οὐκ ἔστι σωτηρία τοῖς Ἀθηναίων πράγμασιν, εἰ μὴ καὶ Θεμιστοκλέα καὶ αὐτὸν εἰς [3] τὸ βάραθρον ἐμβάλοιεν. πάλιν δὲ γράψας τινὰ γνώμην εἰς τὸν δῆμον, ἀντιλογίας οὔσης πρὸς αὐτὴν καὶ φιλονικίας, ἐκράτει· μέλλοντος δὲ τοῦ προέδρου τὸν δῆμον ἐπερωτᾶν, αἰσθόμενος ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων αὐτῶν τὸ ἀσύμφορον, [4] ἀπέστη τοῦ ψηφίσματος. πολλάκις δὲ καὶ δι’ ἑτέρων εἰσέφερε τὰς γνώμας, ὡς μὴ φιλονικίᾳ τῇ πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἐμπόδιος εἴη τῷ συμφέροντι. θαυμαστὴ δέ τις ἐφαίνετο αὐτοῦ παρὰ τὰς ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ μεταβολὰς ἡ εὐστάθεια, μήτε ταῖς τιμαῖς ἐπαιρομένου, πρός τε τὰς δυσημερίας ἀθορύβως καὶ πρᾴως ἔχοντος, καὶ ὁμοίως ἡγουμένου χρῆναι τῇ πατρίδι παρέχειν ἑαυτόν, οὐ χρημάτων μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ δόξης προῖκα καὶ [5] ἀμισθὶ πολιτευόμενον. ὅθεν ὡς ἔοικε τῶν εἰς Ἀμφιάραον ὑπ’ Αἰσχύλου (Sept. 592) πεποιημένων ἰαμβείων ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ λεγομένων·

οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖν δίκαιος, ἀλλ’ εἶναι θέλει,

βαθεῖαν ἄλοκα διὰ φρενὸς καρπούμενος,

ἀφ’ ἧς τὰ κεδνὰ βλαστάνει βουλεύματα,

πάντες ἀπέβλεψαν εἰς Ἀριστείδην, ὡς ἐκείνῳ μάλιστα τῆς ἀρετῆς ταύτης προσηκούσης.

[4] [1] Οὐ μόνον δὲ πρὸς εὔνοιαν καὶ χάριν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν καὶ πρὸς ἔχθραν ἰσχυρότατος ἦν ὑπὲρ τῶν [2] δικαίων ἀντιβῆναι. λέγεται γοῦν ποτε διώκων ἐχθρὸν ἐν δικαστηρίῳ, μετὰ τὴν κατηγορίαν οὐ βουλομένων ἀκούειν τοῦ κινδυνεύοντος τῶν δικαστῶν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ψῆφον εὐθὺς αἰτούντων ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ἀναπηδήσας τῷ κρινομένῳ συνικετεύειν, ὅπως ἀκουσθείη καὶ τύχοι τῶν νομίμων· πάλιν δὲ κρίνων ἰδιώταις δυσί, τοῦ ἑτέρου λέγοντος ὡς πολλὰ τυγχάνει τὸν Ἀριστείδην ὁ ἀντίδικος λελυπηκώς, ‘λέγ’ ὦ ‘γαθέ’ φάναι ‘μᾶλλον, εἴ τι σὲ [3] κακὸν πεποίηκε· σοὶ γάρ, οὐκ ἐμαυτῷ, δικάζω’. τῶν δὲ δημοσίων αἱρεθεὶς προσόδων ἐπιμελητής, οὐ μόνον τοὺς καθ’ αὑτόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς πρὸ αὑτοῦ γενομένους ἄρχοντας ἀπεδείκνυε πολλὰ νενοσφισμένους, καὶ μάλιστα τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα·

σοφὸς γὰρ ἁνήρ, τῆς δὲ χειρὸς οὐ κρατῶν.

[4]διὸ καὶ συναγαγὼν πολλοὺς ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀριστείδην ἐν ταῖς εὐθύναις διώκων κλοπῆς καταδίκῃ περιέβαλεν, ὥς φησιν Ἰδομενεύς (FGrH 338 F 7). ἀγανακτούντων δὲ τῶν πρώτων ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ βελτίστων, οὐ μόνον ἀφείθη τῆς ζημίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάλιν ἄρχων ἐπὶ τὴν αὐτὴν διοίκησιν [5] ἀπεδείχθη. προσποιούμενος δὲ τῶν προτέρων μεταμέλειν αὐτῷ καὶ μαλακώτερον ἐνδιδοὺς ἑαυτόν, ἤρεσκε τοῖς τὰ κοινὰ κλέπτουσιν οὐκ ἐξελέγχων οὐδ’ ἀκριβολογούμενος, ὥστε καταπιμπλαμένους τῶν δημοσίων ὑπερεπαινεῖν τὸν Ἀριστείδην καὶ δεξιοῦσθαι τὸν δῆμον ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ, σπουδάζοντας [6] ἄρχοντα πάλιν αἱρεθῆναι. μελλόντων δὲ χειροτονεῖν, ἐπετίμησε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις· ‘ὅτε μὲν γάρ’ ἔφη ‘πιστῶς καὶ καλῶς ὑμῖν ἦρξα, προεπηλακίσθην· ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλὰ τῶν κοινῶν καταπροεῖμαι τοῖς κλέπτουσι, θαυμαστὸς [7] εἶναι δοκῶ πολίτης. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν αἰσχύνομαι τῇ νῦν τιμῇ μᾶλλον τῆς πρῴην καταδίκης, συνάχθομαι δ’ ὑμῖν, παρ’ οἷς ἐνδοξότερόν ἐστι τοῦ σῴζειν τὰ δημόσια [8] τὸ χαρίζεσθαι τοῖς πονηροῖς.’ ταῦτα δ’ εἰπὼν καὶ τὰς κλοπὰς ἐξελέγξας, τοὺς μὲν τότε βοῶντας ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ καὶ μαρτυροῦντας ἐπεστόμισε, τὸν δ’ ἀληθινὸν καὶ δίκαιον ἀπὸ τῶν βελτίστων ἔπαινον εἶχεν.

[5] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Δᾶτις ὑπὸ Δαρείου πεμφθείς, λόγῳ μὲν ἐπιθεῖναι δίκην Ἀθηναίοις, ὅτι Σάρδεις ἐνέπρησαν, ἔργῳ δὲ καταστρέψασθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας, εἰς Μαραθῶνα παντὶ τῷ στόλῳ κατεσχήκει καὶ τὴν χώραν ἐπόρθει, τῶν δέκα καθεστώτων τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον στρατηγῶν μέγιστον μὲν εἶχεν ἀξίωμα Μιλτιάδης, δόξῃ δὲ καὶ δυνάμει [2] δεύτερος ἦν Ἀριστείδης, καὶ τότε περὶ τῆς μάχης γνώμῃ τῇ Μιλτιάδου προσθέμενος, οὐ μικρὰν ῥοπὴν ἐποίησε, καὶ παρ’ ἡμέραν ἑκάστου στρατηγοῦ τὸ κράτος ἔχοντος, ὡς περιῆλθεν εἰς αὐτὸν ἡ ἀρχή, παρέδωκε Μιλτιάδῃ, διδάσκων τοὺς συνάρχοντας ὅτι τὸ πείθεσθαι καὶ ἀκολουθεῖν τοῖς εὖ φρονοῦσιν οὐκ αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ σεμνόν [3] ἐστι καὶ σωτήριον. οὕτω δὲ πραΰνας τὴν φιλονικίαν καὶ προτρεψάμενος αὐτοὺς ἀγαπᾶν μιᾷ γνώμῃ τῇ κρατίστῃ χρωμένους, ἔρρωσε τὸν Μιλτιάδην, τῷ ἀπερισπάστῳ τῆς ἐξουσίας ἰσχυρὸν γενόμενον. χαίρειν γὰρ ἐῶν ἕκαστος ἤδη τὸ παρ’ ἡμέραν ἄρχειν, ἐκείνῳ προσεῖχεν.

[4] Ἐν δὲ τῇ μάχῃ μάλιστα τῶν Ἀθηναίων τοῦ μέσου πονήσαντος καὶ πλεῖστον ἐνταῦθα τῶν βαρβάρων χρόνον ἀντερεισάντων κατὰ τὴν Λεωντίδα καὶ τὴν Ἀντιοχίδα φυλήν, ἠγωνίσαντο λαμπρῶς τεταγμένοι παρ’ ἀλλήλους ὅ τε Θεμιστοκλῆς καὶ ὁ Ἀριστείδης· ὁ μὲν γὰρ Λεωντίδος [5] ἦν, ὁ δ’ Ἀντιοχίδος. ἐπεὶ δὲ τρεψάμενοι τοὺς βαρβάρους εἰς τὰς ναῦς ἐνέβαλον, καὶ πλέοντας οὐκ ἐπὶ νήσων ἑώρων, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ πνεύματος καὶ τῆς θαλάσσης εἴσω πρὸς τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἀποβιαζομένους, φοβηθέντες μὴ τὴν πόλιν ἔρημον λάβωσι τῶν ἀμυνομένων, ταῖς μὲν ἐννέα φυλαῖς ἠπείγοντο πρὸς τὸ ἄστυ, καὶ κατήνυσαν αὐθημερόν· [6] ἐν δὲ τῷ Μαραθῶνι μετὰ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ φυλῆς Ἀριστείδης ἀπολειφθεὶς φύλαξ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων καὶ τῶν λαφύρων, οὐκ ἐψεύσατο τὴν δόξαν, ἀλλὰ χύδην μὲν ἀργύρου καὶ χρυσοῦ παρόντος, ἐσθῆτος δὲ παντοδαπῆς καὶ χρημάτων ἄλλων ἀμυθήτων ἐν ταῖς σκηναῖς καὶ τοῖς ἡλωκόσι σκάφεσιν ὑπαρχόντων, οὔτ’ αὐτὸς ἐπεθύμησε θιγεῖν, οὔτ’ ἄλλον εἴασε, πλὴν εἴ τινες ἐκεῖνον λαθόντες [7] ὠφελήθησαν. ὧν ἦν καὶ Καλλίας ὁ δᾳδοῦχος· τούτῳ γάρ τις ὡς ἔοικε τῶν βαρβάρων προσέπεσεν, οἰηθεὶς βασιλέα διὰ τὴν κόμην καὶ τὸ στρόφιον εἶναι· προσκυνήσας δὲ καὶ λαβόμενος τῆς δεξιᾶς, ἔδειξε πολὺ χρυσίον [8] ἐν λάκκῳ τινὶ κατορωρυγμένον· ὁ δὲ Καλλίας ὠμότατος ἀνθρώπων καὶ παρανομώτατος γενόμενος, τὸν μὲν χρυσὸν ἀνείλετο, τὸν δ’ ἄνθρωπον, ὡς μὴ κατείποι πρὸς ἑτέρους, ἀπέκτεινεν. ἐκ τούτου φασὶ καὶ λακκοπλούτους ὑπὸ τῶν κωμικῶν τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκίας λέγεσθαι, σκωπτόντων εἰς τὸν τόπον ἐν ᾧ τὸ χρυσίον ὁ Καλλίας εὗρεν.

[9] Ἀριστείδης δὲ τὴν ἐπώνυμον εὐθὺς ἀρχὴν ἦρξε. καίτοι φησὶν ὁ Φαληρεὺς Δημήτριος (FGrH 228 F 44) ἄρξαι τὸν ἄνδρα μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ θανάτου μετὰ τὴν ἐν [10] Πλατοιαῖς μάχην. ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἀναγραφαῖς μετὰ μὲν Ξανθιππίδην, ἐφ’ οὗ Μαρδόνιος ἡττήθη Πλαταιᾶσιν, οὐδ’ ὁμώνυμον Ἀριστείδην ἐν πάνυ πολλοῖς λαβεῖν ἔστι, μετὰ δὲ Φαίνιππον, ἐφ’ οὗ τὴν ἐν Μαραθῶνι μάχην ἐνίκων, εὐθὺς Ἀριστείδης ἄρχων ἀναγέγραπται.

[6] [1] Πασῶν δὲ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἀρετῶν ἡ δικαιοσύνη μάλιστα τοῖς πολλοῖς αἴσθησιν παρεῖχε διὰ τὸ τὴν χρείαν [2] ἐνδελεχεστάτην αὐτῆς καὶ κοινοτάτην ὑπάρχειν. ὅθεν ἀνὴρ πένης καὶ δημοτικὸς ἐκτήσατο τὴν βασιλικωτάτην καὶ θειοτάτην προσηγορίαν τὸν Δίκαιον· ὃ τῶν βασιλέων καὶ τυράννων οὐδεὶς ἐζήλωσεν, ἀλλὰ Πολιορκηταὶ καὶ Κεραυνοὶ καὶ Νικάτορες, ἔνιοι δ’ Ἀετοὶ καὶ Ἱέρακες ἔχαιρον προσαγορευόμενοι, τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς βίας καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως ὡς ἔοικε μᾶλλον ἢ τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρετῆς δόξαν [3] ἀγαπῶντες. καίτοι τὸ θεῖον, ᾧ γλίχονται συνοικειοῦν καὶ συναφομοιοῦν ἑαυτούς, τρισὶ δοκεῖ διαφέρειν, ἀφθαρσίᾳ καὶ δυνάμει καὶ ἀρετῇ. ὧν καὶ σεμνότατον ἡ ἀρετὴ καὶ θειότατόν ἐστιν· ἀφθάρτῳ μὲν γὰρ εἶναι καὶ τῷ κενῷ καὶ τοῖς στοιχείοις συμβέβηκε· δύναμιν δὲ καὶ σεισμοὶ καὶ κεραυνοὶ καὶ πνευμάτων ὁρμαὶ καὶ ῥευμάτων ἐπιφοραὶ μεγάλην ἔχουσι· δίκης δὲ καὶ θέμιδος οὐδέν, ὅτι μὴ τῷ φρονεῖν καὶ λογίζεσθαι θεῖόν ἐστι, μεταλαγχάνει.

[4] διὸ καὶ τριῶν ὄντων ἃ πεπόνθασιν οἱ πολλοὶ πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ζήλου καὶ φόβου καὶ τιμῆς, ζηλοῦν μὲν αὐτοὺς καὶ μακαρίζειν ἐοίκασι κατὰ τὸ ἄφθαρτον καὶ ἀίδιον, ἐκπλήσσεσθαι δὲ καὶ δεδιέναι κατὰ τὸ κύριον καὶ δυνατόν, ἀγαπᾶν δὲ καὶ τιμᾶν καὶ σέβεσθαι κατὰ [5] τὴν δικαιοσύνην. ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτω διακείμενοι, τῆς μὲν ἀθανασίας, ἣν ἡ φύσις ἡμῶν οὐ δέχεται, καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως, ἧς ἐν τῇ τύχῃ κεῖται τὸ πλεῖστον, ἐπιθυμοῦσι, τὴν δ’ ἀρετήν, ὃ μόνον ἐστὶ τῶν θείων ἀγαθῶν ἐφ’ ἡμῖν, ἐν ὑστέρῳ τίθενται, κακῶς φρονοῦντες, ὡς τὸν ἐν δυνάμει καὶ τύχῃ μεγάλῃ καὶ ἀρχῇ βίον ἡ μὲν δικαιοσύνη ποιεῖ θεῖον, ἡ δ’ ἀδικία θηριώδη.

[7] [1] Τῷ δ’ οὖν Ἀριστείδῃ συνέβη τὸ πρῶτον ἀγαπωμένῳ διὰ τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν ὕστερον φθονεῖσθαι, μάλιστα μὲν τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους λόγον εἰς τοὺς πολλοὺς διαδιδόντος, ὡς Ἀριστείδης, ἀνῃρηκὼς τὰ δικαστήρια τῷ κρίνειν ἅπαντα καὶ δικάζειν, λέληθε μοναρχίαν ἀδορυφόρητον αὑτῷ κατεσκευασμένος· ἤδη δέ που καὶ ὁ δῆμος, ἐπὶ τῇ νίκῃ μέγα φρονῶν καὶ τῶν μεγίστων ἀξιῶν ἑαυτόν, ἤχθετο τῇ ὀνομασίᾳ δόξαν ὑπὲρ τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐχούσῃ, [2] καὶ συνελθόντες εἰς ἄστυ πανταχόθεν, ἐξοστρακίζουσι τὸν Ἀριστείδην, ὄνομα τῷ φθόνῳ τῆς δόξης φόβον τυραννίδος θέμενοι. μοχθηρίας γὰρ οὐκ ἦν κόλασις ὁ ἐξοστρακισμός, ἀλλ’ ἐκαλεῖτο μὲν δι’ εὐπρέπειαν ὄγκου καὶ δυνάμεως βαρυτέρας ταπείνωσις καὶ κόλουσις, ἦν δὲ φθόνου παραμυθία φιλάνθρωπος, εἰς ἀνήκεστον οὐδέν, ἀλλ’ εἰς μετάστασιν ἐτῶν δέκα τὴν πρὸς τὸ λυποῦν [3] ἀπερειδομένου δυσμένειαν. ὅτε δ’ ἤρξαντό τινες ἀνθρώπους ἀγεννεῖς καὶ πονηροὺς ὑποβάλλειν τῷ πράγματι, τελευταῖον ἁπάντων Ὑπέρβολον ἐξοστρακίσαντες ἐπαύσαντο. λέγεται δὲ τὸν Ὑπέρβολον ἐξοστρακισθῆναι διὰ τοιαύτην αἰτίαν. Ἀλκιβιάδης καὶ Νικίας μέγιστον ἐν τῇ [4] πόλει δυνάμενοι διεστασίαζον. ὡς οὖν ὁ δῆμος ἔμελλε φέρειν τὸ ὄστρακον καὶ δῆλος ἦν τὸν ἕτερον γράψων, διαλεχθέντες ἀλλήλοις καὶ τὰς στάσεις ἑκατέρας εἰς ταὐτὸ συναγαγόντες, τὸν Ὑπέρβολον ἐξοστρακισθῆναι παρεσκεύασαν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου δυσχεράνας ὁ δῆμος ὡς καθυβρισμένον τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ προπεπηλακισμένον ἀφῆκε παντελῶς καὶ κατέλυσεν.

[5] Ἦν δὲ τοιοῦτον ὡς τύπῳ φράσαι τὸ γινόμενον. ὄστρακον ἕκαστος λαβὼν καὶ γράψας ὃν ἐβούλετο μεταστῆσαι τῶν πολιτῶν, ἔφερεν εἰς ἕνα τόπον τῆς ἀγορᾶς περιπεφραγμένον [6] ἐν κύκλῳ δρυφάκτοις. οἱ δ’ ἄρχοντες πρῶτον μὲν διηρίθμουν τὸ σύμπαν ἐν ταὐτῷ τῶν ὀστράκων πλῆθος· εἰ γὰρ ἑξακισχιλίων ἐλάττονες οἱ φέροντες εἶεν, ἀτελὴς ἦν ὁ ἐξοστρακισμός· ἔπειτα τῶν ὀνομάτων ἕκαστον ἰδίᾳ τιθέντες, τὸν ὑπὸ τῶν πλείστων γεγραμμένον ἐξεκήρυττον εἰς ἔτη δέκα, καρπούμενον τὰ αὑτοῦ.

[7] Γραφομένων οὖν τότε τῶν ὀστράκων, λέγεταί τινα τῶν ἀγραμμάτων καὶ παντελῶς ἀγροίκων ἀναδόντα τῷ Ἀριστείδῃ τὸ ὄστρακον ὡς ἑνὶ τῶν τυχόντων παρακαλεῖν, ὅπως Ἀριστείδην ἐγγράψειε. τοῦ δὲ θαυμάσαντος καὶ πυθομένου μή τι κακὸν αὐτὸν Ἀριστείδης πεποίηκεν, ‘οὐδέν’ εἰπεῖν, ‘οὐδὲ γινώσκω τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἀλλ’ ἐνοχλοῦμαι [8] πανταχοῦ τὸν Δίκαιον ἀκούων’. ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντα τὸν Ἀριστείδην ἀποκρίνασθαι μὲν οὐδέν, ἐγγράψαι δὲ τοὔνομα τῷ ὀστράκῳ καὶ ἀποδοῦναι. τῆς δὲ πόλεως ἀπαλλαττόμενος ἤδη, τὰς χεῖρας ἀνατείνας πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν ηὔξατο τὴν ἐναντίαν ὡς ἔοικεν εὐχὴν τῷ Ἀχιλλεῖ, μηδένα καιρὸν Ἀθηναίους καταλαβεῖν ὃς ἀναγκάσει τὸν δῆμον Ἀριστείδου μνησθῆναι.

[8] [1] Τρίτῳ δ’ ἔτει Ξέρξου διὰ Θετταλίας καὶ Βοιωτίας ἐλαύνοντος ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀττικήν, λύσαντες τὸν νόμον ἐψηφίσαντο τοῖς μεθεστῶσι κάθοδον, μάλιστα φοβούμενοι τὸν Ἀριστείδην μὴ προσθέμενος τοῖς πολεμίοις διαφθείρῃ καὶ μεταστήσῃ πολλοὺς τῶν πολιτῶν πρὸς τὸν βάρβαρον, οὐκ ὀρθῶς στοχαζόμενοι τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὅς γε καὶ πρὸ τοῦ δόγματος τούτου διετέλει προτρέπων καὶ παροξύνων τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, καὶ μετὰ τὸ δόγμα, Θεμιστοκλέους στρατηγοῦντος αὐτοκράτορος, πάντα συνέπραττε καὶ συνεβούλευεν, ἐνδοξότατον ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ [2] κοινῇ ποιῶν τὸν ἔχθιστον. ὡς γὰρ ἀπολείπειν τὴν Σαλαμῖνα βουλευομένων τῶν περὶ Εὐρυβιάδην αἱ βαρβαρικαὶ τριήρεις νύκτωρ ἀναχθεῖσαι καὶ περιβαλοῦσαι τόν τε πόρον ἐν κύκλῳ καὶ τὰς νήσους κατεῖχον, οὐδενὸς προειδότος τὴν κύκλωσιν, ἧκεν ὁ Ἀριστείδης ἀπ’ Αἰγίνης παραβόλως διὰ τῶν πολεμίων νεῶν διεκπλεύσας, [3] καὶ νυκτὸς ἐλθὼν ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους καὶ καλέσας αὐτὸν ἔξω μόνον, ‘ἡμεῖς’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Θεμιστόκλεις, εἰ σωφρονοῦμεν, ἤδη τὴν κενὴν καὶ μειρακιώδη στάσιν ἀφέντες ἀρξώμεθα σωτηρίου καὶ καλῆς φιλονικίας πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἁμιλλώμενοι σῶσαι τὴν Ἑλλάδα, σὺ μὲν ἄρχων καὶ στρατηγῶν, ἐγὼ δ’ ὑπουργῶν καὶ συμβουλεύων· ἐπεὶ καὶ νῦν σε πυνθάνομαι μόνον ἅπτεσθαι τῶν ἀρίστων λογισμῶν, κελεύοντα διαναυμαχεῖν [4] ἐν τοῖς στενοῖς τὴν ταχίστην, καί σοι τῶν συμμάχων ἀντιπραττόντων οἱ πολέμιοι συνεργεῖν ἐοίκασι· τὸ γὰρ ἐν κύκλῳ καὶ κατόπιν ἤδη πέλαγος ἐμπέπλησται νεῶν πολεμίων, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς μὴ θέλοντας ἀνάγκη κατείληφεν ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας εἶναι καὶ μάχεσθαι· φυγῆς [5] γὰρ ὁδὸς οὐ λείπεται.’ πρὸς ταῦθ’ ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς εἶπεν· ‘οὐκ ἂν ἐβουλόμην ὦ Ἀριστείδη σὲ κατὰ τοῦτο κρείσσονά μου γενέσθαι, πειράσομαι δὲ πρὸς καλὴν ἀρχὴν ἁμιλλώμενος ὑπερβαλέσθαι τοῖς ἔργοις.’ ἅμα δ’ αὐτῷ φράσας τὴν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ κατασκευασθεῖσαν ἀπάτην ἐπὶ τὸν βάρβαρον, παρεκάλει πείθειν τὸν Εὐρυβιάδην καὶ διδάσκειν ὡς ἀμήχανόν ἐστι σωθῆναι μὴ ναυμαχήσαντας· [6] εἶχε γὰρ μᾶλλον αὐτοῦ πίστιν. ὅθεν ἐν τῷ συλλόγῳ τῶν στρατηγῶν εἰπόντος Κλεοκρίτου τοῦ Κορινθίου πρὸς τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα, μηδ’ Ἀριστείδῃ τὴν γνώμην ἀρέσκειν αὐτοῦ, παρόντα γὰρ σιωπᾶν, ἀντεῖπεν ὁ Ἀριστείδης ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἐσιώπα μὴ λέγοντος τὰ ἄριστα τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους· νυνὶ δ’ ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν οὐ δι’ εὔνοιαν τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἀλλὰ τὴν γνώμην ἐπαινῶν.

[9] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν ναύαρχοι τῶν Ἑλλήνων ταῦτ’ ἔπραττον. Ἀριστείδης δ’ ὁρῶν τὴν Ψυττάλειαν, ἣ πρὸ τῆς Σαλαμῖνος ἐν τῷ πόρῳ κεῖται νῆσος οὐ μεγάλη, πολεμίων ἀνδρῶν μεστὴν οὖσαν, ἐμβιβάσας εἰς ὑπηρετικὰ τοὺς προθυμοτάτους καὶ μαχιμωτάτους τῶν πολιτῶν, προσέμειξε τῇ Ψυτταλείᾳ, καὶ μάχην πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους συνάψας ἀπέκτεινε πάντας, πλὴν ὅσοι τῶν ἐπιφανῶν [2] ζῶντες ἥλωσαν. ἐν δὲ τούτοις ἦσαν ἀδελφῆς βασιλέως ὄνομα Σανδάκης τρεῖς παῖδες, οὓς εὐθὺς ἀπέστειλε πρὸς τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα, καὶ λέγονται κατά τι λόγιον, τοῦ μάντεως Εὐφραντίδου κελεύσαντος, ὠμηστῇ Διονύσῳ πρὸ [3] τῆς μάχης καθιερευθῆναι. τὴν δὲ νησίδα τοῖς ὅπλοις πανταχόθεν ὁ Ἀριστείδης περιστέψας, ἐφήδρευε τοῖς ἐκφερομένοις πρὸς αὐτήν, ὡς μήτε τῶν φίλων τινὰ διαφθαρῆναι [4] μήτε τῶν πολεμίων διαφυγεῖν. ὁ γὰρ πλεῖστος ὠθισμὸς τῶν νεῶν καὶ τῆς μάχης τὸ καρτερώτατον ἔοικε περὶ τὸν τόπον ἐκεῖνον γενέσθαι· διὸ καὶ τρόπαιον ἕστηκεν ἐν τῇ Ψυτταλείᾳ.

[5] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἀποπειρώμενος τοῦ Ἀριστείδου καλὸν μὲν εἶναι καὶ τὸ πεπραγμένον ἔργον αὐτοῖς ἔλεγε, κρεῖττον δὲ λείπεσθαι τὸ λαβεῖν ἐν τῇ Εὐρώπῃ τὴν Ἀσίαν, ἀναπλεύσαντας εἰς Ἑλλήσποντον [6] τὴν ταχίστην καὶ τὰ ζεύγματα διακόψαντας. ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀριστείδης ἀνακραγὼν τοῦτον μὲν ἐκέλευε τὸν λόγον καταβαλεῖν, σκοπεῖν δὲ καὶ ζητεῖν ὅπως τὴν ταχίστην ἐκβάλωσι τὸν Μῆδον ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, μὴ κατακλεισθεὶς ἀπορίᾳ φυγῆς μετὰ τοσαύτης δυνάμεως τραπῇ πρὸς ἄμυναν ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης, οὕτω πέμπει πάλιν Ἀρνάκην εὐνοῦχον ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἐκ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων κρύφα, φράσαι βασιλεῖ κελεύσας ὅτι πλεῖν ἐπὶ τὰς γεφύρας ὡρμημένους τοὺς Ἕλληνας αὐτὸς ἀποτρέψειε, σῴζεσθαι βασιλέα βουλόμενος.

[10] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Ξέρξης μὲν περίφοβος γενόμενος εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ἠπείγετο, Μαρδόνιος δὲ τοῦ στρατοῦ τὸ δοκιμώτατον ἔχων, περὶ τριάκοντα μυριάδας, ὑπελείπετο, καὶ φοβερὸς ἦν ἀπ’ ἰσχυρᾶς τῆς περὶ τὸ πεζὸν ἐλπίδος ἀπειλῶν τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ γράφων τοιαῦτα· ‘νενικήκατε θαλασσίοις ξύλοις χερσαίους ἀνθρώπους, οὐκ ἐπισταμένους κώπην ἐλαύνειν· ἀλλὰ νῦν πλατεῖα μὲν ἡ Θετταλῶν γῆ, καλὸν δὲ τὸ Βοιώτιον πεδίον ἀγαθοῖς [2] ὁπλίταις καὶ ἱππεῦσιν ἐναγωνίσασθαι.’ πρὸς δ’ Ἀθηναίους ἔπεμψεν ἰδίᾳ γράμματα καὶ λόγους παρὰ βασιλέως, τήν τε πόλιν αὐτοῖς ἀναστήσειν ἐπαγγελλομένου καὶ χρήματα πολλὰ δώσειν καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων κυρίους καταστήσειν, [3] ἐκποδὼν τοῦ πολέμου γενομένους. οἱ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι πυθόμενοι ταῦτα καὶ δείσαντες, ἔπεμψαν Ἀθήναζε πρέσβεις, δεόμενοι τῶν Ἀθηναίων ὅπως παῖδας μὲν καὶ γυναῖκας εἰς Σπάρτην ἀποστείλωσι, τοῖς δὲ πρεσβυτέροις τροφὰς παρ’ αὐτῶν λαμβάνωσιν· ἰσχυρὰ γὰρ ἦν ἀπορία περὶ τὸν δῆμον, ἀπολωλεκότα καὶ τὴν [4] χώραν καὶ τὴν πόλιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῶν πρέσβεων ἀκούσαντες, Ἀριστείδου ψήφισμα γράψαντος, ἀπεκρίναντο θαυμαστὴν ἀπόκρισιν, τοῖς μὲν πολεμίοις συγγνώμην ἔχειν φάσκοντες, εἰ πάντα πλούτου καὶ χρημάτων ὤνια νομίζοιεν, ὧν κρεῖττον οὐδὲν ἴσασιν, ὀργίζεσθαι δὲ Λακεδαιμονίοις, ὅτι τὴν πενίαν καὶ τὴν ἀπορίαν τὴν νῦν παροῦσαν Ἀθηναίοις μόνον ὁρῶσι, τῆς δ’ ἀρετῆς καὶ τῆς φιλοτιμίας ἀμνημονοῦσιν, ἐπὶ σιτίοις ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος [5] ἀγωνίζεσθαι παρακαλοῦντες. ταῦτα γράψας Ἀριστείδης καὶ τοὺς πρέσβεις εἰς ἐκκλησίαν παραγαγών, Λακεδαιμονίοις μὲν ἐκέλευσε φράζειν, ὡς οὐκ ἔστι χρυσοῦ τοσοῦτον πλῆθος οὔθ’ ὑπὲρ γῆν οὔθ’ ὑπὸ γῆν, ὅσον Ἀθηναῖοι δέξαιντο ἂν πρὸ τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐλευθερίας.

[6] τοῖς δὲ παρὰ Μαρδονίου τὸν ἥλιον δείξας ‘ἄχρι ἂν οὗτος’ ἔφη ‘ταύτην πορεύηται τὴν πορείαν, Ἀθηναῖοι πολεμήσουσι Πέρσαις ὑπὲρ τῆς δεδῃωμένης χώρας καὶ τῶν ἠσεβημένων καὶ κατακεκαυμένων ἱερῶν.’ ἔτι δ’ ἀρὰς θέσθαι τοὺς ἱερεῖς ἔγραψεν, εἴ τις ἐπικηρυκεύσαιτο Μήδοις ἢ τὴν συμμαχίαν ἀπολίποι τῶν Ἑλλήνων.

[7] Ἐμβαλόντος δὲ Μαρδονίου τὸ δεύτερον εἰς τὴν Ἀττικήν, αὖθις εἰς Σαλαμῖνα διεπέρασαν. Ἀριστείδης δὲ πεμφθεὶς εἰς Λακεδαίμονα τῆς μὲν βραδυτῆτος αὐτοῖς ἐνεκάλει καὶ τῆς ὀλιγωρίας, προεμένοις αὖθις τῷ βαρβάρῳ τὰς Ἀθήνας, ἠξίου δὲ πρὸς τὰ ἔτι σῳζόμενα τῆς Ἑλλάδος [8] βοηθεῖν. ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντες οἱ ἔφοροι μεθ’ ἡμέραν μὲν ἐδόκουν παίζειν καὶ ῥᾳθυμεῖν ἑορτάζοντες· ἦν γὰρ αὐτοῖς Ὑακίνθια· νυκτὸς δὲ πεντακισχιλίους Σπαρτιατῶν ἐπιλέξαντες, ὧν ἕκαστος ἑπτὰ περὶ αὑτὸν εἵλωτας εἶχεν, [9] ἐξέπεμψαν οὐκ εἰδότων τῶν Ἀθηναίων. ἐπεὶ δὲ πάλιν ἐγκαλῶν ὁ Ἀριστείδης προσῆλθεν, οἱ δὲ σὺν γέλωτι ληρεῖν αὐτὸν ἔφασαν καὶ καθεύδειν, ἤδη γὰρ ἐν Ὀρεστείῳ τὸν στρατὸν εἶναι, πορευόμενον ἐπὶ τοὺς ξένους - ξένους γὰρ ἐκάλουν τοὺς Πέρσας - , οὐ κατὰ καιρὸν ἔφη παίζειν αὐτοὺς ὁ Ἀριστείδης, ἀντὶ τῶν πολεμίων τοὺς φίλους ἐξαπατῶντας. ταῦθ’ οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἰδομενέα (FGrH 338 [10] F 6) λέγουσιν· ἐν δὲ τῷ ψηφίσματι τοῦ Ἀριστείδου πρεσβευτὴς οὐκ αὐτός, ἀλλὰ Κίμων καὶ Ξάνθιππος καὶ Μυρωνίδης φέρονται.

[11] [1] Χειροτονηθεὶς δὲ στρατηγὸς αὐτοκράτωρ ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ὀκτακισχιλίους ὁπλίτας ἀναλαβών, [2] ἧκεν εἰς Πλαταιάς. ἐκεῖ δὲ καὶ Παυσανίας ὁ τοῦ σύμπαντος ἡγούμενος Ἑλληνικοῦ συνέμειξεν, ἔχων τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων ἐπέρρει τὸ πλῆθος. τῶν δὲ βαρβάρων τὸ μὲν ὅλον τῆς στρατοπεδείας παρὰ τὸν Ἀσωπὸν ποταμὸν παρεκτεταμένης οὐδεὶς ἦν ὅρος διὰ τὸ μέγεθος, περὶ δὲ τὰς ἀποσκευὰς καὶ τὰ κυριώτατα τεῖχος περιεφράξαντο τετράγωνον, οὗ τῶν πλευρῶν [3] ἑκάστη μῆκος ἦν δέκα σταδίων. Παυσανίᾳ μὲν οὖν καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησι κοινῇ Τεισαμενὸς ὁ Ἠλεῖος ἐμαντεύσατο, καὶ προεῖπε νίκην ἀμυνομένοις καὶ μὴ προεπιχειροῦσιν· Ἀριστείδου δὲ πέμψαντος εἰς Δελφούς, ἀνεῖλεν ὁ θεὸς Ἀθηναίους καθυπερτέρους ἔσεσθαι τῶν ἐναντίων εὐχομένους τῷ Διὶ καὶ τῇ Ἥρᾳ τῇ Κιθαιρωνίᾳ καὶ Πανὶ καὶ νύμφαις Σφραγίτισι, καὶ θύοντας ἥρωσιν Ἀνδροκράτει Λεύκωνι Πεισάνδρῳ Δαμοκράτει Ὑψίονι Ἀκταίωνι Πολυείδῳ, καὶ τὸν κίνδυνον ἐν γᾷ ἰδίᾳ ποιουμένους ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ τᾶς Δάματρος τᾶς Ἐλευσινίας καὶ τᾶς Κόρας.

[4] οὗτος ὁ χρησμὸς ἀνενεχθεὶς ἀπορίαν τῷ Ἀριστείδῃ παρεῖχεν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἥρωες οἷς ἐκέλευε θύειν ἀρχηγέται Πλαταιέων ἦσαν, καὶ τὸ τῶν Σφραγιτίδων νυμφῶν ἄντρον ἐν μιᾷ κορυφῇ τοῦ Κιθαιρῶνός ἐστιν, εἰς δυσμὰς ἡλίου θερινὰς τετραμμένον, ἐν ᾧ καὶ μαντεῖον ἦν πρότερον ὥς φασι καὶ πολλοὶ κατείχοντο τῶν ἐπιχωρίων, [5] οὓς νυμφολήπτους προσηγόρευον. τὸ δὲ τῆς Ἐλευσινίας Δήμητρος πεδίον, καὶ τὸ τὴν μάχην ἐν ἰδίᾳ χώρᾳ ποιουμένοις τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις νίκην δίδοσθαι, πάλιν εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἀνεκαλεῖτο καὶ μεθίστη τὸν πόλεμον. ἔνθα τῶν Πλαταιέων ὁ στρατηγὸς Ἀρίμνηστος ἔδοξε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ὑπὸ τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἐπερωτώμενον αὑτόν, ὅ τι δὴ πράττειν δέδοκται τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, εἰπεῖν· ‘αὔριον εἰς Ἐλευσῖνα τὴν στρατιὰν ἀπάξομεν ὦ δέσποτα, καὶ διαμαχούμεθα τοῖς βαρβάροις ἐκεῖ κατὰ τὸ πυθόχρηστον’.

[6] τὸν οὖν θεὸν φάναι διαμαρτάνειν αὐτοὺς τοῦ παντός· αὐτόθι γὰρ εἶναι περὶ τὴν Πλαταϊκὴν τὰ πυθόχρηστα, καὶ ζητοῦντας ἀνευρήσειν. τούτων ἐναργῶς τῷ Ἀριμνήστῳ φανέντων, ἐξεγρόμενος τάχιστα μετεπέμψατο τοὺς ἐμπειροτάτους καὶ πρεσβυτάτους τῶν πολιτῶν, μεθ’ ὧν διαλεγόμενος καὶ συνδιαπορῶν εὗρεν, ὅτι τῶν Ὑσιῶν πλησίον ὑπὸ τὸν Κιθαιρῶνα ναός ἐστιν ἀρχαῖος πάνυ [7] Δήμητρος Ἐλευσινίας καὶ Κόρης προσαγορευόμενος. εὐθὺς οὖν παραλαβὼν τὸν Ἀριστείδην ἦγεν ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον, εὐφυέστατον ὄντα παρατάξαι φάλαγγα πεζὴν ἱπποκρατουμένοις διὰ τὰς ὑπωρείας τοῦ Κιθαιρῶνος, ἄφιππα ποιούσας τὰ καταλήγοντα καὶ συγκυροῦντα τοῦ πεδίου [8] πρὸς τὸ ἱερόν. ταύτῃ δ’ ἦν καὶ τὸ τοῦ Ἀνδροκράτους ἡρῷον ἐγγύς, ἄλσει πυκνῶν καὶ συσκίων δένδρων περιεχόμενον. ὅπως δὲ μηδὲν ἐλλιπὲς ἔχῃ πρὸς τὴν ἐλπίδα τῆς νίκης ὁ χρησμός, ἔδοξε τοῖς Πλαταιεῦσιν, Ἀριμνήστου γνώμην εἰπόντος, ἀνελεῖν τὰ πρὸς τὴν Ἀττικὴν ὅρια τῆς Πλαταιΐδος καὶ τὴν χώραν ἐπιδοῦναι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐν οἰκείᾳ κατὰ τὸν χρησμὸν [9] ἐναγωνίσασθαι. ταύτην μὲν οὖν τὴν φιλοτιμίαν τῶν Πλαταιέων οὕτω συνέβη περιβόητον γενέσθαι, ὥστε καὶ Ἀλέξανδρον ἤδη βασιλεύοντα τῆς Ἀσίας ὕστερον πολλοῖς ἔτεσι τειχίζοντα τὰς Πλαταιὰς ἀνειπεῖν Ὀλυμπίασιν ὑπὸ κήρυκος, ὅτι ταύτην ὁ βασιλεὺς ἀποδίδωσι Πλαταιεῦσι τῆς ἀνδραγαθίας καὶ μεγαλοψυχίας χάριν, ἐπειδὴ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐν τῷ Μηδικῷ πολέμῳ τὴν χώραν ἐπέδωκαν καὶ παρέσχον αὑτοὺς προθυμοτάτους.

[12] [1] Ἀθηναίοις δὲ Τεγεᾶται περὶ τάξεως ἐρίσαντες ἠξίουν, ὥσπερ αἰεί, Λακεδαιμονίων τὸ δεξιὸν ἐχόντων κέρας, αὐτοὶ τὸ εὐώνυμον ἔχειν, πολλὰ τοὺς αὑτῶν προγόνους ἐγκωμιάζοντες. ἀγανακτούντων δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων, [2] παρελθὼν ὁ Ἀριστείδης εἶπε· ‘Τεγεάταις μὲν ἀντειπεῖν περὶ εὐγενείας καὶ ἀνδραγαθίας ὁ παρὼν καιρὸς οὐ δίδωσι· πρὸς δ’ ὑμᾶς ὦ Σπαρτιᾶται καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους Ἕλληνας λέγομεν, ὅτι τὴν ἀρετὴν οὐκ ἀφαιρεῖται τόπος οὐδὲ δίδωσιν· ἣν δ’ ἂν ὑμεῖς ἡμῖν τάξιν ἀποδῶτε, πειρασόμεθα κοσμοῦντες καὶ φυλάττοντες μὴ καταισχύνειν [3] τοὺς προηγωνισμένους ἀγῶνας. ἥκομεν γὰρ οὐ τοῖς συμμάχοις στασιάσοντες, ἀλλὰ μαχούμενοι τοῖς πολεμίοις, οὐδ’ ἐπαινεσόμενοι τοὺς πατέρας, ἀλλ’ αὑτοὺς ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς τῇ Ἑλλάδι παρέξοντες· ὡς οὗτος ὁ ἀγὼν δείξει καὶ πόλιν καὶ ἄρχοντα καὶ ἰδιώτην ὁπόσου τοῖς Ἕλλησιν [4] ἄξιός ἐστι.’ ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντες οἱ σύνεδροι καὶ ἡγεμόνες ἀπεδέξαντο τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ θάτερον αὐτοῖς κέρας ἀπέδοσαν.

[13] [1] Οὔσης δὲ μετεώρου τῆς Ἑλλάδος, καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις τῶν πραγμάτων ἐπισφαλῶς ἐχόντων, ἄνδρες ἐξ οἴκων ἐπιφανῶν καὶ χρημάτων μεγάλων πένητες ὑπὸ τοῦ πολέμου γεγονότες, καὶ πᾶσαν ἅμα τῷ πλούτῳ τὴν ἐν τῇ πόλει δύναμιν αὑτῶν καὶ δόξαν οἰχομένην ὁρῶντες, ἑτέρων τιμωμένων καὶ ἀρχόντων, συνῆλθον εἰς οἰκίαν τινὰ τῶν ἐν Πλαταιαῖς κρύφα καὶ συνωμόσαντο καταλύσειν τὸν δῆμον· εἰ δὲ μὴ προχωροίη, λυμανεῖσθαι [2] τὰ πράγματα καὶ τοῖς βαρβάροις προδώσειν. πραττομένων δὲ τούτων ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, καὶ συχνῶν ἤδη διεφθαρμένων, αἰσθόμενος ὁ Ἀριστείδης καὶ φοβηθεὶς τὸν καιρόν, ἔγνω μήτ’ ἐᾶν ἀμελούμενον τὸ πρᾶγμα μήθ’ ἅπαν ἐκκαλύπτειν, ἀγνοούμενον εἰς ὅσον ἐκβήσεται πλῆθος ὁ ἔλεγχος τὸν τοῦ δικαίου ζητῶν ὅρον ἀντὶ τοῦ [3] συμφέροντος. ὀκτὼ δή τινας ἐκ πολλῶν συνέλαβε, καὶ τούτων δύο μέν, οἷς πρώτοις ἡ κρίσις προεγράφη, οἳ καὶ πλείστην αἰτίαν εἶχον, Αἰσχίνης Λαμπτρεὺς καὶ Ἀγασίας Ἀχαρνεύς, ᾤχοντο φεύγοντες ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου· τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἀφῆκε, θαρρῆσαι διδοὺς καὶ μεταγνῶναι τοῖς ἔτι λανθάνειν οἰομένοις, ὑπειπὼν ὡς μέγα δικαστήριον ἔχουσι τὸν πόλεμον ἀπολύσασθαι τὰς αἰτίας ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως τῇ πατρίδι βουλόμενοι.

[14] [1] Μετὰ ταῦτα Μαρδόνιος, ᾧ πλεῖστον ἐδόκει διαφέρειν, τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀπεπειρᾶτο, τὴν ἵππον ἀθρόαν αὐτοῖς ἐφεὶς καθεζομένοις ὑπὸ τὸν πρόποδα τοῦ Κιθαιρῶνος ἐν χωρίοις ὀχυροῖς καὶ πετρώδεσι, πλὴν Μεγαρέων.

[2] οὗτοι δὲ τρισχίλιοι τὸ πλῆθος ὄντες ἐν τοῖς ἐπιπέδοις μᾶλλον ἐστρατοπεδεύοντο. διὸ καὶ κακῶς ἔπασχον ὑπὸ τῆς ἵππου, ῥυείσης ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς καὶ προσβολὰς ἐχούσης [3] πανταχόθεν. ἔπεμπον οὖν ἄγγελον κατὰ τάχος πρὸς Παυσανίαν βοηθεῖν κελεύοντες, ὡς οὐ δυνάμενοι καθ’ αὑτοὺς [4] ὑποστῆναι τὸ τῶν βαρβάρων πλῆθος. ταῦτα Παυσανίας ἀκούων, ἤδη δὲ καὶ καθορῶν ἀποκεκρυμμένον ἀκοντισμάτων καὶ τοξευμάτων πλήθει τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν Μεγαρέων καὶ συνεσταλμένους αὐτοὺς εἰς ὀλίγον, αὐτὸς μὲν ἀμήχανος ἦν ἱππότας ἀμύνειν ὁπλιτικῇ φάλαγγι καὶ βαρείᾳ τῇ Σπαρτιατῶν, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις στρατηγοῖς καὶ λοχαγοῖς τῶν Ἑλλήνων περὶ αὐτὸν οὖσι προὔθετο ζῆλον ἀρετῆς καὶ φιλοτιμίας, εἰ δή τινες ἑκόντες ἀναδέξαιντο προαγωνίσασθαι καὶ βοηθῆσαι τοῖς Μεγαρεῦσι.

[5] τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ὀκνούντων, Ἀριστείδης ἀναδεξάμενος ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἀθηναίων τὸ ἔργον, ἀποστέλλει τὸν προθυμότατον τῶν λοχαγῶν Ὀλυμπιόδωρον, ἔχοντα τοὺς ὑπ’ αὐτῷ τεταγμένους λογάδας τριακοσίους καὶ τοξότας ἀναμεμειγμένους σὺν αὐτοῖς. τούτων ὀξέως διασκευασαμένων καὶ προσφερομένων δρόμῳ, Μασίστιος ὁ τῶν βαρβάρων ἵππαρχος, ἀνὴρ ἀλκῇ τε θαυμαστὸς μεγέθει τε καὶ κάλλει σώματος περιττός, ὡς κατεῖδεν, ἐναντίον ἐπιστρέψας [6] τὸν ἵππον εἰς αὐτοὺς ἤλαυνε. τῶν δ’ ἀνασχομένων καὶ συμβαλόντων, ἦν ἀγὼν καρτερός, ὡς πεῖραν ἐν τούτῳ τοῦ παντὸς λαμβανόντων. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοξευθεὶς ὁ ἵππος τὸν Μασίστιον ἀπέρριψε, καὶ πεσὼν ὑπὸ βάρους τῶν ὅπλων αὐτός τε δυσκίνητος ἦν ἀναφέρειν καὶ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἐπικειμένοις καὶ παίουσι δυσμεταχείριστος, οὐ μόνον στέρνα καὶ κεφαλήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ γυῖς χρυσῷ καὶ χαλκῷ καὶ σιδήρῳ καταπεφραγμένος, τοῦτον μὲν ᾗ τὸ κράνος ὑπέφαινε τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν ἀκοντίου στύρακι παίων τις ἀνεῖλεν, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι Πέρσαι προέμενοι τὸν [7] νεκρὸν ἔφευγον. ἐγνώσθη δὲ τοῦ κατορθώματος τὸ μέγεθος τοῖς Ἕλλησιν οὐκ ἀπὸ τῶν νεκρῶν τοῦ πλήθους - ὀλίγοι γὰρ οἱ πεσόντες ἦσαν - , ἀλλὰ τῷ πένθει τῶν [8] βαρβάρων. καὶ γὰρ ἑαυτοὺς ἔκειραν ἐπὶ τῷ Μασιστίῳ καὶ ἵππους καὶ ἡμιόνους, οἰμωγῆς τε καὶ κλαυθμοῦ τὸ πεδίον ἐνεπίμπλασαν, ὡς ἄνδρα πολὺ πρῶτον ἀρετῇ καὶ δυνάμει μετά γε Μαρδόνιον αὐτὸν ἀποβαλόντες.

[15] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἱππομαχίαν ἀμφότεροι μάχης ἔσχοντο χρόνον πολύν· ἀμυνομένοις γὰρ οἱ μάντεις νίκην προὔφαινον ἐκ τῶν ἱερῶν ὁμοίως καὶ τοῖς Πέρσαις καὶ τοῖς [2] Ἕλλησιν, εἰ δ’ ἐπιχειροῖεν, ἧτταν. ἔπειτα Μαρδόνιος, ὡς αὐτῷ μὲν ἡμερῶν ὀλίγων τὰ ἐπιτήδεια περιῆν, οἱ δ’ Ἕλληνες ἀεί τινων ἐπιρρεόντων πλείονες ἐγίγνοντο, δυσανασχετῶν ἔγνω μηκέτι μένειν, ἀλλὰ διαβὰς ἅμα φάει τὸν Ἀσωπὸν ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἀπροσδοκήτως, καὶ [3] παράγγελμα τοῖς ἡγεμόσιν ἑσπέρας ἔδωκε. μεσούσης δὲ μάλιστα τῆς νυκτὸς ἀνὴρ ἵππον ἔχων ἀτρέμα προσεμείγνυε τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ἐντυχὼν δὲ ταῖς φυλακαῖς, ἐκέλευεν αὐτῷ προσελθεῖν Ἀριστείδην τὸν Ἀθηναῖον. ὑπακούσαντος δὲ ταχέως, ἔφησεν· ‘εἰμὶ μὲν Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μακεδόνων βασιλεύς, ἥκω δὲ κινδύνων τὸν μέγιστον εὐνοίᾳ τῇ πρὸς ὑμᾶς αἰρόμενος, ὡς μὴ τὸ [4] αἰφνίδιον ἐκπλήξειεν ὑμᾶς χεῖρον ἀγωνίσασθαι. μαχεῖται γὰρ ὑμῖν Μαρδόνιος αὔριον, οὐχ ὑπ’ ἐλπίδος χρηστῆς οὐδὲ θάρσους, ἀλλ’ ἀπορίας τῶν παρόντων, ἐπεὶ καὶ μάντεις ἐκεῖνον ἀπαισίοις ἱεροῖς καὶ λογίοις χρησμῶν εἴργουσι μάχης, καὶ τὸν στρατὸν ἔχει δυσθυμία πολλὴ καὶ κατάπληξις. ἀλλ’ ἀνάγκη τολμῶντα πειρᾶσθαι τῆς τύχης ἢ τὴν ἐσχάτην ὑπομένειν ἀπορίαν καθεζόμενον.’ [5] ταῦτα φράσας ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐδεῖτο τὸν Ἀριστείδην αὐτὸν εἰδέναι καὶ μνημονεύειν, ἑτέρῳ δὲ μὴ κατειπεῖν. ὁ δ’ οὐ καλῶς ἔχειν ἔφη ταῦτα Παυσανίαν ἀποκρύψασθαι· ἐκείνῳ γὰρ ἀνακεῖσθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν· πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἄρρητα πρὸ τῆς μάχης [ἔδοξεν] ἔσεσθαι, νικώσης δὲ τῆς Ἑλλάδος οὐδένα τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου προθυμίαν καὶ [6] ἀρετὴν ἀγνοήσειν. λεχθέντων δὲ τούτων ὅ τε βασιλεὺς τῶν Μακεδόνων ἀπήλαυνεν ὀπίσω πάλιν, ὅ τ’ Ἀριστείδης ἀφικόμενος ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ Παυσανίου διηγεῖτο τοὺς λόγους, καὶ μετεπέμποντο τοὺς ἄλλους ἡγεμόνας καὶ παρήγγελλον ἐν κόσμῳ τὸν στρατὸν ἔχειν, ὡς μάχης ἐσομένης.

[16] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δ’, ὡς Ἡρόδοτος (9, 46) ἱστορεῖ, Παυσανίας Ἀριστείδῃ προσέφερε λόγον, ἀξιῶν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐπὶ τὸ δεξιὸν μεταγαγόντα κατὰ τοὺς Πέρσας ἀντιταχθῆναι, βέλτιον γὰρ ἀγωνιεῖσθαι τῆς τε μάχης ἐμπείρους γεγονότας καὶ τῷ προνενικηκέναι θαρροῦντας, αὑτῷ δὲ παραδοῦναι τὸ εὐώνυμον, ὅπου τῶν Ἑλλήνων [2] οἱ μηδίζοντες ἐπιβάλλειν ἔμελλον. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι στρατηγοὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀγνώμονα καὶ φορτικὸν ἡγοῦντο τὸν Παυσανίαν, εἰ τὴν ἄλλην ἐῶν τάξιν ἐν χώρᾳ μόνους ἄνω καὶ κάτω μεταφέρει σφᾶς ὥσπερ εἵλωτας, [3] κατὰ τὸ μαχιμώτατον προβαλλόμενος· ὁ δ’ Ἀριστείδης διαμαρτάνειν αὐτοὺς ἔφασκε τοῦ παντός, εἰ πρῴην μὲν ὑπὲρ τοῦ τὸ εὐώνυμον κέρας ἔχειν διεφιλοτιμοῦντο Τεγεάταις καὶ προκριθέντες ἐσεμνύνοντο, νῦν δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων ἑκουσίως ἐξισταμένων αὐτοῖς τοῦ δεξιοῦ καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν παραδιδόντων, οὔτε τὴν δόξαν ἀγαπῶσιν, οὔτε κέρδος ἡγοῦνται τὸ μὴ πρὸς ὁμοφύλους καὶ συγγενεῖς, ἀλλὰ βαρβάρους φύσει πολεμίους ἀγωνίσασθαι.

[4] ἐκ τούτου πάνυ προθύμως οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι διημείβοντο τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις τὴν τάξιν, καὶ λόγος ἐχώρει δι’ αὐτῶν πολὺς ἀλλήλοις παρεγγυώντων, ὡς οὔθ’ ὅπλα βελτίω λαβόντες οὔτε ψυχὰς ἀμείνους οἱ πολέμιοι τῶν ἐν Μαραθῶνι προσίασιν, ἀλλὰ τὰ αὐτὰ μὲν ἐκείνοις τόξα, τὰ αὐτὰ δ’ ἐσθῆτος ποικίλματα καὶ χρυσὸς ἐπὶ σώμασι [5] μαλακοῖς καὶ ψυχαῖς ἀνάνδροις· ἡμῖν δ’ ὅπλα μὲν ὅμοια καὶ σώματα, μεῖζον δὲ ταῖς νίκαις τὸ θάρσος, ὁ δ’ ἀγὼν οὐχ ὑπὲρ χώρας καὶ πόλεως μόνον ὡς ἐκείνοις, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐν Μαραθῶνι καὶ Σαλαμῖνι τροπαίων, ὡς μηδ’ ἐκεῖνα [6] Μιλτιάδου δοκῇ καὶ τύχης, ἀλλ’ Ἀθηναίων. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν σπεύδοντες ἐν ἀμείψει τῶν τάξεων ἦσαν· αἰσθόμενοι δὲ Θηβαῖοι παρ’ αὐτομόλων, Μαρδονίῳ φράζουσι, κἀκεῖνος εὐθύς, εἴτε δεδιὼς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, εἴτε τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις συμπεσεῖν φιλοτιμούμενος, ἀντιπαρεξῆγε τοὺς Πέρσας ἐπὶ τὸ δεξιόν, τοὺς δ’ Ἕλληνας ἐκέλευε τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ κατὰ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἵστασθαι.

[7] γενομένης δὲ τῆς μετακοσμήσεως καταφανοῦς, ὅ τε Παυσανίας ἀποτραπεὶς αὖθις ἐπὶ τοῦ δεξιοῦ κατέστη, καὶ Μαρδόνιος, ὥσπερ εἶχεν ἐξ ἀρχῆς, ἀνέλαβε τὸ εὐώνυμον κατὰ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους γενόμενος, ἥ θ’ ἡμέρα διεξῆλθεν [8] ἀργή, καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησι βουλευομένοις ἔδοξε πορρωτέρω μεταστρατοπεδεῦσαι καὶ καταλαβεῖν εὔυδρον χωρίον, ἐπεὶ τὰ πλησίον νάματα καθύβριστο καὶ διέφθαρτο τῶν βαρβάρων ἱπποκρατούντων.

[17] [1] Ἐπελθούσης δὲ νυκτὸς καὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἀγόντων ἐπὶ τὴν ἀποδεδειγμένην στρατοπεδείαν, οὐ πάνυ πρόθυμον ἦν ἕπεσθαι καὶ συμμένειν τὸ πλῆθος, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀνέστησαν ἐκ τῶν πρώτων ἐρυμάτων, ἐφέροντο πρὸς τὴν πόλιν τῶν Πλαταιέων οἱ πολλοί, καὶ θόρυβος ἦν ἐκεῖ διασκιδναμένων καὶ κατασκηνούντων ἀτάκτως. Λακεδαιμονίοις δὲ συνέβαινεν ἄκουσιν ἀπολείπεσθαι τῶν ἄλλων· [2] Ἀμομφάρετος γάρ, ἀνὴρ θυμοειδὴς καὶ φιλοκίνδυνος, ἔκπαλαι πρὸς τὴν μάχην σπαργῶν καὶ βαρυνόμενος τὰς πολλὰς ἀναβολὰς καὶ μελλήσεις, τότε δὴ παντάπασι τὴν μετανάστασιν φυγὴν ἀποκαλῶν καὶ ἀπόδρασιν, οὐκ ἔφη λείψειν τὴν τάξιν, ἀλλ’ αὐτόθι μένων μετὰ τῶν [3] αὑτοῦ λοχιτῶν ὑποστήσεσθαι Μαρδόνιον. ὡς δὲ Παυσανίας ἐπελθὼν ἔλεγε ταῦτα πράττειν ἐψηφισμένα καὶ δεδογμένα τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἀράμενος ταῖν χεροῖν πέτρον μέγαν ὁ Ἀμομφάρετος καὶ καταβαλὼν πρὸ τῶν ποδῶν τοῦ Παυσανίου, ταύτην ἔφη ψῆφον αὐτὸς περὶ τῆς μάχης τίθεσθαι, τὰ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων δειλὰ βουλεύματα καὶ δόγματα [4] χαίρειν ἐᾶν. ἀπορούμενος δὲ Παυσανίας τῷ παρόντι, πρὸς μὲν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἔπεμψεν ἀπιόντας ἤδη, περιμεῖναι δεόμενος καὶ κοινῇ βαδίζειν, αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν ἄλλην δύναμιν ἦγε πρὸς τὰς Πλαταιὰς ὡς ἀναστήσων τὸν Ἀμομφάρετον.

[5] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ κατελάμβανεν ἡμέρα, καὶ Μαρδόνιος - οὐ γὰρ ἔλαθον τὴν στρατοπεδείαν ἐκλελοιπότες οἱ Ἕλληνες - ἔχων συντεταγμένην τὴν δύναμιν ἐπεφέρετο τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις βοῇ πολλῇ καὶ πατάγῳ τῶν βαρβάρων, ὡς οὐ μάχης γενησομένης, ἀλλὰ φεύγοντας ἀναρπασομένων [6] τοὺς Ἕλληνας. ὃ μικρᾶς ῥοπῆς ἐδέησε γενέσθαι. κατιδὼν γὰρ τὸ γιγνόμενον ὁ Παυσανίας, ἔσχετο μὲν τῆς πορείας καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ μάχῃ τάξιν ἐκέλευσε λαμβάνειν ἕκαστον, ἔλαθε δ’ αὐτόν, εἴθ’ ὑπὸ τῆς πρὸς τὸν Ἀμομφάρετον ὀργῆς εἴτε τῷ τάχει θορυβηθέντα τῶν πολεμίων, [7] σύνθημα μὴ δοῦναι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν. ὅθεν οὔτ’ εὐθὺς οὔτ’ ἀθρόοι, κατ’ ὀλίγους δὲ καὶ σποράδην, ἤδη τῆς μάχης ἐν χερσὶν οὔσης, προσεβοήθουν. ὡς δὲ θυόμενος οὐκ ἐκαλλιέρει, προσέταξε τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις τὰς ἀσπίδας πρὸ τῶν ποδῶν θεμένους ἀτρέμα καθέζεσθαι καὶ προσέχειν αὐτῷ, μηδένα τῶν πολεμίων ἀμυνομένους, αὐτὸς [8] δὲ πάλιν ἐσφαγιάζετο. καὶ προσέπιπτον οἱ ἱππεῖς, ἤδη δὲ καὶ βέλος ἐξικνεῖτο καί τις ἐπέπληκτο τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ καὶ Καλλικράτης, ὃν ἰδέᾳ τε κάλλιστον Ἑλλήνων καὶ σώματι μέγιστον ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ στρατῷ γενέσθαι λέγουσι, τοξευθεὶς καὶ θνῄσκων οὐκ ἔφη τὸν θάνατον ὀδύρεσθαι, καὶ γὰρ ἐλθεῖν οἴκοθεν ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀποθανούμενος, ἀλλ’ ὅτι θνῄσκει τῇ [9] χειρὶ μὴ χρησάμενος. ἦν οὖν τὸ μὲν πάθος δεινόν, ἡ δ’ ἐγκράτεια θαυμαστὴ τῶν ἀνδρῶν. οὐ γὰρ ἠμύνοντο τοὺς πολεμίους ἐπιβαίνοντας, ἀλλὰ τὸν παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ καιρὸν ἀναμένοντες, ἠνείχοντο βαλλόμενοι [10] καὶ πίπτοντες ἐν ταῖς τάξεσιν. ἔνιοι δέ φασι τῷ Παυσανίᾳ μικρὸν ἔξω τῆς παρατάξεως θύοντι καὶ κατευχομένῳ τῶν Λυδῶν τινας ἄφνω προσπεσόντας ἁρπάζειν καὶ διαρρίπτειν τὰ περὶ τὴν θυσίαν, τὸν δὲ Παυσανίαν καὶ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν οὐκ ἔχοντας ὅπλα ῥάβδοις καὶ μάστιξι παίειν· διὸ καὶ νῦν ἐκείνης τῆς ἐπιδρομῆς μίμημα τὰς περὶ τὸν βωμὸν ἐν Σπάρτῃ πληγὰς τῶν ἐφήβων καὶ τὴν μετὰ ταῦτα Λυδῶν πομπὴν συντελεῖσθαι.

[18] [1] Δυσφορῶν οὖν ὁ Παυσανίας τοῖς παροῦσιν, ἄλλα τοῦ μάντεως ἐπ’ ἄλλοις ἱερεῖα καταβάλλοντος, τρέπεται πρὸς τὸ Ἡραῖον τῇ ὄψει δεδακρυμένος, καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἀνασχὼν εὔξατο Κιθαιρωνίᾳ Ἥρᾳ καὶ θεοῖς ἄλλοις οἳ Πλαταιίδα γῆν ἔχουσιν, εἰ μὴ πέπρωται τοῖς Ἕλλησι νικᾶν, ἀλλὰ δράσαντάς γέ τι παθεῖν καὶ δείξαντας ἔργῳ τοῖς πολεμίοις, ὡς ἐπ’ ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς καὶ μάχεσθαι [2] μεμαθηκότας ἐστράτευσαν. ταῦτα τοῦ Παυσανίου θεοκλυτοῦντος, ἅμα ταῖς εὐχαῖς ἐφάνη τὰ ἱερά, καὶ νίκην ὁ μάντις ἔφραζε, καὶ δοθέντος εἰς ἅπαντας τοῦ παραγγέλματος καθίστασθαι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, ἥ τε φάλαγξ ὄψιν ἔσχεν αἰφνιδίως ἑνὸς ζῴου θυμοειδοῦς πρὸς ἀλκὴν τρεπομένου καὶ φρίξαντος, τοῖς τε βαρβάροις τότε παρέστη λογισμός, ὡς πρὸς ἄνδρας αὐτοῖς ὁ ἀγὼν ἔσται [3] μαχουμένους ἄχρι θανάτου. διὸ καὶ πολλὰ προθέμενοι τῶν γέρρων ἐτόξευον εἰς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, οἱ δὲ τηροῦντες ἅμα τὸν συνασπισμὸν ἐπέβαινον, καὶ προσπεσόντες ἐξεώθουν τὰ γέρρα, καὶ τοῖς δόρασι τύπτοντες πρόσωπα καὶ στέρνα τῶν Περσῶν πολλοὺς κατέβαλλον, [4] οὐκ ἀπράκτως οὐδ’ ἀθύμως πίπτοντας. καὶ γὰρ ἀντιλαμβανόμενοι τῶν δοράτων ταῖς χερσὶ γυμναῖς συνέθραυον τὰ πλεῖστα, καὶ πρὸς τὰς ξιφουλκίας ἐχώρουν οὐκ ἀργῶς, ταῖς τε κοπίσι καὶ τοῖς ἀκινάκαις χρώμενοι καὶ τὰς ἀσπίδας παρασπῶντες, καὶ συμπλεκόμενοι χρόνον πολὺν ἀντεῖχον.

[5] Οἱ δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι τέως μὲν ἠτρέμουν ἀναμένοντες τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, ἐπεὶ δὲ κραυγή τε προσέπιπτε πολλὴ μαχομένων καὶ παρῆν ὥς φασιν ἄγγελος παρὰ Παυσανίου τὰ γιγνόμενα φράζων, ὥρμησαν κατὰ τάχος βοηθεῖν, [6] καὶ προχωροῦσιν αὐτοῖς διὰ τοῦ πεδίου πρὸς τὴν βοὴν ἐπεφέροντο τῶν Ἑλλήνων οἱ μηδίζοντες. Ἀριστείδης δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ὡς εἶδε, πολὺ προελθὼν ἐβόα, μαρτυρόμενος Ἑλληνίους θεούς, ἔχεσθαι μάχης καὶ μὴ σφίσιν ἐμποδὼν εἶναι μηδὲ κωλύειν ἐπαμύνοντας τοῖς προκινδυνεύουσιν ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἑώρα μὴ προσέχοντας αὐτῷ καὶ συντεταγμένους ἐπὶ μάχην, οὕτω τῆς ἐκεῖ βοηθείας ἀποτραπόμενος συνέβαλε τούτοις, περὶ [7] πεντακισμυρίους οὖσιν. ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν πλεῖστον εὐθὺς ἐνέδωκε καὶ ἀπεχώρησεν, ἅτε δὴ καὶ τῶν βαρβάρων ἀπηλλαγμένων, ἡ δὲ μάχη λέγεται μάλιστα κατὰ Θηβαίους γενέσθαι, προθυμότατα τῶν πρώτων καὶ δυνατωτάτων τότε παρ’ αὐτοῖς μηδιζόντων καὶ τὸ πλῆθος οὐ κατὰ γνώμην ἀλλ’ ὀλιγαρχούμενον ἀγόντων.

[19] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τοῦ ἀγῶνος δίχα συνεστῶτος, πρῶτοι μὲν ἐώσαντο τοὺς Πέρσας οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι, καὶ τὸν Μαρδόνιον ἀνὴρ Σπαρτιάτης ὄνομα Ἀείμνηστος ἀποκτίννυσι, λίθῳ τὴν κεφαλὴν πατάξας, ὥσπερ αὐτῷ προεσήμηνε τὸ [2] Ἀμφιάρεω μαντεῖον. ἔπεμψε γὰρ ἄνδρα Λυδὸν ἐνταῦθα, Κᾶρα δ’ ἕτερον εἰς τὸ Πτῷον ὁ Μαρδόνιος, καὶ τοῦτον μὲν ὁ προφήτης Καρικῇ γλώσσῃ προσεῖπεν, ὁ δὲ Λυδὸς ἐν τῷ σηκῷ τοῦ Ἀμφιάρεω κατευνασθεὶς ἔδοξεν ὑπηρέτην τινὰ τοῦ θεοῦ παραστῆναι καὶ κελεύειν αὐτὸν ἀπιέναι, μὴ βουλομένῳ δὲ λίθον εἰς τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐμβαλεῖν μέγαν, ὥστε δόξαι πληγέντα τεθνάναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον· καὶ ταῦτα μὲν οὕτω γενέσθαι λέγεται. τοὺς δὲ φεύγοντας εἰς τὰ [3] ξύλινα τείχη καθεῖρξαν. ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον Ἀθηναῖοι τοὺς Θηβαίους τρέπονται, τριακοσίους τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους καὶ πρώτους διαφθείραντες ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ μάχῃ. γεγενημένης γὰρ τῆς τροπῆς ἧκεν αὐτοῖς ἄγγελος πολιορκεῖσθαι [4] τὸ βαρβαρικὸν εἰς τὰ τείχη κατακεκλειμένον. οὕτω δὴ σῴζεσθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐάσαντες ἐβοήθουν πρὸς τὰ τείχη, καὶ τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις παντάπασιν ἀργῶς πρὸς τειχομαχίαν καὶ ἀπείρως ἔχουσιν ἐπιφανέντες, αἱροῦσι [5] τὸ στρατόπεδον φόνῳ πολλῷ τῶν πολεμίων. λέγονται γὰρ ἀπὸ τῶν τριάκοντα μυριάδων τετρακισμύριοι φυγεῖν σὺν Ἀρταβάζῳ, τῶν δ’ ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀγωνισαμένων ἔπεσον οἱ πάντες ἐπὶ χιλίοις ἑξήκοντα καὶ τριακόσιοι.

[6] τούτων Ἀθηναῖοι μὲν ἦσαν δύο καὶ πεντήκοντα, πάντες ἐκ τῆς Αἰαντίδος φυλῆς, ὥς φησι Κλείδημος (FGrH 323 F 22), ἀγωνισαμένης ἄριστα· διὸ καὶ ταῖς Σφραγίτισι νύμφαις ἔθυον Αἰαντίδαι τὴν πυθόχρηστον θυσίαν ὑπὲρ τῆς νίκης, ἐκ δημοσίου τὸ ἀνάλωμα λαμβάνοντες· Λακεδαιμόνιοι δ’ ἑνὶ πλείους τῶν ἐνενήκοντα, Τεγεᾶται δ’ ἑκκαίδεκα.

[7] θαυμαστὸν οὖν τὸ Ἡροδότου (9, 85), πῶς μόνους τούτους φησὶν εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν τοῖς πολεμίοις, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων μηδένα. καὶ γὰρ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν πεσόντων καὶ τὰ μνήματα μαρτυρεῖ κοινὸν γενέσθαι τὸ κατόρθωμα, καὶ τὸν βωμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐπέγραψαν οὕτως, εἰ μόναι τρεῖς πόλεις ἠγωνίσαντο, τῶν ἄλλων ἀτρέμα καθεζομένων (Simon. fr. 107 D.)·

τόνδε ποθ’ Ἕλλανες νίκας κράτει, ἔργῳ Ἄρηος,

Πέρσας ἐξελάσαντες ἐλευθέρᾳ Ἑλλάδι κοινὸν

ἱδρύσαντο Διὸς βωμὸν Ἐλευθερίου.

[8] ταύτην τὴν μάχην ἐμαχέσαντο τῇ τετράδι τοῦ Βοηδρομιῶνος ἱσταμένου κατ’ Ἀθηναίους, κατὰ δὲ Βοιωτοὺς τετράδι τοῦ Πανήμου φθίνοντος, ᾗ καὶ νῦν ἔτι τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν ἐν Πλαταιαῖς ἀθροίζεται συνέδριον καὶ θύουσι [9] τῷ Ἐλευθερίῳ Διὶ Πλαταιεῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς νίκης. τὴν δὲ τῶν ἡμερῶν ἀνωμαλίαν οὐ θαυμαστέον, ὅπου καὶ νῦν διηκριβωμένων τῶν ἐν ἀστρολογίᾳ μᾶλλον ἄλλην ἄλλοι μηνὸς ἀρχὴν καὶ τελευτὴν ἄγουσιν.

[20] [1] Ἐκ τούτου τῶν Ἀθηναίων τὸ ἀριστεῖον οὐ παραδιδόντων τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις οὐδὲ τρόπαιον ἱστάναι συγχωρούντων ἐκείνοις, παρ’ οὐδὲν ἂν ἦλθεν εὐθὺς ἀπολέσθαι τὰ πράγματα τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις διαστάντων, εἰ μὴ πολλὰ παρηγορῶν καὶ διδάσκων τοὺς συστρατήγους ὁ Ἀριστείδης, μάλιστα δὲ Λεωκράτην καὶ Μυρωνίδην, ἔσχε καὶ συνέπεισε τὴν κρίσιν ἐφεῖναι τοῖς [2] Ἕλλησιν. ἐνταῦθα βουλευομένων τῶν Ἑλλήνων Θεογείτων μὲν ὁ Μεγαρεὺς εἶπεν, ὡς ἑτέρᾳ πόλει δοτέον εἴη τὸ ἀριστεῖον, εἰ μὴ βούλονται συνταράξαι πόλεμον ἐμφύλιον· ἐπὶ τούτῳ δ’ ἀναστὰς Κλεόκριτος ὁ Κορίνθιος, δόξαν μὲν παρέσχεν ὡς Κορινθίοις αἰτήσων τὸ ἀριστεῖον· ἦν γὰρ ἐν ἀξιώματι μεγίστῳ μετὰ τὴν Σπάρτην καὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας ἡ Κόρινθος· εἶπε δὲ πᾶσιν ἀρέσαντα καὶ θαυμαστὸν λόγον ὑπὲρ Πλαταιέων, καὶ συνεβούλευσε τὴν φιλονικίαν ἀνελεῖν, ἐκείνοις τὸ ἀριστεῖον ἀποδόντας, οἷς [3] οὐδετέρους τιμωμένοις ἀχθέσεσθαι. ῥηθέντων δὲ τούτων, πρῶτος μὲν Ἀριστείδης συνεχώρησεν ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ἔπειτα Παυσανίας ὑπὲρ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων. οὕτω δὲ διαλλαγέντες, ἐξεῖλον ὀγδοήκοντα τάλαντα τοῖς Πλαταιεῦσιν, ἀφ’ ὧν τὸ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ἀνῳκοδόμησαν ἱερὸν καὶ τὸ ἕδος ἔστησαν καὶ γραφαῖς τὸν νεὼν διεκόσμησαν, αἳ μέχρι νῦν ἀκμάζουσαι διαμένουσιν, ἔστησαν δὲ τρόπαιον ἰδίᾳ μὲν Λακεδαιμόνιοι, χωρὶς δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι.

[4] Περὶ δὲ θυσίας ἐρομένοις αὐτοῖς ἀνεῖλεν ὁ Πύθιος Διὸς Ἐλευθερίου βωμὸν ἱδρύσασθαι, θῦσαι δὲ μὴ πρότερον ἢ τὸ κατὰ τὴν χώραν πῦρ ἀποσβέσαντας ὡς ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων μεμιασμένον ἐναύσασθαι καθαρὸν ἐκ Δελφῶν [5] ἀπὸ τῆς κοινῆς ἑστίας. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄρχοντες τῶν Ἑλλήνων περιιόντες εὐθὺς ἠνάγκαζον ἀποσβεννύναι τὰ πυρὰ πάντα τοὺς χρωμένους, εἷς δὲ Πλαταιέων Εὐχίδας ὑποσχόμενος ὡς ἐνδέχεται τάχιστα κομιεῖν τὸ παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ πῦρ, ἧκεν εἰς Δελφούς, ἁγνίσας δὲ τὸ σῶμα καὶ περιρρανάμενος ἐστεφανώσατο δάφνῃ, καὶ λαβὼν ἀπὸ τοῦ βωμοῦ τὸ πῦρ, δρόμῳ πάλιν εἰς τὰς Πλαταιὰς ἐχώρει καὶ πρὸ ἡλίου δυσμῶν ἐπανῆλθε, τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρας [6] χιλίους σταδίους κατανύσας. ἀσπασάμενος δὲ τοὺς πολίτας καὶ τὸ πῦρ παραδούς, εὐθὺς ἔπεσε καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ἐξέπνευσεν. ἀγάμενοι δ’ αὐτὸν οἱ Πλαταιεῖς ἔθαψαν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τῆς Εὐκλείας Ἀρτέμιδος, ἐπιγράψαντες τὸ τετράμετρον τοῦτο·

Εὐχίδας Πυθῶδε θρέξας ἦλθε ‹τᾷδ’› αὐθημερόν.

[7] τὴν δ’ Εὔκλειαν οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ καὶ καλοῦσι καὶ νομίζουσιν Ἄρτεμιν, ἔνιοι δέ φασιν Ἡρακλέους μὲν θυγατέρα καὶ Μυρτοῦς γενέσθαι, τῆς Μενοιτίου θυγατρός, Πατρόκλου δ’ ἀδελφῆς, τελευτήσασαν δὲ παρθένον ἔχειν παρά [8] τε Βοιωτοῖς καὶ Λοκροῖς τιμάς. βωμὸς γὰρ αὐτῇ καὶ ἄγαλμα κατὰ πᾶσαν ἀγορὰν ἵδρυται, καὶ προθύουσιν αἵ τε γαμούμεναι καὶ οἱ γαμοῦντες.

[21] [1] Ἐκ τούτου γενομένης ἐκκλησίας κοινῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ἔγραψεν Ἀριστείδης ψήφισμα συνιέναι μὲν εἰς Πλαταιὰς καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος προβούλους καὶ θεωρούς, ἄγεσθαι δὲ πενταετηρικὸν ἀγῶνα [2] τῶν Ἐλευθερίων, εἶναι δὲ σύνταξιν Ἑλληνικὴν μυρίας μὲν ἀσπίδας, χιλίους δ’ ἵππους, ναῦς δ’ ἑκατὸν ἐπὶ τὸν πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους πόλεμον, Πλαταιεῖς δ’ ἀσύλους καὶ ἱεροὺς ἀφίεσθαι τῷ θεῷ θύοντας ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος. κυρωθέντων δὲ τούτων, οἱ Πλαταιεῖς ὑπεδέξαντο τοῖς πεσοῦσι καὶ κειμένοις αὐτόθι τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐναγίζειν [3] καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν. καὶ τοῦτο μέχρι νῦν δρῶσι τόνδε τὸν τρόπον. τοῦ Μαιμακτηριῶνος μηνός, ὅς ἐστι παρὰ Βοιωτοῖς Ἀλαλκομένιος, τῇ ἕκτῃ ἐπὶ δέκα πέμπουσι πομπήν, ἧς προηγεῖται μὲν ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ σαλπιγκτὴς ἐγκελευόμενος τὸ πολεμικόν, ἕπονται δ’ ἅμαξαι μυρρίνης μεσταὶ καὶ στεφανωμάτων καὶ μέλας ταῦρος καὶ χοὰς οἴνου καὶ γάλακτος ἐν ἀμφορεῦσιν ἐλαίου τε καὶ μύρου [4] κρωσσοὺς νεανίσκοι κομίζοντες ἐλεύθεροι· δούλῳ γὰρ οὐδενὸς θέμις ἐστὶ τῶν περὶ τὴν διακονίαν ἐκείνην προσάψασθαι διὰ τὸ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀποθανεῖν ὑπὲρ ἐλευθερίας· ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ τῶν Πλαταιέων ὁ ἄρχων, ᾧ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον οὔτε σιδήρου θιγεῖν ἔξεστιν οὔθ’ ἑτέραν ἐσθῆτα πλὴν λευκῆς ἀναλαβεῖν, τότε χιτῶνα φοινικοῦν ἐνδεδυκώς, ἀράμενός θ’ ὑδρίαν ἀπὸ τοῦ γραμματοφυλακίου ξιφήρης ἐπὶ τοὺς τάφους προάγει διὰ μέσης τῆς πόλεως.

[5] εἶτα λαβὼν ὕδωρ ἀπὸ τῆς κρήνης αὐτὸς ἀπολούει τε τὰς στήλας καὶ μύρῳ χρίει, καὶ τὸν ταῦρον εἰς τὴν πυρὰν σφάξας καὶ κατευξάμενος Διὶ καὶ Ἑρμῇ χθονίῳ, παρακαλεῖ τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας τοὺς ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀποθανόντας [6] ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον καὶ τὴν αἱμακουρίαν. ἔπειτα κρατῆρα κεράσας οἴνου καὶ χεάμενος ἐπιλέγει· ‘προπίνω τοῖς ἀνδράσι τοῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀποθανοῦσι’. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔτι καὶ νῦν διαφυλάττουσιν οἱ Πλαταιεῖς.

[22] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀναχωρήσαντας εἰς τὸ ἄστυ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ὁ Ἀριστείδης ἑώρα ζητοῦντας τὴν δημοκρατίαν ἀπολαβεῖν, ἅμα μὲν ἄξιον ἡγούμενος διὰ τὴν ἀνδραγαθίαν ἐπιμελείας τὸν δῆμον, ἅμα δ’ οὐκέτι ῥᾴδιον ἰσχύοντα τοῖς ὅπλοις καὶ μέγα φρονοῦντα ταῖς νίκαις ἐκβιασθῆναι, γράφει ψήφισμα κοινὴν εἶναι τὴν πολιτείαν καὶ τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἐξ Ἀθηναίων πάντων αἱρεῖσθαι.

[2] Θεμιστοκλέους δὲ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον εἰπόντος, ὡς ἔχει τι βούλευμα καὶ γνώμην ἀπόρρητον, ὠφέλιμον δὲ τῇ πόλει καὶ σωτήριον, ἐκέλευσαν Ἀριστείδην μόνον ἀκοῦσαι [3] καὶ συνδοκιμάσαι. φράσαντος δὲ τῷ Ἀριστείδῃ τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους, ὡς διανοεῖται τὸ ναύσταθμον ἐμπρῆσαι τῶν Ἑλλήνων, οὕτω γὰρ ἔσεσθαι μεγίστους καὶ κυρίους ἁπάντων τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, παρελθὼν εἰς τὸν δῆμον ὁ Ἀριστείδης ἔφη τῆς πράξεως ἣν Θεμιστοκλῆς πράττειν διανοεῖται μήτε λυσιτελεστέραν ἄλλην μήτ’ ἀδικωτέραν [4] εἶναι. ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντες οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι παύσασθαι τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα προσέταξαν. οὕτω μὲν οὖν ὁ δῆμος ἦν φιλοδίκαιος, οὕτω δὲ τῷ δήμῳ πιστὸς ὁ ἀνὴρ καὶ βέβαιος.

[23] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ στρατηγὸς ἐκπεμφθεὶς μετὰ Κίμωνος ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἑώρα τόν τε Παυσανίαν καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἄρχοντας τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ἐπαχθεῖς καὶ χαλεποὺς τοῖς συμμάχοις ὄντας, αὐτός τε πρᾴως καὶ φιλανθρώπως ὁμιλῶν, καὶ τὸν Κίμωνα παρέχων εὐάρμοστον αὐτοῖς καὶ κοινὸν ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις, ἔλαθε τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων οὐχ ὅπλοις οὐδὲ ναυσὶν οὐδ’ ἵπποις, εὐγνωμοσύνῃ δὲ καὶ [2] πολιτείᾳ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν παρελόμενος. προσφιλεῖς γὰρ ὄντας τοῖς Ἕλλησι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους διὰ τὴν Ἀριστείδου δικαιοσύνην καὶ τὴν Κίμωνος ἐπιείκειαν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἡ τοῦ Παυσανίου πλεονεξία καὶ βαρύτης ποθεινοὺς ἐποίει. τοῖς τε γὰρ ἄρχουσι τῶν συμμάχων ἀεὶ μετ’ ὀργῆς ἐνετύγχανε καὶ τραχέως, τούς τε πολλοὺς ἐκόλαζε πληγαῖς, ἢ σιδηρᾶν ἄγκυραν ἐπιτιθεὶς ἠνάγκαζεν ἑστάναι [3] δι’ ὅλης τῆς ἡμέρας. στιβάδα δ’ οὐκ ἦν λαβεῖν οὐδὲ χόρτον οὐδὲ κρήνῃ προσελθεῖν ὑδρευόμενον οὐδένα πρὸ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν, ἀλλὰ μάστιγας ἔχοντες ὑπηρέται τοὺς προσιόντας ἀπήλαυνον. ὑπὲρ ὧν τοῦ Ἀριστείδου ποτὲ βουληθέντος ἐγκαλέσαι καὶ διδάξαι, συναγαγὼν τὸ πρόσωπον ὁ Παυσανίας οὐκ ἔφη σχολάζειν οὐδ’ ἤκουσεν.

[4] Ἐκ τούτου προσιόντες οἱ ναύαρχοι καὶ στρατηγοὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, μάλιστα δὲ Χῖοι καὶ Σάμιοι καὶ Λέσβιοι, τὸν Ἀριστείδην ἔπειθον ἀναδέξασθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν καὶ προσαγαγέσθαι τοὺς συμμάχους, πάλαι δεομένους ἀπαλλαγῆναι τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν καὶ μετατάξασθαι πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους.

[5] ἀποκριναμένου δ’ ἐκείνου τοῖς μὲν λόγοις αὐτῶν τό τ’ ἀναγκαῖον ἐνορᾶν καὶ τὸ δίκαιον, ἔργου δὲ δεῖσθαι τὴν πίστιν ὃ πραχθὲν οὐκ ἐάσει πάλιν μεταβαλέσθαι τοὺς πολλούς, οὕτως οἱ περὶ τὸν Σάμιον Οὐλιάδην καὶ τὸν Χῖον Ἀνταγόραν συνομοσάμενοι περὶ Βυζάντιον ἐμβάλλουσιν εἰς τὴν τριήρη τοῦ Παυσανίου, προεκπλέουσαν [6] ἐν μέσῳ λαβόντες. ὡς δὲ κατιδὼν ἐκεῖνος ἐξανέστη καὶ μετ’ ὀργῆς ἠπείλησεν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπιδείξειν οὐκ εἰς τὴν αὑτοῦ ναῦν ἐμβεβληκότας, ἀλλ’ εἰς τὰς ἰδίας πατρίδας, ἐκέλευον αὐτὸν ἀπιέναι καὶ ἀγαπᾶν τὴν συναγωνισαμένην τύχην ἐν Πλαταιαῖς· ἐκείνην γὰρ ἔτι τοὺς Ἕλληνας αἰσχυνομένους μὴ λαμβάνειν ἀξίαν δίκην παρ’ αὐτοῦ· τέλος δ’ ἀποστάντες ᾤχοντο πρὸς τοὺς [7] Ἀθηναίους. ἔνθα δὴ καὶ τὸ φρόνημα τῆς Σπάρτης διεφάνη θαυμαστόν. ὡς γὰρ ᾔσθοντο τῷ μεγέθει τῆς ἐξουσίας διαφθειρομένους αὐτῶν τοὺς ἄρχοντας, ἀφῆκαν ἑκουσίως τὴν ἡγεμονίαν καὶ πέμποντες ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἐπαύσαντο στρατηγούς, μᾶλλον αἱρούμενοι σωφρονοῦντας ἔχειν καὶ τοῖς ἔθεσιν ἐμμένοντας τοὺς πολίτας ἢ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἄρχειν ἁπάσης.

[24] [1] Οἱ δ’ Ἕλληνες ἐτέλουν μέν τινα καὶ Λακεδαιμονίων ἡγουμένων ἀποφορὰν εἰς τὸν πόλεμον, ταχθῆναι δὲ βουλόμενοι καὶ κατὰ πόλιν ἑκάστοις τὸ μέτριον, ᾐτήσαντο παρὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων Ἀριστείδην, καὶ προσέταξαν αὐτῷ χώραν τε καὶ προσόδους ἐπισκεψάμενον ὁρίσαι τὸ [2] κατ’ ἀξίαν ἑκάστῳ καὶ δύναμιν. ὁ δὲ τηλικαύτης ἐξουσίας κύριος γενόμενος, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐπ’ αὐτῷ μόνῳ τὰ πράγματα πάντα θεμένης, πένης μὲν ἐξῆλθεν, ἐπανῆλθε δὲ πενέστερος, οὐ μόνον καθαρῶς καὶ δικαίως, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσφιλῶς πᾶσι καὶ ἁρμονίως [3] τὴν ἀπογραφὴν τῶν χρημάτων ποιησάμενος. ὡς γὰρ οἱ παλαιοὶ τὸν ἐπὶ Κρόνου βίον, οὕτως οἱ σύμμαχοι τῶν Ἀθηναίων τὸν ἐπ’ Ἀριστείδου φόρον εὐποτμίαν τινὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὀνομάζοντες ὕμνουν, καὶ μάλιστα μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον διπλασιασθέντος, εἶτ’ αὖθις τριπλασιασθέντος.

[4] ὃν μὲν γὰρ Ἀριστείδης ἔταξεν, ἦν εἰς ἑξήκοντα καὶ τετρακοσίων ταλάντων λόγον. τούτῳ Περικλῆς μὲν ἐπέθηκεν ὀλίγου δεῖν τὸ τρίτον μέρος· ἑξακόσια γὰρ τάλαντα Θουκυδίδης (2, 13, 3) φησὶν ἀρχομένου τοῦ πολέμου [5] προσιέναι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἀπὸ τῶν συμμάχων. Περικλέους δ’ ἀποθανόντος, ἐπιτείνοντες οἱ δημαγωγοὶ κατὰ μικρὸν εἰς χιλίων καὶ τριακοσίων ταλάντων κεφάλαιον ἀνήγαγον, οὐχ οὕτω τοῦ πολέμου διὰ μῆκος καὶ τύχας δαπανηροῦ γενομένου καὶ πολυτελοῦς, ὡς τὸν δῆμον εἰς διανομὰς καὶ θεωρικὰ καὶ κατασκευὰς ἀγαλμάτων καὶ ἱερῶν προαγαγόντες.

[6] Μέγα δ’ οὖν ὄνομα τοῦ Ἀριστείδου καὶ θαυμαστὸν ἔχοντος ἐπὶ τῇ διατάξει τῶν φόρων ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς λέγεται καταγελᾶν, ὡς οὐκ ἀνδρὸς ὄντα τὸν ἔπαινον, ἀλλὰ θυλάκου χρυσοφύλακος, ἀνομοίως ἀμυνόμενος τὴν Ἀριστείδου [7] παρρησίαν· ἐκείνῳ γὰρ εἰπόντος ποτὲ τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους ἀρετὴν ἡγεῖσθαι μεγίστην στρατηγοῦ τὸ γιγνώσκειν καὶ προαισθάνεσθαι τὰ βουλεύματα τῶν πολεμίων, ‘τοῦτο μέν’ εἰπεῖν ‘ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν ὦ Θεμιστόκλεις, καλὸν δὲ καὶ στρατηγικὸν ἀληθῶς ἡ περὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἐγκράτεια.’

[25] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἀριστείδης ὥρκισε μὲν τοὺς Ἕλληνας καὶ ὤμοσεν ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἀθηναίων, μύδρους ἐμβαλὼν ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀραῖς εἰς τὴν θάλατταν· ὕστερον δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων ἄρχειν ἐγκρατέστερον ὡς ἔοικεν ἐκβιαζομένων, ἐκέλευε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους τὴν ἐπιορκίαν τρέψαντας εἰς αὐτὸν ᾗ [2] συμφέρει χρῆσθαι τοῖς πράγμασι. καθ’ ὅλου δ’ ὁ Θεόφραστός (fr. 136 W.) φησι τὸν ἄνδρα τοῦτον περὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ τοὺς πολίτας ἄκρως ὄντα δίκαιον, ἐν τοῖς κοινοῖς πολλὰ πρᾶξαι πρὸς τὴν ὑπόθεσιν τῆς πατρίδος, [3] ὡς συχνῆς καὶ ἀδικίας δεομένην. καὶ γὰρ τὰ χρήματά φασιν ἐκ Δήλου βουλευομένων Ἀθήναζε κομίσαι παρὰ τὰς συνθήκας καὶ Σαμίων εἰσηγουμένων, εἰπεῖν ἐκεῖνον ὡς οὐ δίκαιον μέν, συμφέρον δὲ τοῦτ’ ἐστί· καὶ τέλος εἰς τὸ ἄρχειν ἀνθρώπων τοσούτων καταστήσας τὴν πόλιν, αὐτὸς ἐνέμεινε τῇ πενίᾳ, καὶ τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ πένης εἶναι δόξαν οὐδὲν ἧττον ἀγαπῶν τῆς ἀπὸ τῶν τροπαίων [4] διετέλεσε. δῆλον δ’ ἐκεῖθεν. Καλλίας ὁ δᾳδοῦχος ἦν αὐτῷ γένει προσήκων· τοῦτον οἱ ἐχθροὶ θανάτου διώκοντες, ἐπεὶ περὶ ὧν ἐγράψαντο μετρίως κατηγόρησαν, ἔξωθεν [5] εἶπόν τινα λόγον τοιοῦτον πρὸς τοὺς δικαστάς· ‘Ἀριστείδην’ ἔφησαν ‘ἴστε τὸν Λυσιμάχου θαυμαζόμενον ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησι· τούτῳ πῶς ἔχειν οἴεσθε τὰ κατ’ οἶκον, ὁρῶντες αὐτὸν ἐν τρίβωνι τοιούτῳ προερχόμενον εἰς τὸ δημόσιον; ἆρ’ οὐκ εἰκός ἐστι τὸν ῥιγοῦντα φανερῶς καὶ πεινᾶν οἴκοι [6] καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιτηδείων σπανίζειν; τοῦτον μέντοι Καλλίας ἀνεψιὸν ὄντα, πλουσιώτατος ὢν Ἀθηναίων, περιορᾷ μετὰ τέκνων καὶ γυναικὸς ἐνδεόμενον, πολλὰ κεχρημένος τῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ πολλάκις αὐτοῦ τῆς παρ’ ὑμῖν [7] δυνάμεως ἀπολελαυκώς.’ ὁ δὲ Καλλίας ὁρῶν ἐπὶ τούτῳ μάλιστα θορυβοῦντας τοὺς δικαστὰς καὶ χαλεπῶς πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔχοντας, ἐκάλει τὸν Ἀριστείδην, ἀξιῶν μαρτυρῆσαι πρὸς τοὺς δικαστάς, ὅτι πολλάκις αὐτοῦ πολλὰ καὶ διδόντος καὶ δεομένου λαβεῖν οὐκ ἠθέλησεν, ἀποκρινάμενος ὡς μᾶλλον αὐτῷ διὰ πενίαν μέγα φρονεῖν ἢ Καλλίᾳ [8] διὰ πλοῦτον προσήκει· πλούτῳ μὲν γὰρ ἔστι πολλοὺς ἰδεῖν εὖ τε καὶ καλῶς χρωμένους, πενίαν δὲ φέροντι γενναίως οὐ ῥᾴδιον ἐντυχεῖν· αἰσχύνεσθαι δὲ πενίαν τοὺς ἀκουσίως πενομένους. ταῦτα τοῦ Ἀριστείδου τῷ Καλλίᾳ προσμαρτυρήσαντος, οὐδεὶς ἦν τῶν ἀκουσάντων ὃς οὐκ ἀπῄει πένης μᾶλλον ὡς Ἀριστείδης εἶναι βουλόμενος ἢ [9] πλουτεῖν ὡς Καλλίας. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Αἰσχίνης ὁ Σωκρατικὸς (p. 51 Kr.) ἀναγέγραφε. Πλάτων (Gorg. 526b) δὲ τῶν μεγάλων δοκούντων καὶ ὀνομαστῶν Ἀθήνησι μόνον ἄξιον λόγου τοῦτον ἀποφαίνει τὸν ἄνδρα· Θεμιστοκλέα μὲν γὰρ καὶ Κίμωνα καὶ Περικλέα στοῶν καὶ χρημάτων καὶ φλυαρίας πολλῆς ἐμπλῆσαι τὴν πόλιν, Ἀριστείδην δὲ πολιτεύσασθαι πρὸς ἀρετήν.

[10] Μεγάλα δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ πρὸς Θεμιστοκλέα τῆς ἐπιεικείας σημεῖα. χρησάμενος γὰρ αὐτῷ παρὰ πᾶσαν ὁμοῦ τὴν πολιτείαν ἐχθρῷ καὶ δι’ ἐκεῖνον ἐξοστρακισθείς, ἐπεὶ τὴν αὐτὴν λαβὴν παρέσχεν ὁ ἀνὴρ ἐν αἰτίᾳ γενόμενος πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, οὐκ ἐμνησικάκησεν, ἀλλ’ Ἀλκμαίωνος καὶ Κίμωνος καὶ πολλῶν ἄλλων ἐλαυνόντων καὶ κατηγορούντων, μόνος Ἀριστείδης οὔτ’ ἔπραξεν οὔτ’ εἶπέ τι φαῦλον, οὐδ’ ἀπέλαυσεν ἐχθροῦ δυστυχοῦντος. ὥσπερ οὐδ’ εὐημεροῦντι πρότερον ἐφθόνησε.

[26] [1] Τελευτῆσαι δ’ Ἀριστείδην οἱ μὲν ἐν Πόντῳ φασὶν ἐκπλεύσαντα πράξεων ἕνεκα δημοσίων, οἱ δ’ Ἀθήνησι γήρᾳ, τιμώμενον καὶ θαυμαζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν. Κρατερὸς δ’ ὁ Μακεδὼν (FGrH 342 F 12) τοιαῦτά τινα [2] περὶ τῆς τελευτῆς τοῦ ἀνδρὸς εἴρηκε. μετὰ γὰρ τὴν Θεμιστοκλέους φυγήν φησιν ὥσπερ ἐξυβρίσαντα τὸν δῆμον ἀναφῦσαι πλῆθος συκοφαντῶν, οἳ τοὺς ἀρίστους καὶ δυνατωτάτους ἄνδρας διώκοντες ὑπέβαλλον τῷ φθόνῳ τῶν [3] πολλῶν, ἐπαιρομένων ὑπ’ εὐτυχίας καὶ δυνάμεως. ἐν τούτοις καὶ Ἀριστείδην ἁλῶναι δωροδοκίας, Διοφάντου τοῦ Ἀμφιτροπῆθεν κατηγοροῦντος, ὡς ὅτε τοὺς φόρους ἔπραττε παρὰ τῶν Ἰώνων χρήματα λαβόντος, ἐκτεῖσαι δ’ οὐκ ἔχοντα τὴν καταδίκην πεντήκοντα μνῶν [4] οὖσαν, ἐκπλεῦσαι καὶ περὶ τὴν Ἰωνίαν ἀποθανεῖν. τούτων δ’ οὐδὲν ἔγγραφον ὁ Κρατερὸς τεκμήριον παρέσχηκεν, οὔτε δίκην οὔτε ψήφισμα, καίπερ εἰωθὼς ἐπιεικῶς γράφειν τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ παρατίθεσθαι τοὺς ἱστοροῦντας.

[5] οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι πάντες ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, ὅσοι τὰ πλημμεληθέντα τῷ δήμῳ περὶ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς διεξίασι, τὴν μὲν Θεμιστοκλέους φυγὴν καὶ τὰ Μιλτιάδου δεσμὰ καὶ τὴν Περικλέους ζημίαν καὶ τὸν Πάχητος ἐν τῷ δικαστηρίῳ θάνατον, ἀνελόντος ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος ὡς ἡλίσκετο, καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα συνάγουσι καὶ θρυλοῦσιν, Ἀριστείδου δὲ τὸν μὲν ἐξοστρακισμὸν παρατίθενται, καταδίκης δὲ τοιαύτης οὐδαμοῦ μνημονεύουσι.

[27] [1] Καὶ μέντοι καὶ τάφος ἐστὶν αὐτοῦ Φαληροῖ δεικνύμενος, ὅν φασι κατασκευάσαι τὴν πόλιν αὐτῷ, μηδ’ ἐντάφια [2] καταλιπόντι, καὶ τὰς μὲν θυγατέρας ἱστοροῦσιν ἐκ τοῦ πρυτανείου τοῖς νυμφίοις ἐκδοθῆναι, δημοσίᾳ τῆς πόλεως τὸν γάμον ἐγγυώσης καὶ προῖκα τρισχιλίας δραχμὰς ἑκατέρᾳ ψηφισαμένης, Λυσιμάχῳ δὲ τῷ υἱῷ μνᾶς μὲν ἑκατὸν ἀργυρίου καὶ γῆς τοσαῦτα πλέθρα πεφυτευμένης ἔδωκεν ὁ δῆμος, καὶ ἄλλας δραχμὰς τέσσαρας εἰς ἡμέραν ἑκάστην ἀπέταξεν, Ἀλκιβιάδου τὸ ψήφισμα [3] γράψαντος. ἔτι δὲ Λυσιμάχου θυγατέρα Πολυκρίτην ἀπολιπόντος, ὡς Καλλισθένης (FGrH 124 F 48) φησί, καὶ ταύτῃ σίτησιν ὅσην τοῖς Ὀλυμπιονίκαις ὁ δῆμος ἐψηφίσατο. Δημήτριος δ’ ὁ Φαληρεὺς (FGrH 228 F 45) καὶ Ἱερώνυμος ὁ Ῥόδιος καὶ Ἀριστόξενος ὁ μουσικὸς (fr. 58 W.) καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 84) - εἴγε δὴ τὸ περὶ εὐγενείας βιβλίον ἐν τοῖς γνησίοις Ἀριστοτέλους θετέον - ἱστοροῦσι Μυρτὼ θυγατριδῆν Ἀριστείδου Σωκράτει τῷ σοφῷ συνοικῆσαι, γυναῖκα μὲν ἑτέραν ἔχοντι, ταύτην δ’ ἀναλαβόντι, χηρεύουσαν διὰ πενίαν καὶ τῶν ἀναγκαίων [4] ἐνδεομένην. πρὸς μὲν οὖν τούτους ἱκανῶς ὁ Παναίτιος (fr. 132 v. Str.) ἐν τοῖς περὶ Σωκράτους ἀντείρηκεν· ὁ δὲ Φαληρεὺς ἐν τῷ Σωκράτει (FGrH 228 F 45) φησὶ μνημονεύειν Ἀριστείδου θυγατριδοῦν εὖ μάλα πένητα Λυσίμαχον, ὃς ἑαυτὸν μὲν ἐκ πινακίου τινὸς ὀνειροκριτικοῦ παρὰ τὸ Ἰακχεῖον λεγόμενον καθεζόμενος ἔβοσκε, τῇ δὲ [5] μητρὶ καὶ τῇ ταύτης ἀδελφῇ ψήφισμα γράψας ἔπεισε τὸν δῆμον τροφὴν διδόναι τριώβολον ἑκάστης ἡμέρας. αὐτὸς μέντοι φησὶν ὁ Δημήτριος νομοθετῶν ἀντὶ τριωβόλου [6] δραχμὴν ἑκατέρᾳ τάξαι τῶν γυναικῶν. καὶ οὐδέν ἐστι θαυμαστὸν οὕτω φροντίσαι τῶν ἐν ἄστει τὸν δῆμον, ὅπου θυγατριδῆν Ἀριστογείτονος ἐν Λήμνῳ πυθόμενοι ταπεινὰ πράττειν ἀνδρὸς ἀποροῦσαν διὰ πενίαν κατήγαγον Ἀθήναζε, καὶ συνοικίσαντες ἀνδρὶ τῶν εὖ γεγονότων [7] τὸ Ποταμοῖ χωρίον εἰς φερνὴν ἐπέδωκαν. ἧς φιλανθρωπίας καὶ χρηστότητος ἔτι πολλὰ καὶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἡ πόλις ἐκφέρουσα δείγματα θαυμάζεται καὶ ζηλοῦται δικαίως.

Cato Maior

[1] [1]  Μάρκῳ δὲ Κάτωνί φασιν ἀπὸ Τούσκλου τὸ γένος εἶναι, δίαιταν δὲ καὶ βίον ἔχειν πρὸ τῶν στρατειῶν καὶ τῆς πολιτείας ἐν χωρίοις πατρῴοις περὶ τοὺς Σαβίνους. τῶν δὲ προγόνων παντάπασιν ἀγνώστων γεγονέναι δοκούντων αὐτὸς ὁ Κάτων καὶ τὸν πατέρα Μᾶρκον ὡς ἀγαθὸν ἄνδρα καὶ στρατιωτικὸν ἐπαινεῖ, καὶ Κάτωνα τὸν πρόπαππον ἀριστείων πολλάκις τυχεῖν φησι καὶ πέντε πολεμιστὰς ἵππους ἐν μάχαις ἀποβαλόντα τὴν τιμὴν [2] ἀπολαβεῖν ἐκ τοῦ δημοσίου δι’ ἀνδραγαθίαν. εἰωθότων δὲ τῶν Ῥωμαίων τοὺς ἀπὸ γένους μὲν δόξαν οὐκ ἔχοντας, ἀρχομένους δὲ γνωρίζεσθαι δι’ αὑτῶν, καινοὺς προσαγορεύειν ἀνθρώπους, ὥσπερ καὶ τὸν Κάτωνα προσηγόρευον, αὐτὸς ἔλεγε καινὸς εἶναι πρὸς ἀρχὴν καὶ δόξαν, [3] ἔργοις δὲ προγόνων καὶ ἀρεταῖς παμπάλαιος. ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ τῷ τρίτῳ τῶν ὀνομάτων πρότερον οὐ Κάτων, ἀλλὰ Πρῖσκος, ὕστερον δὲ τὸν Κάτωνα τῆς δυνάμεως ἐπώνυμον ἔσχε· Ῥωμαῖοι γὰρ τὸν ἔμπειρον κάτον ὀνομάζουσιν.

[4] ἦν δὲ τὸ μὲν εἶδος ὑπόπυρρος καὶ γλαυκός, ὡς ὁ ποιήσας τὸ ἐπιγραμμάτιον οὐκ εὐμενῶς παρεμφαίνει·

πυρρόν, πανδακέτην, γλαυκόμματον, οὐδὲ θανόντα

Πόρκιον εἰς ἀίδην Φερσεφόνη δέχεται.

[5] τὴν δὲ τοῦ σώματος ἕξιν, αὐτουργίᾳ καὶ διαίτῃ σώφρονι καὶ στρατείαις ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς συντρόφου γεγονότος, πάνυ χρηστικὴν εἶχε καὶ πρὸς ἰσχὺν καὶ πρὸς ὑγίειαν ὁμαλῶς συνεστῶσαν. τὸν δὲ λόγον ὥσπερ δεύτερον σῶμα καὶ τῶν καλῶν μονονοὺκ ἀναγκαῖον ὄργανον ἀνδρὶ μὴ ταπεινῶς βιωσομένῳ μηδ’ ἀπράκτως ἐξηρτύετο καὶ παρεσκεύαζεν, ἐν ταῖς περιοικίσι κώμαις καὶ τοῖς πολιχνίοις ἑκάστοτε συνδικῶν τοῖς δεομένοις καὶ πρῶτον ἀγωνιστὴς εἶναι δοκῶν πρόθυμος, εἶτα καὶ ῥήτωρ ἱκανός.

[6] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου μᾶλλον τοῖς χρωμένοις κατεφαίνετο βάρος τι καὶ φρόνημα περὶ αὐτὸν ἤθους, πραγμάτων μεγάλων [7] καὶ πολιτείας δεόμενον ἡγεμονικῆς. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ὡς ἔοικε μισθαρνίας καθαρὸν αὑτὸν ἐπὶ τὰς δίκας καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας παρεῖχεν, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τὴν δόξαν ὡς μέγιστον ἀγαπῶν ἐφαίνετο τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν τοιούτων ἀγώνων, πολὺ δὲ μᾶλλον ἐν ταῖς μάχαις ταῖς πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ ταῖς στρατείαις βουλόμενος εὐδοκιμεῖν, ἔτι μειράκιον ὢν [8] τραυμάτων τὸ σῶμα μεστὸν ἐναντίων εἶχε. φησὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς (fr. 188 M.²) ἑπτακαίδεκα γεγονὼς ἔτη τὴν πρώτην στρατεύσασθαι στρατείαν, περὶ ὃν Ἀννίβας χρόνον εὐτυχῶν ἐπέφλεγε τὴν Ἰταλίαν. παρεῖχε δ’ αὑτὸν ἐν ταῖς μάχαις τῇ μὲν χειρὶ πλήκτην, τῷ δὲ ποδὶ μόνιμον καὶ βέβαιον, γαῦρον δὲ τῷ προσώπῳ· λόγου δ’ ἀπειλῇ καὶ τραχύτητι φωνῆς πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ἐχρῆτο, ὀρθῶς καὶ διανοούμενος καὶ διδάσκων ὅτι πολλάκις τὰ τοιαῦτα τοῦ ξίφους [9] μᾶλλον καταπλήττεται τὸν ἐναντίον. ἐν δὲ ταῖς πορείαις αὐτὸς ἐβάδιζε φέρων τὰ ὅπλα, καὶ θεράπων εἷς εἵπετο τὰ πρὸς τὴν δίαιταν αὐτῷ κομίζων, ᾧ λέγεται μηδέποτε δυσκολᾶναι μηδὲ μέμψασθαι παραθέντος ἄριστον ἢ δεῖπνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ συλλαμβάνειν αὐτὸς τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ συμπαρασκευάζειν ἀπὸ τῶν στρατιωτικῶν γενόμενος ἔργων. [10] ὕδωρ δ’ ἔπινεν ἐπὶ στρατείας, πλὴν εἴποτε διψήσας περιφλεγῶς ὄξος αἰτήσειεν ἢ τῆς ἰσχύος ἐνδιδούσης ἐπιλάβοι μικρὸν οἰνάριον.

[2] [1] Ἦν δὲ πλησίον αὐτοῦ τῶν ἀγρῶν ἡ γενομένη Μανίου Κουρίου τοῦ τρὶς θριαμβεύσαντος ἔπαυλις. ἐπὶ ταύτην συνεχῶς βαδίζων καὶ θεώμενος τοῦ τε χωρίου τὴν μικρότητα καὶ τῆς οἰκήσεως τὸ λιτόν, ἔννοιαν ἐλάμβανε τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὅτι Ῥωμαίων μέγιστος γενόμενος καὶ τὰ μαχιμώτατα τῶν ἐθνῶν ὑπαγαγόμενος καὶ Πύρρον ἐξελάσας Ἰταλίας, τοῦτο τὸ χωρίδιον αὐτὸς ἔσκαπτε καὶ [2] ταύτην τὴν ἔπαυλιν ᾤκει μετὰ τρεῖς θριάμβους, ‹καὶ› ἐνταῦθα πρὸς ἐσχάρᾳ καθήμενον αὐτὸν ἕψοντα γογγυλίδας εὑρόντες οἱ Σαυνιτῶν πρέσβεις ἐδίδοσαν πολὺ χρυσίον, ὁ δ’ ἀπέπεμψε φήσας οὐδὲν χρυσίου δεῖν ᾧ δεῖπνον ἀρκεῖ τοιοῦτον, αὐτῷ μέντοι τοῦ χρυσίον ἔχειν κάλλιον [3] εἶναι τὸ νικᾶν τοὺς ἔχοντας. ταῦθ’ ὁ Κάτων ἐνθυμούμενος ἀπῄει, καὶ τὸν αὑτοῦ πάλιν οἶκον ἐφορῶν καὶ χωρία καὶ θεράποντας καὶ δίαιταν, ἐπέτεινε τὴν αὐτουργίαν καὶ περιέκοπτε τὴν πολυτέλειαν.

Φαβίου δὲ Μαξίμου τὴν Ταραντίνων πόλιν ἑλόντος, ἔτυχε μὲν ὁ Κάτων στρατευόμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῷ κομιδῇ μειράκιον ὤν, Νεάρχῳ δέ τινι τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν ξένῳ [4] χρησάμενος, ἐσπούδασε τῶν λόγων μεταλαβεῖν. ἀκούσας δὲ ταῦτα διαλεγομένου τοῦ ἀνδρὸς οἷς καὶ Πλάτων (Tim. 69d) κέχρηται, τὴν μὲν ἡδονὴν ἀποκαλῶν μέγιστον κακοῦ δέλεαρ, συμφορὰν δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ τὸ σῶμα πρώτην, λύσιν δὲ καὶ καθαρμὸν οἷς μάλιστα χωρίζει καὶ ἀφίστησιν αὑτὴν τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα παθημάτων λογισμοῖς, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἠγάπησε τὸ λιτὸν καὶ τὴν ἐγκράτειαν.

[5] ἄλλως δὲ παιδείας Ἑλληνικῆς ὀψιμαθὴς λέγεται γενέσθαι, καὶ πόρρω παντάπασιν ἡλικίας ἐληλακὼς Ἑλληνικὰ βιβλία λαβὼν εἰς χεῖρας, βραχέα μὲν ἀπὸ Θουκυδίδου, πλείονα δ’ ἀπὸ Δημοσθένους εἰς τὸ ῥητορικὸν [6] ὠφεληθῆναι. τὰ μέντοι συγγράμματα καὶ δόγμασιν Ἑλληνικοῖς καὶ ἱστορίαις ἐπιεικῶς διαπεποίκιλται, καὶ μεθηρμηνευμένα πολλὰ κατὰ λέξιν ἐν τοῖς ἀποφθέγμασι καὶ ταῖς γνωμολογίαις τέτακται.

[3] [1] Ἦν δέ τις ἀνὴρ εὐπατρίδης μὲν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα Ῥωμαίων καὶ δυνατός, ἀρετὴν δὲ φυομένην μὲν αἰσθάνεσθαι δεινός, εὐμενὴς δὲ καὶ θρέψαι καὶ προαγαγεῖν [2] εἰς δόξαν, Οὐαλέριος Φλάκκος. οὗτος εἶχεν ὁμοροῦντα χωρία τοῖς Κάτωνος, πυνθανόμενος δὲ τὴν αὐτουργίαν καὶ δίαιταν αὐτοῦ παρὰ τῶν οἰκετῶν καὶ θαυμάσας ἐξηγουμένων ὅτι πρωὶ μὲν εἰς ἀγορὰν βαδίζει καὶ παρίσταται τοῖς δεομένοις, ἐπανελθὼν δ’ εἰς τὸ χωρίον, ἂν μὲν ᾖ χειμὼν ἐξωμίδα λαβών, θέρους δὲ γυμνὸς ἐργασάμενος μετὰ τῶν οἰκετῶν ἐσθίει τὸν αὐτὸν ἄρτον ὁμοῦ καθήμενος καὶ πίνει τὸν αὐτὸν οἶνον, ἄλλην τε πολλὴν ἐπιείκειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ μετριότητα καί τινας καὶ λόγους ἀποφθεγματικοὺς διαμνημονευόντων, ἐκέλευσε κληθῆναι [3] πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον. ἐκ δὲ τούτου χρώμενος καὶ κατανοῶν ἥμερον καὶ ἀστεῖον ἦθος, ὥσπερ φυτὸν ἀσκήσεως καὶ χώρας ἐπιφανοῦς δεόμενον, προετρέψατο καὶ συνέπεισεν ἅψασθαι τῆς ἐν Ῥώμῃ πολιτείας. κατελθὼν οὖν εὐθὺς τοὺς μὲν αὐτὸς ἐκτᾶτο θαυμαστὰς καὶ φίλους διὰ τῶν συνηγοριῶν, πολλὴν δὲ τοῦ Οὐαλερίου τιμήν τε καὶ δύναμιν αὐτῷ προστιθέντος, χιλιαρχίας ἔτυχε πρῶτον, εἶτ’ [4] ἐταμίευσεν. ἐκ τούτου δὲ λαμπρὸς ὢν ἤδη καὶ περιφανής, αὐτῷ τῷ Οὐαλερίῳ πρὸς τὰς μεγίστας συνεξέδραμεν ἀρχάς, ὕπατός τε μετ’ ἐκείνου καὶ πάλιν τιμητὴς γενόμενος. Τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων πολιτῶν Μαξίμῳ Φαβίῳ προσένειμεν ἑαυτόν, ἐνδοξοτάτῳ μὲν ὄντι καὶ μεγίστην ἔχοντι δύναμιν, μᾶλλον δὲ τὸν τρόπον αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν βίον ὡς [5] κάλλιστα παραδείγματα προθέμενος. διὸ καὶ Σκιπίωνι τῷ μεγάλῳ, νέῳ μὲν ὄντι τότε, πρὸς δὲ τὴν Φαβίου δύναμιν ἀνταίροντι καὶ φθονεῖσθαι δοκοῦντι, παρ’ οὐδὲν ἐποιήσατο γενέσθαι διάφορος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ταμίας αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν ἐν Λιβύῃ συνεκπεμφθεὶς πόλεμον, ὡς ἑώρα τῇ συνήθει πολυτελείᾳ χρώμενον τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ καταχορηγοῦντα τοῖς στρατεύμασιν ἀφειδῶς τῶν χρημάτων, ἐπαρρησιάζετο πρὸς αὐτόν, οὐ τὸ τῆς δαπάνης μέγιστον εἶναι φάσκων, ἀλλ’ ὅτι διαφθείρει τὴν πάτριον εὐτέλειαν τῶν στρατιωτῶν, εἰς ἡδονὰς καὶ τρυφὰς τῷ περιόντι τῆς [6] χρείας τρεπομένων. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ Σκιπίωνος ὡς οὐδὲν δέοιτο ταμίου λίαν ἀκριβοῦς πλησίστιος ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον φερόμενος, πράξεων γάρ, οὐ χρημάτων, τῇ πόλει λόγον ὀφείλειν, ἀπῆλθεν ὁ Κάτων ἐκ Σικελίας, καὶ μετὰ τοῦ Φαβίου καταβοῶν ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ φθοράν τε χρημάτων ἀμύθητον ὑπὸ τοῦ Σκιπίωνος καὶ διατριβὰς αὐτοῦ μειρακιώδεις ἐν παλαίστραις καὶ θεάτροις, ὥσπερ οὐ στρατηγοῦντος, ἀλλὰ πανηγυρίζοντος, ἐξειργάσατο πεμφθῆναι δημάρχους ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἄξοντας εἰς Ῥώμην, ἄνπερ [7] ἀληθεῖς αἱ κατηγορίαι φανῶσιν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Σκιπίων ἐν τῇ παρασκευῇ τοῦ πολέμου τὴν νίκην ἐπιδειξάμενος, καὶ φανεὶς ἡδὺς μὲν ἐπὶ σχολῆς συνεῖναι φίλοις, οὐδαμῇ δὲ τῷ φιλανθρώπῳ τῆς διαίτης εἰς τὰ σπουδαῖα καὶ μεγάλα ῥᾴθυμος, ἐξέπλευσεν ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον.

[4] [1] Τῷ δὲ Κάτωνι πολλὴ μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ λόγου δύναμις ηὔξητο, καὶ Ῥωμαῖον αὐτὸν οἱ πολλοὶ Δημοσθένη προσηγόρευον, ὁ δὲ βίος μᾶλλον ὀνομαστὸς ἦν αὐτοῦ καὶ [2] περιβόητος. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἐν τῷ λέγειν δεινότης προέκειτο τοῖς νέοις ἀγώνισμα κοινὸν ἤδη καὶ περισπούδαστον, ὁ δὲ τὴν πάτριον αὐτουργίαν ὑπομένων καὶ δεῖπνον ἀφελὲς καὶ ἄριστον ἄπυρον καὶ λιτὴν ἐσθῆτα καὶ δημοτικὴν ἀσπαζόμενος οἴκησιν καὶ τὸ μὴ δεῖσθαι τῶν περιττῶν μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ κεκτῆσθαι θαυμάζων σπάνιος ἦν, ἤδη τότε τῆς πολιτείας τὸ καθαρὸν ὑπὸ μεγέθους οὐ φυλαττούσης, ἀλλὰ τῷ κρατεῖν πραγμάτων πολλῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων πρὸς πολλὰ μειγνυμένης ἔθη καὶ βίων παραδείγματα [3] παντοδαπῶν ὑποδεχομένης. εἰκότως οὖν ἐθαύμαζον τὸν Κάτωνα, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ὑπὸ τῶν πόνων θραυομένους καὶ μαλασσομένους ὑπὸ τῶν ἡδονῶν ὁρῶντες, ἐκεῖνον δ’ ὑπ’ ἀμφοῖν ἀήττητον, οὐ μόνον ἕως ἔτι νέος καὶ φιλότιμος ἦν, ἀλλὰ καὶ γέροντα πολὺν ἤδη μεθ’ ὑπατείαν καὶ θρίαμβον, ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴν νικηφόρον, ἐγκαρτεροῦντα τῇ τάξει τῆς ἀσκήσεως καὶ διομαλίζοντα μέχρι τῆς τελευτῆς.

[4] ἐσθῆτα μὲν γὰρ οὐδέποτέ φησι (fr. 72 M.²) φορέσαι πολυτελεστέραν ἑκατὸν δραχμῶν, πιεῖν δὲ καὶ στρατηγῶν καὶ ὑπατεύων τὸν αὐτὸν οἶνον τοῖς ἐργάταις, ὄψον δὲ παρασκευάζεσθαι πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς ἀσσαρίων τριάκοντα, καὶ τοῦτο διὰ τὴν πόλιν, ὅπως ἰσχύοι τὸ [5] σῶμα πρὸς τὰς στρατείας, ἐπίβλημα δὲ τῶν ποικίλων Βαβυλώνιον ἐκ κληρονομίας κτησάμενος εὐθὺς ἀποδόσθαι, τῶν δ’ ἐπαύλεων αὐτοῦ μηδεμίαν εἶναι κεκονιαμένην, οὐδένα δὲ πώποτε πρίασθαι δοῦλον ὑπὲρ τὰς χιλίας δραχμὰς καὶ πεντακοσίας, ὡς ἂν οὐ τρυφερῶν οὐδ’ ὡραίων, ἐργατικῶν δὲ καὶ στερεῶν οἷον ἱπποκόμων καὶ βοηλατῶν δεόμενος· καὶ τούτους δὲ πρεσβυτέρους γενομένους ᾤετο δεῖν ἀποδίδοσθαι καὶ μὴ βόσκειν ἀχρήστους.

[6] ὅλως δὲ μηδὲν εὔωνον εἶναι τῶν περιττῶν, ἀλλ’ οὗ τις οὐ δεῖται, κἂν ἀσσαρίου πιπράσκηται, πολλοῦ νομίζειν· κτᾶσθαι δὲ τὰ σπειρόμενα καὶ νεμόμενα μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ ῥαινόμενα καὶ σαιρόμενα.

[5] [1] Ταῦτα δ’ οἱ μὲν εἰς μικρολογίαν ἐτίθεντο τοῦ ἀνδρός, οἱ δ’ ὡς ἐπὶ διορθώσει καὶ σωφρονισμῷ τῶν ἄλλων ἐνδοτέρω συστέλλοντος ἑαυτὸν ἀπεδέχοντο. πλὴν τὸ τοῖς οἰκέταις ὡς ὑποζυγίοις ἀποχρησάμενον ἐπὶ γήρως ἐξελαύνειν καὶ πιπράσκειν ἀτενοῦς ἄγαν ἤθους ἔγωγε τίθεμαι, καὶ μηδὲν ἀνθρώπῳ πρὸς ἄνθρωπον οἰομένου κοινώνημα [2] τῆς χρείας πλέον ὑπάρχειν. καίτοι τὴν χρηστότητα τῆς δικαιοσύνης πλατύτερον τόπον ὁρῶμεν ἐπιλαμβάνουσαν· νόμῳ μὲν γὰρ καὶ τῷ δικαίῳ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους μόνον χρῆσθαι πεφύκαμεν, πρὸς εὐεργεσίας δὲ καὶ χάριτας ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ μέχρι τῶν ἀλόγων ζῴων ὥσπερ ἐκ πηγῆς πλουσίας ἀπορρεῖ τῆς ἡμερότητος. καὶ γὰρ ἵππων ἀπειρηκότων ὑπὸ χρόνου τροφαὶ καὶ κυνῶν οὐ σκυλακεῖαι μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ γηροκομίαι τῷ χρηστῷ προσήκουσιν.

[3] ὁ δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων δῆμος οἰκοδομῶν τὸν Ἑκατόμπεδον, ὅσας κατενόησεν ἡμιόνους μάλιστα τοῖς πόνοις ἐγκαρτερούσας, ἀπέλυσεν ἐλευθέρας νέμεσθαι καὶ ἀφέτους, ὧν μίαν φασὶ καταβαίνουσαν ἀφ’ ἑαυτῆς πρὸς τὰ ἔργα τοῖς ἀνάγουσι τὰς ἁμάξας ὑποζυγίοις εἰς ἀκρόπολιν συμπαρατρέχειν καὶ προηγεῖσθαι καθάπερ ἐγκελευομένην καὶ συνεξορμῶσαν, ἣν καὶ τρέφεσθαι δημοσίᾳ μέχρι τελευτῆς [4] ἐψηφίσαντο. τῶν δὲ Κίμωνος ἵππων αἷς Ὀλύμπια τρὶς ἐνίκησε καὶ ταφαὶ πλησίον εἰσὶ τῶν ἐκείνου μνημάτων. κύνας δὲ συντρόφους γενομένους καὶ συνήθεις ἄλλοι τε πολλοὶ καὶ Ξάνθιππος ὁ παλαιὸς τὸν εἰς Σαλαμῖνα τῇ τριήρει παρανηξάμενον, ὅτε τὴν πόλιν ὁ δῆμος ἐξέλιπεν, ἐπὶ τῆς ἄκρας ἐκήδευσεν ἣν Κυνὸς σῆμα μέχρι [5] νῦν καλοῦσιν. οὐ γὰρ ὡς ὑποδήμασιν ἢ σκεύεσι τοῖς ψυχὴν ἔχουσι χρηστέον, κοπέντα καὶ κατατριβέντα ταῖς ὑπηρεσίαις ἀπορρίπτοντας, ἀλλ’ εἰ διὰ μηδὲν ἄλλο μελέτης οὕνεκα τοῦ φιλανθρώπου προεθιστέον ἑαυτὸν ἐν [6] τούτοις πρᾷον εἶναι καὶ μείλιχον. ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν οὐδὲ βοῦν ἂν ἐργάτην διὰ γῆρας ἀποδοίμην, μή τί γε πρεσβύτερον ἄνθρωπον, ἐκ χώρας συντρόφου καὶ διαίτης συνήθους ὥσπερ ἐκ πατρίδος μεθιστάμενον ἀντὶ κερμάτων μικρῶν, ἄχρηστόν γε τοῖς ὠνουμένοις ὥσπερ τοῖς πιπράσκουσι [7] γενησόμενον. ὁ δὲ Κάτων, ὥσπερ νεανιευόμενος ἐπὶ τούτοις, καὶ τὸν ἵππον ᾧ παρὰ τὰς στρατείας ὑπατεύων ἐχρῆτο φησὶν (fr. 54 M.²) ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ καταλιπεῖν, ἵνα μὴ τῇ πόλει λογίσηται τὸ ναῦλον αὐτοῦ. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν εἴτε μεγαλοψυχίας εἴτε μικρολογίας θετέον, ἔξεστι τῷ πείθοντι χρῆσθαι λογισμῷ.

[6] [1] Τῆς δ’ ἄλλης ἐγκρατείας ὑπερφυῶς θαυμαστὸς ὁ ἀνήρ, ὅστις στρατηγῶν ἐλάμβανεν ἑαυτῷ καὶ τοῖς περὶ αὑτὸν οὐ πλέον εἰς τὸν μῆνα πυρῶν ἢ τρεῖς Ἀττικοὺς μεδίμνους, εἰς δὲ τὴν ἡμέραν κριθῶν τοῖς ὑποζυγίοις [2] ἔλαττον τριῶν ἡμιμεδίμνων. ἐπαρχίαν δὲ λαβὼν Σαρδόνα, τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ στρατηγῶν εἰωθότων χρῆσθαι καὶ σκηνώμασι δημοσίοις καὶ κλίναις καὶ ἱματίοις, πολλῇ δὲ θεραπείᾳ καὶ φίλων πλήθει καὶ περὶ δεῖπνα δαπάναις καὶ παρασκευαῖς βαρυνόντων, ἐκεῖνος ἄπιστον ἐποίησε [3] τὴν διαφορὰν τῆς εὐτελείας. δαπάνης μὲν γὰρ εἰς οὐδὲν οὐδεμιᾶς προσεδεήθη δημοσίας, ἐπεφοίτα δὲ ταῖς πόλεσιν αὐτὸς μὲν ἄνευ ζεύγους πορευόμενος, εἷς δ’ ἠκολούθει δημόσιος, ἐσθῆτα καὶ σπονδεῖον αὐτῷ πρὸς ἱερουργίαν [4] κομίζων. ἐν δὲ τούτοις οὕτως εὔκολος καὶ ἀφελὴς τοῖς ὑπὸ χεῖρα φαινόμενος, αὖθις ἀνταπεδίδου τὴν σεμνότητα καὶ τὸ βάρος, ἀπαραίτητος ὢν ἐν τῷ δικαίῳ καὶ τοῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς ἡγεμονίας προστάγμασιν ὄρθιος καὶ αὐθέκαστος, ὥστε μηδέποτε τὴν Ῥωμαίων ἀρχὴν ἐκείνοις μήτε φοβερωτέραν μήτε προσφιλεστέραν γενέσθαι.

[7] [1] Τοιαύτην δέ τινα φαίνεται καὶ ὁ λόγος τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἰδέαν ἔχειν· εὔχαρις γὰρ ἅμα καὶ δεινὸς ἦν, ἡδὺς καὶ καταπληκτικός, φιλοσκώμμων καὶ αὐστηρός, ἀποφθεγματικὸς καὶ ἀγωνιστικός, ὥσπερ ὁ Πλάτων (Symp. 215a) τὸν Σωκράτη φησὶν ἔξωθεν ἰδιώτην καὶ σατυρικὸν καὶ ὑβριστὴν τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι φαινόμενον, ἔνδοθεν σπουδῆς καὶ πραγμάτων μεστὸν εἶναι δάκρυα κινούντων [2] τοῖς ἀκροωμένοις καὶ τὴν καρδίαν στρεφόντων. ὅθεν οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅτι πεπόνθασιν οἱ τῷ Λυσίου λόγῳ τὰ μάλιστα [3] προσεοικέναι φάμενοι τὸν Κάτωνος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν οἷς μᾶλλον ἰδέας λόγων Ῥωμαϊκῶν αἰσθάνεσθαι προσήκει διακρινοῦσιν, ἡμεῖς δὲ τῶν ἀπομνημονευομένων βραχέα γράψομεν, οἳ τῷ λόγῳ πολὺ μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ προσώπῳ, καθάπερ ἔνιοι νομίζουσι, τῶν ἀνθρώπων φαμὲν ἐμφαίνεσθαι τὸ ἦθος.

[8] [1] Μέλλων ποτὲ τὸν Ῥωμαίων δῆμον ὡρμημένον ἀκαίρως ἐπὶ σιτομετρίας καὶ διανομὰς ἀποτρέπειν, ἤρξατο τῶν λόγων οὕτως· ‘χαλεπὸν μέν ἐστιν ὦ πολῖται πρὸς γαστέρα λέγειν ὦτα οὐκ ἔχουσαν.’

[2] Κατηγορῶν δὲ τῆς πολυτελείας ἔφη χαλεπὸν εἶναι σωθῆναι πόλιν ἐν ᾗ πωλεῖται πλείονος ἰχθὺς ἢ βοῦς.

[3] Ἐοικέναι δὲ προβάτοις ἔφη τοὺς Ῥωμαίους· ὡς γὰρ ἐκεῖνα καθ’ ἕκαστον μὲν οὐ πείθεται, σύμπαντα δ’ ἕπεται μετ’ ἀλλήλων τοῖς ἄγουσιν, ‘οὕτω καὶ ὑμεῖς’ εἶπεν ‘οἷς οὐκ ἂν ἀξιώσαιτε συμβούλοις χρῆσθαι κατ’ ἰδίαν, ὑπὸ τούτων εἰς ἓν συνελθόντες ἄγεσθε.’

[4] Περὶ δὲ τῆς γυναικοκρατίας διαλεγόμενος ‘πάντες’ εἶπεν ‘ἄνθρωποι τῶν γυναικῶν ἄρχουσιν, ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντων ἀνθρώπων, ἡμῶν δ’ αἱ γυναῖκες.’ τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ἐστιν ἐκ τῶν Θεμιστοκλέους μετενηνεγμένον ἀποφθεγμάτων.

[5] ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ἐπιτάττοντος αὐτῷ πολλὰ τοῦ υἱοῦ διὰ τῆς μητρός, ‘ὦ γύναι’ εἶπεν, ‘Ἀθηναῖοι μὲν ἄρχουσι τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ἐγὼ δ’ Ἀθηναίων, ἐμοῦ δὲ σύ, σοῦ δ’ ὁ υἱός, ὥστε φειδέσθω τῆς ἐξουσίας, δι’ ἣν ἀνόητος ὢν πλεῖστον Ἑλλήνων δύναται.’

[6] Τὸν δὲ δῆμον ὁ Κάτων ἔφη τῶν Ῥωμαίων οὐ μόνον ταῖς πορφύραις, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἐπιτηδεύμασι τὰς τιμὰς ἐπιγράφειν. ‘ὡς γὰρ οἱ βαφεῖς’ ἔφη ‘ταύτην μάλιστα βάπτουσιν ᾗ χαίροντας ὁρῶσιν, οὕτως οἱ νέοι ταῦτα μανθάνουσι καὶ ζηλοῦσιν οἷς ἂν ὁ παρ’ ὑμῶν ἔπαινος ἕπηται.’

[7] Παρεκάλει δ’ αὐτούς, εἰ μὲν ἀρετῇ καὶ σωφροσύνῃ γεγόνασι μεγάλοι, μὴ μεταβάλλεσθαι πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον, εἰ δ’ ἀκρασίᾳ καὶ κακίᾳ, μεταβάλλεσθαι πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον· ἱκανῶς γὰρ ἤδη μεγάλους ἀπ’ ἐκείνων γεγονέναι.

[8] Τοὺς δὲ πολλάκις ἄρχειν σπουδάζοντας ἔφη καθάπερ ἀγνοοῦντας τὴν ὁδὸν ἀεὶ μετὰ ῥαβδούχων ζητεῖν πορεύεσθαι, μὴ πλανηθῶσιν. ἐπετίμα δὲ τοῖς πολίταις τοὺς [9] αὐτοὺς αἱρουμένοις πολλάκις ἄρχοντας. ‘δόξετε γάρ’ ἔφη ‘ἢ μὴ πολλοῦ τὸ ἄρχειν ἄξιον ἢ μὴ πολλοὺς τοῦ ἄρχειν ἀξίους ἡγεῖσθαι.’

[10] Περὶ δὲ τῶν ἐχθρῶν τινος αἰσχρῶς καὶ ἀδόξως βιοῦν δοκοῦντος ‘ἡ τούτου μήτηρ’ ἔφη ‘κατάραν, οὐκ εὐχήν, [11] ἡγεῖται τὸ τοῦτον ὑπὲρ γῆς ἀπολιπεῖν.’ τὸν δὲ πεπρακότα τοὺς πατρῴους ἀγροὺς παραλίους ὄντας ἐπιδεικνύμενος προσεποιεῖτο θαυμάζειν ὡς ἰσχυρότερον τῆς θαλάττης· ‘ἃ γὰρ ἐκείνη μόλις ἔκλυζεν, οὗτος’ ἔφη ‘ῥᾳδίως καταπέπωκεν.’

[12] Ἐπεὶ δ’ Εὐμένους τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπιδημήσαντος εἰς Ῥώμην ἥ τε σύγκλητος ὑπερφυῶς ἀπεδέξατο καὶ τῶν πρώτων ἅμιλλα καὶ σπουδὴ περὶ αὐτὸν ἐγίνετο, δῆλος [13] ἦν ὁ Κάτων ὑφορώμενος καὶ φυλαττόμενος αὐτόν. εἰπόντος δέ τινος ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν χρηστός ἐστι καὶ φιλορώμαιος’, ‘ἔστω’ εἶπεν, ‘ἀλλὰ φύσει τοῦτο τὸ ζῷον [ὁ βασιλεὺς] [14] σαρκοφάγον ἐστίν.’ οὐδένα δὲ τῶν εὐδαιμονιζομένων ἔφη βασιλέων ἄξιον εἶναι παραβάλλειν πρὸς Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ἢ Περικλέα ἢ Θεμιστοκλέα ἢ Μάνιον Κούριον ἢ Ἀμίλκαν τὸν ἐπικληθέντα Βάρκαν.

[15] Αὑτῷ δ’ ἔλεγε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς φθονεῖν, ὅτι καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐκ νυκτὸς ἀνίσταται καὶ τῶν ἰδίων ἀμελῶν τοῖς δημοσίοις [16] σχολάζει. βούλεσθαι δ’ ἔλεγε μᾶλλον εὖ πράξας [17] ἀποστερηθῆναι χάριν ἢ κακῶς μὴ τυχεῖν κολάσεως, καὶ συγγνώμην ἔφη διδόναι πᾶσι τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι πλὴν αὑτοῦ.

[9] [1] Τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων εἰς Βιθυνίαν τρεῖς ἑλομένων πρέσβεις, ὧν ὁ μὲν ποδαγρικὸς ἦν, ὁ δὲ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐξ ἀνατρήσεως καὶ περικοπῆς κοίλην εἶχεν, ὁ δὲ τρίτος ἐδόκει μωρὸς εἶναι, καταγελῶν ὁ Κάτων ἔλεγε πρεσβείαν ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ἀποστέλλεσθαι μήτε πόδας μήτε κεφαλὴν μήτε καρδίαν ἔχουσαν.

[2] Ὑπὲρ δὲ τῶν ἐξ Ἀχαΐας φυγάδων ἐντευχθεὶς διὰ Πολύβιον ὑπὸ Σκιπίωνος, ὡς πολὺς ἐν τῇ συγκλήτῳ λόγος ἐγίνετο, τῶν μὲν διδόντων κάθοδον αὐτοῖς, τῶν δ’ ἐνισταμένων, ἀναστὰς ὁ Κάτων ‘ὥσπερ οὐκ ἔχοντες’ εἶπεν (fr. 189 M.²) ‘ὃ πράττωμεν, καθήμεθα τὴν ἡμέραν ὅλην περὶ γεροντίων Γραικῶν ζητοῦντες, πότερον ὑπὸ τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν ἢ [3] τῶν ἐν Ἀχαΐᾳ νεκροφόρων ἐκκομισθῶσι.’ ψηφισθείσης δὲ τῆς καθόδου τοῖς ἀνδράσιν, ἡμέρας ὀλίγας οἱ περὶ τὸν Πολύβιον διαλιπόντες, αὖθις ἐπεχείρουν εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον εἰσελθεῖν, ὅπως ἃς πρότερον εἶχον ἐν Ἀχαΐᾳ τιμὰς οἱ φυγάδες ἀναλάβοιεν, καὶ τοῦ Κάτωνος ἀπεπειρῶντο τῆς γνώμης. ὁ δὲ μειδιάσας ἔφη τὸν Πολύβιον ὥσπερ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα βούλεσθαι πάλιν εἰς τὸ τοῦ Κύκλωπος σπήλαιον εἰσελθεῖν, τὸ πιλίον ἐκεῖ καὶ τὴν ζώνην ἐπιλελησμένον.

[4] Τοὺς δὲ φρονίμους ἔλεγε μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀφρόνων ἢ τοὺς ἄφρονας ὑπὸ τῶν φρονίμων ὠφελεῖσθαι· τούτους μὲν γὰρ φυλάττεσθαι τὰς ἐκείνων ἁμαρτίας, ἐκείνους δὲ τὰς τούτων μὴ μιμεῖσθαι κατορθώσεις.

[5] Τῶν δὲ νέων ἔφη χαίρειν τοῖς ἐρυθριῶσι μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ὠχριῶσι, στρατιώτου δὲ μὴ δεῖσθαι τὰς μὲν χεῖρας ἐν τῷ βαδίζειν, τοὺς δὲ πόδας ἐν τῷ μάχεσθαι κινοῦντος, μεῖζον δὲ ῥέγχοντος ἢ ἀλαλάζοντος.

[6] Τὸν δ’ ὑπέρπαχυν κακίζων ‘ποῦ δ’ ἄν’ ἔφη ‘τῇ πόλει σῶμα τοιοῦτο γένοιτο χρήσιμον, οὗ τὸ μεταξὺ λαιμοῦ καὶ βουβώνων ἅπαν ὑπὸ τῆς γαστρὸς κατέχεται;’

[7] Τῶν δὲ φιληδόνων τινὰ βουλόμενον αὐτῷ συνεῖναι παραιτούμενος, ἔφη μὴ δύνασθαι ζῆν μετ’ ἀνθρώπου τῆς καρδίας τὴν ὑπερῴαν εὐαισθητοτέραν ἔχοντος.

[8] Τοῦ δ’ ἐρῶντος ἔλεγε τὴν ψυχὴν ἐν ἀλλοτρίῳ σώματι ζῆν.

[9] Μεταμεληθῆναι δ’ αὐτὸς ἐν παντὶ τῷ βίῳ τρεῖς μεταμελείας· μίαν μὲν ἐπὶ τῷ γυναικὶ πιστεῦσαι λόγον ἀπόρρητον, ἑτέραν δὲ πλεύσας ὅπου δυνατὸν ἦν πεζεῦσαι, τὴν δὲ τρίτην ὅτι μίαν ἡμέραν ἀδιάθετος ἔμεινε.

[10] Πρὸς δὲ πρεσβύτην πονηρευόμενον ‘ἄνθρωπε’ εἶπε, ‘πολλὰ ἔχοντι τῷ γήρᾳ τὰ αἰσχρὰ μὴ προστίθει τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς κακίας αἰσχύνην.’

[11] Πρὸς δὲ δήμαρχον ἐν διαβολῇ μὲν φαρμακείας γενόμενον, φαῦλον δὲ νόμον εἰσφέροντα καὶ βιαζόμενον, ‘ὦ μειράκιον’ εἶπεν, ‘οὐκ οἶδα, πότερον χεῖρόν ἐστιν ὃ κίρνης πιεῖν ἢ ὃ γράφεις κυρῶσαι.’

[12] Βλασφημούμενος δ’ ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπου βεβιωκότος ἀσελγῶς καὶ κακῶς, ‘ἄνισος’ εἶπεν ‘ἡ πρὸς σέ μοι μάχη ἐστί· καὶ γὰρ ἀκούεις τὰ κακὰ ῥᾳδίως καὶ λέγεις εὐχερῶς, ἐμοὶ δὲ καὶ λέγειν ἀηδὲς καὶ ἀκούειν [ἄηθες].’ τὸ μὲν οὖν τῶν ἀπομνημονευμάτων γένος τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν.

[10] [1] Ὕπατος δὲ μετὰ Φλάκκου Οὐαλερίου τοῦ φίλου καὶ συνήθους ἀποδειχθείς, ἔλαχε τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν ἣν Ἐντὸς Ἱσπανίαν Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν. ἐνταῦθα δ’ αὐτῷ τὰ μὲν καταστρεφομένῳ τῶν ἐθνῶν, τὰ δ’ οἰκειουμένῳ διὰ λόγων, πολλὴ στρατιὰ τῶν βαρβάρων ἐπέπεσε, καὶ κίνδυνος ἦν αἰσχρῶς ἐκβιασθῆναι· διὸ τῶν ἐγγὺς Κελτιβήρων [2] ἐπεκαλεῖτο συμμαχίαν. αἰτούντων δ’ ἐκείνων τῆς βοηθείας διακόσια τάλαντα μισθόν, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι πάντες οὐκ ἀνασχετὸν ἐποιοῦντο Ῥωμαίους βαρβάροις ἐπικουρίας ὁμολογῆσαι μισθόν, ὁ δὲ Κάτων οὐδὲν ἔφη δεινὸν εἶναι· νικῶντας μὲν γὰρ ἀποδώσειν παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων, οὐ παρ’ αὑτῶν, ἡττωμένων δὲ μήτε τοὺς ἀπαιτουμένους [3] ἔσεσθαι μήτε τοὺς ἀπαιτοῦντας. ταύτην δὲ τὴν μάχην κατὰ κράτος ἐνίκησε, καὶ τὰ ἄλλα προὐχώρει λαμπρῶς. Πολύβιος (19, 1) μέν γέ φησι τῶν ἐντὸς Βαίτιος ποταμοῦ πόλεων ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ τὰ τείχη κελεύσαντος αὐτοῦ περιαιρεθῆναι· πάμπολλαι δ’ ἦσαν αὗται καὶ γέμουσαι μαχίμων ἀνδρῶν· αὐτὸς δέ φησιν ὁ Κάτων (HRR I 92) πλείονας εἰληφέναι πόλεις ὧν διήγαγεν ἡμερῶν ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ, καὶ τοῦτο κόμπος οὐκ ἔστιν, εἴπερ ὡς ἀληθῶς τετρακόσιαι τὸ πλῆθος ἦσαν.

[4] Τοῖς μὲν οὖν στρατιώταις πολλὰ παρὰ τὴν στρατείαν ὠφεληθεῖσιν ἔτι καὶ λίτραν ἀργυρίου κατ’ ἄνδρα προσδιένειμεν, εἰπὼν ὡς κρεῖττον εἴη πολλοὺς Ῥωμαίων ἀργύριον ἢ χρυσίον ὀλίγους ἔχοντας ἐπανελθεῖν· εἰς δ’ αὑτὸν ἐκ τῶν ἁλισκομένων οὐδὲν ἐλθεῖν λέγει πλὴν ὅσα [5] πέπωκεν ἢ βέβρωκε. ‘καὶ οὐκ αἰτιῶμαι’ φησί ‘τοὺς ὠφελεῖσθαι ζητοῦντας ἐκ τούτων, ἀλλὰ βούλομαι μᾶλλον περὶ ἀρετῆς τοῖς ἀρίστοις ἢ περὶ χρημάτων τοῖς πλουσιωτάτοις ἁμιλλᾶσθαι καὶ τοῖς φιλαργυρωτάτοις περὶ [6] φιλαργυρίας.’ οὐ μόνον δ’ αὑτόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς περὶ αὑτὸν ἐφύλαττε καθαροὺς παντὸς λήμματος. ἦσαν δὲ πέντε θεράποντες ἐπὶ στρατείας σὺν αὐτῷ. τούτων εἷς ὄνομα Πάκκιος ἠγόρασε τρία τῶν αἰχμαλώτων παιδάρια· τοῦ δὲ Κάτωνος αἰσθομένου, πρὶν εἰς ὄψιν ἐλθεῖν ἀπήγξατο. τοὺς δὲ παῖδας ὁ Κάτων ἀποδόμενος, εἰς τὸ δημόσιον ἀνήνεγκε τὴν τιμήν.

[11] [1] Ἔτι δ’ αὐτοῦ διατρίβοντος ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ, Σκιπίων ὁ μέγας, ἐχθρὸς ὢν καὶ βουλόμενος ἐνστῆναι κατορθοῦντι καὶ τὰς Ἰβηρικὰς πράξεις ὑπολαβεῖν, διεπράξατο τῆς ἐπαρχίας ἐκείνης ἀποδειχθῆναι διάδοχος. σπεύσας δ’ ὡς [2] ἐνῆν τάχιστα κατέπαυσε τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ Κάτωνος. ὁ δὲ λαβὼν σπείρας ὁπλιτῶν πέντε καὶ πεντακοσίους ἱππεῖς προπομπούς, κατεστρέψατο μὲν τὸ Λακετανῶν ἔθνος, ἑξακοσίους δὲ τῶν ηὐτομοληκότων κομισάμενος ἀπέκτεινεν· [3] ἐφ’ οἷς σχετλιάζοντα τὸν Σκιπίωνα κατειρωνευόμενος, οὕτως ἔφη τὴν Ῥώμην ἔσεσθαι μεγίστην, τῶν μὲν ἐνδόξων καὶ μεγάλων τὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς πρωτεῖα μὴ μεθιέντων τοῖς ἀσημοτέροις, τῶν δ’ ὥσπερ αὐτός ἐστι δημοτικῶν ἁμιλλωμένων ἀρετῇ πρὸς τοὺς τῷ γένει καὶ τῇ [4] δόξῃ προήκοντας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῆς συγκλήτου ψηφισαμένης μηδὲν ἀλλάττειν μηδὲ κινεῖν τῶν διῳκημένων ὑπὸ τοῦ Κάτωνος, ἡ μὲν ἀρχὴ τῷ Σκιπίωνι τῆς αὐτοῦ μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς Κάτωνος ἀφελοῦσα δόξης ἐν ἀπραξίᾳ καὶ σχολῇ μάτην διῆλθεν, ὁ δὲ Κάτων θριαμβεύσας οὐχ, ὥσπερ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν μὴ πρὸς ἀρετήν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς δόξαν ἁμιλλωμένων, ὅταν εἰς τὰς ἄκρας τιμὰς ἐξίκωνται καὶ τύχωσιν ὑπατείας καὶ θριάμβων, ἤδη τὸ λοιπὸν εἰς ἡδονὴν καὶ σχολὴν συσκευασάμενοι τὸν βίον ἐκ τῶν κοινῶν ἀπίασιν, οὕτω καὐτὸς ἐξανῆκε καὶ κατέλυσε τὴν ἀρετήν, ἀλλ’ ὅμοια τοῖς πρῶτον ἁπτομένοις πολιτείας καὶ διψῶσι τιμῆς καὶ δόξης ἀφ’ ἑτέρας ἀρχῆς συντείνας ἑαυτὸν ἐν μέσῳ παρεῖχε καὶ φίλοις χρῆσθαι καὶ πολίταις, οὔτε τὰς συνηγορίας οὔτε τὰς στρατείας ἀπειπάμενος.

[12] [1] Τιβερίῳ μὲν οὖν Σεμπρωνίῳ τὰ περὶ Θρᾴκην καὶ Ἴστρον ὑπατεύοντι πρεσβεύων συγκατειργάσατο, Μανίῳ δ’ Ἀκιλίῳ χιλιαρχῶν ἐπ’ Ἀντίοχον τὸν μέγαν συνεξῆλθεν εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα, φοβήσαντα Ῥωμαίους ὡς οὐδένα [2] ἕτερον μετ’ Ἀννίβαν. τὴν γὰρ Ἀσίαν ὅσην ὁ Νικάτωρ Σέλευκος εἶχεν ὀλίγου δεῖν ἅπασαν ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς ἀνειληφώς, ἔθνη τε πάμπολλα καὶ μάχιμα βαρβάρων ὑπήκοα πεποιημένος, ἐπῆρτο συμπεσεῖν Ῥωμαίοις ὡς [3] μόνοις ἔτι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀξιομάχοις οὖσιν. εὐπρεπῆ δὲ τοῦ πολέμου ποιησάμενος αἰτίαν τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐλευθεροῦν, οὐδὲν δεομένους, ἀλλ’ ἐλευθέρους καὶ αὐτονόμους χάριτι τῇ Ῥωμαίων ἀπὸ Φιλίππου καὶ Μακεδόνων νεωστὶ γεγονότας, διέβη μετὰ δυνάμεως, καὶ σάλον εὐθὺς ἡ Ἑλλὰς εἶχε καὶ μετέωρος ἦν, ἐλπίσι διαφθειρομένη βασιλικαῖς [4] ὑπὸ τῶν δημαγωγῶν. ἔπεμπεν οὖν πρεσβείας ὁ Μάνιος ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις, καὶ τὰ μὲν πλεῖστα τῶν νεωτεριζόντων Τίτος Φλαμινῖνος ἔσχεν ἄνευ ταραχῆς καὶ κατεπράυνεν, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γέγραπται (cap. 15), Κάτων δὲ Κορινθίους καὶ Πατρεῖς, ἔτι δ’ Αἰγιεῖς παρεστήσατο.

[5] πλεῖστον δὲ χρόνον ἐν Ἀθήναις διέτριψε, καὶ λέγεται μέν τις αὐτοῦ φέρεσθαι λόγος ὃν Ἑλληνιστὶ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον εἶπεν, ὡς ζηλῶν τε τὴν ἀρετὴν τῶν παλαιῶν Ἀθηναίων, τῆς τε πόλεως διὰ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὸ μέγεθος ἡδέως γεγονὼς θεατής· τοῦτο δ’ οὐκ ἀληθές ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἑρμηνέως ἐνέτυχε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, δυνηθεὶς ἂν αὐτὸς εἰπεῖν, ἐμμένων δὲ τοῖς πατρίοις καὶ [6] καταγελῶν τῶν τὰ Ἑλληνικὰ τεθαυμακότων. Ποστούμιον γοῦν Ἀλβῖνον ἱστορίαν Ἑλληνιστὶ γράψαντα καὶ συγγνώμην αἰτούμενον ἐπέσκωψεν, εἰπὼν δοτέον εἶναι τὴν συγγνώμην, εἰ τῶν Ἀμφικτυόνων ψηφισαμένων ἀναγκασθεὶς [7] ὑπέμεινε τὸ ἔργον. θαυμάσαι δέ φησι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους τὸ τάχος αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ὀξύτητα τῆς φράσεως· ἃ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐξέφερε βραχέως, τὸν ἑρμηνέα μακρῶς καὶ διὰ πολλῶν ἀπαγγέλλειν· τὸ δ’ ὅλον οἴεσθαι τὰ ῥήματα τοῖς μὲν Ἕλλησιν ἀπὸ χειλῶν, τοῖς δὲ Ῥωμαίοις ἀπὸ καρδίας φέρεσθαι.

[13] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀντίοχος ἐμφράξας τὰ περὶ Θερμοπύλας στενὰ τῷ στρατοπέδῳ καὶ τοῖς αὐτοφυέσι τῶν τόπων ἐρύμασι προσβαλὼν χαρακώματα καὶ διατειχίσματα, καθῆστο τὸν πόλεμον ἐκκεκλεικέναι νομίζων, τὸ μὲν κατὰ στόμα βιάζεσθαι παντάπασιν ἀπεγίνωσκον οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, τὴν δὲ Περσικὴν ἐκείνην περιήλυσιν καὶ κύκλωσιν ὁ Κάτων εἰς νοῦν βαλόμενος, ἐξώδευσε νύκτωρ, ἀναλαβὼν [2] μέρος τι τῆς στρατιᾶς. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἄνω προελθόντων ὁ καθοδηγῶν αἰχμάλωτος ἐξέπεσε τῆς ὁδοῦ καὶ πλανώμενος ἐν τόποις ἀπόροις καὶ κρημνώδεσι δεινὴν ἀθυμίαν καὶ φόβον ἐνειργάσατο τοῖς στρατιώταις, ὁρῶν ὁ Κάτων τὸν κίνδυνον ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας ἀτρεμεῖν καὶ περιμένειν, αὐτὸς δὲ Λεύκιόν τινα Μάλλιον, ἄνδρα δεινὸν ὀρειβατεῖν, παραλαβὼν ἐχώρει πολυπόνως καὶ παραβόλως ἐν ἀσελήνῳ νυκτὶ καὶ βαθείᾳ, κοτίνοις καὶ πάγοις ἀνατεταμένοις διασπάσματα πολλὰ τῆς ὄψεως καὶ ἀσάφειαν ἐχούσης, ἕως ἐμβαλόντες εἰς ἀτραπόν, ὡς ᾤοντο κάτω περαίνουσαν ἐπὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν πολεμίων, ἔθεντο σημεῖα πρός τινας εὐσκόπους κεραίας ὑπὲρ τὸ Καλλίδρομον [3] ἀνεχούσας. οὕτω δὲ πάλιν ἐπανελθόντες ὀπίσω, τὴν στρατιὰν ἀνέλαβον, καὶ πρὸς τὰ σημεῖα προάγοντες ἥψαντο μὲν ἐκείνης τῆς ἀτραποῦ καὶ κατεστήσαντο τὴν πορείαν, μικρὸν δὲ προελθοῦσιν αὐτοῖς ἐπέλιπε φάραγγος ὑπολαμβανούσης, καὶ πάλιν ἦν ἀπορία καὶ δέος, οὐκ ἐπισταμένων οὐδὲ συνορώντων ὅτι πλησίον ἐτύγχανον [4] τῶν πολεμίων γεγονότες. ἤδη δὲ διέλαμπεν ἡμέρα, καὶ φθογγῆς τις ἔδοξεν ἐπακοῦσαι, τάχα δὲ καὶ καθορᾶν Ἑλληνικὸν χάρακα καὶ προφυλακὴν ὑπὸ τὸ κρημνῶδες. οὕτως οὖν ἐπιστήσας ἐνταῦθα τὴν στρατιὰν ὁ Κάτων, ἐκέλευσεν αὐτῷ προσελθεῖν ἄνευ τῶν ἄλλων τοὺς Φιρμανούς, [5] οἷς ἀεὶ πιστοῖς ἐχρῆτο καὶ προθύμοις. συνδραμόντων δὲ καὶ περιστάντων αὐτὸν ἀθρόων, εἶπεν· ‘ἀλλ’ ἄνδρα χρῄζω λαβεῖν τῶν πολεμίων ζῶντα καὶ πυθέσθαι, τίνες οἱ προφυλάττοντες οὗτοι, καὶ πόσον πλῆθος αὐτῶν, τίς ὁ τῶν ἄλλων διάκοσμος ἢ τάξις καὶ παρασκευὴ μεθ’ ἧς ὑπομένουσιν ἡμᾶς. τὸ δ’ ἔργον ἅρπασμα δεῖ τάχους γενέσθαι καὶ τόλμης, ᾗ καὶ λέοντες ἄνοπλοι θαρροῦντες [6] ἐπὶ τὰ δειλὰ τῶν θηρίων βαδίζουσι.’ ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος τοῦ Κάτωνος, αὐτόθεν ὀρούσαντες ὥσπερ εἶχον οἱ Φιρμανοὶ κατὰ τῶν ὀρῶν ἔθεον ἐπὶ τὰς προφυλακάς, καὶ προσπεσόντες ἀπροσδόκητοι, πάντας μὲν διετάραξαν καὶ διεσκέδασαν, ἕνα δ’ αὐτοῖς ὅπλοις ἁρπάσαντες ἐνεχείρισαν [7] τῷ Κάτωνι. παρὰ τούτου μαθών, ὡς ἡ μὲν ἄλλη δύναμις ἐν τοῖς στενοῖς κάθηται μετ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ βασιλέως, οἱ δὲ φρουροῦντες οὗτοι τὰς ὑπερβολὰς Αἰτωλῶν εἰσιν ἑξακόσιοι λογάδες, καταφρονήσας τῆς ὀλιγότητος ἅμα καὶ τῆς ὀλιγωρίας, εὐθὺς ἐπῆγεν ἅμα σάλπιγξι καὶ ἀλαλαγμῷ, πρῶτος σπασάμενος τὴν μάχαιραν. οἱ δ’ ὡς εἶδον ἀπὸ τῶν κρημνῶν ἐπιφερομένους, φεύγοντες εἰς τὸ μέγα στρατόπεδον κατεπίμπλασαν ταραχῆς ἅπαντας.

[14] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ καὶ τοῦ Μανίου κάτωθεν πρὸς τὰ διατειχίσματα βιαζομένου καὶ τοῖς στενοῖς προσβάλλοντος ἀθρόαν τὴν δύναμιν, ὁ μὲν Ἀντίοχος εἰς τὸ στόμα λίθῳ πληγείς, ἐκτιναχθέντων αὐτοῦ τῶν ὀδόντων, ἀπέστρεψεν ὀπίσω τὸν ἵππον περιαλγὴς γενόμενος, τοῦ δὲ στρατοῦ μέρος οὐδὲν ὑπέμεινε τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ἀλλὰ καίπερ ἀπόρους καὶ ἀμηχάνους τῆς φυγῆς ὁδοὺς καὶ πλάνας ἐχούσης, ἑλῶν βαθέων καὶ πετρῶν ἀποτόμων τὰ πτώματα καὶ τὰς ὀλισθήσεις ὑποδεχομένων, εἰς ταῦτα διὰ τῶν στενῶν ὑπερχεόμενοι καὶ συνωθοῦντες ἀλλήλους φόβῳ πληγῆς καὶ σιδήρου πολεμίων αὑτοὺς διέφθειρον.

[2] ὁ δὲ Κάτων (HRR I 92) ἀεὶ μέν τις ἦν ὡς ἔοικε τῶν ἰδίων ἐγκωμίων ἀφειδὴς καὶ τὴν ἄντικρυς μεγαλαυχίαν ὡς ἐπακολούθημα τῆς μεγαλουργίας οὐκ ἔφευγε, πλεῖστον δὲ ταῖς πράξεσι ταύταις ὄγκον περιτέθεικε, καί φησι τοῖς ἰδοῦσιν αὐτὸν τότε διώκοντα καὶ παίοντα τοὺς πολεμίους παραστῆναι μηδὲν ὀφείλειν Κάτωνα τῷ δήμῳ τοσοῦτον ὅσον Κάτωνι τὸν δῆμον, αὐτόν τε Μάνιον τὸν ὕπατον θερμὸν ἀπὸ τῆς νίκης ἔτι θερμῷ περιπλακέντα πολὺν χρόνον ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ βοᾶν ὑπὸ χαρᾶς, ὡς οὔτ’ ἂν αὐτὸς οὔθ’ ὁ σύμπας δῆμος ἐξισώσειε τὰς ἀμοιβὰς ταῖς [3] Κάτωνος εὐεργεσίαις. μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην εὐθὺς εἰς Ῥώμην ἐπέμπετο τῶν ἠγωνισμένων αὐτάγγελος, καὶ διέπλευσε μὲν εἰς Βρεντέσιον εὐτυχῶς, μιᾷ δ’ ἐκεῖθεν ἡμέρᾳ διελάσας εἰς Τάραντα καὶ τέσσαρας ἄλλας ὁδεύσας, πεμπταῖος εἰς Ῥώμην ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ἀφίκετο καὶ [4] πρῶτος ἀπήγγειλε τὴν νίκην, καὶ τὴν μὲν πόλιν ἐνέπλησεν εὐφροσύνης καὶ θυσιῶν, φρονήματος δὲ τὸν δῆμον, ὡς πάσης γῆς καὶ θαλάττης κρατεῖν δυνάμενον.

[15] [1] Τῶν μὲν οὖν πολεμικῶν πράξεων τοῦ Κάτωνος αὗται σχεδόν εἰσιν ἐλλογιμώταται· τῆς δὲ πολιτείας φαίνεται τὸ περὶ τὰς κατηγορίας καὶ τοὺς ἐλέγχους τῶν πονηρῶν μόριον οὐ μικρᾶς ἄξιον σπουδῆς ἡγησάμενος. αὐτός τε γὰρ ἐδίωξε πολλούς, καὶ διώκουσιν ἑτέροις συνηγωνίσατο, καὶ παρεσκεύασεν ὅλως διώκοντας, ὡς [2] ἐπὶ Σκιπίωνα τοὺς περὶ Πετίλιον. τοῦτον μὲν οὖν ἀπ’ οἴκου τε μεγάλου καὶ φρονήματος ἀληθινοῦ ποιησάμενον ὑπὸ πόδας τὰς διαβολὰς μὴ †ἀποκτεῖναι δυνηθεὶς ἀφῆκε, Λεύκιον δὲ τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῶν κατηγόρων συστὰς καταδίκῃ περιέβαλε χρημάτων πολλῶν πρὸς τὸ δημόσιον, ἣν οὐκ ἔχων ἐκεῖνος ἀπολύσασθαι καὶ κινδυνεύων δεθῆναι, μόλις ἐπικλήσει τῶν δημάρχων ἀφείθη.

[3] λέγεται δὲ καὶ νεανίσκῳ τινὶ τεθνηκότος πατρὸς ἐχθρὸν ἠτιμωκότι καὶ πορευομένῳ δι’ ἀγορᾶς μετὰ τὴν δίκην ἀπαντήσας ὁ Κάτων δεξιώσασθαι καὶ εἰπεῖν, ὅτι ταῦτα χρὴ τοῖς γονεῦοιν ἐναγίζειν, οὐκ ἄρνας οὐδ’ ἐρίφους, ἀλλ’ ἐχθρῶν δάκρυα καὶ καταδίκας.

[4] Οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ περιῆν ἀθῷος, ἀλλ’ ὅπου τινὰ λαβὴν τοῖς ἐχθροῖς παράσχοι, κρινόμενος καὶ κινδυνεύων διετέλει. λέγεται γὰρ ὀλίγον ἀπολιπούσας τῶν πεντήκοντα φυγεῖν δίκας, μίαν δὲ τὴν τελευταίαν ἓξ ἔτη καὶ ὀγδοήκοντα γεγονώς· ἐν ᾗ καὶ τὸ μνημονευόμενον εἶπεν, ὡς χαλεπόν ἐστιν ἐν ἄλλοις βεβιωκότα ἀνθρώποις [5] ἐν ἄλλοις ἀπολογεῖσθαι. καὶ τοῦτο πέρας οὐκ ἐποιήσατο τῶν ἀγώνων, τεσσάρων δ’ ἄλλων ἐνιαυτῶν διελθόντων Σερουίου Γάλβα κατηγόρησεν, ἐνενήκοντα γεγονὼς ἔτη. κινδυνεύει γὰρ ὡς ὁ Νέστωρ εἰς τριγονίαν [6] τῷ βίῳ καὶ ταῖς πράξεσι κατελθεῖν· Σκιπίωνι γὰρ ὡς λέλεκται τῷ μεγάλῳ πολλὰ διερεισάμενος ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ, διέτεινεν εἰς Σκιπίωνα τὸν νέον, ὃς ἦν ἐκείνου κατὰ ποίησιν υἱωνός, υἱὸς δὲ Παύλου τοῦ Περσέα καὶ Μακεδόνας καταπολεμήσαντος.

[16] [1] Τῆς δ’ ὑπατείας κατόπιν ἔτεσι δέκα τιμητείαν ὁ Κάτων παρήγγειλε. κορυφὴ δέ τίς ἐστι τιμῆς ἁπάσης ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τῆς πολιτείας ἐπιτελείωσις, ἄλλην τε πολλὴν ἐξουσίαν ἔχουσα καὶ τὴν περὶ τὰ ἤθη καὶ [2] τοὺς βίους ἐξέτασιν. οὔτε γὰρ γάμον οὔτε παιδοποιίαν τινὸς οὔτε δίαιταν οὔτε συμπόσιον ᾤοντο δεῖν ἄκριτον καὶ ἀνεξέταστον, ὡς ἕκαστος ἐπιθυμίας ἔχοι καὶ προαιρέσεως, ἀφεῖσθαι, πολὺ δὲ μᾶλλον ἐν τούτοις νομίζοντες ἢ ταῖς ὑπαίθροις καὶ πολιτικαῖς πράξεσι τρόπον ἀνδρὸς ἐνορᾶσθαι, φύλακα καὶ σωφρονιστὴν καὶ κολαστὴν τοῦ μηδένα καθ’ ἡδονὰς ἐκτρέπεσθαι καὶ παρεκβαίνειν τὸν ἐπιχώριον καὶ συνήθη βίον ᾑροῦντο τῶν καλουμένων [3] πατρικίων ἕνα καὶ τῶν δημοτικῶν ἕνα. τιμητὰς δὲ τούτους προσηγόρευον, ἐξουσίαν ἔχοντας ἀφελέσθαι μὲν ἵππον, ἐκβαλεῖν δὲ συγκλήτου τὸν ἀκολάστως βιοῦντα καὶ ἀτάκτως. οὗτοι δὲ καὶ τὰ τιμήματα τῶν οὐσιῶν λαμβάνοντες ἐπεσκόπουν καὶ ταῖς ἀπογραφαῖς τὰ γένη καὶ τὰς ἡλικίας διέκρινον, ἄλλας τε μεγάλας ἔχει δυνάμεις ἡ ἀρχή.

[4] Διὸ καὶ τῷ Κάτωνι πρὸς τὴν παραγγελίαν ἀπήντησαν ἐνιστάμενοι σχεδὸν οἱ γνωριμώτατοι καὶ πρῶτοι τῶν συγκλητικῶν. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ εὐπατρίδας ὁ φθόνος ἐλύπει, παντάπασιν οἰομένους προπηλακίζεσθαι τὴν εὐγένειαν ἀνθρώπων ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἀδόξων εἰς τὴν ἄκραν τιμὴν καὶ δύναμιν ἀναβιβαζομένων, οἱ δὲ μοχθηρὰ συνειδότες ἑαυτοῖς ἐπιτηδεύματα καὶ τῶν πατρίων ἐκδιαίτησιν ἐθῶν ἐφοβοῦντο τὴν αὐστηρίαν τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἀπαραίτητον ἐν [5] ἐξουσίᾳ καὶ χαλεπὴν ἐσομένην. διὸ συμφρονήσαντες καὶ παρασκευάσαντες ἑπτὰ κατῆγον ἐπὶ τὴν παραγγελίαν ἀντιπάλους τῷ Κάτωνι, θεραπεύοντας ἐλπίσι χρησταῖς τὸ πλῆθος, ὡς δὴ μαλακῶς καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἄρχεσθαι [6] δεόμενον. τοὐναντίον δ’ ὁ Κάτων οὐδεμίαν ἐνδιδοὺς ἐπιείκειαν, ἀλλ’ ἄντικρυς ἀπειλῶν τε τοῖς πονηροῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος καὶ κεκραγὼς μεγάλου καθαρμοῦ χρῄζειν τὴν πόλιν, ἠξίου τοὺς πολλοὺς εἰ σωφρονοῦσι μὴ τὸν ἥδιστον, [7] ἀλλὰ τὸν σφοδρότατον αἱρεῖσθαι τῶν ἰατρῶν· τοῦτον δ’ αὐτὸν εἶναι καὶ τῶν πατρικίων ἕνα Φλάκκον Οὐαλέριον· μετ’ ἐκείνου γὰρ οἴεσθαι μόνου τὴν τρυφὴν καὶ τὴν μαλακίαν ὥσπερ ὕδραν τέμνων καὶ ἀποκαίων προὔργου τι ποιήσειν, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ὁρᾶν ἕκαστον ἄρξαι κακῶς βιαζόμενον, ὅτι τοὺς καλῶς ἄρξοντας δέδοικεν.

[8] οὕτω δ’ ἄρα μέγας ἦν ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ μεγάλων ἄξιος δημαγωγῶν ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος, ὥστε μὴ φοβηθῆναι τὴν ἀνάτασιν καὶ τὸν ὄγκον τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἡδεῖς ἐκείνους καὶ πρὸς χάριν ἅπαντα ποιήσειν δοκοῦντας ἀπορρίψας ἑλέσθαι μετὰ τοῦ Κάτωνος τὸν Φλάκκον, ὥσπερ οὐκ αἰτοῦντος ἀρχήν, ἀλλ’ ἄρχοντος ἤδη καὶ προστάττοντος ἀκροώμενος.

[17] [1] Προέγραψε μὲν οὖν ὁ Κάτων τῆς συγκλήτου τὸν συνάρχοντα καὶ φίλον Λεύκιον Οὐαλέριον Φλάκκον, ἐξέβαλε δὲ τῆς βουλῆς ἄλλους τε συχνοὺς καὶ Λεύκιον Κοΐντιον, ὕπατον μὲν ἑπτὰ πρότερον ἐνιαυτοῖς γεγενημένον, ὃ δ’ ἦν αὐτῷ πρὸς δόξαν ὑπατείας μεῖζον, ἀδελφὸν Τίτου Φλαμινίνου [2] τοῦ καταπολεμήσαντος Φίλιππον. αἰτίαν δὲ τῆς ἐκβολῆς ἔσχε τοιαύτην. μειράκιον ἐκ τῆς παιδικῆς ὥρας ἑταιροῦν ἀνειληφὼς ὁ Λεύκιος ἀεὶ περὶ αὑτὸν εἶχε, καὶ συνεπήγετο στρατηγῶν ἐπὶ τιμῆς καὶ δυνάμεως τοσαύτης ὅσην οὐδεὶς εἶχε τῶν πρώτων παρ’ αὐτῷ φίλων καὶ οἰκείων.

[3] ἐτύγχανε μὲν οὖν ἡγούμενος ὑπατικῆς ἐπαρχίας· ἐν δὲ συμποσίῳ τινὶ τὸ μειράκιον ὥσπερ εἰώθει συγκατακείμενον ἄλλην τε κολακείαν ἐκίνει πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἐν οἴνῳ ῥᾳδίως ἀγόμενον, καὶ φιλεῖν αὐτὸν οὕτως ἔλεγεν, ‘ὥστ’’ ἔφη ‘θέας οὔσης οἴκοι μονομάχων οὐ τεθεαμένος πρότερον ἐξώρμησα πρὸς σέ, καίπερ ἐπιθυμῶν ἰδεῖν [4] ἄνθρωπον σφαττόμενον’. ὁ δὲ Λεύκιος ἀντιφιλοφρονούμενος, ‘ἀλλὰ τούτου γε χάριν’ εἶπε ‘μή μοι κατάκεισο λυπούμενος, ἐγὼ γὰρ ἰάσομαι’. καὶ κελεύσας ἕνα τῶν ἐπὶ θανάτῳ κατακρίτων εἰς τὸ συμπόσιον ἀχθῆναι καὶ τὸν ὑπηρέτην ἔχοντα πέλεκυν παραστῆναι, πάλιν ἠρώτησε τὸν ἐρώμενον εἰ βούλεται τυπτόμενον θεάσασθαι. φήσαντος δὲ βούλεσθαι, προσέταξεν ἀποκόψαι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου [5] τὸν τράχηλον. οἱ μὲν οὖν πλεῖστοι ταῦθ’ ἱστοροῦσι, καὶ ὅ γε Κικέρων αὐτὸν τὸν Κάτωνα διηγούμενον ἐν τῷ Περὶ γήρως διαλόγῳ (12, 42) πεποίηκεν· ὁ δὲ Λίβιος (39, 42) αὐτόμολον εἶναί φησι Γαλάτην τὸν ἀναιρεθέντα, τὸν δὲ Λεύκιον οὐ δι’ ὑπηρέτου κτεῖναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἰδίᾳ χειρί, καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐν λόγῳ γεγράφθαι Κάτωνος.

Ἐκβληθέντος οὖν τοῦ Λευκίου τῆς βουλῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ Κάτωνος, ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ βαρέως φέρων ἐπὶ τὸν δῆμον κατέφυγε καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἐκέλευσεν εἰπεῖν τὸν Κάτωνα [6] τῆς ἐκβολῆς. εἰπόντος δὲ καὶ διηγησαμένου τὸ συμπόσιον, ἐπεχείρει μὲν ὁ Λεύκιος ἀρνεῖσθαι, προκαλουμένου δὲ τοῦ Κάτωνος εἰς ὁρισμὸν ἀνεδύετο. καὶ τότε μὲν ἄξια παθεῖν κατεγνώσθη· θέας δ’ οὔσης ἐν θεάτρῳ, τὴν ὑπατικὴν χώραν παρελθὼν καὶ πορρωτάτω που καθεσθεὶς οἶκτον ἔσχε παρὰ τῷ δήμῳ, καὶ βοῶντες ἠνάγκασαν αὐτὸν μετελθεῖν, ὡς ἦν δυνατὸν ἐπανορθούμενοι καὶ [7] θεραπεύοντες τὸ γεγενημένον. ἄλλον δὲ βουλῆς ἐξέβαλεν ὑπατεύσειν ἐπίδοξον ὄντα Μανίλιον, ὅτι τὴν αὑτοῦ γυναῖκα μεθ’ ἡμέραν ὁρώσης τῆς θυγατρὸς κατεφίλησεν. αὑτῷ δ’ ἔφη τὴν γυναῖκα μηδέποτε πλὴν βροντῆς μεγάλης γενομένης περιπλακῆναι, καὶ μετὰ παιδιᾶς εἰπεῖν αὐτὸν ὡς μακάριός ἐστι τοῦ Διὸς βροντῶντος.

[18] [1] Ἤνεγκε δέ τινα τῷ Κάτωνι καὶ Λεύκιος ὁ Σκιπίωνος ἀδελφὸς ἐπίφθονον αἰτίαν, θριαμβικὸς ἀνὴρ ἀφαιρεθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τὸν ἵππον· ἔδοξε γὰρ οἷον ἐφυβρίζων Ἀφρικανῷ Σκιπίωνι τεθνηκότι τοῦτο ποιῆσαι.

[2] Τοὺς δὲ πλείστους ἠνίασε μάλιστα τῇ περικοπῇ τῆς πολυτελείας, ἣν ἄντικρυς μὲν ἀφελέσθαι, νενοσηκότων ἤδη καὶ διεφθαρμένων ὑπ’ αὐτῆς τῶν πολλῶν, ἀδύνατον ἦν, κύκλῳ δὲ περιιὼν ἠνάγκαζεν ἐσθῆτος, ὀχήματος, κόσμου γυναικείου, σκευῶν τῶν περὶ δίαιταν, ὧν ἑκάστου τὸ τίμημα χιλίας καὶ πεντακοσίας δραχμὰς ὑπερέβαλλεν, ἀποτιμᾶσθαι τὴν ἀξίαν εἰς τὸ δεκαπλάσιον, βουλόμενος ἀπὸ μειζόνων τιμημάτων αὐτοῖς μείζονας καὶ [3] τὰς εἰσφορὰς εἶναι, καὶ προσετίμησε τρεῖς χαλκοῦς πρὸς τοῖς χιλίοις, ὅπως βαρυνόμενοι ταῖς ἐπιβολαῖς, καὶ τοὺς εὐσταλεῖς καὶ λιτοὺς ὁρῶντες ἀπὸ τῶν ἴσων ἐλάττονα τελοῦντας εἰς τὸ δημόσιον, ἀπαγορεύωσιν. ἦσαν οὖν αὐτῷ χαλεποὶ μὲν οἱ τὰς εἰσφορὰς διὰ τὴν τρυφὴν ὑπομένοντες, χαλεποὶ δ’ αὖ πάλιν οἱ τὴν τρυφὴν ἀποτιθέμενοι [4] διὰ τὰς εἰσφοράς. πλούτου γὰρ ἀφαίρεσιν οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσι τὴν κώλυσιν αὐτοῦ τῆς ἐπιδείξεως· ἐπιδείκνυσθαι δὲ τοῖς περιττοῖς, οὐ τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις. ὃ δὴ καὶ μάλιστά φασι τὸν φιλόσοφον Ἀρίστωνα (I p. 89 n. 398 Arn.) θαυμάζειν, ὅτι τοὺς τὰ περιττὰ κεκτημένους μᾶλλον ἡγοῦνται μακαρίους ἢ τοὺς τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ χρησίμων [5] εὐποροῦντας. Σκόπας δ’ ὁ Θεσσαλός, αἰτουμένου τινὸς τῶν φίλων παρ’ αὐτοῦ τι τοιοῦτον ὃ μὴ σφόδρα ἦν χρήσιμον ἐκείνῳ, καὶ λέγοντος ὡς οὐδὲν αἰτεῖ τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ χρησίμων, ‘καὶ μὴν ἐγὼ τούτοις’ εἶπεν ‘εὐδαίμων καὶ πλούσιός εἰμι, τοῖς ἀχρήστοις καὶ περιττοῖς’. οὕτως ὁ τοῦ πλούτου ζῆλος οὐδενὶ πάθει φυσικῷ συνημμένος ἐκ τῆς ὀχλώδους καὶ θυραίου δόξης ἐπεισόδιός ἐστιν.

[19] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῶν ἐγκαλούντων ἐλάχιστα φροντίζων ὁ Κάτων ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐπέτεινεν, ἀποκόπτων μὲν ὀχετοὺς οἳ τὸ παραρρέον δημόσιον ὕδωρ ὑπολαμβάνοντες ἀπῆγον εἰς οἰκίας ἰδίας καὶ κήπους, ἀνατρέπων δὲ καὶ καταβάλλων ὅσα προὔβαινεν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον οἰκοδομήματα, συστέλλων δὲ τοῖς μισθοῖς τὰς ἐργολαβίας, τὰ δὲ τέλη ταῖς πράσεσιν ἐπὶ τὰς ἐσχάτας ἐλαύνων τιμάς.

[2] ἀφ’ ὧν αὐτῷ πολὺ συνήχθη μῖσος. οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Τίτον συστάντες ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἔν τε τῇ βουλῇ τὰς γεγενημένας ἐκδόσεις καὶ μισθώσεις τῶν ἱερῶν καὶ δημοσίων ἔργων ἔλυσαν ὡς γεγενημένας ἀλυσιτελῶς, καὶ τῶν δημάρχων τοὺς θρασυτάτους παρώξυναν ἐν δήμῳ προσκαλέσασθαι [3] τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ ζημιῶσαι δυσὶ ταλάντοις. πολλὰ δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὴν τῆς βασιλικῆς κατασκευὴν ἠναντιώθησαν, ἣν ἐκεῖνος ἐκ χρημάτων κοινῶν ὑπὸ τὸ βουλευτήριον τῇ ἀγορᾷ παρέβαλε καὶ Πορκίαν βασιλικὴν προσηγόρευσεν.

[4] Φαίνεται δὲ θαυμαστῶς ἀποδεξάμενος αὐτοῦ τὴν τιμητείαν ὁ δῆμος. ἀνδριάντα γοῦν ἀναθεὶς ἐν τῷ ναῷ τῆς Ὑγιείας ἐπέγραψεν οὐ τὰς στρατηγίας οὐδὲ τὸν θρίαμβον τοῦ Κάτωνος, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἄν τις μεταφράσειε τὴν ἐπιγραφήν, ‘ὅτι τὴν Ῥωμαίων πολιτείαν ἐγκεκλιμένην καὶ ῥέπουσαν ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον τιμητὴς γενόμενος χρησταῖς ἀγωγαῖς καὶ σώφροσιν ἐθισμοῖς καὶ διδασκαλίαις [5] εἰς ὀρθὸν αὖθις ἀποκατέστησε’. καίτοι πρότερον αὐτὸς κατεγέλα τῶν ἀγαπώντων τὰ τοιαῦτα, καὶ λανθάνειν αὐτοὺς ἔλεγεν ἐπὶ χαλκέων καὶ ζωγράφων ἔργοις μέγα φρονοῦντας, αὐτοῦ δὲ καλλίστας εἰκόνας ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς [6] περιφέρειν τοὺς πολίτας· πρὸς δὲ τοὺς θαυμάζοντας, ὅτι πολλῶν ἀδόξων ἀνδριάντας ἐχόντων ἐκεῖνος οὐκ ἔχει, ‘μᾶλλον γάρ’ ἔφη ‘βούλομαι ζητεῖσθαι, διὰ τί μου ἀνδριὰς οὐ κεῖται ἢ διὰ τί κεῖται’. τὸ δ’ ὅλον οὐδ’ ἐπαινούμενον ἠξίου τὸν ἀγαθὸν πολίτην ὑπομένειν, εἰ μὴ [7] τοῦτο χρησίμως γίνοιτο τῷ κοινῷ. καί‹τοι› πλεῖστα πάντων ἑαυτὸν ἐγκεκωμίακεν, ὅς γε καὶ τοὺς ἁμαρτάνοντάς τι περὶ τὸν βίον, εἶτ’ ἐλεγχομένους λέγειν φησίν, ὡς οὐκ ἄξιον ἐγκαλεῖν αὐτοῖς· οὐ γὰρ Κάτωνές εἰσι· καὶ τοὺς ἔνια μιμεῖσθαι τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πραττομένων οὐκ ἐμμελῶς ἐπιχειροῦντας ἐπαριστέρους καλεῖσθαι Κάτωνας· ἀφορᾶν δὲ τὴν βουλὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς ἐπισφαλεστάτοις καιροῖς ὥσπερ ἐν πλῷ πρὸς κυβερνήτην, καὶ πολλάκις μὴ παρόντος ὑπερτίθεσθαι τὰ πλείστης ἄξια [8] σπουδῆς. ἃ δὴ παρὰ τῶν ἄλλων αὐτῷ μαρτυρεῖται· μέγα γὰρ ἔσχεν ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ διὰ τὸν βίον καὶ διὰ τὸν λόγον καὶ διὰ τὸ γῆρας ἀξίωμα.

[20] [1] Γέγονε δὲ καὶ πατὴρ ἀγαθὸς καὶ περὶ γυναῖκα χρηστὸς ἀνὴρ καὶ χρηματιστὴς οὐκ εὐκαταφρόνητος οὐδ’ ὥς τι μικρὸν ἢ φαῦλον ἐν παρέργῳ μεταχειρισάμενος τὴν τοιαύτην ἐπιμέλειαν. ὅθεν οἶμαι δεῖν καὶ περὶ τούτων [2] ὅσα καλῶς ἔχει διελθεῖν. γυναῖκα μὲν γὰρ εὐγενεστέραν ἢ πλουσιωτέραν ἔγημεν, ἡγούμενος ὁμοίως μὲν ἀμφοτέρας ἔχειν βάρος καὶ φρόνημα, τὰς δὲ γενναίας αἰδουμένας τὰ αἰσχρὰ μᾶλλον ὑπηκόους εἶναι πρὸς τὰ [3] καλὰ τοῖς γεγαμηκόσι. τὸν δὲ τύπτοντα γαμετὴν ἢ παῖδα τοῖς ἁγιωτάτοις ἔλεγεν ἱεροῖς προσφέρειν τὰς χεῖρας. ἐν ἐπαίνῳ δὲ μείζονι τίθεσθαι τὸ γαμέτην ἀγαθὸν ἢ τὸ μέγαν εἶναι συγκλητικόν· ἐπεὶ καὶ Σωκράτους οὐδὲν ἄλλο θαυμάζειν τοῦ παλαιοῦ πλὴν ὅτι γυναικὶ χαλεπῇ καὶ παισὶν ἀποπλήκτοις χρώμενος ἐπιεικῶς καὶ πρᾴως [4] διετέλεσε. γενομένου δὲ τοῦ παιδὸς οὐδὲν ἦν ἔργον οὕτως ἀναγκαῖον, εἰ μή τι δημόσιον, ὡς μὴ παρεῖναι τῇ [5] γυναικὶ λουούσῃ καὶ σπαργανούσῃ τὸ βρέφος. αὐτὴ γὰρ ἔτρεφεν ἰδίῳ γάλακτι· πολλάκις δὲ καὶ τὰ τῶν δούλων παιδάρια τῷ μαστῷ προσιεμένη, κατεσκεύαζεν εὔνοιαν ἐκ τῆς συντροφίας πρὸς τὸν υἱόν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἤρξατο συνιέναι, παραλαβὼν αὐτὸς ἐδίδασκε γράμματα. καίτοι χαρίεντα δοῦλον εἶχε γραμματιστὴν ὄνομα Χίλωνα, πολ[6]λοὺς διδάσκοντα παῖδας· οὐκ ἠξίου δὲ τὸν υἱόν, ὥς φησιν αὐτός, ὑπὸ δούλου κακῶς ἀκούειν ἢ τοῦ ὠτὸς ἀνατείνεσθαι μανθάνοντα βράδιον, οὐδέ γε μαθήματος τηλικούτου [τῷ] δούλῳ χάριν ὀφείλειν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς μὲν ἦν γραμματιστής, αὐτὸς δὲ νομοδιδάκτης, αὐτὸς δὲ γυμναστής, οὐ μόνον ἀκοντίζειν οὐδ’ ὁπλομαχεῖν οὐδ’ ἱππεύειν διδάσκων τὸν υἱόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῇ χειρὶ πὺξ παίειν καὶ καῦμα καὶ ψῦχος ἀνέχεσθαι καὶ τὰ δινώδη καὶ τραχύνοντα τοῦ [7] ποταμοῦ διανηχόμενον ἀποβιάζεσθαι. καὶ τὰς ἱστορίας δὲ συγγράψαι φησὶν αὐτὸς ἰδίᾳ χειρὶ καὶ μεγάλοις γράμμασιν, ὅπως οἴκοθεν ὑπάρχοι τῷ παιδὶ πρὸς ἐμπειρίαν τῶν παλαιῶν καὶ πατρίων ὠφελεῖσθαι· τὰ δ’ αἰσχρὰ τῶν ῥημάτων οὐχ ἧττον ἐξευλαβεῖσθαι τοῦ παιδὸς παρόντος ἢ τῶν ἱερῶν παρθένων ἃς Ἑστιάδας καλοῦσι· συλλούσασθαι [8] δὲ μηδέποτε. καὶ τοῦτο κοινὸν ἔοικε Ῥωμαίων ἔθος εἶναι· καὶ γὰρ πενθεροὶ γαμβροῖς ἐφυλάττοντο συλλούεσθαι, δυσωπούμενοι τὴν ἀποκάλυψιν καὶ γύμνωσιν. εἶτα μέντοι παρ’ Ἑλλήνων τὸ γυμνοῦσθαι μαθόντες, αὐτοὶ πάλιν τοῦ καὶ μετὰ γυναικῶν τοῦτο πράσσειν ἀναπεπλήκασι [9] τοὺς Ἕλληνας. οὕτω δὲ καλὸν ἔργον εἰς ἀρετὴν τῷ Κάτωνι πλάττοντι καὶ δημιουργοῦντι τὸν υἱόν, ἐπεὶ τὰ τῆς προθυμίας ἦν ἄμεμπτα καὶ δι’ εὐφυΐαν ὑπήκουεν ἡ ψυχή, τὸ δὲ σῶμα μαλακώτερον ἐφαίνετο τοῦ πονεῖν, ἐπανῆκεν αὐτῷ τὸ σύντονον ἄγαν καὶ κεκολασμένον [10] τῆς διαίτης. ὁ δὲ καίπερ οὕτως ἔχων ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς ἦν ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις, καὶ τὴν πρὸς Περσέα μάχην ἠγωνίσατο λαμπρῶς Παύλου στρατηγοῦντος. εἶτα μέντοι τοῦ ξίφους ἐκκρουσθέντος ὑπὸ πληγῆς ἢ δι’ ὑγρότητα τῆς χειρὸς ἐξολισθόντος, ἀχθεσθεὶς τρέπεται πρός τινας τῶν συνήθων, καὶ παραλαβὼν ἐκείνους αὖθις εἰς [11] τοὺς πολεμίους ἐνέβαλε. πολλῷ δ’ ἀγῶνι καὶ βίᾳ μεγάλῃ διαφωτίσας τὸν τόπον, ἀνεῦρε μόγις ἐν πολλοῖς σάγμασιν ὅπλων καὶ σώμασι νεκρῶν ὁμοῦ φίλων τε καὶ πολεμίων κατασεσωρευμένων. ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ Παῦλος ὁ στρατηγὸς ἠγάσθη τὸ μειράκιον, καὶ Κάτωνος αὐτοῦ φέρεταί τις ἐπιστολὴ πρὸς τὸν υἱόν, ὑπερφυῶς ἐπαινοῦντος τὴν περὶ [12] τὸ ξίφος φιλοτιμίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ σπουδήν. ὕστερον δὲ καὶ Παύλου θυγατέρα Τερτίαν ἔγημεν ὁ νεανίας, ἀδελφὴν Σκιπίωνος, οὐχ ἧττον ἤδη δι’ αὑτὸν ἢ τὸν πατέρα καταμειγνύμενος εἰς γένος τηλικοῦτον. ἡ μὲν οὖν περὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἐπιμέλεια τοῦ Κάτωνος ἄξιον ἔσχε τέλος.

[21] [1] Οἰκέτας δὲ πολλοὺς ἐκτᾶτο, τῶν αἰχμαλώτων ὠνούμενος μάλιστα τοὺς μικροὺς καὶ δυναμένους ἔτι τροφὴν καὶ παίδευσιν ὡς σκύλακας ἢ πώλους ἐνεγκεῖν. τούτων οὐδεὶς ἦλθεν εἰς οἰκίαν ἑτέραν, εἰ μὴ πέμψαντος αὐτοῦ Κάτωνος ἢ τῆς γυναικός. ὁ δ’ ἐρωτηθεὶς τί [2] πράττοι Κάτων, οὐδὲν ἀπεκρίνατο πλὴν ἀγνοεῖν. ἔδει δ’ ἢ πράττειν τι τῶν ἀναγκαίων οἴκοι τὸν δοῦλον ἢ καθεύδειν, καὶ σφόδρα τοῖς κοιμωμένοις ὁ Κάτων ἔχαιρε, πρᾳοτέρους τε τῶν ἐγρηγορότων νομίζων καὶ πρὸς ὁτιοῦν βελτίονας χρῆσθαι τῶν δεομένων ὕπνου τοὺς ἀπολελαυκότας.

[3] οἰόμενος δὲ τὰ μέγιστα ῥᾳδιουργεῖν ἀφροδισίων ἕνεκα τοὺς δούλους, ἔταξεν ὡρισμένου νομίσματος ὁμιλεῖν ταῖς θεραπαινίσιν, ἑτέρᾳ δὲ γυναικὶ μηδένα πλησιάζειν.

Ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν οὖν ἔτι πένης ὢν καὶ στρατευόμενος, πρὸς οὐδὲν ἐδυσκόλαινε τῶν περὶ δίαιταν, ἀλλ’ αἴσχιστον ἀπέφαινε διὰ γαστέρα πρὸς οἰκέτην ζυγομαχεῖν.

[4] ὕστερον δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων ἐπιδιδόντων ποιούμενος ἑστιάσεις φίλων καὶ συναρχόντων, ἐκόλαζεν εὐθὺς μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ἱμάντι τοὺς ἀμελέστερον ὑπουργήσαντας ὁτιοῦν ἢ σκευάσαντας. ἀεὶ δέ τινα τοὺς δούλους ἐμηχανᾶτο στάσιν ἔχειν καὶ διαφορὰν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ὑπονοῶν τὴν ὁμόνοιαν αὐτῶν καὶ δεδοικώς. τοὺς δ’ ἄξιον εἰργάσθαι τι θανάτου δόξαντας ἐδικαίου κριθέντας ἐν τοῖς οἰκέταις πᾶσιν ἀποθνῄσκειν, εἰ καταγνωσθεῖεν.

[5] Ἁπτόμενος δὲ συντονώτερον πορισμοῦ, τὴν μὲν γεωργίαν ἡγεῖτο μᾶλλον διαγωγὴν ἢ πρόσοδον, εἰς δ’ ἀσφαλῆ πράγματα καὶ βέβαια κατατιθέμενος τὰς ἀφορμάς, ἐκτᾶτο λίμνας, ὕδατα θερμά, τόπους κναφεῦσιν ἀνειμένους, ἔργα πίσσια, χώραν ἔχουσαν αὐτοφυεῖς νομὰς καὶ ὕλας, ἀφ’ ὧν αὐτῷ χρήματα προσῄει πολλὰ μηδ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ [6] Διός, ὥς φησιν αὐτός, βλαβῆναι δυναμένων. ἐχρήσατο δὲ καὶ τῷ διαβεβλημένῳ μάλιστα τῶν δανεισμῶν ‹τῷ› ἐπὶ ναυτικοῖς τὸν τρόπον τοῦτον. ἐκέλευε τοὺς δανειζομένους ἐπὶ κοινωνίᾳ πολλοὺς παρακαλεῖν· γενομένων δὲ πεντήκοντα καὶ πλοίων τοσούτων, αὐτὸς εἶχε μίαν μερίδα διὰ Κουϊντίωνος ἀπελευθέρου, τοῖς δανειζομένοις [7] συμπραγματευομένου καὶ συμπλέοντος. ἦν οὖν οὐκ εἰς ἅπαν ὁ κίνδυνος, ἀλλ’ εἰς μέρος μικρὸν ἐπὶ κέρδεσι μεγάλοις. ἐδίδου δὲ καὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν τοῖς βουλομένοις ἀργύριον· οἱ δ’ ἐωνοῦντο παῖδας, εἶτα τούτους ἀσκήσαντες καὶ διδάξαντες ἀναλώμασι τοῦ Κάτωνος μετ’ [8] ἐνιαυτὸν ἀπεδίδοντο. πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ κατεῖχεν ὁ Κάτων, ὅσην ὁ πλείστην διδοὺς ἐωνεῖτο τιμὴν ὑπολογιζόμενος. προτρέπων δὲ τὸν υἱὸν ἐπὶ ταῦτα, φησὶν οὐκ ἀνδρός, ἀλλὰ χήρας γυναικὸς εἶναι τὸ μειῶσαί τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντων. ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἤδη σφοδρότερον τοῦ Κάτωνος, ὅτι θαυμαστὸν ἄνδρα καὶ θεῖον εἰπεῖν ἐτόλμησε πρὸς δόξαν, ὃς ἀπολείπει πλέον ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ὃ προσέθηκεν οὗ παρέλαβεν.

[22] [1] Ἤδη δὲ γέροντος αὐτοῦ γεγονότος, πρέσβεις Ἀθήνηθεν ἧκον εἰς Ῥώμην οἱ περὶ Καρνεάδην τὸν Ἀκαδημαϊκὸν καὶ Διογένη τὸν Στωικὸν φιλόσοφοι, καταδίκην τινὰ παραιτησόμενοι τοῦ δήμου τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ἣν ἐρήμην ὦφλον Ὠρωπίων μὲν διωξάντων, Σικυωνίων δὲ καταψηφισαμένων, τίμημα ταλάντων πεντακοσίων ἔχουσαν.

[2] εὐθὺς οὖν οἱ φιλολογώτατοι τῶν νεανίσκων ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἵεντο καὶ συνῆσαν, ἀκροώμενοι καὶ θαυμάζοντες αὐτούς. μάλιστα δ’ ἡ Καρνεάδου χάρις, ἧς δύναμίς τ’ ‹ἦν› πλείστη καὶ δόξα τῆς δυνάμεως οὐκ ἀποδέουσα, μεγάλων ἐπιλαμβανομένη καὶ φιλανθρώπων [3] ἀκροατηρίων ὡς πνεῦμα τὴν πόλιν ἠχῆς ἐνέπλησε, καὶ λόγος κατεῖχεν, ὡς ἀνὴρ Ἕλλην εἰς ἔκπληξιν ὑπερφυὴς πάντα κηλῶν καὶ χειρούμενος ἔρωτα δεινὸν ἐμβέβληκε τοῖς νέοις, ὑφ’ οὗ τῶν ἄλλων ἡδονῶν καὶ διατριβῶν [4] ἐκπεσόντες ἐνθουσιῶσι περὶ φιλοσοφίαν. ταῦτα τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἤρεσκε Ῥωμαίοις γινόμενα, καὶ τὰ μειράκια παιδείας Ἑλληνικῆς μεταλαμβάνοντα καὶ συνόντα θαυμαζομένοις [5] ἀνδράσιν ἡδέως ἑώρων· ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἐξ ἀρχῆς τε τοῦ ζήλου τῶν λόγων παραρρέοντος εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἤχθετο, φοβούμενος μὴ τὸ φιλότιμον ἐνταῦθα τρέψαντες οἱ νέοι τὴν ἐπὶ τῷ λέγειν δόξαν ἀγαπήσωσι μᾶλλον τῆς ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων καὶ τῶν στρατειῶν· ἐπεὶ δὲ προὔβαινεν ἡ δόξα τῶν φιλοσόφων ἐν τῇ πόλει, καὶ τοὺς πρώτους λόγους αὐτῶν πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ἀνὴρ ἐπιφανὴς σπουδάσας αὐτὸς καὶ δεηθεὶς ἡρμήνευσε Γάιος Ἀκίλιος, ἔγνω μετ’ εὐπρεπείας ἀποδιοπομπήσασθαι τοὺς φιλοσόφους [6] πάντας ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, καὶ παρελθὼν εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον ἐμέμψατο τοῖς ἄρχουσιν, ὅτι πρεσβεία κάθηται πολὺν χρόνον ἄπρακτος ἀνδρῶν, οἳ περὶ παντὸς οὗ βούλοιντο [7] ῥᾳδίως πείθειν δύνανται· δεῖν οὖν τὴν ταχίστην γνῶναί τι καὶ ψηφίσασθαι περὶ τῆς πρεσβείας, ὅπως οὗτοι μὲν ἐπὶ τὰς σχολὰς τραπόμενοι διαλέγωνται παισὶν Ἑλλήνων, οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαίων νέοι τῶν νόμων καὶ τῶν ἀρχόντων ὡς πρότερον ἀκούωσι.

[23] [1] Ταῦτα δ’ οὐχ (ὡς ἔνιοι νομίζουσι) Καρνεάδῃ δυσχεράνας ἔπραξεν, ἀλλ’ ὅλως φιλοσοφίᾳ προσκεκρουκώς, καὶ πᾶσαν Ἑλληνικὴν μοῦσαν καὶ παιδείαν ὑπὸ φιλοτιμίας προπηλακίζων, ὅς γε καὶ Σωκράτη φησὶ λάλον γενόμενον καὶ βίαιον ἐπιχειρεῖν, ᾧ τρόπῳ δυνατὸς ἦν, τυραννεῖν τῆς πατρίδος, καταλύοντα τὰ ἔθη καὶ πρὸς ἐναντίας τοῖς νόμοις δόξας ἕλκοντα καὶ μεθιστάντα τοὺς [2] πολίτας. τὴν δ’ Ἰσοκράτους διατριβὴν ἐπισκώπτων, γηρᾶν φησι παρ’ αὐτῷ τοὺς μαθητάς, ὡς ἐν Ἅιδου παρὰ Μίνῳ χρησομένους ταῖς τέχναις καὶ δίκας ἐροῦντας. τὸν δὲ παῖδα διαβάλλων πρὸς τὰ Ἑλληνικά, φωνῇ κέχρηται θρασυτέρᾳ τοῦ γήρως, οἷον ἀποθεσπίζων καὶ προμαντεύων ὡς ἀπολοῦσι Ῥωμαῖοι τὰ πράγματα, γραμμάτων [3] Ἑλληνικῶν ἀναπλησθέντες. ἀλλὰ ταύτην μὲν αὐτοῦ τὴν δυσφημίαν ὁ χρόνος ἀποδείκνυσι κενήν, ἐν ᾧ τοῖς τε πράγμασιν ἡ πόλις ἤρθη μεγίστη, καὶ πρὸς Ἑλληνικὰ μαθήματα καὶ παιδείαν ἅπασαν ἔσχεν οἰκείως.

Ὁ δ’ οὐ μόνον ἀπηχθάνετο τοῖς φιλοσοφοῦσιν Ἑλλήνων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἰατρεύοντας ἐν Ῥώμῃ δι’ ὑποψίας [4] εἶχε, καὶ τὸν Ἱπποκράτους λόγον (IX p. 316 L.) ὡς ἔοικεν ἀκηκοώς, ὃν εἶπε τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως καλοῦντος αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πολλοῖς τισι ταλάντοις, οὐκ ἄν ποτε βαρβάροις Ἑλλήνων πολεμίοις ἑαυτὸν παρασχεῖν, ἔλεγε κοινὸν ὅρκον εἶναι τοῦτον ἰατρῶν ἁπάντων, καὶ παρεκελεύετο [5] φυλάττεσθαι τῷ παιδὶ πάντας· αὑτῷ δὲ γεγραμμένον ὑπόμνημα εἶναι, καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο θεραπεύειν καὶ διαιτᾶν τοὺς νοσοῦντας οἴκοι, νῆστιν μὲν οὐδέποτε διατηρῶν οὐδένα, τρέφων δὲ λαχάνοις καὶ σαρκιδίοις νήσσης ἢ φαβὸς [6] ἢ λαγώ· καὶ γὰρ τοῦτον κοῦφον εἶναι καὶ πρόσφορον ἀσθενοῦσι, πλὴν ὅτι πολλὰ συμβαίνει τοῖς φαγοῦσιν ἐνυπνιάζεσθαι· τοιαύτῃ δὲ θεραπείᾳ καὶ διαίτῃ χρώμενος ὑγιαίνειν μὲν αὐτός, ὑγιαίνοντας δὲ τοὺς αὑτοῦ διαφυλάττειν.

[24] [1] Καὶ περί γε τοῦτο φαίνεται γεγονὼς οὐκ ἀνεμέσητος· καὶ γὰρ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἀπέβαλεν. αὐτὸς δὲ τῷ σώματι πρὸς εὐεξίαν καὶ ῥώμην ἀσφαλῶς πεπηγὼς ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀντεῖχεν, ὥστε καὶ γυναικὶ πρεσβύτης ὢν σφόδρα πλησιάζειν, καὶ γῆμαι γάμον οὐ καθ’ [2] ἡλικίαν ἐκ τοιαύτης προφάσεως. ἀποβαλὼν τὴν γυναῖκα τῷ μὲν υἱῷ Παύλου θυγατέρα, Σκιπίωνος δ’ ἀδελφήν, ἠγάγετο πρὸς γάμον, αὐτὸς δὲ χηρεύων ἐχρῆτο παιδίσκῃ, κρύφα φοιτώσῃ πρὸς αὐτόν. ἦν οὖν ἐν οἰκίᾳ μικρᾷ νύμφην ἐχούσῃ τοῦ πράγματος αἴσθησις, καί ποτε τοῦ γυναίου θρασύτερον παρασοβῆσαι παρὰ τὸ δωμάτιον δόξαντος, ὁ νεανίας εἶπε μὲν οὐδέν, ἐμβλέψας δέ πως [3] πικρότερον καὶ διατραπεὶς οὐκ ἔλαθε τὸν πρεσβύτην. ὡς οὖν ἔγνω τὸ πρᾶγμα δυσχεραινόμενον ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, οὐδὲν ἐγκαλέσας οὐδὲ μεμψάμενος, ἀλλὰ καταβαίνων ὥσπερ εἰώθει μετὰ φίλων εἰς ἀγοράν, Σαλώνιόν τινα τῶν ὑπογεγραμματευκότων αὐτῷ παρόντα καὶ συμπροπέμποντα μεγάλῃ φωνῇ προσαγορεύσας ἠρώτησεν, εἰ τὸ θυγάτριον [4] συνήρμοκε νυμφίῳ. τοῦ δ’ ἀνθρώπου φήσαντος ὡς οὐδὲ μέλλει μὴ πρότερον ἐκείνῳ κοινωσάμενος, ‘καὶ μὴν ἐγώ σοι’ φησίν ‘εὕρηκα κηδεστὴν ἐπιτήδειον, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία τὰ τῆς ἡλικίας δυσχεραίνοιτο· τἆλλα γὰρ οὐ μεμπτός [5] ἐστι, σφόδρα δὲ πρεσβύτης’. ὡς οὖν ὁ Σαλώνιος αὐτὸν ἐκέλευε ταῦτα φροντίζειν καὶ διδόναι τὴν κόρην ᾧ προαιρεῖται, πελάτιν τ’ οὖσαν αὐτοῦ καὶ δεομένην τῆς ἐκείνου κηδεμονίας, οὐδεμίαν ὁ Κάτων ἀναβολὴν ποιησάμενος [6] αὐτὸς ἔφη τὴν παρθένον αἰτεῖν αὑτῷ. καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ὡς εἰκὸς ὁ λόγος ἐξέπληξε τὸν ἄνθρωπον, πόρρω μὲν γάμου τὸν Κάτωνα, πόρρω δ’ αὑτὸν οἰκίας ὑπατικῆς καὶ θριαμβικῶν κηδευμάτων τιθέμενον· σπουδῇ δὲ χρώμενον ὁρῶν τὸν Κάτωνα, ἄσμενος ἐδέξατο, καὶ καταβάντες [7] εὐθὺς εἰς ἀγορὰν ἐποιοῦντο τὴν ἐγγύην. πραττομένου δὲ τοῦ γάμου, παραλαβὼν τοὺς ἐπιτηδείους ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ Κάτωνος ἠρώτησε τὸν πατέρα, μή τι μεμφόμενος ἢ λελυπημένος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ μητρυιὰν ἐπάγεται. ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἀναβοήσας ‘εὐφήμησον’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ παῖ· πάντα γὰρ ἀγαστά μοι τὰ παρὰ σοῦ καὶ μεμπτὸν οὐδέν· ἐπιθυμῶ δὲ πλείονας ἐμαυτῷ τε παῖδας καὶ πολίτας τῇ πατρίδι τοιούτους [8] ἀπολιπεῖν’. ταύτην δὲ τὴν γνώμην πρότερον εἰπεῖν φασι Πεισίστρατον τὸν Ἀθηναίων τύραννον, ἐπιγήμαντα τοῖς ἐνηλίκοις παισὶ τὴν Ἀργολίδα Τιμώνασσαν, ἐξ ἧς Ἰοφῶντα καὶ Θεσσαλὸν αὐτῷ λέγουσι γενέσθαι.

[9] Γήμαντι δὲ τῷ Κάτωνι γίνεται παῖς, ᾧ παρωνύμιον ἀπὸ τῆς μητρὸς ἔθετο Σαλώνιον. ὁ δὲ πρεσβύτερος υἱὸς ἐτελεύτησε στρατηγῶν, καὶ μέμνηται μὲν αὐτοῦ πολλάκις [10] ἐν τοῖς βιβλίοις ὁ Κάτων ὡς ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ γεγονότος, πρᾴως δὲ καὶ φιλοσόφως λέγεται τὴν συμφορὰν ἐνεγκεῖν, καὶ μηδὲν ἀμβλύτερος δι’ αὐτὴν εἰς τὰ πολιτικὰ [11] γενέσθαι. οὐ γὰρ ὡς Λεύκιος Λεύκολλος ὕστερον καὶ Μέτελλος ὁ Πίος ἐξέκαμεν ὑπὸ γήρως πρὸς τὰ δημόσια, λειτουργίαν τὴν πολιτείαν ἡγούμενος, οὐδ’ ὡς πρότερον Σκιπίων ὁ Ἀφρικανὸς διὰ τὸν ἀντικρούσαντα πρὸς τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ φθόνον ἀποστραφεὶς τὸν δῆμον ἐκ μεταβολῆς ἐποιήσατο τοῦ λοιποῦ βίου τέλος ἀπραγμοσύνην, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ Διονύσιόν τις ἔπεισε κάλλιστον ἐντάφιον ἡγεῖσθαι τὴν τυραννίδα, κάλλιστον αὐτὸς ἐγγήραμα τὴν πολιτείαν ποιησάμενος, ἀναπαύσεσιν ἐχρῆτο καὶ παιδιαῖς, ὁπότε σχολάζοι, τῷ συντάττεσθαι βιβλία καὶ τῷ γεωργεῖν.

[25] [1] Συνετάττετο μὲν οὖν λόγους τε παντοδαποὺς καὶ ἱστορίας· γεωργίᾳ δὲ προσεῖχε νέος μὲν ὢν ἔτι καὶ διὰ τὴν χρείαν - φησὶ γὰρ δυσὶ κεχρῆσθαι μόνοις πορισμοῖς, γεωργίᾳ καὶ φειδοῖ - , τότε δὲ διαγωγὴν καὶ [2] θεωρίαν αὐτῷ τὰ γινόμενα κατ’ ἀγρὸν παρεῖχε· καὶ συντέτακταί γε βιβλίον γεωργικόν, ἐν ᾧ καὶ περὶ πλακούντων σκευασίας καὶ τηρήσεως ὀπώρας γέγραφεν, ἐν παντὶ [3] φιλοτιμούμενος περιττὸς εἶναι καὶ ἴδιος. ἦν δὲ καὶ τὸ δεῖπνον ἐν ἀγρῷ δαψιλέστερον· ἐκάλει γὰρ ἑκάστοτε τῶν ἀγρογειτόνων καὶ περιχώρων τοὺς συνήθεις καὶ συνδιῆγεν ἱλαρῶς, οὐ τοῖς καθ’ ἡλικίαν μόνον ἡδὺς ὢν συγγενέσθαι καὶ ποθεινός, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς νέοις, ἅτε δὴ πολλῶν μὲν ἔμπειρος πραγμάτων γεγονώς, πολλοῖς δὲ γράμμασι [4] καὶ λόγοις ἀξίοις ἀκοῆς ἐντετυχηκώς. τὴν δὲ τράπεζαν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα φιλοποιὸν ἡγεῖτο, καὶ πολλὴ μὲν εὐφημία τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν πολιτῶν ἐπεισήγετο, πολλὴ δ’ ἦν ἀμνηστία τῶν ἀχρήστων καὶ πονηρῶν, μήτε ψόγῳ μήτ’ ἐπαίνῳ πάροδον ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν τοῦ Κάτωνος εἰς τὸ συμπόσιον διδόντος.

[26] [1] Ἔσχατον δὲ τῶν πολιτευμάτων αὐτοῦ τὴν Καρχηδόνος ἀνάστασιν οἴονται γεγονέναι, τῷ μὲν ἔργῳ τέλος ἐπιθέντος τοῦ νέου Σκιπίωνος, βουλῇ δὲ καὶ γνώμῃ μάλιστα τῇ Κάτωνος ἀραμένων τὸν πόλεμον ἐξ αἰτίας [2] τοιᾶσδε. Κάτων ἐπέμφθη πρὸς Καρχηδονίους καὶ Μασσανάσσην τὸν Νομάδα πολεμοῦντας ἀλλήλοις, ἐπισκεψόμενος τὰς προφάσεις τῆς διαφορᾶς. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἦν τοῦ δήμου φίλος ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, οἱ δ’ ἐγεγόνεισαν ἔνσπονδοι μετὰ τὴν ὑπὸ Σκιπίωνος ἧτταν, ἀφαιρέσει τε τῆς ἀρχῆς [3] καὶ βαρεῖ δασμῷ χρημάτων κολουθέντες. εὑρὼν δὲ τὴν πόλιν οὐχ ὡς ᾤοντο Ῥωμαῖοι κεκακωμένην καὶ ταπεινὰ πράττουσαν, ἀλλὰ πολλῇ μὲν εὐανδροῦσαν ἡλικίᾳ, μεγάλων δὲ πλούτων γέμουσαν, ὅπλων δὲ παντοδαπῶν καὶ παρασκευῆς πολεμιστηρίου μεστὴν καὶ μικρὸν οὐδὲν ἐπὶ τούτοις φρονοῦσαν, οὐ τὰ Νομάδων ᾤετο καὶ Μασσανάσσου πράγματα Ῥωμαίους ὥραν ἔχειν τίθεσθαι καὶ διαιτᾶν, ἀλλ’ εἰ μὴ καταλήψονται πόλιν ἄνωθεν ἐχθρὰν καὶ βαρύθυμον ηὐξημένην ἀπίστως, πάλιν ἐν τοῖς ἴσοις [4] κινδύνοις ἔσεσθαι. ταχέως οὖν ὑποστρέψας ἐδίδασκε τὴν βουλήν, ὡς αἱ πρότερον ἧτται καὶ συμφοραὶ Καρχηδονίων οὐ τοσοῦτον τῆς δυνάμεως ὅσον τῆς ἀνοίας ἀπαρύσασαι, κινδυνεύουσιν αὐτοὺς οὐκ ἀσθενεστέρους, ἐμπειροτέρους δὲ πολέμων ἀπεργάσασθαι, ἤδη δὲ καὶ προανακινεῖσθαι τοῖς Νομαδικοῖς τοὺς πρὸς Ῥωμαίους ἀγῶνας, εἰρήνην δὲ καὶ σπονδὰς ὄνομα τοῦ πολέμου τῇ μελλήσει κεῖσθαι καιρὸν περιμένοντος.

[27] [1] Πρὸς τούτοις φασὶ τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ σῦκα τῶν Λιβυκῶν ἐπίτηδες ἐκβαλεῖν ἐν τῇ βουλῇ, τὴν τήβεννον ἀναβαλόμενον, εἶτα θαυμασάντων τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ κάλλος, εἰπεῖν ὡς ἡ ταῦτα φέρουσα χώρα τριῶν ἡμερῶν [2] πλοῦν ἀπέχει τῆς Ῥώμης. ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἤδη καὶ βιαιότερον, τὸ περὶ παντὸς οὗ δήποτε πράγματος γνώμην ἀποφαινόμενον προσεπιφωνεῖν οὕτως· ‘δοκεῖ δέ μοι καὶ Καρχηδόνα μὴ εἶναι’. τοὐναντίον δὲ Πόπλιος Σκιπίων ὁ Νασικᾶς ἐπικαλούμενος ἀεὶ διετέλει λέγων καὶ ἀποφαινόμενος· [3] ‘δοκεῖ μοι Καρχηδόνα εἶναι’. πολλὰ γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἤδη τὸν δῆμον ὁρῶν ὕβρει πλημμελοῦντα, καὶ δι’ εὐτυχίαν καὶ φρόνημα τῇ βουλῇ δυσκάθεκτον ὄντα, καὶ τὴν πόλιν ὅλην ὑπὸ δυνάμεως ὅπῃ ῥέψειε ταῖς ὁρμαῖς βίᾳ συνεφελκόμενον, ἐβούλετο τοῦτον γοῦν τὸν φόβον ὥσπερ χαλινὸν ἐπικεῖσθαι σωφρονιστῆρα τῇ θρασύτητι τῶν πολλῶν, ἔλαττον μὲν ἡγούμενος ἰσχύειν Καρχηδονίους τοῦ περιγενέσθαι Ῥωμαίων, μεῖζον δὲ τοῦ καταφρονεῖσθαι.

[4] τῷ δὲ Κάτωνι τοῦτ’ αὐτὸ δεινὸν ἐφαίνετο, βακχεύοντι τῷ δήμῳ καὶ σφαλλομένῳ τὰ πολλὰ δι’ ἐξουσίαν πόλιν ἀεὶ μεγάλην, νῦν δὲ καὶ νήφουσαν ὑπὸ συμφορῶν καὶ κεκολασμένην, ἐπικρέμασθαι, καὶ μὴ παντάπασι τοὺς ἔξωθεν ἀνελεῖν τῆς ἡγεμονίας φόβους, ἀναφορὰς αὑτοῖς [5] πρὸς τὰς οἴκοθεν ἁμαρτίας ἀπολιπόντας. οὕτω μὲν ἐξεργάσασθαι λέγεται τὸν τρίτον καὶ τελευταῖον ὁ Κάτων ἐπὶ Καρχηδονίους πόλεμον, ἀρξαμένων δὲ πολεμεῖν ἐτελεύτησεν, ἀποθεσπίσας περὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἐπιθήσειν τῷ πολέμῳ τέλος ἀνδρός, ὃς ἦν μὲν τότε νεανίας, χιλίαρχος δὲ στρατευόμενος ἐπεδείκνυτο καὶ γνώμης ἔργα καὶ τόλμης πρὸς [6] τοὺς ἀγῶνας. ἀπαγγελλομένων δὲ τούτων εἰς Ῥώμην, πυνθανόμενον τὸν Κάτωνά φασιν εἰπεῖν (Od. 10, 495)·

οἶος πέπνυται, τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀίσσουσι.

[7] ταύτην μὲν οὖν τὴν ἀπόφασιν ταχὺ δι’ ἔργων ἐβεβαίωσεν ὁ Σκιπίων.

Ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἀπέλιπε γενεὰν ἕνα μὲν υἱὸν ἐκ τῆς ἐπιγαμηθείσης, ᾧ παρωνύμιον ἔφαμεν γενέσθαι Σαλώνιον, ἕνα δ’ υἱωνὸν ἐκ τοῦ τελευτήσαντος υἱοῦ, καὶ Σαλώνιος μὲν ἐτελεύτησε στρατηγῶν, ὁ δ’ ἐξ αὐτοῦ γενόμενος Μᾶρκος ὑπάτευσεν. ἦν δὲ πάππος οὗτος τοῦ φιλοσόφου Κάτωνος, ἀνδρὸς ἀρετῇ καὶ δόξῃ τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐπιφανεστάτου γενομένου.

Comparison Aristidis et Catonis

[1] [1] Γεγραμμένων δὲ καὶ περὶ τούτων τῶν ἀξίων μνήμης, ὅλος ὁ τούτου βίος ὅλῳ τῷ θατέρου παρατεθεὶς οὐκ εὐθεώρητον ἔχει τὴν διαφοράν, ἐναφανιζομένην πολλαῖς [2] καὶ μεγάλαις ὁμοιότησιν. εἰ δὲ δεῖ κατὰ μέρος τῇ συγκρίσει διαλαβεῖν ὥσπερ ἔπος ἢ γραφὴν ἑκάτερον, τὸ μὲν ἐξ οὐχ ὑπαρχούσης ἀφορμῆς εἰς πολιτείαν καὶ δόξαν ἀρετῇ καὶ δυνάμει παρελθεῖν ἀμφοτέροις κοινόν ἐστι. φαίνεται δ’ ὁ μὲν Ἀριστείδης οὔπω τότε μεγάλων οὐσῶν τῶν Ἀθηνῶν καὶ ταῖς οὐσίαις ἔτι συμμέτροις καὶ ὁμαλοῖς ἐπιβαλὼν δημαγωγοῖς καὶ στρατηγοῖς ἐπιφανὴς γενέσθαι· [3] τὸ γὰρ μέγιστον ἦν τίμημα τότε πεντακοσίων μεδίμνων, τὸ δὲ δεύτερον [ἱππεῖς] τριακοσίων, ἔσχατον δὲ καὶ τρίτον [οἱ ζευγῖται] διακοσίων· ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἐκ πολίχνης τε μικρᾶς καὶ διαίτης ἀγροίκου δοκούσης φέρων ἀφῆκεν αὑτὸν ὥσπερ εἰς πέλαγος ἀχανὲς τὴν ἐν Ῥώμῃ πολιτείαν, οὐκέτι Κουρίων καὶ Φαβρικίων καὶ Ἀτιλίων ἔργον οὖσαν ἡγεμόνων, οὐδ’ ἀπ’ ἀρότρου καὶ σκαφίου πένητας καὶ αὐτουργοὺς ἀναβαίνοντας ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα προσιεμένην ἄρχοντας καὶ δημαγωγούς, ἀλλὰ πρὸς γένη μεγάλα καὶ πλούτους καὶ νομὰς καὶ σπουδαρχίας ἀποβλέπειν εἰθισμένην, καὶ δι’ ὄγκον ἤδη καὶ δύναμιν [4] ἐντρυφῶσαν τοῖς ἄρχειν ἀξιοῦσιν. οὐκ ἦν δ’ ὅμοιον ἀντιπάλῳ χρῆσθαι Θεμιστοκλεῖ, μήτ’ ἀπὸ γένους λαμπρῷ καὶ κεκτημένῳ μέτρια - πέντε γὰρ ἢ τριῶν ταλάντων οὐσίαν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι λέγουσιν ὅτε πρῶτον ἥπτετο τῆς πολιτείας - καὶ πρὸς Σκιπίωνας Ἀφρικανοὺς καὶ Σερουίους Γάλβας καὶ Κουϊντίους Φλαμινίνους ἁμιλλᾶσθαι περὶ πρωτείων, μηδὲν ὁρμητήριον ἔχοντα πλὴν φωνὴν παρρησιαζομένην ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίων.

[2] [1] Ἔτι δ’ Ἀριστείδης μὲν ἐν Μαραθῶνι καὶ πάλιν ἐν Πλαταιαῖς δέκατος ἦν στρατηγός, Κάτων δὲ δεύτερος μὲν ὕπατος ᾑρέθη πολλῶν ἀντιμετιόντων, δεύτερος δὲ τιμητής, ἑπτὰ τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους καὶ πρώτους ἁμιλλωμένους [2] ὑπερβαλόμενος. καὶ μὴν Ἀριστείδης μὲν ἐν οὐδενὶ τῶν κατορθωμάτων γέγονε πρῶτος, ἀλλὰ Μιλτιάδης ἔχει τοῦ Μαραθῶνος τὸ πρωτεῖον, Θεμιστοκλῆς δὲ τῆς Σαλαμῖνος, ἐν δὲ Πλαταιαῖς φησιν Ἡρόδοτος (9, 64) ἀνελέσθαι καλλίστην νίκην Παυσανίαν, Ἀριστείδῃ δὲ καὶ τῶν δευτερείων ἀμφισβητοῦσι Σωφάναι καὶ Ἀμεινίαι καὶ Καλλίμαχοι καὶ Κυνέγειροι διαπρεπῶς ἀριστεύσαντες ἐν ἐκείνοις [3] τοῖς ἀγῶσι· Κάτων δ’ οὐ μόνον αὐτὸς ὑπατεύων ἐπρώτευσε καὶ χειρὶ καὶ γνώμῃ κατὰ τὸν Ἰβηρικὸν πόλεμον, ἀλλὰ καὶ χιλιαρχῶν περὶ Θερμοπύλας ὑπατεύοντος ἑτέρου τὴν δόξαν ἔσχε τῆς νίκης, μεγάλας ἐπ’ Ἀντίοχον Ῥωμαίοις ἀναπετάσας κλισιάδας καὶ πρόσω μόνον ὁρῶντι τῷ βασιλεῖ περιστήσας κατὰ νώτου τὸν πόλεμον. ἐκείνη γὰρ ἡ νίκη, περιφανῶς ἔργον οὖσα Κάτωνος, ἐξήλασε τῆς Ἑλλάδος τὴν Ἀσίαν, παρέσχε δ’ ἐπιβατὴν αὖθις Σκιπίωνι.

[4] Πολεμοῦντες μὲν οὖν ἀήττητοι γεγόνασιν ἀμφότεροι, τὰ δὲ περὶ τὴν πολιτείαν Ἀριστείδης μὲν ἔπταισεν ἐξοστρακισθεὶς καὶ καταστασιασθεὶς ὑπὸ Θεμιστοκλέους, Κάτων δ’, οἵπερ ἦσαν ἐν Ῥώμῃ δυνατώτατοι καὶ μέγιστοι, πᾶσιν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἀντιπάλοις χρώμενος, καὶ μέχρι γήρως ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴς ἀγωνιζόμενος, ἀπτῶτα διετήρησεν [5] αὑτόν· πλείστας δὲ καὶ φυγὼν δημοσίας δίκας καὶ διώξας, πολλὰς μὲν εἷλε, πάσας δ’ ἀπέφυγε, πρόβλημα τοῦ βίου καὶ δραστήριον ὄργανον ἔχων τὸν λόγον, ᾧ δικαιότερον ἄν τις ἢ τύχῃ καὶ δαίμονι τοῦ ἀνδρὸς τὸ μηδὲν παθεῖν παρ’ ἀξίαν ἀνατιθείη. μέγα γὰρ καὶ Ἀριστοτέλει τῷ φιλοσόφῳ τοῦτο προσεμαρτύρησεν Ἀντίπατρος, γράφων περὶ αὐτοῦ μετὰ τὴν τελευτήν, ὅτι πρὸς τοῖς ἄλλοις ὁ ἀνὴρ καὶ τὸ πιθανὸν εἶχεν.

[3] [1] Ὅτι μὲν δὴ τῆς πολιτικῆς ἄνθρωπος ἀρετῆς οὐ κτᾶται τελειοτέραν, ὁμολογούμενόν ἐστι· ταύτης δέ που μόριον οἱ πλεῖστοι τὴν οἰκονομικὴν οὐ σμικρὸν τίθενται· καὶ γὰρ ἡ πόλις, οἴκων τι σύστημα καὶ κεφάλαιον οὖσα, ῥώννυται πρὸς τὰ δημόσια τοῖς ἰδίοις βίοις τῶν πολιτῶν εὐθενούντων, ὅπου καὶ Λυκοῦργος, ἐξοικίσας μὲν ἄργυρον, ἐξοικίσας δὲ χρυσὸν τῆς Σπάρτης, νόμισμα δὲ διεφθαρμένου πυρὶ σιδήρου θέμενος αὐτοῖς, οἰκονομίας οὐκ ἀπήλλαξε τοὺς πολίτας, ἀλλὰ τὰ τρυφῶντα καὶ ὕπουλα καὶ φλεγμαίνοντα τοῦ πλούτου περιελών, ὅπως εὐπορήσωσι τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ χρησίμων ἅπαντες, ὡς ἄλλος οὐδεὶς νομοθέτης προενόησε, τὸν ἄπορον καὶ ἀνέστιον καὶ πένητα σύνοικον ἐπὶ κοινωνίᾳ πολιτείας μᾶλλον τοῦ πλουσίου καὶ ὑπερόγκου φοβηθείς.

[2] φαίνεται τοίνυν ὁ μὲν Κάτων οὐδέν τι φαυλότερος οἴκου προστάτης ἢ πόλεως γενόμενος· καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ηὔξησε τὸν ἑαυτοῦ βίον, καὶ κατέστη διδάσκαλος οἰκονομίας καὶ γεωργίας ἑτέροις, πολλὰ καὶ χρήσιμα περὶ τούτων συνταξάμενος· Ἀριστείδης δὲ τῇ πενίᾳ καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην συνδιέβαλεν ὡς οἰκοφθόρον καὶ πτωχοποιὸν καὶ πᾶσι [3] μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς κεκτημένοις ὠφέλιμον. καίτοι πολλὰ μὲν Ἡσίοδος πρὸς δικαιοσύνην ἅμα καὶ πρὸς οἰκονομίαν παρακαλῶν ἡμᾶς εἴρηκε, καὶ τὴν ἀργίαν ὡς ἀδικίας ἀρχὴν λελοιδόρηκεν, εὖ δὲ καὶ Ὁμήρῳ πεποίηται (Od. 14, 222)·

ἔργον δέ μοι οὐ φίλον ἦεν

οὐδ’ οἰκωφελίη, ἥ τε τρέφει ἀγλαὰ τέκνα,

ἀλλά μοι αἰεὶ νῆες ἐπήρετμοι φίλαι ἦσαν

καὶ πόλεμοι καὶ ἄκοντες ἐύξεστοι καὶ ὀιστοί,

ὡς τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἀμελοῦντας οἰκίας καὶ ποριζομένους ἐξ [4] ἀδικίας. οὐ γάρ, ὡς τοὔλαιον οἱ ἰατροί φασι τοῦ σώματος εἶναι τοῖς μὲν ἐκτὸς ὠφελιμώτατον, τοῖς δ’ ἐντὸς βλαβερώτατον, οὕτως ὁ δίκαιος ἑτέροις μέν ἐστι χρήσιμος, αὑτοῦ δὲ καὶ τῶν ἰδίων ἀκηδής, ἀλλ’ ἔοικε ταύτῃ πεπηρῶσθαι τῷ Ἀριστείδῃ τὸ πολιτικόν, εἴπερ, ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι λέγουσιν, οὐδὲ προῖκα τοῖς θυγατρίοις οὐδ’ ἑαυτῷ [5] ταφὴν καταλιπέσθαι προὐνόησεν. ὅθεν ὁ μὲν Κάτωνος οἶκος ἄχρι γένους τετάρτου στρατηγοὺς καὶ ὑπάτους τῇ Ῥώμῃ παρεῖχε· καὶ γὰρ υἱωνοὶ καὶ τούτων ἔτι παῖδες ἦρξαν ἀρχὰς τὰς μεγίστας· τῆς δ’ Ἀριστείδου τοῦ πρωτεύσαντος Ἑλλήνων γενεᾶς ἡ πολλὴ καὶ ἄπορος πενία τοὺς μὲν εἰς ἀγυρτικοὺς κατέβαλε πίνακας, τοὺς δὲ δημοσίῳ τὰς χεῖρας ἐράνῳ δι’ ἔνδειαν ὑπέχειν ἠνάγκασεν, οὐδενὶ δὲ λαμπρὸν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἄξιον ἐκείνου τοῦ ἀνδρὸς φρονῆσαι παρέσχεν.

[4] [1] Ἢ τοῦτο πρῶτον ἀμφιλογίαν ἔχει; πενία γὰρ αἰσχρὸν μὲν οὐδαμοῦ δι’ αὑτήν, ἀλλ’ ὅπου δεῖγμα ῥᾳθυμίας ἐστίν, ἀκρασίας, ἀλογιστίας, πολυτελείας· ἀνδρὶ δὲ σώφρονι καὶ φιλοπόνῳ καὶ δικαίῳ καὶ ἀνδρείῳ καὶ δημοσιεύοντι ταῖς ἀρεταῖς πάσαις συνοῦσα μεγαλοψυχίας [2] ἐστὶ καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνης σημεῖον. οὐ γὰρ ἔστι πράττειν μεγάλα φροντίζοντα μικρῶν, οὐδὲ πολλοῖς δεομένοις βοηθεῖν πολλῶν αὐτὸν δεόμενον. μέγα δ’ εἰς πολιτείαν ἐφόδιον οὐχὶ πλοῦτος, ἀλλ’ αὐτάρκεια, τῷ μηδενὸς ἰδίᾳ τῶν περιττῶν δεῖσθαι πρὸς οὐδεμίαν ἀσχολίαν ἀπάγουσα τῶν δημοσίων. ἀπροσδεὴς μὲν γὰρ ἁπλῶς ὁ θεὸς, ἀνθρωπίνης δ’ ἀρετῆς, ᾧ συνάγεται πρὸς τοὐλάχιστον ἡ χρεία, [3] τοῦτο τελειότατον καὶ θειότατον. ὡς γὰρ σῶμα τὸ καλῶς πρὸς εὐεξίαν κεκραμένον οὔτ’ ἐσθῆτος οὔτε τροφῆς δεῖται περιττῆς, οὕτω καὶ οἶκος καὶ βίος ὑγιαίνων ἀπὸ τῶν τυχόντων διοικεῖται. δεῖ δὲ τῇ χρείᾳ σύμμετρον ἔχειν τὴν κτῆσιν, ὡς ὅ γε πολλὰ συνάγων, ὀλίγοις δὲ χρώμενος, οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτάρκης, ἀλλ’ εἴτε μὴ δεῖται, τῆς παρασκευῆς ὧν οὐκ ὀρέγεται μάταιος, εἴτ’ ὀρέγεται, μικρολογίᾳ κολούων τὴν [4] ἀπόλαυσιν ἄθλιος. αὐτοῦ γέ τοι Κάτωνος ἡδέως ἂν πυθοίμην· εἰ μὲν ἀπολαυστὸν ὁ πλοῦτός ἐστι, τί σεμνύνῃ τῷ πολλὰ κεκτημένος ἀρκεῖσθαι μετρίοις; εἰ δὲ λαμπρόν ἐστιν, ὥσπερ ἐστίν, ἄρτῳ τε χρῆσθαι τῷ προστυχόντι, καὶ πίνειν οἷον ἐργάται πίνουσι καὶ θεράποντες οἶνον, καὶ πορφύρας μὴ δεηθῆναι μηδ’ οἰκίας κεκονιαμένης, οὐδὲν οὔτ’ Ἀριστείδης οὔτ’ Ἐπαμεινώνδας οὔτε Μάνιος Κούριος οὔτε Γάιος Φαβρίκιος ἐνέλιπον τοῦ προσήκοντος, χαίρειν ἐάσαντες τὴν κτῆσιν ὧν τὴν χρῆσιν ἀπεδοκίμαζον.

[5] οὐ γὰρ ἀναγκαῖον ἀνθρώπῳ γογγυλίδας ἥδιστον ὄψον πεποιημένῳ καὶ δι’ αὑτοῦ ταύτας ἕψοντι, ματτούσης ἅμα τῆς γυναικὸς ἄλφιτα, τοσαυτάκις περὶ ἀσσαρίου θρυλεῖν καὶ γράφειν, ἀφ’ ἧς ἄν τις ἐργασίας τάχιστα πλούσιος γένοιτο. μέγα γὰρ τὸ εὐτελὲς καὶ αὔταρκες, ὅτι τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἅμα καὶ τῆς φροντίδος ἀπαλλάττει τῶν [6] περιττῶν. διὸ καὶ τοῦτό φασιν ἐν τῇ Καλλίου δίκῃ τὸν Ἀριστείδην εἰπεῖν, ὡς αἰσχύνεσθαι πενίαν προσήκει τοῖς ἀκουσίως πενομένοις, τοῖς δ’ ὥσπερ αὐτὸς ἑκουσίως [7] ἐγκαλλωπίζεσθαι. γελοῖον γὰρ οἴεσθαι ῥᾳθυμίας εἶναι τὴν Ἀριστείδου πενίαν, ᾧ παρῆν αἰσχρὸν ἐργασαμένῳ μηδέν, ἀλλ’ ἕνα σκυλεύσαντι βάρβαρον ἢ μίαν σκηνὴν καταλαβόντι πλουσίῳ γενέσθαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν περὶ τούτων.

[5] [1] Στρατηγίαι δ’ αἱ μὲν Κάτωνος οὐδὲν ὡς μεγάλοις πράγμασι μέγα προσέθηκαν, ἐν δὲ ταῖς Ἀριστείδου τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ λαμπρότατα καὶ πρῶτα τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἔργων ἐστίν, ὁ Μαραθών, ἡ Σαλαμίς, αἱ Πλαταιαί, [2] καὶ οὐκ ἄξιον δήπου παραβαλεῖν τῷ Ξέρξῃ τὸν Ἀντίοχον καὶ τὰ περιαιρεθέντα τῶν Ἰβηρικῶν πόλεων τείχη ταῖς τοσαύταις μὲν ἐν γῇ, τοσαύταις δ’ ἐν θαλάσσῃ πεσούσαις μυριάσιν· ἐν οἷς Ἀριστείδης ἔργῳ μὲν οὐδενὸς ἐλείπετο, δόξης δὲ καὶ στεφάνων, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει πλούτου καὶ χρημάτων, ὑφήκατο τοῖς μᾶλλον δεομένοις, [3] ὅτι καὶ τούτων πάντων διέφερεν. ἐγὼ δ’ οὐ μέμφομαι μὲν Κάτωνος τὸ μεγαλύνειν ἀεὶ καὶ πρῶτον ἁπάντων ἑαυτὸν τίθεσθαι· καίτοι φησὶν ἔν τινι λόγῳ τὸ ἐπαινεῖν αὑτὸν ὥσπερ τὸ λοιδορεῖν ἄτοπον εἶναι τελειότερος δέ μοι δοκεῖ πρὸς ἀρετὴν τοῦ πολλάκις αὑτὸν ἐγκωμιάζοντος [4] ὁ μηδ’ ἑτέρων τοῦτο ποιούντων δεόμενος. τὸ γὰρ ἀφιλότιμον οὐ μικρὸν εἰς πρᾳότητα πολιτικὴν ἐφόδιον, καὶ τοὐναντίον ἡ φιλοτιμία χαλεπὸν καὶ φθόνου γονιμώτατον· ἧς ὁ μὲν ἀπήλλακτο παντάπασιν, ὁ δὲ καὶ πάνυ πολλῆς μετεῖχεν. Ἀριστείδης μὲν γὰρ Θεμιστοκλεῖ τὰ μέγιστα συμπράττων, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ καὶ τὴν στρατηγίαν αὐτοῦ δορυφορῶν, ὤρθωσε τὰς Ἀθήνας, Κάτων δ’ ἀντιπράττων Σκιπίωνι μικροῦ μὲν ἀνέτρεψε καὶ διελυμήνατο τὴν ἐπὶ Καρχηδονίους αὐτοῦ στρατηγίαν, ᾗ τὸν ἀήττητον Ἀννίβαν καθεῖλε, τέλος δὲ μηχανώμενος ἀεί τινας ὑποψίας καὶ διαβολάς, αὐτὸν μὲν ἐξήλασε τῆς πόλεως, τὸν δ’ ἀδελφὸν αἰσχίστῃ κλοπῆς καταδίκῃ περιέβαλεν.

[6] [1] Ἣν τοίνυν πλείστοις ὁ Κάτων κεκόσμηκε καὶ καλλίστοις ἐπαίνοις ἀεὶ σωφροσύνην, Ἀριστείδης μὲν ἄθικτον ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ καθαρὰν ἐτήρησεν, αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ Κάτωνος ὁ παρ’ ἀξίαν ἅμα καὶ παρ’ ὥραν γάμος οὐ μικρὰν οὐδὲ φαύλην εἰς τοῦτο διαβολὴν κατεσκέδασε.

[2] πρεσβύτην γὰρ ἤδη τοσοῦτον ἐνηλίκῳ παιδὶ καὶ γυναικὶ νύμφῃ παιδὸς ἐπιγῆμαι κόρην ὑπηρέτου καὶ δημοσιεύοντος ἐπὶ μισθῷ πατρὸς οὐδαμῇ καλόν, ἀλλ’ εἴτε πρὸς ἡδονὴν ταῦτ’ ἔπραξεν, εἴτ’ ὀργῇ διὰ τὴν ἑταίραν ἀμυνόμενος τὸν υἱόν, αἰσχύνην ἔχει καὶ τὸ ἔργον καὶ ἡ πρόφασις. ᾧ δ’ αὐτὸς ἐχρήσατο λόγῳ κατειρωνευόμενος τὸ [3] μειράκιον, οὐκ ἦν ἀληθής. εἰ γὰρ ἐβούλετο παῖδας ἀγαθοὺς ὁμοίως τεκνῶσαι, γάμον ἔδει λαβεῖν γενναῖον ἐξ ἀρχῆς σκεψάμενον, οὐχ ἕως μὲν ἐλάνθανεν ἀνεγγύῳ γυναικὶ καὶ κοινῇ συγκοιμώμενος ἀγαπᾶν, ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐφωράθη, ποιήσασθαι πενθερὸν ὃν ῥᾷστα πείσειν, οὐχ ᾧ κάλλιστα κηδεύσειν ἔμελλεν.

Philopoemen

[1] [1]  Κλέανδρος ἦν ἐν Μαντινείᾳ γένους τε πρώτου καὶ δυνηθεὶς ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα τῶν πολιτῶν· τύχῃ δὲ χρησάμενος καὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φυγών, ἧκεν εἰς Μεγάλην πόλιν οὐχ ἥκιστα διὰ Φιλοποίμενος πατέρα Κραῦγιν, ἄνδρα πάντων ἕνεκα [2] λαμπρόν, ἰδίᾳ δὲ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον οἰκείως ἔχοντα. ζῶντος μὲν οὖν αὐτοῦ πάντων ἐτύγχανε, τελευτήσαντος δὲ τὴν ἀμοιβὴν τῆς φιλοξενίας ἀποδιδούς, ἔθρεψεν αὐτοῦ τὸν υἱὸν ὀρφανὸν ὄντα, καθάπερ φησὶν Ὅμηρος (Il. 9, 442 sq. 478 sqq.) ὑπὸ τοῦ Φοίνικος τὸν Ἀχιλλέα τραφῆναι, γενναίαν τινὰ καὶ βασιλικὴν τοῦ ἤθους εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς πλάσιν καὶ [3] αὔξησιν λαμβάνοντος. ἤδη δὲ τοῦ Φιλοποίμενος ἀντίπαιδος ὄντος Ἔκδηλος καὶ Δημοφάνης οἱ Μεγαλοπολῖται διεδέξαντο τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν, Ἀρκεσιλάῳ συνήθεις ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ γεγονότες, καὶ φιλοσοφίαν μάλιστα τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἐπὶ [4] πολιτείαν καὶ πράξεις προαγαγόντες. οὗτοι καὶ τὴν ἑαυτῶν πατρίδα τυραννίδος ἀπήλλαξαν, τοὺς ἀποκτενοῦντας Ἀριστόδημον κρύφα παρασκευάσαντες, καὶ Νικοκλέα τὸν Σικυωνίων τύραννον Ἀράτῳ συνεξέβαλον, καὶ Κυρηναίοις δεηθεῖσι, τεταραγμένων τῶν κατὰ τὴν πόλιν καὶ νοσούντων, πλεύσαντες εὐνομίαν ἔθεντο καὶ διεκόσμησαν [5] ἄριστα τὴν πόλιν. αὐτοί γε μὴν ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις ἔργοις καὶ τὴν Φιλοποίμενος ἐποιοῦντο παίδευσιν, ὡς κοινὸν ὄφελος τῇ Ἑλλάδι τὸν ἄνδρα τοῦτον ὑπὸ φιλοσοφίας ἀπεργασάμενοι. [6] καὶ γὰρ ὥσπερ ὀψίγονον ἐν γήρᾳ ταῖς τῶν πα[6]λαιῶν ἡγεμόνων ἐπιτεκοῦσα τοῦτον ἀρεταῖς ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἠγάπησε διαφερόντως καὶ συνηύξησε τῇ δόξῃ τὴν δύναμιν. [7] Ῥωμαίων δέ τις ἐπαινῶν ἔσχατον αὐτὸν Ἑλλήνων προσεῖπεν, ὡς οὐδένα μέγαν μετὰ τοῦτον ἔτι τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἄνδρα γειναμένης οὐδ’ αὑτῆς ἄξιον.

[2] [1] Ἦν δὲ τὸ μὲν εἶδος οὐκ αἰσχρός, ὡς ἔνιοι νομίζουσιν· εἰκόνα γὰρ αὐτοῦ διαμένουσαν ἐν Δελφοῖς ὁρῶμεν· τὴν δὲ τῆς ξένης τῆς Μεγαρικῆς ἄγνοιαν συμβῆναι λέγουσι [2] δι’ εὐκολίαν τινὰ καὶ ἀφέλειαν αὐτοῦ. πυνθανομένη γὰρ ἔρχεσθαι πρὸς αὐτοὺς τὸν στρατηγὸν τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, ἐθορυβεῖτο παρασκευάζουσα δεῖπνον οὐ παρόντος [3] κατὰ τύχην τοῦ ἀνδρός. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τοῦ Φιλοποίμενος εἰσελθόντος, χλαμύδιον εὐτελὲς ἔχοντος, οἰομένη τινὰ τῶν ὑπηρετῶν εἶναι καὶ πρόδρομον, παρεκάλει τῆς [4] διακονίας συνεφάψασθαι. καὶ ὁ μὲν εὐθὺς ἀπορρίψας τὴν χλαμύδα τῶν ξύλων ἔσχιζεν· ὁ δὲ ξένος ἐπεισελθὼν καὶ θεασάμενος, τί τοῦτ’ ἔφη,, ὦ Φιλοποίμην; τί γὰρ ἄλλ’ ἔφη δωρίζων ἐκεῖνος ἢ κακᾶς ὄψεως δίκαν [5] δίδωμι; τοῦ δ’ ἄλλου σώματος τὴν φύσιν ἐπισκώπτων ὁ Τίτος εἶπεν· ὦ Φιλοποίμην, ὡς καλὰς χεῖρας ἔχεις καὶ σκέλη· γαστέρα δ’ οὐκ ἔχεις. ἦν γὰρ ἐκ τῶν μέσων [6] στενώτερος. τὸ μέντοι σκῶμμα πρὸς τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ μᾶλλον ἐλέχθη· καὶ γὰρ ὁπλίτας ἔχων ἀγαθοὺς καὶ ἱππεῖς, χρημάτων πολλάκις οὐκ εὐπόρει. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς περὶ τοῦ Φιλοποίμενος λέγεται.

[3] [1] Τοῦ δ’ ἤθους τὸ φιλότιμον οὐκ ἦν παντάπασι φιλονικίας καθαρὸν οὐδ’ ὀργῆς ἀπηλλαγμένον, ἀλλὰ καίπερ Ἐπαμεινώνδου βουλόμενος εἶναι μάλιστα ζηλωτής, τὸ ‹μὲν› δραστήριον καὶ συνετὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ὑπὸ χρημάτων ἀπαθὲς ἰσχυρῶς ἐμιμεῖτο, τῷ δὲ πρᾴῳ καὶ βαθεῖ καὶ φιλανθρώπῳ παρὰ τὰς πολιτικὰς διαφορὰς ἐμμένειν οὐ δυνάμενος δι’ ὀργὴν καὶ φιλονικίαν, μᾶλλον ἐδόκει στρατιωτικῆς ἢ πολιτικῆς ἀρετῆς οἰκεῖος εἶναι.

[2] καὶ γὰρ ἐκ παίδων εὐθὺς ἦν φιλοστρατιώτης, καὶ τοῖς πρὸς τοῦτο χρησίμοις μαθήμασιν ὑπήκουε προθύμως, [3] ὁπλομαχεῖν καὶ ἱππεύειν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ παλαίειν εὐφυῶς ἐδόκει, καὶ παρεκάλουν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν ἄθλησιν ἔνιοι τῶν φίλων καὶ τῶν ἐπιτρόπων, ἠρώτησεν αὐτούς, μή τι πρὸς τὴν στρατιωτικὴν ἄσκησιν ὑπὸ τῆς ἀθλήσεως βλαβήσοιτο.

[4] τῶν δὲ φαμένων, ὅπερ ἦν, ἀθλητικὸν στρατιωτικοῦ σῶμα καὶ βίον διαφέρειν τοῖς πᾶσι, μάλιστα δὲ δίαιταν ἑτέραν καὶ ἄσκησιν εἶναι, τῶν μὲν ὕπνῳ τε πολλῷ καὶ πλησμοναῖς ἐνδελεχέσι καὶ κινήσεσί ‹τε› τεταγμέναις καὶ ἡσυχίαις αὐξόντων τε καὶ διαφυλαττόντων τὴν ἕξιν, ὑπὸ πάσης ῥοπῆς καὶ παρεκβάσεως τοῦ συνήθους ἀκροσφαλῆ πρὸς μεταβολὴν οὖσαν, τὰ δὲ πάσης μὲν πλάνης ἔμπειρα καὶ πάσης ἀνωμαλίας προσῆκον εἶναι, μάλιστα δὲ φέρειν [5] ῥᾳδίως μὲν ἔνδειαν εἰθισμένα, ῥᾳδίως δ’ ἀγρυπνίαν, ἀκούσας ὁ Φιλοποίμην οὐ μόνον αὐτὸς ἔφυγε τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ κατεγέλασεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ στρατηγῶν ὕστερον ἀτιμίαις καὶ προπηλακισμοῖς, ὅσον ἦν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ, πᾶσαν ἄθλησιν ἐξέβαλλεν, ὡς τὰ χρησιμώτατα τῶν σωμάτων εἰς τοὺς ἀναγκαίους ἀγῶνας ἄχρηστα ποιοῦσαν.

[4] [1] Ἀπαλλαγεὶς δὲ διδασκάλων καὶ παιδαγωγῶν, ἐν μὲν ταῖς πολιτικαῖς στρατείαις, ἃς ἐποιοῦντο κλωπείας ἕνεκα καὶ λεηλασίας εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἐμβάλλοντες, εἴθισεν αὑτὸν πρῶτον μὲν ἐκστρατευόντων, ὕστατον δ’ ἀπερχομένων [2] βαδίζειν. σχολῆς δ’ οὔσης ἢ κυνηγῶν διεπόνει τὸ σῶμα καὶ κατεσκεύαζε κοῦφον ἅμα καὶ ῥωμαλέον, ἢ γεωργῶν.

[3] ἦν γὰρ ἀγρὸς αὐτῷ καλὸς ἀπὸ σταδίων εἴκοσι τῆς πόλεως· εἰς τοῦτον ἐβάδιζε καθ’ ἡμέραν μετὰ τὸ ἄριστον ἢ μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον, καὶ καταβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ στιβαδίου τοῦ τυχόντος ὥσπερ ἕκαστος τῶν ἐργατῶν ἀνεπαύετο.

[4] πρωῒ δ’ ἀναστὰς καὶ συνεφαψάμενος ἔργου τοῖς ἀμπελουργοῦσιν ἢ βοηλατοῦσιν, αὖθις εἰς πόλιν ἀπῄει, καὶ περὶ τὰ δημόσια τοῖς φίλοις καὶ τοῖς ἄρχουσι συνησχολεῖτο.

[5] τὰ μὲν οὖν ἐκ τῶν στρατειῶν προσιόντα κατανήλισκεν εἰς ἵππους καὶ ὅπλα καὶ λύσεις αἰχμαλώτων, τὸν δ’ οἶκον ἀπὸ τῆς γεωργίας αὔξειν ἐπειρᾶτο ‹τῷ› δικαιοτάτῳ τῶν χρηματισμῶν, οὐδὲ τοῦτο ποιούμενος πάρεργον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ προσήκειν οἰόμενος οἰκεῖα κεκτῆσθαι τὸν ἀλλοτρίων [6] ἀφεξόμενον. ἠκροᾶτο δὲ λόγων καὶ συγγράμμασι φιλοσόφων ἐνετύγχανεν, οὐ πᾶσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀφ’ ὧν ἐδόκει [7] πρὸς ἀρετὴν ὠφελεῖσθαι. καὶ τῶν Ὁμηρικῶν ὅσα [τὰς] πρὸς ἀνδρείαν ἐγείρειν καὶ παροξύνειν ἐνόμιζε ‹τὰς› φαντασίας, [8] τούτοις προσεῖχε. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἀναγνωσμάτων μάλιστα τοῖς Εὐαγγέλου τακτικοῖς ἐνεφύετο, καὶ τὰς περὶ Ἀλέξανδρον ἱστορίας κατεῖχε, τοὺς λόγους ἐπὶ τὰ πράγματα καταστρέφειν οἰόμενος, εἰ μὴ σχολῆς ἕνεκα καὶ [9] λαλιᾶς ἀκάρπου περαίνοιντο. καὶ γὰρ τῶν τακτικῶν θεωρημάτων, τὰς ἐπὶ τοῖς πινακίοις διαγραφὰς ἐῶν χαίρειν, ἐπὶ τῶν τόπων αὐτῶν ἐλάμβανεν ἔλεγχον καὶ μελέτην ἐποιεῖτο, χωρίων συγκλινίας καὶ πεδίων ἀποκοπὰς καὶ ὅσα περὶ ῥείθροις ἢ τάφροις ἢ στενωποῖς πάθη καὶ σχήματα διασπωμένης καὶ πάλιν συστελλομένης φάλαγγος ἐπισκοπῶν αὐτὸς πρὸς αὑτὸν ἐν ταῖς ὁδοιπορίαις, καὶ τοῖς [10] μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ προβάλλων. ἔοικε γὰρ οὗτος ‹ὁ› ἀνὴρ περαιτέρω τῆς ἀνάγκης ἐμφιλοκαλῆσαι τοῖς στρατιωτικοῖς, καὶ τὸν πόλεμον ὡς ποικιλωτάτην ὑπόθεσιν τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀσπάσασθαι, καὶ ὅλως καταφρονεῖν τῶν ἀπολειπομένων ὡς ἀπράκτων.

[5] [1] Ἤδη δ’ αὐτοῦ τριάκοντ’ ἔτη γεγονότος, Κλεομένης ὁ βασιλεὺς Λακεδαιμονίων νυκτὸς ἐξαίφνης προσπεσὼν τῇ Μεγάλῃ πόλει, καὶ τὰς φυλακὰς βιασάμενος, ἐντὸς [2] παρῆλθε καὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν κατέλαβεν. ἐκβοηθήσας δὲ Φιλοποίμην, τοὺς μὲν πολεμίους οὐκ ἴσχυσεν ἐξελάσαι, καίπερ ἐρρωμένως καὶ παραβόλως διαγωνισάμενος, τοὺς δὲ πολίτας τρόπον τινὰ τῆς πόλεως ἐξέκλεψε, προσμαχόμενος τοῖς ἐπιδιώκουσι καὶ τὸν Κλεομένην περισπῶν ἐφ’ ἑαυτόν, ὡς χαλεπῶς καὶ μόλις ὕστατος ἀπελθεῖν, [3] ἀποβαλὼν τὸν ἵππον καὶ τραυματίας γενόμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ προσέπεμψεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Κλεομένης εἰς Μεσσήνην ἀπελθοῦσι, τήν τε πόλιν μετὰ τῶν χρημάτων ἀποδιδοὺς καὶ τὴν χώραν, ὁρῶν ὁ Φιλοποίμην τοὺς πολίτας ἀσμένως δεχομένους καὶ σπεύδοντας ἐπανελθεῖν, ἐνέστη καὶ διεκώλυσε τῷ λόγῳ, διδάσκων ὡς οὐκ ἀποδίδωσι τὴν πόλιν Κλεομένης, προσκτᾶται δὲ τοὺς πολίτας ἐπὶ τῷ καὶ [4] τὴν πόλιν ἔχειν βεβαιότερον· οὐ γὰρ ἕξειν αὐτόν, ὅπως οἰκίας καὶ τείχη κενὰ φυλάξει καθήμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτων [5] ὑπ’ ἐρημίας ἐκπεσεῖσθαι. ταῦτα λέγων τοὺς μὲν πολίτας ἀπέτρεψε, τῷ δὲ Κλεομένει πρόφασιν παρέσχε λυμήνασθαι καὶ καταβαλεῖν τὰ πλεῖστα τῆς πόλεως, καὶ χρημάτων εὐπορήσαντι μεγάλων ἀπελθεῖν.

[6] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀντίγονος ὁ βασιλεὺς βοηθῶν ἐπὶ τὸν Κλεομένην μετὰ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐστράτευσε, καὶ τὰς περὶ Σελλασίαν ἄκρας καὶ τὰς ἐμβολὰς κατέχοντος αὐτοῦ, παρέταξε τὴν δύναμιν ἐγγύς, ἐπιχειρεῖν καὶ βιάζεσθαι διανοούμενος, [2] ἦν μὲν ἐν τοῖς ἱππεῦσι μετὰ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ πολιτῶν τεταγμένος καὶ ὁ Φιλοποίμην, καὶ παραστάτας εἶχεν Ἰλλυριούς, οἷς τὰ λήγοντα τῆς παρατάξεως συνεπέφρακτο, [3] πολλοῖς οὖσι καὶ μαχίμοις. εἴρητο δ’ αὐτοῖς ἐφεδρεύουσιν ἡσυχίαν ἔχειν, ἄχρι ἂν ἀπὸ θατέρου κέρως ὑπὸ τοῦ [4] βασιλέως ἀρθῇ φοινικὶς ὑπὲρ σαρίσης διατεταμένη. τῶν δ’ ἡγεμόνων τοῖς Ἰλλυριοῖς πειρωμένων ἐκβιάζεσθαι τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, καὶ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ὥσπερ προσετέτακτο [5] τὴν ἐφεδρείαν ἐν τάξει διαφυλαττόντων, Εὐκλείδας ὁ τοῦ Κλεομένους ἀδελφὸς καταμαθὼν τὸ γινόμενον διάσπασμα περὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, ταχὺ τοὺς ἐλαφροτάτους τῶν ψιλῶν περιέπεμψεν, ἐξόπισθεν τοῖς Ἰλλυριοῖς ἐπιπεσεῖν κελεύσας καὶ περισπᾶν ἐρήμους τῶν ἱππέων ἀπολελειμμένους.

[6] γινομένων δὲ τούτων, καὶ τῶν ψιλῶν τοὺς Ἰλλυριοὺς περισπώντων καὶ διαταραττόντων, συνιδὼν ὁ Φιλοποίμην οὐ μέγ’ ὂν ἔργον ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς ψιλοῖς, καὶ τὸν καιρὸν ὑφηγούμενον τοῦτο, πρῶτον μὲν ἔφραζε τοῖς [7] βασιλικοῖς· ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἔπειθεν, ἀλλὰ μαίνεσθαι δοκῶν κατεφρονεῖτο, οὐδέπω μεγάλης οὐδ’ ἀξιοπίστου πρὸς τηλικοῦτο στρατήγημα δόξης περὶ αὐτὸν οὔσης, αὐτὸς [8] ἐμβάλλει συνεπισπασάμενος τοὺς πολίτας. γενομένης δὲ ταραχῆς τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα φυγῆς καὶ φόνου πολλοῦ τῶν ψιλῶν, βουλόμενος ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐπιρρῶσαι τοὺς βασιλικοὺς καὶ προσμεῖξαι κατὰ τάχος θορυβουμένοις τοῖς πολεμίοις, τὸν μὲν ἵππον ἀφῆκεν, αὐτὸς δὲ πρὸς χωρία σκολιὰ καὶ μεστὰ ῥείθρων καὶ φαράγγων πεζὸς ἐν ἱππικῷ θώρακι καὶ σκευῇ βαρυτέρᾳ χαλεπῶς καὶ ταλαιπώρως ἁμιλλώμενος, διελαύνεται διαμπερὲς ὁμοῦ τοὺς μηροὺς ἑκατέρους ἑνὶ μεσαγκύλῳ, καιρίας μὲν οὐ γενομένης, ἰσχυρᾶς δὲ τῆς πληγῆς, ὥστε τὴν αἰχμὴν ἐπὶ θάτερα διῶσαι.

[9] τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ἐνσχεθεὶς ὥσπερ δεσμῷ, παντάπασιν ἀπόρως εἶχε. τὸ γὰρ ἔναμμα τῆς ἀγκύλης χαλεπὴν ἐποίει τοῦ ἀκοντίσματος ἀνελκομένου διὰ τῶν τραυμάτων [10] τὴν πάροδον· ὡς δ’ ὤκνουν οἱ παρόντες ἅψασθαι, καὶ τῆς μάχης ἀκμὴν ὀξεῖαν ἐχούσης ἐσφάδαζεν ὑπὸ θυμοῦ καὶ φιλοτιμίας πρὸς τὸν ἀγῶνα, τῇ †παραβάσει καὶ τῇ παραλλάξει τῶν σκελῶν διὰ μέσου κλάσας τὸ ἀκόντισμα, [11] χωρὶς ἐκέλευσεν ἑλκύσαι τῶν ἀγμάτων ἑκάτερον. οὕτω δ’ ἀπαλλαγεὶς καὶ σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος, ἐχώρει διὰ τῶν προμάχων ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, ὥστε πολλὴν προθυμίαν καὶ ζῆλον ἀρετῆς παρασχεῖν τοῖς ‹συν›αγωνιζομένοις.

[12] νικήσας οὖν ὁ Ἀντίγονος ἀπεπειρᾶτο τῶν Μακεδόνων, ἐρωτῶν [13] διὰ τί μὴ κελεύσαντος αὐτοῦ τὸ ἱππικὸν ἐκίνησαν. τῶν δ’ ἀπολογουμένων, ὡς παρὰ γνώμην βιασθεῖεν εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν τοῖς πολεμίοις, μειρακίου Μεγαλοπολιτικοῦ προεμβαλόντος, γελάσας ὁ Ἀντίγονος ἐκεῖνο τοίνυν τὸ μειράκιον εἶπεν ἔργον ἡγεμόνος μεγάλου πεποίηκεν.

[7] [1] Ἐκ τούτου δόξαν ἔσχεν ὥσπερ εἰκὸς ὁ Φιλοποίμην. καὶ τοῦ μὲν Ἀντιγόνου σπουδάσαντος ὅπως στρατεύοιτο μετ’ αὐτοῦ, καὶ διδόντος ἡγεμονίαν καὶ χρήματα, παρῃτήσατο, μάλιστα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν καταμαθὼν πρὸς [2] τὸ ἄρχεσθαι δυσκόλως καὶ χαλεπῶς ἔχουσαν· ἀργεῖν δὲ καὶ σχολάζειν οὐ βουλόμενος, ἀσκήσεως ἕνεκα καὶ μελέτης τῶν πολεμικῶν εἰς Κρήτην ἔπλευσεν ἐπὶ στρατείαν· [3] κἀκεῖ συχνὸν χρόνον ἐγγυμνασάμενος ἀνδράσι μαχίμοις καὶ ποικίλοις μεταχειρίσασθαι πόλεμον, ἔτι δὲ σώφροσι καὶ κεκολασμένοις περὶ δίαιταν, ἐπανῆλθεν οὕτω λαμπρὸς εἰς τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, ὥστ’ εὐθὺς ἵππαρχος ἀποδειχθῆναι.

[4] παραλαβὼν δὲ τοὺς ἱππεῖς φαύλοις μὲν ἱππαρίοις ἐκ τοῦ προστυχόντος ὅτε συμβαίνοι στρατεία προσχρωμένους, αὐτοὺς δὲ τὰς πολλὰς τῶν στρατειῶν ἀποδιδράσκοντας, ἑτέρους δὲ πέμποντας ἀνθ’ ἑαυτῶν, δεινὴν δ’ ἀπειρίαν μετ’ ἀτολμίας πάντων οὖσαν, περιορῶντας δὲ ταῦτα τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἀεὶ διά τε τὸ πλεῖστον ἐν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς τοὺς ἱππεῖς δύνασθαι καὶ μάλιστα κυρίους [5] εἶναι τιμῆς καὶ κολάσεως, οὐχ ὑπεῖξεν οὐδ’ ἀνῆκεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἐπιών, καὶ κατ’ ἄνδρα τῶν νέων ἕκαστον ἐπὶ τὴν φιλοτιμίαν συνεξορμῶν, καὶ κολάζων τοὺς ἀνάγκης δεομένους, μελέταις τε καὶ πομπαῖς καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἁμίλλαις χρώμενος, ὅπου πλεῖστοι θεᾶσθαι μέλλοιεν, [6] ‹ἐν› ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ πᾶσι ῥώμην τε θαυμαστὴν καὶ προθυμίαν παρέστησε, καὶ ὃ μέγιστον ἦν ἐν τοῖς τακτικοῖς, ἐλαφροὺς καὶ ὀξεῖς πρός τε τὰς κατ’ οὐλαμὸν ἐπιστροφὰς καὶ περισπασμοὺς καὶ τὰς καθ’ ἵππον ἐπιστροφὰς καὶ κλίσεις ἀπειργάσατο, καὶ συνείθισεν ὡς ἑνὶ σώματι κινουμένῳ καθ’ ὁρμὴν ἑκούσιον ἐοικέναι τὴν ὅλου τοῦ συστήματος [7] ἐν ταῖς μεταβολαῖς εὐχέρειαν. συστάσης δὲ τῆς περὶ τὸν Λάρισσον αὐτοῖς ποταμὸν ἰσχυρᾶς μάχης πρὸς Αἰτωλοὺς καὶ Ἠλείους, ὁ τῶν Ἠλείων ἵππαρχος Δαμόφαντος ὥρμησεν [8] ἐπὶ τὸν Φιλοποίμενα προεξελάσας. δεξάμενος δὲ τὴν ὁρμὴν ἐκεῖνος αὐτοῦ καὶ φθάσας τῷ δόρατι παίει καὶ [9] καταβάλλει τὸν Δαμόφαντον. εὐθὺς δὲ τούτου πεσόντος ἔφυγον οἱ πολέμιοι, καὶ λαμπρὸς ἦν ὁ Φιλοποίμην, ὡς οὔτε κατὰ χεῖρα τῶν νέων τινὸς οὔτε συνέσει τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἀπολειπόμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ μάχεσθαι καὶ στρατηγεῖν ἱκανώτατος.

[8] [1] Τὸ δὲ κοινὸν τῶν Ἀχαιῶν πρῶτος μὲν Ἄρατος εἰς ἀξίωμα καὶ δύναμιν ἦρεν, ἐκ ταπεινοῦ καὶ διερριμμένου κατὰ πόλεις συναγαγὼν καὶ πολιτευσάμενος Ἑλληνικὴν [2] καὶ φιλάνθρωπον πολιτείαν· ἔπειθ’, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ὕδασιν, ἀρξαμένων ὀλίγων ὑφίστασθαι καὶ μικρῶν σωμάτων, ἤδη τὰ ἐπιρρέοντα τοῖς πρώτοις ἐνισχόμενα καὶ περιπίπτοντα πῆξιν ἰσχυρὰν καὶ στερεότητα ποιεῖ δι’ [3] ἀλλήλων, οὕτω τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀσθενοῦς καὶ εὐδιαλύτου φερομένης κατὰ πόλεις ἐν τῷ τότε χρόνῳ, πρῶτον συστάντες οἱ Ἀχαιοί, καὶ τῶν κύκλῳ πόλεων τὰς μὲν ἐκ τοῦ βοηθεῖν καὶ συνελευθεροῦν ἀπὸ τῶν τυράννων ὑπολαμβάνοντες, τὰς δ’ ὁμονοίᾳ καὶ πολιτείᾳ καταμειγνύντες εἰς ἑαυτούς, ἓν σῶμα καὶ μίαν δύναμιν κατασκευάσαι διενοοῦντο [4] τὴν Πελοπόννησον. ἀλλ’ Ἀράτου μὲν ζῶντος ἔτι τοῖς Μακεδόνων ὅπλοις ὑπεδύοντο τὰ πολλά, θεραπεύοντες Πτολεμαῖον, εἶτ’ αὖθις Ἀντίγονον καὶ Φίλιππον, ἐν μέσαις ἀναστρεφομένους ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς πράξεσιν· [5] ἐπεὶ δὲ Φιλοποίμην εἰς τὸ πρωτεύειν προῆλθεν, ἤδη καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἀξιόμαχοι τοῖς ἰσχύουσι πλεῖστον ὄντες, [6] ἐπαύσαντο χρώμενοι προστάταις ἐπεισάκτοις. Ἄρατος μὲν γὰρ ἀργότερος εἶναι δοκῶν πρὸς τοὺς πολεμικοὺς ἀγῶνας, ὁμιλίᾳ καὶ πρᾳότητι καὶ φιλίαις βασιλικαῖς τὰ πλεῖστα κατειργάσατο τῶν πραγμάτων, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ [7] ἐκείνου γέγραπται· Φιλοποίμην δ’ ἀγαθὸς πολεμιστὴς ὢν καὶ διὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἐνεργός, ἔτι δ’ εὐτυχὴς καὶ κατορθωτικὸς εὐθὺς ἐν ταῖς πρώταις γενόμενος μάχαις, ἅμα τῇ δυνάμει τὸ φρόνημα τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ηὔξησε, νικᾶν ἐθισθέντων μετ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ κατευτυχεῖν ἐν τοῖς πλείστοις ἀγῶσι.

[9] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τὰ περὶ τὰς τάξεις καὶ τοὺς ὁπλισμοὺς [2] φαύλως ἔχοντα τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς ἐκίνησεν. ἐχρῶντο γὰρ θυρεοῖς μὲν εὐπετέσι διὰ λεπτότητα καὶ στενωτέροις τοῦ περιστέλλειν τὰ σώματα, δόρασι δὲ μικροτέροις [3] πολὺ τῶν σαρισῶν· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πλῆκται καὶ μάχιμοι πόρρωθεν ἦσαν ὑπὸ κουφότητος, προσμείξαντες δὲ [4] τοῖς πολεμίοις ἔλαττον εἶχον· εἶδος δὲ τάξεως καὶ σχήματος εἰς σπεῖραν οὐκ ἦν σύνηθες, φάλαγγι δὲ χρώμενοι μήτε προβολὴν ἐχούσῃ μήτε συνασπισμόν, ὡς ἡ Μακεδόνων, [5] ῥᾳδίως ἐξεθλίβοντο καὶ διεσπῶντο. ταῦθ’ ὁ Φιλοποίμην διδάξας ἔπεισεν αὐτοὺς ἀντὶ μὲν θυρεοῦ καὶ δόρατος ἀσπίδα λαβεῖν καὶ σάρισαν, κράνεσι δὲ καὶ θώραξι καὶ περικνημῖσι πεφραγμένους μόνιμον καὶ βεβηκυῖαν [6] ἀντὶ δρομικῆς καὶ πελταστικῆς μάχην ἀσκεῖν. πείσας δὲ καθοπλίσασθαι τοὺς ἐν ἡλικίᾳ, πρῶτον μὲν ἐπῆρε θαρρεῖν ὡς ἀμάχους γεγονότας, ἔπειτα τὰς τρυφὰς [7] αὐτῶν καὶ τὰς πολυτελείας ἄριστα μετεκόσμησεν. ἀφελεῖν γὰρ οὐκ ἦν παντάπασιν ἐκ πολλοῦ νοσούντων τὸν κενὸν καὶ μάταιον ζῆλον, ἐσθῆτας ἀγαπώντων περιττάς, στρωμνάς τε βαπτομένων ἁλουργεῖς, καὶ περὶ δεῖπνα φιλοτιμουμένων [8] καὶ τραπέζας. ὁ δ’ ἀρξάμενος ἐκτρέπειν ἀπὸ τῶν οὐκ ἀναγκαίων ἐπὶ τὰ χρήσιμα καὶ καλὰ τὴν φιλοκοσμίαν, ταχὺ πάντας ἔπεισε καὶ παρώρμησε τὰς καθ’ ἡμέραν περὶ σῶμα δαπάνας κολούσαντας, ἐν ταῖς στρατιωτικαῖς καὶ πολεμικαῖς παρασκευαῖς διαπρεπεῖς ὁρᾶσθαι [9] καὶ κεκοσμημένους. ἦν οὖν ἰδεῖν τὰ μὲν ἐργαστήρια μεστὰ κατακοπτομένων φιαλῶν καὶ Θηρικλείων, χρυσουμένων δὲ θωράκων καὶ καταργυρουμένων θυρεῶν καὶ χαλινῶν, τὰ δὲ στάδια πώλων δαμαζομένων καὶ νεανίσκων ὁπλομαχούντων, ἐν δὲ ταῖς χερσὶ τῶν γυναικῶν κράνη καὶ πτερὰ βαφαῖς κοσμούμενα καὶ χιτώνων [10] ἱππικῶν καὶ στρατιωτικῶν χλαμύδων διηνθισμένων. ἡ δ’ ὄψις αὕτη τὸ θάρσος αὔξουσα καὶ παρακαλοῦσα τὴν ὁρμὴν ‹ἐν›εποίει φιλοπαράβολον καὶ πρόθυμον ἐπὶ τοὺς κινδύνους.

[11] ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις θεάμασι πολυτέλεια τρυφὴν ἐπάγεται καὶ μαλακίαν ἐνδίδωσι τοῖς χρωμένοις, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ νυγμῶν καὶ γαργαλισμῶν τῆς αἰσθήσεως συνεπικλώσης [12] τὴν διάνοιαν· ἡ δ’ εἰς τὰ τοιαῦτα ῥώννυσι καὶ μεγαλύνει τὸν θυμόν, ὥσπερ Ὅμηρος (Il. 19, 12 sqq.) ἐποίησε τὸν Ἀχιλλέα τῶν καινῶν ὅπλων παρατεθέντων ἐγγὺς ὑπὸ τῆς ὄψεως οἷον ὀργῶντα καὶ φλεγόμενον πρὸς τὴν δι’ [13] αὐτῶν ἐνέργειαν. οὕτω δὲ κοσμήσας τοὺς νέους ἐγύμναζε καὶ διεπόνει ταῖς κινήσεσι, προθύμως ὑπακούοντας [14] καὶ φιλοτίμως. καὶ γὰρ ἡ τάξις θαυμαστῶς ἠγαπᾶτο, ἄθραυστόν τι λαμβάνειν πύκνωμα δοκοῦσα, καὶ τὰ ὅπλα τοῖς σώμασιν ἐγίνετο χειροήθη καὶ κοῦφα, μεθ’ ἡδονῆς διὰ λαμπρότητα καὶ κάλλος ἁπτομένων καὶ φορούντων, ἐναγωνίσασθαί τε βουλομένων καὶ διακριθῆναι τάχιστα πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους.

[10] [1] Ἦν δὲ τότε τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς ὁ πρὸς Μαχανίδαν πόλεμος τὸν Λακεδαιμονίων τύραννον, ἀπὸ πολλῆς καὶ μεγάλης [2] δυνάμεως ἐπιβουλεύοντα πᾶσι Πελοποννησίοις. ὡς οὖν εἰς τὴν Μαντινέων ἐμβεβληκὼς ἀπηγγέλθη, κατὰ τάχος ὁ Φιλοποίμην ἐξήγαγε τὴν στρατιὰν ἐπ’ αὐτόν.

[3] ἐγγὺς δὲ τῆς πόλεως παρετάξαντο πολλοῖς μὲν ξένοις ἑκάτεροι, πάσαις δ’ ὁμοῦ τι ταῖς πολιτικαῖς δυνάμεσι.

[4] γενομένου δὲ τοῦ ἀγῶνος ἐν χερσίν, ὁ Μαχανίδας τοῖς ξένοις τοὺς τῶν Ἀχαιῶν προτεταγμένους ἀκοντιστὰς καὶ Ταραντίνους τρεψάμενος, ἀντὶ τοῦ χωρεῖν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τοὺς μαχομένους καὶ παραρρηγνύναι τὸ συνεστηκός, ἐξέπεσε διώκων καὶ παρήλλαξε τὴν φάλαγγα τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐν τάξει [5] μενόντων· ὁ δὲ Φιλοποίμην, τηλικούτου πταίσματος ἐν ἀρχῇ γενομένου, καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ἀπολωλέναι κομιδῇ καὶ διεφθάρθαι δοκούντων, τοῦτο μὲν ὅμως προσεποιεῖτο [6] παρορᾶν καὶ μηδὲν ἡγεῖσθαι δεινόν, κατιδὼν δὲ τοὺς πολεμίους, ὅσον ἡμάρτανον ἐν τῇ διώξει, τῆς φάλαγγος ἀπορρηγνυμένους καὶ κενὴν χώραν διδόντας, οὐκ ἀπήντησεν οὐδ’ ἐνέστη φερομένοις αὐτοῖς ἐπὶ τοὺς φεύγοντας, ἀλλ’ ἐάσας παρελθεῖν καὶ διάσπασμα ποιῆσαι μέγα, πρὸς τοὺς ὁπλίτας εὐθὺς ἦγε τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, ὁρῶν τὴν φάλαγγα γυμνὴν ἀπολελειμμένην, καὶ κατὰ κέρας παραδραμὼν ἐνέβαλε, μήτ’ ἄρχοντος αὐτοῖς παρόντος, μήτε μάχεσθαι προσδεχομένοις· νικᾶν γὰρ ἡγοῦντο καὶ κρατεῖν [7] παντάπασι, διώκοντα τὸν Μαχανίδαν ὁρῶντες. ὠσάμενος δὲ τούτους φόνῳ πολλῷ (λέγονται γὰρ ὑπὲρ τοὺς τετρακισχιλίους ἀποθανεῖν), ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ τὸν Μαχανίδαν, [8] ἐκ τῆς διώξεως ἀναστρέφοντα μετὰ τῶν ξένων. τάφρου δὲ μεγάλης καὶ βαθείας ἐν μέσῳ διειργούσης, παρεξήλαυνον ἀλλήλοις ἑκατέρωθεν, ὁ μὲν διαβῆναι καὶ φυγεῖν, ὁ [9] δὲ τοῦτο κωλῦσαι βουλόμενος. ἦν δ’ ὄψις οὐχ ὡς στρατηγῶν μαχομένων, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ θηρίῳ πρὸς ἀλκὴν ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης τρεπομένῳ δεινοῦ κυνηγέτου [τοῦ Φιλοποίμενος] [10] συνεστῶτος. ἔνθ’ ὁ μὲν ἵππος τοῦ τυράννου, ῥωμαλέος ὢν καὶ θυμοειδὴς καὶ τοῖς μύωψιν αἱμαχθεὶς ἑκατέρωθεν, ἐπετόλμησε τῇ διαβάσει, καὶ προσβαλὼν τῇ τάφρῳ τὸ στῆθος, ἐβιάζετο τοῖς προσθίοις πέραν ἐρείσασθαι σκέλεσιν.

[11] ἐν δὲ τούτῳ Σιμμίας καὶ Πολύαινος, οἵπερ ἀεὶ τῷ Φιλοποίμενι παρῆσαν μαχομένῳ καὶ συνήσπιζον, ὁμοῦ προσήλαυνον ἀμφότεροι, τὰς αἰχμὰς κλίναντες ἐναντίας.

[12] φθάνει δ’ αὐτοὺς ὁ Φιλοποίμην ἀπαντήσας τῷ Μαχανίδᾳ, καὶ τὸν ἵππον αὐτοῦ μετεωρίζοντα τὴν κεφαλὴν πρὸ τοῦ σώματος ὁρῶν, μικρὸν ἐνέκλινε τὸν ἴδιον, καὶ διαλαβὼν τὸ ξυστὸν ἐκ χειρὸς ὠθεῖ καὶ περιτρέπει τὸν [13] ἄνδρα συνεπερείσας. τοῦτ’ ἔχων τὸ σχῆμα χαλκοῦς ἐν Δελφοῖς ἕστηκεν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, θαυμασάντων μάλιστα καὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν στρατηγίαν ἐκείνην.

[11] [1] Λέγεται δὲ τῆς τῶν Νεμείων πανηγύρεως συνεστώσης στρατηγοῦντα τὸν Φιλοποίμενα τὸ δεύτερον καὶ νενικηκότα μὲν οὐ πάλαι τὴν ἐν Μαντινείᾳ μάχην, τότε δὲ σχολὴν ἄγοντα διὰ τὴν ἑορτήν, πρῶτον μὲν ἐπιδεῖξαι τοῖς Ἕλλησι κεκοσμημένην τὴν φάλαγγα καὶ κινουμένην ὥσπερ εἴθιστο τοὺς τακτικοὺς ῥυθμοὺς μετὰ τάχους καὶ [2] ῥώμης· ἔπειτα κιθαρῳδῶν ἀγωνιζομένων εἰς τὸ θέατρον παρελθεῖν ἔχοντα τοὺς νεανίσκους ἐν ταῖς στρατιωτικαῖς χλαμύσι καὶ τοῖς φοινικοῖς ὑποδύταις, ἀκμάζοντάς τε τοῖς σώμασιν ἅπαντας καὶ ταῖς ἡλικίαις παραλλήλους, αἰδῶ δὲ πολλὴν πρὸς τὸν ἄρχοντα καὶ φρόνημα νεανικὸν ὑποφαίνοντας ἐκ πολλῶν καὶ καλῶν ἀγώνων· [3] ἄρτι δ’ αὐτῶν εἰσεληλυθότων, κατὰ τύχην Πυλάδην τὸν κιθαρῳδὸν ᾄδοντα τοὺς Τιμοθέου Πέρσας ἐνάρξασθαι (fg. 6a Diehl)·

κλεινὸν ἐλευθερίας τεύχων μέγαν Ἑλλάδι κόσμον·

[4] ἅμα δὲ τῇ λαμπρότητι τῆς φωνῆς τοῦ περὶ τὴν ποίησιν ὄγκου συμπρέψαντος, ἐπίβλεψιν γενέσθαι τοῦ θεάτρου πανταχόθεν εἰς τὸν Φιλοποίμενα καὶ κρότον μετὰ χαρᾶς, τῶν Ἑλλήνων τὸ παλαιὸν ἀξίωμα ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἀναλαμβανόντων καὶ τοῦ τότε φρονήματος ἔγγιστα τῷ θαρρεῖν γινομένων.

[12] [1] Παρὰ δὲ τὰς μάχας καὶ τοὺς κινδύνους, ὥσπερ οἱ πῶλοι τοὺς συνήθεις ἐπιβάτας ποθοῦντες, ἐὰν ἄλλον φέρωσι, πτύρονται καὶ ξενοπαθοῦσιν, οὕτως ἡ δύναμις τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἑτέρου στρατηγοῦντος ἠθύμει καὶ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἐπάπταινε, καὶ μόνον ὀφθέντος εὐθὺς ὀρθὴ καὶ δραστήριος ἦν διὰ τὸ θαρρεῖν, ἅτε δὴ καὶ τοὺς ἐναντίους αἰσθανόμενοι πρὸς ἕνα τοῦτον τῶν στρατηγῶν ἀντιβλέπειν οὐ δυναμένους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τοὔνομα [2] δεδοικότας, ὡς ἦν φανερὸν ἐξ ὧν ἔπρασσον. Φίλιππος μὲν γὰρ ὁ τῶν Μακεδόνων βασιλεύς, οἰόμενος, ἂν ἐκποδὼν ὁ Φιλοποίμην γένηται, πάλιν ὑποπτήξειν αὐτῷ τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, ἔπεμψεν εἰς Ἄργος κρύφα τοὺς ἀναιρήσοντας αὐτόν· [ἐπι]γνωσθείσης δὲ τῆς ἐπιβουλῆς, παντάπασιν ἐξεμισήθη καὶ διεβλήθη πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας.

[3] Βοιωτοὶ δὲ πολιορκοῦντες Μέγαρα, καὶ λήψεσθαι ταχέως ἐλπίζοντες, ἐξαίφνης λόγου προσπεσόντος αὐτοῖς, ὃς οὐκ ἦν ἀληθής, Φιλοποίμενα βοηθοῦντα τοῖς πολιορκουμένοις ἐγγὺς εἶναι, τὰς κλίμακας ἀφέντες ἤδη προσερηρεισμένας τοῖς τείχεσιν ᾤχοντο φεύγοντες.

[4] Νάβιδος δὲ τοῦ μετὰ Μαχανίδαν τυραννοῦντος Λακεδαιμονίων Μεσσήνην ἄφνω καταλαβόντος, ἐτύγχανε μὲν ἰδιώτης ὢν τόθ’ ὁ Φιλοποίμην καὶ δυνάμεως οὐδεμιᾶς [5] κύριος· ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸν στρατηγοῦντα τῶν Ἀχαιῶν Λύσιππον οὐκ ἔπειθε βοηθεῖν τοῖς Μεσσηνίοις, ἀπολωλέναι κομιδῇ φάσκοντα τὴν πόλιν ἔνδον γεγονότων τῶν πολεμίων, αὐτὸς ἐβοήθει τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ πολίτας ἀναλαβών, οὔτε νόμον οὔτε χειροτονίαν περιμείναντας, ἀλλ’ ὡς διὰ παντὸς ἄρχοντι [6] τῷ κρείττονι κατὰ φύσιν ἑπομένους. ἤδη δ’ αὐτοῦ πλησίον ὄντος, ἀκούσας ὁ Νάβις οὐχ ὑπέστη, καίπερ ἐν τῇ πόλει στρατοπεδεύων, ἀλλ’ ὑπεκδὺς διὰ πυλῶν ἑτέρων κατὰ τάχος ἀπήγαγε τὴν δύναμιν, εὐτυχίᾳ χρήσεσθαι δοκῶν εἰ διαφύγοι· καὶ διέφυγε, Μεσσήνη δ’ ἠλευθέρωτο.

[13] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν καλὰ τοῦ Φιλοποίμενος· ἡ δ’ εἰς Κρήτην αὖθις ἀποδημία, Γορτυνίων δεηθέντων ὡς χρήσαιντο πολεμούμενοι στρατηγῷ, διαβολὴν ἔσχεν, ὅτι τῆς πατρίδος αὐτοῦ πολεμουμένης ὑπὸ Νάβιδος ἀπῆν φυγομαχῶν [2] ἢ φιλοτιμούμενος ἀκαίρως πρὸς ἑτέρους. καίτοι συντόνως οὕτως ἐπολεμήθησαν Μεγαλοπολῖται κατὰ τὸν χρόνον ἐκεῖνον, ὥστε τοῖς μὲν τείχεσιν ἐνοικεῖν, σπείρειν δὲ τοὺς στενωπούς, περικεκομμένης τῆς χώρας καὶ τῶν πολεμίων σχεδὸν ἐν ταῖς πύλαις στρατοπεδευόντων· [3] ὁ δὲ Κρησὶ πολεμῶν τηνικαῦτα καὶ στρατηγῶν διαπόντιος, ἐγκλήματα παρεῖχε καθ’ ἑαυτοῦ τοῖς ἐχθροῖς [4] ὡς ἀποδιδράσκων τὸν οἴκοι πόλεμον. ἦσαν δέ τινες οἱ λέγοντες, ἑτέρους τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ᾑρημένων ἄρχοντας, ἰδιώτην ὄντα τὸν Φιλοποίμενα χρῆσαι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ σχολὴν ἐφ’ [5] ἡγεμονίᾳ δεηθεῖσι τοῖς Γορτυνίοις. ἦν γὰρ ἀλλότριος σχολῆς, καθάπερ ἄλλο τι κτῆμα τὴν στρατηγικὴν καὶ πολεμικὴν ἀρετὴν ἔχειν διὰ παντὸς ἐν χρήσει καὶ τριβῇ βουλόμενος, ὡς καὶ τῷ περὶ Πτολεμαίου ποτὲ ῥηθέντι [6] τοῦ βασιλέως ἀπεδήλωσεν. ἐκεῖνον γὰρ ἐγκωμιαζόντων τινῶν, ὡς εὖ μὲν ἐξασκοῦντα τὸ στράτευμα καθ’ ἡμέραν, εὖ δὲ γυμνάζοντα καὶ φιλοπόνως διὰ τῶν ὅπλων τὸ σῶμα, καὶ τίς ἂν ἔφη βασιλέα θαυμάσειεν ἐν τούτῳ [7] τῆς ἡλικίας μὴ ἐπιδεικνύμενον, ἀλλὰ μελετῶντα; χαλεπῶς δ’ οὖν οἱ Μεγαλοπολῖται φέροντες ἐπὶ τούτῳ, καὶ προδεδόσθαι νομίζοντες, ἐπεχείρησαν ἀποξενοῦν αὐτόν· οἱ δ’ Ἀχαιοὶ διεκώλυσαν, Ἀρίσταινον πέμψαντες εἰς Μεγάλην πόλιν στρατηγόν, ὃς καίπερ ὢν διάφορος τῷ Φιλοποίμενι περὶ τὴν πολιτείαν, οὐκ εἴασε τελεσθῆναι [8] τὴν καταδίκην. ἐκ δὲ τούτου παρορώμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν ὁ Φιλοποίμην ἀπέστησε πολλὰς τῶν περιοικίδων κωμῶν, λέγειν διδάξας ὡς οὐ συνετέλουν οὐδ’ ἦσαν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐκείνων, καὶ λεγούσαις ταῦτα φανερῶς συνηγωνίσατο καὶ συγκατεστασίασε τὴν πόλιν ἐπὶ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν.

[9] ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον. ἐν δὲ τῇ Κρήτῃ συνεπολέμει τοῖς Γορτυνίοις, οὐχ ὡς Πελοποννήσιος ἀνὴρ καὶ Ἀρκὰς ἁπλοῦν τινα καὶ γενναῖον πόλεμον, ἀλλὰ τὸ Κρητικὸν ἦθος ἐνδὺς καὶ τοῖς ἐκείνων σοφίσμασι καὶ δόλοις κλωπείαις τε καὶ λοχισμοῖς χρώμενος ἐπ’ αὐτούς, ταχὺ παῖδας ἀπέδειξεν, ἀνόητα καὶ κενὰ πρὸς ἐμπειρίαν ἀληθινὴν πανουργοῦντας.

[14] [1] Ἐπὶ τούτοις δὲ θαυμασθείς, καὶ λαμπρὸς ἀπὸ τῶν ἐκεῖ πράξεων ἀνακομισθεὶς εἰς Πελοπόννησον, εὗρε τὸν μὲν Φίλιππον ὑπὸ τοῦ Τίτου καταπεπολεμημένον, τὸν δὲ Νάβιν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν καὶ τῶν Ῥωμαίων πολεμούμενον.

[2] ἐφ’ ὃν εὐθὺς αἱρεθεὶς ἄρχων καὶ ναυμαχίᾳ παραβαλόμενος, τὸ τοῦ Ἐπαμεινώνδου παθεῖν ἔδοξε, πολὺ τῆς περὶ αὐτὸν ἀρετῆς καὶ [τῆς] δόξης ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ [3] κάκιον ἀγωνισάμενος. πλὴν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν μὲν ἔνιοι λέγουσιν, ὀκνοῦντα γεῦσαι τῶν κατὰ θάλασσαν ὠφελειῶν τοὺς πολίτας, ὅπως αὐτῷ μὴ λάθωσιν ἀντὶ μονίμων ὁπλιτῶν, κατὰ Πλάτωνα (leg. 4, 706b), ναῦται γενόμενοι καὶ διαφθαρέντες, ἄπρακτον ἐκ τῆς Ἀσίας καὶ τῶν νήσων [4] ἀπελθεῖν ἑκουσίως· Φιλοποίμην δὲ τὴν ἐν τοῖς πεζοῖς ἐπιστήμην καὶ διὰ θαλάττης ἀρκέσειν αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸ καλῶς ἀγωνίσασθαι πεπεισμένος, ἔγνω τὴν ἄσκησιν ἡλίκον μέρος ἐστὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς, καὶ πόσην ἐπὶ πάντα τοῖς ἐθισθεῖσι [5] δύναμιν προστίθησιν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐν τῇ ναυμαχίᾳ διὰ τὴν ἀπειρίαν ἔλαττον ἔσχεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ναῦν τινα, παλαιὰν μέν, ἔνδοξον δέ, δι’ ἐτῶν τεσσαράκοντα κατασπάσας ἐπλήρωσεν, ὥστε μὴ στεγούσης κινδυνεῦσαι τοὺς πλέοντας.

[6] πρὸς ταῦτα γινώσκων καταφρονοῦντας αὐτοῦ τοὺς πολεμίους, ὡς παντάπασι πεφευγότος ἐκ τῆς θαλάττης, καὶ πολιορκοῦντας ὑπερηφάνως τὸ Γύθιον, εὐθὺς ἐπέπλευσεν αὐτοῖς, οὐ προσδοκῶσιν ἀλλ’ ἐκλελυμένοις διὰ τὴν [7] νίκην· καὶ νυκτὸς ἐκβιβάσας τοὺς στρατιώτας καὶ προσαγαγών, πῦρ ἐνῆκε ταῖς σκηναῖς καὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον [8] κατέκαυσε καὶ πολλοὺς διέφθειρεν. ὀλίγαις δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέραις καθ’ ὁδὸν ἐν δυσχωρίαις τισὶν ἄφνω τοῦ Νάβιδος ἐπιφανέντος αὐτῷ, καὶ φοβήσαντος τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, ἀνέλπιστον ἡγουμένους τὴν σωτηρίαν ἐκ τόπων χαλεπῶν καὶ γεγονότων ὑποχειρίων τοῖς πολεμίοις, ὀλίγον χρόνον ἐπιστὰς καὶ περιλαβὼν ὄψει τὴν τοῦ χωρίου φύσιν, ἐπέδειξε τὴν τακτικὴν τῶν ἄκρων τῆς πολεμικῆς [9] τέχνην οὖσαν. οὕτω μικρὰ κινήσας τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φάλαγγα καὶ πρὸς τὰ παρόντα μεθαρμόσας, ἀθορύβως καὶ ῥᾳδίως διεκρούσατο τὴν ἀπορίαν, καὶ προσβαλὼν τοῖς πολεμίοις [10] τροπὴν ἰσχυρὰν ἐποίησεν. ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ἑώρα φεύγοντας, ἀλλὰ τῆς χώρας ἄλλον ἄλλῃ διασπειρόμενον (ὑλώδης δὲ καὶ περίβουνος ἦν πᾶσα καὶ δύσιππος ὑπὸ ῥείθρων καὶ φαράγγων), τὴν μὲν δίωξιν ἐπέσχε καὶ [11] κατεστρατοπέδευσεν ἔτι φωτὸς ὄντος· τεκμαιρόμενος δὲ τοὺς πολεμίους ἐκ τῆς φυγῆς καθ’ ἕνα καὶ δύο πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ὑπάξειν σκοταίους, ἐλλοχίζει τοῖς περὶ τὸ ἄστυ ῥείθροις καὶ λόφοις πολλοὺς ἔχοντας ἐγχειρίδια τῶν Ἀχαιῶν.

[12] ἐνταῦθα πλείστους ἀποθανεῖν συνέβη τῶν τοῦ Νάβιδος· ἅτε γὰρ οὐκ ἀθρόαν ποιούμενοι τὴν ἀναχώρησιν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἑκάστοις αἱ φυγαὶ συνετύγχανον, ὥσπερ ὄρνιθες ἡλίσκοντο περὶ τὴν πόλιν εἰς τὰς τῶν πολεμίων χεῖρας καταίροντες.

[15] [1] Ἐπὶ τούτοις ἀγαπώμενος καὶ τιμώμενος ἐκπρεπῶς ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις, φιλότιμον ὄντα [2] τὸν Τίτον ἡσυχῇ παρελύπει. καὶ γὰρ ὡς Ῥωμαίων ὕπατος ἀνδρὸς Ἀρκάδος ἠξίου θαυμάζεσθαι μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, καὶ ταῖς εὐεργεσίαις ὑπερβάλλειν οὐ παρὰ μικρὸν ἡγεῖτο, δι’ ἑνὸς κηρύγματος ἐλευθερώσας τὴν Ἑλλάδα ‹πᾶσαν›, ὅση Φιλίππῳ καὶ Μακεδόσιν ἐδούλευσεν. [3] ἐκ δὲ τούτου καταλύεται μὲν ὁ Τίτος τῷ Νάβιδι τὸν πόλεμον, ἀποθνῄσκει δ’ ὁ Νάβις ὑπ’ Αἰτωλῶν δολοφονηθείς.

[4] τεταραγμένης δὲ τῆς Σπάρτης, ὁ Φιλοποίμην ἁρπάσας τὸν καιρὸν ἐπιπίπτει μετὰ δυνάμεως, καὶ τῶν μὲν ἀκόντων, τοὺς δὲ συμπείσας, προσηγάγετο καὶ μετεκόσμησεν [5] εἰς τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς τὴν πόλιν. οὗ γενομένου θαυμαστῶς μὲν εὐδοκίμησε παρὰ τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, προσκτησάμενος αὐτοῖς ἀξίωμα πόλεως τηλικαύτης καὶ δύναμιν (οὐ γὰρ ἦν μικρὸν Ἀχαΐας μέρος γενέσθαι τὴν Σπάρτην), ἀνέλαβε δὲ καὶ Λακεδαιμονίων τοὺς ἀρίστους, φύλακα τῆς ἐλευθερίας [6] ἐκεῖνον ἐλπίσαντας ἕξειν. διὸ καὶ τὴν Νάβιδος οἰκίαν καὶ οὐσίαν ἐξαργυρισθεῖσαν καὶ γενομένην εἴκοσι καὶ ἑκατὸν ταλάντων ἐψηφίσαντο δωρεὰν αὐτῷ δοῦναι, [7] πρεσβείαν ὑπὲρ τούτων πέμψαντες. ἔνθα δὴ καὶ διεφάνη καθαρῶς ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἀνὴρ οὐ δοκῶν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ [8] ὢν ἄριστος. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ οὐδεὶς ἐβούλετο τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ἀνδρὶ τοιούτῳ διαλέγεσθαι περὶ δωροδοκίας, ἀλλὰ δεδοικότες καὶ ἀναδυόμενοι, προεβάλοντο τὸν ξένον [9] αὐτοῦ Τιμόλαον. ἔπειτα δ’ αὐτὸς ὁ Τιμόλαος ὡς ἦλθεν εἰς Μεγάλην πόλιν, ἑστιαθεὶς παρὰ τῷ Φιλοποίμενι, καὶ τὴν σεμνότητα τῆς ὁμιλίας αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἀφέλειαν τῆς διαίτης καὶ τὸ ἦθος ἐγγύθεν οὐδαμῇ προσιτὸν οὐδ’ εὐάλωτον ὑπὸ χρημάτων κατανοήσας, ἀπεσιώπησε περὶ τῆς δωρεᾶς, ἑτέραν δέ τινα πρόφασιν τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν [10] ὁδοῦ ποιησάμενος, ᾤχετ’ ἀπιών. καὶ πάλιν ἐκ δευτέρου πεμφθείς, ταὐτὸν ἔπαθε· τρίτῃ δ’ ὁδῷ μόλις ἐντυχὼν [11] ἐδήλωσε τὴν προθυμίαν τῆς πόλεως. ὁ δὲ Φιλοποίμην ἡδέως ἀκούσας, ἧκεν αὐτὸς εἰς Λακεδαίμονα, καὶ συνεβούλευσεν αὐτοῖς μὴ τοὺς φίλους καὶ ἀγαθοὺς δεκάζειν, ὧν προῖκα τῆς ἀρετῆς ἔξεστιν ἀπολαύειν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς πονηροὺς καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ καταστασιάζοντας ὠνεῖσθαι καὶ διαφθείρειν, ἵνα τῷ λαβεῖν ἐπιστομισθέντες [12] ἧττον ἐνοχλοῖεν αὐτοῖς. βέλτιον γὰρ εἶναι τῶν ἐχθρῶν παραιρεῖσθαι τὴν παρρησίαν ἢ τῶν φίλων. οὕτως μὲν ἦν πρὸς χρήματα λαμπρός.

[16] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ πάλιν τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους νεωτερίζειν ἀκούσας ὁ στρατηγὸς τῶν Ἀχαιῶν Διοφάνης ἐβούλετο κολάζειν, οἱ δ’ εἰς πόλεμον καθιστάμενοι διετάρασσον [2] τὴν Πελοπόννησον, ἐπειρᾶτο πραΰνειν καὶ καταπαύειν τὸν Διοφάνη τῆς ὀργῆς ὁ Φιλοποίμην, διδάσκων τὸν καιρόν, ὡς Ἀντιόχου τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ Ῥωμαίων ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι τηλικούτοις αἰωρουμένων στρατοπέδοις, ἐκεῖσε χρὴ τὸν ἄρχοντα τὴν γνώμην ἔχειν, τὰ δ’ οἰκεῖα μὴ κινεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ παριδεῖν τι καὶ παρακοῦσαι τῶν ἁμαρτανομένων.

[3] οὐ προσέχοντος δὲ τοῦ Διοφάνους, ἀλλ’ εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἐμβαλόντος ἅμα τῷ Τίτῳ, καὶ βαδιζόντων εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν, ἀγανακτήσας ὁ Φιλοποίμην ἔργον οὐ νόμιμον οὐδ’ ἀπηκριβωμένον ἐκ τῶν δικαίων, ἀλλὰ μέγα καὶ μεγάλου φρονήματος τολμήσας, εἰς τὴν Λακεδαίμονα παρῆλθε, καὶ τόν τε στρατηγὸν τῶν Ἀχαιῶν καὶ τὸν ὕπατον τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἰδιώτης ὢν ἀπέκλεισε, τὰς δ’ ἐν τῇ πόλει ταραχὰς ἔπαυσε καὶ κατέστησε τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους [4] πάλιν εἰς τὸ κοινόν, ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἦσαν. χρόνῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἐγκαλέσας τι τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις στρατηγῶν ὁ Φιλοποίμην, τὰς μὲν φυγὰς κατήγαγεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ὀγδοήκοντα δὲ Σπαρτιάτας ἀπέκτεινεν, ὡς Πολύβιός φησιν (cf. 21, 32c 3), ὡς δ’ Ἀριστοκράτης (FGrH 591 F [5] 4), πεντήκοντα καὶ τριακοσίους. τὰ δὲ τείχη καθεῖλε, χώραν δὲ πολλὴν ἀποτεμόμενος προσένειμε τοῖς Μεγαλοπολίταις, ὅσοι δ’ ἦσαν ὑπὸ τῶν τυράννων ἀποδεδειγμένοι πολῖται τῆς Σπάρτης, μετῴκιζεν ἅπαντας ἀπάγων [6] εἰς Ἀχαΐαν πλὴν τρισχιλίων· τούτους δ’ ἀπειθοῦντας καὶ μὴ βουλομένους ἀπελθεῖν ἐκ τῆς Λακεδαίμονος ἐπώλησεν, εἶθ’ οἷον ἐφυβρίζων ἀπὸ τῶν χρημάτων τούτων ἐν Μεγάλῃ [7] πόλει στοὰν ᾠκοδόμησεν. ἐμπιπλάμενος δὲ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων καὶ παρ’ ἀξίαν πεπραχόσιν ἐπεμβαίνων, τὸ περὶ τὴν πολιτείαν ἔργον ὠμότατον ἐξειργάσατο καὶ [8] παρανομώτατον. ἀνεῖλε γὰρ καὶ διέφθειρε τὴν Λυκούργειον ἀγωγήν, ἀναγκάσας καὶ τοὺς παῖδας αὐτῶν καὶ τοὺς ἐφήβους τὴν Ἀχαϊκὴν ἀντὶ τῆς πατρίου παιδείαν μεταβαλεῖν, ὡς οὐδέποτε μικρὸν ἐν τοῖς τοῦ Λυκούργου νόμοις [9] φρονήσοντας. τότε μὲν οὖν ὑπὸ συμφορῶν μεγάλων ὥσπερ νεῦρα τῆς πόλεως ἐκτεμεῖν τῷ Φιλοποίμενι παρασχόντες, ἐγένοντο χειροήθεις καὶ ταπεινοί, χρόνῳ δ’ ὕστερον αἰτησάμενοι παρὰ Ῥωμαίων τὴν μὲν Ἀχαϊκὴν ἔφυγον πολιτείαν, ἀνέλαβον δὲ καὶ κατεστήσαντο τὴν πάτριον, ὡς ἦν ἀνυστὸν ἐκ κακῶν καὶ φθορᾶς τηλικαύτης.

[17] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Ῥωμαίοις ὁ πρὸς Ἀντίοχον ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι συνέστη πόλεμος, ἦν μὲν ἰδιώτης ὁ Φιλοποίμην, ὁρῶν δὲ τὸν Ἀντίοχον αὐτὸν ἐν Χαλκίδι καθήμενον, περὶ γάμους καὶ παρθένων ἔρωτας οὐ καθ’ ὥραν σχολάζοντα, τοὺς δὲ Σύρους ἐν ἀταξίᾳ πολλῇ καὶ χωρὶς ἡγεμόνων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι πλαζομένους καὶ τρυφῶντας, ἤχθετο μὴ στρατηγῶν τότε τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, καὶ Ῥωμαίοις ἔλεγε φθονεῖν τῆς νίκης. ἐγὼ γὰρ ἂν ἔφη στρατηγῶν ἐν τοῖς καπηλείοις [2] κατέκοψα τούτους πάντας. ἐπεὶ δὲ νικήσαντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι τὸν Ἀντίοχον ἐνεφύοντο τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς μᾶλλον ἤδη, καὶ περιεβάλλοντο τῇ δυνάμει τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, ὑποκατακλινομένων αὐτοῖς τῶν δημαγωγῶν, ἡ δ’ ἰσχὺς ἐπὶ πάντα πολλὴ μετὰ τοῦ δαίμονος ἐχώρει, καὶ τὸ τέλος ἐγγὺς ἦν εἰς ὃ τὴν τύχην ἔδει περιφερομένην ἐξικέσθαι, [3] καθάπερ ἀγαθὸς κυβερνήτης πρὸς κῦμα διερειδόμενος ὁ Φιλοποίμην, τὰ μὲν ἐνδιδόναι καὶ παρείκειν ἠναγκάζετο τοῖς καιροῖς, περὶ δὲ τῶν πλείστων διαφερόμενος, τοὺς τῷ λέγειν καὶ πράττειν ἰσχύοντας ἀντισπᾶν ἐπειρᾶτο [4] πρὸς τὴν ἐλευθερίαν. Ἀρισταίνου δὲ τοῦ Μεγαλοπολίτου δυναμένου μὲν ἐν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς μέγιστον, τοὺς δὲ Ῥωμαίους ἀεὶ θεραπεύοντος, καὶ τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς μὴ οἰομένου [5] δεῖν ἐναντιοῦσθαι μηδ’ ἀχαριστεῖν ἐκείνοις, ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ λέγεται τὸν Φιλοποίμενα σιωπᾶν ἀκούοντα καὶ βαρέως φέρειν, τέλος δ’ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς δυσανασχετοῦντα πρὸς τὸν Ἀρίσταινον εἰπεῖν· ὦ ἄνθρωπε, τί σπεύδεις [6] τὴν πεπρωμένην τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐπιδεῖν; Μανίου δὲ τοῦ Ῥωμαίων ὑπάτου νενικηκότος μὲν Ἀντίοχον, αἰτουμένου δὲ παρὰ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, ὅπως ἐάσωσι τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίων φυγάδας κατελθεῖν, καὶ Τίτου ταὐτὸ τῷ Μανίῳ περὶ τῶν φυγάδων ἀξιοῦντος, διεκώλυσεν ὁ Φιλοποίμην, οὐ τοῖς φυγάσι πολεμῶν, ἀλλὰ βουλόμενος δι’ αὑτοῦ καὶ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, ἀλλὰ μὴ Τίτου μηδὲ Ῥωμαίων χάριτι τοῦτο [7] πραχθῆναι. καὶ στρατηγῶν εἰς τοὐπιὸν αὐτὸς κατήγαγε τοὺς φυγάδας. οὕτως εἶχέ τι πρὸς τὰς ἐξουσίας ὑπὸ φρονήματος δύσερι καὶ φιλόνικον.

[18] [1] Ἤδη δὲ γεγονὼς ἔτος ἑβδομηκοστόν, ὄγδοον δὲ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν στρατηγῶν, ἤλπιζεν οὐ μόνον ἐκείνην τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπολέμως διάξειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ βίου τὸ λοιπὸν αὐτῷ μεθ’ ἡσυχίας καταβιῶναι τὰ πράγματα παρέξειν.

[2] ὡς γὰρ αἱ νόσοι ταῖς τῶν σωμάτων ῥώμαις συναπομαραίνεσθαι δοκοῦσιν, οὕτως ἐν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς πόλεσιν [3] ἐπιλειπούσης τῆς δυνάμεως ἔληγε τὸ φιλόνικον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ Νέμεσίς τις ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴν εὐδρομοῦντα πρὸς τέρματι [4] τοῦ βίου κατέβαλε. λέγεται γὰρ ἔν τινι συλλόγῳ τῶν παρόντων ἐπαινούντων ἄνδρα δεινὸν εἶναι δοκοῦντα περὶ στρατηγίαν εἰπεῖν τὸν Φιλοποίμενα· καὶ πῶς ἄξιον ἐκείνου λόγον ἔχειν τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὅστις ἥλω ζῶν ὑπὸ τῶν [5] πολεμίων; μεθ’ ἡμέρας δ’ ὀλίγας Δεινοκράτης ὁ Μεσσήνιος, ἄνθρωπος ἰδίᾳ τε τῷ Φιλοποίμενι προσκεκρουκώς, καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐπαχθὴς διὰ πονηρίαν καὶ ἀκολασίαν, τήν τε Μεσσήνην ἀπέστησε τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, καὶ κώμην τὴν καλουμένην Κολωνίδα προσηγγέλθη μέλλων καταλαμβάνειν.

[6] ὁ δὲ Φιλοποίμην ἔτυχε μὲν ἐν Ἄργει πυρέσσων, πυθόμενος δὲ ταῦτα συνέτεινεν εἰς Μεγάλην πόλιν ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ σταδίους πλείονας ἢ τετρακοσίους ‹κατηνυκώς›, [7] κἀκεῖθεν εὐθὺς ἐβοήθει τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἀναλαβών, οἵπερ ἦσαν ἐνδοξότατοι μὲν τῶν πολιτῶν, νέοι δὲ κομιδῇ, δι’ εὔνοιαν τοῦ Φιλοποίμενος καὶ ζῆλον ἐθελονταὶ συστρατεύοντες.

[8] ἱππασάμενοι δὲ πρὸς τὴν Μεσσήνην, καὶ περὶ τὸν Εὐάνδρου λόφον ἀπαντῶντι τῷ Δεινοκράτει συμπεσόντες, [9] ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἐτρέψαντο, τῶν δὲ πεντακοσίων, οἳ τὴν χώραν τῶν Μεσσηνίων παρεφύλαττον, ἐξαίφνης ἐπιφερομένων, καὶ τῶν πρότερον ἡττημένων ὡς τούτους κατεῖδον αὖθις ἀνὰ τοὺς λόφους ἀθροιζομένων, δείσας ὁ Φιλοποίμην κυκλωθῆναι καὶ τῶν ἱππέων φειδόμενος, ἀνεχώρει διὰ τόπων χαλεπῶν, αὐτὸς οὐραγῶν καὶ πολλάκις ἀντεξελαύνων τοῖς πολεμίοις καὶ ὅλως ἐπισπώμενος ἐφ’ ἑαυτόν, οὐ τολμώντων ἀντεμβαλεῖν ἐκείνων, ἀλλὰ κραυγαῖς [10] καὶ περιδρομαῖς χρωμένων ἄπωθεν. ἐφιστάμενος οὖν πολλάκις διὰ τοὺς νεανίσκους, καὶ καθ’ ἕνα παραπέμπων, [11] ἔλαθεν ἐν πολλοῖς ἀπομονωθεὶς πολεμίοις. καὶ συνάψαι μὲν εἰς χεῖρας οὐδεὶς ἐτόλμησεν αὐτῷ, πόρρωθεν δὲ βαλλόμενος, καὶ βιαζόμενος πρὸς χωρία πετρώδη καὶ παράκρημνα, χαλεπῶς μετεχειρίζετο καὶ κατέξαινε [12] τὸν ἵππον. αὐτῷ δὲ τὸ μὲν γῆρας ὑπ’ ἀσκήσεως πολλῆς ἐλαφρὸν ἦν καὶ παρ’ οὐδὲν ἐμπόδιον εἰς τὸ σωθῆναι, τότε δὲ καὶ διὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν τοῦ σώματος ἐνδεοῦς γεγονότος, καὶ διὰ τὴν ὁδοιπορίαν κατακόπου, βαρὺν ὄντα καὶ δυσκίνητον ἤδη σφαλεὶς ὁ ἵππος εἰς τὴν γῆν κατέβαλε.

[13] σκληροῦ δὲ τοῦ πτώματος γενομένου, καί ‹τι καὶ› τῆς κεφαλῆς παθούσης, ἔκειτο πολὺν χρόνον ἄναυδος, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς πολεμίους τεθνάναι δόξαντας αὐτόν, ἐπιχειρεῖν στρέφειν [14] τὸ σῶμα καὶ σκυλεύειν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπάρας διέβλεψεν, ἀθρόοι περιπεσόντες ἀπέστρεφον αὐτοῦ τὰς χεῖρας ὀπίσω καὶ δήσαντες ἦγον, ὕβρει χρώμενοι πολλῇ καὶ λοιδορίᾳ κατ’ ἀνδρὸς οὐδ’ ὄναρ ἄν ποτε παθεῖν ὑπὸ Δεινοκράτους ταῦτα προσδοκήσαντος.

[19] [1] Οἱ δ’ ἐν τῇ πόλει τῇ μὲν ἀγγελίᾳ θαυμαστῶς ἐπαρθέντες, ἠθροίζοντο περὶ τὰς πύλας· ὡς δ’ εἶδον ἑλκόμενον τὸν Φιλοποίμενα παρ’ ἀξίαν τῆς τε δόξης καὶ τῶν ἔμπροσθεν ἔργων καὶ τροπαίων, ἠλέησαν οἱ πλεῖστοι καὶ συνήλγησαν, ὥστε καὶ δακρῦσαι καὶ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην ἐκφλαυρίσαι δύναμιν ὡς ἄπιστον καὶ τὸ μηδὲν οὖσαν. [2] οὕτω δὲ κατὰ μικρὸν εἰς ‹τοὺς› πολλοὺς φιλάνθρωπος ἐχώρει λόγος, ὡς μνημονευτέον εἴη τῶν πρόσθεν εὐεργεσιῶν καὶ τῆς ἐλευθερίας, ἣν ἀπέδωκεν αὐτοῖς Νάβιν [3] ἐξελάσας τὸν τύραννον. ὀλίγοι δ’ ἦσαν οἳ τῷ Δεινοκράτει χαριζόμενοι στρεβλοῦν τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ κτείνειν ἐκέλευον ὡς βαρὺν πολέμιον καὶ δυσμείλικτον, αὐτῷ τε Δεινοκράτει φοβερώτερον, εἰ διαφύγοι καθυβρισμένος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ [4] καὶ γεγονὼς αἰχμάλωτος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ κομίσαντες αὐτὸν εἰς τὸν καλούμενον Θησαυρόν, οἴκημα κατάγειον οὔτε πνεῦμα λαμβάνον οὔτε φῶς ἔξωθεν οὔτε θύρας ἔχον, ἀλλὰ μεγάλῳ λίθῳ προσαγομένῳ κατακλειόμενον, ἐνταῦθα κατέθεντο, καὶ τὸν λίθον ἐπιρράξαντες ἄνδρας ἐνόπλους κύκλῳ περιέστησαν.

[5] Οἱ δ’ ἱππεῖς τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐκ τῆς φυγῆς ἀναλαβόντες αὑτούς, ὡς οὐδαμοῦ φανερὸς ἦν ὁ Φιλοποίμην, ἀλλ’ ἐδόκει τεθνάναι, πολὺν μὲν χρόνον ἐπέστησαν, ἀνακαλούμενοι τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ διαδιδόντες ἀλλήλοις λόγον, ὡς αἰσχρὰν σωτηρίαν καὶ ἄδικον σῴζονται, προέμενοι τοῖς πολεμίοις τὸν [6] στρατηγόν, ἀφειδήσαντα τοῦ ζῆν δι’ αὐτούς· ἔπειτα προϊόντες ἅμα καὶ πολυπραγμονοῦντες, ἐπύθοντο τὴν σύλληψιν αὐτοῦ καὶ διήγγελλον εἰς τὰς πόλεις τῶν [7] Ἀχαιῶν. οἱ δὲ συμφορὰν ποιούμενοι μεγάλην, ἀπαιτεῖν μὲν ἔγνωσαν τὸν ἄνδρα παρὰ τῶν Μεσσηνίων πρεσβείαν πέμψαντες, αὐτοὶ δὲ παρεσκευάζοντο στρατεύειν.

[20] [1] Οὗτοι μὲν οὖν ταῦτ’ ἔπραττον. ὁ δὲ Δεινοκράτης μάλιστα τὸν χρόνον ὡς σωτήριον τῷ Φιλοποίμενι δεδοικώς, καὶ φθάσαι τὰ παρὰ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν βουλόμενος, ἐπεὶ νὺξ ἐπῆλθε καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ἀπεχώρησε τῶν Μεσσηνίων, ἀνοίξας τὸ δεσμωτήριον εἰσέπεμψε δημόσιον οἰκέτην φάρμακον κομίζοντα, προσενεγκεῖν καὶ παραστῆναι μέχρι [2] ἂν ἐκπίῃ κελεύσας. ἔτυχε μὲν οὖν ἐν τῷ χλαμυδίῳ κατακείμενος, οὐ καθεύδων, ἀλλὰ λύπῃ καὶ θορύβῳ συνεχόμενος· ἰδὼν δὲ φῶς καὶ παρεστῶτα πλησίον τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἔχοντα τὴν κύλικα τοῦ φαρμάκου, συναγαγὼν μόλις ἑαυτὸν ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας ἀνεκάθιζε, καὶ δεξάμενος ἠρώτησεν, εἴ τι περὶ τῶν ἱππέων καὶ μάλιστα Λυκόρτα πεπυσμένος [3] ἐστίν. εἰπόντος δὲ τἀνθρώπου διαπεφευγέναι τοὺς πολλούς, ἐπένευσε τῇ κεφαλῇ, καὶ διαβλέψας πρᾴως πρὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, εὖ ἔχει εἶπεν εἰ μὴ πάντα κακῶς [4] πεπράχαμεν. ἄλλο δὲ μηδὲν εἰπὼν μηδὲ φθεγξάμενος ἐξέπιε, καὶ πάλιν ἑαυτὸν ἀπέκλινεν, οὐ πολλὰ πράγματα τῷ φαρμάκῳ παρασχών, ἀλλ’ ἀποσβεσθεὶς ταχὺ διὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν.

[21] [1] Ὡς οὖν ὁ περὶ τῆς τελευτῆς λόγος ἧκεν εἰς τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, τὰς μὲν πόλεις αὐτῶν κοινὴ κατήφεια καὶ πένθος εἶχεν, οἱ δ’ ἐν ἡλικίᾳ μετὰ τῶν προβούλων συνελθόντες εἰς Μεγάλην πόλιν, οὐδ’ ἡντινοῦν ἀναβολὴν ἐποιήσαντο τῆς τιμωρίας, ἀλλ’ ἑλόμενοι στρατηγὸν Λυκόρταν εἰς τὴν Μεσσηνίαν ἐνέβαλον καὶ κακῶς ἐποίουν τὴν χώραν, ἄχρι οὗ συμφρονήσαντες ἐδέξαντο τοὺς Ἀχαιούς.

[2] καὶ Δεινοκράτης μὲν αὐτὸς αὑτὸν φθάσας διεχρήσατο, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων, ὅσοις μὲν ἀνελεῖν ἔδοξε Φιλοποίμενα, δι’ αὐτῶν ἀπέθνῃσκον, ὅσοις δὲ καὶ βασανίσαι, τούτους ἐπ’ αἰκίαις ἀπολουμένους συνελάμβανεν ὁ Λυκόρτας.

[3] Τὸ δὲ σῶμα καύσαντες αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ λείψανα συνθέντες εἰς ὑδρίαν ἀνεζεύγνυσαν, οὐκ ἀτάκτως οὐδ’ ὡς ἔτυχεν, ἀλλ’ ἐπινίκιόν τινα πομπὴν ἅμα ταῖς ταφαῖς μείξαντες.

[4] ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἐστεφανωμένους ἰδεῖν, ἦν δὲ τοὺς αὐτοὺς καὶ δακρύοντας, ἦν δὲ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς δεσμίους ἀγομένους.

[5] αὐτὴν δὲ τὴν ὑδρίαν ὑπὸ πλήθους ταινιῶν τε καὶ στεφάνων μόλις ὁρωμένην ἐκόμιζεν ὁ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν παῖς Πολύβιος καὶ περὶ αὐτὸν οἱ πρῶτοι τῶν [6] Ἀχαιῶν. οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται ‹καθ›ωπλισμένοι μὲν αὐτοί, τοῖς δ’ ἵπποις κεκοσμημένοις ἐπηκολούθουν, οὔθ’ οἷον ἐπὶ πένθει τοσούτῳ κατηφεῖς, οὔτε τῇ νίκῃ γαυριῶντες.

[7] ἐκ δὲ τῶν διὰ μέσου πόλεων καὶ κωμῶν ἀπαντῶντες, ὥσπερ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ στρατείας ἐπανιόντα δεξιούμενοι, τῆς ὑδρίας ἐφήπτοντο καὶ συμπροῆγον εἰς Μεγάλην πόλιν.

[8] ὡς οὖν συνανεμείχθησαν αὐτοῖς οἱ πρεσβύτεροι μετὰ γυναικῶν καὶ παίδων, ὀλοφυρμὸς ἤδη διὰ παντὸς ἐχώρει τοῦ στρατεύματος εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἐπιποθοῦσαν τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ βαρέως φέρουσαν, οἰομένην συναποβεβληκέναι τὸ [9] πρωτεύειν ἐν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς. ἐτάφη μὲν οὖν ὡς εἰκὸς ἐνδόξως, καὶ περὶ τὸ μνημεῖον οἱ τῶν Μεσσηνίων αἰχμάλωτοι κατελεύσθησαν.

[10] Οὐσῶν δὲ πολλῶν μὲν εἰκόνων αὐτοῦ, μεγάλων δὲ τιμῶν ἃς αἱ πόλεις ἐψηφίσαντο, Ῥωμαῖος ἀνὴρ ἐν τοῖς περὶ Κόρινθον ἀτυχήμασι τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐπεχείρησεν ἀνελεῖν ἁπάσας καὶ διώκειν αὐτόν, ἐνδεικνύμενος ὥσπερ ἔτι [11] ζῶντα Ῥωμαίοις πολέμιον καὶ κακόνουν γενέσθαι. λόγων δὲ λεχθέντων, καὶ Πολυβίου πρὸς τὸν συκοφάντην ἀντειπόντος, οὔθ’ ὁ Μόμμιος οὔθ’ οἱ πρέσβεις ὑπέμειναν ἀνδρὸς ἐνδόξου τιμὰς ἀφανίσαι, καίπερ οὐκ ὀλίγα τοῖς [12] περὶ Τίτον καὶ Μάνιον ἐναντιωθέντος, ἀλλὰ τῆς χρείας τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐκεῖνοι καὶ τὸ καλὸν ὡς ἔοικε τοῦ λυσιτελοῦς διώριζον, ὀρθῶς καὶ προσηκόντως τοῖς μὲν ὠφελοῦσι μισθὸν καὶ χάριν παρὰ τῶν εὖ παθόντων, τοῖς δ’ ἀγαθοῖς τιμὴν ὀφείλεσθαι παρὰ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀεὶ νομίζοντες. ταῦτα περὶ Φιλοποίμενος.

Titus Flamininus

[1] [1] Ὃν δὲ παραβάλλομεν αὐτῷ, Τίτος Κοΐντιος Φλαμινῖνος, ἰδέαν μὲν ὁποῖος ἦν πάρεστι θεάσασθαι τοῖς βουλομένοις ἀπὸ τῆς ἐν Ῥώμῃ χαλκῆς εἰκόνος, ἣ κεῖται παρὰ τὸν μέγαν Ἀπόλλωνα τὸν ἐκ Καρχηδόνος ἀντικρὺ τοῦ ἱπποδρόμου, γράμμασιν Ἑλληνικοῖς ἐπιγεγραμμένη· [2] τὸ δ’ ἦθος ὀξὺς λέγεται γενέσθαι καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν καὶ πρὸς χάριν, οὐ μὴν ὁμοίως, ἀλλ’ ἐλαφρὸς μὲν ἐν τῷ κολάζειν καὶ οὐκ ἐπίμονος, πρὸς δὲ τὰς χάριτας τελεσιουργός, καὶ τοῖς εὐεργετηθεῖσι διὰ παντὸς ὥσπερ εὐεργέταις εὔνους, καὶ πρόθυμος ὡς κάλλιστα τῶν κτημάτων τοὺς [3] εὖ πεπονθότας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ περιέπειν ἀεὶ καὶ σῴζειν. φιλοτιμότατος δὲ καὶ φιλοδοξότατος ὤν, ἐβούλετο τῶν ἀρίστων καὶ μεγίστων πράξεων αὐτουργὸς εἶναι, καὶ τοῖς δεομένοις εὖ παθεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς εὖ ποιῆσαι δυναμένοις ἔχαιρε, τοὺς μὲν ὥσπερ ὕλην τῆς ἀρετῆς, τοὺς δ’ [ὥσπερ] ἀντιπάλους πρὸς δόξαν ἡγούμενος.

[4] Παιδευθεὶς δὲ παιδείαν τὴν διὰ τῶν ἐθῶν τῶν στρατιωτικῶν, πολλοὺς τότε καὶ μεγάλους τῆς Ῥώμης ἀγωνιζομένης ἀγῶνας, καὶ τῶν νέων εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐν τῷ στρατεύεσθαι στρατηγεῖν διδασκομένων, πρῶτον μὲν ἐν τῷ πρὸς Ἀννίβαν πολέμῳ χιλίαρχος ὑπατεύοντι Μαρκέλλῳ [5] συνεστρατεύσατο. καὶ Μάρκελλος μὲν ἐνέδρᾳ περιπεσὼν ἐτελεύτησε, Τίτος δὲ τῆς περὶ Τάραντα χώρας καὶ Τάραντος αὐτοῦ τὸ δεύτερον ἡλωκότος ἔπαρχος ἀποδειχθείς, εὐδοκίμησεν οὐχ ἧττον ἐπὶ τοῖς δικαίοις ἢ κατὰ [6] τὴν στρατείαν. διὸ καὶ πεμπομένων ἀποίκων εἰς δύο πόλεις, Νάρνειάν τε καὶ Κῶνσαν, ἄρχων ᾑρέθη καὶ οἰκιστής.

[2] [1] Τοῦτο δ’ αὐτὸν ἐπῆρε μάλιστα τὰς διὰ μέσου καὶ συνήθεις τοῖς νέοις ἀρχὰς ὑπερβάντα, δημαρχίαν καὶ στρατηγίαν καὶ ἀγορανομίαν, εὐθὺς αὑτὸν ὑπατείας ἀξιοῦν, καὶ κατῄει, τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν κληρουχιῶν ἔχων προθύμους.

[2] τῶν δὲ περὶ Φούλβιον καὶ Μάνιον δημάρχων ἐνισταμένων, καὶ δεινὸν εἶναι λεγόντων ἄνδρα νέον εἰς τὴν μεγίστην ἀρχὴν εἰσβιάζεσθαι παρὰ τοὺς νόμους, οἷον ἀτέλεστον ἔτι τῶν πρώτων ἱερῶν καὶ μυστηρίων τῆς πολιτείας, ἡ μὲν σύγκλητος ἀπέδωκε τῷ δήμῳ τὴν ψῆφον, ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἀπέδειξεν αὐτὸν ὕπατον μετὰ Σέξτου Αἰλίου, καίπερ οὔπω τριάκοντ’ ἔτη γεγονότα.

[3] Κλήρῳ δὲ λαγχάνει τὸν πρὸς Φίλιππον καὶ Μακεδόνας πόλεμον, εὐτυχίᾳ τινὶ τῶν Ῥωμαίων συλλαχὼν πράγμασι καὶ ἀνθρώποις οὐ πάντα πολέμῳ καὶ βίᾳ χρωμένου δεομένοις ἄρχοντος, ἀλλὰ πειθοῖ καὶ ὁμιλίᾳ μᾶλλον [4] ἁλωσίμοις. Φιλίππῳ γὰρ ἦν στόμωμα μὲν εἰς μάχην ἀποχρῶν ἡ Μακεδόνων ἀρχή, ῥώμη δὲ πολέμου τριβὴν ἔχοντος καὶ χορηγία καὶ καταφυγὴ καὶ ὄργανον ὅλως τῆς φάλαγγος ἡ τῶν Ἑλλήνων δύναμις, ὧν μὴ διαλυθέντων ἀπὸ τοῦ Φιλίππου μιᾶς μάχης οὐκ ‹ἂν› ἦν ἔργον ὁ πρὸς [5] αὐτὸν πόλεμος. ἡ δ’ Ἑλλὰς οὔπω πολλὰ συνενηνεγμένη Ῥωμαίοις, ἀλλὰ τότε πρῶτον ἐπιμειγνυμένη ταῖς πράξεσιν, εἰ μὴ φύσει τε χρηστὸς ἦν ὁ ἄρχων καὶ λόγῳ μᾶλλον ἢ πολέμῳ χρώμενος, ἐντυγχάνοντί τε προσῆν πιθανότης καὶ πρᾳότης ἐντυγχανομένῳ καὶ τόνος πλεῖστος ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίων, οὐκ ἂν οὕτως ῥᾳδίως ἀντὶ τῶν συνήθων ἀλλόφυλον ἀρχὴν ἠγάπησε. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τῶν πράξεων αὐτοῦ δηλοῦται.

[3] [1] Πυνθανόμενος δ’ ὁ Τίτος τοὺς πρὸ ἑαυτοῦ στρατηγούς, τοῦτο μὲν Σουλπίκιον, τοῦτο δὲ Πόπλιον ‹Οὐίλλιον› ὀψὲ τῆς ὥρας ἐμβαλόντας εἰς Μακεδονίαν, καὶ τοῦ πολέμου βραδέως ἁψαμένους κατατετρῖφθαι τοπομαχοῦντας καὶ διαπληκτιζομένους ἀκροβολισμοῖς ὑπὲρ ὁδῶν καὶ [2] σιτολογίας πρὸς τὸν Φίλιππον, οὐκ ᾤετο δεῖν, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνοι καταναλώσαντες οἴκοι τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν ἐν τιμαῖς καὶ πολιτείαις ὕστερον ἐξώρμησαν ἐπὶ τὰς στρατείας, οὕτως καὶ αὐτὸς [ἐν τιμαῖς καὶ πολιτείαις] ἐνιαυτὸν ἐπικερδᾶναι [3] τῇ ἀρχῇ, τὸν μὲν ὑπατεύσας, τῷ δὲ πολεμήσας, ἀλλ’ ὁμοῦ φιλοτιμούμενος ἐνεργὸν τῷ πολέμῳ τὴν ἀρχὴν παρασχεῖν, τὰς μὲν ἐν τῇ πόλει τιμὰς καὶ προεδρίας ἀφῆκεν, αἰτησάμενος δὲ παρὰ τῆς βουλῆς τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὑτῷ Λεύκιον ἄρχοντα νεῶν συστρατεύειν, καὶ τῶν μετὰ Σκιπίωνος ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ μὲν Ἀσδρούβαν, ἐν Λιβύῃ δ’ Ἀννίβαν αὐτὸν καταμεμαχημένων τοὺς ἀκμάζοντας ἔτι καὶ προθύμους ἀναλαβὼν ὥσπερ στόμωμα, τρισχιλίους γενομένους, [4] εἰς τὴν Ἤπειρον ἀσφαλῶς διεπέρασε. καὶ τὸν Πόπλιον εὑρὼν μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως ἀντιστρατοπεδεύοντα τῷ Φιλίππῳ, τὰς περὶ τὸν Ἄψον ποταμὸν ἐμβολὰς καὶ τὰ Στενὰ φυλάττοντι πολὺν ἤδη χρόνον, οὐδὲν δὲ περαίνοντα διὰ τὴν ὀχυρότητα τῶν χωρίων, παρέλαβε τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ τὸν Πόπλιον ἀποπέμψας κατεσκέπτετο τοὺς [5] τόπους. εἰσὶ δ’ ὀχυροὶ μὲν οὐχ ἧττον τῶν περὶ τὰ Τέμπη, κάλλη δὲ δένδρων ὡς ἐκεῖνοι καὶ χλωρότητας ὕλης καὶ [6] διατριβὰς καὶ λειμῶνας ἡδεῖς οὐκ ἔχουσιν· ὀρῶν δὲ μεγάλων καὶ ὑψηλῶν, ἑκατέρωθεν εἰς μίαν φάραγγα μεγίστην καὶ βαθεῖαν συμφερομένων, διεκπίπτων ὁ Ἄψος καὶ σχῆμα καὶ τάχος ἐξομοιοῦται πρὸς τὸν Πηνειόν, τὴν μὲν ἄλλην ἅπασαν ἀποκρύπτων ὑπώρειαν, ἐκτομὴν δὲ κρημνώδη καὶ στενὴν παρὰ τὸ ῥεῖθρον ἀπολείπων ἀτραπόν, οὐδ’ ἄλλως ῥᾳδίαν στρατεύματι διελθεῖν, εἰ δὲ καὶ φυλάττοιτο, παντελῶς ἄπορον.

[4] [1] Ἦσαν μὲν οὖν οἱ τὸν Τίτον ἄγειν κύκλῳ διὰ τῆς Δασσαρήτιδος κατὰ Λύγκον εὔπορον ὁδὸν καὶ ῥᾳδίαν ἐπιχειροῦντες.

[2] ὁ δὲ δεδοικώς, μὴ πόρρω θαλάττης ἐμβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τόπους γλίσχρους καὶ σπειρομένους πονηρῶς τοῦ Φιλίππου φυγομαχοῦντος ἀπορήσῃ σιτίων, καὶ πάλιν ἄπρακτος ὥσπερ ὁ πρὸ αὐτοῦ στρατηγὸς ἀναχωρεῖν ἀναγκασθῇ πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν, ἔγνω προσβαλὼν ἀνὰ κράτος διὰ τῶν ἄκρων βιάσασθαι τὴν πάροδον.

[3] ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰ ὄρη τοῦ Φιλίππου τῇ φάλαγγι κατέχοντος, ἐκ τῶν πλαγίων πανταχόθεν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἀκοντίων καὶ τοξευμάτων φερομένων, πληγαὶ μὲν ἐγίνοντο καὶ ἀγῶνες ὀξεῖς, καὶ νεκροὶ παρ’ ἀμφοτέρων ἔπιπτον, οὐδὲν [4] δὲ τοῦ πολέμου πέρας ἐφαίνετο, προσῆλθον ἄνθρωποι τῶν αὐτόθι νεμόντων, φράζοντές τινα κύκλωσιν ἀμελουμένην ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, ᾗ τὸν στρατὸν ἄξειν ὑπισχνοῦντο καὶ καταστήσειν μάλιστα τριταῖον ἐπὶ τῶν [5] ἄκρων. γνώστην δὲ τῆς πίστεως παρείχοντο καὶ βεβαιωτὴν Χάροπα τὸν Μαχάτα, πρωτεύοντα μὲν Ἠπειρωτῶν, εὔνουν δὲ Ῥωμαίοις ὄντα καὶ κρύφα φόβῳ τοῦ Φιλίππου [6] συναγωνιζόμενον. ᾧ πιστεύσας ὁ Τίτος ἐκπέμπει χιλίαρχον ἕνα πεζοὺς ἔχοντα τετρακισχιλίους καὶ ἱππεῖς [7] τριακοσίους· ἡγοῦντο δ’ οἱ νομεῖς ἐκεῖνοι δεδεμένοι. καὶ τὰς μὲν ἡμέρας ἀνεπαύοντο, κοίλους προβαλλόμενοι καὶ ὑλώδεις τόπους, ὥδευον δὲ νύκτωρ πρὸς τὴν σελήνην· [8] καὶ γὰρ ἦν διχόμηνος. ὁ δὲ Τίτος τούτους ἀποστείλας, τὰς μὲν ἄλλας ἡμέρας διανέπαυε τὸν στρατόν, ὅσα μὴ [9] περισπᾶν τοῖς ἀκροβολισμοῖς τοὺς πολεμίους· καθ’ ἣν δ’ ἔμελλον ὑπερφανήσεσθαι τῶν ἄκρων οἱ περιϊόντες, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ πᾶν μὲν βαρὺ πᾶν δὲ γυμνητικὸν ὅπλον ἐκίνει, [10] καὶ τριχῇ νείμας τὴν δύναμιν, αὐτὸς μὲν εἰς ‹τὸ› στενώτατον παρὰ τὸ ῥεῖθρον ὀρθίας ἀνῆγε τὰς σπείρας, βαλλόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν Μακεδόνων καὶ συμπλεκόμενος τοῖς ἀπαντῶσι περὶ τὰς δυσχωρίας, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἑκατέρωθεν ἅμα πειρωμένων ἁμιλλᾶσθαι, καὶ ταῖς τραχύτησιν [11] ἐμφυομένων προθύμως, ὅ θ’ ἥλιος ἀνέσχε, καὶ καπνὸς οὐ βέβαιος, ἀλλ’ οἷον ὄρειος ὁμίχλη πόρρωθεν ἀνατέλλων καὶ διαφαινόμενος, τοὺς μὲν πολεμίους ἐλάνθανε (κατὰ νώτου γὰρ ἦν αὐτοῖς, ἤδη τῶν ἄκρων ἐχομένων), οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι δόξαν ἔσχον ἀμφίβολον, ἐν ἀγῶνι καὶ πόνῳ τὴν [12] ἐλπίδα πρὸς τὸ βουλόμενον λαμβάνοντες. ἐπεὶ δὲ μᾶλλον αὐξανόμενος καὶ διαμελαίνων τὸν ἀέρα καὶ πολὺς ἄνω χωρῶν ἐδηλοῦτο πυρσὸς εἶναι φίλιος, οἱ μὲν ἀλαλάξαντες ἐπέβαινον ἐρρωμένως καὶ συνέστελλον εἰς τὰ τραχύτατα τοὺς πολεμίους, οἱ δ’ ὄπισθεν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων ἀντηλάλαξαν.

[5] [1] Φυγὴ μὲν οὖν ἦν εὐθὺς ὀξεῖα πάντων, ἔπεσον δὲ δισχιλίων οὐ πλείους· ἀφῃροῦντο γὰρ αἱ δυσχωρίαι τὴν [2] δίωξιν· χρήματα δὲ καὶ σκηνὰς καὶ θεράποντας οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι διαρπάσαντες, ἐκράτουν τῶν Στενῶν καὶ διώδευον τὴν Ἤπειρον οὕτω κοσμίως καὶ μετ’ ἐγκρατείας τοσαύτης, ὥστε τῶν πλοίων καὶ τῆς θαλάσσης μακρὰν ὄντας αὐτούς, καὶ τὸν ἐπιμήνιον σῖτον μὴ μεμετρημένους οὐδ’ εὐποροῦντας ἀγορᾶς, ἀπέχεσθαι τῆς χώρας, ἀμφιλαφεῖς [3] ὠφελείας ἐχούσης. ὁ γὰρ Τίτος πυνθανόμενος τὸν Φίλιππον, ὡς ὅμοια φεύγοντι τὴν Θετταλίαν διερχόμενος τοὺς μὲν ἀνθρώπους ἐκ τῶν πόλεων ἀνίστησιν εἰς τὰ ὄρη, τὰς δὲ πόλεις καταπίμπρησι, τῶν δὲ χρημάτων τὰ λειπόμενα διὰ πλῆθος ἢ βάρος ἁρπαγὴν προτίθεται, τρόπον τινὰ τῆς χώρας ἐξιστάμενος ἤδη Ῥωμαίοις, ἐφιλοτιμεῖτο καὶ παρεκάλει τοὺς στρατιώτας ὥσπερ οἰκείας καὶ [4] παρακεχωρημένης κηδομένους βαδίζειν. καὶ μέντοι καὶ παρεῖχεν αὐτοῖς τὰ γινόμενα τῆς εὐταξίας αἴσθησιν εὐθύς· προσεχώρουν μὲν γὰρ αἱ πόλεις ἁψαμένοις Θετταλίας, οἱ δ’ ἐντὸς Πυλῶν Ἕλληνες ἐπόθουν καὶ διεπτόηντο ταῖς ὁρμαῖς πρὸς τὸν Τίτον, Ἀχαιοὶ δὲ τὴν Φιλίππου συμμαχίαν ἀπειπάμενοι πολεμεῖν ἐψηφίσαντο μετὰ Ῥωμαίων [5] πρὸς αὐτόν· Ὀπούντιοι δέ, καίπερ Αἰτωλῶν τότε Ῥωμαίοις συναγωνιζομένων προθυμότατα καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀξιούντων παραλαβεῖν καὶ φυλάττειν, οὐ προσέσχον, ἀλλὰ μεταπεμψάμενοι τὸν Τίτον ἐκείνῳ διεπίστευσαν [6] ἑαυτοὺς καὶ παρέδωκαν. Πύρρον μὲν οὖν λέγουσιν, ὅτε πρῶτον ἀπὸ σκοπῆς κατεῖδε τὸ στράτευμα τῶν Ῥωμαίων διακεκοσμημένον, εἰπεῖν οὐ βαρβαρικὴν αὐτῷ φανῆναι τὴν τῶν βαρβάρων παράταξιν· οἱ δὲ Τίτῳ πρῶτον ἐντυγχάνοντες ἠναγκάζοντο παραπλησίας ἀφιέναι φωνάς.

[7] ἀκούοντες γὰρ τῶν Μακεδόνων, ὡς ἄνθρωπος ἄρχων βαρβάρου στρατιᾶς ἔπεισι, δι’ ὅπλων πάντα καταστρεφόμενος καὶ δουλούμενος, εἶτ’ ἀπαντῶντες ἀνδρὶ τήν θ’ ἡλικίαν νέῳ καὶ τὴν ὄψιν φιλανθρώπῳ, φωνήν τε καὶ διάλεκτον Ἕλληνι, καὶ τιμῆς ἀληθοῦς ἐραστῇ, θαυμασίως ἐκηλοῦντο, καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἀπιόντες ἐνεπίμπλασαν εὐνοίας τῆς πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς ἐχούσας ἡγεμόνα τῆς ἐλευθερίας.

[8] ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ Φιλίππῳ δοκοῦντι συμβατικῶς ἔχειν εἰς ταὐτὸν ἐλθὼν προὔτεινεν εἰρήνην καὶ φιλίαν ἐπὶ τῷ τοὺς Ἕλληνας αὐτονόμους ἐᾶν καὶ τὰς φρουρὰς ἀπαλλάττειν, ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἐδέξατο, παντάπασιν ἤδη τότε καὶ τοῖς θεραπεύουσι τὰ τοῦ Φιλίππου παρέστη, Ῥωμαίους πολεμήσοντας ἥκειν οὐχ Ἕλλησιν, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ Ἑλλήνων Μακεδόσι.

[6] [1] Τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλα προσεχώρει καθ’ ἡσυχίαν αὐτῷ, τὴν δὲ Βοιωτίαν ἀπολέμως ἐπιπορευομένῳ Θηβαίων ἀπήντησαν οἱ πρῶτοι, φρονοῦντες μὲν τὰ τοῦ Μακεδόνος διὰ Βραχύλλην, ἀσπαζόμενοι δὲ καὶ τιμῶντες τὸν Τίτον, [2] ὡς φιλίας πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους ὑπαρχούσης. ὁ δ’ ἐντυχὼν αὐτοῖς φιλανθρώπως καὶ δεξιωσάμενος, προῆγεν ἡσυχῇ καθ’ ὁδόν, τὰ μὲν ἐρωτῶν καὶ πυνθανόμενος, τὰ δὲ διηγούμενος καὶ παράγων ἐπίτηδες, ἄχρι τοὺς στρατιώτας [3] ἀναλαβεῖν ἐκ τῆς πορείας. οὕτω δὲ προάγων συνεισῆλθε τοῖς Θηβαίοις εἰς τὴν πόλιν, οὐ πάνυ μὲν ἡδομένοις, ὀκνοῦσι δὲ κωλύειν, ἐπεὶ στρατιῶται γε μέτριοι [4] τὸ πλῆθος εἵποντο. καὶ μέντοι παρελθὼν ὁ Τίτος ὡς οὐκ ἔχων τὴν πόλιν ἔπειθεν ἑλέσθαι τὰ Ῥωμαίων, Ἀττάλου τοῦ βασιλέως συναγορεύοντος αὐτῷ καὶ συνεξορμῶντος [5] τοὺς Θηβαίους. ἀλλ’ Ἄτταλος μὲν ὡς ἔοικε τοῦ γήρως προθυμότερον ἑαυτὸν τῷ Τίτῳ ῥήτορα παρασχεῖν φιλοτιμούμενος, ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ λέγειν προσπεσόντος ἰλίγγου τινὸς ἢ ῥεύματος, ἄφνω τὴν αἴσθησιν ἐπιληφθεὶς ἔπεσε, καὶ μετ’ οὐ πολὺ ταῖς ναυσὶν εἰς Ἀσίαν ἀποκομισθεὶς ἐτελεύτησεν· οἱ δὲ Βοιωτοὶ προσεχώρησαν τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις.

[7] [1] Φιλίππου δὲ πρέσβεις πέμψαντος εἰς Ῥώμην, ἀπέστειλε καὶ ὁ Τίτος παρ’ αὑτοῦ τοὺς πράξοντας, ὅπως ἐπιψηφίσηται χρόνον ἡ σύγκλητος αὐτῷ τοῦ πολέμου μένοντος· [2] εἰ δὲ μή, δι’ ἐκείνου τὴν εἰρήνην γενέσθαι. φιλότιμος γὰρ ὢν ἰσχυρῶς, ἐδεδίει πεμφθέντος ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον [3] ἑτέρου στρατηγοῦ τὴν δόξαν ἀφαιρεθῆναι. διαπραξαμένων δὲ τῶν φίλων αὐτῷ, μήτε τὸν Φίλιππον ὧν ἔχρῃζε τυχεῖν, καὶ τοῦ πολέμου τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἐκείνῳ φυλαχθῆναι, δεξάμενος τὸ δόγμα καὶ ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἐπαρθείς, εὐθὺς εἰς Θετταλίαν ἐπὶ τὸν Φίλιππον ὥρμησεν, ὑπὲρ ἑξακισχιλίους καὶ δισμυρίους ἔχων στρατιώτας, ὧν Αἰτωλοὶ πεζοὺς ἑξακισχιλίους καὶ ἱππεῖς τετρακοσίους παρεῖχον· ἦν δὲ καὶ τοῦ Φιλίππου τὸ στράτευμα τῷ [4] πλήθει παραπλήσιον. ἐπεὶ δὲ βαδίζοντες ἐπ’ ἀλλήλους καὶ γενόμενοι περὶ τὴν Σκοτοῦσσαν ἐνταῦθα διακινδυνεύειν ἔμελλον, οὐχ ὅπερ εἰκὸς ἦν πρὸς δέους ἔλαβον οἱ στρατιῶται τὴν ἀλλήλων ‹ἔφοδον›, ἀλλὰ ‹καὶ› μᾶλλον [5] ὁρμῆς καὶ φιλοτιμίας ἐπληροῦντο, Ῥωμαῖοι μὲν εἰ Μακεδόνων κρατήσουσιν, ὧν ὄνομα δι’ Ἀλέξανδρον ἀλκῆς καὶ δυνάμεως πλεῖστον ἦν παρ’ αὐτοῖς· Μακεδόνες δὲ Ῥωμαίους Περσῶν ἡγούμενοι διαφέρειν, ἤλπιζον εἰ περιγένοιντο λαμπρότερον ἀποδείξειν Ἀλεξάνδρου Φίλιππον. [6] ὁ μὲν οὖν Τίτος παρεκάλει τοὺς στρατιώτας ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς γενέσθαι καὶ προθύμους, ὡς ἐν τῷ καλλίστῳ θεάτρῳ τῇ Ἑλλάδι μέλλοντας ἀγωνίζεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς [7] ἀρίστους τῶν ἀνταγωνιστῶν· ὁ δὲ Φίλιππος, εἴτ’ ἀπὸ τύχης εἴθ’ ὑπὸ σπουδῆς παρὰ τὸν καιρὸν ἀγνοήσας, ἦν γάρ τι πολυάνδριον ὑψηλὸν ἔξω τοῦ χάρακος, ἐπὶ τοῦτο προβάς, ἤρξατο μὲν οἷ’ εἰς προτροπὴν πρὸ μάχης φιλεῖ διαλέγεσθαι καὶ παρορμᾶν, ἀθυμίας δὲ δεινῆς πρὸς τὸν οἰωνὸν ἐμπεσούσης, διαταραχθεὶς ἐπέσχε τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην.

[8] [1] Τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον ἐκ μαλακῆς καὶ νοτίου νυκτὸς εἰς ὁμίχλην τῶν νεφῶν τρεπομένων, ἀνεπίμπλατο ζόφου βαθέος πᾶν τὸ πεδίον, καὶ κατῄει παχὺς ἐκ τῶν ἄκρων ἀὴρ εἰς τὸ μεταξὺ τῶν στρατοπέδων, εὐθὺς [2] ἀρχομένης ἡμέρας ἀποκρύπτων τοὺς τόπους. οἱ δ’ ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων ἀποσταλέντες ἐφεδρείας ἕνεκα καὶ κατασκοπῆς ἐν πάνυ βραχεῖ περιπεσόντες ἀλλήλοις, ἐμάχοντο περὶ τὰς καλουμένας Κυνὸς κεφαλάς, αἳ λόφων οὖσαι πυκνῶν καὶ παραλλήλων ἄκραι λεπταὶ δι’ ὁμοιότητα [3] τοῦ σχήματος οὕτως ὠνομάσθησαν. γενομένων δ’ οἵων εἰκὸς ἐν τόποις σκληροῖς μεταβολῶν κατὰ τὰς φυγὰς καὶ διώξεις, ἑκάτεροι τοῖς πονοῦσιν ἀεὶ καὶ ὑποχωροῦσιν ἐπιπέμποντες βοήθειαν ἐκ τῶν στρατοπέδων, καὶ ἤδη τοῦ ἀέρος ἀνακαθαιρομένου καθορῶντες τὰ γινόμενα, πανστρατιᾷ [4] συνέβαλον. τῷ μὲν οὖν δεξιῷ περιῆν ὁ Φίλιππος, ἐκ τόπων ἐπιφόρων ὅλην ἐπερείσας τὴν φάλαγγα τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις, τὸ βάρος τοῦ συνασπισμοῦ καὶ τὴν τραχύτητα τῆς προβολῆς οὐδὲ τῶν ἀρίστων ὑπομεινάντων· [5] τοῦ δ’ εὐωνύμου διασπασμὸν ἀνὰ τοὺς λόφους καὶ περίκλασιν λαμβάνοντος, ὁ Τίτος τὸ μὲν ἡττώμενον ἀπογνούς, πρὸς δὲ θάτερον ὀξέως παρελάσας, προσέβαλε τοῖς Μακεδόσι, συστῆναι μὲν εἰς φάλαγγα καὶ πυκνῶσαι τὴν τάξιν εἰς βάθος, ἥπερ ἦν ἀλκὴ τῆς ἐκείνων δυνάμεως, κωλυομένοις διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν καὶ τραχύτητα τῶν χωρίων, πρὸς δὲ τὸ κατ’ ἄνδρα συμπλέκεσθαι βαρεῖ καὶ [6] δυσέργῳ χρωμένοις ὁπλισμῷ. ζῴῳ γὰρ ἡ φάλαγξ ἔοικεν ἀμάχῳ τὴν ἰσχύν, ἕως ἕν ἐστι σῶμα καὶ τηρεῖ τὸν συνασπισμὸν ἐν τάξει μιᾷ, διαλυθείσης δὲ καὶ τὴν καθ’ ἕνα ῥώμην ἀπόλλυσι τῶν μαχομένων ἕκαστος διά τε τὸν τρόπον τῆς ὁπλίσεως, καὶ ὅτι παντὸς ὅλου τοῖς παρ’ ἀλλήλων [7] μέρεσι μᾶλλον ἢ δι’ αὑτὸν ἰσχύει. τραπομένων δὲ τούτων, οἱ μὲν ἐδίωκον τοὺς φεύγοντας, οἱ δὲ τοὺς μαχομένους τῶν Μακεδόνων παρεκδραμόντες ἐκ πλαγίων ἔκτεινον, ὥστε ταχὺ καὶ τοὺς νικῶντας περισπᾶσθαι καὶ [8] φεύγειν τὰ ὅπλα καταβάλλοντας. ἔπεσον μὲν οὖν ὀκτακισχιλίων οὐκ ἐλάττους, ἑάλωσαν δὲ περὶ πεντακισχιλίους.

[9] τοῦ δὲ τὸν Φίλιππον ἀσφαλῶς ἀπελθεῖν τὴν αἰτίαν ἔλαβον Αἰτωλοί, περὶ ἁρπαγὴν γενόμενοι καὶ πόρθησιν τοῦ χάρακος ἔτι τῶν Ῥωμαίων διωκόντων, ὥστε μηθὲν εὑρεῖν ἐκείνους ἐπανελθόντας.

[9] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἐγένοντο λοιδορίαι καὶ διαφοραὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους αὐτοῖς· ἐκ δὲ τούτων μᾶλλον ἀεὶ τὸν Τίτον ἐλύπουν, ἑαυτοῖς ἀνατιθέντες τὸ νίκημα καὶ τῇ φήμῃ προκαταλαμβάνοντες τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὥστε καὶ γράφεσθαι καὶ ᾄδεσθαι προτέρους ἐκείνους ὑπὸ ποιητῶν [2] καὶ ἰδιωτῶν, ὑμνούντων τὸ ἔργον. ὧν μάλιστα διὰ στόματος ἦν τουτὶ τὸ ἐπίγραμμα (Anth. Pal. VII 247).

Ἄκλαυστοι καὶ ἄθαπτοι ὁδοιπόρε τῷδ’ ἐπὶ νώτῳ

Θεσσαλίης τρισσαὶ κείμεθα μυριάδες,

Αἰτωλῶν δμηθέντες ὑπ’ Ἄρεος ἠδὲ Λατίνων,

οὓς Τίτος εὐρείης ἤγαγ’ ἀπ’ Ἰταλίης,

Ἠμαθίῃ μέγα πῆμα. τὸ δὲ θρασὺ κεῖνο Φιλίππου

πνεῦμα θοῶν ἐλάφων ᾤχετ’ ἐλαφρότερον.

[3] τοῦτ’ ἐποίησε μὲν Ἀλκαῖος, ἐφυβρίζων Φιλίππῳ καὶ τὸν ἀριθμὸν τῶν ἀποθανόντων ἐπιψευσάμενος· λεγόμενον δὲ πολλαχοῦ καὶ ὑπὸ πολλῶν, μᾶλλον ἠνία τὸν Τίτον ἢ τὸν [4] Φίλιππον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἀντικωμῳδῶν τὸν Ἀλκαῖον τῷ ἐλεγείῳ, παρέβαλλεν·

Ἄφλοιος καὶ ἄφυλλος ὁδοιπόρε τῷδ’ ἐπὶ νώτῳ

Ἀλκαίῳ σταυρὸς πήγνυται ἠλίβατος·

[5] τὸν δὲ Τίτον φιλοτιμούμενον πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας οὐ μετρίως παρώξυνε τὰ τοιαῦτα. διὸ καὶ τὰ ὑπόλοιπα τῶν πραγμάτων ἔπραττε καθ’ ἑαυτόν, ἐλάχιστα φροντίζων [6] τῶν Αἰτωλῶν. οἱ δ’ ἤχθοντο, καὶ προσδεξαμένου λόγους αὐτοῦ καὶ πρεσβείαν ἐπὶ συμβάσεσι παρὰ τοῦ Μακεδόνος, τοῦτ’ ἐκεῖνο περιϊόντες ἐπὶ τὰς ἄλλας πόλεις ἐβόων, πωλεῖσθαι τὴν εἰρήνην Φιλίππῳ, παρὸν ἐκκόψαι τὸν πόλεμον ἄρδην καὶ ἀνελεῖν ἀρχὴν ὑφ’ ἧς πρώτης ἐδουλώθη [7] τὸ Ἑλληνικόν. ταῦτα τῶν Αἰτωλῶν λεγόντων καὶ διαταραττόντων τοὺς συμμάχους, αὐτὸς ὁ Φίλιππος ἐλθὼν πρὸς τὰς διαλύσεις ἀνεῖλε τὴν ὑποψίαν, ἐπιτρέψας [8] τῷ Τίτῳ καὶ τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις τὰ καθ’ αὑτόν. καὶ οὕτω καταλύεται τὸν πόλεμον ὁ Τίτος, καὶ τὴν μὲν Μακεδονικὴν ἀπέδωκεν αὐτῷ βασιλείαν, τῆς δ’ Ἑλλάδος προσέταξεν ἀποστῆναι, χιλίοις δὲ ταλάντοις ἐζημίωσε, τὰς δὲ ναῦς πάσας παρείλετο πλὴν δέκα, τῶν δὲ παίδων τὸν ἕτερον, Δημήτριον, ὁμηρεύσοντα λαβὼν εἰς Ῥώμην ἀπέστειλεν, ἄριστα τῷ καιρῷ χρησάμενος καὶ προλαβὼν τὸ μέλλον.

[9] Ἀννίβου γὰρ τοῦ Λίβυος, ἀνδρὸς ἐχθίστου τε Ῥωμαίοις καὶ φυγάδος, ἤδη τότε πρὸς Ἀντίοχον ἥκοντος τὸν βασιλέα καὶ παροξύνοντος αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν προϊέναι, τῇ τύχῃ τῆς δυνάμεως εὐροούσης, ἤδη καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ὑπὸ πραγμάτων μεγάλων, ἃ κατεργασάμενος μέγας ἐπωνομάσθη, πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἁπάντων ἡγεμονίαν ἀποβλέποντα, [10] μάλιστα δὲ κατὰ Ῥωμαίων ἀνιστάμενον, εἰ μὴ τοῦτο προϊδὼν ὁ Τίτος ἐμφρόνως ἐνέδωκε πρὸς τὰς διαλύσεις, ἀλλὰ τὸν Φιλιππικὸν ὁ Ἀντιοχικὸς κατειλήφει πόλεμος ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι, καὶ συνέστησαν ὑπ’ αἰτιῶν ἀμφότεροι κοινῶν οἱ μέγιστοι τῶν τότε καὶ δυνατώτατοι βασιλέων ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην, ἔσχεν ἂν ἀγῶνας ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς καὶ κινδύνους [11] τῶν πρὸς Ἀννίβαν οὐκ ἐλάττους. νῦν δὲ τῶν πολέμων μέσην κατὰ καιρὸν ἐμβαλὼν τὴν εἰρήνην ὁ Τίτος, καὶ πρὶν ἄρξασθαι τὸν μέλλοντα διακόψας τὸν παρόντα, τοῦ μὲν τὴν ἐσχάτην ἐλπίδα, τοῦ δὲ τὴν πρώτην ὑφεῖλεν.

[10] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ δέκα πρέσβεις οὓς ἡ σύγκλητος ἔπεμψε τῷ Τίτῳ συνεβούλευον, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους Ἕλληνας ἐλευθεροῦν, Κόρινθον δὲ καὶ Χαλκίδα καὶ Δημητριάδα διατηρεῖν ἐμφρούρους ἕνεκα τῆς πρὸς Ἀντίοχον ἀσφαλείας, [2] ἐνταῦθα δὴ ταῖς κατηγορίαις λαμπροὶ λαμπρῶς τὰς πόλεις ἀνερρήγνυσαν Αἰτωλοί, τὸν μὲν Τίτον κελεύοντες τὰς πέδας τῆς Ἑλλάδος λύειν (οὕτω γὰρ ὁ Φίλιππος εἰώθει τὰς προειρημένας πόλεις ὀνομάζειν), τοὺς δ’ Ἕλληνας ἐρωτῶντες, εἰ κλοιὸν ἔχοντες βαρύτερον μὲν λειότερον δὲ τοῦ πάλαι τὸν νῦν χαίρουσι, καὶ θαυμάζουσι τὸν Τίτον ὡς εὐεργέτην, ὅτι τοῦ ποδὸς λύσας τὴν Ἑλλάδα [3] τοῦ τραχήλου δέδεκεν. ἐφ’ οἷς ἀχθόμενος ὁ Τίτος καὶ βαρέως φέρων καὶ δεόμενος τοῦ συνεδρίου, τέλος ἐξέπεισε καὶ ταύτας τὰς πόλεις ἀνεῖναι τῆς φρουρᾶς, ὅπως ὁλόκληρος ἡ χάρις ὑπάρξῃ παρ’ αὐτοῦ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν.

[4] Ἰσθμίων οὖν ἀγομένων, πλῆθος μὲν ἀνθρώπων ἐν τῷ σταδίῳ καθῆστο τὸν γυμνικὸν ἀγῶνα θεωμένων, οἷα δὴ διὰ χρόνων πεπαυμένης μὲν πολέμων τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐπ’ ἐλπίσιν ἐλευθερίας, σαφεῖ δ’ εἰρήνῃ πανηγυριζούσης· [5] τῇ σάλπιγγι ‹δὲ› σιωπῆς εἰς ἅπαντας διαδοθείσης, προελθὼν εἰς μέσον ὁ κῆρυξ ἀνεῖπεν, ὅτι Ῥωμαίων ἡ σύγκλητος καὶ Τίτος Κοΐντιος στρατηγὸς ὕπατος, καταπολεμήσαντες βασιλέα Φίλιππον καὶ Μακεδόνας, ἀφιᾶσιν ἐλευθέρους καὶ ἀφρουρήτους καὶ ἀφορολογήτους, νόμοις χρωμένους τοῖς πατρίοις, Κορινθίους, Φωκεῖς, Λοκρούς, Εὐβοέας, Ἀχαιοὺς Φθιώτας, Μάγνητας, Θετταλούς, [6] Περραιβούς. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον οὐ πάνυ πάντες οὐδὲ σαφῶς ἐπήκουσαν, ἀλλ’ ἀνώμαλος καὶ θορυβώδης κίνησις ἦν ἐν τῷ σταδίῳ, θαυμαζόντων καὶ διαπυνθανομένων [7] καὶ πάλιν ἀνειπεῖν κελευόντων· ὡς δ’ αὖθις ἡσυχίας γενομένης ἀναγαγὼν ὁ κῆρυξ τὴν φωνὴν προθυμότερον εἰς ἅπαντας ἐγεγώνει, καὶ διῆλθε τὸ κήρυγμα, κραυγὴ μὲν ἄπιστος τὸ μέγεθος διὰ χαρὰν ἐχώρει μέχρι θαλάττης, ὀρθὸν δ’ ἀνειστήκει τὸ θέατρον, οὐδεὶς δὲ λόγος ἦν τῶν ἀγωνιζομένων, ἔσπευδον δὲ πάντες ἀναπηδῆσαι καὶ δεξιώσασθαι καὶ προσειπεῖν τὸν σωτῆρα τῆς Ἑλλάδος καὶ [8] πρόμαχον. τὸ δὲ πολλάκις λεγόμενον εἰς ὑπερβολὴν τῆς φωνῆς καὶ μέγεθος ὤφθη τότε· κόρακες γὰρ ὑπερπετόμενοι [9] κατὰ τύχην ἔπεσον εἰς τὸ στάδιον. αἰτία δ’ ἡ τοῦ ἀέρος ῥῆξις· ὅταν γὰρ ἡ φωνὴ πολλὴ καὶ μεγάλη φέρηται, διασπώμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῆς οὐκ ἀντερείδει τοῖς πετομένοις, ἀλλ’ ὀλίσθημα ποιεῖ καθάπερ κενεμβατοῦσιν, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία πληγῇ τινι μᾶλλον ὡς ὑπὸ βέλους διελαυνόμενα πίπτει [10] καὶ ἀποθνῄσκει. δύναται δὲ καὶ περιδίνησις εἶναι τοῦ ἀέρος, ἑλιγμὸν οἷον ἐν πελάγει καὶ παλιρρύμην τοῦ σάλου διὰ μέγεθος λαμβάνοντος.

[11] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Τίτος, εἰ μὴ τάχιστα τῆς θέας διαλυθείσης ὑπιδόμενος τὴν φορὰν τοῦ πλήθους καὶ τὸν δρόμον ἐξέκλινεν, οὐκ ἂν ἐδόκει περιγενέσθαι τοσούτων ὁμοῦ καὶ [2] πάντοθεν αὐτῷ περιχεομένων. ὡς δ’ ἀπέκαμον περὶ τὴν σκηνὴν αὐτοῦ βοῶντες ἤδη νυκτὸς οὔσης, αὖθις οὕστινας ἴδοιεν ἢ φίλους ἢ πολίτας ἀσπαζόμενοι καὶ περιπλεκόμενοι, πρὸς δεῖπνα καὶ πότους ἐτρέποντο μετ’ ἀλλήλων.

[3] Ἐν ᾧ καὶ μᾶλλον ὡς εἰκὸς ἡδομένοις ἐπῄει λογίζεσθαι καὶ διαλέγεσθαι περὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ὅσους πολεμήσασα πολέμους διὰ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, οὔπω τύχοι βεβαιότερον οὐδ’ ἥδιον αὐτῆς, ἑτέρων προαγωνισαμένων ὀλίγου δεῖν ἀναίμακτος αὐτὴ καὶ ἀπενθὴς φερομένη τὸ [4] κάλλιστον καὶ περιμαχητότατον ἆθλον. ἦν δ’ ἄρα σπάνιον μὲν ἀνδρεία καὶ φρόνησις ἐν ἀνθρώποις, σπανιώτατον [5] δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἀγαθῶν ὁ δίκαιος. οἱ γὰρ Ἀγησίλαοι καὶ ‹οἱ› Λύσανδροι καὶ οἱ Νικίαι καὶ οἱ Ἀλκιβιάδαι πολέμους μὲν εὖ διέπειν καὶ μάχας νικᾶν κατά τε γῆν καὶ θάλασσαν ἄρχοντες ἠπίσταντο, χρῆσθαι δὲ πρὸς χάριν εὐγενῆ [6] καὶ τὸ καλὸν οἷς κατώρθουν οὐκ ἔγνωσαν, ἀλλ’ εἰ τὸ Μαραθώνιόν τις ἔργον ἀφέλοι, καὶ τὴν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι ναυμαχίαν, καὶ Πλαταιὰς καὶ Θερμοπύλας, καὶ τὰ πρὸς Εὐρυμέδοντι καὶ τὰ περὶ Κύπρον Κίμωνος ἔργα, πάσας τὰς μάχας ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἐπὶ δουλείᾳ μεμάχηται πρὸς αὑτήν, καὶ πᾶν τρόπαιον αὐτῆς συμφορὰ καὶ ὄνειδος [ἐπ’ αὐτὴν] ἕστηκε, τὰ πλεῖστα κακίᾳ καὶ φιλονικίᾳ τῶν ἡγουμένων [7] περιτραπείσης. ἀλλόφυλοι δ’ ἄνδρες, ἐναύσματα μικρὰ καὶ γλίσχρα κοινωνήματα παλαιοῦ γένους ἔχειν δοκοῦντες, ἀφ’ ὧν καὶ λόγῳ τι καὶ γνώμῃ τῶν χρησίμων ὑπάρξαι τῇ Ἑλλάδι θαυμαστὸν ἦν, οὗτοι τοῖς μεγίστοις κινδύνοις καὶ πόνοις ἐξελόμενοι τὴν Ἑλλάδα δεσποτῶν χαλεπῶν καὶ τυράννων ἐλευθεροῦσι.

[12] [1] Ταῦτα δὴ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὑπῄει, καὶ τὰ τῶν ἔργων [2] ὁμολογοῦντα τοῖς κηρύγμασιν ‹ἦν›. ἅμα γὰρ ἐξέπεμπεν ὁ Τίτος, Λέντλον μὲν εἰς Ἀσίαν Βαργυλιήτας ἐλευθερώσοντα, Στερτίνιον δ’ εἰς Θρᾴκην τὰς αὐτόθι πόλεις καὶ [3] νήσους ἀπαλλάξοντα τῶν Φιλίππου φρουρῶν· Πόπλιος δ’ Οὐίλλιος ἔπλει διαλεξόμενος Ἀντιόχῳ περὶ τῆς τῶν [4] ὑπ’ αὐτὸν Ἑλλήνων ἐλευθερίας. αὐτὸς δ’ ὁ Τίτος εἰς Χαλκίδα παρελθών, εἶτα πλεύσας ἐκεῖθεν ἐπὶ Μαγνησίαν, ἐξῆγε τὰς φρουρὰς καὶ τὰς πολιτείας ἀπεδίδου τοῖς [5] δήμοις. ἀγωνοθέτης δὲ Νεμείων ἀποδειχθεὶς ἐν Ἄργει, τήν τε πανήγυριν ἄριστα διέθηκε, καὶ πάλιν ἐκεῖ τοῖς [6] Ἕλλησι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ὑπὸ κήρυκος ἀνεῖπεν, ἐπιφοιτῶν τε ταῖς πόλεσιν εὐνομίαν ἅμα καὶ δίκην πολλὴν ὁμόνοιάν τε καὶ φιλοφροσύνην πρὸς ἀλλήλους παρεῖχε, καταπαύων μὲν τὰς στάσεις, κατάγων δὲ τὰς φυγάς, ἀγαλλόμενος δὲ τῷ πείθειν καὶ διαλλάσσειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τῷ κεκρατηκέναι τῶν Μακεδόνων, ὥστε μικρότατον [7] ἤδη τὴν ἐλευθερίαν δοκεῖν ὧν εὐεργετοῦντο. Ξενοκράτην μὲν οὖν τὸν φιλόσοφον, ὅτε Λυκοῦργος αὐτὸν ὁ ῥήτωρ ὑπὸ τῶν τελωνῶν ἀγόμενον πρὸς τὸ μετοίκιον ἀφείλετο καὶ τοῖς ἄγουσιν ἐπέθηκε δίκην τῆς ἀσελγείας, λέγεται τοῖς παισὶν ἀπαντήσαντα τοῦ Λυκούργου καλήν γ’ ὑμῶν ὦ παῖδες φάναι τῷ πατρὶ χάριν ἀποδίδωμι· πάντες γὰρ αὐτὸν ἐπαινοῦσιν ἐφ’ οἷς ἔπραξε, [8] Τίτῳ δὲ καὶ Ῥωμαίοις, ὧν τοὺς Ἕλληνας εὐεργέτησαν, οὐκ εἰς ἐπαίνους μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πίστιν ἐν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις [9] καὶ δύναμιν ἡ χάρις ἀπήντα δικαίως. οὐ γὰρ προσδεχόμενοι μόνον τοὺς ἡγεμόνας αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ μεταπεμπόμενοι [10] καὶ καλοῦντες, ἐνεχείριζον αὑτούς, οὐδὲ δῆμοι καὶ πόλεις, ἀλλὰ καὶ βασιλεῖς, ὑφ’ ἑτέρων ἀδικούμενοι βασιλέων, κατέφευγον εἰς τὰς ἐκείνων χεῖρας, ὥστ’ ἐν βραχεῖ χρόνῳ, τάχα που καὶ θεοῦ συνεφαπτομένου, [11] πάντ’ αὐτοῖς ὑπήκοα γενέσθαι. καὶ αὐτὸς δὲ μέγιστον ἐφρόνησεν ἐπὶ τῇ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐλευθερώσει. ἀνατιθεὶς γὰρ εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀσπίδας ἀργυρᾶς καὶ τὸν ἑαυτοῦ θυρεόν, ἐπέγραψε (Preger 93)·

Ζηνὸς ἰὼ κραιπναῖσι γεγαθότες ἱπποσύναισι

κοῦροι, ἰὼ Σπάρτας Τυνδαρίδαι βασιλεῖς,

Αἰνεάδας Τίτος ὔμμιν ὑπέρτατον ὤπασε δῶρον,

Ἑλλάνων τεύξας παισὶν ἐλευθερίαν.

[12] ἀνέθηκε δὲ καὶ χρυσοῦν τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι στέφανον, ἐπιγράψας (Preger 92)·

Τόνδε τοι ἀμβροσίοισιν ἐπὶ πλοκάμοισιν ἔθηκε

κεῖσθαι Λατοΐδα χρυσοφαῆ στέφανον,

ὃν πόρεν, Αἰνεαδᾶν ταγὸς μέγας. ἀλλ’ Ἑκάεργε

ἀλκᾶς τῷ θείῳ κῦδος ὄπαζε Τίτῳ.

[13] τῇ γοῦν Κορινθίων πόλει πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας τὸ αὐτὸ δὶς ἤδη συμβέβηκε· καὶ γὰρ Τίτος ἐν Κορίνθῳ τότε καὶ Νέρων αὖθις καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐν Κορίνθῳ παραπλησίως Ἰσθμίων ἀγομένων τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐλευθέρους καὶ αὐτονόμους ἀφῆκαν, ὁ μὲν διὰ κήρυκος ὡς εἴρηται (c. 10, 5), Νέρων δ’ αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἀπὸ βήματος ἐν τῷ πλήθει δημηγορήσας. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὕστερον.

[13] [1] Ὁ δὲ Τίτος τότε καλλίστου καὶ δικαιοτάτου τοῦ πρὸς Νάβιν ἀρξάμενος πολέμου, τὸν Λακεδαιμονίων ἐξωλέστατον καὶ παρανομώτατον τύραννον, ἐν τῷ τέλει διεψεύσατο τὰς τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐλπίδας, ἑλεῖν παρασχὸν οὐκ ἐθελήσας, ἀλλὰ σπεισάμενος καὶ προέμενος τὴν [2] Σπάρτην ἀναξίως δουλεύουσαν, εἴτε δείσας μὴ τοῦ πολέμου μῆκος λαμβάνοντος ἄλλος ἀπὸ Ῥώμης ἐπελθὼν στρατηγὸς ἀνέληται τὴν δόξαν, εἴτε φιλονικίᾳ καὶ ζηλοτυπίᾳ [3] τῶν Φιλοποίμενος τιμῶν, ὃν ἔν τε τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν ἄνδρα δεινότατον τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὄντα, καὶ περὶ ἐκεῖνον τὸν πόλεμον ἔργα θαυμαστὰ τόλμης καὶ δεινότητος ἀποδειξάμενον, ἴσα τῷ Τίτῳ κυδαίνοντες Ἀχαιοὶ καὶ τιμῶντες ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις, ἐλύπουν ἐκεῖνον, οὐκ ἀξιοῦντα Ῥωμαίων ὑπάτῳ προπολεμοῦντι τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἄνθρωπον Ἀρκάδα, μικρῶν καὶ ὁμόρων πολέμων στρατηγόν, ὅμοια [4] θαυμάζεσθαι παρ’ αὐτοῖς. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ὁ Τίτος ὑπὲρ τούτων ἀπελογεῖτο, καταθέσθαι τὸν πόλεμον, ὡς ἑώρα σὺν κακῷ μεγάλῳ τῶν ἄλλων Σπαρτιατῶν ἀπολούμενον τὸν τύραννον.

[5] Τῶν δ’ Ἀχαιῶν αὐτῷ πολλὰ πρὸς τιμὴν ψηφισαμένων, οὐδὲν ἐδόκει πρὸς τὰς εὐεργεσίας ἐξισοῦσθαι πλὴν μιᾶς [6] δωρεᾶς, ἣν ἐκεῖνος ἀντὶ πάντων ἠγάπησεν. ἦν δὲ τοιάδε· Ῥωμαίων οἱ δυστυχήσαντες ἐν τῷ πρὸς Ἀννίβαν πολέμῳ πολλαχοῦ μὲν ὤνιοι γενόμενοι καὶ διασπαρέντες [7] ἐδούλευον· ἐν δὲ τῇ Ἑλλάδι χίλιοι καὶ διακόσιοι τὸ πλῆθος ἦσαν, ἀεὶ μὲν οἰκτροὶ τῆς μεταβολῆς, τότε δὲ καὶ μᾶλλον ὡς εἰκός, ἐντυγχάνοντες οἱ μὲν υἱοῖς, οἱ δ’ ἀδελφοῖς, οἱ δὲ συνήθεσιν, ἐλευθέροις δοῦλοι καὶ νικῶσιν [8] αἰχμάλωτοι. τούτους ὁ μὲν Τίτος οὐκ ἀφείλετο τῶν κεκτημένων, καίπερ ἀνιώμενος ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς, οἱ δ’ Ἀχαιοὶ λυτρωσάμενοι πέντε μνῶν ἕκαστον ἄνδρα καὶ συναγαγόντες εἰς ταὐτὸ πάντας ἤδη περὶ πλοῦν ὄντι τῷ Τίτῳ παρέδωκαν, ὥστ’ αὐτὸν εὐφραινόμενον ἀποπλεῖν, ἀπὸ καλῶν ἔργων καλὰς ἀμοιβὰς καὶ πρεπούσας ἀνδρὶ μεγάλῳ [9] καὶ φιλοπολίτῃ κεκομισμένον. ὃ δὴ δοκεῖ πρὸς τὸν θρίαμβον αὐτῷ πάντων ὑπάρξαι λαμπρότατον. οἱ γὰρ ἄνδρες οὗτοι, καθάπερ ἔθος ἐστὶ τοῖς οἰκέταις ὅταν ἐλευθερωθῶσι, ξύρεσθαί τε τὰς κεφαλὰς καὶ πιλία φορεῖν, ταῦτα δράσαντες αὐτοὶ θριαμβεύοντι τῷ Τίτῳ παρείποντο.

[14] [1] Καλὴν δὲ καὶ τὰ λάφυρα πομπευόμενα παρεῖχεν ὄψιν, Ἑλληνικὰ κράνη καὶ πέλται Μακεδονικαὶ καὶ [2] σάρισαι, τό τε τῶν χρημάτων πλῆθος οὐκ ὀλίγον ἦν, ὡς ἀναγράφουσιν οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀντίαν ἐν τῷ θριάμβῳ κομισθῆναι χρυσίου μὲν συγκεχωνευμένου λίτρας τρισχιλίας ἑπτακοσίας δεκατρεῖς, ἀργύρου δὲ τετρακισμυρίας τρισχιλίας διακοσίας ἑβδομήκοντα, Φιλιππείους δὲ χρυσοῦς μυρίους τετρακισχιλίους πεντακοσίους δεκατέσσαρας· [3] χωρὶς δὲ τούτων τὰ χίλια τάλαντα Φίλιππος ὤφειλεν· ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὕστερον ἐπείσθησαν Ῥωμαῖοι, μάλιστα τοῦ Τίτου συμπράξαντος, ἀφεῖναι τῷ Φιλίππῳ, καὶ σύμμαχον ἐψηφίσαντο καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἀπήλλαξαν αὐτῷ τῆς ὁμηρείας.

[15] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Ἀντίοχος εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα ναυσὶ πολλαῖς καὶ στρατῷ περαιωθεὶς ἀφίστη τὰς πόλεις καὶ διεστασίαζεν, Αἰτωλῶν αὐτῷ συνεπιλαμβανομένων, καὶ πάλαι διακειμένων πρὸς τὸν Ῥωμαίων δῆμον ἐχθρῶς καὶ πολεμικῶς, ὑπόθεσιν τοῦ πολέμου καὶ πρόφασιν διδόντων ἐλευθεροῦν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, οὐδὲν δεομένους (ἐλεύθεροι γὰρ ἦσαν), ἀλλ’ εὐπρεπεστέρας αἰτίας ἀπορίᾳ τῷ [2] καλλίστῳ τῶν ὀνομάτων χρῆσθαι διδασκόντων, [καὶ] σφόδρα δείσαντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι τὴν ἀνάτασιν καὶ δόξαν αὐτοῦ τῆς δυνάμεως, στρατηγὸν μὲν ὕπατον τοῦ πολέμου Μάνιον Ἀκίλιον κατέπεμψαν, πρεσβευτὴν δὲ Τίτον διὰ [3] τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὧν τοὺς μὲν εὐθὺς ὀφθεὶς ἐποίησε βεβαιοτέρους, τοὺς δ’ ἀρχομένους νοσεῖν, ὥσπερ τι σὺν καιρῷ φάρμακον ἐνδιδοὺς τὴν πρὸς αὑτὸν εὔνοιαν, ἔστησε καὶ [4] διεκώλυσεν ἐξαμαρτεῖν. ὀλίγοι δ’ αὐτὸν ἐξέφυγον, ἤδη προκατειλημμένοι καὶ διεφθαρμένοι παντάπασιν ὑπὸ τῶν Αἰτωλῶν, οὓς καίπερ ὀργισθεὶς καὶ παροξυνθεὶς ὅμως [5] μετὰ τὴν μάχην περιεποίησεν. Ἀντίοχος γὰρ ἡττηθεὶς ἐν Θερμοπύλαις καὶ φυγὼν εὐθὺς εἰς Ἀσίαν ἀπέπλευσε, Μάνιος δ’ ὁ ὕπατος τοὺς μὲν αὐτὸς ἐπιὼν τῶν Αἰτωλῶν ἐπολιόρκει, τοὺς δὲ τῷ βασιλεῖ Φιλίππῳ συνεχώρησεν [6] ἐξαιρεῖν. ἀγομένων δὲ καὶ φερομένων ὑπὸ τοῦ Μακεδόνος τοῦτο μὲν Δολόπων καὶ Μαγνήτων, τοῦτο δ’ Ἀθαμάνων καὶ Ἀπεραντῶν, αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ Μανίου τὴν μὲν Ἡράκλειαν διαπεπορθηκότος, τὴν δὲ Ναύπακτον Αἰτωλῶν ἐχόντων πολιορκοῦντος, οἰκτίρων τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὁ Τίτος διέπλευσεν ἐκ Πελοποννήσου πρὸς τὸν ὕπατον.

[7] καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐπετίμησεν, εἰ νενικηκὼς αὐτὸς τὰ ἔπαθλα τοῦ πολέμου Φίλιππον ἐᾷ φέρεσθαι, καὶ τριβόμενος περὶ μιᾷ πόλει κάθηται δι’ ὀργήν, ἔθνη δ’ οὐκ ὀλίγα καὶ [8] βασιλείας Μακεδόνες αἱροῦσιν. ἔπειτα τῶν πολιορκουμένων ὡς εἶδον αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ τείχους ἀνακαλούντων καὶ χεῖρας ὀρεγόντων καὶ δεομένων, τότε μὲν οὐδὲν εἰπών, [9] ἀλλὰ στραφεὶς καὶ δακρύσας ἀπῆλθεν· ὕστερον δὲ διαλεχθεὶς τῷ Μανίῳ καὶ καταπαύσας τὸν θυμὸν αὐτοῦ, διεπράξατο τοῖς Αἰτωλοῖς ἀνοχὰς δοθῆναι καὶ χρόνον, ἐν ᾧ πρεσβεύσαντες εἰς Ῥώμην μετρίου τινὸς τυχεῖν ἀξιώσουσι.

[16] [1] Πλεῖστον δ’ ἀγῶνα καὶ πόνον αὐτῷ παρεῖχον αἱ περὶ Χαλκιδέων δεήσεις, πρὸς τὸν Μάνιον ἐν ὀργῇ γεγονότων διὰ τὸν γάμον, ὃν παρ’ αὐτῶν ἔγημεν Ἀντίοχος ἤδη τοῦ πολέμου συνεστῶτος, οὐ καθ’ ὥραν οὐδὲ κατὰ καιρόν, ἀλλ’ ἐρασθεὶς ἀνὴρ πρεσβύτερος κόρης, ἣ θυγάτηρ μὲν ἦν Κλεοπτολέμου, καλλίστη δὲ λέγεται [2] παρθένων γενέσθαι. τοῦτο τοὺς Χαλκιδεῖς ἐποίησε βασιλίσαι προθυμότατα καὶ τὴν πόλιν αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον [3] ὁρμητήριον παρασχεῖν. ἐκεῖνος μὲν οὖν ὡς τάχιστα μετὰ τὴν μάχην φεύγων προσέμειξε τῇ Χαλκίδι, τὴν δὲ κόρην ἀναλαβὼν καὶ τὰ χρήματα καὶ τοὺς φίλους, εἰς [4] Ἀσίαν ἀπέπλευσε· τὸν δὲ Μάνιον εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τοὺς Χαλκιδεῖς σὺν ὀργῇ πορευόμενον ὁ Τίτος παρακολουθῶν ἐμάλαττε καὶ παρῃτεῖτο, καὶ τέλος ‹ἐξ›έπεισε καὶ κατεπράϋνεν, [5] αὐτοῦ τε καὶ τῶν ἐν τέλει Ῥωμαίων δεόμενος. οὕτω διασωθέντες οἱ Χαλκιδεῖς τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἀναθημάτων τῷ Τίτῳ καθιέρωσαν, ὧν ἐπιγραφὰς ἔστι τοιαύτας ἄχρι νῦν ὁρᾶν· ὁ δῆμος Τίτῳ καὶ Ἡρακλεῖ τὸ γυμνάσιον. ἑτέρωθι δὲ πάλιν· ὁ δῆμος [6] Τίτῳ καὶ Ἀπόλλωνι τὸ Δελφίνιον. ἔτι δὲ καὶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἱερεὺς χειροτονητὸς ἀπεδείκνυτο Τίτου, καὶ θύσαντες αὐτῷ τῶν σπονδῶν γενομένων ᾄδουσι παιᾶνα πεποιημένον, οὗ τἆλλα διὰ μῆκος ἡμεῖς παρέντες, ἀνεγράψαμεν ἃ παυόμενοι τῆς ᾠδῆς λέγουσι (PLG III4`4 673 app. Powell Coll. Alex. 173)·

[7] Πίστιν δὲ Ῥωμαίων σέβομεν

τὰν μεγαλευκτοτάταν ὅρκοις φυλάσσειν·

μέλπετε κοῦραι

Ζῆνα μέγαν Ῥώμαν τε Τίτον θ’ ἅμα Ῥωμαίων τε Πίστιν·

ἰήϊε Παιάν,

ὦ Τίτε σῶτερ.

[17] [1] Ἦσαν δὲ καὶ παρὰ τῶν ‹ἄλλων› Ἑλλήνων τιμαὶ πρέπουσαι, καὶ τὸ τὰς τιμὰς ἀληθινὰς ποιοῦν, εὔνοια θαυμαστὴ [2] δι’ ἐπιείκειαν ἤθους. καὶ γὰρ εἴ τισιν ἐκ πραγμάτων ἢ φιλοτιμίας ἕνεκα, καθάπερ Φιλοποίμενι καὶ πάλιν Διοφάνει στρατηγοῦντι τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, προσέκρουσεν, οὐκ ἦν βαρὺς οὐδ’ εἰς ἔργα διατείνων ὁ θυμός, ἀλλ’ ἐν λόγῳ [3] παρρησίαν τινὰ πολιτικὴν ἔχοντι παυόμενος. πικρὸς μὲν οὖν οὐδενί, πολλοῖς δ’ ὀξὺς ἐδόκει καὶ κοῦφος εἶναι τὴν φύσιν, ἄλλως δὲ συγγενέσθαι πάντων ἥδιστος καὶ εἰπεῖν [4] ἐπίχαρις μετὰ δεινότητος. Ἀχαιοὺς μὲν γὰρ σφετεριζομένους τὴν Ζακυνθίων νῆσον ἀποτρέπων ἔφη κινδυνεύσειν, ἂν ὥσπερ αἱ χελῶναι πορρωτέρω τὴν κεφαλὴν τῆς [5] Πελοποννήσου προτείνωσι· Φιλίππου δ’, ὁπηνίκα περὶ σπονδῶν καὶ εἰρήνης τὸ πρῶτον εἰς λόγους συνῄεσαν, εἰπόντος μετὰ πολλῶν ἥκειν ἐκεῖνον, αὑτὸν δὲ μόνον, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Τίτος αὑτὸν γὰρ ἔφη μόνον ἐποίησας, ἀποκτείνας [6] τοὺς φίλους καὶ συγγενεῖς. ἐπεὶ δὲ Δεινοκράτης ὁ Μεσσήνιος ἐν Ῥώμῃ παρὰ πότον μεθυσθεὶς ὠρχήσατο, λαβὼν ἱμάτιον γυναικεῖον, τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ τὸν Τίτον ἠξίου βοηθεῖν αὐτῷ, διανοουμένῳ τὴν Μεσσήνην ἀφιστάναι τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, ταῦτα μὲν ἔφη σκέψεσθαι, θαυμάζειν δ’ ἐκεῖνον, εἰ τηλικαύταις ἐπικεχειρηκὼς πράξεσιν [7] ὀρχεῖσθαι δύναται παρὰ πότον καὶ ᾄδειν. πρὸς δὲ τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, τῶν παρ’ Ἀντιόχου πρέσβεων πλῆθός τε τῆς βασιλικῆς στρατιᾶς καταλεγόντων, καὶ καταριθμουμένων πολλὰς προσηγορίας, ὁ Τίτος ἔφη, δειπνοῦντος αὐτοῦ παρά τῳ ξένῳ καὶ μεμφομένου τὸ πλῆθος τῶν κρεῶν καὶ θαυμάζοντος πόθεν οὕτω ποικίλης ἀγορᾶς εὐπόρησεν, εἰπεῖν τὸν ξένον, ὡς ὕεια πάντ’ ἐστί, τῇ σκευασίᾳ [8] διαφέροντα καὶ τοῖς ἡδύσμασι· μὴ τοίνυν ἔφη μηδ’ ὑμεῖς ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀχαιοὶ θαυμάζετε τὴν Ἀντιόχου δύναμιν, λογχοφόρους καὶ ξυστοφόρους καὶ πεζεταίρους ἀκούοντες· πάντες γὰρ οὗτοι Σύροι εἰσίν, ὁπλαρίοις διαφέροντες.

[18] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς πράξεις καὶ τὸν Ἀντιοχικὸν πόλεμον ἀπεδείχθη τιμητής, ἥτις ἐστὶν ἀρχὴ μεγίστη καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τῆς πολιτείας ἐπιτελείωσις, [2] καὶ συνῆρχε μὲν αὐτῷ ‹Μάρκελλος› Μαρκέλλου τοῦ πεντάκις ὑπατεύσαντος υἱός, ἐξέβαλον δὲ τῆς βουλῆς τῶν οὐκ ἄγαν ἐπιφανῶν τέσσαρας, προσεδέξαντο δὲ πολίτας ἀπογραφομένους πάντας ὅσοι γονέων ἐλευθέρων ἦσαν, ἀναγκασθέντες ὑπὸ τοῦ δημάρχου Τερεντίου Κουλέωνος, ὃς ἐπηρεάζων τοῖς ἀριστοκρατικοῖς ἔπεισε τὸν δῆμον ταῦτα ψηφίσασθαι.

[3] Τῶν δὲ γνωριμωτάτων κατ’ αὐτὸν ἀνδρῶν καὶ μεγίστων ἐν τῇ πόλει διαφερομένων πρὸς ἀλλήλους, Ἀφρικανοῦ Σκιπίωνος καὶ Μάρκου Κάτωνος, τὸν μὲν προέγραψε τῆς βουλῆς, ὡς ἄριστον ἄνδρα καὶ πρῶτον, Κάτωνι δ’ εἰς ἔχθραν ἦλθε συμφορᾷ τοιαύτῃ χρησάμενος.

[4] ἀδελφὸς ἦν Τίτῳ Λεύκιος Φλαμινῖνος, οὔτε τὰ ἄλλα προσεοικὼς ἐκείνῳ τὴν φύσιν, ἔν τε ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ἀνελεύθερος [5] δεινῶς καὶ ὀλιγωρότατος τοῦ πρέποντος. τούτῳ συνῆν μειρακίσκος ἐρώμενος, ὃν καὶ στρατιᾶς ἄρχων ἐπήγετο, [6] καὶ διέπων ἐπαρχίαν εἶχεν ἀεὶ περὶ αὑτόν. ἐν οὖν πότῳ τινὶ θρυπτόμενος πρὸς τὸν Λεύκιον, οὕτως ἔφη σφόδρα φιλεῖν αὐτόν, ὥστε θέαν μονομάχων ἀπολιπεῖν, οὔπω γεγονὼς ἀνθρώπου φονευομένου θεατής, τὸ πρὸς [7] ἐκεῖνον ἡδὺ τοῦ πρὸς αὑτὸν ἐν πλείονι λόγῳ θέμενος. ὁ δὲ Λεύκιος ἡσθείς, οὐδὲν ἔφη δεινόν· ἰάσομαι γὰρ ἐγώ σου τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν, καὶ κελεύσας ἕνα τῶν καταδίκων ἐκ τοῦ δεσμωτηρίου προαχθῆναι, καὶ τὸν ὑπηρέτην μεταπεμψάμενος, ἐν τῷ συμποσίῳ προσέταξεν ἀποκόψαι τοῦ [8] ἀνθρώπου τὸν τράχηλον. Οὐαλέριος δ’ Ἀντίας (HRR I 269) οὐκ ἐρωμένῳ φησίν, ἀλλ’ ἐρωμένῃ τοῦτο χαρίσασθαι τὸν [9] Λεύκιον. ὁ δὲ Λίβιος ἐν λόγῳ Κάτωνος αὐτοῦ γεγράφθαι φησίν, ὡς Γαλάτην αὐτόμολον ἐλθόντα μετὰ παίδων καὶ γυναικὸς ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας δεξάμενος εἰς τὸ συμπόσιον ὁ Λεύκιος ἀπέκτεινεν ἰδίᾳ χειρί, τῷ ἐρωμένῳ χαριζόμενος.

[10] τοῦτο μὲν οὖν εἰκὸς εἰς δείνωσιν εἰρῆσθαι τῆς κατηγορίας ὑπὸ τοῦ Κάτωνος· ὅτι δ’ οὐκ αὐτόμολος ἦν, ἀλλὰ δεσμώτης ὁ ἀναιρεθεὶς καὶ ἐκ τῶν καταδίκων, ἄλλοι τε πολλοὶ καὶ Κικέρων ὁ ῥήτωρ ἐν τῷ περὶ γήρως (12, 42), αὐτῷ Κάτωνι τὴν διήγησιν ἀναθείς, εἴρηκεν.

[19] [1] Ἐπὶ τούτῳ Κάτων τιμητὴς γενόμενος καὶ καθαίρων τὴν σύγκλητον, ἀπήλασε τῆς βουλῆς τὸν Λεύκιον, ὑπατικοῦ μὲν ἀξιώματος ὄντα, συνατιμοῦσθαι δὲ τοῦ [2] ἀδελφοῦ δοκοῦντος αὐτῷ. διὸ καὶ προελθόντες εἰς τὸν δῆμον ἀμφότεροι ταπεινοὶ καὶ δεδακρυμένοι, μέτρια δεῖσθαι τῶν πολιτῶν ἐδόκουν, ἀξιοῦντες αἰτίαν εἰπεῖν τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ λόγον, ᾧ χρησάμενος οἶκον ἔνδοξον [3] ἀτιμίᾳ τοσαύτῃ περιβέβληκεν. οὐδὲν οὖν ὑποστειλάμενος ὁ Κάτων προῆλθε, καὶ καταστὰς μετὰ τοῦ συνάρχοντος [4] ἠρώτησε τὸν Τίτον εἰ γινώσκει τὸ συμπόσιον. ἀρνουμένου δ’ ἐκείνου, διηγησάμενος εἰς ὁρισμὸν προεκαλεῖτο τὸν [5] Λεύκιον, εἴ τί φησι τῶν εἰρημένων μὴ ἀληθὲς εἶναι. τοῦ δὲ Λευκίου σιωπήσαντος, ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἔγνω δικαίαν γεγονέναι τὴν ἀτιμίαν, καὶ τὸν Κάτωνα προέπεμψε [6] λαμπρῶς ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος· ὁ δὲ Τίτος τῇ συμφορᾷ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ περιπαθῶν, συνέστη μετὰ τῶν πάλαι μισούντων τὸν Κάτωνα, καὶ πάσας μὲν ἃς ἐκεῖνος ἐποιήσατο τῶν δημοσίων ἐκδόσεις καὶ μισθώσεις καὶ ὠνὰς ἠκύρωσε καὶ [7] ἀνέλυσεν, ἐν τῇ βουλῇ κρατήσας, πολλὰς δὲ καὶ μεγάλας δίκας κατ’ αὐτοῦ παρεσκεύασεν, οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως εὖ καὶ πολιτικῶς [καὶ] πρὸς ἄρχοντα νόμιμον καὶ πολίτην ἄριστον ὑπὲρ ἀνδρὸς οἰκείου μέν, ἀναξίου δὲ καὶ τὰ προσήκοντα [8] πεπονθότος, ἀνήκεστον ἔχθραν ἀράμενος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῦ Ῥωμαίων ποτὲ δήμου θέαν ἔχοντος ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ καὶ τῆς βουλῆς ᾧπερ εἴωθε κόσμῳ προκαθημένης, ὀφθεὶς ὁ Λεύκιος ἐπ’ ἐσχάτοις που καθήμενος ἀτίμως καὶ ταπεινῶς, οἶκτον ἔσχε, καὶ τὸ πλῆθος οὐκ ἠνέσχετο τὴν ὄψιν, ἀλλ’ ἐβόων μεταβῆναι κελεύοντες ἕως μετέβη, δεξαμένων αὐτὸν εἰς ἑαυτοὺς τῶν ὑπατικῶν.

[20] [1] Τὸ δ’ οὖν φύσει τοῦ Τίτου φιλότιμον, ἄχρι μὲν ἱκανὴν εἶχεν ὕλην περὶ τοὺς εἰρημένους πολέμους διατρίβοντος, εὐδοκίμει· καὶ γὰρ ἐχιλιάρχησεν αὖθις μετὰ τὴν ὑπατείαν, [2] οὐδενὸς ἐπείγοντος· ἀπαλλαγεὶς δὲ τοῦ ἄρχειν, καὶ πρεσβύτερος ὤν, ἠλέγχετο μᾶλλον ἐν οὐκ ἔχοντι πράξεις ἔτι τῷ λοιπῷ βίῳ σπαργῶντα πρὸς δόξαν καὶ νεάζοντα [3] τῷ πάθει κατέχειν ἑαυτὸν οὐ δυνάμενος· τοιαύτῃ γάρ τινι καὶ τὸ περὶ Ἀννίβαν φορᾷ δοκεῖ πράξας ἐπαχθὴς [4] γενέσθαι τοῖς πολλοῖς. ὁ γὰρ Ἀννίβας οἴκοθεν μὲν ἐκ Καρχηδόνος ὑπεκδρὰς Ἀντιόχῳ συνῆν, ἐκείνου δὲ μετὰ τὴν ἐν Φρυγίᾳ μάχην εἰρήνης ἀγαπητῶς τυχόντος, αὖθις φυγὼν καὶ πλανηθεὶς πολλά, τέλος ἐν τῇ Βιθυνίᾳ κατέστη Προυσίαν θεραπεύων, οὐδενὸς Ῥωμαίων ἀγνοοῦντος, ἀλλὰ παρορώντων ἁπάντων δι’ ἀσθένειαν καὶ [5] γῆρας, ὥσπερ ἐρριμμένον ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης. Τίτος δὲ πρεσβευτὴς δι’ ἑτέρας δή τινας πράξεις ὑπὸ τῆς βουλῆς πρὸς τὸν Προυσίαν ἀφικόμενος, καὶ τὸν Ἀννίβαν ἰδὼν αὐτόθι διαιτώμενον, ἠγανάκτησεν εἰ ζῇ, καὶ πολλὰ τοῦ Προυσίου δεομένου καὶ λιπαροῦντος ὑπὲρ ἀνδρὸς ἱκέτου καὶ [6] συνήθους, οὐ παρῆκε. χρησμοῦ δέ τινος ὡς ἔοικε παλαιοῦ περὶ τῆς Ἀννίβου τελευτῆς οὕτως ἔχοντος·

Λίβυσσα κρύψει βῶλος Ἀννίβου δέμας,

ὁ μὲν ἄρα Λιβύην ὑπενόει καὶ τὰς ἐν Καρχηδόνι ταφάς, ὡς ἐκεῖ καταβιωσόμενος· ἐν δὲ Βιθυνίᾳ τόπος ἐστὶ θινώδης ἐπὶ θαλάσσης καὶ πρὸς αὐτῷ κώμη τις οὐ μεγάλη, [7] Λίβυσσα καλεῖται. περὶ ταύτην ἔτυχε διατρίβων Ἀννίβας, ἀεὶ δ’ ἀπιστῶν τῇ τοῦ Προυσίου μαλακίᾳ καὶ φοβούμενος τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, τὴν οἰκίαν ἔτι πρότερον ἐξόδοις ἑπτὰ καταγείοις συντετρημένην ἐκ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ διαίτης εἶχεν, ἄλλου κατ’ ἄλλο τῶν ὑπονόμων, πόρρω δὲ [8] πάντων ἀδήλως ἐκφερόντων. ὡς οὖν ἤκουσε τότε τὸ πρόσταγμα τοῦ Τίτου, φεύγειν μὲν ὥρμησε διὰ τῶν ὑπονόμων, ἐντυχὼν δὲ φυλακαῖς βασιλικαῖς, ἔγνω δι’ αὑτοῦ [9] τελευτᾶν. ἔνιοι μὲν οὖν λέγουσιν, ὡς ἱμάτιον τῷ τραχήλῳ περιβαλὼν καὶ κελεύσας οἰκέτην ὄπισθεν ἐρείσαντα κατὰ τοῦ ἰσχίου τὸ γόνυ καὶ σφοδρῶς ἀνακλάσαντα συντεῖναι καὶ περιστρέψαι μέχρι ἂν ἐκθλίψαι τὸ πνεῦμα, διαφθείρειεν αὑτόν· ἔνιοι δὲ μιμησάμενον Θεμιστοκλέα καὶ Μίδαν [10] αἷμα ταύρειον πιεῖν· Λίβιος δέ φησι (39, 51, 811) φάρμακον ἔχοντα κεράσαι, καὶ τὴν κύλικα δεξάμενον εἰπεῖν· ἀναπαύσωμεν ἤδη ποτὲ τὴν πολλὴν φροντίδα Ῥωμαίων, οἳ μακρὸν ἡγήσαντο καὶ βαρὺ μισουμένου γέροντος ἀναμεῖναι [11] θάνατον. οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ Τίτος ἀξιοζήλωτον ἀποίσεται νίκην οὐδὲ τῶν προγόνων ἀξίαν, οἳ Πύρρῳ πολεμοῦντι καὶ κρατοῦντι τὴν μέλλουσαν ὑποπέμψαντες κατεμήνυσαν φαρμακείαν.

[21] [1] Οὕτω μὲν τὸν Ἀννίβαν ἀποθανεῖν λέγουσιν.

Ἀπαγγελθέντων δὲ τούτων πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον, οὐκ ὀλίγοις ἐπαχθὴς ἔδοξεν ὁ Τίτος καὶ περιττὸς ἄγαν καὶ ὠμός, ὥσπερ ὄρνιν ὑπὸ γήρως ἀπτῆνα καὶ κόλουρον ἀφειμένον ζῆν χειροήθη τὸν Ἀννίβαν ἀποκτείνας, οὐδενὸς ἐπείγοντος, ἀλλὰ διὰ δόξαν, ὡς ἐπώνυμος τοῦ θανάτου γένοιτο.

[2] καὶ τὴν Ἀφρικανοῦ Σκιπίωνος ἀντιθέντες πρᾳότητα καὶ μεγαλοψυχίαν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐθαύμαζον, ὡς ἀήττητον ὄντα καὶ φοβερὸν ἐν Λιβύῃ καταπολεμήσας Ἀννίβαν, οὔτ’ ἐξήλασεν οὔτ’ ἐξῃτήσατο παρὰ τῶν πολιτῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸ τῆς μάχης εἰς λόγους ἐλθὼν ἐδεξιώσατο, καὶ μετὰ τὴν μάχην σπενδόμενος οὐδὲν ἐπετόλμησεν οὐδ’ [3] ἐπενέβη τῇ τύχῃ τοῦ ἀνδρός. λέγεται δ’ αὖθις ἐν Ἐφέσῳ συμβαλεῖν αὐτούς, καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐν τῷ συμπεριπατεῖν τοῦ Ἀννίβου τὴν προήκουσαν ἐν ἀξιώματι τάξιν [εἶναι] προλαβόντος, ἀνέχεσθαι καὶ περιπατεῖν ἀφελῶς τὸν Ἀφρικανόν· [4] ἔπειτα λόγου περὶ στρατηγῶν ἐμπεσόντος, καὶ τοῦ Ἀννίβου κράτιστον ἀποφηναμένου γεγονέναι τῶν στρατηγῶν Ἀλέξανδρον, εἶτα Πύρρον, τρίτον δ’ αὑτόν, ἡσυχῇ μειδιάσαντα τὸν Ἀφρικανὸν εἰπεῖν· τί δ’ εἰ μή σ’ ἐγὼ [5] νενικήκειν; καὶ τὸν Ἀννίβαν οὐκ ἂν ὦ Σκιπίων φάναι τρίτον ἐμαυτόν, ἀλλὰ πρῶτον ἐποιούμην τῶν στρατηγῶν.

[6] ταῦτα δὴ τοῦ Σκιπίωνος οἱ πολλοὶ θαυμάζοντες ἐκάκιζον τὸν Τίτον, ὡς ἀλλοτρίῳ νεκρῷ προσενεγκόντα [7] τὰς χεῖρας. ἔνιοι δ’ ἦσαν οἱ τὸ πεπραγμένον ἐπαινοῦντες, καὶ τὸν Ἀννίβαν ἕως ἔζη πῦρ ἡγούμενοι δεόμενον [8] τοῦ ῥιπίζοντος· μηδὲ γὰρ ἀκμάζοντος αὐτοῦ τὸ σῶμα Ῥωμαίοις καὶ τὴν χεῖρα φοβεράν, ἀλλὰ τὴν δεινότητα καὶ τὴν ἐμπειρίαν γεγονέναι μετὰ τῆς ἐμφύτου πικρίας [9] καὶ δυσμενείας· ὧν οὐδὲν ἀφαιρεῖν τὸ γῆρας, ἀλλ’ ὑπομένειν τὴν φύσιν ἐν τῷ ἤθει· τὴν δὲ τύχην οὐ διαμένειν ὁμοίαν, ἀλλὰ μεταπίπτουσαν ἐκκαλεῖσθαι ταῖς ἐλπίσι [10] πρὸς τὰς ἐπιθέσεις τοὺς ἀεὶ τῷ μισεῖν πολεμοῦντας. καὶ τὰ ὕστερά πως ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐμαρτύρησε τῷ Τίτῳ, τοῦτο μὲν Ἀριστόνικος ὁ τοῦ κιθαρῳδοῦ, διὰ τὴν Εὐμενοῦς δόξαν ἐμπλήσας ἅπασαν ἀποστάσεων καὶ πολέμων τὴν Ἀσίαν, τοῦτο δὲ Μιθριδάτης, μετὰ Σύλλαν καὶ Φιμβρίαν καὶ τοσούτων ὄλεθρον στρατευμάτων καὶ στρατηγῶν αὖθις ἐπὶ Λεύκολλον ἐκ γῆς ὁμοῦ καὶ θαλάττης ἀναστὰς [11] τηλικοῦτος. οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ Γαΐου Μαρίου ταπεινότερος Ἀννίβας ἔκειτο. τῷ μὲν γὰρ βασιλεὺς φίλος ὑπῆρχε, καὶ βίος ἦν συνήθης καὶ διατριβαὶ περὶ ναῦς καὶ ἵππους καὶ [12] στρατιωτῶν ἐπιμέλειαν· τὰς δὲ Μαρίου τύχας Ῥωμαῖοι γελῶντες, ἀλωμένου καὶ πτωχεύοντος ἐν Λιβύῃ, μετὰ μικρὸν ἐν Ῥώμῃ σφαττόμενοι καὶ μαστιγούμενοι προσεκύνουν.

[13] οὕτως οὐδὲν οὔτε μικρὸν οὔτε μέγα τῶν παρόντων πρὸς τὸ μέλλον ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ μία τοῦ μεταβάλλειν τελευτὴ [14] καὶ τοῦ εἶναι. διὸ καί φασιν ἔνιοι τὸν Τίτον οὐκ ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ ταῦτα πρᾶξαι, πεμφθῆναι δὲ πρεσβευτὴν μετὰ Λευκίου Σκιπίωνος, οὐδὲν ἄλλο τῆς πρεσβείας ἐχούσης ἔργον ἢ τὸν Ἀννίβου θάνατον.

[15] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐδεμίαν ἔτι τούτων κατόπιν οὔτε πολιτικὴν τοῦ Τίτου πρᾶξιν οὔτε πολεμικὴν ἱστορήκαμεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τελευτῆς ἔτυχεν εἰρηνικῆς, ὥρα τὴν σύγκρισιν ἐπισκοπεῖν.

Comparison Philopoemenis et Titi Flaminini

[1] [1] Μεγέθει μὲν οὖν τῶν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας εὐεργεσιῶν οὔτε Φιλοποίμενα Τίτῳ παραβάλλειν οὔτε πάνυ πολλοὺς τῶν Φιλοποίμενος ἀμεινόνων ἀνδρῶν ἄξιόν ἐστι· [2] τοῖς μὲν γὰρ Ἕλλησι πρὸς Ἕλληνας οἱ πόλεμοι, τῷ δ’ οὐχ Ἕλληνι καὶ ὑπὲρ Ἑλλήνων· καὶ ὅτε Φιλοποίμην ἀμηχανῶν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πολίταις ἀμύνειν πολεμουμένοις εἰς Κρήτην ἀπῆρε, τότε νικήσας Τίτος ἐν μέσῃ τῇ Ἑλλάδι Φίλιππον, ἠλευθέρου καὶ τὰ ἔθνη καὶ ‹τὰς› πόλεις [3] ἁπάσας. εἰ δέ τις ἐξετάζοι τὰς μάχας ἑκατέρου, πλείους Ἕλληνας Φιλοποίμην Ἀχαιῶν στρατηγῶν ἢ Μακεδόνας [4] Τίτος Ἕλλησι βοηθῶν ἀνεῖλε. τὰ τοίνυν ἁμαρτήματα τοῦ μὲν φιλοτιμίας, τοῦ δὲ φιλονικίας γέγονε, καὶ πρὸς [5] ὀργὴν ὁ μὲν εὐκίνητος ἦν, ὁ δὲ καὶ δυσπαραίτητος. Τίτος μὲν γὰρ καὶ Φιλίππῳ τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς βασιλείας ἐφύλαξε, καὶ πρὸς Αἰτωλοὺς εὐγνωμόνησε, Φιλοποίμην δὲ τῆς πατρίδος [6] δι’ ὀργὴν ἀφείλετο τὴν περιοικίδα συντέλειαν. ἔτι δ’ ὁ μὲν τοῖς εὖ παθοῦσιν ἀεὶ βέβαιος, ὁ δὲ θυμῷ λῦσαι χάριν ἕτοιμος· Λακεδαιμονίων μὲν γὰρ εὐεργέτης πρότερον ὤν, ὕστερον καὶ τὰ τείχη κατέσκαψε, καὶ τὴν χώραν περιέκοψε, καὶ τέλος αὐτὴν μετέβαλε καὶ διέφθειρε [7] τὴν πολιτείαν. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ τὸν βίον ὀργῇ προέσθαι καὶ φιλονικίᾳ, μὴ κατὰ καιρὸν ἀλλ’ ὀξύτερον τοῦ δέοντος εἰς Μεσσήνην ἐπειχθείς, οὐχ ὥσπερ Τίτος πάντα λογισμῷ καὶ πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν στρατηγήσας.

[2] [1] Ἀλλὰ πλήθει γε πολέμων καὶ τροπαίων ἡ Φιλοποίμενος ἐμπειρία βεβαιοτέρα. τῷ μὲν γὰρ τὰ πρὸς Φίλιππον ἐκρίθη δυοῖν ἀγώνοιν, ὁ δὲ μυρίας μάχας κατορθώσας, οὐδεμίαν ἀμφισβήτησιν τῇ τύχῃ πρὸς τὴν ἐπιστήμην [2] ἀπολέλοιπεν. ἔτι δ’ ὁ μὲν τῇ Ῥωμαίων ἀκμὴν ἐχούσῃ δυνάμει χρησάμενος, ὁ δὲ ‹τῇ› τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἤδη φθινούσης ‹καὶ› παρακμασάσ‹ης›, δόξαν ἔσχεν, ὥστε τοῦ μὲν ἴδιον, τοῦ δὲ κοινὸν ἔργον εἶναι τὸ κατορθούμενον· ὁ μὲν γὰρ [3] ἦρχεν ἀγαθῶν, ὁ δ’ ἄρχων ἀγαθοὺς ἐποίει. καὶ μὴν τό γε πρὸς Ἕλληνας τούτῳ γενέσθαι τοὺς ἀγῶνας οὐκ εὐτυχῆ μέν, ἰσχυρὰν δὲ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀπόδειξιν παρεῖχεν· οἷς γὰρ [4] ὅμοια τἆλλα, τῷ προὔχειν ἀρετῇ κρατοῦσι. καὶ γὰρ δὴ πολεμικωτάτοις Ἑλλήνων Κρησὶ καὶ Λακεδαιμονίοις πολεμήσας, τῶν μὲν πανουργοτάτων δόλῳ, τῶν δ’ ἀλκιμωτάτων [5] τόλμῃ περιεγένετο. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις Τίτος μὲν ἐξ ὑποκειμένων ἐνίκα, χρώμενος ὁπλισμοῖς καὶ τάξεσιν αἷς παρέλαβε, Φιλοποίμην δ’ αὐτὸς ἐπεισενεγκὼν καὶ μεταβαλὼν τὸν περὶ ταῦτα κόσμον, ὥστε τὸ νικητικώτατον ὑφ’ οὗ μὲν οὐκ ὂν εὑρῆσθαι, τῷ δ’ ὑπάρχον βοηθεῖν.

[6] κατὰ χεῖρα τοίνυν Φιλοποίμενος μὲν ἔργα πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα, θατέρου δ’ οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Αἰτωλῶν τις αὐτὸν Ἀρχέδημος ἐπέσκωπτεν, ὡς ὅτ’ αὐτὸς ἐσπασμένος τὴν μάχαιραν ἔθει δρόμῳ πρὸς τοὺς μαχομένους καὶ [τοὺς] συνεστῶτας τῶν Μακεδόνων, τοῦ Τίτου τὰς χεῖρας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν ὑπτίας ἀνατείναντος ἑστῶτος καὶ προσευχομένου.

[3] [1] Καὶ μὴν Τίτῳ μὲν ἄρχοντι συνέβη καὶ πρεσβεύοντι πάντα πρᾶξαι τὰ καλά, Φιλοποίμην δ’ οὐ χείρονα παρέσχεν οὐδ’ ἀπρακτότερον ἑαυτὸν ἰδιώτην ἢ στρατηγὸν [2] τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς. ἰδιώτης μὲν γὰρ ὢν Νάβιν ἐξέβαλεν ἐκ Μεσσήνης καὶ Μεσσηνίους ἠλευθέρωσεν, ἰδιώτης δὲ Διοφάνην τὸν στρατηγὸν καὶ Τίτον ἐπερχομένους ἀπέκλεισε [3] τῆς Σπάρτης καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους διέσωσεν. οὕτως ἡγεμονικὴν φύσιν ἔχων, οὐ κατὰ τοὺς νόμους ‹μόνον›, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν νόμων ἄρχειν ἠπίστατο πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον, οὐ δεόμενος παρὰ τῶν ἀρχομένων λαβεῖν τὸ ἄρχειν, ἀλλὰ χρώμενος αὐτοῖς ὅπου καιρὸς εἴη, τὸν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν φρονοῦντα μᾶλλον ἢ τὸν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ᾑρημένον ἡγουμένοις [4] στρατηγόν. γενναῖα μὲν οὖν Τίτου τὰ πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐπιεικῆ καὶ φιλάνθρωπα, γενναιότερα δὲ Φιλοποίμενος τὰ πρὸς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους σκληρὰ καὶ φιλελεύθερα· ῥᾷον γὰρ χαρίζεσθαι τοῖς δεομένοις ἢ λυπεῖν ἀντιτείνοντα τοὺς δυνατωτέρους.

[5] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὕτως ἐξεταζομένων δυσθεώρητος ἡ διαφορά, σκόπει μὴ τῷ μὲν Ἕλληνι τὸν ἐμπειρίας πολεμικῆς καὶ στρατηγίας στέφανον, τῷ δὲ Ῥωμαίῳ τὸν δικαιοσύνης καὶ χρηστότητος ἀποδιδόντες, οὐ φαύλως διαιτᾶν δόξομεν.

Pyrrus

[1] [1] Θεσπρωτῶν καὶ Μολοσσῶν μετὰ τὸν κατακλυσμὸν ἱστοροῦσι Φαέθοντα βασιλεῦσαι πρῶτον, ἕνα τῶν μετὰ Πελασγοῦ παραγενομένων εἰς τὴν Ἤπειρον· ἔνιοι δὲ Δευκαλίωνα καὶ Πύρραν εἱσαμένους τὸ περὶ Δωδώνην [2] ἱερὸν αὐτόθι κατοικεῖν ἐν Μολοσσοῖς. χρόνῳ δ’ ὕστερον Νεοπτόλεμος ὁ Ἀχιλλέως λαὸν ἀγαγὼν αὐτός τε τὴν χώραν κατέσχε, καὶ διαδοχὴν βασιλέων ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ κατέλιπε, Πυρρίδας ἐπικαλουμένους· καὶ γὰρ αὐτῷ Πύρρος ἦν παιδικὸν ἐπωνύμιον, καὶ τῶν γνησίων παίδων ἐκ Λανάσσης τῆς Κλεοδαίου τοῦ Ὕλλου γενομένων ἕνα Πύρρον [3] ὠνόμασεν. ἐκ τούτου δὲ καὶ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἐν Ἠπείρῳ τιμὰς ἰσοθέους ἔσχεν, Ἄσπετος ἐπιχωρίῳ φωνῇ προσαγορευόμενος.

[4] μετὰ δὲ τοὺς πρώτους τῶν διὰ μέσου βασιλέων ἐκβαρβαρωθέντων καὶ γενομένων τῇ τε δυνάμει καὶ τοῖς βίοις ἀμαυροτέρων, Θαρρύπαν πρῶτον ἱστοροῦσιν Ἑλληνικοῖς ἔθεσι καὶ γράμμασι καὶ νόμοις φιλανθρώποις [5] διακοσμήσαντα τὰς πόλεις ὀνομαστὸν γενέσθαι. Θαρρύπου δ’ Ἀλκέτας υἱὸς ἦν, Ἀλκέτα δ’ Ἀρύββας, Ἀρύββα δὲ [6] καὶ Τρῳάδος Αἰακίδης. οὗτος ἔγημε τὴν Μένωνος τοῦ Θεσσαλοῦ θυγατέρα Φθίαν, ἀνδρὸς εὐδοκίμου περὶ τὸν Λαμιακὸν πόλεμον γενομένου καὶ μέγιστον ἀξίωμα τῶν [7] συμμάχων μετὰ Λεωσθένην λαβόντος. ἐκ δὲ τῆς Φθίας τῷ Αἰακίδῃ γίνονται θυγατέρες Δηιδάμεια καὶ Τρῳάς, υἱὸς δὲ Πύρρος.

[2] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ στασιάσαντες οἱ Μολοσσοὶ καὶ τὸν Αἰακίδην ἐκβαλόντες ἐπηγάγοντο τοὺς Νεοπτολέμου παῖδας, οἱ μὲν φίλοι τοῦ Αἰακίδου διεφθάρησαν καταληφθέντες, τὸν δὲ Πύρρον ἔτι νήπιον ὄντα καὶ ζητούμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ἐκκλέψαντες οἱ περὶ Ἀνδροκλείδην καὶ Ἄγγελον ἔφευγον, οἰκέτας ὀλίγους καὶ γύναια τιθηνούμενα τὸ [2] παιδίον ἀναγκαίως ἐφελκόμενοι. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τῆς φυγῆς γινομένης αὐτοῖς δυσέργου καὶ βραδείας, καταλαμβανόμενοι τὸ μὲν παιδίον ἐγχειρίζουσιν Ἀνδροκλείωνι καὶ Ἱππίᾳ καὶ Νεάνδρῳ, νεανίσκοις οὖσι πιστοῖς καὶ ῥωμαλέοις, ἀνὰ κράτος φεύγειν καὶ Μεγάρων ἔχεσθαι χωρίου Μακεδονικοῦ προστάξαντες, αὐτοὶ δὲ τὰ μὲν δεόμενοι, τὰ δ’ ἀπομαχόμενοι τοῖς διώκουσιν ἐμποδὼν ἦσαν ἄχρι δείλης ὀψίας. ἀποτραπομένων δὲ μόλις ἐκείνων, μετέθεον [3] τοὺς τὸν Πύρρον κομίζοντας. ἤδη δὲ τοῦ ἡλίου καταδεδυκότος ἐγγὺς γενόμενοι τῆς ἐλπίδος ἐξαίφνης ἀπεκόπησαν, ἐντυχόντες τῷ παρὰ τὴν πόλιν παραρρέοντι ποταμῷ, χαλεπῷ μὲν ὀφθῆναι καὶ ἀγρίῳ, πειρωμένοις [4] δὲ διαβαίνειν παντάπασιν ἀπεράτῳ. πολύ τε γὰρ ἐξέπιπτε ῥεῦμα καὶ θολερὸν ὄμβρων ἐπιγενομένων, καὶ τὸ [5] σκότος ἐποίει πάντα φοβερώτερα. καθ’ αὑτοὺς μὲν οὖν ἀπέγνωσαν ἐπιχειρεῖν, παιδίον φερόμενοι καὶ γύναια τὰ τρέφοντα τὸ παιδίον, αἰσθόμενοι δὲ τῶν ἐπιχωρίων τινὰς ἐν τῷ πέραν ἑστῶτας, ἐδέοντο συλλαβέσθαι πρὸς τὴν διάβασιν, καὶ τὸν Πύρρον ἀνεδείκνυσαν βοῶντες καὶ [6] ἱκετεύοντες. οἱ δ’ οὐ κατήκουον διὰ τραχύτητα καὶ πάταγον τοῦ ῥεύματος, ἀλλ’ ἦν διατριβὴ τῶν μὲν βοώντων, τῶν δὲ μὴ συνιέντων, ἄχρι τις ἐννοήσας καὶ περιελὼν δρυὸς φλοιὸν ἐνέγραψε πόρπῃ γράμματα φράζοντα τήν τε χρείαν καὶ τὴν τύχην τοῦ παιδός, εἶτα λίθῳ τὸν φλοιὸν περιελίξας καὶ χρησάμενος οἷον ἕρματι τῆς βολῆς ἀφῆκεν εἰς τὸ πέραν· ἔνιοι δέ φασι σαυνίῳ περιπήξαντας ἀκοντίσαι [7] τὸν φλοιόν. ὡς δ’ οὖν ἀνέγνωσαν οἱ πέραν τὰ γράμματα καὶ συνεῖδον τὴν ὀξύτητα τοῦ καιροῦ, κόπτοντες [8] ξύλα καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα συνδέοντες ἐπεραιοῦντο. καὶ κατὰ τύχην ὁ πρῶτος αὐτῶν περαιωθεὶς Ἀχιλλεὺς τοὔνομα τὸν Πύρρον ἐδέξατο· τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ὡς ἔτυχον ἄλλοι διεκόμιζον.

[3] [1] Οὕτω δὲ σωθέντες καὶ φθάσαντες τὴν δίωξιν, εἰς Ἰλλυριοὺς παρεγένοντο πρὸς Γλαυκίαν τὸν βασιλέα· καὶ καθεζόμενον εὑρόντες οἴκοι μετὰ τῆς γυναικός, ἐν μέσῳ [2] τὸ παιδίον ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς κατέθεσαν. ὁ δ’ †ἦν ἐπὶ γνώμης, Κάσσανδρον δεδοικὼς ἐχθρὸν ὄντα τοῦ Αἰακίδου, καὶ [3] σιωπὴν εἶχε πολὺν χρόνον βουλευόμενος. ἐν τούτῳ δ’ ὁ Πύρρος ἀπ’ αὐτομάτου προσερπύσας καὶ λαβόμενος τοῦ ἱματίου ταῖς χερσὶ καὶ προσεξαναστὰς πρὸς τὰ γόνατα τοῦ Γλαυκίου, γέλωτα πρῶτον, εἶτ’ οἶκτον παρέσχεν, [4] ὥσπερ τις ἱκέτης δεόμενος καὶ δακρύων. ἔνιοι δέ φασιν οὐ τῷ Γλαυκίᾳ προσπεσεῖν αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ βωμοῦ θεῶν προσαψάμενον ἑστάναι πρὸς αὐτὸν περιβαλόντα τὰς χεῖρας, [5] καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα τῷ Γλαυκίᾳ θεῖον φανῆναι. διὸ καὶ παραυτίκα τὸν Πύρρον ἐνεχείρισε τῇ γυναικί, κελεύσας ἅμα τοῖς τέκνοις τρέφεσθαι, καὶ μικρὸν ὕστερον ἐξαιτουμένων τῶν πολεμίων, Κασσάνδρου δὲ καὶ διακόσια τάλαντα διδόντος, οὐκ ἐξέδωκεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ γενόμενον δυοκαίδεκα ἐτῶν καταγαγὼν εἰς Ἤπειρον μετὰ δυνάμεως βασιλέα κατέστησεν.

[6] Ἦν δ’ ὁ Πύρρος τῇ μὲν ἰδέᾳ τοῦ προσώπου φοβερώτερον ἔχων ἢ σεμνότερον τὸ βασιλικόν, πολλοὺς δ’ ὀδόντας οὐκ εἶχεν, ἀλλ’ ἓν ὀστέον συνεχὲς ἦν ἄνωθεν, οἷον λεπταῖς ἀμυχαῖς τὰς διαφυὰς ὑπογεγραμμένον τῶν ὀδόντων.

[7] τοῖς δὲ σπληνιῶσιν ἐδόκει βοηθεῖν ἀλεκτρυόνα θύων λευκόν, ὑπτίων τε κατακειμένων τῷ δεξιῷ ποδὶ πιέζων [8] ἀτρέμα τὸ σπλάγχνον. οὐδεὶς δ’ ἦν πένης οὐδ’ ἄδοξος οὕτως, ὥστε μὴ τυχεῖν τῆς ἰατρείας δεηθείς. ἐλάμβανε δὲ καὶ τὸν ἀλεκτρυόνα θύσας, καὶ τὸ γέρας τοῦθ’ ἥδιστον ἦν [9] αὐτῷ. λέγεται δὲ τοῦ ποδὸς ἐκείνου τὸν μείζονα δάκτυλον ἔχειν δύναμιν θείαν, ὥστε μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦ λοιποῦ σώματος κατακαέντος ἀπαθῆ καὶ ἄθικτον ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς εὑρεθῆναι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον.

[4] [1] Γενομένῳ δὲ περὶ ἑπτακαίδεκα ἔτη καὶ δοκοῦντι τὴν ἀρχὴν ἔχειν βεβαίως ἀποδημία τις συνέτυχε, τῶν Γλαυκίου παίδων ἑνὸς οἷς συνετέθραπτο γυναῖκα λαμβάνοντος.

[2] πάλιν οὖν οἱ Μολοττοὶ συστάντες ἐξέβαλον τοὺς φίλους αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ χρήματα διήρπασαν, καὶ Νεοπτολέμῳ [3] παρέδωκαν ἑαυτούς. ὁ δὲ Πύρρος οὕτω τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀποβαλὼν καὶ γενόμενος πάντων ἔρημος, Δημητρίῳ τῷ Ἀντιγόνου προσέμειξεν ἑαυτόν, ἔχοντι τὴν ἀδελφὴν αὐτοῦ Δηιδάμειαν, ἣν ἔτι μὲν οὖσαν κόρην ὠνόμαζον Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Ῥωξάνης γυναῖκα, τῶν δὲ κατ’ ἐκείνους δυστυχηθέντων, ὥραν ἔχουσαν αὐτὴν ἔγημεν ὁ Δημήτριος.

[4] τῆς δὲ μεγάλης μάχης, ἣν ἐν Ἰψῷ πάντες οἱ βασιλεῖς ἠγωνίσαντο, παρὼν ὁ Πύρρος τοῖς περὶ Δημήτριον συμμετεῖχε μειράκιον ὢν ἔτι, καὶ τοὺς καθ’ ἑαυτὸν [5] ἐτρέψατο καὶ διεφάνη λαμπρὸς ἐν τοῖς μαχομένοις. πταίσαντα δὲ Δημήτριον οὐκ ἐγκατέλιπεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι πόλεις πιστευθεὶς διεφύλαξε, καὶ συμβάσεων αὐτῷ γενομένων πρὸς Πτολεμαῖον, ἔπλευσεν εἰς Αἴγυπτον [6] ὁμηρεύσων. καὶ Πτολεμαίῳ μὲν ἔν τε θήραις καὶ γυμνασίοις ἐπίδειξιν ἀλκῆς παὶ καρτερίας παρεῖχε, τὴν δὲ Βερενίκην ὁρῶν μέγιστον δυναμένην καὶ πρωτεύουσαν ἀρετῇ καὶ φρονήσει τῶν Πτολεμαίου γυναικῶν ἐθεράπευε [7] μάλιστα· καὶ δεινὸς ὢν ὑπελθεῖν ἐπ’ ὠφελείᾳ τοὺς κρείττονας, ὥσπερ ὑπερόπτης τῶν ταπεινοτέρων, κόσμιος δὲ καὶ σώφρων περὶ δίαιταν, ἐκ πολλῶν νέων ἡγεμονικῶν προεκρίθη λαβεῖν Ἀντιγόνην γυναῖκα τῶν Βερενίκης θυγατέρων, ἣν ἔσχεν ἐκ Φιλίππου πρὶν ἢ Πτολεμαίῳ συνοικεῖν.

[5] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὸν γάμον τοῦτον ἔτι μᾶλλον εὐδοκιμῶν, καὶ γυναικὸς ἀγαθῆς τῆς Ἀντιγόνης περὶ αὐτὸν οὔσης, διεπράξατο χρήματα λαβὼν καὶ δύναμιν εἰς Ἤπειρον ἐπὶ [2] τὴν βασιλείαν ἀποσταλῆναι. καὶ παρῆν οὐκ ἄκουσι ‹τοῖς› πολλοῖς διὰ τὴν ἀπέχθειαν τοῦ Νεοπτολέμου, χαλεπῶς [3] καὶ βιαίως ἄρχοντος. πλὴν ἀλλὰ δείσας, μὴ πρός τινα τῶν ἄλλων βασιλέων ὁ Νεοπτόλεμος τράπηται, διαλύσεις ἔθετο καὶ φιλίαν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐπὶ κοινωνίᾳ τῆς ἀρχῆς.

[4] Χρόνου δὲ προϊόντος ἦσαν οἱ παροξύνοντες αὐτοὺς κρύφα καὶ κατ’ ἀλλήλων ἐμποιοῦντες ὑποψίας. ἡ μέντοι μάλιστα κινήσασα τὸν Πύρρον αἰτία λέγεται τοιαύτην [5] ἀρχὴν λαβεῖν. εἰώθεισαν οἱ βασιλεῖς ἐν Πασσαρῶνι, χωρίῳ τῆς Μολοττίδος, Ἀρείῳ Διὶ θύσαντες ὁρκωμοτεῖν τοῖς Ἠπειρώταις καὶ ὁρκίζειν, αὐτοὶ μὲν ἄρξειν κατὰ τοὺς νόμους, ἐκείνους δὲ τὴν βασιλείαν διαφυλάξειν κατὰ [6] τοὺς νόμους. ταῦτ’ οὖν ἐδρᾶτο ἀμφοτέρων τῶν βασιλέων παρόντων, καὶ συνῆσαν ἀλλήλοις μετὰ τῶν φίλων, δῶρα [7] πολλὰ τὰ μὲν διδόντες, τὰ δὲ λαμβάνοντες. ἐνταῦθα δὴ Γέλων, ἀνὴρ πιστὸς Νεοπτολέμῳ, δεξιωσάμενος φιλοφρόνως τὸν Πύρρον ἐδωρήσατο βοῶν ἀροτήρων δυσὶ ζεύγεσι. ταῦτα Μυρτίλος ὁ ἐπὶ τοῦ οἴνου παρὼν ᾔτει τὸν Πύρρον· ἐκείνου δὲ μὴ διδόντος, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρῳ, χαλεπῶς [8] ἐνεγκὼν ὁ Μυρτίλος οὐκ ἔλαθε τὸν Γέλωνα. καλέσας οὖν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον, ὡς δέ φασιν ἔνιοι καὶ χρησάμενος παρ’ οἶνον ὥραν ἔχοντι, λόγους προσήνεγκε παρακαλῶν ἑλέσθαι τὰ τοῦ Νεοπτολέμου καὶ φαρμάκοις διαφθεῖραι τὸν [9] Πύρρον. ὁ δὲ Μυρτίλος ἐδέξατο μὲν τὴν πεῖραν ὡς ἐπαινῶν καὶ συμπεπεισμένος, ἐμήνυσε δὲ τῷ Πύρρῳ· καὶ κελεύσαντος ἐκείνου τὸν ἀρχιοινοχόον Ἀλεξικράτην τῷ Γέλωνι συνέστησεν, ὡς δὴ μεθέξοντα τῆς πράξεως αὐτοῖς· ἐβούλετο γὰρ ἐν πλείοσιν ὁ Πύρρος τὸν ἔλεγχον γενέσθαι [10] τοῦ ἀδικήματος. οὕτω δὲ τοῦ Γέλωνος ἐξαπατωμένου, συνεξαπατώμενος ὁ Νεοπτόλεμος καὶ τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν ὁδῷ βαδίζειν οἰόμενος, οὐ κατεῖχεν, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ἐξέφερε [11] πρὸς τοὺς φίλους. καί ποτε κωμάσας παρὰ τὴν ἀδελφὴν Καδμείαν, ἐχρῆτο λαλιᾷ περὶ τούτων, οὐδένα συνακούειν [12] οἰόμενος· οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἦν πλησίον ἄλλος ἢ Φαιναρέτη, γυνὴ Σάμωνος τοῦ τὰ ποίμνια καὶ τὰ βουκόλια τῷ Νεοπτολέμῳ διοικοῦντος, αὕτη δ’ ἀπεστραμμένη πρὸς τοῖχον ἐπὶ [13] κλίνης τινὸς ἐδόκει καθεύδειν. συνήκοος δὲ πάντων γενομένη καὶ λαθοῦσα, μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἧκε πρὸς Ἀντιγόνην τὴν Πύρρου γυναῖκα καὶ πάντα κατεῖπεν ὅσα τοῦ Νεοπτολέμου [14] πρὸς τὴν ἀδελφὴν ἤκουσε λέγοντος. πυθόμενος δ’ ὁ Πύρρος ἐκεῖ μὲν ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν, ἐν δὲ θυσίᾳ καλέσας ἐπὶ δεῖπνον τὸν Νεοπτόλεμον ἀπέκτεινεν, αἰσθόμενος τῶν Ἠπειρωτῶν τοὺς κρατίστους προσέχοντας αὑτῷ καὶ παρακελευομένους ἀπαλλαγῆναι τοῦ Νεοπτολέμου, καὶ μὴ μερίδα μικρὰν ἔχοντα βασιλείας ἀγαπᾶν, ἀλλὰ τῇ φύσει χρήσασθαι μειζόνων πραγμάτων ἀντιλαμβανόμενον, καί τινος ὑποψίας ἅμα προσγενομένης τὸν Νεοπτόλεμον φθάσαντ’ ἀνελεῖν.

[6] [1] Μεμνημένος δὲ Βερενίκης καὶ Πτολεμαίου, παιδίον μὲν αὐτῷ γενόμενον ἐξ Ἀντιγόνης Πτολεμαῖον ὠνόμασεν, οἰκίσας δὲ πόλιν ἐν τῇ χερρονήσῳ τῆς Ἠπείρου Βερονικίδα προσηγόρευσεν.

[2] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου πολλὰ μὲν περινοῶν καὶ μεγάλα τῇ γνώμῃ, ταῖς δ’ ἐλπίσι μάλιστα καὶ πρῶτον ἀντιλαμβανόμενος τῶν πλησίον, εὗρεν ἐμφῦναι τοῖς Μακεδόνων [3] πράγμασιν ἐκ τοιᾶσδέ τινος προφάσεως. τῶν Κασσάνδρου παίδων ὁ πρεσβύτερος Ἀντίπατρος τήν τε μητέρα Θεσσαλονίκην ἀνεῖλε καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἤλαυνεν. ὁ δὲ πρός τε Δημήτριον ἔπεμψε δεόμενος βοηθεῖν καὶ [4] Πύρρον ἐκάλει. Δημητρίου δ’ ὑπ’ ἀσχολιῶν βραδύνοντος, ἐπελθὼν ὁ Πύρρος ᾔτησε μισθὸν τῆς συμμαχίας τήν τε Στυμφαίαν καὶ τὴν Παραυαίαν τῆς Μακεδονίας καὶ τῶν ἐπικτήτων ἐθνῶν Ἀμβρακίαν, Ἀκαρνανίαν, Ἀμφιλοχίαν.

[5] προεμένου δὲ τοῦ νεανίσκου, ταῦτα μὲν αὐτὸς εἶχε φρουραῖς καταλαβών, τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ κτώμενος ἐκείνῳ, [6] περιέκοπτε τὸν Ἀντίπατρον. Λυσίμαχος δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς αὐτὸς μὲν ἦν ἐν ἀσχολίαις, προθυμούμενος Ἀντιπάτρῳ βοηθεῖν, εἰδὼς δὲ τὸν Πύρρον οὐδὲν ἀχαριστεῖν οὐδ’ ἀρνεῖσθαι Πτολεμαίῳ βουλόμενον, ἔπεμψε πλαστὰ γράμματα πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς Πτολεμαίου κελεύοντος ἀπαλλάττεσθαι τῆς στρατείας τριακόσια τάλαντα παρὰ τοῦ Ἀντιπάτρου [7] λαβόντα. λύσας δὲ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ὁ Πύρρος εὐθὺς τὸ ῥᾳδιούργημα τοῦ Λυσιμάχου συνεῖδεν· οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἡ συνήθης γεγραμμένη προσαγόρευσις ὁ πατὴρ τῷ υἱῷ χαίρειν, ἀλλὰ βασιλεὺς Πτολεμαῖος βασιλεῖ Πύρρῳ [8] χαίρειν. λοιδορήσας δὲ τὸν Λυσίμαχον, ὅμως ἐποιεῖτο τὴν εἰρήνην, καὶ συνῄεσαν ὡς κατὰ σφαγίων ὁρκωμοτήσοντες.

[9] ἐπεὶ δὲ ταύρου καὶ κάπρου καὶ κριοῦ προσαχθέντος ὁ κριὸς αὐτομάτως ἀπέθανε, τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις γελᾶν ἐπῄει, τὸν δὲ Πύρρον ὁ μάντις Θεόδοτος ὀμόσαι διεκώλυσε, φήσας τὸ δαιμόνιον ἑνὶ προσημαίνειν τῶν τριῶν βασιλέων θάνατον. ὁ μὲν οὖν Πύρρος οὕτως ἀπέστη τῆς εἰρήνης.

[7] [1] Τῷ δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τῶν πραγμάτων ἤδη κατάστασιν ἐχόντων, ὅμως ὁ Δημήτριος ἀφίκετο, καὶ δῆλος μὲν ἦν εὐθὺς ἥκων μὴ δεομένῳ καὶ φόβον παρεῖχεν· ὀλίγας δ’ ἡμέρας συγγενόμενοι δι’ ἀπιστίας ἐπεβούλευσαν ἀλλήλοις [2] ἀμφότεροι. καιρῷ δὲ χρησάμενος καὶ φθάσας ἀποκτίννυσιν ὁ Δημήτριος τὸ μειράκιον καὶ βασιλεὺς ἀνηγορεύθη Μακεδονίας.

[3] Ἦν μὲν οὖν καὶ πρότερον αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν Πύρρον ἐγκλήματα, καὶ καταδρομαὶ τῆς Θεσσαλίας ἐγεγόνεισαν ὑπ’ ἐκείνου, καὶ τὸ σύμφυτον νόσημα ταῖς δυναστείαις, ἡ πλεονεξία, τὴν γειτνίασιν αὐτοῖς ἐπίφοβον καὶ ἄπιστον παρεῖχε, καὶ μᾶλλον ἔτι μετὰ τὴν τῆς Δηιδαμείας τελευτήν.

[4] ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ κατασχόντες ἀμφότεροι Μακεδονίας συνέπιπτον εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ μείζονας ἐλάμβανε προφάσεις ἡ διαφορά, Δημήτριος μὲν ἐπ’ Αἰτωλοὺς στρατευσάμενος καὶ κρατήσας, Πάνταυχον αὐτόθι μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως καταλιπών, αὐτὸς ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ Πύρρον, καὶ [5] Πύρρος ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον ὡς ᾔσθετο. γενομένης δὲ διαμαρτίας καθ’ ὁδὸν ἀλλήλους παρήλλαξαν· καὶ Δημήτριος μὲν ἐμβαλὼν εἰς Ἤπειρον ἐλεηλάτει, Πύρρος δὲ Πανταύχῳ [6] περιπεσὼν εἰς μάχην κατέστη. καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν συμπεσόντων δεινὸς ἦν καὶ μέγας ἀγὼν μάλιστα κατὰ [7] τοὺς ἡγεμόνας. ὅ τε γὰρ Πάνταυχος ἀνδρείᾳ καὶ χειρὶ καὶ ῥώμῃ σώματος ἄριστος ὢν ὁμολογουμένως τῶν περὶ Δημήτριον στρατηγῶν, καὶ θάρσος ἔχων καὶ φρόνημα, προὐκαλεῖτο τὸν Πύρρον εἰς [τὰς] χεῖρας, ὅ τε Πύρρος οὐδενὶ τῶν βασιλέων ὑφιέμενος ἀλκῆς καὶ τόλμης, καὶ τὴν Ἀχιλλέως δόξαν αὑτῷ δι’ ἀρετὴν μᾶλλον ἢ κατὰ γένος συνοικειοῦν βουλόμενος, ἐναντίος ἐχώρει διὰ τῶν [8] προμάχων ἐπὶ τὸν Πάνταυχον. ἦν δὲ δορατισμὸς τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτ’ ἐν χερσὶ γενόμενοι μετὰ τέχνης ἅμα καὶ [9] βίας ἐχρῶντο τοῖς ξίφεσι. λαβὼν δ’ ὁ Πύρρος ἓν τραῦμα, δοὺς δὲ δύο, τὸ μὲν εἰς τὸν μηρόν, τὸ δὲ παρὰ τὸν τράχηλον, ἐτρέψατο καὶ κατέβαλε τὸν Πάνταυχον· οὐ μὴν ἀνεῖλεν, [10] ἀνηρπάγη γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων. οἱ δ’ Ἠπειρῶται τῇ νίκῃ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπαρθέντες καὶ θαυμάσαντες τὴν ἀρετήν, ἐβιάσαντο καὶ διέκοψαν τὴν φάλαγγα τῶν Μακεδόνων, καὶ φεύγοντας διώκοντες ἀπέκτεινάν τε πολλοὺς καὶ πεντακισχιλίους ζῶντας εἷλον.

[8] [1] Ὁ δ’ ἀγὼν οὗτος οὐ τοσοῦτον ὀργῆς ὧν ἔπαθον οὐδὲ μίσους ἐνέπλησε τοὺς Μακεδόνας πρὸς τὸν Πύρρον, ὅσην δόξαν αὐτοῦ καὶ θαῦμα τῆς ἀρετῆς καὶ λόγον ἐνειργάσατο τοῖς ἰδοῦσι τὰ ἔργα καὶ συνενεχθεῖσι κατὰ τὴν μάχην. [2] καὶ γὰρ ὄψιν ᾤοντο καὶ τάχος ἐοικέναι καὶ κίνημα τοῖς Ἀλεξάνδρου, καὶ τῆς φορᾶς ἐκείνου καὶ βίας παρὰ τοὺς ἀγῶνας ἐν τούτῳ σκιάς τινας ὁρᾶσθαι καὶ μιμήματα, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων βασιλέων ἐν πορφύραις καὶ δορυφόροις καὶ κλίσει τραχήλου καὶ τῷ μεῖζον διαλέγεσθαι, μόνου δὲ Πύρρου τοῖς ὅπλοις καὶ ταῖς χερσὶν ἐπιδεικνυμένου τὸν [3] Ἀλέξανδρον. τῆς δὲ περὶ τάξεις καὶ στρατηγίας ἐπιστήμης αὐτοῦ καὶ δεινότητος ἔνεστι δείγματα λαβεῖν ἐκ τῶν [4] γραμμάτων ἃ περὶ τούτων ἀπολέλοιπε (FGrH 229). λέγεται δὲ καὶ Ἀντίγονος ἐρωτηθείς, τίς ἄριστος τῶν στρατηγῶν, φάναι Πύρρος, ἂν γηράσῃ, περὶ τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν [5] οὕτως ἀποφηνάμενος μόνον. Ἀννίβας δὲ συμπάντων ἀπέφαινε τῶν στρατηγῶν πρῶτον μὲν ἐμπειρίᾳ καὶ δεινότητι Πύρρον, Σκιπίωνα δὲ δεύτερον, ἑαυτὸν δὲ τρίτον, ὡς [6] ἐν τοῖς περὶ Σκιπίωνος (fr. 2 Sandbach) γέγραπται. καὶ ὅλως τοῦτο μελετῶν ἔοικε καὶ φιλοσοφῶν ἀεὶ διατελεῖν ὁ Πύρρος, ὡς μαθημάτων βασιλικώτατον, τὰς δ’ ἄλλας [7] ‹ὡς› γλαφυρίας ἐν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ τίθεσθαι. λέγεται γὰρ ὡς ἐρωτηθεὶς ἔν τινι πότῳ, πότερον αὐτῷ φαίνεται Πύθων αὐλητὴς ἀμείνων ἢ Καφισίας, εἰπεῖν ὅτι Πολυπέρχων στρατηγός, ὡς ταῦτα τῷ βασιλεῖ ζητεῖν μόνα καὶ γινώσκειν [8] προσῆκον. ἦν δὲ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς συνήθεις ἐπιεικὴς καὶ πρᾶος ὀργήν, σφοδρὸς δὲ καὶ πρόθυμος ἐν ταῖς χάρισιν.

[9] Ἀερόπου γοῦν ἀποθανόντος οὐκ ἤνεγκε μετρίως, ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἀνθρώπινα πεπονθέναι φάσκων, ἑαυτὸν δὲ μεμφόμενος καὶ κακίζων, ὅτι μέλλων ἀεὶ καὶ βραδύνων χάριν οὐκ ἀπέδωκεν [10] αὐτῷ. τὰ μὲν γὰρ χρέα καὶ κληρονόμοις ἔστιν ἀποδοῦναι τῶν δανεισάντων, αἱ δὲ τῶν χαρίτων ἀμοιβαὶ μὴ γενόμεναι πρὸς αἰσθανομένους ἀνιῶσι τὸν χρηστὸν [11] καὶ δίκαιον. ἐν δ’ Ἀμβρακίᾳ κακολόγον τινὰ καὶ βλάσφημον ἄνθρωπον οἰομένων δεῖν μεταστῆσαι τὸν Πύρρον, αὐτοῦ μένων ἔφη μᾶλλον ἡμᾶς ἐν ὀλίγοις ἢ [12] περιιὼν πρὸς ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους κακῶς λεγέτω. καὶ τοὺς παρ’ οἶνον αὐτὸν λοιδορήσαντας, εἶτ’ ἐλεγχομένους ἠρώτησεν εἰ ταῦτ’ εἶπον. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τῶν νεανίσκων ἑνός, ταῦτ’ ὦ βασιλεῦ· πλείονα δ’ ἂν ἔτι τούτων εἰρήκειμεν, εἰ πλείων παρῆν οἶνος ἡμῖν, γελάσας ἀφῆκε.

[9] [1] Γυναῖκας δὲ πραγμάτων ἕνεκα καὶ δυνάμεως πλείονας [2] ἔγημε μετὰ τὴν Ἀντιγόνης τελευτήν. καὶ γὰρ Αὐτολέοντος τοῦ Παιόνων βασιλέως ἔλαβε θυγατέρα, καὶ Βιρκένναν τὴν Βαρδύλλιος τοῦ Ἰλλυριῶν, καὶ Λάνασσαν τὴν Ἀγαθοκλέους τοῦ Συρακοσίου, προῖκα προσφερομένην αὐτῷ τὴν Κερκυραίων πόλιν, ἡλωκυῖαν ὑπ’ Ἀγαθοκλέους.

[3] ἐκ μὲν οὖν Ἀντιγόνης Πτολεμαῖον υἱὸν ἔσχεν, ἐκ δὲ Λανάσσης Ἀλέξανδρον, Ἕλενον δὲ τὸν νεώτατον ἐκ [4] Βιρκέννης. καὶ πάντας ἀγαθοὺς ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἐθρέψατο καὶ διαπύρους, εὐθὺς ἐκ γενετῆς ἐπὶ τοῦτο θηγομένους [5] ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ. λέγεται γὰρ [ὡς] ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑφ’ ἑνὸς αὐτῶν ἔτι παιδὸς ὄντος, τίνι καταλείψει τὴν βασιλείαν, εἰπεῖν ὃς [6] ἂν ὑμῶν τὴν μάχαιραν ὀξυτέραν ἔχῃ. τοῦτο δ’ οὐδὲν ἀποδεῖ τῆς τραγικῆς ἀρᾶς ἐκείνης (Eurip. Phoen. 68)· θηκτῷ σιδήρῳ δῶμα διαλαχεῖν τοὺς ἀδελφούς. οὕτως ἄμεικτός ἐστι καὶ θηριώδης ἡ τῆς πλεονεξίας ὑπόθεσις.

[10] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην ταύτην ὁ Πύρρος ἐπανελθὼν οἴκαδε λαμπρὸς ὑπὸ δόξης καὶ φρονήματος ἔχαιρε, καὶ Ἀετὸς ὑπὸ τῶν Ἠπειρωτῶν προσαγορευόμενος, δι’ ὑμᾶς ἔλεγεν ἀετός εἰμι· πῶς γὰρ οὐ μέλλω, τοῖς ὑμετέροις [2] ὅπλοις ὥσπερ ὠκυπτέροις ἐπαιρόμενος; ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον πυθόμενος νοσεῖν τὸν Δημήτριον ἐπισφαλῶς, ἐνέβαλε μὲν ἐξαίφνης εἰς Μακεδονίαν ὡς ἐπιδρομήν τινα καὶ λεηλασίαν ποιησόμενος, παρ’ ὀλίγον δ’ ἦλθε πάντων ὁμοῦ κρατῆσαι καὶ λαβεῖν ἀμαχεὶ τὴν βασιλείαν, ἐλάσας ἄχρι Ἐδέσσης μηδενὸς ἀμυνομένου, πολλῶν δὲ καὶ προστιθεμένων [3] καὶ συστρατευόντων. αὐτόν τε δὴ τὸν Δημήτριον ὁ κίνδυνος ἐξανέστησε παρὰ δύναμιν, οἵ τε φίλοι καὶ ἡγεμόνες ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ πολλοὺς ἀθροίσαντες, ἐρρωμένως [4] καὶ προθύμως ἐπὶ τὸν Πύρρον ὥρμησαν. ὁ δὲ λῃστρικώτερον ἀφιγμένος οὐκ ἔμεινεν, ἀλλὰ φεύγων μέρος τι τῆς στρατιᾶς ἀπέβαλε, καθ’ ὁδὸν ἐπιθεμένων τῶν [5] Μακεδόνων. οὐ μὴν ὅτι ῥᾳδίως καὶ ταχὺ τὸν Πύρρον ἐξέβαλε τῆς χώρας ὁ Δημήτριος ἠμέλησεν, ἐγνωκὼς δὲ μεγάλων πραγμάτων ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ τὴν πατρῴαν ἀρχὴν ἀνακτᾶσθαι δέκα μυριάσι στρατοῦ καὶ ναυσὶ πεντακοσίαις, οὐκ ἐβούλετο τῷ Πύρρῳ προσπταῖσαι οὐδ’ ἀπολιπεῖν Μακεδόσι πάροικον ἐργώδη καὶ χαλεπόν, ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ μὴ ἐσχόλαζε πολεμεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν, διαλυθεὶς καὶ θέμενος εἰρήνην οὕτως ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄλλους βασιλεῖς τραπέσθαι.

[6] Γενομένων δὲ διὰ ταῦτα τῶν ὁμολογιῶν, καὶ τῆς γνώμης ἅμα τῷ μεγέθει τῆς παρασκευῆς ἐκφανείσης τοῦ Δημητρίου, φοβηθέντες οἱ βασιλεῖς διεπέμποντο πρὸς τὸν Πύρρον ἀγγέλους καὶ γράμματα, θαυμάζειν φάσκοντες, εἰ τὸν αὑτοῦ προέμενος καιρὸν ἐν τῷ Δημητρίου πολεμῆσαι περιμένει, καὶ δυνάμενος Μακεδονίας ἐκβαλεῖν αὐτὸν πολλὰ ταράττοντα καὶ ταραττόμενον, ἐκδέχεται [καὶ] σχολάζοντι καὶ μεγάλῳ γενομένῳ περὶ τῶν ἐν Μολοσσοῖς ἱερῶν καὶ τάφων διαγωνίσασθαι, καὶ ταῦτα Κέρκυραν ἔναγχος ἀφῃρημένος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῆς γυναικός.

[7] ἡ γὰρ Λάνασσα μεμψαμένη τὸν Πύρρον ὡς μᾶλλον προσέχοντα ταῖς βαρβάροις γυναιξίν, εἰς Κέρκυραν ἀπεχώρησε, καὶ δεομένη γάμων βασιλικῶν ἐκάλει Δημήτριον, ἐπισταμένη μάλιστα τῶν βασιλέων εὐκόλως ἔχοντα πρὸς γάμους γυναικῶν. ἐκεῖνος δὲ πλεύσας τῇ τε Λανάσσῃ συνῆλθε καὶ φρουρὰν ἐν τῇ πόλει κατέλιπε.

[11] [1] Ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Πύρρον οἱ βασιλεῖς γράφοντες, ἅμα καὶ δι’ ἑαυτῶν ἔτι μέλλοντα καὶ παρασκευαζόμενον τὸν [2] Δημήτριον ἐκίνουν. Πτολεμαῖος μὲν γὰρ ἐπιπλεύσας μεγάλῳ στόλῳ τὰς Ἑλληνίδας ἀφίστη πόλεις, Λυσίμαχος δὲ τὴν ἄνω Μακεδονίαν ἐκ Θρᾴκης ἐμβαλὼν ἐπόρθει.

[3] Πύρρος δὲ τούτοις ἅμα συνεξαναστὰς ἐπὶ Βέροιαν ἤλαυνε, προσδοκῶν, ὅπερ συνέβη, Δημήτριον ὑπαντιάζοντα Λυσιμάχῳ [4] τὴν κάτω χώραν ἀπολείψειν ἔρημον. ἐκείνης δὲ τῆς νυκτὸς ἔδοξε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου καλεῖσθαι τοῦ μεγάλου, καὶ παραγενόμενος κλινήρη μὲν αὐτὸν ἰδεῖν, λόγων δὲ χρηστῶν τυχεῖν καὶ φιλοφροσύνης, ἐπαγγελλομένου [5] προθύμως βοηθήσειν. αὐτοῦ δὲ τολμήσαντος εἰπεῖν καὶ πῶς ἂν ὦ βασιλεῦ νοσῶν δυνατὸς εἴης ἐμοὶ βοηθεῖν; αὐτῷ φάναι τῷ ὀνόματι, καὶ περιβάντα [6] Νισαῖον ἵππον ἡγεῖσθαι. ταύτην ἰδὼν τὴν ὄψιν ἐπερρώσθη, τάχει δὲ χρησάμενος καὶ διαδραμὼν τὰ μεταξύ, καταλαμβάνει τὴν Βέροιαν, καὶ τὸ πλεῖστον αὐτόθι τῆς στρατιᾶς ἱδρύσας, τὰ λοιπὰ προσήγετο διὰ τῶν στρατηγῶν.

[7] ὁ δὲ Δημήτριος ἐπεὶ ταῦτ’ ἤκουσε καὶ πονηρὸν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ θόρυβον ᾔσθετο τῶν Μακεδόνων, ἔδεισε πορρωτέρω προαγαγεῖν, μὴ πλησίον γενόμενοι βασιλέως Μακεδόνος καὶ δόξαν ἔχοντος μεταβάλωνται πρὸς [8] αὐτόν. ὅθεν ἐπιστρέψας ἐπὶ τὸν Πύρρον ἦγεν ὡς ξένον καὶ μισούμενον ὑπὸ τῶν Μακεδόνων. ἐπεὶ δὲ παρεστρατοπέδευσεν αὐτόθι, πολλοὶ τῶν ἐκ τῆς Βεροίας ἀφικνούμενοι τὸν Πύρρον ἐνεκωμίαζον ὡς ἄμαχον μὲν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις καὶ λαμπρὸν ἄνδρα, πράως δὲ καὶ φιλανθρώπως [9] τοῖς ἡλωκόσι χρώμενον. ἦσαν δέ τινες οὓς αὐτὸς ὁ Πύρρος ἐγκαθίει, προσποιουμένους εἶναι Μακεδόνας καὶ λέγοντας, ὅτι νῦν καιρός ἐστι τῆς Δημητρίου βαρύτητος ἀπαλλαγῆναι, πρὸς ἄνδρα δημοτικὸν καὶ φιλοστρατιώτην [10] μεταβαλομένους τὸν Πύρρον. ἐκ τούτου τὸ πλεῖστον ἀνηρέθιστο τῆς στρατιᾶς, καὶ τὸν Πύρρον ἐζήτουν [11] περισκοποῦντες· ἔτυχε γὰρ ἀφῃρημένος τὸ κράνος, ἄχρι οὗ πάλιν συμφρονήσας καὶ περιθέμενος ἐγνώσθη τῷ τε λόφῳ διαπρέποντι καὶ τοῖς τραγικοῖς κέρασιν, ὥστε τοὺς Μακεδόνας σύνθημα προστρέχοντας αἰτεῖν, ἄλλους δὲ κλάδους δρυὸς ἀναστέφεσθαι διὰ τὸ καὶ τοὺς περὶ ἐκεῖνον [12] ἐστεφανωμένους [εἰς]ὁρᾶν. ἤδη δὲ καὶ πρὸς αὐτόν τινες ἐτόλμων λέγειν τὸν Δημήτριον, ὡς ὑπεκστὰς καὶ προέμενος [13] τὰ πράγματα καλῶς δόξει βεβουλεῦσθαι. τούτοις τοῖς λόγοις ὅμοιον ὁρῶν τὸ κίνημα τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ φοβηθεὶς κρύφα διεξέπεσε, καυσίᾳ τινὶ καὶ λιτῷ χλαμυδίῳ [14] περιστείλας ἑαυτόν. ἐπελθὼν δ’ ὁ Πύρρος ἀμαχεὶ παρέλαβε τὸ στρατόπεδον, καὶ βασιλεὺς ἀνηγορεύθη Μακεδόνων.

[12] [1] Ἐπιφανέντος δὲ Λυσιμάχου καὶ κοινὸν ἔργον ἀμφοῖν ποιουμένου τὴν Δημητρίου κατάλυσιν, καὶ νέμεσθαι τὴν βασιλείαν ἀξιοῦντος, οὔπω πάνυ βεβαίως τοῖς Μακεδόσι πιστεύων ὁ Πύρρος ἀλλ’ ἀμφίβολος ὢν ἐν αὐτοῖς, ἐδέξατο τοῦ Λυσιμάχου τὴν πρόκλησιν, καὶ διενείμαντο τὰς πόλεις καὶ τὴν χώραν πρὸς ἀλλήλους.

[2] Τοῦτο δ’ ὤνησε μὲν ἐν τῷ παρόντι καὶ κατέπαυσε τὸν πόλεμον αὐτοῖς, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἔγνωσαν οὐκ ἀπαλλαγὴν ἔχθρας, ἀλλ’ ἐγκλημάτων καὶ διαφορᾶς ἀρχὴν πεποιημένοι [3] τὴν νέμησιν. οἷς γὰρ οὐ πέλαγος, οὐκ ὄρος, οὐκ ἀοίκητος ἐρημία πέρας ἐστὶ πλεονεξίας, οὐδ’ οἱ διαιροῦντες Εὐρώπην καὶ Ἀσίαν τέρμονες ὁρίζουσι τὰς ἐπιθυμίας, πῶς ἂν ἁπτόμενοι καὶ ψαύοντες ἀλλήλων ἀτρεμοῖεν, ἐν τοῖς παροῦσι μὴ ἀδικοῦντες, οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν· [4] ἀλλὰ πολεμοῦσι μὲν ἀεί, τὸ ἐπιβουλεύειν καὶ φθονεῖν ἔμφυτον ἔχοντες, δυεῖν δ’ ὀνομάτων ὥσπερ νομισμάτων, πολέμου καὶ εἰρήνης, τῷ παρατυχόντι χρῶνται πρὸς τὸ [5] συμφέρον, οὐ πρὸς τὸ δίκαιον· ἐπεὶ βελτίους γε πολεμεῖν ὁμολογοῦντές εἰσιν, ἢ τῆς ἀδικίας τὸ ἀργοῦν καὶ σχολάζον [6] δικαιοσύνην καὶ φιλίαν ὀνομάζοντες. ἐδήλωσε δ’ ὁ Πύρρος· ἐμποδὼν γὰρ αὐξομένῳ τῷ Δημητρίῳ πάλιν ἱστάμενος καὶ κολούων τὴν δύναμιν ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀρρωστίας μεγάλης ἀναλαμβάνουσαν, ἐβοήθει τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ παρῆλθεν εἰς [7] τὰς Ἀθήνας. ἀναβὰς δ’ εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν καὶ θύσας τῇ θεῷ καὶ καταβὰς αὐθημερόν, ἀγαπᾶν μὲν ἔφησε τοῦ δήμου τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν εὔνοιαν καὶ πίστιν· ἂν μέντοι σωφρονῶσι, μηδένα τῶν βασιλέων ἔτι παρήσειν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὴν πόλιν, [8] μηδὲ τὰς πύλας ἀνοίξειν. ἐκ τούτου καὶ πρὸς τὸν Δημήτριον εἰρήνην ἐποιήσατο, καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον εἰς Ἀσίαν ἀπάραντος αὐτοῦ, πάλιν πεισθεὶς ὑπὸ Λυσιμάχου Θετταλίαν ἀφίστη καὶ ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς φρουραῖς προσεπολέμει, βελτίοσι χρώμενος τοῖς Μακεδόσι στρατευομένοις ἢ σχολάζουσι, καὶ ὅλως αὐτὸς οὐκ εὖ πρὸς ἡσυχίαν πεφυκώς.

[9] τέλος δὲ Δημητρίου καταπολεμηθέντος ἐν Συρίᾳ, Λυσίμαχος ἐπ’ ἀδείας γενόμενος καὶ σχολάζων εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸν [10] Πύρρον ὥρμησε. καὶ καθημένου περὶ τὴν Ἔδεσσαν αὐτοῦ, ταῖς ἀγοραῖς κομιζομέναις ἐπιπεσὼν καὶ κρατήσας, ἀπορίαν πρῶτον αὐτῷ περιέστησεν, εἶτα γράμμασι καὶ λόγοις διέφθειρε τοὺς πρώτους τῶν Μακεδόνων, ὀνειδίζων εἰ ξένον ἄνδρα καὶ προγόνων ἀεὶ δεδουλευκότων Μακεδόσι δεσπότην ἑλόμενοι, τοὺς Ἀλεξάνδρου φίλους καὶ συνήθεις [11] ἀπωθοῦσι Μακεδονίας. ἀναπειθομένων δὲ πολλῶν, δείσας ὁ Πύρρος ἀπηλλάγη μετὰ τῆς Ἠπειρωτικῆς καὶ συμμαχικῆς δυνάμεως, ἀποβαλὼν Μακεδονίαν ᾧ τρόπῳ παρέλαβεν.

[12] ὅθεν οὐδ’ αἰτιᾶσθαι τοὺς πολλοὺς ἔχουσιν οἱ βασιλεῖς μετατιθεμένους πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον· ἐκείνους γὰρ αὐτοὺς ταῦτα μιμοῦνται ποιοῦντες, ἀπιστίας καὶ προδοσίας διδασκάλους ὄντας καὶ πλεῖστα νομίζοντας ὠφελεῖσθαι τὸν ἐλάχιστα τῷ δικαίῳ χρώμενον.

[13] [1] Τότε δ’ οὖν εἰς Ἤπειρον ἐκπεσόντι τῷ Πύρρῳ καὶ προεμένῳ Μακεδονίαν ἡ μὲν τύχη παρεῖχε χρῆσθαι τοῖς παροῦσιν ἀπραγμόνως καὶ ζῆν ἐν εἰρήνῃ, βασιλεύοντα [2] τῶν οἰκείων· ὁ δὲ τὸ μὴ παρέχειν ἑτέροις κακὰ μηδ’ ἔχειν ὑφ’ ἑτέρων ἄλυν τινὰ ναυτιώδη νομίζων, ὥσπερ ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς οὐκ ἔφερε τὴν σχολήν (Il. 1, 491 sq.),

ἀλλὰ φθινύθεσκε φίλον κῆρ

αὖθι μένων, ποθέεσκε δ’ ἀυτήν τε πτόλεμόν τε.

[3] δεόμενος δ’ οὖν ἔλαβε πραγμάτων καινῶν τοιαύτην ὑπόθεσιν.

[4] Ῥωμαῖοι Ταραντίνοις ἐπολέμουν· οἱ δὲ μήτε φέρειν τὸν πόλεμον δυνάμενοι μήτε θέσθαι θρασύτητι καὶ μοχθηρίᾳ δημαγωγῶν, ἐβουλεύοντο ποιεῖσθαι Πύρρον ἡγεμόνα καὶ καλεῖν ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον, ὡς σχολὴν ἄγοντα πλείστην τῶν βασιλέων καὶ στρατηγὸν ὄντα δεινότατον.

[5] τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων καὶ νοῦν ἐχόντων πολιτῶν οἱ μὲν ἄντικρυς ἐνιστάμενοι πρὸς τὴν γνώμην ἐξέπιπτον ὑπὸ κραυγῆς καὶ βίας τῶν πολεμοποιῶν, οἱ δὲ ταῦθ’ ὁρῶντες [6] ἀπέλειπον τὰς ἐκκλησίας. εἷς δέ τις ἀνὴρ ἐπιεικὴς Μέτων ὄνομα, τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης ἐν ᾗ τὸ δόγμα κυροῦν ἔμελλον ἐνστάσης καὶ τοῦ δήμου καθεζομένου, λαβὼν στέφανον τῶν ἑώλων καὶ λαμπάδιον ὥσπερ οἱ μεθύοντες, αὐλητρίδος ὑφηγουμένης αὐτῷ, πρὸς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν [7] ἐκώμαζεν. οἷα δ’ ἐν ὄχλῳ δημοκρατίας κόσμον οὐκ ἐχούσης, οἱ μὲν ἐκρότουν ἰδόντες, οἱ δ’ ἐγέλων, ἐκώλυε δ’ οὐδείς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ γύναιον αὐλεῖν κἀκεῖνον ᾄδειν ἐκέλευον εἰς μέσον προελθόντα· καὶ τοῦτο ποιήσων ἐπίδοξος [8] ἦν. γενομένης δὲ σιωπῆς ἄνδρες ἔφη Ταραντῖνοι, καλῶς ποιεῖτε παίζειν καὶ κωμάζειν ἕως ἔξεστι [9] τοῖς βουλομένοις μὴ φθονοῦντες. ἐὰν δὲ σωφρονῆτε, καὶ πάντες ἀπολαύσετε ἔτι τῆς ἐλευθερίας, ὡς ἕτερα πράγματα καὶ βίον καὶ δίαιταν ἕξοντες, ὅταν Πύρρος εἰς τὴν [10] πόλιν παραγένηται. ταῦτα ῥηθέντα τοὺς πολλοὺς ἔπεισε τῶν Ταραντίνων, καὶ θροῦς διέδραμε τῆς ἐκκλησίας ὡς [11] εὖ λεγομένων. οἱ δὲ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους δεδιότες, μὴ γενομένης εἰρήνης ἐκδοθῶσι, τόν τε δῆμον ἐλοιδόρουν, εἰ φέρει πράως ἐπικωμαζόμενος οὕτως ἀσελγῶς καὶ παροινούμενος, [12] τόν τε Μέτωνα συστραφέντες ἐξέβαλον. οὕτω δὲ τοῦ δόγματος κυρίου γενομένου, πρέσβεις ἔπεμψαν εἰς Ἤπειρον, οὐχ αὑτῶν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν Ἰταλιωτῶν, δῶρα τῷ Πύρρῳ κομίζοντας καὶ λέγοντας, ὡς ἡγεμόνος ἔμφρονος δέονται καὶ δόξαν ἔχοντος, δυνάμεις δ’ αὐτόθεν ὑπάρξουσι μεγάλαι παρά τε Λευκανῶν καὶ Μεσσαπίων καὶ Σαυνιτῶν καὶ Ταραντίνων εἰς δισμυρίους ἱππεῖς, πεζῶν δ’ ὁμοῦ πέντε καὶ τριάκοντα μυριάδας.

[13] ταῦτ’ οὐ μόνον αὐτὸν ἐπῆρε τὸν Πύρρον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς Ἠπειρώταις προθυμίαν ἐνέβαλε καὶ ὁρμὴν τῆς στρατείας.

[14] [1] Ἦν δέ τις Κινέας Θεσσαλὸς ἀνήρ, τῷ μὲν φρονεῖν δοκῶν ἱκανὸς εἶναι, Δημοσθένους δὲ τοῦ ῥήτορος ἀκηκοὼς ἐδόκει μόνος ἢ μάλιστα τῶν τότε λεγόντων οἷον ἐν εἰκόνι τῆς ἐκείνου δυνάμεως καὶ δεινότητος ἀναμιμνῄσκειν [2] τοὺς ἀκούοντας. συνὼν δὲ τῷ Πύρρῳ καὶ πεμπόμενος ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις, ἐβεβαίου τὸ Εὐριπίδειον (Phoen. 516) ὅτι

πᾶν ἐξαιρεῖ λόγος,

ὃ καὶ σίδηρος πολεμίων δράσειεν ἄν.

[3] ὁ γοῦν Πύρρος ἔλεγε πλείονας πόλεις ὑπὸ Κινέου τοῖς λόγοις ἢ τοῖς ὅπλοις ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ προσῆχθαι· καὶ διετέλει [4] τὸν ἄνδρα τιμῶν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα καὶ χρώμενος. οὗτος οὖν τὸν Πύρρον ὡρμημένον τόθ’ ὁρῶν ἐπὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν, εἰς λόγους ἐπηγάγετο τοιούτους ἰδὼν σχολάζοντα· [5] πολεμισταὶ μὲν ὦ Πύρρε Ῥωμαῖοι λέγονται καὶ πολλῶν ἐθνῶν μαχίμων ἄρχοντες· εἰ δὲ δοίη θεὸς περιγενέσθαι [6] τῶν ἀνδρῶν, τί χρησόμεθα τῇ νίκῃ; καὶ ὁ Πύρρος ἐρωτᾷς εἶπεν ὦ Κινέα πρᾶγμα φαινόμενον· οὔτε βάρβαρος ἡμῖν ἐκεῖ πόλις οὔθ’ Ἑλληνὶς ἀξιόμαχος Ῥωμαίων κρατηθέντων, ἀλλ’ ἕξομεν εὐθὺς Ἰταλίαν ἅπασαν, ἧς μέγεθος καὶ ἀρετὴν καὶ δύναμιν ἄλλῳ πού τινι μᾶλλον [7] ἀγνοεῖν ἢ σοὶ προσήκει. μικρὸν οὖν ἐπισχὼν ὁ Κινέας, Ἰταλίαν δέ εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ λαβόντες, τί [8] ποιήσομεν; καὶ ὁ Πύρρος οὔπω τὴν διάνοιαν αὐτοῦ καθορῶν, ἐγγύς εἶπεν ἡ Σικελία χεῖρας ὀρέγει, νῆσος εὐδαίμων καὶ πολυάνθρωπος, ἁλῶναι δὲ ῥᾴστη· στάσις γὰρ ὦ Κινέα πάντα νῦν ἐκεῖ[να] καὶ ἀναρχία πόλεων καὶ [9] δημαγωγῶν ὀξύτης, Ἀγαθοκλέους ἐκλελοιπότος. εἰκότα ἔφη λέγεις ὁ Κινέας· ἀλλ’ ἦ τοῦτο πέρας ἡμῖν [10] τῆς στρατείας, λαβεῖν Σικελίαν; θεός ὁ Πύρρος ἔφη νικᾶν διδῴη καὶ κατορθοῦν· τούτοις δὲ προάγωσι χρησόμεθα πραγμάτων μεγάλων. τίς γὰρ ἂν ἀπόσχοιτο Λιβύης καὶ Καρχηδόνος ἐν ἐφικτῷ γενομένης, ἣν Ἀγαθοκλῆς ἀποδρὰς ἐκ Συρακουσῶν κρύφα καὶ περάσας ναυσὶν ὀλίγαις λαβεῖν παρ’ οὐδὲν ἦλθεν; ὅτι δὲ τούτων κρατήσασιν ἡμῖν οὐδεὶς ἀντιστήσεται τῶν νῦν ὑβριζόντων πολεμίων, [11] τί ἂν λέγοι τις; οὐδέν ὁ Κινέας εἶπε· δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι καὶ Μακεδονίαν ἀναλαβεῖν καὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἄρχειν ὑπάρξει βεβαίως ἀπὸ τηλικαύτης δυνάμεως. γενομένων [12] δὲ πάντων ὑφ’ ἡμῖν, τί ποιήσομεν; καὶ ὁ Πύρρος ἐπιγελάσας, σχολήν ἔφη ἄξομεν πολλήν, καὶ κώθων ὦ μακάριε καθημερινὸς ἔσται, καὶ διὰ λόγων συνόντες [13] ἀλλήλους εὐφρανοῦμεν. ἐνταῦθα δὴ τῶν λόγων καταστήσας τὸν Πύρρον ὁ Κινέας, εἶτα ἔφη τί νῦν ἐμποδών ἐστιν ἡμῖν βουλομένοις κώθωνι χρῆσθαι καὶ σχολάζειν μετ’ ἀλλήλων, εἰ ταῦτ’ ἔχομεν ἤδη καὶ πάρεστιν ἀπραγμόνως, ἔφ’ ἃ δι’ αἵματος καὶ πόνων μεγάλων καὶ κινδύνων μέλλομεν ἀφίξεσθαι, πολλὰ καὶ δράσαντες [14] ἑτέρους κακὰ καὶ παθόντες; τούτοις τοῖς λόγοις ἠνίασε μᾶλλον ἢ μετέθηκε τὸν Πύρρον ὁ Κινέας, νοήσαντα μὲν ὅσην ἀπέλειπεν εὐδαιμονίαν, ὧν δ’ ὠρέγετο τὰς ἐλπίδας ἀφεῖναι μὴ δυνάμενον.

[15] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἀπέστειλε τὸν Κινέαν τοῖς Ταραντίνοις, [2] στρατιώτας ἄγοντα τρισχιλίους. ἔπειτα πολλῶν ἱππηγῶν καὶ καταφράκτων καὶ πορθμείων παντοδαπῶν ἐκ Τάραντος κομισθέντων, ἐνεβίβαζεν ἐλέφαντας εἴκοσι καὶ τρισχιλίους ἱππεῖς, πεζοὺς δὲ δισμυρίους καὶ [3] δισχιλίους τοξότας καὶ σφενδονήτας πεντακοσίους. γενομένων δὲ πάντων ἑτοίμων, ἀναχθεὶς ἔπλει· καὶ μέσον ἔχων τὸν Ἰόνιον, ἁρπάζεται βορέᾳ ἀνέμῳ παρ’ ὥραν [4] ἐκραγέντι. καὶ βιασθεὶς αὐτὸς μὲν ἀρετῇ καὶ προθυμίᾳ ναυτῶν καὶ κυβερνητῶν ἐξανέφερε καὶ προσῆγε τῇ γῇ [5] πολυπόνως καὶ παραβόλως· τοῦ δ’ ἄλλου στόλου συγχυθέντος καὶ τῶν νεῶν σκεδασθεισῶν, αἱ μὲν ἀποσφαλεῖσαι τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐξεώσθησαν εἰς τὸ Λιβυκὸν καὶ Σικελικὸν πέλαγος, τὰς δ’ ὑπερβαλεῖν μὴ δυνηθείσας ἄκραν Ἰαπυγίαν νύξ τε κατελάμβανε, καὶ πολλὴ καὶ χαλεπὴ θάλασσα παίουσα πρὸς χωρία δύσορμα καὶ τυφλὰ πάσας διέφθειρε [6] πλὴν τῆς βασιλικῆς. αὕτη δὲ πελαγίου μὲν ἔτι ὄντος τοῦ κύματος ἠμύνετο καὶ διέφευγε μεγέθει καὶ ῥώμῃ τὰς [7] ἐπιβολὰς τῆς θαλάσσης· ἐπεὶ δὲ περιελθὸν ἀπὸ γῆς ἀπήντα τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ κίνδυνον εἶχεν ἡ ναῦς ἀντίπρῳρος ἱσταμένη πρὸς κλύδωνα πολὺν διαρραγῆναι, τὸ δ’ ἐφέντας αὖθις ἠγριωμένῳ πελάγει καὶ πνεύματι τροπὰς λαμβάνοντι παντοδαπὰς φέρεσθαι φοβερώτερον ἐφαίνετο τῶν παρόντων κακῶν, ἄρας ὁ Πύρρος αὑτὸν ἀφῆκεν εἰς θάλασσαν, καὶ τῶν φίλων καὶ τῶν δορυφόρων εὐθὺς ἦν [8] ἅμιλλα καὶ προθυμία περὶ αὐτόν. ἡ δὲ νὺξ καὶ τὸ κῦμα μετὰ ψόφου μεγάλου καὶ τραχείας ἀνακοπῆς χαλεπὴν ἐποίει τὴν βοήθειαν, ὥστε μόλις ἡμέρας ἤδη μαραινομένου τοῦ πνεύματος ἐκπεσεῖν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν, τῷ μὲν σώματι παντάπασιν ἀδυνάτως ἔχοντα, τόλμῃ δὲ καὶ ῥώμῃ τῆς [9] ψυχῆς ἀνταίροντα πρὸς τὴν ἀπορίαν. ἅμα δ’ οἵ τε Μεσσάπιοι, καθ’ οὓς ἐξεβράσθη, συνέθεον βοηθοῦντες ἐκ τῶν παρόντων προθύμως, καὶ προσεφέροντο τῶν σῳζομένων ἔνιαι νεῶν, ἐν αἷς ἦσαν ἱππεῖς μὲν ὀλίγοι παντάπασι, πεζοὶ δὲ δισχιλίων ἐλάττους, ἐλέφαντες δὲ δύο.

[16] [1] Τούτους ἀναλαβὼν ὁ Πύρρος ἐβάδιζεν εἰς Τάραντα. καὶ τοῦ Κινέου προαγαγόντος εἰς ἀπάντησιν ὡς ᾔσθετο τοὺς στρατιώτας, παρελθὼν οὐδὲν ἀκόντων οὐδὲ πρὸς βίαν ἔπραττε τῶν Ταραντίνων, ἕως ἀνεσώθησαν αἱ νῆες ἐκ τῆς θαλάττης καὶ συνῆλθεν ἡ πλείστη τῆς δυνάμεως.

[2] τηνικαῦτα δ’ ὁρῶν τὸ πλῆθος ἄνευ μεγάλης ἀνάγκης μήτε σῴζεσθαι δυνάμενον μήτε σῴζειν, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐκείνου προπολεμοῦντος οἴκοι καθῆσθαι περὶ λουτρὰ καὶ συνουσίας γενόμενον, ἀπέκλεισε μὲν τὰ γυμνάσια καὶ τοὺς περιπάτους, ἐν οἷς ἀλύοντες ὑπὲρ τῶν πραγμάτων λόγῳ διεστρατήγουν, πότους δὲ καὶ κώμους καὶ θαλίας ἀκαίρους [3] ἀνεῖλεν, ἐκάλει δὲ πρὸς τὰ ὅπλα, καὶ περὶ τοὺς καταλόγους τῶν στρατευομένων ἀπαραίτητος ἦν καὶ λυπηρός, ὥστε πολλοὺς ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἀπελθεῖν, ἀηθείᾳ τοῦ ἄρχεσθαι δουλείαν τὸ μὴ πρὸς ἡδονὴν ζῆν καλοῦντας.

[4] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Λαιβῖνος ὁ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ὕπατος ἠγγέλλετο πολλῇ στρατιᾷ χωρεῖν ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ἅμα τὴν Λευκανίαν διαπορθῶν, οὐδέπω μὲν οἱ σύμμαχοι παρῆσαν αὐτῷ, δεινὸν δὲ ποιούμενος ἀνασχέσθαι καὶ περιιδεῖν τοὺς πολεμίους ἐγγυτέρω προϊόντας, ἐξῆλθε μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως, προπέμψας κήρυκα πρὸς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, εἰ φίλον ἐστὶν αὐτοῖς πρὸ πολέμου δίκας λαβεῖν παρὰ τῶν Ἰταλιωτῶν, [5] αὐτῷ δικαστῇ καὶ διαλλακτῇ χρησαμένους. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Λαιβίνου μήτε διαλλακτὴν Πύρρον αἱρεῖσθαι Ῥωμαίους μήτε δεδοικέναι πολέμιον, προελθὼν κατεστρατοπέδευσεν ἐν τῷ μεταξὺ πεδίῳ Πανδοσίας [6] πόλεως καὶ Ἡρακλείας. πυθόμενος δὲ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἐγγὺς εἶναι καὶ πέραν τοῦ Σίριος ποταμοῦ καταστρατοπεδεύειν, [7] προσίππευσε τῷ ποταμῷ θέας ἕνεκα· καὶ κατιδὼν τάξιν τε καὶ φυλακὰς καὶ κόσμον αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ σχῆμα τῆς στρατοπεδείας, ἐθαύμασε καὶ τῶν φίλων προσαγορεύσας τὸν ἐγγυτάτω τάξις μέν εἶπεν ὦ Μεγάκλεις αὕτη τῶν βαρβάρων οὐ βάρβαρος, τὸ δ’ ἔργον εἰσόμεθα.

[8] καὶ διὰ φροντίδος ἔχων ἤδη τὸ μέλλον, ἔγνω τοὺς συμμάχους ἀναμένειν, τοῖς δὲ Ῥωμαίοις, ἂν πρότερον ἐπιχειρῶσι διαβαίνειν, ἐπέστησε φυλακὴν ὑπὲρ τοῦ [9] ποταμοῦ τὴν εἴρξουσαν. οἱ δ’ ἅπερ ἐκεῖνος ἔγνω περιμένειν φθῆναι σπεύδοντες, ἐνεχείρουν τῇ διαβάσει, κατὰ πόρον μὲν οἱ πεζοί, πολλαχόθεν δ’ οἱ ἱππεῖς διεξελαύνοντες [10] τὸν ποταμόν, ὥστε δείσαντας τὴν κύκλωσιν ἀναχωρεῖν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, αἰσθόμενον δὲ τὸν Πύρρον καὶ διαταραχθέντα, τοῖς μὲν ἡγεμόσι τοῦ πεζοῦ παρεγγυᾶν εὐθὺς εἰς τάξιν καθίστασθαι καὶ περιμένειν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις, αὐτὸν δὲ τοῖς ἱππεῦσι παρεξελάσαι τρισχιλίοις οὖσιν, ἐλπίζοντα διαβαίνοντας ἔτι καὶ διεσπασμένους ἀτάκτους [11] λήψεσθαι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἑώρα θυρεούς τε πολλοὺς ὑπερφαινομένους τοῦ ποταμοῦ καὶ τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἐπελαύνοντας ἐν τάξει, συστρέψας ἐνέβαλε πρῶτος, αὐτόθεν τε περίοπτος ὢν ὅπλων κάλλει καὶ λαμπρότητι κεκοσμημένων περιττῶς, καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἐπιδεικνύμενος ἔργοις οὐκ ἀποδέουσαν αὐτοῦ τῆς ἀρετῆς, μάλιστα δ’ ὅτι τὰς χεῖρας καὶ τὸ σῶμα παρέχων τῷ ἀγῶνι καὶ τοὺς καθ’ αὑτὸν ἀμυνόμενος ἐρρωμένως, οὐ συνεχεῖτο τὸν λογισμὸν οὐδὲ τοῦ φρονεῖν ἐξέπιπτεν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἔξωθεν ἐφορῶν διεκυβέρνα τὸν πόλεμον, αὐτὸς μεταθέων ἑκασταχόσε καὶ [12] παραβοηθῶν τοῖς ἐκβιάζεσθαι δοκοῦσιν. ἔνθα δὴ Λεοννάτος ὁ Μακεδὼν ἄνδρα κατιδὼν Ἰταλὸν ἐπέχοντα τῷ Πύρρῳ καὶ τὸν ἵππον ἀντιπαρεξάγοντα καὶ συμμεθιστάμενον [13] ἀεὶ καὶ συγκινούμενον, ὁρᾷς εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ τὸν βάρβαρον ἐκεῖνον, ὃν ὁ μέλας ἵππος ὁ λευκόπους φέρει; μέγα τι βουλευομένῳ καὶ δεινὸν ὅμοιός ἐστι. σοὶ γὰρ ἐνορᾷ καὶ πρὸς σὲ τέταται, πνεύματος μεστὸς ὢν καὶ θυμοῦ, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐᾷ χαίρειν. ἀλλὰ σὺ φυλάττου [14] τὸν ἄνδρα. καὶ ὁ Πύρρος ἀπεκρίνατο· τὸ μὲν εἱμαρμένον ὦ Λεοννάτε διαφυγεῖν ἀδύνατον· χαίρων δ’ οὔθ’ οὗτος οὔτ’ ἄλλος τις Ἰταλῶν εἰς χεῖρας ἡμῖν σύνεισιν.

[15] ἔτι ταῦτα προσδιαλεγομένων, ὁ Ἰταλὸς διαλαβὼν τὸ δόρυ καὶ συστρέψας τὸν ἵππον ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ τὸν Πύρρον. εἶθ’ ἅμα παίει μὲν αὐτὸς τῷ δόρατι τοῦ βασιλέως τὸν [16] ἵππον, παίει δὲ τὸν ἐκείνου παραβαλὼν ὁ Λεοννάτος. ἀμφοτέρων δὲ τῶν ἵππων πεσόντων, τὸν μὲν Πύρρον οἱ φίλοι περισχόντες ἀνήρπασαν, τὸν δ’ Ἰταλὸν μαχόμενον διέφθειραν. ἦν δὲ τῷ γένει Φρεντανός, ἴλης ἡγεμών, Ὄπλακος ὄνομα.

[17] [1] Τοῦτο δ’ ἐδίδαξε τὸν Πύρρον μᾶλλον φυλάττεσθαι· καὶ τοὺς ἱππεῖς ὁρῶν ἐνδιδόντας, μετεπέμπετο τὴν φάλαγγα καὶ παρέταττεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν χλαμύδα καὶ τὰ ὅπλα παραδοὺς ἑνὶ τῶν ἑταίρων Μεγακλεῖ, τοῖς δ’ ἐκείνου τρόπον τινὰ κατακρύψας ἑαυτόν, ἐπῆγε τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις.

[2] δεξαμένων δ’ ἐκείνων καὶ συμβαλόντων, χρόνον τε πολὺν εἱστήκει τὰ τῆς μάχης ἄκριτα, καὶ τροπὰς ἑπτὰ λέγεται φευγόντων ἀνάπαλιν καὶ διωκόντων γενέσθαι.

[3] καὶ γὰρ ἡ διάμειψις τῶν ὅπλων, ἐν καιρῷ πρὸς σωτηρίαν αὐτοῦ γενομένη τοῦ βασιλέως, ὀλίγον ἐδέησεν ἀνατρέψαι [4] τὰ πράγματα καὶ διαφθεῖραι τὴν νίκην. πολλῶν γὰρ ἐφιεμένων τοῦ Μεγακλέους, ὁ πρῶτος πατάξας καὶ καταβαλὼν αὐτόν, ὄνομα Δέξιος, ἀφαρπάσας τὸ κράνος καὶ τὴν χλαμύδα τῷ Λαιβίνῳ προσίππευσεν ἀναδεικνύων [5] ἅμα καὶ βοῶν ἀνῃρηκέναι τὸν Πύρρον. ἦν οὖν, παρὰ τὰς τάξεις τῶν λαφύρων παραφερομένων καὶ ἀναδεικνυμένων, τοῖς τε Ῥωμαίοις χαρὰ μετ’ ἀλαλαγμοῦ καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἀθυμία καὶ κατάπληξις, ἄχρι οὗ μαθὼν ὁ Πύρρος τὸ γινόμενον παρήλαυνε γυμνῷ τῷ προσώπῳ, τήν τε δεξιὰν ὀρέγων τοῖς μαχομένοις καὶ τῇ φωνῇ σημαίνων ἑαυτόν.

[6] τέλος δὲ τῶν θηρίων ἐκβιαζομένων μάλιστα τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, καὶ τῶν ἵππων πρὶν ἐγγὺς γενέσθαι δυσανασχετούντων καὶ παραφερόντων τοὺς ἐπιβάτας, ἐπαγαγὼν τὴν Θεσσαλικὴν ἵππον αὐτοῖς ταρασσομένοις, ἐτρέψατο [7] πολλῷ φόνῳ. Διονύσιος (19, 12) μὲν οὖν ὀλίγῳ τῶν πεντακισχιλίων καὶ μυρίων ἐλάσσονας πεσεῖν ἱστορεῖ Ῥωμαίων, Ἱερώνυμος (FGrH 154 F 11) δὲ μόνους ἑπτακισχιλίους, τῶν δὲ περὶ Πύρρον ὁ μὲν Διονύσιος μυρίους καὶ τρισχιλίους, ὁ δ’ Ἱερώνυμος ἐλάττονας τῶν τετρακισχιλίων· [8] κράτιστοι δ’ ἦσαν οὗτοι, καὶ τῶν φίλων ὁ Πύρρος καὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν, οἷς μάλιστα χρώμενος [9] διετέλει καὶ πιστεύων, ἀπέβαλεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον ἔλαβε τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐκλιπόντων, καὶ πόλεις συμμαχίδας αὐτῶν προσηγάγετο, καὶ χώραν πολλὴν διεπόρθησε, καὶ προῆλθεν ὅσον μὴ πλέον σταδίων [10] τριακοσίων ἀποσχεῖν τῆς Ῥώμης. ἀφίκοντο δ’ αὐτῷ Λευκανῶν τε πολλοὶ καὶ Σαυνιτῶν μετὰ τὴν μάχην, οὓς ἐμέμψατο μὲν ὑστερήσαντας, ἦν δὲ δῆλος ἡδόμενος καὶ μέγα φρονῶν, ὅτι μόνοις τοῖς μετ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ Ταραντίνοις ἐκράτησε τῆς μεγάλης Ῥωμαίων δυνάμεως.

[18] [1] Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ Λαιβῖνον μὲν οὐκ ἀπήλλαξαν τῆς ἀρχῆς· καίτοι λέγεται Γάιον Φαβρίκιον εἰπεῖν, ὡς οὐκ Ἠπειρῶται Ῥωμαίους, ἀλλὰ Πύρρος νενικήκοι Λαιβῖνον, οἰόμενον οὐ τῆς δυνάμεως, ἀλλὰ τῆς στρατηγίας γεγονέναι [2] τὴν ἧτταν· ἀναπληροῦντες δὲ τὰς τάξεις καὶ συντάττοντες ἑτέρας προθύμως, καὶ λόγους ἀδεεῖς καὶ σοβαροὺς περὶ τοῦ πολέμου λέγοντες, ἔκπληξιν τῷ Πύρρῳ παρεῖχον.

[3] ἔδοξεν οὖν αὐτῷ πέμψαντι πρότερον διάπειραν λαβεῖν τῶν ἀνδρῶν εἰ συμβατικῶς ἔχοιεν, ἡγουμένῳ τὸ μὲν ἑλεῖν τὴν πόλιν καὶ κρατῆσαι παντάπασιν οὐ μικρὸν ἔργον οὐδὲ τῆς παρούσης δυνάμεως εἶναι, τὴν δὲ φιλίαν καὶ τὰς διαλύσεις κάλλιστ’ ἔχειν πρὸς δόξαν αὐτῷ μετὰ [4] νίκην. πεμφθεὶς οὖν ὁ Κινέας ἐνετύγχανε τοῖς δυνατοῖς, καὶ δῶρα παισὶν αὐτῶν καὶ γυναιξὶν ἔπεμψε παρὰ τοῦ [5] βασιλέως. ἔλαβε δ’ οὐδείς, ἀλλ’ ἀπεκρίναντο πάντες καὶ πᾶσαι, ὅτι δημοσίᾳ σπονδῶν γενομένων καὶ τὰ παρ’ αὐτῶν [6] ὑπάρξει πρόθυμα τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ κεχαρισμένα. πρὸς δὲ τὴν σύγκλητον ἐπαγωγὰ τοῦ Κινέου πολλὰ καὶ φιλάνθρωπα διαλεχθέντος, ἄσμενοι μὲν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἑτοίμως ἐδέχοντο, καίπερ ἄνδρας τε τοὺς ἡλωκότας ἐν τῇ μάχῃ δίχα λύτρων ἀφιέντος αὐτοῖς τοῦ Πύρρου καὶ συγκατεργάσεσθαι τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἐπαγγελλομένου, φιλίαν δ’ ἀντὶ τούτων ἑαυτῷ καὶ τοῖς Ταραντίνοις ἄδειαν, ἕτερον δὲ [7] μηδὲν αἰτουμένου· δῆλοί γε μὴν ἦσαν ἐνδιδόντες οἱ πολλοὶ πρὸς τὴν εἰρήνην, ἡττημένοι τε μεγάλῃ μάχῃ καὶ προσδοκῶντες ἑτέραν ἀπὸ μείζονος δυνάμεως, τῶν [8] Ἰταλικῶν τῷ Πύρρῳ προσγεγονότων. ἔνθα δὴ Κλαύδιος Ἄππιος, ἀνὴρ ἐπιφανής, ὑπὸ δὲ γήρως ἅμα καὶ πηρώσεως ὀμμάτων ἀπειρηκὼς πρὸς τὴν πολιτείαν καὶ πεπαυμένος, ἀπαγγελλομένων τότε τῶν παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως, καὶ λόγου κατασχόντος, ὡς μέλλει ψηφίζεσθαι τὰς διαλύσεις ἡ σύγκλητος, οὐκ ἐκαρτέρησεν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς θεράποντας ἄρασθαι κελεύσας αὑτόν, ἐκομίζετο πρὸς τὸ βουλευτήριον ἐν φορείῳ [9] δι’ ἀγορᾶς. γενόμενον δὲ πρὸς ταῖς θύραις οἱ μὲν παῖδες ἅμα τοῖς γαμβροῖς ὑπολαβόντες καὶ περισχόντες εἰσῆγον, ἡ δὲ βουλὴ σιωπὴν αἰδουμένη τὸν ἄνδρα μετὰ τιμῆς ἔσχεν.

[19] [1] Ὁ δ’ αὐτόθεν καταστάς πρότερον μέν ἔφη τὴν περὶ τὰ ὄμματα τύχην ἀνιαρῶς ἔφερον, ὦ Ῥωμαῖοι, νῦν δ’ ἄχθομαι πρὸς τῷ τυφλὸς εἶναι μὴ καὶ κωφὸς ὤν, ἀλλ’ ἀκούων αἰσχρὰ βουλεύματα καὶ δόγμαθ’ ὑμῶν, ἀνατρέποντα [2] τῆς Ῥώμης τὸ κλέος. ποῦ γὰρ ὑμῶν ὁ πρὸς ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους θρυλούμενος ἀεὶ λόγος, ὡς εἰ παρῆν ἐκεῖνος εἰς Ἰταλίαν ὁ μέγας Ἀλέξανδρος καὶ συνηνέχθη νέοις ἡμῖν καὶ τοῖς πατράσιν ἡμῶν ἀκμάζουσιν, οὐκ ἂν ὑμνεῖτο νῦν ἀνίκητος, ἀλλ’ ἢ φυγὼν ἂν ἤ που πεσὼν ἐνταῦθα τὴν [3] Ῥώμην ἐνδοξοτέραν ἀπέλιπε; ταῦτα μέντοι κενὴν ἀλαζονείαν καὶ κόμπον ἀποδείκνυτε, Χάονας καὶ Μολοσσοὺς τὴν ἀεὶ Μακεδόνων λείαν δεδιότες, καὶ τρέμοντες Πύρρον, ὃς τῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου δορυφόρων ἕνα γοῦν ἀεὶ περιέπων καὶ θεραπεύων διατετέλεκε, καὶ νῦν οὐ βοηθῶν τοῖς ἐνταῦθα μᾶλλον Ἕλλησιν ἢ φεύγων τοὺς ἐκεῖ πολεμίους πλανᾶται περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν, ἐπαγγελλόμενος ἡμῖν τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἀπὸ ταύτης τῆς δυνάμεως, ἣ μέρος μικρὸν αὐτῷ Μακεδονίας [4] οὐκ ἤρκεσε διαφυλάξαι. μὴ τοῦτον οὖν ἀπαλλάξειν νομίζετε ποιησάμενοι φίλον, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνους ἐπάξεσθαι καταφρονήσαντας ὑμῶν ὡς πᾶσιν εὐκατεργάστων, εἰ Πύρρος ἄπεισι μὴ δοὺς δίκην ὧν ὕβρισεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσλαβὼν μισθὸν τὸ ἐπεγγελάσαι Ῥωμαίοις Ταραν[5]τίνους καὶ Σαυνίτας. τοιαῦτα τοῦ Ἀππίου διαλεχθέντος, ὁρμὴ παρέστη πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον αὐτοῖς, καὶ τὸν Κινέαν ἀποπέμπουσιν ἀποκρινάμενοι, Πύρρον ἐξελθόντα τῆς Ἰταλίας, οὕτως εἰ δέοιτο περὶ φιλίας καὶ συμμαχίας διαλέγεσθαι, μέχρι δ’ οὗ πάρεστιν ἐν ὅπλοις, πολεμήσειν αὐτῷ Ῥωμαίους κατὰ κράτος, κἂν μυρίους ἔτι Λαιβίνους [6] τρέψηται μαχόμενος. λέγεται δὲ Κινέαν, ἐν ᾧ ταῦτ’ ἔπραττεν, ἅμα ποιησάμενον ἔργον καὶ σπουδάσαντα τῶν τε βίων γενέσθαι θεατὴν καὶ τῆς πολιτείας τὴν ἀρετὴν κατανοῆσαι, καὶ διὰ λόγων ἐλθόντα τοῖς ἀρίστοις, τά τ’ ἄλλα τῷ Πύρρῳ φράσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν ὡς ἡ σύγκλητος αὐτῷ [7] βασιλέων πολλῶν συνέδριον φανείη· περὶ δὲ τοῦ πλήθους δεδιέναι, μὴ πρός τινα φανῶσι Λερναίαν ὕδραν μαχόμενοι· διπλασίους γὰρ ἤδη τῷ ὑπάτῳ τῶν παρατεταγμένων πρότερον ἠθροῖσθαι, καὶ πολλάκις εἶναι τοσούτους ἔτι τῶν Ῥωμαίων ὅπλα φέρειν δυναμένους.

[20] [1] Ἐκ τούτου πρέσβεις ἀφίκοντο περὶ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων οἱ περὶ Γάιον Φαβρίκιον, οὗ πλεῖστον ἔφη Ῥωμαίους λόγον ἔχειν ὁ Κινέας ὡς ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ καὶ πολεμικοῦ, [2] πένητος δ’ ἰσχυρῶς. τοῦτον οὖν ὁ Πύρρος ἰδίᾳ φιλοφρονούμενος ἔπειθε λαβεῖν χρυσίον, ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ δῆθεν αἰσχρῷ, φιλίας δέ τι καὶ ξενίας ἐπονομάζων τοῦτο [3] σύμβολον. ἀπωσαμένου δὲ τοῦ Φαβρικίου, τότε μὲν ἡσύχασε, τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ βουλόμενος αὐτὸν ἐκπλῆξαι μήπω θεατὴν ἐλέφαντος γεγενημένον, ἐκέλευσε τῶν θηρίων τὸ μέγιστον ἐξόπισθεν αὐτοῖς παραστῆσαι κοινολογουμένοις, [4] αὐλαίαν παρατείναντας. ἐγένετο δὴ ταῦτα· καὶ σημείου δοθέντος ἡ μὲν αὐλαία παρήχθη, τὸ δὲ θηρίον ἄφνω τήν τε προνομαίαν ἀράμενον ὑπερέσχε τῆς κεφαλῆς τοῦ Φαβρικίου [5] καὶ φωνὴν ἀφῆκε φοβερὰν καὶ τραχεῖαν. ὁ δ’ ἠρέμα μεταστραφεὶς καὶ διαμειδιάσας πρὸς τὸν Πύρρον εἶπεν· οὔτε χθές με τὸ χρυσίον ἐκίνησεν οὔτε σήμερον [6] τὸ θηρίον. ἐν δὲ τῷ δείπνῳ λόγων παντοδαπῶν γενομένων, πλείστων δὲ περὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος καὶ τῶν φιλοσοφούντων, ἔτυχέ πως ὁ Κινέας ἐπιμνησθεὶς τοῦ Ἐπικούρου, καὶ διῆλθεν ἃ λέγουσι περὶ θεῶν καὶ πολιτείας καὶ τέλους, τὸ μὲν ἐν ἡδονῇ τιθέμενοι, πολιτείαν δὲ φεύγοντες ὡς βλάβην καὶ σύγχυσιν τοῦ μακαρίου, τὸ δὲ θεῖον ἀπωτάτω χάριτος καὶ ὀργῆς καὶ τοῦ μέλειν ἡμῶν εἰς ἀπράγμονα βίον καὶ μεστὸν εὐπαθειῶν ἀποικίζοντες.

[7] ἔτι δ’ αὐτοῦ λέγοντος, ἀνακραγὼν ὁ Φαβρίκιος ὦ Ἡράκλεις, εἶπε Πύρρῳ τὰ δόγματα μέλοι ταῦτα καὶ Σαυνίταις, [8] ἕως πολεμοῦσι πρὸς ἡμᾶς. οὕτω δὴ θαυμάσας τὸ φρόνημα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς καὶ τὸ ἦθος ὁ Πύρρος ἔτι μᾶλλον ὠρέγετο φιλίαν ἀντὶ πολέμου πρὸς τὴν πόλιν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι, κἀκεῖνον ἰδίᾳ παρεκάλει ποιησάμενον τὰς διαλύσεις ἕπεσθαι καὶ συζῆν μετ’ αὐτοῦ, πρῶτον ὄντα πάντων [9] τῶν ἑταίρων καὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν. ὁ δ’ ἡσυχῇ λέγεται πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν· ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ σοὶ τοῦτο βασιλεῦ λυσιτελές ἐστιν· αὐτοὶ γὰρ οἱ νῦν σε τιμῶντες καὶ θαυμάζοντες, ἂν ἐμοῦ πεῖραν λάβωσιν, ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ μᾶλλον [10] ἐθελήσουσιν ἢ σοῦ βασιλεύεσθαι. τοιοῦτος μὲν ὁ Φαβρίκιος. ὁ δὲ Πύρρος οὐ πρὸς ὀργὴν οὐδὲ τυραννικῶς ἐδέξατο τὸν λόγον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς φίλοις ἀπήγγειλε τοῦ Φαβρικίου τὴν μεγαλοφροσύνην, καὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους ἐκείνῳ μόνῳ διεπίστευσεν, ὅπως εἰ μὴ ψηφίσαιτο τὴν εἰρήνην ἡ σύγκλητος, ἀσπασάμενοι τοὺς προσήκοντας καὶ τὰ Κρόνια διεορτάσαντες ἀποπεμφθεῖεν πάλιν πρὸς [11] αὐτόν. καὶ ἀπεπέμφθησαν μετὰ τὴν ἑορτήν, τῷ ὑπολειφθέντι τῆς βουλῆς ζημίαν θάνατον ψηφισαμένης.

[21] [1] Μετὰ ταῦτα τοῦ Φαβρικίου τὴν ἀρχὴν παραλαβόντος, ἧκεν ἀνὴρ εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐπιστολὴν κομίζων ἣν ἔγραψεν ὁ τοῦ βασιλέως ἰατρός, ἐπαγγελλόμενος φαρμάκοις ἀναιρήσειν τὸν Πύρρον, εἰ χάρις αὐτῷ παρ’ ἐκείνων ὁμολογηθείη λύσαντι τὸν πόλεμον [2] ἀκινδύνως. ὁ δὲ Φαβρίκιος δυσχεράνας πρὸς τὴν ἀδικίαν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, καὶ τὸν συνάρχοντα διαθεὶς ὁμοίως, ἔπεμψε γράμματα πρὸς τὸν Πύρρον κατὰ τάχος, φυλάττεσθαι [3] τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν κελεύων. εἶχε δ’ οὕτως τὰ γεγραμμένα· Γάιος Φαβρίκιος καὶ Κόιντος Αἰμίλιος ὕπατοι Ῥωμαίων Πύρρῳ βασιλεῖ χαίρειν. οὔτε φίλων εὐτυχὴς [4] ἔοικας εἶναι κριτὴς οὔτε πολεμίων. γνώσῃ δὲ τὴν πεμφθεῖσαν ἡμῖν ἐπιστολὴν ἀναγνούς, ὅτι χρηστοῖς καὶ δικαίοις ἀνδράσι πολεμεῖς, ἀδίκοις δὲ καὶ κακοῖς πιστεύεις. οὐδὲ γὰρ ταῦτα σῇ χάριτι μηνύομεν, ἀλλ’ ὅπως μὴ τὸ σὸν πάθος ἡμῖν διαβολὴν ἐνέγκῃ καὶ δόλῳ δόξωμεν, ὡς [5] ἀρετῇ μὴ δυνάμενοι, κατεργάσασθαι τὸν πόλεμον. ἐντυχὼν τούτοις τοῖς γράμμασιν ὁ Πύρρος καὶ τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν ἐξελέγξας, τὸν μὲν ἰατρὸν ἐκόλασε, Φαβρικίῳ δὲ καὶ Ῥωμαίοις ἀμοιβὴν ἐδωρεῖτο προῖκα τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους, καὶ πάλιν ἔπεμψε τὸν Κινέαν διαπραξόμενον αὐτῷ τὴν [6] εἰρήνην. οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι μήτ’ εἰ χάρις ἐστὶ παρὰ πολεμίου, μήτ’ εἰ μισθὸς τοῦ μὴ ἀδικηθῆναι, λαβεῖν προῖκα τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀξιώσαντες, ἴσους ἀπέλυσαν αὐτῷ Ταραντίνων καὶ Σαυνιτῶν, περὶ δὲ φιλίας καὶ εἰρήνης οὐδὲν εἴων διαλέγεσθαι, πρὶν ‹ἂν› ἀράμενος τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τὸν στρατὸν ἐξ Ἰταλίας αἷς ἦλθε ναυσὶν ἀποπλεύσῃ πάλιν εἰς Ἤπειρον.

[7] Ἐκ τούτου μάχης ἄλλης τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῷ δεομένων, ἀναλαβὼν τὴν στρατιὰν ἐχώρει, καὶ περὶ Ἄσκλον πόλιν τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις συνάψας καὶ βιαζόμενος πρὸς χωρία δύσιππα καὶ ποταμὸν ἰλυώδη καὶ τραχύν, ἔφοδον τῶν θηρίων οὐ λαβόντων, ὥστε προσμεῖξαι τῇ φάλαγγι, τραυμάτων πολλῶν γενομένων καὶ νεκρῶν πεσόντων, [8] τότε μὲν διεκρίθη μέχρι νυκτὸς ἀγωνισάμενος. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ στρατηγῶν δι’ ὁμαλοῦ τὴν μάχην θέσθαι καὶ τοὺς ἐλέφαντας ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις γενέσθαι τῶν πολεμίων, προέλαβε τὰς δυσχωρίας φυλακῇ, καὶ πολλὰ καταμείξας ἀκοντίσματα καὶ τοξεύματα τοῖς θηρίοις, ἐπῆγε μετὰ ῥώμης καὶ βίας πυκνὴν καὶ συντεταγμένην τὴν δύναμιν.

[9] οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι τὰς διακλίσεις καὶ τὰς ἀντιπαραγωγὰς τὰς πρότερον οὐκ ἔχοντες, ἐξ ἐπιπέδου συνεφέροντο κατὰ [10] στόμα· καὶ σπεύδοντες ὤσασθαι τοὺς ὁπλίτας πρὶν ἐπιβῆναι τὰ θηρία, δεινοὺς περὶ τὰς σαρίσας τῶν ξιφῶν ἀγῶνας εἶχον, ἀφειδοῦντες ἑαυτῶν καὶ ‹πρὸς› τὸ τρῶσαι καὶ καταβαλεῖν ὁρῶντες, τὸ δὲ παθεῖν εἰς οὐδὲν τιθέμενοι.

[11] χρόνῳ δὲ πολλῷ λέγεται μὲν ἀρχὴ τροπῆς κατ’ αὐτὸν γενέσθαι τὸν Πύρρον, ἐπερείσαντα τοῖς ἀντιτεταγμένοις, τὸ δὲ πλεῖστον ἀλκῇ καὶ βίᾳ τῶν ἐλεφάντων κατειργάσατο, χρήσασθαι τῇ ἀρετῇ πρὸς τὴν μάχην τῶν Ῥωμαίων μὴ δυναμένων, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐφόδῳ κύματος ἢ σεισμοῦ κατερείποντος οἰομένων δεῖν ἐξίστασθαι, μηδ’ ὑπομένειν ἀπράκτους ἀποθνῄσκειν, ἐν τῷ μηδὲν ὠφελεῖν πάντα πάσχοντας [12] τὰ χαλεπώτατα. τῆς δὲ φυγῆς οὐ μακρᾶς εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον γενομένης, ἑξακισχιλίους ἀποθανεῖν φησι τῶν Ῥωμαίων Ἱερώνυμος (FGrH 154 F 12), τῶν δὲ περὶ Πύρρον ἐν τοῖς βασιλικοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν (FGrH 229 F 2) ἀνενεχθῆναι τρισχιλίους πεντακοσίους καὶ πέντε τεθνηκότας.

[13] ὁ μέντοι Διονύσιος (20, 13) οὔτε δύο περὶ Ἄσκλον μάχας οὔθ’ ὁμολογουμένην ἧτταν ἱστορεῖ γενέσθαι Ῥωμαίων, ἅπαξ δὲ μέχρι δυσμῶν ἡλίου μαχεσαμένους μόλις ἀπαλλαγῆναι, τοῦ Πύρρου τρωθέντος ὑσσῷ τὸν βραχίονα καὶ τὴν ἀποσκευὴν ἅμα Δαυνίων διαρπασάντων, ἀποθανεῖν δὲ καὶ Πύρρου καὶ Ῥωμαίων ἄνδρας ὑπὲρ [14] μυρίους πεντακισχιλίους ἑκατέρων. διελύθησαν δ’ ἀμφότεροι· καὶ λέγεται τὸν Πύρρον εἰπεῖν πρός τινα τῶν συνηδομένων αὐτῷ· ἂν ἔτι μίαν μάχην Ῥωμαίους νικήσωμεν, [15] ἀπολούμεθα παντελῶς. πολὺ μὲν γὰρ ἀπωλώλει μέρος ἧς ἄγων ἧκε δυνάμεως, φίλοι δὲ καὶ στρατηγοὶ πλὴν ὀλίγων ἅπαντες, μεταπέμπεσθαι δ’ οὐκ ἦσαν ἕτεροι, καὶ τοὺς αὐτόθι συμμάχους ἀμβλυτέρους ἑώρα, τοῖς δὲ Ῥωμαίοις ὥσπερ ἐκ πηγῆς οἴκοθεν ἐπιρρεούσης ἀναπληρούμενον εὐπόρως καὶ ταχὺ τὸ στρατόπεδον, καὶ ταῖς ἥτταις οὐκ ἀποβάλλοντας τὸ θαρρεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ῥώμην καὶ φιλονικίαν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον προσλαμβάνοντας.

[22] [1] Ἐν τοιαύταις δ’ ὢν ἀπορίαις, εἰς ἐλπίδας αὖ πάλιν καινὰς ἐνέπεσε καὶ πράγματα διχοστασίαν ἔχοντα [2] τῆς γνώμης. ἅμα γὰρ ἧκον ἐκ μὲν Σικελίας ἄνδρες, Ἀκράγαντα καὶ Συρακούσας καὶ Λεοντίνους ἐγχειρίζοντες αὐτῷ καὶ δεόμενοι Καρχηδονίους τε συνεκβαλεῖν καὶ τῶν τυράννων ἀπαλλάξαι τὴν νῆσον, ἐκ δὲ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀγγέλλοντες, ὡς Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Κεραυνὸς ἀπόλωλε συμπεσὼν Γαλάταις μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως, καὶ νῦν ἂν ἐν καιρῷ μάλιστα δεομένοις βασιλέως Μακεδόσι παραγένοιτο· [3] πολλὰ δὴ τὴν τύχην μεμψάμενος, ὅτι πράξεων μεγάλων ὑποθέσεις εἰς ἕνα καιρὸν αὐτῷ συνήνεγκε, καὶ νομίζων, ὡς ἀμφοτέρων ὑπαρχόντων, ἀπολλύναι θάτερον, διηνέχθη [4] τοῖς λογισμοῖς πολὺν χρόνον. εἶτα τοῖς Σικελικοῖς μειζόνων ὑποκεῖσθαι πραγμάτων δοκούντων, Λιβύης ἐγγὺς εἶναι δοκούσης, ἐπὶ ταῦτα τρέψας Κινέαν μὲν εὐθὺς ἐξέπεμψε προδιαλεξόμενον ὥσπερ εἰώθει ταῖς πόλεσιν, [5] αὐτὸς δὲ τοῖς Ταραντίνοις ἐμβαλὼν φρουράν, δυσανασχετοῦσι καὶ ἀξιοῦσιν ἢ παρέχειν ἐφ’ οἷς ἧκε συμπολεμοῦντα Ῥωμαίοις, ἢ τὴν χώραν προέμενον αὐτῶν ἀπολιπεῖν τὴν πόλιν οἵαν παρέλαβε, μηδὲν ἐπιεικὲς ἀποκρινάμενος, ἀλλὰ προστάξας ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν καὶ [6] περιμένειν τὸν ἑαυτοῦ καιρόν, ἐξέπλευσεν. ἁψαμένῳ δ’ αὐτῷ Σικελίας ἃ μὲν ἤλπισεν εὐθὺς ἀπήντα βέβαια, καὶ παρεῖχον αἱ πόλεις ἑαυτὰς προθύμως, τῶν δ’ ἀγῶνος καὶ βίας δεηθέντων οὐδὲν ἀντεῖχε τὸ πρῶτον, ἀλλὰ τρισμυρίοις πεζοῖς καὶ δισχιλίοις πεντακοσίοις ἱππεῦσι καὶ διακοσίαις ναυσὶν ἐπιών, τούς τε Φοίνικας ἐξῄρει καὶ κατεστρέφετο [7] τὴν ἐπικράτειαν αὐτῶν. τοῦ δ’ Ἔρυκος ἐχυρωτάτου τῶν χωρίων ὄντος καὶ πολλοὺς ‹τοὺς› ἀμυνομένους ἔχοντος, [8] ἔγνω βιάζεσθαι πρὸς τὰ τείχη. καὶ τῆς στρατιᾶς γενομένης ἑτοίμης, ἐνεδύσατο τὴν πανοπλίαν, καὶ προελθὼν εὔξατο τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ ποιήσειν ἀγῶνα καὶ θυσίαν ἀριστεῖον, ἂν τοῦ γένους καὶ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ἄξιον ἀγωνιστὴν αὐτὸν [9] ἀποδείξῃ τοῖς Σικελίαν οἰκοῦσιν Ἕλλησι· τῇ δὲ σάλπιγγι σημήνας καὶ τοῖς βέλεσι τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀνασκεδάσας καὶ τὰς κλίμακας προσαγαγών, πρῶτος ἐπέβη τοῦ τείχους.

[10] ἀντιστάντων δὲ πολλῶν, ἀμυνόμενος τοὺς μὲν ἐξέωσε τοῦ τείχους ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα καὶ κατέβαλε, πλείστους δὲ [11] περὶ αὑτὸν τῷ ξίφει χρώμενος ἐσώρευσε νεκρούς. ἔπαθε δ’ αὐτὸς οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσιδεῖν δεινὸς ἐφάνη τοῖς πολεμίοις, καὶ τὸν Ὅμηρον ἔδειξεν ὀρθῶς καὶ μετ’ ἐμπειρίας ἀποφαίνοντα τῶν ἀρετῶν μόνην τὴν ἀνδρείαν φορὰς πολλάκις ἐνθουσιώδεις καὶ μανικὰς φερομένην.

[12] ἁλούσης δὲ τῆς πόλεως ἔθυσέ τε τῷ θεῷ μεγαλοπρεπῶς καὶ θέας ἀγώνων παντοδαπῶν παρέσχε.

[23] [1] Τῶν δὲ περὶ Μεσσήνην βαρβάρων, Μαμερτίνων καλουμένων, πολλὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐνοχλούντων, ἐνίους δὲ καὶ φόρου πεποιημένων ὑποτελεῖς, πολλῶν δὲ καὶ μαχίμων ὄντων - διὸ καὶ προσηγορεύθησαν Ἀρήιοι γλώσσῃ τῇ Λατίνων - , τοὺς μὲν φορολόγους συλλαβὼν ἀπέκτεινεν, αὐτοὺς δὲ νικήσας μάχῃ πολλὰ τῶν φρουρίων ἐξέκοψε.

[2] Καρχηδονίοις δὲ συμβατικῶς ἔχουσι καὶ χρήματα βουλομένοις τελεῖν, εἰ γένοιτο φιλία, καὶ ναῦς ἀποστέλλειν, ἀπεκρίνατο πλειόνων ἐφιέμενος μίαν εἶναι διάλυσιν καὶ φιλίαν πρὸς αὐτούς, εἰ πᾶσαν ἐκλιπόντες Σικελίαν ὅρῳ [3] χρῷντο τῇ Λιβυκῇ θαλάσσῃ πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας. εὐτυχίᾳ δὲ καὶ ῥύμῃ τῶν παρόντων ἐπαιρόμενος, καὶ διώκων τὰς ἐλπίδας ἐφ’ αἷς ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἔπλευσε, πρώτης δὲ Λιβύης ἐφιέμενος καὶ ναῦς ἔχων πολλὰς πληρωμάτων ἐπιδεεῖς, ἤγειρεν ἐρέτας, οὐκ ἐπιεικῶς ἐντυγχάνων οὐδὲ πράως ταῖς πόλεσιν, ἀλλὰ δεσποτικῶς καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν βιαζόμενος καὶ κολάζων, οὐκ εὐθὺς ὢν οὐδ’ ἐν ἀρχῇ τοιοῦτος, ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον ἑτέρων τῷ πρὸς χάριν ὁμιλεῖν καὶ πάντα πιστεύειν καὶ μηδὲν ἐνοχλεῖν ὑπαγόμενος, εἶτα γινόμενος ἐκ δημαγωγοῦ τύραννος, ἀχαριστίας [4] τῇ χαλεπότητι καὶ ἀπιστίας προσωφλίσκανε δόξαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὡς ἀναγκαῖα συνεχώρουν καίπερ [5] δυσφοροῦντες· ἐπεὶ δὲ Θοίνωνα καὶ Σωσίστρατον, ἄνδρας ἡγεμονικοὺς ἐν Συρακούσαις, οἳ πρῶτοι μὲν αὐτὸν ἐλθεῖν ἔπεισαν εἰς Σικελίαν, ἐλθόντι δὲ τὴν πόλιν εὐθὺς ἐνεχείρισαν καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα συγκατειργάσαντο τῶν Σικελικῶν, μήτ’ ἄγειν σὺν αὑτῷ μήτ’ ἀπολείπειν βουλόμενος ἐν ὑποψίαις εἶχε, καὶ Σωσίστρατος μὲν ἀπέστη φοβηθείς, Θοίνωνα δὲ τὰ αὐτὰ φρονεῖν αἰτιασάμενος ἀπέκτεινεν, οὐ κατὰ μικρὸν οὐδὲ καθ’ ἓν αὐτῷ μεθίστατο τῶν πραγμάτων, ἀλλὰ δεινοῦ τινος μίσους ἐγγενομένου ταῖς πόλεσι πρὸς αὐτόν, αἱ μὲν προσετίθεντο [6] Καρχηδονίοις, αἱ δ’ ἐπήγοντο Μαμερτίνους. ἀποστάσεις δ’ ὁρῶν ἅπαντα καὶ νεωτερισμοὺς καὶ σύστασιν ἰσχυρὰν ἐφ’ αὑτόν, ἐδέξατο γράμματα Σαυνιτῶν καὶ Ταραντίνων, μόλις ἀντεχόντων ταῖς πόλεσιν αὐταῖς πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, εἰργομένων δὲ τῆς χώρας ἁπάσης καὶ δεομένων βοηθεῖν.

[7] τοῦτο δ’ ἦν εὐπρέπεια, μὴ φυγὴν εἶναι μηδ’ ἀπόγνωσιν τὸν ἀπόπλουν τῶν αὐτόθι πραγμάτων, τὸ δ’ ἀληθὲς οὐ δυνάμενος κρατεῖν Σικελίας, ‹ἀλλ’› ὥσπερ νεὼς ταραχθείσης [ἀλλ’] ἔκβασιν ζητῶν, αὖθις ἔρριψεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς [8] Ἰταλίαν. λέγεται δ’ ἀπαλλαττόμενος ἤδη πρὸς τὴν νῆσον ἀπιδὼν εἰπεῖν τοῖς περὶ αὐτόν· οἵαν ἀπολείπομεν ὦ φίλοι Καρχηδονίοις καὶ Ῥωμαίοις παλαίστραν. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ὥσπερ εἰκάσθη μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἐγένετο.

[24] [1] Τῶν δὲ βαρβάρων συστάντων ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἀποπλέοντα, Καρχηδονίοις μὲν ἐν τῷ πορθμῷ ναυμαχήσας ἀπέβαλε τῶν νεῶν πολλάς, ταῖς δ’ ἄλλαις κατέφυγε πρὸς [2] τὴν Ἰταλίαν· Μαμερτῖνοι δὲ μυρίων οὐκ ἐλάττους προδιαβάντες, ἀντιτάξασθαι μὲν ἐφοβήθησαν, ἐν δὲ ταῖς δυσχωρίαις ἐπιτιθέμενοι καὶ προσπίπτοντες, ἅπαν τὸ στράτευμα συνετάραξαν. ἔπεσε δὲ δύο θηρία, καὶ συχνοὶ τῶν [3] ὀπισθοφυλακούντων ἀπέθνῃσκον. αὐτὸς οὖν ἀπὸ τοῦ στόματος παρελάσας ἠμύνετο καὶ διεκινδύνευε πρὸς ἄνδρας ἠσκημένους μάχεσθαι καὶ θυμοειδεῖς. πληγεὶς δὲ τὴν κεφαλὴν ξίφει καὶ μικρὸν ἐκ τῶν μαχομένων ἀποστάς, [4] ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐπῆρε τοὺς πολεμίους. εἷς δὲ καὶ πολὺ πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιδραμών, ἀνὴρ τῷ τε σώματι μέγας καὶ τοῖς ὅπλοις λαμπρός, ἐχρῆτο τῇ φωνῇ θρασυτέρᾳ, καὶ [5] προελθεῖν ἐκέλευεν αὐτὸν εἰ ζῇ. παροξυνθεὶς δ’ ὁ Πύρρος ἐπέστρεψε βίᾳ [μετὰ] τῶν ὑπασπιστῶν, καὶ μετ’ ὀργῆς αἵματι πεφυρμένος καὶ δεινὸς ὀφθῆναι τὸ πρόσωπον ὠσάμενος δι’ αὐτῶν, καὶ φθάσας τὸν βάρβαρον ἔπληξε κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς τῷ ξίφει πληγήν, ῥώμῃ τε τῆς χειρὸς ἅμα καὶ βαφῆς ἀρετῇ τοῦ σιδήρου μέχρι τῶν κάτω διαδραμοῦσαν, ὥσθ’ ἑνὶ χρόνῳ περιπεσεῖν ἑκατέρωσε τὰ [6] μέρη τοῦ σώματος διχοτομηθέντος. τοῦτο τοὺς βαρβάρους ἐπέσχε τοῦ πρόσω χωρεῖν, ὥς τινα τῶν κρειττόνων θαυμάσαντας καὶ καταπλαγέντας τὸν Πύρρον.

[7] Ὁ δὲ τὴν ἄλλην ὁδὸν ἀδεῶς διεξελθών, ἧκεν εἰς Τάραντα δισμυρίους πεζοὺς καὶ τρισχιλίους ἱππεῖς κομίζων.

[8] ἀναλαβὼν δὲ τῶν Ταραντίνων τοὺς κρατίστους, εὐθὺς ἐπὶ Ῥωμαίους ἦγεν ἐν τῇ Σαυνίτιδι στρατοπεδεύοντας.

[25] [1] Τῶν δὲ Σαυνιτῶν τά τε πράγματα διέφθαρτο καὶ τοῦ φρονήματος ὑφεῖντο, κεκρατημένοι μάχαις πολλαῖς ὑπὸ τῶν Ῥωμαίων. ἐνῆν δέ τι καὶ πρὸς τὸν Πύρρον ὀργῆς διὰ τὸν εἰς Σικελίαν πλοῦν· ὅθεν οὐ πολλοὶ τούτων [2] αὐτῷ συνῆλθον. πάντας δὲ νείμας δίχα, τοὺς μὲν εἰς τὴν Λευκανίαν ἔπεμψεν, ἀντιληψομένους τοῦ ἑτέρου τῶν ὑπάτων ὡς μὴ βοηθοίη, τοὺς δ’ ἦγεν αὐτὸς ἐπὶ Μάνιον Κούριον, ‹περὶ› πόλιν Βενεουεντὸν ἱδρυμένον ἐν ἀσφαλεῖ [3] καὶ περιμένοντα τὴν ἐκ τῆς Λευκανίας βοήθειαν· ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ μάντεων αὐτὸν οἰωνοῖς καὶ ἱεροῖς ἀποτρεπόντων [4] ἡσύχαζε. σπεύδων οὖν ὁ Πύρρος ἐπιθέσθαι τούτοις πρὶν ἐκείνους ἐπελθεῖν, ἄνδρας τε τοὺς κρατίστους καὶ τῶν θηρίων τὰ μαχιμώτατα λαβὼν νυκτὸς ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ τὸ [5] στρατόπεδον. περιιόντι δ’ αὐτῷ μακρὰν καὶ δασεῖαν ὕλαις ὁδὸν οὐκ ἀντέσχε τὰ φῶτα, καὶ πλάναι τοῖς στρατιώταις συνέτυχον· καὶ περὶ ταῦτα γινομένης διατριβῆς, ἥ τε νὺξ ἐπέλιπε καὶ καταφανὴς ἦν ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐπερχόμενος ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων, ὥστε θόρυβον [6] πολὺν καὶ κίνησιν παρασχεῖν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῶν ἱερῶν τῷ Μανίῳ γενομένων, καὶ τοῦ καιροῦ βοηθεῖν ἀναγκάζοντος, ἐξελθὼν ἐνέβαλε τοῖς πρώτοις καὶ τρεψάμενος ἐφόβησε πάντας, ὥστε καὶ πεσεῖν οὐκ ὀλίγους καὶ τῶν ἐλεφάντων [7] τινὰς ἁλῶναι καταλειφθέντας. αὕτη τὸν Μάνιον ἡ νίκη κατήγαγε μαχόμενον εἰς τὸ πεδίον· καὶ συμβαλὼν ἐκ προδήλου, τὸ μὲν ἐτρέψατο τῶν πολεμίων, ἔστι δ’ ᾗ βιασθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν θηρίων καὶ συσταλεὶς πρὸς τὸ στρατόπεδον, τοὺς φύλακας ἐκάλει συχνοὺς ἐφεστῶτας τῷ [8] χάρακι μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ ἀκμῆτας. οἱ δ’ ἐπιφανέντες ἐκ τόπων ὀχυρῶν καὶ τὰ θηρία βάλλοντες ἠνάγκασαν ἀποστρέφεσθαι καὶ φυγῇ χωροῦντα διὰ τῶν συμμάχων ὀπίσω ταραχὴν ἀπεργάσασθαι καὶ σύγχυσιν, ἣ τὸ νίκημα παρέδωκε τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις, ἅμα δὲ καὶ τὸ κράτος τῆς [9] ἡγεμονίας. καὶ γὰρ φρόνημα καὶ δύναμιν καὶ δόξαν ὡς ἄμαχοι προσλαβόντες ἐκ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐκείνης καὶ τῶν ἀγώνων, Ἰταλίαν μὲν εὐθύς, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον Σικελίαν κατέσχον.

[26] [1] Οὕτω μὲν οὖν ἐξέπεσε τῶν Ἰταλικῶν καὶ Σικελικῶν ὁ Πύρρος ἐλπίδων, ἑξαετῆ χρόνον ἀναλώσας περὶ τοὺς ἐκεῖ πολέμους καὶ τοῖς ‹μὲν› πράγμασιν ἐλαττωθείς, τὸ δ’ ἀνδρεῖον ἀνίκητον ἐν ταῖς ἥτταις διαφυλάξας, καὶ νομισθεὶς ἐμπειρίᾳ μὲν πολεμικῇ καὶ χειρὶ καὶ τόλμῃ πολὺ πρῶτος εἶναι τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν βασιλέων, ἃ δὲ ταῖς πράξεσιν ἐκτᾶτο, ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἀπολλύναι, δι’ ἔρωτα τῶν ἀπόντων οὐδὲν εἰς ὃ δεῖ θέσθαι τῶν ὑπαρχόντων φθάσας.

[2] ὅθεν ἀπείκαζεν αὐτὸν ὁ Ἀντίγονος κυβευτῇ πολλὰ βάλλοντι καὶ καλά, χρῆσθαι δ’ οὐκ ἐπισταμένῳ τοῖς πεσοῦσι.

[3] Κομίσας δ’ εἰς Ἤπειρον ὀκτακισχιλίους πεζοὺς καὶ πεντακοσίους ἱππεῖς, χρήματα δ’ οὐκ ἔχων, ἐζήτει πόλεμον [4] ᾧ θρέψει τὸ στράτευμα. καί τινων Γαλατῶν αὐτῷ προσγενομένων, ἐνέβαλεν εἰς Μακεδονίαν, Ἀντιγόνου τοῦ Δημητρίου βασιλεύοντος, ὡς ἁρπαγῇ καὶ λεηλασίᾳ [5] χρησόμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ πόλεις ἐλάμβανε συχνὰς καὶ στρατιῶται δισχίλιοι μετέστησαν ὡς αὐτόν, ἐλπίσας τι πλέον ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον, καὶ περὶ τὰ Στενὰ [6] προσπεσὼν συνετάραξε τὴν στρατιὰν ἅπασαν. οἱ δ’ ἐπὶ τῆς οὐραγίας τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου τεταγμένοι Γαλάται, συχνοὶ τὸ πλῆθος ὄντες, ὑπέστησαν εὐρώστως, καὶ καρτερᾶς μάχης γενομένης, τούτων μὲν οἱ πλεῖστοι κατεκόπησαν, οἱ δὲ τῶν ἐλεφάντων ἡγεμόνες ἐγκαταλαμβανόμενοι [7] παρέδωκαν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ τὰ θηρία πάντα. προσλαβὼν δ’ ὁ Πύρρος τηλικαῦτα, καὶ τῇ τύχῃ μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς λογισμοῖς χρώμενος, ἐπῆγε τῇ φάλαγγι τῶν Μακεδόνων, ἀναπεπλησμένῃ [8] ταραχῆς καὶ φόβου διὰ τὴν ἧτταν. ὅθεν ἐμβολῆς μὲν ἔσχοντο καὶ μάχης πρὸς αὐτόν· ‹ὁ› δὲ τὴν δεξιὰν προτείνων καὶ στρατηγοὺς καὶ ταξιάρχους ἀνακαλούμενος, ἅπαντας ὁμαλῶς ἀπέστησε τοὺς πεζοὺς τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου.

[9] κἀκεῖνος μὲν ὑποφεύγων ὅμως τῶν παραλίων τινὰς πόλεων κατέσχεν, ὁ δὲ Πύρρος ‹ἐν› εὐτυχήμασι τοσούτοις μέγιστον αὑτῷ πρὸς δόξαν οἰόμενος διαπεπρᾶχθαι τὸ περὶ τοὺς Γαλάτας, τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ λαμπρότατα τῶν λαφύρων ἀνέθηκεν εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν τῆς Ἰτωνίδος Ἀθηνᾶς, τόδε τὸ ἐλεγεῖον ἐπιγράψας (96 Preger)·

[10] Τοὺς θυρεοὺς ὁ Μολοσσὸς Ἰτωνίδι δῶρον Ἀθάνᾳ

Πύρρος ἀπὸ θρασέων ἐκρέμασεν Γαλατᾶν,

πάντα τὸν Ἀντιγόνου καθελὼν στρατόν· οὐ μέγα θαῦμα·

αἰχμηταὶ καὶ νῦν καὶ πάρος Αἰακίδαι.

[11] μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην εὐθὺς ἀνελάμβανε τὰς πόλεις. τῶν δ’ Αἰγαίων κρατήσας, τά τ’ ἄλλα χαλεπῶς ἐχρήσατο τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, καὶ φρουρὰν Γαλατικὴν ἐν τῇ πόλει κατέλιπε [12] τῶν μετ’ αὐτοῦ στρατευομένων. οἱ δὲ Γαλάται, γένος ἀπληστότατον χρημάτων ὄντες, ἐπέθεντο τῶν βασιλέων αὐτόθι κεκηδευμένων τοὺς τάφους ὀρύττειν, καὶ τὰ μὲν χρήματα διήρπασαν, τὰ δ’ ὀστᾶ πρὸς ὕβριν διέρριψαν.

[13] τοῦτο κούφως ἔδοξε καὶ ὀλιγώρως ἐνεγκεῖν ὁ Πύρρος, ἢ δι’ ἀσχολίας τινὰς ὑπερθέμενος, ἢ παρεὶς ὅλως διὰ φόβον τὸ κολάσαι τοὺς βαρβάρους· ὅθεν ἤκουσε κακῶς ὑπὸ τῶν Μακεδόνων.

[14] Οὔπω δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῷ βεβαιότητα καὶ σύστασιν ἐχόντων μόνιμον, ᾐωρεῖτο τῇ γνώμῃ πάλιν πρὸς [15] ἑτέρας ἐλπίδας. καὶ τὸν μὲν Ἀντίγονον ἐφυβρίζων ἀναίσχυντον ἐκάλει, μὴ λαμβάνοντα θοἱμάτιον, ἀλλ’ ἔτι τὴν πορφύραν φοροῦντα, Κλεωνύμου δὲ τοῦ Σπαρτιάτου παραγενομένου καὶ καλοῦντος αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν Λακεδαίμονα, [16] προθύμως ὑπήκουσεν. ὁ δὲ Κλεώνυμος ἦν μὲν γένους βασιλικοῦ, δοκῶν δὲ βίαιος εἶναι καὶ μοναρχικός, οὔτ’ εὔνοιαν οὔτε πίστιν εἶχεν, ἀλλ’ Ἄρευς ἐβασίλευε.

[17] καὶ τοῦτο μὲν [ἓν] ἦν κοινὸν ἔγκλημα καὶ πρεσβύτερον αὐτῷ πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας· γυναῖκα δὲ καλὴν καὶ γένους βασιλικοῦ Χιλωνίδα τὴν Λεωτυχίδου πρεσβύτερος ὢν [18] ἔγημεν ὁ Κλεώνυμος. ἡ δ’ Ἀκροτάτῳ τῷ Ἄρεως ἐπιμανεῖσα, μειρακίῳ καθ’ ὥραν ἀκμάζοντι, λυπηρὸν ἐρῶντι τῷ Κλεωνύμῳ καὶ ἄδοξον ὁμοῦ παρεῖχε τὸν γάμον· οὐδένα γὰρ ἐλάνθανε Σπαρτιατῶν καταφρονούμενος ὑπὸ τῆς [19] γυναικός. οὕτω δὲ τῶν κατ’ οἶκον ἀνιαρῶν τοῖς πολιτικοῖς προσγενομένων, ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ βαρυθυμίας ἐπῆγε τῇ Σπάρτῃ τὸν Πύρρον, ἔχοντα δισμυρίους καὶ πεντακισχιλίους πεζούς, δισχιλίους δ’ ἱππεῖς, ἐλέφαντας δ’ [20] εἰκοσιτέσσαρας· ὥστε τῷ μεγέθει τῆς παρασκευῆς εὐθὺς εἶναι κατάδηλον οὐ Κλεωνύμῳ τὴν Σπάρτην, ἀλλὰ τὴν Πελοπόννησον ἑαυτῷ κτώμενον, ἐπεὶ τῷ γε λόγῳ καὶ πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἔξαρνος ἦν τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, πρεσβεύσαντας [21] εἰς Μεγάλην πόλιν. ἔφη γὰρ ἐλευθερώσων τὰς ὑπ’ Ἀντιγόνῳ πόλεις ἀφῖχθαι, καὶ νὴ Δία τοὺς νεωτέρους παῖδας εἰς Σπάρτην, εἰ μή τι κωλύει, πέμψων ἐντραφησομένους τοῖς Λακωνικοῖς ἔθεσιν, ὡς τούτῳ πλέον ἔχοιεν [22] ἤδη τῶν πάντων βασιλέων. ταῦτα πλαττόμενος καὶ παράγων τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας αὐτῷ καθ’ ὁδόν, ὡς πρῶτον ἥψατο τῆς Λακωνικῆς, ἁρπαγὴν ἐποιεῖτο καὶ λεηλασίαν.

[23] ἐγκαλούντων δὲ τῶν πρέσβεων, ὅτι μὴ καταγγείλας πόλεμον ἐξενήνοχε πρὸς αὐτούς, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὑμᾶς ἔφη τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας ἴσμεν ὅ τι ἂν μέλλητε ποιεῖν ἑτέροις [24] προλέγοντας. εἷς δὲ τῶν παρόντων, ὄνομα Μανδρικλείδας, εἶπε τῇ φωνῇ λακωνίζων· αἰ μὲν ἐσσὶ τύ γε θεός, οὐδὲν μὴ πάθωμεν· οὐ γὰρ ἀδικεῦμεν· αἰ δ’ ἄνθρωπος, ἔσσεται καὶ τεῦ κάρρων ἄλλος.

[27] [1] Ἐκ τούτου κατέβαινεν ἐπὶ τὴν Λακεδαίμονα, καὶ τοῦ Κλεωνύμου κελεύοντος ἐξ ἐφόδου προσβαλεῖν, φοβηθεὶς ὁ Πύρρος, ὡς λέγεται, μὴ διαρπάσωσιν οἱ στρατιῶται τὴν πόλιν ἐν νυκτὶ προσπεσόντες, ἐπέσχεν, εἰπὼν [2] ὅτι ταὐτὸ ποιήσουσι μεθ’ ἡμέραν. αὐτοί τε γὰρ ἦσαν ὀλίγοι καὶ ἀπαράσκευοι διὰ τὸ αἰφνίδιον, ὅ τ’ Ἄρευς οὐκ ἐτύγχανε παρών, ἀλλ’ ἐν Κρήτῃ Γορτυνίοις πολεμουμένοις [3] βοηθῶν. καὶ τοῦτο δὴ μάλιστα τὴν πόλιν ἔσωσε, δι’ ἐρημίαν καὶ ἀσθένειαν καταφρονηθεῖσαν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Πύρρος οὐδένα μαχεῖσθαι νομίζων κατηυλίσατο, τοῦ δὲ Κλεωνύμου τὴν οἰκίαν οἵ τε φίλοι καὶ εἵλωτες οὕτως ἐκόσμησαν καὶ παρεσκεύασαν, ὡς δειπνήσοντος τοῦ Πύρρου [4] παρ’ αὐτῷ. γενομένης δὲ νυκτός, οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι πρῶτον μὲν ἐβουλεύσαντο τὰς γυναῖκας εἰς Κρήτην ἀποστέλλειν· αἱ δ’ ἀντέστησαν, Ἀρχιδαμία δὲ καὶ ξίφος ἔχουσα πρὸς τὴν γερουσίαν ἦλθεν, ἐγκαλοῦσα τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ὑπὲρ τῶν γυναικῶν, εἰ ζῆν αὐτὰς ἀξιοῦσι τῆς Σπάρτης [5] ἀπολομένης. ἔπειτα τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τῶν πολεμίων παράλληλον ἔγνωσαν ἐμβαλόντες τάφρον ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν αὐτῆς στῆσαι τὰς ἁμάξας, μέχρι τοῦ μέσου τῶν τροχῶν καταχώσαντες, ὅπως ἕδραν ἔχουσαι δυσεκβίαστον ἐμποδὼν [6] ὦσι τοῖς θηρίοις. ἀρχομένοις δὲ ταῦτα πράττειν ἧκον αὐτοῖς τῶν παρθένων καὶ γυναικῶν αἱ μὲν ‹ἐν› ἱματίοις καταζωσάμεναι τοὺς χιτωνίσκους, αἱ δὲ μονοχίτωνες, [7] συνεργασόμεναι τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις. τοὺς δὲ μάχεσθαι μέλλοντας ἐκέλευον ἡσυχάζειν, καὶ λαβοῦσαι μέτρον αὐταὶ καθ’ αὑτὰς ἐξειργάσαντο τῆς τάφρου τὸ τρίτον [8] μέρος. ἦν δὲ τὸ μὲν πλάτος αὐτῆς πήχεων ἕξ, τὸ δὲ βάθος τεσσάρων, τὸ δὲ μῆκος ὀκτάπλεθρον, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Φύλαρχος (FGrH 81 F 48), ὡς δ’ Ἱερώνυμος (FGrH 154 [9] F 14) ἔλαττον. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ κινουμένων τῶν πολεμίων, τὰ ὅπλα τοῖς νέοις ὀρέγουσαι καὶ παραδιδοῦσαι τὴν τάφρον, ἀμύνειν καὶ φυλάττειν ἐκέλευον, ὡς ἡδὺ μὲν νικᾶν ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς τῆς πατρίδος, εὐκλεὲς δὲ θνῄσκειν ἐν χερσὶ μητέρων καὶ γυναικῶν, ἀξίως τῆς Σπάρτης πεσόντας.

[10] ἡ δὲ Χιλωνὶς ἐκποδὼν οὖσα καθ’ ἑαυτὴν βρόχον εἶχεν ἐνημμένον, ὅπως ἐπὶ τῷ Κλεωνύμῳ μὴ γένοιτο τῆς πόλεως ἁλούσης.

[28] [1] Αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ὁ Πύρρος ἐβιάζετο κατὰ στόμα τοῖς ὁπλίταις πρὸς ἀσπίδας πολλὰς τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ἀντιπαρατεταγμένας καὶ τάφρον οὐ περατὴν οὐδὲ βάσιν ἀσφαλῆ τοῖς μαχομένοις παρέχουσαν ὑπὸ χαυνότητος.

[2] ὁ δὲ παῖς Πτολεμαῖος ἔχων δισχιλίους Γαλάτας καὶ Χαόνων λογάδας ἐξελίξας τὴν τάφρον, ἐπειρᾶτο κατὰ τὰς [3] ἁμάξας ὑπερβαίνειν. αἱ δ’ ὑπὸ βάθους καὶ πυκνότητος οὐ μόνον τούτοις τὴν ἔφοδον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις [4] δύσεργον ἐποίουν τὴν βοήθειαν. ἀνασπώντων δὲ τῶν Γαλατῶν τοὺς τροχοὺς καὶ ὑποσυρόντων τὰς ἁμάξας εἰς τὸν ποταμόν, κατιδὼν τὸν κίνδυνον ὁ νεανίας Ἀκρότατος καὶ τὴν [τε] πόλιν διαδραμὼν μετὰ τριακοσίων, περιῆλθε τὸν Πτολεμαῖον, οὐ συνορώμενος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ διά τινας συγκλινίας, ἕως προσέβαλε τοῖς ἐσχάτοις καὶ μεταβαλόντας ἠνάγκασε μάχεσθαι πρὸς ἑαυτόν, ὠθουμένους ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων εἴς τε τὴν τάφρον καὶ περὶ ταῖς ἁμάξαις πίπτοντας, ἄχρι οὗ φόνῳ πολλῷ μόλις ἀνεκόπησαν.

[5] ἐθεῶντο δ’ οἵ τε πρεσβύτεροι καὶ τῶν γυναικῶν τὸ πλῆθος ἀριστεύοντα τὸν Ἀκρότατον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀπῄει πάλιν διὰ τῆς πόλεως ἐπὶ τὴν αὑτοῦ τάξιν, αἵματος κατάπλεως καὶ γαῦρος ὑπὸ τῆς νίκης ἐπηρμένος, καὶ μείζων ἔδοξε γεγονέναι καὶ καλλίων ταῖς Λακαίναις, καὶ τὴν Χιλωνίδα [6] τοῦ ἔρωτος ἐζήλουν. τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων τινὲς ἐπηκολούθουν βοῶντες· οἶχε Ἀκρότατε καὶ οἶφε τὰν Χιλωνίδα· [7] μόνον παῖδας ἀγαθοὺς τᾷ Σπάρτᾳ ποίει. κατὰ δὲ τὸν Πύρρον αὐτὸν ἰσχυρᾶς μάχης συνεστώσης, ἄλλοι τε λαμπρῶς ἠγωνίζοντο, καὶ Φύλλιος ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀντισχὼν καὶ πλείστους ἀποκτείνας τῶν βιαζομένων, ὡς ᾔσθετο τραυμάτων πλήθει παραλυόμενον ἑαυτόν, ἐκστάς τινι τῶν ἐπιτεταγμένων τῆς χώρας ἔπεσεν ἐντὸς τῶν ὅπλων, ὥστε μὴ γενέσθαι τὸν νεκρὸν ὑπὸ τοῖς πολεμίοις.

[29] [1] Νυκτὸς δ’ ἡ μάχη διεκρίθη, καὶ κοιμώμενος ὁ Πύρρος ὄψιν εἶδε τοιαύτην. ἐδόκει βάλλεσθαι κεραυνοῖς ὑπ’ ἀετοῦ τὴν Λακεδαίμονα καὶ φλέγεσθαι πᾶσαν, αὐτὸς [2] δὲ χαίρειν. ὑπὸ δὲ τῆς χαρᾶς ἐξεγρόμενος, τούς θ’ ἡγεμόνας ἐκέλευεν ἐν παρασκευῇ τὸν στρατὸν ἔχειν, καὶ τοῖς φίλοις διηγεῖτο τὸν ὄνειρον, ὡς ληψόμενος κατὰ [3] κράτος τὴν πόλιν. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι θαυμασίως ἐπείθοντο, Λυσιμάχῳ δ’ οὐκ ἤρεσκεν ἡ ὄψις, ἀλλ’ ἔφη δεδιέναι μή, καθάπερ τὰ βαλλόμενα τοῖς κεραυνοῖς ἀνέμβατα μένει χωρία, καὶ τῷ Πύρρῳ προσημαίνῃ τὸ θεῖον ἀνείσοδον [4] ἔσεσθαι τὴν πόλιν. ὁ δὲ Πύρρος εἰπὼν ὅτι ταῦτα μέν ἐστι πυλαϊκῆς ὀχλαγωγίας καὶ ἀσοφίαν ἔχοντα πολλήν, ἐκεῖνο δὲ δεῖ τὰ ὅπλα διὰ χειρῶν ἔχοντας ὑποβάλλειν ἑαυτοῖς (Il. 12, 243)

εἷς οἰωνὸς ἄριστος ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ Πύρρου,

[5] ἐξανέστη καὶ προσῆγεν ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὸν στρατόν. ἠμύνοντο δὲ προθυμίᾳ καὶ ἀρετῇ παρὰ δύναμιν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι· καὶ παρῆσαν αἱ γυναῖκες, ὀρέγουσαι βέλη καὶ σιτία καὶ ποτὸν τοῖς δεομένοις προσφέρουσαι καὶ ἀναλαμβάνουσαι [6] τοὺς τιτρωσκομένους. τὴν δὲ τάφρον οἱ Μακεδόνες χοῦν ἐπειρῶντο, πολλὴν συμφοροῦντες ὕλην, ὑφ’ ἧς ὅπλα καὶ σώματα νεκρῶν ἐπιχεομένης ἀπεκρύπτετο.

[7] καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων βοηθούντων, ὤφθη παρὰ τὴν τάφρον καὶ τὰς ἁμάξας ὁ Πύρρος ἵππῳ βιαζόμενος [8] εἰς τὴν πόλιν. κραυγῆς δὲ τῶν κατὰ τοῦτο τεταγμένων γενομένης καὶ δρόμου καὶ ἀλαλαγμοῦ τῶν γυναικῶν, ἤδη διεξελαύνοντι τῷ Πύρρῳ καὶ προσκειμένῳ τοῖς κατὰ πρόσωπον ἐξήλατο Κρητικῷ βέλει πληγεὶς ὁ ἵππος ὑπὸ τὴν γαστέρα καὶ κατέβαλε δυσθανατῶν τὸν Πύρρον [9] εἰς τόπους ὀλισθηροὺς καὶ κατάντεις. θορυβουμένων δὲ περὶ τοῦτον τῶν ἑταίρων, ἐπέδραμον οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται, καὶ [10] χρώμενοι τοῖς βέλεσιν ἐξέωσαν ἅπαντας. ἐκ δὲ τούτου καὶ τὴν ἄλλην μάχην ἔπαυεν, οἰόμενος ἐνδώσειν τι τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, σχεδὸν ἁπάντων κατατετρωμένων αὐτοῖς, [11] πεπτωκότων δὲ πολλῶν. ἡ δ’ ἀγαθὴ τύχη τῆς πόλεως, εἴτε πεῖραν ἀρετῆς λαμβάνουσα τῶν ἀνδρῶν, εἴθ’ ἑαυτῆς ὅσην ἐν ἀπόροις ἔχει δύναμιν ἀπόδειξιν διδοῦσα, μοχθηρὰς ἤδη τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἐχόντων τὰς ἐλπίδας, Ἀμεινίαν τε Φωκέα τῶν Ἀντιγόνου στρατηγῶν ἐκ Κορίνθου βοηθήσαντα παρεισήγαγε μετὰ ξένων, καὶ τοῦτον ἄρτι δεδεγμένων, ὁ βασιλεὺς αὐτοῖς Ἄρευς ἧκεν ἐκ Κρήτης, δισχιλίους [12] στρατιώτας κομίζων. αἵ τε δὴ γυναῖκες εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὰς οἰκίας ἐσκεδάσθησαν, οὐδὲν ἔτι πολυπραγμονεῖν ἀξιοῦσαι τῶν πολεμικῶν, καὶ τοὺς παρ’ ἡλικίαν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης γενομένους ἀφέντες, αὑτοὺς ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην ἔταξαν.

[30] [1] Τὸν δὲ Πύρρον ἔσχε μέν τις ἀλκὴ καὶ φιλοτιμία μᾶλλον διὰ τοὺς προσγεγονότας κρατῆσαι τῆς πόλεως· ὡς δ’ οὐδὲν ἐπέραινε, πληγὰς λαβὼν ἀπέστη καὶ τὴν χώραν ἐπόρθει, διανοούμενος αὐτόθι χειμάσαι.

[2] Τὸ δὲ χρεὼν ἦν ἄφυκτον. ἐν γὰρ Ἄργει στάσις ἦν Ἀριστέου πρὸς Ἀρίστιππον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Ἀρίστιππος ἐδόκει χρῆσθαι φίλῳ τῷ Ἀντιγόνῳ, φθάσας ὁ Ἀριστέας ἐκάλει [3] τὸν Πύρρον εἰς τὸ Ἄργος. ὁ δ’ ἐλπίδας ἐξ ἐλπίδων ἀεὶ κυλίνδων, καὶ ταῖς μὲν εὐτυχίαις ἐπ’ ἄλλας χρώμενος ἀφορμαῖς, ἃ δ’ ἔπταιεν ἑτέροις βουλόμενος ἀναπληροῦν πράγμασιν, οὔθ’ ἧτταν οὔτε νίκην ὅρον ἐποιεῖτο τοῦ [4] ταράττεσθαι καὶ ταράττειν. εὐθὺς οὖν ἀνεζεύγνυεν ἐπὶ τὸ Ἄργος. ὁ δ’ Ἄρευς ἐνέδρας τε πολλὰς ὑφεὶς καὶ καταλαβὼν τὰ χαλεπώτατα τῆς ὁδοῦ, περιέκοπτε τοὺς Γαλάτας [5] καὶ τοὺς Μολοσσοὺς ὀπισθοφυλακοῦντας. τῷ δὲ Πύρρῳ προείρητο μὲν ἐκ τῶν ἱερῶν ἀλόβων γενομένων ὑπὸ τοῦ μάντεως ἀποβολή τινος τῶν ἀναγκαίων, παρὰ δὲ τὸν καιρὸν τότε τῷ θορύβῳ καὶ τῷ κινήματι τὸν λογισμὸν ἐκκρουσθείς, ἐκέλευσε τὸν υἱὸν Πτολεμαῖον λαβόντα τοὺς ἑταίρους παραβοηθεῖν, αὐτὸς δὲ θᾶττον ἐκ τῶν [6] στενῶν ἐφελκόμενος τὴν στρατιὰν ὑπῆγεν. ὀξείας δὲ περὶ τὸν Πτολεμαῖον μάχης γενομένης, καὶ τῶν ἐπιλέκτων Λακεδαιμονίων, ὧν Εὔαλκος ἡγεῖτο, τοῖς μαχομένοις πρὸ αὐτοῦ συμπλεκομένων, ἀνὴρ πλήκτης καὶ δραμεῖν ὀξύς, Ὄροισσος ὄνομα, Κρὴς Ἀπτεραῖος, ἐκ πλαγίου παραδραμὼν ἀγωνιζόμενον ἐκθύμως τὸν νεανίσκον ἐπάταξε [7] καὶ κατέβαλε. πεσόντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ τροπῆς γενομένης τῶν περὶ αὐτόν, οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι διώκοντες καὶ κρατοῦντες ἔλαθον εἰς τὸ πεδίον συνεμβαλόντες καὶ ἀποληφθέντες ὑπὸ τῶν ὁπλιτῶν· ἐφ’ οὓς ὁ Πύρρος, ἄρτι τὸν θάνατον τοῦ παιδὸς ἀκηκοὼς καὶ περιπαθῶν, ἐπέστρεψε [8] τοὺς ἱππεῖς τῶν Μολοσσῶν. καὶ πρῶτος εἰσελάσας ἐνεπίμπλατο φόνου τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, ἀεὶ μέν τις ἄμαχος καὶ δεινὸς ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις φαινόμενος, τότε δ’ [9] ὑπερβάλλων τόλμῃ καὶ βίᾳ τοὺς προτέρους ἀγῶνας. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐπέβαλε τῷ Εὐάλκῳ τὸν ἵππον, ὁ μὲν ἐκ πλαγίου παραστὰς μικρὸν ἐδέησε τῷ ξίφει τὴν ἐπὶ τῆς ἡνίας χεῖρα διακόψαι τοῦ Πύρρου, τὴν δ’ ἡνίαν πατάξας ἀπέκοψεν. [10] ὁ δὲ Πύρρος ἅμα τῇ πληγῇ τοῦ δόρατος διελάσας ἐκεῖνον, ἀπερρύη τοῦ ἵππου, καὶ πεζὸς ἤδη πάντας ἐπὶ τῷ [11] Εὐάλκῳ μαχομένους ἀπέκτεινε τοὺς λογάδας. καὶ μέγα τοῦτο τῇ Σπάρτῃ παρανάλωμα τοῦ πολέμου πέρας ἔχοντος ἐποίησεν ἡ φιλοτιμία τῶν ἀρχόντων.

[31] [1] Ὁ δὲ Πύρρος ὥσπερ ἐναγισμόν τινα τῷ παιδὶ τελέσας καὶ λαμπρὸν ἐπιτάφιον ἀγωνισάμενος, καὶ πολὺ τῆς λύπης ἐν τῷ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ἀφεὶς θυμῷ, προῆγεν [2] ἐπὶ τὸ Ἄργος. καὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον ἤδη πυνθανόμενος ἐπὶ τῶν ἄκρων ὑπὲρ τοῦ πεδίου καθῆσθαι, περὶ τὴν [3] Ναυπλίαν ἐστρατοπέδευσε. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ κήρυκα πρὸς τὸν Ἀντίγονον ἔπεμψε, λυμεῶνά τε καλῶν καὶ προκαλούμενος εἰς τὸ πεδίον καταβάντα διαγωνίσασθαι περὶ τῆς [4] βασιλείας. ὁ δ’ ἀπεκρίνατο τὴν μὲν αὑτοῦ στρατηγίαν οὐχ ὅπλων μᾶλλον ἢ καιρῶν εἶναι, τῷ δὲ Πύρρῳ πολλὰς [5] ὁδοὺς ἀνεῳγέναι πρὸς θάνατον, εἰ ζῆν μὴ σχολάζει. πρὸς δ’ ἀμφοτέρους πρέσβεις ἧκον ἐξ Ἄργους, ἀπαλλάττεσθαι δεόμενοι καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐᾶν μηδετέρου γενομένην, εὔνουν [6] δ’ οὖσαν ἀμφοτέροις. ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀντίγονος ἐπείθετο καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἐδίδου τοῖς Ἀργείοις ὅμηρον, ὁ δὲ Πύρρος ὡμολόγει μὲν ἀπαλλαγήσεσθαι, μὴ παρέχων δὲ πίστιν ὑποπτότερος ἦν.

[7] Γίνεται δὲ σημεῖον αὐτῷ τε τῷ Πύρρῳ μέγα· τῶν γὰρ βοῶν τεθυμένων αἱ κεφαλαὶ κείμεναι χωρὶς ἤδη τάς τε γλώττας ὤφθησαν προβάλλουσαι καὶ περιλιχμώμεναι τὸν ἑαυτῶν φόνον· ἔν τε τῇ πόλει τῶν Ἀργείων ἡ τοῦ Λυκείου προφῆτις Ἀπόλλωνος ἐξέδραμε, βοῶσα νεκρῶν ὁρᾶν καὶ φόνου κατάπλεω τὴν πόλιν, τὸν δ’ ἀετὸν ἐπὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα χωροῦντα, εἶτα φροῦδον εἶναι.

[32] [1] Σκότους δὲ πολλοῦ προσμείξας ὁ Πύρρος τοῖς τείχεσι, καὶ πύλην εὑρών, ἣν Διαμπερὲς καλοῦσιν, ἀνεῳγμένην ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀριστέου αὐτοῖς, ἄχρι μὲν τοῦ παρεισπεσεῖν τοὺς Γαλάτας τοὺς παρ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν [2] καταλαβεῖν ἐλάνθανε· τῆς δὲ πύλης τοὺς ἐλέφαντας οὐ δεχομένης καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τοὺς πύργους αὐτῶν ἀφαιρούντων, εἶτα πάλιν ἐν σκότει καὶ θορύβῳ περιτιθέντων, καὶ γενομένης διατριβῆς, οἱ Ἀργεῖοι συναισθόμενοι πρὸς τὴν Ἀσπίδα καὶ τοὺς ὀχυροὺς τόπους ἀνέθεον καὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον [3] ἐκάλουν πέμποντες. ὁ δ’ αὐτὸς μὲν ἐγγὺς προσελάσας ἐφήδρευε, τοὺς δὲ στρατηγοὺς καὶ τὸν υἱὸν εἰσέπεμψε [4] συχνὴν βοήθειαν ἄγοντας. ἧκε δὲ καὶ Ἄρευς, ἔχων χιλίους Κρῆτας καὶ Σπαρτιάτας τοὺς ἐλαφροτάτους. καὶ πάντες ἅμα τοῖς Γαλάταις προσβαλόντες, εἰς πολὺν [5] θόρυβον κατέστησαν αὐτούς. ὁ δὲ Πύρρος εἰσιὼν μετ’ ἀλαλαγμοῦ καὶ βοῆς παρὰ τὴν Κυλάραβιν, ὡς οἱ Γαλάται τοῖς περὶ αὐτὸν ἀντηλάλαξαν οὐκ ἰταμὸν οὐδὲ θαρραλέον, εἴκασε ταραττομένων εἶναι τὴν φωνὴν καὶ πονούντων.

[6] ἐπῆγεν οὖν θᾶττον, ὠθῶν τοὺς πρὸ αὐτοῦ τῶν ἱππέων, δυσοδοῦντας ἐν τοῖς ὀχετοῖς, ὧν ἡ πόλις ἐστὶ μεστή, καὶ [7] κινδυνεύοντας. ἦν δὲ καὶ ἀσάφεια πολλὴ τῶν δρωμένων καὶ παραγγελλομένων ἐν νυκτομαχίᾳ, καὶ πλάναι καὶ διασπασμοὶ περὶ τοὺς στενωπούς, καὶ στρατηγίας οὐδὲν ἔργον ὑπὸ σκότους καὶ βοῆς ἀκρίτου καὶ στενότητος, ἀλλὰ [8] διέτριβον ἄλλως περιμένοντες ἀμφότεροι τὴν ἡμέραν. ἤδη δὲ διαλάμποντος, ἥ τ’ Ἀσπὶς ὅπλων περίπλεως πολεμίων ὀφθεῖσα τὸν Πύρρον διετάραξε, καὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἐν πολλοῖς ἀναθήμασι κατιδὼν λύκον χαλκοῦν καὶ ταῦρον οἷον εἰς μάχην ἀλλήλοις συνιόντας ἐξεπλάγη, χρησμόν τινα πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀνενεγκὼν παλαιόν, ὡς ἀποθανεῖν αὐτῷ πεπρωμένον, [9] ὅταν λύκον ἴδῃ ταύρῳ μαχόμενον. ταῦτα δ’ Ἀργεῖοι πάθους ὑπομνήματα παλαιοῦ γεγενῆσθαι παρ’ αὐτοῖς λέγουσι. Δαναῷ γάρ, ὅτε πρῶτον ἐπέβη τῆς χώρας κατὰ τὰ Πυράμια τῆς Θυρεάτιδος, εἰς Ἄργος πορευομένῳ λύκον [10] φανῆναι ταύρῳ μαχόμενον· θέμενον δὲ τὸν Δαναόν, ὡς ὁ λύκος εἴη πρὸς αὐτοῦ, ξένον γὰρ ὄντα τοῖς ἐγχωρίοις ἐπιτίθεσθαι καθάπερ αὐτόν, ἐφορᾶν τὴν μάχην, καὶ τοῦ λύκου κρατήσαντος Ἀπόλλωνι Λυκείῳ προσευξάμενον ἐπιχειρῆσαι καὶ περιγενέσθαι, στάσει Γελάνορος, ὃς τότε τῶν Ἀργείων ἐβασίλευεν, ἐκπεσόντος. τὸ μὲν οὖν ἀνάθημα τοῦτον εἶχε τὸν λόγον.

[33] [1] Πρὸς δὲ τὴν ὄψιν ὁ Πύρρος ἅμα καὶ τῷ μηδὲν ὧν ἤλπιζε προχωρεῖν ἀθυμῶν, ἀναστρέφειν διενοεῖτο· τὰς δὲ πύλας στενὰς οὔσας φοβούμενος, ἔπεμψε πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν Ἕλενον, μετὰ τῆς πολλῆς δυνάμεως ἔξω καταλελειμμένον, κελεύων τοῦ τείχους διασκάπτειν καὶ δέχεσθαι [2] τοὺς ἐκπίπτοντας, ἂν ἐνοχλῶσιν οἱ πολέμιοι. σπουδῇ δὲ καὶ θορύβῳ τοῦ πεμφθέντος οὐδὲν σαφὲς ἀπαγγέλλοντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ διαμαρτίας γενομένης, τῶν θηρίων τὰ λοιπὰ καὶ στρατιώτας ἀναλαβὼν τοὺς κρατίστους ὁ νεανίσκος εἴσω [3] διὰ τῶν πυλῶν ἐχώρει τῷ πατρὶ βοηθήσων. ἔτυχε δ’ ὁ Πύρρος ἀναστρέφων ἤδη. καὶ μέχρι μὲν ἡ ἀγορὰ παρεῖχεν ὑπεξάγοντι χώραν, καὶ μαχόμενος ἐκ μεταβολῆς ἠμύνετο [4] τοὺς ἐπιφερομένους· ἐπεὶ δὲ τῆς ἀγορᾶς εἰς τὸν στενωπὸν ἐξωσθεὶς τὸν ἐπὶ τὴν πύλην ἀνήκοντα συνέπιπτε τοῖς ἐπιβοηθοῦσιν ἐξ ἐναντίας προσφερομένοις, οἱ μὲν οὐχ ὑπήκουον ὑποχωρεῖν βοῶντος αὐτοῦ, τοὺς δὲ καὶ πάνυ προθύμους ὄντας εἶργον οἱ κατόπιν ἀπὸ τῆς πύλης [5] ἐπιχεόμενοι. καὶ γὰρ ὁ μέγιστος ἐλέφας ἐν τῇ πύλῃ πλάγιος παραπεσὼν καὶ βρυχώμενος, ἐμποδὼν ἔκειτο τοῖς ἀποτρεπομένοις, καὶ τῶν προεισεληλυθότων ἕτερος, ᾧ Νίκων ὄνομα ἦν, ἀπορρυέντα τὸν ἐπιστάτην ὑπὸ τραυμάτων ζητῶν ἀναλαβεῖν, καὶ φερόμενος πρὸς τοὐναντίον τοῖς ὑπεξάγουσιν, ἀνέμειξε φίλους ὁμοῦ καὶ πολεμίους ὠθουμένους [6] ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, καὶ περιέπιπτον ἀλλήλοις, ἕως εὑρὼν νεκρὸν ἀνείλετο τῇ προβοσκίδι καὶ τοῖς ὀδοῦσιν ἀμφοτέροις ὑπολαβὼν ἀνέστρεφε πάλιν, ὥσπερ ἐμμανὴς ἀνατρέπων [7] καὶ διαφθείρων τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας. οὕτω δὲ θλιβομένων καὶ συμπιλουμένων πρὸς ἀλλήλους, οὐδεὶς οὐδὲν ἑαυτῷ καθ’ ἕνα χρῆσθαι δυνατὸς ἦν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἓν σῶμα συγγεγομφωμένον ἑαυτῷ τὸ πᾶν πλῆθος ἐλάμβανε πολλὰς [8] ἀποκλίσεις καὶ μεταβολὰς ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα. καὶ μάχαι μὲν ἦσαν ὀλίγαι πρὸς τοὺς ἐναπολαμβανομένους ἀεὶ τῶν πολεμίων ἢ προσκειμένους ὄπισθεν, πλεῖστα δ’ ἑαυτοὺς [9] εἰργάζοντο κακά. σπασάμενον γὰρ τὸ ξίφος ἢ κλίναντα λόγχην οὐκ ἦν ἀναλαβεῖν οὐδὲ καταθέσθαι πάλιν, ἀλλ’ ἐχώρει δι’ ὧν ἔτυχε τὰ τοιαῦτα πάντα, καὶ περιπίπτοντες ἀλλήλοις ἔθνῃσκον.

[34] [1] Ὁ δὲ Πύρρος ἐφορῶν τὸν περιέχοντα χειμῶνα καὶ κλύδωνα, τὴν μὲν στεφάνην ᾗ διάσημον ἦν τὸ κράνος ἀφελὼν ἔδωκέ τινι τῶν ἑταίρων, αὐτὸς δὲ τῷ ἵππῳ πεποιθὼς εἰς τοὺς ἑπομένους τῶν πολεμίων ἐνέβαλε, καὶ δόρατι πληγεὶς διὰ τοῦ θώρακος οὐ καιρίαν πληγὴν οὐδὲ μεγάλην, ἐπέστρεψε κατὰ τοῦ πατάξαντος, ὃς ἦν Ἀργεῖος οὐ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν, ἀλλὰ πενιχρᾶς καὶ πρεσβυτέρας [2] υἱὸς γυναικός. αὕτη τότε θεωμένη τὴν μάχην ὥσπερ αἱ λοιπαὶ γυναῖκες ἀπὸ τοῦ τέγους, ὡς ἐπέγνω συνεστῶτα τῷ Πύρρῳ τὸν υἱόν, ἐκπαθὴς γενομένη πρὸς τὸν κίνδυνον, ἄρασα κεραμίδα ταῖς χερσὶν ἀμφοτέραις ἀφῆκεν ἐπὶ τὸν [3] Πύρρον. ἐμπεσούσης δὲ τῇ κεφαλῇ κατὰ τοῦ κράνους, καὶ τῶν σφονδύλων πρὸς τὴν βάσιν τοῦ τραχήλου συντριβέντων, αἵ τ’ ὄψεις συνεχύθησαν αὐτοῦ, καὶ προήκαντο [4] τὰς ἡνίας αἱ χεῖρες. αὐτὸς δὲ κατενεχθεὶς παρὰ τὸν τοῦ Λικυμνίου σηκὸν ἔπεσεν, ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν ἀγνοούμενος.

[5] Ζώπυρος δέ τις τῶν παρ’ Ἀντιγόνῳ στρατευομένων καὶ δύο ἢ τρεῖς ἕτεροι προσδραμόντες καὶ κατανοήσαντες, εἴς τινα θυρῶνα παρείλκυσαν αὐτόν, ἀρχόμενον ἐκ τῆς [6] πληγῆς ἀναφέρεσθαι. σπασαμένου δὲ τοῦ Ζωπύρου μάχαιραν Ἰλλυρικὴν ὡς τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποτεμοῦντος, ἐνέβλεψε δεινόν, ὥστε τὸν Ζώπυρον περίφοβον γενόμενον καὶ τὰ μὲν τρέμοντα ταῖς χερσί, τὰ δ’ ἐπιχειροῦντα, θορύβου δὲ καὶ ταραχῆς μεστὸν ὄντα, μὴ κατ’ ὀρθόν, ἀλλὰ παρὰ τὸ στόμα καὶ τὸ γένειον ἀποτέμνοντα βραδέως καὶ μόλις ἀποσπάσαι τὴν κεφαλήν.

[7] Ἤδη δὲ σύνδηλον ἦν τὸ γεγονὸς πλείοσι, καὶ προσδραμὼν ὁ Ἀλκυονεὺς ᾔτησε τὴν κεφαλὴν ὡς κατανοήσων. λαβὼν δ’ ἀφίππευσε πρὸς τὸν πατέρα καὶ καθεζομένῳ [8] μετὰ τῶν φίλων προσέβαλε. θεασάμενος δὲ καὶ γνοὺς ὁ Ἀντίγονος, τὸν μὲν υἱὸν ἀπήλασε, τῇ βακτηρίᾳ παίων καὶ καλῶν ἐναγῆ καὶ βάρβαρον, αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν χλαμύδα προθέμενος τοῖς ὄμμασιν ἐδάκρυσεν, Ἀντιγόνου τοῦ πάππου μνησθεὶς καὶ Δημητρίου τοῦ πατρός, [9] οἰκείων παραδειγμάτων εἰς τύχης μεταβολήν. τὴν μὲν οὖν κεφαλὴν καὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Πύρρου κοσμήσας ἔκαυσεν· [10] ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Ἀλκυονεὺς τῷ Ἑλένῳ περιτυχών, ταπεινῷ καὶ χλαμύδιον λιτὸν ἀμπεχομένῳ, φιλανθρώπως ἐνέτυχε καὶ τῷ πατρὶ προσήγαγεν, ἰδὼν ὁ Ἀντίγονος βελτίονα μὲν εἶπεν ὦ παῖ ταῦτα τῶν προτέρων, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ νῦν ὀρθῶς τῷ μὴ περιελεῖν τὴν ἐσθῆτα ταύτην, ἣ μᾶλλον ἡμᾶς [11] καταισχύνει τοὺς κρατεῖν δοκοῦντας. ἐκ τούτου φιλοφρονησάμενος καὶ κοσμήσας τὸν Ἕλενον ἀπέστειλεν εἰς Ἤπειρον, καὶ τοῖς φίλοις τοῦ Πύρρου πράως ἐνετύγχανε, τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως πάσης κύριος γενόμενος.

Marius

[1] [1]  Γαΐου Μαρίου τρίτον οὐκ ἔχομεν εἰπεῖν ὄνομα, καθάπερ οὐδὲ Κοΐντου Σερτωρίου τοῦ κατασχόντος Ἰβηρίαν οὐδὲ Λευκίου Μομμίου τοῦ Κόρινθον ἑλόντος· ὁ γὰρ Ἀχαϊκὸς τούτῳ γε τῆς πράξεως ἐπώνυμον γέγονεν, ὡς ὁ Ἀφρικανὸς Σκιπίωνι καὶ ὁ Μακεδονικὸς Μετέλλῳ. ἐξ οὗ [2] καὶ μάλιστα Ποσειδώνιος (FGrH 87 F 60) ἐλέγχειν οἴεται τοὺς τὸ τρίτον ὄνομα Ῥωμαίοις κύριον εἶναι νομίζοντας, οἷον τὸν Κάμιλλον καὶ τὸν Μάρκελλον καὶ τὸν Κάτωνα· γίνεσθαι γὰρ ‹ἂν› ἀνωνύμους τοὺς ἀπὸ μόνων [3] τῶν δυεῖν προσαγορευομένους. λανθάνει δ’ ἑαυτὸν ὅτι τούτῳ τῷ λόγῳ πάλιν αὐτὸς ἀνωνύμους ποιεῖ[ται] τὰς γυναῖκας· οὐδεμιᾷ γὰρ γυναικὶ τίθεται τῶν ὀνομάτων τὸ πρῶτον, ὅπερ οἴεται κύριον ὄνομα Ῥωμαίοις ὑπάρχειν [4] ὁ Ποσειδώνιος· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων τὸ μὲν κοινὸν ἀπὸ συγγενείας, τοὺς Πομπηίους καὶ τοὺς Μαλλίους καὶ τοὺς Κορνηλίους, ὥσπερ ἂν Ἡρακλείδας τις εἴποι καὶ Πελοπίδας, [5] [τοῦ] τὸ δὲ προσηγορικὸν ἐξ ἐπιθέτου πρὸς τὰς φύσεις ἢ τὰς πράξεις ἢ τὰ τοῦ σώματος εἴδη καὶ πάθη τίθεσθαι, τὸν Μακρῖνον καὶ τὸν Τορκουᾶτον καὶ τὸν Σύλλαν, οἷόν ἐστιν ὁ Μνήμων ἢ ὁ Γρυπὸς ἢ ὁ Καλλίνικος. εἰς μὲν οὖν ταῦτα πολλὰς δίδωσιν ἐπιχειρήσεις ἡ τῆς συνηθείας ἀνωμαλία.

[2] [1] Τῆς δ’ ὄψεως τῆς Μαρίου λιθίνην εἰκόνα κειμένην ἐν Ῥαβέννῃ τῆς Γαλατίας ἐθεώμεθα, πάνυ τῇ λεγομένῃ περὶ τὸ ἦθος στρυφνότητι καὶ πικρίᾳ πρέπουσαν. ἀνδρώδης γὰρ φύσει καὶ πολεμικὸς γενόμενος, καὶ στρατιωτικῆς μᾶλλον ἢ πολιτικῆς παιδείας μεταλαβών, ἄκρατον [2] ἐν ταῖς ἐξουσίαις τὸν θυμὸν ἔσχε. λέγεται δὲ μήτε γράμματα μαθεῖν Ἑλληνικὰ μήτε γλώττῃ πρὸς μηδὲν Ἑλληνίδι χρῆσθαι τῶν σπουδῆς ἐχομένων, ὡς γελοῖον γράμματα μανθάνειν ὧν οἱ διδάσκαλοι δουλεύοιεν ἑτέροις· μετὰ δὲ τὸν δεύτερον θρίαμβον ἐπὶ ναοῦ τινος καθιερώσει θέας Ἑλληνικὰς παρέχων, εἰς τὸ θέατρον ἐλθὼν καὶ [3] μόνον καθίσας εὐθὺς ἀπαλλαγῆναι. ὥσπερ οὖν Ξενοκράτει τῷ φιλοσόφῳ σκυθρωποτέρῳ δοκοῦντι τὸ ἦθος εἶναι πολλάκις εἰώθει λέγειν ὁ Πλάτων· ὦ μακάριε Ξενόκρατες, [4] θῦε ταῖς Χάρισιν, οὕτως εἴ τις ἔπεισε Μάριον θύειν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς Μούσαις καὶ Χάρισιν, οὐκ ἂν ἐκπρεπεστάταις στρατηγίαις καὶ πολιτείαις ἀμορφοτάτην ἐπέθηκε , ὑπὸ θυμοῦ καὶ φιλαρχίας ἀώρου καὶ πλεονεξιῶν ἀπαρηγορήτων εἰς ὠμότατον καὶ ἀγριώτατον γῆρας ἐξοκείλας. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τῶν πράξεων αὐτῶν εὐθὺς θεωρείσθω.

[3] [1] Γενόμενος δὲ γονέων παντάπασιν ἀδόξων, αὐτουργῶν δὲ καὶ πενήτων, πατρὸς μὲν ὁμωνύμου, μητρὸς δὲ Φουλκινίας, ὀψέ ποτε πόλιν εἶδε καὶ τῶν ἐν πόλει διατριβῶν ἐγεύσατο, τὸν δ’ ἄλλον χρόνον ἐν κώμῃ Κερεατίνων τῆς Ἀρπίνης δίαιταν εἶχε, πρὸς μὲν ἀστεῖον καὶ γλαφυρὸν βίον ἀγροικοτέραν, σώφρονα δὲ καὶ ταῖς [2] πάλαι Ῥωμαίων τροφαῖς ἐοικυῖαν. πρώτην δὲ στρατείαν στρατευσάμενος ἐπὶ Κελτίβηρας, ὅτε Σκιπίων Ἀφρικανὸς Νομαντίαν ἐπολιόρκει, τὸν στρατηγὸν οὐκ ἐλάνθανεν ἀνδρείᾳ τῶν ἄλλων νέων διαφέρων, καὶ τὴν μεταβολὴν τῆς διαίτης, ἣν ὑπὸ τρυφῆς καὶ πολυτελείας διεφθαρμένοις ἐπῆγε τοῖς στρατεύμασιν ὁ Σκιπίων, εὐκολώτατα [3] προσδεχόμενος. λέγεται δὲ καὶ πολέμιον ἄνδρα συστὰς [4] καταβαλεῖν ἐν ὄψει τοῦ στρατηγοῦ. διὸ ταῖς τ’ ἄλλαις προήγετο τιμαῖς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, καί ποτε λόγου μετὰ δεῖπνον ἐμπεσόντος ὑπὲρ στρατηγῶν, καὶ τῶν παρόντων ἑνὸς εἴτ’ ἀληθῶς διαπορήσαντος εἴτε πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἐρομένου τὸν Σκιπίωνα, τίνα δὴ τοιοῦτον ἕξει μετ’ ἐκεῖνον ἡγεμόνα καὶ προστάτην ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος, ὑπερκατακειμένου τοῦ Μαρίου τῇ χειρὶ τὸν ὦμον ἠρέμα πατάξας ὁ Σκιπίων [5] τάχα δὲ τοῦτον εἶπεν. οὕτως εὐφυὴς ἦν ὁ μὲν ἐκ μειρακίου φανῆναι μέγας, ὁ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς τὸ τέλος νοῆσαι.

[4] [1] Τὸν δ’ οὖν Μάριον ὑπὸ ταύτης λέγεται μάλιστα τῆς φωνῆς ὥσπερ ὑπὸ θείας κληδόνος ἐπαρθέντα ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ὁρμῆσαι πρὸς τὴν πολιτείαν, καὶ τυχεῖν δημαρχίας Καικιλίου Μετέλλου ‹συ›σπουδάσαντος, οὗ τὸν οἶκον ἐξ [2] ἀρχῆς καὶ πατρόθεν ἐθεράπευεν. ἐν δὲ τῇ δημαρχίᾳ νόμον τινὰ περὶ ψηφοφορίας γράφοντος αὐτοῦ, δοκοῦντα τῶν δυνατῶν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τὴν περὶ τὰς κρίσεις ἰσχύν, ἐνιστάμενος Κόττας ὁ ὕπατος συνέπεισε τὴν βουλὴν τῷ μὲν νόμῳ μάχεσθαι, τὸν δὲ Μάριον καλεῖν λόγον ὑφέξοντα.

[3] καὶ τοῦ δόγματος τούτου γραφέντος, εἰσελθὼν ἐκεῖνος οὐκ ἔπαθε νέου πάθος ἀπὸ μηδενὸς λαμπροῦ προεληλυθότος ἄρτι πρὸς τὴν πολιτείαν, ἀλλ’ ἑαυτῷ διδοὺς ἤδη φρονεῖν ἡλίκον αἱ μετέπειτα πράξεις ἔδωκαν, ἠπείλησε τὸν Κότταν ἀπάξειν εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον, εἰ μὴ διαγράψει [4] τὸ δόγμα. τοῦ δὲ πρὸς Μέτελλον τραπομένου καὶ γνώμην ἐρωτῶντος, Μέτελλος μὲν ἀναστὰς συνηγόρει τῷ ὑπάτῳ, Μάριος δὲ τὸν ὑπηρέτην μεταπεμψάμενος ἔξωθεν ἐκέλευεν [5] ἀπάγειν αὐτὸν τὸν Μέτελλον εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον. ἐκείνου δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐπικαλουμένου δημάρχους, ἐβοήθει μὲν [6] οὐδείς, ἡ δὲ σύγκλητος εἴξασα προήκατο τὸ δόγμα. καὶ λαμπρὸς ἐξελάσας ὁ Μάριος εἰς τὸ πλῆθος ἐκύρωσε τὸν νόμον, δόξας ἄκαμπτος μὲν εἶναι πρὸς φόβον, ἄτρεπτος δ’ ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς, δεινὸς δὲ κατὰ τῆς βουλῆς ἀνίστασθαι, [7] χάριτι τῶν πολλῶν δημαγωγῶν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ταύτην μὲν ταχέως μετέστησεν ἑτέρῳ πολιτεύματι τὴν δόξαν. νόμου γὰρ εἰσφερομένου περὶ σίτου διανομῆς, τοῖς πολλοῖς ἐναντιωθεὶς ἐρρωμενέστατα καὶ κρατήσας, εἰς τὸ ἴσον ἑαυτὸν κατέστησε τῇ τιμῇ πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους, ὡς μηδετέροις παρὰ τὸ συμφέρον χαριζόμενος.

[5] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν δημαρχίαν ἀγορανομίαν τὴν μείζονα [2] παρήγγειλε. δύο γάρ εἰσι τάξεις ἀγορανομιῶν, ἡ μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν δίφρων τῶν ἀγκυλοπόδων, ἐφ’ ὧν καθεζόμενοι χρηματίζουσιν, ἔχουσα τοὔνομα τῆς ἀρχῆς, τὴν δ’ ὑποδεεστέραν δημοτικὴν καλοῦσιν· ὅταν δὲ τοὺς ἐντιμοτέρους ἕλωνται, περὶ τῶν ἑτέρων πάλιν τὴν ψῆφον λαμβάνουσιν.

[3] ὡς οὖν ὁ Μάριος φανερὸς ἦν λειπόμενος ἐν ἐκείνῃ, ταχὺ μεταστὰς αὖθις ᾔτει τὴν ἑτέραν. δόξας δὲ θρασὺς εἶναι καὶ αὐθάδης, ἀπέτυχε· καὶ δυσὶν ἐν ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ περιπεσὼν ἀποτεύξεσιν, ὃ μηδεὶς ἔπαθεν ἄλλος, οὐδὲ μικρὸν ὑφήκατο τοῦ φρονήματος, ὕστερον δ’ οὐ πολλῷ στρατηγίαν μετελθὼν ὀλίγον ἐδέησεν ἐκπεσεῖν, ἔσχατος [4] δὲ πάντων ἀναγορευθείς, δίκην ἔσχε δεκασμοῦ. μάλιστα δ’ ὑποψίαν παρέσχε Κασσίου Σαβάκωνος οἰκέτης ὀφθεὶς ἐντὸς τῶν δρυφάκτων ἀναμεμειγμένος τοῖς φέρουσι τὰς ψήφους· ὁ γὰρ Σαβάκων ἦν ἑταῖρος ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα [5] Μαρίου. κληθεὶς οὖν οὗτος ὑπὸ τῶν δικαστῶν, ἔφη διὰ τὸ καῦμα διψήσας ὕδωρ ψυχρὸν αἰτῆσαι καὶ τὸν οἰκέτην ἔχοντα ποτήριον εἰσελθεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν, εἶτ’ εὐθὺς οἴχεσθαι [6] πιόντος. οὗτος μὲν οὖν ὑπὸ τῶν μετὰ ταῦτα τιμητῶν ἐξέπεσε τῆς βουλῆς, ἐπιτήδειος εἶναι παθεῖν τοῦτο [7] δόξας ἢ διὰ τὴν ψευδομαρτυρίαν ἢ διὰ τὴν ἀκρασίαν· ἐπὶ δὲ τὸν Μάριον καὶ Γάιος Ἑρέννιος μάρτυς εἰσαχθεὶς οὐκ ἔφη πάτριον εἶναι καταμαρτυρεῖν πελατῶν, ἀλλὰ τὸν νόμον ἀφιέναι ταύτης τῆς ἀνάγκης τοὺς πάτρωνας· οὕτως γὰρ οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι τοὺς προστάτας καλοῦσι· τοῦ δ’ Ἑρεννίων οἴκου τοὺς Μαρίου γονεῖς καὶ Μάριον αὐτὸν [8] ἐξ ἀρχῆς γεγονέναι πελάτας. ἀποδεξαμένων δὲ τὴν ἀπόρρησιν τῆς μαρτυρίας τῶν δικαστῶν, αὐτὸς ἀντεῖπεν ὁ Μάριος πρὸς τὸν Ἑρέννιον, ὡς ὅτε πρῶτον ἄρχων ἀνηγορεύθη [9] τὸν πελάτην ἐκβεβηκώς. ὅπερ ἦν οὐ παντάπασιν ἀληθές· ἀρχὴ γὰρ οὐ πᾶσα τοῦ νέμειν προστάτην ἀπαλλάσσει τοὺς τυχόντας αὐτοὺς καὶ γένος, ἀλλ’ ᾗ τὸν [10] ἀγκυλόποδα δίφρον ὁ νόμος δίδωσιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ταῖς πρώταις ἡμέραις ἐν τῇ δίκῃ κακῶς πράττων ὁ Μάριος καὶ χαλεποῖς χρώμενος τοῖς δικασταῖς, τῇ τελευταίᾳ παραλόγως ἀπέφυγεν ἴσων τῶν ψήφων γενομένων.

[6] [1] Ἐν μὲν οὖν τῇ στρατηγίᾳ μετρίως ἐπαινούμενον [2] ἑαυτὸν παρέσχε. μετὰ δὲ τὴν στρατηγίαν κλήρῳ λαβὼν τὴν ἐκτὸς Ἰβηρίαν, λέγεται καθᾶραι λῃστηρίων τὴν ἐπαρχίαν, ἀνήμερον οὖσαν ἔτι τοῖς ἐθισμοῖς καὶ θηριώδη, καὶ τὸ λῃστεύειν οὔπω τότε τῶν Ἰβήρων οὐχὶ κάλλιστον [3] ἡγουμένων. ἐν δὲ τῇ πολιτείᾳ γενόμενος, οὐκ εἶχεν οὔτε πλοῦτον οὔτε λόγον, οἷς ἦγον οἱ τότε μάλιστα τιμώμενοι [4] τὸν δῆμον. αὐτὴν δὲ τὴν ἀνάτασιν τοῦ φρονήματος καὶ τὸ περὶ τοὺς πόνους ἐνδελεχὲς αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ δημοτικὸν τῆς διαίτης ἔν τινι σπουδῇ τιθεμένων τῶν πολιτῶν, ηὐξάνετο τῇ τιμῇ πρὸς δύναμιν, ὥστε καὶ γάμον γῆμαι λαμπρὸν οἰκίας ἐπιφανοῦς τῆς Καισάρων Ἰουλίαν, ἧς ἦν ἀδελφιδοῦς Καῖσαρ ὁ χρόνοις ὕστερον Ῥωμαίων μέγιστος γενόμενος καί τι κατ’ οἰκειότητα ζηλώσας Μάριον, [5] ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου (1, 2) γέγραπται. τῷ δὲ Μαρίῳ καὶ σωφροσύνην μαρτυροῦσι καὶ καρτερίαν, ἧς δεῖγμα [6] καὶ τὸ περὶ τὴν χειρουργίαν ἐστίν. ἰξιῶν γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε μεγάλων ἀνάπλεως ἄμφω τὰ σκέλη γεγονὼς καὶ τὴν ἀμορφίαν δυσχεραίνων, ἔγνω παρασχεῖν ἑαυτὸν ἰατρῷ· καὶ παρέσχεν ἄδετος θάτερον σκέλος, οὐδὲν κινηθεὶς οὐδὲ στενάξας, ἀλλὰ καθεστῶτι τῷ προσώπῳ καὶ μετὰ σιωπῆς ὑπερβολάς τινας ἀλγηδόνων ἐν ταῖς τομαῖς ἀνασχόμενος.

[7] τοῦ δ’ ἰατροῦ μετιόντος ἐπὶ θάτερον, οὐκέτι παρέσχε, φήσας ὁρᾶν τὸ ἐπανόρθωμα τῆς ἀλγηδόνος οὐκ ἄξιον.

[7] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Καικίλιος Μέτελλος ἀποδειχθεὶς ἐπὶ τὸν κατὰ Ἰουγούρθα πόλεμον ὕπατος στρατηγὸς εἰς Λιβύην ἐπηγάγετο πρεσβευτὴν Μάριον, ἐνταῦθα πράξεων μεγάλων καὶ λαμπρῶν ἀγώνων ἐπιλαβόμενος, τὸ μὲν αὔξειν τὸν Μέτελλον ὥσπερ οἱ λοιποὶ καὶ πολιτεύεσθαι πρὸς [2] ἐκεῖνον εἴασε χαίρειν, ἀξιῶν δ’ οὐχ ὑπὸ Μετέλλου κεκλῆσθαι πρεσβευτής, ὑπὸ δὲ τῆς τύχης εἰς εὐφυέστατον καιρὸν ὁμοῦ καὶ μέγιστον εἰσάγεσθαι πράξεων θέατρον, [3] ἐπεδείκνυτο πᾶσαν ἀνδραγαθίαν. καὶ πολλὰ τοῦ πολέμου δυσχερῆ φέροντος, οὔτε τῶν μεγάλων τινὰ πόνων ὑποτρέσας οὔτε τῶν μικρῶν ἀπαξιώσας, ἀλλὰ τοὺς μὲν ὁμοτίμους εὐβουλίᾳ καὶ προνοίᾳ τοῦ συμφέροντος ὑπερβαλλόμενος, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς στρατιώτας ὑπὲρ εὐτελείας καὶ καρτερίας διαμιλλώμενος, εὔνοιαν ἔσχε πολλὴν παρ’ αὐτοῖς.

[4] ὅλως μὲν γὰρ ἔοικε τοῦ κάμνειν ἑκάστῳ παραμυθία τὸ συγκάμνον ἑκουσίως εἶναι· δοκεῖ γὰρ ἀφαιρεῖν τὴν ἀνάγκην· ἥδιστον δὲ Ῥωμαίῳ θέαμα στρατιώτῃ στρατηγὸς ἐσθίων ἐν ὄψει κοινὸν ἄρτον ἢ κατακείμενος ἐπὶ στιβάδος εὐτελοῦς ἢ περὶ ταφρείαν τινὰ καὶ χαράκωσιν ἔργου [5] συνεφαπτόμενος. οὐ γὰρ οὕτως τοὺς τιμῆς καὶ χρημάτων μεταδιδόντας, ὡς τοὺς πόνου καὶ κινδύνου μεταλαμβάνοντας ἡγεμόνας θαυμάζουσιν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀγαπῶσι τῶν [6] ῥᾳθυμεῖν ἐπιτρεπόντων τοὺς συμπονεῖν ἐθέλοντας. ταῦτα πάντα ποιῶν ὁ Μάριος καὶ διὰ τούτων τοὺς στρατιώτας δημαγωγῶν, ταχὺ μὲν ἐνέπλησε τὴν Λιβύην, ταχὺ δὲ τὴν Ῥώμην ὀνόματος καὶ δόξης, τῶν ἀπὸ στρατοπέδου τοῖς οἴκοι γραφόντων, ὡς οὐκ ἔστι πέρας οὐδ’ ἀπαλλαγὴ τοῦ πρὸς τὸν βάρβαρον πολέμου μὴ Γάιον Μάριον ἑλομένοις ὕπατον.

[8] [1] Ἐφ’ οἷς δῆλος ἦν ὁ Μέτελλος ἀχθόμενος. μάλιστα δ’ αὐτὸν ἠνίασε τὸ περὶ Τουρπίλλιον. οὗτος γὰρ ὁ ἀνὴρ ἦν μὲν ἐκ πατέρων ξένος τῷ Μετέλλῳ, καὶ τότε τὴν ἐπὶ [2] τῶν τεκτόνων ἔχων ἀρχὴν συνεστράτευε· φρουρῶν δὲ Βάγαν πόλιν μεγάλην, καὶ τῷ μηδὲν ἀδικεῖν τοὺς ἐνοικοῦντας, ἀλλὰ πράως καὶ φιλανθρώπως αὐτοῖς προσφέρεσθαι πιστεύων, ἔλαθεν ὑποχείριος τοῖς πολεμίοις γενόμενος.

[3] παρεδέξαντο γὰρ τὸν Ἰουγούρθαν, τὸν δὲ Τουρπίλλιον οὐδὲν ἠδίκησαν, ἀλλὰ σῷον ἐξαιτησάμενοι διῆκαν.

[4] ἔσχεν οὖν αἰτίαν προδοσίας, καὶ παρὼν ὁ Μάριος τῇ κρίσει σύμβουλος, αὐτός θ’ οἱ πικρὸς ἦν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων παρώξυνε τοὺς πλείστους, ὥστ’ ἄκοντα τὸν Μέτελλον ἐκβιασθῆναι [5] [καὶ] καταψηφίσασθαι θάνατον τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. μετ’ ὀλίγον δὲ τῆς αἰτίας ψευδοῦς φανείσης, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι συνήχθοντο τῷ Μετέλλῳ βαρέως φέροντι, Μάριος δὲ χαίρων καὶ ποιούμενος ἴδιον τὸ ἔργον, οὐκ ᾐσχύνετο λέγειν περιιών, ὡς αὐτὸς εἴη προστετριμμένος ἀλάστορα τῷ [6] Μετέλλῳ ξενοκτόνον. ἐκ τούτου φανερῶς ἀπηχθάνοντο· καὶ λέγεταί ποτε τοῦ Μαρίου παρόντος οἷον ἐφυβρίζων ὁ Μέτελλος εἰπεῖν· σὺ δὴ καταλιπὼν ἡμᾶς ὦ γενναῖε πλεῖν ἐπ’ οἴκου διανοῇ καὶ παραγγέλλειν ὑπατείαν; οὐ γὰρ ἀγαπήσεις, ἂν τᾠμῷ παιδὶ τούτῳ συνυπατεύσῃς; ἦν δ’ ὁ παῖς τότε τοῦ Μετέλλου παντάπασι μειράκιον.

[7] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῦ Μαρίου σπουδάζοντος ἀφεθῆναι πολλὰς ἀναβολὰς ποιησάμενος, ἔτι δώδεκα λειπομένων ἡμερῶν ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν ὑπάτων ἀνάδειξιν ἀφῆκεν αὐτόν.

[8] ὁ δὲ πολλὴν ἀπὸ στρατοπέδου τὴν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν εἰς Ἰτύκην ὁδὸν ἡμέραις δυσὶ καὶ μιᾷ νυκτὶ συνελών, ἔθυε πρὸ τοῦ πλοῦ· καὶ λέγεται τὸν μάντιν εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἀπίστους τινὰς τὸ μέγεθος καὶ κρείττονας ἐλπίδος ἁπάσης εὐπραξίας [9] προφαίνοι τῷ Μαρίῳ τὸ δαιμόνιον. ὁ δὲ τούτοις ἐπαρθεὶς ἀνήχθη, καὶ τὸ πέλαγος τεταρταῖος οὐρίῳ πνεύματι περάσας, αὐτίκα τε τῷ δήμῳ ποθεινὸς ὤφθη, καὶ προαχθεὶς ὑπό τινος τῶν δημάρχων εἰς τὸ πλῆθος, ἐπὶ πολλαῖς κατὰ τοῦ Μετέλλου διαβολαῖς ᾐτεῖτο τὴν ἀρχήν, ὑπισχνούμενος ἢ κτενεῖν ἢ ζῶντα λήψεσθαι τὸν Ἰουγούρθαν.

[9] [1] Ἀναγορευθεὶς δὲ λαμπρῶς, εὐθὺς ἐστρατολόγει, παρὰ τὸν νόμον καὶ τὴν συνήθειαν πολὺν τὸν ἄπορον καὶ δοῦλον καταγράφων, τῶν πρόσθεν ἡγεμόνων οὐ προσδεχομένων τοὺς τοιούτους, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἄλλο τι τῶν καλῶν τὰ ὅπλα μετὰ τιμῆς τοῖς ἀξίοις νεμόντων, ἐνέχυρον [2] τὴν οὐσίαν ἑκάστου τιθέναι δοκοῦντος. οὐ μὴν ταῦτά γε μάλιστα διέβαλλε τὸν Μάριον, ἀλλ’ οἱ λόγοι θρασεῖς ὄντες ὑπεροψίᾳ καὶ ὕβρει τοὺς πρώτους ἐλύπουν, σκῦλόν τε βοῶντος αὐτοῦ τὴν ὑπατείαν φέρεσθαι τῆς τῶν εὐγενῶν καὶ πλουσίων μαλακίας, καὶ τραύμασιν οἰκείοις πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, οὐ μνήμασι νεκρῶν οὐδ’ ἀλλοτρίαις εἰκόσι [3] νεανιεύεσθαι. πολλάκις δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἀτυχήσαντας ἐν Λιβύῃ στρατηγούς, τοῦτο μὲν Βηστίαν, τοῦτο δ’ Ἀλβῖνον, ἀνθρώπους οἴκων μὲν ἐπιφανῶν, αὐτοὺς δ’ ἀπολέμους καὶ δι’ ἀπειρίαν πταίσαντας ὀνομάζων, ἐπυνθάνετο τῶν παρόντων, εἰ μὴ καὶ τοὺς ἐκείνων οἴονται προγόνους αὐτῷ μᾶλλον ἂν εὔξασθαι παραπλησίους ἐκγόνους ἀπολιπεῖν, ἅτε δὴ μηδ’ αὐτοὺς δι’ εὐγένειαν, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ [4] ἀρετῆς καὶ καλῶν ἔργων ἐνδόξους γενομένους. ταῦτα δ’ οὐ κενῶς οὐδ’ ἀλαζονικῶς ἔλεγεν οὐδὲ μάτην ἀπεχθάνεσθαι τοῖς δυνατοῖς βουλόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὁ δῆμος αὐτόν, ἡδόμενός τε τῇ βουλῇ προπηλακιζομένῃ καὶ λόγου κόμπῳ μετρῶν ἀεὶ φρονήματος μέγεθος, ἐξεκούφιζε καὶ συνεξώρμα μὴ φείδεσθαι τῶν ἀξιολόγων, χαριζόμενον τοῖς πολλοῖς.

[10] [1] Ὡς δὲ διέπλευσεν εἰς Λιβύην, Μέτελλος μὲν ἥττων τοῦ φθόνου γενόμενος καὶ περιπαθῶν, ὅτι κατειργασμένου τὸν πόλεμον αὐτοῦ καὶ μηδὲν ὑπόλοιπον ἢ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Ἰουγούρθα λαβεῖν ἔχοντος, ἥκει Μάριος ἐπὶ τὸν στέφανον καὶ τὸν θρίαμβον, ἐκ τῆς πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἀχαριστίας ηὐξημένος, οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συνελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς μὲν ὑπεξεχώρησε, Ῥουτίλιος δὲ τὸ στράτευμα τῷ Μαρίῳ παρέδωκε, πρεσβευτὴς γενονὼς τοῦ Μετέλλου.

[2] καὶ περιῆλθέ τις νέμεσις ἐν τῷ τέλει τῶν πράξεων Μάριον· ἀφῃρέθη γὰρ ὑπὸ Σύλλα τὴν τοῦ κατορθώματος δόξαν, ὡς ὑπ’ ἐκείνου Μέτελλος· ὃν τρόπον δ’ ἀφηγήσομαι βραχέως, ἐπεὶ τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς περὶ [3] Σύλλα (c. 3) γέγραπται. Βόκχος ὁ τῶν ἄνω βαρβάρων βασιλεὺς ἦν πενθερὸς Ἰουγούρθα, καὶ πολεμοῦντι μὲν οὐ πάνυ τι συλλαμβάνειν ἐδόκει, προβαλλόμενος αὐτοῦ τὴν ἀπιστίαν [4] καὶ τὴν αὔξησιν δεδοικώς· ἐπεὶ δὲ φεύγων καὶ πλανώμενος ἐκεῖνον ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ἔθετο τῶν ἐλπίδων τελευταίαν καὶ κατῆρε πρὸς αὐτόν, αἰσχύνῃ μᾶλλον ὡς ἱκέτην ἢ δι’ εὔνοιαν ὑποδεξάμενος διὰ χειρὸς εἶχε, φανερῶς μὲν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ παραιτούμενος Μάριον, καὶ γράφων ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἐκδῴη καὶ παρρησιαζόμενος, κρύφα δὲ βουλεύων προδοσίαν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ καὶ μεταπεμπόμενος Λεύκιον Σύλλαν, ταμίαν μὲν ὄντα Μαρίου, χρήσιμον δὲ τῷ Βόκχῳ γεγενημένον [5] ἐπὶ στρατείας. ὡς δὲ πιστεύσας ἀνέβη πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Σύλλας, ἔσχε μέν τις τροπὴ γνώμης καὶ μετάνοια τὸν βάρβαρον, ἡμέρας τε συχνὰς διηνέχθη τῷ λογισμῷ, βουλευόμενος ἢ παραδοῦναι τὸν Ἰουγούρθαν ἢ μηδὲ [6] τὸν Σύλλαν ἀφεῖναι. τέλος δὲ τὴν προτέραν κυρώσας προδοσίαν, ἐνεχείρισε τῷ Σύλλᾳ ζῶντα τὸν Ἰουγούρθαν.

[7] καὶ τοῦτο πρῶτον ὑπῆρξεν αὐτοῖς σπέρμα τῆς ἀνηκέστου καὶ χαλεπῆς ἐκείνης στάσεως, ἣ μικρὸν ἐδέησεν ἀνατρέψαι [8] τὴν Ῥώμην. πολλοὶ γὰρ ἐβούλοντο τοῦ Σύλλα τὸ ἔργον εἶναι, τῷ Μαρίῳ φθονοῦντες, αὐτός τε Σύλλας σφραγῖδα ποιησάμενος ἐφόρει, γλυφὴν ἔχουσαν ἐγχειριζόμενον [9] ὑπὸ τοῦ Βόκχου τὸν Ἰουγούρθαν ἑαυτῷ. καὶ ταύτῃ χρώμενος ἀεὶ διετέλει, φιλότιμον ἄνδρα καὶ πρὸς κοινωνίαν δόξης ἀγνώμονα καὶ δύσεριν ἐρεθίζων τὸν Μάριον, ἐναγόντων μάλιστα τῶν ἐχθρῶν τῶν ἐκείνου καὶ τὰ μὲν πρῶτα τοῦ πολέμου καὶ μέγιστα τῷ Μετέλλῳ, τὰ δ’ ἔσχατα καὶ τὸ πέρας αὐτοῦ Σύλλᾳ προστιθέντων, ὡς παύσαιτο θαυμάζων καὶ προσέχων ἐκείνῳ μάλιστα πάντων ὁ δῆμος.

[11] [1] Ταχὺ μέντοι τὸν φθόνον τοῦτον καὶ τὰ μίση καὶ τὰς διαβολὰς ἀπεσκέδασε τοῦ Μαρίου καὶ μετέστησεν ὁ κατασχὼν τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἀπὸ τῆς ἑσπέρας κίνδυνος, ἅμα τῷ πρῶτον ἐν χρείᾳ μεγάλου στρατηγοῦ γενέσθαι καὶ περισκέψασθαι τὴν πόλιν, ᾧ χρωμένη κυβερνήτῃ διαφεύξεται κλύδωνα πολέμου τοσοῦτον, οὐδενὸς ἀνασχομένου τῶν ἀπὸ γένους μεγάλων ἢ πλουσίων οἴκων ἐπὶ τὰς ὑπατικὰς κατιόντων ἀρχαιρεσίας, ἀλλ’ ἀπόντα τὸν [2] Μάριον ἀναγορευσάντων. ἄρτι γὰρ ἀπηγγελμένης αὐτοῖς τῆς Ἰουγούρθα συλλήψεως, αἱ περὶ Τευτόνων καὶ Κίμβρων φῆμαι προσέπιπτον, ἀπιστίαν μὲν ἐν ἀρχῇ παρασχοῦσαι πλήθους τε καὶ ῥώμης τῶν ἐπερχομένων στρατῶν, ὕστερον δὲ τῆς ἀληθείας ὑποδεέστεραι φανεῖσαι.

[3] μυριάδες μὲν γὰρ αἱ μάχιμοι τριάκοντα σὺν ὅπλοις ἐχώρουν, ὄχλοι δὲ παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν ἐλέγοντο πολλῷ πλείους συμπεριάγεσθαι, γῆς χρῄζοντες ἣ θρέψει τοσοῦτον πλῆθος, καὶ πόλεων ἐν αἷς ἱδρυθέντες βιώσονται, καθάπερ πρὸ αὐτῶν ἐπυνθάνοντο Κελτοὺς τῆς Ἰταλίας [4] τὴν ἀρίστην κατασχεῖν, Τυρρηνῶν ἀφελομένους. αὐτοὶ μὲν γὰρ ἀμειξίᾳ τῇ πρὸς ἑτέρους μήκει τε χώρας ἣν ἐπῆλθον ἠγνοοῦντο, τίνες ὄντες ἀνθρώπων ἢ πόθεν ὁρμηθέντες [5] ὥσπερ νέφος ἐμπέσοιεν Γαλατίᾳ καὶ Ἰταλίᾳ. καὶ μάλιστα μὲν εἰκάζοντο Γερμανικὰ γένη τῶν καθηκόντων ἐπὶ τὸν βόρειον ὠκεανὸν εἶναι τοῖς μεγέθεσι τῶν σωμάτων καὶ τῇ χαροπότητι τῶν ὀμμάτων, καὶ ὅτι Κίμβρους [6] ἐπονομάζουσι Γερμανοὶ τοὺς λῃστάς. εἰσὶ δ’ οἳ τὴν Κελτικὴν διὰ βάθος χώρας καὶ μέγεθος ἀπὸ τῆς ἔξω θαλάσσης καὶ τῶν ὑπαρκτίων κλιμάτων πρὸς ἥλιον ἀνίσχοντα κατὰ τὴν Μαιῶτιν ἐπιστρέφουσαν ἅπτεσθαι τῆς Ποντικῆς Σκυθίας λέγουσι, κἀκεῖθεν τὰ γένη μεμεῖχθαι· [7] τούτους ἐξαναστάντας οὐκ ἐκ μιᾶς ὁρμῆς οὐδὲ συνεχῶς, ἀλλ’ ἔτους ὥρᾳ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν εἰς τοὔμπροσθεν ἀεὶ χωροῦντας πολέμῳ, χρόνοις πολλοῖς ἐπελθεῖν τὴν ἤπειρον. διὸ καὶ πολλὰς κατὰ μέρος ἐπικλήσεις ἐχόντων, κοινῇ Κελτοσκύθας τὸν στρατὸν ὠνόμαζον.

[8] ἄλλοι δέ φασι Κιμμερίων τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων τῶν πάλαι γνωσθὲν[των] οὐ μέγα γενέσθαι τοῦ παντὸς μόριον, ἀλλὰ φυγὴν ἢ στάσιν τινὰ βιασθεῖσαν ὑπὸ Σκυθῶν εἰς Ἀσίαν ἀπὸ τῆς Μαιώτιδος διαπερᾶσαι Λυγδάμιος [9] ἡγουμένου· τὸ δὲ πλεῖστον αὐτῶν καὶ μαχιμώτατον ἐπ’ ἐσχάτοις οἰκοῦν παρὰ τὴν ἔξω θάλασσαν, γῆν μὲν νέμεσθαι σύσκιον καὶ ὑλώδη καὶ δυσήλιον πάντῃ διὰ βάθος καὶ πυκνότητα δρυμῶν, οὓς μέχρι τῶν Ἑρκυνίων εἴσω διήκειν, οὐρανοῦ δ’ εἰληχέναι, καθ’ ὃ δοκεῖ μέγα λαμβάνων ὁ πόλος ἔξαρμα διὰ τὴν ἔγκλισιν τῶν παραλλήλων, ὀλίγον ἀπολείπειν τοῦ κατὰ κορυφὴν ἱσταμένου σημείου πρὸς τὴν οἴκησιν, αἵ θ’ ἡμέραι βραχύτητι καὶ μήκει πρὸς [10] τὰς νύκτας ἴσαι κατανέμεσθαι τὸν χρόνον· διὸ καὶ τὴν εὐπορίαν τοῦ μυθεύματος Ὁμήρῳ γενέσθαι πρὸς τὴν [11] νεκυίαν. ἔνθεν οὖν τὴν ἔφοδον εἶναι τῶν βαρβάρων τούτων ἐπὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν, Κιμμερίων μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς, τότε δὲ Κίμβρων [12] οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου προσαγορευομένων. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν εἰκασμῷ μᾶλλον ἢ κατὰ βέβαιον ἱστορίαν λέγεται. τὸ δὲ πλῆθος οὐκ ἔλαττον, ἀλλὰ πλέον εἶναι τοῦ λεχθέντος [13] ὑπὸ πολλῶν ἱστόρηται. θυμὸν δὲ καὶ τόλμαν ἀνυπόστατοι καὶ χειρῶν ἔργα παρὰ τὰς μάχας ὀξύτητι καὶ βίᾳ πυρὸς ἐοικότες ἐπῄεσαν, οὐδενὸς ἀντέχοντος αὐτῶν πρὸς τὴν ἔφοδον, ἀλλὰ πάντων μὲν ὅσους ἐπῆλθον ἐν λόγῳ λείας ἀγομένων καὶ φερομένων, πολλῶν δὲ καὶ μεγάλων Ῥωμαϊκῶν στρατοπέδων καὶ στρατηγῶν, ὅσοι προεκάθηντο τῆς ἐκτὸς Ἄλπεων Γαλατίας, ἀνηρπασμένων [14] ἀκλεῶς. οἳ καὶ μάλιστα τὴν φορὰν αὐτῶν κακῶς ἀγωνισάμενοι κατὰ τῆς Ῥώμης ἐπεσπάσαντο· νικήσαντες γὰρ οἷς ἐνέτυχον καὶ χρημάτων πολλῶν κρατήσαντες, ἔγνωσαν μηδαμοῦ γῆς ἑαυτοὺς ἱδρύειν, πρὶν ‹ἂν› ἀνατρέψωσι τὴν Ῥώμην καὶ διαπορθήσωσι τὴν Ἰταλίαν.

[12] [1] Ταῦτα Ῥωμαῖοι πυνθανόμενοι πολλαχόθεν, ἐκάλουν Μάριον ἐπὶ τὴν στρατηγίαν, καὶ τὸ δεύτερον ὕπατος ἀπεδείχθη, τοῦ μὲν νόμου κωλύοντος ἀπόντα καὶ μὴ διαλιπόντα χρόνον ὡρισμένον αὖθις αἱρεῖσθαι, τοῦ δὲ [2] δήμου τοὺς ἀντιλέγοντας ἐκβαλόντος. ἡγοῦντο γὰρ οὔτε νῦν πρῶτον εἴξειν τῷ συμφέροντι τὸν νόμον, οὔτ’ ἀλογωτέραν εἶναι τὴν παροῦσαν αἰτίαν ἐκείνης, δι’ ἣν τὸν Σκιπίωνα παρὰ τοὺς νόμους ὕπατον ἀπέδειξαν, οὐ φοβούμενοι τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀποβαλεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὴν Καρχηδονίων [3] ἐπιθυμοῦντες ἀνελεῖν. ταῦτ’ ἔδοξε, καὶ Μάριος ἐκ Λιβύης μετὰ τοῦ στρατεύματος διακομισθείς, αὐταῖς Καλάνδαις Ἰανουαρίαις, ἣν ἔτους ἀρχὴν ἄγουσι Ῥωμαῖοι, τήν θ’ ὑπατείαν ἀνέλαβε καὶ τὸν θρίαμβον εἰσήλασεν, ἄπιστον ἐπιδειξάμενος θέαμα Ῥωμαίοις Ἰουγούρθαν αἰχμάλωτον, οὗ ζῶντος οὐδ’ ἂν εἷς ἤλπισε πολεμῶν κρατῆσαι· οὕτω τις ἦν ποικίλος ἀνὴρ τύχαις ὁμιλῆσαι, καὶ [4] πανουργίᾳ πολλῇ μεμειγμένον ἔχων τὸ θυμοειδές. ἀλλ’ ἐξέστη γε πομπευθεὶς ὡς λέγουσι τότε τοῦ φρονεῖν, καὶ μετὰ τὸν θρίαμβον εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον ἐμπεσών, ὡς οἱ μὲν αὐτοῦ βίᾳ περιέρρηξαν τὸν χιτωνίσκον, οἱ δὲ σπεύδοντες ἀφελέσθαι βίᾳ τὸ χρυσοῦν ἐλλόβιον ἅμα τὸν λοβὸν συναπέρρηξαν, ὠσθεὶς δὲ γυμνὸς εἰς τὸ βάραθρον κατεβλήθη, μεστὸς ὢν ταραχῆς καὶ διασεσηρώς Ἡράκλεις [5] εἶπεν, ὡς ψυχρὸν ὑμῶν τὸ βαλανεῖον. ἀλλὰ τοῦτον μὲν ἓξ ἡμέραις ζυγομαχήσαντα τῷ λιμῷ καὶ μέχρι τῆς ἐσχάτης ὥρας ἐκκρεμασθέντα τῆς τοῦ ζῆν ἐπιθυμίας [6] εἶχεν ἀξία δίκη τῶν ἀσεβημάτων. ἐν δὲ τῷ θριάμβῳ κομισθῆναι λέγουσι χρυσοῦ μὲν ἑπτὰ καὶ τρισχιλίας λίτρας, ἀργύρου δ’ ἀσήμου πεντακισχιλίας ἑπτακοσίας ἑβδομήκοντα πέντε, νομίσματος δὲ δραχμὰς ἑπτακισχιλίας ἐπὶ [7] μυριάσιν ὀκτὼ καὶ εἴκοσι. μετὰ δὲ τὴν πομπὴν ὁ Μάριος σύγκλητον ἤθροισεν ἐν Καπετωλίῳ, καὶ παρῆλθε μὲν εἴτε λαθὼν αὑτὸν εἴτε τῇ τύχῃ χρώμενος ἀγροικότερον ἐν τῇ θριαμβικῇ σκευῇ, ταχὺ δὲ τὴν βουλὴν ἀχθεσθεῖσαν αἰσθόμενος, ἐξανέστη καὶ μεταλαβὼν τὴν περιπόρφυρον αὖθις ‹εἰς›ῆλθεν.

[13] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῇ στρατείᾳ τὴν δύναμιν διεπόνει καθ’ ὁδόν, ἐξασκῶν δρόμοις τε παντοδαποῖς καὶ μακραῖς ὁδοιπορίαις, ἑαυτῷ δ’ ‹ἕκαστον› ἀχθοφορεῖν ἀναγκάζων καὶ αὐτουργεῖν τὰ πρὸς τὴν δίαιταν, ὥστε καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα τοὺς φιλοπόνους καὶ σιωπῇ μετ’ εὐκολίας τὰ προστασσόμενα [2] ποιοῦντας ἡμιόνους Μαριανοὺς καλεῖσθαι. καίτοι τινὲς αἰτίαν ἑτέραν τοῦ λόγου τούτου νομίζουσι. Σκιπίωνος γὰρ ὅτε Νομαντίαν ἐπολιόρκει βουληθέντος ἐπιδεῖν μὴ μόνον τὰ ὅπλα μηδὲ τοὺς ἵππους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ὀρεῖς καὶ τὰς ἁμάξας, ὅπως ἑκάστοις ἐξησκημένα καὶ παρεσκευασμένα τυγχάνοι, προαγαγεῖν τὸν Μάριον ἵππον τε κάλλιστα τεθραμμένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἡμίονον εὐεξίᾳ καὶ [3] λιπαρότητι καὶ ῥώμῃ διαφέροντα πολὺ τῶν ἄλλων· ἡσθέντος οὖν τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τοῖς τοῦ Μαρίου θρέμμασι καὶ πολλάκις αὐτῶν μνησθέντος, οὕτως ἄρα τοὺς σκώπτοντας ἐν ἐπαίνῳ τὸν ἐνδελεχῆ καὶ τλήμονα καὶ φιλόπονον Μαριανὸν ἡμίονον προσαγορεύειν.

[14] [1] Εὐτύχημα δὲ δοκεῖ τῷ Μαρίῳ μέγα γενέσθαι· τῶν γὰρ βαρβάρων ὥσπερ τινὰ παλίρροιαν τῆς ὁρμῆς λαβόντων, καὶ ῥυέντων πρότερον ἐπὶ τὴν Ἰβηρίαν, χρόνον ἔσχε καὶ τὰ σώματα γυμνάσαι τῶν ἀνδρῶν καὶ τὰ φρονήματα πρὸς τὸ θαρρεῖν ἀναρρῶσαι, τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, αὐτὸς οἷος ἦν [2] κατανοηθῆναι. τὸ γὰρ ἐν ἀρχῇ σκυθρωπὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ περὶ τὰς τιμωρίας δυσμείλικτον ἐθισθεῖσι μηδὲν ἁμαρτάνειν μηδ’ ἀπειθεῖν ἅμα τῷ δικαίῳ σωτήριον ἐφαίνετο, τήν τε τοῦ θυμοῦ σφοδρότητα καὶ τὸ τραχὺ τῆς φωνῆς καὶ ‹τὸ› ἀγριωπὸν τοῦ προσώπου συντρεφόμενον κατὰ μικρὸν [3] οὐχ αὑτοῖς ἐνόμιζον εἶναι φοβερόν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις. μάλιστα δ’ ἡ περὶ τὰς κρίσεις ὀρθότης αὐτοῦ τοῖς στρατιώταις [4] ἤρεσκεν· ἧς καὶ τοιόνδε τι δεῖγμα λέγεται. Γάιος Λούσιος ἀδελφιδοῦς αὐτοῦ τεταγμένος ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίας ἐστρατεύετο, τἆλλα μὲν ἀνὴρ οὐ δοκῶν εἶναι πονηρός, [5] ἥττων δὲ μειρακίων καλῶν. οὗτος ἤρα νεανίσκου τῶν ὑφ’ αὑτῷ στρατευομένων ὄνομα Τρεβωνίου, καὶ πολλάκις πειρῶν οὐκ ἐτύγχανε· τέλος δὲ νύκτωρ ὑπηρέτην ἀποστείλας [6] μετεπέμπετο τὸν Τρεβώνιον. ὁ δὲ νεανίας ἧκε μέν, ἀντειπεῖν γὰρ οὐκ ἐξῆν καλούμενον, εἰσαχθεὶς δ’ ὑπὸ τὴν σκηνὴν πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐπιχειροῦντα βιάζεσθαι σπασάμενος [7] τὸ ξίφος ἀπέκτεινε. ταῦτ’ ἐπράχθη τοῦ Μαρίου μὴ παρόντος· ἐπανελθὼν δὲ προὔθηκε τῷ Τρεβωνίῳ κρίσιν.

[8] ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλῶν κατηγορούντων, οὐδενὸς δὲ συνηγοροῦντος, αὐτὸς εὐθαρσῶς καταστὰς διηγήσατο τὸ πρᾶγμα, καὶ μάρτυρας ἔσχεν ὅτι πειρῶντι πολλάκις ἀντεῖπε τῷ Λουσίῳ καὶ μεγάλων διδομένων ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ προήκατο τὸ σῶμα, θαυμάσας ὁ Μάριος καὶ ἡσθεὶς ἐκέλευσε τὸν πάτριον ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀριστείαις στέφανον κομισθῆναι, καὶ λαβὼν αὐτὸς ἐστεφάνωσε τὸν Τρεβώνιον, ὡς κάλλιστον ἔργον ἐν καιρῷ [9] παραδειγμάτων δεομένῳ καλῶν ἀποδεδειγμένον. τοῦτ’ εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην ἀπαγγελθὲν οὐχ ἥκιστα τῷ Μαρίῳ συνέπραξε τὴν τρίτην ὑπατείαν· ἅμα δὲ καὶ τῶν βαρβάρων ἔτους ὥρᾳ προσδοκίμων ὄντων, ἐβούλοντο μετὰ μηδενὸς [10] ἄλλου στρατηγοῦ κινδυνεῦσαι πρὸς αὐτούς. οὐ μὴν ἧκον ὡς προσεδοκῶντο ταχέως, ἀλλὰ πάλιν διῆλθε τῷ Μαρίῳ ὁ τῆς ὑπατείας χρόνος.

[11] Ἐνισταμένων δὲ τῶν ἀρχαιρεσιῶν καὶ τοῦ συνάρχοντος αὐτοῦ τελευτήσαντος, ἀπολιπὼν ἐπὶ τῶν δυνάμεων [12] Μάνιον Ἀκύλλιον, αὐτὸς ἧκεν εἰς Ῥώμην. μετιόντων δὲ πολλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν τὴν ὑπατείαν, Λούκιος Σατορνῖνος, ὁ μάλιστα τῶν δημάρχων ἄγων τὸ πλῆθος, ὑπὸ τοῦ Μαρίου τεθεραπευμένος ἐδημηγόρει, κελεύων ἐκεῖνον [13] ὕπατον αἱρεῖσθαι. θρυπτομένου δὲ τοῦ Μαρίου καὶ παραιτεῖσθαι τὴν ἀρχὴν φάσκοντος, ὡς δὴ μὴ δεομένου, προδότην αὐτὸν ὁ Σατορνῖνος ἀπεκάλει τῆς πατρίδος, ἐν [14] κινδύνῳ τοσούτῳ φεύγοντα τὸ στρατηγεῖν. καὶ φανερὸς μὲν ἦν ἀπιθάνως συνυποκρινόμενος τὸ προσποίημα τῷ Μαρίῳ, τὸν δὲ καιρὸν ὁρῶντες οἱ πολλοὶ τῆς ἐκείνου δεινότητος ἅμα καὶ τύχης δεόμενον, ἐψηφίσαντο τὴν τετάρτην ὑπατείαν, καὶ συνάρχοντα Κάτλον αὐτῷ Λουτάτιον κατέστησαν, ἄνδρα καὶ τιμώμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρίστων καὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς οὐκ ἐπαχθῆ.

[15] [1] Πυνθανόμενος δὲ τοὺς πολεμίους ὁ Μάριος ἐγγὺς εἶναι, διὰ ταχέων ὑπερέβαλε τὰς Ἄλπεις· καὶ τειχίσας στρατόπεδον παρὰ τῷ Ῥοδανῷ ποταμῷ, συνήγαγεν εἰς αὐτὸ χορηγίαν ἄφθονον, ὡς μηδέποτε παρὰ τὸν τοῦ συμφέροντος λογισμὸν ἐκβιασθείη δι’ ἔνδειαν τῶν [2] ἀναγκαίων εἰς μάχην καταστῆναι. τὴν δὲ κομιδὴν ὧν ἔδει[το] τῷ στρατεύματι μακρὰν καὶ πολυτελῆ πρότερον οὖσαν πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν αὐτὸς εἰργάσατο ῥᾳδίαν καὶ [3] ταχεῖαν. τὰ γὰρ στόματα τοῦ Ῥοδανοῦ, πρὸς τὰς ἀνακοπὰς τῆς θαλάττης ἰλύν τε πολλὴν λαμβάνοντα καὶ θῖνα πηλῷ βαθεῖ συμπεπιλημένην ὑπὸ τοῦ κλύδωνος, χαλεπὸν καὶ ἐπίπονον καὶ βραδύπορον τοῖς σιταγωγοῖς ἐποίει τὸν [4] εἴσπλουν. ὁ δὲ τρέψας ἐνταῦθα τὸν στρατὸν σχολάζοντα, τάφρον μεγάλην ἐνέβαλε, καὶ ταύτῃ πολὺ μέρος τοῦ ποταμοῦ μεταστήσας περιήγαγεν εἰς ἐπιτήδειον αἰγιαλόν, βαθὺ μὲν καὶ ναυσὶ μεγάλαις ἔποχον, λεῖον δὲ καὶ ἄκλυστον στόμα λαβοῦσαν πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν. αὕτη μὲν οὖν ἔτι ‹καὶ [5] νῦν› ἀπ’ ἐκείνου τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν φυλάττει. τῶν δὲ βαρβάρων διελόντων σφᾶς αὐτοὺς δίχα, Κίμβροι μὲν ἔλαχον διὰ Νωρικῶν ἄνωθεν ἐπὶ Κάτλον χωρεῖν καὶ τὴν πάροδον ἐκείνην βιάζεσθαι, Τεύτονες δὲ καὶ Ἄμβρωνες διὰ Λιγύων [6] ἐπὶ Μάριον παρὰ θάλατταν. καὶ Κίμβροις μὲν ἐγίνετο πλείων ἡ διατριβὴ καὶ μέλλησις, Τεύτονες δὲ καὶ Ἄμβρωνες ἄραντες εὐθὺς καὶ διελθόντες τὴν ἐν μέσῳ χώραν, ἐφαίνοντο πλήθει τ’ ἄπειροι καὶ δυσπρόσοπτοι τὰ εἴδη, [7] φθόγγον τε καὶ θόρυβον οὐχ ἑτέροις ὅμοιοι. περιβαλόμενοι δὲ τοῦ πεδίου μέγα καὶ στρατοπεδεύσαντες, προὐκαλοῦντο τὸν Μάριον εἰς μάχην.

[16] [1] Ὁ δὲ τούτων μὲν οὐκ ἐφρόντιζεν, ἐν δὲ τῷ χάρακι τοὺς στρατιώτας συνεῖχε, καὶ καθήπτετο πικρῶς τῶν θρασυνομένων, καὶ τοὺς προπίπτοντας ὑπὸ θυμοῦ καὶ μάχεσθαι βουλομένους προδότας ἀπεκάλει τῆς πατρίδος.

[2] οὐ γὰρ ὑπὲρ θριάμβων τὴν φιλοτιμίαν εἶναι καὶ τροπαίων, ἀλλ’ ὅπως νέφος τοσοῦτον πολέμου καὶ σκηπτὸν ὠσάμενοι [3] διασώσουσι τὴν Ἰταλίαν. ταῦτα μὲν ἰδίᾳ πρὸς τοὺς ἡγεμόνας καὶ τοὺς ὁμοτίμους ἔλεγε, τοὺς δὲ στρατιώτας ὑπὲρ τοῦ χάρακος ἱστὰς ἀνὰ μέρος καὶ θεᾶσθαι κελεύων, εἴθιζε τὴν μορφὴν ἀνέχεσθαι τῶν πολεμίων καὶ τὴν φωνὴν ὑπομένειν, ὅλως οὖσαν ἀλλόκοτον καὶ θηριώδη, σκευήν τε καὶ κίνησιν αὐτῶν καταμανθάνειν, ἅμα τῷ χρόνῳ τὰ φαινόμενα δεινὰ ποιουμένους τῇ διανοίᾳ χειροήθη [4] διὰ τῆς ὄψεως· ἡγεῖτο γὰρ πολλὰ μὲν ἐπιψεύδεσθαι τῶν οὐ προσόντων τὴν καινότητα τοῖς φοβεροῖς, ἐν δὲ τῇ συνηθείᾳ καὶ τὰ τῇ φύσει δεινὰ τὴν ἔκπληξιν ἀποβάλλειν.

[5] τῶν δ’ οὐ μόνον ἡ καθ’ ἡμέραν ὄψις ἀφῄρει τι τοῦ θάμβους, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἀπειλὰς τῶν βαρβάρων καὶ τὸν κόμπον οὐκ ἀνεκτὸν ὄντα θυμὸς αὐτοῖς παριστάμενος ἐξεθέρμαινε καὶ διέφλεγε τὰς ψυχάς, οὐ μόνον ἀγόντων καὶ φερόντων τὰ πέριξ ἅπαντα τῶν πολεμίων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ χάρακι ποιουμένων προσβολὰς μετὰ πολλῆς ἀσελγείας καὶ [6] θρασύτητος· ὥστε φωνὰς καὶ διαγανακτήσεις τῶν [7] στρατιωτῶν πρὸς τὸν Μάριον ἐκφέρεσθαι· τίνα δὴ καταγνοὺς ἀνανδρίαν ἡμῶν Μάριος εἴργει μάχης ὥσπερ γυναῖκας ὑπὸ κλεισὶ καὶ θυρωροῖς; φέρε παθόντες ἀνδρῶν πάθος ἐλευθέρων ἐρώμεθα, πότερον ἄλλους ἀναμένει μαχουμένους ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας τῆς Ἰταλίας, ἡμῖν δὲ λειτουργοῖς χρήσεται διὰ παντός, ὅταν δέῃ[ται] τάφρους ὀρύσσειν καὶ πηλὸν ἐκκαθαίρειν καὶ ποταμούς τινας [8] παρατρέπειν; ἐπὶ ταῦτα γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἤσκει τοῖς πολλοῖς πόνοις ἡμᾶς, καὶ ταῦτα τῶν ὑπατειῶν ἀποδειξάμενος [9] ἔργα τοῖς πολίταις ἐπάνεισιν. ἢ τὰ Κάρβωνος αὐτὸν φοβεῖ καὶ Καιπίωνος, οὓς ἐνίκησαν οἱ πολέμιοι, πολὺ μὲν αὐτοὺς τῆς Μαρίου δόξης καὶ ἀρετῆς ἀποδέοντας, πολὺ δὲ χείρονα [10] στρατὸν ἄγοντας; ἀλλὰ καὶ παθεῖν τι δρῶντας ὡς ἐκεῖνοι κάλλιον, ἢ καθῆσθαι πορθουμένων τῶν συμμάχων θεατάς.

[17] [1] Ταῦτ’ ἀκούων ὁ Μάριος ἥδετο, καὶ κατεπράυνεν αὐτούς, ὡς οὐκ ἐκείνοις ἀπιστῶν, ἀλλ’ ἔκ τινων λογίων [2] τὸν τῆς νίκης ἅμα καιρὸν καὶ τόπον ἐκδεχόμενος. καὶ γάρ τινα Σύραν γυναῖκα, Μάρθαν ὄνομα, μαντεύεσθαι λεγομένην ἐν φορείῳ κατακειμένην σεμνῶς περιήγετο, καὶ [3] θυσίας ἔθυεν ἐκείνης κελευούσης. ἣν πρότερον μὲν ἀπήλασεν ἡ σύγκλητος, ἐντυχεῖν ὑπὲρ τούτων βουλομένην καὶ τὰ μέλλοντα προθεσπίζουσαν, ἐπεὶ δὲ πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας εἰσιοῦσα διάπειραν ἐδίδου, καὶ μάλιστα τῇ Μαρίου παρακαθίζουσα παρὰ τοὺς ἀγῶνας τῶν μονομάχων ἐπιτυχῶς προηγόρευε τὸν μέλλοντα νικᾶν, ἀναπεμφθεῖσα [4] πρὸς Μάριον ὑπ’ ἐκείνης ἐθαυμάζετο. καὶ τὰ πολλὰ μὲν ἐν φορείῳ παρεκομίζετο, πρὸς δὲ τὰς θυσίας κατῄει φοινικίδα διπλῆν ἐμπεπορπημένη καὶ λόγχην ἀναδεδεμένην [5] ταινίαις καὶ στεφανώμασι φέρουσα. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν τὸ δρᾶμα πολλοῖς ἀμφισβήτησιν παρεῖχεν, εἴτε πεπεισμένος ὡς ἀληθῶς εἴτε πλαττόμενος καὶ συνυποκρινόμενος ἐπιδείκνυται [6] τὴν ἄνθρωπον. τὸ δὲ περὶ τοὺς γῦπας θαύματος ἄξιον Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μύνδιος (fr. 26 Wellm.) ἱστόρηκε. δύο γὰρ ἐφαίνοντο πρὸ τῶν κατορθωμάτων ἀεὶ περὶ τὰς στρατιὰς καὶ παρηκολούθουν, γνωριζόμενοι χαλκοῖς περιδεραίοις· [7] ταῦτα δ’ οἱ στρατιῶται συλλαβόντες αὐτοὺς περιῆψαν, εἶτ’ ἀφῆκαν· ἐκ δὲ τούτου γνωρίζοντες ἠσπάζοντό θ’ ὡς ‹συ›στρατιώτας, καὶ φανέντων ἐπὶ ταῖς ἐξόδοις ἔχαιρον ὡς ἀγαθόν τι πράξοντες.

[8] Πολλῶν δὲ σημείων προφαινομένων, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα χαρακτῆρα κοινὸν εἶχεν, ἐκ δ’ Ἀμερίας καὶ Τουδέρτου πόλεων Ἰταλικῶν ἀπηγγέλθη νυκτὸς ὦφθαι κατὰ τὸν οὐρανὸν αἰχμάς τε φλογοειδεῖς καὶ θυρεοὺς διαφερομένους τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα συμπίπτοντας ἀλλήλοις καὶ σχήματα καὶ κινήματα λαμβάνοντας οἷα γίνεται μαχομένων ἀνδρῶν, τέλος δὲ τῶν μὲν ἐνδιδόντων, τῶν δ’ ἐπιφερομένων, πάντας [9] ἐπὶ δυσμὰς ῥυῆναι. περὶ τοῦτον δέ πως τὸν χρόνον ἀφίκετο καὶ Βατάκης ἐκ Πεσσινοῦντος, ὁ τῆς Μεγάλης Μητρὸς ἱερεύς, ἀπαγγέλλων ὡς ἡ θεὸς ἐκ τῶν ἀνακτόρων ἐφθέγξατ’ αὐτῷ, νίκην καὶ κράτος πολέμου Ῥωμαίοις [10] ὑπάρχειν. τῆς δὲ συγκλήτου προσεμένης καὶ τῇ θεῷ ναὸν ἐπινίκιον ἱδρύσασθαι ψηφισαμένης, τὸν Βατάκην εἰς τὸν δῆμον προελθόντα καὶ ταὐτὰ βουλόμενον εἰπεῖν ἐκώλυσε δημαρχῶν Αὖλος Πομπήιος, ἀγύρτην ἀποκαλῶν [11] καὶ πρὸς ὕβριν ἀπελαύνων τοῦ βήματος. ὃ δὴ καὶ μάλιστα τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου πίστιν παρέσχεν· οὐ γὰρ ἔφθη τῆς ἐκκλησίας λυθείσης ὁ Αὖλος εἰς οἶκον ἐπανελθεῖν, καὶ πυρετὸς ἐξήνθησεν αὐτῷ τοσοῦτος, ὥστε πᾶσι καταφανῆ γενόμενον καὶ περιβόητον ἐντὸς ἑβδόμης ἡμέρας ἀποθανεῖν.

[18] [1] Οἱ δὲ Τεύτονες ἐπεχείρησαν μὲν ἡσυχάζοντος τοῦ Μαρίου πολιορκεῖν τὸ στρατόπεδον, βέλεσι δὲ πολλοῖς ἐντυχόντες ἀπὸ τοῦ χάρακος φερομένοις καί τινας ἐξ αὑτῶν ἀποβαλόντες, ἔγνωσαν εἰς τοὔμπροσθεν χωρεῖν [2] ὡς ὑπερβαλοῦντες ἀδεῶς τὰς Ἄλπεις. καὶ συσκευασάμενοι παρήμειβον τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν Ῥωμαίων, τότε δὴ μάλιστα παμπληθεῖς μήκει καὶ χρόνῳ τῆς παρόδου φανέντες· ἡμέραις γὰρ ἓξ λέγονται τὸν χάρακα τοῦ Μαρίου [3] παραμείψασθαι συνεχῶς ὁδεύοντες. ἐπορεύοντο δ’ ἐγγύς, πυνθανόμενοι τῶν Ῥωμαίων μετὰ γέλωτος, εἴ τι πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας ἐπιστέλλοιεν· αὐτοὶ γὰρ ἔσεσθαι ταχέως [4] παρ’ αὐταῖς. ἐπεὶ δὲ παρήλλαξαν οἱ βάρβαροι καὶ προῄεσαν, ἄρας καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπηκολούθει σχέδην, ἐγγὺς μὲν ἀεὶ καὶ παρ’ αὐτοὺς ἐκείνους ἱδρυόμενος, ὀχυραῖς δὲ χρώμενος στρατοπεδείαις καὶ χωρία καρτερὰ προβαλλόμενος, [5] ὥστ’ ἐν ἀσφαλεῖ νυκτερεύειν. οὕτω δὴ προϊόντες ἐγένοντο πρὸς τοῖς καλουμένοις ὕδασι Σεξτίοις, ὅθεν ἔδει πορευθέντας οὐ πολλὴν ὁδὸν ἐν ταῖς Ἄλπεσιν εἶναι.

[6] διὸ δὴ καὶ Μάριος ἐνταῦθα παρεσκευάζετο μάχεσθαι, καὶ κατέλαβε τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τόπον ἰσχυρὸν μέν, ὕδωρ δ’ ἄφθονον οὐκ ἔχοντα, βουλόμενος ὥς φασι καὶ τούτῳ παροξῦναι [7] τοὺς στρατιώτας. πολλῶν γέ τοι δυσχεραινόντων καὶ διψήσειν λεγόντων, δείξας τῇ χειρὶ ποταμόν τινα ῥέοντα πλησίον τοῦ βαρβαρικοῦ χάρακος, ἐκεῖθεν αὐτοῖς [8] ἔφησεν εἶναι ποτὸν ὤνιον αἵματος. τί οὖν ἔφασαν οὐκ εὐθὺς ἡμᾶς ἄγεις ἐπ’ αὐτούς, ἕως ὑγρὸν τὸ αἷμα ἔχομεν; κἀκεῖνος ἠρέμα τῇ φωνῇ πρότερον εἶπεν ὀχυρωτέον ἡμῖν τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[19] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν στρατιῶται καίπερ ἀσχάλλοντες ἐπείθοντο· τῆς δὲ θεραπείας τὸ πλῆθος, οὔτ’ αὐτοὶ ποτὸν οὔθ’ ὑποζυγίοις ἔχοντες, ἀθρόοι κατέβαινον ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμόν, οἱ μὲν ἀξίνας, οἱ δὲ πελέκεις, ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ ξίφη καὶ λόγχας ἅμα τοῖς ὑδρίοις ἀναλαβόντες, ὡς καὶ διὰ μάχης ὑδρευσόμενοι.

[2] τούτοις τὸ πρῶτον ὀλίγοι προσεμάχοντο τῶν πολεμίων· ἔτυχον γὰρ ἀριστῶντες οἱ πολλοὶ μετὰ λουτρόν, οἱ δ’ ἐλούοντο· ῥήγνυσι γὰρ αὐτόθι ναμάτων θερμῶν πηγὰς ὁ χῶρος· καὶ μέρος τι περὶ ταῦτα τοὺς βαρβάρους εὐπαθοῦντας καὶ πανηγυρίζοντας ἡδονῇ καὶ θαύματι τοῦ τόπου [3] κατέλαβον οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι. πρὸς δὲ τὴν κραυγὴν πλειόνων συντρεχόντων, τῷ τε Μαρίῳ χαλεπὸν ἦν ἔτι τοὺς στρατιώτας ἐπισχεῖν περὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν δεδιότας, καὶ τῶν πολεμίων τὸ μαχιμώτατον μέρος, ὑφ’ οὗ προήττηντο Ῥωμαῖοι μετὰ Μαλλίου καὶ Καιπίωνος πρότερον - Ἄμβρωνες ὠνομάζοντο, καὶ πλῆθος ὑπὲρ τρισμυρίους αὐτοὶ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἦσαν - , ἀναΐξαντες ἐπὶ τὰς πανοπλίας [4] ἐχώρουν. τὰ μὲν οὖν σώματα πλησμονῇ βεβαρημένοι, τοῖς δὲ φρονήμασι γαῦροι καὶ διακεχυμένοι πρὸς τὸν ἄκρατον, οὐκ ἀτάκτοις οὐδὲ μανιώδεσι φερόμενοι δρόμοις οὐδ’ ἄναρθρον ἀλαλαγμὸν ἱέντες, ἀλλὰ κρούοντες ῥυθμῷ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ συναλλόμενοι, πάντες ἅμα τὴν αὑτῶν ἐφθέγγοντο πολλάκις προσηγορίαν Ἄμβρωνες, εἴτ’ ἀνακαλούμενοι σφᾶς αὐτούς, εἴτε τοὺς πολεμίους τῇ [5] προδηλώσει προεκφοβοῦντες. τῶν δ’ Ἰταλικῶν πρῶτοι καταβαίνοντες ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς Λίγυες, ὡς ἤκουσαν βοώντων καὶ συνῆκαν, ἀντεφώνουν καὶ αὐτοὶ τὴν πάτριον ἐπίκλησιν αὐτῶν εἶναι· σφᾶς γὰρ αὐτοὺς οὕτως κατὰ γένος [6] ὀνομάζουσι Λίγυες. πυκνὸν οὖν καὶ παράλληλον ἀντήχει πρὶν εἰς χεῖρας συνελθεῖν τὸ ἀναφώνημα· καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἑκατέροις ἀνὰ μέρος συναναφθεγγομένων καὶ φιλοτιμουμένων πρῶτον ἀλλήλους τῷ μεγέθει τῆς βοῆς ὑπερβαλέσθαι, παρώξυνε καὶ διηρέθιζε τὸν θυμὸν ἡ [7] κραυγή. τοὺς μὲν οὖν Ἄμβρωνας διέσπασε τὸ ῥεῖθρον· οὐ γὰρ ἔφθασαν εἰς τάξιν καταστῆναι διαβάντες, ἀλλὰ τοῖς πρώτοις εὐθὺς μετὰ δρόμου τῶν Λιγύων προσπεσόντων, ἐν χερσὶν ἦν ἡ μάχη· τοῖς δὲ Λίγυσι τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐπιβοηθούντων καὶ φερομένων ἄνωθεν ἐπὶ τοὺς [8] βαρβάρους, βιασθέντες ἐτράποντο. καὶ πλεῖστοι μὲν αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸ ῥεῖθρον ὠθούμενοι κατ’ ἀλλήλων ἐπαίοντο καὶ κατεπίμπλασαν φόνου καὶ νεκρῶν τὸν ποταμόν, τοὺς δὲ διαβάντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι μὴ τολμῶντας ἀναστρέφειν ἔκτεινον, ἄχρι τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ τῶν ἁμαξῶν φεύγοντας.

[9] ἐνταῦθα δ’ αἱ γυναῖκες ἀπαντῶσαι μετὰ ξιφῶν καὶ πελέκεων, δεινὸν τετριγυῖαι καὶ περίθυμον, ἠμύνοντο τοὺς φεύγοντας ὁμοίως καὶ τοὺς διώκοντας, τοὺς μὲν ὡς προδότας, τοὺς δ’ ὡς πολεμίους, ἀναπεφυρμέναι μαχομένοις καὶ χερσὶ γυμναῖς τούς τε θυρεοὺς τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἀποσπῶσαι καὶ τῶν ξιφῶν ἐπιλαμβανόμεναι, καὶ τραύματα καὶ διακοπὰς σωμάτων ὑπομένουσαι, μέχρι τελευτῆς [10] ἀήττητοι τοῖς θυμοῖς. τὴν μὲν οὖν παραποτάμιον μάχην οὕτω κατὰ τύχην μᾶλλον ἢ γνώμῃ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ γενέσθαι λέγουσιν.

[20] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλοὺς τῶν Ἀμβρώνων οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι διαφθείραντες ἀνεχώρησαν ὀπίσω καὶ σκότος ἐπέσχεν, οὐχ ὥσπερ ἐπ’ εὐτυχήματι τοσούτῳ τὸν στρατὸν ἐδέξαντο παιᾶνες ἐπινίκιοι καὶ πότοι κατὰ σκηνὰς καὶ φιλοφροσύναι περὶ δεῖπνα καὶ τὸ πάντων ἥδιστον ἀνδράσιν εὐτυχῶς μεμαχημένοις, ὕπνος ἤπιος, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνην μάλιστα [2] τὴν νύκτα φοβερὰν καὶ ταραχώδη διήγαγον. ἦν μὲν γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἀχαράκωτον τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ ἀτείχιστον, ἀπελείποντο δὲ τῶν βαρβάρων ἔτι πολλαὶ μυριάδες ἀήττητοι, καὶ συμμεμειγμένων τούτοις ὅσοι διαπεφεύγεσαν τῶν Ἀμβρώνων, ὀδυρμὸς ἦν διὰ νυκτὸς οὐ κλαυθμοῖς οὐδὲ στεναγμοῖς ἀνθρώπων ἐοικώς, ἀλλὰ θηρομιγής τις ὠρυγὴ καὶ βρύχημα μεμειγμένον ἀπειλαῖς καὶ θρήνοις ἀναπεμπόμενον ἐκ πλήθους τοσούτου τά τε πέριξ ὄρη [3] καὶ τὰ κοῖλα τοῦ ποταμοῦ περιεφώνει. καὶ κατεῖχε φρικώδης ἦχος τὸ πεδίον, τοὺς δὲ Ῥωμαίους δέος αὐτόν τε τὸν Μάριον ἔκπληξις, ἄκοσμόν τινα καὶ ταραχώδη νυκτομαχίαν [4] προσδεχόμενον. οὐ μὴν ἐπῆλθον οὔτε νυκτὸς οὔτε τῆς ἐπιούσης ἡμέρας, ἀλλὰ συντάττοντες ἑαυτοὺς [5] καὶ παρασκευαζόμενοι διετέλουν. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Μάριος, ἦσαν γὰρ ἐκ κεφαλῆς τῶν βαρβάρων νάπαι περικλινεῖς καὶ κατάσκιοι δρυμοῖς αὐλῶνες, ἐνταῦθα Κλαύδιον Μάρκελλον ἐκπέμπει μετὰ τρισχιλίων ὁπλιτῶν, ἐνεδρεῦσαι κελεύσας κρύφα καὶ μαχομένοις ἐξόπισθεν ἐπιφανῆναι.

[6] τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους δειπνήσαντας ἐν ὥρᾳ καὶ κοιμηθέντας ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ συνέταττε πρὸ τοῦ χάρακος ἀγαγών, καὶ προεξέπεμπε [7] τοὺς ἱππέας εἰς τὸ πεδίον. θεασάμενοι δ’ οἱ Τεύτονες οὐκ ἠνέσχοντο καταβαίνοντας αὐτοῖς ἐξ ἴσου διαγωνίζεσθαι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ἀλλὰ σὺν τάχει καὶ δι’ [8] ὀργῆς ὁπλισάμενοι τῷ λόφῳ προσέβαλον. ὁ δὲ Μάριος ἑκασταχοῦ διαπέμπων τοὺς ἡγεμόνας ἑστάναι καὶ καρτερεῖν παρεκάλει, πελασάντων δ’ εἰς ἐφικτὸν ἐξακοντίσαι τοὺς ὑσσούς, εἶτα χρῆσθαι ταῖς μαχαίραις καὶ τοῖς [9] θυρεοῖς ἀντερείσαντας βιάζεσθαι· τῶν γὰρ τόπων ἐπισφαλῶν ὄντων ἐκείνοις, οὔτε τόνον ἕξειν τὰς πληγὰς οὔτε ῥώμην τὸν συνασπισμόν, ἐν περιτροπῇ καὶ σάλῳ [10] τῶν σωμάτων ὄντων διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν. ταῦθ’ ἅμα παρῄνει καὶ δρῶν ἑωρᾶτο πρῶτος· οὐδενὸς γὰρ ἤσκητο χεῖρον τὸ σῶμα, καὶ πάντας πολὺ τῇ τόλμῃ παρήλλαττεν.

[21] [1] Ὡς οὖν ἀντιστάντες αὐτοῖς οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ συμπεσόντες ἔσχον ἄνω φερομένους, ἐκθλιβόμενοι κατὰ μικρὸν ὑπεχώρουν εἰς τὸ πεδίον· καὶ τῶν πρώτων ἤδη καθισταμένων εἰς τάξιν ἐν τοῖς ἐπιπέδοις, βοὴ καὶ διασπασμὸς [2] ἦν περὶ τοὺς ὄπισθεν. ὁ γὰρ καιρὸς οὐκ ἔλαθε τὸν Μάρκελλον, ἀλλὰ τῆς κραυγῆς ὑπὲρ τοὺς λόφους ἄνω φερομένης, ἀναστήσας τοὺς μετ’ αὐτοῦ δρόμῳ καὶ ἀλαλαγμῷ προσέπιπτε κατὰ νώτου, κτείνων τοὺς ἐσχάτους.

[3] οἱ δὲ τοὺς πρὸ αὑτῶν ἐπισπώμενοι, ταχὺ πᾶν τὸ στράτευμα ταραχῆς ἐνέπλησαν, οὐ πολύν τε χρόνον ἠνέσχοντο παιόμενοι διχόθεν, ἀλλὰ τὴν τάξιν λύσαντες [4] ἔφευγον. οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι διώκοντες αὐτῶν μὲν ὑπὲρ δέκα μυριάδας ἢ ζῶντας εἷλον ἢ κατέβαλον, σκηνῶν δὲ καὶ ἁμαξῶν καὶ χρημάτων κρατήσαντες, ὅσα μὴ διεκλάπη, [5] Μάριον λαβεῖν ἐψηφίσαντο. καὶ δωρεᾶς ταύτης λαμπροτάτης τυχών, οὐδὲν ἄξιον ἔχειν ὧν ἐστρατήγησεν ἐνομίσθη [6] διὰ τὸ τοῦ κινδύνου μέγεθος. ἕτεροι δὲ περὶ τῆς δωρεᾶς τῶν λαφύρων οὐχ ὁμολογοῦσιν οὐδὲ περὶ τοῦ πλήθους τῶν [7] πεσόντων. Μασσαλιήτας μέντοι λέγουσι τοῖς ὀστέοις περιθριγκῶσαι τοὺς ἀμπελῶνας, τὴν δὲ γῆν, τῶν νεκρῶν καταναλωθέντων ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ διὰ χειμῶνος ὄμβρων ἐπιπεσόντων, οὕτως ἐκλιπανθῆναι καὶ γενέσθαι διὰ βάθους περίπλεω τῆς σηπεδόνος ἐνδύσης, ὥστε καρπῶν ὑπερβάλλον εἰς ὥρας πλῆθος ἐξενεγκεῖν, καὶ μαρτυρῆσαι τῷ Ἀρχιλόχῳ (fr. 148 B.4`4) λέγοντι πιαίνεσθαι πρὸς τοῦ [8] τοιούτου τὰς ἀρούρας. ἐπιεικῶς δὲ ταῖς μεγάλαις μάχαις ἐξαισίους ὑετοὺς ἐπικαταρρήγνυσθαι λέγουσιν, εἴτε δαιμονίου τινὸς τὴν γῆν καθαροῖς καὶ διιπετέσιν ἁγνίζοντος ὕδασι καὶ κατακλύζοντος, εἴτε τοῦ φόνου καὶ τῆς σηπεδόνος ἐξανιείσης ὑγρὰν καὶ βαρεῖαν ἀναθυμίασιν, ἣ τὸν ἀέρα συνίστησιν, εὔτρεπτον ὄντα καὶ ῥᾴδιον μεταβάλλειν ἀπὸ σμικροτάτης ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀρχῆς.

[22] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην ὁ Μάριος τῶν βαρβαρικῶν ὅπλων καὶ λαφύρων τὰ μὲν ἐκπρεπῆ καὶ ὁλόκληρα καὶ πομπικὴν ὄψιν τῷ θριάμβῳ δυνάμενα παρασχεῖν ἐπέλεξε, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἐπὶ πυρᾶς μεγάλης κατασωρεύσας τὸ [2] πλῆθος, ἔθυσε θυσίαν μεγαλοπρεπῆ. καὶ τοῦ στρατοῦ περιεστῶτος ἐν ὅπλοις ἐστεφανωμένου, περιζωσάμενος αὐτὸς ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστίν, ἀναβαλὼν τὴν περιπόρφυρον καὶ λαβὼν δᾷδα καιομένην καὶ δι’ ἀμφοτέρων τῶν χειρῶν ἀνασχὼν πρὸς τὸν οὐρανόν, ἔμελλεν ὑφήσειν τῇ [3] πυρᾷ· καὶ προσελαύνοντες ἵπποις ἑωρῶντο φίλοι σὺν τάχει πρὸς αὐτόν, ὥστε πολλὴν γενέσθαι σιωπὴν καὶ [4] προσδοκίαν ἁπάντων. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐγγὺς ἦσαν, ἀποπηδήσαντες ἐδεξιοῦντο τὸν Μάριον, εὐαγγελιζόμενοι τὸ πέμπτον αὐτὸν ὕπατον ᾑρῆσθαι, καὶ γράμματα περὶ τούτων ἀπέδοσαν.

[5] μεγάλης οὖν χαρᾶς τοῖς ἐπινικίοις προσγενομένης, ὅ τε στρατὸς ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἐνοπλίῳ τινὶ κρότῳ καὶ πατάγῳ συνηλάλαξαν, καὶ τῶν ἡγεμόνων τὸν Μάριον αὖθις ἀναδούντων δάφνης στεφάνοις, ἀνῆψε τὴν πυρὰν καὶ τὴν θυσίαν ἐπετελείωσεν.

[23] [1] Ἡ δὲ μηθὲν ἐῶσα τῶν μεγάλων εὐτυχημάτων ἄκρατον εἰς ἡδονὴν καὶ καθαρόν, ἀλλὰ μείξει κακῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ποικίλλουσα τὸν ἀνθρώπινον βίον, ἢ τύχη τις ἢ νέμεσις ἢ πραγμάτων ἀναγκαία φύσις, οὐ πολλαῖς ὕστερον ἡμέραις ἐπήγαγε τῷ Μαρίῳ τὴν περὶ Κάτλου τοῦ συνάρχοντος ἀγγελίαν, ὥσπερ ἐν εὐδίᾳ καὶ γαλήνῃ νέφος αὖθις ἕτερον φόβον καὶ χειμῶνα τῇ Ῥώμῃ περιστήσασα.

[2] ὁ γὰρ δὴ Κάτλος ἀντικαθήμενος τοῖς Κίμβροις, τὰς μὲν ὑπερβολὰς τῶν Ἄλπεων ἀπέγνω φυλάσσειν, μὴ κατὰ πολλὰ τὴν δύναμιν μέρη διαιρεῖν ἀναγκαζόμενος ἀσθενὴς γένοιτο, καταβὰς δ’ εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν, καὶ τὸν Νατισῶνα ποταμὸν λαβὼν πρὸ αὑτοῦ καὶ φραξάμενος πρὸς τὰς διαβάσεις ἑκατέρωθεν ἰσχυροῖς χαρακώμασιν, ἔζευξε τὸν πόρον, ὡς ἐπιβοηθεῖν εἴη τοῖς πέραν, εἰ πρὸς [3] τὰ φρούρια βιάζοιντο διὰ τῶν στενῶν οἱ βάρβαροι. τοῖς δὲ τοσοῦτον περιῆν ὑπεροψίας καὶ θράσους κατὰ τῶν πολεμίων, ὥστε ῥώμην καὶ τόλμαν ἐπιδεικνύμενοι μᾶλλον ἢ πράττοντές τι τῶν ἀναγκαίων, γυμνοὶ μὲν ἠνείχοντο νιφόμενοι καὶ διὰ πάγων καὶ χιόνος βαθείας τοῖς ἄκροις προσέβαινον, ἄνωθεν δὲ τοὺς θυρεοὺς πλατεῖς ὑποτιθέντες τοῖς σώμασιν, εἶτ’ ἀφιέντες αὑτούς, ὑπεφέροντο κατὰ κρημνῶν ὀλισθήματα καὶ λισσάδας ἀχανεῖς [4] ἐχόντων. ὡς δὲ παραστρατοπεδεύσαντες ἐγγὺς καὶ κατασκεψάμενοι τὸν πόρον ἤρξαντο χοῦν, καὶ τοὺς πέριξ λόφους ἀναρρηγνύντες, ὥσπερ οἱ γίγαντες, ἅμα δένδρα πρόρριζα καὶ κρημνῶν σπαράγματα καὶ γῆς κολωνοὺς ἐφόρουν εἰς τὸν ποταμόν, ἐκθλίβοντες τὸ ῥεῦμα καὶ τοῖς ἐρείδουσι τὰ ζεύγματα βάθροις ἐφιέντες βάρη μεγάλα, συρόμενα κατὰ ῥοῦν καὶ τινάττοντα ταῖς πληγαῖς τὴν γέφυραν, ἀποδειλιάσαντες οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν στρατιωτῶν [5] ἐξέλειπον τὸ μέγα στρατόπεδον καὶ ἀνεχώρουν. ἔνθα δὴ Κάτλος ἔδειξεν ἑαυτόν, ὥσπερ χρὴ τὸν ἀγαθὸν καὶ τέλειον ἄρχοντα, τὴν αὑτοῦ δόξαν ἐν ὑστέρῳ τῆς τῶν πολιτῶν [6] τιθέμενον. ἐπεὶ γὰρ οὐκ ἔπειθε τοὺς στρατιώτας μένειν, ἀλλ’ ἑώρα περιδεῶς ἀναζευγνύντας, ἄρασθαι κελεύσας τὸν ἀετὸν εἰς τοὺς πρώτους τῶν ἀπερχομένων ὥρμησε δρόμῳ καὶ πρῶτος ἡγεῖτο, βουλόμενος αὑτοῦ τὸ αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ μὴ τῆς πατρίδος γενέσθαι, καὶ δοκεῖν μὴ φεύγοντας, ἀλλ’ ἑπομένους τῷ στρατηγῷ ποιεῖσθαι τὴν [7] ἀποχώρησιν. οἱ δὲ βάρβαροι τὸ μὲν πέραν τοῦ Νατισῶνος φρούριον ἐπελθόντες ἔλαβον, καὶ τοὺς αὐτόθι Ῥωμαίους ἀνδρῶν κρατίστους γενομένους καὶ προκινδυνεύσαντας ἀξίως τῆς πατρίδος θαυμάσαντες ὑποσπόνδους ἀφῆκαν, ὀμόσαντες τὸν χαλκοῦν ταῦρον, ὃν ὕστερον ἁλόντα μετὰ τὴν μάχην εἰς τὴν Κάτλου φασὶν οἰκίαν ὥσπερ ἀκροθίνιον τῆς νίκης κομισθῆναι. τὴν δὲ χώραν ἔρημον βοηθείας ἐπιχυθέντες ἐπόρθουν.

[24] [1] Ἐπὶ τούτοις ἐκαλεῖτο Μάριος εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην· καὶ παραγενόμενος, πάντων αὐτὸν οἰομένων θριαμβεύσειν καὶ τῆς βουλῆς προθύμως ψηφισαμένης, οὐκ ἠξίωσεν, εἴτε τοὺς στρατιώτας καὶ συναγωνιστὰς ἀποστερῆσαι τῆς φιλοτιμίας μὴ βουλόμενος, εἴτε πρὸς τὰ παρόντα θαρρύνων τὸ πλῆθος, ὡς τῇ τύχῃ τῆς πόλεως παρακατατιθέμενος τὴν τῶν πρώτων κατορθωμάτων δόξαν, ἐν [2] τοῖς δευτέροις λαμπροτέραν ἀποδοθησομένην. διαλεχθεὶς δὲ τὰ πρέποντα τῷ καιρῷ καὶ πρὸς τὸν Κάτλον ἐξορμήσας, τοῦτόν τε παρεθάρρυνε καὶ τοὺς αὑτοῦ μετεπέμπετο [3] στρατιώτας ἐκ Γαλατίας. ὡς δ’ ἀφίκοντο, διαβὰς τὸν Ἠριδανὸν εἴργειν ἐπειρᾶτο τῆς ἐντὸς Ἰταλίας [4] τοὺς βαρβάρους. οἱ δὲ τοὺς Τεύτονας ἐκδέχεσθαι καὶ θαυμάζειν ὡς βραδυνόντων φάσκοντες, ἀνεβάλλοντο τὴν μάχην, εἴτ’ ἀγνοοῦντες ὄντως τὴν ἐκείνων φθοράν, εἴτε βουλόμενοι δοκεῖν ἀπιστεῖν. καὶ γὰρ τοὺς ἀγγέλλοντας ᾐκίζοντο δεινῶς, καὶ τὸν Μάριον ᾔτουν πέμψαντες ἑαυτοῖς καὶ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς χώραν καὶ πόλεις ἱκανὰς ἐνοικεῖν.

[5] ἐρομένου δὲ τοῦ Μαρίου τοὺς πρέσβεις περὶ τῶν ἀδελφῶν, κἀκείνων ὀνομασάντων τοὺς Τεύτονας, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι πάντες ἐγέλασαν, ὁ δὲ Μάριος ἔσκωψεν εἰπών· ἐᾶτε τοίνυν τοὺς ἀδελφούς· ἔχουσι γὰρ γῆν ἐκεῖνοι καὶ διὰ [6] παντὸς ἕξουσι, παρ’ ἡμῶν λαβόντες. οἱ δὲ πρέσβεις τὴν εἰρωνείαν ‹οὐ› συνέντες, ἐλοιδόρουν αὐτὸν ὡς δίκην ὑφέξοντα, Κίμβροις μὲν αὐτίκα, Τεύτοσι δ’ ὅταν παραγένωνται.

[7] καὶ μὴν πάρεισιν ὁ Μάριος ἔφη καὶ οὐχ ἕξει καλῶς ὑμῖν ἀπαλλαγῆναι πρότερον ἢ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ἀσπάσασθαι. καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἐκέλευσε τοὺς βασιλεῖς τῶν Τευτόνων προσαχθῆναι δεδεμένους· ἑάλωσαν γὰρ ἐν ταῖς Ἄλπεσι φεύγοντες ὑπὸ Σηκουανῶν.

[25] [1] Ὡς δ’ ἀπηγγέλθη ταῦτα τοῖς Κίμβροις, εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐχώρουν ἐπὶ τὸν Μάριον, ἡσυχάζοντα καὶ διαφυλάττοντα [2] τὸ στρατόπεδον. λέγεται δ’ εἰς ἐκείνην τὴν μάχην πρῶτον ὑπὸ Μαρίου καινοτομηθῆναι τὸ περὶ τοὺς [3] ὑσσούς. τὸ γὰρ εἰς τὸν σίδηρον ἔμβλημα τοῦ ξύλου πρότερον μὲν ἦν δυσὶ περόναις κατειλημμένον σιδηραῖς, τότε δ’ ὁ Μάριος τὴν μὲν ὥσπερ εἶχεν εἴασε, τὴν δ’ ἑτέραν ἐξελὼν ξύλινον ἧλον εὔθραυστον ἀντ’ αὐτῆς ἐνέβαλε, τεχνάζων προσπεσόντα τὸν ὑσσὸν τῷ θυρεῷ τοῦ πολεμίου μὴ μένειν ὀρθόν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ ξυλίνου κλασθέντος ἥλου καμπὴν γίνεσθαι περὶ τὸν σίδηρον καὶ παρέλκεσθαι τὸ δόρυ, διὰ τὴν στρεβλότητα τῆς αἰχμῆς ἐνεχόμενον.

[4] Βοιῶριξ δ’ ὁ τῶν Κίμβρων βασιλεὺς ὀλιγοστὸς προσιππεύσας τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, προὐκαλεῖτο τὸν Μάριον ἡμέραν ὁρίσαντα καὶ τόπον προελθεῖν καὶ διαγωνίσασθαι [5] περὶ τῆς χώρας. τοῦ δὲ Μαρίου φήσαντος οὐδέποτε Ῥωμαίους συμβούλοις κεχρῆσθαι περὶ μάχης τοῖς πολεμίοις, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ χαριεῖσθαι τοῦτο Κίμβροις, ἡμέραν μὲν ἔθεντο τὴν ἀπ’ ἐκείνης τρίτην, χώραν δὲ τὸ πεδίον τὸ περὶ Βερκέλλας, Ῥωμαίοις μὲν ἐπιτήδειον ἐνιππάσασθαι, [6] τῶν δ’ ἀνάχυσιν τῷ πλήθει παρασχεῖν. τηρήσαντες οὖν τὸν ὡρισμένον χρόνον ἀντιπαρετάσσοντο, Κάτλος μὲν ἔχων δισμυρίους καὶ τριακοσίους στρατιώτας, οἱ δὲ Μαρίου δισχίλιοι μὲν ἐπὶ τρισμυρίοις ἐγένοντο, περιέσχον δὲ τὸν Κάτλον ἐν μέσῳ, νεμηθέντες εἰς ἑκάτερον κέρας, ὡς Σύλλας, ἠγωνισμένος ἐκείνην τὴν μάχην, γέγραφε [7] (HRR I² 196). καί φησι τὸν Μάριον ἐλπίσαντα τοῖς ἄκροις μάλιστα καὶ κατὰ κέρας συμπεσεῖν τὰς φάλαγγας, ὅπως ἴδιος ἡ νίκη τῶν ἐκείνου στρατιωτῶν γένοιτο, καὶ μὴ μετάσχοι τοῦ ἀγῶνος ὁ Κάτλος μηδὲ προσμείξειε τοῖς πολεμίοις, κόλπωμα τῶν μέσων ὥσπερ εἴωθεν ἐν μεγάλοις μετώποις λαμβανόντων, οὕτω διαστῆσαι τὰς δυνάμεις· [8] ὅμοια δὲ καὶ τὸν Κάτλον αὐτὸν (HRR I² 191) ἀπολογεῖσθαι περὶ τούτων ἱστοροῦσι, πολλὴν κατηγοροῦντα [9] τοῦ Μαρίου κακοήθειαν πρὸς αὐτόν. τοῖς δὲ Κίμβροις τὸ μὲν πεζὸν ἐκ τῶν ἐρυμάτων καθ’ ἡσυχίαν προῄει, βάθος ἴσον τῷ μετώπῳ ποιούμενον· ἑκάστη γὰρ ἐπέσχε [10] πλευρὰ σταδίους τριάκοντα τῆς παρατάξεως· οἱ δ’ ἱππεῖς μύριοι καὶ πεντακισχίλιοι τὸ πλῆθος ὄντες ἐξήλασαν λαμπροί, κράνη μὲν εἰκασμένα θηρίων φοβερῶν χάσμασι καὶ προτομαῖς ἰδιομόρφοις ἔχοντες, ἃς ἐπαιρόμενοι λόφοις πτερωτοῖς εἰς ὕψος ἐφαίνοντο μείζους, θώραξι δὲ κεκοσμημένοι σιδηροῖς, θυρεοῖς δὲ λευκοῖς στίλβοντες. [11] ἀκόντισμα δ’ ἦν ἑκάστῳ διβολία, συμπεσόντες δὲ μεγάλαις ἐχρῶντο καὶ βαρείαις μαχαίραις.

[26] [1] Τότε δ’ οὐχὶ κατὰ στόμα προσεφέροντο τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις, ἀλλ’ ἐκκλίνοντες ἐπὶ δεξιὰ ὑπῆγον αὑτοὺς κατὰ μικρόν, ἐμβάλλοντες εἰς τὸ μέσον αὐτῶν τε καὶ τῶν [2] πεζῶν ἐξ ἀριστερᾶς παρατεταγμένων. καὶ συνεῖδον μὲν οἱ τῶν Ῥωμαίων στρατηγοὶ τὸν δόλον, ἐπισχεῖν δὲ τοὺς στρατιώτας οὐκ ἔφθησαν, ἀλλ’ ἑνὸς ἐκβοήσαντος, ὅτι φεύγουσιν οἱ πολέμιοι, πάντες ὥρμησαν διώκειν. καὶ τὸ πεζὸν ἐν τούτῳ τῶν βαρβάρων ἐπῄει καθάπερ πέλαγος [3] ἀχανὲς κινούμενον. ἐνταῦθα νιψάμενος ὁ Μάριος τὰς χεῖρας καὶ πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνασχών, εὔξατο τοῖς θεοῖς καθ’ ἑκατόμβης· εὔξατο δὲ καὶ Κάτλος ὁμοίως ἀνασχὼν τὰς χεῖρας καθιερώσειν τὴν τύχην τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης.

[4] τὸν δὲ Μάριον καὶ θύσαντα λέγεται, τῶν ἱερῶν αὐτῷ δειχθέντων, μέγα φθεγξάμενον εἰπεῖν· ἐμὴ ‹ἡ› νίκη.

[5] γενομένης δὲ τῆς ἐφόδου πρᾶγμα νεμεσητὸν παθεῖν τὸν Μάριον οἱ περὶ Σύλλαν ἱστοροῦσι· κονιορτοῦ γὰρ ἀρθέντος οἷον εἰκὸς ἀπλέτου καὶ τῶν στρατοπέδων ἀποκεκρυμμένων, ἐκεῖνον μέν, ὡς τὸ πρῶτον ὥρμησε πρὸς τὴν δίωξιν, ἐπισπασάμενον τὴν δύναμιν ἀστοχῆσαι τῶν πολεμίων, καὶ παρενεχθέντα τῆς φάλαγγος ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ [6] διαφέρεσθαι πολὺν χρόνον· τῷ δὲ Κάτλῳ τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀπὸ τύχης συρραγῆναι, καὶ γενέσθαι τὸν ἀγῶνα κατ’ ἐκεῖνον καὶ τοὺς ἐκείνου μάλιστα στρατιώτας, ἐν οἷς [7] αὐτὸς ὁ Σύλλας τετάχθαι φησί (HRR I² 197)· συναγωνίσασθαι δὲ τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις τὸ καῦμα καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἀντιλάμποντα [8] τοῖς Κίμβροις. δεινοὶ γὰρ ὄντες ὑπομεῖναι κρύη καὶ τόποις ἐντεθραμμένοι σκιεροῖς ὡς λέλεκται (11, 9) καὶ ψυχροῖς, ἀνετρέποντο πρὸς τὸ θάλπος, ἱδρῶτά τε μετ’ ἄσθματος πολὺν ἐκ τῶν σωμάτων ἀφιέντες, καὶ τοὺς θυρεοὺς προβαλλόμενοι πρὸ τῶν προσώπων, ἅτε δὴ καὶ μετὰ τροπὰς θέρους τῆς μάχης γενομένης, ἃς ἄγουσι Ῥωμαῖοι πρὸ τριῶν ἡμερῶν τῆς νουμηνίας τοῦ νῦν μὲν [9] Αὐγούστου, τότε δὲ Σεξτιλίου μηνός. ὤνησε δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὸ θαρρεῖν ὁ κονιορτός, ἀποκρύψας τοὺς πολεμίους· οὐ γὰρ κατεῖδον ἐκ πολλοῦ τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ δρόμῳ τοῖς καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἕκαστοι προσμείξαντες, ἐν χερσὶν ἦσαν [10] ὑπὸ τῆς ὄψεως μὴ προεκφοβηθέντες. οὕτω δ’ ἦσαν διάπονοι τὰ σώματα καὶ κατηθληκότες, ὡς μήθ’ ἱδροῦντά τινα μήτ’ ἀσθμαίνοντα Ῥωμαίων ὀφθῆναι, διὰ πνίγους τοσούτου καὶ μετὰ δρόμου τῆς συρράξεως γενομένης, ὡς τὸν Κάτλον αὐτὸν ἱστορεῖν (HRR I² 191) λέγουσι μεγαλύνοντα τοὺς στρατιώτας.

[27] [1] Τὸ μὲν οὖν πλεῖστον μέρος καὶ μαχιμώτατον τῶν πολεμίων αὐτοῦ κατεκόπη· καὶ γὰρ ἦσαν ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ διασπᾶσθαι τὴν τάξιν οἱ πρόμαχοι μακραῖς ἁλύσεσι πρὸς ἀλλήλους συνεχόμενοι, διὰ τῶν ζωστήρων ἀναδεδεμέναις· [2] τοὺς δὲ φεύγοντας ὤσαντες πρὸς τὸ χαράκωμα, τραγικωτάτοις ἐνετύγχανον πάθεσιν. αἱ γὰρ γυναῖκες ἐπὶ τῶν ἁμαξῶν μελανείμονες ἐφεστῶσαι, τούς τε φεύγοντας ἔκτεινον, αἱ μὲν ἄνδρας, αἱ δ’ ἀδελφούς, αἱ δὲ πατέρας, καὶ τὰ νήπια τῶν τέκνων ἀπάγχουσαι ταῖς χερσὶν ἐρρίπτουν ὑπὸ τοὺς τροχοὺς καὶ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ὑποζυγίων, αὑτὰς [3] δ’ ἀπέσφαττον. μίαν δέ φασιν ἐξ ἄκρου ῥυμοῦ κρεμαμένην τὰ παιδία τῶν αὑτῆς σφυρῶν ἀφημμένα βρόχοις ἑκατέρωθεν [4] ἠρτῆσθαι· τοὺς δ’ ἄνδρας ἀπορίᾳ δένδρων τοῖς κέρασι τῶν βοῶν, τοὺς δὲ τοῖς σκέλεσι προσδεῖν τοὺς αὑτῶν τραχήλους, εἶτα κέντρα προσφέροντας ἐξαλλομένων τῶν βοῶν ἐφελκομένους καὶ πατουμένους ἀπόλλυσθαι.

[5] πλὴν καίπερ οὕτως αὐτῶν διαφθαρέντων, ἑάλωσαν ὑπὲρ ἓξ μυριάδας· αἱ δὲ τῶν πεσόντων ἐλέγοντο δὶς τοσαῦται γενέσθαι.

[6] Τὰ μὲν οὖν χρήματα διήρπασαν οἱ Μαρίου στρατιῶται, τὰ δὲ λάφυρα καὶ τὰς σημαίας καὶ τὰς σάλπιγγας εἰς τὸ Κάτλου στρατόπεδον ἀνενεχθῆναι λέγουσιν· ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα τεκμηρίῳ χρῆσθαι τὸν Κάτλον (HRR I² 191), ὡς [7] κατ’ αὐτὸν ἡ νίκη γένοιτο. καὶ μέντοι καὶ τοῖς στρατιώταις ὡς ἔοικεν ἐμπεσούσης ἔριδος, ᾑρέθησαν οἷον διαιτηταὶ πρέσβεις Παρμητῶν παρόντες, οὓς οἱ Κάτλου διὰ τῶν πολεμίων νεκρῶν ἄγοντες ἐπεδείκνυντο τοῖς ἑαυτῶν ὑσσοῖς διαπεπαρμένους· γνώριμοι δ’ ἦσαν ὑπὸ γραμμάτων, τοὔνομα τοῦ Κάτλου παρὰ τὸ ξύλον αὐτῶν ἐγχαράξαντος.

[8] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῷ Μαρίῳ προσετίθετο σύμπαν τὸ ἔργον, ἥ τε προτέρα νίκη καὶ τὸ πρόσχημα τῆς ἀρχῆς.

[9] μάλιστα δ’ οἱ πολλοὶ κτίστην τε Ῥώμης τρίτον ἐκεῖνον ἀνηγόρευον, ὡς οὐχ ἥττονα τοῦ Κελτικοῦ τοῦτον ἀπεωσμένον τὸν κίνδυνον, εὐθυμούμενοί τε μετὰ παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν ἕκαστοι κατ’ οἶκον ἅμα τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ Μαρίῳ δείπνου καὶ λοιβῆς ἀπήρχοντο, καὶ θριαμβεύειν μόνον [10] ἠξίουν ἀμφοτέρους τοὺς θριάμβους. οὐ μὴν ἐθριάμβευσεν οὕτως, ἀλλὰ μετὰ τοῦ Κάτλου, μέτριον ἐπὶ τηλικαύταις εὐτυχίαις βουλόμενος παρέχειν ἑαυτόν, ἔστι δ’ ὅτι καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας φοβηθείς, παρατεταγμένους εἰ Κάτλος ἀπείργοιτο τῆς τιμῆς μηδ’ ἐκεῖνον ἐᾶν θριαμβεύειν.

[28] [1] Πέμπτην μὲν οὖν ὑπατείαν διεῖπε· τῆς δ’ ἕκτης ὡς οὐδ’ εἷς πρώτης ὠρέγετο, θεραπείαις τε τὸν δῆμον ἀναλαμβάνων καὶ πρὸς χάριν ἐνδιδοὺς τοῖς πολλοῖς, οὐ μόνον παρὰ τὸν ὄγκον καὶ τὸ κοινὸν ἀξίωμα τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ὑγρός τις εἶναι βουλόμενος καὶ [2] δημοτικός, ἥκιστα τοιοῦτος πεφυκώς. ἀλλ’ ἦν ὡς λέγουσι πρὸς πολιτείαν καὶ τοὺς ἐν ὄχλοις θορύβους ὑπὸ φιλοδοξίας ἀτολμότατος, καὶ τὸ παρὰ τὰς μάχας ἀνέκπληκτον καὶ στάσιμον ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις ἀπέλειπεν αὐτόν, ὑπὸ τῶν τυχόντων ἐπαίνων καὶ ψόγων ἐξιστάμενον.

[3] καίτοι λέγεται Καμερίνων ἄνδρας ὁμοῦ χιλίους διαπρεπῶς ἀγωνισαμένους ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ δωρησάμενος πολιτείᾳ, δοκοῦντος εἶναι τούτου παρανόμου καί τινων ἐγκαλούντων, εἰπεῖν ὅτι τοῦ νόμου διὰ τὸν τῶν ὅπλων ψόφον οὐ κατακούσειεν.

[4] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἔοικεν ἐκπλήσσεσθαι καὶ [5] δεδιέναι τὴν ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις κραυγήν. ἐν μέν γε τοῖς ὅπλοις ἀξίωμα καὶ δύναμιν εἶχε διὰ τὴν χρείαν, ἐν δὲ τῇ πολιτείᾳ περικοπτόμενος τὰ πρωτεῖα, κατέφευγεν ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν πολλῶν εὔνοιαν καὶ χάριν, ὑπὲρ τοῦ μέγιστος [6] γενέσθαι τὸ βέλτιστος εἶναι προϊέμενος. πᾶσι μὲν οὖν προσέκρουε τοῖς ἀριστοκρατικοῖς, μάλιστα δ’ ὀρρωδῶν τὸν Μέτελλον, ἠχαριστημένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ φύσει δι’ ἀρετὴν ἀληθῆ πολεμοῦντα τοῖς οὐ κατὰ τὸ βέλτιστον ὑποδυομένοις τὰ πλήθη καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὴν δημαγωγοῦσιν, [7] ἐπεβούλευε τῆς πόλεως ἐκβαλεῖν τὸν ἄνδρα. καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο Γλαυκίαν καὶ Σατορνῖνον ἀνθρώπους θρασυτάτους καὶ πλῆθος ἄπορον καὶ θορυβοποιὸν ὑφ’ αὑτοῖς ἔχοντας οἰκειωσάμενος, εἰσέφερε νόμους δι’ αὐτῶν, καὶ τὸ στρατιωτικὸν ἐπάρας κατεμείγνυε ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις καὶ [8] κατεστασίαζε τὸν Μέτελλον. ὡς δὲ Ῥουτίλιος (HRR I² 188) ἱστορεῖ, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα φιλαλήθης ἀνὴρ καὶ χρηστός, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τῷ Μαρίῳ προσκεκρουκώς, ὥς φησι, καὶ τῆς ἕκτης ἔτυχεν ὑπατείας ἀργύριον εἰς τὰς φυλὰς καταβαλὼν πολὺ καὶ πριάμενος τὸ Μέτελλον ἐκκροῦσαι τῆς ἀρχῆς, Οὐαλλέριον δὲ Φλάκκον ὑπηρέτην μᾶλλον ἢ συνάρχοντα τῆς [9] ὑπατείας λαβεῖν. οὐδενὶ μέντοι τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ πλὴν μόνῳ Κορβίνῳ Οὐαλλερίῳ τοσαύτας ὑπατείας ἔδωκεν ὁ δῆμος, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνῳ μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς πρώτης εἰς τὴν τελευταίαν ἔτη πέντε καὶ τεσσαράκοντα γενέσθαι λέγουσι, Μάριος δὲ μετὰ τὴν πρώτην τὰς πέντε ῥύμῃ μιᾷ τύχης διέδραμε.

[29] [1] Καὶ μάλιστα περὶ τὴν τελευταίαν ἐφθονεῖτο, πολλὰ συνεξαμαρτάνων τοῖς περὶ τὸν Σατορνῖνον. ὧν ἦν καὶ ὁ Νωνίου φόνος, ὃν ἀντιπαραγγέλλοντα δημαρχίαν ἀπέσφαξεν [2] ὁ Σατορνῖνος. εἶτα δημαρχῶν ἐπῆγε τὸν περὶ τῆς χώρας νόμον, ᾧ προσεγέγραπτο τὴν σύγκλητον ὀμόσαι προσελθοῦσαν, ἦ μὴν ἐμμενεῖν οἷς ἂν ὁ δῆμος ψηφίσαιτο [3] καὶ πρὸς μηδὲν ὑπεναντιώσεσθαι. τοῦτο τοῦ νόμου τὸ μέρος προσποιούμενος ἐν τῇ βουλῇ διώκειν ὁ Μάριος οὐκ ἔφη δέξεσθαι τὸν ὅρκον, οὐδ’ ἄλλον οἴεσθαι σωφρονοῦντα· καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ μοχθηρὸς ἦν ὁ νόμος, ὕβριν εἶναι τὰ τοιαῦτα τὴν βουλὴν διδόναι βιαζομένην, ἀλλὰ μὴ πειθοῖ μηδ’ ἑκοῦσαν.

[4] ταῦτα δ’ οὐχ οὕτως φρονῶν ἔλεγεν, ἀλλ’ ἀπάτην τῷ [5] Μετέλλῳ περιτιθεὶς ἄφυκτον. αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ εἰς ἀρετῆς καὶ δεινότητος μερίδα τὸ ψεύσασθαι τιθέμενος, λόγον οὐδένα τῶν πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ὡμολογημένων ἕξειν ἔμελλε, τὸν δὲ Μέτελλον εἰδὼς βέβαιον ἄνδρα καὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἀρχὴν μεγάλης ἀρετῆς κατὰ Πίνδαρον (fr. 205 Snell) ἡγούμενον, ἐβούλετο τῇ πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ἀρνήσει προληφθέντα καὶ μὴ δεξάμενον τὸν ὅρκον εἰς [6] ἀνήκεστον ἐμβαλεῖν πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἔχθραν. ὃ καὶ συνέβη. τοῦ γὰρ Μετέλλου φήσαντος μὴ ὀμόσειν, τότε μὲν ἡ βουλὴ διελύθη· μετὰ δ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας τοῦ Σατορνίνου πρὸς τὸ βῆμα τοὺς συγκλητικοὺς ἀνακαλουμένου καὶ τὸν ὅρκον ὀμνύειν ἀναγκάζοντος, ὁ Μάριος παρελθών, γενομένης σιωπῆς καὶ πάντων εἰς ἐκεῖνον ἀνηρτημένων, μακρὰ χαίρειν φράσας τοῖς ἐν τῇ βουλῇ νεανιευθεῖσιν ἀπὸ φωνῆς, οὐχ οὕτω πλατὺν ἔφη φορεῖν τὸν τράχηλον, ὡς προαποφαίνεσθαι καθάπαξ εἰς πρᾶγμα τηλικοῦτον, ἀλλ’ ὀμεῖσθαι καὶ τῷ νόμῳ πειθαρχήσειν, εἴπερ ἔστι νόμος· καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο προσέθηκε τὸ σοφὸν ὥσπερ παρακάλυμμα [7] τῆς αἰσχύνης. ὁ μὲν οὖν δῆμος ἡσθεὶς ὀμόσαντος ἀνεκρότησε καὶ κατευφήμησε, τοὺς δ’ ἀρίστους κατήφεια [8] δεινὴ καὶ μῖσος ἔσχε τοῦ Μαρίου τῆς μεταβολῆς. ὤμνυσαν οὖν ἅπαντες ἐφεξῆς δεδιότες τὸν δῆμον ἄχρι Μετέλλου· Μέτελλος δέ, καίπερ ἀντιβολούντων καὶ δεομένων τῶν φίλων ὀμόσαι καὶ μὴ περιβαλεῖν ἑαυτὸν ἐπιτιμίοις ἀνηκέστοις, ἃ κατὰ τῶν μὴ ὀμνυόντων ὁ Σατορνῖνος εἰσέφερεν, οὐχ ὑφήκατο τοῦ φρονήματος οὐδ’ ὤμοσεν, ἀλλ’ ἐμμένων τῷ ἤθει καὶ πᾶν παθεῖν δεινὸν ἐπὶ τῷ μηθὲν αἰσχρὸν ἐργάσασθαι παρεσκευασμένος, ἀπῆλθεν ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς, διαλεγόμενος τοῖς περὶ αὐτόν, ὡς τὸ κακόν τι πρᾶξαι φαῦλον εἴη, τὸ δὲ καλὸν μέν, ἀκινδύνως δὲ κοινόν, ἴδιον [9] δ’ ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ τὸ μετὰ κινδύνων τὰ καλὰ πράσσειν. ἐκ τούτου ψηφίζεται Σατορνῖνος ἐπικηρύξαι τοὺς ὑπάτους, ὅπως πυρὸς καὶ ὕδατος καὶ στέγης εἴργηται Μέτελλος· καὶ τὸ φαυλότατον αὐτοῖς τοῦ πλήθους παρῆν ἕτοιμον [10] ἀποκτιννύναι τὸν ἄνδρα. τῶν δὲ βελτίστων περιπαθούντων καὶ συντρεχόντων πρὸς τὸν Μέτελλον, οὐκ εἴα στασιάζειν δι’ αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἀπῆλθεν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, [11] ἔμφρονι λογισμῷ χρησάμενος. ἢ γὰρ ἀμεινόνων ἔφη τῶν πραγμάτων γενομένων καὶ τοῦ δήμου μετανοήσαντος ἀφίξομαι παρακαλούμενος, ἢ μενόντων ὁμοίων, ἀπηλλάχθαι [12] κράτιστον. ἀλλὰ γὰρ ὅσης μὲν ἀπέλαυσεν εὐνοίας παρὰ τὴν φυγὴν καὶ τιμῆς Μέτελλος, ὃν δὲ τρόπον ἐν Ῥόδῳ φιλοσοφῶν διῃτήθη, βέλτιον ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γραφομένοις (VII 148 Bernardakis; deest ap. Sandbach) εἰρήσεται.

[30] [1] Μάριος δὲ τὸν Σατορνῖνον ἀντὶ τῆς ὑπουργίας ταύτης ἐπὶ πᾶν προϊόντα τόλμης καὶ δυνάμεως περιορᾶν ἀναγκαζόμενος, ἔλαθεν οὐκ ἀνεκτὸν ἀπεργασάμενος κακόν, ἀλλ’ ἄντικρυς ὅπλοις καὶ σφαγαῖς ἐπὶ τυραννίδα [2] καὶ πολιτείας ἀνατροπὴν πορευόμενον. αἰδούμενος δὲ τοὺς κρατίστους, θεραπεύων δὲ τοὺς πολλούς, ἔργον [3] ἀνελεύθερον ἐσχάτως ὑπέμεινε καὶ παλίμβολον. ἐλθόντων γὰρ ὡς αὐτὸν ὑπὸ νύκτα τῶν πρώτων ἀνδρῶν καὶ παρακαλούντων ἐπὶ τὸν Σατορνῖνον, ἑτέραις θύραις ἐκεῖνον ὑπεδέξατο τούτων ἀγνοούντων· εἶτα πρόφασιν λέγων πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους κοιλίας διάρροιαν, νῦν μὲν ὡς τούτους, νῦν δ’ ὡς ἐκεῖνον ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας ἀνὰ μέρος [4] διατρέχων, συνέκρουε καὶ παρώξυνεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τῶν ἱππέων συνισταμένων καὶ ἀγανακτούντων, ἐξήνεγκεν εἰς ἀγορὰν τὰ ὅπλα, καὶ καταδιωχθέντας αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ Καπετώλιον εἷλε δίψει· τοὺς γὰρ ὀχετοὺς ἀπέκοψεν, οἱ δ’ ἀπειπόντες ἐκεῖνον ἐκάλουν καὶ παρέδωκαν σφᾶς αὐτοὺς διὰ τῆς λεγομένης δημοσίας πίστεως.

[5] ἐπεὶ δὲ παντοῖος γενόμενος ὑπὲρ τοῦ σῶσαι τοὺς ἄνδρας οὐδὲν ὤνησεν, ἀλλὰ κατιόντες εἰς ἀγορὰν ἀνῃρέθησαν, ἐκ τούτου τοῖς τε δυνατοῖς ἅμα καὶ τῷ δήμῳ προσκεκρουκώς, τιμητείας παραπεσούσης ἐπίδοξος ὢν οὐ μετῆλθεν, ἀλλ’ εἴασεν ἑτέρους ὑποδεεστέρους αἱρεθῆναι, [6] δεδιὼς ἀποτυχεῖν. ἄλλως δ’ αὐτὸς ἐκαλλωπίζετο πολλοῖς μὴ θέλειν ἀπεχθάνεσθαι, τοὺς βίους αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἤθη πικρῶς ἐξετάζων.

[31] [1] Δόγματος δ’ εἰσφερομένου Μέτελλον ἀπὸ τῆς φυγῆς ἀνακαλεῖσθαι, πολλὰ καὶ διὰ λόγων καὶ δι’ ἔργων [2] μάτην ἐναντιωθείς, τέλος ἀπεῖπε· καὶ δεξαμένου τὴν γνώμην τοῦ δήμου προθύμως, οὐχ ὑπομένων κατερχόμενον ἐπιδεῖν τὸν Μέτελλον, ἐξέπλευσεν εἰς Καππαδοκίαν καὶ Γαλατίαν, λόγῳ μὲν ἀποδώσων ἃς εὔξατο τῇ Μητρὶ τῶν θεῶν θυσίας, ἑτέραν δὲ τῆς ἀποδημίας ἔχων ὑπόθεσιν [3] λανθάνουσαν τοὺς πολλούς. ἀφυὴς γὰρ ὢν πρὸς εἰρήνην καὶ ἀπολίτευτος, ηὐξημένος δὲ τοῖς πολέμοις, εἶτα κατὰ μικρὸν αὖθις ὑπ’ ἀργίας καὶ ἡσυχίας ἀπομαραίνεσθαι τὴν δύναμιν αὑτοῦ καὶ τὴν δόξαν οἰόμενος, ἐζήτει καινῶν [4] πραγμάτων ἀρχάς. ἤλπιζε γὰρ τοὺς βασιλεῖς συνταράξας καὶ Μιθριδάτην ἐπίδοξον ὄντα πολεμήσειν ἀναστήσας καὶ παροξύνας, εὐθὺς ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἡγεμὼν αἱρεθήσεσθαι καὶ νέων μὲν τὴν πόλιν θριάμβων, σκύλων δὲ Ποντικῶν καὶ [5] πλούτου βασιλικοῦ τὸν οἶκον ἐμπλήσειν. διὸ καὶ Μιθριδάτου πάσῃ χρησαμένου θεραπείᾳ καὶ τιμῇ πρὸς αὐτόν, οὐ καμφθεὶς οὐδ’ ὑπείξας, ἀλλ’ εἰπών ἢ μεῖζον ὦ βασιλεῦ πειρῶ δύνασθαι Ῥωμαίων, ἢ ποίει σιωπῇ τὸ προστασσόμενον, ἐξέπληξεν αὐτόν, ὡς φωνῆς μὲν πολλάκις, παρρησίας δὲ τότε πρῶτον ἀκούσαντα Ῥωμαϊκῆς.

[32] [1] Ἐπανελθὼν δ’ εἰς Ῥώμην, οἰκίαν ἐδείματο τῆς ἀγορᾶς πλησίον, εἴθ’, ὡς αὐτὸς ἔλεγε, τοὺς θεραπεύοντας αὐτὸν ἐνοχλεῖσθαι μὴ βουλόμενος μακρὰν βαδίζοντας, εἴτε τοῦτ’ αἴτιον οἰόμενος εἶναι τοῦ μὴ πλείονας [2] ἄλλων ἐπὶ θύρας αὐτοῦ φοιτᾶν. τὸ δ’ οὐκ ἦν ἄρα τοιοῦτον· ἀλλ’ ὁμιλίας χάριτι καὶ πολιτικαῖς χρείαις ἑτέρων λειπόμενος, ὥσπερ ὄργανον πολεμικὸν ἐπ’ εἰρήνης παρημελεῖτο.

[3] καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἧττον ἤχθετο παρευδοκιμούμενος, σφόδρα δ’ αὐτὸν ἠνία Σύλλας, ἐκ τοῦ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον αὐξανόμενος φθόνου τῶν δυνατῶν καὶ τὰς πρὸς [4] ἐκεῖνον διαφορὰς ἀρχὴν πολιτείας ποιούμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ Βόκχος ὁ Νομὰς σύμμαχος Ῥωμαίων ἀναγεγραμμένος ἔστησεν ἐν Καπετωλίῳ Νίκας τροπαιοφόρους καὶ παρ’ αὐταῖς ἐν εἰκόσι χρυσαῖς Ἰουγούρθαν ἐγχειριζόμενον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ Σύλλᾳ, τοῦτ’ ἐξέστησεν ὀργῇ καὶ φιλονικίᾳ Μάριον, ὡς Σύλλα περισπῶντος εἰς ἑαυτὸν τὰ ἔργα, καὶ παρεσκευάζετο βίᾳ τὰ ἀναθήματα καταβάλλειν.

[5] ἀντεφιλονίκει δὲ Σύλλας, καὶ τὴν στάσιν ὅσον οὔπω φερομένην εἰς μέσον ἐπέσχεν ὁ συμμαχικὸς πόλεμος, [6] ἐξαίφνης ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀναρραγείς. τὰ γὰρ μαχιμώτατα τῶν Ἰταλικῶν ἐθνῶν καὶ πολυανθρωπότατα κατὰ τῆς Ῥώμης συνέστησαν καὶ μικρὸν ἐδέησαν συγχέαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, οὐ μόνον ὅπλοις ἐρρωμένα καὶ σώμασιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τόλμαις στρατηγῶν καὶ δεινότησι χρησάμενα θαυμασταῖς καὶ ἀντιπάλοις.

[33] [1] Οὗτος ὁ πόλεμος τοῖς πάθεσι ποικίλος γενόμενος καὶ ταῖς τύχαις πολυτροπώτατος, ὅσον Σύλλᾳ προσέθηκε [2] δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως, τοσοῦτον ἀφεῖλε Μαρίου. βραδὺς γὰρ ἐφάνη ταῖς ἐπιβολαῖς, ὄκνου τε περὶ πάντα καὶ μελλήσεως ὑπόπλεως, εἴτε τοῦ γήρως τὸ δραστήριον ἐκεῖνο καὶ θερμὸν ἐν αὐτῷ κατασβεννύντος - ἑξηκοστὸν γὰρ ἤδη καὶ πέμπτον ἔτος ὑπερέβαλλεν - εἴθ’, ὡς αὐτὸς ἔλεγε, περὶ νεῦρα γεγονὼς νοσώδης καὶ σώματι δύσεργος ὢν ὑπέμενε [3] παρὰ δύναμιν αἰσχύνῃ τὰς στρατείας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τότε μάχῃ τε μεγάλῃ νικήσας, ἑξακισχιλίους ἀνεῖλε τῶν πολεμίων καὶ λαβὴν οὐδαμῇ παρέσχεν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ περιταφρευόμενος ἠνέσχετο καὶ χλευαζόμενος καὶ ‹προ›καλούμενος [4] οὐ παρωξύνθη. λέγεται δὲ Ποπαιδίου Σίλωνος, ὃς μέγιστον εἶχε τῶν πολεμίων ἀξίωμα καὶ δύναμιν, εἰπόντος πρὸς αὐτόν εἰ μέγας εἶ στρατηγὸς ὦ Μάριε, διαγώνισαι καταβάς, ἀποκρίνασθαι· σὺ μὲν οὖν, εἰ μέγας εἶ στρατηγός, ἀνάγκασόν με διαγωνίσασθαι μὴ [5] βουλόμενον. πάλιν δέ ποτε τῶν μὲν πολεμίων καιρὸν ἐπιχειρήσεως παραδιδόντων, τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἀποδειλιασάντων, ὡς ἀνεχώρησαν ἀμφότεροι, συναγαγὼν εἰς [6] ἐκκλησίαν τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀπορῶ φησὶ πότερον εἴπω τοὺς πολεμίους ἀνανδροτέρους ἢ ὑμᾶς· οὔτε γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι τὸν νῶτον ὑμῶν οὔθ’ ὑμεῖς ἐκείνων τὸ ἰνίον ἰδεῖν ἐδυνήθητε. τέλος δ’ ἀφῆκε τὴν στρατηγίαν ὡς ἐξαδυνατῶν τῷ σώματι διὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν.

[34] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἤδη τῶν Ἰταλῶν ἐγκεκλικότων ἐμνηστεύοντο πολλοὶ τὸν Μιθριδατικὸν πόλεμον ἐν Ῥώμῃ διὰ τῶν δημαγωγῶν, παρὰ πᾶσαν ἐλπίδα Σουλπίκιος δήμαρχος ἀνὴρ θρασύτατος παραγαγὼν Μάριον ἀπεδείκνυεν [2] ἀνθύπατον στρατηγὸν ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην. καὶ ὁ δῆμος διέστη, τῶν μὲν αἱρουμένων τὰ Μαρίου, τῶν δὲ Σύλλαν καλούντων καὶ τὸν Μάριον ἐπὶ θερμὰ κελευόντων εἰς Βαΐας βαδίζειν καὶ τὸ σῶμα θεραπεύειν ὑπό τε [3] γήρως καὶ ῥευμάτων ἀπειρηκός, ὡς αὐτὸς ἔλεγε. καὶ γὰρ ἦν ἐκεῖ περὶ Μισηνοὺς τῷ Μαρίῳ πολυτελὴς οἰκία, τρυφὰς ἔχουσα καὶ διαίτας θηλυτέρας ἢ κατ’ ἄνδρα πολέμων [4] τοσούτων καὶ στρατειῶν αὐτουργόν. ταύτην λέγεται μυριάδων ἑπτὰ ἡμίσους Κορνηλία πρίασθαι, χρόνου δ’ οὐ πάνυ πολλοῦ ‹δια›γενομένου Λεύκιος Λεύκολλος ὠνεῖται μυριάδων πεντήκοντα καὶ διακοσίων· οὕτως ταχέως ἀνέδραμεν ἡ πολυτέλεια, καὶ τοσαύτην ἐπίδοσιν [5] τὰ πράγματα πρὸς τρυφὴν ἔλαβεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ Μάριος φιλοτίμως πάνυ καὶ μειρακιωδῶς ἀποτριβόμενος τὸ γῆρας καὶ τὴν ἀσθένειαν, ὁσημέραι κατέβαινεν εἰς τὸ πεδίον, καὶ μετὰ τῶν νεανίσκων γυμναζόμενος ἐπεδείκνυε τὸ σῶμα κοῦφον μὲν ὅπλοις, ἔποχον δὲ ταῖς ἱππασίαις, καίπερ οὐκ εὐσταλὴς γεγονὼς ἐν γήρᾳ τὸν ὄγκον, ἀλλ’ εἰς σάρκα [6] περιπληθῆ καὶ βαρεῖαν ἐνδεδωκώς. ἐνίοις μὲν οὖν ἤρεσκε ταῦτα πράττων, καὶ κατιόντες ἐθεῶντο τὴν φιλοτιμίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰς ἁμίλλας, τοῖς δὲ βελτίστοις ὁρῶσιν οἰκτίρειν ἐπῄει τὴν πλεονεξίαν καὶ τὴν φιλοδοξίαν, ὅτι πλουσιώτατος ἐκ πένητος καὶ μέγιστος ἐκ μικροῦ γεγονώς, ὅρον οὐκ οἶδεν εὐτυχίας, οὐδὲ θαυμαζόμενος ἀγαπᾷ καὶ ἀπολαύων ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ τῶν παρόντων, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐνδεὴς ἁπάντων εἰς Καππαδοκίαν καὶ τὸν Εὔξεινον Πόντον ἄρας ἐκ θριάμβων καὶ δόξης ἐκφέρει τοσοῦτον γῆρας, Ἀρχελάῳ καὶ Νεοπτολέμῳ τοῖς Μιθριδάτου σατράπαις [7] διαμαχούμενος. αἱ δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα τοῦ Μαρίου δικαιολογίαι παντάπασιν ἐφαίνοντο ληρώδεις· ἔφη γὰρ ἐθέλειν τὸν υἱὸν ἀσκῆσαι παρὼν αὐτὸς ἐπὶ στρατείας.

[35] [1] Ταῦτα τὴν πόλιν ἐκ πολλῶν χρόνων ὕπουλον γεγενημένην καὶ νοσοῦσαν ἀνέρρηξεν, εὐφυέστατον εὑρόντος ὄργανον Μαρίου πρὸς τὸν κοινὸν ὄλεθρον τὸ Σουλπικίου θράσος, ὃς διὰ τἆλλα πάντα θαυμάζων καὶ ζηλῶν τὸν Σατορνῖνον, ἀτολμίαν ἐπεκάλει τοῖς πολιτεύμασιν [2] αὐτοῦ καὶ μέλλησιν. αὐτὸς δὲ μὴ μέλλων ἑξακοσίους μὲν εἶχε περὶ αὑτὸν τῶν ἱππικῶν οἷον δορυφόρους, καὶ τούτους ἀντισύγκλητον ὠνόμαζεν, ἐπελθὼν δὲ μεθ’ ὅπλων ἐκκλησιάζουσι τοῖς ὑπάτοις, τοῦ μὲν ἑτέρου φυγόντος ἐξ ἀγορᾶς τὸν υἱὸν ἐγκαταλαβὼν ἀπέσφαξε, Σύλλας δὲ παρὰ τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ Μαρίου διωκόμενος, [3] οὐδενὸς ἂν προσδοκήσαντος εἰσέπεσε· καὶ τοὺς μὲν διώκοντας ἔλαθε δρόμῳ παρενεχθέντας, ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ δὲ Μαρίου λέγεται κατὰ θύρας ἑτέρας ἀσφαλῶς ἀποπεμφθεὶς [4] διεκπεσεῖν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον. αὐτὸς δὲ Σύλλας ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν (HRR I² 200) οὔ φησι καταφυγεῖν πρὸς τὸν Μάριον, ἀλλ’ ἀπαλλαχθῆναι βουλευσόμενος ὑπὲρ ὧν Σουλπίκιος ἠνάγκαζεν αὐτὸν ἄκοντα ψηφίσασθαι, περισχὼν ἐν κύκλῳ ξίφεσι γυμνοῖς καὶ συνελάσας πρὸς τὸν Μάριον, ἄχρι οὗ προελθὼν ἐκεῖθεν εἰς ἀγορὰν ὡς ἠξίουν [5] ἐκεῖνοι τὰς ἀπραξίας ἔλυσε. γενομένων δὲ τούτων, ὅ τε Σουλπίκιος ἤδη κρατῶν ἐπεχειροτόνησε τῷ Μαρίῳ τὴν στρατηγίαν, ὅ τε Μάριος ἐν παρασκευῇ τῆς ἐξόδου καθειστήκει, καὶ δύο χιλιάρχους ἐξέπεμψε παραληψομένους [6] τὸ Σύλλα στράτευμα. Σύλλας δὲ τοὺς στρατιώτας παροξύνας - ἦσαν δὲ τρισμυρίων καὶ πεντακισχιλίων οὐ μείους ὁπλῖται - προήγαγεν ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην. τοὺς δὲ χιλιάρχους οὓς ἔπεμψε Μάριος προσπεσόντες οἱ στρατιῶται [7] διέφθειραν. πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ Μάριος ἐν Ῥώμῃ τῶν Σύλλα φίλων ἀνῃρήκει, καὶ δούλοις ἐλευθερίαν ἐκήρυττεν ἐπὶ συμμαχίᾳ· λέγονται δὲ τρεῖς μόνοι προσγενέσθαι.

[8] μικρὰ δ’ ἀντιστὰς εἰσελάσαντι τῷ Σύλλᾳ καὶ ταχέως ἐκβιασθεὶς ἔφυγε. τῶν δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν ὡς πρῶτον ἐξέπεσε τῆς πόλεως διασπαρέντων, σκότους ὄντος εἴς τι [9] τῶν ἐπαυλίων αὑτοῦ Σολώνιον κατέφυγε. καὶ τὸν μὲν υἱὸν ἔπεμψεν ἐκ τῶν Μουκίου τοῦ πενθεροῦ χωρίων οὐ μακρὰν ὄντων τὰ ἐπιτήδεια ληψόμενον, αὐτὸς δὲ καταβὰς εἰς Ὠστίαν, φίλου τινὸς Νουμερίου πλοῖον αὐτῷ παρασκευάσαντος, οὐκ ἀναμείνας τὸν υἱόν, ἀλλὰ Γράνιον [10] ἔχων μεθ’ αὑτοῦ τὸν πρόγονον, ἐξέπλευσεν. ὁ δὲ νεανίας ὡς ἦλθεν εἰς τὰ χωρία τοῦ Μουκίου, λαμβάνων τι καὶ σκευαζόμενος ἡμέρας καταλαβούσης οὐ παντάπασι τοὺς πολεμίους ἔλαθεν, ἀλλ’ ἦλθον ἱππεῖς ἐλαύνοντες καθ’ [11] ὑπόνοιαν ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον· οὓς ὁ τῶν ἀγρῶν ἐπιμελητὴς προϊδόμενος, ἔκρυψε τὸν Μάριον ἐν ἁμάξῃ κυάμους ἀγούσῃ, καὶ βοῦς ὑποζεύξας ἀπήντα τοῖς ἱππεῦσιν, εἰς [12] πόλιν ἐλαύνων τὴν ἅμαξαν. οὕτω δὲ πρὸς τὴν οἰκίαν τῆς γυναικὸς ὁ Μάριος διακομισθεὶς καὶ λαβὼν ὅσων ἐδεῖτο, νυκτὸς ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ἧκε καὶ νεὼς ἐπιβὰς εἰς Λιβύην πλεούσης ἀπεπέρασεν.

[36] [1] Ὁ δὲ πρεσβύτης Μάριος ὡς ἀνήχθη, πνεύματι φορῷ κομιζόμενος παρὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν, ἐφοβήθη Γεμίνιόν τινα τῶν ἐν Ταρρακίνῃ δυνατῶν ἐχθρὸν αὑτοῦ, καὶ τοῖς [2] ναύταις προεῖπεν εἴργεσθαι Ταρρακίνης. οἱ δ’ ἐβούλοντο μὲν αὐτῷ χαρίζεσθαι, τοῦ δὲ πνεύματος εἰς πελάγιον μεθισταμένου καὶ κλύδωνα κατάγοντος πολύν, οὔτε τὸ πορθμεῖον ἐδόκει περικλυζόμενον ἀνθέξειν, τοῦ τε Μαρίου δυσφοροῦντος καὶ κακῶς ἔχοντος ὑπὸ ναυτίας, μόλις [3] ἀντιλαμβάνονται τῶν περὶ τὸ Κίρκαιον αἰγιαλῶν. τοῦ δὲ χειμῶνος αὐξανομένου καὶ τῶν σιτίων ἐπιλιπόντων, ἐκβάντες ἐπλάζοντο πρὸς οὐδένα σκοπόν, ἀλλ’ οἷα συμβαίνει ταῖς μεγάλαις ἀπορίαις ἀεὶ φεύγειν ἐκ τοῦ παρόντος ὡς χαλεπωτάτου καὶ τὰς ἐλπίδας ἔχειν ἐν τοῖς ἀδήλοις.

[4] ἐπεὶ πολεμία μὲν ἐκείνοις ἡ γῆ πολεμία δ’ ἡ θάλασσα, φοβερὸν δ’ ἦν ἀνθρώποις περιπεσεῖν, φοβερὸν δὲ μὴ [5] περιπεσεῖν δι’ ἔνδειαν τῶν ἀναγκαίων. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὀψέ που βοτῆρσιν ὀλίγοις ἐντυγχάνουσιν, οἳ δοῦναι μὲν οὐδὲν ἔσχον αὐτοῖς δεομένοις, γνωρίσαντες δὲ τὸν Μάριον ἐκέλευον ἀπαλλάττεσθαι τὴν ταχίστην· ὀλίγον γὰρ ἔμπροσθεν αὐτόθι κατὰ ζήτησιν αὐτοῦ συχνοὺς ἱππέας [6] ὀφθῆναι διεξελαύνοντας. ἐν παντὶ δὴ γεγονὼς ἀπορίας, μάλιστα δὲ νηστείᾳ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἀπαγορευόντων, τότε μὲν ἐκτραπόμενος τῆς ὁδοῦ καὶ καταβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν εἰς [7] ὕλην βαθεῖαν, ἐπιπόνως διενυκτέρευσε. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ συνηγμένος ὑπ’ ἐνδείας, καὶ τῷ σώματι πρὶν ἐκλελύσθαι παντάπασι χρήσασθαι βουλόμενος, ἐχώρει παρὰ τὸν αἰγιαλόν, ἐπιθαρσύνων τοὺς ἑπομένους καὶ δεόμενος μὴ προαποκάμνειν τῆς τελευταίας ἐλπίδος, ἐφ’ ἣν ἑαυτὸν [8] φυλάττει μαντεύμασι παλαιοῖς πιστεύων. νέος γὰρ ὢν ἔτι παντελῶς καὶ διατρίβων κατ’ ἀγρόν, ὑποδέξασθαι τῷ ἱματίῳ καταφερομένην ἀετοῦ νεοττιὰν ἑπτὰ νεοττοὺς ἔχουσαν· ἰδόντας δὲ τοὺς γονεῖς καὶ θαυμάσαντας διαπυνθάνεσθαι τῶν μάντεων· τοὺς δ’ εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἐπιφανέστατος ἀνθρώπων ἔσοιτο, καὶ τὴν μεγίστην ἡγεμονίαν [9] καὶ ἀρχὴν ἑπτάκις αὐτὸν λαβεῖν ἀναγκαῖον εἴη. ταῦθ’ οἱ μὲν ἀληθῶς τῷ Μαρίῳ συντυχεῖν οὕτω λέγουσιν, οἱ δὲ [του]τοὺς τότε καὶ παρὰ τὴν ἄλλην φυγὴν ἀκούσαντας αὐτοῦ καὶ πιστεύσαντας ἀναγράψαι, πρᾶγμα κομιδῇ [10] μυθῶδες. ἀετὸς γὰρ οὐ τίκτει πλείονα τῶν δυεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Μουσαῖον (fr. 3 Diels) ἐψεῦσθαι λέγουσιν, εἰπόντα περὶ τοῦ ἀετοῦ·

ὃς τρία μὲν τίκτει, δύο δ’ ἐκλέπει, ἓν δ’ ἀλεγίζει.

[11] τὸ μέντοι πολλάκις ἐν τῇ φυγῇ καὶ ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἀπορίαις Μάριον εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἄχρις ἑβδόμης ὑπατείας πρόεισιν, ὁμολογούμενόν ἐστιν.

[37] [1] Ἤδη δὲ Μιντούρνης πόλεως Ἰταλικῆς ὁδὸν εἴκοσι σταδίων ἀπέχοντες, ὁρῶσιν ἱππέων ἴλην πρόσωθεν ἐλαύνοντας ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς καὶ κατὰ τύχην ὁλκάδας δύο [2] φερομένας. ὡς οὖν ἕκαστος ποδῶν εἶχε καὶ ῥώμης, καταδραμόντες ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ καταβαλόντες ἑαυτοὺς προσενήχοντο ταῖς ναυσί· καὶ λαβόμενοι τῆς ἑτέρας οἱ περὶ τὸν Γράνιον ἀπεπέρασαν εἰς τὴν ἄντικρυς [3] νῆσον· Αἰναρία καλεῖται. αὐτὸν δὲ Μάριον βαρὺν ὄντα τῷ σώματι καὶ δυσμεταχείριστον οἰκέται δύο μόλις καὶ χαλεπῶς ὑπὲρ τῆς θαλάττης ἐξάραντες εἰς τὴν ἑτέραν ἔθεντο ναῦν, ἤδη τῶν ἱππέων ἐφεστώτων καὶ διακελευομένων ἀπὸ γῆς τοῖς ναύταις κατάγειν τὸ πλοῖον ἢ τὸν Μάριον ἐκβαλόντας αὐτοὺς ἀποπλεῖν ὅπῃ χρῄζοιεν. [4] ἱκετεύοντος δὲ τοῦ Μαρίου καὶ δακρύοντος, οἱ κύριοι τῆς ὁλκάδος ὡς ἐν ὀλίγῳ πολλὰς ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα τῆς γνώμης τροπὰς λαβόντες, ὅμως ἀπεκρίναντο τοῖς ἱππεῦσι [5] μὴ προ‹ής›εσθαι τὸν Μάριον. ἐκείνων δὲ πρὸς ὀργὴν ἀπελασάντων, αὖθις ἑτέρων γενόμενοι λογισμῶν κατεφέροντο πρὸς τὴν γῆν· καὶ περὶ τὰς ἐκβολὰς τοῦ Λίριος ποταμοῦ διάχυσιν λιμνώδη λαμβάνοντος ἀγκύρας βαλόμενοι, παρεκάλουν αὐτὸν ἐκβῆναι καὶ τροφὴν ἐπὶ γῆς λαβεῖν καὶ τὸ σῶμα θεραπεῦσαι κεκακωμένον, ἄχρι οὗ [6] φορὰ γένηται· γίγνεσθαι δὲ ‹περὶ› τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ὥραν τοῦ πελαγίου μαραινομένου καὶ τῶν ἑλῶν αὔραν ἀναδιδόντων [7] ἐπιεικῶς διαρκῆ. ταῦτα πεισθεὶς ὁ Μάριος ἔπραττε· καὶ τῶν ναυτῶν ἐξελομένων αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν, κατακλινεὶς ἔν τινι πόᾳ πορρωτάτω τοῦ μέλλοντος εἶχε [8] τὴν διάνοιαν. οἱ δ’ εὐθὺς ἐπιβάντες ἐπὶ τὴν ναῦν καὶ τὰς ἀγκύρας ἀναλαβόντες ἔφευγον, ὡς οὔτε καλὸν ἐκδοῦναι [9] τὸν Μάριον αὐτοῖς οὔτε σῴζειν ἀσφαλές. οὕτω δὴ πάντων ἔρημος ἀπολειφθείς, πολὺν μὲν χρόνον ἄναυδος ἐπὶ τῆς ἀκτῆς ἔκειτο, μόλις δέ πως ἀναλαβὼν ἑαυτὸν ἐπορεύετο [10] ταλαιπώρως ἀνοδίαις· καὶ διεξελθὼν ἕλη βαθέα καὶ τάφρους ὕδατος καὶ πηλοῦ γεμούσας, ἐπιτυγχάνει καλύβῃ λιμνουργοῦ γέροντος, ὃν περιπεσὼν ἱκέτευε γενέσθαι σωτῆρα καὶ βοηθὸν ἀνδρός, εἰ διαφύγοι τὰ παρόντα, [11] μείζονας ἐλπίδων ἀμοιβὰς ἀποδώσοντος. ὁ δ’ ἄνθρωπος εἴτε πάλαι γινώσκων, εἴτε πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν ὡς κρείττονα θαυμάσας, ἀναπαύσασθαι μὲν ἔφη δεομένῳ τὸ σκηνύδριον ἐξαρκεῖν, εἰ δέ τινας ὑποφεύγων πλάζοιτο, κρύψειν αὐτὸν [12] ἐν τόπῳ μᾶλλον ἡσυχίαν ἔχοντι. τοῦ δὲ Μαρίου δεηθέντος τοῦτο ποιεῖν, ἀγαγὼν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ ἕλος καὶ πτῆξαι κελεύσας ἐν χωρίῳ κοίλῳ παρὰ τὸν ποταμόν, ἐπέβαλε τῶν τε καλάμων πολλοὺς καὶ τῆς ἄλλης ἐπιφέρων ὕλης ὅση κούφη καὶ περιπέσσειν ἀβλαβῶς δυναμένη.

[38] [1] Χρόνου δ’ οὐ πολλοῦ διαγενομένου, ψόφος αὐτῷ καὶ θόρυβος ἀπὸ τῆς καλύβης προσέπεσεν. ὁ γὰρ Γεμίνιος ἐκ Ταρρακίνης ἔπεμψε πολλοὺς ἐπὶ τὴν δίωξιν, ὧν ἔνιοι κατὰ τύχην ἐκεῖ προσελθόντες ἐξεφόβουν καὶ κατεβόων τοῦ γέροντος ὡς ὑποδεδεγμένου καὶ κατακρυβόντος [2] πολέμιον Ῥωμαίων. ἐξαναστὰς οὖν ὁ Μάριος καὶ ἀποδυσάμενος καθῆκεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὴν λίμνην, ὕδωρ παχὺ καὶ τελματῶδες ἔχουσαν. ὅθεν οὐ διέλαθε τοὺς ζητοῦντας, ἀλλ’ ἀνασπασθεὶς βορβόρου κατάπλεως καὶ γυμνὸς εἰς [3] Μιντούρνας ἀνήχθη καὶ παρεδόθη τοῖς ἄρχουσιν. ἦν γὰρ εἰς ἅπασαν ἤδη πόλιν ἐξενηνεγμένον παράγγελμα περὶ τοῦ Μαρίου, δημοσίᾳ διώκειν καὶ κτείνειν τοὺς λαβόντας. ὅμως δὲ βουλεύσασθαι πρότερον ἐδόκει τοῖς ἄρχουσι· καὶ κατατίθενται τὸν Μάριον εἰς οἰκίαν Φαννίας, γυναικὸς οὐκ εὐμενῶς δοκούσης ἔχειν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐξ αἰτίας παλαιᾶς.

[4] ἦν γὰρ ἀνὴρ τῇ Φαννίᾳ Τιτίννιος· τούτου διαστᾶσα τὴν φερνὴν ἀπῄτει λαμπρὰν οὖσαν. ὁ δὲ μοιχείαν ἐνεκάλει· [5] καὶ γίνεται Μάριος ὑπατεύων τὸ ἕκτον δικαστής. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῆς δίκης λεγομένης ἐφαίνετο καὶ τὴν Φαννίαν ἀκόλαστον γεγονέναι, καὶ τὸν ἄνδρα τοιαύτην εἰδότα λαβεῖν καὶ συμβιῶσαι πολὺν χρόνον, ἀμφοτέρους δυσχεράνας, τὸν μὲν ἄνδρα τὴν φερνὴν ἐκέλευσεν ἀποδοῦναι, τῆς δὲ γυναικὸς ἀτιμίας ἕνεκα τῇ καταδίκῃ χαλκοῦς τέσσαρας [6] προσετίμησεν. οὐ μὴν ἥ γε Φαννία τότε πάθος γυναικὸς ἠδικημένης ἔπαθεν, ἀλλ’ ὡς εἶδε τὸν Μάριον, πορρωτάτω γενομένη τοῦ μνησικακεῖν, ἐκ τῶν παρόντων ἐπεμελεῖτο [7] καὶ παρεθάρρυνεν αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ κἀκείνην ἐπῄνει καὶ θαρρεῖν ἔφασκε· σημεῖον γὰρ αὐτῷ γεγονέναι χρηστόν. ἦν δὲ τοιοῦτον. ὡς ἀγόμενος πρὸς τῇ οἰκίᾳ τῆς Φαννίας ἐγεγόνει, τῶν θυρῶν ἀνοιχθεισῶν ὄνος ἔνδοθεν ἐχώρει δρόμῳ, πιόμενος [8] ἀπὸ κρήνης ἐγγὺς ἀπορρεούσης· προσβλέψας δὲ τῷ Μαρίῳ λαμυρόν τι καὶ γεγηθός, ἔστη πρῶτον ἐναντίον, εἶτα φωνὴν ἀφῆκε λαμπρὰν καὶ παρεσκίρτησε παρ’ αὐτὸν ὑπὸ γαυρότητος.

[9] ἐξ οὗ συμβαλὼν ὁ Μάριος ἔφασκεν, ὡς διὰ θαλάσσης αὐτῷ μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ γῆς ὑποδείκνυσι σωτηρίαν τὸ δαιμόνιον· τὸν γὰρ ὄνον οὐ προσέχοντα τῇ ξηρᾷ τροφῇ πρὸς τὸ ὕδωρ [10] ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τραπέσθαι. ταῦτα διαλεχθεὶς τῇ Φαννίᾳ καθ’ αὑτὸν ἀνεπαύετο, τὴν θύραν τοῦ δωματίου προσθεῖναι κελεύσας.

[39] [1] Βουλευομένοις δὲ τοῖς ἄρχουσι καὶ συνέδροις τῶν Μιντουρνησίων ἔδοξε μὴ μέλλειν, ἀλλὰ διαχρήσασθαι [2] τὸν ἄνδρα. καὶ τῶν μὲν πολιτῶν οὐδεὶς ὑπέστη τὸ ἔργον, ἱππεὺς δὲ Γαλάτης τὸ γένος ἢ Κίμβρος - ἀμφοτέρως γὰρ ἱστορεῖται - λαβὼν ξίφος ἐπεισῆλθεν αὐτῷ.

[3] τοῦ δ’ οἰκήματος, ἐν ᾧ ἔτυχε μέρει κατακείμενος, οὐ πάνυ λαμπρὸν φῶς ἔχοντος, ἀλλ’ ὄντος ἐπισκίου, λέγεται τὰ μὲν ὄμματα τοῦ Μαρίου φλόγα πολλὴν ἐκβάλλοντα τῷ στρατιώτῃ φανῆναι, φωνὴν δὲ μεγάλην ἐκ τοῦ παλισκίου γενέσθαι· σὺ δὴ τολμᾷς ἄνθρωπε Γάιον Μάριον ἀνελεῖν; [4] ἐξῆλθεν οὖν εὐθὺς ὁ βάρβαρος φυγῇ, καὶ τὸ ξίφος ἐν μέσῳ καταβαλὼν ἐχώρει διὰ θυρῶν, τοῦτο μόνον [5] βοῶν· οὐ δύναμαι Γάιον Μάριον ἀποκτεῖναι. πάντας οὖν ἔκπληξις ἔσχεν, εἶτ’ οἶκτος καὶ μετάνοια τῆς γνώμης καὶ κατάμεμψις ἑαυτῶν, ὡς βούλευμα βεβουλευκότων ἄνομον καὶ ἀχάριστον ἐπ’ ἀνδρὶ σωτῆρι τῆς Ἰταλίας, ᾧ [6] μὴ βοηθῆσαι δεινὸν ἦν. ἴτω δ’ οὖν ὅπῃ χρῄζει φυγάς, ἀνατλησόμενος ἀλλαχόθι τὸ μεμορμένον. ἡμῖν δ’ εὐχώμεθα μὴ νεμεσῆσαι θεούς, Μάριον ἄπορον καὶ γυμνὸν [7] ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἐκβαλοῦσιν. ὑπὸ τοιούτων λογισμῶν εἰσπεσόντες ἀθρόοι καὶ περισχόντες αὐτὸν ἐξῆγον ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν. ἄλλου δ’ ἄλλο τι προθύμως ὑπηρετοῦντος καὶ σπευδόντων ἁπάντων, ἐγίνετο τριβὴ τοῦ χρόνου.

[8] τὸ γὰρ τῆς λεγομένης Μαρίκας ἄλσος, ὃ σέβονται καὶ παραφυλάττουσι μηθὲν ἐκεῖθεν ἐκκομισθῆναι τῶν εἰσκομισθέντων, ἐμποδὼν ἦν τῆς ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ὁδοῦ, καὶ κύκλῳ περιιόντας ἔδει βραδύνειν, ἄχρι οὗ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων τις ἐκβοήσας ἔφη μηδεμίαν ἄβατον μηδ’ ἀπόρευτον [9] ὁδὸν εἶναι δι’ ἧς σῴζεται Μάριος, καὶ πρῶτος αὐτὸς λαβών τι τῶν κομιζομένων ἐπὶ ναῦν διὰ τοῦ τόπου διεξῆλθε.

[40] [1] Τοιαύτῃ προθυμίᾳ ταχὺ πάντων συμπορισθέντων, καὶ Βηλαίου τινὸς ναῦν τῷ Μαρίῳ παρασχόντος, ὃς ὕστερον πίνακα τῶν πράξεων ἐκείνων γραψάμενος ἀνέθηκεν εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν ὅθεν ἐμβὰς ὁ Μάριος ἀνήχθη, τῷ φέροντι χρώμενος ἐφέρετό [δὲ] πως κατὰ τύχην πρὸς Αἰναρίαν τὴν νῆσον, ὅπου τὸν Γράνιον καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους [2] φίλους εὑρών, ἔπλει μετ’ αὐτῶν ἐπὶ Λιβύης. ὕδατος δ’ ἐπιλιπόντος αὐτούς, ἀναγκαίως Σικελίᾳ κατὰ τὴν Ἐρυκίνην [3] προσέσχον. ἔτυχε δὲ περὶ τοὺς τόπους ἐκείνους ὁ Ῥωμαίων ταμίας παραφυλάσσων, καὶ μικροῦ μὲν αὐτὸν ἀποβάντα τὸν Μάριον εἷλεν, ἀπέκτεινε δὲ περὶ ἑκκαίδεκα [4] τῶν ὑδρευομένων. Μάριος δὲ κατὰ σπουδὴν ἀναχθεὶς καὶ διαπεράσας τὸ πέλαγος πρὸς Μήνιγγα τὴν νῆσον, ἐνταῦθα διαπυνθάνεται πρῶτον, ὡς ὁ παῖς αὐτοῦ διασέσῳσται μετὰ Κεθήγου καὶ πορεύονται πρὸς τὸν βασιλέα τῶν [5] Νομάδων Ἰάμψαν, δεησόμενοι βοηθεῖν. ἐφ’ οἷς μικρὸν ἀναπνεύσας, ἐθάρρησεν ἀπὸ τῆς νήσου πρὸς τὴν Καρχηδονίαν [6] προσβαλεῖν. ἐστρατήγει δὲ τῆς Λιβύης τότε Σεξτίλιος, ἀνὴρ Ῥωμαῖος οὔτε φαῦλον οὐθὲν οὔτε χρηστὸν ἐκ Μαρίου προειληφώς, ἀλλ’ ὅσον ἀπ’ οἴκτου τι προσδοκώμενος [7] ὠφελήσειν. ἄρτι δ’ αὐτοῦ μετ’ ὀλίγων ἀποβεβηκότος, ὑπηρέτης ἀπαντήσας καὶ καταστὰς ἐναντίον εἶπεν· ἀπαγορεύει σοι Σεξτίλιος ὁ στρατηγὸς ὦ Μάριε Λιβύης ἐπιβαίνειν· εἰ δὲ μή, φησὶν ἀμυνεῖν τοῖς τῆς βουλῆς [8] δόγμασιν, ὡς Ῥωμαίων πολεμίῳ χρώμενος. ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντα τὸν Μάριον ὑπὸ λύπης καὶ βαρυθυμίας ἀπορία λόγων ἔσχε, καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἡσυχίαν ἦγε, δεινὸν εἰς [9] τὸν ὑπηρέτην ἀποβλέπων. ἐρομένου δ’ ἐκείνου τί φράζῃ καὶ τί λέγῃ πρὸς τὸν στρατηγόν, ἀπεκρίνατο μέγα στενάξας· ἄγγελλε τοίνυν ὅτι Γάιον Μάριον ἐν τοῖς Καρχηδόνος ἐρειπίοις φυγάδα καθεζόμενον εἶδες, οὐ κακῶς ἅμα τήν τε τῆς πόλεως ἐκείνης τύχην καὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ μεταβολὴν ἐν παραδείγματος λόγῳ θέμενος.

[10] Ἐν τούτῳ δ’ Ἰάμψας ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Νομάδων ἐπαμφοτερίζων τοῖς λογισμοῖς, ἐν τιμῇ μὲν ἦγε τοὺς περὶ τὸν νέον Μάριον, ἀπιέναι δὲ βουλομένους ἔκ τινος ἀεὶ προφάσεως κατεῖχε, καὶ δῆλος ἦν ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ χρηστῷ ποιούμενος [11] τὴν ἀναβολήν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ συμβαίνει τι τῶν ‹ἀπ›εικότων αὐτοῖς πρὸς σωτηρίαν. ὁ γὰρ νέος Μάριος εὐπρεπὴς ὢν τὴν ὄψιν ἠνία τινὰ τῶν παλλακίδων τοῦ βασιλέως παρ’ ἀξίαν πράττων· ὁ δ’ οἶκτος οὗτος ἀρχὴ καὶ πρόφασις ἦν [12] ἔρωτος. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ἀπετρίβετο τὴν ἄνθρωπον· ὡς δ’ οὔτε φυγῆς ἑτέραν ὁδὸν ἑώρα, καὶ τὰ παρ’ ἐκείνης σπουδαιότερον ἢ πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἀκόλαστον διεπράττετο, δεξάμενος τὴν φιλοφροσύνην καὶ συνεκπεμφθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτῆς ἀπέδρα μετὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ διέφυγε πρὸς τὸν [13] Μάριον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀλλήλους ἠσπάσαντο, πορευόμενοι παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν ἐντυγχάνουσι σκορπίοις μαχομένοις· καὶ [14] τὸ σημεῖον ἐφάνη τῷ Μαρίῳ πονηρόν. εὐθὺς οὖν ἁλιάδος ἐπιβάντες εἰς Κέρκιναν διεπέρων νῆσον, ἀπέχουσαν οὐ πολὺ τῆς ἠπείρου· καὶ τοσοῦτον ἔφθασαν, ὅσον ἀνηγμένων αὐτῶν ἱππεῖς ὁρᾶσθαι παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐλαύνοντας ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον ὅθεν ἀνήχθησαν. τοῦτον οὐδενὸς ἐλάττονα ‹τὸν› κίνδυνον ἔδοξεν ἐκφυγεῖν ὁ Μάριος.

[41] [1] Ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ Σύλλας μὲν ἠκούετο τοῖς Μιθριδάτου πολεμεῖν στρατηγοῖς περὶ Βοιωτίαν, οἱ δ’ ὕπατοι [2] στασιάσαντες ἐχώρουν εἰς ὅπλα. καὶ μάχης γενομένης, Ὀκτάβιος μὲν κρατήσας ἐξέβαλε Κίνναν ἐπιχειροῦντα τυραννικώτερον ἄρχειν, καὶ κατέστησεν ἀντ’ αὐτοῦ Κορνήλιον Μερούλαν ὕπατον, ὁ δὲ Κίννας ἐκ τῆς ἄλλης Ἰταλίας συναγαγὼν δύναμιν, αὖθις διεπολέμει πρὸς αὐτούς.

[3] ταῦτα τῷ Μαρίῳ πυνθανομένῳ πλεῦσαι τὴν ταχίστην ἐφαίνετο· καὶ παραλαβὼν ἔκ τε Λιβύης Μαυρουσίων τινὰς ἱππότας καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας τινὰς καταφερομένων, συναμφοτέρους οὐ πλείονας χιλίων γενομένους, ἀνήχθη, μεθ’ ὧν προσβαλὼν Τελαμῶνι τῆς Τυρρηνίας καὶ ἀποβάς, ἐκήρυττε δούλοις ἐλευθερίαν· [4] καὶ τῶν αὐτόθι γεωργούντων καὶ νεμόντων ἐλευθέρων κατὰ δόξαν αὐτοῦ συντρεχόντων ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν ἀναπείθων τοὺς ἀκμαιοτάτους, ἐν ἡμέραις ὀλίγαις χεῖρα μεγάλην [5] ἤθροισε καὶ τεσσαράκοντα ναῦς ἐπλήρωσεν. εἰδὼς δὲ τὸν μὲν Ὀκτάβιον ἄριστον ἄνδρα καὶ τῷ δικαιοτάτῳ τρόπῳ βουλόμενον ἄρχειν, τὸν δὲ Κίνναν ὕποπτόν τε τῷ Σύλλᾳ καὶ πολεμοῦντα τῇ καθεστώσῃ πολιτείᾳ, τούτῳ προσνέμειν ἑαυτὸν ἔγνω μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως.

[6] ἔπεμψεν οὖν ἐπαγγελλόμενος ὡς ὑπάτῳ πάντα ποιήσειν τὰ προστασσόμενα. δεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ Κίννα καὶ προσαγορεύσαντος αὐτὸν ἀνθύπατον, ῥάβδους δὲ καὶ τἆλλα παράσημα τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀποστείλαντος, οὐκ ἔφη πρέπειν αὐτοῦ ταῖς τύχαις τὸν κόσμον, ἀλλ’ ἐσθῆτι φαύλῃ κεχρημένος καὶ κομῶν ἀφ’ ἧς ἔφυγεν ἡμέρας, ὑπὲρ ἑβδομήκοντα γεγονὼς ἔτη, βάδην προῄει, βουλόμενος μὲν ἐλεεινὸς εἶναι, τῷ δ’ οἰκτρῷ συμμέμεικτο τὸ οἰκεῖον τῆς ὄψεως αὐτοῦ πλέον, τὸ φοβερόν, καὶ διέφαινεν ἡ κατήφεια τὸν θυμὸν οὐ τεταπεινωμένον, ἀλλ’ ἐξηγριωμένον ὑπὸ τῆς μεταβολῆς.

[42] [1] Ἀσπασάμενος δὲ τὸν Κίνναν καὶ τοῖς στρατιώταις ἐντυχών, εὐθὺς εἴχετο τοῦ ἔργου καὶ μεγάλην μεταβολὴν [2] τῶν πραγμάτων ἐποίησε. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ταῖς ναυσὶ τὰ σιτηγὰ περικόπτων καὶ τοὺς ἐμπόρους ληιζόμενος, ἐκράτησε τῆς ἀγορᾶς, ἔπειτα τὰς παραλίους πόλεις [3] ἐπιπλέων ᾕρει. τέλος δὲ τὴν Ὠστίαν αὐτὴν λαβὼν ἐκ προδοσίας, τά τε χρήματα διήρπασε καὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων τοὺς πολλοὺς ἀπέκτεινε, καὶ γεφυρώσας τὸν ποταμὸν ἀπέκοψε κομιδῇ τὰς ἐκ θαλάσσης εὐπορίας τῶν πολεμίων.

[4] ἄρας δὲ τῷ στρατῷ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ἐχώρει καὶ τὸ καλούμενον Ἰανοῦκλον ὄρος κατέσχεν, οὐ τοσοῦτον ἀπειρίᾳ τοῦ Ὀκταβίου τὰ πράγματα βλάπτοντος, ὅσον ἀκριβείᾳ τῶν δικαίων προϊεμένου τὰ χρειώδη παρὰ τὸ συμφέρον, ὅς γε πολλῶν κελευόντων αὐτὸν ἐπ’ ἐλευθερίᾳ καλεῖν τοὺς οἰκέτας, οὐκ ἔφη δούλοις μεταδώσειν τῆς πατρίδος, ἧς [5] Γάιον Μάριον εἴργει τοῖς νόμοις ἀμύνων. ἐπεὶ δὲ Μέτελλος, υἱὸς ὢν Μετέλλου τοῦ στρατηγήσαντος ἐν Λιβύῃ καὶ διὰ Μάριον ἐκπεσόντος, ἧκεν εἰς Ῥώμην καὶ πολὺ τοῦ Ὀκταβίου στρατηγικώτερος ἐφαίνετο, καταλιπόντες οἱ στρατιῶται τὸν Ὀκτάβιον ἧκον ὡς ἐκεῖνον, ἄρχειν δεόμενοι καὶ σῴζειν τὴν πόλιν· εὖ γὰρ ἀγωνιεῖσθαι καὶ κρατήσειν, [6] ἔμπειρον ἡγεμόνα καὶ δραστήριον λαβόντες. ἀγανακτήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Μετέλλου καὶ κελεύσαντος ἀπιέναι πρὸς τὸν ὕπατον, ᾤχοντο πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους· ὑπεξέστη δὲ [7] καὶ Μέτελλος ἀπογνοὺς τὴν πόλιν. Ὀκτάβιον δὲ Χαλδαῖοι καὶ θύται τινὲς καὶ σιβυλλισταὶ πείσαντες ἐν Ῥώμῃ κατέσχον, ὡς εὖ γενησομένων. ὁ γὰρ ἀνὴρ οὗτος δοκεῖ, τἆλλα Ῥωμαίων εὐγνωμονέστατος γενόμενος καὶ μάλιστα δὴ τὸ πρόσχημα τῆς ὑπατείας ἀκολάκευτον ἐπὶ τῶν πατρίων ἐθῶν καὶ νόμων ὥσπερ διαγραμμάτων ἀμεταβόλων διαφυλάξας, ἀρρωστίᾳ τῇ περὶ ταῦτα χρήσασθαι, πλείονα δὲ συνὼν χρόνον ἀγύρταις καὶ μάντεσιν ἢ πολιτικοῖς [8] καὶ πολεμικοῖς ἀνδράσιν. οὗτος μὲν οὖν, πρὶν εἰσελθεῖν τὸν Μάριον, ὑπὸ τῶν προπεμφθέντων ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος κατασπασθεὶς ἐσφάττετο, καὶ λέγεται διάγραμμα Χαλδαϊκὸν ἐν τοῖς κόλποις αὐτοῦ φονευθέντος εὑρεθῆναι.

[9] καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα πολλὴν ἀλογίαν εἶχε, τὸ δυεῖν ἡγεμόνων ἐπιφανεστάτων Μάριον μὲν σῶσαι τὸ μὴ καταφρονῆσαι μαντικῆς, Ὀκτάβιον δ’ ἀπολέσαι.

[43] [1] Οὕτω δὴ τῶν πραγμάτων ἐχόντων, ἡ βουλὴ συνελθοῦσα πρέσβεις ἐξέπεμψε πρὸς Κίνναν καὶ Μάριον, εἰσιέναι [2] καὶ φείδεσθαι δεομένη τῶν πολιτῶν. Κίννας μὲν οὖν ὡς ὕπατος ἐπὶ τοῦ δίφρου καθήμενος ἐχρημάτιζε καὶ φιλανθρώπους ἀποκρίσεις ἔδωκε τοῖς πρέσβεσι, Μάριος δὲ τῷ δίφρῳ παρειστήκει, φθεγγόμενος μὲν οὐδέν, ὑποδηλῶν δ’ ἀεὶ τῇ βαρύτητι τοῦ προσώπου καὶ τῇ στυγνότητι τοῦ βλέμματος ὡς εὐθὺς ἐμπλήσων φόνων [3] τὴν πόλιν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀναστάντες ἐβάδιζον, Κίννας μὲν εἰσῄει δορυφορούμενος, Μάριος δὲ παρὰ ταῖς πύλαις ὑποστὰς εἰρωνεύετο πρὸς ὀργήν, φυγὰς εἶναι λέγων καὶ τῆς πατρίδος εἴργεσθαι κατὰ τὸν νόμον, εἰ δὲ χρῄζοι τις αὐτοῦ παρόντος, ἑτέρᾳ ψήφῳ λυτέον εἶναι τὴν ἐκβαλοῦσαν, ὡς δὴ νόμιμός τις ὢν ἀνὴρ καὶ κατιὼν εἰς πόλιν [4] ἐλευθέραν. ἐκαλεῖτο δὴ τὸ πλῆθος εἰς ἀγοράν· καὶ πρὸ τοῦ τρεῖς ἢ τέσσαρας φυλὰς ἐνεγκεῖν τὴν ψῆφον ἀφεὶς τὸ πλάσμα καὶ τὴν φυγαδικὴν ἐκείνην δικαιολογίαν κατῄει, δορυφόρους ἔχων λογάδας ἐκ τῶν προσπεφοιτηκότων δούλων, [5] οὓς Βαρδυαίους προσηγόρευεν. οὗτοι πολλοὺς μὲν ἀπὸ φωνῆς, πολλοὺς δ’ ἀπὸ νεύματος ἀνῄρουν προστάσσοντος αὐτοῦ, καὶ τέλος Ἀγχάριον, ἄνδρα βουλευτὴν καὶ στρατηγικόν, ἐντυγχάνοντα τῷ Μαρίῳ καὶ μὴ προσαγορευθέντα καταβάλλουσιν ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ ταῖς [6] μαχαίραις τύπτοντες. ἐκ δὲ τούτου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων, ὅσους ἀσπασαμένους μὴ προσαγορεύσειε μηδ’ ἀντασπάσαιτο, τοῦτ’ αὐτὸ σύμβολον ἦν ἀποσφάττειν εὐθὺς ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς, ὥστε καὶ τῶν φίλων ἕκαστον ἀγωνίας μεστὸν εἶναι καὶ φρίκης, ὁσάκις ἀσπασόμενοι τῷ Μαρίῳ πελάζοιεν.

[7] κτεινομένων δὲ πολλῶν, Κίννας μὲν ἀμβλὺς ἦν καὶ μεστὸς ἤδη τοῦ φονεύειν, Μάριος δὲ καθ’ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν ἀκμάζοντι τῷ θυμῷ καὶ διψῶντι διὰ πάντων ἐχώρει τῶν [8] ὁπωσοῦν ἐν ὑποψίᾳ γεγονότων. καὶ πᾶσα μὲν ὁδός, πᾶσα δὲ πόλις τῶν διωκόντων καὶ κυνηγετούντων τοὺς ὑποφεύγοντας [9] καὶ κεκρυμμένους ἔγεμεν. ἠλέγχετο δὲ καὶ ξενίας καὶ φιλίας πίστις οὐδὲν ἔχουσα παρὰ τὰς τύχας βέβαιον· ὀλίγοι γὰρ ἐγένοντο παντάπασιν οἱ μὴ προδόντες [10] αὐτοῖς τοὺς παρὰ σφᾶς καταφυγόντας. ἄξιον οὖν ἄγασθαι καὶ θαυμάσαι τοὺς τοῦ Κορνούτου θεράποντας, οἳ τὸν δεσπότην ἀποκρύψαντες οἴκοι, νεκρὸν δέ τινα τῶν πολλῶν, ἀναρτήσαντες ἐκ τοῦ τραχήλου καὶ περιθέντες αὐτῷ χρυσοῦν δακτύλιον, ἐπεδείκνυον τοῖς Μαρίου δορυφόροις, καὶ κοσμήσαντες ὡς ἐκεῖνον αὐτὸν ἔθαπτον. ὑπενόησε δ’ οὐδείς, ἀλλ’ οὕτω λαθὼν ὁ Κορνοῦτος ὑπὸ τῶν οἰκετῶν εἰς Γαλατίαν διεκομίσθη.

[44] [1] Χρηστῷ δὲ καὶ Μᾶρκος Ἀντώνιος ὁ ῥήτωρ φίλῳ χρησάμενος, ἠτύχησεν. ὁ γὰρ ἄνθρωπος ἦν μὲν πένης καὶ δημοτικός, ὑποδεξάμενος δὲ πρῶτον ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος ἐκ τῶν παρόντων, οἰκέτην ἔπεμψε [2] πρός τινα τῶν ἐγγὺς καπήλων, ληψόμενον οἶνον. διαγευομένου δ’ ἐπιμελέστερον καὶ βελτίονα μετρῆσαι κελεύοντος, ἠρώτησεν ὁ κάπηλος, τί παθὼν οὐχὶ τὸν νέον ὥσπερ εἴωθεν ὠνεῖται καὶ δημοτικόν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ σπουδαίου [3] καὶ πολυτελοῦς. ἁπλῶς δέ πως ἐκείνου φράσαντος ὡς πρὸς συνήθη καὶ γνώριμον, ὅτι Μᾶρκον Ἀντώνιον ὁ δεσπότης ἑστιᾷ παρ’ αὐτῷ κρυπτόμενον, ἀσεβὴς καὶ μιαρὸς ὢν ὁ κάπηλος ἅμα τῷ τὸν οἰκέτην ἀπελθεῖν αὐτὸς συνέτεινε πρὸς Μάριον ἤδη περὶ δεῖπνον ὄντα, καὶ προσαχθεὶς ὡμολόγησε παραδώσειν αὐτῷ τὸν Ἀντώνιον.

[4] ἀκούσας οὖν ἐκεῖνος ἐκκραγεῖν λέγεται μέγα καὶ ταῖς χερσὶν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἀνακροτῆσαι· καὶ μικροῦ μὲν ἐδέησεν ἐξαναστὰς αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον φέρεσθαι, τῶν δὲ φίλων κατασχόντων, Ἄννιον ἔπεμπε καὶ στρατιώτας μετ’ αὐτοῦ, κελεύσας κατὰ τάχος τὴν κεφαλὴν τοῦ Ἀντωνίου [5] κομίζειν. ὡς οὖν ἧκον ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν, ὁ μὲν Ἄννιος ὑπέστη παρὰ τὰς θύρας, οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται διὰ κλιμάκων ἀναβάντες εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον καὶ θεασάμενοι τὸν Ἀντώνιον, ἄλλος ἄλλον ἐπὶ τὴν σφαγὴν ἀνθ’ ἑαυτοῦ παρεκάλει καὶ προὐβάλλετο.

[6] τοιαύτη δέ τις ἦν ὡς ἔοικε τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἡ τῶν λόγων σειρὴν καὶ χάρις, ὥστ’ ἀρξαμένου λέγειν καὶ παραιτεῖσθαι τὸν θάνατον ἅψασθαι μὲν οὐδεὶς ἐτόλμησεν οὐδ’ ἀντιβλέψαι, [7] κάτω δὲ κύψαντες ἐδάκρυον ἅπαντες. διατριβῆς δὲ γενομένης, ἀναβὰς ὁ Ἄννιος ὁρᾷ τὸν μὲν Ἀντώνιον διαλεγόμενον, τοὺς δὲ στρατιώτας ἐκπεπληγμένους καὶ κατακεκηλημένους ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ· κακίσας οὖν ἐκείνους καὶ προσδραμὼν [8] αὐτὸς ἀποτέμνει τὴν κεφαλήν. Κάτλος δὲ Λουτάτιος ‹ὁ› Μαρίῳ συνάρξας καὶ συνθριαμβεύσας ἀπὸ Κίμβρων, ἐπεὶ πρὸς τοὺς δεομένους ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ καὶ παραιτουμένους ὁ Μάριος τοσοῦτον μόνον εἶπεν ἀποθανεῖν δεῖ, κατακλεισάμενος εἰς οἴκημα καὶ πολλοὺς [9] ἄνθρακας ἐκζωπυρήσας ἀπεπνίγη. ῥιπτουμένων δὲ τῶν σωμάτων ἀκεφάλων καὶ πατουμένων ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς, ἔλεος οὐκ ἦν, ἀλλὰ φρίκη καὶ τρόμος ἁπάντων πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν. ἠνία δὲ μάλιστα τὸν δῆμον ἡ τῶν καλουμένων Βαρδυαίων [10] ἀσέλγεια. τοὺς γὰρ δεσπότας ἐν ταῖς οἰκίαις σφάττοντες, ᾔσχυνον μὲν αὐτῶν παῖδας, ἐμείγνυντο δὲ βίᾳ ταῖς δεσποίναις, ἀκατάσχετοι δ’ ἦσαν ἁρπάζοντες καὶ μιαιφονοῦντες, ἕως οἱ περὶ Κίνναν καὶ Σερτώριον συμφρονήσαντες ἐπέθεντο κοιμωμένοις αὐτοῖς ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ καὶ κατηκόντισαν ἅπαντας.

[45] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δ’ ὥσπερ τροπαίας τινὸς ἀμειβούσης ἐφοίτων ἄγγελοι πανταχόθεν, ὡς Σύλλας συνῃρηκὼς τὸν Μιθριδατικὸν πόλεμον καὶ τὰς ἐπαρχίας ἀνειληφὼς ἐπιπλέοι [2] μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως. καὶ τοῦτο βραχεῖαν ἐπίσχεσιν ἐποίησε καὶ παῦλαν ὀλίγην ἀφάτων κακῶν, ὅσον [3] οὔπω τὸν πόλεμον ἥκειν ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς οἰομένων. ὕπατος μὲν οὖν ἀπεδείχθη τὸ ἕβδομον Μάριος, καὶ προελθὼν αὐταῖς Καλάνδαις Ἰανουαρίαις, ἔτους ἀρχῇ, Σέξτον τινὰ Λικίννιον κατεκρήμνισεν· ὃ κἀκείνοις καὶ τῇ πόλει τῶν [4] αὖθις ἐδόκει κακῶν γεγονέναι σημεῖον μέγιστον. αὐτὸς δ’ ἤδη τοῖς τε πόνοις ἀπειρηκὼς καὶ ταῖς φροντίσιν οἷον ὑπέραντλος ὢν καὶ κατάπονος, τὴν ψυχὴν πρὸς τοσαύτην αὖθις ἐπίνοιαν νέου πολέμου καὶ καινῶν ἀγώνων καὶ φόβων ὑπ’ ἐμπειρίας δεινῶν καὶ καμάτου τρέμουσαν οὐκ ἀνέφερε, λογιζόμενος ὡς οὐ πρὸς Ὀκτάβιον οὐδὲ Μερούλαν σύγκλυδος ὁμίλου καὶ στασιώδους ὄχλου στρατηγοὺς ὁ κίνδυνος ἔσοιτο, Σύλλας δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἔπεισιν ὁ τῆς πατρίδος αὐτὸν ἐξελάσας πάλαι, νῦν δὲ Μιθριδάτην συνεσταλκὼς [5] εἰς τὸν Εὔξεινον Πόντον. ὑπὸ τοιούτων θραυόμενος λογισμῶν, καὶ τὴν μακρὰν ἄλην αὑτοῦ καὶ φυγὰς καὶ κινδύνους διὰ γῆς καὶ θαλάττης ἐλαυνομένου λαμβάνων πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν, εἰς ἀπορίας ἐνέπιπτε δεινὰς καὶ νυκτερινὰ δείματα καὶ ταραχώδεις ὀνείρους, ἀεί τινος ἀκούειν φθεγγομένου δοκῶν·

δειναὶ γὰρ κοῖται καὶ ἀποιχομένοιο λέοντος.

[6] μάλιστα δὲ πάντων φοβούμενος τὰς ἀγρυπνίας, ἐνέβαλεν εἰς πότους ἑαυτὸν καὶ μέθας ἀώρους καὶ παρ’ ἡλικίαν, ὥσπερ ἀπόδρασιν τῶν φροντίδων τὸν ὕπνον μηχανώμενος.

[7] τέλος δ’ ὡς ἧκέ τις ἀπαγγέλλων ἀπὸ θαλάσσης , νέοι προσπίπτοντες αὐτῷ φόβοι, τὰ μὲν δέει τοῦ μέλλοντος, τὰ δ’ ὥσπερ ἄχθει καὶ κόρῳ τῶν παρόντων, ῥοπῆς βραχείας ἐπιγενομένης, εἰς νόσον κατηνέχθη πλευρῖτιν, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Ποσειδώνιος (FGrH 87 F 37) ὁ φιλόσοφος, αὐτὸς εἰσελθεῖν καὶ διαλεχθῆναι περὶ ὧν ἐπρέσβευεν ἤδη [8] νοσοῦντι φάσκων αὐτῷ. Γάιος δέ τις Πίσων ἀνὴρ ἱστορικὸς ἱστορεῖ (HRR I² 317) τὸν Μάριον ἀπὸ δείπνου περιπατοῦντα μετὰ τῶν φίλων ἐν λόγοις γενέσθαι περὶ τῶν καθ’ [9] ἑαυτὸν πραγμάτων, ἄνωθεν ἀρξάμενον· καὶ τὰς ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα πολλάκις μεταβολὰς ἀφηγησάμενον, εἰπεῖν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι νοῦν ἔχοντος ἀνδρὸς ἔτι τῇ τύχῃ πιστεύειν ἑαυτόν· ἐκ δὲ τούτου τοὺς παρόντας ἀσπασάμενον καὶ [10] κατακλινέντα συνεχῶς ἡμέρας ἑπτὰ τελευτῆσαι. τινὲς δὲ τὴν φιλοτιμίαν αὐτοῦ φασιν ἐν τῇ νόσῳ παντάπασιν ἀποκαλυφθεῖσαν εἰς ἄτοπον ἐξοκεῖλαι παρακοπήν, οἰομένου τὸν Μιθριδατικὸν στρατηγεῖν πόλεμον, εἶθ’, ὥσπερ ἐπ’ αὐτῶν εἰώθει τῶν ἀγώνων, σχήματα παντοδαπὰ καὶ κινήματα σώματος μετὰ συντόνου κραυγῆς καὶ πυκνῶν [11] ἀλαλαγμάτων ἀποδιδόντος. οὕτως δεινὸς αὐτῷ καὶ δυσπαραμύθητος ἐκ φιλαρχίας καὶ ζηλοτυπίας ἔρως ἐντετήκει [12] τῶν πράξεων ἐκείνων· δι’ ὅν, ἔτη μὲν ἑβδομήκοντα βεβιωκώς, ὕπατος δὲ πρῶτος ἀνθρώπων ἑπτάκις ἀνηγορευμένος, οἶκόν τε καὶ πλοῦτον ἀρκοῦντα βασιλείαις ὁμοῦ πολλαῖς κεκτημένος, ὠδύρετο τὴν ἑαυτοῦ τύχην, ὡς ἐνδεὴς καὶ ἀτελὴς ὧν ἐπόθει προαποθνῄσκων.

[46] [1] Πλάτων μὲν οὖν, ἤδη πρὸς τῷ τελευτᾶν γενόμενος, ὕμνει τὸν αὑτοῦ δαίμονα καὶ τὴν τύχην, ὅτι πρῶτον μὲν ἄνθρωπος, οὐκ ἄλογον τῇ φύσει θηρίον, εἶθ’ Ἕλλην, οὐ βάρβαρος γένοιτο, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ὅτι τοῖς Σωκράτους [2] χρόνοις ἀπήντησεν ἡ γένεσις αὐτοῦ. καὶ νὴ Δία τὸν Ταρσέα λέγουσιν Ἀντίπατρον (SVF III 246) ὡσαύτως ὑπὸ τὴν τελευτὴν ἀναλογιζόμενον ὧν τύχοι μακαρίων, μηδὲ τῆς εἰς Ἀθήνας οἴκοθεν εὐπλοίας ἐπιλαθέσθαι, καθάπερ φιλοχρήστου τῆς τύχης ἅπασαν δόσιν εἰς μεγάλην χάριν τιθέμενον καὶ σῴζοντα τῇ μνήμῃ διὰ τέλους, ἧς οὐδέν [3] ἐστιν ἀνθρώπῳ ταμιεῖον ἀγαθῶν βεβαιότερον. τοὺς δ’ ἀμνήμονας καὶ ἀνοήτους ὑπεκρεῖ τὰ γιγνόμενα μετὰ τοῦ χρόνου· διὸ μηθὲν στέγοντες μηδὲ διατηροῦντες, ἀεὶ κενοὶ μὲν ἀγαθῶν, πλήρεις δ’ ἐλπίδων, πρὸς τὸ μέλλον [4] ἀποβλέπουσι, τὸ παρὸν προϊέμενοι. καίτοι τὸ μὲν ἂν ἡ τύχη κωλῦσαι δύναιτο, τὸ δ’ ἀναφαίρετόν ἐστιν· ἀλλ’ ὅμως τοῦτο τῆς ψυχῆς ὡς ἀλλότριον ἐκβάλλοντες, ἐκεῖνο [5] τὸ ἄδηλον ὀνειρώττουσιν, εἰκότα πάσχοντες. πρὶν γὰρ ἐκ λόγου καὶ παιδείας ἕδραν ὑποβαλέσθαι καὶ κρηπῖδα τοῖς ἔξωθεν ἀγαθοῖς, συνάγοντες αὐτὰ καὶ συμφοροῦντες, ἐμπλῆσαι τῆς ψυχῆς οὐ δύνανται τὸ ἀκόρεστον.

[6] Ἀποθνῄσκει δ’ οὖν Μάριος, ἡμέρας ἑπτακαίδεκα τῆς ἑβδόμης ὑπατείας ἐπιλαβών· καὶ μέγα ἔσχε παραυτίκα τὴν Ῥώμην χάρμα καὶ θάρσος, ὡς χαλεπῆς τυραννίδος [7] ἀπηλλαγμένην. ὀλίγαις δ’ ἡμέραις ᾔσθοντο νέον ἀντηλλαγμένοι καὶ ἀκμάζοντα ἀντὶ πρεσβύτου δεσπότην· τοσαύτην ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ Μάριος ὠμότητα καὶ πικρίαν ἀπεδείξατο, [8] τοὺς ἀρίστους καὶ δοκιμωτάτους ἀναιρῶν. δόξας δὲ καὶ τολμητὴς καὶ φιλοκίνδυνος εἶναι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, ἐν ἀρχῇ παῖς Ἄρεως ὠνομάζετο, ταχὺ δὲ τοῖς [9] ἔργοις ἐλεγχόμενος, αὖθις Ἀφροδίτης υἱὸς ἐκαλεῖτο. τέλος δὲ κατακλεισθεὶς εἰς Πραινεστὸν ὑπὸ Σύλλα καὶ πολλὰ φιλοψυχήσας μάτην, ὡς ἦν ἄφυκτα τῆς πόλεως ἁλισκομένης, αὐτὸς αὑτὸν ἀπέκτεινεν.

Lysander

[1] [1] Ὁ Ἀκανθίων θησαυρὸς ἐν Δελφοῖς ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχει τοιαύτην· “Βρασίδας καὶ Ἀκάνθιοι ἀπ’ Ἀθηναίων·” διὸ καὶ πολλοὶ τὸν ἐντὸς ἐστῶτα τοῦ οἴκου παρὰ ταῖς θύραις λίθινον ἀνδριάντα Βρασίδου νομίζουσιν εἶναι. Λυσάνδρου δέ ἐστιν εἰκονικός, εὖ μάλα κομῶντος ἔθει τῷ παλαιῷ καὶ [2] πώγωνα καθειμένου γενναῖον. οὐ γάρ, ὡς ἔνιοί φασιν, Ἀργείων μετὰ τὴν μεγάλην ἧτταν ἐπὶ πένθει καρέντων οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται πρὸς τὸ ἀντίπαλον αὐτοῖς τὰς κόμας ἀγαλλόμενοι τοῖς πεπραγμένοις ἀνῆκαν, οὐδὲ Βακχιαδῶν τῶν ἐκ Κορίνθου φυγόντων εἰς Λακεδαίμονα ταπεινῶν καὶ ἀμόρφων διὰ τὸ κείρασθαι τὰς κεφαλὰς φανέντων εἰς ζῆλον αὐτοὶ τοῦ κομᾶν ἦλθον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο Λυκούργειόν ἐστι. καί φασιν αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν ὡς ἡ κόμη τοὺς μὲν καλοὺς εὐπρεπεστέρους ὁρᾶσθαι ποιεῖ, τοὺς δὲ αἰσχροὺς φοβερωτέρους.

[2] [1] Λέγεται δὲ ὁ Λυσάνδρου πατὴρ Ἀριστόκλειτος οἰκίας μὲν οὐ γενέσθαι βασιλικῆς, ἄλλως δὲ γένους εἶναι τοῦ τῶν Ἡρακλειδῶν. ἐτράφη δὲ ὁ Λύσανδρος ἐν πενίᾳ, καὶ παρέσχεν ἑαυτὸν εὔτακτον, ὡς εἴ τις ἄλλος, πρὸς τοὺς ἐθισμοὺς καὶ ἀνδρώδη καὶ κρείττονα πάσης ἡδονῆς, πλὴν εἴ τινα τιμωμένοις καὶ κατορθοῦσιν αἱ καλαὶ πράξεις ἐπιφέρουσι. ταύτης δὲ οὐκ αἰσχρόν ἐστιν ἡττᾶσθαι [2] τοὺς νέους ἐν Σπάρτῃ. βούλονται γὰρ εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς πάσχειν τι τοὺς παῖδας αὐτῶν πρὸς δόξαν, ἀλγυνομένους τε τοῖς ψόγοις καὶ μεγαλυνομένους ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπαίνων· ὁ δὲ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀκίνητος ἐν τούτοις ὡς ἀφιλότιμος πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ ἀργὸς καταφρονεῖται. τὸ μὲν οὖν φιλότιμον αὐτῷ καὶ φιλόνεικον ἐκ τῆς Λακωνικῆς παρέμεινε παιδείας ἐγγενόμενον, καὶ οὐδέν τι μέγα χρὴ τὴν φύσιν ἐν [3] τούτοις αἰτιᾶσθαι· θεραπευτικὸς δὲ τῶν δυνατῶν μᾶλλον ἢ κατὰ Σπαρτιάτην φύσει δοκεῖ γενέσθαι, καὶ βάρος ἐξουσίας διὰ χρείαν ἐνεγκεῖν εὔκολος· ὃ πολιτικῆς δεινότητος οὐ μικρὸν ἔνιοι ποιοῦνται μέρος. Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ τὰς μεγάλας φύσεις ἀποφαίνων μελαγχολικάς, ὡς τὴν Σωκράτους καὶ Πλάτωνος καὶ Ἡρακλέους, ἱστορεῖ καὶ Λύσανδρον οὐκ εὐθύς, ἀλλὰ πρεσβύτερον ὄντα τῇ μελαγχολίᾳ περιπεσεῖν.

[4] Ἴδιον δὲ αὐτοῦ μάλιστα τὸ καλῶς πενίαν φέροντα, καὶ μηδαμοῦ κρατηθέντα μηδὲ διαφθαρέντα χρήμασιν αὐτόν, ἐμπλῆσαι τὴν πατρίδα πλούτου καὶ φιλοπλουτίας καὶ παῦσαι θαυμαζομένην ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ θαυμάζειν πλοῦτον, εἰσάγοντα χρυσίου καὶ ἀργυρίου πλῆθος μετὰ τὸν Ἀττικὸν πόλεμον, ἑαυτῷ δὲ μηδεμίαν δραχμὴν ὑπολειπόμενον.

[5] Διονυσίου δὲ τοῦ τυράννου πέμψαντος αὐτοῦ ταῖς θυγατράσι πολυτελῆ χιτώνια τῶν Σικελῶν, οὐκ ἔλαβεν, εἰπὼν φοβεῖσθαι μὴ διὰ ταῦτα μᾶλλον αἰσχραὶ φανῶσιν. ἀλλ’ ὀλίγον ὕστερον πρὸς τὸν αὐτὸν τύραννον ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς πόλεως ἀποσταλεὶς πρεσβευτής, προσπέμψαντος αὐτῷ δύο στολὰς ἐκείνου καὶ κελεύσαντος ἣν βούλεται τούτων ἑλόμενον τῇ θυγατρὶ κομίζειν, αὐτὴν ἐκείνην ἔφη βέλτιον αἱρήσεσθαι, καὶ λαβὼν ἀμφοτέρας ἀπῆλθεν.

[3] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ Πελοποννησιακοῦ πολέμου μῆκος λαμβάνοντος, καὶ μετὰ τὴν ἐν Σικελίᾳ τῶν Ἀθηναίων κακοπραγίαν αὐτίκα μὲν ἐπιδόξων ὄντων ἐκπεσεῖσθαι τῆς θαλάττης, οὐ πολλῷ δὲ ὕστερον ἀπαγορεύσειν παντάπασιν, Ἀλκιβιάδης ἀπὸ τῆς φυγῆς ἐπιστὰς τοῖς πράγμασι μεγάλην μεταβολὴν ἐποίησε καὶ κατέστησε τοὺς ναυτικοὺς [2] ἀγῶνας εἰς ἀντίπαλον αὐτοῖς, δείσαντες οὖν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι πάλιν καὶ γενόμενοι ταῖς προθυμίαις καινοὶ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ὡς ἡγεμόνος τε δεινοῦ καὶ παρασκευῆς ἐρρωμενεστέρας δεόμενον, ἐκπέμπουσιν ἐπὶ τὴν τῆς θαλάττης ἡγεμονίαν Λύσανδρον. γενόμενος δ’ ἐν Ἐφέσῳ, καὶ τὴν πόλιν εὑρὼν εὔνουν μὲν αὑτῷ καὶ λακωνίζουσαν προθυμότατα, πράττουσαν δὲ τότε λυπρῶς καὶ κινδυνεύουσαν ἐκβαρβαρωθῆναι τοῖς Περσικοῖς ἔθεσι διὰ τὰς ἐπιμιξίας, ἅτε δὴ τῆς Λυδίας περικεχυμένης καὶ τῶν βασιλικῶν στρατηγῶν αὐτόθι τὰ [3] πολλὰ διατριβόντων, στρατόπεδον βαλόμενος καὶ τὰ πλοῖα πανταχόθεν ἕλκεσθαι κελεύσας ἐκεῖ τὰ φορτηγά, καὶ ναυπηγίαν τριήρων ἐκεῖ κατασκευασάμενος, ταῖς μὲν ἐμπορίαις τοὺς λιμένας αὐτῶν ἀνέλαβεν, ἐργασίαις δὲ τὴν ἀγοράν, χρηματισμῶν δὲ τοὺς οἴκους καὶ τὰς τέχνας ἐνέπλησεν, ὥστε πρῶτον ἀπ’ ἐκείνου τοῦ χρόνου τὴν πόλιν ἐν ἐλπίδι τοῦ περὶ αὐτὴν νῦν ὄντος ὄγκου καὶ μεγέθους διὰ Λύσανδρον γενέσθαι.

[4] [1] Πυθόμενος δὲ Κῦρον εἰς Σάρδεις ἀφῖχθαι τὸν βασιλέως υἱόν, ἀνέβη διαλεξόμενος αὐτῷ καὶ Τισαφέρνου κατηγορήσων, ὃς ἔχων πρόσταγμα Λακεδαιμονίοις βοηθεῖν καὶ τῆς θαλάσσης ἐξελάσαι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ἐδόκει δι’ Ἀλκιβιάδην ὑφιέμενος ἀπρόθυμος εἶναι καὶ γλίσχρως χορηγῶν [2] τὸ ναυτικὸν φθείρειν. ἦν δὲ καὶ Κύρῳ βουλομένῳ τὸν Τισαφέρνην ἐν αἰτίαις εἶναι καὶ κακῶς ἀκούειν, πονηρὸν ὄντα καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἰδίᾳ διαφερόμενον. ἔκ τε δὴ τούτων καὶ τῆς ἄλλης συνδιαιτήσεως ὁ Λύσανδρος ἀγαπηθεὶς καὶ τῷ θεραπευτικῷ μάλιστα τῆς ὁμιλίας ἑλὼν τὸ μειρά[3]κιον ἐπέρρωσε πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀπαλλάττεσθαι βουλόμενον αὐτὸν ἑστιῶν ὁ Κῦρος ἠξίου μὴ διωθεῖσθαι τὰς παρ’ αὐτοῦ φιλοφροσύνας, ἀλλ’ αἰτεῖν ὃ βούλοιτο καὶ φράζειν ὡς οὐδενὸς ἁπλῶς ἀποτευξόμενον, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Λύσανδρος, “Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν,” εἶπεν, “οὕτως ἔχεις, ὦ Κῦρε, προθυμίας, αἰτοῦμαί σε καὶ παρακαλῶ προσθεῖναι τῷ μισθῷ τῶν ναυτῶν ὀβολόν, ὅπως [4] τετρώβολον ἀντὶ τριωβόλου λαμβάνωσιν.” ἡσθεὶς οὖν ὁ Κῦρος ἐπὶ τῇ φιλοτιμίᾳ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς μυρίους αὐτῷ δαρεικοὺς ἔδωκεν, ἐξ ὧν ἐπιμετρήσας τὸν ὀβολὸν τοῖς ναύταις καὶ λαμπρυνάμενος ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ τὰς ναῦς τῶν πολεμίων κενὰς ἐποίησεν. ἀπεφοίτων γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ πρὸς τοὺς πλέον διδόντας, οἱ δὲ μένοντες ἀπρόθυμοι καὶ στασιώδεις ἐγίνοντο καὶ κακὰ παρεῖχον ὁσημέραι τοῖς στρατηγοῖς.

[5] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτως περισπάσας καὶ κακώσας τοὺς πολεμίους ὁ Λύσανδρος ὠρρώδει ναυμαχεῖν, δραστήριον ὄντα τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην καὶ νεῶν πλήθει περιόντα καὶ μάχας καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν εἰς ἐκεῖνο χρόνου πάσας ἀήττητον ἠγωνισμένον δεδοικώς.

[5] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ὁ μὲν Ἀλκιβιάδης εἰς Φωκαίαν ἐκ Σάμου διέπλευσεν ἐπὶ τοῦ στόλου καταλιπὼν Ἀντίοχον τὸν κυβερνήτην, ὁ δὲ Ἀντίοχος οἷον ἐφυβρίζων τῷ Λυσάνδρῳ καὶ θρασυνόμενος ἐπέπλευσε δυσὶ τριήρεσιν εἰς τὸν λιμένα τῶν Ἐφεσίων καὶ παρὰ τὸν ναύσταθμον γέλωτι καὶ πατάγῳ χρώμενος σοβαρῶς παρήλαυνεν, ἀγανακτήσας ὁ Λύσανδρος καὶ κατασπάσας τὸ πρῶτον οὐ πολλὰς τῶν τριήρων ἐδίωκεν αὐτόν, ἰδὼν δὲ αὖ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους βοηθοῦντας ἄλλας ἐπλήρου, [2] καὶ τέλος ἐναυμάχουν συμπεσόντες. ἐνίκα δὲ Λύσανδρος, καὶ πεντεκαίδεκα τριήρεις λαβὼν ἔστησε τρόπαιον. ἐπὶ τούτῳ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ὁ μὲν ἐν ἄστει δῆμος ὀργισθεὶς ἀπεχειροτόνησεν, ὑπὸ δὲ τῶν ἐν Σάμῳ στρατιωτῶν ἀτιμαζόμενος καὶ κακῶς ἀκούων ἀπέπλευσεν εἰς Χερρόνησον ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου. ταύτην μὲν οὖν τὴν μάχην, καίπερ οὐ μεγάλην τῇ πράξει γενομένην, ἡ τύχη δι’ Ἀλκιβιάδην ὀνομαστὴν ἐποίησεν.

[3] Ὁ δὲ Λύσανδρος ἀπὸ τῶν πόλεων εἰς Ἔφεσον μεταπεμπόμενος οὓς ἑώρα μάλιστα ταῖς τε τόλμαις καὶ τοῖς φρονήμασιν ὑπὲρ τοὺς πολλοὺς ὄντας, ἀρχὰς ὑπέσπειρε τῶν ὕστερον ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ γενομένων δεκαδαρχιῶν καὶ νεωτερισμῶν, προτρέπων καὶ παροξύνων ἑταιρικὰ συνίστασθαι καὶ προσέχειν τὸν νοῦν τοῖς πράγμασιν, ὡς ἅμα τῷ καταλυθῆναι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους τῶν τε δήμων ἀπαλλαξομένους καὶ δυναστεύσοντας ἐν ταῖς [4] πατρίσι. τούτων δὲ τὴν πίστιν ἑκάστῳ δι’ ἔργων παρεῖχε, τοὺς ἤδη γεγονότας φίλους αὐτῷ καὶ ξένους εἰς μεγάλα πράγματα καὶ τιμὰς καὶ στρατηγίας ἀνάγων, καὶ συναδικῶν καὶ συνεξαμαρτάνων αὐτὸς ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐκείνων πλεονεξίας, ὥστε προσέχειν ἅπαντας αὐτῷ καὶ χαρίζεσθαι καὶ ποθεῖν, ἐλπίζοντας οὐδενὸς ἀτυχήσειν τῶν [5] μεγίστων ἐκείνου κρατοῦντος. διὸ καὶ Καλλικρατίδαν οὔτ’ εὐθὺς ἡδέως εἶδον ἐλθόντα τῷ Λυσάνδρῳ διάδοχον τῆς ναυαρχίας, οὔτε, ὡς ὕστερον διδοὺς πεῖραν ἀνὴρ ἐφαίνετο πάντων ἄριστος καὶ δικαιότατος, ἠρέσκοντο τῷ τρόπῳ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἁπλοῦν τι καὶ Δώριον ἐχούσης καὶ ἀληθινόν. ἀλλὰ τούτου μὲν τὴν ἀρετὴν ὥσπερ ἀγάλματος ἡρωϊκοῦ κάλλος ἐθαύμαζον, ἐπόθουν δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου σπουδὴν καὶ τὸ φιλέταιρον καὶ χρειῶδες ἐζήτουν, ὥστε ἀθυμεῖν ἐκπλέοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ δακρύειν.

[6] [1] Ὁ δὲ τούτους τε τῷ Καλλικρατίδᾳ δυσμενεστέρους ἐποίει ἔτι μᾶλλον, καὶ τῶν ὑπὸ Κύρου χρημάτων αὐτῷ δεδομένων εἰς τὸ ναυτικὸν τὰ περιόντα πάλιν εἰς Σάρδεις ἀνέπεμψεν, αὐτὸν αἰτεῖν, εἰ βούλοιτο, τὸν Καλλικρατίδαν καὶ σκοπεῖν ὅπως θρέψοι τοὺς στρατιώτας κελεύσας.

[2] τέλος δὲ ἀποπλέων ἐμαρτύρατο πρὸς αὐτὸν ὅτι θαλασσοκρατοῦν τὸ ναυτικὸν παραδίδωσιν. ὁ δὲ βουλόμενος ἐλέγξαι τὴν φιλοτιμίαν ἀλαζονικὴν καὶ κενὴν οὖσαν, “Οὐκοῦν,” ἔφη, “λαβὼν ἐν ἀριστερᾷ Σάμον καὶ περιπλεύσας εἰς Μίλητον ἐκεῖ μοι παράδος τὰς τριήρεις· δεδιέναι γὰρ οὐ χρὴ παραπλέοντας ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἐν Σάμῳ πολεμίους, [3] εἰ θαλασσοκρατοῦμεν.” πρὸς ταῦτα εἰπὼν ὁ Λύσανδρος ὅτι οὐκ αὐτός, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος ἄρχοι τῶν νεῶν, ἀπέπλευσεν εἰς Πελοπόννησον, ἐν πολλῇ τὸν Καλλικρατίδαν ἀπορίᾳ καταλιπών. οὔτε γὰρ οἴκοθεν ἀφῖκτο χρήματα κομίζων, οὔτε τὰς πόλεις ἀργυρολογεῖν καὶ βιάζεσθαι μοχθηρὰ [4] πραττούσας ὑπέμεινε. λοιπὸν οὖν ἦν ἐπὶ θύρας ἰόντα τῶν βασιλέως στρατηγῶν, ὥσπερ Λύσανδρος, αἰτεῖν· πρὸς ὃ πάντων ἀφυέστατος ἐτύγχανεν, ἀνὴρ ἐλευθέριος καὶ μεγαλόφρων, καὶ πᾶσαν ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων ἧτταν Ἕλλησιν ἡγούμενος εὐπρεπεστέραν εἶναι τοῦ κολακεύειν καὶ φοιτᾶν ἐπὶ θύρας ἀνθρώπων βαρβάρων, πολὺ χρυσίον, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν καλὸν ἐχόντων.

[5] Ἐκβιαζόμενος δὲ ὑπὸ τῆς ἀπορίας, ἀναβὰς εἰς Λυδίαν εὐθὺς ἐπορεύετο εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ Κύρου, καὶ φράζειν προσέταξεν ὅτι Καλλικρατίδας ὁ ναύαρχος ἥκει διαλεχθῆναι βουλόμενος αὐτῷ. τῶν δ’ ἐπὶ θύραις τινὸς εἰπόντος, “Ἀλλ’ οὐ σχολὴ νῦν, ὦ ξένε, Κύρῳ· πίνει γάρ,” ἀφελέστατά πως ὁ Καλλικρατίδας, “Οὐδέν,” ἔφη, “δεινόν· αὐτοῦ γὰρ ἑστὼς ἀναμενῶ, μέχρι πίῃ.”

[6] τότε μὲν οὖν δόξας ἀγροῖκός τις εἶναι καὶ καταγελασθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων ἀπῆλθεν· ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ δεύτερον ἐλθὼν ἐπὶ θύρας οὐ παρείθη, βαρέως ἐνεγκὼν εἰς Ἔφεσον ᾤχετο, πολλὰ μὲν ἐπαρώμενος κακὰ τοῖς πρώτοις ἐντρυφηθεῖσιν ὑπὸ βαρβάρων καὶ διδάξασιν αὐτοὺς ὑβρίζειν διὰ [7] πλοῦτον, ὀμνύων δὲ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ἦ μήν, ὅταν πρῶτον εἰς Σπάρτην παραγένηται, πάντα ποιήσειν ὑπὲρ τοῦ διαλυθῆναι τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὡς φοβεροὶ τοῖς βαρβάροις εἶεν αὐτοὶ καὶ παύσαιντο τῆς ἐκείνων ἐπ’ ἀλλήλους δεόμενοι δυνάμεως.

[7] [1] Ἀλλὰ Καλλικρατίδας μὲν ἄξια τῆς Λακεδαίμονος διανοηθείς, καὶ γενόμενος τοῖς ἄκροις ἐνάμιλλος τῶν Ἑλλήνων διὰ δικαιοσύνην καὶ μεγαλοψυχίαν καὶ ἀνδρείαν, μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἐν Ἀργινούσαις καταναυμαχηθεὶς ἠφανίσθη. τῶν δὲ πραγμάτων ὑποφερομένων οἱ σύμμαχοι πρεσβείαν πέμποντες εἰς Σπάρτην ᾐτοῦντο Λύσανδρον ἐπὶ τὴν ναυαρχίαν, ὡς πολὺ προθυμότερον ἀντιληψόμενοι τῶν πραγμάτων ἐκείνου στρατηγοῦντος.

[2] τὰ δὲ αὐτὰ καὶ Κῦρος ἀξιῶν ἐπέστελλεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ νόμος ἦν οὐκ ἐῶν δὶς τὸν αὐτὸν ναυαρχεῖν, ἐβούλοντό τε χαρίζεσθαι τοῖς συμμάχοις οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι, τὸ μὲν ὄνομα τῆς ναυαρχίας Ἀράκῳ τινὶ περιέθεσαν, τὸν δὲ Λύσανδρον ἐπιστολέα τῷ λόγῳ, τῷ δ’ ἔργῳ κύριον ἁπάντων ἐξέπεμψαν. τοῖς μὲν οὖν πλείστοις τῶν πολιτευομένων καὶ δυναμένων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι πάλαι ποθούμενος ἧκεν· ἤλπιζον γὰρ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἰσχύσειν δι’ αὐτοῦ [3] παντάπασι τῶν δήμων καταλυθέντων· τοῖς δὲ τὸν ἁπλοῦν καὶ γενναῖον ἀγαπῶσι τῶν ἡγεμόνων τρόπον, ὁ Λύσανδρος τῷ Καλλικρατίδᾳ παραβαλλόμενος ἐδόκει πανοῦργος εἶναι καὶ σοφιστής, ἀπάταις τὰ πολλὰ διαποικίλλων τοῦ πολέμου καὶ τὸ δίκαιον ἐπὶ τῷ λυσιτελοῦντι μεγαλύνων, εἰ δὲ μή, τῷ συμφέροντι χρώμενος ὡς καλῷ, καὶ τὸ ἀληθὲς οὐ φύσει τοῦ ψεύδους κρεῖττον ἡγούμενος, ἀλλ’ ἑκατέρου τῇ χρείᾳ τὴν τιμὴν ὁρίζων.

[4] τῶν δ’ ἀξιούντων μὴ πολεμεῖν μετὰ δόλου τοὺς ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους γεγονότας καταγελᾶν ἐκέλευεν· “Ὅπου γὰρ ἡ λεοντῆ μὴ ἐφικνεῖται, προσραπτέον ἐκεῖ τὴν ἀλωπεκῆν.”

[8] [1] Τοιαῦτα δὲ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ περὶ Μίλητον ἱστόρηται. τῶν γὰρ φίλων καὶ ξένων, οἷς ὑπέσχετο συγκαταλύσειν τε τὸν δῆμον καὶ συνεκβαλεῖν τοὺς διαφόρους, μεταβαλομένων καὶ διαλλαγέντων τοῖς ἐχθροῖς, φανερῶς μὲν ἥδεσθαι προσεποιεῖτο καὶ συνδιαλλάττειν, κρύφα δὲ λοιδορῶν αὐτοὺς καὶ κακίζων παρώξυνεν ἐπι[2]θέσθαι τοῖς πολλοῖς. ὡς δὲ ᾔσθετο γινομένην τὴν ἐπανάστασιν, ὀξέως βοηθήσας καὶ παρεισελθὼν εἰς τὴν πόλιν οἷς πρώτοις ἐπιτύχοι τῶν νεωτεριζόντων ἐχαλέπαινε τῇ φωνῇ καὶ προσῆγε τραχυνόμενος ὡς ἐπιθήσων δίκην αὐτοῖς, τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἐκέλευε θαρρεῖν καὶ μηδὲν ἔτι προσδοκᾶν [3] δεινὸν αὐτοῦ παρόντος. ὑπεκρίνετο δὲ ταῦτα καὶ διεποίκιλλε, τοὺς δημοτικωτάτους καὶ κρατίστους βουλόμενος μὴ φεύγειν, ἀλλ’ ἀποθανεῖν ἐν τῇ πόλει μείναντας. ὃ καὶ συνέβη· πάντες γὰρ ἀπεσφάγησαν οἱ καταπιστεύσαντες.

Ἀπομνημονεύεται δὲ ὑπὸ Ἀνδροκλείδου λόγος πολλήν τινα κατηγορῶν τοῦ Λυσάνδρου περὶ τοὺς [4] ὅρκους εὐχέρειαν. ἐκέλευε γάρ, ὥς φησι, τοὺς μὲν παῖδας ἀστραγάλοις, τοὺς δὲ ἄνδρας ὅρκοις ἐξαπατᾶν, ἀπομιμούμενος Πολυκράτη τὸν Σάμιον, οὐκ ὀρθῶς τύραννον στρατηγός, οὐδὲ Λακωνικὸν τὸ χρῆσθαι τοῖς θεοῖς ὥσπερ τοῖς πολεμίοις, μᾶλλον δὲ ὑβριστικώτερον. ὁ γὰρ ὅρκῳ παρακρουόμενος τὸν μὲν ἐχθρὸν ὁμολογεῖ δεδιέναι, τοῦ δὲ θεοῦ καταφρονεῖν.

[9] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Κῦρος εἰς Σάρδεις μεταπεμψάμενος τὸν Λύσανδρον, τὰ μὲν ἔδωκε, τὰ δὲ ὑπέσχετο, νεανιευσάμενος εἰς τὴν ἐκείνου χάριν καὶ εἰ μηδὲν ὁ πατὴρ διδῴη καταχορηγήσειν τὰ οἰκεῖα· κἂν ἐπιλίπῃ πάντα, κατακόψειν ἔφη τὸν θρόνον ἐφ’ ᾧ καθήμενος ἐχρημάτιζε, χρυσοῦν καὶ ἀργυροῦν [2] ὄντα. τέλος δὲ εἰς Μηδίαν ἀναβαίνων πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, τούς τε φόρους ἀπέδειξε τῶν πόλεων λαμβάνειν ἐκεῖνον, καὶ τὴν αὑτοῦ διεπίστευσεν ἀρχήν· ἀσπασάμενος δὲ καὶ δεηθεὶς μὴ ναυμαχεῖν Ἀθηναίοις, πρὶν αὐτὸν ἀφικέσθαι πάλιν, ἀφίξεσθαι δὲ ναῦς ἔχοντα πολλὰς ἔκ τε Φοινίκης καὶ Κιλικίας, ἀνέβαινεν ὡς βασιλέα.

Λύσανδρος δὲ μήτε ναυμαχεῖν ἀγχωμάλῳ πλήθει δυνάμενος μήτε ἀργὸς καθέζεσθαι μετὰ νεῶν τοσούτων, ἀναχθεὶς ἐνίας προσηγάγετο τῶν νήσων, Αἴγινάν τε καὶ Σαλαμῖνα προσμίξας κατέδραμεν.

[3] εἰς δὲ τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἀποβὰς καὶ τὸν Ἆγιν ἀσπασάμενος, κατέβη γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐκ Δεκελείας πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐπέδειξε τῷ πεζῷ παρόντι τὴν τοῦ ναυτικοῦ ῥώμην, ὡς πλέων ᾗ βούλοιτο, κρατῶν τῆς θαλάττης. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους αἰσθόμενος διώκοντας αὐτὸν ἄλλῳ δρόμῳ διὰ νήσων ἔφευγεν εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν.

[4] Καὶ τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ἔρημον καταλαβὼν ἐπεχείρει Λαμψακηνοῖς αὐτὸς ἐκ θαλάττης ταῖς ναυσί, Θώραξ δὲ τῷ πεζῷ στρατῷ συνανύσας εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ προσέβαλε τοῖς τείχεσιν. ἑλὼν δὲ τὴν πόλιν κατὰ κράτος διαρπάσαι τοῖς στρατιώταις ἔδωκεν. ὁ δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων στόλος ὀγδοήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν τριήρων ἐτύγχανε μὲν ἄρτι καθωρμισμένος εἰς Ἐλαιοῦντα τῆς Χερρονήσου, πυνθανόμενοι δὲ ἀπολωλέναι τὴν Λάμψακον εὐθὺς εἰς [5] Σηστὸν καταίρουσι. κἀκεῖθεν ἐπισιτισάμενοι παρέπλευσαν εἰς Αἰγὸς ποταμούς, ἀντιπέρας τῶν πολεμίων ἔτι ναυλοχούντων περὶ τὴν Λάμψακον. ἐστρατήγουν δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἄλλοι τε πλείους καὶ Φιλοκλῆς ὁ πείσας ποτὲ ψηφίσασθαι τὸν δῆμον ἀποκόπτειν τὸν δεξιὸν ἀντίχειρα τῶν ἁλισκομένων κατὰ πόλεμον, ὅπως δόρυ μὲν φέρειν μὴ δύνωνται, κώπην δὲ ἐλαύνωσι.

[10] [1] Τότε μὲν οὖν ἀνεπαύοντο πάντες, ἐλπίζοντες εἰς τὴν ὑστεραίαν ναυμαχήσειν. ὁ δὲ Λύσανδρος ἄλλα μὲν διενοεῖτο, προσέταττε δὲ ναύταις καὶ κυβερνήταις, ὡς ἀγῶνος ἅμα ἡμέρᾳ γενησομένου, περὶ ὄρθρον ἐμβαίνειν εἰς τὰς τριήρεις καὶ καθέζεσθαι κόσμῳ καὶ σιωπῇ, δεχομένους τὸ παραγγελλόμενον, ὡς δ’ αὕτως καὶ τὸ πεζὸν ἐν τάξει [2] παρὰ τὴν θάλατταν ἡσυχάζειν. ἀνίσχοντος δὲ τοῦ ἡλίου καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων μετωπηδὸν ἁπάσαις ἐπιπλεόντων καὶ προκαλουμένων, ἀντιπρῴρους ἔχων τὰς ναῦς καὶ πεπληρωμένας ἔτι νυκτὸς οὐκ ἀνήγετο, πέμπων δὲ ὑπηρετικὰ παρὰ τὰς πρώτας τῶν νεῶν ἀτρεμεῖν ἐκέλευε καὶ μένειν ἐν τάξει μὴ [3] θορυβουμένους μηδ’ ἀντεκπλέοντας. οὕτω δὲ περὶ δείλην ἀποπλεόντων ὀπίσω τῶν Ἀθηναίων οὐ πρότερον ἐκ τῶν νεῶν τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀφῆκεν, εἰ μὴ δύο καὶ τρεῖς τριήρεις, ἃς ἔπεμψε κατασκόπους, ἐλθεῖν ἰδόντας ἀποβεβηκότας τοὺς πολεμίους. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ πάλιν ἐγίνοντο ταῦτα καὶ τῇ τρίτῃ μέχρι τετάρτης, ὥστε πολὺ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις θράσος ἐγγενέσθαι καὶ καταφρόνησιν ὡς δεδιότων καὶ συνεσταλμένων τῶν πολεμίων.

[4] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Ἀλκιβιάδης (ἐτύγχανε γὰρ περὶ Χερρόνησον ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ τείχεσι διαιτώμενος) ἵππῳ προσελάσας πρὸς τὸ στράτευμα τῶν Ἀθηναίων ᾐτιᾶτο τοὺς στρατηγοὺς πρῶτον μὲν οὐ καλῶς οὐδ’ ἀσφαλῶς στρατοπεδεύειν ἐν αἰγιαλοῖς δυσόρμοις καὶ ἀναπεπταμένοις· ἔπειτα πόρρωθεν ἐκ Σηστοῦ τὰ ἐπιτήδεια λαμβάνοντας ἁμαρτάνειν, [5] δέον εἰς λιμένα καὶ πόλιν Σηστὸν δι’ ὀλίγου περιπλεύσαντας, ἀπωτέρω γενέσθαι τῶν πολεμίων ἐφορμούντων στρατεύματι μοναρχουμένῳ καὶ πάντα πρὸς φόβον ὀξέως ἀπὸ συνθήματος ὑπηρετοῦντι. ταῦτα δὲ αὐτοῦ διδάσκοντος οὐκ ἐπείθοντο, Τυδεὺς δὲ καὶ πρὸς ὕβριν ἀπεκρίνατο, φήσας οὐκ ἐκεῖνον, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρους στρατηγεῖν.

[11] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀλκιβιάδης ὑποπτεύσας τι καὶ προδοσίας ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀπηλλάττετο. πέμπτῃ δὲ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ποιησαμένων τὸν ἐπίπλουν καὶ πάλιν ἀπερχομένων, ὥσπερ εἰώθεσαν, ὀλιγώρως πάνυ καὶ καταφρονητικῶς, ὁ Λύσανδρος ἐκπέμπων τὰς κατασκόπους ναῦς ἐκέλευσε τοὺς τριηράρχους, ὅταν ἴδωσι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐκβεβηκότας, ἐλαύνειν ἀποστρέψαντας ὀπίσω τάχει παντί, καὶ γενομένους κατὰ μέσον τὸν πόρον ἀσπίδα χαλκῆν ἐπάρασθαι πρῴραθεν ἐπίπλου [2] σύμβολον. αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς κυβερνήτας καὶ τριηράρχους ἐπιπλέων ἀνεκαλεῖτο καὶ παρώρμα συνέχειν ἕκαστον ἐν τάξει τὸ πλήρωμα καὶ τοὺς ναύτας καὶ τοὺς ἐπιβάτας, ὅταν δὲ σημανθῇ, μετὰ προθυμίας καὶ ῥώμης ἐλαύνειν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους. ὡς δὲ ἥ τε ἀσπὶς ἀπὸ τῶν νεῶν ἤρθη καὶ τῇ σάλπιγγι τὴν ἀναγωγὴν ἐσήμαινεν ἀπὸ τῆς ναυαρχίδος, ἐπέπλεον μὲν αἱ νῆες, ἡμιλλῶντο δὲ [3] οἱ πεζοὶ παρὰ τὸν αἰγιαλὸν ἐπὶ τὴν ἄκραν. τὸ δὲ μεταξὺ τῶν ἠπείρων διάστημα ταύτῃ πεντεκαίδεκα σταδίων ἐστί, καὶ ταχέως ὑπὸ σπουδῆς καὶ προθυμίας τῶν ἐλαυνόντων συνῄρητο. Κόνων δὲ πρῶτος ὁ τῶν Ἀθηναίων στρατηγὸς ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἰδὼν ἐπιπλέοντα τὸν στόλον ἐξαίφνης ἀνεβόησεν ἐμβαίνειν, καὶ περιπαθῶν τῷ κακῷ τοὺς μὲν ἐκάλει, τῶν δὲ ἐδεῖτο, τοὺς δὲ ἠνάγκαζε πληροῦν [4] τὰς τριήρεις. ἦν δὲ οὐδὲν ἔργον αὐτοῦ τῆς σπουδῆς ἐσκεδασμένων τῶν ἀνθρώπων. ὡς γὰρ ἐξέβησαν, εὐθύς, ἅτε μηδὲν προσδοκῶντες, ἠγόραζον, ἐπλανῶντο περὶ τὴν χώραν, ἐκάθευδον ὑπὸ ταῖς σκηναῖς, ἠριστοποιοῦντο, πορρωτάτω τοῦ μέλλοντος [5] ἀπειρίᾳ τῶν ἡγουμένων ὄντες. ἤδη δὲ κραυγῇ καὶ ῥοθίῳ προσφερομένων τῶν πολεμίων ὁ μὲν Κόνων ὀκτὼ ναυσὶν ὑπεξέπλευσε καὶ διαφυγὼν ἀπεπέρασεν εἰς Κύπρον πρὸς Εὐαγόραν, ταῖς δὲ ἄλλαις ἐπιπεσόντες οἱ Πελοποννήσιοι τὰς μὲν κενὰς παντάπασιν ᾕρουν, τὰς δ’ ἔτι πληρουμένας ἔκοπτον. οἱ δὲ ἄνθρωποι πρός τε ταῖς ναυσὶν ἀπέθνησκον ἄνοπλοι καὶ σποράδες ἐπιβοηθοῦντες, ἔν τε τῇ γῇ φεύγοντες ἀποβάντων τῶν πολεμίων [6] ἐκτείνοντο. λαμβάνει δὲ ὁ Λύσανδρος τρισχιλίους ἄνδρας αἰχμαλώτους μετὰ τῶν στρατηγῶν, ἅπαν δὲ τὸ ναύσταθμον ἄνευ τῆς Παράλου καὶ τῶν μετὰ Κόνωνος ἐκφυγουσῶν. ἀναδησάμενος δὲ τὰς ναῦς καὶ διαπορθήσας τὸ στρατόπεδον μετὰ αὐλοῦ καὶ παιάνων ἀνέπλευσεν εἰς Λάμψακον, ἔργον ἐλαχίστῳ πόνῳ μέγιστον ἐξειργασμένος, καὶ συνῃρηκὼς ὥρᾳ μιᾷ χρόνου μήκιστον καὶ ποικιλώτατον πάθεσί τε καὶ τύχαις ἀπιστότατον [7] τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ πολέμων, ὃς μυρίας μορφὰς ἀγώνων καὶ πραγμάτων μεταβολὰς ἀμείψας, καὶ στρατηγοὺς ὅσους οὐδὲ οἱ σύμπαντες οἱ πρὸ αὐτοῦ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀναλώσας, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς εὐβουλίᾳ καὶ δεινότητι συνῄρητο· διὸ καὶ θεῖόν τινες ἡγήσαντο τοῦτο τὸ ἔργον.

[12] [1] Ἦσαν δέ τινες οἱ τοὺς Διοσκούρους ἐπὶ τῆς Λυσάνδρου νεὼς ἑκατέρωθεν, ὅτε τοῦ λιμένος ἐξέπλει πρῶτον ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, ἄστρα τοῖς οἴαξιν ἐπιλάμψαι λέγοντες. οἱ δὲ καὶ τὴν τοῦ λίθου πτῶσιν ἐπὶ τῷ πάθει τούτῳ σημεῖόν φασι γενέσθαι· κατηνέχθη γάρ, ὡς ἡ δόξα τῶν πολλῶν, ἐξ οὐρανοῦ παμμεγέθης λίθος εἰς Αἰγὸς ποταμούς.

[2] καὶ δείκνυται μὲν ἔτι νῦν, σεβομένων αὐτὸν τῶν Χερρονησιτῶν· λέγεται δὲ Ἀναξαγόραν προειπεῖν ὡς τῶν κατὰ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐνδεδεμένων σωμάτων, γενομένου τινὸς ὀλισθήματος ἢ σάλου, ῥῖψις ἔσται καὶ πτῶσις ἑνὸς ἀπορραγέντος· εἶναι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄστρων ἕκαστον οὐκ ἐν ᾗ πέφυκε χώρᾳ· λιθώδη γὰρ ὄντα καὶ βαρέα λάμπειν μὲν ἀντερείσει καὶ περικλάσει τοῦ αἰθέρος, ἕλκεσθαι δὲ ὑπὸ βίας σφιγγόμενα δίνῃ καὶ τόνῳ τῆς περιφορᾶς, ὥς που καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἐκρατήθη μὴ πεσεῖν δεῦρο, τῶν ψυχρῶν καὶ βαρέων ἀποκρινομένων τοῦ παντός.

[3] Ἔστι δέ τις πιθανωτέρα δόξα ταύτης, εἰρηκότων ἐνίων ὡς οἱ διᾴττοντες ἀστέρες οὐ ῥύσις εἰσὶν οὐδ’ ἐπινέμησις αἰθερίου πυρὸς ἐν ἀέρι κατασβεννυμένου περὶ τὴν ἔξαψιν αὐτήν, οὐδὲ ἀέρος εἰς τὴν ἄνω χώραν πλήθει λυθέντος ἔκπρησις καὶ ἀνάφλεξις, ῥῖψις δὲ καὶ πτῶσις οὐρανίων σωμάτων οἷον ἐνδόσει τινὶ τόνου καὶ περιτρόπου κινήσεως ἐκπαλῶν φερομένων οὐ πρὸς τὸν οἰκούμενον τόπον τῆς γῆς, ἀλλὰ τῶν πλείστων ἐκτὸς εἰς τὴν μεγάλην ἐκπιπτόντων θάλατταν· διὸ καὶ λανθάνουσι.

[4] Τῷ δ’ Ἀναξαγόρᾳ μαρτυρεῖ καὶ Δαΐμαχος ἐν τοῖς Περὶ εὐσεβείας, ἱστορῶν ὅτι πρὸ τοῦ πεσεῖν τὸν λίθον ἐφ’ ἡμέρας ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ πέντε συνεχῶς κατὰ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἑωρᾶτο πύρινον σῶμα παμμέγεθες, ὥσπερ νέφος φλογοειδές, οὐ σχολάζον, ἀλλὰ πολυπλόκους καὶ κεκλασμένας φορὰς φερόμενον, ὥστε ὑπὸ σάλου καὶ πλάνης ἀπορρηγνύμενα πυροειδῆ σπάσματα φέρεσθαι πολλαχοῦ καὶ ἀστράπτειν, ὥσπερ οἱ διᾴττοντες ἀστέρες.

[5] ἐπεὶ δὲ ἐνταῦθα τῆς γῆς ἔβρισε καὶ παυσάμενοι φόβου καὶ θάμβους οἱ ἐπιχώριοι συνῆλθον, ὤφθη πυρὸς μὲν οὐδὲν ἔργον οὐδ’ ἴχνος τοσοῦτο, λίθος δὲ κείμενος, ἄλλως μὲν μέγας, οὐθὲν δὲ μέρος, ὡς εἰπεῖν, ἐκείνης τῆς πυροειδοῦς περιοχῆς ἔχων. ὅτι μὲν οὖν εὐγνωμόνων ὁ Δαΐμαχος ἀκροατῶν [6] δεῖται δῆλός ἐστιν· εἰ δὲ ἀληθὴς ὁ λόγος, ἐξελέγχει κατὰ κράτος τοὺς φάσκοντας ἔκ τινος ἀκρωρείας ἀποκοπεῖσαν πνεύμασι καὶ ζάλαις πέτραν, ὑποληφθεῖσαν δ’ ὥσπερ οἱ στρόβιλοι, καὶ φερομένην, ᾗ πρῶτον ἐνέδωκε καὶ διελύθη τὸ περιδινῆσαν, [7] ἐκριφῆναι καὶ πεσεῖν. εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία πῦρ μὲν ἦν ὄντως τὸ φαινόμενον ἐπὶ πολλὰς ἡμέρας, σβέσις δὲ καὶ φθορὰ μεταβολὴν ἀέρι παρέσχεν εἰς πνεύματα βιαιότερα καὶ κινήσεις, ὑφ’ ὧν συνέτυχε καὶ τὸν λίθον ἐκριφῆναι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἑτέρῳ γένει γραφῆς διακριβωτέον.

[13] [1] Ὁ δὲ Λύσανδρος, ἐπεὶ τῶν τρισχιλίων Ἀθηναίων, οὓς ἔλαβεν αἰχμαλώτους, ὑπὸ τῶν συνέδρων θάνατος κατέγνωστο, καλέσας Φιλοκλέα τὸν στρατηγὸν αὐτῶν ἠρώτησεν τίνα τιμᾶται δίκην ἑαυτῷ τοιαῦτα περὶ Ἑλλήνων συμβεβουλευκὼς [2] τοῖς πολίταις. ὁ δὲ οὐδέν τι πρὸς τὴν συμφορὰν ἐνδοὺς ἐκέλευσε μὴ κατηγορεῖν ὧν οὐδείς ἐστι δικαστής, ἀλλὰ νικῶντα πράττειν ἅπερ ἂν νικηθεὶς ἔπασχεν· εἶτα λουσάμενος καὶ λαβὼν χλανίδα λαμπρὰν πρῶτος ἐπὶ τὴν σφαγὴν ἡγεῖτο τοῖς πολίταις, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Θεόφραστος. ἐκ δὲ τούτου πλέων ὁ Λύσανδρος ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις Ἀθηναίων μὲν οἷς ἐπιτύχοι ἐκέλευε πάντας εἰς Ἀθήνας ἀπιέναι· φείσεσθαι γὰρ οὐδενός, ἀλλ’ [3] ἀποσφάξειν ὃν ἂν ἔξω λάβῃ τῆς πόλεως. ταῦτα δ’ ἔπραττε καὶ συνήλαυνεν ἅπαντας εἰς τὸ ἄστυ βουλόμενος ἐν τῇ πόλει ταχὺ λιμὸν ἰσχυρὸν γενέσθαι καὶ σπάνιν, ὅπως μὴ πράγματα παράσχοιεν αὐτῷ τὴν πολιορκίαν εὐπόρως ὑπομένοντες. καταλύων δὲ τοὺς δήμους καὶ τὰς ἄλλας πολιτείας, ἕνα μὲν ἁρμοστὴν ἑκάστῃ Λακεδαιμόνιον κατέλιπε, δέκα δὲ ἄρχοντας ἐκ τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ συγκεκροτημένων [4] κατὰ πόλιν ἑταιρειῶν. καὶ ταῦτα πράττων ὁμοίως ἔν τε ταῖς πολεμίαις καὶ ταῖς συμμάχοις γεγενημέναις πόλεσι, παρέπλει σχολαίως, τρόπον τινὰ κατασκευαζόμενος ἑαυτῷ τὴν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἡγεμονίαν. οὔτε γὰρ ἀριστίνδην οὔτε πλουτίνδην ἀπεδείκνυε τοὺς ἄρχοντας, ἀλλ’ ἑταιρείαις καὶ ξενίαις χαριζόμενος τὰ πράγματα καὶ κυρίους ποιῶν τιμῆς τε καὶ κολάσεως, πολλαῖς δὲ παραγινόμενος αὐτὸς σφαγαῖς καὶ συνεκβάλλων τοὺς τῶν φίλων ἐχθρούς, οὐκ ἐπιεικὲς ἐδίδου τοῖς Ἕλλησι δεῖγμα τῆς Λακεδαιμονίων ἀρχῆς, [5] ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁ κωμικὸς Θεόπομπος ἔοικε ληρεῖν ἀπεικάζων τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ταῖς καπηλίσιν, ὅτι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἥδιστον ποτὸν τῆς ἐλευθερίας γεύσαντες ὄξος ἐνέχεαν· εὐθὺς γὰρ ἦν τὸ γεῦμα δυσχερὲς καὶ πικρόν, οὔτε τοὺς δήμους κυρίους τῶν πραγμάτων ἐῶντος εἶναι τοῦ Λυσάνδρου, καὶ τῶν ὀλίγων τοῖς θρασυτάτοις καὶ φιλονεικοτάτοις τὰς πόλεις ἐγχειρίζοντος.

[14] [1] Διατρίψας δὲ περὶ ταῦτα χρόνον οὐ πολύν, καὶ προπέμψας εἰς Λακεδαίμονα τοὺς ἀπαγγελοῦντας ὅτι προσπλεῖ μετὰ νεῶν διακοσίων, συνέμιξε περὶ Ἀττικὴν Ἄγιδι καὶ Παυσανίᾳ τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν ὡς ταχὺ συναιρήσων τὴν πόλιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀντεῖχον οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι, λαβὼν τὰς ναῦς πάλιν εἰς Ἀσίαν διεπέρασε· καὶ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων πόλεων ὁμαλῶς ἁπασῶν κατέλυε τὰς πολιτείας καὶ καθίστη δεκαδαρχίας, πολλῶν μὲν ἐν ἑκάστῃ σφαττομένων, πολλῶν δὲ φευγόντων, Σαμίους δὲ πάντας ἐκβαλὼν παρέδωκε τοῖς φυγάσι τὰς πόλεις.

[2] Σηστὸν δ’ Ἀθηναίων ἐχόντων ἀφελόμενος οὐκ εἴασεν οἰκεῖν Σηστίους, ἀλλὰ τοῖς γενομένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῷ κυβερνήταις καὶ κελευσταῖς ἔδωκε τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὴν χώραν νέμεσθαι. πρὸς ὃ καὶ πρῶτον ἀντέκρουσαν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ τοὺς Σηστίους [3] αὖθις ἐπὶ τὴν χώραν κατήγαγον. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνά γε τοῦ Λυσάνδρου πάντες ἡδέως ἑώρων οἱ Ἕλληνες, Αἰγινήτας τε διὰ πολλοῦ χρόνου τὴν αὑτῶν πόλιν ἀπολαμβάνοντας καὶ Μηλίους καὶ Σκιωναίους ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ συνοικιζομένους, ἐξελαυνομένων Ἀθηναίων καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἀποδιδόντων.

Ἤδη δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἐν ἄστει κακῶς ἔχειν ὑπὸ λιμοῦ πυνθανόμενος κατέπλευσεν εἰς τὸν Πειραιᾶ καὶ παρεστήσατο τὴν πόλιν, ἀναγκασθεῖσαν ἐφ’ οἷς ἐκεῖνος ἐκέλευε ποιήσασθαι τὰς διαλύσεις.

[4] καίτοι Λακεδαιμονίων ἐστὶν ἀκοῦσαι λεγόντων ὡς Λύσανδρος μὲν ἔγραψε τοῖς ἐφόροις τάδε· “Ἁλώκαντι ταὶ Ἀθᾶναι,” Λυσάνδρῳ δ’ ἀντέγραψαν οἱ ἔφοροι· “Ἀρκεῖ τό γε ἑαλώκειν.” ἀλλ’ εὐπρεπείας χάριν οὗτος ὁ λόγος πέπλασται. τὸ δ’ ἀληθινὸν δόγμα τῶν ἐφόρων οὕτως εἶχε· “Τάδε τὰ τέλη τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἔγνω· καββαλόντες τὸν Πειραιᾶ καὶ τὰ μακρὰ σκέλη, καὶ ἐκβάντες ἐκ πασῶν τῶν πόλεων τὰν αὑτῶν γᾶν ἔχοντες, ταῦτά κα δρῶντες τὰν εἰράναν ἔχοιτε, αἰ χρήδοιτε, καὶ τοὺς φυγάδας ἀνέντες.

[5] περὶ τᾶν ναῶν τῶ πλήθεος, ὁκοῖόν τί κα τηνεὶ δοκέῃ, ταῦτα ποιέετε.” ταύτην δὲ προσεδέξαντο τὴν σκυτάλην οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι Θηραμένους τοῦ Ἅγνωνος συμβουλεύσαντος· ὅτε καί φασιν ὑπὸ τῶν νέων τινὸς δημαγωγῶν Κλεομένους ἐρωτώμενον εἰ τολμᾷ τἀναντία Θεμιστοκλεῖ πράττειν καὶ λέγειν, παραδιδοὺς τὰ τείχη τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις, ἃ Λακεδαιμονίων ἀκόντων ἐκεῖνος ἀνέστησεν, [6] εἰπεῖν· “Ἀλλ’ οὐδέν, ὦ μειράκιον, ὑπεναντίον ἐγὼ πράττω Θεμιστοκλεῖ· τὰ γὰρ αὐτὰ τείχη κἀκεῖνος ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ τῶν πολιτῶν ἀνέστησε καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ καταβαλοῦμεν. εἰ δὲ τὰ τείχη τὰς πόλεις εὐδαίμονας ἐποίει, πασῶν ἔδει πράττειν κάκιστα τὴν Σπάρτην ἀτείχιστον οὖσαν.”

[15] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Λύσανδρος, ὡς παρέλαβε τάς τε ναῦς ἁπάσας πλὴν δώδεκα καὶ τὰ τείχη τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ἕκτῃ ἐπὶ δεκάτῃ Μουνυχιῶνος μηνός, ἐν ᾗ καὶ τὴν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι ναυμαχίαν ἐνίκων τὸν βάρβαρον, ἐβούλευσεν εὐθὺς καὶ τὴν πολιτείαν [2] μεταστῆσαι. δυσπειθῶς δὲ καὶ τραχέως φερόντων, ἀποστείλας πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἔφη τὴν πόλιν εἰληφέναι παρασπονδοῦσαν· ἑστάναι γὰρ τὰ τείχη τῶν ἡμερῶν ἐν αἷς ἔδει καθῃρῆσθαι παρῳχημένων. ἑτέραν οὖν ἐξ ἀρχῆς προθήσειν γνώμην περὶ αὐτῶν ὡς τὰς ὁμολογίας λελυκότων. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ προτεθῆναί φασιν ὡς ἀληθῶς ὑπὲρ ἀνδραποδισμοῦ γνώμην ἐν τοῖς συμμάχοις, ὅτε καὶ τὸν Θηβαῖον Ἐρίανθον εἰσηγήσασθαι τὸ μὲν ἄστυ κατασκάψαι, τὴν δὲ χώραν ἀνεῖναι [3] μηλόβοτον. εἶτα μέντοι συνουσίας γενομένης τῶν ἡγεμόνων παρὰ πότον, καί τινος Φωκέως ᾄσαντος ἐκ τῆς Εὐριπίδου Ἠλέκτρας τὴν πάροδον ἧς ἡ ἀρχή

Ἀγαμέμνονος ὦ κόρα,

ἤλυθον, Ἠλέκτρα, ποτὶ σὰν ἀγρότειραν αὐλάν,

πάντας ἐπικλασθῆναι, καὶ φανῆναι σχέτλιον ἔργον τὴν οὕτως εὐκλεᾶ καὶ τοιούτους ἄνδρας φέρουσαν ἀνελεῖν καὶ διεργάσασθαι πόλιν.

[4] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Λύσανδρος ἐνδόντων τῶν Ἀθηναίων πρὸς ἅπαντα, πολλὰς μὲν ἐξ ἄστεος μεταπεμψάμενος αὐλητρίδας, πάσας δὲ τὰς ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ συναγαγών, τὰ τείχη κατέσκαπτε καὶ τὰς τριήρεις κατέφλεγε πρὸς τὸν αὐλόν, ἐστεφανωμένων καὶ παιζόντων ἅμα τῶν συμμάχων, ὡς ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν ἄρχουσαν τῆς ἐλευθερίας.

[5] εὐθὺς δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὴν πολιτείαν ἐκίνησε, τριάκοντα μὲν ἐν ἄστει, δέκα δὲ ἐν Πειραιεῖ καταστήσας ἄρχοντας, ἐμβαλὼν δὲ φρουρὰν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, καὶ Καλλίβιον ἁρμοστήν, ἄνδρα Σπαρτιάτην, ἐπιστήσας. ἐπεὶ δὲ οὗτος Αὐτόλυκον τὸν ἀθλητήν, ἐφ’ ᾧ τὸ συμπόσιον ὁ Ξενοφῶν πεποίηκε, τὴν βακτηρίαν διαράμενος παίσειν ἔμελλεν, ὁ δὲ τῶν σκελῶν συναράμενος ἀνέτρεψεν αὐτόν, οὐ συνηγανάκτησεν ὁ Λύσανδρος, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνεπετίμησε, φήσας αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐπίστασθαι ἐλευθέρων ἄρχειν. ἀλλὰ τὸν μὲν Αὐτόλυκον οἱ τριάκοντα τῷ Καλλιβίῳ χαριζόμενοι μικρὸν ὕστερον ἀνεῖλον.

[16] [1] Ὁ δὲ Λύσανδρος ἀπὸ τούτων γενόμενος, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐπὶ Θρᾴκης ἐξέπλευσε, τῶν δὲ χρημάτων τὰ περιόντα καὶ ὅσας δωρεὰς αὐτὸς ἢ στεφάνους ἐδέξατο, πολλῶν, ὡς εἰκός, διδόντων ἀνδρὶ δυνατωτάτῳ καὶ τρόπον τινὰ κυρίῳ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἀπέστειλεν εἰς Λακεδαίμονα διὰ Γυλίππου τοῦ στρατηγήσαντος περὶ Σικελίαν. ὁ δέ, ὡς λέγεται, τὰς ῥαφὰς τῶν ἀγγείων κάτωθεν ἀναλύσας καὶ ἀφελὼν συχνὸν ἀργύριον ἐξ ἑκάστου πάλιν συνέρραψεν, ἀγνοήσας ὅτι γραμματίδιον ἐνῆν ἑκάστῳ τὸν ἀριθμὸν σημαῖνον.

[2] ἐλθὼν δὲ εἰς Σπάρτην ἃ μὲν ὑφῄρητο κατέκρυψεν ὑπὸ τὸν κέραμον τῆς οἰκίας, τὰ δὲ ἀγγεῖα παρέδωκε τοῖς ἐφόροις καὶ τὰς σφραγῖδας ἐπέδειξεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀνοιξάντων καὶ ἀριθμούντων διεφώνει πρὸς τὰ γράμματα τὸ πλῆθος τοῦ ἀργυρίου καὶ παρεῖχε τοῖς ἐφόροις ἀπορίαν τὸ πρᾶγμα, φράζει θεράπων τοῦ Γυλίππου πρὸς αὐτοὺς αἰνιξάμενος ὑπὸ τῷ κεραμικῷ κοιτάζεσθαι πολλὰς γλαῦκας. ἦν γάρ, ὡς ἔοικε, τὸ χάραγμα τοῦ πλείστου τότε νομίσματος διὰ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους γλαῦκες.

[17] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Γύλιππος αἰσχρὸν οὕτω καὶ ἀγεννὲς ἔργον ἐπὶ λαμπροῖς τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν καὶ μεγάλοις ἐργασάμενος μετέστησεν ἑαυτὸν ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος. οἱ δὲ φρονιμώτατοι τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν οὐχ ἥκιστα καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὴν τοῦ νομίσματος ἰσχὺν φοβηθέντες, ὡς οὐχὶ τῶν τυχόντων ἁπτομένην πολιτῶν, τόν τε Λύσανδρον ἐλοιδόρουν καὶ διεμαρτύραντο τοῖς ἐφόροις ἀποδιοπομπεῖσθαι πᾶν τὸ ἀργύριον καὶ τὸ χρυσίον ὥσπερ κῆρας ἐπαγωγίμους. οἱ δὲ προὔθεσαν γνώμην.

[2] καὶ Θεόπομπος μέν φησι Σκιραφίδαν, Ἔφορος δὲ Φλογίδαν εἶναι τὸν ἀποφηνάμενον ὡς οὐ χρὴ προσδέχεσθαι νόμισμα χρυσοῦν καὶ ἀργυροῦν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλὰ χρῆσθαι τῷ πατρίῳ. τοῦτο δὲ ἦν σιδηροῦν, πρῶτον μὲν ὄξει καταβαπτόμενον ἐκ πυρός, ὅπως μὴ καταχαλκεύοιτο, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν βαφὴν ἄστομον καὶ ἀδρανὲς γίνοιτο, ἔπειτα βαρύσταθμον καὶ δυσπαρακόμιστον καὶ ἀπὸ πολλοῦ τινος πλήθους καὶ ὄγκου μικράν [3] τινα ἀξίαν δυνάμενον. κινδυνεύει δὲ καὶ τὸ πάμπαν ἀρχαῖον οὕτως ἔχειν, ὀβελίσκοις χρωμένων νομίσμασι σιδηροῖς, ἐνίων δὲ χαλκοῖς· ἀφ’ ὧν παραμένει πλῆθος ἔτι καὶ νῦν τῶν κερμάτων ὀβολοὺς καλεῖσθαι, δραχμὴν δὲ τοὺς ἓξ ὀβολούς· τοσούτων γὰρ ἡ χεὶρ περιεδράττετο.

[4] Τῶν δὲ Λυσάνδρου φίλων ὑπεναντιουμένων καὶ σπουδασάντων ἐν τῷ πόλει καταμεῖναι τὰ χρήματα, δημοσίᾳ μὲν ἔδοξεν εἰσάγεσθαι νόμισμα τοιοῦτον, ἂν δέ τις ἁλῷ κεκτημένος ἰδίᾳ, ζημίαν ὥρισαν θάνατον, ὥσπερ τοῦ Λυκούργου τὸ νόμισμα φοβηθέντος, οὐ τὴν ἐπὶ τῷ νομίσματι φιλαργυρίαν, ἣν οὐκ ἀφῄρει τὸ μὴ κεκτῆσθαι τὸν ἰδιώτην, ὡς τὸ κεκτῆσθαι τὴν πόλιν εἰσεποιεῖτο, τῆς χρείας ἀξίαν προσλαμβανούσης καὶ [5] ζῆλον. οὐ γὰρ ἦν δημοσίᾳ τιμώμενον ὁρῶντας ἰδίᾳ καταφρονεῖν ὡς ἀχρήστου, καὶ πρὸς τὰ οἰκεῖα νομίζειν ἑκάστῳ μηδενὸς ἄξιον πρᾶγμα τὸ κοινῇ οὕτως εὐδοκιμοῦν καὶ ἀγαπώμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πολλῷ τάχιον ἀπὸ τῶν κοινῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων ἐπιρρέουσιν οἱ ἐθισμοὶ τοῖς ἰδιωτικοῖς βίοις ἢ τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον ὀλισθήματα καὶ πάθη τὰς πόλεις [6] ἀναπίμπλησι πραγμάτων πονηρῶν. τῷ γὰρ ὅλῳ συνδιαστρέφεσθαι τὰ μέρη μᾶλλον, ὅταν ἐνδῷ πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον, εἰκός, αἱ δὲ ἀπὸ μέρους εἰς ὅλον ἁμαρτίαι πολλὰς ἐνστάσεις καὶ βοηθείας ἀπὸ τῶν ὑγιαινόντων ἔχουσιν. οἱ δὲ ταῖς μὲν οἰκίαις τῶν πολιτῶν, ὅπως οὐ πάρεισιν εἰς αὐτὰς νόμισμα, τὸν φόβον ἐπέστησαν φύλακα καὶ τὸν νόμον, αὐτὰς δὲ τὰς ψυχὰς ἀνεκπλήκτους καὶ ἀπαθεῖς πρὸς ἀργύριον οὐ διετήρησαν, ἐμβαλόντες εἰς ζῆλον ὡς σεμνοῦ δή τινος καὶ μεγάλου τοῦ πλουτεῖν ἅπαντας. περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων καὶ δι’ ἑτέρας που γραφῆς ἡψάμεθα Λακεδαιμονίων.

[18] [1] Ὁ δὲ Λύσανδρος ἔστησεν ἀπὸ τῶν λαφύρων ἐν Δελφοῖς αὑτοῦ χαλκῆν εἰκόνα καὶ τῶν ναυάρχων ἑκάστου καὶ χρυσοῦς ἀστέρας τῶν Διοσκούρων, οἳ πρὸ τῶν Λευκτρικῶν ἠφανίσθησαν. ἐν δὲ τῷ Βρασίδου καὶ Ἀκανθίων θησαυρῷ τριήρης ἔκειτο διὰ χρυσοῦ πεποιημένη καὶ ἐλέφαντος δυεῖν πηχῶν, ἣν Κῦρος αὐτῷ νικητήριον [2] ἔπεμψεν. Ἀναξανδρίδης δὲ ὁ Δελφὸς ἱστορεῖ καὶ παρακαταθήκην ἐνταῦθα Λυσάνδρου κεῖσθαι τάλαντον ἀργυρίου καὶ μνᾶς πεντήκοντα δύο καὶ πρὸς τούτοις ἕνδεκα στατῆρας, οὐχ ὁμολογούμενα γράφων τοῖς περὶ τῆς πενίας τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὁμολογουμένοις. τότε δ’ οὖν ὁ Λύσανδρος ὅσον οὐδεὶς τῶν πρόσθεν Ἑλλήνων δυνηθεὶς ἐδόκει φρονήματι καὶ ὄγκῳ μείζονι κεχρῆσθαι τῆς [3] δυνάμεως. πρώτῳ μὲν γάρ, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Δοῦρις, Ἑλλήνων ἐκείνῳ βωμοὺς αἱ πόλεις ἀνέστησαν ὡς θεῷ καὶ θυσίας ἔθυσαν, εἰς πρῶτον δὲ παιᾶνες ᾔσθησαν, ὧν ἑνὸς ἀρχὴν ἀπομνημονεύουσι τοιάνδε·

Τὸν Ἑλλάδος ἀγαθέας

στραταγὸν ἀπ’ εὐρυχόρου

Σπάρτας ὑμνήσομεν, ὦ,

ἰὴ Παιάν.

[4] Σάμιοι δὲ τὰ παρ’ αὐτοῖς Ἡραῖα Λυσάνδρεια καλεῖν ἐψηφίσαντο. τῶν δὲ ποιητῶν Χοιρίλον μὲν ἀεὶ περὶ αὑτὸν εἶχεν ὡς κοσμήσοντα τὰς πράξεις διὰ ποιητικῆς, Ἀντιλόχῳ δὲ ποιήσαντι μετρίους τινὰς εἰς αὐτὸν στίχους ἡσθεὶς ἔδωκε πλήσας ἀργυρίου τὸν πῖλον. Ἀντιμάχου δὲ τοῦ Κολοφωνίου καὶ Νικηράτου τινὸς Ἡρακλεώτου ποιήμασι Λυσάνδρεια διαγωνισαμένων ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ τὸν Νικήρατον ἐστεφάνωσεν, ὁ δὲ Ἀντίμαχος [5] ἀχθεσθεὶς ἠφάνισε τὸ ποίημα. Πλάτων δὲ νέος ὢν τότε, καὶ θαυμάζων τὸν Ἀντίμαχον ἐπὶ τῇ ποιητικῇ, βαρέως φέροντα τὴν ἧτταν ἀνελάμβανε καὶ παρεμυθεῖτο, τοῖς ἀγνοοῦσι κακὸν εἶναι φάμενος τὴν ἄγνοιαν, ὥσπερ τὴν τυφλότητα τοῖς μὴ βλέπουσιν. ἐπεὶ μέντοι ὁ κιθαρῳδὸς Ἀριστόνους ἑξάκις Πύθια νενικηκὼς ἐπηγγέλλετο τῷ Λυσάνδρῳ φιλοφρονούμενος, ἂν νικήσῃ πάλιν, Λυσάνδρου κηρύξειν ἑαυτόν, “Ἦ δοῦλον;” εἶπεν.

[19] [1] Ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν φιλοτιμία τοῦ Λυσάνδρου τοῖς πρώτοις καὶ ἰσοτίμοις ἦν ἐπαχθὴς μόνον. ὑπεροψίας δὲ πολλῆς ἅμα τῇ φιλοτιμίᾳ διὰ τοὺς θεραπεύοντας ἐγγενομένης τῷ ἤθει καὶ βαρύτητος, οὔτε τιμῆς οὔτε τιμωρίας μέτρον ἦν παρ’ αὐτῷ δημοτικόν, ἀλλὰ φιλίας μὲν ἆθλα καὶ ξενίας ἀνυπεύθυνοι δυναστεῖαι πόλεων καὶ τυραννίδες ἀνεξέταστοι, θυμοῦ δὲ μία πλήρωσις ἀπολέσθαι [2] τὸν ἀπεχθόμενον· οὐδὲ γὰρ φυγεῖν ἐξῆν. ἀλλὰ καὶ Μιλησίων ὕστερον τοὺς τοῦ δήμου προϊσταμένους δεδιὼς μὴ φύγωσι, καὶ προαγαγεῖν τοὺς κεκρυμμένους βουλόμενος, ὤμοσε μὴ ἀδικήσειν· πιστεύσαντας δὲ καὶ προελθόντας ἀποσφάξαι τοῖς ὀλιγαρχικοῖς παρέδωκεν, οὐκ ἐλάττονας [3] ὀκτακοσίων συναμφοτέρους ὄντας. ἦν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι δημοτικῶν φόνος οὐκ ἀριθμητός, ἅτε δὴ μὴ κατ’ ἰδίας μόνον αἰτίας αὐτοῦ κτείνοντος, ἀλλὰ πολλαῖς μὲν ἔχθραις, πολλαῖς δὲ πλεονεξίαις τῶν ἑκασταχόθι φίλων χαριζομένου τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ συνεργοῦντος. ὅθεν εὐδοκίμησεν Ἐτεοκλῆς ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος εἰπὼν ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἡ Ἑλλὰς δύο Λυσάνδρους ἤνεγκε. τὸ δὲ αὐτὸ τοῦτο καὶ περὶ Ἀλκιβιάδου φησὶ Θεόφραστος [4] εἰπεῖν Ἀρχέστρατον. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖ μὲν ὕβρις ἦν καὶ τρυφὴ σὺν αὐθαδείᾳ τὸ μάλιστα δυσχεραινόμενον· τὴν δὲ Λυσάνδρου δύναμιν ἡ τοῦ τρόπου χαλεπότης φοβερὰν ἐποίει καὶ βαρεῖαν.

Οἱ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις οὐ πάνυ προσεῖχον ἐγκαλοῦσιν· ἐπεὶ δὲ Φαρνάβαζος ἀδικούμενος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν χώραν ἄγοντος καὶ φέροντος ἀπέστειλεν εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην κατηγόρους, ἀγανακτήσαντες οἱ ἔφοροι τῶν μὲν φίλων αὐτοῦ καὶ συστρατήγων ἕνα Θώρακα λαβόντες ἀργύριον ἰδίᾳ κεκτημένον ἀπέκτειναν, ἐκείνῳ δὲ σκυτάλην ἔπεμψαν ἥκειν κελεύοντες.

[5] Ἔστι δὲ ἡ σκυτάλη τοιοῦτον. ἐπὰν ἐκπέμπωσι ναύαρχον ἢ στρατηγὸν οἱ ἔφοροι, ξύλα δύο στρογγύλα μῆκος καὶ πάχος ἀκριβῶς ἀπισώσαντες, ὥστε ταῖς τομαῖς ἐφαρμόζειν πρὸς ἄλληλα, τὸ μὲν αὐτοὶ φυλάττουσι, θάτερον δὲ τῷ πεμπομένῳ διδόασι. ταῦτα δὲ τὰ ξύλα σκυτάλας [6] καλοῦσιν. ὅταν οὖν ἀπόρρητόν τι καὶ μέγα φράσαι βουληθῶσι, βιβλίον ὥσπερ ἱμάντα μακρὸν καὶ στενὸν ποιοῦντες περιελίττουσι τὴν παρ’ αὐτοῖς σκυτάλην, οὐδὲν διάλειμμα ποιοῦντες, ἀλλὰ πανταχόθεν κύκλῳ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν αὐτῆς τῷ βιβλίῳ καταλαμβάνοντες. τοῦτο δὲ ποιήσαντες ἃ βούλονται καταγράφουσιν εἰς τὸ βιβλίον, ὥσπερ ἐστὶ τῇ σκυτάλῃ περικείμενον· ὅταν δὲ γράψωσιν, ἀφελόντες τὸ βιβλίον ἄνευ τοῦ ξύλου πρὸς τὸν στρατηγὸν ἀποστέλλουσι.

[7] δεξάμενος δὲ ἐκεῖνος ἄλλως μὲν οὐδὲν ἀναλέξασθαι δύναται τῶν γραμμάτων συναφὴν οὐκ ἐχόντων, ἀλλὰ διεσπασμένων, τὴν δὲ παρ’ αὑτῷ σκυτάλην λαβὼν τὸ τμῆμα τοῦ βιβλίου περὶ αὐτὴν περιέτεινεν, ὥστε, τῆς ἕλικος εἰς τάξιν ὁμοίως ἀποκαθισταμένης, ἐπιβάλλοντα τοῖς πρώτοις τὰ δεύτερα, κύκλῳ τὴν ὄψιν ἐπάγειν τὸ συνεχὲς ἀνευρίσκουσαν. καλεῖται δὲ ὁμωνύμως τῷ ξύλῳ σκυτάλη τὸ βιβλίον, ὡς τῷ μετροῦντι τὸ μετρούμενον.

[20] [1] Ὁ δὲ Λύσανδρος, ἐλθούσης τῆς σκυτάλης πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον, διεταράχθη, καὶ μάλιστα τὰς τοῦ Φαρναβάζου δεδιὼς κατηγορίας, ἐσπούδασεν εἰς λόγους αὐτῷ συνελθεῖν, ὡς λύσων τὴν διαφοράν. καὶ συνελθὼν ἐδεῖτο γράψαι περὶ αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἑτέραν ἐπιστολὴν ὡς οὐδὲν ἠδικημένον οὐδ’ ἐγκαλοῦντα.

[2] πρὸς Κρῆτα δὲ ἄρα, τὸ τοῦ λόγου, κρητίζων ἠγνόει τὸν Φαρνάβαζον. ὑποσχόμενος γὰρ ἅπαντα ποιήσειν, φανερῶς μὲν ἔγραψεν οἵαν ὁ Λύσανδρος ἠξίωσεν ἐπιστολήν, κρύφα δὲ εἶχεν ἑτέραν αὐτόθι γεγραμμένην. ἐν δὲ τῷ τὰς σφραγῖδας ἐπιβάλλειν ἐναλλάξας τὰ βιβλία μηδὲν διαφέροντα τῇ ὄψει, δίδωσιν ἐκείνην αὐτῷ τὴν [3] κρύφα γεγραμμένην. ἀφικόμενος οὖν ὁ Λύσανδρος εἰς Λακεδαίμονα καὶ πορευθείς, ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστίν, εἰς τὸ ἀρχεῖον, ἀπέδωκε τοῖς ἐφόροις τὰ γράμματα τοῦ Φαρναβάζου, πεπεισμένος ἀνῃρῆσθαι τὸ μέγιστον αὐτοῦ τῶν ἐγκλημάτων· ἠγαπᾶτο γὰρ ὁ Φαρνάβαζος ὑπὸ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, προθυμότατος ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ τῶν βασιλέως στρατηγῶν [4] γεγενημένος. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀναγνόντες οἱ ἔφοροι τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἔδειξαν αὐτῷ, καὶ συνῆκεν ὡς

Οὐκ ἆρ’ Ὀδυσσεύς ἐστιν αἱμύλος μόνος,

τότε μὲν ἰσχυρῶς τεθορυβημένος ἀπῆλθεν· ἡμέραις δὲ ὀλίγαις ὕστερον ἐντυχὼν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ἔφη δεῖν αὐτὸν εἰς Ἄμμωνος ἀναβῆναι καὶ τῷ θεῷ [5] θῦσαι θυσίας ἃς εὔξατο πρὸ τῶν ἀγώνων. ἔνιοι μὲν οὖν ἀληθῶς φασιν αὐτῷ πολιορκοῦντι τὴν τῶν Ἀφυταίων πόλιν ἐν Θρᾴκῃ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους παραστῆναι τὸν Ἄμμωνα· διὸ καὶ τὴν πολιορκίαν ἀφείς, ὡς τοῦ θεοῦ προστάξαντος, ἐκέλευσε τοὺς Ἀφυταίους Ἄμμωνι θύειν καὶ τὸν θεὸν ἐσπούδασεν εἰς τὴν Λιβύην πορευθεὶς ἐξιλάσασθαι.

[6] τοῖς δὲ πλείστοις ἐδόκει πρόσχημα ποιεῖσθαι τὸν θεόν, ἄλλως δὲ τοὺς ἐφόρους δεδοικὼς καὶ τὸν οἴκοι ζυγὸν οὐ φέρων οὐδ’ ὑπομένων ἄρχεσθαι πλάνης ὀρέγεσθαι καὶ περιφοιτήσεως τινός, ὥσπερ ἵππος ἐκ νομῆς ἀφέτου καὶ λειμῶνος αὖθις ἥκων ἐπὶ φάτνην καὶ πρὸς τὸ σύνηθες ἔργον αὖθις ἀγόμενος. ἣν μὲν γὰρ Ἔφορος τῆς ἀποδημίας ταύτης αἰτίαν ἀναγράφει, μετὰ μικρὸν ἀφηγήσομαι.

[21] [1] Μόλις δὲ καὶ χαλεπῶς ἀφεθῆναι διαπραξάμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ἐφόρων ἐξέπλευσεν. οἱ δὲ βασιλεῖς ἀποδημήσαντος αὐτοῦ συμφρονήσαντες ὅτι ταῖς ἑταιρείαις τὰς πόλεις κατέχων διὰ παντὸς ἄρχει καὶ κύριός ἐστι τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἔπρασσον ὅπως ἀποδώσουσι τοῖς δημόταις τὰ πράγματα [2] τοὺς ἐκείνου φίλους ἐκβαλόντες. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πάλιν πρὸς ταῦτα κινήματος γενομένου, καὶ πρώτων τῶν ἀπὸ Φυλῆς Ἀθηναίων ἐπιθεμένων τοῖς τριάκοντα καὶ κρατούντων, ἐπανελθὼν διὰ ταχέων ὁ Λύσανδρος ἔπεισε τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ταῖς ὀλιγαρχίαις βοηθεῖν καὶ τοὺς δήμους κολάζειν. καὶ πρώτοις τοῖς τριάκοντα πέμπουσιν ἑκατὸν τάλαντα πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον καὶ στρατηγὸν αὐτὸν [3] Λύσανδρον. οἱ δὲ βασιλεῖς φθονοῦντες καὶ δεδιότες μὴ πάλιν ἕλῃ τὰς Ἀθήνας, ἔγνωσαν ἐξιέναι τὸν ἕτερον αὐτῶν. ἐξῆλθε δὲ ὁ Παυσανίας, λόγῳ μὲν ὑπὲρ τῶν τυράννων ἐπὶ τὸν δῆμον, ἔργῳ δὲ καταλύσων τὸν πόλεμον, ὡς μὴ πάλιν ὁ Λύσανδρος διὰ τῶν φίλων κύριος γένοιτο τῶν Ἀθηνῶν. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν διεπράξατο ῥᾳδίως· καὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους διαλλάξας καὶ καταπαύσας τὴν στάσιν [4] ἀφείλετο τοῦ Λυσάνδρου τὴν φιλοτιμίαν. ὀλίγῳ δὲ ὕστερον ἀποστάντων πάλιν τῶν Ἀθηναίων αὐτὸς μὲν αἰτίαν ἔλαβεν, ὡς ἐγκεχαλινωμένον τῇ ὀλιγαρχίᾳ τὸν δῆμον ἀνεὶς αὖθις ἐξυβρίσαι καὶ θρασύνασθαι, τῷ δὲ Λυσάνδρῳ προσεθήκατο δόξαν ἀνδρὸς οὐ πρὸς ἑτέρων χάριν οὐδὲ θεατρικῶς, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸ τῇ Σπάρτῃ συμφέρον αὐθεκάστως στρατηγοῦντος.

[22] [1] Ἦν δὲ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ θρασὺς καὶ καταπληκτικὸς πρὸς τοὺς ἀντιτείνοντας. Ἀργείοις μὲν γὰρ ἀμφιλογουμένοις περὶ γῆς ὅρων καὶ δικαιότερα τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων οἰομένοις λέγειν δείξας τὴν μάχαιραν, “Ὁ ταύτης,” ἔφη, “κρατῶν βέλτιστα περὶ γῆς ὅρων διαλέγεται.” Μεγαρέως δὲ ἀνδρὸς ἔν τινι συλλόγῳ παρρησίᾳ χρησαμένου πρὸς αὐτόν, “Οἱ λόγοι σου,” εἶπεν, “ὦ ξένε, [2] πόλεως δέονται.” τοὺς δὲ Βοιωτοὺς ἐπαμφοτερίζοντας ἠρώτα πότερον ὀρθοῖς τοῖς δόρασιν ἢ κεκλιμένοις διαπορεύηται τὴν χώραν αὐτῶν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν Κορινθίων ἀφεστώτων παρερχόμενος πρὸς τὰ τείχη τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἑώρα προσβάλλειν ὀκνοῦντας, καὶ λαγώς τις ὤφθη διαπηδῶν τὴν τάφρον, “Οὐκ αἰσχύνεσθε,” ἔφη, “τοιούτους φοβούμενοι πολεμίους, ὧν οἱ λαγωοὶ δι’ ἀργίαν τοῖς τείχεσιν ἐγκαθεύδουσιν;”

[3] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Ἆγις ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐτελεύτησεν ἀδελφὸν μὲν Ἀγησίλαον καταλιπών, υἱὸν δὲ νομιζόμενον Λεωτυχίδαν, ἐραστὴς τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου γεγονὼς ὁ Λύσανδρος ἔπεισεν αὐτὸν ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι τῆς βασιλείας ὡς Ἡρακλείδην ὄντα γνήσιον. ὁ γὰρ Λεωτυχίδας διαβολὴν εἶχεν ἐξ Ἀλκιβιάδου γεγονέναι, συνόντος κρύφα τῇ Ἄγιδος γυναικὶ Τιμαίᾳ καθ’ ὃν χρόνον φεύγων ἐν Σπάρτῃ διέτριβεν.

[4] ὁ δὲ Ἆγις, ὥς φασι, χρόνου λογισμῷ τὸ πρᾶγμα συνελών, ὡς οὐ κυήσειεν ἐξ αὐτοῦ, παρημέλει τοῦ Λεωτυχίδου καὶ φανερὸς ἦν ἀναινόμενος αὐτὸν παρά γε τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον. ἐπεὶ δὲ νοσῶν εἰς Ἡραίαν ἐκομίσθη καὶ τελευτᾶν ἔμελλε, τὰ μὲν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ νεανίσκου, τὰ δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων ἐκλιπαρηθεὶς ἐναντίον πολλῶν ἀπέφηνεν υἱὸν αὑτοῦ τὸν Λεωτυχίδαν, καὶ δεηθεὶς τῶν παρόντων ἐπιμαρτυρῆσαι ταῦτα πρὸς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους [5] ἀπέθανεν. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν ἐμαρτύρουν ταῦτα τῷ Λεωτυχίδᾳ· τὸν δ’ Ἀγησίλαον λαμπρὸν ὄντα τἆλλα καὶ συναγωνιστῇ τῷ Λυσάνδρῳ χρώμενον ἔβλαπτε Διοπείθης, ἀνὴρ εὐδόκιμος ἐπὶ χρησμολογίᾳ, τοιόνδε μάντευμα προφέρων εἰς τὴν χωλότητα τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου·

Φράζεο δή, Σπάρτη, καίπερ μεγάλαυχος ἐοῦσα,

μὴ σέθεν ἀρτίποδος βλάστῃ χωλὴ βασιλεία.

δηρὸν γὰρ μόχθοι σε κατασχήσουσιν ἄελπτοι

φθισιβρότου τ’ ἐπὶ κῦμα κυλινδόμενον πολέμοιο.

[6] πολλῶν οὖν ὑποκατακλινομένων πρὸς τὸ λόγιον καὶ τρεπομένων πρὸς τὸν Λεωτυχίδαν, ὁ Λύσανδρος οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἔφη τὸν Διοπείθη τὴν μαντείαν ὑπολαμβάνειν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν προσπταίσας τις ἄρχῃ Λακεδαιμονίων, δυσχεραίνειν τὸν θεόν, ἀλλὰ χωλὴν εἶναι τὴν βασιλείαν εἰ νόθοι καὶ κακῶς γεγονότες βασιλεύσουσι σὺν Ἡρακλείδαις. τοιαῦτα λέγων καὶ δυνάμενος πλεῖστον ἔπεισε, καὶ γίνεται βασιλεὺς Ἀγησίλαος.

[23] [1] Εὐθὺς οὖν αὐτὸν ἐξώρμα καὶ προὔτρεπεν ὁ Λύσανδρος εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν στρατεύειν, ὑποτιθεὶς ἐλπίδας ὡς καταλύσοντι Πέρσας καὶ μεγίστῳ γενησομένῳ, πρός τε τοὺς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ φίλους ἔγραψεν αἰτεῖσθαι κελεύων παρὰ Λακεδαιμονίων στρατηγὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἐπὶ τὸν πρὸς [2] τοὺς βαρβάρους πόλεμον. οἱ δὲ ἐπείθοντο καὶ πρέσβεις ἔπεμπον εἰς Λακεδαίμονα δεομένους· ὃ δοκεῖ τῆς βασιλείας οὐκ ἔλαττον Ἀγησιλάῳ καλὸν ὑπάρξαι διὰ Λύσανδρον. ἀλλ’ αἱ φιλότιμοι φύσεις ἄλλως μὲν οὐ κακαὶ πρὸς τὰς ἡγεμονίας εἰσί, τὸ δὲ φθονεῖν τοῖς ὁμοίοις διὰ δόξαν οὐ μικρὸν ἐμπόδιον τῶν καλῶν πράξεων ἔχουσι· ποιοῦνται γὰρ ἀνταγωνιστὰς τῆς ἀρετῆς οἷς πάρεστι [3] χρῆσθαι συνεργοῖς. Ἀγησίλαος μὲν οὖν ἐπηγάγετο Λύσανδρον ἐν τοῖς τριάκοντα συμβούλοις ὡς μάλιστα καὶ πρώτῳ τῶν φίλων χρησόμενος· ἐπεὶ δὲ εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν παραγενομένων πρὸς ἐκεῖνον μὲν οὐκ ἔχοντες οἱ ἄνθρωποι συνήθως βραχέα καὶ σπανίως διελέγοντο, τὸν δὲ Λύσανδρον ἐκ πολλῆς τῆς πρόσθεν ὁμιλίας οἵ τε φίλοι θεραπεύοντες οἵ τε ὕποπτοι δεδοικότες [4] ἐφοίτων ἐπὶ θύρας καὶ παρηκολούθουν, οἷον ἐν τραγῳδίαις ἐπιεικῶς συμβαίνει περὶ τοὺς ὑποκριτάς, τὸν μὲν ἀγγέλου τινὸς ἢ θεράποντος ἐπικείμενον πρόσωπον εὐδοκιμεῖν καὶ πρωταγωνιστεῖν, τὸν δὲ διάδημα καὶ σκῆπτρον φοροῦντα μηδὲ ἀκούεσθαι φθεγγόμενον, οὕτω περὶ τὸν σύμβουλον ἦν τὸ πᾶν ἀξίωμα τῆς ἀρχῆς, τῷ δὲ βασιλεῖ τοὔνομα τῆς δυνάμεως ἔρημον ἀπελείπετο. [5] γενέσθαι μὲν οὖν ἴσως ἔδει τινὰ τῆς ἐκμελοῦς ταύτης φιλοτιμίας ἐπαφὴν καὶ συσταλῆναι τὸν Λύσανδρον ἄχρι τῶν δευτερείων· τὸ δὲ παντελῶς ἀπορρῖψαι καὶ προπηλακίσαι διὰ δόξαν εὐεργέτην ἄνδρα καὶ φίλον οὐκ ἦν ἄξιον Ἀγησιλάῳ προσεῖναι.

Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν οὐ παρεῖχεν αὐτῷ πράξεων ἀφορμάς, οὐδὲ ἔταττεν ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίας· ἔπειτα ὑπὲρ ὧν αἴσθοιτό τι πράττοντα καὶ σπουδάζοντα τὸν Λύσανδρον, ἀεὶ τούτους πάντων ἀπράκτους καὶ τῶν ἐπιτυχόντων ἔλαττον ἔχοντας ἀπέπεμπε, παραλύων ἡσυχῆ καὶ διαψύχων τὴν ἐκείνου [6] δύναμιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν πάντων διαμαρτάνων ὁ Λύσανδρος ἔγνω τοῖς φίλοις τὴν παρ’ αὑτοῦ σπουδὴν ἐναντίωμα γινομένην, αὐτός τε τὸ βοηθεῖν ἐξέλιπε κἀκείνων ἐδεῖτο μὴ προσιέναι μηδὲ θεραπεύειν αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ τῷ βασιλεῖ διαλέγεσθαι καὶ τοῖς δυναμένοις ὠφελεῖν τοὺς τιμῶντας αὐτοὺς [7] μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ παρόντι. ταῦτα ἀκούοντες οἱ πολλοὶ τοῦ μὲν ἐνοχλεῖν αὐτὸν περὶ πραγμάτων ἀπείχοντο, τὰς δὲ θεραπείας οὐ κατέλιπον, ἀλλὰ προσφοιτῶντες ἐν τοῖς περιπάτοις καὶ γυμνασίοις ἔτι μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον ἠνίων τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ὑπὸ φθόνου τῆς τιμῆς, ὥστε τοῖς πολλοῖς Σπαρτιάταις ἡγεμονίας πραγμάτων καὶ διοικήσεις πόλεων ἀποδιδοὺς τὸν Λύσανδρον ἀπέδειξε κρεοδαίτην. εἶτα οἷον ἐφυβρίζων πρὸς τοὺς Ἴωνας, “Ἀπιόντες,” ἔφη, “νῦν τὸν ἐμὸν κρεοδαίτην θεραπευέτωσαν.”

[8] ἔδοξεν οὖν τῷ Λυσάνδρῳ διὰ λόγων πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐλθεῖν· καὶ γίνεται βραχὺς καὶ Λακωνικὸς αὐτῶν διάλογος. “Ἦ καλῶς ᾔδεις, ὦ Ἀγησίλαε, φίλους ἐλαττοῦν.” καὶ ὅς· “Ἄν γε ἐμοῦ βούλωνται μείζονες εἶναι· τοὺς δὲ αὔξοντας τὴν ἐμὴν δύναμιν [9] καὶ μετέχειν αὐτῆς δίκαιον.” “Ἀλλ’ ἴσως μέν, ὦ Ἀγησίλαε, σοὶ λέλεκται κάλλιον ἢ ἐμοὶ πέπρακται· δέομαι δέ σου καὶ διὰ τοὺς ἐκτὸς ἀνθρώπους, οἳ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἀποβλέπουσιν, ἐνταῦθά με τῆς σεαυτοῦ στρατηγίας τάξον, ὅπου τεταγμένον ἥκιστα μὲν ἐπαχθῆ, μᾶλλον δὲ χρήσιμον ἔσεσθαι σεαυτῷ νομίζεις.”

[24] [1] Ἐκ τούτου πρεσβευτὴς εἰς Ἑλλήσποντον ἐπέμπετο· καὶ τὸν μὲν Ἀγησίλαον δι’ ὀργῆς εἶχεν, οὐκ ἠμέλει δὲ τοῦ τὰ δέοντα πράττειν, Σπιθριδάτην δὲ τὸν Πέρσην προσκεκρουκότα Φαρναβάζῳ, γενναῖον ἄνδρα καὶ στρατιὰν ἔχοντα περὶ αὑτόν, ἀποστήσας ἤγαγε πρὸς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον.

[2] ἄλλο δὲ οὐδὲν ἐχρήσατο αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ἀλλὰ τοῦ χρόνου διελθόντος ἀπέπλευσεν εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην ἀτίμως, ὀργιζόμενος μὲν τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ, μισῶν δὲ καὶ τὴν ὅλην πολιτείαν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον, καὶ τὰ πάλαι δοκοῦντα συγκεῖσθαι καὶ μεμηχανῆσθαι πρὸς μεταβολὴν καὶ νεωτερισμὸν ἐγνωκὼς ἐγχειρεῖν τότε καὶ μὴ διαμέλλειν.

[3] Ἦν δὲ τοιάδε. τῶν ἀναμιχθέντων Δωριεῦσιν Ἡρακλειδῶν καὶ κατελθόντων εἰς Πελοπόννησον πολὺ μὲν ἐν Σπάρτῃ καὶ λαμπρὸν ἤνθησε γένος, οὐ παντὶ δὲ αὐτῶν τῆς βασιλικῆς μετῆν διαδοχῆς, ἀλλ’ ἐβασίλευον ἐκ δυεῖν οἴκων μόνον Εὐρυπωντίδαι καὶ Ἀγιάδαι προσαγορευόμενοι, τοῖς δὲ ἄλλοις οὐδὲν ἑτέρου πλέον ἔχειν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ διὰ τὴν εὐγένειαν ὑπῆρχεν, αἱ δὲ ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς [4] τιμαὶ πᾶσι προὔκειντο τοῖς δυναμένοις. τούτων οὖν γεγονὼς ὁ Λύσανδρος, ὡς εἰς δόξαν τῶν πράξεων ἤρθη μεγάλην καὶ φίλους ἐκέκτητο πολλοὺς καὶ δύναμιν, ἤχθετο τὴν πόλιν ὁρῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ μὲν αὐξανομένην, ὑφ’ ἑτέρων δὲ βασιλευομένην οὐδὲν βέλτιον αὐτοῦ γεγονότων, καὶ διενοεῖτο τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐκ τῶν δυεῖν οἴκων μεταστήσας εἰς κοινὸν [5] ἀποδοῦναι πᾶσιν Ἡρακλείδαις, ὡς δὲ ἔνιοί φασιν, οὐχ Ἡρακλείδαις, ἀλλὰ Σπαρτιάταις, ἵνα μὴ ᾖ τῶν ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους, ἀλλὰ τῶν οἷος Ἡρακλῆς τὸ γέρας, ἀρετῇ κρινομένων, ἣ κἀκεῖνον εἰς θεῶν τιμὰς ἀνήγαγεν. ἤλπιζε δὲ τῆς βασιλείας οὕτω δικαζομένης οὐδένα πρὸ αὑτοῦ Σπαρτιάτην ἂν αἱρεθήσεσθαι.

[25] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἐπεχείρησε καὶ παρεσκευάσατο πείθειν δι’ ἑαυτοῦ τοὺς πολίτας, καὶ λόγον ἐξεμελέτα πρὸς τὴν ὑπόθεσιν γεγραμμένον ὑπὸ Κλέωνος τοῦ Ἁλικαρνασσέως. ἔπειτα τὴν ἀτοπίαν καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ καινοτομουμένου πράγματος ὁρῶν ἰταμωτέρας δεόμενον βοηθείας, ὥσπερ ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ μηχανὴν αἴρων ἐπὶ τοὺς [2] πολίτας, λόγια πυθόχρηστα καὶ χρησμοὺς συνετίθει καὶ κατεσκεύαζεν, ὡς οὐδὲν ὠφελησόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς Κλέωνος δεινότητος, εἰ μὴ φόβῳ θεοῦ τινι καὶ δεισιδαιμονίᾳ προεκπλήξας καὶ χειρωσάμενος ὑπαγάγοι πρὸς τὸν λόγον τοὺς πολίτας.

[3] Ἔφορος μὲν οὖν φησιν αὐτόν, ὡς τήν τε Πυθίαν ἐπιχειρήσας διαφθεῖραι καὶ τὰς Δωδωνίδας αὖθις ἀναπείθων διὰ Φερεκλέους ἀπέτυχεν, εἰς Ἄμμωνος ἀναβῆναι καὶ διαλέγεσθαι τοῖς προφήταις πολὺ χρυσίον διδόντα, τοὺς δὲ δυσχεραίνοντας εἰς Σπάρτην τινὰς ἀποστεῖλαι τοῦ Λυσάνδρου κατηγορήσοντας, ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀπελύθη, τοὺς Λίβυας ἀπιόντας εἰπεῖν· “Ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς γε βέλτιον, ὦ Σπαρτιᾶται, κρινοῦμεν, ὅταν ἥκητε πρὸς ἡμᾶς εἰς Λιβύην οἰκήσοντες,” ὡς δὴ χρησμοῦ τινος ὄντος παλαιοῦ Λακεδαιμονίους [4] ἐν Λιβύῃ κατοικῆσαι. τὴν δὲ ὅλην ἐπιβουλὴν καὶ σκευωρίαν τοῦ πλάσματος οὐ φαύλην οὖσαν οὐδὲ ἀφ’ ὧν ἔτυχεν ἀρξαμένην, ἀλλὰ πολλὰς καὶ μεγάλας ὑποθέσεις, ὥσπερ ἐν διαγράμματι μαθηματικῷ, προσλαβοῦσαν καὶ διὰ λημμάτων χαλεπῶν καὶ δυσπορίστων ἐπὶ τὸ συμπέρασμα προϊοῦσαν, ἡμεῖς ἀναγράψομεν ἀνδρὸς ἱστορικοῦ καὶ φιλοσόφου λόγῳ κατακολουθήσαντες.

[26] [1] Ἦν γύναιον ἐν Πόντῳ κύειν ἐξ Ἀπόλλωνος φάμενον, ᾧ πολλοὶ μέν, ὡς εἰκὸς ἦν, ἠπίστουν, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ προσεῖχον, ὥστε καὶ τεκούσης παιδάριον ἄρρεν ὑπὸ πολλῶν καὶ γνωρίμων σπουδάζεσθαι τὴν ἐκτροφὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν. ὄνομα δὲ τῷ παιδὶ Σειληνὸς ἐκ δή τινος αἰτίας ἐτέθη. ταύτην λαβὼν ὁ Λύσανδρος ἀρχήν, τὰ λοιπὰ παρ’ ἑαυτοῦ προσετεκταίνετο καὶ συνύφαινεν, οὐκ ὀλίγοις χρώμενος οὐδὲ φαύλοις τοῦ μύθου συναγωνισταῖς, [2] οἳ τήν τε φήμην τῆς γενέσεως τοῦ παιδὸς εἰς πίστιν ἀνυπόπτως προῆγον, ἄλλον τε λόγον ἐκ Δελφῶν ἀντικομίσαντες εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην κατέβαλον καὶ διέσπειραν, ὡς ἐν γράμμασιν ἀπορρήτοις ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερέων φυλάττοιντο παμπάλαιοι δή τινες χρησμοί, καὶ λαβεῖν οὐκ ἔξεστι τούτους οὐδ’ ἐντυχεῖν θεμιτόν, εἰ μή τις ἄρα γεγονὼς ἐξ Ἀπόλλωνος ἀφίκοιτο τῷ πολλῷ χρόνῳ καὶ σύνθημα τοῖς φυλάττουσι τῆς γενέσεως γνώριμον παρασχὼν κομίσαιτο τὰς δέλτους ἐν αἷς ἦσαν [3] οἱ χρησμοί. τούτων δὲ προκατεσκευασμένων ἔδει τὸν Σειληνὸν ἐλθόντα τοὺς χρησμοὺς ἀπαιτεῖν ὡς Ἀπόλλωνος παῖδα, τοὺς δὲ συμπράττοντας τῶν ἱερέων ἐξακριβοῦν ἕκαστα καὶ διαπυνθάνεσθαι περὶ τῆς γενέσεως, τέλος δὲ πεπεισμένους δῆθεν ὡς Ἀπόλλωνος υἱῷ δεῖξαι τὰ γράμματα, τὸν δὲ ἀναγνῶναι πολλῶν παρόντων ἄλλας τε μαντείας καὶ ἧς ἕνεκα τἄλλα πέπλασται τὴν περὶ τῆς βασιλείας, ὡς ἄμεινον εἴη καὶ λώϊον Σπαρτιάταις ἐκ τῶν ἀρίστων πολιτῶν αἱρουμένοις τοὺς βασιλέας.

[4] Ἤδη δὲ τοῦ Σειληνοῦ μειρακίου γεγονότος καὶ πρὸς τὴν πρᾶξιν ἥκοντος, ἐξέπεσε τοῦ δράματος ὁ Λύσανδρος ἀτολμίᾳ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν καὶ συνεργῶν ἑνός, ὡς ἐπ’ αὐτὸ τὸ ἔργον ἦλθεν, ἀποδειλιάσαντος καὶ ἀναδύντος. οὐ μὴν ἐφωράθη γε τοῦ Λυσάνδρου ζῶντος οὐθέν, ἀλλὰ μετὰ τὴν τελευτήν.

[27] [1] Ἐτελεύτησε δὲ πρὶν ἐξ Ἀσίας ἐπανελθεῖν τὸν Ἀγησίλαον, ἐμπεσὼν εἰς τὸν Βοιωτικὸν πόλεμον, ἢ μᾶλλον ἐμβαλὼν τὴν Ἑλλάδα. λέγεται γὰρ ἀμφοτέρως· καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν οἱ μέν τινες ἐκείνου ποιοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ Θηβαίων, οἱ δὲ κοινήν, Θηβαίοις μὲν ἐγκαλοῦντες τὴν ἐν Αὐλίδι τῶν ἱερῶν διάρριψιν καὶ ὅτι τῶν περὶ Ἀνδροκλείδην καὶ Ἀμφίθεον χρήμασι βασιλικοῖς διαφθαρέντων ἐπὶ τῷ Λακεδαιμονίοις Ἑλληνικὸν περιστῆσαι πόλεμον ἐπέθεντο Φωκεῦσι καὶ τὴν [2] χώραν αὐτῶν ἐπόρθησαν, Λύσανδρον δέ φασιν ὀργῇ φέρειν ὅτι τῆς δεκάτης ἀντεποιήσαντο τοῦ πολέμου Θηβαῖοι μόνοι, τῶν ἄλλων συμμάχων ἡσυχαζόντων, καὶ περὶ χρημάτων ἠγανάκτησαν ἃ Λύσανδρος εἰς Σπάρτην ἀπέστειλε, μάλιστα δὲ ἐπὶ τῷ παρασχεῖν ἀρχὴν Ἀθηναίοις ἐλευθερώσεως ἀπὸ τῶν τριάκοντα τυράννων, οὓς Λύσανδρος μὲν κατέστησε, Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ δύναμιν καὶ φόβον αὐτοῖς προστιθέντες ἐψηφίσαντο τοὺς φεύγοντας ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν ἀγωγίμους εἶναι πανταχόθεν, ἐκσπόνδους δὲ τοὺς ἐνισταμένους τοῖς [3] ἄγουσι. πρὸς ταῦτα γὰρ ἀντεψηφίσαντο Θηβαῖοι ψηφίσματα πρέποντα καὶ ἀδελφὰ ταῖς Ἡρακλέους καὶ Διονύσου πράξεσιν, οἰκίαν μὲν ἀνεῷχθαι πᾶσαν καὶ πόλιν ἐν Βοιωτίᾳ τοῖς δεομένοις Ἀθηναίων, τὸν δὲ τῷ ἀγομένῳ φυγάδι μὴ βοηθήσαντα ζημίαν ὀφείλειν τάλαντον, ἂν δέ τις Ἀθήναζε διὰ τῆς Βοιωτίας ἐπὶ τοὺς τυράννους ὅπλα κομίζῃ, μήτε ὁρᾶν τινα Θηβαῖον μήτε [4] ἀκούειν. καὶ οὐκ ἐψηφίσαντο μὲν οὕτως Ἑλληνικὰ καὶ φιλάνθρωπα, τὰς δὲ πράξεις τοῖς γράμμασιν ὁμοίας οὐ παρέσχον, ἀλλὰ Θρασύβουλος καὶ οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ Φυλὴν καταλαβόντες ἐκ Θηβῶν ὡρμήθησαν, ὅπλα καὶ χρήματα καὶ τὸ λαθεῖν καὶ τὸ ἄρξασθαι Θηβαίων αὐτοῖς συμπαρασκευασάντων. αἰτίας μὲν οὖν ταύτας ἔλαβε κατὰ τῶν Θηβαίων ὁ Λύσανδρος.

[28] [1] Ἤδη δὲ παντάπασι χαλεπὸς ὢν ὀργὴν διὰ τὴν μελαγχολίαν ἐπιτείνουσαν εἰς γῆρας, παρώξυνε τοὺς ἐφόρους καὶ συνέπεισε φῆναι φρουρὰν ἐπ’ αὐτούς, καὶ λαβὼν τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἐξεστράτευσεν. ὕστερον δὲ καὶ Παυσανίαν τὸν βασιλέα μετὰ στρατιᾶς ἀπέστειλαν.

[2] ἀλλὰ Παυσανίας μὲν κύκλῳ περιελθὼν διὰ τοῦ Κιθαιρῶνος ἐμβάλλειν ἔμελλεν εἰς τὴν Βοιωτίαν, Λύσανδρος δὲ διὰ Φωκέων ἀπήντα στρατιώτας ἔχων πολλούς· καὶ τὴν μὲν Ὀρχομενίων πόλιν ἑκουσίως προσχωρήσασαν ἔλαβε, τὴν δὲ Λεβάδειαν ἐπελθὼν διεπόρθησεν. ἔπεμψε δὲ τῷ Παυσανίᾳ γράμματα κελεύων εἰς Ἁλίαρτον ἐκ Πλαταιῶν συνάπτειν, ὡς αὐτὸς ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ πρὸς τοῖς τείχεσι τῶν Ἁλιαρτίων γενησόμενος. ταῦτα τὰ γράμματα πρὸς τοὺς Θηβαίους ἀπηνέχθη, τοῦ κομίζοντος εἰς κατασκόπους τινὰς ἐμπεσόντος.

[3] οἱ δὲ προσβεβοηθηκότων αὐτοῖς Ἀθηναίων τὴν μὲν πόλιν ἐκείνοις διεπίστευσαν, αὐτοὶ δὲ περὶ πρῶτον ὕπνον ἐξορμήσαντες ἔφθασαν ὀλίγῳ τὸν Λύσανδρον ἐν Ἁλιάρτῳ γενόμενοι, καὶ μέρει τινὶ παρῆλθον εἰς τὴν πόλιν. ἐκεῖνος δὲ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἔγνω τὴν στρατιὰν ἱδρύσας ἐπὶ λόφου περιμένειν τὸν Παυσανίαν· ἔπειτα προϊούσης τῆς ἡμέρας ἀτρεμεῖν οὐ δυνάμενος, λαβὼν τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τοὺς συμμάχους παρορμήσας ὀρθίῳ τῇ φάλαγγι [4] παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἦγε πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος. τῶν δὲ Θηβαίων οἱ μὲν ἔξω μεμενηκότες ἐν ἀριστερᾷ τὴν πόλιν λαβόντες ἐβάδιζον ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐσχάτους τῶν πολεμίων ὑπὸ τὴν κρήνην τὴν Κισσοῦσαν προσαγορευομένην, ἔνθα μυθολογοῦσι τὰς τιθήνας νήπιον ἐκ τῆς λοχείας ἀπολοῦσαι τὸν Διόνυσον· καὶ γὰρ οἰνωπὸν ἐπιστίλβει τὸ χρῶμα καὶ διαυγὲς καὶ πιεῖν ἥδιστον. οἱ δὲ Κρήσιοι στύρακες οὐ πρόσω περιπεφύκασιν, ἃ τεκμήρια τῆς Ῥαδαμάνθυος αὐτόθι κατοικήσεως Ἁλιάρτιοι ποιοῦνται, καὶ τάφον αὐτοῦ δεικνύουσιν Ἀλεᾶ καλοῦντες.

[5] ἔστι δὲ καὶ τὸ τῆς Ἀλκμήνης μνημεῖον ἐγγύς· ἐνταῦθα γάρ, ὥς φασιν, ἐκηδεύθη συνοικήσασα Ῥαδαμάνθυϊ μετὰ τὴν Ἀμφιτρύωνος τελευτήν.

Οἱ δὲ ἐν τῇ πόλει Θηβαῖοι μετὰ τῶν Ἁλιαρτίων συντεταγμένοι τέως μὲν ἡσύχαζον, ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸν Λύσανδρον ἅμα τοῖς πρώτοις προσπελάζοντα τῷ τείχει κατεῖδον, ἐξαπίνης ἀνοίξαντες τὰς πύλας καὶ προσπεσόντες αὐτόν τε μετὰ τοῦ μάντεως κατέβαλον καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὀλίγους τινάς· οἱ γὰρ πλεῖστοι ταχέως ἀνέφυγον πρὸς [6] τὴν φάλαγγα. τῶν δὲ Θηβαίων οὐκ ἀνιέντων, ἀλλὰ προσκειμένων αὐτοῖς, ἐτράποντο πάντες ἀνὰ τοὺς λόφους φεύγειν, καὶ χίλιοι πίπτουσιν αὐτῶν. ἀπέθανον δὲ καὶ Θηβαίων τριακόσιοι πρὸς τὰ τραχέα καὶ καρτερὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις συνεκπεσόντες. οὗτοι δὲ ἦσαν ἐν αἰτίᾳ τοῦ λακωνίζειν, ἣν σπουδάζοντες ἀπολύσασθαι τοῖς πολίταις καὶ σφῶν αὐτῶν ἀφειδοῦντες ἐν τῇ διώξει παραναλώθησαν.

[29] [1] Τῷ δὲ Παυσανίᾳ τὸ πάθος ἀγγέλλεται καθ’ ὁδὸν ἐκ Πλαταιῶν εἰς Θεσπιὰς πορευομένῳ· καὶ συνταξάμενος ἧκε πρὸς τὸν Ἁλίαρτον. ἧκε δὲ καὶ Θρασύβουλος ἐκ Θηβῶν ἄγων τοὺς Ἀθηναίους. βουλευομένου δὲ τοῦ Παυσανίου τοὺς νεκροὺς ὑποσπόνδους ἀπαιτεῖν, δυσφοροῦντες οἱ πρεσβύτεροι τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν αὐτοί τε καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἠγανάκτουν, καὶ τῷ βασιλεῖ προσιόντες ἐμαρτύραντο μὴ διὰ σπονδῶν ἀναιρεῖσθαι Λύσανδρον, ἀλλὰ δι’ ὅπλων περὶ τοῦ σώματος ἀγωνισαμένους καὶ νικήσαντας οὕτω τὸν ἄνδρα θάπτειν, ἡττωμένοις δὲ καλὸν ἐνταῦθα κεῖσθαι [2] μετὰ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ. ταῦτα τῶν πρεσβυτέρων λεγόντων ὁρῶν ὁ Παυσανίας μέγα μὲν ἔργον ὑπερβαλέσθαι μάχῃ τοὺς Θηβαίους ἄρτι κεκρατηκότας, ἐγγὺς δὲ τῶν τειχῶν τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Λυσάνδρου παραπεπτωκός, ὥστε χαλεπὴν ἄνευ σπονδῶν καὶ νικῶσιν εἶναι τὴν ἀναίρεσιν, ἔπεμψε κήρυκα καὶ σπεισάμενος ἀπήγαγε τὴν δύναμιν [3] ὀπίσω. τὸν δὲ Λύσανδρον ᾗ πρῶτον κομίζοντες ὑπὲρ τοὺς ὅρους ἐγένοντο τῆς Βοιωτίας ἐν φίλῃ καὶ συμμαχίδι χώρᾳ τῇ Πανοπέων κατέθεσαν, οὗ νῦν τὸ μνημεῖόν ἐστι παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν εἰς Χαιρώνειαν ἐκ Δελφῶν πορευομένοις.

Ἐνταῦθα δὴ τῆς στρατιᾶς καταυλισαμένης

λέγεταί τινα τῶν Φωκέων ἑτέρῳ μὴ παρατυχόντι τὸν ἀγῶνα διηγούμενον, εἰπεῖν ὡς οἱ πολέμιοι προσπέσοιεν αὐτοῖς τοῦ Λυσάνδρου τὸν Ὁπλίτην [4] ἤδη διαβεβηκότος. θαυμάσαντα δὲ Σπαρτιάτην ἄνδρα τοῦ Λυσάνδρου φίλον ἐρέσθαι τίνα λέγοι τὸν Ὁπλίτην· οὐ γὰρ εἰδέναι τοὔνομα· “Καὶ μὴν ἐκεῖ γε,” φάναι, “τοὺς πρώτους ἡμῶν οἱ πολέμιοι κατέβαλον. τὸ γὰρ παρὰ τὴν πόλιν ῥεῖθρον Ὁπλίτην καλοῦσιν.” ἀκούσαντα δὲ τὸν Σπαρτιάτην ἐκδακρῦσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν ὡς ἄφευκτόν ἐστιν [5] ἀνθρώπῳ τὸ πεπρωμένον. ἦν γάρ, ὡς ἔοικε, τῷ Λυσάνδρῳ δεδομένος χρησμὸς οὕτως ἔχων·

Ὁπλίτην κελάδοντα φυλάξασθαί σε κελεύω

γῆς τε δράκονθ’ υἱὸν δόλιον κατόπισθεν ἰόντα.

τινὲς δὲ τὸν Ὁπλίτην οὐ πρὸς Ἁλιάρτῳ ῥεῖν λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς Κορώνειαν χειμάρρουν εἶναι τῷ Φιλάρῳ ποταμῷ συμφερόμενον παρὰ τὴν πόλιν, ὃν πάλαι μὲν Ὁπλίαν, νῦν δὲ Ἰσόμαντον [6] προσαγορεύουσιν. ὁ δὲ ἀποκτείνας τὸν Λύσανδρον Ἁλιάρτιος ἀνὴρ ὄνομα Νεόχωρος ἐπίσημον εἶχε τῆς ἀσπίδος δράκοντα· καὶ τοῦτο σημαίνειν ὁ χρησμὸς εἰκάζετο. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Θηβαίοις ὑπὸ τὸν Πελοποννησιακὸν πόλεμον ἐν Ἰσμηνίῳ γενέσθαι χρησμὸν ἅμα τήν τε πρὸς Δηλίῳ μάχην καὶ τὴν πρὸς Ἁλιάρτῳ ταύτην ἐκείνης ὕστερον ἔτει [7] τριακοστῷ γενομένην προμηνύοντα. ἦν δὲ τοιοῦτος·

Ἐσχατιὰν πεφύλαξο λύκους καμάκεσσι δοκεύων

καὶ λόφον Ὀρχαλίδην, ὃν ἀλώπηξ οὔποτε λείπει.

τὸν μὲν οὖν περὶ Δήλιον τόπον ἐσχατιὰν προσεῖπε, καθ’ ὃν ἡ Βοιωτία τῇ Ἀττικῇ σύνορός ἐστιν, Ὀρχαλίδην δὲ λόφον, ὃν νῦν Ἀλώπεκον καλοῦσιν, ἐν τοῖς πρὸς τὸν Ἑλικῶνα μέρεσι τοῦ Ἁλιάρτου κείμενον.

[30] [1] Τοιαύτης δὲ τῷ Λυσάνδρῳ τῆς τελευτῆς γενομένης παραχρῆμα μὲν οὕτως ἤνεγκαν οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται βαρέως, ὥστε τῷ βασιλεῖ κρίσιν προγράψαι θανατικήν· ἣν οὐχ ὑποστὰς ἐκεῖνος εἰς Τεγέαν ἔφυγε, κἀκεῖ κατεβίωσεν ἱκέτης ἐν τῷ [2] τεμένει τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς. καὶ γὰρ ἡ πενία τοῦ Λυσάνδρου τελευτήσαντος ἐκκαλυφθεῖσα φανερωτέραν ἐποίησε τὴν ἀρετήν, ἀπὸ χρημάτων πολλῶν καὶ δυνάμεως θεραπείας τε πόλεων καὶ βασιλέως τοσαύτης μηδὲ μικρὸν ἐπιλαμπρύναντος τὸν οἶκον εἰς χρημάτων λόγον, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Θεόπομπος, ᾧ μᾶλλον ἐπαινοῦντι πιστεύσειεν ἄν τις ἢ ψέγοντι, [3] ψέγει γὰρ ἥδιον ἢ ἐπαινεῖ. χρόνῳ δὲ ὕστερον Ἔφορός φησιν ἀντιλογίας τινὸς συμμαχικῆς ἐν Σπάρτῃ γενομένης, καὶ τὰ γράμματα διασκέψασθαι δεῆσαν ἃ παρ’ ἑαυτῷ κατέσχεν ὁ Λύσανδρος, ἐλθεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τὸν Ἀγησίλαον. εὑρόντα δὲ τὸ βιβλίον ἐν ᾧ γεγραμμένος ἦν ὁ περὶ τῆς πολιτείας λόγος, ὡς χρὴ τῶν Εὐρυπωντιδῶν καὶ Ἀγιαδῶν τὴν βασιλείαν ἀφελομένους εἰς μέσον θεῖναι καὶ ποιεῖσθαι τὴν αἵρεσιν ἐκ τῶν [4] ἀρίστων, ὁρμῆσαι μὲν εἰς τοὺς πολίτας τὸν λόγον ἐξενεγκεῖν καὶ παραδεικνύναι τὸν Λύσανδρον, οἷος ὢν πολίτης διαλάθοι, Λακρατίδαν δέ, ἄνδρα φρόνιμον καὶ τότε προεστῶτα τῶν ἐφόρων, ἐπιλαβέσθαι τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου, καὶ εἰπεῖν ὡς δεῖ μὴ ἀνορύττειν τὸν Λύσανδρον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν λόγον αὐτῷ συγκατορύττειν οὕτω συντεταγμένον πιθανῶς καὶ πανούργως.

[5] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τάς τε ἄλλας τιμὰς ἀπέδοσαν αὐτῷ τελευτήσαντι, καὶ τοὺς μνηστευσαμένους τὰς θυγατέρας, εἶτα μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦ Λυσάνδρου πένητος εὑρεθέντος ἀπειπαμένους ἐζημίωσαν, ὅτι πλούσιον μὲν νομίζοντες ἐθεράπευον, δίκαιον δὲ καὶ χρηστὸν ἐκ τῆς πενίας ἐπιγνόντες ἐγκατέλιπον. ἦν γάρ, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐν Σπάρτῃ καὶ ἀγαμίου δίκη καὶ ὀψιγαμίου καὶ κακογαμίου· ταύτῃ δὲ ὑπῆγον μάλιστα τοὺς ἀντὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ οἰκείων τοῖς πλουσίοις κηδεύοντας. τὰ μὲν οὖν περὶ Λύσανδρον οὕτως ἱστορήσαμεν ἔχοντα.

Sulla

[1] [1] Λεύκιος δὲ Κορνήλιος Σύλλας γένει μὲν ἦν ἐκ πατρικίων, οὓς εὐπατρίδας ἄν τις εἴποι, τῶν δὲ προγόνων αὐτοῦ λέγουσι Ῥουφῖνον ὑπατεῦσαι, καὶ τούτῳ δὲ τῆς τιμῆς ἐπιφανεστέραν γενέσθαι τὴν ἀτιμίαν. εὑρέθη γὰρ ἀργυρίου κοίλου κεκτημένος ὑπὲρ δέκα λίτρας, τοῦ νόμου μὴ διδόντος· ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ τῆς βουλῆς ἐξέπεσεν. οἱ δὲ μετ’ ἐκεῖνον ἤδη ταπεινὰ πράττοντες διετέλεσαν, αὐτός τε Σύλλας ἐν οὐκ ἀφθόνοις ἐτράφη τοῖς πατρῴοις.

[2] γενόμενος δὲ μειράκιον ᾤκει παρ’ ἑτέροις ἐνοίκιον οὐ πολὺ τελῶν, ὡς ὕστερον ὠνειδίζετο παρ’ ἀξίαν εὐτυχεῖν δοκῶν. σεμνυνομένῳ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ μεγαληγοροῦντι μετὰ τὴν ἐν Λιβύῃ στρατείαν λέγεταί τις εἰπεῖν τῶν καλῶν τε κἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν, “Καὶ πῶς ἂν εἴης σὺ χρηστός, ὃς τοῦ πατρός σοι [3] μηδὲν καταλιπόντος τοσαῦτα κέκτησαι;” καὶ γὰρ οὐκ ἔτι τῶν βίων ἐν ἤθεσιν ὀρθίοις καὶ καθαροῖς μενόντων, ἀλλ’ ἐγκεκλικότων καὶ παραδεδεγμένων τρυφῆς καὶ πολυτελείας ζῆλον, εἰς ἴσον ὅμως ὄνειδος ἐτίθεντο τοὺς ὑπάρχουσαν εὐπορίαν ἀπολέσαντας καὶ τοὺς πενίαν πατρῴαν μὴ διαφυλάξαντας.

[4] ὕστερον δὲ ἤδη κρατοῦντος αὐτοῦ καὶ πολλοὺς ἀποκτιννύντος, ἀπελευθερικὸς ἄνθρωπος, δοκῶν κρύπτειν ἕνα τῶν προγεγραμμένων καὶ κατακρημνίζεσθαι διὰ τοῦτο μέλλων, ὠνείδισε τὸν Σύλλαν ὅτι πολὺν χρόνον ἐν μιᾷ συνοικίᾳ διῃτῶντο, φέροντες ἐνοίκιον αὐτὸς μὲν τῶν ἄνω δισχιλίους νούμμους, ἐκεῖνος δὲ τῶν ὑποκάτω τρισχιλίους, ὥστε τῆς τύχης αὐτῶν τὸ μεταξὺ χιλίους εἶναι νούμμους, οἳ πεντήκοντα καὶ διακοσίας δραχμὰς Ἀττικὰς δύνανται. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἱστοροῦσι περὶ τῆς παλαιᾶς τοῦ Σύλλα τύχης.

[2] [1] Τοῦ δὲ σώματος αὐτοῦ τὸ μὲν ἄλλο εἶδος ἐπὶ τῶν ἀνδριάντων φαίνεται, τὴν δὲ τῶν ὀμμάτων γλαυκότητα δεινῶς πικρὰν καὶ ἄκρατον οὖσαν ἡ χρόα τοῦ προσώπου φοβερωτέραν ἐποίει προσιδεῖν. ἐξήνθει γὰρ τὸ ἐρύθημα τραχὺ καὶ σποράδην καταμεμιγμένον τῇ λευκότητι· πρὸς ὃ καὶ τοὔνομα λέγουσιν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τῆς χρόας ἐπίθετον, καὶ τῶν Ἀθήνησι γεφυριστῶν ἐπέσκωψέ τις εἰς τοῦτο ποιήσας·

συκάμινόν ἐσθ’ ὁ Σύλλας ἀλφίτῳ πεπασμένον.

[2] τοῖς δὲ τοιούτοις τῶν τεκμηρίων οὐκ ἄτοπόν ἐστι χρῆσθαι περὶ ἀνδρός, ὃν οὕτω φιλοσκώμμονα φύσει γεγονέναι λέγουσιν, ὥστε νέον μὲν ὄντα καὶ ἄδοξον ἔτι μετὰ μίμων καὶ γελωτοποιῶν διαιτᾶσθαι καὶ συνακολασταίνειν, ἐπεὶ δὲ κύριος ἁπάντων κατέστη, συναγαγόντα τῶν ἀπὸ σκηνῆς καὶ θεάτρου τοὺς ἰταμωτάτους ὁσημέραι πίνειν καὶ διαπληκτίζεσθαι τοῖς σκώμμασι, τοῦ τε γήρως ἀωρότερα πράττειν δοκοῦντα καὶ πρὸς τῷ καταισχύνειν τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς ἀρχῆς πολλὰ τῶν [3] δεομένων ἐπιμελείας προϊέμενον. οὐ γὰρ ἦν τῷ Σύλλᾳ περὶ δεῖπνον ὄντι χρήσασθαι σπουδαῖον οὐδέν, ἀλλ’ ἐνεργὸς ὢν καὶ σκυθρωπότερος παρὰ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον, ἀθρόαν ἐλάμβανε μεταβολὴν ὁπότε πρῶτον ἑαυτὸν εἰς συνουσίαν καταβάλοι καὶ πότον, ὥστε μιμῳδοῖς καὶ ὀρχησταῖς τιθασὸς εἶναι καὶ πρὸς πᾶσαν ἔντευξιν ὑποχείριος καὶ κατάντης. ταύτης δὲ τῆς ἀνέσεως ἔοικε γεγονέναι νόσημα καὶ ἡ πρὸς τοὺς ἔρωτας εὐχέρεια καὶ ῥύσις αὐτοῦ τῆς φιληδονίας, ἧς οὐδὲ γηράσας [4] ἐπαύσατο, Μητροβίου δὲ τῶν ἀπὸ σκηνῆς τινος ἐρῶν διετέλεσεν ἔτι νέος ὤν. καὶ συνήντησεν αὐτῷ τὸ τοιοῦτον· ἀρξάμενος γὰρ ἐρᾶν κοινῆς μέν, εὐπόρου δὲ γυναικός, ὄνομα Νικοπόλεως, καὶ διὰ συνήθειαν καὶ χάριν, ἣν ἀφ’ ὥρας εἶχεν, εἰς ἐρωμένου σχῆμα περιελθών, ἀπελείφθη κληρονόμος ὑπὸ τῆς ἀνθρώπου τελευτώσης. ἐκληρονόμησε δὲ καὶ τὴν μητρυιάν, ἀγαπηθεὶς ὥσπερ υἱὸς ὑπ’ αὐτῆς· καὶ μετρίως μὲν ἀπὸ τούτων εὐπόρησεν.

[3] [1] Ἀποδειχθεὶς δὲ ταμίας ὑπατεύοντι Μαρίῳ τὴν πρώτην ὑπατείαν, συνεξέπλευσεν εἰς Λιβύην πολεμήσων Ἰογόρθαν. γενόμενος δὲ ἐπὶ στρατοπέδου τά τε ἄλλα παρεῖχεν ἑαυτὸν εὐδόκιμον, καὶ καιρῷ παραπεσόντι χρησάμενος εὖ φίλον ἐποιήσατο τὸν τῶν Νομάδων βασιλέα Βόκχον. πρεσβευτὰς γὰρ αὐτοῦ λῃστήριον Νομαδικὸν ἐκφυγόντας ὑποδεξάμενος καὶ φιλοφρονηθείς, δῶρα καὶ [2] πομπὴν ἀσφαλῆ παρασχὼν ἀπέστειλεν. ὁ δὲ Βόκχος ἐτύγχανε μὲν ἔτι γε πάλαι γαμβρὸν ὄντα μισῶν καὶ φοβούμενος τὸν Ἰογόρθαν, τότε δὲ ἡττημένῳ καὶ πεφευγότι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐπιβουλεύων ἐκάλει τὸν Σύλλαν, δι’ ἐκείνου μάλιστα βουλόμενος τὴν σύλληψιν καὶ παράδοσιν τοῦ Ἰογόρθα γενέσθαι ἢ δι’ αὑτοῦ. κοινωσάμενος δὲ τῷ Μαρίῳ καὶ λαβὼν στρατιώτας ὀλίγους ὁ Σύλλας τὸν μέγιστον ὑπέδυ κίνδυνον, ὅτι βαρβάρῳ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς οἰκειοτάτους ἀπίστῳ πιστεύσας, ὑπὲρ τοῦ [3] παραλαβεῖν ἕτερον ἑαυτὸν ἐνεχείρισεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ὁ Βόκχος ἀμφοτέρων κύριος γενόμενος, καὶ καταστήσας ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἀνάγκην τοῦ παρασπονδῆσαι τὸν ἕτερον, καὶ πολλὰ διενεχθεὶς τῇ γνώμῃ, τέλος ἐκύρωσε τὴν πρώτην προδοσίαν καὶ παρέδωκε τῷ Σύλλᾳ τὸν Ἰογόρθαν. ὁ μὲν οὖν θριαμβεύων ἐπὶ τούτῳ Μάριος ἦν, ἡ δὲ δόξα τοῦ κατορθώματος, ἣν ὁ Μαρίου φθόνος Σύλλᾳ [4] προσετίθει, παρελύπει τὸν Μάριον ἡσυχῇ. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ὁ Σύλλας φύσει τε μεγάλαυχος ὢν καὶ τότε πρῶτον ἐκ βίου ταπεινοῦ καὶ ἀγνῶτος ἔν τινι λόγῳ γεγονὼς παρὰ τοῖς πολίταις, καὶ τοῦ τιμᾶσθαι γευόμενος, εἰς τοῦτο φιλοτιμίας προῆλθεν ὥστε γλυψάμενος ἐν δακτυλίῳ φορεῖν εἰκόνα τῆς πράξεως, καὶ ταύτῃ γε χρώμενος ἀεὶ διετέλεσεν. ἦν δὲ ἡ γραφὴ Βόκχος μὲν παραδιδούς, Σύλλας δὲ παραλαμβάνων τὸν Ἰογόρθαν.

[4] [1] Ἠνία μὲν οὖν ταῦτα τὸν Μάριον· ἔτι δὲ ἡγούμενος ἐλάττονα τοῦ φθονεῖσθαι τὸν Σύλλαν, ἐχρῆτο πρὸς τὰς στρατείας, τὸ μὲν δεύτερον ὑπατεύων πρεσβευτῇ, τὸ δὲ τρίτον χιλιάρχῳ, καὶ πολλὰ δι’ ἐκείνου τῶν χρησίμων κατωρθοῦτο. πρεσβεύων τε γὰρ ἡγεμόνα Τεκτοσάγων Κόπιλλον εἷλε, καὶ χιλιαρχῶν μέγα καὶ πολυάνθρωπον ἔθνος Μαρσοὺς ἔπεισε φίλους γενέσθαι καὶ συμμάχους [2] Ῥωμαίων. ἐκ δὲ τούτων τὸν Μάριον αἰσθόμενος ἀχθόμενον αὐτῷ καὶ μηκέτι προϊέμενον ἡδέως πράξεων ἀφορμάς, ἀλλὰ ἐνιστάμενον τῇ αὐξήσει, Κάτλῳ, τῷ συνάρχοντι τοῦ Μαρίου, προσένειμεν ἑαυτόν, ἀνδρὶ χρηστῷ μέν, ἀμβλυτέρῳ δὲ πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας. ὑφ’ οὗ τὰ πρῶτα καὶ μέγιστα πιστευόμενος εἰς δύναμιν ἅμα δόξῃ [3] προῄει. καὶ πολέμῳ μὲν αἱρεῖ πολὺ μέρος τῶν ἐν ταῖς Ἄλπεσι βαρβάρων, ἐπιλιπούσης δὲ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἀναδεξάμενος τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν τοσαύτην ἐποίησε περιουσίαν, ὥστε τῶν Κάτλου στρατιωτῶν ἐν ἀφθόνοις διαγόντων καὶ τοῖς Μαρίου προσπαρασχεῖν. ἐφ’ ᾧ φησιν αὐτὸς ἰσχυρῶς [4] ἀνιᾶσαι τὸν Μάριον. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἔχθρα βραχεῖαν οὕτω καὶ μειρακιώδη λαβοῦσα τὴν πρώτην ὑπόθεσιν καὶ ἀρχήν, εἶτα χωροῦσα δι’ αἵματος ἐμφυλίου καὶ στάσεων ἀνηκέστων ἐπὶ τυραννίδα καὶ σύγχυσιν ἁπάντων πραγμάτων, ἀπέδειξε τὸν Εὐριπίδην σοφὸν ἄνδρα καὶ πολιτικῶν ἐπιστήμονα νοσημάτων, διακελευσάμενον φυλάττεσθαι τὴν φιλοτιμίαν ὡς ὀλεθριωτάτην καὶ κακίστην δαίμονα τοῖς χρωμένοις.

[5] [1] Ὁ δὲ Σύλλας οἰόμενος αὑτῷ τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν πολεμικῶν δόξαν ἐπὶ τὰς πολιτικὰς πράξεις διαρκεῖν, καὶ δοὺς ἑαυτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς στρατείας εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ δήμου πρᾶξιν, ἐπὶ στρατηγίαν πολιτικὴν ἀπεγράψατο καὶ διεψεύσθη· τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν τοῖς ὄχλοις ἀνατίθησι. φησὶ γὰρ αὐτοὺς τὴν πρὸς Βόκχον εἰδότας φιλίαν, καὶ προσδεχομένους, εἰ πρὸ τῆς στρατηγίας ἀγορανομοίη, κυνηγέσια λαμπρὰ καὶ Λιβυκῶν θηρίων ἀγῶνας, ἑτέρους ἀποδεῖξαι στρατηγοὺς ὡς αὐτὸν ἀγορανομεῖν ἀναγκάσοντας.

[2] ἔοικε δὲ τὴν ἀληθῆ τῆς ἀποτεύξεως αἰτίαν οὐχ ὁμολογῶν ὁ Σύλλας ἐλέγχεσθαι τοῖς πράγμασιν. ἐνιαυτῷ γὰρ κατόπιν ἔτυχε τῆς στρατηγίας, τοῦ δήμου τὸ μέν τι θεραπείᾳ, τὸ δὲ καὶ χρήμασι προσαγαγόμενος. διὸ δὴ καὶ στρατηγοῦντος αὐτοῦ, καὶ πρὸς Καίσαρα μετ’ ὀργῆς εἰπόντος ὡς χρήσεται τῇ ἰδίᾳ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐξουσίᾳ, γελάσας ὁ Καῖσαρ, “Ὀρθῶς,” ἔφη, “τὴν ἀρχὴν ἰδίαν νομίζεις· ἔχεις γὰρ αὐτὴν πριάμενος.”

[3] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν στρατηγίαν εἰς τὴν Καππαδοκίαν ἀποστέλλεται, τὸν μὲν ἐμφανῆ λόγον ἔχων πρὸς τὴν στρατείαν Ἀριοβαρζάνην καταγαγεῖν, αἰτίαν δὲ ἀληθῆ Μιθριδάτην ἐπισχεῖν πολυπραγμονοῦντα καὶ περιβαλλόμενον ἀρχὴν καὶ δύναμιν οὐκ ἐλάττονα τῆς ὑπαρχούσης. ἰδίαν μὲν οὖν δύναμιν οὐ πολλὴν ἐπήγετο, χρησάμενος δὲ τοῖς συμμάχοις προθύμοις, καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν αὐτῶν Καππαδοκῶν, πλείονας δ’ αὖθις Ἀρμενίων προσβοηθοῦντας ἀποκτείνας, Γόρδιον μὲν ἐξήλασεν, Ἀριοβαρζάνην δὲ ἀπέδειξε βασιλέα.

[4] Διατρίβοντι δὲ αὐτῷ παρὰ τὸν Εὐφράτην ἐντυγχάνει Πάρθος Ὀρόβαζος, Ἀρσάκου βασιλέως πρεσβευτής, οὔπω πρότερον ἀλλήλοις ἐπιμεμιγμένων τῶν γενῶν· ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο τῆς μεγάλης δοκεῖ Σύλλα τύχης γενέσθαι, τὸ πρώτῳ Ῥωμαίων ἐκείνῳ Πάρθους συμμαχίας καὶ φιλίας δεομένους διὰ λόγων ἐλθεῖν. ὅτε καὶ λέγεται τρεῖς δίφρους προθέμενος, τὸν μὲν Ἀριοβαρζάνῃ, τὸν δὲ Ὀροβάζῳ, τὸν δὲ αὑτῷ, μέσος ἀμφοῖν [5] καθεζόμενος χρηματίζειν. ἐφ’ ᾧ τὸν μὲν Ὀρόβαζον ὕστερον ὁ τῶν Πάρθων βασιλεὺς ἀπέκτεινε, τὸν δὲ Σύλλαν οἱ μὲν ἐπῄνεσαν ἐντρυφήσαντα τοῖς βαρβάροις, οἱ δὲ ὡς φορτικὸν ᾐτιάσαντο καὶ ἀκαίρως φιλότιμον. ἱστορεῖται δέ τις ἀνὴρ τῶν μετὰ Ὀροβάζου καταβεβηκότων, Χαλδαῖος, εἰς τὸ τοῦ Σύλλα πρόσωπον ἀπιδὼν καὶ ταῖς κινήσεσι τῆς τε διανοίας καὶ τοῦ σώματος [6] οὐ παρέργως ἐπιστήσας, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὰς τῆς τέχνης ὑποθέσεις τὴν φύσιν ἐπισκεψάμενος, εἰπεῖν ὡς ἀναγκαῖον εἴη τοῦτον τὸν ἄνδρα μέγιστον γενέσθαι, θαυμάζειν δὲ καὶ νῦν πῶς ἀνέχεται μὴ πρῶτος ὢν ἁπάντων. ἀναχωρήσαντι δὲ αὐτῷ δίκην ἔλαχε δώρων Κηνσωρῖνος, ὡς πολλὰ χρήματα συνειλοχότι παρὰ τὸν νόμον ἐκ φίλης καὶ συμμάχου βασιλείας. οὐ μὴν ἀπήντησεν ἐπὶ τὴν κρίσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀπέστη τῆς κατηγορίας.

[6] [1] Ἡ μέντοι πρὸς Μάριον αὐτῷ στάσις ἀνερριπίζετο καινὴν ὑπόθεσιν λαβοῦσα τὴν Βόκχου φιλοτιμίαν, ὃς τόν τε δῆμον ἅμα θεραπεύων ἐν Ῥώμῃ καὶ τῷ Σύλλᾳ χαριζόμενος ἀνέθηκε εἰκόνας ἐν Καπιτωλίῳ τροπαιοφόρους καὶ παρ’ αὐταῖς χρυσοῦν Ἰογόρθαν ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ Σύλλᾳ παραδιδό[2]μενον. ἐφ’ ᾧ τοῦ Μαρίου βαρυθυμουμένου καὶ καθαιρεῖν ἐπιχειροῦντος, ἑτέρων δὲ ἀμύνειν τῷ Σύλλᾳ, καὶ τῆς πόλεως ὅσον οὔπω διακεκαυμένης ὑπ’ ἀμφοῖν, ὁ συμμαχικὸς πόλεμος πάλαι τυφόμενος ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀναλάμψας τότε τὴν στάσιν ἐπέσχεν. ἐν τούτῳ, μεγίστῳ καὶ ποικιλωτάτῳ γενομένῳ καὶ πλεῖστα κακὰ καὶ βαρυτάτους παρασχόντι κινδύνους Ῥωμαίοις, Μάριος μὲν οὐδὲν ἀποδεῖξαι μέγα δυνηθεὶς ἤλεγχε τὴν πολεμικὴν ἀρετὴν ἀκμῆς καὶ ῥώμης δεομένην, Σύλλας δὲ πολλὰ δράσας ἄξια λόγου δόξαν ἔσχεν ἡγεμόνος μεγάλου μὲν παρὰ τοῖς πολίταις, μεγίστου δὲ παρὰ τοῖς φίλοις, εὐτυχεστάτου δὲ καὶ παρὰ [3] τοῖς ἐχθροῖς. ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔπαθε ταὐτὸ Τιμοθέῳ τῷ τοῦ Κόνωνος, ὅς, εἰς τὴν τύχην αὐτοῦ τὰ κατορθώματα τῶν ἐχθρῶν τιθεμένων καὶ γραφόντων ἐν πίναξι κοιμώμενον ἐκεῖνον, τὴν δὲ Τύχην δικτύῳ τὰς πόλεις περιβάλλουσαν, ἀγροικιζόμενος καὶ χαλεπαίνων πρὸς τοὺς ταῦτα ποιοῦντας ὡς ἀποστερούμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν τῆς ἐπὶ ταῖς πράξεσι δόξης, ἔφη ποτὲ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, ἐπανήκων ἐκ στρατείας εὖ κεχωρηκέναι δοκούσης, “Ἀλλὰ ταύτης γε τῆς στρατείας οὐδέν, ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τῇ τύχῃ [4] μέτεστι.” πρὸς Τιμόθεον μὲν οὖν φασιν οὕτω φανέντα φιλότιμον ἀντιμειρακιεύεσθαι τὸ δαιμόνιον, ὥστε μηδὲν ἔτι πρᾶξαι λαμπρόν, ἀλλὰ ὅλως ἀποτυγχάνοντα ταῖς πράξεσι καὶ προσκρούοντα τῷ δήμῳ τέλος ἐκπεσεῖν τῆς πόλεως· Σύλλας δὲ οὐ μόνον ἡδέως προσιέμενος τὸν τοιοῦτον εὐδαιμονισμὸν καὶ ζῆλον, ἀλλὰ καὶ συναύξων καὶ συνεπιθειάζων τὰ πραττόμενα, τῆς τύχης ἐξῆπτεν, εἴτε κόμπῳ χρώμενος εἴθ’ οὕτως ἔχων τῇ [5] δόξῃ πρὸς τὸ θεῖον. καὶ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασι γέγραφεν ὅτι τῶν καλῶς αὐτῷ βεβουλεῦσθαι δοκούντων αἱ μὴ κατὰ γνώμην, ἀλλὰ πρὸς καιρὸν ἀποτολμώμεναι πράξεις ἔπιπτον εἰς ἄμεινον. ἔτι δὲ καὶ δι’ ὧν φησι πρὸς τύχην εὖ πεφυκέναι μᾶλλον ἢ πρὸς πόλεμον, τῇ τύχῃ τῆς ἀρετῆς πλέον ἔοικε νέμειν καὶ ὅλως ἑαυτὸν τοῦ δαίμονος ποιεῖν, ὅς γε καὶ τῆς πρὸς Μέτελλον ὁμονοίας, ἰσότιμον ἄνδρα καὶ κηδεστήν, εὐτυχίαν τινὰ θείαν αἰτιᾶται· πολλὰ γὰρ αὐτῷ πράγματα παρέξειν ἐπίδοξον ὄντα πρᾳότατον ἐν τῇ κοινωνίᾳ γενέσθαι τῆς [6] ἀρχῆς. ἔτι δὲ Λευκόλλῳ μὲν ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν, ὧν ἐκείνῳ τὴν γραφὴν ἀνατέθεικε, παραινεῖ μηδὲν οὕτως ἡγεῖσθαι βέβαιον ὡς ὅ τι ἂν αὐτῷ προστάξῃ νύκτωρ τὸ δαιμόνιον. ἐκπεμπομένου δὲ αὐτοῦ μετὰ δυνάμεως εἰς τὸν συμμαχικὸν πόλεμον ἱστορεῖ χάσμα τῆς γῆς μέγα γενέσθαι περὶ Λαβέρνην· ἐκ δὲ τούτου πῦρ ἀναβλῦσαι πολὺ καὶ φλόγα λαμπρὰν στηρίσαι πρὸς τὸν [7] οὐρανόν. εἰπεῖν δὴ καὶ τοὺς μάντεις ὡς ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς ὄψει διάφορος καὶ περιττὸς ἄρξας ἀπαλλάξει τῇ πόλει ταραχὰς τὰς παρούσας. τοῦτον δὲ αὑτὸν εἶναί φησιν ὁ Σύλλας· τῆς μὲν γὰρ ὄψεως ἴδιον εἶναι τὸ περὶ τὴν κόμην χρυσωπόν, ἀρετὴν δὲ οὐκ αἰσχύνεσθαι μαρτυρῶν ἑαυτῷ μετὰ πράξεις καλὰς οὕτω καὶ μεγάλας. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν περὶ τῆς θειότητος.

Τὸν δὲ ἄλλον τρόπον ἀνώμαλός τις ἔοικε γεγονέναι καὶ διάφορος πρὸς ἑαυτόν, ἀφελέσθαι πολλά, χαρίσασθαι πλείονα, τιμῆσαι παραλόγως, παραλόγως ἐφυβρίσαι, θεραπεύειν ὧν δέοιτο, θρύπτεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς δεομένους, ὥστε ἀγνοεῖσθαι πότερον ὑπερόπτης φύσει μᾶλλον ἢ κόλαξ γέγονε.

[8] τὴν μὲν γὰρ ἐν ταῖς τιμωρίαις ἀνωμαλίαν, ἐξ ὧν ἔτυχεν αἰτιῶν ἀποτυμπανίζοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ πάλιν τὰ μέγιστα τῶν ἀδικημάτων πρᾴως φέροντος, καὶ διαλλαττομένου μὲν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀνηκέστοις μετὰ εὐκολίας, τὰ δὲ μικρὰ καὶ φαῦλα προσκρούσματα σφαγαῖς καὶ δημεύσεσιν οὐσιῶν μετιόντος, οὕτως ἄν τις διαιτήσειεν ὡς φύσει μὲν ὀργὴν χαλεπὸν ὄντα καὶ τιμωρητικόν, ὑφιέμενον δὲ τῆς πικρίας [9] λογισμῷ πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον. ἐν αὐτῷ γε τούτῳ τῷ συμμαχικῷ πολέμῳ τῶν στρατιωτῶν αὐτοῦ στρατηγικὸν ἄνδρα πρεσβευτήν, Ἀλβῖνον ὄνομα, ξύλοις καὶ λίθοις διαχρησαμένων, παρῆλθε καὶ οὐκ ἐπεξῆλθεν ἀδίκημα τοσοῦτον, ἀλλὰ καὶ σεμνυνόμενος διεδίδου λόγον ὡς προθυμοτέροις διὰ τοῦτο χρήσοιτο πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον αὐτοῖς ἰωμένοις τὸ ἁμάρτημα δι’ ἀνδραγαθίας. τῶν δ’ ἐγκαλούντων οὐδὲν ἐφρόντιζεν, ἀλλὰ ἤδη καταλῦσαι Μάριον διανοούμενος καὶ τοῦ πρὸς τοὺς συμμάχους πολέμου τέλος ἔχειν δοκοῦντος ἀποδειχθῆναι στρατηγὸς ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην, ἐθεράπευε τὴν ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ στρατιάν.

[10] Καὶ παρελθὼν εἰς τὴν πόλιν ὕπατος μὲν ἀποδείκνυται μετὰ Κοΐντου Πομπηΐου, πεντήκοντα ἔτη γεγονώς, γαμεῖ δὲ γάμον ἐνδοξότατον Καικιλίαν τὴν Μετέλλου θυγατέρα τοῦ ἀρχιερέως. ἐφ’ ᾧ πολλὰ μὲν εἰς αὐτὸν ᾖδον οἱ δημοτικοί, πολλοὶ δὲ τῶν πρώτων ἐνεμέσων, οὐκ ἄξιον ἡγούμενοι τῆς γυναικὸς ὃν ἄξιον ὑπατείας ἔκριναν, [11] ὥς φησιν ὁ Τίτος. οὐ μόνην δὲ ταύτην ἔγημεν, ἀλλὰ πρώτην μὲν ἔτι μειράκιον ὢν Ἰλίαν ἔσχε τὴν καὶ θυγάτριον αὐτῷ τεκοῦσαν, εἶτα μετ’ ἐκείνην Αἰλίαν· τρίτην δὲ Κλοιλίαν, ἣν ἀπεπέμψατο μὲν ὡς στεῖραν ἐντίμως καὶ μετ’ εὐφημίας καὶ δῶρα προσθείς, ὀλίγαις δὲ ὕστερον ἡμέραις ἀγαγόμενος τὴν Μετέλλαν ἔδοξε διὰ τοῦτο τὴν [12] Κλοιλίαν οὐ καλῶς αἰτιάσασθαι. τὴν μέντοι Μετέλλαν ἐν πᾶσι θεραπεύων διετέλεσεν, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Ῥωμαίων δῆμον, ὅτε τοὺς περὶ Μάριον φυγάδας ἐπεθύμει καταγαγεῖν, ἀρνουμένου τοῦ Σύλλα, δεόμενον ἐπιβοήσασθαι τὴν Μετέλλαν. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἑλὼν τὸ ἄστυ προσενεχθῆναι τραχύτερον, ὅτι τὴν Μετέλλαν ἀπὸ τοῦ τείχους γεφυρίζοντες ἐλοιδόρησαν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὕστερον.

[7] [1] Τότε δὲ τὴν ὑπατείαν πρὸς τὰ μέλλοντα μικρὸν ἡγούμενος, ἐπτόητο τῇ γνώμῃ πρὸς τὸν Μιθριδατικὸν πόλεμον. ἀντανίστατο δὲ αὐτῷ Μάριος ὑπὸ δοξομανίας καὶ φιλοτιμίας, ἀγηράτων παθῶν, ἀνὴρ τῷ τε σώματι βαρὺς καὶ ταῖς ἔναγχος ἀπειρηκὼς στρατείαις διὰ γῆρας ἐκδήμων [2] καὶ διαποντίων πολέμων ἐφιέμενος. καὶ τοῦ Σύλλα πρὸς τὰς ἐπιλιπεῖς πράξεις ὁρμήσαντος εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, αὐτὸς οἰκουρῶν ἐτεκταίνετο τὴν ὀλεθριωτάτην ἐκείνην καὶ ὅσα σύμπαντες οἱ πόλεμοι τὴν Ῥώμην οὐκ ἔβλαψαν ἀπεργασαμένην στάσιν, ὡς καὶ τὸ δαιμόνιον αὐτοῖς προεσήμηνε. πῦρ μὲν γὰρ αὐτόματον ἐκ τῶν τὰ σημεῖα δοράτων ὑποφερόντων ἀνέλαμψε καὶ κατεσβέσθη μόλις, κόρακες δὲ τρεῖς τοὺς νεοσσοὺς εἰς τὴν ὁδὸν προαγαγόντες κατέφαγον, τὰ δὲ λείψανα [3] πάλιν εἰς τὴν νεοσσιὰν ἀνήνεγκαν. καὶ μυῶν δὲ ἐν ἱερῷ χρυσὸν ἀνακείμενον διαφαγόντων μίαν οἱ ζάκοροι πάγῃ θήλειαν λαμβάνουσιν, ἡ δὲ ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ πάγῃ τεκοῦσα πέντε κατανάλωσε τὰ τρία. τὸ δὲ πάντων μέγιστον, ἐξ ἀνεφέλου καὶ διαίθρου τοῦ περιέχοντος ἤχησε φωνὴ σάλπιγγος ὀξὺν ἀποτείνουσα καὶ θρηνώδη φθόγγον, ὥστε πάντας ἔκφρονας γενέσθαι καὶ καταπτῆξαι διὰ τὸ μέγεθος. Τυρρηνῶν δὲ οἱ λόγιοι μεταβολὴν ἑτέρου γένους ἀπεφαίνοντο καὶ μετακόσμησιν ἀποσημαίνειν [4] τὸ τέρας. εἶναι μὲν γὰρ ὀκτὼ τὰ σύμπαντα γένη, διαφέροντα τοῖς βίοις καὶ τοῖς ἤθεσιν ἀλλήλων, ἑκάστῳ δὲ ἀφωρίσθαι χρόνων ἀριθμὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ συμπεραινόμενον ἐνιαυτοῦ μεγάλου περιόδῳ. καὶ ὅταν αὕτη σχῇ τέλος, ἑτέρας ἐνισταμένης κινεῖσθαί τι σημεῖον ἐκ γῆς ἢ οὐρανοῦ θαυμάσιον, ὡς δῆλον εἶναι τοῖς πεφροντικόσι τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ μεμαθηκόσιν εὐθὺς ὅτι καὶ τρόποις ἄλλοις καὶ βίοις ἄνθρωποι χρώμενοι γεγόνασι, καὶ θεοῖς ἧττον ἢ μᾶλλον τῶν προτέρων [5] μέλοντες. τά τε γὰρ ἄλλα φασὶν ἐν τῇ τῶν γενῶν ἀμείψει λαμβάνειν μεγάλας καινοτομίας, καὶ τὴν μαντικὴν ποτὲ μὲν αὔξεσθαι τῇ τιμῇ καὶ κατατυγχάνειν ταῖς προαγορεύσεσι, καθαρὰ καὶ φανερὰ σημεῖα τοῦ δαιμονίου προπέμποντος, αὖθις δ’ ἐν ἑτέρῳ γένει ταπεινὰ πράττειν, αὐτοσχέδιον οὖσαν τὰ πολλὰ καὶ δι’ ἀμυδρῶν καὶ σκοτεινῶν ὀργάνων τοῦ μέλλοντος ἁπτομένην. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οἱ λογιώτατοι Τυρρηνῶν καὶ πλέον [6] τι τῶν ἄλλων εἰδέναι δοκοῦντες ἐμυθολόγουν. τῆς δὲ συγκλήτου τοῖς μάντεσι περὶ τούτων σχολαζούσης καὶ καθημένης ἐν τῷ ναῷ τῆς Ἐνυοῦς, στρουθὸς εἰσέπτη πάντων ὁρώντων τέττιγα φέρων τῷ στόματι, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐκβαλὼν μέρος αὐτοῦ κατέλιπε, τὸ δὲ ἔχων ἀπῆλθεν. ὑφεωρῶντο δὴ στάσιν οἱ τερατοσκόποι καὶ διαφορὰν τῶν κτηματικῶν πρὸς τὸν ἀστικὸν ὄχλον καὶ ἀγοραῖον· φωνάεντα γὰρ τοῦτον εἶναι καθάπερ τέττιγα, τοὺς δὲ χωρίτας ἀρουραίους.

[8] [1] Μάριος δὴ προσλαμβάνει δημαρχοῦντα Σουλπίκιον, ἄνθρωπον οὐδενὸς δεύτερον ἐν ταῖς ἄκραις κακίαις, ὥστε μὴ ζητεῖν τίνος ἐστὶν ἑτέρου μοχθηρότερος, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τί μοχθηρότατος ἑαυτοῦ. καὶ γὰρ ὠμότης καὶ τόλμα καὶ πλεονεξία περὶ αὐτὸν ἦν ἀπερίσκεπτος αἰσχροῦ καὶ παντὸς κακοῦ, ὅς γε τὴν Ῥωμαίων πολιτείαν ἐξελευθερικοῖς καὶ μετοίκοις πωλῶν ἀναφανδὸν ἠρίθμει [2] τιμὴν διὰ τραπέζης ἐν ἀγορᾷ κειμένης. ἔτρεφε δὲ τρισχιλίους μαχαιροφόρους, καὶ πλῆθος ἱππικῶν νεανίσκων πρὸς ἅπαν ἑτοίμων περὶ αὑτὸν εἶχεν, οὓς ἀντισύγκλητον ὠνόμαζε. νόμον δὲ κυρώσας μηδένα συγκλητικὸν ὑπὲρ δισχιλίας δραχμὰς ὀφείλειν, αὐτὸς ἀπέλιπε μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ὀφλήματος μυριάδας τριακοσίας. οὗτος εἰς τὸν δῆμον ἀφεθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Μαρίου, καὶ συνταράξας πάντα τὰ πράγματα βίᾳ καὶ σιδήρῳ, νόμους ἔγραφεν ἄλλους τε μοχθηροὺς καὶ τὸν διδόντα Μαρίῳ τοῦ [3] Μιθριδατικοῦ πολέμου τὴν ἡγεμονίαν. ἀπραξίας δὲ διὰ ταῦτα τῶν ὑπάτων ψηφισαμένων, ἐπαγαγὼν αὐτοῖς ἐκκλησιάζουσι περὶ τὸν νεὼν τῶν Διοσκούρων ὄχλον ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς καὶ τὸ Πομπηΐου τοῦ ὑπάτου μειράκιον ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἀνεῖλεν· αὐτὸς δὲ Πομπήϊος λαθὼν ἐξέφυγε. Σύλλας δὲ εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ Μαρίου συνδιωχθεὶς [4] ἠναγκάσθη προελθὼν τὰς ἀπραξίας λῦσαι· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐπάρχοντα παύσας ὁ Σουλπίκιος οὐκ ἀφείλετο τοῦ Σύλλα τὴν ὑπατείαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην στρατείαν μόνον εἰς Μάριον μετήνεγκε· καὶ πέμπει χιλιάρχους εὐθὺς εἰς Νῶλαν παραληψομένους τὸ στράτευμα καὶ πρὸς τὸν Μάριον ἄξοντας.

[9] [1] Φθάσαντος δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα διαφυγεῖν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν, ὡς ἐπύθοντο ταῦτα, καταλευσάντων τοὺς χιλιάρχους, οἱ περὶ τὸν Μάριον αὖθις ἐν τῇ πόλει τοὺς Σύλλα φίλους ἀνῄρουν καὶ χρήματα διήρπαζον αὐτῶν. ἦσαν δὲ μεταστάσεις καὶ φυγαί, τῶν μὲν εἰς πόλιν ἀπὸ στρατοπέδου, τῶν δ’ ἐκεῖσε διαφοιτώντων ἐκ τῆς [2] πόλεως. ἡ δὲ σύγκλητος ἦν μὲν οὐχ αὑτῆς, ἀλλὰ τοῖς Μαρίου καὶ Σουλπικίου διῳκεῖτο προστάγμασι, πυθομένη δὲ τὸν Σύλλαν ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐλαύνειν ἔπεμψε δύο τῶν στρατηγῶν, Βροῦτον καὶ Σερουΐλιον, ἀπαγορεύσοντας αὐτῷ βαδίζειν. τούτους θρασύτερον Σύλλᾳ διαλεχθέντας ὥρμησαν μὲν ἀνελεῖν οἱ στρατιῶται, τὰς δὲ ῥάβδους κατέκλασαν καὶ τὰς περιπορφύρους ἀφείλοντο καὶ πολλὰ περιυβρισμένους ἀπέπεμψαν, αὐτόθεν τε δεινὴν κατήφειαν, ὁρωμένους τῶν στρατηγικῶν παρασήμων ἐρήμους, καὶ τὴν στάσιν οὐκέτι καθεκτήν, ἀλλ’ ἀνήκεστον ἀπαγγέλλοντας.

[3] Οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ τὸν Μάριον ἐν παρασκευαῖς ἦσαν· ὁ δὲ Σύλλας ἄγων ἓξ τάγματα τέλεια μετὰ τοῦ συνάρχοντος ἀπὸ Νώλης ἐκίνει, τὸν μὲν στρατὸν ὁρῶν πρόθυμον ὄντα χωρεῖν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν, ἐνδοιάζων δὲ τῇ γνώμῃ παρ’ ἑαυτῷ καὶ δεδοικὼς τὸν κίνδυνον. ὁ δὲ μάντις Ποστούμιος θύσαντος αὐτοῦ καταμαθὼν τὰ σημεῖα, καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἀμφοτέρας τῷ Σύλλᾳ προτείνας, ἠξίου δεθῆναι καὶ φυλάττεσθαι μέχρι τῆς μάχης, ὡς, εἰ μὴ πάντα ταχὺ καὶ καλῶς αὐτῷ συντελεσθείη, [4] τὴν ἐσχάτην δίκην ὑποσχεῖν βουλόμενος. λέγεται δὲ καὶ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους αὐτῷ Σύλλᾳ φανῆναι θεὸν ἣν τιμῶσι Ῥωμαῖοι παρὰ Καππαδοκῶν μαθόντες, εἴτε δὴ Σελήνην οὖσαν εἴτε Ἀθηνᾶν εἴτε Ἐνυώ. ταύτην ὁ Σύλλας ἔδοξεν ἐπιστᾶσαν ἐγχειρίσαι κεραυνὸν αὑτῷ, καὶ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἕκαστον ὀνομάζουσαν τῶν ἐκείνου βάλλειν κελεῦσαι, τοὺς δὲ πίπτειν βαλλομένους καὶ ἀφανίζεσθαι. θαρσήσας δὲ τῇ ὄψει καὶ φράσας τῷ συνάρχοντι μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ἡγεῖτο.

[5] Καὶ περὶ Πικτὰς αὐτῷ πρεσβείας ἐντυχούσης καὶ δεομένης μὴ βαδίζειν εὐθὺς ἐξ ἐφόδου, πάντα γὰρ ἔσεσθαι τὰ δίκαια τῆς βουλῆς ψηφισαμένης, ὡμολόγησε μὲν αὐτοῦ καταστρατοπεδεύσειν καὶ διαμετρεῖν ἐκέλευε χώρας, ὥσπερ εἰώθει, τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τοὺς ἡγεμόνας, ὥστε τοὺς πρέσβεις ἀπελθεῖν πιστεύσαντας· ἐκείνων δὲ ἀπελθόντων εὐθὺς ἐκπέμψας Λεύκιον Βάσιλλον καὶ Γάϊον Μόμμιον καταλαμβάνει τὴν πύλην δι’ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ τείχη τὰ περὶ τὸν λόφον τὸν Αἰσκυλῖνον· εἶτ’ [6] αὐτὸς ἁπάσῃ σπουδῇ συνῆπτε. τῶν δὲ περὶ τὸν Βάσιλλον εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἐμπεσόντων καὶ κρατούντων, ὁ πολὺς καὶ ἄνοπλος δῆμος ἀπὸ τῶν τεγῶν κεράμῳ καὶ λίθῳ βάλλοντες ἐπέσχον αὐτοὺς τοῦ πρόσω χωρεῖν καὶ συνέστειλαν εἰς τὸ τεῖχος. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ ὁ Σύλλας παρῆν ἤδη, καὶ συνιδὼν τὸ γινόμενον ἐβόα τὰς οἰκίας ὑφάπτειν, καὶ λαβὼν δᾷδα καιομένην ἐχώρει πρῶτος αὐτός, καὶ τοὺς τοξότας ἐκέλευε χρῆσθαι τοῖς πυροβόλοις ἄνω τῶν στεγασμάτων ἐφιεμένους, κατ’ οὐδένα λογισμόν, [7] ἀλλ’ ἐμπαθὴς ὢν καὶ τῷ θυμῷ παραδεδωκὼς τὴν τῶν πρασσομένων ἡγεμονίαν, ὅς γε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς μόνον ἑώρα, φίλους δὲ καὶ συγγενεῖς καὶ οἰκείους εἰς οὐδένα λόγον θέμενος οὐδ’ οἶκτον κατῄει διὰ πυρός, ᾧ τῶν αἰτίων καὶ μὴ διάγνωσις οὐκ ἦν. τούτων δὲ γινομένων Μάριος ἐξωσθεὶς πρὸς τὸ τῆς Γῆς ἱερὸν ἐκάλει διὰ κηρύγματος ἐπ’ ἐλευθερίᾳ τὸ οἰκετικόν· ἐπελθόντων δὲ τῶν πολεμίων κρατηθεὶς ἐξέπεσε τῆς πόλεως.

[10] [1] Σύλλας δὲ τὴν βουλὴν συναγαγὼν καταψηφίζεται θάνατον αὐτοῦ τε Μαρίου καὶ ὀλίγων ἄλλων, ἐν οἷς Σουλπίκιος ἦν ὁ δήμαρχος. ἀλλὰ Σουλπίκιος μὲν ἀπεσφάγη προδοθεὶς ὑπὸ θεράποντος, ὃν ὁ Σύλλας ἠλευθέρωσεν, εἶτα κατεκρήμνισε, Μαρίῳ δ’ ἐπεκήρυξεν ἀργύριον, οὐκ εὐγνωμόνως οὐδὲ πολιτικῶς, ᾧ γε μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν ὑποχείριον εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν δοὺς ἑαυτὸν [2] ἀσφαλῶς ἀφείθη. καίτοι Μαρίῳ τότε μὴ διέντι Σύλλαν, ἀλλ’ ἀποθανεῖν ὑπὸ Σουλπικίου προεμένῳ, πάντων κρατεῖν ὑπῆρχεν, ἀλλ’ ὅμως ἐφείσατο· καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας τὴν αὐτὴν λαβὴν παρασχὼν οὐκ ἔτυχε τῶν ὁμοίων. ἐφ’ οἷς ὁ Σύλλας τὴν μὲν σύγκλητον ἀδήλως ἠνίασεν· ἡ δὲ παρὰ τοῦ δήμου δυσμένεια καὶ νέμεσις αὐτῷ [3] φανερὰ δι’ ἔργων ἀπήντα. Νώνιον μέν γε τὸν ἀδελφιδοῦν αὐτοῦ καὶ Σερουήϊον ἀρχὰς μετιόντας ἀποψηφισάμενοι καὶ καθυβρίσαντες ἑτέρους κατέστησαν ἄρχοντας, οὓς μάλιστα τιμῶντες ᾤοντο λυπεῖν ἐκεῖνον. ὁ δὲ τούτοις τε προσεποιεῖτο χαίρειν, ὡς τοῦ δήμου τῷ ποιεῖν ἃ βούλοιτο δι’ αὐτὸν ἀπολαύοντος τῆς ἐλευθερίας, καὶ θεραπεύων τὸ τῶν πολλῶν μῖσος ὕπατον κατέστησεν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐναντίας στάσεως Λεύκιον Κίνναν, ἀραῖς καὶ ὅρκοις καταλαβὼν εὐνοήσειν [4] τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πράγμασιν. ὁ δὲ ἀναβὰς εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον ἔχων ἐν τῇ χειρὶ λίθον ὤμνυεν, εἶτα ἐπαρασάμενος ἑαυτῷ μὴ φυλάττοντι τὴν πρὸς ἐκεῖνον εὔνοιαν ἐκπεσεῖν τῆς πόλεως, ὥσπερ ὁ λίθος διὰ τῆς χειρός, κατέβαλε χαμᾶζε τὸν λίθον οὐκ ὀλίγων παρόντων. παραλαβὼν δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν εὐθὺς ἐπεχείρει τὰ καθεστῶτα κινεῖν, καὶ δίκην ἐπὶ τὸν Σύλλαν παρεσκεύασε καὶ κατηγορεῖν ἐπέστησεν Οὐεργίνιον, ἕνα τῶν δημάρχων, ὃν ἐκεῖνος ἅμα τῷ δικαστηρίῳ χαίρειν ἐάσας ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην ἀπῆρε.

[11] [1] Λέγεται δὲ ὑπὸ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας ἐν αἷς ὁ Σύλλας ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐκίνει τὸν στόλον, ἄλλα τε πολλὰ Μιθριδάτῃ διατρίβοντι περὶ τὸ Πέργαμον ἐπισκῆψαι δαιμόνια, καὶ Νίκην στεφανηφόρον καθιεμένην ὑπὸ τῶν Περγαμηνῶν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἔκ τινων ὀργάνων ἄνωθεν ὅσον οὔπω τῆς κεφαλῆς ψαύουσαν συντριβῆναι, καὶ τὸν στέφανον ἐκπεσόντα κατὰ τοῦ θεάτρου φέρεσθαι χαμᾶζε διαθρυπτόμενον, ὥστε φρίκην μὲν τῷ δήμῳ, ἀθυμίαν δὲ πολλὴν Μιθριδάτῃ παρασχεῖν, καίπερ αὐτῷ τότε τῶν πραγμάτων ἐλπίδος πέρα [2] προχωρούντων. αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ Ἀσίαν τε Ῥωμαίων καὶ Βιθυνίαν καὶ Καππαδοκίαν τῶν βασιλέων ἀφῃρημένος ἐν Περγάμῳ καθῆστο, πλούτους καὶ δυναστείας καὶ τυραννίδας διανέμων τοῖς φίλοις, τῶν δὲ παίδων ὁ μὲν ἐν Πόντῳ καὶ Βοσπόρῳ τὴν παλαιὰν ἄχρι τῶν ὑπὲρ τὴν Μαιῶτιν ἀοικήτων ἀρχὴν κατεῖχεν οὐδενὸς παρενοχλοῦντος, Ἀριαράθης δὲ Θρᾴκην καὶ Μακεδονίαν [3] ἐπῄει στρατῷ μεγάλῳ προσαγόμενος, ἄλλους δὲ οἱ στρατηγοὶ τόπους ἐχειροῦντο δυνάμεις ἔχοντες, ὧν ὁ μέγιστος Ἀρχέλαος ταῖς μὲν ναυσὶν ὁμοῦ τι συμπάσης ἐπικρατῶν τῆς θαλάττης τάς τε Κυκλάδας νήσους ἐδουλοῦτο καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅσαι Μαλέας ἐντὸς ἵδρυνται, καὶ τὴν Εὔβοιαν αὐτὴν εἶχεν, ἐκ δὲ Ἀθηνῶν ὁρμώμενος τὰ μέχρι Θετταλίας ἔθνη τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀφίστη, μικρὰ προσκρούσας [4] περὶ Χαιρώνειαν. ἐνταῦθα γὰρ αὐτῷ Βρέττιος Σούρρας ἀπήντησε, πρεσβευτὴς μὲν ὢν Σεντίου, τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τῆς Μακεδονίας, ἀνὴρ δὲ τόλμῃ καὶ φρονήσει διαφέρων. οὗτος Ἀρχελάῳ δίκην ῥεύματος φερομένῳ διὰ τῆς Βοιωτίας ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀντιστάς, καὶ τρισὶ μάχαις διαγωνισάμενος περὶ Χαιρώνειαν, ἐξέωσε [5] καὶ συνέστειλε πάλιν ἐπὶ τὴν θάλατταν. Λευκίου δὲ Λευκόλλου κελεύσαντος αὐτὸν ὑποχωρεῖν ἐπιόντι Σύλλᾳ καὶ τὸν ἐψηφισμένον ἐκείνῳ ἐᾶν πόλεμον, εὐθὺς ἐκλιπὼν τὴν Βοιωτίαν ὀπίσω πρὸς Σέντιον ἀπήλαυνε, καίπερ αὐτῷ τῶν πραγμάτων ἐλπίδος πέρα προχωρούντων καὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος οἰκείως ἐχούσης πρὸς μεταβολὴν διὰ τὴν ἐκείνου καλοκἀγαθίαν. ἀλλὰ γὰρ Βρεττίῳ μὲν ταῦτα λαμπρότατα τῶν πεπραγμένων.

[12] [1] Σύλλας δὲ τὰς μὲν ἄλλας πόλεις εὐθὺς εἶχεν ἐπιπρεσβευομένας καὶ καλούσας, ταῖς δὲ Ἀθήναις διὰ τὸν τύραννον Ἀριστίωνα βασιλεύεσθαι ἠναγκασμέναις ἄθρους ἐπέστη καὶ τὸν Πειραιᾶ περιλαβὼν ἐπολιόρκει, μηχανήν τε πᾶσαν ἐφιστὰς καὶ μάχας παντοδαπὰς ποιούμενος.

[2] καίτοι χρόνον οὐ πολὺν ἀνασχομένῳ παρῆν ἀκινδύνως ἑλεῖν τὴν ἄνω πόλιν, ὑπὸ λιμοῦ συνηγμένην ἤδη τῇ χρείᾳ τῶν ἀναγκαίων εἰς τὸν ἔσχατον καιρόν· ἀλλ’ ἐπειγόμενος εἰς Ῥώμην καὶ δεδιὼς τὸν ἐκεῖ νεωτερισμόν, πολλοῖς μὲν κινδύνοις, πολλαῖς δὲ μάχαις, μεγάλαις δὲ δαπάναις κατέσπευδε τὸν πόλεμον, ᾧ γε δίχα τῆς ἄλλης παρασκευῆς ἡ περὶ τὰ μηχανήματα πραγματεία ζεύγεσι μυρίοις ὀρικοῖς ἐχορηγεῖτο, καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐνεργοῖς οὖσι πρὸς τὴν [3] ὑπηρεσίαν. ἐπιλειπούσης δὲ τῆς ὕλης διὰ τὸ κόπτεσθαι πολλὰ τῶν ἔργων περικλώμενα τοῖς αὑτῶν βρίθεσι καὶ πυρπολεῖσθαι βαλλόμενα συνεχῶς ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, ἐπεχείρησε τοῖς ἱεροῖς ἄλσεσι, καὶ τήν τε Ἀκαδήμειαν ἔκειρε δενδροφορωτάτην προαστείων οὖσαν καὶ τὸ Λύκειον. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ χρημάτων ἔδει πολλῶν πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ἐκίνει τὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἄσυλα, τοῦτο μὲν ἐξ Ἐπιδαύρου, τοῦτο δὲ ἐξ Ὀλυμπίας, τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ πολυτελέστατα τῶν ἀναθημάτων [4] μεταπεμπόμενος. ἔγραψε δὲ καὶ τοῖς Ἀμφικτύοσιν εἰς Δελφοὺς ὅτι τὰ χρήματα τοῦ θεοῦ βέλτιον εἴη κομισθῆναι πρὸς αὐτόν· ἢ γὰρ φυλάξειν ἀσφαλέστερον ἢ καὶ ἀποχρησάμενος ἀποδώσειν οὐκ ἐλάττω· καὶ τῶν φίλων ἀπέστειλε Κάφιν τὸν Φωκέα κελεύσας σταθμῷ παραλαβεῖν ἕκαστον. ὁ δὲ Κάφις ἧκε μὲν εἰς Δελφούς, ὤκνει δὲ τῶν ἱερῶν θιγεῖν, καὶ πολλὰ τῶν Ἀμφικτυόνων παρόντων ἀπεδάκρυσε τὴν ἀνάγκην.

[5] ἐνίων δὲ φασκόντων ἀκοῦσαι φθεγγομένης τῆς ἐν τοῖς ἀνακτόροις κιθάρας, εἴτε πιστεύσας εἴτε τὸν Σύλλαν βουλόμενος ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς δεισιδαιμονίαν, ἐπέστειλε πρὸς αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ σκώπτων ἀντέγραψε θαυμάζειν τὸν Κάφιν, εἰ μὴ συνίησιν ὅτι χαίροντος, οὐ χαλεπαίνοντος, εἴη τὸ ᾄδειν· ὥστε θαρροῦντα λαμβάνειν ἐκέλευσεν, ὡς ἡδομένου τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ διδόντος.

[6] Τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλα διέλαθε τούς γε πολλοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐκπεμπόμενα, τὸν δὲ ἀργυροῦν πίθον, ὃς ἦν ὑπόλοιπος ἔτι τῶν βασιλικῶν, διὰ βάρος καὶ μέγεθος οὐ δυναμένων ἀναλαβεῖν τῶν ὑποζυγίων, ἀναγκαζόμενοι κατακόπτειν οἱ Ἀμφικτύονες εἰς μνήμην ἐβάλοντο τοῦτο μὲν Τίτον Φλαμινῖνον καὶ Μάνιον Ἀκύλιον, τοῦτο δὲ Αἰμίλιον Παῦλον, ὧν ὁ μὲν Ἀντίοχον ἐξελάσας τῆς Ἑλλάδος, οἱ δὲ τοὺς Μακεδόνων βασιλεῖς καταπολεμήσαντες οὐ μόνον ἀπέσχοντο τῶν ἱερῶν τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δῶρα καὶ τιμὴν αὐτοῖς καὶ σεμνότητα πολλὴν προσέθεσαν.

[7] ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν ἀνδρῶν τε σωφρόνων καὶ μεμαθηκότων σιωπῇ τοῖς ἄρχουσι παρέχειν τὰς χεῖρας ἡγούμενοι κατὰ νόμον, αὐτοί τε ταῖς ψυχαῖς βασιλικοὶ καὶ ταῖς δαπάναις εὐτελεῖς ὄντες, μετρίοις ἐχρῶντο καὶ τεταγμένοις ἀναλώμασι, τὸ κολακεύειν τοὺς στρατιώτας αἴσχιον [8] ἡγούμενοι τοῦ δεδιέναι τοὺς πολεμίους· οἱ δὲ τότε στρατηγοὶ βίᾳ τὸ πρωτεῖον, οὐκ ἀρετῇ, κτώμενοι, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπ’ ἀλλήλους δεόμενοι τῶν ὅπλων ἢ τοὺς πολεμίους, ἠναγκάζοντο δημαγωγεῖν ἐν τῷ στρατηγεῖν, εἶθ’ ὧν εἰς τὰς ἡδυπαθείας τοῖς στρατευομένοις ἀνήλισκον ὠνούμενοι τοὺς πόνους αὐτῶν, ἔλαθον ὤνιον ὅλην τὴν πατρίδα ποιήσαντες ἑαυτούς τε δούλους τῶν κακίστων ἐπὶ τῷ τῶν βελτιόνων ἄρχειν. ταῦτα ἐξήλαυνε Μάριον, εἶτ’ αὖθις ἐπὶ Σύλλαν κατῆγε, ταῦτα Ὀκταουΐου τοὺς περὶ Κίνναν, ταῦτα Φλάκκου [9] τοὺς περὶ Φιμβρίαν αὐτόχειρας ἐποίησεν. ὧν οὐχ ἥκιστα Σύλλας ἐνέδωκεν ἀρχάς, ἐπὶ τῷ διαφθείρειν καὶ μετακαλεῖν τοὺς ὑπ’ ἄλλοις ταττομένους καταχορηγῶν εἰς τοὺς ὑφ’ αὑτῷ καὶ δαπανώμενος, ὥστε ἅμα τοὺς ἄλλους μὲν εἰς προδοσίαν, τοὺς δὲ ὑφ’ αὑτῷ εἰς ἀσωτίαν διαφθείρων χρημάτων δεῖσθαι πολλῶν, καὶ μάλιστα πρὸς τὴν πολιορκίαν ἐκείνην.

[13] [1] Δεινὸς γάρ τις ἄρα καὶ ἀπαραίτητος εἶχεν αὐτὸν ἔρως ἑλεῖν τὰς Ἀθήνας, εἴτε ζήλῳ τινὶ πρὸς τὴν πάλαι σκιαμαχοῦντα τῆς πόλεως δόξαν, εἴτε θυμῷ τὰ σκώμματα φέροντα καὶ τὰς βωμολοχίας, αἷς αὐτόν τε καὶ τὴν Μετέλλαν ἀπὸ τῶν τειχῶν ἑκάστοτε γεφυρίζων καὶ κατορχούμενος ἐξηρέθιζεν ὁ τύραννος Ἀριστίων, ἄνθρωπος ἐξ ἀσελγείας ὁμοῦ καὶ ὠμότητος ἔχων συγκειμένην [2] τὴν ψυχήν, καὶ τὰ χείριστα τῶν Μιθριδατικῶν συνερρυηκότα νοσημάτων καὶ παθῶν εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἀνειληφώς, καὶ τῇ πόλει μυρίους μὲν πολέμους, πολλὰς δὲ τυραννίδας καὶ στάσεις διαπεφευγυίᾳ πρότερον ὥσπερ νόσημα θανατηφόρον εἰς τοὺς ἐσχάτους καιροὺς ἐπιτιθέμενος· ὅς, χιλίων δραχμῶν ὠνίου τοῦ μεδίμνου τῶν πυρῶν ὄντος ἐν ἄστει τότε, τῶν ἀνθρώπων σιτουμένων τὸ [3] περὶ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν φυόμενον παρθένιον, ὑποδήματα δὲ καὶ ληκύθους ἑφθὰς ἐσθιόντων, αὐτὸς ἐνδελεχῶς πότοις μεθημερινοῖς καὶ κώμοις χρώμενος καὶ πυρριχίζων καὶ γελωτοποιῶν πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους τὸν μὲν ἱερὸν τῆς θεοῦ λύχνον ἀπεσβηκότα διὰ σπάνιν ἐλαίου περιεῖδε, τῇ δὲ ἱεροφάντιδι πυρῶν ἡμίεκτον προσαιτούσῃ πεπέρεως ἔπεμψε, τοὺς δὲ βουλευτὰς καὶ ἱερεῖς ἱκετεύοντας οἰκτεῖραι τὴν πόλιν καὶ διαλύσασθαι πρὸς Σύλλαν [4] τοξεύμασι βάλλων διεσκέδασεν. ὀψὲ δὲ ἤδη που μόλις ἐξέπεμψεν ὑπὲρ εἰρήνης δύο ἢ τρεῖς τῶν συμποτῶν· πρὸς οὓς οὐδὲν ἀξιοῦντας σωτήριον, ἀλλὰ τὸν Θησέα καὶ τὸν Εὔμολπον καὶ τὰ Μηδικὰ σεμνολογουμένους ὁ Σύλλας “Ἄπιτε,” εἶπεν, “ὦ μακάριοι, τοὺς λόγους τούτους ἀναλαβόντες· ἐγὼ γὰρ οὐ φιλομαθήσων εἰς Ἀθήνας ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ἐπέμφθην, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἀφισταμένους καταστρεψόμενος.”

[14] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ λέγεταί τινας ἐν Κεραμεικῷ πρεσβυτῶν ἀκούσαντας διαλεγομένων πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ κακιζόντων τὸν τύραννον, ὡς μὴ φυλάττοντα τοῦ τείχους τὴν περὶ τὸ Ἑπτάχαλκον ἔφοδον καὶ προσβολήν, ᾗ μόνῃ δυνατὸν εἶναι καὶ ῥᾴδιον ὑπερβῆναι τοὺς πολεμίους, ἀπαγγεῖλαι [2] ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Σύλλαν. ὁ δὲ οὐ κατεφρόνησεν, ἀλλὰ ἐπελθὼν νυκτὸς καὶ θεασάμενος τὸν τόπον ἁλώσιμον εἴχετο τοῦ ἔργου. λέγει δὲ αὐτὸς ὁ Σύλλας ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασι τὸν πρῶτον ἐπιβάντα τοῦ τείχους Μάρκον Ἀτήϊον ἀντιστάντος αὐτῷ πολεμίου δόντα πληγὴν ἐκ καταφορᾶς τῷ κράνει περικλάσαι τὸ ξίφος, οὐ μὴν ὑφέσθαι τῆς χώρας, ἀλλὰ μεῖναι καὶ κατασχεῖν. κατελήφθη μὲν οὖν ἡ πόλις ἐκεῖθεν, ὡς Ἀθηναίων οἱ πρεσβύτατοι [3] διεμνημόνευον. αὐτὸς δὲ Σύλλας τὸ μεταξὺ τῆς Πειραϊκῆς πύλης καὶ τῆς ἱερᾶς κατασκάψας καὶ συνομαλύνας, περὶ μέσας νύκτας εἰσήλαυνε, φρικώδης ὑπό τε σάλπιγξι καὶ κέρασι πολλοῖς, ἀλαλαγμῷ καὶ κραυγῇ τῆς δυνάμεως ἐφ’ ἁρπαγὴν καὶ φόνον ἀφειμένης ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, καὶ φερομένης διὰ τῶν στενωπῶν ἐσπασμένοις τοῖς ξίφεσιν, ὥστε ἀριθμὸν μηδένα γενέσθαι τῶν ἀποσφαγέντων, ἀλλὰ τῷ τόπῳ τοῦ ῥυέντος αἵματος ἔτι νῦν [4] μετρεῖσθαι τὸ πλῆθος. ἄνευ γὰρ τῶν κατὰ τὴν ἄλλην πόλιν ἀναιρεθέντων ὁ περὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν φόνος ἐπέσχε πάντα τὸν ἐντὸς τοῦ Διπύλου Κεραμεικόν· πολλοῖς δὲ λέγεται καὶ διὰ πυλῶν κατακλύσαι τὸ προάστειον. ἀλλὰ τῶν οὕτως ἀποθανόντων, τοσούτων γενομένων, οὐκ ἐλάσσονες ἦσαν οἱ σφᾶς αὐτοὺς διαφθείροντες οἴκτῳ καὶ πόθῳ τῆς πατρίδος ὡς ἀναιρεθησομένης. τοῦτο γὰρ ἀπογνῶναι καὶ φοβηθῆναι τὴν σωτηρίαν ἐποίησε τοὺς βελτίστους, οὐδὲν ἐν τῷ Σύλλᾳ φιλάνθρωπον οὐδὲ μέτριον ἐλπίσαντας.

[5] ἀλλὰ γὰρ τοῦτο μὲν Μειδίου καὶ Καλλιφῶντος τῶν φυγάδων δεομένων καὶ προκυλινδουμένων αὐτοῦ, τοῦτο δὲ τῶν συγκλητικῶν, ὅσοι συνεστράτευον, ἐξαιτουμένων τὴν πόλιν, αὐτός τε μεστὸς ὢν ἤδη τῆς τιμωρίας, ἐγκώμιόν τι τῶν παλαιῶν Ἀθηναίων ὑπειπὼν ἔφη χαρίζεσθαι πολλοῖς μὲν ὀλίγους, ζῶντας δὲ τεθνηκόσιν.

[6] Ἑλεῖν δὲ τὰς Ἀθήνας αὐτός φησιν ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασι Μαρτίαις καλάνδαις, ἥτις ἡμέρα μάλιστα συμπίπτει τῇ νουμηνίᾳ τοῦ Ἀνθεστηριῶνος μηνός, ἐν ᾧ κατὰ τύχην ὑπομνήματα πολλὰ τοῦ διὰ τὴν ἐπομβρίαν ὀλέθρου καὶ τῆς φθορᾶς ἐκείνης δρῶσιν, ὡς τότε καὶ περὶ τὸν χρόνον ἐκεῖνον μάλιστα τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ συμπεσόντος.

[7] ἑαλωκότος δὲ τοῦ ἄστεος ὁ μὲν τύραννος εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν καταφυγὼν ἐπολιορκεῖτο, Κουρίωνος ἐπὶ τούτῳ τεταγμένου· καὶ χρόνον ἐγκαρτερήσας συχνὸν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐνεχείρισε δίψει πιεσθείς. καὶ τὸ δαιμόνιον εὐθὺς ἐπεσήμηνε· τῆς γὰρ αὐτῆς ἡμέρας τε καὶ ὥρας ἐκεῖνόν τε Κουρίων κατῆγε, καὶ νεφῶν ἐξ αἰθρίας συνδραμόντων πλῆθος ὄμβρου καταρραγὲν ἐπλήρωσεν ὕδατος τὴν ἀκρόπολιν. εἷλε δὲ καὶ τὸν Πειραιᾶ μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ὁ Σύλλας, καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα κατέκαυσεν, ὧν ἦν καὶ ἡ Φίλωνος ὁπλοθήκη, θαυμαζόμενον ἔργον.

[15] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ Ταξίλης ὁ Μιθριδάτου στρατηγὸς ἐκ Θρᾴκης καὶ Μακεδονίας καταβεβηκὼς δέκα μυριάσι πεζῶν καὶ μυρίοις ἱππεῦσι καὶ τεθρίπποις ἐνενήκοντα δρεπανηφόροις ἐκάλει τὸν Ἀρχέλαον, ἔτι ναυλοχοῦντα περὶ τὴν Μουνυχίαν καὶ μήτε τῆς θαλάττης βουλόμενον ἀποστῆναι μήτε πρόθυμον ὄντα συμπλέκεσθαι τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις, ἀλλὰ χρονοτριβεῖν τὸν πόλεμον καὶ τὰς [2] εὐπορίας αὐτῶν ἀφαιρεῖν. ἃ δὴ πολὺ μᾶλλον ἐκείνου συνορῶν ὁ Σύλλας ἀνέζευξεν εἰς Βοιωτίαν ἐκ χωρίων γλίσχρων καὶ μηδὲ ἐν εἰρήνῃ τρέφειν ἱκανῶν ὄντων. καὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἐδόκει σφάλλεσθαι τὸν λογισμόν, ὅτι τὴν Ἀττικὴν τραχεῖαν οὖσαν καὶ δύσιππον ἀπολιπὼν ἐνέβαλεν ἑαυτὸν πεδιάσι καὶ ἀναπεπταμέναις ταῖς περὶ τὴν Βοιωτίαν χώραις, ὁρῶν ἐν ἅρμασι καὶ ἵπποις τὴν [3] βαρβαρικὴν οὖσαν ἀλκήν. ἀλλὰ φεύγων, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, λιμὸν καὶ σπάνιν ἠναγκάζετο διώκειν τὸν ἐκ τῆς μάχης κίνδυνον. ἔτι δὲ Ὁρτήσιος αὐτὸν ἐφόβει, στρατηγικὸς ἀνὴρ καὶ φιλόνεικος, ὃν ἐκ Θετταλίας ἄγοντα τῷ Σύλλᾳ δύναμιν ἐν τοῖς στενοῖς οἱ βάρβαροι παρεφύλαττον. διὰ ταῦτα μὲν εἰς τὴν Βοιωτίαν ἀνέζευξεν ὁ Σύλλας· Ὁρτήσιον δὲ Κάφις, ἡμέτερος ὤν, ἑτέραις ὁδοῖς ψευσάμενος τοὺς βαρβάρους διὰ τοῦ Παρνασσοῦ κατῆγεν ὑπ’ αὐτὴν τὴν Τιθόραν, οὔπω τοσαύτην πόλιν [4] οὖσαν ὅση νῦν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ φρούριον ἀπορρῶγι κρημνῷ περικοπτόμενον, εἰς ὃ καὶ πάλαι ποτὲ Φωκέων οἱ Ξέρξην ἐπιόντα φεύγοντες ἀνεσκευάσαντο καὶ διεσώθησαν. ἐνταῦθα καταστρατοπεδεύσας Ὁρτήσιος ἡμέρας μὲν ἀπεκρούσατο τοὺς πολεμίους, νύκτωρ δ’ ἐπὶ Πατρωνίδα ταῖς δυσχωρίαις καταβὰς ἀπαντήσαντι τῷ Σύλλᾳ μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως συνέμιξε.

[16] [1] Γενόμενοι δὲ κοινῇ καταλαμβάνονται βουνὸν ἐκ μέσων ἑστῶτα τῶν Ἐλατικῶν πεδίων, εὔγεων καὶ ἀμφιλαφῆ καὶ παρὰ τὴν ῥίζαν ὕδωρ ἔχοντα· Φιλοβοιωτὸς καλεῖται, καὶ τὴν φύσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν θέσιν ἐπαινεῖ θαυμασίως ὁ Σύλλας. στρατοπεδεύσαντες δὲ παντάπασιν ὀλίγοι τοῖς πολεμίοις κατεφάνησαν· ἱππεῖς μὲν γὰρ οὐ πλείους πεντακοσίων καὶ χιλίων ἐγένοντο, πεζοὶ [2] δὲ πεντακισχιλίων καὶ μυρίων ἐλάττους. ὅθεν ἐκβιασάμενοι τὸν Ἀρχέλαον οἱ λοιποὶ στρατηγοὶ καὶ παρατάξαντες τὴν δύναμιν, ἐνέπλησαν ἵππων, ἁρμάτων, ἀσπίδων, θυρεῶν τὸ πεδίον.

Τὴν δὲ κραυγὴν καὶ ἀλαλαγμὸν οὐκ ἔστεγεν ὁ ἀὴρ ἐθνῶν τοσούτων ἅμα καθισταμένων εἰς τάξιν. ἦν δὲ ἅμα καὶ τὸ κομπῶδες καὶ σοβαρὸν αὐτῶν τῆς πολυτελείας οὐκ ἀργὸν οὐδὲ ἄχρηστον εἰς ἔκπληξιν, ἀλλ’ αἵ τε μαρμαρυγαὶ τῶν ὅπλων [3] ἠσκημένων χρυσῷ τε καὶ ἀργύρῳ διαπρεπῶς, αἵ τε βαφαὶ τῶν Μηδικῶν καὶ Σκυθικῶν χιτώνων ἀναμεμιγμέναι χαλκῷ καὶ σιδήρῳ λάμποντι πυροειδῆ καὶ φοβερὰν ἐν τῷ σαλεύεσθαι καὶ διαφέρεσθαι προσέβαλον ὄψιν, ὥστε τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ὑπὸ τὸν χάρακα συστέλλειν ἑαυτούς, καὶ τὸν Σύλλαν μηδενὶ λόγῳ τὸ θάμβος αὐτῶν ἀφελεῖν δυνάμενον, βιάζεσθαί τε ἀποδιδράσκοντας οὐ βουλόμενον, ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν καὶ φέρειν βαρέως ἐφυβρίζοντας ὁρῶντα κομπασμῷ καὶ γέλωτι τοὺς βαρβάρους. ὤνησε μέντοι τοῦτο [4] μάλιστα πάντων αὐτόν. οἱ γὰρ ἐναντίοι καταφρονήσαντες ἐτράποντο πρὸς ἀταξίαν πολλήν, οὐδὲ ἄλλως ὑπήκοοι τῶν στρατηγῶν διὰ πολυαρχίαν ὄντες· ὥστε ὀλίγοι μὲν ἐν τῷ χάρακι διεκαρτέρουν, ὁ δὲ πλεῖστος ὄχλος ἁρπαγαῖς καὶ πορθήμασι δελεαζόμενος ὁδὸν ἡμερῶν πολλῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατοπέδου διεσπείρετο. καὶ τήν τε τῶν Πανοπέων πόλιν ἐκκόψαι λέγονται καὶ τὴν Λεβαδέων διαρπάσαι καὶ συλῆσαι τὸ μαντεῖον, οὐδενὸς στρατηγοῦ πρόσταγμα δόντος.

[5] Ὁ δὲ Σύλλας, ἐν ὄμμασιν αὐτοῦ πόλεων ἀπολλυμένων, δυσανασχετῶν καὶ λυπούμενος, οὐκ εἴα τοὺς στρατιώτας σχολάζειν, ἀλλὰ προσάγων αὐτοὺς ἠνάγκαζε τόν τε Κηφισὸν ἐκ τοῦ ῥείθρου παρατρέπειν καὶ τάφρους ὀρύσσειν, ἀνάπαυλαν οὐδενὶ διδοὺς καὶ τῶν ἐνδιδόντων ἀπαραίτητος ἐφεστὼς κολαστής, ὅπως ἀπαγορεύσαντες πρὸς τὰ ἔργα διὰ τὸν πόνον ἀσπάσωνται τὸν κίνδυνον.

[6] ὃ καὶ συνέβη. τρίτην γὰρ ἡμέραν ἐργαζόμενοι τοῦ Σύλλα παρεξιόντος ἐδέοντο μετὰ κραυγῆς ἄγειν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους. ὁ δὲ οὐ μάχεσθαι βουλομένων, ἀλλὰ μὴ βουλομένων πονεῖν ἔφησεν εἶναι τὸν λόγον· εἰ δὲ ὄντως ἔχουσιν ἀγωνιστικῶς, ἐκέλευσεν ἤδη μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἐλθεῖν ἐκεῖσε, δείξας αὐτοῖς τὴν πρότερον μὲν γενομένην ἀκρόπολιν [7] τῶν Παραποταμίων, τότε δὲ ἀνῃρημένης τῆς πόλεως λόφος ἐλείπετο πετρώδης καὶ περίκρημνος, τοῦ Ἡδυλίου διωρισμένος ὄρους ὅσον ὁ Ἄσσος ἐπέχει ῥέων, εἶτα συμπίπτων ὑπὸ τὴν ῥίζαν αὐτὴν τῷ Κηφισῷ καὶ συνεκτραχυνόμενος ὀχυρὰν ἐνστρατοπεδεῦσαι τὴν ἄκραν ποιεῖ. διὸ καὶ τοὺς χαλκάσπιδας ὁρῶν τῶν πολεμίων ὠθουμένους ἐπ’ αὐτὴν ὁ Σύλλας ἐβούλετο φθῆναι καταλαβὼν τὸν τόπον· καὶ κατέλαβε χρησάμενος [8] τοῖς στρατιώταις προθύμοις. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀποκρουσθεὶς ἐκεῖθεν ὁ Ἀρχέλαος ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ τὴν Χαιρώνειαν, οἱ δὲ συστρατευσάμενοι τῶν Χαιρωνέων ἐδέοντο τοῦ Σύλλα μὴ προέσθαι τὴν πόλιν, ἐκπέμπει τῶν χιλιάρχων ἕνα Γαβίνιον μετὰ τάγματος ἑνὸς καὶ τοὺς Χαιρωνεῖς ἀφίησι, βουληθέντας μέν, οὐ μὴν δυνηθέντας φθῆναι τὸν Γαβίνιον. οὕτως ἦν ἀγαθὸς καὶ προθυμότερος εἰς τὸ σῶσαι τῶν σωθῆναι δεομένων. ὁ δὲ Ἰόβας οὐ Γαβίνιόν φησι πεμφθῆναι, ἀλλὰ Ἐρίκιον. ἡ μὲν οὖν πόλις ἡμῶν παρὰ τοσοῦτον ἐξέφυγε τὸν κίνδυνον.

[17] [1] Ἐκ δὲ Λεβαδείας καὶ τοῦ Τροφωνίου φῆμαί τε χρησταὶ καὶ νικηφόρα μαντεύματα τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἐξεπέμποντο. περὶ ὧν οἱ μὲν ἐπιχώριοι πλείονα λέγουσιν· ὡς δὲ Σύλλας αὐτὸς ἐν δεκάτῳ τῶν ὑπομνημάτων γέγραφε, Κόϊντος Τίτιος, οὐκ ἀφανὴς ἀνὴρ τῶν ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι πραγματευομένων, ἧκε πρὸς αὐτὸν ἤδη τὴν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ νενικηκότα μάχην, ἀπαγγέλλων ὅτι καὶ δευτέραν ὁ Τροφώνιος αὐτόθι μάχην καὶ νίκην προσημαίνει [2] ἐντὸς ὀλίγου χρόνου. μετὰ δὲ τοῦτον ἀνὴρ τῶν ἐν τάξει στρατευομένων ὄνομα Σαλουήνιος ἀνήνεγκε παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τέλος οἷον αἱ κατὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν πράξεις ἔμελλον ἕξειν. ἀμφότεροι δὲ ταὐτὰ περὶ τῆς ὀμφῆς ἔφραζον· τῷ γὰρ Ὀλυμπίῳ Διῒ καὶ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὸ μέγεθος παραπλήσιον ἰδεῖν ἔφασαν.

[3] Ἐπειδὴ δὲ διέβη τὸν Ἄσσον ὁ Σύλλας, παρελθὼν ὑπὸ τὸ Ἡδύλιον τῷ Ἀρχελάῳ παρεστρατοπέδευσε, βεβλημένῳ χάρακα καρτερὸν ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ Ἀκοντίου καὶ τοῦ Ἡδυλίου πρὸς τοῖς λεγομένοις Ἀσσίοις. ὁ μέντοι τόπος ἐν ᾧ κατεσκήνωσεν ἄχρι νῦν Ἀρχέλαος ἀπ’ ἐκείνου καλεῖται. διαλιπὼν δὲ μίαν ἡμέραν ὁ Σύλλας Μουρήναν μὲν ἔχοντα τάγμα καὶ σπείρας δύο πρὸς τὸ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐνοχλῆσαι παραταττομένοις ἀπέλιπεν, [4] αὐτὸς δὲ παρὰ τὸν Κηφισὸν ἐσφαγιάζετο, καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν γενομένων ἐχώρει πρὸς τὴν Χαιρώνειαν, ἀναληψόμενός τε τὴν αὐτόθι στρατιὰν καὶ κατοψόμενος τὸ καλούμενον Θούριον ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων προκατειλημμένον. ἔστι δὲ κορυφὴ τραχεῖα καὶ στροβιλῶδες ὄρος, ὃ καλοῦμεν Ὀρθόπαγον, ὑπὸ δὲ αὐτὸ τὸ ῥεῦμα τοῦ Μόλου καὶ Θουρίου νεὼς Ἀπόλλωνος. ὠνόμασται δὲ ὁ θεὸς ἀπὸ Θουροῦς, τῆς Χαίρωνος μητρός, ὃν οἰκιστὴν γεγονέναι [5] τῆς Χαιρωνείας ἱστοροῦσιν. οἱ δέ φασι τὴν Κάδμῳ δοθεῖσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Πυθίου καθηγεμόνα βοῦν ἐκεῖ φανῆναι, καὶ τὸν τόπον ἀπ’ αὐτῆς οὕτω προσαγορευθῆναι· θὼρ γὰρ οἱ Φοίνικες τὴν βοῦν καλοῦσι.

Προσιόντος δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα πρὸς τὴν Χαιρώνειαν ὁ τεταγμένος ἐν τῇ πόλει χιλίαρχος, ἐξωπλισμένους ἄγων τοὺς στρατιώτας, ἀπήντησε στέφανον [6] δάφνης κομίζων. ὡς δὲ δεξάμενος ἠσπάσατο τοὺς στρατιώτας καὶ παρώρμησε πρὸς τὸν κίνδυνον, ἐντυγχάνουσιν αὐτῷ δύο τῶν Χαιρωνέων ἄνδρες, Ὁμολόϊχος καὶ Ἀναξίδαμος, ὑφιστάμενοι τοὺς τὸ Θούριον κατασχόντας ἐκκόψειν, ὀλίγους στρατιώτας παρ’ ἐκείνου λαβόντες· ἀτραπὸν γὰρ εἶναι τοῖς βαρβάροις ἄδηλον, ἀπὸ τοῦ καλουμένου Πετράχου παρὰ τὸ Μουσεῖον ἐπὶ τὸ Θούριον ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς ἄγουσαν, ᾗ πορευθέντες οὐ χαλεπῶς ἐπιπεσεῖσθαι καὶ καταλεύσειν ἄνωθεν [7] αὐτοὺς ἢ συνώσειν εἰς τὸ πεδίον. τοῦ δὲ Γαβινίου τοῖς ἀνδράσι μαρτυρήσαντος ἀνδρείαν καὶ πίστιν, ἐκέλευσεν ἐπιχειρεῖν ὁ Σύλλας· αὐτὸς δὲ συνέταττε τὴν φάλαγγα καὶ διένειμε τοὺς ἱππότας ἐπὶ κέρως ἑκατέρου, τὸ δεξιὸν αὐτὸς ἔχων, τὸ δ’ εὐώνυμον ἀποδοὺς Μουρήνᾳ. Γάλβας δὲ καὶ Ὁρτήσιος οἱ πρεσβευταὶ σπείρας ἐπιτάκτους ἔχοντες ἔσχατοι παρενέβαλον ἐπὶ τῶν ἄκρων φύλακες πρὸς τὰς κυκλώσεις· ἑωρῶντο γὰρ οἱ πολέμιοι κατασκευάζοντες ἱππεῦσι πολλοῖς καὶ ψιλοῖς ποδώκεσιν εἰς ἐπιστροφὴν τὸ κέρας εὐκαμπὲς καὶ κοῦφον, ὡς μακρὰν ἀνάξοντες καὶ κυκλωσόμενοι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους.

[18] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ τῶν Χαιρωνέων Ἐρίκιον ἄρχοντα παρὰ τοῦ Σύλλα λαβόντων καὶ περιελθόντων ἀδήλως τὸ Θούριον, εἶτα ἐπιφανέντων, θόρυβος ἦν πολὺς καὶ φυγὴ τῶν βαρβάρων καὶ φόνος ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων ὁ πλεῖστος. οὐ γὰρ ὑπέμειναν, ἀλλὰ κατὰ πρανοῦς φερόμενοι τοῖς τε δόρασι περιέπιπτον αὐτοὶ τοῖς ἑαυτῶν καὶ κατεκρήμνιζον ὠθοῦντες ἀλλήλους, ἄνωθεν ἐπικειμένων τῶν πολεμίων καὶ τὰ γυμνὰ παιόντων, [2] ὥστε τρισχιλίους πεσεῖν περὶ τὸ Θούριον. τῶν δὲ φευγόντων τοὺς μὲν εἰς τάξιν ἤδη καθεστὼς ὁ Μουρήνας ἀπετέμνετο καὶ διέφθειρεν ὑπαντιάζων, οἱ δὲ ὠσάμενοι πρὸς τὸ φίλιον στρατόπεδον καὶ τῇ φάλαγγι φύρδην ἐμπεσόντες ἀνέπλησαν δέους καὶ ταραχῆς τὸ πλεῖστον μέρος, καὶ διατριβὴν τοῖς στρατηγοῖς ἐνεποίησαν οὐχ ἥκιστα βλάψασαν αὐτούς. ὀξέως γὰρ ὁ Σύλλας ταρασσομένοις ἐπαγαγὼν καὶ τὸ μέσον διάστημα τῷ τάχει συνελὼν ἀφείλετο τὴν τῶν δρεπανηφόρων ἐνέργειαν.

[3] ἔρρωται γὰρ μάλιστα μήκει δρόμου σφοδρότητα καὶ ῥύμην τῇ διεξελάσει διδόντος, αἱ δὲ ἐκ βραχέος ἀφέσεις ἄπρακτοι καὶ ἀμβλεῖαι, καθάπερ βελῶν τάσιν οὐ λαβόντων. ὃ δὴ καὶ τότε τοῖς βαρβάροις ἀπήντα· καὶ τὰ πρῶτα τῶν ἁρμάτων ἀργῶς ἐξελαυνόμενα καὶ προσπίπτοντα νωθρῶς ἐκκρούσαντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι μετὰ κρότου καὶ γέλωτος ἄλλα ᾔτουν, ὥσπερ εἰώθασιν ἐν ταῖς [4] θεατρικαῖς ἱπποδρομίαις. τοὐντεῦθεν αἱ πεζαὶ δυνάμεις συνερράγησαν, τῶν μὲν βαρβάρων προβαλλομένων τὰς σαρίσας μακρὰς καὶ πειρωμένων τῷ συνασπισμῷ τὴν φάλαγγα διατηρεῖν ἐν τάξει, τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων τοὺς μὲν ὑσσοὺς αὐτοῦ καταβαλόντων, σπασαμένων δὲ τὰς μαχαίρας καὶ παρακρουομένων τὰς σαρίσας, ὡς τάχιστα προσμίξειαν [5] αὐτοῖς δι’ ὀργήν. προτεταγμένους γὰρ ἑώρων τῶν πολεμίων μυρίους καὶ πεντακισχιλίους θεράποντας, οὓς ἐκ τῶν πόλεων κηρύγμασιν ἐλευθεροῦντες οἱ βασιλέως στρατηγοὶ κατελόχιζον εἰς τοὺς ὁπλίτας. καί τις ἑκατοντάρχης λέγεται Ῥωμαῖος εἰπεῖν ὡς ἐν Κρονίοις μόνον εἰδείη τῆς [6] παρρησίας δούλους μετέχοντας. τούτους μὲν οὖν διὰ βάθος καὶ πυκνότητα βραδέως ἐξωθουμένους ὑπὸ τῶν ὁπλιτῶν καὶ παρὰ φύσιν μένειν τολμῶντας αἵ τε βελοσφενδόναι καὶ οἱ γρόσφοι, χρωμένων ἀφειδῶς τῶν κατόπιν Ῥωμαίων, ἀπέστρεφον καὶ συνετάραττον.

[19] [1] Ἀρχελάου δὲ τὸ δεξιὸν κέρας εἰς κύκλωσιν ἀνάγοντος, Ὁρτήσιος ἐφῆκε τὰς σπείρας δρόμῳ προσφερομένας ὡς ἐμβαλῶν πλαγίοις. ἐπιστρέψαντος δὲ ταχέως ἐκείνου τοὺς περὶ αὑτὸν ἱππεῖς δισχιλίους, ἐκθλιβόμενος ὑπὸ πλήθους προσεστέλλετο τοῖς ὀρεινοῖς, κατὰ μικρὸν ἀπορρηγνύμενος τῆς φάλαγγος καὶ περιλαμβανόμενος [2] ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων. πυθόμενος δὲ ὁ Σύλλας ἀπὸ τοῦ δεξιοῦ μήπω συμπεπτωκότος εἰς μάχην ἐδίωκε βοηθῶν. Ἀρχέλαος δὲ τῷ κονιορτῷ τῆς ἐλάσεως ὅπερ ἦν τεκμηράμενος, Ὁρτήσιον μὲν εἴα χαίρειν, αὐτὸς δὲ ἐπιστρέψας ὥρμησεν ὅθεν ὁ Σύλλας πρὸς τὸ δεξιόν, ὡς ἔρημον ἄρχοντος αἱρήσων. ἅμα δὲ καὶ Μουρήνᾳ Ταξίλης ἐπῆγε τοὺς χαλκάσπιδας, ὥστε τῆς κραυγῆς διχόθεν φερομένης καὶ τῶν ὀρῶν ἀνταποδιδόντων τὴν περιήχησιν, ἐπιστήσαντα τὸν Σύλλαν διαπορεῖν [3] ὁποτέρωσε χρὴ προσγενέσθαι. δόξαν δὲ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ τάξιν ἀναλαμβάνειν, Μουρήνᾳ μὲν ἀρωγὸν ἔπεμψεν Ὁρτήσιον ἔχοντα τέσσαρας σπείρας, αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν πέμπτην ἕπεσθαι κελεύσας ἐπὶ τὸ δεξιὸν ἠπείγετο καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὸ μὲν ἀξιομάχως ἤδη τῷ Ἀρχελάῳ συνεστηκός, ἐκείνου δὲ ἐπιφανέντος παντάπασιν ἐξεβιάσαντο, καὶ κρατήσαντες ἐδίωκον πρός τε τὸν ποταμὸν καὶ [4] τὸ Ἀκόντιον ὄρος προτροπάδην φεύγοντας. οὐ μὴν ὅ γε Σύλλας ἠμέλησε Μουρήνα κινδυνεύοντος, ἀλλὰ ὥρμησε τοῖς ἐκεῖ βοηθεῖν· ἰδὼν δὲ νικῶντας, τότε τῆς διώξεως μετεῖχε. πολλοὶ μὲν οὖν ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ τῶν βαρβάρων ἀνῃροῦντο, πλεῖστοι δὲ τῷ χάρακι προσφερόμενοι κατεκόπησαν, ὥστε μυρίους διαπεσεῖν εἰς Χαλκίδα μόνους ἀπὸ τοσούτων μυριάδων. ὁ δὲ Σύλλας λέγει τέσσαρας καὶ δέκα ἐπιζητῆσαι τῶν αὐτοῦ στρατιωτῶν, εἶτα καὶ τούτων δύο πρὸς τὴν [5] ἑσπέραν παραγενέσθαι. διὸ καὶ τοῖς τροπαίοις ἐπέγραψεν Ἄρη καὶ Νίκην καὶ Ἀφροδίτην, ὡς οὐχ ἧττον εὐτυχίᾳ κατορθώσας ἢ δεινότητι καὶ δυνάμει τὸν πόλεμον. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν τὸ τρόπαιον ἕστηκε τῆς πεδιάδος μάχης ᾗ πρῶτον ἐνέκλιναν οἱ περὶ Ἀρχέλαον παρὰ τὸ Μόλου ῥεῖθρον, ἕτερον δέ ἐστι τοῦ Θουρίου κατὰ κορυφὴν βεβηκὸς ἐπὶ τῇ κυκλώσει τῶν βαρβάρων, γράμμασιν Ἑλληνικοῖς ἐπισημαῖνον Ὁμολόϊχον [6] καὶ Ἀναξίδαμον ἀριστεῖς. ταύτης τὰ ἐπινίκια τῆς μάχης ἦγεν ἐν Θήβαις, περὶ τὴν Οἰδιπόδειον κρήνην κατασκευάσας θυμέλην. οἱ δὲ κρίνοντες ἦσαν Ἕλληνες ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων ἀνακεκλημένοι πόλεων, ἐπεὶ πρός γε Θηβαίους ἀδιαλλάκτως εἶχε, καὶ τῆς χώρας αὐτῶν ἀποτεμόμενος τὴν ἡμίσειαν τῷ Πυθίῳ καὶ τῷ Ὀλυμπίῳ καθιέρωσεν, ἐκ τῶν προσόδων κελεύσας ἀποδίδοσθαι τὰ χρήματα τοῖς θεοῖς ἅπερ αὐτὸς εἰλήφει.

[20] [1] Μετὰ ταῦτα πυνθανόμενος Φλάκκον ἀπὸ τῆς ἐναντίας στάσεως ὕπατον ᾑρημένον διαπερᾶν τὸν Ἰόνιον μετὰ δυνάμεως, λόγῳ μὲν ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην, ἔργῳ δὲ ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον αὐτόν, ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ Θετταλίας ὡς ἀπαντήσων. γενομένῳ δὲ αὐτῷ περὶ πόλιν Μελίτειαν ἀφικνοῦντο πολλαχόθεν ἀγγελίαι πορθεῖσθαι τὰ κατόπιν αὖθις οὐκ ἐλάττονι [2] στρατιᾷ βασιλικῇ τῆς πρότερον. Δορύλαος γὰρ εἰς Χαλκίδα καταχθεὶς παρασκευῇ νεῶν πολλῇ, ἐν αἷς ἦγεν ὀκτὼ μυριάδας ἠσκημένας καὶ συντεταγμένας ἄριστα δὴ τῆς Μιθριδατικῆς στρατιᾶς, εὐθὺς εἰς Βοιωτίαν ἐνέβαλε καὶ κατεῖχε τὴν χώραν, προθυμούμενος εἰς μάχην ἐπισπάσασθαι τὸν Σύλλαν, οὐ προσέχων Ἀρχελάῳ διακωλύοντι, καὶ λόγον περὶ τῆς προτέρας μάχης διαδιδοὺς ὡς οὐκ ἄνευ προδοσίας μυριάδες τοσαῦται [3] διαφθαρεῖεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ὁ Σύλλας ταχέως ὑποστρέψας ἀπέδειξε τῷ Δορυλάῳ τὸν Ἀρχέλαον ἄνδρα φρόνιμον καὶ τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἐμπειρότατον ἀρετῆς, ὥστε μικρὰ αὐτὸν τῷ Σύλλᾳ περὶ τὸ Τιλφώσσιον ἐμπεσόντα πρῶτον εἶναι τῶν οὐκ ἀξιούντων κρίνεσθαι διὰ μάχης, ἀλλὰ δαπάναις καὶ χρόνῳ τρίβειν τὸν πόλεμον. ὅμως δὲ θάρσος τι τῷ Ἀρχελάῳ παρεῖχεν ὁ πρὸς Ὀρχομενῷ τόπος, ἐν ᾧ κατεστρατοπέδευσαν, εὐφυέστατος ὢν ἱπποκρατοῦσιν ἐναγωνίσασθαι.

[4] τῶν γὰρ Βοιωτίων πεδίων ὅ τί πέρ ἐστι κάλλιστον καὶ μέγιστον, τοῦτο τῆς Ὀρχομενίων ἐξηρτημένον πόλεως ὁμαλὸν ἀναπέπταται καὶ ἄδενδρον ἄχρι τῶν ἑλῶν ἐν οἷς ὁ Μέλας καταναλίσκεται ποταμός, ἀνατέλλων μὲν ὑπὸ τὴν πόλιν τῶν Ὀρχομενίων πολὺς καὶ πλώϊμος ἐν πηγαῖς μόνος τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ποταμῶν, αὐξόμενος δὲ ὑπὸ τροπὰς θερινάς, ὥσπερ ὁ Νεῖλος, καὶ φέρων ὅμοια τοῖς ἐκεῖ τὰ φυόμενα, πλὴν [5] ἄκαρπα καὶ ἀναυξῆ. πόρρω δὲ οὐ πρόεισιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν πλεῖστον εὐθὺς εἰς λίμνας τυφλὰς καὶ ἑλώδεις ἀφανίζεται, μέρος δὲ οὐ πολὺ τῷ Κηφισῷ συμμίγνυται, περὶ ὃν μάλιστα τόπον ἡ λίμνη δοκεῖ τὸν αὐλητικὸν ἐκφέρειν κάλαμον.

[21] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ἐγγὺς κατεστρατοπέδευσαν, ὁ μὲν Ἀρχέλαος ἡσύχαζεν, ὁ δὲ Σύλλας ὤρυττε τάφρους ἑκατέρωθεν, ὅπως, εἰ δύναιτο, τῶν στερεῶν καὶ ἱππασίμων ἀποτεμόμενος τοὺς πολεμίους ὤσειεν εἰς τὰ ἕλη. τῶν δὲ οὐκ ἀνασχομένων, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀφείθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν στρατηγῶν, ἐντόνως καὶ ῥύδην ἐλαυνόντων, οὐ μόνον οἱ περὶ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ Σύλλα διεσκεδάσθησαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ παρατεταγμένου συνεχύθη τὸ πλεῖστον φυγόντος.

[2] ἔνθα δὴ Σύλλας αὐτὸς ἀποπηδήσας τοῦ ἵππου καὶ σημεῖον ἀναρπάσας ὠθεῖτο διὰ τῶν φευγόντων εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους, βοῶν “Ἐμοὶ μὲν ἐνταῦθά που καλόν, ὦ Ῥωμαῖοι, τελευτᾶν, ὑμεῖς δὲ τοῖς πυνθανομένοις ποῦ προδεδώκατε τὸν αὐτοκράτορα, μεμνημένοι φράζειν ὡς ἐν Ὀρχομενῷ.” τούτους τε δὴ τὸ ῥηθὲν ἐπέστρεψε, καὶ τῶν ἐπὶ τοῦ δεξιοῦ κέρως σπειρῶν δύο προσεβοήθησαν, ἃς ἐπαγαγὼν τρέπεται τοὺς [3] πολεμίους. ἀναγαγὼν δὲ μικρὸν ὀπίσω, καὶ δοὺς ἄριστον αὐτοῖς, αὖθις ἀπετάφρευε τὸν χάρακα τῶν πολεμίων. οἱ δὲ αὖθις ἐν τάξει μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον προσεφέροντο. καὶ Διογένης μὲν ὁ τῆς Ἀρχελάου γυναικὸς υἱὸς ἀριστεύων ἐπὶ τοῦ δεξιοῦ περιόπτως ἔπεσεν, οἱ δὲ τοξόται, τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐκβιαζομένων, οὐκ ἔχοντες ἀναστροφὴν ἀθρόοις τοῖς ὀϊστοῖς ἐκ χειρὸς ὥσπερ ξίφεσι παίοντες ἀνέκοπτον αὐτούς, τέλος δὲ κατακλεισθέντες εἰς τὸν χάρακα μοχθηρῶς ὑπὸ τραυμάτων καὶ φόνου διενυκτέρευσαν. ἡμέρας δὲ πάλιν τῷ χάρακι τοὺς στρατιώτας προσαγαγὼν [4] ὁ Σύλλας ἀπετάφρευεν. ἐξελθόντας δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς ὡς ἐπὶ μάχην συμβαλὼν τρέπεται, καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἐκείνων φόβον οὐδενὸς μένοντος αἱρεῖ κατὰ κράτος τὸ στρατόπεδον. καὶ κατέπλησαν ἀποθνήσκοντες αἵματος τὰ ἕλη καὶ νεκρῶν τὴν λίμνην, ὥστε μέχρι νῦν πολλὰ βαρβαρικὰ τόξα καὶ κράνη καὶ θωράκων σπάσματα σιδηρῶν καὶ μαχαίρας ἐμβεβαπτισμένας τοῖς τέλμασιν εὑρίσκεσθαι, σχεδὸν ἐτῶν διακοσίων ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης ἐκείνης διαγεγονότων. τὰ μὲν οὖν περὶ Χαιρώνειαν καὶ πρὸς Ὀρχομενῷ τοιαῦτα λέγεται γενέσθαι.

[22] [1] Κίννα δὲ καὶ Κάρβωνος ἐν Ῥώμῃ τοῖς ἐπιφανεστάτοις ἀνδράσι χρωμένων παρανόμως καὶ βιαίως, πολλοὶ τὴν τυραννίδα φεύγοντες ὥσπερ εἰς λιμένα τοῦ Σύλλα τὸ στρατόπεδον κατεφέροντο, καὶ περὶ αὐτὸν ὀλίγου χρόνου σχῆμα βουλῆς ἐγεγόνει. καὶ Μετέλλα μόλις διακλέψασα ἑαυτὴν καὶ τοὺς παῖδας, ἧκεν ἀγγέλλουσα τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰς ἐπαύλεις ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἐμπεπρῆσθαι [2] καὶ δεομένη τοῖς οἴκοι βοηθεῖν. ἀπορουμένῳ δ’ αὐτῷ, καὶ μήτε τῆς πατρίδος ἀμελεῖν ὑπομένοντι κακουμένης μήτε ὅπως ἄπεισιν ἀτελὲς λιπὼν τοσοῦτον ἔργον, τὸν Μιθριδατικὸν πόλεμον, ἐπινοοῦντι, παραγίνεται Δηλιακὸς ἔμπορος Ἀρχέλαος, ἐλπίδας τινὰς καὶ λόγους κρύφα παρὰ τοῦ βασιλικοῦ κομίζων Ἀρχελάου. καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα Σύλλας οὕτως ἠγάπησεν ὥστε αὐτὸς εἰς λόγους [3] σπεῦσαι τῷ Ἀρχελάῳ συνελθεῖν· καὶ συνῆλθον ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ περὶ Δήλιον, οὗ τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνός ἐστιν. ἀρξαμένου δὲ τοῦ Ἀρχελάου διαλέγεσθαι, καὶ τὸν Σύλλαν ἀξιοῦντος ἀφέντα τὴν Ἀσίαν καὶ τὸν Πόντον ἐπὶ τὸν ἐν Ῥώμῃ πόλεμον πλεῖν, χρήματα λαβόντα καὶ τριήρεις καὶ δύναμιν ὅσην βούλοιτο παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Σύλλας Μιθριδάτου μὲν ἀμελεῖν ἐκέλευεν, αὐτὸν δὲ βασιλεύειν ἀντ’ ἐκείνου σύμμαχον Ῥωμαίων γενόμενον καὶ παραδόντα τὰς ναῦς.

[4] ἀφοσιουμένου δὲ τοῦ Ἀρχελάου τὴν προδοσίαν, “Εἶτα,” ἔφη “σὺ μέν, ὦ Ἀρχέλαε, Καππαδόκης ὢν καὶ βαρβάρου βασιλέως δοῦλος, εἰ δὲ βούλει, φίλος, οὐχ ὑπομένεις ἐπὶ τηλικούτοις ἀγαθοῖς τὸ αἰσχρόν, ἐμοὶ δὲ ἡγεμόνι Ῥωμαίων ὄντι καὶ Σύλλᾳ τολμᾷς διαλέγεσθαι περὶ προδοσίας, ὥσπερ οὐκ ἐκεῖνος ὢν Ἀρχέλαος, ὁ φυγὼν μὲν ἐκ Χαιρωνείας ὀλιγοστὸς ἀπὸ μυριάδων δυοκαίδεκα, κρυφθεὶς δὲ δύο ἡμέρας ἐν τοῖς Ὀρχομενίων ἕλεσιν, ἄβατον δὲ τὴν Βοιωτίαν ὑπὸ [5] νεκρῶν πλήθους ἀπολελοιπώς;” ἐκ τούτου μεταβαλὼν ὁ Ἀρχέλαος καὶ προσκυνήσας ἐδεῖτο παύσασθαι τοῦ πολέμου καὶ διαλλαγῆναι πρὸς τὸν Μιθριδάτην. δεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα τὴν πρόκλησιν ἐγένοντο συνθῆκαι, Μιθριδάτην μὲν Ἀσίαν ἀφεῖναι καὶ Παφλαγονίαν, ἐκστῆναι δὲ Βιθυνίας Νικομήδει καὶ Καππαδοκίας Ἀριοβαρζάνῃ, καταβαλεῖν δὲ Ῥωμαίοις δισχίλια τάλαντα καὶ δοῦναι ναῦς ἑβδομήκοντα χαλκήρεις μετὰ τῆς οἰκείας παρασκευῆς, Σύλλαν δὲ ἐκείνῳ τήν τε ἄλλην ἀρχὴν βεβαιοῦν καὶ σύμμαχον Ῥωμαίων ψηφίζεσθαι.

[23] [1] Τούτων ὁμολογηθέντων ἀναστρέψας ἐβάδιζε διὰ Θετταλίας καὶ Μακεδονίας ἐπὶ τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον, ἔχων μεθ’ αὑτοῦ τὸν Ἀρχέλαον ἐν τιμῇ. καὶ νοσήσαντος ἐπισφαλῶς περὶ Λάρισσαν ἐπιστήσας τὴν πορείαν, ὡς ἑνὸς τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτὸν [2] ἡγεμόνων καὶ στρατηγῶν ἐπεμελήθη. ταῦτά τε δὴ διέβαλλε τὸ περὶ Χαιρώνειαν ἔργον ὡς οὐχὶ καθαρῶς ἀγωνισθέν, καὶ ὅτι τοὺς ἄλλους Μιθριδάτῃ φίλους, οὓς εἶχεν αἰχμαλώτους, ἀποδοὺς ὁ Σύλλας Ἀριστίωνα μόνον τὸν τύραννον ἀνεῖλε διὰ φαρμάκων Ἀρχελάῳ διάφορον ὄντα· μάλιστα δ’ ἡ δοθεῖσα γῆ τῷ Καππαδόκῃ μυρίων πλέθρων ἐν Εὐβοίᾳ, καὶ τὸ Ῥωμαίων φίλον αὐτὸν καὶ σύμμαχον ὑπὸ Σύλλα ἀναγραφῆναι. περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων αὐτὸς ὁ Σύλλας ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν ἀπολογεῖται.

[3] Τότε δὲ πρεσβευτῶν παρὰ τοῦ Μιθριδάτου παραγενομένων καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα φασκόντων δέχεσθαι, Παφλαγονίαν δὲ ἀξιούντων μὴ ἀφαιρεθῆναι, τὰς δὲ ναῦς οὐδὲ ὅλως ὁμολογηθῆναι, χαλεπήνας ὁ Σύλλας, “Τί φατε;” εἶπε, “Μιθριδάτης Παφλαγονίας ἀντιποιεῖται καὶ περὶ τῶν νεῶν ἔξαρνός ἐστιν, ὃν ἐγὼ προσκυνήσειν ἐνόμιζον, εἰ τὴν δεξιὰν αὐτῷ καταλείποιμι χεῖρα, δι’ ἧς [4] τοσούτους Ῥωμαίων ἀνεῖλεν; ἑτέρας μέντοι τάχα φωνὰς ἀφήσει διαβάντος εἰς Ἀσίαν ἐμοῦ· νῦν δὲ ἐν Περγάμῳ καθήμενος ὃν οὐχ ἑώρακε διαστρατηγεῖ πόλεμον.” οἱ μὲν οὖν πρέσβεις φοβηθέντες ἡσύχαζον, ὁ δὲ Ἀρχέλαος ἐδεῖτο τοῦ Σύλλα καὶ κατεπράϋνε τὴν ὀργήν, ἁπτόμενος τῆς δεξιᾶς αὐτοῦ καὶ δακρύων. τέλος δ’ ἔπεισεν ἀποσταλῆναι αὐτὸς πρὸς τὸν Μιθριδάτην· διαπράξεσθαι γὰρ ἐφ’ οἷς βούλεται τὴν εἰρήνην, εἰ δὲ μὴ [5] πείθοι, κτενεῖν αὐτὸς αὐτόν. ἐπὶ τούτοις ἐκπέμψας ἐκεῖνον αὐτὸς εἰς τὴν Μαιδικὴν ἐνέβαλε, καὶ τὰ πολλὰ διαπορθήσας πάλιν ἀνέστρεψεν εἰς Μακεδονίαν, καὶ τὸν Ἀρχέλαον ἐδέξατο περὶ Φιλίππους ἀγγέλλοντα καλῶς ἔχειν πάντα· δεῖσθαι δὲ πάντως αὐτῷ τὸν Μιθριδάτην εἰς [6] λόγους ἐλθεῖν. αἴτιος δ’ ἦν μάλιστα Φιμβρίας, ὃς τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ἑτέρας στάσεως ἄρχοντα Φλάκκον ἀνελὼν καὶ τῶν Μιθριδατικῶν στρατηγῶν κρατήσας ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον ἐβάδιζε. ταῦτα γὰρ δείσας ὁ Μιθριδάτης μᾶλλον εἵλετο τῷ Σύλλᾳ φίλος γενέσθαι.

[24] [1] Συνῆλθον οὖν τῆς Τρῳάδος ἐν Δαρδάνῳ, Μιθριδάτης μὲν ἔχων ναῦς αὐτόθι διακοσίας ἐνήρεις καὶ τῆς πεζῆς δυνάμεως ὁπλίτας μὲν δισμυρίους, ἱππεῖς δὲ ἑξακισχιλίους καὶ συχνὰ τῶν δρεπανηφόρων, Σύλλας δὲ τέσσαρας σπείρας καὶ διακοσίους ἱππεῖς. ἀπαντήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Μιθριδάτου καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν προτείναντος, ἠρώτησεν αὐτὸν εἰ καταλύσεται τὸν πόλεμον ἐφ’ οἷς ὡμολόγησεν Ἀρχέλαος· σιωπῶντος δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως, ὁ Σύλλας “Ἀλλὰ μήν,” ἔφη, “τῶν δεομένων ἐστὶ τὸ προτέρους λέγειν, τοῖς δὲ νικῶσιν [2] ἐξαρκεῖ τὸ σιωπᾶν.” ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀρξάμενος τῆς ἀπολογίας ὁ Μιθριδάτης ἐπειρᾶτο τοῦ πολέμου τὰ μὲν εἰς δαίμονας τρέπειν, τὰ δὲ αὐτοὺς αἰτιᾶσθαι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Σύλλας ἔφη πάλαι μὲν ἑτέρων ἀκούειν, νῦν δ’ αὐτὸς ἐγνωκέναι τὸν Μιθριδάτην δεινότατον ὄντα ῥητορεύειν, ὃς ἐπὶ πράξεσιν οὕτω πονηραῖς καὶ παρανόμοις [3] λόγων ἐχόντων εὐπρέπειαν οὐκ ἠπόρηκεν. ἐξελέγξας δὲ τὰ πεπραγμένα πικρῶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ κατηγορήσας, πάλιν ἠρώτησεν εἰ ποιεῖ τὰ συγκείμενα δι’ Ἀρχελάου. φήσαντος δὲ ποιεῖν, οὕτως ἠσπάσατο καὶ περιλαβὼν ἐφίλησεν αὐτόν, Ἀριοβαρζάνην δὲ αὖθις καὶ Νικομήδην τοὺς βασιλεῖς προσαγαγὼν διήλλαξεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Μιθριδάτης ἑβδομήκοντα ναῦς παραδοὺς καὶ τοξότας πεντακοσίους εἰς Πόντον ἀπέπλευσεν.

[4] Ὁ δὲ Σύλλας, αἰσθόμενος ἀχθομένους τοὺς στρατιώτας τῇ διαλύσει (τὸν γὰρ ἔχθιστον τῶν βασιλέων καὶ δεκαπέντε μυριάδας ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ τῶν ἐν Ἀσίᾳ Ῥωμαίων κατασφαγῆναι παρασκευάσαντα δεινὸν ἡγοῦντο μετὰ πλούτου καὶ λαφύρων ὁρᾶν ἐκπλέοντα τῆς Ἀσίας, ἣν ἔτη τέσσαρα λεηλατῶν καὶ φορολογῶν διετέλεσεν), ἀπελογεῖτο πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἅμα Φιμβρίᾳ καὶ Μιθριδάτῃ πολεμεῖν, εἰ συνέστησαν ἀμφότεροι κατ’ αὐτοῦ, δυνηθείς.

[25] [1] Ὁρμήσας δὲ ἐκεῖθεν ἐπὶ Φιμβρίαν πρὸς Θυατείροις στρατοπεδεύοντα καὶ πλησίον καταζεύξας, τάφρον τῷ στρατοπέδῳ περιέβαλεν. οἱ δὲ τοῦ Φιμβρίου στρατιῶται μονοχίτωνες ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου προϊόντες ἠσπάζοντο τοὺς ἐκείνου καὶ συνελάμβανον αὐτοῖς τῶν ἔργων προθύμως. ὁρῶν δὲ ὁ Φιμβρίας τὴν μεταβολὴν καὶ τὸν Σύλλαν ὡς ἀδιάλλακτον δεδοικὼς αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ διέφθειρε.

[2] Σύλλας δὲ κοινῇ μὲν ἐζημίωσε τὴν Ἀσίαν δισμυρίοις ταλάντοις, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τοὺς οἴκους ἐξέτριψεν ὕβρει καὶ πολιορκίᾳ τῶν ἐπισταθμευόντων. ἐτέτακτο γὰρ ἑκάστης ἡμέρας τῷ καταλύτῃ τὸν ξένον διδόναι τέσσαρα τετράδραχμα καὶ παρέχειν δεῖπνον αὐτῷ καὶ φίλοις, ὅσους ἂν ἐθέλῃ καλεῖν, ταξίαρχον δὲ πεντήκοντα δραχμὰς λαμβάνειν τῆς ἡμέρας, ἐσθῆτα δὲ ἄλλην μὲν οἰκουρῶν, ἄλλην δὲ εἰς ἀγορὰν προερχόμενος.

[26] [1] Ἀναχθεὶς δὲ πάσαις ταῖς ναυσὶν ἐξ Ἐφέσου τριταῖος ἐν Πειραιεῖ καθωρμίσθη· καὶ μυηθεὶς ἐξεῖλεν ἑαυτῷ τὴν Ἀπελλικῶνος τοῦ Τηΐου βιβλιοθήκην, ἐν ᾗ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ Θεοφράστου βιβλίων ἦν, οὔπω τότε σαφῶς γνωριζόμενα τοῖς πολλοῖς. λέγεται δὲ κομισθείσης αὐτῆς εἰς Ῥώμην Τυραννίωνα τὸν γραμματικὸν ἐνσκευάσασθαι τὰ πολλά, καὶ παρ’ αὐτοῦ τὸν Ῥόδιον Ἀνδρόνικον εὐπορήσαντα τῶν ἀντιγράφων εἰς μέσον θεῖναι καὶ ἀναγράψαι τοὺς [2] νῦν φερομένους πίνακας. οἱ δὲ πρεσβύτεροι Περιπατητικοὶ φαίνονται μὲν καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς γενόμενοι χαρίεντες καὶ φιλολόγοι, τῶν δὲ Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ Θεοφράστου γραμμάτων οὔτε πολλοῖς οὔτε ἀκριβῶς ἐντετυχηκότες διὰ τὸ τὸν Νηλέως τοῦ Σκηψίου κλῆρον, ᾧ τὰ βιβλία κατέλιπε Θεόφραστος, εἰς ἀφιλοτίμους καὶ ἰδιώτας ἀνθρώπους περιγενέσθαι.

[3] Σύλλᾳ δὲ διατρίβοντι περὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας ἄλγημα ναρκῶδες μετὰ βάρους εἰς τοὺς πόδας ἐνέπεσεν, ὅ φησιν ὁ Στράβων ποδάγρας ψελλισμὸν εἶναι. διαπλεύσας οὖν εἰς Αἴδηψον ἐχρῆτο τοῖς θερμοῖς ὕδασι, ῥᾳθυμῶν ἅμα καὶ συνδιημερεύων τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνίταις. περιπατοῦντος δὲ πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν ἁλιεῖς τινες ἰχθῦς αὐτῷ παγκάλους προσήνεγκαν. ἡσθεὶς δὲ τοῖς δώροις, καὶ πυθόμενος ὡς ἐξ Ἁλῶν εἶεν, “Ἔτι γὰρ ζῇ τις [4] Ἁλαίων;” ἔφη· ἐτύγχανε γάρ, ὅτε τὴν πρὸς Ὀρχομενῷ μάχην νενικηκὼς ἐδίωκε τοὺς πολεμίους, ἅμα τρεῖς πόλεις τῆς Βοιωτίας, Ἀνθηδόνα, Λάρυμναν, Ἁλὰς ἀνῃρηκώς. τῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων ὑπὸ δέους ἀφώνων γενομένων, διαμειδιάσας ἐκέλευσεν ἀπιέναι χαίροντας, ὡς οὐ μετὰ φαύλων οὐδὲ ἀξίων ὀλιγωρίας ἥκοντας παραιτητῶν. Ἁλαῖοι μὲν ἐκ τούτου λέγουσι θαρρήσαντες αὖθις εἰς τὴν πόλιν συνελθεῖν.

[27] [1] Σύλλας δὲ διὰ Θετταλίας καὶ Μακεδονίας καταβὰς ἐπὶ θάλατταν παρεσκευάζετο χιλίαις ναυσὶ καὶ διακοσίαις ἀπὸ Δυρραχίου διαβάλλειν εἰς Βρεντέσιον. ἡ δὲ Ἀπολλωνία πλησίον ἐστί, καὶ πρὸς αὐτῇ τὸ Νύμφαιον, ἱερὸς τόπος ἐκ χλοερᾶς νάπης καὶ λειμώνων ἀναδιδοὺς [2] πυρὸς πηγὰς σποράδας ἐνδελεχῶς ῥέοντος. ἐνταῦθά φασι κοιμώμενον ἁλῶναι σάτυρον, οἷον οἱ πλάσται καὶ γραφεῖς εἰκάζουσιν, ἀχθέντα δὲ ὡς Σύλλαν ἐρωτᾶσθαι δι’ ἑρμηνέων πολλῶν ὅστις εἴη· φθεγξαμένου δὲ μόλις οὐδὲν συνετῶς, ἀλλὰ τραχεῖάν τινα καὶ μάλιστα μεμιγμένην ἵππου τε χρεμετισμῷ καὶ τράγου μηκασμῷ φωνὴν ἀφέντος, ἐκπλαγέντα τὸν Σύλλαν ἀποδιοπομπήσασθαι.

[3] Μέλλοντος δὲ τοὺς στρατιώτας διαπεραιοῦν, καὶ δεδιότος μὴ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐπιλαβόμενοι κατὰ πόλεις ἕκαστοι διαρρυῶσι, πρῶτον μὲν ὤμοσαν ἀφ’ αὑτῶν παραμενεῖν καὶ μηδὲν ἑκουσίως κακουργήσειν τὴν Ἰταλίαν, ἔπειτα χρημάτων δεόμενον πολλῶν ὁρῶντες, ἀπήρχοντο καὶ συνεισέφερον ὡς ἕκαστος εἶχεν εὐπορίας. οὐ μὴν ἐδέξατο τὴν ἀπαρχὴν ὁ Σύλλας, ἀλλ’ ἐπαινέσας καὶ παρορμήσας διέβαινεν, ὥς φησιν αὐτός, ἐπὶ πεντεκαίδεκα στρατηγοὺς πολεμίους πεντήκοντα καὶ τετρακοσίας σπείρας ἔχοντας, ἐκδηλότατα τοῦ θεοῦ τὰς εὐτυχίας προσημαίνοντος αὐτῷ.

[4] θύσαντος μὲν γὰρ εὐθέως ᾗ διέβη περὶ Τάραντα, δάφνης στεφάνου τύπον ἔχων ὁ λοβὸς ὤφθη, καὶ λημνίσκων δύο κατηρτημένων. μικρὸν δὲ πρὸ τῆς διαβάσεως ἐν Καμπανίᾳ περὶ τὸ Τίφατον ὄρος ἡμέρας ὤφθησαν δύο τράγοι μεγάλοι συμφερόμενοι καὶ πάντα δρῶντες καὶ πάσχοντες ἃ συμβαίνει μαχομένοις ἀνθρώποις. ἦν δὲ ἄρα φάσμα, καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν αἰρόμενον ἀπὸ γῆς διεσπείρετο πολλαχοῦ τοῦ ἀέρος εἰδώλοις ἀμαυροῖς [5] ὅμοιον, εἶτα οὕτως ἠφανίσθη. καὶ μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἐν τῷ τόπῳ τούτῳ Μαρίου τοῦ νέου καὶ Νορβανοῦ τοῦ ὑπάτου μεγάλας δυνάμεις ἐπαγαγόντων, ὁ Σύλλας οὔτε τάξιν ἀποδοὺς οὔτε λοχίσας τὸ οἰκεῖον στράτευμα, ῥώμῃ δὲ προθυμίας κοινῆς καὶ φορᾷ τόλμης ἀποχρησάμενος ἐτρέψατο τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ κατέκλεισεν εἰς Καπύην πόλιν τὸν Νορβανόν, ἑπτακισχιλίους [6] ἀποκτείνας. τοῦτο αἴτιον αὐτῷ γενέσθαι φησὶ τοῦ μὴ διαλυθῆναι τοὺς στρατιώτας κατὰ πόλεις, ἀλλὰ συμμεῖναι καὶ καταφρονῆσαι τῶν ἐναντίων πολλαπλασίων ὄντων. ἐν δὲ Σιλβίῳ φησὶν οἰκέτην Ποντίου θεοφόρητον ἐντυχεῖν αὐτῷ λέγοντα παρὰ τῆς Ἐνυοῦς κράτος πολέμου καὶ νίκην ἀπαγγέλλειν· εἰ δὲ μὴ σπεύσειεν, ἐμπεπρήσεσθαι τὸ Καπιτώλιον· ὃ καὶ συμβῆναι τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης ἧς ὁ ἄνθρωπος προηγόρευσεν· ἦν δὲ αὕτη πρὸ μιᾶς νωνῶν Κυντιλίων, ἃς νῦν [7] Ἰουλίας καλοῦμεν. ἔτι δὲ Μάρκος Λεύκολλος, εἷς τῶν ὑπὸ Σύλλᾳ στρατηγούντων, περὶ Φιδεντίαν ἑκκαίδεκα σπείραις πρὸς πεντήκοντα τῶν πολεμίων ἀντιταχθεὶς τῇ μὲν προθυμίᾳ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἐπίστευεν, ἀνόπλους δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς ἔχων ὤκνει. βουλευομένου δὲ αὐτοῦ καὶ διαμέλλοντος, ἀπὸ τοῦ πλησίον πεδίου λειμῶνα ἔχοντος αὔρα φέρουσα μαλακὴ πολλὰ τῶν ἀνθέων ἐπέβαλε τῇ στρατιᾷ καὶ κατέσπειρεν, αὐτομάτως ἐπιμένοντα καὶ περιπίπτοντα τοῖς θυρεοῖς καὶ τοῖς κράνεσιν αὐτῶν, ὥστε φαίνεσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις [8] ἐστεφανωμένους. γενόμενοι δὲ ὑπὸ τούτου προθυμότεροι συνέβαλον· καὶ νικήσαντες ὀκτακισχιλίους ἐπὶ μυρίοις ἀπέκτειναν καὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον εἷλον. οὗτος ὁ Λεύκολλος ἀδελφὸς ἦν Λευκόλλου τοῦ Μιθριδάτην ὕστερον καὶ Τιγράνην καταπολεμήσαντος.

[28] [1] Ὁ δὲ Σύλλας ἔτι πολλοῖς στρατοπέδοις καὶ μεγάλαις δυνάμεσι περικεχυμένους αὐτῷ τοὺς πολεμίους ὁρῶν πανταχόθεν ἥπτετο δυνάμει καὶ δι’ ἀπάτης, προκαλούμενος εἰς διαλύσεις [2] τὸν ἕτερον τῶν ὑπάτων Σκηπίωνα. δεξαμένου δ’ ἐκείνου σύλλογοι μὲν ἐγίνοντο καὶ κοινολογίαι πλείονες, ἀεὶ δέ τινα παραγωγὴν καὶ πρόφασιν ἐμβάλλων ὁ Σύλλας διέφθειρε τοὺς περὶ Σκηπίωνα τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ στρατιώταις, ἠσκημένοις πρὸς ἀπάτην καὶ γοητείαν ἅπασαν ὥσπερ αὐτὸς ὁ ἡγεμών. εἰσιόντες γὰρ εἰς τὸν χάρακα τῶν πολεμίων καὶ ἀναμιγνυμένοι τοὺς μὲν εὐθὺς ἀργυρίῳ, τοὺς δὲ ὑποσχέσεσι, τοὺς δὲ κολακεύοντες [3] καὶ ἀναπείθοντες προσήγοντο. τέλος δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα μετὰ σπειρῶν εἴκοσι προσελθόντος ἐγγὺς οἱ μὲν ἠσπάσαντο τοὺς τοῦ Σκηπίωνος, οἱ δὲ ἀντασπασάμενοι προσεχώρησαν· ὁ δὲ Σκηπίων ἔρημος ἐν τῇ σκηνῇ ληφθεὶς ἠφείθη, Σύλλας δὲ ταῖς εἴκοσι σπείραις ὥσπερ ἠθάσιν ὄρνισι τεσσαράκοντα τὰς τῶν πολεμίων παλεύσας ἀπήγαγεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον ἅπαντας. ὅτε καὶ Κάρβωνά φασιν εἰπεῖν ὡς ἀλώπεκι καὶ λέοντι πολεμῶν ἐν τῇ Σύλλα ψυχῇ κατοικοῦσιν ὑπὸ τῆς ἀλώπεκος ἀνιῷτο μᾶλλον.

[4] Ἐκ τούτου περὶ Σίγνιον Μάριος ὀγδοήκοντα καὶ πέντε σπείρας ἔχων προὐκαλεῖτο Σύλλαν. ὁ δὲ καὶ πάνυ πρόθυμος ἦν διαγωνίσασθαι κατ’ ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν· ἐτύγχανε γὰρ ὄψιν ἑωρακὼς τοιάνδε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους. ἐδόκει τὸν γέροντα Μάριον τεθνηκότα πάλαι τῷ παιδὶ Μαρίῳ παραινεῖν φυλάξασθαι τὴν ἐπιοῦσαν ἡμέραν ὡς μεγάλην αὐτῷ δυστυχίαν φέρουσαν. διὰ τοῦτο μὲν δὴ πρόθυμος ὁ Σύλλας ἦν μάχεσθαι, καὶ μετεπέμπετο τὸν Δολοβέλλαν ἄπωθεν στρατοπεδεύοντα.

[5] τῶν δὲ πολεμίων ἐφισταμένων ταῖς ὁδοῖς καὶ ἀποφραττόντων οἱ τοῦ Σύλλα προσμαχόμενοι καὶ ὁδοποιοῦντες ἔκαμνον· καὶ πολὺς ὄμβρος ἅμα τοῖς ἔργοις ἐπιγενόμενος μᾶλλον ἐκάκωσεν αὐτούς. ὅθεν οἱ ταξίαρχοι προσιόντες τῷ Σύλλᾳ ἐδέοντο τὴν μάχην ἀναβαλέσθαι, δεικνύντες ἅμα τοὺς στρατιώτας ἐρριμμένους ὑπὸ κόπου καὶ προσαναπαυομένους χαμᾶζε τοῖς θυρεοῖς [6] κεκλιμένοις. ἐπεὶ δὲ συνεχώρησεν ἄκων καὶ πρόσταγμα καταζεύξεως ἔδωκεν, ἀρχομένων αὐτῶν τὸν χάρακα βάλλειν καὶ τάφρον ὀρύσσειν πρὸ τῆς στρατοπεδείας, ἐπήλαυνε σοβαρῶς ὁ Μάριος προϊππεύων ὡς ἀτάκτους καὶ τεθορυβημένους διασκεδάσων. ἐνταῦθα τῷ Σύλλᾳ τὴν κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους φωνὴν ὁ δαίμων συνετέλει. ὀργὴ γὰρ αὐτοῦ τοῖς στρατιώταις παρέστη, καὶ παυσάμενοι τῶν ἔργων τοὺς μὲν ὑσσοὺς κατέπηξαν ἐπὶ τῇ τάφρῳ, σπασάμενοι δὲ τὰ ξίφη καὶ συναλαλάξαντες ἐν χερσὶν ἦσαν τῶν πολεμίων.

[7] οἱ δὲ οὐ πολὺν ὑπέστησαν χρόνον, ἀλλὰ γίνεται πολὺς φόνος αὐτῶν τραπέντων. Μάριος δὲ φεύγων εἰς Πραινεστὸν ἤδη τὰς πύλας εὗρε κεκλειμένας· καλωδίου δὲ ἄνωθεν ἀφεθέντος ἐνζώσας ἑαυτὸν ἀνελήφθη πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος. ἔνιοι δέ φασιν, ὧν καὶ Φαινεστέλλας ἐστίν, οὐδὲ αἰσθέσθαι τῆς μάχης τὸν Μάριον, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀγρυπνιῶν καὶ κόπων ὑπὸ σκιᾷ τινι χαμαὶ κατακλινέντα τοῦ συνθήματος δοθέντος ἐνδοῦναι πρὸς ὕπνον, εἶτα μόλις [8] ἐξεγείρεσθαι τῆς φυγῆς γενομένης. ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ μάχῃ Σύλλας φησὶν εἰκοσιτρεῖς μόνους ἀποβαλεῖν, ἀποκτεῖναι δὲ τῶν πολεμίων δισμυρίους καὶ λαβεῖν ζῶντας ὀκτακισχιλίους. καὶ τἆλλα δὲ ὁμοίως εὐτυχεῖτο διὰ τῶν στρατηγῶν, Πομπηΐου, Κράσσου, Μετέλλου, Σερουϊλίου. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἢ μικρὰ προσκρούσαντες οὗτοι μεγάλας συνέτριψαν δυνάμεις τῶν πολεμίων, ὥστε τὸν μάλιστα τὴν ἐναντίαν στάσιν συνέχοντα Κάρβωνα νύκτωρ ἀποδράντα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ στρατιὰν εἰς Λιβύην ἐκπλεῦσαι.

[29] [1] Τὸν μέντοι τελευταῖον ἀγῶνα καθάπερ ἔφεδρος ἀθλητῇ καταπόνῳ προσενεχθεὶς ὁ Σαυνίτης Τελεσῖνος ἐγγὺς ἦλθε τοῦ σφῆλαι καὶ καταβαλεῖν ἐπὶ θύραις τῆς Ῥώμης. ἔσπευδε μὲν γὰρ ἅμα Λαμπωνίῳ τῷ Λευκανῷ χεῖρα πολλὴν ἀθροίσας ἐπὶ Πραινεστὸν ὡς ἐξαρπασόμενος τῆς [2] πολιορκίας τὸν Μάριον· ἐπεὶ δὲ ᾔσθετο Σύλλαν μὲν κατὰ στόμα, Πομπήϊον δὲ κατ’ οὐρὰν βοηδρομοῦντας ἐπ’ αὐτόν, εἰργόμενος τοῦ πρόσω καὶ ὀπίσω πολεμιστὴς ἀνὴρ καὶ μεγάλων ἀγώνων ἔμπειρος ἄρας νυκτὸς ἐπ’ αὐτὴν ἐχώρει παντὶ τῷ στρατοπίδῳ τὴν Ῥώμην. καὶ μικροῦ μὲν ἐδέησεν ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς ἀφύλακτον· ἀποσχὼν δὲ τῆς Κολλίνης πύλης δέκα σταδίους ἐπηυλίσατο τῇ πόλει, μεγαλοφρονῶν καὶ ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἐπηρμένος ὡς τοσούτους ἡγεμόνας καὶ τηλικούτους κατεστρατη[3]γηκώς. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν λαμπροτάτων νέων ἐξιππασαμένων ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς καὶ Κλαύδιον Ἄππιον, εὐγενῆ καὶ ἀγαθὸν ἄνδρα, κατέβαλε. θορύβου δ’, οἷον εἰκός, ὄντος ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ βοῆς γυναικείας καὶ διαδρομῶν ὡς ἁλισκομένων κατὰ κράτος, πρῶτος ὤφθη Βάλβος ἀπὸ Σύλλα προσελαύνων ἀνὰ κράτος ἱππεῦσιν ἑπτακοσίοις. διαλιπὼν δὲ ὅσον ἀναψῦξαι τὸν ἱδρῶτα τῶν ἵππων, εἴτ’ αὖθις ἐγχαλινώσας διὰ ταχέων ἐξήπτετο τῶν πολεμίων.

[4] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ καὶ Σύλλας ἐφαίνετο· καὶ τοὺς πρώτους εὐθὺς ἀριστᾶν κελεύων εἰς τάξιν καθίστη. πολλὰ δὲ Δολοβέλλα καὶ Τουρκουάτου δεομένων ἐπισχεῖν καὶ μὴ κατακόπους ἔχοντα τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀποκινδυνεῦσαι περὶ τῶν ἐσχάτων (οὐ γὰρ Κάρβωνα καὶ Μάριον, ἀλλὰ Σαυνίτας καὶ Λευκανούς, τὰ ἔχθιστα τῇ Ῥώμῃ καὶ τὰ πολεμικώτατα φῦλα, συμφέρεσθαι), παρωσάμενος αὐτοὺς ἐκέλευσε σημαίνειν τὰς σάλπιγγας ἀρχὴν ἐφόδου, σχεδὸν εἰς ὥραν δεκάτην ἤδη τῆς ἡμέρας καταστρεφούσης.

[5] γενομένου δὲ ἀγῶνος, οἷος οὐχ ἕτερος, τὸ μὲν δεξιόν, ἐν ᾧ Κράσσος ἐτέτακτο, λαμπρῶς ἐνίκα, τῷ δὲ εὐωνύμῳ πονοῦντι καὶ κακῶς ἔχοντι Σύλλας παρεβοήθει, λευκὸν ἵππον ἔχων θυμοειδῆ καὶ ποδωκέστατον· ἀφ’ οὗ γνωρίσαντες αὐτὸν δύο τῶν πολεμίων διετείνοντο τὰς λόγχας ὡς ἀφήσοντες. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν οὐ προενόησε, τοῦ δ’ ἱπποκόμου μαστίξαντος τὸν ἵππον ἔφθη παρενεχθεὶς τοσοῦτον ὅσον περὶ τὴν οὐρὰν τοῦ ἵππου τὰς αἰχμὰς συμπεσούσας εἰς τὴν γῆν παγῆναι.

[6] λέγεται δὲ ἔχων τι χρυσοῦν Ἀπόλλωνος ἀγαλμάτιον ἐκ Δελφῶν ἀεὶ μὲν αὐτὸ κατὰ τὰς μάχας περιφέρειν ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ, ἀλλὰ καὶ τότε τοῦτο καταφιλεῖν οὕτω δὴ λέγων· “Ὦ Πύθιε Ἄπολλον, τὸν εὐτυχῆ Σύλλαν Κορνήλιον ἐν τοσούτοις ἀγῶσιν ἄρας λαμπρὸν καὶ μέγαν ἐνταῦθα ῥίψεις ἐπὶ θύραις τῆς πατρίδος ἀγαγών, αἴσχιστα τοῖς [7] ἑαυτοῦ συναπολούμενον πολίταις;” τοιαῦτά φασι τὸν Σύλλαν θεοκλυτοῦντα τοὺς μὲν ἀντιβολεῖν, τοῖς δὲ ἀπειλεῖν, τῶν δὲ ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι· τέλος δὲ τοῦ εὐωνύμου συντριβέντος ἀναμιχθέντα τοῖς φεύγουσιν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον καταφυγεῖν, πολλοὺς ἀποβαλόντα τῶν ἑταίρων καὶ γνωρίμων. οὐκ ὀλίγοι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἐπὶ θέαν προελθόντες ἀπώλοντο καὶ κατεπατήθησαν, [8] ὥστε τὴν μὲν πόλιν οἴεσθαι διαπεπρᾶχθαι, παρ’ ὀλίγον δὲ καὶ τὴν Μαρίου πολιορκίαν λυθῆναι, πολλῶν ἐκ τῆς τροπῆς ὠσαμένων ἐκεῖ καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ τῇ πολιορκίᾳ τεταγμένον Ὀφέλλαν Λουκρήτιον ἀναζευγνύναι κατὰ τάχος κελευόντων, ὡς ἀπολωλότος τοῦ Σύλλα καὶ τῆς Ῥώμης ἐχομένης ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων.

[30] [1] Ἤδη δὲ νυκτὸς οὔσης βαθείας ἧκον εἰς τὸ τοῦ Σύλλα στρατόπεδον παρὰ τοῦ Κράσσου δεῖπνον αὐτῷ καὶ τοῖς στρατιώταις μετιόντες· ὡς γὰρ ἐνίκησε τοὺς πολεμίους, εἰς Ἄντεμναν καταδιώξαντες ἐκεῖ κατεστρατοπέδευσαν. ταῦτ’ οὖν πυθόμενος ὁ Σύλλας, καὶ ὅτι τῶν πολεμίων οἱ πλεῖστοι διολώλασιν, ἧκεν εἰς Ἄντεμναν ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ, καὶ τρισχιλίων ἐπικηρυκευσαμένων πρὸς αὐτὸν ὑπέσχετο δώσειν τὴν ἀσφάλειαν, εἰ κακόν τι τοὺς ἄλλους ἐργασάμενοι πολεμίους ἔλθοιεν πρὸς [2] αὐτόν. οἱ δὲ πιστεύσαντες ἐπέθεντο τοῖς λοιποῖς, καὶ πολλοὶ κατεκόπησαν ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτους καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τοὺς περιγενομένους εἰς ἑξακισχιλίους ἀθροίσας παρὰ τὸν ἱππόδρομον, ἐκάλει τὴν σύγκλητον εἰς τὸ τῆς Ἐνυοῦς ἱερόν. ἅμα δ’ αὐτός τε λέγειν ἐνήρχετο καὶ κατέκοπτον οἱ τεταγμένοι τοὺς ἑξακισχιλίους.

[3] κραυγῆς δέ, ὡς εἰκός, ἐν χωρίῳ μικρῷ τοσούτων σφαττομένων φερομένης καὶ τῶν συγκλητικῶν ἐκπλαγέντων, ὥσπερ ἐτύγχανε λέγων ἀτρέπτῳ καὶ καθεστηκότι τῷ προσώπῳ προσέχειν ἐκέλευσεν αὐτοὺς τῷ λόγῳ, τὰ δ’ ἔξω γινόμενα μὴ πολυπραγμονεῖν· νουθετεῖσθαι γὰρ αὐτοῦ κελεύσαντος ἐνίους τῶν πονηρῶν.

[4] Τοῦτο καὶ τῷ βραδυτάτῳ Ῥωμαίων νοῆσαι παρέστησεν ὡς ἀλλαγὴ τὸ χρῆμα τυραννίδος, οὐκ ἀπαλλαγὴ γέγονε. Μάριος μὲν οὖν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς χαλεπὸς ὢν ἐπέτεινεν, οὐ μετέβαλε τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ τὴν φύσιν· Σύλλας δὲ μετρίως τὰ πρῶτα καὶ πολιτικῶς ὁμιλήσας τῇ τύχῃ καὶ δόξαν ἀριστοκρατικοῦ καὶ δημωφελοῦς ἡγεμόνος [5] παρασχών, ἔτι δὲ καὶ φιλόγελως ἐκ νέου γενόμενος καὶ πρὸς οἶκτον ὑγρός, ὥστε ῥᾳδίως ἐπιδακρύειν, εἰκότως προσετρίψατο ταῖς μεγάλαις ἐξουσίαις διαβολὴν ὡς τὰ ἤθη μένειν οὐκ ἐώσαις ἐπὶ τῶν ἐξ ἀρχῆς τρόπων, ἀλλ’ ἔμπληκτα καὶ χαῦνα καὶ ἀπάνθρωπα ποιούσαις. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν εἴτε κίνησίς ἐστι καὶ μεταβολὴ φύσεως ὑπὸ τύχης, εἴτε μᾶλλον ὑποκειμένης ἀποκάλυψις ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ κακίας. ἑτέρα τις ἂν διορίσειε πραγματεία.

[31] [1] Τοῦ δὲ Σύλλα πρὸς τὸ σφάττειν τραπομένου καὶ φόνων οὔτε ἀριθμὸν οὔτε ὅρον ἐχόντων ἐμπιπλάντος τὴν πόλιν, ἀναιρουμένων πολλῶν καὶ κατ’ ἰδίας ἔχθρας, οἷς οὐδὲν ἦν πρᾶγμα πρὸς Σύλλαν, ἐφιέντος αὐτοῦ καὶ χαριζομένου τοῖς περὶ αὐτόν, ἐτόλμησε τῶν νέων εἷς, Γάϊος Μέτελλος, ἐν τῇ συγκλήτῳ τοῦ Σύλλα πυθέσθαι τί πέρας ἔσται τῶν κακῶν, καὶ ποῖ προελθόντος αὐτοῦ δεῖ πεπαῦσθαι τὰ γινόμενα [2] προσδοκᾶν. “Παραιτούμεθα γάρ,” εἶπεν, “οὐχ οὓς σὺ ἔγνωκας ἀναιρεῖν τῆς τιμωρίας, ἀλλὰ τῆς ἀμφιβολίας οὓς ἔγνωκας σώζειν.” ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα μηδέπω γινώσκειν οὓς ἀφίησιν, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Μέτελλος, “Οὐκοῦν,” ἔφη, “δήλωσον οὓς μέλλεις κολάζειν.” καὶ ὁ Σύλλας [3] ἔφη τοῦτο ποιήσειν. ἔνιοι δὲ οὐ τὸν Μέτελλον, ἀλλὰ Φουφίδιόν τινα τῶν πρὸς χάριν ὁμιλούντων τῷ Σύλλᾳ τὸ τελευταῖον εἰπεῖν λέγουσιν. ὁ δ’ οὖν Σύλλας εὐθὺς ὀγδοήκοντα προέγραψεν, οὐδενὶ τῶν ἐν τέλει κοινωσάμενος. ἀγανακτούντων δὲ πάντων, μίαν ἡμέραν διαλιπὼν ἄλλους προέγραψεν εἴκοσι καὶ διακοσίους, εἶτα τρίτῃ [4] πάλιν οὐκ ἐλάττους. ἐπὶ δὲ τούτοις δημηγορῶν εἶπεν ὅσους μεμνημένος τυγχάνοι προγράφειν, τοὺς δὲ νῦν διαλανθάνοντας αὖθις προγράψειν. προέγραψε δὲ τῷ μὲν ὑποδεξαμένῳ καὶ διασώσαντι τὸν προγεγραμμένον, ζημίαν τῆς φιλανθρωπίας ὁρίζων θάνατον, οὐκ ἀδελφόν, οὐχ υἱόν, οὐ γονεῖς ὑπεξελόμενος, τῷ δὲ ἀποκτείναντι γέρας δύο τάλαντα τῆς ἀνδροφονίας, κἂν δοῦλος δεσπότην κἂν πατέρα υἱὸς ἀνέλῃ. ὃ δὲ πάντων ἀδικώτατον ἔδοξε, τῶν γὰρ προγεγραμμένων ἠτίμωσε καὶ υἱοὺς καὶ υἱωνούς, καὶ τὰ χρήματα [5] πάντων ἐδήμευσε. προεγράφοντο δὲ οὐκ ἐν Ῥώμῃ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν πάσῃ πόλει τῆς Ἰταλίας· καὶ φονευομένων οὔτε ναὸς ἦν καθαρὸς θεοῦ οὔτε ἑστία ξένιος οὔτε οἶκος πατρῷος, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρὰ γυναιξὶ γαμεταῖς ἄνδρες ἐσφάττοντο καὶ παρὰ μητράσι παῖδες. ἦσαν δὲ οἱ δι’ ὀργὴν ἀπολλύμενοι καὶ δι’ ἔχθραν οὐδὲν μέρος τῶν διὰ χρήματα σφαττομένων, ἀλλὰ καὶ λέγειν ἐπῄει τοῖς κολάζουσιν ὡς τόνδε μὲν ἀνῄρηκεν οἰκία μεγάλη, τόνδε δὲ κῆπος, ἄλλον ὕδατα [6] θερμά. Κόϊντος δὲ Αὐρήλιος, ἀνὴρ ἀπράγμων καὶ τοσοῦτον αὐτῷ μετεῖναι τῶν κακῶν νομίζων ὅσον ἄλλοις συναλγεῖν ἀτυχοῦσιν, εἰς ἀγορὰν ἐλθὼν ἀνεγίνωσκε τοὺς προγεγραμμένους· εὑρὼν δὲ ἑαυτόν, “Οἴμοι τάλας,” εἶπε, “διώκει με τὸ ἐν Ἀλβανῷ χωρίον.” καὶ βραχὺ προελθὼν ὑπό τινος ἀπεσφάγη καταδιώξαντος.

[32] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Μάριος μὲν ἁλισκόμενος ἑαυτὸν διέφθειρε, Σύλλας δὲ εἰς Πραινεστὸν ἐλθὼν πρῶτα μὲν ἰδίᾳ κατ’ ἄνδρα κρίνων ἐκόλαζεν, εἶτα ὡς οὐ σχολῆς οὔσης πάντας ἀθρόως εἰς ταὐτὸ συναγαγών, μυρίους καὶ δισχιλίους ὄντας, ἐκέλευσεν ἀποσφάττειν, μόνῳ τῷ ξένῳ διδοὺς ἄδειαν. ὁ δὲ εὐγενῶς πάνυ φήσας πρὸς αὐτὸν ὡς οὐδέποτε σωτηρίας χάριν εἴσεται τῷ φονεῖ τῆς πατρίδος, ἀναμιχθεὶς ἑκὼν συγκατε[2]κόπη τοῖς πολίταις. ἔδοξε δὲ καινότατον γενέσθαι τὸ περὶ Λεύκιον Κατιλίναν. οὗτος γὰρ οὔπω τῶν πραγμάτων κεκριμένων ἀνῃρηκὼς ἀδελφὸν ἐδεήθη τοῦ Σύλλα τότε προγράψαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὡς ζῶντα· καὶ προεγράφη. τούτου δὲ τῷ Σύλλᾳ χάριν ἐκτίνων Μάρκον τινὰ Μάριον τῶν ἐκ τῆς ἐναντίας στάσεως ἀποκτείνας τὴν μὲν κεφαλὴν ἐν ἀγορᾷ καθεζομένῳ τῷ Σύλλᾳ προσήνεγκε, τῷ δὲ περιρραντηρίῳ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἐγγὺς ὄντι προσελθὼν ἀπενίψατο τὰς χεῖρας.

[33] [1] Ἔξω δὲ τῶν φονικῶν καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐλύπει. δικτάτορα μὲν γὰρ ἑαυτὸν ἀνηγόρευσε, δι’ ἐτῶν ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι τοῦτο τὸ γένος τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀναλαβών. ἐψηφίσθη δὲ αὐτῷ πάντων ἄδεια τῶν γεγονότων, πρὸς δὲ τὸ μέλλον ἐξουσία θανάτου, δημεύσεως, κληρουχιῶν, κτίσεως, πορθήσεως, ἀφελέσθαι βασιλείαν, [2] καὶ ᾧ βούλοιτο χαρίσασθαι. τὰς δὲ διαπράσεις τῶν δεδημευμένων οἴκων οὕτως ὑπερηφάνως ἐποιεῖτο καὶ δεσποτικῶς ἐπὶ βήματος καθεζόμενος, ὥστε τῶν ἀφαιρέσεων ἐπαχθεστέρας αὐτοῦ τὰς δωρεὰς εἶναι, καὶ γυναιξὶν εὐμόρφοις καὶ λυρῳδοῖς καὶ μίμοις καὶ καθάρμασιν ἐξελευθερικοῖς ἐθνῶν χώρας καὶ πόλεων χαριζομένου προσόδους, ἐνίοις δὲ γάμους ἀκουσίως [3] ζευγνυμένων γυναικῶν. Πομπήϊόν γέ τοι βουλόμενος οἰκειώσασθαι τὸν Μάγνον, ἣν μὲν εἶχε γαμετὴν ἀφεῖναι προσέταξεν, Αἰμιλίαν δέ, Σκαύρου θυγατέρα καὶ Μετέλλης τῆς ἑαυτοῦ γυναικός, ἀποσπάσας Μανίου Γλαβρίωνος ἐγκύμονα, συνῴκισεν αὐτῷ· ἀπέθανε δὲ ἡ κόρη παρὰ τῷ [4] Πομπηΐῳ τίκτουσα. Λουκρητίου δὲ Ὀφέλλα τοῦ Μάριον ἐκπολιορκήσαντος αἰτουμένου καὶ μετιόντος ὑπατείαν πρῶτον μὲν ἐκώλυεν· ὡς δὲ ἐκεῖνος ὑπὸ πολλῶν σπουδαζόμενος εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἐνέβαλε, πέμψας τινὰ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἑκατονταρχῶν ἀπέσφαξε τὸν ἄνδρα, καθεζόμενος αὐτὸς ἐπὶ βήματος ἐν τῷ Διοσκουρείῳ καὶ τὸν φόνον ἐφορῶν ἄνωθεν. τῶν δὲ ἀνθρώπων τὸν ἑκατοντάρχην συλλαβόντων καὶ προσαγαγόντων τῷ βήματι, σιωπῆσαι κελεύσας τοὺς θορυβοῦντας αὐτὸς ἔφη κελεῦσαι τοῦτο, καὶ τὸν ἑκατοντάρχην ἀφεῖναι προσέταξεν.

[34] [1] Ὁ μέντοι θρίαμβος αὐτοῦ τῇ πολυτελείᾳ καὶ καινότητι τῶν βασιλικῶν λαφύρων σοβαρὸς γενόμενος μείζονα κόσμον ἔσχε καὶ καλὸν θέαμα τοὺς φυγάδας. οἱ γὰρ ἐνδοξότατοι καὶ δυνατώτατοι τῶν πολιτῶν ἐστεφανωμένοι παρείποντο, σωτῆρα καὶ πατέρα τὸν Σύλλαν ἀποκαλοῦντες, ἅτε δὴ δι’ ἐκεῖνον εἰς τὴν πατρίδα κατιόντες καὶ κομιζόμενοι παῖδας καὶ γυναῖκας.

[2] ἤδη δὲ συνῃρημένων ἁπάντων, ἀπολογισμὸν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ τῶν πράξεων ποιούμενος οὐκ ἐλάσσονι σπουδῇ τὰς εὐτυχίας ἢ τὰς ἀνδραγαθίας κατηριθμεῖτο, καὶ πέρας ἐκέλευσεν ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ τούτοις Εὐτυχῆ προσαγορεύεσθαι· τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ Φῆλιξ μάλιστα βούλεται δηλοῦν· αὐτὸς δὲ τοῖς Ἕλλησι γράφων καὶ χρηματίζων ἑαυτὸν Ἐπαφρόδιτον ἀνηγόρευε, καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν τοῖς τροπαίοις οὕτως ἀναγέγραπται· ΛΕΥΚΙΟΣ ΚΟΡΝΗΛΙΟΣ [3] ΣΥΛΛΑΣ ΕΠΑΦΡΟΔΙΤΟΣ. ἔτι δὲ τῆς Μετέλλης παιδία τεκούσης δίδυμα τὸ μὲν ἄρρεν Φαῦστον, τὸ δὲ θῆλυ Φαῦσταν ὠνόμασε· τὸ γὰρ εὐτυχὲς καὶ ἱλαρὸν Ῥωμαῖοι φαῦστον καλοῦσιν. οὕτω δὲ ἄρα οὐ ταῖς πράξεσιν ὡς τοῖς εὐτυχήμασιν ἐπίστευεν, ὥστε, παμπόλλων μὲν ἀνῃρημένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, καινοτομίας δὲ γενομένης καὶ μεταβολῆς ἐν τῇ πόλει τοσαύτης, ἀποθέσθαι τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ τὸν δῆμον ἀρχαιρεσιῶν ὑπατικῶν ποιῆσαι κύριον, αὐτὸς δὲ μὴ προσελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἀγορᾷ τὸ σῶμα παρέχων τοῖς βουλομένοις ὑπεύθυνον ὥσπερ ἰδιώτης ἀναστρέφεσθαι.

[4] καί τις παρὰ γνώμην αὐτοῦ θρασὺς ἀνὴρ καὶ πολέμιος ἐπίδοξος ἦν ὕπατος αἱρεθήσεσθαι, Μάρκος Λέπιδος, οὐ δι’ ἑαυτόν, ἀλλὰ Πομπηΐῳ σπουδάζοντι καὶ δεομένῳ τοῦ δήμου χαριζομένου.

[5] διὸ καὶ χαίροντα τῇ νίκῃ τὸν Πομπήϊον ὁ Σύλλας ἰδὼν ἀπιόντα καλέσας πρὸς ἑαυτόν, “Ὡς καλόν,” ἔφη, “σοῦ τὸ πολίτευμα, ὦ νεανία, τὸ Κάτλου πρότερον ἀναγορεῦσαι Λέπιδον, τοῦ πάντων ἀρίστου τὸν ἐμπληκτότατον. ὥρα μέντοι σοι μὴ καθεύδειν ὡς ἰσχυρότερον πεποιηκότι κατὰ σαυτοῦ τὸν ἀνταγωνιστήν.” τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ὁ Σύλλας ὥσπερ ἀπεθέσπισε· ταχὺ γὰρ ἐξυβρίσας ὁ Λέπιδος εἰς πόλεμον κατέστη τοῖς περὶ τὸν Πομπήϊον.

[35] [1] Ἀποθύων δὲ τῆς οὐσίας ἁπάσης ὁ Σύλλας τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ δεκάτην ἑστιάσεις ἐποιεῖτο τῷ δήμῳ πολυτελεῖς· καὶ τοσοῦτον περιττὴ ἦν ἡ παρασκευὴ τῆς χρείας ὥστε παμπληθῆ καθ’ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν ὄψα ῥιπτεῖσθαι, πίνεσθαι δὲ οἶνον ἐτῶν τεσσαράκοντα καὶ παλαιότερον.

[2] διὰ μέσου δὲ τῆς θοίνης πολυημέρου γενομένης ἀπέθνησκεν ἡ Μετέλλα νόσῳ· καὶ τῶν ἱερέων τὸν Σύλλαν οὐκ ἐώντων αὐτῇ προσελθεῖν οὐδὲ τὴν οἰκίαν τῷ κήδει μιανθῆναι, γραψάμενος διάλυσιν τοῦ γάμου πρὸς αὐτὴν ὁ Σύλλας ἔτι ζῶσαν ἐκέλευσεν εἰς ἑτέραν οἰκίαν μετακομισθῆναι. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἀκριβῶς τὸ νόμιμον ὑπὸ δεισιδαιμονίας ἐτήρησε· τὸν δὲ τῆς ταφῆς ὁρίζοντα τὴν δαπάνην νόμον αὐτὸς εἰσενηνοχὼς παρέβη, [3] μηδενὸς ἀναλώματος φεισάμενος. παρέβαινε δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τῆς εὐτελείας τῶν δείπνων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τεταγμένα, πότοις καὶ συνδείπνοις τρυφὰς καὶ βωμολοχίας ἔχουσι παρηγορῶν τὸ πένθος.

Ὀλίγων δὲ μηνῶν διαγενομένων ἦν μὲν θέα μονομάχων, οὔπω δὲ τῶν τόπων διακεκριμένων, ἀλλ’ ἔτι τοῦ θεάτρου συμμιγοῦς ἀνδράσι καὶ γυναιξὶν ὄντος, ἔτυχε πλησίον τοῦ Σύλλα καθεζομένη γυνὴ τὴν ὄψιν εὐπρεπὴς καὶ γένους λαμπροῦ· [4] Μεσσάλα γὰρ ἦν θυγάτηρ, Ὁρτησίου δὲ τοῦ ῥήτορος ἀδελφή, Οὐαλλερία δὲ τοὔνομα· συνεβεβήκει δὲ αὐτῇ νεωστὶ πρὸς ἄνδρα διάστασις. αὕτη παρὰ τὸν Σύλλαν ἐξόπισθεν παραπορευομένη τήν τε χεῖρα πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀπηρείσατο καὶ κροκύδα τοῦ ἱματίου σπάσασα παρῆλθεν ἐπὶ τὴν ἑαυτῆς χώραν. ἐμβλέψαντος δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα καὶ θαυμάσαντος, “Οὐδέν,” ἔφη, “δεινόν, αὐτόκρατορ, ἀλλὰ βούλομαι τῆς σῆς κἀγὼ μικρὸν [5] εὐτυχίας μεταλαβεῖν.” τοῦτο ἤκουσεν οὐκ ἀηδῶς ὁ Σύλλας, ἀλλὰ καὶ δῆλος εὐθὺς ἦν ὑποκεκνισμένος· ἠρώτα γὰρ ὑποπέμπων αὐτῆς ὄνομα, καὶ γένος καὶ βίον ἐμάνθανεν. ἐκ δὲ τούτων ῥίψεις ὀμμάτων ἐπ’ ἀλλήλους ἐγίνοντο καὶ παρεπιστροφαὶ συνεχεῖς προσώπων καὶ μειδιαμάτων διαδόσεις, τέλος δὲ ὁμολογίαι καὶ συνθέσεις περὶ γάμων, ἐκείνῃ μὲν ἴσως ἄμεμπτοι, Σύλλας δέ, εἰ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα σώφρονα καὶ γενναίαν, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐκ σώφρονος καὶ καλῆς ἔγημεν ἀρχῆς, ὄψει καὶ λαμυρίᾳ μειρακίου δίκην παραβληθείς, ὑφ’ ὧν τὰ αἴσχιστα καὶ ἀναιδέστατα πάθη κινεῖσθαι πέφυκεν.

[36] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ ταύτην ἔχων ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας συνῆν μίμοις γυναιξὶ καὶ κιθαριστρίαις καὶ θυμελικοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ἐπὶ στιβάδων ἀφ’ ἡμέρας συμπίνων. οὗτοι γὰρ οἱ τότε παρ’ αὐτῷ δυνάμενοι μέγιστον ἦσαν, Ῥώσκιος ὁ κωμῳδὸς καὶ Σῶριξ ὁ ἀρχιμῖμος καὶ Μητρόβιος ὁ λυσιῳδός, οὗ καίπερ ἐξώρου γενομένου διετέλει μέχρι παντὸς [2] ἐρᾶν οὐκ ἀρνούμενος. ὅθεν καὶ τὴν νόσον ἀπ’ αἰτίας ἐλαφρᾶς ἀρξαμένην ἐξέθρεψε, καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἠγνόει περὶ τὰ σπλάγχνα γεγονὼς ἔμπυος, ὑφ’ ἧς καὶ τὴν σάρκα διαφθαρεῖσαν εἰς φθεῖρας μετέβαλε πᾶσαν, ὥστε πολλῶν δι’ ἡμέρας ἅμα καὶ νυκτὸς ἀφαιρούντων μηδὲν εἶναι μέρος τοῦ ἐπιγινομένου τὸ ἀποκρινόμενον, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν ἐσθῆτα καὶ λουτρὸν καὶ ἀπόνιμμα καὶ σιτίον ἀναπίμπλασθαι τοῦ ῥεύματος ἐκείνου καὶ τῆς [3] φθορᾶς· τοσοῦτον ἐξήνθει. διὸ πολλάκις τῆς ἡμέρας εἰς ὕδωρ ἐνέβαινεν ἐκκλύζων τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἀπορρυπτόμενος. ἦν δὲ οὐδὲν ὄφελος· ἐκράτει γὰρ ἡ μεταβολὴ τῷ τάχει, καὶ περιεγίνετο παντὸς καθαρμοῦ τὸ πλῆθος. Λέγεται δὲ τῶν μὲν πάνυ παλαιῶν Ἄκαστον φθειριάσαντα τὸν Πελίου τελευτῆσαι, τῶν δὲ ὑστέρων Ἀλκμᾶνα τὸν μελοποιὸν καὶ Φερεκύδην τὸν θεολόγον καὶ Καλλισθένη τὸν Ὀλύνθιον ἐν εἱρκτῇ φρουρούμενον, ἔτι δὲ Μούκιον τὸν νομικόν.

[4] εἰ δὲ δεῖ καὶ τῶν ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς μὲν χρηστοῦ γνωρίμων δὲ ἄλλως ἐπιμνησθῆναι, λέγεται τὸν ἄρξαντα τοῦ δουλικοῦ πολέμου περὶ Σικελίαν δραπέτην, Εὔνουν ὄνομα, μετὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν εἰς Ῥώμην ἀγόμενον ὑπὸ φθειριάσεως ἀποθανεῖν.

[37] [1] Ὁ δὲ Σύλλας οὐ μόνον προέγνω τὴν ἑαυτοῦ τελευτήν, ἀλλὰ τρόπον τινὰ καὶ γέγραφε περὶ αὐτῆς. τὸ γὰρ εἰκοστὸν καὶ δεύτερον τῶν ὑπομνημάτων πρὸ δυεῖν ἡμερῶν ἢ ἐτελεύτα γράφων ἐπαύσατο· καί φησι τοὺς Χαλδαίους αὐτῷ προειπεῖν ὡς δέοι βεβιωκότα καλῶς αὐτὸν ἐν ἀκμῇ τῶν εὐτυχημάτων καταστρέψαι· [2] λέγει δὲ καὶ τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ, τεθνηκότα μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν τῆς Μετέλλης, φανῆναι κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ἐν ἐσθῆτι φαύλῃ παρεστῶτα καὶ δεόμενον τοῦ πατρὸς παύσασθαι τῶν φροντίδων, ἰόντα δὲ σὺν αὐτῷ παρὰ τὴν μητέρα Μετέλλαν ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ καὶ ἀπραγμόνως ζῆν μετ’ αὐτῆς. οὐ [3] μὴν ἐπαύσατό γε τοῦ πράττειν τὰ δημόσια. δέκα μὲν γὰρ ἡμέραις ἔμπροσθεν τῆς τελευτῆς τοὺς ἐν Δικαιαρχείᾳ στασιάζοντας διαλλάξας νόμον ἔγραψεν αὐτοῖς καθ’ ὃν πολιτεύσονται· πρὸ μιᾶς δὲ ἡμέρας πυθόμενος τὸν ἄρχοντα Γράνιον, ὡς ὀφείλων δημόσιον χρέος οὐκ ἀποδίδωσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀναμένει τὴν αὐτοῦ τελευτήν, μετεπέμψατο τὸν ἄνθρωπον εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον· καὶ περιστήσας τοὺς ὑπηρέτας ἐκέλευσε πνίγειν, τῇ δὲ κραυγῇ καὶ τῷ σπαραγμῷ τὸ ἀπόστημα ῥήξας πλῆθος αἵματος [4] ἐξέβαλεν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου τῆς δυνάμεως ἐπιλιπούσης διαγαγὼν τὴν νύκτα μοχθηρῶς ἀπέθανε, δύο παῖδας ἐκ τῆς Μετέλλης νηπίους καταλιπών. ἡ γὰρ Οὐαλλερία μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν αὐτοῦ θυγάτριον ἀπεκύησεν, ὃ Πόστουμαν ἐκάλουν· τοὺς γὰρ ὕστερον τῆς τῶν πατέρων τελευτῆς γενομένους οὕτω Ῥωμαῖοι προσαγορεύουσιν.

[38] [1] Ὥρμησαν μὲν οὖν πολλοὶ καὶ συνέστησαν πρὸς Λέπιδον ὡς εἵρξοντες τὸ σῶμα κηδείας τῆς νενομισμένης· Πομπήϊος δέ, καίπερ ἐγκαλῶν τῷ Σύλλᾳ (μόνον γὰρ αὐτὸν ἐν ταῖς διαθήκαις τῶν φίλων παρέλιπε), τοὺς μὲν χάριτι καὶ δεήσει, τοὺς δὲ ἀπειλῇ διακρουσάμενος εἰς Ῥώμην παρέπεμψε τὸ σῶμα, καὶ ταῖς ταφαῖς [2] ἀσφάλειαν ἅμα καὶ τιμὴν παρέσχε. λέγεται δὲ τοσοῦτο πλῆθος ἀρωμάτων ἐπενεγκεῖν τὰς γυναῖκας αὐτῷ ὥστε ἄνευ τῶν ἐν φορήμασι δέκα καὶ διακοσίοις διακομιζομένων πλασθῆναι μὲν εἴδωλον εὐμέγεθες αὐτοῦ Σύλλα, πλασθῆναι δὲ καὶ ῥαβδοῦχον ἔκ τε λιβανωτοῦ πολυτελοῦς καὶ κινναμώμου. τῆς δὲ ἡμέρας συννεφοῦς ἕωθεν οὔσης, ὕδωρ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ προσδοκῶντες ἐνάτης [3] ἦραν μόλις ὥρας τὸν νεκρόν. ἀνέμου δὲ λαμπροῦ καταιγίσαντος εἰς τὴν πυρὰν καὶ φλόγα πολλὴν ἐγείραντος ἔφθη τὸ σῶμα συγκομισθὲν ὅσον ἤδη τῆς πυρᾶς μαραινομένης καὶ τοῦ πυρὸς ἀπιόντος ἐκχυθῆναι πολὺν ὄμβρον καὶ κατασχεῖν ἄχρι νυκτός, ὥστε τὴν τύχην αὐτοῦ δοκεῖν τὸ σῶμα [4] συνθάπτειν παραμένουσαν. τὸ μὲν οὖν μνημεῖον ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ τοῦ Ἄρεώς ἐστι· τὸ δὲ ἐπίγραμμά φασιν αὐτὸν ὑπογραψάμενον καταλιπεῖν, οὗ κεφάλαιόν ἐστιν ὡς οὔτε τῶν φίλων τις αὐτὸν εὖ ποιῶν οὔτε τῶν ἐχθρῶν κακῶς ὑπερεβάλετο.

Comparison Lysandri et Sullae

[1] [1]  Ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὸν τούτου διεληλύθαμεν βίον, ἴωμεν ἤδη πρὸς τὴν σύγκρισιν. τὸ μὲν οὖν ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν αὐξήσεως ἀρχὴν λαβοῦσι μεγάλοις γενέσθαι κοινὸν ἀμφοτέροις ὑπῆρξεν, ἴδιον δὲ Λυσάνδρου τὸ βουλομένων τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ ὑγιαινόντων ὅσας ἔσχεν ἀρχὰς λαβεῖν, βιάσασθαι δὲ μηδὲν ἀκόντων μηδ’ ἰσχῦσαι παρὰ τοὺς νόμους.

[5] Ἐν δὲ διχοστασίῃ καὶ ὁ πάγκακος ἔλλαχε τιμῆς,

ὥσπερ ἐν Ῥώμῃ τότε διεφθαρμένου τοῦ δήμου καὶ νοσοῦντος αὐτοῖς τοῦ πολιτεύματος ἄλλος ἀλλαχόθεν ἀνίστατο δυνάστης. καὶ οὐδὲν ἦν θαυμαστὸν εἰ Σύλλας ἦρχεν, ὅτε Γλαυκίαι καὶ Σατορνῖνοι Μετέλλους ἤλαυνον ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, ὑπάτων δὲ ἀπεσφάττοντο παῖδες ἐν ἐκκλησίαις, ἀργυρίῳ δὲ καὶ χρυσίῳ τὰ ὅπλα παρελάμβανον ὠνούμενοι τοὺς στρατευομένους, πυρὶ δὲ καὶ σιδήρῳ τοὺς νόμους ἐτίθεσαν βιαζόμενοι τοὺς [6] ἀντιλέγοντας. οὐκ αἰτιῶμαι δὲ τὸν ἐν τοιούτοις πράγμασι μέγιστον ἰσχῦσαι διαπραξάμενον, ἀλλὰ σημεῖον οὐ τίθεμαι τοῦ βέλτιστον εἶναι τὸ γενέσθαι πρῶτον οὕτω πονηρὰ πραττούσης τῆς πόλεως. ὁ δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς Σπάρτης εὐνομουμένης τότε μάλιστα καὶ σωφρονούσης ἐπὶ τὰς μεγίστας ἐκπεμπόμενος ἡγεμονίας καὶ πράξεις σχεδὸν ἀρίστων ἄριστος ἐκρίνετο καὶ πρώτων πρῶτος.

[7] ὅθεν ὁ μὲν πολλάκις τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀποδοὺς τοῖς πολίταις ἀνέλαβε πολλάκις· διέμενε γὰρ ἡ τιμὴ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἔχουσα τὸ πρωτεῖον· ὁ δὲ ἅπαξ αἱρεθεὶς στρατεύματος ἡγεμών, ἔτη συνεχῶς δέκα, νῦν μὲν ὕπατον, νῦν δὲ δικτάτορα ποιῶν ἑαυτόν, ἀεὶ δὲ ὢν τύραννος, ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἔμενεν.

[2] [1] Ἐπεχείρησε μὲν οὖν ὁ Λύσανδρος, ὡς εἴρηται, μεταστῆσαι τὰ περὶ τὴν πολιτείαν πρᾳότερον καὶ νομιμώτερον ἢ Σύλλας· πειθοῖ γάρ, οὐ δι’ ὅπλων οὐδὲ πάντα συλλήβδην ἀναιρῶν, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνος, ἀλλ’ αὐτὴν ἐπανορθούμενος τὴν κατάστασιν τῶν βασιλέων· ὃ καὶ φύσει που δίκαιον ἐδόκει, τὸν ἐξ ἀρίστων ἄριστον ἄρχειν ἐν πόλει τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἡγουμένῃ δι’ ἀρετήν, οὐ [2] δι’ εὐγένειαν. ὥσπερ γὰρ κυνηγὸς οὐ ζητεῖ τὸ ἐκ κυνός, ἀλλὰ κύνα, καὶ ἱππικὸς ἵππον, οὐ τὸ ἐξ ἵππου· τί γάρ, ἂν ἐξ ἵππου ἡμίονος γένηται; οὕτως ὁ πολιτικὸς ἁμαρτήσεται τοῦ παντός, ἐὰν μὴ ζητῇ τὸν ἄρχοντα τίς ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ ἐκ τίνος. αὐτοί γέ τοι Σπαρτιᾶται βασιλεύοντας ἐνίους ἀφείλοντο τὴν ἀρχήν, ὡς οὐ βασιλικούς, ἀλλὰ φαύλους καὶ τὸ μηδὲν ὄντας. εἰ δὲ κακία καὶ μετὰ γένους ἄτιμον, οὐδ’ ἀρετὴ δι’ εὐγένειαν, ἀλλ’ ἀφ’ ἑαυτῆς ἔντιμον.

[3] Αἱ τοίνυν ἀδικίαι τῷ μὲν ὑπὲρ φίλων, τῷ δ’ ἄχρι φίλων ἐπράχθησαν. Λύσανδρος μὲν γὰρ ὁμολογεῖται τὰ πλεῖστα διὰ τοὺς ἑταίρους ἐξαμαρτεῖν καὶ τὰς πλείστας σφαγὰς ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐκείνων ἀπεργάσασθαι δυναστείας καὶ τυραννίδος· [4] Σύλλας δὲ καὶ Πομπηΐου περιέκοψε τὸ στρατιωτικὸν φθονήσας, καὶ Δολοβέλλα τὴν ναυαρχίαν ἐπεχείρησε δοὺς ἀφελέσθαι, καὶ Λουκρήτιον Ὀφέλλαν ἀντὶ πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων ὑπατείαν μνώμενον ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς ἀποσφάξαι προσέταξε, φρίκην καὶ δέος ἐμποιῶν πρὸς αὑτὸν ἀνθρώποις ἅπασι διὰ τῆς τῶν φιλτάτων ἀναιρέσεως.

[3] [1] Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἡ περὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς καὶ τὰ χρήματα σπουδὴ δείκνυσι τοῦ μὲν ἡγεμονικήν, τοῦ δὲ τυραννικὴν τὴν προαίρεσιν οὖσαν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀκόλαστον οὐδὲ μειρακιῶδες ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ καὶ δυνάμει τηλικαύτῃ φαίνεται διαπεπραγμένος, ἀλλ’, εἰ δή τις ἄλλος, ἐκπεφευγὼς τουτὶ τὸ περίακτον· “Οἴκοι λέοντες, ἐν ὑπαίθρῳ δὲ ἀλώπεκες·” οὕτω σώφρονα καὶ Λακωνικὴν καὶ κεκολασμένην ἐπεδείκνυτο πανταχοῦ τὴν δίαιταν.

[2] ὁ δὲ οὔτε νέος ὢν περὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας ἐμετρίαζε διὰ τὴν πενίαν οὔτε γηράσας διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς περὶ γάμων καὶ σωφροσύνης εἰσηγεῖτο νόμους τοῖς πολίταις αὐτὸς ἐρῶν καὶ μοιχεύων, ὥς φησι Σαλούστιος. ὅθεν οὕτω τὴν πόλιν πτωχὴν καὶ κενὴν ἐποίησε χρημάτων ὥστε ταῖς συμμαχίσι καὶ φίλαις πόλεσιν ἀργυρίου πωλεῖν τὴν ἐλευθερίαν καὶ τὴν αὐτονομίαν, καίτοι τοὺς πολυαργυρωτάτους οἴκους καὶ μεγίστους ὁσημέραι [3] δημεύοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀποκηρύττοντος. ἀλλὰ μέτρον οὐδὲν ἦν τῶν ῥιπτουμένων καὶ καταχορηγουμένων εἰς τοὺς κόλακας. τίνα γὰρ εἰκὸς εἶναι λογισμὸν ἢ φειδὼ πρὸς τὰς παρ’ οἶνον συνουσίας αὐτοῦ καὶ χάριτας, ὃς ἐν φανερῷ ποτε τοῦ δήμου περιεστῶτος οὐσίαν μεγάλην διαπιπράσκων τιμῆς τῆς τυχούσης εἰς ἕνα τῶν φίλων ἐκέλευε κατακηρύσσειν, ἑτέρου δὲ τὴν τιμὴν ὑπερβαλομένου καὶ τοῦ κήρυκος τὸ προστεθὲν ἀγορεύσαντος διηγανάκτησε, “Δεινά γε, ὦ φίλοι πολῖται, καὶ τυραννικὰ πάσχω,” φάμενος, “εἰ τὰ ἐμά μοι λάφυρα διαθέσθαι μὴ ἔξεστιν ὡς βούλομαι.”

[4] Λύσανδρος δὲ καὶ τὰς αὐτῷ δοθείσας δωρεὰς μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἀπέπεμψε τοῖς πολίταις. καὶ οὐκ ἐπαινῶ τὸ ἔργον· ἴσως γὰρ ἔβλαψε τῇ κτήσει τῶν χρημάτων τὴν Σπάρτην οὗτος ὅσον οὐκ ἔβλαψε τῇ ἀφαιρέσει τὴν Ῥώμην ἐκεῖνος· ἀλλὰ τεκμήριον τοῦτο ποιοῦμαι τῆς ἀφιλοπλουτίας [5] τοῦ ἀνδρός. ἴδιον δέ τι πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ πόλιν ἑκάτερος ἔπαθε. Σύλλας μὲν γὰρ ἀκόλαστος ὢν καὶ πολυτελὴς ἐσωφρόνιζε τοὺς πολίτας, Λύσανδρος δ’ ὧν αὐτὸς ἀπείχετο παθῶν ἐνέπλησε τὴν πόλιν, ὥστε ἁμαρτάνειν τὸν μὲν αὐτὸν ὄντα χείρονα τῶν ἰδίων νόμων, τὸν δὲ αὑτοῦ χείρονας ἀπεργαζόμενον τοὺς πολίτας· δεῖσθαι γὰρ ἐδίδαξε τὴν Σπάρτην ὧν αὐτὸς ἔμαθε μὴ προσδεῖσθαι. καὶ τὰ μὲν πολιτικὰ ταῦτα.

[4] [1] Πολέμων δὲ ἀγῶσι καὶ στρατηγικαῖς πράξεσι καὶ πλήθει τροπαίων καὶ μεγέθει κινδύνων ἀσύγκριτος ὁ Σύλλας. ὁ μέντοι γε δύο νίκας ἐξηνέγκατο ναυμαχίαις δυσί· προσθήσω δὲ αὐτῷ τὴν Ἀθηνῶν πολιορκίαν, ἔργῳ μὲν οὐ μεγάλην, τῇ δὲ δόξῃ λαμπροτάτην γενομένην.

[2] τὰ δ’ ἐν Βοιωτίᾳ καὶ Ἁλιάρτῳ δυστυχίᾳ μὲν ἴσως ἐπράχθη τινί, κακοβουλίᾳ δὲ προσέοικεν οὐκ ἀναμείναντος ὅσον οὔπω παροῦσαν ἐκ Πλαταιῶν τὴν μεγάλην τοῦ βασιλέως δύναμιν, ἀλλὰ θυμῷ καὶ φιλοτιμίᾳ παρὰ καιρὸν ὠσαμένου πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος, ὥστε τοὺς τυχόντας ἀνθρώπους ἐκπηδήσαντας ἐν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ καταβαλεῖν αὐτόν. οὐ γὰρ ὡς Κλεόμβροτος ἐν Λεύκτροις ἀντερείδων ἐπικειμένοις τοῖς πολεμίοις, οὐδὲ ὡς Κῦρος οὐδὲ ὡς Ἐπαμεινώνδας κατέχων ἐγκεκλικότας καὶ τὸ νίκημα βεβαιούμενος πληγῇ καιρίᾳ περιέπεσεν· [3] ἀλλ’ οὗτοι μὲν βασιλέων καὶ στρατηγῶν θάνατον ἀπέθνησκον, Λύσανδρος δὲ πελταστοῦ καὶ προδρόμου δίκην ἀκλεῶς παραναλώσας ἑαυτόν, ἐμαρτύρησε τοῖς παλαιοῖς Σπαρτιάταις ὅτι καλῶς ἐφυλάττοντο τὰς τειχομαχίας, ἐν αἷς οὐχ ὑπ’ ἀνδρὸς μόνον τοῦ τυχόντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὑπὸ παιδὸς καὶ γυναικὸς ἀποθανεῖν ἂν συντύχοι πληγέντα τὸν κράτιστον, ὥσπερ τὸν Ἀχιλλέα φασὶν ὑπὸ τοῦ Πάριδος ἐν ταῖς πύλαις ἀναιρεθῆναι.

[4] Σύλλας μὲν οὖν ὅσας ἐκ παρατάξεως ἐνίκησε νίκας καὶ κατέβαλε μυριάδας πολεμίων οὐδὲ ἀριθμῆσαι ῥᾴδιόν ἐστιν· αὐτὴν δὲ τὴν Ῥώμην δὶς εἷλε, καὶ τὸν Πειραιᾶ τῶν Ἀθηνῶν οὐ λιμῷ καθάπερ Λύσανδρος, ἀλλὰ πολλοῖς ἀγῶσι καὶ μεγάλοις, ἐκβαλὼν Ἀρχέλαον ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἐπὶ τὴν θάλατταν, κατέσχεν. ἔστι δὲ μέγα καὶ τὸ τῶν ἀντιστρατήγων. τρυφὴν γὰρ οἶμαι καὶ παιδιὰν πρὸς Ἀντίοχον διαναυμαχεῖν τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδου κυβερνήτην, καὶ Φιλοκλέα τὸν Ἀθηναίων ἐξαπατᾶν δημαγωγόν,

Ἄδοξον, ἄκραν γλῶσσαν ἠκονημένον·

οὓς οὐκ ἂν ἱπποκόμῳ Μιθριδάτης οὐδὲ ῥαβδούχῳ [5] Μάριος ἠξίωσε παραβαλεῖν τῶν ἑαυτοῦ. τῶν δὲ πρὸς Σύλλαν ἀνταραμένων δυναστῶν, ὑπάτων, στρατηγῶν, δημαγωγῶν, ἵνα τοὺς ἄλλους ἐάσω, τίς ἦν Ῥωμαίων Μαρίου φοβερώτερος ἢ Μιθριδάτου βασιλέων δυνατώτερος ἢ Λαμπωνίου καὶ Τελεσίνου τῶν Ἰταλικῶν μαχιμώτερος; ὧν ἐκεῖνος τὸν μὲν ἐξέβαλε, τὸν δὲ ὑπέταξε, τοὺς δὲ ἀπέκτεινε.

[5] [1] Τὸ δὲ πάντων μέγιστον, ὡς ἐγὼ νομίζω, τῶν εἰρημένων ἐκεῖνό ἐστιν, ὅτι Λύσανδρος μὲν κατώρθου πάντα τῶν οἴκοι συναγωνιζομένων, Σύλλας δὲ φυγὰς ὢν καὶ κατεστασιασμένος ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν, καθ’ ὃν χρόνον ἠλαύνετο μὲν αὐτοῦ γυνή, κατεσκάπτετο δὲ οἰκία, φίλοι δὲ ἀπέθνησκον, αὐτὸς ἐν Βοιωτίᾳ ταῖς ἀναριθμήτοις μυριάσι παρατασσόμενος καὶ κινδυνεύων ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος, [2] ἵστη τρόπαιον, καὶ Μιθριδάτῃ συμμαχίαν διδόντι καὶ δύναμιν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς οὐδὲν οὐδαμῆ μαλακὸν ἐνέδωκεν οὐδὲ φιλάνθρωπον, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ προσεῖπεν οὐδὲ τὴν δεξιὰν ἐνέβαλε πρότερον ἢ πυθέσθαι παρόντος ὅτι καὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν ἀφίησι καὶ τὰς ναῦς παραδίδωσι καὶ τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν [3] ἐξίσταται καὶ Βιθυνίας καὶ Καππαδοκίας. ὧν οὐδὲν ὅλως δοκεῖ Σύλλας κάλλιον ἔργον οὐδὲ ἀπὸ μείζονος εἰργάσθαι φρονήματος, ὅτι τὸ κοινὸν τοῦ οἰκείου πρόσθεν θέμενος, καὶ καθάπερ οἱ γενναῖοι κύνες οὐκ ἀνεὶς τὸ δῆγμα καὶ τὴν λαβὴν πρότερον ἢ τὸν ἀνταγωνιστὴν ἀπειπεῖν, τότε [4] πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἰδίων ἄμυναν ὥρμησεν. ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ καὶ τὸ περὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας ἔχει τινὰ ῥοπὴν εἰς ἤθους σύγκρισιν· εἴγε Σύλλας μὲν ὑπὲρ τῆς Μιθριδάτου δυνάμεως καὶ ἡγεμονίας πολεμήσασαν αὐτῷ τὴν πόλιν ἑλὼν ἐλευθέραν ἀφῆκε καὶ αὐτόνομον, Λύσανδρος δὲ τοσαύτης ἡγεμονίας καὶ ἀρχῆς ἐκπεσοῦσαν οὐκ ᾤκτειρεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν δημοκρατίαν ἀφελόμενος ὠμοτάτους αὐτῇ καὶ παρανόμους ἀπέδειξε τοὺς τυράννους.

[5] Ὥρα δὴ σκοπεῖν, μὴ οὐ πολὺ τἀληθοῦς διαμαρτάνωμεν ἀποφαινόμενοι πλέονα μὲν κατωρθωκέναι Σύλλαν, ἐλάττονα δὲ ἐξημαρτηκέναι Λύσανδρον, καὶ τῷ μὲν ἐγκρατείας καὶ σωφροσύνης, τῷ δὲ στρατηγίας καὶ ἀνδρείας ἀποδιδόντες τὸ πρωτεῖον.

Cimon

[1] [1] Περιπόλτας ὁ μάντις ἐκ Θεσσαλίας εἰς Βοιωτίαν Ὀφέλταν τὸν βασιλέα καὶ τοὺς ὑπ’ αὐτῷ λαοὺς καταγαγών, γένος εὐδοκιμῆσαν ἐπὶ πολλοὺς χρόνους κατέλιπεν, οὗ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ κατῴκησεν, ἣν πρώτην πόλιν [2] ἔσχον ἐξελάσαντες τοὺς βαρβάρους. οἱ μὲν οὖν πλεῖστοι τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ γένους, φύσει μάχιμοι καὶ ἀνδρώδεις γενόμενοι, καταναλώθησαν ἐν ταῖς Μηδικαῖς ἐπιδρομαῖς καὶ τοῖς Γαλατικοῖς ἀγῶσιν, ἀφειδήσαντες αὑτῶν· λείπεται δὲ παῖς ὀρφανὸς γονέων ὄνομα Δάμων, παρωνύμιον δὲ Περιπόλτας, πολὺ δή τι καὶ σώματος κάλλει καὶ ψυχῆς φρονήματι τοὺς καθ’ αὑτὸν ὑπεραίρων νέους, ἄλλως [3] δ’ ἀπαίδευτος καὶ σκληρὸς τὸ ἦθος. τούτου Ῥωμαῖος ἡγεμὼν σπείρας τινὸς ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ διαχειμαζούσης ἐρασθείς, ἄρτι τὴν παιδικὴν ἡλικίαν παρηλλαχότος, ὡς οὐκ ἔπειθε πειρῶν καὶ διδούς, δῆλος ἦν οὐκ ἀφεξόμενος βίας, ἅτε δὴ καὶ τῆς πατρίδος ἡμῶν τότε λυπρὰ πραττούσης καὶ διὰ μικρότητα καὶ πενίαν παρορωμένης.

[4] τοῦτο δὴ δεδιὼς ὁ Δάμων καὶ τὴν πεῖραν αὐτὴν δι’ ὀργῆς πεποιημένος, ἐπεβούλευε τῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ συνίστη τῶν ἡλικιωτῶν τινας ἐπ’ αὐτόν, οὐ πολλοὺς ἕνεκα τοῦ λαθεῖν, ἀλλ’ οἱ σύμπαντες ἑκκαίδεκα γενόμενοι χρίονται μὲν αἰθάλῳ τὰ πρόσωπα νυκτός, ἐμπιόντες δ’ ἄκρατον ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ προσπίπτουσι τῷ Ῥωμαίῳ κατ’ ἀγορὰν θύοντι, καὶ καταβαλόντες αὐτόν τε καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν [5] ὀλίγους, ἐκ τῆς πόλεως μετέστησαν. γενομένης δὲ ταραχῆς, ἡ τῶν Χαιρωνέων βουλὴ συνελθοῦσα θάνατον αὐτῶν κατέγνω· καὶ τοῦτ’ ἦν ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως ἀπολόγημα πρὸς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους. ἑσπέρας δὲ τῶν ἀρχόντων ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστὶ κοινῇ δειπνούντων, οἱ περὶ τὸν Δάμωνα παρεισπεσόντες εἰς τὸ ἀρχεῖον ἀπέσφαξαν αὐτούς, καὶ πάλιν ᾤχοντο φεύγοντες ἐκ τῆς πόλεως.

[6] Ἔτυχε δὲ περὶ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας Λεύκιος Λεύκολλος ἐπί τινα πρᾶξιν μετὰ δυνάμεως παρερχόμενος. ἐπιστήσας δὲ τὴν πορείαν καὶ τῶν γεγονότων προσφάτων ὄντων ἐξέτασιν ποιησάμενος, εὗρε τὴν πόλιν οὐδενὸς αἰτίαν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον συνηδικημένην, καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας [7] ἀναλαβὼν ἀπήγαγε μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ. τὸν δὲ Δάμωνα λῃστείαις καὶ καταδρομαῖς πορθοῦντα τὴν χώραν καὶ τῇ πόλει προσκείμενον ὑπηγάγοντο πρεσβείαις καὶ ψηφίσμασι φιλανθρώποις οἱ πολῖται, κατελθόντα δὲ γυμνασίαρχον [7] κατέστησαν· εἶτ’ ἀλειφόμενον ἐν τῷ πυριατηρίῳ διέφθειραν.

[8] ἐπὶ πολὺν δὲ χρόνον εἰδώλων τινῶν ἐν τῷ τόπῳ προφαινομένων καὶ στεναγμῶν ἐξακουομένων, ὡς οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν λέγουσι, τὰς θύρας ἀπῳκοδόμησαν τοῦ πυριατηρίου, καὶ μέχρι νῦν οἱ τῷ τόπῳ γειτνιῶντες οἴονταί τινας ὄψεις καὶ φωνὰς ταραχώδεις φέρεσθαι.

[9] τοὺς δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ γένους αὐτοῦ - διασῴζονται γὰρ ἔνιοι, μάλιστα τῆς Φωκίδος περὶ Στεῖριν - αἰολίζοντες Ἀσβολωμένους καλοῦσι διὰ τὸ τὸν Δάμωνα πρὸς τὸν φόνον ἀσβόλῳ χρισάμενον ἐξελθεῖν.

[2] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀστυγείτονες ὄντες Ὀρχομένιοι καὶ διάφοροι τοῖς Χαιρωνεῦσιν ἐμισθώσαντο Ῥωμαϊκὸν συκοφάντην, ὁ δ’ ὥσπερ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου τὸ τῆς πόλεως ὄνομα κατενεγκὼν ἐδίωκε φόνου τῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ Δάμωνος ἀνῃρημένων, ἡ δὲ κρίσις ἦν ἐπὶ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τῆς Μακεδονίας - οὔπω γὰρ εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα Ῥωμαῖοι στρατηγοὺς διεπέμποντο - , οἱ δὲ λέγοντες ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως ἐπεκαλοῦντο τὴν Λευκόλλου μαρτυρίαν, γράψαντος δὲ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ πρὸς Λεύκολλον, ἐκεῖνος ἐμαρτύρησε τἀληθῆ, καὶ τὴν δίκην οὕτως ἀπέφυγεν ἡ πόλις κινδυνεύουσα περὶ τῶν μεγίστων.

[2] Ἐκεῖνοι μὲν οὖν οἱ τότε σωθέντες εἰκόνα τοῦ Λευκόλλου λιθίνην ἐν ἀγορᾷ παρὰ τὸν Διόνυσον ἀνέστησαν· ἡμεῖς δ’ εἰ καὶ πολλαῖς ἡλικίαις λειπόμεθα, τὴν μὲν χάριν οἰόμεθα διατείνειν καὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς τοὺς νῦν ὄντας, εἰκόνα δὲ πολὺ καλλίονα νομίζοντες εἶναι τῆς τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ἀπομιμουμένης τὴν τὸ ἦθος καὶ τὸν τρόπον ἐμφανίζουσαν, ἀναληψόμεθα τῇ γραφῇ τῶν παραλλήλων βίων τὰς πράξεις τοῦ ἀνδρός, τἀληθῆ διεξιόντες.

[3] ἀρκεῖ γὰρ ἡ τῆς μνήμης χάρις· ἀληθοῦς δὲ μαρτυρίας οὐδ’ ἂν αὐτὸς ἐκεῖνος ἠξίωσε μισθὸν λαβεῖν ψευδῆ καὶ πεπλασμένην ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ διήγησιν. ὥσπερ γὰρ τοὺς τὰ καλὰ καὶ πολλὴν ἔχοντα χάριν εἴδη ζῳγραφοῦντας, ἂν προσῇ τι μικρὸν αὐτοῖς δυσχερές, ἀξιοῦμεν μήτε [4] παραλιπεῖν τοῦτο τελέως μήτ’ ἐξακριβοῦν· τὸ μὲν γὰρ αἰσχράν, τὸ δ’ ἀνομοίαν παρέχεται τὴν ὄψιν· οὕτως ἐπεὶ χαλεπόν ἐστι, μᾶλλον δ’ ἴσως ἀμήχανον, ἀμεμφῆ καὶ καθαρὸν ἀνδρὸς ἐπιδεῖξαι βίον, ἐν τοῖς καλοῖς ἀναπληρωτέον [5] ὥσπερ ὁμοιότητα τὴν ἀλήθειαν. τὰς δ’ ἐκ πάθους τινὸς ἢ πολιτικῆς ἀνάγκης ἐπιτρεχούσας ταῖς πράξεσιν ἁμαρτίας καὶ κῆρας ἐλλείμματα μᾶλλον ἀρετῆς τινος ἢ κακίας πονηρεύματα νομίζοντας οὐ δεῖ πάνυ προθύμως ἐναποσημαίνειν τῇ ἱστορίᾳ καὶ περιττῶς, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ αἰδουμένους ὑπὲρ τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης φύσεως, εἰ καλὸν οὐδὲν εἰλικρινὲς οὐδ’ ἀναμφισβήτητον εἰς ἀρετὴν ἦθος γεγονὸς ἀποδίδωσιν.

[3] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Λεύκολλος ἐδόκει σκοποῦσιν ἡμῖν τῷ Κίμωνι παραβλητέος εἶναι. πολεμικοὶ γὰρ ἀμφότεροι καὶ πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους λαμπροί, πρᾷοι δὲ τὰ πολιτικὰ καὶ μάλιστα τῶν ἐμφυλίων στάσεων ἀναπνοὴν ταῖς πατρίσι παρασχόντες, ἐκτὸς δὲ τῆς αὑτῶν στήσαντες τρόπαια [2] καὶ νίκας ἀνελόμενοι περιβοήτους. οὔτε γὰρ Ἑλλήνων Κίμωνος οὔτε Ῥωμαίων Λευκόλλου πρότερος οὐδεὶς οὕτω μακρὰν πολεμῶν προῆλθεν, ἔξω λόγου τιθεμένων τῶν καθ’ Ἡρακλέα καὶ Διόνυσον, εἴ τέ τι Περσέως πρὸς Αἰθίοπας ἢ ‹πρὸς› Μήδους καὶ Ἀρμενίους [ἢ] Ἰάσονος ἔργον ἀξιόπιστον ἐκ τῶν τότε χρόνων [3] μνήμῃ φερόμενον εἰς τοὺς νῦν ἀφῖκται. κοινὸν δέ πως αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ ἀτελὲς γέγονε τῆς στρατηγίας, ἑκατέρου μὲν συντρίψαντος, οὐδετέρου δὲ καταλύσαντος τὸν ἀνταγωνιστήν. μάλιστα δ’ ἡ περὶ τὰς ὑποδοχὰς καὶ τὰς φιλανθρωπίας [ταύτας] ὑγρότης καὶ δαψίλεια καὶ τὸ νεαρὸν καὶ ἀνειμένον ἐν τῇ διαίτῃ παραπλήσιον ἐπ’ ἀμφοτέρων ἰδεῖν ὑπάρχει. παραλείπομεν δ’ ἴσως καὶ ἄλλας τινὰς ὁμοιότητας, ἃς οὐ χαλεπὸν ἐκ τῆς διηγήσεως αὐτῆς συναγαγεῖν.

[4] [1] Κίμων ὁ Μιλτιάδου μητρὸς ἦν Ἡγησιπύλης, γένος Θρᾴττης, θυγατρὸς Ὀλόρου τοῦ βασιλέως, ὡς ἐν τοῖς Ἀρχελάου (PLG II 259 B4`4) καὶ Μελανθίου (PLG II 258 B4`4) ποιήμασιν εἰς αὐτὸν Κίμωνα γεγραμμένοις ἱστόρηται.

[2] διὸ καὶ Θουκυδίδης ὁ ἱστορικός, τοῖς περὶ Κίμωνα κατὰ γένος προσήκων, Ὀλόρου τε πατρὸς ἦν, εἰς τὸν πρόγονον ἀναφέροντος τὴν ὁμωνυμίαν, καὶ τὰ χρυσεῖα [3] περὶ τὴν Θρᾴκην ἐκέκτητο, καὶ τελευτῆσαι μὲν ἐν τῇ Σκαπτῇ ὕλῃ - τοῦτο δ’ ἔστι τῆς Θρᾴκης χωρίον - λέγεται φονευθεὶς ἐκεῖ, μνῆμα δ’ αὐτοῦ τῶν λειψάνων εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν κομισθέντων ἐν τοῖς Κιμωνείοις δείκνυται [4] παρὰ τὸν Ἐλπινίκης τῆς Κίμωνος ἀδελφῆς τάφον. ἀλλὰ Θουκυδίδης μὲν Ἁλιμούσιος γέγονε τῶν δήμων, οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Μιλτιάδην Λακιάδαι.

Μιλτιάδης μὲν οὖν πεντήκοντα ταλάντων ὀφλὼν δίκην καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἔκτισιν εἱρχθείς, ἐτελεύτησεν ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ, Κίμων δὲ μειράκιον παντάπασιν ἀπολειφθεὶς μετὰ τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἔτι κόρης οὔσης καὶ ἀγάμου, τὸν πρῶτον ἠδόξει χρόνον ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ κακῶς ἤκουεν ὡς ἄτακτος καὶ πολυπότης καὶ τῷ πάππῳ Κίμωνι προσεοικὼς τὴν φύσιν, ὃν δι’ εὐήθειάν φασι Κοάλεμον προσαγορευθῆναι.

[5] Στησίμβροτος δ’ ὁ Θάσιος (FGrH 107 F 4), περὶ τὸν αὐτὸν ὁμοῦ τι χρόνον τῷ Κίμωνι γεγονώς, φησὶν αὐτὸν οὔτε μουσικὴν οὔτ’ ἄλλο τι μάθημα τῶν ἐλευθερίων καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐπιχωριαζόντων ἐκδιδαχθῆναι, δεινότητός τε καὶ στωμυλίας Ἀττικῆς ὅλως ἀπηλλάχθαι, καὶ τῷ τρόπῳ πολὺ τὸ γενναῖον καὶ ἀληθὲς ἐνυπάρχειν, καὶ μᾶλλον εἶναι Πελοποννήσιον τὸ σχῆμα τῆς ψυχῆς τοῦ ἀνδρός,

φαῦλον, ἄκομψον, τὰ μέγιστ’ ἀγαθόν,

κατὰ τὸν Εὐριπίδειον Ἡρακλέα (fr. 473 N²)· ταῦτα γὰρ ἔστι τοῖς ὑπὸ τοῦ Στησιμβρότου γεγραμμένοις ἐπειπεῖν.

[6] Ἔτι δὲ νέος ὢν αἰτίαν ἔσχε πλησιάζειν τῇ ἀδελφῇ· καὶ γὰρ οὐδ’ ἄλλως τὴν Ἐλπινίκην εὔτακτόν τινα γεγονέναι λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς Πολύγνωτον ἐξαμαρτεῖν τὸν ζῳγράφον, καὶ διὰ τοῦτό φασιν ἐν τῇ Πεισιανακτείῳ τότε καλουμένῃ (Ποικίλῃ δὲ νῦν) στοᾷ γράφοντα τὰς Τρῳάδας τὸ τῆς Λαοδίκης ποιῆσαι πρόσωπον ἐν εἰκόνι [7] τῆς Ἐλπινίκης. ὁ δὲ Πολύγνωτος οὐκ ἦν τῶν βαναύσων, οὐδ’ ἀπ’ ἐργολαβίας ἔγραφε τὴν στοάν, ἀλλὰ προῖκα, φιλοτιμούμενος πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, ὡς οἵ τε συγγραφεῖς ἱστοροῦσι καὶ Μελάνθιος ὁ ποιητὴς (fg. 1 D.) λέγει τὸν τρόπον τοῦτον·

αὑτοῦ γὰρ δαπάναισι θεῶν ναοὺς ἀγοράν τε

Κεκροπίαν κόσμησ’ ἡμιθέων ἀρεταῖς.

[8] εἰσὶ δ’ οἳ τὴν Ἐλπινίκην οὐ κρύφα τῷ Κίμωνι, φανερῶς δὲ γημαμένην συνοικῆσαι λέγουσιν, ἀξίου τῆς εὐγενείας νυμφίου διὰ τὴν πενίαν ἀποροῦσαν· ἐπεὶ δὲ Καλλίας τῶν εὐπόρων τις Ἀθήνησιν ἐρασθεὶς προσῆλθε, τὴν ὑπὲρ τοῦ πατρὸς καταδίκην ἐκτίνειν ἕτοιμος ὢν πρὸς τὸ δημόσιον, αὐτήν τε πεισθῆναι, καὶ τὸν Κίμωνα τῷ Καλλίᾳ [9] συνοικίσαι τὴν Ἐλπινίκην. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅλως φαίνεται τοῖς περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἐρωτικοῖς ὁ Κίμων ἔνοχος γενέσθαι. καὶ γὰρ Ἀστερίας τῷ γένει Σαλαμινίας καὶ πάλιν Μνήστρας τινὸς ὁ ποιητὴς Μελάνθιος (PLG II 258 B4`4) μνημονεύει πρὸς τὸν Κίμωνα παίζων [10] δι’ ἐλεγείας ὡς σπουδαζομένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ. δῆλος δ’ ἐστὶ καὶ πρὸς Ἰσοδίκην, τὴν Εὐρυπτολέμου μὲν θυγατέρα τοῦ Μεγακλέους, κατὰ νόμους δ’ αὐτῷ συμβιώσασαν, ὁ Κίμων ἐμπαθέστερον διατεθεὶς καὶ δυσφορήσας ἀποθανούσης, εἴ τι δεῖ τεκμαίρεσθαι ταῖς γεγραμμέναις ἐπὶ παρηγορίᾳ τοῦ πένθους ἐλεγείαις πρὸς αὐτόν, ὧν Παναίτιος ὁ φιλόσοφος (fr. 125 v. Str.) οἴεται ποιητὴν γεγονέναι τὸν φυσικὸν Ἀρχέλαον (PLG II 259 B4`4), οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου τοῖς χρόνοις εἰκάζων.

[5] [1] Τὰ δ’ ἄλλα πάντα τοῦ ἤθους ἀγαστὰ καὶ γενναῖα τοῦ Κίμωνος. οὔτε γὰρ τόλμῃ Μιλτιάδου λειπόμενος, οὔτε συνέσει Θεμιστοκλέους, δικαιότερος ἀμφοῖν ὁμολογεῖται γενέσθαι, καὶ ταῖς πολεμικαῖς οὐδὲ μικρὸν ἀποδέων ἀρεταῖς ἐκείνων, ἀμήχανον ὅσον ἐν ταῖς πολιτικαῖς [2] ὑπερβαλέσθαι νέος ὢν ἔτι καὶ πολέμων ἄπειρος. ὅτε γὰρ τὸν δῆμον ἐπιόντων Μήδων Θεμιστοκλῆς ἔπειθε προέμενον τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὴν χώραν ἐκλιπόντα πρὸ τῆς Σαλαμῖνος ἐν ταῖς ναυσὶ τὰ ὅπλα θέσθαι καὶ διαγωνίσασθαι κατὰ θάλατταν, ἐκπεπληγμένων τῶν πολλῶν τὸ τόλμημα, πρῶτος Κίμων ὤφθη διὰ τοῦ Κεραμεικοῦ φαιδρὸς ἀνιὼν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν μετὰ τῶν ἑταίρων, ἵππου τινὰ χαλινὸν ἀναθεῖναι τῇ θεῷ διὰ χειρῶν κομίζων, ὡς οὐδὲν ἱππικῆς ἀλκῆς, ἀλλὰ ναυμάχων ἀνδρῶν ἐν τῷ [3] παρόντι τῆς πόλεως δεομένης. ἀναθεὶς δὲ τὸν χαλινὸν καὶ λαβὼν ἐκ τῶν περὶ τὸν ναὸν κρεμαμένων ἀσπίδα καὶ προσευξάμενος τῇ θεῷ, κατέβαινεν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν, οὐκ ὀλίγοις ἀρχὴ τοῦ θαρρεῖν γενόμενος. ἦν δὲ καὶ τὴν ἰδέαν οὐ μεμπτός, ὡς Ἴων ὁ ποιητής (FGrH 392 F 12) φησιν, ἀλλὰ μέγας, οὔλῃ καὶ πολλῇ τριχὶ κομῶν τὴν [4] κεφαλήν. φανεὶς δὲ καὶ κατ’ αὐτὸν τὸν ἀγῶνα λαμπρὸς καὶ ἀνδρώδης, ταχὺ δόξαν ἐν τῇ πόλει μετ’ εὐνοίας ἔσχεν, ἀθροιζομένων πολλῶν πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ παρακαλούντων ἄξια τοῦ Μαραθῶνος ἤδη διανοεῖσθαι καὶ πράσσειν.

[5] ὁρμήσαντα δ’ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν πολιτείαν ἄσμενος ὁ δῆμος ἐδέξατο, καὶ μεστὸς ὢν τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους ἀνῆγεν ‹εἰς› τὰς μεγίστας ἐν τῇ πόλει τιμὰς καὶ ἀρχάς, εὐάρμοστον ὄντα καὶ προσφιλῆ τοῖς πολλοῖς διὰ πρᾳότητα [6] καὶ ἀφέλειαν. οὐχ ἥκιστα δ’ αὐτὸν ηὔξησεν Ἀριστείδης ὁ Λυσιμάχου, τὴν εὐφυΐαν ἐνορῶν τῷ ἤθει καὶ ποιούμενος οἷον ἀντίπαλον πρὸς τὴν Θεμιστοκλέους δεινότητα καὶ τόλμαν.

[6] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Μήδων φυγόντων ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐπέμφθη στρατηγός, κατὰ θάλατταν οὔπω τὴν ἀρχὴν Ἀθηναίων ἐχόντων, ἔτι δὲ Παυσανίᾳ τε καὶ Λακεδαιμονίοις ἑπομένων, πρῶτον μὲν ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις ἀεὶ παρεῖχε τοὺς πολίτας κόσμῳ τε θαυμαστοὺς καὶ προθυμίᾳ πολὺ [2] πάντων διαφέροντας· ἔπειτα Παυσανίου τοῖς μὲν βαρβάροις διαλεγομένου περὶ προδοσίας καὶ βασιλεῖ γράφοντος ἐπιστολάς, τοῖς δὲ συμμάχοις τραχέως καὶ αὐθαδῶς προσφερομένου καὶ πολλὰ δι’ ἐξουσίαν καὶ ὄγκον ἀνόητον ὑβρίζοντος, ὑπολαμβάνων πρᾴως τοὺς ἀδικουμένους καὶ φιλανθρώπως ἐξομιλῶν, ἔλαθεν οὐ δι’ ὅπλων τὴν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἡγεμονίαν, ἀλλὰ λόγῳ καὶ ἤθει παρελόμενος.

[3] προσετίθεντο γὰρ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν συμμάχων ἐκείνῳ τε καὶ Ἀριστείδῃ, τὴν χαλεπότητα καὶ ὑπεροψίαν τοῦ Παυσανίου μὴ φέροντες. οἱ δὲ καὶ τούτους ἅμα προσήγοντο, καὶ τοῖς ἐφόροις πέμποντες ἔφραζον, ὡς ἀδοξούσης τῆς Σπάρτης καὶ ταραττομένης τῆς Ἑλλάδος [4] ἀνακαλεῖν τὸν Παυσανίαν. λέγεται δέ, παρθένον τινὰ Βυζαντίαν ἐπιφανῶν γονέων ὄνομα Κλεονίκην ἐπ’ αἰσχύνῃ τοῦ Παυσανίου μεταπεμπομένου, τοὺς μὲν γονεῖς ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης καὶ φόβου προέσθαι τὴν παῖδα, τὴν δὲ τῶν πρὸ τοῦ δωματίου δεηθεῖσαν ἀνελέσθαι τὸ φῶς, διὰ σκότους καὶ σιωπῆς τῇ κλίνῃ προσιοῦσαν ἤδη τοῦ Παυσανίου καθεύδοντος ἐμπεσεῖν καὶ ἀνατρέψαι τὸ λυχνίον ἄκουσαν· [5] τὸν δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ ψόφου ταραχθέντα καὶ σπασάμενον τὸ παρακείμενον ἐγχειρίδιον, ὥς τινος ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἐχθροῦ βαδίζοντος, πατάξαι καὶ καταβαλεῖν τὴν παρθένον, ἐκ δὲ τῆς πληγῆς ἀποθανοῦσαν αὐτὴν οὐκ ἐᾶν τὸν Παυσανίαν ἡσυχάζειν, ἀλλὰ νύκτωρ εἴδωλον αὐτῷ φοιτῶσαν εἰς τὸν ὕπνον ὀργῇ λέγειν τόδε τὸ ἡρῷον·

στεῖχε δίκης ἆσσον· μάλα τοι κακὸν ἀνδράσιν ὕβρις.

[6] ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα χαλεπῶς ἐνεγκόντες οἱ σύμμαχοι μετὰ τοῦ Κίμωνος ἐξεπολιόρκησαν αὐτόν. ὁ δ’ ἐκπεσὼν τοῦ Βυζαντίου, καὶ τῷ φάσματι ταραττόμενος ὡς λέγεται, κατέφυγε πρὸς τὸ νεκυομαντεῖον εἰς Ἡράκλειαν, καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀνακαλούμενος τῆς Κλεονίκης παρῃτεῖτο [7] τὴν ὀργήν. ἡ δ’ εἰς ὄψιν ἐλθοῦσα ταχέως ἔφη παύσεσθαι τῶν κακῶν αὐτὸν ἐν Σπάρτῃ γενόμενον, αἰνιττομένη τὴν μέλλουσαν ὡς ἔοικεν αὐτῷ τελευτήν. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὑπὸ πολλῶν ἱστόρηται.

[7] [1] Κίμων δὲ τῶν συμμάχων ἤδη προσκεχωρηκότων αὐτῷ στρατηγὸς εἰς Θρᾴκην ἔπλευσε, πυνθανόμενος Περσῶν ἄνδρας ἐνδόξους καὶ συγγενεῖς βασιλέως Ἠϊόνα πόλιν παρὰ τῷ Στρυμόνι κειμένην ποταμῷ κατέχοντας ἐνοχλεῖν [2] τοῖς περὶ τὸν τόπον ἐκεῖνον Ἕλλησι. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν αὐτοὺς μάχῃ τοὺς Πέρσας ἐνίκησε καὶ κατέκλεισεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν· ἔπειτα τοὺς ὑπὲρ Στρυμόνα Θρᾷκας, ὅθεν αὐτοῖς ἐφοίτα σῖτος, ἀναστάτους ποιῶν καὶ τὴν χώραν παραφυλάττων ἅπασαν, εἰς τοσαύτην ἀπορίαν τοὺς πολιορκουμένους κατέστησεν, ὥστε Βόγην τὸν βασιλέως στρατηγὸν ἀπογνόντα τὰ πράγματα τῇ πόλει πῦρ ἐνεῖναι καὶ συνδιαφθεῖραι μετὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ τῶν χρημάτων [3] ἑαυτόν. οὕτω δὲ λαβὼν τὴν πόλιν ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν ἀξιόλογον ὠφελήθη, τῶν πλείστων τοῖς βαρβάροις συγκατακαέντων, τὴν δὲ χώραν εὐφυεστάτην οὖσαν καὶ καλλίστην [4] οἰκῆσαι παρέδωκε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, καὶ τοὺς Ἑρμᾶς αὐτῷ τοὺς λιθίνους ὁ δῆμος ἀναθεῖναι συνεχώρησεν, ὧν ἐπιγέγραπται τῷ μὲν πρώτῳ (153 Preger)·

ἦν ἄρα κἀκεῖνοι ταλακάρδιοι, οἵ ποτε Μήδων

παισὶν ἐπ’ Ἠϊόνι, Στρυμόνος ἀμφὶ ῥοάς,

λιμόν τ’ αἴθωνα κρυερόν τ’ ἐπάγοντες Ἄρηα

πρῶτοι δυσμενέων εὗρον ἀμηχανίην.

[5] τῷ δὲ δευτέρῳ·

ἡγεμόνεσσι δὲ μισθὸν Ἀθηναῖοι τάδ’ ἔδωκαν

ἀντ’ εὐεργεσίης καὶ μεγάλων ἀγαθῶν.

μᾶλλόν τις τάδ’ ἰδὼν καὶ ἐπεσσομένων ἐθελήσει

ἀμφὶ περὶ ξυνοῖς πράγμασι δῆριν ἔχειν.

[6] τῷ δὲ τρίτῳ·

ἔκ ποτε τῆσδε πόληος ἅμ’ Ἀτρείδῃσι Μενεσθεὺς

ἡγεῖτο ζάθεον Τρωικὸν ἐς πεδίον·

ὅν ποθ’ Ὅμηρος ἔφη Δαναῶν πύκα θωρηκτάων

κοσμητῆρα μάχης ἔξοχον ὄντα μολεῖν.

οὕτως οὐδὲν ἀεικὲς Ἀθηναίοισι καλεῖσθαι

κοσμηταῖς πολέμου τ’ ἀμφὶ καὶ ἠνορέης.

[8] [1] Ταῦτα καίπερ οὐδαμοῦ τὸ Κίμωνος ὄνομα δηλοῦντα τιμῆς ὑπερβολὴν ἔχειν ἐδόκει τοῖς τότ’ ἀνθρώποις. οὔτε γὰρ Θεμιστοκλῆς τοιούτου τινὸς οὔτε Μιλτιάδης ἔτυχεν, ἀλλὰ τούτῳ γε θαλλοῦ στέφανον αἰτοῦντι Σωφάνης ὁ Δεκελεὺς ἐκ μέσου τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἀναστὰς ἀντεῖπεν, οὐκ εὐγνώμονα μέν, ἀρέσασαν δὲ τῷ δήμῳ τότε φωνὴν ἀφείς· ‘ὅταν γάρ’ ἔφη ‘μόνος ἀγωνισάμενος ὦ Μιλτιάδη νικήσῃς τοὺς βαρβάρους, τότε καὶ τιμᾶσθαι μόνος [2] ἀξίου.’ διὰ τί τοίνυν τὸ Κίμωνος ὑπερηγάπησαν ἔργον; ἢ ὅτι τῶν μὲν ἄλλων στρατηγούντων ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ παθεῖν ἠμύνοντο τοὺς πολεμίους, τούτου δὲ καὶ ποιῆσαι κακῶς ἠδυνήθησαν, ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκείνων αὐτοὶ στρατεύσαντες, καὶ προσεκτήσαντο χώρας, αὐτήν τε τὴν Ἠϊόνα καὶ τὴν Ἀμφίπολιν οἰκίσαντες;

[3] Ὤικισαν δὲ καὶ Σκῦρον, ἑλόντος Κίμωνος ἐξ αἰτίας τοιαύτης. Δόλοπες ᾤκουν τὴν νῆσον, ἐργάται κακοὶ γῆς, ληιζόμενοι δὲ τὴν θάλασσαν ἐκ παλαιοῦ, τελευτῶντες οὐδὲ τῶν εἰσπλεόντων παρ’ αὐτοὺς καὶ χρωμένων ἀπείχοντο ξένων, ἀλλὰ Θετταλούς τινας ἐμπόρους περὶ τὸ [4] Κτήσιον ὁρμισαμένους συλήσαντες εἷρξαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ διαδράντες ἐκ τῶν δεσμῶν οἱ ἄνθρωποι δίκην κατεδικάσαντο τῆς πόλεως Ἀμφικτυονικήν, οὐ βουλομένων τὰ χρήματα τῶν πολλῶν συνεκτίνειν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἔχοντας καὶ διηρπακότας ἀποδοῦναι κελευόντων, δείσαντες ἐκεῖνοι πέμπουσι γράμματα πρὸς Κίμωνα, κελεύοντες ἥκειν μετὰ τῶν νεῶν ληψόμενον τὴν πόλιν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἐνδιδομένην.

[5] παραλαβὼν δ’ οὕτω τὴν νῆσον ὁ Κίμων, τοὺς μὲν Δόλοπας ἐξήλασε καὶ τὸν Αἰγαῖον ἠλευθέρωσε, πυνθανόμενος δὲ τὸν παλαιὸν Θησέα τὸν Αἰγέως φυγόντα μὲν ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν εἰς Σκῦρον, αὐτοῦ δ’ ἀποθανόντα δόλῳ διὰ φόβον ὑπὸ Λυκομήδους τοῦ βασιλέως, ἐσπούδασε [6] τὸν τάφον ἀνευρεῖν. καὶ γὰρ ἦν χρησμὸς Ἀθηναίοις, τὰ Θησέως λείψανα κελεύων ἀνακομίζειν εἰς ἄστυ καὶ τιμᾶν ὡς ἥρωα πρεπόντως, ἀλλ’ ἠγνόουν ὅπου κεῖται, [7] Σκυρίων οὐχ ὁμολογούντων οὐδ’ ἐώντων ἀναζητεῖν. τότε δὴ πολλῇ φιλοτιμίᾳ τοῦ σηκοῦ μόγις ἐξευρεθέντος, ἐνθέμενος ὁ Κίμων εἰς τὴν αὑτοῦ τριήρη τὰ ὀστᾶ καὶ τἆλλα κοσμήσας μεγαλοπρεπῶς, κατήγαγεν εἰς τὸ ἄστυ δι’ ἐτῶν σχεδὸν τετρακοσίων. ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡδέως ὁ δῆμος ἔσχεν. ἔθεντο δ’ εἰς μνήμην αὐτοῦ [8] καὶ τὴν τῶν τραγῳδῶν κρίσιν ὀνομαστὴν γενομένην. πρώτην γὰρ διδασκαλίαν τοῦ Σοφοκλέους ἔτι νέου καθέντος, Ἀψεφίων ὁ ἄρχων, φιλονικίας οὔσης καὶ παρατάξεως τῶν θεατῶν, κριτὰς μὲν οὐκ ἐκλήρωσε τοῦ ἀγῶνος, ὡς δὲ Κίμων μετὰ τῶν συστρατήγων παρελθὼν εἰς τὸ θέατρον ἐποιήσατο τῷ θεῷ τὰς νενομισμένας σπονδάς, οὐκ ἐφῆκεν αὐτοὺς ἀπελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὁρκώσας ἠνάγκασε καθίσαι καὶ κρῖναι δέκα ὄντας, ἀπὸ φυλῆς μιᾶς [9] ἕκαστον. ὁ μὲν οὖν ἀγὼν καὶ διὰ τὸ τῶν κριτῶν ἀξίωμα τὴν φιλοτιμίαν ὑπερέβαλε. νικήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους λέγεται τὸν Αἰσχύλον περιπαθῆ γενόμενον καὶ βαρέως ἐνεγκόντα χρόνον οὐ πολὺν Ἀθήνησι διαγαγεῖν, εἶτ’ οἴχεσθαι δι’ ὀργὴν εἰς Σικελίαν, ὅπου καὶ τελευτήσας περὶ Γέλαν τέθαπται.

[9] [1] Συνδειπνῆσαι δὲ τῷ Κίμωνί φησιν ὁ Ἴων (FGrH 392 F 13) παντάπασι μειράκιον ἥκων εἰς Ἀθήνας ἐκ Χίου παρὰ Λαομέδοντι, καὶ τῶν σπονδῶν γενομένων παρακληθέντος ᾆσαι καὶ ᾄσαντος οὐκ ἀηδῶς, ἐπαινεῖν τοὺς παρόντας ὡς δεξιώτερον Θεμιστοκλέους· ἐκεῖνον γὰρ ᾄδειν μὲν οὐ φάναι μαθεῖν οὐδὲ κιθαρίζειν, πόλιν δὲ ποιῆσαι [2] μεγάλην καὶ πλουσίαν ἐπίστασθαι· τοὐντεῦθεν οἷον εἰκὸς ἐν πότῳ τοῦ λόγου ῥυέντος ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις τοῦ Κίμωνος καὶ μνημονευομένων τῶν μεγίστων, αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον ἓν διελθεῖν στρατήγημα τῶν ἰδίων ὡς σοφώτατον.

[3] ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐκ Σηστοῦ καὶ Βυζαντίου πολλοὺς τῶν βαρβάρων αἰχμαλώτους λαβόντες οἱ σύμμαχοι τῷ Κίμωνι διανεῖμαι προσέταξαν, ὁ δὲ χωρὶς μὲν αὐτούς, χωρὶς δὲ τὸν περὶ τοῖς σώμασι κόσμον αὐτῶν ἔθηκεν, ᾐτιῶντο τὴν [4] διανομὴν ὡς ἄνισον. ὁ δὲ τῶν μερίδων ἐκέλευσεν αὐτοὺς ἑλέσθαι τὴν ἑτέραν· ἣν δ’ ἂν ἐκεῖνοι καταλίπωσιν, ἀγαπήσειν Ἀθηναίους. Ἡροφύτου δὲ τοῦ Σαμίου συμβουλεύσαντος αἱρεῖσθαι τὰ Περσῶν μᾶλλον ἢ Πέρσας, τὸν μὲν κόσμον αὑτοῖς ἔλαβον, Ἀθηναίοις δὲ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους [5] ἀπέλιπον. καὶ τότε μὲν ὁ Κίμων ἀπῄει γελοῖος εἶναι δοκῶν διανομεύς, τῶν μὲν συμμάχων ψέλια χρυσᾶ καὶ μανιάκας καὶ στρεπτοὺς καὶ κάνδυας καὶ πορφύραν φερομένων, τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων γυμνὰ σώματα κακῶς [6] ἠσκημένα πρὸς ἐργασίαν παραλαβόντων. μικρὸν δ’ ὕστερον οἱ τῶν ἑαλωκότων φίλοι καὶ οἰκεῖοι καταβαίνοντες ἐκ Φρυγίας καὶ Λυδίας ἐλυτροῦντο μεγάλων χρημάτων ἕκαστον, ὥστε τῷ Κίμωνι τεσσάρων μηνῶν τροφὰς εἰς τὰς ναῦς ὑπάρξαι καὶ προσέτι τῇ πόλει χρυσίον οὐκ ὀλίγον ἐκ τῶν λύτρων περιγενέσθαι.

[10] [1] Ἤδη δ’ εὐπορῶν ὁ Κίμων εὐροίᾳ τῆς στρατείας, ἃ καλῶς ἀπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ἔδοξεν ὠφελῆσθαι, κάλλιον ἀνήλισκεν εἰς τοὺς πολίτας. τῶν τε γὰρ ἀγρῶν τοὺς φραγμοὺς ἀφεῖλεν, ἵνα καὶ τοῖς ξένοις καὶ τῶν πολιτῶν τοῖς δεομένοις ἀδεῶς ὑπάρχῃ λαμβάνειν τῆς ὀπώρας, καὶ δεῖπνον οἴκοι παρ’ αὐτῷ λιτὸν μὲν, ἀρκοῦν δὲ πολλοῖς ἐποιεῖτο καθ’ ἡμέραν, ἐφ’ ὃ τῶν πενήτων ὁ βουλόμενος εἰσῄει καὶ διατροφὴν εἶχεν ἀπράγμονα, μόνοις τοῖς δημοσίοις [2] σχολάζων. ὡς δ’ Ἀριστοτέλης (Ἀθπ. 27, 3) φησίν, οὐχ ἁπάντων Ἀθηναίων, ἀλλὰ τῶν δημοτῶν αὐτοῦ Λακιαδῶν παρεσκευάζετο τῷ βουλομένῳ τὸ δεῖπνον. αὐτῷ δὲ νεανίσκοι παρείποντο συνήθεις ἀμπεχόμενοι καλῶς, ὧν ἕκαστος, εἴ τις συντύχοι τῷ Κίμωνι τῶν ἀστῶν πρεσβύτερος ἠμφιεσμένος ἐνδεῶς, διημείβετο πρὸς αὐτὸν τὰ [3] ἱμάτια· καὶ τὸ γινόμενον ἐφαίνετο σεμνόν. οἱ δ’ αὐτοὶ καὶ νόμισμα κομίζοντες ἄφθονον, παριστάμενοι τοῖς κομψοῖς τῶν πενήτων ἐν ἀγορᾷ σιωπῇ τῶν κερματίων ἐνέβαλλον [4] εἰς τὰς χεῖρας. ὧν δὴ καὶ Κρατῖνος ὁ κωμικὸς ἐν Ἀρχιλόχοις (fr. 1 K.) ἔοικε μεμνῆσθαι διὰ τούτων·

κἀγὼ γὰρ ηὔχουν Μητρόβιος ὁ γραμματεὺς

σὺν ἀνδρὶ θείῳ καὶ φιλοξενωτάτῳ

καὶ πάντ’ ἀρίστῳ τῶν Πανελλήνων πρόμῳ

Κίμωνι λιπαρὸν γῆρας εὐωχούμενος

αἰῶνα πάντα συνδιατρίψειν. ὁ δὲ λιπὼν

βέβηκε πρότερος.

[5] ἔτι τοίνυν Γοργίας μὲν ὁ Λεοντῖνός (VS 82 B 20) φησι τὸν Κίμωνα τὰ χρήματα κτᾶσθαι μὲν ὡς χρῷτο, χρᾶσθαι δ’ ὡς τιμῷτο, Κριτίας δ’ ‹ὁ› τῶν τριάκοντα γενόμενος ἐν ταῖς ἐλεγείαις (fr. 6 D.) εὔχεται

πλοῦτον μὲν Σκοπαδῶν, μεγαλοφροσύνην δὲ Κίμωνος,

νίκας δ’ Ἀρκεσίλα τοῦ Λακεδαιμονίου.

[6] καίτοι Λίχαν γε τὸν Σπαρτιάτην ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ἄλλου γινώσκομεν ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ὀνομαστὸν γενόμενον ἢ ὅτι τοὺς ξένους ἐν ταῖς γυμνοπαιδίαις ἐδείπνιζεν· ἡ δὲ Κίμωνος ἀφθονία καὶ τὴν παλαιὰν τῶν Ἀθηναίων φιλοξενίαν [7] καὶ φιλανθρωπίαν ὑπερέβαλεν. οἱ μὲν γάρ, ἐφ’ οἷς ἡ πόλις μέγα φρονεῖ δικαίως, τό τε σπέρμα τῆς τροφῆς εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐξέδωκαν, ὑδάτων τε πηγαίων ‹ὀχετείαν› καὶ πυρὸς ἔναυσιν χρῄζουσιν ἀνθρώποις ἔδειξαν, ὁ δὲ τὴν μὲν οἰκίαν τοῖς πολίταις πρυτανεῖον ἀποδείξας κοινόν, ἐν δὲ τῇ χώρᾳ καρπῶν ἑτοίμων ἀπαρχὰς καὶ ὅσα ὧραι καλὰ φέρουσι χρῆσθαι καὶ λαμβάνειν ἅπαντα τοῖς ξένοις παρέχων, τρόπον τινὰ τὴν ἐπὶ Κρόνου μυθολογουμένην [8] κοινωνίαν εἰς τὸν βίον αὖθις κατῆγεν. οἱ δὲ ταῦτα κολακείαν ὄχλου καὶ δημαγωγίαν εἶναι διαβάλλοντες ὑπὸ τῆς ἄλλης ἐξηλέγχοντο τοῦ ἀνδρὸς προαιρέσεως, ἀριστοκρατικῆς καὶ Λακωνικῆς οὔσης, ὅς γε καὶ Θεμιστοκλεῖ πέρα τοῦ δέοντος ἐπαίροντι τὴν δημοκρατίαν ἀντέβαινε μετ’ Ἀριστείδου, καὶ πρὸς Ἐφιάλτην ὕστερον χάριτι τοῦ δήμου καταλύοντα τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴν διηνέχθη, λημμάτων δὲ δημοσίων τοὺς ἄλλους πλὴν Ἀριστείδου καὶ Ἐφιάλτου πάντας ἀναπιμπλαμένους ὁρῶν, αὑτὸν ἀδέκαστον καὶ ἄθικτον ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ δωροδοκίας καὶ πάντα προῖκα καὶ καθαρῶς πράττοντα καὶ [9] λέγοντα διὰ τέλους παρέσχε. λέγεταί γέ τοι Ῥοισάκην τινὰ βάρβαρον ἀποστάτην βασιλέως ἐλθεῖν μετὰ χρημάτων πολλῶν εἰς Ἀθήνας, καὶ σπαραττόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν συκοφαντῶν καταφυγεῖν πρὸς Κίμωνα, καὶ θεῖναι παρὰ τὴν αὔλειον αὐτοῦ φιάλας δύο, τὴν μὲν ἀργυρῶν ἐμπλησάμενον δαρεικῶν, τὴν δὲ χρυσῶν· ἰδόντα δὲ τὸν Κίμωνα καὶ μειδιάσαντα πυθέσθαι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, πότερον αἱρεῖται Κίμωνα μισθωτὸν ἢ φίλον ἔχειν· τοῦ δὲ φήσαντος φίλον, ‘οὐκοῦν’ φάναι ‘ταῦτ’ ἄπιθι μετὰ σεαυτοῦ κομίζων· χρήσομαι γὰρ αὐτοῖς ὅταν δέωμαι φίλος γενόμενος.’

[11] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ σύμμαχοι τοὺς φόρους μὲν ἐτέλουν, ἄνδρας δὲ καὶ ναῦς ὡς ἐτάχθησαν οὐ παρεῖχον, ἀλλ’ ἀπαγορεύοντες ἤδη πρὸς τὰς στρατείας, καὶ πολέμου μὲν οὐδὲν δεόμενοι, γεωργεῖν δὲ καὶ ζῆν καθ’ ἡσυχίαν ἐπιθυμοῦντες, ἀπηλλαγμένων τῶν βαρβάρων καὶ μὴ διοχλούντων, οὔτε τὰς ναῦς ἐπλήρουν οὔτ’ ἄνδρας ἀπέστελλον, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι στρατηγοὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων προσηνάγκαζον αὐτοὺς ταῦτα ποιεῖν, καὶ τοὺς ἐλλείποντας ὑπάγοντες δίκαις καὶ κολάζοντες, ἐπαχθῆ τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ λυπηρὰν [2] ἐποίουν· Κίμων δὲ τὴν ἐναντίαν ὁδὸν ἐν τῇ στρατηγίᾳ πορευόμενος, βίαν μὲν οὐδενὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων προσῆγε, χρήματα δὲ λαμβάνων παρὰ τῶν οὐ βουλομένων στρατεύεσθαι καὶ ναῦς κενάς, ἐκείνους εἴα δελεαζομένους τῇ σχολῇ περὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα διατρίβειν, γεωργοὺς καὶ χρηματιστὰς ἀπολέμους ἐκ πολεμικῶν ὑπὸ τρυφῆς καὶ ἀνοίας γινομένους, τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων ἀνὰ μέρος πολλοὺς ἐμβιβάζων καὶ διαπονῶν ταῖς στρατείαις, ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ τοῖς παρὰ τῶν συμμάχων μισθοῖς καὶ χρήμασι δεσπότας [3] αὐτῶν τῶν διδόντων ἐποίησε. πλέοντας γὰρ αὐτοὺς συνεχῶς καὶ διὰ χειρὸς ἔχοντας ἀεὶ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τρεφομένους καὶ ἀσκοῦντας ἐκ τῆς αὐτῶν ‹ἀ›στρατείας ἐθισθέντες φοβεῖσθαι καὶ κολακεύειν, ἔλαθον ἀντὶ συμμάχων ὑποτελεῖς καὶ δοῦλοι γεγονότες.

[12] [1] Καὶ μὴν αὐτοῦ γε τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως οὐδεὶς ἐταπείνωσε καὶ συνέστειλε τὸ φρόνημα μᾶλλον ἢ Κίμων. οὐ γὰρ ἀνῆκεν ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀπηλλαγμένον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐκ ποδὸς διώκων, πρὶν διαπνεῦσαι καὶ στῆναι τοὺς βαρβάρους, τὰ μὲν ἐπόρθει καὶ κατεστρέφετο, τὰ δ’ ἀφίστη καὶ προσήγετο τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ὥστε τὴν ἀπ’ Ἰωνίας Ἀσίαν ἄχρι Παμφυλίας παντάπασι Περσικῶν ὅπλων [2] ἐρημῶσαι. πυθόμενος δὲ τοὺς βασιλέως στρατηγοὺς μεγάλῳ στρατῷ καὶ ναυσὶ πολλαῖς ἐφεδρεύειν περὶ Παμφυλίαν, καὶ βουλόμενος αὐτοῖς ἄπλουν καὶ ἀνέμβατον ὅλως ὑπὸ φόβου τὴν ἐντὸς Χελιδονίων ποιήσασθαι θάλατταν, ὥρμησεν ἄρας ἀπὸ Κνίδου καὶ Τριοπίου τριακοσίαις τριήρεσι, πρὸς μὲν τάχος ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς καὶ περιαγωγὴν ὑπὸ Θεμιστοκλέους ἄριστα κατεσκευασμέναις, ἐκεῖνος δὲ τότε καὶ πλατυτέρας ἐποίησεν αὐτάς, καὶ διάβασιν τοῖς καταστρώμασιν ἔδωκεν, ὡς ἂν ὑπὸ πολλῶν ὁπλιτῶν μαχιμώτεραι [3] προσφέροιντο τοῖς πολεμίοις. ἐπιπλεύσας δὲ τῇ πόλει τῶν Φασηλιτῶν, Ἑλλήνων μὲν ὄντων, οὐ δεχομένων δὲ τὸν στόλον οὐδὲ βουλομένων ἀφίστασθαι βασιλέως, τήν τε χώραν κακῶς ἐποίει καὶ προσέβαλλε τοῖς [4] τείχεσιν. οἱ δὲ Χῖοι συμπλέοντες αὐτῷ, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς Φασηλίτας ἐκ παλαιοῦ φιλικῶς ἔχοντες, ἅμα μὲν τὸν Κίμωνα κατεπράυνον, ἅμα δὲ τοξεύοντες ὑπὲρ τὰ τείχη βιβλίδια προσκείμενα τοῖς ὀιστοῖς ἐξήγγελλον τοῖς Φασηλίταις. τέλος δὲ διήλλαξαν αὐτούς, ὅπως δέκα τάλαντα δόντες ἀκολουθῶσι καὶ συστρατεύωσιν ἐπὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους.

[5] Ἔφορος (FGrH 70 F 192) μὲν οὖν Τιθραύστην φησὶ τῶν βασιλικῶν νεῶν ἄρχειν καὶ τοῦ πεζοῦ Φερενδάτην, Καλλισθένης (FGrH 124 F 15) δ’ Ἀριομάνδην τὸν Γωβρύου, κυριώτατον ὄντα τῆς δυνάμεως, παρὰ τὸν Εὐρυμέδοντα ταῖς ναυσὶ παρορμεῖν, οὐκ ὄντα μάχεσθαι τοῖς Ἕλλησι πρόθυμον, ἀλλὰ προσδεχόμενον ὀγδοήκοντα ναῦς [6] Φοινίσσας, ἀπὸ Κύπρου προσπλεούσας. ταύτας φθῆναι βουλόμενος ὁ Κίμων ἀνήχθη, βιάζεσθαι παρεσκευασμένος, ἂν ἑκόντες μὴ ναυμαχῶσιν. οἱ δὲ πρῶτον μέν, ὡς μὴ βιασθεῖεν, εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν εἰσωρμίσαντο, προσφερομένων δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀντεξέπλευσαν, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Φανόδημος (FGrH 325 F 22) ἑξακοσίαις ναυσίν, ὡς δ’ Ἔφορος [7] (FGrH 70 F 192) πεντήκοντα καὶ τριακοσίαις. ἔργον δὲ κατὰ γοῦν τὴν θάλατταν οὐδὲν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἐπράχθη τῆς δυνάμεως ἄξιον, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν γῆν ἀποστρέφοντες ἐξέπιπτον οἱ πρῶτοι καὶ κατέφευγον εἰς τὸ πεζὸν ἐγγὺς παρατεταγμένον, οἱ δὲ καταλαμβανόμενοι διεφθείροντο [8] μετὰ τῶν νεῶν. ᾧ καὶ δῆλόν ἐστιν, ὅτι πάμπολλαί τινες αἱ πεπληρωμέναι τοῖς βαρβάροις νῆες ἦσαν, ὅτε πολλῶν μὲν ὡς εἰκὸς ἐκφυγουσῶν, πολλῶν δὲ συντριβεισῶν, ὅμως αἰχμαλώτους διακοσίας ἔλαβον οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι.

[13] [1] Τῶν δὲ πεζῶν ἐπικαταβάντων πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν, μέγα μὲν ἔργον ἐφαίνετο τῷ Κίμωνι τὸ βιάζεσθαι τὴν ἀπόβασιν καὶ κεκμηκότας ἀκμῆσι καὶ πολλαπλασίοις ἐπάγειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὅμως δὲ ῥώμῃ καὶ φρονήματι τοῦ κρατεῖν ὁρῶν ἐπηρμένους καὶ προθύμους ὁμόσε χωρεῖν τοῖς βαρβάροις, ἀπεβίβαζε τοὺς ὁπλίτας, ἔτι θερμοὺς τῷ κατὰ τὴν ναυμαχίαν ἀγῶνι μετὰ κραυγῆς καὶ [2] δρόμου προσφερομένους. ὑποστάντων δὲ τῶν Περσῶν καὶ δεξαμένων οὐκ ἀγεννῶς, κρατερὰ μάχη συνέστη, καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἄνδρες ἀγαθοὶ καὶ τοῖς ἀξιώμασι πρῶτοι καὶ διαπρεπεῖς ἔπεσον. πολλῷ δ’ ἀγῶνι τρεψάμενοι τοὺς βαρβάρους ἔκτεινον, εἶθ’ ᾕρουν αὐτούς τε καὶ σκηνὰς [3] παντοδαπῶν χρημάτων γεμούσας. Κίμων δ’ ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴς δεινὸς ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ δύο καθῃρηκὼς ἀγωνίσματα, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι πεζομαχίᾳ, τὸ δ’ ἐν Πλαταιαῖς ναυμαχίᾳ παρεληλυθὼς τρόπαιον, ἐπηγωνίσατο ταῖς νίκαις, καὶ τὰς ὀγδοήκοντα Φοινίσσας τριήρεις, αἳ τῆς μάχης ἀπελείφθησαν, Ὕδρῳ προσβεβληκέναι πυθόμενος, διὰ τάχους ἔπλευσεν, οὐδὲν εἰδότων βέβαιον οὔπω περὶ τῆς μείζονος δυνάμεως τῶν στρατηγῶν, ἀλλὰ δυσπίστως ἔτι καὶ μετεώρως ἐχόντων· ᾗ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐκπλαγέντες ἀπώλεσαν τὰς ναῦς ἁπάσας. καὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν οἱ πλεῖστοι συνδιεφθάρησαν.

[4] Τοῦτο τὸ ἔργον οὕτως ἐταπείνωσε τὴν γνώμην τοῦ βασιλέως, ὥστε συνθέσθαι τὴν περιβόητον εἰρήνην ἐκείνην, ἵππου μὲν δρόμον ἀεὶ τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς ἀπέχειν θαλάσσης, ἔνδον δὲ Κυανέων καὶ Χελιδονίων μακρᾷ νηὶ καὶ χαλκεμβόλῳ μὴ πλέειν. καίτοι Καλλισθένης (FGrH 124 F 16) οὔ φησι ταῦτα συνθέσθαι τὸν βάρβαρον, ἔργῳ δὲ ποιεῖν διὰ φόβον τῆς ἥττης ἐκείνης, καὶ μακρὰν οὕτως ἀποστῆναι τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ὥστε πεντήκοντα ναυσὶ Περικλέα καὶ τριάκοντα μόναις Ἐφιάλτην ἐπέκεινα πλεῦσαι Χελιδονίων καὶ μηδὲν αὐτοῖς ναυτικὸν [5] ἀπαντῆσαι παρὰ τῶν βαρβάρων. ἐν δὲ τοῖς ψηφίσμασιν ἃ συνήγαγε Κρατερὸς (FGrH 342 F 13) ἀντίγραφα συνθηκῶν ὡς γενομένων κατατέτακται. φασὶ δὲ καὶ βωμὸν Εἰρήνης διὰ ταῦτα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἱδρύσασθαι, καὶ Καλλίαν τὸν πρεσβεύσαντα τιμῆσαι διαφερόντως.

Πραθέντων δὲ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων λαφύρων, εἴς τε τὰ ἄλλα χρήμασιν ὁ δῆμος ἐρρώσθη, καὶ τῇ ἀκροπόλει τὸ νότιον τεῖχος κατεσκεύασεν, ἀπ’ ἐκείνης εὐπορήσας τῆς [6] στρατείας. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τῶν μακρῶν τειχῶν, ἃ σκέλη καλοῦσι, συντελεσθῆναι μὲν ὕστερον τὴν οἰκοδομίαν, τὴν δὲ πρώτην θεμελίωσιν, εἰς τόπους ἑλώδεις καὶ διαβρόχους τῶν ἔργων ἐμπεσόντων, ἐρεισθῆναι διὰ Κίμωνος ἀσφαλῶς, χάλικι πολλῇ καὶ λίθοις βαρέσι τῶν ἑλῶν πιεσθέντων, ἐκείνου χρήματα πορίζοντος καὶ διδόντος.

[7] πρῶτος δὲ ταῖς λεγομέναις ἐλευθερίοις καὶ γλαφυραῖς διατριβαῖς, αἳ μικρὸν ὕστερον ὑπερφυῶς ἠγαπήθησαν, ἐκαλλώπισε τὸ ἄστυ, τὴν μὲν ἀγορὰν πλατάνοις καταφυτεύσας, τὴν δ’ Ἀκαδήμειαν ἐξ ἀνύδρου καὶ αὐχμηρᾶς κατάρρυτον ἀποδείξας ἄλσος, ἠσκημένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ δρόμοις καθαροῖς καὶ συσκίοις περιπάτοις.

[14] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν Περσῶν τινες οὐκ ἐβούλοντο τὴν Χερρόνησον ἐκλιπεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς Θρᾷκας ἄνωθεν ἐπεκαλοῦντο, καταφρονοῦντες τοῦ Κίμωνος, μετ’ ὀλίγων παντάπασι τριήρων Ἀθήνηθεν ἐκπεπλευκότος, ὁρμήσας ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς τέτταρσι μὲν ναυσὶ τρισκαίδεκα τὰς ἐκείνων ἔλαβεν, ἐξελάσας δὲ τοὺς Πέρσας καὶ κρατήσας τῶν Θρᾳκῶν πᾶσαν ᾠκειώσατο τῇ πόλει τὴν Χερρόνησον.

[2] ἐκ δὲ τούτου Θασίους μὲν ἀποστάντας Ἀθηναίων καταναυμαχήσας, τρεῖς καὶ τριάκοντα ναῦς ἔλαβε καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐξεπολιόρκησε, καὶ τὰ χρυσεῖα τὰ πέραν Ἀθηναίοις προσεκτήσατο, καὶ χώραν ἧς ἐπῆρχον Θάσιοι παρέλαβεν.

[3] ἐκεῖθεν δὲ ῥᾳδίως ἐπιβῆναι Μακεδονίας καὶ πολλὴν ἀποτεμέσθαι παρασχὸν ὡς ἐδόκει, μὴ θελήσας αἰτίαν ἔσχε δώροις ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως Ἀλεξάνδρου συμπεπεῖσθαι, καὶ δίκην ἔφυγε τῶν ἐχθρῶν συστάντων [4] ἐπ’ αὐτόν. ἀπολογούμενος δὲ πρὸς τοὺς δικαστάς, οὐκ Ἰώνων ἔφη προξενεῖν οὐδὲ Θεσσαλῶν πλουσίων ὄντων ὥσπερ ἑτέρους, ἵνα θεραπεύωνται καὶ λαμβάνωσιν, ἀλλὰ Λακεδαιμονίων, μιμούμενος καὶ ἀγαπῶν τὴν παρ’ αὐτοῖς εὐτέλειαν καὶ σωφροσύνην, ἧς οὐδένα προτιμᾶν πλοῦτον, ἀλλὰ πλουτίζων ἀπὸ τῶν πολεμίων τὴν πόλιν [5] ἀγάλλεσθαι. μνησθεὶς δὲ τῆς κρίσεως ἐκείνης ὁ Στησίμβροτός (FGrH 107 F 5) φησι τὴν Ἐλπινίκην ὑπὲρ τοῦ Κίμωνος δεομένην ἐλθεῖν ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας τοῦ Περικλέους - οὗτος γὰρ ἦν τῶν κατηγόρων ὁ σφοδρότατος - , τὸν δὲ μειδιάσαντα ‘γραῦς εἶ’ φάναι ‘γραῦς ὦ Ἐλπινίκη, ὡς τηλικαῦτα διαπράττεσθαι πράγματα·’ πλὴν ἔν γε τῇ δίκῃ πρᾳότατον γενέσθαι τῷ Κίμωνι καὶ πρὸς τὴν κατηγορίαν ἅπαξ ἀναστῆναι μόνον ὥσπερ ἀφοσιούμενον.

[15] [1] Ἐκείνην μὲν οὖν ἀπέφυγε τὴν δίκην· ἐν δὲ τῇ λοιπῇ πολιτείᾳ παρὼν μὲν ἐκράτει καὶ συνέστελλε τὸν δῆμον, ἐπιβαίνοντα τοῖς ἀρίστοις καὶ περισπῶντα τὴν [2] πᾶσαν εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἀρχὴν καὶ δύναμιν· ὡς δὲ πάλιν ἐπὶ στρατείαν ἐξέπλευσε, τελέως ἀνεθέντες οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ συγχέαντες τὸν καθεστῶτα τῆς πολιτείας κόσμον τά ‹τε› πάτρια νόμιμα οἷς ἐχρῶντο πρότερον, Ἐφιάλτου προεστῶτος ἀφείλοντο τῆς ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλῆς τὰς κρίσεις πλὴν ὀλίγων ἁπάσας, καὶ τῶν δικαστηρίων κυρίους ἑαυτοὺς ποιήσαντες, εἰς ἄκρατον δημοκρατίαν ἐνέβαλον τὴν πόλιν, ἤδη καὶ Περικλέους δυναμένου καὶ τὰ [3] τῶν πολλῶν φρονοῦντος. διὸ καὶ τοῦ Κίμωνος ὡς ἐπανῆλθεν ἀγανακτοῦντος ἐπὶ τῷ προπηλακίζεσθαι τὸ ἀξίωμα τοῦ συνεδρίου, καὶ πειρωμένου πάλιν ἄνω τὰς δίκας ἀνακαλεῖσθαι καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ Κλεισθένους ἐγείρειν ἀριστοκρατίαν, κατεβόων συνιστάμενοι καὶ τὸν δῆμον ἐξηρέθιζον, ἐκεῖνά τε τὰ πρὸς τὴν ἀδελφὴν ἀνανεούμενοι καὶ [4] Λακωνισμὸν ἐπικαλοῦντες. εἰς ἃ καὶ τὰ Εὐπόλιδος (fr. 208 K.) διατεθρύληται περὶ Κίμωνος, ὅτι

κακὸς μὲν οὐκ ἦν, φιλοπότης δὲ κἀμελής

κἀνίοτ’ ‹ἂν› ἀπεκοιμᾶτ’ ἂν ἐν Λακεδαίμονι

κἂν Ἐλπινίκην τῇδε καταλιπὼν μόνην.

[5] εἰ δ’ ἀμελῶν καὶ μεθυσκόμενος τοσαύτας πόλεις εἷλε καὶ τοσαύτας νίκας ἐνίκησε, δῆλον ὅτι νήφοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ προσέχοντος οὐδεὶς ἂν οὔτε τῶν πρότερον οὔτε τῶν ὕστερον Ἑλλήνων παρῆλθε τὰς πράξεις.

[16] [1] Ἦν μὲν οὖν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς φιλολάκων, καὶ τῶν γε παίδων τῶν διδύμων τὸν ἕτερον Λακεδαιμόνιον ὠνόμασε, τὸν δ’ ἕτερον Ἠλεῖον, ἐκ γυναικὸς αὐτῷ Κλειτορίας γενομένους, ὡς Στησίμβροτος (FGrH 107 F 6) ἱστορεῖ· διὸ πολλάκις Περικλέα τὸ μητρῷον αὐτοῖς γένος ὀνειδίζειν. Διόδωρος δ’ ὁ περιηγητὴς (FGrH 372 F 37) καὶ τούτους φησὶ καὶ τὸν τρίτον τῶν Κίμωνος υἱῶν Θεσσαλὸν ἐξ Ἰσοδίκης γεγονέναι τῆς Εὐρυπτολέμου τοῦ Μεγακλέους.

[2] ηὐξήθη δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, ἤδη τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ προσπολεμούντων καὶ τοῦτον ὄντα νέον ἐν Ἀθήναις μᾶλλον ἰσχύειν καὶ κρατεῖν βουλομένων. οἱ δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι τὸ πρῶτον ἡδέως ἑώρων, οὐ μικρὰ τῆς πρὸς ἐκεῖνον εὐνοίας τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ἀπολαύοντες· αὐξανομένοις γὰρ αὐτοῖς κατ’ ἀρχὰς καὶ τὰ συμμαχικὰ πολυπραγμονοῦσιν [3] οὐκ ἤχθοντο τιμῇ καὶ χάριτι τοῦ Κίμωνος. τὰ γὰρ πλεῖστα δι’ ἐκείνου τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν διεπράττετο, πρᾴως μὲν τοῖς συμμάχοις, κεχαρισμένως δὲ τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις ὁμιλοῦντος. ἔπειτα δυνατώτεροι γενόμενοι καὶ τὸν Κίμωνα τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις οὐκ ἠρέμα προσκείμενον ὁρῶντες ἤχθοντο. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐπὶ παντὶ μεγαλύνων τὴν Λακεδαίμονα πρὸς Ἀθηναίους, καὶ μάλιστα ὅτε τύχοι μεμφόμενος αὐτοῖς ἢ παροξύνων, ὥς φησι Στησίμβροτος (FGrH 107 F 7), εἰώθει λέγειν· ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ Λακεδαιμόνιοί γε τοιοῦτοι.’ ὅθεν φθόνον ἑαυτῷ συνῆγε καὶ δυσμένειάν τινα παρὰ τῶν πολιτῶν.

[4] Ἡ δ’ οὖν ἰσχύσασα μάλιστα κατ’ αὐτοῦ τῶν διαβολῶν αἰτίαν ἔσχε τοιαύτην. Ἀρχιδάμου τοῦ Ζευξιδάμου τέταρτον ἔτος ἐν Σπάρτῃ βασιλεύοντος, ὑπὸ σεισμοῦ μεγίστου δὴ τῶν μνημονευομένων πρότερον ἥ τε χώρα τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων χάσμασιν ἐνώλισθε πολλοῖς, καὶ τῶν Ταϋγέτων τιναχθέντων κορυφαί τινες ἀπερράγησαν, αὐτὴ δ’ ἡ πόλις ὅλη συνεχύθη πλὴν οἰκιῶν πέντε, τὰς [5] δ’ ἄλλας ἤρειψεν ὁ σεισμός. ἐν δὲ μέσῃ τῇ στοᾷ, γυμναζομένων ὁμοῦ τῶν ἐφήβων καὶ τῶν νεανίσκων, λέγεται μικρὸν πρὸ τοῦ σεισμοῦ λαγὼν παραφανῆναι, καὶ τοὺς μὲν νεανίσκους ὥσπερ ἦσαν ἀληλιμμένοι μετὰ παιδιᾶς ἐκδραμεῖν καὶ διώκειν, τοῖς δ’ ἐφήβοις ὑπολειφθεῖσιν ἐπιπεσεῖν τὸ γυμνάσιον, καὶ πάντας ὁμοῦ τελευτῆσαι. τὸν δὲ τάφον αὐτῶν ἔτι νῦν Σεισματίαν προσαγορεύουσι.

[6] ταχὺ δὴ συνιδὼν ἀπὸ τοῦ παρόντος τὸν μέλλοντα κίνδυνον ὁ Ἀρχίδαμος, καὶ τοὺς πολίτας ὁρῶν ἐκ τῶν οἰκιῶν τὰ τιμιώτατα πειρωμένους σῴζειν, ἐκέλευσε τῇ σάλπιγγι σημαίνειν ὡς πολεμίων ἐπιόντων, ὅπως ὅτι τάχιστα μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἀθροίζωνται πρὸς αὐτόν. ὃ δὴ [7] καὶ μόνον ἐν τῷ τότε καιρῷ τὴν Σπάρτην διέσωσεν. οἱ γὰρ εἵλωτες ἐκ τῶν ἀγρῶν συνέδραμον πανταχόθεν ὡς ἀναρπασόμενοι τοὺς σεσωσμένους τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν, ὡπλισμένους δὲ καὶ συντεταγμένους εὑρόντες, ἀνεχώρησαν ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις καὶ φανερῶς ἐπολέμουν, τῶν τε περιοίκων ἀναπείσαντες οὐκ ὀλίγους, καὶ Μεσσηνίων ἅμα τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις συνεπιθεμένων.

[8] Πέμπουσιν οὖν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι Περικλείδαν εἰς Ἀθήνας δεόμενοι βοηθεῖν, ὅν φησι κωμῳδῶν Ἀριστοφάνης (Lysistr. 1138) καθεζόμενον

ἐπὶ τοῖσι βωμοῖς ὠχρὸν ἐν φοινικίδι

στρατιὰν ἐπαιτεῖν.

[9] Ἐφιάλτου δὲ κωλύοντος καὶ διαμαρτυρομένου μὴ βοηθεῖν μηδ’ ἀνιστάναι πόλιν ἀντίπαλον ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας, ἀλλ’ ἐᾶν κεῖσθαι καὶ πατηθῆναι τὸ φρόνημα τῆς Σπάρτης, Κίμωνά φησι Κριτίας (FHG II 70) τὴν τῆς πατρίδος αὔξησιν ἐν ὑστέρῳ θέμενον τοῦ Λακεδαιμονίων συμφέροντος ἀναπείσαντα τὸν δῆμον ἐξελθεῖν βοηθοῦντα [10] μετὰ πολλῶν ὁπλιτῶν. ὁ δ’ Ἴων (FGrH 392 F 14) ἀπομνημονεύει καὶ τὸν λόγον, ᾧ μάλιστα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐκίνησε, παρακαλῶν μήτε τὴν Ἑλλάδα χωλὴν μήτε τὴν πόλιν ἑτερόζυγα περιιδεῖν γεγενημένην.

[17] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ βοηθήσας τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις ἀπῄει διὰ Κορίνθου τὴν στρατιὰν ἄγων, ἐνεκάλει Λάχαρτος αὐτῷ, πρὶν ἐντυχεῖν τοῖς πολίταις εἰσαγαγόντι τὸ στράτευμα· καὶ γὰρ θύραν κόψαντας ἀλλοτρίαν οὐκ εἰσιέναι πρότερον [2] ἢ τὸν κύριον κελεῦσαι. καὶ ὁ Κίμων ‘ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὑμεῖς’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Λάχαρτε τὰς Κλεωναίων καὶ Μεγαρέων πύλας κόψαντες, ἀλλὰ κατασχίσαντες εἰσεβιάσασθε μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων, ἀξιοῦντες ἀνεῳγέναι πάντα τοῖς μεῖζον δυναμένοις’. οὕτω μὲν ἐθρασύνατο πρὸς τὸν Κορίνθιον ἐν δέοντι, καὶ μετὰ τῆς στρατιᾶς διεξῆλθεν.

[3] Οἱ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους αὖθις ἐκάλουν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐν Ἰθώμῃ Μεσσηνίους καὶ εἵλωτας, ἐλθόντων δὲ τὴν τόλμαν καὶ τὴν λαμπρότητα δείσαντες, ἀπεπέμψαντο μόνους τῶν συμμάχων ὡς νεωτεριστάς. οἱ δὲ πρὸς ὀργὴν ἀπελθόντες, ἤδη τοῖς λακωνίζουσι φανερῶς ἐχαλέπαινον, καὶ τὸν Κίμωνα μικρᾶς ἐπιλαβόμενοι προφάσεως ἐξωστράκισαν εἰς ἔτη δέκα· τοσοῦτον γὰρ ἦν χρόνου τεταγμένον ἅπασι τοῖς ἐξοστρακιζομένοις.

[4] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, ὡς ἐπανήρχοντο Δελφοὺς ἀπὸ Φωκέων ἐλευθερώσαντες, ἐν Τανάγρᾳ καταστρατοπεδευσάντων, Ἀθηναῖοι μὲν ἀπήντων διαμαχούμενοι, Κίμων δὲ μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἧκεν εἰς τὴν αὑτοῦ φυλὴν τὴν Οἰνηίδα, πρόθυμος ὢν ἀμύνεσθαι τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους [5] μετὰ τῶν πολιτῶν. ἡ δὲ βουλὴ τῶν πεντακοσίων πυθομένη καὶ φοβηθεῖσα, τῶν ἐχθρῶν αὐτοῦ καταβοώντων ὡς συνταράξαι τὴν φάλαγγα βουλομένου καὶ τῇ πόλει Λακεδαιμονίους ἐπαγαγεῖν, ἀπηγόρευσε [6] τοῖς στρατηγοῖς μὴ δέχεσθαι τὸν ἄνδρα. κἀκεῖνος μὲν ᾤχετο, δεηθεὶς Εὐθίππου τοῦ Ἀναφλυστίου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἑταίρων, ὅσοι μάλιστα τὴν τοῦ λακωνίζειν αἰτίαν ἔσχον, ἐρρωμένως ἀγωνίσασθαι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ δι’ ἔργων ἀπολύσασθαι τὴν αἰτίαν πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας.

[7] οἱ δὲ λαβόντες αὐτοῦ τὴν πανοπλίαν εἰς τὸν λόχον ἔθεντο, καὶ μετ’ ἀλλήλων συστάντες ἐκθύμως ἑκατὸν ὄντες ἔπεσον, πολὺν αὑτῶν πόθον καὶ μεταμέλειαν ἐφ’ οἷς [8] ᾐτιάθησαν ἀδίκως ἀπολιπόντες τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις. ὅθεν οὐδὲ τῷ πρὸς Κίμωνα θυμῷ πολὺν χρόνον ἐνέμειναν, τὰ μὲν ὡς εἰκὸς ὧν ἔπαθον εὖ μεμνημένοι, τὰ δὲ τοῦ καιροῦ συλλαμβανομένου. νενικημένοι γὰρ ἐν Τανάγρᾳ μάχῃ μεγάλῃ καὶ προσδοκῶντες εἰς ὥραν ἔτους στρατιὰν Πελοποννησίων ἐπ’ αὐτούς, ἐκάλουν ἐκ τῆς φυγῆς τὸν Κίμωνα, καὶ κατῆλθε, τὸ ψήφισμα γράψαντος αὐτοῦ [9] Περικλέους. οὕτω τότε πολιτικαὶ μὲν ἦσαν αἱ διαφοραί, μέτριοι δ’ οἱ θυμοὶ καὶ πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν εὐανάκλητοι συμφέρον, ἡ δὲ φιλοτιμία πάντων ἐπικρατοῦσα τῶν παθῶν τοῖς τῆς πατρίδος ὑπεχώρει καιροῖς.

[18] [1] Εὐθὺς μὲν οὖν ὁ Κίμων κατελθὼν ἔλυσε τὸν πόλεμον καὶ διήλλαξε τὰς πόλεις· γενομένης δ’ εἰρήνης, ὁρῶν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν μὴ δυναμένους, ἀλλὰ κινεῖσθαι καὶ αὐξάνεσθαι ταῖς στρατείαις βουλομένους, ἵνα μὴ τοῖς Ἕλλησι διοχλῶσι μηδὲ περὶ τὰς νήσους ἢ Πελοπόννησον ἀναστρεφόμενοι ναυσὶ πολλαῖς αἰτίας ἐμφυλίων πολέμων καὶ συμμαχικῶν ἐγκλημάτων ἀρχὰς ἐπισπάσωνται κατὰ τῆς πόλεως, ἐπλήρου τριακοσίας τριήρεις, ὡς ἐπ’ Αἴγυπτον καὶ Κύπρον αὖθις ἐκστρατευσόμενος, ἅμα μὲν ἐμμελετᾶν τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀγῶσι βουλόμενος τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ἅμα δ’ ὠφελεῖσθαι δικαίως, τὰς ἀπὸ τῶν φύσει πολεμίων εὐπορίας εἰς τὴν [2] Ἑλλάδα κομίζοντας. ἤδη δὲ παρεσκευασμένων ἁπάντων καὶ τοῦ στρατοῦ παρὰ ταῖς ναυσὶν ὄντος, ὄναρ εἶδεν ὁ Κίμων· ἐδόκει κύνα θυμουμένην ὑλακτεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐκ δὲ τῆς ὑλακῆς μεμειγμένον ἀφεῖσαν ἀνθρώπου φθόγγον εἰπεῖν·

[3] στεῖχε· φίλος γὰρ ἔσῃ καὶ ἐμοὶ καὶ ἐμοῖς σκυλάκεσσιν. οὕτω δὲ δυσκρίτου τῆς ὄψεως οὔσης, Ἀστύφιλος ὁ Ποσειδωνιάτης, μαντικὸς ἀνὴρ καὶ συνήθης τῷ Κίμωνι, φράζει θάνατον αὐτῷ προσημαίνειν τὴν ὄψιν, οὕτω διαιρῶν· κύων ἀνθρώπῳ πρὸς ὃν ὑλακτεῖ πολέμιος· πολεμίῳ δ’ οὐκ ἄν τις μᾶλλον ἢ τελευτήσας φίλος γένοιτο· τὸ δὲ μεῖγμα τῆς φωνῆς Μῆδον ἀποδηλοῖ τὸν ἐχθρόν· ὁ γὰρ Μήδων στρατὸς Ἕλλησιν ὁμοῦ καὶ βαρβάροις μέμεικται.

[4] μετὰ δὲ ταύτην τὴν ὄψιν αὐτοῦ τῷ Διονύσῳ θύσαντος, ὁ μὲν μάντις ἀνέτεμε τὸ ἱερεῖον, τοῦ δ’ αἵματος τὸ πηγνύμενον ἤδη μύρμηκες πολλοὶ λαμβάνοντες κατὰ μικρὸν ἔφερον πρὸς τὸν Κίμωνα, καὶ τοῦ ποδὸς περὶ τὸν μέγαν δάκτυλον περιέπλαττον, ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον λανθάνοντες.

[5] ἅμα δέ πως ὅ τε Κίμων τῷ γιγνομένῳ προσέσχε, καὶ παρῆν ὁ θύτης ἐπιδεικνύμενος αὐτῷ τὸν λοβὸν οὐκ ἔχοντα κεφαλήν. ἀλλ’ - οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἀνάδυσις τῆς στρατείας - ἐξέπλευσε, καὶ τῶν νεῶν ἑξήκοντα μὲν ἀπέστειλεν εἰς Αἴγυπτον, ταῖς δ’ ἄλλαις †πάλιν ἔπλει, [6] καὶ καταναυμαχήσας Φοινισσῶν νεῶν καὶ Κιλισσῶν βασιλικὸν στόλον, ἀνεκτᾶτό τε τὰς ἐν κύκλῳ πόλεις καὶ τοῖς περὶ Αἴγυπτον ἐφήδρευεν, οὐδὲν μικρόν, ἀλλ’ ὅλης ἐπινοῶν τῆς βασιλέως ἡγεμονίας κατάλυσιν, καὶ μάλιστα ὅτι τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους ἐπυνθάνετο δόξαν εἶναι καὶ δύναμιν ἐν τοῖς βαρβάροις μεγάλην, ὑποδεδεγμένου βασιλεῖ [7] κινοῦντι τὸν Ἑλληνικὸν πόλεμον στρατηγήσειν. Θεμιστοκλῆς μὲν οὖν οὐχ ἥκιστα λέγεται τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς πράξεις ἀπογνούς, ὡς οὐκ ἂν ὑπερβαλόμενος τὴν Κίμωνος εὐτυχίαν καὶ ἀρετήν, ἑκὼν τελευτῆσαι, Κίμων δὲ μεγάλων ἐπαιρόμενος ἀρχὰς ἀγώνων καὶ περὶ Κύπρον συνέχων τὸ ναυτικόν, ἔπεμψεν εἰς Ἄμμωνος ἄνδρας ἀπόρρητόν τινα μαντείαν ποιησομένους παρὰ τῷ θεῷ· γιγνώσκει γὰρ οὐδεὶς ὑπὲρ ὧν ἐπέμφθησαν, οὐδὲ χρησμὸν αὐτοῖς ὁ θεὸς ἐξήνεγκεν, ἀλλ’ ἅμα τῷ προσελθεῖν ἐκέλευσεν ἀπιέναι τοὺς θεοπρόπους· αὐτὸν γὰρ ἤδη τὸν Κίμωνα [8] παρ’ ἑαυτῷ τυγχάνειν ὄντα. ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντες οἱ θεοπρόποι κατέβαινον ἐπὶ θάλασσαν· γενόμενοι δ’ ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ὃ τότε περὶ Αἴγυπτον ἦν, ἐπύθοντο τεθνάναι τὸν Κίμωνα, καὶ τὰς ἡμέρας πρὸς τὸ μαντεῖον ἀνάγοντες, ἔγνωσαν ᾐνιγμένην τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὡς ἤδη παρὰ θεοῖς ὄντος.

[19] [1] Ἀπέθανε δὲ πολιορκῶν Κίτιον, ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι λέγουσι νοσήσας· ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ἐκ τραύματος, ὃ πρὸς [2] τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀγωνιζόμενος ἔσχε. τελευτῶν δὲ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν ἐκέλευσεν εὐθὺς ἀποπλεῖν, ἀποκρυψαμένους τὸν θάνατον αὐτοῦ, καὶ συνέβη μήτε τῶν πολεμίων μήτε τῶν συμμάχων αἰσθομένων ἀσφαλῶς αὐτοὺς ἀνακομισθῆναι, στρατηγουμένους ὑπὸ Κίμωνος, ὥς φησι Φανόδημος (FGrH 325 F 23), τεθνηκότος ἐφ’ ἡμέρας τριάκοντα.

[3] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου τελευτὴν πρὸς μὲν τοὺς βαρβάρους οὐδὲν ἔτι λαμπρὸν ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἐπράχθη στρατηγοῦ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ἀλλὰ τραπέντες ὑπὸ δημαγωγῶν καὶ πολεμοποιῶν ἐπ’ ἀλλήλους, οὐδενὸς τὰς χεῖρας ἐν μέσῳ διασχόντος, συνερράγησαν εἰς τὸν πόλεμον, ἀναπνοὴν μὲν τοῖς βασιλέως πράγμασι γενόμενον, φθόρον δ’ ἀμύθητον [4] τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς δυνάμεως ἀπεργασάμενον. ὀψὲ δ’ οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀγησίλαον εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν ἐξενεγκάμενοι τὰ ὅπλα, βραχέος ἥψαντο πολέμου πρὸς τοὺς ἐπὶ θαλάσσῃ βασιλέως στρατηγούς, καὶ λαμπρὸν οὐδὲν οὐδὲ μέγα δράσαντες, αὖθις δὲ ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς στάσεσι καὶ ταραχαῖς ἀφ’ ἑτέρας ἀρχῆς ὑπενεχθέντες, ᾤχοντο, τοὺς Περσῶν φορολόγους ἐν μέσαις ταῖς συμμάχοις καὶ φίλαις πόλεσιν ἀπολιπόντες, ὧν οὐδὲ γραμματοφόρος κατέβαινεν οὐδ’ ἵππος πρὸς θαλάσσῃ τετρακοσίων σταδίων ἐντὸς ὤφθη στρατηγοῦντος Κίμωνος.

[5] Ὅτι μὲν οὖν εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἀπεκομίσθη τὰ λείψανα αὐτοῦ, μαρτυρεῖ τῶν μνημάτων τὰ μέχρι νῦν Κιμώνεια προσαγορευόμενα· τιμῶσι δὲ καὶ Κιτιεῖς τάφον τινὰ Κίμωνος, ὡς Ναυσικράτης ὁ ῥήτωρ φησίν, ἐν λοιμῷ καὶ γῆς ἀφορίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ προστάξαντος αὐτοῖς μὴ ἀμελεῖν Κίμωνος, ἀλλ’ ὡς κρείττονα σέβεσθαι καὶ γεραίρειν. τοιοῦτος μὲν ὁ Ἑλληνικὸς ἡγεμών.

Lucullus

[1] [1] Τῷ δὲ Λευκόλλῳ πάππος μὲν ἦν ὑπατικός, θεῖος δὲ πρὸς μητρὸς Μέτελλος ὁ Νομαδικὸς ἐπικληθείς. τῶν δὲ γονέων ὁ μὲν πατὴρ ἑάλω κλοπῆς, Κεκιλία δ’ ἡ μήτηρ [2] ἠδόξησεν ὡς οὐ βεβιωκυῖα σωφρόνως. αὐτὸς δ’ ὁ Λεύκολλος ἔτι μειράκιον ὤν, πρὶν ἀρχήν τινα μετελθεῖν καὶ πολιτείας ἅψασθαι, πρῶτον ἔργον ἐποιήσατο τὸν τοῦ πατρὸς κατήγορον κρῖναι Σερουίλιον αὔγουρα, λαβὼν ἀδικοῦντα δημοσίᾳ. καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα λαμπρὸν ἐφάνη Ῥωμαίοις, καὶ τὴν δίκην ἐκείνην ὥσπερ ἀριστείαν διὰ στόματος [3] ἔσχον. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ ἄλλως αὐτοῖς ἄνευ προφάσεως οὐκ ἀγεννὲς εἶναι τὸ τῆς κατηγορίας ἔργον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ τοὺς νέους ἐβούλοντο τοῖς ἀδικοῦσιν ἐπιφυομένους ὁρᾶν ὥσπερ θηρίοις εὐγενεῖς σκύλακας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ μεγάλης περὶ τὴν δίκην ἐκείνην φιλονικίας γενομένης, ὥστε καὶ τρωθῆναί τινας καὶ πεσεῖν, ἀπέφυγεν ὁ Σερουίλιος.

[4] Ὁ δὲ Λεύκολλος ἤσκητο καὶ λέγειν ἱκανῶς ἑκατέραν γλῶτταν, ὥστε καὶ Σύλλας (HRR I 195) τὰς αὑτοῦ πράξεις ἀναγράφων ἐκείνῳ προσεφώνησεν ὡς συνταξομένῳ [5] καὶ διαθήσοντι τὴν ἱστορίαν ἄμεινον. ἦν γὰρ οὐκ ἐπὶ τὴν χρείαν μόνην ἐμμελὴς αὐτοῦ καὶ πρόχειρος ὁ λόγος, καθάπερ ὁ τῶν ἄλλων τὴν μὲν ἀγορὰν

θύννος βολαῖος πέλαγος ὣς διεστρόβει (TGF p. 914 N²),

γενόμενος δὲ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἐκτὸς ‘αὖος, ἀμουσίᾳ τεθηπώς’, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ἐμμελῆ ταύτην καὶ λεγομένην ἐλευθέριον ἐπὶ τῷ καλῷ προσεποιεῖτο παιδείαν ἔτι καὶ μειράκιον [6] ὤν· γενόμενος δὲ πρεσβύτερος, ἤδη παντάπασιν ὥσπερ ἐκ πολλῶν ἀγώνων ἀφῆκε τὴν διάνοιαν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ σχολάζειν καὶ ἀναπαύεσθαι, τὸ θεωρητικὸν αὐτῆς ἐγείρας, καταλύσας δ’ ἐν καιρῷ καὶ κολούσας τὸ φιλότιμον [7] ἐκ τῆς πρὸς Πομπήιον διαφορᾶς. περὶ μὲν οὖν τῆς φιλολογίας αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοῖς εἰρημένοις καὶ ταῦτα λέγεται· νέον ὄντα πρὸς Ὁρτήσιον τὸν δικολόγον καὶ Σισεννᾶν τὸν ἱστορικὸν ἐκ παιδιᾶς τινος εἰς σπουδὴν προελθούσης ὁμολογῆσαι, προθεμένων ποίημα καὶ λόγον Ἑλληνικόν τε καὶ Ῥωμαϊκόν, εἰς ὅ τι ἂν λάχῃ τούτων, [8] τὸν Μαρσικὸν ἐντενεῖν πόλεμον. καί πως ἔοικεν εἰς λόγον Ἑλληνικὸν ὁ κλῆρος ἀφικέσθαι· διασῴζεται γὰρ Ἑλληνική τις ἱστορία τοῦ Μαρσικοῦ πολέμου.

Τῆς δὲ πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ Μᾶρκον εὐνοίας πολλῶν τεκμηρίων ὄντων μάλιστα Ῥωμαῖοι τοῦ πρώτου μνημονεύουσι.

[9] πρεσβύτερος γὰρ ὢν αὐτοῦ λαβεῖν ἀρχὴν μόνος οὐκ ἠθέλησεν, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἐκείνου καιρὸν ἀναμείνας, οὕτως ἐπηγάγετο τὸν δῆμον, ὥστε σὺν ἐκείνῳ μὴ παρὼν ἀγορανόμος αἱρεθῆναι.

[2] [1] Νέος δ’ ὢν ἐν τῷ Μαρσικῷ πολέμῳ πολλὰ μὲν τόλμης δείγματα παρέσχε καὶ συνέσεως, μᾶλλόν γε μὴν αὐτὸν δι’ εὐστάθειαν καὶ πρᾳότητα Σύλλας προσηγάγετο, καὶ χρώμενος ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἐπὶ τὰ πλείστης ἄξια σπουδῆς διετέλεσεν. ὧν ἦν καὶ ἡ περὶ τὸ νόμισμα πραγματεία· [2] δι’ ἐκείνου γὰρ ἐκόπη τὸ πλεῖστον ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ περὶ τὸν Μιθριδατικὸν πόλεμον, καὶ Λευκόλλειον ἀπ’ ἐκείνου προσηγορεύθη καὶ διετέλεσεν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον, ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτικῶν χρειῶν ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ λαμβάνον [3] ἀμοιβὴν ταχεῖαν. ἐκ τούτου τῆς μὲν γῆς ἐπικρατῶν ὁ Σύλλας ἐν ταῖς Ἀθήναις, περικοπτόμενος δὲ τὴν ἀγορὰν ἐκ τῆς θαλάττης ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ναυκρατούντων, ἐξέπεμψεν ἐπ’ Αἰγύπτου καὶ Λιβύης τὸν Λεύκολλον, ἄξοντα [4] ναῦς ἐκεῖθεν. ἦν μὲν οὖν ἀκμὴ χειμῶνος, ἐξέπλευσε δὲ τρισὶν Ἑλληνικοῖς μυοπάρωσι καὶ δικρότοις ἴσαις Ῥοδιακαῖς, πρὸς μέγα πέλαγος καὶ ναῦς πολεμίας πανταχόσε τῷ κρατεῖν πολλὰς διαφερομένας παραβαλλόμενος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ Κρήτην κατάρας ὠκειώσατο, καὶ Κυρηναίους καταλαβὼν ἐκ τυραννίδων συνεχῶν καὶ πολέμων ταραττομένους ἀνέλαβε, καὶ κατεστήσατο τὴν πολιτείαν Πλατωνικῆς τινος φωνῆς ἀναμνήσας τὴν πόλιν, ἣν ἐκεῖνος [5] ἀπεθέσπισε πρὸς αὐτούς· δεομένων γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ὅπως τε νόμους γράψῃ καὶ τὸν δῆμον αὐτῶν εἰς τύπον τινὰ καταστήσῃ πολιτείας σώφρονος, ἔφη χαλεπὸν εἶναι Κυρηναίοις οὕτως εὐτυχοῦσι νομοθετεῖν· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώπου δυσαρκτότερον εὖ πράσσειν δοκοῦντος, οὐδ’ αὖ πάλιν δεκτικώτερον ἐπιστασίας συσταλέντος ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης. ὃ καὶ τότε Κυρηναίους νομοθετοῦντι Λευκόλλῳ πρᾴους παρέσχεν.

[6] Ἐκεῖθεν δ’ ἀναχθεὶς ἐπ’ Αἰγύπτου, τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν σκαφῶν ἀπέβαλε πειρατῶν ἐπιφανέντων, αὐτὸς δὲ διασωθεὶς [7] κατήγετο λαμπρῶς εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν. ἀπήντησε γὰρ αὐτῷ σύμπας ὁ στόλος, ὥσπερ εἰώθει βασιλεῖ καταπλέοντι, κεκοσμημένος ἐκπρεπῶς, καὶ τὸ μειράκιον ὁ Πτολεμαῖος ἄλλην τε θαυμαστὴν ἐπεδείκνυτο φιλοφροσύνην πρὸς αὐτόν, οἴκησίν τε καὶ δίαιταν ἐν τοῖς βασιλείοις ἔδωκεν, οὐδενός πω ξένου πρότερον ἡγεμόνος αὐτόθι [8] καταχθέντος. δαπάνην δὲ καὶ σύνταξιν οὐχ ὅσην ἐδίδου τοῖς ἄλλοις, ἀλλὰ τετραπλῆν ἐκείνῳ παρεῖχεν, οὐ προσιεμένῳ τῶν ἀναγκαίων πλέον οὐδὲν οὐδὲ δῶρον λαβόντι, καίπερ ὀγδοήκοντα ταλάντων ἄξια πέμψαντος αὐτῷ.

[9] λέγεται δὲ μήτ’ εἰς Μέμφιν ἀναβῆναι μήτ’ ἄλλο τῶν θαυμαζομένων ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ καὶ περιβοήτων ἱστορῆσαι· σχολάζοντος γὰρ εἶναι ταῦτα θεατοῦ καὶ τρυφῶντος, οὐχ ὡς αὐτὸς ἐν ὑπαίθρῳ τὸν αὐτοκράτορα σκηνοῦντα παρὰ ταῖς ἐπάλξεσι τῶν πολεμίων ἀπολελοιπότος.

[3] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀπεῖπε τὴν συμμαχίαν ὁ Πτολεμαῖος πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ἀποδειλιάσας, ἐκείνῳ δὲ ναῦς ἄχρι Κύπρου πομποὺς παρέσχε, καὶ περὶ τὸν ἔκπλουν αὐτὸν ἀσπαζόμενος καὶ θεραπεύων ἐδωρεῖτο χρυσένδετον σμάραγδον τῶν πολυτελῶν, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ὁ Λεύκολλος παρῃτεῖτο, δείξαντος δὲ τὴν γλυφὴν τοῦ βασιλέως εἰκόνα οὖσαν ἰδίαν, ἐφοβήθη διώσασθαι, μὴ παντάπασιν ἐχθρὸς ἀποπλεῖν [2] νομισθεὶς ἐπιβουλευθείη κατὰ θάλατταν. ἐπεὶ δὲ πλῆθος ἐν παράπλῳ νεῶν ἐκ τῶν παραλίων πόλεων ἀθροίσας, πλὴν ὅσαι πειρατικῶν μετεῖχον ἀδικημάτων, εἰς τὴν Κύπρον διεπέρασεν, ἐνταῦθα πυνθανόμενος τοὺς πολεμίους ναυλοχοῦντας ἐπὶ ταῖς ἄκραις παραφυλάττειν αὐτόν, ἐνεώλκησε τὰ σκάφη πάντα, καὶ ταῖς πόλεσιν ἔγραψε περὶ χειμαδίων καὶ ἀγορᾶς, ὡς αὐτόθι τὴν ὥραν [3] ἀναμενῶν. εἶτα πλοῦ φανέντος, ἐξαπίνης κατασπάσας τὰς ναῦς ἀνήχθη, καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν μὲν ὑφειμένοις πλέων τοῖς ἱστίοις καὶ ταπεινοῖς, νύκτωρ δ’ ἐπαιρομένοις, εἰς Ῥόδον ἐσώθη. Ῥοδίων δὲ ναῦς αὐτῷ προσπαρασχόντων, Κῴους ἔπεισε καὶ Κνιδίους τῶν βασιλικῶν ἀπαλλαγέντας [4] ἐπὶ Σαμίους συστρατεύειν. ἐκ δὲ Χίου τοὺς βασιλικοὺς αὐτὸς ἐξήλασε, Κολοφωνίους δ’ ἠλευθέρωσε συλλαβὼν Ἐπίγονον τὸν τύραννον αὐτῶν.

Ἐτύγχανε δὲ κατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον ἤδη Μιθριδάτης τὸ Πέργαμον ἐκλελοιπὼς καὶ συνεσταλμένος εἰς Πιτάνην.

[5] ἐκεῖ δὲ Φιμβρίου κατέχοντος αὐτὸν ἐκ γῆς καὶ πολιορκοῦντος, εἰς τὴν θάλατταν ἀφορῶν συνῆγε καὶ μετεπέμπετο τοὺς πανταχόθεν στόλους πρὸς αὑτόν, ἀνδρὶ τολμητῇ καὶ νενικηκότι τῷ Φιμβρίᾳ συμπλέκεσθαι [6] καὶ πολεμεῖν ἀπεγνωκώς. ὁ δὲ ταῦτα συνορῶν, ναυτικῷ δὲ λειπόμενος, πρὸς Λεύκολλον ἔπεμψεν, ἥκειν τῷ στόλῳ δεόμενος καὶ συνεξελεῖν ἔχθιστον καὶ πολεμιώτατον βασιλέων, ὡς μὴ τὸ μέγα καὶ διὰ πολλῶν ἀγώνων καὶ πόνων διωκόμενον ἆθλον ἐκφύγοι Ῥωμαίους, Μιθριδάτης εἰς λαβὰς ἥκων καὶ γεγονὼς ἐντὸς ἀρκύων, οὗ ληφθέντος οὐδένα τῆς δόξης οἴσεσθαι πλέον ἢ τὸν ἐμποδὼν τῇ φυγῇ στάντα καὶ διαδιδράσκοντος ἐπιλαβόμενον· ‹ὃν› ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ μὲν ἐξεωσμένον τῆς γῆς, ὑπ’ ἐκείνου δὲ τῆς θαλάττης εἰργόμενον, ἀμφοτέροις ἀποδώσειν τὸ κατόρθωμα, τὰς δὲ Σύλλα πρὸς Ὀρχομενῷ καὶ περὶ Χαιρώνειαν ὑμνουμένας ἀριστείας ἐν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ θήσεσθαι [7] Ῥωμαίους. καὶ οὐδὲν ἦν ἀπὸ τρόπου τῶν λεγομένων, ἀλλὰ παντὶ δῆλον ὡς, εἰ Φιμβρίᾳ τότε πεισθεὶς ὁ Λεύκολλος οὐ μακρὰν ὢν περιήγαγεν ἐκεῖσε τὰς ναῦς καὶ συνέφραξε τὸν λιμένα τῷ στόλῳ, πέρας ἂν εἶχεν ὁ πόλεμος καὶ μυρίων ἀπηλλαγμένοι κακῶν ἅπαντες ἦσαν.

[8] ἀλλ’ εἴτε τὰ πρὸς Σύλλαν δίκαια πρεσβεύων πρὸ παντὸς ἰδίου τε καὶ κοινοῦ συμφέροντος, εἴτε τὸν Φιμβρίαν μιαρὸν ὄντα καὶ φονέα γεγενημένον ἔναγχος ἀνδρὸς φίλου καὶ στρατηγοῦ διὰ φιλαρχίαν προβαλλόμενος, εἴτε κατὰ θείαν δή τινα τύχην περιφεισάμενος [αὐτοῦ] Μιθριδάτου καὶ ‹αὑτῷ› φυλάξας ἀνταγωνιστήν, οὐχ ὑπήκουσεν, ἀλλὰ Μιθριδάτῃ μὲν ἐκπλεῦσαι παρέσχε καὶ καταγελάσαι τῆς Φιμβρίου δυνάμεως, αὐτὸς δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ἐπὶ Λεκτοῦ τῆς Τρῳάδος βασιλικὰς ναῦς ἐπιφανείσας κατεναυμάχησεν, αὖθις δὲ πρὸς Τενέδῳ ναυλοχοῦντα μείζονι παρασκευῇ κατιδὼν Νεοπτόλεμον, ἐπέπλει πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων, Ῥοδιακῆς πεντήρους ἐπιβεβηκώς, ἧς ἐναυάρχει Δαμαγόρας, ἀνὴρ εὔνους τε Ῥωμαίοις καὶ θαλασσίων ἀγώνων [9] ἐμπειρότατος. ἐπελαύνοντος δὲ ῥοθίῳ τοῦ Νεοπτολέμου καὶ κελεύσαντος εἰς ἐμβολὴν ἀγαγεῖν τὸν κυβερνήτην, δείσας ὁ Δαμαγόρας τὸ βάρος τῆς βασιλικῆς καὶ τὴν τραχύτητα τοῦ χαλκώματος, οὐκ ἐτόλμησε συμπεσεῖν ἀντίπρῳρος, ἀλλ’ ὀξέως ἐκ περιαγωγῆς ἀποστρέψας ἐκέλευσεν ἐπὶ πρύμναν ὤσασθαι, καὶ πιεσθείσης ἐνταῦθα τῆς νεώς, ἐδέξατο τὴν πληγήν, ἀβλαβῆ γενομένην ἅτε δὴ τοῖς ‹μὴ› θαλαττεύουσι τῆς νεὼς μέρεσι προσπεσοῦσαν.

[10] ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τῶν φίλων προσφερομένων, ἐγκελευσάμενος ὁ Λεύκολλος ἐπιστρέφειν καὶ πολλὰ δράσας ἄξια λόγου τρέπεται τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ καταδιώκει τὸν Νεοπτόλεμον.

[4] [1] Ἐκεῖθεν δὲ Σύλλᾳ περὶ Χερρόνησον ἤδη μέλλοντι διαβαίνειν συμβαλών, τόν τε πόρον ἀσφαλῆ παρεῖχε καὶ τὴν στρατιὰν συνδιεβίβαζεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ συνθηκῶν γενομένων Μιθριδάτης μὲν ἀπέπλευσεν εἰς τὸν Εὔξεινον πόντον, Σύλλας δὲ τὴν Ἀσίαν δισμυρίοις ταλάντοις ἐζημίωσε, προσταχθὲν αὐτῷ τά τε χρήματα ταῦτα πρᾶξαι καὶ νόμισμα κόψαι, παραμύθιόν τι δοκεῖ τῆς Σύλλα χαλεπότητος γενέσθαι ταῖς πόλεσιν, οὐ μόνον καθαρὸν καὶ δίκαιον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρᾷον εἰς οὕτω βαρὺ καὶ σκυθρωπὸν ὑπηρέτημα παρασχὼν ἑαυτόν.

[2] Μιτυληναίους δ’ ἄντικρυς ἀφεστῶτας ἐβούλετο μὲν εὐγνωμονῆσαι καὶ δίκης τυχεῖν μετρίας ἐφ’ οἷς περὶ Μάνιον ἐξήμαρτον· ὡς δ’ ἑώρα κακοδαιμονοῦντας, ἐπιπλεύσας ἐκράτησε μάχῃ καὶ κατέκλεισεν εἰς τὰ τείχη, καὶ πολιορκίαν συστησάμενος, ἐξέπλευσε μὲν ἡμέρας καὶ φανερῶς εἰς Ἐλαίαν, ὑπέστρεψε δὲ λεληθότως καὶ περὶ [3] τὴν πόλιν ὑφεὶς ἐνέδραν ἡσύχαζεν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀτάκτως καὶ μετὰ θράσους ὡς ἔρημον ἀναρπασόμενοι τὸ στρατόπεδον οἱ Μιτυληναῖοι προῆλθον, ἐπεισπεσὼν αὐτοῖς ἔλαβέ τε παμπόλλους ζῶντας καὶ τῶν ἀμυνομένων πεντακοσίους ἀπέκτεινεν, ἀνδραπόδων δὲ χιλιάδας ἓξ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην ἀναρίθμητον ἠλάσατο λείαν.

[4] Τῶν δὲ περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν κακῶν, ἃ τότε Σύλλας καὶ Μάριος ἄφθονα καὶ παντοδαπὰ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις παρεῖχον, οὐ πάνυ μετέσχε, θείᾳ τινὶ τύχῃ περὶ τὰς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ πράξεις [5] βραδύνας. οὐ μὴν ἔλαττόν τι παρὰ Σύλλα τῶν ἄλλων φίλων ἔσχεν, ἀλλὰ τήν τε γραφὴν ὡς εἴρηται (1, 4) τῶν ὑπομνημάτων ἐκείνῳ δι’ εὔνοιαν ἀνέθηκε, καὶ τελευτῶν ἐπίτροπον τοῦ παιδὸς ἔγραψεν ὑπερβὰς Πομπήιον· καὶ δοκεῖ τοῦτο πρῶτον αὐτοῖς ὑπάρξαι διαφορᾶς αἴτιον καὶ ζηλοτυπίας, νέοις οὖσι καὶ διαπύροις πρὸς δόξαν.

[5] [1] Ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἢ Σύλλαν ἀποθανεῖν ὑπάτευσε μετὰ Μάρκου Κόττα περὶ τὴν ἕκτην καὶ ἑβδομηκοστὴν πρὸς ταῖς ἑκατὸν ὀλυμπιάδα. πολλῶν οὖν αὖθις ἀνακινούντων τὸν Μιθριδατικὸν πόλεμον, ἔφη Μᾶρκος αὐτὸν [2] οὐ πεπαῦσθαι, ἀλλ’ ἀναπεπαῦσθαι. διὸ καὶ λαχὼν τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν ὁ Λεύκολλος τὴν ἐντὸς Ἄλπεων Γαλατίαν ἤχθετο, πράξεων ὑποθέσεις μεγάλων οὐκ ἔχουσαν. μάλιστα δ’ αὐτὸν εὐδοκιμῶν Πομπήιος ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ παρώξυνεν, ὡς ἄλλος οὐδεὶς ἐπίδοξος ὤν, εἰ συμβαίη παύσασθαι τὸν Ἰβηρικὸν πόλεμον, εὐθὺς αἱρεθήσεσθαι στρατηγὸς [3] ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην. διὸ καὶ χρήματα αἰτοῦντος αὐτοῦ καὶ γράφοντος, ὡς εἰ μὴ πέμποιεν, ἀφεὶς Ἰβηρίαν καὶ Σερτώριον εἰς Ἰταλίαν ἀπάξοι τὰς δυνάμεις, συνέπραξεν ὁ Λεύκολλος προθυμότατα πεμφθῆναι τὰ χρήματα καὶ μηδ’ ἀφ’ ἡστινοσοῦν προφάσεως ἐκεῖνον ἐπανελθεῖν ὑπατεύοντος αὐτοῦ· πάντα γὰρ ἂν ἐπ’ ἐκείνῳ γενήσεσθαι τὰ τῆς πόλεως παρόντι μετὰ τοσαύτης στρατιᾶς.

[4] καὶ γὰρ ὁ κρατῶν τότε τῆς πολιτείας τῷ πρὸς χάριν ἅπαντα καὶ λέγειν καὶ πράττειν Κέθηγος ἔχθραν τινὰ πρὸς Λεύκολλον εἶχε, βδελυττόμενον αὐτοῦ τὸν βίον, αἰσχρῶν ἐρώτων καὶ ὕβρεως καὶ πλημμελείας μεστὸν [5] ὄντα. τοῦτον μὲν οὖν ἄντικρυς ἐπολέμει· Λεύκιον δὲ Κοίντιον, ἄλλον δημαγωγόν, ἐπαναστάντα τοῖς Σύλλα πολιτεύμασι καὶ ταράττειν τὰ πράγματα πειρώμενον ἐκ τοῦ καθεστῶτος, ἰδίᾳ τε πολλὰ παραμυθούμενος καὶ δημοσίᾳ νουθετῶν ἀπέστησε τῆς πείρας καὶ κατεστόρεσε τὴν φιλοτιμίαν, ὡς ἐνῆν μάλιστα πολιτικῶς καὶ σωτηρίως ἀρχὴν νοσήματος μεγάλου μεταχειρισάμενος.

[6] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δ’ ὁ τὴν Κιλικίαν ἔχων Ὀκτάουϊος ἠγγέλθη τεθνηκώς. σπαργώντων δὲ πολλῶν πρὸς τὴν ἐπαρχίαν καὶ Κέθηγον ὡς δυνατώτατον ὄντα διαπράξασθαι θεραπευόντων, αὐτῆς μὲν ὁ Λεύκολλος Κιλικίας οὐ πολὺν εἶχε λόγον, οἰόμενος δ’ εἰ λάβοι ταύτην, ἐγγὺς οὔσης Καππαδοκίας, ἄλλον οὐδένα πεμφθήσεσθαι πολεμήσοντα Μιθριδάτην, πᾶσαν ἔστρεφε μηχανὴν ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ [2] προέσθαι τὴν ἐπαρχίαν ἑτέρῳ, καὶ τελευτῶν ἔργον οὐ σεμνὸν οὐδ’ ἐπαινετόν, ἄλλως δ’ ἀνύσιμον πρὸς τὸ τέλος ἐκ τῆς ἀνάγκης ὑπέμεινε παρὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν. Πραικία τις ἦν ὄνομα τῶν ἐφ’ ὥρᾳ καὶ λαμυρίᾳ διαβοήτων ἐν τῇ πόλει, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα κρείττων οὐδὲν ἀνέδην ἑταιρούσης γυναικός, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ χρῆσθαι τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν αὐτῇ καὶ διαλεγομένοις πρὸς τὰς ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων σπουδὰς καὶ πολιτείας προσλαβοῦσα τῇ λοιπῇ χάριτι τὸ δοκεῖν φιλέταιρός τις εἶναι καὶ δραστήριος, ἴσχυσε μέγιστον.

[3] ὡς δὲ καὶ Κέθηγον ἀνθοῦντα τῇ δόξῃ τότε καὶ φέροντα τὴν πόλιν ὑπηγάγετο καὶ συνῆν ἐρῶντι, παντάπασιν εἰς ἐκείνην περιῆλθεν ἡ τῆς πόλεως δύναμις· οὐ[δὲ] γὰρ ἐπράττετό τι δημοσίᾳ Κεθήγου μὴ σπουδάζοντος, οὐδὲ [4] Πραικίας μὴ κελευούσης παρὰ Κεθήγῳ. ταύτην οὖν ὑπελθὼν δώροις ὁ Λεύκολλος καὶ κολακείαις - ἦν δέ που καὶ τῷ Λευκόλλῳ συμφιλοτιμουμένην ὁρᾶσθαι μέγας γυναικὶ σοβαρᾷ καὶ πανηγυρικῇ μισθός - εὐθὺς εἶχε τὸν Κέθηγον ἐπαινέτην καὶ προμνώμενον αὐτῷ Κιλικίαν.

[5] ἐπεὶ δ’ ἅπαξ ἔτυχε ταύτης, οὐδὲν ἔτι Πραικίαν οὐδὲ Κέθηγον ἔδει παρακαλεῖν, ἀλλὰ πάντες ὁμαλῶς ἐκείνῳ φέροντες ἐνεχείρισαν τὸν Μιθριδατικὸν πόλεμον, ὡς ὑφ’ ἑτέρου μηδενὸς ἄμεινον διαπολεμηθῆναι δυνάμενον, Πομπηίου μὲν ἔτι Σερτωρίῳ προσπολεμοῦντος, Μετέλλου δ’ ἀπειρηκότος ἤδη διὰ γῆρας, οὓς μόνους ἄν τις ἐναμίλλους ἐποιήσατο Λευκόλλῳ περὶ τῆς στρατηγίας [6] ἀμφισβητοῦντας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ Κόττας ὁ συνάρχων αὐτοῦ πολλὰ λιπαρήσας τὴν σύγκλητον ἀπεστάλη μετὰ νεῶν τὴν Προποντίδα φυλάξων καὶ προπολεμήσων Βιθυνίας.

[7] [1] Λεύκολλος δὲ τάγμα μὲν αὐτόθεν ἔχων συντεταγμένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ διέβαινεν εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν· ἐκεῖ δὲ τὴν ἄλλην παρέλαβε δύναμιν, πάντων μὲν πάλαι τρυφαῖς διεφθορότων καὶ πλεονεξίαις, τῶν δὲ Φιμβριανῶν λεγομένων καὶ διὰ συνήθειαν ἀναρχίας δυσμεταχειρίστων γεγονότων.

[2] οὗτοι γὰρ ἦσαν οἱ Φλάκκον τε μετὰ Φιμβρίου τὸν ὕπατον καὶ στρατηγὸν ἀνῃρηκότες αὐτόν τε τὸν Φιμβρίαν Σύλλᾳ προδεδωκότες, αὐθάδεις μὲν ἄνθρωποι καὶ παράνομοι, μάχιμοι δὲ καὶ τλήμονες μετ’ ἐμπειρίας [3] πολέμου. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ βραχεῖ χρόνῳ καὶ τούτων τὸ θράσος ὁ Λεύκολλος ἐξέκοψε καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐπέστρεψε, τότε πρῶτον ὡς ἔοικε πειρωμένους ἄρχοντος ἀληθινοῦ καὶ ἡγεμόνος· ἄλλως δ’ ἐδημαγωγοῦντο, πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἐθιζόμενοι στρατεύεσθαι.

[4] Τὰ δὲ τῶν πολεμίων οὕτως εἶχε. Μιθριδάτης, ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν σοφιστῶν κομπώδης ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ σοβαρὸς ἐπὶ Ῥωμαίους ἀναστὰς διακένῳ δυνάμει, λαμπρᾷ δὲ καὶ πανηγυρικῇ τὴν ὄψιν, εἶτ’ ἐκπεσὼν καταγελάστως καὶ νουθετηθείς, ὅτε τὸ δεύτερον πολεμεῖν ἔμελλεν, εἰς ἀληθινὴν καὶ πραγματικὴν συνέστελλε τὰς δυνάμεις παρασκευήν.

[5] ἀφελὼν γὰρ τὰ παντοδαπὰ πλήθη καὶ τὰς πολυγλώσσους ἀπειλὰς τῶν βαρβάρων, ὅπλων τε διαχρύσων καὶ διαλίθων κατασκευάς, ὡς λάφυρα τῶν κρατούντων, οὐκ ἀλκήν τινα τῶν κεκτημένων ὄντα, ξίφη μὲν ἠλαύνετο Ῥωμαϊκά, καὶ θυρεοὺς ἐμβριθεῖς ἐπήγνυτο, καὶ γεγυμνασμένους μᾶλλον ἢ κεκοσμημένους ἤθροιζεν ἵππους, πεζῶν δὲ μυριάδας δώδεκα κατεσκευασμένων εἰς φάλαγγα Ῥωμαϊκήν, ἱππεῖς δὲ πρὸς μυρίοις ἑξακισχιλίους ἄνευ τῶν δρεπανηφόρων τεθρίππων· ταῦτα δ’ ἦν [6] ἑκατόν· ἔτι δὲ ναῦς οὐ χρυσορόφοις σκηνίσιν οὐδὲ λουτροῖς παλλακίδων καὶ γυναικωνίτισι τρυφώσαις ἠσκημένας, ἀλλ’ ὅπλων καὶ βελῶν καὶ χρημάτων γεμούσας παραρτισάμενος, ἐνέβαλεν εἰς Βιθυνίαν, τῶν πόλεων αὖθις ἀσμένως ὑποδεχομένων οὐ μόνον τούτων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν ὅλην ὑποτροπὴ τῶν ἔμπροσθεν νοσημάτων εἶχεν, ἀφόρητα πάσχουσαν ὑπὸ Ῥωμαϊκῶν δανειστῶν καὶ τελωνῶν· [7] οὓς ὕστερον μὲν ὥσπερ Ἁρπυίας τὴν τροφὴν ἁρπάζοντας αὐτῶν ὁ Λεύκολλος ἐξήλασε, τότε δὲ μετριωτέρους ἐπειρᾶτο νουθετῶν ποιεῖν, καὶ τὰς ἀποστάσεις κατέπαυε τῶν δήμων, οὐδενὸς ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἡσυχάζοντος.

[8] [1] Ὃν δὲ περὶ ταῦτα Λεύκολλος ἠσχολεῖτο χρόνον, αὑτοῦ καιρὸν εἶναι νομίζων ὁ Κόττας παρεσκευάζετο μάχεσθαι πρὸς Μιθριδάτην, καὶ πολλῶν ἀπαγγελλόντων ἤδη Λεύκολλον ἐν Φρυγίᾳ στρατοπεδεύειν ἐπιόντα, μόνον οὐκ ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν ἔχειν τὸν θρίαμβον οἰόμενος, ὡς μὴ [2] μεταλάβῃ Λεύκολλος αὐτοῦ, συμβαλεῖν ἔσπευσε. πληγεὶς δ’ ἅμα καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν, ἑξήκοντα μὲν ἀπώλεσεν αὔτανδρα σκάφη, πεζοὺς δὲ τετρακισχιλίους, αὐτὸς δὲ κατακλεισθεὶς εἰς Χαλκηδόνα καὶ πολιορκούμενος, [3] εἰς τὰς Λευκόλλου χεῖρας ἀπέβλεπεν. ἦσαν μὲν οὖν οἱ τὸν Λεύκολλον ἀμελήσαντα Κόττα πρόσω χωρεῖν παρορμῶντες, ὡς ἔρημον αἱρήσοντα τὴν Μιθριδάτου βασιλείαν, καὶ μάλιστα τῶν στρατιωτῶν οὗτος ἦν ὁ λόγος, ἀγανακτούντων εἰ μὴ μόνον αὑτὸν ἀπολεῖ καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ βουλευσάμενος κακῶς ὁ Κόττας, ἀλλὰ καὶ σφίσιν ἐμποδὼν ἔσται, νικᾶν ἀμαχεῖ δυναμένοις· Λεύκολλος δὲ πρὸς μὲν τούτους δημηγορῶν εἶπεν, ὡς ἕνα βούλοιτ’ ἂν ἐκ πολεμίων σῶσαι Ῥωμαῖον ἢ πάντα [4] λαβεῖν τὰ τῶν πολεμίων· Ἀρχελάου δὲ τοῦ περὶ Βοιωτίαν Μιθριδάτῃ στρατηγήσαντος, εἶτ’ ἀποστάντος καὶ Ῥωμαίοις συστρατεύοντος, διαβεβαιουμένου ‹μόνον› ὀφθέντα Λεύκολλον ἐν Πόντῳ πάντων ὁμοῦ κρατήσειν, οὐκ ἔφη δειλότερος εἶναι τῶν κυνηγῶν, ὥστε τὰ θηρία παρελθὼν ἐπὶ κενοὺς αὐτῶν τοὺς φωλεοὺς βαδίζειν. καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην προῆγε, πεζοὺς μὲν ἔχων [5] τρισμυρίους, ἱππεῖς δὲ δισχιλίους πεντακοσίους. καταστὰς δ’ εἰς ἔποψιν τῶν πολεμίων καὶ θαυμάσας τὸ πλῆθος, ἐβούλετο μὲν ἀπέχεσθαι μάχης καὶ τρίβειν τὸν χρόνον, Μαρίου δ’, ὃν Σερτώριος ἐξ Ἰβηρίας ἀπεστάλκει Μιθριδάτῃ μετὰ δυνάμεως στρατηγόν, ἀπαντήσαντος αὐτῷ καὶ προκαλουμένου, κατέστη μὲν εἰς τάξιν ὡς διαμαχούμενος, ἤδη δ’ ὅσον οὔπω συμφερομένων, ἀπ’ οὐδεμιᾶς ἐπιφανοῦς μεταβολῆς, ἀλλ’ ἐξαίφνης τοῦ ἀέρος ὑπορραγέντος, ὤφθη μέγα σῶμα φλογοειδὲς εἰς μέσον τῶν στρατοπέδων καταφερόμενον, τὸ μὲν σχῆμα πίθῳ μάλιστα, τὴν δὲ χρόαν ἀργύρῳ διαπύρῳ προσεοικός, ὥστε δείσαντας ἀμφοτέρους τὸ φάσμα διακριθῆναι.

[6] τοῦτο μὲν οὖν φασιν ἐν Φρυγίᾳ περὶ τὰς λεγομένας Ὀτρύας συμβῆναι τὸ πάθος. ὁ δὲ Λεύκολλος οὐδεμιᾶς εἶναι νομίζων ἀνθρωπίνης παρασκευῆς οὐδὲ πλούτου θρέψαι μυριάδας ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἀντικαθημένων πολεμίων τοσαύτας ὅσας εἶχε Μιθριδάτης, ἐκέλευσεν ἀχθῆναι τῶν αἰχμαλώτων ἕνα, καὶ πρῶτον ἀνέκρινε μετὰ πόσων διαιτῷτο συσκήνων, ἔπειτα πόσον ἐν τῇ σκηνῇ καταλέλοιπε [7] σῖτον. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τἀνθρώπου, τὸν μὲν ἐκέλευσε μεταστῆναι, δεύτερον δὲ καὶ τρίτον ὁμοίως ἀνέκρινεν. εἶτα συνθεὶς τὸ τῆς παρεσκευασμένης τροφῆς πλῆθος πρὸς τὸ τῶν τρεφομένων, ἔγνω τριῶν ἢ τεσσάρων ἡμερῶν [8] ἐπιλείψειν τὸν σῖτον τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ πολὺ μᾶλλον εἴχετο τοῦ χρόνου, καὶ συνῆγεν εἰς τὸν χάρακα παμπληθῆ σῖτον, ὡς ἐν ἀφθόνοις διάγων αὐτὸς ἐφεδρεύοι ταῖς ἐκείνων ἀπορίαις.

[9] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Μιθριδάτης ἐπεβούλευε Κυζικηνοῖς, πεπληγόσιν ἐν τῇ περὶ Χαλκηδόνα μάχῃ· τρισχιλίων γὰρ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δέκα νεῶν ἐστέρηντο. βουλόμενος οὖν λαθεῖν τὸν Λεύκολλον, εὐθὺς ἀπὸ δείπνου νύκτα δυσφανῆ καὶ νοτερὰν ἔχων ἐκίνει, καὶ φθάνει τῆς πόλεως ἄντικρυς ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ περὶ τὸ τῆς Ἀδραστείας ὄρος ἱδρύσας [2] τὴν δύναμιν. ὁ δὲ Λεύκολλος αἰσθόμενος καὶ διώξας, ἠγάπησε μὲν οὐκ ἐμπεσὼν ἀσύντακτος εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους, καθίζει δὲ τὸν στρατὸν περὶ τὴν Θρᾳκίαν λεγομένην κώμην ἐν τόπῳ κατὰ τῶν ὁδῶν ἄριστα πεφυκότι καὶ τῶν χωρίων, ἀφ’ ὧν καὶ δι’ ὧν ἀναγκαῖον ἦν τοῖς [3] Μιθριδατικοῖς τὰ ἐπιτήδεια φοιτᾶν. διὸ καὶ περιλαβὼν τῇ διανοίᾳ τὸ μέλλον, οὐκ ἀπεκρύψατο τοὺς στρατιώτας, ἀλλ’ ἅμα τῷ θέσθαι τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων γενέσθαι συναγαγὼν αὐτοὺς ἐμεγαληγόρησεν, ὡς ὀλίγων ἡμερῶν ἀναιμωτὶ τὸ νίκημα παραδώσων αὐτοῖς.

[4] Κυζικηνοὺς δὲ Μιθριδάτης δέκα μὲν ἐκ γῆς στρατοπέδοις περιλαβών, ταῖς δὲ ναυσὶν ἐκ θαλάσσης τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ἠπείρου διείργοντα τὴν πόλιν εὔριπον ἐμφράξας, ἑκατέρωθεν ἐπολιόρκει, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα διακειμένους πρὸς τὸν κίνδυνον εὐθαρσῶς καὶ πᾶν ἕνεκα Ῥωμαίων ἐγνωκότας ἐκδέχεσθαι δυσχερές, ἀγνοοῦντας δ’ ὅπῃ Λεύκολλος εἴη, καὶ τῷ μηδὲν περὶ αὐτοῦ πεπύσθαι ταραττομένους.

[5] καίτοι καταφανὴς ἦν ἡ στρατοπεδεία καὶ ἄποπτος, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τῶν Μιθριδατικῶν ἐξηπατῶντο. δεικνύντες γὰρ αὐτοῖς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἄνω παρεμβεβληκότας ‘ὁρᾶτε τούτους;’ ἔφασαν ‘Ἀρμενίων στρατός ἐστι καὶ Μήδων, [6] Τιγράνου Μιθριδάτῃ καταπέμψαντος ἐπικουρίαν’. οἱ δ’ ἐξεπλήσσοντο, τοσούτου πολέμου περικεχυμένου μηδ’ εἰ παραγένοιτο Λεύκολλος χώραν ἔτι λελεῖφθαι βοηθείας ἐλπίζοντες. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πρῶτος αὐτοῖς εἰσπεμφθεὶς ὑπ’ Ἀρχελάου Δημῶναξ ἔφρασε τὴν τοῦ Λευκόλλου παρουσίαν. τούτῳ δ’ ἀπιστούντων καὶ νομιζόντων αὐτὸν τῶν παρόντων ἐπὶ παρηγορίᾳ πεπλασμένα λέγειν, ἧκε παιδάριον [7] αἰχμάλωτον ἐκ τῶν πολεμίων ἀποδεδρακός. πυνθανομένων δ’ αὐτῶν ποῦ λέγοι τὸν Λεύκολλον εἶναι, κατεγέλα παίζειν αὐτοὺς οἰόμενον. ὡς δ’ ἑώρα σπουδάζοντας, ἐσήμηνε τῇ χειρὶ τὸν χάρακα τῶν Ῥωμαίων, οἱ [8] δ’ ἀνεθάρσησαν. τῆς δὲ Δασκυλίτιδος λίμνης πλεομένης ἀκατίοις ἐπιεικῶς εὐμεγέθεσι, τὸ μέγιστον αὐτῶν ὁ Λεύκολλος ἀνελκύσας καὶ διαγαγὼν ἁμάξῃ πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν, ὅσους ἐχώρει στρατιώτας ἐνεβίβασεν. ἔλαθον δὲ νυκτὸς διαπεράσαντες καὶ παρεισῆλθον εἰς τὴν πόλιν.

[10] [1] Ἔοικε δὲ καὶ τὸ θεῖον ἐπιθαρρῦναι τοὺς Κυζικηνούς, ἀγασθὲν αὐτῶν τὴν ἀνδραγαθίαν, ἄλλοις τε σημείοις ἐναργέσι, καὶ τῆς τῶν Φερεφαττίων ἑορτῆς ἐνεστώσης, οἱ μὲν ἠπόρουν βοὸς μελαίνης πρὸς τὴν θυσίαν, καὶ σταιτίνην πλάσαντες τῷ βωμῷ παρέστησαν, ἡ δ’ ἱερὰ καὶ τρεφομένη τῇ θεῷ νομὴν μὲν εἶχεν ὥσπερ τἆλλα βοτὰ τῶν Κυζικηνῶν ἐν τῇ περαίᾳ, κατ’ ἐκείνην δὲ τὴν ἡμέραν ἀποκριθεῖσα τῆς ἀγέλης μόνη διενήξατο πρὸς [2] τὴν πόλιν καὶ κατέστησεν ἐπὶ τὴν θυσίαν αὑτήν. ὄναρ δ’ ἡ θεὸς Ἀρισταγόρᾳ τῷ τοῦ δήμου γραμματεῖ παραστᾶσα· ‘καὶ μὴν ἔγωγε’ εἶπεν ‘ἥκω τὸν Λιβυκὸν αὐλητὴν ἐπὶ τὸν Ποντικὸν σαλπιγκτὴν ἐπάγουσα. φράσον [3] οὖν θαρρεῖν τοῖς πολίταις.’ θαυμαζόντων δὲ τὴν φωνὴν τῶν Κυζικηνῶν, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ σάλον εἶχεν ἡ θάλασσα κατιόντος ἀκρίτου πνεύματος, αἵ τε μηχαναὶ τοῦ βασιλέως παρεστῶσαι τοῖς τείχεσιν, ἔργα θαυμαστὰ Νικωνίδου τοῦ Θεσσαλοῦ, ῥοίζῳ καὶ πατάγῳ πρῶτον ἀπεδήλουν τὸ μέλλον· εἶτα νότος ἐκραγεὶς ἄπιστος τὸ μέγεθος τά τ’ ἄλλα συνέτριψε μηχανήματα ὥρας βραχεῖ μορίῳ, καὶ τὸν ξύλινον πύργον ἑκατὸν πηχῶν ὕψος ὄντα διασείσας κατέβαλεν.

[4] ἱστορεῖται δὲ τῶν ἐν Ἰλίῳ πολλοῖς καθ’ ὕπνον ὀφθῆναι τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν, ἱδρῶτι πολλῷ ῥεομένην καὶ ὑποφαίνουσάν τι τοῦ πέπλου παρερρωγός, λέγουσαν ὡς ἀρτίως ἥκοι βοηθήσασα Κυζικηνοῖς· καὶ στήλην τινὰ δόγματα καὶ γράμματα περὶ τούτων ἔχουσαν ἐδείκνυον Ἰλιεῖς.

[11] [1] Μιθριδάτην δ’, ἄχρι μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ στρατηγῶν φενακιζόμενος ἠγνόει τὸν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ λιμόν, [2] ἠνίων Κυζικηνοὶ διαφεύγοντες τὴν πολιορκίαν. ταχὺ δ’ ἐξερρύη τὸ φιλότιμον αὐτοῦ καὶ φιλόνικον ἐν αἰσθήσει γενομένου τῶν ἀποριῶν, αἷς οἱ στρατιῶται συνείχοντο, καὶ τῶν ἀνθρωποφαγιῶν, ἅτε δὴ μὴ θεατρικῶς μηδ’ ἐπιδεικτικῶς Λευκόλλου πολεμοῦντος, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ λεγόμενον εἰς τὴν γαστέρα ἐναλλομένου καὶ ὅπως ὑφαι[3]ρήσει τὴν τροφὴν ἅπαντα πραγματευομένου. διὸ καὶ φρούριόν τι πολιορκοῦντος αὐτοῦ, τῷ καιρῷ χρήσασθαι σπεύδων ὁ Μιθριδάτης ἐξέπεμψεν εἰς Βιθυνίαν τοὺς μὲν ἱππεῖς σχεδὸν ἅπαντας μετὰ τῶν ὑποζυγίων, τῶν δὲ πεζῶν [4] τοὺς ἀχρήστους. πυθόμενος δ’ ὁ Λεύκολλος ἔτι νυκτὸς ἧκεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, πρωὶ δὲ χειμῶνος ὄντος ἀναλαβὼν σπείρας δέκα καὶ τὴν ἵππον, ἐδίωκε νιφόμενος καὶ κακοπαθῶν, ὥστε πολλοὺς ὑπὸ κρύους ἐνδιδόντας ἀπολείπεσθαι τῶν στρατιωτῶν· τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις περὶ τὸν Ῥυνδακὸν ποταμὸν καταλαβὼν τοὺς πολεμίους, τοσαύτην τροπὴν ἐποίησεν, ὥστε τὰς γυναῖκας ἐκ τῆς Ἀπολλωνίας προερχομένας ἀφαρπάζειν τὰ φορτία καὶ σκυλεύειν τοὺς [5] φονευομένους. πολλῶν δ’ ὡς εἰκὸς ἀποθανόντων, ἑάλωσαν ἵπποι μὲν ἑξακισχίλιοι καὶ πλῆθος ἀναρίθμητον ὑποζυγίων, ἄνδρες δὲ μύριοι πεντακισχίλιοι· καὶ τούτους ἄγων πάντας παρεξῄει παρὰ τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν πολεμίων.

[6] Σαλουστίου (hist. fr. 3, 42 M.) δὲ θαυμάζω, τότε πρῶτον ὦφθαι Ῥωμαίοις καμήλους λέγοντος, εἰ μήτε πρότερον τοὺς μετὰ Σκιπίωνος νικήσαντας Ἀντίοχον ᾤετο μήτε τοὺς ἔναγχος πρὸς Ὀρχομενῷ καὶ περὶ Χαιρώνειαν Ἀρχελάῳ μεμαχημένους ἐγνωκέναι κάμηλον.

[7] Ἀλλὰ τῷ γε Μιθριδάτῃ φεύγειν μὲν ἔγνωστο τὴν ταχίστην, ἀνθολκὰς δὲ Λευκόλλῳ καὶ διατριβὰς ὀπίσω μηχανώμενος, ἔστελλε τὸν ναύαρχον Ἀριστόνικον ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν θάλασσαν, καὶ ὅσον οὔπω μέλλοντος ἐκπλεῖν ἐκ προδοσίας ὁ Λεύκολλος ἐκυρίευσε μετὰ χρυσῶν μυρίων, οὓς ἐκόμιζε διαφθερῶν τι τοῦ Ῥωμαϊκοῦ στρατεύματος.

[8] ἐκ τούτου Μιθριδάτης μὲν ἔφυγεν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν, οἱ δὲ στρατηγοὶ πεζῇ τὸν στρατὸν ἀπήγαγον. ἐπιπεσὼν δὲ Λεύκολλος αὐτοῖς περὶ τὸν Γρανικὸν ποταμόν, εἷλέ τε παμπόλλους καὶ δισμυρίους ἀπέκτεινε. λέγονται δ’ ἐκ τοῦ παντὸς ἀκολούθων τε καὶ μαχίμων ὄχλου μυριάδες οὐ πολὺ δὴ τῶν τριάκοντα λείπουσαι διαφθαρῆναι.

[12] [1] Λεύκολλος δὲ πρῶτον εἰς Κύζικον παρελθών, ἀπέλαυσεν ἡδονῆς καὶ φιλοφροσύνης πρεπούσης. ἔπειτα ναυτικὸν ἐξηρτύετο, τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ἐπιπορευόμενος. εἰς δὲ Τρῳάδα καταχθείς, ἐσκήνωσε μὲν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης, κατακοιμηθεὶς δὲ νύκτωρ ἐδόκει τὴν θεὰν ὁρᾶν ἐφεστῶσαν αὐτῷ καὶ λέγουσαν·

τί κνώσσεις μεγάθυμε λέον; νεβροὶ δέ τοι ἐγγύς.

[2] ἐξαναστὰς δὲ καὶ τοὺς φίλους καλέσας διηγεῖτο τὴν ὄψιν ἔτι νυκτὸς οὔσης· καὶ παρῆσαν ἐξ Ἰλίου τινὲς ἀπαγγέλλοντες ὦφθαι περὶ τὸν Ἀχαιῶν λιμένα τρισκαίδεκα πεντήρεις τῶν βασιλικῶν ἐπὶ Λήμνου πλεούσας. εὐθὺς οὖν ἀναχθείς, τούτους μὲν εἷλε καὶ τὸν στρατηγὸν αὐτῶν Ἰσίδωρον ἀπέκτεινεν, ἐπὶ δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἔπλει †πρωρέας.

[3] οἱ δ’ ἔτυχον ὁρμοῦντες, καὶ τὰ πλοῖα πάντα πρὸς τὴν γῆν συνέλκοντες, ἀπὸ τῶν καταστρωμάτων διεμάχοντο καὶ πληγὰς ἐδίδοσαν τοῖς περὶ τὸν Λεύκολλον, οὔτε περιπλεῦσαι τοῦ χωρίου διδόντος οὔτε βιάσασθαι ναυσὶ μετεώροις τὰς τῶν πολεμίων, προσερηρεισμένας τῇ γῇ [4] καὶ βεβηκυίας ἀσφαλῶς. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ μόλις, ᾗ προσβολήν τιν’ ἡ νῆσος εἶχεν, ἀποβιβάζει τῶν στρατιωτῶν τοὺς ἀρίστους, οἳ κατόπιν ἐπιπεσόντες τοῖς πολεμίοις τοὺς μὲν διέφθειρον αὐτῶν, τοὺς δ’ ἠνάγκαζον ἀποκόπτοντας τὰ πρυμνήσια τῶν νεῶν καὶ φεύγοντας ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἀλλήλοις τε συγκρούειν τὰ πλοῖα καὶ ταῖς ἐμβολαῖς τῶν περὶ τὸν [5] Λεύκολλον ὑποπίπτειν. πολλοὶ μὲν οὖν διεφθάρησαν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἁλοῦσιν ἀνήχθη καὶ Μάριος ὁ παρὰ Σερτωρίου στρατηγός· ἦν γὰρ ἑτερόφθαλμος, καὶ παρήγγελτο τοῖς στρατιώταις εὐθὺς ἐπιπλέουσιν ὑπὸ Λευκόλλου μηδένα κτείνειν ἑτερόφθαλμον, ὅπως ἐξονειδισθεὶς καὶ καθυβρισθεὶς ἀποθάνοι.

[13] [1] Γενόμενος δ’ ἀπὸ τούτων ἠπείγετο πρὸς τὴν αὐτοῦ Μιθριδάτου δίωξιν. ἤλπιζε γὰρ ἔτι περὶ Βιθυνίαν εὑρήσειν αὐτόν, ὑπὸ Βοκωνίου φρουρούμενον, ὃν αὐτὸς ἐνστησόμενον τῇ φυγῇ μετὰ νεῶν ἀπεστάλκει πρὸς Νικομήδειαν.

[2] ἀλλὰ Βοκώνιος μὲν ἐν Σαμοθρᾴκῃ μυούμενος καὶ πανηγυρίζων καθυστέρησε, Μιθριδάτην δ’ ἀναχθέντα μετὰ τοῦ στόλου, σπεύδοντα πρὶν ἐπιστρέφειν Λεύκολλον εἰς τὸν Πόντον εἰσπλεῦσαι, καταλαμβάνει χειμὼν πολύς, ὑφ’ οὗ τὰ μὲν ἀφηρπάγη, τὰ δ’ ἐβυθίσθη τῶν σκαφῶν, πᾶσα δ’ ἡ παραλία τῶν ναυαγίων ἐκφερομένων ὑπὸ τοῦ [3] κλύδωνος ἐπὶ πολλὰς ἡμέρας ἦν περίπλεως. αὐτὸς δέ, τῆς ὁλκάδος ἐφ’ ἧς ἔπλει μήτε πρὸς τὴν γῆν εὐπαρακομίστου διὰ μέγεθος ἐν σάλῳ μεγάλῳ καὶ κύματι τυφλῷ παρισταμένης τοῖς κυβερνήταις, πρός τε τὴν θάλασσαν ἤδη βαρείας καὶ ὑπεράντλου γενομένης, μετεμβὰς εἰς λῃστρικὸν μυοπάρωνα καὶ τὸ σῶμα πειραταῖς ἐγχειρίσας, ἀνελπίστως καὶ παραβόλως εἰς τὴν Ποντικὴν Ἡράκλειαν [4] ἐξεσώθη. Λευκόλλῳ δ’ ἀνεμέσητος ἡ πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ἀπέβη φιλοτιμία. ψηφιζομένης γὰρ αὐτῆς πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ἀπὸ τρισχιλίων ταλάντων ἐξαρτύεσθαι ναυτικόν, ἐκώλυσε πέμψας γράμματα καὶ μεγαληγορήσας, ὡς ἄνευ δαπάνης τοσαύτης καὶ παρασκευῆς ταῖς τῶν συμμάχων ναυσὶ Μιθριδάτην ἐκβαλεῖ τῆς θαλάσσης.

[5] καὶ τοῦθ’ ὑπῆρξεν αὐτῷ τοῦ θεοῦ συναγωνισαμένου· λέγεται γὰρ Ἀρτέμιδος χόλῳ Πριαπηνῆς ὁ χειμὼν ἐμπεσεῖν τοῖς Ποντικοῖς, συλήσασιν αὐτῆς τὸ ἱερὸν καὶ τὸ ξόανον ἀνασπάσασι.

[14] [1] Πολλῶν δὲ Λευκόλλῳ παραινούντων ἀναβαλέσθαι τὸν πόλεμον, οὐ φροντίσας ἐνέβαλε διὰ Βιθυνίας καὶ Γαλατίας εἰς τὴν βασιλικήν, ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν ἐνδεὴς τῶν ἀναγκαίων, ὥστε Γαλάτας ἕπεσθαι τρισμυρίους, ἕκαστον ἐπὶ τῶν ὤμων κομίζοντα σίτου μέδιμνον, προϊὼν δὲ καὶ κρατῶν ἁπάντων εἰς τοσαύτην ἦλθεν εὐπορίαν, ὥστε τὸν μὲν βοῦν ἐν στρατοπέδῳ δραχμῆς, τὸ δ’ ἀνδράποδον τεττάρων ὤνιον εἶναι, τὴν δ’ ἄλλην λείαν ἐν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ τοὺς μὲν ἀπολείπειν, τοὺς δ’ ἀναλίσκειν. διάθεσις γὰρ [2] οὐδενὸς ἦν πρὸς οὐδένα πάντων εὐπορούντων. ἀλλ’ ὅσον φθεῖραι καὶ κακῶσαι τὴν χώραν ἱππασάμενοι καὶ καταδραμόντες ἄχρι Θεμισκύρας καὶ τῶν περὶ Θερμώδοντα πεδίων, ᾐτιῶντο τὸν Λεύκολλον, ὅτι πάσας προσάγεται τὰς πόλεις, κατὰ κράτος δ’ οὐδεμίαν ᾕρηκεν οὐδὲ παρέσχηκεν [3] αὐτοῖς ὠφεληθῆναι διαρπάσασιν. ‘ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν’ ἔφασαν ‘Ἀμισόν, πόλιν εὐδαίμονα καὶ πλουσίαν, οὐ μέγα ὂν ἔργον εἴ τις ἐντείναι τὴν πολιορκίαν κατασχεῖν, ἀπολιπόντας ἡμᾶς ἄγει περὶ τὴν Τιβαρηνῶν καὶ Χαλδαίων [4] ἐρημίαν Μιθριδάτῃ πολεμήσοντας.’ ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν οὐκ ἂν ὁ Λεύκολλος ἐλπίσας εἰς τοσοῦτον ἀπονοίας τοὺς στρατιώτας παραγαγεῖν, ὅσον ὕστερον ἐξέφηναν, ὑπερεώρα καὶ οὐκ ἐφρόντιζεν, ἐκείνοις δ’ ἀπελογεῖτο μᾶλλον οἳ βραδυτῆτα κατηγόρουν αὐτοῦ, διατρίβοντος ἐνταῦθα περὶ κώμας καὶ πόλεις οὐ πολλοῦ τινος ἀξίας πολὺν [5] χρόνον, ἐῶντος δ’ αὔξεσθαι Μιθριδάτην. ‘αὐτὸ γάρ’ ἔφη ‘τοῦτο καὶ βούλομαι καὶ κάθημαι τεχνάζων, μέγαν αὖθις γενέσθαι τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ συναγαγεῖν αὐτὸν ἀξιόμαχον [6] δύναμιν, ἵνα μείνῃ καὶ μὴ φύγῃ προσιόντας ἡμᾶς. ἢ οὐχ ὁρᾶτε πολλὴν μὲν αὐτῷ καὶ ἀτέκμαρτον ἐρημίαν ὀπίσω παροῦσαν; ἐγγὺς δ’ ὁ Καύκασος καὶ ὄρη πολλὰ καὶ βαθέα καὶ μυρίους βασιλεῖς φυγομαχοῦντας ἀρκοῦντα κατακρύψαι καὶ περισχεῖν, ὀλίγων δ’ ἡμερῶν ὁδὸς εἰς Ἀρμενίαν ἐκ Καβήρων, καὶ ὑπὲρ Ἀρμενίας κάθηται Τιγράνης, βασιλεὺς βασιλέων, ἔχων δύναμιν ᾗ Πάρθους τε περικόπτει τῆς Ἀσίας καὶ πόλεις Ἑλληνίδας εἰς Μηδίαν ἀνακομίζει καὶ Συρίας κρατεῖ καὶ Παλαιστίνης καὶ τοὺς ἀπὸ Σελεύκου βασιλεῖς ἀποκτιννύει, θυγατέρας δ’ αὐτῶν [7] ἄγει καὶ γυναῖκας ἀνασπάστους. οὗτος οἰκεῖός ἐστι Μιθριδάτου καὶ γαμβρός, οὐ περιόψεται δ’ αὐτὸν ἱκέτην ὑποδεξάμενος, ἀλλὰ πολεμήσει πρὸς ἡμᾶς, καὶ σπεύδοντες ἐκβάλλειν Μιθριδάτην, κινδυνεύσομεν ἐπισπάσασθαι Τιγράνην, πάλαι μὲν αἰτίας δεόμενον ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς, εὐπρεπεστέραν δ’ οὐκ ἂν λαβόντα τῆς ὑπὲρ ἀνδρὸς οἰκείου [8] καὶ βασιλέως ἀναγκασθέντος ὑπουργεῖν αὐτῷ. τί οὖν δεῖ τοῦθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐξεργάσασθαι καὶ διδάξαι Μιθριδάτην ἀγνοοῦντα, μεθ’ ὧν ἐστιν αὐτῷ πρὸς ἡμᾶς πολεμητέον, καὶ μὴ βουλόμενον, ἀλλ’ ἀδοξοῦντα συνελαύνειν εἰς τὰς Τιγράνου χεῖρας, ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ δόντας αὐτῷ χρόνον ἐκ τῶν οἰκείων παρασκευάσασθαι καὶ ἀναθαρρῦναι, Κόλχοις καὶ Τιβαρηνοῖς καὶ Καππάδοξιν, ὧν πολλάκις κεκρατήκαμεν, μάχεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ Μήδοις καὶ Ἀρμενίοις;’

[15] [1] Ἐπὶ τοιούτων λογισμῶν γενόμενος ὁ Λεύκολλος περί τε τὴν Ἀμισὸν διέτριψε, μαλακῶς τῇ πολιορκίᾳ χρώμενος, καὶ μετὰ χειμῶνα Μουρήναν ἀπολιπὼν ἐπὶ τῆς πολιορκίας, ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην, καθήμενον ἐν Καβήροις καὶ διανοούμενον ὑφίστασθαι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ἠθροισμένης αὐτῷ δυνάμεως εἰς τετρακισμυρίους πεζούς, [2] ἱππεῖς δὲ τετρακισχιλίους, οἷς ἐθάρρει μάλιστα. καὶ διαβὰς τὸν Λύκον ποταμὸν εἰς τὸ πεδίον προὐκαλεῖτο τοὺς Ῥωμαίους. γενομένης δ’ ἱππομαχίας ἔφυγον οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, Πομπώνιος δ’ ἀνὴρ οὐκ ἄδοξος ἑάλω τετρωμένος καὶ πρὸς τὸν Μιθριδάτην ἀνήχθη, κακῶς ὑπὸ τραυμάτων διακείμενος. πυθομένου δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως εἰ σωθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ γενήσεται φίλος, ‘ἄν γε δή’ ἔφη ‘Ῥωμαίοις διαλλαγῇς· εἰ δὲ μή, πολέμιος’. τοῦτον μὲν θαυμάσας ὁ Μιθριδάτης οὐκ ἠδίκησε.

[3] Τοῦ δὲ Λευκόλλου τὰ μὲν πεδία τῶν πολεμίων ἱπποκρατούντων δεδιότος, τὴν δ’ ὀρεινὴν ὀκνοῦντος προϊέναι, μακρὰν καὶ ὑλώδη καὶ δύσβατον οὖσαν, ἁλίσκονταί τινες κατὰ τύχην Ἕλληνες, εἴς τι σπήλαιον καταφυγόντες, ὧν ὁ πρεσβύτερος Ἀρτεμίδωρος ὑπέσχετο τὸν Λεύκολλον ἄξειν καὶ καταστήσειν ἐπὶ τόπῳ ἀσφαλεῖ τῷ στρατοπέδῳ καὶ φρούριον ἔχοντι τοῖς Καβήροις ἐπικρεμάμενον.

[4] πιστεύσας δ’ ὁ Λεύκολλος ἅμα τῇ νυκτὶ πυρὰ καύσας ἐκίνει, καὶ τὰ στενὰ παρελθὼν ἀσφαλῶς τὸ χωρίον εἶχε, καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ὑπερεφαίνετο τῶν πολεμίων ἱδρύων τὸν στρατὸν ἐν τόποις οἳ μάχεσθαι βουλομένῳ προσαγωγὴν ἐδίδοσαν καὶ τὸ μὴ βιασθῆναι παρεῖχον ἡσυχάζοντι.

[5] Γνώμην μὲν οὖν οὐδέτερος εἶχεν ἔν γε τῷ παρόντι διακινδυνεύειν· ἔλαφον δὲ λέγεται τῶν βασιλικῶν διωκόντων, ὑποτεμνομένους ἀπαντῆσαι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ἐκ δὲ τούτου συμπεσόντας ἀγωνίζεσθαι, πλειόνων ἑκατέροις [6] ἀεὶ προσγινομένων. τέλος δ’ ἐνίκων οἱ βασιλικοί, καὶ τὴν φυγὴν ἐκ τοῦ χάρακος οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι καθορῶντες, ἤσχαλλον καὶ συνέτρεχον πρὸς τὸν Λεύκολλον, ἄγειν σφᾶς δεόμενοι καὶ σύνθημα πρὸς τὴν μάχην αἰτοῦντες. ὁ δὲ βουλόμενος αὐτοὺς μαθεῖν, ἡλίκον ἐστὶν ἐν ἀγῶνι πολέμου καὶ κινδύνῳ παρουσία καὶ ὄψις ἡγεμόνος ἔμφρονος, ἐκείνους μὲν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν ἐκέλευσεν, αὐτὸς δὲ κατέβαινεν εἰς τὸ πεδίον καὶ τοῖς πρώτοις ἀπαντήσας τῶν φευγόντων ἵστασθαι προσέταξε καὶ ἀναστρέφειν [7] μετ’ αὐτοῦ. πεισθέντων δὲ τούτων, καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ μεταβαλόμενοι καὶ συστάντες ὀλίγῳ πόνῳ τρέπονται τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ καταδιώκουσιν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον. ἐπανελθὼν δὲ Λεύκολλος ἀτιμίαν τινὰ τοῖς φεύγουσι νενομισμένην προσέβαλε, κελεύσας ἐν χιτῶσιν ἀζώστοις ὀρύξαι δώδεκα ποδῶν τάφρον, ἐφεστώτων καὶ θεωμένων τῶν ἄλλων στρατιωτῶν.

[16] [1] Ἦν δέ τις ἐν τῷ Μιθριδάτου στρατοπέδῳ Δανδαρίων δυνάστης Ὀλθακὸς - γένος δ’ εἰσὶν οἱ Δανδάριοι βαρβάρων τῶν περὶ τὴν Μαιῶτιν οἰκούντων - , ἀνὴρ ὅσα χειρὸς ἔργα καὶ τόλμης ἐν πολέμῳ διαπρεπὴς ἅπαντα καὶ γνώμην ἱκανὸς ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις, ἔτι δ’ ἐμμελὴς [2] ὁμιλῆσαι καὶ θεραπευτικός. οὗτος ἔχων ἀεὶ πρός τινα τῶν ὁμοφύλων δυναστῶν ἅμιλλαν ὑπὲρ πρωτείων καὶ ζηλοτυπίαν, ὑπέσχετο τῷ Μιθριδάτῃ μέγα ἔργον, ἀποκτενεῖν Λεύκολλον. ἐπαινέσαντος δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως καί τινας αὐτῷ προσβαλόντος ἐπίτηδες ἀτιμίας εἰς προσποίησιν [3] ὀργῆς, ἀφιππάσατο πρὸς Λεύκολλον· ὁ δ’ ἄσμενος ἐδέξατο (λόγος γὰρ ἦν αὐτοῦ πολὺς ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ), καὶ ταχὺ πειρώμενος ἠσπάζετο τήν τ’ ἀγχίνοιαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ λιπαρές, ὥστε τραπέζης καὶ συνεδρίου [4] ποτὲ ποιεῖσθαι κοινωνόν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐδόκει καιρὸν ἔχειν ὁ Δανδάριος, τὸν μὲν ἵππον ἔξω τοῦ χάρακος ἐκέλευσε προαγαγεῖν τοὺς παῖδας, αὐτὸς δὲ μεσημβρίας οὔσης καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἐνδιαζόντων καὶ ἀναπαυομένων ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ τὴν στρατηγικὴν σκηνήν, ὡς οὐδενὸς κωλύσοντος εἰσελθεῖν ἄνδρα συνήθη καὶ λόγους τινὰς ἀξίους σπουδῆς [5] τῷ στρατηγῷ κομίζειν φάσκοντα. κἂν εἰσῆλθεν ἀδεῶς, εἰ μὴ ὁ πολλοὺς ἀνῃρηκὼς στρατηγοὺς ὕπνος Λεύκολλον ἔσωσεν. ἐτύγχανε γὰρ καθεύδων, καὶ Μενέδημος, εἷς τῶν κατευναστῶν, παρὰ ταῖς θύραις ἑστὼς οὐκ ἔφη κατὰ καιρὸν ἥκειν τὸν Ὀλθακόν, ἄρτι Λευκόλλου πρὸς ἀνάπαυσιν ἐκ μακρᾶς ἀγρυπνίας καὶ πόνων τοσούτων [6] δεδωκότος ἑαυτόν. ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐκ ἀπῄει κελεύοντος, ἀλλ’ ἔφη ‹καὶ› κωλύοντος εἰσελεύσεσθαι, περὶ πράγματος ἀναγκαίου καὶ μεγάλου διαλεχθῆναι βουλόμενος, ἤδη πρὸς ὀργὴν ὁ Μενέδημος εἰπὼν ‘μηδὲν ἀναγκαιότερον τοῦ σῴζεσθαι Λεύκολλον’, ἀπεώσατο τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἀμφοτέραις [7] ταῖς χερσίν. ὁ δὲ δείσας ὑπεξῆλθε τοῦ χάρακος, καὶ λαβὼν τὸν ἵππον ἀπήλασεν εἰς τὸ Μιθριδάτου στρατόπεδον ἄπρακτος. οὕτως ἄρα καὶ τοῖς πράγμασιν ὁ καιρὸς ὥσπερ τοῖς φαρμάκοις καὶ τὴν σῴζουσαν καὶ τὴν ἀναιροῦσαν ῥοπὴν προστίθησιν.

[17] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Σωρνάτιος μὲν ἐπὶ σίτου κομιδὴν ἐπέμφθη μετὰ δέκα σπειρῶν, καὶ καταδιωχθεὶς ὑπὸ Μενάνδρου, τῶν Μιθριδάτου στρατηγῶν ἑνός, ἀντέστη καὶ συμβαλὼν φόνον ἐποίησε πολὺν καὶ τροπὴν τῶν πολεμίων.

[2] αὖθις δὲ πεμφθέντος Ἀδριανοῦ μετὰ δυνάμεως, ὅπως ἐκ περιουσίας ἔχωσιν οἱ στρατιῶται σῖτον, οὐ περιεῖδε Μιθριδάτης, ἀλλ’ ἀπέστειλε Μενέμαχον καὶ Μύρωνα, πολλῶν μὲν ἱππέων, πολλῶν δὲ πεζῶν ἡγουμένους. οὗτοι πάντες ὡς λέγεται πλὴν δυεῖν κατεκόπησαν ὑπὸ [3] τῶν Ῥωμαίων. καὶ Μιθριδάτης μὲν ἔκρυπτε τὴν συμφοράν, ὡς οὐ τοσαύτην οὖσαν ἀλλὰ μικράν, προσκεκρουκότων ἀπειρίᾳ τῶν στρατηγῶν, Ἀδριανὸς δὲ λαμπρῶς παρημείβετο τὸ στρατόπεδον, πολλὰς κατάγων ἁμάξας σίτου καὶ λαφύρων γεμούσας, ὥστε δυσθυμίαν μὲν αὐτῷ, ταραχὴν δὲ καὶ φόβον ἀμήχανον ἐμπεσεῖν τοῖς στρατιώταις.

[4] ἐδέδοκτο μὲν οὖν μηκέτι μένειν· ἐπεὶ δὲ προεξέπεμπον οἱ βασιλικοὶ τὰ σφέτερα χρήματα καθ’ ἡσυχίαν, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐκώλυον, ἤδη καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν ἐπὶ τὰς ἐξόδους ὠθούμενοι καὶ βιαζόμενοι, τὰ μὲν χρήματα ἥρπαζον, αὐτοὺς δ’ ἀπέσφαττον. ὅπου καὶ Δορύλαος ὁ στρατηγός, οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἔχων ἢ τὴν πορφύραν περὶ αὑτόν, ἀπώλετο διὰ ταύτην, Ἑρμαῖος δ’ ὁ θύτης κατεπατήθη [5] περὶ τὰς πύλας. αὐτὸς δ’ ὁ Μιθριδάτης, οὔτ’ ὀπαδοῦ τινος οὔθ’ ἱπποκόμου παραμείναντος αὐτῷ, συνεξέπεσεν ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατοπέδου τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀναμεμειγμένος, οὐδ’ ἵππου τῶν βασιλικῶν εὐπορήσας, ἀλλ’ ὀψέ που κατιδὼν αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ ῥεύματι τῆς τροπῆς ἐκείνης διαφερόμενον Πτολεμαῖος ὁ εὐνοῦχος ἵππον ἔχων αὐτὸς [6] ἀπεπήδησε καὶ παρέσχεν. ἤδη γὰρ αὐτὸν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι κατεῖχον ἐπικείμενοι, καὶ τάχει μὲν οὐκ ἀπελίποντο τοῦ λαβεῖν αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἦλθον ἔγγιστα τούτου, φιλοπλουτία δὲ καὶ μικρολογία στρατιωτικὴ τὸ πολλοῖς ἀγῶσι καὶ μεγάλοις κινδύνοις διωκόμενον ἐκ μακροῦ θήραμα Ῥωμαίους ἀφείλετο καὶ Λεύκολλον ἀπεστέρησε νικῶντα τῶν [7] ἐπάθλων. ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἐν ἐφικτῷ τῆς διώξεως ὁ ὑπεκφέρων τὸν ἄνδρα ἵππος, ἡμιόνου δὲ τῶν τὸ χρυσίον κομιζόντων μεταξὺ τοῦ βασιλέως εἴτ’ ἀπὸ ταὐτομάτου παρεισπεσόντος, εἴτε τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπίτηδες ἐμβαλόντος αὐτὸν εἰς τοὺς διώκοντας, ἁρπάζοντες καὶ συλλέγοντες τὸ χρυσίον [8] καὶ διαμαχόμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους καθυστέρησαν. καὶ οὐ τοῦτο μόνον αὐτῶν ἀπέλαυσε τῆς πλεονεξίας Λεύκολλος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ τῶν ἀπορρήτων τοῦ βασιλέως ὄντα Καλλίστρατον ὁ μὲν ἄγειν ἐκέλευσεν, οἱ δ’ ἄγοντες αἰσθόμενοι πεντακοσίους χρυσοῦς ὑπεζωσμένον ἀπέκτειναν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τούτοις μὲν ἐπέτρεψε τὸν χάρακα πορθῆσαι.

[18] [1] Τὰ δὲ Κάβηρα λαβὼν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων φρουρίων τὰ πλεῖστα, θησαυρούς τε μεγάλους εὗρε καὶ δεσμωτήρια, πολλῶν μὲν Ἑλλήνων, πολλῶν δὲ συγγενῶν τοῦ βασιλέως καθειργμένων, οἷς πάλαι τεθνάναι δοκοῦσιν οὐ σωτηρίαν, ἀλλ’ ἀναβίωσιν καὶ δευτέραν τινὰ γέννησιν ἡ [2] Λευκόλλου χάρις παρέσχεν. ἑάλω δὲ καὶ ἀδελφὴ τοῦ Μιθριδάτου Νύσσα σωτήριον ἅλωσιν· αἱ δ’ ἀπωτάτω τοῦ κινδύνου καὶ καθ’ ἡσυχίαν ἀποκεῖσθαι δοκοῦσαι περὶ Φαρνάκειαν ἀδελφαὶ καὶ γυναῖκες οἰκτρῶς ἀπώλοντο, Μιθριδάτου πέμψαντος ἐπ’ αὐτὰς ἐκ τῆς φυγῆς [3] Βακχίδην εὐνοῦχον. ἦσαν δὲ μετὰ πολλῶν ἀδελφαί τε δύο τοῦ βασιλέως, Ῥωξάνη καὶ Στάτειρα, περὶ τετταράκοντα ἔτη παρθενευόμεναι, καὶ γαμεταὶ δύο, γένος Ἰωνίδες, Βερενίκη μὲν ἐκ Χίου, Μονίμη δὲ Μιλησία. ταύτης ὁ πλεῖστος ἦν λόγος ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ὅτι τοῦ βασιλέως πειρῶντος αὐτὴν καὶ μυρίους πεντακισχιλίους χρυσοῦς προσπέμψαντος ἀντέσχε, μέχρι οὗ γάμων ἐγένοντο συνθῆκαι καὶ διάδημα πέμψας αὐτῇ βασίλισσαν [4] ἀνηγόρευσεν. αὕτη καὶ παρὰ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον ἀνιαρῶς εἶχε, καὶ ἀπεθρήνει τὴν τοῦ σώματος εὐμορφίαν, ὡς δεσπότην μὲν ἀντ’ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῇ, φρουρὰν δὲ βαρβάρων ἀντὶ γάμου καὶ οἴκου προξενήσασαν, πόρρω δέ που τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀπῳκισμένη τοῖς ἐλπισθεῖσιν ἀγαθοῖς ὄναρ σύνεστι, [5] τῶν δ’ ἀληθινῶν ἐκείνων ἀπεστέρηται. καὶ δὴ τοῦ Βακχίδου παραγενομένου καὶ προστάξαντος αὐταῖς ἀποθνῄσκειν, ὡς ἑκάστῃ δοκοίη ῥᾷστον εἶναι καὶ ἀλυπότατον, περισπάσασα τῆς κεφαλῆς τὸ διάδημα τῷ τραχήλῳ [6] περιῆψε καὶ ἀνήρτησεν ἑαυτήν. ταχὺ δ’ ἀπορραγέντος, ‘ὦ κατηραμένον’ ἔφη ‘ῥάκος, οὐδὲ πρὸς τοῦτό μοι χρήσιμον ἔσῃ;’ κἀκεῖνο μὲν ἀπέρριψε προσπτύσασα, τῷ δὲ Βακχίδῃ τὴν σφαγὴν παρέσχεν. ἡ δὲ Βερενίκη κύλικα φαρμάκου λαβοῦσα, τῆς μητρὸς αὐτῇ παρούσης καὶ δεομένης, [7] μετέδωκε, καὶ συνεξέπιον μὲν ἀμφότεραι, ἤρκεσε δ’ ἡ τοῦ φαρμάκου δύναμις εἰς τὸ ἀσθενέστερον σῶμα, τὴν δὲ Βερενίκην οὐχ ὅσον ἔδει πιοῦσαν οὐκ ἀπήλλαξεν, ἀλλὰ δυσθανατοῦσα τοῦ Βακχίδου σπεύδοντος ἀπεπνίγη. [8] λέγεται δὲ καὶ τῶν ἀγάμων ἀδελφῶν ἐκείνων τὴν μὲν ἐπαρωμένην πολλὰ καὶ λοιδοροῦσαν ἐκπιεῖν τὸ φάρμακον, τὴν δὲ Στάτειραν οὔτε δύσφημόν τι φθεγξαμένην οὔτ’ ἀγεννές, ἀλλ’ ἐπαινοῦσαν τὸν ἀδελφόν, ὅτι περὶ τοῦ σώματος κινδυνεύων οὐκ ἠμέλησεν αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ [9] προὐνόησεν ἐλευθέρας καὶ ἀνυβρίστους ἀποθανεῖν. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν φύσει χρηστὸν ὄντα καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ἠνία τὸν Λεύκολλον.

[19] [1] Ἐλάσας δ’ ἄχρι Ταλαύρων, ἔνθεν ἡμέρᾳ τετάρτῃ πρότερον ἐφθάκει Μιθριδάτης εἰς Ἀρμενίαν πρὸς Τιγράνην πεφευγώς, ἀποτρέπεται. καταστρεψάμενος δὲ Χαλδαίους καὶ Τιβαρηνούς, καὶ τὴν μικρὰν Ἀρμενίαν παραλαβών, καὶ φρούρια καὶ πόλεις παραστησάμενος, Ἄππιον μὲν ἔπεμψε πρὸς Τιγράνην ἐξαιτῶν Μιθριδάτην, αὐτὸς δ’ ἧκε πρὸς Ἀμισὸν ἔτι πολιορκουμένην.

[2] αἴτιος δ’ ἦν Καλλίμαχος ὁ στρατηγός, ἐμπειρίᾳ μηχανικῆς παρασκευῆς καὶ δεινότητι πανουργίας ὅσην πολιορκία δέχεται πλεῖστα λυπήσας Ῥωμαίους· ὧν ὕστερον [3] ἔδωκε δίκην. τότε δ’ ὑπὸ Λευκόλλου καταστρατηγηθείς, ὑφ’ ἣν ἔθος εἶχεν ὥραν τῆς ἡμέρας ἀπάγειν καὶ ἀναπαύειν τοὺς στρατιώτας, ἐν ἐκείνῃ προσβαλόντος αἰφνιδίως καὶ κατασχόντος οὐ πολὺ μέρος τοῦ τείχους, αὐτὸς ἐκλιπὼν τὴν πόλιν ὑφῆψεν, εἴτε φθονῶν ὠφεληθῆναι Ῥωμαίοις, εἴτε ῥᾳστώνην φυγῆς ἑαυτῷ μηχανώμενος.

[4] οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἐφρόντιζε τῶν ἐκπλεόντων, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὡς ἡ φλὸξ ἀναδραμοῦσα πολλὴ τὰ τείχη περιέσχεν, οἱ μὲν στρατιῶται παρεσκευάζοντο πρὸς ἁρπαγήν, ὁ δὲ Λεύκολλος οἰκτίρων ἀπολλυμένην τὴν πόλιν, ἔξωθεν ἐβοήθει πρὸς τὸ πῦρ καὶ σβεννύναι παρεκάλει, μηδενὸς αὐτῷ προσέχοντος, ἀλλ’ ἐξαιτουμένων τὰ χρήματα καὶ μετὰ βοῆς ‹τὰ› ὅπλα κρουόντων, ἕως ἐκβιασθεὶς ἐπέτρεψεν, [5] ὡς αὐτήν γε τὴν πόλιν ἐξαιρησόμενος τοῦ πυρός. οἱ δὲ τοὐναντίον ἔπραξαν. πάντα γὰρ ἐξερευνῶντες ὑπὸ λαμπάδων καὶ πανταχοῦ φῶς ἐπιφέροντες, αὐτοὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν οἰκημάτων καθεῖλον, ὥστε τὸν Λεύκολλον εἰσελθόντα μεθ’ ἡμέραν καὶ δακρύσαντα πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἰπεῖν, ὡς πολλάκις ἤδη Σύλλαν μακαρίσας, μάλιστα τῇ σήμερον ἡμέρᾳ τὴν τἀνδρὸς εὐτυχίαν θαυμάσειεν, ὅτι σῶσαι βουληθεὶς ἐδυνήθη τὰς Ἀθήνας. ‘ἐμὲ δέ’ ἔφη ‘τούτου ζηλωτὴν γενόμενον εἰς τὴν Μομμίου δόξαν ὁ [6] δαίμων περιέστησεν.’ οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῶν παρόντων ἀναλαμβάνειν ἐπειρᾶτο τὴν πόλιν, καὶ τὸ μὲν πῦρ ὄμβροι κατέσβεσαν, ἔκ τινος θείας τύχης περὶ τὴν ἅλωσιν αὐτὴν συμπεσόντες, τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα τῶν ἀπολωλότων αὐτὸς ἔτι παρὼν ἀνῳκοδόμησε, καὶ τοὺς φεύγοντας Ἀμισηνῶν ἐδέξατο, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων κατῴκισε τοὺς βουλομένους, εἴκοσι καὶ ἑκατὸν σταδίων χώραν προσορίσας.

[7] ἦν δ’ ἡ πόλις Ἀθηναίων ἄποικος, ἐν ἐκείνοις ἄρα τοῖς καιροῖς, ἐν οἷς ἤκμαζεν ἡ δύναμις αὐτῶν καὶ κατεῖχε τὴν θάλασσαν, οἰκισθεῖσα, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πολλοὶ τῶν τὴν Ἀριστίωνος τυραννίδα βουλομένων φεύγειν ἐκπλεύσαντες αὐτοῦ κατῴκουν καὶ μετεῖχον τῆς πολιτείας, οἷς συνέβη τὰ οἰκεῖα κακὰ φεύγουσιν ἀπολαῦσαι τῶν ἀλλοτρίων.

[8] ἀλλὰ τούς γε σωθέντας αὐτῶν ὁ Λεύκολλος ἀμφιέσας καλῶς καὶ διακοσίας ἑκάστῳ δραχμὰς ἐπιδοὺς ἀπέστειλε.

Τότε καὶ Τυραννίων ὁ γραμματικὸς ἑάλω· Μουρήνας δ’ αὐτὸν ἐξῃτήσατο καὶ λαβὼν ἀπηλευθέρωσεν, ἀνελευθέρως [9] τῇ δωρεᾷ χρησάμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἠξίου Λεύκολλος ἄνδρα διὰ παιδείαν ἐσπουδασμένον δοῦλον γενέσθαι πρότερον, εἶτ’ ἐλεύθερον. ἀφαίρεσις γὰρ ἦν τῆς ὑπαρχούσης ἡ τῆς δοκούσης ἐλευθερίας δόσις. ἀλλὰ Μουρήνας μὲν οὐκ ἐνταῦθα μόνον ὤφθη πολὺ τῆς τοῦ στρατηγοῦ καλοκαγαθίας ἀποδέων.

[20] [1] Λεύκολλος δὲ τρέπεται πρὸς τὰς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ πόλεις, ὅπως, τῶν πολεμικῶν ἔργων σχολάζοντος αὐτοῦ, καὶ δίκης τινὸς μετάσχῃ καὶ θεσμῶν, ὧν ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἐνδεῆ τὴν ἐπαρχίαν οὖσαν ἄρρητοι καὶ ἄπιστοι δυστυχίαι κατεῖχον, ὑπὸ τῶν τελωνῶν καὶ τῶν δανειστῶν πορθουμένην καὶ ἀνδραποδιζομένην, πιπράσκειν ἰδίᾳ μὲν υἱοὺς εὐπρεπεῖς θυγατέρας τε παρθένους, δημοσίᾳ δ’ ἀναθήματα, γραφάς, ἱεροὺς ἀνδριάντας ἀναγκαζομένων.

[2] αὐτοῖς δὲ τέλος μὲν ἦν προσθέτοις γενομένοις δουλεύειν, τὰ δὲ πρὸ τούτου χαλεπώτερα, σχοινισμοὶ καὶ κιγκλίδες καὶ ἵπποι καὶ στάσεις ὕπαιθροι, καύματος μὲν ἡλίῳ, ψύχους δ’ εἰς πηλὸν ἐμβιβαζομένων ἢ πάγον, ὥστε τὴν δουλείαν σεισάχθειαν δοκεῖν εἶναι καὶ εἰρήνην.

[3] τοιαῦτα μὲν κακὰ Λεύκολλος εὑρὼν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν, ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ πάντων ἀπήλλαξε τοὺς ἀδικουμένους. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἑκατοστὴν ἐκέλευσε καὶ μὴ πλέον εἰς τοὺς τόκους λογίζεσθαι, δεύτερον δὲ τοὺς μακροτέρους τοῦ ἀρχαίου τόκους ἀπέκοψε, τὸ δὲ τρίτον καὶ μέγιστον ἔταξε τῶν τοῦ χρεωφειλέτου προσόδων τὴν τετάρτην μερίδα καρποῦσθαι τὸν δανειστήν· ὁ δὲ τόκον κεφαλαίῳ συνάψας ἐστέρητο τοῦ παντός· ὥστ’ ἐν ἐλάττονι χρόνῳ τετραετίας διαλυθῆναι τὰ χρέα πάντα, καὶ τὰς κτήσεις [4] ἐλευθέρας ἀποδοθῆναι τοῖς δεσπόταις. ἦν δὲ τοῦτο κοινὸν δάνειον ἐκ τῶν δισμυρίων ταλάντων οἷς τὴν Ἀσίαν ἐξημίωσεν ὁ Σύλλας, καὶ διπλοῦν ἀπεδόθη τοῖς δανείσασιν, ὑπ’ ἐκείνων ἀνηγμένον ἤδη τοῖς τόκοις εἰς δώδεκα [5] μυριάδας ταλάντων. ἐκεῖνοι μὲν οὖν ὡς δεινὰ πεπονθότες ἐν Ῥώμῃ τοῦ Λευκόλλου κατεβόων, καὶ χρήμασιν ἀνίστασαν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἐνίους τῶν δημαγωγῶν, μέγα δυνάμενοι καὶ πολλοὺς ὑπόχρεως πεποιημένοι τῶν πολιτευομένων.

[6] ὁ δὲ Λεύκολλος οὐ μόνον ὑπὸ τῶν εὖ πεπονθότων ἠγαπᾶτο δήμων, ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις ἐπαρχίαις ποθεινὸς ἦν, εὐδαιμονιζούσαις τοὺς ἡγεμόνος τοιούτου τυχόντας.

[21] [1] Ἄππιος δὲ Κλώδιος, ὁ πεμφθεὶς πρὸς Τιγράνην - ἦν δ’ ὁ Κλώδιος ἀδελφὸς τῆς τότε Λευκόλλῳ συνοικούσης - πρῶτον μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν βασιλικῶν ὁδηγῶν κύκλον τινὰ καὶ περιβολὴν ἔχουσαν οὐκ ἀναγκαίαν καὶ πολυήμερον ὁδὸν διὰ τῆς ἄνω χώρας ἀγόμενος, μηνύσαντος αὐτῷ τὴν εὐθεῖαν ὁδὸν ἀπελευθέρου Σύρου τὸ γένος, ἐκτρέπεται τῆς μακρᾶς ἐκείνης καὶ σοφιστικῆς, ἐρρῶσθαι φράσας πολλὰ τοῖς βαρβάροις ἀγωγοῖς, καὶ δι’ ἡμερῶν ὀλίγων τὸν Εὐφράτην περάσας, εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν [2] ἧκε τὴν ἐπὶ Δάφνης. ἔπει‹τα› δὲ Τιγράνην αὐτοῦ κελευσθεὶς περιμένειν - ἀπῆν γὰρ ἐνίας ἔτι τῶν ἐν Φοινίκῃ πόλεων καταστρεφόμενος - , πολλοὺς μὲν ᾠκειώσατο τῶν ὑπούλως ἀκροωμένων τοῦ Ἀρμενίου δυναστῶν, ὧν εἷς ἦν καὶ Ζαρβιηνὸς ὁ τῆς Γορδυηνῆς βασιλεύς, πολλαῖς δὲ κρύφα τῶν δεδουλωμένων πόλεων διαπεμπομέναις πρὸς αὐτὸν ὑπέσχετο τὴν Λευκόλλου βοήθειαν, [3] ἐν τῷ παρόντι κελεύσας ἡσυχάζειν. ἦν γὰρ οὐκ ἀνασχετὸς ἡ τῶν Ἀρμενίων ἀρχὴ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἀλλὰ χαλεπή, καὶ μάλιστα τοῦ βασιλέως αὐτοῦ τὸ φρόνημα τραγικὸν καὶ ὑπέρογκον ἐν ταῖς μεγάλαις εὐτυχίαις ἐγεγόνει, πάντων ὅσα ζηλοῦσιν οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ θαυμάζουσιν οὐ μόνον ‹ὄν›των περὶ αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δι’ αὐτὸν γεγονέναι δοκούντων.

[4] ἀρξάμενος γὰρ ἀπὸ μικρᾶς καὶ καταφρονουμένης ἐλπίδος, ἔθνη πολλὰ κατεστρέψατο, καὶ τὴν Πάρθων ὡς ἄλλος οὐδεὶς δύναμιν ἐταπείνωσεν, Ἑλλήνων δὲ τὴν Μεσοποταμίαν ἐνέπλησε, πολλοὺς μὲν ἐκ Κιλικίας, πολλοὺς δ’ ἐκ Καππαδοκίας ἀνασπάστους κατοικίζων.

[5] ἐκίνησε δ’ ἐξ ἠθῶν καὶ Ἄραβας τοὺς Σκηνίτας, μεταγαγὼν καὶ πλησίον ἱδρύσας, ὅπως χρῷτο δι’ ἐκείνων ταῖς ἐμπορίαις. βασιλεῖς δὲ πολλοὶ μὲν ἦσαν οἱ θεραπεύοντες αὐτόν, τέσσαρες δ’ οὓς ἀεὶ περὶ αὑτὸν εἶχεν ὥσπερ ὀπαδοὺς ἢ δορυφόρους, ἱππότῃ μὲν ἐλαύνοντι πεζοὺς παραθέοντας ἐν χιτωνίσκοις, καθημένῳ δὲ καὶ χρηματίζοντι περιεστῶτας ἐπηλλαγμέναις δι’ ἀλλήλων ταῖς χερσίν, ὅπερ ἐδόκει μάλιστα τῶν σχημάτων ἐξομολόγησις εἶναι δουλείας, οἷον ἀποδομένων τὴν ἐλευθερίαν καὶ τὸ σῶμα τῷ κυρίῳ παρεχόντων παθεῖν ἑτοιμότερον ἢ ποιῆσαι.

[6] Ταύτην μέντοι τὴν τραγῳδίαν οὐχ ὑποτρέσας οὐδ’ ἐκπλαγεὶς ὁ Ἄππιος, ὡς ἔτυχε λόγου πρῶτον, ἄντικρυς ἥκειν ἔφη Μιθριδάτην ἀπάξων, ὀφειλόμενον τοῖς Λευκόλλου θριάμβοις, ἢ καταγγελῶν Τιγράνῃ πόλεμον, ὥστε τὸν Τιγράνην, καίπερ ἐν διαχύσει τοῦ προσώπου καὶ μειδιάματι πεπλασμένῳ πειρώμενον ἀκούειν τῶν λόγων, μὴ λαθεῖν τοὺς παρόντας ἠλλοιωμένον τῇ παρρησίᾳ τοῦ νεανίσκου, φωνῆς σχεδὸν ἐλευθέρας ἀκούοντα διὰ πέντε καὶ εἴκοσιν ἐτῶν· τοσαῦτα γὰρ ἐβασίλευσε, μᾶλλον [7] δ’ ὕβρισεν. ἀπεκρίνατο μὲν οὖν τῷ Ἀππίῳ μὴ προήσεσθαι Μιθριδάτην, καὶ Ῥωμαίους πολέμου ἄρχοντας ἀμυνεῖσθαι. Λευκόλλῳ δ’ ὀργιζόμενος, ὅτι βασιλέα μόνον αὐτόν, οὐ ‹βασιλέα› βασιλέων ἐν τῇ ἐπιστολῇ προσηγόρευσεν, οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ἀντιγράφων αὐτοκράτορα προσεῖπεν.

[8] ἔπεμψε δὲ δῶρα τῷ Ἀππίῳ λαμπρά, καὶ μὴ λαβόντος, ἄλλα πλείω προσέθηκεν. ἐκ τούτων ὁ Ἄππιος, οὐκ ἐθέλων δοκεῖν ἔχθρᾳ τινὶ διωθεῖσθαι, φιάλην δεξάμενος μίαν ἀπέπεμψε τὰ λοιπά, καὶ διὰ ταχέων ἀπήλαυνε πρὸς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα.

[22] [1] Τιγράνης δὲ Μιθριδάτην πρότερον μὲν οὐδ’ ἰδεῖν ἠξίωσεν οὐδὲ προσειπεῖν, οἰκεῖον ἄνδρα βασιλείας ἐκπεπτωκότα τηλικαύτης, ἀλλ’ ἀτίμως καὶ ὑπερηφάνως ἀπωτάτω περιεῖδεν αὐτὸν τρόπον τινὰ φρουρούμενον ἐν χωρίοις ἑλώδεσι καὶ νοσεροῖς· τότε δὲ σὺν τιμῇ καὶ [2] φιλοφροσύνῃ μετεπέμψατο αὐτὸν εἰς τὰ βασίλεια, καὶ δὴ λόγων γενομένων ἀπορρήτων, τὰς πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐθεράπευον ὑποψίας ἐπὶ κακῷ τῶν φίλων, εἰς ἐκείνους τὰς αἰτίας τρέποντες. ὧν ἦν καὶ Μητρόδωρος ὁ Σκήψιος, ἀνὴρ εἰπεῖν οὐκ ἀηδὴς καὶ πολυμαθής, ἀκμῇ δὲ φιλίας τοσαύτῃ χρησάμενος, ὥστε πατὴρ προσαγορεύεσθαι [3] τοῦ βασιλέως. τοῦτον ὡς ἔοικεν ὁ Τιγράνης πεμφθέντα πρεσβευτὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ Μιθριδάτου πρὸς αὐτὸν δεομένου βοηθεῖν ἐπὶ Ῥωμαίους ἤρετο· ‘σὺ δ’ αὐτὸς ὦ Μητρόδωρε τί μοι περὶ τούτων παραινεῖς;’ κἀκεῖνος, εἴτε πρὸς τὸ Τιγράνου συμφέρον, εἴτε Μιθριδάτην σῴζεσθαι μὴ βουλόμενος, ὡς μὲν πρεσβευτὴς ἔφη κελεύειν, [4] ὡς δὲ σύμβουλος ἀπαγορεύειν. ταῦτ’ ἐξήνεγκεν ὁ Τιγράνης τῷ Μιθριδάτῃ καὶ κατεῖπεν, ὡς οὐδὲν ἐργασομένῳ τὸν Μητρόδωρον ἀνήκεστον. ὁ δ’ εὐθὺς ἀνῄρητο, καὶ μετάνοια τὸν Τιγράνην εἶχεν, οὐ παντελῶς ὄντα τῷ Μητροδώρῳ τῆς συμφορᾶς αἴτιον, ἀλλὰ ῥοπήν τινα τῷ [5] πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔχθει τοῦ Μιθριδάτου προσθέντα. πάλαι γὰρ ὑπούλως εἶχε πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐφωράθη τῶν ἀπορρήτων αὐτοῦ γραμμάτων ἁλόντων, ἐν οἷς ἦν καὶ Μητρόδωρον ἀπολέσθαι διατεταγμένον. ἔθαψεν οὖν ὁ Τιγράνης λαμπρῶς τὸ σῶμα, μηδεμιᾶς πολυτελείας φεισάμενος εἰς νεκρὸν ὃν ζῶντα προὔδωκεν.

[6] Ἐτελεύτησε δὲ παρὰ τῷ Τιγράνῃ καὶ Ἀμφικράτης ὁ ῥήτωρ, εἰ δεῖ καὶ τούτου μνήμην τινὰ γενέσθαι διὰ τὰς [7] Ἀθήνας. λέγεται γὰρ φυγεῖν μὲν αὐτὸν εἰς Σελεύκειαν τὴν ἐπὶ Τίγριδι, δεομένων δ’ αὐτόθι σοφιστεύειν ὑπεριδεῖν καταλαζονευσάμενον, ὡς οὐδὲ λεκάνη δελφῖνα χωροίη, μεταστάντα δὲ πρὸς Κλεοπάτραν τὴν Μιθριδάτου θυγατέρα, Τιγράνῃ δὲ συνοικοῦσαν, ἐν διαβολῇ γενέσθαι ταχύ, καὶ τῆς πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐπιμειξίας εἰργόμενον ἀποκαρτερῆσαι· ταφῆναι δὲ καὶ τοῦτον ἐντίμως ὑπὸ τῆς Κλεοπάτρας καὶ κεῖσθαι περὶ Σαφάν, ἐκεῖ τι χωρίον οὕτω καλούμενον.

[23] [1] Λεύκολλος δὲ τὴν Ἀσίαν πολλῆς μὲν εὐνομίας, πολλῆς δ’ εἰρήνης ἐμπεπληκώς, οὐδὲ τῶν πρὸς ἡδονὴν καὶ χάριν ἠμέλησεν, ἀλλὰ πομπαῖς καὶ πανηγύρεσιν ἐπινικίοις καὶ ἀγῶσιν ἀθλητῶν καὶ μονομάχων ἐν Ἐφέσῳ [2] καθήμενος ἐδημαγώγει τὰς πόλεις. αἱ δ’ ἀμειβόμεναι Λευκόλλειά τ’ ἦγον ἐπὶ τιμῇ τοῦ ἀνδρός, καὶ τῆς τιμῆς ἡδίονα τὴν ἀληθινὴν εὔνοιαν αὐτῷ παρεῖχον. ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἄππιός θ’ ἧκε καὶ πολεμητέον πρὸς Τιγράνην ἐφαίνετο, παρῆλθεν αὖθις εἰς Πόντον, καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀναλαβὼν ἐπολιόρκει Σινώπην, μᾶλλον δὲ τοὺς κατέχοντας αὐτὴν βασιλικοὺς Κίλικας, οἳ πολλοὺς μὲν ἀνελόντες τῶν Σινωπέων, τὴν δὲ πόλιν ἐμπρήσαντες, διὰ νυκτὸς [3] ἔφυγον. αἰσθόμενος δ’ ὁ Λεύκολλος καὶ παρελθὼν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ὀκτακισχιλίους αὐτῶν τοὺς ἐγκαταληφθέντας ἀπέκτεινε, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις ἀπέδωκε τὰ οἰκεῖα, καὶ τῆς πόλεως ἐπεμελήθη μάλιστα διὰ τὴν τοιαύτην ὄψιν. ἐδόκει τινὰ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους εἰπεῖν παραστάντα· ‘πρόελθε Λεύκολλε μικρόν· ἥκει γὰρ Αὐτόλυκος ἐντυχεῖν σοι βουλόμενος.’ [4] ἐξαναστὰς δὲ τὴν μὲν ὄψιν οὐκ εἶχε συμβαλεῖν εἰς ὅ τι φέροι, τὴν δὲ πόλιν εἷλε κατ’ ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν, καὶ τοὺς ἐκπλέοντας τῶν Κιλίκων διώκων, ὁρᾷ παρὰ τὸν αἰγιαλὸν ἀνδριάντα κείμενον, ὃν ἐκκομίζοντες οἱ Κίλικες οὐκ ἔφθησαν ἐμβαλέσθαι· τὸ δ’ ἔργον ἦν Σθένιδος τῶν καλῶν. φράζει ‹δ’› οὖν τις ὡς Αὐτολύκου τοῦ κτίσαντος [5] τὴν Σινώπην ὁ ἀνδριὰς εἴη. λέγεται δ’ ὁ Αὐτόλυκος γενέσθαι τῶν ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀμαζόνας ἐκ Θετταλίας Ἡρακλεῖ συστρατευσάντων, Δηιμάχου παῖς, ἐκεῖθεν δ’ ἀποπλέων ἅμα Δημολέοντι καὶ Φλογίῳ τὴν μὲν ναῦν ἀπολέσαι, περιπεσοῦσαν τῆς Χερρονήσου κατὰ τὸ καλούμενον Πηδάλιον, αὐτὸς δὲ σωθεὶς μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τῶν ἑταίρων πρὸς τὴν Σινώπην, ἀφελέσθαι τοὺς Σύρους τὴν πόλιν· Σύροι γὰρ αὐτὴν κατεῖχον, ἀπὸ Σύρου γεγονότες τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ὡς λέγεται καὶ Σινώπης τῆς Ἀσωπίδος.

[6] ταῦτ’ ἀκούων ὁ Λεύκολλος ἀνεμιμνῄσκετο τῆς Σύλλα παραινέσεως· παρῄνει δὲ διὰ τῶν ὑπομνημάτων (HRR I 198) ἐκεῖνος μηδὲν οὕτως ἀξιόπιστον ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ βέβαιον, ὡς ὅ τι ἂν ἀποσημανθῇ διὰ τῶν ἐνυπνίων.

[7] Πυνθανόμενος δὲ Μιθριδάτην τε καὶ Τιγράνην εἰς Λυκαονίαν καὶ Κιλικίαν ὅσον οὔπω διαβιβάζειν δύναμιν, ὡς προτέρους ἐμβαλοῦντας εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν, ἐθαύμαζε τὸν Ἀρμένιον, εἰ γνώμην ἔχων ἐπιθέσθαι Ῥωμαίοις, ἀκμάζοντι μὲν οὐκ ἐχρῆτο Μιθριδάτῃ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, οὐδ’ ἐρρωμένοις τοῖς ἐκείνου τὰ παρ’ αὑτοῦ συνῆπτεν, ἀπολέσθαι δ’ ἐάσας καὶ συντριβῆναι, νῦν ἐπὶ ψυχραῖς ἐλπίσιν ἄρχεται πολέμου, τοῖς ἀναστῆναι μὴ δυναμένοις συγκαταβάλλων ἑαυτόν.

[24] [1] Ἐπειδὴ δὲ καὶ Μαχάρης ὁ Μιθριδάτου παῖς, ἔχων τὸν Βόσπορον, ἔπεμψεν αὐτῷ στέφανον ἀπὸ χρυσῶν χιλίων, δεόμενος Ῥωμαίων ἀναγραφῆναι φίλος καὶ σύμμαχος, οἰόμενος ἤδη τὰ τοῦ προτέρου πολέμου πέρας ἔχειν, Σωρνάτιον μὲν αὐτοῦ φύλακα τῶν Ποντικῶν ἀπέλιπε μετὰ στρατιωτῶν ἑξακισχιλίων, αὐτὸς δὲ μυρίους μὲν ἄγων καὶ δισχιλίους πεζούς, ἱππεῖς δὲ τρισχιλίων ἐλάττους, ἐπὶ τὸν δεύτερον ἐχώρει πόλεμον, ὁρμῇ τινι δοκῶν παραβόλῳ καὶ σωτήριον οὐκ ἐχούσῃ λογισμὸν ἐμβαλεῖν αὑτὸν εἰς ἔθνη μάχιμα καὶ μυριάδας ἱππέων πολλὰς καὶ ἀχανῆ χώραν, βαθέσι μὲν ποταμοῖς, ἀεὶ δὲ κατανιφομένοις ὄρεσι περιεχομένην, ὥστε τοὺς μὲν στρατιώτας, οὐδ’ ἄλλως ὄντας εὐτάκτους, ἄκοντας ἕπεσθαι καὶ ζυγομαχοῦντας, ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ καταβοᾶν καὶ διαμαρτύρεσθαι τοὺς δημαγωγούς, ὡς πόλεμον ἐκ πολέμου διώκοι Λεύκολλος, οὐδὲν τῆς πόλεως δεομένης, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ στρατηγῶν μηδέποτε καταθέσθαι τὰ ὅπλα μηδὲ παύσασθαι [2] χρηματιζόμενος ἀπὸ τῶν κοινῶν κινδύνων. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν ἐξειργάσαντο χρόνῳ τὴν αὑτῶν ὑπόθεσιν· Λεύκολλος δὲ συντόνως ὁδεύσας ἐπὶ τὸν Εὐφράτην, καὶ κατιόντα πολὺν καὶ θολερὸν ὑπὸ χειμῶνος εὑρών, ἤσχαλλεν ὡς διατριβῆς αὐτῷ καὶ πραγματείας ἐσομένης συνάγοντι [3] πορθμεῖα καὶ πηγνυμένῳ σχεδίας. ἀρξάμενον δ’ ἀφ’ ἑσπέρας ὑποχωρεῖν τὸ ῥεῦμα καὶ μειούμενον διὰ τῆς νυκτός, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ κοῖλον παρέσχεν ὀφθῆναι τὸν ποταμόν. οἱ δ’ ἐπιχώριοι νησῖδας ἐν τῷ πόρῳ μικρὰς διαφανείσας θεασάμενοι καὶ τεναγίζοντα τὸν ῥοῦν ἐπ’ αὐταῖς, προσεκύνουν τὸν Λεύκολλον, ὡς ὀλιγάκις τούτου συμβεβηκότος πρότερον, ἐκείνῳ δ’ ἑκουσίως χειροήθη καὶ πρᾷον αὑτὸν ἐνδιδόντος τοῦ ποταμοῦ καὶ παρέχοντος ἀπράγμονα [4] καὶ ταχεῖαν τὴν διάβασιν. χρησάμενος οὖν τῷ καιρῷ διεβίβαζε τὴν στρατιάν, καὶ γίνεται σημεῖον αὐτῷ χρηστὸν ἅμα τῇ διαβάσει. βόες ἱεραὶ νέμονται Περσίας Ἀρτέμιδος, ἣν μάλιστα θεῶν οἱ πέραν Εὐφράτου βάρβαροι τιμῶσι· χρῶνται δὲ ταῖς βουσὶ πρὸς θυσίαν μόνον, ἄλλως δὲ πλάζονται κατὰ τὴν χώραν ἄφετοι, χαράγματα φέρουσαι τῆς θεοῦ λαμπάδα, καὶ λαβεῖν ἐξ αὐτῶν ὅταν δεηθῶσιν [5] οὐ πάνυ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστιν οὐδὲ μικρᾶς πραγματείας. τούτων μία, τοῦ στρατοῦ διαβάντος τὸν Εὐφράτην, ἐλθοῦσα πρός τινα πέτραν ἱερὰν τῆς θεοῦ νομιζομένην, ἐπ’ αὐτῆς ἔστη, καὶ καταβαλοῦσα τὴν κεφαλὴν ὥσπερ αἱ δεσμῷ κατατεινόμεναι θῦσαι τῷ Λευκόλλῳ παρέσχεν αὑτήν.

[6] ἔθυσε δὲ καὶ τῷ Εὐφράτῃ ταῦρον διαβατήρια. κἀκείνην μὲν αὐτοῦ τὴν ἡμέραν ηὐλίσατο, τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ καὶ ταῖς ἐφεξῆς προῆγε διὰ τῆς Σωφηνῆς, οὐδὲν ἀδικῶν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, προσχωροῦντας αὐτῷ καὶ δεχομένους τὴν στρατιὰν ἀσμένους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν φρούριόν τι [7] δοκοῦν ἔχειν χρήματα πολλὰ βουλομένων λαβεῖν, ‘ἐκεῖνο’ ἔφη ‘μᾶλλον τὸ φρούριον ἡμῖν ἐκκοπτέον ἐστί’, δεῖξας τὸν Ταῦρον ἄπωθεν ὄντα· ‘ταῦτα δ’ ἀπόκειται τοῖς νικῶσι’. συντείνας δὲ τὴν πορείαν καὶ τὸν Τίγριν διαβάς, ἐνέβαλεν εἰς τὴν Ἀρμενίαν.

[25] [1] Τιγράνῃ δ’ ὡς ὁ πρῶτος ἀγγείλας ἥκοντα Λεύκολλον οὐκ ἐχαίρησεν, ἀλλ’ ἀπετέτμητο τὴν κεφαλήν, οὐδεὶς ἄλλος ἔφραζεν, ἀλλ’ ἀγνοῶν καθῆστο περικαιόμενος ἤδη τῷ πολεμίῳ πυρί, λόγους ἀκούων πρὸς χάριν ὡς μέγαν ‹ἂν› ὄντα Λεύκολλον στρατηγόν, εἰ πρὸς Ἐφέσῳ Τιγράνην ὑποσταίη καὶ μὴ φεύγων εὐθὺς ἐξ Ἀσίας οἴχοιτο, [2] τὰς τοσαύτας μυριάδας ἰδών. οὕτως οὔτε σώματος παντός ἐστι πολὺν ἄκρατον ἐνεγκεῖν, οὔτε διανοίας τῆς τυχούσης ἐν εὐτυχήμασι μεγάλοις μὴ ἐκστῆναι τῶν λογισμῶν. πρῶτος δ’ αὐτῷ τῶν φίλων ἐτόλμησε Μιθροβαρζάνης φράσαι τὸ ἀληθές. οὐδ’ οὗτος δὲ χρηστὸν ἠνέγκατο [3] γέρας τῆς παρρησίας· ἐπέμφθη γὰρ εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸν Λεύκολλον σὺν ἱππεῦσι τρισχιλίοις, πεζοῖς δὲ παμπόλλοις, κελευσθεὶς τὸν μὲν στρατηγὸν ἄγειν ζῶντα, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους καταπατῆσαι. Λευκόλλῳ δὲ τῆς στρατιᾶς ἡ μὲν [4] ἤδη κατεζεύγνυεν, ἡ δ’ ἔτι προσῄει. τῶν δὲ σκοπῶν αὐτῷ φρασάντων ἐπελαύνοντα τὸν βάρβαρον, ἔδεισε μὴ χωρὶς ὄντας καὶ οὐκ ἐν τάξει προσπεσὼν ταράξῃ, καὶ αὐτὸς μὲν καθίστατο τὴν στρατοπεδείαν, Σεξτίλιον δὲ πρεσβευτὴν ἔπεμψεν, ἱππεῖς ἔχοντα χιλίους ἑξακοσίους, ὁπλίτας δὲ καὶ ψιλοὺς οὐ πολλῷ πλείονας, κελεύσας ἐγγὺς προσελθόντα τοῖς πολεμίοις μένειν, ἕως ἂν πύθηται [5] τοὺς μετ’ αὐτοῦ κατεστρατοπεδευκότας. ἐβούλετο μὲν οὖν ὁ Σεξτίλιος ταῦτα ποιεῖν, ἐβιάσθη δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Μιθροβαρζάνου θρασέως ἐπελαύνοντος εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν, καὶ γενομένης μάχης ὁ μὲν Μιθροβαρζάνης ἔπεσεν ἀγωνιζόμενος, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι φεύγοντες ἀπώλοντο πλὴν ὀλίγων ἅπαντες.

[6] Ἐκ τούτου Τιγράνης μὲν ἐκλιπὼν Τιγρανόκερτα, μεγάλην πόλιν ἐκτισμένην ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, πρὸς τὸν Ταῦρον ἀνεχώρησε, καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις πανταχόθεν ἐνταῦθα συνῆγε· Λεύκολλος δὲ τῇ παρασκευῇ χρόνον οὐ διδούς, Μουρήναν μὲν ἐξέπεμψεν ‹ἐν›οχλήσοντα καὶ περικόψοντα τοὺς ἀθροιζομένους πρὸς τὸν Τιγράνην, Σεξτίλιον δὲ πάλιν Ἀράβων χεῖρα μεγάλην ἀνείρξοντα βασιλεῖ προσιοῦσαν.

[7] ὁμοῦ δὲ Σεξτίλιος μὲν ἐπιπεσὼν στρατόπεδον ποιουμένοις τοῖς Ἄραψι τοὺς πλείστους διέφθειρε, Μουρήνας δ’ ἑπόμενος Τιγράνῃ, τραχὺν αὐλῶνα καὶ στενόπορον στρατῷ μακρῷ διεκβάλλοντι, καιροῦ παρασχόντος ἐπιτίθεται, καὶ φεύγει μὲν αὐτὸς Τιγράνης, προέμενος τὴν ἀποσκευὴν ἅπασαν, ἀποθνῄσκουσι δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ πλείονες ἁλίσκονται τῶν Ἀρμενίων.

[26] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τούτων προχωρούντων, ἄρας ὁ Λεύκολλος ἐπορεύετο πρὸς Τιγρανόκερτα, καὶ περιστρατοπεδεύσας ἐπολιόρκει τὴν πόλιν. ἦσαν δ’ ἐν αὐτῇ πολλοὶ μὲν Ἕλληνες τῶν ἀναστάτων ἐκ Κιλικίας, πολλοὶ δὲ βάρβαροι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ὅμοια πεπονθότες, Ἀδιαβηνοὶ καὶ Ἀσσύριοι καὶ Γορδυηνοὶ καὶ Καππάδοκες, ὧν κατασκάψας τὰς πατρίδας, αὐτοὺς δὲ κομίσας ἐκεῖ κατοικεῖν ἠνάγκασεν.

[2] ἦν δὲ καὶ χρημάτων ἡ πόλις μεστὴ καὶ ἀναθημάτων, παντὸς ἰδιώτου καὶ δυνάστου τῷ βασιλεῖ συμφιλοτιμουμένου πρὸς αὔξησιν καὶ κατασκευὴν τῆς πόλεως. διὸ καὶ συντόνως ἐπολιόρκει [ὁ] Λεύκολλος αὐτήν, οὐκ ἀνέξεσθαι τὸν Τιγράνην οἰόμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρὰ γνώμην ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καταβήσεσθαι διαμαχούμενον· ὀρθῶς οἰόμενος.

[3] πολλὰ δὲ Μιθριδάτης ἀπηγόρευσεν, ἀγγέλους πέμπων καὶ γράμματα, μὴ συνάπτειν μάχην, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἱππεῦσι περικόπτειν τὴν ἀγοράν· πολλὰ δὲ Ταξίλης ἥκων παρ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ συστρατεύων ἐδεῖτο τοῦ βασιλέως φυλάττεσθαι καὶ φεύγειν ὡς ἄμαχον πρᾶγμα τὰ Ῥωμαίων [4] ὅπλα. καὶ τά γε πρῶτα πρᾴως ἤκουε τούτων. ἐπεὶ δὲ πανστρατιᾷ μὲν αὐτῷ συνῆλθον Ἀρμένιοι καὶ Γορδυηνοί, πανστρατιᾷ δὲ Μήδους καὶ Ἀδιαβηνοὺς ἄγοντες οἱ βασιλεῖς παρῆσαν, ἧκον δὲ πολλοὶ μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐν Βαβυλῶνι θαλάσσης Ἄραβες, πολλοὶ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς Κασπίας Ἀλβανοὶ καὶ Ἴβηρες Ἀλβανοῖς προσοικοῦντες, οὐκ ὀλίγοι δὲ τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἀράξην νεμομένων ἀβασίλευτοι χάριτι καὶ δώροις πεισθέντες ἀπήντησαν, ἐλπίδων δὲ καὶ θράσους καὶ βαρβαρικῶν ἀπειλῶν μεστὰ μὲν ἦν τὰ συμπόσια τοῦ βασιλέως, μεστὰ δὲ τὰ συμβούλια, παρεκινδύνευσε μὲν ὁ Ταξίλης ἀποθανεῖν, ὑπεναντιούμενος τῇ γνώμῃ τῆς μάχης, ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ Μιθριδάτης φθονῶν ἀποτρέπειν μεγάλου [5] κατορθώματος. ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἀνέμεινεν αὐτὸν ὁ Τιγράνης, μὴ μετάσχοι τῆς δόξης, ἀλλ’ ἐχώρει παντὶ τῷ στρατῷ, σφόδρα δυσφορῶν ὡς λέγεται πρὸς τοὺς φίλους, ὅτι πρὸς Λεύκολλον αὐτῷ μόνον, οὐ πρὸς ἅπαντας ὁ ἀγὼν ἔσοιτο τοὺς Ῥωμαίων στρατηγοὺς ἐν ταὐτῷ γενομένους.

[6] καὶ οὐ παντάπασιν ἦν τὸ θράσος αὐτοῦ μανιῶδες οὐδ’ ἄλογον, ἔθνη τοσαῦτα καὶ βασιλεῖς ἑπομένους καὶ φάλαγγας ὁπλιτῶν καὶ μυριάδας ἱππέων ἀποβλέποντος.

[7] τοξότας μὲν γὰρ καὶ σφενδονήτας δισμυρίους ἦγεν, ἱππεῖς δὲ πεντακισμυρίους καὶ πεντακισχιλίους, ὧν ἑπτακισχίλιοι καὶ μύριοι κατάφρακτοι ἦσαν, ὡς Λεύκολλος ἔγραψε πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον, ὁπλιτῶν δέ, τῶν μὲν εἰς σπείρας, τῶν δ’ εἰς φάλαγγας συντεταγμένων, πεντεκαίδεκα μυριάδας, ὁδοποιοὺς δὲ καὶ γεφυρωτὰς καὶ καθαρτὰς ποταμῶν καὶ ὑλοτόμους καὶ τῶν ἄλλων χρειῶν ὑπηρέτας τρισμυρίους καὶ πεντακισχιλίους, οἳ τοῖς μαχομένοις ἐπιτεταγμένοι κατόπιν ὄψιν ἅμα καὶ ῥώμην παρεῖχον.

[27] [1] Ὡς δ’ ὑπερβαλὼν τὸν Ταῦρον ἄθρους κατεφάνη καὶ κατεῖδε πρὸς τοῖς Τιγρανοκέρτοις ἐπικαθήμενον τὸ στράτευμα τῶν Ῥωμαίων, ὁ μὲν ἐν τῇ πόλει βάρβαρος ὅμιλος ὀλολυγῇ καὶ κρότῳ τὴν ὄψιν ἐδέξατο, καὶ τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἀπὸ τῶν τειχῶν ἀπειλοῦντες ἐδείκνυσαν τοὺς Ἀρμενίους· Λευκόλλῳ δὲ σκοποῦντι περὶ τῆς μάχης οἱ μὲν ἄγειν ἐπὶ Τιγράνην ἐάσαντα τὴν πολιορκίαν συνεβούλευον, οἱ δὲ μὴ καταλιπεῖν ὀπίσω πολεμίους τοσούτους [2] μηδ’ ἀνεῖναι τὴν πολιορκίαν. ὁ δ’ εἰπὼν ἑκατέρους μὲν οὐκ ὀρθῶς, ἀμφοτέρους δὲ καλῶς παραινεῖν, διεῖλε τὴν στρατιάν, καὶ Μουρήναν μὲν ἑξακισχιλίους ἔχοντα πεζοὺς ἐπὶ τῆς πολιορκίας ἀπέλιπεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τέσσαρας καὶ εἴκοσι σπείρας ἀναλαβών, ἐν αἷς οὐ πλείονες ἦσαν μυρίων ὁπλιτῶν, καὶ τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἅπαντας καὶ σφενδονήτας [3] καὶ τοξότας περὶ χιλίους ἐχώρει. καὶ παρὰ τὸν ποταμὸν ἐν πεδίῳ μεγάλῳ καταστρατοπεδεύσας, παντάπασι μικρὸς ἐφάνη Τιγράνῃ, καὶ τοῖς κολακεύουσιν αὐτὸν διατριβὴν παρεῖχεν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἔσκωπτον, οἱ δ’ ὑπὲρ τῶν λαφύρων ἐν παιδιᾷ διεβάλλοντο κλῆρον, τῶν δὲ στρατηγῶν καὶ βασιλέων ἕκαστος ᾐτεῖτο προσιὼν αὐτοῦ μόνου γενέσθαι τὸ ἔργον, ἐκεῖνον δὲ καθέζεσθαι [4] θεατήν. βουλόμενος δέ τι καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Τιγράνης χαρίεις εἶναι καὶ σκωπτικός, εἶπε τὸ θρυλούμενον· ‘εἰ μὲν ὡς πρεσβευταί, πολλοὶ πάρεισιν· εἰ δ’ ὡς στρατιῶται, ὀλίγοι.’ καὶ τότε μὲν οὕτως εἰρωνευόμενοι καὶ παίζοντες διετέλεσαν.

[5] Ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ Λεύκολλος ὡπλισμένην τὴν δύναμιν ἐξῆγε, καὶ πρὸς ἕω μὲν ἦν τοῦ ποταμοῦ τὸ βαρβαρικὸν στράτευμα, τοῦ δὲ ῥεύματος ἀποστροφὴν λαμβάνοντος ἐπὶ τὰς δύσεις, ᾗ μάλιστα περάσιμον ἦν, ἀντιπαρεξάγων τὴν δύναμιν καὶ σπεύδων, ἔδοξεν ἀποχωρεῖν τῷ Τιγράνῃ, [6] καὶ καλέσας τὸν Ταξίλην ἅμα γέλωτι ‘τοὺς ἀμάχους’ ἔφη ‘Ῥωμαίων ὁπλίτας οὐχ ὁρᾷς φεύγοντας;’ καὶ ὁ Ταξίλης ‘βουλοίμην ἄν’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ γενέσθαι τι τῷ σῷ δαίμονι τῶν παραλόγων, ἀλλ’ οὔτ’ ἐσθῆτα λαμπρὰν οἱ ἄνδρες λαμβάνουσιν ὁδοιποροῦντες, οὔτε θυρεοῖς ἐκκεκαθαρμένοις χρῶνται καὶ κράνεσι γυμνοῖς, ὥσπερ νῦν τὰ σκύτινα τῶν ὅπλων σκεπάσματα περισπάσαντες, ἀλλὰ μαχουμένων ἐστὶν ἡ λαμπρότης αὕτη καὶ βαδιζόντων [7] ἤδη πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους.’ ταῦτα λέγοντος ἔτι τοῦ Ταξίλου, καταφανὴς ἦν ‹ὁ› πρῶτος ἀετὸς ἐπιστρέφοντος τοῦ Λευκόλλου καὶ τάξιν αἱ σπεῖραι κατὰ λόχους λαμβάνουσαι πρὸς τὴν διάβασιν, καὶ μόλις ὥσπερ ἐκ μέθης τινὸς ἀναφέρων ὁ Τιγράνης δὶς ἢ τρὶς ἐξέκραγεν ‘ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς οἱ ἄνδρες;’ ὥστε θορύβῳ πολλῷ τὸ πλῆθος εἰς τάξιν καθίστασθαι, βασιλέως μὲν αὐτοῦ τὸ μέσον ἔχοντος, τῶν δὲ κεράτων τὸ μὲν ἀριστερὸν τῷ Ἀδιαβηνῷ, τὸ δὲ δεξιὸν τῷ Μήδῳ παραδόντος, ἐφ’ οὗ καὶ τῶν καταφράκτων ἐν προτάγματι τὸ πλεῖστον ἦν.

[8] Λευκόλλῳ δὲ μέλλοντι διαβαίνειν τὸν ποταμὸν ἔνιοι τῶν ἡγεμόνων παρῄνουν φυλάττεσθαι τὴν ἡμέραν, μίαν οὖσαν τῶν ἀποφράδων ἃς μελαίνας καλοῦσιν· ἐν ἐκείνῃ γὰρ [τῇ ἡμέρᾳ] ἡ μετὰ Καιπίωνος ἀπώλετο στρατιὰ [9] συμβαλοῦσα Κίμβροις. ὁ δ’ ἀπεκρίνατο τὴν μνημονευομένην φωνήν· ‘ἐγὼ γάρ’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ταύτην εὐτυχῆ ποιήσω Ῥωμαίοις τὴν ἡμέραν.’ ἦν δ’ ‹ἡ› πρὸ μιᾶς νωνῶν Ὀκτωβρίων.

[28] [1] Ταῦτα δ’ εἰπὼν καὶ θαρρεῖν κελεύσας, τόν τε ποταμὸν διέβαινε καὶ πρῶτος ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους ἡγεῖτο, θώρακα μὲν ἔχων σιδηροῦν φολιδωτὸν ἀποστίλβοντα, κροσσωτὴν δ’ ἐφεστρίδα, τὸ δὲ ξίφος αὐτόθεν ὑποφαίνων γυμνόν, ὡς εὐθὺς εἰς χεῖρας ἵεσθαι δέον ἑκηβόλοις ἀνδράσι καὶ συναιρεῖν τὴν διατοξεύσιμον χώραν τῷ τάχει [2] τῆς ἐπαγωγῆς. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν κατάφρακτον ἵππον, ἧς πλεῖστος ἦν λόγος, κατεῖδε συντεταγμένην ὑπὸ λόφῳ τινὶ τὴν ἄνω χώραν ἐπίπεδον καὶ πλατεῖαν ἔχοντι, πρόσβασιν δὲ τεττάρων σταδίων οὐ παντάπασι χαλεπὴν οὐδ’ ἀποκεκομμένην, Θρᾷκας μὲν ἱππεῖς καὶ Γαλάτας οὓς εἶχεν ἐκέλευσεν ἐκ πλαγίου προσφερομένους παρακρούεσθαι [3] ταῖς μαχαίραις τοὺς κοντούς. μία γὰρ ἀλκὴ τῶν καταφράκτων κοντός, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν οὔθ’ ἑαυτοῖς οὔτε τοῖς πολεμίοις χρῆσθαι δύνανται διὰ βάρος καὶ σκληρότητα τῆς σκευῆς, ἀλλ’ ἐγκατῳκοδομημένοις ἐοίκασιν. αὐτὸς δὲ δύο σπείρας ἀναλαβὼν ἡμιλλᾶτο πρὸς τὸν λόφον, ἐρρωμένως ἑπομένων τῶν στρατιωτῶν διὰ τὸ κἀκεῖνον ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ὁρᾶν πρῶτον κακοπαθοῦντα πεζὸν καὶ [4] προσβιαζόμενον. γενόμενος δ’ ἄνω καὶ στὰς ἐν τῷ περιφανεῖ τοῦ χωρίου, μέγα βοήσας ‘νενικήκαμεν’ ἔφη, ‘νενικήκαμεν ὦ συστρατιῶται.’ καὶ τοῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἐπῆγε τοῖς καταφράκτοις, κελεύσας μηδὲν ἔτι χρῆσθαι τοῖς ὑσσοῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐκ χειρὸς ἕκαστον διαλαβόντα παίειν τῶν πολεμίων κνήμας τε καὶ μηρούς, ἃ μόνα γυμνὰ τῶν καταφράκτων [5] ἐστίν. οὐ μὴν ἐδέησέ τι ταύτης τῆς μάχης· οὐ γὰρ ἐδέξαντο τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ἀλλ’ ἀλαλάξαντας [καὶ] ‹μόνον› φεύγοντες αἴσχιστα πάντων ἐνέωσαν ἑαυτούς τε καὶ τοὺς ἵππους βαρεῖς ὄντας εἰς τὰ τῶν πεζῶν ὅπλα, πρὶν ἄρξασθαί τινος ἐκείνους μάχης, ὥστε μήτε τραύματος γενομένου μήθ’ αἵματος ὀφθέντος ἡττᾶσθαι τὰς τοσαύτας [6] μυριάδας. ὁ δὲ πολὺς φόνος ἤδη φευγόντων ἐγίνετο, μᾶλλον δὲ βουλομένων φεύγειν· οὐ γὰρ ἐδύναντο, πυκνότητι καὶ βάθει τῶν τάξεων ὑφ’ αὑτῶν ἐμποδιζόμενοι.

Τιγράνης δ’ ἐξελάσας ἐν ἀρχῇ μετ’ ὀλίγων ἔφευγε, καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ὁρῶν κοινωνοῦντα τῆς αὐτῆς τύχης, περιεσπάσατο τὸ διάδημα τῆς κεφαλῆς κἀκείνῳ δακρύσας παρέδωκε, σῴζειν ἑαυτὸν ὅπως δύναται καθ’ ἑτέρας [7] ὁδοὺς κελεύσας. ὁ δὲ νεανίας ἀναδήσασθαι μὲν οὐκ ἐτόλμησε, τῶν δὲ παίδων τῷ πιστοτάτῳ φυλάττειν ἔδωκεν. οὗτος ἁλοὺς κατὰ τύχην ἀνήχθη πρὸς Λεύκολλον, ὥστε μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων αἰχμάλωτον καὶ τὸ διάδημα γενέσθαι τοῦ Τιγράνου. Λέγεται δὲ τῶν μὲν πεζῶν ὑπὲρ δέκα μυριάδας διαφθαρῆναι, τῶν δ’ ἱππέων ὀλίγους παντάπασι διαφυγεῖν.

[8] Ῥωμαίων δ’ ἑκατὸν ἐτρώθησαν, ἔπεσον δὲ πέντε. ταύτης τῆς μάχης Ἀντίοχος ὁ φιλόσοφος ἐν τῇ ‘Περὶ θεῶν’ γραφῇ μνησθεὶς οὔ φησιν ἄλλην ἐφεωρακέναι τοιαύτην τὸν ἥλιον. Στράβων δ’, ἕτερος φιλόσοφος, ἐν τοῖς ἱστορικοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν (FGrH 91 F 9) αὐτοὺς λέγει τοὺς Ῥωμαίους αἰσχύνεσθαι καὶ καταγελᾶν ἑαυτῶν ἐπ’ ἀνδράποδα τοιαῦτα δεηθέντας ὅπλων. Λίουϊος (fr. 23 H.) δ’ εἴρηκεν ὡς οὐδέποτε Ῥωμαῖοι πολεμίοις ἀποδέοντες τοσοῦτον πλήθει παρετάξαντο· σχεδὸν γὰρ οὐδ’ εἰκοστόν, ἀλλ’ ἔλαττον ἐγένοντο μέρος οἱ νικῶντες τῶν ἡσσημένων.

[9] Ῥωμαίων δ’ οἱ δεινότατοι στρατηγοὶ καὶ πλεῖστα πολέμοις ὡμιληκότες ἐπῄνουν μάλιστα τοῦ Λευκόλλου τὸ δύο βασιλεῖς τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους καὶ μεγίστους δυσὶ τοῖς ἐναντιωτάτοις, τάχει καὶ βραδυτῆτι, καταστρατηγῆσαι· Μιθριδάτην μὲν γὰρ ἀκμάζοντα χρόνῳ καὶ τριβῇ κατανάλωσε, Τιγράνην δὲ τῷ σπεῦσαι συνέτριψεν, ἐν ὀλίγοις τῶν πώποτε ἡγεμόνων τῇ μελλήσει μὲν ἔργῳ, τῇ τόλμῃ δ’ ὑπὲρ ἀσφαλείας χρησάμενος.

[29] [1] Διὸ καὶ Μιθριδάτης οὐ συνέτεινεν ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, τῇ συνήθει τὸν Λεύκολλον εὐλαβείᾳ καὶ παραγωγῇ πολεμήσειν οἰόμενος, ἀλλὰ καθ’ ἡσυχίαν ἐπορεύετο πρὸς τὸν Τιγράνην, καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ὀλίγοις τῶν Ἀρμενίων ἐντυχὼν καθ’ ὁδὸν ἐπτοημένοις καὶ περιφόβοις ἀπιοῦσιν, εἴκασε τὸ πάθος, εἶτ’ ἤδη πλειόνων γυμνῶν καὶ τετρωμένων ἀπαντώντων πυθόμενος τὴν ἧτταν, ἐζήτει [2] τὸν Τιγράνην. εὑρὼν δὲ πάντων ἔρημον καὶ ταπεινόν, οὐκ ἀνθύβρισεν, ἀλλὰ καταβὰς καὶ συνδακρύσας τὰ κοινὰ πάθη, θεραπείαν τε τὴν ἑπομένην αὐτῷ βασιλικὴν ἔδωκε καὶ κατεθάρρυνε πρὸς τὸ μέλλον. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν αὖθις ἑτέρας δυνάμεις συνῆγον.

[3] Ἐν δὲ τῇ πόλει τοῖς Τιγρανοκέρτοις τῶν Ἑλλήνων πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους στασιασάντων καὶ τῷ Λευκόλλῳ τὴν πόλιν ἐνδιδόντων, προσβαλὼν εἷλε, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἐν τῇ πόλει θησαυροὺς παρελάμβανε, τὴν δὲ πόλιν διαρπάσαι παρέδωκε τοῖς στρατιώταις, μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων χρημάτων [4] ὀκτακισχίλια τάλαντα νομίσματος ἔχουσαν. χωρὶς δὲ τούτων ὀκτακοσίας δραχμὰς κατ’ ἄνδρα διένειμεν ἀπὸ τῶν λαφύρων. πυνθανόμενος δὲ πολλοὺς ἐν τῇ πόλει κατειλῆφθαι τῶν περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνιτῶν, οὓς ὁ Τιγράνης πανταχόθεν ἠθροίκει, μέλλων ἀναδεικνύναι τὸ κατεσκευασμένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ θέατρον, ἐχρήσατο τούτοις [5] πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας καὶ τὰς θέας τῶν ἐπινικίων. τοὺς δ’ Ἕλληνας εἰς τὰς αὐτῶν πατρίδας ἔπεμψε προσθεὶς ἐφόδια, καὶ τῶν βαρβάρων ὁμοίως τοὺς ἠναγκασμένους κατοικεῖν, ὥστε συνέβη μιᾶς πόλεως διαλυθείσης πολλὰς ἀνοικίζεσθαι πάλιν, κομιζομένας τοὺς αὑτῶν οἰκήτορας, ὑφ’ ὧν ὡς εὐεργέτης ὁ Λεύκολλος καὶ κτίστης ἠγαπᾶτο.

[6] Προὐχώρει δὲ καὶ τἆλλα κατ’ ἀξίαν τἀνδρί, τῶν ἀπὸ δικαιοσύνης καὶ φιλανθρωπίας ἐπαίνων ὀρεγομένῳ μᾶλλον ἢ τῶν ἐπὶ τοῖς πολεμικοῖς κατορθώμασιν. ἐκείνων μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ὀλίγον ἡ στρατιὰ καὶ πλεῖστον ἡ τύχη μετεῖχε, ταῦτα δ’ ἦν ἡμέρου ψυχῆς καὶ πεπαιδευμένης ἐπίδειξις, οἷς ὁ Λεύκολλος τότε χωρὶς ὅπλων ἐχειροῦτο [7] τοὺς βαρβάρους. καὶ γὰρ Ἀράβων βασιλεῖς ἧκον πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐγχειρίζοντες τὰ σφέτερα, καὶ τὸ Σωφηνῶν ἔθνος προσεχώρει. τὸ δὲ Γορδυηνῶν οὕτω διέθηκεν, ὥστε βούλεσθαι τὰς πόλεις ἐκλιπόντας ἀκολουθεῖν ἐκείνῳ μετὰ [8] παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν ἐθελοντὰς ἐξ αἰτίας τοιᾶσδε. Ζαρβιηνὸς γὰρ ὁ τῶν Γορδυηνῶν βασιλεὺς ὥσπερ εἴρηται (cap. 21, 2) δι’ Ἀππίου κρύφα Λευκόλλῳ διείλεκτο περὶ συμμαχίας, τὴν Τιγράνου τυραννίδα βαρυνόμενος· μηνυθεὶς δ’ ἀπεσφάγη, καὶ παῖδες αὐτοῦ καὶ γυνὴ συναπώλοντο, [9] πρὶν ἢ Ῥωμαίους εἰς Ἀρμενίαν ἐμβαλεῖν. τούτων οὐκ ἠμνημόνησεν ὁ Λεύκολλος, ἀλλὰ παρελθὼν εἰς τὴν Γορδυηνῶν, ταφὰς προὔθετο τοῦ Ζαρβιηνοῦ, καὶ πυρὰν ἐσθῆτι καὶ χρυσῷ βασιλικῷ καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ Τιγράνου κοσμήσας λαφύροις αὐτὸς παρὼν ὑφῆψε, καὶ χοὰς ἐπήνεγκε μετὰ φίλων καὶ οἰκείων τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἑταῖρον ἑαυτοῦ καὶ [10] Ῥωμαίων σύμμαχον ἀνακαλούμενος. ἐκέλευσε δὲ καὶ μνημεῖον ἀπὸ χρημάτων αὐτῷ συχνῶν γενέσθαι· πάμπολλα γὰρ εὑρέθη καὶ χρυσὸς καὶ ἄργυρος ἐν τοῖς τοῦ Ζαρβιηνοῦ βασιλείοις, σίτου δ’ ἀπέκειντο μυριάδες τριακόσιαι μεδίμνων, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ὠφελεῖσθαι καὶ τὸν Λεύκολλον θαυμάζεσθαι, ὅτι δραχμὴν μίαν ἐκ τοῦ δημοσίου ταμιείου μὴ λαβὼν αὐτὸν ἐξ αὑτοῦ διῴκει τὸν πόλεμον.

[30] [1] Ἐνταῦθα καὶ παρὰ τοῦ Πάρθων βασιλέως ἧκε πρεσβεία παρ’ αὐτόν, εἰς φιλίαν προκαλουμένου καὶ συμμαχίαν. ἦν δ’ ἀσμένῳ ταῦτα τῷ Λευκόλλῳ, καὶ πάλιν ἀντέπεμψε παρ’ ἑαυτοῦ πρέσβεις πρὸς τὸν Πάρθον, οἳ κατεφώρασαν αὐτὸν ἐπαμφοτερίζοντα τῇ γνώμῃ καὶ μισθὸν αἰτοῦντα κρύφα τοῦ συμμαχῆσαι τῷ Τιγράνῃ [2] τὴν Μεσοποταμίαν. ὡς οὖν ταῦθ’ ὁ Λεύκολλος ᾔσθετο, Τιγράνην μὲν ἔγνω καὶ Μιθριδάτην παρελθεῖν ὥσπερ ἀνταγωνιστὰς ἀπειρηκότας, ἀποπειρᾶσθαι δὲ τῆς Πάρθων δυνάμεως καὶ στρατεύειν ἐπ’ αὐτούς, καλὸν ἡγούμενος μιᾷ ῥύμῃ πολέμου τρεῖς ἐφεξῆς ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴς βασιλεῖς καταπαλαῖσαι καὶ διὰ τριῶν τῶν ὑπὸ τὸν ἥλιον μεγίστων ἡγεμονιῶν ἀήττητος καὶ νικῶν διεξελθεῖν.

[3] ἔπεμψεν οὖν εἰς Πόντον τοῖς περὶ Σωρνάτιον ἡγεμόσιν, ἐπιστείλας ἄγειν τὴν ἐκεῖ στρατιὰν πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς ἐκ [4] τῆς Γορδυηνῆς ἀναβησόμενος. οἱ δὲ καὶ πρότερον χαλεποῖς χρώμενοι καὶ δυσπειθέσι τοῖς στρατιώταις, τότε παντελῶς ἀπεκάλυψαν αὐτῶν τὴν ἀκολασίαν, οὐδενὶ τρόπῳ πειθοῦς οὐδ’ ἀνάγκης εὑρόμενοι προσαγαγέσθαι, μαρτυρομένους καὶ βοῶντας ὡς οὐδ’ αὐτόθι μενοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ οἰχήσονται [5] τὸν Πόντον ἔρημον ἀπολιπόντες. ταῦτα πρὸς Λεύκολλον ἀπαγγελθέντα καὶ τοὺς ἐκεῖ προσδιέφθειρε στρατιώτας, ἤδη μὲν ὑπὸ πλούτου καὶ τρυφῆς βαρεῖς γεγονότας πρὸς τὴν στρατείαν καὶ σχολῆς δεομένους, ὡς δὲ τὴν ἐκείνων ἐπύθοντο παρρησίαν, ἄνδρας αὐτοὺς ἀπεκάλουν καὶ μιμητέον αὐτοὺς ἔφασαν εἶναι· πολλὰ γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἄξια σωτηρίας καὶ ἀναπαύσεως κατειργάσθαι.

[31] [1] Τοιούτων δὲ καὶ πονηροτέρων ἔτι λόγων αἰσθόμενος ὁ Λεύκολλος τὴν ἐπὶ Πάρθους στρατείαν ἀφῆκεν, αὖθις δ’ ἐπὶ τὸν Τιγράνην ἐβάδιζε θέρους ἀκμάζοντος, καὶ τὸν Ταῦρον ὑπερβαλὼν ἠθύμησε χλωρῶν τῶν πεδίων ἐκφανέντων· τοσοῦτον αἱ ὧραι διὰ τὴν ψυχρότητα [2] τοῦ ἀέρος ὑστερίζουσιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καταβὰς καὶ δὶς ἢ τρὶς ἀνατολμήσαντας ἐπ’ αὐτὸν τοὺς Ἀρμενίους τρεψάμενος, ἀδεῶς ἐπόρθει τὰς κώμας, καὶ τὸν παρεσκευασμένον τῷ Τιγράνῃ σῖτον ἐξαιρῶν, ἣν αὐτὸς ἐφοβεῖτο [3] τοῖς πολεμίοις περιέστησεν ἀπορίαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ προκαλούμενος εἰς μάχην αὐτούς, περιταφρεύων τὸν χάρακα καὶ πορθῶν ἐν ὄψει τὴν χώραν, οὐκ ἐκίνει πεπληγότας πολλάκις, ἀναστὰς ἐβάδιζεν ἐπ’ Ἀρτάξατα τὸ Τιγράνου βασίλειον, ὅπου καὶ παῖδες αὐτῷ νήπιοι καὶ γαμεταὶ γυναῖκες ἦσαν, οὐκ ἂν οἰόμενος ἀμαχεὶ προήσεσθαι ταῦτα [4] τὸν Τιγράνην. λέγεται δ’ Ἀννίβαν τὸν Καρχηδόνιον, Ἀντιόχου καταπολεμηθέντος ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων, μεταβάντα πρὸς Ἀρτάξαν τὸν Ἀρμένιον ἄλλων τε πολλῶν εἰσηγητὴν καὶ διδάσκαλον αὐτῷ γενέσθαι χρησίμων, καὶ τῆς χώρας καταμαθόντα τόπον εὐφυέστατον καὶ ἥδιστον ἀργοῦντα καὶ παρορώμενον, σχῆμα πόλεως ἐν αὐτῷ προϋπογράψασθαι, καὶ τὸν Ἀρτάξαν ἐπαγαγόντα δεῖξαι καὶ παρορμῆσαι [5] πρὸς τὸν οἰκισμόν. ἡσθέντος δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ δεηθέντος ὅπως αὐτὸς ἐπιστατήσῃ τοῦ ἔργου, μέγα τι καὶ πάγκαλον χρῆμα πόλεως ἀναστῆναι, καὶ γενομένην ἐπώνυμον τοῦ βασιλέως μητρόπολιν ἀποδειχθῆναι τῆς Ἀρμενίας. ἐπὶ ταύτην τοῦ Λευκόλλου βαδίζοντος, οὐκ ἠνέσχετο Τιγράνης, ἀλλὰ τὴν δύναμιν ἀναλαβὼν ἡμέρᾳ τετάρτῃ παρεστρατοπέδευσε τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις, ἐν μέσῳ λαβὼν τὸν Ἀρσανίαν ποταμόν, ὃν ἐξ ἀνάγκης διαβατέον ἦν τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις τὴν ἐπ’ Ἀρταξάτων πορευομένοις.

[6] θύσας δὲ τοῖς θεοῖς Λεύκολλος ὡς ἐν χερσὶν οὔσης τῆς νίκης, διεβίβαζε τὸν στρατὸν ἐν δώδεκα σπείραις προτεταγμέναις, ταῖς δ’ ἄλλαις ἐπιτεταγμέναις πρὸς τὰς κυκλώσεις τῶν πολεμίων. πολλοὶ γὰρ ἦσαν ἱππεῖς καὶ λογάδες ἀντιπαρατεταγμένοι, πρὸ δ’ αὐτῶν ἱπποτοξόται Μάρδοι καὶ λογχοφόροι Ἴβηρες, οἷς μάλιστα [7] τῶν ξένων ὁ Τιγράνης ἐπίστευεν ὡς μαχιμωτάτοις. οὐ μὴν ἐπράχθη τι λαμπρὸν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, μικρὰ δὲ τοῖς ἱππεῦσι τῶν Ῥωμαίων διαπληκτισάμενοι, τοὺς πεζοὺς ἐπιόντας οὐχ ὑπέμειναν, ἀλλ’ ἑκατέρωσε τῇ φυγῇ σχισθέντες, ἐπεσπάσαντο τοὺς ἱππεῖς πρὸς τὴν δίωξιν. ἅμα δὲ τῷ τούτους διασπαρῆναι τῶν περὶ τὸν Τιγράνην ἐξιππασαμένων, ἰδὼν τὴν λαμπρότητα καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ὁ Λεύκολλος [8] ἔδεισε, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἱππεῖς ἀπὸ τῆς διώξεως ἀνεκαλεῖτο, πρῶτος δ’ αὐτὸς ἀντέστη τοῖς Ἀτροπατηνοῖς κατ’ αὐτὸν οὖσι μετὰ τῶν ἀρίστων, καὶ πρὶν εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν φοβήσας ἐτρέψατο. τριῶν δ’ ὁμοῦ παρατεταγμένων βασιλέων αἴσχιστα δοκεῖ φυγεῖν ὁ Ποντικὸς Μιθριδάτης, οὐδὲ τὴν κραυγὴν τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἀνασχόμενος.

[9] γενομένης δὲ τῆς διώξεως μακρᾶς καὶ δι’ ὅλης νυκτός, οὐ μόνον κτείνοντες αὐτούς, ἀλλὰ καὶ ζωγροῦντες καὶ χρήματα καὶ λείαν ἄγοντες καὶ φέροντες ἀπεῖπον οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι. φησὶ δ’ ὁ Λίουϊος (fr. 24 H.) ἐν μὲν τῇ προτέρᾳ μάχῃ πλείονας, ἐν δὲ ταύτῃ γνωριμωτέρους πεσεῖν καὶ ληφθῆναι τῶν πολεμίων.

[32] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Λεύκολλος μὲν ἐπηρμένος καὶ τεθαρρηκὼς ἄνω προάγειν διενοεῖτο καὶ καταστρέφεσθαι τὴν βάρβαρον· ὥρᾳ δ’ ἰσημερίας φθινοπωρινῆς οὐκ ἂν ἐλπίσαντι χειμῶνες ἐπέπεσον βαρεῖς, τὰ μὲν πλεῖστα κατανίφοντες, ἐν δὲ ταῖς αἰθρίαις πάχνην ἐπιφέροντες καὶ πάγον, ὑφ’ οὗ χαλεποὶ μὲν ἦσαν οἱ ποταμοὶ τοῖς ἵπποις πίνεσθαι διὰ ψυχρότητος ὑπερβολήν, χαλεπαὶ δ’ αὐτῶν αἱ διαβάσεις, ἐκρηγνυμένου τοῦ κρυστάλλου καὶ διακόπτοντος [2] τὰ νεῦρα τῶν ἵππων τῇ τραχύτητι. τῆς δὲ χώρας ἡ πολλὴ συνηρεφὴς οὖσα καὶ στενόπορος καὶ ἑλώδης ἀεὶ καθύγραινεν αὐτούς, χιόνος ἀναπιμπλαμένους ἐν ταῖς ὁδοιπορίαις καὶ κακῶς ἐν τόποις νοτεροῖς νυκτερεύοντας.

[3] οὐ πολλὰς οὖν ἡμέρας ἀκολουθήσαντες τῷ Λευκόλλῳ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἠναντιοῦντο, πρῶτον δεόμενοι καὶ τοὺς χιλιάρχους προσπέμποντες, ἔπειτα θορυβωδέστερον συνιστάμενοι καὶ κατὰ σκηνὰς νυκτὸς ἀλαλάζοντες, ὅπερ εἶναι δοκεῖ σύμβολον ἀποστατικῶς ἐχούσης [4] στρατιᾶς. καίτοι πολλὰ προσελιπάρει Λεύκολλος, ἀξιῶν αὐτοὺς μακροθυμίαν ἐμβαλέσθαι ταῖς ψυχαῖς, ἄχρι οὗ τὴν ἐν Ἀρμενίοις Καρχηδόνα λαβόντες ἀνδρὸς ἐχθίστου (τὸν Ἀννίβαν λέγων) ἔργον ἀνατρέψωσιν. ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἔπειθεν, ἀπῆγεν αὐτοὺς ὀπίσω, καὶ κατ’ ἄλλας ὑπερβολὰς διελθὼν τὸν Ταῦρον, εἰς τὴν λεγομένην Μυγδονικὴν κατέβαινε, χώραν παμφόρον καὶ ἀλεεινὴν καὶ πόλιν ἐν αὑτῇ μεγάλην καὶ πολυάνθρωπον ἔχουσαν, ἣν οἱ μὲν βάρβαροι Νίσιβιν, οἱ δ’ Ἕλληνες Ἀντιόχειαν Μυγδονικὴν [5] προσηγόρευον. ταύτην εἶχεν ἀξιώματι μὲν ἀδελφὸς Τιγράνου Γούρας, ἐμπειρίᾳ δὲ καὶ δεινότητι μηχανικῇ Καλλίμαχος ὁ καὶ περὶ Ἀμισὸν πλεῖστα πράγματα Λευκόλλῳ παρασχών. βαλόμενος δὲ στρατόπεδον καὶ πᾶσαν ἰδέαν πολιορκίας ἐπαγαγών, ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ κατὰ κράτος λαμβάνει [6] τὴν πόλιν· καὶ Γούρᾳ μὲν ἑαυτὸν ἐγχειρίσαντι φιλανθρώπως ἐχρήσατο, Καλλιμάχῳ δ’ ὑπισχνουμένῳ θήκας ἀπορρήτους μεγάλων χρημάτων ἀνακαλύψειν οὐ προσέσχεν, ἀλλ’ ἐκέλευσεν ἐν πέδαις κομίζεσθαι, δίκην ὑφέξοντα τοῦ πυρὸς ᾧ τὴν Ἀμισηνῶν διαλυμηνάμενος πόλιν ἀφείλετο φιλοτιμίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ χρηστότητος ἐπίδειξιν πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας.

[33] [1] Μέχρι τοῦδε φαίη τις ἂν Λευκόλλῳ τὴν τύχην ἑπομένην συστρατηγεῖν. ἐντεῦθεν δ’ ὥσπερ πνεύματος ἐπιλιπόντος προσβιαζόμενος πάντα καὶ παντάπασιν ἀντικρούων, ἀρετὴν μὲν ἐπεδείκνυτο καὶ μακροθυμίαν ἡγεμόνος ἀγαθοῦ, δόξαν δὲ καὶ χάριν οὐδεμίαν αἱ πράξεις ἔσχον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν προϋπάρχουσαν ἐγγὺς ἦλθε δυσπραγῶν [2] καὶ διαφερόμενος μάτην ἀποβαλεῖν. τῶν δ’ αἰτιῶν αὐτὸς οὐχὶ τὴν ἐλαχίστην εἰς τοῦτο παρέσχεν, οὐκ ὢν θεραπευτικὸς πλήθους στρατιωτικοῦ, καὶ πᾶν τὸ πρὸς ἡδονὴν τοῦ ἀρχομένου γινόμενον ἀρχῆς ἀτιμίαν καὶ κατάλυσιν ἡγούμενος· τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, οὐδὲ τοῖς δυνατοῖς καὶ ἰσοτίμοις εὐάρμοστος εἶναι πεφυκώς, ἀλλὰ πάντων καταφρονῶν καὶ μηδενὸς ἀξίους πρὸς αὑτὸν ἡγούμενος.

[3] ταῦτα γὰρ ὑπάρξαι Λευκόλλῳ κακὰ λέγουσιν ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀγαθοῖς· καὶ γὰρ μέγας καὶ καλὸς καὶ δεινὸς εἰπεῖν καὶ φρόνιμος ὁμαλῶς ἐν ἀγορᾷ καὶ στρατοπέδῳ δοκεῖ γενέσθαι. Σαλούστιος (fr. 5, 10 K.) μὲν οὖν φησι χαλεπῶς διατεθῆναι τοὺς στρατιώτας πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐθὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ πολέμου πρὸς Κυζίκῳ καὶ πάλιν πρὸς Ἀμισῷ, δύο χειμῶνας ἑξῆς ἐν χάρακι διαγαγεῖν [4] ἀναγκασθέντας. ἠνίων δ’ αὐτοὺς καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ χειμῶνες· ἢ γὰρ ἐν τῇ πολεμίᾳ διεχείμαζον, ἢ παρὰ τοῖς συμμάχοις ὕπαιθροι σκηνοῦντες, εἰς δὲ πόλιν Ἑλληνίδα καὶ φίλην [5] οὐδ’ ἅπαξ εἰσῆλθε μετὰ στρατοπέδου Λεύκολλος. οὕτω δὲ διακειμένοις αὐτοῖς τὰς μεγίστας ἐνέδωκαν ἀπὸ τῆς Ῥώμης οἱ δημαγωγοὶ προφάσεις, φθόνῳ τοῦ Λευκόλλου κατηγοροῦντες ὡς ὑπὸ φιλαρχίας καὶ φιλοπλουτίας ἕλκοντος τὸν πόλεμον καὶ μονονοὺ κατέχοντος ἐν ταὐτῷ Κιλικίαν, Ἀσίαν, Βιθυνίαν, Παφλαγονίαν, Γαλατίαν, Πόντον, Ἀρμενίαν, τὰ μέχρι Φάσιδος, νυνὶ δὲ καὶ τὰ Τιγράνου βασίλεια πεπορθηκότος, ὥσπερ ἐκδῦσαι τοὺς [6] βασιλεῖς, οὐ καταπολεμῆσαι πεμφθέντος. τοῦτο γὰρ εἰπεῖν φασιν ἕνα τῶν στρατηγῶν Λεύκιον Κοίντιον, ὑφ’ οὗ μάλιστα πεισθέντες ἐψηφίσαντο πέμπειν διαδόχους τῷ Λευκόλλῳ τῆς ἐπαρχίας. ἐψηφίσαντο δὲ καὶ τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτῷ στρατευομένων πολλοὺς ἀφεῖσθαι στρατείας.

[34] [1] Τούτοις δὲ τηλικούτοις οὖσι προσγίνεται τὸ μάλιστα Λευκόλλῳ διειργασμένον τὰς πράξεις, Πόπλιος Κλώδιος, ἀνὴρ ὑβριστὴς καὶ μεστὸς ὀλιγωρίας ἁπάσης καὶ θρασύτητος. ἦν δὲ τῆς Λευκόλλου γυναικὸς ἀδελφός, ἣν καὶ διαφθείρειν ἔσχεν αἰτίαν, ἀκολαστοτάτην [2] οὖσαν. τότε δὲ τῷ Λευκόλλῳ συστρατεύων οὐχ ὅσης αὑτὸν ἠξίου τιμῆς ἐτύγχανεν· ἠξίου δὲ πρῶτος εἶναι, καὶ πολλῶν ἀπολειπόμενος διὰ τὸν τρόπον, ὑπῳκούρει τὴν Φιμβριανὴν στρατιὰν καὶ παρώξυνε κατὰ τοῦ Λευκόλλου, λόγους ‹οὐ› χρηστοὺς εἰς οὐκ ἄκοντας οὐδ’ ἀήθεις [3] τοῦ δημαγωγεῖσθαι διαδιδούς. οὗτοι γὰρ ἦσαν οὓς καὶ πρότερον ἀνέπεισε Φιμβρίας ἀποκτείναντας τὸν ὕπατον [4] Φλάκκον αὑτὸν ἑλέσθαι στρατηγόν. διὸ καὶ τὸν Κλώδιον ἡδέως ἐδέχοντο καὶ φιλοστρατιώτην προσηγόρευον, ἀγανακτεῖν προσποιούμενον ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν εἰ πέρας οὐδὲν ἔσται πολέμων τοσούτων καὶ πόνων, ἀλλὰ παντὶ μὲν ἔθνει μαχόμενοι, πᾶσαν δὲ γῆν πλανώμενοι κατατρίψουσι τὸν βίον, οὐδὲν ἄξιον ἐκ τηλικαύτης φερόμενοι στρατείας, ἀλλὰ τὰς Λευκόλλου παραπέμποντες ἁμάξας καὶ καμήλους, ἐκπωμάτων χρυσῶν καὶ διαλίθων γεμούσας, οἱ δὲ Πομπηίου στρατιῶται δῆμος ὄντες ἤδη που μετὰ γυναικῶν καὶ τέκνων κάθηνται, γῆν εὐδαίμονα καὶ πόλεις ἔχοντες, οὐ Μιθριδάτην καὶ Τιγράνην εἰς τὰς ἀοικήτους ἐμβαλόντες ἐρημίας, οὐδὲ τῆς Ἀσίας τὰ βασίλεια καταρρίψαντες, ἀλλὰ φυγάσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ καὶ [5] δραπέταις ἐν Ἰταλίᾳ πολεμήσαντες. ‘τί οὖν, εἰ δεῖ μηδέποτε παύσασθαι στρατευομένους, οὐχὶ τοιούτῳ στρατηγῷ καὶ σώματα τὰ λοιπὰ καὶ ψυχὰς φυλάσσομεν, ᾧ κάλλιστος εἶναι δοκεῖ κόσμος ὁ τῶν στρατευομένων πλοῦτος;’

[6] Τοιαύταις αἰτίαις τὸ Λευκόλλου στράτευμα διαφθαρέν, οὔτ’ ἐπὶ Τιγράνην ἠκολούθησεν οὔτ’ ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην, αὖθις ἐξ Ἀρμενίας εἰς Πόντον ἐμβαλόντα καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀναλαμβάνοντα, πρόφασιν δὲ τὸν χειμῶνα ποιούμενοι περὶ τὴν Γορδυηνὴν διέτριβον, ὅσον οὔπω Πομπήιον ἤ τιν’ ἄλλον τῶν ἡγεμόνων Λευκόλλῳ διάδοχον ἀφίξεσθαι προσδοκῶντες.

[35] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Μιθριδάτης ἤγγελτο Φάβιον νενικηκὼς ἐπὶ Σωρνάτιον καὶ Τριάριον βαδίζειν, αἰσχυνθέντες εἵποντο τῷ Λευκόλλῳ. Τριάριος δ’ ὡς ἕτοιμον ἁρπάσαι τὸ νίκημα πρὶν ἐπελθεῖν Λεύκολλον ἐγγὺς ὄντα φιλοτιμούμενος, [2] ἡττᾶται μάχῃ μεγάλῃ· λέγονται γὰρ ὑπὲρ ἑπτακισχιλίους Ῥωμαίων ἀποθανεῖν, ἐν οἷς ἑκατόνταρχοι μὲν ἑκατὸν πεντήκοντα, χιλίαρχοι δ’ εἴκοσι καὶ τέσσαρες· τὸ [3] δὲ στρατόπεδον εἷλε Μιθριδάτης. ἐπελθὼν δὲ Λεύκολλος ὀλίγαις ὕστερον ἡμέραις, Τριάριον μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ζητούμενον πρὸς ὀργὴν ἐξέκλεψε, Μιθριδάτου δὲ μὴ θέλοντος μάχεσθαι, ἀλλὰ Τιγράνην περιμένοντος ἤδη καταβαίνοντα μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως, ἔγνω πρὶν ἀμφοτέρους συνελθεῖν πάλιν ἀπαντῆσαι καὶ διαγωνίσασθαι [4] πρὸς τὸν Τιγράνην. πορευομένῳ δ’ αὐτῷ καθ’ ὁδὸν οἱ Φιμβριανοὶ στασιάσαντες ἀπέλιπον τὰς τάξεις, ὡς ἀφειμένοι δόγματι τῆς στρατείας καὶ μηκέτι τῷ Λευκόλλῳ προσῆκον ἄρχειν, ἑτέροις ἀποδεδειγμένων τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν. οὐδὲν οὖν ἐστιν ὅ τι τῶν παρ’ ἀξίαν ὁ Λεύκολλος οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν, ἀντιβολῶν καθ’ ἕνα καὶ κατὰ σκηνὰς περιιὼν ταπεινὸς καὶ δεδακρυμένος, ἔστι δ’ ὧν [5] καὶ χειρὸς ἁπτόμενος. οἱ δ’ ἀπετρίβοντο τὰς δεξιώσεις καὶ κενὰ προσερρίπτουν βαλλάντια, καὶ μόνον μάχεσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐκέλευον, ἀφ’ ὧν μόνος ἠπίστατο πλουτεῖν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῶν ἄλλων στρατιωτῶν δεομένων, ἐκβιασθέντες οἱ Φιμβριανοὶ συνέθεντο παραμεῖναι τὸ θέρος· ἐὰν δὲ μηδεὶς ἐν τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ κατίῃ πρὸς αὐτοὺς [6] ἀγωνιούμενος, ἀπηλλάχθαι. ταῦτ’ ἔδει στέργειν ἐξ ἀνάγκης τὸν Λεύκολλον, ἢ προέσθαι τοῖς βαρβάροις τὴν χώραν ἀπολειφθέντα. συνεῖχεν οὖν αὐτοὺς οὐκέτι προσβιαζόμενος οὐδὲ προάγων πρὸς μάχην, ἀλλ’ εἰ παραμένοιεν ἀγαπῶν, καὶ περιορῶν πορθουμένην ὑπὸ Τιγράνου τὴν Καππαδοκίαν καὶ πάλιν ὑβρίζοντα Μιθριδάτην, ὃν αὐτὸς ἐπεστάλκει τῇ συγκλήτῳ γράφων καταπεπολεμῆσθαι· καὶ οἱ ‹δέκα› πρέσβεις παρῆσαν αὐτῷ πρὸς τὴν διάθεσιν τῶν ἐν Πόντῳ πραγμάτων, ὡς δὴ βεβαίως ἐχομένων.

[7] καὶ δὴ παρόντες ἑώρων οὐδ’ αὑτοῦ κύριον, ἀλλὰ παροινούμενον καὶ προπηλακιζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν, οἷς γε τοσοῦτο περιῆν τῆς εἰς τὸν στρατηγὸν ἀσελγείας, ὥστε τοῦ θέρους λήγοντος ἐνδύντες τὰ ὅπλα καὶ σπασάμενοι τὰς μαχαίρας προεκαλοῦντο τοὺς μηδαμοῦ [8] παρόντας, ἀλλ’ ἀπηρκότας ἤδη πολεμίους. ἀλαλάξαντες δὲ καὶ σκιαμαχήσαντες ἀπεχώρησαν ἐκ τοῦ χάρακος, ἐπιμαρτυράμενοι πεπληρῶσθαι τὸν χρόνον ὃν ὡμολόγησαν [9] τῷ Λευκόλλῳ παραμενεῖν. τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐκάλει διὰ γραμμάτων Πομπήιος· ἤδη γὰρ ἀποδέδεικτο τοῦ πρὸς Μιθριδάτην καὶ Τιγράνην πολέμου στρατηγὸς χάριτι τοῦ δήμου καὶ κολακείᾳ τῶν δημαγωγῶν, ἐπεὶ τῇ γε βουλῇ καὶ τοῖς ἀρίστοις ἄδικα πάσχειν ἐδόκει Λεύκολλος, οὐ πολέμου διαδόχους, ἀλλὰ θριάμβου λαμβάνων, οὐδὲ τῆς στρατηγίας ἀναγκαζόμενος, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἐπάθλων τῆς στρατηγίας ἐξίστασθαι καὶ παραχωρεῖν ἑτέροις.

[36] [1] Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐφάνη τὸ γινόμενον τοῖς ἐκεῖ παροῦσι νεμεσητόν. οὔτε γὰρ τιμῆς ὁ Λεύκολλος οὔτε τιμωρίας τῶν ἐν πολέμῳ κύριος ὑπῆρχεν, οὐδ’ εἴα τινὰ Πομπήιος βαδίζειν πρὸς αὐτὸν οὐδὲ προσέχειν οἷς ἐκεῖνος ἔγραφε καὶ διένεμε μετὰ τῶν δέκα πρέσβεων, ἀλλ’ ἐκώλυεν ἐκτιθεὶς διαγράμματα καὶ φοβερὸς παρὼν ἀπὸ μείζονος [2] δυνάμεως. ὅμως δὲ τοῖς φίλοις ἔδοξε συναγαγεῖν αὐτούς, καὶ συνῆλθον ἐν κώμῃ τινὶ τῆς Γαλατίας καὶ προσεῖπον ἀλλήλους φιλοφρόνως καὶ συνήσθησαν ἐπὶ τοῖς κατωρθωμένοις ἑκατέρῳ, πρεσβύτερος μὲν ὢν ὁ Λεύκολλος, ἀξίωμα δ’ ἦν τὸ Πομπηίου μεῖζον ἀπὸ πλειόνων [3] στρατηγιῶν καὶ δυεῖν θριάμβων. ῥάβδοι δ’ ἀμφοτέρων προηγοῦντο δαφνηφόροι διὰ τὰς νίκας, καὶ τοῦ γε Πομπηίου, μακρὰν ὁδὸν διὰ τόπων ἀνύδρων καὶ αὐχμηρῶν ὁδεύσαντος, τὰς δάφνας ξηρὰς περικειμένας ταῖς ῥάβδοις ἰδόντες οἱ τοῦ Λευκόλλου ῥαβδοφόροι φιλοφρονούμενοι τοῖς ἐκείνου μετέδωκαν ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων, προσφάτους καὶ [4] θαλερὰς ἔχοντες. καὶ τὸ γινόμενον εἰς οἰωνὸν ἐτίθεντο χρηστὸν οἱ Πομπηίου φίλοι· τῷ γὰρ ὄντι τὴν ἐκείνου στρατηγίαν αἱ τούτου πράξεις ἐκόσμησαν.

Ἐκ δὲ τῶν λόγων πρὸς οὐδὲν ἐπιεικὲς συνέβησαν, ἀλλ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἀλλοτριωθέντες πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀπῆλθον, καὶ τὰς ὑπὸ τοῦ Λευκόλλου γενομένας διατάξεις ἠκύρωσεν ὁ Πομπήιος, στρατιώτας δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀπαγαγών, μόνους αὐτῷ χιλίους ἑξακοσίους ἀπέλιπε συνθριαμβεύσοντας, [5] οὐδὲ τούτους μάλα προθύμως ἑπομένους. οὕτω τις ἦν ἀφυὴς ἢ δυστυχὴς ὁ Λεύκολλος πρὸς τὸ πάντων ἐν ἡγεμονίᾳ πρῶτον καὶ μέγιστον· ὡς εἰ τοῦτο μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ὑπῆρξεν αὐτῷ τηλικούτων ὄντων καὶ τοσούτων, μετ’ ἀνδρείας, ἐπιμελείας, συνέσεως, δικαιοσύνης, οὐκ ἂν εἶχεν ἡ Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονία τὸν Εὐφράτην τῆς Ἀσίας ὅρον, ἀλλὰ τὰ ἔσχατα καὶ τὴν Ὑρκανίαν θάλασσαν, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ἐθνῶν Τιγράνῃ προηττημένων, τῆς δὲ Πάρθων δυνάμεως οὐχ ὅση κατὰ Κράσσον ἐξεφάνη, τοσαύτης καὶ κατὰ Λεύκολλον οὔσης οὐδ’ ὁμοίως συνεστώσης, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ἐμφυλίων καὶ προσοίκων πολέμων οὐδ’ Ἀρμενίους [6] ὑβρίζοντας ἐρρωμένης ἀμύνεσθαι. νῦν δέ μοι δοκεῖ Λεύκολλος, ὧν ὠφέλησε δι’ αὑτοῦ τὴν πατρίδα, βλάψαι μείζονα δι’ ἑτέρων. τὰ γὰρ ἐν Ἀρμενίᾳ τρόπαια Πάρθων πλησίον ἑστῶτα καὶ Τιγρανόκερτα καὶ Νίσιβις καὶ πλοῦτος ἐκ τούτων πολὺς εἰς Ῥώμην κομισθεὶς καὶ τὸ Τιγράνου διάδημα πομπευθὲν αἰχμάλωτον ἐπῆρε Κράσσον ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν, ὡς λάφυρα καὶ λείαν τοὺς βαρβάρους, ἄλλο [7] δ’ οὐδὲν ὄντας. ταχὺ μέντοι τοῖς Πάρθων τοξεύμασιν ἐντυχών, ἐπέδειξε τὸν Λεύκολλον οὐκ ἀφροσύνῃ καὶ μαλακίᾳ τῶν πολεμίων, αὑτοῦ δὲ τόλμῃ καὶ δεινότητι περιγενόμενον. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὕστερον.

[37] [1] Ὁ δὲ Λεύκολλος ἀναβὰς εἰς Ῥώμην, πρῶτον μὲν κατέλαβε τὸν ἀδελφὸν Μᾶρκον ὑπὸ Γαΐου Μεμμίου κατηγορούμενον ἐφ’ οἷς ἔπραξε ταμιεύων Σύλλα προστάξαντος.

[2] ἐκείνου δ’ ἀποφυγόντος, ἐπὶ τοῦτον αὐτὸν ὁ Μέμμιος μεταβαλόμενος παρώξυνε τὸν δῆμον, καὶ ὡς πολλὰ νενοσφισμένῳ καὶ μηκύναντι τὸν πόλεμον ἔπειθεν αὐτῷ [3] μὴ δοῦναι θρίαμβον. ἐλθόντος δ’ εἰς ἀγῶνα τοῦ Λευκόλλου μέγαν, οἱ πρῶτοι καὶ δυνατώτατοι καταμείξαντες ἑαυτοὺς ταῖς φυλαῖς, πολλῇ δεήσει καὶ σπουδῇ μόλις ἔπεισαν τὸν δῆμον ἐπιτρέψαι θριαμβεῦσαι οὐχ ὥσπερ ἔνιοι μήκει τε πομπῆς καὶ πλήθει τῶν κομιζομένων ἐκπληκτικὸν καὶ ὀχλώδη θρίαμβον, ἀλλὰ τοῖς μὲν ὅπλοις τῶν πολεμίων οὖσι παμπόλλοις καὶ τοῖς βασιλικοῖς μηχανήμασι τὸν Φλαμίνειον ἱππόδρομον διεκόσμησε· καὶ θέα τις ἦν αὐτὴ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν οὐκ εὐκαταφρόνητος· [4] ἐν δὲ τῇ πομπῇ τῶν τε καταφράκτων ἱππέων ὀλίγοι καὶ τῶν δρεπανηφόρων ἁρμάτων δέκα παρῆλθον, ἑξήκοντα δὲ φίλοι καὶ στρατηγοὶ τῶν βασιλικῶν, μακραὶ δὲ χαλκέμβολοι νῆες ἑκατὸν καὶ δέκα ἅμα παρεκομίσθησαν, αὐτοῦ τε Μιθριδάτου χρύσεος ἑξάπους κολοσσός, καὶ θυρεός τις διάλιθος, καὶ φορήματα εἴκοσι μὲν ἀργυρῶν σκευῶν, χρυσῶν δ’ ἐκπωμάτων καὶ ὅπλων καὶ νομίσμα[5]τος δύο καὶ τριάκοντα. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἄνδρες παρεκόμιζον· ἡμίονοι δ’ ὀκτὼ κλίνας χρυσᾶς ἔφερον, ἓξ δὲ καὶ πεντήκοντα κεχωνευμένον ἀργύριον, ἄλλοι δ’ ἑκατὸν ἑπτὰ νομίσματος [καὶ] ἀργυροῦ μικρῷ τινι δεούσας ἑβδομήκοντα [6] καὶ διακοσίας μυριάδας. ἐν δὲ δέλτοις ἀναγραφαὶ τῶν ἤδη δεδομένων χρημάτων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ Πομπηίῳ πρὸς τὸν πειρατικὸν πόλεμον καὶ τοῖς ἐπὶ τοῦ δημοσίου ταμείου, καὶ χωρὶς ὅτι στρατιώτης ἕκαστος ἐνακοσίας καὶ πεντήκοντα δραχμὰς ἔλαβεν. ἐπὶ τούτοις τήν τε πόλιν εἱστίασε λαμπρῶς καὶ τὰς περιοικίδας κώμας, ἃς οὐΐκους καλοῦσι.

[38] [1] Τῆς δὲ Κλωδίας ἀπηλλαγμένος, οὔσης ἀσελγοῦς καὶ πονηρᾶς, Σερουϊλίαν ἔγημεν, ἀδελφὴν Κάτωνος, οὐδὲ τοῦτον εὐτυχῆ γάμον. ἓν γὰρ οὐ προσῆν αὐτῷ τῶν Κλωδίας κακῶν μόνον, ἡ ‹ἐπὶ› τῷ ἀδελφῷ διαβολή· τἆλλα δὲ βδελυρὰν ὁμοίως οὖσαν καὶ ἀκόλαστον ἠναγκάζετο φέρειν αἰδούμενος Κάτωνα, τέλος δ’ ἀπεῖπεν.

[2] Ἐλπίδας δὲ θαυμαστὰς τῇ βουλῇ παρασχών, ὡς ἐχούσῃ τὸν ἄνδρα τοῦτον ἀντίταγμα πρὸς τὴν Πομπηίου τυραννίδα καὶ τῆς ἀριστοκρατίας πρόμαχον, ἀπὸ δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως ὁρμώμενον μεγάλης, ἐγκατέλιπε καὶ προήκατο τὴν πολιτείαν, εἴτε δυσκάθεκτον ἤδη καὶ νοσοῦσαν ὁρῶν, εἴθ’, ὥς φασιν ἔνιοι, μεστὸς ὢν δόξης καὶ πρὸς τὸ ῥᾷστον ἀναπίπτων τοῦ βίου καὶ μαλακώτατον ἐκ πολλῶν ἀγώνων [3] καὶ πόνων οὐκ εὐτυχέστατον τέλος λαβόντων. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐπαινοῦσιν αὐτοῦ τὴν τοσαύτην μεταβολήν, τὸ Μαρίου πάθος μὴ παθόντος, ὃς ἐπὶ ταῖς Κιμβρικαῖς νίκαις καὶ τοῖς καλοῖς καὶ μεγάλοις ἐκείνοις κατορθώμασιν οὐκ ἠθέλησεν αὑτὸν ἀνεῖναι, τιμῇ τοσαύτῃ ζηλωτόν, ἀλλ’ ἀπληστίᾳ δόξης καὶ ἀρχῆς νέοις ἀνδράσι γέρων ἀντιπολιτευόμενος, εἰς ἔργα δεινὰ καὶ πάθη δεινότερα τῶν ἔργων [4] ἐξώκειλε· βέλτιον δ’ ἂν καὶ Κικέρωνα γηρᾶσαι μετὰ Κατιλίναν ὑποστειλάμενον, καὶ Σκιπίωνα Καρχηδόνι προσθέντα Νομαντίαν, εἶτα παυσάμενον· εἶναι γάρ τινα καὶ πολιτικῆς περιόδου κατάλυσιν· τῶν γὰρ ἀθλητικῶν ἀγώνων τοὺς πολιτικοὺς οὐδὲν ἧττον ἀκμῆς καὶ ὥρας ἐπιλιπούσης [5] ἐλέγχεσθαι. οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Κράσσον καὶ Πομπήιον ἐχλευάζον τὸν Λεύκολλον εἰς ἡδονὴν ἀφεικότα καὶ πολυτέλειαν αὑτόν, ὥσπερ οὐ τοῦ τρυφᾶν μᾶλλον τοῖς τηλικούτοις παρ’ ἡλικίαν ὄντος ἢ τοῦ πολιτεύεσθαι καὶ στρατηγεῖν.

[39] [1] Ἔστι δ’ οὖν τοῦ Λευκόλλου βίου καθάπερ ἀρχαίας κωμῳδίας ἀναγνῶναι τὰ μὲν πρῶτα πολιτείας καὶ στρατηγίας, τὰ δ’ ὕστερα πότους καὶ δεῖπνα καὶ μονονουχὶ [2] κώμους καὶ λαμπάδας καὶ παιδιὰν ἅπασαν. εἰς παιδιὰν γὰρ ἔγωγε τίθεμαι καὶ οἰκοδομὰς πολυτελεῖς καὶ κατασκευὰς περιπάτων καὶ λουτρῶν καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον γραφὰς καὶ ἀνδριάντας καὶ τὴν περὶ ταύτας τὰς τέχνας σπουδήν, ἃς ἐκεῖνος συνῆγε μεγάλοις ἀναλώμασιν, εἰς ταῦτα τῷ πλούτῳ ῥύδην καταχρώμενος, ὃν ἠθροίκει πολὺν καὶ λαμπρὸν ἀπὸ τῶν στρατειῶν, ὅπου καὶ νῦν, ἐπίδοσιν τοιαύτην τῆς τρυφῆς ἐχούσης, οἱ Λευκολλιανοὶ κῆποι τῶν [3] βασιλικῶν ἐν τοῖς πολυτελεστάτοις ἀριθμοῦνται. τὰ δ’ ἐν τοῖς παραλίοις καὶ περὶ Νέαν πόλιν ἔργα, λόφους ἀνακρεμαννύντος αὐτοῦ μεγάλοις ὀρύγμασι, καὶ τροχοὺς θαλάσσης καὶ διαδρομὰς ἰχθυοτρόφους τοῖς οἰκητηρίοις περιελίσσοντος, καὶ διαίτας ἐναλίους κτίζοντος, ὁ Στωικὸς Τουβέρων θεασάμενος Ξέρξην αὐτὸν ἐκ τηβέννου προσηγόρευσεν.

[4] ἦσαν δ’ αὐτῷ περὶ Τοῦσκλον ἐγχώριοι δίαιται καὶ κατασκευαὶ περιόπτων καὶ ἀναπεπταμένων ἀνδρώνων καὶ περιπάτων, ἐν αἷς ὁ Πομπήιος γενόμενος ἐμέμφετο τὸν Λεύκολλον, ὅτι πρὸς θέρος ἄριστα διαθεὶς τὴν [5] ἔπαυλιν ἀοίκητον ἐν χειμῶνι πεποίηκε. γελάσας οὖν ἐκεῖνος ‘εἶτα’ ἔφη ‘σοὶ δοκῶ ἐλάττονα τῶν γεράνων νοῦν ἔχειν καὶ τῶν πελαργῶν, ὥστε ταῖς ὥραις μὴ συμμεταβάλλειν τὰς διαίτας;’ στρατηγοῦ δέ ποτε φιλοτιμουμένου περὶ θέας, καὶ χορῷ τινι κόσμον αἰτουμένου πορφυρᾶς χλαμύδας, ἀπεκρίνατο σκεψάμενος ἂν ἔχῃ δώσειν, εἶτα μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἠρώτησεν αὐτὸν ὁπόσων δέοιτο. τοῦ δ’ ἑκατὸν ἀρκέσειν φήσαντος, ἐκέλευσε λαβεῖν δὶς τοσαύτας· εἰς ὃ καὶ Φλάκκος ὁ ποιητὴς (Hor. ep. 1, 6, 45) ἐπιπεφώνηκεν, ὡς οὐ νομίζοι πλοῦτον, οὗ μὴ τὰ παρορώμενα καὶ λανθάνοντα πλείονα τῶν φαινομένων ἐστί.

[40] [1] Νεόπλουτα δ’ ἦν τοῦ Λευκόλλου τὰ δεῖπνα τὰ καθ’ ἡμέραν, οὐ μόνον στρωμναῖς ἁλουργέσι καὶ διαλίθοις ἐκπώμασι καὶ χοροῖς καὶ ἀκροάμασιν ἐπεισοδίοις, ἀλλ’ ὄψων τε παντοδαπῶν καὶ πεμμάτων περιττῶς διαπεπονημένων παρασκευαῖς ζηλωτὸν ἀνελευθέροις ποιοῦντος [2] ἑαυτόν. ὁ γοῦν Πομπήιος εὐδοκίμησεν ‹ὅτι› νοσῶν, τοῦ μὲν ἰατροῦ κίχλην αὐτὸν λαβεῖν κελεύσαντος, τῶν δ’ οἰκετῶν οὐκ ἂν εὑρεῖν ἀλλαχόθι φαμένων θέρους ὥρᾳ κίχλην ἢ παρὰ Λευκόλλῳ σιτευομένην, οὐκ εἴασε λαβεῖν ἐκεῖθεν, ἀλλ’ εἰπὼν πρὸς τὸν ἰατρόν ‘οὐκοῦν εἰ μὴ Λεύκολλος ἐτρύφα, Πομπήιος οὐκ ἂν ἔζησεν;’ ἄλλο [3] τι παρασκευάσαι τῶν εὐπορίστων ἐκέλευσε. Κάτων δ’ ἦν αὐτῷ φίλος καὶ οἰκεῖος, οὕτω δὲ τὸν βίον αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δίαιταν ἐδυσχέραινεν, ὥστε νέου τινὸς ἐν τῇ βουλῇ λόγον ἐπαχθῆ καὶ μακρὸν ἀκαίρως ὑπὲρ εὐτελείας καὶ σωφροσύνης διελθόντος, ἐπαναστὰς ὁ Κάτων ‘οὐ παύσῃ’ ἔφη ‘σὺ πλουτῶν μὲν ὡς Κράσσος, ζῶν δ’ ὡς Λεύκολλος, λέγων δ’ ὡς Κάτων;’ ἔνιοι δὲ τοῦτο ῥηθῆναι μὲν οὕτως, ὑπὸ Κάτωνος δ’ οὐ λέγουσιν.

[41] [1] Ὁ μέντοι Λεύκολλος οὐχ ἡδόμενος μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ σεμνυνόμενος τῷ βίῳ τούτῳ δῆλος ἦν ἐκ τῶν ἀπομνημονευομένων.

[2] λέγεται γὰρ Ἕλληνας ἀνθρώπους ἀναβάντας εἰς Ῥώμην ἑστιᾶν ἐπὶ πολλὰς ἡμέρας, τοὺς δ’ ὄντως Ἑλληνικόν τι παθόντας, αἰσχύνεσθαι καὶ διωθεῖσθαι τὴν κλῆσιν, ὡς δι’ αὐτοὺς καθ’ ἡμέραν τοσούτων ἀναλισκομένων· τὸν οὖν Λεύκολλον εἰπεῖν μειδιάσαντα πρὸς αὐτούς· ‘γίνεται μέν τι τούτων καὶ δι’ ὑμᾶς ὦ ἄνδρες Ἕλληνες· τὰ μέντοι πλεῖστα γίνεται διὰ Λεύκολλον.’ [3] ἐπεὶ δὲ μόνου δειπνοῦντος αὐτοῦ μία τράπεζα καὶ μέτριον παρεσκευάσθη δεῖπνον, ἠγανάκτει καλέσας τὸν ἐπὶ τούτῳ τεταγμένον οἰκέτην. τοῦ δὲ φήσαντος ὡς οὐκ ᾤετο μηδενὸς κεκλημένου πολυτελοῦς τινος αὐτὸν δεήσεσθαι, ‘τί λέγεις;’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ᾔδεις ὅτι σήμερον [4] παρὰ Λευκόλλῳ δειπνεῖ Λεύκολλος;’ ὄντος δὲ περὶ τούτων ὡς εἰκὸς ἐν τῇ πόλει λόγου πολλοῦ, προσῆλθον αὐτῷ κατ’ ἀγορὰν σχολὴν ἄγοντι Κικέρων καὶ Πομπήιος, ὁ μὲν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα φίλος ὢν καὶ συνήθης, Πομπηίῳ δ’ ἦν μὲν ἐκ τῆς στρατηγίας διαφορὰ πρὸς αὐτόν, εἰώθεισαν δὲ χρῆσθαι καὶ διαλέγεσθαι πολλάκις [5] ἐπιεικῶς ἀλλήλοις. ἀσπασάμενος οὖν ὁ Κικέρων αὐτὸν ἠρώτησεν, ὅπως ἔχοι πρὸς ἔντευξιν· τοῦ δὲ φήσαντος ὡς ἄριστα καὶ παρακαλοῦντος ἐντυγχάνειν, ‘ἡμεῖς’ ἔφη ‘βουλόμεθα δειπνῆσαι παρὰ σοὶ τήμερον οὕτως ὅπως [6] ἔσται σοι παρεσκευασμένα.’ θρυπτομένου δὲ τοῦ Λευκόλλου καὶ μεταλαβεῖν ἡμέραν ἀξιοῦντος, οὐκ ἔφασαν ἐπιτρέψειν, οὐδ’ εἴων διαλέγεσθαι τοῖς οἰκέταις, ἵνα μή τι πλέον κελεύσῃ γενέσθαι τῶν αὐτῷ γινομένων, πλὴν τοσοῦτο μόνον αἰτουμένῳ συνεχώρησαν εἰπεῖν πρὸς ἕνα τῶν οἰκετῶν ἐναντίον ἐκείνων, ὅτι τήμερον ἐν τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι δειπνήσοι· τοῦτο γάρ τις εἶχε τῶν πολυτελῶν οἴκων [7] ὄνομα. καὶ τοῦτο σεσοφισμένος ἐλελήθει τοὺς ἄνδρας. ἑκάστῳ γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε δειπνητηρίῳ τεταγμένον ἦν τίμημα δείπνου, καὶ χορηγίαν ἰδίαν καὶ παρασκευὴν ἕκαστον εἶχεν, ὥστε τοὺς δούλους ἀκούσαντας ὅπου βούλεται δειπνεῖν, εἰδέναι πόσον δαπάνημα καὶ ποῖόν τι κόσμῳ καὶ διαθέσει γενέσθαι δεῖ τὸ δεῖπνον· εἰώθει δὲ δειπνεῖν ἐν τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι πέντε μυριάδων· καὶ τότε τοσούτου τελεσθέντος, ἐξέπληξε τοὺς περὶ τὸν Πομπήιον ἐν τῷ μεγέθει τῆς δαπάνης τὸ τάχος τῆς παρασκευῆς. εἰς ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὑβριστικῶς ἐχρῆτο τῷ πλούτῳ καθάπερ ὄντως αἰχμαλώτῳ καὶ βαρβάρῳ.

[42] [1] Σπουδῆς δ’ ἄξια καὶ λόγου τὰ περὶ τὴν τῶν βιβλίων κατασκευήν. καὶ γὰρ πολλὰ καὶ γεγραμμένα καλῶς συνῆγεν, ἥ τε χρῆσις ἦν φιλοτιμοτέρα τῆς κτήσεως, ἀνειμένων πᾶσι τῶν βιβλιοθηκῶν, καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτὰς περιπάτων καὶ σχολαστηρίων ἀκωλύτως ὑποδεχομένων τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὥσπερ εἰς Μουσῶν τι καταγώγιον ἐκεῖσε φοιτῶντας καὶ συνδιημερεύοντας ἀλλήλοις, ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων [2] χρειῶν ἀσμένως ἀποτρέχοντας. πολλάκις δὲ καὶ συνεσχόλαζεν αὐτὸς ἐμβάλλων εἰς τοὺς περιπάτους τοῖς φιλολόγοις, καὶ τοῖς πολιτικοῖς συνέπραττεν ὅτου δέοιντο· καὶ ὅλως ἑστία καὶ πρυτανεῖον Ἑλληνικὸν ὁ οἶκος [3] ἦν αὐτοῦ τοῖς ἀφικνουμένοις εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην. φιλοσοφίαν δὲ πᾶσαν μὲν ἠσπάζετο καὶ πρὸς πᾶσαν εὐμενὴς ἦν καὶ οἰκεῖος, ἴδιον δὲ τῆς Ἀκαδημείας ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἔρωτα καὶ ζῆλον ἔσχεν, οὐ τῆς νέας λεγομένης, καίπερ ἀνθούσης τότε τοῖς Καρνεάδου λόγοις διὰ Φίλωνος, ἀλλὰ τῆς παλαιᾶς, πιθανὸν ἄνδρα καὶ δεινὸν εἰπεῖν τότε προστάτην ἐχούσης τὸν Ἀσκαλωνίτην Ἀντίοχον, ὃν πάσῃ σπουδῇ ποιησάμενος φίλον ὁ Λεύκολλος καὶ συμβιωτὴν ἀντετάττετο τοῖς Φίλωνος ἀκροαταῖς, ὧν καὶ Κικέρων ἦν [4] καὶ σύγγραμμά γε πάγκαλον ἐποίησεν εἰς τὴν αἵρεσιν, ἐν ᾧ τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς καταλήψεως λόγον Λευκόλλῳ περιτέθεικεν, αὑτῷ δὲ τὸν ἐναντίον· Λεύκολλος δ’ ἀναγέγραπται τὸ βιβλίον.

Ἦσαν δ’ ὥσπερ εἴρηται φίλοι σφόδρα καὶ κοινωνοὶ τῆς ἐν πολιτείᾳ προαιρέσεως· οὐδὲ γὰρ αὖ πάμπαν ἀπηλλάχει τῆς πολιτείας ἑαυτὸν ὁ Λεύκολλος, ἀλλὰ τὴν ὑπὲρ τοῦ μέγιστος εἶναι καὶ πλεῖστον δύνασθαι φιλοτιμίαν καὶ ἅμιλλαν, ὡς οὔτ’ ἀκίνδυνον οὔτ’ ἀνύβριστον [5] οὖσαν, εὐθὺς ἀφῆκε Κράσσῳ καὶ Κάτωνι· τούτους γὰρ οἱ τὴν Πομπηίου δύναμιν ὑφορώμενοι προεβάλλοντο τῆς βουλῆς, ἀπολεγομένου τοῦ Λευκόλλου τὰ πρωτεῖα· κατέβαινε δ’ εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν διὰ τοὺς φίλους, εἰς δὲ τὴν σύγκλητον, εἰ Πομπηίου τινὰ δέοι σπουδὴν ἢ φιλοτιμίαν [6] ἐπηρεάσαι, καὶ τάς τε διατάξεις, ἃς ἐκεῖνος ἐποιήσατο τῶν βασιλέων κρατήσας, ἐξέκρουσε, καὶ νέμησίν τινα τοῖς στρατιώταις αὐτοῦ γράφοντος ἐκώλυσε δοθῆναι συμπράττοντος Κάτωνος, ὥστε Πομπήιον εἰς τὴν Κράσσου καὶ Καίσαρος φιλίαν, μᾶλλον δὲ συνωμοσίαν καταφυγεῖν καὶ πληρώσαντα τὴν πόλιν ὅπλων καὶ στρατιωτῶν βίᾳ κυρῶσαι τὰ δόγματα, τοὺς περὶ τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ Λεύκολλον [7] ἐκβαλόντα τῆς ἀγορᾶς. ἀγανακτούντων δὲ τῶν βελτίστων ἐπὶ τοῖς γινομένοις, προῆγον οἱ Πομπηιανοὶ Βέττιόν τινα, συνειληφέναι λέγοντες ἐπιβουλεύοντα Πομπηίῳ, κἀκεῖνος ἀνακρινόμενος ἐν μὲν τῇ συγκλήτῳ κατηγόρησεν ἑτέρων τινῶν, ἐν δὲ τῷ δήμῳ Λεύκολλον ὠνόμασεν, ὡς ὑπ’ ἐκείνου παρεσκευασμένος ἀποκτεῖναι [8] Πομπήιον. οὐδεὶς δὲ τῷ λόγῳ προσέσχεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ παραυτίκα δῆλος ἦν ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐπὶ συκοφαντίᾳ καὶ διαβολῇ προηγμένος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐφωράθη τὸ πρᾶγμα μετ’ ὀλίγας ἡμέρας ῥιφέντος ἐκ τῆς εἱρκτῆς νεκροῦ, λεγομένου μὲν αὐτομάτως τεθνάναι, σημεῖα δ’ ἀγχόνης καὶ πληγῶν ἔχοντος· ἐδόκει ‹γὰρ› ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀνῃρῆσθαι τῶν παρεσκευακότων.

[43] [1] Ταῦτα δὴ καὶ μᾶλλον ἀπῆγε τῆς πολιτείας τὸν Λεύκολλον. ἐπεὶ δὲ Κικέρων ἐξέπεσε τῆς πόλεως καὶ Κάτων εἰς Κύπρον ἀπεστάλη, παντάπασιν ἐξελύθη. καὶ πρό γε τῆς τελευτῆς λέγεται νοσῆσαι τὴν διάνοιαν αὐτῷ, [2] κατὰ μικρὸν ἀπομαραινομένην. Νέπως δὲ Κορνήλιος (fr. 9, 1 M.) οὐχ ὑπὸ γήρως φησὶν οὐδὲ νόσου παραλλάξαι τὸν Λεύκολλον, ἀλλὰ φαρμάκοις ὑπό τινος τῶν ἀπελευθέρων Καλλισθένους διαφθαρέντα· τὰ δὲ φάρμακα δοθῆναι μὲν ὡς ἀγαπῷτο μᾶλλον ὁ Καλλισθένης ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, τοιαύτην ἔχειν δοκοῦντα τὴν δύναμιν, ἐκστῆσαι δὲ καὶ κατακλύσαι τὸν λογισμόν, ὥστ’ ἔτι ζῶντος αὐτοῦ [3] τὴν οὐσίαν διοικεῖν τὸν ἀδελφόν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀπέθανε, καθάπερ ἐν ἀκμῇ τῆς στρατηγίας καὶ τῆς πολιτείας αὐτοῦ τελευτήσαντος, ὁ δῆμος ἠχθέσθη καὶ συνέδραμε, καὶ τὸ σῶμα κομισθὲν εἰς ἀγορὰν ὑπὸ τῶν εὐγενεστάτων νεανίσκων ἐβιάζετο θάπτειν ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ τοῦ Ἄρεος, [4] ὅπου καὶ Σύλλαν ἔθαψεν. οὐδενὸς δὲ τοῦτο προσδοκήσαντος οὐδὲ ῥᾳδίας οὔσης τῆς παρασκευῆς, ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ δεόμενος καὶ παραιτούμενος ἔπεισεν ἐπιτρέψαι τὴν παρεσκευασμένην ἐν τῷ περὶ Τοῦσκλον ἀγρῷ τοῦ νεκροῦ κηδείαν γενέσθαι. πολὺν δ’ οὐδ’ αὐτὸς προσεβίω χρόνον, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἡλικίᾳ καὶ δόξῃ μικρὸν ἀπελείφθη, καὶ τῷ χρόνῳ τῆς τελευτῆς φιλαδελφότατος γενόμενος.

Comparison Cimonis et Luculli

[1] [1] Μάλιστα δ’ ἄν τις εὐδαιμονίσειε τοῦ τέλους Λεύκολλον, ὅτι πρὸ τῆς μεταβολῆς, ἣν ἤδη κατὰ τῆς πολιτείας ἐτεκταίνετο τοῖς ἐμφυλίοις πολέμοις τὸ πεπρωμένον, ἔφθη προαποθανὼν καὶ καταλύσας ἐν νοσούσῃ μέν, ἔτι δ’ ἐλευθέρᾳ τῇ πατρίδι τὸν βίον. καὶ τοῦτό γε [2] πάντων αὐτῷ πρὸς Κίμωνα κοινότατόν ἐστι. καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος οὔπω συντεταραγμένων τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν, ἀλλ’ ἀκμὴν ἐχόντων ἐτελεύτησεν, ἐπὶ στρατοπέδου μέντοι καὶ στρατηγῶν, οὐκ ἀπειρηκὼς οὐδ’ ἀλύων, οὐδὲ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τῶν στρατηγιῶν καὶ τῶν τροπαίων ἔπαθλον ποιούμενος εὐωχίας καὶ πότους, ὥσπερ Πλάτων (res publ. 363c) ἐπισκώπτει τοὺς περὶ τὸν Ὀρφέα, τοῖς εὖ βεβιωκόσι φάσκοντας ἀποκεῖσθαι γέρας ἐν Ἅιδου μέθην αἰώνιον.

[3] σχολὴ μὲν οὖν καὶ ἡσυχία καὶ διατριβὴ περὶ λόγους ἡδονήν τινα καὶ θεωρίαν ἔχοντας εὐπρεπέστατον ἀνδρὶ πρεσβύτῃ καὶ πεπαυμένῳ πολέμων καὶ πολιτείας παραμύθιον· τὸ δ’ ἐφ’ ἡδονὴν ὡς τέλος καταστρέψαντα τὰς καλὰς πράξεις ἤδη λοιπὸν Ἀφροδίσια τῶν πολέμων καὶ στρατηγιῶν ἄγοντα παίζειν καὶ τρυφᾶν οὐκ ἄξιον τῆς καλῆς Ἀκαδημείας, οὐδὲ τὸν Ξενοκράτη ζηλοῦντος, ἀλλ’ [4] ἐγκεκλικότος πρὸς τὸν Ἐπίκουρον. ὃ καὶ θαυμαστόν ἐστιν· ὑπεναντίως γὰρ ἡ νεότης τοῦ μὲν ἐπίψογος καὶ ἀκόλαστος γεγονέναι δοκεῖ, τοῦ δὲ πεπαιδευμένη καὶ σώφρων. βελτίων οὖν ᾧ πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον ἡ μεταβολή· χρηστοτέρα γὰρ ἡ φύσις ἐν ᾗ γηρᾷ μὲν τὸ χεῖρον, ἐπακμάζει δὲ τὸ ἄμεινον.

[5] Καὶ μὴν ὁμοίως γε πλουτήσαντες οὐχ ὁμοίως διέθεντο τὸν πλοῦτον. οὐ γὰρ ἄξιον ὁμοιῶσαι τῷ νοτίῳ τείχει τῆς ἀκροπόλεως, ὃ τοῖς ὑπὸ Κίμωνος κομισθεῖσιν ἐτελέσθη χρήμασι, τοὺς ἐν Νέᾳ πόλει θαλάμους καὶ τὰς περικλύστους ἀπόψεις, ἃς Λεύκολλος ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβαρικῶν ἐξῳκοδόμει λαφύρων· οὐδέ γε τῇ Κίμωνος τραπέζῃ τὴν Λευκόλλου παραβαλεῖν, τῇ δημοκρατικῇ καὶ [6] φιλανθρώπῳ τὴν πολυτελῆ καὶ σατραπικήν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀπὸ μικρᾶς δαπάνης πολλοὺς καθ’ ἡμέραν διέτρεφεν, ἡ δ’ εἰς ὀλίγους τρυφῶντας ἀπὸ πολλῶν παρεσκευάζετο [7] χρημάτων. εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία τῶν πραγμάτων ἐποίει διαφορὰν ὁ χρόνος· ἄδηλον γὰρ εἰ καὶ Κίμων ἀπὸ τῶν πράξεων καὶ στρατηγιῶν εἰς ἀπόλεμον καὶ ἀπολίτευτον γῆρας ἀφεὶς αὑτόν, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἂν ἐχρήσατο σοβαρᾷ καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἀνειμένῃ διαίτῃ· καὶ γὰρ φιλοπότης καὶ πανηγυρικὸς καὶ τὰ πρὸς γυναῖκας ὡς προείρηται διαβεβλημένος.

[8] αἱ δὲ περὶ τὰς πράξεις καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας κατορθώσεις, ἡδονὰς ἑτέρας ἔχουσαι, τῶν χειρόνων ἐπιθυμιῶν ἀσχολίαν ποιοῦσι καὶ λήθην ταῖς πολιτικαῖς καὶ φιλοτίμοις φύσεσιν. εἰ γοῦν καὶ Λεύκολλος ἐτελεύτησεν ἀγωνιζόμενος καὶ στρατηγῶν, οὐδ’ ἂν ὁ ψογερώτατος καὶ φιλομεμφότατος εὑρεῖν μοι δοκεῖ διαβολὴν ἐπ’ αὐτόν. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν περὶ τῆς διαίτης.

[2] [1] Ἐν δὲ τοῖς πολεμικοῖς ὅτι μὲν ἀμφότεροι καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλασσαν ἀγαθοὶ γεγόνασιν ἀγωνισταί, δῆλον· ὥσπερ δὲ τῶν ἀθλητῶν τοὺς ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ πάλῃ [μιᾷ] καὶ παγκρατίῳ στεφανουμένους ἔθει τινὶ παραδοξονίκας καλοῦσιν, οὕτω Κίμων, ἐν ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ πεζομαχίας καὶ ναυμαχίας ἅμα τροπαίῳ στεφανώσας τὴν Ἑλλάδα, δίκαιός ἐστιν ἔχειν τινὰ προεδρίαν ἐν τοῖς στρατηγοῖς.

[2] καὶ μὴν Λευκόλλῳ μὲν ἡ πατρίς, Κίμων δὲ τῇ πατρίδι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν περιέθηκε, καὶ ὁ μὲν ἀρχούσῃ τῶν συμμάχων προσεκτήσατο τὰ τῶν πολεμίων, ὁ δ’ ἄλλοις ἑπομένην παραλαβών, ἅμα καὶ τῶν συμμάχων ἄρχειν καὶ τῶν πολεμίων κρατεῖν ἐποίησε, Πέρσας μὲν ἀναγκάσας ἡττηθέντας ἐκβῆναι τῆς θαλάσσης, Λακεδαιμονίους δὲ πείσας ἑκόντας ἐκστῆναι.

[3] Εἰ τοίνυν μέγιστον ἔργον ἡγεμόνος εὐπείθειαν ‹ἐν›εργάσασθαι δι’ εὐνοίας, Λεύκολλος μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν κατεφρονήθη, Κίμων δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν συμμάχων ἐθαυμάσθη· παρ’ οὗ μὲν γὰρ ἀπέστησαν, πρὸς ὃν δὲ μετέστησαν.

[4] καὶ ὁ μὲν ὧν ἄρχων ἐξῆλθεν, ὑπὸ τούτων ἀπολειφθεὶς ἐπανῆλθεν, ὁ δὲ μεθ’ ὧν ἑτέροις ποιήσων τὸ προσταττόμενον ἐξεπέμφθη, τούτοις αὐτὸς διδοὺς τὸ παράγγελμα κατέπλευσε, τρία τὰ πάντων δυσκολώτατα διαπεπραγμένος ὁμοῦ τῇ πόλει, πρὸς μὲν τοὺς πολεμίους εἰρήνην, παρὰ δὲ τῶν συμμάχων ἡγεμονίαν, πρὸς δὲ Λακεδαιμονίους ὁμόνοιαν.

[5] Μεγάλας τοίνυν ἐπιχειρήσαντες ἀμφότεροι καταλύειν ἡγεμονίας καὶ καταστρέφεσθαι τὴν Ἀσίαν πᾶσαν, ἀτελεῖς ἐγένοντο τῶν πράξεων· ὁ μὲν καθάπαξ διὰ τὴν τύχην· ἐτελεύτησε γὰρ στρατηγῶν καὶ εὐημερῶν· τὸν δ’ οὐ παντελῶς ἄν τις ἐξέλοιτο τῆς παρ’ αὐτὸν αἰτίας, εἴτ’ ἠγνόησεν εἴτ’ οὐκ ἐθεράπευσε τὰς ἐν τῷ στρατιωτικῷ διαφορὰς καὶ μέμψεις, ἀφ’ ὧν εἰς τηλικαύτας ἀπεχθείας [6] προῆλθεν. ἢ τοῦτό γε καὶ πρὸς Κίμωνα κοινόν ἐστι; καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνον ὑπήγαγον εἰς δίκας οἱ πολῖται καὶ τελευτῶντες ἐξωστράκισαν, ἵν’ αὐτοῦ δέκα ἐτῶν ὥς φησιν [7] ὁ Πλάτων (Gorg. 516d) τῆς φωνῆς μὴ ἀκούσωσιν. αἱ γὰρ ἀριστοκρατικαὶ φύσεις ὀλίγα τοῖς πολλοῖς ‹συν›ᾴδουσι καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἔχουσι, τὰ δὲ πολλὰ προσβιαζόμεναι τῷ κατευθύνειν διαστρεφομένους ἀνιῶσιν ὥσπερ οἱ τῶν ἰατρῶν δεσμοί, καίπερ εἰς τὰ κατὰ φύσιν ἄγοντες τὰς παραρθρήσεις. ταύτης μὲν οὖν ἴσως ἀπαλλακτέον τῆς αἰτίας ἑκάτερον.

[3] [1] Πολὺ δ’ ὁ Λεύκολλος προῆλθε τῷ πολέμῳ, τόν τε Ταῦρον ὑπερβαλὼν στρατοπέδῳ Ῥωμαίων πρῶτος, καὶ τὸν Τίγριν διαβάς, καὶ τὰ βασίλεια τῆς Ἀσίας ἐν ὄψει τῶν βασιλέων, Τιγρανόκερτα καὶ Κάβηρα καὶ Σινώπην καὶ Νίσιβιν, ἑλὼν καὶ καταφλέξας, καὶ τὰ μὲν βόρεια μέχρι Φάσιδος, τὰ δ’ ἑῷα μέχρι Μηδίας, τὰ δὲ πρὸς νότον καὶ τὴν Ἐρυθρὰν θάλασσαν οἰκειωσάμενος διὰ τῶν Ἀραβικῶν βασιλέων, συντρίψας δὲ τὰς δυνάμεις τῶν βασιλέων, ἀπολειφθεὶς δὲ μόνου τοῦ τὰ σώματα λαβεῖν, ὥσπερ θηρίων εἰς ἐρημίας καὶ ὕλας ἀστιβεῖς [2] καὶ ἀβάτους ἀποδιδρασκόντων. τεκμήριον δὲ μέγα· Πέρσαι μὲν γὰρ ὡς οὐδὲν μέγα πεπονθότες ὑπὸ Κίμωνος εὐθὺς ἀντετάττοντο τοῖς Ἕλλησι, καὶ τήν γε πολλὴν δύναμιν αὐτῶν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ κρατήσαντες διέφθειραν, Τιγράνου δὲ καὶ Μιθριδάτου μετὰ Λεύκολλον οὐδὲν ἄλλ’ ἔργον ἐγένετο, ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ἀσθενὴς ἤδη καὶ συγκεκομμένος ὑπὸ τῶν πρώτων ἀγώνων οὐδ’ ἅπαξ ἐτόλμησε δεῖξαι Πομπηίῳ τὴν δύναμιν ἔξω τοῦ χάρακος, ἀλλὰ φυγὼν εἰς Βόσπορον κατέβη κἀκεῖ κατέστρεψε, Τιγράνης δ’ αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν γυμνὸν καὶ ἄνοπλον φέρων ὑπέρριψε Πομπηίῳ, καὶ τὸ διάδημα τῆς κεφαλῆς ἀφελόμενος ἔθηκε πρὸ τῶν ποδῶν, οὐ τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ κολακεύων Πομπήιον, [3] ἀλλὰ τοῖς ὑπὸ Λευκόλλου τεθριαμβευμένοις. ἠγάπησε γοῦν ἀπολαμβάνων τὰ σύμβολα τῆς βασιλείας ὡς ἀφῃρημένος πρότερον. μείζων οὖν στρατηγὸς ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴς ὁ τῷ μεθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀσθενέστερον παραδοὺς τὸν [4] ἀντίπαλον. ἔτι τοίνυν Κίμων μὲν συντετριμμένην τὴν βασιλέως δύναμιν καὶ τὸ Περσῶν φρόνημα συνεσταλμένον ἥτταις μεγάλαις καὶ ἀπαύστοις φυγαῖς ὑπὸ Θεμιστοκλέους καὶ Παυσανίου καὶ Λεωτυχίδου καταλαβὼν ἐπενέβη καὶ πεπτωκότων καὶ προηττημένων ταῖς ψυχαῖς τὰ σώματα ῥᾳδίως ἐνίκησε, Λευκόλλῳ δὲ Τιγράνης ἀήττητος ἐκ πολλῶν ἀγώνων καὶ μέγα φρονῶν συνέπεσε. [5] πλήθει δ’ οὐδ’ ἄξιον παραβαλεῖν τοῖς ἐπὶ Λεύκολλον συνελθοῦσι τοὺς ὑπὸ Κίμωνος κρατηθέντας.

[6] Ὥστε πάντῃ μεταλαμβάνοντι δυσδιαίτητον εἶναι τὴν κρίσιν· ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ δαιμόνιον ἀμφοτέροις ἔοικεν εὐμενὲς γενέσθαι, τῷ μὲν ἃ χρὴ κατορθοῦν, τῷ δ’ ἃ φυλάττεσθαι [χρὴ] προμηνῦον, ὥστε καὶ τὴν παρὰ τῶν θεῶν ψῆφον αὐτοῖς ὑπάρχειν ὡς ἀγαθοῖς καὶ θείοις τὴν φύσιν ἀμφοτέροις.

Nicias

[1] [1] Ἐπεὶ δοκοῦμεν οὐκ ἀτόπως τῷ Νικίᾳ τὸν Κράσσον παραβάλλειν καὶ τὰ Παρθικὰ παθήματα τοῖς Σικελικοῖς, ὥρα παραιτεῖσθαι καὶ παρακαλεῖν ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας τοῖς συγγράμμασι τούτοις, ὅπως ἐπὶ ταῖς διηγήσεσιν αἷς Θουκυδίδης, αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ περὶ ταῦτα παθητικώτατος ἐναργέστατος ποικιλώτατος γενόμενος, ἀμιμήτως ἐξενήνοχε, μηδὲν ἡμᾶς ὑπολάβωσι πεπονθέναι Τιμαίῳ πάθος ὅμοιον, ὃς ἐλπίσας τὸν μὲν Θουκυδίδην ὑπερβαλεῖσθαι δεινότητι, τὸν δὲ Φίλιστον ἀποδείξειν παντάπασι φορτικὸν καὶ ἰδιώτην, διὰ μέσων ὠθεῖται τῇ ἱστορίᾳ τῶν μάλιστα κατωρθωμένων ἐκείνοις ἀγώνων καὶ ναυμαχιῶν καὶ δημηγοριῶν, οὐ μὰ Δία

παρὰ Λύδιον ἅρμα πεζὸς οἰχνεύων

ὥς φησι Πίνδαρος (fr. 206 Sn.), ἀλλ’ ὅλως τις ὀψιμαθὴς καὶ μειρακιώδης φαινόμενος ἐν τούτοις, καὶ κατὰ τὸν Δίφιλον (fr. 119 CAF II 576)

παχύς, ὠνθυλευμένος στέατι Σικελικῷ,

[2] πολλαχοῦ δ’ ὑπορρέων εἰς τὸν Ξέναρχον, ὥσπερ ὅταν λέγῃ (FGrH 566 F 102b, cf. T 18) τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις οἰωνὸν ἡγήσασθαι γεγονέναι τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς νίκης ἔχοντα τοὔνομα στρατηγὸν ἀντειπόντα πρὸς τὴν στρατηγίαν, καὶ τῇ περικοπῇ τῶν Ἑρμῶν προσημαίνειν αὐτοῖς τὸ δαιμόνιον, ὡς ὑφ’ Ἑρμοκράτους τοῦ Ἕρμωνος πλεῖστα πείσονται παρὰ [3] τὸν πόλεμον· ἔτι δ’ εἰκὸς εἶναι τὸν Ἡρακλέα τοῖς μὲν Συρακουσίοις βοηθεῖν διὰ τὴν Κόρην, παρ’ ἧς ἔλαβε τὸν Κέρβερον, ὀργίζεσθαι δὲ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ὅτι τοὺς Αἰγεστέας, ἀπογόνους ὄντας Τρώων, ἔσῳζον, αὐτὸς δ’ ὑπὸ Λαομέδοντος ἀδικηθεὶς ἀνάστατον ἐποίησε τὴν πόλιν.

[4] ἀλλὰ τούτῳ μὲν ἴσως ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς ἐμμελείας ταῦτά τε γράφειν ἐπῄει καὶ τὴν Φιλίστου διάλεκτον εὐθύνειν καὶ τοῖς περὶ Πλάτωνα καὶ Ἀριστοτέλην λοιδορεῖσθαι· ἐμοὶ δ’ ὅλως μὲν ἡ περὶ λέξιν ἅμιλλα καὶ ζηλοτυπία πρὸς ἑτέρους μικροπρεπὲς φαίνεται καὶ σοφιστικόν, ἂν δὲ πρὸς τὰ [5] ἀμίμητα γίγνηται, καὶ τελέως ἀναίσθητον. ἃς γοῦν Θουκυδίδης ἐξήνεγκε πράξεις καὶ Φίλιστος (FGrH 556 F 54) ἐπεὶ παρελθεῖν οὐκ ἔστι, μάλιστά γε δὴ τὸν τρόπον καὶ τὴν διάθεσιν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὑπὸ πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων παθῶν καλυπτομένην περιεχούσας, ἐπιδραμὼν βραχέως καὶ διὰ τῶν ἀναγκαίων, ἵνα μὴ παντάπασιν ἀμελὴς δοκῶ καὶ ἀργὸς εἶναι, τὰ διαφεύγοντα τοὺς πολλούς, ὑφ’ ἑτέρων δ’ εἰρημένα σποράδην ἢ πρὸς ἀναθήμασιν ἢ ψηφίσμασιν εὑρημένα παλαιοῖς πεπείραμαι συναγαγεῖν, οὐ τὴν ἄχρηστον ἀθροίζων ἱστορίαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν πρὸς κατανόησιν ἤθους καὶ τρόπου παραδιδούς.

[2] [1] Ἔνεστιν οὖν περὶ Νικίου πρῶτον εἰπεῖν ὃ γέγραφεν Ἀριστοτέλης (Ἀθπ. 28, 5), ὅτι τρεῖς ἐγένοντο βέλτιστοι τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ πατρικὴν ἔχοντες εὔνοιαν καὶ φιλίαν πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, Νικίας ὁ Νικηράτου καὶ Θουκυδίδης ὁ Μελησίου καὶ Θηραμένης ὁ Ἅγνωνος, ἧττον δ’ οὗτος ἢ ἐκεῖνοι· καὶ γὰρ εἰς δυσγένειαν ὡς ξένος ἐκ Κέω λελοιδόρηται, καὶ διὰ τὸ μὴ μόνιμον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐπαμφοτερίζον ἀεὶ τῇ προαιρέσει τῆς πολιτείας ἐπεκλήθη Κόθορνος.

[2] ἐκείνων δὲ πρεσβύτερος μὲν ὁ Θουκυδίδης ἦν, καὶ πολλὰ καὶ Περικλεῖ δημαγωγοῦντι τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν προιστάμενος ἀντεπολιτεύσατο, νεώτερος δὲ Νικίας γενόμενος, ἦν μὲν ἔν τινι λόγῳ καὶ Περικλέους ζῶντος, ὥστε κἀκείνῳ συστρατηγῆσαι καὶ καθ’ αὑτὸν ἄρξαι πολλάκις, Περικλέους δ’ ἀποθανόντος εὐθὺς εἰς τὸ πρωτεύειν προήχθη, μάλιστα μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν πλουσίων καὶ γνωρίμων, ἀντίταγμα ποιουμένων αὐτὸν πρὸς τὴν Κλέωνος βδελυρίαν καὶ τόλμαν, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν δῆμον εἶχεν εὔνουν καὶ [3] συμφιλοτιμούμενον. ἴσχυε μὲν γὰρ ὁ Κλέων μέγα γερονταγωγῶν καὶ ἀναμισθαρνεῖν διδούς (fr. adesp. 11 CAF III 400), ὅμως δὲ καὶ τὴν πλεονεξίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἰταμότητα καὶ ‹τὸ› θράσος ‹ἐν›ορῶντες αὐτοῖς οἷς πρὸς χάριν [4] ἔπραττεν, οἱ πολλοὶ τὸν Νικίαν ἐπήγοντο. καὶ γὰρ οὐκ ἦν αὐστηρὸν οὐδ’ ἐπαχθὲς ἄγαν αὐτοῦ τὸ σεμνόν, ἀλλ’ εὐλαβείᾳ τινὶ μεμειγμένον, αὐτῷ τῷ δεδιέναι δοκοῦντι τοὺς [5] πολλοὺς δημαγωγοῦν. τῇ φύσει γὰρ ὢν ἀθαρσὴς καὶ δύσελπις, ἐν μὲν τοῖς πολεμικοῖς ἀπέκρυπτεν εὐτυχίᾳ τὴν δειλίαν· [6] κατώρθου γὰρ ὁμαλῶς στρατηγῶν· τὸ δ’ ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ ψοφοδεὲς καὶ πρὸς τοὺς συκοφάντας εὐθορύβητον αὐτοῦ καὶ δημοτικὸν ἐδόκει καὶ δύναμιν οὐ μικρὰν ἀπ’ εὐνοίας τοῦ δήμου παρέχειν τῷ δεδιέναι τοὺς θαρροῦντας, αὔξειν δὲ τοὺς δεδιότας. τοῖς γὰρ πολλοῖς τιμὴ μεγίστη παρὰ τῶν μειζόνων τὸ μὴ καταφρονεῖσθαι.

[3] [1] Περικλῆς μὲν οὖν ἀπό τ’ ἀρετῆς ἀληθινῆς καὶ λόγου δυνάμεως τὴν πόλιν ἄγων, οὐδενὸς ἐδεῖτο σχηματισμοῦ πρὸς τὸν ὄχλον οὐδὲ πιθανότητος, Νικίας δὲ τούτοις μὲν λειπόμενος, οὐσίᾳ δὲ προέχων, ἀπ’ αὐτῆς ἐδημαγώγει, [2] καὶ τῇ Κλέωνος εὐχερείᾳ καὶ βωμολοχίᾳ πρὸς ἡδονὴν μεταχειριζομένῃ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους διὰ τῶν ὁμοίων ἀντιπαρεξάγειν ἀπίθανος ὤν, χορηγίαις ἀνελάμβανε καὶ γυμνασιαρχίαις ἑτέραις τε τοιαύταις φιλοτιμίαις τὸν δῆμον, ὑπερβαλλόμενος πολυτελείᾳ καὶ χάριτι τοὺς πρὸ ἑαυτοῦ [3] καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἅπαντας. εἱστήκει δὲ καὶ τῶν ἀναθημάτων αὐτοῦ καθ’ ἡμᾶς τό τε Παλλάδιον ἐν ἀκροπόλει, τὴν χρύσωσιν ἀποβεβληκός, καὶ ὁ τοῖς χορηγικοῖς τρίποσιν ὑποκείμενος ἐν Διονύσου νεώς· ἐνίκησε γὰρ πολλάκις [4] χορηγήσας, ἐλείφθη δ’ οὐδέποτε. λέγεται δ’ ἔν τινι χορηγίᾳ παρελθεῖν οἰκέτης αὐτοῦ κεκοσμημένος εἰς σχῆμα Διονύσου, κάλλιστος ὀφθῆναι καὶ μέγιστος, οὔπω γενειῶν· ἡσθέντων δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων τῇ ὄψει καὶ κροτούντων ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον, ἀναστὰς ὁ Νικίας εἶπεν ὡς οὐχ ὅσιον ἡγοῖτο δουλεύειν καταπεφημισμένον θεῷ σῶμα, καὶ τὸν νεανίσκον [5] ἀπηλευθέρωσε. μνημονεύεται δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ περὶ Δῆλον ὡς λαμπρὰ καὶ θεοπρεπῆ φιλοτιμήματα. τῶν γὰρ χορῶν, οὓς αἱ πόλεις ἔπεμπον ᾀσομένους τῷ θεῷ, προσπλεόντων μὲν ὡς ἔτυχεν, εὐθὺς δ’ ὄχλου πρὸς τὴν ναῦν ἀπαντῶντος ᾄδειν κελευομένων κατ’ οὐδένα κόσμον, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ σπουδῆς ἀσυντάκτως ἀποβαινόντων ἅμα καὶ στεφανουμένων καὶ μεταμφιεννυμένων, ἐκεῖνος ὅτε τὴν θεωρίαν ἦγεν, αὐτὸς μὲν εἰς Ῥήνειαν ἀπέβη, τὸν χορὸν ἔχων καὶ τὰ ἱερεῖα καὶ τὴν ἄλλην παρασκευήν, ζεῦγμα δὲ πεποιημένον Ἀθήνησι πρὸς τὰ μέτρα καὶ κεκοσμημένον ἐκπρεπῶς χρυσώσεσι καὶ βαφαῖς καὶ στεφάνοις καὶ αὐλαίαις κομίζων, διὰ νυκτὸς ἐγεφύρωσε τὸν μεταξὺ Ῥηνείας καὶ [6] Δήλου πόρον, οὐκ ὄντα μέγαν· εἶθ’ ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ τήν τε πομπὴν τῷ θεῷ καὶ τὸν χορὸν ἄγων κεκοσμημένον πολυτελῶς [7] καὶ ᾄδοντα διὰ τῆς γεφύρας ἀπεβίβαζε. μετὰ δὲ τὴν θυσίαν καὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα καὶ τὰς ἑστιάσεις τόν τε φοίνικα τὸν χαλκοῦν ἔστησεν ἀνάθημα τῷ θεῷ, καὶ χωρίον μυρίων δραχμῶν πριάμενος καθιέρωσεν, οὗ τὰς προσόδους ἔδει Δηλίους καταθύοντας ἑστιᾶσθαι, πολλὰ καὶ ἀγαθὰ Νικίᾳ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν αἰτουμένους· καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο τῇ στήλῃ ‹συν›ενέγραψεν. ἣν ὥσπερ φύλακα τῆς δωρεᾶς ἐν Δήλῳ κατέλιπεν.

[8] ὁ δὲ φοῖνιξ ἐκεῖνος ὑπὸ τῶν πνευμάτων ἀποκλασθεὶς ἐνέπεσε τῷ Ναξίων ἀνδοιάντι τῷ μεγάλῳ καὶ ἀνέτρεψε.

[4] [1] Τούτοις δ’ ὅτι μὲν πολὺ τὸ πρὸς δόξαν καὶ φιλοτιμίαν πανηγυρικὸν καὶ ἀγοραῖον ‹ἔν›εστιν, οὐκ ἄδηλον· ἀλλὰ τῷ λοιπῷ τρόπῳ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς καὶ ἤθει πιστεύσειεν ἄν τις εὐσεβείας ἐπακολούθημα τὴν τοιαύτην χάριν καὶ δημαγωγίαν γενέσθαι· σφόδρα γὰρ ἦν τῶν ἐκπεπληγμένων τὰ δαιμόνια καὶ θειασμῷ προσκείμενος, ὥς φησι Θουκυδίδης [2] (7, 50, 4). ἐν δέ τινι τῶν Πασιφῶντος διαλόγων γέγραπται, ὅτι καθ’ ἡμέραν ἔθυε τοῖς θεοῖς, καὶ μάντιν ἔχων ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας προσεποιεῖτο μὲν ἀεὶ σκέπτεσθαι περὶ τῶν δημοσίων, τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα περὶ τῶν ἰδίων καὶ μάλιστα περὶ τῶν ἀργυρείων μετάλλων· ἐκέκτητο γὰρ ἐν τῇ Λαυρεωτικῇ πολλά, μεγάλα μὲν εἰς πρόσοδον, οὐκ ἀκινδύνους δὲ τὰς ἐργασίας ἔχοντα, καὶ πλῆθος ἀνδραπόδων ἔτρεφεν αὐτόθι, καὶ τῆς οὐσίας ἐν ἀργυρίῳ τὸ πλεῖστον [3] εἶχεν. ὅθεν οὐκ ὀλίγοι περὶ αὐτὸν ἦσαν αἰτοῦντες καὶ λαμβάνοντες. ἐδίδου γὰρ οὐχ ἧττον τοῖς κακῶς ποιεῖν δυναμένοις ἢ τοῖς εὖ πάσχειν ἀξίοις, καὶ ὅλως πρόσοδος ἦν αὐτοῦ τοῖς τε πονηροῖς ἡ δειλία καὶ τοῖς χρηστοῖς ἡ φιλανθρωπία.

[4] λαβεῖν δὲ περὶ τούτων μαρτυρίαν καὶ παρὰ τῶν κωμικῶν [5] ἔστι. Τηλεκλείδης μὲν γὰρ εἴς τινα τῶν συκοφαντῶν ταυτὶ πεποίηκε (fr. 41 CAF I 219)·

Χαρικλέης μὲν οὖν ἔδωκε μνᾶν, ἵν’ αὐτὸν μὴ λέγῃ,

ὡς ἔφυ τῇ μητρὶ παίδων πρῶτος ἐκ βαλλαντίου.

τέσσαρας δὲ μνᾶς ἔδωκε Νικίας Νικηράτου·

ὧν δ’ ἕκατι τοῦτ’ ἔδωκε, καίπερ εὖ εἰδὼς ἐγὼ

οὐκ ἐρῶ, φίλος γὰρ ἁνήρ, σωφρονεῖν δέ μοι δοκεῖ.

[6] ὁ δ’ ὑπ’ Εὐπόλιδος κωμῳδούμενος ἐν τῷ Μαρικᾷ παράγων τινὰ τῶν ἀπραγμόνων καὶ πενήτων λέγει (fr. 181 CAF I 308)·

‹Α.› πόσου χρόνου γὰρ συγγεγένησαι Νικίᾳ;

‹Β.› οὐδ’ εἶδον, εἰ μὴ ‘ναγχος ἑστῶτ’ ἐν ἀγορᾷ.

‹Α.› ἁνὴρ ὁμολογεῖ Νικίαν ἑορακέναι.

καίτοι τί παθὼν ἂν εἶδεν, εἰ μὴ προὐδίδου;

‹Γ.› ἠκούσατ’, ὦ ξυνήλικες,

ἐπ’ αὐτοφώρῳ Νικίαν εἰλημμένον;

‹Β.› ὑμεῖς γάρ, ὦ φρενοβλαβεῖς,

λάβοιτ’ ἂν ἄνδρ’ ἄριστον ἐν κακῷ τινι;

[7] ὁ δ’ Ἀριστοφάνους Κλέων ἀπειλῶν λέγει (equit. 358)·

λαρυγγιῶ τοὺς ῥήτορας καὶ Νικίαν ταράξω.

[8] ὑποδηλοῖ δὲ καὶ Φρύνιχος τὸ ἀθαρσὲς αὐτοῦ καὶ καταπεπληγμένον ἐν τούτοις (fr. 59 CAF I 385)·

ἦν γὰρ πολίτης ἀγαθός, ὡς εὖ οἶδ’ ἐγώ,

κοὐχ ὑποταγεὶς ἐβάδιζεν, ὥσπερ Νικίας.

[5] [1] Οὕτω δὴ διακείμενος εὐλαβῶς πρὸς τοὺς συκοφάντας, οὔτε συνεδείπνει τινὶ τῶν πολιτῶν, οὔτε κοινολογίαις οὔτε συνδιημερεύσεσιν ἐνέβαλλεν ἑαυτόν, οὐδ’ ὅλως ἐσχόλαζε ταῖς τοιαύταις διατριβαῖς, ἀλλ’ ἄρχων μὲν ἐν τῷ στρατηγίῳ διετέλει μέχρι νυκτός, ἐκ δὲ βουλῆς ὕστατος [2] ἀπῄει πρῶτος ἀφικνούμενος. εἰ δὲ μηδὲν ἐν κοινῷ πράττειν ἔχοι, δυσπρόσοδος ἦν καὶ δυσέντευκτος, οἰκουρῶν καὶ κατακεκλειμένος, οἱ δὲ φίλοι τοῖς ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας φοιτῶσιν ἐνετύγχανον καὶ παρῃτοῦντο συγγνώμην ἔχειν, ὡς καὶ τότε Νικίου πρὸς δημοσίας χρείας τινὰς [3] καὶ ἀσχολίας ὄντος, καὶ ὁ μάλιστα ταῦτα συντραγῳδῶν καὶ συμπεριτιθεὶς ὄγκον αὐτῷ καὶ δόξαν Ἱέρων ἦν, ἀνὴρ τεθραμμένος ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας τοῦ Νικίου περί τε γράμματα καὶ μουσικὴν ἐξησκημένος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, προσποιούμενος δ’ υἱὸς εἶναι Διονυσίου τοῦ Χαλκοῦ προσαγορευθέντος, οὗ καὶ ποιήματα σῴζεται, καὶ τῆς εἰς Ἰταλίαν [4] ἀποικίας ἡγεμὼν γενόμενος ἔκτισε Θουρίους. οὗτος οὖν ὁ Ἱέρων τά τε πρὸς τοὺς μάντεις ἀπόρρητα διεπράττετο τῷ Νικίᾳ, καὶ λόγους ἐξέφερεν εἰς τὸν δῆμον ὡς ἐπίπονόν τινα καὶ ταλαίπωρον διὰ τὴν πόλιν ζῶντος αὐτοῦ βίον· ᾧ γ’ ἔφη καὶ περὶ λουτρὸν ὄντι καὶ περὶ δεῖπνον ἀεί τι προσπίπτειν δημόσιον· ἀμελῶν δὲ τῶν ἰδίων ὑπὸ τοῦ τὰ κοινὰ φροντίζειν μόλις ἄρχεται καθεύδειν περὶ [5] πρῶτον ὕπνον. ὅθεν αὐτῷ καὶ τὸ σῶμα διάκειται κακῶς, καὶ τοῖς φίλοις οὐ προσηνὴς οὐδ’ ἡδύς ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ [6] τούτους προσαποβέβληκε τοῖς χρήμασι πολιτευόμενος. οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι καὶ φίλους κτώμενοι καὶ πλουτίζοντες αὑτοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος εὐπαθοῦσι καὶ προσπαίζουσι τῇ πολιτείᾳ.

[7] τῷ δ’ ὄντι τοιοῦτος ἦν ὁ Νικίου βίος, ὥστ’ ‹ἂν› αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν τὰ τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος εἰς αὑτόν (Eurip. Iph. A. 449)·

προστάτην δὲ τοῦ βίου

τὸν ὄγκον ἔχομεν, τῷ δ’ ὄχλῳ δουλεύομεν.

[6] [1] Ὁρῶν δὲ τῶν ἐν λόγῳ δυνατῶν ἢ τῷ φρονεῖν διαφερόντων ἀποχρώμενον εἰς ἔνια ταῖς ἐμπειρίαις τὸν δῆμον, ὑφορώμενον δ’ ἀεὶ καὶ φυλαττόμενον τὴν δεινότητα καὶ κολούοντα τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὴν δόξαν - ὡς δῆλον ἦν τῇ Περικλέους καταδίκῃ καὶ τῷ Δάμωνος ἐξοστρακισμῷ καὶ τῇ πρὸς Ἀντιφῶντα τὸν Ῥαμνούσιον ἀπιστίᾳ τῶν πολλῶν, καὶ μάλιστα δὴ τοῖς περὶ Πάχητα τὸν ἑλόντα Λέσβον, ὃς εὐθύνας διδοὺς τῆς στρατηγίας ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ δικαστηρίῳ [2] σπασάμενος ξίφος ἀνεῖλεν ἑαυτόν - , τὰς μὲν ἐργώδεις πάνυ καὶ μακρὰς ἐπειρᾶτο διακρούεσθαι στρατηγίας, ὅπου δ’ αὐτὸς στρατεύοιτο, τῆς ἀσφαλείας ἐχόμενος καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα κατορθῶν ὡς εἰκός, εἰς οὐδεμίαν αὑτοῦ σοφίαν ἢ δύναμιν ἢ ἀρετὴν ἀνέφερε τὰς πράξεις, ἀλλὰ παρεχώρει τῇ τύχῃ καὶ κατέφευγεν εἰς τὸ θεῖον, τῷ φθόνῳ τῆς δόξης [3] ὑφιέμενος. ἐπεμαρτύρει δὲ καὶ τὰ πράγματα· πολλῶν γὰρ τότε προσκρουσμάτων τῇ πόλει καὶ μεγάλων γενομένων οὐδενὸς ἁπλῶς ἐκεῖνος μετέσχεν, ἀλλὰ περὶ Θρᾴκην μὲν ἡττήθησαν ὑπὸ Χαλκιδέων Καλλιάδου τε καὶ Ξενοφῶντος στρατηγούντων, τὸ δ’ Αἰτωλικὸν πταῖσμα συνέβη Δημοσθένους ἄρχοντος, ἐν δὲ Δηλίῳ χιλίους αὑτῶν ἀπέβαλον Ἱπποκράτους ἡγουμένου, τοῦ δὲ λοιμοῦ τὴν πλείστην αἰτίαν ἔλαβε Περικλῆς, διὰ τὸν πόλεμον εἰς τὸ ἄστυ κατακλείσας τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς χώρας ὄχλον, ἐκ τῆς μεταβολῆς [4] τῶν τόπων καὶ διαίτης ἀήθους γενομένου. Νικίας δὲ τούτων ἁπάντων ἀναίτιος ἔμεινε, καὶ στρατηγῶν εἷλε μὲν Κύθηρα, νῆσον εὖ κατὰ τῆς Λακωνικῆς πεφυκυῖαν καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους ἔχουσαν οἰκήτορας, ἔλαβε δὲ καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἐπὶ Θρᾴκης ἀφεστώτων καὶ προσηγάγετο, κατακλείσας δὲ Μεγαρεῖς εἰς τὴν πόλιν εὐθὺς μὲν ἔσχε Μίνῳαν τὴν νῆσον, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἐκ ταύτης ὁρμώμενος Νισαίας ἐκράτησεν, εἰς δὲ τὴν Κορινθίαν ἀποβὰς ἐνίκησε μάχῃ καὶ διέφθειρε Κορινθίων πολλοὺς καὶ Λυκόφρονα [5] τὸν στρατηγόν. ἔνθα δ’ αὐτῷ συνέβη τῶν οἰκείων δύο νεκροὺς ἀπολιπεῖν, διαλαθόντας περὶ τὴν ἀναίρεσιν. ὡς οὖν τοῦτ’ ἔγνω τάχιστα, τὸν στόλον ἐπιστήσας ἔπεμψε [6] κήρυκα πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους περὶ ἀναιρέσεως. καίτοι κατὰ νόμον τινὰ καὶ συνήθειαν ἐδόκουν οἱ νεκρῶν ὑποσπόνδων λαβόντες ἀναίρεσιν ἀπολέγεσθαι τὴν νίκην, καὶ τρόπαιον ἱστάναι τοὺς τούτου τυχόντας οὐκ ἔνθεσμον ἦν· νικᾶν γὰρ τοὺς κρατοῦντας, μὴ κρατεῖν δὲ τοὺς αἰτοῦντας [7] ὡς λαβεῖν μὴ δυναμένους. ἀλλ’ ὅμως ἐκεῖνος ὑπέμεινε μᾶλλον προέσθαι τὸ νίκημα καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἢ καταλιπεῖν ἀτάφους δύο τῶν πολιτῶν. πορθήσας δὲ τὴν παραλίαν τῆς Λακωνικῆς καὶ τοὺς ἀντιστάντας Λακεδαιμονίων τρεψάμενος, εἷλε Θυρέαν Αἰγινητῶν ἐχόντων, καὶ τοὺς αἱρεθέντας ἀπήγαγε ζῶντας εἰς Ἀθήνας.

[7] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Δημοσθένους Πύλον τειχίσαντος ἐπεστράτευσαν ἅμα πεζῷ καὶ ναυσὶ Πελοποννήσιοι, καὶ μάχης γενομένης ἀπελήφθησαν ἐν τῇ Σφακτηρίᾳ νήσῳ Σπαρτιατῶν ἄνδρες ἀμφὶ τοὺς τετρακοσίους, μέγα μὲν ὥσπερ ἦν ἡγούμενοι τὸ λαβεῖν αὐτοὺς Ἀθηναῖοι, χαλεπῆς δὲ καὶ δυσέργου τῆς πολιορκίας οὔσης ἐν χωρίοις ἀνύδροις, καὶ θέρους μὲν μακρὰν καὶ πολυτελῆ τὴν περιαγωγὴν τῶν ἐπιτηδείων ἐχούσης, σφαλερὰν δὲ χειμῶνος καὶ παντελῶς ἄπορον, ἤχθοντο καὶ μετεμέλοντο πρεσβείαν Λακεδαιμονίων ἀπωσάμενοι, περὶ σπονδῶν καὶ εἰρήνης ἀφικομένην [2] πρὸς αὐτούς. ἀπεώσαντο δὲ Κλέωνος ἐναντιωθέντος οὐχ ἥκιστα διὰ Νικίαν· ἐχθρὸς γὰρ ὢν αὐτοῦ καὶ προθύμως ὁρῶν συμπράττοντα τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις, ἔπεισε τὸν δῆμον ἀποψηφίσασθαι τὰς σπονδάς. ὡς οὖν ἥ τε πολιορκία μῆκος ἐλάμβανε, καὶ δεινὰς ἀπορίας ἐπυνθάνοντο περιεστάναι [3] τὸ στρατόπεδον, δι’ ὀργῆς εἶχον τὸν Κλέωνα. τοῦ δ’ εἰς τὸν Νικίαν ἐκτρέποντος τὴν αἰτίαν, καὶ κατηγοροῦντος ὅτι δειλίᾳ καὶ μαλακίᾳ προΐεται τοὺς ἄνδρας, ὡς αὐτοῦ γε στρατηγοῦντος οὐκ ἂν περιγενομένους χρόνον τοσοῦτον, τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις εἰπεῖν παρέστη· τί δ’ οὐχὶ καὶ νῦν αὐτὸς [4] σὺ πλεῖς ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας; ὅ τε Νικίας ἀναστὰς ἐξίστατο τῆς ἐπὶ Πύλον στρατηγίας αὐτῷ, καὶ λαμβάνειν ὁπόσην βούλεται δύναμιν ἐκέλευσε καὶ μὴ θρασύνεσθαι λόγοις ἀκινδύνοις, ἀλλ’ ἔργον τι τῇ πόλει παρασχεῖν ἄξιον σπουδῆς.

[5] ὁ δὲ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἀνεδύετο, τῷ μὴ προσδοκῆσαι τοῦτο θορυβούμενος· ἐγκελευομένων δὲ ταὐτὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων, καὶ τοῦ Νικίου καταβοῶντος, ἐξαρθεὶς καὶ ἀναφλεχθεὶς τὸ φιλότιμον ὑπεδέξατό τε τὴν στρατηγίαν, καὶ προσδιωρίσατο πλεύσας ἐντὸς ἡμερῶν εἴκοσιν ἢ κατακτενεῖν [6] ἐκεῖ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἢ ζῶντας ἄξειν Ἀθήναζε. τοῖς δ’ Ἀθηναίοις ἐπῆλθε γελάσαι μέγα μᾶλλον ἢ πιστεῦσαι· καὶ γὰρ ἄλλως εἰώθεσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν κουφότητα καὶ μανίαν [7] φέρειν μετὰ παιδιᾶς οὐκ ἀηδῶς. λέγεται γὰρ ἐκκλησίας ποτ’ οὔσης τὸν μὲν δῆμον καθήμενον ἄνω περιμένειν πολὺν χρόνον, ὀψὲ δ’ εἰσελθεῖν ἐκεῖνον ἐστεφανωμένον καὶ παρακαλεῖν ὑπερθέσθαι τὴν ἐκκλησίαν εἰς αὔριον· ἀσχολοῦμαι γάρ ἔφη σήμερον, ἑστιᾶν μέλλων ξένους καὶ τεθυκὼς τοῖς θεοῖς· τοὺς δ’ Ἀθηναίους γελάσαντας ἀναστῆναι καὶ διαλῦσαι τὴν ἐκκλησίαν.

[8] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τότε τύχῃ χρησάμενος ἀγαθῇ καὶ στρατηγήσας ἄριστα μετὰ Δημοσθένους, ἐντὸς οὗ προεῖπε χρόνου τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ὅσοι μὴ κατὰ μάχην ἔπεσον [2] τὰ ὅπλα παραδόντας ἤγαγεν αἰχμαλώτους· καὶ τοῦτο τῷ Νικίᾳ μεγάλην ἤνεγκεν ἀδοξίαν. οὐ γὰρ ἀσπίδος ῥῖψις, ἀλλ’ αἴσχιόν τι καὶ χεῖρον ἐδόκει τὸ δειλίᾳ τὴν στρατηγίαν ἀποβαλεῖν ἑκουσίως, καὶ προέσθαι τῷ ἐχθρῷ τηλικούτου κατορθώματος ἀφορμάς, αὑτὸν ἀποχειροτονήσαντα [3] τῆς ἀρχῆς. σκώπτει δ’ αὐτὸν εἰς ταῦτα πάλιν Ἀριστοφάνης ἐν μὲν Ὄρνισιν (v. 639) οὕτω πως λέγων·

καὶ μὴν μὰ τὸν Δί’ οὐχὶ νυστάζειν γ’ ἔτι

ὥρα ‘στὶν ἡμῖν οὐδὲ μελλονικιᾶν,

[4] ἐν δὲ Γεωργοῖς (fr. 100 CAF I 416) ταῦτα γράφων·

‹Α.› ἐθέλω γεωργεῖν. ‹Β.› εἶτα τίς σε κωλύει;

‹Α.› ὑμεῖς· ἐπεὶ δίδωμι χιλίας δραχμάς,

ἐάν με τῶν ἀρχῶν ἀφῆτε. ‹Β.› δεχόμεθα·

δισχίλιαι γάρ εἰσι σὺν ταῖς Νικίου.

[5] καὶ μέντοι καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἔβλαψεν οὐ μικρά, τῷ Κλέωνι τοσοῦτον προσγενέσθαι δόξης ἐάσας καὶ δυνάμεως, ὑφ’ ἧς εἰς βαρὺ φρόνημα καὶ θράσος ἐμπεσὼν ἀκάθεκτον, ἄλλας τε τῇ πόλει προσετρίψατο συμφοράς, ὧν οὐχ ἥκιστα [6] καὶ αὐτὸς ἀπέλαυσε, καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος κόσμον ἀνελὼν καὶ πρῶτος ἐν τῷ δημηγορεῖν ἀνακραγὼν καὶ περισπάσας τὸ ἱμάτιον καὶ τὸν μηρὸν πατάξας καὶ δρόμῳ μετὰ τοῦ λέγειν ἅμα χρησάμενος, τὴν ὀλίγον ὕστερον ἅπαντα τὰ πράγματα συγχέασαν εὐχέρειαν καὶ ὀλιγωρίαν τοῦ πρέποντος ἐνεποίησε τοῖς πολιτευομένοις.

[9] Ἤδη δέ που καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐνεφύετο τηνικαῦτα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, δημαγωγὸς οὐχ ὁμοίως ἄκρατος, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἡ Αἰγυπτίων χώρα λέγεται δι’ ἀρετὴν ἐκφέρειν ὁμοῦ (Hom. Od. 4, 230)

φάρμακα πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ μεμειγμένα, πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά,

οὕτως ἡ Ἀλκιβιάδου φύσις ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα πολλὴ ῥυεῖσα καὶ λαμπρά, μεγάλων ἐνέδωκεν ἀρχὰς νεωτερισμῶν.

[7] ὅθεν οὐδ’ ὑπαλλαγεὶς τοῦ Κλέωνος ὁ Νικίας καιρὸν ἔσχε παντάπασιν ἀναπαῦσαι καὶ καταστορέσαι τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλ’ εἰς ὁδὸν τὰ πράγματα σωτήριον καταστήσας ἐξέπεσε, ῥύμῃ καὶ σφοδρότητι τῆς Ἀλκιβιάδου φιλοτιμίας αὖθις [8] ἐξωσθεὶς εἰς τὸν πόλεμον. ἐπράχθη δ’ οὕτως. οἱ μάλιστα προσπολεμοῦντες τῇ εἰρήνῃ τῆς Ἑλλάδος Κλέων καὶ Βρασίδας ἦσαν, ὧν ὁ πόλεμος τοῦ μὲν ἀπέκρυπτε τὴν κακίαν, τοῦ δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐκόσμει. τῷ μὲν γὰρ ἀδικημάτων μεγάλων, [9] τῷ δὲ κατορθωμάτων ἀφορμὰς παρεῖχε. τούτων οὖν ἅμα πεσόντων ἐν μάχῃ μιᾷ περὶ Ἀμφίπολιν, εὐθὺς ὁ Νικίας παραλαβὼν τοὺς μὲν Σπαρτιάτας ἔκπαλαι τῆς εἰρήνης ὀρεγομένους, τοὺς δ’ Ἀθηναίους οὐκέτι τῷ πολέμῳ θαρροῦντας, ἀμφοτέρους δ’ οἷον ἐκλελυμένους καὶ παρακαθιέντας ἑκουσίως τὰς χεῖρας, ἔπραττεν ὅπως εἰς φιλίαν τὰς πόλεις συναγαγών, καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους Ἕλληνας ἀπαλλάξας κακῶν καὶ ἀναπαυσάμενος, βέβαιον οὕτω τὸ τῆς [10] εὐτυχίας ὄνομα πρὸς τὸν αὖθις χρόνον ποιοῖτο. τοὺς μὲν οὖν εὐπόρους καὶ πρεσβυτέρους καὶ τῶν γεωργῶν τὸ πλῆθος αὐτόθεν εἰρηνικὸν εἶχεν· ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων πολλοῖς ἐντυγχάνων ἰδίᾳ καὶ διδάσκων ἀμβλυτέρους ἐποίησε πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, οὕτως ἤδη τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις ἐλπίδας ἐνδιδοὺς προεκαλεῖτο καὶ προὔτρεπεν ἔχεσθαι τῆς εἰρήνης.

[11] οἱ δ’ ἐπίστευον αὐτῷ διά τε τὴν ἄλλην ἐπιείκειαν, καὶ ὅτι τοῖς ἡλωκόσι περὶ Πύλον καὶ δεδεμένοις, ἐπιμελόμενος καὶ περιέπων φιλανθρώπως, ἐλαφροτέραν ἐποίει τὴν ἀτυχίαν.

[12] ἦσαν οὖν πρότερον πεποιημένοι τινὰ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐκεχειρίαν ἐνιαύσιον, ἐν ᾗ συνιόντες εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ γευόμενοι πάλιν ἀδείας καὶ σχολῆς καὶ πρὸς ξένους καὶ οἰκείους ἐπιμειξίας, ἐπόθουν τὸν ἀμίαντον καὶ ἀπόλεμον βίον, ἡδέως μὲν ᾀδόντων τὰ τοιαῦτα χορῶν ἀκούοντες (Eur. fr. 369 N²)·

κείσθω δόρυ μοι μίτον ἀμφιπλέκειν ἀράχναις,

ἡδέως δὲ μεμνημένοι τοῦ εἰπόντος, ὅτι τοὺς ἐν εἰρήνῃ καθεύδοντας οὐ σάλπιγγες, ἀλλ’ ἀλεκτρυόνες ἀφυπνίζουσι.

[13] λοιδοροῦντες οὖν καὶ προβαλλόμενοι τοὺς λέγοντας, ὡς τρὶς ἐννέα ἔτη διαπολεμηθῆναι πέπρωται τὸν πόλεμον, ἔπειθ’ οὕτω περὶ παντὸς εἰς λόγους συμβαίνοντες, ἐποιήσαντο τὴν εἰρήνην, δόξα τε παρέστη τοῖς πλείστοις ἀπαλλαγὴν κακῶν σαφῆ γεγονέναι, καὶ τὸν Νικίαν διὰ στόματος εἶχον, ὡς ἀνὴρ εἴη θεοφιλὴς καὶ τὸ δαιμόνιον αὐτῷ δι’ εὐσέβειαν ἐπωνύμῳ γενέσθαι τοῦ μεγίστου [14] καὶ καλλίστου τῶν ἀγαθῶν δέδωκε. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι Νικίου τὴν εἰρήνην ἐνόμιζον ἔργον, ὡς Περικλέους τὸν πόλεμον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐπ’ αἰτίαις μικραῖς εἰς συμφορὰς μεγάλας ἐμβαλεῖν ἐδόκει τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὁ δὲ τῶν μεγίστων κακῶν ἔπεισεν ἐκλαθέσθαι φίλους γενομένους. διὸ καὶ τὴν εἰρήνην ἐκείνην ἄχρι νῦν Νικίειον καλοῦσι.

[10] [1] Γενομένων δὲ συνθηκῶν, ὅπως τὰ χωρία καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἃς εἶχον ἀλλήλων καὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους ἀποδιδῶσι, προτέρων ἀποδιδόντων τῶν κλήρῳ λαχόντων, ὠνήσατο τὸν κλῆρον ὁ Νικίας κρύφα χρήμασιν, ὥστε προτέρους ἀποδιδόναι τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν [2] ἱστορεῖ Θεόφραστος (fr. 138 W.)· ἐπεὶ δὲ Κορίνθιοι καὶ Βοιωτοὶ πρὸς τὰ πραττόμενα δυσκολαίνοντες αἰτίαις καὶ μέμψεσιν αὖθις ἐδόκουν ἀνακαλεῖσθαι τὸν πόλεμον, ἔπεισεν ὁ Νικίας τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους τῇ εἰρήνῃ τὴν συμμαχίαν ὥσπερ κράτος ἢ δεσμὸν ἐπιθέντας, φοβερωτέρους τε τοῖς ἀφισταμένοις καὶ βεβαιοτέρους ἀλλήλοις [3] γενέσθαι. πραττομένων δὲ τούτων ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης, οὔτε πρὸς ἡσυχίαν εὖ πεφυκώς, καὶ τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις ἀχθόμενος, ὅτι τῷ Νικίᾳ προσέκειντο καὶ προσεῖχον, αὐτὸν δ’ ὑπερεώρων καὶ κατεφρόνουν, ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν εὐθὺς ὑπεναντιωθεὶς τῇ εἰρήνῃ καὶ ἀντιστὰς οὐδὲν ἐπέραινεν, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ὁρῶν οὐκέτι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ὁμοίως ἀρέσκοντας τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, ἀλλ’ ἀδικεῖν δοκοῦντας ὅτι Βοιωτοῖς ἔθεντο συμμαχίαν καὶ Πάνακτον ἑστῶσαν οὐ παρέδωκαν οὐδ’ Ἀμφίπολιν, ἐπεφύετο ταῖς αἰτίαις καὶ [4] παρώξυνε τὸν δῆμον ἐφ’ ἑκάστῃ. τέλος δὲ πρεσβείαν μεταπεμψάμενος Ἀργείων, ἔπραττε συμμαχίαν πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους. ἐπεὶ δὲ πρέσβεις ἐλθόντες ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος αὐτοκράτορες καὶ τῇ βουλῇ προεντυγχάνοντες ἔδοξαν ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ἥκειν τοῖς δικαίοις, δείσας ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης μὴ καὶ τὸν δῆμον ἀπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν λόγων ἐπαγάγωνται, περιῆλθεν αὐτοὺς δι’ ἀπάτης καὶ ὅρκων ὡς ἅπαντα συμπράξων, ἂν μὴ φῶσι μηδ’ ὁμολογήσωσιν ἥκειν αὐτοκράτορες· [5] μάλιστα γὰρ οὕτως ἃ βούλονται γενήσεσθαι. πεισθέντων δὲ καὶ μεταστάντων ἀπὸ τοῦ Νικίου πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, ἐμβαλὼν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸν δῆμον ἠρώτα πρῶτον εἰ περὶ πάντων ἥκουσιν αὐτοκράτορες· ὡς δ’ ἠρνοῦντο, παρ’ ἐλπίδας μεταβαλόμενος τήν τε βουλὴν ἐπεκαλεῖτο μάρτυρα τῶν λόγων, καὶ τὸν δῆμον ἐκέλευε μὴ προσέχειν μηδὲ πιστεύειν οὕτω περιφανῶς ψευδομένοις καὶ νῦν μὲν ταῦτα, νῦν δὲ τἀναντία [6] περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν λέγουσι. θορυβουμένων δ’ ὡς εἰκὸς αὐτῶν, καὶ τοῦ Νικίου μηδὲν ἔχοντος εἰπεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἄχει καὶ θαύματι πεπληγότος, ὁ μὲν δῆμος εὐθὺς ὥρμητο τοὺς Ἀργείους καλεῖν καὶ ποιεῖσθαι συμμάχους, ἐβοήθησε δὲ τῷ Νικίᾳ σεισμός τις διὰ μέσου γενόμενος καὶ διαλύσας [7] τὴν ἐκκλησίαν. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ πάλιν τοῦ δήμου συνελθόντος, πολλὰ ποιήσας καὶ εἰπὼν ἔπεισε μόλις ἐπισχεῖν τὰ πρὸς Ἀργείους, αὐτὸν δὲ πέμψαι πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους, [8] ὡς πάντων καλῶς γενησομένων. ἐλθὼν δ’ εἰς Σπάρτην, τἆλλα μὲν ὡς ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς καὶ πρόθυμος εἰς αὐτοὺς ἐτιμήθη, πράξας δ’ οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ κρατηθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν βοιωτιαζόντων, ἐπανῆλθεν οὐ μόνον ἀδοξῶν καὶ κακῶς ἀκούων, ἀλλὰ καὶ δεδιὼς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, λυπουμένους καὶ ἀγανακτοῦντας ὅτι πεισθέντες ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τοσούτους καὶ τοιούτους ἄνδρας ἀπέδωκαν· οἱ γὰρ ἐκ Πύλου κομισθέντες ἦσαν ἐξ οἴκων τε πρώτων τῆς Σπάρτης καὶ φίλους καὶ [9] συγγενεῖς τοὺς δυνατωτάτους ἔχοντες. οὐ μὴν ἔπραξάν τι τραχύτερον ὀργῇ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, ἀλλὰ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην στρατηγὸν εἵλοντο, καὶ Μαντινεῖς καὶ Ἠλείους Λακεδαιμονίων ἀποστάντας ἐποιήσαντο συμμάχους μετ’ Ἀργείων, καὶ λῃστὰς εἰς Πύλον ἔπεμψαν κακουργεῖν τὴν Λακωνικήν· ἐξ ὧν αὖθις εἰς πόλεμον κατέστησαν.

[11] [1] Ἀκμαζούσης δὲ τῆς πρὸς τὸν Νικίαν τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου διαφορᾶς καὶ γιγνομένης ὀστρακοφορίας, ἣν εἰώθει διὰ χρόνου τινὸς ὁ δῆμος ποιεῖσθαι, ἕνα τῶν ὑπόπτων ἢ διὰ δόξαν ἄλλως ἢ πλοῦτον ἐπιφθόνων ἀνδρῶν τῷ ὀστράκῳ μεθιστὰς εἰς δέκα ἔτη, πολὺς θόρυβος ἀμφοτέρους περιίστατο καὶ κίνδυνος, ὡς θατέρου πάντως ὑποπεσουμένου [2] τῷ ἐξοστρακισμῷ. τοῦ μὲν γὰρ Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ τὸν βίον ἐβδελύττοντο καὶ τὸ θράσος ὠρρώδουν, ὡς μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γραφομένοις δηλοῦται, τὸν δὲ Νικίαν ὅ τε πλοῦτος ἐπίφθονον ἐποίει, καὶ μάλιστα τῆς διαίτης τὸ μὴ φιλάνθρωπον μηδὲ δημοτικόν, ἀλλ’ ἄμεικτον καὶ ὀλιγαρχικὸν ἀλλόκοτον ἐδόκει, πολλὰ δ’ ἤδη ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις αὐτῶν ἀντιτείνων καὶ παρὰ γνώμην βιαζόμενος [3] πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον ἐπαχθὴς ἦν. ὡς δ’ ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν, νέων ἦν καὶ πολεμοποιῶν ἅμιλλα πρὸς εἰρηνοποιοὺς καὶ πρεσβυτέρους, τῶν μὲν εἰς τοῦτον, τῶν δ’ εἰς ἐκεῖνον τὸ ὄστρακον τρεπόντων.

ἐν δὲ διχοστασίῃ καὶ ὁ πάγκακος ἔλλαχε τιμῆς·

ὥς που καὶ τότε διαστὰς ὁ δῆμος δίχα χώραν ἔδωκε τοῖς ἰταμωτάτοις καὶ πανουργοτάτοις, ὧν ἦν καὶ Ὑπέρβολος ὁ Περιθοΐδης, ἄνθρωπος ἀπ’ οὐδεμιᾶς τολμῶν δυνάμεως, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ τολμᾶν εἰς δύναμιν προελθὼν καὶ γενόμενος, δι’ ἣν εἶχεν ἐν τῇ πόλει δόξαν, ἀδοξία τῆς πόλεως.

[4] οὗτος ἐν τῷ τότε χρόνῳ τοῦ μὲν ὀστράκου πόρρω τιθέμενος ἑαυτόν, ἅτε δὴ τῷ κύφωνι μᾶλλον προσήκων, ἐλπίζων δὲ θατέρου τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐκπεσόντος αὐτὸς ἀντίπαλος τῷ λειπομένῳ γενέσθαι, καταφανὴς ἦν ἡδόμενός τε τῇ διαφορᾷ καὶ παροξύνων τὸν δῆμον ἐπ’ ἀμφοτέρους.

[5] συνιδόντες οὖν τὴν μοχθηρίαν οἱ περὶ τὸν Νικίαν καὶ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην, καὶ λόγον δόντες ἀλλήλοις κρύφα, καὶ τὰς στάσεις συναγαγόντες εἰς ἓν ἀμφοτέρας καὶ ἀναμείξαντες, ἐκράτησαν ὥστε μηδέτερον αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ τὸν [6] Ὑπέρβολον ἐξοστρακισθῆναι. καὶ παραυτίκα μὲν ἡδονὴν τοῦτο καὶ γέλωτα τῷ δήμῳ παρέσχεν, ὕστερον δ’ ἠγανάκτουν, ὡς καθυβρισμένον τὸ πρᾶγμα τοῦτο πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἀνάξιον γεγονέναι νομίζοντες· εἶναι γάρ τι καὶ κολάσεως ἀξίωμα, μᾶλλον δὲ κόλουσιν τὸν ἐξοστρακισμὸν ἡγούμενοι Θουκυδίδῃ καὶ Ἀριστείδῃ καὶ τοῖς ὁμοίοις, Ὑπερβόλῳ δὲ τιμὴν καὶ προσποίησιν ἀλαζονείας, εἰ διὰ μοχθηρίαν ἔπαθε ταὐτὰ τοῖς ἀρίστοις, ὥς που καὶ Πλάτων ὁ κωμικὸς (fr. 187 CAF I 654) εἴρηκε περὶ αὐτοῦ·

[7] καίτοι πέπραγε τῶν τρόπων μὲν ἄξια,

αὑτοῦ δὲ καὶ τῶν στιγμάτων ἀνάξια·

οὐ γὰρ τοιούτων εἵνεκ’ ὄστραχ’ εὑρέθη.

[8] καὶ τὸ πέρας οὐδεὶς ἔτι τὸ παράπαν ἐξωστρακίσθη μεθ’ Ὑπέρβολον, ἀλλ’ ἔσχατος ἐκεῖνος, πρῶτος δ’ Ἵππαρχος ὁ Χολαργεύς, συγγενής τις ὢν τοῦ τυράννου.

[9] Ἄκριτον δ’ ἡ τύχη πρᾶγμα καὶ ἄληπτον λογισμῷ. Νικίας γὰρ εἰ τὸν περὶ ὀστράκου κίνδυνον ἀνέρριψε πρὸς Ἀλκιβιάδην, ἢ κρατήσας ἂν ἀσφαλῶς ᾤκει τὴν πόλιν, ἐκεῖνον ἐξελάσας, ἢ κρατηθεὶς αὐτὸς ἐξῄει πρὸ τῶν ἐσχάτων ἀτυχιῶν, τὸ δοκεῖν ἄριστος εἶναι στρατηγὸς διαφυλάξας.

[10] Οὐκ ἀγνοῶ δ’ ὅτι Θεόφραστος (fr. 139 W.) ἐξοστρακισθῆναί φησι τὸν Ὑπέρβολον Φαίακος, οὐ Νικίου, πρὸς Ἀλκιβιάδην ἐρίσαντος. ἀλλ’ οἱ πλείονες οὕτω γεγράφασιν.

[12] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Νικίας, τῶν Αἰγεστέων πρέσβεων καὶ Λεοντίνων παραγενομένων καὶ πειθόντων τοὺς Ἀθηναίους στρατεύειν ἐπὶ Σικελίαν, ἀνθιστάμενος ἡττᾶτο τῆς βουλῆς Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ φιλοτιμίας, πρὶν ὅλως ἐκκλησίαν γενέσθαι, κατασχόντος ἤδη ‹τὸ› πλῆθος ἐλπίσι καὶ λόγοις προδιεφθαρμένον, ὥστε καὶ νέους ἐν παλαίστραις καὶ γέροντας ἐν ἐργαστηρίοις καὶ ἡμικυκλίοις συγκαθεζομένους ὑπογράφειν τὸ σχῆμα τῆς Σικελίας καὶ τὴν φύσιν τῆς περὶ αὐτὴν θαλάσσης καὶ λιμένας καὶ τόπους, οἷς [2] τέτραπται πρὸς Λιβύην ἡ νῆσος. οὐ γὰρ ἆθλον ἐποιοῦντο τοῦ πολέμου Σικελίαν, ἀλλ’ ὁρμητήριον, ὡς ἀπ’ αὐτῆς διαγωνισόμενοι πρὸς Καρχηδονίους καὶ σχήσοντες ἅμα Λιβύην [3] καὶ τὴν ἐντὸς Ἡρακλείων στηλῶν θάλασσαν. ὡς οὖν ὥρμηντο πρὸς ταῦθ’, ὁ Νικίας ἐναντιούμενος οὔτε πολλοὺς οὔτε δυνατοὺς εἶχε συναγωνιστάς. οἱ γὰρ εὔποροι δεδιότες μὴ δοκῶσι τὰς λειτουργίας καὶ τριηραρχίας ἀποδιδράσκειν, [4] παρὰ γνώμην ἡσύχαζον. ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἔκαμνεν οὐδ’ ἀπηγόρευεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ μετὰ τὸ ψηφίσασθαι τὸν πόλεμον Ἀθηναίους καὶ στρατηγὸν ἑλέσθαι πρῶτον ἐκεῖνον μετ’ Ἀλκιβιάδου καὶ Λαμάχου, πάλιν ἐκκλησίας γενομένης ἀναστὰς ἀπέτρεπε καὶ διεμαρτύρετο, καὶ τελευτῶν διέβαλε τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ἰδίων ἕνεκα κερδῶν καὶ φιλοτιμίας τὴν [5] πόλιν εἰς χαλεπὸν ἐξωθεῖν καὶ διαπόντιον κίνδυνον. ἔπραξε δ’ οὐδὲν μᾶλλον, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ἐμπειρίας δόξας ἐπιτηδειότερος εἶναι καὶ πολλὴν ἀσφάλειαν ἕξειν, πρὸς τὴν Ἀλκιβιάδου τόλμαν καὶ τὴν Λαμάχου διαπυρότητα τῆς ἐκείνου συγκεραννυμένης εὐλαβείας, βεβαιοτέραν ἐποίησε τὴν χειροτονίαν.

[6] ἀναστὰς γὰρ ὁ μάλιστα τῶν δημαγωγῶν ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον παροξύνων τοὺς Ἀθηναίους Δημόστρατος ἔφη τὸν Νικίαν προφάσεις λέγοντα παύσειν, καὶ ψήφισμα γράψας ὅπως αὐτοκράτορες ὦσιν οἱ στρατηγοὶ κἀνταῦθα κἀκεῖ βουλευόμενοι καὶ πράττοντες, ἔπεισε τὸν δῆμον ψηφίσασθαι.

[13] [1] Καίτοι λέγεται πολλὰ καὶ παρὰ τῶν ἱερέων ἐναντιοῦσθαι πρὸς τὴν στρατείαν· ἀλλ’ ἑτέρους ἔχων μάντεις ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐκ δή τινων λογίων προὔφερε παλαιῶν [2] μέγα κλέος τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀπὸ Σικελίας ἔσεσθαι, καὶ θεοπρόποι τινὲς αὐτῷ παρ’ Ἄμμωνος ἀφίκοντο χρησμὸν κομίζοντες, ὡς λήψονται Συρακουσίους ἅπαντας Ἀθηναῖοι· [3] τὰ δ’ ἐναντία φοβούμενοι δυσφημεῖν ἔκρυπτον. οὐδὲ γὰρ τὰ προὖπτα καὶ καταφανῆ τῶν σημείων ἀπέτρεπεν, ἥ τε τῶν Ἑρμῶν περικοπή, μιᾷ νυκτὶ πάντων ἀκρωτηριασθέντων πλὴν ἑνὸς ὃν Ἀνδοκίδου καλοῦσιν, ἀνάθημα μὲν τῆς Αἰγηίδος φυλῆς, κείμενον δὲ πρὸ τῆς Ἀνδοκίδου τότ’ οὔσης οἰκίας, καὶ τὸ πραχθὲν περὶ τὸν βωμὸν τῶν δώδεκα [4] θεῶν. ἄνθρωπος γάρ τις ἐξαίφνης ἀναπηδήσας ἐπ’ αὐτόν, [5] εἶτα περιβάς, ἀπέκοψεν αὑτοῦ λίθῳ τὸ αἰδοῖον. ἐν δὲ Δελφοῖς Παλλάδιον ἕστηκε χρυσοῦν ἐπὶ φοίνικος χαλκοῦ βεβηκός, ἀνάθημα τῆς πόλεως ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἀριστείων· τοῦτ’ ἔκοπτον ἐφ’ ἡμέρας πολλὰς προσπετόμενοι κόρακες, καὶ τὸν καρπὸν ὄντα χρυσοῦν τοῦ φοίνικος ἀπέτρωγον [6] καὶ κατέβαλλον. οἱ δὲ ταῦτα μὲν ἔφασαν εἶναι Δελφῶν πλάσματα, πεπεισμένων ὑπὸ Συρακουσίων· χρησμοῦ δέ τινος κελεύοντος αὐτοὺς ἐκ Κλαζομενῶν τὴν ἱέρειαν τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ἄγειν, μετεπέμψαντο τὴν ἄνθρωπον· ἐκαλεῖτο δ’ Ἡσυχία. καὶ τοῦτ’ ἦν ὡς ἔοικεν ὃ παρῄνει τῇ πόλει τὸ δαιμόνιον, [7] ἐν τῷ παρόντι τὴν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν. εἴτε δὴ ταῦτα δείσας, εἴτ’ ἀνθρωπίνῳ λογισμῷ τὴν στρατείαν φοβηθείς, ὁ ἀστρολόγος Μέτων - ἦν γὰρ ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίας τινὸς τεταγμένος - προσεποιεῖτο τὴν οἰκίαν ὑφάπτειν ὡς μεμηνώς.

[8] οἱ δέ φασιν οὐ μανίαν σκηψάμενον, ἀλλὰ νύκτωρ ἐμπρήσαντα τὴν οἰκίαν προελθεῖν εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ταπεινόν, καὶ δεῖσθαι τῶν πολιτῶν ὅπως ἐπὶ συμφορᾷ τοσαύτῃ τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ μέλλοντα πλεῖν τριήραρχον εἰς Σικελίαν ἀφῶσι τῆς [9] στρατείας. Σωκράτει δὲ τῷ σοφῷ τὸ δαιμόνιον οἷς εἰώθει συμβόλοις χρησάμενον πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐμήνυσε κἀκεῖνα, τὸν ἔκπλουν ἐπ’ ὀλέθρῳ τῆς πόλεως πραττόμενον. ὁ δὲ τοῖς συνήθεσι καὶ φίλοις ἔφρασε, καὶ διῆλθεν εἰς πολλοὺς ὁ [10] λόγος. οὐκ ὀλίγους δὲ καὶ τὰ τῶν ἡμερῶν ἐν αἷς τὸν στόλον [11] ἐξέπεμπον ὑπέθραττεν. Ἀδώνια γὰρ εἶχον αἱ γυναῖκες τότε, καὶ προὔκειτο πολλαχόθι τῆς πόλεως εἴδωλα, καὶ ταφαὶ περὶ αὐτὰ καὶ κοπετοὶ γυναικῶν ἦσαν, ὥστε τοὺς ἐν λόγῳ ποιουμένους τινὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα δυσχεραίνειν καὶ δεδιέναι περὶ τῆς παρασκευῆς ἐκείνης καὶ δυνάμεως, μὴ λαμπρότητα καὶ ἀκμὴν ἐπιφανεστάτην σχοῦσα ταχέως μαρανθῇ.

[14] [1] Τὸ μὲν οὖν ἐναντιωθῆναι ψηφιζομένῃ τῇ στρατείᾳ τὸν Νικίαν, καὶ μήθ’ ὑπ’ ἐλπίδων ἐπαρθέντα μήτε πρὸς τὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς μέγεθος ἐκπλαγέντα μεταθέσθαι τὴν γνώμην, [2] ἀνδρὸς ἦν χρηστοῦ καὶ σώφρονος· ἐπεὶ δ’ οὔτε τοῦ πολέμου τὸν δῆμον ἀποτρέψαι πειρώμενος, οὔθ’ αὑτὸν ἐξελέσθαι τῆς στρατηγίας δεόμενος ἴσχυσεν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀράμενος καὶ φέρων αὐτὸν ὁ δῆμος ἐπέθηκε τῇ δυνάμει στρατηγόν, οὐδεὶς ἔτι καιρὸς ἦν τῆς πολλῆς εὐλαβείας καὶ μελλήσεως, ὥστε παιδὸς δίκην ἀπὸ τῆς νεὼς ὀπίσω βλέποντα καὶ τὸ μὴ κρατηθῆναι τοῖς λογισμοῖς ἀναλαμβάνοντα καὶ στρέφοντα πολλάκις ἐναμβλῦναι καὶ τοὺς συνάρχοντας αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν ἀκμὴν διαφθεῖραι τῶν πράξεων, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἔδει τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐμφύντα καὶ προσκείμενον [3] ἐλέγχειν τὴν τύχην ἐπὶ τῶν ἀγώνων. ὁ δὲ Λαμάχου μὲν ἄντικρυς ἀξιοῦντος πλεῖν ἐπὶ Συρακούσας καὶ μάχην ἔγγιστα τῆς πόλεως τιθέναι, Ἀλκιβιάδου δὲ τὰς πόλεις ἀφιστάναι Συρακουσίων, εἶθ’ οὕτως ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς βαδίζειν, τὰ ἐναντία λέγων καὶ κελεύων ἀτρέμα παρὰ τὴν Σικελίαν κομιζομένους καὶ περιπλέοντας ἐπιδείξασθαι τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τὰς τριήρεις, εἶτ’ ἀποπλεῖν Ἀθήναζε, μικρὸν τῆς δυνάμεως Αἰγεστεῦσιν ἀπαρξαμένους, αὐτίκα τε τὴν γνώμην ὑπεξέλυσε [4] καὶ κατέβαλε τὸ φρόνημα τῶν ἀνδρῶν, καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον Ἀλκιβιάδην Ἀθηναίων μεταπεμψαμένων εἰς κρίσιν, λόγῳ μὲν ἀπολειφθεὶς δεύτερος ἡγεμών, δυνάμει δὲ μόνος ὤν, οὐκ ἐπαύσατο καθήμενος ἢ περιπλέων ἢ βουλευόμενος, πρὶν ἐγγηρᾶσαι μὲν αὐτῶν τὴν ἀκμὴν τῆς ἐλπίδος, ἐκρυῆναι δὲ τῶν πολεμίων τὸ θάμβος καὶ τὸν φόβον, ὃν ἡ πρώτη παρέστησεν αὐτοῖς ὄψις τῶν δυνάμεων.

[5] Ἔτι δὲ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου παρόντος, ἑξήκοντα ναυσὶ πλεύσαντες ἐπὶ Συρακούσας, τὰς μὲν ἄλλας ἀνεῖχον ὑπὲρ τοῦ λιμένος ἔξω παρατάξαντες, δέκα δὲ κατήλαυνον εἴσω κατασκοπῆς εἵνεκα καὶ Λεοντίνους ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκείαν ἀποκαλοῦσαι [6] διὰ κήρυκος. αὗται λαμβάνουσι ναῦν πολεμίαν σανίδας κομίζουσαν, εἰς ἃς ἀπεγράφοντο κατὰ φυλὰς αὑτοὺς οἱ Συρακούσιοι. κείμεναι δ’ ἄπωθεν τῆς πόλεως ἐν ἱερῷ Διὸς Ὀλυμπίου, τότε πρὸς ἐξέτασιν καὶ κατάλογον [7] τῶν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ μετεπέμφθησαν. ὡς οὖν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἁλοῦσαι πρὸς τοὺς στρατηγοὺς ἐκομίσθησαν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ὤφθη τῶν ὀνομάτων, ἠχθέσθησαν οἱ μάντεις μή ποτ’ ἄρα τὸ χρεὼν ἐνταῦθα τοῦ χρησμοῦ περαίνοι, λέγοντος ὡς Ἀθηναῖοι λήψονται Συρακουσίους ἅπαντας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἕτεροί φασιν ἔργῳ τοῦτο τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἐπιτελὲς γενέσθαι καθ’ ὃν χρόνον ἀποκτείνας Δίωνα Κάλλιππος ὁ Ἀθηναῖος ἔσχε Συρακούσας.

[15] [1] Ἀποπλεύσαντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀλκιβιάδου μετ’ ὀλίγον ἐκ Σικελίας, τὸ πᾶν ἤδη κράτος ὁ Νικίας ἔσχεν. ὁ δὲ Λάμαχος ἦν μὲν ἀνδρώδης καὶ δίκαιος ἀνὴρ καὶ τῇ χειρὶ χρώμενος ἀφειδῶς κατὰ τὰς μάχας, πένης δὲ τοσοῦτον καὶ λιτός, ὥστε καθ’ ἑκάστην στρατηγίαν ἀπολογίζεσθαι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις μικρὸν ἀργύριον εἰς ἐσθῆτα καὶ κρηπῖδας ἑαυτῷ.

[2] τοῦ δὲ Νικίου καὶ διὰ τἆλλα μέγας ἦν καὶ διὰ τὸν πλοῦτον καὶ διὰ τὴν δόξαν ὁ ὄγκος. λέγεται δ’ ἐν τῷ στρατηγίῳ ποτὲ βουλευομένων τι κοινῇ τῶν συναρχόντων κελευσθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πρῶτος εἰπεῖν γνώμην Σοφοκλῆς ὁ ποιητής, ὡς πρεσβύτατος ὢν τῶν συστρατήγων, ἐγώ φάναι [3] παλαιότατός εἰμι, σὺ δὲ πρεσβύτατος. οὕτω δὴ καὶ τότε τὸν Λάμαχον ἄγων ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ στρατηγικώτερον ὄντα, καὶ χρώμενος εὐλαβῶς καὶ διὰ μελλήσεως ἀεὶ τῇ δυνάμει, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπωτάτω τῶν πολεμίων ἐκπεριπλέων Σικελίαν θάρσος ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς, ἔπειτα προσβαλὼν Ὕβλῃ πολιχνίῳ μικρῷ καὶ πρὶν ἑλεῖν ἀποστάς, κομιδῇ κατεφρονήθη, [4] καὶ τέλος εἰς Κατάνην ἀπῆλθε, πράξας οὐδὲν ἢ καταστρεψάμενος Ὕκκαρα, βαρβαρικὸν χωρίον, ὅθεν λέγεται καὶ Λαΐδα τὴν ἑταίραν ἔτι κόρην ἐν τοῖς αἰχμαλώτοις πραθεῖσαν εἰς Πελοπόννησον κομισθῆναι.

[16] [1] Τοῦ δὲ θέρους διελθόντος, ἐπεὶ τοὺς Συρακουσίους ἐπυνθάνετο προτέρους ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ἀφίξεσθαι τεθαρρηκότας, οἱ δ’ ἱππεῖς ὕβρει προσελαύνοντες ἤδη πρὸς τὸ στρατόπεδον ἠρώτων, εἰ Καταναίοις συνοικήσοντες ἢ Λεοντίνους κατοικιοῦντες ἥκουσι, μόλις ὁ Νικίας ὥρμησε πλεῖν ἐπὶ [2] Συρακούσας, καὶ βουλόμενος ἀδεῶς καὶ καθ’ ἡσυχίαν ἱδρῦσαι τὸν στρατόν, ὑπέπεμψεν ἄνθρωπον ἐκ Κατάνης κελεύοντα τοὺς Συρακουσίους, εἰ βούλονται λαβεῖν ἔρημον ἀνδρῶν τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ τὰ ὅπλα τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ῥητῇ πρὸς Κατάνην πανστρατιᾷ παραγενέσθαι· τῶν γὰρ Ἀθηναίων ἐν τῇ πόλει τὰ πλεῖστα διατριβόντων, ἐγνωκέναι τοὺς Συρακουσίων φίλους, ὅταν ἐκείνους προσιόντας αἴσθωνται, τάς τε πύλας καταλαμβάνειν ἅμα καὶ τὸν ναύσταθμον ὑποπιμπράναι· πολλοὺς δ’ εἶναι τοὺς συνεστῶτας ἤδη καὶ τὴν ἐκείνων περιμένοντας ἄφιξιν.

[3] τοῦτ’ ἄριστα Νικίας ἐστρατήγησε περὶ Σικελίαν. πανστρατιᾷ γὰρ ἐξαγαγὼν τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ τὴν πόλιν ὁμοῦ τι ποιήσας ἔρημον ἀνδρῶν, αὐτὸς ἐκ Κατάνης ἀναχθείς, τῶν τε λιμένων ἐκράτησε, καὶ τῷ στρατοπέδῳ κατέλαβε χώραν, ὅθεν ἥκιστα βλαπτόμενος οἷς ἐλείπετο τῶν πολεμίων [4] ἤλπιζεν ἐξ ὧν ἐθάρρει πολεμήσειν ἀκωλύτως. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀναστρέψαντες ἐκ Κατάνης οἱ Συρακούσιοι παρετάξαντο πρὸ τῆς πόλεως, ἐπαγαγὼν ταχὺ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐκράτησε.

[5] καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν οὐκ ἀπέκτεινε τῶν πολεμίων· οἱ γὰρ ἱππεῖς ἐμποδὼν ἐγένοντο τῇ διώξει· τοῦ δὲ ποταμοῦ διαφθείρων καὶ ἀποκόπτων τὰς γεφύρας, παρέσχεν Ἑρμοκράτει λέγειν παραθαρρύνοντι τοὺς Συρακουσίους, ὅτι γελοῖός ἐστιν ὁ Νικίας, ὅπως οὐ μαχεῖται στρατηγῶν, ὥσπερ [6] οὐκ ἐπὶ μάχῃ πεπλευκώς. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ φόβον τε καὶ κατάπληξιν ἰσχυρὰν ἐνειργάσατο τοῖς Συρακουσίοις, ὥστ’ ἀντὶ τῶν ὄντων τότε πεντεκαίδεκα στρατηγῶν ἑτέρους ἑλέσθαι τρεῖς, οἷς πίστιν ἔδωκεν ὁ δῆμος δι’ ὅρκων, ἦ μὴν [7] ἐάσειν ἄρχειν αὐτοκράτορας. τοῦ δ’ Ὀλυμπιείου πλησίον ὄντος, ὥρμησαν οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι καταλαβεῖν, πολλῶν ὄντων ἐν αὐτῷ χρυσῶν καὶ ἀργυρῶν ἀναθημάτων. ὁ δὲ Νικίας ἐπίτηδες ἀναβαλλόμενος ὑστέρησε καὶ περιεῖδε φρουρὰν εἰσελθοῦσαν παρὰ τῶν Συρακουσίων, ἡγούμενος, ἐὰν τὰ χρήματα διαρπάσωσιν οἱ στρατιῶται, τὸ μὲν κοινὸν οὐκ ὠφεληθήσεσθαι, τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν αὐτὸς ἕξειν τοῦ ἀσεβήματος.

[8] τῇ δὲ νίκῃ περιβοήτῳ γενομένῃ χρησάμενος εἰς οὐδέν, ὀλίγων ἡμερῶν διαγενομένων αὖθις ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς Νάξον, κἀκεῖ διεχείμασε, πολλὰ μὲν ἀναλίσκων στρατιᾷ τοσαύτῃ, πράττων δὲ μικρὰ πρὸς Σικελούς τινας ἀφισταμένους πρὸς αὐτόν, ὥστε τοὺς Συρακουσίους αὖθις ἀναθαρρήσαντας ἐξελάσαι πρὸς Κατάνην καὶ τήν τε χώραν τεμεῖν καὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον κατακαῦσαι τῶν Ἀθηναίων.

[9] ἃ δὴ πάντες ᾐτιῶντο τὸν Νικίαν, ὡς ἐν τῷ διαλογίζεσθαι καὶ μέλλειν καὶ φυλάττεσθαι τὸν τῶν πράξεων ἀπολλύντα καιρόν· ἐπεὶ τάς γε πράξεις οὐδεὶς ἂν ἐμέμψατο τοῦ ἀνδρός· ὁρμήσας γὰρ ἦν ἐνεργὸς καὶ δραστήριος, ὁρμῆσαι δὲ μελλητὴς καὶ ἄτολμος.

[17] [1] Ὡς δ’ οὖν ἐκίνησε τὴν στρατιὰν πάλιν ἐπὶ τὰς Συρακούσας, οὕτως ἐστρατήγησε καὶ μετὰ τοσαύτης ὀξύτητος ἅμα καὶ ἀσφαλείας ἐπῆλθεν, ὥστε λαθεῖν μὲν εἰς Θάψον ταῖς ναυσὶ προσμείξας καὶ ἀποβάς, φθάσαι δὲ τὰς Ἐπιπολὰς κατασχών, τῶν δὲ προσβοηθούντων λογάδων κρατήσας ‹ἀν›ελεῖν μὲν τριακοσίους, τρέψασθαι δὲ καὶ τὴν ἵππον [2] τῶν πολεμίων, ἄμαχον εἶναι δοκοῦσαν. ὃ δὲ πάντων μάλιστα καὶ Σικελιώτας ἐξέπληξε καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἀπιστίαν παρέσχεν, ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ περιετείχισε Συρακούσας, πόλιν Ἀθηνῶν οὐκ ἐλάττονα, δυσεργοτέραν δὲ χωρίων ἀνωμαλίαις καὶ θαλάσσῃ γειτνιώσῃ καὶ παρακειμένοις ἕλεσι [3] τεῖχος κύκλῳ περὶ αὐτὴν τοσοῦτον ἀγαγεῖν. ἀλλὰ τοῦτ’ ἐξεργάσασθαι μικρὸν ἐδέησε τοῦ παντός, ἄνθρωπος οὐδ’ ὑγιαίνοντι χρώμενος ἑαυτῷ πρὸς τοσαύτας φροντίδας, ἀλλὰ νόσον νοσῶν νεφρῖτιν, ἧς τὸ μὴ προσεκπονηθὲν ‹ἔλ›λειμμα ποιεῖσθαι δίκαιόν ἐστι, θαυμάζειν δὲ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ τὴν τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀνδραγαθίαν [4] ἐν οἷς κατώρθουν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Εὐριπίδης (fg. 1 D.) μετὰ τὴν ἧτταν αὐτῶν καὶ τὸν ὄλεθρον γράφων ἐπικήδειον ἐποίησεν·

οἵδε Συρακοσίους ὀκτὼ νίκας ἐκράτησαν

ἄνδρες, ὅτ’ ἦν τὰ θεῶν ἐξ ἴσου ἀμφοτέροις·

οὐκ ὀκτὼ δὲ νίκας, ἀλλὰ πλείονας ἄν τις εὕροι Συρακουσίους νενικημένους ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, πρὶν ἐκ θεῶν ὄντως ἢ τύχης ἀντίστασίν τινα γενέσθαι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ἐπὶ πλεῖστον αἰρομένοις δυνάμεως.

[18] [1] Ταῖς μὲν οὖν πλείσταις πράξεσι βιαζόμενος τὸ σῶμα παρῆν ὁ Νικίας· ἀκμὴν δέ ποτε τῆς ἀρρωστίας λαβούσης, ὁ μὲν ἐν τείχεσι μετ’ ὀλίγων ὑπηρετῶν κατέκειτο, τὴν δὲ στρατιὰν ἔχων ὁ Λάμαχος προσεμάχετο τοῖς Συρακουσίοις, ἐκ τῆς πόλεως τεῖχος ἀνάγουσι πρὸς τὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων, [2] ὃ κωλύσειν ἔμελλε διὰ μέσου τὸν ἀποτειχισμόν. τῷ δὲ κρατεῖν τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀτακτότερον φερομένων πρὸς τὰς διώξεις, ἀπομονωθεὶς ὁ Λάμαχος ὑπέστη τῶν Συρακουσίων [3] τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἐπιφερομένους. ἦν δὲ πρῶτος αὐτῶν Καλλικράτης, ἀνὴρ πολεμικὸς καὶ θυμοειδής. πρὸς τοῦτον ἐκ προκλήσεως καταστὰς ὁ Λάμαχος ἐμονομάχησε, καὶ λαβὼν πληγὴν πρότερος, εἶτα δοὺς καὶ πεσὼν ὁμοῦ, συναπέθανε [4] τῷ Καλλικράτει. καὶ τὸ μὲν σῶμα κρατήσαντες αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἐξῆραν οἱ Συρακούσιοι, δρόμῳ δ’ ἐφέροντο πρὸς τὰ τείχη τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ἐν οἷς ὁ Νικίας [5] ἦν, οὐκ ἔχων τοὺς βοηθοῦντας. ὅμως δ’ ὑπὸ τῆς ἀνάγκης ἐξαναστὰς καὶ κατιδὼν τὸν κίνδυνον, ἐκέλευσε τοὺς καθ’ ἑαυτόν, ὅσα ξύλα πρὸ τῶν τειχῶν ἐτύγχανεν εἰς μηχανὰς παραβεβλημένα καὶ τὰς μηχανὰς αὐτὰς πῦρ κομίσαντας [6] ἅψαι. τοῦτο τοὺς Συρακουσίους ἐπέσχε, καὶ τὸν Νικίαν ἔσωσε καὶ τὰ τείχη καὶ τὰ χρήματα τῶν Ἀθηναίων· φλόγα γὰρ ἀρθεῖσαν διὰ μέσου πολλὴν ἰδόντες, ἀπετράπησαν οἱ Συρακούσιοι.

[7] Τούτων δὲ πραχθέντων ἀπολέλειπτο μὲν ὁ Νικίας μόνος τῶν στρατηγῶν, ἦν δ’ ἐλπίδος μεγάλης. καὶ γὰρ πόλεις μεθίσταντο, καὶ πλοῖα μεστὰ σίτου πολλαχόθεν ‹ἦλθεν› εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, τοῖς πράγμασιν εὖ φερομένοις [8] πάντων προστιθεμένων, καὶ λόγοι τινὲς ἤδη παρὰ τῶν Συρακουσίων ἐγίνοντο περὶ συμβάσεως πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀπεγνωκότων [9] τὴν πόλιν· ὅπου καὶ Γύλιππος ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος πλέων βοηθὸς αὐτοῖς, ὡς ἤκουσε κατὰ πλοῦν τὸν ἀποτειχισμὸν καὶ τὰς ἀπορίας, οὕτως ἔπλει τὸ λοιπὸν ὡς ἐχομένης μὲν ἤδη τῆς Σικελίας, Ἰταλιώταις δὲ τὰς πόλεις διαφυλάξων, [10] εἰ καὶ τοῦτό πως ἐγγένοιτο. μεγάλη γὰρ ἡ δόξα διεφοίτα τοῦ κρατεῖν πάντα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ στρατηγὸν [11] ἔχειν ἄμαχον δι’ εὐτυχίαν καὶ φρόνησιν. ὁ δὲ Νικίας εὐθὺς αὐτὸς καὶ παρὰ φύσιν ὑπὸ τῆς ἐν τῷ παρόντι ῥύμης καὶ τύχης ἀνατεθαρρηκώς, μάλιστα δὲ τοῖς ἐκ Συρακουσῶν διαλεγομένοις κρύφα καὶ πέμπουσι πρὸς αὐτὸν ὅσον οὔπω τὴν πόλιν ἐνδίδοσθαι κατὰ συμβάσεις νομίζων, οὐδένα τοῦ Γυλίππου λόγον ἔσχε προσπλέοντος, οὐδὲ φυλακὴν ἐποιήσατο καθαράν, ἀλλὰ τῷ παντελῶς ὑπερορᾶσθαι καὶ καταφρονεῖσθαι λαθὼν αὐτὸν ὁ ἀνὴρ εἰσέπλευσε διὰ τοῦ πορθμοῦ, καὶ προσκομισθεὶς ἀπωτάτω τῶν Συρακουσῶν στρατιὰν συνηγάγετο πολλήν, οὐδ’ εἰ πάρεστι [12] τῶν Συρακουσίων ἐπισταμένων οὐδὲ προσδοκώντων. διὸ καὶ παρήγγελτο μὲν αὐτοῖς ἐκκλησία περὶ τῶν πρὸς τὸν Νικίαν ὁμολογιῶν, καί τινες ἐβάδιζον ἤδη, πρὶν ἢ παντελῶς ἀποτειχισθῆναι τὴν πόλιν οἰόμενοι δεῖν γενέσθαι τὰς διαλύσεις· βραχὺ γὰρ ἦν κομιδῇ τὸ ἀπολειπόμενον τοῦ ἔργου, καὶ τοῦτο παραβεβλημένην εἶχε τὴν παρασκευὴν τῆς τειχοδομίας σύμπασαν.

[19] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ καιροῦ τοῦ κινδύνου παρόντος ἀφικνεῖται Γογγύλος ἐκ Κορίνθου μιᾷ τριήρει, καὶ συνδραμόντων πρὸς αὐτὸν ὡς εἰκὸς πάντων, ἔφραζεν ὅτι Γύλιππος ἀφίξεται διὰ ταχέων καὶ νῆες ἄλλαι βοηθοὶ προσπλέουσιν.

[2] οὔπω δὲ τῷ Γογγύλῳ πιστευόντων βεβαίως, ἧκεν ἄγγελος παρὰ τοῦ Γυλίππου, κελεύοντος ἀπαντᾶν. οἱ δὲ θαρρήσαντες ἐξωπλίζοντο, καὶ προσῆγεν εὐθὺς ὁ Γύλιππος [3] ἐξ ὁδοῦ παρατεταγμένος ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους. ὡς δὲ κἀκείνους ἀντέταξεν ὁ Νικίας, θέμενος [ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους] ὁ Γύλιππος τὰ ὅπλα καὶ κήρυκα πέμψας ἔλεγε διδόναι [4] τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἄδειαν ἀπιοῦσιν ἐκ Σικελίας. ὁ μὲν οὖν Νικίας οὐδὲν ἠξίωσεν ἀποκρίνεσθαι, τῶν δὲ στρατιωτῶν τινες καταγελῶντες ἠρώτων, εἰ διὰ παρουσίαν ἑνὸς τρίβωνος καὶ βακτηρίας Λακωνικῆς οὕτως ἰσχυρὰ τὰ Συρακουσίων ἐξαίφνης γέγονεν, ὥστ’ Ἀθηναίων καταφρονεῖν, οἳ πολὺ ῥωμαλεωτέρους Γυλίππου καὶ μᾶλλον κομῶντας τριακοσίους ἔχοντες ἐν πέδαις δεδεμένους ἀπέδωκαν Λακεδαιμονίοις.

[5] Τίμαιος (FGrH 566 F 100a) δὲ καὶ τοὺς Σικελιώτας φησὶν ἐν μηδενὶ λόγῳ ποιεῖσθαι τὸν Γύλιππον, ὕστερον μὲν αἰσχροκέρδειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ μικρολογίαν καταγνόντας, ὡς δὲ πρῶτον ὤφθη, σκώπτοντας εἰς τὸν τρίβωνα καὶ τὴν κόμην. εἶτα μέντοι φησὶν αὐτός, ὅτι τῷ Γυλίππῳ φανέντι καθάπερ γλαυκὶ πολλοὶ προσέπτησαν ἑτοίμως [6] ‹συ›στρατευόμενοι. καὶ ταῦτα τῶν πρώτων ἀληθέστερά εἰσιν· ἐν γὰρ τῇ βακτηρίᾳ καὶ τῷ τρίβωνι τὸ σύμβολον καὶ τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς Σπάρτης καθορῶντες συνίσταντο, κἀκείνου τὸ πᾶν ἔργον γεγονέναι φησὶν οὐ Θουκυδίδης μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ Φίλιστος (FGrH 556 F 56), ἀνὴρ Συρακούσιος [7] καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ὁρατὴς γενόμενος. τῇ μὲν οὖν πρώτῃ μάχῃ κρατήσαντες οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι τῶν Συρακουσίων ὀλίγους τινὰς ἀπέκτειναν καὶ Γογγύλον τὸν Κορίνθιον· εἰς δὲ τὴν ἐπιοῦσαν ἡμέραν ἔδειξεν ὁ Γύλιππος, οἷόν ἐστιν [8] ἐμπειρία. τοῖς γὰρ αὐτοῖς ὅπλοις καὶ ἵπποις καὶ χωρίοις χρησάμενος οὐχ ὡσαύτως, ἀλλὰ μεταθεὶς τὴν τάξιν, ἐνίκησε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, καὶ φυγόντων εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, ἐπιστήσας τοὺς Συρακουσίους τοῖς λίθοις οἷς ἐκεῖνοι προσεκόμιζον καὶ τῇ ὕλῃ παροικοδομῶν εἰς διαστολάς, ἀπέκοψε τὸν ἐκείνων περιτειχισμόν, ὥστ’ αὐτοῖς μηδὲν εἶναι [9] πλέον κρατοῦσιν. ἐκ τούτου δὲ θαρρήσαντες οἱ Συρακούσιοι τάς τε ναῦς ἐπλήρουν, καὶ τοῖς ἱππεῦσι τοῖς ἑαυτῶν καὶ [10] ἀκολούθοις περιελαύνοντες πολλοὺς ᾕρουν, καὶ ὁ Γύλιππος ἐπιὼν [ἐπὶ] τὰς πόλεις αὐτὸς ἐξώρμα καὶ συνίστη πάντας, ἐρρωμένως ὑπακούοντας αὐτῷ καὶ συλλαμβανομένους, ὥστε τὸν Νικίαν αὖθις εἰς ἐκείνους ἀποτρεπόμενον τοὺς πρώτους λογισμούς, καὶ συμφρονοῦντα τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων μεταβολὴν ἀθυμεῖν, καὶ γράφειν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, κελεύοντα πέμπειν ἕτερον στρατόν, ἢ καὶ τοῦτον ἀπάγειν ἐκ Σικελίας, αὑτῷ δὲ πάντως αἰτούμενον τῆς στρατηγίας ἄφεσιν διὰ τὴν νόσον.

[20] [1] Οἱ δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ πρότερον μὲν ὥρμηντο πέμπειν ἑτέραν δύναμιν εἰς Σικελίαν, φθόνῳ δὲ τῶν πρώτων, ταραττομένων πρὸς εὐτυχίαν τοῦ Νικίου τοσαύτην, πολλὰς διατριβὰς ἐμβαλόντων, τότε γοῦν ἔσπευδον [2] βοηθεῖν. καὶ Δημοσθένης μὲν ἔμελλε μεγάλῳ στόλῳ πλεῖν ἐκ χειμῶνος, Εὐρυμέδων δὲ διὰ χειμῶνος προεξέπλευσε, χρήματα κομίζων καὶ συστρατήγους ἀποφαίνων ᾑρημένους τῷ Νικίᾳ τῶν αὐτόθι στρατευομένων Εὐθύδημον καὶ Μένανδρον.

[3] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν ἐξαίφνης ἐπιχειρούμενος ὁ Νικίας, ταῖς μὲν ναυσὶν ἡττώμενος τὸ πρῶτον, ὅμως ἐξέωσε καὶ κατέδυσε πολλὰς τῶν πολεμίων, πρὸς δὲ τὸ πεζὸν οὐκ ἔφθασε βοηθῶν, ἀλλ’ ἄφνω προσπεσὼν ὁ Γύλιππος εἷλε τὸ Πλημμύριον, ἐν ᾧ σκευῶν τριηρικῶν καὶ χρημάτων πολλῶν ἀποκειμένων, ἐκράτησε πάντων καὶ διέφθειρεν ἄνδρας οὐκ ὀλίγους καὶ ζῶντας ἔλαβε· τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, ἀφείλετο τοῦ Νικίου τῆς ἀγορᾶς τὴν εὐπέτειαν. ἦν γὰρ ἡ κομιδὴ παρὰ τὸ Πλημμύριον ἀσφαλὴς καὶ ταχεῖα τῶν Ἀθηναίων κρατούντων, ἐκπεσόντων δὲ χαλεπὴ καὶ μετὰ μάχης ἐγίνετο πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, [4] ἐκεῖ ναυλοχοῦντας. ἔτι δὲ καὶ τὸ ναυτικὸν τοῖς Συρακουσίοις οὐκ ἀπὸ κράτους ἐφαίνετο νενικημένον, ἀλλ’ ἀταξίᾳ περὶ τὴν δίωξιν. αὖθις οὖν ἐπεχείρουν παρασκευαζόμενοι [5] λαμπρότερον. ὁ δὲ Νικίας οὐκ ἐβούλετο ναυμαχεῖν, ἀλλὰ πολλὴν ἀβελτερίαν ἔλεγεν εἶναι, στόλου τοσούτου προσπλέοντος αὐτοῖς καὶ δυνάμεως ἀκραιφνοῦς ἣν ἦγε Δημοσθένης σπεύδων, ἀπ’ ἐλαττόνων καὶ χορηγουμένων [6] φαύλως διαγωνίσασθαι. τοῖς δὲ περὶ τὸν Μένανδρον καὶ τὸν Εὐθύδημον ἀρτίως εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν καθισταμένοις φιλοτιμία καὶ ζῆλος ἦν πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους τοὺς στρατηγούς, τὸν μὲν Δημοσθένην φθῆναι πράξαντάς τι λαμπρόν, ὑπερβαλέσθαι [7] δὲ τὸν Νικίαν. πρόσχημα δ’ ἦν ἡ δόξα τῆς πόλεως, ἣν ἀπόλλυσθαι καὶ καταλύεσθαι παντάπασι φάσκοντες, εἰ φοβηθήσονται Συρακουσίους ἐπιπλέοντας, ἐξεβιάσαντο [8] ναυμαχῆσαι, καὶ καταστρατηγηθέντες ὑπ’ Ἀρίστωνος τοῦ Κορινθίων κυβερνήτου τοῖς περὶ τὸ ἄριστον, ὡς εἴρηκε Θουκυδίδης (7, 40), κατὰ κράτος ἡττήθησαν καὶ πολλοὺς ἀπέβαλον· καὶ ἀθυμία πολλὴ περιεστήκει τὸν Νικίαν, τῇ τε μοναρχίᾳ κακοπαθοῦντα, καὶ σφαλλόμενον αὖθις ὑπὸ τῶν συναρχόντων.

[21] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Δημοσθένης ὑπὲρ τῶν λιμένων ἐπεφαίνετο λαμπρότατος τῇ παρασκευῇ καὶ δεινότατος τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἐπὶ νεῶν ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ τριῶν ἄγων ὁπλίτας πεντακισχιλίους, ἀκοντιστὰς δὲ καὶ τοξότας καὶ σφενδονήτας τρισχιλίων οὐκ ἐλάττους, ὅπλων δὲ κόσμῳ καὶ παρασήμοις τριήρων καὶ πλήθει κελευστῶν καὶ αὐλητῶν θεατρικῶς [2] καὶ πρὸς ἔκπληξιν πολεμίων ἐξησκημένος. ἦν οὖν ὡς εἰκὸς αὖθις ἐν φόβῳ μεγάλῳ τὰ Συρακουσίων, εἰς οὐδὲν πέρας οὐδ’ ἀπαλλαγήν, ἀλλὰ πονοῦντας ἄλλως καὶ φθειρομένους [3] αὑτοὺς μάτην ὁρώντων. τὸν δὲ Νικίαν οὐ πολὺν χρόνον εὔφρανεν ἡ παρουσία τῆς δυνάμεως, ἀλλ’ ἅμα τῷ πρῶτον ἐν λόγοις γενέσθαι, τοῦ Δημοσθένους εὐθὺς ἐπιχειρεῖν τοῖς πολεμίοις κελεύοντος καὶ τῷ ταχίστῳ τῶν κινδύνων περὶ τοῦ παντὸς διαγωνισαμένους ἑλεῖν Συρακούσας ἢ ἀποπλεῖν οἴκαδε, δείσας καὶ θαυμάσας τὴν ὀξύτητα καὶ τόλμαν, ἐδεῖτο μηδὲν ἀπεγνωσμένως πράττειν μήδ’ ἀνοήτως.

[4] τὴν γὰρ τριβὴν εἶναι κατὰ τῶν πολεμίων, οὔτε χρήματα κεκτημένων ἔτι, μήτε τῶν συμμάχων αὐτοῖς πολὺν χρόνον παραμενούντων, εἰ δὲ θλίβοιντο ταῖς ἀπορίαις, ταχὺ πάλιν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν περὶ συμβάσεως τραπησομένων ὡς [5] πρότερον. καὶ γὰρ ἦσαν ἄνδρες οὐκ ὀλίγοι τῶν ἐν Συρακούσαις διαλεγόμενοι τῷ Νικίᾳ κρύφα καὶ μένειν κελεύοντες, ὡς καὶ νῦν ὑπερπονούντων τῷ πολέμῳ, καὶ τὸν Γύλιππον βαρυνομένων, ἐὰν δὲ μικρὸν ἐπιτείνωσιν αἱ ἀνάγκαι, [6] παντάπασιν ἀπαγορευσόντων. τούτων ὁ Νικίας τὰ μὲν αἰνιττόμενος, τὰ δ’ οὐ θέλων ἐν φανερῷ λέγειν, ἀτολμίας παρέσχε τοῖς ‹συ›στρατήγοις δόξαν, καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐκεῖνα πάλιν ἥκειν φάσκοντες αὐτοῦ, μελλήματα καὶ διατριβὰς καὶ ἀκριβολογίας, αἷς ἀπώλεσε τὴν ἀκμήν, οὐκ εὐθὺς ἐπιχειρῶν τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἀλλ’ ἕωλος καὶ καταφρονούμενος, τῷ Δημοσθένει προσετίθεντο, καὶ ὁ Νικίας [7] μόλις συνεχώρησεν ἐκβιασθείς. οὕτω δὴ τὴν πεζὴν στρατιὰν ἀναλαβὼν ὁ Δημοσθένης νυκτὸς ἐπεχείρει ταῖς Ἐπιπολαῖς, καὶ τοὺς μὲν φθάσας πρὶν αἰσθέσθαι τῶν πολεμίων ἀπέκτεινε, τοὺς δ’ ἀμυνομένους ἐτρέψατο, καὶ κρατῶν οὐκ ἔμενεν, ἀλλ’ ἐχώρει προσωτέρω, μέχρι οὗ τοῖς Βοιωτοῖς [8] ἐνέτυχε. πρῶτοι γὰρ οὗτοι συστρέψαντες ἑαυτοὺς καὶ συνδραμόντες εἰς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐναντίοις τοῖς δόρασι μετὰ βοῆς ἐώσαντο, καὶ πολλοὺς αὐτοῦ κατέβαλον, δι’ ὅλου δὲ τοῦ στρατεύματος εὐθὺς ἦν πτοία καὶ ταραχή, καὶ τοῦ φεύγοντος ἤδη καταπιμπλάμενον τὸ ἔτι νικῶν, καὶ τὸ ἐπιβαῖνον καὶ προσφερόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πεφοβημένων ἀνακοπτόμενον, ἑαυτῷ περιέπιπτε, τοὺς μὲν φεύγοντας οἰόμενον διώκειν, τοῖς δὲ φίλοις ὡς πολεμίοις χρώμενον.

[9] ἡ γὰρ ἄτακτος ἀνάμειξις ἐν ταὐτῷ μετὰ φόβου καὶ ἀγνοίας, καὶ τὸ τῆς ὄψεως ἄπιστον ἐν νυκτὶ μήτε σκότος ἄκρατον μήτε φῶς ἐχούσῃ βέβαιον, ἀλλ’ οἵαν εἰκός, ἤδη καταφερομένης σελήνης καὶ περισκιαζομένης ὅπλοις πολλοῖς καὶ σώμασι κινουμένοις διὰ τοῦ φωτός, μὴ διασαφοῦσαν τὰ εἴδη φόβῳ τοῦ πολεμίου καὶ τὸ οἰκεῖον ποιεῖν ὕποπτον, εἰς δεινὰς ἀπορίας καὶ περιπετείας καθίστη τοὺς Ἀθηναίους.

[10] ἔτυχον δέ πως καὶ τὴν σελήνην ἔχοντες ὄπισθεν· ὅθεν αὐτοὶ μὲν αὑτοῖς τὰς σκιὰς ἐπιβάλλοντες, ἀπέκρυπτον τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τὴν λαμπρότητα, τοὺς δ’ ἐναντίους ὁ πρὸς τὴν σελήνην τῶν ἀσπίδων ἀντιφωτισμὸς [11] πολὺ πλείονας ὁρᾶσθαι καὶ λαμπροτέρους ἐποίει. τέλος δέ, πανταχόθεν αὐτοῖς ὡς ἐνέδοσαν προσκειμένων τῶν πολεμίων, φεύγοντες οἱ μὲν ὑπ’ ἐκείνων, οἱ δ’ ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων ἀπέθνῃσκον, οἱ δὲ κατὰ τῶν κρημνῶν ὀλισθαίνοντες, τοὺς δ’ ἀποσκεδασθέντας καὶ πλανωμένους ἡμέρας ἐπιγενομένης οἱ ἱππεῖς καταλαμβάνοντες διέφθειρον. ἐγένοντο δὲ νεκροὶ δισχίλιοι, καὶ τῶν περιγενομένων ὀλίγοι μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἀπεσώθησαν.

[22] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Νικίας πληγεὶς οὐκ ἀπροσδοκήτως ᾐτιᾶτο τοῦ Δημοσθένους τὴν προπέτειαν, ἐκεῖνος δὲ περὶ τούτων ἀπολογησάμενος ἐκέλευσεν ἀποπλεῖν τὴν ταχίστην· οὔτε γὰρ ἄλλην ἀφίξεσθαι δύναμιν αὐτοῖς, οὔτ’ ἀπὸ τῆς παρούσης τῶν πολεμίων κρατεῖν, ὅπου γε καὶ κρατοῦντας ἐκείνων ἔδει μεταστῆναι καὶ φυγεῖν τὸ χωρίον, ἀεὶ μὲν ὡς πυνθάνονται βαρὺ καὶ νοσῶδες ὂν στρατοπέδῳ, [2] νῦν δ’ ὡς βλέπουσι καὶ διὰ τὴν ὥραν ὀλέθριον. μετοπώρου γὰρ ἦν ἀρχή, καὶ πολλοὶ μὲν ἠσθένουν ἤδη, πάντες δ’ ἠθύμουν. ὁ δὲ Νικίας χαλεπῶς ἤκουε τὴν φυγὴν καὶ τὸν ἀπόπλουν, οὐ τῷ μὴ δεδιέναι τοὺς Συρακουσίους, ἀλλὰ τῷ μᾶλλον τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ τὰς ἐκείνων δίκας καὶ συκοφαντίας [3] φοβεῖσθαι. δεινὸν μὲν οὖν οὐδὲν αὐτόθι προσδοκᾶν ἔφασκεν, εἰ δὲ συμβαίη, μᾶλλον αἱρεῖσθαι τὸν ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων θάνατον ἢ τὸν ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν, οὐχ ὅμοια φρονῶν οἷς ὕστερον ὁ Βυζάντιος Λέων εἶπε πρὸς τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ πολίτας· βούλομαι γὰρ ἔφη μᾶλλον ὑφ’ ὑμῶν ἢ μεθ’ ὑμῶν ἀποθανεῖν· περὶ μέντοι τόπου καὶ χώρας εἰς ἣν μετάξουσι τὸ στρατόπεδον βουλεύσεσθαι καθ’ ἡσυχίαν.

[4] ταῦτα δ’ αὐτοῦ λέγοντος, ὁ μὲν Δημοσθένης οὐδὲ τῇ προτέρᾳ γνώμῃ κατευτυχήσας ἐπαύσατο βιαζόμενος, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις παρέσχε τὸν Νικίαν προσδοκῶντα καὶ πιστεύοντα τοῖς ἔνδον οὕτως ἐρρωμένως ἀναμάχεσθαι περὶ τῆς [5] ἀποβάσεως· διὸ καὶ συνεχώρησαν. ὡς μέντοι στρατιὰ Συρακουσίοις ἐπῆλθεν ἄλλη, καὶ μᾶλλον ἥπτετο τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἡ νόσος, ἤδη καὶ τῷ Νικίᾳ συνεδόκει μεθίστασθαι, καὶ παρήγγελλε τοῖς στρατιώταις εὐτρεπεῖς εἶναι πρὸς ἀπόπλουν.

[23] [1] Ὡς δ’ ἦν ἕτοιμα ταῦτα πάντα καὶ τῶν πολεμίων οὐδεὶς παρεφύλαττεν, ἅτε δὴ μὴ προσδοκώντων, ἐξέλιπεν ἡ σελήνη τῆς νυκτός, μέγα δέος τῷ Νικίᾳ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τοῖς ὑπ’ ἀπειρίας ἢ δεισιδαιμονίας ἐκπεπληγμένοις τὰ [2] τοιαῦτα. τοῦ μὲν γὰρ ἡλίου τὴν περὶ τὰς τριακάδας ἐπισκότησιν ἁμῶς γέ πως ἤδη συνεφρόνουν καὶ οἱ πολλοὶ γινομένην ὑπὸ τῆς σελήνης· αὐτὴν δὲ τὴν σελήνην, ᾧτινι συντυγχάνουσα καὶ πῶς αἰφνίδιον ἐκ πανσελήνου τὸ φῶς ἀπόλλυσι καὶ χρόας ἵησι παντοδαπάς, οὐ ῥᾴδιον ἦν καταλαβεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἀλλόκοτον ἡγοῦντο καὶ πρὸ συμφορῶν τινων [3] καὶ πραγμάτων μεγάλων ἐκ θεοῦ γινόμενον σημεῖον. ὁ γὰρ πρῶτος σαφέστατόν τε πάντων καὶ θαρραλεώτατον περὶ σελήνης καταυγασμῶν καὶ σκιᾶς λόγον εἰς γραφὴν καταθέμενος Ἀναξαγόρας οὔτ’ αὐτὸς ἦν παλαιὸς οὔθ’ ὁ λόγος ἔνδοξος, ἀλλ’ ἀπόρρητος ἔτι καὶ δι’ ὀλίγων καὶ μετ’ [4] εὐλαβείας τινὸς ἢ πίστεως βαδίζων. οὐ γὰρ ἠνείχοντο τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρολέσχας τότε καλουμένους, ὡς εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους καὶ κατηναγκασμένα πάθη διατρίβοντας τὸ θεῖον, ἀλλὰ καὶ Πρωταγόρας ἔφυγε, καὶ Ἀναξαγόραν εἱρχθέντα μόλις περιεποιήσατο Περικλῆς, καὶ Σωκράτης, οὐδὲν αὐτῷ τῶν γε τοιούτων [5] προσῆκον, ὅμως ἀπώλετο διὰ φιλοσοφίαν. ὀψὲ δ’ ἡ Πλάτωνος ἐκλάμψασα δόξα διὰ τὸν βίον τοῦ ἀνδρός, καὶ ὅτι ταῖς θείαις καὶ κυριωτέραις ἀρχαῖς ὑπέταξε τὰς φυσικὰς ἀνάγκας, ἀφεῖλε τὴν τῶν λόγων τούτων διαβολὴν καὶ τοῖς [6] μαθήμασιν εἰς ἅπαντας ὁδὸν ἐνέδωκεν. ὁ γοῦν ἑταῖρος αὐτοῦ Δίων, καθ’ ὃν χρόνον ἔμελλεν ἄρας ἐκ Ζακύνθου πλεῖν ἐπὶ Διονύσιον ἐκλιπούσης τῆς σελήνης, οὐδὲν διαταραχθεὶς ἀνήχθη, καὶ κατασχὼν ἐν Συρακούσαις ἐξέβαλε [7] τὸν τύραννον. τῷ μέντοι Νικίᾳ συνηνέχθη τότε μηδὲ μάντιν ἔχειν ἔμπειρον· ὁ γὰρ συνήθης αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ πολὺ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας ἀφαιρῶν Στιλβίδης ἐτεθνήκει μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν.

[8] ἐπεὶ τὸ σημεῖον, ὥς φησι Φιλόχορος (FGrH 328 F 135), φεύγουσιν οὐκ ἦν πονηρόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ χρηστόν· ἐπικρύψεως γὰρ αἱ σὺν φόβῳ πράξεις δέονται, τὸ δὲ φῶς [9] πολέμιόν ἐστιν αὐταῖς, ἄλλως τε καὶ τῶν περὶ ἥλιον καὶ σελήνην ἐπὶ τρεῖς ἡμέρας ἐποιοῦντο φυλακήν, ὡς Αὐτοκλείδης διέγραψεν ἐν τοῖς ἐξηγητικοῖς· ὁ δὲ Νικίας ἄλλην ἔπεισε σελήνης ἀναμένειν περίοδον, ὥσπερ οὐκ εὐθὺς θεασάμενος αὐτὴν ἀποκαθαρθεῖσαν, ὅτε τὸν σκιερὸν τόπον καὶ ὑπὸ τῆς γῆς ἀντιφραττόμενον παρῆλθε.

[24] [1] Μικροῦ δὲ πάντων ἀφέμενος τῶν ἄλλων, ἔθυε καὶ διεμαντεύετο καθήμενος, ἕως ἐπῆλθον αὐτοῖς οἱ πολέμιοι, τῷ μὲν πεζῷ τὰ τείχη καὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον αὐτῶν πολιορκοῦντες, ταῖς δὲ ναυσὶ κύκλῳ τὸν λιμένα περιλαμβάνοντες, οὐκ αὐτοὶ μόνον ταῖς τριήρεσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ παιδάρια παντοχόθεν ἐπιβαίνοντα τῶν ἁλιάδων καὶ ταῖς σκάφαις προσπλέοντα προὐκαλεῖτο τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ [2] προὐπηλάκιζεν. ὧν ἕνα, παῖδα γνωρίμων γονέων Ἡρακλείδην, προεξελάσαντα τῷ πλοίῳ ναῦς Ἀττικὴ διώκουσα κατελάμβανε. δείσας δὲ περὶ αὐτοῦ Πόλλιχος ὁ θεῖος ἀντελαύνει δέκα τριήρεσιν ὧν ἦρχεν· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι περὶ τοῦ Πολλίχου [3] φοβηθέντες ὡσαύτως ἀνήγοντο, καὶ ναυμαχίας ἰσχυρᾶς γενομένης ἐνίκησαν οἱ Συρακούσιοι, καὶ τὸν Εὐρυμέδοντα [4] πολλῶν μετ’ ἄλλων διέφθειραν. ἦν οὖν οὐκέτι μένειν ἀνασχετὸν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ἀλλὰ τῶν στρατηγῶν κατεβόων, πεζῇ κελεύοντες ἀναχωρεῖν. καὶ γὰρ οἱ Συρακούσιοι νικήσαντες εὐθὺς ἐνέφραξαν καὶ ἀπέκλεισαν τὸν διέκπλουν [5] τοῦ λιμένος. οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Νικίαν τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἐπείθοντο· δεινὸν γὰρ ἦν ἀπολιπεῖν ὁλκάδας τε πολλὰς καὶ τριήρεις ὀλίγον ἀριθμῷ διακοσίων ἀποδεούσας· ἐμβιβάσαντες δὲ τῶν πεζῶν τοὺς ἀρίστους καὶ τῶν ἀκοντιστῶν τοὺς ἀλκιμωτάτους, ἐπλήρωσαν ἑκατὸν καὶ δέκα τριήρεις· αἱ γὰρ [6] ἄλλαι ταρσῶν ἐνδεεῖς ἦσαν. τὸν δὲ λοιπὸν ὄχλον ἔστησε παρὰ θάλασσαν ὁ Νικίας, ἐκλιπὼν τὸ μέγα στρατόπεδον καὶ τὰ τείχη τὰ συνάπτοντα πρὸς τὸ Ἡράκλειον, ὥστε μὴ τεθυκότων τὴν εἰθισμένην θυσίαν τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ τῶν Συρακουσίων, θῦσαι τότε τοὺς ἱερεῖς καὶ στρατηγοὺς ἀναβάντας, ἤδη [δὲ] πληρουμένων τῶν τριήρων.

[25] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ μάντεις τοῖς Συρακουσίοις ἀπήγγειλαν ἐκ τῶν ἱερῶν λαμπρότητα καὶ νίκην μὴ καταρχομένοις μάχης ἀλλ’ ἀμυνομένοις - καὶ γὰρ τὸν Ἡρακλέα πάντων κρατεῖν ἀμυνόμενον καὶ προεπιχειρούμενον - ἀνήχθησαν.

[2] ἡ δὲ ναυμαχία πολὺ μεγίστη καὶ καρτερωτάτη γενομένη, καὶ μηδὲν ἐλάττονα πάθη καὶ θορύβους παρασχοῦσα τοῖς θεωμένοις ἢ τοῖς ἀγωνιζομένοις διὰ τὴν παντὸς ἐπίβλεψιν τοῦ ἔργου, ποικίλας μεταβολὰς καὶ ἀπροσδοκήτους ἐν ὀλίγῳ λαμβάνοντος, ἔβλαπτε ταῖς αὐτῶν παρασκευαῖς [3] οὐχ ἧττον τῶν πολεμίων τοὺς Ἀθηναίους. ἀθρόαις γὰρ ἐμάχοντο ταῖς ναυσὶ καὶ βαρείαις πρὸς κούφας ἀλλαχόθεν ἄλλας ἐπιφερομένας, καὶ βαλλόμενοι λίθοις ὁμοίαν ἔχουσι τὴν πληγὴν πανταχόθεν, ἀντέβαλλον ἀκοντίοις καὶ τοξεύμασιν, ὧν ὁ σάλος τὴν εὐθυβολίαν διέστρεφεν, ὥστε μὴ [4] πάντα κατ’ αἰχμὴν προσφέρεσθαι. ταῦτα δ’ Ἀρίστων ὁ Κορίνθιος κυβερνήτης ἐδίδαξε τοὺς Συρακουσίους, καὶ παρὰ τὴν μάχην αὐτὴν ἀγωνιζόμενος προθύμως ἔπεσεν, [5] ἤδη κρατούντων τῶν Συρακουσίων. γενομένης δὲ μεγάλης τροπῆς καὶ φθορᾶς, ἡ μὲν κατὰ θάλασσαν φυγὴ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἀπεκέκοπτο· χαλεπὴν δὲ καὶ τὴν διὰ γῆς σωτηρίαν ὁρῶντες, οὔτε ναῦς ἀφέλκοντας ἐγγύθεν ἔτι τοὺς πολεμίους ἐκώλυον, οὔτε νεκρῶν ᾔτησαν ἀναίρεσιν, ἅτε δὴ τῆς ἐκείνων ἀταφίας τὴν τῶν νοσούντων καὶ τετρωμένων ἀπόλειψιν οἰκτροτέραν οὖσαν ἤδη πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν ἔχοντες, αὑτοὺς δὲ κἀκείνων ἐπιπονωτέρους ἡγούμενοι, μετὰ πλειόνων κακῶν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ πάντως ἀφιξομένους τέλος.

[26] [1] Ὡρμημένων δ’ αὐτῶν ἀπαίρειν διὰ νυκτός, οἱ μὲν περὶ τὸν Γύλιππον, ὁρῶντες ἐν θυσίαις καὶ πότοις τοὺς Συρακουσίους διά τε τὴν νίκην καὶ τὴν ἑορτὴν ὄντας, οὔτε πείσειν οὔτε βιάσεσθαι προσεδόκων ἀναστάντας ἤδη προσφέρεσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀπιοῦσιν, Ἑρμοκράτης δ’ αὐτὸς ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ συνθεὶς ἐπὶ τὸν Νικίαν ἀπάτην, ἔπεμψέ τινας τῶν ἑταίρων πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀπ’ ἐκείνων μὲν δῆθεν ἥκειν τῶν ἀνδρῶν φάσκοντας οἳ καὶ πρότερον εἰώθεσαν κρύφα τῷ Νικίᾳ διαλέγεσθαι, παραινοῦντας δὲ μὴ πορεύεσθαι τῆς νυκτός, ὡς τῶν Συρακουσίων ἐνέδρας πεποιημένων αὐτοῖς [2] καὶ προκατεχόντων τὰς παρόδους. τούτῳ δὲ καταστρατηγηθεὶς ὁ Νικίας διέμεινεν ἃ ψευδῶς ἔδεισεν ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ἀληθῶς παθεῖν. προελθόντες γὰρ ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὰς δυσχωρίας τῶν ὁδῶν κατέλαβον, καὶ τὰς διαβάσεις τῶν ποταμῶν ἀπετείχισαν, τάς τε γεφύρας ἀπέκοψαν, ἔν τε τοῖς ὁμαλέσι καὶ πεδινοῖς τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἔταξαν, ὥστε μηδένα λελεῖφθαι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις τόπον τὸ παράπαν ἀμαχεὶ προελθεῖν.

[3] οἱ δὲ καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην καὶ τὴν νύκτα τὴν ἑτέραν ἐπιμείναντες, ἐπορεύοντο κλαυθμῷ καὶ ὀλοφυρμῷ, καθάπερ ἐκ πατρίδος, οὐ πολεμίας, ἀνιστάμενοι, διὰ τὰς ἀπορίας τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ τὰς ἀπολείψεις τῶν ἀδυνάτων φίλων καὶ συνήθων, ὅμως τὰ παρόντα κακὰ κουφότερα [4] τῶν προσδοκωμένων νομίζοντες εἶναι. πολλῶν δὲ δεινῶν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ φαινομένων, οὐδὲν ἦν οἰκτρότερον αὐτοῦ Νικίου θέαμα, κεκακωμένου μὲν ὑπὸ τῆς ἀσθενείας, συνεσταλμένου δὲ παρ’ ἀξίαν εἰς ἀναγκαίαν δίαιταν καὶ τὰ μικρότατα τῶν ἐφοδίων εἰς τὸ σῶμα πολλῶν διὰ τὴν νόσον δεόμενον, πράττοντος δὲ μετ’ ἀρρωστίας καὶ καρτεροῦντος ἃ πολλοὶ τῶν ἐρρωμένων μόλις ὑπέμενον, καταφανοῦς δὲ πᾶσιν ὄντος οὐ δι’ ἑαυτὸν οὐδὲ τῷ φιλοψυχεῖν τοῖς πόνοις ἐμμένοντος, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἐκείνους τὴν ἐλπίδα μὴ [5] προϊεμένου. καὶ γὰρ εἰς δάκρυα καὶ ὀδυρμοὺς τῶν ἄλλων ὑπὸ φόβου καὶ λύπης τρεπομένων, ἐκεῖνος εἴ ποτε βιασθείη τοῦτο ποιῆσαι, δῆλος ἦν τὸ αἰσχρὸν καὶ τὸ ἀκλεὲς τῆς στρατείας ἀναλογιζόμενος πρὸς τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὴν δόξαν [6] ὧν ἤλπιζε κατορθώσειν. οὐ μόνον δ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν ὄψιν ὁρῶντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν λόγων μνημονεύοντες καὶ τῶν παραινέσεων, ἃς ἐποιήσατο κωλύων τὸν ἔκπλουν, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐνόμιζον ἀναξίως ταλαιπωρεῖν, καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἐκ θεῶν ἐλπίδας ἀθύμως εἶχον, ἐννοοῦντες ὡς ἀνὴρ θεοφιλὴς καὶ πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα λαμπρυνάμενος πρὸς τὸ θεῖον οὐδενὸς ἐπιεικεστέρᾳ τύχῃ χρῆται τῶν κακίστων ἐν τῷ στρατεύματι καὶ ταπεινοτάτων.

[27] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὅ γε Νικίας ἐπειρᾶτο καὶ φωνῇ καὶ προσώπῳ καὶ δεξιώσει κρείττων ὁρᾶσθαι τῶν δεινῶν, καὶ παρὰ πᾶσάν γε τὴν πορείαν ἐφ’ ἡμέρας ὀκτὼ βαλλόμενος καὶ τραυματιζόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ἀήττητον διεφύλαττε τὴν σὺν ἑαυτῷ δύναμιν, ἄχρι οὗ Δημοσθένης ἑάλω καὶ τὸ μετ’ ἐκείνου στράτευμα, περὶ τὴν Πολυζήλειον αὐλὴν ἐν τῷ διαμάχεσθαι καὶ ὑπολείπεσθαι κυκλωθέν, [2] αὐτός τε Δημοσθένης σπασάμενος ξίφος ἔπληξε μὲν ἑαυτόν, οὐ μὴν ἀπέθανε, ταχὺ τῶν πολεμίων περισχόντων [3] καὶ συλλαβόντων αὐτόν. ὡς δὲ τῷ Νικίᾳ προσελάσαντες ἔφραζον οἱ Συρακούσιοι, καὶ πέμψας ἱππέας ἔγνω τὴν ἐκείνου τοῦ στρατεύματος ἅλωσιν, ἠξίου σπείσασθαι πρὸς τὸν Γύλιππον, ὅπως ἀφῶσι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐκ Σικελίας, ὅμηρα λαβόντες ὑπὲρ τῶν χρημάτων ὅσα Συρακουσίοις [4] ἀνήλωτο πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον. οἱ δ’ οὐ προσεῖχον, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ὕβριν καὶ μετ’ ὀργῆς ἀπειλοῦντες καὶ λοιδοροῦντες ἔβαλλον, ἤδη πάντων ἐνδεῶς ἔχοντα τῶν ἀναγκαίων. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν νύκτα διεκαρτέρησε καὶ τὴν ἐπιοῦσαν ἡμέραν [5] προῄει βαλλόμενος πρὸς τὸν Ἀσίναρον ποταμόν. ἐκεῖ δὲ τοὺς μὲν οἱ πολέμιοι συνεπελθόντες ἐνέσεισαν εἰς τὸ ῥεῖθρον, οἱ δὲ φθάνοντες ὑπὸ δίψους ἐρρίπτουν αὑτούς, καὶ πλεῖστος ἐνταῦθα φθόρος ἦν καὶ ὠμότατος ἐν τῷ ποταμῷ πινόντων ἅμα καὶ σφαττομένων, ἄχρι Νικίας Γυλίππῳ προσπεσὼν εἶπεν· ἔλεος ὑμᾶς ὦ Γύλιππε λαβέτω νικῶντας, ἐμοῦ μὲν μηθείς, ὃς ἐπὶ τηλικαύταις εὐτυχίαις ὄνομα καὶ δόξαν ἔσχον, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων Ἀθηναίων, ἐννοηθέντας ὅτι κοιναὶ μὲν αἱ τύχαι τοῦ πολέμου, μετρίως δ’ αὐταῖς καὶ πρᾴως ἐχρήσαντο ἐν οἷς εὐτύχουν Ἀθηναῖοι πρὸς [6] ὑμᾶς. τοιαῦτα τοῦ Νικίου λέγοντος, ἔπαθε μέν τι καὶ πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν αὐτοῦ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς λόγους ὁ Γύλιππος· ᾔδει γὰρ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους εὖ πεπονθότας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ τὰς γενομένας διαλύσεις, μέγα δ’ ἡγεῖτο πρὸς δόξαν, [7] εἰ ζῶντας ἀπάγοι τοὺς ἀντιστρατήγους. διὸ τόν τε Νικίαν ἀναλαβὼν ἐθάρρυνε, καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ζωγρεῖν παρήγγειλε. βραδέως δὲ τοῦ παραγγέλματος διικνουμένου, πολλῷ τῶν φονευθέντων ἐλάττους οἱ διασωθέντες ἐγένοντο· καίτοι [8] πολλοὶ διεκλάπησαν ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν. τοὺς δὲ φανερῶς ἑαλωκότας ἀθροίσαντες, τὰ μὲν κάλλιστα καὶ μέγιστα δένδρα τῶν παρὰ τὸν ποταμὸν ἀνέδησαν αἰχμαλώτοις πανοπλίαις, ἐστεφανωμένοι δ’ αὐτοὶ καὶ κοσμήσαντες [9] ‹τοὺς ἑαυτῶν› ἵππους διαπρεπῶς, κείραντες δὲ τοὺς τῶν πολεμίων, εἰσήλαυνον εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἀγῶνα λαμπρότατον ὧν Ἕλληνες πρὸς Ἕλληνας ἠγωνίσαντο καὶ νίκην τελειοτάτην κράτει πλείστῳ καὶ ῥώμῃ μεγίστῃ προθυμίας καὶ ἀρετῆς κατωρθωκότες.

[28] [1] Ἐκκλησίας δὲ πανδήμου Συρακουσίων καὶ τῶν συμμάχων γενομένης, Εὐρυκλῆς ὁ δημαγωγὸς ἔγραψε, πρῶτον μὲν τὴν ἡμέραν ἐν ᾗ τὸν Νικίαν ἔλαβον ἱερὰν ἔχειν, θύοντας καὶ σχολάζοντας ἔργων, Ἀσιναρίαν τὴν ἑορτὴν ἀπὸ [2] τοῦ ποταμοῦ καλοῦντας· ἡμέρα δ’ ἦν τετρὰς φθίνοντος τοῦ Καρνείου μηνός, ὃν Ἀθηναῖοι Μεταγειτνιῶνα προσαγορεύουσι· τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων τοὺς μὲν οἰκέτας ἀποδόσθαι καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους συμμάχους, αὐτοὺς δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἀπὸ Σικελίας φρουρεῖν ἐμβαλόντας εἰς τὰς λατομίας πλὴν τῶν [3] στρατηγῶν, ἐκείνους δ’ ἀποκτεῖναι. ταῦτα προσδεχομένων τῶν Συρακουσίων, Ἑρμοκράτης μὲν εἰπὼν ὅτι τοῦ νικᾶν κρεῖττόν ἐστι τὸ καλῶς χρῆσθαι τῇ νίκῃ, οὐ μετρίως ἐθορυβήθη, Γύλιππον δὲ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐξαιτούμενον ζῶντας ἀγαγεῖν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὑβρίζοντες ἤδη τοῖς εὐτυχήμασιν οἱ Συρακούσιοι κακῶς ἔλεγον, ἄλλως τε καὶ παρὰ τὸν πόλεμον αὐτοῦ τὴν τραχύτητα καὶ [4] τὸ Λακωνικὸν τῆς ἐπιστασίας οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἐνηνοχότες, ὡς δὲ Τίμαιός (FGrH 566 F 100b) φησι, καὶ μικρολογίαν τινὰ καὶ πλεονεξίαν κατεγνωκότες, ἀρρώστημα πατρῷον ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ Κλεανδρίδης ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ δώρων ἁλοὺς ἔφυγε, καὶ οὗτος αὐτὸς ἀπὸ τῶν χιλίων ταλάντων, ἃ Λύσανδρος ἔπεμψεν εἰς Σπάρτην, ὑφελόμενος τριάκοντα καὶ κρύψας ὑπὸ τὸν ὄροφον τῆς οἰκίας, εἶτα μηνυθείς, αἴσχιστα πάντων ἐξέπεσεν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἐν τῷ Λυσάνδρου βίῳ [5] (cap. 16) μᾶλλον διηκρίβωται. Δημοσθένην δὲ καὶ Νικίαν ἀποθανεῖν Τίμαιος οὔ φησιν ὑπὸ Συρακουσίων κελευσθέντας, ὡς Φίλιστος (FGrH 556 F 55) ἔγραψε καὶ Θουκυδίδης (7, 86), ἀλλ’ Ἑρμοκράτους πέμψαντος, ἔτι τῆς ἐκκλησίας συνεστώσης, καὶ δι’ ἑνὸς τῶν φυλαττόντων παρέντος αὐτοὺς δι’ αὑτῶν ἀποθανεῖν· τὰ μέντοι σώματα πρὸς ταῖς πύλαις ἐκβληθέντα κεῖσθαι φανερὰ τοῖς δεομένοις τοῦ [6] θεάματος. πυνθάνομαι δὲ μέχρι νῦν ἐν Συρακούσαις ἀσπίδα κειμένην πρὸς ἱερῷ δείκνυσθαι, Νικίου μὲν λεγομένην, χρυσοῦ δὲ καὶ πορφύρας εὖ πως πρὸς ἄλληλα μεμειγμένων δι’ ὑφῆς συγκεκροτημένην.

[29] [1] Τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων οἱ μὲν πλεῖστοι διεφθάρησαν ἐν ταῖς λατομίαις ὑπὸ νόσου καὶ διαίτης πονηρᾶς, εἰς ἡμέραν ἑκάστην κοτύλας δύο κριθῶν λαμβάνοντες καὶ μίαν ὕδατος, οὐκ ὀλίγοι δ’ ἐπράθησαν διακλαπέντες ἢ καὶ διαλαθόντες [2] ὡς οἰκέται. καὶ τούτους ὡς οἰκέτας ἐπώλουν στίζοντες ἵππον εἰς τὸ μέτωπον· ἀλλ’ †ἦσαν οἱ καὶ τοῦτο πρὸς τῷ δουλεύειν ὑπομένοντες. ἐβοήθει δὲ τούτοις ἥ τ’ αἰδὼς καὶ τὸ κόσμιον· ἢ γὰρ ἠλευθεροῦντο ταχέως, ἢ τιμώμενοι παρέμενον τοῖς κεκτημένοις. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ δι’ [3] Εὐριπίδην ἐσώθησαν. μάλιστα γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε τῶν ἐκτὸς Ἑλλήνων ἐπόθησαν αὐτοῦ τὴν μοῦσαν οἱ περὶ Σικελίαν, καὶ μικρὰ τῶν ἀφικνουμένων ἑκάστοτε δείγματα καὶ γεύματα κομιζόντων ἐκμανθάνοντες ἀγαπητῶς μετεδίδοσαν [4] ἀλλήλοις. τότε γοῦν φασι τῶν σωθέντων οἴκαδε συχνοὺς ἀσπάζεσθαί τε τὸν Εὐριπίδην φιλοφρόνως, καὶ διηγεῖσθαι τοὺς μὲν ὅτι δουλεύοντες ἀφείθησαν, ἐκδιδάξαντες ὅσα τῶν ἐκείνου ποιημάτων ἐμέμνηντο, τοὺς δ’ ὅτι πλανώμενοι μετὰ τὴν μάχην τροφῆς καὶ ὕδατος μετελάμβανον [5] τῶν μελῶν ᾄσαντες. οὐ δεῖ δὴ θαυμάζειν ὅτι τοὺς Καυνίους φασὶ πλοίου προσφερομένου τοῖς λιμέσιν ὑπὸ λῃστρίδων διωκομένου μὴ δέχεσθαι τὸ πρῶτον, ἀλλ’ ἀπείργειν, εἶτα μέντοι διαπυνθανομένους εἰ γιγνώσκουσιν ᾄσματα τῶν Εὐριπίδου, φησάντων δ’ ἐκείνων, οὕτω παρεῖναι καὶ συγκαταγαγεῖν τὸ πλοῖον.

[30] [1] Ἀθηναίοις δέ φασι τὴν συμφορὰν οὐχ ἥκιστα διὰ τὸν ἄγγελον ἄπιστον γενέσθαι. ξένος γάρ τις ὡς ἔοικεν ἀποβὰς εἰς Πειραιᾶ καὶ καθίσας ἐπὶ κουρεῖον, ὡς ἐγνωκότων ἤδη τῶν Ἀθηναίων λόγους ἐποιεῖτο περὶ τῶν γεγονότων.

[2] ὁ δὲ κουρεὺς ἀκούσας, πρὶν ἄλλους πυνθάνεσθαι, δρόμῳ συντείνας εἰς τὸ ἄστυ καὶ προσβαλὼν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν εὐθὺς κατ’ ἀγορὰν ἐνέβαλε τὸν λόγον. ἐκπλήξεως δὲ καὶ ταραχῆς ὡς εἰκὸς γενομένης, οἱ μὲν ἄρχοντες ἐκκλησίαν [3] συναγαγόντες εἰσήγαγον τὸν ἄνθρωπον· ὡς δ’ ἐρωτώμενος παρ’ οὗ πύθοιτο, σαφὲς οὐδὲν εἶχε φράζειν, δόξας λογοποιὸς εἶναι καὶ ταράττειν τὴν πόλιν, εἰς τὸν τροχὸν καταδεθεὶς ἐστρεβλοῦτο πολὺν χρόνον, ἕως ἐπῆλθον οἱ τὸ πᾶν κακὸν ὡς εἶχεν ἀπαγγέλλοντες. οὕτω μόλις ὁ Νικίας ἐπιστεύθη παθὼν ἃ πολλάκις αὐτοῖς προεῖπεν.

Crassus

[1] [1] Μᾶρκος δὲ Κράσσος ἦν τιμητικοῦ καὶ θριαμβικοῦ πατρός, ἐτράφη δ’ ἐν οἰκίᾳ μικρᾷ μετὰ δυοῖν ἀδελφῶν, [2] καὶ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς αὐτοῦ γυναῖκες ἦσαν ἔτι τῶν γονέων ζώντων, καὶ πάντες ἐπὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἐφοίτων τράπεζαν, ὅθεν οὐχ ἥκιστα δοκεῖ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο σώφρων καὶ μέτριος [3] γενέσθαι περὶ τὴν δίαιταν. ἀποθανόντος δὲ τοῦ ἑτέρου τῶν ἀδελφῶν, τῇ γυναικὶ συνῴκησε καὶ τοὺς παῖδας ἐξ ἐκείνης ἔσχεν, οὐδενὸς ἧττον καὶ περὶ ταῦτα Ῥωμαίων [4] εὔτακτος γενόμενος. καίτοι προϊὼν καθ’ ἡλικίαν αἰτίαν ἔσχε Λικιννίᾳ συνιέναι, τῶν Ἑστιάδων μιᾷ παρθένων, καὶ [5] δίκην ἔφυγεν ἡ Λικιννία Πλωτίου τινὸς διώκοντος. ἦν δὲ προάστειον αὐτῇ καλόν, ὃ βουλόμενος λαβεῖν ὀλίγης τιμῆς ὁ Κράσσος, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο προσκείμενος ἀεὶ τῇ γυναικὶ καὶ θεραπεύων, εἰς τὴν ὑποψίαν ἐκείνην ἐνέπεσε, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τῇ φιλοπλουτίᾳ τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς φθορᾶς ἀπολυσάμενος, ὑπὸ τῶν δικαστῶν ἀφείθη. τὴν δὲ Λικιννίαν οὐκ ἀνῆκε πρότερον ἢ τοῦ κτήματος κρατῆσαι.

[2] [1] Ῥωμαῖοι μὲν οὖν λέγουσι πολλαῖς ἀρεταῖς τοῦ Κράσσου κακίαν μίαν ἐπισκοτῆσαι τὴν φιλοπλουτίαν· ἔοικε δ’ ‹οὐ› μία, πασῶν δ’ ἐρρωμενεστάτη τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ κακιῶν [2] γενομένη, τὰς ἄλλας ἀμαυρῶσαι. τεκμήρια δὲ τῆς φιλοπλουτίας αὐτοῦ μέγιστα ποιοῦνται τόν τε τρόπον τοῦ [3] πορισμοῦ καὶ τῆς οὐσίας τὸ μέγεθος. τριακοσίων γὰρ οὐ πλείω κεκτημένος ἐν ἀρχῇ ταλάντων, εἶτα παρὰ τὴν ὑπατείαν ἀποθύσας μὲν τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ τὴν δεκάτην καὶ τὸν δῆμον ἑστιάσας, τρεῖς δὲ μῆνας ἑκάστῳ Ῥωμαίων σιτηρέσιον ἐκ τῶν αὑτοῦ παρασχών, ὅμως πρὸ τῆς ἐπὶ Πάρθους στρατείας αὐτὸς αὑτῷ θέμενος ἐκλογισμὸν τῆς οὐσίας, εὗρεν ἑκατὸν ταλάντων τίμημα πρὸς ἑπτακισχιλίοις.

[4] τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα τούτων, εἰ δεῖ μετὰ βλασφημίας εἰπεῖν τὸ ἀληθές, ἐκ πυρὸς συνήγαγε καὶ πολέμου, ταῖς κοιναῖς ἀτυχίαις προσόδῳ τῇ μεγίστῃ χρησάμενος. ὅτε γὰρ Σύλλας ἑλὼν τὴν πόλιν ἐπώλει τὰς οὐσίας τῶν ἀνῃρημένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, λάφυρα καὶ νομίζων καὶ ὀνομάζων, καὶ βουλόμενος ὅτι πλείστοις καὶ κρατίστοις προσομόρξασθαι [5] τὸ ἄγος, οὔτε λαμβάνων οὔτ’ ὠνούμενος ἀπεῖπε. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ὁρῶν τὰς συγγενεῖς καὶ συνοίκους τῆς Ῥώμης κῆρας ἐμπρησμοὺς καὶ συνιζήσεις διὰ βάρος καὶ πλῆθος οἰκοδομημάτων, ἐωνεῖτο δούλους ἀρχιτέκτονας καὶ οἰκοδόμους. εἶτ’ ἔχων τούτους, ὑπὲρ πεντακοσίους ὄντας, ἐξηγόραζε τὰ καιόμενα καὶ γειτνιῶντα τοῖς καιομένοις, διὰ φόβον καὶ ἀδηλότητα τῶν δεσποτῶν ἀπ’ ὀλίγης τιμῆς προϊεμένων, ὥστε τῆς Ῥώμης τὸ πλεῖστον μέρος ὑπ’ [6] αὐτῷ γενέσθαι. τοσούτους δὲ κεκτημένος τεχνίτας, οὐδὲν ᾠκοδόμησεν αὐτὸς ἢ τὴν ἰδίαν οἰκίαν, ἀλλ’ ἔλεγε τοὺς φιλοικοδόμους αὐτοὺς ὑφ’ ἑαυτῶν καταλύεσθαι χωρὶς [7] ἀνταγωνιστῶν. ὄντων δ’ αὐτῷ παμπόλλων ἀργυρείων, πολυτιμήτου δὲ χώρας καὶ τῶν ἐργαζομένων ἐν αὐτῇ, ὅμως ἄν τις ἡγήσαιτο μηδὲν εἶναι ταῦτα πάντα πρὸς τὴν τῶν οἰκετῶν τιμήν· τοσούτους ἐκέκτητο καὶ τοιούτους, ἀναγνώστας, ὑπογραφεῖς, ἀργυρογνώμονας, διοικητάς, τραπεζοκόμους, αὐτὸς ἐπιστατῶν μανθάνουσι καὶ προσέχων καὶ διδάσκων, καὶ ὅλως νομίζων τῷ δεσπότῃ προσήκειν μάλιστα τὴν περὶ τοὺς οἰκέτας ἐπιμέλειαν, ὡς [8] ὄργανα ἔμψυχα τῆς οἰκονομικῆς. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ὀρθῶς ὁ Κράσσος, εἴπερ ὡς ἔλεγεν ἡγεῖτο τὰ μὲν ἄλλα διὰ τῶν οἰκετῶν χρῆναι, τοὺς δ’ οἰκέτας δι’ αὑτοῦ κυβερνᾶν· τὴν γὰρ οἰκονομικήν, ἐν ἀψύχοις χρηματιστικὴν οὖσαν, ἐν ἀνθρώποις [9] πολιτικὴν καὶ βασιλικὴν γιγνομένην ὁρῶμεν· ἐκεῖνο δ’ οὐκ εὖ, τὸ μηδένα νομίζειν μηδὲ φάσκειν εἶναι πλούσιον, ὃς μὴ δύναται τρέφειν ἀπὸ τῆς οὐσίας στρατόπεδον - ὁ γὰρ πόλεμος οὐ τεταγμένα σιτεῖται κατὰ τὸν Ἀρχίδαμον, ὥσθ’ ὁ πρὸς πόλεμον πλοῦτος ἀόριστος - καὶ πολὺ [10] τῆς Μανίου γνώμης ἀπηρτημένως. ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ἐπεὶ κατ’ ἄνδρα νείμας ἑκάστῳ δέκα καὶ τέσσαρα πλέθρα γῆς ἑώρα πλέον ἐπιζητοῦντας, μηδείς ἔφη γένοιτο Ῥωμαίων ὀλίγην ἡγούμενος γῆν τὴν τρέφειν ἀρκοῦσαν.

[3] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ ξένους ἦν φιλότιμος ὁ Κράσσος· ἀνέῳκτο γὰρ ἡ οἰκία πᾶσι, καὶ τοῖς φίλοις ἐδάνειζεν ἄνευ τόκων, ἀπῄτει δ’ ἀποτόμως τοῦ χρόνου παρελθόντος εἰς ὃν ἐδάνειζε, καὶ τὸ προῖκα πολλῶν ἐγίνετο τόκων ἐπαχθέστερον.

[2] ἐν δὲ τοῖς δείπνοις ἡ μὲν κλῆσις ἦν ὡς τὰ πολλὰ δημοτικὴ καὶ λαώδης, ἡ δ’ εὐτέλεια τὴν καθαριότητα [3] καὶ φιλοφροσύνην ἡδίονα τοῦ πολυτελοῦς εἶχε. παιδείας δὲ τῆς περὶ λόγον μάλιστα μὲν τὸ ῥητορικὸν καὶ χρειῶδες εἰς ‹τοὺς› πολλοὺς ἤσκησε, καὶ γενόμενος δεινὸς εἰπεῖν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα Ῥωμαίων, ἐπιμελείᾳ καὶ πόνῳ τοὺς εὐφυεστάτους [4] ὑπερέβαλεν. οὐδεμίαν γὰρ οὕτω δίκην φασὶ μικρὰν οὐδ’ εὐκαταφρόνητον γενέσθαι πρὸς ἣν ἀπαράσκευος ἦλθεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Πομπηίου πολλάκις ὀκνοῦντος καὶ Καίσαρος ἐξαναστῆναι καὶ Κικέρωνος, ἐκεῖνος ἀνεπλήρου τὴν συνηγορίαν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μᾶλλον ἤρεσκεν [5] ὡς ἐπιμελὴς καὶ βοηθητικός. ἤρεσκε δὲ καὶ τὸ περὶ τὰς δεξιώσεις καὶ προσαγορεύσεις φιλάνθρωπον αὐτοῦ καὶ δημοτικόν. οὐδενὶ γὰρ οὕτως ἀπήντησε Ῥωμαίων ἀδόξῳ καὶ ταπεινῷ Κράσσος, ὃν ἀσπασάμενον οὐκ ἀντιπροσηγόρευσεν [6] ἐξ ὀνόματος. λέγεται δὲ καὶ πολυμαθὴς καθ’ ἱστορίαν γενέσθαι καί τι καὶ φιλοσοφῆσαι, τοῖς Ἀριστοτέλους λόγοις προσθέμενος, ὧν διδάσκαλον εἶχεν Ἀλέξανδρον, ἄνθρωπον εὐκολίας καὶ πρᾳότητος ἀπόδειξιν διδόντα [7] τὴν πρὸς Κράσσον συνήθειαν. οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἀποφήνασθαι ῥᾳδίως, πότερον προσῆλθεν αὐτῷ πενέστερος ἢ προσελθὼν ἐγένετο. μόνος δ’ οὖν ἀεὶ τῶν φίλων αὐτῷ συναποδημῶν, στέγαστρον ἐλάμβανεν εἰς τὴν ὁδόν, καὶ τοῦτ’ [8] ἐπανελθὼν ἀπῃτεῖτο. [φεῦ τῆς ὑπομονῆς, οὐδὲ τὴν πενίαν ὁ τλήμων ἀδιάφορον ἡγούμενος.] ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὕστερον.

[4] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Κίννας καὶ Μάριος κρατήσαντες εὐθὺς ἦσαν ἔνδηλοι κατιόντες οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ τῆς πατρίδος, ἐπ’ ἀναιρέσει δ’ ἄντικρυς καὶ ὀλέθρῳ τῶν ἀρίστων, οἱ μὲν ἐγκαταληφθέντες ἀπέθνῃσκον, ὧν ἦν καὶ ὁ πατὴρ Κράσσου καὶ ὁ ἀδελφός, αὐτὸς δὲ νέος ὢν παντάπασι τὸ μὲν αὐτίκα δεινὸν ἐξέφυγε, πάντῃ δὲ περιβαλλόμενον ἑαυτὸν αἰσθανόμενος καὶ κυνηγετούμενον ὑπὸ τῶν τυράννων, τρεῖς φίλους ἀναλαβὼν καὶ θεράποντας δέκα, τάχει δ’ ὑπερβάλλοντι χρησάμενος, εἰς Ἰβηρίαν ἔφυγε, γεγονὼς πάλαι στρατηγοῦντος αὐτόθι τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ φίλους πεποιημένος.

[2] εὑρὼν δὲ πάντας περιδεεῖς καὶ τὴν ὠμότητα τοῦ Μαρίου καθάπερ ἐφεστῶτος αὐτοῖς τρέμοντας, οὐδενὶ γενέσθαι φανερὸς ἐθάρρησεν, ἀλλ’ ἐμβαλὼν εἰς ἀγροὺς παραλίους Οὐιβίου Πακιανοῦ σπήλαιον ἔχοντας εὐμέγεθες [3] ἀπέκρυψεν ἑαυτόν. πρὸς δὲ τὸν Οὐίβιον ἔπεμψεν ἕνα δοῦλον ἀποπειρώμενος, ἤδη καὶ τῶν ἐφοδίων ὑπολιπόντων.

[4] ὁ δ’ Οὐίβιος ἀκούσας ἥσθη τε σῳζομένῳ, καὶ πυθόμενος τὸ πλῆθος τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ καὶ τὸν τόπον, αὐτὸς μὲν οὐκ ἦλθεν εἰς ὄψιν, τὸν δὲ τῶν χωρίων ἐπίτροπον προσαγαγὼν ἐγγὺς ἐκέλευσε καθ’ ἡμέραν δεῖπνον πεποιημένον κομίζειν, καὶ θέντα παρὰ τὴν πέτραν ἀπέρχεσθαι σιωπῇ καὶ μὴ πολυπραγμονεῖν μηδ’ ἐξετάζειν, προειπὼν πολυπραγμονοῦντι θάνατον, συμπράττοντι δὲ τοῦτο πιστῶς ἐλευθερίαν.

[5] τὸ δὲ σπήλαιον οὐκ ἄπωθεν μέν ἐστι θαλάσσης, κρημνοὶ δ’ αὐτῷ συμπεριφερόμενοι λεπτὴν καὶ ἀσαφῆ παραπέμπουσι λαύραν ἀνάγουσαν εἴσω, παρελθόντι δ’ ὕψος τε θαυμαστὸν ἀναπέπταται, καὶ κατ’ εὖρος ἔχει κόλπους δι’ ἀλλήλων ἀνοιγομένους μεγάλαις περιφερείαις.

[6] ἀμοιρεῖ δ’ οὔθ’ ὕδατος οὔτε φωτός, ἀλλὰ πηγὴ μὲν ἡδίστου νάματος ὑπορρεῖ παρὰ τὸν κρημνόν, αὐτοφυεῖς δὲ ῥωχμοὶ τῆς πέτρας ᾗ μάλιστα περιπίπτει τὸ φῶς ἔξωθεν ὑπολαμβάνουσι, [7] καὶ καταλάμπεται δι’ ἡμέρας τὸ χωρίον. ὁ δ’ ἐντὸς ἀὴρ ἀστάλακτος καὶ καθαρός, πυκνότητι τῆς πέτρας τὸ νοτερὸν καὶ ἀποτηκόμενον εἰς τὴν πηγὴν ἐκπιεζούσης.

[5] [1] Ἐνταῦθα διατρίβοντι τῷ Κράσσῳ τὰ ἐπιτήδεια καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐφοίτα κομίζων ὁ ἄνθρωπος, αὐτὸς μὲν οὐχ ὁρῶν ἐκείνους οὐδὲ γινώσκων, ὑπ’ ἐκείνων δὲ καθορώμενος, [2] εἰδότων καὶ παραφυλαττόντων τὸν καιρόν. ἦν δ’ ἄφθονα καὶ πρὸς ἡδονήν, οὐ μόνον χρείαν, ποιούμενα τὰ πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον. ἐγνώκει γὰρ ὁ Οὐίβιος ἁπάσῃ φιλοφροσύνῃ θεραπεύειν τὸν Κράσσον, ᾧ γε καὶ τὸ τῆς ὥρας ἐν νῷ λαβεῖν ἐπῆλθεν, ὡς παντάπασι νεανίας εἴη καί τι καὶ ταῖς καθ’ ἡλικίαν ἡδοναῖς αὐτοῦ χαριστέον, ἐπεὶ τήν γε χρείαν ἀναγκαίως [3] μᾶλλον ἢ προθύμως ὑπουργοῦντος εἶναι. δύο δὴ θεραπαινίδας εὐπρεπεῖς ἀναλαβὼν ἐβάδιζε παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν. ὡς δ’ ἦλθεν ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον, δείξας τὴν ἄνοδον ἐκέλευσεν [4] εἴσω πορεύεσθαι καὶ θαρρεῖν. οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Κράσσον ἰδόντες προσερχομένας, ἔδεισαν μὴ καταφανὲς πολλοῖς καὶ γνώριμον εἴη τὸ χωρίον· ἀνέκρινον οὖν αὐτάς, τί [5] βούλονται καὶ τίνες εἰσίν. ὡς δ’ ἀπεκρίναντο δεδιδαγμέναι, δεσπότην ζητεῖν ἐνταῦθα κρυπτόμενον, μαθὼν ὁ Κράσσος τοῦ Οὐιβίου τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν παιδιὰν καὶ φιλοφροσύνην, ἀνέλαβε τὰς παιδίσκας, καὶ συνῆσαν αὐτῷ τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον, ὧν ἐδεῖτο φράζουσαι καὶ διαγγέλλουσαι πρὸς [6] τὸν Οὐίβιον. τούτων φησὶ τὴν ἑτέραν ἤδη πρεσβῦτιν οὖσαν ὁ Φενεστέλλας (HRR II 82) ἰδεῖν αὐτός, καὶ πολλάκις ἀκοῦσαι μεμνημένης ταῦτα καὶ διεξιούσης προθύμως.

[6] [1] Ὁ δὲ Κράσσος ὀκτὼ μῆνας οὕτω διαγαγὼν καὶ διακλαπείς, ἅμα τῷ πυθέσθαι τὴν Κίννα τελευτὴν φανερὸς γενόμενος, συνδραμόντων πρὸς αὐτὸν οὐκ ὀλίγων ἀνθρώπων, ἐπιλεξάμενος δισχιλίους καὶ πεντακοσίους, ἐπήρχετο τὰς πόλεις, καὶ μίαν γε διήρπασε Μαλάκην, ὡς πολλοὶ γεγράφασιν, αὐτὸν δέ φασιν ἀρνεῖσθαι καὶ διαμάχεσθαι [2] πρὸς τοὺς λέγοντας. ἐκ τούτου συναγαγὼν πλοῖα καὶ διαπεράσας εἰς Λιβύην, ἀφίκετο πρὸς Μέτελλον Πίον, ἔνδοξον ἄνδρα, συνειλοχότα στρατιὰν οὐκ εὐκαταφρόνητον. οὐ πολὺν δὲ χρόνον ἐνταῦθα παρέμεινεν, ἀλλὰ στασιάσας τῷ Μετέλλῳ, πρὸς Σύλλαν ἀπῆρε καὶ συνῆν ἐν [3] τοῖς μάλιστα τιμώμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ διαβὰς εἰς Ἰταλίαν ὁ Σύλλας πάντας ἐβούλετο τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ νέους ἔχειν συνεργούς, καὶ πρὸς ἄλλην ἄλλον ἔταττε πρᾶξιν, ἀποστελλόμενος εἰς Μαρσοὺς ἐπὶ στρατιὰν ὁ Κράσσος, ᾔτει φύλακας· [4] ἡ γὰρ πάροδος ἦν παρὰ τοὺς πολεμίους. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα σὺν ὀργῇ καὶ σφοδρῶς πρὸς αὐτόν· δίδωμί σοι φύλακας τὸν πατέρα, τὸν ἀδελφόν, τοὺς φίλους, τοὺς συγγενεῖς, ὧν παρανόμως καὶ ἀδίκως ἀναιρεθέντων ἐγὼ μετέρχομαι τοὺς φονεῖς, οὕτω παθών τι καὶ παροξυνθεὶς ὁ Κράσσος εὐθὺς ἐξῆλθε, καὶ διὰ τῶν πολεμίων ὠσάμενος εὐρώστως, δύναμίν τε συχνὴν ἤθροισε, καὶ πρόθυμον [5] αὑτὸν ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι τῷ Σύλλᾳ παρεῖχεν. ἀπ’ ἐκείνων δὲ τῶν πράξεων λέγουσιν αὐτῷ πρῶτον ἐγγενέσθαι τὴν πρὸς Πομπήιον ὑπὲρ δόξης ἅμιλλαν καὶ φιλοτιμίαν. ὁ γὰρ Πομπήιος, ἡλικίᾳ τε λειπόμενος αὐτοῦ, καὶ πατρὸς γεγονὼς ἀδοξήσαντος ἐν Ῥώμῃ καὶ μισηθέντος ἔσχατον μῖσος ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν, ἐν ἐκείνοις τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐξέλαμψε καὶ διεφάνη μέγας, ὥστε Σύλλαν, ἃ πρεσβυτέροις καὶ ἰσοτίμοις οὐ πάνυ πολλάκις παρεῖχεν, ὑπεξανίστασθαι προσιόντος αὐτοῦ καὶ κεφαλὴν ἀποκαλύπτεσθαι καὶ προσειπεῖν [6] αὐτοκράτορα. ταῦτα διέκαιε καὶ παρώξυνε τὸν Κράσσον, οὐκ ἀλόγως ἐλασσούμενον. ἐμπειρίᾳ τε γὰρ ἐνδεὴς ἦν, καὶ τῶν πράξεων αὐτοῦ τὴν χάριν ἀφῄρουν αἱ συγγενεῖς κῆρες ἐπιφερόμεναι, φιλοκέρδεια καὶ μικρολογία. καὶ γὰρ πόλιν Ὀμβρικὴν Τουδερτίαν ἑλών, ἔδοξε τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν χρημάτων σφετερίσασθαι, καὶ διεβλήθη [7] πρὸς Σύλλαν. ἀλλ’ ἔν γε τῷ περὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ἀγῶνι, πάντων γενομένῳ μεγίστῳ καὶ τελευταίῳ, Σύλλας μὲν ἡττήθη, τῶν κατ’ αὐτὸν ὠσθέντων καὶ συντριβέντων, Κράσσος δὲ τὸ δεξιὸν κέρας ἔχων ἐνίκησε, καὶ μέχρι νυκτὸς διώξας τοὺς πολεμίους, ἔπεμψε πρὸς Σύλλαν, δεῖπνον αἰτῶν τοῖς [8] στρατιώταις καὶ τὸ κατόρθωμα φράζων. ἐν δὲ ταῖς προγραφαῖς καὶ δημεύσεσι πάλιν κακῶς ἤκουσεν, ὠνούμενός τε τιμῆς βραχείας μεγάλα πράγματα καὶ δωρεὰς αἰτῶν. ἐν δὲ Βρεττίοις λέγεται καὶ προγράψαι τινὰς οὐ Σύλλα κελεύσαντος, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ χρηματισμῷ, δι’ ὃ καὶ Σύλλαν [9] καταγνόντα πρὸς μηδὲν ἔτι χρῆσθαι δημόσιον αὐτῷ. καίτοι δεινότατος ἦν Κράσσος πάντας ἀνθρώπους κολακείᾳ κατεργάσασθαι, πάλιν δ’ αὐτὸς ὑπὸ πάντων διὰ κολακείας εὐάλωτος. ἴδιον δὲ κἀκεῖνο περὶ αὐτοῦ λέγεται, φιλοκερδέστατον ὄντα μάλιστα μισεῖν καὶ λοιδορεῖν τοὺς ὁμοίους.

[7] [1] Ἠνία δὲ Πομπήιος αὐτόν, εὐημερῶν ἐν ἡγεμονίαις, καὶ πρὶν ἢ βουλῆς μεταλαβεῖν θριαμβεύων, καὶ Μᾶγνος, ὅπερ ἐστὶ μέγας, ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν ἀναγορευθείς. καί ποτε καὶ φήσαντός τινος, ὡς Πομπήιος Μᾶγνος πρόσεισι, γελάσας [2] ἠρώτησεν ὡς πηλίκος. ἀπογνοὺς δὲ τοῖς πολεμικοῖς ἐξισώσασθαι πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, ὑπεδύετο τὴν πολιτείαν, σπουδαῖς καὶ συνηγορίαις καὶ δανεισμοῖς καὶ τῷ συμπαραγγέλλειν καὶ συνεξετάζεσθαι τοῖς δεομένοις τι τοῦ δήμου κτώμενος δύναμιν ἀντίπαλον καὶ δόξαν, ᾗ Πομπήιος εἶχεν [3] ἀπὸ πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων στρατειῶν. καὶ πρᾶγμα συνέβαινεν αὐτοῖς ἴδιον. μεῖζον γὰρ ἀπόντος ἦν ὄνομα τοῦ Πομπηίου καὶ κράτος ἐν τῇ πόλει διὰ τὰς στρατείας, παρὼν δὲ πολλάκις ἠλαττοῦτο τοῦ Κράσσου, διὰ τὸν ὄγκον καὶ τὸ πρόσχημα τοῦ βίου φεύγων τὰ πλήθη, καὶ ἀναδυόμενος ἐξ ἀγορᾶς, καὶ τῶν δεομένων ὀλίγοις καὶ μὴ πάνυ προθύμως βοηθῶν, ὡς ἀκμαιοτέραν ἔχοι τὴν δύναμιν [4] ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ χρώμενος. ὁ δὲ Κράσσος ἐνδελεχέστερον τὸ χρήσιμον ἔχων, καὶ σπάνιος οὐκ ὢν οὐδὲ δυσπρόσοδος, ἀλλ’ ἐν μέσαις ἀεὶ ταῖς σπουδαῖς ἀναστρεφόμενος, τῷ κοινῷ καὶ φιλανθρώπῳ περιεγίνετο τῆς ἐκείνου σεμνότητος. σώματος δ’ ἀξίωμα καὶ λόγου πειθὼ καὶ προσώπου χάριν [5] ἀγωγὸν ἀμφοτέροις ὁμοίως προσεῖναι λέγουσιν. οὐ μέντοι πρὸς ἔχθραν τινὰ τὸν Κράσσον ἢ κακόνοιαν ἐξήνεγκεν οὗτος ὁ ζῆλος, ἀλλὰ καὶ Πομπηίῳ καὶ Καίσαρι τιμωμένοις μὲν ὑπὲρ αὐτὸν ἤχθετο, τῇ δὲ φιλοτιμίᾳ ταύτῃ δυσμένειαν καὶ κακοήθειαν οὐ συνῆπτε· καίτοι Καῖσαρ ὑπὸ λῃστῶν ἁλοὺς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ καὶ φρουρούμενος ἀνεβόησεν· ἡλίκης ὦ Κράσσε χαρᾶς ἀπολαύσεις πυθόμενος τὴν [6] ἐμὴν ἅλωσιν. ἀλλ’ ὕστερόν γε καὶ φιλικῶς ἀλλήλοις προσεφέροντο, καί ποτε τῷ Καίσαρι, μέλλοντι μὲν εἰς Ἰβηρίαν ἐξιέναι στρατηγῷ, χρήματα δ’ οὐκ ἔχοντι τῶν δανειστῶν ἐπιπεσόντων καὶ τῆς παρασκευῆς ἐπιλαμβανομένων, ὁ Κράσσος οὐ περιεῖδεν, ἀλλ’ ἀπήλλαξεν, ὑποθεὶς ἑαυτὸν ἔγγυον τριάκοντα καὶ ὀκτακοσίων ταλάντων.

[7] καθόλου δὲ τῆς Ῥώμης εἰς τρεῖς νενεμημένης δυνάμεις, τὴν Πομπηίου, τὴν Καίσαρος, τὴν Κράσσου - Κάτωνος γὰρ ἡ δόξα μείζων ἦν τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ τὸ θαυμαζόμενον πλέον ‹ἢ τὸ› ἰσχῦον - , ἡ μὲν ἔμφρων καὶ καθεστῶσα μερὶς ἐν τῇ πόλει Πομπήιον ἐθεράπευε, τὸ δ’ ὀξὺ καὶ φερόμενον μετ’ εὐχερείας ταῖς Καίσαρος ἐλπίσιν ἐπηκολούθει, Κράσσος δὲ μέσος ὢν ἀμφοτέραις ἐχρῆτο, καὶ πλείστας μεταβολὰς ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ μεταβαλλόμενος, οὔτε φίλος ἦν βέβαιος οὔτ’ ἀνήκεστος ἐχθρός, ἀλλὰ ῥᾳδίως καὶ χάριτος καὶ ὀργῆς ἐξέπιπτεν ὑπὸ τοῦ συμφέροντος, ὥστε πολλάκις μὲν ἀνθρώπων, πολλάκις δὲ νόμων ἐν ὀλίγῳ [8] φανῆναι τῶν αὐτῶν συνήγορος καὶ ἀντίδικος. ἴσχυε δὲ καὶ χάριτι καὶ φόβῳ, φόβῳ δ’ οὐκ ἔλαττον. ὁ γοῦν πλεῖστα πράγματα παρασχὼν τοῖς καθ’ αὑτὸν ἄρχουσι [καὶ] δημαγωγός, Σικίννιος, πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα, τί δὴ μόνον οὐ σπαράσσει τὸν Κράσσον, ἀλλὰ παρίησιν, ἀπεκρίνατο χόρτον αὐτὸν ἔχειν ἐπὶ τοῦ κέρατος. εἰώθεισαν δ’ οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι τοὺς κυρίττοντας τῶν βοῶν ὑπὲρ τοῦ φυλάττεσθαι τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας χόρτῳ περιελίττειν τὸ κέρας.

[8] [1] Ἡ δὲ τῶν μονομάχων ἐπανάστασις καὶ λεηλασία τῆς Ἰταλίας, ἣν οἱ πολλοὶ Σπαρτάκειον πόλεμον ὀνομάζουσιν, [2] ἀρχὴν ἔλαβεν ἐκ τοιαύτης αἰτίας. Λέντλου τινὸς Βατιάτου μονομάχους ἐν Καπύῃ τρέφοντος, ὧν οἱ πολλοὶ Γαλάται καὶ Θρᾷκες ἦσαν, ἐξ αἰτιῶν οὐ πονηρῶν, ἀλλ’ ἀδικίᾳ τοῦ πριαμένου συνειρχθέντες ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ἐπὶ τῷ μονομαχεῖν, ἐβουλεύσαντο μὲν διακόσιοι φεύγειν, γενομένης δὲ μηνύσεως οἱ προαισθόμενοι καὶ φθάσαντες ὀγδοήκοντα δυεῖν δέοντες ἔκ τινος ὀπτανείου κοπίδας ἀράμενοι καὶ [3] ὀβελίσκους ἐξεπήδησαν. ἐντυχόντες δὲ κατὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἁμάξαις ὅπλα κομιζούσαις μονομάχων εἰς ἑτέραν πόλιν, ἀφήρπασαν καὶ ὡπλίσαντο, καὶ τόπον τινὰ καρτερὸν καταλαβόντες, ἡγεμόνας εἵλοντο τρεῖς, ὧν πρῶτος ἦν Σπάρτακος, ἀνὴρ Θρᾷξ τοῦ Μαιδικοῦ γένους, οὐ μόνον φρόνημα μέγα καὶ ῥώμην ἔχων, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνέσει καὶ πρᾳότητι τῆς τύχης ἀμείνων καὶ τοῦ γένους ἑλληνικώτερος.

[4] τούτῳ δὲ λέγουσιν, ὅτε πρῶτον εἰς Ῥώμην ὤνιος ἤχθη, δράκοντα κοιμωμένῳ περιπεπλεγμένον φανῆναι περὶ τὸ πρόσωπον, [ἡ] γυνὴ δ’ ὁμόφυλος οὖσα τοῦ Σπαρτάκου, μαντικὴ δὲ καὶ κάτοχος τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμοῖς, ἔφραζε τὸ σημεῖον εἶναι μεγάλης καὶ φοβερᾶς περὶ αὐτὸν εἰς ἀτυχὲς τέλος ἐσομένης δυνάμεως· ἣ καὶ τότε συνῆν αὐτῷ καὶ συνέφευγε.

[9] [1] Καὶ πρῶτον μὲν τοὺς ἐκ Καπύης ἐλθόντας ὠσάμενοι, καὶ πολλῶν ὅπλων ἐπιλαβόμενοι πολεμιστηρίων, ἄσμενοι ταῦτα μετελάμβανον, ἀπορρίψαντες ὡς ἄτιμα [2] καὶ βάρβαρα τὰ τῶν μονομάχων. ἔπειτα Κλωδίου στρατηγοῦ μετὰ τρισχιλίων πεμφθέντος ἐκ Ῥώμης καὶ πολιορκοῦντος αὐτοὺς ἐν ὄρει μίαν ἔχοντι χαλεπὴν καὶ στενὴν κάθοδον, ἣν ὁ Κλώδιος ἐφρούρει, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα κρημνοὺς ἀποτόμους καὶ λισσάδας, ἄμπελον δὲ πολλὴν ἀγρίαν ἐπιπολῆς πεφυκυῖαν, ἔτεμνον τῶν κλημάτων τὰ χρήσιμα, καὶ συμπλέκοντες ἐξ αὐτῶν κλιμακίδας εὐτόνους καὶ βαθείας, ὥστ’ ἄνωθεν ἀνηρτημένας παρὰ τὸ κρημνῶδες ἅπτεσθαι τῶν ἐπιπέδων, κατέβαινον ἀσφαλῶς δι’ αὐτῶν [3] πλὴν ἑνός. οὗτος δὲ τῶν ὅπλων ἕνεκα μείνας, ἐπεὶ κατέβησαν ἠφίει κάτω τὰ ὅπλα, καὶ βαλὼν ἅπαντα τελευταῖος ἀπεσῴζετο καὶ αὐτός. ταῦτ’ ἠγνόουν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι· διὸ καὶ περιελθόντες αὐτοὺς ἐξέπληξαν τῷ αἰφνιδίῳ, καὶ φυγῆς [4] γενομένης ἔλαβον τὸ στρατόπεδον. καὶ προσεγίνοντο πολλοὶ τῶν αὐτόθι βοτήρων καὶ ποιμένων αὐτοῖς, πλῆκται καὶ ποδώκεις ἄνδρες, ὧν τοὺς μὲν ὥπλιζον, τοῖς δὲ προδρόμοις [5] καὶ ψιλοῖς ἐχρῶντο. δεύτερος ἐκπέμπεται πρὸς αὐτοὺς στρατηγὸς Πούπλιος Βαρῖνος, οὗ πρῶτον μὲν ὑποστράτηγόν τινα Φούριον ἔχοντα τρισχιλίους στρατιώτας ἐτρέψαντο συμβαλόντες, ἔπειτα σύμβουλον αὐτῷ καὶ συνάρχοντα Κοσσίνιον ἀποσταλέντα μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως ἐπιτηρήσας ὁ Σπάρτακος λουόμενον περὶ Σαλίνας μικρὸν ἐδέησε [6] συναρπάσαι. χαλεπῶς δὲ καὶ μόλις ἐκφυγόντος, εὐθὺς μὲν ἐκράτησε τῆς ἀποσκευῆς, ἐκ ποδὸς δὲ κατέχων καὶ διώκων [7] φόνῳ πολλῷ τὸ στρατόπεδον εἷλεν. ἔπεσε δὲ καὶ Κοσσίνιος. αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν στρατηγὸν ἄλλαις μάχαις πολλαῖς καταγωνισάμενος, τέλος δὲ τούς τε ῥαβδούχους καὶ τὸν ἵππον αὐτοῦ λαβὼν αἰχμάλωτον, ἦν μὲν ἤδη μέγας καὶ φοβερός, ἐφρόνει δὲ τὰ εἰκότα, καὶ μὴ προσδοκῶν ὑπερβαλέσθαι τὴν Ῥωμαίων δύναμιν, ἦγεν ἐπὶ τὰς Ἄλπεις τὸν στρατόν, οἰόμενος δεῖν ὑπερβαλόντας αὐτὰς ἐπὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα χωρεῖν, τοὺς μὲν εἰς Θρᾴκην, τοὺς δ’ εἰς Γαλατίαν.

[8] οἱ δὲ πλήθει τ’ ὄντες ἰσχυροὶ καὶ μέγα φρονοῦντες, οὐχ ὑπήκουον, ἀλλ’ ἐπόρθουν ἐπιπορευόμενοι τὴν Ἰταλίαν. οὐκέτ’ οὖν τὸ παρ’ ἀξίαν καὶ τὸ αἰσχρὸν ἠνώχλει τῆς ἀποστάσεως τὴν σύγκλητον, ἀλλ’ ἤδη διὰ φόβον καὶ κίνδυνον ὡς πρὸς ἕνα τῶν δυσκολωτάτων πολέμων καὶ μεγίστων [9] ἅμ’ ἀμφοτέρους ἐξέπεμπον τοὺς ὑπάτους. ὧν Γέλλιος μὲν τὸ Γερμανικόν, ὕβρει καὶ φρονήματι τῶν Σπαρτακείων ἀποσχισθέν, ἐξαίφνης ἐπιπεσὼν ἅπαν διέφθειρε, Λέντλου δὲ τὸν Σπάρτακον μεγάλοις στρατοπέδοις περιβαλόντος, ὁρμήσας ὁμόσε καὶ μάχην συνάψας, ἐκράτησε μὲν τῶν πρεσβευτῶν, ἔλαβε δὲ τὴν ἀποσκευὴν ἅπασαν.

[10] ὠθουμένῳ δ’ αὐτῷ πρὸς τὰς Ἄλπεις Κάσσιος ὁ τῆς περὶ Πάδον Γαλατίας στρατηγὸς ἔχων μυρίους ἀπήντησε, καὶ γενομένης μάχης κρατηθεὶς καὶ πολλοὺς ἀποβαλών, μόλις αὐτὸς ἐξέφυγε.

[10] [1] Ταῦθ’ ἡ βουλὴ πυθομένη, τοὺς μὲν ὑπάτους πρὸς ὀργὴν ἐκέλευσεν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, Κράσσον δὲ τοῦ πολέμου στρατηγὸν εἵλετο, καὶ πολλοὶ διὰ δόξαν αὐτῷ καὶ φιλίαν [2] συνεστράτευον τῶν ἐπιφανῶν. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ὑπέμεινε πρὸ τῆς Πικηνίδος, ὡς τὸν Σπάρτακον ἐκεῖ φερόμενον δεξόμενος, Μόμμιον δὲ πρεσβευτὴν ἄγοντα δύο τάγματα κύκλῳ περιέπεμψεν, ἕπεσθαι κελεύσας τοῖς πολεμίοις, [3] μὴ συμπλέκεσθαι δὲ μηδ’ ἁψιμαχεῖν. ὁ δ’ ἅμα τῷ πρῶτον ἐπ’ ἐλπίδος γενέσθαι μάχην θέμενος, ἡττήθη, καὶ πολλοὶ μὲν ἔπεσον, πολλοὶ δ’ ἄνευ τῶν ὅπλων φεύγοντες ἐσώθησαν.

[4] ὁ δὲ Κράσσος αὐτόν τε τὸν Μόμμιον ἐδέξατο τραχέως, καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ὁπλίζων αὖθις, ἐγγυητὰς ᾔτει τῶν ὅπλων ὅτι φυλάξουσι, πεντακοσίους δὲ τοὺς πρώτους καὶ μάλιστα [τοὺς] τρέσαντας εἰς πεντήκοντα διανείμας δεκάδας, ἀφ’ ἑκάστης ἀπέκτεινεν ἕνα τὸν κλήρῳ λαχόντα, πάτριόν τι τοῦτο διὰ πολλῶν χρόνων κόλασμα τοῖς στρατιώταις [5] ἐπαγαγών. καὶ γὰρ αἰσχύνη τοῦ θανάτου τῷ τρόπῳ πρόσεστι, καὶ δρᾶται πολλὰ φρικώδη καὶ σκυθρωπὰ περὶ τὴν κόλασιν, ἁπάντων θεωμένων. οὕτω δ’ ἐπιστρέψας [6] τοὺς ἄνδρας ἦγεν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους. ὁ δὲ Σπάρτακος ὑπεξεχώρει διὰ Λευκανίας πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν. ἐν δὲ τῷ πορθμῷ λῃστρίσι Κιλίσσαις περιτυχών, ὥρμησεν ἅψασθαι Σικελίας καὶ δισχιλίους ἄνδρας ἐμβαλὼν εἰς τὴν νῆσον αὖθις ἐκζωπυρῆσαι τὸν δουλικὸν ἐκεῖ πόλεμον, οὔπω πολὺν χρόνον ἀπεσβηκότα καὶ μικρῶν πάλιν ὑπεκκαυμάτων [7] δεόμενον. ὁμολογήσαντες δ’ οἱ Κίλικες αὐτῷ καὶ δῶρα λαβόντες, ἐξηπάτησαν καὶ ἀπέπλευσαν. οὕτω δὴ πάλιν ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ἀναζεύξας, ἐκάθισε τὸν στρατὸν εἰς τὴν Ῥηγίνων χερρόνησον. ἐπελθὼν δ’ ὁ Κράσσος καὶ τοῦ τόπου τὴν φύσιν ἰδὼν ὑφηγουμένην τὸ δέον, ὥρμησεν ἀποτειχίσαι τὸν ἰσθμόν, ἅμα καὶ τὴν σχολὴν τῶν στρατιωτῶν [8] ὑφαιρῶν καὶ τὴν εὐπορίαν τῶν πολεμίων. μέγα μὲν οὖν ἦν καὶ χαλεπὸν τὸ ἔργον, ἤνυσε δὲ καὶ κατειργάσατο παρὰ δόξαν ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ, τάφρον ἐμβαλὼν ἐκ θαλάσσης εἰς θάλασσαν διὰ τοῦ αὐχένος σταδίων τριακοσίων, εὖρος δὲ καὶ βάθος ἴσον πεντεκαίδεκα ποδῶν· ὑπὲρ δὲ τῆς τάφρου τεῖχος ἔστησεν ὕψει καὶ ῥώμῃ θαυμαστόν.

[9] ὧν ὁ Σπάρτακος ἠμέλει καὶ κατεφρόνει τὸ πρῶτον· ὡς δὲ τῆς λείας ὑπολειπούσης προϊέναι βουλόμενος συνεῖδε τὸν ἀποτειχισμόν, καὶ λαμβάνειν οὐδὲν ἦν ἐκ τῆς χερρονήσου, νύκτα νιφετώδη καὶ πνεῦμα χειμέριον παραφυλάξας, ἔχωσε τῆς τάφρου μέρος οὐ πολὺ γῇ καὶ ὕλῃ καὶ κλάδοις δένδρων, ὥστε τῆς στρατιᾶς περαιῶσαι τὸ τρίτον.

[11] [1] Ἐφοβήθη μὲν οὖν ὁ Κράσσος, μὴ λάβοι τις ὁρμὴ τὸν Σπάρτακον ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ἐλαύνειν, ἐθάρρησε δὲ πολλῶν ἐκ διαφορᾶς ἀποστάντων αὐτοῦ καὶ στρατοπεδευσαμένων καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἐπὶ Λευκανίδος λίμνης, ἥν φασι τρέπεσθαι διὰ χρόνου γινομένην γλυκεῖαν, εἶτ’ αὖθις [2] ἁλμυρὰν καὶ ἄποτον. τούτοις ἐπελθὼν ὁ Κράσσος ἐξέωσε μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς λίμνης ἅπαντας, ἀφῃρέθη δὲ τὸν φόνον καὶ τὴν δίωξιν αὐτῶν, ἐπιφανέντος ὀξέως τοῦ Σπαρτάκου καὶ τὴν [3] φυγὴν ἐπιστήσαντος. γεγραφὼς δὲ τῇ βουλῇ πρότερον ὡς χρὴ καὶ Λεύκολλον ἐκ Θρᾴκης καλεῖν καὶ Πομπήιον ἐξ Ἰβηρίας, μετενόει καὶ πρὶν ἥκειν ἐκείνους ἔσπευδε διαπράξασθαι τὸν πόλεμον, εἰδὼς ὅτι τοῦ προσγενομένου [4] καὶ βοηθήσαντος, οὐκ αὐτοῦ, τὸ κατόρθωμα δόξει. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν διαγνοὺς τοῖς ἀφεστῶσι καὶ κατ’ ἰδίαν στρατευομένοις, ὧν ἀφηγοῦντο [Γάιος] Γαννίκιος καὶ Κάστος, ἐπιθέσθαι, λόφον τινὰ προκαταληψομένους ἄνδρας ἑξακισχιλίους [5] ἀπέστειλε, λανθάνειν πειρᾶσθαι κελεύσας. οἱ δ’ ἐπειρῶντο μὲν τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀποκρύπτειν, τὰ κράνη καταμπέχοντες, ὀφθέντες δ’ ὑπὸ δυεῖν γυναικῶν προθυομένων τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐκινδύνευσαν, εἰ μὴ Κράσσος ὀξέως ἐπιφανεὶς μάχην ἔθετο πασῶν καρτερωτάτην, ἐν ᾗ τριακοσίους ἐπὶ δισχιλίοις καὶ μυρίοις καταβαλών, δύο μόνους εὗρε κατὰ νώτου τετρωμένους, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι πάντες ἑστῶτες ἐν τάξει καὶ μαχόμενοι τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἀπέθανον.

[6] Σπαρτάκῳ δὲ μετὰ τὴν τούτων ἧτταν ἀναχωροῦντι πρὸς τὰ ὄρη τὰ Πετηλῖνα Κόιντος τῶν περὶ Κράσσον ἡγεμόνων καὶ Σκρώφας ὁ ταμίας ἐξαπτόμενοι παρηκολούθουν. ἐπιστρέψαντος δὲ γίνεται φυγὴ μεγάλη τῶν Ῥωμαίων, καὶ μόλις τρωθέντα τὸν ταμίαν ἁρπάσαντες ἀπεσώθησαν.

Τοῦτο τὸν Σπάρτακον ἀπώλεσε τὸ κατόρθωμα, φρονήματος [7] ἐπιγενομένου τοῖς δραπέταις. οὐκέτι γὰρ ἠξίουν φυγομαχεῖν οὐδ’ ἐπείθοντο τοῖς ἄρχουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἤδη καθ’ ὁδὸν ὄντας ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις περισχόντες ἠνάγκασαν αὖθις ὀπίσω διὰ τῆς Λευκανίας ἄγειν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, εἰς [8] ταὐτὸ τῷ Κράσσῳ σπεύδοντες. ἤδη γὰρ ὁ Πομπήιος προσιὼν ἀπηγγέλλετο, καὶ διαρχαιρεσιάζοντες ἦσαν οὐκ ὀλίγοι τὴν νίκην ἐκείνῳ τοῦ πολέμου προσήκειν· ἐλθόντα γὰρ εὐθὺς μαχεῖσθαι καὶ καταλύσειν τὸν πόλεμον. ἐπειγόμενος οὖν διαγωνίσασθαι καὶ παραστρατοπεδεύσας τοῖς πολεμίοις, ὤρυττε τάφρον, πρὸς ἣν ἐκπηδῶντες οἱ δοῦλοι προσεμάχοντο τοῖς ἐργαζομένοις. ἀεὶ δὲ πλειόνων ἑκατέρωθεν ἐκβοηθούντων, ὁρῶν τὴν ἀνάγκην ὁ Σπάρτακος [9] ἅπαν παρέταξε τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ πρῶτον μὲν τοῦ ἵππου προσαχθέντος αὐτῷ, σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος καὶ εἰπών, ὅτι νικῶν μὲν ἕξει πολλοὺς ἵππους καὶ καλοὺς τοὺς τῶν πολεμίων, ἡττώμενος δ’ οὐ δεῖται, κατέσφαξε τὸν ἵππον· ἔπειτα πρὸς Κράσσον αὐτὸν ὠθούμενος διὰ πολλῶν ὅπλων καὶ τραυμάτων, ἐκείνου μὲν οὐκ ἔτυχεν, ἑκατοντάρχας [10] δὲ δύο συμπεσόντας ἀνεῖλε. τέλος δὲ φευγόντων τῶν περὶ αὐτόν, αὐτὸς ἑστὼς καὶ κυκλωθεὶς ὑπὸ πολλῶν, ἀμυνόμενος κατεκόπη. Κράσσου δὲ τῇ τύχῃ χρησαμένου καὶ στρατηγήσαντος ἄριστα καὶ τὸ σῶμα τῷ κινδύνῳ παρασχόντος, ὅμως οὐ διέφυγε τὸ κατόρθωμα τὴν Πομπηίου δόξαν.

[11] οἱ γὰρ διαπεσόντες ἐκ τῆς μάχης πεντακισχίλιοι περιπεσόντες αὐτῷ διεφθάρησαν, ὥστε καὶ γράψαι πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον, ὅτι μάχῃ μὲν τοὺς δραπέτας φανερᾷ Κράσσος νενίκηκεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τοῦ πολέμου τὴν ῥίζαν ἀνῄρηκε. Πομπήιος μὲν οὖν ἀπὸ Σερτωρίου καὶ Ἰβηρίας ἐπιφανῶς ἐθριάμβευσε, Κράσσος δὲ τὸν μὲν μέγαν θρίαμβον οὐδ’ αὐτὸς αἰτεῖν ἐπεχείρησεν, ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ τὸν πεζόν, ὀούαν δὲ καλούμενον, ἀγεννῶς καὶ παρ’ ἀξίαν ἐπὶ δουλικῷ πολέμῳ θριαμβεύειν. τί δ’ οὗτος ἐκείνου διαφέρει, καὶ περὶ τῆς κλήσεως, ἐν τῷ Μαρκέλλου βίῳ (cap. 22) γέγραπται.

[12] [1] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα τοῦ Πομπηίου αὐτόθεν ἐπὶ τὴν ὑπατείαν καλουμένου, ἐλπίδας ἔχων ὁ Κράσσος συνάρξειν, [2] ὅμως οὐκ ὤκνησε τοῦ Πομπηίου δεηθῆναι. δεξάμενος δὲ τὴν χρείαν ἀσμένως ἐκεῖνος - ἐπεθύμει γὰρ ἁμῶς γέ πως ἀεὶ χάριτός τινος ὀφειλέτην λαβεῖν τὸν Κράσσον - , ἐσπούδασε προθύμως, καὶ τέλος εἶπεν ἐκκλησιάζων, ὡς οὐκ ἐλάττονα περὶ τοῦ συνάρχοντος ἕξει χάριν ἢ περὶ τῆς [3] ἀρχῆς. οὐ μὴν ἔμειναν ἐπὶ ταύτης τῆς φιλοφροσύνης εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν καταστάντες, ἀλλ’ ὀλίγου δεῖν περὶ πάντων διαφερόμενοι καὶ πάντα δυσκολαίνοντες ἀλλήλοις καὶ φιλονικοῦντες, ἀπολίτευτον καὶ ἄπρακτον αὑτοῖς τὴν ὑπατείαν ἐποίησαν, πλὴν ὅτι Κράσσος Ἡρακλεῖ μεγάλην θυσίαν ποιησάμενος, εἱστίασε τὸν δῆμον ἀπὸ μυρίων τραπεζῶν καὶ σῖτον ἐπεμέτρησεν εἰς τρίμηνον.

[4] Ἤδη δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς αὐτοῖς τελευτώσης, ἔτυχον μὲν ἐκκλησιάζοντες, ἀνὴρ δέ τις οὐ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν, ἱππεὺς Ῥωμαίων, ἀγροῖκος δὲ τῷ βίῳ καὶ ἰδιώτης, ὀνόματι Γάιος Αὐρήλιος, ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ προελθών, ὄψιν διηγεῖτο κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους αὐτῷ γενομένην. ὁ γὰρ Ζεύς ἔφη μοι φανεὶς προσέταξεν εἰς κοινὸν εἰπεῖν, ὅπως μὴ περιίδητε τοὺς ὑπάτους πρότερον ἀποθέσθαι τὴν ἀρχὴν ἢ [5] φίλους γενέσθαι. ταῦτα λέγοντος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, καὶ τοῦ δήμου διαλλάττεσθαι κελεύοντος, ὁ μὲν Πομπήιος ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν ἑστώς, ὁ δὲ Κράσσος ἐμβαλὼν τὴν δεξιὰν αὐτῷ πρότερος, οὐδέν εἶπεν ὦ ἄνδρες πολῖται πράττειν οἴομαι ταπεινὸν οὐδ’ ἀνάξιον ἐμαυτοῦ, καταρχόμενος εὐνοίας καὶ φιλίας πρὸς Πομπήιον, ὃν ὑμεῖς μήπω γενειῶντα Μέγαν ἀνηγορεύσατε καὶ μήπω μετέχοντι βουλῆς ἐψηφίσασθε θρίαμβον.

[13] [1] Ἡ μὲν οὖν ὑπατεία τοῦ Κράσσου ταῦτ’ ἔσχεν ἄξια μνήμης, ἡ δὲ τιμητεία παντάπασιν ἀτελὴς καὶ ἄπρακτος αὐτῷ διῆλθεν - οὔτε γὰρ βουλῆς ἐξέτασιν οὔθ’ ἱππέων ἐπίσκεψιν οὔτ’ ἀποτίμησιν πολιτῶν ἐποιήσατο - , καίτοι συνάρχοντα Ῥωμαίων ἔχοντι τὸν πρᾳότατον Λουτάτιον [2] Κάτλον. ἀλλά φασιν ἐπὶ δεινὸν ὁρμήσαντι τῷ Κράσσῳ πολίτευμα καὶ βίαιον, Αἴγυπτον ποιεῖν ὑποτελῆ Ῥωμαίοις, ἀντιβῆναι τὸν Κάτλον ἐρρωμένως, ἐκ δὲ τούτου γενομένης διαφορᾶς, ἑκόντας ἀποθέσθαι τὴν ἀρχήν.

[3] Ἐν δὲ τοῖς περὶ Κατιλίναν πράγμασι μεγάλοις καὶ μικροῦ δεήσασιν ἀνατρέψαι τὴν Ῥώμην ἥψατο μέν τις ὑπόνοια τοῦ Κράσσου, καὶ προσῆλθεν ἄνθρωπος ὀνομάζων [4] ἀπὸ τῆς συνωμοσίας, οὐδεὶς δ’ ἐπίστευσεν. ὅμως δ’ ὁ Κικέρων ἔν τινι λόγῳ φανερός ἐστι καὶ Κράσσῳ καὶ Καίσαρι τὴν αἰτίαν προστριβόμενος. ἀλλ’ οὗτος μὲν ὁ λόγος ἐξεδόθη μετὰ τὴν ἀμφοῖν τελευτήν, ἐν δὲ τῷ Περὶ τῆς ὑπατείας ὁ Κικέρων νύκτωρ φησὶ τὸν Κράσσον ἀφικέσθαι πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐπιστολὴν κομίζοντα ‹τὰ› περὶ τὸν Κατιλίναν ἐξηγουμένην ὡς ἤδη βεβαιοῦντα τὴν συνωμοσίαν.

[5] ὁ δ’ οὖν Κράσσος ἀεὶ μὲν ἐμίσει τὸν Κικέρωνα διὰ τοῦτο, τοῦ δὲ βλάπτειν ἀναφανδὸν ἐμποδὼν εἶχε τὸν υἱόν. ὁ γὰρ Πούπλιος ὢν φιλολόγος καὶ φιλομαθὴς ἐξήρτητο τοῦ Κικέρωνος, ὥστε καὶ συμμεταβαλεῖν αὐτῷ τὴν ἐσθῆτα κρινομένῳ καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους νέους ταὐτὸ ποιοῦντας παρασχεῖν. τέλος δὲ τὸν πατέρα πείσας φίλον ἐποίησεν.

[14] [1] Ὁ δὲ Καῖσαρ ὡς ἐπανῆλθεν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐπαρχίας, παρασκευαζόμενος ὑπατείαν μετιέναι, καὶ Κράσσον ὁρῶν καὶ Πομπήιον αὖθις ἐν διαφοραῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὄντας, οὔτε θατέρου δεηθεὶς ἐβούλετο λαβεῖν ἐχθρὸν τὸν ἕτερον, οὔτε μηδετέρου συνεργοῦντος ἤλπιζε κατορθώσειν.

[2] ἔπραττεν οὖν διαλλαγὰς αὐτοῖς προσκείμενος ἀεὶ καὶ διδάσκων, ὡς καταλύοντες ἀλλήλους αὔξουσι Κικέρωνας καὶ Κάτλους καὶ Κάτωνας, ὧν οὐδεὶς λόγος, ἂν ἐκεῖνοι συνενεγκόντες εἰς ταὐτὸ τὰς φιλίας καὶ τὰς ἑταιρείας ἑνὶ [3] κράτει καὶ μιᾷ γνώμῃ τὴν πόλιν ἄγωσι. πείσας δὲ καὶ διαλλάξας συνήγαγε, καὶ συνέστησεν ἐκ τῶν τριῶν ἰσχὺν ἄμαχον, ᾗ κατέλυσε Ῥωμαίων τήν τε βουλὴν καὶ τὸν δῆμον, οὐκ ἐκείνους δι’ ἀλλήλων μείζονας, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἐκείνων [4] μέγιστον ἑαυτὸν ἀπεργασάμενος. εὐθὺς μὲν γὰρ ἀρθεὶς ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων ὕπατος ἀπεδείχθη λαμπρῶς, ὑπατεύοντι δ’ αὐτῷ μεγάλων ψηφισάμενοι στρατευμάτων ἡγεμονίαν καὶ Γαλατίαν ἐγχειρίσαντες, ὥσπερ εἰς ἀκρόπολιν κατέστησαν, οἰόμενοι καθ’ ἡσυχίαν νεμήσεσθαι τὰ λοιπὰ πρὸς [5] ἀλλήλους ἐκείνῳ βεβαιοῦντες ἣν ἔλαχεν ἀρχήν. Πομπήιος μὲν οὖν ὑπὸ φιλαρχίας ἀμέτρου ταῦτ’ ἔπραττε, τῶν δὲ Κράσσου νοσημάτων τὸ ἀρχαῖον, ἡ φιλοπλουτία, καινὸν ἔρωτα προσλαβοῦσα καὶ ζῆλον ἐπὶ ταῖς Καίσαρος ἀριστείαις τροπαίων καὶ θριάμβων, οἷς γε μόνοις ἐλαττοῦσθαι προὔχοντα τοῖς ἄλλοις ἑαυτόν, οὐκ ἀνῆκεν οὐδ’ ἐλώφησε, πρὶν εἰς ὄλεθρον ἀκλεῆ καὶ δημοσίας συμφορὰς τελευτῆσαι.

[6] Καίσαρος γὰρ εἰς Λοῦκαν πόλιν ἐκ Γαλατίας καταβάντος, ἄλλοι τε πολλοὶ Ῥωμαίων ἀφίκοντο, καὶ Πομπήιος καὶ Κράσσος ἰδίᾳ συγγενόμενοι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔγνωσαν ἐγκρατέστερον ἔχεσθαι τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ πᾶσαν ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῖς ποιεῖσθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, Καίσαρος μὲν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις μένοντος, ἄλλας δ’ ἐπαρχίας καὶ στρατεύ[7]ματα Πομπηίου καὶ Κράσσου λαβόντων. ἐπὶ ταῦτα δ’ ὁδὸς ἦν μία δευτέρας ὑπατείας αἴτησις, ἣν μετιόντων ἐκείνων ἔδει συμπράττειν Καίσαρα, τοῖς τε φίλοις γράφοντα καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν πέμποντα πολλοὺς ἀρχαιρεσιάσοντας.

[15] [1] Ἐπὶ τούτοις οἱ περὶ Κράσσον εἰς Ῥώμην ἐπανελθόντες εὐθὺς ἦσαν ὕποπτοι, καὶ πολὺς ἐχώρει διὰ πάντων [2] λόγος, οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ γεγονέναι τὴν σύνοδον αὐτῶν. ἐν δὲ τῇ βουλῇ Μαρκελλίνου καὶ Δομιτίου Πομπήιον ἐρωτώντων εἰ μέτεισιν ὑπατείαν, ἀπεκρίνατο τυχὸν μὲν μετιέναι, τυχὸν δὲ μὴ μετιέναι, καὶ πάλιν ἐρωτώμενος ἔφη μετιέναι [3] τοῖς δικαίοις πολίταις, μὴ μετιέναι δὲ τοῖς ἀδίκοις. τούτου δὲ δόξαντος ὑπερηφάνους ἀποκρίσεις καὶ τετυφωμένας ποιεῖσθαι, μετριώτερον ὁ Κράσσος εἶπεν, εἰ τῇ πόλει συμφέρει, μετιέναι τὴν ἀρχήν, εἰ δὲ μή, παύσεσθαι. διὸ καί τινες ἐθάρρησαν ὑπατείαν μετελθεῖν, ὧν ἦν καὶ Δομίτιος.

[4] γενομένων δὲ φανερῶν ἐκείνων ἐν ταῖς παραγγελίαις, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι δείσαντες ἀπέστησαν, Δομίτιον δὲ Κάτων οἰκεῖον ὄντα καὶ φίλον ἐθάρρυνεν, ἐγκελευόμενος καὶ παρορμῶν ἔχεσθαι τῆς ἐλπίδος ὡς ὑπερμαχοῦντα τῆς κοινῆς ἐλευθερίας· οὐ γὰρ ὑπατείας Πομπήιον δεῖσθαι καὶ Κράσσον, ἀλλὰ τυραννίδος, οὐδ’ ἀρχῆς αἴτησιν, ἀλλ’ ἁρπαγὴν ἐπαρχιῶν [5] καὶ στρατοπέδων εἶναι τὰ πρασσόμενα. ταῦτα δὲ καὶ λέγων οὕτω καὶ φρονῶν ὁ Κάτων μονονοὺ βίᾳ προῆγεν εἰς ἀγορὰν τὸν Δομίτιον, καὶ συνίσταντο πολλοὶ πρὸς αὐτούς. καὶ τὸ θαυμαζόμενον οὐκ ὀλίγον ἦν· τί δὴ δευτέρας οὗτοι χρῄζουσιν ὑπατείας; τί δὲ πάλιν μετ’ ἀλλήλων; τί δ’ οὐ μεθ’ ἑτέρων; πολλοὶ δ’ εἰσὶν ἄνδρες ἡμῖν οὐκ [6] ἀνάξιοι δήπου Κράσσῳ καὶ Πομπηίῳ συνάρχειν. ἐκ τούτου δείσαντες οἱ περὶ Πομπήιον οὐδενὸς ἀπείχοντο τῶν ἀκοσμοτάτων καὶ βιαιοτάτων, ἀλλὰ πρὸς πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις λόχον ὑφέντες τῷ Δομιτίῳ, νυκτὸς ἔτι μετὰ τῶν φίλων κατερχομένῳ, κτείνουσι μὲν τὸν ἀνέχοντα τὸ φῶς πρὸ αὐτοῦ, συντιτρώσκουσι δὲ πολλούς, ὧν ἦν καὶ ὁ Κάτων.

[7] τρεψάμενοι δὲ καὶ κατακλείσαντες εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν ἐκείνους, ἀνηγορεύθησαν ὕπατοι, καὶ μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον αὖθις ὅπλοις περισχόντες τὸ βῆμα, καὶ τὸν Κάτωνα τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἐκβαλόντες, καί τινας ὑποστάντας ἀποκτείναντες, Καίσαρι μὲν ἄλλην ἐπέδοσαν πενταετίαν τῆς ἀρχῆς, αὑτοῖς δὲ τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν ἐψηφίσαντο Συρίαν καὶ Ἰβηρίας συναμφοτέρας. κληρουμένων δὲ Συρίαν ἔλαχε Κράσσος, τὰ δ’ Ἰβηρικὰ Πομπήιος.

[16] [1] Ἦν δ’ ἀσπάσιος ἅπασιν ὁ κλῆρος. οἵ τε γὰρ πολλοὶ Πομπήιον ἐβούλοντο μὴ μακρὰν εἶναι τῆς πόλεως, καὶ Πομπήιος ἐρῶν τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτόθι τὰ πολλὰ διατρίβειν ἔμελλε, Κράσσος δ’ ὑπὸ χαρᾶς εὐθὺς ‹ἅμ’› ἐκπεσόντι τῷ κλήρῳ καταφανὴς ἦν οὐδὲν εὐτύχημα λαμπρότερον ἑαυτῷ γεγονέναι τοῦ παρόντος ἡγούμενος, ὡς μόλις ἐν ἀλλοτρίοις καὶ πολλοῖς ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς συνήθεις πολλὰ κενὰ καὶ μειρακιώδη λέγειν παρ’ ἡλικίαν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ φύσιν, ἥκιστα κομπαστὴς ἢ σοβαρὸς ἐν τῷ βίῳ γεγονώς.

[2] τότε δ’ ἐπηρμένος κομιδῇ καὶ διεφθαρμένος, οὐ Συρίαν οὐδὲ Πάρθους ὅρον ἐποιεῖτο τῆς εὐπραξίας, ἀλλ’ ὡς παιδιὰν ἀποφανῶν τὰ Λευκόλλου πρὸς Τιγράνην καὶ Πομπηίου πρὸς Μιθριδάτην, ἄχρι Βακτρίων καὶ Ἰνδῶν καὶ τῆς ἔξω θαλάσσης ἀνῆγεν ἑαυτὸν ταῖς ἐλπίσι. καίτοι τῷ γραφέντι [3] περὶ τούτων νόμῳ Παρθικὸς πόλεμος οὐ προσῆν. ᾔδεσαν δὲ πάντες, ὅτι πρὸς τοῦτο Κράσσος ἐπτόητο, καὶ Καῖσαρ ἐκ Γαλατίας ἔγραφεν αὐτῷ, τὴν ὁρμὴν ἐπαινῶν [4] καὶ παροξύνων ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον. ἐπεὶ δὲ δημαρχῶν Ἀτήιος ἔμελλε πρὸς τὴν ἔξοδον ἐναντιώσεσθαι, καὶ συνίσταντο πολλοὶ χαλεπαίνοντες, εἴ τις ἀνθρώποις οὐδὲν ἀδικοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐνσπόνδοις, πολεμήσων ἄπεισι, δείσας ὁ Κράσσος ἐδεήθη Πομπηίου παραγενέσθαι καὶ συμπροπέμψαι. [5] μέγα γὰρ ἦν ἐκείνου τὸ πρὸς τὸν ὄχλον ἀξίωμα, καὶ τότε παρεσκευασμένους πολλοὺς ἐνίστασθαι καὶ καταβοᾶν ὁρώμενος πρὸ αὐτοῦ φαιδρῷ τῷ βλέμματι καὶ προσώπῳ κατεπράυνεν ὁ Πομπήιος, ὥσθ’ ὑπείκειν σιωπῇ δι’ αὐτῶν [6] προϊοῦσιν. ὁ δ’ Ἀτήιος ἀπαντήσας, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπὸ φωνῆς ἐκώλυε καὶ διεμαρτύρετο μὴ βαδίζειν, ἔπειτα τὸν ὑπηρέτην ἐκέλευσεν ἁψάμενον τοῦ σώματος κατέχειν.

[7] ἄλλων δὲ δημάρχων οὐκ ἐώντων, ὁ μὲν ὑπηρέτης ἀφῆκε τὸν Κράσσον, ὁ δ’ Ἀτήιος προδραμὼν ἐπὶ τὴν πύλην ἔθηκεν ἐσχαρίδα καιομένην, καὶ τοῦ Κράσσου γενομένου κατ’ αὐτήν, ἐπιθυμιῶν καὶ κατασπένδων ἀρὰς ἐπηρᾶτο δεινὰς μὲν αὐτὰς καὶ φρικώδεις, δεινοὺς δέ τινας θεοὺς καὶ [8] ἀλλοκότους ἐπ’ αὐταῖς καλῶν καὶ ὀνομάζων. ταύτας φασὶ Ῥωμαῖοι τὰς ἀρὰς ἀποθέτους οὔσας καὶ παλαιὰς τοιαύτην ἔχειν δύναμιν, ὡς περιφεύγειν μηδένα τῶν ἐνσχεθέντων αὐταῖς, κακῶς δὲ πράσσειν καὶ τὸν χρησάμενον, ὅθεν οὐκ ἐπὶ τοῖς τυχοῦσιν αὐτὰς οὐδ’ ὑπὸ πολλῶν ἐγείρεσθαι. καὶ τότ’ οὖν ἐμέμφοντο τὸν Ἀτήιον, εἰ δι’ ἣν ἐχαλέπαινε τῷ Κράσσῳ πόλιν, εἰς αὐτὴν ἀρὰς ἀφῆκε καὶ δεισιδαιμονίαν τοσαύτην.

[17] [1] Ὁ δὲ Κράσσος εἰς Βρεντέσιον ἦλθεν. ἔτι δ’ ἀστατούσης χειμῶνι τῆς θαλάσσης, οὐ περιέμεινεν, ἀλλ’ ἀνήχθη καὶ συχνὰ τῶν πλοίων ἀπέβαλε, τὴν δ’ ἄλλην ἀναλαβὼν [2] δύναμιν, ἠπείγετο πεζῇ διὰ Γαλατίας. εὑρὼν δὲ τὸν βασιλέα Δηιόταρον πάνυ μὲν ὄντα γηραιὸν ἤδη, κτίζοντα δὲ νέαν πόλιν, ἐπέσκωψεν εἰπών· ὦ βασιλεῦ, δωδεκάτης ὥρας οἰκοδομεῖν ἄρχῃ. γελάσας δ’ ὁ Γαλάτης· ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ αὐτός εἶπεν ὦ αὐτόκρατορ, ὡς ὁρῶ, πρωὶ [3] λίαν ἐπὶ Πάρθους ἐλαύνεις. ἦν δ’ ὁ Κράσσος ἑξήκοντα μὲν ἔτη παραλλάττων, πρεσβύτερος δὲ τὴν ὄψιν ἢ καθ’ ἡλικίαν. ἀφικόμενον δ’ αὐτὸν ἐδέξατο τὰ πράγματα τῆς [4] ἐλπίδος ἀξίως τὸ πρῶτον. καὶ γὰρ ἔζευξε ῥᾳδίως τὸν Εὐφράτην καὶ διήγαγε τὸν στρατὸν ἀσφαλῶς, καὶ πόλεις πολλὰς ἐν τῇ Μεσοποταμίᾳ κατέσχεν, ἑκουσίως προσθεμένας.

[5] ἐν μιᾷ δ’, ἧς Ἀπολλώνιός τις ἐτυράννει, στρατιωτῶν ἑκατὸν ἀναιρεθέντων, ἐπαγαγὼν τὴν δύναμιν αὐτῇ καὶ κρατήσας, διήρπασε τὰ χρήματα καὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους [6] ἀπέδοτο· Ζηνοδοτίαν ἐκάλουν τὴν πόλιν οἱ Ἕλληνες. ἐπὶ ταύτῃ δ’ ἁλούσῃ δεξάμενος αὐτοκράτωρ ὑπὸ τῆς στρατιᾶς ἀναγορευθῆναι, πολλὴν ὦφλεν αἰσχύνην καὶ ταπεινὸς ἐφάνη καὶ περὶ τὰ μείζονα δύσελπις, οὕτω πλεονέκτημα μικρὸν [7] ἠγαπηκώς. ἐμβαλὼν δὲ φρουρὰς ταῖς προσκεχωρηκυίαις πόλεσιν, ὧν ἀριθμὸς ἦν ἑπτακισχίλιοι πεζοί, χίλιοι δ’ ἱππεῖς, ἀνεχώρησεν αὐτός, ἐν Συρίᾳ διαχειμάσων καὶ δεξόμενος αὐτόθι τὸν υἱόν, ἥκοντα παρὰ Καίσαρος ἐκ Γαλατίας, αὐτόν τε κεκοσμημένον ἀριστείοις καὶ χιλίους [8] ἱππέας ἐπιλέκτους ἄγοντα. τοῦτο πρῶτον ἁμαρτεῖν ἔδοξεν ὁ Κράσσος - μετά γε τὴν στρατείαν αὐτήν - μέγιστον ἁμάρτημα τῶν γενομένων, ὅτι πρόσω χωρεῖν δέον ἔχεσθαί τε Βαβυλῶνος καὶ Σελευκείας, δυσμενῶν ἀεὶ Πάρθοις [9] πόλεων, χρόνον ἔδωκε τοῖς πολεμίοις παρασκευῆς. ἔπειτα τὰς ἐν Συρίᾳ διατριβὰς ᾐτιῶντο, χρηματιστικὰς μᾶλλον οὔσας ἢ στρατηγικάς· οὐ γὰρ ὅπλων ἀριθμὸν ἐξετάζων οὐδὲ γυμνασιῶν ποιούμενος ἁμίλλας, ἀλλὰ προσόδους πόλεων ἐκλογιζόμενος, καὶ τὰ χρήματα τῆς ἐν Ἱεραπόλει θεοῦ σταθμοῖς καὶ τρυτάναις μεταχειριζόμενος ἐπὶ πολλὰς ἡμέρας, ἐπιγράφων δὲ καὶ δήμοις καὶ δυνάσταις στρατιωτῶν καταλόγους, εἶτ’ ἀνιεὶς ἀργύριον διδόντας, ἠδόξει [10] καὶ κατεφρονεῖτο. γίνεται δὲ πρῶτον αὐτῷ σημεῖον ἀπὸ τῆς θεοῦ ταύτης, ἣν οἱ μὲν Ἀφροδίτην, οἱ δ’ Ἥραν, οἱ δὲ τὴν ἀρχὰς καὶ σπέρματα πᾶσιν ἐξ ὑγρῶν παρασχοῦσαν αἰτίαν καὶ φύσιν νομίζουσι καὶ τὴν πάντων εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἀρχὴν ἀγαθῶν καταδείξασαν. ἐξιόντων γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ πρῶτος ἐσφάλη κατὰ τὰς θύρας ὁ νεανίας Κράσσος, εἶτ’ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ περιπεσὼν ὁ πρεσβύτερος.

[18] [1] Ἤδη δὲ τὰς δυνάμεις ἐκ τῶν χειμαδίων συναθροίζοντος αὐτοῦ, πρέσβεις ἀφίκοντο παρ’ Ἀρσάκου, βραχύν τινα λόγον κομίζοντες. ἔφασαν γάρ, εἰ μὲν ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ὁ στρατὸς ἀπέσταλται, πόλεμον αὐτοῖς ἄσπονδον εἶναι καὶ ἀδιάλλακτον, εἰ δὲ τῆς πατρίδος ἀκούσης - ὡς πυνθάνονται - Κράσσος ἰδίων ἕνεκα κερδῶν ὅπλα Πάρθοις ἐπενήνοχε καὶ χώραν κατείληφε, μετριάζειν Ἀρσάκην καὶ τὸ μὲν Κράσσου γῆρας οἰκτίρειν, ἀφιέναι δὲ Ῥωμαίοις τοὺς ἄνδρας, οὓς ἔχει φρουρουμένους μᾶλλον ἢ φρουροῦντας.

[2] πρὸς ταῦτα Κράσσου κομπάσαντος, ὡς ἐν Σελευκείᾳ δώσει τὰς ἀποκρίσεις, γελάσας ὁ πρεσβύτατος τῶν πρέσβεων Οὐαγίσης καὶ τῆς χειρὸς ὑπτίας δείξας τὸ μέσον, ἐντεῦθεν εἶπεν ὦ Κράσσε φύσονται τρίχες πρότερον [3] ἢ σὺ ὄψει Σελεύκειαν. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν ἀπήλαυνον ὡς Ὁρώδην βασιλέα, πολεμητέα φράσοντες, ἐκ δὲ τῶν πόλεων, ἃς ἐφρούρουν Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς Μεσοποταμίας, παραβόλως τινὲς διεκπεσόντες ἄξια φροντίδων ἀπήγγελλον, αὐτόπται μὲν γεγονότες τοῦ τε πλήθους τῶν πολεμίων καὶ τῶν ἀγώνων οὓς ἠγωνίσαντο προσμαχόμενοι ταῖς πόλεσιν, οἷα δὲ φιλεῖ, πάντα πρὸς τὸ δεινότερον ἐξαγγέλλοντες, ὡς ἄφυκτοι μὲν οἱ ἄνδρες διώκοντες, ἄληπτοι δὲ φεύγοντες, βέλη δὲ πτηνὰ προθέοντα τῆς ὄψεως καί, πρὶν ὀφθῆναι τὸν βάλλοντα, χωροῦντα διὰ τοῦ προστυχόντος, τῶν δὲ καταφράκτων ὅπλων τὰ μὲν διὰ παντὸς ὠθεῖσθαι, τὰ δὲ πρὸς [4] μηδὲν ἐνδιδόναι πεποιημένα. ταῦτα τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀκουόντων τὸ θράσος ὑπήρειπε· πεπεισμένοι γὰρ οὐδὲν Ἀρμενίων διαφέρειν Πάρθους οὐδὲ Καππαδοκῶν, οὓς ἄγων καὶ φέρων Λεύκολλος ἀπεῖπε, καὶ τοῦ πολέμου τὸ χαλεπώτατον ἡγούμενοι μακρὰν ὁδὸν ἔσεσθαι καὶ δίωξιν ἀνθρώπων εἰς χεῖρας οὐκ ἀφιξομένων, παρ’ ἐλπίδας ἀγῶνα καὶ κίνδυνον μέγαν προσεδόκων, ὥστε καὶ τῶν ἐν τέλει τινὰς οἴεσθαι δεῖν ἐπισχόντα τὸν Κράσσον αὖθις ὑπὲρ τῶν ὅλων γνώμην [5] προθέσθαι· τούτων ἦν Κάσσιος ὁ ταμίας. ἡσυχῇ δὲ παρεδήλουν καὶ οἱ μάντεις, ὡς ἀεὶ πονηρὰ σημεῖα καὶ δυσέκθυτα προφαίνοιτο τῷ Κράσσῳ διὰ τῶν ἱερῶν. ἀλλ’ οὔτε τούτοις προσεῖχεν οὔτε τοῖς ἕτερόν τι πλὴν ἐπείγεσθαι παραινοῦσιν.

[19] [1] Οὐχ ἥκιστα δ’ αὐτὸν Ἀρταβάζης ὁ Ἀρμενίων βασιλεὺς ἐπέρρωσεν· ἦλθε γὰρ εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον μεθ’ ἑξακισχιλίων ἱππέων. καὶ οὗτοι μὲν ἐλέγοντο φύλακες καὶ προπομποὶ βασιλέως· ἑτέρους δὲ μυρίους ὑπισχνεῖτο καταφράκτους [2] καὶ τρισμυρίους πεζοὺς οἰκοσίτους. ἔπειθε δὲ Κράσσον ἐμβαλεῖν δι’ Ἀρμενίας εἰς τὴν Παρθίαν· οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐν ἀφθόνοις τὴν στρατιὰν διάξειν αὐτοῦ παρέχοντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ πορεύσεσθαι δι’ ἀσφαλείας, ὄρη πολλὰ καὶ λόφους συνεχεῖς καὶ χωρία δύσιππα πρὸς τὴν ἵππον, ἣ μόνη Πάρθων [3] ἀλκή, προβαλλόμενον. ὁ δὲ τὴν μὲν προθυμίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν λαμπρότητα τῆς παρασκευῆς οὐ μετρίως ἠγάπησε, βαδιεῖσθαι δ’ ἔφη διὰ Μεσοποταμίας, ὅπου πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς Ῥωμαίων ἄνδρας ἀπέλιπεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀρμένιος ἐπὶ τούτοις ἀπήλαυνε.

[4] Τῷ δὲ Κράσσῳ διαβιβάζοντι τὴν στρατιὰν κατὰ τὸ Ζεῦγμα πολλαὶ μὲν ὑπερφυεῖς βρονταὶ περιερρήγνυντο, πολλὰ δὲ κατήστραπτεν ἐναντία τῷ στρατῷ, πνεῦμα δὲ νέφει καὶ πρηστῆρι μεμειγμένον ἐρεῖσαν αὐτοῦ κατὰ τῆς [5] σχεδίας ἀνέρρηξε πολλὰ καὶ συνέτριψεν. ἐβλήθη δὲ καὶ κεραυνοῖς δυσὶν ὁ χῶρος οὗ στρατοπεδεύειν ἔμελλεν. ἵππος δὲ τῶν στρατηγικῶν ἐπιφανῶς κεκοσμημένος βίᾳ συνεπισπάσας τὸν ἡνίοχον εἰς τὸ ῥεῖθρον ὑποβρύχιος ἠφανίσθη. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τῶν ἀετῶν ὁ πρῶτος ἀρθεὶς ἀπὸ ταὐτομάτου [6] μεταστραφῆναι. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις συνέπεσε μετὰ τὴν διάβασιν μετρουμένοις τὰ ἐπιτήδεια τοῖς στρατιώταις πρῶτον πάντων δοθῆναι φακοὺς καὶ μάζαν, ἃ νομίζουσι Ῥωμαῖοι πένθιμα καὶ προτίθενται τοῖς νεκυσίοις, αὐτοῦ τε Κράσσου δημηγοροῦντος ἐξέπεσε φωνή, δεινῶς συγχέασα [7] τὸν στρατόν· ἔφη γὰρ τὸ ζεῦγμα τοῦ ποταμοῦ διαλύειν, ὅπως μηδεὶς αὐτῶν ἐπανέλθῃ· καὶ δέον, ὡς ᾔσθετο, τοῦ ῥήματος τὴν ἀτοπίαν ἀναλαβεῖν, καὶ διασαφῆσαι πρὸς τοὺς ἀποδειλιῶντας τὸ εἰρημένον, ἠμέλησεν ὑπ’ αὐθαδείας.

[8] τέλος δὲ τὸν εἰθισμένον καθαρμὸν ἐσφαγιάζετο, καὶ τὰ σπλάγχνα τοῦ μάντεως αὐτῷ προσδόντος ἐξέβαλε τῶν χειρῶν· ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα δυσχεραίνοντας ἰδὼν τοὺς παρόντας, ἐμειδίασε καὶ τοιοῦτον ἔφη τὸ γῆρας· ἀλλὰ τῶν γ’ ὅπλων οὐδὲν ἂν ἐκφύγοι τὰς χεῖρας.

[20] [1] Ἐκ τούτου παρὰ τὸν ποταμὸν ἐξήλαυνεν, ἑπτὰ μὲν ἔχων ὁπλιτῶν τάγματα καὶ τετρακισχιλίων ὀλίγον ἀποδέοντας ἱππεῖς, ψιλοὺς δὲ τοῖς ἱππεῦσι παραπλησίους.

[2] τῶν δὲ προδρόμων τινὲς ἀπὸ σκοπιᾶς ἐπανελθόντες, ἤγγελλον ἀνθρώπων μὲν ἔρημον εἶναι τὴν χώραν, ἵππων δ’ ἐντετυχηκέναι πολλῶν ἴχνεσιν, οἷον ἐκ μεταβολῆς [3] ὀπίσω διωκομένων. ὅθεν αὐτός τε Κράσσος ἔτι μᾶλλον εὔελπις ἦν, καὶ τοῖς στρατιώταις παντάπασι τῶν Πάρθων παρέστη καταφρονεῖν, ὡς οὐκ ἀφιξομένων εἰς χεῖρας.

[4] ὅμως δ’ οἱ περὶ Κάσσιον αὖθις διελέγοντο τῷ Κράσσῳ, καὶ παρῄνουν μάλιστα μὲν ἐν πόλει τινὶ τῶν φρουρουμένων ἀναλαβεῖν τὴν δύναμιν, ἄχρι οὗ τι πύθηται περὶ τῶν πολεμίων βέβαιον· εἰ δὲ μή, χωρεῖν ἐπὶ Σελευκείας παρὰ τὸν ποταμόν· εὐπορίαν γὰρ τὰ σιτηγὰ τῆς ἀγορᾶς παρέξειν, ἅμα συγκαταίροντα πρὸς τὸ στρατόπεδον, καὶ φύλακα τοῦ μὴ κυκλωθῆναι τὸν ποταμὸν ἔχοντας, ἀπ’ ἴσης ἀεὶ πρὸς ἐναντίους μαχεῖσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους.

[21] [1] Ταῦτα τοῦ Κράσσου διασκοποῦντος ἔτι καὶ βουλευομένου, παραγίνεται φύλαρχος Ἀράβων Ἄβγαρος ὄνομα, δολερὸς καὶ παλίμβολος ἀνὴρ καὶ πάντων ὅσα συνήνεγκεν εἰς ὄλεθρον ἡ τύχη κακὰ μέγιστον αὐτοῖς καὶ τελειότατον [2] γενόμενος. τοῦτον δ’ ᾔδεσαν ἔνιοι τῶν Πομπηίῳ συνεστρατευμένων ἀπολαύσαντά τι τῆς ἐκείνου φιλανθρωπίας καὶ δόξαντα φιλορώμαιον εἶναι· τότε δ’ ὑφεῖτο τῷ Κράσσῳ μετὰ γνώμης τῶν βασιλέως στρατηγῶν, εἰ δύναιτο παρατρέψας αὐτὸν ἀπωτάτω τοῦ ποταμοῦ καὶ τῶν ὑπωρειῶν εἰς πεδίον ἐκβαλεῖν ἀχανὲς καὶ περιελαυνόμενον.

[3] πάντα γὰρ διενοοῦντο μᾶλλον ἢ κατὰ στόμα συμφέρεσθαι Ῥωμαίοις. ἐλθὼν οὖν πρὸς τὸν Κράσσον ὁ Ἄβγαρος - ἦν δὲ καὶ πιθανὸς εἰπεῖν - , Πομπήιον μὲν ὡς εὐεργέτην ἐπῄνει, Κράσσον δὲ τῆς δυνάμεως μακαρίσας ἐμέμφετο τῆς διατριβῆς, μέλλοντα καὶ παρασκευαζόμενον, ὥσπερ ὅπλων αὐτῷ δεῆσον καὶ χειρῶν, οὐ ποδῶν τῶν ταχίστων ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους οἳ πάλαι ζητοῦσιν ἁρπάσαντες τὰ τιμιώτατα τῶν χρημάτων καὶ σωμάτων εἰς Σκύθας ἢ Ὑρκανοὺς [4] ἀναπτέσθαι. καίτοι μάχεσθαι μέλλοντά σ’ ἔφη σπεύδειν ἔδει, πρὶν ἅπασαν ἐν ταὐτῷ γενέσθαι τὴν δύναμιν ἀναθαρρήσαντος βασιλέως· ἐπεὶ νῦν γε Σουρήνας ὑμῖν προβέβληται καὶ Σιλάκης, ἐφ’ αὑτοὺς ἀναδεξάμενοι τὴν δίωξιν, ὁ δ’ οὐδαμῇ φανερός ἐστι.

[5] Ταῦτα δ’ ἦν ψευδῆ πάντα. διχῇ γὰρ εὐθὺς Ὁρώδης διελὼν τὴν δύναμιν, αὐτὸς μὲν Ἀρμενίαν ἐπόρθει τινύμενος Ἀρταβάζην, Σουρήναν δ’ ἀφῆκεν ἐπὶ Ῥωμαίους, οὐχ ὑπερφροσύνῃ χρώμενος ὡς ἔνιοί φασιν - οὐ γὰρ ἦν τοῦ αὐτοῦ, Κράσσον μὲν ἀπαξιοῦν ἀνταγωνιστήν, ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων πρῶτον, Ἀρταβάζῃ δὲ προσπολεμεῖν καὶ τὰς Ἀρμενίων ἐπιόντα κώμας ἐξαιρεῖν - , ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ μοι δοκεῖ καταδείσας τὸν κίνδυνον, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐφεδρεύειν καὶ καραδοκεῖν τὸ μέλλον, Σουρήναν δὲ προκαθεῖναι, πειρασόμενον [6] ἄλλως καὶ περιέλξοντα τοὺς πολεμίους. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἦν τῶν τυχόντων ὁ Σουρήνας, ἀλλὰ πλούτῳ μὲν καὶ γένει καὶ δόξῃ μετὰ βασιλέα δεύτερος, ἀνδρείᾳ δὲ καὶ δεινότητι τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν ἐν Πάρθοις πρῶτος, ἔτι δὲ μεγέθει καὶ [7] κάλλει σώματος ὡς οὐδεὶς ἕτερος. ἐξήλαυνε δὲ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν αἰεὶ χιλίαις σκευοφορούμενος καμήλοις, καὶ διακοσίας ἀπήνας ἐπήγετο παλλακίδων, ἱππεῖς δὲ κατάφρακτοι χίλιοι, πλείονες δὲ τῶν κούφων παρέπεμπον, εἶχε δὲ τοὺς σύμπαντας ἱππεῖς ὁμοῦ πελάτας τε καὶ δούλους μυρίων οὐκ [8] ἀποδέοντας. καὶ κατὰ γένος μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐκέκτητο βασιλεῖ γινομένῳ Πάρθων ἐπιτιθέναι τὸ διάδημα πρῶτος, Ὁρώδην δὲ τοῦτον αὐτὸς ἐξεληλαμένον εἰς Πάρθους κατήγαγε, καὶ Σελεύκειαν αὐτῷ τὴν μεγάλην εἷλε, πρῶτος ἐπιβὰς τοῦ τείχους καὶ τρεψάμενος ἰδίᾳ χειρὶ τοὺς ἀντιστάντας.

[9] οὔπω δὲ γεγονὼς ἔτη τριάκοντα κατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον, εὐβουλίας καὶ συνέσεως δόξαν εἶχε μεγίστην, οἷς οὐχ ἥκιστα καὶ τὸν Κράσσον ἔσφηλε, διὰ θράσος καὶ φρόνημα πρῶτον, εἶθ’ ὑπὸ δέους καὶ συμφορῶν ταῖς ἀπάταις εὐχείρωτον γενόμενον.

[22] [1] Τότε δ’ οὖν ὁ Ἄβγαρος ὡς ἔπεισεν αὐτόν, ἀποσπάσας τοῦ ποταμοῦ διὰ μέσων ἦγε τῶν πεδίων ὁδὸν ἐπιεικῆ καὶ κούφην τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα μοχθηράν, ἄμμου βαθείας ὑποδεχομένης καὶ πεδίων ἀδένδρων καὶ ἀνύδρων καὶ πρὸς οὐδὲν οὐδαμῇ πέρας ἐφικτὸν αἰσθήσει παυομένων, ὥστε μὴ μόνον δίψει καὶ χαλεπότητι τῆς πορείας ἀπαγορεύειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ τῆς ὄψεως ἀπαραμύθητον ἀθυμίαν παρέχειν, οὐ φυτὸν ὁρῶσιν, οὐ ῥεῖθρον, οὐ προβολὴν ὄρους καθιέντος, οὐ πόαν βλαστάνουσαν, ἀλλ’ ἀτεχνῶς πελάγιόν τι [2] χεῦμα θινῶν ἐρήμων περιεῖχε τὸν στρατόν. ἦν μὲν οὖν καὶ ἀπὸ τούτων ὁ δόλος ὕποπτος· ἐπειδὴ δὲ καὶ παρ’ Ἀρταβάζου τοῦ Ἀρμενίου παρῆσαν ἄγγελοι, φράζοντες ὡς πολλῷ συνέχοιτο πολέμῳ ῥυέντος ἐπ’ αὐτὸν Ὁρώδου, καὶ πέμπειν μὲν ἐκείνῳ βοήθειαν οὐ δύναται, παραινεῖ δὲ Κράσσῳ, μάλιστα μὲν ἐκτραπέσθαι καὶ γενόμενον μετ’ Ἀρμενίων ὁμοῦ διαγωνίσασθαι πρὸς τὸν Ὁρώδην, εἰ δὲ μή, καὶ πορεύεσθαι καὶ στρατοπεδεύειν ἀεὶ τὰ ἱππάσιμα φεύγοντα καὶ προσχωροῦντα τοῖς ὀρεινοῖς, Κράσσος μὲν οὐδὲν ἀντιγράψας ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ σκαιότητος ἀπεκρίνατο, νῦν μὲν Ἀρμενίοις μὴ σχολάζειν, αὖθις δ’ ἀφίξεσθαι δίκην [3] ἐπιθήσων Ἀρταβάζῃ τῆς προδοσίας. οἱ δὲ περὶ Κάσσιον αὖθις ἠγανάκτουν, καὶ Κράσσον μὲν ἀχθόμενον αὐτοῖς ἐπαύσαντο νουθετοῦντες, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τὸν Ἄβγαρον ἐλοιδόρουν· τίς σε δαίμων πονηρός, ὦ κάκιστε ἀνθρώπων, ἤγαγε πρὸς ἡμᾶς; τίσι δὲ φαρμάκοις ἢ γοητείαις ἔπεισας Κράσσον εἰς ἐρημίαν ἀχανῆ καὶ βύθιον ἐκχέαντα τὴν στρατιὰν ὁδεύειν ὁδοὺς Νομάδι λῃστάρχῃ μᾶλλον ἢ Ῥωμαίων αὐτοκράτορι [4] προσηκούσας; ὁ δ’ Ἄβγαρος, ἀνὴρ ὢν ποικίλος, ἐκείνους μὲν ὑποπίπτων ἐθάρρυνε καὶ παρεκάλει μικρὸν ἐπικαρτερῆσαι, τοὺς δὲ στρατιώτας ἅμα συμπαραθέων καὶ παραβοηθῶν ἐπέσκωπτε μετὰ γέλωτος· ὑμεῖς δὲ διὰ Καμπανίας ὁδεύειν οἴεσθε, κρήνας καὶ νάματα καὶ σκιὰς καὶ λουτρὰ δηλαδὴ συνεχῆ καὶ πανδοκεῖα ποθοῦντες; οὐ μέμνησθε τὴν Ἀράβων καὶ Ἀσσυρίων μεθορίαν διεξιόντες; [5] οὕτω μὲν ὁ Ἄβγαρος διεπαιδαγώγησε τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, καὶ πρὶν ἢ γενέσθαι φανερὸς ἐξαπατῶν, ἀφίππευσεν, οὐ λαθὼν τὸν Κράσσον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο πείσας, ὡς ὑπεργάσεται καὶ διαταράξει τὰ τῶν πολεμίων.

[23] [1] Λέγεται δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης τὸν Κράσσον οὐχ, ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστὶ Ῥωμαίων στρατηγόν, ἐν φοινικίδι προελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἱματίῳ μέλανι, καὶ τοῦτο μὲν εὐθὺς ἀλλάξαι συμφρονήσαντα, τῶν δὲ σημαιῶν ἐνίας μόλις ὥσπερ [2] πεπηγυίας πολλὰ παθόντας ἀνελέσθαι τοὺς φέροντας. ὧν ὁ Κράσσος καταγελῶν ἐπετάχυνε τὴν πορείαν, προσβιαζόμενος ἀκολουθεῖν τὴν φάλαγγα τοῖς ἱππεῦσι, πρίν γε δὴ τῶν ἐπὶ κατασκοπὴν ἀποσταλέντων ὀλίγοι προσελάσαντες ἀπήγγειλαν ἀπολωλέναι τοὺς ἄλλους ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, αὐτοὺς δὲ μόλις ἐκφυγεῖν, ἐπιέναι δὲ μαχουμένους [3] πλήθει πολλῷ καὶ θάρσει τοὺς ἄνδρας. ἅπαντες μὲν οὖν ἐθορυβήθησαν, ὁ δὲ Κράσσος ἐξεπλάγη παντάπασι καὶ διὰ σπουδῆς οὐ πάνυ καθεστηκὼς παρέταττε, πρῶτον μέν, ὡς οἱ περὶ Κάσσιον ἠξίουν, ἀραιὰν τὴν φάλαγγα τῶν ὁπλιτῶν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀνάγων τοῦ πεδίου πρὸς τὰς κυκλώσεις, τοὺς δ’ ἱππεῖς διανέμων τοῖς κέρασιν· ἔπειτα μετέδοξε, καὶ συναγαγὼν ἀμφίστομον ἐποίησε καὶ βαθὺ πλινθίον, εἰς δώδεκα σπείρας προερχομένης τῶν [4] πλευρῶν ἑκάστης. παρὰ δὲ σπεῖραν ἴλην ἱππέων ἔταξεν, ὡς μηδὲν ἔχοι μέρος ἐνδεὲς ἱππικῆς βοηθείας, ἀλλὰ πανταχόθεν ὁμαλῶς προσφέροιτο πεφραγμένος. τῶν δὲ κεράτων τὸ μὲν Κασσίῳ, τὸ δὲ τῷ νέῳ Κράσσῳ παρέδωκεν, [5] αὐτὸς δ’ εἰς μέσον κατέστη. καὶ προάγοντες οὕτως ἐπὶ ῥεῖθρον ἦλθον ὃ καλεῖται Βάλισσος, οὐ πολὺ μὲν ἄλλως οὐδ’ ἄφθονον, ἀσμένοις δὲ τότε τοῖς στρατιώταις φανὲν ἐν αὐχμῷ καὶ καύματι καὶ παρὰ τὴν ἄλλην ἐπίπονον καὶ [6] ἄνυδρον πορείαν. οἱ μὲν οὖν πλεῖστοι τῶν ἡγεμόνων ᾤοντο δεῖν ἐνταῦθα καταυλισαμένους καὶ νυκτερεύσαντας, καὶ πυθομένους ἐφ’ ὅσον οἷόν τε πλῆθος καὶ τάξιν τῶν πολεμίων, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ χωρεῖν ἐπ’ αὐτούς· Κράσσος δὲ τῷ παιδὶ καὶ τοῖς περὶ αὐτὸν ἱππεῦσιν ἐγκελευομένοις ἄγειν καὶ συνάπτειν ἐπαρθείς, ἐκέλευσεν ἑστῶτας ἐν τάξει φαγεῖν [7] καὶ πιεῖν τοὺς δεομένους. καὶ πρὶν ἢ τοῦτο διὰ πάντων γενέσθαι καλῶς, ἦγεν οὐ σχέδην οὐδ’ ὡς ἐπὶ μάχῃ διαναπαύων, ἀλλ’ ὀξείᾳ καὶ συντόνῳ χρώμενος τῇ πορείᾳ, μέχρι οὗ κατώφθησαν οἱ πολέμιοι, παρὰ δόξαν οὔτε πολλοὶ [8] φανέντες οὔτε σοβαροὶ τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις. τὸ μὲν γὰρ πλῆθος ὑπέστειλε τοῖς προτάκτοις ὁ Σουρήνας, τὴν δὲ λαμπρότητα κατέκρυπτε τῶν ὅπλων, ἱμάτια καὶ διφθέρας προίσχεσθαι κελεύσας. ὡς δ’ ἐγγὺς ἐγένοντο καὶ σημεῖον ἤρθη παρὰ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ, πρῶτον μὲν ἐνεπίμπλατο [9] φθογγῆς βαρείας καὶ βρόμου φρικώδους τὸ πεδίον. Πάρθοι γὰρ οὐ κέρασιν οὐδὲ σάλπιγξιν ἐποτρύνουσιν ἑαυτοὺς εἰς μάχην, ἀλλὰ ῥόπτρα βυρσοπαγῆ καὶ κοῖλα περιτείναντες ἠχείοις χαλκοῖς ἅμα πολλαχόθεν ἐπιδουποῦσι, τὰ δὲ φθέγγεται βύθιόν τι καὶ δεινόν, ὠρυγῇ θηριώδει καὶ τραχύτητι βροντῆς μεμειγμένον, εὖ πως συνεωρακότες ὅτι τῶν αἰσθητηρίων ἡ ἀκοὴ ταρακτικώτατόν ἐστι τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τὰ περὶ ταύτην πάθη τάχιστα κινεῖ καὶ μάλιστα πάντων ἐξίστησι τὴν διάνοιαν.

[24] [1] Ἐκπεπληγμένων δὲ τῶν Ῥωμαίων δέει διὰ τὸν ἦχον, ἐξαίφνης τὰ προκαλύμματα τῶν ὅπλων καταβαλόντες, ὤφθησαν αὐτοί τε φλογοειδεῖς κράνεσι καὶ θώραξι, τοῦ Μαργιανοῦ σιδήρου στίλβοντος ὀξὺ καὶ περιλαμπές, οἵ θ’ ἵπποι καταπεφραγμένοι χαλκοῖς καὶ σιδηροῖς σκεπάσμασι, μέγιστος δ’ ὁ Σουρήνας καὶ κάλλιστος αὐτός, τῇ δὲ κατ’ ἀνδρείαν δόξῃ τὴν θηλύτητα τοῦ κάλλους οὐκ ἐοικώς, ἀλλὰ μηδικώτερον ἐσκευασμένος ἐντρίμμασι προσώπου καὶ κόμης διακρίσει, τῶν ἄλλων Πάρθων ἔτι Σκυθικῶς [2] ἐπὶ τὸ φοβερὸν τῷ ἀνασίλλῳ κομώντων. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν διενοοῦντο τοῖς κοντοῖς εἰσελαύνοντες ὠθεῖν καὶ βιάζεσθαι τοὺς προτάκτους· ὡς δ’ ἑώρων τό τε βάθος τοῦ συνασπισμοῦ καὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν τὸ μόνιμον καὶ παρεστηκός, ἀνῆγον ὀπίσω, καὶ σκίδνασθαι δοκοῦντες ἅμα καὶ διαλύειν τὴν τάξιν, ἐλάνθανον ἐν κύκλῳ περιβάλλοντες τὸ [3] πλινθίον αὐτῶν. Κράσσου δὲ τοὺς ψιλοὺς ἐκδραμεῖν κελεύσαντος, οὗτοι μὲν οὐ πολὺ προῆλθον, ἀλλὰ πολλοῖς τοξεύμασιν ἐντυχόντες, ταχὺ συμπαρέντες αὖθις ἐνεδύοντο τοῖς ὁπλίταις, καὶ παρεῖχον ἀκοσμίας ἀρχὴν καὶ δέους ὁρῶσι τὴν ῥύμην τῶν ὀιστῶν καὶ τὸν τόνον, ὅπλα τε ῥηγνύντων καὶ διὰ παντὸς φερομένων ὁμοίως ἀντιτύπου καὶ μαλακοῦ [4] στεγάσματος. οἱ δὲ Πάρθοι διαστάντες ἐκ μήκους ἤρξαντο τοξεύειν ἅμα πανταχόθεν, οὐ τὴν ἀκριβῆ τοξείαν - ἡ γὰρ συνέχεια καὶ πυκνότης τῶν Ῥωμαίων οὐδὲ τῷ βουλομένῳ διαμαρτάνειν ἀνδρὸς παρεῖχεν - , εὐτόνους δὲ τὰς πληγὰς καὶ βιαίους διδόντες ἀπὸ τόξων κραταιῶν καὶ μεγάλων καὶ τῇ σκολιότητι τῆς καμπῆς τὸ βέλος ἠναγκασμένον [5] ἀποστελλόντων. ἦν οὖν αὐτόθεν ἤδη μοχθηρὰ τὰ Ῥωμαίων· καὶ γὰρ μένοντες ἐν τάξει συνετιτρώσκοντο, καὶ χωρεῖν ὁμόσε πειρώμενοι, τοῦ μὲν ποιεῖν ἴσον ἀπεῖχον, ὁμοίως δ’ ἔπασχον· ὑπέφευγον γὰρ ἅμα βάλλοντες οἱ Πάρθοι, καὶ τοῦτο κράτιστα ποιοῦσι μετὰ Σκύθας, καὶ σοφώτατόν ἐστιν ἀμυνομένους ἐπὶ τῷ σῴζεσθαι τῆς φυγῆς ἀφαιρεῖν τὸ αἰσχρόν.

[25] [1] Ἄχρι μὲν οὖν ἤλπιζον αὐτοὺς ἐκχεαμένους τὰ βέλη σχήσεσθαι μάχης ἢ συνάψειν εἰς χεῖρας, ἐκαρτέρουν· ὡς δ’ ἔγνωσαν ὅτι πολλαὶ κάμηλοι παρεστᾶσι τοξευμάτων πλήρεις, ἀφ’ ὧν περιελαύνοντες οἱ πρῶτοι λαμβάνουσιν, οὐδὲν πέρας ὁρῶν ὁ Κράσσος ἠθύμει, καὶ σκοπεῖν ἐκέλευεν, ἀγγέλους πέμψας πρὸς τὸν υἱόν, ὅπως προσμεῖξαι βιάσαιτο τοῖς ἐναντίοις πρὶν ἢ κυκλωθῆναι· μάλιστα γὰρ ἐκείνῳ προσέκειντο καὶ περιίππευον τὸ κέρας ὡς κατὰ [2] νώτου γενησόμενοι. λαβὼν οὖν ὁ νεανίας ἱππεῖς τε χιλίους καὶ τριακοσίους, ὧν οἱ χίλιοι παρὰ Καίσαρος ἦσαν, καὶ τοξότας πεντακοσίους καὶ τῶν ἔγγιστα θυρεαφόρων ὀκτὼ [3] σπείρας, συνήγαγεν εἰς ἐμβολήν. τῶν δὲ Πάρθων οἱ περιελαύνοντες, εἴτε τέλμασιν ἐντυχόντες, ὡς ἔνιοί φασιν, εἴτε λαβεῖν τὸν Κράσσον ἀπωτάτω τοῦ πατρὸς στρατηγοῦντες, ὀπίσω στρέψαντες ἀπεδίωκον. ὁ δ’ ἐμβοήσας ὡς οὐ μένουσιν οἱ ἄνδρες ἤλαυνε, καὶ σὺν αὐτῷ Κηνσωρῖνός τε καὶ Μεγάβακχος, ὁ μὲν εὐψυχίᾳ καὶ ῥώμῃ διαφέρων, Κηνσωρῖνος δὲ καὶ βουλευτικὸν ἔχων ἀξίωμα καὶ δεινὸς εἰπεῖν, [4] ἑταῖροι δὲ Κράσσου καὶ παραπλήσιοι καθ’ ἡλικίαν. ἐπισπομένων δὲ τῶν ἱππέων οὐδὲ τὸ πεζὸν ἀπελείπετο προθυμίᾳ καὶ χαρᾷ τῆς ἐλπίδος· νικᾶν γὰρ ᾤοντο καὶ διώκειν, ἄχρι οὗ πολὺ προελθόντες ᾔσθοντο τὴν ἀπάτην, μεταβαλλομένων ἅμα τῶν φεύγειν δοκούντων καὶ πλειόνων ἄλλων ἐπιφερομένων. ἐνταῦθα δ’ ἔστησαν, οἰόμενοι συνάψειν [5] αὐτοῖς εἰς χεῖρας ὀλίγοις οὖσι τοὺς πολεμίους. οἱ δὲ τοὺς καταφράκτους προτάξαντες ἐναντίους τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις, τὴν δ’ ἄλλην ἵππον ἄτακτον περὶ αὐτοὺς ἐλαύνοντες καὶ συνταράσσοντες τὸ πεδίον, ἀνίστασαν ἐκ βυθοῦ θῖνας ἄμμου, κονιορτὸν ἐπαγούσας ἄπλετον, ὡς μήτε διορᾶν ῥᾳδίως μήτε φθέγγεσθαι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, εἱλουμένους δ’ ἐν ὀλίγῳ καὶ συμπίπτοντας ἀλλήλοις, βάλλεσθαι καὶ ἀποθνῄσκειν οὐ ῥᾴδιον οὐδ’ ὀξὺν θάνατον, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ σπασμοῦ καὶ ὀδύνης δυσανασχετοῦντας καὶ κυλινδουμένους περὶ τοῖς ὀιστοῖς ἐναποθραύειν τοῖς τραύμασι, βίᾳ τε πειρωμένους ἐξέλκειν ἠγκιστρωμένας ἀκίδας καὶ δεδυκυίας διὰ φλεβῶν καὶ νεύρων, προσαναρρηγνύναι καὶ λυμαίνεσθαι σφᾶς αὐτούς.

[6] οὕτω δὲ πολλῶν ἀποθνῃσκόντων, ἄπρακτοι καὶ οἱ ζῶντες ἦσαν πρὸς ἀλκήν, καὶ τοῦ Ποπλίου παρακαλοῦντος ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν κατάφρακτον, ἐπεδείκνυσαν ἑαυτῶν χεῖράς τε θυρεοῖς προσπεπερονημένας καὶ πόδας διαμπὰξ προσεληλαμένους πρὸς τοὔδαφος, ὥστε καὶ πρὸς φυγὴν [7] ἀμηχάνους εἶναι καὶ πρὸς ἄμυναν. αὐτὸς οὖν τοὺς ἱππεῖς παρορμήσας, προσέβαλε μὲν ἐρρωμένως καὶ συνῆψε τοῖς ἀνδράσιν, ἦν δ’ ἄνισος ἔν τε ταῖς πληγαῖς καὶ τῷ φυλάσσεσθαι, παίων μὲν ἀσθενέσι καὶ μικροῖς δορατίοις θώρακας ὠμοβύρσους ἢ σιδηροῦς, παιόμενος δὲ κοντοῖς εἰς εὐσταλῆ καὶ γυμνὰ σώματα τῶν Γαλατῶν· τούτοις γὰρ ἐθάρρει μάλιστα, καὶ μετὰ τούτων ἔργα θαυμαστὰ διεπράττετο.

[8] τῶν τε γὰρ κοντῶν ἐπελαμβάνοντο, καὶ συμπλεκόμενοι τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀπὸ τῶν ἵππων ἐώθουν, τῇ βαρύτητι τοῦ ὁπλισμοῦ δυσκινήτους ὄντας, πολλοὶ δὲ τοὺς ἑαυτῶν ἀπολείποντες ἵππους καὶ ὑποδυόμενοι τοῖς ἐκείνων ἔτυπτον εἰς τὰς γαστέρας· οἱ δ’ ἀνεσκίρτων ὑπ’ ὀδύνης, καὶ συμπατοῦντες ἐν ταὐτῷ τοὺς ἐπιβάτας καὶ τοὺς πολεμίους ἀναπεφυρμένους, [9] ἀπέθνῃσκον. ἐπίεζε δὲ τοὺς Γαλάτας μάλιστα τό τε θάλπος καὶ τὸ δίψος, ἀμφοτέρων ἀήθεις ὄντας, καὶ τῶν ἵππων ἀπολώλεισαν οἱ πλεῖστοι πρὸς ἐναντίους ἐλαυνόμενοι τοὺς κοντούς. ἐβιάσθησαν οὖν ἀναχωρῆσαι πρὸς τοὺς ὁπλίτας, ἔχοντες τὸν Πόπλιον ὑπὸ τραυμάτων ἤδη κακῶς [10] διακείμενον. ἰδόντες δὲ θῖνα βουνώδη πλησίον, ἐχώρουν ἐπ’ αὐτήν, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἵππους ἐν μέσῳ κατέδησαν, ἔξωθεν δὲ τοῖς θυρεοῖς συγκλείσαντες, ᾤοντο ῥᾷον ἀμυνεῖσθαι [11] τοὺς βαρβάρους. ἀπέβαινε δὲ τοὐναντίον· ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῷ ὁμαλῷ τοῖς ὄπισθεν ἁμῶς γέ πως οἱ πρότακτοι παρέχουσι ῥᾳστώνην, ἐκεῖ δ’ ἄλλον ὑπὲρ ἄλλου διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν ἀνέχοντος τοῦ χωρίου καὶ μᾶλλον ἀεὶ τοὺς κατόπιν ἐξαίροντος, οὐδὲν ἦν τὸ διαφεῦγον, ἀλλ’ ἐβάλλοντο πάντες ὁμαλῶς, ὀδυρόμενοι τὴν ἀκλεῆ καὶ ἄπρακτον αὑτῶν τελευτήν.

[12] Ἦσαν δὲ περὶ τὸν Πόπλιον ἄνδρες Ἕλληνες δύο τῶν αὐτόθι, κατοικοῦντες ἐν Κάρραις, Ἱερώνυμος καὶ Νικόμαχος· οὗτοι συνέπειθον αὐτὸν ὑπεξελθεῖν μετ’ αὐτῶν καὶ διαφυγεῖν εἰς Ἴχνας, πόλιν ᾑρημένην τὰ Ῥωμαίων [13] καὶ οὐ μακρὰν οὖσαν. ὁ δὲ φήσας οὐδένα δεινὸν οὕτως ἔσεσθαι θάνατον, ὃν φοβηθεὶς Πόπλιος ἀπολείψει τοὺς ἀπολλυμένους δι’ αὑτόν, ἐκείνους μὲν ἐκέλευσε σῴζεσθαι καὶ δεξιωσάμενος ἀπέστειλεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τῇ χειρὶ χρήσασθαι μὴ δυνάμενος - διελήλατο γὰρ βέλει - τὸν ὑπασπιστὴν [14] ἐκέλευσε πατάξαι τῷ ξίφει παρασχὼν τὸ πλευρόν. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ Κηνσωρῖνον ἀποθανεῖν λέγουσι· Μεγάβακχος δ’ αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν διεχρήσατο καὶ τῶν ἄλλων οἱ δοκιμώτατοι. τοὺς δ’ ὑπολελειμμένους ἀναβαίνοντες οἱ Πάρθοι τοῖς κοντοῖς διήλαυνον μαχομένους· ζῶντας δ’ οὐ πλείους φασὶν ἁλῶναι πεντακοσίων. τὰς δὲ κεφαλὰς τῶν περὶ τὸν Πόπλιον ἀποκόψαντες, ἤλαυνον εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸν Κράσσον.

[26] [1] Εἶχε δὲ τὰ κατ’ αὐτὸν οὕτως. ὡς ἐκέλευσε τὸν υἱὸν ἐμβαλεῖν τοῖς Πάρθοις καί τις ἤγγειλεν αὐτῷ μακρὰν τροπὴν εἶναι καὶ δίωξιν ἰσχυρὰν τῶν πολεμίων, ἑώρα δὲ καὶ τοὺς καθ’ αὑτὸν οὐκέτι προσκειμένους ὁμοίως - ἐκεῖ γὰρ ἐρρύησαν οἱ πλεῖστοι - , μικρὸν ἀνεθάρρησε, καὶ συναγαγὼν ὑπέστειλε χωρίοις προσάντεσι τὸν στρατόν, αὐτίκα [2] προσδοκῶν τὸν υἱὸν ἐπανήξειν ἀπὸ τῆς διώξεως. τῶν δὲ πεμφθέντων ὑπὸ τοῦ Ποπλίου πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς ἐκινδύνευεν, οἱ μὲν πρῶτοι διεφθάρησαν ἐμπεσόντες εἰς τοὺς βαρβάρους, οἱ δ’ ὕστεροι μόγις διαφυγόντες ἀπήγγειλαν οἴχεσθαι τὸν Πόπλιον, εἰ μὴ ταχεῖα καὶ πολλὴ βοήθεια [3] παρ’ ἐκείνου γένοιτο. τὸν δὲ Κράσσον ἅμα πολλὰ πάθη κατέσχε, καὶ λογισμῷ μὲν οὐδὲν ἔτι τῶν πραγμάτων ἑώρα, φόβῳ δὲ περὶ τοῦ σύμπαντος ἅμα καὶ πόθῳ τοῦ παιδὸς ἑλκόμενος βοηθεῖν ἢ μὴ βοηθεῖν, τέλος ὥρμησε προάγειν [4] τὴν δύναμιν. ἐν τούτῳ δ’ οἱ πολέμιοι προσεφέροντο κραυγῇ καὶ παιᾶνι φοβερώτεροι, καὶ πολλὰ τῶν τυμπάνων αὖθις περιεμυκᾶτο τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ἑτέρας μάχης ἀρχὴν προσδοκῶντας. οἱ δὲ τὴν κεφαλὴν τοῦ Ποπλίου κομίζοντες ὑπὲρ αἰχμῆς ἀναπεπηγυῖαν ἐγγὺς προσελάσαντες ἀνέδειξαν, ὕβρει πυνθανόμενοι τοκέας αὐτοῦ καὶ γένος· οὐ γὰρ δὴ πρέπειν γε Κράσσου πατρὸς ἀνανδροτάτου καὶ κακίστου γενναῖον οὕτω παῖδα καὶ λαμπρὸν ἀρετῇ γενέσθαι.

[5] τοῦτο τὸ θέαμα Ῥωμαίων ὑπὲρ ἅπαντα τὰ ἄλλα δεινὰ τὰς ψυχὰς κατέκλασε καὶ παρέλυσεν, οὐ θυμοῦ πρὸς ἄμυναν, ὥσπερ ἦν εἰκός, ἀλλὰ φρίκης καὶ τρόμου πᾶσιν [6] ἐγγενομένου. καίτοι τόν γε Κράσσον αὐτὸν αὑτοῦ λαμπρότατον ἐν τῷ τότε πάθει φανῆναι λέγουσιν· ἐβόα γὰρ ἐπιὼν τὰς τάξεις· ἐμὸν ὦ Ῥωμαῖοι τοῦτο τὸ πάθος ἴδιόν ἐστιν· ἡ δὲ μεγάλη δόξα καὶ τύχη τῆς Ῥώμης ἐν ὑμῖν [7] ἕστηκε σῳζομένοις ἄθραυστος καὶ ἀήττητος. εἰ δὲ καὶ ἐμοῦ τις οἶκτος ἀφῃρημένου παῖδα πάντων ἄριστον, ἐπιδείξασθε τοῦτον ὀργῇ τῇ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους. ἀφέλεσθε τὴν χαρὰν αὐτῶν, τιμωρήσασθε τὴν ὠμότητα, μὴ καταπλαγῆτε τοῖς γεγενημένοις. ‹ἐπ›εὶ δεῖ τι καὶ παθεῖν [8] ‹τοὺς› μεγάλων ἐφιεμένους. οὐδὲ Λεύκολλος Τιγράνην ἀναιμωτὶ καθεῖλεν, οὐδὲ Σκιπίων Ἀντίοχον, χιλίας δὲ ναῦς οἱ παλαιοὶ περὶ Σικελίαν ἀπώλεσαν, ἐν δ’ Ἰταλίᾳ πολλοὺς αὐτοκράτορας καὶ στρατηγούς, ὧν οὐδεὶς προηττηθεὶς [9] ἐκώλυσεν αὐτοὺς κρατῆσαι τῶν νενικηκότων. οὐ γὰρ εὐτυχίᾳ τὰ Ῥωμαίων, ἀλλὰ τλημοσύνῃ καὶ ἀρετῇ πρὸς τὰ δεινὰ χωρούντων, εἰς τοσοῦτο προῆλθε δυνάμεως.

[27] [1] Τοιαῦτα λέγων καὶ παραθαρσύνων ὁ Κράσσος οὐ πολλοὺς ἑώρα προθύμως ὑπακούοντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ συναλαλάξαι κελεύσας ἤλεγξε τοῦ στρατοῦ τὴν κατήφειαν, ἀσθενῆ καὶ ὀλίγην καὶ ἀνώμαλον κραυγὴν ποιήσαντος· ἡ δὲ παρὰ [2] τῶν βαρβάρων λαμπρὰ καὶ θρασεῖα κατεῖχε. τραπομένων δὲ πρὸς ἔργον, οἱ μὲν ἱππόται πλάγιοι περιελαύνοντες ἐτόξευον, αὐτοὶ δὲ τοῖς κοντοῖς οἱ πρότακτοι χρώμενοι, συνέστελλον εἰς ὀλίγον τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, πλὴν ὅσοι τὸν ὑπὸ τῶν τοξευμάτων φεύγοντες θάνατον ἀπετόλμων παραβόλως εἰς αὐτοὺς φέρεσθαι, μικρὰ μὲν βλάπτοντες, ὀξέως δὲ θνῄσκοντες ὑπὸ τραυμάτων μεγάλων καὶ καιρίων, παχὺν ἐπωθούντων τῷ σιδήρῳ τὸν κοντόν, †τοὺς ἵππους, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ διὰ δυοῖν ἀνδρῶν ὑπὸ ῥύμης διαπορευόμενον.

[3] οὕτω δὲ διαγωνισάμενοι, νυκτὸς ἐπιούσης ἀπηλλάγησαν, εἰπόντες ὅτι Κράσσῳ χαρίζονται νύκτα μίαν ἀποθρηνῆσαι τὸν υἱόν, ἢν ἄρα μὴ βέλτιον ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ σκεψάμενος ἐλθεῖν μᾶλλον ἐθελήσῃ πρὸς Ἀρσάκην ἢ κομισθῆναι.

[4] οὗτοι μὲν οὖν ἐπαυλισάμενοι πλησίον ἐν ἐλπίσι μεγάλαις ἦσαν· νὺξ δὲ χαλεπὴ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους κατελάμβανεν, οὔτε ταφῆς τῶν κειμένων οὔτε θεραπείας τῶν τετρωμένων καὶ ψυχορραγούντων ποιουμένους λόγον, ἑκάστου δ’ [5] ἑαυτὸν ἀποκλαίοντος. ἀνέκφυκτα γὰρ ἐφαίνετο, τήν θ’ ἡμέραν αὐτοῦ προσμείνασι, καὶ νύκτωρ εἰς πεδίον ἀχανὲς ἐμβαλοῦσιν, οἵ τε τραυματίαι πολλὴν ἀπορίαν παρεῖχον, καὶ κομίζειν, ἐμποδὼν τῷ τάχει τῆς φυγῆς ἐσόμενοι, καὶ [6] ἀπολείπειν, βοῇ τὴν ἀπόδρασιν ἐξαγγελοῦντες. τοῦ δὲ Κράσσου, καίπερ αἴτιον ἁπάντων νομίζοντες, ἐπόθουν ὅμως τήν τ’ ὄψιν καὶ τὴν φωνήν. ὁ δὲ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐγκεκαλυμμένος ὑπὸ σκότος ἔκειτο, παράδειγμα τοῖς πολλοῖς τύχης, τοῖς δ’ εὖ φρονοῦσιν ἀβουλίας καὶ φιλοτιμίας, δι’ ἣν οὐκ ἠγάπα πρῶτος ὢν καὶ μέγιστος ἐν μυριάσιν ἀνθρώπων τοσαύταις, ἀλλ’ ὅτι δυοῖν μόνον ἀνδρῶν ὕστερος [7] ἐκρίνετο, τοῦ παντὸς ἀποδεῖν ἐνόμιζε. τότε δ’ οὖν αὐτὸν Ὀκτάβιος θ’ ὁ πρεσβευτὴς καὶ Κάσσιος ἀνίστασαν καὶ παρεθάρρυνον. ὡς δ’ ἀπηγορεύκει παντάπασιν, αὐτοὶ συγκαλέσαντες ἑκατοντάρχας καὶ λοχαγούς, ὡς ἔδοξε βουλευομένοις μὴ μένειν, ἀνίστασαν τὸν στρατὸν ἄνευ σάλπιγγος καὶ δι’ ἡσυχίας τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτ’ αἰσθομένων ὡς ἀπολείποιντο τῶν ἀδυνάτων, ἀκοσμία δεινὴ καὶ σύγχυσις μετ’ [8] οἰμωγῆς καὶ βοῆς τὸ στρατόπεδον κατεῖχεν. ἐκ τούτου δὲ ταραχὴ καὶ πτοία προϊόντας αὐτοὺς ὑπελάμβανεν, ὡς ἐπιφερομένων τῶν πολεμίων, καὶ πολλάκις μὲν ἐκτρεπόμενοι, πολλάκις δ’ εἰς τάξιν καθιστάμενοι, τῶν τε τραυματιῶν ὅσοι παρηκολούθουν τοὺς μὲν ἀναλαμβάνοντες, τοὺς δ’ ἀποτιθέμενοι, διατριβὴν εἶχον, πλὴν τριακοσίων ἱππέων οὓς Ἐγνάτιος ἔχων προσέμειξε ταῖς Κάρραις περὶ [9] μέσας νύκτας, φθεγξάμενος δὲ Ῥωμαϊστὶ τοῖς τειχοφυλακοῦσιν, ὡς ὑπήκουσαν, ἐκέλευε Κοπωνίῳ τῷ ἄρχοντι φράζειν, ὅτι μάχη γέγονε μεγάλη Κράσσῳ πρὸς Πάρθους, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν εἰπὼν οὐδ’ αὑτὸν ὅστις ἦν, ἀπήλαυνεν ἐπὶ τὸ Ζεῦγμα, καὶ διέσωσε μὲν τοὺς σὺν αὑτῷ, κακῶς δ’ [10] ἤκουσε καταλιπὼν τὸν στρατηγόν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὤνησέ γε τὸν Κράσσον ἡ προσριφεῖσα τότε τῷ Κοπωνίῳ φωνή· συμφρονήσας γὰρ ὅτι χρηστὸν οὐδὲν ἀγγέλλειν ἔχοντός ἐστι τὸ τάχος καὶ τὸ συγκεχυμένον τοῦ λόγου, παρήγγειλεν εὐθὺς ἐξοπλίζεσθαι τοὺς στρατιώτας, καὶ ἅμα τῷ πρῶτον αἰσθέσθαι τὸν Κράσσον ἐν ὁδῷ γεγενημένον, ἀπαντήσας ἀνελάμβανε καὶ παρέπεμπε τὴν στρατιὰν εἰς τὴν πόλιν.

[28] [1] Οἱ δὲ Πάρθοι νυκτὸς μὲν αἰσθόμενοι τὴν ἀπόδρασιν οὐκ ἐδίωκον, ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τοὺς μὲν ἐπὶ τῷ στρατοπέδῳ καταλειφθέντας οὐ μείους τετρακισχιλίων ἐπελθόντες ἀπέσφαξαν, ἐν δὲ τῷ πεδίῳ πλανωμένους πολλοὺς ἱππασάμενοι [2] συνέλαβον. τέσσαρας δ’ ὁμοῦ σπείρας, ἃς ἔτι νυκτὸς ἀπέρρηξε Βαργοντήιος ὁ πρεσβευτής, ἐκπεσούσας τῆς ὁδοῦ περισχόντες ἔν τισι στενοῖς, διέφθειραν ἀμυνομένας πλὴν ἀνδρῶν εἴκοσι. τούτους δὲ γυμνοῖς τοῖς ξίφεσιν ὠθουμένους δι’ αὐτῶν θαυμάσαντες, εἶξαν καὶ διέσχον ἀπιοῦσι [3] βάδην εἰς τὰς Κάρρας. τῷ δὲ Σουρήνᾳ προσέπεσε ψευδὴς λόγος ἐκπεφευγέναι Κράσσον μετὰ τῶν ἀρίστων, τὸ δ’ εἰς Κάρρας συνερρυηκὸς ὄχλον εἶναι σύμμεικτον οὐκ ἀξίων [4] σπουδῆς ἀνθρώπων. οἰόμενος οὖν ἀποβεβληκέναι τὸ τῆς νίκης τέλος, ἔτι δ’ ἀμφιδοξῶν καὶ μαθεῖν βουλόμενος τὸ ἀληθές, ὅπως ἢ προσμένων ἐνταῦθα πολιορκοίη Κράσσον ἢ διώκοι χαίρειν ἐάσας Καρρηνούς, ὑποπέμπει τινὰ τῶν παρ’ αὐτῷ διγλώσσων πρὸς τὰ τείχη, κελεύσας ἱέντα Ῥωμαϊκὴν διάλεκτον καλεῖν Κράσσον αὐτὸν ἢ Κάσσιον, ὡς Σουρήνα διὰ λόγων θέλοντος αὐτοῖς [συγ]γενέσθαι.

[5] ταῦτα τοῦ διγλώσσου φράσαντος ὡς ἀπηγγέλη τοῖς περὶ Κράσσον, ἐδέχοντο τὰς προκλήσεις, καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ἧκον ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων Ἄραβες, οἳ Κράσσον εὖ καὶ Κάσσιον ἀπ’ ὄψεως ἐγνώριζον, ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ πρὸ τῆς μάχης [6] γεγονότες. οὗτοι τὸν Κάσσιον ἰδόντες ἐπὶ τοῦ τείχους, ἔλεγον ὅτι Σουρήνας σπένδεται καὶ δίδωσιν αὐτοῖς φίλοις οὖσι βασιλέως σῴζεσθαι, Μεσοποταμίαν ἐκλιποῦσι· τοῦτο γὰρ ὁρᾶν λυσιτελὲς ἀμφοτέροις πρὸ τῆς ἐσχάτης ἀνάγκης.

[7] δεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ Κασσίου, καὶ τόπον ὁρισθῆναι καὶ χρόνον ἀξιοῦντος ἐν ᾧ συνίασι Σουρήνας καὶ Κράσσος, οὕτω φάμενοι ποιήσειν ἀπήλαυνον.

[29] [1] Ἡσθεὶς οὖν ὁ Σουρήνας ἐπὶ τῷ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐνέχεσθαι τῇ πολιορκίᾳ, μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπῆγε τοὺς Πάρθους, πολλὰ καθυβρίζοντας καὶ κελεύοντας, εἰ βούλονται τυχεῖν σπονδῶν Ῥωμαῖοι, Κράσσον ἐγχειρίσαι σφίσι καὶ Κάσσιον [2] δεδεμένους. οἱ δ’ ἤχθοντο μὲν ἠπατημένοι, μακρὰς δὲ καὶ κενὰς τὰς ἀπ’ Ἀρμενίων ἐλπίδας καταβάλλειν τῷ Κράσσῳ φράσαντες, εἴχοντο δρασμοῦ. καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔδει μηδένα πρὸ καιροῦ Καρρηνῶν πυθέσθαι· πυνθάνεται δ’ ὁ πάντων ἀπιστότατος Ἀνδρόμαχος, ὑπὸ Κράσσου καὶ τοῦτο [3] πιστευθεὶς καὶ τῆς ὁδοῦ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν. οὐδὲν οὖν ἔλαθε τοὺς Πάρθους, ἐξαγγέλλοντος τοῦ Ἀνδρομάχου καθ’ ἕκαστον. ἐπεὶ δὲ νυκτομαχεῖν οὐ πάτριον αὐτοῖς ἐστιν οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιον, ἐξῄει δὲ νυκτὸς ὁ Κράσσος, ὅπως μὴ πολὺ καθυστερήσωσι τῇ διώξει στρατηγῶν ὁ Ἀνδρόμαχος ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλας ὁδοὺς ὑφηγεῖτο, καὶ τέλος ἐξέτρεψεν εἰς ἕλη βαθέα καὶ χωρία τάφρων μεστὰ τὴν πορείαν, χαλεπὴν καὶ πολυπλανῆ [4] γινομένην τοῖς ἐπισπομένοις. ἐγένοντο δέ τινες, οἳ μηδὲν ὑγιὲς ‹φρονοῦντα› τὸν Ἀνδρόμαχον στρέφειν καὶ περιελίττειν εἰκάσαντες οὐκ ἠκολούθησαν, ἀλλὰ Κάσσιος μὲν ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς Κάρρας πάλιν, καὶ τῶν ὁδηγῶν (Ἄραβες δ’ ἦσαν) ἀναμεῖναι κελευόντων, ἄχρι ἂν ἡ σελήνη παραλλάξῃ τὸν σκορπίον, ἀλλ’ ἔγωγε εἰπών μᾶλλον φοβοῦμαι τὸν τοξότην, ἀπήλαυνεν εἰς Συρίαν μεθ’ ἱππέων πεντακοσίων· ἄλλοι δὲ χρησάμενοι πιστοῖς ὁδηγοῖς, ἐλάβοντο χωρίων ὀρεινῶν ἃ καλεῖται Σίννακα, καὶ κατέστησαν ἐν [5] ἀσφαλεῖ πρὸ ἡμέρας. οὗτοι περὶ πεντακισχιλίους ἦσαν, ἡγεῖτο δ’ αὐτῶν ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς Ὀκτάβιος. τὸν δὲ Κράσσον ἡμέρα κατελάμβανεν ἔτι ἀγόμενον ὑπ’ Ἀνδρομάχου περὶ [6] τὰς δυσχωρίας καὶ τὸ ἕλος. ἦσαν δὲ τέσσαρες σπεῖραι σὺν αὐτῷ θυρεαφόρων, ἱππεῖς δὲ παντελῶς ὀλίγοι καὶ πέντε ῥαβδοῦχοι, μεθ’ ὧν ἐπιπόνως καὶ μόλις εἰς τὴν ὁδὸν καταστάς, ἤδη τῶν πολεμίων ἐπικειμένων, ὅσον δώδεκα σταδίους ἀπολιπὼν τοῦ συμμεῖξαι τοῖς περὶ Ὀκτάβιον, ἐπ’ ἄλλον διαφεύγει λόφον, οὐχ οὕτω μὲν ἄφιππον οὐδ’ ὀχυρόν, ὑποκείμενον δὲ τοῖς Σιννάκοις καὶ συνηρτημένον αὐχένι μακρῷ διὰ μέσου κατατείνοντι τοῦ πεδίου πρὸς [7] τοῦτον. ἦν οὖν ἐν ὄψει τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ὀκτάβιον ὁ κίνδυνος αὐτοῦ, καὶ πρῶτος Ὀκτάβιος ἔθει μετ’ ὀλίγων ἄνωθεν ἐπιβοηθῶν, εἶθ’ οἱ λοιποὶ κακίσαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐφέροντο, καὶ προσπεσόντες καὶ ὠσάμενοι τοὺς πολεμίους ἀπὸ τοῦ λόφου, περιέσχον ἐν μέσῳ τὸν Κράσσον καὶ προὐβάλοντο τοὺς θυρεούς, μεγαληγοροῦντες ὡς οὐκ ἔστι Πάρθοις βέλος ὃ προσπεσεῖται τῷ σώματι τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος πρὶν ἢ σφᾶς ἅπαντας ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ μαχομένους ἀποθανεῖν.

[30] [1] Ὁρῶν οὖν ὁ Σουρήνας τούς τε Πάρθους ἀμβλύτερον ἤδη κινδυνεύοντας, ἤν τε νὺξ ἐπίσχῃ καὶ τῶν ὀρῶν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι λάβωνται, παντάπασιν αὐτοὺς ἐσομένους ἀλήπτους, [2] ἐπῆγε τῷ Κράσσῳ δόλον. ἀφείθησαν μὲν γὰρ ἔνιοι τῶν αἰχμαλώτων, ἀκηκοότες ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τῶν βαρβάρων πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐπίτηδες διαλεγομένων, ὡς οὐ βούλεται βασιλεὺς ἄσπονδον αὑτῷ πόλεμον εἶναι πρὸς Ῥωμαίους, ἀλλὰ τὴν φιλίαν ἀναλαβεῖν χάριτι, Κράσσῳ χρησάμενος φιλανθρώπως, ἔσχοντο δὲ μάχης οἱ βάρβαροι, Σουρήνας δὲ μετὰ τῶν ἀρίστων προσελάσας ἀτρέμα τῷ λόφῳ, τοῦ μὲν τόξου τὸν τόνον ἀνῆκε, τὴν δὲ δεξιὰν προὔτεινεν, ἐκάλει δὲ τὸν Κράσσον ἐπὶ συμβάσεις, ὑπειπὼν ὅτι τῆς μὲν ἀνδρείας καὶ δυνάμεως ἄκοντος πεπείραται βασιλέως, πρᾳότητα δ’ αὐτοῖς καὶ φιλοφροσύνην ἑκὼν ἐπιδείκνυται, [3] σπενδόμενος ἀπιοῦσι καὶ παρέχων σῴζεσθαι. ταῦτα τοῦ Σουρήνα λέγοντος, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι προθύμως ἐδέξαντο καὶ περιχαρεῖς ἦσαν, ὁ δὲ Κράσσος οὐδὲν ὅ τι μὴ δι’ ἀπάτης ἐσφαλμένος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, καὶ τὸ αἰφνίδιον τῆς μεταβολῆς [4] ἄλογον ἡγούμενος, οὐχ ὑπήκουεν, ἀλλ’ ἐβουλεύετο. τῶν δὲ στρατιωτῶν βοώντων καὶ ‹ἰέναι› κελευόντων, εἶτα λοιδορούντων καὶ κακιζόντων ὡς προβάλλοντα μαχουμένους αὐτοὺς οἷς αὐτὸς ἀνόπλοις εἰς λόγους οὐ θαρρεῖ συνελθεῖν, πρῶτον μὲν ἐπειρᾶτο δεῖσθαι καὶ λέγειν, ὅτι τὸ λειπόμενον μέρος τῆς ἡμέρας διακαρτερήσαντες, ἐν τοῖς ὀρεινοῖς καὶ τραχέσι δύνανται διὰ νυκτὸς ἰέναι, καὶ τὴν ὁδὸν ἐδείκνυε καὶ παρεκάλει τὴν ἐλπίδα μὴ προέσθαι τῆς [5] σωτηρίας ἐγγὺς οὔσης. ὡς δὲ χαλεπαίνοντες αὐτῷ καὶ τὰ ὅπλα κρούοντες ἠπείλουν, φοβηθεὶς ἐχώρει, καὶ τοσοῦτον εἶπε μεταστραφείς· Ὀκτάβιε καὶ Πετρώνιε καὶ ὅσοι πάρεστε Ῥωμαίων ἄρχοντες, ὑμεῖς ὁρᾶτε τῆς ἐμῆς ὁδοῦ τὴν ἀνάγκην, καὶ σύνιστε παρόντες ὡς αἰσχρὰ πάσχω καὶ βίαια· τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις ἅπασιν ἀνθρώποις λέγετε σωθέντες, ὡς Κράσσος ἀπατηθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, οὐκ ἐκδοθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν ἀπόλωλε.

[31] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἔμειναν οἱ περὶ τὸν Ὀκτάβιον, ἀλλὰ συγκατέβαινον ἀπὸ τοῦ λόφου· τοὺς δὲ ῥαβδούχους ἑπομένους ὁ Κράσσος ἀπήλλασσε. πρῶτοι δὲ τῶν βαρβάρων ἀπήντησαν αὐτοῖς δύο μειξέλληνες, οἳ καὶ προσεκύνησαν τὸν Κράσσον, ἀπὸ τῶν ἵππων ἁλάμενοι, καὶ προσαγορεύσαντες ἑλλάδι φωνῇ παρεκάλουν προπέμψαι τινάς, οἷς ἐπιδείξεται Σουρήνας ἑαυτὸν καὶ τοὺς περὶ αὑτὸν ἀνόπλους [2] καὶ ἀσιδήρους προσερχομένους. ὁ δὲ Κράσσος ἀπεκρίνατο μέν, ὡς εἰ καὶ τὸν ἐλάχιστον εἶχε τοῦ ζῆν λόγον, οὐκ ἂν εἰς χεῖρας αὐτοῖς ἦλθεν· ὅμως δὲ δύο Ῥωσκίους ἀδελφοὺς ἔπεμψε πευσομένους ἐπὶ τίσι καὶ πόσοι συνίασιν.

[3] οὓς εὐθὺς συλλαβὼν ὁ Σουρήνας κατέσχεν, αὐτὸς δὲ μετὰ τῶν ἀρίστων ἱππότης προσῄει καὶ τί τοῦτο; ἔφη πεζὸς ὁ Ῥωμαίων αὐτοκράτωρ, ἡμεῖς δ’ ὀχούμεθα; [4] καὶ προσαγαγεῖν ἐκέλευσεν ἵππον αὐτῷ. τοῦ δὲ Κράσσου φήσαντος οὔθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἁμαρτάνειν οὔτ’ ἐκεῖνον, ὡς ἑκατέρῳ πάτριόν ἐστι ποιουμένους τὴν σύνοδον, εἶναι μὲν αὐτόθεν ἔφη σπονδὰς καὶ εἰρήνην ὁ Σουρήνας Ὁρώδῃ τε βασιλεῖ καὶ Ῥωμαίοις, δεῖν δὲ γράψασθαι τὰς συνθήκας ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμὸν προελθόντας· οὐ γὰρ ὑμεῖς γε ἔφη πάνυ μνήμονες ὁμολογιῶν οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, καὶ προὔτεινε τὴν δεξιὰν αὐτῷ. μεταπεμπομένου δ’ ἵππον, οὐδὲν ἔφη δεῖν· [5] βασιλεὺς γάρ σοι δίδωσι τοῦτον. ἅμα δ’ ἵππος τε τῷ Κράσσῳ παρέστη χρυσοχάλινος, οἵ τ’ ἀναβολεῖς αὐτὸν ἀράμενοι περιεβίβασαν καὶ παρείποντο, πληγῇ τὸν ἵππον ἐπιταχύνοντες. Ὀκτάβιος δὲ πρῶτος ἀντιλαμβάνεται τῶν χαλινῶν, καὶ μετ’ ἐκεῖνον εἷς τῶν χιλιάρχων Πετρώνιος, εἶθ’ οἱ λοιποὶ περιίσταντο, τόν θ’ ἵππον ἀνακόπτειν πειρώμενοι καὶ τοὺς πιεζοῦντας τὸν Κράσσον ἐξ ἑκατέρου μέρους [6] ἀφέλκοντες. ὠθισμοῦ δὲ γενομένου καὶ ταραχῆς, εἶτα πληγῶν, Ὀκτάβιος μὲν ἀνασπάσας τὸ ξίφος ἑνὸς τῶν βαρβάρων κτείνει τὸν ἱπποκόμον, ἕτερος δὲ τὸν Ὀκτάβιον ἐκ τῶν ὄπισθεν πατάξας· Πετρώνιος δ’ ὅπλου μὲν οὐκ ηὐπόρησεν, εἰς δὲ τὸν θώρακα πληγεὶς ἀπεπήδησεν ἄτρωτος· τὸν δὲ Κράσσον ὄνομα Ἐξάθρης Πάρθος ἀπέκτεινεν.

[7] οἱ δ’ οὔ φασιν, ἀλλ’ ἕτερον μὲν εἶναι τὸν ἀποκτείναντα, τοῦτον δὲ κειμένου τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποκόψαι καὶ τὴν δεξιάν. εἰκάζεται δὲ ταῦτα μᾶλλον ἢ γινώσκεται· τῶν γὰρ παρόντων οἱ μὲν ἐκεῖ μαχόμενοι περὶ τὸν Κράσσον ἀνῃρέθησαν, οἱ δ’ εὐθὺς ἀνεχώρησαν ἐπὶ τὸν λόφον.

[8] Ἐπελθόντων δὲ τῶν Πάρθων καὶ λεγόντων ὅτι Κράσσος μὲν δίκην δέδωκε, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους κελεύει Σουρήνας κατιέναι θαρροῦντας, οἱ μὲν ἐνεχείρισαν αὑτοὺς καταβάντες, οἱ δὲ τῆς νυκτὸς ἐσπάρησαν, καὶ τούτων ὀλίγοι παντάπασιν διεσώθησαν· τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐκθηρεύοντες οἱ Ἄραβες συνελάμβανον καὶ διέφθειρον. λέγονται δ’ οἱ πάντες δισμύριοι μὲν ἀποθανεῖν, μύριοι δ’ ἁλῶναι ζῶντες.

[32] [1] Ὁ δὲ Σουρήνας τὴν κεφαλὴν τοῦ Κράσσου καὶ τὴν χεῖρα πρὸς Ὁρώδην ἔπεμψεν εἰς Ἀρμενίαν, αὐτὸς δὲ διαδοὺς λόγον ὑπ’ ἀγγέλων εἰς Σελεύκειαν ὡς ζῶντα Κράσσον ἄγοι, παρεσκεύαζε πομπήν τινα γελοίαν, ὕβρει προσαγορεύων [2] θρίαμβον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐμφερέστατος Κράσσῳ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων, Γάιος Πακκιανός, ἐσθῆτα βασιλικὴν γυναικὸς ἐνδὺς καὶ διδαχθεὶς Κράσσος ὑπακούειν καὶ αὐτοκράτωρ τοῖς καλοῦσιν, ἐφ’ ἵππου καθήμενος ἤγετο· πρὸ αὐτοῦ δὲ σαλπιγκταὶ καὶ ῥαβδοῦχοί τινες ὀχούμενοι καμήλοις εἰσήλαυνον· ἐξήρτητο δὲ τῶν ῥάβδων βαλάντια καὶ περὶ τοὺς πελέκεις πρόσφατοι κεφαλαὶ Ῥωμαίων [3] ἀποτετμημέναι. κατόπιν δ’ εἵποντο Σελευκίδες ἑταῖραι μουσουργοί, πολλὰ βωμολόχα καὶ γελοῖα δι’ ᾀσμάτων εἰς θηλύτητα καὶ ἀνανδρίαν τοῦ Κράσσου λέγουσαι. ταῦτα [4] μὲν οὖν πάντες ἐθεῶντο. τὴν δὲ γερουσίαν τῶν Σελευκέων ἀθροίσας, εἰσήνεγκεν ἀκόλαστα βιβλία τῶν Ἀριστείδου Μιλησιακῶν, οὔτι ταῦτά γε καταψευσάμενος· εὑρέθη γὰρ ἐν τοῖς Ῥουστίου σκευοφόροις, καὶ παρέσχε τῷ Σουρήνᾳ καθυβρίσαι πολλὰ καὶ κατασκῶψαι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, εἰ μηδὲ πολεμοῦντες ἀπέχεσθαι πραγμάτων καὶ γραμμάτων [5] δύνανται τοιούτων. τοῖς μέντοι Σελευκεῦσιν ἐδόκει σοφὸς ἀνὴρ ὁ Αἴσωπος (fab. 229 Hausr.) εἶναι, τὸν Σουρήναν ὁρῶσι τὴν μὲν τῶν Μιλησιακῶν ἀκολαστημάτων πήραν ἐξηρτημένον πρόσθεν, ὄπισθεν δὲ Παρθικὴν Σύβαριν ἐφελκόμενον ἐν τοσαῖσδε παλλακίδων ἁμάξαις, τρόπον τινὰ ταῖς λεγομέναις ἐχίδναις καὶ σκυτάλαις ἀντιμόρφως τὰ μὲν ἐμφανῆ καὶ πρόσθια μέρη φοβερὰ καὶ φρικώδη δόρασι καὶ τόξοις καὶ ἵπποις προβαλλομένην, κατ’ οὐρὰν δὲ τῆς φάλαγγος εἰς χορείαν καὶ κρόταλα καὶ ψαλμοὺς καὶ παννυχίδας ἀκολάστους μετὰ γυναικῶν τελευτῶσαν.

[6] ψεκτὸς μὲν γὰρ ὁ Ῥούστιος, ἀναιδεῖς δὲ Πάρθοι τὰ Μιλησιακὰ ψέγοντες, ὧν πολλοὶ βεβασιλεύκασιν ἐκ Μιλησίων καὶ Ἰωνίδων ἑταιρῶν γεγονότες Ἀρσακίδαι.

[33] [1] Τούτων δὲ πραττομένων Ὁρώδης ἐτύγχανεν ἤδη διηλλαγμένος Ἀρταβάζῃ τῷ Ἀρμενίῳ καὶ τὴν ἀδελφὴν αὐτοῦ γυναῖκα Πακόρῳ τῷ παιδὶ καθωμολογημένος, ἑστιάσεις τε καὶ πότοι δι’ ἀλλήλων ἦσαν αὐτοῖς, καὶ πολλὰ [2] παρεισήγετο τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀκουσμάτων. ἦν γὰρ οὔτε φωνῆς οὔτε γραμμάτων ὁ Ὁρώδης Ἑλληνικῶν ἄπειρος, ὁ δ’ Ἀρταβάζης καὶ τραγῳδίας ἐποίει καὶ λόγους ἔγραφε [3] καὶ ἱστορίας, ὧν ἔνιαι διασῴζονται. τῆς δὲ κεφαλῆς τοῦ Κράσσου κομισθείσης ἐπὶ θύρας, ἀπηρμέναι μὲν ἦσαν αἱ τράπεζαι, τραγῳδιῶν δ’ ὑποκριτὴς Ἰάσων ὄνομα Τραλλιανὸς ᾖδεν Εὐριπίδου Βακχῶν τὰ περὶ τὴν Ἀγαύην. εὐδοκιμοῦντος δ’ αὐτοῦ, Σιλάκης ἐπιστὰς τῷ ἀνδρῶνι καὶ προσκυνήσας, προὔβαλεν εἰς μέσον τοῦ Κράσσου τὴν [4] κεφαλήν. κρότον δὲ τῶν Πάρθων μετὰ χαρᾶς καὶ κραυγῆς ἀραμένων, τὸν μὲν Σιλάκην κατέκλιναν οἱ ὑπηρέται βασιλέως κελεύσαντος, ὁ δ’ Ἰάσων τὰ μὲν τοῦ Πενθέως σκευοποιήματα παρέδωκέ τινι τῶν χορευτῶν, τῆς δὲ τοῦ Κράσσου κεφαλῆς λαβόμενος καὶ ἀναβακχεύσας ἐπέραινεν ἐκεῖνα τὰ μέλη μετ’ ἐνθουσιασμοῦ καὶ ᾠδῆς (Eur. Bacch. 1169)

[5] φέρομεν ἐξ ὄρεος

ἕλικα νεότομον ἐπὶ μέλαθρα,

μακάριον θήραμα.

[6] καὶ ταῦτα μὲν πάντας ἔτερπεν· ᾀδομένων δὲ τῶν ἑξῆς ἀμοιβαίων πρὸς τὸν χορόν

‹Α.› τίς ἐφόνευσεν;

‹Β.› ἐμὸν τὸ γέρας,

ἀναπηδήσας ὁ Ἐξάθρης - ἐτύγχανε γὰρ δειπνῶν - ἀντελαμβάνετο τῆς κεφαλῆς, ὡς αὐτῷ λέγειν ταῦτα μᾶλλον [7] ἢ ἐκείνῳ προσῆκον. ἡσθεὶς δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς τὸν μὲν οἷς πάτριόν ἐστιν ἐδωρήσατο, τῷ δ’ Ἰάσονι τάλαντον ἔδωκεν. εἰς τοιοῦτόν φασιν ἐξόδιον τὴν Κράσσου στρατηγίαν ὥσπερ τραγῳδίαν τελευτῆσαι.

Δίκη μέντοι καὶ τῆς ὠμότητος Ὁρώδην καὶ τῆς ἐπιορκίας [8] Σουρήναν ἀξία μετῆλθε. Σουρήναν μὲν γὰρ οὐ μετὰ πολὺν χρόνον Ὁρώδης φθονῶν τῆς δόξης ἀπέκτεινεν, Ὁρώδῃ δ’ ἀποβαλόντι Πάκορον ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων μάχῃ κρατηθέντα καὶ νοσήσαντι νόσον εἰς ὕδερον τραπεῖσαν Φραάτης [9] ὁ υἱὸς ἐπιβουλεύων ἀκόνιτον ἔδωκεν. ἀναδεξαμένης δὲ τῆς νόσου τὸ φάρμακον εἰς ἑαυτὴν ὥστε συνεκκριθῆναι, καὶ τοῦ σώματος κουφισθέντος, ἐπὶ τὴν ταχίστην τῶν ὁδῶν ἐλθὼν ὁ Φραάτης ἀπέπνιξεν αὐτόν.

Comparison Niciae et Crassi

[1] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῇ συγκρίσει πρῶτον ὁ Νικίου πλοῦτος τῷ Κράσσου παραβαλλόμενος ἀμεμπτοτέραν ἔχει τὴν κτῆσιν. ἄλλως μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἄν τις δοκιμάσειε τὴν ἀπὸ μετάλλων ἐργασίαν, ἧς τὰ πλεῖστα περαίνεται διὰ κακούργων ἢ βαρβάρων ὠνίων, δεδεμένων καὶ φθειρομένων ἐν τόποις ὑπούλοις καὶ νοσεροῖς· παραβαλλομένη δὲ πρὸς τὰ Σύλλα δημιόπρατα καὶ τὰς περὶ τὸ πῦρ ἐργολαβίας, [2] ἐπιεικεστέρα φανεῖται. ταύταις γὰρ ὁ Κράσσος ἀναφανδὸν ὡς τῷ γεωργεῖν ἐχρῆτο καὶ τῷ δανείζειν· ἃ δ’ ἔξαρνος ἦν ἐλεγχόμενος, ἐπὶ κέρδεσιν ἐν βουλῇ λέγειν καὶ τοὺς συμμάχους ἀδικεῖν καὶ γύναια περιιὼν κολακεύειν καὶ συνεπικρύπτειν τοὺς πονηρούς, τούτων αἰτίαν οὐδὲ ψευδῆ πώποτε Νικίας ἔλαβεν, ἄλλως δὲ διδοὺς καὶ προϊέμενος ἀργύριον ὑπὸ δειλίας τοῖς συκοφάνταις ἐχλευάζετο, πρᾶγμα ποιῶν Περικλεῖ μὲν ἴσως καὶ Ἀριστείδῃ μὴ πρέπον, αὐτῷ [3] δ’ ἀναγκαῖον, οὐκ εὖ πεφυκότι πρὸς τὸ θαρρεῖν. ᾧ καὶ Λυκοῦργος ὕστερον ὁ ῥήτωρ ἐπαρρησιάσατο πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, αἰτίαν ἔχων ἐξωνεῖσθαί τινας τῶν συκοφαντῶν· ἥδομαι γάρ εἶπεν, εἰ τοσοῦτον χρόνον πεπολιτευμένος παρ’ ὑμῖν, διδοὺς πεφώραμαι πρότερον ἢ λαμβάνων.

[4] ἦν δὲ ταῖς δαπάναις πολιτικώτερος μὲν ὁ Νικίας, ἀναθήμασι καὶ γυμνασιαρχίαις καὶ διδασκαλίαις χορῶν φιλοτιμούμενος· ὧν δ’ ὁ Κράσσος ἀνήλωσεν, ἑστιάσας ἅμα τοσαύτας μυριάδας ἀνθρώπων, εἶτα θρέψας πάλιν, οὐδὲν ἦν μέρος ἃ Νικίας ἐκέκτητο σὺν οἷς ἀνήλωσεν, ὥστε θαυμάζειν εἴ τινα λέληθε τὸ τὴν κακίαν ἀνωμαλίαν εἶναί τινα τρόπου καὶ ἀνομολογίαν, ὁρῶντα τοὺς αἰσχρῶς συλλέγοντας εἶτ’ ἀχρήστως ἐκχέοντας.

[2] [1] Περὶ μὲν οὖν τοῦ πλούτου τοσαῦτα· τοῖς δὲ πολιτεύμασι τοῦ μὲν Νικίου πανοῦργον οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἄδικον οὐδὲ βίαιον πρόσεστιν οὐδὲ θρασύτης, ἀλλ’ ἐξηπατᾶτο μᾶλλον ὑπ’ Ἀλκιβιάδου, καὶ τῷ δήμῳ προσῄει μετ’ εὐλαβείας.

[2] τοῦ δὲ Κράσσου πολλὴν μὲν ἐν ταῖς πρὸς ἔχθραν καὶ φιλίαν μεταβολαῖς ἀπιστίαν καὶ ἀνελευθερίαν κατηγοροῦσι, βίᾳ δ’ οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ἠρνεῖτο τὴν ὑπατείαν μετιέναι, μισθωσάμενος ἄνδρας τοὺς Κάτωνι καὶ Δομιτίῳ τὰς χεῖρας [3] προσοίσοντας. ἐν δὲ τῇ περὶ τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν ψηφοφορίᾳ τοῦ δήμου πολλοὶ μὲν ἐτρώθησαν, ἔπεσον δὲ τέσσαρες, αὐτὸς δ’ - ὅπερ ἡμᾶς ἐν τῇ διηγήσει παρελήλυθε - Λεύκιον Ἀννάλιον, ἄνδρα βουλευτήν, ἀντιλέγοντα πὺξ πατάξας [4] εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον ἐξέβαλεν ᾑμαγμένον. ὡς δὲ περὶ ταῦτα βίαιος ὁ Κράσσος καὶ τυραννικός, οὕτως αὖ πάλιν ἐκείνου τὸ ψοφοδεὲς ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ ἄτολμον καὶ τοῖς κακίστοις ὑφιέμενον τῶν μεγίστων ἐπιλήψεως ἄξιον· ὁ δὲ Κράσσος ὑψηλὸς περί γε ταῦτα καὶ μεγαλόφρων, οὐ πρὸς Κλέωνας οὐδ’ Ὑπερβόλους μὰ Δία τοῦ ἀγῶνος ὄντος, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὴν Καίσαρος λαμπρότητα καὶ τρεῖς τοῦ Πομπηίου θριάμβους οὐχ ὑπείξας, ἀλλ’ ἀντάρας ἑκατέρῳ τὴν δύναμιν, ἀξιώματι δὲ τῆς τιμητικῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ Πομπήιον [5] ὑπερβαλόμενος. δεῖ γὰρ ἐπὶ μεγίστοις οὐ τὸ ‹ἀν›επίφθονον, ἀλλὰ τὸ λαμπρὸν ἐν πολιτεία λαμβάνειν, μεγέθει [6] δυνάμεως ἐξαμαυροῦντα τὸν φθόνον. εἰ δ’ ἐξ ἅπαντος ἀγαπᾶς ἀσφάλειαν καὶ ἡσυχίαν, καὶ δέδιας Ἀλκιβιάδην μὲν ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος, ἐν δὲ Πύλῳ Λακεδαιμονίους, Περδίκκαν δ’ ἐν Θρᾴκῃ· πολλὴν εὐρυχωρίαν ἡ πόλις ἔχει σχολῆς, ἐκ μέσου γενόμενον καθῆσθαι πλέκοντα τῆς ἀταραξίας [7] αὑτῷ στέφανον, ὡς ἔνιοι σοφισταὶ λέγουσιν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ τῆς εἰρήνης ἔρως θεῖος ἦν ὡς ἀληθῶς, καὶ τὸ λῦσαι τὸν πόλεμον ἑλληνικώτατον πολίτευμα, καὶ τῆς πράξεως ἕνεκα ταύτης οὐκ ἄξιον Νικίᾳ παραβαλεῖν Κράσσον, οὐδ’ εἰ τὸ Κάσπιον φέρων πέλαγος ἢ τὸν Ἰνδῶν ὠκεανὸν τῇ Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίᾳ προσώρισε.

[3] [1] Πόλει μέντοι χρώμενον ἀρετῆς αἰσθανομένῃ καὶ κρείττονα ὄντα τῇ δυνάμει χώραν οὐ δοτέον τοῖς πονηροῖς, οὐδ’ ἀρχὴν μὴ ἀρχ‹ικοῖς› οὖσιν, οὐδὲ πίστιν ἀπιστουμένοις, ὅπερ ἐποίησεν ὁ Νικίας, τὸν Κλέωνα, μηδὲν ὄντα πλέον ἐν τῇ πόλει τῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος ἀναισχυντίας [2] καὶ κραυγῆς, αὐτὸς εἰς τὸ στρατηγεῖν καταστήσας. οὐκ ἐπαινῶ μὲν γὰρ ἐγὼ τὸν Κράσσον, ἐν τοῖς Σπαρτακείοις ἐπειχθέντα θᾶσσον ἢ ἀσφαλέστερον διαγωνίσασθαι· καίτοι φιλοτιμίας ἦν τὸ δεῖσαι, μὴ Πομπήιος ἐλθὼν ἀφέληται τὴν νίκην αὐτοῦ, καθάπερ ἀφείλετο Μετέλλου Μόμμιος τὴν Κόρινθον· τὸ δὲ τοῦ Νικίου παντάπασιν ἄτοπον καὶ [3] δεινόν. οὐ γὰρ ἐλπίδας οὐδὲ ῥᾳστώνην ἐχούσης ἐξέστη τῷ ἐχθρῷ φιλοτιμίας καὶ ἀρχῆς, ἀλλὰ κίνδυνον ὑφορώμενος ἐν τῇ στρατηγίᾳ μέγαν, ἠγάπησε τὸ καθ’ αὑτὸν ἐν [4] ἀσφαλεῖ θέμενος προέσθαι τὸ κοινόν. καίτοι ὅ γε Θεμιστοκλῆς, ἵνα μὴ φαῦλος ἄνθρωπος ἐν τοῖς Περσικοῖς καὶ ἄφρων στρατηγήσας ἀπολέσῃ τὴν πόλιν, ἀργυρίῳ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀπέστησεν αὐτόν, καὶ Κάτων ὅτε μάλισθ’ ἑώρα πράγματα καὶ κινδύνους ἔχουσαν ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως τὴν [5] δημαρχίαν μετῆλθεν· ὁ δ’ αὑτὸν ἐπὶ Μίνῳαν καὶ Κύθηρα καὶ Μηλίους τοὺς ταλαιπώρους φυλάττων στρατηγόν, εἰ ‹δὲ› δέοι μάχεσθαι Λακεδαιμονίοις, ἀποδυόμενος τὴν χλανίδα καὶ τῇ Κλέωνος ἀπειρίᾳ καὶ θρασύτητι ναῦς καὶ ὅπλα καὶ ἄνδρας καὶ στρατηγίαν ἐμπειρίας ἄκρας δεομένην παραδιδούς, οὐ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ προΐεται δόξαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν [6] τῆς πατρίδος ἀσφάλειαν καὶ σωτηρίαν. ὅθεν ὕστερον οὐχ ἑκὼν οὐδὲ βουλόμενος Συρακουσίοις πολεμεῖν ἠναγκάζετο, δοκῶν οὐ λογισμῷ τοῦ συμφέροντος, ῥᾳστώνῃ δὲ μᾶλλον καὶ μαλακίᾳ τὸ παρ’ αὑτὸν ἀποστερεῖν Σικελίας τὴν πόλιν. ἐκεῖνο μέντοι μεγάλης ἐπιεικείας σημεῖον, ὅτι δυσχεραίνοντα τὸ πολεμεῖν ἀεὶ καὶ φεύγοντα τὸ στρατηγεῖν οὐκ ἐπαύοντο χειροτονοῦντες ὡς ἐμπειρότατον καὶ [7] βέλτιστον· τῷ δὲ Κράσσῳ παρὰ πάντα τὸν χρόνον ἐφιεμένῳ στρατηγίας τυχεῖν οὐχ ὑπῆρξε, πλὴν ἐπὶ τὸν δουλικὸν πόλεμον ἐξ ἀνάγκης, Πομπηίου καὶ Μετέλλου καὶ Λευκόλλων ἀμφοτέρων ἀπόντων, καίτοι τότε τιμωμένῳ μάλιστα καὶ δυναμένῳ πλεῖστον. ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔοικε καὶ τοῖς σπουδάζουσι περὶ αὐτὸν ἐδόκει κατὰ τὸν κωμικὸν (fr. adesp. 451 CAF III 493)

  ἀνὴρ

ἄριστος εἶναι τἆλλα πλὴν ἐν ἀσπίδι.

[8] καὶ ‹διὰ› τοῦτο Ῥωμαίους οὐδὲν ὤνησεν, ἐκβιασθέντας ὑπὸ τῆς φιλαρχίας αὐτοῦ καὶ φιλοτιμίας. Ἀθηναῖοι μὲν γὰρ ἄκοντα Νικίαν ἐξέπεμψαν ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον, Ῥωμαίους δὲ Κράσσος ἄκοντας ἐξήγαγε, καὶ διὰ μὲν τοῦτον ἡ πόλις, ἐκεῖνος δὲ διὰ τὴν πόλιν ἠτύχησεν.

[4] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον ἔστιν ἐν τούτοις τὸν Νικίαν ἐπαινεῖν ἢ ψέγειν τὸν Κράσσον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐμπειρίᾳ καὶ λογισμῷ χρησάμενος ἡγεμόνος ἔμφρονος, οὐ συνηπατήθη ταῖς ἐλπίσι τῶν πολιτῶν, ἀλλ’ ἔδεισε καὶ ἀπέγνω λήψεσθαι Σικελίαν· ὁ δ’ ὡς ἐπὶ ῥᾷστον ἔργον τὸν Παρθικὸν [2] ὁρμήσας πόλεμον, ἥμαρτε ‹μέν›, ὠρέχθη δὲ μεγάλων, Καίσαρος τὰ ἑσπέρια καὶ Κελτοὺς καὶ Γερμανοὺς καταστρεφομένου καὶ Βρεττανίαν, αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τὴν ἕω καὶ τὴν Ἰνδικὴν ἐλάσαι θάλασσαν καὶ προσ‹κατ›εργάσασθαι τὴν Ἀσίαν, οἷς Πομπήιος ἐπῆλθε καὶ Λεύκολλος ἀντέσχεν, ἄνδρες εὐμενεῖς καὶ πρὸς πάντας ἀγαθοὶ διαμείναντες, προελόμενοι δ’ ὅμοια Κράσσῳ καὶ τὰς αὐτὰς ὑποθέσεις λαβόντες· ἐπεὶ καὶ Πομπηίῳ τῆς ἀρχῆς διδομένης ἡ σύγκλητος ἠναντιοῦτο, καὶ Καίσαρα μυριάδας τριάκοντα Γερμανῶν τρεψάμενον συνεβούλευεν ὁ Κάτων ἐκδοῦναι τοῖς ἡττημένοις καὶ τρέψαι τὸ μήνιμα τοῦ παρασπονδήματος [3] εἰς ἐκεῖνον, ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἐρρῶσθαι φράσας Κάτωνι πεντεκαίδεκα ἡμέρας ἔθυεν ἐπινίκια καὶ περιχαρὴς ἦν. πῶς οὖν ἂν διετέθη καὶ πόσας ἔθυσεν ἡμέρας, εἰ Κράσσος ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος ἔγραψε νικῶν, εἶτ’ ἐπελθὼν Μηδίαν, Περσίδα, Ὑρκανούς, Σοῦσα, Βάκτρα Ῥωμαίων ἐπαρχίας ἀπέδειξεν; εἴπερ γὰρ ἀδικεῖν χρή κατὰ τὸν Εὐριπίδην (Phoeniss. 524), ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν μὴ δυναμένους μηδὲ χρῆσθαι τοῖς παροῦσιν ἀγαθοῖς εἰδότας, οὐ Σκάνδειαν οὐδὲ Μένδην ἐκκοπτέον, οὐδὲ φεύγοντας Αἰγινήτας ἀπολελοιπότας τὴν ἑαυτῶν ὥσπερ ὄρνιθας εἰς ἑτέραν ἀποκεκρυμμένους χώραν ἐκθηρατέον, ἀλλὰ πολλοῦ τιμητέον τὸ ἀδικεῖν, μὴ ῥᾳδίως μηδ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς τυχοῦσιν ὥς τι φαῦλον [4] ἢ μικρὸν προϊεμένους τὸ δίκαιον. οἱ δὲ τὴν μὲν τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου στρατείας ὁρμὴν ἐπαινοῦντες, τὴν δὲ Κράσσου ψέγοντες, οὐκ εὖ τὰ πρῶτα κρίνουσιν ἀπὸ τῶν τελευταίων.

[5] [1] Ἐν δὲ ταῖς στρατηγίαις αὐταῖς Νικίου μὲν οὐκ ὀλίγα γενναῖα· καὶ γὰρ μάχαις πολλαῖς ἐνίκησε τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ τοῦ λαβεῖν Συρακούσας ὀλίγον ἐδέησε, καὶ πάντα δι’ αὑτὸν οὐκ ἔπταισεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ νόσον ἄν τις [2] αἰτιάσαιτο καὶ φθόνον τῶν οἴκοι πολιτῶν. Κράσσος δὲ διὰ πλῆθος ἁμαρτημάτων οὐδὲ τῇ τύχῃ τι χρηστὸν ἀποδείξασθαι παρῆκεν, ὥστε θαυμάζειν αὐτοῦ τὴν ἀβελτερίαν, οὐ τῆς Πάρθων δυνάμεως ἡττηθεῖσαν, ἀλλὰ τῆς Ῥωμαίων εὐτυχίας περιγενομένην.

[3] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ μὲν μηδενὸς τῶν ἀπὸ μαντικῆς καταφρονῶν, ὁ δὲ πάντα ὑπερορῶν, ὁμοίως ἀπώλοντο, χαλεπὴ μὲν ἐν τούτοις ἡ ἀσφάλεια καὶ δύσκριτος· ἐπιεικέστερον δ’ αὐτῆς τοῦ παρανόμου καὶ αὐθάδους τὸ μετὰ δόξης παλαιᾶς καὶ συνήθους δι’ εὐλάβειαν ἁμαρτανόμενον.

[4] Περὶ μέντοι τὴν τελευτὴν ἀμεμπτότερος ὁ Κράσσος, οὐ παραδοὺς ἑαυτὸν οὐδὲ δεθεὶς οὐδὲ φενακισθείς, ἀλλ’ εἴξας τοῖς φίλοις δεομένοις καὶ παρασπονδηθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων· ὁ δὲ Νικίας αἰσχρᾶς καὶ ἀκλεοῦς ἐλπίδι σωτηρίας ὑποπεσὼν τοῖς πολεμίοις, αἰσχίονα ἑαυτῷ τὸν θάνατον ἐποίησεν.

Eumenes

[1] [1] Εὐμενῆ δὲ τὸν Καρδιανὸν ἱστορεῖ Δοῦρις (FGrH 76 F 53) πατρὸς μὲν ἁμαξεύοντος ἐν Χερρονήσῳ διὰ πενίαν γενέσθαι, τραφῆναι δ’ ἐλευθερίως [2] ἐν γράμμασι καὶ περὶ παλαίστραν· ἔτι δὲ παιδὸς ὄντος αὐτοῦ, Φίλιππον παρεπιδημοῦντα καὶ σχολὴν ἄγοντα τὰ τῶν Καρδιανῶν θεάσασθαι παγκράτια μειρακίων καὶ παλαίσματα παίδων, ἐν οἷς εὐημερήσαντα τὸν Εὐμενῆ καὶ φανέντα συνετὸν καὶ ἀνδρεῖον, ἀρέσαι τῷ Φιλίππῳ καὶ ἀναληφθῆναι.

[3] δοκοῦσι δ’ εἰκότα λέγειν μᾶλλον οἱ διὰ ξενίαν καὶ φιλίαν πατρῴαν [4] τὸν Εὐμενῆ λέγοντες ὑπὸ τοῦ Φιλίππου προαχθῆναι. μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου τελευτὴν οὔτε συνέσει τινὸς οὔτε πίστει λείπεσθαι δοκῶν τῶν περὶ Ἀλέξανδρον, ἐκαλεῖτο μὲν ἀρχιγραμματεύς, τιμῆς δ’ ἧσπερ οἱ μάλιστα φίλοι [5] καὶ συνήθεις ἐτύγχανεν, ὥστε καὶ στρατηγὸς ἀποσταλῆναι κατὰ τὴν Ἰνδικὴν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ μετὰ δυνάμεως, καὶ τὴν Περδίκκου παραλαβεῖν ἱππαρχίαν, ὅτε Περδίκκας ἀποθανόντος Ἡφαιστίωνος εἰς τὴν ἐκείνου προῆλθε τάξιν.

[6] διὸ καὶ Νεοπτολέμου τοῦ ἀρχιυπασπιστοῦ μετὰ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου τελευτὴν λέγοντος, ὡς αὐτὸς μὲν ἀσπίδα καὶ λόγχην, Εὐμενὴς δὲ γραφεῖον ἔχων καὶ πινακίδιον ἠκολούθει, κατεγέλων οἱ Μακεδόνες, μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων καλῶν τὸν Εὐμενῆ καὶ τῆς κατὰ τὸν γάμον οἰκειότητος ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως εἰδότες [7] ἀξιωθέντα. Βαρσίνην γὰρ τὴν Ἀρταβάζου πρώτην ἐν Ἀσίᾳ γνοὺς ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος, ἐξ ἧς υἱὸν ἔσχεν Ἡρακλέα, τῶν ταύτης ἀδελφῶν Πτολεμαίῳ μὲν Ἀπάμαν, Εὐμενεῖ δ’ Ἄρτωνιν ἐξέδωκεν, ὅτε καὶ τὰς ἄλλας Περσίδας διένειμε καὶ συνῴκισε τοῖς ἑταίροις.

[2] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ προσέκρουσε πολλάκις Ἀλεξάνδρῳ καὶ παρεκινδύνευσε [2] δι’ Ἡφαιστίωνα. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ Εὐΐῳ τῷ αὐλητῇ τοῦ Ἡφαιστίωνος οἰκίαν κατανείμαντος ἣν οἱ παῖδες ἔτυχον τῷ Εὐμενεῖ προκατειληφότες, ἐλθὼν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς πρὸς τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ὁ Εὐμενὴς ἐβόα μετὰ Μέντορος, ὡς αὐλεῖν εἴη κράτιστον ἢ τραγῳδεῖν τὰ ὅπλα ῥίψαντας ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν, ὥστ’ Ἀλέξανδρον αὐτῷ συναγανακτεῖν καὶ λοιδορεῖσθαι τῷ Ἡφαιστίωνι.

[3] ταχὺ μέντοι μεταπεσὼν αὖθις εἶχε τὸν Εὐμενῆ δι’ ὀργῆς, ὡς ὕβρει μᾶλλον [4] πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἢ παρρησίᾳ πρὸς Ἡφαιστίωνα χρησάμενον. ἔπειτα Νέαρχον ἐκπέμπων μετὰ νεῶν ἐπὶ τὴν ἔξω θάλασσαν, ᾔτει χρήματα τοὺς φίλους· [5] οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἐν τῷ βασιλείῳ. τοῦ δ’ Εὐμενοῦς αἰτηθέντος μὲν τριακόσια τάλαντα, δόντος δ’ ἑκατὸν μόνα, καὶ ταῦτα γλίσχρως καὶ μόλις αὐτῷ συνειλέχθαι διὰ τῶν ἐπιτρόπων φάσκοντος, οὐδὲν ἐγκαλέσας οὐδὲ δεξάμενος, ἐκέλευσε τοὺς παῖδας κρύφα τῇ σκηνῇ τοῦ Εὐμενοῦς πῦρ ἐνεῖναι, βουλόμενος ἐκκομιζομένων τῶν χρημάτων λαβεῖν ἐπ’ αὐτοφώρῳ ψευδόμενον. [6] ἔφθη δ’ ἡ σκηνὴ καταφλεχθεῖσα, καὶ μετενόησε τῶν γραμμάτων διαφθαρέντων ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος. τὸ δὲ συγχυθὲν χρυσίον καὶ ἀργύριον ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς [7] ἀνευρέθη πλεῖον ἢ χιλίων ταλάντων. ἔλαβε δ’ οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ καὶ γράψας τοῖς πανταχοῦ σατράπαις καὶ στρατηγοῖς ἀντίγραφα τῶν διεφθαρμένων ἀπο[8]στέλλειν, πάντα παραλαμβάνειν ἐκέλευσε τὸν Εὐμενῆ. πάλιν δὲ περὶ δωρεᾶς τινος εἰς διαφορὰν καταστὰς πρὸς τὸν Ἡφαιστίωνα, καὶ πολλὰ μὲν [9] ἀκούσας κακῶς, πολλὰ δ’ εἰπών, τότε μὲν οὐκ ἔλαττον ἔσχε· μετ’ ὀλίγον δὲ τελευτήσαντος Ἡφαιστίωνος, περιπαθῶν ὁ βασιλεύς, καὶ πᾶσιν οὓς ἐδόκει ζῶντι μὲν ἐκείνῳ φθονεῖν, ἐπιχαίρειν δὲ τεθνηκότι τραχέως ὁμιλῶν καὶ χαλεπὸς ὤν, μάλιστα τὸν Εὐμενῆ δι’ ὑποψίας εἶχε, καὶ προὔφερε [10] πολλάκις τὰς διαφορὰς καὶ λοιδορίας ἐκείνας. ὁ δὲ πανοῦργος ὢν καὶ πιθανός, ἐπεχείρησεν οἷς ἀπώλλυτο σῴζειν ἑαυτόν· κατέφυγε γὰρ εἰς τὴν πρὸς Ἡφαιστίωνα φιλοτιμίαν Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ χάριν, ὑφηγούμενός τε τιμὰς αἳ μάλιστα κοσμεῖν ἔμελλον τὸν τεθνηκότα, καὶ χρήματα τελῶν εἰς τὴν τοῦ τάφου κατασκευὴν ἀφειδῶς καὶ προθύμως.

[3] [1] Ἀποθανόντος δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου, καὶ τῆς φάλαγγος διεστώσης πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους, τῇ μὲν γνώμῃ τούτοις προσένειμεν ἑαυτὸν ὁ Εὐμενής, τῷ δὲ λόγῳ κοινός τις ἦν πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους καὶ ἰδιώτης, ὡς οὐδὲν αὐτῷ προσῆκον [2] ὄντι ξένῳ πολυπραγμονεῖν ἐν ταῖς Μακεδόνων διαφοραῖς. καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἑταίρων ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος ἀνασκευασαμένων, αὐτὸς ὑπολειφθεὶς ἐν τῇ πόλει κατεπράϋνε ‹τοὺς› πολλοὺς τῶν πεζῶν καὶ πρὸς τὰς διαλύσεις ἡδίους [3] ἐποίησεν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀναμειχθέντες ἀλλήλοις οἱ στρατηγοὶ καὶ καταστάντες ἐκ τῶν πρώτων ταραχῶν, διενέμοντο σατραπείας καὶ στρατηγίας, Εὐμενὴς λαμβάνει Καππαδοκίαν καὶ Παφλαγονίαν καὶ τὴν ὑποκειμένην τῇ [4] Ποντικῇ θαλάττῃ μέχρι Τραπεζοῦντος, οὔπω τότε Μακεδόνων οὖσαν, Ἀριαράθης γὰρ αὐτῆς ἐβασίλευεν, ἀλλ’ ἔδει Λεόννατον καὶ Ἀντίγονον χειρὶ μεγάλῃ τὸν Εὐμενῆ καταγ‹αγ›όντας ἀποδεῖξαι τῆς χώρας σατράπην. [5] Ἀντίγονος μὲν οὖν οὐ προσέσχε τοῖς γραφεῖσιν ὑπὸ Περδίκκου, μετέωρος ὢν ἤδη καὶ περιφρονῶν ἁπάντων, Λεόννατος δὲ κατέβη μὲν ἄνωθεν εἰς [6] Φρυγίαν, ἀναδεξόμενος Εὐμενεῖ τὴν σατραπείαν. Ἑκαταίου δὲ τοῦ Καρδιανῶν τυράννου συμμείξαντος αὐτῷ καὶ δεομένου βοηθεῖν μᾶλλον Ἀντιπάτρῳ καὶ Μακεδόνων τοῖς ἐν Λαμίᾳ πολιορκουμένοις, ὥρμητο διαβαίνειν καὶ [7] τὸν Εὐμενῆ παρεκάλει καὶ διήλλαττε πρὸς τὸν Ἑκαταῖον. ἦν γὰρ αὐτοῖς πατρική τις ἐκ πολιτικῶν διαφορῶν ὑποψία πρὸς ἀλλήλους, καὶ πολλάκις ὁ Εὐμενὴς ἐγεγόνει φανερὸς κατηγορῶν τοῦ Ἑκαταίου τυραννοῦντος καὶ παρακαλῶν [8] Ἀλέξανδρον ἀποδοῦναι τοῖς Καρδιανοῖς τὴν ἐλευθερίαν. διὸ καὶ τότε τοῦ Εὐμενοῦς παραιτουμένου τὴν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας στρατείαν καὶ δεδιέναι φάσκοντος Ἀντίπατρον, μήπως Ἑκαταίῳ χαριζόμενος καὶ πάλαι μισῶν αὐτὸν ἀνέλῃ, πιστεύσας ὁ Λεόννατος οὐδὲν ὧν ἐφρόνει πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀπεκρύψατο.

[9] λόγος μὲν γὰρ ἦν ἡ βοήθεια καὶ πρόφασις, ἐγνώκει δὲ διαβὰς εὐθὺς ἀντιποιεῖσθαι Μακεδονίας, καί τινας ἐπιστολὰς ἔδειξε Κλεοπάτρας, μεταπεμπομένης [10] αὐτὸν εἰς Πέλλαν ὡς γαμησομένης. ὁ δ’ Εὐμενής, εἴτε τὸν Ἀντίπατρον δεδοικώς, εἴτε τὸν Λεόννατον ἔμπληκτον ὄντα καὶ φορᾶς μεστὸν ἀβεβαίου καὶ ὀξείας ἀπογνούς, νύκτωρ ἀνέζευξε, τὴν ἑαυτοῦ λαβὼν [11] ἀποσκευήν. εἶχε δὲ τριακοσίους μὲν ἱππεῖς, διακοσίους δὲ τῶν παίδων ὁπλοφόρους, ἐν δὲ χρυσοῖς εἰς ἀργυρίου λόγον τάλαντα πεντακισχίλια.

[12] φυγὼν δ’ οὕτως πρὸς Περδίκκαν καὶ τὰ Λεοννάτου βουλεύματα κατειπών, εὐθὺς μὲν ἴσχυε μέγα παρ’ αὐτῷ καὶ τοῦ συνεδρίου μετεῖχεν, ὀλίγον δ’ ὕστερον εἰς Καππαδοκίαν κατήχθη μετὰ δυνάμεως, αὐτοῦ Περδίκκου [13] παρόντος καὶ στρατηγοῦντος. Ἀριαράθου δὲ ληφθέντος αἰχμαλώτου καὶ τῆς [14] χώρας ὑποχειρίου γενομένης, ἀποδείκνυται σατράπης. καὶ τὰς μὲν πόλεις τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ φίλοις παρέδωκε καὶ φρουράρχους ἐγκατέστησε καὶ δικαστὰς ἀπέλιπε καὶ διοικητὰς οὓς ἐβούλετο, τοῦ Περδίκκου μηδὲν ἐν τούτοις πολυπραγμονοῦντος, αὐτὸς δὲ συνανέζευξεν, ἐκεῖνόν τε θεραπεύων καὶ τῶν βασιλέων ἀπολείπεσθαι μὴ βουλόμενος.

[4] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὁ Περδίκκας, ἐφ’ ἃ μὲν ὥρμητο πιστεύων δι’ αὑτοῦ προσάξεσθαι, τὰ δ’ ὑπολειπόμενα δεῖσθαι δραστηρίου τε καὶ πιστοῦ φύλακος οἰόμενος, ἀπέπεμψεν ἐκ Κιλικίας τὸν Εὐμενῆ, λόγῳ μὲν ἐπὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ σατραπείαν, ἔργῳ δὲ τὴν ὅμορον Ἀρμενίαν τεταραγμένην ὑπὸ [2] Νεοπτολέμου διὰ χειρὸς ἕξοντα. τοῦτον μὲν οὖν ὁ Εὐμενής, καίπερ ὄγκῳ τινὶ καὶ φρονήματι κενῷ διεφθαρμένον, ἐπειρᾶτο ταῖς ὁμιλίαις κατέχειν· [3] αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν φάλαγγα τῶν Μακεδόνων ἐπηρμένην καὶ θρασεῖαν εὑρών, ὥσπερ ἀντίταγμα κατεσκεύαζεν αὐτῇ δύναμιν ἱππικήν, τῶν μὲν ἐγχωρίων τοῖς ἱππεύειν δυναμένοις ἀνεισφορίας διδοὺς καὶ ἀτελείας, τῶν δὲ περὶ αὑτὸν οἷς μάλιστ’ ἐπίστευεν ὠνητοὺς διανέμων ἵππους, φιλοτιμίαις τε καὶ δωρεαῖς τὰ φρονήματα παροξύνων, καὶ τὰ σώματα κινήσεσι καὶ [4] μελέταις διαπονῶν, ὥστε τοὺς μὲν ἐκπλαγῆναι, τοὺς δὲ θαρρῆσαι τῶν Μακεδόνων, ὁρῶντας ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ περὶ αὐτὸν ἠθροισμένους ἱππεῖς οὐκ ἐλάττους ἑξακισχιλίων καὶ τριακοσίων.

[5] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Κρατερὸς καὶ Ἀντίπατρος τῶν Ἑλλήνων περιγενόμενοι διέβαινον εἰς Ἀσίαν, τὴν Περδίκκου καταλύσοντες ἀρχήν, καὶ προσηγγέλλοντο μέλλοντες ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς Καππαδοκίαν, ὁ Περδίκκας αὐτὸς ἐπὶ Πτολεμαῖον στρατεύων ἀπέδειξε τὸν Εὐμενῆ τῶν ἐν Ἀρμενίᾳ καὶ Καππαδοκίᾳ [2] δυνάμεων αὐτοκράτορα στρατηγόν, καὶ περὶ τούτων ἐπιστολὰς ἔπεμψεν, Ἀλκέταν μὲν καὶ Νεοπτόλεμον Εὐμενεῖ προσέχειν κελεύσας, [3] Εὐμενῆ δὲ χρῆσθαι τοῖς πράγμασιν ὅπως αὐτὸς ἔγνωκεν. Ἀλκέτας μὲν οὖν ἄντικρυς ἀπείπατο τὴν στρατείαν, ὡς τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτῷ Μακεδόνων Ἀντιπάτρῳ μὲν αἰδουμένων μάχεσθαι, Κρατερὸν δὲ καὶ δέχεσθαι δι’ [4] εὔνοιαν ἑτοίμων ὄντων· Νεοπτόλεμος δὲ βουλεύων μὲν ἐπ’ Εὐμενεῖ προδοσίαν οὐκ ἔλαθε, καλούμενος δ’ οὐχ ὑπήκουσεν, ἀλλὰ παρέταττε [5] τὴν δύναμιν. ἔνθα πρῶτον ὁ Εὐμενὴς ἀπέλαυσε τῆς ἑαυτοῦ προνοίας καὶ παρασκευῆς· ἡττώμενος γὰρ ἤδη κατὰ τὸ πεζόν, ἐτρέψατο τοῖς ἱππεῦσι τὸν Νεοπτόλεμον καὶ τὴν ἀποσκευὴν ἔλαβεν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τῇ φάλαγγι διεσπαρμένῃ περὶ τὴν δίωξιν ἅθρους ἐπελάσας, ἠνάγκασε τὰ ὅπλα θέσθαι καὶ ‹δόντας καὶ› λαβόντας ὅρκους αὐτῷ συστρατεύειν.

[6] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Νεοπτόλεμος ὀλίγους τινὰς συναγαγὼν ἐκ τῆς τροπῆς, ἔφυγε πρὸς Κρατερὸν καὶ Ἀντίπατρον, παρ’ ἐκείνων δ’ ἀπέσταλτο πρεσβεία πρὸς Εὐμενῆ, παρακαλοῦσα μεταθέσθαι πρὸς αὐτούς, καρπούμενον μὲν ἃς εἶχε σατραπείας, προσλαβόντα δὲ στρατιὰν καὶ χώραν παρ’ αὐτῶν, Ἀντιπάτρῳ μὲν ἀντ’ ἐχθροῦ φίλον γενόμενον, Κρατερῷ δὲ μὴ [7] γενόμενον ἐκ φίλου πολέμιον. ταῦθ’ ὁ Εὐμενὴς ἀκούσας, Ἀντιπάτρῳ μὲν οὐκ ἂν ἔφη παλαιὸς ὢν ἐχθρὸς νῦν γενέσθαι φίλος, ὅτ’ αὐτὸν ὁρᾷ τοῖς [8] φίλοις ὡς ἐχθροῖς χρώμενον, Κρατερὸν δὲ Περδίκκᾳ διαλλάττειν ἕτοιμος εἶναι καὶ συνάγειν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἴσοις καὶ δικαίοις, ἄρχοντος δὲ πλεονεξίας τῷ ἀδικουμένῳ βοηθήσειν μέχρι ἂν ἐμπνέῃ, καὶ μᾶλλον τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὸν βίον ἢ τὴν πίστιν προήσεσθαι.

[6] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ τὸν Ἀντίπατρον πυθόμενοι ταῦτα κατὰ σχολὴν ἐβουλεύοντο περὶ τῶν ὅλων· ὁ Νεοπτόλεμος δὲ μετὰ τὴν φυγὴν ἀφικόμενος πρὸς αὐτούς, τήν τε μάχην ἀπήγγελλε καὶ παρεκάλει βοηθεῖν, [2] μάλιστα μὲν ἀμφοτέρους, πάντως δὲ Κρατερόν· ποθεῖσθαι γὰρ ὑπερφυῶς ἐκεῖνον ὑπὸ τῶν Μακεδόνων, κἂν μόνον ἴδωσι τὴν καυσίαν αὐτοῦ [3] καὶ τὴν φωνὴν ἀκούσωσι, μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἥξειν φερομένους. καὶ γὰρ ἦν ὄντως ὄνομα τοῦ Κρατεροῦ μέγα, καὶ μετὰ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου τελευτὴν τοῦτον ἐπόθησαν οἱ πολλοί, μνημονεύοντες ὅτι καὶ πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν ἀνεδέξατο πολλάκις ἀπεχθείας πολλάς, ὑποφερομένου πρὸς τὸν Περσικὸν ζῆλον ἀντιλαμβανόμενος καὶ τοῖς πατρίοις ἐμμένων, διὰ [4] τρυφὴν καὶ ὄγκον ἤδη περιυβριζομένοις. τότε δ’ οὖν ὁ Κρατερὸς τὸν μὲν Ἀντίπατρον εἰς Κιλικίαν ἀπέστελλεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τῆς δυνάμεως ἀναλαβὼν πολὺ μέρος ἐπὶ τὸν Εὐμενῆ μετὰ τοῦ Νεοπτολέμου προῆγεν, οἰόμενος οὐ προσδεχομένῳ καὶ μετὰ πρόσφατον νίκην ἐν ἀταξίᾳ καὶ περὶ πότους ἔχοντι τὴν δύναμιν ἐπιπεσεῖσθαι.

[5] Τὸ μὲν οὖν προαισθέσθαι τὴν ἔφοδον αὐτοῦ τὸν Εὐμενῆ καὶ προπαρασκευάσασθαι νηφούσης ἄν τις ἡγεμονίας, οὐ μὴν ἄκρας θείη δεινότητος· [6] τὸ δὲ μὴ μόνον τοὺς πολεμίους ἃ μὴ καλῶς εἶχεν αἰσθέσθαι διαφυγεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς μετ’ αὐτοῦ στρατευομένους ἀγνοοῦντας ᾧ μαχοῦνται προενσεῖσαι τῷ Κρατερῷ, καὶ ἀποκρύψαι τὸν ἀντιστράτηγον, ἴδιον [7] δοκεῖ τούτου τοῦ ἡγεμόνος ἔργον γενέσθαι. διέδωκε μὲν οὖν λόγον ὡς Νεοπτόλεμος αὖθις ἐπίοι καὶ Πίγρης, ἔχοντες ἱππεῖς [καὶ] Καππαδοκῶν [8] καὶ Παφλαγόνων. νυκτὸς δ’ ἀναζεῦξαι βουλόμενος, εἶτα καταδαρθών, ὄψιν εἶδεν ἀλλόκοτον. ἐδόκει γὰρ ὁρᾶν Ἀλεξάνδρους δύο παρασκευαζομένους [9] ἀλλήλοις μάχεσθαι, μιᾶς ἑκάτερον ἡγούμενον φάλαγγος· εἶτα τῷ μὲν τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν, τῷ δὲ τὴν Δήμητραν βοηθοῦσαν ἐλθεῖν, γενομένου δ’ ἀγῶνος ἰσχυροῦ κρατηθῆναι τὸν μετὰ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς, τῷ δὲ νικῶντι σταχύων [10] δρεπομένην τὴν Δήμητραν συμπλέκειν στέφανον. αὐτόθεν μὲν οὖν τὴν ὄψιν εἴκαζεν εἶναι πρὸς αὑτοῦ, μαχομένου περὶ γῆς ἀρίστης καὶ τότε πολὺν καὶ καλὸν ἐχούσης ἐν κάλυκι στάχυν· ἅπασα γὰρ κατέσπαρτο καὶ παρεῖχεν εἰρήνῃ πρέπουσαν ὄψιν, ἀμφιλαφῶς τῶν πεδίων κομώντων· μᾶλλον δ’ ἐπερρώσθη πυθόμενος σύνθημα τοῖς πολεμίοις Ἀθηνᾶν καὶ [11] Ἀλέξανδρον εἶναι. Δήμητραν δὴ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐδίδου σύνθημα καὶ Ἀλέξανδρον, ἀναδεῖσθαί τε πάντας ἐκέλευε καὶ καταστέφειν τὰ ὅπλα, τῶν [12] σταχύων λαμβάνοντας. ὁρμήσας δὲ πολλάκις ἐξαγορεῦσαι καὶ φράσαι τοῖς περὶ αὑτὸν ἡγεμόσι καὶ στρατηγοῖς, πρὸς ὃν ἔμελλεν ὁ ἀγὼν ἔσεσθαι, καὶ μὴ μόνος ἐν αὑτῷ θέμενος ἀποκρύψαι καὶ κατασχεῖν ἀπόρρητον οὕτως ἀναγκαῖον, ὅμως ἐνέμεινε τοῖς λογισμοῖς καὶ διεπίστευσε τῇ γνώμῃ τὸν κίνδυνον.

[7] [1] Ἀντέταξε δὲ Κρατερῷ Μακεδόνων μὲν οὐδένα, δύο δ’ ἱππαρχίας ξενικάς, ὧν Φαρνάβαζος ὁ Ἀρταβάζου καὶ Φοῖνιξ ὁ Τενέδιος ἡγοῦντο, διακελευσάμενος ὀφθέντων τῶν πολεμίων ἐλαύνειν κατὰ τάχος καὶ συμπλέκεσθαι, μὴ διδόντας ἀναστροφὴν μηδὲ φωνὴν μηδὲ κήρυκα πεμπόμενον [2] προσιεμένους. ἐδεδίει γὰρ ἰσχυρῶς τοὺς Μακεδόνας, μὴ γνωρίσαντες [3] τὸν Κρατερὸν οἴχωνται μεταβαλόμενοι πρὸς ἐκεῖνον. αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς ἐρρωμενεστάτους ἱππεῖς τριακοσίους εἰς ἄγημα συντάξας καὶ παρελάσας [4] ἐπὶ τὸ δεξιόν, ἔμελλε τοῖς περὶ Νεοπτόλεμον ἐπιχειρεῖν. ὡς δὲ τὸν ἐν μέσῳ λόφον ὑπερβαλόντες ὤφθησαν ὀξεῖαν καὶ μεθ’ ὁρμῆς σφοδροτέρας ποιούμενοι τὴν ἔφοδον, ἐκπλαγεὶς ὁ Κρατερὸς καὶ πολλὰ λοιδορήσας τὸν Νεοπτόλεμον, ὡς ἐξηπατημένος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ τῆς τῶν Μακεδόνων μεταβολῆς, ἐγκελευσάμενος ἀνδραγαθεῖν τοῖς περὶ αὐτὸν ἡγεμόσιν [5] ἀντεξήλασε. γενομένης δὲ τῆς πρώτης συρράξεως βαρείας καὶ τῶν δοράτων ταχὺ συντριβέντων, τοῦ δ’ ἀγῶνος ἐν τοῖς ξίφεσιν ὄντος, οὐ καταισχύνας ὁ Κρατερὸς τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, ἀλλὰ πολλοὺς μὲν καταβαλών, πολλάκις δὲ τρεψάμενος τοὺς ἀντιτεταγμένους, τέλος δὲ πληγεὶς ὑπὸ [6] Θρᾳκὸς ἐκ πλαγίων προσελάσαντος, ἀπερρύη τοῦ ἵππου. πεσόντα δ’ αὐτὸν οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι παρήλασαν ἀγνοοῦντες, Γοργίας δ’ ‹εἷς› τῶν Εὐμενοῦς στρατηγῶν ἔγνω τε καὶ καταβὰς περιέστησε φρουρὰν τῷ σώματι κακῶς ἤδη διακειμένου καὶ δυσθανατοῦντος.

[7] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ καὶ Νεοπτόλεμος Εὐμενεῖ συνήρχετο. μισοῦντες γὰρ ἀλλήλους πάλαι καὶ δι’ ὀργῆς ἔχοντες, ἐν μὲν δυσὶν ἀναστροφαῖς οὐ κατεῖδον, ἐν δὲ τῇ τρίτῃ γνωρίσαντες εὐθὺς ἤλαυνον, σπασάμενοι τὰ ἐγχειρίδια [8] καὶ βοῶντες. τῶν δ’ ἵππων ἐξ ἐναντίας βίᾳ συμπεσόντων ὥσπερ τριήρων, τὰς ἡνίας ἀφέντες ἀλλήλων ἐπεδράξαντο ταῖς χερσί, τά τε κράνη [9] περισπῶντες καὶ περιρρηγνύντες ἐκ τῶν ἐπωμίδων τοὺς θώρακας. πρὸς δὲ τὸν σπαραγμὸν ὑπεκδραμόντων ἅμα τῶν ἵππων, ἀπορρυέντες εἰς γῆν [10] καὶ περιπεσόντες ἀλλήλοις, ἐν λαβαῖς ἦσαν καὶ διεπάλαιον. εἶθ’ ὁ μὲν Εὐμενὴς τοῦ Νεοπτολέμου προεξανισταμένου τὴν ἰγνύαν ὑπέκοψεν, αὐτὸς εἰς ὀρθὸν φθάσας καταστῆναι, ὁ δὲ Νεοπτόλεμος εἰς θάτερον ἐρεισάμενος γόνυ, θάτερον δὲ πεπηρωμένος, ἠμύνετο μὲν εὐρώστως κάτωθεν, οὐ θανασίμους δὲ πληγὰς ὑποφέρων, πληγεὶς δὲ παρὰ τὸν τράχηλον, [11] ἔπεσε καὶ παρείθη. τοῦ δ’ Εὐμενοῦς δι’ ὀργὴν καὶ μῖσος παλαιὸν τά θ’ ὅπλα περισπῶντος αὐτοῦ καὶ κακῶς λέγοντος, ἔτι τὸ ξίφος ἔχων ἔλαθεν [12] ὑπὸ τὸν θώρακα τρώσας ᾗ παρέψαυσε τοῦ βουβῶνος ἀποβάς. ἡ δὲ πληγὴ μᾶλλον ἐφόβησεν ἢ ἔβλαψε τὸν Εὐμενῆ, δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀμυδρὰ γενομένη. σκυλεύσας δὲ τὸν νεκρόν, εἶχε μὲν χαλεπῶς, ὑπὸ τραυμάτων μηροὺς καὶ βραχίονας διακεκομμένος, ὅμως δ’ ἀναβληθεὶς ἐπὶ τὸν ἵππον ἐδίωκε πρὸς [13] θάτερον κέρας, ὡς ἔτι συνεστώτων τῶν πολεμίων. πυθόμενος δὲ τὴν Κρατεροῦ τελευτὴν καὶ προσελάσας, ὡς εἶδεν ἐμπνέοντα καὶ συνιέντα, καταβὰς ἀπεδάκρυσε, καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν ἐνέβαλε, καὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἐλοιδόρησε τὸν Νεοπτόλεμον, πολλὰ δ’ ἐκεῖνον μὲν ᾠκτίσατο τῆς τύχης, αὑτὸν δὲ τῆς ἀνάγκης, δι’ ἣν ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ καὶ συνήθει ταῦτα πεισόμενος ἢ δράσων συνηνέχθη.

[8] [1] Ταύτην τὴν μάχην Εὐμενὴς ἡμέραις δέκα σχεδόν τι μετὰ τὴν προτέραν ἐνίκησε, καὶ δόξῃ μὲν ἤρθη μέγας ἀπ’ αὐτῆς, ὡς τὰ μὲν σοφίᾳ τὰ δ’ ἀνδρείᾳ κατειργασμένος, φθόνον δὲ πολὺν ἔσχε καὶ μῖσος ὁμαλῶς παρά τε τοῖς συμμάχοις καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις, ὡς ἔπηλυς ἀνὴρ καὶ ξένος ὅπλοις καὶ χερσὶ ταῖς τῶν Μακεδόνων τὸν πρῶτον αὐτῶν καὶ [2] δοκιμώτατον ἀνῃρηκώς. ἀλλ’ εἰ μὲν ἔφθη Περδίκκας πυθόμενος τὴν [3] Κρατεροῦ τελευτήν, οὐκ ἂν ἄλλος ἐπρώτευσε Μακεδόνων· νυνὶ δ’ ἀνῃρημένου Περδίκκου κατὰ στάσιν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ δυσὶν ἡμέραις πρότερον, ἧκεν οὗτος ὁ περὶ τῆς μάχης λόγος εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν [4] εὐθὺς οἱ Μακεδόνες θάνατον τοῦ Εὐμενοῦς κατέγνωσαν. ἀπεδείχθη δὲ τοῦ πολέμου τοῦ πρὸς αὐτὸν Ἀντίγονος μετ’ Ἀντιπάτρου στρατηγός.

[5] Ἐπεὶ δ’ Εὐμενὴς τοῖς βασιλικοῖς ἱπποφορβίοις περὶ τὴν Ἴδην νεμομένοις ἐπιτυχὼν καὶ λαβὼν ἵππους ὅσων ἔχρῃζε τοῖς ἐπιμεληταῖς τὴν γραφὴν ἔπεμψε, λέγεται γελάσαι τὸν Ἀντίπατρον καὶ εἰπεῖν, ὅτι θαυμάζει τὸν Εὐμενῆ τῆς προνοίας, ἐλπίζοντα λόγον αὐτοῖς ἀποδώσειν τῶν βασιλικῶν ἢ λήψεσθαι παρ’ αὐτῶν.

[6] Περὶ δὲ τὰς Σάρδεις ἐβούλετο μὲν ἱπποκρατῶν ὁ Εὐμενὴς τοῖς Λυδῶν ἐναγωνίσασθαι πεδίοις, ἅμα καὶ τῇ Κλεοπάτρᾳ τὴν δύναμιν ἐπιδεῖξαι [7] φιλοτιμούμενος· αὐτῆς δ’ ἐκείνης δεηθείσης (ἐφοβεῖτο γὰρ αἰτίαν τινὰ λαβεῖν ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἀντίπατρον), ἐξήλασεν εἰς τὴν ἄνω Φρυγίαν καὶ [8] διεχείμαζεν ἐν Κελαιναῖς· ὅπου τῶν μὲν περὶ τὸν Ἀλκέταν καὶ Πολέμωνα καὶ Δόκιμον ὑπὲρ ἡγεμονίας διαφιλοτιμουμένων πρὸς αὐτόν, τοῦτ’ [9] ἦν ἔφη τὸ λεγόμενον, ὀλέθρου δ’ οὐθεὶς λόγος· τοῖς δὲ στρατιώταις ὑποσχόμενος ἐν τρισὶν ἡμέραις τὸν μισθὸν ἀποδώσειν, ἐπίπρασκεν αὐτοῖς τὰς κατὰ τὴν χώραν ἐπαύλεις καὶ τετραπυργίας, σωμάτων καὶ βοσκημάτων [10] γεμούσας. ὁ δὲ πριάμενος ἡγεμὼν τάγματος ἢ ξεναγός, ὄργανα καὶ μηχανὰς τοῦ Εὐμενοῦς παρέχοντος, ἐξεπολιόρκει, καὶ πρὸς τὸν ὀφειλόμενον [11] μισθὸν οἱ στρατιῶται διενέμοντο τῶν ἁλισκομένων ἕκαστον. ἐκ δὴ τούτου πάλιν ὁ Εὐμενὴς ἠγαπᾶτο, καί ποτε γραμμάτων ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ φανέντων, ἃ διέρριψαν οἱ τῶν πολεμίων ἡγεμόνες, ἑκατὸν τάλαντα καὶ τιμὰς διδόντες τῷ κτείναντι τὸν Εὐμενῆ, σφόδρα παρωξύνθησαν οἱ Μακεδόνες, καὶ δόγμα ποιοῦνται χιλίους τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἀεὶ δορυφοροῦντας εἶναι καὶ φυλάττειν ἐν περιόδῳ καὶ παρανυκτερεύειν.

[12] οἱ δ’ ἐπείθοντο καὶ τιμὰς ἠγάπων παρ’ αὐτοῦ λαμβάνοντες ἃς οἱ φίλοι παρὰ τῶν βασιλέων· ἐξῆν γὰρ Εὐμενεῖ καὶ καυσίας ἁλουργεῖς καὶ χλαμύδας διανέμειν, ἥτις ἦν δωρεὰ βασιλικωτάτη παρὰ Μακεδόσι.

[9] [1] Τὸ μὲν οὖν εὐτυχεῖν καὶ τοὺς φύσει μικροὺς συνεπικουφίζει τοῖς φρονήμασιν, ὥστε φαίνεσθαί τι μέγεθος περὶ αὐτοὺς καὶ ὄγκον, ἐκ πραγμάτων [2] ὑπερεχόντων ἀποβλεπομένους· ὁ δ’ ἀληθῶς μεγαλόφρων καὶ βέβαιος ἐν τοῖς σφάλμασι μᾶλλον καὶ ταῖς δυσημερίαις ἀναφέρων γίνεται [3] κατάδηλος, ὥσπερ Εὐμενής. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἐν Ὀρκυνίοις τῆς Καππαδοκίας ἡττηθεὶς ὑπ’ Ἀντιγόνου διὰ προδοσίαν καὶ διωκόμενος, οὐ παρῆκε τὸν προδότην ἐκ τῆς φυγῆς διαπεσεῖν πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, [4] ἀλλὰ συλλαβὼν ἐκρέμασε. φεύγων δὲ τὴν ἐναντίαν ὁδὸν τοῖς διώκουσι μετέβαλε, καὶ λαθὼν παραλλάξας ὡς ἦλθεν ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον οὗ τὴν μάχην [5] συνέβη γενέσθαι, κατεστρατοπέδευσε, συναγαγὼν ‹δὲ› τοὺς νεκροὺς καὶ τῶν ἐν κύκλῳ κωμῶν τὰ θυρώματα κατασχίσας, ἔκαυσεν ἰδίᾳ μὲν ἡγεμόνας, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τοὺς πολλούς, καὶ πολυάνδρια χώσας ἀπῆλθεν, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον ὕστερον ἐπελθόντα θαυμάζειν τὸ θάρσος αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν εὐστάθειαν.

[6] Ἔπειτα ταῖς ἀποσκευαῖς τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου περιπεσών, καὶ λαβεῖν ῥᾳδίως δυνάμενος πολλὰ μὲν ἐλεύθερα σώματα, πολλὴν δὲ θεραπείαν καὶ πλοῦτον, ἐκ πολέμων τοσούτων καὶ λεηλασιῶν ἠθροισμένον, ἔδεισε μὴ καταπλησθέντες ὠφελείας καὶ λαφύρων οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ βαρεῖς γένωνται πρὸς τὴν φυγὴν καὶ μαλακώτεροι τὰς πλάνας ὑπομένειν καὶ τὸν χρόνον, ἐν ᾧ μάλιστα τοῦ πολέμου τὰς ἐλπίδας εἶχεν, ὡς ἀποστρέψων τὸν Ἀντίγονον.

[7] ἐπεὶ δ’ ἄντικρυς χαλεπὸν ἦν ἀποτρέπειν Μακεδόνας χρημάτων ἐν ἐφικτῷ παρόντων, ἐκέλευσε θεραπεύσαντας αὑτοὺς καὶ τοῖς ἵπποις χιλὸν ἐμβαλόντας, [8] οὕτω βαδίζειν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους. αὐτὸς δὲ πέμπει κρύφα πρὸς τὸν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀποσκευῆς τῶν πολεμίων Μένανδρον, ὡς κηδόμενος αὐτοῦ φίλου γεγονότος καὶ συνήθους, φυλάξασθαι παραινῶν καὶ ἀναχωρῆσαι τὴν ταχίστην ἐκ τῶν ἐπιδρόμων καὶ ταπεινῶν πρὸς τὴν ἐγγὺς ὑπώρειαν, [9] ἄφιππον οὖσαν καὶ κυκλώσεις οὐκ ἔχουσαν. τοῦ δὲ Μενάνδρου ταχὺ συμφρονήσαντος τὸν κίνδυνον καὶ ἀνασκευασαμένου, κατασκόπους ἔπεμπεν ὁ Εὐμενὴς φανερῶς καὶ παρήγγειλε τοῖς στρατιώταις ὁπλίζεσθαι καὶ [10] τοὺς ἵππους ἐγχαλινοῦν, ὡς προσάξων τοῖς πολεμίοις. τῶν δὲ κατασκόπων ἀπαγγειλάντων, ὅτι παντάπασιν ὁ Μένανδρος ἄληπτος εἴη, καταπεφευγὼς εἰς τόπους χαλεπούς, ἄχθεσθαι προσποιούμενος ὁ Εὐμενὴς [11] ἀπῆγε τὴν στρατιάν. λέγεται δέ, τοῦ Μενάνδρου ταῦτα μαρτυρήσαντος πρὸς τὸν Ἀντίγονον, καὶ τῶν Μακεδόνων ἐπαινούντων τὸν Εὐμενῆ καὶ φιλανθρωπότερον διατεθέντων, ὅτι καὶ παῖδας αὐτῶν ἀνδραποδίσασθαι [12] καὶ γυναῖκας αἰσχῦναι παρόν, ἐφείσατο καὶ παρῆκεν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνός γε φάναι τὸν Ἀντίγονον οὐχ ὑμῶν ὦ μακάριοι φειδόμενος παρῆκεν, ἀλλ’ αὑτῷ φεύγοντι δεδιὼς περιθεῖναι πέδας τοσαύτας.

[10] [1] Ἐκ τούτου πλανώμενος ὁ Εὐμενὴς καὶ ὑποφεύγων ἔπεισε τοὺς πολλοὺς τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀπελθεῖν, εἴτε κηδόμενος αὐτῶν, εἴτ’ ἐφέλκεσθαι μὴ βουλόμενος, ἐλάττονας μὲν τοῦ μάχεσθαι, πλείονας δὲ τοῦ [2] λανθάνειν ὄντας. καταφυγὼν δ’ εἰς Νῶρα, χωρίον ἐν μεθορίῳ Λυκαονίας καὶ Καππαδοκίας, μετὰ πεντακοσίων ἱππέων καὶ διακοσίων ὁπλιτῶν, κἀντεῦθεν αὖθις, ὅσοι τῶν φίλων ἐδεήθησαν ἀφεθῆναι, τοῦ χωρίου τὴν χαλεπότητα καὶ τῆς διαίτης τὴν ἀνάγκην οὐ φέροντες, πάντας ἀσπασάμενος [3] καὶ φιλοφρονηθεὶς ἀπέπεμψεν. ὡς δ’ ἐπελθὼν ὁ Ἀντίγονος εἰς λόγους αὐτὸν ἐκάλει πρὸ τῆς πολιορκίας, ἀπεκρίνατο πολλοὺς εἶναι τοὺς Ἀντιγόνου φίλους καὶ μετ’ Ἀντίγονον ἡγεμόνας, ὧν δ’ αὐτὸς προπολεμεῖ μηδένα λείπεσθαι μετ’ αὐτόν· ὁμήρους δὲ πέμπειν ἐκέλευσεν, εἰ [4] χρῄζει διὰ λόγων αὐτῷ γενέσθαι. τοῦ δ’ Ἀντιγόνου κελεύοντος ὡς κρείττονι λαλεῖν, οὐδένα εἶπεν ἐμαυτοῦ κρείττονα νομίζω, μέχρι ἂν ὦ τοῦ [5] ξίφους κύριος. ὅμως δὲ πέμψαντος τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου τὸν ἀδελφιδοῦν Πτολεμαῖον εἰς τὸ χωρίον, ὥσπερ ἠξίωσεν ὁ Εὐμενής, κατέβη, καὶ περιβαλόντες ἀλλήλους ἠσπάσαντο φιλικῶς καὶ οἰκείως, ἅτε δὴ κεχρημένοι [6] πολλὰ καὶ συνήθεις γεγονότες ἀλλήλοις. λόγων δὲ γενομένων πολλῶν, καὶ τοῦ Εὐμενοῦς οὐχ ὑπὲρ ἀσφαλείας μεμνημένου ‹μόνον› καὶ διαλύσεως, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς σατραπείας ἀξιοῦντος αὑτῷ βεβαιοῦσθαι καὶ τὰς δωρεὰς ἀποδίδοσθαι, θαῦμα τοὺς παρόντας εἶχε, τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὴν [7] εὐτολμίαν ἀγαμένους. ἅμα δὲ πολλοὶ συνέτρεχον τῶν Μακεδόνων, ἰδεῖν ὅστις ἐστὶ τὸν Εὐμενῆ ποθοῦντες· οὐ γὰρ ἑτέρου λόγος ἦν τοσοῦτος ἐν [8] τῷ στρατῷ μετὰ τὴν τοῦ Κρατεροῦ τελευτήν. δείσας δ’ ὁ Ἀντίγονος ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ, μή τι πάθῃ βίαιον, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπηγόρευε μὴ προσιέναι βοῶν, καὶ τοῖς λίθοις ἔβαλλε τοὺς ἐπιφερομένους, τέλος δὲ ταῖς χερσὶ τὸν Εὐμενῆ περιβαλὼν καὶ τὸν ὄχλον ἀπερύκων τοῖς δορυφόροις, μόλις εἰς τὸ ἀσφαλὲς ἀποκατέστησε.

[11] [1] Τοὐντεῦθεν ὁ μὲν περιτειχίσας τὰ Νῶρα καὶ φρουρὰν καταλιπών, ἀνέζευξεν· Εὐμενὴς δὲ πολιορκούμενος ἐγκρατῶς, τοῦ χωρίου γέμοντος σίτου καὶ ὕδωρ ἄφθονον καὶ ἅλας, [καὶ] ἄλλο ‹δὲ› μηδὲν ἔχοντος ἐδώδιμον μηδ’ ἥδυσμα πρὸς τὸν σῖτον, ἐκ τῶν παρόντων ὅμως κατεσκεύαζε [2] τοῖς συνοῦσιν ἱλαρὰν τὴν δίαιταν, ἐν μέρει τε παραλαμβάνων πάντας ἐπὶ τὴν αὑτοῦ τράπεζαν, καὶ τὸ συσσίτιον ὁμιλίᾳ χάριν ἐχούσῃ καὶ φιλοφροσύνην [3] ἐφηδύνων. ἦν δὲ καὶ τὸ εἶδος ἡδύς, οὐ πολεμικῷ καὶ τετριμμένῳ δι’ ὅπλων ἐοικώς, ἀλλὰ γλαφυρὸς καὶ νεοπρεπὴς καὶ πᾶν τὸ σῶμα διηρθρωμένος ὡς ὑπὸ τέχνης ἀκριβῶς τοῖς μέλεσι, θαυμαστὴν συμμετρίαν ἔχουσιν· εἰπεῖν δ’ οὐ δεινός, αἱμύλος δὲ καὶ πιθανός, ὡς ἐκ τῶν ἐπιστολῶν [4] συμβάλλειν ἐστίν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ πολιορκουμένους ἡ στενοχωρία μάλιστα πάντων ἔβλαπτεν, ἐν οἰκήμασι μικροῖς καὶ τόπῳ δυοῖν σταδίοιν ἔχοντι τὴν περίμετρον ἀναστρεφομένους, τροφὴν δ’ ἀγυμνάστους μὲν αὐτοὺς λαμβάνοντας, ἀργοῖς δὲ τοῖς ἵπποις προσφέροντας, [5] οὐ μόνον τὸν ἄλυν αὐτῶν ὑπὸ τῆς ἀπραξίας μαραινομένων ἀπαλλάξαι βουλόμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς φυγήν, εἰ παραπέσοι καιρός, ἁμῶς γέ πως [6] ἠσκημένοις χρήσασθαι, τοῖς μὲν ἀνθρώποις οἶκον, ὃς ἦν μέγιστος ἐν τῷ χωρίῳ, δεκατεσσάρων πηχῶν τὸ μῆκος, ἀπέδειξε περίπατον, κατὰ μικρὸν [7] ἐπιτείνειν τὴν κίνησιν κελεύων· τῶν δ’ ἵππων ἕκαστον ῥυτῆρσι μεγάλοις εἰς τὴν ὀροφὴν ἀναδεδεμένοις ὑποζώσας ἐκ τῶν περὶ τὸν αὐχένα μερῶν ἐμετεώριζε καὶ παρῃώρει διὰ τροχιλίας, ὥστε τοῖς μὲν ὀπισθίοις σκέλεσιν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐρείδεσθαι, τοῖς δ’ ἐμπροσθίοις ποσὶν ἀκρωνύχους [8] ἐπιψαύειν. οὕτως [δὴ] ἀνηρτημένους οἱ ἱπποκόμοι παρεστῶτες ἅμα ταῖς τε κραυγαῖς καὶ ταῖς μάστιξιν ἐπηρέθιζον· οἱ δ’ ἐμπιπλάμενοι θυμοῦ καὶ ὀργῆς, τοῖς μὲν ὀπισθίοις ἐνήλλοντο καὶ διεσκίρτων σκέλεσι, τοῖς δὲ μετεώροις ἐφιέμενοι στηρίξασθαι καὶ κροτοῦντες τὸ ἔδαφος, κατετείνοντο πᾶν τὸ σῶμα καὶ πολὺν ἠφίεσαν ἱδρῶτα καὶ σταλαγμόν, οὔτε πρὸς [9] τάχος οὔτε πρὸς ῥώμην γυμναζόμενοι κακῶς. τὰς δὲ κριθὰς ἐνέβαλλον αὐτοῖς ἐπτισμένας, ἵνα κατεργάζωνται θᾶττον καὶ πέττωσι βέλτιον.

[12] [1] Ἤδη δὲ τῆς πολιορκίας χρόνον λαμβανούσης, Ἀντίγονος τεθνηκέναι πυνθανόμενος Ἀντίπατρον ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ καὶ τεταράχθαι τὰ πράγματα, Κασάνδρου καὶ Πολυπέρχοντος διαφερομένων, οὐδὲν ἔτι μικρὸν ἐλπίζων, ἀλλὰ τῇ γνώμῃ τὴν ὅλην περιβαλλόμενος ἡγεμονίαν, ἐβούλετο [2] τὸν Εὐμενῆ φίλον ἔχειν καὶ συνεργὸν ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις. διὸ πέμψας Ἱερώνυμον ἐσπένδετο τῷ Εὐμενεῖ προτείνας ὅρκον, ὃν ὁ Εὐμενὴς διορθώσας ἐπέτρεψεν ἐπικρῖναι τοῖς πολιορκοῦσιν αὐτὸν Μακεδόσι, πότερος εἴη δικαιότερος.

[3] Ἀντίγονος μὲν γὰρ ἀφοσιώσεως ἕνεκεν ἐν ἀρχῇ τῶν βασιλέων ἐπιμνησθείς, τὸν λοιπὸν ὅρκον εἰς ἑαυτὸν ὥρκιζεν· Εὐμενὴς δὲ πρώτην μὲν ἐνέγραψε τοῖς ὅρκοις Ὀλυμπιάδα μετὰ τῶν βασιλέων, ἔπειτ’ ὤμνυεν οὐκ Ἀντιγόνῳ μόνον εὐνοήσειν οὐδ’ ἐκείνῳ τὸν αὐτὸν ἐχθρὸν ἕξειν καὶ φίλον, [4] ἀλλὰ καὶ Ὀλυμπιάδι καὶ τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν. ὧν δικαιοτέρων φανέντων, οἱ Μακεδόνες ταῦθ’ ὁρκίσαντες τὸν Εὐμενῆ τὴν πολιορκίαν ἔλυσαν καὶ πρὸς τὸν Ἀντίγονον ἀπέστελλον, ὅπως καὶ αὐτὸς ἀποδῷ τῷ Εὐμενεῖ τὸν ὅρκον.

[5] ἐν τούτῳ δ’ Εὐμενὴς ὅσους εἶχεν ἐν Νώροις τῶν Καππαδοκῶν ὁμήρους ἀπεδίδου, λαμβάνων ἵππους καὶ ὑποζύγια καὶ σκηνὰς παρὰ τῶν κομιζομένων, καὶ συνῆγε τῶν στρατιωτῶν ὅσοι διασπαρέντες ἀπὸ τῆς φυγῆς [6] ἐπλανῶντο κατὰ τὴν χώραν, ὥστε περὶ αὐτὸν ἱππεῖς ὀλίγῳ τῶν χιλίων ἀποδέοντας γενέσθαι, μεθ’ ὧν ἐξελάσας ἔφυγεν, ὀρθῶς φοβηθεὶς τὸν [7] Ἀντίγονον. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐκεῖνον ἐκέλευσε πολιορκεῖν αὖθις περιτειχίσαντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς Μακεδόσι πικρῶς ἀντέγραψε, δεξαμένοις τοῦ ὅρκου τὴν διόρθωσιν.

[13] [1] Φεύγοντι δ’ Εὐμενεῖ γράμματα κομίζεται παρὰ τῶν ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ τὴν Ἀντιγόνου δεδοικότων αὔξησιν, Ὀλυμπιάδος μὲν παρακαλούσης ἐλθόντα τὸ Ἀλεξάνδρου παιδίον παραλαβεῖν καὶ τρέφειν ὡς ἐπιβουλευόμενον, [2] Πολυπέρχοντος δὲ καὶ Φιλίππου τοῦ βασιλέως κελευόντων Ἀντιγόνῳ πολεμεῖν, τῆς ἐν Καππαδοκίᾳ δυνάμεως ἄρχοντα, καὶ τῶν ἐν Κουΐνδοις χρημάτων πεντακόσια μὲν τάλαντα λαβεῖν εἰς τὴν τῶν ἰδίων ἐπανόρθωσιν, [3] εἰς δὲ τὸν πόλεμον ὁπόσοις βούλεται χρῆσθαι. περὶ δὲ τούτων καὶ Ἀντιγένει καὶ Τευτάμῳ τοῖς τῶν ἀργυρασπίδων ἡγουμένοις ἐγεγράφεισαν.

[4] ἐπεὶ δὲ λαβόντες ἐκεῖνοι τὰ γράμματα τῷ μὲν λόγῳ φιλανθρώπως ἐδέξαντο τὸν Εὐμενῆ, φθόνου δὲ καὶ φιλονικίας ἐφαίνοντο μεστοί, δευτερεύειν ἀπαξιοῦντες ἐκείνῳ, τὸν μὲν φθόνον ὁ Εὐμενὴς ἐθεράπευε τῷ τὰ χρήματα μὴ λαβεῖν, ὡς οὐδὲν δεόμενος, ταῖς δὲ φιλονικίαις καὶ φιλαρχίαις αὐτῶν, μήθ’ ἡγεῖσθαι δυναμένων μήθ’ ἕπεσθαι βουλομένων, ἐπῆγε δεισιδαιμονίαν.

[5] ἔφη γὰρ Ἀλέξανδρον αὐτῷ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους φανῆναι καὶ δεῖξαί τινα σκηνὴν [6] κατεσκευασμένην βασιλικῶς καὶ θρόνον ἐν αὐτῇ κείμενον, εἶτ’ εἰπεῖν ὡς ἐνταῦθα συνεδρεύουσιν αὐτοῖς καὶ χρηματίζουσιν αὐτὸς παρέσται καὶ [7] συνεφάψεται βουλῆς τε πάσης καὶ πράξεως ἀρχομένοις ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ. ταῦτα ῥᾳδίως ἔπεισε τὸν Ἀντιγένη καὶ τὸν Τεύταμον, οὔτ’ ἐκείνων βαδίζειν βουλομένων [8] πρὸς αὐτόν, οὔτ’ αὐτὸς ἀξιῶν ἐπὶ θύραις ἑτέρων ὁρᾶσθαι. καὶ τιθέντες οὕτω σκηνὴν βασιλικὴν καὶ θρόνον Ἀλεξάνδρῳ καταπεφημισμένον, ἐκεῖ συνεπορεύοντο βουλευόμενοι περὶ τῶν μεγίστων.

[9] Ἐπεὶ δὲ προϊοῦσιν αὐτοῖς εἰς τὴν ἄνω χώραν ὁ Πευκέστας μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων σατραπῶν ἀπήντησε φίλος ὢν καὶ συνεμείξαντο τὰς δυνάμεις, πλήθει μὲν ὅπλων καὶ λαμπρότητι παρασκευῆς ἐπέρρωσαν τοὺς Μακεδόνας, [10] αὐτοὶ δ’ ἀνάγωγοι ταῖς ἐξουσίαις καὶ μαλακοὶ ταῖς διαίταις γεγονότες μετὰ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου τελευτήν, καὶ φρονήματα τυραννικὰ καὶ τεθρυμμένα βαρβαρικαῖς ἀλαζονείαις ἐπὶ ταὐτὸ συνενεγκάμενοι, πρὸς μὲν ἀλλήλους [11] βαρεῖς ἦσαν καὶ δυσάρμοστοι, τοὺς δὲ Μακεδόνας κολακεύοντες ἐκκεχυμένως καὶ καταχορηγοῦντες εἰς δεῖπνα καὶ θυσίας, ὀλίγου χρόνου τὸ στρατόπεδον ἀσωτίας πανηγυριζούσης καταγώγιον ἐποίησαν καὶ δημαγωγούμενον ἐφ’ αἱρέσει στρατηγῶν ὄχλον, ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς δημοκρατίαις.

[12] αἰσθόμενος δ’ ὁ Εὐμενὴς αὐτοὺς ἀλλήλων μὲν καταφρονοῦντας, αὐτὸν δὲ φοβουμένους καὶ παραφυλάττοντας, ἀνελεῖν εἰ γένοιτο καιρός, ἐσκήψατο χρημάτων δεῖσθαι καὶ συνεδανείσατο τάλαντα πολλὰ παρὰ τῶν μάλιστα μισούντων αὐτόν, ἵνα καὶ πιστεύωσι καὶ ἀπέχωνται περὶ τῶν [13] δανείων ἀγωνιῶντες· ὥστε συνέβη τὸν ἀλλότριον πλοῦτον αὐτῷ φύλακα τοῦ σώματος ἔχειν, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ διδόντων, μόνον ἐκ τοῦ λαβεῖν κτήσασθαι τὴν ἀσφάλειαν.

[14] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ οἱ Μακεδόνες ἀδείας μὲν οὔσης ἐφθείροντο πρὸς τοὺς διδόντας καὶ τὰς ἐκείνων θύρας ἐθεράπευον, δορυφορουμένων καὶ στρατηγιώντων· [2] ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀντίγονος αὐτοῖς παρεστρατοπέδευσε μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως καὶ τὰ πράγματα ‹μόνον οὐχὶ› φωνὴν ἀφιέντα τὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκάλει στρατηγόν, οὐ μόνον οἱ στρατευόμενοι τῷ Εὐμενεῖ προσεῖχον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἐν εἰρήνῃ καὶ τρυφῇ μεγάλων ἐκείνων ἕκαστος ἐνέδωκε καὶ παρεῖχεν [3] ἑαυτὸν σιωπῇ τὴν δοθεῖσαν φυλάττοντα τάξιν. καὶ γάρ τοι περὶ τὸν Πασιτίγριν ποταμὸν ἐπιχειρήσαντα διαβαίνειν τὸν Ἀντίγονον οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι παραφυλάττοντες οὐδ’ ᾔσθοντο, μόνος δ’ Εὐμενὴς ὑπέστη, καὶ συνάψας μάχην πολλοὺς μὲν κατέβαλε καὶ νεκρῶν ἐνέπλησε τὸ ῥεῖθρον, ἔλαβε δὲ [4] τετρακισχιλίους αἰχμαλώτους. μάλιστα δ’ οἱ Μακεδόνες περὶ τὴν συμβᾶσαν ἀρρωστίαν αὐτῷ καταφανεῖς ἐγένοντο τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἑστιᾶν λαμπρῶς καὶ πανηγυρίζειν, ἄρχειν δὲ καὶ πολεμεῖν δυνατὸν ἡγούμενοι μόνον [5] ἐκεῖνον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Πευκέστας ἐν τῇ Περσίδι λαμπρῶς αὐτοὺς ἑστιάσας [6] καὶ κατ’ ἄνδρα διαδοὺς ἱερεῖον εἰς θυσίαν, ἤλπιζεν εἶναι μέγιστος· ὀλίγαις δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέραις τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους βαδιζόντων, ἐτύγχανεν ὁ Εὐμενὴς ἐκ νόσου τινὸς ἐπισφαλοῦς ἐν φορείῳ κομιζόμενος [7] ἔξω τοῦ στρατεύματος ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ διὰ τὰς ἀγρυπνίας, μικρὸν δὲ προελθοῦσιν αὐτοῖς ἄφνω λόφους τινὰς ὑπερβάλλοντες ἐξεφάνησαν οἱ πολέμιοι ‹καὶ› [8] καταβαίνοντες εἰς τὸ πεδίον. ὡς οὖν αἵ τε τῶν χρυσῶν ὅπλων αὐγαὶ πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ἐξέλαμψαν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων, τοῦ ἀγήματος ἐν τάξει πορευομένου, καὶ τῶν θηρίων τοὺς πύργους ἄνω καὶ τὰς πορφύρας εἶδον, ὅσπερ ἦν αὐτοῖς κόσμος εἰς μάχην ἀγομένοις, ἐπιστήσαντες οἱ πρῶτοι τὴν πορείαν ἐβόων [9] Εὐμενῆ καλεῖν αὑτοῖς· οὐ γὰρ ἂν προελθεῖν ἐκείνου μὴ στρατηγοῦντος· καὶ τὰ ὅπλα πρὸς τὴν γῆν ἐρείσαντες, ἀλλήλοις μένειν διεκελεύοντο καὶ τοῖς ἡγεμόσιν ἡσυχίαν ἔχειν καὶ χωρὶς Εὐμενοῦς μὴ μάχεσθαι μηδὲ κινδυνεύειν [10] πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους. ἀκούσας δ’ ὁ Εὐμενὴς ἧκε πρὸς αὐτοὺς δρόμῳ, τοὺς κομίζοντας ἐπιταχύνας, καὶ τοῦ φορείου τὰς ἑκατέρωθεν αὐλαίας [11] ἀνακαλύψας προὔτεινε τὴν δεξιὰν γεγηθώς. οἱ δ’ ὡς εἶδον, εὐθὺς ἀσπασάμενοι Μακεδονιστὶ τῇ φωνῇ τάς τ’ ἀσπίδας ἀνείλοντο καὶ ταῖς σαρίσαις ἐπιδουπήσαντες ἀνηλάλαξαν, προκαλούμενοι τοὺς πολεμίους, ὡς τοῦ ἡγεμόνος αὐτοῖς παρόντος.

[15] [1] Ἀντίγονος δὲ παρὰ τῶν ἁλισκομένων ἀκούων τὸν Εὐμενῆ νοσεῖν καὶ κομίζεσθαι κακῶς διακείμενον, οὐ μέγ’ ἔργον ἡγεῖτο συντρῖψαι τοὺς [2] ἄλλους ἐκείνου νοσοῦντος. διὸ καὶ σπεύδων ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην προσῆγεν. ὡς δὲ τῶν πολεμίων εἰς τάξιν καθισταμένων παρελάσας κατεῖδε τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὴν διακόσμησιν, ἐκπλαγεὶς ἐπέστη πλείω χρόνον· εἶτ’ ὤφθη τὸ φορεῖον [3] ἀπὸ θατέρου κέρως ἐπὶ θάτερον διαφερόμενον. γελάσας οὖν ὁ Ἀντίγονος ὥσπερ εἰώθει μέγα καὶ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἰπὼν τοῦτ’ ἦν [τὸ φορεῖον] ὡς ἔοικε τὸ ἀντιπαραταττόμενον ἡμῖν, εὐθὺς ἀπῆγε τὴν δύναμιν ὀπίσω καὶ κατεστρατοπέδευσεν.

[4] Οἱ δὲ μικρὸν ἀναπνεύσαντες αὖθις ἐδημαγωγοῦντο, καὶ τοῖς ἡγεμόσιν ἐντρυφῶντες σχεδὸν ὅλην εἰς τὰ χειμάδια κατενείμαντο τὴν Γαβηνῶν, ὥστε τοὺς ἐσχάτους τῶν πρώτων ἀποσκηνοῦν ὁμοῦ τι χιλίους σταδίους.

[5] ταῦτα γνοὺς ὁ Ἀντίγονος ὥρμησεν ἐξαίφνης ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ὑποστρέψας χαλεπὴν ὁδὸν καὶ ἄνυδρον, σύντομον δὲ καὶ βραχεῖαν, ἐλπίζων, εἰ διεσπαρμένοις ἐπιπέσοι περὶ τὰ χειμάδια, μηδ’ ἂν συνελθεῖν ἔτι τὸ πλῆθος ῥᾳδίως [6] εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ τοῖς στρατηγοῖς. ἐμβαλόντι δ’ εἰς γῆν ἀοίκητον αὐτῷ πνεύματά τε δεινὰ καὶ κρύη μεγάλα διελυμαίνετο τὴν πορείαν, ἐνοχλουμένου τοῦ [7] στρατεύματος. ἦν οὖν ἀναγκαία βοήθεια πυρὰ πολλὰ καίειν· ὅθεν οὐκ ἔλαθε τοὺς πολεμίους, ἀλλὰ τῶν βαρβάρων οἱ τὰ βλέποντα πρὸς τὴν ἀοίκητον ὄρη νεμόμενοι θαυμάσαντες τὸ τῶν πυρῶν πλῆθος, ἔπεμψαν [8] ἱππαστρίαις καμήλοις ἀγγέλους πρὸς Πευκέσταν. ὁ δ’ ὡς ἤκουσεν, αὐτός τε παντάπασιν ἔκφρων ὑπὸ δέους γενόμενος, καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ὁρῶν ὁμοίως ἔχοντας, ὥρμητο φεύγειν, ἀναστήσας τοὺς καθ’ ὁδὸν ὄντας αὐτοῖς μάλιστα [9] τῶν στρατιωτῶν. Εὐμενὴς δὲ τὴν ταραχὴν ἀφῄρει καὶ τὸν φόβον, ὑπισχνούμενος ἐπιστήσειν τῶν πολεμίων τὸ τάχος, ὥστε τρισὶν ὕστερον [10] ἡμέραις ἢ προσδοκῶνται παραγενέσθαι. πεισθέντων δ’ αὐτῶν, ἅμα μὲν ἀγγέλους περιέπεμπε, τὰς δυνάμεις ἐκ τῶν χειμαδίων καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀθροίζεσθαι κατὰ τάχος κελεύων, ἅμα δ’ αὐτὸς ἐξιππασάμενος μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἡγεμόνων, καὶ τόπον ἐξ ἀπόπτου καταφανῆ τοῖς ὁδεύουσι τὴν ἔρημον περιβαλόμενος καὶ διαμετρήσας, ἐκέλευε πυρὰ πολλὰ καίειν ἐν διαστήμασιν [11] ὥσπερ οἱ στρατοπεδεύοντες. γενομένου δὲ τούτου καὶ τῶν πυρῶν τοῖς περὶ Ἀντίγονον ἐκ τῆς ὀρεινῆς καταφανέντων, ἄχθος ἔσχε καὶ δυσθυμία τὸν Ἀντίγονον, οἰόμενον ᾐσθημένους ἔκπαλαι τοὺς πολεμίους [12] ἀπαντᾶν. ἵν’ οὖν μὴ κατάκοπος καὶ τετρυμένος ἐκ πορείας ἀναγκάζηται μάχεσθαι πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ἑτοίμους καὶ καλῶς κεχειμακότας, προέμενος τὴν σύντομον ἦγε διὰ κωμῶν καὶ πόλεων καθ’ ἡσυχίαν, ἀναλαμβάνων τὸ [13] στράτευμα. μηδενὸς δ’ ἐμποδὼν ὄντος, ὥσπερ εἴωθεν ἀντικαθημένων πολεμίων, τῶν δὲ περιχώρων λεγόντων στράτευμα ‹μὲν› μηδὲν ὦφθαι, πυρῶν δὲ κεκαυμένων μεστὸν εἶναι τὸν τόπον, ᾔσθετο κατεστρατηγημένος ὑπ’ Εὐμενοῦς, καὶ βαρέως φέρων προσῆγεν ὡς φανερᾷ μάχῃ κριθησόμενος.

[16] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τῆς δυνάμεως περὶ τὸν Εὐμενῆ τὸ πλεῖστον ἠθροισμένον [2] ἐθαύμαζε τὴν σύνεσιν αὐτοῦ, καὶ μόνον ἐκέλευεν ἄρχειν· ἐφ’ ᾧ λυπούμενοι καὶ φθονοῦντες οἱ τῶν ἀργυρασπίδων ἡγεμόνες, Ἀντιγένης καὶ Τεύταμος, ἐπεβούλευον αὐτῷ, καὶ τοὺς πλείστους τῶν τε σατραπῶν καὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν συναγαγόντες ἐβουλεύοντο, πότε χρὴ καὶ πῶς τὸν Εὐμενῆ διαφθεῖραι.

[3] συνδόξαν δὲ πᾶσιν ἀποχρήσασθαι πρὸς τὴν μάχην αὐτῷ, μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην εὐθὺς ἀνελεῖν, Εὔδαμος ὁ τῶν ἐλεφάντων ἡγεμὼν καὶ Φαίδιμος ἐξαγγέλλουσι κρύφα τῷ Εὐμενεῖ τὰ δεδογμένα, δι’ εὔνοιαν μὲν οὐδεμίαν ἢ χάριν, εὐλαβούμενοι δὲ μὴ τῶν χρημάτων ἃ δεδανείκεσαν αὐτῷ στερηθῶσιν.

[4] Εὐμενὴς δὲ τούτους μὲν ἐπῄνεσεν, εἰς δὲ τὴν σκηνὴν ἀπελθών, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἰπὼν ὡς ἐν πανηγύρει θηρίων ἀναστρέφοιτο, διαθήκας ἔγραψε καὶ τὰ γραμματεῖα κατέσχισε καὶ διέφθειρεν, οὐ βουλόμενος αὐτοῦ τελευτήσαντος ἐκ τῶν ἀπορρήτων αἰτίας καὶ συκοφαντήματα τοῖς γράψασι [5] γενέσθαι. ταῦτα διοικησάμενος, ἐβουλεύετο τὴν νίκην παρεῖναι τοῖς ἐναντίοις, ἢ φυγὼν διὰ Μηδίας καὶ Ἀρμενίας ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς Καππαδοκίαν.

[6] οὐδὲν δὲ κυρώσας τῶν φίλων παρόντων, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ πολλὰ τῇ γνώμῃ πολυτρόπῳ παρὰ τὰς τύχας οὔσῃ κινήσας αὑτόν, ἐξέταττε τὴν δύναμιν, τοὺς μὲν Ἕλληνας καὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους παρορμῶν, ὑπὸ δὲ τῆς φάλαγγος καὶ τῶν ἀργυρασπίδων αὐτὸς παρακαλούμενος θαρρεῖν, ὡς οὐ δεξομένων [7] τῶν πολεμίων. καὶ γὰρ ἦσαν οἱ πρεσβύτατοι τῶν περὶ Φίλιππον καὶ Ἀλέξανδρον, ὥσπερ ἀθληταὶ πολέμων ἀήττητοι καὶ ἀπτῶτες εἰς ἐκεῖνο χρόνου, πολλοὶ μὲν ἑβδομήκοντ’ ἔτη γεγονότες, νεώτερος δ’ οὐδεὶς ἑξηκονταετοῦς.

[8] διὸ καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον ἐπιόντες ἐβόων· ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας ἁμαρτάνετ’ ὦ κακαὶ κεφαλαί, καὶ μετ’ ὀργῆς ἐμπεσόντες ὅλην ὁμοῦ τὴν φάλαγγα συνέτριψαν, οὐδενὸς ὑποστάντος αὐτούς, τῶν δὲ πλείστων ἐν [9] χερσὶ διαφθαρέντων. ταύτῃ μὲν οὖν ὁ Ἀντίγονος ἡττᾶτο κατὰ κράτος, τοῖς δ’ ἱππεῦσιν ἐπεκράτει, τοῦ [δὲ] Πευκέστου παντάπασιν ἐκλελυμένως καὶ ἀγεννῶς ἀγωνισαμένου, καὶ τὴν ἀποσκευὴν ἔλαβε πᾶσαν, αὑτῷ τε [10] νήφοντι χρησάμενος παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ καὶ τοῦ τόπου συνεργοῦντος. ἀχανὲς γὰρ ἦν τὸ πεδίον, οὔτε βαθύγεων οὔτ’ ἀπόκροτον καὶ στερεόν, ἀλλὰ θινῶδες καὶ μεστὸν ἁλμυρίδος αὐχμηρᾶς, ἣ τοσούτων μὲν ἵππων τοσούτων δ’ ἀνθρώπων ξαινομένη δρόμοις ὑπὸ τὸν τῆς μάχης καιρόν, ἐξήνθει κόνιν ὥσπερ ἄσβεστον, ἀπολευκαίνουσαν τὸν ἀέρα καὶ τὰς ὄψεις διαθολοῦσαν.

[11] ᾗ καὶ ῥᾷον λαθὼν ὁ Ἀντίγονος τῆς ἀποσκευῆς τῶν πολεμίων ἐκράτησε.

[17] [1] Παυσαμένης δὲ τῆς μάχης εὐθὺς οἱ περὶ τὸν Τεύταμον ἐπρεσβεύοντο [2] περὶ τῆς ἀποσκευῆς. Ἀντιγόνου δὲ καὶ ταύτην ἀποδώσειν ὑπισχνουμένου τοῖς ἀργυράσπισι, καὶ τἆλλα χρήσεσθαι φιλανθρώπως, εἰ παραλάβοι τὸν Εὐμενῆ, βούλευμα δεινὸν οἱ ἀργυράσπιδες ἐβουλεύσαντο, ἐγχειρίσαι ζῶντα [3] τοῖς πολεμίοις τὸν ἄνδρα. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἀνυπόπτως προσεπέλαζον αὐτῷ καὶ παρεφύλαττον, οἱ μὲν ἀποδυρόμενοι περὶ τῆς ἀποσκευῆς, οἱ δὲ θαρρεῖν ὡς νενικηκότα κελεύοντες, οἱ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἡγεμόνων κατηγοροῦντες.

[4] ἔπειτα προσπεσόντες ἐξήρπασαν τὸ ἐγχειρίδιον αὐτοῦ καὶ τῇ ζώνῃ τὰς [5] χεῖρας ἀποστρέψαντες ἔδησαν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὑπ’ Ἀντιγόνου Νικάνωρ ἐπέμφθη παραληψόμενος αὐτόν, ἐδεῖτο λόγου τυχεῖν ἀγόμενος διὰ τῶν Μακεδόνων, οὐκ εἰς δέησιν ἢ παραίτησιν, ἀλλ’ ὡς περὶ τῶν ἐκείνοις συμφερόντων διαλεξόμενος.

[6] γενομένης δὲ σιωπῆς, ἐν ὑψηλῷ τινι καταστὰς καὶ τὰς χεῖρας δεδεμένας προτείνας, ποῖον εἶπεν ὦ κάκιστοι Μακεδόνων τρόπαιον Ἀντίγονος ἐθελήσας ‹ἂν› ἀνέστησε καθ’ ὑμῶν, οἷον ὑμεῖς καθ’ αὑτῶν [7] ἀνίστατε, τὸν στρατηγὸν αἰχμάλωτον ἐκδιδόντες; οὐκ ἄρα δεινὸν ἦν κρατοῦντας ὑμᾶς ἧτταν ἐξομολογεῖσθαι διὰ τὰς ἀποσκευάς, ὡς ἐν τοῖς χρήμασιν, οὐκ ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις τοῦ κρατεῖν ὄντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ἡγεμόνα πέμπετε [8] λύτρον τῆς ἀποσκευῆς; ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν ἀήττητος ἄγομαι, νικῶν τοὺς πολεμίους, ὑπὸ τῶν συμμάχων ἀπολλύμενος· ὑμεῖς δέ, πρὸς Διὸς στρατίου [9] καὶ θεῶν ὁρκίων, ἐνταῦθά με δι’ αὑτῶν κτείνατε. πάντως κἀκεῖ κτεινόμενος ὑμέτερον ἔργον εἰμί· μέμψεται δ’ οὐδὲν Ἀντίγονος· νεκροῦ [10] γὰρ Εὐμενοῦς δεῖται καὶ οὐ ζῶντος. εἰ δὲ φείδεσθε τῶν χειρῶν, ἀρκέσει τῶν ἐμῶν ἡ ἑτέρα λυθεῖσα πρᾶξαι τὸ ἔργον. εἰ δ’ οὐ πιστεύετέ μοι ξίφος, [11] ὑπορρίψατε τοῖς θηρίοις δεδεμένον. καὶ ταῦτα πράξαντας ὑμᾶς ἀφίημι τῆς ἐπ’ ἐμοὶ δίκης, ὡς ἄνδρας ὁσιωτάτους καὶ δικαιοτάτους περὶ τὸν αὑτῶν στρατηγὸν γενομένους.

[18] [1] Ταῦτα τοῦ Εὐμενοῦς λέγοντος, τὸ μὲν ἄλλο πλῆθος ἄχθει κατείχετο καὶ κλαυθμὸς ἦν, οἱ δ’ ἀργυράσπιδες ἄγειν ἐβόων καὶ μὴ φλυαροῦντι προσέχειν· [2] οὐ γὰρ εἶναι δεινόν, εἰ Χερρονησίτης ὄλεθρος οἰμώξεται, μυρίοις γυμνάσας πολέμοις Μακεδόνας, ἀλλ’ εἰ τῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ Φιλίππου στρατιωτῶν οἱ κράτιστοι τοσαῦτα καμόντες ἐν γήρᾳ στέρονται τῶν ἐπάθλων καὶ τροφὴν παρ’ ἑτέρων λαμβάνουσιν, αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες αὐτῶν ἤδη τρίτην νύκτα τοῖς πολεμίοις συγκαθεύδουσιν· ἅμα δ’ ἦγον αὐτὸν ἐπιταχύνοντες.

[3] Ἀντίγονος δὲ δείσας τὸν ὄχλον - ἀπελείφθη γὰρ οὐδεὶς ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ - δέκα τοὺς κρατιστεύοντας ἐλέφαντας ἐξέπεμψε καὶ λογχοφόρους συχνοὺς [4] Μήδους καὶ Παρθυαίους, διακρουσομένους τὸ πλῆθος. εἶτ’ αὐτὸς μὲν ἰδεῖν οὐχ ὑπέμεινε τὸν Εὐμενῆ διὰ τὴν προγεγενημένην φιλίαν καὶ συνήθειαν, πυνθανομένων δὲ τῶν παρειληφότων τὸ σῶμα, πῶς φυλάξουσιν, οὕτως εἶπεν ὡς ἐλέφαντα, ὡς λέοντα.

[5] Μετὰ μικρὸν δὲ συμπαθὴς γενόμενος, τῶν τε δεσμῶν τοὺς βαρεῖς ἐκέλευσεν ἀφελεῖν καὶ παῖδα παραδέξασθαι τῶν συνήθων, ὅπως ἀλείψαιτο, καὶ τῶν φίλων ἐφῆκε τῷ βουλομένῳ συνδιημερεύειν καὶ κομίζειν τὰ ἐπιτήδεια.

[6] βουλευόμενος δὲ περὶ αὐτοῦ πλείονας ἡμέρας, προσίετο καὶ λόγους καὶ ὑποσχέσεις, Νεάρχου τε τοῦ Κρητὸς καὶ Δημητρίου τοῦ υἱοῦ φιλοτιμουμένων τὸν Εὐμενῆ σῶσαι, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ὁμοῦ τι πάντων ἐνισταμένων [7] καὶ κελευόντων ἀναιρεῖν. λέγεται δὲ τὸν Εὐμενῆ τοῦ φυλάσσοντος αὐτὸν Ὀνομάρχου πυθέσθαι, τί δήποτ’ Ἀντίγονος ἐχθρὸν ἄνδρα καὶ πολέμιον [8] λαβὼν ὑποχείριον οὔτ’ ἀποκτίννυσι ταχέως οὔτ’ εὐγενῶς ἀφίησι· τοῦ δ’ Ὀνομάρχου πρὸς ὕβριν εἰπόντος, ὡς οὐ νῦν ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τῆς μάχης ἔδει πρὸς θάνατον ἔχειν εὐθαρσῶς, ναὶ μὰ τὸν Δία φάναι τὸν Εὐμενῆ καὶ τότ’ εἶχον· ἐροῦ δὲ τοὺς εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθόντας· ἀλλ’ οὐδενὶ κρείττονι προστυχὼν [9] οἶδα. καὶ τὸν Ὀνόμαρχον οὐκοῦν ἐπεὶ νῦν φάναι τὸν κρείττονα εὕρηκας, τί οὐκ ἀναμένεις τὸν ἐκείνου καιρόν;

[19] [1] Ὡς δ’ οὖν ἔδοξε τῷ Ἀντιγόνῳ τὸν Εὐμενῆ κτείνειν, ἐκέλευσεν αὐτοῦ τὴν τροφὴν ἀφελεῖν, καὶ δύο μὲν ἡμέρας ἢ τρεῖς ἄσιτος οὕτω προσήγετο πρὸς τὴν τελευτήν. αἰφνίδιον δ’ ἀναζυγῆς γενομένης, εἰσπέμψαντες ἄνθρωπον ἀποσφάττουσιν αὐτόν.

[2] Τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῖς φίλοις παραδοὺς ὁ Ἀντίγονος ἐπέτρεψε καῦσαι καὶ τὰ λείψανα συνθέντας εἰς ἀργυρᾶν ὑδρίαν κομίζειν, ἀποδοθησόμενα τῇ γυναικὶ [3] καὶ τοῖς παισίν. οὕτω δ’ ἀποθανόντος Εὐμενοῦς, οὐκ ἐπ’ ἄλλῳ τινὶ τὴν τιμωρίαν ἐποιήσατο τῶν προδόντων αὐτὸν ἡγεμόνων καὶ στρατιωτῶν τὸ δαιμόνιον, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς Ἀντίγονος προβαλόμενος ὡς ἀσεβεῖς καὶ θηριώδεις τοὺς ἀργυράσπιδας παρέδωκε Σιβυρτίῳ τῷ διοικοῦντι τὴν Ἀραχωσίαν, πάντα τρόπον ἐκτρῖψαι καὶ καταφθεῖραι κελεύσας, ὅπως μηδεὶς αὐτῶν εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἄπεισι μηδ’ ὄψεται τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν θάλατταν.

Sertorius

[1] [1] Θαυμαστὸν μὲν ἴσως οὐκ ἔστιν, ἐν ἀπείρῳ τῷ χρόνῳ τῆς τύχης ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλως ῥεούσης, ἐπὶ ταὐτὰ συμπτώματα πολλάκις καταφέρεσθαι τὸ αὐτόματον.

[2] εἴτε γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι τῶν ὑποκειμένων ὡρισμένον τὸ πλῆθος, ἄφθονον ἔχει τῆς τῶν ἀποτελουμένων ὁμοιότητος χορηγὸν ἡ τύχη τὴν τῆς ὕλης ἀπειρίαν· εἴτ’ ἔκ τινων ὡρισμένων ἀριθμῷ συμπλέκεται τὰ πράγματα, [3] πολλάκις ἀνάγκη ταὐτὰ γίνεσθαι, διὰ τῶν αὐτῶν περαινόμενα. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀγαπῶντες ἔνιοι τὰ τοιαῦτα συνάγουσιν ἱστορίᾳ καὶ ἀκοῇ τῶν κατὰ τύχην [4] γεγονότων ὅσα λογισμοῦ καὶ προνοίας ἔργοις ἔοικεν - οἷον ὅτι δυεῖν Ἄττεων γενομένων ἐμφανῶν, τοῦ μὲν Σύρου, τοῦ δ’ Ἀρκάδος, ἑκάτερος ὑπὸ συὸς ἀπώλετο, δυεῖν δ’ Ἀκταιώνων ὁ μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν κυνῶν, ὁ δ’ ὑπὸ [5] τῶν ἐραστῶν διεσπάσθη· δυεῖν δὲ Σκιπιώνων ὑφ’ οὗ μὲν ἐνικήθησαν [6] Καρχηδόνιοι πρότερον, ὑφ’ οὗ δ’ ὕστερον ἄρδην ἀνῃρέθησαν· ἑάλω δὲ τὸ Ἴλιον ὑφ’ Ἡρακλέους διὰ τὰς Λαομέδοντος ἵππους, καὶ ὑπ’ Ἀγαμέμνονος διὰ τοῦ δουρείου προσαγορευθέντος ἵππου, τρίτον δ’ ὑπὸ Χαριδήμου, ταῖς πύλαις ἵππου τινὸς ἐμπεσόντος ἀποκλεῖσαι ταχὺ τῶν Ἰλιέων μὴ δυνηθέντων· [7] δυεῖν δ’ ὁμωνύμων τοῖς εὐωδεστάτοις φυτοῖς πόλεων, Ἴου καὶ Σμύρνης, τὸν ποιητὴν Ὅμηρον ἐν ᾗ μὲν γενέσθαι λέγουσιν, ἐν ᾗ δ’ ἀποθανεῖν - , [8] φέρε καὶ τοῦτο προσθῶμεν αὐτοῖς, ὅτι καὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν οἱ πολεμικώτατοι καὶ πλεῖστα δόλῳ κατεργασάμενοι μετὰ δεινότητος ἑτερόφθαλμοι γεγόνασι· Φίλιππος, Ἀντίγονος, Ἀννίβας, ‹καὶ› περὶ οὗ τόδε τὸ [9] σύγγραμμα, Σερτώριος· ὃν Φιλίππου μὲν ἄν τις ἀποφαίνοιτο σωφρονέστερον περὶ [τὰς] γυναῖκας, Ἀντιγόνου δὲ πιστότερον περὶ φίλους, Ἀννίβου δ’ ἡμερώτερον πρὸς πολεμίους, λειπόμενον δὲ συνέσει μὲν οὐδενὸς τούτων, [10] τύχῃ δὲ πάντων· ᾗ πολὺ τῶν ἐμφανῶν πολεμίων χαλεπωτέρᾳ περὶ πάντα χρησάμενος, ἐπανίσωσεν ἑαυτὸν ἐμπειρίᾳ μὲν τῇ Μετέλλου, τόλμῃ δὲ τῇ Πομπηΐου, τύχῃ δὲ τῇ Σύλλα, δυνάμει δὲ τῇ Ῥωμαίων φυγὰς καὶ βαρβάρων ἔπηλυς ἄρχων ἀντιταξάμενος.

[11] Τούτῳ δὴ μάλιστα τῶν Ἑλλήνων τὸν Καρδιανὸν ὁμοιοῦμεν Εὐμενῆ· ἀμφότεροι γὰρ ἀρχικοὶ καὶ σὺν δόλῳ πολεμικοί, καὶ τῆς μὲν αὑτῶν ἀποξενωθέντες, ἡγησάμενοι δ’ ἀλλοδαπῶν, τύχῃ δὲ χρησάμενοι βιαίῳ καὶ [14] ἀδίκῳ περὶ τὴν τελευτήν· ἐπιβουλευθέντες γὰρ ἀμφότεροι, μεθ’ ὧν τοὺς πολεμίους ἐνίκων, ὑπὸ τούτων ἀνῃρέθησαν.

[2] [1] Κοΐντῳ Σερτωρίῳ γένος ἦν οὐκ ἀσημότατον ἐν πόλει Νουρσίᾳ τῆς Σαβίνων· τραφεὶς δὲ κοσμίως ὑπὸ μητρὶ χήρᾳ πατρὸς ὀρφανός, ὑπερφυῶς [2] δοκεῖ φιλομήτωρ γενέσθαι· ὄνομα τῆς μητρὸς Ῥαΐαν λέγουσιν. ἤσκητο μὲν οὖν καὶ περὶ δίκας ἱκανῶς καί τινα καὶ δύναμιν ἐν τῇ πόλει μειράκιον ὢν ἀπὸ τοῦ λέγειν ἔσχεν· αἱ δὲ περὶ τὰ στρατιωτικὰ λαμπρότητες αὐτοῦ καὶ κατορθώσεις ἐνταῦθα τὴν φιλοτιμίαν μετέστησαν.

[3] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν Κίμβρων καὶ Τευτόνων ἐμβεβληκότων εἰς Γαλατίαν στρατευόμενος ὑπὸ Καιπίωνι, κακῶς ἀγωνισαμένων τῶν Ῥωμαίων καὶ τροπῆς γενομένης, ἀποβεβληκὼς τὸν ἵππον καὶ κατατετρωμένος τὸ σῶμα τὸν Ῥοδανὸν διεπέρασεν, αὐτῷ τε τῷ θώρακι καὶ θυρεῷ πρὸς ἐναντίον ῥεῦμα πολὺ νηχόμενος· οὕτω τὸ σῶμα ῥωμαλέον ἦν αὐτῷ καὶ διάπονον [2] τῇ ἀσκήσει. δεύτερον δὲ τῶν αὐτῶν ἐπερχομένων μυριάσι πολλαῖς καὶ δειναῖς ἀπειλαῖς, ὥστε καὶ τὸ μένειν ἄνδρα Ῥωμαῖον ἐν τάξει τότε καὶ πείθεσθαι τῷ στρατηγῷ μέγ’ ἔργον εἶναι, Μάριος μὲν ἡγεῖτο, Σερτώριος δὲ [3] κατασκοπὴν ὑπέστη τῶν πολεμίων. ἐσθῆτι δὲ Κελτικῇ σκευασάμενος καὶ τὰ κοινότατα τῆς διαλέκτου πρὸς ἔντευξιν ἐπὶ καιροῦ παραλαβών, ἀναμείγνυται τοῖς βαρβάροις, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἰδών, τὰ δ’ ἀκοῇ πυθόμενος τῶν ἐπειγόντων, [4] ἐπανῆλθε πρὸς Μάριον. τότε μὲν οὖν ἀριστείων ἔτυχεν· ἐν δὲ τῇ λοιπῇ στρατείᾳ πολλὰ καὶ συνέσεως ἔργα καὶ τόλμης ἀποδειξάμενος, εἰς ὄνομα καὶ πίστιν ὑπὸ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ προήχθη.

[5] Μετὰ δὲ τὸν Κίμβρων καὶ Τευτόνων πόλεμον ἐκπεμφθεὶς ὑπὸ Δειδίῳ στρατηγῷ χιλίαρχος ἐπ’ Ἰβηρίας, ἐν τῇ πόλει Κάστλωνι παρεχείμαζε τῆς [6] Κελτιβήρων. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἐν ἀφθόνοις ὑβριζόντων καὶ τὰ πολλὰ μεθυόντων καταφρονήσαντες οἱ βάρβαροι μετεπέμψαντο νυκτὸς ἐπικουρίαν παρὰ τῶν ἀστυγειτόνων Ἰστουργίνων, καὶ κατ’ οἰκίας ἐπιόντες ἔκτεινον αὐτούς, ὑπεκδὺς ὁ Σερτώριος μετ’ ὀλίγων καὶ τοὺς ἐκπίπτοντας [7] συναγαγών, κύκλῳ τὴν πόλιν περιῆλθε· καὶ καθ’ ἃς οἱ βάρβαροι πύλας ἔλαθον παρεισπεσόντες, ἀνεῳγμένας εὑρών, οὐ ταὐτὸν ἐκείνοις ἔπαθεν, ἀλλὰ φρουρὰς ἐπιστήσας καὶ καταλαβὼν πανταχόθεν τὴν πόλιν, ἔκτεινε τοὺς ἐν [8] ἡλικίᾳ πάντας. ὡς δ’ ἀνῃρέθησαν, ἐκέλευσε τοὺς στρατιώτας πάντας τὰ μὲν αὑτῶν ὅπλα καὶ τὴν ἐσθῆτα καταθέσθαι, τοῖς δὲ τῶν βαρβάρων ἐνσκευασαμένους ἕπεσθαι πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ἐκείνην, ἐξ ἧς ἀπεστάλησαν οἱ [9] νύκτωρ ἐπιπεσόντες αὐτοῖς. ψευσάμενος δὲ τῇ τῶν ὅπλων ὄψει τοὺς βαρβάρους, τάς τε πύλας ἀνεῳγμένας εὗρε, καὶ πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων ἔλαβεν οἰομένων [10] ἀπαντᾶν εὖ πεπραχόσι φίλοις καὶ πολίταις. διὸ πλεῖστοι μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐσφάττοντο περὶ τὰς πύλας, οἱ δὲ λοιποὶ παραδόντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐπράθησαν.

[4] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Σερτώριος ἐν τῇ Ἰβηρίᾳ διεβοήθη, καὶ ὅτε πρῶτον ἐπανῆκεν εἰς Ῥώμην, ταμίας ἀποδείκνυται τῆς περὶ Πάδον Γαλατίας ἐν δέοντι.

[2] τοῦ γὰρ Μαρσικοῦ πολέμου συνισταμένου, στρατιώτας τε προσταχθὲν αὐτῷ καταλέγειν καὶ ὅπλα ποιεῖσθαι, σπουδὴν καὶ τάχος προσθεὶς τῷ ἔργῳ παρὰ τὴν τῶν ἄλλων νέων βραδυτῆτα καὶ μαλακίαν ἀνδρὸς ἐμπράκτως [3] βιωσομένου δόξαν ἔσχεν. οὐ μὴν ὑφήκατο τῆς στρατιωτικῆς τόλμης εἰς ἀξίωμα προεληλυθὼς ἡγεμόνος, ἀλλὰ καὶ χειρὸς ἀποδεικνύμενος ἔργα θαυμαστὰ καὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῖς ἀγῶσιν ἀφειδῶς ἐπιδιδούς, τῶν ὄψεων ἀπέβαλε [4] τὴν ἑτέραν ἐκκοπεῖσαν. ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ καὶ καλλωπιζόμενος ἀεὶ διετέλει· τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἄλλους οὐκ ἀεὶ τὰ μαρτύρια τῶν ἀριστειῶν περιφέρειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀποτίθεσθαι, στρεπτὰ καὶ δόρατα καὶ στεφάνους, αὑτῷ δὲ τῆς ἀνδραγαθίας παραμένειν τὰ γνωρίσματα, τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἔχοντι τῆς ἀρετῆς [5] ἅμα καὶ τῆς συμφορᾶς θεατάς. ἀπέδωκε δὲ καὶ ὁ δῆμος αὐτῷ τιμὴν πρέπουσαν. εἰσελθόντα γὰρ εἰς θέατρον ἐδέξαντό τε κρότῳ καὶ κατευφήμησαν, ὧν οὐδὲ τοῖς πάνυ προήκουσιν ἡλικίᾳ τε καὶ δόξῃ τυχεῖν ἦν ῥᾴδιον.

[6] Δημαρχίαν μέντοι μετιών, Σύλλα καταστασιάσαντος αὐτόν, ἐξέπεσε· [7] διὸ καὶ δοκεῖ γενέσθαι μισοσύλλας. ἐπεὶ δὲ Μάριος μὲν ὑπὸ Σύλλα κρατηθεὶς ἔφευγε, Σύλλας δὲ Μιθριδάτῃ πολεμήσων ἀπῆρε, τῶν δ’ ὑπάτων Ὀκτάβιος μὲν ἐπὶ τῆς Σύλλα προαιρέσεως ἔμενε, Κίννας δὲ νεωτερίζων ὑποφερομένην ἀνεκαλεῖτο τὴν Μαρίου στάσιν, τούτῳ προσένειμεν αὑτὸν ὁ Σερτώριος, ἄλλως τε καὶ τὸν Ὀκτάβιον ὁρῶν αὐτὸν μὲν ἀμβλύτερον [8] ὄντα, τοῖς δὲ Μαρίου φίλοις ἀπιστοῦντα. γενομένης δὲ τοῖς ὑπάτοις ἐν ἀγορᾷ μάχης μεγάλης, Ὀκτάβιος μὲν ἐκράτησε, Κίννας δὲ καὶ Σερτώριος [9] οὐ πολλῷ τῶν μυρίων ἐλάττους ἀποβαλόντες ἔφυγον, καὶ τῶν περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἔτι διεσπαρμένων στρατοπέδων προσαγ‹αγ›όμενοι τὰ πλεῖστα πειθοῖ, ταχὺ κατέστησαν ἀξιόμαχοι τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ὀκτάβιον.

[5] [1] Μαρίου δὲ καταπλεύσαντος ἐκ Λιβύης καὶ τῷ Κίννᾳ προστιθέντος ἑαυτὸν ὡς ἰδιώτην ὑπάτῳ, τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἐδόκει δέχεσθαι, Σερτώριος δ’ ἀπηγόρευεν, εἴτε τὸν Κίνναν ἧττον οἰόμενος ἑαυτῷ προσέξειν ἀνδρὸς ἡγεμονικωτέρου παρόντος, εἴτε τὴν βαρύτητα τοῦ Μαρίου δεδοικώς, μὴ πάντα τὰ πράγματα συγχέῃ, θυμῷ μέτρον οὐκ ἔχοντι πέρα δίκης ἐν τῷ [2] κρατεῖν προερχόμενος. ἔλεγεν οὖν μικρὸν εἶναι τὸ ὑπολειπόμενον ἔργον αὐτοῖς ἤδη κρατοῦσι, δεξαμένων δὲ τὸν Μάριον, τὸ σύμπαν οἴσεσθαι τῆς δόξης ἐκεῖνον καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως, χαλεπὸν ὄντα πρὸς κοινωνίαν ἀρχῆς καὶ [3] ἄπιστον. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ Κίννα, ταῦτα μὲν ὀρθῶς ὑπολογίζεσθαι τὸν Σερτώριον, αἰδεῖσθαι δὲ καὶ διαπορεῖν ὅπως ἀπώσεται τὸν Μάριον, αὐτὸς [4] ἐπὶ κοινωνίᾳ πραγμάτων κεκληκώς, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Σερτώριος εἶπεν· ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ μὲν αὐτὸν ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ Μάριον ἥκειν νομίζων εἰς Ἰταλίαν τὸ συμφέρον ἐσκόπουν, σοὶ δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν οὐδὲ βουλεύεσθαι καλῶς εἶχεν ἥκοντος ὃν αὐτὸς ἐλθεῖν ἠξίωσας, ἀλλὰ χρῆσθαι καὶ δέχεσθαι, τῆς πίστεως [5] μηδενὶ λογισμῷ χώραν διδούσης. οὕτως μεταπέμπεται τὸν Μάριον [6] Κίννας, καὶ τριχῇ τῆς δυνάμεως διανεμηθείσης, ἦρχον οἱ τρεῖς. διαπολεμηθέντος δὲ τοῦ πολέμου, καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Κίνναν καὶ Μάριον ἐμφορουμένων ὕβρεώς τε καὶ πικρίας ἁπάσης, ὥστε χρυσὸν ἀποδεῖξαι Ῥωμαίοις τὰ τοῦ πολέμου κακά, Σερτώριος λέγεται μόνος οὔτ’ ἀποκτεῖναί τινα πρὸς ὀργὴν οὔτ’ ἐνυβρίσαι κρατῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ Μαρίῳ δυσχεραίνειν, [7] καὶ τὸν Κίνναν ἐντυγχάνων ἰδίᾳ καὶ δεόμενος μετριώτερον ποιεῖν. τέλος δὲ τῶν δούλων, οὓς Μάριος συμμάχους μὲν ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ, δορυφόρους δὲ τῆς τυραννίδος ἔχων ἰσχυροὺς καὶ πλουσίους ἐποίησε, τὰ μὲν ἐκείνου διδόντος καὶ κελεύοντος, τὰ δὲ καὶ ἰδίᾳ παρανομούντων εἰς τοὺς δεσπότας, σφαττόντων μὲν αὐτούς, ταῖς δὲ δεσποίναις πλησιαζόντων, καὶ βιαζομένων τοὺς παῖδας, οὐκ ἀνασχετὰ ποιούμενος ὁ Σερτώριος ἅπαντας ἐν ταὐτῷ στρατοπεδεύοντας κατηκόντισεν, οὐκ ἐλάττους τετρακισχιλίων ὄντας.

[6] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Μάριος μὲν ἐτελεύτησε καὶ Κίννας ἀνῃρέθη μικρὸν ὕστερον, ὁ δὲ νεανίας Μάριος ἄκοντος αὐτοῦ παρὰ τοὺς νόμους ὑπατείαν ἔλαβε, Κάρβωνες δὲ καὶ Νωρβανοὶ καὶ Σκιπίωνες ἐπιόντι Σύλλᾳ κακῶς ἐπολέμουν, [2] καὶ τὰ μὲν ἀνανδρίᾳ καὶ μαλακίᾳ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἐφθείρετο, τὰ δ’ οἱ προδιδόντες ἀπώλλυσαν, ἔργον δ’ οὐδὲν ἦν αὐτοῦ παρόντος τοῖς πράγμασι μοχθηρῶς ὑποφερομένοις διὰ τὸ χεῖρον φρονεῖν τοὺς μᾶλλον δυναμένους, [3] τέλος δὲ Σύλλας Σκιπίωνι παραστρατοπεδεύσας καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος, ὡς εἰρήνης ἐσομένης, διέφθειρε τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ ταῦτα προλέγων [4] Σκιπίωνι καὶ διδάσκων Σερτώριος οὐκ ἔπεισε, παντάπασιν ἀπογνοὺς τὴν πόλιν ὥρμησεν εἰς Ἰβηρίαν, ὡς, εἰ φθάσει τὴν ἐκεῖ κρατυνάμενος ἀρχήν, [5] καταφυγὴ τοῖς πταίουσιν ἐνταῦθα τῶν φίλων ἐσόμενος. χειμῶσι δὲ χαλεποῖς χρησάμενος ἐν χωρίοις ὀρεινοῖς, ὑπὸ βαρβάρων ἐπράττετο τέλη καὶ [6] μισθοὺς τοῦ παρελθεῖν τὴν ὁδόν. ἀγανακτούντων δὲ τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ καὶ δεινολογουμένων, εἰ Ῥωμαίων ἀνθύπατος τέλη καταβαλεῖ βαρβάροις ὀλέθροις, μικρὰ φροντίσας τοῦ δοκοῦντος αἰσχροῦ καὶ καιρὸν ὠνεῖσθαι φήσας, οὗ σπανιώτερον οὐδὲν ἀνδρὶ μεγάλων ἐφιεμένῳ, τοὺς μὲν βαρβάρουσ ἐθεράπευσε [7] χρήμασι, τὴν δ’ Ἰβηρίαν ἐπειχθεὶς κατέσχε. παραλαβὼν δ’ ἔθνη, πλήθεσι μὲν καὶ ἡλικίαις ἀκμάζοντα, πλεονεξίᾳ δὲ καὶ ὕβρει τῶν πεμπομένων ἑκάστοτε στρατηγῶν πρὸς ὅλην κακῶς διακείμενα τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, ἀνελάμβανεν ὁμιλίᾳ τε τοὺς δυνατοὺς καὶ φόρων ἀνέσει τοὺς πολλούς.

[8] μάλιστα δὲ τῶν ἐπισταθμιῶν ἀπαλλάξας ἠγαπήθη· τοὺς γὰρ στρατιώτας ἠνάγκαζεν ἐν τοῖς προαστίοις χειμάδια πήγνυσθαι, πρῶτος αὐτὸς οὕτω [9] κατασκηνῶν. οὐ μὴν ἐπὶ τῇ τῶν βαρβάρων εὐνοίᾳ τὸ πᾶν ἐποιήσατο, Ῥωμαίων δὲ τῶν αὐτόθι μετοικούντων τοὺς ἐν ἡλικίᾳ καθοπλίσας, μηχανάς τε παντοδαπὰς καὶ ναυπηγίας τριήρων ὑποβαλόμενος, διὰ χειρὸς εἶχε τὰς πόλεις, ἥμερος μὲν ὢν ἐν ταῖς εἰρηνικαῖς χρείαις, φοβερὸς δὲ τῇ παρασκευῇ [κατὰ] τῶν πολεμικῶν φαινόμενος.

[7] [1] Ὡς δὲ Σύλλαν μὲν ἐπυνθάνετο τῆς Ῥώμης κρατεῖν, ἔρρειν δὲ τὴν Μαρίου καὶ Κάρβωνος στάσιν, αὐτίκα προσδοκῶν στρατιὰν διαπολεμήσουσαν αὐτῷ μεθ’ ἡγεμόνος ἀφίξεσθαι, φράγνυται τὰ Πυρηναῖα ὄρη διὰ [2] Λιουίου Σαλινάτορος, ἑξακισχιλίους ὁπλίτας ἔχοντος. καὶ μετ’ οὐ πολὺ Γάϊος Ἄννιος ἐκπεμφθεὶς ὑπὸ Σύλλα καὶ τὸν Λίουιον ἀπρόσμαχον ὁρῶν, ἐν [3] ἀπόρῳ καθῆστο παρὰ ταῖς ὑπωρείαις. Καλπουρνίου δέ τινος ἐπίκλησιν Λαναρίου δολοφονήσαντος τὸν Λίουιον καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν τὰ ἄκρα τῆς Πυρήνης ἐκλιπόντων, ὑπερβαλὼν Ἄννιος ἐπῄει χειρὶ μεγάλῃ, τοὺς ἐμποδὼν [4] ἀνιστάς. Σερτώριος δ’ οὐκ ὢν ἀξιόμαχος, μετὰ τρισχιλίων εἰς Καρχηδόνα τὴν νέαν καταφυγών, κἀκεῖθεν ἐπιβὰς τῶν νεῶν καὶ διαπεράσας τὸ [5] πέλαγος, Λιβύῃ κατὰ τὴν Μαυρουσίαν προσέσχεν. ἀφυλάκτοις δὲ τοῖς στρατιώταις ὑδρευομένοις τῶν βαρβάρων ἐπιπεσόντων, συχνοὺς ἀποβαλὼν αὖθις εἰς Ἰβηρίαν ἀπέπλει, καὶ ταύτης μὲν ἀποκρούεται, Κιλισσῶν δὲ λῃστρίδων αὐτῷ προσγενομένων, Πιτυούσσῃ νήσῳ προσέβαλε καὶ ἀπέβη [6] τὴν παρ’ Ἀννίου φρουρὰν βιασάμενος. Ἄννιος δὲ μετ’ οὐ πολὺ παρῆν ναυσί τε πολλαῖς καὶ πεντακισχιλίοις ὁπλίταις· πρὸς ὃν ἐπεχείρησε μὲν διαναυμαχεῖν, καίπερ ἐλαφροῖς καὶ πρὸς τάχος, οὐ πρὸς ἀλκήν, πεποιημένοις σκάφεσι χρώμενος, ζεφύρῳ δὲ λαμπρῷ τοῦ πελάγους ἀνισταμένου καὶ τὰ πολλὰ τῶν τοῦ Σερτωρίου πλοίων ὑπὸ κουφότητος πλάγια ταῖς ῥαχίαις [7] περιβάλλοντος, αὐτὸς ὀλίγαις ναυσί, τῆς μὲν θαλάσσης ὑπὸ τοῦ χειμῶνος εἰργόμενος, τῆς δὲ γῆς ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, ἡμέρας δέκα σαλεύων πρὸς ἐναντίον κῦμα καὶ κλύδωνα τραχὺν ἐπιπόνως διεκαρτέρησεν.

[8] [1] Ἐνδόντος δὲ τοῦ πνεύματος, φερόμενος νήσοις τισὶν ἐναυλίζεται σποράσιν ἀνύδροις, κἀκεῖθεν ἄρας καὶ διεκβαλὼν τὸν Γαδειραῖον πορθμόν, ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῖς ἐκτὸς ἐπιβάλλει τῆς Ἰβηρίας, μικρὸν ὑπὲρ τῶν τοῦ Βαίτιος ἐκβολῶν, ὃς εἰς τὴν Ἀτλαντικὴν ἐκφερόμενος θάλατταν ὄνομα τῇ περὶ αὐτὸν Ἰβηρίᾳ παρέσχεν.

[2] Ἐνταῦθα ναῦταί τινες ἐντυγχάνουσιν αὐτῷ, νέον ἐκ τῶν Ἀτλαντικῶν νήσων ἀναπεπλευκότες, αἳ δύο μέν εἰσι, λεπτῷ παντάπασι πορθμῷ διαιρούμεναι, μυρίους δ’ ἀπέχουσαι Λιβύης σταδίους, καὶ ὀνομάζονται Μακάρων.

[3] ὄμβροις δὲ χρώμεναι μετρίοις σπανίως, τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα πνεύμασι μαλακοῖς καὶ δροσοβόλοις, οὐ μόνον ἀροῦν καὶ φυτεύειν παρέχουσιν ἀγαθὴν καὶ πίονα χώραν, ἀλλὰ καὶ καρπὸν αὐτοφυῆ φέρουσιν, ἀποχρῶντα πλήθει καὶ [4] γλυκύτητι βόσκειν ἄνευ πόνων καὶ πραγματείας σχολάζοντα δῆμον. ἀὴρ δ’ ἄλυπος ὡρῶν τε κράσει καὶ μεταβολῆς μετριότητι κατέχει τὰς νήσους. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐνθένδε τῆς γῆς ἀποπνέοντες ἔξω βορέαι καὶ ἀπηλιῶται διὰ μῆκος ἐκπεσόντες εἰς τόπον ἀχανῆ διασπείρονται καὶ προαπολείπουσι, πελάγιοι δὲ περιρρέοντες ἀργέσται καὶ ζέφυροι, βληχροὺς μὲν ὑετοὺς καὶ σποράδας ἐκ θαλάττης ἐπάγοντες, τὰ δὲ πολλὰ νοτεραῖς αἰθρίαις ἐπιψύχοντες, [5] ἡσυχῇ τρέφουσιν· ὥστε μέχρι τῶν βαρβάρων διῖχθαι πίστιν ἰσχυράν, αὐτόθι τὸ Ἠλύσιον εἶναι πεδίον καὶ τὴν τῶν εὐδαιμόνων οἴκησιν, ἣν Ὅμηρος ὕμνησε (Od. 4, 563 sqq.).

[9] [1] Ταῦθ’ ὁ Σερτώριος ἀκούσας ἔρωτα θαυμαστὸν ἔσχεν οἰκῆσαι τὰς νήσους καὶ ζῆν ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ, τυραννίδος ἀπαλλαγεὶς καὶ πολέμων ἀπαύστων.

[2] αἰσθόμενοι δ’ οἱ Κίλικες, οὐθὲν εἰρήνης δεόμενοι καὶ σχολῆς, ἀλλὰ πλούτου καὶ λαφύρων, εἰς Λιβύην ἀπέπλευσαν, Ἄσκαλιν τὸν Ἴφθα κατάξοντες [3] ἐπὶ τὴν Μαυρουσίων βασιλείαν. οὐ μὴν ἀπέκαμεν ὁ Σερτώριος, ἀλλὰ τοῖς πρὸς τὸν Ἄσκαλιν διαπολεμοῦσιν ἔγνω βοηθεῖν, ὡς οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ καινήν τινα λαβόντες ἐλπίδων ἀρχὴν καὶ πράξεων ἑτέρων ὑπόθεσιν, μὴ διαλυθεῖεν [4] ὑπὸ τῆς ἀπορίας. ἀσμένοις δὲ τοῖς Μαυρουσίοις ἀφικόμενος, εἴχετο ‹τοῦ› [5] ἔργου, καὶ καταμαχεσάμενος τὸν Ἄσκαλιν ἐπολιόρκει. Σύλλα δὲ Πακκιανὸν ἐκπέμψαντος βοηθῆσαι τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἄσκαλιν μετὰ δυνάμεως, συμβαλὼν ὁ Σερτώριος τὸν μὲν Πακκιανὸν ἀπέκτεινε, τὴν δὲ στρατιὰν κρατήσας προσηγάγετο, καὶ τὴν Τίγγιν, εἰς ἣν ὁ Ἄσκαλις συνέφυγε μετὰ τῶν ἀδελφῶν, [6] ἐξεπολιόρκησεν. ἐνταῦθα τὸν Ἀνταῖον οἱ Λίβυες ἱστοροῦσι κεῖσθαι, καὶ τὸν τάφον αὐτοῦ Σερτώριος διέσκαψε, τοῖς βαρβάροις ἀπιστῶν διὰ [7] μέγεθος. ἐντυχὼν δὲ τῷ σώματι, πηχῶν ἑξήκοντα μῆκος ὥς φασι, κατεπλάγη, καὶ σφάγιον ἐντεμὼν συνέχωσε τὸ μνῆμα καὶ τὴν περὶ αὐτοῦ τιμήν [8] τε καὶ φήμην συνηύξησε. Τιγγῖται δὲ μυθολογοῦσιν Ἀνταίου τελευτήσαντος τὴν γυναῖκα Τίγγην Ἡρακλεῖ συνελθεῖν, Σόφακα δ’ ἐξ αὐτῶν γενόμενον βασιλεῦσαι τῆς χώρας καὶ πόλιν ἐπώνυμον τῆς μητρὸς ἀποδεῖξαι· [9] Σόφακος δὲ παῖδα γενέσθαι Διόδωρον, ᾧ πολλὰ τῶν Λιβυκῶν ἐθνῶν ὑπήκουσεν, Ἑλληνικὸν ἔχοντι στράτευμα τῶν αὐτόθι κατῳκισμένων ὑφ’ [10] Ἡρακλέους Ὀλβιανῶν καὶ Μυκηναίων. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἀνακείσθω τῇ Ἰόβα (FGrH 275 T 10) χάριτι, τοῦ πάντων ἱστορικωτάτου βασιλέων· ἐκείνου γὰρ ἱστοροῦσι τοὺς προγόνους Διοδώρου καὶ Σόφακος ἀπογόνους [11] εἶναι. Σερτώριος δὲ πάντων ἐγκρατὴς γενόμενος, τοὺς δεηθέντας αὐτοῦ καὶ πιστεύσαντας οὐκ ἠδίκησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ χρήματα καὶ πόλεις καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπέδωκεν αὐτοῖς, ὅσα καλῶς εἶχε δεξάμενος διδόντων.

[10] [1] Ἐντεῦθεν ὅποι χρὴ τραπέσθαι βουλευόμενον ἐκάλουν Λυσιτανοὶ πρέσβεις πέμψαντες ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίᾳ, πάντως μὲν ἄρχοντος ἀξίωμα μέγα καὶ ἐμπειρίαν ἔχοντος δεόμενοι πρὸς τὸν ἀπὸ Ῥωμαίων φόβον, ἐκείνῳ δὲ πιστεύοντες αὑτοὺς μόνῳ, καὶ πυνθανόμενοι παρὰ τῶν συγγεγονότων τὸ [2] ἦθος αὐτοῦ. λέγεται γὰρ ὁ Σερτώριος οὔθ’ ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς οὔθ’ ὑπὸ δέους εὐάλωτος γενέσθαι, φύσει τ’ ἀνέκπληκτος [ὢν] παρὰ τὰ δεινά, καὶ μέτριος [3] εὐτυχίαν ἐνεγκεῖν, καὶ πρὸς μὲν εὐθυμαχίαν οὐδενὸς ἀτολμότερος τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἡγεμόνων, ὅσα δὲ κλωπείας ἐν πολέμοις ἔργα καὶ πλεονεξίας περὶ τόπους ἐχυροὺς καὶ διαβάσεις τάχους δεομένας ἀπάτης τε καὶ ψευδῶν [4] ἐν δέοντι, σοφιστὴς δεινότατος. ἐν δὲ ταῖς τιμαῖς τῶν ἀνδραγαθημάτων [5] δαψιλὴς φαινόμενος, περὶ τὰς τιμωρίας ἐμετρίαζε τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων. καίτοι δοκεῖ περὶ τὸν ἔσχατον αὐτοῦ βίον ὠμότητος καὶ βαρυθυμίας τὸ περὶ τοὺς ὁμήρους πραχθὲν ἔργον ἐπιδεῖξαι τὴν φύσιν οὐκ οὖσαν ἥμερον, ἀλλ’ [6] ἐπαμπεχομένην λογισμῷ διὰ τὴν ἀνάγκην. ἐμοὶ δ’ ἀρετὴν μὲν εἰλικρινῆ καὶ κατὰ λόγον συνεστῶσαν οὐκ ἄν ποτε δοκεῖ τύχη τις ἐκστῆσαι πρὸς τοὐναντίον· ἄλλως δὲ προαιρέσεις καὶ φύσεις χρηστὰς ὑπὸ συμφορῶν μεγάλων παρ’ ἀξίαν κακωθείσας οὐκ ἀδύνατον τῷ δαίμονι συμμεταβαλεῖν τὸ [7] ἦθος. ὃ καὶ Σερτώριον οἶμαι παθεῖν, ἤδη τῆς τύχης αὐτὸν ἐπιλειπούσης ἐκτραχυνόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων γινομένων πονηρῶν πρὸς τοὺς ἀδικοῦντας.

[11] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τότε γε τῶν Λυσιτανῶν καλούντων, ἀπῆρεν ἐκ Λιβύης. [2] καὶ τούτους ‹τε› συνέταττεν εὐθὺς αὐτοκράτωρ στρατηγὸς ‹ἀποδειχθείς›, καὶ τὴν ἐγγὺς Ἰβηρίαν ὑπήκοον ἐποιεῖτο, τῶν πλείστων ἑκουσίως προστιθεμένων, μάλιστα μὲν διὰ τὸ πρᾷον αὐτοῦ καὶ δραστήριον· ἔστι δ’ ἃ [3] καὶ σοφιστικῶς αὐτὸς εἰς ἀπάτην καὶ κήλησιν ἐμηχανᾶτο. καὶ πρῶτόν γε πάντων τὸ περὶ τὴν ἔλαφον. ἦν δὲ τοιόνδε· ‹Λυ›σιτανὸς ἀνὴρ δημότης τῶν ἐπὶ χώρας βιούντων ἐλάφῳ νεοτόκῳ φευγούσῃ κυνηγέτας ἐπιτυχών, αὐτῆς μὲν ἀπελείφθη, τὴν δὲ νεβρὸν ἐκπλαγεὶς τῇ καινότητι τῆς χρόας, [4] λευκὴ γὰρ ἦν πᾶσα, λαμβάνει διώξας. κατὰ τύχην δὲ Σερτωρίου τοῖς τόποις ἐναυλισαμένου, καὶ πᾶν ὅ τις ἐξ ἄγρας ἢ γεωργίας ἥκοι κομίζων δῶρον ἀσμένως δεχομένου, καὶ φιλοφρόνως ἀμειβομένου τοὺς θεραπεύοντας, [5] ἐγχειρίζει φέρων αὐτῷ τὴν νεβρόν. ὁ δὲ δεξάμενος, αὐτίκα μὲν ἥσθη μετρίως, χρόνῳ δὲ ποιησάμενος τιθασὸν οὕτω καὶ φιλάνθρωπον, ὥστε καὶ καλοῦντος ἀκούειν καὶ βαδίζοντί ποι παρακολουθεῖν, ὄχλου τε καὶ [6] θορύβου παντὸς ἀνέχεσθαι στρατιωτικοῦ, κατὰ μικρὸν ἐξεθείαζε φάσκων Ἀρτέμιδος δῶρον τὴν ἔλαφον εἶναι, καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἀδήλων ἐπεφήμιζεν αὐτῷ δηλοῦν, γινώσκων εὐάλωτον εἰς δεισιδαιμονίαν εἶναι φύσει τὸ [7] βαρβαρικόν. ὁ δὲ καὶ προσετεχνᾶτο τοιάδε· γνοὺς γὰρ ἂν κρύφα τοὺς πολεμίους ἐμβεβληκότας ποι τῆς ὑπ’ αὐτὸν χώρας ἢ πόλιν ἀφιστάντας, προσεποιεῖτο τὴν ἔλαφον αὐτῷ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους διειλέχθαι, κελεύουσαν [8] ἐν ἑτοίμῳ τὰς δυνάμεις ἔχειν. αὖθις δὲ νίκην τινὰ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ στρατηγῶν ἀκούσας, τὸν μὲν ἄγγελον ἔκρυπτε, τὴν δ’ ἔλαφον ἐστεφανωμένην ἐπ’ εὐαγγελίοις προῆγεν, εὐθυμεῖσθαι παρακαλῶν καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς θύειν, ὡς ἀγαθόν τι πευσομένους.

[12] [1] Οὕτως δὲ χειροήθεις ποιησάμενος αὐτούς, ἐχρῆτο πρὸς ἅπαντα μετριωτέροις, οὐχ ὑπ’ ἀνδρὸς ἀλλοδαποῦ λογισμῶν, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ θεοῦ στρατηγεῖσθαι πειθομένοις, ἅμα καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ἐπιμαρτυρούντων τῷ [2] παρὰ λόγον τὴν δύναμιν αὐξάνεσθαι. δισχιλίοις γὰρ ἑξακοσίοις, οὓς ὠνόμαζε Ῥωμαίους, συμμείκτοις δ’ ἑπτακοσίοις Λιβύων εἰς Λυσιτανίαν αὐτῷ συνδιαβᾶσι πελταστὰς τετρακισχιλίους Λυσιτανῶν καὶ ἱππεῖς ἑπτακοσίους προσλαβών, ἐπολέμει τέτταρσι Ῥωμαίων στρατηγοῖς, ὑφ’ οἷς ἦσαν πεζῶν μὲν δώδεκα μυριάδες, ἱππεῖς δ’ ἑξακισχίλιοι, τοξόται δὲ καὶ σφενδονῆται δισχίλιοι, πόλεις δ’ ἀναρίθμητοι τὸ πλῆθος, αὐτὸς εἴκοσι [3] τὰς πάσας ἐν ἀρχῇ κεκτημένος. ἀλλ’ ὅμως ἀσθενὴς οὕτω καὶ μικρὸς ἀρξάμενος, οὐ μόνον ἐθνῶν ἐκράτησε μεγάλων καὶ πόλεις εἷλε πολλάς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἀντιστρατήγων Κότταν μὲν ἐν τῷ περὶ τὴν Μελλαρίαν [4] πορθμῷ κατεναυμάχησε, Φουφίδιον δὲ τὸν ἄρχοντα τῆς Βαιτικῆς περὶ τὸν Βαῖτιν ἐτρέψατο, δισχιλίους ἀποκτείνας Ῥωμαίων, Δομίτιον δὲ Καλουῖνον ἀνθύπατον ὄντα τῆς ἑτέρας Ἰβηρίας διὰ τοῦ ταμίου καταγωνισάμενος, καὶ Θώρ[άν]ιον, ἄλλον ἡγεμόνα τῶν ὑπὸ Μετέλλου πεμφθέντων, [5] μετὰ δυνάμεως ἀνεῖλεν, αὐτόν τε τὸν Μέτελλον, ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων ἐν τοῖς τότε μέγιστον καὶ δοκιμώτατον, οὐκ ὀλίγοις σφάλμασι περιβαλὼν εἰς τοσαύτην ἀπορίαν κατέστησεν, ὥστε Λεύκιον μὲν Μάλλιον ἐκ τῆς περὶ Ναρβῶνα Γαλατίας ἐλθεῖν αὐτῷ βοηθόν, Πομπήϊον δὲ Μᾶγνον ἐκ [6] Ῥώμης κατὰ τάχος ἀποσταλῆναι μετὰ δυνάμεως. οὐ γὰρ εἶχεν ὁ Μέτελλος ὅ τι χρήσαιτο, προσπολεμῶν ἀνδρὶ τολμητῇ, πάσης ἐξαναδυομένῳ φανερᾶς μάχης, πᾶσαν δὲ μεταβαλλομένῳ μεταβολὴν εὐσταλείᾳ καὶ κουφότητι [7] τῆς Ἰβηρικῆς στρατιᾶς, αὐτὸς ὁπλιτικῶν καὶ νομίμων ἀσκητὴς γεγονὼς ἀγώνων καὶ στρατηγὸς ἐμβριθοῦς καὶ μονίμου φάλαγγος, ὤσασθαι μὲν εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθόντας πολεμίους καὶ καταβαλεῖν ἄριστα γεγυμνασμένης, ὀρειβατεῖν δὲ καὶ συνηρτῆσθαι διώξεσι καὶ φυγαῖς ἀπαύστοις ἀνθρώπων ὑπηνεμίων καὶ λιμὸν ἀνέχεσθαι καὶ δίαιταν ἄπυρον καὶ ἄσκηνον ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνοι μὴ δυναμένης.

[13] [1] Ἔτι δ’ αὐτὸς μὲν ἤδη πρεσβύτερος ἦν, καί τι καὶ πρὸς ἀνειμένην ἤδη καὶ τρυφερὰν δίαιταν ἐκ πολλῶν ἀγώνων καὶ μεγάλων ἐνδεδωκώς, τῷ δὲ Σερτωρίῳ συνειστήκει πνεύματος ἀκμαίου γέμοντι καὶ κατεσκευασμένον [2] ἔχοντι θαυμασίως τὸ σῶμα ῥώμῃ καὶ τάχει καὶ λιτότητι. μέθης μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲ ῥᾳθυμῶν ἥπτετο, πόνους δὲ μεγάλους καὶ μακρὰς ὁδοιπορίας καὶ συνεχεῖς ἀγρυπνίας ὀλίγοις εἴθιστο καὶ φαύλοις ἀρκούμενος σιτίοις διαφέρειν· πλάνοις δὲ χρώμενος ἀεὶ καὶ κυνηγεσίοις ὁπότε σχολάζοι, πάσης διεκδύσεως φεύγοντι καὶ διώκοντι κυκλώσεως ἀβάτων τε καὶ [3] βασίμων τόπων ἐμπειρίαν προσειλήφει. διὸ τῷ μὲν εἰργομένῳ μάχης ὅσα νικώμενοι πάσχουσιν ἄνθρωποι βλάπτεσθαι συνέβαινεν, ὁ δὲ τῷ φεύγειν [4] εἶχε τὰ τῶν διωκόντων. καὶ γὰρ ὑδρείας ἀπέκοπτε, καὶ σιτολογίας εἶργε, καὶ προϊόντι μὲν ἐκποδὼν ἦν, ἐκίνει δ’ ἱδρυνθέντα, πολιορκοῦντι δ’ ἄλλους [5] ἐπιφαινόμενος ἀντεπολιόρκει ταῖς τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἀπορίαις, ὥστε τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀπαγορεύειν, καὶ τοῦ Σερτωρίου μονομαχῆσαι προκαλουμένου τὸν Μέτελλον, βοᾶν καὶ κελεύειν μάχεσθαι στρατηγὸν στρατηγῷ καὶ Ῥωμαίῳ Ῥωμαῖον, ἀναδυόμενον δὲ χλευάζειν. ὁ δὲ τούτων μὲν εὖ ποιῶν [6] κατεγέλα· στρατηγοῦ γὰρ ὡς ἔφη Θεόφραστος (fg. 140 Wimmer) δεῖ θάνατον [7] ἀποθνῄσκειν τὸν στρατηγόν, οὐ πελταστοῦ τοῦ τυχόντος. ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς Λαγγοβρίγας οὐ μικρὰ τῷ Σερτωρίῳ συλλαμβανομένους, δίψῃ δ’ ὄντας εὐαλώτους (ἓν γὰρ ἦν αὐτοῖς φρέαρ ἐν τῇ πόλει, τῶν δ’ ἐν τοῖς προαστίοις καὶ παρὰ τὰ τείχη ναμάτων ὁ πολιορκῶν ἐπικρατεῖν ἔμελλεν), ἧκεν ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν ὡς ἡμέραις δυσὶ συναιρήσων τὴν πολιορκίαν ὕδατος οὐκ ὄντος· διὸ καὶ πένθ’ ἡμερῶν ἐπιφέρεσθαι σιτία μόνον προείρητο τοῖς στρατιώταις.

[8] ὁ Σερτώριος δ’ ὀξέως βοηθήσας, ἐκέλευσε δισχιλίους ἀσκοὺς ὕδατος ἐμπλῆσαι, [9] καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀσκὸν ἀργύριον συχνὸν τάξας, καὶ πολλῶν μὲν Ἰβήρων, πολλῶν δὲ Μαυρουσίων ὑφισταμένων τὸ ἔργον, ἐπιλεξάμενος ἄνδρας εὐρώστους ἅμα καὶ ποδώκεις ἔπεμψε διὰ τῆς ὀρεινῆς, κελεύσας, ὅταν παραδῶσι τοὺς ἀσκοὺς τοῖς ἐν τῇ πόλει, τὸν ἄχρηστον ὑπεξαγαγεῖν [10] ὄχλον, ὅπως ἐξαρκῇ τοῖς ἀμυνομένοις τὸ ποτόν. ἐκπύστου δὲ τούτου γενομένου πρὸς τὸν Μέτελλον, ἤχθετο μὲν ἤδη τὰ ἐπιτήδεια τῶν στρατιωτῶν ὑπαναλωκότων, ἐξέπεμψε δ’ ἐπὶ σιτολογίαν Ἀκυῗνον ἑξακισχιλίων [11] ἡγούμενον. αἰσθόμενος δ’ ὁ Σερτώριος καὶ προλοχίσας τὴν ὁδόν, ἐπανερχομένῳ τῷ Ἀκυΐνῳ τρισχιλίους ἄνδρας ἔκ τινος συσκίου χαράδρας ἐπανίστησιν, αὐτὸς δὲ κατὰ στόμα προσβαλὼν τρέπεται, καὶ τοὺς μὲν [12] διαφθείρει, τοὺς δὲ λαμβάνει ζῶντας. Ἀκυῗνον δὲ μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τὸν ἵππον ἀποβεβληκότα δεξάμενος Μέτελλος αἰσχρῶς ἀπῄει, πολλὰ χλευαζόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν Ἰβήρων.

[14] [1] Ἔκ τε δὴ τούτων θαυμαζόμενος ἠγαπᾶτο παρὰ τοῖς βαρβάροις ὁ Σερτώροις, καὶ ὅτι Ῥωμαϊκοῖς ὁπλισμοῖς καὶ τάξεσι καὶ συνθήμασιν ἀφαιρῶν τὸ μανικὸν καὶ θηριῶδες αὐτῶν τῆς ἀλκῆς ἀντὶ λῃστηρίου [2] μεγάλου στρατὸν ἐποιεῖτο τὴν δύναμιν. ἔτι δ’ ἀργύρῳ χρώμενος ἀφειδῶς καὶ χρυσῷ κράνη τε κατεκόσμει καὶ θυρεοὺς αὐτῶν διεποίκιλλε, καὶ χλαμύσιν ἀνθιναῖς καὶ χιτῶσι χρῆσθαι διδάσκων, καὶ χορηγῶν εἰς [3] ταῦτα καὶ συμφιλοκαλῶν, ἐδημαγώγει. μάλιστα δ’ εἷλεν αὐτοὺς τὰ τῶν παίδων· τοὺς γὰρ εὐγενεστάτους ἀπὸ τῶν ἐθνῶν συναγαγὼν εἰς Ὄσκαν πόλιν μεγάλην, διδασκάλους ἐπιστήσας Ἑλληνικῶν τε καὶ Ῥωμαϊκῶν μαθημάτων, ἔργῳ μὲν ἐξωμηρεύσατο, λόγῳ δ’ ἐπαίδευεν, ὡς ἀνδράσι [4] γενομένοις πολιτείας τε μεταδώσων καὶ ἀρχῆς. οἱ δὲ πατέρες ἥδοντο θαυμαστῶς, τοὺς παῖδας ἐν περιπορφύροις ὁρῶντες μάλα κοσμίως φοιτῶντας εἰς τὰ διδασκαλεῖα, καὶ τὸν Σερτώριον ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν μισθοὺς τελοῦντα, καὶ πολλάκις ἀποδείξεις λαμβάνοντα, καὶ γέρα τοῖς ἀξίοις νέμοντα, καὶ τὰ χρυσᾶ περιδέραια δωρούμενον ἃ Ῥωμαῖοι βούλλας καλοῦσιν.

[5] ἔθους δ’ ὄντος Ἰβηρικοῦ τοὺς περὶ τὸν ἄρχοντα τεταγμένους συναποθνῄσκειν αὐτῷ πεσόντι, καὶ τοῦτο τῶν ἐκεῖ βαρβάρων κατάσπεισιν ὀνομαζόντων, τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἡγεμόσιν ὀλίγοι τῶν ὑπασπιστῶν καὶ τῶν ἑταίρων, Σερτωρίῳ δὲ πολλαὶ μυριάδες ἀνθρώπων κατεσπεικότων ἑαυτοὺς [6] ἠκολούθουν. λέγεται δὲ πρός τινι πόλει τροπῆς γενομένης καὶ τῶν πολεμίων ἐπικειμένων, τοὺς Ἴβηρας ἀμελήσαντας αὑτῶν τὸν Σερτώριον σῴζειν καὶ τοῖς ὤμοις ἐπαραμένους ἄλλους ὑπὲρ ἄλλων ἀνακουφίσαι πρὸς τὰ τείχη, γενομένου δ’ ἐν ἀσφαλεῖ τοῦ ἄρχοντος, οὕτω τραπέσθαι πρὸς φυγὴν ἕκαστον αὐτῶν.

[15] [1] Οὐ μόνον δὲ τοῖς Ἴβηρσιν ἦν ποθεινός, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἐξ Ἰταλίας [2] στρατευομένοις. Περπέννα γοῦν Οὐέντωνος ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς Σερτωρίῳ στάσεως εἰς Ἰβηρίαν παραγενομένου μετὰ χρημάτων πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλης δυνάμεως, ἰδίᾳ δὲ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐγνωκότος πολεμεῖν πρὸς τὸν Μέτελλον, ἐδυσχέραινον οἱ στρατιῶται, καὶ πολὺς ἦν τοῦ Σερτωρίου λόγος ἐν τῷ σταρτοπέδῳ, τὸν Περπένναν ἀνιῶν, εὐγενείᾳ καὶ πλούτῳ τετυφωμένον.

[3] οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ Πομπήϊος ἠγγέλλετο τὴν Πυρήνην ὑπερβάλλων, ἀναλαβόντες οἱ στρατιῶται τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τὰ σημεῖα τῶν τάξεων ἀναρπάσαντες κατεβόησαν τοῦ Περπέννα, κελεύοντες ὡς τὸν Σερτώριον ἄγειν αὐτούς· [4] εἰ δὲ μή, καταλιπόντες ἐκεῖνον ἠπείλουν αὐτοὶ βαδιεῖσθαι πρὸς ἄνδρα [5] σῴζεσθαι καὶ σῴζειν δυνάμενον. συγχωρήσας δ’ ‹οὖν› ὁ Περπέννας ἤγαγεν αὐτοὺς καὶ συνέμειξε τῷ Σερτωρίῳ, πεντήκοντα καὶ τρεῖς ἔχων σπείρας.

[16] [1] Σερτώριος δέ, τῶν ἐντὸς Ἴβηρος αὐτῷ ποταμοῦ πάντων ὁμοῦ τι προστιθεμένων, πλήθει μὲν ἦν μέγας· ἐπέρρεον γὰρ ἀεὶ καὶ συνεφέροντο [2] πανταχόθεν πρὸς αὐτόν· ἀταξίᾳ δὲ βαρβαρικῇ καὶ θρασύτητι ταραττόμενος, ἐπιχειρεῖν τοῖς πολεμίοις βοώντων καὶ τὴν τριβὴν δυσανασχετούντων, [3] ἐπειρᾶτο παραμυθεῖσθαι διὰ λόγων. ὡς δ’ ἑώρα χαλεπαίνοντας καὶ βιαζομένους ἀκαίρως, προήκατο καὶ περιεῖδε συμπλεκομένους τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἐν οἷς οὐ παντελῶς συντριβέντας, ἀλλὰ πληγὰς λαβόντας ἤλπιζε [4] πρὸς τὰ λοιπὰ κατηκόους μᾶλλον ἕξειν. ὧν δ’ εἴκαζε γενομένων, ἐπιβοηθήσας ἀνέλαβέ τε φεύγοντας αὐτοὺς καὶ κατέστησεν ἀσφαλῶς εἰς τὸ [5] στρατόπεδον. βουλόμενος δὲ καὶ τὴν ἀθυμίαν ἀφελεῖν, μεθ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας πάνδημον ἐκκλησίαν ἀθροίσας ἵππους εἰσήγαγε δύο, τὸν μὲν ἀσθενῆ τελέως καὶ πρεσβύτερον ἤδη, τὸν δ’ ἕτερον εὐμεγέθη μὲν αὐτὸν καὶ ἰσχυρόν, θαυμαστὴν δὲ πυκνότητι καὶ κάλλει τριχῶν οὐρὰν ἔχοντα.

[6] παρειστήκει δὲ τῷ μὲν ἀσθενεῖ μέγας ἀνὴρ καὶ ῥωμαλέος, τῷ δ’ ἰσχυρῷ [7] μικρὸς ἕτερος καὶ τὴν ὄψιν εὐκαταφρόνητος. σημείου δὲ δοθέντος αὐτοῖς, ὁ μὲν ἰσχυρὸς ἀμφοτέραις ταῖς χερσὶ τοῦ ἵππου τὴν κέρκον ὡς ἀπορρήξων εἷλκε βίᾳ πρὸς αὑτόν, ὁ δ’ ἀσθενὴς τοῦ ἰσχυροῦ κατὰ μίαν τῶν τριχῶν [8] ἐξέτιλλεν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ μὲν οὐκ ὀλίγα πράγματα μάτην ἑαυτῷ καὶ πολὺν γέλωτα τοῖς θεωμένοις παρασχὼν ἀπεῖπεν, ὁ δ’ ἀσθενὴς ἀκαρεὶ καὶ σὺν [9] οὐδενὶ πόνῳ ψιλὴν τριχῶν ἀπέδειξε τὴν οὐράν, ἀναστὰς ὁ Σερτώριος ὁρᾶτ’ εἶπεν ἄνδρες σύμμαχοι τὴν ἐπιμονὴν ἀνυσιμωτέραν τῆς βίας [10] οὖσαν καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἁθρόως ἀλήπτων ἐνδιδόντα τῷ κατὰ μικρόν. ἄμαχον γὰρ τὸ ἐνδελεχές, ᾧ πᾶσαν ἐπιὼν ὁ χρόνος ‹ἀν›αιρεῖ καὶ κατεργάζεται δύναμιν, εὐμενὴς ὢν σύμμαχος τοῖς δεχομένοις λογισμῷ τὸν καιρὸν [11] αὐτοῦ, τοῖς δ’ ἀκαίρως ἐπειγομένοις πολεμιώτατος. τοιαῦτα μὲν ὁ Σερτώριος ἑκάστοτε πλέκων παραμύθια τοῖς βαρβάροις, διεπαιδαγώγει τὸν καιρόν.

[17] [1] Οὐδενὸς δ’ ἧττον αὐτοῦ τῶν πολεμικῶν ἔργων ἐθαυμάσθη τὸ περὶ [2] τοὺς λεγομένους Χαρακιτανούς. εἰσὶ δὲ δῆμος ὑπὲρ τὸν Ταγώνιον ποταμόν, οὐκ ἄστεσιν οὐδὲ κώμαις ἐνοικοῦντες, ἀλλὰ λόφος ἐστὶν εὐμεγέθης καὶ ὑψηλός, ἄντρα καὶ κοιλώματα πετρῶν βλέποντα πρὸς βορέαν περιέχων.

[3] ἡ δ’ ὑποκειμένη πᾶσα χώρα πηλὸν ἀργιλώδη καὶ γῆν ὑπὸ χαυνότητος εὔθρυπτον ἀναδίδωσιν, οὔτε τοὺς ἐπιβαίνοντας ἀνέχεσθαι καρτεράν, καὶ [4] μικρὸν ἁψαμένων ὥσπερ ἄσβεστον ἢ τέφραν ἐπὶ πολὺ διαχεομένην. τῶν οὖν βαρβάρων, ὁσάκις φόβῳ πολέμου καταδύντες εἰς τὰ σπήλαια καὶ τὴν λείαν εἴσω συναγαγόντες ἀτρεμοῖεν, ὄντων ἀλήπτων ὑπὸ βίας, τὸν δὲ Σερτώριον τότε διακεκριμένον ἀπὸ τοῦ Μετέλλου καὶ καταστρατοπεδεύσαντα παρὰ τὸν λόφον ὑπερφρονούντων ὡς κεκρατημένον, εἴθ’ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἐκεῖνος, εἴτε [τὸ] μὴ δοκεῖν φεύγειν βουλόμενος, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ [5] προσελάσας κατεσκέπτετο τὸν τόπον. οὐδαμόθεν δὲ προσβολὴν ἔχοντος, ἄλλως [δ’] ἀλύων καὶ κεναῖς χρώμενος ἀπειλαῖς, ὁρᾷ τῆς γῆς ἐκείνης [6] κονιορτὸν ἄνω πολὺν ὑπὸ πνεύματος ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς φερόμενον. τέτραπται μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἔφην τὰ σπήλαια πρὸς βορέαν, ὁ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ἄρκτου ῥέων ἄνεμος, ὃν Καικίαν ἔνιοι καλοῦσιν, ἐπέχει μάλιστα καὶ πλεῖστός ἐστι τῶν ἐκεῖ πνευμάτων, ἐξ ὑγρῶν πεδίων καὶ νιφοβόλων συμφυσώμενος [7] ὀρῶν· τότε δὲ καὶ θέρους ἀκμάζοντος ἰσχύων καὶ τρεφόμενος τῇ τῶν ὑπαρκτίων ἀνέσει πάγων, ἥδιστος ἐπέπνει καὶ κατεῖχεν αὐτούς τε καὶ [8] βοτὰ δι’ ἡμέρας ἀναψύχων. ταῦτα δὴ συλλογιζόμενος ὁ Σερτώριος καὶ παρὰ τῶν ἐγχωρίων ἀκούων, ἐκέλευσε τοὺς στρατιώτας τῆς ἀραιᾶς καὶ τεφρώδους γῆς ἐκείνης ἀποσπῶντας καὶ παραφέροντας καταντικρὺ τοῦ λόφου θῖνα ποιεῖν, ἣν οἱ βάρβαροι χώματος ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς εἶναι κατασκευὴν [9] ὑπονοοῦντες ἐχλεύαζον. τότε μὲν οὖν ἐργασαμένους τοὺς στρατιώτας ἄχρι νυκτὸς ἀπήγαγεν· ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ πρῶτον μὲν αὔρα μαλακὴ προαπέπνει, διακινοῦσα τῆς συμπεφορημένης γῆς τὸ λειότατον, ὥσπερ ἄχνην σκιδνάμενον· [10] ἔπειτα σοβαροῦ τοῦ Καικίου πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ἐκχεομένου καὶ τῶν λόφων κονιωμένων, ἐπιστάντες οἱ στρατιῶται τόν τε χοῦν ἀνέτρεπον διὰ βάθους καὶ τὸν πηλὸν ἔκοπτον, ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἵππους ἄνω καὶ κάτω διεξήλασαν, ἀνιστάντες τὸ χαύνωμα καὶ τῇ πνοῇ μετέωρον παραδιδόντες.

[11] ἡ δ’ ὑπολαμβάνουσα πᾶν τὸ θρυπτόμενον καὶ κινούμενον ἄνω προσέβαλλε [12] τοῖς οἰκήμασι τῶν βαρβάρων, κατὰ θύρας δεχομένοις τὸν Καικίαν. οἱ δ’, ἅτε δὴ τῶν σπηλαίων μίαν ἐκείνην ἀναπνοὴν ἐχόντων, ᾗ τὸ πνεῦμα προσέπιπτε, ταχὺ μὲν ἀπεσκοτοῦντο τὰς ὄψεις, ταχὺ δ’ ἀνεπίμπλαντο πνιγώδους [13] ἄσθματος, τραχὺν ἀέρα καὶ πολλῇ κόνει συμπεφυρμένον ἕλκοντες. ὅθεν ἡμέρας δύο μόλις ἀνασχόμενοι, τῇ τρίτῃ παρέδωκαν ἑαυτούς, οὐ τοσοῦτον Σερτωρίῳ δυνάμεως ὅσον δόξης προσθέντες, ὡς τὰ δι’ ὅπλων ἀνάλωτα σοφίᾳ κατεργασαμένῳ.

[18] [1] Μέχρι μὲν οὖν τοῖς περὶ Μέτελλον ἐπολέμει, τὰ πλεῖστα κατευτυχεῖν ἐδόκει, γήρᾳ καὶ φυσικῇ βραδυτῆτι τοῦ Μετέλλου πρὸς ἄνδρα τολμητὴν καὶ λῃστρικῆς μᾶλλον ἢ στρατιωτικῆς ἡγούμενον δυνάμεως οὐκ [2] ἀναφέροντος· ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ Πομπηΐῳ τὴν Πυρήνην ὑπερβαλόντι παραστρατοπεδεύσας, καὶ πᾶσαν ἅμα μὲν διδοὺς ἅμα δὲ λαμβάνων στρατηγικῶν παλαισμάτων πεῖραν, ἀντιτεχνώμενός τε καὶ φυλαττόμενος πλεῖον εἶχε, κομιδῇ διεβοήθη μέχρι Ῥώμης ὡς δεινότατος ὢν πόλεμον μεταχειρίσασθαι τῶν [3] τότε στρατηγῶν. οὐ γάρ τοι μικρὸν ἦν τὸ Πομπηΐου κλέος, ἀλλ’ ἤνθει τότε μάλιστα πρὸς δόξαν ἐκ τῶν περὶ Σύλλαν ἀνδραγαθημάτων, ἐφ’ οἷς καὶ Μᾶγνος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, τουτέστι Μέγας, ἐπωνομάσθη, τιμῶν τε θριαμβικῶν [4] οὔπω γενειῶν ἔτυχεν. ὅθεν καὶ πολλαὶ τῶν ὑπὸ Σερτωρίῳ πόλεων ἀποβλέψασαι πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁρμὴν μεταβολῆς ἔσχον, εἶτ’ ἐπαύσαντο, τοῦ περὶ [5] Λαύρωνα πάθους παρὰ πᾶσαν ἐλπίδα συμβάντος. Σερτωρίου γὰρ πολιορκοῦντος αὐτούς, ἧκε Πομπήϊος πανστρατιᾷ βοηθήσων· εἶθ’ ὁ μὲν λόφον εὖ δοκοῦντα πεφυκέναι κατὰ τῆς πόλεως προληψόμενος, ὁ δὲ τοῦτο κωλύσων [6] ἠπείγετο. τοῦ δὲ Σερτωρίου φθάσαντος, ἐπιστήσας τὸν στρατὸν ὁ Πομπήϊος ἔχαιρε τῇ συντυχίᾳ, νομίζων ἐν μέσῳ τῆς πόλεως καὶ τῆς αὐτοῦ στρατιᾶς [7] ἀπειλῆφθαι τὸν Σερτώριον, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς Λαυρωνίτας εἰσέπεμψε, θαρρεῖν κελεύων καὶ καθῆσθαι περὶ τὰ τείχη, θεωμένους πολιορκούμενον Σερτώριον.

[8] ἐκεῖνος δ’ ἀκούσας ἐγέλασε, καὶ τὸν Σύλλα μαθητὴν (οὕτω γὰρ τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐπισκώπτων προσηγόρευεν) αὐτὸς ἔφη διδάξειν, ὅτι δεῖ τὸν στρατηγὸν [9] κατόπιν μᾶλλον ἢ κατὰ πρόσωπον βλέπειν. ταῦτα δὲ λέγων ἅμα τοῖς πολιορκουμένοις ἐπεδείκνυεν ἑξακισχιλίους ὁπλίτας, ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καταλελειμμένους ἐπὶ τοῦ προτέρου χάρακος, ὅθεν ὁρμηθεὶς κατειλήφει τὸν λόφον, [10] ὅπως ἐπὶ σφᾶς τρεπομένῳ τῷ Πομπηΐῳ κατὰ νώτου προσπέσοιεν. ὃ δὴ καὶ Πομπήϊος ὀψὲ μάλα συμφρονήσας, ἐπιχειρεῖν μὲν οὐκ ἐθάρρει κύκλωσιν δεδοικώς, ἀπολιπεῖν δ’ ᾐσχύνετο κινδυνεύοντας ἀνθρώπους, παρὼν δὲ καὶ καθήμενος ἠναγκάζετο ‹περι›ορᾶν ἀπολλυμένους· ἀπέγνωσαν γὰρ [11] αὑτοὺς οἱ βάρβαροι καὶ τῷ Σερτωρίῳ παρέδωκαν. ὁ δὲ τῶν μὲν σωμάτων ἐφείσατο καὶ πάντας ἀφῆκε, τὴν δὲ πόλιν κατέπρησεν, οὐχ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς οὐδ’ ὠμότητος, ἐλάχιστα γὰρ δοκεῖ θυμῷ χαρίσασθαι τῶν στρατηγῶν οὗτος ἁνήρ, ἀλλ’ ἐπ’ αἰσχύνῃ καὶ κατηφείᾳ τῶν τεθαυμακότων Πομπήϊον, ἵν’ ᾖ λόγος ἐν τοῖς βαρβάροις, ὅτι παρὼν ἐγγὺς καὶ μονονοὺ θερμαινόμενος τῷ πυρὶ τῶν συμμάχων, οὐ προσήμυνεν.

[19] [1] Ἧτται μὲν οὖν τῷ Σερτωρίῳ πλείονες συνέβαινον, αὑτὸν μὲν ἀήττητον ἀεὶ φυλάττοντι καὶ τοὺς καθ’ αὑτόν, θραυομένῳ δὲ περὶ τοὺς ἄλλους [2] ἡγεμόνας· ἐκ δ’ ὧν ἐπηνωρθοῦτο τὰς ἥττας, μᾶλλον ἐθαυμάζετο νικώντων τῶν ἀντιστρατήγων, οἷον ἐν τῇ περὶ Σούκρωνι μάχῃ πρὸς Πομπήϊον, καὶ [3] πάλιν ἐν τῇ περὶ Σεγουντίαν πρός τε τοῦτον ὁμοῦ καὶ Μέτελλον. ἡ μὲν οὖν περὶ Σούκρωνι μάχη λέγεται γενέσθαι τοῦ Πομπηΐου κατεπείξαντος, ὡς [4] μὴ μετάσχοι τῆς νίκης Μέτελλος. ὁ δὲ Σερτώριος ἐβούλετο μὲν τῷ Πομπηΐῳ πρὶν ἐπελθεῖν τὸν Μέτελλον διαγωνίσασθαι, παραγαγὼν δ’ ἑσπέρας ἤδη συνέβαλεν, οἰόμενος ξένοις οὖσι καὶ ἀπείροις τῶν χωρίων τοῖς [5] πολεμίοις τὸ σκότος ἔσεσθαι καὶ φεύγουσιν ἐμπόδιον καὶ διώκουσι. γενομένης δὲ τῆς μάχης ἐν χερσίν, ἔτυχε μὲν οὐ πρὸς Πομπήϊον αὐτός, ἀλλὰ πρὸς Ἀφράνιον ἐν ἀρχῇ συνεστηκώς, ἔχοντα τὸ ἀριστερόν, αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τοῦ [6] δεξιοῦ τεταγμένος. ἀκούσας δὲ τῷ Πομπηΐῳ τοὺς συνεστῶτας ὑποχωρεῖν ἐγκειμένῳ καὶ κρατεῖσθαι, τὸ μὲν δεξιὸν ἐπ’ ἄλλοις ἐποιήσατο στρατηγοῖς, [7] πρὸς δ’ ἐκεῖνο τὸ νικώμενον αὐτὸς ἐβοηδρόμει. καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἤδη τρεπομένους, τοὺς δ’ ἔτι μένοντας ἐν τάξει συναγαγὼν καὶ ἀναθαρρύνας, ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς ἐνέβαλε τῷ Πομπηΐῳ διώκοντι καὶ φυγὴν ἐποιήσατο πολλήν· [8] ὅτε καὶ Πομπήϊος ἐγγὺς ἐλθὼν ἀποθανεῖν καὶ τραυματισθείς, παραλόγως διέφυγεν. οἱ γὰρ μετὰ Σερτωρίου Λίβυες ὡς ἔλαβον αὐτοῦ τὸν ἵππον χρυσῷ κεκοσμημένον καὶ φαλάρων ἀνάπλεων πολυτελῶν, ἐν τῷ διανέμεσθαι καὶ [9] διαφέρεσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους προήκαντο τὴν δίωξιν. Ἀφράνιος δὲ τοὺς ἀνθεστῶτας πρὸς αὐτὸν ἅμα τῷ Σερτώριον ἀπελθεῖν ἐπὶ θάτερα βοηθοῦντα τρεψάμενος, εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον κατήραξε, καὶ συνεισπεσὼν ἐπόρθει σκότους ὄντος ἤδη, μήτε τὴν Πομπηΐου φυγὴν εἰδώς, μήτε τοὺς στρατιώτας [10] τῆς ἁρπαγῆς ἐπισχεῖν δυνάμενος. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Σερτώριος ἀνέστρεψε, τὸ καθ’ αὑτὸν νενικηκώς, καὶ τοῖς Ἀφρανίου δι’ ἀταξίαν ταρασσομένοις [11] ἐπιπεσών, πολλοὺς διέφθειρε. πρωὶ δ’ αὖθις ἐξοπλισθεὶς ἐπὶ μάχην κατέβαινεν, εἶτα Μέτελλον αἰσθόμενος ἐγγὺς εἶναι, λύσας τὴν τάξιν ἀνέζευξεν, εἰπών· ἀλλ’ ἔγωγε τὸν παῖδα τοῦτον, εἰ μὴ παρῆν ἡ γραῦς ἐκείνη, πληγαῖς ἂν νουθετήσας εἰς Ῥώμην ἀπεστάλκειν.

[20] [1] Ἠθύμει δὲ δεινῶς διὰ τὸ μηδαμοῦ φανερὰν τὴν ἔλαφον ἐκείνην εἶναι· μηχανῆς γὰρ ἐπὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους ἐστέρητο θαυμαστῆς, τότε δὴ [2] μάλιστα παραμυθίας δεομένους. εἶτα μέντοι νυκτὸς ἄλλως πλανώμενοί τινες ἐπιτυγχάνουσιν αὐτῇ, καὶ γνωρίσαντες ἀπὸ τῆς χρόας λαμβάνουσιν.

[3] ἀκούσας δ’ ὁ Σερτώριος, ἐκείνοις μὲν ὡμολόγησεν, ἂν μηδενὶ φράσωσι, χρήματα πολλὰ δώσειν, ἀποκρύψας δὲ τὴν ἔλαφον καὶ διαλιπὼν ὀλίγας ἡμέρας, προῄει μάλα φαιδρὸς ὡς ἀπ’ ὄψεως ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα, διηγούμενος τοῖς ἡγεμόσι τῶν Ἰβήρων, ὡς ἀγαθόν τι μέγα τοῦ θεοῦ προμηνύοντος αὐτῷ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους· εἶτ’ ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν ἐχρημάτιζεν.

[4] ἡ δ’ ἔλαφος ὑπὸ τῶν φυλαττόντων αὐτὴν ἐγγὺς ἀφεθεῖσα καὶ κατιδοῦσα τὸν Σερτώριον, ἐχώρει δρόμῳ περιχαρὴς πρὸς τὸ βῆμα, καὶ παραστᾶσα τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπέθηκε τοῖς γόνασιν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τῷ στόματι τῆς δεξιᾶς [5] ἔψαυεν, εἰθισμένη καὶ πρότερον τοῦτο ποιεῖν. ἀντιφιλοφρονουμένου δὲ τοῦ Σερτωρίου πιθανῶς, καί τι καὶ δακρύσαντος, ἔκπληξις εἶχε τοὺς παρόντας τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα κρότῳ καὶ βοῇ τὸν Σερτώριον ὡς δαιμόνιον ἄνδρα καὶ θεοῖς φίλον οἴκαδε προπέμψαντες, ἐν εὐθυμίαις καὶ χρησταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἦσαν.

[21] [1] Ἐν δὲ τοῖς τῶν Σεγουντίνων πεδίοις εἰς τὰς ἐσχάτας ἀπορίας κατακεκλεικὼς τοὺς πολεμίους, ἠναγκάσθη συμβαλεῖν αὐτοῖς καταβαίνουσιν [2] ἐφ’ ἁρπαγὴν καὶ σιτολογίαν. ἠγωνίσθη δὲ λαμπρῶς παρ’ ἀμφοτέρων, καὶ Μέμμιος μὲν ὁ τῶν ὑπὸ Πομπηΐῳ στρατηγῶν ἡγεμονικώτατος ἐν τῷ καρτερωτάτῳ τῆς μάχης ἔπεσεν, ἐκράτει δὲ Σερτώριος καὶ φόνῳ πολλῷ τῶν ἔτι συνεστώτων ἐωθεῖτο πρὸς αὐτὸν τὸν Μέτελλον. ὁ δὲ παρ’ ἡλικίαν [3] ὑποστὰς καὶ περιφανῶς ἀγωνιζόμενος, παίεται δόρατι. τοῦτο τοὺς μὲν ἰδόντας τῶν Ῥωμαίων, τοὺς δ’ ἀκούσαντας, αἰδὼς ἔσχεν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν τὸν ἡγεμόνα, καὶ θυμὸς ἅμα πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους παρέστη. προθέμενοι δὲ τοὺς θυρεοὺς καὶ συνεξενεγκόντες εὐρώστως, ἐξωθοῦσι τοὺς Ἴβηρας· [4] καὶ γενομένης οὕτω παλιντρόπου τῆς νίκης, ὁ Σερτώριος ἐκείνοις τε φυγὰς ἀδεεῖς μηχανώμενος, καὶ τεχνάζων ἑτέραν αὐτῷ δύναμιν συνελθεῖν ἐφ’ ἡσυχίας, εἰς πόλιν ὀρεινὴν καὶ καρτερὰν ἀναφυγὼν ἐφράγνυτο τὰ τείχη καὶ τὰς πύλας ὠχυροῦτο, πάντα μᾶλλον ἢ πολιορκίαν ὑπομένειν διανοούμενος, [5] ἀλλ’ ἐξηπάτα τοὺς πολεμίους. ἐκείνῳ γὰρ προσκαθεζόμενοι καὶ τὸ χωρίον οὐ χαλεπῶς λήψεσθαι προσδοκῶντες, τούς τε φεύγοντας τῶν βαρβάρων προΐεντο, καὶ τῆς ἀθροιζομένης αὖθις τῷ Σερτωρίῳ δυνάμεως ἠμέλησαν.

[6] ἠθροίζετο δὲ πέμψαντος ἡγεμόνας ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις αὐτοῦ καὶ κελεύοντος, [7] ὅταν ἤδη πολλοὺς ἔχωσιν, ἄγγελον ἀποστεῖλαι πρὸς αὐτόν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀπέστειλαν, σὺν οὐδενὶ πόνῳ διεκπαισάμενος τοὺς πολεμίους, συνέμειξε τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ, καὶ πάλιν ἐπῄει πολὺς γεγονώς, καὶ περιέκοπτεν αὐτῶν τὴν μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς εὐπορίαν ἐνέδραις καὶ κυκλώσεσι καὶ τῷ πανταχόσε φοιτᾶν ὀξὺς ἐπιών, τὴν δ’ ἐκ θαλάττης λῃστρικοῖς σκάφεσι κατέχων τὴν παραλίαν, [8] ὥστ’ ἠναγκάσθησαν οἱ στρατηγοὶ διαλυθέντες, ὁ μὲν εἰς Γαλατίαν ἀπελθεῖν, Πομπήϊος δὲ περὶ Βακκαίους διαχειμάσαι μοχθηρῶς ὑπ’ ἀχρηματίας, γράφων πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ὡς ἀπάξοι τὸν στρατόν, εἰ μὴ πέμποιεν ἀργύριον αὐτῷ· καταναλωκέναι γὰρ ἤδη τὰ αὑτοῦ, προπολεμῶν τῆς Ἰταλίας.

[9] καὶ πολὺς ἦν [οὗτος] ἐν Ῥώμῃ λόγος, ὡς Πομπηΐου πρότερος εἰς Ἰταλίαν ἀφίξοιτο Σερτώριος· εἰς τοσοῦτον τοὺς πρώτους καὶ δυνατωτάτους τῶν τότε στρατηγῶν ἡ Σερτωρίου δεινότης κατέστησεν.

[22] [1] Ἐδήλωσε δὲ καὶ Μέτελλος ἐκπεπληγμένος τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ μέγαν ἡγούμενος· ἐπεκήρυξε γάρ, εἴ τις αὐτὸν ἀνέλοι Ῥωμαῖος, ἑκατὸν ἀργυρίου τάλαντα δώσειν καὶ πλέθρα δισμύρια γῆς, εἰ δὲ φυγάς, κάθοδον εἰς Ῥώμην, ὡς ἀπογνώσει φανερᾶς ἀμύνης ὠνούμενος τὸν ἄνδρα διὰ προδοσίας.

[2] ἔτι δὲ νικήσας ποτὲ μάχῃ τὸν Σερτώριον οὕτως ἐπήρθη καὶ τὴν εὐτυχίαν ἠγάπησεν, ὥστ’ αὐτοκράτωρ ἀναγορευθῆναι, θυσίαις δ’ αὐτὸν αἱ πόλεις [3] ἐπιφοιτῶντα καὶ βωμοῖς ἐδέχοντο. λέγεται δὲ καὶ στεφάνων ἀναδέσεις προσίεσθαι καὶ δείπνων σοβαρωτέρων ὑποδοχάς, ἐν οἷς ἐσθῆτα θριαμβικὴν ἔχων ἔπινε, καὶ Νῖκαι πεποιημέναι δι’ ὀργάνων ἐπιδρόμων χρύσεα τρόπαια καὶ στεφάνους διαφέρουσαι κατήγοντο, καὶ χοροὶ παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν [4] ἐπινικίους ὕμνους ᾖδον εἰς αὐτόν. ἐφ’ οἷς εἰκότως ἦν καταγέλαστος, εἰ δραπέτην Σύλλα καὶ λείψανον τῆς Κάρβωνος φυγῆς ἀποκαλῶν τὸν Σερτώριον, οὕτω κεχαύνωται καὶ περιχαρὴς γέγονεν ὑποχωρήσαντος αὐτοῦ περιγενόμενος.

[5] Μεγαλοφροσύνης δὲ τοῦ Σερτωρίου πρῶτον μὲν τὸ τοὺς φεύγοντας ἀπὸ Ῥώμης βουλευτὰς καὶ παρ’ αὐτῷ διατρίβοντας σύγκλητον ἀναγορεῦσαι, ταμίας τε καὶ στρατηγοὺς ἐξ ἐκείνων ἀποδεικνύναι, καὶ πάντα τοῖς πατρίοις [6] νόμοις τὰ τοιαῦτα κοσμεῖν· ἔπειτα τὸ χρώμενον ὅπλοις καὶ χρήμασι καὶ πόλεσι ταῖς Ἰβήρων μηδ’ ἄχρι λόγου τῆς ἄκρας ἐξουσίας ὑφίεσθαι πρὸς αὐτούς, Ῥωμαίους δὲ καθιστάναι στρατηγοὺς καὶ ἄρχοντας αὐτῶν, ὡς Ῥωμαίοις ἀνακτώμενον τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, οὐκ ἐκείνους αὔξοντα κατὰ [7] Ῥωμαίων. καὶ γὰρ ἦν ἀνὴρ φιλόπατρις καὶ πολὺν ἔχων ἵμερον τοῦ κατελθεῖν· ἀλλὰ δυσπραγῶν μὲν ἠνδραγάθει, καὶ ταπεινὸν μὲν οὐδὲν ἔπραττε πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, ἐν δὲ ταῖς νίκαις διεπέμπετο πρὸς Μέτελλον καὶ πρὸς Πομπήϊον, ἕτοιμος ὢν τὰ ὅπλα καταθέσθαι καὶ βιοῦν ἰδιώτης καθόδου [8] τυχών· μᾶλλον γὰρ ἐθέλειν ἀσημότατος ἐν Ῥώμῃ πολίτης ἢ φεύγων τὴν [9] ἑαυτοῦ πάντων ὁμοῦ τῶν ἄλλων αὐτοκράτωρ ἀναγορεύεσθαι. λέγεται δ’ οὐχ ἥκιστα τῆς πατρίδος ἐπιθυμεῖν διὰ τὴν μητέρα, τραφεὶς ὀρφανὸς ὑπ’ [10] αὐτῇ καὶ τὸ σύμπαν ἀνακείμενος ἐκείνῃ. καλούντων δὲ τῶν περὶ τὴν Ἰβηρίαν φίλων αὐτὸν ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίᾳ, πυθόμενος τὴν τελευτὴν τῆς μητρὸς ὀλίγον [11] ἐδέησεν ὑπὸ λύπης προέσθαι τὸν βίον. ἑπτὰ γὰρ ἡμέρας οὔτε σύνθημα δοὺς οὔτ’ ὀφθείς τινι τῶν φίλων ἔκειτο, καὶ μόλις οἱ συστράτηγοι καὶ ἰσότιμοι τὴν σκηνὴν περιστάντες ἠνάγκασαν αὐτὸν προελθόντα τοῖς στρατιώταις [12] ἐντυχεῖν καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων εὖ φερομένων ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι. διὸ καὶ πολλοῖς ἔδοξεν ἥμερος ἀνὴρ φύσει γεγονὼς καὶ πρὸς ἡσυχίαν ἔχων ἐπιεικῶς, †δι’ αἰτίας παρὰ γνώμην ταῖς στρατηγικαῖς ἀρχαῖς χρῆσθαι, καὶ μὴ τυγχάνων ἀδείας, ἀλλὰ συνελαυνόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν εἰς τὰ ὅπλα, φρουρὰν ἀναγκαίαν τοῦ σώματος περιβάλλεσθαι τὸν πόλεμον.

[23] [1] Ἦν δὲ καὶ τὰ πρὸς Μιθριδάτην αὐτοῦ πολιτεύματα μεγαλοφροσύνης.

[2] ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ Σύλλαν σφάλματος ὁ Μιθριδάτης ὥσπερ εἰς πάλαισμα δεύτερον ἀνιστάμενος αὖθις ἐπεχείρησε τῇ Ἀσίᾳ, μέγα δ’ ἤδη τὸ Σερτωρίου κλέος ἐφοίτα πανταχόσε, καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτοῦ λόγων ὥσπερ φορτίων ξενικῶν οἱ πλέοντες ἀπὸ τῆς ἑσπέρας ἀναπεπλήκεσαν τὸν Πόντον, [3] ὥρμητο διαπρεσβεύεσθαι πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐπηρμένος μάλιστα ταῖς τῶν κολάκων ἀλαζονείαις, οἳ τὸν μὲν Σερτώριον Ἀννίβᾳ, τὸν δὲ Μιθριδάτην Πύρρῳ παρεικάζοντες, οὐκ ἂν ἔφασαν Ῥωμαίους πρὸς τηλικαύτας ὁμοῦ φύσεις τε καὶ δυνάμεις ἐπιχειρουμένους διχόθεν ἀντισχεῖν, τοῦ δεινοτάτου στρατηγοῦ [4] τῷ μεγίστῳ τῶν βασιλέων προσγενομένου. πέμπει δὴ πρέσβεις ὁ Μιθριδάτης εἰς Ἰβηρίαν, γράμματα Σερτωρίῳ καὶ λόγους κομίζοντας, δι’ ὧν αὐτὸς μὲν ἐπηγγέλλετο χρήματα καὶ ναῦς παρέξειν εἰς τὸν πόλεμον, ὑπ’ ἐκείνου δ’ ἠξίου τὴν Ἀσίαν αὐτῷ βεβαιοῦσθαι πᾶσαν, ἧς ὑπεχώρησε [5] Ῥωμαίοις κατὰ τὰς πρὸς Σύλλαν γενομένας συνθήκας. ἀθροίσαντος δὲ τοῦ Σερτωρίου βουλήν, ἣν σύγκλητον ὠνόμαζε, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων δέχεσθαι τὰς προκλήσεις καὶ ἀγαπᾶν κελευόντων - ὄνομα γὰρ καὶ γράμμα κενὸν αἰτουμένους περὶ τῶν οὐκ ὄντων ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς, ἀντὶ τούτων λαμβάνειν ὧν μάλιστα [6] δεόμενοι τυγχάνουσιν - , οὐκ ἠνέσχετο [ὁ] Σερτώριος, ἀλλὰ Βιθυνίαν μὲν ἔφη καὶ Καππαδοκίαν λαμβάνοντι Μιθριδάτῃ μὴ φθονεῖν, ἔθνη βασιλευόμενα καὶ μηδὲν προσήκοντα Ῥωμαίοις· ἣν δὲ τῷ δικαιοτάτῳ τρόπῳ Ῥωμαίων κεκτημένων ἐπαρχίαν ἀφελόμενος καὶ κατασχών, πολεμῶν μὲν ἐξέπεσεν ὑπὸ Φιμβρίου, σπενδόμενος δὲ πρὸς Σύλλαν ἀφῆκε, ταύτην οὐκ [7] ἔφη περιόψεσθαι πάλιν ὑπ’ ἐκείνῳ γενομένην· δεῖν γὰρ αὔξεσθαι τὴν πόλιν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ κρατοῦντος, οὐκ ἐλαττώσει τῶν ἐκείνης κρατεῖν αὐτόν· γενναίῳ γὰρ ἀνδρὶ μετὰ τοῦ καλοῦ νικᾶν αἱρετόν, αἰσχρῶς δ’ οὐδὲ σῴζεσθαι.

[24] [1] Ταῦτ’ ἀπαγγελθέντα Μιθριδάτης διὰ θάμβους ἐποιεῖτο, καὶ λέγεται [2] μὲν εἰπεῖν πρὸς τοὺς φίλους· τί δῆτα προστάξει Σερτώριος ἐν Παλατίῳ καθεζόμενος, εἰ νῦν εἰς τὴν Ἀτλαντικὴν ἐξεωσμένος θάλασσαν ὅρους [3] ἡμῶν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τίθησι καὶ πειρωμένοις Ἀσίας ἀπειλεῖ πόλεμον; οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ γίνονταί γε συνθῆκαι καὶ ὅρκοι, Καππαδοκίαν καὶ Βιθυνίαν ἔχειν Μιθριδάτην, Σερτωρίου στρατηγὸν αὐτῷ καὶ στρατιώτας πέμποντος, Σερτώριον δὲ παρὰ Μιθριδάτου λαβεῖν τρισχίλια τάλαντα καὶ τεσσαράκοντα [4] ναῦς. πέμπεται δὲ καὶ στρατηγὸς εἰς Ἀσίαν ὑπὸ Σερτωρίου τῶν ἀπὸ βουλῆς πεφευγότων πρὸς αὐτὸν Μᾶρκος Μάριος, ᾧ συνεξελών τινας πόλεις τῶν Ἀσιάδων ὁ Μιθριδάτης εἰσελαύνοντι μετὰ ῥάβδων καὶ πελέκεων αὐτὸς εἵπετο, δευτέραν τάξιν καὶ σχῆμα θεραπεύοντος ἑκουσίως [5] ἀνειληφώς. ὁ δὲ τὰς μὲν ἠλευθέρου, ταῖς δ’ ἀτέλειαν γράφων χάριτι Σερτωρίου κατήγγελλεν, ὥστε τὴν Ἀσίαν αὖθις ἐνοχλουμένην μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν τελωνῶν, βαρυνομένην δὲ ταῖς πλεονεξίαις καὶ ὑπερηφανίαις τῶν ἐπισκήνων, ἀναπτερωθῆναι πρὸς τὴν ἐλπίδα καὶ ποθεῖν τὴν προσδοκωμένην μεταβολὴν τῆς ἡγεμονίας.

[25] [1] Ἐν δ’ Ἰβηρίᾳ τῶν περὶ Σερτώριον συγκλητικῶν καὶ ἰσοτίμων, ὡς πρῶτον εἰς ἀντίπαλον ἐλπίδα κατέστησαν ἐπανέντος τοῦ φόβου, φθόνος [2] ἥπτετο καὶ ζῆλος ἀνόητος τῆς ἐκείνου δυνάμεως. ἐνῆγε δὲ Περπέννας, δι’ εὐγένειαν ἐπαιρόμενος φρονήματι κενῷ πρὸς τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, καὶ λόγους [3] μοχθηροὺς διεδίδου κρύφα τοῖς ἐπιτηδείοις· τίς ἄρα πονηρὸς ἡμᾶς ὑπολαβὼν ἐκ κακῶν εἰς χείρονα φέρει δαίμων, οἳ Σύλλᾳ μὲν ὁμοῦ τι συμπάσης ἄρχοντι γῆς καὶ θαλάττης ποιεῖν τὸ προσταττόμενον οὐκ ἠξιοῦμεν οἴκοι μένοντες, δεῦρο δὲ φθάσαντες ὡς ἐλεύθεροι βιωσόμενοι δουλεύομεν ἑκουσίως, τὴν Σερτωρίου δορυφοροῦντες φυγήν, ὄνομα χλευαζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀκουόντων, σύγκλητος, ὄντες, ὕβρεις δὲ καὶ προστάγματα καὶ πόνους [4] οὐκ ἐλάττονας Ἰβήρων καὶ Λυσιτανῶν ὑπομένοντες; τοιούτων ἀναπιμπλάμενοι λόγων οἱ πολλοὶ φανερῶς μὲν οὐκ ἀφίσταντο, δεδοικότες αὐτοῦ τὴν δύναμιν, κρύφα δὲ τάς τε πράξεις ἐλυμαίνοντο καὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους ἐκάκουν, κολάζοντες πικρῶς καὶ δασμολογοῦντες ὡς Σερτωρίου κελεύοντος.

[5] ἐξ ὧν ἀποστάσεις ἐγίνοντο καὶ ταραχαὶ περὶ τὰς πόλεις. οἱ δὲ πεμπόμενοι ταῦτα θεραπεύειν καὶ ἀποπραΰνειν ἐπανήρχοντο πλείονας ἐξειργασμένοι [6] πολέμους καὶ τὰς ὑπαρχούσας ηὐξηκότες ἀπειθείας, ὥστε τὸν Σερτώριον ἐκ τῆς προτέρας ἐπιεικείας καὶ πρᾳότητος μεταβαλόντα περὶ τοὺς ἐν Ὄσκῃ τρεφομένους παρανομῆσαι παῖδας τῶν Ἰβήρων, τοὺς μὲν ἀνελόντα, τοὺς δ’ ἀποδόμενον.

[26] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Περπέννας πλείονας ἐνωμότους ἔχων πρὸς τὴν ἐπίθεσιν, [2] προσάγεται καὶ Μάλλιον, ἕνα τῶν ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίας. οὗτος ἐρῶν τινος τῶν ἐν ὥρᾳ μειρακίου καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος πρὸς αὐτό, φράζει τὴν ἐπιβουλήν, κελεύων ἀμελήσαντα τῶν ἄλλων ἐραστῶν αὐτῷ μόνῳ προσέχειν, ὡς ἐντὸς [3] ἡμερῶν ὀλίγων μεγάλῳ γενησομένῳ. τὸ δὲ μειράκιον ἑτέρῳ τινὶ τῶν ἐραστῶν Αὐφιδίῳ μᾶλλον προσπεπονθὸς ἐκφέρει τὸν λόγον. ἀκούσας δ’ ὁ Αὐφίδιος ἐξεπλάγη· καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς μετεῖχε τῆς ἐπὶ Σερτώριον συνωμοσίας, [4] οὐ μέντοι τὸν Μάλλιον ἐγίνωσκε μετέχοντα. Περπένναν δὲ καὶ Γραικῖνον καί τινας ἄλλους ὧν αὐτὸς ᾔδει συνωμοτῶν ὀνομάζοντος τοῦ μειρακίου, διαταραχθεὶς πρὸς ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἐξεφλαύριζε τὸν λόγον καὶ παρεκάλει τοῦ Μαλλίου καταφρονεῖν ὡς κενοῦ καὶ ἀλαζόνος, αὐτὸς δὲ πρὸς τὸν Περπένναν πορευθεὶς καὶ φράσας τὴν ὀξύτητα τοῦ καιροῦ καὶ τὸν κίνδυνον, ἐκέλευσεν [5] ἐπιχειρεῖν. οἱ δ’ ἐπείθοντο, καὶ παρασκευάσαντες ἄνθρωπον γράμματα κομίζοντα τῷ Σερτωρίῳ προσήγαγον· ἐδήλου δὲ τὰ γράμματα νίκην [6] τινὸς τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτῷ στρατηγῶν καὶ φόνον πολὺν τῶν πολεμίων. ἐφ’ οἷς τοῦ Σερτωρίου περιχαροῦς ὄντος καὶ θύοντος εὐαγγέλια, Περπέννας ἑστίασιν αὐτῷ καὶ τοῖς παροῦσι φίλοις (οὗτοι δ’ ἦσαν ἐκ τῆς συνωμοσίας) ἐπηγγέλλετο, [7] καὶ πολλὰ λιπαρήσας ἔπεισεν ἐλθεῖν. ἀεὶ μὲν οὖν τὰ μετὰ Σερτωρίου δεῖπνα πολλὴν εἶχεν αἰδῶ καὶ κόσμον, οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν τι τῶν αἰσχρῶν οὔτ’ ἀκούειν ὑπομένοντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς συμπίνοντας εὐτάκτοις καὶ ἀνυβρίστοις [8] παιδιαῖς χρῆσθαι καὶ φιλοφροσύναις ἐθίζοντος· τότε δὲ τοῦ πότου μεσοῦντος ἀρχὴν ἁψιμαχίας ζητοῦντες, ἀναφανδὸν ἀκολάστοις ἐχρῶντο ῥήμασι, καὶ πολλὰ προσποιούμενοι μεθύειν ἠσέλγαινον ὡς παροξυνοῦντες [9] ἐκεῖνον. ὁ δ’ εἴτε δυσχεραίνων τὴν ἀκοσμίαν, εἴτε τὴν διάνοιαν αὐτῶν τῇ θρασύτητι τῆς λαλιᾶς καὶ τῇ παρὰ τὸ εἰωθὸς ὀλιγωρίᾳ συμφρονήσας, μετέβαλε τὸ σχῆμα τῆς κλίσεως, ὕπτιον ἀνεὶς ἑαυτὸν ὡς οὔτε προσέχων [10] οὔτε κατακούων. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Περπέννας φιάλην τινὰ λαβὼν ἀκράτου καὶ μεταξὺ πίνων ἀφῆκεν ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν καὶ ψόφον ἐποίησεν, ὅπερ ἦν αὐτοῖς [11] σύμβολον, Ἀντώνιος ὑπερκατακείμενος παίει τῷ ξίφει τὸν Σερτώριον. ἀναστρέψαντος δὲ πρὸς τὴν πληγὴν ἐκείνου καὶ συνεξανισταμένου, περιπεσὼν εἰς τὸ στῆθος κατέλαβε τὰς χεῖρας ἀμφοτέρας, ὥστε μηδ’ ἀμυνόμενον πολλῶν παιόντων ἀποθανεῖν.

[27] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν πλεῖστοι τῶν Ἰβήρων εὐθὺς ᾤχοντο καὶ παρέδωκαν ἑαυτοὺς ἐπιπρεσβευσάμενοι τοῖς περὶ Πομπήϊον καὶ Μέτελλον· τοὺς δὲ [2] συμμείναντας ὁ Περπέννας ἀναλαβὼν ἐπεχείρει τι πράττειν. χρησάμενος δὲ ταῖς Σερτωρίου παρασκευαῖς ὅσον ἐνασχημονῆσαι καὶ φανερὸς γενέσθαι [3] μήτ’ ἄρχειν μήτ’ ἄρχεσθαι πεφυκώς, Πομπηΐῳ συνέβαλε, καὶ ταχὺ συντριβεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ γενόμενος αἰχμάλωτος, οὐδὲ τὴν ἐσχάτην ὑπέμεινε συμφορὰν ἡγεμονικῶς, ἀλλὰ τῶν Σερτωρίου γραμμάτων κύριος γεγονώς, ὑπισχνεῖτο Πομπηΐῳ δείξειν ὑπατικῶν ἀνδρῶν καὶ μέγιστον ἐν Ῥώμῃ δυναμένων αὐτογράφους ἐπιστολάς, καλούντων Σερτώριον εἰς Ἰταλίαν, ὡς πολλῶν ποθούντων τὰ παρόντα κινῆσαι καὶ μεταβαλεῖν τὴν πολιτείαν.

[4] ἔργον οὖν ὁ Πομπήϊος οὐ νέας φρενός, ἀλλ’ εὖ μάλα βεβηκυίας καὶ κατηρτυμένης ἐργασάμενος, μεγάλων ἀπήλλαξε τὴν Ῥώμην φόβων καὶ νεωτερισμῶν.

[5] τὰς μὲν γὰρ ἐπιστολὰς ἐκείνας καὶ τὰ γράμματα τοῦ Σερτωρίου συναγαγὼν ἅπαντα κατέκαυσεν, οὔτ’ ἀναγνοὺς οὔτ’ ἐάσας ἕτερον, αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Περπένναν κατὰ τάχος ἀνεῖλε, φοβηθεὶς μὴ τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐξενεχθέντων [6] πρός τινας ἀποστάσεις καὶ ταραχαὶ γένωνται· τῶν δὲ τῷ Περπέννᾳ συνομοσαμένων οἱ μὲν ἐπὶ Πομπήϊον ἀναχθέντες διεφθάρησαν, οἱ δὲ φεύγοντες [7] εἰς Λιβύην ὑπὸ Μαυρουσίων κατηκοντίσθησαν, διέφυγε δ’ οὐδεὶς πλὴν Αὐφίδιος [ὁ τοῦ Μαλλίου ἀντεραστής]· οὗτος δ’ ἢ λαθὼν ἢ παραμεληθεὶς ἔν τινι βαρβάρῳ κώμῃ πενόμενος καὶ μισούμενος κατεγήρασεν.

Comparison Eumenis et Sertorii

[1] [1] Ταῦτ’ ἔστιν ἃ περὶ Εὐμενοῦς καὶ Σερτωρίου μνήμης ἄξια παρειλήφαμεν.

[2] ἐν δὲ τῇ συγκρίσει κοινὸν μὲν ἀμφοτέροις ὑπάρχει τὸ ξένους καὶ ἀλλοδαποὺς καὶ φυγάδας ὄντας ἐθνῶν τε παντοδαπῶν καὶ στρατευμάτων [3] μαχίμων τε καὶ μεγάλων δυνάμεων ἡγουμένους διατελεῖν· ἴδιον δὲ Σερτωρίῳ μὲν τὸ παρὰ πάντων τῶν συμμάχων δεδομένην ἔχειν διὰ τὸ ἀξίωμα τὴν ἀρχήν, Εὐμενεῖ δὲ τὸ πολλῶν διαφερομένων περὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας πρὸς αὐτὸν [4] ἐκ τῶν πράξεων λαμβάνειν τὸ πρωτεῖον· τῷ μὲν γὰρ ἄρχεσθαι βουλόμενοι δικαίως εἵποντο, τῷ δ’ ἄρχειν μὴ δυνάμενοι πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον ὑπήκουον.

[5] καὶ γὰρ ὁ μὲν Ἰβήρων καὶ Λυσιτανῶν Ῥωμαῖος, ὁ δὲ Χερρονησίτης Μακεδόνων ἦρχεν, ὧν οἱ μὲν ἔκπαλαι Ῥωμαίοις ἐδούλευον, οἱ δὲ τότε πάντας [6] ἀνθρώπους ἐδουλοῦντο. καὶ Σερτώριος μὲν ἀπὸ βουλῆς καὶ στρατηγίας θαυμαζόμενος, Εὐμενὴς δὲ διὰ τὴν γραμματείαν καταφρονούμενος, ἐφ’ [7] ἡγεμονίαν προῆλθεν. οὐ μόνον τοίνυν ἐλάττοσι πρὸς τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀφορμαῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ μείζοσι πρὸς τὴν αὔξησιν ἐχρήσατο κωλύμασιν Εὐμενής.

[8] καὶ γὰρ ἄντικρυς τοὺς ἐνισταμένους καὶ κρύφα τοὺς ἐπιβουλεύοντας εἶχε πολλούς, οὐχ ὥσπερ τῷ ἑτέρῳ φανερῶς μὲν οὐδείς, λάθρα δ’ ὕστερον [9] καὶ ὀλίγοι τῶν συμμάχων ἐπανέστησαν. διὸ τῷ μὲν ἦν πέρας τοῦ κινδυνεύειν τὸ νικᾶν τοὺς πολεμίους, τῷ δ’ ἐκ τοῦ νικᾶν ὁ κίνδυνος ὑπὸ τῶν φθονούντων.

[2] [1] Τὰ μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὴν στρατηγίαν ἐφάμιλλα καὶ παράλληλα· τῷ δ’ ἄλλῳ τρόπῳ φιλοπόλεμος μὲν ὁ Εὐμενὴς καὶ φιλόνικος, ἡσυχίας δὲ καὶ [2] πρᾳότητος οἰκεῖος ὁ Σερτώριος. ὁ μὲν γάρ, ἀσφαλῶς καὶ μετὰ τιμῆς βιοῦν ἐξὸν ἐκποδὼν γενομένῳ, τοῖς πρώτοις μαχόμενος καὶ κινδυνεύων διετέλεσε, τῷ δ’ οὐδὲν δεομένῳ πραγμάτων ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς τῆς τοῦ σώματος ἀσφαλείας [3] πρὸς οὐκ ἐῶντας εἰρήνην ἄγειν ἦν ὁ πόλεμος. Εὐμενεῖ μὲν γὰρ Ἀντίγονος ἐκστάντι τῶν ὑπὲρ τοῦ πρωτεύειν ἀγώνων ἡδέως ἂν ἐχρῆτο, τὴν μετ’ αὐτὸν ἀγαπῶντι τάξιν· Σερτωρίῳ δ’ οἱ περὶ Πομπήϊον οὐδὲ ζῆν ἀπραγμόνως [4] ἐπέτρεπον. διὸ τῷ μὲν ἑκοντὶ συνέβαινε πολεμεῖν ἐπ’ ἀρχῇ, τῷ δ’ [5] ἀκουσίως ἄρχειν διὰ τὸ πολεμεῖσθαι. φιλοπόλεμος μὲν οὖν ὁ τῆς ἀσφαλείας τὴν πλεονεξίαν προτιμῶν, πολεμικὸς δ’ ὁ τῷ πολέμῳ κτώμενος τὴν [6] ἀσφάλειαν. καὶ μὴν ἀποθανεῖν γε συνέβη τῷ μὲν οὐ προαισθομένῳ, τῷ δὲ καὶ προσδεχομένῳ τὴν τελευτήν· ὧν τὸ μὲν ἐπιεικείας, φίλοις γὰρ ἐδόκει [7] πιστεύειν, τὸ δ’ ἀσθενείας, βουλόμενος γὰρ φυγεῖν συνελήφθη. καὶ τοῦ μὲν οὐ κατῄσχυνε τὸν βίον ὁ θάνατος, πάσχοντος ὑπὸ τῶν συμμάχων [8] ἃ τῶν πολεμίων αὐτὸν οὐδεὶς ἐποίησεν· ὁ δὲ φεύγειν μὲν πρὸ αἰχμαλωσίας μὴ δυνηθείς, ζῆν δὲ μετ’ αἰχμαλωσίαν βουληθείς, οὔτ’ ἐφυλάξατο καλῶς τὴν τελευτὴν οὔθ’ ὑπέμεινεν, ἀλλὰ προσλιπαρῶν καὶ δεόμενος, τοῦ σώματος μόνου κρατεῖν δοκοῦντα τὸν πολέμιον καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς αὑτοῦ κύριον ἐποίησεν.

Agesilaus

[1] [1]  Ἀρχίδαμος ὁ Ζευξιδάμου βασιλεύσας ἐπιφανῶς Λακεδαιμονίων, κατέλιπεν υἱὸν ἐκ γυναικὸς εὐδοκίμου, Λαμπιδοῦς, Ἆγιν, καὶ πολὺ νεώτερον ἐξ Εὐπωλίας τῆς Μελησιππίδα θυγατρός, Ἀγησίλαον. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῆς βασιλείας Ἄγιδι προσηκούσης κατὰ τὸν νόμον ἰδιώτης ἐδόκει βιοτεύσειν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, ἤχθη τὴν λεγομένην ἀγωγὴν ἐν Λακεδαίμονι, σκληρὰν μὲν οὖσαν τῇ διαίτῃ καὶ πολύπονον, παιδεύουσαν δὲ τοὺς νέους ἄρχεσθαι.

[2] διὸ καί φασιν ὑπὸ τοῦ Σιμωνίδου τὴν Σπάρτην προσηγορεῦσθαι “δαμασίμβροτον,” ὡς μάλιστα διὰ τῶν ἐθῶν τοὺς πολίτας τοῖς νόμοις πειθηνίους καὶ χειροήθεις ποιοῦσαν, ὥσπερ ἵππους εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς δαμαζομένους. ταύτης ἀφίησιν ὁ νόμος τῆς ἀνάγκης τοὺς ἐπὶ βασιλείᾳ τρεφομένους [3] παῖδας. Ἀγησιλάῳ δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ὑπῆρξεν ἴδιον, ἐλθεῖν ἐπὶ τὸ ἄρχειν μὴ ἀπαίδευτον τοῦ ἄρχεσθαι. διὸ καὶ πολὺ τῶν βασιλέων εὐαρμοστότατον αὑτὸν τοῖς ὑπηκόοις παρέσχε, τῷ φύσει ἡγεμονικῷ καὶ βασιλικῷ προσκτησάμενος ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγωγῆς τὸ δημοτικὸν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον.

[2] [1] Ἐν δὲ ταῖς καλουμέναις ἀγέλαις τῶν συντρεφομένων παίδων Λύσανδρον ἔσχεν ἐραστήν, ἐκπλαγέντα μάλιστα τῷ κοσμίῳ τῆς φύσεως αὐτοῦ. φιλονεικότατος γὰρ ὢν καὶ θυμοειδέστατος ἐν τοῖς νέοις καὶ πάντα πρωτεύειν βουλόμενος, καὶ τὸ σφοδρὸν ἔχων καὶ ῥαγδαῖον ἄμαχον καὶ δυσεκβίαστον, εὐπειθείᾳ πάλιν αὖ καὶ πρᾳότητι τοιοῦτος ἦν οἷος φόβῳ μηδέν, αἰσχύνῃ δὲ πάντα ποιεῖν τὰ προσταττόμενα, καὶ τοῖς ψόγοις ἀλγύνεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ τοὺς πόνους βαρύνεσθαι· [2] τὴν δὲ τοῦ σκέλους πήρωσιν ἥ τε ὥρα τοῦ σώματος ἀνθοῦντος ἐπέκρυπτε, καὶ τὸ ῥᾳδίως φέρειν καὶ ἱλαρῶς τὸ τοιοῦτο, παίζοντα καὶ σκώπτοντα πρῶτον ἑαυτόν, οὐ μικρὸν ἦν ἐπανόρθωμα τοῦ πάθους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν φιλοτιμίαν ἐκδηλοτέραν ἐποίει, πρὸς μηδένα πόνον μηδὲ πρᾶξιν ἀπαγορεύοντος αὐτοῦ διὰ τὴν χωλότητα. τῆς δὲ μορφῆς εἰκόνα μὲν οὐκ ἔχομεν (αὐτὸς γὰρ οὐκ ἠθέλησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀποθνήσκων ἀπεῖπε “μήτε πλαστὰν μήτε μιμηλάν” τινα ποιήσασθαι τοῦ σώματος εἰκόνα), λέγεται δὲ μικρός τε γενέσθαι [3] καὶ τὴν ὄψιν εὐκαταφρόνητος· ἡ δὲ ἱλαρότης καὶ τὸ εὔθυμον ἐν ἅπαντι καιρῷ καὶ παιγνιῶδες, ἀχθεινὸν δὲ καὶ τραχὺ μηδέποτε μήτε φωνῇ μήτε ὄψει, τῶν καλῶν καὶ ὡραίων ἐρασμιώτερον αὐτὸν ἄχρι γήρως παρεῖχεν. ὡς δὲ Θεόφραστος ἱστορεῖ, τὸν Ἀρχίδαμον ἐζημίωσαν οἱ ἔφοροι γήμαντα γυναῖκα μικράν· “Οὐ γὰρ βασιλεῖς,” ἔφασαν, “ἄμμιν, ἀλλὰ βασιλείδια γεννάσει.”

[3] [1] Βασιλεύοντος δὲ Ἄγιδος ἧκεν Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐκ Σικελίας φυγὰς εἰς Λακεδαίμονα· καὶ χρόνον οὔπω πολὺν ἐν τῇ πόλει διάγων, αἰτίαν ἔσχε τῇ γυναικὶ τοῦ βασιλέως, Τιμαίᾳ, συνεῖναι. καὶ τὸ γεννηθὲν ἐξ αὐτῆς παιδάριον οὐκ ἔφη γινώσκειν ὁ Ἆγις, ἀλλ’ ἐξ Ἀλκιβιάδου γεγονέναι. τοῦτο δὲ οὐ πάνυ δυσκόλως τὴν Τιμαίαν ἐνεγκεῖν φησι Δοῦρις, ἀλλὰ καὶ ψιθυρίζουσαν οἴκοι πρὸς τὰς εἱλωτίδας Ἀλκιβιάδην τὸ παιδίον, οὐ Λεωτυχίδην, [2] καλεῖν· καὶ μέντοι καὶ τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην αὐτὸν οὐ πρὸς ὕβριν τῇ Τιμαίᾳ φάναι πλησιάζειν, ἀλλὰ φιλοτιμούμενον βασιλεύεσθαι Σπαρτιάτας ὑπὸ τῶν ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ γεγονότων. διὰ ταῦτα μὲν τῆς Λακεδαίμονος Ἀλκιβιάδης ὑπεξῆλθε, φοβηθεὶς τὸν Ἆγιν· ὁ δὲ παῖς τὸν μὲν ἄλλον χρόνον ὕποπτος ἦν τῷ Ἄγιδι, καὶ γνησίου τιμὴν οὐκ εἶχε παρ’ αὐτῷ, νοσοῦντι δὲ προσπεσὼν καὶ δακρύων ἔπεισεν υἱὸν ἀποφῆναι πολλῶν ἐναντίον.

[3] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τελευτήσαντος τοῦ Ἄγιδος ὁ Λύσανδρος, ἤδη κατανεναυμαχηκὼς Ἀθηναίους καὶ μέγιστον ἐν Σπάρτῃ δυνάμενος, τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἐπὶ τὴν βασιλείαν προῆγεν, ὡς οὐ προσήκουσαν ὄντι νόθῳ τῷ Λεωτυχίδῃ. πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν, διὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου καὶ τὸ συντετράφθαι καὶ μετεσχηκέναι τῆς ἀγωγῆς, ἐφιλοτιμοῦντο καὶ συνέπραττον αὐτῷ προθύμως. ἦν δὲ Διοπείθης ἀνὴρ χρησμολόγος ἐν Σπάρτῃ, μαντειῶν τε παλαιῶν ὑπόπλεως καὶ δοκῶν περὶ τὰ θεῖα σοφὸς εἶναι καὶ περιττός.

[4] οὗτος οὐκ ἔφη θεμιτὸν εἶναι χωλὸν γενέσθαι τῆς Λακεδαίμονος βασιλέα, καὶ χρησμὸν ἐν τῇ δίκῃ τοιοῦτον ἀνεγίνωσκε·

Φράζεο δή, Σπάρτη, καίπερ μεγάλαυχος ἐοῦσα,

μὴ σέθεν ἀρτίποδος βλάστῃ χωλὴ βασιλεία·

δηρὸν γὰρ νοῦσοί σε κατασχήσουσιν ἄελπτοι

φθισιβρότου τ’ ἐπὶ κῦμα κυλινδόμενον πολέμοιο.

[5] πρὸς ταῦτα Λύσανδρος ἔλεγεν ὡς, εἰ πάνυ φοβοῖντο τὸν χρησμὸν οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται, φυλακτέον αὐτοῖς εἴη τὸν Λεωτυχίδην· οὐ γὰρ εἰ προσπταίσας τις τὸν πόδα βασιλεύοι, τῷ θεῷ διαφέρειν, ἀλλ’ εἰ μὴ γνήσιος ὢν μηδὲ Ἡρακλείδης, τοῦτο τὴν χωλὴν εἶναι βασιλείαν. ὁ δὲ Ἀγησίλαος ἔφη καὶ τὸν Ποσειδῶ καταμαρτυρεῖν τοῦ Λεωτυχίδου τὴν νοθείαν, ἐκβαλόντα σεισμῷ τοῦ θαλάμου τὸν Ἆγιν· ἀπ’ ἐκείνου δὲ πλέον ἢ δέκα μηνῶν διελθόντων γενέσθαι τὸν Λεωτυχίδην.

[4] [1] Οὕτω δὲ καὶ διὰ ταῦτα βασιλεὺς ἀποδειχθεὶς ὁ Ἀγησίλαος εὐθὺς εἶχε καὶ τὰ χρήματα τοῦ Ἄγιδος, ὡς νόθον ἀπελάσας τὸν Λεωτυχίδην. ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς ἀπὸ μητρὸς οἰκείους ἐπιεικεῖς μὲν ὄντας, ἰσχυρῶς δὲ πενομένους, ἀπένειμεν αὐτοῖς τὰ ἡμίσεα τῶν χρημάτων, εὔνοιαν ἑαυτῷ καὶ δόξαν ἀντὶ φθόνου καὶ δυσμενείας ἐπὶ τῇ κληρονομίᾳ κατασκευαζόμενος. ὃ δέ φησιν ὁ Ξενοφῶν, ὅτι πάντα τῇ πατρίδι πειθόμενος ἴσχυε πλεῖστον, ὥστε ποιεῖν ὃ βούλοιτο, [2] τοιοῦτόν ἐστι. τῶν ἐφόρων ἦν τότε καὶ τῶν γερόντων τὸ μέγιστον ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ κράτος, ὧν οἱ μὲν ἐνιαυτὸν ἄρχουσι μόνον, οἱ δὲ γέροντες διὰ βίου ταύτην ἔχουσι τὴν τιμήν, ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ πάντα τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν ἐξεῖναι συνταχθέντες, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ Λυκούργου γέγραπται. διὸ καὶ πατρικήν τινα πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ παλαιοῦ διετέλουν εὐθὺς οἱ βασιλεῖς φιλονεικίαν καὶ διαφορὰν [3] παραλαμβάνοντες. ὁ δὲ Ἀγησίλαος ἐπὶ τὴν ἐναντίαν ὁδὸν ἦλθε, καὶ τὸ πολεμεῖν καὶ τὸ προσκρούειν αὐτοῖς ἐάσας ἐθεράπευε, πάσης μὲν ἀπ’ ἐκείνων πράξεως ἀρχόμενος, εἰ δὲ κληθείη, θᾶττον ἢ βάδην ἐπειγόμενος, ὁσάκις δὲ τύχοι καθήμενος ἐν τῷ βασιλικῷ θώκῳ καὶ χρηματίζων, ἐπιοῦσι τοῖς ἐφόροις ὑπεξανίστατο, τῶν δ’ εἰς τὴν γερουσίαν ἀεὶ καταταττομένων ἑκάστῳ [4] χλαῖναν ἔπεμπε καὶ βοῦν ἀριστεῖον. ἐκ δὲ τούτων τιμᾶν δοκῶν καὶ μεγαλύνειν τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς ἐκείνων ἀρχῆς, ἐλάνθανεν αὔξων τὴν ἑαυτοῦ δύναμιν καὶ τῇ βασιλείᾳ προστιθέμενος μέγεθος ἐκ τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐνοίας συγχωρούμενον.

[5] [1] Ἐν δὲ ταῖς πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους πολίτας ὁμιλίαις ἐχθρὸς ἦν ἀμεμπτότερος ἢ φίλος. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἐχθροὺς ἀδίκως οὐκ ἔβλαπτε, τοῖς δὲ φίλοις καὶ τὰ μὴ δίκαια συνέπραττε. καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἐχθροὺς ᾐσχύνετο μὴ τιμᾶν κατορθοῦντας, τοὺς δὲ φίλους οὐκ ἐδύνατο ψέγειν ἁμαρτάνοντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ βοηθῶν ἠγάλλετο καὶ συνεξαμαρτάνων αὐτοῖς· οὐδὲν γὰρ ᾤετο τῶν φιλικῶν [2] ὑπουργημάτων αἰσχρὸν εἶναι. τοῖς δ’ αὖ διαφόροις πταίσασι πρῶτος συναχθόμενος καὶ δεηθεῖσι συμπράττων προθύμως ἐδημαγώγει καὶ προσήγετο πάντας. ὁρῶντες οὖν οἱ ἔφοροι ταῦτα καὶ φοβούμενοι τὴν δύναμιν ἐζημίωσαν αὐτόν, αἰτίαν ὑπειπόντες ὅτι τοὺς κοινοὺς πολίτας ἰδίους κτᾶται.

[3] Καθάπερ γὰρ οἱ φυσικοὶ τὸ νεῖκος οἴονται καὶ τὴν ἔριν, εἰ τῶν ὅλων ἐξαιρεθείη, στῆναι μὲν ἂν τὰ οὐράνια, παύσασθαι δὲ πάντων τὴν γένεσιν καὶ κίνησιν ὑπὸ τῆς πρὸς πάντα πάντων ἁρμονίας, οὕτως ἔοικεν ὁ Λακωνικὸς νομοθέτης ὑπέκκαυμα τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν τὸ φιλότιμον καὶ φιλόνεικον, ἀεί τινα τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς διαφορὰν καὶ ἅμιλλαν εἶναι πρὸς ἀλλήλους βουλόμενος, τὴν δὲ ἀνθυπείκουσαν τῷ ἀνελέγκτῳ χάριν ἀργὴν καὶ ἀναγώνιστον οὖσαν [4] οὐκ ὀρθῶς ὁμόνοιαν λέγεσθαι. τοῦτο δὲ ἀμέλει συνεωρακέναι καὶ τὸν Ὅμηρον οἴονταί τινες· οὐ γὰρ ἂν τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα ποιῆσαι χαίροντα τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως καὶ τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως εἰς λοιδορίαν προαχθέντων “ἐκπάγλοις ἐπέεσσιν,” εἰ μὴ μέγα τοῖς κοινοῖς ἀγαθὸν ἐνόμιζεν εἶναι τὸν πρὸς ἀλλήλους ζῆλον καὶ τὴν διαφορὰν τῶν ἀρίστων. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἂν οὕτως τις ἁπλῶς συγχωρήσειεν· αἱ γὰρ ὑπερβολαὶ τῶν φιλονεικιῶν χαλεπαὶ ταῖς πόλεσι καὶ μεγάλους κινδύνους ἔχουσι.

[6] [1] Τοῦ δὲ Ἀγησιλάου τὴν βασιλείαν νεωστὶ παρειληφότος, ἀπήγγελλόν τινες ἐξ Ἀσίας ἥκοντες ὡς ὁ Περσῶν βασιλεὺς παρασκευάζοιτο μεγάλῳ στόλῳ Λακεδαιμονίους ἐκβαλεῖν τῆς θαλάσσης. ὁ δὲ Λύσανδρος ἐπιθυμῶν αὖθις εἰς Ἀσίαν ἀποσταλῆναι καὶ βοηθῆσαι τοῖς φίλοις, οὓς αὐτὸς μὲν ἄρχοντας καὶ κυρίους τῶν πόλεων ἀπέλιπε, κακῶς δὲ χρώμενοι καὶ βιαίως τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐξέπιπτον ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ ἀπέθνησκον, ἀνέπεισε τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἐπιθέσθαι τῇ στρατείᾳ καὶ προπολεμῆσαι τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἀπωτάτω διαβάντα καὶ φθάσαντα τὴν [2] τοῦ βαρβάρου παρασκευήν. ἅμα δὲ τοῖς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ φίλοις ἐπέστελλε πέμπειν εἰς Λακεδαίμονα καὶ στρατηγὸν Ἀγησίλαον αἰτεῖσθαι. παρελθὼν οὖν εἰς τὸ πλῆθος Ἀγησίλαος ἀνεδέξατο τὸν πόλεμον, εἰ δοῖεν αὐτῷ τριάκοντα μὲν ἡγεμόνας καὶ συμβούλους Σπαρτιάτας, νεοδαμώδεις δὲ λογάδας δισχιλίους, τὴν δὲ συμμαχικὴν εἰς [3] ἑξακισχιλίους δύναμιν. συμπράττοντος δὲ τοῦ Λυσάνδρου πάντα προθύμως ἐψηφίσαντο, καὶ τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἐξέπεμπον εὐθὺς ἔχοντα τοὺς τριάκοντα Σπαρτιάτας, ὧν ὁ Λύσανδρος ἦν πρῶτος, οὐ διὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ δόξαν καὶ δύναμιν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τὴν Ἀγησιλάου φιλίαν, ᾧ μεῖζον ἐδόκει τῆς βασιλείας ἀγαθὸν διαπεπρᾶχθαι τὴν στρατηγίαν ἐκείνην.

[4] Ἀθροιζομένης δὲ τῆς δυνάμεως εἰς Γεραιστόν, αὐτὸς εἰς Αὐλίδα κατελθὼν μετὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ νυκτερεύσας ἔδοξε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους εἰπεῖν τινα πρὸς αὐτόν· “Ὦ βασιλεῦ Λακεδαιμονίων, ὅτι μὲν οὐδεὶς τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὁμοῦ συμπάσης ἀπεδείχθη στρατηγὸς ἢ πρότερον Ἀγαμέμνων καὶ σὺ νῦν μετ’ ἐκεῖνον, ἐννοεῖς δήπουθεν· ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν μὲν αὐτῶν ἄρχεις ἐκείνῳ, τοῖς δὲ αὐτοῖς πολεμεῖς, ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν αὐτῶν τόπων ὁρμᾷς ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον, εἰκός ἐστι καὶ θῦσαί σε τῇ θεῷ θυσίαν ἣν ἐκεῖνος ἐνταῦθα [5] θύσας ἐξέπλευσεν.” ἅμα δέ πως ὑπῆλθε τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ὁ τῆς κόρης σφαγιασμός, ἣν ὁ πατὴρ ἔσφαξε πεισθεὶς τοῖς μάντεσιν. οὐ μὴν διετάραξεν αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἀναστὰς καὶ διηγησάμενος τοῖς φίλοις τὰ φανέντα τὴν μὲν θεὸν ἔφη τιμήσειν οἷς εἰκός ἐστι χαίρειν θεὸν οὖσαν, οὐ μιμήσεσθαι δὲ τὴν ἀπάθειαν τοῦ τότε στρατηγοῦ. καὶ καταστέψας ἔλαφον ἐκέλευσεν ἀπάρξασθαι τὸν ἑαυτοῦ μάντιν, οὐχ ὥσπερ εἰώθει τοῦτο [6] ποιεῖν ὁ ὑπὸ τῶν Βοιωτῶν τεταγμένος. ἀκούσαντες οὖν οἱ βοιωτάρχαι πρὸς ὀργὴν κινηθέντες ἔπεμψαν ὑπηρέτας, ἀπαγορεύοντες τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ μὴ θύειν παρὰ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὰ πάτρια Βοιωτῶν. οἱ δὲ καὶ ταῦτα ἀπήγγειλαν καὶ τὰ μηρία διέρριψαν ἀπὸ τοῦ βωμοῦ. χαλεπῶς οὖν ἔχων ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἀπέπλει, τοῖς τε Θηβαίοις διωργισμένος καὶ γεγονὼς δύσελπις διὰ τὸν οἰωνόν, ὡς ἀτελῶν αὐτῷ τῶν πράξεων γενησομένων καὶ τῆς στρατείας ἐπὶ τὸ προσῆκον οὐκ ἀφιξομένης.

[7] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ἧκεν εἰς Ἔφεσον, εὐθὺς ἀξίωμα μέγα καὶ δύναμις ἦν ἐπαχθὴς καὶ βαρεῖα περὶ τὸν Λύσανδρον, ὄχλου φοιτῶντος ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας ἑκάστοτε καὶ πάντων παρακολουθούντων καὶ θεραπευόντων ἐκεῖνον, ὡς ὄνομα μὲν καὶ σχῆμα τῆς στρατηγίας τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἔχοντα, διὰ τὸν νόμον, ἔργῳ δὲ κύριον ὄντα ἁπάντων καὶ δυνάμενον καὶ πράττοντα πάντα τὸν Λύσανδρον.

[2] οὐδεὶς γὰρ δεινότερος οὐδὲ φοβερώτερος ἐκείνου τῶν εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν ἀποσταλέντων ἐγένετο στρατηγῶν, οὐδὲ μείζονα τοὺς φίλους ἀνὴρ ἄλλος εὐεργέτησεν οὐδὲ κακὰ τηλικαῦτα τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ἐποίησεν. ὧν ἔτι προσφάτων ὄντων οἱ ἄνθρωποι μνημονεύοντες, ἄλλως δὲ τὸν μὲν Ἀγησίλαον ἀφελῆ καὶ λιτὸν ἐν ταῖς ὁμιλίαις καὶ δημοτικὸν ὁρῶντες, ἐκείνῳ δὲ τὴν αὐτὴν ὁμοίως σφοδρότητα καὶ τραχύτητα καὶ βραχυλογίαν παροῦσαν, ὑπέπιπτον αὐτῷ παντάπασι καὶ μόνῳ προσεῖχον.

[3] ἐκ δὲ τούτου πρῶτον μὲν οἱ λοιποὶ Σπαρτιᾶται χαλεπῶς ἔφερον ὑπηρέται Λυσάνδρου μᾶλλον ἢ σύμβουλοι βασιλέως ὄντες· ἔπειτα δ’ αὐτὸς ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, εἰ καὶ μὴ φθονερὸς ἦν μηδὲ ἤχθετο τοῖς τιμωμένοις, ἀλλὰ φιλότιμος ὢν σφόδρα καὶ φιλόνεικος, ἐφοβεῖτο μή, κἂν ἐνέγκωσί τι λαμπρὸν αἱ πράξεις, τοῦτο Λυσάνδρου γένηται διὰ τὴν δόξαν. οὕτως οὖν ἐποίει.

[4] Πρῶτον ἀντέκρουε ταῖς συμβουλίαις αὐτοῦ, καὶ πρὸς ἃς ἐκεῖνος ἐσπουδάκει μάλιστα πράξεις ἐῶν χαίρειν καὶ παραμελῶν, ἕτερα πρὸ ἐκείνων ἔπραττεν· ἔπειτα τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων καὶ δεομένων οὓς αἴσθοιτο Λυσάνδρῳ μάλιστα πεποιθότας, ἀπράκτους ἀπέπεμπε· καὶ περὶ τὰς κρίσεις ὁμοίως οἷς ἐκεῖνος ἐπηρεάζοι, τούτους ἔδει πλέον ἔχοντας ἀπελθεῖν, καὶ τοὐναντίον οὓς φανερὸς γένοιτο προθυμούμενος ὠφελεῖν, χαλεπὸν ἦν μὴ [5] καὶ ζημιωθῆναι. γινομένων δὲ τούτων οὐ κατὰ τύχην, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐκ παρασκευῆς καὶ ὁμαλῶς, αἰσθόμενος τὴν αἰτίαν ὁ Λύσανδρος οὐκ ἀπεκρύπτετο πρὸς τοὺς φίλους, ἀλλ’ ἔλεγεν ὡς δι’ αὐτὸν ἀτιμάζοιντο, καὶ παρεκάλει θεραπεύειν ἰόντας τὸν βασιλέα καὶ τοὺς μᾶλλον αὐτοῦ δυναμένους.

[8] [1] Ὡς οὖν ταῦτα πράττειν καὶ λέγειν ἐδόκει φθόνον ἐκείνῳ μηχανώμενος, ἔτι μᾶλλον αὐτοῦ καθάψασθαι βουλόμενος Ἀγησίλαος ἀπέδειξε κρεοδαίτην καὶ προσεῖπεν, ὡς λέγεται, πολλῶν ἀκουόντων· “Νῦν οὖν θεραπευέτωσαν [2] οὗτοι ἀπιόντες τὸν ἐμὸν κρεοδαίτην.” ἀχθόμενος οὖν ὁ Λύσανδρος λέγει πρὸς αὐτόν· “Ἤιδεις ἄρα σαφῶς, Ἀγησίλαε, φίλους ἐλαττοῦν.” “Νὴ Δί’,” ἔφη, “τοὺς ἐμοῦ μεῖζον δύνασθαι βουλομένους.” καὶ ὁ Λύσανδρος, “Ἀλλ’ ἴσως,” ἔφη, “ταῦτα σοὶ λέλεκται βέλτιον ἢ ἐμοὶ πέπρακται. δὸς δέ μοι τινὰ τάξιν καὶ χώραν ἔνθα μὴ λυπῶν ἔσομαί [3] σοι χρήσιμος.” ἐκ τούτου πέμπεται μὲν ἐφ’ Ἑλλήσποντον, καὶ Σπιθριδάτην, ἄνδρα Πέρσην, ἀπὸ τῆς Φαρναβάζου χώρας μετὰ χρημάτων συχνῶν καὶ διακοσίων ἱππέων ἤγαγε πρὸς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον, οὐκ ἔληγε δὲ τῆς ὀργῆς, ἀλλὰ βαρέως φέρων ἤδη τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον ἐβούλευεν ὅπως τῶν δυεῖν οἴκων τὴν βασιλείαν ἀφελόμενος εἰς μέσον ἅπασιν ἀποδοίη Σπαρτιάταις. καὶ ἐδόκει μεγάλην ἂν ἀπεργάσασθαι κίνησιν ἐκ ταύτης τῆς διαφορᾶς, εἰ μὴ πρότερον ἐτελεύτησεν [4] εἰς Βοιωτίαν στρατεύσας. οὕτως αἱ φιλότιμοι φύσεις ἐν ταῖς πολιτείαις, τὸ ἄγαν μὴ φυλαξάμεναι, τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ μεῖζον τὸ κακὸν ἔχουσι. καὶ γὰρ εἰ Λύσανδρος ἦν φορτικός, ὥσπερ ἦν, ὑπερβάλλων τῇ φιλοτιμίᾳ τὸν καιρόν, οὐκ ἠγνόει δήπουθεν Ἀγησίλαος ἑτέραν ἀμεμπτοτέραν ἐπανόρθωσιν οὖσαν ἀνδρὸς ἐνδόξου καὶ φιλοτίμου πλημμελοῦντος. ἀλλ’ ἔοικε ταὐτῷ πάθει μήτε ἐκεῖνος ἄρχοντος ἐξουσίαν γνῶναι μήτε οὗτος ἄγνοιαν ἐνεγκεῖν συνήθους.

[9] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Τισαφέρνης ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν φοβηθεὶς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἐποιήσατο σπονδάς, ὡς τὰς πόλεις αὐτῷ τὰς Ἑλληνίδας ἀφήσοντος αὐτονόμους βασιλέως, ὕστερον δὲ πεισθεὶς ἔχειν δύναμιν ἱκανὴν ἐξήνεγκε τὸν πόλεμον, ἄσμενος ὁ [2] Ἀγησίλαος ἐδέξατο. προσδοκία γὰρ ἦν μεγάλη τῆς στρατείας· καὶ δεινὸν ἡγεῖτο τοὺς μὲν σὺν Ξενοφῶντι μυρίους ἥκειν ἐπὶ θάλατταν, ὁσάκις ἐβουλήθησαν αὐτοὶ τοσαυτάκις βασιλέα νενικηκότας, αὐτοῦ δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων ἄρχοντος ἡγουμένων γῆς καὶ θαλάσσης μηδὲν ἔργον ἄξιον μνήμης φανῆναι πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας. εὐθὺς οὖν ἀμυνόμενος ἀπάτῃ δικαίᾳ τὴν Τισαφέρνους ἐπιορκίαν, ἐπέδειξεν ὡς ἐπὶ Καρίαν προάξων, ἐκεῖ δὲ τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ βαρβάρου συναθροίσαντος [3] ἄρας εἰς Φρυγίαν ἐνέβαλε. καὶ πόλεις μὲν εἷλε συχνὰς καὶ χρημάτων ἀφθόνων ἐκυρίευσεν, ἐπιδεικνύμενος τοῖς φίλοις ὅτι τὸ μὲν σπεισάμενον ἀδικεῖν τῶν θεῶν ἔστι καταφρονεῖν, ἐν δὲ τῷ παραλογίζεσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους οὐ μόνον τὸ δίκαιον, ἀλλὰ καὶ δόξα πολλὴ καὶ τὸ μεθ’ ἡδονῆς κερδαίνειν ἔνεστι. τοῖς δὲ ἱππεῦσιν ἐλαττωθεὶς καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν ἀλόβων φανέντων, ἀναχωρήσας εἰς Ἔφεσον ἱππικὸν συνῆγε, τοῖς εὐπόροις προειπών, εἰ μὴ βούλονται στρατεύεσθαι, παρασχεῖν ἕκαστον ἵππον ἀνθ’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἄνδρα.

[4] πολλοὶ δ’ ἦσαν οὗτοι, καὶ συνέβαινε τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ ταχὺ πολλοὺς καὶ πολεμικοὺς ἔχειν ἱππεῖς ἀντὶ δειλῶν ὁπλιτῶν. ἐμισθοῦντο γὰρ οἱ μὴ βουλόμενοι στρατεύεσθαι τοὺς βουλομένους στρατεύεσθαι, οἱ δὲ μὴ βουλόμενοι ἱππεύειν τοὺς βουλομένους ἱππεύειν. καὶ γὰρ τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα ποιῆσαι καλῶς ὅτι θήλειαν ἵππον ἀγαθὴν λαβὼν κακὸν ἄνδρα καὶ πλούσιον ἀπήλλαξε τῆς στρατείας.

[5] ἐπεὶ δὲ κελεύσαντος αὐτοῦ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους ἀποδύοντες ἐπίπρασκον οἱ λαφυροπῶλαι, καὶ τῆς μὲν ἐσθῆτος ἦσαν ὠνηταὶ πολλοί, τῶν δὲ σωμάτων λευκῶν καὶ ἁπαλῶν παντάπασι διὰ τὰς σκιατραφίας γυμνουμένων κατεγέλων ὡς ἀχρήστων καὶ μηδενὸς ἀξίων, ἐπιστὰς ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, “Οὗτοι μέν,” εἶπεν, “οἷς μάχεσθε, ταῦτα δὲ ὑπὲρ ὧν μάχεσθε.”

[10] [1] Καιροῦ δὲ ὄντος αὖθις ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν πολεμίαν προεῖπεν εἰς Λυδίαν ἀπάξειν, οὐκέτι ψευδόμενος ἐνταῦθα τὸν Τισαφέρνην· ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος ἑαυτὸν ἐξηπάτησε, διὰ τὴν ἔμπροσθεν ἀπάτην ἀπιστῶν τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ, καὶ νῦν γοῦν αὐτὸν ἅψεσθαι τῆς Καρίας νομίζων οὔσης δυσίππου [2] πολὺ τῷ ἱππικῷ λειπόμενον. ἐπεὶ δέ, ὡς προεῖπεν, ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἧκεν εἰς τὸ περὶ Σάρδεις πεδίον, ἠναγκάζετο κατὰ σπουδὴν ἐκεῖθεν αὖ βοηθεῖν ὁ Τισαφέρνης· καὶ τῇ ἵππῳ διεξελαύνων διέφθειρε πολλοὺς τῶν ἀτάκτως τὸ πεδίον πορθούντων. ἐννοήσας οὖν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ὅτι τοῖς πολεμίοις οὔπω πάρεστι τὸ πεζόν, αὐτῷ δὲ τῆς δυνάμεως [3] οὐδὲν ἄπεστιν, ἔσπευσε διαγωνίσασθαι. καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἱππεῦσιν ἀναμίξας τὸ πελταστικόν, ἐλαύνειν ἐκέλευσεν ὡς τάχιστα καὶ προσβάλλειν τοῖς ἐναντίοις, αὐτὸς δὲ εὐθὺς τοὺς ὁπλίτας ἐπῆγε. γενομένης δὲ τροπῆς τῶν βαρβάρων ἐπακολουθήσαντες οἱ Ἕλληνες ἔλαβον τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ πολλοὺς ἀνεῖλον. ἐκ ταύτης τῆς μάχης οὐ μόνον ὑπῆρξεν αὐτοῖς ἄγειν καὶ φέρειν ἀδεῶς τὴν βασιλέως χώραν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δίκην ἐπιδεῖν Τισαφέρνην διδόντα, μοχθηρὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τῷ γένει τῶν Ἑλλήνων [4] ἀπεχθέστατον. ἔπεμψε γὰρ εὐθέως ὁ βασιλεὺς Τιθραύστην ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ὃς ἐκείνου μὲν τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀπέτεμε, τὸν δὲ Ἀγησίλαον ἠξίου διαλυσάμενον ἀποπλεῖν οἴκαδε, καὶ χρήματα διδοὺς αὐτῷ προσέπεμψεν. ὁ δὲ τῆς μὲν εἰρήνης ἔφη τὴν πόλιν εἶναι κυρίαν, αὐτὸς δὲ πλουτίζων τοὺς στρατιώτας ἥδεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ πλουτῶν αὐτός· καὶ ἄλλως γε μέντοι νομίζειν Ἕλληνας καλὸν οὐ δῶρα λαμβάνειν, ἀλλὰ λάφυρα παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων.

[5] ὅμως δὲ τῷ Τιθραύστῃ χαρίζεσθαι βουλόμενος, ὅτι τὸν κοινὸν ἐχθρὸν Ἑλλήνων ἐτετιμώρητο Τισαφέρνην, ἀπήγαγεν εἰς Φρυγίαν τὸ στράτευμα, λαβὼν ἐφόδιον παρ’ αὐτοῦ τριάκοντα τάλαντα.

Καὶ καθ’ ὁδὸν ὢν σκυτάλην δέχεται παρὰ τῶν οἴκοι τελῶν κελεύουσαν αὐτὸν ἄρχειν ἅμα καὶ τοῦ ναυτικοῦ. τοῦτο μόνῳ πάντων ὑπῆρξεν Ἀγησιλάῳ. καὶ μέγιστος μὲν ἦν ὁμολογουμένως καὶ τῶν τότε ζώντων ἐπιφανέστατος, ὡς εἴρηκέ που καὶ Θεόπομπος, ἑαυτῷ γε μὴν ἐδίδου δι’ ἀρετὴν [6] φρονεῖν μεῖζον ἢ διὰ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν. τότε δὲ τοῦ ναυτικοῦ καταστήσας ἄρχοντα Πείσανδρον ἁμαρτεῖν ἔδοξεν, ὅτι πρεσβυτέρων καὶ φρονιμωτέρων παρόντων οὐ σκεψάμενος τὸ τῆς πατρίδος, ἀλλὰ τὴν οἰκειότητα τιμῶν καὶ τῇ γυναικὶ χαριζόμενος, ἧς ἀδελφὸς ἦν ὁ Πείσανδρος, ἐκείνῳ παρέδωκε τὴν ναυαρχίαν.

[11] [1] Αὐτὸς δὲ τὸν στρατὸν καταστήσας εἰς τὴν ὑπὸ Φαρναβάζῳ τεταγμένην χώραν οὐ μόνον ἐν ἀφθόνοις διῆγε πᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ χρήματα συνῆγε πολλά· καὶ προελθὼν ἄχρι Παφλαγονίας προσηγάγετο τὸν βασιλέα τῶν Παφλαγόνων, Κότυν, ἐπιθυμήσαντα τῆς φιλίας αὐτοῦ δι’ ἀρετὴν καὶ [2] πίστιν. ὁ δὲ Σπιθριδάτης, ὡς ἀποστὰς τοῦ Φαρναβάζου τὸ πρῶτον ἦλθε πρὸς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον, ἀεὶ συναπεδήμει καὶ συνεστράτευεν αὐτῷ, κάλλιστον υἱὸν μὲν ἔχων, Μεγαβάτην, οὗ παιδὸς ὄντος ἤρα σφοδρῶς Ἀγησίλαος, καλὴν δὲ καὶ θυγατέρα παρθένον ἐν ἡλικίᾳ γάμου. ταύτην [3] ἔπεισε γῆμαι τὸν Κότυν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος· καὶ λαβὼν παρ’ αὐτοῦ χιλίους ἱππεῖς καὶ δισχιλίους πελταστὰς αὖθις ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς Φρυγίαν, καὶ κακῶς ἐποίει τὴν Φαρναβάζου χώραν οὐχ ὑπομένοντος οὐδὲ πιστεύοντος τοῖς ἐρύμασιν, ἀλλὰ ἔχων ἀεὶ τὰ πλεῖστα σὺν ἑαυτῷ τῶν τιμίων καὶ ἀγαπητῶν ἐξεχώρει καὶ ὑπέφευγεν ἄλλοτε ἀλλαχόσε τῆς χώρας μεθιδρυόμενος, μέχρι οὗ παραφυλάξας αὐτὸν ὁ Σπιθριδάτης καὶ παραλαβὼν Ἡριππίδαν τὸν Σπαρτιάτην ἔλαβε τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ τῶν [4] χρημάτων ἁπάντων ἐκράτησεν. ἔνθα δὴ πικρὸς ὢν ὁ Ἡριππίδας ἐξεταστὴς τῶν κλαπέντων, καὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀναγκάζων ἀποτίθεσθαι, καὶ πάντα ἐφορῶν καὶ διερευνώμενος, παρώξυνε τὸν Σπιθριδάτην, ὥστε ἀπελθεῖν εὐθὺς εἰς Σάρδεις μετὰ τῶν Παφλαγόνων.

Τοῦτο λέγεται τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ γενέσθαι πάντων ἀνιαρότατον. ἤχθετο μὲν γὰρ ἄνδρα γενναῖον ἀποβεβληκὼς τὸν Σπιθριδάτην καὶ σὺν αὐτῷ δύναμιν οὐκ ὀλίγην, ᾐσχύνετο δὲ τῇ διαβολῇ τῆς μικρολογίας καὶ ἀνελευθερίας, ἧς οὐ μόνον αὑτόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν πατρίδα καθαρεύουσαν ἀεὶ παρέχειν [5] ἐφιλοτιμεῖτο. χωρὶς δὲ τῶν ἐμφανῶν τούτων ἔκνιζεν αὐτὸν οὐ μετρίως ὁ τοῦ παιδὸς ἔρως ἐνεσταγμένος, εἰ καὶ πάνυ παρόντος αὐτοῦ τῷ φιλονείκῳ χρώμενος ἐπειρᾶτο νεανικῶς ἀπομάχεσθαι πρὸς τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν. καί ποτε τοῦ Μεγαβάτου προσιόντος ὡς ἀσπασομένου καὶ [6] φιλήσοντος ἐξέκλινεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἐκεῖνος αἰσχυνθεὶς ἐπαύσατο καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν ἄπωθεν ἤδη προσηγόρευεν, ἀχθόμενος αὖ πάλιν καὶ μεταμελόμενος τῇ φυγῇ τοῦ φιλήματος, ὁ Ἀγησίλαος προσεποιεῖτο θαυμάζειν ὅ τι δὴ παθὼν αὐτὸν ὁ Μεγαβάτης ἀπὸ στόματος οὐ φιλοφρονοῖτο. “Σὺ γὰρ αἴτιος,” οἱ συνήθεις ἔφασαν, “οὐχ ὑποστάς, ἀλλὰ τρέσας τὸ φίλημα τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ φοβηθείς· ἐπεὶ καὶ νῦν ἂν ἔλθοι σοι πεισθεὶς ἐκεῖνος ἐντὸς φιλήματος· ἀλλ’ ὅπως αὖθις οὐκ ἀποδειλιάσεις.”

[7] χρόνον οὖν τινα πρὸς ἑαυτῷ γενόμενος ὁ Ἀγησίλαος καὶ διασιωπήσας, “Οὐδέν,” ἔφη, “δεινὸν πείθειν ὑμᾶς ἐκεῖνον· ἐγὼ γάρ μοι δοκῶ τήναν τὰν μάχαν τὰν περὶ τοῦ φιλάματος ἅδιον ἂν μάχεσθαι πάλιν ἢ πάντα ὅσα τεθέαμαι χρυσία μοι γενέσθαι.” τοιοῦτος μὲν ἦν τοῦ Μεγαβάτου παρόντος, ἀπελθόντος γε μὴν οὕτω περικαῶς ἔσχεν ὡς χαλεπὸν εἰπεῖν εἰ πάλιν αὖ μεταβαλομένου καὶ φανέντος ἐνεκαρτέρησε μὴ φιληθῆναι.

[12] [1] Μετὰ ταῦτα Φαρνάβαζος εἰς λόγους αὐτῷ συνελθεῖν ἠθέλησε, καὶ συνῆγεν ἀμφοτέρους ὢν ξένος ὁ Κυζικηνὸς Ἀπολλοφάνης. πρότερος δὲ μετὰ τῶν φίλων ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἐλθὼν εἰς τὸ χωρίον, ὑπὸ σκιᾷ τινι πόας οὔσης βαθείας καταβαλὼν ἑαυτόν, ἐνταῦθα περιέμενε τὸν Φαρνάβαζον.

[2] ὁ δὲ ὡς ἐπῆλθεν, ὑποβεβλημένων αὐτῷ κωδίων τε μαλακῶν καὶ ποικίλων δαπίδων, αἰδεσθεὶς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον οὕτω κατακείμενον κατεκλίνη καὶ αὐτός, ὡς ἔτυχεν, ἐπὶ τῆς πόας χαμᾶζε, καίπερ ἐσθῆτα θαυμαστὴν λεπτότητι καὶ βαφαῖς ἐνδεδυκώς. ἀσπασάμενοι δὲ ἀλλήλους ὁ μὲν Φαρνάβαζος οὐκ ἠπόρει λόγων δικαίων, ἅτε δὴ πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα Λακεδαιμονίοις χρήσιμος γεγονὼς ἐν τῷ πρὸς Ἀθηναίους πολέμῳ, νῦν δὲ [3] πορθούμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν· ὁ δὲ Ἀγησίλαος, ὁρῶν τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ Σπαρτιάτας ὑπ’ αἰσχύνης κύπτοντας εἰς τὴν γῆν καὶ διαποροῦντας (ἀδικούμενον γὰρ ἑώρων τὸν Φαρνάβαζον), “Ἡμεῖς,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Φαρνάβαζε, καὶ φίλοι ὄντες πρότερον βασιλέως ἐχρώμεθα τοῖς ἐκείνου πράγμασι φιλικῶς καὶ νῦν πολέμιοι γεγονότες πολεμικῶς. ἓν οὖν καὶ σὲ τῶν βασιλέως κτημάτων ὁρῶντες εἶναι βουλόμενον, εἰκότως διὰ σοῦ βλάπτομεν ἐκεῖνον.

[4] ἀφ’ ἧς δ’ ἂν ἡμέρας σεαυτὸν ἀξιώσῃς Ἑλλήνων φίλον καὶ σύμμαχον μᾶλλον ἢ δοῦλον λέγεσθαι βασιλέως, ταύτην νόμιζε τὴν φάλαγγα καὶ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τὰς ναῦς καὶ πάντας ἡμᾶς τῶν σῶν κτημάτων φύλακας εἶναι καὶ τῆς ἐλευθερίας, ἧς ἄνευ καλὸν ἀνθρώποις οὐδὲν οὐδὲ ζηλωτόν ἐστιν.”

[5] ἐκ τούτου λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Φαρνάβαζος ἣν εἶχε διάνοιαν. “Ἐγὼ γάρ,” εἶπεν, “ἐὰν μὲν ἄλλον ἐκπέμψῃ βασιλεὺς στρατηγόν, ἔσομαι μεθ’ ὑμῶν, ἐὰν δ’ ἐμοὶ παραδῷ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, οὐδὲν ἐλλείψω προθυμίας ἀμυνόμενος ὑμᾶς καὶ κακῶς ποιῶν ὑπὲρ ἐκείνου.” ταῦτα δ’ ἀκούσας ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἥσθη, καὶ τῆς δεξιᾶς αὐτοῦ λαβόμενος καὶ συνεξαναστάς, “Εἴθε,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Φαρνάβαζε, τοιοῦτος ὢν φίλος ἡμῖν γένοιο μᾶλλον ἢ πολέμιος.”

[13] [1] Ἀπιόντος δὲ τοῦ Φαρναβάζου μετὰ τῶν φίλων, ὁ υἱὸς ὑπολειφθεὶς προσέδραμε τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ καὶ μειδιῶν εἶπεν· “Ἐγώ σε ξένον, ὦ Ἀγησίλαε, ποιοῦμαι·” καὶ παλτὸν ἔχων ἐν τῇ χειρὶ δίδωσιν αὐτῷ. δεξάμενος οὖν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος καὶ ἡσθεὶς τῇ τε ὄψει καὶ τῇ φιλοφροσύνῃ τοῦ παιδός, ἐπεσκόπει τοὺς παρόντας, εἴ τις ἔχοι τι τοιοῦτον οἷον ἀντιδοῦναι καλῷ καὶ γενναίῳ [2] δῶρον. ἰδὼν δὲ ἵππον Ἰδαίου τοῦ γραφέως κεκοσμημένον φαλάροις, ταχὺ ταῦτα περισπάσας τῷ μειρακίῳ δίδωσι. καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν οὐκ ἐπαύετο μεμνημένος, ἀλλὰ καὶ χρόνῳ περιϊόντι τὸν οἶκον ἀποστερηθέντος αὐτοῦ καὶ φυγόντος ὑπὸ τῶν ἀδελφῶν εἰς Πελοπόννησον, ἰσχυρῶς ἐπεμελεῖτο.

[3] καί τι καὶ τῶν ἐρωτικῶν αὐτῷ συνέπραξεν. ἠράσθη γὰρ ἀθλητοῦ παιδὸς ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν· ἐπεὶ δὲ μέγας ὢν καὶ σκληρὸς Ὀλυμπίασιν ἐκινδύνευσεν ἐκκριθῆναι, καταφεύγει πρὸς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ὁ Πέρσης δεόμενος ὑπὲρ τοῦ παιδός· ὁ δὲ καὶ τοῦτο βουλόμενος αὐτῷ χαρίζεσθαι, μάλα μόλις διεπράξατο σὺν πολλῇ πραγματείᾳ.

Τἆλλα μὲν γὰρ ἦν ἀκριβὴς καὶ νόμιμος, ἐν δὲ τοῖς φιλικοῖς πρόφασιν ἐνόμιζεν εἶναι τὸ λίαν [4] δίκαιον. φέρεται γοῦν ἐπιστόλιον αὐτοῦ πρὸς Ἱδριέα τὸν Κᾶρα τοιοῦτο· “Νικίας εἰ μὲν μὴ ἀδικεῖ, ἄφες· εἰ δὲ ἀδικεῖ, ἡμῖν ἄφες· πάντως δὲ ἄφες.” ἐν μὲν οὖν τοῖς πλείστοις τοιοῦτος ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων ὁ Ἀγησίλαος· ἔστι δὲ ὅπου πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον ἐχρῆτο τῷ καιρῷ μᾶλλον, ὡς ἐδήλωσεν, ἀναζυγῆς αὐτῷ θορυβωδεστέρας γενομένης, ἀσθενοῦντα καταλιπὼν τὸν ἐρώμενον. ἐκείνου γὰρ δεομένου καὶ καλοῦντος αὐτὸν ἀπιόντα, μεταστραφεὶς εἶπεν ὡς χαλεπὸν ἐλεεῖν ἅμα καὶ φρονεῖν. τουτὶ μὲν Ἱερώνυμος ὁ φιλόσοφος ἱστόρηκεν.

[14] [1] Ἤδη δὲ περιϊόντος ἐνιαυτοῦ δευτέρου τῇ στρατηγίᾳ πολὺς ἄνω λόγος ἐχώρει τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου, καὶ δόξα θαυμαστὴ κατεῖχε τῆς τε σωφροσύνης αὐτοῦ καὶ εὐτελείας καὶ μετριότητος. ἐσκήνου μὲν γὰρ ἀποδημῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν ἐν τοῖς ἁγιωτάτοις ἱεροῖς, ἃ μὴ πολλοὶ καθορῶσιν ἄνθρωποι πράττοντας ἡμᾶς, τούτων τοὺς θεοὺς ποιούμενος ἐπόπτας καὶ μάρτυρας· ἐν δὲ χιλιάσι στρατιωτῶν τοσαύταις οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἄν τις εἶδε [2] φαυλοτέραν στιβάδα τῆς Ἀγησιλάου. πρός τε θάλπος οὕτω καὶ ψῦχος εἶχεν ὥσπερ μόνος ἀεὶ χρῆσθαι ταῖς ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ κεκραμέναις ὥραις πεφυκώς. ἥδιστον δὲ θέαμα τοῖς κατοικοῦσι τὴν Ἀσίαν Ἕλλησιν ἦσαν οἱ πάλαι βαρεῖς καὶ ἀφόρητοι καὶ διαρρέοντες ὑπὸ πλούτου καὶ τρυφῆς ὕπαρχοι καὶ στρατηγοὶ δεδιότες καὶ θεραπεύοντες ἄνθρωπον ἐν τρίβωνι περιϊόντα λιτῷ, καὶ πρὸς ἓν ῥῆμα βραχὺ καὶ Λακωνικὸν ἁρμόζοντες ἑαυτοὺς καὶ μετασχηματίζοντες, ὥστε πολλοῖς ἐπῄει τὰ τοῦ Τιμοθέου λέγειν,

Ἄρης τύραννος· χρυσὸν δὲ Ἕλλας οὐ δέδοικε.

[15] [1] Κινουμένης δὲ τῆς Ἀσίας καὶ πολλαχοῦ πρὸς ἀπόστασιν ὑπεικούσης, ἁρμοσάμενος τὰς αὐτόθι πόλεις, καὶ ταῖς πολιτείαις δίχα φόνου καὶ φυγῆς ἀνθρώπων ἀποδοὺς τὸν προσήκοντα κόσμον, ἐγνώκει πρόσω χωρεῖν, καὶ τὸν πόλεμον διάρας ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς θαλάττης, περὶ τοῦ σώματος βασιλεῖ καὶ τῆς ἐν Ἐκβατάνοις καὶ Σούσοις εὐδαιμονίας διαμάχεσθαι, καὶ περισπάσαι πρῶτον αὐτοῦ τὴν σχολήν, ὡς μὴ καθέζοιτο τοὺς πολέμους βραβεύων τοῖς Ἕλλησι [2] καὶ διαφθείρων τοὺς δημαγωγούς. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ ἀφικνεῖται πρὸς αὐτὸν Ἐπικυδίδας ὁ Σπαρτιάτης, ἀπαγγέλλων ὅτι πολὺς περιέστηκε τὴν Σπάρτην πόλεμος Ἑλληνικός, καὶ καλοῦσιν ἐκεῖνον οἱ ἔφοροι καὶ κελεύουσι τοῖς οἴκοι βοηθεῖν.

Ὦ βάρβαρ’ ἐξευρόντες Ἕλληνες κακά·

τί γὰρ ἄν τις ἄλλο τὸν φθόνον ἐκεῖνον προσείποι καὶ τὴν τότε σύστασιν καὶ σύνταξιν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων; οἳ τῆς τύχης ἄνω φερομένης ἐπελάβοντο, καὶ τὰ ὅπλα πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους βλέποντα καὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἤδη τῆς Ἑλλάδος [3] ἐξῳκισμένον αὖθις εἰς ἑαυτοὺς ἔτρεψαν. οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγε συμφέρομαι τῷ Κορινθίῳ Δημαράτῳ μεγάλης ἡδονῆς ἀπολελεῖφθαι φήσαντι τοὺς μὴ θεασαμένους Ἕλληνας Ἀλέξανδρον ἐν τῷ Δαρείου θρόνῳ καθήμενον, ἀλλ’ εἰκότως ἂν οἶμαι δακρῦσαι, συννοήσαντας ὅτι ταῦτ’ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ καὶ Μακεδόσιν ἀπέλιπον οἳ τότε τοὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων στρατηγοὺς περὶ Λεῦκτρα καὶ Κορώνειαν καὶ Κόρινθον καὶ Ἀρκαδίαν κατανήλωσαν.

[4] Ἀγησιλάῳ μέντοι οὐδὲν κρεῖσσον ἢ μεῖζόν ἐστι τῆς ἀναχωρήσεως ἐκείνης διαπεπραγμένον, οὐδὲ γέγονε παράδειγμα πειθαρχίας καὶ δικαιοσύνης ἕτερον κάλλιον. ὅπου γὰρ Ἀννίβας ἤδη κακῶς πράττων καὶ περιωθούμενος ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας μάλα μόλις ὑπήκουσε τοῖς ἐπὶ τὸν οἴκοι πόλεμον καλοῦσιν, Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ καὶ προσεπέσκωψε πυθόμενος τὴν πρὸς Ἆγιν Ἀντιπάτρου μάχην, εἰπών· “Ἔοικεν, ὦ ἄνδρες, ὅτε Δαρεῖον ἡμεῖς ἐνικῶμεν ἐνταῦθα, ἐκεῖ τις ἐν Ἀρκαδίᾳ γεγονέναι [5] μυομαχία·” πῶς οὐκ ἦν ἄξιον τὴν Σπάρτην μακαρίσαι τῆς Ἀγησιλάου τιμῆς πρὸς ταύτην καὶ πρὸς τοὺς νόμους τῆς εὐλαβείας; ὃς ἅμα τῷ τὴν σκυτάλην ἐλθεῖν εὐτυχίαν τοσαύτην καὶ δύναμιν παροῦσαν καὶ τηλικαύτας ἐλπίδας ὑφηγουμένας ἀφεὶς καὶ προέμενος εὐθὺς ἀπέπλευσεν “ἀτελευτήτῳ ἐπὶ ἔργῳ,” πολὺν ἑαυτοῦ πόθον τοῖς συμμάχοις ἀπολιπών, καὶ μάλιστα δὴ τὸν Ἐρασιστράτου τοῦ Φαίακος ἐλέγξας λόγον, εἰπόντος ὡς εἰσὶ δημοσίᾳ μὲν Λακεδαιμόνιοι βελτίονες, [6] ἰδίᾳ δὲ Ἀθηναῖοι. βασιλέα γὰρ ἑαυτὸν καὶ στρατηγὸν ἄριστον ἐπιδειξάμενος, ἔτι βελτίονα καὶ ἡδίονα τοῖς χρωμένοις ἰδίᾳ φίλον καὶ συνήθη παρέσχε. τοῦ δὲ Περσικοῦ νομίσματος χάραγμα τοξότην ἔχοντος, ἀναζευγνύων ἔφη μυρίοις τοξόταις ὑπὸ βασιλέως ἐξελαύνεσθαι τῆς Ἀσίας· τοσούτων γὰρ εἰς Ἀθήνας καὶ Θήβας κομισθέντων καὶ διαδοθέντων τοῖς δημαγωγοῖς, ἐξεπολεμώθησαν οἱ δῆμοι πρὸς τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας.

[16] [1] Ὡς δὲ διαβὰς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ἐβάδιζε διὰ τῆς Θρᾴκης, ἐδεήθη μὲν οὐδενὸς τῶν βαρβάρων, πέμπων δὲ πρὸς ἑκάστους ἐπυνθάνετο πότερον ὡς φιλίαν ἢ ὡς πολεμίαν διαπορεύηται τὴν χώραν. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι πάντες φιλικῶς ἐδέχοντο καὶ παρέπεμπον, ὡς ἕκαστος δυνάμεως εἶχεν· οἱ δὲ καλούμενοι Τράλλεις, οἷς καὶ Ξέρξης ἔδωκεν, ὡς λέγεται, δῶρα, τῆς διόδου μισθὸν ᾔτουν τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἑκατὸν ἀργυρίου τάλαντα [2] καὶ τοσαύτας γυναῖκας. ὁ δὲ κατειρωνευσάμενος αὐτοὺς καὶ φήσας· “Τί οὖν οὐκ εὐθὺς ἦλθον ληψόμενοι;” προῆγε, καὶ συμβαλὼν αὐτοῖς παρατεταγμένοις ἐτρέψατο καὶ διέφθειρε πολλούς. τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ καὶ τῷ βασιλεῖ τῶν Μακεδόνων ἐρώτημα προσέπεμψε· φήσαντος δὲ βουλεύσεσθαι, “Βουλευέσθω τοίνυν ἐκεῖνος,” εἶπεν, “ἡμεῖς δὲ δὴ πορευόμεθα.” Θαυμάσας οὖν τὴν τόλμαν αὐτοῦ καὶ δείσας ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐκέλευσεν ὡς φίλον προάγειν.

[3] τῶν δὲ Θετταλῶν τοῖς πολεμίοις συμμαχούντων ἐπόρθει τὴν χώραν. εἰς δὲ Λάρισσαν ἔπεμψε Ξενοκλέα καὶ Σκύθην περὶ φιλίας· συλληφθέντων δὲ τούτων καὶ παραφυλασσομένων οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι βαρέως φέροντες ᾤοντο δεῖν τὸν Ἀγησίλαον περιστρατοπεδεύσαντα πολιορκεῖν τὴν Λάρισσαν, ὁ δὲ φήσας οὐκ ἂν ἐθελῆσαι Θεσσαλίαν ὅλην λαβεῖν ἀπολέσας τῶν ἀνδρῶν τὸν [4] ἕτερον, ὑποσπόνδους αὐτοὺς ἀπέλαβε. καὶ τοῦτ’ ἴσως ἐπ’ Ἀγησιλάῳ θαυμαστὸν οὐκ ἦν, ὃς πυθόμενος μάχην μεγάλην γεγονέναι περὶ Κόρινθον, καὶ ἄνδρας τῶν πάνυ ἐνδόξων ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα αἰφνίδιον ἀπολωλέναι, καὶ Σπαρτιατῶν μὲν ὀλίγους παντάπασι τεθνηκέναι, παμπόλλους δὲ τῶν πολεμίων, οὐκ ὤφθη περιχαρὴς οὐδὲ ἐπηρμένος, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ βαρὺ στενάξας, “Φεῦ τῆς Ἑλλάδος,” ἔφη, “τοσούτους ἄνδρας ἀπολωλεκυίας ὑφ’ αὑτῆς, ὅσοι ζῶντες ἐδύναντο νικᾶν [5] ὁμοῦ σύμπαντας τοὺς βαρβάρους μαχόμενοι.” τῶν δὲ Φαρσαλίων προσκειμένων αὐτῷ καὶ κακούντων τὸ στράτευμα, πεντακοσίοις ἱππεῦσιν ἐμβαλεῖν κελεύσας σὺν αὑτῷ καὶ τρεψάμενος ἔστησε τρόπαιον ὑπὸ τῷ Ναρθακίῳ. καὶ τὴν νίκην ὑπερηγάπησεν ἐκείνην, ὅτι συστησάμενος ἱππικὸν αὐτὸς δι’ ἑαυτοῦ τούτῳ μόνῳ τοὺς μέγιστον ἐφ’ ἱππικῇ φρονοῦντας ἐκράτησεν.

[17] [1] Ἐνταῦθα Διφρίδας οἴκοθεν ἔφορος ὢν ἀπήντησεν αὐτῷ κελεύων εὐθὺς ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν Βοιωτίαν. ὁ δέ, καίπερ ἀπὸ μείζονος παρασκευῆς ὕστερον τοῦτο ποιῆσαι διανοούμενος, οὐδὲν ᾤετο δεῖν ἀπειθεῖν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς τε μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ προεῖπεν ἐγγὺς εἶναι τὴν ἡμέραν ἐφ’ ἣν ἐξ Ἀσίας ἥκουσι, καὶ δύο μόρας μετεπέμψατο τῶν [2] περὶ Κόρινθον στρατευομένων. οἱ δὲ ἐν τῇ πόλει Λακεδαιμόνιοι τιμῶντες αὐτὸν ἐκήρυξαν τῶν νέων ἀπογράφεσθαι τὸν βουλόμενον τῷ βασιλεῖ βοηθεῖν. ἀπογραψαμένων δὲ πάντων προθύμως, οἱ ἄρχοντες πεντήκοντα τοὺς ἀκμαιοτάτους καὶ ῥωμαλεωτάτους ἐκλέξαντες ἀπέστειλαν.

Ὁ δὲ Ἀγησίλαος εἴσω Πυλῶν παρελθὼν καὶ διοδεύσας τὴν Φωκίδα φίλην οὖσαν, ἐπεὶ τῆς Βοιωτίας πρῶτον ἐπέβη καὶ περὶ τὴν Χαιρώνειαν κατεστρατοπέδευσεν, ἅμα μὲν τὸν ἥλιον ἐκλείποντα καὶ γινόμενον μηνοειδῆ κατεῖδεν, ἅμα δὲ ἤκουσε τεθνάναι Πείσανδρον ἡττημένον ναυμαχίᾳ περὶ Κνίδον ὑπὸ Φαρναβάζου καὶ Κόνωνος.

[3] ἠχθέσθη μὲν οὖν, ὡς εἰκός, ἐπὶ τούτοις καὶ διὰ τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ διὰ τὴν πόλιν, ὅπως δὲ μὴ τοῖς στρατιώταις ἐπὶ μάχην βαδίζουσιν ἀθυμία καὶ φόβος ἐμπέσῃ, τἀναντία λέγειν ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ἀπὸ θαλάττης ἥκοντας, ὅτι νικῶσι τῇ ναυμαχίᾳ· καὶ προελθὼν αὐτὸς ἐστεφανωμένος ἔθυσεν εὐαγγέλια καὶ διέπεμπε μερίδας τοῖς φίλοις ἀπὸ τῶν τεθυμένων.

[18] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ προϊὼν καὶ γενόμενος ἐν Κορωνείᾳ κατεῖδε τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ κατώφθη, παρετάξατο δοὺς Ὀρχομενίοις τὸ εὐώνυμον κέρας, αὐτὸς δὲ τὸ δεξιὸν ἐπῆγεν. οἱ δὲ Θηβαῖοι τὸ μὲν δεξιὸν εἶχον αὐτοί, τὸ δὲ εὐώνυμον Ἀργεῖοι. λέγει δὲ τὴν μάχην ὁ Ξενοφῶν ἐκείνην οἵαν οὐκ ἄλλην τῶν πώποτε γενέσθαι· καὶ παρῆν αὐτὸς τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ συναγωνιζόμενος, ἐξ Ἀσίας διαβεβηκώς.

[2] ἡ μὲν οὖν πρώτη σύρραξις οὐκ ἔσχεν ὠθισμὸν οὐδὲ ἀγῶνα πολύν, ἀλλὰ οἵ τε Θηβαῖοι ταχὺ τοὺς Ὀρχομενίους ἐτρέψαντο καὶ τοὺς Ἀργείους ὁ Ἀγησίλαος· ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀκούσαντες ἀμφότεροι τὰ εὐώνυμα πιέζεσθαι καὶ φεύγειν ἀνέστρεψαν, ἐνταῦθα τῆς νίκης ἀκινδύνου παρούσης, εἰ τῆς κατὰ στόμα μάχης ὑφέσθαι τοῖς Θηβαίοις ἠθέλησε καὶ παίειν ἑπόμενος παραλλάξαντας, ὑπὸ θυμοῦ καὶ φιλονεικίας ἐναντίος ἐχώρει τοῖς ἀνδράσιν, ὤσασθαι κατὰ κράτος [3] βουλόμενος. οἱ δὲ οὐχ ἧττον ἐρρωμένως ἐδέξαντο, καὶ μάχη γίνεται δι’ ὅλου μὲν ἰσχυρὰ τοῦ στρατεύματος, ἰσχυροτάτη δὲ κατ’ ἐκεῖνον αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς πεντήκοντα τεταγμένον, ὧν εἰς καιρὸν ἔοικεν ἡ φιλοτιμία τῷ βασιλεῖ γενέσθαι καὶ σωτήριος. ἀγωνιζόμενοι γὰρ ἐκθύμως καὶ προκινδυνεύοντες ἄτρωτον μὲν αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐδυνήθησαν φυλάξαι, πολλὰς δὲ διὰ τῶν ὅπλων δεξάμενον εἰς τὸ σῶμα πληγὰς δόρασι καὶ ξίφεσι μόλις ἀνήρπασαν ζῶντα, καὶ συμφράξαντες πρὸ αὐτοῦ [4] πολλοὺς μὲν ἀνῄρουν, πολλοὶ δὲ ἔπιπτον. ὡς δὲ μέγα ἔργον ἦν ὤσασθαι προτροπάδην τοὺς Θηβαίους, ἠναγκάσθησαν ὅπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς οὐκ ἐβούλοντο ποιῆσαι. διέστησαν γὰρ αὐτοῖς τὴν φάλαγγα καὶ διέσχον, εἶτα ἀτακτότερον ἤδη πορευομένους, ὡς διεξέπεσον, ἀκολουθοῦντες καὶ παραθέοντες ἐκ πλαγίων ἔπαιον. οὐ μὴν ἐτρέψαντό γε, ἀλλ’ ἀπεχώρησαν οἱ Θηβαῖοι πρὸς τὸν Ἑλικῶνα, μέγα τῇ μάχῃ φρονοῦντες, ὡς ἀήττητοι καθ’ αὑτοὺς γεγονότες.

[19] [1] Ἀγησίλαος δέ, καίπερ ὑπὸ τραυμάτων πολλῶν κακῶς τὸ σῶμα διακείμενος, οὐ πρότερον ἐπὶ σκηνὴν ἀπῆλθεν ἢ φοράδην ἐνεχθῆναι πρὸς τὴν φάλαγγα καὶ τοὺς νεκροὺς ἰδεῖν ἐντὸς τῶν ὅπλων συγκεκομισμένους. ὅσοι μέντοι τῶν πολεμίων εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν κατέφυγον, πάντας ἐκέλευσεν [2] ἀφεθῆναι. πλησίον γὰρ ὁ νεώς ἐστιν ὁ τῆς Ἰτωνίας Ἀθηνᾶς, καὶ πρὸ αὐτοῦ τρόπαιον ἕστηκεν, ὃ πάλαι Βοιωτοὶ Σπάρτωνος στρατηγοῦντος ἐνταῦθα νικήσαντες Ἀθηναίους καὶ Τολμίδην ἀποκτείναντες ἔστησαν. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ βουλόμενος ἐξελέγξαι τοὺς Θηβαίους ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, εἰ διαμαχοῦνται, στεφανοῦσθαι μὲν ἐκέλευσε τοὺς στρατιώτας, αὐλεῖν δὲ τοὺς αὐλητάς, ἱστάναι [3] δὲ καὶ κοσμεῖν τρόπαιον ὡς νενικηκότας. ὡς δὲ ἔπεμψαν οἱ πολέμιοι νεκρῶν ἀναίρεσιν αἰτοῦντες, ἐσπείσατο, καὶ τὴν νίκην οὕτως ἐκβεβαιωσάμενος εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀπεκομίσθη, Πυθίων ἀγομένων, καὶ τήν τε πομπὴν ἐπετέλει τῷ θεῷ καὶ τὴν δεκάτην ἀπέθυε τῶν ἐκ τῆς Ἀσίας λαφύρων ἑκατὸν ταλάντων γενομένην.

[4] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀπενόστησεν οἴκαδε, προσφιλὴς μὲν ἦν εὐθὺς τοῖς πολίταις καὶ περίβλεπτος ἀπὸ τοῦ βίου καὶ τῆς διαίτης· οὐ γάρ, ὥσπερ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν στρατηγῶν, καινὸς ἐπανῆλθεν ἀπὸ τῆς ξένης καὶ κεκινημένος ὑπ’ ἀλλοτρίων ἐθῶν, καὶ δυσκολαίνων πρὸς τὰ οἴκοι καὶ ζυγομαχῶν, ἀλλὰ ὁμοίως τοῖς μηδεπώποτε τὸν Εὐρώταν διαβεβηκόσι τὰ παρόντα τιμῶν καὶ στέργων οὐ δεῖπνον [5] ἤλλαξεν, οὐ λουτρόν, οὐ θεραπείαν γυναικός, οὐχ ὅπλων κόσμον, οὐκ οἰκίας κατασκευήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς θύρας ἀφῆκεν οὕτως οὔσας σφόδρα παλαιάς, ὡς δοκεῖν εἶναι, ταύτας ἐκείνας ἃς ἐπέθηκεν Ἀριστόδημος. καὶ τὸ κάνναθρόν φησιν ὁ Ξενοφῶν οὐδέν τι σεμνότερον εἶναι τῆς ἐκείνου θυγατρὸς ἢ τῶν ἄλλων. κάνναθρα δὲ καλοῦσιν εἴδωλα γρυπῶν ξύλινα καὶ τραγελάφων ἐν οἷς κομίζουσι [6] τὰς παῖδας ἐν ταῖς πομπαῖς. ὁ μὲν οὖν Ξενοφῶν ὄνομα τῆς Ἀγησιλάου θυγατρὸς οὐ γέγραφε, καὶ ὁ Δικαίαρχος ἐπηγανάκτησεν ὡς μήτε τὴν Ἀγησιλάου θυγατέρα μήτε τὴν Ἐπαμινώνδου μητέρα γινωσκόντων ἡμῶν· ἡμεῖς δὲ εὕρομεν ἐν ταῖς Λακωνικαῖς ἀναγραφαῖς ὀνομαζομένην γυναῖκα μὲν Ἀγησιλάου Κλεόραν, θυγατέρας δὲ Εὐπωλίαν καὶ Πρόαυγαν. ἔστι δὲ καὶ λόγχην ἰδεῖν αὐτοῦ κειμένην ἄχρι νῦν ἐν Λακεδαίμονι, μηδὲν τῶν ἄλλων διαφέρουσαν.

[20] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ὁρῶν ἐνίους τῶν πολιτῶν ἀπὸ ἱπποτροφίας δοκοῦντας εἶναί τινας καὶ μέγα φρονοῦντας, ἔπεισε τὴν ἀδελφὴν Κυνίσκαν ἅρμα καθεῖσαν Ὀλυμπίασιν ἀγωνίσασθαι, βουλόμενος ἐνδείξασθαι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ὡς οὐδεμιᾶς ἐστιν ἀρετῆς, ἀλλὰ πλούτου καὶ δαπάνης ἡ νίκη.

[2] Ξενοφῶντα δὲ τὸν σοφὸν ἔχων μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ σπουδαζόμενον ἐκέλευε τοὺς παῖδας ἐν Λακεδαίμονι τρέφειν μεταπεμψάμενον, ὡς μαθησομένους τῶν μαθημάτων τὸ κάλλιστον, ἄρχεσθαι καὶ ἄρχειν. τοῦ δὲ Λυσάνδρου τετελευτηκότος εὑρὼν ἑταιρείαν πολλὴν συνεστῶσαν, ἣν ἐκεῖνος εὐθὺς ἐπανελθὼν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀσίας συνέστησεν ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀγησίλαον, ὥρμησεν αὐτὸν ἐξελέγχειν οἷος [3] ἦν ζῶν πολίτης· καὶ λόγον ἀναγνοὺς ἐν βιβλίῳ ἀπολελειμμένον, ὃν ἔγραψε μὲν Κλέων ὁ Ἁλικαρνασσεύς, ἔμελλε δὲ λέγειν ἀναλαβὼν ὁ Λύσανδρος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ περὶ πραγμάτων καινῶν καὶ μεταστάσεως τοῦ πολιτεύματος, ἠθέλησεν εἰς μέσον ἐξενεγκεῖν. ἐπεὶ δέ τις τῶν γερόντων τὸν λόγον ἀναγνοὺς καὶ φοβηθεὶς τὴν δεινότητα συνεβούλευσε μὴ τὸν Λύσανδρον ἀνορύττειν, ἀλλὰ τὸν λόγον μᾶλλον αὐτῷ συγκατορύττειν, ἐπείσθη [4] καὶ καθησύχαζε. τοὺς δὲ ὑπεναντιουμένους αὐτῷ φανερῶς μὲν οὐκ ἔβλαπτε, διαπραττόμενος δὲ πέμπεσθαί τινας ἀεὶ στρατηγοὺς καὶ ἄρχοντας ἐξ αὐτῶν, ἐπεδείκνυε γενομένους ἐν ταῖς ἐξουσίαις πονηροὺς καὶ πλεονέκτας, εἶτα κρινομένοις πάλιν αὖ βοηθῶν καὶ συναγωνιζόμενος, οἰκείους ἐκ διαφόρων ἐποιεῖτο καὶ μεθίστη πρὸς αὑτόν, ὥστε μηθένα ἀντίπαλον εἶναι.

[5] Ὁ γὰρ ἕτερος βασιλεὺς Ἀγησίπολις, ἅτε δὴ πατρὸς μὲν ὢν φυγάδος, ἡλικίᾳ δὲ παντάπασι μειράκιον, φύσει δὲ πρᾷος καὶ κόσμιος, οὐ πολλὰ τῶν πολιτικῶν ἔπραττεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτον ἐποιεῖτο χειροήθη. συσσιτοῦσι γὰρ οἱ βασιλεῖς εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ φοιτῶντες φιδίτιον, ὅταν [6] ἐπιδημῶσιν. εἰδὼς οὖν ἔνοχον ὄντα τοῖς ἐρωτικοῖς τὸν Ἀγησίπολιν, ὥσπερ ἦν αὐτός, ἀεί τινος ὑπῆρχε λόγου περὶ τῶν ἐν ὥρᾳ· καὶ προῆγε τὸν νεανίσκον εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ συνήρα καὶ συνέπραττε, τῶν Λακωνικῶν ἐρώτων οὐδὲν αἰσχρόν, αἰδῶ δὲ πολλὴν καὶ φιλοτιμίαν καὶ ζῆλον ἀρετῆς ἐχόντων, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ Λυκούργου γέγραπται.

[21] [1] Μέγιστον οὖν δυνάμενος ἐν τῇ πόλει διαπράττεται Τελευτίαν τὸν ὁμομήτριον ἀδελφὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ ναυτικοῦ γενέσθαι. καὶ στρατευσάμενος εἰς Κόρινθον αὐτὸς μὲν ᾕρει κατὰ γῆν τὰ μακρὰ τείχη, ταῖς δὲ ναυσὶν ὁ Τελευτίας ..... Ἀργείων δὲ τὴν Κόρινθον ἐχόντων τότε καὶ τὰ Ἴσθμια συντελούντων, ἐπιφανεὶς ἐκείνους μὲν ἐξήλασεν ἄρτι τῷ θεῷ τεθυκότας, τὴν παρασκευὴν [2] ἅπασαν ἀπολιπόντας· ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν Κορινθίων ὅσοι φυγάδες ἔτυχον παρόντες ἐδεήθησαν αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀγῶνα διαθεῖναι, τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἐποίησεν, αὐτῶν δὲ ἐκείνων διατιθέντων καὶ συντελούντων παρέμεινε καὶ παρέσχεν ἀσφάλειαν. ὕστερον δὲ ἀπελθόντος αὐτοῦ πάλιν ὑπ’ Ἀργείων ἤχθη τὰ Ἴσθμια, καί τινες μὲν ἐνίκησαν πάλιν, εἰσὶ δὲ οἳ νενικηκότες πρότερον, ἡττημένοι δὲ ὕστερον, [3] ἀνεγράφησαν. ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ πολλὴν ἀπέφηνε δειλίαν κατηγορεῖν ἑαυτῶν τοὺς Ἀργείους ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, εἰ σεμνὸν οὕτω καὶ μέγα τὴν ἀγωνοθεσίαν ἡγούμενοι μάχεσθαι περὶ αὐτῆς οὐκ ἐτόλμησαν. αὐτὸς δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα πάντα μετρίως ᾤετο δεῖν ἔχειν, καὶ τοὺς μὲν οἴκοι χοροὺς καὶ ἀγῶνας ἐπεκόσμει καὶ συμπαρῆν ἀεὶ φιλοτιμίας καὶ σπουδῆς μεστὸς ὢν καὶ οὔτε παίδων οὔτε παρθένων ἁμίλλης ἀπολειπόμενος, ἃ δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἑώρα θαυμάζοντας ἐδόκει μηδὲ γινώσκειν.

[4] καί ποτε Καλλιππίδης ὁ τῶν τραγῳδιῶν ὑποκριτής, ὄνομα καὶ δόξαν ἔχων ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ σπουδαζόμενος ὑπὸ πάντων, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπήντησεν αὐτῷ καὶ προσεῖπεν, ἔπειτα σοβαρῶς εἰς τοὺς συμπεριπατοῦντας ἐμβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν ἐπεδείκνυτο νομίζων ἐκεῖνον ἄρξειν τινὸς φιλοφροσύνης, τέλος δὲ εἶπεν· “Οὐκ ἐπιγινώσκεις με, ὦ βασιλεῦ;” κἀκεῖνος ἀποβλέψας πρὸς αὐτὸν εἶπεν· “Ἀλλὰ οὐ σύγε ἐσσὶ Καλλιππίδας ὁ δεικηλίκτας;” οὕτω δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τοὺς μίμους [5] καλοῦσι. παρακαλούμενος δὲ πάλιν ἀκοῦσαι τοῦ τὴν ἀηδόνα μιμουμένου, παρῃτήσατο φήσας, “Αὐτᾶς ἄκουκα.” τοῦ δὲ ἰατροῦ Μενεκράτους, ἐπεὶ κατατυχὼν ἔν τισιν ἀπεγνωσμέναις θεραπείαις Ζεὺς ἐπεκλήθη, φορτικῶς ταύτῃ χρωμένου τῇ προσωνυμίᾳ καὶ δὴ καὶ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἐπιστεῖλαι τολμήσαντος οὕτως· “Μενεκράτης Ζεὺς βασιλεῖ Ἀγησιλάῳ χαίρειν,” ἀντέγραψε· “Βασιλεὺς Ἀγησίλαος Μενεκράτει ὑγιαίνειν.”

[22] [1] Διατρίβοντος δὲ περὶ τὴν Κορινθίων αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ Ἡραῖον εἰληφότος καὶ τὰ αἰχμάλωτα τοὺς στρατιώτας ἄγοντας καὶ φέροντας ἐπιβλέποντος, ἀφίκοντο πρέσβεις ἐκ Θηβῶν περὶ φιλίας. ὁ δὲ μισῶν μὲν ἀεὶ τὴν πόλιν, οἰόμενος δὲ τότε καὶ συμφέρειν ἐνυβρίσαι, προσεποιεῖτο μήτε ὁρᾶν αὐτοὺς μήτε ἀκούειν ἐντυγχανόντων.

[2] ἔπαθε δὲ πρᾶγμα νεμεσητόν· οὔπω γὰρ ἀπηλλαγμένων τῶν Θηβαίων ἧκόν τινες ἀπαγγέλλοντες αὐτῷ τὴν μόραν ὑπὸ Ἰφικράτους κατακεκόφθαι. καὶ πάθος τοῦτο μέγα διὰ πολλοῦ χρόνου συνέπεσεν αὐτοῖς· πολλοὺς γὰρ ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς ἀπέβαλον κρατηθέντας ὑπό τε πελταστῶν ὁπλίτας καὶ μισθοφόρων Λακεδαιμονίους.

[3] Ἀνεπήδησε μὲν οὖν εὐθὺς ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ὡς βοηθήσων· ἐπεὶ δὲ ἔγνω διαπεπραγμένους, αὖθις εἰς τὸ Ἡραῖον ἧκε, καὶ τοὺς Βοιωτοὺς τότε προσελθεῖν κελεύσας, ἐχρημάτιζεν. ὡς δὲ ἀνθυβρίζοντες ἐκεῖνοι τῆς μὲν εἰρήνης οὐκ ἐμέμνηντο, παρεθῆναι δὲ ἠξίουν εἰς Κόρινθον, ὀργισθεὶς ὁ Ἀγησίλαος εἶπεν· “Εἴγε βούλεσθε τοὺς φίλους ὑμῶν ἰδεῖν μέγα φρονοῦντας ἐφ’ οἷς εὐτυχοῦσιν, [4] αὔριον ἀσφαλῶς ὑμῖν τοῦτο ὑπάρξει.” καὶ παραλαβὼν αὐτοὺς τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ τήν τε χώραν τῶν Κορινθίων ἔκοπτε καὶ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν αὐτὴν προσῆλθεν. οὕτω δὲ τοὺς Κορινθίους ἐξελέγξας ἀμύνεσθαι μὴ τολμῶντας, ἀφῆκε τὴν πρεσβείαν. αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς περιλελειμμένους ἄνδρας ἐκ τῆς μόρας ἀναλαβὼν ἀπῆγεν εἰς Λακεδαίμονα, πρὸ ἡμέρας ποιούμενος τὰς ἀναζεύξεις καὶ πάλιν σκοταίους τὰς καταλύσεις, ὅπως οἱ μισοῦντες καὶ βασκαίνοντες τῶν Ἀρκάδων μὴ ἐπιχαίρωσιν.

[5] Ἐκ τούτου χαριζόμενος τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς διέβαινεν εἰς Ἀκαρνανίαν στρατιᾷ μετ’ αὐτῶν, καὶ πολλὴν μὲν ἠλάσατο λείαν, μάχῃ δὲ τοὺς Ἀκαρνᾶνας ἐνίκησε. δεομένων δὲ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ὅπως τὸν χειμῶνα παραμείνας ἀφέληται τὸν σπόρον τῶν πολεμίων, τοὐναντίον ἔφη ποιήσειν· μᾶλλον γὰρ φοβηθήσεσθαι τὸν πόλεμον αὐτούς, ἐὰν ἐσπαρμένην τὴν γῆν εἰς ὥρας ἔχωσιν· ὃ καὶ συνέβη. παραγγελλομένης γὰρ αὖθις ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς στρατείας διηλλάγησαν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς.

[23] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Κόνων καὶ Φαρνάβαζος τῷ βασιλέως ναυτικῷ θαλαττοκρατοῦντες ἐπόρθουν τὰ παράλια τῆς Λακωνικῆς, ἐτειχίσθη δὲ καὶ τὸ ἄστυ τῶν Ἀθηναίων Φαρναβάζου χρήματα δόντος, ἔδοξε τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις εἰρήνην ποιεῖσθαι πρὸς βασιλέα· καὶ πέμπουσιν Ἀνταλκίδαν πρὸς Τιρίβαζον, αἴσχιστα καὶ παρανομώτατα τοὺς τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικοῦντας Ἕλληνας, ὑπὲρ ὧν ἐπολέμησεν [2] Ἀγησίλαος, βασιλεῖ παραδιδόντες. ὅθεν ἥκιστα συνέβη τῆς κακοδοξίας ταύτης Ἀγησιλάῳ μετασχεῖν. ὁ γὰρ Ἀνταλκίδας ἐχθρὸς ἦν αὐτῷ, καὶ τὴν εἰρήνην ἐξ ἅπαντος ἔπραττεν ὡς τοῦ πολέμου τὸν Ἀγησίλαον αὔξοντος καὶ ποιοῦντος ἐνδοξότατον καὶ μέγιστον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους μηδίζειν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἀπεκρίνατο μᾶλλον τοὺς Μήδους [3] λακωνίζειν. τοῖς δὲ μὴ βουλομένοις δέχεσθαι τὴν εἰρήνην ἀπειλῶν καὶ καταγγέλλων πόλεμον ἠνάγκασεν ἐμμένειν ἅπαντας οἷς ὁ Πέρσης ἐδικαίωσε, μάλιστα διὰ τοὺς Θηβαίους, ὅπως αὐτόνομον τὴν Βοιωτίαν ἀφέντες ἀσθενέστεροι γένωνται. δῆλον δὲ τοῦτο τοῖς ὕστερον ἐποίησεν. ἐπεὶ γὰρ Φοιβίδας ἔργον εἰργάσατο δεινὸν ἐν σπονδαῖς καὶ εἰρήνῃ τὴν Καδμείαν καταλαβών, καὶ πάντες μὲν ἠγανάκτουν οἱ Ἕλληνες, χαλεπῶς [4] δὲ ἔφερον οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται, καὶ μάλιστα οἱ διαφερόμενοι τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ μετ’ ὀργῆς ἐπυνθάνοντο τοῦ Φοιβίδου τίνος ταῦτα κελεύσαντος ἔπραξεν, εἰς ἐκεῖνον τὴν ὑπόνοιαν τρέποντες, οὐκ ὤκνησε τῷ Φοιβίδᾳ βοηθῶν λέγειν ἀναφανδὸν ὅτι δεῖ τὴν πρᾶξιν αὐτήν, εἴ τι χρήσιμον ἔχει, σκοπεῖν· τὰ γὰρ συμφέροντα τῇ Λακεδαίμονι καλῶς ἔχειν [5] αὐτοματίζεσθαι, κἂν μηδεὶς κελεύσῃ. καίτοι τῷ λόγῳ πανταχοῦ τὴν δικαιοσύνην ἀπέφαινε πρωτεύειν τῶν ἀρετῶν· ἀνδρείας μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ὄφελος εἶναι, μὴ παρούσης δικαιοσύνης, εἰ δὲ δίκαιοι πάντες γένοιντο, μηδὲν ἀνδρείας δεήσεσθαι. πρὸς δὲ τοὺς λέγοντας ὅτι ταῦτα δοκεῖ τῷ μεγάλῳ βασιλεῖ, “Τί δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἐμοῦ,” εἶπε, “μείζων, εἰ μὴ καὶ δικαιότερος;” ὀρθῶς καὶ καλῶς οἰόμενος δεῖν τῷ δικαίῳ καθάπερ μέτρῳ βασιλικῷ μετρεῖσθαι [6] τὴν ὑπεροχὴν τοῦ μείζονος. ἣν δὲ τῆς εἰρήνης γενομένης ἔπεμψεν αὐτῷ περὶ ξενίας καὶ φιλίας ἐπιστολὴν ὁ βασιλεύς, οὐκ ἔλαβεν, εἰπὼν ἐξαρκεῖν τὴν κοινὴν φιλίαν, καὶ μηδὲν ἰδίας δεήσεσθαι μενούσης ἐκείνης. ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἔργοις οὐκέτι ταύτην διαφυλάττων τὴν δόξαν, ἀλλὰ τῇ φιλοτιμίᾳ καὶ τῇ φιλονεικίᾳ πολλαχοῦ συνεκφερόμενος, [7] καὶ μάλιστα τῇ πρὸς Θηβαίους, οὐ μόνον ἔσωσε τὸν Φοιβίδαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἔπεισεν εἰς αὑτὴν ἀναδέξασθαι τὸ ἀδίκημα καὶ κατέχειν τὴν Καδμείαν δι’ ἑαυτῆς, τῶν δὲ πραγμάτων καὶ τῆς πολιτείας Ἀρχίαν καὶ Λεοντίδαν ἀποδεῖξαι κυρίους, δι’ ὧν ὁ Φοιβίδας εἰσῆλθε καὶ κατέλαβε τὴν ἀκρόπολιν.

[24] [1] Ἦν μὲν οὖν εὐθὺς ἐκ τούτων ὑπόνοια Φοιβίδου μὲν ἔργον εἶναι, βούλευμα δὲ Ἀγησιλάου τὸ πεπραγμένον· αἱ δὲ ὕστερον πράξεις ὁμολογουμένην ἐποίησαν τὴν αἰτίαν. ὡς γὰρ ἐξέβαλον οἱ Θηβαῖοι τὴν φρουρὰν καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἠλευθέρωσαν, ἐγκαλῶν αὐτοῖς ὅτι τὸν Ἀρχίαν καὶ τὸν Λεοντίδαν ἀπεκτόνεσαν, ἔργῳ μὲν τυράννους, λόγῳ δὲ πολεμάρχους ὄντας, ἐξήνεγκε [2] πόλεμον πρὸς αὐτούς. καὶ Κλεόμβροτος ἤδη βασιλεύων Ἀγησιπόλιδος τεθνηκότος, εἰς Βοιωτίαν ἐπέμφθη μετὰ δυνάμεως· ὁ γὰρ Ἀγησίλαος, ὡς ἔτη τεσσαράκοντα γεγονὼς ἀφ’ ἥβης καὶ στρατείας ἔχων ἄφεσιν ὑπὸ τῶν νόμων, ἔφυγε τὴν στρατηγίαν ἐκείνην, αἰσχυνόμενος εἰ Φλιασίοις ὀλίγον ἔμπροσθεν ὑπὲρ φυγάδων πεπολεμηκώς, αὖθις ὀφθήσεται Θηβαίους κακῶς ποιῶν διὰ τοὺς τυράννους.

[3] Ἦν δέ τις Λάκων Σφοδρίας ἐκ τῆς ὑπεναντίας στάσεως τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ τεταγμένος ἐν Θεσπιαῖς ἁρμοστής, οὐκ ἄτολμος μὲν οὐδ’ ἀφιλότιμος ἀνήρ, ἀεὶ δ’ ἐλπίδων μᾶλλον ἢ φρενῶν ἀγαθῶν μεστός. οὗτος ἐπιθυμῶν ὀνόματος μεγάλου, καὶ τὸν Φοιβίδαν νομίζων ἔνδοξον γεγονέναι καὶ περιβόητον ἀπὸ τοῦ περὶ Θήβας τολμήματος, ἐπείσθη πολὺ κάλλιον εἶναι καὶ λαμπρότερον εἰ τὸν Πειραιᾶ καταλάβοι δι’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀφέλοιτο τὴν θάλασσαν, ἐκ γῆς ἀπροσδοκήτως [4] ἐπελθών. λέγουσι δὲ τοῦτο μηχάνημα γενέσθαι τῶν περὶ Πελοπίδαν καὶ Μέλωνα βοιωταρχῶν. ὑπέπεμψαν γὰρ ἀνθρώπους λακωνίζειν προσποιουμένους, οἳ τὸν Σφοδρίαν ἐπαινοῦντες καὶ μεγαλύνοντες ὡς ἔργου τηλικούτου μόνον ἄξιον, ἐπῆραν καὶ παρώρμησεν ἀνελέσθαι πρᾶξιν ἄδικον μὲν ὁμοίως ἐκείνῃ καὶ παράνομον, τόλμης δὲ καὶ [5] τύχης ἐνδεᾶ γενομένην. ἡμέρα γὰρ αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ Θριασίῳ πεδίῳ κατέλαβε καὶ κατέλαμψεν ἐλπίσαντα νυκτὸς προσμίξειν τῷ Πειραιεῖ· καὶ φῶς ἀφ’ ἱερῶν τινων Ἐλευσινόθεν ἰδόντας λέγουσι φρῖξαι καὶ περιφόβους γενέσθαι τοὺς στρατιώτας. αὐτὸς δὲ τοῦ θράσους ἐξέπεσεν, ὡς οὐκέτι λαθεῖν ἦν, καί τινα βραχεῖαν ἁρπαγὴν θέμενος αἰσχρῶς [6] ἀνεχώρησε καὶ ἀδόξως εἰς τὰς Θεσπιάς. ἐκ δὲ τούτου κατήγοροι μὲν ἐπέμφθησαν εἰς Σπάρτην ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν, εὗρον δὲ κατηγορίας μηδὲν ἐπὶ τὸν Σφοδρίαν δεομένους τοὺς ἄρχοντας, ἀλλὰ θανάτου κρίσιν αὐτῷ προειρηκότας, ἣν ἐκεῖνος ὑπομένειν ἀπέγνω, φοβούμενος τὴν ὀργὴν τῶν πολιτῶν αἰσχυνομένων τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ βουλομένων συναδικεῖσθαι δοκεῖν, ἵνα μὴ συναδικεῖν δοκῶσιν.

[25] [1] Εἶχεν οὖν υἱὸν ὁ Σφοδρίας Κλεώνυμον, οὗ παιδὸς ὄντος ἔτι καὶ καλοῦ τὴν ὄψιν Ἀρχίδαμος ὁ Ἀγησιλάου τοῦ βασιλέως υἱὸς ἤρα. καὶ τότε συνηγωνία μὲν ὡς εἰκὸς αὐτῷ κινδυνεύοντι περὶ τοῦ πατρός, συμπράττειν δὲ φανερῶς καὶ βοηθεῖν οὐκ εἶχεν· ἦν γὰρ ὁ Σφοδρίας ἐκ τῶν [2] διαφόρων τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου. τοῦ δὲ Κλεωνύμου προσελθόντος αὐτῷ καὶ μετὰ δεήσεως καὶ δακρύων ἐντυχόντος, ὅπως τὸν Ἀγησίλαον εὔνουν παράσχῃ, μάλιστα γὰρ ἐκεῖνον αὐτοῖς φοβερὸν εἶναι, τρεῖς μὲν ἢ τέσσαρας ἡμέρας αἰδούμενος τὸν πατέρα καὶ δεδιὼς σιωπῇ παρηκολούθει· τέλος δὲ τῆς κρίσεως ἐγγὺς οὔσης ἐτόλμησεν εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ὅτι Κλεώνυμος αὐτοῦ [3] δεηθείη περὶ τοῦ πατρός. ὁ δὲ Ἀγησίλαος εἰδὼς ἐρῶντα τὸν Ἀρχίδαμον οὐκ ἔπαυσεν· ἦν γὰρ ὁ Κλεώνυμος εὐθὺς ἐκ παίδων ἐπίδοξος, εἴ τις καὶ ἄλλος, ἀνὴρ ἔσεσθαι σπουδαῖος. οὐ μὴν ἐνέδωκέ τι τότε χρηστὸν ἢ φιλάνθρωπον ἐλπίσαι δεομένῳ τῷ παιδί, σκέψεσθαι δὲ φήσας ὅ τι καλῶς ἔχοι [4] καὶ πρεπόντως, ἀπῆλθεν. αἰδούμενος οὖν ὁ Ἀρχίδαμος ἐξέλειπε τὸ προσιέναι τῷ Κλεωνύμῳ, καίπερ εἰωθὼς πολλάκις τοῦτο τῆς ἡμέρας ποιεῖν πρότερον. ἐκ δὲ τούτου κἀκεῖνοι τὰ κατὰ τὸν Σφοδρίαν μᾶλλον ἀπέγνωσαν, ἄχρι οὗ τῶν Ἀγησιλάου φίλων Ἐτυμοκλῆς ἔν τινι κοινολογίᾳ πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἀπεγύμνωσε τὴν γνώμην τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἔργον ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα ψέγειν αὐτόν, ἄλλως γε μὴν ἄνδρα τὸν Σφοδρίαν ἀγαθὸν ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ τὴν πόλιν ὁρᾶν τοιούτων στρατιωτῶν [5] δεομένην. τούτους γὰρ ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἑκάστοτε τοὺς λόγους ἐποιεῖτο περὶ τῆς δίκης, τῷ παιδὶ χαρίζεσθαι βουλόμενος, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Κλεώνυμον εὐθὺς αἰσθάνεσθαι τὴν σπουδὴν τοῦ Ἀρχιδάμου καὶ τοὺς φίλους τοὺς τοῦ Σφοδρίου θαρροῦντας ἤδη βοηθεῖν. ἦν δὲ καὶ φιλότεκνος ὁ Ἀγησίλαος διαφερόντως· καὶ περὶ ἐκείνου τὸ τῆς παιδιᾶς λέγουσιν, ὅτι μικροῖς τοῖς παιδίοις οὖσι κάλαμον περιβεβηκὼς ὥσπερ ἵππον οἴκοι συνέπαιζεν, ὀφθεὶς δὲ ὑπό τινος τῶν φίλων παρεκάλει μηδενὶ φράσαι, πρὶν ἂν καὶ αὐτὸς πατὴρ παίδων γένηται.

[26] [1] Ἀπολυθέντος δὲ τοῦ Σφοδρίου, καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ὡς ἐπύθοντο, πρὸς πόλεμον τραπομένων, σφόδρα κακῶς ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἤκουσε, δι’ ἐπιθυμίαν ἄτοπον καὶ παιδαριώδη δοκῶν ἐμποδὼν γεγονέναι κρίσει δικαίᾳ, καὶ τὴν πόλιν παραίτιον ἀπειργάσθαι παρανομημάτων τηλικούτων [2] εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸν Κλεόμβροτον οὐχ ἑώρα πρόθυμον ὄντα πολεμεῖν τοῖς Θηβαίοις, οὕτω δὴ χαίρειν τὸν νόμον ἐάσας ᾧ πρόσθεν ἐχρῆτο περὶ τῆς στρατείας, αὐτὸς εἰς Βοιωτίαν ἐνέβαλεν ἤδη καὶ κακῶς ἐποίει τοὺς Θηβαίους καὶ πάλιν ἀντέπασχεν, ὥστε καὶ τρωθέντος αὐτοῦ ποτε τὸν Ἀνταλκίδαν εἰπεῖν· “Ἦ καλὰ τὰ διδασκάλια παρὰ Θηβαίων ἀπολαμβάνεις, μὴ βουλομένους μηδὲ ἐπισταμένους [3] μάχεσθαι διδάξας.” τῷ γὰρ ὄντι Θηβαίους αὐτοὺς ἑαυτῶν πολεμικωτάτους τότε γενέσθαι φασί, ταῖς πολλαῖς στρατείαις τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ὥσπερ ἐγγυμνασαμένους. διὸ καὶ Λυκοῦργος ὁ παλαιὸς ἐν ταῖς καλουμέναις τρισὶ ῥήτραις ἀπεῖπε μὴ πολλάκις ἐπὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς στρατεύειν, ὅπως μὴ πολεμεῖν μανθάνωσιν.

Ἦν δὲ καὶ τοῖς συμμάχοις τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἐπαχθὴς ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, ὡς δι’ οὐδὲν ἔγκλημα δημόσιον, ἀλλὰ θυμῷ τινι καὶ φιλονεικίᾳ τοὺς [4] Θηβαίους ἀπολέσαι ζητῶν. οὐδὲν οὖν ἔλεγον δεόμενοι φθείρεσθαι δεῦρο κἀκεῖσε καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν, ὀλίγοις τοσοῦτοι συνακολουθοῦντες. ἔνθα δὲ δὴ λέγεται τὸν Ἀγησίλαον, ἐξελέγξαι βουλόμενον αὐτῶν τὸ πλῆθος, τόδε μηχανήσασθαι. πάντας ἐκέλευσε καθίσαι τοὺς συμμάχους μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἀναμεμιγμένους, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους [5] ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν. εἶτα ἐκήρυττε τοὺς κεραμεῖς ἀνίστασθαι πρῶτον· ὡς δὲ ἀνέστησαν οὗτοι, δεύτερον ἐκήρυττε τοὺς χαλκεῖς, εἶτα τέκτονας ἐφεξῆς καὶ οἰκοδόμους καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τεχνῶν ἑκάστην. πάντες οὖν ὀλίγου δεῖν ἀνέστησαν οἱ σύμμαχοι, τῶν δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων οὐδείς· ἀπείρητο γὰρ αὐτοῖς τέχνην ἐργάζεσθαι καὶ μανθάνειν βάναυσον. οὕτω δὴ γελάσας ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, “Ὁρᾶτε,” εἶπεν, “ὦ ἄνδρες, ὅσῳ πλείονας ὑμῶν στρατιώτας ἐκπέμπομεν ἡμεῖς.”

[27] [1] Ἐν δὲ Μεγάροις, ὅτε τὴν στρατιὰν ἀπῆγεν ἐκ Θηβῶν, ἀναβαίνοντος αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὸ ἀρχεῖον εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, σπάσμα καὶ πόνον ἰσχυρὸν ἔλαβε τὸ ὑγιὲς σκέλος· ἐκ δὲ τούτου διογκωθὲν μεστὸν αἵματος ἔδοξε γεγονέναι, καὶ [2] φλεγμονὴν ὑπερβάλλουσαν παρεῖχεν. ἰατροῦ δέ τινος Συρακουσίου τὴν ὑπὸ τῷ σφυρῷ φλέβα σχάσαντος, αἱ μὲν ἀλγηδόνες ἔληξαν, αἵματος δὲ πολλοῦ φερομένου καὶ ῥέοντος ἀνεπισχέτως λιποψυχία πολλὴ καὶ κίνδυνος ὀξὺς ἀπ’ αὐτῆς περιέστη τὸν Ἀγησίλαον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τότε γε τὴν φορὰν τοῦ αἵματος ἔπαυσε· καὶ κομισθεὶς εἰς Λακεδαίμονα πολὺν χρόνον ἔσχεν ἀρρώστως καὶ πρὸς τὰς στρατείας ἀδυνάτως.

[3] Ἐν δὲ τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ πολλὰ συνέβη πταίσματα τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν· ὧν ἦν τὸ περὶ Τεγύρας μέγιστον, ὅπου πρῶτον ἐκ παρατάξεως κρατηθέντες ὑπὸ Θηβαίων ἡττήθησαν. ἔδοξεν οὖν πᾶσι θέσθαι πρὸς πάντας εἰρήνην· καὶ συνῆλθον ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος πρέσβεις εἰς Λακεδαίμονα ποιησόμενοι τὰς διαλύσεις.

[4] ὧν εἷς ἦν Ἐπαμεινώνδας, ἀνὴρ ἔνδοξος ἐπὶ παιδείᾳ καὶ φιλοσοφίᾳ, στρατηγίας δὲ πεῖραν οὔπω δεδωκώς. οὗτος ὁρῶν τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας ὑποκατακλινομένους τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ, μόνος ἐχρήσατο φρονήματι παρρησίαν ἔχοντι, καὶ διεξῆλθε λόγον, οὐχ ὑπὲρ Θηβαίων, ἀλλὰ ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὁμοῦ κοινόν, τὸν μὲν πόλεμον ἀποδεικνύων αὔξοντα τὴν Σπάρτην ἐξ ὧν ἅπαντες οἱ λοιποὶ κακῶς πάσχουσι, τὴν δὲ εἰρήνην ἰσότητι καὶ τῷ δικαίῳ κτᾶσθαι κελεύων· οὕτω γὰρ αὐτὴν διαμενεῖν, ἴσων ἁπάντων γενομένων.

[28] [1] Ὁρῶν οὖν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ὑπερφυῶς ἀγαμένους καὶ προσέχοντας αὐτῷ τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ἠρώτησεν εἰ νομίζει δίκαιον εἶναι καὶ ἴσον αὐτονομεῖσθαι τὴν Βοιωτίαν. ἀντερωτήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Ἐπαμεινώνδου ταχὺ καὶ τεθαρρηκότως εἰ κἀκεῖνος οἴεται δίκαιον αὐτονομεῖσθαι τὴν Λακωνικήν, ἀναπηδήσας ὁ Ἀγησίλαος μετ’ ὀργῆς ἐκέλευσε λέγειν σαφῶς αὐτὸν εἰ τὴν Βοιωτίαν ἀφίησιν [2] αὐτόνομον. τὸ δὲ αὐτὸ τοῦτο πάλιν τοῦ Ἐπαμεινώνδου φήσαντος, εἰ τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἀφίησιν αὐτόνομον, οὕτω τραχέως ἔσχεν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος καὶ τὴν πρόφασιν ἠγάπησεν ὡς εὐθὺς ἐξαλεῖψαι τὸ τῶν Θηβαίων ὄνομα τῆς εἰρήνης καὶ προειπεῖν πόλεμον αὐτοῖς· τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους Ἕλληνας διαλλαγέντας ἐκέλευσεν ἀπιέναι, τὰ μὲν ἀκεστὰ τῆς εἰρήνης, τὰ δὲ ἀνήκεστα τοῦ πολέμου ποιοῦντας. ἔργον γὰρ ἦν πάσας ἐκκαθᾶραι καὶ διαλῦσαι τὰς ἀμφιλογίας.

[3] Ἔτυχε δὲ κατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον ἐν Φωκεῦσιν ὢν ὁ Κλεόμβροτος μετὰ δυνάμεως. εὐθὺς οὖν ἔπεμπον οἱ ἔφοροι κελεύοντες αὐτὸν ἐπὶ Θηβαίους ἄγειν τὸ στράτευμα· καὶ τοὺς συμμάχους περιπέμποντες ἤθροιζον, ἀπροθύμους μὲν ὄντας καὶ βαρυνομένους τὸν πόλεμον, οὔπω δὲ θαρροῦντας ἀντιλέγειν οὐδὲ ἀπειθεῖν τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις.

[4] πολλῶν δὲ σημείων μοχθηρῶν γενομένων, ὡς ἐν τῷ περὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδου γέγραπται, καὶ Προθόου τοῦ Λάκωνος ἐναντιουμένου πρὸς τὴν στρατείαν, οὐκ ἀνῆκεν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, ἀλλ’ ἐξέπραξε τὸν πόλεμον, ἐλπίζων αὐτοῖς μὲν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὅλης ὑπαρχούσης, ἐκσπόνδων δὲ τῶν Θηβαίων γενομένων, καιρὸν εἶναι δίκην λαβεῖν [5] παρ’ αὐτῶν. δηλοῖ δὲ τὸ σὺν ὀργῇ μᾶλλον ἢ λογισμῷ γενέσθαι τὴν στρατείαν ἐκείνην ὁ καιρός. τῇ γὰρ τετράδι ἐπὶ δέκα τοῦ Σκιροφοριῶνος μηνὸς ἐποιήσαντο τὰς σπονδὰς ἐν Λακεδαίμονι, τῇ δὲ πέμπτῃ τοῦ Ἑκατομβαιῶνος ἡττήθησαν ἐν Λεύκτροις ἡμερῶν εἴκοσι διαγενομένων. ἀπέθανον δὲ χίλιοι Λακεδαιμονίων καὶ Κλεόμβροτος ὁ βασιλεὺς καὶ περὶ αὐτὸν οἱ κράτιστοι [6] τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν. ἐν οἷς καὶ Κλεώνυμόν φασι τὸν Σφοδρίου τὸν καλὸν τρὶς πεσόντα πρὸ τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ τοσαυτάκις ἐξαναστάντα καὶ μαχόμενον τοῖς Θηβαίοις ἀποθανεῖν.

[29] [1] Συμβάντος δὲ τοῖς τε Λακεδαιμονίοις πταίσματος ἀπροσδοκήτου καὶ τοῖς Θηβαίοις παρὰ δόξαν εὐτυχήματος οἷον οὐ γέγονεν ἄλλοις Ἕλλησι πρὸς Ἕλληνας ἀγωνισαμένοις, οὐδὲν ἄν τις ἧττον ἐζήλωσε τῆς ἀρετῆς καὶ ἠγάσθη τὴν [2] ἡττημένην πόλιν ἢ τὴν νικῶσαν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ξενοφῶν φησι τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ἔχειν τι καὶ τὰς ἐν οἴνῳ καὶ παιδιᾷ φωνὰς καὶ διατριβὰς ἀξιομνημόνευτον, ὀρθῶς λέγων· ἔστι δὲ οὐχ ἧττον, ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον ἄξιον κατανοεῖν καὶ θεᾶσθαι τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἃ παρὰ τὰς τύχας πράττουσι καὶ λέγουσι διευσχημονοῦντες. ἔτυχε μὲν γὰρ ἡ πόλις ἑορτὴν ἄγουσα καὶ ξένων οὖσα μεστή· γυμνοπαιδίαι γὰρ ἦσαν ἀγωνιζομένων χορῶν ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ· παρῆσαν δ’ ἀπὸ Λεύκτρων οἱ τὴν [3] συμφορὰν ἀπαγγέλλοντες. οἱ δὲ ἔφοροι, καίπερ εὐθὺς ὄντος καταφανοῦς ὅτι διέφθαρται τὰ πράγματα καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπολωλέκασιν, οὔτε χορὸν ἐξελθεῖν εἴασαν οὔτε τὸ σχῆμα τῆς ἑορτῆς μεταβαλεῖν τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλὰ κατ’ οἰκίαν τῶν τεθνεώτων τοῖς προσήκουσι τὰ ὀνόματα πέμψαντες, αὐτοὶ τὰ περὶ τὴν θέαν καὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα τῶν χορῶν [4] ἔπραττον. ἅμα δὲ ἡμέρᾳ φανερῶν ἤδη γεγονότων πᾶσι τῶν τε σωζομένων καὶ τῶν τεθνεώτων, οἱ μὲν τῶν τεθνεώτων πατέρες καὶ κηδεσταὶ καὶ οἰκεῖοι καταβαίνοντες εἰς ἀγορὰν ἀλλήλους ἐδεξιοῦντο λιπαροὶ τὰ πρόσωπα, φρονήματος μεστοὶ καὶ γήθους, οἱ δὲ τῶν σωζομένων, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ πένθει, μετὰ τῶν γυναικῶν οἴκοι διέτριβον, εἰ δέ τις ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης προέλθοι, καὶ σχήματι καὶ φωνῇ καὶ βλέμματι ταπεινὸς ἐφαίνετο καὶ συνεσταλμένος.

[5] ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον τῶν γυναικῶν ἰδεῖν ἦν καὶ πυθέσθαι τὴν μὲν ζῶντα προσδεχομένην υἱὸν ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης κατηφῆ καὶ σιωπηλήν, τὰς δὲ τῶν πεπτωκέναι λεγομένων ἔν τε τοῖς ἱεροῖς εὐθὺς ἀναστρεφομένας, καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλας ἱλαρῶς καὶ φιλοτίμως βαδιζούσας.

[30] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς, ὡς ἀφίσταντο μὲν οἱ σύμμαχοι, προσεδοκᾶτο δὲ νενικηκὼς Ἐπαμεινώνδας καὶ μεγαλοφρονῶν ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς Πελοπόννησον, ἔννοια τῶν χρησμῶν ἐνέπεσε τότε, πρὸς τὴν χωλότητα τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου, καὶ δυσθυμία πολλὴ καὶ πτοία πρὸς τὸ θεῖον, ὡς διὰ τοῦτο πραττούσης κακῶς τῆς πόλεως, ὅτι τὸν ἀρτίποδα τῆς βασιλείας ἐκβαλόντες εἵλοντο χωλὸν καὶ πεπηρωμένον· ὃ παντὸς μᾶλλον αὐτοὺς ἐδίδασκε φράζεσθαι καὶ φυλάττεσθαι τὸ [2] δαιμόνιον. διὰ δὲ τὴν ἄλλην δύναμιν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀρετὴν καὶ δόξαν οὐ μόνον ἐχρῶντο βασιλεῖ καὶ στρατηγῷ τῶν κατὰ πόλεμον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν πολιτικῶν ἀποριῶν ἰατρῷ καὶ διαιτητῇ, τοῖς ἐν τῇ μάχῃ καταδειλιάσασιν, οὓς αὐτοὶ τρέσαντας ὀνομάζουσιν, ὀκνοῦντες τὰς ἐκ τῶν νόμων ἀτιμίας προσάγειν, πολλοῖς οὖσι καὶ δυνατοῖς, φοβούμενοι [3] νεωτερισμὸν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἀρχῆς ἀπείργονται πάσης, ἀλλὰ καὶ δοῦναί τινι τούτων γυναῖκα καὶ λαβεῖν ἄδοξόν ἐστι· παίει δὲ ὁ βουλόμενος αὐτοὺς τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων. οἱ δὲ καρτεροῦσι περιϊόντες αὐχμηροὶ καὶ ταπεινοί, τρίβωνάς τε προσερραμμένους χρώματος βαπτοῦ φοροῦσι, καὶ ξυρῶνται μέρος τῆς ὑπήνης, μέρος δὲ [4] τρέφουσι. δεινὸν οὖν ἦν τοιούτους ἐν τῇ πόλει περιορᾶν πολλοὺς οὐκ ὀλίγων δεομένῃ στρατιωτῶν. καὶ νομοθέτην αἱροῦνται τὸν Ἀγησίλαον. ὁ δὲ μήτε προσθείς τι μήτε ἀφελὼν μήτε μεταγράψας εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸ πλῆθος τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων· καὶ φήσας ὅτι τοὺς νόμους δεῖ σήμερον ἐᾶν καθεύδειν, ἐκ δὲ τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας κυρίους εἶναι πρὸς τὸ λοιπόν, ἅμα τούς τε νόμους τῇ [5] πόλει καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπιτίμους ἐφύλαξε. βουλόμενος δὲ τὴν παροῦσαν ἀθυμίαν καὶ κατήφειαν ἀφελεῖν τῶν νέων ἐνέβαλεν εἰς Ἀρκαδίαν, καὶ μάχην μὲν ἰσχυρῶς ἐφυλάξατο συνάψαι τοῖς ἐναντίοις, ἑλὼν δὲ πολίχνην τινὰ τῶν Μαντινέων καὶ τὴν χώραν ἐπιδραμών, ἐλαφροτέραν ἐποίησε ταῖς ἐλπίσι καὶ ἡδίω τὴν πόλιν, ὡς οὐ παντάπασιν ἀπεγνωσμένην.

[31] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου παρῆν εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας μετὰ τῶν συμμάχων, οὐκ ἐλάττονας ἔχων τετρακισμυρίων ὁπλιτῶν. πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ ψιλοὶ καὶ ἄνοπλοι πρὸς ἁρπαγὴν συνηκολούθουν, ὥστε μυριάδας ἑπτὰ τοῦ σύμπαντος ὄχλου συνεισβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν Λακωνικήν.

[2] ἦν μὲν δὴ χρόνος οὐκ ἐλάττων ἐτῶν ἑξακοσίων ἀφ’ οὗ κατῴκουν τὴν Λακεδαίμονα Δωριεῖς· ἐν δὲ τούτῳ παντὶ τότε πρῶτον ὤφθησαν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ πολέμιοι, πρότερον δὲ οὐδεὶς ἐτόλμησεν· ἀλλὰ ἀδῄωτον καὶ ἄθικτον οὖσαν ἐμβαλόντες ἐπυρπόλουν καὶ διήρπαζον ἄχρι τοῦ ποταμοῦ καὶ τῆς [3] πόλεως, μηδενὸς ἐπεξιόντος. ὁ γὰρ Ἀγησίλαος οὐκ εἴα πρὸς τοσοῦτον, ὥς φησι Θεόπομπος, “ῥεῦμα καὶ κλύδωνα πολέμου” μάχεσθαι τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, ἀλλὰ τῆς πόλεως τὰ μέσα καὶ κυριώτατα τοῖς ὁπλίταις περιεσπειραμένος ἐκαρτέρει τὰς ἀπειλὰς καὶ τὰς μεγαλαυχίας τῶν Θηβαίων, προκαλουμένων ἐκεῖνον ὀνομαστὶ καὶ διαμάχεσθαι περὶ τῆς χώρας κελευόντων, ὃς τῶν [4] κακῶν αἴτιός ἐστιν ἐκκαύσας τὸν πόλεμον. οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τούτων ἐλύπουν τὸν Ἀγησίλαον οἱ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν θόρυβοι καὶ κραυγαὶ καὶ διαδρομαὶ τῶν τε πρεσβυτέρων δυσανασχετούντων τὰ γινόμενα καὶ τῶν γυναικῶν οὐ δυναμένων ἡσυχάζειν, ἀλλὰ παντάπασιν ἐκφρόνων οὐσῶν πρός τε τὴν [5] κραυγὴν καὶ τὸ πῦρ τῶν πολεμίων. ἠνία δὲ καὶ τὸ τῆς δόξης αὐτόν, ὅτι τὴν πόλιν μεγίστην παραλαβὼν καὶ δυνατωτάτην, ἑώρα συνεσταλμένον αὐτῆς τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ τὸ αὔχημα κεκολουμένον, ᾧ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐχρήσατο πολλάκις, εἰπὼν ὅτι γυνὴ Λάκαινα καπνὸν οὐχ ἑώρακε πολέμιον. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Ἀνταλκίδας, Ἀθηναίου τινὸς ἀμφισβητοῦντος ὑπὲρ ἀνδρείας πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ εἰπόντος, “Ἡμεῖς μέντοι πολλάκις ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ Κηφισοῦ ἐδιώξαμεν,” ὑποτυχεῖν· “Ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς [6] γε οὐδέποτε ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ Εὐρώτα.” παραπλησίως δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὸν Ἀργεῖον ἀπεκρίνατο τῶν ἀσημοτέρων τις Σπαρτιατῶν· ὁ μὲν γὰρ εἶπε· “Πολλοὶ ὑμῶν ἐν τῇ Ἀργολίδι κεῖνται,” ὁ δὲ ἀπήντησεν· “Ὑμῶν δέ γε οὐδεὶς ἐν τῇ Λακωνικῇ.”

[32] [1] Τότε μέντοι τὸν Ἀνταλκίδαν φασὶν ἔφορον ὄντα τοὺς παῖδας εἰς Κύθηρα ὑπεκθέσθαι, περίφοβον γενόμενον. ὁ δὲ Ἀγησίλαος, ἐπιχειρούντων διαβαίνειν τὸν ποταμὸν τῶν πολεμίων καὶ βιάζεσθαι πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, ἐκλιπὼν τὰ λοιπὰ [2] παρετάξατο πρὸ τῶν μέσων καὶ ὑψηλῶν. ἐρρύη δὲ πλεῖστος ἑαυτοῦ καὶ μέγιστος τότε ὁ Εὐρώτας, χιόνων γενομένων, καὶ τὸ ῥεῦμα μᾶλλον ὑπὸ ψυχρότητος ἢ τραχύτητος ἐγένετο σκληρὸν καὶ χαλεπὸν τοῖς Θηβαίοις. πορευόμενον δὲ πρῶτον τῆς φάλαγγος τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ἐδείκνυσάν τινες τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ· κἀκεῖνος, ὡς λέγεται, πολὺν χρόνον ἐμβλέψας αὐτῷ καὶ συμπαραπέμψας τὴν ὄψιν οὐδὲν ἢ τοσοῦτον μόνον εἶπεν· “Ὢ τοῦ [3] μεγαλοπράγμονος ἀνθρώπου.” ἐπεὶ δὲ φιλοτιμούμενος ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας ἐν τῇ πόλει μάχην συνάψαι καὶ στῆσαι τρόπαιον οὐκ ἴσχυσεν ἐξαγαγεῖν οὐδὲ προκαλέσασθαι τὸν Ἀγησίλαον, ἐκεῖνος μὲν ἀναζεύξας πάλιν ἐπόρθει τὴν χώραν, ἐν δὲ Λακεδαίμονι τῶν πάλαι τινὲς ὑπούλων καὶ πονηρῶν ὡς διακόσιοι συστραφέντες κατελάβοντο τὸ Ἰσσώριον, οὗ τὸ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος ἱερόν ἐστιν, [4] εὐερκῆ καὶ δυσεκβίαστον τόπον. ἐφ’ οὓς βουλομένων εὐθὺς ὠθεῖσθαι τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, φοβηθεὶς τὸν νεωτερισμὸν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἐκέλευσε τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, αὐτὸς δὲ ἐν ἱματίῳ καὶ μεθ’ ἑνὸς οἰκέτου προσῄει, βοῶν ἄλλως ἀκηκοέναι τοῦ προστάγματος αὐτούς· οὐ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα κελεῦσαι συνελθεῖν οὐδὲ πάντας, ἀλλὰ τοὺς μὲν ἐκεῖ (δείξας ἕτερον τόπον), τοὺς δὲ [5] ἀλλαχόσε τῆς πόλεως. οἱ δὲ ἀκούσαντες ἥσθησαν οἰόμενοι λανθάνειν, καὶ διαστάντες ἐπὶ τοὺς τόπους οὓς ἐκεῖνος ἐκέλευσεν ἀπεχώρουν. ὁ δὲ τὸ μὲν Ἰσσώριον εὐθὺς μεταπεμψάμενος ἑτέρους κατέσχε, τῶν δὲ συστάντων ἐκείνων περὶ πεντεκαίδεκά τινας συλλαβὼν νυκτὸς ἀπέκτεινεν.

[6] ἄλλη δὲ μείζων ἐμηνύθη συνωμοσία καὶ σύνοδος ἀνδρῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ἐπὶ πράγμασι νεωτέροις εἰς οἰκίαν κρύφα συνερχομένων, οὓς καὶ κρίνειν ἄπορον ἦν ἐν ταραχῇ τοσαύτῃ καὶ περιορᾶν ἐπιβουλεύοντας. ἀπέκτεινεν οὖν καὶ τούτους μετὰ τῶν ἐφόρων βουλευσάμενος ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἀκρίτους, οὐδενὸς δίχα δίκης τεθανατωμένου [7] πρότερον Σπαρτιατῶν. ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλοὶ τῶν συντεταγμένων εἰς τὰ ὅπλα περιοίκων καὶ εἱλώτων ἀπεδίδρασκον ἐκ τῆς πόλεως πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ τοῦτο πλείστην ἀθυμίαν παρεῖχεν, ἐδίδαξε τοὺς ὑπηρέτας περὶ ὄρθρον ἐπιφοιτᾶν ταῖς στιβάσι καὶ τὰ ὅπλα τῶν ἀποκεχωρηκότων λαμβάνειν καὶ ἀποκρύπτειν, ὅπως ἀγνοῆται τὸ πλῆθος.

[8] Ἀναχωρῆσαι δὲ τοὺς Θηβαίους ἐκ τῆς Λακωνικῆς οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι λέγουσι χειμώνων γενομένων καὶ τῶν Ἀρκάδων ἀρξαμένων ἀπιέναι καὶ διαρρεῖν ἀτάκτως, οἱ δὲ τρεῖς μῆνας ἐμμεμενηκότας ὅλους καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῆς χώρας διαπεπορθηκότας· Θεόπομπος δέ φησιν, ἤδη τῶν βοιωταρχῶν ἐγνωκότων ἀπαίρειν, ἀφικέσθαι πρὸς αὐτοὺς Φρίξον, ἄνδρα Σπαρτιάτην, παρὰ Ἀγησιλάου δέκα τάλαντα κομίζοντα τῆς ἀναχωρήσεως μισθόν, ὥστε τὰ πάλαι δεδογμένα πράττουσιν αὐτοῖς ἐφόδιον παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων προσπεριγενέσθαι.

[33] [1] Τοῦτο μὲν οὖν οὐκ οἶδα ὅπως ἠγνόησαν οἱ ἄλλοι, μόνος δὲ Θεόπομπος ᾔσθετο. τοῦ δὲ σωθῆναι τὴν Σπάρτην τότε πάντες αἴτιον ὁμολογοῦσι γενέσθαι τὸν Ἀγησίλαον, ὅτι τῶν ἐμφύτων αὐτῷ παθῶν, φιλονεικίας καὶ φιλοτιμίας, ἀποστάς, ἐχρήσατο τοῖς πράγμασιν ἀσφαλῶς.

[2] οὐ μέντοι τήν γε δύναμιν καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἐδυνήθη τῆς πόλεως ἀναλαβεῖν ἐκ τοῦ πταίσματος, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ σώματος ὑγιεινοῦ, λίαν δὲ ἀκριβεῖ καὶ κατησκημένῃ κεχρημένου διαίτῃ παρὰ πάντα τὸν χρόνον, ἁμαρτία μία καὶ ῥοπὴ τὴν πᾶσαν ἔκλινεν εὐτυχίαν τῆς πόλεως· οὐκ ἀλόγως. πρὸς γὰρ εἰρήνην καὶ ἀρετὴν καὶ ὁμόνοιαν ἄριστα συντεταγμένῳ πολιτεύματι προσαγαγόντες ἀρχὰς καὶ δυναστείας βιαίους, ὧν οὐδενὸς ἡγεῖτο δεῖσθαι πόλιν εὐδαιμόνως βιωσομένην ὁ Λυκοῦργος, ἐσφάλησαν.

[3] Αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἤδη πρὸς τὰς στρατείας ἀπειρήκει διὰ τὸ γῆρας, Ἀρχίδαμος δὲ ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ, τὴν ἐκ Σικελίας ἥκουσαν παρὰ τοῦ τυράννου βοήθειαν ἔχων, ἐνίκησεν Ἀρκάδας τὴν λεγομένην ἄδακρυν μάχην· οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἔπεσε τῶν μετ’ αὐτοῦ, συχνοὺς δὲ τῶν ἐναντίων ἀνεῖλεν. αὕτη μάλιστα τὴν ἀσθένειαν ἤλεγξεν ἡ νίκη τῆς [4] πόλεως. πρότερον μὲν γὰρ οὕτω σύνηθες ἡγοῦντο καὶ προσῆκον ἔργον αὐτοῖς εἶναι τὸ νικᾶν τοὺς πολεμίους, ὥστε μήτε θύειν τοῖς θεοῖς πλὴν ἀλεκτρυόνα νικητήριον ἐν τῇ πόλει, μήτε μεγαληγορεῖν τοὺς ἀγωνισαμένους, μήτε ὑπερχαίρειν τοὺς πυνθανομένους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς ἐν Μαντινείᾳ μάχης γενομένης, ἣν Θουκυδίδης γέγραφε, τῷ πρώτῳ φράσαντι τὴν νίκην οἱ ἄρχοντες ἐκ φιδιτίου κρέας [5] ἔπεμψαν εὐαγγέλιον, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδέν· τότε δὲ τῆς μάχης ἀγγελθείσης καὶ τοῦ Ἀρχιδάμου προσιόντος οὐδεὶς ἐκαρτέρησεν, ἀλλὰ πρῶτος ὁ πατὴρ ἀπήντα δακρύων ὑπὸ χαρᾶς καὶ μετ’ ἐκεῖνον τὰ ἀρχεῖα, τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων καὶ τῶν γυναικῶν τὸ πλῆθος ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμὸν κατῄει, τάς τε χεῖρας ὀρεγόντων καὶ θεοκλυτούντων, ὥσπερ ἀπεωσμένης τὰ παρ’ ἀξίαν ὀνείδη τῆς Σπάρτης καὶ λαμπρὸν αὖθις ἐξ ἀρχῆς τὸ φῶς ὁρώσης· ἐπεὶ πρότερόν γέ φασιν οὐδὲ ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἀντιβλέπειν τοὺς ἄνδρας αἰσχυνομένους ἐφ’ οἷς ἔπταισαν.

[34] [1] Οἰκιζομένης δὲ Μεσσήνης ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν, καὶ τῶν ἀρχαίων πολιτῶν πανταχόθεν εἰς αὐτὴν συμπορευομένων, διαμάχεσθαι μὲν οὐκ ἐτόλμων οὐδὲ κωλύειν ἐδύναντο, χαλεπῶς δὲ καὶ βαρέως πρὸς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον εἶχον, ὅτι χώραν οὔτε πλήθει τῆς Λακωνικῆς ἐλάττονα καὶ πρωτεύουσαν ἀρετῇ τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς ἔχοντες καὶ καρπούμενοι χρόνον τοσοῦτον ἐπὶ [2] τῆς ἐκείνου βασιλείας ἀπολωλέκασι. διὸ καὶ προτεινομένην ὑπὸ τῶν Θηβαίων τὴν εἰρήνην ὁ Ἀγησίλαος οὐκ ἐδέξατο. μὴ βουλόμενος δὲ τῷ λόγῳ προέσθαι τοῖς ἔργῳ κρατοῦσι τὴν χώραν, ἀλλὰ φιλονεικῶν, ἐκείνην μὲν οὐκ ἀπέλαβε, μικροῦ δὲ τὴν Σπάρτην προσαπέβαλε καταστρατηγηθείς.

[3] ἐπεὶ γὰρ οἱ Μαντινεῖς αὖθις ἀπέστησαν τῶν Θηβαίων καὶ μετεπέμποντο τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, αἰσθόμενος ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἐξεστρατευμένον μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ προσιόντα, λαθὼν τοὺς Μαντινεῖς ἀνέζευξε νυκτὸς ἐκ Τεγέας ἄγων ἐπ’ αὐτὴν τὴν Λακεδαίμονα τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ μικρὸν ἐδέησε παραλλάξας τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἔρημον ἐξαίφνης καταλαβεῖν [4] τὴν πόλιν. Εὐθύνου δὲ Θεσπιέως, ὡς Καλλισθένης φησίν, ὡς δὲ Ξενοφῶν, Κρητός τινος, ἐξαγγείλαντος τῷ Ἀγησιλάῳ, ταχὺ προπέμψας ἱππέα τοῖς ἐν τῇ πόλει φράσοντα, μετ’ οὐ πολὺ καὶ αὐτὸς παρῆλθεν εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην. ὀλίγῳ δὲ ὕστερον οἱ Θηβαῖοι διέβαινον τὸν Εὐρώταν καὶ προσέβαλλον τῇ πόλει, μάλα ἐρρωμένως τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου καὶ παρ’ ἡλικίαν ἐπαμύνοντος.

[5] οὐ γάρ, ὡς πρότερον, ἀσφαλείας ἑώρα τὸν καιρὸν ὄντα καὶ φυλακῆς, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀπονοίας καὶ τόλμης, οἷς τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον οὐδέποτε πιστεύσας οὐδὲ χρησάμενος, τότε μόνοις ἀπεώσατο τὸν κίνδυνον, ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν τοῦ Ἐπαμεινώνδου τὴν πόλιν ἐξαρπάσας, καὶ στήσας τρόπαιον, καὶ τοῖς παισὶ καὶ ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἐπιδείξας τὰ κάλλιστα τροφεῖα τῇ πατρίδι τοὺς [6] Λακεδαιμονίους ἀποδιδόντας, ἐν δὲ πρώτοις τὸν Ἀρχίδαμον ἀγωνιζόμενον ὑπερηφάνως τῇ τε ῥώμῃ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τῇ κουφότητι τοῦ σώματος, ὀξέως ἐπὶ τὰ θλιβόμενα τῆς μάχης διαθέοντα διὰ τῶν στενωπῶν καὶ πανταχοῦ μετ’ ὀλίγων ἀντερείδοντα τοῖς πολεμίοις· Ἰσίδαν δὲ δοκῶ, τὸν Φοιβίδου υἱόν, οὐ τοῖς πολίταις μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις θέαμα φανῆναι καινὸν καὶ [7] ἀγαστόν. ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἐκπρεπὴς τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ σώματος, ὥραν δὲ ἐν ᾗ τὸ ἥδιστον ἀνθοῦσιν ἄνθρωποι παριόντες εἰς ἄνδρας ἐκ παίδων εἶχε, γυμνὸς δὲ καὶ ὅπλων τῶν σκεπόντων καὶ ἱματίων, λίπα χρισάμενος τὸ σῶμα, καὶ τῇ μὲν ἔχων χειρὶ λόγχην, τῇ δὲ ξίφος, ἐξήλατο τῆς οἰκίας, καὶ διὰ μέσων τῶν μαχομένων ὠσάμενος ἐν τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀνεστρέφετο, παίων τὸν [8] προστυχόντα καὶ καταβάλλων. ἐτρώθη δὲ ὑπ’ οὐδενός, εἴτε θεοῦ δι’ ἀρετὴν φυλάττοντος αὐτόν, εἴτε μεῖζόν τι καὶ κρεῖττον ἀνθρώπου φανεὶς τοῖς ἐναντίοις. ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ λέγεται τοὺς ἐφόρους στεφανώσαντας αὐτὸν εἶτα χιλίων δραχμῶν ἐπιβαλεῖν ζημίαν, ὅτι χωρὶς ὅπλων διακινδυνεύειν ἐτόλμησεν.

[35] [1] Ὀλίγαις δὲ ὕστερον ἡμέραις περὶ τὴν Μαντίνειαν ἐμαχέσαντο, καὶ τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ἤδη κρατοῦντα τῶν πρώτων, ἔτι δὲ ἐγκείμενον καὶ κατασπεύδοντα τὴν δίωξιν, Ἀντικράτης Λάκων ὑποστὰς ἔπαισε δόρατι μέν, ὡς Διοσκουρίδης ἱστόρηκε, Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ Μαχαιρίωνας ἔτι νῦν τοὺς ἀπογόνους τοῦ Ἀντικράτους καλοῦσιν, [2] ὡς μαχαίρᾳ πατάξαντος. οὕτω γὰρ ἐθαύμασαν καὶ ὑπερηγάπησαν αὐτὸν φόβῳ τοῦ Ἐπαμεινώνδου ζῶντος, ὥστε τιμὰς μὲν ἐκείνῳ καὶ δωρεὰς ψηφίσασθαι, γένει δ’ ἀτέλειαν, ἣν ἔτι καὶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἔχει Καλλικράτης, εἷς τῶν Ἀντικράτους ἀπογόνων.

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην καὶ τὸν θάνατον τοῦ Ἐπαμεινώνδου γενομένης εἰρήνης τοῖς Ἕλλησι πρὸς αὑτούς, ἀπήλαυνον οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀγησίλαον τοῦ ὅρκου τοὺς Μεσσηνίους, ὡς πόλιν οὐκ ἔχοντας.

[3] ἐπεὶ δὲ οἱ λοιποὶ πάντες ἐδέχοντο καὶ τοὺς ὅρκους ἐλάμβανον παρ’ αὐτῶν, ἀπέστησαν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι, καὶ μόνοις αὐτοῖς πόλεμος ἦν ἐλπίζουσιν ἀναλήψεσθαι τὴν Μεσσηνίαν. βίαιος οὖν ἐδόκει καὶ ἀτενὴς καὶ πολέμων ἄπληστος ὁ Ἀγησίλαος εἶναι, τὰς μὲν κοινὰς διαλύσεις πάντα τρόπον ὑπορύττων καὶ ἀναβάλλων, πάλιν δὲ ὑπὸ χρημάτων ἀπορίας ἀναγκαζόμενος ἐνοχλεῖν τοῖς κατὰ πόλιν φίλοις καὶ δανείζεσθαι καὶ [4] συνερανίζεσθαι, δέον ἀπηλλάχθαι κακῶν εἰς τοῦτο περιήκοντι τῷ καιρῷ, καὶ μὴ τὴν ἅπασαν ἀρχὴν τοσαύτην γενομένην ἀφεικότα καὶ πόλεις καὶ γῆν καὶ θάλατταν, ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐν Μεσσήνῃ κτημάτων καὶ προσόδων σφαδάζειν.

[36] [1] Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἠδόξησε Τάχῳ τῷ Αἰγυπτίῳ στρατηγὸν ἐπιδοὺς ἑαυτόν. οὐ γὰρ ἠξίουν ἄνδρα τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἄριστον κεκριμένον καὶ δόξης ἐμπεπληκότα τὴν οἰκουμένην, ἀποστάτῃ βασιλέως, ἀνθρώπῳ βαρβάρῳ, χρῆσαι τὸ σῶμα καὶ τοὔνομα καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἀποδόσθαι χρημάτων, ἔργα μισθοφόρου καὶ ξεναγοῦ διαπραττόμενον.

[2] κεἰ γὰρ ὑπὲρ ὀγδοήκοντα γεγονὼς ἔτη καὶ πᾶν ὑπὸ τραυμάτων τὸ σῶμα κατακεκομμένος ἐκείνην αὖθις ἀνεδέξατο τὴν καλὴν καὶ περίβλεπτον ἡγεμονίαν ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐλευθερίας, οὐ πάμπαν ἄμεμπτον εἶναι τὴν φιλοτιμίαν· τοῦ γὰρ καλοῦ καιρὸν οἰκεῖον εἶναι καὶ ὥραν, μᾶλλον δὲ ὅλως τὰ καλὰ τῶν αἰσχρῶν τῷ [3] μετρίῳ διαφέρειν. οὐ μὴν ἐφρόντιζε τούτων ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, οὐδὲ ᾤετο παρ’ ἀξίαν εἶναι λειτούργημα δημόσιον οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀνάξιον ἑαυτοῦ τὸ ζῆν ἄπρακτον ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ καθῆσθαι περιμένοντα τὸν θάνατον. ὅθεν ἀθροίσας μισθοφόρους ἀφ’ ὧν ὁ Τάχως αὐτῷ χρημάτων ἔπεμψε, καὶ πλοῖα πληρώσας, ἀνήχθη, τριάκοντα συμβούλους ἔχων μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ Σπαρτιάτας, ὡς πρότερον.

[4] Ἐπεὶ δὲ κατέπλευσεν εἰς τὴν Αἴγυπτον, εὐθὺς οἱ πρῶτοι τῶν βασιλικῶν ἡγεμόνων καὶ διοικητῶν ἐβάδιζον ἐπὶ ναῦν θεραπεύοντες αὐτόν. ἦν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Αἰγυπτίων σπουδή τε μεγάλη καὶ προσδοκία διὰ τοὔνομα καὶ τὴν δόξαν τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου, καὶ συνετρόχαζον ἅπαντες ἐπὶ τὴν [5] θέαν. ὡς δὲ ἑώρων λαμπρότητα μὲν καὶ κατασκευὴν οὐδεμίαν, ἄνθρωπον δὲ πρεσβύτην κατακείμενον ἔν τινι πόᾳ παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν, εὐτελῆ καὶ μικρὸν τὸ σῶμα, τραχὺ καὶ φαῦλον ἱμάτιον ἀμπεχόμενον, σκώπτειν αὐτοῖς καὶ γελωτοποιεῖν ἐπῄει, καὶ λέγειν ὅτι τοῦτο ἦν τὸ μυθολογούμενον [6] ὠδίνειν ὄρος, εἶτα μῦν ἀποτεκεῖν. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτοῦ τὴν ἀτοπίαν ἐθαύμασαν, ὅτε ξενίων προσκομισθέντων καὶ προσαχθέντων ἄλευρα μὲν καὶ μόσχους καὶ χῆνας ἔλαβε, τραγήματα δὲ καὶ πέμματα καὶ μύρα διωθεῖτο, καὶ βιαζομένων λαβεῖν καὶ λιπαρούντων ἐκέλευσε τοῖς εἵλωσι διδόναι κομίζοντας. τῇ μέντοι στεφανωτρίδι βύβλῳ φησὶν αὐτὸν ἡσθέντα Θεόφραστος διὰ τὴν λιτότητα καὶ καθαριότητα τῶν στεφάνων αἰτήσασθαι καὶ λαβεῖν, ὅτε ἀπέπλει, παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως.

[37] [1] Τότε δὲ συμμίξας τῷ Τάχῳ παρασκευαζομένῳ πρὸς τὴν στρατείαν, οὐχ, ὥσπερ ἤλπιζεν, ἁπάσης στρατηγὸς ἀπεδείχθη τῆς δυνάμεως, ἀλλὰ τῶν μισθοφόρων μόνων, τοῦ δὲ ναυτικοῦ Χαβρίας ὁ Ἀθηναῖος· ἡγεμὼν δὲ συμπάντων [2] αὐτὸς ἦν ὁ Τάχως. καὶ τοῦτο πρῶτον ἠνίασε τὸν Ἀγησίλαον· ἔπειτα τὴν ἄλλην ἀλαζονείαν καὶ κενοφροσύνην τοῦ Αἰγυπτίου βαρυνόμενος ἠναγκάζετο φέρειν· καὶ συνεξέπλευσεν ἐπὶ τοὺς Φοίνικας αὐτῷ, παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τὴν φύσιν ὑπείκων καὶ καρτερῶν, ἄχρι οὗ καιρὸν ἔλαβε.

[3] Νεκτάναβις γὰρ ἀνεψιὸς ὢν τοῦ Τάχω καὶ μέρος ἔχων ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ τῆς δυνάμεως ἀπέστη· καὶ βασιλεὺς ὑπὸ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ἀναγορευθεὶς διεπέμπετο πρὸς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἀξιῶν αὐτῷ βοηθεῖν· τὰ δ’ αὐτὰ καὶ τὸν Χαβρίαν παρεκάλει, [4] μεγάλας ὑπισχνούμενος ἀμφοτέροις δωρεάς. αἰσθομένου δὲ ταῦτα τοῦ Τάχω καὶ τραπομένου πρὸς δέησιν αὐτῶν, ὁ μὲν Χαβρίας ἐπειρᾶτο καὶ τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἐν τῇ φιλίᾳ τοῦ Τάχω πείθων καὶ παραμυθούμενος κατέχειν, ὁ δὲ Ἀγησίλαος εἶπεν ὅτι “Σοὶ μέν, ὦ Χαβρία, κατὰ σεαυτὸν ἀφιγμένῳ χρῆσθαι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ λογισμοῖς ἔξεστιν, ἐγὼ δὲ ὑπὸ τῆς πατρίδος ἐδόθην Αἰγυπτίοις στρατηγός. οὐκ οὖν ἂν ἔχοι μοι καλῶς οἷς ἐπέμφθην σύμμαχος πολεμεῖν, ἐὰν μὴ πάλιν ἡ [5] πατρὶς κελεύσῃ.” ταῦτα δὲ εἰπὼν ἔπεμψεν εἰς Σπάρτην ἄνδρας, οἳ τοῦ μὲν Τάχω κατηγορήσειν, ἐπαινέσεσθαι δὲ τὸν Νεκτάναβιν ἔμελλον. ἔπεμψαν δὲ κἀκεῖνοι δεόμενοι τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, ὁ μὲν ὡς πάλαι σύμμαχος γεγονὼς καὶ φίλος, ὁ δὲ ὡς εὔνους καὶ προθυμότερος περὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐσόμενος. ἀκούσαντες οὖν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τοῖς μὲν Αἰγυπτίοις ἀπεκρίναντο φανερῶς Ἀγησιλάῳ περὶ τούτων μελήσειν, ἐκείνῳ δὲ ἐπέστειλαν ὁρᾶν κελεύοντες ὅπως πράξει τὸ τῇ Σπάρτῃ συμφέρον.

[6] οὕτω δὴ λαβὼν τοὺς μισθοφόρους ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἀπὸ τοῦ Τάχω μετέστη πρὸς τὸν Νεκτάναβιν, ἀτόπου καὶ ἀλλοκότου πράγματος παρακαλύμματι τῷ συμφέροντι τῆς πατρίδος χρησάμενος· ἐπεὶ ταύτης γε τῆς προφάσεως ἀφαιρεθείσης τὸ δικαιότατον ὄνομα τῆς πράξεως ἦν προδοσία. Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ τὴν πρώτην τοῦ καλοῦ μερίδα τῷ τῆς πατρίδος συμφέροντι διδόντες οὔτε μανθάνουσιν οὔτε ἐπίστανται δίκαιον ἄλλο πλὴν ὃ τὴν Σπάρτην αὔξειν νομίζουσιν.

[38] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Τάχως ἐρημωθεὶς τῶν μισθοφόρων ἔφυγεν, ἐκ δὲ Μένδητος ἕτερος ἐπανίσταται τῷ Νεκτανάβιδι βασιλεὺς ἀναγορευθείς· καὶ συναγαγὼν δέκα μυριάδας ἀνθρώπων ἐπῄει. θαρσύνοντος δὲ τοῦ Νεκτανάβιδος τὸν Ἀγησίλαον, καὶ λέγοντος ὅτι πολλοὶ μέν εἰσιν οἱ πολέμιοι, μιγάδες δὲ καὶ βάναυσοι καὶ δι’ ἀπειρίαν [2] εὐκαταφρόνητοι, “Καὶ μὴν οὐ τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῶν,” ὁ Ἀγησίλαος εἶπεν, “ἀλλὰ τὴν ἀπειρίαν φοβοῦμαι καὶ τὴν ἀμαθίαν ὡς δυσεξαπάτητον. αἱ γὰρ ἀπάται τὸ παράδοξον ἐπάγουσι τοῖς πρὸς ἄμυναν ὑπονοοῦσι καὶ προσδοκῶσι τρεπομένοις, ὁ δὲ μὴ προσδοκῶν μηδὲ ὑπονοῶν μηδὲν οὐ δίδωσι τῷ παραλογιζομένῳ λαβήν, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τῷ παλαίοντι ῥοπὴν ὁ μὴ κινούμενος.” ἐκ τούτου καὶ ὁ [3] Μενδήσιος ἔπεμπε πειρῶν τὸν Ἀγησίλαον. ἔδεισεν οὖν ὁ Νεκτάναβις, καὶ κελεύοντος αὐτοῦ διαμάχεσθαι τὴν ταχίστην καὶ μὴ χρόνῳ πολεμεῖν πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ἀπείρους ἀγῶνος, πολυχειρίᾳ δὲ περιελθεῖν καὶ περιταφρεῦσαι καὶ φθάσαι πολλὰ καὶ προλαβεῖν δυναμένους, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐν ὑποψίᾳ καὶ φόβῳ γενόμενος πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀπεχώρησεν εἰς πόλιν εὐερκῆ καὶ μέγαν ἔχουσαν [4] περίβολον. ὁ δὲ Ἀγησίλαος ἠγανάκτει μὲν ἀπιστούμενος καὶ βαρέως ἔφερεν, αἰσχυνόμενος δὲ καὶ πάλιν μεταστῆναι πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον καὶ τελέως ἀπελθεῖν ἄπρακτος, ἠκολούθησε καὶ συνεισῆλθεν εἰς τὸ τεῖχος.

[39] [1] Ἐπελθόντων δὲ τῶν πολεμίων καὶ περιταφρευόντων τὴν πόλιν, αὖθις αὖ δείσας τὴν πολιορκίαν ὁ Αἰγύπτιος ἐβούλετο μάχεσθαι καὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας μάλα συμπροθυμουμένους εἶχεν· οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἐν τῷ χωρίῳ σῖτος. ὁ δὲ Ἀγησίλαος οὐκ ἐῶν, ἀλλὰ κωλύων ἤκουε μὲν ἔτι μᾶλλον κακῶς ἢ πρότερον ὑπὸ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων καὶ προδότης ἀπεκαλεῖτο τοῦ βασιλέως, ἔφερε δὲ πρᾳότερον ἤδη τὰς διαβολὰς καὶ προσεῖχε τῷ καιρῷ τοῦ στρατηγήματος.

[2] Ἦν δὲ τοιόνδε. τάφρον ἔξωθεν ἦγον οἱ πολέμιοι περὶ τὸ τεῖχος βαθεῖαν ὡς παντάπασιν ἀποκλείσοντες αὐτούς. ὡς οὖν ἐγγὺς ἦσαν αἱ τελευταὶ τοῦ ὀρύγματος ἀπαντῶντος αὑτῷ καὶ περιϊόντος ἐν κύκλῳ τὴν πόλιν, ἑσπέραν ἀναμείνας γενέσθαι καὶ κελεύσας ἐξοπλίζεσθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἔλεγεν ἐλθὼν πρὸς τὸν Αἰγύπτιον· “Ὁ μὲν τῆς σωτηρίας, ὦ νεανία, καιρὸς οὗτός ἐστιν, ὃν ἐγὼ διαφθεῖραι φοβούμενος οὐκ ἔφραζον πρὶν [3] ἐλθεῖν. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἡμῖν οἱ πολέμιοι τὴν ἀσφάλειαν αὐτοὶ διὰ τῶν χειρῶν παρεσκευάκασι, τοσαύτην ὀρυξάμενοι τάφρον, ἧς τὸ μὲν ἐξειργασμένον ἐκείνοις ἐμποδών ἐστι τοῦ πλήθους, τὸ δὲ διαλεῖπον ἡμῖν δίδωσιν ἴσῳ καὶ δικαίῳ μέτρῳ διαμάχεσθαι πρὸς αὐτούς, φέρε νῦν, προθυμηθεὶς ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς γενέσθαι καὶ μεθ’ ἡμῶν ἐπισπόμενος δρόμῳ σῶζε [4] σεαυτὸν ἅμα καὶ τὴν στρατιάν. ἡμᾶς γὰρ οἱ μὲν κατὰ στόμα τῶν πολεμίων οὐχ ὑπομενοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ ἄλλοι διὰ τὴν τάφρον οὐ βλάψουσιν.” ἐθαύμασεν οὖν ὁ Νεκτάναβις τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου τὴν δεινότητα, καὶ δοὺς ἑαυτὸν εἰς μέσα τὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὅπλα καὶ προσπεσὼν ἐτρέψατο ῥᾳδίως τοὺς ἀντιστάντας. ὡς δὲ ἅπαξ ἔλαβε πειθόμενον αὑτῷ τὸν Νεκτάναβιν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, αὖθις ἐπῆγε τὸ αὐτὸ στρατήγημα καθάπερ πάλαισμα τοῖς πολεμίοις.

[5] τὰ μὲν γὰρ ὑποφεύγων καὶ ὑπάγων, τὰ δὲ ἀντιπεριχωρῶν, ἐμβάλλει τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῶν εἰς τόπον ἔχοντα διώρυχα βαθεῖαν ἐξ ἑκατέρας πλευρᾶς παραρρέουσαν, ὧν τὸ μέσον ἐμφράξας καὶ καταλαβὼν τῷ μετώπῳ τῆς φάλαγγος ἐξίσωσε πρὸς τοὺς μαχομένους τῶν πολεμίων τὸ πλῆθος, οὐκ ἔχοντας περιδρομὴν καὶ κύκλωσιν. ὅθεν οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἀντιστάντες ἐτράποντο· καὶ πολλοὶ μὲν ἀνῃρέθησαν, οἱ δὲ φεύγοντες ἐσκεδάσθησαν καὶ διερρύησαν.

[40] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου καλῶς μὲν εἶχε τὰ πράγματα καὶ βεβαίως τῷ Αἰγυπτίῳ πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν· ἀγαπῶν δὲ καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος ἐδεῖτο μεῖναι καὶ συνδιαχειμάσαι μετ’ αὐτοῦ τὸν Ἀγησίλαον. ὁ δὲ ὥρμητο πρὸς τὸν οἴκοι πόλεμον, εἰδὼς χρημάτων δεομένην τὴν πόλιν καὶ ξενοτροφοῦσαν. προὔπεμψεν οὖν αὐτὸν ἐντίμως καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς, ἄλλας τε λαβόντα τιμὰς καὶ δωρεὰς καὶ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ἀργυρίου διακόσια καὶ τριάκοντα τάλαντα.

[2] χειμῶνος δὲ ὄντος ἤδη τῆς γῆς ἐχόμενος ταῖς ναυσὶ καὶ παρὰ τὴν Λιβύην εἰς χωρίον ἔρημον κομισθείς, ὃ καλοῦσι Μενελάου λιμένα, θνήσκει, βιώσας μὲν ὀγδοήκοντα καὶ τέσσαρα ἔτη, βασιλεύσας δὲ τῆς Σπάρτης ἑνὶ τῶν τεσσαράκοντα πλέον, καὶ τούτων ὑπὲρ τριάκοντα πάντων μέγιστος καὶ δυνατώτατος γενόμενος καὶ σχεδὸν ὅλης τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἡγεμὼν καὶ βασιλεὺς νομισθεὶς ἄχρι τῆς ἐν Λεύκτροις μάχης.

[3] Ἔθους δὲ ὄντος Λακωνικοῦ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ἐπὶ ξένης ἀποθανόντων αὐτοῦ τὰ σώματα κηδεύειν καὶ ἀπολείπειν, τὰ δὲ τῶν βασιλέων οἴκαδε κομίζειν, οἱ παρόντες Σπαρτιᾶται κηρὸν ἐπιτήξαντες τῷ νεκρῷ, μέλιτος οὐ παρόντος, ἀπῆγον εἰς Λακεδαίμονα. τὴν δὲ βασιλείαν Ἀρχίδαμος ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ παρέλαβε, καὶ διέμεινε τῷ γένει μέχρις Ἄγιδος, ὃν ἐπιχειροῦντα τὴν πάτριον ἀναλαβεῖν πολιτείαν ἀπέκτεινε Λεωνίδας πέμπτον ἀπ’ Ἀγησιλάου γεγονότα.

Pompeius

[1] [1]  Πρὸς Πομπήϊον ἔοικε τοῦτο παθεῖν ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς, ὅπερ ὁ Αἰσχύλου Προμηθεὺς πρὸς τὸν Ἡρακλέα σωθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ λέγων·

Ἐχθροῦ πατρός μοι τοῦτο φίλτατον τέκνον.

οὔτε γὰρ μῖσος οὕτως ἰσχυρὸν καὶ ἄγριον ἐπεδείξαντο Ῥωμαῖοι πρὸς ἕτερον στρατηγὸν ὡς τὸν Πομπηΐου πατέρα Στράβωνα, ζῶντος μὲν αὐτοῦ φοβούμενοι τὴν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις δύναμιν (ἦν γὰρ [2] ἀνὴρ πολεμικώτατος), ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀπέθανε κεραυνωθείς, ἐκκομιζόμενον τὸ σῶμα κατασπάσαντες ἀπὸ τοῦ λέχους καὶ καθυβρίσαντες, οὔτε μὴν εὔνοιαν αὖ πάλιν σφοδροτέραν ἢ θᾶσσον ἀρξαμένην ἢ μᾶλλον εὐτυχοῦντι συνακμάσασαν ἢ πταίσαντι παραμείνασαν βεβαιότερον ἄλλος ἔσχε [3] Ῥωμαίων ἢ Πομπήϊος. αἰτία δὲ τοῦ μὲν μίσους ἐκείνῳ μία, χρημάτων ἄπληστος ἐπιθυμία, τούτῳ δὲ πολλαὶ τοῦ ἀγαπᾶσθαι, σωφροσύνη περὶ δίαιταν, ἄσκησις ἐν ὅπλοις, πιθανότης λόγου, πίστις ἤθους, εὐαρμοστία πρὸς ἔντευξιν, ὡς μηδενὸς ἀλυπότερον δεηθῆναι μηδὲ ἥδιον ὑπουργῆσαι δεομένῳ. προσῆν γὰρ αὐτοῦ ταῖς χάρισι καὶ τὸ ἀνεπαχθὲς διδόντος καὶ τὸ σεμνὸν λαμβάνοντος.

[2] [1] Ἐν ἀρχῇ δὲ καὶ τὴν ὄψιν ἔσχεν οὐ μετρίως συνδημαγωγοῦσαν καὶ προεντυγχάνουσαν αὐτοῦ τῆς φωνῆς. τὸ γὰρ ἐράσμιον ἀξιωματικὸν ἦν φιλανθρώπως, καὶ ἐν τῷ νεαρῷ καὶ ἀνθοῦντι διέφαινεν εὐθὺς ἡ ἀκμὴ τὸ γεραρὸν καὶ τὸ βασιλικὸν τοῦ ἤθους. ἦν δέ τις καὶ ἀναστολὴ τῆς κόμης ἀτρέμα καὶ τῶν περὶ τὰ ὄμματα ῥυθμῶν ὑγρότης τοῦ προσώπου, ποιοῦσα μᾶλλον λεγομένην ἢ φαινομένην ὁμοιότητα πρὸς τὰς Ἀλεξάνδρου [2] τοῦ βασιλέως εἰκόνας. ᾗ καὶ τοὔνομα πολλῶν ἐν ἀρχῇ συνεπιφερόντων οὐκ ἔφευγεν ὁ Πομπήϊος, ὥστε καὶ χλευάζοντας αὐτὸν ἐνίους ἤδη καλεῖν Ἀλέξανδρον. διὸ καὶ Λεύκιος Φίλιππος, ἀνὴρ ὑπατικός, συνηγορῶν αὐτῷ, μηδὲν ἔφη ποιεῖν παράλογον εἰ Φίλιππος ὢν φιλαλέξανδρός ἐστιν.

Φλώραν δὲ τὴν ἑταίραν ἔφασαν ἤδη πρεσβυτέραν οὖσαν ἐπιεικῶς ἀεὶ μνημονεύειν τῆς γενομένης αὐτῇ πρὸς Πομπήϊον ὁμιλίας, λέγουσαν ὡς οὐκ ἦν ἐκείνῳ συναναπαυσαμένην [3] ἀδήκτως ἀπελθεῖν. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις διηγεῖσθαι τὴν Φλώραν ἐπιθυμῆσαί τινα τῶν Πομπηΐου συνήθων αὐτῆς Γεμίνιον, καὶ πράγματα πολλὰ παρέχειν πειρῶντα· αὐτῆς δὲ φαμένης οὐκ ἂν ἐθελῆσαι διὰ Πομπήϊον, ἐκείνῳ τὸν Γεμίνιον διαλέγεσθαι· τὸν οὖν Πομπήϊον ἐπιτρέψαι μὲν τῷ Γεμινίῳ, μηκέτι δὲ αὐτὸν ἅψασθαι τὸ παράπαν μηδὲ ἐντυχεῖν αὐτῇ, καίπερ ἐρᾶν δοκοῦντα· τοῦτο δὲ αὐτὴν οὐχ ἑταιρικῶς ἐνεγκεῖν, ἀλλὰ πολὺν ὑπὸ λύπης καὶ πόθου χρόνον νοσῆσαι.

[4] καίτοι τὴν Φλώραν οὕτω λέγουσιν ἀνθῆσαι καὶ γενέσθαι περιβόητον ὥστε Κεκίλιον Μέτελλον ἀνδριάσι καὶ γραφαῖς κοσμοῦντα τὸν νεὼν τῶν Διοσκούρων, κἀκείνης εἰκόνα γραψάμενον ἀναθεῖναι διὰ τὸ κάλλος. Πομπήϊος δὲ καὶ τῇ Δημητρίου τοῦ ἀπελευθέρου γυναικί, πλεῖστον ἰσχύσαντος παρ’ αὐτῷ καὶ τετρακισχιλίων ταλάντων ἀπολιπόντος οὐσίαν, ἐχρῆτο παρὰ τὸν αὑτοῦ τρόπον οὐκ ἐπιεικῶς οὐδὲ ἐλευθερίως, φοβηθεὶς τὴν εὐμορφίαν αὐτῆς ἄμαχόν τινα καὶ περιβόητον οὖσαν, ὡς μὴ φανείη κεκρατημένος.

[5] οὕτω δὲ πάνυ πόρρωθεν εὐλαβὴς ὢν πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ πεφυλαγμένος, ὅμως οὐ διέφυγε τῶν ἐχθρῶν τὸν ἐπὶ τούτῳ ψόγον, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ ταῖς γαμεταῖς ἐσυκοφαντεῖτο πολλὰ τῶν κοινῶν παριδεῖν καὶ προέσθαι χαριζόμενος ἐκείναις. Τῆς δὲ περὶ τὴν δίαιταν εὐκολίας καὶ λιτότητος καὶ ἀπομνημόνευμα λέγεται τοιοῦτον.

[6] ἰατρὸς αὐτῷ νοσοῦντι καὶ κακῶς ἔχοντι πρὸς τὰ σιτία κίχλην προσέταξε λαβεῖν. ὡς δὲ ζητοῦντες οὐχ εὗρον ὤνιον (ἦν γὰρ παρ’ ὥραν), ἔφη δέ τις εὑρεθήσεσθαι παρὰ Λευκόλλῳ δι’ ἔτους τρεφομένας, “Εἶτα,” εἶπεν, “εἰ μὴ Λεύκολλος ἐτρύφα, Πομπήϊος οὐκ ἂν ἔζησε;” καὶ χαίρειν ἐάσας τὸν ἰατρὸν ἔλαβέ τι τῶν εὐπορίστων. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον.

[3] [1] Ἔτι δὲ μειράκιον ὢν παντάπασι καὶ τῷ πατρὶ συστρατευόμενος ἀντιτεταγμένῳ πρὸς Κίνναν, Λευκιόν τινα Τερέντιον εἶχεν ἑταῖρον καὶ σύσκηνον. οὗτος ὑπὸ Κίννα πεισθεὶς χρήμασιν αὐτὸς μὲν ἔμελλε Πομπήϊον ἀποκτενεῖν, ἕτεροι δὲ [2] τὴν σκηνὴν ἐμπρήσειν τοῦ στρατηγοῦ. μηνύσεως δὲ τῷ Πομπηΐῳ περὶ δεῖπνον ὄντι προσπεσούσης, οὐδὲν διαταραχθείς, ἀλλὰ καὶ πιὼν προθυμότερον καὶ φιλοφρονησάμενος τὸν Τερέντιον, ἅμα τῷ τραπέσθαι πρὸς ἀνάπαυσιν ὑπεκρυεὶς τῆς σκηνῆς ἔλαθε, καὶ τῷ πατρὶ φρουρὰν περιστήσας ἡσύχαζεν. ὁ δὲ Τερέντιος, ὡς ἐνόμιζε καιρὸν εἶναι, σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος ἀνέστη καὶ τῇ στιβάδι τοῦ Πομπηΐου προσελθὼν ὡς κατακειμένου πολλὰς [3] ἐνεφόρει πληγὰς τοῖς στρώμασιν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου γίνεται μέγα κίνημα μίσει τοῦ στρατηγοῦ, καὶ πρὸς ἀπόστασιν ὁρμὴ τῶν στρατιωτῶν, τάς τε σκηνὰς ἀνασπώντων καὶ τὰ ὅπλα λαμβανόντων. ὁ μὲν οὖν στρατηγὸς οὐ προῄει δεδιὼς τὸν θόρυβον, ὁ δὲ Πομπήϊος ἐν μέσοις ἀναστρεφόμενος καὶ δακρύων ἱκέτευε, τέλος δὲ ῥίψας ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ στόμα πρὸ τῆς πύλης τοῦ χάρακος ἐμποδὼν ἔκειτο κλαίων καὶ πατεῖν κελεύων τοὺς ἐξιόντας, ὥστε ἕκαστον ἀναχωρεῖν ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς καὶ πάντας οὕτω πλὴν ὀκτακοσίων μεταβαλέσθαι καὶ διαλλαγῆναι πρὸς τὸν στρατηγόν.

[4] [1] Ἅμα δὲ τῷ τελευτῆσαι τὸν Στράβωνα, δίκην κλοπῆς ἔσχεν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ δημοσίων χρημάτων ὁ Πομπήϊος. καὶ τὰ μὲν πλεῖστα φωράσας ἕνα τῶν ἀπελευθέρων ὁ Πομπήϊος νενοσφισμένον Ἀλέξανδρον, ἀπέδειξε τοῖς ἄρχουσιν, αὐτὸς δὲ λίνα θηρατικὰ καὶ βιβλία τῶν ἐν Ἄσκλῳ ληφθέντων ἔχειν κατηγορεῖτο. ταῦτα δὲ ἔλαβε μὲν παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἑλόντος τὸ Ἄσκλον, ἀπώλεσε δὲ τῶν Κίννα δορυφόρων, ὅτε κατῆλθεν, ὠσαμένων εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ διαρπασάντων.

[2] ἐγίνοντο δὲ τῆς δίκης αὐτῷ προαγῶνες οὐκ ὀλίγοι πρὸς τὸν κατήγορον. ἐν οἷς ὀξὺς ἅμα καὶ παρ’ ἡλικίαν εὐσταθὴς φαινόμενος δόξαν ἔσχε μεγάλην καὶ χάριν, ὥστε Ἀντίστιον στρατηγοῦντα καὶ βραβεύοντα τὴν δίκην ἐκείνην ἐρασθῆναι τοῦ Πομπηΐου καὶ γυναῖκα διδόναι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ θυγατέρα καὶ περὶ τούτου τοῖς φίλοις [3] διαλέγεσθαι. δεξαμένου δὲ Πομπηΐου καὶ γενομένων ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀπορρήτων ὁμολογιῶν, ὅμως οὐκ ἔλαθε τοὺς πολλοὺς τὸ πρᾶγμα διὰ τὴν τοῦ Ἀντιστίου σπουδήν. τέλος δὲ τὴν γνώμην ἀναγορεύσαντος αὐτοῦ τῶν δικαστῶν ἀπολύουσαν, ὥσπερ ἐκ παραγγέλματος ὁ δῆμος ἐπεφώνησε τοῦτο δὴ τὸ τοῖς γαμοῦσιν ἐπιφωνούμενον ἐξ ἔθους παλαιοῦ, Ταλασίῳ.

[4] Τὸ δὲ ἔθος ἀρχὴν λαβεῖν φασι τοιαύτην. ὅτε τὰς θυγατέρας τῶν Σαβίνων ἐπὶ θέαν ἀγῶνος εἰς Ῥώμην παραγενομένας οἱ πρωτεύοντες ἀρετῇ Ῥωμαίων ἥρπαζον ἑαυτοῖς γυναῖκας, ἄδοξοί τινες πελάται καὶ βοτῆρες ἀράμενοι κόρην καλὴν καὶ μεγάλην ἐκόμιζον. ὅπως οὖν μὴ προστυχών τις ἀφέληται τῶν κρειττόνων, ἐβόων θέοντες ἅμα Ταλασίῳ (τῶν δὲ χαριέντων καὶ γνωρίμων τις ἦν ὁ Ταλάσιος), ὥστε τοὺς ἀκούσαντας τοὔνομα κροτεῖν καὶ βοᾶν οἷον συνηδομένους καὶ συνεπαινοῦντας.

[5] ἐκ τούτου φασὶ (καὶ γὰρ εὐτυχὴς ὁ γάμος ἀπέβη τῷ Ταλασίῳ) ταύτην τὴν ἐπιφώνησιν μετὰ παιδιᾶς γενέσθαι τοῖς γαμοῦσιν. οὗτος ὁ λόγος πιθανώτατός ἐστι τῶν περὶ τοῦ Ταλασίου λεγομένων. ὀλίγαις δ’ οὖν ὕστερον ἡμέραις ὁ Πομπήϊος ἠγάγετο τὴν Ἀντιστίαν.

[5] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ πρὸς Κίνναν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον πορευθεὶς ἐξ αἰτίας τινὸς καὶ διαβολῆς ἔδεισε καὶ ταχὺ λαθὼν ἐκποδὼν ἐποίησεν ἑαυτόν, οὐκ ὄντος ἐμφανοῦς αὐτοῦ θροῦς διῆλθεν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ καὶ λόγος ὡς ἀνῃρήκοι τὸν νεανίσκον ὁ Κίννας· ἐκ δὲ τούτου οἱ πάλαι βαρυνόμενοι καὶ μισοῦντες ὥρμησαν ἐπ’ αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ φεύγων καὶ καταλαμβανόμενος ὑπό τινος τῶν λοχαγῶν γυμνῷ τῷ ξίφει διώκοντος προσέπεσε τοῖς γόνασι καὶ τὴν [2] σφραγῖδα προὔτεινε πολύτιμον οὖσαν. ὁ δὲ καὶ μάλα ὑβριστικῶς εἰπών, “Ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐγγύην ἔρχομαι σφραγιούμενος, ἀλλὰ ἀνόσιον καὶ παράνομον τιμωρησόμενος τύραννον,” ἀπέκτεινεν αὐτόν. οὕτω δὲ τοῦ Κίννα τελευτήσαντος ἐδέξατο μὲν τὰ πράγματα καὶ συνεῖχε Κάρβων ἐμπληκτότερος ἐκείνου τύραννος, ἐπῄει δὲ Σύλλας τοῖς πλείστοις ποθεινός, ὑπὸ τῶν παρόντων κακῶν οὐδὲ δεσπότου μεταβολὴν μικρὸν ἡγουμένοις ἀγαθόν. εἰς τοῦτο προήγαγον αἱ συμφοραὶ τὴν πόλιν, ὡς δουλείαν ἐπιεικεστέραν ζητεῖν ἀπογνώσει τῆς ἐλευθερίας.

[6] [1] Τότε οὖν ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐν τῇ Πικηνίδι τῆς Ἰταλίας διέτριβεν, ἔχων μὲν αὐτόθι καὶ χωρία, τὸ δὲ πλέον ταῖς πόλεσιν ἡδόμενος οἰκείως καὶ φιλικῶς πατρόθεν ἐχούσαις πρὸς αὐτόν. ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους καὶ βελτίστους τῶν πολιτῶν ἀπολείποντας τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ πανταχόθεν εἰς τὸ Σύλλα στρατόπεδον ὥσπερ εἰς λιμένα καταθέοντας, αὐτὸς οὐκ ἠξίωσεν ἀποδρὰς οὐδὲ ἀσύμβολος οὐδὲ χρῄζων βοηθείας, ἀλλὰ ὑπάρξας τινὸς χάριτος ἐνδόξως καὶ μετὰ δυνάμεως ἐλθεῖν πρὸς [2] αὐτόν. ὅθεν ἐκίνει τοὺς Πικηνοὺς ἀποπειρώμενος. οἱ δὲ ὑπήκουον αὐτῷ προθύμως καὶ τοῖς παρὰ Κάρβωνος ἥκουσιν οὐ προσεῖχον. Οὐηδίου δέ τινος εἰπόντος ὅτι δημαγωγὸς αὐτοῖς ἐκ παιδαγωγείου παραπεπήδηκεν ὁ Πομπήϊος, οὕτως ἠγανάκτησαν ὥστε εὐθὺς ἀνελεῖν προσπεσόντες τὸν Οὐήδιον.

[3] Ἐκ τούτου Πομπήϊος ἔτη μὲν τρία καὶ εἴκοσι γεγονώς, ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς δὲ ἀνθρώπων ἀποδεδειγμένος στρατηγός, αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ δοὺς τὸ ἄρχειν, ἐν Αὐξίμῳ, πόλει μεγάλῃ, βῆμα θεὶς ἐν ἀγορᾷ, καὶ τοὺς πρωτεύοντας αὐτῶν ἀδελφοὺς δύο Οὐεντιδίους ὑπὲρ Κάρβωνος ἀντιπράττοντας διατάγματι μεταστῆναι τῆς πόλεως κελεύσας, στρατιώτας κατέλεγε, καὶ λοχαγοὺς καὶ ταξιάρχους κατὰ κόσμον ἀποδείξας ἑκάστοις τὰς κύκλῳ πόλεις [4] ἐπῄει τὸ αὐτὸ ποιῶν. ἐξανισταμένων δὲ καὶ ὑποχωρούντων ὅσοι τὰ Κάρβωνος ἐφρόνουν, τῶν δὲ ἄλλων ἀσμένως ἐπιδιδόντων αὑτούς, οὕτω κατανείμας ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ τρία τάγματα τέλεια, καὶ τροφὴν πορίσας καὶ σκευαγωγὰ καὶ ἁμάξας καὶ τὴν ἄλλην πᾶσαν παρασκευήν, ἦγε πρὸς Σύλλαν, οὐκ ἐπειγόμενος οὐδὲ τὸ λαθεῖν ἀγαπῶν, ἀλλὰ διατρίβων καθ’ ὁδὸν ἐν τῷ κακῶς ποιεῖν τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ πᾶν ὅσον ἐπῄει τῆς Ἰταλίας πειρώμενος ἀφιστάναι τοῦ Κάρβωνος.

[7] [1] Ἀνέστησαν οὖν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν τρεῖς ἅμα στρατηγοὶ πολέμιοι, Καρίνας καὶ Κλοίλιος καὶ Βροῦτος, οὐκ ἐναντίοι πάντες οὐδὲ ὁμόθεν, ἀλλὰ κύκλῳ τρισὶ στρατοπέδοις περιχωροῦντες ὡς ἀναρπασόμενοι. ὁ δὲ οὐκ ἔδεισεν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν εἰς ταὐτὸ τὴν δύναμιν συναγαγὼν ὥρμησεν ἐφ’ ἓν τὸ τοῦ Βρούτου στράτευμα, τοὺς ἱππεῖς, ἐν οἷς [2] ἦν αὐτός, προτάξας. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων ἀντεξίππευσαν οἱ Κελτοί, τὸν πρῶτον αὐτῶν καὶ ῥωμαλεώτατον φθάνει παίσας ἐκ χειρὸς δόρατι καὶ καταβαλών. οἱ δὲ ἄλλοι τραπόμενοι καὶ τὸ πεζὸν συνετάραξαν, ὥστε φυγὴν γενέσθαι πάντων. ἐκ δὲ τούτου στασιάσαντες οἱ στρατηγοὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀνεχώρησαν, ὡς ἕκαστος ἔτυχε, Πομπηΐῳ δὲ προσεχώρουν αἱ πόλεις, ὡς διὰ φόβον ἐσκεδασμένων τῶν πολεμίων.

[3] αὖθις δὲ Σκηπίωνος ἐπιόντος αὐτῷ τοῦ ὑπάτου, πρὶν ἐν ἐμβολαῖς ὑσσῶν γενέσθαι τὰς φάλαγγας, οἱ Σκηπίωνος ἀσπασάμενοι τοὺς Πομπηΐου μετεβάλοντο, Σκηπίων δὲ ἔφυγε. τέλος δὲ Κάρβωνος αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸν Ἄρσιν ποταμὸν ἱππέων συχνὰς ἴλας ἐφέντος, εὐρώστως ὑποστὰς καὶ τρεψάμενος εἰς χαλεπὰ καὶ ἄφιππα χωρία πάντας ἐμβάλλει διώκων· οἱ δὲ τὴν σωτηρίαν ἀνέλπιστον ὁρῶντες ἐνεχείρισαν αὑτοὺς μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τῶν ἵππων.

[8] [1] Οὔπω δὲ ταῦτα Σύλλας ἐπέπυστο, πρὸς δὲ τὰς πρώτας ἀγγελίας καὶ φήμας ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ δεδοικὼς ἐν τοσούτοις καὶ τηλικούτοις ἀναστρεφομένου στρατηγοῖς πολεμίοις, ἐδίωκε βοηθήσων. γνοὺς δὲ ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐγγὺς ὄντα προσέταξε τοῖς ἡγεμόσιν ἐξοπλίζειν καὶ διακοσμεῖν τὴν δύναμιν, ὡς καλλίστη τῷ αὐτοκράτορι καὶ λαμπροτάτη φανείη· μεγάλας γὰρ ἤλπιζε [2] παρ’ αὐτοῦ τιμάς, ἔτυχε δὲ μειζόνων. ὡς γὰρ εἶδεν αὐτὸν ὁ Σύλλας προσιόντα καὶ τὴν στρατιὰν παρεστῶσαν εὐανδρίᾳ τε θαυμαστὴν καὶ διὰ τὰς κατορθώσεις ἐπηρμένην καὶ ἱλαράν, ἀποπηδήσας τοῦ ἵππου καὶ προσαγορευθείς, ὡς εἰκός, αὐτοκράτωρ ἀντιπροσηγόρευσεν αὐτοκράτορα τὸν Πομπήϊον, οὐδενὸς ἂν προσδοκήσαντος ἀνδρὶ νέῳ καὶ μηδέπω βουλῆς μετέχοντι κοινώσασθαι τοὔνομα τοῦτο Σύλλαν, περὶ οὗ Σκηπίωσι καὶ [3] Μαρίοις ἐπολέμει. καὶ τἆλλα δὲ ἦν ὁμολογοῦντα ταῖς πρώταις φιλοφροσύναις, ὑπεξανισταμένου τε προσιόντι τῷ Πομπηΐῳ καὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἀπάγοντος τὸ ἱμάτιον, ἃ πρὸς ἄλλον οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἑωρᾶτο ποιῶν, καίπερ ὄντων πολλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν περὶ αὐτόν.

[4] Οὐ μὴν ἐκουφίσθη γε τούτοις ὁ Πομπήϊος, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν Κελτικὴν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πεμπόμενος, ἣν ἔχων ὁ Μέτελλος ἐδόκει μηδὲν ἄξιον πράττειν τῆς παρασκευῆς, οὐ καλῶς ἔφη ἔχειν πρεσβύτερον καὶ προὔχοντα δόξῃ στρατηγίας ἀφαιρεῖσθαι, βουλομένῳ μέντοι τῷ Μετέλλῳ καὶ κελεύοντι συμπολεμεῖν καὶ βοηθεῖν ἕτοιμος εἶναι.

[5] δεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ Μετέλλου καὶ γράψαντος ἥκειν, ἐμβαλὼν εἰς τὴν Κελτικὴν αὐτός τε καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἔργα θαυμαστὰ διεπράττετο, καὶ τοῦ Μετέλλου τὸ μάχιμον καὶ θαρσαλέον ἤδη σβεννύμενον ὑπὸ γήρως αὖθις ἐξερρίπιζε καὶ συνεξεθέρμαινεν, ὥσπερ ὁ ῥέων καὶ πεπυρωμένος χαλκὸς τῷ πεπηγότι καὶ ψυχρῷ περιχυθεὶς λέγεται τοῦ πυρὸς [6] μᾶλλον ἀνυγραίνειν καὶ συνανατήκειν. ἀλλὰ γάρ, ὥσπερ ἀθλητοῦ πρωτεύσαντος ἐν ἀνδράσι καὶ τοὺς πανταχοῦ καθελόντος ἐνδόξως ἀγῶνας εἰς οὐδένα λόγον τὰς παιδικὰς τίθενται νίκας οὐδ’ ἀναγράφουσιν, οὕτως ἃς ἔπραξε τότε πράξεις ὁ Πομπήϊος, αὐτὰς καθ’ ἑαυτὰς ὑπερφυεῖς οὔσας, πλήθει δὲ καὶ μεγέθει τῶν ὑστέρων ἀγώνων καὶ πολέμων κατακεχωσμένας, ἐδεδίειν κινεῖν, μὴ περὶ τὰ πρῶτα πολλῆς διατριβῆς γενομένης τῶν μεγίστων καὶ μάλιστα δηλούντων τὸ ἦθος ἔργων καὶ παθημάτων τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀπολειφθῶμεν.

[9] [1] Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ἐκράτησε τῆς Ἰταλίας ὁ Σύλλας καὶ δικτάτωρ ἀνηγορεύθη, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἡγεμόνας καὶ στρατηγοὺς ἠμείβετο πλουσίους ποιῶν καὶ προάγων ἐπὶ ἀρχὰς καὶ χαριζόμενος ἀφθόνως καὶ προθύμως ὧν ἕκαστος ἐδεῖτο, Πομπήϊον δὲ θαυμάζων δι’ ἀρετὴν καὶ μέγα νομίζων ὄφελος εἶναι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πράγμασιν, ἐσπούδασεν ἁμῶς γέ πως οἰκειότητι προσθέσθαι.

[2] συμβουλομένης δὲ τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ τῆς Μετέλλης, πείθουσι τὸν Πομπήϊον ἀπαλλαγέντα τῆς Ἀντιστίας λαβεῖν γυναῖκα τὴν Σύλλα πρόγονον Αἰμιλίαν, ἐκ Μετέλλης καὶ Σκαύρου γεγενημένην, ἀνδρὶ δὲ συνοικοῦσαν ἤδη καὶ κύουσαν τότε.

Ἦν οὖν τυραννικὰ τὰ τοῦ γάμου καὶ τοῖς Σύλλα καιροῖς μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς Πομπηΐου τρόποις πρέποντα, τῆς μὲν Αἰμιλίας ἀγομένης ἐγκύμονος [3] παρ’ ἑτέρου πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐξελαυνομένης δὲ τῆς Ἀντιστίας ἀτίμως καὶ οἰκτρῶς, ἅτε δὴ καὶ τοῦ πατρὸς ἔναγχος ἐστερημένης διὰ τὸν ἄνδρα· κατεσφάγη γὰρ ὁ Ἀντίστιος ἐν τῷ βουλευτηρίῳ δοκῶν τὰ Σύλλα φρονεῖν διὰ Πομπήϊον· ἡ δὲ μήτηρ αὐτῆς ἐπιδοῦσα ταῦτα προήκατο τὸν βίον ἑκουσίως, ὥστε καὶ τοῦτο τὸ πάθος τῇ περὶ τὸν γάμον ἐκεῖνον τραγῳδίᾳ προσγενέσθαι καὶ νὴ Δία τὸ τὴν Αἰμιλίαν εὐθὺς διαφθαρῆναι παρὰ τῷ Πομπηΐῳ τίκτουσαν.

[10] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Σικελίαν ἠγγέλλετο Περπέννας αὑτῷ κρατύνεσθαι καὶ τοῖς περιοῦσιν ἔτι τῆς ἐναντίας στάσεως ὁρμητήριον παρέχειν τὴν νῆσον, αἰωρουμένου καὶ Κάρβωνος αὐτόθι ναυτικῷ καὶ Δομετίου Λιβύῃ προσπεπτωκότος, ἄλλων τε πολλῶν ἐπέκεινα μεγάλων ὠθουμένων φυγάδων, ὅσοι τὰς προγραφὰς ἔφθησαν ἀποδράντες. ἐπὶ τούτους Πομπήϊος ἀπεστάλη μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως.

[2] καὶ Περπέννας μὲν εὐθὺς αὐτῷ Σικελίας ἐξέστη, τὰς δὲ πόλεις ἀνελάμβανε τετρυχωμένας καὶ φιλανθρώπως πάσαις ἐχρῆτο πλὴν Μαμερτίνων τῶν ἐν Μεσσήνῃ. παραιτουμένων γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὴν δικαιοδοσίαν ὡς νόμῳ παλαιῷ Ῥωμαίων ἀπειρημένα, “Οὐ παύσεσθε,” εἶπεν, “ἡμῖν ὑπεζωσμένοις ξίφη νόμους ἀναγινώσκοντες;”

[3] ἔδοξε δὲ καὶ ταῖς Κάρβωνος οὐκ ἀνθρωπίνως ἐνυβρίσαι συμφοραῖς. εἰ γὰρ ἦν ἀναγκαῖον αὐτόν, ὥσπερ ἦν ἴσως, ἀνελεῖν, εὐθὺς ἔδει λαβόντα, καὶ τοῦ κελεύσαντος ἂν ἦν τὸ ἔργον. ὁ δὲ δέσμιον προαγαγὼν ἄνδρα Ῥωμαῖον τρὶς ὑπατεύσαντα καὶ πρὸ τοῦ βήματος στήσας καθεζόμενος αὐτὸς ἀνέκρινεν, ἀχθομένων καὶ βαρυνομένων τῶν παρόντων· εἶτα ἐκέλευσεν [4] ἀπαγαγόντας ἀνελεῖν. ἀπαχθέντα μέντοι φασὶν αὐτόν, ὡς εἶδεν ἑλκόμενον ἤδη τὸ ξίφος, δεῖσθαι τόπον αὑτῷ καὶ χρόνον βραχύν, ὡς ὑπὸ κοιλίας ἐνοχλουμένῳ, παρασχεῖν. Γάϊος δὲ Ὄππιος ὁ Καίσαρος ἑταῖρος ἀπανθρώπως φησὶ καὶ Κοΐντῳ Οὐαλλερίῳ χρήσασθαι τὸν Πομπήϊον. ἐπιστάμενον γὰρ ὡς ἔστι φιλολόγος ἀνὴρ καὶ φιλομαθὴς ἐν ὀλίγοις ὁ Οὐαλλέριος, ὡς ἤχθη πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐπισπασάμενον καὶ συμπεριπατήσαντα καὶ πυθόμενον ὧν ἔχρῃζε καὶ μαθόντα, προστάξαι τοῖς ὑπηρέταις εὐθὺς ἀνελεῖν ἀπαγαγόντας.

[5] Ἀλλ’ Ὀππίῳ μέν, ὅταν περὶ τῶν Καίσαρος πολεμίων ἢ φίλων διαλέγηται, σφόδρα δεῖ πιστεύειν μετὰ εὐλαβείας· Πομπήϊος δὲ τοὺς μὲν ἐν δόξῃ μάλιστα τῶν Σύλλα πολεμίων καὶ φανερῶς ἁλισκομένους ἀναγκαίως ἐκόλαζε, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ὅσους ἐξῆν περιεώρα λανθάνοντας, [6] ἐνίους δὲ καὶ συνεξέπεμπε. τὴν δ’ Ἱμεραίων πόλιν ἐγνωκότος αὐτοῦ κολάζειν γενομένην μετὰ τῶν πολεμίων, Σθένις ὁ δημαγωγὸς αἰτησάμενος λόγον οὐκ ἔφη δίκαια ποιήσειν τὸν Πομπήϊον, ἐὰν τὸν αἴτιον ἀφεὶς ἀπολέσῃ τοὺς μηδὲν ἀδικοῦντας. ἐρομένου δὲ ἐκείνου τίνα λέγει τὸν αἴτιον, ἑαυτὸν ὁ Σθένις ἔφη, τοὺς μὲν φίλους πείσαντα τῶν πολιτῶν, τοὺς δ’ ἐχθροὺς βιασάμενον.

[7] ἀγασθεὶς οὖν τὴν παρρησίαν καὶ τὸ φρόνημα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὁ Πομπήϊος ἀφῆκε τῆς αἰτίας πρῶτον ἐκεῖνον, εἶτα τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας. ἀκούων δὲ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἐν ταῖς ὁδοιπορίαις ἀτακτεῖν, σφραγῖδα ταῖς μαχαίραις αὐτῶν ἐπέβαλεν, ἣν ὁ μὴ φυλάξας ἐκολάζετο.

[11] [1] Ταῦτα πράττων ἐν Σικελίᾳ καὶ πολιτευόμενος ἐδέξατο δόγμα συγκλήτου καὶ γράμματα Σύλλα κελεύοντα εἰς Λιβύην πλεῖν καὶ πολεμεῖν Δομετίῳ κατὰ κράτος, ἠθροικότι πολλαπλασίαν δύναμιν ἧς ἔχων Μάριος οὐ πάλαι διεπέρασεν ἐκ Λιβύης εἰς Ἰταλίαν καὶ συνέχει τὰ Ῥωμαίων πράγματα, τύραννος ἐκ φυγάδος καταστάς.

[2] ὀξέως οὖν ἅπαντα παρασκευασάμενος ὁ Πομπήϊος Σικελίας μὲν ἄρχοντα Μέμμιον κατέλιπε τὸν ἄνδρα τῆς ἀδελφῆς, αὐτὸς δὲ ἀνήγετο ναυσὶ μὲν μακραῖς ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι, φορτηγοῖς δὲ σῖτον καὶ βέλη καὶ χρήματα καὶ μηχανὰς κομιζούσαις ὀκτακοσίαις. κατασχόντι δὲ αὐτῷ ταῖς μὲν εἰς Ἰτύκην ναυσί, ταῖς δὲ εἰς Καρχηδόνα, τῶν πολεμίων ἀποστάντες ἑπτακισχίλιοι προσεχώρησαν, αὐτὸς δὲ ἦγεν ἓξ ἐντελῆ τάγματα.

[3] Συμβῆναι δὲ αὐτῷ πρᾶγμα γελοῖον ἱστοροῦσι. στρατιῶται γάρ τινες, ὡς ἔοικε, θησαυρῷ περιπεσόντες ἔλαβον συχνὰ χρήματα. τοῦ δὲ πράγματος γενομένου φανεροῦ δόξα τοῖς ἄλλοις παρέστη πᾶσι χρημάτων μεστὸν εἶναι τὸν τόπον ἐν ταῖς ποτε τύχαις τῶν Καρχηδονίων ἀποτεθειμένων.

[4] οὐδὲν οὖν ὁ Πομπήϊος εἶχε χρῆσθαι τοῖς στρατιώταις ἐπὶ πολλὰς ἡμέρας θησαυροὺς ζητοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ περιῄει γελῶν καὶ θεώμενος ὁμοῦ μυριάδας τοσαύτας ὀρυσσούσας καὶ στρεφούσας τὸ πεδίον, ἕως ἀπειπόντες ἐκέλευον αὑτοὺς ἄγειν ὅπη βούλεται τὸν Πομπήϊον, ὡς δίκην ἱκανὴν τῆς ἀβελτερίας δεδωκότας.

[12] [1] Ἀντιτεταγμένου δὲ τοῦ Δομετίου καὶ χαράδραν τινὰ προβεβλημένου χαλεπὴν περᾶσαι καὶ τραχεῖαν, ὄμβρος ἅμα πνεύματι πολὺς ἕωθεν ἀρξάμενος κατεῖχεν, ὥστε ἀπογνόντα τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης μαχέσασθαι τὸν Δομέτιον ἀναζυγὴν παραγγεῖλαι. Πομπήϊος δὲ τοῦτον αὑτοῦ ποιούμενος τὸν καιρὸν ὀξέως ἐπῄει καὶ διέβαινε τὴν [2] χαράδραν. οἱ δὲ ἀτάκτως καὶ θορυβούμενοι καὶ οὐ πάντες οὐδὲ ὁμαλῶς ὑφίσταντο, καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα περιῄει τὴν ζάλην αὐτοῖς προσβάλλον ἐναντίαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ὁ χειμὼν ἐτάραξεν οὐ καθορῶντας ἀλλήλους ἀκριβῶς, αὐτός τε Πομπήϊος ἐκινδύνευσεν ἀγνοηθεὶς ἀποθανεῖν, ἐρωτῶντι στρατιώτῃ τὸ σύνθημα βράδιον ἀποκρινάμενος.

[3] Ὠσάμενοι δὲ πολλῷ φόνῳ τοὺς πολεμίους (λέγονται γὰρ ἀπὸ δισμυρίων τρισχίλιοι διαφυγεῖν) αὐτοκράτορα τὸν Πομπήϊον ἠσπάσαντο. φήσαντος δὲ ἐκείνου μὴ δέχεσθαι τὴν τιμὴν ἕως ὀρθὸν ἕστηκε τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν πολεμίων, εἰ δὲ αὐτὸν ἀξιοῦσι ταύτης τῆς προσηγορίας, ἐκεῖνο χρῆναι πρότερον καταβαλεῖν, ὥρμησαν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸν χάρακα· καὶ Πομπήϊος ἄνευ κράνους ἠγωνίζετο [4] δεδοικὼς τὸ πρότερον πάθος. ἁλίσκεται δὴ τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ ἀποθνήσκει Δομέτιος. τῶν δὲ πόλεων αἱ μὲν εὐθὺς ὑπήκουον, αἱ δὲ κατὰ κράτος ἐλήφθησαν. εἷλε δὲ καὶ τῶν βασιλέων Ἰάρφαν τὸν συμμαχήσαντα Δομετίῳ, τὴν δὲ βασιλείαν Ἰάμψᾳ παρέδωκε. χρώμενος δὲ τῇ τύχῃ καὶ τῇ ῥύμῃ τοῦ στρατεύματος εἰς τὴν Νομαδικὴν ἐνέβαλε· καὶ πολλῶν ὁδὸν ἡμερῶν [5] ἐλάσας καὶ πάντων κρατήσας οἷς ἐνέτυχε, καὶ τὸ πρὸς Ῥωμαίους δέος ἤδη τῶν βαρβάρων ἐξερρυηκὸς αὖθις ἰσχυρὸν καὶ φοβερὸν ἐγκαταστήσας, οὐδὲ τὰ θηρία δεῖν ἔφη τὰ τὴν Λιβύην κατοικοῦντα τῆς τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἄπειρα ῥώμης καὶ τόλμης ἀπολείπειν. ὅθεν ἐν θήραις λεόντων καὶ ἐλεφάντων ἡμέρας διέτριψεν οὐ πολλάς· ταῖς δὲ πάσαις, ὥς φασι, τεσσαράκοντα τοὺς πολεμίους συνεῖλε καὶ Λιβύην ἐχειρώσατο καὶ διῄτησε τὰ τῶν βασιλέων, ἔτος ἄγων ἐκεῖνο τέταρτον καὶ εἰκοστόν.

[13] [1] Ἐπανελθόντι δὲ εἰς Ἰτύκην αὐτῷ γράμματα κομίζεται Σύλλα προστάττοντος ἀφιέναι μὲν τὴν ἄλλην στρατιάν, αὐτὸν δὲ μεθ’ ἑνὸς τάγματος περιμένειν αὐτόθι τὸν διαδεξόμενον στρατηγόν. ἐπὶ τούτοις ἀδήλως μὲν αὐτὸς ἤχθετο καὶ βαρέως ἔφερεν, ἐμφανῶς δὲ ὁ στρατὸς ἠγανάκτει· καὶ δεηθέντος τοῦ Πομπηΐου προελθεῖν, τόν τε Σύλλαν κακῶς ἔλεγον, κἀκεῖνον οὐκ ἔφασαν προήσεσθαι χωρὶς αὑτῶν, οὐδὲ εἴων [2] πιστεύειν τῷ τυράννῳ. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐπειρᾶτο πραΰνειν καὶ παρηγορεῖν αὐτούς· ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἔπειθε, καταβὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν ἀπῄει δεδακρυμένος. οἱ δὲ συλλαβόντες αὐτὸν αὖθις ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος κατέστησαν· καὶ πολὺ μέρος τῆς ἡμέρας ἀνηλώθη, τῶν μὲν μένειν καὶ ἄρχειν κελευόντων, τοῦ δὲ πείθεσθαι δεομένου καὶ μὴ στασιάζειν, ἄχρι οὗ προσλιπαρούντων καὶ καταβοώντων ὤμοσεν ἀναιρήσειν ἑαυτὸν εἰ βιάζοιντο, καὶ μόλις οὕτως ἐπαύσαντο.

[3] Τῷ δὲ Σύλλᾳ πρώτη μὲν ἦλθεν ἀγγελία τὸν Πομπήϊον ἀφεστάναι, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἶπεν ὡς ἄρα πεπρωμένον ἦν αὐτῷ γενομένῳ γέροντι παίδων ἀγῶνας ἀγωνίζεσθαι, διὰ τὸ καὶ Μάριον αὐτῷ νέον ὄντα κομιδῇ πλεῖστα πράγματα παρασχεῖν καὶ εἰς τοὺς ἐσχάτους περιστῆσαι κινδύνους, [4] πυθόμενος δὲ τἀληθῆ, καὶ πάντας ἀνθρώπους αἰσθανόμενος δέχεσθαι καὶ παραπέμπειν τὸν Πομπήϊον ὡρμημένους μετ’ εὐνοίας, ἔσπευδεν ὑπερβαλέσθαι· καὶ προελθὼν ἀπήντησεν αὐτῷ, καὶ δεξιωσάμενος ὡς ἐνῆν προθυμότατα μεγάλῃ φωνῇ Μάγνον ἠσπάσατο, καὶ τοὺς παρόντας [5] οὕτως ἐκέλευσε προσαγορεῦσαι. σημαίνει δὲ τὸν μέγαν ὁ Μάγνος. ἕτεροι δέ φασιν ἐν Λιβύῃ πρῶτον ἀναφώνημα τοῦτο τοῦ στρατοῦ παντὸς γενέσθαι, κράτος δὲ λαβεῖν καὶ δύναμιν ὑπὸ Σύλλα βεβαιωθέν. αὐτὸς μέντοι πάντων ὕστατος καὶ μετὰ πολὺν χρόνον εἰς Ἰβηρίαν ἀνθύπατος ἐκπεμφθεὶς ἐπὶ Σερτώριον ἤρξατο γράφειν ἑαυτὸν ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς καὶ τοῖς διατάγμασι Μάγνον Πομπήϊον· οὐκέτι γὰρ ἦν ἐπίφθονον τοὔνομα σύνηθες γενόμενον.

[6] Ὅθεν εἰκότως ἀγασθείη καὶ θαυμάσειεν ἄν τις τοὺς πάλαι Ῥωμαίους, οἳ ταῖς τοιαύταις ἐπικλήσεσι καὶ προσωνυμίαις οὐ τὰς πολεμικὰς ἠμείβοντο καὶ στρατιωτικὰς κατορθώσεις μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς πολιτικὰς πράξεις καὶ ἀρετὰς [7] ἐκόσμουν. δύο γοῦν Μαξίμους, ὅπερ ἐστὶ μεγίστους, ἀνηγόρευσεν ὁ δῆμος· Οὐαλλέριον μὲν ἐπὶ τῷ διαλλάξαι στασιάζουσαν αὐτῷ τὴν σύγκλητον, Φάβιον δὲ Ῥοῦλλον, ὅτι πλουσίους τινὰς ἐξ ἀπελευθέρων γεγονότας καὶ καταλελεγμένους εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον ἐξέβαλεν.

[14] [1] Ἐκ τούτου θρίαμβον ᾔτει Πομπήϊος, ἀντέλεγε δὲ Σύλλας. ὑπάτῳ γὰρ ἢ στρατηγῷ μόνον, ἄλλῳ δὲ οὐδενὶ δίδωσιν ὁ νόμος. διὸ καὶ Σκηπίων ὁ πρῶτος ἀπὸ μειζόνων καὶ κρειττόνων ἀγώνων ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ Καρχηδονίων κρατήσας οὐκ ᾔτησε θρίαμβον· ὕπατος γὰρ οὐκ ἦν οὐδὲ στρατηγός.

[2] εἰ δὲ Πομπήϊος οὔπω πάνυ γενειῶν εἰσελᾷ θριαμβεύων εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ᾧ βουλῆς διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν οὐ μέτεστι, παντάπασιν ἐπίφθονον ἔσεσθαι καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἑαυτῷ καὶ τὴν τιμὴν ἐκείνῳ. ταῦτα πρὸς Πομπήϊον ὁ Σύλλας ἔλεγεν, ὡς οὐκ ἐάσων, ἀλλὰ ἐνστησόμενος αὐτῷ καὶ κωλύσων τὸ φιλόνεικον ἀπειθοῦντος.

[3] Ὁ δὲ Πομπήϊος οὐχ ὑπέπτηξεν, ἀλλ’ ἐννοεῖν ἐκέλευσε τὸν Σύλλαν ὅτι τὸν ἥλιον ἀνατέλλοντα πλείονες ἢ δυόμενον προσκυνοῦσιν, ὡς αὐτῷ μὲν αὐξανομένης, μειουμένης δὲ καὶ μαραινομένης ἐκείνῳ τῆς δυνάμεως. ταῦτα ὁ Σύλλας οὐκ ἀκριβῶς ἐξακούσας, ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς ἀκούσαντας ἀπὸ τοῦ προσώπου καὶ τοῦ σχήματος ἐν θαύματι ποιουμένους, ἤρετο τί τὸ λεχθὲν εἴη. πυθόμενος δὲ καὶ καταπλαγεὶς τοῦ Πομπηΐου τὴν τόλμαν [4] ἀνεβόησε δὶς ἐφεξῆς, “Θριαμβευσάτω.” πολλῶν δὲ δυσχεραινόντων καὶ ἀγανακτούντων, ἔτι μᾶλλον αὐτούς, ὥς φασι, βουλόμενος ἀνιᾶν ὁ Πομπήϊος, ἐπεχείρησεν ἐλεφάντων ἅρματι τεττάρων ἐπιβὰς εἰσελαύνειν· ἤγαγε γὰρ ἐκ Λιβύης τῶν βασιλικῶν συχνοὺς αἰχμαλώτους· ἀλλὰ τῆς πύλης στενωτέρας οὔσης ἀπέστη καὶ μετῆλθεν ἐπὶ τοὺς [5] ἵππους. ἐπεὶ δὲ οἱ στρατιῶται μὴ τυχόντες ἡλίκων προσεδόκησαν ἐνοχλεῖν ἐβούλοντο καὶ θορυβεῖν, οὐδὲν ἔφη φροντίζειν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀφήσειν τὸν θρίαμβον ἢ κολακεύσειν ἐκείνους. ὅτε δὴ καὶ Σερουΐλιος, ἀνὴρ ἐπιφανὴς καὶ μάλιστα πρὸς τὸν θρίαμβον ἐνστὰς τοῦ Πομπηΐου, νῦν ἔφη τὸν Πομπήϊον ὁρᾶν καὶ μέγαν ἀληθῶς καὶ [6] ἄξιον τοῦ θριάμβου. δῆλον δ’ ἐστὶν ὅτι καὶ βουλῆς ἂν ἐθελήσας τότε ῥᾳδίως ἔτυχεν. ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐσπούδασεν, ὡς λέγουσι, τὸ ἔνδοξον ἐκ τοῦ παραδόξου θηρώμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἦν θαυμαστὸν εἰ πρὸ ἡλικίας ἐβούλευε Πομπήϊος, ἀλλ’ ὑπέρλαμπρον ὅτι μηδέπω βουλεύων ἐθριάμβευε. τοῦτο δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ πρὸς εὔνοιαν ὑπῆρχε τῶν πολλῶν οὐ μικρόν· ἔχαιρε γὰρ ὁ δῆμος αὐτῷ μετὰ θρίαμβον ἐν τοῖς ἱππικοῖς ἐξεταζομένῳ.

[15] [1] Σύλλας δὲ ἠνιᾶτο μὲν ὁρῶν εἰς ὅσον δόξης πρόεισι καὶ δυνάμεως, αἰσχυνόμενος δὲ κωλύειν ἡσυχίαν ἦγε· πλήν, ὅτε βίᾳ καὶ ἄκοντος αὐτοῦ Λέπιδον εἰς ὑπατείαν κατέστησε, συναρχαιρεσιάσας καὶ τὸν δῆμον εὐνοίᾳ τῇ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐκείνῳ σπουδάζοντα παρασχών, θεασάμενος αὐτὸν ἀπιόντα μετὰ πλήθους δι’ ἀγορᾶς ὁ Σύλλας, [2] “Ὁρῶ σε,” εἶπεν, “ὦ νεανία, χαίροντα τῇ νίκῃ· πῶς γὰρ οὐχὶ γενναῖα ταῦτα καὶ καλά, Κάτλου τοῦ πάντων ἀρίστου Λέπιδον τὸν πάντων κάκιστον ἀποδειχθῆναι πρότερον ὕπατον, σοῦ τὸν δῆμον οὕτω παρασκευάσαντος; ὥρα μέντοι σοι μὴ καθεύδειν, ἀλλὰ προσέχειν τοῖς πράγμασιν· ἰσχυρότερον γὰρ τὸν ἀνταγωνιστὴν σεαυτῷ κατεσκεύακας.” ἐδήλωσε δὲ μάλιστα Σύλλας ὅτι πρὸς Πομπήϊον οὐκ εὐμενῶς εἶχε ταῖς διαθήκαις [3] ἃς ἔγραψεν. ἑτέροις γὰρ φίλοις δωρεὰς ἀπολιπών, καὶ τοῦ παιδὸς ἀποδείξας ἐπιτρόπους, τὸν Πομπήϊον ὅλως παρῆλθεν. ἤνεγκε μέντοι τοῦτο μετρίως πάνυ καὶ πολιτικῶς ἐκεῖνος, ὥστε Λεπίδου καί τινων ἄλλων ἐνισταμένων μὴ ταφῆναι τὸν νεκρὸν ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ, μηδὲ δημοσίᾳ τὴν ἐκφορὰν γενέσθαι, βοηθῆσαι καὶ παρασχεῖν δόξαν ἅμα ταῖς ταφαῖς καὶ ἀσφάλειαν.

[16] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ταχὺ τοῦ Σύλλα τελευτήσαντος εἰς φῶς παρῄει τὰ μαντεύματα, καὶ Λέπιδος εἰσποιῶν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὴν ἐκείνου δύναμιν οὐ κύκλῳ περιϊὼν οὐδὲ μετὰ σχήματος, ἀλλὰ εὐθὺς ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἦν, τὰ πάλαι νοσοῦντα καὶ διαφυγόντα τὸν Σύλλαν ὑπολείμματα τῶν στάσεων αὖθις ἀνακινῶν καὶ περιβαλλόμενος, ὁ δὲ συνάρχων αὐτοῦ Κάτλος, ᾧ τὸ καθαρὸν καὶ ὑγιαῖνον μάλιστα τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τοῦ δήμου προσεῖχεν, ἦν μὲν ἐν ἀξιώματι σωφροσύνης καὶ δικαιοσύνης [2] μέγιστος τῶν τότε Ῥωμαίων, ἐδόκει δὲ πολιτικῆς ἡγεμονίας μᾶλλον ἢ στρατιωτικῆς οἰκεῖος εἶναι, τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῶν ποθούντων τὸν Πομπήϊον οὐ διεμέλλησεν ὅπη τράπηται, προσθεὶς δὲ τοῖς ἀρίστοις ἑαυτὸν ἀπεδείχθη στρατεύματος ἡγεμὼν ἐπὶ τὸν Λέπιδον ἤδη πολλὰ τῆς Ἰταλίας κεκινηκότα καὶ τὴν ἐντὸς Ἄλπεων Γαλατίαν κατέχοντα διὰ Βρούτου στρατεύματι.

[3] Τῶν μὲν οὖν ἄλλων ἐκράτησε ῥᾳδίως ἐπελθὼν ὁ Πομπήϊος· ἐν δὲ Μουτίνῃ τῆς Γαλατίας ἀντεκάθητο τῷ Βρούτῳ συχνὸν χρόνον· ἐν ᾧ Λέπιδος ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ῥυεὶς καὶ προσκαθήμενος ἔξωθεν ὑπατείαν ᾔτει δευτέραν, ὄχλῳ πολλῷ δεδιττόμενος [4] τοὺς ἔνδον. ἔλυσε δὲ τὸν φόβον ἐπιστολὴ παρὰ Πομπηΐου κομισθεῖσα κατωρθωκότος ἄνευ μάχης τὸν πόλεμον. ὁ γὰρ Βροῦτος, εἴτε παραδοὺς τὴν δύναμιν αὐτός, εἴτε προδοθεὶς μεταβαλομένης ἐκείνης, ἐνεχείρισε τῷ Πομπηΐῳ τὸ σῶμα, καὶ λαβὼν ἱππεῖς προπομποὺς ἀπεχώρησεν εἰς πολίχνιόν τι τῶν περὶ τὸν Πάδον, ὅπου μεθ’ ἡμέραν μίαν, ἐπιπέμψαντος αὐτῷ τοῦ Πομπηΐου [5] Γεμίνιον, ἀνῃρέθη· καὶ πολλὴν ἔσχεν ἀπὸ τούτου Πομπήϊος αἰτίαν. γεγραφὼς γὰρ εὐθὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς μεταβολῆς πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ὡς ἑκὼν αὐτῷ πρόσθοιτο Βροῦτος, ἑτέρας αὖθις ἔπεμψεν ἐπιστολὰς ἀνῃρημένου τοῦ ἀνθρώπου κατηγορούσας. τούτου Βροῦτος ἦν υἱὸς ὁ Καίσαρα σὺν Κασσίῳ κτείνας, ἀνὴρ ὁμοίως τῷ πατρὶ μήτε πολεμήσας μήτε ἀποθανών, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ [6] ἐκείνου γέγραπται. Λέπιδος μὲν οὖν εὐθὺς ἐκπεσὼν τῆς Ἰταλίας ἀπεπέρασεν εἰς Σαρδόνα· κἀκεῖ νοσήσας ἐτελεύτησε δι’ ἀθυμίαν, οὐ τῶν πραγμάτων, ὥς φασιν, ἀλλὰ γραμματίῳ περιπεσὼν ἐξ οὗ μοιχείαν τινὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ἐφώρασε.

[17] [1] Λεπίδῳ δὲ οὐδὲν ὅμοιος στρατηγὸς Ἰβηρίαν κατέχων Σερτώριος ἐπῃωρεῖτο Ῥωμαίοις φοβερός, ὥσπερ ἐπ’ ἔσχατον νόσημα τῶν ἐμφυλίων πολέμων εἰς τοῦτον τὸν ἄνδρα συνερρυηκότων, πολλοὺς μὲν ἤδη τῶν ἐλαττόνων στρατηγῶν ἀνῃρηκότα, Μετέλλῳ δὲ Πίῳ τότε συμπεπλεγμένον, [2] ἀνδρὶ λαμπρῷ μὲν καὶ πολεμικῷ, δοκοῦντι δὲ ἀργότερον ὑπὸ γήρως ἕπεσθαι τοῖς καιροῖς τοῦ πολέμου, καὶ ἀπολείπεσθαι τῶν πραγμάτων ἁρπαζομένων ὀξύτητι καὶ τάχει, τοῦ Σερτωρίου παραβόλως καὶ λῃστρικώτερον αὐτῷ προσφερομένου, καὶ ταράττοντος ἐνέδραις καὶ περιδρομαῖς ἄνδρα νομίμων ἀθλητὴν ἀγώνων καὶ [3] δυνάμεως στασίμου καὶ βαρείας ἡγεμόνα. πρὸς ταῦτα Πομπήϊος ἔχων τὴν στρατιὰν ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ διεπράττετο Μετέλλῳ πεμφθῆναι βοηθός· καὶ Κάτλου κελεύοντος οὐ διέλυεν, ἀλλ’ ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἦν περὶ τὴν πόλιν, ἀεί τινας ποιούμενος προφάσεις, ἕως ἔδωκαν αὐτῷ τὴν ἀρχὴν Λευκίου [4] Φιλίππου γνώμην εἰπόντος. ὅτε καί φασιν ἐν συγκλήτῳ πυθομένου τινὸς καὶ θαυμάζοντος εἰ Πομπήϊον ἀνθύπατον οἴεται δεῖν ἐκπεμφθῆναι Φίλιππος· “Οὐκ ἔγωγε,” φάναι τὸν Φίλιππον, “ἀλλ’ ἀνθ’ ὑπάτων,” ὡς ἀμφοτέρους τοὺς τότε ὑπατεύοντας οὐδενὸς ἀξίους ὄντας.

[18] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τῆς Ἰβηρίας ἁψάμενος ὁ Πομπήϊος, οἷα φιλεῖ πρὸς νέου δόξαν ἡγεμόνος, ἑτέρους ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἐποίησε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ τὰ μὴ πάνυ βεβαίως τῷ Σερτωρίῳ συνεστῶτα τῶν ἐθνῶν ἐκινεῖτο καὶ μετεβάλλετο, λόγους ὑπερηφάνους ὁ Σερτώριος κατὰ τοῦ Πομπηΐου διέσπειρε, καὶ σκώπτων ἔλεγε νάρθηκος ἂν αὐτῷ δεῆσαι καὶ σκύτους ἐπὶ τὸν παῖδα τοῦτον, εἰ μὴ τὴν γραῦν ἐκείνην ἐφοβεῖτο, λέγων τὸν Μέτελλον.

[2] ἔργῳ μέντοι φυλαττόμενος σφόδρα καὶ δεδοικὼς τὸν Πομπήϊον ἀσφαλέστερον ἐστρατήγει. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Μέτελλος, ὅπερ οὐκ ἄν τις ᾠήθη, διετέθρυπτο τῷ βίῳ κομιδῆ πρὸς τὰς ἡδονὰς ἐνδεδωκώς, καὶ μεγάλη τις εἰς ὄγκον καὶ πολυτέλειαν ἐξαίφνης ἐγεγόνει μεταβολὴ περὶ αὐτόν, ὥστε τῷ Πομπηΐῳ καὶ τοῦτο θαυμαστὴν εὔνοιαν ἅμα δόξῃ φέρειν, ἐπιτείνοντι τὴν εὐτέλειαν τῆς διαίτης οὐ πολλῆς ἐπιτηδεύσεως δεομένην· φύσει γὰρ ἦν σώφρων καὶ τεταγμένος ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις.

[3] Τοῦ δὲ πολέμου πολλὰς ἰδέας ἔχοντος, ἠνίασε μάλιστα τὸν Πομπήϊον ἡ Λαύρωνος ἅλωσις ὑπὸ Σερτωρίου. κυκλοῦσθαι γὰρ αὐτὸν οἰηθεὶς καί τι μεγαληγορήσας, αὐτὸς ἐξαίφνης ἀνεφάνη περιεχόμενος κύκλῳ· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο κινεῖσθαι δεδιὼς ἐπεῖδε καταπιμπραμένην τὴν πόλιν αὐτοῦ παρόντος. Ἑρέννιον δὲ καὶ Περπένναν, ἄνδρας ἡγεμονικοὺς τῶν πρὸς Σερτώριον καταπεφευγότων καὶ στρατηγούντων ἐκείνῳ, νικήσας περὶ Οὐαλεντίαν ὑπὲρ μυρίους ἀπέκτεινεν.

[19] [1] Ἐπαρθεὶς δὲ τῇ πράξει καὶ μέγα φρονῶν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἔσπευδε Σερτώριον, ὡς μὴ μετάσχοι τῆς νίκης Μέτελλος. περὶ δὲ Σούκρωνι ποταμῷ τῆς ἡμέρας ἤδη τελευτώσης συνέβαλον τὰς δυνάμεις, δεδιότες ἐπελθεῖν τὸν Μέτελλον, [2] ὁ μὲν ὡς μόνος, ὁ δὲ ὡς μόνῳ διαγωνίσαιτο. τὸ μὲν οὖν τέλος ἀμφίδοξον ἔσχεν ὁ ἀγών· ἑκατέρου γὰρ θάτερον κέρας ἐνίκησε· τῶν δὲ στρατηγῶν πλέον ἠνέγκατο Σερτώριος· ἐτρέψατο γὰρ τὸ καθ’ αὑτὸν ἐκεῖνος ἀντιταχθείς. Πομπηΐῳ δὲ ἀνὴρ μέγας ἱππότῃ πεζὸς ἐφώρμησε· συμπεσόντων δ’ εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ γενομένων ἐν λαβαῖς ἀπέσκηψαν αἱ πληγαὶ τῶν ξιφῶν εἰς τὰς χεῖρας ἀμφοῖν, οὐχ ὁμοίως· ἐτρώθη μὲν γὰρ ὁ Πομπήϊος [3] μόνον, ἐκείνου δὲ ἀπέκοψε τὴν χεῖρα. πλειόνων δὲ συνδραμόντων ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ἤδη τῆς τροπῆς γεγενημένης, ἀνελπίστως διέφυγε, προέμενος τὸν ἵππον τοῖς πολεμίοις φάλαρα χρυσᾶ καὶ κόσμον ἄξιον πολλοῦ περικείμενον. ταῦτα γὰρ διανεμόμενοι καὶ περὶ τούτων μαχόμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους [4] ἀπελείφθησαν. ἅμα δὲ ἡμέρᾳ παρετάξαντο μὲν ἀμφότεροι πάλιν ἐκβεβαιούμενοι τὸ νίκημα, Μετέλλου δὲ προσιόντος ἀνεχώρησεν ὁ Σερτώριος σκεδασθέντι τῷ στρατῷ. τοιαῦται γὰρ ἦσαν αἱ διαλύσεις καὶ πάλιν συνδρομαὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὥστε πολλάκις μόνον πλανᾶσθαι τὸν Σερτώριον, πολλάκις δὲ αὖθις ἐπιέναι μυριάσι πεντεκαίδεκα στρατιᾶς, ὥσπερ χειμάρρουν ἐξαίφνης πιμπλάμενον.

[5] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Πομπήϊος, ἐπεὶ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἀπήντα τῷ Μετέλλῳ καὶ πλησίον ἀλλήλων ἦσαν, ἐκέλευσεν ὑφεῖναι τὰς ῥάβδους, θεραπεύων ὡς προὔχοντα τιμῇ τὸν Μέτελλον. ὁ δὲ καὶ τοῦτο διεκώλυσε καὶ τἆλλα χρηστὸς ἦν ἀνὴρ περὶ αὐτόν, οὐδὲν ὡς ὑπατικῷ καὶ πρεσβυτέρῳ νέμων ἑαυτῷ πλέον, ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸ σύνθημα κοινῇ στρατοπεδευόντων εἰς ἅπαντας ἐξεπέμπετο παρὰ Μετέλλου· τὰ πολλὰ δὲ χωρὶς ἐστρατοπεδεύοντο.

[6] διέκοπτε γὰρ αὐτοὺς καὶ διΐστη ποικίλος ὢν ὁ πολέμιος καὶ δεινὸς ἐν βραχεῖ πολλαχοῦ περιφανῆναι καὶ μεταγαγεῖν ἀπ’ ἄλλων εἰς ἄλλους ἀγῶνας. τέλος δὲ περικόπτων μὲν ἀγοράς, ληϊζόμενος δὲ τὴν χώραν, ἐπικρατῶν δὲ τῆς θαλάσσης, ἐξέβαλεν ἀμφοτέρους τῆς ὑφ’ ἑαυτὸν Ἰβηρίας, ἀναγκασθέντας εἰς ἀλλοτρίας καταφυγεῖν ἐπαρχίας ἀπορίᾳ τῶν ἐπιτηδείων.

[20] [1] Πομπήϊος δὲ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἰδίων ἐξανηλωκὼς καὶ κατακεχρημένος εἰς τὸν πόλεμον, ᾔτει χρήματα τὴν σύγκλητον, ὡς ἀφιξόμενος εἰς Ἰταλίαν μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως εἰ μὴ πέμποιεν. ὑπατεύων δὲ Λεύκολλος τότε καὶ Πομπηΐῳ μὲν ὢν διάφορος, μνώμενος δ’ ἑαυτῷ τὸν Μιθριδατικὸν πόλεμον, ἔσπευσεν ἀποσταλῆναι τὰ χρήματα, φοβούμενος αἰτίαν Πομπηΐῳ παρασχεῖν δεομένῳ Σερτώριον ἀφεῖναι καὶ πρὸς Μιθριδάτην τραπέσθαι, λαμπρὸν μὲν εἰς δόξαν, εὐμεταχείριστον δὲ [2] φαινόμενον ἀνταγωνιστήν. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ θνήσκει Σερτώριος ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων δολοφονηθείς· ὧν Περπέννας ὁ κορυφαιότατος ἐπεχείρησεν ἐκείνῳ τὰ αὐτὰ ποιεῖν, ἀπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν μὲν ὁρμώμενος δυνάμεων καὶ παρασκευῶν, τὸν δὲ χρώμενον αὐταῖς ὁμοίως οὐκ ἔχων λογισμόν. εὐθὺς οὖν ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐπεξελθὼν καὶ ῥεμβόμενον ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι τὸν Περπένναν καταμαθών, δέλεαρ αὐτῷ δέκα σπείρας ὑφῆκεν, εἰς τὸ πεδίον διασπαρῆναι [3] κελεύσας. τραπομένου δὲ πρὸς ταύτας ἐκείνου καὶ διώκοντος, ἄθρους ἐπιφανεὶς καὶ συνάψας μάχην ἐκράτησε πάντων. καὶ διεφθάρησαν οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν ἡγεμόνων ἐν τῇ μάχῃ· τὸν δὲ Περπένναν ἀχθέντα πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀπέκτεινεν, οὐκ ἀχάριστος οὐδ’ ἀμνήμων γενόμενος τῶν περὶ Σικελίαν, ὡς ἐγκαλοῦσιν ἔνιοι, μεγάλῃ δὲ διανοίᾳ [4] καὶ σωτηρίῳ τῶν ὅλων γνώμῃ χρησάμενος. ὁ γὰρ Περπέννας τῶν Σερτωρίου γραμμάτων γεγονὼς κύριος ἐδείκνυεν ἐπιστολὰς τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ δυνατωτάτων ἀνδρῶν, οἳ τὰ παρόντα κινῆσαι βουλόμενοι πράγματα καὶ μεταστῆσαι τὴν πολιτείαν ἐκάλουν τὸν Σερτώριον εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν. φοβηθεὶς οὖν ὁ Πομπήϊος ταῦτα, μὴ μείζονας ἀναστήσῃ τῶν πεπαυμένων πολέμων, τόν τε Περπένναν ἀνεῖλε καὶ τὰς ἐπιστολὰς οὐδ’ ἀναγνοὺς κατέκαυσεν.

[21] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου παραμείνας χρόνον ὅσον τὰς μεγίστας κατασβέσαι ταραχὰς καὶ τὰ φλεγμαίνοντα μάλιστα καταστῆσαι καὶ διαλῦσαι τῶν πραγμάτων, ἀπῆγεν εἰς Ἰταλίαν τὸν στρατόν, ἀκμάζοντι τῷ δουλικῷ πολέμῳ κατὰ τύχην φερόμενος. διὸ καὶ Κράσσος ὁ στρατηγὸς ἤπειξε παραβόλως τὴν μάχην, καὶ κατευτύχησε, δισχιλίους [2] τριακοσίους ἐπὶ μυρίοις κτείνας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτῳ τὸν Πομπήϊον εἰσποιούσης ἁμῶς γέ πως τῷ κατορθώματι τῆς τύχης, πεντακισχίλιοι φεύγοντες ἐκ τῆς μάχης ἐνέπεσον εἰς αὐτόν, οὓς ἅπαντας διαφθείρας, ἔγραψε πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ὑποφθάσας ὡς Κράσσος μὲν ἐκ παρατάξεως νενίκηκε τοὺς μονομάχους, αὐτὸς δὲ τὸν πόλεμον ἐκ ῥιζῶν παντάπασιν ἀνῄρηκε. καὶ ταῦτα βουλομένοις ἦν δι’ εὔνοιαν ἀκροᾶσθαι καὶ λέγειν τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις. Ἰβηρίαν δὲ καὶ Σερτώριον οὐδὲ παίζων ἄν τις εἶπεν ἑτέρου καὶ μὴ Πομπηΐου τὸ πᾶν ἔργον εἶναι.

[3] Ἐν τοσαύτῃ δὲ τιμῇ καὶ προσδοκίᾳ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὅμως ἐνῆν καὶ ὑποψία τις καὶ δέος, ὡς οὐ προησομένου τὸ στράτευμα, βαδιουμένου δὲ δι’ ὅπλων καὶ μοναρχίας ἄντικρυς ἐπὶ τὴν Σύλλα πολιτείαν. ὅθεν οὐκ ἐλάττονες ἦσαν τῶν δι’ εὔνοιαν τρεχόντων καὶ φιλοφρονουμένων καθ’ [4] ὁδὸν οἱ φόβῳ ταῦτα ποιοῦντες. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ ταύτην ἀνεῖλε τὴν ὑπόνοιαν ὁ Πομπήϊος προειπὼν ἀφήσειν τὸ στράτευμα μετὰ τὸν θρίαμβον, ἓν αἰτιᾶσθαι τοῖς βασκαίνουσι περιῆν ὑπόλοιπον, ὅτι τῷ δήμῳ προσνέμει μᾶλλον ἑαυτὸν ἢ τῇ βουλῇ, καὶ τὸ τῆς δημαρχίας ἀξίωμα, Σύλλα καταβαλόντος, ἔγνωκεν ἀνιστάναι καὶ χαρίζεσθαι [5] τοῖς πολλοῖς, ὅπερ ἦν ἀληθές. οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν οὗτινος ἐμμανέστερον ὁ Ῥωμαίων ἠράσθη δῆμος καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπόθησεν ἢ τὴν ἀρχὴν αὖθις ἐπιδεῖν ἐκείνην, ὥστε καὶ Πομπήϊον εὐτύχημα ποιεῖσθαι μέγα τὸν τοῦ πολιτεύματος καιρόν, ὡς οὐκ ἂν εὑρόντα χάριν ἄλλην ᾗ τὴν εὔνοιαν ἀμείψεται τῶν πολιτῶν, εἰ ταύτην ἕτερος προέλαβε.

[22] [1] Ψηφισθέντος οὖν αὐτῷ δευτέρου θριάμβου καὶ ὑπατείας οὐ διὰ ταῦτα θαυμαστὸς ἐδόκει καὶ μέγας, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο τεκμήριον ἐποιοῦντο τῆς λαμπρότητος, ὅτι Κράσσος, ἀνὴρ τῶν τότε πολιτευομένων πλουσιώτατος καὶ δεινότατος εἰπεῖν καὶ μέγιστος, αὐτόν τε Πομπήϊον ὑπερφρονῶν καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας, οὐκ ἐθάρρησεν ὑπατείαν μετιέναι πρότερον ἢ Πομπηΐου δεηθῆναι.

[2] καὶ μέντοι Πομπήϊος ἠγάπησε, πάλαι δεόμενος χρείας τινὸς ὑπάρξαι καὶ φιλανθρωπίας πρὸς αὐτόν· ὥστε καὶ δεξιοῦσθαι προθύμως καὶ παρακαλεῖν τὸν δῆμον, ἐπαγγελλόμενος χάριν ἕξειν οὐκ ἐλάττονα τοῦ συνάρχοντος ἢ τῆς ἀρχῆς.

[3] οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἀποδειχθέντες ὕπατοι διεφέροντο πάντα καὶ προσέκρουον ἀλλήλοις· καὶ ἐν μὲν τῇ βουλῇ μᾶλλον ἴσχυεν ὁ Κράσσος, ἐν δὲ τῷ δήμῳ μέγα τὸ Πομπηΐου κράτος ἦν. καὶ γὰρ ἀπέδωκε τὴν δημαρχίαν αὐτῷ, καὶ τὰς δίκας περιεῖδεν αὖθις εἰς τοὺς ἱππέας νόμῳ μεταφερομένας. ἥδιστον δὲ θέαμα τῷ δήμῳ παρέσχεν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν τὴν στρατείαν παραιτούμενος.

[4] Ἔθος γάρ ἐστι Ῥωμαίων τοῖς ἱππεῦσιν, ὅταν στρατεύσωνται τὸν νόμιμον χρόνον, ἄγειν εἰς ἀγορὰν τὸν ἵππον ἐπὶ τοὺς δύο ἄνδρας οὓς τιμητὰς καλοῦσι, καὶ καταριθμησαμένους τῶν στρατηγῶν καὶ αὐτοκρατόρων ἕκαστον ὑφ’ οἷς ἐστρατεύσαντο, καὶ δόντας εὐθύνας τῆς στρατείας ἀφίεσθαι. νέμεται δὲ καὶ τιμὴ καὶ ἀτιμία προσήκουσα τοῖς βίοις ἑκάστων.

[5] Τότε δὴ προεκάθηντο μὲν οἱ τιμηταὶ Γέλλιος καὶ Λέντλος ἐν κόσμῳ, καὶ πάροδος ἦν τῶν ἱππέων ἐξεταζομένων, ὤφθη δὲ Πομπήϊος ἄνωθεν ἐπ’ ἀγορὰν κατερχόμενος, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα παράσημα τῆς ἀρχῆς ἔχων, αὐτὸς δὲ διὰ χειρὸς ἄγων τὸν ἵππον. ὡς δ’ ἐγγὺς ἦν καὶ καταφανὴς ἐγεγόνει, κελεύσας διασχεῖν τοὺς ῥαβδοφόρους τῷ βήματι [6] προσήγαγε τὸν ἵππον. ἦν δὲ τῷ δήμῳ θαῦμα καὶ σιωπὴ πᾶσα, τούς τε ἄρχοντας αἰδὼς ἅμα καὶ χαρὰ πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν ἔσχεν. εἶτα ὁ μὲν πρεσβύτερος ἠρώτησε· “Πυνθάνομαί σου, ὦ Πομπήϊε Μάγνε, εἰ πάσας ἐστράτευσαι τὰς κατὰ νόμον στρατείας;” Πομπήϊος δὲ μεγάλῃ φωνῇ, “Πάσας,” εἶπεν, “ἐστράτευμαι, καὶ πάσας ὑπ’ ἐμαυτῷ αὐτοκράτορι.” τοῦτο ἀκούσας ὁ δῆμος ἐξέκραγε, καὶ κατασχεῖν οὐκέτι τὴν βοὴν ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ἦν, ἀλλ’ ἀναστάντες οἱ τιμηταὶ προέπεμπον αὐτὸν οἴκαδε, χαριζόμενοι τοῖς πολίταις ἑπομένοις καὶ κροτοῦσιν.

[23] [1] Ἤδη δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς περαινομένης τῷ Πομπηΐῳ, τῆς δὲ πρὸς Κράσσον αὐξομένης διαφορᾶς, Γάϊός τις Αὐρήλιος, ἀξίωμα μὲν ἱππικὸν ἔχων, βίῳ δὲ ἀπράγμονι κεχρημένος, ἐκκλησίας οὔσης ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ προσελθὼν ἔφη κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους αὐτῷ τὸν Δία φανῆναι, κελεύοντα τοῖς ὑπάτοις φράσαι μὴ πρότερον ἀποθέσθαι [2] τὴν ἀρχὴν ἢ φίλους ἀλλήλοις γενέσθαι. ῥηθέντων δὲ τούτων ὁ μὲν Πομπήϊος ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν ἑστώς, ὁ δὲ Κράσσος ἀρξάμενος δεξιοῦσθαι καὶ προσαγορεύειν αὐτόν, “Οὐδέν,” εἶπεν, “οἶμαι ποιεῖν ἀγεννὲς οὐδὲ ταπεινόν, ὦ πολῖται, Πομπηΐῳ πρότερος ἐνδιδούς, ὃν ὑμεῖς μήπω μὲν γενειῶντα Μέγαν ἠξιώσατε καλεῖν, μήπω δὲ μετέχοντι βουλῆς ἐψηφίσασθε δύο θριάμβους.” ἐκ τούτου διαλλαγέντες ἀπέθεντο τὴν ἀρχήν.

[3] Καὶ Κράσσος μὲν ὅνπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς εἵλετο τρόπον τοῦ βίου διεφύλαττε, Πομπήϊος δὲ τάς τε πολλὰς ἀνεδύετο συνηγορίας καὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν κατὰ μικρὸν ἀπέλειπε καὶ προῄει σπανίως εἰς τὸ δημόσιον, ἀεὶ δὲ μετὰ πλήθους. οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἔτι ῥᾴδιον ὄχλου χωρὶς ἐντυχεῖν οὐδ’ ἰδεῖν αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἥδιστος ὁμοῦ πολλοῖς καὶ ἀθρόοις ἐφαίνετο, σεμνότητα περιβαλλόμενος ἐκ τούτου τῇ ὄψει καὶ ὄγκον, ταῖς δὲ τῶν πολλῶν ἐντεύξεσι καὶ συνηθείαις ἄθικτον οἰόμενος δεῖν τὸ ἀξίωμα διατηρεῖν.

[4] ὁ γὰρ ἐν ἱματίῳ βίος ἐπισφαλής ἐστι πρὸς ἀδοξίαν τοῖς ἐκ τῶν ὅπλων μεγάλοις καὶ πρὸς ἰσότητα δημοτικὴν ἀσυμμέτροις· αὐτοὶ μὲν γὰρ καὶ ἐνταῦθα πρωτεύειν, ὡς ἐκεῖ, δικαιοῦσι, τοῖς δὲ ἐκεῖ φερομένοις ἔλαττον ἐνταῦθα γοῦν μὴ πλέον ἔχειν οὐκ ἀνεκτόν ἐστι. διὸ τὸν ἐν στρατοπέδοις καὶ θριάμβοις λαμπρόν, ὅταν ἐν ἀγορᾷ λάβωσιν, ὑπὸ χεῖρα ποιοῦνται καὶ καταβάλλουσι, τῷ δὲ ἀπολεγομένῳ καὶ ὑποχωροῦντι τὴν ἐκεῖ τιμὴν καὶ δύναμιν ἀνεπίφθονον φυλάττουσιν. ἐδήλωσε δὲ αὐτὰ τὰ πράγματα μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον.

[24] [1] Ἡ γὰρ πειρατικὴ δύναμις ὡρμήθη μὲν ἐκ Κιλικίας τὸ πρῶτον, ἀρχὴν παράβολον λαβοῦσα καὶ λανθάνουσαν, φρόνημα δὲ καὶ τόλμαν ἔσχεν ἐν τῷ Μιθριδατικῷ πολέμῳ, χρήσασα ταῖς [2] βασιλικαῖς ὑπηρεσίαις ἑαυτήν. εἶτα Ῥωμαίων ἐν τοῖς ἐμφυλίοις πολέμοις περὶ θύρας τῆς Ῥώμης συμπεσόντων, ἔρημος οὖσα φρουρᾶς ἡ θάλασσα κατὰ μικρὸν αὐτοὺς ἐφείλκετο καὶ προῆγεν, οὐκέτι τοῖς πλέουσι μόνον ἐπιτιθεμένους, ἀλλὰ καὶ νήσους καὶ πόλεις παραλίους ἐκκόπτοντας. ἤδη δὲ καὶ χρήμασι δυνατοὶ καὶ γένεσι λαμπροὶ καὶ τὸ φρονεῖν ἀξιούμενοι διαφέρειν ἄνδρες ἐνέβαινον εἰς τὰ λῃστρικὰ καὶ μετεῖχον, ὡς καὶ δόξαν τινὰ καὶ φιλοτιμίαν τοῦ ἔργου φέροντος.

[3] ἦν δὲ καὶ ναύσταθμα πολλαχόθι πειρατικὰ καὶ φρυκτώρια τετειχισμένα, καὶ στόλοι προσέπιπτον οὐ πληρωμάτων μόνον εὐανδρίαις οὐδὲ τέχναις κυβερνητῶν οὐδὲ τάχεσι νεῶν καὶ κουφότησιν ἐξησκημένοι πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἔργον, ἀλλὰ τοῦ φοβεροῦ μᾶλλον αὐτῶν τὸ ἐπίφθονον ἐλύπει καὶ ὑπερήφανον, στυλίσι χρυσαῖς καὶ παραπετάσμασιν ἁλουργοῖς καὶ πλάταις ἐπαργύροις, ὥσπερ ἐντρυφώντων τῷ κακουργεῖν καὶ καλλωπιζομένων.

[4] αὐλοὶ δὲ καὶ ψαλμοὶ καὶ μέθαι παρὰ πᾶσαν ἀκτὴν καὶ σωμάτων ἡγεμονικῶν ἁρπαγαὶ καὶ πόλεων αἰχμαλώτων ἀπολυτρώσεις ὄνειδος ἦσαν τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίας. ἐγένοντο δ’ οὖν αἱ μὲν λῃστρίδες νῆες ὑπὲρ χιλίας, αἱ δὲ ἁλοῦσαι πόλεις [5] ὑπ’ αὐτῶν τετρακόσιαι. τῶν δὲ ἀσύλων καὶ ἀβάτων πρότερον ἱερῶν ἐξέκοψαν ἐπιόντες τὸ Κλάριον, τὸ Διδυμαῖον, τὸ Σαμοθρᾴκιον, τὸν ἐν Ἑρμιόνῃ τῆς Χθονίας νεὼν καὶ τὸν ἐν Ἐπιδαύρῳ τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ καὶ τὸν Ἰσθμοῖ καὶ Ταινάρῳ καὶ Καλαυρίᾳ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος, τοῦ δὲ Ἀπόλλωνος τὸν ἐν Ἀκτίῳ καὶ Λευκάδι, τῆς δὲ Ἥρας τὸν ἐν Σάμῳ, τὸν ἐν Ἄργει, τὸν ἐπὶ Λακινίῳ. ξένας δὲ θυσίας ἔθυον αὐτοὶ τὰς ἐν Ὀλύμπῳ, καὶ τελετάς τινας ἀπορρήτους ἐτέλουν, ὧν ἡ τοῦ Μίθρου καὶ μέχρι δεῦρο διασώζεται καταδειχθεῖσα πρῶτον ὑπ’ ἐκείνων.

[6] Πλεῖστα δὲ Ῥωμαίοις ἐνυβρίσαντες, ἔτι καὶ τὰς ὁδοὺς αὐτῶν ἀναβαίνοντες ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ἐληΐζοντο καὶ τὰς ἐγγὺς ἐπαύλεις ἐξέκοπτον. ἥρπασαν δέ ποτε καὶ στρατηγοὺς δύο Σεξτίλιον καὶ Βελλῖνον ἐν ταῖς περιπορφύροις, καὶ τοὺς ὑπηρέτας ἅμα καὶ ῥαβδοφόρους ᾤχοντο σὺν αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις ἔχοντες. ἥλω δὲ καὶ θυγάτηρ Ἀντωνίου, θριαμβικοῦ ἀνδρός, εἰς ἀγρὸν βαδίζουσα, καὶ πολλῶν χρημάτων ἀπελυτρώθη.

[7] ἐκεῖνο δὲ ἦν ὑβριστικώτατον. ὁπότε γάρ τις ἑαλωκὼς ἀναβοήσειε Ῥωμαῖος εἶναι καὶ τοὔνομα φράσειεν, ἐκπεπλῆχθαι προσποιούμενοι καὶ δεδιέναι τούς τε μηροὺς ἐπαίοντο καὶ προσέπιπτον αὐτῷ, συγγνώμην ἔχειν ἀντιβολοῦντες· ὁ δὲ ἐπείθετο ταπεινοὺς ὁρῶν καὶ δεομένους. ἐκ τούτου δὲ οἱ μὲν ὑπέδουν τοῖς καλκίοις αὐτόν, οἱ δὲ τήβεννον περιέβαλλον, ὡς δὴ μὴ πάλιν ἀγνοηθείη.

[8] πολὺν δὲ χρόνον οὕτω κατειρωνευσάμενοι καὶ ἀπολαύσαντες τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, τέλος ἐν μέσῳ πελάγει κλίμακα προσβαλόντες ἐκέλευον ἐκβαίνειν καὶ ἀπιέναι χαίροντα, τὸν δὲ μὴ βουλόμενον ὠθοῦντες αὐτοὶ κατέδυον.

[25] [1] Ἐπενείματο δὲ ἡ δύναμις αὕτη πᾶσαν ὁμοῦ τι τὴν καθ’ ἡμᾶς θάλασσαν, ὥστε ἄπλουν καὶ ἄβατον ἐμπορίᾳ πάσῃ γενέσθαι. τοῦτο δὴ μάλιστα Ῥωμαίους ἐπέστρεψε, θλιβομένους τῇ ἀγορᾷ καὶ σπάνιν μεγάλην προσδοκῶντας, ἐκπέμψαι Πομπήϊον ἀφαιρησόμενον τῶν πειρατῶν [2] τὴν θάλασσαν. ἔγραψε δὲ Γαβίνιος, εἷς τῶν Πομπηΐου συνήθων, νόμον οὐ ναυαρχίαν, ἄντικρυς δὲ μοναρχίαν αὐτῷ διδόντα καὶ δύναμιν ἐπὶ πάντας ἀνθρώπους ἀνυπεύθυνον. ἐδίδου γὰρ ἄρχειν ὁ νόμος αὐτῷ τῆς ἐντὸς Ἡρακλείων στηλῶν θαλάσσης, ἠπείρου δὲ πάσης ἐπὶ σταδίους τετρακοσίους ἀπὸ θαλάσσης. τοῦτο δὲ οὐ πάνυ πολλὰ χωρία τῆς ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων οἰκουμένης τὸ μέτρον ἐξέφυγεν, ἀλλὰ τὰ μέγιστα τῶν ἐθνῶν καὶ τῶν βασιλέων οἱ δυνατώτατοι περιελαμβάνοντο.

[3] πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἑλέσθαι πεντεκαίδεκα πρεσβευτὰς αὐτὸν ἐκ βουλῆς ἐπὶ τὰς κατὰ μέρος ἡγεμονίας, χρήματα δὲ λαμβάνειν ἐκ τῶν ταμιείων καὶ παρὰ τῶν τελωνῶν ὅσα βούλοιτο καὶ ναῦς διακοσίας, κύριον ὄντα πλήθους καὶ καταλόγου στρατιᾶς καὶ πληρωμάτων ἐρετικῶν.

Ἀναγνωσθέντων δὲ τούτων ὁ μὲν δῆμος ὑπερφυῶς ἐδέξατο, τῆς δὲ συγκλήτου τοῖς μεγίστοις καὶ δυνατωτάτοις ἔδοξε μεῖζον μὲν φθόνου, φόβου δὲ ἄξιον εἶναι τὸ τῆς ἐξουσίας ἀπερίληπτον καὶ [4] ἀόριστον. ὅθεν ἐνίσταντο τῷ νόμῳ, πλὴν Καίσαρος· οὗτος δὲ συνηγόρει τῷ νόμῳ, Πομπηΐου μὲν ἐλάχιστα φροντίζων, ὑποδυόμενος δὲ τὸν δῆμον ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἑαυτῷ καὶ κτώμενος. οἱ δὲ ἄλλοι τοῦ Πομπηΐου σφοδρῶς καθήπτοντο. καὶ τῶν μὲν ὑπάτων ἅτερος, εἰπὼν πρὸς αὐτὸν ὅτι Ῥωμύλον ζηλῶν οὐ φεύξεται ταὐτὸν ἐκείνῳ τέλος, ἐκινδύνευσεν ὑπὸ τοῦ πλήθους διαφθαρῆναι· [5] Κάτλου δὲ κατὰ τοῦ νόμου προσελθόντος, πολλὴν μὲν αἰδούμενος ὁ δῆμος ἡσυχίαν παρεῖχεν, ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλὰ μετὰ τιμῆς ἀνεπιφθόνως ὑπὲρ τοῦ Πομπηΐου διελθὼν συνεβούλευε φείδεσθαι καὶ μὴ προβάλλειν τοιοῦτον ἄνδρα κινδύνοις ἐπαλλήλοις καὶ πολέμοις, “Ἢ τίνα,” εἶπεν, “ἕξετε ἄλλον, ἂν ἀπολέσητε τοῦτον;” ἐκ μιᾶς γνώμης [6] ὑπεφώνησαν ἅπαντες, “Σὲ αὐτόν.” ὁ μὲν οὖν Κάτλος, ὡς οὐκ ἔπειθεν, ἀπέστη· Ῥωσκίου δὲ προσελθόντος οὐδεὶς ἤκουσεν· ὁ δὲ τοῖς δακτύλοις διεσήμαινε μὴ μόνον, ἀλλὰ δεύτερον αἱρεῖσθαι Πομπήϊον. ἐπὶ τούτῳ λέγεται δυσχεράναντα τὸν δῆμον τηλικοῦτον ἀνακραγεῖν ὥστε ὑπερπετόμενον κόρακα τῆς ἀγορᾶς τυφωθῆναι καὶ καταπεσεῖν [7] εἰς τὸν ὄχλον. ὅθεν οὐ δοκεῖ ῥήξει τοῦ ἀέρος καὶ διασπασμῷ κενὸν πολὺ λαμβάνοντος ἐνολισθαίνειν τὰ πίπτοντα τῶν ὀρνέων, ἀλλὰ τυπτόμενα τῇ πληγῇ τῆς φωνῆς, ὅταν ἐν τῷ ἀέρι σάλον καὶ κῦμα ποιήσῃ πολλὴ καὶ ἰσχυρὰ φερομένη.

[26] [1] Τότε μὲν οὖν διελύθησαν· ᾗ δὲ ἡμέρᾳ τὴν ψῆφον ἐποίσειν ἔμελλον, ὑπεξῆλθεν ὁ Πομπήϊος εἰς ἀγρόν. ἀκούσας δὲ κεκυρῶσθαι τὸν νόμον εἰσῆλθε νύκτωρ εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ὡς ἐπιφθόνου τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀπαντήσεως καὶ συνδρομῆς ἐσομένης. ἅμα δὲ ἡμέρᾳ προελθὼν ἔθυσε· καὶ γενομένης ἐκκλησίας αὐτῷ, διεπράξατο προσλαβεῖν ἕτερα πολλὰ τοῖς ἐψηφισμένοις ἤδη, [2] μικροῦ διπλασιάσας τὴν παρασκευήν. πεντακόσιαι μὲν γὰρ αὐτῷ νῆες ἐπληρώθησαν, ὁπλιτῶν δὲ μυριάδες δώδεκα καὶ πεντακισχίλιοι ἱππεῖς ἠθροίσθησαν. ἡγεμονικοὶ δὲ καὶ στρατηγικοὶ κατελέγησαν ἀπὸ βουλῆς ἄνδρες εἰκοσιτέσσαρες ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, δύο δὲ ταμίαι παρῆσαν. αἱ δὲ τιμαὶ τῶν ὠνίων εὐθὺς πεσοῦσαι λόγον ἡδομένῳ τῷ δήμῳ παρεῖχον, ὡς αὐτὸ τοὔνομα τοῦ Πομπηΐου λέλυκε τὸν πόλεμον.

[3] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ διελὼν τὰ πελάγη καὶ τὸ διάστημα τῆς ἐντὸς θαλάσσης εἰς μέρη τρισκαίδεκα, καὶ νεῶν ἀριθμὸν ἐφ’ ἑκάστῳ καὶ ἄρχοντα τάξας, ἅμα πανταχοῦ τῇ δυνάμει σκεδασθείσῃ τὰ μὲν ἐμπίπτοντα τῶν πειρατικῶν ἀθρόα περιλαμβάνων εὐθὺς ἐξεθηρᾶτο καὶ κατῆγεν· οἱ δὲ φθάσαντες διαλυθῆναι καὶ διεκπεσόντες ὥσπερ εἰς σμῆνος ἐδύοντο πανταχόθεν καταφερόμενοι τὴν Κιλικίαν, ἐφ’ οὓς αὐτὸς ἐστέλλετο ναῦς ἔχων ἑξήκοντα τὰς [4] ἀρίστας. οὐ μὴν πρότερον ἐπ’ ἐκείνους ἐξέπλευσεν ἢ παντάπασι καθῆραι τῶν αὐτόθι λῃστηρίων τὸ Τυρρηνικὸν πέλαγος, τὸ Λιβυκόν, τὸ περὶ Σαρδόνα καὶ Κύρνον καὶ Σικελίαν, ἡμέραις τεσσαράκοντα ταῖς πάσαις, αὑτῷ τε χρώμενος ἀτρύτῳ καὶ τοῖς στρατηγοῖς προθύμοις.

[27] [1] Ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ τοῦ ὑπάτου Πείσωνος ὀργῇ καὶ φθόνῳ λυμαινομένου τὴν παρασκευὴν καὶ διαλύοντος τὰ πληρώματα, τὸ μὲν ναυτικὸν εἰς Βρεντέσιον περιέπεμψεν, αὐτὸς δὲ διὰ Τυρρηνίας εἰς Ῥώμην ἀνέβαινεν. αἰσθόμενοι δὲ πάντες ἐξεχύθησαν εἰς τὴν ὁδόν, ὥσπερ οὐ πρὸ [2] ἡμερῶν ὀλίγων ἐκπέμψαντες αὐτόν. ἐποίει δὲ τὴν χαρὰν τὸ παρ’ ἐλπίδα τῆς μεταβολῆς τάχος, ὑπερβάλλουσαν ἀφθονίαν τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἐχούσης. ὅθεν ὁ Πείσων ἐκινδύνευσε τὴν ὑπατείαν ἀφαιρεθῆναι, Γαβινίου νόμον ἔχοντος ἤδη συγγεγραμμένον. ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο διεκώλυσεν ὁ Πομπήϊος, καὶ τἆλλα χρηματίσας ἐπιεικῶς καὶ διαπραξάμενος ὧν ἐδεῖτο, καταβὰς εἰς Βρεντέσιον ἐξέπλευσεν.

[3] ἐπειγόμενος δὲ τῷ καιρῷ καὶ παραπλέων τὰς πόλεις ὑπὸ σπουδῆς, ὅμως οὐ παρῆλθε τὰς Ἀθήνας, ἀναβὰς δὲ καὶ θύσας τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ προσαγορεύσας τὸν δῆμον εὐθὺς ἀπιὼν ἀνεγίνωσκεν εἰς αὐτὸν ἐπιγεγραμμένα μονόστιχα, τὸ μὲν ἐντὸς τῆς πύλης·

Ἐφ’ ὅσον ὢν ἄνθρωπος οἶδας, ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον εἶ

θεός·

τὸ δ’ ἐκτός·

Προσεδοκῶμεν, προσεκυνοῦμεν, εἴδομεν, προπέμπομεν.

[4] ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν συνεστώτων ἔτι καὶ πλανωμένων ἔξω πειρατηρίων ἐνίοις δεηθεῖσιν ἐπιεικῶς ἐχρήσατο καὶ παραλαβὼν τὰ πλοῖα καὶ τὰ σώματα κακὸν οὐδὲν ἐποίησεν, ἐπ’ ἐλπίδος χρηστῆς οἱ λοιποὶ γενόμενοι τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους διέφευγον ἡγεμόνας, Πομπηΐῳ δὲ φέροντες ἑαυτοὺς μετὰ τέκνων καὶ γυναικῶν ἐνεχείριζον. ὁ δὲ πάντων ἐφείδετο, καὶ μάλιστα διὰ τούτων τοὺς ἔτι λανθάνοντας ἐξιχνεύων καὶ λαμβάνων ἐκόλαζεν ὡς αὐτοὺς ἑαυτοῖς ἀνήκεστα συνειδότας.

[28] [1] Οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι καὶ δυνατώτατοι γενεὰς μὲν αὑτῶν καὶ χρήματα καὶ τὸν ἄχρηστον ὄχλον ἐν φρουρίοις καὶ πολίσμασι καρτεροῖς περὶ τὸν Ταῦρον εἶχον ἀποκείμενα, τὰς δὲ ναῦς πληρώσαντες αὐτοὶ περὶ τὸ Κορακήσιον τῆς Κιλικίας ἐπιπλέοντα τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐδέξαντο· καὶ μάχης γενομένης νικηθέντες ἐπολιορκοῦντο. τέλος δὲ πέμψαντες ἱκετηρίας παρέδωκαν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ πόλεις καὶ νήσους ὧν ἐπεκράτουν ἐντειχισάμενοι, χαλεπὰς βιασθῆναι καὶ δυσπροσπελάστους.

[2] κατελύθη μὲν οὖν ὁ πόλεμος καὶ τὰ πανταχοῦ λῃστήρια τῆς θαλάσσης ἐξέπεσεν οὐκ ἐν πλείονι χρόνῳ τριῶν μηνῶν, ναῦς δὲ πολλὰς μὲν ἄλλας, ἐνενήκοντα δὲ χαλκεμβόλους παρέλαβεν. αὐτοὺς δὲ δισμυρίων πλείονας γενομένους ἀνελεῖν μὲν οὐδὲ ἐβουλεύσατο, μεθεῖναι δὲ καὶ περιϊδεῖν σκεδασθέντας ἢ συστάντας αὖθις, ἀπόρους καὶ πολεμικοὺς καὶ πολλοὺς ὄντας, οὐκ [3] ᾤετο καλῶς ἔχειν. ἐννοήσας οὖν ὅτι φύσει μὲν ἄνθρωπος οὔτε γέγονεν οὔτ’ ἔστιν ἀνήμερον ζῷον οὐδ’ ἄμικτον, ἀλλ’ ἐξίσταται τῇ κακίᾳ παρὰ φύσιν χρώμενος, ἔθεσι δὲ καὶ τόπων καὶ βίων μεταβολαῖς ἐξημεροῦται, καὶ θηρία δὲ διαίτης κοινωνοῦντα πρᾳοτέρας ἐκδύεται τὸ ἄγριον καὶ χαλεπόν, ἔγνω τοὺς ἄνδρας εἰς γῆν μεταφέρειν ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης καὶ βίου γεύειν ἐπιεικοῦς, συνεθισθέντας [4] ἐν πόλεσιν οἰκεῖν καὶ γεωργεῖν. ἐνίους μὲν οὖν αἱ μικραὶ καὶ ὑπέρημοι τῶν Κιλίκων πόλεις ἐδέξαντο καὶ κατέμιξαν ἑαυταῖς χώραν προσλαβοῦσαι, τὴν δὲ Σολίων ἠρημωμένην ἔναγχος ὑπὸ Τιγράνου τοῦ Ἀρμενίων βασιλέως ἀναλαβὼν ἵδρυσε πολλοὺς ἐν αὐτῇ. τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς οἰκητήριον ἔδωκε Δύμην τὴν Ἀχαΐδα, χηρεύουσαν ἀνδρῶν τότε, γῆν δὲ πολλὴν καὶ ἀγαθὴν ἔχουσαν.

[29] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οἱ βασκαίνοντες ἔψεγον· τοῖς δὲ περὶ Κρήτην πραχθεῖσι πρὸς Μέτελλον οὐδ’ οἱ πάνυ φιλοῦντες αὐτὸν ἔχαιρον. ὁ γὰρ Μέτελλος, οἰκεῖος ὢν ἐκείνου τοῦ συνάρξαντος ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ τῷ Πομπηΐῳ, στρατηγὸς εἰς Κρήτην ἐπέμφθη πρότερον ἢ τὸν Πομπήϊον αἱρεθῆναι· δευτέρα γάρ τις ἦν αὕτη τῶν πειρατηρίων πηγὴ μετὰ τὴν ἐν Κιλικίᾳ· καὶ πολλοὺς ἐγκαταλαβὼν [2] ὁ Μέτελλος ἐξῄρει καὶ διέφθειρεν. οἱ δὲ περιόντες ἔτι καὶ πολιορκούμενοι πέμψαντες ἱκετηρίαν ἐπεκαλοῦντο τὸν Πομπήϊον εἰς τὴν νῆσον, ὡς τῆς ἐκείνου μέρος οὖσαν ἀρχῆς καὶ πανταχόθεν ἐμπίπτουσαν εἰς τὸ μέτρον τὸ ἀπὸ θαλάσσης. ὁ δὲ δεξάμενος ἔγραφε τῷ Μετέλλῳ κωλύων τὸν πόλεμον. ἔγραφε δὲ καὶ ταῖς πόλεσι μὴ προσέχειν Μετέλλῳ, καὶ στρατηγὸν ἔπεμψε τῶν ὑφ’ [3] ἑαυτὸν ἀρχόντων ἕνα Λεύκιον Ὀκταούϊον, ὃς συνεισελθὼν εἰς τὰ τείχη τοῖς πολιορκουμένοις καὶ μαχόμενος μετ’ αὐτῶν, οὐ μόνον ἐπαχθῆ καὶ βαρύν, ἀλλὰ καὶ καταγέλαστον ἐποίει τὸν Πομπήϊον, ἀνθρώποις ἀνοσίοις καὶ ἀθέοις τοὔνομα κιχράντα καὶ περιάπτοντα τὴν αὑτοῦ δόξαν ὥσπερ ἀλεξιφάρμακον ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ φιλοτιμίας [4] τῆς πρὸς τὸν Μέτελλον. οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸν Ἀχιλλέα ποιεῖν ἀνδρὸς ἔργον, ἀλλὰ μειρακίου παντάπασιν ἐμπλήκτου καὶ σεσοβημένου πρὸς δόξαν, ἀνανεύοντα τοῖς ἄλλοις καὶ διακωλύοντα βάλλειν Ἕκτορα,

Μή τις κῦδος ἄροιτο βαλών, ὁ δὲ δεύτερος ἔλθοι·

[5] Πομπήϊον δὲ καὶ σώζειν ὑπερμαχοῦντα τῶν κοινῶν πολεμίων ἐπὶ τῷ τὸν θρίαμβον ἀφελέσθαι στρατηγοῦ πολλὰ πεπονηκότος. οὐ μὴν ἐνέδωκεν ὁ Μέτελλος, ἀλλὰ τούς τε πειρατὰς ἐξελὼν ἐτιμωρήσατο, καὶ τὸν Ὀκταούϊον ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ καθυβρίσας καὶ λοιδορήσας ἀφῆκεν.

[30] [1] Ἀπαγγελθέντος δὲ εἰς Ῥώμην πέρας ἔχειν τὸν πειρατικὸν πόλεμον καὶ σχολὴν ἄγοντα τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐπέρχεσθαι τὰς πόλεις, γράφει νόμον εἷς τῶν δημάρχων Μάλλιος, ὅσης Λεύκολλος ἄρχει χώρας καὶ δυνάμεως, Πομπήϊον παραλαβόντα πᾶσαν, προσλαβόντα δὲ καὶ Βιθυνίαν, ἣν ἔχει Γλαβρίων, πολεμεῖν Μιθριδάτῃ καὶ Τιγράνῃ τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν, ἔχοντα καὶ τὴν ναυτικὴν δύναμιν καὶ τὸ κράτος τῆς θαλάσσης ἐφ’ [2] οἷς ἔλαβεν ἐξ ἀρχῆς. τοῦτο δ’ ἦν ἐφ’ ἑνὶ συλλήβδην γενέσθαι τὴν Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίαν· ὧν γὰρ ἐδόκει μόνων ἐπαρχιῶν μὴ ἐφικνεῖσθαι τῷ προτέρῳ νόμῳ, Φρυγίας, Λυκαονίας, Γαλατίας, Καππαδοκίας, Κιλικίας, τῆς ἄνω Κολχίδος, Ἀρμενίας, αὗται προσετίθεντο μετὰ στρατοπέδων καὶ δυνάμεων αἷς Λεύκολλος κατεπολέμησε [3] Μιθριδάτην καὶ Τιγράνην. ἀλλὰ Λευκόλλου μὲν ἀποστερουμένου τὴν δόξαν ὧν κατειργάσατο καὶ θριάμβου μᾶλλον ἢ πολέμου διαδοχὴν λαμβάνοντος, ἥττων λόγος ἦν τοῖς ἀριστοκρατικοῖς, καίπερ οἰομένοις ἄδικα καὶ ἀχάριστα πάσχειν τὸν ἄνδρα, τὴν δὲ δύναμιν τοῦ Πομπηΐου βαρέως φέροντες ὡς τυραννίδα καθισταμένην, ἰδίᾳ παρεκάλουν καὶ παρεθάρρυνον αὑτοὺς ἐπιλαβέσθαι τοῦ νόμου καὶ μὴ προέσθαι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν. [4] ἐνστάντος δὲ τοῦ καιροῦ, τὸν δῆμον φοβηθέντες ἐξέλιπον καὶ κατεσιώπησαν οἱ λοιποί, Κάτλος δὲ τοῦ νόμου πολλὰ κατηγορήσας καὶ τοῦ δημάρχου, μηδένα δὲ πείθων, ἐκέλευε τὴν βουλὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος κεκραγὼς πολλάκις ὄρος ζητεῖν, ὥσπερ οἱ πρόγονοι, καὶ κρημνόν, ὅπου καταφυγοῦσα [5] διασώσει τὴν ἐλευθερίαν. ἐκυρώθη δ’ οὖν ὁ νόμος, ὡς λέγουσι, πάσαις ταῖς φυλαῖς, καὶ κύριος ἀποδέδεικτο μὴ παρὼν ὁ Πομπήϊος ἁπάντων σχεδὸν ὧν ὁ Σύλλας ὅπλοις καὶ πολέμῳ τῆς πόλεως κρατήσας. αὐτὸς δὲ δεξάμενος τὰ γράμματα καὶ πυθόμενος τὰ δεδογμένα, τῶν φίλων παρόντων καὶ συνηδομένων, τὰς ὀφρῦς λέγεται συναγαγεῖν καὶ τὸν μηρὸν πατάξαι καὶ εἰπεῖν ὡς ἂν βαρυνόμενος ἤδη καὶ δυσχεραίνων τὸ ἄρχειν· [6] “Φεῦ τῶν ἀνηνύτων ἄθλων, ὡς ἄρα κρεῖττον ἦν ἕνα τῶν ἀδόξων γενέσθαι, εἰ μηδέποτε παύσομαι στρατευόμενος μηδὲ τὸν φθόνον τοῦτον ἐκδὺς ἐν ἀγρῷ διαιτήσομαι μετὰ τῆς γυναικός.” ἐφ’ οἷς λεγομένοις οὐδ’ οἱ πάνυ συνήθεις ἔφερον αὐτοῦ τὴν εἰρωνείαν, γινώσκοντες ὅτι τῆς ἐμφύτου φιλοτιμίας καὶ φιλαρχίας ὑπέκκαυμα τὴν πρὸς Λεύκολλον ἔχων διαφορὰν μειζόνως ἔχαιρεν.

[31] [1] Ἀμέλει δὲ καὶ τὰ ἔργα ταχέως αὐτὸν ἀπεκάλυπτε. πανταχοῦ γὰρ ἐκτιθεὶς διαγράμματα τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀνεκαλεῖτο καὶ μετεπέμπετο τοὺς ὑπηκόους δυνάστας καὶ βασιλεῖς ὡς ἑαυτόν. ἐπιών τε τὴν χώραν οὐδὲν ἀκίνητον εἴα τῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ Λευκόλλου γεγονότων, ἀλλὰ καὶ κολάσεις ἀνῆκε πολλοῖς καὶ δωρεὰς ἀφείλετο καὶ πάντα ὅλως ἔπραττεν ἐπιδεῖξαι τὸν ἄνδρα φιλονεικῶν τοῖς θαυμάζουσιν οὐδενὸς ὄντα κύριον.

[2] ἐγκαλοῦντος δ’ ἐκείνου διὰ τῶν φίλων, ἔδοξε συνελθεῖν εἰς ταὐτό· καὶ συνῆλθον περὶ τὴν Γαλατίαν. οἷα δὲ μεγίστων στρατηγῶν καὶ μέγιστα κατωρθωκότων δάφναις ἀνεστεμμένας ἔχοντες ὁμοῦ καὶ τὰς ῥάβδους οἱ ὑπηρέται ἀπήντων· ἀλλὰ Λεύκολλος μὲν ἐκ τόπων χλοερῶν καὶ κατασκίων προσῄει, Πομπήϊος δὲ πολλὴν ἄδενδρον καὶ κατεψυγμένην ἔτυχε διεληλυθώς.

[3] ἰδόντες οὖν οἱ τοῦ Λευκόλλου ῥαβδοφόροι τοῦ Πομπηΐου τὰς δάφνας ἀθαλλεῖς καὶ μεμαραμμένας παντάπασιν, ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων προσφάτων οὐσῶν μεταδιδόντες ἐπεκόσμησαν καὶ κατέστεψαν τὰς ἐκείνου ῥάβδους. ὃ σημεῖον ἔδοξεν εἶναι τοῦ τὰ Λευκόλλου νικητήρια καὶ τὴν δόξαν οἰσόμενον [4] ἔρχεσθαι Πομπήϊον. ἦν δὲ Λεύκολλος μὲν ἐν ὑπατείας τε τάξει καὶ καθ’ ἡλικίαν πρεσβύτερος, τὸ δὲ τοῦ Πομπηΐου μεῖζον ἀξίωμα τοῖς δυσὶ θριάμβοις. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τὴν πρώτην ἔντευξιν ὡς ἐνῆν μάλιστα πολιτικῶς καὶ φιλοφρόνως ἐποιήσαντο, μεγαλύνοντες ἀλλήλων τὰ ἔργα καὶ συνηδόμενοι τοῖς κατορθώμασιν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς λόγοις πρὸς οὐδὲν ἐπιεικὲς οὐδὲ μέτριον συμβάντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ λοιδορήσαντες, ὁ μὲν εἰς φιλαργυρίαν τὸν Λεύκολλον, ὁ δὲ εἰς φιλαρχίαν ἐκεῖνον, ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων μόλις διελύθησαν.

[5] Καὶ Λεύκολλος μὲν ἐν Γαλατίᾳ διέγραψε χώρας τῆς αἰχμαλώτου καὶ δωρεὰς ἄλλας οἷς ἐβούλετο, Πομπήϊος δὲ μικρὸν ἀπωτέρω στρατοπεδεύσας ἐκώλυε προσέχειν αὐτῷ, καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἅπαντας ἀφείλετο πλὴν χιλίων ἑξακοσίων, οὓς ἐνόμιζεν ὑπ’ αὐθαδείας ἀχρήστους μὲν ἑαυτῷ, τῷ [6] Λευκόλλῳ δὲ δυσμενεῖς εἶναι. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις διασύρων τὰ ἔργα ἐμφανῶς ἔλεγε τραγῳδίαις καὶ σκιαγραφίαις πεπολεμηκέναι βασιλικαῖς τὸν Λεύκολλον, αὑτῷ δὲ πρὸς ἀληθινὴν καὶ σεσωφρονισμένην τὸν ἀγῶνα λείπεσθαι δύναμιν, εἰς θυρεοὺς καὶ ξίφη καὶ ἵππους Μιθριδάτου καταφεύγοντος. ἀμυνόμενος δὲ ὁ Λεύκολλος εἰδώλῳ καὶ σκιᾷ πολέμου τὸν Πομπήϊον ἔφη μαχούμενον βαδίζειν, εἰθισμένον ἀλλοτρίοις νεκροῖς, ὥσπερ ὄρνιν ἀργόν, ἐπικαταίρειν καὶ λείψανα πολέμων [7] σπαράσσειν. οὕτω γὰρ αὑτὸν ἐπιγράψαι Σερτωρίῳ, Λεπίδῳ, τοῖς Σπαρτακείοις, τὰ μὲν Κράσσου, τὰ δὲ Μετέλλου, τὰ δὲ Κάτλου κατωρθωκότος. ὅθεν οὐ θαυμάζειν εἰ τῶν Ἀρμενιακῶν καὶ Ποντικῶν πολέμων ὑποβάλλεται τὴν δόξαν, ἄνθρωπος ἑαυτὸν εἰς δραπετικὸν θρίαμβον ἁμῶς γέ πως ἐμβαλεῖν μηχανησάμενος.

[32] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Λεύκολλος μὲν ἀπῆρε, Πομπήϊος δὲ τῷ στόλῳ παντὶ τὴν μεταξὺ Φοινίκης καὶ Βοσπόρου θάλασσαν ἐπὶ φρουρᾷ διαλαβών, αὐτὸς ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην, ἔχοντα τρισμυρίους πεζοὺς ἐν φάλαγγι καὶ δισχιλίους [2] ἱππεῖς, μάχεσθαι δὲ μὴ θαρροῦντα. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν αὐτοῦ καρτερὸν ὄρος καὶ δύσμαχον, ἐν ᾧ στρατοπεδεύων ἔτυχεν, ὡς ἄνυδρον ἐκλιπόντος, αὐτὸ τοῦτο κατασχὼν ὁ Πομπήϊος, καὶ τῇ φύσει τῶν βλαστανόντων καὶ ταῖς συγκλινίαις τῶν τόπων τεκμαιρόμενος ἔχειν πηγὰς τὸ χωρίον, ἐκέλευσεν ἐκβαλεῖν πανταχοῦ φρέατα. καὶ μεστὸν ἦν εὐθὺς ὕδατος ἀφθόνου τὸ στρατόπεδον, ὥστε θαυμάζειν εἰ τῷ παντὶ χρόνῳ τοῦτο Μιθριδάτης [3] ἠγνόησεν. ἔπειτα περιστρατοπεδεύσας περιετείχιζεν αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ πέντε καὶ τετταράκοντα πολιορκηθεὶς ἡμέρας ἔλαθεν ἀποδρὰς μετὰ τῆς ἐρρωμενεστάτης δυνάμεως, κτείνας τοὺς ἀχρήστους καὶ νοσοῦντας. εἶτα μέντοι περὶ τὸν Εὐφράτην καταλαβὼν αὐτὸν ὁ Πομπήϊος παρεστρατοπέδευσε· καὶ δεδιὼς μὴ φθάσῃ περάσας τὸν Εὐφράτην, ἐκ μέσων νυκτῶν ἐπῆγεν ὡπλισμένην [4] τὴν στρατιάν· καθ’ ὃν χρόνον λέγεται τὸν Μιθριδάτην ὄψιν ἐν ὕπνοις ἰδεῖν τὰ μέλλοντα προδηλοῦσαν. ἐδόκει γὰρ οὐρίῳ πνεύματι πλέων τὸ Ποντικὸν πέλαγος ἤδη Βόσπορον καθορᾶν καὶ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι τοὺς συμπλέοντας, ὡς ἄν τις ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ σαφεῖ καὶ βεβαίῳ χαίρων· ἄφνω δὲ ἀναφανῆναι πάντων ἔρημος ἐπὶ λεπτοῦ ναυαγίου διαφερόμενος. ἐν τοιούτοις δὲ αὐτὸν ὄντα πάθεσι καὶ φάσμασιν ἐπιστάντες ἀνέστησαν [5] οἱ φίλοι, φράζοντες ἐπιέναι Πομπήϊον. ἦν οὖν ἐξ ἀνάγκης μαχητέον ὑπὲρ τοῦ χάρακος, καὶ προαγαγόντες οἱ στρατηγοὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἔταξαν. αἰσθόμενος δὲ τὴν παρασκευὴν αὐτῶν ὁ Πομπήϊος ὤκνει κατὰ σκότος εἰς κίνδυνον ἐλθεῖν, καὶ κύκλῳ μόνον ᾤετο δεῖν περιελαύνειν, ὅπως μὴ φεύγοιεν, ἡμέρας δὲ κρείττους ὄντας ἐπιχειρεῖν. οἱ δὲ πρεσβύτατοι τῶν ταξιαρχῶν δεόμενοι καὶ παρακαλοῦντες ἐξώρμησαν αὐτόν· οὐδὲ γὰρ σκότος ἦν παντάπασιν, ἀλλὰ ἡ σελήνη καταφερομένη παρεῖχεν ἔτι τῶν σωμάτων ἱκανὴν ἔποψιν. καὶ τοῦτο μάλιστα τοὺς βασιλικοὺς [6] ἔσφηλεν. ἐπῄεσαν μὲν γὰρ οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι κατὰ νώτου τὴν σελήνην ἔχοντες· πεπιεσμένου δὲ περὶ τὰς δύσεις τοῦ φωτός, αἱ σκιαὶ πολὺ τῶν σωμάτων ἔμπροσθεν προϊοῦσαι τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐπέβαλλον, οὐ δυναμένοις τὸ διάστημα συνιδεῖν ἀκριβῶς· ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐν χερσὶν ἤδη γεγονότων τοὺς ὑσσοὺς ἀφέντες μάτην οὐδενὸς ἐφίκοντο.

[7] τοῦτο συνιδόντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι μετὰ κραυγῆς ἐπέδραμον, καὶ μηκέτι μένειν τολμῶντας, ἀλλ’ ἐκπεπληγμένους καὶ φεύγοντας ἔκτεινον, ὥστε πολὺ πλείονας μυρίων ἀποθανεῖν, ἁλῶναι δὲ τὸ στρατόπεδον.

Αὐτὸς δὲ Μιθριδάτης ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν ὀκτακοσίοις ἱππεῦσι διέκοψε καὶ διεξήλασε τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ταχὺ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων σκεδασθέντων ἀπελείφθη [8] μετὰ τριῶν. ἐν οἷς ἦν Ὑψικράτεια παλλακίς, ἀεὶ μὲν ἀνδρώδης τις οὖσα καὶ παράτολμος· Ὑψικράτην γοῦν αὐτὴν ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐκάλει· τότε δὲ ἀνδρὸς ἔχουσα Πέρσου στολὴν καὶ ἵππον οὔτε τῷ σώματι πρὸς τὰ μήκη τῶν δρόμων ἀπηγόρευσεν οὔτε θεραπεύουσα τοῦ βασιλέως τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὸν ἵππον ἐξέκαμεν, ἄχρι ἧκον εἰς χωρίον Σίνωρα χρημάτων καὶ κειμηλίων βασιλικῶν [9] μεστόν. ἐξ οὗ λαβὼν ὁ Μιθριδάτης ἐσθῆτας πολυτελεῖς διένειμε τοῖς συνδεδραμηκόσι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐκ τῆς φυγῆς. ἔδωκε δὲ καὶ τῶν φίλων ἑκάστῳ φορεῖν θανάσιμον φάρμακον, ὅπως ἄκων μηδεὶς ὑποχείριος γένοιτο τοῖς πολεμίοις. ἐντεῦθεν ὥρμητο μὲν ἐπ’ Ἀρμενίας πρὸς Τιγράνην, ἐκείνου δὲ ἀπαγορεύοντος καὶ τάλαντα ἑκατὸν ἐπικηρύξαντος αὐτῷ, παραμειψάμενος τὰς πηγὰς τοῦ Εὐφράτου διὰ τῆς Κολχίδος ἔφευγε.

[33] [1] Πομπήϊος δὲ εἰς Ἀρμενίαν ἐνέβαλε τοῦ νέου Τιγράνου καλοῦντος αὐτόν· ἤδη γὰρ ἀφειστήκει τοῦ πατρός, καὶ συνήντησε τῷ Πομπηΐῳ περὶ τὸν Ἀράξην ποταμόν, ὃς ἀνίσχει μὲν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν τῷ Εὐφράτῃ τόπων, ἀποτρεπόμενος δὲ πρὸς τὰς ἀνατολὰς εἰς τὸ Κάσπιον ἐμβάλλει [2] πέλαγος. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν προῆγον ἅμα τὰς πόλεις παραλαμβάνοντες· ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς Τιγράνης ἔναγχος μὲν ὑπὸ Λευκόλλου συντετριμμένος, ἥμερον δέ τινα τῷ τρόπῳ καὶ πρᾷον πυθόμενος εἶναι τὸν Πομπήϊον, ἐδέξατο μὲν εἰς τὰ βασίλεια φρουράν, ἀναλαβὼν δὲ τοὺς φίλους καὶ συγγενεῖς αὐτὸς [3] ἐπορεύετο παραδώσων ἑαυτόν. ὡς δὲ ἦλθεν ἱππότης ἐπὶ τὸν χάρακα, ῥαβδοῦχοι δύο τοῦ Πομπηΐου προσελθόντες ἐκέλευσαν ἀποβῆναι τοῦ ἵππου καὶ πεζὸν ἐλθεῖν· οὐδένα γὰρ ἀνθρώπων ἐφ’ ἵππου καθεζόμενον ἐν Ῥωμαϊκῷ στρατοπέδῳ πώποτε ὀφθῆναι. καὶ ταῦτα οὖν ὁ Τιγράνης ἐπείθετο καὶ τὸ ξίφος αὐτοῖς ἀπολυσάμενος παρεδίδου· καὶ τέλος, ὡς πρὸς αὐτὸν ἦλθε τὸν Πομπήϊον, ἀφελόμενος τὴν κίταριν ὥρμησε πρὸ τῶν ποδῶν θεῖναι, καὶ καταβαλὼν ἑαυτόν, αἴσχιστα δὴ πάντων, προσπεσεῖν αὐτοῦ τοῖς γόνασιν.

[4] ἀλλ’ ὁ Πομπήϊος ἔφθη τῆς δεξιᾶς αὐτοῦ λαβόμενος προσαγαγέσθαι· καὶ πλησίον ἱδρυσάμενος ἑαυτοῦ, τὸν δὲ υἱὸν ἐπὶ θάτερα, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ἔφησε δεῖν αἰτιᾶσθαι Λεύκολλον, ὑπ’ ἐκείνου γὰρ ἀφῃρῆσθαι Συρίαν, Φοινίκην, Κιλικίαν, Γαλατίαν, Σωφηνήν, ἃ δὲ ἄχρι ἑαυτοῦ διατετήρηκεν, ἕξειν ἐκτίσαντα ποινὴν ἑξακισχίλια τάλαντα Ῥωμαίοις τῆς ἀδικίας, Σωφηνῆς δὲ βασιλεύσειν [5] τὸν υἱόν. ἐπὶ τούτοις ὁ μὲν Τιγράνης ἠγάπησε, καὶ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἀσπασαμένων αὐτὸν βασιλέα περιχαρὴς γενόμενος ἐπηγγείλατο στρατιώτῃ μὲν ἡμιμναῖον ἀργυρίου δώσειν, ἑκατοντάρχῃ δὲ μνᾶς δέκα, χιλιάρχῳ δὲ τάλαντον· ὁ δ’ υἱὸς ἐδυσφόρει, καὶ κληθεὶς ἐπὶ δεῖπνον οὐκ ἔφη Πομπηΐου δεῖσθαι τοιαῦτα τιμῶντος· καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἄλλον εὑρήσειν Ῥωμαίων. ἐκ τούτου δεθεὶς εἰς τὸν [6] θρίαμβον ἐφυλάττετο. καὶ μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἔπεμψε Φραάτης ὁ Πάρθος ἀπαιτῶν μὲν τὸν νεανίσκον, ὡς αὐτοῦ γαμβρόν, ἀξιῶν δὲ τῶν ἡγεμονιῶν ὅρῳ χρῆσθαι τῷ Εὐφράτῃ. Πομπήϊος δὲ ἀπεκρίνατο τὸν μὲν Τιγράνην τῷ πατρὶ μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ πενθερῷ προσήκειν, ὅρῳ δὲ χρήσεσθαι τῷ δικαίῳ.

[34] [1] Καταλιπὼν δὲ φρουρὸν Ἀρμενίας Ἀφράνιον αὐτὸς ἐβάδιζε διὰ τῶν περιοικούντων τὸν Καύκασον ἐθνῶν ἀναγκαίως ἐπὶ Μιθριδάτην. μέγιστα δὲ αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἔθνη Ἀλβανοὶ καὶ Ἴβηρες, Ἴβηρες μὲν ἐπὶ τὰ Μοσχικὰ ὄρη καὶ τὸν Πόντον καθήκοντες, Ἀλβανοὶ δὲ ἐπὶ τὴν ἕω καὶ τὴν [2] Κασπίαν κεκλιμένοι θάλασσαν. οὗτοι πρῶτον μὲν αἰτοῦντι Πομπηΐῳ δίοδον ἔδοσαν· χειμῶνος δὲ τὴν στρατιὰν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ καταλαβόντος καὶ τῆς Κρονικῆς ἑορτῆς τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις καθηκούσης, γενόμενοι τετρακισμυρίων οὐκ ἐλάττους ἐπεχείρησαν αὐτοῖς, διαβάντες τὸν Κύρνον ποταμόν, ὃς ἐκ τῶν Ἰβηρικῶν ὀρῶν ἀνιστάμενος καὶ δεχόμενος κατιόντα τὸν Ἀράξην ἀπ’ Ἀρμενίας ἐξίησι δώδεκα [3] στόμασιν εἰς τὸ Κάσπιον. οἱ δὲ οὔ φασι τούτῳ συμφέρεσθαι τὸν Ἀράξην, ἀλλὰ καθ’ ἑαυτόν, ἐγγὺς δὲ ποιεῖσθαι τὴν ἐκβολὴν εἰς ταὐτὸ πέλαγος. Πομπήϊος δέ, καίπερ ἐνστῆναι δυνάμενος πρὸς τὴν διάβασιν τοῖς πολεμίοις, περιεῖδε διαβάντας καθ’ ἡσυχίαν· εἶτα ἐπαγαγὼν ἐτρέψατο [4] καὶ διέφθειρε παμπληθεῖς. τῷ δὲ βασιλεῖ δεηθέντι καὶ πέμψαντι πρέσβεις ἀφεὶς τὴν ἀδικίαν καὶ σπεισάμενος, ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἴβηρας ἐβάδιζε, πλήθει μὲν οὐκ ἐλάττονας, μαχιμωτέρους δὲ τῶν ἑτέρων ὄντας, ἰσχυρῶς δὲ βουλομένους τῷ Μιθριδάτῃ χαρίζεσθαι καὶ διωθεῖσθαι τὸν Πομπήϊον.

[5] οὔτε γὰρ Μήδοις οὔτε Πέρσαις ὑπήκουσαν Ἴβηρες, διέφυγον δὲ καὶ τὴν Μακεδόνων ἀρχήν, Ἀλεξάνδρου διὰ ταχέων ἐκ τῆς Ὑρκανίας ἀπάραντος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτους μάχῃ μεγάλῃ τρεψάμενος ὁ Πομπήϊος, ὥστε ἀποθανεῖν μὲν ἐνακισχιλίους, ἁλῶναι δὲ πλείους μυρίων, εἰς τὴν Κολχικὴν ἐνέβαλε· καὶ πρὸς τὸν Φᾶσιν αὐτῷ Σερουΐλιος ἀπήντησε, τὰς ναῦς ἔχων αἷς ἐφρούρει τὸν Πόντον.

[35] [1] Ἡ μὲν οὖν Μιθριδάτου δίωξις ἐνδεδυκότος εἰς τὰ περὶ Βόσπορον ἔθνη καὶ τὴν Μαιῶτιν ἀπορίας εἶχε μεγάλας· Ἀλβανοὶ δὲ αὖθις ἀφεστῶτες αὐτῷ προσηγγέλθησαν. πρὸς οὓς ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ φιλονεικίας ἐπιστρέψας τόν τε Κύρνον μόλις καὶ παραβόλως πάλιν διεπέρασεν ἐπὶ πολὺ σταυροῖς ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων ἀποκεχαρακωμένον, [2] καὶ μακρᾶς αὐτὸν ἐκδεχομένης ἀνύδρου καὶ ἀργαλέας ὁδοῦ, μυρίους ἀσκοὺς ὕδατος ἐμπλησάμενος ἤλαυνεν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ κατέλαβε πρὸς Ἄβαντι ποταμῷ παρατεταγμένους ἑξακισμυρίους πεζοὺς καὶ δισχιλίους ἱππεῖς ἐπὶ μυρίοις, ὡπλισμένους δὲ φαύλως καὶ δέρμασι θηρίων τοὺς πολλούς. ἡγεῖτο δὲ αὐτῶν βασιλέως [3] ἀδελφὸς ὄνομα Κῶσις. οὗτος ἐν χερσὶ τῆς μάχης γενομένης ἐπὶ τὸν Πομπήϊον ὁρμήσας αὐτὸν ἔβαλεν ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ θώρακος ἐπιπτυχὴν ἀκοντίσματι, Πομπήϊος δὲ ἐκεῖνον ἐκ χειρὸς διελάσας ἀνεῖλεν.

Ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ μάχῃ λέγονται καὶ Ἀμαζόνες συναγωνίσασθαι τοῖς βαρβάροις, ἀπὸ τῶν περὶ τὸν Θερμώδοντα ποταμὸν ὀρῶν καταβᾶσαι. μετὰ γὰρ τὴν μάχην σκυλεύοντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι τοὺς βαρβάρους πέλταις Ἀμαζονικαῖς καὶ κοθόρνοις ἐνετύγχανον, σῶμα δὲ οὐδὲν ὤφθη γυναικεῖον.

[4] νέμονται δὲ τοῦ Καυκάσου τὰ καθήκοντα πρὸς τὴν Ὑρκανίαν θάλασσαν, οὐχ ὁμοροῦσαι τοῖς Ἀλβανοῖς, ἀλλὰ Γέλαι καὶ Λῆγες οἰκοῦσι διὰ μέσου· καὶ τούτοις ἔτους ἑκάστου δύο μῆνας εἰς ταὐτὸ φοιτῶσαι περὶ τὸν Θερμώδοντα ποταμὸν ὁμιλοῦσιν, εἶτα καθ’ αὑτὰς ἀπαλλαγεῖσαι βιοτεύουσιν.

[36] [1] Ὁρμήσας δὲ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐλαύνειν ἐπὶ τὴν Ὑρκανίαν καὶ Κασπίαν θάλασσαν, ὑπὸ πλήθους ἑρπετῶν θανασίμων ἀπετράπη τριῶν ὁδὸν ἡμερῶν ἀποσχών, εἰς δὲ τὴν [2] μικρὰν Ἀρμενίαν ἀνεχώρησε. καὶ τῷ μὲν Ἐλυμαίων καὶ Μήδων βασιλεῖ πέμψασι πρέσβεις ἀντέγραψε φιλικῶς, τὸν δὲ Πάρθον, εἰς τὴν Γορδυηνὴν ἐμβεβληκότα καὶ περικόπτοντα τοὺς ὑπὸ Τιγράνῃ, πέμψας μετὰ Ἀφρανίου δύναμιν ἐξήλασε διωχθέντα μέχρι τῆς Ἀρβηλίτιδος.

Ὅσαι δὲ τῶν Μιθριδάτου παλλακίδων ἀνήχθησαν, οὐδεμίαν ἔγνω, πάσας δὲ τοῖς γονεῦσι καὶ οἰκείοις ἀνέπεμπεν. ἦσαν γὰρ αἱ πολλαὶ θυγατέρες καὶ γυναῖκες στρατηγῶν καὶ δυναστῶν.

[3] Στρατονίκη δέ, ἣ μέγιστον εἶχεν ἀξίωμα καὶ τὸ πολυχρυσότατον τῶν φρουρίων ἐφύλαττεν, ἦν μέν, ὡς ἔοικε, ψάλτου τινὸς οὐκ εὐτυχοῦς τἆλλα, πρεσβύτου δὲ θυγάτηρ, οὕτω δὲ εὐθὺς εἷλε παρὰ πότον ψήλασα τὸν Μιθριδάτην, ὥστε ἐκείνην μὲν ἔχων ἀνεπαύετο, τὸν δὲ πρεσβύτην ἀπέπεμψε δυσφοροῦντα τῷ μηδὲ προσρήσεως τυχεῖν ἐπιεικοῦς.

[4] ὡς μέντοι περὶ ὄρθρον ἐγερθεὶς εἶδεν ἔνδον ἐκπωμάτων μὲν ἀργυρῶν καὶ χρυσῶν τραπέζας, ὄχλον δὲ θεραπείας πολύν, εὐνούχους δὲ καὶ παῖδας ἱμάτια τῶν πολυτελῶν προσφέροντας αὐτῷ, καὶ πρὸ τῆς θύρας ἵππον ἑστῶτα κεκοσμημένον ὥσπερ οἱ τῶν φίλων τοῦ βασιλέως, χλευασμὸν εἶναι τὸ χρῆμα καὶ παιδιὰν ἡγούμενος [5] ὥρμησε φεύγειν διὰ θυρῶν. τῶν δὲ θεραπόντων ἀντιλαμβανομένων, καὶ λεγόντων ὅτι πλουσίου τεθνηκότος ἔναγχος οἶκον αὐτῷ μέγαν ὁ βασιλεὺς δεδώρηται, καὶ ταῦτα μικραί τινες ἀπαρχαὶ καὶ δείγματα τῶν ἄλλων χρημάτων καὶ κτημάτων εἰσίν, οὕτω πιστεύσας μόλις καὶ τὴν πορφύραν ἀναλαβὼν καὶ ἀναπηδήσας ἐπὶ τὸν ἵππον ἤλαυνε διὰ τῆς πόλεως βοῶν· “Ἐμὰ ταῦτα [6] πάντα ἐστί.” πρὸς δὲ τοὺς καταγελῶντας οὐ τοῦτο ἔλεγεν εἶναι θαυμαστόν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι μὴ λίθοις βάλλει τοὺς ἀπαντῶντας ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς μαινόμενος. ταύτης μὲν ἦν καὶ γενεᾶς καὶ αἵματος ἡ Στρατονίκη. τῷ δὲ Πομπηΐῳ καὶ τὸ χωρίον παρεδίδου τοῦτο καὶ δῶρα πολλὰ προσήνεγκεν, ὧν ἐκεῖνος ὅσα κόσμον ἱεροῖς καὶ λαμπρότητα τῷ θριάμβῳ παρέξειν ἐφαίνετο λαβὼν μόνα, τὰ λοιπὰ τὴν Στρατονίκην ἐκέλευε κεκτῆσθαι χαίρουσαν.

[7] ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τοῦ βασιλέως τῶν Ἰβήρων κλίνην τε καὶ τράπεζαν καὶ θρόνον, ἅπαντα χρυσᾶ, πέμψαντος αὐτῷ καὶ δεηθέντος λαβεῖν, καὶ ταῦτα τοῖς ταμίαις παρέδωκεν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον.

[37] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῷ Καινῷ φρουρίῳ καὶ γράμμασιν ἀπορρήτοις ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐνέτυχε τοῦ Μιθριδάτου, καὶ διῆλθεν οὐκ ἀηδῶς αὐτὰ πολλὴν ἔχοντα τοῦ ἤθους κατανόησιν. ὑπομνήματα γὰρ ἦν, ἐξ ὧν ἐφωράθη φαρμάκοις ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς καὶ τὸν υἱὸν Ἀριαράθην ἀνῃρηκὼς καὶ τὸν Σαρδιανὸν Ἀλκαῖον, ὅτι παρευδοκίμησεν αὐτὸν [2] ἵππους ἀγωνιστὰς ἐλαύνων. ἦσαν δὲ ἀναγεγραμμέναι καὶ κρίσεις ἐνυπνίων, ὧν τὰ μὲν αὐτὸς ἑωράκει, τὰ δὲ ἔνιαι τῶν γυναικῶν, ἐπιστολαί τε Μονίμης πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀκόλαστοι καὶ πάλιν ἐκείνου πρὸς αὐτήν. Θεοφάνης δὲ καὶ Ῥουτιλίου λόγον εὑρεθῆναί φησι παροξυντικὸν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀναίρεσιν [3] τῶν ἐν Ἀσίᾳ Ῥωμαίων. ὃ καλῶς εἰκάζουσιν οἱ πλεῖστοι κακοήθευμα τοῦ Θεοφάνους εἶναι, τάχα μὲν οὐδὲν αὐτῷ τὸν Ῥουτίλιον ἐοικότα μισοῦντος, εἰκὸς δὲ καὶ διὰ Πομπήϊον, οὗ τὸν πατέρα παμπόνηρον ἀπέδειξεν ὁ Ῥουτίλιος ἐν ταῖς ἱστορίαις.

[38] [1] Ἐντεῦθεν εἰς Ἀμισὸν ἐλθὼν ὁ Πομπήϊος πάθος νεμεσητὸν ὑπὸ φιλοτιμίας ἔπαθε. πολλὰ γὰρ τὸν Λεύκολλον ἐπικερτομήσας, ὅτι τοῦ πολεμίου ζῶντος ἔγραφε διατάξεις καὶ δωρεὰς ἔνεμε καὶ τιμάς, ἃ συνῃρημένου πολέμου καὶ πέρας ἔχοντος εἰώθασι ποιεῖν οἱ νενικηκότες, αὐτὸς ἐν Βοσπόρῳ Μιθριδάτου κρατοῦντος καὶ συνειλοχότος ἀξιόμαχον δύναμιν, ὡς δὴ [2] συντετελεσμένων ἁπάντων, ἔπραττε ταὐτά, διακοσμῶν τὰς ἐπαρχίας καὶ διανέμων δωρεάς, πολλῶν μὲν ἡγεμόνων καὶ δυναστῶν, βασιλέων δὲ δώδεκα βαρβάρων ἀφιγμένων πρὸς αὐτόν. ὅθεν οὐδὲ ἠξίωσε τὸν Πάρθον ἀντιγράφων, ὥσπερ οἱ λοιποί, βασιλέα βασιλέων προσαγορεῦσαι, τοῖς ἄλλοις χαριζόμενος. αὐτὸν δέ τις ἔρως καὶ ζῆλος εἶχε Συρίαν ἀναλαβεῖν καὶ διὰ τῆς Ἀραβίας ἐπὶ τὴν ἐρυθρὰν ἐλάσαι θάλασσαν, ὡς τῷ περιϊόντι τὴν οἰκουμένην πανταχόθεν Ὠκεανῷ [3] προσμίξειε νικῶν· καὶ γὰρ ἐν Λιβύῃ πρῶτος ἄχρι τῆς ἐκτὸς θαλάσσης κρατῶν προῆλθε, καὶ τὴν ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ πάλιν ἀρχὴν ὡρίσατο Ῥωμαίοις τῷ Ἀτλαντικῷ πελάγει, καὶ τρίτον ἔναγχος Ἀλβανοὺς διώκων ὀλίγον ἐδέησεν ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν Ὑρκανίαν θάλασσαν. ὡς οὖν συνάψων τῇ ἐρυθρᾷ τὴν περίοδον τῆς στρατείας ἀνίστατο. καὶ γὰρ ἄλλως τὸν Μιθριδάτην ἑώρα δυσθήρατον ὄντα τοῖς ὅπλοις καὶ φεύγοντα χαλεπώτερον ἢ μαχόμενον.

[39] [1] Διὸ τούτῳ μὲν εἰπὼν ἰσχυρότερον ἑαυτοῦ πολέμιον τὸν λιμὸν ἀπολείψειν, ἐπέστησε φυλακὰς τῶν νεῶν ἐπὶ τοὺς πλέοντας εἰς Βόσπορον ἐμπόρους· καὶ θάνατος ἦν ἡ ζημία τοῖς ἁλισκομένοις. ἀναλαβὼν δὲ τῆς στρατιᾶς τὴν πληθὺν συχνὴν προῆγε· καὶ τῶν μετὰ Τριαρίου πρὸς Μιθριδάτην ἀτυχῶς ἀγωνισαμένων καὶ πεσόντων ἐντυχὼν ἀτάφοις ἔτι τοῖς νεκροῖς, ἔθαψε λαμπρῶς καὶ φιλοτίμως ἅπαντας, ὃ δοκεῖ παραλειφθὲν οὐχ ἥκιστα Λευκόλλῳ μίσους [2] αἴτιον γενέσθαι. χειρωσάμενος δὲ δι’ Ἀφρανίου τοὺς περὶ Ἀμανὸν Ἄραβας καὶ καταβὰς αὐτὸς εἰς Συρίαν, ταύτην μὲν ὡς οὐκ ἔχουσαν γνησίους βασιλεῖς ἐπαρχίαν ἀπέφηνε καὶ κτῆμα τοῦ δήμου Ῥωμαίων, τὴν δὲ Ἰουδαίαν κατεστρέψατο, καὶ συνέλαβεν Ἀριστόβουλον τὸν βασιλέα. πόλεις δὲ τὰς μὲν ἔκτιζε, τὰς δὲ ἠλευθέρου κολάζων τοὺς ἐν αὐταῖς τυράννους.

[3] τὴν δὲ πλείστην διατριβὴν ἐν τῷ δικάζειν ἐποιεῖτο, πόλεων καὶ βασιλέων ἀμφισβητήματα διαιτῶν, ἐφ’ ἃ δὲ αὐτὸς οὐκ ἐξικνεῖτο, πέμπων τοὺς φίλους, ὥσπερ Ἀρμενίοις καὶ Πάρθοις περὶ ἧς διεφέροντο χώρας τὴν κρίσιν ποιησαμένοις ἐπ’ αὐτῷ τρεῖς ἀπέστειλε κριτὰς καὶ διαλλακτάς.

[4] μέγα μὲν γὰρ ἦν ὄνομα τῆς δυνάμεως, οὐκ ἔλαττον δὲ τῆς ἀρετῆς καὶ πρᾳότητος· ᾧ καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἁμαρτήματα φίλων καὶ συνήθων ἀπέκρυπτε, κωλύειν μὲν ἢ κολάζειν τοὺς πονηρευομένους οὐ πεφυκώς, αὑτὸν δὲ παρέχων τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι τοιοῦτον ὥστε καὶ τὰς ἐκείνων πλεονεξίας καὶ βαρύτητας εὐκόλως ὑπομένειν.

[40] [1] Ὁ δὲ μέγιστον δυνάμενος παρ’ αὐτῷ Δημήτριος ἦν ἀπελεύθερος, οὐκ ἄφρων εἰς τἆλλα νεανίας, ἄγαν δὲ τῇ τύχῃ χρώμενος· περὶ οὗ καὶ τοιόνδε τι λέγεται. Κάτων ὁ φιλόσοφος ἔτι μὲν ὢν νέος, ἤδη δὲ μεγάλην ἔχων δόξαν καὶ μέγα φρονῶν, ἀνέβαινεν εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν, οὐκ ὄντος αὐτόθι Πομπηΐου, βουλόμενος ἱστορῆσαι τὴν [2] πόλιν. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν, ὥσπερ ἀεί, πεζὸς ἐβάδιζεν, οἱ δὲ φίλοι συνώδευον ἵπποις χρώμενοι. κατιδὼν δὲ πρὸ τῆς πύλης ὄχλον ἀνδρῶν ἐν ἐσθῆσι λευκαῖς καὶ παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἔνθεν μὲν τοὺς ἐφήβους, ἔνθεν δὲ τοὺς παῖδας διακεκριμένους, ἐδυσχέραινεν οἰόμενος εἰς τιμήν τινα καὶ θεραπείαν ἑαυτοῦ μηδὲν δεομένου ταῦτα γίνεσθαι.

[3] τοὺς μέντοι φίλους ἐκέλευσε καταβῆναι καὶ πορεύεσθαι μετ’ αὐτοῦ· γενομένοις δὲ πλησίον ὁ πάντα διακοσμῶν ἐκεῖνα καὶ καθιστὰς ἔχων στέφανον καὶ ῥάβδον ἀπήντησε, πυνθανόμενος παρ’ αὐτῶν ποῦ Δημήτριον ἀπολελοίπασι καὶ πότε ἀφίξεται. τοὺς μὲν οὖν φίλους τοῦ Κάτωνος γέλως ἔλαβεν, ὁ δὲ Κάτων εἰπών, “Ὢ τῆς ἀθλίας πόλεως,” παρῆλθεν, οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἀποκρινάμενος.

[4] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις τοῦτον τὸν Δημήτριον ἧττον ἐπίφθονον ἐποίει αὐτὸς ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐντρυφώμενος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ μὴ δυσκολαίνων. λέγεται γάρ, ὅτι πολλάκις ἐν ταῖς ὑποδοχαῖς τοῦ Πομπηΐου προσμένοντος καὶ δεχομένου τοὺς ἄλλους ἐκεῖνος ἤδη κατέκειτο σοβαρός, ἔχων δι’ ὤτων κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς τὸ ἱμάτιον.

[5] οὔπω δὲ εἰς Ἰταλίαν ἐπανεληλυθὼς ἐκέκτητο τῆς Ῥώμης τὰ ἥδιστα προάστεια καὶ τῶν ἡβητηρίων τὰ κάλλιστα, καὶ κῆποι πολυτελεῖς ἦσαν ὀνομαζόμενοι Δημητρίου· καίτοι Πομπήϊος αὐτὸς ἄχρι τοῦ τρίτου θριάμβου μετρίως καὶ ἀφελῶς ᾤκησεν. ὕστερον δὲ Ῥωμαίοις τοῦτο δὴ τὸ καλὸν καὶ περιβόητον ἀνιστὰς θέατρον, ὥσπερ ἐφόλκιόν τι, παρετεκτήνατο λαμπροτέραν οἰκίαν ἐκείνης, ἀνεπίφθονον δὲ καὶ ταύτην, ὥστε τὸν γενόμενον δεσπότην αὐτῆς μετὰ Πομπήϊον εἰσελθόντα θαυμάζειν καὶ πυνθάνεσθαι ποῦ Πομπήϊος Μάγνος ἐδείπνει. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οὕτω λέγεται.

[41] [1] Τοῦ δὲ βασιλέως τῶν περὶ τὴν Πέτραν Ἀράβων πρότερον μὲν ἐν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ τὰ Ῥωμαίων τιθεμένου, τότε δὲ δείσαντος ἰσχυρῶς καὶ γράψαντος ὅτι πάντα πείθεσθαι καὶ ποιεῖν ἔγνωκεν, ἐκβεβαιώσασθαι βουλόμενος αὐτοῦ τὴν διάνοιαν ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐστράτευσεν ἐπὶ τὴν Πέτραν οὐ πάνυ τι τοῖς πολλοῖς ἄμεμπτον στρατείαν.

[2] ἀπόδρασιν γὰρ ᾤοντο τῆς Μιθριδάτου διώξεως εἶναι, καὶ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἠξίουν τρέπεσθαι τὸν ἀρχαῖον ἀνταγωνιστήν, αὖθις ἀναζωπυροῦντα καὶ παρασκευαζόμενον, ὡς ἀπηγγέλλετο, διὰ Σκυθῶν καὶ Παιόνων στρατὸν ἐλαύνειν ἐπὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν. ὁ δὲ ῥᾷον οἰόμενος αὐτοῦ καταλύσειν τὴν δύναμιν πολεμοῦντος ἢ τὸ σῶμα λήψεσθαι φεύγοντος, οὐκ ἐβούλετο τρίβεσθαι μάτην περὶ τὴν δίωξιν, ἑτέρας δὲ τοῦ πολέμου παρενθήκας ἐποιεῖτο καὶ τὸν χρόνον εἷλκεν.

[3] Ἡ δὲ τύχη τὴν ἀπορίαν ἔλυσεν. οὐκέτι γὰρ αὐτοῦ τῆς Πέτρας πολλὴν ὁδὸν ἀπέχοντος, ἤδη δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης βεβλημένου χάρακα καὶ γυμνάζοντος ἑαυτὸν ἵππῳ παρὰ τὸ στρατόπεδον, γραμματηφόροι προσήλαυνον ἐκ Πόντου κομίζοντες εὐαγγέλια. δῆλοι δ’ εὐθύς εἰσι ταῖς αἰχμαῖς τῶν δοράτων· δάφναις γὰρ ἀναστέφονται. τούτους ἰδόντες οἱ στρατιῶται συνετρόχαζον πρὸς [4] τὸν Πομπήϊον. ὁ δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ἐβούλετο τὰ γυμνάσια συντελεῖν, βοώντων δὲ καὶ δεομένων καταπηδήσας ἀπὸ τοῦ ἵππου καὶ λαβὼν τὰ γράμματα προῄει. βήματος δὲ οὐκ ὄντος οὐδὲ τοῦ στρατιωτικοῦ γενέσθαι φθάσαντος (ὃ ποιοῦσιν αὐτοὶ τῆς γῆς ἐκτομὰς βαθείας λαμβάνοντες καὶ κατ’ ἀλλήλων συντιθέντες), ὑπὸ τῆς τότε σπουδῆς καὶ προθυμίας τὰ σάγματα τῶν ὑποζυγίων συμφορήσαντες [5] ὕψος ἐξῆραν. ἐπὶ τοῦτο προβὰς ὁ Πομπήϊος ἀπήγγειλεν αὐτοῖς ὅτι Μιθριδάτης τέθνηκε στασιάσαντος Φαρνάκου τοῦ υἱοῦ διαχρησάμενος αὑτόν, τὰ δὲ ἐκεῖ πάντα πράγματα Φαρνάκης κατεκληρώσατο, καὶ ἑαυτῷ καὶ Ῥωμαίοις γέγραφε ποιούμενος.

[42] [1] Ἐκ τούτου τὸ μὲν στράτευμα τῇ χαρᾷ χρώμενον, ὡς εἰκός, ἐν θυσίαις καὶ συνουσίαις διῆγεν, ὡς ἐν τῷ Μιθριδάτου σώματι μυρίων τεθνηκότων πολεμίων. Πομπήϊος δὲ ταῖς πράξεσιν αὑτοῦ καὶ ταῖς στρατείαις κεφαλὴν ἐπιτεθεικὼς οὐ πάνυ ῥᾳδίως οὕτω προσδοκηθεῖσαν, [2] εὐθὺς ἀνέζευξεν ἐκ τῆς Ἀραβίας· καὶ ταχὺ τὰς ἐν μέσῳ διεξελθὼν ἐπαρχίας εἰς Ἀμισὸν ἀφίκετο, καὶ κατέλαβε πολλὰ μὲν δῶρα παρὰ Φαρνάκου κεκομισμένα, πολλὰ δὲ σώματα τῶν βασιλικῶν, αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Μιθριδάτου νεκρὸν οὐ πάνυ γνώριμον ἀπὸ τοῦ προσώπου (τὸν γὰρ ἐγκέφαλον ἔλαθεν ἐκτῆξαι τοὺς θεραπεύοντας)· ἀλλὰ ταῖς οὐλαῖς ἐπεγίγνωσκον οἱ δεόμενοι τοῦ θεάματος.

[3] οὐ γὰρ αὐτὸς Πομπήϊος ἰδεῖν ὑπέμεινεν, ἀλλ’ ἀφοσιωσάμενος τὸ νεμεσητὸν εἰς Σινώπην ἀπέπεμψε. τῆς δ’ ἐσθῆτος, ἣν ἐφόρει, καὶ τῶν ὅπλων τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὴν λαμπρότητα ἐθαύμασε· καίτοι τὸν μὲν ξιφιστῆρα πεποιημένον ἀπὸ τετρακοσίων ταλάντων Πόπλιος κλέψας ἐπώλησεν Ἀριαράθῃ, τὴν δὲ κίταριν Γάϊος ὁ τοῦ Μιθριδάτου σύντροφος ἔδωκε κρύφα δεηθέντι Φαύστῳ τῷ Σύλλα παιδί, θαυμαστῆς οὖσαν ἐργασίας. ὃ τότε τὸν Πομπήϊον διέλαθε, Φαρνάκης δὲ γνοὺς ὕστερον ἐτιμωρήσατο τοὺς ὑφελομένους.

[4] Διοικήσας δὲ τὰ ἐκεῖ καὶ καταστησάμενος οὕτως ἤδη πανηγυρικώτερον ἐχρῆτο τῇ πορείᾳ. καὶ γὰρ εἰς Μιτυλήνην ἀφικόμενος τήν τε πόλιν ἠλευθέρωσε διὰ Θεοφάνη, καὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα τὸν πάτριον ἐθεάσατο τῶν ποιητῶν, ὑπόθεσιν μίαν ἔχοντα τὰς ἐκείνου πράξεις. ἡσθεὶς δὲ τῷ θεάτρῳ περιεγράψατο τὸ εἶδος αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν τύπον, ὡς ὅμοιον ἀπεργασόμενος τὸ ἐν Ῥώμῃ, μεῖζον δὲ [5] καὶ σεμνότερον. ἐν δὲ Ῥόδῳ γενόμενος πάντων μὲν ἠκροάσατο τῶν σοφιστῶν, καὶ δωρεὰν ἑκάστῳ τάλαντον ἔδωκε· Ποσειδώνιος δὲ καὶ τὴν ἀκρόασιν ἀνέγραψεν ἣν ἔσχεν ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ πρὸς Ἑρμαγόραν τὸν ῥήτορα περὶ τῆς καθόλου ζητήσεως ἀντιταξάμενος. ἐν δὲ Ἀθήναις τὰ μὲν πρὸς τοὺς [6] φιλοσόφους ὅμοια τοῦ Πομπηΐου· τῇ πόλει δὲ ἐπιδοὺς εἰς ἐπισκευὴν πεντήκοντα τάλαντα λαμπρότατος ἀνθρώπων ἤλπιζεν ἐπιβήσεσθαι τῆς Ἰταλίας καὶ ποθῶν ὀφθήσεσθαι τοῖς οἴκοι ποθοῦσιν. ᾧ δ’ ἄρα πρὸς τὰ λαμπρὰ καὶ μεγάλα τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς τύχης ἀγαθῶν ἀεί τινα κεραννύναι κακοῦ μοῖραν ἐπιμελές ἐστι δαιμονίῳ, τοῦτο ὑποικούρει πάλαι παρασκευάζον αὐτῷ λυπηροτέραν τὴν [7] ἐπάνοδον. ἐξύβρισε γὰρ ἡ Μουκία παρὰ τὴν ἀποδημίαν αὐτοῦ. καὶ πόρρω μὲν ὢν ὁ Πομπήϊος κατεφρόνει τοῦ λόγου· πλησίον δὲ Ἰταλίας γενόμενος καὶ σχολάζοντι τῷ λογισμῷ μᾶλλον, ὡς ἔοικε, τῆς αἰτίας ἁψάμενος, ἔπεμψεν αὐτῇ τὴν ἄφεσιν, οὔτε τότε γράψας οὔθ’ ὕστερον ἐφ’ οἷς ἀφῆκεν ἐξειπών· ἐν δ’ ἐπιστολαῖς Κικέρωνος ἡ αἰτία γέγραπται.

[43] [1] Λόγοι δὲ παντοδαποὶ περὶ τοῦ Πομπηΐου προκατέπιπτον εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην, καὶ θόρυβος ἦν πολύς, ὡς εὐθὺς ἄξοντος ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν τὸ στράτευμα καὶ μοναρχίας βεβαίας ἐσομένης. Κράσσος δὲ τοὺς παῖδας καὶ τὰ χρήματα λαβὼν ὑπεξῆλθεν, εἴτε δείσας ἀληθῶς, εἴτε μᾶλλον, ὡς ἐδόκει, πίστιν ἀπολείπων τῇ διαβολῇ καὶ τὸν [2] φθόνον ποιῶν τραχύτερον. εὐθὺς οὖν ἐπιβὰς Ἰταλίας ὁ Πομπήϊος καὶ συναγαγὼν εἰς ἐκκλησίαν τοὺς στρατιώτας καὶ τὰ πρέποντα διαλεχθεὶς καὶ φιλοφρονησάμενος, ἐκέλευσε διαλύεσθαι κατὰ πόλιν ἑκάστους καὶ τρέπεσθαι πρὸς τὰ οἰκεῖα, μεμνημένους αὖθις ἐπὶ τὸν θρίαμβον αὐτῷ συνελθεῖν. οὕτω δὲ τῆς στρατιᾶς σκεδασθείσης καὶ πυνθανομένων ἁπάντων [3] πρᾶγμα συνέβη θαυμαστόν. ὁρῶσαι γὰρ αἱ πόλεις Πομπήϊον Μάγνον ἄνοπλον καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγων τῶν συνήθων ὥσπερ ἐξ ἄλλης ἀποδημίας διαπορευόμενον, ἐκχεόμεναι δι’ εὔνοιαν καὶ προπέμπουσαι μετὰ μείζονος δυνάμεως συγκατῆγον εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην, εἴ τι κινεῖν διενοεῖτο καὶ νεωτερίζειν τότε, μηδὲν ἐκείνου δεόμενον τοῦ στρατεύματος.

[44] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ὁ νόμος οὐκ εἴα πρὸ τοῦ θριάμβου παρελθεῖν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἔπεμψεν ἀξιῶν εἰς τὴν βουλὴν ἀναβαλέσθαι τὰς τῶν ὑπάτων ἀρχαιρεσίας, καὶ δοῦναι ταύτην αὐτῷ τὴν χάριν ὅπως παρὼν Πείσωνι συναρχαιρεσιάσῃ.

[2] Κάτωνος δὲ πρὸς τὴν ἀξίωσιν ἐνστάντος οὐκ ἔτυχε τοῦ βουλεύματος. θαυμάσας δὲ τὴν παρρησίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν τόνον ᾧ μόνος ἐχρῆτο φανερῶς ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίων, ἐπεθύμησεν ἁμῶς γέ πως κτήσασθαι τὸν ἄνδρα· καὶ δυεῖν οὐσῶν ἀδελφιδῶν τῷ Κάτωνι τὴν μὲν αὐτὸς ἐβούλετο λαβεῖν [3] γυναῖκα, τὴν δὲ τῷ παιδὶ συνοικίσαι. τοῦ δὲ Κάτωνος ὑπιδομένου τὴν πεῖραν, ὡς διαφθορὰν οὖσαν αὐτοῦ τρόπον τινὰ δεκαζομένου διὰ τῆς οἰκειότητος, ἥ τε ἀδελφὴ καὶ ἡ γυνὴ χαλεπῶς ἔφερον εἰ Πομπήϊον Μάγνον ἀποτρίψεται κηδεστήν. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ βουλόμενος ὕπατον ἀποδεῖξαι Πομπήϊος Ἀφράνιον ἀργύριον εἰς τὰς φυλὰς ἀνήλισκεν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ, καὶ τοῦτο κατιόντες εἰς τοὺς [4] Πομπηΐου κήπους ἐλάμβανον, ὥστε τὸ πρᾶγμα περιβόητον εἶναι καὶ τὸν Πομπήϊον ἀκούειν κακῶς, ἧς αὐτὸς ἀρχῆς ἐφ’ οἷς κατώρθωσεν ὡς μεγίστης ἔτυχε, ταύτην ὤνιον ποιοῦντα τοῖς δι’ ἀρετῆς κτήσασθαι μὴ δυναμένοις. “Τούτων μέντοι,” πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας ὁ Κάτων ἔφησε, “τῶν ὀνειδῶν κοινωνητέον οἰκείοις Πομπηΐου γενομένοις.” αἱ δὲ ἀκούσασαι συνέγνωσαν βέλτιον αὐτῶν ἐκεῖνον λογίζεσθαι περὶ τοῦ πρέποντος.

[45] [1] Τοῦ δὲ θριάμβου τῷ μεγέθει, καίπερ εἰς ἡμέρας δύο μερισθέντος, ὁ χρόνος οὐκ ἐξήρκεσεν, ἀλλὰ τῶν παρεσκευασμένων πολλὰ τῆς θέας ἐξέπεσεν, ἑτέρας ἀποχρῶντα πομπῆς ἀξίωμα καὶ κόσμος εἶναι. γράμμασι δὲ προηγουμένοις ἐδηλοῦτο [2] τὰ γένη καθ’ ὧν ἐθριάμβευεν. ἦν δὲ τάδε· Πόντος, Ἀρμενία, Καππαδοκία, Παφλαγονία, Μηδία, Κολχίς, Ἴβηρες, Ἀλβανοί, Συρία, Κιλικία, Μεσοποταμία, τὰ περὶ Φοινίκην καὶ Παλαιστίνην, Ἰουδαία, Ἀραβία, τὸ πειρατικὸν ἅπαν ἐν γῇ καὶ θαλάσσῃ καταπεπολεμημένον. ἐν δὲ τούτοις φρούρια μὲν ἡλωκότα χιλίων οὐκ ἐλάττονα, πόλεις δὲ οὐ πολὺ τῶν ἐνακοσίων ἀποδέουσαι, πειρατικαὶ δὲ νῆες ὀκτακόσιαι, κατοικίαι [3] δὲ πόλεων μιᾶς δέουσαι τετταράκοντα. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἔφραζε διὰ τῶν γραμμάτων ὅτι πεντακισχίλιαι μὲν μυριάδες ἐκ τῶν τελῶν ὑπῆρχον, ἐκ δὲ ὧν αὐτὸς προσεκτήσατο τῇ πόλει μυριάδας ὀκτακισχιλίας πεντακοσίας λαμβάνουσιν, ἀναφέρεται δὲ εἰς τὸ δημόσιον ταμιεῖον ἐν νομίσματι καὶ κατασκευαῖς ἀργυρίου καὶ χρυσίου δισμύρια τάλαντα, πάρεξ τῶν εἰς τοὺς στρατιώτας δεδομένων, ὧν ὁ τοὐλάχιστον αἴρων κατὰ λόγον [4] δραχμὰς εἴληφε χιλίας πεντακοσίας. αἰχμάλωτοι δ’ ἐπομπεύθησαν, ἄνευ τῶν ἀρχιπειρατῶν, υἱὸς Τιγράνου τοῦ Ἀρμενίου μετὰ γυναικὸς καὶ θυγατρός, αὐτοῦ τε Τιγράνου τοῦ βασιλέως γυνὴ Ζωσίμη, καὶ βασιλεὺς Ἰουδαίων Ἀριστόβουλος, Μιθριδάτου δὲ ἀδελφὴ καὶ πέντε τέκνα, καὶ Σκυθίδες γυναῖκες, Ἀλβανῶν δὲ καὶ Ἰβήρων ὅμηροι καὶ τοῦ Κομμαγηνῶν βασιλέως, καὶ τρόπαια πάμπολλα καὶ ταῖς μάχαις ἰσάριθμα πάσαις ἃς ἢ αὐτὸς ἢ διὰ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἐνίκησε.

[5] μέγιστον δὲ ὑπῆρχε πρὸς δόξαν καὶ μηδενὶ τῶν πώποτε Ῥωμαίων γεγονός, ὅτι τὸν τρίτον θρίαμβον ἀπὸ τῆς τρίτης ἠπείρου κατήγαγεν. ἐπεὶ τρίς γε καὶ πρότερον ἦσαν ἕτεροι τεθριαμβευκότες· ἐκεῖνος δὲ τὸν μὲν πρῶτον ἐκ Λιβύης, τὸν δὲ δεύτερον ἐξ Εὐρώπης, τοῦτον δὲ τὸν τελευταῖον ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀσίας εἰσαγαγὼν τρόπον τινὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐδόκει τοῖς τρισὶν ὑπῆχθαι θριάμβοις.

[46] [1] Ἡλικίᾳ δὲ τότε ἦν, ὡς μὲν οἱ κατὰ πάντα τῷ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ παραβάλλοντες αὐτὸν καὶ προσβιβάζοντες ἀξιοῦσι, νεώτερος τῶν τριάκοντα καὶ τεττάρων ἐτῶν, ἀληθείᾳ δὲ τοῖς τετταράκοντα προσῆγεν. ὡς ὤνητό γ’ ἂν ἐνταῦθα τοῦ βίου παυσάμενος, ἄχρι οὗ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου τύχην ἔσχεν· ὁ δὲ ἐπέκεινα χρόνος αὐτῷ τὰς μὲν εὐτυχίας ἤνεγκεν ἐπιφθόνους, ἀνηκέστους δὲ τὰς [2] δυστυχίας. ἣν γὰρ ἐκ προσηκόντων αὐτὸς ἐκτήσατο δύναμιν ἐν τῇ πόλει, ταύτῃ χρώμενος ὑπὲρ ἄλλων οὐ δικαίως, ὅσον ἐκείνοις ἰσχύος προσετίθει τῆς ἑαυτοῦ δόξης ἀφαιρῶν, ἔλαθε ῥώμῃ καὶ μεγέθει τῆς αὑτοῦ δυνάμεως καταλυθείς. καὶ καθάπερ τὰ καρτερώτατα μέρη καὶ χωρία τῶν πόλεων, ὅταν δέξηται πολεμίους, ἐκείνοις προστίθησι τὴν αὑτῶν ἰσχύν, οὕτως διὰ τῆς Πομπηΐου δυνάμεως Καῖσαρ ἐξαρθεὶς ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν, ᾧ κατὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἴσχυσε, τοῦτον ἀνέτρεψε καὶ κατέβαλεν. ἐπράχθη δὲ οὕτως.

[3] Λεύκολλον, ὡς ἐπανῆλθεν ἐξ Ἀσίας ὑπὸ Πομπηΐου περιϋβρισμένος, αὐτίκα τε λαμπρῶς ἡ σύγκλητος ἐδέξατο, καὶ μᾶλλον ἔτι Πομπηΐου παραγενομένου κολούουσα τὴν δόξαν ἤγειρεν ἐπὶ τὴν πολιτείαν. ὁ δὲ τἆλλα μὲν ἀμβλὺς ἦν ἤδη καὶ κατέψυκτο τὸ πρακτικόν, ἡδονῇ σχολῆς καὶ ταῖς περὶ τὸν πλοῦτον διατριβαῖς ἑαυτὸν ἐνδεδωκώς, ἐπὶ δὲ Πομπήϊον εὐθὺς ἀΐξας καὶ λαβόμενος ἐντόνως αὐτοῦ περί τε τῶν διατάξεων ἃς ἔλυσεν ἐκράτει, καὶ πλέον εἶχεν ἐν τῇ βουλῇ συναγωνιζομένου [4] Κάτωνος. ἐκπίπτων δὲ καὶ περιωθούμενος ὁ Πομπήϊος ἠναγκάζετο δημαρχοῦσι προσφεύγειν καὶ προσαρτᾶσθαι μειρακίοις· ὧν ὁ βδελυρώτατος καὶ θρασύτατος Κλώδιος ἀναλαβὼν αὐτὸν ὑπέρριψε τῷ δήμῳ, καὶ παρ’ ἀξίαν κυλινδούμενον ἐν ἀγορᾷ ἔχων καὶ περιφέρων ἐχρῆτο τῶν πρὸς χάριν ὄχλου καὶ κολακείαν γραφομένων καὶ λεγομένων [5] βεβαιωτῇ, καὶ προσέτι μισθὸν ᾔτει, ὥσπερ οὐ καταισχύνων, ἀλλὰ εὐεργετῶν, ὃν ὕστερον ἔλαβε παρὰ Πομπηΐου, προέσθαι Κικέρωνα, φίλον ὄντα καὶ πλεῖστα δὴ πεπολιτευμένον ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ. κινδυνεύοντι γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ δεομένῳ βοηθείας οὐδὲ εἰς ὄψιν προῆλθεν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἥκουσιν ἀποκλείσας τὴν αὔλειον ἑτέραις θύραις ᾤχετο ἀπιών. Κικέρων δὲ φοβηθεὶς τὴν κρίσιν ὑπεξῆλθε τῆς Ῥώμης.

[47] [1] Τότε δὲ Καῖσαρ ἐλθὼν ἀπὸ στρατείας ἥψατο πολιτεύματος ὃ πλείστην μὲν αὐτῷ χάριν ἐν τῷ παρόντι καὶ δύναμιν εἰσαῦθις ἤνεγκε, μέγιστα δὲ Πομπήϊον ἔβλαψε καὶ τὴν πόλιν. ὑπατείαν μὲν γὰρ μετῄει πρώτην· ὁρῶν δὲ ὅτι Κράσσου πρὸς Πομπήϊον διαφερομένου θατέρῳ προσθέμενος ἐχθρῷ χρήσεται τῷ ἑτέρῳ, τρέπεται πρὸς διαλλαγὰς ἀμφοῖν, πρᾶγμα καλὸν μὲν ἄλλως καὶ πολιτικόν, αἰτίᾳ δὲ φαύλῃ καὶ μετὰ [2] δεινότητος ὑπ’ ἐκείνου συντεθὲν ἐπιβούλως. ἡ γὰρ ὥσπερ ἐν σκάφει τὰς ἀποκλίσεις ἐπανισοῦσα τῆς πόλεως ἰσχὺς εἰς ἓν συνελθοῦσα καὶ γενομένη μία τὴν πάντα πράγματα καταστασιάσασαν καὶ καταβαλοῦσαν ἀνανταγώνιστον ῥοπὴν ἐποίησεν. ὁ γοῦν Κάτων τοὺς λέγοντας ὑπὸ τῆς ὕστερον γενομένης πρὸς Καίσαρα Πομπηΐῳ διαφορᾶς ἀνατραπῆναι τὴν πόλιν ἁμαρτάνειν ἔλεγεν αἰτιωμένους [3] τὸ τελευταῖον· οὐ γὰρ τὴν στάσιν οὐδὲ τὴν ἔχθραν, ἀλλὰ τὴν σύστασιν καὶ τὴν ὁμόνοιαν αὐτῶν τῇ πόλει κακὸν πρῶτον γενέσθαι καὶ μέγιστον. ᾑρέθη μὲν γὰρ ὕπατος Καῖσαρ· εὐθὺς δὲ θεραπεύων τὸν ἄπορον καὶ πένητα κατοικίας πόλεων καὶ νομὰς ἀγρῶν ἔγραφεν, ἐκβαίνων τὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀξίωμα καὶ τρόπον τινὰ δημαρχίαν [4] τὴν ὑπατείαν καθιστάς. ἐναντιουμένου δὲ τοῦ συνάρχοντος αὐτῷ Βύβλου, καὶ Κάτωνος ἐρρωμενέστατα τῷ Βύβλῳ παρεσκευασμένου βοηθεῖν, προαγαγὼν ὁ Καῖσαρ ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος Πομπήϊον ἐμφανῆ καὶ προσαγορεύσας ἠρώτησεν εἰ τοὺς νόμους ἐπαινοίη· τοῦ δὲ συμφήσαντος, “Οὐκοῦν,” εἶπεν, “ἄν τις τοὺς νόμους βιάζηται, εἰς τὸν [5] δῆμον ἀφίξῃ βοηθῶν;” “Πάνυ μὲν οὖν,” ἔφη ὁ Πομπήϊος, “ἀφίξομαι, πρὸς τοὺς ἀπειλοῦντας τὰ ξίφη μετὰ ξίφους καὶ θυρεὸν κομίζων.” τούτου Πομπήϊος οὐδὲν οὔτε εἰπεῖν οὔτε ποιῆσαι μέχρι τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης φορτικώτερον ἔδοξεν, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς φίλους ἀπολογεῖσθαι φάσκοντας ἐκφυγεῖν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ καιροῦ τὸ ῥῆμα. τοῖς μέντοι μετὰ ταῦτα πραττομένοις φανερὸς ἦν ἤδη παντάπασιν ἑαυτὸν τῷ Καίσαρι χρήσασθαι παραδεδωκώς.

[6] Ἰουλίαν γὰρ τὴν Καίσαρος θυγατέρα, Καιπίωνι καθωμολογημένην καὶ γαμεῖσθαι μέλλουσαν ὀλίγων ἡμερῶν, οὐδενὸς ἂν προσδοκήσαντος ἔγημε Πομπήϊος, μείλιγμα Καιπίωνι τῆς ὀργῆς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ θυγατέρα καταινέσας, Φαύστῳ τῷ παιδὶ Σύλλα πρότερον ἐγγεγυημένην. αὐτὸς δὲ Καῖσαρ ἔγημε Καλπουρνίαν τὴν Πείσωνος.

[48] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου Πομπήϊος ἐμπλήσας στρατιωτῶν τὴν πόλιν ἅπαντα τὰ πράγματα βίᾳ κατεῖχε. Βύβλῳ τε γὰρ εἰς ἀγορὰν τῷ ὑπάτῳ κατιόντι μετὰ Λευκόλλου καὶ Κάτωνος ἄφνω προσπεσόντες κατέκλασαν τὰς ῥάβδους, αὐτοῦ δέ τις κοπρίων κόφινον ἐκ κεφαλῆς τοῦ Βύβλου κατεσκέδασε, δύο δὲ δήμαρχοι τῶν συμπροπεμπόντων [2] ἐτρώθησαν. οὕτω δὲ τῶν ἐνισταμένων τὴν ἀγορὰν ἐρημώσαντες ἐπεκύρωσαν τὸν περὶ τῆς διανομῆς τῶν χωρίων νόμον· ᾧ δελεασθεὶς ὁ δῆμος εἰς πᾶσαν ἤδη τιθασὸς αὐτοῖς ἐγεγόνει καὶ κατάντης πρᾶξιν, οὐδὲν πολυπραγμονῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιφέρων σιωπῇ τοῖς γραφομένοις τὴν ψῆφον.

[3] ἐκυρώθησαν οὖν Πομπηΐῳ μὲν αἱ διατάξεις ὑπὲρ ὧν Λεύκολλος ἤριζε, Καίσαρι δὲ τὴν ἐντὸς Ἄλπεων καὶ τὴν ἐκτὸς ἔχειν Γαλατίαν καὶ Ἰλλυριοὺς εἰς πενταετίαν καὶ τέσσαρα τάγματα τέλεια στρατιωτῶν, ὑπάτους δὲ εἰς τὸ μέλλον εἶναι Πείσωνα τὸν Καίσαρος πενθερὸν καὶ Γαβίνιον, ἄνδρα τῶν Πομπηΐου κολάκων ὑπερφυέστατον.

[4] Πραττομένων δὲ τούτων Βύβλος μὲν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν κατακλεισάμενος ὀκτὼ μηνῶν οὐ προῆλθεν ὑπατεύων, ἀλλ’ ἐξέπεμπε διαγράμματα βλασφημίας ἀμφοῖν ἔχοντα καὶ κατηγορίας, Κάτων δὲ ὥσπερ ἐπίπνους καὶ φοιβόληπτος ἐν τῇ βουλῇ τὰ μέλλοντα τῇ πόλει καὶ τῷ Πομπηΐῳ προηγόρευε, Λεύκολλος δὲ ἀπειπὼν ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν ὡς οὐκέτι πρὸς πολιτείαν ὡραῖος· ὅτε δὴ καὶ Πομπήϊος ἔφη, γέροντι τὸ τρυφᾶν ἀωρότερον εἶναι [5] τοῦ πολιτεύεσθαι. ταχὺ μέντοι καὶ αὐτὸς ἐμαλάσσετο τῷ τῆς κόρης ἔρωτι καὶ προσεῖχεν ἐκείνῃ τὰ πολλὰ καὶ συνδιημέρευεν ἐν ἀγροῖς καὶ κήποις, ἠμέλει δὲ τῶν κατ’ ἀγορὰν πραττομένων, ὥστε καὶ Κλώδιον αὐτοῦ καταφρονῆσαι δημαρχοῦντα τότε καὶ θρασυτάτων ἅψασθαι [6] πραγμάτων. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐξέβαλε Κικέρωνα, καὶ Κάτωνα προφάσει στρατηγίας εἰς Κύπρον ἀπέπεμψε, Καίσαρος εἰς Γαλατίαν ἐξεληλακότος, αὐτῷ δὲ προσέχοντα τὸν δῆμον ἑώρα πάντα πράττοντι καὶ πολιτευομένῳ πρὸς χάριν, εὐθὺς ἐπεχείρει τῶν Πομπηΐου διατάξεων ἐνίας ἀναιρεῖν, καὶ Τιγράνην τὸν αἰχμάλωτον ἀφαρπάσας εἶχε σὺν αὑτῷ, καὶ τοῖς φίλοις δίκας ἐπῆγε, πεῖραν ἐν ἐκείνοις τῆς Πομπηΐου λαμβάνων δυνάμεως.

[7] τέλος δέ, προελθόντος αὐτοῦ πρός τινα δίκην, ἔχων ὑφ’ αὑτῷ πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων ἀσελγείας καὶ ὀλιγωρίας μεστὸν αὐτὸς μὲν εἰς ἐπιφανῆ τόπον καταστὰς ἐρωτήματα τοιαῦτα προὔβαλλε· “Τίς ἐστιν αὐτοκράτωρ ἀκόλαστος; τίς ἀνὴρ ἄνδρα ζητεῖ; τίς ἑνὶ δακτύλῳ κνᾶται τὴν κεφαλήν;” οἱ δέ, ὥσπερ χορὸς εἰς ἀμοιβαῖα συγκεκροτημένος, ἐκείνου τὴν τήβεννον ἀνασείοντος ἐφ’ ἑκάστῳ μέγα βοῶντες ἀπεκρίναντο· “Πομπήϊος.”

[49] [1] Ἠνία μὲν οὖν καὶ ταῦτα Πομπήϊον ἀήθη τοῦ κακῶς ἀκούειν ὄντα καὶ μάχης τοιαύτης ἄπειρον· ἤχθετο δὲ μᾶλλον αἰσθανόμενος τὴν βουλὴν ἐπιχαίρουσαν αὐτῷ προπηλακιζομένῳ καὶ [2] διδόντι δίκην τῆς Κικέρωνος προδοσίας. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ πληγὰς ἐν ἀγορᾷ μέχρι τραυμάτων συνέβη γενέσθαι, καὶ Κλωδίου τις οἰκέτης παραδυόμενος ἐν ὄχλῳ διὰ τῶν περιεστώτων πρὸς τὸν Πομπήϊον ἠλέγχθη ξίφος ἔχειν, ταῦτα ποιούμενος πρόφασιν, ἄλλως δὲ τοῦ Κλωδίου τὴν ἀσέλγειαν καὶ τὰς βλασφημίας δεδιώς, οὐκέτι προῆλθεν εἰς ἀγορὰν ὅσον ἐκεῖνος ἦρχε χρόνον, ἀλλ’ οἰκουρῶν διετέλει καὶ σκεπτόμενος μετὰ τῶν φίλων ὅπως ἂν ἐξακέσαιτο τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τῶν ἀρίστων τὴν πρὸς [3] αὐτὸν ὀργήν. Κουλλέωνι μὲν οὖν κελεύοντι τὴν Ἰουλίαν ἀφεῖναι καὶ μεταβαλέσθαι πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ἀπὸ τῆς Καίσαρος φιλίας οὐ προσέσχε, τοῖς δὲ Κικέρωνα καταγαγεῖν ἀξιοῦσιν, ἄνδρα καὶ Κλωδίῳ πολεμιώτατον καὶ τῇ βουλῇ προσφιλέστατον, ἐπείσθη· καὶ προαγαγὼν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ δεόμενον σὺν χειρὶ πολλῇ, τραυμάτων ἐν ἀγορᾷ γενομένων καί τινων ἀναιρεθέντων, [4] ἐκράτησε τοῦ Κλωδίου. καὶ νόμῳ κατελθὼν ὁ Κικέρων τήν τε βουλὴν εὐθὺς τῷ Πομπηΐῳ διήλλαττε, καὶ τῷ σιτικῷ νόμῳ συνηγορῶν τρόπῳ τινὶ πάλιν γῆς καὶ θαλάττης, ὅσην ἐκέκτηντο Ῥωμαῖοι, κύριον ἐποίει Πομπήϊον. ἐπ’ αὐτῷ γὰρ ἐγίνοντο λιμένες, ἐμπόρια, καρπῶν διαθέσεις, ἑνὶ λόγῳ, τὰ τῶν πλεόντων πράγματα, τὰ τῶν [5] γεωργούντων. Κλώδιος δὲ ᾐτιᾶτο μὴ γεγράφθαι τὸν νόμον διὰ τὴν σιτοδείαν, ἀλλ’ ὅπως ὁ νόμος γραφείη γεγονέναι τὴν σιτοδείαν, ὥσπερ ἐκ λιποθυμίας αὐτοῦ μαραινομένην τὴν δύναμιν ἀρχῇ νέᾳ πάλιν ἀναζωπυροῦντος καὶ ἀναλαμβάνοντος. ἕτεροι δὲ τοῦ ὑπάτου Σπινθῆρος ἀποφαίνουσι τοῦτο σόφισμα, κατακλείσαντος εἰς ἀρχὴν μείζονα Πομπήϊον, ὅπως αὐτὸς ἐκπεμφθῇ Πτολεμαίῳ [6] τῷ βασιλεῖ βοηθῶν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ Κανίδιος εἰσήνεγκε δημαρχῶν νόμον, ἄνευ στρατιᾶς Πομπήϊον ἔχοντα ῥαβδούχους δύο διαλλάττειν Ἀλεξανδρεῦσι τὸν βασιλέα. καὶ Πομπήϊος μὲν ἐδόκει τῷ νόμῳ μὴ δυσχεραίνειν, ἡ δὲ σύγκλητος ἐξέβαλεν, εὐπρεπῶς σκηψαμένη δεδιέναι περὶ τἀνδρός. ἦν δὲ γράμμασιν ἐντυχεῖν διερριμμένοις κατ’ ἀγορὰν καὶ παρὰ τὸ βουλευτήριον ὡς δὴ Πτολεμαίου δεομένου Πομπήϊον αὐτῷ στρατηγὸν ἀντὶ τοῦ Σπινθῆρος δοθῆναι.

[7] Τιμαγένης δὲ καὶ ἄλλως τὸν Πτολεμαῖον οὐκ οὔσης ἀνάγκης ἀπελθεῖν φησι, καὶ καταλιπεῖν Αἴγυπτον ὑπὸ Θεοφάνους πεισθέντα πράττοντος Πομπηΐῳ χρηματισμοὺς καὶ στρατηγίας καινῆς ὑπόθεσιν. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν οὐχ οὕτως ἡ Θεοφάνους μοχθηρία πιθανὸν ὡς ἄπιστον ἡ Πομπηΐου ποιεῖ φύσις, οὐκ ἔχουσα κακόηθες οὐδ’ ἀνελεύθερον οὕτω τὸ φιλότιμον.

[50] [1] Ἐπισταθεὶς δὲ τῇ περὶ τὸ σιτικὸν οἰκονομίᾳ καὶ πραγματείᾳ, πολλαχοῦ μὲν ἀπέστειλε πρεσβευτὰς καὶ φίλους, αὐτὸς δὲ πλεύσας εἰς Σικελίαν καὶ Σαρδόνα καὶ Λιβύην ἤθροιζε σῖτον. ἀνάγεσθαι δὲ μέλλων πνεύματος μεγάλου κατὰ θάλατταν ὄντος καὶ τῶν κυβερνητῶν ὀκνούντων, πρῶτος ἐμβὰς καὶ κελεύσας τὴν ἄγκυραν αἴρειν ἀνεβόησε· [2] “Πλεῖν ἀνάγκη, ζῆν οὐκ ἀνάγκη.” τοιαύτῃ δὲ τόλμῃ καὶ προθυμίᾳ χρώμενος μετὰ τύχης ἀγαθῆς ἐνέπλησε σίτου τὰ ἐμπόρια καὶ πλοίων τὴν θάλασσαν, ὥστε καὶ τοῖς ἐκτὸς ἀνθρώποις ἐπαρκέσαι τὴν περιουσίαν ἐκείνης τῆς παρασκευῆς, καὶ γενέσθαι καθάπερ ἐκ πηγῆς ἄφθονον ἀπορροὴν εἰς πάντας.

[51] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τῷ χρόνῳ μέγαν ἦραν οἱ Κελτικοὶ πόλεμοι Καίσαρα· καὶ δοκῶν πορρωτάτω τῆς Ῥώμης ἀπεῖναι καὶ συνηρτῆσθαι Βέλγαις καὶ Σουήβοις καὶ Βρεττανοῖς, ἐλάνθανεν ὑπὸ δεινότητος ἐν μέσῳ τῷ δήμῳ καὶ τοῖς κυριωτάτοις πράγμασι καταπολιτευόμενος τὸν Πομπήϊον.

[2] αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ ὡς σῶμα τὴν στρατιωτικὴν δύναμιν περικείμενος, οὐκ ἐπὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν θήραις καὶ κυνηγεσίοις τοῖς πρὸς ἐκείνους ἀγῶσι γυμνάζων, διεπόνει, καὶ κατεσκεύαζεν ἄμαχον καὶ φοβεράν, χρυσὸν δὲ καὶ ἄργυρον καὶ τἆλλα λάφυρα καὶ τὸν ἄλλον πλοῦτον τὸν ἐκ πολέμων τοσούτων περιγινόμενον εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην ἀποστέλλων, καὶ διαπειρῶν ταῖς δωροδοκίαις καὶ συγχορηγῶν ἀγορανόμοις καὶ στρατηγοῖς καὶ ὑπάτοις καὶ γυναιξὶν αὐτῶν, ᾠκειοῦτο πολλούς· [3] ὥστε ὑπερβαλόντος αὐτοῦ τὰς Ἄλπεις καὶ διαχειμάζοντος ἐν Λούκῃ, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν ἁμιλλωμένων καὶ φερομένων πολὺ πλῆθος γενέσθαι, συγκλητικοὺς δὲ διακοσίους, ἐν οἷς καὶ Πομπήϊος ἦν καὶ Κράσσος, ἀνθυπάτων δὲ καὶ στρατηγῶν ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι ῥάβδους ἐπὶ [4] ταῖς Καίσαρος θύραις ὀφθῆναι. τοὺς μὲν οὖν ἄλλους ἅπαντας ἐμπλήσας ἐλπίδων καὶ χρημάτων ἀπέστελλε, Κράσσῳ δὲ καὶ Πομπηΐῳ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐγένοντο συνθῆκαι, μετιέναι μὲν ὑπατείας ἐκείνους καὶ Καίσαρα συλλαμβάνειν αὐτοῖς, πέμποντα τῶν στρατιωτῶν συχνοὺς ἐπὶ τὴν ψῆφον, ἐπὰν δὲ αἱρεθῶσι τάχιστα, πράττειν μὲν ἑαυτοῖς ἐπαρχιῶν καὶ στρατοπέδων ἡγεμονίας, Καίσαρι δὲ τὰς [5] οὔσας βεβαιοῦν εἰς ἄλλην πενταετίαν. ἐπὶ τούτοις ἐξενεχθεῖσιν εἰς τοὺς πολλοὺς χαλεπῶς ἔφερον οἱ πρῶτοι· καὶ Μαρκελλῖνος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ καταστὰς ἀμφοῖν ἐναντίον ἠρώτησεν εἰ μετίασιν ὑπατείαν. καὶ τῶν πολλῶν ἀποκρίνασθαι κελευόντων, πρῶτος Πομπήϊος εἶπεν ὡς τάχα μὲν ἂν μετέλθοι, τάχα δὲ οὐκ ἂν μετέλθοι· Κράσσος δὲ πολιτικώτερον· οὕτω γὰρ ἔφη πράξειν ὁποτέρως [6] ἂν οἴηται τῷ κοινῷ συνοίσειν. ἐπιφυομένου δὲ Πομπηΐῳ Μαρκελλίνου καὶ σφοδρῶς λέγειν δοκοῦντος, ὁ Πομπήϊος ἔφη πάντων ἀδικώτατον εἶναι τὸν Μαρκελλῖνον, ὃς χάριν οὐκ ἔχει λόγοις μὲν ἐξ ἀφώνου δι’ αὐτόν, ἐμετικὸς δὲ ἐκ πεινατικοῦ γενόμενος.

[52] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἀποστάντων τοῦ παραγγέλλειν ὑπατείαν, Λεύκιον Δομέτιον Κάτων ἔπεισε καὶ παρεθάρρυνε μὴ ἀπειπεῖν· οὐ γὰρ ὑπὲρ ἀρχῆς, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ ἐλευθερίας εἶναι τὸν ἀγῶνα πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους. οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Πομπήϊον φοβηθέντες τὸν τόνον τοῦ Κάτωνος, μὴ τὴν βουλὴν ἔχων ἅπασαν ἀποσπάσῃ καὶ μεταβάλῃ τοῦ δήμου τὸ ὑγιαῖνον, οὐκ εἴασαν εἰς ἀγορὰν [2] κατελθεῖν τὸν Δομέτιον, ἀλλ’ ἐπιπέμψαντες ἐνόπλους ἄνδρας ἀπέκτειναν μὲν τὸν προηγούμενον λυχνοφόρον, ἐτρέψαντο δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους· ἔσχατος δὲ Κάτων ἀνεχώρησε, τρωθεὶς τὸν δεξιὸν πῆχυν ἀμυνόμενος πρὸ τοῦ Δομετίου.

Τοιαύτῃ δὲ ὁδῷ παρελθόντες ἐπὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν οὐδὲ τἆλλα κοσμιώτερον ἔπραττον. ἀλλὰ πρῶτον μὲν τὸν Κάτωνα τοῦ δήμου στρατηγὸν αἱρουμένου καὶ τὴν ψῆφον ἐπιφέροντος, Πομπήϊος ἔλυσε τὴν ἐκκλησίαν οἰωνοὺς αἰτιώμενος, ἀντὶ δὲ Κάτωνος Βατίνιον ἀνηγόρευσαν, ἀργυρίῳ τὰς [3] φυλὰς διαφθείραντες. ἔπειτα νόμους διὰ Τρεβωνίου δημαρχοῦντος εἰσέφερον, Καίσαρι μέν, ὥσπερ ὡμολόγητο, δευτέραν ἐπιμετροῦντας πενταετίαν, Κράσσῳ δὲ Συρίαν καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ Πάρθους στρατείαν διδόντας, αὐτῷ δὲ Πομπηΐῳ Λιβύην ἅπασαν καὶ Ἰβηρίαν ἑκατέραν καὶ τέσσαρα τάγματα στρατιωτῶν, ὧν ἐπέχρησε δύο Καίσαρι [4] δεηθέντι πρὸς τὸν ἐν Γαλατίᾳ πόλεμον. ἀλλὰ Κράσσος μὲν ἐξῆλθεν εἰς τὴν ἐπαρχίαν ἀπαλλαγεὶς τῆς ὑπατείας, Πομπήϊος δὲ τὸ θέατρον ἀναδείξας ἀγῶνας ἦγε γυμνικοὺς καὶ μουσικοὺς ἐπὶ τῇ καθιερώσει, καὶ θηρῶν ἁμίλλας ἐν οἷς πεντακόσιοι λέοντες ἀνῃρέθησαν, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ τὴν ἐλεφαντομαχίαν, ἐκπληκτικώτατον θέαμα, παρέσχεν.

[53] [1] Ἐπὶ τούτοις δὲ θαυμαστωθεὶς καὶ ἀγαπηθείς, αὖθις οὐκ ἐλάττονα φθόνον ἔσχεν, ὅτι πρεσβευταῖς φίλοις παραδοὺς τὰ στρατεύματα καὶ τὰς ἐπαρχίας, αὐτὸς ἐν τοῖς περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἡβητηρίοις, μετιὼν ἄλλοτε ἀλλαχόσε, μετὰ τῆς γυναικὸς διῆγεν, εἴτε ἐρῶν αὐτῆς, εἴτε ἐρῶσαν οὐχ ὑπομένων ἀπολιπεῖν· καὶ γὰρ καὶ τοῦτο [2] λέγεται. καὶ περιβόητον ἦν τῆς κόρης τὸ φίλανδρον, οὐ καθ’ ὥραν ποθούσης τὸν Πομπήϊον, ἀλλ’ αἴτιον ἔοικεν ἥ τε σωφροσύνη τοῦ ἀνδρὸς εἶναι μόνην γινώσκοντος τὴν γεγαμημένην, ἥ τε σεμνότης οὐκ ἄκρατον, ἀλλ’ εὔχαριν ἔχουσα τὴν ὁμιλίαν καὶ μάλιστα γυναικῶν ἀγωγόν, εἰ δεῖ μηδὲ Φλώραν ἁλῶναι τὴν ἑταίραν ψευδομαρτυριῶν.

[3] ἐν δ’ οὖν ἀγορανομικοῖς ἀρχαιρεσίοις εἰς χεῖράς τινων ἐλθόντων καὶ φονευθέντων περὶ αὐτὸν οὐκ ὀλίγων ἀναπλησθεὶς αἵματος ἤλλαξε τὰ ἱμάτια. πολλοῦ δὲ θορύβου καὶ δρόμου πρὸς τὴν οἰκίαν γενομένου τῶν κομιζόντων τὰ ἱμάτια θεραπόντων, ἔτυχε μὲν ἡ κόρη κύουσα, θεασαμένη δὲ καθῃμαγμένην τὴν τήβεννον ἐξέλιπε καὶ μόλις ἀνήνεγκεν, ἐκ δὲ τῆς ταραχῆς ἐκείνης καὶ τοῦ [4] πάθους ἀπήμβλωσεν. ὅθεν οὐδὲ οἱ μάλιστα μεμφόμενοι τὴν πρὸς Καίσαρα Πομπηΐου φιλίαν ᾐτιῶντο τὸν ἔρωτα τῆς γυναικός. αὖθις μέντοι κυήσασα καὶ τεκοῦσα θῆλυ παιδίον ἐκ τῶν ὠδίνων ἐτελεύτησε, καὶ τὸ παιδίον οὐ πολλὰς ἡμέρας ἐπέζησε. παρεσκευασμένου δὲ τοῦ Πομπηΐου τὸ σῶμα θάπτειν ἐν Ἀλβανῷ, βιασάμενος ὁ δῆμος εἰς τὸ Ἄρειον πεδίον κατήνεγκεν, οἴκτῳ τῆς κόρης μᾶλλον ἢ Πομπηΐῳ καὶ Καίσαρι [5] χαριζόμενος. αὐτῶν δὲ ἐκείνων μεῖζον ἐδόκει μέρος ἀπόντι Καίσαρι νέμειν ὁ δῆμος ἢ Πομπηΐῳ παρόντι τῆς τιμῆς. εὐθὺς γὰρ ἐκύμαινεν ἡ πόλις, καὶ πάντα τὰ πράγματα σάλον εἶχε καὶ λόγους διαστατικούς, ὡς ἡ πρότερον παρακαλύπτουσα μᾶλλον ἢ κατείργουσα τῶν ἀνδρῶν τὴν φιλαρχίαν [6] οἰκειότης ἀνῄρηται. μετ’ οὐ πολὺ δὲ καὶ Κράσσος ἐν Πάρθοις ἀπολωλὼς ἠγγέλλετο· καὶ τοῦτο κώλυμα ὂν μέγα τοῦ συμπεσεῖν τὸν ἐμφύλιον πόλεμον ἐκποδὼν ἐγεγόνει· δεδιότες γὰρ ἐκεῖνον ἀμφότεροι τοῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἁμῶς γέ πως ἐνέμενον δικαίοις. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀνεῖλεν ἡ τύχη τὸν ἔφεδρον τοῦ ἀγῶνος, εὐθὺς ἦν εἰπεῖν τὸ κωμικόν, ὡς

ἅτερος πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον

ὑπαλείφεται τὼ χεῖρέ θ’ ὑποκονίεται.

[7] οὕτως ἡ τύχη μικρόν ἐστι πρὸς τὴν φύσιν. οὐ γὰρ ἀποπίμπλησιν αὐτῆς τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν, ὅπου τοσοῦτον βάθος ἡγεμονίας καὶ μέγεθος εὐρυχωρίας δυοῖν ἀνδροῖν οὐκ ἐπέσχεν, ἀλλ’ ἀκούοντες καὶ ἀναγινώσκοντες ὅτι “τριχθὰ δὲ πάντα δέδασται” τοῖς θεοῖς, “ἕκαστος δ’ ἔμμορε τιμῆς,” ἑαυτοῖς οὐκ ἐνόμιζον ἀρκεῖν δυσὶν οὖσι τὴν Ῥωμαίων ἀρχήν.

[54] [1] Καίτοι Πομπήϊος εἶπέ ποτε δημηγορῶν ὅτι πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν λάβοι πρότερον ἢ προσεδόκησε καὶ κατάθοιτο θᾶττον ἢ προσεδοκήθη. καὶ νὴ Δία μαρτυρούσας εἶχεν ἀεὶ τὰς διαλύσεις τῶν στρατοπέδων. τότε δὲ τὸν Καίσαρα δοκῶν οὐ προήσεσθαι τὴν δύναμιν ἐζήτει ταῖς πολιτικαῖς ἀρχαῖς ὀχυρὸς εἶναι πρὸς αὐτόν, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδὲν ἐνεωτέριζεν, οὐδὲ ἐβούλετο δοκεῖν ἀπιστεῖν, ἀλλ’ [2] ὑπερορᾶν μᾶλλον καὶ καταφρονεῖν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰς ἀρχὰς οὐ κατὰ γνώμην ἑώρα βραβευομένας, δεκαζομένων τῶν πολιτῶν, ἀναρχίαν ἐν τῇ πόλει περιεῖδε γενομένην· καὶ λόγος εὐθὺς ἐχώρει πολὺς ὑπὲρ δικτάτορος, ὃν πρῶτος εἰς μέσον ἐξενεγκεῖν ἐτόλμησε Λουκίλλιος ὁ δήμαρχος, τῷ δήμῳ παραινῶν ἑλέσθαι δικτάτορα Πομπήϊον. ἐπιλαβομένου δὲ Κάτωνος οὗτος μὲν ἐκινδύνευσε τὴν δημαρχίαν ἀποβαλεῖν, ὑπὲρ δὲ Πομπηΐου πολλοὶ τῶν φίλων ἀπελογοῦντο παριόντες ὡς οὐ δεομένου τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐκείνης οὐδὲ βουλομένου.

[3] Κάτωνος δὲ Πομπήϊον ἐπαινέσαντος καὶ προτρεψαμένου τῆς εὐκοσμίας ἐπιμεληθῆναι, τότε μὲν αἰδεσθεὶς ἐπεμελήθη, καὶ κατεστάθησαν ὕπατοι Δομέτιος καὶ Μεσσάλας, ὕστερον δὲ πάλιν ἀναρχίας γινομένης καὶ πλειόνων ἤδη τὸν περὶ τοῦ δικτάτορος λόγον ἐγειρόντων ἰταμώτερον, φοβηθέντες οἱ περὶ Κάτωνα μὴ βιασθῶσιν, ἔγνωσαν ἀρχήν τινα τῷ Πομπηΐῳ προέμενοι νόμιμον ἀποτρέψαι τῆς ἀκράτου καὶ τυραννικῆς [4] ἐκείνης. καὶ Βύβλος ἐχθρὸς ὢν Πομπηΐῳ πρῶτος ἀπεφήνατο γνώμην ἐν συγκλήτῳ Πομπήϊον μόνον ἑλέσθαι ὕπατον· ἢ γὰρ ἀπαλλαγήσεσθαι τῆς παρούσης τὴν πόλιν ἀκοσμίας, ἢ δουλεύσειν τῷ κρατίστῳ. φανέντος δὲ παραδόξου τοῦ λόγου διὰ τὸν εἰπόντα, Κάτων ἀναστὰς καὶ παρασχὼν δόκησιν ὡς ἀντιλέξοι, γενομένης σιωπῆς εἶπε τὴν προκειμένην γνώμην αὐτὸς μὲν οὐκ ἂν εἰσενεγκεῖν, εἰσενηνεγμένῃ δὲ ὑφ’ ἑτέρου πείθεσθαι κελεύειν, πᾶσαν μὲν ἀρχὴν μᾶλλον αἱρούμενος ἀναρχίας, Πομπηΐου δὲ μηδένα βέλτιον ἄρξειν [5] ἐν ταραχαῖς τηλικαύταις νομίζων. δεξαμένης δὲ τῆς βουλῆς, καὶ ψηφισαμένης ὅπως ὕπατος αἱρεθεὶς ὁ Πομπήϊος ἄρχοι μόνος, εἰ δὲ αὐτὸς συνάρχοντος δεηθείη, μὴ θᾶττον δυοῖν μηνοῖν δοκιμάσας ἕλοιτο, κατασταθεὶς οὕτως καὶ ἀποδειχθεὶς διὰ Σουλπικίου μεσοβασιλέως ὕπατος ἠσπάζετο φιλοφρόνως τὸν Κάτωνα, πολλὴν ὁμολογῶν χάριν ἔχειν καὶ παρακαλῶν γίνεσθαι [6] σύμβουλον ἰδίᾳ τῆς ἀρχῆς. Κάτων δὲ χάριν μὲν ἔχειν αὐτῷ τὸν Πομπήϊον οὐκ ἠξίου· δι’ ἐκεῖνον γὰρ ὧν εἶπεν οὐδὲν εἰπεῖν, διὰ δὲ τὴν πόλιν· ἔσεσθαι δὲ σύμβουλος ἰδίᾳ παρακαλούμενος, ἐὰν δὲ μὴ παρακαλῆται, δημοσίᾳ φράσειν τὸ φαινόμενον. τοιοῦτος μὲν οὖν Κάτων ἐν πᾶσι.

[55] [1] Πομπήϊος δὲ παρελθὼν εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἔγημε Κορνηλίαν θυγατέρα Μετέλλου Σκηπίωνος, οὐ παρθένον, ἀλλὰ χήραν ἀπολελειμμένην νεωστὶ Ποπλίου τοῦ Κράσσου παιδός, ᾧ συνῴκησεν ἐκ παρθενίας, ἐν Πάρθοις τεθνηκότος. ἐνῆν δὲ τῇ κόρῃ πολλὰ φίλτρα δίχα τῶν ἀφ’ ὥρας. καὶ γὰρ περὶ γράμματα καλῶς ἤσκητο καὶ περὶ λύραν καὶ γεωμετρίαν, καὶ λόγων φιλοσόφων εἴθιστο [2] χρησίμως ἀκούειν. καὶ προσῆν τούτοις ἦθος ἀηδίας καὶ περιεργίας καθαρόν, ἃ δὴ νέαις προστρίβεται γυναιξὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα μαθήματα· πατὴρ δὲ καὶ γένους ἕνεκα καὶ δόξης ἄμεμπτος. ἀλλ’ ὅμως τοῦ γάμου τοῖς μὲν οὐκ ἤρεσκε τὸ μὴ καθ’ ἡλικίαν· υἱῷ γὰρ αὐτοῦ συνοικεῖν ὥραν εἶχεν ἡ [3] Κορνηλία μᾶλλον· οἱ δὲ κομψότεροι τὸ τῆς πόλεως ἡγοῦντο παρεωρακέναι τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐν τύχαις οὔσης, ὧν ἐκεῖνον ἰατρὸν ᾕρηται καὶ μόνῳ παραδέδωκεν αὑτήν· ὁ δὲ στεφανοῦται καὶ θύει γάμους, αὐτὴν τὴν ὑπατείαν ὀφείλων ἡγεῖσθαι συμφοράν, οὐκ ἂν οὕτω παρανόμως δοθεῖσαν [4] εὐτυχούσης τῆς πατρίδος. ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῖς δίκαις τῶν δωροδοκιῶν καὶ δεκασμῶν ἐπιστάς, καὶ νόμους γράψας καθ’ οὓς αἱ κρίσεις ἐγίνοντο, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα σεμνῶς ἐβράβευε καὶ καθαρῶς, ἀσφάλειαν ἅμα καὶ κόσμον καὶ ἡσυχίαν αὐτοῦ προσκαθημένου μεθ’ ὅπλων τοῖς δικαστηρίοις παρέχων, Σκηπίωνος δὲ τοῦ πενθεροῦ κρινομένου, μεταπεμψάμενος οἴκαδε τοὺς ἑξήκοντα καὶ τριακοσίους δικαστὰς ἐνέτυχε βοηθεῖν, ὁ δὲ κατήγορος ἀπέστη τῆς δίκης ἰδὼν τὸν Σκηπίωνα προπεμπόμενον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς ὑπὸ τῶν δικαστῶν, πάλιν οὖν ἤκουε [5] κακῶς, ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ὅτι λύσας νόμῳ τοὺς γινομένους περὶ τῶν κρινομένων ἐπαίνους, αὐτὸς εἰσῆλθε Πλάγκον ἐπαινεσόμενος. καὶ Κάτων (ἔτυχε γὰρ κρίνων) ἐπισχόμενος τὰ ὦτα ταῖς χερσὶν οὐκ ἔφη καλῶς ἔχειν αὐτῷ παρὰ τὸν [6] νόμον ἀκούειν τῶν ἐπαίνων. ὅθεν ὁ μὲν Κάτων ἀπεβλήθη πρὸ τοῦ φέρειν τὴν ψῆφον, ἑάλω δὲ ταῖς ἄλλαις ὁ Πλάγκος σὺν αἰσχύνῃ τοῦ Πομπηΐου. καὶ γὰρ ὀλίγαις ὕστερον ἡμέραις Ὑψαῖος, ἀνὴρ ὑπατικός, δίκην φεύγων καὶ παραφυλάξας τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἀπιόντα λελουμένον, ἱκέτευε τῶν γονάτων λαβόμενος. ὁ δὲ παρῆλθεν ὑπεροπτικῶς εἰπὼν διαφθείρειν τὸ δεῖπνον αὐτόν, ἄλλο δὲ μηδὲν περαίνειν. οὕτως οὖν ἄνισος εἶναι [7] δοκῶν αἰτίας εἶχε. τὰ δ’ ἄλλα καλῶς ἅπαντα κατέστησεν εἰς τάξιν, καὶ προσείλετο συνάρχοντα τὸν πενθερὸν εἰς τοὺς ὑπολοίπους πέντε μῆνας. ἐψηφίσθη δὲ αὐτῷ τὰς ἐπαρχίας ἔχειν εἰς ἄλλην τετραετίαν, καὶ χίλια τάλαντα λαμβάνειν καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν, ἀφ’ ὧν θρέψει καὶ διοικήσει τὸ στρατιωτικόν.

[56] [1] Οἱ δὲ Καίσαρος φίλοι ταύτην ἀρχὴν λαβόντες ἠξίουν τινὰ γενέσθαι καὶ Καίσαρος λόγον, ἀγωνιζομένου τοσούτους ἀγῶνας ὑπὲρ τῆς ἡγεμονίας· ἢ γὰρ ὑπατείας ἄξιον εἶναι τυχεῖν ἑτέρας, ἢ προσλαβεῖν τῇ στρατείᾳ χρόνον, ἐν ᾧ τῶν πεπονημένων οὐκ ἄλλος ἐπελθὼν ἀφαιρήσεται τὴν δόξαν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ἄρξει καὶ τιμήσεται [2] καθ’ ἡσυχίαν ὁ κατεργασάμενος. οὔσης δὲ περὶ τούτων ἁμίλλης, ὡς δὴ παραιτούμενος ὑπὲρ τοῦ Καίσαρος ἐπ’ εὐνοίᾳ τὸν φθόνον ὁ Πομπήϊος ἔφη γράμματα Καίσαρος ἔχειν βουλομένου λαβεῖν διάδοχον καὶ παύσασθαι τῆς στρατείας· ὑπατείας μέντοι καὶ μὴ παρόντι καλῶς ἔχειν αἴτησιν αὐτῷ [3] δοθῆναι. πρὸς ταῦτα ἐνισταμένων τῶν περὶ Κάτωνα καὶ κελευόντων ἰδιώτην γενόμενον καὶ τὰ ὅπλα καταθέμενον εὑρίσκεσθαί τι παρὰ τῶν πολιτῶν ἀγαθόν, οὐκ ἐξερίσας, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἡττηθεὶς ὁ Πομπήϊος ὕποπτος ἦν μᾶλλον ὧν ἐφρόνει περὶ Καίσαρος. ἔπεμψε δὲ καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις ἀπαιτῶν ἃς ἔχρησεν αὐτῷ, τὰ Παρθικὰ ποιούμενος πρόφασιν. ὁ δέ, καίπερ εἰδὼς ἐφ’ οἷς ἀπῃτεῖτο τοὺς στρατιώτας, ἀπέπεμψε καλῶς δωρησάμενος.

[57] [1] Ἐκ τούτου δὲ Πομπήϊος ἐν Νεαπόλει νοσήσας ἐπισφαλῶς ἀνέρρωσε, Πραξαγόρου δὲ πείσαντος τοὺς Νεαπολίτας ἔθυσαν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ σωτήρια. μιμουμένων δὲ τούτους τῶν προσοίκων καὶ τοῦ πράγματος οὕτω περιϊόντος τὴν Ἰταλίαν πᾶσαν, καὶ μικρὰ καὶ μεγάλη πόλις ἐφ’ ἡμέρας [2] πολλὰς ἑώρταζε. τοὺς δὲ ἀπαντῶντας πανταχόθεν οὐδεὶς ἐχώρει τόπος, ἀλλὰ ὁδοί τε κατεπίμπλαντο καὶ κῶμαι καὶ λιμένες εὐωχουμένων καὶ θυόντων. πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ στεφανηφοροῦντες ὑπὸ λαμπάδων ἐδέχοντο καὶ παρέπεμπον ἀνθοβολούμενον, ὥστε τὴν κομιδὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ πορείαν [3] θέαμα κάλλιστον εἶναι καὶ λαμπρότατον. οὐδενὸς μέντοι τοῦτο λέγεται τῶν ἀπεργασαμένων τὸν πόλεμον αἰτίων ἔλαττον γενέσθαι. φρόνημα γὰρ εἰσῆλθεν ὑπεραῖρον ἅμα τῷ μεγέθει τῆς χαρᾶς τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων λογισμούς· καὶ τὴν εἰς ἀσφαλὲς ἀεὶ τὰ εὐτυχήματα καὶ τὰς πράξεις αὐτοῦ θεμένην εὐλάβειαν προέμενος εἰς ἄκρατον ἐξέπεσε θράσος καὶ περιφρόνησιν τῆς Καίσαρος δυνάμεως, ὡς οὔτε ὅπλων ἐπ’ αὐτὸν οὔτε τινὸς ἐργώδους πραγματείας δεησόμενος, ἀλλὰ πολὺ ῥᾷον καθαιρήσων ἢ πρότερον ηὔξησε [4] τὸν ἄνδρα. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις Ἄππιος ἀφίκετο κομίζων ἐκ Γαλατίας ἣν ἔχρησε Πομπήϊος Καίσαρι στρατιάν· καὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἐξεφλαύριζε τὰς ἐκεῖ πράξεις καὶ λόγους ἐξέφερε βλασφήμους περὶ Καίσαρος, αὐτὸν δὲ Πομπήϊον ἀπείρως ἔχειν ἔλεγε τῆς αὑτοῦ δυνάμεως καὶ δόξης, ἑτέροις ὅπλοις πρὸς Καίσαρα φραγνύμενον, ὃν αὐτοῖς κατεργάσεται τοῖς ἐκείνου στρατεύμασιν, ὅταν πρῶτον ὀφθῇ· τοσοῦτον καὶ μίσους πρὸς Καίσαρα καὶ πόθου πρὸς Πομπήϊον ἐνυπάρχειν αὐτοῖς.

[5] οὕτω δ’ οὖν ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐπήρθη, καὶ τοιαύτης καὶ τοσαύτης ὀλιγωρίας διὰ τὸ θαρρεῖν ἐγένετο μεστὸς ὥστε καὶ τῶν δεδιότων τὸν πόλεμον κατεγέλα, καὶ τοὺς λέγοντας ἂν ἐλαύνῃ Καῖσαρ ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν, οὐχ ὁρᾶν δυνάμεις αἷς αὐτὸν ἀμυνοῦνται, μειδιῶν τῷ προσώπῳ καὶ διακεχυμένος ἀμελεῖν ἐκέλευσεν· “Ὅπου γὰρ ἄν,” ἔφη, “τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐγὼ κρούσω τῷ ποδὶ τὴν γῆν, ἀναδύσονται καὶ πεζικαὶ καὶ ἱππικαὶ δυνάμεις.”

[58] [1] Ἤδη δὲ καὶ Καῖσαρ ἐπεφύετο τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐρρωμενέστερον, αὐτὸς μὲν οὐκέτι μακρὰν τῆς Ἰταλίας ἀπαίρων, εἰς δὲ τὴν πόλιν ἀεὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀποστέλλων ἀρχαιρεσιάσοντας, χρήμασι δὲ πολλοὺς ὑποικουρῶν καὶ διαφθείρων ἄρχοντας· ὧν καὶ Παῦλος ἦν ὁ ὕπατος ἐπὶ χιλίοις καὶ πεντακοσίοις ταλάντοις μεταβαλόμενος, καὶ Κουρίων ὁ δήμαρχος ἀμηχάνων πλήθει δανείων ἐλευθερωθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, καὶ Μάρκος Ἀντώνιος διὰ φιλίαν Κουρίωνος ὧν [2] ὠφελεῖτο μετέχων. ἐλέχθη μὲν οὖν ὅτι τῶν ἀφιγμένων τις ἀπὸ Καίσαρος ταξιαρχῶν ἑστὼς παρὰ τὸ βουλευτήριον, καὶ πυθόμενος ὡς οὐ δίδωσιν ἡ βουλὴ Καίσαρι χρόνον τῆς ἀρχῆς, εἶπεν ἐπικρούων τῇ χειρὶ τὸ ξίφος, “Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο δώσει.” καὶ τὰ πραττόμενα καὶ τὰ παρασκευαζόμενα ταύτην εἶχε τὴν διάνοιαν.

[3] Αἱ μέντοι Κουρίωνος ἀξιώσεις καὶ παρακλήσεις ὑπὲρ Καίσαρος ἐφαίνοντο δημοτικώτεραι. δυεῖν γὰρ ἠξίου θάτερον, ἢ καὶ Πομπήϊον ἀπαιτεῖν ἢ μηδὲ Καίσαρος ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τὸ στρατιωτικόν· ἢ γὰρ ἰδιώτας γενομένους ἐπὶ τοῖς δικαίοις ἢ μένοντας ἀντιπάλους ἐφ’ οἷς ἔχουσιν ἀτρεμήσειν· ὁ δὲ τὸν ἕτερον ἀσθενῆ ποιῶν ἣν φοβεῖται [4] δύναμιν διπλασιάζει. πρὸς ταῦτα Μαρκέλλου τοῦ ὑπάτου λῃστὴν ἀποκαλοῦντος τὸν Καίσαρα, καὶ ψηφίζεσθαι πολέμιον κελεύοντος εἰ μὴ καταθήσεται τὰ ὅπλα, Κουρίων ὅμως ἴσχυσε μετὰ Ἀντωνίου καὶ Πείσωνος ἐξελέγξαι τὴν σύγκλητον. ἐκέλευσε γὰρ μεταστῆναι τοὺς Καίσαρα μόνον τὰ ὅπλα καταθέσθαι κελεύοντας, Πομπήϊον δὲ [5] ἄρχειν· καὶ μετέστησαν οἱ πλείους. αὖθις δὲ μεταστῆναι κελεύσαντος ὅσοις ἀμφοτέρους ἀρέσκει τὰ ὅπλα καταθέσθαι καὶ μηδέτερον ἄρχειν, Πομπηΐῳ μὲν εἴκοσι καὶ δύο μόνον, Κουρίωνι δὲ πάντες οἱ λοιποὶ προσέθεντο. κἀκεῖνος μὲν ὡς νενικηκὼς λαμπρὸς ὑπὸ χαρᾶς εἰς τὸν δῆμον ἐξήλατο, κρότῳ καὶ βολαῖς στεφάνων καὶ ἀνθῶν δεξιούμενον αὐτόν. ἐν δὲ τῇ βουλῇ Πομπήϊος οὐ παρῆν· οἱ γὰρ ἄρχοντες στρατοπέδων εἰς τὴν [6] πόλιν οὐκ εἰσίασι. Μάρκελλος δὲ ἀναστὰς οὐκ ἔφη λόγων ἀκροάσεσθαι καθήμενος, ἀλλ’ ὁρῶν ὑπερφαινόμενα τῶν Ἄλπεων ἤδη δέκα τάγματα βαδίζειν, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐκπέμψειν τὸν ἀντιταξόμενον αὐτοῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος.

[59] [1] Ἐκ τούτου τὰς ἐσθῆτας ὡς ἐπὶ πένθει μετεβάλοντο. Μάρκελλος δὲ πρὸς Πομπήϊον δι’ ἀγορᾶς ἐβάδιζε τῆς βουλῆς ἑπομένης, καὶ καταστὰς ἐναντίος, “Κελεύω σε,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Πομπήϊε, βοηθεῖν τῇ πατρίδι καὶ χρῆσθαι ταῖς παρεσκευασμέναις δυνάμεσι καὶ καταλέγειν ἑτέρας.” τὰ δ’ αὐτὰ ταῦτα καὶ Λέντλος ἔλεγε, τῶν ἀποδεδειγμένων [2] εἰς τὸ μέλλον ὑπάτων ἅτερος. ἀρξαμένου δὲ τοῦ Πομπηΐου καταλέγειν οἱ μὲν οὐχ ὑπήκουον, ὀλίγοι δὲ γλίσχρως καὶ ἀπροθύμως συνῄεσαν, οἱ δὲ πλείους διαλύσεις ἐβόων. καὶ γὰρ ἀνέγνω τινὰ Καίσαρος ἐπιστολὴν Ἀντώνιος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ, βιασάμενος τὴν βουλήν, ἔχουσαν ἐπαγωγοὺς ὄχλου προκλήσεις. ἠξίου γὰρ ἀμφοτέρους ἐκβάντας τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν καὶ τὰς στρατιωτικὰς δυνάμεις ἀφέντας ἐπὶ τῷ δήμῳ γενέσθαι [3] καὶ τῶν πεπραγμένων εὐθύνας ὑποσχεῖν. οἱ δὲ περὶ Λέντλον ὑπατεύοντες ἤδη βουλὴν οὐ συνῆγον· ἄρτι δὲ ἐκ Κιλικίας ἀφιγμένος Κικέρων ἔπραττε διαλλαγάς, ὅπως Καῖσαρ, ἐξελθὼν Γαλατίας καὶ τὴν ἄλλην στρατιὰν ἀφεὶς πᾶσαν, ἐπὶ δυσὶ τάγμασι καὶ τῷ Ἰλλυρικῷ τὴν δευτέραν [4] ὑπατείαν περιμένῃ. Πομπηΐου δὲ δυσκολαίνοντος ἐπείσθησαν οἱ Καίσαρος φίλοι θάτερον ἀφεῖναι· Λέντλου δὲ ἀντικρούσαντος καὶ Κάτωνος αὖθις ἁμαρτάνειν τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐξαπατώμενον βοῶντος οὐκ ἔσχον αἱ διαλύσεις πέρας.

[60] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ ἀπαγγέλλεται Καῖσαρ Ἀρίμινον, πόλιν μεγάλην τῆς Ἰταλίας, κατειληφὼς καὶ βαδίζων ἄντικρυς ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην μετὰ πάσης τῆς δυνάμεως. τοῦτο δὲ ἦν ψεῦδος. ἐβάδιζε γὰρ οὐ πλείονας ἔχων ἱππέων τριακοσίων καὶ πεντακισχιλίων ὁπλιτῶν· τὴν δὲ ἄλλην δύναμιν ἐπέκεινα τῶν Ἄλπεων οὖσαν οὐ περιέμενεν, ἐμπεσεῖν ἄφνω τεταραγμένοις καὶ μὴ προσδοκῶσι βουλόμενος μᾶλλον ἢ χρόνον δοὺς ἐκ παρασκευῆς μάχεσθαι.

[2] καὶ γὰρ ἐπὶ τὸν Ῥουβίκωνα ποταμὸν ἐλθών, ὃς ἀφώριζεν αὐτῷ τὴν δεδομένην ἐπαρχίαν, ἔστη σιωπῇ καὶ διεμέλλησεν, αὐτὸς ἄρα πρὸς ἑαυτὸν συλλογιζόμενος τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ τολμήματος. εἶτα, ὥσπερ οἱ πρὸς βάθος ἀφιέντες ἀχανὲς ἀπὸ κρημνοῦ τινος ἑαυτούς, μύσας τῷ λογισμῷ καὶ παρακαλυψάμενος πρὸς τὸ δεινόν, καὶ τοσοῦτον μόνον Ἑλληνιστὶ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ἐκβοήσας, “Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος,” διεβίβαζε τὸν στρατόν.

[3] Ὡς δὲ πρῶτον ἡ φήμη προσέπεσε καὶ κατέσχε τὴν Ῥώμην μετὰ ἐκπλήξεως θόρυβος καὶ φόβος οἷος οὔπω πρότερον, εὐθὺς μὲν ἡ βουλὴ φερομένη πρὸς τὸν Πομπήϊον συνέτρεχε καὶ παρῆσαν αἱ ἀρχαί, πυθομένου δὲ τοῦ Τύλλου περὶ στρατιᾶς καὶ δυνάμεως καὶ τοῦ Πομπηΐου μετά τινος μελλήσεως ἀθαρσῶς εἰπόντος ὅτι τοὺς παρὰ Καίσαρος [4] ἥκοντας ἑτοίμους ἔχει, νομίζει δὲ καὶ τοὺς κατειλεγμένους πρότερον ἐν τάχει συνάξειν τρισμυρίους ὄντας, ὁ μὲν Τύλλος ἀναβοήσας, “Ἐξηπάτηκας ἡμᾶς, ὦ Πομπήϊε,” συνεβούλευεν ὡς Καίσαρα πρέσβεις ἀποστέλλειν, Φαώνιος δέ τις, ἀνὴρ τἆλλα μὲν οὐ πονηρός, αὐθαδείᾳ δὲ καὶ ὕβρει πολλάκις τὴν Κάτωνος οἰόμενος ἀπομιμεῖσθαι παρρησίαν, ἐκέλευε τὸν Πομπήϊον τῷ ποδὶ τύπτειν τὴν γῆν, ἃς ὑπισχνεῖτο δυνάμεις ἀνακαλούμενον.

[5] ὁ δὲ ταύτην μὲν ἤνεγκε τὴν ἀκαιρίαν πρᾴως· τοῦ δὲ Κάτωνος ὑπομιμνήσκοντος ὧν ἐν ἀρχῇ περὶ Καίσαρος αὐτῷ προεῖπεν, ἀπεκρίνατο μαντικώτερα μὲν εἶναι τὰ Κάτωνι λεχθέντα, φιλικώτερα δὲ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πεπρᾶχθαι.

[61] [1] Κάτων δὲ συνεβούλευεν αἱρεῖσθαι στρατηγὸν αὐτοκράτορα Πομπήϊον, ἐπειπὼν ὅτι τῶν αὐτῶν ἐστι καὶ ποιεῖν τὰ μεγάλα κακὰ καὶ παύειν. οὗτος μὲν οὖν εὐθὺς ἐξῆλθεν εἰς Σικελίαν (ἔλαχε γὰρ αὐτὴν τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν) καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἕκαστος εἰς ἃς ἐκληρώθη. τῆς δ’ Ἰταλίας σχεδὸν ὅλης [2] ἀνισταμένης ἀπορίαν εἶχε τὸ γινόμενον. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἔξωθεν φερόμενοι φυγῇ πανταχόθεν εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην ἐνέπιπτον, οἱ δὲ τὴν Ῥώμην οἰκοῦντες ἐξέπιπτον αὐτοὶ καὶ ἀπέλειπον τὴν πόλιν, ἐν χειμῶνι καὶ ταράχῳ τοσούτῳ τὸ μὲν χρήσιμον ἀσθενὲς ἔχουσαν, τὸ δὲ ἀπειθὲς ἰσχυρὸν καὶ δυσμεταχείριστον τοῖς ἄρχουσιν. οὐ γὰρ ἦν παῦσαι τὸν φόβον, οὐδὲ εἴασέ τις χρῆσθαι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ λογισμοῖς Πομπήϊον, ἀλλ’ ᾧ τις ἐνετύγχανε πάθει, φοβηθεὶς ἢ λυπηθεὶς ἢ διαπορήσας, τούτῳ [3] φέρων ἐκεῖνον ἀνεπίμπλη· καὶ τἀναντία τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρας ἐκράτει βουλεύματα, καὶ πυθέσθαι περὶ τῶν πολεμίων οὐδὲν ἦν ἀληθὲς αὐτῷ διὰ τὸ πολλοὺς ἀπαγγέλλειν ὅ τι τύχοιεν, εἶτα ἀπιστοῦντι χαλεπαίνειν. οὕτω δὴ ψηφισάμενος ταραχὴν ὁρᾶν καὶ κελεύσας ἅπαντας ἕπεσθαι αὐτῷ τοὺς ἀπὸ βουλῆς, καὶ προειπὼν ὅτι Καίσαρος ἡγήσεται τὸν ἀπολειφθέντα, περὶ δείλην ὀψίαν [4] ἀπέλιπε τὴν πόλιν. οἱ δὲ ὕπατοι μηδὲ θύσαντες ἃ νομίζεται πρὸ πολέμων ἔφυγον. ἦν δὲ καὶ παρ’ αὐτὰ τὰ δεινὰ ζηλωτὸς ἀνὴρ τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐνοίας τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὅτι πολλῶν τὴν στρατηγίαν μεμφομένων οὐδεὶς ἦν ὁ μισῶν τὸν στρατηγόν, ἀλλὰ πλείονας ἄν τις εὗρε τῶν διὰ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν φευγόντων τοὺς ἀπολιπεῖν Πομπήϊον μὴ δυναμένους.

[62] [1] Ὀλίγαις δὲ ὕστερον ἡμέραις Καῖσαρ εἰσελάσας καὶ κατασχὼν τὴν Ῥώμην τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἐπιεικῶς ἐνέτυχε καὶ κατεπράϋνε, τῶν δὲ δημάρχων ἑνὶ Μετέλλῳ κωλύοντι χρήματα λαβεῖν αὐτὸν ἐκ τοῦ ταμιείου θάνατον ἠπείλησε, καὶ προσέθηκε τῇ ἀπειλῇ τραχύτερον λόγον· ἔφη γὰρ ὡς τοῦτο φῆσαι χαλεπὸν ἦν αὐτῷ μᾶλλον ἢ [2] πρᾶξαι. τρεψάμενος δὲ τὸν Μέτελλον οὕτω, καὶ λαβὼν ὧν ἔχρῃζεν, ἐδίωκε Πομπήϊον, ἐκβαλεῖν σπεύδων ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας πρὶν ἀφικέσθαι τὴν ἐξ Ἰβηρίας αὐτῷ δύναμιν. ὁ δὲ τὸ Βρεντέσιον κατασχὼν καὶ πλοίων εὐπορήσας τοὺς μὲν ὑπάτους εὐθὺς ἐμβιβάσας καὶ μετ’ αὐτῶν σπείρας τριάκοντα προεξέπεμψεν εἰς Δυρράχιον, Σκηπίωνα δὲ τὸν πενθερὸν καὶ Γναῖον τὸν υἱὸν εἰς Συρίαν ἀπέστειλε ναυτικὸν κατασκευάσοντας.

[3] αὐτὸς δὲ φραξάμενος τὰς πύλας καὶ τοῖς τείχεσι τοὺς ἐλαφροτάτους στρατιώτας ἐπιστήσας, τοὺς δὲ Βρεντεσίνους ἀτρεμεῖν κατ’ οἰκίαν κελεύσας, ὅλην ἐντὸς τὴν πόλιν ἀνέσκαψε καὶ διετάφρευσε, καὶ σκολόπων ἐνέπλησε τοὺς στενωποὺς πλὴν δυεῖν, δι’ ὧν ἐπὶ θάλατταν αὐτὸς κατῆλθεν.

[4] ἡμέρᾳ δὲ τρίτῃ τὸν μὲν ἄλλον ὄχλον ἐν ταῖς ναυσὶν εἶχεν ἤδη καθ’ ἡσυχίαν ἐμβεβηκότα, τοῖς δὲ τὰ τείχη φυλάττουσιν ἐξαίφνης σημεῖον ἄρας καὶ καταδραμόντας ὀξέως ἀναλαβὼν ἀπεπέρασεν. ὁ δὲ Καῖσαρ, ὡς εἶδεν ἐκλελειμμένα τὰ τείχη, τὴν φυγὴν αἰσθόμενος μικροῦ μὲν ἐδέησε διώκων τοῖς σταυροῖς καὶ τοῖς ὀρύγμασι περιπετὴς γενέσθαι, τῶν δὲ Βρεντεσίνων φρασάντων φυλαττόμενος τὴν πόλιν καὶ κύκλῳ περιϊὼν ἀνηγμένους εὗρε πάντας πλὴν δυεῖν πλοίων στρατιώτας τινὰς οὐ πολλοὺς ἐχόντων.

[63] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι τοῦ Πομπηΐου τὸν ἀπόπλουν ἐν τοῖς ἀρίστοις τίθενται στρατηγήμασιν, αὐτὸς δὲ Καῖσαρ ἐθαύμαζεν ὅτι καὶ πόλιν ἔχων ὀχυρὰν καὶ προσδοκῶν τὰς ἐξ Ἰβηρίας δυνάμεις καὶ θαλασσοκρατῶν ἐξέλιπε καὶ προήκατο τὴν Ἰταλίαν. αἰτιᾶται καὶ Κικέρων ὅτι τὴν Θεμιστοκλέους ἐμιμήσατο στρατηγίαν μᾶλλον ἢ τὴν Περικλέους, τῶν πραγμάτων τούτοις [2] ὁμοίων ὄντων, οὐκ ἐκείνοις. ἐδήλωσε δὲ Καῖσαρ ἔργῳ σφόδρα φοβούμενος τὸν χρόνον. ἑλὼν γὰρ Νουμέριον Πομπηΐου φίλον ἀπέστειλεν εἰς Βρεντέσιον ἐπὶ τοῖς ἴσοις ἀξιῶν διαλλαγῆναι· Νουμέριος δὲ Πομπηΐῳ συνεξέπλευσεν. ἐντεῦθεν ὁ μὲν ἐν ἡμέραις ἑξήκοντα κύριος γεγονὼς ἀναιμωτὶ τῆς Ἰταλίας ὅλης ἐβούλετο μὲν εὐθὺς Πομπήϊον διώκειν, πλοίων δὲ μὴ παρόντων ἀποστρέψας εἰς Ἰβηρίαν ἤλαυνε, τὰς ἐκεῖ δυνάμεις προσαγαγέσθαι βουλόμενος.

[64] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ μεγάλη συνέστη Πομπηΐῳ δύναμις, ἡ μὲν ναυτικὴ καὶ παντελῶς ἀνανταγώνιστος (ἦσαν γὰρ αἱ μάχιμοι πεντακόσιαι, λιβυρνίδων δὲ καὶ κατασκόπων ὑπερβάλλων ἀριθμός), ἱππεῖς δέ, Ῥωμαίων καὶ Ἰταλῶν τὸ ἀνθοῦν, ἑπτακισχίλιοι, γένεσι καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ φρονήμασι διαφέροντες· τὴν δὲ πεζὴν σύμμικτον οὖσαν καὶ μελέτης δεομένην ἐγύμναζεν ἐν Βεροίᾳ καθήμενος οὐκ ἀργός, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀκμάζοντι χρώμενος αὑτῷ πρὸς τὰ γυμνάσια.

[2] μεγάλη γὰρ ἦν ῥοπὴ πρὸς τὸ θαρρεῖν τοῖς ὁρῶσι Πομπήϊον Μάγνον ἑξήκοντα μὲν ἔτη δυεῖν λείποντα γεγενημένον, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ὅπλοις ἁμιλλώμενον πεζόν, εἶτα ἱππότην αὖθις ἑλκόμενόν τε τὸ ξίφος ἀπραγμόνως θέοντι τῷ ἵππῳ καὶ κατακλείοντα πάλιν εὐχερῶς, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἀκοντισμοῖς οὐ μόνον ἀκρίβειαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ῥώμην ἐπιδεικνύμενον εἰς μῆκος, ὃ πολλοὶ τῶν νέων οὐχ ὑπερέβαλλον.

[3] ἐπεφοίτων δὲ καὶ βασιλεῖς ἐθνῶν καὶ δυνάσται, καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ Ῥώμης ἡγεμονικῶν ἀριθμὸς ἦν ἐντελοῦς βουλῆς περὶ αὐτόν. ἦλθε δὲ καὶ Λαβιηνὸς ἀπολιπὼν Καίσαρα φίλος γεγονὼς καὶ συνεστρατευμένος ἐν Γαλατίᾳ, καὶ Βροῦτος, υἱὸς ὢν Βρούτου τοῦ περὶ Γαλατίαν σφαγέντος, ἀνὴρ μεγαλόφρων καὶ μηδέποτε Πομπήϊον προσειπὼν μηδὲ ἀσπασάμενος πρότερον ὡς φονέα τοῦ πατρός, τότε δὲ ὡς ἐλευθεροῦντι τὴν Ῥώμην [4] ὑπέταξεν ἑαυτόν. Κικέρων δέ, καίπερ ἄλλα γεγραφὼς καὶ βεβουλευμένος, ὅμως κατῃδέσθη μὴ γενέσθαι τοῦ προκινδυνεύοντος ἀριθμοῦ τῆς πατρίδος. ἦλθε δὲ καὶ Τίδιος Σέξτιος, ἐσχατόγηρως ἀνὴρ θάτερον πεπηρωμένος σκέλος, εἰς Μακεδονίαν· ὃν τῶν ἄλλων γελώντων καὶ χλευαζόντων, ὁ Πομπήϊος ἰδὼν ἐξανέστη καὶ προσέδραμε, μέγα νομίζων μαρτύριον εἶναι καὶ τοὺς παρ’ ἡλικίαν καὶ παρὰ δύναμιν αἱρουμένους τὸν μετ’ αὐτοῦ κίνδυνον ἀντὶ τῆς ἀσφαλείας.

[65] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ βουλῆς γενομένης καὶ γνώμην Κάτωνος εἰπόντος ἐψηφίσαντο μηδένα Ῥωμαίων ἄνευ παρατάξεως ἀναιρεῖν μηδὲ διαρπάζειν πόλιν ὑπήκοον Ῥωμαίοις, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἡ Πομπηΐου μερὶς ἠγαπήθη· καὶ γὰρ οἷς μηδὲν ἦν πρᾶγμα τοῦ πολέμου πόρρω κατοικοῦσιν ἢ δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀμελουμένοις, τῷ γε βούλεσθαι συγκατετίθεντο καὶ τῷ λόγῳ συνεμάχουν ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίων, ἡγούμενοι θεοῖς εἶναι καὶ ἀνθρώποις ἐχθρὸν ᾧ μὴ καθ’ ἡδονήν ἐστι νικᾶν Πομπήϊον.

[2] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ Καῖσαρ εὐγνώμονα παρεῖχεν ἑαυτὸν ἐν τῷ κρατεῖν, ὃς καὶ τὰς ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ τοῦ Πομπηΐου δυνάμεις ἑλὼν καὶ καταπολεμήσας ἀφῆκε τοὺς στρατηγούς, τοῖς δὲ στρατιώταις ἐχρῆτο. καὶ πάλιν ὑπερβαλὼν τὰς Ἄλπεις καὶ διαδραμὼν τὴν Ἰταλίαν εἰς Βρεντέσιον ἧκεν ἐν [3] τροπαῖς ἤδη τοῦ χειμῶνος ὄντος· καὶ διαπεράσας τὸ πέλαγος αὐτὸς μὲν εἰς Ὤρικον παρενέβαλεν, Οὐιβούλλιον δὲ τὸν Πομπηΐου φίλον αἰχμάλωτον ἔχων σὺν ἑαυτῷ πρὸς Πομπήϊον ἀνέστειλε, προκαλούμενος εἰς ἓν συνελθόντας ἀμφοτέρους ἡμέρᾳ τρίτῃ πάντα διαλῦσαι τὰ στρατεύματα καὶ γενομένους φίλους καὶ ὀμόσαντας ἐπανελθεῖν [4] εἰς Ἰταλίαν. ταῦτα Πομπήϊος αὖθις ἐνέδραν ἡγεῖτο· καὶ καταβὰς ὀξέως ἐπὶ θάλατταν κατέλαβε χωρία καὶ τόπους ἕδρας τε τοῖς πεζοῖς στρατοπέδοις ὑπεραλκεῖς ἔχοντα, καὶ ναύλοχα καὶ κατάρσεις ἐπιφόρους τοῖς ἐπιφοιτῶσι διὰ θαλάττης, ὥστε πάντα πνεῖν ἄνεμον Πομπηΐῳ σῖτον ἢ στρατιὰν ἢ χρήματα κομίζοντα, Καίσαρα δὲ δυσχερείαις κατὰ γῆν ὁμοῦ καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν [5] περιεχόμενον ἐξ ἀνάγκης φιλομαχεῖν, καὶ προσβάλλοντα τοῖς ἐρύμασι καὶ προκαλούμενον ἑκάστοτε τὰ μὲν πλεῖστα νικᾶν καὶ κρατεῖν τοῖς ἀκροβολισμοῖς, ἅπαξ δὲ μικροῦ συντριβῆναι καὶ τὴν στρατιὰν ἀποβαλεῖν, τοῦ Πομπηΐου λαμπρῶς ἀγωνισαμένου μέχρι τροπῆς ἁπάντων καὶ φόνου δισχιλίων, βιάσασθαι δὲ καὶ συνεισπεσεῖν μὴ δυνηθέντος ἢ φοβηθέντος, ὥστε εἰπεῖν Καίσαρα πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ὅτι Σήμερον ἂν ἡ νίκη παρὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἦν, εἰ τὸν νικῶντα εἶχον.

[66] [1] Ἐπὶ τούτῳ μέγα φρονήσαντες οἱ Πομπηΐου διὰ μάχης ἔσπευδον κριθῆναι. Πομπήϊος δὲ τοῖς μὲν ἔξω βασιλεῦσι καὶ στρατηγοῖς καὶ πόλεσιν ὡς νενικηκὼς ἔγραφε, τὸν δὲ τῆς μάχης κίνδυνον ὠρρώδει, τῷ χρόνῳ καὶ ταῖς ἀπορίαις καταπολεμήσειν νομίζων ἄνδρας ἀμάχους μὲν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις καὶ συνειθισμένους νικᾶν μετ’ ἀλλήλων [2] πολὺν ἤδη χρόνον, πρὸς δὲ τὴν ἄλλην στρατείαν καὶ πλάνας καὶ μεταβάσεις καὶ τάφρων ὀρύξεις καὶ τειχῶν οἰκοδομίας ἀπαγορεύοντας ὑπὸ γήρως, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ταῖς χερσὶν ἐμφῦναι τάχιστα καὶ συμπλακῆναι σπεύδοντας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πρότερον ἁμῶς γέ πως παρῆγε πείθων τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν ἀτρεμεῖν ὁ Πομπήϊος· ἐπεὶ δὲ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ὁ Καῖσαρ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποριῶν ἀναστὰς ἐβάδιζε δι’ Ἀθαμάνων εἰς Θετταλίαν, οὐκέτι [3] καθεκτὸν ἦν τὸ φρόνημα τῶν ἀνδρῶν, ἀλλὰ φεύγειν Καίσαρα βοῶντες οἱ μὲν ἀκολουθεῖν καὶ διώκειν ἐκέλευον, οἱ δὲ διαβαίνειν εἰς Ἰταλίαν, οἱ δὲ θεράποντας εἰς Ῥώμην καὶ φίλους ἔπεμπον οἰκίας προκαταληψομένους ἐγγὺς ἀγορᾶς ὡς αὐτίκα μετιόντες ἀρχάς. ἐθελονταὶ δὲ πολλοὶ πρὸς Κορνηλίαν ἔπλεον εἰς Λέσβον εὐαγγελιζόμενοι πέρας ἔχειν τὸν πόλεμον· ἐκεῖ γὰρ αὐτὴν ὑπεξέπεμψεν ὁ Πομπήϊος.

[4] Ἀθροισθείσης δὲ βουλῆς Ἀφράνιος μὲν ἀπεφαίνετο γνώμην ἔχεσθαι τῆς Ἰταλίας, ταύτην γὰρ εἶναι τοῦ πολέμου τὸ μέγιστον ἆθλον, προστιθέναι δὲ τοῖς κρατοῦσιν εὐθὺς Σικελίαν, Σαρδόνα, Κύρνον, Ἰβηρίαν, Γαλατίαν ἅπασαν· ἧς τε δὴ πλεῖστος ὁ λόγος Πομπηΐῳ πατρίδος ὀρεγούσης χεῖρας ἐγγύθεν, οὐ καλῶς ἔχειν περιορᾶν προπηλακιζομένην καὶ δουλεύουσαν οἰκέταις καὶ κόλαξι [5] τυράννων. αὐτὸς δὲ Πομπήϊος οὔτε πρὸς δόξαν ἡγεῖτο καλὸν αὑτῷ δευτέραν φυγὴν φεύγειν Καίσαρα καὶ διώκεσθαι, τῆς τύχης διώκειν διδούσης, οὔτε ὅσιον ἐγκαταλιπεῖν Σκηπίωνα καὶ τοὺς περὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ Θετταλίαν ἄνδρας ὑπατικούς, εὐθὺς ὑπὸ Καίσαρι γενησομένους μετὰ χρημάτων καὶ δυνάμεων μεγάλων, τῆς δὲ Ῥώμης μάλιστα κήδεσθαι τὸν ἀπωτάτω πολεμοῦντα περὶ αὐτῆς, ὅπως ἀπαθὴς κακῶν οὖσα καὶ ἀνήκοος περιμένῃ τὸν κρατοῦντα.

[67] [1] Ταῦτα ψηφισάμενος ἐδίωκε Καίσαρα, μάχης μὲν ἐγνωκὼς ἀπέχεσθαι, πολιορκεῖν δὲ καὶ τρίβειν ταῖς ἀπορίαις ἐγγύθεν ἐπακολουθῶν. καὶ γὰρ ἄλλως ταῦτα συμφέρειν ἡγεῖτο, καὶ λόγος τις εἰς αὐτὸν ἧκεν ἐν τοῖς ἱππεῦσι φερόμενος, ὡς χρὴ τάχιστα τρεψαμένους Καίσαρα [2] συγκαταλύειν κἀκεῖνον αὐτόν. ἔνιοι δέ φασι διὰ τοῦτο καὶ Κάτωνι μηδὲν ἄξιον σπουδῆς χρήσασθαι Πομπήϊον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πορευόμενον ἐπὶ Καίσαρα πρὸς θαλάσσῃ καταλιπεῖν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀποσκευῆς, φοβηθέντα μὴ Καίσαρος ἀναιρεθέντος ἀναγκάσῃ κἀκεῖνον εὐθὺς ἀποθέσθαι τὴν ἀρχήν. οὕτω δὲ παρακολουθῶν ἀτρέμα τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐν αἰτίαις ἦν καὶ καταβοήσεσιν ὡς οὐ Καίσαρα καταστρατηγῶν, ἀλλὰ τὴν πατρίδα καὶ τὴν βουλήν, ὅπως διὰ παντὸς ἄρχῃ καὶ μηδέποτε παύσηται τοῖς ἀξιοῦσι τῆς οἰκουμένης ἄρχειν [3] χρώμενος ὑπηρέταις καὶ δορυφόροις. Δομέτιος δὲ αὐτὸν Ἀηνόβαρβος Ἀγαμέμνονα καλῶν καὶ βασιλέα βασιλέων ἐπίφθονον ἐποίει. καὶ Φαώνιος οὐχ ἧττον ἦν ἀηδὴς τῶν παρρησιαζομένων ἀκαίρως ἐν τῷ σκώπτειν, “Ἄνθρωποι,” βοῶν, “οὐδὲ τῆτες ἔσται τῶν ἐν Τουσκλάνῳ σύκων μεταλαβεῖν;” Λεύκιος δὲ Ἀφράνιος ὁ τὰς ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ δυνάμεις ἀποβαλὼν ἐν αἰτίᾳ προδοσίας γεγονώς, τότε δὲ τὸν Πομπήϊον ὁρῶν φυγομαχοῦντα, θαυμάζειν ἔλεγε τοὺς κατηγοροῦντας αὐτοῦ, πῶς πρὸς τὸν ἔμπορον τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν οὐ μάχονται προελθόντες.

[4] Ταῦτα καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πολλὰ λέγοντες ἄνδρα δόξης ἥττονα καὶ τῆς πρὸς τοὺς φίλους αἰδοῦς τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐξεβιάσαντο καὶ συνεπεσπάσαντο ταῖς ἑαυτῶν ἐλπίσι καὶ ὁρμαῖς ἐπακολουθῆσαι, προέμενον τοὺς ἀρίστους λογισμούς, ὅπερ οὐδὲ πλοίου κυβερνήτῃ, μήτιγε τοσούτων ἐθνῶν καὶ δυνάμεων αὐτοκράτορι στρατηγῷ παθεῖν ἦν προσῆκον.

[5] ὁ δὲ τῶν μὲν ἰατρῶν τοὺς μηδέποτε χαριζομένους ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις ἐπῄνεσεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τῷ νοσοῦντι τῆς στρατιᾶς ἐνέδωκε, δείσας ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ λυπηρὸς γενέσθαι. πῶς γὰρ ἄν τις φήσειεν ὑγιαίνειν ἐκείνους τοὺς ἄνδρας, ὧν οἱ μὲν ὑπατείας ἤδη καὶ στρατηγίας ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ περινοστοῦντες ἐμνῶντο, Σπινθῆρι δὲ καὶ Δομετίῳ καὶ Σκηπίωνι περὶ τῆς Καίσαρος ἀρχιερωσύνης ἔριδες ἦσαν καὶ φιλονεικίαι καὶ [6] δεξιώσεις; ὥσπερ αὐτοῖς Τιγράνου τοῦ Ἀρμενίου παραστρατοπεδεύοντος ἢ τοῦ Ναβαταίων βασιλέως, ἀλλ’ οὐ Καίσαρος ἐκείνου καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως ᾗ χιλίας μὲν ᾑρήκει πόλεις κατὰ κράτος, ἔθνη δὲ πλείονα τριακοσίων ὑπῆκτο, Γερμανοῖς δὲ καὶ Γαλάταις μεμαχημένος ἀήττητος ὅσας οὐκ ἄν τις ἀριθμήσαι μάχας ἑκατὸν μυριάδας αἰχμαλώτων ἔλαβεν, ἑκατὸν δὲ ἀπέκτεινε τρεψάμενος ἐκ παρατάξεως.

[68] [1] Ἀλλ’ ὅμως ἐγκείμενοι καὶ θορυβοῦντες, ἐπεὶ κατέβησαν εἰς τὸ Φαρσάλιον πεδίον, ἠνάγκασαν βουλὴν προθεῖναι τὸν Πομπήϊον, ἐν ᾗ Λαβιηνὸς ὁ τῶν ἱππέων ἄρχων πρῶτος ἀναστὰς ὤμοσε μὴ ἀναχωρήσειν ἐκ τῆς μάχης, εἰ μὴ τρέψαιτο τοὺς πολεμίους· τὰ δὲ [2] αὐτὰ καὶ πάντες ὤμνυσαν. τῆς δὲ νυκτὸς ἔδοξε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους Πομπήϊος εἰς τὸ θέατρον εἰσιόντος αὐτοῦ κροτεῖν τὸν δῆμον, αὐτὸς δὲ κοσμεῖν ἱερὸν Ἀφροδίτης νικηφόρου πολλοῖς λαφύροις. καὶ τὰ μὲν ἐθάρρει, τὰ δὲ ὑπέθραττεν αὐτὸν ἡ ὄψις, δεδοικότα μὴ τῷ γένει τῷ Καίσαρος εἰς Ἀφροδίτην ἀνήκοντι δόξα καὶ λαμπρότης ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ γένηται· καὶ πανικοί τινες θόρυβοι [3] διᾴττοντες ἐξανέστησαν αὐτόν. ἑωθινῆς δὲ φυλακῆς ὑπὲρ τοῦ Καίσαρος στρατοπέδου πολλὴν ἡσυχίαν ἄγοντος ἐξέλαμψε μέγα φῶς, ἐκ δὲ τούτου λαμπὰς ἀρθεῖσα φλογοειδὴς ἐπὶ τὸ Πομπηΐου κατέσκηψε· καὶ τοῦτο ἰδεῖν φησι Καῖσαρ αὐτὸς ἐπιὼν τὰς φυλακάς. ἅμα δὲ ἡμέρᾳ μέλλοντος αὐτοῦ πρὸς Σκοτοῦσαν ἀναζευγνύειν καὶ τὰς σκηνὰς τῶν στρατιωτῶν καθαιρούντων καὶ προπεμπόντων ὑποζύγια καὶ θεράποντας, ἧκον οἱ σκοποὶ φράζοντες ὅπλα πολλὰ καθορᾶν ἐν τῷ χάρακι τῶν πολεμίων διαφερόμενα, καὶ κίνησιν εἶναι καὶ θόρυβον ἀνδρῶν ἐπὶ μάχην ἐξιόντων.

[4] μετὰ δὲ τούτους ἕτεροι παρῆσαν εἰς τάξιν ἤδη καθίστασθαι τοὺς πρώτους λέγοντες. ὁ μὲν οὖν Καῖσαρ εἰπὼν τὴν προσδοκωμένην ἥκειν ἡμέραν, ἐν ᾗ πρὸς ἄνδρας, οὐ πρὸς λιμὸν οὐδὲ πενίαν μαχοῦνται, κατὰ τάχος πρὸ τῆς σκηνῆς ἐκέλευσε προθεῖναι τὸν φοινικοῦν χιτῶνα· τοῦτο γὰρ [5] μάχης Ῥωμαίοις ἐστὶ σύμβολον. οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται θεασάμενοι μετὰ βοῆς καὶ χαρᾶς τὰς σκηνὰς ἀφέντες ἐφέροντο πρὸς τὰ ὅπλα. καὶ τῶν ταξιαρχῶν ἀγόντων εἰς ἣν ἔδει τάξιν, ἕκαστος, ὥσπερ χορός, ἄνευ θορύβου μεμελετημένως εἰς τάξιν καὶ πρᾴως καθίστατο.

[69] [1] Πομπήϊος δὲ τὸ μὲν δεξιὸν αὐτὸς ἔχων ἔμελλεν ἀνθίστασθαι πρὸς Ἀντώνιον, ἐν δὲ τῷ μέσῳ Σκηπίωνα τὸν πενθερὸν ἀντέταξε Καλβίνῳ Λευκίῳ, τὸ δὲ εὐώνυμον εἶχε μὲν Λεύκιος Δομέτιος, [2] ἐρρώσθη δὲ τῷ πλήθει τῶν ἱππέων. ἐνταῦθα γὰρ ὀλίγου δεῖν ἅπαντες ἐρρύησαν ὡς Καίσαρα βιασόμενοι καὶ τὸ δέκατον τάγμα διακόψοντες, οὗ πλεῖστος ἦν ὁ λόγος ὡς μαχιμωτάτου, καὶ Καῖσαρ ἐν ἐκείνῳ ταττόμενος εἰώθει μάχεσθαι. κατιδὼν δὲ πεφραγμένον ἵππῳ τοσαύτῃ τῶν πολεμίων τὸ εὐώνυμον, καὶ φοβηθεὶς τὴν λαμπρότητα τοῦ ὁπλισμοῦ, μετεπέμψατο σπείρας ἓξ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐπιταγμάτων καὶ κατέστησεν ὄπισθεν [3] τοῦ δεκάτου, κελεύσας ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν ἀδήλους τοῖς πολεμίοις ὄντας· ὅταν δὲ προσελαύνωσιν οἱ ἱππεῖς, διὰ τῶν προμάχων ἐκδραμόντας μὴ προέσθαι τοὺς ὑσσούς, ὥσπερ εἰώθασιν οἱ κράτιστοι σπεύδοντες ἐπὶ τὰς ξιφουλκίας, ἀλλὰ παίειν ἄνω συντιτρώσκοντας ὄμματα καὶ πρόσωπα τῶν πολεμίων· οὐ γὰρ μενεῖν τοὺς καλοὺς τούτους καὶ ἀνθηροὺς πυρριχιστὰς διὰ τὸν ὡραϊσμόν, οὐδὲ ἀντιβλέψειν πρὸς τὸν σίδηρον ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς γινόμενον. ἐν τούτοις μὲν οὖν ὁ Καῖσαρ ἦν.

[4] Ὁ δὲ Πομπήϊος ἀφ’ ἵππου τὴν παράταξιν ἐπισκοπῶν, ὡς ἑώρα τοὺς μὲν ἀντιπάλους μεθ’ ἡσυχίας τὸν καιρὸν ἐν τάξει προσμένοντας, τῆς δ’ ὑφ’ αὑτῷ στρατιᾶς τὸ πλεῖστον οὐκ ἀτρεμοῦν, ἀλλὰ κυμαῖνον ἀπειρίᾳ καὶ θορυβούμενον, ἔδεισε μὴ διασπασθῇ παντάπασιν ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς μάχης, καὶ παράγγελμα τοῖς προτεταγμένοις ἔδωκεν ἑστῶτας ἐν προβολῇ καὶ μένοντας ἀραρότως δέχεσθαι [5] τοὺς πολεμίους. ὁ δὲ Καῖσαρ αἰτιᾶται τὸ στρατήγημα τοῦτο· τῶν τε γὰρ πληγῶν τὸν ἐξ ἐπιδρομῆς τόνον ἀμαυρῶσαι, καὶ τὴν μάλιστα τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐν τῷ συμφέρεσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις πληροῦσαν ἐνθουσιασμοῦ καὶ φορᾶς ἀντεξόρμησιν, ἅμα κραυγῇ καὶ δρόμῳ τὸν θυμὸν αὔξουσαν, ἀφελόντα πῆξαι καὶ καταψῦξαι τοὺς ἄνδρας. ἦσαν δὲ οἱ μὲν μετὰ Καίσαρος δισχίλιοι πρὸς δισμυρίοις, οἱ δὲ μετὰ Πομπηΐου βραχεῖ πλείονες ἢ διπλάσιοι τούτων.

[70] [1] Ἤδη δὲ συνθήματος διδομένου παρὰ ἀμφοτέρων καὶ τῆς σάλπιγγος ἀρχομένης ἐγκελεύεσθαι πρὸς τὴν σύστασιν, τῶν μὲν πολλῶν ἕκαστος ἐσκόπει τὸ καθ’ αὑτόν, ὀλίγοι δὲ Ῥωμαίων οἱ βέλτιστοι καί τινες Ἑλλήνων παρόντες ἔξω τῆς μάχης, ὡς ἐγγὺς ἦν τὸ δεινόν, ἐλογίζοντο τὴν πλεονεξίαν καὶ φιλονεικίαν, ὅπου φέρουσα [2] τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἐξέθηκεν. ὅπλα γὰρ συγγενικὰ καὶ τάξεις ἀδελφαὶ καὶ κοινὰ σημεῖα καὶ μιᾶς πόλεως εὐανδρία τοσαύτη καὶ δύναμις αὐτὴ πρὸς ἑαυτὴν συνέπιπτεν, ἐπιδεικνυμένη τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν, ὡς ἐν πάθει γενομένη τυφλόν ἐστι καὶ μανιῶδες. ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἤδη καθ’ ἡσυχίαν χρῄζουσιν ἄρχειν καὶ ἀπολαύειν τῶν κατειργασμένων τὸ πλεῖστον καὶ κράτιστον ἀρετῇ γῆς καὶ θαλάσσης ὑπήκοον, ἦν δ’ ἔτι τροπαίων καὶ θριάμβων ἔρωτι βουλομένους χαρίζεσθαι καὶ διψῶντας ἐμπίπλασθαι Παρθικῶν πολέμων ἢ Γερμανικῶν.

[3] πολὺ δὲ καὶ Σκυθία λειπόμενον ἔργον καὶ Ἰνδοί, καὶ πρόφασις οὐκ ἄδοξος ἐπὶ ταῦτα τῆς πλεονεξίας ἡμερῶσαι τὰ βαρβαρικά. τίς δ’ ἂν ἢ Σκυθῶν ἵππος ἢ τοξεύματα Πάρθων ἢ πλοῦτος Ἰνδῶν ἐπέσχε μυριάδας ἑπτὰ Ῥωμαίων ἐν ὅπλοις ἐπερχομένας Πομπηΐου καὶ Καίσαρος ἡγουμένων, ὧν ὄνομα πολὺ πρότερον ἤκουσαν ἢ τὸ Ῥωμαίων; οὕτως ἄμικτα καὶ ποικίλα καὶ θηριώδη φῦλα [4] νικῶντες ἐπῆλθον. τότε δὲ ἀλλήλοις μαχούμενοι συνῄεσαν, οὐδὲ τὴν δόξαν αὑτῶν, δι’ ἣν τῆς πατρίδος ἠφείδουν, οἰκτείραντες, ἄχρι τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης ἀνικήτων προσαγορευομένων. ἡ μὲν γὰρ γενομένη συγγένεια καὶ τὰ Ἰουλίας φίλτρα καὶ γάμος ἐκεῖνος εὐθὺς ἦν ἀπατηλὰ καὶ ὕποπτα κοινωνίας ἐπὶ χρείᾳ συνισταμένης ὁμηρεύματα, φιλίας δ’ ἀληθινῆς οὐ μετέσχεν.

[71] [1] Ὡς δ’ οὖν τὸ Φαρσάλιον πεδίον ἀνδρῶν καὶ ἵππων καὶ ὅπλων ἀνεπέπληστο καὶ μάχης ἤρθη παρ’ ἀμφοτέρων σημεῖα, πρῶτος ἐκ τῆς Καίσαρος φάλαγγος ἐξέδραμε Γάϊος Κρασσιανός, ἀνδρῶν ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι λοχαγῶν, μεγάλην ἀποδιδοὺς [2] ὑπόσχεσιν Καίσαρι. πρῶτον γὰρ αὐτὸν ἐξιὼν τοῦ χάρακος εἶδε, καὶ προσαγορεύσας ἤρετο πῶς φρονοίη περὶ τῆς μάχης. ὁ δὲ τὴν δεξιὰν προτείνας ἀνεβόησε· “Νικήσεις λαμπρῶς, ὦ Καῖσαρ· ἐμὲ δὲ ἢ ζῶντα τήμερον ἢ νεκρὸν ἐπαινέσεις.” τούτων τῶν λόγων μεμνημένος ἐξώρμησε καὶ συνεπεσπάσατο πολλοὺς καὶ προσέβαλε [3] κατὰ μέσους τοὺς πολεμίους. γενομένου δὲ τοῦ ἀγῶνος εὐθὺς ἐν ξίφεσι καὶ πολλῶν φονευομένων, βιαζόμενον πρόσω καὶ διακόπτοντα τοὺς πρώτους ὑποστάς τις ὠθεῖ διὰ τοῦ στόματος τὸ ξίφος, ὥστε τὴν αἰχμὴν περάσασαν ἀνασχεῖν κατὰ τὸ ἰνίον.

Πεσόντος δὲ τοῦ Κρασσιανοῦ, κατὰ τοῦτο μὲν ἦν ἰσόρροπος ἡ μάχη, τὸ δὲ δεξιὸν ὁ Πομπήϊος οὐ ταχέως ἐπῆγεν, ἀλλὰ παπταίνων ἐπὶ θάτερα καὶ [4] τὸ τῶν ἱππέων ἀναμένων ἔργον ἐνδιέτριβεν. ἤδη δὲ ἐκεῖνοι τοὺς οὐλαμοὺς ἀνῆγον ὡς κυκλωσόμενοι τὸν Καίσαρα, καὶ τοὺς προτεταγμένους ἱππεῖς ὀλίγους ὄντας ἐμβαλοῦντες εἰς τὴν φάλαγγα. Καίσαρος δὲ σημεῖον ἄραντος, οἱ μὲν ἱππεῖς ἐξανεχώρησαν, αἱ δὲ ἐπιτεταγμέναι σπεῖραι πρὸς τὴν κύκλωσιν ἐκδραμοῦσαι, τρισχίλιοι ἄνδρες, ὑπαντιάζουσι τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ παριστάμενοι καθ’ ἵππων, ὡς ἐδιδάχθησαν, ὑψηλοῖς ἐχρῶντο [5] τοῖς ὑσσοῖς, ἐφιέμενοι τῶν προσώπων. οἱ δέ, ἅτε μάχης πάσης ἄπειροι, τοιαύτην δὲ μὴ προσδοκήσαντες μηδὲ προμαθόντες, οὐκ ἐτόλμων οὐδὲ ἠνείχοντο τὰς πληγὰς ἐν ὄμμασι καὶ στόμασιν οὔσας, ἀλλ’ ἀποστρεφόμενοι καὶ προϊσχόμενοι τῶν ὄψεων τὰς χεῖρας ἀκλεῶς ἐτράποντο. φευγόντων δὲ τούτων ἀμελήσαντες οἱ Καίσαρος ἐχώρουν ἐπὶ τοὺς πεζούς, ᾗ μάλιστα τῶν ἱππέων τὸ κέρας ἐψιλωμένον περιδρομὴν ἐδίδου καὶ κύκλωσιν.

[6] ἅμα δὲ τούτων ἐκ πλαγίου προσπεσόντων καὶ κατὰ στόμα τοῦ δεκάτου προσμίξαντος οὐχ ὑπέμειναν οὐδὲ συνέστησαν, ὁρῶντες ἐν ᾧ κυκλώσεσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους ἤλπιζον αὑτοὺς τοῦτο πάσχοντας.

[72] [1] Τραπομένων δὲ τούτων, ὡς κατεῖδε τὸν κονιορτὸν ὁ Πομπήϊος καὶ τὸ περὶ τοὺς ἱππέας πάθος εἴκασεν, ᾧ μὲν ἐχρήσατο λογισμῷ χαλεπὸν εἰπεῖν, μάλιστα δὲ ὅμοιος παράφρονι καὶ παραπλῆγι τὴν διάνοιαν, καὶ μηδ’ ὅτι Μάγνος ἐστὶ Πομπήϊος ἐννοοῦντι, μηδένα προσειπὼν ἀπῄει βάδην εἰς τὸν χάρακα, πάνυ τοῖς ἔπεσι πρέπων ἐκείνοις·

[2] Ζεὺς δὲ πατὴρ Αἴανθ’ ὑψίζυγος ἐν φόβον ὦρσε·

στῆ δὲ ταφών, ὄπιθεν δὲ σάκος βάλεν ἑπταβόειον,

τρέσσε δὲ παπτήνας ἐφ’ ὁμίλου.

τοιοῦτος εἰς τὴν σκηνὴν παρελθὼν ἄφθογγος καθῆστο, μέχρι οὗ τοῖς φεύγουσι πολλοὶ διώκοντες συνεισέπιπτον· τότε δὲ φωνὴν μίαν ἀφεὶς ταύτην, “Οὐκοῦν καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν παρεμβολήν;” ἄλλο δὲ μηδὲν εἰπών, ἀναστὰς καὶ λαβὼν ἐσθῆτα τῇ [3] παρούσῃ τύχῃ πρέπουσαν ὑπεξῆλθεν. ἔφυγε δὲ καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ τάγματα, καὶ φόνος ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ πολὺς ἐγένετο σκηνοφυλάκων καὶ θεραπόντων· στρατιώτας δὲ μόνους ἑξακισχιλίους πεσεῖν φησιν Ἀσίννιος Πολλίων, μεμαχημένος ἐκείνην τὴν μάχην μετὰ Καίσαρος.

[4] Αἱροῦντες δὲ τὸ στρατόπεδον ἐθεῶντο τὴν ἄνοιαν καὶ κουφότητα τῶν πολεμίων. πᾶσα γὰρ σκηνὴ μυρσίναις κατέστεπτο καὶ στρωμναῖς ἀνθιναῖς ἤσκητο καὶ τραπέζαις ἐκπωμάτων μεσταῖς· καὶ κρατῆρες οἴνου προὔκειντο, καὶ παρασκευὴ καὶ κόσμος ἦν τεθυκότων καὶ πανηγυριζόντων μᾶλλον ἢ πρὸς μάχην ἐξοπλιζομένων. οὕτω ταῖς ἐλπίσι διεφθαρμένοι καὶ γέμοντες ἀνοήτου θράσους ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἐχώρουν.

[73] [1] Πομπήϊος δὲ μικρὸν ἔξω τοῦ χάρακος προελθὼν τὸν μὲν ἵππον ἀφῆκεν, ὀλίγων δὲ κομιδῇ περὶ αὐτὸν ὄντων, ὡς οὐδεὶς ἐδίωκεν, ἀπῄει καθ’ ἡσυχίαν, ἐν διαλογισμοῖς ὢν οἵους εἰκὸς λαμβάνειν ἄνθρωπον ἔτη τέτταρα καὶ τριάκοντα νικᾶν καὶ κρατεῖν ἁπάντων εἰθισμένον, ἥττης δὲ καὶ φυγῆς τότε πρῶτον ἐν γήρᾳ λαμβάνοντα πεῖραν, ἐννοούμενον δὲ ἐξ ὅσων ἀγώνων καὶ πολέμων ηὐξημένην ἀποβαλὼν ὥρᾳ μιᾷ δόξαν καὶ δύναμιν, [2] ὁ πρὸ μικροῦ τοσούτοις ὅπλοις καὶ ἵπποις καὶ στόλοις δορυφορούμενος ἀπέρχεται μικρὸς οὕτω γεγονὼς καὶ συνεσταλμένος ὥστε λανθάνειν ζητοῦντας τοὺς πολεμίους. παραμειψάμενος δὲ Λάρισσαν, ὡς ἦλθεν ἐπὶ τὰ Τέμπη, καταβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ στόμα δεδιψηκὼς ἔπινε τοῦ ποταμοῦ, καὶ πάλιν ἀναστὰς ἐβάδιζε διὰ τῶν Τεμπῶν, ἄχρι [3] οὗ κατῆλθεν ἐπὶ θάλατταν. ἐκεῖ δὲ τῆς νυκτὸς τὸ λοιπὸν ἀναπαυσάμενος ἐν καλυβίῳ τινὶ σαγηνέων, καὶ περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον ἐπιβὰς ποταμίου πλοίου, καὶ τῶν ἑπομένων τοὺς ἐλευθέρους ἀναλαβών, τοὺς δὲ θεράποντας ἀπιέναι πρὸς Καίσαρα κελεύσας καὶ μὴ δεδιέναι, παρὰ γῆν κομιζόμενος εἶδεν εὐμεγέθη φορτηγὸν ἀνάγεσθαι μέλλουσαν, ἧς ἐναυκλήρει Ῥωμαῖος ἀνὴρ οὐ πάνυ Πομπηΐῳ συνήθης, γινώσκων δὲ τὴν ὄψιν αὐτοῦ· Πετίκιος ἐπεκαλεῖτο.

[4] τούτῳ συνεβεβήκει τῆς παρῳχημένης νυκτὸς ἰδεῖν κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους Πομπήϊον, οὐχ ὃν ἑωράκει πολλάκις, ἀλλὰ ταπεινὸν καὶ κατηφῆ, προσδιαλεγόμενον αὐτῷ. καὶ ταῦτα τοῖς συμπλέουσιν ἐτύγχανε διηγούμενος, ὡς δὴ φιλεῖ περὶ πραγμάτων τηλικούτων λόγον ἔχειν ἀνθρώπους σχολὴν [5] ἄγοντας. ἐξαίφνης δέ τις τῶν ναυτῶν ἔφρασε κατιδὼν ὅτι πλοῖον ποτάμιον ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἐρέσσεται καὶ κατασείουσί τινες ἄνθρωποι τὰ ἱμάτια καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ὀρέγουσι πρὸς αὐτούς. ἐπιστήσας οὖν ὁ Πετίκιος εὐθὺς ἔγνω τὸν Πομπήϊον, οἷον ὄναρ εἶδε· καὶ πληξάμενος τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ναύτας τὸ ἐφόλκιον παραβαλεῖν, καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν ἐξέτεινε καὶ προσεκάλει τὸν Πομπήϊον, ἤδη συμφρονῶν τῷ σχήματι τὴν τύχην καὶ μεταβολὴν [6] τοῦ ἀνδρός. ὅθεν οὔτε παράκλησιν ἀναμείνας οὔτε λόγον, ἀλλ’ ἀναλαβὼν ὅσους ἐκέλευσε μετ’ αὐτοῦ (Λέντουλοι δὲ ἦσαν ἀμφότεροι καὶ Φαώνιος) ἀνήχθη· καὶ μικρὸν ὕστερον ἰδόντες ἀπὸ γῆς ἁμιλλώμενον Δηϊόταρον τὸν βασιλέα προσαναλαμβάνουσιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καιρὸς ἦν δείπνου καὶ παρεσκεύασεν ὁ ναύκληρος ἐκ τῶν παρόντων, ἰδὼν ὁ Φαώνιος οἰκετῶν ἀπορίᾳ τὸν Πομπήϊον ἀρχόμενον αὑτὸν ὑπολύειν προσέδραμε καὶ ὑπέλυσε [7] καὶ συνήλειψε. καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν ἐκ τούτου περιέπων καὶ θεραπεύων ὅσα δεσπότας δοῦλοι, μέχρι νίψεως ποδῶν καὶ δείπνου παρασκευῆς, διετέλεσεν, ὥστε τὴν ἐλευθεριότητα τῆς ὑπουργίας ἐκείνης θεασάμενον ἄν τινα καὶ τὸ ἀφελὲς καὶ ἄπλαστον εἰπεῖν·

Φεῦ τοῖσι γενναίοισιν ὡς ἅπαν καλόν.

[74] [1] Οὕτω δὲ παραπλεύσας ἐπ’ Ἀμφιπόλεως ἐκεῖθεν εἰς Μιτυλήνην ἐπεραιοῦτο, βουλόμενος τὴν Κορνηλίαν ἀναλαβεῖν καὶ τὸν υἱόν. ἐπεὶ δὲ προσέσχε τῇ νήσῳ κατ’ αἰγιαλόν, ἔπεμψεν εἰς πόλιν ἄγγελον, οὐχ ὡς ἡ Κορνηλία προσεδόκα τοῖς πρὸς χάριν ἀπαγγελλομένοις καὶ γραφομένοις, ἐλπίζουσα τοῦ πολέμου κεκριμένου περὶ Δυρράχιον ἔτι λοιπὸν ἔργον εἶναι Πομπηΐῳ [2] τὴν Καίσαρος δίωξιν. ἐν τούτοις οὖσαν αὐτὴν καταλαβὼν ὁ ἄγγελος ἀσπάσασθαι μὲν οὐχ ὑπέμεινε, τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν κακῶν τοῖς δάκρυσι μᾶλλον ἢ τῇ φωνῇ φράσας σπεύδειν ἐκέλευσεν, εἰ βούλεταί πως Πομπήϊον ἰδεῖν ἐπὶ νεὼς μιᾶς καὶ ἀλλοτρίας. ἡ δὲ ἀκούσασα προήκατο μὲν αὑτὴν χαμᾶζε καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἔκφρων καὶ ἄναυδος ἔκειτο, μόλις δέ πως ἔμφρων γενομένη καὶ συννοήσασα τὸν καιρὸν οὐκ ὄντα θρήνων καὶ δακρύων, ἐξέδραμε διὰ τῆς πόλεως [3] ἐπὶ θάλατταν. ἀπαντήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Πομπηΐου καὶ δεξαμένου ταῖς ἀγκάλαις αὐτὴν ὑπερειπομένην καὶ περιπίπτουσαν, “Ὁρῶ σε,” εἶπεν, “ἄνερ, οὐ τῆς σῆς τύχης ἔργον, ἀλλὰ τῆς ἐμῆς, προσερριμμένον ἑνὶ σκάφει τὸν πρὸ τῶν Κορνηλίας γάμων πεντακοσίαις ναυσὶ ταύτην περιπλεύσαντα τὴν θάλασσαν. τί μ’ ἦλθες ἰδεῖν καὶ οὐκ ἀπέλιπες τῷ βαρεῖ δαίμονι τὴν καὶ σὲ δυστυχίας ἀναπλήσασαν τοσαύτης; ὡς εὐτυχὴς μὲν ἂν ἤμην γυνὴ πρὸ τοῦ Πόπλιον ἐν Πάρθοις ἀκοῦσαι τὸν παρθένιον ἄνδρα κείμενον ἀποθανοῦσα, σώφρων δὲ καὶ μετ’ ἐκεῖνον, ὥσπερ ὥρμησα, τὸν ἐμαυτῆς προεμένη βίον· ἐσωζόμην δ’ ἄρα καὶ Πομπηΐῳ Μάγνῳ συμφορὰ γενέσθαι.”

[75] [1] Ταῦτα εἰπεῖν τὴν Κορνηλίαν λέγουσι, τὸν δὲ Πομπήϊον ἀποκρίνασθαι· “Μίαν ἄρα, Κορνηλία, τύχην ᾔδεις τὴν ἀμείνονα, ἣ καὶ σὲ ἴσως ἐξηπάτησεν, ὅτι μοι χρόνον πλείονα τοῦ συνήθους παρέμεινεν. ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῦτα δεῖ φέρειν γενομένους ἀνθρώπους, καὶ τῆς τύχης ἔτι πειρατέον. οὐ γὰρ ἀνέλπιστον ἐκ τούτων ἀναλαβεῖν ἐκεῖνα τὸν ἐξ ἐκείνων ἐν τούτοις γενόμενον.”

[2] Ἡ μὲν οὖν γυνὴ μετεπέμπετο χρήματα καὶ θεράποντας ἐκ πόλεως· τῶν δὲ Μιτυληναίων τὸν Πομπήϊον ἀσπασαμένων καὶ παρακαλούντων εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, οὐκ ἠθέλησεν, ἀλλὰ κἀκείνους ἐκέλευσε τῷ κρατοῦντι πείθεσθαι καὶ θαρρεῖν· εὐγνώμονα γὰρ εἶναι Καίσαρα καὶ [3] χρηστόν. αὐτὸς δὲ πρὸς Κράτιππον τραπόμενος τὸν φιλόσοφον (κατέβη γὰρ ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ὀψόμενος αὐτόν), ἐμέμψατο καὶ συνδιηπόρησε βραχέα περὶ τῆς προνοίας, ὑποκατακλινομένου τοῦ Κρατίππου καὶ παράγοντος αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὰς ἀμείνονας ἐλπίδας, ὅπως μὴ λυπηρὸς μηδὲ ἄκαιρος [4] ἀντιλέγων εἴη. ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν ἐρέσθαι τὸν Πομπήϊον ἦν ὑπὲρ τῆς προνοίας, τὸν δ’ ἀποφαίνεσθαι ὅτι τοῖς πράγμασιν ἤδη μοναρχίας ἔδει διὰ τὴν κακοπολιτείαν· ἐρέσθαι δέ· “Πῶς, ὦ Πομπήϊε, καὶ τίνι τεκμηρίῳ πεισθῶμεν ὅτι βέλτιον ἂν σὺ τῇ τύχῃ Καίσαρος ἐχρήσω κρατήσας;” ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἐατέον ὥσπερ ἔχει, τὰ τῶν θεῶν.

[76] [1] Ἀναλαβὼν δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τοὺς φίλους ἐκομίζετο, προσίσχων ὅρμοις ἀναγκαίοις ὕδωρ ἢ ἀγορὰν ἔχουσιν. εἰς δὲ πόλιν εἰσῆλθε πρώτην Ἀττάλειαν τῆς Παμφυλίας. ἐνταῦθα δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ τριήρεις τινὲς ἀπήντησαν ἐκ Κιλικίας καὶ στρατιῶται συνελέγοντο καὶ τῶν συγκλητικῶν [2] πάλιν ἑξήκοντα περὶ αὐτὸν ἦσαν. ἀκούων δὲ καὶ τὸ ναυτικὸν ἔτι συνεστάναι, καὶ Κάτωνα πολλοὺς στρατιώτας ἀνειληφότα περαιοῦν εἰς Λιβύην, ὠδύρετο πρὸς τοὺς φίλους, καταμεμφόμενος ἑαυτὸν ἐκβιασθέντα τῷ πεζῷ συμβαλεῖν, τῇ δὲ κρείττονι ἀδηρίτως δυνάμει πρὸς μηδὲν ἀποχρήσασθαι μηδὲ περιορμίσαι τὸ ναυτικόν, ὅπου κατὰ γῆν σφαλεὶς εὐθὺς ἂν εἶχεν ἀντίπαλον ἐκ θαλάττης παρεστῶσαν ἀλκὴν καὶ δύναμιν [3] τοσαύτην. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἁμάρτημα Πομπηΐου μεῖζον οὐδὲ δεινότερον στρατήγημα Καίσαρος ἢ τὸ τὴν μάχην οὕτω μακρὰν ἀποσπάσασθαι τῆς ναυτικῆς βοηθείας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῶν παρόντων κρίνειν τι καὶ πράττειν ἀναγκαζόμενος, ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις περιέπεμπε· τὰς δ’ αὐτὸς περιπλέων ᾔτει χρήματα καὶ ναῦς ἐπλήρου. τὴν δ’ ὀξύτητα τοῦ πολεμίου καὶ τὸ τάχος δεδοικώς, μὴ προαναρπάσῃ τῆς παρασκευῆς αὐτὸν ἐπελθών, ἐσκόπει καταφυγὴν [4] ἐπὶ τῷ παρόντι καὶ ἀναχώρησιν. ἐπαρχία μὲν οὖν οὐδεμία φύξιμος ἐφαίνετο βουλευομένοις αὐτοῖς, τῶν δὲ βασιλειῶν αὐτὸς μὲν ἀπέφαινε τὴν Πάρθων ἱκανωτάτην οὖσαν ἔν τε τῷ παρόντι δέξασθαι καὶ περιβαλεῖν σφᾶς ἀσθενεῖς ὄντας, αὖθίς τε ῥῶσαι καὶ προπέμψαι μετὰ πλείστης [5] δυνάμεως· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων οἱ μὲν εἰς Λιβύην καὶ Ἰόβαν ἔτρεπον τὴν γνώμην, Θεοφάνει δὲ τῷ Λεσβίῳ μανικὸν ἐδόκει τριῶν ἡμερῶν πλοῦν ἀπέχουσαν Αἴγυπτον ἀπολιπόντα καὶ Πτολεμαῖον, ἡλικίαν μὲν ἀντίπαιδα, φιλίας δὲ καὶ χάριτος πατρῴας ὑπόχρεων, Πάρθοις ὑποβαλεῖν ἑαυτόν, ἀπιστοτάτῳ γένει, καὶ Ῥωμαίῳ μὲν ἀνδρὶ κηδεστῇ γενομένῳ τὰ δεύτερα λέγοντα πρῶτον εἶναι τῶν ἄλλων μὴ θέλειν μηδὲ πειρᾶσθαι τῆς [6] ἐκείνου μετριότητος, Ἀρσάκην δὲ ποιεῖσθαι κύριον ἑαυτοῦ τὸν μηδὲ Κράσσου δυνηθέντα ζῶντος· καὶ γυναῖκα νέαν οἴκου τοῦ Σκηπίωνος εἰς βαρβάρους κομίζειν ὕβρει καὶ ἀκολασίᾳ τὴν ἐξουσίαν μετροῦντας, ᾗ, κἂν μὴ πάθῃ, δόξῃ δὲ παθεῖν, δεινόν ἐστιν ἐπὶ τοῖς ποιῆσαι δυναμένοις γενομένῃ. τοῦτο μόνον, ὥς φασιν, ἀπέτρεψε τῆς ἐπὶ τὸν Εὐφράτην ὁδοῦ Πομπήϊον· εἰ δή τις ἔτι Πομπηΐου λογισμός, ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ δαίμων ἐκείνην ὑφηγεῖτο τὴν ὁδόν.

[77] [1] Ὡς δ’ οὖν ἐνίκα φεύγειν εἰς τὴν Αἴγυπτον, ἀναχθεὶς ἀπὸ Κύπρου Σελευκίδι τριήρει μετὰ τῆς γυναικός (τῶν δ’ ἄλλων οἱ μὲν ἐν μακραῖς ὁμοίως ναυσίν, οἱ δὲ ἐν ὁλκάσιν ἅμα συμπαρέπλεον), τὸ μὲν πέλαγος διεπέρασεν ἀσφαλῶς, πυθόμενος δὲ τὸν Πτολεμαῖον ἐν Πηλουσίῳ καθῆσθαι μετὰ στρατιᾶς, πολεμοῦντα πρὸς τὴν ἀδελφήν, ἐκεῖ κατέσχε, προπέμψας τὸν [2] φράσοντα τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ δεησόμενον. ὁ μὲν οὖν Πτολεμαῖος ἦν κομιδῇ νέος· ὁ δὲ πάντα διέπων τὰ πράγματα Ποθεινὸς ἤθροισε βουλὴν τῶν δυνατωτάτων· ἐδύναντο δὲ μέγιστον οὓς ἐκεῖνος ἐβούλετο· καὶ λέγειν ἐκέλευσεν ἣν ἔχει γνώμην ἕκαστος. ἦν οὖν δεινὸν περὶ Πομπηΐου Μάγνου βουλεύεσθαι Ποθεινὸν τὸν εὐνοῦχον καὶ Θεόδοτον τὸν Χῖον, ἐπὶ μισθῷ ῥητορικῶν λόγων διδάσκαλον ἀνειλημμένον, καὶ τὸν Αἰγύπτιον Ἀχιλλᾶν· κορυφαιότατοι γὰρ ἦσαν ἐν κατευνασταῖς καὶ τιθηνοῖς τοῖς ἄλλοις οὗτοι σύμβουλοι.

[3] καὶ τοιούτου δικαστηρίου ψῆφον Πομπήϊος ἐπ’ ἀγκυρῶν πρόσω τῆς χώρας ἀποσαλεύων περιέμενεν, ὃν Καίσαρι σωτηρίας χάριν οὐκ ἦν ἄξιον ὀφείλειν.

Τῶν μὲν οὖν ἄλλων τοσοῦτον αἱ γνῶμαι διέστησαν ὅσον οἱ μὲν ἀπελαύνειν ἐκέλευον, οἱ δὲ [4] καλεῖν καὶ δέχεσθαι τὸν ἄνδρα· Θεόδοτος δὲ δεινότητα λόγου καὶ ῥητορείαν ἐπιδεικνύμενος οὐδέτερον ἀπέφηνεν ἀσφαλές, ἀλλὰ δεξαμένους μὲν ἕξειν Καίσαρα πολέμιον καὶ δεσπότην Πομπήϊον, ἀπωσαμένους δὲ καὶ Πομπηΐῳ τῆς ἐκβολῆς ὑπαιτίους ἔσεσθαι καὶ Καίσαρι τῆς διώξεως· κράτιστον οὖν εἶναι μεταπεμψαμένους ἀνελεῖν τὸν ἄνδρα· καὶ γὰρ ἐκείνῳ χαριεῖσθαι καὶ τοῦτον οὐ φοβήσεσθαι. προσεπεῖπε δὲ διαμειδιάσας, ὥς φασιν, ὅτι νεκρὸς οὐ δάκνει.

[78] [1] Ταῦτα κυρώσαντες ἐπ’ Ἀχιλλᾷ ποιοῦνται τὴν πρᾶξιν. ὁ δὲ Σεπτίμιόν τινα πάλαι γεγονότα Πομπηΐου ταξίαρχον παραλαβών, καὶ Σάλβιον ἕτερον ἑκατοντάρχην καὶ τρεῖς ἢ τέτταρας ὑπηρέτας, ἀνήχθη πρὸς τὴν Πομπηΐου ναῦν. ἔτυχον δὲ πάντες εἰς αὐτὴν οἱ δοκιμώτατοι τῶν συμπλεόντων ἐμβεβηκότες, ὅπως εἰδεῖεν τὸ [2] πραττόμενον. ὡς οὖν εἶδον οὐ βασιλικὴν οὐδὲ λαμπρὰν οὐδὲ ταῖς Θεοφάνους ἐλπίσιν ὁμοίαν ὑποδοχήν, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ μιᾶς ἁλιάδος προσπλέοντας ὀλίγους ἀνθρώπους, ὑπείδοντο τὴν ὀλιγωρίαν καὶ τῷ Πομπηΐῳ παρῄνουν εἰς πέλαγος ἀνακρούεσθαι τὴν ναῦν, ἕως ἔξω βέλους εἰσίν. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ πελαζούσης τῆς ἁλιάδος φθάσας ὁ Σεπτίμιος ἐξανέστη καὶ Ῥωμαϊστὶ τὸν Πομπήϊον αὐτοκράτορα [3] προσηγόρευσεν. ὁ δὲ Ἀχιλλᾶς ἀσπασάμενος αὐτὸν Ἑλληνιστὶ παρεκάλει μετελθεῖν εἰς τὴν ἁλιάδα· τέναγος γὰρ εἶναι πολύ, καὶ βάθος οὐκ ἔχειν πλόϊμον τριήρει τὴν θάλατταν ὑπόψαμμον οὖσαν. ἅμα δὲ καὶ ναῦς τινες ἑωρῶντο τῶν βασιλικῶν πληρούμεναι, καὶ τὸν αἰγιαλὸν ὁπλῖται κατεῖχον, ὥστ’ ἄφυκτα καὶ μεταβαλλομένοις ἐφαίνετο, καὶ προσῆν τὸ διδόναι τοῖς φονεῦσι τὴν [4] ἀπιστίαν αὐτὴν τῆς ἀδικίας ἀπολογίαν. ἀσπασάμενος οὖν τὴν Κορνηλίαν προαποθρηνοῦσαν αὐτοῦ τὸ τέλος, καὶ δύο ἑκατοντάρχας προεμβῆναι κελεύσας καὶ τῶν ἀπελευθέρων ἕνα Φίλιππον καὶ θεράποντα Σκύθην ὄνομα, δεξιουμένων αὐτὸν ἤδη τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἀχιλλᾶν ἐκ τῆς ἁλιάδος, μεταστραφεὶς πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὸν υἱὸν εἶπε Σοφοκλέους ἰαμβεῖα·

Ὅστις δὲ πρὸς τύραννον ἐμπορεύεται,

κείνου ‘στὶ δοῦλος, κἂν ἐλεύθερος μόλῃ.

[79] [1] Ταῦτα δ’ ἔσχατα πρὸς τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ φθεγξάμενος ἐνέβη· καὶ συχνοῦ διαστήματος ὄντος ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν ἀπὸ τῆς τριήρους, ὡς οὐδεὶς παρὰ τῶν συμπλεόντων ἐγίνετο λόγος φιλάνθρωπος πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀποβλέψας εἰς τὸν Σεπτίμιον, “Οὐ δή πού σε,” εἶπεν, “ἐγὼ γεγονότα συστρατιώτην [2] ἐμὸν ἀμφιγνοῶ;” κἀκεῖνος ἐπένευσε τῇ κεφαλῇ μόνον, οὐδὲν προσειπὼν οὐδὲ φιλοφρονηθείς. πολλῆς οὖν πάλιν οὔσης σιωπῆς ὁ Πομπήϊος ἔχων ἐν βιβλίῳ μικρῷ γεγραμμένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λόγον Ἑλληνικόν, ᾧ παρεσκεύαστο χρῆσθαι πρὸς τὸν [3] Πτολεμαῖον, ἀνεγίνωσκεν. ὡς δὲ τῇ γῇ προσεπέλαζον, ἡ μὲν Κορνηλία μετὰ τῶν φίλων ἐκ τῆς τριήρους περιπαθὴς οὖσα τὸ μέλλον ἀπεσκοπεῖτο, καὶ θαρρεῖν ἤρχετο πολλοὺς ὁρῶσα πρὸς τὴν ἀπόβασιν τῶν βασιλικῶν οἷον ἐπὶ τιμῇ καὶ δεξιώσει συνερχομένους. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τὸν Πομπήϊον τῆς τοῦ Φιλίππου λαμβανόμενον χειρός, ὅπως ῥᾷον ἐξανασταίη, Σεπτίμιος ὄπισθεν τῷ ξίφει διελαύνει πρῶτος, εἶτα Σάλβιος μετ’ ἐκεῖνον, εἶτα [4] Ἀχιλλᾶς ἐσπάσαντο τὰς μαχαίρας. ὁ δὲ ταῖς χερσὶν ἀμφοτέραις τὴν τήβεννον ἐφελκυσάμενος κατὰ τοῦ προσώπου, μηδὲν εἰπὼν ἀνάξιον ἑαυτοῦ μηδὲ ποιήσας, ἀλλὰ στενάξας μόνον, ἐνεκαρτέρησε ταῖς πληγαῖς, ἑξήκοντα μὲν ἑνὸς δέοντα βεβιωκὼς ἔτη, μιᾷ δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέρᾳ τῆς γενεθλίου τελευτήσας τὸν βίον.

[80] [1] Οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν νεῶν ὡς ἐθεάσαντο τὸν φόνον, οἰμωγὴν ἐξάκουστον ἄχρι τῆς γῆς ἐκχέαντες ἔφυγον, ἀράμενοι τὰς ἀγκύρας κατὰ τάχος. καὶ πνεῦμα λαμπρὸν ἐβοήθει πελαγίοις ὑπεκθέουσιν, ὥστε βουλομένους διώκειν ἀποτραπέσθαι τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους. τοῦ δὲ Πομπηΐου τὴν μὲν κεφαλὴν ἀποτέμνουσι, τὸ δὲ ἄλλο σῶμα γυμνὸν ἐκβαλόντες ἀπὸ τῆς ἁλιάδος τοῖς δεομένοις τοιούτου [2] θεάματος ἀπέλιπον. παρέμεινε δὲ αὐτῷ Φίλιππος, ἕως ἐγένοντο μεστοὶ τῆς ὄψεως· εἶτα περιλούσας τῇ θαλάσσῃ τὸ σῶμα καὶ χιτωνίῳ τινὶ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ περιστείλας, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδὲν ἔχων, ἀλλὰ περισκοπῶν τὸν αἰγιαλὸν εὗρε μικρᾶς ἁλιάδος λείψανα, παλαιὰ μέν, ἀρκοῦντα δὲ νεκρῷ γυμνῷ καὶ οὐδὲ ὅλῳ πυρκαϊὰν ἀναγκαίαν παρασχεῖν.

[3] ταῦτα συγκομίζοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ συντιθέντος ἐπιστὰς ἀνὴρ Ῥωμαῖος ἤδη γέρων, τὰς δὲ πρώτας στρατείας ἔτι νέος Πομπηΐῳ συνεστρατευμένος, “Τίς ὤν, ὦ ἄνθρωπε,” ἔφη, “θάπτειν διανοῇ Μάγνον Πομπήϊον;” ἐκείνου δὲ φήσαντος ὡς ἀπελεύθερος, “Ἀλλ’ οὐ μόνῳ σοί,” ἔφη, “τοῦτο τὸ καλὸν ὑπάρξει· κἀμὲ δὲ ὥσπερ εὑρήματος εὐσεβοῦς δέξαι κοινωνόν, ὡς μὴ κατὰ πάντα μέμφωμαι τὴν ἀποξένωσιν, ἀντὶ πολλῶν ἀνιαρῶν τοῦτο γοῦν εὑράμενος, ἅψασθαι καὶ περιστεῖλαι ταῖς ἐμαῖς χερσὶ τὸν μέγιστον αὐτοκράτορα Ῥωμαίων.”

[4] οὕτω μὲν ἐκηδεύετο Πομπήϊος. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ Λεύκιος Λέντλος οὐκ εἰδὼς τὰ πεπραγμένα, πλέων ἀπὸ Κύπρου καὶ παρὰ γῆν κομιζόμενος, ὡς εἶδε νεκροῦ πυρὰν καὶ παρεστῶτα τὸν Φίλιππον, οὔπω καθορώμενος· “Τίς ἄρα,” ἔφη, “τὸ πεπρωμένον ἐνταῦθα τελέσας ἀναπέπαυται;” καὶ μικρὸν διαλιπὼν καὶ στενάξας, “Τάχα δέ,” εἶπε, “σύ, Πομπήϊε Μάγνε.” καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ἀποβὰς καὶ συλληφθεὶς ἀπέθανε.

[5] Τοῦτο Πομπηΐου τέλος. οὐ πολλῷ δὲ ὕστερον Καῖσαρ ἐλθὼν εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἄγους τοσούτου καταπεπλησμένην τὸν μὲν προσφέροντα τὴν κεφαλὴν ὡς παλαμναῖον ἀπεστράφη, τὴν δὲ σφραγῖδα τοῦ Πομπηΐου δεξάμενος ἐδάκρυσεν· ἦν δὲ γλυφὴ λέων ξιφήρης. Ἀχιλλᾶν δὲ καὶ Ποθεινὸν ἀπέσφαξεν· αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ βασιλεὺς μάχῃ λειφθεὶς [6] περὶ τὸν ποταμὸν ἠφανίσθη. Θεόδοτον δὲ τὸν σοφιστὴν ἡ μὲν ἐκ Καίσαρος δίκη παρῆλθε· φυγὼν γὰρ Αἴγυπτον ἐπλανᾶτο ταπεινὰ πράττων καὶ μισούμενος· Βροῦτος δὲ Μάρκος, ὅτε Καίσαρα κτείνας ἐκράτησεν, ἐξευρὼν αὐτὸν ἐν Ἀσίᾳ καὶ πᾶσαν αἰκίαν αἰκισάμενος ἀπέκτεινεν. τὰ δὲ λείψανα τοῦ Πομπηΐου Κορνηλία δεξαμένη κομισθέντα, περὶ τὸν Ἀλβανὸν ἔθηκεν.

Comparison Agesilai et Pompeii

[1] [1]  Ἐκκειμένων οὖν τῶν βίων ἐπιδράμωμεν τῷ λόγῳ ταχέως τὰ ποιοῦντα τὰς διαφοράς, παρ’ ἄλληλα συνάγοντες. ἔστι δὲ ταῦτα· πρῶτον, ὅτι Πομπήϊος ἐκ τοῦ δικαιοτάτου τρόπου παρῆλθεν εἰς δύναμιν καὶ δόξαν, αὐτὸς ὁρμηθεὶς ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα Σύλλᾳ τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἀπὸ τῶν τυράννων ἐλευθεροῦντι συγκατεργασάμενος, [2] Ἀγησίλαος δὲ τὴν βασιλείαν ἔδοξε λαβεῖν οὔτε τὰ πρὸς θεοὺς ἄμεμπτος οὔτε τὰ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους, κρίνας νοθείας Λεωτυχίδην, ὃν υἱὸν αὑτοῦ ἀπέδειξεν ὁ ἀδελφὸς γνήσιον, τὸν δὲ χρησμὸν κατειρωνευσάμενος τὸν περὶ τῆς χωλότητος. δεύτερον, ὅτι Πομπήϊος Σύλλαν καὶ ζῶντα τιμῶν διετέλεσε καὶ τεθνηκότος ἐκήδευσε βιασάμενος Λέπιδον τὸ σῶμα, καὶ τῷ παιδὶ Φαύστῳ τὴν αὑτοῦ θυγατέρα συνῴκισεν, Ἀγησίλαος δὲ Λύσανδρον ἐκ τῆς τυχούσης προφάσεως ὑπεξέρριψε καὶ καθύβρισε.

[3] καίτοι Σύλλας μὲν οὐκ ἐλαττόνων ἔτυχεν ἢ Πομπηΐῳ παρέσχεν, Ἀγησίλαον δὲ Λύσανδρος καὶ τῆς Σπάρτης βασιλέα καὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος στρατηγὸν ἐποίησε. τρίτον δέ, αἱ περὶ τὰ πολιτικὰ τῶν δικαίων παραβάσεις Πομπηΐῳ μὲν δι’ οἰκειότητας ἐγένοντο· τὰ γὰρ πλεῖστα Καίσαρι καὶ Σκηπίωνι συνεξήμαρτε κηδεσταῖς οὖσιν· [4] Ἀγησίλαος δὲ Σφοδρίαν μὲν ἐφ’ οἷς Ἀθηναίους ἠδίκησεν ἀποθανεῖν ὀφείλοντα τῷ τοῦ παιδὸς ἔρωτι χαριζόμενος ἐξήρπασε, Φοιβίδᾳ δὲ Θηβαίους παρασπονδήσαντι δῆλος ἦν δι’ αὐτὸ τὸ ἀδίκημα προθύμως βοηθῶν. καθόλου δὲ ὅσα Ῥωμαίους δι’ αἰδῶ Πομπήϊος ἢ ἄγνοιαν αἰτίαν ἔσχε βλάψαι, ταῦτα θυμῷ καὶ φιλονεικίᾳ Λακεδαιμονίους Ἀγησίλαος ἔβλαψε τὸν Βοιώτιον ἐκκαύσας πόλεμον.

[2] [1] Εἰ δὲ καὶ τύχην τινὰ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἑκατέρου τοῖς σφάλμασι προσοιστέον, ἀνέλπιστος μὲν ἡ Πομπηΐου Ῥωμαίοις, Ἀγησίλαος δὲ Λακεδαιμονίους ἀκούοντας καὶ προειδότας οὐκ εἴασε φυλάξασθαι τὴν χωλὴν βασιλείαν. καὶ γὰρ εἰ μυριάκις ἠλέγχθη Λεωτυχίδης ἀλλότριος εἶναι καὶ νόθος, οὐκ ἂν ἠπόρησαν Εὐρυπωντίδαι γνήσιον καὶ ἀρτίποδα τῇ Σπάρτῃ βασιλέα παρασχεῖν, εἰ μὴ δι’ Ἀγησίλαον ἐπεσκότησε τῷ χρησμῷ Λύσανδρος.

[2] Οἷον μέντοι τῇ περὶ τῶν τρεσάντων ἀπορίᾳ προσήγαγεν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἴαμα μετὰ τὴν ἐν Λεύκτροις ἀτυχίαν, κελεύσας τοὺς νόμους ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν καθεύδειν, οὐ γέγονεν ἄλλο σόφισμα πολιτικόν, οὐδ’ ἔχομέν τι τοῦ Πομπηΐου παραπλήσιον, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον οὐδ’ οἷς αὐτὸς ἐτίθει νόμοις ᾤετο δεῖν ἐμμένειν, τὸ δύνασθαι μέγα τοῖς φίλοις ἐνδεικνύμενος. ὁ δὲ εἰς ἀνάγκην καταστὰς τοῦ λῦσαι τοὺς νόμους ἐπὶ τῷ σῶσαι τοὺς πολίτας, ἐξεῦρε τρόπον ᾧ μήτε ἐκείνους βλάψουσι [3] μήτε ὅπως οὐ βλάψωσι λυθήσονται. τίθεμαι δὲ κἀκεῖνο τὸ ἀμίμητον ἔργον εἰς πολιτικὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου, τὸ δεξάμενον τὴν σκυτάλην ἀπολιπεῖν τὰς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ πράξεις. οὐ γάρ, ὡς Πομπήϊος, ἀφ’ ὧν ἑαυτὸν ἐποίει μέγαν ὠφέλει τὸ κοινόν, ἀλλὰ τὸ τῆς πατρίδος σκοπῶν τηλικαύτην ἀφῆκε δύναμιν καὶ δόξαν ἡλίκην οὐδεὶς πρότερον οὐδὲ ὕστερον πλὴν Ἀλέξανδρος ἔσχεν.

[3] [1] Ἀπ’ ἄλλης τοίνυν ἀρχῆς, ἐν ταῖς στρατηγίαις καὶ τοῖς πολεμικοῖς, ἀριθμῷ μὲν τροπαίων καὶ μεγέθει δυνάμεων ἃς ἐπηγάγετο Πομπήϊος, καὶ πλήθει παρατάξεων ἃς ἐνίκησεν, οὐδ’ ἂν ὁ Ξενοφῶν μοι δοκεῖ παραβαλεῖν τὰς Ἀγησιλάου νίκας, ᾧ διὰ τἆλλα καλὰ καθάπερ γέρας ἐξαίρετον δέδοται καὶ γράφειν ὃ βούλοιτο καὶ λέγειν περὶ [2] τοῦ ἀνδρός. οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τῇ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ἐπιεικείᾳ διαφέρειν τὸν ἄνδρα τοῦ ἀνδρός. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἀνδραποδίσασθαι Θήβας καὶ Μεσσήνην ἐξοικίσασθαι βουλόμενος, ἣν μὲν ὁμόκληρον τῆς πατρίδος, ἣν δὲ μητρόπολιν τοῦ γένους, παρ’ οὐδὲν ἦλθε τὴν Σπάρτην ἀποβαλεῖν, ἀπέβαλε δὲ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν· ὁ δὲ καὶ τῶν πειρατῶν τοῖς μεταβαλομένοις πόλεις ἔδωκε, καὶ Τιγράνην τὸν Ἀρμενίων βασιλέα γενόμενον ἐφ’ ἑαυτῷ θριαμβεῦσαι σύμμαχον ἐποιήσατο, φήσας ἡμέρας μιᾶς αἰῶνα προτιμᾶν.

[3] Εἰ μέντοι τοῖς μεγίστοις καὶ κυριωτάτοις εἰς τὰ ὅπλα πράγμασι καὶ λογισμοῖς προστίθεται πρωτεῖον ἀρετῆς ἀνδρὸς ἡγεμόνος, οὐ μικρὸν ὁ Λάκων τὸν Ῥωμαῖον ἀπολέλοιπε. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ οὐ προήκατο τὴν πόλιν οὐδ’ ἐξέλιπεν ἑπτὰ μυριάσι στρατοῦ τῶν πολεμίων ἐμβαλόντων, ὀλίγους ἔχων ὁπλίτας καὶ προνενικημένους ἐν [4] Λεύκτροις· Πομπήϊος δέ, πεντακισχιλίοις μόνοις καὶ τριακοσίοις μίαν Καίσαρος πόλιν Ἰταλικὴν καταλαβόντος, ἐξέπεσε τῆς Ῥώμης ὑπὸ δέους, ἢ τοσούτοις εἴξας ἀγεννῶς ἢ πλείονας ψευδῶς εἰκάσας· καὶ συσκευασάμενος τὰ τέκνα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα αὑτοῦ, τὰς δὲ τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν ἐρήμους ἀπολιπὼν ἔφυγε, δέον ἢ κρατεῖν μαχόμενον ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἢ δέχεσθαι διαλύσεις παρὰ τοῦ κρείττονος· ἦν γὰρ πολίτης καὶ [5] οἰκεῖος· νῦν δὲ ᾧ στρατηγίας χρόνον ἐπιμετρῆσαι καὶ ὑπατείαν ψηφίσασθαι δεινὸν ἡγεῖτο, τούτῳ παρέσχε λαβόντι τὴν πόλιν εἰπεῖν πρὸς Μέτελλον ὅτι κἀκεῖνον αἰχμάλωτον αὑτοῦ νομίζει καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας.

[4] [1] Ὃ τοίνυν ἔργον ἐστὶν ἀγαθοῦ στρατηγοῦ μάλιστα, κρείττονα μὲν ὄντα βιάσασθαι τοὺς πολεμίους μάχεσθαι, λειπόμενον δὲ δυνάμει μὴ βιασθῆναι, τοῦτο ποιῶν Ἀγησίλαος ἀεὶ διεφύλαξεν ἑαυτὸν ἀνίκητον· Πομπήϊον δὲ Καῖσαρ, οὗ μὲν ἦν ἐλάττων, διέφυγε μὴ βλαβῆναι, καθὸ δὲ κρείττων ἦν, ἠνάγκασεν ἀγωνισάμενον τῷ πεζῷ περὶ πάντων σφαλῆναι, καὶ κύριος εὐθὺς ἦν χρημάτων καὶ ἀγορᾶς καὶ θαλάττης, ὑφ’ ὧν διεπέπρακτο [2] ἂν ἄνευ μάχης ἐκείνοις προσόντων. τὸ δ’ ὑπὲρ τούτων ἀπολόγημα μέγιστόν ἐστιν ἔγκλημα στρατηγοῦ τηλικούτου. νέον μὲν γὰρ ἄρχοντα θορύβοις καὶ καταβοήσεσιν εἰς μαλακίαν καὶ δειλίαν ἐπιταραχθέντα τῶν ἀσφαλεστάτων ἐκπεσεῖν λογισμῶν εἰκός ἐστι καὶ συγγνωστόν· Πομπήϊον δὲ Μάγνον, οὗ Ῥωμαῖοι τὸ μὲν στρατόπεδον πατρίδα, σύγκλητον δὲ τὴν σκηνήν, ἀποστάτας δὲ καὶ προδότας τοὺς ἐν Ῥώμῃ πολιτευομένους καὶ στρατηγοῦντας καὶ ὑπατεύοντας ἐκάλουν, [3] ἀρχόμενον δὲ ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἔγνωσαν, πάσας δὲ αὐτοκράτορα στρατευσάμενον ἄριστα τὰς στρατείας, τίς ἂν ἀνάσχοιτο τοῖς Φαωνίου σκώμμασι καὶ Δομετίου, καὶ ἵνα μὴ Ἀγαμέμνων λέγηται, παρ’ ἐλάχιστον ἐκβιασθέντα τὸν περὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας καὶ ἐλευθερίας ἀναρρῖψαι κίνδυνον; ὃς εἰ μόνον ἐσκόπει τὸ παρ’ ἡμέραν ἄδοξον, ὤφειλεν ἀντιστὰς ἐν ἀρχῇ διαγωνίσασθαι περὶ τῆς Ῥώμης, ἀλλὰ μὴ τὴν φυγὴν ἐκείνην ἀποφαίνων στρατήγημα Θεμιστόκλειον ὕστερον ἐν αἰσχρῷ τίθεσθαι τὴν ἐν Θετταλίᾳ πρὸ μάχης διατριβήν.

[4] οὐ γὰρ ἐκεῖνό γε στάδιον αὐτοῖς καὶ θέατρον ἐναγωνίσασθαι περὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ὁ θεὸς ἀπέδειξε τὸ Φαρσάλιον πεδίον, οὐδὲ ὑπὸ κήρυκος ἐκαλεῖτο μάχεσθαι κατιὼν ἢ λιπεῖν ἑτέρῳ τὸν στέφανον, ἀλλὰ πολλὰ μὲν πεδία μυρίας δὲ πόλεις καὶ γῆν ἄπλετον ἡ κατὰ θάλατταν εὐπορία παρέσχε βουλομένῳ μιμεῖσθαι Μάξιμον καὶ Μάριον καὶ Λεύκολλον καὶ αὐτὸν Ἀγησίλαον, [5] ὃς οὐκ ἐλάττονας μὲν ἐν Σπάρτῃ θορύβους ὑπέμεινε βουλομένων Θηβαίοις ὑπὲρ τῆς χώρας μάχεσθαι, πολλὰς δ’ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ διαβολὰς καὶ κατηγορίας καὶ ὑπονοίας τοῦ βασιλέως ἤνεγκεν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν κελεύων, χρησάμενος δὲ τοῖς ἀρίστοις [6] ὡς ἐβούλετο λογισμοῖς, οὐ μόνον Αἰγυπτίους ἄκοντας ἔσωσεν, οὐδὲ τὴν Σπάρτην ἐν τοσούτῳ σεισμῷ μόνος ὀρθὴν ἀεὶ διεφύλαξεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τρόπαιον ἔστησε κατὰ Θηβαίων ἐν τῇ πόλει, τὸ νικῆσαι παρασχὼν αὖθις ἐκ τοῦ τότε μὴ προαπολέσθαι βιασαμένους. ὅθεν Ἀγησίλαος μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν βιασθέντων ὕστερον ἐπῃνεῖτο σωθέντων, Πομπήϊος δὲ δι’ ἄλλους ἁμαρτών, αὐτοὺς οἷς ἐπείσθη [7] κατηγόρους εἶχε. καίτοι φασί τινες ὡς ὑπὸ τοῦ πενθεροῦ Σκηπίωνος ἐξηπατήθη· τὰ γὰρ πλεῖστα τῶν χρημάτων ὧν ἐκόμιζεν ἐξ Ἀσίας βουλόμενον αὐτὸν νοσφίσασθαι καὶ ἀποκρύψαντα κατεπεῖξαι τὴν μάχην, ὡς οὐκέτι χρημάτων ὄντων. ὃ κἂν ἀληθὲς ἦν, παθεῖν οὐκ ὤφειλεν ὁ στρατηγός, οὐδὲ ῥᾳδίως οὕτω παραλογισθεὶς ἀποκινδυνεῦσαι περὶ τῶν μεγίστων. ἐν μὲν οὖν τούτοις οὕτως ἑκάτερον ἀποθεωροῦμεν.

[5] [1] Εἰς Αἴγυπτον δ’ ὁ μὲν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἔπλευσε φεύγων, ὁ δὲ οὔτε καλῶς οὔτε ἀναγκαίως ἐπὶ χρήμασιν, ὅπως ἔχῃ τοῖς Ἕλλησι πολεμεῖν ἀφ’ ὧν τοῖς βαρβάροις ἐστρατήγησεν. εἶτα ἃ διὰ Πομπήϊον Αἰγυπτίοις ἐγκαλοῦμεν, ταῦτα Αἰγύπτιοι κατηγοροῦσιν Ἀγησιλάου. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἠδικήθη πιστεύσας, ὁ δὲ πιστευθεὶς ἐγκατέλιπε καὶ μετέστη πρὸς τοὺς πολεμοῦντας οἷς ἔπλευσε συμμαχήσων.

Alexander

[1] [1]  Τὸν Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ βασιλέως βίον καὶ τὸν Καίσαρος, ὑφ’ οὗ κατελύθη Πομπήϊος, ἐν τούτῳ τῷ βιβλίῳ γράφοντες, διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ὑποκειμένων πράξεων οὐδὲν ἄλλο προεροῦμεν ἢ παραιτησόμεθα τοὺς ἀναγινώσκοντας, ἐὰν μὴ πάντα μηδὲ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐξειργασμένως τι τῶν περιβοήτων ἀπαγγέλλωμεν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιτέμνοντες τὰ πλεῖστα, [2] μὴ συκοφαντεῖν. οὔτε γὰρ ἱστορίας γράφομεν, ἀλλὰ βίους, οὔτε ταῖς ἐπιφανεστάταις πράξεσι πάντως ἔνεστι δήλωσις ἀρετῆς ἢ κακίας, ἀλλὰ πρᾶγμα βραχὺ πολλάκις καὶ ῥῆμα καὶ παιδιά τις ἔμφασιν ἤθους ἐποίησε μᾶλλον ἢ μάχαι μυριόνεκροι καὶ παρατάξεις αἱ μέγισται καὶ [3] πολιορκίαι πόλεων. ὥσπερ οὖν οἱ ζῳγράφοι τὰς ὁμοιότητας ἀπὸ τοῦ προσώπου καὶ τῶν περὶ τὴν ὄψιν εἰδῶν οἷς ἐμφαίνεται τὸ ἦθος ἀναλαμβάνουσιν, ἐλάχιστα τῶν λοιπῶν μερῶν φροντίζοντες, οὕτως ἡμῖν δοτέον εἰς τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς σημεῖα μᾶλλον ἐνδύεσθαι, καὶ διὰ τούτων εἰδοποιεῖν τὸν ἑκάστου βίον, ἐάσαντας ἑτέροις τὰ μεγέθη καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας.

[2] [1] Ἀλέξανδρος ὅτι τῷ γένει πρὸς πατρὸς μὲν ἦν Ἡρακλείδης ἀπὸ Καράνου, πρὸς δὲ μητρὸς Αἰακίδης [2] ἀπὸ Νεοπτολέμου, τῶν πάνυ πεπιστευμένων ἐστί. λέγεται δὲ Φίλιππος ἐν Σαμοθρᾴκῃ τῇ Ὀλυμπιάδι συμμυηθείς, αὐτός τε μειράκιον ὢν ἔτι κἀκείνης παιδὸς ὀρφανῆς γονέων ἐρασθῆναι, καὶ τὸν γάμον οὕτως ἁρμόσαι, πείσας τὸν [3] ἀδελφὸν αὐτῆς Ἀρύββαν. ἡ μὲν οὖν νύμφη πρὸ τῆς νυκτός, ᾗ συνείρχθησαν εἰς τὸν θάλαμον, ἔδοξε βροντῆς γενομένης ἐμπεσεῖν αὐτῆς τῇ γαστρὶ κεραυνόν, ἐκ δὲ τῆς πληγῆς πολὺ πῦρ ἀναφθέν, εἶτα ῥηγνύμενον εἰς φλόγας [4] πάντῃ φερομένας διαλυθῆναι. ὁ δὲ Φίλιππος ὑστέρῳ χρόνῳ μετὰ τὸν γάμον εἶδεν ὄναρ αὑτὸν ἐπιβάλλοντα σφραγῖδα τῇ γαστρὶ τῆς γυναικός· ἡ δὲ γλυφὴ τῆς [5] σφραγῖδος ὡς ᾤετο λέοντος εἶχεν εἰκόνα. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων μάντεων ὑφορωμένων τὴν ὄψιν, ὡς ἀκριβεστέρας φυλακῆς δεομένων τῷ Φιλίππῳ τῶν περὶ τὸν γάμον, Ἀρίστανδρος ὁ Τελμησσεὺς κύειν ἔφη τὴν ἄνθρωπον· οὐθὲν γὰρ ἀποσφραγίζεσθαι τῶν κενῶν· καὶ κύειν παῖδα θυμοειδῆ [6] καὶ λεοντώδη τὴν φύσιν. ὤφθη δέ ποτε καὶ δράκων κοιμωμένης τῆς Ὀλυμπιάδος παρεκτεταμένος τῷ σώματι, καὶ τοῦτο μάλιστα τοῦ Φιλίππου τὸν ἔρωτα καὶ τὰς φιλοφροσύνας ἀμαυρῶσαι λέγουσιν, ὡς μηδὲ φοιτᾶν ἔτι πολλάκις παρ’ αὐτὴν ἀναπαυσόμενον, εἴτε δείσαντά τινας μαγείας ἐπ’ αὐτῷ καὶ φάρμακα τῆς γυναικός, εἴτε τὴν ὁμιλίαν ὡς [7] κρείττονι συνούσης ἀφοσιούμενον. ἕτερος δὲ περὶ τούτων ἐστὶ λόγος, ὡς πᾶσαι μὲν αἱ τῇδε γυναῖκες ἔνοχοι τοῖς Ὀρφικοῖς οὖσαι καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμοῖς ἐκ τοῦ πάνυ παλαιοῦ, Κλώδωνές τε καὶ Μιμαλλόνες ἐπωνυμίαν ἔχουσαι, πολλὰ ταῖς Ἠδωνίσι καὶ ταῖς περὶ τὸν [8] Αἷμον Θρῄσσαις ὅμοια δρῶσιν· ἀφ’ ὧν δοκεῖ καὶ τὸ θρησκεύειν ὄνομα ταῖς κατακόροις γενέσθαι καὶ περιέργοις [9] ἱερουργίαις· ἡ δ’ Ὀλυμπιὰς μᾶλλον ἑτέρων ζηλώσασα τὰς κατοχάς, καὶ τοὺς ἐνθουσιασμοὺς ἐξάγουσα βαρβαρικώτερον, ὄφεις μεγάλους χειροήθεις ἐφείλκετο τοῖς θιάσοις, οἳ πολλάκις ἐκ τοῦ κιττοῦ καὶ τῶν μυστικῶν λίκνων παραναδυόμενοι καὶ περιελιττόμενοι τοῖς θύρσοις τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ τοῖς στεφάνοις, ἐξέπληττον τοὺς ἄνδρας.

[3] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ Φιλίππῳ μὲν μετὰ τὸ φάσμα πέμψαντι Χαίρωνα τὸν Μεγαλοπολίτην εἰς Δελφοὺς χρησμὸν κομισθῆναι λέγουσι παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ, κελεύοντος Ἄμμωνι [2] θύειν καὶ σέβεσθαι μάλιστα τοῦτον τὸν θεόν· ἀποβαλεῖν δὲ τῶν ὄψεων αὐτὸν τὴν ἑτέραν, ἣν τῷ τῆς θύρας ἁρμῷ προσβαλών, κατώπτευσεν ἐν μορφῇ δράκοντος συνευναζόμενον [3] τῇ γυναικὶ τὸν θεόν. ἡ δ’ Ὀλυμπιάς, ὡς Ἐρατοσθένης φησί (FGrH 241 F 28), προπέμπουσα τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐπὶ τὴν στρατείαν, καὶ φράσασα μόνῳ τὸ περὶ τὴν τέκνωσιν [4] ἀπόρρητον, ἐκέλευεν ἄξια φρονεῖν τῆς γενέσεως· ἕτεροι δέ φασιν αὐτὴν ἀφοσιοῦσθαι καὶ λέγειν· οὐ παύσεταί με διαβάλλων Ἀλέξανδρος πρὸς τὴν Ἥραν;

[5] Ἐγεννήθη δ’ οὖν Ἀλέξανδρος ἱσταμένου μηνὸς Ἑκατομβαιῶνος, ὃν Μακεδόνες Λῷον καλοῦσιν, ἕκτῃ, καθ’ ἣν ἡμέραν ὁ τῆς Ἐφεσίας Ἀρτέμιδος ἐνεπρήσθη νεώς· [6] ᾧ γ’ Ἡγησίας ὁ Μάγνης (FGrH 142 F 3) ἐπιπεφώνηκεν ἐπιφώνημα κατασβέσαι τὴν πυρκαϊὰν ἐκείνην ὑπὸ ψυχρίας δυνάμενον· εἰκότως γὰρ ἔφη καταφλεχθῆναι τὸν νεών, τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος ἀσχολουμένης περὶ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου [7] μαίωσιν. ὅσοι δὲ τῶν μάγων ἐν Ἐφέσῳ διατρίβοντες ἔτυχον, τὸ περὶ τὸν νεὼν πάθος ἡγούμενοι πάθους ἑτέρου σημεῖον εἶναι, διέθεον, τὰ πρόσωπα τυπτόμενοι καὶ βοῶντες ἄτην ἅμα καὶ συμφορὰν μεγάλην τῇ Ἀσίᾳ τὴν [8] ἡμέραν ἐκείνην τετοκέναι. Φιλίππῳ δ’ ἄρτι Ποτείδαιαν ᾑρηκότι τρεῖς ἧκον ἀγγελίαι κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν χρόνον, ἡ μὲν Ἰλλυριοὺς ἡττῆσθαι μάχῃ μεγάλῃ διὰ Παρμενίωνος, ἡ δ’ Ὀλυμπίασιν ἵππῳ κέλητι νενικηκέναι, τρίτη δὲ περὶ τῆς [9] Ἀλεξάνδρου γενέσεως. ἐφ’ οἷς ἡδόμενον ὡς εἰκὸς ἔτι μᾶλλον οἱ μάντεις ἐπῆραν, ἀποφαινόμενοι τὸν παῖδα τρισὶ νίκαις συγγεγεννημένον ἀνίκητον ἔσεσθαι.

[4] [1] Τὴν μὲν οὖν ἰδέαν τοῦ σώματος οἱ Λυσίππειοι μάλιστα τῶν ἀνδριάντων ἐμφαίνουσιν, ὑφ’ οὗ μόνου καὶ [2] αὐτὸς ἠξίου πλάττεσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ‹ὃ› μάλιστα πολλοὶ τῶν διαδόχων ὕστερον καὶ τῶν φίλων ἀπεμιμοῦντο, τήν τ’ ἀνάτασιν τοῦ αὐχένος εἰς εὐώνυμον ἡσυχῇ κεκλιμένου καὶ τὴν ὑγρότητα τῶν ὀμμάτων, διατετήρηκεν ἀκριβῶς [3] ὁ τεχνίτης. Ἀπελλῆς δὲ γράφων ‹αὐ›τὸν κεραυνοφόρον, οὐκ ἐμιμήσατο τὴν χρόαν, ἀλλὰ φαιότερον καὶ πεπινωμένον ἐποίησεν. ἦν δὲ λευκός, ὥς φασιν· ἡ δὲ λευκότης ἐπεφοίνισσεν αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸ στῆθος μάλιστα καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον.

[4] ὅτι δὲ τοῦ χρωτὸς ἥδιστον ἀπέπνει καὶ τὸ στόμα κατεῖχεν εὐωδία καὶ τὴν σάρκα πᾶσαν, ὥστε πληροῦσθαι τοὺς χιτωνίσκους, ἀνέγνωμεν ἐν ὑπομνήμασιν Ἀριστοξενείοις [5] (fg. 132 W.)· αἰτία δ’ ἴσως ἡ τοῦ σώματος κρᾶσις, πολύθερμος οὖσα καὶ πυρώδης· ἡ γὰρ εὐωδία γίνεται πέψει τῶν ὑγρῶν ὑπὸ θερμότητος, ὡς οἴεται Θεόφραστος (fg. 4, 6 W.). [6] ὅθεν οἱ ξηροὶ καὶ διάπυροι τόποι τῆς οἰκουμένης τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ κάλλιστα τῶν ἀρωμάτων φέρουσιν· ἐξαιρεῖ γὰρ ὁ ἥλιος τὸ ὑγρόν, ὥσπερ ὕλην σηπεδόνος ἐπιπολάζον [7] τοῖς σώμασιν. Ἀλέξανδρον δ’ ἡ θερμότης τοῦ σώματος ὡς ἔοικε καὶ ποτικὸν καὶ θυμοειδῆ παρεῖχεν.

[8] Ἔτι δ’ ὄντος αὐτοῦ παιδὸς ἥ τε σωφροσύνη διεφαίνετο τῷ πρὸς τἆλλα ῥαγδαῖον ὄντα καὶ φερόμενον σφοδρῶς ἐν ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ταῖς περὶ τὸ σῶμα δυσκίνητον εἶναι καὶ μετὰ πολλῆς πρᾳότητος ἅπτεσθαι τῶν τοιούτων, ἥ τε φιλοτιμία παρ’ ἡλικίαν ἐμβριθὲς εἶχε τὸ φρόνημα καὶ μεγαλόψυχον.

[9] οὔτε γὰρ ἀπὸ παντὸς οὔτε πᾶσαν ἠγάπα δόξαν, ὡς Φίλιππος λόγου τε δεινότητι σοφιστικῶς καλλωπιζόμενος, καὶ τὰς ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ νίκας τῶν ἁρμάτων ἐγχαράττων τοῖς [10] νομίσμασιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἀποπειρωμένων, εἰ βούλοιτ’ ἂν Ὀλυμπίασιν ἀγωνίσασθαι στάδιον, ἦν γὰρ ποδώκης, εἴ γε ἔφη βασιλεῖς ἔμελλον ἕξειν ἀνταγωνιστάς.

[11] φαίνεται δὲ καὶ καθόλου πρὸς τὸ τῶν ἀθλητῶν γένος ἀλλοτρίως ἔχων· πλείστους γέ τοι θεὶς ἀγῶνας οὐ μόνον τραγῳδῶν καὶ αὐλητῶν καὶ κιθαρῳδῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ῥαψῳδῶν θήρας τε παντοδαπῆς καὶ ῥαβδομαχίας, οὔτε πυγμῆς οὔτε παγκρατίου μετά τινος σπουδῆς ἔθηκεν ἆθλον.

[5] [1] Τοὺς δὲ παρὰ τοῦ Περσῶν βασιλέως πρέσβεις ἥκοντας ἀποδημοῦντος Φιλίππου ξενίζων καὶ γενόμενος συνήθης, οὕτως ἐχειρώσατο τῇ φιλοφροσύνῃ καὶ τῷ μηδὲν [2] ἐρώτημα παιδικὸν ἐρωτῆσαι μηδὲ μικρόν, ἀλλ’ ὁδῶν τε μήκη καὶ πορείας τῆς ἄνω τρόπον ἐκπυνθάνεσθαι, καὶ [3] περὶ αὐτοῦ βασιλέως ὁποῖος εἴη πρὸς τοὺς πολέμους, καὶ τίς ἡ Περσῶν ἀλκὴ καὶ δύναμις, ὥστε θαυμάζειν ἐκείνους καὶ τὴν λεγομένην Φιλίππου δεινότητα μηδὲν ἡγεῖσθαι πρὸς τὴν τοῦ παιδὸς ὁρμὴν καὶ μεγαλοπραγμοσύνην.

[4] ὁσάκις γοῦν ἀπαγγελθείη Φίλιππος ἢ πόλιν ἔνδοξον ᾑρηκὼς ἢ μάχην τινὰ περιβόητον νενικηκώς, οὐ πάνυ φαιδρὸς ἦν ἀκούων, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τοὺς ἡλικιώτας ἔλεγεν· ὦ παῖδες, πάντα προλήψεται ὁ πατήρ, ἐμοὶ δ’ οὐδὲν ἀπολείψει μεθ’ ὑμῶν ἔργον ἀποδείξασθαι μέγα καὶ [5] λαμπρόν. οὐ γὰρ ἡδονὴν ζηλῶν οὐδὲ πλοῦτον, ἀλλ’ ἀρετὴν καὶ δόξαν, ἐνόμιζεν, ὅσῳ πλείονα λήψεται παρὰ [6] τοῦ πατρός, ἐλάττονα κατορθώσειν δι’ αὑτοῦ. διὸ τοῖς πράγμασιν αὐξομένοις καταναλίσκεσθαι τὰς πράξεις εἰς ἐκεῖνον ἡγούμενος, ἐβούλετο μὴ χρήματα μηδὲ τρυφὰς καὶ ἀπολαύσεις, ἀλλ’ ἀγῶνας καὶ πολέμους καὶ φιλοτιμίας ἔχουσαν ἀρχὴν παραλαβεῖν.

[7] Πολλοὶ μὲν οὖν περὶ τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν ὡς εἰκὸς ἦσαν αὐτοῦ τροφεῖς καὶ παιδαγωγοὶ καὶ διδάσκαλοι λεγόμενοι, πᾶσι δ’ ἐφειστήκει Λεωνίδας, ἀνὴρ τό τ’ ἦθος αὐστηρὸς καὶ συγγενὴς Ὀλυμπιάδος, αὐτὸς μὲν οὐ φεύγων τὸ τῆς παιδαγωγίας ὄνομα, καλὸν ἔργον ἐχούσης καὶ λαμπρόν, ὑπὸ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων διὰ τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ τὴν οἰκειότητα [8] τροφεὺς Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ καθηγητὴς καλούμενος. ὁ δὲ τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ καὶ τὴν προσηγορίαν ὑποποιούμενος ἦν Λυσίμαχος, τὸ γένος Ἀκαρνάν, ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν ἔχων ἀστεῖον, ὅτι δ’ ἑαυτὸν μὲν ὠνόμαζε Φοίνικα, τὸν δ’ Ἀλέξανδρον Ἀχιλλέα, Πηλέα δὲ τὸν Φίλιππον, ἠγαπᾶτο καὶ δευτέραν εἶχε χώραν.

[6] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Φιλονίκου τοῦ Θεσσαλοῦ τὸν Βουκεφάλαν ἀγαγόντος ὤνιον τῷ Φιλίππῳ τρισκαίδεκα ταλάντων, κατέβησαν εἰς τὸ πεδίον δοκιμάσοντες τὸν ἵππον, ἐδόκει τε χαλεπὸς εἶναι καὶ κομιδῇ δύσχρηστος, οὔτ’ ἀναβάτην προσιέμενος οὔτε φωνὴν ὑπομένων τινὸς τῶν περὶ τὸν [2] Φίλιππον, ἀλλ’ ἁπάντων κατεξανιστάμενος, δυσχεραίνοντος δὲ τοῦ Φιλίππου καὶ κελεύοντος ἀπάγειν ὡς παντάπασιν ἄγριον καὶ ἀκόλαστον, παρὼν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος εἶπεν· οἷον ἵππον ἀπολλύουσι, δι’ ἀπειρίαν καὶ μαλακίαν χρήσασθαι μὴ δυνάμενοι, τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ὁ Φίλιππος [3] ἐσιώπησε· πολλάκις δ’ αὐτοῦ παραφθεγγομένου καὶ περιπαθοῦντος, ἐπιτιμᾷς σὺ ἔφη πρεσβυτέροις ὥς τι πλέον αὐτὸς εἰδὼς ἢ μᾶλλον ἵππῳ χρήσασθαι δυνάμενος; [4] τούτῳ γοῦν ἔφη χρησαίμην ἂν ἑτέρου βέλτιον. ἂν δὲ μὴ χρήσῃ, τίνα δίκην τῆς προπετείας ὑφέξεις; ἐγὼ νὴ Δί’ εἶπεν ἀποτείσω τοῦ ἵππου τὴν τιμήν.

[5] γενομένου δὲ γέλωτος, εἶθ’ ὁρισμοῦ πρὸς ἀλλήλους εἰς τὸ ἀργύριον, εὐθὺς προσδραμὼν τῷ ἵππῳ καὶ παραλαβὼν τὴν ἡνίαν, ἐπέστρεψε πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον, ὡς ἔοικεν ἐννοήσας ὅτι τὴν σκιὰν προπίπτουσαν καὶ σαλευομένην ὁρῶν πρὸ [6] αὑτοῦ διαταράττοιτο. μικρὰ δ’ αὐτῷ παρακαλπάσας καὶ καταψήσας, ὡς ἑώρα πληρούμενον θυμοῦ καὶ πνεύματος, ἀπορρίψας ἡσυχῇ τὴν χλαμύδα καὶ μετεωρίσας αὑτόν, [7] ἀσφαλῶς περιέβη. καὶ μικρὰ μὲν περιλαβὼν ταῖς ἡνίαις τὸν χαλινόν, ἄνευ πληγῆς καὶ σπαραγμοῦ προσανέστειλεν· ὡς δ’ ἑώρα τὸν ἵππον ἀφεικότα τὴν ἀπειλήν, ὀργῶντα δὲ πρὸς τὸν δρόμον, ἀφεὶς ἐδίωκεν, ἤδη φωνῇ θρασυτέρᾳ καὶ [8] ποδὸς κρούσει χρώμενος. τῶν δὲ περὶ τὸν Φίλιππον ἦν ἀγωνία καὶ σιγὴ τὸ πρῶτον· ὡς δὲ κάμψας ὑπέστρεψεν ὀρθῶς σοβαρὸς καὶ γεγηθώς, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι πάντες ἀνηλάλαξαν, ὁ δὲ πατὴρ καὶ δακρῦσαί τι λέγεται πρὸς τὴν χαράν, καὶ καταβάντος αὐτοῦ τὴν κεφαλὴν φιλήσας ὦ παῖ φάναι, ζήτει σεαυτῷ βασιλείαν ἴσην· Μακεδονία γάρ σ’ οὐ χωρεῖ.

[7] [1] Καθορῶν δὲ τὴν φύσιν αὐτοῦ δυσνίκητον μὲν οὖσαν, ἐρίσαντος μὴ βιασθῆναι, ῥᾳδίως δ’ ἀγομένην ὑπὸ λόγου πρὸς τὸ δέον, αὐτός τε πείθειν ἐπειρᾶτο μᾶλλον ἢ προστάττειν, [2] καὶ τοῖς περὶ μουσικὴν καὶ τὰ ἐγκύκλια παιδευταῖς οὐ πάνυ τι πιστεύων τὴν ἐπιστασίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ κατάρτισιν, ὡς μείζονος οὖσαν πραγματείας καὶ κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα (fg. 785 N.²)

πολλῶν χαλινῶν ἔργον οἰάκων θ’ ἅμα,

μετεπέμψατο τῶν φιλοσόφων τὸν ἐνδοξότατον καὶ λογιώτατον Ἀριστοτέλην, καλὰ καὶ πρέποντα διδασκάλια [3] τελέσας αὐτῷ. τὴν γὰρ Σταγειριτῶν πόλιν, ἐξ ἧς ἦν Ἀριστοτέλης, ἀνάστατον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ γεγενημένην συνῴκισε πάλιν, καὶ τοὺς διαφυγόντας ἢ δουλεύοντας τῶν πολιτῶν [4] ἀποκατέστησε. σχολὴν μὲν οὖν αὐτοῖς καὶ διατριβὴν τὸ περὶ Μίεζαν Νυμφαῖον ἀπέδειξεν, ὅπου μέχρι νῦν Ἀριστοτέλους ἕδρας τε λιθίνας καὶ ὑποσκίους περιπάτους [5] δεικνύουσιν. ἔοικε δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος οὐ μόνον τὸν ἠθικὸν καὶ πολιτικὸν παραλαβεῖν λόγον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἀπορρήτων καὶ βαθυτέρων διδασκαλιῶν, ἃς οἱ ἄνδρες ἰδίως ἀκροατικὰς καὶ ἐποπτικὰς προσαγορεύοντες οὐκ ἐξέφερον εἰς [6] πολλούς, μετασχεῖν. ἤδη γὰρ εἰς Ἀσίαν διαβεβηκώς, καὶ πυθόμενος λόγους τινὰς ἐν βιβλίοις περὶ τούτων ὑπ’ Ἀριστοτέλους ἐκδεδόσθαι, γράφει πρὸς αὐτὸν ὑπὲρ φιλοσοφίας παρρησιαζόμενος ἐπιστολήν, ἧς ἀντίγραφόν ἐστιν· [7] Ἀλέξανδρος Ἀριστοτέλει εὖ πράττειν. οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἐποίησας ἐκδοὺς τοὺς ἀκροατικοὺς τῶν λόγων· τίνι γὰρ δὴ διοίσομεν ἡμεῖς τῶν ἄλλων, εἰ καθ’ οὓς ἐπαιδεύθημεν λόγους, οὗτοι πάντων ἔσονται κοινοί; ἐγὼ δὲ βουλοίμην ἂν ταῖς περὶ τὰ ἄριστα ἐμπειρίαις ἢ ταῖς δυνάμεσι διαφέρειν.

[8] ἔρρωσο. ταύτην μὲν οὖν τὴν φιλοτιμίαν αὐτοῦ παραμυθούμενος Ἀριστοτέλης ἀπολογεῖται περὶ τῶν λόγων ἐκείνων, ὡς καὶ ἐκδεδομένων καὶ μὴ ἐκδεδομένων.

[9] ἀληθῶς γὰρ ἡ περὶ τὰ φυσικὰ πραγματεία, πρὸς διδασκαλίαν καὶ μάθησιν οὐδὲν ἔχουσα χρήσιμον, ὑπόδειγμα τοῖς πεπαιδευμένοις ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς γέγραπται.

[8] [1] Δοκεῖ δέ μοι καὶ τὸ φιλιατρεῖν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ προστρίψασθαι μᾶλλον ἑτέρων Ἀριστοτέλης. οὐ γὰρ μόνον τὴν θεωρίαν ἠγάπησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ νοσοῦσιν ἐβοήθει τοῖς φίλοις, καὶ συνέταττε θεραπείας τινὰς καὶ διαίτας, ὡς [2] ἐκ τῶν ἐπιστολῶν λαβεῖν ἔστιν. ἦν δὲ καὶ φύσει φιλόλογος καὶ φιλομαθὴς καὶ φιλαναγνώστης, καὶ τὴν μὲν Ἰλιάδα τῆς πολεμικῆς ἀρετῆς ἐφόδιον καὶ νομίζων καὶ ὀνομάζων, ἔλαβε μὲν Ἀριστοτέλους διορθώσαντος ἣν ἐκ τοῦ νάρθηκος καλοῦσιν, εἶχε δ’ ἀεὶ μετὰ τοῦ ἐγχειριδίου κειμένην ὑπὸ τὸ προσκεφάλαιον, ὡς Ὀνησίκριτος ἱστόρηκε [3] (FGrH 134 F 38)· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων βιβλίων οὐκ εὐπορῶν ἐν τοῖς ἄνω τόποις, Ἅρπαλον ἐκέλευσε πέμψαι, κἀκεῖνος ἔπεμψεν αὐτῷ τάς τε Φιλίστου βίβλους καὶ τῶν Εὐριπίδου καὶ Σοφοκλέους καὶ Αἰσχύλου τραγῳδιῶν συχνάς, καὶ Τελέστου [4] καὶ Φιλοξένου διθυράμβους. Ἀριστοτέλην δὲ θαυμάζων ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ ἀγαπῶν οὐχ ἧττον, ὡς αὐτὸς ἔλεγε, τοῦ πατρός, ὡς δι’ ἐκεῖνον μὲν ζῶν, διὰ τοῦτον δὲ καλῶς ζῶν, ὕστερον ὑποπτότερον ἔσχεν, οὐχ ὥστε ποιῆσαί τι κακόν, ἀλλ’ αἱ φιλοφροσύναι τὸ σφοδρὸν ἐκεῖνο καὶ στερκτικὸν οὐκ ἔχουσαι πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀλλοτριότητος ἐγένοντο [5] τεκμήριον. ὁ μέντοι πρὸς φιλοσοφίαν ἐμπεφυκὼς καὶ συντεθραμμένος ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς αὐτῷ ζῆλος καὶ πόθος οὐκ ἐξερρύη τῆς ψυχῆς, ὡς ἡ περὶ Ἀνάξαρχόν τε τιμὴ καὶ τὰ πεμφθέντα Ξενοκράτει πεντήκοντα τάλαντα καὶ Δάνδαμις καὶ Καλανὸς οὕτω σπουδασθέντες μαρτυροῦσι.

[9] [1] Φιλίππου δὲ στρατεύοντος ἐπὶ Βυζαντίους, ἦν μὲν ἑκκαιδεκέτης ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος, ἀπολειφθεὶς δὲ κύριος ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ τῆς σφραγῖδος, Μαίδων τε τοὺς ἀφεστῶτας κατεστρέψατο, καὶ πόλιν ἑλὼν αὐτῶν, τοὺς μὲν βαρβάρους ἐξήλασε, συμμείκτους δὲ κατοικίσας, Ἀλεξανδρόπολιν προσηγόρευσεν.

[2] Ἐν δὲ Χαιρωνείᾳ τῆς πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας μάχης παρὼν μετέσχε, καὶ λέγεται πρῶτος ἐνσεῖσαι τῷ ἱερῷ λόχῳ τῶν [3] Θηβαίων. ἔτι δὲ καὶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐδείκνυτο παλαιὰ παρὰ τὸν Κηφισὸν Ἀλεξάνδρου καλουμένη δρῦς, πρὸς ἣν τότε κατεσκήνωσε, καὶ τὸ πολυάνδριον οὐ πόρρω τῶν Μακεδόνων [4] ἐστίν. ἐκ μὲν οὖν τούτων ὡς εἰκὸς Φίλιππος ὑπερηγάπα τὸν υἱόν, ὥστε καὶ χαίρειν τῶν Μακεδόνων Ἀλέξανδρον μὲν βασιλέα, Φίλιππον δὲ στρατηγὸν καλούντων.

[5] Αἱ δὲ περὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ταραχαί, διὰ τοὺς γάμους καὶ τοὺς ἔρωτας αὐτοῦ τρόπον τινὰ τῆς βασιλείας τῇ γυναικωνίτιδι συννοσούσης, πολλὰς αἰτίας καὶ μεγάλας διαφορὰς παρεῖχον, ἃς ἡ τῆς Ὀλυμπιάδος χαλεπότης, δυσζήλου καὶ βαρυθύμου γυναικός, ἔτι μείζονας ἐποίει, παροξυνούσης [6] τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον. ἐκφανεστάτην δ’ Ἄτταλος παρέσχεν ἐν τοῖς Κλεοπάτρας γάμοις, ἣν ὁ Φίλιππος ἠγάγετο παρθένον, ἐρασθεὶς παρ’ ἡλικίαν τῆς κόρης.

[7] θεῖος γὰρ ὢν αὐτῆς ὁ Ἄτταλος, ἐν τῷ πότῳ μεθύων παρεκάλει τοὺς Μακεδόνας αἰτεῖσθαι παρὰ θεῶν γνήσιον ἐκ Φιλίππου καὶ Κλεοπάτρας γενέσθαι διάδοχον τῆς [8] βασιλείας. ἐπὶ τούτῳ παροξυνθεὶς ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος καὶ εἰπών· ἡμεῖς δέ σοι κακὴ κεφαλὴ νόθοι δοκοῦμεν; [9] ἔβαλε σκύφον ἐπ’ αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ Φίλιππος ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον ἐξανέστη σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος, εὐτυχίᾳ δ’ ἑκατέρου διὰ [10] τὸν θυμὸν καὶ τὸν οἶνον ἔπεσε σφαλείς. ὁ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐφυβρίζων οὗτος μέντοι εἶπεν ἄνδρες εἰς Ἀσίαν ἐξ Εὐρώπης παρεσκευάζετο διαβαίνειν, ὃς ἐπὶ κλίνην ἀπὸ [11] κλίνης διαβαίνων ἀνατέτραπται. μετὰ ταύτην τὴν παροινίαν ἀναλαβὼν τὴν Ὀλυμπιάδα καὶ καταστήσας εἰς [12] Ἤπειρον, αὐτὸς ἐν Ἰλλυριοῖς διέτριβεν. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Δημάρατος ὁ Κορίνθιος, ξένος ὢν τῆς οἰκίας καὶ παρρησίας [13] μετέχων, ἀφίκετο πρὸς Φίλιππον. μετὰ δὲ τὰς πρώτας δεξιώσεις καὶ φιλοφροσύνας ἐπερωτῶντος τοῦ Φιλίππου, πῶς ἔχουσιν ὁμονοίας πρὸς ἀλλήλους οἱ Ἕλληνες, πάνυ γοῦν ἔφη σοι προσήκει Φίλιππε κήδεσθαι τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ὃς τὸν οἶκον τὸν σεαυτοῦ στάσεως τοσαύτης [14] καὶ κακῶν ἐμπέπληκας. οὕτω δὴ συμφρονήσας ὁ Φίλιππος ἔπεμψε καὶ κατήγαγε πείσας διὰ τοῦ Δημαράτου τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον.

[10] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Πιξώδαρος ὁ Καρίας σατράπης, ὑποδυόμενος δι’ οἰκειότητος εἰς τὴν Φιλίππου συμμαχίαν, ἐβούλετο τὴν πρεσβυτάτην τῶν θυγατέρων Ἀρριδαίῳ τῷ Φιλίππου γυναῖκα δοῦναι καὶ περὶ τούτων Ἀριστόκριτον εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἀπέστειλεν, αὖθις ἐγίνοντο λόγοι καὶ διαβολαὶ παρὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ τῆς μητρὸς πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον, ὡς Ἀρριδαῖον ἐπὶ τῇ βασιλείᾳ Φιλίππου γάμοις λαμπροῖς [2] καὶ πράγμασι μεγάλοις εἰσοικειοῦντος. ὑφ’ ὧν διαταραχθεὶς πέμπει Θεσσαλὸν εἰς Καρίαν τὸν τῶν τραγῳδιῶν ὑποκριτήν, Πιξωδάρῳ διαλεξόμενον ὡς χρὴ τὸν νόθον ἐάσαντα καὶ οὐ φρενήρη μεθαρμόσασθαι τὸ κῆδος εἰς [3] Ἀλέξανδρον. καὶ Πιξωδάρῳ μὲν οὐ παρὰ μικρὸν ἤρεσκε ταῦτα τῶν προτέρων μᾶλλον· ὁ δὲ Φίλιππος αἰσθόμενος †ὄντα τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον, παραλαβὼν τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ καὶ συνήθων ἕνα Φιλώταν τὸν Παρμενίωνος, ἐπετίμησεν ἰσχυρῶς καὶ πικρῶς ἐλοιδόρησεν ὡς ἀγεννῆ καὶ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων περὶ αὐτὸν ἀγαθῶν ἀνάξιον, εἰ Καρὸς ἀνθρώπου καὶ βαρβάρῳ βασιλεῖ δουλεύοντος ἀγαπᾷ [4] γαμβρὸς γενέσθαι. τὸν δὲ Θεσσαλὸν ἔγραψε Κορινθίοις ὅπως ἀναπέμψωσιν ἐν πέδαις δεδεμένον, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἑταίρων Ἅρπαλον καὶ Νέαρχον, ἔτι δ’ Ἐρίγυιον καὶ Πτολεμαῖον ἐκ Μακεδονίας μετέστησεν, οὓς ὕστερον Ἀλέξανδρος καταγαγὼν ἐν ταῖς μεγίσταις ἔσχε τιμαῖς.

[5] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Παυσανίας Ἀττάλου γνώμῃ καὶ Κλεοπάτρας ὑβρισθεὶς καὶ μὴ τυχὼν δίκης ἀνεῖλε Φίλιππον, τὸ μὲν πλεῖστον εἰς Ὀλυμπιάδα τῆς αἰτίας περιῆλθεν, ὡς θυμουμένῳ τῷ νεανίσκῳ προσεγκελευσαμένην καὶ παροξύνασαν, [6] ἔθιγε δέ τις καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου διαβολή. λέγεται γὰρ ἐντυχόντος αὐτῷ τοῦ Παυσανίου μετὰ τὴν ὕβριν ἐκείνην καὶ ἀποδυρομένου προενέγκασθαι τὸ τῆς Μηδείας ἰαμβεῖον (Eur. Med. 288)·

τὸν δόντα καὶ γήμαντα καὶ γαμουμένην.

[7] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς συναιτίους τῆς ἐπιβουλῆς ἀναζητήσας ἐκόλασε, καὶ τὴν Κλεοπάτραν ἀποδημοῦντος αὐτοῦ τῆς Ὀλυμπιάδος ὠμῶς μεταχειρισαμένης ἠγανάκτησε.

[11] [1] Παρέλαβε μὲν οὖν ἔτη γεγονὼς εἴκοσι τὴν βασιλείαν, φθόνους μεγάλους καὶ δεινὰ μίση καὶ κινδύνους [2] πανταχόθεν ἔχουσαν. οὔτε γὰρ τὰ βάρβαρα καὶ πρόσοικα γένη τὴν δούλωσιν ἔφερε, ποθοῦντα τὰς πατρίους βασιλείας, οὔτε τὴν Ἑλλάδα κρατήσας τοῖς ὅπλοις ὁ Φίλιππος οἷον καταζεῦξαι καὶ τιθασεῦσαι χρόνον ἔσχεν, ἀλλὰ μόνον μεταβαλὼν καὶ ταράξας τὰ πράγματα πολὺν [3] σάλον ἔχοντα καὶ κίνησιν ὑπ’ ἀηθείας ἀπέλιπε. φοβουμένων δὲ τῶν Μακεδόνων τὸν καιρόν, καὶ τὰ μὲν Ἑλληνικὰ πάντως ἀφεῖναι καὶ μὴ προσβιάζεσθαι τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον οἰομένων δεῖν, τοὺς δ’ ἀφισταμένους τῶν βαρβάρων ἀνακαλεῖσθαι πρᾴως καὶ θεραπεύειν τὰς ἀρχὰς τῶν [4] νεωτερισμῶν, αὐτὸς ἀπ’ ἐναντίων λογισμῶν ὥρμησε τόλμῃ καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνῃ κτᾶσθαι τὴν ἀσφάλειαν καὶ σωτηρίαν τοῖς πράγμασιν, ὡς κἂν ὁτιοῦν ὑφιέμενος ὀφθῇ τοῦ [5] φρονήματος, ἐπιβησομένων ἁπάντων. τὰ μὲν οὖν βαρβαρικὰ κινήματα καὶ τοὺς ἐκεῖ πολέμους κατέπαυσεν, ὀξέως ἐπιδραμὼν στρατῷ μέχρι πρὸς τὸν Ἴστρον, [ᾗ] καὶ Σύρμον ἐνίκησε μάχῃ μεγάλῃ τὸν βασιλέα τῶν Τριβαλλῶν· [6] Θηβαίους δ’ ἀφεστάναι πυθόμενος καὶ συμφρονεῖν αὐτοῖς Ἀθηναίους, [ἐθέλων ἀνὴρ φανῆναι] εὐθὺς ἦγε διὰ Πυλῶν τὴν δύναμιν, εἰπὼν ὅτι Δημοσθένει, παῖδα μὲν αὐτὸν ἕως ἦν ἐν Ἰλλυριοῖς καὶ Τριβαλλοῖς ἀποκαλοῦντι, μειράκιον δὲ περὶ Θετταλίαν γενόμενον, βούλεται πρὸς τοῖς [7] Ἀθηναίων τείχεσιν ἀνὴρ φανῆναι. προσμείξας δὲ ταῖς Θήβαις καὶ διδοὺς ἔτι τῶν πεπραγμένων μετάνοιαν, ἐξῄτει Φοίνικα καὶ Προθύτην καὶ τοῖς μεταβαλλομένοις [8] πρὸς αὐτὸν ἄδειαν ἐκήρυττε. τῶν δὲ Θηβαίων ἀντεξαιτούντων μὲν παρ’ αὐτοῦ Φιλώταν καὶ Ἀντίπατρον, κηρυττόντων δὲ τοὺς τὴν Ἑλλάδα βουλομένους συνελευθεροῦν τάττεσθαι μετ’ αὐτῶν, οὕτως ἔτρεψε τοὺς Μακεδόνας [9] πρὸς πόλεμον. ἠγωνίσθη μὲν οὖν ὑπὲρ δύναμιν ἀρετῇ καὶ προθυμίᾳ τὰ παρὰ τῶν Θηβαίων, πολλαπλασίοις οὖσι [10] τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀντιταχθέντων· ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν Καδμείαν ἀφέντες οἱ φρουροὶ τῶν Μακεδόνων ἐπέπιπτον αὐτοῖς ἐξόπισθεν, κυκλωθέντες οἱ πλεῖστοι κατὰ τὴν μάχην αὐτὴν ἔπεσον, ἡ δὲ πόλις ἥλω καὶ διαρπασθεῖσα κατεσκάφη, [11] τὸ μὲν ὅλον προσδοκήσαντος αὐτοῦ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐκπλαγέντας πάθει τηλικούτῳ καὶ πτήξαντας ἀτρεμήσειν, ἄλλως δὲ καὶ καλλωπισαμένου χαρίζεσθαι τοῖς τῶν συμμάχων ἐγκλήμασι· καὶ γὰρ Φωκεῖς καὶ Πλαταιεῖς [12] τῶν Θηβαίων κατηγόρησαν. ὑπεξελόμενος δὲ τοὺς ἱερεῖς καὶ τοὺς ξένους τῶν Μακεδόνων ἅπαντας καὶ τοὺς ἀπὸ Πινδάρου γεγονότας καὶ τοὺς ὑπεναντιωθέντας τοῖς ψηφισαμένοις τὴν ἀπόστασιν, ἀπέδοτο τοὺς ἄλλους, περὶ τρισμυρίους γενομένους· οἱ δ’ ἀποθανόντες ὑπὲρ ἑξακισχιλίους ἦσαν.

[12] [1] Ἐν δὲ τοῖς πολλοῖς πάθεσι καὶ χαλεποῖς ἐκείνοις ἃ τὴν πόλιν κατεῖχε Θρᾷκές τινες ἐκκόψαντες οἰκίαν Τιμοκλείας, γυναικὸς ἐνδόξου καὶ σώφρονος, αὐτοὶ μὲν τὰ χρήματα διήρπαζον, ὁ δ’ ἡγεμὼν τῇ γυναικὶ πρὸς βίαν συγγενόμενος καὶ καταισχύνας, ἀνέκρινεν εἴ που χρυσίον [2] ἔχοι κεκρυμμένον ἢ ἀργύριον. ἡ δ’ ἔχειν ὡμολόγησε, καὶ μόνον εἰς τὸν κῆπον ἀγαγοῦσα καὶ δείξασα φρέαρ, ἐνταῦθ’ ἔφη τῆς πόλεως ἁλισκομένης καταβαλεῖν αὐτὴ τὰ τιμιώτατα [3] τῶν χρημάτων. ἐγκύπτοντος δὲ τοῦ Θρᾳκὸς καὶ κατασκεπτομένου τὸν τόπον, ἔωσεν αὐτὸν ἐξόπισθεν γενομένη, καὶ τῶν λίθων ἐπεμβαλοῦσα πολλοὺς ἀπέκτεινεν.

[4] ὡς δ’ ἀνήχθη πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ὑπὸ τῶν Θρᾳκῶν δεδεμένη, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς ὄψεως καὶ τῆς βαδίσεως ἐφάνη τις ἀξιωματικὴ καὶ μεγαλόφρων, ἀνεκπλήκτως καὶ [5] ἀδεῶς ἑπομένη τοῖς ἄγουσιν· ἔπειτα τοῦ βασιλέως ἐρωτήσαντος ἥτις εἴη γυναικῶν, ἀπεκρίνατο Θεαγένους ἀδελφὴ γεγονέναι τοῦ παραταξαμένου πρὸς Φίλιππον ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐλευθερίας καὶ πεσόντος ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ [6] στρατηγοῦντος. θαυμάσας οὖν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος αὐτῆς καὶ τὴν ἀπόκρισιν καὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν, ἐκέλευσεν ἐλευθέραν ἀπιέναι μετὰ τῶν τέκνων.

[13] [1] Ἀθηναίοις δὲ διηλλάγη, καίπερ οὐ μετρίως ἐνεγκοῦσι τὸ περὶ Θήβας δυστύχημα· καὶ γὰρ τὴν τῶν μυστηρίων ἑορτὴν ἐν χερσὶν ἔχοντες ὑπὸ πένθους ἀφῆκαν, καὶ τοῖς καταφυγοῦσιν ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν ἁπάντων [2] μετεδίδοσαν τῶν φιλανθρώπων. ἀλλ’ εἴτε μεστὸς ὢν ἤδη τὸν θυμὸν ὥσπερ οἱ λέοντες, εἴτ’ ἐπιεικὲς ἔργον ὠμοτάτῳ καὶ σκυθρωποτάτῳ παραβαλεῖν βουλόμενος, οὐ μόνον ἀφῆκεν αἰτίας πάσης, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσέχειν ἐκέλευσε τοῖς πράγμασι τὸν νοῦν τὴν πόλιν, ὡς εἴ τι συμβαίη [3] περὶ αὐτὸν, ἄρξουσαν τῆς Ἑλλάδος. ὕστερον μέντοι πολλάκις αὐτὸν ἡ Θηβαίων ἀνιᾶσαι συμφορὰ λέγεται καὶ [4] πρᾳότερον οὐκ ὀλίγοις παρασχεῖν. ὅλως δὲ καὶ τὸ περὶ Κλεῖτον ἔργον ἐν οἴνῳ γενόμενον, καὶ τὴν πρὸς Ἰνδοὺς τῶν Μακεδόνων ἀποδειλίασιν, ὥσπερ ἀτελῆ τὴν στρατείαν καὶ τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ προεμένων, εἰς μῆνιν ἀνῆγε [5] Διονύσου καὶ νέμεσιν. ἦν δὲ Θηβαίων οὐδεὶς τῶν περιγενομένων, ὃς ἐντυχών τι καὶ δεηθεὶς ὕστερον οὐ διεπράξατο παρ’ αὐτοῦ. ταῦτα μὲν τὰ περὶ Θήβας.

[14] [1] Εἰς δὲ τὸν Ἰσθμὸν τῶν Ἑλλήνων συλλεγέντων καὶ ψηφισαμένων ἐπὶ Πέρσας μετ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου στρατεύειν, [2] ἡγεμὼν ἀνηγορεύθη. πολλῶν δὲ καὶ πολιτικῶν ἀνδρῶν καὶ φιλοσόφων ἀπηντηκότων αὐτῷ καὶ συνηδομένων, ἤλπιζε καὶ Διογένην τὸν Σινωπέα ταὐτὸ ποιήσειν, διατρίβοντα [3] περὶ Κόρινθον. ὡς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἐλάχιστον Ἀλεξάνδρου λόγον ἔχων ἐν τῷ Κρανείῳ σχολὴν ἦγεν, αὐτὸς ἐπορεύετο πρὸς αὐτόν· ἔτυχε δὲ κατακείμενος ἐν ἡλίῳ.

[4] καὶ μικρὸν μὲν ἀνεκάθισεν, ἀνθρώπων τοσούτων ἐπερχομένων, καὶ διέβλεψεν εἰς τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον. ὡς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἀσπασάμενος καὶ προσειπὼν αὐτὸν ἠρώτησεν, εἴ τινος τυγχάνει δεόμενος, μικρὸν εἶπεν· ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου [5] μετάστηθι. πρὸς τοῦτο λέγεται τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον οὕτω διατεθῆναι καὶ θαυμάσαι καταφρονηθέντα τὴν ὑπεροψίαν καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὥστε τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ὡς ἀπῄεσαν διαγελώντων καὶ σκωπτόντων, ἀλλὰ μὴν ἐγὼ εἶπεν εἰ μὴ Ἀλέξανδρος ἤμην, Διογένης ἂν ἤμην.

[6] Βουλόμενος δὲ τῷ θεῷ χρήσασθαι περὶ τῆς στρατείας, ἦλθεν εἰς Δελφούς, καὶ κατὰ τύχην ἡμερῶν ἀποφράδων οὐσῶν, ἐν αἷς οὐ νενόμισται θεμιστεύειν, πρῶτον μὲν [7] ἔπεμπε παρακαλῶν τὴν πρόμαντιν. ὡς δ’ ἀρνουμένης καὶ προϊσχομένης τὸν νόμον αὐτὸς ἀναβὰς βίᾳ πρὸς τὸν ναὸν εἷλκεν αὐτήν, ἡ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐξηττημένη τῆς σπουδῆς εἶπεν· ἀνίκητος εἶ ὦ παῖ, τοῦτ’ ἀκούσας ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος οὐκέτ’ ἔφη χρῄζειν ἑτέρου μαντεύματος, ἀλλ’ ἔχειν ὃν ἐβούλετο παρ’ αὐτῆς χρησμόν.

[8] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὥρμησε πρὸς τὴν στρατείαν, ἄλλα τ’ ἐδόκει σημεῖα παρὰ τοῦ δαιμονίου γενέσθαι, καὶ τὸ περὶ Λείβηθρα τοῦ Ὀρφέως ξόανον (ἦν δὲ κυπαρίττινον) ἱδρῶτα [9] πολὺν ὑπὸ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας ἀφῆκε. φοβουμένων δὲ πάντων τὸ σημεῖον, Ἀρίστανδρος ἐκέλευε θαρρεῖν, ὡς ἀοιδίμους καὶ περιβοήτους κατεργασόμενον πράξεις, αἳ πολὺν ἱδρῶτα καὶ πόνον ὑμνοῦσι ποιηταῖς καὶ μουσικοῖς παρέξουσι.

[15] [1] Τῆς δὲ στρατιᾶς τὸ πλῆθος οἱ μὲν ἐλάχιστον λέγοντες τρισμυρίους πεζοὺς καὶ τετρακισχιλίους ἱππεῖς, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστον πεζοὺς μὲν τετρακισμυρίους καὶ τρισχιλίους, [2] ἱππέας δὲ πεντακισχιλίους ἀναγράφουσιν. ἐφόδιον δὲ τούτοις οὐ πλέον ἑβδομήκοντα ταλάντων ἔχειν αὐτὸν Ἀριστόβουλος (FGrH 139 F 4) ἱστορεῖ, Δοῦρις δὲ (FGrH 76 F 40) τριάκοντα μόνον ἡμερῶν διατροφήν, Ὀνησίκριτος δὲ (FGrH 134 F 2) καὶ διακόσια τάλαντα προσοφείλειν.

[3] ἀλλὰ καίπερ ἀπὸ μικρῶν καὶ στενῶν οὕτως ὁρμώμενος, οὐ πρότερον ἐπέβη τῆς νεώς, ἢ τὰ τῶν ἑταίρων πράγματα σκεψάμενος ἀπονεῖμαι τῷ μὲν ἀγρόν, τῷ δὲ κώμην, τῷ δὲ [4] συνοικίας πρόσοδον ἢ λιμένος. ἤδη δὲ κατανηλωμένων καὶ διαγεγραμμένων σχεδὸν ἁπάντων τῶν βασιλικῶν, ὁ Περδίκκας σεαυτῷ δ’ εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ τί καταλείπεις; τοῦ δὲ φήσαντος ὅτι τὰς ἐλπίδας, οὐκοῦν ἔφη καὶ ἡμεῖς τούτων κοινωνήσομεν οἱ μετὰ σοῦ στρατευόμενοι. [5] παραιτησαμένου δὲ τοῦ Περδίκκου τὴν διαγεγραμμένην κτῆσιν αὐτῷ, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων φίλων ἔνιοι τὸ αὐτὸ ἐποίησαν.

[6] τοῖς δὲ λαμβάνουσι καὶ δεομένοις προθύμως ἐχαρίζετο, καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ διανέμων οὕτως κατηνάλωσε.

[7] Τοιαύτῃ μὲν ‹οὖν› ὁρμῇ καὶ παρασκευῇ διανοίας τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον διεπέρασεν. ἀναβὰς δ’ εἰς Ἴλιον, ἔθυσε τῇ [8] Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ τοῖς ἥρωσιν ἔσπεισε. τὴν δ’ Ἀχιλλέως στήλην ἀλειψάμενος λίπα, καὶ μετὰ τῶν ἑταίρων συναναδραμὼν γυμνὸς ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστίν, ἐστεφάνωσε, μακαρίσας αὐτὸν ὅτι καὶ ζῶν φίλου πιστοῦ καὶ τελευτήσας μεγάλου κήρυκος [9] ἔτυχεν. ἐν δὲ τῷ περιϊέναι καὶ θεᾶσθαι τὰ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν ἐρομένου τινὸς αὐτόν, εἰ βούλεται τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου λύραν ἰδεῖν, ἐλάχιστα φροντίζειν ἐκείνης ἔφη, τὴν δ’ Ἀχιλλέως ζητεῖν, ᾗ τὰ κλέα καὶ τὰς πράξεις ὕμνει τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐκεῖνος.

[16] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ τῶν Δαρείου στρατηγῶν μεγάλην δύναμιν ἡθροικότων καὶ παρατεταγμένων ἐπὶ τῇ διαβάσει τοῦ Γρανικοῦ, μάχεσθαι μὲν ἴσως ἀναγκαῖον ἦν, ὥσπερ ἐν πύλαις τῆς Ἀσίας, περὶ τῆς εἰσόδου καὶ ἀρχῆς· [2] τοῦ δὲ ποταμοῦ τὸ βάθος καὶ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν καὶ τραχύτητα τῶν πέραν ὄχθων, πρὸς οὓς ἔδει γίνεσθαι τὴν ἀπόβασιν μετὰ μάχης, τῶν πλείστων δεδιότων, ἐνίων δὲ καὶ τὸ περὶ τὸν μῆνα νενομισμένον οἰομένων δεῖν φυλάξασθαι (Δαισίου γὰρ οὐκ εἰώθεισαν οἱ βασιλεῖς τῶν Μακεδόνων ἐξάγειν τὴν στρατιάν), τοῦτο μὲν ἐπηνωρθώσατο, [3] κελεύσας δεύτερον Ἀρτεμίσιον ἄγειν· τοῦ δὲ Παρμενίωνος, ὡς ὀψὲ τῆς ὥρας οὔσης, οὐκ ἐῶντος ἀποκινδυνεύειν, εἰπὼν αἰσχύνεσθαι τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον, εἰ φοβήσεται τὸν Γρανικὸν διαβεβηκὼς ἐκεῖνον, ἐμβάλλει τῷ ῥεύματι σὺν [4] ἴλαις ἱππέων τρισκαίδεκα· καὶ πρὸς ἐναντία βέλη καὶ τόπους ἀπορρῶγας ὅπλοις καταπεφραγμένους καὶ ἵπποις ἐλαύνων, καὶ διὰ ῥεύματος παραφέροντος καὶ περικλύζοντος, ἔδοξε μανικῶς καὶ πρὸς ἀπόνοιαν μᾶλλον ἢ γνώμῃ [5] στρατηγεῖν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐμφὺς τῇ διαβάσει καὶ κρατήσας τῶν τόπων χαλεπῶς καὶ μόλις, ὑγρῶν καὶ περισφαλῶν γενομένων διὰ τὸν πηλόν, εὐθὺς ἠναγκάζετο φύρδην μάχεσθαι καὶ κατ’ ἄνδρα συμπλέκεσθαι τοῖς ἐπιφερομένοις, [6] πρὶν εἰς τάξιν τινὰ καταστῆναι τοὺς διαβαίνοντας. ἐνέκειντο γὰρ κραυγῇ, καὶ τοὺς ἵππους παραβάλλοντες τοῖς ἵπποις ἐχρῶντο δόρασι καὶ ξίφεσι τῶν δοράτων συντριβέντων.

[7] ὠσαμένων δὲ πολλῶν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν (ἦν δὲ τῇ πέλτῃ καὶ τοῦ κράνους τῇ χαίτῃ διαπρεπής, ἧς ἑκατέρωθεν εἱστήκει πτερὸν λευκότητι καὶ μεγέθει θαυμαστόν), ἀκοντισθεὶς μὲν ὑπὸ τὴν ὑποπτυχίδα τοῦ θώρακος οὐκ ἐτρώθη, [8] Ῥοισάκου δὲ καὶ Σπιθριδάτου τῶν στρατηγῶν προσφερομένων ἅμα, τὸν μὲν ἐκκλίνας, Ῥοισάκῃ δὲ προεμβαλὼν τεθωρακισμένῳ τὸ δόρυ καὶ κατακλάσας, οὕτως [9] ἐπὶ τὸ ἐγχειρίδιον ὥρμησε. συμπεπτωκότων δ’ αὐτῶν, ὁ Σπιθριδάτης ὑποστήσας ἐκ πλαγίων τὸν ἵππον καὶ μετὰ [10] σπουδῆς συνεξαναστάς, κοπίδι βαρβαρικῇ κατήνεγκε, καὶ τὸν μὲν λόφον ἀπέρραξε μετὰ θατέρου πτεροῦ, τὸ δὲ κράνος πρὸς τὴν πληγὴν ἀκριβῶς καὶ μόλις ἀντέσχεν, ὥστε τῶν πρώτων ψαῦσαι τριχῶν τὴν πτέρυγα τῆς κοπίδος.

[11] ἑτέραν δὲ τὸν Σπιθριδάτην πάλιν ἐπαιρόμενον ἔφθασε Κλεῖτος ὁ μέλας τῷ ξυστῷ διελάσας μέσον· ὁμοῦ δὲ καὶ Ῥοισάκης ἔπεσεν, ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου ξίφει [12] πληγείς. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ κινδύνου καὶ ἀγῶνος οὔσης τῆς ἱππομαχίας, ἥ τε φάλαγξ διέβαινε τῶν Μακεδόνων, καὶ [13] συνῆγον αἱ πεζαὶ δυνάμεις. οὐ μὴν ὑπέστησαν εὐρώστως οὐδὲ πολὺν χρόνον, ἀλλ’ ἔφυγον τραπόμενοι πλὴν τῶν μισθοφόρων Ἑλλήνων· οὗτοι δὲ πρός τινι λόφῳ [14] συστάντες, ᾔτουν τὰ πιστὰ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον. ὁ δὲ θυμῷ μᾶλλον ἢ λογισμῷ πρῶτος ἐμβαλών, τόν θ’ ἵππον ἀποβάλλει ξίφει πληγέντα διὰ τῶν πλευρῶν (ἦν δ’ ἕτερος, οὐχ ὁ Βουκεφάλας), καὶ τοὺς πλείστους τῶν ἀποθανόντων καὶ τραυματισθέντων ἐκεῖ συνέβη κινδυνεῦσαι καὶ πεσεῖν, πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ἀπεγνωκότας καὶ μαχίμους συμπλεκομένους.

[15] λέγονται δὲ πεζοὶ μὲν δισμύριοι τῶν βαρβάρων, ἱππεῖς δὲ δισχίλιοι πεντακόσιοι πεσεῖν. τῶν δὲ περὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον Ἀριστόβουλός φησι (FGrH 139 F 5) τέσσαρας καὶ τριάκοντα νεκροὺς γενέσθαι τοὺς πάντας, ὧν ἐννέα [16] πεζοὺς εἶναι. τούτων μὲν οὖν ἐκέλευσεν εἰκόνας ἀνασταθῆναι [17] χαλκᾶς, ἃς Λύσιππος εἰργάσατο. κοινούμενος δὲ τὴν νίκην τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἰδίᾳ μὲν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἔπεμψε τῶν αἰχμαλώτων τριακοσίας ἀσπίδας, κοινῇ δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις λαφύροις ἐκέλευσεν ἐπιγράψαι φιλοτιμοτάτην [18] ἐπιγραφήν· Ἀλέξανδρος [ὁ] Φιλίππου καὶ οἱ Ἕλληνες πλὴν Λακεδαιμονίων ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων τῶν τὴν Ἀσίαν [19] κατοικούντων. ἐκπώματα δὲ καὶ πορφύρας καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα τῶν Περσικῶν ἔλαβε, πάντα τῇ μητρὶ πλὴν ὀλίγων ἔπεμψεν.

[17] [1] Οὗτος ὁ ἀγὼν μεγάλην εὐθὺς ἐποίησε τῶν πραγμάτων μεταβολὴν πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον, ὥστε καὶ Σάρδεις, τὸ πρόσχημα τῆς ἐπὶ θαλάσσῃ τῶν βαρβάρων ἡγεμονίας, [2] παραλαβεῖν καὶ τἆλλα προστίθεσθαι. μόνη δ’ Ἁλικαρνασσὸς ἀντέστη καὶ Μίλητος, ἃς ἑλὼν κατὰ κράτος καὶ τὰ περὶ αὐτὰς πάντα χειρωσάμενος, ἀμφίβολος ἦν πρὸς τὰ [3] λοιπὰ τῇ γνώμῃ. καὶ πολλάκις μὲν ἔσπευδε Δαρείῳ συμπεσὼν ἀποκινδυνεῦσαι περὶ τῶν ὅλων, πολλάκις δὲ τοῖς ἐπὶ θαλάσσῃ πράγμασι καὶ χρήμασι διενοεῖτο πρῶτον οἷον ἐνασκήσας καὶ ῥώσας αὑτόν, οὕτως ἀναβαίνειν ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον.

[4] Ἔστι δὲ τῆς Λυκίας κρήνη παρὰ τὴν Ξανθίων πόλιν, ἧς τότε λέγουσιν αὐτομάτως περιτραπείσης καὶ ὑπερβαλούσης ἐκ βυθοῦ δέλτον ἐκπεσεῖν χαλκῆν, τύπους ἔχουσαν ἀρχαίων γραμμάτων, ἐν οἷς ἐδηλοῦτο παύσεσθαι [5] τὴν Περσῶν ἀρχὴν ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων καταλυθεῖσαν. τούτοις ἐπαρθείς, ἠπείγετο τὴν παραλίαν ἀνακαθήρασθαι μέχρι [6] τῆς Φοινίκης καὶ Κιλικίας. ἡ δὲ τῆς Παμφυλίας παραδρομὴ πολλοῖς γέγονε τῶν ἱστορικῶν ὑπόθεσις γραφικὴ πρὸς ἔκπληξιν καὶ ὄγκον, ὡς θείᾳ τινὶ τύχῃ παραχωρήσασαν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τὴν θάλασσαν, ἄλλως ἀεὶ τραχεῖαν ἐκ πελάγους προσφερομένην, σπανίως δέ ποτε λεπτοὺς καὶ περιηχεῖς ὑπὸ τὰ κρημνώδη καὶ παρερρωγότα τῆς [7] ὀρεινῆς πάγους διακαλύπτουσαν. δηλοῖ δὲ καὶ Μένανδρος, ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ παίζων πρὸς τὸ παράδοξον (fg. 751 K.Th.)·

ὡς Ἀλεξανδρῶδες ἤδη τοῦτο· κἂν ζητῶ τινα,

αὐτόματος οὗτος παρέσται· κἂν διελθεῖν δηλαδή

διὰ θαλάσσης δέῃ τόπον τιν’, οὗτος ἔσται μοι βατός.

[8] αὐτὸς δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς οὐδὲν τοιοῦτον τερατευσάμενος, ὁδοποιῆσαί φησι τὴν λεγομένην Κλίμακα [9] καὶ διελθεῖν ὁρμήσας ἐκ Φασηλίδος. διὸ καὶ πλείονας ἡμέρας ἐν τῇ πόλει διέτριψεν· ἐν αἷς καὶ Θεοδέκτου τεθνηκότος (ἦν δὲ Φασηλίτης) ἰδὼν εἰκόνα [ἀνα]κειμένην ἐν ἀγορᾷ, μετὰ δεῖπνον ἐπεκώμασε μεθύων καὶ τῶν στεφάνων ἐπέρριψε πολλούς, οὐκ ἄχαριν ἀποδιδοὺς ἐν παιδιᾷ τιμὴν τῇ γενομένῃ δι’ Ἀριστοτέλην καὶ φιλοσοφίαν ὁμιλίᾳ πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα.

[18] [1] Μετὰ ταῦτα Πισιδῶν τε τοὺς ἀντιστάντας ᾕρει καὶ [2] Φρυγίαν ἐχειροῦτο· καὶ Γόρδιον πόλιν, ἑστίαν Μίδου τοῦ παλαιοῦ γενέσθαι λεγομένην, παραλαβών, τὴν θρυλουμένην ἅμαξαν εἶδε, φλοιῷ κρανείας ἐνδεδεμένην, καὶ λόγον ἐπ’ αὐτῇ πιστευόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων ἤκουσεν, ὡς τῷ λύσαντι τὸν δεσμὸν εἵμαρται βασιλεῖ γενέσθαι τῆς [3] οἰκουμένης. οἱ μὲν οὖν πολλοί φασι, τῶν δεσμῶν τυφλὰς ἐχόντων τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ δι’ ἀλλήλων πολλάκις σκολιοῖς ἑλιγμοῖς ὑποφερομένων, τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἀμηχανοῦντα λῦσαι, διατεμεῖν τῇ μαχαίρᾳ τὸ σύναμμα, καὶ πολλὰς [4] ἐξ αὐτοῦ κοπέντος ἀρχὰς φανῆναι. Ἀριστόβουλος δὲ (FGrH 139 F 75) καὶ πάνυ λέγει ῥᾳδίαν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τὴν λύσιν, ἐξελόντι τοῦ ῥυμοῦ τὸν ἕστορα καλούμενον, ᾧ συνείχετο τὸ ζυγόδεσμον, εἶθ’ οὕτως ὑφελκύσαντι τὸν ζυγόν.

[5] Ἐντεῦθεν Παφλαγόνας τε καὶ Καππαδόκας προσαγαγόμενος, καὶ τὴν Μέμνονος ἀκούσας τελευτήν, ὃς τῶν ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ Δαρείου στρατηγῶν ἐπίδοξος ἦν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ πολλὰ πράγματα καὶ μυρίας ἀντιλήψεις καὶ ἀσχολίας παρέξειν, ἐπερρώσθη πρὸς τὴν ἄνω στρατείαν μᾶλλον.

[6] Ἤδη δὲ καὶ Δαρεῖος ἐκ Σούσων κατέβαινεν, ἐπαιρόμενός τε τῷ πλήθει τῆς δυνάμεως (ἑξήκοντα γὰρ ἦγε μυριάδας στρατοῦ), καί τινος ὀνείρου θαρρύνοντος αὐτόν, ὃν οἱ μάγοι πρὸς χάριν ἐξηγοῦντο μᾶλλον ἢ κατὰ τὸ [7] εἰκός. ἔδοξε γὰρ πυρὶ νέμεσθαι πολλῷ τὴν Μακεδόνων φάλαγγα, τὸν δ’ Ἀλέξανδρον ἔχοντα στολήν, ἣν αὐτὸς ἐφόρει πρότερον ἀστάνδης ὢν βασιλέως, ὑπηρετεῖν αὐτῷ· παρελθόντα δ’ εἰς τὸ τοῦ Βήλου τέμενος, ἀφανῆ γενέσθαι.

[8] διὰ τούτων ὡς ἔοικεν ὑπεδηλοῦτο παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ λαμπρὰ μὲν γενήσεσθαι καὶ περιφανῆ τὰ τῶν Μακεδόνων, Ἀλέξανδρον δὲ τῆς μὲν Ἀσίας κρατήσειν, ὥσπερ ἐκράτησε Δαρεῖος, ἐξ ἀστάνδου βασιλεὺς γενόμενος, ταχὺ δὲ σὺν δόξῃ τὸν βίον ἀπολείψειν.

[19] [1] Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐθάρρησε καταγνοὺς δειλίαν Ἀλεξάνδρου, [2] πολὺν χρόνον ἐν Κιλικίᾳ διατρίψαντος. ἦν δ’ ἡ διατριβὴ διὰ νόσον, ἣν οἱ μὲν ἐκ κόπων, οἱ δ’ ἐν τῷ τοῦ Κύδνου ῥεύματι λουσαμένῳ ‹καὶ› καταπαγέντι προσπεσεῖν [3] λέγουσι. τῶν μὲν οὖν ἄλλων ἰατρῶν οὐδεὶς ἐθάρρει βοηθεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὸν κίνδυνον οἰόμενοι πάσης ἰσχυρότερον εἶναι βοηθείας, ἐφοβοῦντο τὴν ἐκ τοῦ σφαλῆναι διαβολὴν [4] πρὸς τοὺς Μακεδόνας· Φίλιππος δ’ ὁ Ἀκαρνὰν μοχθηρὰ μὲν ἑώρα τὰ περὶ αὐτὸν ὄντα, τῇ δὲ φιλίᾳ πιστεύων, καὶ δεινὸν ἡγούμενος εἰ κινδυνεύοντι μὴ συγκινδυνεύσει, μέχρι τῆς ἐσχάτης πείρας βοηθῶν καὶ παραβαλλόμενος, ἐπεχείρησε φαρμακείᾳ καὶ συνέπεισεν αὐτὸν ὑπομεῖναι καὶ [5] πιεῖν, σπεύδοντα ῥωσθῆναι πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Παρμενίων ἔπεμψεν ἐπιστολὴν ἀπὸ στρατοπέδου, διακελευόμενος αὐτῷ φυλάξασθαι τὸν Φίλιππον, ὡς ὑπὸ Δαρείου πεπεισμένον ἐπὶ δωρεαῖς μεγάλαις καὶ γάμῳ θυγατρὸς ἀνελεῖν Ἀλέξανδρον. ὁ δὲ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἀναγνοὺς καὶ μηδενὶ δείξας τῶν φίλων ὑπὸ τὸ προσκεφάλαιον [6] ὑπέθηκεν. ὡς δὲ τοῦ καιροῦ παρόντος εἰσῆλθε μετὰ τῶν ἑταίρων ὁ Φίλιππος, τὸ φάρμακον ἐν κύλικι κομίζων, ἐκείνῳ μὲν ἐπέδωκε τὴν ἐπιστολήν, αὐτὸς δὲ [7] τὸ φάρμακον ἐδέξατο προθύμως καὶ ἀνυπόπτως, ὥστε θαυμαστὴν καὶ θεατρικὴν τὴν ὄψιν εἶναι, τοῦ μὲν ἀναγινώσκοντος, τοῦ δὲ πίνοντος, εἶθ’ ἅμα πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀποβλεπόντων οὐχ ὁμοίως, ἀλλὰ τοῦ μὲν Ἀλεξάνδρου φαιδρῷ τῷ προσώπῳ καὶ διακεχυμένῳ τὴν πρὸς τὸν [8] Φίλιππον εὐμένειαν καὶ πίστιν ἀποφαίνοντος, ἐκείνου δὲ πρὸς τὴν διαβολὴν ἐξισταμένου, καὶ ποτὲ μὲν θεοκλυτοῦντος καὶ πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνατείνοντος τὰς χεῖρας, ποτὲ δὲ τῇ κλίνῃ περιπίπτοντος καὶ παρακαλοῦντος τὸν [9] Ἀλέξανδρον εὐθυμεῖν καὶ προσέχειν αὐτῷ. τὸ γὰρ φάρμακον ἐν ἀρχῇ κρατῆσαν τοῦ σώματος οἷον ἀπέωσε καὶ κατέδυσεν εἰς βάθος τὴν δύναμιν, ὥστε καὶ φωνὴν ἐπιλιπεῖν καὶ τὰ περὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀσαφῆ καὶ μικρὰ κομιδῇ [10] γενέσθαι, λιποθυμίας ἐπιπεσούσης. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ταχέως ἀναληφθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Φιλίππου καὶ ῥαΐσας, αὑτὸν ἐπέδειξε τοῖς Μακεδόσιν· οὐ γὰρ ἐπαύοντο πρὶν ἰδεῖν τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἀθυμοῦντες.

[20] [1] Ἦν δέ τις ἐν τῷ Δαρείου στρατῷ πεφευγὼς ἐκ Μακεδονίας ἀνὴρ Μακεδών, Ἀμύντας, οὐκ ἄπειρος τῆς [2] Ἀλεξάνδρου φύσεως. οὗτος ὡρμημένον ἰδὼν Δαρεῖον εἴσω τῶν στενῶν βαδίζειν ἐπ’ Ἀλέξανδρον, ἐδεῖτο κατὰ χώραν ὑπομένειν ἐν πλάτος ἔχουσι πεδίοις καὶ ἀναπεπταμένοις, [3] πρὸς ἐλάττονας πλήθει τοσούτῳ διαμαχούμενον. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ Δαρείου δεδιέναι μὴ φθάσωσιν αὐτὸν ἀποδράντες οἱ πολέμιοι καὶ διαφυγὼν Ἀλέξανδρος, ἀλλὰ τούτου γ’ εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ χάριν θάρρει· βαδιεῖται [4] γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ἐπὶ σέ, καὶ σχεδὸν ἤδη βαδίζει. ταῦτα λέγων Ἀμύντας οὐκ ἔπειθεν, ἀλλ’ ἀναστὰς ἐπορεύετο Δαρεῖος εἰς Κιλικίαν, ἅμα δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος εἰς Συρίαν ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον.

[5] ἐν δὲ τῇ νυκτὶ διαμαρτόντες ἀλλήλων, αὖθις ἀνέστρεφον, Ἀλέξανδρος μὲν ἡδόμενός τε τῇ συντυχίᾳ καὶ σπεύδων ἀπαντῆσαι περὶ τὰ στενά, Δαρεῖος δὲ τὴν προτέραν ἀναλαβεῖν στρατοπεδείαν καὶ τῶν στενῶν ἐξελίξαι τὴν [6] δύναμιν. ἤδη γὰρ ἐγνώκει παρὰ τὸ συμφέρον ἐμβεβληκὼς ἑαυτὸν εἰς χωρία θαλάττῃ καὶ ὄρεσι καὶ ποταμῷ διὰ μέσου ῥέοντι τῷ Πινάρῳ δύσιππα καὶ διεσπασμένα πολλαχοῦ καὶ πρὸς τῆς ὀλιγότητος τῶν πολεμίων ἔχοντα τὴν θέσιν.

[7] Ἀλεξάνδρῳ δὲ τὸν μὲν τόπον ἡ τύχη παρέσχεν, ἐστρατήγησε δὲ τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς τύχης ὑπαρχόντων πρὸς τὸ νικῆσαι [8] βέλτιον, ὅς γε τοσούτῳ πλήθει τῶν βαρβάρων λειπόμενος, ἐκείνοις μὲν οὐ παρέσχε κύκλωσιν, αὐτὸς δὲ τῷ δεξιῷ τὸ εὐώνυμον ὑπερβαλὼν καὶ γενόμενος κατὰ κέρας, φυγὴν ἐποίησε τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν βαρβάρων, ἐν πρώτοις ἀγωνιζόμενος, ὥστε τρωθῆναι ξίφει τὸν μηρόν, ὡς μὲν Χάρης φησίν (FGrH 125 F 6) ὑπὸ Δαρείου (συμπεσεῖν γὰρ [9] αὐτοὺς εἰς χεῖρας)· Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ περὶ τῆς μάχης ἐπιστέλλων τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἀντίπατρον οὐκ εἴρηκεν ὅστις ἦν ὁ τρώσας, ὅτι δὲ τρωθείη τὸν μηρὸν ἐγχειριδίῳ, δυσχερὲς δ’ οὐδὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ τραύματος συμβαίη, γέγραφε.

[10] νικήσας δὲ λαμπρῶς καὶ καταβαλὼν ὑπὲρ ἕνδεκα μυριάδας τῶν πολεμίων, Δαρεῖον μὲν οὐχ εἷλε, τέτταρας σταδίους ἢ πέντε προλαβόντα τῇ φυγῇ, τὸ δ’ ἅρμα καὶ τὸ [11] τόξον αὐτοῦ λαβὼν ἐπανῆλθε· καὶ κατέλαβε τοὺς Μακεδόνας τὸν μὲν ἄλλον πλοῦτον ἐκ τοῦ βαρβαρικοῦ στρατοπέδου φέροντας καὶ ἄγοντας, ὑπερβάλλοντα πλήθει, καίπερ εὐζώνων πρὸς τὴν μάχην παραγενομένων καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῆς ἀποσκευῆς ἐν Δαμασκῷ καταλιπόντων, τὴν δὲ Δαρείου σκηνὴν ἐξῃρηκότας ἐκείνῳ, θεραπείας τε λαμπρᾶς καὶ παρασκευῆς καὶ χρημάτων πολλῶν γέμουσαν.

[12] εὐθὺς οὖν ἀποδυσάμενος τὰ ὅπλα πρὸς τὸ λουτρὸν ἐβάδιζεν εἰπών· ἴωμεν ἀπολουσόμενοι τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης ἱδρῶτα τῷ Δαρείου λουτρῷ. καί τις τῶν ἑταίρων μὰ τὸν Δία εἶπεν, ἀλλὰ τῷ Ἀλεξάνδρου· τὰ γὰρ τῶν ἡττωμένων εἶναί τε δεῖ καὶ προσαγορεύεσθαι [13] τοῦ κρατοῦντος. ὡς δ’ εἶδε μὲν ὅλκια καὶ κρωσσοὺς καὶ πυέλους καὶ ἀλαβάστρους, πάντα χρυσοῦ, ‹δι›ησκημένα περιττῶς, ὠδώδει δὲ θεσπέσιον οἷον ὑπ’ ἀρωμάτων καὶ μύρων ὁ οἶκος, ἐκ δὲ τούτου παρῆλθεν εἰς σκηνὴν ὕψει τε καὶ μεγέθει καὶ τῷ περὶ τὴν στρωμνὴν καὶ ‹τὰς› τραπέζας καὶ τὸ δεῖπνον αὐτὸ κόσμῳ θαύματος ἀξίαν, διαβλέψας πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους, τοῦτ’ ἦν ὡς ἔοικεν ἔφη τὸ βασιλεύειν.

[21] [1] Τρεπομένῳ δὲ πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον αὐτῷ φράζει τις ἐν τοῖς αἰχμαλώτοις ἀγομένας μητέρα καὶ γυναῖκα Δαρείου καὶ θυγατέρας δύο παρθένους ἰδούσας τὸ ἅρμα καὶ τὰ τόξα κόπτεσθαι καὶ θρηνεῖν, ὡς ἀπολωλότος ἐκείνου.

[2] συχνὸν οὖν ἐπισχὼν χρόνον Ἀλέξανδρος, καὶ ταῖς ἐκείνων τύχαις μᾶλλον ἢ ταῖς ἑαυτοῦ συμπαθὴς γενόμενος, πέμπει Λεοννάτον, ἀπαγγεῖλαι κελεύσας ὡς οὔτε Δαρεῖος τέθνηκεν οὔτ’ Ἀλέξανδρον δεδιέναι χρή· Δαρείῳ γὰρ ὑπὲρ ἡγεμονίας πολεμεῖν, ἐκείναις δὲ πάνθ’ ὑπάρξειν ὧν καὶ [3] Δαρείου βασιλεύοντος ἠξιοῦντο. τοῦ δὲ λόγου ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἡμέρου καὶ χρηστοῦ φανέντος, ἔτι μᾶλλον τὰ τῶν [4] ἔργων ἀπήντα φιλάνθρωπα. θάψαι γὰρ ὅσους ἐβούλοντο Περσῶν ἔδωκεν, ἐσθῆτι καὶ κόσμῳ χρησαμέναις ἐκ τῶν λαφύρων, θεραπείας τε καὶ τιμῆς ἣν εἶχον οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν ἀφεῖλε, συντάξεις δὲ καὶ μείζονας ἐκαρποῦντο τῶν προτέρων.

[5] ἡ δὲ καλλίστη καὶ βασιλικωτάτη χάρις ἦν παρ’ αὐτοῦ γυναιξὶ γενναίαις καὶ σώφροσι γενομέναις αἰχμαλώτοις μήτ’ ἀκοῦσαι τι μήθ’ ὑπονοῆσαι μήτε προσδοκῆσαι τῶν αἰσχρῶν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οὐκ ἐν στρατοπέδῳ πολεμίων, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἱεροῖς καὶ ἁγίοις φυλαττομένας παρθενῶσιν, ἀπόρρητον [6] ἔχειν καὶ ἀόρατον ἑτέροις δίαιταν. καίτοι λέγεταί γε τὴν Δαρείου γυναῖκα πολὺ πασῶν τῶν βασιλίδων εὐπρεπεστάτην γενέσθαι, καθάπερ καὶ αὐτὸς Δαρεῖος ἀνδρῶν κάλλιστος καὶ μέγιστος, τὰς δὲ παῖδας ἐοικέναι τοῖς [7] γονεῦσιν. ἀλλ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ὡς ἔοικε τοῦ νικᾶν τοὺς πολεμίους τὸ κρατεῖν ἑαυτοῦ βασιλικώτερον ἡγούμενος, οὔτε τούτων ἔθιγεν, οὔτ’ ἄλλην ἔγνω γυναῖκα πρὸ γάμου πλὴν [8] Βαρσίνης. αὕτη δὲ μετὰ τὴν Μέμνονος τελευτὴν χήρα [9] γενομένη, περὶ Δαμασκὸν ἐλήφθη. πεπαιδευμένη δὲ παιδείαν Ἑλληνικήν, ‹καὶ τὸ κάλλος› καὶ τὸν τρόπον ἐπιεικὴς οὖσα, καὶ πατρὸς Ἀρταβάζου γεγονότος ἐκ βασιλέως θυγατρός, ἐγνώσθη, Παρμενίωνος προτρεψαμένου τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, ὥς φησιν Ἀριστόβουλος, (FGrH 139 F 11) καλῆς καὶ γενναίας [καὶ τὸ κάλλος] ἅψασθαι [10] γυναικός. τὰς δ’ ἄλλας αἰχμαλώτους ὁρῶν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος κάλλει καὶ μεγέθει διαφερούσας, ἔλεγε παίζων ὡς εἰσὶν [11] ἀλγηδόνες ὀμμάτων αἱ Περσίδες. ἀντεπιδεικνύμενος δὲ πρὸς τὴν ἰδέαν τὴν ἐκείνων τὸ τῆς ἰδίας ἐγκρατείας καὶ σωφροσύνης κάλλος, ὥσπερ ἀψύχους εἰκόνας ἀγαλμάτων παρέπεμπεν.

[22] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Φιλόξενος ὁ τῶν ἐπὶ θαλάττης στρατηγὸς ἔγραψεν εἶναι παρ’ αὐτῷ Θεόδωρόν τινα Ταραντῖνον, ἔχοντα παῖδας ὠνίους δύο τὴν ὄψιν ὑπερφυεῖς, καὶ πυνθανόμενος εἰ πρίηται, χαλεπῶς ἐνεγκὼν ἐβόα πολλάκις πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ἐρωτῶν, τί πώποτε Φιλόξενος αἰσχρὸν αὐτῷ [2] συνεγνωκώς, τοιαῦτ’ ὀνείδη προξενῶν κάθηται. τὸν δὲ Φιλόξενον αὐτὸν ἐν ἐπιστολῇ πολλὰ λοιδορήσας ἐκέλευσεν αὐτοῖς φορτίοις τὸν Θεόδωρον εἰς τὸν ὄλεθρον ἀποστέλλειν.

[3] ἐπέπληξε δὲ καὶ Ἅγνωνι νεανικῶς γράψαντι πρὸς αὐτόν, ὅτι Κρωβύλον ‹νεανίσκον› εὐδοκιμοῦντ’ ἐν [4] Κορίνθῳ βούλεται πριάμενος ἀγαγεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν. πυνθανόμενος δὲ μισθοφόρων τινῶν γύναια διεφθαρκέναι Δάμωνα καὶ Τιμόθεον Μακεδόνας τῶν ὑπὸ Παρμενίωνι στρατευομένων, ἔγραψε Παρμενίωνι κελεύων, ἐὰν ἐλεγχθῶσιν, ὡς θηρία ἐπὶ καταφθορᾷ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γεγονότα [5] τιμωρησάμενον ἀποκτεῖναι. καὶ περὶ ἑαυτοῦ κατὰ λέξιν ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ ἐπιστολῇ γέγραφεν· ἐγὼ γὰρ οὐχ ὅτι ἑωρακὼς ἂν εὑρεθείην τὴν Δαρείου γυναῖκα ἢ βεβουλημένος ἰδεῖν, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τῶν λεγόντων περὶ τῆς εὐμορφίας [6] αὐτῆς προσδεδεγμένος τὸν λόγον. ἔλεγε δὲ μάλιστα συνιέναι θνητὸς ὢν ἐκ τοῦ καθεύδειν καὶ συνουσιάζειν, ὡς ἀπὸ μιᾶς ἐγγινόμενον ἀσθενείας τῇ φύσει καὶ τὸ [7] πονοῦν καὶ τὸ ἡδόμενον. ἦν δὲ καὶ γαστρὸς ἐγκρατέστατος, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἄλλοις τε πολλοῖς ἐδήλωσε καὶ τοῖς πρὸς Ἄδαν λεχθεῖσιν, ἣν ἐποιήσατο μητέρα καὶ Καρίας βασίλισσαν [8] ἀπέδειξεν. ὡς γὰρ ἐκείνη φιλοφρονουμένη πολλὰ μὲν ὄψα καθ’ ἡμέραν ἀπέστελλεν αὐτῷ καὶ πέμματα, τέλος δὲ τοὺς δοκοῦντας εἶναι δεινοτάτους ὀψοποιοὺς καὶ ἀρτοποιούς, [9] ἔφη τούτων μηδενὸς δεῖσθαι· βελτίονας γὰρ ὀψοποιοὺς ἔχειν ὑπὸ τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ Λεωνίδου δεδομένους αὐτῷ, πρὸς μὲν τὸ ἄριστον νυκτοπορίαν, πρὸς δὲ [10] τὸ δεῖπνον ὀλιγαριστίαν. ὁ δ’ αὐτὸς οὗτος ἀνὴρ ἔφη καὶ τῶν στρωμάτων ἐπιὼν τὰ ἀγγεῖα καὶ τῶν ἱματίων ἔλυεν, ἐπισκοπῶν μή τί μοι τρυφερὸν ἢ περισσὸν ἡ μήτηρ ἐντέθεικεν.

[23] [1] Ἦν δὲ καὶ πρὸς οἶνον ἧττον ἢ ἐδόκει καταφερής, ἔδοξε δὲ διὰ τὸν χρόνον, ὃν οὐ πίνων μᾶλλον ἢ λαλῶν εἷλκεν, ἐφ’ ἑκάστης κύλικος ἀεὶ μακρόν τινα λόγον διατιθέμενος, [2] καὶ ταῦτα πολλῆς σχολῆς οὔσης. ἐπεὶ πρός γε τὰς πράξεις οὐκ οἶνος ἐκεῖνον, οὐχ ὕπνος, οὐ παιδιά τις, οὐ γάμος, οὐ θέα, καθάπερ ἄλλους στρατηγούς, ἐπέσχε· δηλοῖ δ’ ὁ βίος, ὃν βιώσας βραχὺν παντάπασι πλείστων [3] καὶ μεγίστων πράξεων ἐνέπλησεν. ἐν δὲ ταῖς σχολαῖς πρῶτον μὲν ἀναστὰς καὶ θύσας τοῖς θεοῖς, εὐθὺς ἠρίστα καθήμενος· ἔπειτα διημέρευε κυνηγῶν ἢ συντάττων ἢ [4] διδάσκων τι τῶν πολεμικῶν ἢ ἀναγινώσκων. εἰ δ’ ὁδὸν βαδίζοι μὴ λίαν ἐπείγουσαν, ἐμάνθανεν ἅμα πορευόμενος ἢ τοξεύειν ἢ ἐπιβαίνειν ἅρματος ἐλαυνομένου καὶ ἀποβαίνειν. πολλάκις δὲ παίζων καὶ ἀλώπεκας ἐθήρευε καὶ ὄρνιθας, ὡς ἔστι λαβεῖν ἐκ τῶν ἐφημερίδων (FGrH 117 F 1).

[5] καταλύσας δὲ καὶ τρεπόμενος πρὸς λουτρὸν ἢ ἄλειμμα, τοὺς ἐπὶ τῶν σιτοποιῶν καὶ μαγείρων ἀνέκρινεν, εἰ τὰ [6] πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον εὐτρεπῶς ἔχουσι. καὶ δειπνεῖν μὲν ὀψὲ καὶ σκότους ἤδη κατακλινόμενος ἤρχετο, θαυμαστὴ δ’ ἦν ἡ ἐπιμέλεια καὶ περίβλεψις ἐπὶ τῆς τραπέζης, ὅπως μηδὲν ἀνίσως μηδ’ ὀλιγώρως διανέμοιτο· τὸν δὲ πότον ὥσπερ [7] εἴρηται μακρὸν ὑπ’ ἀδολεσχίας ἐξέτεινε. καὶ τἆλλα πάντων ἥδιστος ὢν βασιλέων συνεῖναι καὶ χάριτος οὐδεμιᾶς ἀμοιρῶν, τότε ταῖς μεγαλαυχίαις ἀηδὴς ἐγίνετο καὶ λίαν στρατιωτικός, αὐτός τε πρὸς τὸ κομπῶδες ὑποφερόμενος, καὶ τοῖς κόλαξιν ἑαυτὸν ἀνεικὼς ἱππάσιμον, ὑφ’ ὧν οἱ χαριέστατοι τῶν παρόντων ἐπετρίβοντο, μήθ’ ἁμιλλᾶσθαι τοῖς κόλαξι μήτε λείπεσθαι βουλόμενοι τῶν [αὐτῶν] ἐπαίνων· τὸ μὲν γὰρ αἰσχρὸν ἐδόκει, τὸ δὲ [8] κίνδυνον ἔφερε. μετὰ δὲ τὸν πότον λουσάμενος, ἐκάθευδε πολλάκις μέχρι μέσης ἡμέρας· ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ διημέρευεν [9] ἐν τῷ καθεύδειν. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν καὶ ὄψων ἐγκρατὴς ἦν, ὥστε καὶ τὰ σπανιώτατα [πολλάκις] τῶν ἀπὸ θαλάττης αὐτῷ κομιζομένων ἀκροδρύων καὶ ἰχθύων ἑκάστῳ διαπεμπόμενος τῶν ἑταίρων, πολλάκις ἑαυτῷ μόνῳ μηδὲν καταλείπειν.

[10] τὸ μέντοι δεῖπνον ἦν ἀεὶ μεγαλοπρεπές, καὶ τοῖς εὐτυχήμασι τῆς δαπάνης ἅμα συναυξομένης, τέλος εἰς μυρίας δραχμὰς προῆλθεν· ἐνταῦθα δ’ ἔστη, καὶ τοσοῦτον ὡρίσθη τελεῖν τοῖς ὑποδεχομένοις Ἀλέξανδρον.

[24] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην τὴν ἐν Ἰσσῷ πέμψας εἰς Δαμασκόν, ἔλαβε τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὰς ἀποσκευὰς καὶ τὰ [2] τέκνα καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας τῶν Περσῶν. καὶ πλεῖστα μὲν ὠφελήθησαν οἱ τῶν Θεσσαλῶν ἱππεῖς· τούτους γὰρ ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς διαφερόντως ἐν τῇ μάχῃ γενομένους [3] ἔπεμψεν ἐπίτηδες, ὠφεληθῆναι βουλόμενος· ἐνεπλήσθη δὲ καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν εὐπορίας στρατόπεδον, καὶ γευσάμενοι τότε πρῶτον οἱ Μακεδόνες χρυσοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ γυναικῶν καὶ διαίτης βαρβαρικῆς, ὥσπερ κύνες ἔσπευδον ἁψάμενοι στίβου διώκειν καὶ ἀνιχνεύειν τὸν τῶν Περσῶν πλοῦτον.

[4] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ πρῶτον ἐδόκει κρατύνεσθαι τὰ πρὸς θαλάσσῃ. Κύπρον μὲν οὖν εὐθὺς οἱ βασιλεῖς ἧκον ἐγχειρίζοντες αὐτῷ καὶ Φοινίκην πλὴν Τύρου.

[5] Τύρον δὲ πολιορκῶν ἑπτὰ μῆνας χώμασι καὶ μηχαναῖς καὶ τριήρεσι διακοσίαις ἐκ θαλάττης, ὄναρ εἶδε τὸν Ἡρακλέα δεξιούμενον αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ τείχους καὶ καλοῦντα.

[6] τῶν δὲ Τυρίων πολλοῖς κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ἔδοξεν ὁ Ἀπόλλων λέγειν, ὡς ἄπεισι πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον· οὐ γὰρ ἀρέσκειν [7] αὐτῷ τὰ πρασσόμενα κατὰ τὴν πόλιν. ἀλλ’ οὗτοι μὲν ὥσπερ ἄνθρωπον αὐτομολοῦντα πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ἐπ’ αὐτοφώρῳ τὸν θεὸν εἰληφότες, σειράς τε τῷ κολοσσῷ περιέβαλλον αὐτοῦ, καὶ καθήλουν πρὸς τὴν βάσιν, Ἀλεξανδριστὴν [8] καλοῦντες. ἑτέραν δ’ ὄψιν Ἀλέξανδρος εἶδε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους· σάτυρος αὐτῷ φανεὶς ἐδόκει προσπαίζειν πόρρωθεν, εἶτα βουλομένου λαβεῖν ὑπεξέφευγε· τέλος δὲ πολλὰ λιπαρήσαντος καὶ περιδραμόντος, ἦλθεν εἰς [9] χεῖρας. οἱ δὲ μάντεις τοὔνομα διαιροῦντες οὐκ ἀπιθάνως ἔφασαν αὐτῷ· σὰ γενήσεται Τύρος. καὶ κρήνην δέ τινα δεικνύουσι, πρὸς ἣν κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ἰδεῖν ἔδοξε τὸν σάτυρον.

[10] Διὰ μέσου δὲ τῆς πολιορκίας ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἄραβας τοὺς προσοικοῦντας τῷ Ἀντιλιβάνῳ στρατεύσας, ἐκινδύνευσε διὰ τὸν παιδαγωγὸν Λυσίμαχον· ἐξηκολούθησε γὰρ αὐτῷ, λέγων τοῦ Φοίνικος οὐκ εἶναι χείρων οὐδὲ πρεσβύτερος.

[11] ἐπεὶ δὲ πλησιάσας τοῖς ὀρεινοῖς καὶ τοὺς ἵππους ἀπολιπὼν πεζὸς ἐβάδιζεν, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι πολὺ προῆλθον, αὐτὸς δὲ τὸν Λυσίμαχον, ἑσπέρας ἤδη καταλαμβανούσης καὶ τῶν πολεμίων ἐγγὺς ὄντων, ἀπαγορεύοντα καὶ βαρυνόμενον οὐχ ὑπομένων ἀπολιπεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἀνακαλούμενος καὶ παρακομίζων, ἔλαθε τοῦ στρατεύματος ἀποσπασθεὶς μετ’ ὀλίγων, καὶ σκότους ἅμα καὶ ῥίγους σφοδροῦ νυκτερεύων ἐν χωρίοις χαλεποῖς, εἶδεν οὐ πόρρω πυρὰ πολλὰ καιόμενα [12] σποράδην τῶν πολεμίων. θαρρῶν δὲ τοῦ σώματος τῇ κουφότητι, καὶ τῷ πονεῖν αὐτὸς ἀεὶ παραμυθούμενος τὴν ἀπορίαν τῶν Μακεδόνων, προσέδραμε τοῖς ἔγγιστα πῦρ [13] καίουσι, καὶ περικαθημένους τῇ πυρᾷ δύο βαρβάρους πατάξας τῷ ἐγχειριδίῳ καὶ δαλὸν ἁρπάσας ἧκε πρὸς τοὺς [14] ἑαυτοῦ κομίζων. ἐναύσαντες δὲ πῦρ πολύ, τοὺς μὲν εὐθὺς ἐφόβησαν ὥστε φυγεῖν, τοὺς δ’ ἐπιόντας ἐτρέψαντο, καὶ κατηυλίσθησαν ἀκινδύνως. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Χάρης ἱστόρηκεν (FGrH 125 F 7).

[25] [1] Ἡ δὲ πολιορκία τοιοῦτον ἔσχε πέρας. Ἀλεξάνδρου τὴν μὲν πολλὴν τῆς δυνάμεως ἀναπαύοντος ἀπὸ πολλῶν ἀγώνων τῶν ἔμπροσθεν, ὀλίγους δέ τινας, ὡς μὴ σχολάζοιεν οἱ πολέμιοι, τοῖς τείχεσι προσάγοντος, Ἀρίστανδρος ὁ μάντις ἐσφαγιάζετο, καὶ τὰ σημεῖα κατιδὼν θρασύτερον διωρίσατο πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ [2] μηνὶ πάντως ἁλώσεσθαι τὴν πόλιν. γενομένου δὲ χλευασμοῦ καὶ γέλωτος (ἦν γὰρ ἡ τελευταία τοῦ μηνὸς ἡμέρα), διηπορημένον αὐτὸν ἰδὼν ὁ βασιλεύς, καὶ συμφιλοτιμούμενος ἀεὶ τοῖς μαντεύμασιν, ἐκέλευε μηκέτι τριακάδα τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην, ἀλλὰ τρίτην φθίνοντος ἀριθμεῖν, καὶ τῇ σάλπιγγι σημήνας ἀπεπειρᾶτο τῶν τειχῶν ἐρρωμενέστερον [3] ἤπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς διενοήθη. γενομένης δὲ λαμπρᾶς ἐπιβολῆς, καὶ μηδὲ τῶν ἐπὶ στρατοπέδου καρτερούντων, ἀλλὰ συντρεχόντων καὶ προσβοηθούντων, ἀπεῖπον οἱ Τύριοι, καὶ τὴν πόλιν εἷλε κατ’ ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν.

[4] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα πολιορκοῦντι Γάζαν αὐτῷ, τῆς Συρίας μεγίστην πόλιν, ἐμπίπτει βῶλος εἰς τὸν ὦμον, ἀφεθεὶς ἄνωθεν ὑπ’ ὄρνιθος· ὁ δ’ ὄρνις ὑφ’ ἓν τῶν μηχανημάτων καθίσας, ἔλαθεν ἐνσχεθεὶς τοῖς νευρίνοις κεκρυφάλοις, οἷς [5] πρὸς τὰς ἐπιστροφὰς τῶν σχοινίων ἐχρῶντο. καὶ τὸ σημεῖον ἀπέβη κατὰ τὴν Ἀριστάνδρου πρόρρησιν· ἐτρώθη μὲν γὰρ Ἀλέξανδρος εἰς τὸν ὦμον, ἔλαβε δὲ τὴν πόλιν.

[6] Ἀποστέλλων δὲ πολλὰ τῶν λαφύρων Ὀλυμπιάδι καὶ Κλεοπάτρᾳ καὶ τοῖς φίλοις, κατέπεμψε καὶ Λεωνίδῃ τῷ παιδαγωγῷ τάλαντα λιβανωτοῦ πεντακόσια καὶ σμύρνης [7] ἑκατόν, ἀναμνησθεὶς παιδικῆς ἐλπίδος. ὁ γὰρ Λεωνίδης ὡς ἔοικεν ἐν θυσίᾳ ποτὲ πρὸς τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐπιδραξάμενον ἀμφοτέραις ταῖς χερσὶ καὶ καθαγίσαντα τοῦ θυμιάματος, ὅταν ἔφη τῆς ἀρωματοφόρου κρατήσῃς Ἀλέξανδρε, πλουσίως οὕτως ἐπιθυμιάσεις· νῦν δὲ φειδομένως [8] χρῶ τοῖς παροῦσι. τότ’ οὖν Ἀλέξανδρος ἔγραψε πρὸς αὐτόν· ἀπεστάλκαμέν σοι λιβανωτὸν ἄφθονον καὶ σμύρναν, ὅπως παύσῃ πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς μικρολογούμενος.

[26] [1] Κιβωτίου δέ τινος αὐτῷ προσενεχθέντος, οὗ πολυτελέστερον οὐδὲν ἐφάνη τοῖς τὰ Δαρείου χρήματα καὶ τὰς ἀποσκευὰς παραλαμβάνουσιν, ἠρώτα τοὺς φίλους, ὅ τι δοκοίη μάλιστα τῶν ἀξίων σπουδῆς εἰς αὐτὸ καταθέσθαι.

[2] πολλὰ δὲ πολλῶν λεγόντων, αὐτὸς ἔφη τὴν Ἰλιάδα φρουρήσειν ἐνταῦθα καταθέμενος· καὶ ταῦτα μὲν [3] οὐκ ὀλίγοι τῶν ἀξιοπίστων μεμαρτυρήκασιν. εἰ δ’, ὅπερ Ἀλεξανδρεῖς λέγουσιν Ἡρακλείδῃ (fr. 140 W.) πιστεύοντες, ἀληθές ἐστιν, οὔκουν [οὐκ] ἀργὸς οὐδ’ ἀσύμβολος αὐτῷ [4] συστρατεύειν ἔοικεν Ὅμηρος. λέγουσι γὰρ ὅτι τῆς Αἰγύπτου κρατήσας ἐβούλετο πόλιν μεγάλην καὶ πολυάνθρωπον Ἑλληνίδα συνοικίσας ἐπώνυμον ἑαυτοῦ καταλιπεῖν, καί τινα τόπον γνώμῃ τῶν ἀρχιτεκτόνων ὅσον [5] οὐδέπω διεμετρεῖτο καὶ περιέβαλλεν. εἶτα νύκτωρ κοιμώμενος ὄψιν εἶδε θαυμαστήν· ἀνὴρ πολιὸς εὖ μάλα τὴν κόμην καὶ γεραρὸς τὸ εἶδος ἔδοξεν αὐτῷ παραστὰς λέγειν τὰ ἔπη τάδε (Od. 4, 354)·

νῆσος ἔπειτά τις ἔστι πολυκλύστῳ ἐνὶ πόντῳ,

Αἰγύπτου προπάροιθε· Φάρον δέ ἑ κικλήσκουσιν.

[6] εὐθὺς οὖν ἐξαναστὰς ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ τὴν Φάρον, ἣ τότε μὲν ἔτι νῆσος ἦν τοῦ Κανωβικοῦ μικρὸν ἀνωτέρω στόματος, [7] νῦν δὲ διὰ χώματος ἀνείληπται πρὸς τὴν ἤπειρον. ὡς οὖν εἶδε τόπον εὐφυΐᾳ διαφέροντα (ταινία γάρ ἐστιν ἰσθμῷ πλάτος ἔχοντι σύμμετρον ἐπιεικῶς, διείργουσα λίμνην τε πολλὴν καὶ θάλασσαν ἐν λιμένι μεγάλῳ τελευτῶσαν), εἰπὼν ὡς Ὅμηρος ἦν ἄρα τά τ’ ἄλλα θαυμαστὸς καὶ σοφώτατος ἀρχιτέκτων, ἐκέλευσε διαγράψαι τὸ σχῆμα [8] τῆς πόλεως τῷ τόπῳ συναρμόττοντας. καὶ γῆ μὲν οὐ παρῆν λευκή, τῶν δ’ ἀλφίτων λαμβάνοντες ἐν πεδίῳ μελαγγείῳ κυκλοτερῆ κόλπον ἦγον, οὗ τὴν ἐντὸς περιφέρειαν εὐθεῖαι βάσεις ὥσπερ ἀπὸ κρασπέδων εἰς σχῆμα χλαμύδος ὑπελάμβανον ἐξ ἴσου συνάγουσαι τὸ μέγεθος.

[9] ἡσθέντος δὲ τῇ διαθέσει τοῦ βασιλέως, αἰφνίδιον ὄρνιθες ἀπὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ καὶ τῆς λίμνης, πλήθει τ’ ἄπειροι καὶ κατὰ γένος παντοδαποὶ καὶ μέγεθος, ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον καταίροντες, νέφεσιν ἐοικότες, οὐδὲ μικρὸν ὑπέλιπον τῶν ἀλφίτων, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον διαταραχθῆναι πρὸς τὸν [10] οἰωνόν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῶν μάντεων θαρρεῖν παραινούντων (πολυαρκεστάτην γὰρ οἰκίζεσθαι πόλιν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ παντοδαπῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐσομένην τροφόν), ἔργου κελεύσας [11] ἔχεσθαι τοὺς ἐπιμελητάς, αὐτὸς ὥρμησεν εἰς Ἄμμωνος ὁδὸν μακρὰν καὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἔχουσαν ἐργώδη καὶ ταλαίπωρα, κινδύνους δὲ δύο, τὸν μὲν ἀνυδρίας, δι’ ἣν ἔρημός ἐστιν οὐκ ὀλίγων ἡμερῶν, τὸν δ’ εἰ λάβρος ἐν ἄμμῳ βαθείᾳ καὶ [12] ἀχανεῖ πορευομένοις ἐπιπέσοι νότος, ὅς που καὶ πάλαι λέγεται περὶ τὸν Καμβύσου στρατὸν ἀναστήσας θῖνα μεγάλην καὶ κυματώσας τὸ πεδίον, μυριάδας ἀνθρώπων πέντε [13] καταχῶσαι καὶ διαφθεῖραι. ταῦτα πάντα σχεδὸν πάντες ἐλογίζοντο, χαλεπὸν δ’ ἦν Ἀλέξανδρον ἀποτρέψαι πρὸς [14] ὁτιοῦν ὡρμημένον. ἥ τε γὰρ τύχη ταῖς ἐπιβολαῖς ὑπείκουσα τὴν γνώμην ἰσχυρὰν ἐποίει, καὶ τὸ θυμοειδὲς ἄχρι τῶν πραγμάτων ὑπεξέφερε τὴν φιλονικίαν ἀήττητον, οὐ μόνον πολεμίους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τόπους καὶ καιροὺς καταβιαζομένην.

[27] [1] Ἐν γοῦν τῇ τότε πορείᾳ τὰ συντυχόντα ταῖς ἀπορίαις παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ βοηθήματα τῶν ὑστέρων χρησμῶν ἐπιστεύθη μᾶλλον· τρόπον δέ τινα καὶ τοῖς χρησμοῖς ἡ [2] πίστις ἐκ τούτων ὑπῆρξε. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἐκ Διὸς ὕδωρ πολὺ καὶ διαρκεῖς ὑετοὶ γενόμενοι τόν τε τῆς δίψης φόβον ἔλυσαν, καὶ τὴν ξηρότητα κατασβέσαντες τῆς ἄμμου, νοτερᾶς γενομένης καὶ πρὸς αὑτὴν ξυμπεσούσης, εὔπνουν [3] τὸν ἀέρα καὶ καθαρώτερον παρέσχον. ἔπειτα τῶν ὅρων οἵπερ ἦσαν τοῖς ὁδηγοῖς συγχυθέντων, καὶ πλάνης οὔσης καὶ διασπασμοῦ τῶν βαδιζόντων διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν, κόρακες ἐπιφανέντες ὑπελάμβανον τὴν ἡγεμονίαν τῆς πορείας, ἑπομένων μὲν ἔμπροσθεν πετόμενοι καὶ σπεύδοντες, [4] ὑστεροῦντας δὲ καὶ βραδύνοντας ἀναμένοντες· ὃ δ’ ἦν θαυμασιώτατον, ὡς Καλλισθένης φησί (FGrH 124 F 14b), ταῖς φωναῖς ἀνακαλούμενοι τοὺς πλανωμένους νύκτωρ [5] καὶ κλάζοντες εἰς ἴχνος καθίστασαν τῆς πορείας. ἐπεὶ δὲ διεξελθὼν τὴν ἔρημον ἧκεν εἰς τὸν τόπον, ὁ μὲν προφήτης αὐτὸν ὁ Ἄμμωνος ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ χαίρειν ὡς ἀπὸ πατρὸς προσεῖπεν· ὁ δ’ ἐπήρετο, μή τις αὐτὸν εἴη διαπεφευγὼς [6] τῶν τοῦ πατρὸς φονέων. εὐφημεῖν δὲ τοῦ προφήτου κελεύσαντος, οὐ γὰρ εἶναι πατέρα θνητὸν αὐτῷ, μεταβαλὼν ἐπυνθάνετο τοὺς Φιλίππου φονεῖς, εἰ πάντας εἴη τετιμωρημένος· εἶτα περὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς, εἰ πάντων αὐτῷ [7] δίδωσιν ἀνθρώπων κυρίῳ γενέσθαι. χρήσαντος δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοῦτο διδόναι καὶ Φίλιππον ἀπέχειν ἔκπλεω τὴν δίκην, ἐδωρεῖτο τὸν θεὸν ἀναθήμασι λαμπροῖς καὶ [8] χρήμασι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. ταῦτα περὶ τῶν χρησμῶν οἱ πλεῖστοι γράφουσιν· αὐτὸς δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐν ἐπιστολῇ πρὸς τὴν μητέρα φησὶ γεγονέναι τινὰς αὐτῷ μαντείας ἀπορρήτους, ἃς αὐτὸς ἐπανελθὼν φράσει πρὸς μόνην [9] ἐκείνην. ἔνιοι δέ φασι τὸν μὲν προφήτην Ἑλληνιστὶ βουλόμενον προσειπεῖν μετά τινος φιλοφροσύνης ὦ παιδίον, ἐν τῷ τελευταίῳ τῶν φθόγγων ὑπὸ βαρβαρισμοῦ πρὸς τὸ σίγμ’ ἐξενεχθῆναι καὶ εἰπεῖν ὦ παιδίος, ἀντὶ τοῦ νῦ τῷ σίγμα χρησάμενον, ἀσμένῳ δὲ τῷ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τὸ σφάλμα τῆς φωνῆς γενέσθαι, καὶ διαδοθῆναι λόγον ὡς [10] παῖδα Διὸς αὐτὸν τοῦ θεοῦ προσειπόντος. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Ψάμμωνος ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ τοῦ φιλοσόφου διακούσας, ἀποδέξασθαι μάλιστα τῶν λεχθέντων, ὅτι πάντες οἱ ἄνθρωποι βασιλεύονται ὑπὸ θεοῦ· τὸ γὰρ ἄρχον ἐν ἑκάστῳ καὶ [11] κρατοῦν θεῖόν ἐστιν· ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτὸς περὶ τούτων ‹καὶ› φιλοσοφώτερον δοξάζειν [καὶ] λέγων ὡς πάντων μὲν ὄντα κοινὸν ἀνθρώπων πατέρα τὸν θεόν, ἰδίους δὲ ποιούμενον ἑαυτοῦ τοὺς ἀρίστους.

[28] [1] Καθόλου δὲ πρὸς μὲν τοὺς βαρβάρους σοβαρὸς ἦν καὶ σφόδρα πεπεισμένῳ περὶ τῆς ἐκ θεοῦ γενέσεως καὶ τεκνώσεως ὅμοιος, τοῖς δ’ Ἕλλησι μετρίως καὶ ὑποφειδομένως [2] ἑαυτὸν ἐξεθείαζε· πλὴν περὶ Σάμου γράφων Ἀθηναίοις ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ ἂν φησὶν ὑμῖν ἐλευθέραν πόλιν ἔδωκα καὶ ἔνδοξον· ἔχετε δ’ αὐτὴν λαβόντες παρὰ τοῦ τότε κυρίου καὶ πατρὸς ἐμοῦ προσαγορευομένου, [3] λέγων τὸν Φίλιππον. ὕστερον δὲ πληγῇ περιπεσὼν ὑπὸ τοξεύματος καὶ περιαλγὴς γενόμενος· τοῦτο μὲν εἶπεν ὦ φίλοι τὸ ῥέον αἷμα καὶ οὐκ (Hom. Il. 5, 340)

ἰχώρ, οἷός πέρ τε ῥέει μακάρεσσι θεοῖσιν.

[4] ἐπεὶ δὲ μεγάλης ποτὲ βροντῆς γενομένης καὶ πάντων ἐκπλαγέντων Ἀνάξαρχος ὁ σοφιστὴς παρὼν ἔφη πρὸς αὐτὸν μή τι σὺ τοιοῦτον ὁ τοῦ Διός; γελάσας ἐκεῖνος οὐ βούλομαι γὰρ εἶπε φοβερὸς εἶναι τοῖς φίλοις, ὥσπερ σύ με κελεύεις ὁ καταφαυλίζων μου τὸ δεῖπνον, ὅτι ταῖς τραπέζαις ἰχθύας ὁρᾷς ἐπικειμένους, οὐ σατραπῶν κεφαλάς.

[5] τῷ γὰρ ὄντι λέγεται τὸν Ἀνάξαρχον ἰχθυδίων Ἡφαιστίωνι πεμφθέντων ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως τὸν προειρημένον ἐπιφθέγξασθαι λόγον, οἷον ἐξευτελίζοντα καὶ κατειρωνευόμενον τοὺς τὰ περίβλεπτα μεγάλοις πόνοις καὶ κινδύνοις διώκοντας, ὡς οὐδὲν ἢ μικρὸν ἐν ἡδοναῖς καὶ [6] ἀπολαύσεσι πλέον ἔχοντας τῶν ἄλλων. ὁ δ’ οὖν Ἀλέξανδρος καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν εἰρημένων δῆλός ἐστιν αὐτὸς οὐδὲν πεπονθὼς οὐδὲ τετυφωμένος, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἄλλους καταδουλούμενος τῇ δόξῃ τῆς θειότητος.

[29] [1] Εἰς δὲ Φοινίκην ἐπανελθὼν ἐξ Αἰγύπτου, θυσίας τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ πομπὰς ἐπετέλει καὶ χορῶν [ἐγ]κυκλίων καὶ τραγικῶν ἀγῶνας, οὐ μόνον ταῖς παρασκευαῖς, ἀλλὰ [2] καὶ ταῖς ἁμίλλαις λαμπροὺς γενομένους. ἐχορήγουν γὰρ οἱ βασιλεῖς τῶν Κυπρίων, ὥσπερ Ἀθήνησιν οἱ κληρούμενοι κατὰ φυλάς, καὶ ἠγωνίζοντο θαυμαστῇ φιλοτιμίᾳ πρὸς [3] ἀλλήλους. μάλιστα δὲ Νικοκρέων ὁ Σαλαμίνιος καὶ Πασικράτης ὁ Σόλιος διεφιλονίκησαν. οὗτοι γὰρ ἔλαχον τοῖς ἐνδοξοτάτοις ὑποκριταῖς χορηγεῖν, Πασικράτης μὲν Ἀθηνοδώρῳ, Νικοκρέων δὲ Θεσσαλῷ, περὶ ὃν ἐσπουδάκει καὶ [4] αὐτὸς Ἀλέξανδρος. οὐ μὴν διέφηνε τὴν σπουδὴν πρότερον ἢ ταῖς ψήφοις ἀναγορευθῆναι νικῶντα τὸν Ἀθηνόδωρον. τότε δ’ ὡς ἔοικεν ἀπιὼν ἔφη τοὺς μὲν κριτὰς ἐπαινεῖν, αὐτὸς μέντοι μέρος ἂν ἡδέως προέσθαι τῆς βασιλείας ἐπὶ [5] τῷ μὴ Θεσσαλὸν ἰδεῖν νενικημένον. ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀθηνόδωρος ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ζημιωθείς, ὅτι πρὸς τὸν ἀγῶνα τῶν Διονυσίων οὐκ ἀπήντησεν, ἠξίου γράψαι περὶ αὐτοῦ τὸν βασιλέα, τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἐποίησε, τὴν δὲ ζημίαν ἀπέστειλε [6] παρ’ ἑαυτοῦ. Λύκωνος δὲ τοῦ Σκαρφέως εὐημεροῦντος ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ καὶ στίχον εἰς τὴν κωμῳδίαν ἐμβαλόντος αἴτησιν περιέχοντα δέκα ταλάντων, γελάσας ἔδωκε.

[7] Δαρείου δὲ πέμψαντος ἐπιστολὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ φίλους δεομένους, μύρια μὲν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἑαλωκότων λαβεῖν τάλαντα, τὴν δ’ ἐντὸς Εὐφράτου πᾶσαν ἔχοντα καὶ γήμαντα μίαν τῶν θυγατέρων φίλον εἶναι καὶ σύμμαχον, ἐκοινοῦτο τοῖς [8] ἑταίροις· καὶ Παρμενίωνος εἰπόντος ἐγὼ μὲν εἰ Ἀλέξανδρος ἤμην, ἔλαβον ἂν ταῦτα, κἀγὼ νὴ Δία εἶπεν [9] ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος, εἰ Παρμενίων. πρὸς δὲ τὸν Δαρεῖον ἔγραψεν, ὡς οὐδενὸς ἀτυχήσει τῶν φιλανθρώπων ἐλθὼν πρὸς αὐτόν, εἰ δὲ μή, αὐτὸς ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον ἤδη πορεύσεσθαι.

[30] [1] Ταχὺ μέντοι μετεμελήθη, τῆς Δαρείου γυναικὸς ἀποθανούσης ἐν ὠδῖσι, καὶ φανερὸς ἦν ἀνιώμενος ὡς ἐπίδειξιν οὐ μικρὰν ἀφῃρημένος χρηστότητος. ἔθαψεν οὖν [2] τὴν ἄνθρωπον οὐδεμιᾶς πολυτελείας φειδόμενος. τῶν δὲ θαλαμηπόλων τις εὐνούχων, οἳ συνεαλώκεισαν ταῖς γυναιξίν, ἀποδρὰς ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ πρὸς Δαρεῖον ἀφιππασάμενος, Τίρεως ὄνομα, φράζει τὸν θάνατον αὐτῷ [3] τῆς γυναικός. ὡς δὲ πληξάμενος τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ ἀνακλαύσας φεῦ τοῦ Περσῶν ἔφη δαίμονος, εἰ ‹δεῖ› τὴν βασιλέως γυναῖκα καὶ ἀδελφὴν οὐ μόνον αἰχμάλωτον γενέσθαι ζῶσαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τελευτήσασαν ἄμοιρον κεῖσθαι [4] ταφῆς βασιλικῆς, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ θαλαμηπόλος ἀλλὰ ταφῆς γε χάριν εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ καὶ τιμῆς ἁπάσης καὶ τοῦ πρέποντος οὐδὲν ἔχεις αἰτιάσασθαι τὸν πονηρὸν δαίμονα [5] Περσῶν. οὔτε γὰρ ζώσῃ τῇ δεσποίνῃ Στατείρᾳ καὶ μητρὶ σῇ καὶ τέκνοις ‹οὐδὲν› ἐνέδει τῶν πρόσθεν ἀγαθῶν καὶ καλῶν ἢ τὸ σὸν ὁρᾶν φῶς, ὃ πάλιν ἀναλάμψειε λαμπρὸν ὁ κύριος Ὠρομάσδης, οὔτ’ ἀποθανοῦσα κόσμου τινὸς ἄμοιρος γέγονεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πολεμίων τετίμηται [6] δάκρυσιν. οὕτω γάρ ἐστι χρηστὸς κρατήσας Ἀλέξανδρος [7] ὡς δεινὸς μαχόμενος. ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντα Δαρεῖον ἡ ταραχὴ καὶ τὸ πάθος ἐξέφερε πρὸς ὑποψίας ἀτόπους, καὶ τὸν [8] εὐνοῦχον ἐνδοτέρω τῆς σκηνῆς ἀπαγαγών, εἰ μὴ καὶ σὺ μετὰ τῆς Περσῶν ἔφη τύχης μακεδονίζεις, ἀλλ’ ἔτι σοι δεσπότης ἐγὼ Δαρεῖος, εἰπέ μοι σεβόμενος Μίθρου τε φῶς μέγα καὶ δεξιὰν βασίλειον, ἆρα μὴ τὰ μικρότατα τῶν Στατείρας κλαίω κακῶν, οἰκτρότερα δὲ ζώσης ἐπάσχομεν, καὶ μᾶλλον ἂν κατ’ ἀξίαν ἐδυστυχοῦμεν ὠμῷ [9] καὶ σκυθρωπῷ περιπεσόντες ἐχθρῷ; τί γὰρ εὐπρεπὲς ἀνδρὶ νέῳ πρὸς ἐχθροῦ γυναῖκα μέχρι τιμῆς τοσαύτης [10] συμβόλαιον; ἔτι λέγοντος αὐτοῦ καταβαλὼν ἐπὶ τοὺς πόδας Τίρεως αὑτὸν ἱκέτευεν εὐφημεῖν, καὶ μήτ’ Ἀλέξανδρον ἀδικεῖν, μήτε τὴν τεθνεῶσαν ἀδελφὴν καὶ γυναῖκα καταισχύνειν, μήθ’ αὑτοῦ τὴν μεγίστην ὧν ἔπταικεν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι παραμυθίαν, τὸ δοκεῖν ὑπ’ ἀνδρὸς ἡττῆσθαι κρείττονος ἢ κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ θαυμάζειν Ἀλέξανδρον, ὡς πλείονα ταῖς Περσῶν γυναιξὶ [11] σωφροσύνην ἢ Πέρσαις ἀνδρείαν ἐπιδεδειγμένον. ἅμα δ’ ὅρκους τε φρικώδεις τοῦ θαλαμηπόλου κινοῦντος ὑπὲρ τούτων, καὶ περὶ τῆς ἄλλης ἐγκρατείας καὶ μεγαλοψυχίας τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου λέγοντος, ἐξελθὼν πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους ὁ Δαρεῖος, καὶ ‹τὰς› χεῖρας ἀνατείνας πρὸς τὸν οὐρανόν, [12] ἐπεύξατο· θεοὶ γενέθλιοι καὶ βασίλειοι, μάλιστα μὲν ἐμοὶ διδοίητε τὴν Περσῶν ἀρχὴν εἰς ὀρθὸν αὖθις σταθεῖσαν ἐφ’ οἷς ἐδεξάμην ἀγαθοῖς ἀπολαβεῖν, ἵνα κρατήσας ἀμείψωμαι τὰς Ἀλεξάνδρου χάριτας, ὧν εἰς τὰ φίλτατα [13] πταίσας ἔτυχον· εἰ δ’ ἄρα τις οὗτος εἱμαρτὸς ἥκει χρόνος, ὀφειλόμενος νεμέσει καὶ μεταβολῇ, παύσασθαι τὰ Περσῶν, μηδεὶς ἄλλος ἀνθρώπων καθίσειεν εἰς τὸν Κύρου [14] θρόνον πλὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου. ταῦτα μὲν οὕτω γενέσθαι τε καὶ λεχθῆναί φασιν οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν συγγραφέων.

[31] [1] Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ τὴν ἐντὸς τοῦ Εὐφράτου πᾶσαν ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ ποιησάμενος, ἤλαυνεν ἐπὶ Δαρεῖον, ἑκατὸν [2] μυριάσι στρατοῦ καταβαίνοντα. καί τις αὐτῷ φράζει τῶν ἑταίρων, ὡς δὴ γέλωτος ἄξιον πρᾶγμα, τοὺς ἀκολούθους παίζοντας εἰς δύο μέρη διῃρηκέναι σφᾶς αὐτούς, ὧν ἑκατέρου στρατηγὸν εἶναι καὶ ἡγεμόνα, τὸν μὲν Ἀλέξαν[3]δρον, τὸν δὲ Δαρεῖον ὑπ’ αὐτῶν προσαγορευόμενον· ἀρξαμένους δὲ βώλοις ἀκροβολίζεσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους, εἶτα πυγμαῖς, τέλος ἐκκεκαῦσθαι τῇ φιλονικίᾳ καὶ μέχρι λίθων καὶ ξύλων, πολλοὺς καὶ δυσκαταπαύστους γεγονότας.

[4] ταῦτ’ ἀκούσας ἐκέλευσεν αὐτοὺς μονομαχῆσαι τοὺς ἡγεμόνας, καὶ τὸν μὲν Ἀλέξανδρον αὐτὸς ὥπλισε, τὸν δὲ Δαρεῖον Φιλώτας. ἐθεᾶτο δ’ ὁ στρατός, ἐν οἰωνῷ τινι τοῦ [5] μέλλοντος τιθέμενος τὸ γιγνόμενον. ἰσχυρᾶς δὲ τῆς μάχης γενομένης, ἐνίκησεν ὁ καλούμενος Ἀλέξανδρος, καὶ δωρεὰν ἔλαβε δώδεκα κώμας καὶ στολῇ Περσικῇ χρῆσθαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Ἐρατοσθένης (FGrH 241 F 29) ἱστόρηκε.

[6] Τὴν δὲ μεγάλην μάχην πρὸς Δαρεῖον οὐκ ἐν Ἀρβήλοις, ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ γράφουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐν Γαυγαμήλοις γενέσθαι [7] συνέπεσε. σημαίνειν δέ φασιν οἶκον καμήλου τὴν διάλεκτον, ἐπεὶ τῶν πάλαι τις βασιλέων ἐκφυγὼν πολεμίους ἐπὶ καμήλου δρομάδος ἐνταῦθα καθίδρυσεν αὐτήν, ἀποτάξας τινὰς κώμας καὶ προσόδους εἰς τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν.

[8] Ἡ μὲν οὖν σελήνη τοῦ Βοηδρομιῶνος ἐξέλιπε περὶ τὴν τῶν μυστηρίων τῶν Ἀθήνησιν ἀρχήν, ἑνδεκάτῃ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκλείψεως νυκτὶ τῶν στρατοπέδων ‹ἀλλήλων› ἐν ὄψει γεγονότων, Δαρεῖος μὲν ‹ἐν› ὅπλοις συνεῖχε τὴν δύναμιν, [9] ὑπὸ λαμπάδων ἐπιπορευόμενος τὰς τάξεις· Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ τῶν Μακεδόνων ἀναπαυομένων αὐτὸς πρὸ τῆς σκηνῆς μετὰ τοῦ μάντεως Ἀριστάνδρου διέτριβεν, ἱερουργίας τινὰς ἀπορρήτους ἱερουργούμενος καὶ τῷ Φόβῳ σφαγιαζόμενος.

[10] οἱ δὲ πρεσβύτεροι τῶν ἑταίρων καὶ μάλιστα Παρμενίων, ὡς τὸ μὲν πεδίον τὸ μεταξὺ τοῦ Νιφάτου καὶ τῶν ὀρῶν τῶν Γορδυαίων ἅπαν ἑωρᾶτο καταλαμπόμενον τοῖς βαρβαρικοῖς φέγγεσιν, ἀτέκμαρτος δέ τις φωνὴ συμμεμειγμένη καὶ θόρυβος ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου καθάπερ ἐξ ἀχανοῦς [11] προσήχει πελάγους, θαυμάσαντες τὸ πλῆθος καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαλεχθέντες, ὡς μέγα καὶ χαλεπὸν ἔργον εἴη συμπεσόντας ἐκ προφανοῦς τοσοῦτον ὤσασθαι πόλεμον, ἀπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν γενομένῳ τῷ βασιλεῖ προσελθόντες, ἔπειθον αὐτὸν ἐπιχειρῆσαι νύκτωρ τοῖς πολεμίοις καὶ τῷ σκότῳ τὸ φοβερώτατον συγκαλύψαι τοῦ μέλλοντος [12] ἀγῶνος. ὁ δὲ τὸ μνημονευόμενον εἰπὼν οὐ κλέπτω τὴν νίκην, ἐνίοις μὲν ἔδοξε μειρακιώδη καὶ κενὴν ἀπόκρισιν [13] πεποιῆσθαι, παίζων πρὸς τοσοῦτον κίνδυνον, ἐνίοις δὲ καὶ τῷ παρόντι θαρρεῖν καὶ στοχάζεσθαι τοῦ μέλλοντος ὀρθῶς, μὴ διδοὺς πρόφασιν ἡττηθέντι Δαρείῳ πρὸς ἄλλην αὖθις ἀναθαρρῆσαι πεῖραν, αἰτιωμένῳ τούτων νύκτα καὶ [14] σκότος, ὡς ὄρη καὶ στενὰ καὶ θάλασσαν τῶν προτέρων. οὐ γὰρ ὅπλων οὐδὲ σωμάτων ἀπορίᾳ παύσεσθαι πολεμοῦντα Δαρεῖον ἀπὸ τηλικαύτης δυνάμεως καὶ χώρας τοσαύτης, ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἀφῇ τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὴν ἐλπίδα, δι’ ἐμφανοῦς ἥττης κατὰ κράτος ἐξελεγχθείς.

[32] [1] Ἀπελθόντων δὲ τούτων, κατακλιθεὶς ὑπὸ σκηνὴν λέγεται τὸ λοιπὸν μέρος τῆς νυκτὸς ὕπνῳ βαθεῖ κρατηθῆναι παρὰ τὸ εἰωθός, ὥστε θαυμάζειν ἐπελθόντος ὄρθρου τοὺς ἡγεμόνας, καὶ παρ’ αὑτῶν ἐξενεγκεῖν παράγγελμα [2] πρῶτον ἀριστοποιεῖσθαι τοὺς στρατιώτας· ἔπειτα τοῦ καιροῦ κατεπείγοντος, εἰσελθόντα Παρμενίωνα καὶ παραστάντα τῇ κλίνῃ δὶς ἢ τρὶς αὐτοῦ φθέγξασθαι τοὔνομα, καὶ διεγερθέντος οὕτως ἐρωτᾶν, ὅ τι δὴ πεπονθὼς ὕπνον καθεύδοι νενικηκότος, οὐχὶ μέλλοντος ἀγωνιεῖσθαι [3] τὸν μέγιστον τῶν ἀγώνων. τὸν δ’ οὖν Ἀλέξανδρον εἰπεῖν διαμειδιάσαντα· τί γάρ; οὐκ ἤδη σοι νενικηκέναι δοκοῦμεν, ἀπηλλαγμένοι τοῦ πλανᾶσθαι καὶ διώκειν ἐν πολλῇ [4] καὶ κατεφθαρμένῃ φυγομαχοῦντα χώρᾳ Δαρεῖον; οὐ μόνον δὲ πρὸ τῆς μάχης, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρ’ αὐτὸν τὸν κίνδυνον ἐπεδείξατο μέγαν καὶ συνεστηκότα τῷ λογίζεσθαι καὶ θαρρεῖν ἑαυτόν.

[5] Ἔσχε γὰρ ὁ ἀγὼν ὑποτροπὴν καὶ σάλον ἐν τῷ εὐωνύμῳ κέρατι κατὰ Παρμενίωνα, τῆς Βακτριανῆς ἵππου ῥόθῳ πολλῷ καὶ μετὰ βίας παρεμπεσούσης εἰς τοὺς Μακεδόνας, Μαζαίου δὲ περιπέμψαντος ἔξω τῆς φάλαγγος ἱππεῖς [6] τοῖς σκευοφυλακοῦσι προσβαλοῦντας. διὸ καὶ θορυβούμενος ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων ὁ Παρμενίων ἀπέστειλε πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ἀγγέλους, φράζοντας οἴχεσθαι τὸν χάρακα καὶ τὰς ἀποσκευάς, εἰ μὴ κατὰ τάχος βοήθειαν ἰσχυρὰν ἀπὸ [7] τοῦ στόματος πέμψειε τοῖς ὄπισθεν. ἔτυχε μὲν οὖν κατ’ ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ τοῖς περὶ αὐτὸν ἐφόδου διδοὺς σημεῖον· ὡς δ’ ἤκουσε τὰ παρὰ τοῦ Παρμενίωνος, οὐκ ἔφη σωφρονεῖν αὐτὸν οὐδ’ ἐντὸς εἶναι τῶν λογισμῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιλελῆσθαι ταραττόμενον, ὅτι νικῶντες μὲν προσκτήσονται καὶ τὰ τῶν πολεμίων, ἡττωμένοις δὲ φροντιστέον οὐ χρημάτων οὐδ’ ἀνδραπόδων, ἀλλ’ ὅπως ἀποθανοῦνται καλῶς καὶ λαμπρῶς ἀγωνιζόμενοι.

[8] Ταῦτ’ ἐπιστείλας Παρμενίωνι, τὸ κράνος περιέθετο, τὸν δ’ ἄλλον ὁπλισμὸν εὐθὺς ἀπὸ σκηνῆς εἶχεν, ὑπένδυμα τῶν Σικελικῶν ζωστόν, ἐπὶ δὲ τούτῳ θώρακα διπλοῦν [9] λινοῦν ἐκ τῶν ληφθέντων ἐν Ἰσσῷ. τὸ δὲ κράνος ἦν μὲν σιδηροῦν, ἔστιλβε δ’ ὥσπερ ἄργυρος καθαρός, ἔργον Θεοφίλου· συνήρμοστο δ’ αὐτῷ περιτραχήλιον ὁμοίως [10] σιδηροῦν, λιθοκόλλητον· μάχαιραν δὲ θαυμαστὴν βαφῇ καὶ κουφότητι, δωρησαμένου τοῦ Κιτιέων βασιλέως, [ἣν] εἶχεν, ἠσκημένος τὰ πολλὰ χρῆσθαι μαχαίρᾳ παρὰ τὰς [11] μάχας. ἐπιπόρπωμα δ’ ἐφόρει τῇ μὲν ἐργασίᾳ σοβαρώτερον ἢ κατὰ τὸν ἄλλον ὁπλισμόν· ἦν γὰρ ἔργον Ἑλικῶνος τοῦ παλαιοῦ, τιμὴ δὲ τῆς Ῥοδίων πόλεως, ὑφ’ ἧς ἐδόθη [12] δῶρον· ἐχρῆτο δὲ καὶ τούτῳ πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας. ἄχρι μὲν οὖν συντάττων τι τῆς φάλαγγος ἢ παρακελευόμενος ἢ διδάσκων ἢ ἐφορῶν παρεξήλαυνεν, ἄλλον ἵππον εἶχε, τοῦ Βουκεφάλα φειδόμενος, ἤδη παρήλικος ὄντος· χωροῦντι δὲ πρὸς ἔργον ἐκεῖνος προσήγετο, καὶ μεταβὰς εὐθὺς ἦρχεν ἐφόδου.

[33] [1] Τότε δὲ τοῖς Θετταλοῖς πλεῖστα διαλεχθεὶς καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις Ἕλλησιν, ὡς ἐπέρρωσαν αὐτὸν βοῶντες ἄγειν ἐπὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους, τὸ ξυστὸν εἰς τὴν ἀριστερὰν μεταλαβών, τῇ δεξιᾷ παρεκάλει τοὺς θεούς, ὡς Καλλισθένης φησίν (FGrH 124 F 36), ἐπευχόμενος, εἴπερ ὄντως Διόθεν ἐστὶ γεγονώς, ἀμῦναι καὶ συνεπιρρῶσαι τοὺς [2] Ἕλληνας. ὁ δὲ μάντις Ἀρίστανδρος, χλανίδα λευκὴν ἔχων καὶ χρυσοῦν στέφανον, ἐπεδείκνυτο παριππεύων ἀετὸν ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου συνεπαιωρούμενον καὶ κατευθύνοντα [3] τὴν πτῆσιν ὄρθιον ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, ὥστε πολὺ μὲν θάρσος ἐγγενέσθαι τοῖς ὁρῶσιν, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ θαρρεῖν καὶ παρακαλεῖν ἀλλήλους δρόμῳ τοῖς ἱππεῦσιν ἱεμένοις [4] ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους ἐπικυμαίνειν τὴν φάλαγγα. πρὶν δὲ συμμεῖξαι τοὺς πρώτους, ἐξέκλιναν οἱ βάρβαροι, καὶ διωγμὸς ἦν πολὺς, εἰς τὰ μέσα συνελαύνοντος Ἀλεξάνδρου τὸ [5] νικώμενον, ὅπου Δαρεῖος ἦν. πόρρωθεν γὰρ αὐτὸν κατεῖδε, διὰ τῶν προτεταγμένων ἐν βάθει τῆς βασιλικῆς ἴλης ἐκφανέντα, καλὸν ἄνδρα καὶ μέγαν ἐφ’ ἅρματος ὑψηλοῦ βεβῶτα, πολλοῖς ἱππεῦσι καὶ λαμπροῖς καταπεφραγμένον, εὖ μάλα συνεσπειραμένοις περὶ τὸ ἅρμα καὶ παρατεταγμένοις [6] δέχεσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους. ἀλλὰ δεινὸς ὀφθεὶς ἐγγύθεν Ἀλέξανδρος, καὶ τοὺς φεύγοντας ἐμβαλὼν εἰς [7] τοὺς μένοντας, ἐξέπληξε καὶ διεσκέδασε τὸ πλεῖστον. οἱ δ’ ἄριστοι καὶ γενναιότατοι πρὸ τοῦ βασιλέως φονευόμενοι καὶ κατ’ ἀλλήλων πίπτοντες, ἐμποδὼν τῆς διώξεως ἦσαν, ἐμπλεκόμενοι καὶ περισπαίροντες αὑτοῖς καὶ [8] ἵπποις. Δαρεῖος δέ, τῶν δεινῶν ἁπάντων ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς ὄντων, καὶ τῶν προτεταγμένων δυνάμεων ἐρειπομένων εἰς αὐτόν, ὡς οὐκ ἦν ἀποστρέψαι τὸ ἅρμα καὶ διεξελάσαι ῥᾴδιον, ἀλλ’ οἵ τε τροχοὶ συνείχοντο πτώμασι πεφυρμένοι τοσούτοις, οἵ θ’ ἵπποι καταλαμβανόμενοι καὶ ἀποκρυπτόμενοι τῷ πλήθει τῶν νεκρῶν, ἐξήλλοντο καὶ συνετάραττον τὸν ἡνίοχον, ἀπολείπει μὲν τὸ ἅρμα καὶ τὰ ὅπλα, θήλειαν [9] δ’ ὥς φασι νεοτόκον ἵππον περιβὰς ἔφυγεν. οὐ μὴν τότε γ’ ἂν ἐδόκει διαφυγεῖν, εἰ μὴ πάλιν ἧκον ἕτεροι παρὰ τοῦ Παρμενίωνος ἱππεῖς μετακαλοῦντες Ἀλέξανδρον, ὡς συνεστώσης ἔτι πολλῆς δυνάμεως ἐκεῖ καὶ τῶν πολεμίων οὐκ [10] ἐνδιδόντων. ὅλως γὰρ αἰτιῶνται Παρμενίωνα κατ’ ἐκείνην τὴν μάχην νωθρὸν γενέσθαι καὶ δύσεργον, εἴτε τοῦ γήρως ἤδη τι παραλύοντος τῆς τόλμης, εἴτε τὴν ἐξουσίαν καὶ τὸν ὄγκον, ὡς Καλλισθένης φησί (FGrH 124 F 36), τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου δυνάμεως βαρυνόμενον καὶ προσφθονοῦντα.

[11] τότε δ’ οὖν ὁ βασιλεὺς ἀνιαθεὶς τῇ μεταπέμψει, τοῖς μὲν στρατιώταις οὐκ ἔφρασε τὸ ἀληθές, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἄδην ἔχων τοῦ φονεύειν, καὶ σκότους ὄντος, ἀνάκλησιν ἐσήμανεν· ἐλαύνων δὲ πρὸς τὸ κινδυνεῦον μέρος, ἤκουσε καθ’ ὁδὸν ἡττῆσθαι παντάπασι καὶ φεύγειν τοὺς πολεμίους.

[34] [1] Τοῦτο τῆς μάχης ἐκείνης λαβούσης τὸ πέρας, ἡ μὲν ἀρχὴ παντάπασιν ἡ Περσῶν ἐδόκει καταλελύσθαι, βασιλεὺς δὲ τῆς Ἀσίας Ἀλέξανδρος ἀνηγορευμένος, ἔθυε τοῖς θεοῖς μεγαλοπρεπῶς, καὶ τοῖς φίλοις ἐδωρεῖτο πλούτους [2] καὶ οἴκους καὶ ἡγεμονίας. φιλοτιμούμενος δὲ πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ἔγραψε τὰς τυραννίδας πάσας καταλυθῆναι καὶ πολιτεύειν αὐτονόμους, ἰδίᾳ δὲ Πλαταιεῦσι τὴν πόλιν ἀνοικοδομεῖν, ὅτι τὴν χώραν οἱ πατέρες αὐτῶν ἐναγωνίσασθαι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας παρέσχον. [3] ἔπεμψε δὲ καὶ Κροτωνιάταις εἰς Ἰταλίαν μέρος τῶν λαφύρων, τὴν Φαΰλλου τοῦ ἀθλητοῦ τιμῶν προθυμίαν καὶ ἀρετήν, ὃς περὶ τὰ Μηδικά, τῶν ἄλλων Ἰταλιωτῶν ἀπεγνωκότων τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ἰδιόστολον ἔχων ναῦν ἔπλευσεν [4] εἰς Σαλαμῖνα, τοῦ κινδύνου συμμεθέξων. οὕτω τις εὐμενὴς ἦν πρὸς ἅπασαν ἀρετὴν καὶ καλῶν ἔργων φύλαξ καὶ οἰκεῖος.

[35] [1] Ἐπιὼν δὲ τὴν Βαβυλωνίαν, ἅπασαν εὐθὺς ἐπ’ αὐτῷ γενομένην, ἐθαύμασε μάλιστα τό τε χάσμα τοῦ πυρὸς ἐν †Ἐκβατάνοις, ὥσπερ ἐκ πηγῆς συνεχῶς ἀναφερομένου, καὶ τὸ ῥεῦμα τοῦ νάφθα, λιμνάζοντος διὰ τὸ πλῆθος οὐ [2] πόρρω τοῦ χάσματος· ὃς τἆλλα μὲν ἀσφάλτῳ προσέοικεν, οὕτω δ’ εὐπαθὴς πρὸς τὸ πῦρ ἐστιν, ὥστε πρὶν ἢ θιγεῖν τὴν φλόγα δι’ αὐτῆς τῆς περὶ τὸ φῶς ἐξαπτόμενος αὐγῆς [3] τὸν μεταξὺ πολλάκις ἀέρα συνεκκαίειν. ἐπιδεικνύμενοι δὲ τὴν φύσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ δύναμιν οἱ βάρβαροι τὸν ἄγοντα πρὸς τὴν κατάλυσιν τοῦ βασιλέως στενωπὸν ἐλαφρῶς τῷ φαρμάκῳ κατεψέκασαν· εἶτα στάντες ἐπ’ ἄκρῳ τοὺς λαμπτῆρας [4] τοῖς βεβρεγμένοις προσέθηκαν· ἤδη γὰρ συνεσκόταζε. τῶν δὲ πρώτων εὐθὺς ἁψαμένων, οὐκ ἔσχεν ἡ ‹ἐπι›νομὴ χρόνον αἰσθητόν, ἀλλ’ ἅμα νοήματι διῖκτο πρὸς θάτερον πέρας, καὶ πῦρ ἐγεγόνει συνεχὲς ὁ στενωπός.

[5] Ἦν δέ τις Ἀθηνοφάνης Ἀθηναῖος τῶν περὶ ἄλειμμα καὶ λουτρὸν εἰωθότων τὸ σῶμα θεραπεύειν τοῦ βασιλέως [6] καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ἐμμελῶς ἀπάγειν ἐπὶ τὸ ῥᾴθυμον. οὗτος ἐν τῷ λουτρῶνι τότε παιδαρίου τῷ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ παρεστῶτος εὐτελοῦς σφόδρα καὶ γελοίου τὴν ὄψιν, ᾄδοντος [7] δὲ χαριέντως, Στέφανος ἐκαλεῖτο, βούλει φησὶν ὦ βασιλεῦ διάπειραν ἐν Στεφάνῳ τοῦ φαρμάκου λάβωμεν; ἂν γὰρ ἅψηται τούτου καὶ μὴ κατασβεσθῇ, παντάπασιν ἂν φαίην ἄμαχον καὶ δεινὴν αὐτοῦ τὴν δύναμιν εἶναι.

[8] προθύμως δέ πως καὶ τοῦ παιδαρίου διδόντος ἑαυτὸν πρὸς τὴν πεῖραν, ἅμα τῷ περιαλεῖψαι καὶ θιγεῖν ἐξήνθησε φλόγα τοσαύτην τὸ σῶμα καὶ πυρὶ κατεσχέθη τὸ πᾶν, ὥστε τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον εἰς πᾶν ἀπορίας καὶ δέους [9] ἐλθεῖν. εἰ δὲ μὴ κατὰ τύχην πολλοὶ παρῆσαν ἀγγεῖα πρὸς τὸ λουτρὸν ὕδατος διὰ χειρῶν ἔχοντες, οὐκ ἂν ἔφθασεν ἡ βοήθεια τὴν ἐπινομήν. ἀλλὰ καὶ τότε μόγις κατέσβεσαν τὸ σῶμα τοῦ παιδὸς δι’ ὅλου πῦρ γενόμενον, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα χαλεπῶς ἔσχεν.

[10] Εἰκότως οὖν ἔνιοι τὸν μῦθον ἀνασῴζοντες πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν, τοῦτό φασιν εἶναι τὸ τῆς Μηδείας φάρμακον, ᾧ [11] τὸν τραγῳδούμενον στέφανον καὶ τὸν πέπλον ἔχρισεν. οὐ γὰρ ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐκείνων οὐδ’ ἀπ’ αὐτομάτου λάμψαι τὸ πῦρ, ἀλλὰ φλογὸς ἐγγύθεν παρατεθείσης ὀξεῖαν ὁλκὴν καὶ [12] συναφὴν ἄδηλον αἰσθήσει γενέσθαι. τὰς γὰρ ἀκτῖνας καὶ τὰ ῥεύματα τοῦ πυρὸς ἄπωθεν ἐπερχόμενα, τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις σώμασι φῶς καὶ θερμότητα προσβάλλειν μόνον, ἐν δὲ τοῖς [ἄλλοις] ξηρότητα πνευματικὴν ἢ νοτίδα λιπαρὰν καὶ διαρκῆ κεκτημένοις ἀθροιζόμενα καὶ πυριγονοῦντα [13] μεταβάλλειν ὀξέως τὴν ὕλην. παρεῖχε δ’ ἀπορίαν ἡ γένεσις εἴτε μᾶλλον ὑπέκκαυμα τῆς φλογὸς ὑπορρεῖ τὸ ὑγρὸν [14] ἐκ τῆς γῆς, φύσιν λιπαρὰν καὶ πυριγόνον ἐχούσης. καὶ γάρ ἐστιν ἡ Βαβυλωνία σφόδρα πυρώδης, ὥστε τὰς μὲν κριθὰς χαμόθεν ἐκπηδᾶν καὶ ἀποπάλλεσθαι πολλάκις, οἷον ὑπὸ φλεγμονῆς τῶν τόπων σφυγμοὺς ἐχόντων, τοὺς δ’ ἀνθρώπους ἐν τοῖς καύμασιν ἐπ’ ἀσκῶν πεπληρωμένων ὕδατος [15] καθεύδειν. Ἅρπαλος δὲ τῆς χώρας ἀπολειφθεὶς ἐπιμελητής, καὶ φιλοκαλῶν Ἑλληνικαῖς φυτείαις διακοσμῆσαι τὰ βασίλεια καὶ τοὺς περιπάτους, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ἐκράτησε, τὸν δὲ κιττὸν οὐκ ἔστεξεν ἡ γῆ μόνον, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ διέφθειρεν οὐ φέροντα τὴν κρᾶσιν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ πυρώδης, ὁ [16] δὲ φιλόψυχρος. τῶν μὲν οὖν τοιούτων παρεκβάσεων, ἂν μέτρον ἔχωσιν, ἧττον ἴσως οἱ δύσκολοι κατηγορ‹ής›ουσιν.

[36] [1] Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ Σούσων κυριεύσας, παρέλαβεν ἐν τοῖς βασιλείοις τετρακισμύρια τάλαντα νομίσματος, τὴν [2] δ’ ἄλλην κατασκευὴν καὶ πολυτέλειαν ἀδιήγητον. ὅπου φασὶ καὶ πορφύρας Ἑρμιονικῆς εὑρεθῆναι τάλαντα πεντακισχίλια, συγκειμένης μὲν ἐξ ἐτῶν δέκα δεόντων διακοσίων, πρόσφατον δὲ τὸ ἄνθος ἔτι καὶ νεαρὸν φυλαττούσης.

[3] αἴτιον δὲ τούτου φασὶν εἶναι τὸ τὴν βαφὴν διὰ μέλιτος γίνεσθαι τῶν ἁλουργῶν, δι’ ἐλαίου δὲ λευκοῦ τῶν λευκῶν· καὶ γὰρ τούτων τὸν ἴσον χρόνον ἐχόντων τὴν λαμπρότητα [4] καθαρὰν καὶ στίλβουσαν ὁρᾶσθαι. Δίνων δέ φησι (FGrH 690 F 23b) καὶ ὕδωρ ἀπό τε τοῦ Νείλου καὶ τοῦ Ἴστρου μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων μεταπεμπομένους εἰς τὴν γάζαν ἀποτίθεσθαι τοὺς βασιλεῖς, οἷον ἐκβεβαιουμένους τὸ μέγεθος τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ τὸ κυριεύειν ἁπάντων.

[37] [1] Τῆς δὲ Περσίδος οὔσης διὰ τραχύτητα δυσεμβόλου καὶ φυλαττομένης ὑπὸ ‹τῶν› γενναιοτάτων Περσῶν (Δαρεῖος μὲν γὰρ ἐπεφεύγει), γίγνεταί τινος περιόδου κύκλον ἐχούσης οὐ πολὺν ἡγεμὼν αὐτῷ δίγλωσσος ἄνθρωπος, ἐκ πατρὸς Λυκίου, μητρὸς δὲ Περσίδος γεγονώς· [2] ὅ φασιν ἔτι παιδὸς ὄντος Ἀλεξάνδρου τὴν Πυθίαν προειπεῖν, ὡς Λύκιος ἔσται καθηγεμὼν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τῆς ἐπὶ Πέρσας πορείας

[3] Φόνον μὲν οὖν ἐνταῦθα πολὺν τῶν ἁλισκομένων γενέσθαι συνέπεσε· γράφει γὰρ αὐτός, ὡς νομίζων αὐτῷ τοῦτο λυσιτελεῖν, ἐκέλευεν ἀποσφάττεσθαι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους· [4] νομίσματος δ’ εὑρεῖν πλῆθος ὅσον ἐν Σούσοις, τὴν δ’ ἄλλην κατασκευὴν καὶ τὸν πλοῦτον ἐκκομισθῆναί φασι μυρίοις [5] ὀρικοῖς ζεύγεσι καὶ πεντακισχιλίαις καμήλοις. Ξέρξου δ’ ἀνδριάντα μέγαν θεασάμενος ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν ὠθουμένων εἰς τὰ βασίλεια πλημμελῶς ἀνατετραμμένον, ἐπέστη, καὶ καθάπερ ἔμψυχον προσαγορεύσας πότερόν σε εἶπε διὰ τὴν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας στρατείαν κείμενον παρέλθωμεν, ἢ διὰ τὴν ἄλλην μεγαλοφροσύνην καὶ ἀρετὴν ἐγείρωμεν; τέλος δὲ πολὺν χρόνον πρὸς ἑαυτῷ γενόμενος [6] καὶ σιωπήσας, παρῆλθε. βουλόμενος δὲ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀναλαβεῖν (καὶ γὰρ ἦν χειμῶνος ὥρα), τέσσαρας μῆνας αὐτόθι διήγαγε.

[7] Λέγεται δὲ καθίσαντος αὐτοῦ τὸ πρῶτον ὑπὸ τὸν χρυσοῦν οὐρανίσκον ἐν τῷ βασιλικῷ θρόνῳ, τὸν Κορίνθιον Δημάρατον, εὔνουν ὄντ’ ἄνδρα καὶ πατρῷον φίλον Ἀλεξάνδρου, πρεσβυτικῶς ἐπιδακρῦσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν, ὡς μεγάλης ἡδονῆς ἐστεροῖντο τῶν Ἑλλήνων οἱ τεθνηκότες πρὶν ἰδεῖν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐν τῷ Δαρείου θρόνῳ καθήμενον.

[38] [1] Ἐκ τούτου μέλλων ἐξελαύνειν ἐπὶ Δαρεῖον, ἔτυχε μὲν εἰς μέθην τινὰ καὶ παιδιὰν τοῖς ἑταίροις ἑαυτὸν δεδωκώς, ὥστε καὶ γύναια συμπίνειν, ἐπὶ κῶμον ἥκοντα [2] πρὸς τοὺς ἐραστάς. ἐν δὲ τούτοις εὐδοκιμοῦσα μάλιστα Θαῒς ἡ Πτολεμαίου τοῦ βασιλεύσαντος ὕστερον ἑταίρα, γένος Ἀττική, τὰ μὲν ἐμμελῶς ἐπαινοῦσα, τὰ δὲ παίζουσα πρὸς τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, ἅμα τῇ μέθῃ λόγον εἰπεῖν προήχθη, τῷ μὲν τῆς πατρίδος ἤθει πρέποντα, μείζονα δ’ ἢ καθ’ [3] αὑτήν. ἔφη γάρ, ὧν πεπόνηκε πεπλανημένη τὴν Ἀσίαν, ἀπολαμβάνειν χάριν ἐκείνης τῆς ἡμέρας, ἐντρυφῶσα τοῖς [4] ὑπερηφάνοις Περσῶν βασιλείοις· ἔτι δ’ ἂν ἥδιον ὑποπρῆσαι κωμάσασα τὸν Ξέρξου τοῦ κατακαύσαντος τὰς Ἀθήνας οἶκον, αὐτὴ τὸ πῦρ ἅψασα τοῦ βασιλέως ὁρῶντος, ὡς ἂν λόγος ἔχῃ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους, ὅτι τῶν ναυμάχων καὶ πεζομάχων ἐκείνων στρατηγῶν τὰ μετ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου γύναια μείζονα δίκην ἐπέθηκε Πέρσαις ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος.

[5] ἅμα δὲ τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ κρότου καὶ θορύβου γενομένου καὶ παρακελεύσεως τῶν ἑταίρων καὶ φιλοτιμίας, ἐπισπασθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς καὶ ἀναπηδήσας ἔχων στέφανον καὶ [6] λαμπάδα προῆγεν· οἱ δ’ ἑπόμενοι κώμῳ καὶ βοῇ περιίσταντο τὰ βασίλεια, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Μακεδόνων οἱ [7] πυνθανόμενοι συνέτρεχον μετὰ λαμπάδων χαίροντες. ἤλπιζον γὰρ ὅτι τοῖς οἴκοι προσέχοντός ἐστι τὸν νοῦν καὶ μὴ μέλλοντος ἐν βαρβάροις οἰκεῖν τὸ πιμπράναι τὰ βασίλεια [8] καὶ διαφθείρειν. οἱ μὲν οὕτω ταῦτα γενέσθαι φασίν, οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ γνώμης· ὅτι δ’ οὖν μετενόησε ταχὺ καὶ κατασβέσαι προσέταξεν, ὁμολογεῖται.

[39] [1] Φύσει δ’ ὢν μεγαλοδωρότατος, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐπέδωκεν εἰς τοῦτο τῶν πραγμάτων αὐξομένων· καὶ προσῆν ἡ φιλοφροσύνη, μεθ’ ἧς μόνης ὡς ἀληθῶς οἱ διδόντες [2] χαρίζονται. μνησθήσομαι δ’ ὀλίγων. Ἀρίστων ὁ τῶν Παιόνων ἡγούμενος, ἀποκτείνας πολέμιον ἄνδρα καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπιδειξάμενος αὐτῷ, τοῦτ’ εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐκπώματος χρυσοῦ τιμᾶται τὸ δῶρον. ὁ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος γελάσας κενοῦ γ’ εἶπεν, ἐγὼ δέ σοι μεστὸν [3] ἀκράτου προπίομαι. τῶν δὲ πολλῶν τις Μακεδόνων ἤλαυνεν ἡμίονον, βασιλικὸν χρυσίον κομίζοντα· κάμνοντος δὲ τοῦ κτήνους, αὐτὸς ἀράμενος ἐκόμιζε τὸ φορτίον. ἰδὼν οὖν ὁ βασιλεὺς θλιβόμενον αὐτὸν σφόδρα καὶ πυθόμενος τὸ πρᾶγμα, μέλλοντος κατατίθεσθαι, μὴ κάμῃς εἶπεν, ἀλλὰ πρόσθες ἔτι τὴν λοιπὴν ὁδὸν ἐπὶ [4] τὴν σκηνήν, ἑαυτῷ τοῦτο κομίσας. ὅλως δ’ ἤχθετο τοῖς μὴ λαμβάνουσι μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς αἰτοῦσι. καὶ Φωκίωνι μὲν ἔγραψεν ἐπιστολήν, ὡς οὐ χρησόμενος αὐτῷ φίλῳ τὸ [5] λοιπόν, εἰ διωθοῖτο τὰς χάριτας. Σεραπίωνι δὲ τῶν ἀπὸ σφαίρας τινὶ νεανίσκων οὐδὲν ἐδίδου διὰ τὸ μηδὲν αἰτεῖν. ὡς οὖν εἰς τὸ σφαιρίζειν παραγενόμενος ὁ Σεραπίων ἄλλοις ἔβαλλε τὴν σφαῖραν, εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐμοὶ δ’ οὐ δίδως; οὐ γὰρ αἰτεῖς εἶπε, τούτῳ μὲν δὴ γελάσας [6] πολλὰ δέδωκε. Πρωτέᾳ δέ τινι τῶν περὶ σκώμματα καὶ πότον οὐκ ἀμούσων ἔδοξε δι’ ὀργῆς γεγονέναι· τῶν δὲ φίλων δεομένων κἀκείνου δακρύοντος, ἔφη διαλλάττεσθαι· κἀκεῖνος οὐκοῦν εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ δός τί μοι πιστὸν πρῶτον. ἐκέλευσεν οὖν αὐτῷ πέντε τάλαντα δοθῆναι.

[7] περὶ δὲ τῶν τοῖς φίλοις καὶ τοῖς σωματοφύλαξι νεμομένων πλούτων, ἡλίκον εἶχον ὄγκον, ἐμφαίνει δι’ ἐπιστολῆς Ὀλυμπιάς, ἣν ἔγραψε πρὸς αὐτόν. ἄλλως φησὶν εὖ ποίει τοὺς φίλους καὶ ἐνδόξους ἔχε· νῦν δ’ ἰσοβασιλέας πάντας ποιεῖς, καὶ πολυφιλίας παρασκευάζεις [8] αὐτοῖς, ἑαυτὸν δ’ ἐρημοῖς. πολλάκις δὲ τοιαῦτα τῆς Ὀλυμπιάδος γραφούσης, ἐφύλαττεν ἀπόρρητα τὰ γράμματα, πλὴν ἅπαξ Ἡφαιστίωνος ὥσπερ εἰώθει λυθεῖσαν ἐπιστολὴν αὐτῷ συναναγινώσκοντος, οὐκ ἐκώλυσεν, ἀλλὰ τὸν δακτύλιον ἀφελόμενος τὸν αὑτοῦ, προσέθηκε τῷ [9] ἐκείνου στόματι τὴν σφραγῖδα. Μαζαίου δὲ τοῦ μεγίστου παρὰ Δαρείῳ γενομένου παιδὶ σατραπείαν ἔχοντι δευτέραν προσετίθει μείζονα. παραιτούμενος δ’ ἐκεῖνος εἶπεν· ὦ βασιλεῦ, τότε μὲν ἦν εἷς Δαρεῖος, νῦν δὲ σὺ πολλοὺς [10] πεποίηκας Ἀλεξάνδρους. Παρμενίωνι μὲν οὖν τὸν Βαγώου ἔδωκεν οἶκον, ἐν ᾧ λέγεται τῶν περισσῶν ἱματισμὸν [11] χιλίων ταλάντων εὑρεθῆναι. πρὸς δ’ Ἀντίπατρον ἔγραφε κελεύων ἔχειν φύλακας τοῦ σώματος ὡς ἐπιβουλευόμενον.

[12] τῇ δὲ μητρὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἐδωρεῖτο καὶ κατέπεμπεν, οὐκ εἴα δὲ πολυπραγμονεῖν οὐδὲ παραστρατηγεῖν· ἐγκαλούσης [13] δὲ πρᾴως ἔφερε τὴν χαλεπότητα. πλὴν ἅπαξ ποτ’ Ἀντιπάτρου μακρὰν κατ’ αὐτῆς γράψαντος ἐπιστολήν, ἀναγνοὺς ἀγνοεῖν εἶπεν Ἀντίπατρον, ὅτι μυρίας ἐπιστολὰς ἓν δάκρυον ἀπαλείφει μητρός.

[40] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοὺς περὶ αὑτὸν ἑώρα παντάπασιν ἐκτετρυφηκότας καὶ φορτικοὺς ταῖς διαίταις καὶ πολυτελείαις ὄντας, ὥσθ’ Ἅγνωνα μὲν τὸν Τήϊον ἀργυροῦς ἐν ταῖς κρηπῖσιν ἥλους φορεῖν, Λεοννάτῳ δὲ πολλαῖς καμήλοις ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου κόνιν εἰς τὰ γυμνάσια παρακομίζεσθαι, Φιλώτᾳ δὲ πρὸς θήρας σταδίων ἑκατὸν αὐλαίας †γεγονέναι, μύρῳ δὲ χρωμένους ἰέναι πρὸς ἄλειμμα καὶ λουτρὸν ὅσῳ ‹πρότερον› οὐδ’ ἐλαίῳ, τρίπτας δὲ καὶ κατευναστὰς [2] περιαγομένους, ἐπετίμησε πρᾴως καὶ φιλοσόφως, θαυμάζειν φάμενος, εἰ τοσούτους ἠγωνισμένοι καὶ τηλικούτους ἀγῶνας, οὐ μνημονεύουσιν ὅτι τῶν καταπονηθέντων οἱ καταπονήσαντες ἥδιον καθεύδουσιν, οὐδ’ ὁρῶσι τοῖς Περσῶν βίοις τοὺς ἑαυτῶν παραβάλλοντες, ὅτι δουλικώτατον μέν ἐστι τὸ τρυφᾶν, βασιλικώτατον δὲ τὸ πονεῖν.

[3] καίτοι πῶς ἄν τις ἔφη δι’ ἑαυτοῦ θεραπεύσειεν ἵππον ἢ λόγχην ἀσκήσειεν ἢ κράνος, ἀπειθικὼς τοῦ φιλτάτου σώματος ἅπτεσθαι τὰς χεῖρας; οὐκ ἴστ’ εἶπεν ὅτι τοῦ κρατεῖν πέρας ἡμῖν ἐστι τὸ μὴ ταὐτὰ ποιεῖν τοῖς [4] κεκρατημένοις; ἐπέτεινεν οὖν ἔτι μᾶλλον αὐτὸς ἑαυτόν, ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις καὶ τοῖς κυνηγεσίοις κακοπαθῶν καὶ παραβαλλόμενος, ὥστε καὶ Λάκωνα πρεσβευτήν, παραγενόμενον αὐτῷ λέοντα καταβάλλοντι μέγαν, εἰπεῖν· καλῶς γ’ Ἀλέξανδρε πρὸς τὸν λέοντα ἠγώνισαι περὶ τᾶς [5] βασιλείας. τοῦτο τὸ κυνήγιον Κρατερὸς εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀνέθηκεν, εἰκόνας χαλκᾶς ποιησάμενος τοῦ λέοντος καὶ τῶν κυνῶν, καὶ τοῦ βασιλέως τῷ λέοντι συνεστῶτος, καὶ αὑτοῦ προσβοηθοῦντος, ὧν τὰ μὲν Λύσιππος ἔπλασε, τὰ δὲ Λεωχάρης.

[41] [1] Ἀλέξανδρος μὲν οὖν ἑαυτὸν ἀσκῶν ἅμα καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους παροξύνων πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἐκινδύνευεν· οἱ δὲ φίλοι διὰ πλοῦτον καὶ ὄγκον ἤδη τρυφᾶν βουλόμενοι καὶ σχολάζειν, ἐβαρύνοντο τὰς πλάνας καὶ τὰς στρατείας, καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν οὕτω προῆλθον εἰς τὸ βλασφημεῖν καὶ κακῶς [2] λέγειν αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ καὶ πάνυ πρᾴως ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς ταῦτα διέκειτο, φάσκων βασιλικὸν εἶναι τὸ κακῶς ἀκούειν εὖ [3] ποιοῦντα. καίτοι τὰ μὲν μικρότατα τῶν γενομένων τοῖς συνήθεσι παρ’ αὐτοῦ σημεῖα μεγάλης ὑπῆρχεν εὐνοίας [4] καὶ τιμῆς· ὧν ὀλίγα παραθήσομαι. Πευκέστᾳ μὲν ἔγραψε μεμφόμενος, ὅτι δηχθεὶς ὑπ’ ἄρκτου τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἔγραψεν, αὐτῷ δ’ οὐκ ἐδήλωσεν. ἀλλὰ νῦν γε φησί γράψον τε πῶς ἔχεις, καὶ μή τινές σε τῶν συγκυνηγετούντων [5] ἐγκατέλιπον, ἵνα δίκην δῶσι. τοῖς δὲ περὶ Ἡφαιστίωνα διὰ πράξεις τινὰς ἀποῦσιν ἔγραψεν, ὅτι παιζόντων αὐτῶν πρὸς ἰχνεύμονα τῷ Περδίκκου δορατίῳ [6] περιπεσὼν Κρατερὸς τοὺς μηροὺς ἐτρώθη. Πευκέστα δὲ σωθέντος ἔκ τινος ἀσθενείας, ἔγραψε πρὸς Ἀλέξιππον τὸν ἰατρὸν εὐχαριστῶν. Κρατεροῦ δὲ νοσοῦντος ὄψιν ἰδὼν καθ’ ὕπνον, αὐτός τέ τινας θυσίας ἔθυσεν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ, [7] κἀκεῖνον [θῦσαι] ἐκέλευσεν. ἔγραψε δὲ καὶ Παυσανίᾳ τῷ ἰατρῷ βουλομένῳ τὸν Κρατερὸν ἐλλεβορίσαι, τὰ μὲν ἀγωνιῶν, τὰ δὲ παραινῶν ὅπως χρήσηται τῇ φαρμακείᾳ.

[8] τοὺς δὲ πρώτους τὴν Ἁρπάλου φυγὴν καὶ ἀπόδρασιν ἀπαγγείλαντας ἔδησεν, Ἐφιάλτην καὶ Κίσσον, ὡς καταψευδομένους [9] τοῦ ἀνδρός. ἐπεὶ δέ, τοὺς ἀσθενοῦντας αὐτοῦ καὶ γέροντας εἰς οἶκον ἀποστέλλοντος, Εὐρύλοχος Αἰγαῖος ἐνέγραψεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τοὺς νοσοῦντας, εἶτα φωραθεὶς ἔχων οὐδὲν κακόν, ὡμολόγησε Τελεσίππας ἐρᾶν καὶ συνεπακολουθεῖν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ἀπιούσης ἐκείνης, ἠρώτησε [10] τίνων ἀνθρώπων ἐστὶ τὸ γύναιον. ἀκούσας δ’ ὅτι τῶν ἐλευθέρων ἑταιρῶν ἡμᾶς μὲν εἶπεν ὦ Εὐρύλοχε συνερῶντας ἔχεις· ὅρα δ’ ὅπως πείθωμεν ἢ λόγοις ἢ δώροις τὴν Τελεσίππαν, ἐπειδήπερ ἐξ ἐλευθέρων ἐστί.

[42] [1] Θαυμάσαι δ’ αὐτὸν ἔστιν, ὅτι καὶ μέχρι τοιούτων ἐπιστολῶν τοῖς φίλοις ἐσχόλαζεν· οἷα γράφει παῖδα Σελεύκου εἰς Κιλικίαν ἀποδεδρακότα κελεύων ἀναζητῆσαι, καὶ Πευκέσταν ἐπαινῶν ὅτι Νίκωνα Κρατεροῦ δοῦλον συνέλαβε, καὶ Μεγαβύζῳ περὶ τοῦ θεράποντος τοῦ ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ καθεζομένου, κελεύων αὐτὸν ἂν δύνηται συλλαβεῖν ἔξω τοῦ ἱεροῦ προκαλεσάμενον, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἱερῷ μὴ προσάπτεσθαι.

[2] λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὰς δίκας διακρίνων ἐν ἀρχῇ τὰς θανατικὰς τὴν χεῖρα τῶν ὤτων τῷ ἑτέρῳ προστιθέναι τοῦ κατηγόρου λέγοντος, ὅπως τῷ κινδυνεύοντι καθαρὸν [3] φυλάττηται καὶ ἀδιάβλητον. ἀλλ’ ὕστερόν γ’ αὐτὸν ἐξετράχυναν αἱ πολλαὶ διαβολαί, διὰ τῶν ἀληθῶν πάροδον [4] ‹καὶ› πίστιν ἐπὶ τὰ ψευδῆ λαβοῦσαι, καὶ μάλιστα κακῶς ἀκούων ἐξίστατο τοῦ φρονεῖν, καὶ χαλεπὸς ἦν καὶ ἀπαραίτητος, ἅτε δὴ τὴν δόξαν ἀντὶ τοῦ ζῆν καὶ τῆς βασιλείας ἠγαπηκώς.

[5] Τότε δ’ ἐξήλαυνεν ἐπὶ Δαρεῖον, ὡς πάλιν μαχούμενος· ἀκούσας δὲ τὴν ὑπὸ Βήσσου γενομένην αὐτοῦ σύλληψιν, ἀπέλυσε τοὺς Θεσσαλοὺς οἴκαδε, δισχίλια τάλαντα δωρεὰν [6] ἐπιμετρήσας ταῖς μισθοφοραῖς. πρὸς δὲ τὴν δίωξιν, ἀργαλέαν καὶ μακρὰν γινομένην (ἕνδεκα γὰρ ἡμέραις ἱππάσατο τρισχιλίους καὶ τριακοσίους σταδίους), ἀπηγόρευσαν μὲν οἱ πλεῖστοι, καὶ μάλιστα κατὰ τὴν ἄνυδρον.

[7] ἔνθα δὴ Μακεδόνες ἀπήντησαν αὐτῷ τινες ὕδωρ ἐν ἀσκοῖς ἐφ’ ἡμιόνων κομίζοντες ἀπὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ, καὶ θεασάμενοι τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἤδη μεσημβρίας οὔσης κακῶς ὑπὸ δίψους [8] ἔχοντα, ταχὺ πλησάμενοι κράνος προσήνεγκαν. πυθομένου δ’ αὐτοῦ τίσι κομίζοιεν, υἱοῖς ἔφασαν ἰδίοις· ἀλλὰ σοῦ ζῶντος ἑτέρους ποιησόμεθα, κἂν ἐκείνους ἀπολέσωμεν.

[9] ταῦτ’ ἀκούσας, ἔλαβεν εἰς τὰς χεῖρας τὸ κράνος· περιβλέψας δὲ καὶ θεασάμενος τοὺς περὶ αὑτὸν ἱππεῖς ἅπαντας ἐγκεκλικότας ταῖς κεφαλαῖς καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀποβλέποντας, ἀπέδωκεν οὐ πιών, ἀλλ’ ἐπαινέσας τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἂν γὰρ αὐτὸς ἔφη πίω μόνος, ἀθυμήσουσιν [10] οὗτοι. θεασάμενοι δὲ τὴν ἐγκράτειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ μεγαλοψυχίαν οἱ ἱππεῖς ἄγειν ἀνέκραγον θαρροῦντα καὶ τοὺς ἵππους ἐμάστιζον· οὔτε γὰρ κάμνειν οὔτε διψᾶν οὔθ’ ὅλως θνητοὺς εἶναι νομίζειν αὑτούς, ἕως ἂν ἔχωσι βασιλέα τοιοῦτον.

[43] [1] Ἡ μὲν οὖν προθυμία πάντων ἦν ὁμοία, μόνους δέ φασιν ἑξήκοντα συνεισπεσεῖν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν [2] πολεμίων. ἔνθα δὴ πολὺν μὲν ἄργυρον καὶ χρυσὸν ἐρριμμένον ὑπερβαίνοντες, πολλὰς δὲ παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν ἁρμαμάξας ἡνιόχων ἐρήμους διαφερομένας παρερχόμενοι, [3] τοὺς πρώτους ἐδίωκον, ὡς ἐν ἐκείνοις Δαρεῖον ὄντα. μόλις δ’ εὑρίσκεται πολλῶν ἀκοντισμάτων κατάπλεως τὸ σῶμα κείμενος ἐν ἁρμαμάξῃ, μικρὸν ἀπολείπων τοῦ τελευτᾶν· ὅμως δὲ καὶ πιεῖν ᾔτησε, καὶ πιὼν ὕδωρ ψυχρόν, εἶπε πρὸς [4] τὸν δόντα Πολύστρατον· ὦ ἄνθρωπε, τοῦτό μοι πέρας γέγονε δυστυχίας ἁπάσης, εὖ παθεῖν ἀμείψασθαι μὴ δυνάμενον· ἀλλ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ἀποδώσει σοι τὴν χάριν, Ἀλεξάνδρῳ δ’ οἱ θεοὶ τῆς εἰς μητέρα καὶ γυναῖκα καὶ παῖδας τοὺς ἐμοὺς ἐπιεικείας, ᾧ ταύτην δίδωμι τὴν δεξιὰν διὰ σοῦ. ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν καὶ λαβόμενος τῆς τοῦ Πολυστράτου χειρός, ἐξέλιπεν.

[5] Ἀλέξανδρος δ’ ὡς ἐπῆλθεν, ἀλγῶν τε τῷ πάθει φανερὸς ἦν, καὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ χλαμύδα λύσας ἐπέβαλε τῷ σώματι καὶ [6] περιέστειλε. καὶ Βῆσσον μὲν ὕστερον εὑρὼν διεσφενδόνησεν, ὀρθίων δένδρων εἰς ταὐτὸ καμφθέντων ἑκατέρῳ μέρος προσαρτήσας τοῦ σώματος, εἶτα μεθεὶς ἑκάτερον, ὡς ὥρμητο ῥύμῃ φερόμενον, τὸ προσῆκον αὐτῷ μέρος [7] νείμασθαι. τότε δὲ τοῦ Δαρείου τὸ μὲν σῶμα κεκοσμημένον βασιλικῶς πρὸς τὴν μητέρ’ ἀπέστειλε, τὸν δ’ ἀδελφὸν Ἐξάθρην εἰς τοὺς ἑταίρους ἀνέλαβεν.

[44] [1] Αὐτὸς δὲ μετὰ τῆς ἀκμαιοτάτης δυνάμεως εἰς Ὑρκανίαν κατέβαινε, καὶ πελάγους ἰδὼν κόλπον οὐκ ἐλάττονα μὲν τοῦ Πόντου φανέντα, γλυκύτερον δὲ τῆς ἄλλης θαλάττης, σαφὲς μὲν οὐδὲν ἔσχε πυθέσθαι περὶ αὐτοῦ, μάλιστα δ’ εἴκασε τῆς Μαιώτιδος λίμνης ἀνακοπὴν [2] εἶναι. καίτοι τούς γε φυσικοὺς ἄνδρας οὐκ ἔλαθε τἀληθές, ἀλλὰ πολλοῖς ἔτεσιν ἔμπροσθεν τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου στρατείας ἱστορήκασιν, ὅτι τεσσάρων κόλπων εἰσεχόντων ἀπὸ τῆς ἔξω θαλάσσης βορειότατος οὗτός ἐστι, τὸ Ὑρκάνιον πέλαγος καὶ Κάσπιον ὁμοῦ προσαγορευόμενον.

[3] Ἐνταῦθα τῶν βαρβάρων τινὲς ἀπροσδοκήτως περιτυχόντες τοῖς ἄγουσι τὸν ἵππον αὐτοῦ τὸν Βουκεφάλαν [4] λαμβάνουσιν. ὁ δ’ ἤνεγκεν οὐ μετρίως, ἀλλὰ κήρυκα πέμψας ἠπείλησε πάντας ἀποκτενεῖν μετὰ τέκνων καὶ [5] γυναικῶν, εἰ τὸν ἵππον αὐτῷ μὴ ἀναπέμψειαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὸν ἵππον [αὐτῷ] ἄγοντες ἧκον ‹αὐτῷ› καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἐγχειρίζοντες, ἐχρήσατο φιλανθρώπως πᾶσι καὶ τοῦ ἵππου λύτρα τοῖς λαβοῦσιν ἔδωκεν.

[45] [1] Ἐντεῦθεν εἰς τὴν Παρθικὴν ἀναζεύξας καὶ σχολάζων, πρῶτον ἐνεδύσατο τὴν βαρβαρικὴν στολὴν, εἴτε βουλόμενος αὑτὸν συνοικειοῦν τοῖς ἐπιχωρίοις νόμοις, ὡς μέγα πρὸς ἐξημέρωσιν ἀνθρώπων τὸ σύνηθες καὶ ὁμόφυλον, εἴτ’ ἀπόπειρά τις ὑφεῖτο τῆς προσκυνήσεως αὕτη τοῖς Μακεδόσι, κατὰ μικρὸν ἀνασχέσθαι τὴν ἐκδιαίτησιν [2] αὐτοῦ καὶ μεταβολὴν ἐθιζομένοις. οὐ μὴν τήν γε Μηδικὴν ἐκείνην προσήκατο, παντάπασι βαρβαρικὴν καὶ ἀλλόκοτον οὖσαν, οὐδ’ ἀναξυρίδας οὐδὲ κάνδυν οὐδὲ τιάραν ἔλαβεν, ἀλλ’ ἐν μέσῳ τινὰ τῆς Περσικῆς καὶ τῆς Μηδικῆς μειξάμενος εὖ πως, ἀτυφοτέραν μὲν ἐκείνης, ταύτης δὲ [3] σοβαρωτέραν οὖσαν. ἐχρῆτο δὲ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἐντυγχάνων τοῖς βαρβάροις καὶ τοῖς ἑταίροις κατ’ οἶκον, εἶτα τοῖς [4] πολλοῖς οὕτως ἐξελαύνων καὶ χρηματίζων ἑωρᾶτο. καὶ λυπηρὸν μὲν ἦν τοῖς Μακεδόσι τὸ θέαμα, τὴν δ’ ἄλλην αὐτοῦ θαυμάζοντες ἀρετὴν ᾤοντο δεῖν ἔνια τῶν πρὸς [5] ἡδονὴν αὐτῷ καὶ δόξαν ἐπιχωρεῖν· ὅς γε πρὸς ἅπασι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἔναγχος τόξευμα μὲν εἰς τὴν κνήμην λαβών, ὑφ’ οὗ τῆς κερκίδος ‹τὸ› ὁστέον ἀποθραυσθὲν ἐξέπεσε, λίθῳ δὲ πληγεὶς πάλιν εἰς τὸν τράχηλον, ὥστε καὶ ταῖς ὄψεσιν [6] ἀχλὺν ὑποδραμεῖν παραμείνασαν οὐκ ὀλίγον χρόνον, ὅμως οὐκ ἐπαύετο χρώμενος ἑαυτῷ πρὸς τοὺς κινδύνους ἀφειδῶς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν Ὀρεξάρτην διαβὰς ποταμόν, ὃν αὐτὸς ᾤετο Τάναϊν εἶναι, καὶ τοὺς Σκύθας τρεψάμενος, ἐδίωξεν ἐπὶ σταδίους ἑκατόν, ἐνοχλούμενος ὑπὸ διαρροίας.

[46] [1] Ἐνταῦθα δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀφικέσθαι τὴν Ἀμαζόνα οἱ πολλοὶ λέγουσιν, ὧν καὶ Κλείταρχός ἐστι (FGrH 137 F 15) καὶ Πολύκλειτος (FGrH 128 F 8) καὶ Ὀνησίκριτος (FGrH 134 F 1) καὶ Ἀντιγένης (FGrH 141 F 1) καὶ Ἴστρος (FGrH 334 [2] F 26). Ἀριστόβουλος (FGrH 139 F 21) δὲ καὶ Χάρης ὁ εἰσαγγελεύς (FGrH 125 F 12), πρὸς δὲ τούτοις Ἑκαταῖος ὁ Ἐρετριεὺς (Scr. rer. Alex. M. 49 M.) καὶ Πτολεμαῖος (FGrH 138 F 28a) καὶ Ἀντικλείδης (FGrH 140 F 12) καὶ Φίλων ὁ Θηβαῖος (FHG III 560 not.) καὶ Φίλιππος ὁ Θεαγγελεὺς (FGrH 741 F 4) καὶ Φίλιππος ὁ Χαλκιδεὺς (ibid.) καὶ Δοῦρις ὁ Σάμιος (FGrH 76 F 46) πλάσμα φασὶ γεγονέναι [3] τοῦτο. καὶ μαρτυρεῖν αὐτοῖς ἔοικεν Ἀλέξανδρος· Ἀντιπάτρῳ γὰρ ἅπαντα γράφων ἀκριβῶς, τὸν μὲν Σκύθην φησὶν αὐτῷ διδόναι τὴν θυγατέρα πρὸς γάμον, Ἀμαζόνος [4] δ’ οὐ μνημονεύει. λέγεται δὲ πολλοῖς χρόνοις Ὀνησίκριτος ὕστερον ἤδη βασιλεύοντι Λυσιμάχῳ τῶν βιβλίων τὸ τέταρτον ἀναγινώσκειν, ἐν ᾧ γέγραπται περὶ τῆς Ἀμαζόνος· τὸν οὖν Λυσίμαχον ἀτρέμα μειδιάσαντα καὶ ποῦ φάναι [5] τότ’ ἤμην ἐγώ; ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἄν τις οὔτ’ ἀπιστῶν ἧττον οὔτε πιστεύων μᾶλλον Ἀλέξανδρον θαυμάσειε.

[47] [1] Φοβούμενος δὲ τοὺς Μακεδόνας μὴ εἰς τὰ ὑπόλοιπα τῆς στρατείας ἀπαγορεύσωσι, τὸ μὲν ἄλλο πλῆθος εἴασε κατὰ χώραν, τοὺς δ’ ἀρίστους ἔχων ἐν Ὑρκανίᾳ μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ, δισμυρίους πεζοὺς καὶ τρισχιλίους ἱππεῖς, ‹πεῖραν› προσέβαλε, λέγων ὡς νῦν μὲν αὐτοὺς †ἐνύπνιον τῶν βαρβάρων ὁρώντων, ἂν δὲ μόνον ταράξαντες τὴν [2] Ἀσίαν ἀπίωσιν, ἐπιθησομένων εὐθὺς ὥσπερ γυναιξίν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἀφιέναι γε τοὺς βουλομένους ἔφη, καὶ μαρτυράμενος ὅτι τὴν οἰκουμένην τοῖς Μακεδόσι κτώμενος ἐγκαταλέλειπται, μετὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ τῶν ἐθελόντων [3] στρατεύειν. ταῦτα σχεδὸν αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν ἐν τῇ πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον ἐπιστολῇ γέγραπται, καὶ ὅτι ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος αὐτοῦ πάντες ἐξέκραγον, ὅπου βούλεται τῆς οἰκουμένης [4] ἄγειν. δεξαμένων δὲ τούτων τὴν πεῖραν, οὐκέτ’ ἦν χαλεπὸν προσαχθῆναι τὸ πλῆθος, ἀλλὰ ῥᾳδίως ἐπηκολούθησεν.

[5] Οὕτω δὴ καὶ τὴν δίαιταν ἔτι μᾶλλον ὡμοίου τε τοῖς ἐπιχωρίοις ἑαυτόν, ἐκείνους τε προσῆγε τοῖς Μακεδονικοῖς ἔθεσιν, ἀνακράσει καὶ κοινωνίᾳ μᾶλλον δι’ εὐνοίας καταστήσεσθαι τὰ πράγματα νομίζων ἢ βίᾳ, μακρὰν [6] ἀπαίροντος αὐτοῦ. διὸ καὶ τρισμυρίους παῖδας ἐπιλεξάμενος ἐκέλευσε γράμματά τε μανθάνειν Ἑλληνικὰ καὶ Μακεδονικοῖς ὅπλοις ἐντρέφεσθαι, πολλοὺς ἐπιστάτας καταστήσας, [7] καὶ τὰ περὶ Ῥωξάνην ἔρωτι μὲν ἐπράχθη, καλὴν καὶ ὡραίαν ἔν τινι χορῷ παρὰ πότον ὀφθεῖσαν, ἔδοξε δ’ [8] οὐκ ἀνάρμοστα τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις εἶναι πράγμασιν. ἐθάρρησαν γὰρ οἱ βάρβαροι τῇ κοινωνίᾳ τοῦ γάμου, καὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ὑπερηγάπησαν, ὅτι σωφρονέστατος περὶ ταῦτα γεγονὼς οὐδ’ ἧς μόνης ἡττήθη γυναικὸς ἄνευ νόμου θιγεῖν ὑπέμεινεν.

[9] Ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τῶν φίλων ἑώρα τῶν μεγίστων Ἡφαιστίωνα μὲν ἐπαινοῦντα καὶ συμμετακοσμούμενον αὐτῷ, Κρατερὸν δὲ τοῖς πατρίοις ἐμμένοντα, δι’ ἐκείνου μὲν ἐχρημάτιζε τοῖς βαρβάροις, διὰ τούτου δὲ τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ [10] τοῖς Μακεδόσι· καὶ ὅλως τὸν μὲν ἐφίλει μάλιστα, τὸν δ’ ἐτίμα, νομίζων καὶ λέγων ἀεί, τὸν μὲν Ἡφαιστίωνα [11] φιλαλέξανδρον εἶναι, τὸν δὲ Κρατερὸν φιλοβασιλέα. διὸ καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὑπούλως ἔχοντες, συνέκρουον πολλάκις, ἅπαξ δὲ περὶ τὴν Ἰνδικὴν καὶ εἰς χεῖρας ἦλθον σπασάμενοι τὰ ξίφη, καὶ τῶν φίλων ἑκατέρῳ παραβοηθούντων, προσελάσας ‹ὁ› Ἀλέξανδρος ἐλοιδόρει τὸν Ἡφαιστίωνα φανερῶς, ἔμπληκτον καλῶν καὶ μαινόμενον, εἰ μὴ συνίησιν ὡς ἐάν τις αὐτοῦ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἀφέληται, μηδέν ἐστιν· [12] ἰδίᾳ δὲ καὶ τοῦ Κρατεροῦ πικρῶς καθήψατο, καὶ συναγαγὼν αὐτοὺς καὶ διαλλάξας, ἐπώμοσε τὸν Ἄμμωνα καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους θεούς, ἦ μὴν μάλιστα φιλεῖν ἀνθρώπων ἁπάντων ἐκείνους· ἂν δὲ πάλιν αἴσθηται διαφερομένους, ἀποκτενεῖν ἀμφοτέρους ἢ τὸν ἀρξάμενον. ὅθεν ὕστερον οὐδὲ παίζοντες εἰπεῖν τι πρὸς ἀλλήλους οὐδὲ πρᾶξαι λέγονται.

[48] [1] Φιλώτας δ’ ὁ Παρμενίωνος ἀξίωμα μὲν εἶχεν ἐν τοῖς Μακεδόσι μέγα· καὶ γὰρ ἀνδρεῖος ἐδόκει καὶ καρτερικὸς εἶναι, φιλόδωρος δὲ καὶ φιλέταιρος ‹ὡς› μετ’ αὐτὸν [2] Ἀλέξανδρον οὐδείς. λέγεται γοῦν ὅτι τῶν συνήθων τινὸς αἰτοῦντος ἀργύριον, ἐκέλευσε δοῦναι· φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ διοικητοῦ μὴ ἔχειν, τί λέγεις; εἶπεν οὐδὲ ποτήριον [3] ἔχεις οὐδ’ ἱμάτιον; ὄγκῳ δὲ φρονήματος καὶ βάρει πλούτου καὶ τῇ περὶ τὸ σῶμα θεραπείᾳ καὶ διαίτῃ χρώμενος ἐπαχθέστερον ἢ κατ’ ἰδιώτην, καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ σεμνὸν καὶ ὑψηλὸν οὐκ ἐμμελῶς, ἀλλ’ ἄνευ χαρίτων τῷ σολοίκῳ καὶ παρασήμῳ μιμούμενος, ὑποψίαν ‹εἶχε› καὶ φθόνον, ὥστε καὶ Παρμενίωνά ποτ’ εἰπεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν· [4] ὦ παῖ, χείρων μοι γίνου. πρὸς δ’ αὐτὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐκ πάνυ πολλῶν χρόνων ἐτύγχανε διαβεβλημένος. ὅτε γὰρ τὰ περὶ Δαμασκὸν ἑάλω χρήματα Δαρείου νικηθέντος ἐν Κιλικίᾳ, πολλῶν σωμάτων κομισθέντων εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, εὑρέθη γύναιον ἐν τοῖς αἰχμαλώτοις, τῷ μὲν γένει Πυδναῖον, εὐπρεπὲς δὲ τὴν ὄψιν· ἐκαλεῖτο δ’ Ἀντιγόνη· [5] τοῦτ’ ἔσχεν ὁ Φιλώτας. οἷα δὲ νέος πρὸς ἐρωμένην καὶ σὺν οἴνῳ πολλὰ φιλότιμα καὶ στρατιωτικὰ παρρησιαζόμενος ἑαυτοῦ τὰ μέγιστα τῶν ἔργων ἀπέφαινε καὶ τοῦ πατρός, Ἀλέξανδρον δὲ μειράκιον ἀπεκάλει, δι’ αὐτοὺς τὸ [6] τῆς ἀρχῆς ὄνομα καρπούμενον. ταῦτα τῆς γυναικὸς ἐκφερούσης πρός τινα τῶν συνήθων, ἐκείνου δ’ ὡς εἰκὸς πρὸς ἕτερον, περιῆλθεν εἰς Κρατερὸν ὁ λόγος, καὶ λαβὼν τὸ [7] γύναιον εἰσήγαγε κρύφα πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον. ἀκούσας δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἐκέλευσε φοιτᾶν εἰς ταὐτὸ τῷ Φιλώτᾳ καὶ πᾶν ὅ τι ἂν ἐκπύθηται τούτου, πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀπαγγέλλειν βαδίζουσαν.

[49] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Φιλώτας ἐπιβουλευόμενος οὕτως ἠγνόει καὶ συνῆν τῇ Ἀντιγόνῃ, πολλὰ καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν καὶ μεγαλαυχίαν κατὰ τοῦ βασιλέως ῥήματα καὶ λόγους ἀνεπιτηδείους [2] προϊέμενος. ὁ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος, καίπερ καρτερᾶς ἐνδείξεως κατὰ τοῦ Φιλώτου προσπεσούσης, ἐκαρτέρησε σιωπῇ καὶ κατέσχεν, εἴτε θαρρῶν τῇ Παρμενίωνος εὐνοίᾳ πρὸς αὑτόν, εἴτε δεδιὼς τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν δύναμιν.

[3] Ἐν δὲ τῷ τότε χρόνῳ Μακεδὼν ὄνομα Λίμνος ἐκ Χαλαίστρας [χαλεπῶς] ἐπιβουλεύων Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, Νικόμαχόν τινα τῶν νέων, πρὸς ὃν αὐτὸς ἐρωτικῶς εἶχεν, ἐπὶ τὴν [4] κοινωνίαν τῆς πράξεως παρεκάλει. τοῦ δὲ μὴ δεξαμένου, φράσαντος δὲ τἀδελφῷ ‹Κε›βαλίνῳ τὴν πεῖραν, ἐλθὼν ἐκεῖνος πρὸς Φιλώταν ἐκέλευσεν εἰσάγειν αὐτοὺς πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον, ὡς περὶ ἀναγκαίων ἔχοντας ἐντυχεῖν καὶ [5] μεγάλων. ὁ δὲ Φιλώτας, ὅ τι δὴ παθὼν (ἄδηλον γάρ ἐστιν), οὐ παρῆγεν αὐτούς, ὡς πρὸς ἄλλοις μείζοσι γινομένου τοῦ [6] βασιλέως· καὶ τοῦτο δὶς ἐποίησεν. οἱ δὲ καθ’ ὑπ[ερ]οψίαν ἤδη τοῦ Φιλώτου τραπόμενοι πρὸς ἕτερον καὶ δι’ ἐκείνου τῷ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ προσαχθέντες, πρῶτον μὲν τὰ τοῦ Λίμνου κατεῖπον, ἔπειτα παρεδήλωσαν ἡσυχῇ τὸν Φιλώταν ὡς [7] ἀμελήσειεν αὐτῶν δὶς ἐντυχόντων. καὶ τοῦτο δὴ σφόδρα παρώξυνε τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, καὶ τοῦ πεμφθέντος ἐπὶ τὸν Λίμνον, ὡς ἠμύνετο συλλαμβανόμενος, ἀποκτείναντος αὐτόν, ἔτι μᾶλλον διεταράχθη, τὸν ἔλεγχον ἐκπεφευγέναι [8] τῆς ἐπιβουλῆς νομίζων, καὶ πικρῶς ἔχων πρὸς τὸν Φιλώταν ἐπεσπάσατο τοὺς πάλαι μισοῦντας αὐτόν, ἤδη φανερῶς λέγοντας, ὡς ῥᾳθυμία τοῦ βασιλέως εἴη Λίμνον οἰομένου Χαλαιστραῖον ἄνθρωπον ἐπιχειρῆσαι τολμήματι τοσούτῳ [9] καθ’ αὑτόν· ἀλλὰ τοῦτον μὲν ὑπηρέτην εἶναι, μᾶλλον δ’ ὄργανον ἀπὸ μείζονος ἀρχῆς ἀφιέμενον, ἐν ἐκείνοις δὲ τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν ζητητέον οἷς μάλιστα ταῦτα λανθάνειν [10] συνέφερε. τοιούτοις λόγοις καὶ ὑπονοίαις ἀναπετάσαντος τὰ ὦτα τοῦ βασιλέως, ἐπῆγον ἤδη μυρίας κατὰ τοῦ [11] Φιλώτου διαβολάς. ἐκ τούτου δὲ συλληφθεὶς ἀνεκρίνετο, τῶν ἑταίρων ἐφεστώτων ταῖς βασάνοις, Ἀλεξάνδρου δὲ [12] κατακούοντος ἔξωθεν αὐλαίας παρατεταμένης· ὅτε δὴ καί φασιν αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν, οἰκτρὰς καὶ ταπεινὰς τοῦ Φιλώτου φωνὰς καὶ δεήσεις τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἡφαιστίωνα προσφέροντος· οὕτω δὴ μαλακὸς ὢν ὦ Φιλώτα καὶ ἄνανδρος ἐπεχείρεις πράγμασι τηλικούτοις;

[13] Ἀποθανόντος δὲ τοῦ Φιλώτου, καὶ Παρμενίωνα πέμψας εὐθὺς εἰς Μηδίαν ἀνεῖλεν, ἄνδρα πολλὰ μὲν Φιλίππῳ συγκατεργασάμενον, μόνον δ’ ἢ μάλιστα τῶν πρεσβυτέρων φίλων Ἀλέξανδρον εἰς Ἀσίαν ἐξορμήσαντα διαβῆναι, τριῶν δ’ υἱῶν οὓς ἔσχεν ἐπὶ τῆς στρατιᾶς δύο μὲν ἐπιδόντα πρότερον ἀποθανόντας, τῷ δὲ τρίτῳ συναναιρεθέντα.

[14] Ταῦτα πραχθέντα πολλοῖς τῶν φίλων φοβερὸν ἐποίησε τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, μάλιστα δ’ Ἀντιπάτρῳ, καὶ πρὸς Αἰτωλοὺς [15] ἔπεμψε κρύφα, πίστεις διδοὺς καὶ λαμβάνων. ἐφοβοῦντο γὰρ Ἀλέξανδρον Αἰτωλοὶ διὰ τὴν Οἰνιαδῶν ἀνάστασιν, ἣν πυθόμενος οὐκ Οἰνιαδῶν ἔφη παῖδας, ἀλλ’ αὑτὸν ἐπιθήσειν δίκην Αἰτωλοῖς.

[50] [1] Οὐ πολλῷ δ’ ὕστερον συνηνέχθη καὶ τὰ περὶ Κλεῖτον, οὕτω μὲν ἁπλῶς πυθομένοις τῶν κατὰ Φιλώταν [2] ἀγριώτερα· λόγῳ μέντοι συντιθέντες ἅμα καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν καὶ τὸν καιρόν, οὐκ ἀπὸ γνώμης, ἀλλὰ δυστυχίᾳ τινὶ ταῦθ’ εὑρίσκομεν πεπραγμένα τοῦ βασιλέως, ὀργὴν καὶ μέθην πρόφασιν τῷ Κλείτου δαίμονι παρασχόντος.

[3] ἐπράχθη δ’ οὕτως. ἧκόν τινες ὀπώραν Ἑλληνικὴν ἀπὸ θαλάσσης τῷ βασιλεῖ κομίζοντες. ὁ δὲ θαυμάσας τὴν ἀκμὴν καὶ τὸ κάλλος, ἐκάλει τὸν Κλεῖτον, ἐπιδεῖξαι καὶ [4] μεταδοῦναι βουλόμενος. ὁ δὲ θύων μὲν ἐτύγχανεν, ἀφεὶς δὲ τὴν θυσίαν ἐβάδιζε, καὶ τρία τῶν κατεσπεισμένων [5] προβάτων ἐπηκολούθησεν αὐτῷ. πυθόμενος δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἀνεκοινοῦτο τοῖς μάντεσιν Ἀριστάνδρῳ καὶ Κλεομένει τῷ Λάκωνι· φησάντων δὲ πονηρὸν εἶναι τὸ σημεῖον, ἐκέλευσεν [6] ἐκθύσασθαι κατὰ τάχος ὑπὲρ τοῦ Κλείτου· καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἡμέρᾳ τρίτῃ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ἰδεῖν ὄψιν ἄτοπον· δόξαι γὰρ αὐτῷ τὸν Κλεῖτον μετὰ τῶν Παρμενίωνος υἱῶν ἐν μέλασιν ἱματίοις καθέζεσθαι, τεθνηκότων ἁπάντων.

[7] οὐ μὴν ἔφθασεν ὁ Κλεῖτος ἐκθυσάμενος, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον ἧκε, τεθυκότος τοῦ βασιλέως Διοσκούροις. [8] πότου δὲ νεανικοῦ συρραγέντος, ᾔδετο ποιήματα Πρανίχου τινός, ὡς δέ φασιν ἔνιοι Πιερίωνος, εἰς τοὺς στρατηγοὺς πεποιημένα τοὺς ἔναγχος ἡττημένους ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων [9] ἐπ’ αἰσχύνῃ καὶ γέλωτι. τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων δυσχεραινόντων καὶ λοιδορούντων τόν τε ποιητὴν καὶ τὸν ᾄδοντα, τοῦ δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἡδέως ἀκροωμένων καὶ λέγειν κελευόντων, ὁ Κλεῖτος ἤδη μεθύων, καὶ φύσει τραχὺς ὢν πρὸς ὀργὴν καὶ αὐθάδης, ἠγανάκτει μάλιστα, φάσκων οὐ καλῶς ἐν βαρβάροις καὶ πολεμίοις ὑβρίζεσθαι Μακεδόνας, πολὺ βελτίονας τῶν [10] γελώντων, εἰ καὶ δυστυχίᾳ κέχρηνται. φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου τὸν Κλεῖτον αὑτῷ συνηγορεῖν, δυστυχίαν [11] ἀποφαίνοντα τὴν δειλίαν, ἐπαναστὰς ὁ Κλεῖτος αὕτη μέντοι σ’ εἶπεν ἡ δειλία τὸν ἐκ θεῶν, ἤδη τῷ Σπιθριδάτου ξίφει τὸν νῶτον ἐπιτρέποντα, περιεποίησε, καὶ τῷ Μακεδόνων αἵματι καὶ τοῖς τραύμασι τούτοις ἐγένου τηλικοῦτος, ὥστ’ Ἄμμωνι σαυτὸν εἰσποιεῖν, ἀπειπάμενος Φίλιππον.

[51] [1] Παροξυνθεὶς οὖν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ἦ ταῦτ’ εἶπεν ὦ κακὴ κεφαλὴ σὺ περὶ ἡμῶν ἑκάστοτε λέγων καὶ [2] διαστασιάζων Μακεδόνας χαιρήσειν νομίζεις; ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ νῦν ἔφη χαίρομεν Ἀλέξανδρε, τοιαῦτα τέλη τῶν πόνων κομιζόμενοι, μακαρίζομεν δὲ τοὺς ἤδη τεθνηκότας, πρὶν ἐπιδεῖν Μηδικαῖς ῥάβδοις ξαινομένους Μακεδόνας, καὶ [3] Περσῶν δεομένους ἵνα τῷ βασιλεῖ προσέλθωμεν. τοιαῦτα τοῦ Κλείτου παρρησιαζομένου, καὶ τῶν περὶ Ἀλέξανδρον ἀντανισταμένων καὶ λοιδορούντων αὐτόν, οἱ πρεσβύτεροι [4] κατέχειν ἐπειρῶντο τὸν θόρυβον. ὁ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ἀποστραφεὶς πρὸς Ξενόδοχον τὸν Καρδιανὸν καὶ τὸν Κολοφώνιον Ἀρτέμιον, οὐ δοκοῦσιν εἶπεν ὑμῖν οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐν τοῖς Μακεδόσιν ὥσπερ ἐν θηρίοις ἡμίθεοι περιπατεῖν; [5] τοῦ δὲ Κλείτου μὴ εἴκοντος, ἀλλ’ εἰς μέσον ‹ἐᾶν› ἃ βούλεται λέγειν τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον κελεύοντος, ἢ μὴ καλεῖν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἄνδρας ἐλευθέρους καὶ παρρησίαν ἔχοντας, ἀλλὰ μετὰ βαρβάρων ζῆν καὶ ἀνδραπόδων, οἳ τὴν Περσικὴν ζώνην καὶ τὸν διάλευκον αὐτοῦ χιτῶνα προσκυνήσουσιν, οὐκέτι φέρων τὴν ὀργὴν Ἀλέξανδρος, μήλων παρακειμένων [6] ἑνὶ βαλὼν ἔπαισεν αὐτὸν καὶ τὸ ἐγχειρίδιον ἐζήτει. τῶν δὲ σωματοφυλάκων ἑνὸς Ἀριστοφάνους φθάσαντος ὑφελέσθαι, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων περιεχόντων καὶ δεομένων, ἀναπηδήσας ἀνεβόα Μακεδονιστὶ καλῶν τοὺς ὑπασπιστάς· τοῦτο δ’ ἦν σύμβολον θορύβου μεγάλου· καὶ τὸν σαλπιγκτὴν ἐκέλευσε σημαίνειν καὶ πὺξ ἔπαισεν ὡς διατρίβοντα [7] καὶ μὴ βουλόμενον. οὗτος μὲν οὖν ὕστερον εὐδοκίμησεν, ὡς τοῦ μὴ συνταραχθῆναι τὸ στρατόπεδον αἰτιώτατος [8] γενόμενος. τὸν δὲ Κλεῖτον οὐχ ὑφιέμενον οἱ φίλοι μόλις ἐξέωσαν τοῦ ἀνδρῶνος· ὁ δὲ κατ’ ἄλλας θύρας αὖθις εἰσῄει, μάλ’ ὀλιγώρως καὶ θρασέως Εὐριπίδου τὰ ἐξ Ἀνδρομάχης ἰαμβεῖα ταῦτα περαίνων (693)·

οἴμοι, καθ’ Ἑλλάδ’ ὡς κακῶς νομίζεται

[9] οὕτω δὴ λαβὼν παρά τινος τῶν δορυφόρων Ἀλέξανδρος αἰχμήν, ἀπαντῶντα τὸν Κλεῖτον αὐτῷ καὶ παράγοντα τὸ [10] πρὸ τῆς θύρας παρακάλυμμα διελαύνει. πεσόντος δὲ μετὰ στεναγμοῦ καὶ βρυχήματος, εὐθὺς ἀφῆκεν ὁ θυμὸς αὐτόν, [11] καὶ γενόμενος παρ’ ἑαυτῷ, καὶ τοὺς φίλους ἰδὼν ἀφώνους ἑστῶτας, ἑλκύσασθαι μὲν ἐκ τοῦ νεκροῦ τὴν αἰχμὴν ἔφθασε, παῖσαι δ’ ἑαυτὸν ὁρμήσας παρὰ τὸν τράχηλον ἐπεσχέθη, τῶν σωματοφυλάκων τὰς χεῖρας αὐτοῦ λαβόντων καὶ τὸ σῶμα βίᾳ παρενεγκόντων εἰς τὸν θάλαμον.

[52] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τήν τε νύκτα κακῶς κλαίων διήνεγκε, καὶ τὴν ἐπιοῦσαν ἡμέραν ἤδη τῷ βοᾶν καὶ θρηνεῖν ἀπειρηκὼς ἄναυδος ἔκειτο, βαρεῖς ἀναφέρων στεναγμούς, δείσαντες [2] οἱ φίλοι τὴν ἀποσιώπησιν εἰσῆλθον βίᾳ. καὶ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων οὐ προσίετο τοὺς λόγους, Ἀριστάνδρου δὲ τοῦ μάντεως ὑπομιμνῄσκοντος αὐτὸν τήν τ’ ὄψιν ἣν εἶδε περὶ τοῦ Κλείτου καὶ τὸ σημεῖον, ὡς δὴ πάλαι καθειμαρμένων τούτων, ἔδοξεν ἐνδιδόναι.

[3] Διὸ Καλλισθένην τε τὸν φιλόσοφον παρεισήγαγον, Ἀριστοτέλους οἰκεῖον ὄντα, καὶ τὸν Ἀβδηρίτην Ἀνάξαρχον.

[4] ὧν Καλλισθένης μὲν ἠθικῶς ἐπειρᾶτο καὶ πρᾴως ὑποδυόμενος τῷ λόγῳ καὶ περιϊὼν ἀλύπως λαβέσθαι τοῦ πάθους, ὁ δ’ Ἀνάξαρχος ἰδίαν τινὰ πορευόμενος ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὁδὸν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ, καὶ δόξαν εἰληφὼς ὑπεροψίας καὶ ὀλιγωρίας τῶν συνήθων, εὐθὺς εἰσελθὼν ἀνεβόησεν· [5] οὗτός ἐστιν Ἀλέξανδρος, εἰς ὃν ἡ οἰκουμένη νῦν ἀποβλέπει· ὁ δ’ ἔρριπται κλαίων ὥσπερ ἀνδράποδον, ἀνθρώπων νόμον καὶ ψόγον δεδοικώς, οἷς αὐτὸν προσήκει νόμον εἶναι καὶ ὅρον τῶν δικαίων, ἐπείπερ ἄρχειν καὶ κρατεῖν νενίκηκεν, ἀλλὰ μὴ δουλεύειν ὑπὸ κενῆς δόξης κεκρατημένον.

[6] οὐκ οἶσθ’ εἶπεν ὅτι τὴν Δίκην ἔχει πάρεδρον ὁ Ζεὺς καὶ τὴν Θέμιν, ἵνα πᾶν τὸ πραχθὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ [7] κρατοῦντος θεμιτὸν ᾖ καὶ δίκαιον; τοιούτοις τισὶ λόγοις χρησάμενος ὁ Ἀνάξαρχος, τὸ μὲν πάθος ἐκούφισε τοῦ βασιλέως, τὸ δ’ ἦθος εἰς πολλὰ χαυνότερον καὶ παρανομώτερον ἐποίησεν, αὑτὸν δὲ δαιμονίως ἐνήρμοσε, καὶ τοῦ Καλλισθένους τὴν ὁμιλίαν, οὐδ’ ἄλλως ἐπίχαριν διὰ τὸ αὐστηρὸν οὖσαν, προσδιέβαλε.

[8] Λέγεται δέ ποτε παρὰ δεῖπνον ὑπὲρ ὡρῶν καὶ κράσεως τοῦ περιέχοντος λόγων ὄντων τὸν Καλλισθένην, μετέχοντα δόξης τοῖς [δὲ] λέγουσι τἀκεῖ μᾶλλον εἶναι ψυχρὰ καὶ δυσχείμερα τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν, ἐναντιουμένου τοῦ Ἀναξάρχου [9] καὶ φιλονικοῦντος, εἰπεῖν· ἀλλὰ μὴν ἀνάγκη σοὶ ταῦτ’ ἐκείνων ὁμολογεῖν ‹εἶναι› ψυχρότερα· σὺ γὰρ ἐκεῖ μὲν ἐν τρίβωνι διεχείμαζες, ἐνταῦθα δὲ τρεῖς ἐπιβεβλημένος δάπιδας κατάκεισαι. τὸν μὲν οὖν Ἀνάξαρχον καὶ τοῦτο προσπαρώξυνε.

[53] [1] Τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους σοφιστὰς καὶ κόλακας ὁ Καλλισθένης ἐλύπει, σπουδαζόμενος μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν νέων διὰ τὸν λόγον, οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις ἀρέσκων διὰ τὸν βίον, εὔτακτον ὄντα καὶ σεμνὸν καὶ αὐτάρκη καὶ βεβαιοῦντα τὴν λεγομένην τῆς ἀποδημίας πρόφασιν, ὅτι τοὺς πολίτας καταγαγεῖν καὶ κατοικίσαι πάλιν τὴν πατρίδα φιλοτιμούμενος [2] ἀνέβη πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον. φθονούμενος δὲ διὰ τὴν δόξαν, ἔστιν ἃ καὶ καθ’ αὑτοῦ τοῖς διαβάλλουσι παρεῖχε, τάς τε κλήσεις τὰ πολλὰ διωθούμενος, ἔν τε τῷ συνεῖναι βαρύτητι καὶ σιωπῇ δοκῶν οὐκ ἐπαινεῖν οὐδ’ ἀρέσκεσθαι τοῖς γινομένοις, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον εἰπεῖν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ (Eurip. fr. 905 N.²)·

μισῶ σοφιστήν, ὅστις οὐχ αὑτῷ σοφός.

[3] Λέγεται δέ ποτε πολλῶν παρακεκλημένων ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον ἐπαινέσαι κελευσθεὶς ἐπὶ τοῦ ποτηρίου Μακεδόνας ὁ Καλλισθένης οὕτως εὐροῆσαι πρὸς τὴν ὑπόθεσιν, ὥστ’ ἀνισταμένους κροτεῖν καὶ βάλλειν τοὺς στεφάνους ἐπ’ [4] αὐτόν· εἰπεῖν οὖν τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ὅτι, κατ’ Εὐριπίδην (Bacch. 266 sq.), τὸν λαβόντα τῶν λόγων

καλὰς ἀφορμὰς οὐ μέγ’ ἔργον εὖ λέγειν·

ἀλλ’ ἔνδειξαι φάναι τὴν σαυτοῦ δύναμιν ἡμῖν κατηγορήσας Μακεδόνων, ἵνα καὶ βελτίους γένωνται μαθόντες [5] ἃ πλημμελοῦσιν. οὕτω δὴ τὸν ἄνδρα πρὸς τὴν παλινῳδίαν τραπόμενον πολλὰ παρρησιάσασθαι κατὰ τῶν Μακεδόνων, καὶ τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν στάσιν αἰτίαν ἀποφήναντα τῆς γενομένης περὶ Φίλιππον αὐξήσεως καὶ δυνάμεως, εἰπεῖν·

ἐν δὲ διχοστασίῃ καὶ ὁ πάγκακος ἔλλαχε τιμῆς·

[6] ἐφ’ ᾧ πικρὸν καὶ βαρὺ τοῖς Μακεδόσιν ἐγγενέσθαι μῖσος, καὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον εἰπεῖν, ὡς οὐ τῆς δεινότητος ὁ Καλλισθένης, ἀλλὰ τῆς δυσμενείας Μακεδόσιν ἀπόδειξιν δέδωκε.

[54] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὁ Ἕρμιππός φησι (FHG III 47) τὸν ἀναγνώστην τοῦ Καλλισθένους Στροῖβον Ἀριστοτέλει διηγεῖσθαι, τὸν δὲ Καλλισθένην συνέντα τὴν ἀλλοτριότητα τοῦ βασιλέως δὶς ἢ τρὶς ἀπιόντα πρὸς αὑτὸν εἰπεῖν (Il. 21, 107)·

κάτθανε καὶ Πάτροκλος, ὅπερ σέο πολλὸν ἀμείνων.

[2] οὐ φαύλως οὖν εἰπεῖν ἔοικεν ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης, ὅτι Καλλισθένης λόγῳ μὲν ἦν δυνατὸς καὶ μέγας, νοῦν δ’ οὐκ εἶχεν.

[3] Ἀλλὰ τήν γε προσκύνησιν ἰσχυρῶς ἀπωσάμενος καὶ φιλοσόφως, καὶ μόνος ἐν φανερῷ διελθὼν ἃ κρύφα πάντες οἱ βέλτιστοι καὶ πρεσβύτατοι τῶν Μακεδόνων ἠγανάκτουν, τοὺς μὲν Ἕλληνας αἰσχύνης ἀπήλλαξε μεγάλης, καὶ μείζονος Ἀλέξανδρον, ἀποτρέψας τὴν προσκύνησιν, αὑτὸν δ’ ἀπώλεσεν, ἐκβιάσασθαι δοκῶν μᾶλλον ἢ πεῖσαι [4] τὸν βασιλέα. Χάρης δ’ ὁ Μιτυληναῖός φησι (FGrH 125 F 18a) τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐν τῷ συμποσίῳ πιόντα φιάλην προτεῖναί τινι τῶν φίλων· τὸν δὲ δεξάμενον πρὸς ἑστίαν ἀναστῆναι, καὶ πιόντα προσκυνῆσαι πρῶτον, εἶτα φιλῆσαι τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον [5] [ἐν τῷ συμποσίῳ] καὶ κατακλιθῆναι. πάντων δὲ τοῦτο ποιούντων ἐφεξῆς, τὸν Καλλισθένην λαβόντα τὴν φιάλην, οὐ προσέχοντος τοῦ βασιλέως, ἀλλ’ Ἡφαιστίωνι [6] προσδιαλεγομένου, πιόντα προσιέναι φιλήσοντα· Δημητρίου δὲ τοῦ προσονομαζομένου Φείδωνος εἰπόντος ὦ βασιλεῦ, μὴ φιλήσῃς· οὗτος γάρ σε μόνος οὐ προσεκύνησε, διακλῖναι τὸ φίλημα τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, τὸν δὲ Καλλισθένην μέγα φθεγξάμενον εἰπεῖν· φιλήματι τοίνυν ἔλασσον ἔχων ἄπειμι.

[55] [1] Τοιαύτης ὑπογινομένης ἀλλοτριότητος, πρῶτον μὲν Ἡφαιστίων ἐπιστεύετο λέγων, ὅτι συνθέμενος πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Καλλισθένης προσκυνῆσαι, ψεύσαιτο τὴν ὁμολογίαν· [2] ἔπειτα Λυσίμαχοι καὶ Ἅγνωνες ἐπεφύοντο, φάσκοντες περιϊέναι τὸν σοφιστὴν ὡς ἐπὶ καταλύσει τυραννίδος μέγα φρονοῦντα, καὶ συντρέχειν πρὸς αὐτὸν τὰ μειράκια καὶ [3] περιέπειν, ὡς μόνον ἐλεύθερον ἐν τοσαύταις μυριάσι. διὸ καὶ τῶν περὶ Ἑρμόλαον ἐπιβουλευσάντων τῷ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ καὶ φανερῶν γενομένων, ἔδοξαν ἀληθέσιν ὅμοια κατηγορεῖν οἱ διαβάλλοντες, ὡς τῷ μὲν προβαλόντι, πῶς ἂν ἐνδοξότατος γένοιτ’ ἄνθρωπος, εἶπεν ἂν ἀποκτείνῃ τὸν [4] ἐνδοξότατον, τὸν δ’ Ἑρμόλαον ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν παροξύνων ἐκέλευε μὴ δεδιέναι τὴν χρυσῆν κλίνην, ἀλλὰ μνημονεύειν ὅτι καὶ νοσοῦντι καὶ τιτρωσκομένῳ πρόσεισιν [5] ἀνθρώπῳ. καίτοι τῶν περὶ Ἑρμόλαον οὐδεὶς οὐδὲ διὰ τῆς [6] ἐσχάτης ἀνάγκης τοῦ Καλλισθένους κατεῖπεν. ἀλλὰ καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος αὐτὸς εὐθὺς Κρατερῷ γράφων καὶ Ἀττάλῳ καὶ Ἀλκέτᾳ φησὶ τοὺς παῖδας βασανιζομένους ὁμολογεῖν, [7] ὡς αὐτοὶ ταῦτα πράξειαν, ἄλλος δ’ οὐδεὶς συνειδείη. ὕστερον δὲ γράφων πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον καὶ τὸν Καλλισθένην συνεπαιτιασάμενος, οἱ μὲν παῖδες φησὶν ὑπὸ τῶν Μακεδόνων κατελεύσθησαν, τὸν δὲ σοφιστὴν ἐγὼ κολάσω καὶ τοὺς ἐκπέμψαντας αὐτὸν καὶ τοὺς ὑποδεχομένους ταῖς πόλεσι τοὺς ἐμοὶ ἐπιβουλεύοντας, ἄντικρυς ἔν γε τούτοις [8] ἀποκαλυπτόμενος πρὸς Ἀριστοτέλην· καὶ γὰρ ἐτέθραπτο Καλλισθένης παρ’ αὐτῷ διὰ τὴν συγγένειαν, ἐξ Ἡροῦς [9] γεγονώς, ἀνεψιᾶς Ἀριστοτέλους. ἀποθανεῖν δ’ αὐτὸν οἱ μὲν ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου κρεμασθέντα λέγουσιν, οἱ δ’ ἐν πέδαις δεδεμένον καὶ νοσήσαντα, Χάρης δὲ (FGrH 125 F 15) μετὰ τὴν σύλληψιν ἑπτὰ μῆνας φυλάττεσθαι δεδεμένον, ὡς ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ κριθείη παρόντος Ἀριστοτέλους· ἐν αἷς δ’ ἡμέραις Ἀλέξανδρος [ἐν Μαλλοῖς Ὀξυδράκαις] ἐτρώθη περὶ τὴν Ἰνδίαν, ἀποθανεῖν ὑπέρπαχυν γενόμενον καὶ φθειριάσαντα.

[56] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον ἐπράχθη. Δημάρατος δ’ ὁ Κορίνθιος ἤδη πρεσβύτερος ὢν ἐφιλοτιμήθη πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ἀναβῆναι· καὶ θεασάμενος αὐτὸν εἶπε μεγάλης ἡδονῆς ἐστερῆσθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὅσοι τεθνήκασι πρὶν [2] ἰδεῖν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐν τῷ Δαρείου θρόνῳ καθήμενον. οὐ μὴν ἐπὶ πλέον γε τῆς πρὸς αὑτὸν εὐνοίας τοῦ βασιλέως ἀπέλαυσεν, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀρρωστίας ἀποθανὼν ἐκηδεύθη μεγαλοπρεπῶς, καὶ τάφον ἔχωσεν ὁ στρατὸς ἐπ’ αὐτῷ τῇ περιμέτρῳ μέγαν, ὕψος δὲ πηχῶν ὀγδοήκοντα· τὰ δὲ λείψανα τέθριππον κεκοσμημένον λαμπρῶς ἐπὶ θάλασσαν κατεκόμισε.

[57] [1] Μέλλων δ’ ὑπερβάλλειν εἰς τὴν Ἰνδικὴν ὡς ἑώρα πλήθει λαφύρων τὴν στρατιὰν ἤδη βαρεῖαν καὶ δυσκίνητον οὖσαν, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ συνεσκευασμένων τῶν ἁμαξῶν πρώτας μὲν ὑπέπρησε τὰς αὑτοῦ καὶ ‹τὰς› τῶν ἑταίρων, μετὰ δὲ ταύτας ἐκέλευσε καὶ ταῖς τῶν Μακεδόνων [2] ἐνεῖναι πῦρ. καὶ τοῦ πράγματος τὸ βούλευμα μεῖζον ἐφάνη καὶ δεινότερον ἢ τὸ ἔργον· ὀλίγους μὲν γὰρ ἠνίασεν, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι βοῇ καὶ ἀλαλαγμῷ μετ’ ἐνθουσιασμοῦ, τὰ μὲν ἀναγκαῖα τοῖς δεομένοις μεταδιδόντες, τὰ δὲ περιόντα τῆς χρείας αὐτοὶ κατακαίοντες καὶ διαφθείροντες, ὁρμῆς [3] καὶ προθυμίας ἐνεπίμπλασαν τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον. ἤδη δὲ καὶ φοβερὸς ἦν καὶ ἀπαραίτητος κολαστὴς τῶν πλημμελούντων· καὶ γὰρ Μένανδρόν τινα τῶν ἑταίρων ἄρχοντα φρουρίου καταστήσας, ὡς οὐκ ἐβούλετο μένειν, ἀπέκτεινε, καὶ τῶν ἀποστάντων βαρβάρων Ὀρσοδάτην αὐτὸς κατετόξευσε.

[4] προβάτου δὲ τεκόντος ἄρνα περὶ τῇ κεφαλῇ σχῆμα καὶ χρῶμα τιάρας ἔχοντα καὶ διδύμους ἑκατέρωθεν αὐτῆς, βδελυχθεὶς τὸ σημεῖον ἐκαθάρθη μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν Βαβυλωνίων, οὓς ἐξ ἔθους ἐπήγετο πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα, διελέχθη δὲ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους, ὡς οὐ δι’ αὑτόν, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἐκείνους ταράττοιτο, μὴ τὸ κράτος εἰς ἀγεννῆ καὶ ἄναλκιν ἄνθρωπον [5] ἐκλιπόντος αὐτοῦ περιστήσῃ τὸ δαιμόνιον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ βέλτιόν τι σημεῖον γενόμενον τὴν ἀθυμίαν ἔλυσεν. ὁ γὰρ ἐπὶ τῶν στρωματοφυλάκων τεταγμένος ἀνὴρ Μακεδὼν ὄνομα Πρόξενος, τῇ βασιλικῇ σκηνῇ χώραν ὀρύττων παρὰ τὸν Ὦξον ποταμόν, ἀνεκάλυψε πηγὴν ὑγροῦ λιπαροῦ καὶ [6] πιμελώδους· ἀπαντλουμένου δὲ τοῦ πρώτου, καθαρὸν ἀνέβλυζεν ἤδη καὶ διαυγές [ἔλαιον], οὔτ’ ὀσμῇ δοκοῦν ἐλαίου διαφέρειν οὔτε γεύσει, στιλπνότητά τε καὶ λιπαρότητα παντάπασιν ἀπαράλλακτον, καὶ ταῦτα τῆς χώρας [7] μηδ’ ἐλαίας φερούσης. λέγεται μὲν οὖν καὶ τὸν Ὦξον αὐτὸν εἶναι μαλακώτατον ὕδωρ, ὥστε τὸ δέρμα τοῖς [8] λουομένοις ἐπιλιπαίνειν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ‹καὶ› θαυμαστῶς Ἀλέξανδρος ἡσθεὶς δῆλός ἐστιν ἐξ ὧν γράφει πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον, ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις τοῦτο τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ γεγονότων [9] αὐτῷ τιθέμενος. οἱ δὲ μάντεις ἐνδόξου μὲν στρατείας, ἐπιπόνου δὲ καὶ χαλεπῆς τὸ σημεῖον ἐποιοῦντο· πόνων γὰρ ἀρωγὴν ἔλαιον ἀνθρώποις ὑπὸ θεοῦ δεδόσθαι.

[58] [1] Πολλοὶ μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὰς μάχας αὐτῷ κίνδυνοι συνέπεσον, καὶ τραύμασι νεανικοῖς ἀπήντησε, τὴν δὲ πλείστην φθορὰν ἀπορίαι τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ δυσκρασίαι [2] τοῦ περιέχοντος ἀπειργάσαντο τῆς στρατιᾶς. αὐτὸς δὲ τόλμῃ τὴν τύχην ὑπερβαλέσθαι καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἀρετῇ φιλοτιμούμενος, οὐδὲν ᾤετο τοῖς θαρροῦσιν ἀνάλωτον [3] οὐδ’ ὀχυρὸν εἶναι τοῖς ἀτόλμοις. λέγεται δὲ τὴν Σισιμίθρου πολιορκῶν πέτραν, ἀπότομον οὖσαν καὶ ἀπρόσβατον, ἀθυμούντων τῶν στρατιωτῶν, ἐρωτῆσαι τὸν Ὀξυάρτην, [4] ποῖός τις αὐτὸς εἴη τὴν ψυχὴν ὁ Σισιμίθρης. φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Ὀξυάρτου δειλότατον ἀνθρώπων, λέγεις σύ γε φάναι τὴν πέτραν ἁλώσιμον ἡμῖν εἶναι· τὸ γὰρ ἄρχον αὐτῆς οὐκ ὀχυρόν ἐστι. ταύτην μὲν οὖν ἐκφοβήσας τὸν [5] Σισιμίθρην ἔλαβεν. ἑτέρᾳ δ’ ὁμοίως ἀποτόμῳ προσβαλὼν ‹ἔχων› τοὺς νεωτέρους τῶν Μακεδόνων, Ἀλέξανδρόν τινα καλούμενον προσαγορεύσας, ἀλλὰ σοί γ’ εἶπεν ἀνδραγαθεῖν προσήκει καὶ διὰ τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ λαμπρῶς [6] ὁ νεανίας ἀγωνιζόμενος ἔπεσεν, οὐ μετρίως ἐδήχθη. τῇ δὲ καλουμένῃ Νύσῃ τῶν Μακεδόνων ὀκνούντων προσάγειν (καὶ γὰρ ποταμὸς ἦν πρὸς αὐτῇ βαθύς), ἐπιστὰς τί γάρ; εἶπεν ὁ κάκιστος ἐγὼ νεῖν οὐκ ἔμαθον; καὶ ἤδη [7] ἔχων τὴν ἀσπίδα περᾶν ἠθέλησεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καταπαύσαντος τὴν μάχην αὐτοῦ παρῆσαν ἀπὸ τῶν πολιορκουμένων [πόλεων] πρέσβεις δεησόμενοι, πρῶτον μὲν ὀφθεὶς ἀθεράπευτος ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις, ἐξέπληξεν αὐτούς· ἔπειτα προσκεφαλαίου τινὸς αὐτῷ κομισθέντος, ἐκέλευσε λαβόντα [8] καθίσαι τὸν πρεσβύτατον· Ἄκουφις ἐκαλεῖτο. θαυμάσας οὖν τὴν [λαμ]πρᾳότητα καὶ φιλανθρωπίαν ὁ Ἄκουφις [9] ἠρώτα, τί βούλεται ποιοῦντας αὐτοὺς ἔχειν φίλους. φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου σὲ μὲν ἄρχοντα καταστήσαντας αὑτῶν, πρὸς δ’ ἡμᾶς πέμψαντας ἑκατὸν ἄνδρας τοὺς ἀρίστους, γελάσας ὁ Ἄκουφις ἀλλὰ βέλτιον εἶπεν ἄρξω βασιλεῦ, τοὺς κακίστους πρὸς σὲ πέμψας μᾶλλον ἢ τοὺς ἀρίστους.

[59] [1] Ὁ δὲ Ταξίλης λέγεται μὲν τῆς Ἰνδικῆς ἔχειν μοῖραν οὐκ ἀποδέουσαν Αἰγύπτου τὸ μέγεθος, εὔβοτον δὲ καὶ καλλίκαρπον ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα, σοφὸς δέ τις ἀνὴρ εἶναι [2] καὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἀσπασάμενος τί δεῖ πολέμων φάναι καὶ μάχης ἡμῖν Ἀλέξανδρε πρὸς ἀλλήλους, εἰ μήθ’ ὕδωρ ἀφαιρησόμενος ἡμῶν ἀφῖξαι, μήτε τροφὴν ἀναγκαίαν, ὑπὲρ ὧν μόνων ἀνάγκη διαμάχεσθαι νοῦν [3] ἔχουσιν ἀνθρώποις; τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις χρήμασι καὶ κτήμασι λεγομένοις, εἰ μέν εἰμι κρείττων, ἕτοιμος εὖ ποιεῖν, εἰ [4] δ’ ἥττων, οὐ φεύγω χάριν ἔχειν εὖ παθών. ἡσθεὶς οὖν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος καὶ δεξιωσάμενος αὐτόν, ἦ που νομίζεις ἔφη δίχα μάχης ἔσεσθαι τὴν ἔντευξιν ἡμῖν ἀπὸ τοιούτων λόγων καὶ φιλοφροσύνης; ἀλλ’ οὐδέν σοι πλέον· ἐγὼ γὰρ ἀγωνιοῦμαι πρὸς σὲ καὶ διαμαχοῦμαι ταῖς χάρισιν, ὥς [5] μου χρηστὸς ὢν μὴ περιγένῃ. λαβὼν δὲ δῶρα πολλὰ καὶ δοὺς πλείονα, τέλος χίλια τάλαντα νομίσματος αὐτῷ προέπιεν· ἐφ’ οἷς τοὺς μὲν φίλους ἰσχυρῶς ἐλύπησε, τῶν δὲ βαρβάρων πολλοὺς ἐποίησεν ἡμερωτέρως ἔχειν πρὸς αὐτόν.

[6] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν Ἰνδῶν οἱ μαχιμώτατοι μισθοφοροῦντες ἐπεφοίτων ταῖς πόλεσιν ἐρρωμένως ἀμύνοντες, καὶ πολλὰ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐκακοποίουν, σπεισάμενος ἔν τινι πόλει πρὸς [7] αὐτούς, ἀπιόντας ἐν ὁδῷ λαβὼν ἅπαντας ἀπέκτεινε. καὶ τοῦτο τοῖς πολεμικοῖς ἔργοις αὐτοῦ, τὰ ἄλλα νομίμως καὶ βασιλικῶς πολεμήσαντος, ὥσπερ κηλὶς πρόσεστιν.

[8] Οὐκ ἐλάσσονα δὲ τούτων οἱ φιλόσοφοι πράγματα παρέσχον αὐτῷ, τούς τε προστιθεμένους τῶν βασιλέων κακίζοντες, καὶ τοὺς ἐλευθέρους δήμους ἀφιστάντες. διὸ καὶ τούτων πολλοὺς ἐκρέμασε.

[60] [1] Τὰ δὲ πρὸς Πῶρον αὐτὸς ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς ὡς ἐπράχθη γέγραφε. φησὶ γάρ, ἐν μέσῳ τῶν στρατοπέδων τοῦ Ὑδάσπου ῥέοντος, ἀντιπρῴρους ἱστάντα τοὺς ἐλέφαντας [2] ἀεὶ τὸν Πῶρον ἐπιτηρεῖν τὴν διάβασιν. αὑτὸν μὲν οὖν καθ’ ἡμέραν ἑκάστην ψόφον ποιεῖν καὶ θόρυβον ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ πολύν, ἐθίζοντα τοὺς βαρβάρους μὴ φοβεῖσθαι· [3] νυκτὸς δὲ χειμερίου καὶ ἀσελήνου λαβόντα τῶν πεζῶν μέρος, ἱππεῖς δὲ τοὺς κρατίστους, καὶ προελθόντα πόρρω τῶν πολεμίων, διαπερᾶσαι πρὸς νῆσον οὐ μεγάλην.

[4] ἐνταῦθα δὲ ῥαγδαίου μὲν ἐκχυθέντος ὄμβρου, πρηστήρων δὲ πολλῶν καὶ κεραυνῶν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον φερομένων, ὅμως ὁρῶν ἀπολλυμένους τινὰς καὶ συμφλεγομένους ὑπὸ τῶν κεραυνῶν, ἀπὸ τῆς νησῖδος ἄρας προσφέρεσθαι ταῖς [5] ἀντιπέρας ὄχθαις. τραχὺν δὲ τὸν Ὑδάσπην ὑπὸ τοῦ χειμῶνος ἐπιόντα καὶ μετέωρον ἔκρηγμα ποιῆσαι μέγα, καὶ πολὺ μέρος ἐκείνῃ φέρεσθαι τοῦ ῥεύματος, αὐτοὺς δὲ δέξασθαι τὸ μέσον οὐ βεβαίως, ἅτε δὴ συνολισθάνον καὶ [6] περιρρηγνύμενον. ἐνταῦθα δ’ εἰπεῖν φασιν αὐτόν· ὦ Ἀθηναῖοι, ἆρά γε πιστεύσαιτ’ ἄν, ἡλίκους ὑπομένω κινδύνους ἕνεκα τῆς παρ’ ὑμῖν εὐδοξίας; ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν [7] Ὀνησίκριτος εἴρηκεν (FGrH 134 F 19)· αὐτὸς δέ φησι τὰς σχεδίας ἀφέντας αὐτοὺς μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων τὸ ἔκρηγμα διαβαίνειν, ἄχρι μαστῶν βρεχομένους, διαβὰς δὲ τῶν πεζῶν εἴκοσι σταδίους προϊππεῦσαι, λογιζόμενος, εἰ μὲν οἱ πολέμιοι τοῖς ἵπποις προσβάλοιεν, πολὺ κρατήσειν, εἰ δὲ κινοῖεν τὴν φάλαγγα, φθήσεσθαι τοὺς πεζοὺς αὐτῷ [8] προσγενομένους· θάτερον δὲ συμβῆναι. τῶν γὰρ ἱππέων χιλίους καὶ τῶν ἁρμάτων ἑξήκοντα συμπεσόντα τρεψάμενος, τὰ μὲν ἅρματα λαβεῖν ἅπαντα, τῶν δ’ ἱππέων ἀνελεῖν [9] τετρακοσίους. οὕτω δὴ συμφρονήσαντα τὸν Πῶρον, ὡς αὐτὸς εἴη διαβεβηκὼς Ἀλέξανδρος, ἐπιέναι μετὰ πάσης τῆς δυνάμεως, πλὴν ὅσον ἐμποδὼν εἶναι τοῖς διαβαίνουσι [10] τῶν Μακεδόνων ἀπέλιπε· φοβηθεὶς δὲ τὰ θηρία καὶ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν πολεμίων, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐνσεῖσαι κατὰ θάτερον [11] κέρας, Κοῖνον δὲ τῷ δεξιῷ προσβαλεῖν κελεῦσαι. γενομένης δὲ τροπῆς, ἑκατέρωθεν ἀναχωρεῖν ἀεὶ πρὸς τὰ θηρία καὶ συνειλεῖσθαι τοὺς ἐκβιαζομένους, ὅθεν ἤδη τὴν μάχην ἀναμεμειγμένην εἶναι, καὶ μόλις ὀγδόης ὥρας ἀπειπεῖν τοὺς πολεμίους. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὁ τῆς μάχης [12] ποιητὴς αὐτὸς ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς εἴρηκεν. οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι τῶν συγγραφέων ὁμολογοῦσι τὸν Πῶρον, ὑπεραίροντα τεσσάρων πηχῶν σπιθαμῇ τὸ μῆκος, ἱππότου μηδὲν ἀποδεῖν πρὸς τὸν ἐλέφαντα συμμετρίᾳ διὰ τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸν ὄγκον τοῦ σώματος· καίτοι μέγιστος ἦν ὁ ἐλέφας· [13] σύνεσιν δὲ θαυμαστὴν ἐπεδείξατο καὶ κηδεμονίαν τοῦ βασιλέως, ἐρρωμένου μὲν ἔτι θυμῷ τοὺς προσμαχομένους ἀμυνόμενος καὶ ἀνακόπτων, ὡς δ’ ᾔσθετο βελῶν πλήθει καὶ τραυμάτων κάμνοντα, δείσας μὴ περιρρυῇ, τοῖς μὲν γόνασιν εἰς γῆν ὑφῆκε πρᾴως ἑαυτόν, τῇ δὲ προνομαίᾳ λαμβάνων ἀτρέμα τῶν δορατίων ἕκαστον ἐξῄρει τοῦ σώματος.

[14] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ληφθέντα τὸν Πῶρον ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ἠρώτα, πῶς αὐτῷ χρήσηται, βασιλικῶς εἶπε· προσπυθομένου δὲ μή τι ‹καὶ› ἄλλο λέγει, πάντ’ εἶπεν ‹ἔν›εστιν ἐν [15] τῷ βασιλικῶς. οὐ μόνον οὖν ἀφῆκεν αὐτὸν ἄρχειν ὧν ἐβασίλευε σατράπην καλούμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσέθηκε χώραν [καὶ] τῆς αὐτονόμου καταστρεψάμενος, ἐν ᾗ πεντεκαίδεκα μὲν ἔθνη, πόλεις δὲ πεντακισχιλίας ἀξιολόγους, [16] κώμας δὲ παμπόλλας εἶναί φασιν· ἄλλης δὲ τρὶς τοσαύτης Φίλιππόν τινα τῶν ἑταίρων σατράπην ἀπέδειξεν.

[61] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τῆς πρὸς Πῶρον μάχης καὶ ὁ Βουκεφάλας ἐτελεύτησεν, οὐκ εὐθύς, ἀλλ’ ὕστερον, ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι λέγουσιν, ἀπὸ τραυμάτων θεραπευόμενος, ὡς δ’ Ὀνησίκριτος (FGrH 134 F 20), διὰ γῆρας ὑπέρπονος γενόμενος· [2] τριάκοντα γὰρ ἐτῶν ἀποθανεῖν αὐτόν. ἐδήχθη δ’ ἰσχυρῶς Ἀλέξανδρος, οὐδὲν ἄλλ’ ἢ συνήθη καὶ φίλον ἀποβεβληκέναι νομίζων, καὶ πόλιν οἰκίσας ἐπ’ αὐτῷ παρὰ [3] τὸν Ὑδάσπην Βουκεφαλίαν προσηγόρευσε. λέγεται δὲ καὶ κύνα Περίταν ὄνομα τεθραμμένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ στεργόμενον ἀποβαλών, κτίσαι πόλιν ἐπώνυμον. τοῦτο δὲ Σωτίων φησὶ Ποτάμωνος (FGrH 147 F 1) ἀκοῦσαι τοῦ Λεσβίου.

[62] [1] Τοὺς μέντοι Μακεδόνας ὁ πρὸς Πῶρον ἀγὼν ἀμβλυτέρους ἐποίησε, καὶ τοῦ πρόσω τῆς Ἰνδικῆς ἔτι [2] προελθεῖν ἐπέσχε. μόλις γὰρ ἐκεῖνον ὠσάμενοι, δισμυρίοις πεζοῖς καὶ δισχιλίοις ἱππεῦσι παραταξάμενον, ἀντέστησαν ἰσχυρῶς Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, βιαζομένῳ καὶ τὸν Γάγγην περᾶσαι ποταμόν, εὖρος μὲν αὐτοῦ δύο καὶ τριάκοντα σταδίων εἶναι πυνθανόμενοι καὶ βάθος ὀργυιὰς ἑκατόν, ἀντιπέρας δὲ τὰς ὄχθας ἀποκεκρύφθαι πλήθεσιν ὅπλων [3] καὶ ἵππων καὶ ἐλεφάντων. ἐλέγοντο γὰρ ὀκτὼ μὲν μυριάδας ἱπποτῶν, εἴκοσι δὲ πεζῶν, ἅρματα δ’ ὀκτακισχίλια καὶ μαχίμους ἐλέφαντας ἑξακισχιλίους ἔχοντες οἱ Γανδαριτῶν [4] καὶ Πραισίων βασιλεῖς ὑπομένειν. καὶ κόμπος οὐκ ἦν περὶ ταῦτα. Ἀνδρόκοττος γὰρ ὕστερον οὐ πολλῷ βασιλεύσας Σελεύκῳ πεντακοσίους ἐλέφαντας ἐδωρήσατο, καὶ στρατοῦ μυριάσιν ἑξήκοντα τὴν Ἰνδικὴν ἐπῆλθεν [5] ἅπασαν καταστρεφόμενος. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ὑπὸ δυσθυμίας καὶ ὀργῆς αὑτὸν εἰς τὴν σκηνὴν καθείρξας ἔκειτο, χάριν οὐδεμίαν εἰδὼς τοῖς διαπεπραγμένοις, εἰ μὴ περάσειε τὸν Γάγγην, ἀλλ’ ἐξομολόγησιν ἥττης τιθέμενος τὴν [6] ἀναχώρησιν. ὡς δ’ οἵ τε φίλοι τὰ εἰκότα παρηγοροῦντες αὐτόν, οἵ τε στρατιῶται κλαυθμῷ καὶ βοῇ προσιστάμενοι ταῖς θύραις ἱκέτευον, ἐπικλασθεὶς ἀνεζεύγνυε, πολλὰ πρὸς [7] δόξαν ἀπατηλὰ καὶ σοφιστικὰ μηχανώμενος. καὶ γὰρ ὅπλα μείζονα καὶ φάτνας ἵππων καὶ χαλινοὺς βαρυτέρους [8] κατασκευάσας ἀπέλιπέ τε καὶ διέρριψεν. ἱδρύσατο δὲ βωμοὺς θεῶν, οὓς μέχρι νῦν οἱ Πραισίων βασιλεῖς διαβαίνοντες σέβονται καὶ θύουσιν Ἑλληνικὰς θυσίας.

[9] Ἀνδρόκοττος δὲ μειράκιον ὢν αὐτὸν Ἀλέξανδρον εἶδε, καὶ λέγεται πολλάκις εἰπεῖν ὕστερον, ὡς παρ’ οὐδὲν ἦλθε τὰ πράγματα λαβεῖν Ἀλέξανδρος, μισουμένου τε καὶ καταφρονουμένου τοῦ βασιλέως διὰ μοχθηρίαν καὶ δυσγένειαν.

[63] [1] Ἐντεῦθεν ὁρμήσας Ἀλέξανδρος τὴν ἔξω θάλασσαν ἐπιδεῖν, καὶ πολλὰ πορθμεῖα κωπήρη καὶ σχεδίας πηξάμενος, ἐκομίζετο τοῖς ποταμοῖς ὑποφερόμενος σχολαίως.

[2] ὁ δὲ πλοῦς οὐκ ἀργὸς ἦν οὐδ’ ἀπόλεμος, προσβάλλων δὲ ταῖς πόλεσι καὶ ἀποβαίνων, ἐχειροῦτο πάντα. πρὸς δὲ τοῖς καλουμένοις Μαλλοῖς, οὕς φασιν Ἰνδῶν μαχιμωτάτους [3] γενέσθαι, μικρὸν ἐδέησε κατακοπῆναι. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώπους βέλεσιν ἀπὸ τῶν τειχῶν ἀπεσκέδασε, πρῶτος δὲ διὰ κλίμακος τεθείσης ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ τεῖχος, ὡς ἥ τε κλίμαξ συνετρίβη καὶ τῶν βαρβάρων ὑφισταμένων παρὰ τὸ τεῖχος ἐλάμβανε πληγὰς κάτωθεν, ὀλιγοστὸς ὢν συστρέψας ἑαυτὸν εἰς μέσους ἀφῆκε τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ [4] κατὰ τύχην ὀρθὸς ἔστη. τιναξαμένου δὲ τοῖς ὅπλοις ἔδοξαν οἱ βάρβαροι σέλας τι καὶ φάσμα πρὸ τοῦ σώματος [5] φέρεσθαι. διὸ καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἔφυγον καὶ διεσκεδάσθησαν· ὡς δ’ εἶδον αὐτὸν μετὰ δυεῖν ὑπασπιστῶν, ἐπιδραμόντες οἱ μὲν ἐκ χειρὸς ξίφεσι καὶ δόρασι διὰ τῶν ὅπλων συνετίτρωσκον [6] ἀμυνόμενον, εἷς δὲ μικρὸν ἀπωτέρω στάς, ἐφῆκεν ἀπὸ τόξου βέλος οὕτως εὔτονον καὶ βίαιον, ὥστε τὸν θώρακα διακόψαν ἐμπαγῆναι τοῖς περὶ τὸν μασθὸν ὀστέοις.

[7] πρὸς δὲ τὴν πληγὴν ἐνδόντος αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ σῶμα κάμψαντος, ὁ μὲν βαλὼν ἐπέδραμε, βαρβαρικὴν μάχαιραν σπασάμενος, [8] Πευκέστας δὲ καὶ Λιμναῖος προέστησαν· ὧν πληγέντων ἑκατέρων, ὁ μὲν ἀπέθανε, Πευκέστας δ’ [9] ἀντεῖχε, τὸν δὲ βάρβαρον Ἀλέξανδρος ἀπέκτεινεν. αὐτὸς δὲ τραύματα πολλὰ λαβών, τέλος δὲ πληγεὶς ὑπέρῳ κατὰ τοῦ τραχήλου, προσήρεισε τῷ τείχει τὸ σῶμα, βλέπων πρὸς [10] τοὺς πολεμίους. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τῶν Μακεδόνων περιχυθέντων, ἁρπασθεὶς ἀναίσθητος ἤδη τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ [11] σκηνῆς ἐκομίζετο. καὶ παραυτίκα μὲν ὡς τεθνεῶτος ἦν λόγος ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ· χαλεπῶς δὲ καὶ πολυπόνως τὸν ὀϊστὸν ἐκπρισάντων ξύλινον ὄντα, καὶ τοῦ θώρακος οὕτω μόλις ἀπολυθέντος, περὶ τὴν ἐκκοπὴν ἐγίνοντο τῆς [12] ἀκίδος, ἐνδεδυκυίας [ἐν] ἑνὶ τῶν ὀστέων. λέγεται δὲ τὸ μὲν πλάτος τριῶν δακτύλων εἶναι, τὸ δὲ μῆκος τεσσάρων· διὸ ταῖς λιποθυμίαις ἔγγιστα θανάτου συνελαυνόμενος [13] ἐξαιρουμένης αὐτῆς, ὅμως ἀνέλαβε, καὶ διαφυγὼν τὸν κίνδυνον, ἔτι δ’ ἀσθενὴς ὢν καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἐν διαίτῃ καὶ θεραπείαις ἔχων αὑτόν, ἔξω θορυβοῦντας ὡς ᾔσθετο ποθοῦντας αὐτὸν ἰδεῖν τοὺς Μακεδόνας, λαβὼν ἱμάτιον [14] προῆλθε, καὶ θύσας τοῖς θεοῖς αὖθις ἀνήχθη καὶ παρεκομίζετο, χώραν τε πολλὴν καὶ πόλεις μεγάλας καταστρεφόμενος.

[64] [1] Τῶν δὲ Γυμνοσοφιστῶν τοὺς μάλιστα τὸν Σάββαν ἀναπείσαντας ἀποστῆναι καὶ κακὰ πλεῖστα τοῖς Μακεδόσι παρασχόντας λαβὼν δέκα, δεινοὺς δοκοῦντας εἶναι περὶ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις καὶ βραχυλόγους, ἐρωτήματα προὔθηκεν αὐτοῖς ἄπορα, φήσας ἀποκτενεῖν τὸν μὴ ὀρθῶς ἀποκρινάμενον πρῶτον, εἶτ’ ἐφεξῆς οὕτω τοὺς ἄλλους· [2] ἕνα δὲ τὸν πρεσβύτατον ἐκέλευσεν ‹ἐπι›κρίνειν. ὁ μὲν οὖν πρῶτος ἐρωτηθείς, πότερον οἴεται τοὺς ζῶντας εἶναι πλείονας ἢ τοὺς τεθνηκότας, ἔφη τοὺς ζῶντας· οὐ[κέτι] [3] γὰρ εἶναι τοὺς τεθνηκότας. ὁ δὲ δεύτερος, πότερον τὴν γῆν ἢ τὴν θάλατταν μείζονα τρέφειν θηρία, τὴν γῆν ἔφη· [4] ταύτης γὰρ μέρος εἶναι τὴν θάλατταν. ὁ δὲ τρίτος, ποῖόν ἐστι ζῷον πανουργότατον, ὃ μέχρι νῦν, εἶπεν, ἄνθρωπος [5] οὐκ ἔγνωκεν. ὁ δὲ τέταρτος ἀνακρινόμενος, τίνι λογισμῷ τὸν Σάββαν ἀπέστησεν, ἀπεκρίνατο, καλῶς ζῆν βουλόμενος [6] αὐτὸν ἢ καλῶς ἀποθανεῖν. ὁ δὲ πέμπτος ἐρωτηθείς, πότερον οἴεται τὴν ἡμέραν πρότερον ἢ τὴν νύκτα γεγονέναι, [7] τὴν ἡμέραν, εἶπεν, ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ· καὶ προσεπεῖπεν οὗτος, θαυμάσαντος τοῦ βασιλέως, ὅτι τῶν ἀπόρων ἐρωτήσεων [8] ἀνάγκη καὶ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις ἀπόρους εἶναι. μεταβαλὼν οὖν τὸν ἕκτον ἠρώτα, πῶς ἄν τις φιληθείη μάλιστα· ἂν κράτιστος [9] ὤν, ἔφη, μὴ φοβερὸς ᾖ. τῶν δὲ λοιπῶν τριῶν ὁ μὲν ἐρωτηθείς, πῶς ἄν τις ἐξ ἀνθρώπου γένοιτο θεός, εἴ τι [10] πράξειεν, εἶπεν, ὃ πρᾶξαι δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ μὴ ἔστιν· ὁ δὲ περὶ ζῳῆς καὶ θανάτου, πότερον ἰσχυρότερον, ἀπεκρίνατο [11] τὴν ζῳήν, τοσαῦτα κακὰ φέρουσαν. ὁ δὲ τελευταῖος, μέχρι τίνος ‹ἂν› ἄνθρωπον καλῶς ἔχοι ζῆν, μέχρι [12] οὗ μὴ νομίζει τὸ τεθνάναι τοῦ ζῆν ἄμεινον. οὕτω δὴ τραπόμενος πρὸς τὸν δικαστήν, ἐκέλευσεν ἀποφαίνεσθαι. τοῦ δ’ ἕτερον ἑτέρου χεῖρον εἰρηκέναι φήσαντος, οὐκοῦν ἔφη καὶ σὺ πρῶτος ἀποθανῇ τοιαῦτα κρίνων. οὐκ ἄν γ’ εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ, εἰ μὴ σὺ ψεύδῃ, φήσας πρῶτον ἀποκτενεῖν τὸν ἀποκρινάμενον κάκιστα.

[65] [1] Τούτους μὲν οὖν ἀφῆκε δωρησάμενος· πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἐν δόξῃ μάλιστα καὶ καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ ζῶντας ἔπεμψεν Ὀνησίκριτον, ἀφικέσθαι δεόμενος πρὸς αὐτόν.

[2] ὁ δ’ Ὀνησίκριτος ἦν φιλόσοφος τῶν Διογένει τῷ κυνικῷ συνεσχολακότων· καί φησι (FGrH 134 F 17b) τὸν μὲν Καλανὸν ὑβριστικῶς πάνυ καὶ τραχέως κελεύειν ἀποδύντα τὸν χιτῶνα γυμνὸν ἀκροᾶσθαι τῶν λόγων· ἄλλως δ’ οὐ διαλέξεσθαι πρὸς αὐτὸν, οὐδ’ εἰ παρὰ τοῦ Διὸς [3] ἀφῖκται. τὸν δὲ Δάνδαμιν πρᾳότερον εἶναι, καὶ διακούσαντα περὶ Σωκράτους καὶ Πυθαγόρου καὶ Διογένους, εἰπεῖν ὡς εὐφυεῖς μὲν αὐτῷ γεγονέναι δοκοῦσιν οἱ ἄνδρες, [4] λίαν δὲ τοὺς νόμους αἰσχυνόμενοι βεβιωκέναι. ἄλλοι δέ φασι τὸν Δάνδαμιν οὐδὲν εἰπεῖν ἀλλ’ ἢ τοσοῦτον μόνον· τίνος χάριν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ὁδὸν τοσαύτην δεῦρ’ [5] ἦλθε; τὸν μέντοι Καλανὸν ἔπεισεν ὁ Ταξίλης ἐλθεῖν πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον· ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ Σφίνης· ἐπεὶ δὲ κατ’ Ἰνδικὴν γλῶτταν τῷ καλὲ προσαγορεύων ἀντὶ τοῦ χαίρειν τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας ἠσπάζετο, Καλανὸς ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων [6] ὠνομάσθη. τοῦτον δὲ λέγεται καὶ τὸ παράδειγμα τῆς ἀρχῆς τῷ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ προθέσθαι· καταβαλὼν γὰρ ἐν μέσῳ βύρσαν τινὰ ξηρὰν καὶ κατεσκληκυῖαν, ἐπάτησε τὸ ἄκρον· ἡ δ’ εἰς ἓν πιεσθεῖσα, τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐπήρθη μέρεσι.

[7] καὶ τοῦτο περιϊὼν ἐν κύκλῳ καὶ πιέζων καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐδείκνυε γιγνόμενον, ἄχρι οὗ τὸ μέσον ἐπιστὰς κατέσχε, [8] καὶ πάνθ’ οὕτως ἠρέμησεν. ἐβούλετο δ’ ἡ εἰκὼν ἔνδειξις εἶναι τοῦ τὰ μέσα δεῖν μάλιστα τῆς ἀρχῆς πιέζειν καὶ μὴ [δὲ] μακρὰν ἀποπλανᾶσθαι τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον.

[66] [1] Ἡ δὲ διὰ τῶν ποταμῶν πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν ὑπαγωγὴ μηνῶν ἑπτὰ χρόνον ἀνάλωσεν. ἐμβαλὼν δὲ ταῖς ναυσὶν εἰς τὸν Ὠκεανόν, ἀνέπλευσε πρὸς νῆσον, ἣν Σκιλλοῦστιν [2] αὐτὸς ὠνόμασεν, ἕτεροι δὲ Ψιλτοῦκιν. ἐνταῦθα δ’ ἀποβὰς ἔθυε τοῖς θεοῖς, καὶ τὴν φύσιν ἐπεῖδε τοῦ πελάγους καὶ τῆς παραλίας, ὅσον ἐφικτὸν ἦν· εἶτ’ ἐπευξάμενος μηδένα μετ’ αὐτὸν ἀνθρώπων ὑπερβῆναι τοὺς ὅρους τῆς [3] στρατείας, ἀνέστρεψε. καὶ τὰς μὲν ναῦς ἐκέλευσε παραπλεῖν, ἐν δεξιᾷ τὴν Ἰνδικὴν ἐχούσας, ἡγεμόνα μὲν Νέαρχον [4] ἀποδείξας, ἀρχικυβερνήτην δ’ Ὀνησίκριτον· αὐτὸς δὲ πεζῇ δι’ Ὠρειτῶν πορευόμενος, εἰς ἐσχάτην ἀπορίαν προήχθη, καὶ πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων ἀπώλεσε ‹τοσοῦτον›, ὥστε τῆς μαχίμου δυνάμεως μηδὲ τὸ τέταρτον ἐκ τῆς Ἰνδικῆς ἀπαγαγεῖν.

[5] καίτοι δώδεκα μὲν μυριάδες ἦσαν οἱ πεζοί, τὸ δ’ [6] ἱππικὸν εἰς μυρίους καὶ πεντακισχιλίους. ἀλλὰ καὶ νόσοι χαλεπαὶ καὶ δίαιται πονηραὶ καὶ καύματα ξηρὰ καὶ πλείστους ὁ λιμὸς διέφθειρεν, ἄσπορον χώραν ἐπιόντας ἀνθρώπων κακοβίων, ὀλίγα καὶ ἀγεννῆ πρόβατα κεκτημένων, ἃ τοὺς θαλαττίους ἰχθῦς εἰθισμένα προσφέρεσθαι σάρκα [7] μοχθηρὰν εἶχε καὶ δυσώδη. μόλις οὖν ἐν ἡμέραις ἑξήκοντα ταύτην διελθὼν καὶ τῆς Γεδρωσίας ἁψάμενος, εὐθὺς ἐν ἀφθόνοις ἦν πᾶσι, τῶν ἔγγιστα σατραπῶν καὶ βασιλέων παρασκευασάντων.

[67] [1] Ἀναλαβὼν οὖν ἐνταῦθα τὴν δύναμιν, ἐξώρμησε κώμῳ χρώμενος ἐφ’ ἡμέρας ἑπτὰ διὰ τῆς Καρμανίας.

[2] αὐτὸν μὲν οὖν ἵπποι σχέδην ἐκόμιζον ὀκτώ, μετὰ τῶν ἑταίρων ὑπὲρ θυμέλης ἐν ὑψηλῷ καὶ περιφανεῖ πλαισίῳ πεπηγυίας [3] εὐωχούμενον συνεχῶς ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτός· ἅμαξαι δὲ παμπληθεῖς, αἱ μὲν ἁλουργοῖς καὶ ποικίλοις περιβολαίοις, αἱ δ’ ὕλης ἀεὶ προσφάτου καὶ χλωρᾶς σκιαζόμεναι κλάδοις, εἵποντο, τοὺς ἄλλους ἄγουσαι φίλους καὶ ἡγεμόνας, ἐστεφανωμένους [4] καὶ πίνοντας. εἶδες δ’ ἂν οὐ πέλτην, οὐ κράνος, οὐ σάρισαν, ἀλλὰ φιάλαις καὶ ῥυτοῖς καὶ θηρικλείοις παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἅπασαν οἱ στρατιῶται κυαθίζοντες ἐκ πίθων μεγάλων καὶ κρατήρων ἀλλήλοις προέπινον, οἱ μὲν ἐν τῷ [5] προάγειν ἅμα καὶ βαδίζειν, οἱ δὲ κατακείμενοι. πολλὴ δὲ μοῦσα συρίγγων καὶ αὐλῶν ᾠδῆς τε καὶ ψαλμοῦ καὶ [6] βακχεία γυναικῶν κατεῖχε πάντα τόπον. τῷ δ’ ἀτάκτῳ καὶ πεπλανημένῳ τῆς πορείας παρείπετο [ταῖς φιάλαις] καὶ παιδιὰ βακχικῆς ὕβρεως, ὡς τοῦ θεοῦ παρόντος [7] αὐτοῦ καὶ συμπαραπέμποντος τὸν κῶμον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἧκε τῆς Γεδρωσίας εἰς τὸ βασίλειον, αὖθις ἀνελάμβανε τὴν στρατιὰν [8] πανηγυρίζων. λέγεται δ’ αὐτὸν μεθύοντα θεωρεῖν ἀγῶνας χορῶν, τὸν δ’ ἐρώμενον Βαγώαν χορεύοντα νικῆσαι καὶ κεκοσμημένον διὰ τοῦ θεάτρου παρελθόντα καθίσαι παρ’ αὐτόν· ἰδόντας δὲ τοὺς Μακεδόνας κροτεῖν καὶ βοᾶν φιλῆσαι κελεύοντας, ἄχρι οὗ περιβαλὼν κατεφίλησεν.

[68] [1] Ἐνταῦθα τῶν περὶ Νέαρχον ἀναβάντων πρὸς αὐτόν, ἡσθεὶς καὶ διακούσας τὰ περὶ τὸν πλοῦν ὥρμησεν αὐτὸς πλεύσας κατὰ τὸν Εὐφράτην στόλῳ μεγάλῳ, εἶτα περὶ τὴν Ἀραβίαν καὶ τὴν Λιβύην παρακομισθείς, διὰ στηλῶν [2] Ἡρακλείων ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν ἐντὸς θάλασσαν, καὶ πλοῖα παντοδαπὰ περὶ Θάψακον ἐπήγνυτο, καὶ συνήγοντο ναῦται [3] καὶ κυβερνῆται πανταχόθεν. ἡ δ’ ἄνω στρατεία χαλεπὴ γενομένη, καὶ τὸ περὶ Μαλλοὺς τραῦμα, καὶ ἡ φθορὰ πολλὴ λεχθεῖσα τῆς δυνάμεως ἀπιστίᾳ τῆς σωτηρίας αὐτοῦ τά θ’ ὑπήκοα πρὸς ἀποστάσεις ἐπῆρε, καὶ τοῖς στρατηγοῖς καὶ σατράπαις ἀδικίαν πολλὴν καὶ πλεονεξίαν καὶ ὕβριν ‹ἐν›εποίησε, καὶ ὅλως διέδραμε σάλος ἁπάντων καὶ [4] νεωτερισμός. ὅπου καὶ πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον Ὀλυμπιὰς καὶ Κλεοπάτρα στασιάσασαι, διείλοντο τὴν ἀρχήν, Ὀλυμπιὰς μὲν Ἤπειρον, Κλεοπάτρα δὲ Μακεδονίαν παραλαβοῦσα.

[5] καὶ τοῦτ’ ἀκούσας Ἀλέξανδρος βέλτιον ἔφη βεβουλεῦσθαι τὴν μητέρα· Μακεδόνας γὰρ οὐκ ἂν ὑπομεῖναι βασιλευομένους [6] ὑπὸ γυναικός. διὰ ταῦτα Νέαρχον μὲν αὖθις ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ἔπεμψεν, ἐμπλῆσαι †πολεμίων ἅπασαν ἐγνωκὼς τὴν παραλίαν, αὐτὸς δὲ καταβαίνων ἐκόλαζε [7] τοὺς πονηροὺς τῶν στρατηγῶν. τῶν δ’ Ἀβουλίτου παίδων ἕνα μὲν Ὀξυάρτην αὐτὸς ἀπέκτεινε σαρίσῃ διελάσας, Ἀβουλίτου δὲ μηδὲν τῶν ἀναγκαίων παρασκευάσαντος, ἀλλ’ ἢ τρισχίλαι τάλαντα νομίσματος αὐτῷ προσαγαγόντος, ἐκέλευσε τοῖς ἵπποις τὸ ἀργύριον παραβαλεῖν. ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἐγεύοντο, φήσας τί οὖν ὄφελος ἡμῖν τῆς σῆς παρασκευῆς; καθεῖρξε τὸν Ἀβουλίτην.

[69] [1] Ἐν δὲ Πέρσαις πρῶτον μὲν ἀπέδωκε τὸ νόμισμα ταῖς γυναιξίν, ὥσπερ εἰώθεισαν οἱ βασιλεῖς, ὁσάκις εἰς [2] Πέρσας ἀφίκοιντο, διδόναι χρυσοῦν ἑκάστῃ. καὶ διὰ τοῦτό φασιν ἐνίους μὴ πολλάκις, Ὦχον δὲ μηδ’ ἅπαξ εἰς Πέρσας παραγενέσθαι, διὰ μικρολογίαν ἀποξενώσαντα τῆς πατρίδος ἑαυτόν.

[3] Ἔπειτα τὸν Κύρου τάφον εὑρὼν διορωρυγμένον, ἀπέκτεινε τὸν ἀδικήσαντα, καίτοι Πελλαῖος ἦν οὐ τῶν [4] ἀσημοτάτων ὁ πλημμελήσας, ὄνομα Πουλαμάχος. τὴν δ’ ἐπιγραφὴν ἀναγνούς, ἐκέλευσεν Ἑλληνικοῖς ὑποχαράξαι γράμμασιν. εἶχε δ’ οὕτως· ὦ ἄνθρωπε, ὅστις εἶ καὶ ὁπόθεν ἥκεις, ὅτι μὲν γὰρ ἥξεις οἶδα, ἐγὼ Κῦρός εἰμι ὁ Πέρσαις κτησάμενος τὴν ἀρχήν. μὴ οὖν τῆς ὀλίγης ‹μοι› [5] ταύτης γῆς φθονήσῃς ἣ τοὐμὸν σῶμα περικαλύπτει. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐμπαθῆ σφόδρα τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐποίησεν, ἐν νῷ λαβόντα ‹τῶν πραγμάτων› τὴν ἀδηλότητα καὶ μεταβολήν.

[6] Ὁ δὲ Καλανὸς ἐνταῦθα χρόνον οὐ πολὺν ὑπὸ κοιλίας ἐνοχληθείς, ᾐτήσατο πυρὰν αὑτῷ γενέσθαι· καὶ κομισθεὶς ἵππῳ πρὸς αὐτήν, ἐπευξάμενος καὶ κατασπείσας ἑαυτὸν καὶ τῶν τριχῶν ἀπαρξάμενος, ἀναβαίνων ἐδεξιοῦτο τοὺς παρόντας τῶν Μακεδόνων καὶ παρεκάλει τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἡδέως γενέσθαι καὶ μεθυσθῆναι μετὰ τοῦ βασιλέως, αὐτὸν δ’ ἐκεῖνον ἔφη μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον ἐν Βαβυλῶνι [7] ὄψεσθαι. ταῦτα δ’ εἰπών, κατακλιθεὶς καὶ συγκαλυψάμενος, οὐκ ἐκινήθη τοῦ πυρὸς πλησιάζοντος, ἀλλ’ ἐν ᾧ κατεκλίθη σχήματι, τοῦτο διατηρῶν, ἐκαλλιέρησεν [8] ἑαυτὸν τῷ πατρίῳ νόμῳ τῶν ἐκεῖ σοφιστῶν. (τοῦτο πολλοῖς ἔτεσιν ὕστερον ἄλλος Ἰνδὸς ἐν Ἀθήναις Καίσαρι συνὼν ἐποίησε, καὶ δείκνυται μέχρι νῦν τὸ μνημεῖον, Ἰνδοῦ προσαγορευόμενον).

[70] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ἀπὸ τῆς πυρᾶς γενόμενος, καὶ συναγαγὼν πολλοὺς τῶν φίλων καὶ τῶν ἡγεμόνων ἐπὶ [2] δεῖπνον, ἀγῶνα προὔθηκε καὶ στέφανον ἀκρατοποσίας. ὁ μὲν οὖν πλεῖστον πιὼν Πρόμαχος ἄχρι χοῶν τεσσάρων προῆλθε· καὶ λαβὼν τὸ νικητήριον, στέφανον ταλαντ‹ιαῖ›ον, ἡμέρας τρεῖς ἐπέζησε· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων, ὡς Χάρης φησί (FGrH 125 F 19b), τετταράκοντα καὶ εἷς ἀπέθανον πιόντες, ἰσχυροῦ τῇ μέθῃ κρύους ἐπιγενομένου.

[3] Τῶν δ’ ἑταίρων γάμον ἐν Σούσοις ἐπιτελῶν, καὶ λαμβάνων μὲν αὐτὸς γυναῖκα τὴν Δαρείου θυγατέρα Στάτειραν, διανέμων δὲ τὰς ἀρίστας τοῖς ἀρίστοις, κοινὸν δὲ τῶν ἤδη προγεγαμηκότων Μακεδόνων γάμον [καλὸν] ἑστιάσας, ἐν ᾧ φασιν, ἐνακισχιλίων τῶν παρακεκλημένων ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον ὄντων, ἑκάστῳ χρυσῆν φιάλην πρὸς τὰς σπονδὰς δοθῆναι, τά τ’ ἄλλα θαυμαστῶς ἐλαμπρύνατο, καὶ τὰ χρέα τοῖς δανείσασιν ὑπὲρ τῶν ὀφειλόντων αὐτὸς διαλύσας, τοῦ παντὸς ἀναλώματος ἐλάσσονος μυρίων ταλάντων ἑκατὸν [4] τριάκοντα ταλάντοις γενομένου. ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀντιγένης ὁ ἑτερόφθαλμος ὡς ὀφείλων ἀπεγράψατο ψευδῶς, καὶ παραγαγών τινα φάσκοντα δεδανεικέναι πρὸς τὴν τράπεζαν ἀπέτεισε τὸ ἀργύριον, εἶτ’ ἐφωράθη ψευδόμενος, ὀργισθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς ἀπήλασε τῆς αὐλῆς αὐτὸν καὶ παρείλετο [5] τὴν ἡγεμονίαν. ἦν δὲ λαμπρὸς ἐν τοῖς πολεμικοῖς ὁ Ἀντιγένης, καὶ ἔτι [δὲ] νέος ὤν, Φιλίππου πολιορκοῦντος Πέρινθον, ἐμπεσόντος αὐτῷ καταπελτικοῦ βέλους εἰς τὸν ὀφθαλμόν, οὐ παρέσχε βουλομένοις ἐξελεῖν τὸ βέλος οὐδ’ ὑφήκατο πρὶν ὤσασθαι προσμαχόμενος καὶ κατακλεῖσαι [6] τοὺς πολεμίους εἰς τὸ τεῖχος. οὐ μετρίως οὖν τότε τὴν ἀτιμίαν ἔφερεν, ἀλλὰ δῆλος ἦν ἑαυτὸν ὑπὸ λύπης καὶ βαρυθυμίας διαχρησόμενος, καὶ τοῦτο δείσας ὁ βασιλεὺς ἀνῆκε τὴν ὀργὴν καὶ τὰ χρήματ’ ἔχειν ἐκέλευσεν αὐτόν.

[71] [1] Τῶν δὲ παίδων τῶν τρισμυρίων, οὓς ἀσκουμένους καὶ μανθάνοντας ἀπέλιπε, τοῖς τε σώμασιν ἀνδρείων φανέντων καὶ τοῖς εἴδεσιν εὐπρεπῶν, ἔτι δὲ καὶ ταῖς μελέταις εὐχέρειαν καὶ κουφότητα θαυμαστὴν ἐπιδειξαμένων, αὐτὸς μὲν ἥσθη, τοῖς δὲ Μακεδόσι δυσθυμία παρέστη καὶ δέος, ὡς ἧττον αὐτοῖς τοῦ βασιλέως προσέξοντος.

[2] διὸ καὶ τοὺς ἀσθενεῖς καὶ πεπηρωμένους αὐτοῦ καταπέμποντος ἐπὶ θάλατταν, ὕβριν ἔφασαν εἶναι καὶ προπηλακισμόν, ἀνθρώποις ἀποχρησάμενον εἰς ἅπαντα, νῦν ἀποτίθεσθαι σὺν αἰσχύνῃ καὶ προσρίπτειν ταῖς πατρίσι καὶ [3] τοῖς γονεῦσιν, οὐ τοιούτους παραλαβόντα. πάντας οὖν ἐκέλευον ἀφιέναι καὶ πάντας ἀχρήστους νομίζειν Μακεδόνας, ἔχοντα τοὺς νέους τούτους πυρριχιστάς, σὺν οἷς [4] ἐπιὼν κατακτήσεται τὴν οἰκουμένην. πρὸς ταῦτα χαλεπῶς ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ἔσχε, καὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἐλοιδόρησεν αὐτοὺς πρὸς ὀργήν, ἀπελάσας δὲ τὰς φυλακὰς παρέδωκε Πέρσαις, καὶ κατέστησεν ἐκ τούτων δορυφόρους καὶ ῥαβδοφόρους, [5] ὑφ’ ὧν ὁρῶντες αὐτὸν παραπεμπόμενον, αὑτοὺς δ’ ἀπειργομένους καὶ προπηλακιζομένους, ἐταπεινοῦντο, καὶ διδόντες λόγον εὕρισκον αὑτοὺς ὀλίγου δεῖν μανέντας ὑπὸ ζηλοτυπίας [6] καὶ ὀργῆς. τέλος δὲ συμφρονήσαντες ἐβάδιζον ἄνοπλοι καὶ μονοχίτωνες ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνήν, μετὰ βοῆς καὶ κλαυθμοῦ παραδιδόντες ἑαυτούς, καὶ χρήσασθαι κελεύοντες [7] ὡς κακοῖς καὶ ἀχαρίστοις. ὁ δ’ οὐ προσίετο, καίπερ ἤδη μαλασσόμενος· οἱ δ’ οὐκ ἀπέστησαν, ἀλλ’ ἡμέρας δύο καὶ νύκτας οὕτω προσεστῶτες καὶ ὀλοφυρόμενοι καὶ [8] κοίρανον ἀνακαλοῦντες ἐκαρτέρησαν. τῇ δὲ τρίτῃ προελθὼν καὶ θεασάμενος οἰκτροὺς καὶ τεταπεινωμένους, ἐδάκρυε πολὺν χρόνον· εἶτα μεμψάμενος μέτρια καὶ προσαγορεύσας φιλανθρώπως, ἀπέλυσε τοὺς ἀχρήστους, δωρησάμενος μεγαλοπρεπῶς καὶ γράψας πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον, ὅπως ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἀγῶσι καὶ τοῖς θεάτροις προεδρίαν [9] ἔχοντες ἐστεφανωμένοι καθέζοιντο. τῶν δὲ τεθνηκότων τοὺς παῖδας ὀρφανοὺς ὄντας ἐμμίσθους ἐποίησεν.

[72] [1] Ὡς δ’ ἧκεν εἰς Ἐκβάτανα τῆς Μηδίας καὶ διῴκησε τὰ κατεπείγοντα, πάλιν ἦν ἐν θεάτροις καὶ πανηγύρεσιν, ἅτε δὴ τρισχιλίων αὐτῷ τεχνιτῶν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀφιγμένων.

[2] ἔτυχε δὲ περὶ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας Ἡφαιστίων πυρέσσων· οἷα δὲ νέος καὶ στρατιωτικὸς οὐ φέρων ἀκριβῆ δίαιταν, ἀλλ’ ‹ἅμα› τῷ τὸν ἰατρὸν Γλαῦκον ἀπελθεῖν εἰς τὸ θέατρον περὶ ἄριστον γενόμενος καὶ καταφαγὼν ἀλεκτρυόνα ἑφθὸν καὶ ψυκτῆρα μέγαν ἐκπιὼν οἴνου, κακῶς ἔσχε [3] καὶ μικρὸν διαλιπὼν ἀπέθανε. τοῦτ’ οὐδενὶ λογισμῷ τὸ πάθος Ἀλέξανδρος ἤνεγκεν, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς μὲν ἵππους τε κεῖραι πάντας ἐπὶ πένθει καὶ ἡμιόνους ἐκέλευσε, καὶ τῶν πέριξ πόλεων ἀφεῖλε τὰς ἐπάλξεις, τὸν δ’ ἄθλιον ἰατρὸν ἀνεσταύρωσεν, αὐλοὺς δὲ κατέπαυσε καὶ μουσικὴν πᾶσαν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ πολὺν χρόνον, ἕως ἐξ Ἄμμωνος ἦλθε μαντεία, τιμᾶν Ἡφαιστίωνα καὶ θύειν ὡς ἥρωϊ παρακελεύουσα.

[4] τοῦ δὲ πένθους παρηγορίᾳ τῷ πολέμῳ χρώμενος, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ θήραν καὶ κυνηγέσιον ἀνθρώπων ἐξῆλθε καὶ τὸ Κοσσαίων ἔθνος κατεστρέφετο, πάντας ἡβηδὸν ἀποσφάττων. τοῦτο δ’ Ἡφαιστίωνος ἐναγισμὸς ἐκαλεῖτο.

[5] τύμβον δὲ καὶ ταφὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν περὶ ταῦτα κόσμον ἀπὸ μυρίων ταλάντων ἐπιτελέσαι διανοούμενος, ὑπερβαλέσθαι δὲ τῷ φιλοτέχνῳ καὶ περιττῷ τῆς κατασκευῆς τὴν δαπάνην, ἐπόθησε μάλιστα τῶν τεχνιτῶν Στασικράτην, μεγαλουργίαν τινὰ καὶ τόλμαν καὶ κόμπον ἐν ταῖς [6] καινοτομίαις ἐπαγγελλόμενον. οὗτος γὰρ αὐτῷ πρότερον ἐντυχὼν ἔφη τῶν ὀρῶν μάλιστα τὸν Θρᾴκιον Ἄθων διατύπωσιν [7] ἀνδρείκελον δέχεσθαι καὶ διαμόρφωσιν· ἂν οὖν κελεύῃ, μονιμώτατον ἀγαλμάτων αὐτῷ καὶ περιφανέστατον ἐξεργάσεσθαι τὸν Ἄθων, τῇ μὲν ἀριστερᾷ χειρὶ περιλαμβάνοντα μυρίανδρον πόλιν οἰκουμένην, τῇ δὲ δεξιᾷ σπένδοντα ποταμοῦ ῥεῦμα δαψιλὲς εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν [8] ἀπορρέοντος. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν παρῃτήσατο, πολλῷ δ’ ἀτοπώτερα καὶ δαπανηρότερα τούτων σοφιζόμενος τότε καὶ συμμηχανώμενος τοῖς τεχνίταις διέτριβεν.

[73] [1] Εἰς δὲ Βαβυλῶνα προάγοντος αὐτοῦ, Νέαρχος (ἀφίκετο γὰρ αὖθις εἰσπλεύσας εἰς τὸν Εὐφράτην ἐκ τῆς μεγάλης θαλάσσης) ἔφη τινὰς ἐντυχεῖν αὐτῷ Χαλδαίους, [2] παραινοῦντας ἀπέχεσθαι Βαβυλῶνος τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον. ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἐφρόντισεν, ἀλλ’ ἐπορεύετο, καὶ πρὸς τοῖς τείχεσι γενόμενος, ὁρᾷ κόρακας πολλοὺς διαφερομένους καὶ τύπτοντας [3] ἀλλήλους, ὧν ἔνιοι κατέπεσον παρ’ αὐτόν. ἔπειτα μηνύσεως γενομένης κατ’ Ἀπολλοδώρου τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τῆς Βαβυλῶνος, ὡς εἴη περὶ αὐτοῦ τεθυμένος, ἐκάλει [4] Πυθαγόραν τὸν μάντιν. οὐκ ἀρνουμένου δὲ τὴν πρᾶξιν, ἠρώτησε τῶν ἱερῶν τὸν τρόπον· φήσαντος δ’ ὅτι τὸ ἧπαρ [5] ἦν ἄλοβον, παπαὶ εἶπεν, ἰσχυρὸν τὸ σημεῖον. καὶ τὸν Πυθαγόραν οὐδὲν ἠδίκησεν, ἤχθετο δὲ μὴ πεισθεὶς τῷ Νεάρχῳ, καὶ τὰ πολλὰ τῆς Βαβυλῶνος ἔξω κατασκηνῶν [6] καὶ περιπλέων τὸν Εὐφράτην διέτριβεν. ἠνώχλει δ’ αὐτὸν ‹καὶ ἄλλα› σημεῖα πολλά. καὶ γὰρ λέοντα τῶν τρεφομένων μέγιστον καὶ κάλλιστον ἥμερος ὄνος ἐπελθὼν καὶ [7] λακτίσας ἀνεῖλεν. ἀποδυσαμένου δ’ ‹αὐτοῦ› πρὸς ἄλειμμα καὶ σφαῖραν [αὐτοῦ] παίζοντος, τῶν νεανίσκων οἱ ‹συ›σφαιρίζοντες, ὡς ἔδει πάλιν λαβεῖν τὰ ἱμάτια, καθορῶσιν ἄνθρωπον ἐν τῷ θρόνῳ καθεζόμενον σιωπῇ, τὸ διάδημα [8] καὶ τὴν στολὴν τὴν βασιλικὴν περικείμενον. οὗτος ἀνακρινόμενος ὅστις εἴη, πολὺν χρόνον ἄναυδος ἦν· μόλις δὲ συμφρονήσας, Διονύσιος μὲν ἔφη καλεῖσθαι, Μεσσήνιος δ’ εἶναι τὸ γένος, ἐκ δέ τινος αἰτίας καὶ κατηγορίας ἐνταῦθα κομισθεὶς ἀπὸ θαλάσσης, πολὺν γεγονέναι χρόνον [9] ἐν δεσμοῖς· ἄρτι δ’ αὐτῷ τὸν Σάραπιν ἐπιστάντα τοὺς δεσμοὺς ἀνεῖναι καὶ προαγ‹αγ›εῖν δεῦρο, καὶ κελεῦσαι λαβόντα τὴν στολὴν καὶ τὸ διάδημα καθίσαι καὶ σιωπᾶν.

[74] [1] Ταῦτ’ ἀκούσας ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος, τὸν μὲν ἄνθρωπον, ὥσπερ ἐκέλευον οἱ μάντεις, ἠφάνισεν· αὐτὸς δ’ ἠθύμει καὶ δύσελπις ἦν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἤδη καὶ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ὕποπτος.

[2] Μάλιστα δ’ Ἀντίπατρον ἐφοβεῖτο καὶ τοὺς παῖδας, ὧν Ἰόλας μὲν ἀρχιοινοχόος ἦν, ὁ δὲ Κάσανδρος ἀφῖκτο μὲν νεωστί, θεασάμενος δὲ βαρβάρους τινὰς προσκυνοῦντας, ἅτε δὴ τεθραμμένος Ἑλληνικῶς καὶ τοιοῦτο πρότερον [3] μηδὲν ἑωρακώς, ἐγέλασε προπετέστερον. ὁ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ὠργίσθη, καὶ δραξάμενος αὐτοῦ τῶν τριχῶν σφόδρα ταῖς χερσὶν ἀμφοτέραις, ἔπαισε τὴν κεφαλὴν πρὸς τὸν τοῖχον.

[4] αὖθις δὲ πρὸς τοὺς κατηγοροῦντας Ἀντιπάτρου λέγειν τι βουλόμενον τὸν Κάσανδρον ἐκκρούων, τί λέγεις; ἔφη· τοσαύτην ὁδὸν ἀνθρώπους μηδὲν ἀδικουμένους, ἀλλὰ [5] συκοφαντοῦντας ἐλθεῖν; φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Κασάνδρου τοῦτ’ αὐτὸ σημεῖον εἶναι τοῦ συκοφαντεῖν, ὅτι μακρὰν ἥκουσι τῶν ἐλέγχων, ἀναγελάσας ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ταῦτ’ ἐκεῖνα ἔφη σοφίσματα τῶν Ἀριστοτέλους εἰς ἑκάτερον τὸν λόγον, οἰμωξομένων, ἂν καὶ μικρὸν ἀδικοῦντες τοὺς [6] ἀνθρώπους φανῆτε. τὸ δ’ ὅλον οὕτω φασὶ δεινὸν ἐνδῦναι καὶ δευσοποιὸν ἐγγενέσθαι τῇ ψυχῇ τοῦ Κασάνδρου τὸ δέος, ὥσθ’ ὕστερον χρόνοις πολλοῖς, ἤδη Μακεδόνων βασιλεύοντα καὶ κρατοῦντα τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἐν Δελφοῖς περιπατοῦντα καὶ θεώμενον τοὺς ἀνδριάντας, εἰκόνος Ἀλεξάνδρου φανείσης ἄφνω πληγέντα φρῖξαι καὶ κραδανθῆναι τὸ σῶμα, καὶ μόλις ἀναλαβεῖν ἑαυτόν, ἰλιγγιάσαντα πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν.

[75] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Ἀλέξανδρος ὡς ἐνέδωκε τότε πρὸς τὰ θεῖα, ταραχώδης γενόμενος καὶ περίφοβος τὴν διάνοιαν, οὐδὲν ἦν μικρὸν οὕτως τῶν ἀήθων καὶ ἀτόπων, ὃ μὴ τέρας ἐποιεῖτο καὶ σημεῖον, ἀλλὰ θυομένων καὶ καθαιρόντων καὶ μαντευόντων μεστὸν ἦν τὸ βασίλειον ‹καὶ ἀναπληρούντων [2] ἀβελτερίας καὶ φόβου τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον›. οὕτως ἄρα δεινὸν μὲν ‹ἡ› ἀπιστία πρὸς τὰ θεῖα καὶ περιφρόνησις αὐτῶν, δεινὴ δ’ αὖθις ἡ δεισιδαιμονία, δίκην ὕδατος ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ ταπεινούμενον [καὶ ἀναπληροῦν ἀβελτερίας καὶ φόβου τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον] †γενόμενον .

[3] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ χρησμῶν γε τῶν περὶ Ἡφαιστίωνος ἐκ θεοῦ κομισθέντων, ἀποθέμενος τὸ πένθος αὖθις ἦν ἐν [4] θυσίαις καὶ πότοις. ἑστιάσας δὲ λαμπρῶς τοὺς περὶ Νέαρχον, εἶτα λουσάμενος ὥσπερ εἰώθει μέλλων καθεύδειν, Μηδίου δεηθέντος ᾤχετο κωμασόμενος πρὸς αὐτόν· [5] κἀκεῖ πιὼν ὅλην τὴν ‹νύκτα καὶ τὴν› ἐπιοῦσαν ἡμέραν, ἤρξατο πυρέττειν, οὔτε σκύφον Ἡρακλέους ἐκπιὼν οὔτ’ ἄφνω διαλγὴς γενόμενος τὸ μετάφρενον ὥσπερ λόγχῃ πεπληγώς, ἀλλὰ ταῦτά τινες ᾤοντο δεῖν γράφειν, ὥσπερ δράματος μεγάλου τραγικὸν ἐξόδιον καὶ περιπαθὲς πλάσαντες. [6] Ἀριστόβουλος δέ (FGrH 139 F 59) φησιν αὐτὸν πυρέττοντα νεανικῶς, διψήσαντα δὲ σφόδρα, πιεῖν οἶνον· ἐκ τούτου δὲ φρενιτιᾶσαι καὶ τελευτῆσαι τριακάδι Δαισίου μηνός.

[76] [1] Ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἐφημερίσιν (FGrH 117 F 3b) οὕτως γέγραπται ‹τὰ› περὶ τὴν νόσον. ὀγδόῃ ἐπὶ δεκάτῃ Δαισίου μηνὸς [2] ἐκάθευδεν ἐν τῷ λουτρῶνι διὰ τὸ πυρέξαι. τῇ δ’ ἑξῆς λουσάμενος εἰς τὸν θάλαμον μετῆλθε, καὶ διημέρευε πρὸς Μήδιον κυβεύων. εἶτ’ ὀψὲ λουσάμενος, καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ τοῖς θεοῖς ἐπιθείς, [3] ἐμφαγὼν διὰ νυκτὸς ἐπύρεξε. τῇ εἰκάδι λουσάμενος πάλιν ἔθυσε τὴν εἰθισμένην θυσίαν, καὶ κατακείμενος ἐν τῷ λουτρῶνι τοῖς περὶ Νέαρχον ἐσχόλαζεν, ἀκροώμενος τὰ [4] περὶ τὸν πλοῦν καὶ τὴν μεγάλην θάλατταν. τῇ δεκάτῃ φθίνοντος ταὐτὰ ποιήσας, μᾶλλον ἀνεφλέχθη, καὶ τὴν νύκτα βαρέως ἔσχε, καὶ τὴν ἐπιοῦσαν ἡμέραν ἐπύρεττε [5] σφόδρα. καὶ μεταρθεὶς κατέκειτο παρὰ τὴν μεγάλην κολυμβήθραν, ὅτε δὴ τοῖς ἡγεμόσι διελέχθη περὶ τῶν ἐρήμων ἡγεμονίας τάξεων, ὅπως καταστήσωσι δοκιμάσαντες.

[6] ἑβδόμῃ σφόδρα πυρέττων, ἔθυσεν ἐξαρθεὶς πρὸς τὰ ἱερά· τῶν δ’ ἡγεμόνων ἐκέλευε τοὺς μεγίστους διατρίβειν ἐν τῇ αὐλῇ, ταξιάρχους δὲ καὶ πεντακοσιάρχους ἔξω [7] νυκτερεύειν. εἰς δὲ τὰ πέραν βασίλεια διακομισθείς, τῇ ἕκτῃ μικρὸν ὕπνωσεν, ὁ δὲ πυρετὸς οὐκ ἀνῆκεν· ἐπελθόντων δὲ τῶν ἡγεμόνων ἦν ἄφωνος, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὴν πέμπτην.

[8] διὸ καὶ τοῖς Μακεδόσιν ἔδοξε τεθνάναι, καὶ κατεβόων ἐλθόντες ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας, καὶ διηπειλοῦντο τοῖς ἑταίροις, ἕως ἐβιάσαντο, καὶ τῶν θυρῶν αὐτοῖς ἀνοιχθεισῶν, ἐν τοῖς χιτῶσι καθ’ ἕνα πάντες παρὰ τὴν κλίνην παρεξῆλθον.

[9] ταύτης δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας οἱ περὶ Πύθωνα καὶ Σέλευκον εἰς τὸ Σεραπεῖον ἀποσταλέντες, ἠρώτων εἰ κομίσωσιν ἐκεῖ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, ὁ δὲ θεὸς κατὰ χώραν ἐᾶν ἀνεῖλε. τῇ δὲ τρίτῃ φθίνοντος πρὸς δείλην ἀπέθανε.

[77] [1] Τούτων τὰ πλεῖστα κατὰ λέξιν ἐν ταῖς ἐφημερίσιν οὕτως γέγραπται.

[2] Φαρμακείας δ’ ὑποψίαν παραυτίκα μὲν οὐδεὶς ἔσχεν, ἕκτῳ δ’ ἔτει φασὶ μηνύσεως γενομένης τὴν Ὀλυμπιάδα πολλοὺς μὲν ἀνελεῖν, ἐκρῖψαι δὲ τὰ λείψανα τοῦ Ἰόλα [3] τεθνηκότος, ὡς τούτου τὸ φάρμακον ἐγχέαντος. οἱ δ’ Ἀριστοτέλην φάσκοντες Ἀντιπάτρῳ σύμβουλον γεγενῆσθαι τῆς πράξεως καὶ ὅλως δι’ ἐκείνου κομισθῆναι τὸ φάρμακον Ἁγνόθεμίν τινα διηγεῖσθαι λέγουσιν ὡς [4] Ἀντιγόνου τοῦ βασιλέως ἀκούσαντα· τὸ δὲ φάρμακον ὕδωρ εἶναι ψυχρὸν καὶ παγετῶδες, ἀπὸ πέτρας τινὸς ἐν Νωνάκριδι †οὔσης ἣν ὥσπερ δρόσον λεπτὴν ἀναλαμβάνοντες εἰς ὄνου χηλὴν ἀποτίθενται· τῶν γὰρ ἄλλων οὐδὲν ἀγγείων στέγειν, ἀλλὰ διακόπτειν ὑπὸ ψυχρότητος [5] καὶ δριμύτητος. οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι τὸν λόγον ὅλως οἴονται πεπλάσθαι τὸν περὶ τῆς φαρμακείας, καὶ τεκμήριον αὐτοῖς ἐστιν οὐ μικρόν, ὅτι τῶν ἡγεμόνων στασιασάντων ἐφ’ ἡμέρας πολλὰς ἀθεράπευτον τὸ σῶμα κείμενον ἐν τόποις θερμοῖς καὶ πνιγώδεσιν οὐδὲν ἔσχε τοιαύτης φθορᾶς σημεῖον, ἀλλ’ ἔμεινε καθαρὸν καὶ πρόσφατον.

[6] Ἡ δὲ Ῥωξάνη κύουσα μὲν ἐτύγχανε καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τιμωμένη παρὰ τοῖς Μακεδόσι· δυσζήλως δ’ ἔχουσα πρὸς τὴν Στάτειραν, ἐξηπάτησεν αὐτὴν ἐπιστολῇ τινι πεπλασμένῃ παραγενέσθαι, καὶ προσαγαγοῦσα μετὰ τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἀπέκτεινε καὶ τοὺς νεκροὺς εἰς τὸ φρέαρ κατέβαλε καὶ συνέχωσεν, εἰδότος ταῦτα Περδίκκου καὶ συμπράττοντος.

[7] ἦν γὰρ ἐκεῖνος εὐθὺς ἐν δυνάμει μεγίστῃ, τὸν Ἀρριδαῖον ὥσπερ δορυφόρημα τῆς βασιλείας ἐφελκόμενος, γεγονότα μὲν ἐκ γυναικὸς ἀδόξου καὶ κοινῆς Φιλίννης, ἀτελῆ δὲ τὸ φρονεῖν ὄντα διὰ σώματος νόσον, οὐ ‹μὴν› φύσει προσπεσοῦσαν [8] οὐδ’ αὐτομάτως, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ φασὶ παιδὸς ὄντος αὐτοῦ διαφαίνεσθαι χάριεν ἦθος καὶ οὐκ ἀγεννές, εἶτα μέντοι φαρμάκοις ὑπ’ Ὀλυμπιάδος κακωθέντα διαφθαρῆναι τὴν διάνοιαν.

Caesar

[1] [1] Τὴν Κίννα τοῦ μοναρχήσαντος θυγατέρα Κορνηλίαν ὡς ἐπεκράτησε Σύλλας οὔτ’ ἐλπίσιν οὔτε φόβῳ δυνηθεὶς ἀποσπάσαι Καίσαρος, ἐδήμευσε τὴν φερνὴν αὐτῆς.

[2] αἰτία δὲ Καίσαρι τῆς πρὸς Σύλλαν ἀπεχθείας ἡ πρὸς Μάριον οἰκειότης ἦν· Ἰουλίᾳ γὰρ πατρὸς ἀδελφῇ Καίσαρος ὁ πρεσβύτερος συνῴκει Μάριος, ἐξ ἧς ἐγεγόνει Μάριος [3] ὁ νεώτερος, ἀνεψιὸς ὢν Καίσαρος. ὡς δ’ ὑπὸ πλήθους φόνων ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ δι’ ἀσχολίας ὑπὸ Σύλλα παρορώμενος οὐκ ἠγάπησεν, ἀλλὰ μετιὼν ἱερωσύνην εἰς τὸν δῆμον προῆλθεν οὔπω πάνυ μειράκιον ὤν, ταύτης μὲν ἐκπεσεῖν [11] αὐτὸν ὑπεναντιωθεὶς Σύλλας παρεσκεύασε· περὶ δ’ ἀναιρέσεως βουλευόμενος, ἐνίων λεγόντων ὡς οὐκ ἔχοι λόγον ἀποκτιννύναι παῖδα τηλικοῦτον, οὐκ ἔφη νοῦν ἔχειν [4] αὐτούς, εἰ μὴ πολλοὺς ἐν τῷ παιδὶ τούτῳ Μαρίους ἐνορῶσι.

[5] ταύτης τῆς φωνῆς ἀνενεχθείσης πρὸς Καίσαρα, συχνὸν μέν τινα χρόνον πλανώμενος ἐν Σαβίνοις ἔκλεπτεν ἑαυτόν· [6] ἔπειτα δι’ ἀρρωστίαν εἰς οἰκίαν ἑτέραν μετακομιζόμενος κατὰ νύκτα, περιπίπτει στρατιώταις τοῦ Σύλλα διερευνωμένοις ἐκεῖνα τὰ χωρία καὶ τοὺς κεκρυμμένους συλλαμβάνουσιν.

[7] ὧν τὸν ἡγεμόνα Κορνήλιον πείσας δυσὶ ταλάντοις, ἀφείθη, καὶ καταβὰς εὐθὺς ἐπὶ θάλατταν ἐξέπλευσεν [8] εἰς Βιθυνίαν πρὸς Νικομήδην τὸν βασιλέα. παρ’ ᾧ διατρίψας χρόνον οὐ πολύν, εἶτ’ ἀποπλέων, ἁλίσκεται περὶ τὴν Φαρμακοῦσσαν νῆσον ὑπὸ πειρατῶν, ἤδη τότε στόλοις μεγάλοις καὶ σκάφεσιν ἀπλέτοις κατεχόντων τὴν θάλατταν.

[2] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν αἰτηθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν λύτρα εἴκοσι τάλαντα, κατεγέλασεν ὡς οὐκ εἰδότων ὃν ᾑρήκοιεν, αὐτὸς [2] δ’ ὡμολόγησε πεντήκοντα δώσειν· ἔπειτα τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἄλλον εἰς ἄλλην διαπέμψας πόλιν ἐπὶ τὸν τῶν χρημάτων πορισμόν, ἐν ἀνθρώποις φονικωτάτοις Κίλιξι μεθ’ ἑνὸς φίλου καὶ δυοῖν ἀκολούθοιν ἀπολελειμμένος, οὕτω καταφρονητικῶς εἶχεν, ὥστε πέμπων ὁσάκις ἀναπαύοιτο [3] προσέταττεν αὐτοῖς σιωπᾶν. ἡμέραις δὲ τεσσαράκοντα δυεῖν δεούσαις, ὥσπερ οὐ φρουρούμενος ἀλλὰ δορυφορούμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, ἐπὶ πολλῆς ἀδείας συνέπαιζε καὶ [4] συνεγυμνάζετο, καὶ ποιήματα γράφων καὶ λόγους τινὰς ἀκροαταῖς ἐκείνοις ἐχρῆτο, καὶ τοὺς μὴ θαυμάζοντας ἄντικρυς ἀπαιδεύτους καὶ βαρβάρους ἀπεκάλει, καὶ σὺν γέλωτι πολλάκις ἠπείλησε κρεμᾶν αὐτούς· οἱ δ’ ἔχαιρον, ἀφελείᾳ τινὶ καὶ παιδιᾷ τὴν παρρησίαν ταύτην νέμοντες.

[5] ὡς δ’ ἧκον ἐκ Μιλήτου τὰ λύτρα καὶ δοὺς ἀφείθη, πλοῖα πληρώσας εὐθὺς ἐκ τοῦ Μιλησίων λιμένος ἐπὶ τοὺς λῃστὰς ἀνήγετο, καὶ καταλαβὼν ἔτι πρὸς τῇ νήσῳ ναυλοχοῦντας, [6] ἐκράτησε τῶν πλείστων. καὶ τὰ μὲν χρήματα λείαν ἐποιήσατο, τοὺς δ’ ἄνδρας ἐν Περγάμῳ καταθέμενος εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον, αὐτὸς ἐπορεύθη πρὸς τὸν διέποντα τὴν Ἀσίαν Ἴουγκον, ὡς ἐκείνῳ προσῆκον ὄντι στρατηγῷ [7] κολάσαι τοὺς ἑαλωκότας. ἐκείνου δὲ καὶ τοῖς χρήμασιν ἐποφθαλμιῶντος (ἦν γὰρ οὐκ ὀλίγα), καὶ περὶ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων σκέψεσθαι φάσκοντος ἐπὶ σχολῆς, χαίρειν ἐάσας αὐτὸν ὁ Καῖσαρ εἰς Πέργαμον ᾤχετο, καὶ προαγαγὼν τοὺς λῃστὰς ἅπαντας ἀνεσταύρωσεν, ὥσπερ αὐτοῖς δοκῶν παίζειν ἐν τῇ νήσῳ προειρήκει πολλάκις.

[3] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου τῆς Σύλλα δυνάμεως ἤδη μαραινομένης καὶ τῶν οἴκοι καλούντων αὐτόν, ἔπλευσεν εἰς Ῥόδον ἐπὶ σχολὴν πρὸς Ἀπολλώνιον τὸν τοῦ Μόλωνος, οὗ καὶ Κικέρων ἠκρόατο, σοφιστεύοντος ἐπιφανῶς καὶ [2] τὸν τρόπον ἐπιεικοῦς εἶναι δοκοῦντος. λέγεται δὲ καὶ φῦναι πρὸς λόγους πολιτικοὺς ὁ Καῖσαρ ἄριστα καὶ διαπονῆσαι φιλοτιμότατα τὴν φύσιν, ὡς τὰ δευτερεῖα μὲν [3] ἀδηρίτως ἔχειν, τὸ δὲ πρωτεῖον, ὅπως τῇ δυνάμει καὶ τοῖς ὅπλοις πρῶτος εἴη μᾶλλον [ἀλλ’] ἀσχοληθείς, ἀφεῖναι, πρὸς ὅπερ ἡ φύσις ὑφηγεῖτο τῆς ἐν τῷ λέγειν δεινότητος, ὑπὸ στρατειῶν καὶ πολιτείας, ᾗ κατεκτήσατο [4] τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, οὐκ ἐξικόμενος. αὐτὸς δ’ οὖν ὕστερον ἐν τῇ πρὸς Κικέρωνα περὶ Κάτωνος ἀντιγραφῇ παραιτεῖται, μὴ στρατιωτικοῦ λόγον ἀνδρὸς ἀντεξετάζειν πρὸς δεινότητα ῥήτορος εὐφυοῦς καὶ σχολὴν ἐπὶ τοῦτο πολλὴν ἄγοντος.

[4] [1] Ἐπανελθὼν δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος εἰς Ῥώμην, Δολοβέλλαν ἔκρινε κακώσεως ἐπαρχίας, καὶ πολλαὶ τῶν [2] πόλεων μαρτυρίας αὐτῷ παρέσχον. ὁ μὲν οὖν Δολοβέλλας ἀπέφυγε τὴν δίκην, ὁ δὲ Καῖσαρ, ἀμειβόμενος τὴν Ἑλλάδα τῆς προθυμίας, συνηγόρευσεν αὐτῇ Πόπλιον Ἀντώνιον διωκούσῃ δωροδοκίας ἐπὶ Λευκούλλου Μάρκου [3] τοῦ Μακεδονίας στρατηγοῦ. καὶ τοσοῦτον ἴσχυσεν, ὥστε τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἐπικαλέσασθαι τοὺς δημάρχους, σκηψάμενον οὐκ ἔχειν τὸ ἴσον ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι πρὸς Ἕλληνας.

[4] ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ πολλὴ μὲν ἐπὶ τῷ λόγῳ περὶ τὰς συνηγορίας αὐτοῦ χάρις ἐξέλαμπε, πολλὴ δὲ τῆς περὶ τὰς δεξιώσεις καὶ ὁμιλίας φιλοφροσύνης εὔνοια παρὰ τῶν δημοτῶν [5] ἀπήντα, θεραπευτικοῦ παρ’ ἡλικίαν ὄντος. ἦν δέ τις καὶ ἀπὸ δείπνων καὶ τραπέζης καὶ ὅλως τῆς περὶ τὴν δίαιταν λαμπρότητος αὐξανομένη κατὰ μικρὸν αὐτῷ δύναμις εἰς [6] τὴν πολιτείαν. ἣν τὸ πρῶτον οἱ φθονοῦντες οἰόμενοι ταχὺ τῶν ἀναλωμάτων ἐπιλιπόντων ἐξίτηλον ἔσεσθαι, [7] περιεώρων ἀνθοῦσαν ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς· ὀψὲ δ’ ᾔσθοντο, μεγάλης καὶ δυσανατρέπτου γενομένης καὶ βαδιζούσης ἄντικρυς ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν ὅλων μεταβολήν, ὡς οὐδεμίαν ἀρχὴν πράγματος ‹οὕτως› ἡγητέον μικράν, ἣν οὐ ταχὺ ποιεῖ μεγάλην τὸ ἐνδελεχές, ἐκ τοῦ καταφρονηθῆναι τὸ [8] μὴ κωλυθῆναι λαβοῦσαν. ὁ γοῦν πρῶτος ὑπιδέσθαι δοκῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ φοβηθῆναι τῆς πολιτείας ὥσπερ θαλάττης τὰ διαγελῶντα καὶ τὴν ἐν τῷ φιλανθρώπῳ καὶ ἱλαρῷ κεκρυμμένην δεινότητα τοῦ ἤθους καταμαθὼν Κικέρων ἔλεγε τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν ἐπιβουλεύμασιν αὐτοῦ καὶ πολιτεύμασι [9] τυραννικὴν ἐνορᾶν διάνοιαν· ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἔφη τὴν κόμην οὕτω διακειμένην περιττῶς ἴδω, κἀκεῖνον ἑνὶ δακτύλῳ κνώμενον, οὔ μοι δοκεῖ πάλιν οὗτος ἅνθρωπος εἰς νοῦν ἂν ἐμβαλέσθαι τηλικοῦτον κακόν, ἀναίρεσιν τῆς Ῥωμαίων πολιτείας. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον.

[5] [1] Τοῦ δὲ δήμου πρώτην μὲν ἀπόδειξιν τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐνοίας ἔλαβεν, ὅτε πρὸς Γάϊον Ποπίλιον ἐρίσας ὑπὲρ [2] χιλιαρχίας πρότερος ἀνηγορεύθη· δευτέραν δὲ καὶ καταφανεστέραν, ὅτε τῆς Μαρίου γυναικὸς Ἰουλίας ἀποθανούσης, ἀδελφιδοῦς ὢν αὐτῆς, ἐγκώμιόν τε λαμπρὸν ἐν ἀγορᾷ διῆλθε, καὶ περὶ τὴν ἐκφορὰν ἐτόλμησεν εἰκόνας Μαρίων προθέσθαι, τότε πρῶτον ὀφθείσας μετὰ τὴν ἐπὶ [3] Σύλλα πολιτείαν, πολεμίων τῶν ἀνδρῶν κριθέντων. ἐπὶ τούτῳ γὰρ ἐνίων καταβοησάντων τοῦ Καίσαρος, ὁ δῆμος ἀντήχησε, λαμπρῷ δεξάμενος κρότῳ καὶ θαυμάσας ὥσπερ ἐξ Ἅιδου διὰ χρόνων πολλῶν ἀνάγοντα τὰς Μαρίου [4] τιμὰς εἰς τὴν πόλιν. τὸ μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ γυναιξὶ πρεσβυτέραις λόγους ἐπιταφίους διεξιέναι πάτριον ἦν Ῥωμαίοις, ‹ἐπὶ› νέαις δ’ οὐκ ὂν ἐν ἔθει, πρῶτος εἶπε Καῖσαρ ἐπὶ τῆς [5] ἑαυτοῦ γυναικὸς ἀποθανούσης. καὶ τοῦτ’ ἤνεγκεν αὐτῷ χάριν τινα καὶ συνεδημαγώγησε τῷ πάθει τοὺς πολλοὺς ὡς [6] ἥμερον ἄνδρα καὶ περίμεστον ἤθους ἀγαπᾶν. θάψας δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα, ταμίας εἰς Ἰβηρίαν ἑνὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν Βέτερι συνεξῆλθεν, ὃν αὐτόν τε τιμῶν ἀεὶ διετέλεσε, καὶ [7] τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ πάλιν αὐτὸς ἄρχων ταμίαν ἐποίησε. γενόμενος δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐκείνης, τρίτην ἠγάγετο γυναῖκα Πομπηΐαν, ἔχων ἐκ Κορνηλίας θυγατέρα τὴν ὕστερον Πομπηΐῳ Μάγνῳ γαμηθεῖσαν.

[8] Χρώμενος δὲ ταῖς δαπάναις ἀφειδῶς, καὶ δοκῶν μὲν ἐφήμερον καὶ βραχεῖαν ἀντικαταλλάττεσθαι μεγάλων ἀναλωμάτων δόξαν, ὠνούμενος δὲ ταῖς ἀληθείαις τὰ μέγιστα μικρῶν, λέγεται πρὶν εἰς ἀρχήν τινα καθίστασθαι χιλίων καὶ τριακοσίων γενέσθαι χρεωφειλέτης ταλάντων.

[9] ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦτο μὲν ὁδοῦ τῆς Ἀππίας ἀποδειχθεὶς ἐπιμελητὴς πάμπολλα χρήματα προσανάλωσε τῶν ἑαυτοῦ, τοῦτο δ’ ἀγορανομῶν ζεύγη μονομάχων τριακόσια καὶ εἴκοσι παρέσχε, καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις περί τε θέατρα καὶ πομπὰς καὶ δεῖπνα χορηγίαις καὶ πολυτελείαις τὰς πρὸ αὐτοῦ κατέκλυσε φιλοτιμίας, οὕτω διέθηκε τὸν δῆμον, ὡς καινὰς μὲν ἀρχάς, καινὰς δὲ τιμὰς ζητεῖν ἕκαστον αἷς αὐτὸν ἀμείψαιντο.

[6] [1] Δυεῖν δ’ οὐσῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει στάσεων, τῆς μὲν ἀπὸ Σύλλα μέγα δυναμένης, τῆς δὲ Μαριανῆς, ἣ τότε κατεπτήχει καὶ διέσπαστο κομιδῇ ταπεινὰ πράττουσα, ταύτην ἀναρρῶσαι καὶ προσαγαγέσθαι βουλόμενος, ἐν ταῖς ἀγορανομικαῖς φιλοτιμίαις ἀκμὴν ἐχούσαις εἰκόνας ἐποιήσατο Μαρίου κρύφα καὶ Νίκας τροπαιοφόρους, ἃς φέρων [2] νυκτὸς εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον ἀνέστησεν. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τοὺς θεασαμένους μαρμαίροντα πάντα χρυσῷ καὶ τέχνῃ κατεσκευασμένα περιττῶς (διεδήλου δὲ γράμμασι τὰ Κιμβρικὰ κατορθώματα) θάμβος ἔσχε τῆς τόλμης τοῦ ἀναθέντος (οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἄδηλος), ταχὺ δὲ περιϊὼν ὁ λόγος [3] ἤθροιζε πάντας ἀνθρώπους πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν. ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν ἐβόων τυραννίδα πολιτεύεσθαι Καίσαρα, νόμοις καὶ δόγμασι κατορωρυγμένας ἐπανιστάντα τιμάς, καὶ τοῦτο πεῖραν ἐπὶ τὸν δῆμον εἶναι, προμαλαττόμενον εἰ τετιθάσσευται ταῖς φιλοτιμίαις ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ δίδωσι παίζειν [4] τοιαῦτα καὶ καινοτομεῖν· οἱ δὲ Μαριανοὶ παραθαρρύναντες ἀλλήλους, πλήθει τε θαυμαστὸν ὅσοι διεφάνησαν [5] ἐξαίφνης, καὶ κρότῳ κατεῖχον τὸ Καπιτώλιον· πολλοῖς δὲ καὶ δάκρυα τὴν Μαρίου θεωμένοις ὄψιν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἐχώρει, καὶ μέγας ἦν ὁ Καῖσαρ ἐγκωμίοις αἰρόμενος, ὡς ἀντὶ πάντων ἄξιος εἷς ὁ ἀνὴρ τῆς Μαρίου συγγενείας.

[6] συναχθείσης δὲ περὶ τούτων τῆς βουλῆς, Κάτλος Λουτάτιος, ἀνὴρ εὐδοκιμῶν τότε μάλιστα Ῥωμαίων, ἀναστὰς καὶ κατηγορήσας Καίσαρος ἐπεφθέγξατο τὸ μνημονευόμενον· οὐκέτι γὰρ ὑπονόμοις ἔφη Καῖσαρ, ἀλλ’ [7] ἤδη μηχαναῖς αἱρεῖ τὴν πολιτείαν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀπολογησάμενος πρὸς ταῦτα Καῖσαρ ἔπεισε τὴν σύγκλητον, ἔτι μᾶλλον οἱ θαυμάζοντες αὐτὸν ἐπήρθησαν, καὶ παρεκελεύοντο μηδενὶ τοῦ φρονήματος ὑφίεσθαι· πάντων γὰρ ἑκόντι τῷ δήμῳ περιέσεσθαι καὶ πρωτεύσειν.

[7] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ καὶ Μετέλλου τοῦ ἀρχιερέως τελευτήσαντος, καὶ τὴν ἱερωσύνην περιμάχητον οὖσαν Ἰσαυρικοῦ καὶ Κάτλου μετιόντων, ἐπιφανεστάτων ἀνδρῶν καὶ μέγιστον ἐν ‹τῇ› βουλῇ δυναμένων, οὐχ ὑπεῖξεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Καῖσαρ, ἀλλὰ καταβὰς εἰς τὸν δῆμον ἀντιπαρήγγελλεν.

[2] ἀγχωμάλου δὲ τῆς σπουδῆς φαινομένης, ὁ Κάτλος, ἀπὸ μείζονος ἀξίας μᾶλλον ὀρρωδῶν τὴν ἀδηλότητα, προσέπεμψε πείθων ἀποστῆναι τὸν Καίσαρα τῆς φιλοτιμίας ἐπὶ πολλοῖς χρήμασιν· ὁ δὲ καὶ πλείω προσδανεισάμενος [3] ἔφη διαγωνιεῖσθαι. τῆς δ’ ἡμέρας ἐνστάσης, καὶ τῆς μητρὸς ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας αὐτὸν οὐκ ἀδακρυτὶ προπεμπούσης, ἀσπασάμενος αὐτήν, ὦ μῆτερ εἶπε, [4] τήμερον ἢ ἀρχιερέα τὸν υἱὸν ἢ φυγάδα ὄψει. διενεχθείσης δὲ τῆς ψήφου καὶ γενομένης ἁμίλλης, ἐκράτησε καὶ παρέσχε τῇ βουλῇ καὶ τοῖς ἀρίστοις φόβον ὡς ἐπὶ πᾶν θρασύτητος προάξων τὸν δῆμον.

[5] Ὅθεν οἱ περὶ Πίσωνα καὶ Κάτλον ᾐτιῶντο Κικέρωνα, φεισάμενον Καίσαρος ἐν τοῖς περὶ Κατιλίναν λαβὴν παρασχόντος.

[6] ὁ γὰρ δὴ Κατιλίνας οὐ μόνον τὴν πολιτείαν μεταβαλεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὅλην ἀνελεῖν τὴν ἡγεμονίαν καὶ πάντα τὰ πράγματα συγχέαι διανοηθείς, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐξέπεσε, περιπταίσας ἐλάττοσιν ἐλέγχοις πρὸ τοῦ τὰς ἐσχάτας αὐτοῦ βουλὰς ἀποκαλυφθῆναι, Λέντλον δὲ καὶ Κέθηγον ἐν [7] τῇ πόλει διαδόχους ἀπέλιπε τῆς συνωμοσίας· οἷς εἰ μὲν κρύφα παρεῖχέ τι θάρσους καὶ δυνάμεως ὁ Καῖσαρ, ἄδηλόν ἐστιν, ἐν δὲ τῇ βουλῇ κατὰ κράτος ἐξελεγχθέντων, καὶ Κικέρωνος τοῦ ὑπάτου γνώμας ἐρωτῶντος περὶ κολάσεως ἕκαστον, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι μέχρι Καίσαρος θανατοῦν [8] ἐκέλευον, ὁ δὲ Καῖσαρ ἀναστὰς λόγον διῆλθε πεφροντισμένον, ὡς ἀποκτεῖναι μὲν ἀκρίτους ἄνδρας ἀξιώματι καὶ γένει λαμπροὺς οὐ δοκεῖ πάτριον οὐδὲ δίκαιον εἶναι [9] μὴ μετὰ τῆς ἐσχάτης ἀνάγκης· εἰ δὲ φρουροῖντο δεθέντες ἐν πόλεσι τῆς Ἰταλίας, ἃς ἂν αὐτὸς ἕληται Κικέρων, μέχρι ‹ἂν› οὗ καταπολεμηθῇ Κατιλίνας, ὕστερον ἐν εἰρήνῃ καὶ καθ’ ἡσυχίαν περὶ ἑκάστου τῇ βουλῇ γνῶναι παρέξειν.

[8] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τῆς γνώμης φιλανθρώπου φανείσης καὶ τοῦ λόγου δυνατῶς ἐπ’ αὐτῇ ῥηθέντος, οὐ μόνον οἱ μετὰ τοῦτον ἀνιστάμενοι προσετίθεντο, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ τὰς εἰρημένας γνώμας ἀπειπάμενοι πρὸς τὴν ἐκείνου μετέστησαν, ἕως ἐπὶ Κάτωνα τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ [2] Κάτλον περιῆλθε. τούτων δὲ νεανικῶς ἐναντιωθέντων, Κάτωνος δὲ καὶ τὴν ὑπόνοιαν ἅμα τῷ λόγῳ συνεπερείσαντος αὐτῷ καὶ συγκατεξαναστάντος ἐρρωμένως, οἱ μὲν ἄνδρες ἀποθανούμενοι παρεδόθησαν, Καίσαρι δὲ τῆς βουλῆς ἐξιόντι πολλοὶ τῶν Κικέρωνα φρουρούντων τότε [3] νέων γυμνὰ τὰ ξίφη συνδραμόντες ἐπέσχον. ἀλλὰ Κουρίων τε λέγεται τῇ τηβέννῳ περιβαλὼν ὑπεξαγαγεῖν, αὐτός θ’ ὁ Κικέρων ὡς οἱ νεανίσκοι προσέβλεψαν ἀνανεῦσαι, φοβηθεὶς τὸν δῆμον, ἢ τὸν φόνον ὅλως ἄδικον καὶ παράνομον [4] ἡγούμενος. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως ὁ Κικέρων, εἴπερ ἦν ἀληθές, ἐν τῷ περὶ τῆς ὑπατείας οὐκ ἔγραψεν· αἰτίαν δ’ εἶχεν ὕστερον ὡς ἄριστα τῷ καιρῷ τότε παρασχόντι κατὰ τοῦ Καίσαρος μὴ χρησάμενος, ἀλλ’ ἀποδειλιάσας ‹πρὸς› τὸν δῆμον, ὑπερφυῶς περιεχόμενον τοῦ [5] Καίσαρος· ὅς γε καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγας ἡμέρας, εἰς τὴν βουλὴν εἰσελθόντος αὐτοῦ καὶ περὶ ὧν ἐν ὑποψίαις ἦν ἀπολογουμένου καὶ περιπίπτοντος θορύβοις πονηροῖς, ἐπειδὴ πλείων τοῦ συνήθους ἐγίγνετο τῇ βουλῇ καθεζομένῃ χρόνος, ἐπῆλθε μετὰ κραυγῆς καὶ περιέστη τὴν σύγκλητον, ἀπαιτῶν τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ κελεύων ἀφεῖναι.

[6] Διὸ καὶ Κάτων φοβηθεὶς μάλιστα τὸν ἐκ τῶν ἀπόρων νεωτερισμόν, οἳ τοῦ παντὸς ὑπέκκαυμα πλήθους ἦσαν ἐν τῷ Καίσαρι τὰς ἐλπίδας ἔχοντες, ἔπεισε τὴν σύγκλητον [7] ἀπονεῖμαι σιτηρέσιον αὐτοῖς ἔμμηνον, ἐξ οὗ δαπάνης μὲν ἑπτακόσιαι πεντήκοντα μυριάδες ἐνιαύσιοι προσεγένοντο τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀναλώμασι, τὸν μέντοι μέγαν ἐν τῷ παρόντι φόβον ἔσβεσε περιφανῶς τὸ πολίτευμα τοῦτο καὶ [τὸ] πλεῖστον ἀπέρρηξε τῆς Καίσαρος δυνάμεως καὶ διεσκέδασεν ἐν καιρῷ, στρατηγεῖν μέλλοντος καὶ φοβερωτέρου διὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν ὄντος.

[9] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀπέβη τι ταραχῶδες ἀπ’ αὐτῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τύχη τις ἄχαρις τῷ Καίσαρι συνηνέχθη περὶ τὸν οἶκον.

[2] Πόπλιος Κλώδιος ἦν ἀνὴρ γένει μὲν εὐπατρίδης καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ λόγῳ λαμπρός, ὕβρει δὲ καὶ θρασύτητι τῶν [3] ἐπὶ βδελυρίᾳ περιβοήτων οὐδενὸς δεύτερος. οὗτος ἤρα Πομπηΐας τῆς Καίσαρος γυναικός, οὐδ’ αὐτῆς ἀκούσης, ἀλλὰ φυλακαί τε τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος ἀκριβεῖς ἦσαν, ἥ τε μήτηρ τοῦ Καίσαρος Αὐρηλία γυνὴ σώφρων περιέπουσα τὴν νύμφην ἀεὶ χαλεπὴν καὶ παρακεκινδυνευμένην αὐτοῖς ἐποίει τὴν ἔντευξιν.

[4] Ἔστι δὲ Ῥωμαίοις θεὸς ἣν Ἀγαθὴν ὀνομάζουσιν, ὥσπερ Ἕλληνες Γυναικείαν, καὶ Φρύγες μὲν οἰκειούμενοι Μίδα μητέρα τοῦ βασιλέως γενέσθαι φασί, Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ νύμφην δρυάδα Φαύνῳ συνοικήσασαν, Ἕλληνες δὲ τῶν [5] Διονύσου μητέρων τὴν ἄρρητον. ὅθεν ἀμπελίνοις τε τὰς σκηνὰς κλήμασιν ἑορτάζουσαι κατερέφουσι, καὶ δράκων [6] ἱερὸς παρακαθίδρυται τῇ θεῷ κατὰ τὸν μῦθον. ἄνδρα δὲ προσελθεῖν οὐ θέμις οὐδ’ ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας γενέσθαι τῶν ἱερῶν ὀργιαζομένων, αὐταὶ δὲ καθ’ ἑαυτὰς αἱ γυναῖκες πολλὰ τοῖς Ὀρφικοῖς ὁμολογοῦντα δρᾶν λέγονται περὶ [7] τὴν ἱερουργίαν. ὅταν οὖν ὁ τῆς ἑορτῆς καθήκῃ χρόνος, ὑπατεύοντος ἢ στρατηγοῦντος ἀνδρός, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐξίσταται καὶ πᾶν τὸ ἄρρεν, ἡ δὲ γυνὴ τὴν οἰκίαν παραλαβοῦσα [8] διακοσμεῖ. καὶ τὰ μέγιστα νύκτωρ τελεῖται, παιδιᾶς ἀναμεμειγμένης ταῖς παννυχίσι, καὶ μουσικῆς ἅμα πολλῆς παρούσης.

[10] [1] Ταύτην τότε τὴν ἑορτὴν τῆς Πομπηΐας ἐπιτελούσης, ὁ Κλώδιος οὔπω γενειῶν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο λήσειν οἰόμενος, ἐσθῆτα καὶ σκευὴν ψαλτρίας ἀναλαβὼν ἐχώρει, [2] νέᾳ γυναικὶ τὴν ὄψιν ἐοικώς· καὶ ταῖς θύραις ἐπιτυχὼν ἀνεῳγμέναις, εἰσήχθη μὲν ἀδεῶς ὑπὸ τῆς συνειδυίας θεραπαινίδος, ἐκείνης δὲ προδραμούσης, ὡς τῇ Πομπηΐᾳ φράσειε, καὶ γενομένης διατριβῆς, περιμένειν μὲν ὅπου κατελείφθη τῷ Κλωδίῳ μὴ καρτεροῦντι, πλανωμένῳ δ’ ἐν οἰκίᾳ μεγάλῃ καὶ περιφεύγοντι τὰ φῶτα προσπεσοῦσα τῆς Αὐρηλίας ἀκόλουθος, ὡς δὴ γυνὴ γυναῖκα παίζειν προὐκαλεῖτο, καὶ μὴ βουλόμενον εἰς τὸ μέσον εἷλκε, καὶ [3] τίς ἐστι καὶ πόθεν ἐπυνθάνετο. τοῦ δὲ Κλωδίου φήσαντος Ἅβραν περιμένειν Πομπηΐας, αὐτὸ τοῦτο καλουμένην, καὶ τῇ φωνῇ γενομένου καταφανοῦς, ἡ μὲν ἀκόλουθος εὐθὺς ἀπεπήδησε κραυγῇ πρὸς τὰ φῶτα καὶ τὸν ὄχλον, ἄνδρα πεφωρακέναι βοῶσα, τῶν δὲ γυναικῶν διαπτοηθεισῶν, ἡ Αὐρηλία τὰ μὲν ὄργια τῆς θεοῦ κατέπαυσε καὶ συνεκάλυψεν, αὐτὴ δὲ τὰς θύρας ἀποκλεῖσαι κελεύσασα περιῄει [4] τὴν οἰκίαν ὑπὸ λαμπάδων, ζητοῦσα τὸν Κλώδιον. εὑρίσκεται δ’ εἰς οἴκημα παιδίσκης ᾗ συνεισῆλθε καταπεφευγώς, καὶ γενόμενος φανερὸς ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν ἐξελαύνεται [5] διὰ τῶν θυρῶν. τὸ δὲ πρᾶγμα καὶ νυκτὸς εὐθὺς αἱ γυναῖκες ἀπιοῦσαι τοῖς αὑτῶν ἔφραζον ἀνδράσι, καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐχώρει διὰ τῆς πόλεως λόγος, ὡς ἀθέσμοις ἐπικεχειρηκότος τοῦ Κλωδίου καὶ δίκην οὐ τοῖς ὑβρισμένοις μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῇ πόλει καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς ὀφείλοντος.

[6] Ἐγράψατο μὲν οὖν τὸν Κλώδιον εἷς τῶν δημάρχων ἀσεβείας, καὶ συνέστησαν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν οἱ δυνατώτατοι τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς βουλῆς, ἄλλας τε δεινὰς ἀσελγείας καταμαρτυροῦντες, καὶ μοιχείαν ἀδελφῆς ἣ Λευκούλλῳ συνῳκήκει.

[7] πρὸς δὲ τὰς τούτων σπουδὰς ὁ δῆμος ἀντιτάξας ἑαυτὸν ἤμυνε τῷ Κλωδίῳ καὶ μέγα πρὸς τοὺς δικαστὰς ὄφελος [8] ἦν, ἐκπεπληγμένους καὶ δεδοικότας τὸ πλῆθος. ὁ δὲ Καῖσαρ ἀπεπέμψατο μὲν εὐθὺς τὴν Πομπηΐαν, μάρτυς δὲ πρὸς τὴν δίκην κληθείς, οὐδὲν ἔφη τῶν λεγομένων κατὰ [9] τοῦ Κλωδίου γιγνώσκειν. ὡς δὲ τοῦ λόγου παραδόξου φανέντος ὁ κατήγορος ἠρώτησε πῶς οὖν ἀπεπέμψω τὴν γυναῖκα; ὅτι ἔφη τὴν ἐμὴν ἠξίουν μηδ’ ὑπονοηθῆναι.

[10] ταῦθ’ οἱ μὲν οὕτω φρονοῦντα τὸν Καίσαρα λέγουσιν εἰπεῖν, οἱ δὲ τῷ δήμῳ χαριζόμενον, ὡρμημένῳ σῴζειν [11] τὸν Κλώδιον. ἀποφεύγει δ’ οὖν τὸ ἔγκλημα, τῶν πλείστων δικαστῶν συγκεχυμένοις τοῖς γράμμασι τὰς γνώμας ἀποδόντων, ὅπως μήτε παρακινδυνεύσωσιν ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς καταψηφισάμενοι, μήτ’ ἀπολύσαντες ἀδοξήσωσι παρὰ τοῖς ἀρίστοις.

[11] [1] Ὁ δὲ Καῖσαρ εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῆς στρατηγίας τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν τὴν Ἰβηρίαν λαβών, ὡς ἦν δυσδιάθετον αὐτῷ τὸ περὶ τοὺς δανειστάς, ἐνοχλοῦντας ἐξιόντι καὶ καταβοῶντας, ἐπὶ Κράσσον κατέφυγε, πλουσιώτατον ὄντα Ῥωμαίων, δεόμενον δὲ τῆς Καίσαρος ἀκμῆς καὶ θερμότητος [2] ἐπὶ τὴν πρὸς Πομπήϊον ἀντιπολιτείαν. ἀναδεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ Κράσσου τοὺς μάλιστα χαλεποὺς καὶ ἀπαραιτήτους τῶν δανειστῶν, καὶ διεγγυήσαντος ὀκτακοσίων καὶ τριάκοντα ταλάντων οὕτως ἐξῆλθεν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐπαρχίαν.

[3] λέγεται δὲ τὰς Ἄλπεις ὑπερβάλλοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ πολίχνιόν τι βαρβαρικόν, οἰκούμενον ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων παντάπασιν ὀλίγων καὶ λυπρόν, παρερχομένου, τοὺς ἑταίρους ἅμα γέλωτι καὶ μετὰ παιδιᾶς ἦ που φάναι κἀνταῦθά τινές εἰσιν ὑπὲρ ἀρχῶν φιλοτιμίαι καὶ περὶ πρωτείων ἅμιλλαι καὶ φθόνοι τῶν δυνατῶν πρὸς ἀλλήλους; [4] τὸν δὲ Καίσαρα σπουδάσαντα πρὸς αὐτοὺς εἰπεῖν· ἐγὼ μὲν ‹μᾶλλον ἂν› ἐβουλόμην παρὰ τούτοις εἶναι [μᾶλλον] πρῶτος ἢ παρὰ Ῥωμαίοις δεύτερος.

[5] ὁμοίως δὲ πάλιν ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ σχολῆς οὔσης ἀναγινώσκοντά τι τῶν περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου γεγραμμένων σφόδρα γενέσθαι [6] πρὸς ἑαυτῷ πολὺν χρόνον, εἶτα καὶ δακρῦσαι· τῶν δὲ φίλων θαυμασάντων τὴν αἰτίαν εἰπεῖν· οὐ δοκεῖ ὑμῖν ἄξιον εἶναι λύπης, εἰ τηλικοῦτος μὲν ὢν Ἀλέξανδρος ἤδη τοσούτων ἐβασίλευεν, ἐμοὶ δὲ λαμπρὸν οὐδὲν οὔπω πέπρακται;

[12] [1] Τῆς γοῦν Ἰβηρίας ἐπιβὰς εὐθὺς ἦν ἐνεργός, ὥσθ’ ἡμέραις ὀλίγαις δέκα σπείρας συναγαγεῖν πρὸς ταῖς πρότερον οὔσαις εἴκοσι, καὶ στρατεύσας ἐπὶ Καλαϊκοὺς καὶ Λυσιτανοὺς κρατῆσαι καὶ προελθεῖν ἄχρι τῆς ἔξω θαλάσσης, τὰ μὴ πρότερον ὑπακούοντα Ῥωμαίοις ἔθνη [2] καταστρεφόμενος. θέμενος δὲ τὰ τοῦ πολέμου καλῶς, οὐ χεῖρον ἐβράβευε τὰ τῆς εἰρήνης, ὁμόνοιάν τε ταῖς πόλεσι καθιστὰς καὶ μάλιστα τὰς τῶν χρεωφειλετῶν καὶ δανειστῶν [3] ἰώμενος διαφοράς. ἔταξε γὰρ τῶν προσιόντων τοῖς ὀφείλουσι καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν δύο μὲν μέρη τὸν δανειστὴν ἀναιρεῖσθαι, τῷ δὲ λοιπῷ χρῆσθαι τὸν δεσπότην, [4] ἄχρι ἂν οὕτως ἐκλυθῇ τὸ δάνειον. ἐπὶ τούτοις εὐδοκιμῶν, ἀπηλλάγη τῆς ἐπαρχίας, αὐτός τε πλούσιος γεγονὼς καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ὠφεληκὼς ἀπὸ τῶν στρατειῶν, καὶ προσηγορευμένος αὐτοκράτωρ ὑπ’ αὐτῶν.

[13] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοὺς μὲν μνωμένους θρίαμβον ἔξω διατρίβειν ἔδει, τοὺς δὲ μετιόντας ὑπατείαν παρόντας ἐν τῇ πόλει τοῦτο πράττειν, ἐν τοιαύτῃ γεγονὼς ἀντινομίᾳ, καὶ πρὸς αὐτὰς τὰς ὑπατικὰς ἀφιγμένος ἀρχαιρεσίας, ἔπεμψε πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον αἰτούμενος αὐτῷ δοθῆναι [2] παραγγέλλειν εἰς ὑπατείαν ἀπόντι διὰ τῶν φίλων. Κάτωνος δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ἰσχυριζομένου τῷ νόμῳ πρὸς τὴν ἀξίωσιν, εἶθ’ ὡς ἑώρα πολλοὺς τεθεραπευμένους ὑπὸ τοῦ Καίσαρος ἐκκρούσαντος τῷ χρόνῳ τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐν τῷ λέγειν κατατρίψαντος, ἔγνω τὸν θρίαμβον ἀφεὶς ὁ [3] Καῖσαρ ἔχεσθαι τῆς ὑπατείας· καὶ παρελθὼν εὐθὺς ὑποδύεται πολίτευμά τι πάντας ἀνθρώπους ἐξαπατῆσαν πλὴν Κάτωνος· ἦν δὲ τοῦτο διαλλαγὴ Πομπηΐου καὶ Κράσσου, [4] τῶν μέγιστον ἐν τῇ πόλει δυναμένων· οὓς συναγαγὼν ὁ Καῖσαρ εἰς φιλίαν ἐκ διαφορᾶς καὶ τὴν ἀπ’ ἀμφοῖν συνενεγκάμενος ἰσχὺν εἰς ἑαυτόν, ἔργῳ φιλάνθρωπον ἔχοντι [5] προσηγορίαν ἔλαθε μεταστήσας τὴν πολιτείαν. οὐ γάρ, ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι νομίζουσιν, ἡ Καίσαρος καὶ Πομπηΐου διαφορὰ τοὺς ἐμφυλίους ἀπειργάσατο πολέμους, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἡ φιλία, συστάντων ἐπὶ καταλύσει τῆς ἀριστοκρατίας τὸ πρῶτον, εἶθ’ οὕτως καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαστάντων.

[6] Κάτωνι δὲ πολλάκις τὰ μέλλοντα προθεσπίζοντι περιῆν δυσκόλου μὲν ἀνθρώπου τότε καὶ πολυπράγμονος, ὕστερον δὲ φρονίμου μέν, οὐκ εὐτυχοῦς δὲ συμβούλου λαβεῖν δόξαν.

[14] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὁ Καῖσαρ ἐν μέσῳ τῆς Κράσσου καὶ Πομπηΐου φιλίας ‹ὥσπερ› δορυφορούμενος ἐπὶ τὴν [2] ὑπατείαν προήχθη· καὶ λαμπρῶς ἀναγορευθεὶς μετὰ Καλπουρνίου Βύβλου καὶ καταστὰς εἰς τὴν ἀρχήν, εὐθὺς εἰσέφερε νόμους οὐχ ὑπάτῳ προσήκοντας, ἀλλὰ δημάρχῳ τινὶ θρασυτάτῳ, πρὸς ἡδονὴν τῶν πολλῶν κληρουχίας [3] τινὰς καὶ διανομὰς χώρας εἰσηγούμενος. ἐν δὲ τῇ βουλῇ τῶν καλῶν τε καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀντικρουσάντων, πάλαι δεόμενος προφάσεως ἀνακραγὼν καὶ μαρτυράμενος, ὡς εἰς τὸν δῆμον ἄκων ἐξελαύνοιτο, θεραπεύσων ἐκεῖνον ἐξ ἀνάγκης ὕβρει καὶ χαλεπότητι τῆς βουλῆς, πρὸς αὐτὸν [4] ἐξεπήδησε. καὶ περιστησάμενος ἔνθεν μὲν Κράσσον, ἔνθεν δὲ Πομπήϊον, ἠρώτησεν εἰ τοὺς νόμους ἐπαινοῖεν· ἐπαινεῖν δὲ φασκόντων, παρεκάλει βοηθεῖν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐνίστασθαι [5] μετὰ ξιφῶν ἀπειλοῦντας. ἐκεῖνοι δ’ ὑπισχνοῦντο· Πομπήϊος δὲ καὶ προσεπεῖπεν, ὡς ἀφίξοιτο πρὸς τὰ ξίφη μετὰ [6] τοῦ ξίφους καὶ θυρεὸν κομίζων. ἐπὶ τούτῳ τοὺς μὲν ἀριστοκρατικοὺς ἠνίασεν, οὐκ ἀξίαν τῆς περὶ αὐτὸν αἰδοῦς οὐδὲ τῇ πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον εὐλαβείᾳ πρέπουσαν, ἀλλὰ μανικὴν καὶ μειρακιώδη φωνὴν ἀκούσαντας, ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἥσθη.

[7] Καῖσαρ δὲ μειζόνως ἔτι τῆς Πομπηΐου δυνάμεως ἐπιδραττόμενος, ἦν γὰρ αὐτῷ Ἰουλία θυγάτηρ ἐγγεγυημένη Σερουϊλίῳ Καιπίωνι, ταύτην ἐνεγγύησε Πομπηΐῳ, τὴν δὲ Πομπηΐου τῷ Σερουϊλίῳ δώσειν ἔφησεν, οὐδ’ αὐτὴν ἀνέγγυον οὖσαν, ἀλλὰ Φαύστῳ τῷ Σύλλα παιδὶ [8] καθωμολογημένην. ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον Καῖσαρ ἠγάγετο Καλπουρνίαν θυγατέρα Πείσωνος, τὸν δὲ Πείσωνα κατέστησεν ὕπατον εἰς τὸ μέλλον, ἐνταῦθα δὴ καὶ σφόδρα μαρτυρομένου Κάτωνος καὶ βοῶντος οὐκ ἀνεκτὸν εἶναι γάμοις διαμαστροπευομένης τῆς ἡγεμονίας, καὶ διὰ γυναίων εἰς ἐπαρχίας καὶ στρατεύματα καὶ δυνάμεις ἀλλήλους ἀντεισαγόντων.

[9] Ὁ μὲν οὖν συνάρχων τοῦ Καίσαρος Βύβλος, ἐπεὶ κωλύων τοὺς νόμους οὐδὲν ἐπέραινεν, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις ἐκινδύνευε μετὰ Κάτωνος ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἀποθανεῖν, ἐγκλεισάμενος [10] οἴκοι τὸν τῆς ἀρχῆς χρόνον διετέλεσε. Πομπήϊος δὲ γήμας εὐθὺς ἐνέπλησε τὴν ἀγορὰν ὅπλων καὶ συνεπεκύρου τῷ δήμῳ τοὺς νόμους, Καίσαρι δὲ τὴν ἐντὸς Ἄλπεων καὶ τὴν ἐκτὸς ἅπασαν Κελτικήν, προσθεὶς τὸ Ἰλλυρικόν, [11] μετὰ ταγμάτων τεσσάρων εἰς πενταετίαν. Κάτωνα μὲν οὖν ἐπιχειρήσαντα τούτοις ἀντιλέγειν ἀπῆγεν εἰς φυλακὴν ὁ Καῖσαρ, οἰόμενος αὐτὸν ἐπικαλέσεσθαι τοὺς δημάρχους· [12] ἐκείνου δ’ ἀφώνου βαδίζοντος, ὁρῶν ὁ Καῖσαρ οὐ μόνον τοὺς κρατίστους δυσφοροῦντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ δημοτικὸν αἰδοῖ τῆς Κάτωνος ἀρετῆς σιωπῇ καὶ μετὰ κατηφείας ἑπόμενον, αὐτὸς ἐδεήθη κρύφα τῶν δημάρχων ἑνὸς ἀφελέσθαι [13] τὸν Κάτωνα. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων συγκλητικῶν ὀλίγοι παντάπασιν αὐτῷ συνῄεσαν εἰς βουλήν, οἱ δὲ λοιποὶ [14] δυσχεραίνοντες ἐκποδὼν ἦσαν. εἰπόντος δὲ Κωνσιδίου τινὸς τῶν σφόδρα γερόντων, ὡς φοβούμενοι τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας οὐ συνέρχοιντο, τί οὖν ἔφη [ὁ] [15] Καῖσαρ οὐ καὶ σὺ ταῦτα δεδιὼς οἰκουρεῖς; καὶ ὁ Κωνσίδιος εἶπεν· ὅτι με ποιεῖ μὴ φοβεῖσθαι τὸ γῆρας· ὁ γὰρ ἔτι λειπόμενος βίος οὐ πολλῆς ὀλίγος ὢν δεῖται προνοίας.

[16] Αἴσχιστον δὲ τῶν τότε πολιτευμάτων ἔδοξεν ἐν τῇ Καίσαρος ὑπατείᾳ δήμαρχον αἱρεθῆναι Κλώδιον ἐκεῖνον, ὑφ’ οὗ τὰ περὶ τὸν γάμον καὶ τὰς ἀπορρήτους παρενομήθη [17] παννυχίδας. ᾑρέθη δ’ ἐπὶ τῇ Κικέρωνος καταλύσει, καὶ Καῖσαρ οὐ πρότερον ἐξῆλθεν ἐπὶ τὴν στρατιάν, ἢ καταστασιάσαι Κικέρωνα μετὰ Κλωδίου καὶ συνεκβαλεῖν ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας.

[15] [1] Τοιαῦτα μὲν οὖν λέγεται γενέσθαι τὰ πρὸ τῶν [2] Γαλατικῶν. ὁ δὲ τῶν πολέμων οὓς ἐπολέμησε μετὰ ταῦτα καὶ τῶν στρατειῶν αἷς ἡμερώσατο τὴν Κελτικὴν χρόνος, ὥσπερ ἄλλην ἀρχὴν λαβόντος αὐτοῦ καὶ καταστάντος εἰς ἑτέραν τινὰ βίου καὶ πραγμάτων καινῶν ὁδόν, οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτου τῶν μάλιστα τεθαυμασμένων ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίᾳ καὶ μεγίστων γεγονότων ἀπολείποντα πολεμιστὴν καὶ στρατηλάτην [3] ἀπέδειξεν αὐτόν· ἀλλ’ εἴτε Φαβίους καὶ Σκιπίωνας καὶ Μετέλλους καὶ τοὺς κατ’ αὐτὸν ἢ μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ, Σύλλαν καὶ Μάριον ἀμφοτέρους τε Λευκούλλους, ἢ καὶ Πομπήϊον αὐτόν, οὗ κλέος ὑπουράνιον ἤνθει [4] τότε παντοίας περὶ πόλεμον ἀρετῆς, παραβάλοι τις, αἱ Καίσαρος ὑπερβάλλουσι πράξεις, τὸν μὲν χαλεπότητι τόπων ἐν οἷς ἐπολέμησε, τὸν δὲ μεγέθει χώρας ἣν προσεκτήσατο, τὸν δὲ πλήθει καὶ βίᾳ πολεμίων οὓς ἐνίκησε, τὸν δ’ ἀτοπίαις καὶ ἀπιστίαις ἠθῶν ἃ καθωμίλησε, τὸν δ’ ἐπιεικείᾳ καὶ πρᾳότητι πρὸς τοὺς ἁλισκομένους, τὸν [5] δὲ δώροις καὶ χάρισι πρὸς τοὺς συστρατευομένους· πάντας δὲ τῷ πλείστας μεμαχῆσθαι μάχας καὶ πλείστους ἀνῃρηκέναι τῶν ἀντιταχθέντων. ἔτη γὰρ οὐδὲ δέκα πολεμήσας περὶ Γαλατίαν, πόλεις μὲν ὑπὲρ ὀκτακοσίας κατὰ κράτος εἷλεν, ἔθνη δ’ ἐχειρώσατο τριακόσια, μυριάσι δὲ παραταξάμενος κατὰ μέρος τριακοσίαις, ἑκατὸν μὲν ἐν χερσὶ διέφθειρεν, ἄλλας δὲ τοσαύτας ἐζώγρησεν.

[16] [1] Εὐνοίᾳ δὲ καὶ προθυμίᾳ στρατιωτῶν ἐχρήσατο τοσαύτῃ περὶ αὑτόν, ὥστε τοὺς ἑτέρων μηδὲν ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις στρατείαις διαφέροντας ἀμάχους καὶ ἀνυποστάτους φέρεσθαι πρὸς πᾶν δεινὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς Καίσαρος δόξης.

[2] οἷος ἦν τοῦτο μὲν Ἀκίλιος, ὃς ἐν τῇ περὶ Μασσαλίαν ναυμαχίᾳ νεὼς πολεμίας ἐπιβεβηκώς, τὴν μὲν δεξιὰν ἀπεκόπη χεῖρα μαχαίρᾳ, τῇ δ’ ἀριστερᾷ τὸν θυρεὸν οὐκ ἀφῆκεν, ἀλλὰ τύπτων εἰς τὰ πρόσωπα τοὺς πολεμίους [3] ἀπέστρεψε πάντας καὶ τοῦ σκάφους ἐπεκράτησε· τοῦτο δὲ Κάσσιος Σκεύας, ὃς ἐν τῇ περὶ Δυρράχιον μάχῃ τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν ἐκκοπεὶς τοξεύματι, τὸν δ’ ὦμον ὑσσῷ καὶ τὸν μηρὸν ἑτέρῳ διεληλαμένος, τῷ δὲ θυρεῷ βελῶν ἑκατὸν καὶ τριάκοντα πληγὰς ἀναδεδεγμένος, ἐκάλει τοὺς πολεμίους [4] ὡς παραδώσων ἑαυτόν. δυεῖν δὲ προσιόντων τοῦ μὲν ἀπέκοψε τὸν ὦμον τῇ μαχαίρᾳ, τὸν δὲ κατὰ τοῦ προσώπου πατάξας ἀπέστρεψεν, αὐτὸς δὲ διεσώθη, τῶν [5] οἰκείων περισχόντων. ἐν δὲ Βρεττανίᾳ τῶν πολεμίων εἰς τόπον ἑλώδη καὶ μεστὸν ὑδάτων ἐμπεσοῦσι τοῖς πρώτοις ταξιάρχοις ἐπιθεμένων, στρατιώτης, Καίσαρος αὐτοῦ τὴν μάχην ἐφορῶντος, ὠσάμενος εἰς μέσους καὶ πολλὰ καὶ περίοπτα τόλμης ἀποδειξάμενος ἔργα, τοὺς μὲν [6] ταξιάρχους ἔσωσε τῶν βαρβάρων φυγόντων, αὐτὸς δὲ χαλεπῶς ἐπὶ πᾶσι διαβαίνων ἔρριψεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς ῥεύματα τελματώδη, καὶ μόλις ἄνευ τοῦ θυρεοῦ, τὰ μὲν νηχόμενος [7] τὰ δὲ βαδίζων, διεπέρασε. θαυμαζόντων δὲ τῶν περὶ τὸν Καίσαρα καὶ μετὰ χαρᾶς καὶ κραυγῆς ἀπαντώντων, αὐτὸς εὖ μάλα κατηφὴς καὶ δεδακρυμένος προσέπεσε τῷ Καίσαρι, συγγνώμην αἰτούμενος ἐπὶ τῷ προέσθαι [8] τὸν θυρεόν. ἐν δὲ Λιβύῃ ναῦν ἑλόντες οἱ περὶ Σκιπίωνα Καίσαρος, ἐν ᾗ Γράνιος Πέτρων ἐπέπλει ταμίας ἀποδεδειγμένος, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἐποιοῦντο λείαν, τῷ δὲ [9] ταμίᾳ διδόναι τὴν σωτηρίαν ἔφασαν, ὁ δ’ εἰπών, ὅτι τοῖς Καίσαρος στρατιώταις οὐ λαμβάνειν, ἀλλὰ διδόναι σωτηρίαν ἔθος ἐστίν, ἑαυτὸν τῷ ξίφει πατάξας ἀνεῖλε.

[17] [1] Τὰ δὲ τοιαῦτα λήματα καὶ τὰς φιλοτιμίας αὐτὸς ἀνέθρεψε καὶ κατεσκεύασε Καῖσαρ, πρῶτον μὲν τῷ χαρίζεσθαι καὶ τιμᾶν ἀφειδῶς, ἐνδεικνύμενος ὅτι τὸν πλοῦτον οὐκ εἰς τρυφὴν ἰδίαν οὐδ’ ἰδίας ἡδυπαθείας ἐκ τῶν πολέμων ἀθροίζει, κοινὰ δ’ ἆθλα τῆς ἀνδραγαθίας παρ’ αὐτῷ φυλασσόμενα ἀπόκειται καὶ μέτεστιν ἐκείνῳ τοῦ πλουτεῖν ὅσα τοῖς ἀξίοις τῶν στρατιωτῶν δίδωσιν· ἔπειτα τῷ πάντα μὲν κίνδυνον ἑκὼν ὑφίστασθαι, πρὸς μηδένα δὲ [2] τῶν πόνων ἀπαγορεύειν. τὸ μὲν οὖν φιλοκίνδυνον οὐκ ἐθαύμαζον αὐτοῦ διὰ τὴν φιλοτιμίαν· ἡ δὲ τῶν πόνων ὑπομονὴ παρὰ τὴν τοῦ σώματος δύναμιν ἐγκαρτερεῖν δοκοῦντος ἐξέπληττεν, ὅτι καὶ τὴν ἕξιν ὢν ἰσχνός, καὶ τὴν σάρκα λευκὸς καὶ ἁπαλός, καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν νοσώδης, καὶ τοῖς ἐπιληπτικοῖς ἔνοχος (ἐν Κορδύβῃ πρῶτον αὐτῷ τοῦ [3] πάθους ὡς λέγεται τούτου προσπεσόντος), οὐ μαλακίας ἐποιήσατο τὴν ἀρρωστίαν πρόφασιν, ἀλλὰ θεραπείαν τῆς ἀρρωστίας τὴν στρατείαν, ταῖς ἀτρύτοις ὁδοιπορίαις καὶ ταῖς εὐτελέσι διαίταις καὶ τῷ θυραυλεῖν ἐνδελεχῶς καὶ ταλαιπωρεῖν ἀπομαχόμενος τῷ πάθει καὶ τὸ σῶμα τηρῶν [4] δυσάλωτον. ἐκοιμᾶτο μὲν γὰρ τοὺς πλείστους ὕπνους ἐν ὀχήμασιν ἢ φορείοις, εἰς πρᾶξιν τὴν ἀνάπαυσιν κατατιθέμενος, ὠχεῖτο δὲ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπὶ τὰ φρούρια καὶ τὰς πόλεις καὶ τοὺς χάρακας, ἑνὸς αὐτῷ συγκαθημένου παιδὸς τῶν ὑπογράφειν ἅμα διώκοντος εἰθισμένων, ἑνὸς δ’ ἐξόπισθεν [5] ἐφεστηκότος στρατιώτου ξίφος ἔχοντος. συντόνως δ’ ἤλαυνεν οὕτως, ὥστε τὴν πρώτην ἔξοδον ἀπὸ Ῥώμης [6] ποιησάμενος ὀγδοαῖος ἐπὶ τὸν Ῥοδανὸν ἐλθεῖν. τὸ μὲν οὖν ἱππεύειν ἐκ παιδὸς ἦν αὐτῷ ῥᾴδιον· εἴθιστο γὰρ εἰς τοὐπίσω τὰς χεῖρας ἀπάγων καὶ τῷ νώτῳ περιπλέκων [7] ἀνὰ κράτος ἐλαύνειν τὸν ἵππον. ἐν ἐκείνῃ δὲ τῇ στρατείᾳ προσεξήσκησεν ἱππαζόμενος τὰς ἐπιστολὰς ὑπαγορεύειν καὶ δυσὶν ὁμοῦ γράφουσιν ἐξαρκεῖν, ὡς δ’ Ὄππιός φησι [8] (HRR II 48), καὶ πλείοσι. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸ διὰ γραμμάτων τοῖς φίλοις ὁμιλεῖν Καίσαρα πρῶτον μηχανήσασθαι, τὴν κατὰ πρόσωπον ἔντευξιν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐπειγόντων τοῦ καιροῦ διά τε πλῆθος ἀσχολιῶν καὶ τῆς πόλεως τὸ μέγεθος μὴ [9] περιμένοντος. τῆς δὲ περὶ τὴν δίαιταν εὐκολίας κἀκεῖνο ποιοῦνται σημεῖον, ὅτι τοῦ δειπνίζοντος αὐτὸν ἐν Μεδιολάνῳ ξένου Οὐαλερίου Λέοντος παραθέντος ἀσπάραγον καὶ μύρον ἀντ’ ἐλαίου καταχέαντος, αὐτὸς μὲν ἀφελῶς [10] ἔφαγε, τοῖς δὲ φίλοις δυσχεραίνουσιν ἐπέπληξεν. ἤρκει γὰρ ἔφη τὸ μὴ χρῆσθαι τοῖς ἀπαρέσκουσιν· ὁ δὲ τὴν [11] τοιαύτην ἀγροικίαν ἐξελέγχων αὐτός ἐστιν ἄγροικος. ἐν ὁδῷ δέ ποτε συνελασθεὶς ὑπὸ χειμῶνος εἰς ἔπαυλιν ἀνθρώπου πένητος, ὡς οὐδὲν εὗρε πλέον οἰκήματος ἑνὸς γλίσχρως ἕνα δέξασθαι δυναμένου, πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἰπών, ὡς τῶν μὲν ἐντίμων παραχωρητέον εἴη τοῖς κρατίστοις, τῶν δ’ ἀναγκαίων τοῖς ἀσθενεστάτοις, Ὄππιον ἐκέλευσεν ἀναπαύσασθαι· αὐτὸς δὲ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ὑπὸ τῷ προστεγίῳ τῆς θύρας ἐκάθευδεν.

[18] [1] Ἀλλὰ γὰρ ὁ μὲν πρῶτος αὐτῷ τῶν Κελτικῶν πολέμων πρὸς Ἐλβηττίους συνέστη καὶ Τιγυρίνους, οἳ τὰς αὑτῶν δώδεκα πόλεις καὶ κώμας τετρακοσίας ἐμπρήσαντες, ἐχώρουν πρόσω διὰ τῆς ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίους Γαλατίας, ὥσπερ πάλαι Κίμβροι καὶ Τεύτονες, οὔτε τόλμαν ἐκείνων ὑποδεέστεροι δοκοῦντες εἶναι, καὶ πλῆθος ὁμαλεῖς, τριάκοντα μὲν αἱ πᾶσαι μυριάδες ὄντες, εἴκοσι δ’ [2] αἱ μαχόμεναι μιᾶς δέουσαι. τούτων Τιγυρίνους μὲν οὐκ αὐτός, ἀλλὰ Λαβιηνὸς πεμφθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸν Ἄραρα ποταμὸν συνέτριψεν, Ἐλβηττίων δ’ αὐτῷ πρός τινα πόλιν φίλην ἄγοντι τὴν στρατιὰν καθ’ ὁδὸν ἀπροσδοκήτως ἐπιθεμένων, φθάσας ἐπὶ χωρίον καρτερὸν κατέφυγε.

[3] κἀκεῖ συναγαγὼν καὶ παρατάξας τὴν δύναμιν, ὡς ἵππος αὐτῷ προσήχθη, τούτῳ μὲν ἔφη νικήσας χρήσομαι πρὸς τὴν δίωξιν, νῦν δ’ ἴωμεν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ [4] πεζὸς ὁρμήσας ἐνέβαλε. χρόνῳ δὲ καὶ χαλεπῶς ὠσάμενος τὸ μάχιμον, περὶ ταῖς ἁμάξαις καὶ τῷ χάρακι τὸν πλεῖστον ἔσχε πόνον, οὐκ αὐτῶν μόνων ὑφισταμένων ἐκεῖ καὶ μαχομένων, ἀλλὰ καὶ παῖδες αὐτῶν καὶ γυναῖκες ἀμυνόμενοι μέχρι θανάτου συγκατεκόπησαν, ὥστε τὴν μάχην μόλις [5] εἰς μέσας νύκτας τελευτῆσαι. καλῷ δὲ τῷ τῆς νίκης ἔργῳ κρεῖττον ἐπέθηκε τὸ συνοικίσαι τοὺς διαφυγόντας ἐκ τῆς μάχης τῶν [παρόντων] βαρβάρων καὶ καταναγκάσαι τὴν χώραν ἀναλαβεῖν ἣν ἀπέλιπον καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἃς διέφθειραν, [6] ὄντας ὑπὲρ δέκα μυριάδας. ἔπραξε δὲ τοῦτο δεδιὼς μὴ τὴν χώραν ἔρημον γενομένην οἱ Γερμανοὶ διαβάντες κατάσχωσι.

[19] [1] Δεύτερον δὲ πρὸς Γερμανοὺς ἄντικρυς ὑπὲρ Κελτῶν ἐπολέμησε, καίτοι τὸν βασιλέα πρότερον αὐτῶν Ἀριόβιστον [2] ἐν Ῥώμῃ σύμμαχον πεποιημένος· ἀλλ’ ἦσαν ἀφόρητοι τοῖς ὑπηκόοις αὐτοῦ γείτονες, καὶ καιροῦ παραδόντος οὐκ ἂν ἐδόκουν ἐπὶ τοῖς παροῦσιν ἀτρεμήσειν, ἀλλ’ ἐπινεμήσεσθαι [3] καὶ καθέξειν τὴν Γαλατίαν. ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς ἡγεμόνας ἀποδειλιῶντας, καὶ μάλισθ’ ὅσοι τῶν ἐπιφανῶν καὶ νέων αὐτῷ συνεξῆλθον, ὡς δὴ τρυφῇ χρησόμενοι καὶ χρηματισμῷ τῇ μετὰ Καίσαρος στρατείᾳ, συναγαγὼν εἰς ἐκκλησίαν ἐκέλευσεν ἀπιέναι καὶ μὴ κινδυνεύειν παρὰ [4] γνώμην, οὕτως ἀνάνδρως καὶ μαλακῶς ἔχοντας· αὐτὸς δ’ ἔφη τὸ δέκατον τάγμα μόνον παραλαβὼν ἐπὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους πορεύσεσθαι, μήτε κρείττοσι μέλλων Κίμβρων μάχεσθαι πολεμίοις, μήτ’ αὐτὸς ὢν Μαρίου χείρων [5] στρατηγός. ἐκ τούτου τὸ μὲν δέκατον τάγμα πρεσβευτὰς ἔπεμψε πρὸς αὐτόν, χάριν ἔχειν ὁμολογοῦντες, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα τοὺς ἑαυτῶν ἐκάκιζον ἡγεμόνας, ὁρμῆς δὲ καὶ προθυμίας γενόμενοι πλήρεις ἅπαντες ἠκολούθουν ὁδὸν ἡμερῶν πολλῶν, ἕως ἐν διακοσίοις τῶν πολεμίων σταδίοις [6] κατεστρατοπέδευσαν. ἦν μὲν οὖν ὅ τι καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἔφοδον αὐτὴν ἐτέθραυστο τῆς τόλμης τοῦ Ἀριοβίστου.

[7] Γερμανοῖς γὰρ ἐπιθήσεσθαι Ῥωμαίους, ὧν ἐπερχομένων οὐκ ἂν ἐδόκουν ὑποστῆναι, [ὃ] μὴ προσδοκήσας, ἐθαύμαζε τὴν Καίσαρος τόλμαν, καὶ τὸν στρατὸν ἑώρα τεταραγμένον.

[8] ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτοὺς ἤμβλυνε τὰ μαντεύματα τῶν ἱερῶν γυναικῶν, αἳ ποταμῶν δίναις προσβλέπουσαι καὶ ῥευμάτων ἑλιγμοῖς καὶ ψόφοις τεκμαιρόμεναι προεθέσπιζον, οὐκ [9] ἐῶσαι μάχην θέσθαι πρὶν ἐπιλάμψαι νέαν σελήνην. ταῦτα τῷ Καίσαρι πυνθανομένῳ καὶ τοὺς Γερμανοὺς ἡσυχάζοντας ὁρῶντι καλῶς ἔχειν ἔδοξεν ἀπροθύμοις οὖσιν αὐτοῖς συμβαλεῖν μᾶλλον, ἢ τὸν ἐκείνων ἀναμένοντα καιρὸν καθῆσθαι.

[10] καὶ προσβολὰς ποιούμενος τοῖς ἐρύμασι καὶ λόφοις ἐφ’ ὧν ἐστρατοπέδευον, ἐξηγρίαινε καὶ παρώξυνε καταβάντας [11] πρὸς ὀργὴν διαγωνίσασθαι. γενομένης δὲ λαμπρᾶς τροπῆς αὐτῶν, ἐπὶ σταδίους τετρακοσίους ἄχρι τοῦ Ῥήνου διώξας, κατέπλησε τοῦτο πᾶν νεκρῶν τὸ πεδίον καὶ λαφύρων.

[12] Ἀριόβιστος δὲ φθάσας μετ’ ὀλίγων διεπέρασε τὸν Ῥῆνον· ἀριθμὸν δὲ νεκρῶν μυριάδας ὀκτὼ γενέσθαι λέγουσι.

[20] [1] Ταῦτα διαπραξάμενος, τὴν μὲν δύναμιν ἐν Σηκουανοῖς ἀπέλιπε διαχειμάσουσαν, αὐτὸς δὲ τοῖς ἐν Ῥώμῃ προσέχειν βουλόμενος εἰς τὴν περὶ Πάδον Γαλατίαν κατέβη, τῆς αὐτῷ δεδομένης ἐπαρχίας οὖσαν· ὁ γὰρ καλούμενος Ῥουβίκων ποταμὸς ἀπὸ τῆς ὑπὸ ταῖς Ἄλπεσι [2] Κελτικῆς ὁρίζει τὴν ἄλλην Ἰταλίαν. ἐνταῦθα καθήμενος ἐδημαγώγει, πολλῶν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀφικνουμένων, διδοὺς ὧν ἕκαστος δεηθείη καὶ πάντας ἀποπέμπων, τὰ μὲν [3] ἔχοντας ἤδη παρ’ αὐτοῦ, τὰ δ’ ἐλπίζοντας. καὶ παρὰ τὸν ἄλλον δὲ πάντα τῆς στρατείας χρόνον ἐλάνθανε τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐν μέρει νῦν μὲν τοὺς πολεμίους τοῖς τῶν πολιτῶν ὅπλοις καταστρεφόμενος, νῦν δὲ τοῖς ἀπὸ τῶν πολεμίων χρήμασιν αἱρῶν τοὺς πολίτας καὶ χειρούμενος.

[4] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Βέλγας ἤκουσε, δυνατωτάτους Κελτῶν καὶ τὴν τρίτην ἁπάσης τῆς Κελτικῆς νεμομένους, ἀφεστάναι, πολλὰς δή τινας μυριάδας ἐνόπλων ἀνδρῶν ἠθροικότας, [5] ἐπιστρέψας εὐθὺς ἐχώρει τάχει πολλῷ, καὶ πορθοῦσι τοὺς συμμάχους Γαλάτας ἐπιπεσὼν τοῖς πολεμίοις, τοὺς μὲν ἀθρουστάτους καὶ πλείστους αἰσχρῶς ἀγωνισαμένους τρεψάμενος διέφθειρεν, ὥστε καὶ λίμνας καὶ ποταμοὺς βαθεῖς τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις νεκρῶν πλήθει περατοὺς γενέσθαι· [6] τῶν δ’ ἀποστάντων οἱ μὲν παρωκεάνιοι πάντες ἀμαχεὶ προσεχώρησαν, ἐπὶ δὲ τοὺς ἀγριωτάτους καὶ μαχιμωτάτους [7] τῶν τῇδε, Νερβίους, ἐστράτευσεν· οἵπερ εἰς συμμιγεῖς δρυμοὺς κατῳκημένοι, γενεὰς δὲ καὶ κτήσεις ἔν τινι βυθῷ τῆς ὕλης ἀπωτάτω θέμενοι τῶν πολεμίων, αὐτοὶ τῷ Καίσαρι, ποιουμένῳ χάρακα καὶ μὴ προσδεχομένῳ τηνικαῦτα τὴν μάχην, ἑξακισμύριοι τὸ πλῆθος ὄντες αἰφνιδίως προσέπεσον, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἱππεῖς ἐτρέψαντο, τῶν δὲ ταγμάτων τὸ δωδέκατον καὶ τὸ ἕβδομον περισχόντες, [8] ἅπαντας ἀπέκτειναν τοὺς ταξιάρχους. εἰ δὲ μὴ Καῖσαρ ἁρπάσας τὸν θυρεὸν καὶ διασχὼν τοὺς πρὸ αὐτοῦ μαχομένους, ἐνέβαλε τοῖς βαρβάροις, καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων τὸ δέκατον κινδυνεύοντος αὐτοῦ κατέδραμε καὶ διέκοψε τὰς τάξεις τῶν πολεμίων, οὐδεὶς ἂν δοκεῖ περιγενέσθαι· [9] νῦν δὲ τῇ Καίσαρος τόλμῃ τὴν λεγομένην ὑπὲρ δύναμιν μάχην ἀγωνισάμενοι, τρέπονται μὲν οὐδ’ ὣς τοὺς Νερβίους, [10] κατακόπτουσι δ’ ἀμυνομένους· πεντακόσιοι γὰρ ἀπὸ μυριάδων ἓξ σωθῆναι λέγονται, βουλευταὶ δὲ τρεῖς ἀπὸ τετρακοσίων.

[21] [1] Ταῦθ’ ἡ σύγκλητος πυθομένη πεντεκαίδεχ’ ἡμέρας ἐψηφίσατο θύειν τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ σχολάζειν ἑορτάζοντας, [2] ὅσας ἐπ’ οὐδεμιᾷ νίκῃ πρότερον. καὶ γὰρ ὁ κίνδυνος ἐφάνη μέγας ἐθνῶν ἅμα τοσούτων ἀναρραγέντων, καὶ τὸ νίκημα λαμπρότερον, ὅτι Καῖσαρ ἦν ὁ νικῶν, ἡ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον εὔνοια τῶν πολλῶν ἐποίει.

[3] Καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς εὖ θέμενος τὰ κατὰ τὴν Γαλατίαν, πάλιν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Πάδον χωρίοις διεχείμαζε, συσκευαζόμενος [4] τὴν πόλιν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον οἱ τὰς ἀρχὰς παραγγέλλοντες, ἐκείνῳ χρώμενοι χορηγῷ καὶ τοῖς παρ’ ἐκείνου χρήμασι διαφθείροντες τὸν δῆμον, ἀνηγορεύοντο καὶ [5] πᾶν ἔπραττον ὃ τὴν ἐκείνου δύναμιν αὔξειν ἔμελλεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων ἀνδρῶν καὶ μεγίστων οἱ πλεῖστοι συνῆλθον πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰς Λοῦκαν, Πομπήϊός τε καὶ Κράσσος, καὶ Ἄππιος ὁ τῆς Σαρδόνος ἡγεμών, καὶ Νέπως ὁ τῆς Ἰβηρίας ἀνθύπατος, ὥστε ῥαβδούχους μὲν ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι γενέσθαι, συγκλητικοὺς δὲ πλείονας ἢ διακοσίους.

[6] βουλὴν δὲ θέμενοι διεκρίθησαν ἐπὶ τούτοις· ἔδει Πομπήϊον μὲν καὶ Κράσσον ὑπάτους ἀποδειχθῆναι, Καίσαρι δὲ χρήματα καὶ πενταετίαν ἄλλην ἐπιμετρηθῆναι [7] τῆς στρατηγίας. ὃ καὶ παραλογώτατον ἐφαίνετο τοῖς νοῦν ἔχουσιν· οἱ γὰρ τοσαῦτα χρήματα παρὰ Καίσαρος λαμβάνοντες ὡς οὐκ ἔχοντι διδόναι τὴν βουλὴν ἔπειθον, μᾶλλον [8] δ’ ἠνάγκαζον, ἐπιστένουσαν οἷς ἐψηφίζοντο, Κάτωνος μὲν οὐ παρόντος, ἐπίτηδες γὰρ αὐτὸν εἰς Κύπρον ἀπεδιοπομπήσαντο, Φαωνίου δ’, ὃς ἦν ζηλωτὴς Κάτωνος, ὡς οὐδὲν ἐπέραινεν ἀντιλέγων, ἐξαλλομένου διὰ θυρῶν καὶ [9] βοῶντος εἰς τὸ πλῆθος. ἀλλὰ προσεῖχεν οὐδείς, τῶν μὲν Πομπήϊον αἰδουμένων καὶ Κράσσον, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι, Καίσαρι χαριζόμενοι καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἀπ’ ἐκείνου ζῶντες ἐλπίδας, ἡσύχαζον.

[22] [1] Τραπόμενος δ’ αὖθις ὁ Καῖσαρ ἐπὶ τὰς ἐν τῇ Κελτικῇ δυνάμεις, πολὺν καταλαμβάνει πόλεμον ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ, δύο Γερμανικῶν ἐθνῶν μεγάλων ἐπὶ κατακτήσει γῆς ἄρτι τὸν Ῥῆνον διαβεβηκότων· Οὐσίπας καλοῦσι τοὺς ἑτέρους, τοὺς [2] δὲ Τεντερίτας. περὶ δὲ τῆς πρὸς τούτους γενομένης μάχης ὁ μὲν Καῖσαρ ἐν ταῖς ἐφημερίσι (b. G. 4, 1113) γέγραφεν, ὡς οἱ βάρβαροι διαπρεσβευόμενοι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν σπονδαῖς ἐπιθοῖντο καθ’ ὁδόν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τρέψαιντο τοὺς αὐτοῦ πεντακισχιλίους ὄντας ἱππεῖς ὀκτακοσίοις τοῖς ἐκείνων, [3] μὴ προσδοκῶντας· εἶτα πέμψειαν ἑτέρους πρὸς αὐτὸν αὖθις ἐξαπατῶντας, οὓς κατασχὼν ἐπαγάγοι τοῖς βαρβάροις τὸ στράτευμα, τὴν πρὸς οὕτως ἀπίστους καὶ παρασπόνδους [4] πίστιν εὐήθειαν ἡγούμενος. Τανύσιος δὲ λέγει (HRR II 50) Κάτωνα, τῆς βουλῆς ἐπὶ τῇ νίκῃ ψηφιζομένης ἑορτὰς καὶ θυσίας, ἀποφήνασθαι γνώμην, ὡς ἐκδοτέον ἐστὶ τὸν Καίσαρα τοῖς βαρβάροις, ἀφοσιουμένους τὸ παρασπόνδημα ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως καὶ τὴν ἀρὰν εἰς τὸν αἴτιον τρέποντας.

[5] τῶν δὲ διαβάντων αἱ μὲν κατακοπεῖσαι τεσσαράκοντα μυριάδες ἦσαν, ὀλίγους δὲ τοὺς ἀποπεράσαντας αὖθις ὑπεδέξαντο Σούγαμβροι, Γερμανικὸν ἔθνος.

[6] Καὶ ταύτην λαβὼν αἰτίαν ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ὁ Καῖσαρ, ἄλλως δὲ ‹καὶ› δόξης ἐφιέμενος [καὶ] τοῦ πρῶτος ἀνθρώπων στρατῷ διαβῆναι, τὸν Ῥῆνον ἐγεφύρου, πλάτος τε πολὺν ὄντα καὶ κατ’ ἐκεῖνο τοῦ χρόνου μάλιστα πλημμυροῦντα καὶ τραχὺν καὶ ῥοώδη, καὶ τοῖς καταφερομένοις στελέχεσι καὶ ξύλοις πληγὰς καὶ σπαραγμοὺς ἐνδιδόντα κατὰ τῶν [7] ἐρειδόντων τὴν γέφυραν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα προβόλοις ξύλων μεγάλων διὰ τοῦ πόρου καταπεπηγότων ἀναδεχόμενος, καὶ χαλινώσας τὸ προσπῖττον ῥεῦμα τῷ ζεύγματι, πίστεως πάσης θέαμα κρεῖττον ἐπεδείξατο τὴν γέφυραν ἡμέραις δέκα συντελεσθεῖσαν.

[23] [1] Περαιώσας δὲ τὴν δύναμιν, οὐδενὸς ὑπαντῆσαι τολμήσαντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἡγεμονικωτάτων τοῦ Γερμανικοῦ Σουήβων εἰς βαθεῖς καὶ ὑλώδεις αὐλῶνας ἀνασκευασαμένων, πυρπολήσας μὲν τὴν τῶν πολεμίων, θαρρύνας δὲ τοὺς ἀεὶ τὰ Ῥωμαίων ἀσπαζομένους, ἀνεχώρησεν αὖθις εἰς τὴν Γαλατίαν, εἴκοσι δυεῖν δεούσας ἡμέρας ἐν τῇ Γερμανικῇ διατετριφώς.

[2] Ἡ δ’ ἐπὶ τοὺς Βρεττανοὺς στρατεία τὴν μὲν τόλμαν εἶχεν ὀνομαστήν· πρῶτος γὰρ εἰς τὸν ἑσπέριον Ὠκεανὸν ἐπέβη στόλῳ, καὶ διὰ τῆς Ἀτλαντικῆς θαλάττης στρατὸν [3] ἐπὶ πόλεμον κομίζων ἔπλευσε· καὶ νῆσον ἀπιστουμένην ὑπὸ μεγέθους, καὶ πολλὴν ἔριν παμπόλλοις συγγραφεῦσι παρασχοῦσαν, ὡς ὄνομα καὶ λόγος οὐ γενομένης οὐδ’ οὔσης πέπλασται, κατασχεῖν ἐπιθέμενος, προήγαγεν ἔξω [4] τῆς οἰκουμένης τὴν Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίαν. δὶς δὲ διαπλεύσας εἰς τὴν νῆσον ἐκ τῆς ἀντιπέρας Γαλατίας, καὶ μάχαις πολλαῖς κακώσας τοὺς πολεμίους μᾶλλον ἢ τοὺς ἰδίους ὠφελήσας (οὐδὲν γὰρ ὅ τι καὶ λαβεῖν ἦν ἄξιον ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων κακοβίων καὶ πενήτων), οὐχ οἷον ἐβούλετο τῷ πολέμῳ τέλος ἐπέθηκεν, ἀλλ’ ὁμήρους λαβὼν παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ ταξάμενος φόρους, ἀπῆρεν ἐκ τῆς νήσου.

[5] Καὶ καταλαμβάνει γράμματα μέλλοντα διαπλεῖν [πρὸς] αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ φίλων, δηλοῦντα τὴν τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ τελευτήν· τελευτᾷ δὲ τίκτουσα παρὰ [6] Πομπηΐῳ. καὶ μέγα μὲν αὐτὸν ἔσχε Πομπήϊον, μέγα δὲ Καίσαρα πένθος, οἱ δὲ φίλοι συνεταράχθησαν, ὡς τῆς ἐν εἰρήνῃ καὶ ὁμονοίᾳ τἆλλα νοσοῦσαν τὴν πολιτείαν φυλαττούσης οἰκειότητος λελυμένης· καὶ γὰρ ‹καὶ› τὸ βρέφος εὐθὺς οὐ πολλὰς ἡμέρας μετὰ τὴν μητέρα διαζῆσαν [7] ἐτελεύτησε. τὴν μὲν οὖν Ἰουλίαν βίᾳ τῶν δημάρχων ἀράμενον τὸ πλῆθος εἰς τὸ Ἄρειον ἤνεγκε πεδίον, κἀκεῖ κηδευθεῖσα κεῖται.

[24] [1] Τοῦ δὲ Καίσαρος μεγάλην ἤδη τὴν δύναμιν οὖσαν εἰς πολλὰ κατ’ ἀνάγκην χειμάδια διελόντος, αὐτοῦ δὲ πρὸς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ὥσπερ εἰώθει τραπομένου, πάντα μὲν αὖθις ἀνερρήγνυτο τὰ τῶν Γαλατῶν, καὶ στρατοὶ μεγάλοι περιϊόντες ἐξέκοπτον τὰ χειμάδια καὶ προσεμάχοντο τοῖς [2] χαρακώμασι τῶν Ῥωμαίων· οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι καὶ κράτιστοι τῶν ἀποστάντων μετ’ Ἀμβιόριγος Κότταν μὲν αὐτῷ [3] στρατοπέδῳ καὶ Τιτύριον διέφθειραν, τὸ δ’ ὑπὸ Κικέρωνι τάγμα μυριάσιν ἓξ περισχόντες ἐπολιόρκουν, καὶ μικρὸν ἀπέλιπον ᾑρηκέναι κατὰ κράτος, συντετρωμένων ἁπάντων [4] καὶ παρὰ δύναμιν ὑπὸ προθυμίας ἀμυνομένων. ὡς δ’ ἠγγέλθη ταῦτα τῷ Καίσαρι μακρὰν ὄντι, ταχέως ἐπιστρέψας καὶ συναγαγὼν ἑπτακισχιλίους τοὺς σύμπαντας, ἠπείγετο [5] τὸν Κικέρωνα τῆς πολιορκίας ἐξαιρησόμενος. τοὺς δὲ πολιορκοῦντας οὐκ ἔλαθεν, ἀλλ’ ἀπήντων ὡς ἀναρπασόμενοι, [6] τῆς ὀλιγότητος καταφρονήσαντες. κἀκεῖνος ἐξαπατῶν ὑπέφευγεν ἀεί, καὶ χωρία λαβὼν ἐπιτηδείως ἔχοντα πρὸς πολλοὺς μαχομένῳ μετ’ ὀλίγων, φράγνυται στρατόπεδον, καὶ μάχης ἔσχε τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ πάσης, ἀναγαγεῖν δὲ τὸν χάρακα καὶ τὰς πύλας ἀποικοδομεῖν ὡς [7] δεδοικότας ἠνάγκαζε, καταφρονηθῆναι στρατηγῶν, μέχρι οὗ σποράδην ὑπὸ θράσους προσβάλλοντας ἐπεξελθὼν ἐτρέψατο, καὶ πολλοὺς αὐτῶν διέφθειρε.

[25] [1] Τοῦτο τὰς πολλὰς ἀποστάσεις τῶν ἐνταῦθα Γαλατῶν κατεστόρεσε, καὶ τοῦ χειμῶνος αὐτὸς ἐπιφοιτῶν τε [2] πανταχόσε καὶ προσέχων ὀξέως τοῖς νεωτερισμοῖς. καὶ γὰρ ἧκεν ἐξ Ἰταλίας ἀντὶ τῶν ἀπολωλότων αὐτῷ τρία τάγματα, Πομπηΐου μὲν ἐκ τῶν ὑφ’ αὑτὸν δύο χρήσαντος, ἓν δὲ νεοσύλλεκτον ἐκ τῆς περὶ Πάδον Γαλατίας.

[3] Πόρρω δὲ τούτων αἱ πάλαι καταβεβλημέναι κρύφα καὶ νεμόμεναι διὰ τῶν δυνατωτάτων ἀνδρῶν ἐν τοῖς μαχιμωτάτοις γένεσιν ἀρχαὶ τοῦ μεγίστου καὶ κινδυνωδεστάτου τῶν ἐκεῖ πολέμων ἀνεφαίνοντο, ῥωσθεῖσαι πολλῇ μὲν ἡλικίᾳ καὶ πανταχόθεν ‹ἐν› ὅπλοις ἀθροισθείσῃ, μεγάλοις δὲ πλούτοις εἰς ταὐτὸ συνενεχθεῖσιν, ἰσχυραῖς [4] δὲ πόλεσι, δυσεμβόλοις δὲ χώραις. τότε δὲ καὶ χειμῶνος ὥρᾳ πάγοι ποταμῶν, καὶ νιφετοῖς ἀποκεκρυμμένοι δρυμοί, καὶ πεδία χειμάρροις ἐπιλελιμνασμένα, καὶ πῇ μὲν ἀτέκμαρτοι βάθει χιόνος ἀτραποί, πῇ δὲ δι’ ἑλῶν καὶ ῥευμάτων παρατρεπομένων ἀσάφεια πολλὴ τῆς πορείας, παντάπασιν ἐδόκουν ἀνεπιχείρητα Καίσαρι τὰ τῶν ἀφισταμένων [5] ποιεῖν. ἀφειστήκει μὲν οὖν πολλὰ φῦλα, πρόσχημα δ’ ἦσαν Ἀρβέρνοι καὶ Καρνουτῖνοι, τὸ δὲ σύμπαν αἱρεθεὶς κράτος εἶχε τοῦ πολέμου Οὐεργεντόριξ, οὗ τὸν πατέρα Γαλάται τυραννίδα δοκοῦντα πράττειν ἀπέκτειναν.

[26] [1] Οὗτος οὖν εἰς πολλὰ διελὼν τὴν δύναμιν μέρη, καὶ πολλοὺς ἐπιστήσας ἡγεμόνας, ᾠκειοῦτο τὴν πέριξ ἅπασαν ἄχρι τῶν πρὸς τὸν Ἄραρα κεκλιμένων, διανοούμενος, ἤδη τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ συνισταμένων ἐπὶ Καίσαρα, [2] σύμπασαν ἐγείρειν τῷ πολέμῳ Γαλατίαν. ὅπερ εἰ μικρὸν ὕστερον ἔπραξε, Καίσαρος εἰς τὸν ἐμφύλιον ἐμπεσόντος πόλεμον, οὐκ ἂν ἐλαφρότεροι τῶν Κιμβρικῶν ἐκείνων [3] φόβοι τὴν Ἰταλίαν κατέσχον. νυνὶ δ’ ὁ πᾶσι μὲν ἄριστα χρῆσθαι [δοκῶν] τοῖς πρὸς πόλεμον, μάλιστα δὲ καιρῷ πεφυκὼς Καῖσαρ ἅμα τῷ πυθέσθαι τὴν ἀπόστασιν ἄρας ἐχώρει, αὐταῖς ταῖς ὁδοῖς ἃς διῆλθε καὶ βίᾳ καὶ τάχει τῆς πορείας διὰ τοσούτου χειμῶνος ἐπιδειξάμενος τοῖς βαρβάροις, ὡς ἄμαχος αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀήττητος ἔπεισι στρατός.

[4] ὅπου γὰρ ἄγγελον ἢ γραμματοφόρον διαδῦναι τῶν παρ’ αὐτοῦ χρόνῳ πολλῷ ἦν ἄπιστον, ἐνταῦθα μετὰ πάσης ἑωρᾶτο τῆς στρατιᾶς ἅμα χώρας λυμαινόμενος αὐτῶν καὶ ἐκκόπτων τὰ χωρία, καταστρεφόμενος πόλεις, [5] ἀναλαμβάνων τοὺς μετατιθεμένους, μέχρι καὶ τὸ τῶν Ἐδούων ἔθνος ἐξεπολεμώθη πρὸς αὐτόν, οἳ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον ἀδελφοὺς ἀναγορεύοντες αὑτοὺς Ῥωμαίων καὶ τιμώμενοι διαπρεπῶς, τότε δὲ τοῖς ἀποστάταις προσγενόμενοι, πολλὴν τῇ Καίσαρος στρατιᾷ παρέστησαν ἀθυμίαν.

[6] διόπερ καὶ κινήσας ἐκεῖθεν ὑπερέβαλε τὰ Λιγγονικά, βουλόμενος ἅψασθαι τῆς Σηκουανῶν, φίλων ὄντων καὶ προκειμένων τῆς Ἰταλίας πρὸς τὴν ἄλλην Γαλατίαν.

[7] ἐνταῦθα δ’ αὐτῷ τῶν πολεμίων ἐπιπεσόντων καὶ περισχόντων μυριάσι πολλαῖς, ὁρμήσας διαγωνίσασθαι τοῖς μὲν ὅλοις καταπολεμῶν ἐκράτησε, χρόνῳ πολλῷ καὶ [8] φόνῳ καταβιασάμενος τοὺς βαρβάρους· ἔδοξε δὲ κατ’ ἀρχάς τι καὶ σφαλῆναι, καὶ δεικνύουσιν Ἀρβέρνοι ξιφίδιον πρὸς ἱερῷ κρεμάμενον, ὡς δὴ Καίσαρος λάφυρον· ὃ θεασάμενος αὐτὸς ὕστερον ἐμειδίασε, καὶ τῶν φίλων καθελεῖν κελευόντων οὐκ εἴασεν, ἱερὸν ἡγούμενος.

[27] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τότε τῶν διαφυγόντων οἱ πλεῖστοι [2] μετὰ τοῦ βασιλέως εἰς πόλιν Ἀλησίαν συνέφυγον. καὶ πολιορκοῦντι ταύτην Καίσαρι, δοκοῦσαν ἀνάλωτον εἶναι μεγέθει τε τειχῶν καὶ πλήθει τῶν ἀπομαχομένων ἐπιπίπτει [3] παντὸς λόγου μείζων κίνδυνος ἔξωθεν. ὃ γὰρ ἦν ἐν Γαλατίᾳ κράτιστον, ἀπὸ τῶν ἐθνῶν ἀθροισθὲν ἐν [4] ὅπλοις ἧκον ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀλησίαν, τριάκοντα μυριάδες· αἱ δ’ ἐν αὐτῇ τῶν μαχομένων οὐκ ἐλάττονες ἦσαν ἑπτακαίδεκα μυριάδων, ὥστ’ ἐν μέσῳ πολέμου τοσούτου τὸν Καίσαρα κατειλημμένον καὶ πολιορκούμενον ἀναγκασθῆναι διττὰ τείχη προβαλέσθαι, τὸ μὲν πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, τὸ δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐπεληλυθότων, ὡς εἰ συνέλθοιεν αἱ δυνάμεις, κομιδῇ [5] διαπεπραγμένων τῶν καθ’ αὑτόν. διὰ πολλὰ μὲν οὖν εἰκότως ὁ πρὸς Ἀλησίᾳ κίνδυνος ἔσχε δόξαν, ὡς ἔργα τόλμης καὶ δεινότητος οἷα τῶν ἄλλων ἀγώνων οὐδεὶς παρασχόμενος· μάλιστα δ’ ἄν τις θαυμάσειε τὸ λαθεῖν τοὺς ἐν τῇ πόλει Καίσαρα τοσαύταις μυριάσι ταῖς ἔξω συμβαλόντα καὶ περιγενόμενον, μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ τῶν Ῥωμαίων [6] τοὺς τὸ πρὸς τῇ πόλει τεῖχος φυλάττοντας. οὐ γὰρ πρότερον ᾔσθοντο τὴν νίκην, ἢ κλαυθμὸν ἐκ τῆς Ἀλησίας ἀνδρῶν καὶ κοπετὸν γυναικῶν ἀκουσθῆναι, θεασαμένων ἄρα κατὰ θάτερα μέρη πολλοὺς μὲν ἀργύρῳ καὶ χρυσῷ κεκοσμημένους θυρεούς, πολλοὺς δ’ αἵματι πεφυρμένους θώρακας, ἔτι δ’ ἐκπώματα καὶ σκηνὰς Γαλατικὰς ὑπὸ [7] τῶν Ῥωμαίων εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον κομιζομένας. οὕτως ὀξέως ἡ τοσαύτη δύναμις ὥσπερ εἴδωλον ἢ ὄνειρον ἠφάνιστο καὶ διεπεφόρητο, τῶν πλείστων ἐν τῇ μάχῃ [8] πεσόντων. οἱ δὲ τὴν Ἀλησίαν ἔχοντες, οὐκ ὀλίγα πράγματα παρασχόντες ἑαυτοῖς καὶ Καίσαρι, τέλος παρέδοσαν [9] ἑαυτούς. ὁ δὲ τοῦ σύμπαντος ἡγεμὼν πολέμου Οὐεργεντόριξ ἀναλαβὼν τῶν ὅπλων τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ κοσμήσας τὸν [10] ἵππον, ἐξιππάσατο διὰ τῶν πυλῶν· καὶ κύκλῳ περὶ τὸν Καίσαρα καθεζόμενον ἐλάσας, εἶτ’ ἀφαλόμενος τοῦ ἵππου, τὴν μὲν πανοπλίαν ἀπέρριψεν, αὐτὸς δὲ καθίσας ὑπὸ πόδας τοῦ Καίσαρος ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν, ἄχρι οὗ παρεδόθη φρουρησόμενος ἐπὶ τὸν θρίαμβον.

[28] [1] Καίσαρι δὲ πάλαι μὲν ἐδέδοκτο καταλύειν Πομπήϊον, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει κἀκείνῳ τοῦτον· Κράσσου γὰρ ἐν Πάρθοις ἀπολωλότος, ὃς ἦν ἔφεδρος ἀμφοῖν, ἀπελείπετο τῷ μὲν ὑπὲρ τοῦ γενέσθαι μεγίστῳ τὸν ὄντα καταλύειν, [2] τῷ δ’ ἵνα μὴ πάθῃ τοῦτο, προαναιρεῖν ὃν ἐδεδοίκει. τοῦτο δὲ Πομπηΐῳ μὲν ἐξ ὀλίγου φοβεῖσθαι παρέστη, τέως ὑπερορῶντι Καίσαρος, ὡς οὐ χαλεπὸν ἔργον, ὃν αὐτὸς [3] ηὔξησε, καταλυθῆναι πάλιν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ· Καῖσαρ δ’ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ὑπόθεσιν ταύτην πεποιημένος, [ἐπὶ] τῶν ἀνταγωνιστῶν ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴς ἑαυτὸν ἀποστήσας μακρὰν καὶ τοῖς Κελτικοῖς ἐγγυμνασάμενος πολέμοις, ἐπήσκησε μὲν τὴν δύναμιν, ηὔξησε δὲ τὴν δόξαν, ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων εἰς ἀντίπαλον [4] ἀρθεῖσ‹αν› τοῖς Πομπηΐου κατορθώμασι, λαμβάνων προφάσεις, τὰς μὲν αὐτοῦ Πομπηΐου, τὰς δὲ τῶν καιρῶν ἐνδιδόντων καὶ τῆς ἐν Ῥώμῃ κακοπολιτείας, δι’ ἣν οἱ μὲν ἀρχὰς μετιόντες ἐν μέσῳ θέμενοι τραπέζας ἐδέκαζον ἀναισχύντως τὰ πλήθη, κατῄει δ’ ὁ δῆμος ἔμμισθος, οὐ ψήφοις ὑπὲρ τοῦ δεδωκότος, ἀλλὰ τόξοις καὶ ξίφεσι καὶ [5] σφενδόναις ἁμιλλώμενος. αἵματι δὲ καὶ νεκροῖς πολλάκις αἰσχύναντες τὸ βῆμα διεκρίθησαν, ἐν ἀναρχίᾳ τὴν πόλιν ὥσπερ ‹ναῦν› ἀκυβέρνητον ὑποφερομένην ἀπολιπόντες, ὥστε τοὺς νοῦν ἔχοντας ἀγαπᾶν, εἰ πρὸς μηδὲν αὐτοῖς χεῖρον, ἀλλ’ ‹ἢ› μοναρχίαν ἐκ τοσαύτης παραφροσύνης [6] καὶ τοσούτου κλύδωνος ἐκπεσεῖται τὰ πράγματα. πολλοὶ δ’ ἦσαν οἱ καὶ λέγειν ἐν μέσῳ τολμῶντες ἤδη, πλὴν ὑπὸ μοναρχίας ἀνήκεστον εἶναι τὴν πολιτείαν, καὶ τὸ φάρμακον τοῦτο χρῆναι τοῦ πρᾳοτάτου τῶν ἰατρῶν ἀνασχέσθαι [7] προσφέροντος, ὑποδηλοῦντες ‹δὴ› τὸν Πομπήϊον. ἐπεὶ δὲ κἀκεῖνος λόγῳ παραιτεῖσθαι καλλωπιζόμενος, ἔργῳ παντὸς μᾶλλον ἐπέραινεν ἐξ ὧν ἀναδειχθήσοιτο δικτάτωρ, συμφρονήσαντες οἱ περὶ Κάτωνα πείθουσι τὴν γερουσίαν ὕπατον αὐτὸν ἀποδεῖξαι μόνον, ὡς μὴ βιάσαιτο δικτάτωρ [8] γενέσθαι, νομιμωτέρᾳ μοναρχίᾳ παρηγορηθείς. οἱ δὲ καὶ χρόνον ἐπεψηφίσαντο τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν· δύο δ’ εἶχεν, Ἰβηρίαν καὶ Λιβύην σύμπασαν, ἃς διῴκει πρεσβευτὰς ἀποστέλλων καὶ στρατεύματα τρέφων, οἷς ἐλάμβανεν ἐκ τοῦ δημοσίου ταμιείου χίλια τάλαντα καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν.

[29] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Καῖσαρ ὑπατείαν ἐμνᾶτο πέμπων καὶ χρόνον ὁμοίως τῶν ἰδίων ἐπαρχιῶν. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον Πομπηΐου σιωπῶντος, οἱ περὶ Μάρκελλον καὶ Λέντλον ἠναντιοῦντο, μισοῦντες ἄλλως Καίσαρα καὶ τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις οὐκ ἀναγκαῖα προστιθέντες εἰς ἀτιμίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ [2] προπηλακισμόν. Νεοκωμίτας γὰρ ἔναγχος ὑπὸ Καίσαρος ἐν Γαλατίᾳ κατῳκισμένους ἀφῃροῦντο τῆς πολιτείας, καὶ Μάρκελλος ὑπατεύων ἕνα τῶν ἐκεῖ βουλευτῶν εἰς Ῥώμην ἀφικόμενον ᾐκίσατο ῥάβδοις, ἐπιλέγων ὡς ταῦτα τοῦ μὴ Ῥωμαῖον εἶναι παράσημα προστίθησιν αὐτῷ, καὶ δεικνύειν [3] ἀπιόντα Καίσαρι κελεύει. μετὰ δὲ Μάρκελλον, ἤδη Καίσαρος τὸν Γαλατικὸν πλοῦτον ἀρύεσθαι ῥύδην ἀφεικότος πᾶσι τοῖς πολιτευομένοις, καὶ Κουρίωνα μὲν δημαρχοῦντα πολλῶν ἐλευθερώσαντος δανείων, Παύλῳ δ’ ὑπατεύοντι χίλια καὶ πεντακόσια τάλαντα δόντος, ἀφ’ ὧν καὶ τὴν βασιλικὴν ἐκεῖνος, ὀνομαστὸν ἀνάθημα, τῇ ἀγορᾷ προσεκόσμησεν, [4] ἀντὶ τῆς Φουλβίας οἰκοδομηθεῖσαν, οὕτω δὴ φοβηθεὶς τὴν σύστασιν ὁ Πομπήϊος ἀναφανδὸν ἤδη δι’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν φίλων ἔπραττεν ἀποδειχθῆναι διάδοχον Καίσαρι τῆς ἀρχῆς, καὶ πέμπων ἀπῄτει τοὺς στρατιώτας οὓς ἔχρησεν αὐτῷ πρὸς τοὺς Κελτικοὺς ἀγῶνας. ὁ δ’ ἀποπέμπει, δωρησάμενος ἕκαστον ἄνδρα πεντήκοντα καὶ [5] διακοσίαις δραχμαῖς. οἱ δὲ τούτους Πομπηΐῳ κομίσαντες εἰς μὲν τὸ πλῆθος οὐκ ἐπιεικεῖς οὐδὲ χρηστοὺς κατέσπειραν λόγους ὑπὲρ τοῦ Καίσαρος, αὐτὸν δὲ Πομπήϊον ἐλπίσι κεναῖς διέφθειραν, ὡς ποθούμενον ὑπὸ τῆς Καίσαρος στρατιᾶς, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἐνταῦθα διὰ φθόνον πολιτείας ὑπούλου μόλις ἔχοντα, τῆς δ’ ἐκεῖ δυνάμεως ἑτοίμης ὑπαρχούσης αὐτῷ, κἂν μόνον ὑπερβάλωσιν εἰς Ἰταλίαν, εὐθὺς ἐσομένης πρὸς ἐκεῖνον· οὕτως γεγονέναι τὸν Καίσαρα πλήθει στρατειῶν λυπηρὸν αὐτοῖς καὶ φόβῳ [6] μοναρχίας ὕποπτον. ἐπὶ τούτοις Πομπήϊος ἐχαυνοῦτο, καὶ παρασκευῆς μὲν ἠμέλει στρατιωτῶν, ὡς μὴ δεδοικώς, λόγοις δὲ καὶ γνώμαις κατεπολιτεύετο τῷ δοκεῖν Καίσαρα [7] καταψηφιζόμενος· ὧν ἐκεῖνος οὐδὲν ἐφρόντιζεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ λέγεταί τινα τῶν ἀφιγμένων παρ’ αὐτοῦ ταξιάρχων, ἑστῶτα πρὸ τοῦ βουλευτηρίου καὶ πυθόμενον ὡς οὐ δίδωσιν ἡ γερουσία Καίσαρι χρόνον τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἀλλ’ αὕτη φάναι δώσει, κρούσαντα τῇ χειρὶ τὴν λαβὴν τῆς μαχαίρας.

[30] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἥ γε παρὰ Καίσαρος ἀξίωσις τὸ πρόσχημα τῆς δικαιολογίας λαμπρὸν εἶχεν· ἠξίου γὰρ αὐτός τε καταθέσθαι τὰ ὅπλα, καὶ Πομπηΐου ταὐτὸ πράξαντος ἀμφοτέρους ἰδιώτας γενομένους εὑρίσκεσθαί τι παρὰ τῶν πολιτῶν ἀγαθόν, ὡς τοὺς αὐτὸν μὲν ἀφαιρουμένους, ἐκείνῳ δ’ ἣν εἶχε βεβαιοῦντας δύναμιν, ἕτερον [2] διαβάλλοντας ἕτερον κατασκευάζειν τύραννον. ταῦτα προκαλούμενος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ Κουρίων ὑπὲρ Καίσαρος ἐκροτεῖτο λαμπρῶς, οἱ δὲ καὶ στεφάνους ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὥσπερ [3] ἀθλητὴν ἀνθοβολοῦντες ἠφίεσαν. Ἀντώνιος δὲ δημαρχῶν Καίσαρος ὑπὲρ τούτων ἐπιστολὴν κομισθεῖσαν εἰς τὸ [4] πλῆθος ἐξήνεγκε καὶ ἀνέγνω βίᾳ τῶν ὑπάτων. ἐν δὲ τῇ βουλῇ Σκιπίων μὲν ὁ Πομπηΐου πενθερὸς εἰσηγήσατο γνώμην, ἂν ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ῥητῇ μὴ κατάθηται τὰ ὅπλα Καῖσαρ, [5] ἀποδειχθῆναι πολέμιον αὐτόν. ἐρωτώντων δὲ τῶν ὑπάτων εἰ δοκεῖ Πομπήϊον ἀφεῖναι τοὺς στρατιώτας, καὶ πάλιν εἰ δοκεῖ Καίσαρα, τῇ μὲν ὀλίγοι παντάπασι, τῇ δὲ πάντες παρ’ ὀλίγους προσέθεντο· τῶν δὲ περὶ Ἀντώνιον πάλιν ἀξιούντων ἀμφοτέρους τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀφεῖναι, πάντες ὁμαλῶς [6] προσεχώρησαν. ἀλλ’ ἐκβιαζομένου Σκιπίωνος, καὶ Λέντλου τοῦ ὑπάτου βοῶντος ὅπλων δεῖν πρὸς ἄνδρα λῃστήν, οὐ ψήφων, τότε μὲν διελύθησαν καὶ μετεβάλοντο τὰς ἐσθῆτας ἐπὶ πένθει διὰ τὴν στάσιν.

[31] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ παρὰ Καίσαρος ἧκον ἐπιστολαὶ μετριάζειν δοκοῦντος (ἠξίου γὰρ ἀφεὶς τὰ ἄλλα πάντα τὴν ἐντὸς Ἄλπεων καὶ τὸ Ἰλλυρικὸν μετὰ δυεῖν ταγμάτων αὐτῷ δοθῆναι, μέχρι οὗ τὴν δευτέραν ὑπατείαν μέτεισι), καὶ Κικέρων ὁ ῥήτωρ, ἄρτι παρὼν ἐκ Κιλικίας καὶ διαλλαγὰς πράττων, ἐμάλαττε τὸν Πομπήϊον, ὁ δὲ τἆλλα συγχωρῶν [2] τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀφῄρει, καὶ Κικέρων μὲν ἔπειθε τοὺς Καίσαρος φίλους συνενδόντας ἐπὶ ταῖς εἰρημέναις ἐπαρχίαις καὶ στρατιώταις μόνοις ἑξακισχιλίοις ποιεῖσθαι τὰς διαλύσεις, Πομπηΐου δὲ καμπτομένου καὶ διδόντος, οἱ περὶ Λέντλον οὐκ εἴων ὑπατεύοντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς βουλῆς Ἀντώνιον καὶ Κουρίωνα προπηλακίσαντες ἐξήλασαν [3] ἀτίμως, τὴν εὐπρεπεστάτην Καίσαρι τῶν προφάσεων αὐτοὶ μηχανησάμενοι καὶ δι’ ἧς μάλιστα τοὺς στρατιώτας παρώξυνεν, ἐπιδεικνύμενος ἄνδρας ἐλλογίμους καὶ ἄρχοντας ἐπὶ μισθίων ζευγῶν πεφευγότας ἐν ἐσθῆσιν οἰκετικαῖς· οὕτω γὰρ ἀπὸ Ῥώμης σκευάσαντες ἑαυτοὺς διὰ φόβον ὑπεξῄεσαν.

[32] [1] Ἦσαν μὲν οὖν περὶ αὐτὸν οὐ πλείους ἱππέων τριακοσίων καὶ πεντακισχιλίων ὁπλιτῶν· τὸ γὰρ ἄλλο στράτευμα πέραν Ἄλπεων ἀπολελειμμένον ἔμελλον ἄξειν οἱ [2] πεμφθέντες. ὁρῶν δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν ὧν ἐνίστατο πραγμάτων καὶ τὴν ἔφοδον οὐ πολυχειρίας δεομένην ἐν τῷ παρόντι μᾶλλον ἢ θάμβει τε τόλμης καὶ τάχει καιροῦ καταληπτέαν οὖσαν (ἐκπλήξειν γὰρ ἀπιστούμενος ῥᾷον ἢ βιάσεσθαι [3] μετὰ παρασκευῆς ἐπελθών), τοὺς μὲν ἡγεμόνας καὶ ταξιάρχους ἐκέλευσε μαχαίρας ἔχοντας ἄνευ τῶν ἄλλων ὅπλων κατασχεῖν Ἀρίμινον, τῆς Κελτικῆς μεγάλην πόλιν, ὡς ἐνδέχεται μάλιστα φεισαμένους φόνου καὶ ταραχῆς, [4] Ὁρτησίῳ δὲ τὴν δύναμιν παρέδωκεν. αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν μὲν ἡμέραν διῆγεν ἐν φανερῷ, μονομάχοις ἐφεστὼς γυμναζομένοις καὶ θεώμενος· μικρὸν δὲ πρὸ ἑσπέρας θεραπεύσας τὸ σῶμα, καὶ παρελθὼν εἰς τὸν ἀνδρῶνα, καὶ συγγενόμενος βραχέα τοῖς παρακεκλημένοις ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον, ἤδη συσκοτάζοντος ἐξανέστη, [καὶ] τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους φιλοφρονηθεὶς καὶ κελεύσας περιμένειν αὐτὸν ὡς ἐπανελευσόμενον, ὀλίγοις δὲ τῶν φίλων προείρητο μὴ κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ [5] πάντας, ἄλλον δ’ ἄλλῃ διώκειν. αὐτὸς δὲ τῶν μισθίων ζευγῶν ἐπιβὰς ἑνός, ἤλαυνεν ἑτέραν τινὰ πρῶτον ὁδόν· εἶτα πρὸς τὸ Ἀρίμινον ἐπιστρέψας, ὡς ἦλθεν ἐπὶ τὸν διορίζοντα τὴν ἐντὸς Ἄλπεων Γαλατίαν ἀπὸ τῆς ἄλλης Ἰταλίας ποταμὸν (Ῥουβίκων καλεῖται), καὶ λογισμὸς αὐτὸν εἰσῄει, μᾶλλον ἐγγίζοντα τῷ δεινῷ καὶ περιφερόμενον [6] τῷ μεγέθει τῶν τολμωμένων, ἔσχετο δρόμου, καὶ τὴν πορείαν ἐπιστήσας, πολλὰ μὲν αὐτὸς ἐν ἑαυτῷ διήνεγκε σιγῇ τὴν γνώμην ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα μεταλαμβάνων, καὶ [7] τροπὰς ἔσχεν αὐτῷ τότε ‹τὸ› βούλευμα πλείστας· πολλὰ δὲ καὶ τῶν φίλων τοῖς παροῦσιν, ὧν ἦν καὶ Πολλίων Ἀσίνιος, συνδιηπόρησεν, ἀναλογιζόμενος ἡλίκων κακῶν ἄρξει πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἡ διάβασις, ὅσον τε λόγον αὐτῆς [8] τοῖς αὖθις ἀπολείψουσι. τέλος δὲ μετὰ θυμοῦ τινος ὥσπερ ἀφεὶς ἑαυτὸν ἐκ τοῦ λογισμοῦ πρὸς τὸ μέλλον, καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ κοινὸν τοῖς εἰς τύχας ἐμβαίνουσιν ἀπόρους καὶ τόλμας προοίμιον ὑπειπὼν ἀνερρίφθω κύβος, ὥρμησε πρὸς τὴν διάβασιν, καὶ δρόμῳ τὸ λοιπὸν ἤδη χρώμενος, εἰσέπεσε [9] πρὸ ἡμέρας εἰς τὸ Ἀρίμινον, καὶ κατέσχε. λέγεται δὲ τῇ προτέρᾳ νυκτὶ τῆς διαβάσεως ὄναρ ἰδεῖν ἔκθεσμον· ἐδόκει γὰρ αὐτὸς τῇ ἑαυτοῦ μητρὶ μείγνυσθαι τὴν ἄρρητον μεῖξιν.

[33] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ κατελήφθη τὸ Ἀρίμινον, ὥσπερ ἀνεῳγμένου τοῦ πολέμου πλατείαις πύλαις ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ὁμοῦ τὴν γῆν καὶ θάλασσαν, καὶ συγκεχυμένων ἅμα τοῖς ὅροις τῆς ἐπαρχίας τῶν νόμων τῆς πόλεως, οὐκ ἄνδρας ἄν τις ᾠήθη καὶ γυναῖκας ὥσπερ ἄλλοτε σὺν ἐκπλήξει διαφοιτᾶν τῆς Ἰταλίας, ἀλλὰ τὰς πόλεις αὐτὰς ἀνισταμένας [2] φυγῇ διαφέρεσθαι δι’ ἀλλήλων, τὴν δὲ Ῥώμην ὥσπερ ὑπὸ ῥευμάτων πιμπλαμένην φυγαῖς τῶν πέριξ δήμων καὶ μεταστάσεσιν, οὔτ’ ἄρχοντι πεῖσαι ῥᾳδίαν οὖσαν οὔτε λόγῳ καθεκτήν, ἐν πολλῷ κλύδωνι καὶ σάλῳ μικρὸν [3] ἀπολιπεῖν αὐτὴν ὑφ’ αὑτῆς ἀνατετράφθαι. πάθη γὰρ ἀντίπαλα καὶ βίαια κατεῖχε κινήματα πάντα τόπον· οὔτε γὰρ τὸ χαῖρον ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν, ἀλλὰ τῷ δεδοικότι καὶ λυπουμένῳ κατὰ πολλὰ συμπῖπτον ἐν μεγάλῃ πόλει καὶ [4] θρασυνόμενον ὑπὲρ τοῦ μέλλοντος δι’ ἐρίδων ἦν, αὐτόν τε Πομπήϊον ἐκπεπληγμένον ἄλλος ἀλλαχόθεν ἐτάραττε, τοῖς μὲν ὡς ηὔξησε Καίσαρα καθ’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας εὐθύνας ὑπέχοντα, τῶν δ’ ὅτι παρείκοντα καὶ προτεινόμενον εὐγνώμονας διαλύσεις ἐφῆκε τοῖς περὶ Λέντλον [5] ὑβρίσαι κατηγορούντων. Φαώνιος δ’ αὐτὸν ἐκέλευε τῷ ποδὶ κτυπεῖν τὴν γῆν, ἐπεὶ μεγαληγορῶν ποτε πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον οὐδὲν εἴα πολυπραγμονεῖν οὐδὲ φροντίζειν ἐκείνους τῆς ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον παρασκευῆς· αὐτὸς γὰρ ὅταν ἐπίῃ κρούσας τὸ ἔδαφος τῷ ποδὶ στρατευμάτων [6] ἐμπλήσειν τὴν Ἰταλίαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τότε πλήθει δυνάμεως ὑπερέβαλλεν ὁ Πομπήϊος τὴν Καίσαρος· εἴασε δ’ οὐδεὶς τὸν ἄνδρα χρήσασθαι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ λογισμοῖς, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ἀγγελμάτων πολλῶν καὶ ψευδῶν καὶ φόβων, ὡς ἐφεστῶτος ἤδη τοῦ πολέμου καὶ πάντα κατέχοντος, εἴξας καὶ συνεκκρουσθεὶς τῇ πάντων φορᾷ ψηφίζεται ταραχὴν ὁρᾶν καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐξέλιπε, κελεύσας ἕπεσθαι τὴν γερουσίαν καὶ μηδένα μένειν τῶν πρὸ τῆς τυραννίδος ᾑρημένων τὴν πατρίδα καὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν.

[34] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν ὕπατοι μηδ’ ἃ νόμος ἐστὶ πρὸ ἐξόδου θύσαντες ἔφυγον, ἔφευγον δὲ καὶ τῶν βουλευτῶν οἱ πλεῖστοι, τρόπον τινὰ δι’ ἁρπαγῆς ἀπὸ τῶν ἰδίων ὅ τι [2] τύχοιεν ὥσπερ ἀλλοτρίων λαμβάνοντες. εἰσὶ δ’ οἳ καὶ σφόδρα τὰ Καίσαρος ᾑρημένοι πρότερον ἐξέπεσον ὑπὸ θάμβους τότε τῶν λογισμῶν, καὶ συμπαρηνέχθησαν οὐδὲν [3] δεόμενοι τῷ ῥεύματι τῆς φορᾶς ἐκείνης. οἰκτρότατον δὲ τὸ θέαμα τῆς πόλεως ἦν, ἐπιφερομένου τοσούτου χειμῶνος ὥσπερ νεὼς ὑπὸ κυβερνητῶν ἀπαγορευόντων πρὸς τὸ [4] συντυχὸν ἐκπεσεῖν κομιζομένης. ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτως τῆς μεταστάσεως οἰκτρᾶς οὔσης, τὴν μὲν φυγὴν οἱ ἄνθρωποι πατρίδα διὰ Πομπήϊον ἡγοῦντο, τὴν δὲ Ῥώμην ὡς Καίσαρος [5] στρατόπεδον ἐξέλιπον· ὅπου καὶ Λαβιηνός, ἀνὴρ ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα φίλος Καίσαρος καὶ πρεσβευτὴς γεγονὼς καὶ συνηγωνισμένος ἐν πᾶσι προθυμότατα τοῖς Κελτικοῖς πολέμοις, τότ’ ἐκεῖνον ἀποδρὰς ἀφίκετο πρὸς Πομπήϊον· ἀλλὰ τούτῳ μὲν καὶ τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὰς ἀποσκευὰς [6] ἀπέπεμψεν ὁ Καῖσαρ. Δομιτίῳ δ’ ἡγουμένῳ σπειρῶν τριάκοντα καὶ κατέχοντι Κορφίνιον ἐπελθὼν παρεστρατοπέδευσεν· ὁ δ’ ἀπογνοὺς τὰ καθ’ ἑαυτόν, ᾔτησε τὸν ἰατρὸν οἰκέτην ὄντα φάρμακον, καὶ λαβὼν τὸ δοθὲν ἔπιεν [7] ὡς τεθνηξόμενος. μετ’ ὀλίγον δ’ ἀκούσας τὸν Καίσαρα θαυμαστῇ τινι φιλανθρωπίᾳ χρῆσθαι πρὸς τοὺς ἑαλωκότας, αὐτὸς αὑτὸν ἀπεθρήνει καὶ τὴν ὀξύτητα τοῦ βουλεύματος [8] ᾐτιᾶτο. τοῦ δ’ ἰατροῦ θαρρύναντος αὐτόν, ὡς ὑπνωτικόν, οὐ θανάσιμον πεπωκότα, περιχαρὴς ἀναστὰς ἀπῄει πρὸς Καίσαρα, καὶ λαβὼν δεξιάν, αὖθις [9] διεξέπεσε πρὸς Πομπήϊον. ταῦτ’ εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην ἀπαγγελλόμενα τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἡδίους ἐποίει, καί τινες φυγόντες ἀνέστρεψαν.

[35] [1] Ὁ δὲ Καῖσαρ τήν τε τοῦ Δομιτίου στρατιὰν παρέλαβε, καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους, ὅσους ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι Πομπηΐῳ στρατολογουμένους ἔφθασε καταλαβών. πολὺς δὲ γεγονὼς [2] ἤδη καὶ φοβερός, ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἤλαυνε Πομπήϊον. ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἐδέξατο τὴν ἔφοδον, ἀλλ’ εἰς Βρεντέσιον φυγών, τοὺς μὲν ὑπάτους πρότερον ἔστειλε μετὰ δυνάμεως εἰς Δυρράχιον, αὐτὸς δ’ ὀλίγον ὕστερον ἐπελθόντος Καίσαρος ἐξέπλευσεν, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γραφησομένοις τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον δηλωθήσεται (c. 62, 26).

[3] Καίσαρι δὲ βουλομένῳ μὲν εὐθὺς διώκειν ἀπορία νεῶν ἦν, εἰς δὲ τὴν Ῥώμην ἀνέστρεψε, γεγονὼς ἐν ἡμέραις [4] ἑξήκοντα πάσης ἀναιμωτὶ τῆς Ἰταλίας κύριος. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν πόλιν εὗρε μᾶλλον ἢ προσεδόκα καθεστῶσαν καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ βουλῆς ἐν αὐτῇ συχνούς, τούτοις μὲν ἐπιεικῆ καὶ δημοτικὰ διελέχθη, παρακαλῶν αὐτοὺς [καὶ] πρὸς Πομπήϊον ἀποστέλλειν ἄνδρας ἐπὶ συμβάσεσι πρεπούσαις· [5] ὑπήκουσε δ’ οὐδείς, εἴτε φοβούμενοι Πομπήϊον ἐγκαταλελειμμένον, εἴτε μὴ νομίζοντες οὕτω Καίσαρα φρονεῖν, ἀλλ’ εὐπρεπείᾳ λόγων χρῆσθαι.

[6] Τοῦ δὲ δημάρχου Μετέλλου κωλύοντος αὐτὸν ἐκ τῶν ἀποθέτων χρήματα λαμβάνειν καὶ νόμους τινὰς προφέροντος, οὐκ ἔφη τὸν αὐτὸν ὅπλων καὶ νόμων καιρὸν [7] εἶναι· σὺ δ’ εἰ τοῖς πραττομένοις δυσκολαίνεις, νῦν μὲν ἐκποδὼν ἄπιθι· παρρησίας γὰρ οὐ δεῖται πόλεμος· ὅταν δὲ κατάθωμαι τὰ ὅπλα συμβάσεων γενομένων, τότε [8] παριὼν δημαγωγήσεις. καὶ ταῦτ’ ἔφη λέγω τῶν ἐμαυτοῦ δικαίων ὑφιέμενος· ἐμὸς γὰρ εἶ καὶ σὺ καὶ πάντες [9] ὅσους εἴληφα τῶν πρὸς ἐμὲ στασιασάντων. ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Μέτελλον εἰπών, ἐβάδιζε πρὸς τὰς θύρας τοῦ ταμιείου. μὴ φαινομένων δὲ τῶν κλειδῶν, χαλκεῖς μεταπεμψάμενος [10] ἐκκόπτειν ἐκέλευεν. αὖθις δ’ ἐνισταμένου τοῦ Μετέλλου καί τινων ἐπαινούντων, διατεινάμενος ἠπείλησεν ἀποκτενεῖν αὐτόν, εἰ μὴ παύσαιτο παρενοχλῶν· καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔφη μειράκιον οὐκ ἀγνοεῖς ὅτι μοι δυσκολώτερον [11] ἦν εἰπεῖν ἢ πρᾶξαι. οὗτος ὁ λόγος τότε καὶ Μέτελλον ἀπελθεῖν ἐποίησε καταδείσαντα, καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ῥᾳδίως αὐτῷ καὶ ταχέως ὑπηρετεῖσθαι πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον.

[36] [1] Ἐστράτευσε δ’ εἰς Ἰβηρίαν, πρότερον ἐγνωκὼς τοὺς περὶ Ἀφράνιον καὶ Βάρρωνα Πομπηΐου πρεσβευτὰς ἐκβαλεῖν, καὶ τὰς ἐκεῖ δυνάμεις καὶ τὰς ἐπαρχίας ὑφ’ αὑτῷ ποιησάμενος, οὕτως ἐπὶ Πομπήϊον ἐλαύνειν, μηδένα [2] κατὰ νώτου τῶν πολεμίων ὑπολιπόμενος. κινδυνεύσας δὲ καὶ τῷ σώματι πολλάκις κατ’ ἐνέδρας καὶ τῷ στρατῷ μάλιστα διὰ λιμόν, οὐκ ἀνῆκε πρότερον διώκων καὶ προκαλούμενος καὶ περιταφρεύων τοὺς ἄνδρας ἢ κύριος βίᾳ γενέσθαι τῶν στρατοπέδων καὶ τῶν δυνάμεων. οἱ δ’ ἡγεμόνες ᾤχοντο πρὸς Πομπήϊον φεύγοντες.

[37] [1] Ἐπανελθόντα δ’ εἰς Ῥώμην Καίσαρα Πείσων μὲν ὁ πενθερὸς παρεκάλει πρὸς Πομπήϊον ἀποστέλλειν ἄνδρας ὑπὲρ διαλύσεως, Ἰσαυρικὸς δὲ Καίσαρι χαριζόμενος ἀντεῖπεν.

[2] αἱρεθεὶς δὲ δικτάτωρ ὑπὸ τῆς βουλῆς, φυγάδας τε κατήγαγε καὶ τῶν ἐπὶ Σύλλα δυστυχησάντων τοὺς παῖδας ἐπιτίμους ἐποίησε, καὶ σεισαχθείᾳ τινὶ τόκων ἐκούφιζε τοὺς χρεωφειλέτας, ἄλλων τε τοιούτων ἥψατο πολιτευμάτων οὐ πολλῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἡμέραις ἕνδεκα τὴν μὲν μοναρχίαν ἀπειπάμενος, ὕπατον δ’ ἀναδείξας ἑαυτὸν καὶ [3] Σερουΐλιον Ἰσαυρικόν, εἴχετο τῆς στρατείας. καὶ τὰς μὲν ἄλλας δυνάμεις καθ’ ὁδὸν ἐπειγόμενος παρῆλθεν, ἱππεῖς δ’ ἔχων λογάδας ἑξακοσίους καὶ πέντε τάγματα, χειμῶνος ἐν τροπαῖς ὄντος, ἱσταμένου Ἰαννουαρίου μηνὸς (οὗτος δ’ ἂν εἴη Ποσειδεὼν Ἀθηναίοις) ἀφῆκεν εἰς τὸ πέλαγος· [4] καὶ διαβαλὼν τὸν Ἰόνιον Ὤρικον καὶ Ἀπολλωνίαν αἱρεῖ, τὰ δὲ πλοῖα πάλιν ἀπέπεμψεν εἰς Βρεντέσιον ἐπὶ τοὺς [5] ὑστερήσαντας τῇ πορείᾳ στρατιώτας. οἱ δ’ ἄχρι μὲν καθ’ ὁδὸν ἦσαν, ἅτε δὴ καὶ παρηκμακότες ἤδη τοῖς σώμασι καὶ πρὸς τὰ πλήθη τῶν πόνων ἀπειρηκότες, ἐν [6] αἰτίαις εἶχον τὸν Καίσαρα· ποῖ δὴ καὶ πρὸς τί πέρας ἡμᾶς οὗτος ὁ ἀνὴρ καταθήσεται περιφέρων καὶ χρώμενος ὥσπερ ἀτρύτοις καὶ ἀψύχοις ἡμῖν; καὶ σίδηρος ἐξέκαμε πληγαῖς, καὶ θυρεοῦ φειδώ τίς ἐστιν ἐν χρόνῳ τοσούτῳ καὶ [7] θώρακος. οὐδ’ ἀπὸ τῶν τραυμάτων ἄρα λογίζεται Καῖσαρ, ὅτι θνητῶν μὲν ἄρχει, θνητὰ δὲ πεφύκαμεν πάσχειν καὶ ἀλγεῖν; ὥραν δὲ χειμῶνος καὶ πνεύματος ἐν θαλάττῃ καιρὸν οὐδὲ θεῷ βιάζεσθαι δυνατόν· ἀλλ’ οὗτος παραβάλλεται, καθάπερ οὐ διώκων πολεμίους, ἀλλὰ φεύγων.

[8] τοιαῦτα λέγοντες ἐπορεύοντο σχολαίως εἰς τὸ Βρεντέσιον· ὡς δ’ ἐλθόντες εὗρον ἀνηγμένον τὸν Καίσαρα, ταχὺ πάλιν αὖ μεταβαλόντες ἐκάκιζον ἑαυτούς, προδότας ἀποκαλοῦντες τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος, ἐκάκιζον δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἡγεμόνας, [9] οὐκ ἐπιταχύναντας τὴν πορείαν. καθήμενοι δ’ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄκρων, πρὸς τὸ πέλαγος καὶ τὴν Ἤπειρον ἀπεσκόπουν τὰς ναῦς, ἐφ’ ὧν ἔμελλον περαιοῦσθαι πρὸς ἐκεῖνον.

[38] [1] Ἐν δ’ Ἀπολλωνίᾳ Καῖσαρ οὐκ ἔχων ἀξιόμαχον τὴν μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ δύναμιν, βραδυνούσης δὲ τῆς ἐκεῖθεν ἀπορούμενος καὶ περιπαθῶν, δεινὸν ἐβούλευσε βούλευμα, κρύφα πάντων εἰς πλοῖον ἐμβὰς τὸ μέγεθος δωδεκάσκαλμον ἀναχθῆναι πρὸς τὸ Βρεντέσιον, τηλικούτοις στόλοις περιεχομένου τοῦ πελάγους ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων.

[2] νυκτὸς οὖν ἐσθῆτι θεράποντος ἐπικρυψάμενος ἐνέβη, καὶ καταβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν ὥς τινα τῶν παρημελημένων [3] ἡσύχαζε. τοῦ δ’ Ἀῴου ποταμοῦ τὴν ναῦν ὑποφέροντος εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, τὴν μὲν ἑωθινὴν αὔραν, ἣ παρεῖχε τηνικαῦτα περὶ τὰς ἐκβολὰς γαλήνην, ἀπωθοῦσα πόρρω τὸ κῦμα, πολὺς πνεύσας πελάγιος διὰ νυκτὸς ἀπέσβεσε· [4] πρὸς δὲ τὴν πλημμύραν τῆς θαλάττης καὶ τὴν ἀντίβασιν τοῦ κλύδωνος ἀγριαίνων ὁ ποταμός, καὶ τραχὺς ἅμα καὶ κτύπῳ μεγάλῳ καὶ σκληραῖς ἀνακοπτόμενος δίναις, ἄπορος ἦν βιασθῆναι τῷ κυβερνήτῃ, καὶ μεταβαλεῖν [5] ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ναύτας, ὡς ἀποστρέψων τὸν πλοῦν. αἰσθόμενος δ’ ὁ Καῖσαρ ἀναδείκνυσιν ἑαυτόν, καὶ τοῦ κυβερνήτου λαβόμενος τῆς χειρός, ἐκπεπληγμένου πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, ἴθι ἔφη γενναῖε, τόλμα καὶ δέδιθι μηδέν· Καίσαρα [6] φέρεις καὶ τὴν Καίσαρος Τύχην συμπλέουσαν. ‹εὐθὺς οὖν ἐπ›ελάθοντο τοῦ χειμῶνος οἱ ναῦται, καὶ ταῖς κώπαις ἐμφύντες ἐβιάζοντο πάσῃ προθυμίᾳ τὸν ποταμόν· ὡς δ’ ἦν ἄπορα, δεξάμενος πολλὴν θάλατταν ἐν τῷ στόματι καὶ κινδυνεύσας, συνεχώρησε μάλ’ ἄκων τῷ κυβερνήτῃ [7] μεταβαλεῖν. ἀνιόντι δ’ αὐτῷ κατὰ πλῆθος ἀπήντων οἱ στρατιῶται, πολλὰ μεμφόμενοι καὶ δυσπαθοῦντες, εἰ μὴ πέπεισται καὶ σὺν αὐτοῖς μόνοις ἱκανὸς εἶναι νικᾶν, ἀλλ’ ἄχθεται καὶ παραβάλλεται διὰ τοὺς ἀπόντας, ὡς ἀπιστῶν τοῖς παροῦσιν.

[39] [1] Ἐκ τούτου κατέπλευσε μὲν Ἀντώνιος, ἀπὸ Βρεντεσίου τὰς δυνάμεις ἄγων, θαρρήσας δὲ Καῖσαρ προὐκαλεῖτο Πομπήϊον, ἱδρυμένον ἐν καλῷ καὶ χορηγούμενον ἔκ τε γῆς καὶ θαλάττης ἀποχρώντως, αὐτὸς ἐν οὐκ ἀφθόνοις διάγων κατ’ ἀρχάς, ὕστερον δὲ καὶ σφόδρα [2] πιεσθεὶς ἀπορίᾳ τῶν ἀναγκαίων, ἀλλὰ ῥίζαν τινὰ κόπτοντες οἱ στρατιῶται καὶ γάλακτι φυρῶντες προσεφέροντο, καί ποτε καὶ διαπλάσαντες ἐξ αὐτῆς ἄρτους καὶ ταῖς προφυλακαῖς τῶν πολεμίων ἐπιδραμόντες ἔβαλλον εἴσω καὶ διερρίπτουν, ἐπιλέγοντες ὡς ἄχρι ἂν ἡ γῆ τοιαύτας ἐκφέρῃ ῥίζας, οὐ παύσονται πολιορκοῦντες [3] Πομπήϊον. ὁ μέντοι Πομπήϊος οὔτε τοὺς ἄρτους οὔτε τοὺς λόγους εἴα τούτους ἐκφέρεσθαι πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος· ἠθύμουν γὰρ οἱ στρατιῶται, τὴν ἀγριότητα καὶ τὴν ἀπάθειαν τῶν πολεμίων ὥσπερ θηρίων ὀρρωδοῦντες.

[4] Ἀεὶ δέ τινες περὶ τοῖς ἐρύμασι τοῖς Πομπηΐου μάχαι σποράδες ἐγίγνοντο, καὶ περιῆν πάσαις ὁ Καῖσαρ πλὴν μιᾶς, ἐν ᾗ τροπῆς γενομένης μεγάλης ἐκινδύνευσεν [μὲν] ἀπολέσαι τὸ [5] στρατόπεδον. Πομπηΐου γὰρ προσβαλόντος οὐδεὶς ἔμεινεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τάφροι κατεπίμπλαντο κτεινομένων, καὶ περὶ τοῖς αὑτῶν χαρακώμασι καὶ περιτειχίσμασιν ἔπιπτον [6] ἐλαυνόμενοι προτροπάδην. Καῖσαρ δ’ ὑπαντιάζων ἐπειρᾶτο μὲν ἀναστρέφειν τοὺς φεύγοντας, ἐπέραινε δ’ οὐδέν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιλαμβανομένου τῶν σημείων ἀπερρίπτουν οἱ κομίζοντες, ὥστε δύο καὶ τριάκοντα λαβεῖν τοὺς πολεμίους, αὐτὸς δὲ [7] παρὰ μικρὸν ἦλθεν ἀποθανεῖν. ἀνδρὶ γὰρ μεγάλῳ καὶ ῥωμαλέῳ φεύγοντι παρ’ αὐτὸν ἐπιβαλὼν τὴν χεῖρα, μένειν ἐκέλευσε καὶ στρέφεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους· ὁ δὲ μεστὸς ὢν ταραχῆς παρὰ τὸ δεινόν, ἐπήρατο τὴν μάχαιραν ὡς καθιξόμενος, φθάνει δ’ ὁ τοῦ Καίσαρος ὑπασπιστὴς [8] ἀποκόψας αὐτοῦ τὸν ὦμον. οὕτω δ’ ἀπέγνω ‹τότε› τὰ καθ’ αὑτόν, ὥστ’ ἐπεὶ Πομπήϊος ὑπ’ εὐλαβείας τινὸς ἢ τύχης ἔργῳ μεγάλῳ τέλος οὐκ ἐπέθηκεν, ἀλλὰ καθείρξας εἰς τὸν χάρακα τοὺς φεύγοντας ἀνεχώρησεν, εἶπεν ἄρα πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ἀπιὼν ὁ Καῖσαρ· σήμερον ἂν ἡ νίκη παρὰ τοῖς [9] πολεμίοις ἦν, εἰ τὸν νικῶντα εἶχον. αὐτὸς δὲ παρελθὼν εἰς τὴν σκηνὴν καὶ κατακλιθείς, νύκτα πασῶν ἐκείνην ἀνιαροτάτην διήγαγεν ἐν ἀπόροις λογισμοῖς, ὡς κακῶς ἐστρατηγηκώς, ὅτι καὶ χώρας ἐπικειμένης βαθείας καὶ πόλεων εὐδαιμόνων τῶν Μακεδονικῶν καὶ Θετταλικῶν, ἐάσας ἐκεῖ περισπάσαι τὸν πόλεμον ἐνταῦθα καθέζοιτο πρὸς θαλάττῃ, ναυκρατούντων τῶν πολεμίων πολιορκούμενος τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ὅπλοις πολιορκῶν.

[10] Οὕτω δὴ ῥιπτασθεὶς καὶ ἀδημονήσας πρὸς τὴν ἀπορίαν καὶ χαλεπότητα τῶν παρόντων, ἀνίστη τὸν στρατόν, [11] ἐπὶ Σκιπίωνα προάγειν εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἐγνωκώς· ἢ γὰρ ἐπισπάσεσθαι Πομπήϊον, ὅπου μαχεῖται μὴ χορηγούμενος ὁμοίως ἀπὸ τῆς θαλάττης, ἢ περιέσεσθαι μεμονωμένου Σκιπίωνος.

[40] [1] Τοῦτο τὴν Πομπηΐου στρατιὰν ἐπῆρε καὶ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν ἡγεμόνας ὡς ἡττημένου καὶ φεύγοντος ἔχεσθαι [2] Καίσαρος. αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ εὐλαβῶς εἶχε Πομπήϊος ἀναρρῖψαι μάχην περὶ τηλικούτων, καὶ παρεσκευασμένος ἄριστα πᾶσι πρὸς τὸν χρόνον, ἠξίου τρίβειν καὶ μαραίνειν [3] τὴν τῶν πολεμίων ἀκμήν, βραχεῖαν οὖσαν. τὸ γάρ τοι μαχιμώτατον τῆς Καίσαρος δυνάμεως ἐμπειρίαν μὲν εἶχε καὶ τόλμαν ἀνυπόστατον πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας, ἐν δὲ ταῖς πλάναις καὶ ταῖς στρατοπεδείαις καὶ τειχοφυλακοῦντες καὶ νυκτεγερτοῦντες ἐξέκαμνον ὑπὸ γήρως, καὶ βαρεῖς ἦσαν τοῖς σώμασι πρὸς τοὺς πόνους, δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἐγκαταλείποντες [4] τὴν προθυμίαν. τότε δὲ καί τι νόσημα λοιμῶδες ἐλέχθη, τὴν ἀτοπίαν τῆς διαίτης ποιησάμενον ἀρχήν, ἐν τῇ στρατιᾷ περιφέρεσθαι τῇ Καίσαρος, καὶ τὸ μέγιστον, οὔτε χρήμασιν ἐρρωμένος οὔτε τροφῆς εὐπορῶν, χρόνου βραχέος ἐδόκει περὶ αὑτῷ καταλυθήσεσθαι.

[41] [1] Διὰ ταῦτα Πομπήϊον μάχεσθαι μὴ βουλόμενον μόνος ἐπῄνει Κάτων φειδοῖ τῶν πολιτῶν· ὅς γε καὶ τοὺς πεσόντας ἐν τῇ μάχῃ τῶν πολεμίων εἰς χιλίους τὸ πλῆθος γενομένους ἰδών, ἀπῆλθεν ἐγκαλυψάμενος καὶ καταδακρύσας.

[2] οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι πάντες ἐκάκιζον τὸν Πομπήϊον φυγομαχοῦντα καὶ παρώξυνον, Ἀγαμέμνονα καὶ βασιλέα βασιλέων ἀποκαλοῦντες, ὡς δὴ μὴ βουλόμενον ἀποθέσθαι τὴν μοναρχίαν, ἀλλ’ ἀγαλλόμενον ἡγεμόνων τοσούτων [3] ἐξηρτημένων αὐτοῦ καὶ φοιτώντων ἐπὶ σκηνήν. Φαώνιος δὲ τὴν Κάτωνος παρρησίαν ὑποποιούμενος μανικῶς, ἐσχετλίαζεν εἰ μηδὲ τῆτες ἔσται τῶν περὶ Τουσκλάνον [4] ἀπολαῦσαι σύκων διὰ τὴν Πομπηΐου φιλαρχίαν. Ἀφράνιος δὲ (νεωστὶ γὰρ ἐξ Ἰβηρίας ἀφῖκτο κακῶς στρατηγήσας) διαβαλλόμενος ἐπὶ χρήμασι προδοῦναι τὸν στρατόν, ἠρώτα διὰ τί πρὸς τὸν ἔμπορον οὐ μάχονται τὸν ἐωνημένον [5] παρ’ αὐτοῦ τὰς ἐπαρχίας. ἐκ τούτων ἁπάντων συνελαυνόμενος ἄκων εἰς μάχην ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐχώρει τὸν Καίσαρα διώκων.

[6] Ὁ δὲ τὴν μὲν ἄλλην πορείαν χαλεπῶς ἤνυσεν, οὐδενὸς παρέχοντος ἀγοράν, ἀλλὰ πάντων καταφρονούντων διὰ [7] τὴν ἔναγχος ἧτταν· ὡς δ’ εἷλε Γόμφους Θεσσαλικὴν πόλιν, οὐ μόνον ἔθρεψε τὴν στρατιάν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ νοσήματος [8] ἀπήλλαξε παραλόγως. ἀφθόνῳ γὰρ ἐνέτυχον οἴνῳ, καὶ πιόντες ἀνέδην, εἶτα χρώμενοι κώμοις καὶ βακχεύοντες ἀνὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἐκ μέθης, διεκρούσαντο καὶ παρήλλαξαν τὸ πάθος, εἰς ἕξιν ἑτέραν τοῖς σώμασι μεταπεσόντες.

[42] [1] Ὡς δ’ εἰς τὴν Φαρσαλίαν ἐμβαλόντες ἀμφότεροι κατεστρατοπέδευσαν, ὁ μὲν Πομπήϊος αὖθις εἰς τὸν ἀρχαῖον ἀνεκρούετο λογισμὸν τὴν γνώμην, ἔτι καὶ φασμάτων οὐκ αἰσίων προσγενομένων καὶ καθ’ ὕπνον ὄψεως· ἐδόκει γὰρ ἑαυτὸν ὁρᾶν ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ κροτούμενον ὑπὸ [2] Ῥωμαίων. οἱ δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν οὕτω θρασεῖς ἦσαν καὶ τὸ νίκημα ταῖς ἐλπίσι προειληφότες, ὥστε φιλονικεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς Καίσαρος ἀρχιερωσύνης Δομίτιον καὶ Σπινθῆρα καὶ Σκιπίωνα διαμιλλωμένους ἀλλήλοις, πέμπειν δὲ πολλοὺς εἰς Ῥώμην, μισθουμένους καὶ προκαταλαμβάνοντας οἰκίας ὑπατεύουσι καὶ στρατηγοῦσιν ἐπιτηδείους, ὡς [3] εὐθὺς ἄρξοντες μετὰ τὸν πόλεμον. μάλιστα δ’ ἐσφάδαζον οἱ ἱππεῖς ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, ἠσκημένοι περιττῶς ὅπλων λαμπρότησι καὶ τροφαῖς ἵππων καὶ κάλλεσι σωμάτων, μέγα φρονοῦντες καὶ διὰ τὸ πλῆθος, ἑπτακισχίλιοι πρὸς [4] χιλίους τοὺς Καίσαρος ὄντες. ἦν δὲ καὶ τὸ τῶν πεζῶν πλῆθος οὐκ ἀγχώμαλον, ἀλλὰ τετρακισμύριοι καὶ πεντακισχίλιοι παρετάττοντο δισμυρίοις καὶ δισχιλίοις.

[43] [1] Ὁ δὲ Καῖσαρ τοὺς στρατιώτας συναγαγών, καὶ προειπὼν ὡς δύο μὲν αὐτῷ τάγματα Κορνιφίκιος ἄγων ἐγγύς ἐστιν, ἄλλαι δὲ πεντεκαίδεκα σπεῖραι μετὰ Καληνοῦ κάθηνται περὶ Μέγαρα καὶ Ἀθήνας, ἠρώτησεν εἴτε βούλονται περιμένειν ἐκείνους, εἴτ’ αὐτοὶ διακινδυνεῦσαι [2] καθ’ ἑαυτούς. οἱ δ’ ἀνεβόησαν δεόμενοι μὴ περιμένειν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὅπως τάχιστα συνίασιν εἰς χεῖρας τοῖς [3] πολεμίοις τεχνάζεσθαι καὶ στρατηγεῖν. ποιουμένῳ δὲ καθαρμὸν αὐτῷ τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ θύσαντι τὸ πρῶτον ἱερεῖον εὐθὺς ὁ μάντις ἔφραζε, τριῶν ἡμερῶν μάχῃ κριθήσεσθαι [4] πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους. ἐρομένου δὲ τοῦ Καίσαρος, εἰ καὶ περὶ τοῦ τέλους ἐνορᾷ τι τοῖς ἱεροῖς εὔσημον, αὐτὸς ἂν ἔφη σὺ τοῦτο βέλτιον ὑποκρίναιο σαυτῷ· μεγάλην γὰρ οἱ θεοὶ μεταβολὴν καὶ μετάπτωσιν ἐπὶ τὰ ἐναντία τῶν καθεστώτων δηλοῦσιν, ὥστ’ εἰ μὲν εὖ πράττειν ἡγῇ σεαυτὸν ἐπὶ τῷ παρόντι, τὴν χείρονα προσδόκα [5] τύχην· εἰ δὲ κακῶς, τὴν ἀμείνονα. τῇ δὲ πρὸ τῆς μάχης νυκτὶ τὰς φυλακὰς ἐφοδεύοντος αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸ μεσονύκτιον, ὤφθη λαμπὰς οὐρανίου πυρός, ἣν ὑπερενεχθεῖσαν τὸ Καίσαρος στρατόπεδον λαμπρὰν καὶ φλογώδη [6] γενομένην ἔδοξεν εἰς τὸ Πομπηΐου καταπεσεῖν. ἑωθινῆς δὲ φυλακῆς καὶ πανικὸν τάραχον ᾔσθοντο γιγνόμενον παρὰ [7] τοῖς πολεμίοις. οὐ μὴν μαχεῖσθαί γε κατ’ ἐκείνην προσεδόκα τὴν ἡμέραν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐπὶ Σκοτούσσης ὁδεύσων ἀνεζεύγνυεν.

[44] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν σκηνῶν ἤδη καταλελυμένων οἱ σκοποὶ προσίππευσαν αὐτῷ, τοὺς πολεμίους ἐπὶ μάχῃ καταβαίνειν ἀπαγγέλλοντες, περιχαρὴς γενόμενος καὶ προσευξάμενος τοῖς θεοῖς, παρέταττε τὴν φάλαγγα, τὴν τάξιν τριπλῆν [2] ποιῶν. καὶ τοῖς μὲν μέσοις ἐπέστησε Καλβῖνον Δομίτιον, τῶν δὲ κεράτων τὸ μὲν εἶχεν Ἀντώνιος, αὐτὸς δὲ τὸ δεξιόν, [3] ἐν τῷ δεκάτῳ τάγματι μέλλων μάχεσθαι. κατὰ τοῦτο δὲ τοὺς τῶν πολεμίων ἱππεῖς ἀντιταττομένους ὁρῶν, καὶ δεδοικὼς τὴν λαμπρότητα καὶ τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῶν, ἀπὸ τῆς ἐσχάτης τάξεως ἀδήλως ἐκέλευσε περιελθεῖν πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἓξ σπείρας καὶ κατόπιν ἔστησε τοῦ δεξιοῦ, διδάξας ἃ χρὴ ποιεῖν ὅταν οἱ τῶν πολεμίων ἱππεῖς προσφέρωνται.

[4] Πομπήϊος δὲ τὸ μὲν αὐτὸς εἶχε τῶν κεράτων, τὸ δ’ εὐώνυμον Δομίτιος, τοῦ δὲ μέσου Σκιπίων ἦρχεν ὁ [5] πενθερός. οἱ δ’ ἱππεῖς ἅπαντες ἐπὶ τὸ ἀριστερὸν ἔβρισαν, ὡς τὸ δεξιὸν κυκλωσόμενοι τῶν πολεμίων καὶ λαμπρὰν [6] περὶ αὐτὸν τὸν ἡγεμόνα ποιησόμενοι τροπήν· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἀνθέξειν βάθος ὁπλιτικῆς φάλαγγος, ἀλλὰ συντρίψεσθαι καὶ καταρράξεσθαι πάντα τοῖς ἐναντίοις ἐπιβολῆς ἅμα τοσούτων ἱππέων γενομένης.

[7] Ἐπεὶ δὲ σημαίνειν ἔμελλον ἀμφότεροι τὴν ἔφοδον, Πομπήϊος μὲν ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ὁπλίτας ἑστῶτας ἐν προβολῇ καὶ μένοντας ἀραρότως δέχεσθαι τὴν ἐπιδρομὴν τῶν [8] πολεμίων, μέχρι ἂν ὑσσοῦ βολῆς ἐντὸς γένωνται. Καῖσαρ δὲ καὶ περὶ τοῦτο διαμαρτεῖν φησιν αὐτόν (b. c. 3, 92, 4. 5), ἀγνοήσαντα τὴν μετὰ δρόμου καὶ φορᾶς ἐν ἀρχῇ γινομένην σύρραξιν, ὡς ἔν τε ταῖς πληγαῖς βίαν προστίθησι, καὶ συνεκκαίει τὸν θυμὸν ἐκ ‹τοῦ ἀ›παντᾶν ἀναρριπιζόμενον.

[9] Αὐτὸς δὲ κινεῖν τὴν φάλαγγα μέλλων καὶ προϊὼν ἐπ’ ἔργον ἤδη, πρῶτον ὁρᾷ τῶν ταξιάρχων ἄνδρα πιστὸν αὐτῷ καὶ πολέμων ἔμπειρον, ἐπιθαρσύνοντα τοὺς ὑφ’ [10] αὑτῷ καὶ προκαλούμενον εἰς ἅμιλλαν ἀλκῆς. τοῦτον ὀνομαστὶ προσαγορεύσας, τί ἐλπίζομεν εἶπεν ὦ Γάϊε Κρασσίνιε, καὶ πῶς [τι] θάρσους ἔχομεν; ὁ δὲ Κρασσίνιος ἐκτείνας τὴν δεξιὰν καὶ μέγα βοήσας, νικήσομεν ἔφη λαμπρῶς ὦ Καῖσαρ· ἐμὲ δ’ ἢ ζῶντα τήμερον ἢ [11] τεθνηκότα ἐπαινέσεις. ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν πρῶτος ἐμβάλλει τοῖς πολεμίοις δρόμῳ, συνεπισπασάμενος τοὺς περὶ ἑαυτὸν [12] ἑκατὸν καὶ εἴκοσι στρατιώτας. διακόψας δὲ τοὺς πρώτους, καὶ πρόσω χωρῶν φόνῳ πολλῷ καὶ βιαζόμενος ἀνακόπτεται ξίφει πληγεὶς διὰ τοῦ στόματος, ὥστε καὶ τὴν ἀκμὴν ὑπὲρ τὸ ἰνίον ἀνασχεῖν.

[45] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τῶν πεζῶν κατὰ τὸ μέσον συρραγέντων καὶ μαχομένων, ἀπὸ τοῦ κέρατος οἱ ἱππεῖς τοῦ Πομπηΐου σοβαρῶς ἐπήλαυνον, εἰς κύκλωσιν τοῦ δεξιοῦ τὰς ἴλας [2] ἀναχεόμενοι· καὶ πρὶν ἢ προσβαλεῖν αὐτούς, ἐκτρέχουσιν αἱ σπεῖραι παρὰ Καίσαρος, οὐχ ὥσπερ εἰώθεσαν ἀκοντίσμασι χρώμενοι τοῖς ὑσσοῖς, οὐδὲ μηροὺς παίοντες ἐκ χειρὸς ἢ κνήμας τῶν πολεμίων, ἀλλὰ τῶν ὄψεων ἐφιέμενοι καὶ τὰ πρόσωπα συντιτρώσκοντες, ὑπὸ Καίσαρος δεδιδαγμένοι [3] τοῦτο ποιεῖν, ἐλπίζοντος ἄνδρας οὐ πολλὰ πολέμοις οὐδὲ τραύμασιν ὡμιληκότας, νέους δὲ καὶ κομῶντας ἐπὶ κάλλει καὶ ὥρᾳ, μάλιστα τὰς τοιαύτας πληγὰς ὑπόψεσθαι καὶ μὴ μενεῖν, τὸν ἐν τῷ παρόντι κίνδυνον ἅμα [4] καὶ τὴν αὖθις αἰσχύνην δεδοικότας. ὃ δὴ καὶ συνέβαινεν· οὐ γὰρ ἠνείχοντο τῶν ὑσσῶν ἀναφερομένων, οὐδ’ ἐτόλμων ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς τὸν σίδηρον ὁρῶντες, ἀλλ’ ἀπεστρέφοντο [5] καὶ συνεκαλύπτοντο, φειδόμενοι τῶν προσώπων· καὶ τέλος οὕτως ταράξαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐτράποντο φεύγειν, [6] αἴσχιστα λυμηνάμενοι τὸ σύμπαν. εὐθὺς γὰρ οἱ μὲν νενικηκότες τούτους ἐκυκλοῦντο τοὺς πεζοὺς καὶ κατὰ [7] νώτου προσπίπτοντες ἔκοπτον. Πομπήϊος δ’ ὡς κατεῖδεν ἀπὸ θατέρου τοὺς ἱππεῖς φυγῇ σκεδασθέντας, οὐκέτ’ ἦν ὁ αὐτὸς οὐδ’ ἐμέμνητο Πομπήϊος ὢν Μᾶγνος, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ θεοῦ μάλιστα βλαπτομένῳ τὴν γνώμην ἐοικώς [ἢ διὰ θείας ἥττης τεθαμβημένος], ἄφθογγος ᾤχετ’ ἀπιὼν ἐπὶ σκηνήν, καὶ καθεζόμενος ἐκαραδόκει τὸ μέλλον, ἄχρι οὗ τροπῆς ἁπάντων γενομένης ἐπέβαινον οἱ πολέμιοι τοῦ [8] χάρακος καὶ διεμάχοντο πρὸς τοὺς φυλάττοντας. τότε δ’ ὥσπερ ἔννους γενόμενος, καὶ ταύτην μόνην ὥς φασι φωνὴν ἀφεὶς οὐκοῦν καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν παρεμβολήν; ἀπεδύσατο μὲν τὴν ἐναγώνιον καὶ στρατηγικὴν ἐσθῆτα, φεύγοντι [9] δὲ πρέπουσαν μεταλαβὼν ὑπεξῆλθεν. ἀλλ’ οὗτος μὲν οἵαις ὕστερον χρησάμενος τύχαις, ὅπως τε παραδοὺς ἑαυτὸν τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοις ἀνδράσιν ἀνῃρέθη, δηλοῦμεν ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γράμμασιν (c. 73 sqq.).

[46] [1] Ὁ δὲ Καῖσαρ ὡς ἐν τῷ χάρακι τοῦ Πομπηΐου γενόμενος τούς τε κειμένους νεκροὺς ἤδη τῶν πολεμίων εἶδε καὶ τοὺς ἔτι κτεινομένους, εἶπεν ἄρα στενάξας· τοῦτ’ ἐβουλήθησαν, εἰς τοῦτό μ’ ἀνάγκης ὑπηγάγοντο, ἵνα Γάϊος Καῖσαρ ὁ μεγίστους πολέμους κατορθώσας, εἰ προηκάμην τὰ στρατεύματα, κἂν κατεδικάσθην. ταῦτά [2] φησι Πολλίων Ἀσίνιος (HRR II 68) τὰ ῥήματα Ῥωμαϊστὶ μὲν ἀναφθέγξασθαι τὸν Καίσαρα παρὰ τὸν τότε καιρόν, [3] Ἑλληνιστὶ δ’ ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ γεγράφθαι· τῶν δ’ ἀποθανόντων τοὺς πλείστους οἰκέτας γενέσθαι, περὶ τὴν κατάληψιν τοῦ χάρακος ἀναιρεθέντας, στρατιώτας δὲ μὴ πλείους ἑξακισχιλίων [4] πεσεῖν. τῶν δὲ ζώντων ἁλόντων κατέμειξε τοὺς πλείστους ὁ Καῖσαρ εἰς ‹τὰ ἑαυτοῦ› τάγματα· πολλοῖς δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν ἄδειαν ἔδωκεν, ὧν καὶ Βροῦτος ἦν ὁ κτείνας αὐτὸν ὕστερον, ἐφ’ ᾧ λέγεται μὴ φαινομένῳ μὲν ἀγωνιᾶσαι, σωθέντος δὲ καὶ παραγενομένου πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡσθῆναι διαφερόντως.

[47] [1] Σημείων δὲ πολλῶν γενομένων τῆς νίκης ἐπιφανέστατον [2] ἱστορεῖται τὸ περὶ Τράλλεις. ἐν γὰρ ἱερῷ Νίκης ἀνδριὰς εἱστήκει Καίσαρος, καὶ τὸ περὶ αὐτῷ χωρίον αὐτό τε στερεὸν φύσει καὶ λίθῳ σκληρῷ κατεστρωμένον ἦν ἄνωθεν· ἐκ τούτου λέγουσιν ἀνατεῖλαι φοίνικα παρὰ [3] τὴν βάσιν τοῦ ἀνδριάντος. ἐν δὲ Παταβίῳ Γάϊος Κορνήλιος, ἀνὴρ εὐδόκιμος ἐπὶ μαντικῇ, Λιβίου τοῦ συγγραφέως πολίτης καὶ γνώριμος, ἐτύγχανεν ἐπ’ οἰωνοῖς καθήμενος [4] ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν. καὶ πρῶτον μέν, ὡς Λίβιός φησι, τὸν καιρὸν ἔγνω τῆς μάχης, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας εἶπεν ὅτι καὶ δὴ περαίνεται τὸ χρῆμα καὶ συνίασιν εἰς [5] ἔργον οἱ ἄνδρες. αὖθις δὲ πρὸς τῇ θέᾳ γενόμενος καὶ τὰ σημεῖα κατιδών, ἀνήλατο μετ’ ἐνθουσιασμοῦ βοῶν· [6] νικᾷς ὦ Καῖσαρ. ἐκπλαγέντων δὲ τῶν παρατυχόντων, περιελὼν τὸν στέφανον ἀπὸ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἐνώμοτος ἔφη μὴ πρὶν ἐπιθήσεσθαι πάλιν, ἢ τῇ τέχνῃ μαρτυρῆσαι τὸ ἔργον. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὁ Λίβιος οὕτως γενέσθαι καταβεβαιοῦται.

[48] Καῖσαρ δὲ τῷ Θετταλῶν ἔθνει τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀναθεὶς νικητήριον, ἐδίωκε Πομπήϊον· ἁψάμενος δὲ τῆς Ἀσίας, Κνιδίους τε Θεοπόμπῳ τῷ συναγαγόντι τοὺς μύθους (FGrH 21 T 4) χαριζόμενος ἠλευθέρωσε, καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικοῦσι τὸ τρίτον τῶν φόρων ἀνῆκεν.

[7] εἰς δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρειαν ἐπὶ Πομπηΐῳ τεθνηκότι καταχθείς, Θεόδοτον μὲν ἀπεστράφη, τὴν Πομπηΐου κεφαλὴν προσφέροντα, τὴν δὲ σφραγῖδα δεξάμενος τοῦ ἀνδρὸς [8] κατεδάκρυσεν· ὅσοι δὲ τῶν ἑταίρων αὐτοῦ καὶ συνήθων πλανώμενοι κατὰ τὴν χώραν ἑαλώκεσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως, [9] πάντας εὐεργέτησε καὶ προσηγάγετο. τοῖς δὲ φίλοις εἰς Ῥώμην ἔγραφεν, ὅτι τῆς νίκης ἀπολαύοι τοῦτο μέγιστον καὶ ἥδιστον, τὸ σῴζειν τινὰς ἀεὶ τῶν πεπολεμηκότων πολιτῶν αὐτῷ.

[10] Τὸν δ’ αὐτόθι πόλεμον οἱ μὲν οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον, ἀλλ’ ἔρωτι Κλεοπάτρας ἄδοξον αὐτῷ καὶ κινδυνώδη γενέσθαι λέγουσιν, οἱ δὲ τοὺς βασιλικοὺς αἰτιῶνται, καὶ μάλιστα τὸν εὐνοῦχον Ποθεινόν, ὃς πλεῖστον δυνάμενος, καὶ Πομπήϊον μὲν ἀνῃρηκὼς ἔναγχος, ἐκβεβληκὼς δὲ Κλεοπάτραν, [11] κρύφα μὲν ἐπεβούλευε τῷ Καίσαρι - καὶ διὰ τοῦτό φασιν αὐτὸν ἀρξάμενον ἔκτοτε διανυκτερεύειν ἐν τοῖς πότοις ἕνεκα φυλακῆς τοῦ σώματος - , φανερῶς δ’ οὐκ ἦν ἀνεκτός, ἐπίφθονα πολλὰ καὶ πρὸς ὕβριν εἰς τὸν [12] Καίσαρα λέγων καὶ πράττων. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ στρατιώτας τὸν κάκιστον μετρουμένους καὶ παλαιότατον σῖτον ἐκέλευσεν ἀνέχεσθαι καὶ στέργειν ἐσθίοντας τὰ ἀλλότρια, πρὸς δὲ τὰ δεῖπνα σκεύεσιν ἐχρῆτο ξυλίνοις καὶ κεραμεοῖς, ὡς τὰ χρυσᾶ καὶ ἀργυρᾶ πάντα Καίσαρος ἔχοντος εἴς τι [13] χρέος. ὤφειλε γὰρ ὁ τοῦ βασιλεύοντος τότε πατὴρ Καίσαρι χιλίας ἑπτακοσίας πεντήκοντα μυριάδας, ὧν τὰς μὲν ἄλλας ἀνῆκε τοῖς παισὶν αὐτοῦ πρότερον ὁ Καῖσαρ, τὰς δὲ χιλίας ἠξίου τότε λαβὼν διαθρέψαι τὸ στράτευμα.

[14] τοῦ δὲ Ποθεινοῦ νῦν μὲν αὐτὸν ἀπιέναι καὶ τῶν μεγάλων ἔχεσθαι πραγμάτων κελεύοντος, ὕστερον δὲ κομιεῖσθαι μετὰ χάριτος, εἰπὼν ὡς Αἰγυπτίων ἐλάχιστα δέοιτο συμβούλων, κρύφα τὴν Κλεοπάτραν ἀπὸ τῆς χώρας μετεπέμπετο.

[49] [1] Κἀκείνη παραλαβοῦσα τῶν φίλων Ἀπολλόδωρον τὸν Σικελιώτην μόνον, εἰς ἀκάτιον μικρὸν ἐμβᾶσα, τοῖς [2] μὲν βασιλείοις προσέσχεν ἤδη συσκοτάζοντος· ἀπόρου δὲ τοῦ λαθεῖν ὄντος ἄλλως, ἡ μὲν εἰς στρωματόδεσμον ἐνδῦσα προτείνει μακρὰν ἑαυτήν, ὁ δ’ Ἀπολλόδωρος ἱμάντι συνδήσας τὸν στρωματόδεσμον εἰσκομίζει διὰ [3] θυρῶν πρὸς τὸν Καίσαρα. καὶ τούτῳ τε πρώτῳ λέγεται τῷ τεχνήματι τῆς Κλεοπάτρας ἁλῶναι λαμυρᾶς φανείσης, καὶ τῆς ἄλλης ὁμιλίας καὶ χάριτος ἥττων γενόμενος, διαλλάξαι [4] πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν ὡς συμβασιλεύσουσαν. ἔπειτα δ’ ἐπὶ ταῖς διαλλαγαῖς ἑστιωμένων ἁπάντων, οἰκέτης Καίσαρος κουρεύς, διὰ δειλίαν ᾗ πάντας ἀνθρώπους ὑπερέβαλεν οὐδὲν ἐῶν ἀνεξέταστον, ἀλλ’ ὠτακουστῶν καὶ πολυπραγμονῶν, συνῆκεν ἐπιβουλὴν Καίσαρι πραττομένην ὑπ’ Ἀχιλλᾶ [5] τοῦ στρατηγοῦ καὶ Ποθεινοῦ τοῦ εὐνούχου. φωράσας δ’ ὁ Καῖσαρ, φρουρὰν μὲν περιέστησε τῷ ἀνδρῶνι, τὸν δὲ Ποθεινὸν ἀνεῖλεν· ὁ δ’ Ἀχιλλᾶς φυγὼν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον περιΐστησιν αὐτῷ βαρὺν καὶ δυσμεταχείριστον πόλεμον, [6] ὀλιγοστῷ τοσαύτην ἀμυνομένῳ πόλιν καὶ δύναμιν. ἐν ᾧ πρῶτον μὲν ἐκινδύνευσεν ὕδατος ἀποκλεισθείς· αἱ γὰρ διώρυχες ἀπῳκοδομήθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων· δεύτερον δὲ περικοπτόμενος τὸν στόλον, ἠναγκάσθη διὰ πυρὸς ἀπώσασθαι τὸν κίνδυνον, ὃ καὶ τὴν μεγάλην βιβλιοθήκην ἐκ [7] τῶν νεωρίων ἐπινεμόμενον διέφθειρε· τρίτον δὲ περὶ τῇ Φάρῳ μάχης συνεστώσης, κατεπήδησε μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ χώματος εἰς ἀκάτιον καὶ παρεβοήθει τοῖς ἀγωνιζομένοις, ἐπιπλεόντων δὲ πολλαχόθεν αὐτῷ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων, ῥίψας ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ἀπενήξατο μόλις καὶ χαλεπῶς.

[8] ὅτε καὶ λέγεται βιβλίδια κρατῶν πολλὰ μὴ προέσθαι βαλλόμενος καὶ βαπτιζόμενος, ἀλλ’ ἀνέχων ὑπὲρ τῆς θαλάσσης τὰ βιβλίδια, τῇ ἑτέρᾳ χειρὶ νήχεσθαι· τὸ δ’ [9] ἀκάτιον εὐθὺς ἐβυθίσθη. τέλος δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ἀποχωρήσαντος, ἐπελθὼν καὶ συνάψας μάχην ἐνίκησε, πολλῶν πεσόντων αὐτοῦ τε τοῦ βασιλέως [10] ἀφανοῦς γενομένου. καταλιπὼν δὲ τὴν Κλεοπάτραν βασιλεύουσαν Αἰγύπτου καὶ μικρὸν ὕστερον ἐξ αὐτοῦ τεκοῦσαν υἱόν, ὃν Ἀλεξανδρεῖς Καισαρίωνα προσηγόρευον, ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ Συρίας.

[50] [1] Κἀκεῖθεν ἐπιὼν τὴν Ἀσίαν, ἐπυνθάνετο Δομίτιον μὲν ὑπὸ Φαρνάκου τοῦ Μιθριδάτου παιδὸς ἡττημένον ἐκ Πόντου πεφευγέναι σὺν ὀλίγοις, Φαρνάκην δὲ τῇ νίκῃ χρώμενον ἀπλήστως, καὶ Βιθυνίαν ἔχοντα καὶ Καππαδοκίαν, Ἀρμενίας ἐφίεσθαι τῆς μικρᾶς καλουμένης, καὶ πάντας ἀνιστάναι τοὺς ταύτῃ βασιλεῖς καὶ τετράρχας.

[2] εὐθὺς οὖν ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνδρα τρισὶν ἤλαυνε τάγμασι, καὶ περὶ πόλιν Ζῆλαν μάχην μεγάλην συνάψας αὐτὸν μὲν ἐξέβαλε τοῦ Πόντου φεύγοντα, τὴν δὲ στρατιὰν [3] ἄρδην ἀνεῖλε· καὶ τῆς μάχης ταύτης τὴν ὀξύτητα καὶ τὸ τάχος ἀναγγέλλων εἰς Ῥώμην πρός τινα τῶν φίλων Μάτιον ἔγραψε τρεῖς λέξεις· ἦλθον, εἶδον, ἐνίκησα.

[4] Ῥωμαϊστὶ δ’ αἱ λέξεις, εἰς ὅμοιον ἀπολήγουσαι σχῆμα ῥήματος, οὐκ ἀπίθανον τὴν βραχυλογίαν ἔχουσιν.

[51] [1] Ἐκ τούτου διαβαλὼν εἰς Ἰταλίαν ἀνέβαινεν εἰς Ῥώμην, τοῦ μὲν ἐνιαυτοῦ καταστρέφοντος εἰς ὃν ᾕρητο δικτάτωρ τὸ δεύτερον, οὐδέποτε πρότερον τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐκείνης ἐνιαυσίου γενομένης· εἰς δὲ τοὐπιὸν ‹ἔτος› ὕπατος [2] ἀπεδείχθη. καὶ κακῶς ἤκουσεν, ὅτι τῶν στρατιωτῶν στασιασάντων καὶ δύο στρατηγικοὺς ἄνδρας ἀνελόντων, Κοσκώνιον καὶ Γάλβαν, ἐπετίμησε μὲν αὐτοῖς τοσοῦτον ὅσον ἀντὶ στρατιωτῶν πολίτας προσαγορεῦσαι, χιλίας δὲ διένειμεν ἑκάστῳ δραχμὰς καὶ χώραν τῆς Ἰταλίας ἀπεκλήρωσε [3] πολλήν. ἦν δ’ αὐτοῦ διαβολὴ καὶ ἡ Δολοβέλλα μανία, καὶ ἡ Ματίου φιλαργυρία, καὶ μεθύων Ἀντώνιος καὶ [Κορφίνιος] τὴν Πομπηΐου σκευωρούμενος οἰκίαν καὶ μετοικοδομῶν, ὡς ἱκανὴν οὐκ οὖσαν. ἐπὶ τούτοις γὰρ [4] ἐδυσφόρουν Ῥωμαῖοι· Καῖσαρ δὲ διὰ τὴν ὑπόθεσιν τῆς πολιτείας οὐκ ἀγνοῶν οὐδὲ βουλόμενος ἠναγκάζετο χρῆσθαι τοῖς ὑπουργοῦσι.

[52] [1] Τῶν δὲ περὶ Κάτωνα καὶ Σκιπίωνα μετὰ τὴν ἐν Φαρσάλῳ μάχην εἰς Λιβύην φυγόντων κἀκεῖ, τοῦ βασιλέως Ἰόβα βοηθοῦντος αὐτοῖς, ἠθροικότων δυνάμεις ἀξιολόγους, ἔγνω στρατεύειν ὁ Καῖσαρ ἐπ’ αὐτούς· [2] καὶ περὶ τροπὰς χειμερινὰς διαβὰς εἰς Σικελίαν, καὶ βουλόμενος εὐθὺς ἀποκόψαι τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἡγεμόνων ἅπασαν ἐλπίδα μελλήσεως καὶ διατριβῆς, ἐπὶ τοῦ κλύσματος ἔπηξε τὴν ἑαυτοῦ σκηνήν, καὶ γενομένου πνεύματος ἐμβὰς ἀνήχθη μετὰ τρισχιλίων πεζῶν καὶ ἱππέων [3] ὀλίγων. ἀποβιβάσας δὲ τούτους καὶ λαθών, ἀνήχθη πάλιν, ὑπὲρ τῆς μείζονος ὀρρωδῶν δυνάμεως, καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν οὖσιν ἤδη προστυχών, κατήγαγεν ἅπαντας εἰς [4] τὸ στρατόπεδον. πυνθανόμενος δὲ χρησμῷ τινι παλαιῷ θαρρεῖν τοὺς πολεμίους, ὡς προσῆκον ἀεὶ τῷ Σκιπιώνων γένει κρατεῖν ἐν Λιβύῃ, χαλεπὸν εἰπεῖν εἴτε φλαυρίζων ἐν παιδιᾷ τινι τὸν Σκιπίωνα, στρατηγοῦντα τῶν [5] πολεμίων, εἴτε καὶ σπουδῇ τὸν οἰωνὸν οἰκειούμενος, ἦν γὰρ καὶ παρ’ αὐτῷ τις ἄνθρωπος, ἄλλως μὲν εὐκαταφρόνητος καὶ παρημελημένος, οἰκίας δὲ τῆς Ἀφρικανῶν, Σκιπίων ἐκαλεῖτο Σαλλουΐτων, τοῦτον ἐν ταῖς μάχαις προέταττεν ὥσπερ ἡγεμόνα τῆς στρατιᾶς, ἀναγκαζόμενος πολλάκις ἐξάπτεσθαι τῶν πολεμίων καὶ φιλομαχεῖν.

[6] ἦν γὰρ οὔτε σῖτος τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἄφθονος οὔθ’ ὑποζυγίοις χιλός, ἀλλὰ βρύοις ἠναγκάζοντο θαλαττίοις, ἀποπλυθείσης τῆς ἁλμυρίδος, ὀλίγην ἄγρωστιν ὥσπερ [7] ἥδυσμα παραμειγνύντες, ἐπάγειν τοὺς ἵππους. οἱ γὰρ Νομάδες, ἐπιφαινόμενοι πολλοὶ καὶ ταχεῖς ἑκάστοτε, κατεῖχον τὴν χώραν· καί ποτε τῶν Καίσαρος ἱππέων σχολὴν ἀγόντων (ἔτυχε γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἀνὴρ Λίβυς ἐπιδεικνύμενος ὄρχησιν ἅμα καὶ μοναυλῶν θαύματος ἀξίως), οἱ μὲν ἐκάθηντο τερπόμενοι, τοῖς παισὶ τοὺς ἵππους ἐπιτρέψαντες, ἐξαίφνης δὲ περιελθόντες ἐμβάλλουσιν οἱ πολέμιοι, καὶ τοὺς μὲν αὐτοῦ κτείνουσι, τοῖς δ’ εἰς τὸ [8] στρατόπεδον προτροπάδην ἐλαυνομένοις συνεισέπεσον. εἰ δὲ μὴ Καῖσαρ αὐτός, ἅμα δὲ Καίσαρι Πολλίων Ἀσίνιος, βοηθοῦντες ἐκ τοῦ χάρακος ἔσχον τὴν φυγήν, διεπέπρακτ’ [9] ἂν ὁ πόλεμος. ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ καθ’ ἑτέραν μάχην ἐπλεονέκτησαν οἱ πολέμιοι συμπλοκῆς γενομένης, ἐν ᾗ Καῖσαρ τὸν ἀετοφόρον φεύγοντα λέγεται κατασχὼν ἐκ τοῦ αὐχένος ἀναστρέψαι καὶ εἰπεῖν· ἐνταῦθ’ εἰσιν οἱ πολέμιοι.

[53] [1] Τούτοις μέντοι τοῖς προτερήμασιν ἐπήρθη Σκιπίων μάχῃ κριθῆναι, καὶ καταλιπὼν χωρὶς μὲν Ἀφράνιον, χωρὶς δ’ Ἰόβαν, δι’ ὀλίγου στρατοπεδεύοντας, αὐτὸς ἐτείχιζεν ὑπὲρ λίμνης ἔρυμα τῷ στρατοπέδῳ περὶ πόλιν Θάψον, ὡς εἴη πᾶσιν ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην ὁρμητήριον [2] καὶ καταφυγή. πονουμένου δ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ ταῦτα Καῖσαρ ὑλώδεις τόπους καὶ προσβολὰς ἀφράστους ἔχοντας ἀμηχάνῳ τάχει διελθών, τοὺς μὲν ἐκυκλοῦτο, τοῖς δὲ [3] προσέβαλλε κατὰ στόμα. τρεψάμενος δὲ τούτους, ἐχρῆτο τῷ καιρῷ καὶ τῇ ῥύμῃ τῆς τύχης, ὑφ’ ἧς αὐτοβοεὶ μὲν ᾕρει τὸ Ἀφρανίου στρατόπεδον, αὐτοβοεὶ δὲ φεύγοντος [4] Ἰόβα διεπόρθει τὸ τῶν Νομάδων· ἡμέρας δὲ μιᾶς μέρει μικρῷ τριῶν στρατοπέδων ἐγκρατὴς γεγονὼς καὶ πεντακισμυρίους τῶν πολεμίων ἀνῃρηκώς, οὐδὲ πεντήκοντα [5] τῶν ἰδίων ἀπέβαλεν. οἱ μὲν ‹οὖν› ταῦτα περὶ τῆς μάχης ἐκείνης ἀναγγέλλουσιν· οἱ δ’ οὔ φασιν αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ ἔργῳ γενέσθαι, συντάττοντος δὲ τὴν στρατιὰν καὶ διακοσμοῦντος [6] ἅψασθαι τὸ σύνηθες νόσημα· τὸν δ’ εὐθὺς αἰσθόμενον ἀρχομένου, πρὶν ἐκταράττεσθαι καὶ καταλαμβάνεσθαι παντάπασιν ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους τὴν αἴσθησιν ἤδη σειομένην, εἴς τινα τῶν πλησίον πύργων κομισθῆναι [7] καὶ διαγαγεῖν ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ. τῶν δὲ πεφευγότων ἐκ τῆς μάχης ὑπατικῶν καὶ στρατηγικῶν ἀνδρῶν οἱ μὲν ἑαυτοὺς διέφθειραν ἁλισκόμενοι, συχνοὺς δὲ Καῖσαρ ἔκτεινεν ἁλόντας.

[54] [1] Κάτωνα δὲ λαβεῖν ζῶντα φιλοτιμούμενος, ἔσπευδε πρὸς Ἰτύκην· ἐκείνην γὰρ παραφυλάττων τὴν πόλιν, [2] οὐ μετέσχε τοῦ ἀγῶνος. πυθόμενος δ’ ὡς ἑαυτὸν ὁ ἀνὴρ διεργάσαιτο, δῆλος μὲν ἦν δηχθείς, ἐφ’ ᾧ δ’ ἄδηλον· εἶπε δ’ οὖν· ὦ Κάτων, φθονῶ σοι τοῦ θανάτου· καὶ γὰρ [3] σὺ ἐμοὶ τῆς ‹σῆς› σωτηρίας ἐφθόνησας. ὁ μὲν οὖν μετὰ ταῦτα γραφεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πρὸς Κάτωνα τεθνεῶτα λόγος οὐ δοκεῖ πρᾴως ἔχοντος οὐδ’ εὐδιαλλάκτως σημεῖον εἶναι· πῶς γὰρ ἂν ἐφείσατο ζῶντος, εἰς ἀναίσθητον ἐκχέας [4] ὀργὴν τοσαύτην; τῇ δὲ πρὸς Κικέρωνα καὶ Βροῦτον αὐτοῦ καὶ μυρίους ἄλλους τῶν πεπολεμηκότων ἐπιεικείᾳ τεκμαίρονται καὶ τὸν λόγον ἐκεῖνον οὐκ ἐξ ἀπεχθείας, ἀλλὰ φιλοτιμίᾳ πολιτικῇ συντετάχθαι διὰ τοιαύτην [5] αἰτίαν. ἔγραψε Κικέρων ἐγκώμιον Κάτωνος, ὄνομα τῷ λόγῳ θέμενος Κάτωνα· καὶ πολλοῖς ὁ λόγος ἦν διὰ σπουδῆς, ὡς εἰκός, ὑπὸ τοῦ δεινοτάτου τῶν ῥητόρων εἰς [6] τὴν καλλίστην πεποιημένος ὑπόθεσιν. τοῦτ’ ἠνία Καίσαρα, κατηγορίαν αὑτοῦ νομίζοντα τὸν τοῦ τεθνηκότος δι’ αὐτὸν ἔπαινον. ἔγραψεν οὖν πολλάς τινας κατὰ τοῦ Κάτωνος αἰτίας συναγαγών· τὸ δὲ βιβλίον Ἀντικάτων ἐπιγέγραπται, καὶ σπουδαστὰς ἔχει τῶν λόγων ἑκάτερος διὰ Καίσαρα καὶ Κάτωνα πολλούς.

[55] [1] Ἀλλὰ γὰρ ὡς ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς Ῥώμην ἀπὸ Λιβύης, πρῶτον μὲν ὑπὲρ τῆς νίκης ἐμεγαληγόρησε πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, ὡς τοσαύτην κεχειρωμένος χώραν, ὅση παρέξει καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον σίτου μὲν εἴκοσι μυριάδας Ἀττικῶν μεδίμνων, ἐλαίου δὲ λιτρῶν μυριάδας [2] τριακοσίας. ἔπειτα θριάμβους κατήγαγε ‹τὸν Κελτικόν›, τὸν Αἰγυπτιακόν, τὸν Ποντικόν, τὸν Λιβυκόν, οὐκ ἀπὸ [3] Σκιπίωνος, ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ Ἰόβα δῆθεν τοῦ βασιλέως. τότε καὶ Ἰόβας, υἱὸς ὢν ἐκείνου κομιδῇ νήπιος, ἐν τῷ θριάμβῳ παρήχθη, μακαριωτάτην ἁλοὺς ἅλωσιν, ‹ὡς› ἐκ βαρβάρου καὶ Νομάδος Ἑλλήνων τοῖς πολυμαθεστάτοις ἐναρίθμιος γενέσθαι συγγραφεῦσι.

[4] Μετὰ δὲ τοὺς θριάμβους ‹τοῖς› στρατιώταις τε μεγάλας δωρεὰς ἐδίδου, καὶ τὸν δῆμον ἀνελάμβανεν ἑστιάσεσι καὶ θέαις, ἑστιάσας μὲν ἐν δισμυρίοις καὶ δισχιλίοις τρικλίνοις ὁμοῦ σύμπαντας, θέας δὲ καὶ μονομάχων καὶ ναυμάχων ἀνδρῶν παρασχὼν ἐπὶ τῇ θυγατρὶ Ἰουλίᾳ πάλαι τεθνεώσῃ.

[5] Μετὰ δὲ τὰς θέας γενομένων τιμήσεων, ἀντὶ τῶν προτέρων δυεῖν καὶ τριάκοντα μυριάδων ἐξητάσθησαν αἱ [6] πᾶσαι πεντεκαίδεκα. τηλικαύτην ἡ στάσις ἀπειργάσατο [συμ]φθορὰν καὶ τοσοῦτον ἀπανάλωσε τοῦ δήμου μέρος, ἔξω λόγου τιθεμένοις τὰ κατασχόντα τὴν ἄλλην Ἰταλίαν ἀτυχήματα καὶ τὰς ἐπαρχίας.

[56] [1] Συντελεσθέντων δὲ τούτων ὕπατος ἀποδειχθεὶς τὸ τέταρτον, εἰς Ἰβηρίαν ἐστράτευσεν ἐπὶ τοὺς Πομπηΐου παῖδας, νέους μὲν ὄντας ἔτι, θαυμαστὴν δὲ τῷ πλήθει στρατιὰν συνειλοχότας καὶ τόλμαν ἀποδεικνυμένους ἀξιόχρεων πρὸς ἡγεμονίαν, ὥστε κίνδυνον τῷ Καίσαρι [2] περιστῆσαι τὸν ἔσχατον. ἡ δὲ μεγάλη μάχη περὶ πόλιν συνέστη Μοῦνδαν, ἐν ᾗ Καῖσαρ ἐκθλιβομένους ὁρῶν τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ καὶ κακῶς ἀντέχοντας, ἐβόα διὰ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τῶν τάξεων περιθέων, εἰ μηδὲν αἰδοῦνται, λαβόντας [3] αὐτὸν ἐγχειρίσαι τοῖς παιδαρίοις. μόλις δὲ προθυμίᾳ πολλῇ τοὺς πολεμίους ὠσάμενος, ἐκείνων μὲν ὑπὲρ τρισμυρίους διέφθειρε, τῶν δ’ ἑαυτοῦ χιλίους ἀπώλεσε [4] τοὺς ἀρίστους. ἀπιὼν δὲ μετὰ τὴν μάχην πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἶπεν, ὡς πολλάκις μὲν ἀγωνίσαιτο περὶ νίκης, νῦν δὲ [5] πρῶτον περὶ ψυχῆς. ταύτην τὴν μάχην ἐνίκησε τῇ τῶν Διονυσίων ἑορτῇ, καθ’ ἣν λέγεται καὶ Πομπήϊος Μᾶγνος ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἐξελθεῖν· διὰ μέσου δὲ χρόνος ἐνιαυτῶν [6] τεσσάρων διῆλθε. τῶν δὲ Πομπηΐου παίδων ὁ μὲν νεώτερος διέφυγε, τοῦ δὲ πρεσβυτέρου μεθ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας Δείδιος ἀνήνεγκε τὴν κεφαλήν.

[7] Τοῦτον ἔσχατον Καῖσαρ ἐπολέμησε τὸν πόλεμον· ὁ δ’ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καταχθεὶς θρίαμβος ὡς οὐδὲν ἄλλο Ῥωμαίους [8] ἠνίασεν. οὐ γὰρ ἀλλοφύλους ἡγεμόνας οὐδὲ βαρβάρους βασιλεῖς κατηγωνισμένον, ἀνδρὸς δὲ Ῥωμαίων κρατίστου τύχαις κεχρημένου παῖδας καὶ γένος ἄρδην ἀνῃρηκότα ταῖς τῆς πατρίδος ἐπιπομπεύειν συμφοραῖς οὐ καλῶς [9] εἶχεν, ἀγαλλόμενον ἐπὶ τούτοις ὧν μία καὶ πρὸς θεοὺς καὶ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ἀπολογία τὸ μετ’ ἀνάγκης πεπρᾶχθαι, καὶ ταῦτα πρότερον μήτ’ ἄγγελον μήτε γράμματα δημοσίᾳ πέμψαντα περὶ νίκης ἀπὸ τῶν ἐμφυλίων πολέμων, ἀλλ’ ἀπωσάμενον αἰσχύνῃ τὴν δόξαν.

[57] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὴν τύχην τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐγκεκλικότες, καὶ δεδεγμένοι τὸν χαλινόν, καὶ τῶν ἐμφυλίων πολέμων καὶ κακῶν ἀναπνοὴν ἡγούμενοι τὴν μοναρχίαν, δικτάτορα μὲν αὐτὸν ἀπέδειξαν διὰ βίου· τοῦτο δ’ ἦν ὁμολογουμένη [μὲν] τυραννίς, τῷ ἀνυπευθύνῳ [2] τῆς μοναρχίας τὸ ἀκατάπαυστον προσλαβούσης· τιμὰς δὲ τὰς πρώτας Κικέρωνος εἰς τὴν βουλὴν γράψαντος, ὧν ἁμῶς γέ πως ἀνθρώπινον ἦν τὸ μέγεθος, ἕτεροι προστιθέντες ὑπερβολὰς καὶ διαμιλλώμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἐξειργάσαντο καὶ τοῖς πρᾳοτάτοις ἐπαχθῆ τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ λυπηρὸν γενέσθαι διὰ τὸν ὄγκον καὶ τὴν ἀτοπίαν τῶν [3] ψηφιζομένων, οἷς οὐδὲν ἧττον οἴονται συναγωνίσασθαι τῶν κολακευόντων Καίσαρα τοὺς μισοῦντας, ὅπως ὅτι πλείστας κατ’ αὐτοῦ προφάσεις ἔχωσι καὶ μετὰ μεγίστων [4] ἐγκλημάτων ἐπιχειρεῖν δοκῶσιν. ἐπεὶ τά γ’ ἄλλα, τῶν ἐμφυλίων αὐτῷ πολέμων πέρας ἐσχηκότων, ἀνέγκλητον ‹ἑαυτὸν› παρεῖχε· καὶ τό γε τῆς Ἐπιεικείας ἱερὸν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου δοκοῦσι χαριστήριον ἐπὶ τῇ πρᾳότητι ψηφίσασθαι.

[5] καὶ γὰρ ἀφῆκε πολλοὺς τῶν πεπολεμηκότων πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐνίοις δὲ καὶ ἀρχὰς καὶ τιμάς, ὡς Βρούτῳ καὶ Κασσίῳ, προσέθηκεν· ἐστρατήγουν γὰρ ἀμφότεροι· [6] καὶ τὰς Πομπηΐου καταβεβλημένας εἰκόνας οὐ περιεῖδεν, ἀλλ’ ἀνέστησεν, ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ Κικέρων εἶπεν, ὅτι Καῖσαρ [7] τοὺς Πομπηΐου στήσας ἀνδριάντας τοὺς ἰδίους ἔπηξε. τῶν δὲ φίλων ἀξιούντων αὐτὸν δορυφορεῖσθαι καὶ πολλῶν ἐπὶ τοῦτο παρεχόντων ἑαυτούς, οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν, εἰπὼν ὡς [8] βέλτιόν ἐστιν ἅπαξ ἀποθανεῖν ἢ ἀεὶ προσδοκᾶν. τὴν δ’ εὔνοιαν ὡς κάλλιστον ἅμα καὶ βεβαιότατον ἑαυτῷ περιβαλλόμενος φυλακτήριον, αὖθις ἀνελάμβανε τὸν δῆμον ἑστιάσεσι καὶ σιτηρεσίοις, τὸ δὲ στρατιωτικὸν ἀποικίαις, ὧν ἐπιφανέσταται Καρχηδὼν καὶ Κόρινθος ἦσαν, αἷς καὶ πρότερον τὴν ἅλωσιν καὶ τότε τὴν ἀνάληψιν ἅμα καὶ κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν χρόνον ἀμφοτέραις γενέσθαι συνέτυχε.

[58] [1] Τῶν δὲ δυνατῶν τοῖς μὲν ὑπατείας καὶ στρατηγίας εἰς τοὐπιὸν ἐπηγγέλλετο, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλαις τισὶν ἐξουσίαις καὶ τιμαῖς παρεμυθεῖτο, πᾶσι δ’ ἐλπίζειν [2] ἐνεδίδου, μνηστευόμενος ἄρχειν ἑκόντων· ὡς καὶ Μαξίμου τοῦ ὑπάτου τελευτήσαντος εἰς τὴν περιοῦσαν ἔτι τῆς ἀρχῆς μίαν ἡμέραν ὕπατον ἀποδεῖξαι Κανίνιον [3] Ῥεβίλιον. πρὸς ὃν ὡς ἔοικε πολλῶν δεξιώσασθαι καὶ προπέμψαι βαδιζόντων, ὁ Κικέρων· σπεύδωμεν ἔφη, πρὶν φθάσῃ τῆς ὑπατείας ἐξελθὼν ὁ ἄνθρωπος.

[4] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ φύσει μεγαλουργὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ φιλότιμον αἱ πολλαὶ κατορθώσεις οὐ πρὸς ἀπόλαυσιν ἔτρεπον τῶν πεπονημένων, ἀλλ’ ὑπέκκαυμα καὶ θάρσος οὖσαι πρὸς τὰ μέλλοντα μειζόνων ἐνέτικτον ἐπινοίας πραγμάτων καὶ [5] καινῆς ἔρωτα δόξης, ὡς ἀποκεχρημένῳ τῇ παρούσῃ, τὸ μὲν πάθος οὐδὲν ἦν ἕτερον ἢ ζῆλος αὑτοῦ καθάπερ ἄλλου καὶ φιλονικία τις ὑπὲρ τῶν μελλόντων πρὸς τὰ πεπραγμένα, [6] παρασκευὴ δὲ καὶ γνώμη στρατεύειν μὲν ἐπὶ Πάρθους, καταστρεψαμένῳ δὲ τούτους καὶ δι’ Ὑρκανίας παρὰ τὴν Κασπίαν θάλασσαν καὶ τὸν Καύκασον ἐκπεριελθόντι τὸν Πόντον εἰς τὴν Σκυθικὴν ἐμβαλεῖν, [7] καὶ τὰ περίχωρα Γερμανοῖς καὶ Γερμανίαν αὐτὴν ἐπιδραμόντι διὰ Κελτῶν ἐπανελθεῖν εἰς Ἰταλίαν, καὶ συνάψαι τὸν κύκλον τοῦτον τῆς ἡγεμονίας τῷ πανταχόθεν [8] Ὠκεανῷ περιορισθείσης. διὰ μέσου δὲ τῆς στρατείας τόν τε Κορίνθιον Ἰσθμὸν ἐπεχείρει διασκάπτειν, †Ἀνιηνὸν ἐπὶ τούτῳ προχειρισάμενος, καὶ τὸν Τίβεριν εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῆς πόλεως ὑπολαβὼν διώρυχι βαθείᾳ καὶ περικλάσας ἐπὶ τὸ Κιρκαῖον ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν πρὸς Ταρρακίνῃ θάλατταν, ἀσφάλειαν ἅμα καὶ ῥᾳστώνην τοῖς δι’ [9] ἐμπορίας φοιτῶσιν εἰς Ῥώμην μηχανώμενος· πρὸς δὲ τούτοις τὰ μὲν ἕλη τὰ περὶ Πωμεντῖνον καὶ Σητίαν ἐκτρέψας, πεδίον ἀποδεῖξαι πολλαῖς ἐνεργὸν ἀνθρώπων [10] μυριάσι, τῇ δ’ ἔγγιστα τῆς Ῥώμης θαλάσσῃ κλεῖθρα διὰ χωμάτων ἐπαγαγών, καὶ τὰ τυφλὰ καὶ δύσορμα τῆς Ὠστιανῆς ἠϊόνος ἀνακαθηράμενος, λιμένας ἐμποιήσασθαι καὶ ναύλοχα πρὸς τοσαύτην ἀξιόπιστα ναυτιλίαν. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἐν παρασκευαῖς ἦν.

[59] [1] Ἡ δὲ τοῦ ἡμερολογίου διάθεσις καὶ διόρθωσις τῆς περὶ τὸν χρόνον ἀνωμαλίας, φιλοσοφηθεῖσα χαριέντως ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τέλος λαβοῦσα, γλαφυρωτάτην παρέσχε [2] χρείαν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐν τοῖς παλαιοῖς πάνυ χρόνοις τεταραγμέναις ἐχρῶντο Ῥωμαῖοι ταῖς τῶν μηνῶν πρὸς τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν περιόδοις, ὥστε τὰς θυσίας καὶ τὰς ἑορτὰς ὑποφερομένας κατὰ μικρὸν εἰς ἐναντίας ἐκπεπτωκέναι [3] τοῖς χρόνοις ὥρας, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τὴν τότ’ οὖσαν ἡλικίαν οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι παντάπασι τούτων ἀσυλλογίστως εἶχον, οἱ δ’ ἱερεῖς μόνοι τὸν καιρὸν εἰδότες ἐξαίφνης καὶ προῃσθημένου μηδενὸς τὸν ἐμβόλιμον [4] προσέγραφον μῆνα, Μερκηδόνιον ὀνομάζοντες· ὃν Νομᾶς ὁ βασιλεὺς πρῶτος ἐμβαλεῖν λέγεται, μικρὰν καὶ διατείνουσαν οὐ πόρρω βοήθειαν ἐξευρὼν τῆς περὶ τὰς ἀποκαταστάσεις πλημμελείας, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου [5] γέγραπται (c. 18). Καῖσαρ δὲ τοῖς ἀρίστοις τῶν φιλοσόφων καὶ μαθηματικῶν τὸ πρόβλημα προθείς, ἐκ τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἤδη μεθόδων ἔμειξεν ἰδίαν τινὰ καὶ διηκριβωμένην μᾶλλον ἐπανόρθωσιν, ᾗ χρώμενοι μέχρι νῦν Ῥωμαῖοι δοκοῦσιν ἧττον ἑτέρων σφάλλεσθαι περὶ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν.

[6] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο τοῖς βασκαίνουσι καὶ βαρυνομένοις τὴν δύναμιν αἰτίας παρεῖχε· Κικέρων γοῦν ὁ ῥήτωρ ὡς ἔοικε, φήσαντός τινος αὔριον ἐπιτελεῖν Λύραν, ναὶ εἶπεν, ἐκ διατάγματος, ὡς καὶ τοῦτο πρὸς ἀνάγκην τῶν ἀνθρώπων δεχομένων.

[60] [1] Τὸ δ’ ἐμφανὲς μάλιστα μῖσος καὶ θανατηφόρον ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὁ τῆς βασιλείας ἔρως ἐξειργάσατο, τοῖς μὲν πολλοῖς αἰτία πρώτη, τοῖς δ’ ὑπούλοις πάλαι πρόφασις [2] εὐπρεπεστάτη γενομένη. καίτοι καὶ λόγον τινὰ κατέσπειραν εἰς τὸν δῆμον οἱ ταύτην Καίσαρι τὴν τιμὴν προξενοῦντες, ὡς ἐκ γραμμάτων Σιβυλλείων ἁλώσιμα τὰ Πάρθων φαίνοιτο Ῥωμαίοις σὺν βασιλεῖ στρατευομένοις ἐπ’ [3] αὐτούς, ἄλλως ἀνέφικτ’ ὄντα· καὶ καταβαίνοντος ἐξ Ἄλβης Καίσαρος εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἐτόλμησαν αὐτὸν ἀσπάσασθαι βασιλέα· τοῦ δὲ δήμου διαταραχθέντος, ἀχθεσθεὶς ἐκεῖνος οὐκ ἔφη βασιλεύς, ἀλλὰ Καῖσαρ καλεῖσθαι, καὶ γενομένης πρὸς τοῦτο πάντων σιωπῆς, οὐ πάνυ [4] φαιδρὸς οὐδ’ εὐμενὴς παρῆλθεν. ἐν δὲ συγκλήτῳ τιμάς τινας ὑπερφυεῖς αὐτῷ ψηφισαμένων, ἔτυχε μὲν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐμβόλων καθεζόμενος, προσιόντων δὲ τῶν ὑπάτων καὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν, ἅμα δὲ καὶ τῆς βουλῆς ἁπάσης ἑπομένης, οὐχ ὑπεξαναστάς, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἰδιώταις τισὶ χρηματίζων ἀπεκρίνατο συστολῆς μᾶλλον ἢ προσθέσεως τὰς τιμὰς [5] δεῖσθαι. καὶ τοῦτ’ οὐ μόνον ἠνίασε τὴν βουλήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν δῆμον, ὡς ἐν τῇ βουλῇ τῆς πόλεως προπηλακιζομένης, καὶ μετὰ δεινῆς κατηφείας ἀπῆλθον εὐθὺς οἷς [6] ἐξῆν μὴ παραμένειν, ὥστε κἀκεῖνον ἐννοήσαντα παραχρῆμα μὲν οἴκαδε τραπέσθαι καὶ βοᾶν πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ἀπαγαγόντα τοῦ τραχήλου τὸ ἱμάτιον, ὡς ἕτοιμος εἴη τῷ βουλομένῳ τὴν σφαγὴν παρέχειν, ὕστερον δὲ προφασίζεσθαι [7] τὴν νόσον· οὐ γὰρ ἐθέλειν τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀτρεμεῖν τῶν οὕτως ἐχόντων, ὅταν ἱστάμενοι διαλέγωνται πρὸς ὄχλον, ἀλλὰ σειομένην ταχὺ καὶ περιφερομένην [8] ἰλίγγους ἐπισπᾶσθαι καὶ καταλαμβάνεσθαι. τότε δ’ οὐκ εἶχεν οὕτως, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ βουλόμενον αὐτὸν ὑπεξαναστῆναι τῇ βουλῇ λέγουσιν ὑπό του τῶν φίλων, μᾶλλον δὲ κολάκων, Κορνηλίου Βάλβου, κατασχεθῆναι φήσαντος· οὐ μεμνήσῃ Καῖσαρ ὤν, οὐδ’ ἀξιώσεις ὡς κρείττονα θεραπεύεσθαι σεαυτόν;

[61] [1] Ἐπιγίνεται τούτοις τοῖς προσκρούσμασιν ὁ τῶν δημάρχων προπηλακισμός. ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἡ τῶν Λουπερκαλίων ἑορτή, περὶ ἧς πολλοὶ γράφουσιν ὡς ποιμένων τὸ παλαιὸν εἴη, καί τι καὶ προσήκει τοῖς Ἀρκαδικοῖς Λυκαίοις.

[2] τῶν δ’ εὐγενῶν νεανίσκων καὶ ἀρχόντων πολλοὶ διαθέουσιν ἀνὰ τὴν πόλιν γυμνοί, σκύτεσι λασίοις τοὺς ἐμποδὼν ἐπὶ [3] παιδιᾷ καὶ γέλωτι παίοντες· πολλαὶ δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐν τέλει γυναικῶν ἐπίτηδες ἀπαντῶσαι παρέχουσιν ὥσπερ ἐν διδασκάλου τὼ χεῖρε ταῖς πληγαῖς, πεπεισμέναι πρὸς εὐτοκίαν κυούσαις, ἀγόνοις δὲ πρὸς κύησιν ἀγαθὸν εἶναι.

[4] ταῦτα Καῖσαρ ἐθεᾶτο, καθήμενος ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐμβόλων ἐπὶ δίφρου χρυσοῦ, θριαμβικῷ κόσμῳ κεκοσμημένος.

[5] Ἀντώνιος δὲ τῶν θεόντων τὸν ἱερὸν δρόμον εἷς ἦν· καὶ γὰρ ὑπάτευεν· ὡς οὖν εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἐνέβαλε καὶ τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῷ διέστη, φέρων διάδημα στεφάνῳ δάφνης περιπεπλεγμένον ὤρεξε τῷ Καίσαρι· καὶ γίνεται κρότος οὐ λαμπρός, [6] ἀλλ’ ὀλίγος ἐκ παρασκευῆς. ἀπωσαμένου δὲ τοῦ Καίσαρος, ἅπας ὁ δῆμος ἀνεκρότησεν· αὖθις δὲ προσφέροντος, [7] ὀλίγοι, καὶ μὴ δεξαμένου, πάλιν ἅπαντες. οὕτω δὲ τῆς πείρας ἐξελεγχομένης, Καῖσαρ μὲν ἀνίσταται, τὸν στέφανον [8] εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον ἀπενεχθῆναι κελεύσας. ὤφθησαν δ’ ἀνδριάντες αὐτοῦ διαδήμασιν ἀναδεδεμένοι βασιλικοῖς, καὶ τῶν δημάρχων δύο, Φλάουϊος καὶ Μάρυλλος, ἐπελθόντες ἀπέσπασαν, καὶ τοὺς ἀσπασαμένους βασιλέα τὸν Καίσαρα πρώτους ἐξευρόντες ἀπῆγον εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον.

[9] ὁ δὲ δῆμος εἵπετο κροτῶν καὶ Βρούτους ἀπεκάλει τοὺς ἄνδρας, ὅτι Βροῦτος ἦν ὁ καταλύσας τὴν τῶν βασιλέων διαδοχὴν καὶ τὸ κράτος εἰς βουλὴν καὶ δῆμον ἐκ μοναρχίας [10] καταστήσας. ἐπὶ τούτῳ Καῖσαρ παροξυνθείς, τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν ἀφείλετο τῶν περὶ τὸν Μάρυλλον, ἐν δὲ τῷ κατηγορεῖν αὐτῶν ἅμα καὶ τὸν δῆμον ἐφυβρίζων, πολλάκις Βρούτους τε καὶ Κυμαίους ἀπεκάλει τοὺς ἄνδρας.

[62] [1] Οὕτω δὴ τρέπονται πρὸς Μᾶρκον Βροῦτον οἱ πολλοί, γένος μὲν ἐκεῖθεν εἶναι δοκοῦντα πρὸς πατέρων, καὶ τὸ πρὸς μητρὸς δ’ ἀπὸ Σερουιλίων, οἰκίας ἑτέρας [2] ἐπιφανοῦς, γαμβρὸν δὲ καὶ ἀδελφιδοῦν Κάτωνος. τοῦτον ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ μὲν ὁρμῆσαι πρὸς κατάλυσιν τῆς μοναρχίας [3] ἤμβλυνον αἱ παρὰ Καίσαρος τιμαὶ καὶ χάριτες. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐσώθη περὶ Φάρσαλον ἀπὸ τῆς Πομπηΐου φυγῆς, οὐδὲ πολλοὺς τῶν ἐπιτηδείων ἔσωσεν ἐξαιτησάμενος, [4] ἀλλὰ καὶ πίστιν εἶχε μεγάλην παρ’ αὐτῷ. καὶ στρατηγιῶν μὲν ἐν ταῖς τότε τὴν ἐπιφανεστάτην ἔλαβεν, ὑπατεύειν δ’ ἔμελλεν εἰς τέταρτον ἔτος, ἐρίσαντος Κασσίου προτιμηθείς.

[5] λέγεται γὰρ ὁ Καῖσαρ εἰπεῖν, ὡς δικαιότερα μὲν λέγοι Κάσσιος, αὐτὸς μέντοι Βροῦτον οὐκ ἂν παρέλθοι.

[6] καί ποτε καὶ διαβαλλόντων τινῶν τὸν ἄνδρα, πραττομένης ἤδη τῆς συνωμοσίας, οὐ προσέσχεν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ σώματος τῇ χειρὶ θιγὼν ἔφη πρὸς τοὺς διαβάλλοντας· ἀναμενεῖ τοῦτο τὸ δέρμα Βροῦτος, ὡς ἄξιον μὲν ὄντα τῆς ἀρχῆς δι’ ἀρετήν, διὰ δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν οὐκ ἂν ἀχάριστον [7] καὶ πονηρὸν γενόμενον. οἱ δὲ τῆς μεταβολῆς ἐφιέμενοι καὶ πρὸς μόνον ἐκεῖνον ἢ πρῶτον ἀποβλέποντες, αὐτῷ μὲν οὐκ ἐτόλμων διαλέγεσθαι, νύκτωρ δὲ κατεπίμπλασαν γραμμάτων τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὸν δίφρον, ἐφ’ οὗ στρατηγῶν ἐχρημάτιζεν, ὧν ἦν τὰ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα· καθεύδεις ὦ [8] Βροῦτε καὶ οὐκ εἶ Βροῦτος. ὑφ’ ὧν ὁ Κάσσιος αἰσθόμενος διακινούμενον ἡσυχῇ τὸ φιλότιμον αὐτοῦ, μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον ἐνέκειτο καὶ παρώξυνεν, αὐτὸς ἰδίᾳ τι καὶ μίσους ἔχων πρὸς τὸν Καίσαρα δι’ αἰτίας ἃς ἐν τοῖς περὶ [9] Βρούτου γεγραμμένοις δεδηλώκαμεν (c. 8, 5. 6). εἶχε μέντοι καὶ δι’ ὑποψίας ὁ Καῖσαρ αὐτόν, ὥστε καὶ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἰπεῖν ποτε· τί φαίνεται βουλόμενος ὑμῖν Κάσσιος; ἐμοὶ [10] μὲν γὰρ οὐ λίαν ἀρέσκει, λίαν ὠχρὸς ὤν. πάλιν δὲ λέγεται περὶ Ἀντωνίου καὶ Δολοβέλλα διαβολῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν ὡς νεωτερίζοιεν ἐλθούσης, οὐ πάνυ φάναι τούτους δέδοικα τοὺς παχεῖς καὶ κομήτας, μᾶλλον δὲ τοὺς ὠχροὺς καὶ λεπτοὺς ἐκείνους, Κάσσιον λέγων καὶ Βροῦτον.

[63] [1] Ἀλλ’ ἔοικεν οὐχ οὕτως ἀπροσδόκητον ὡς ἀφύλακτον εἶναι τὸ πεπρωμένον, ἐπεὶ καὶ σημεῖα θαυμαστὰ καὶ [2] φάσματα φανῆναι λέγουσι. σέλα μὲν οὖν οὐράνια καὶ κτύπους νύκτωρ πολλαχοῦ διαφερομένους καὶ καταίροντας εἰς ἀγορὰν ‹ἀν›ημέρους ὄρνιθας οὐκ ἄξιον ἴσως [3] ἐπὶ πάθει τηλικούτῳ μνημονεῦσαι· Στράβων δ’ ὁ φιλόσοφος ἱστορεῖ (FGrH 91 F 19) πολλοῖς μὲν ἀνθρώπους διαπύρους ἐπιφερομένους φανῆναι, στρατιώτου δ’ ἀνδρὸς οἰκέτην ἐκ τῆς χειρὸς ἐκβαλεῖν πολλὴν φλόγα καὶ δοκεῖν καίεσθαι τοῖς ὁρῶσιν, ὡς δ’ ἐπαύσατο, μηδὲν ἔχειν κακὸν [4] τὸν ἄνθρωπον· αὐτῷ δὲ Καίσαρι θύοντι τὴν καρδίαν ἀφανῆ γενέσθαι τοῦ ἱερείου, καὶ δεινὸν εἶναι τὸ τέρας· [5] οὐ γὰρ ἂν φύσει γε συστῆναι ζῷον ἀκάρδιον. ἔστι δὲ καὶ ταῦτα πολλῶν ἀκοῦσαι διεξιόντων, ὥς τις αὐτῷ μάντις ἡμέρᾳ Μαρτίου μηνὸς ἣν Εἰδοὺς Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσι [6] προείποι μέγαν φυλάττεσθαι κίνδυνον, ἐλθούσης δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας προϊὼν ὁ Καῖσαρ εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον ἀσπασάμενος προσπαίξειε τῷ μάντει φάμενος· αἱ μὲν δὴ Μάρτιαι Εἰδοὶ πάρεισιν, ὁ δ’ ἡσυχῇ πρὸς αὐτὸν εἴποι· ναί, [7] πάρεισιν, ἀλλ’ οὐ παρεληλύθασι. πρὸ μιᾶς δ’ ἡμέρας Μάρκου Λεπίδου δειπνίζοντος αὐτόν, ἔτυχε μὲν ἐπιστολαῖς ὑπογράφων ὥσπερ εἰώθει κατακείμενος· ἐμπεσόντος δὲ λόγου, ποῖος ἄρα τῶν θανάτων ἄριστος, ἅπαντας φθάσας [8] ἐξεβόησεν· ὁ ἀπροσδόκητος. μετὰ ταῦτα κοιμώμενος ὥσπερ εἰώθει παρὰ τῇ γυναικί, πασῶν ἅμα τῶν θυρῶν τοῦ δωματίου καὶ τῶν θυρίδων ἀναπεταννυμένων, διαταραχθεὶς ἅμα τῷ κτύπῳ καὶ τῷ φωτὶ καταλαμπούσης τῆς σελήνης, ᾔσθετο τὴν Καλπουρνίαν βαθέως μὲν καθεύδουσαν, ἀσαφεῖς δὲ φωνὰς καὶ στεναγμοὺς ἀνάρθρους [9] ἀναπέμπουσαν ἐκ τῶν ὕπνων· ἐδόκει δ’ ἄρα κλαίειν ἐκεῖνον ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀγκάλαις ἔχουσα κατεσφαγμένον· οἱ δ’ οὔ φασι τῇ γυναικὶ ταύτην γενέσθαι τὴν ὄψιν, ἀλλ’, ἦν γάρ τι τῇ Καίσαρος οἰκίᾳ προσκείμενον οἷον ἐπὶ κόσμῳ καὶ σεμνότητι τῆς βουλῆς ψηφισαμένης ἀκρωτήριον, ὡς Λίβιος ἱστορεῖ, τοῦτ’ ὄναρ ἡ Καλπουρνία θεασαμένη [10] καταρρηγνύμενον ἔδοξε ποτνιᾶσθαι καὶ δακρύειν. ἡμέρας δ’ οὖν γενομένης ἐδεῖτο τοῦ Καίσαρος, εἰ μὲν οἷόν τε, μὴ προελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἀναβαλέσθαι τὴν σύγκλητον· εἰ δὲ τῶν ἐκείνης ὀνείρων ἐλάχιστα φροντίζει, σκέψασθαι διὰ [11] μαντικῆς ἄλλης καὶ ἱερῶν περὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος. εἶχε δέ τις ὡς ἔοικε κἀκεῖνον ὑποψία καὶ φόβος· οὐδένα γὰρ γυναικισμὸν ἐν δεισιδαιμονίᾳ πρότερον κατεγνώκει τῆς Καλπουρνίας, τότε δ’ ἑώρα περιπαθοῦσαν.

[12] Ὡς δὲ καὶ πολλὰ καταθύσαντες οἱ μάντεις ἔφρασαν αὐτῷ δυσιερεῖν, ἔγνω πέμψας Ἀντώνιον ἀφεῖναι τὴν σύγκλητον.

[64] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ Δέκιμος Βροῦτος ἐπίκλησιν Ἀλβῖνος, πιστευόμενος μὲν ὑπὸ Καίσαρος, ὥστε καὶ δεύτερος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ κληρονόμος γεγράφθαι, τοῖς δὲ περὶ Βροῦτον τὸν [2] ἕτερον καὶ Κάσσιον μετέχων τῆς συνωμοσίας, φοβηθεὶς μὴ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην διακρουσαμένου τοῦ Καίσαρος ἔκπυστος ἡ πρᾶξις γένηται, τούς τε μάντεις ἐχλεύαζε καὶ καθήπτετο τοῦ Καίσαρος, ὡς αἰτίας καὶ διαβολὰς ἑαυτῷ κτωμένου πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον, ἐντρυφᾶσθαι δοκοῦσαν· [3] ἥκειν μὲν γὰρ αὐτὴν κελεύσαντος ἐκείνου, καὶ προθύμους εἶναι ψηφίζεσθαι πάντας, ὅπως τῶν ἐκτὸς Ἰταλίας ἐπαρχιῶν βασιλεὺς ἀναγορεύοιτο καὶ φοροίη διάδημα τὴν ἄλλην [4] ἐπιὼν γῆν ‹τε› καὶ θάλασσαν· εἰ δὲ φράσει τις αὐτοῖς καθεζομένοις νῦν μὲν ἀπαλλάττεσθαι, παρεῖναι δ’ αὖθις, ὅταν ἐντύχῃ βελτίοσιν ὀνείροις Καλπουρνία, τίνας ἔσεσθαι [5] λόγους παρὰ τῶν φθονούντων; ἢ τίνα τῶν φίλων ἀνέξεσθαι διδασκόντων ὡς οὐχὶ δουλεία ταῦτα καὶ τυραννίς ἐστιν; ἀλλ’ εἰ δοκεῖ πάντως, ἔφη, τὴν ἡμέραν ἀφοσιώσασθαι, βέλτιον αὐτὸν παρελθόντα καὶ προσαγορεύσαντα τὴν [6] βουλὴν ὑπερθέσθαι. ταῦθ’ ἅμα λέγων ὁ Βροῦτος ἦγε τῆς χειρὸς λαβόμενος τὸν Καίσαρα. καὶ μικρὸν μὲν αὐτῷ προελθόντι τῶν θυρῶν οἰκέτης ‹τις› ἀλλότριος ἐντυχεῖν προθυμούμενος, ὡς ἡττᾶτο τοῦ περὶ ἐκεῖνον ὠθισμοῦ καὶ πλήθους, βιασάμενος εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν παρέδωκεν ἑαυτὸν τῇ Καλπουρνίᾳ, φυλάττειν κελεύσας ἄχρι ἂν ἐπανέλθῃ Καῖσαρ, ὡς ἔχων μεγάλα πράγματα κατειπεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν.

[65] [1] Ἀρτεμίδωρος δὲ Κνίδιος τὸ γένος, Ἑλληνικῶν λόγων σοφιστὴς καὶ διὰ τοῦτο γεγονὼς ἐνίοις συνήθης τῶν περὶ Βροῦτον, ὥστε καὶ γνῶναι τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν πραττομένων, ἧκε μὲν ἐν βιβλιδίῳ κομίζων ἅπερ ἔμελλε [2] μηνύειν· ὁρῶν δὲ τὸν Καίσαρα τῶν βιβλιδίων ἕκαστον δεχόμενον καὶ παραδιδόντα τοῖς περὶ αὐτὸν ὑπηρέταις, ἐγγὺς σφόδρα προσελθών, τοῦτ’ ἔφη Καῖσαρ ἀνάγνωθι μόνος καὶ ταχέως· γέγραπται γὰρ ὑπὲρ πραγμάτων [3] μεγάλων καὶ σοὶ διαφερόντων. δεξάμενος οὖν ὁ Καῖσαρ, ἀναγνῶναι μὲν ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων ἐκωλύθη, καίπερ ὁρμήσας πολλάκις, ἐν δὲ τῇ χειρὶ κατέχων καὶ φυλάττων μόνον ἐκεῖνο παρῆλθεν εἰς τὴν [4] σύγκλητον. ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ἄλλον ἐπιδοῦναι τὸ βιβλίον τοῦτο, τὸν δ’ Ἀρτεμίδωρον οὐδ’ ὅλως προσελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐκθλιβῆναι παρὰ πᾶσαν τὴν ὁδόν.

[66] [1] Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἤδη που φέρει καὶ τὸ αὐτόματον· ὁ δὲ δεξάμενος τὸν φόνον ἐκεῖνον καὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα χῶρος, εἰς ὃν ἡ σύγκλητος ἠθροίσθη τότε, Πομπηΐου μὲν εἰκόνα κειμένην ἔχων, Πομπηΐου δ’ ἀνάθημα γεγονὼς τῶν προσκεκοσμημένων τῷ θεάτρῳ, παντάπασιν ἀπέφαινε δαίμονός τινος ὑφηγουμένου καὶ καλοῦντος ἐκεῖ τὴν πρᾶξιν [2] ἔργον γεγονέναι. καὶ γὰρ οὖν καὶ λέγεται Κάσσιος εἰς τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦ Πομπηΐου πρὸ τῆς ἐγχειρήσεως ἀποβλέπων ἐπικαλεῖσθαι σιωπῇ, καίπερ οὐκ ἀλλότριος ὢν [3] τῶν Ἐπικούρου λόγων· ἀλλ’ ὁ καιρὸς ὡς ἔοικεν ἤδη τοῦ δεινοῦ παρεστῶτος ἐνθουσιασμὸν ἐνεποίει καὶ πάθος [4] ἀντὶ τῶν προτέρων λογισμῶν. Ἀντώνιον μὲν οὖν, πιστὸν ὄντα Καίσαρι καὶ ῥωμαλέον, ἔξω παρακατεῖχε Βροῦτος Ἀλβῖνος, ἐμβαλὼν ἐπίτηδες ὁμιλίαν μῆκος ἔχουσαν· [5] εἰσιόντος δὲ Καίσαρος ἡ βουλὴ μὲν ὑπεξανέστη θεραπεύουσα, τῶν δὲ περὶ Βροῦτον οἱ μὲν ἐξόπισθεν τὸν δίφρον αὐτοῦ περιέστησαν, οἱ δ’ ἀπήντησαν ὡς δὴ Τιλλίῳ Κίμβρῳ περὶ ἀδελφοῦ φυγάδος ἐντυχάνοντι συνδεησόμενοι, [6] καὶ συνεδέοντο μέχρι τοῦ δίφρου παρακολουθοῦντες. ὡς δὲ καθίσας διεκρούετο τὰς δεήσεις καὶ προσκειμένων βιαιότερον ἠγανάκτει πρὸς ἕκαστον, ὁ μὲν Τίλλιος τὴν τήβεννον αὐτοῦ ταῖς χερσὶν ἀμφοτέραις συλλαβὼν ἀπὸ τοῦ τραχήλου κατῆγεν, ὅπερ ἦν σύνθημα τῆς ἐπιχειρήσεως.

[7] πρῶτος δὲ Κάσκας ξίφει παίει παρὰ τὸν αὐχένα πληγὴν οὐ θανατηφόρον οὐδὲ βαθεῖαν, ἀλλ’ ὡς εἰκὸς ἐν ἀρχῇ τολμήματος μεγάλου ταραχθείς, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Καίσαρα μεταστραφέντα τοῦ ἐγχειριδίου λαβέσθαι καὶ κατασχεῖν.

[8] ἅμα δέ πως ἐξεφώνησαν, ὁ μὲν πληγεὶς Ῥωμαϊστί· μιαρώτατε Κάσκα, τί ποιεῖς; ὁ δὲ πλήξας Ἑλληνιστὶ [9] πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφόν· ἀδελφέ, βοήθει. τοιαύτης δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς γενομένης, τοὺς μὲν οὐδὲν συνειδότας ἔκπληξις εἶχε καὶ φρίκη πρὸς τὰ δρώμενα, μήτε φεύγειν μήτ’ [10] ἀμύνειν, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ φωνὴν ἐκβάλλειν τολμῶντας. τῶν δὲ παρεσκευασμένων ἐπὶ τὸν φόνον ἑκάστου γυμνὸν ἀποδείξαντος τὸ ξίφος, ἐν κύκλῳ περιεχόμενος, καὶ πρὸς ὅ τι τρέψειε τὴν ὄψιν, πληγαῖς ἀπαντῶν καὶ σιδήρῳ φερομένῳ καὶ κατὰ προσώπου καὶ κατ’ ὀφθαλμῶν, διελαυνόμενος ὥσπερ θηρίον ἐνειλεῖτο ταῖς πάντων χερσίν· [11] ἅπαντας γὰρ ἔδει κατάρξασθαι καὶ γεύσασθαι τοῦ φόνου. διὸ καὶ Βροῦτος αὐτῷ πληγὴν ἐνέβαλε μίαν εἰς τὸν [12] βουβῶνα. λέγεται δ’ ὑπό τινων, ὡς ἄρα πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους ἀπομαχόμενος καὶ διαφέρων δεῦρο κἀκεῖ τὸ σῶμα καὶ κεκραγώς, ὅτε Βροῦτον εἶδεν ἐσπασμένον τὸ ξίφος, ἐφειλκύσατο κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς τὸ ἱμάτιον καὶ παρῆκεν ἑαυτόν, εἴτ’ ἀπὸ τύχης εἴθ’ ὑπὸ τῶν κτεινόντων ἀπωσθεὶς [13] πρὸς τὴν βάσιν ἐφ’ ἧς ὁ Πομπηΐου βέβηκεν ἀνδριάς. καὶ πολὺς καθῄμαξεν αὐτὴν ὁ φόνος, ὡς δοκεῖν αὐτὸν ἐφεστάναι τῇ τιμωρίᾳ τοῦ πολεμίου Πομπήϊον, ὑπὸ πόδας κεκλιμένου καὶ περισπαίροντος ὑπὸ πλήθους τραυμάτων.

[14] εἴκοσι γὰρ καὶ τρία λαβεῖν λέγεται, καὶ πολλοὶ κατετρώθησαν ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων, εἰς ἓν ἀπερειδόμενοι σῶμα πληγὰς τοσαύτας.

[67] [1] Κατειργασμένου δὲ τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἡ μὲν γερουσία, καίπερ εἰς μέσον Βρούτου ‹προ›ελθόντος ὥς τι περὶ τῶν πεπραγμένων ἐροῦντος, οὐκ ἀνασχομένη διὰ θυρῶν ἐξέπιπτε καὶ φεύγουσα κατέπλησε ταραχῆς καὶ δέους ἀπόρου τὸν δῆμον, ὥστε τοὺς μὲν οἰκίας κλείειν, τοὺς δ’ ἀπολείπειν τραπέζας καὶ χρηματιστήρια, δρόμῳ δὲ χωρεῖν τοὺς μὲν ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον ὀψομένους τὸ πάθος, [2] τοὺς δ’ ἐκεῖθεν ἑωρακότας. Ἀντώνιος δὲ καὶ Λέπιδος οἱ μάλιστα φίλοι Καίσαρος ὑπεκδύντες εἰς οἰκίας ἑτέρας [3] κατέφυγον. οἱ δὲ περὶ Βροῦτον, ὥσπερ ἦσαν ἔτι θερμοὶ τῷ φόνῳ, γυμνὰ τὰ ξίφη δεικνύντες ἅμα πάντες ἀπὸ τοῦ βουλευτηρίου συστραφέντες ἐχώρουν εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον, οὐ φεύγουσιν ἐοικότες, ἀλλὰ μάλα φαιδροὶ καὶ θαρραλέοι, παρακαλοῦντες ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν τὸ πλῆθος καὶ προσδεχόμενοι [4] τοὺς ἀρίστους τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ συνανέβαινον αὐτοῖς καὶ κατεμείγνυσαν ἑαυτούς, ὡς μετεσχηκότες τοῦ ἔργου, καὶ προσεποιοῦντο τὴν δόξαν, [5] ὧν ἦν καὶ Γάϊος Ὀκτάουϊος καὶ Λέντλος Σπινθήρ. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν τῆς ἀλαζονείας δίκην ἔδωκαν ὕστερον, ὑπ’ Ἀντωνίου καὶ τοῦ νέου Καίσαρος ἀναιρεθέντες, καὶ μηδὲ τῆς δόξης δι’ ἣν ἀπέθνῃσκον ἀπολαύσαντες ἀπιστίᾳ τῶν [6] ἄλλων. οὐδὲ γὰρ οἱ κολάζοντες αὐτοὺς τῆς πράξεως, ἀλλὰ τῆς βουλήσεως τὴν δίκην ἔλαβον.

[7] Μεθ’ ἡμέραν δὲ τῶν περὶ Βροῦτον κατελθόντων καὶ ποιησαμένων λόγους, ὁ μὲν δῆμος οὔτε δυσχεραίνων οὔθ’ ὡς ἐπαινῶν τὰ πεπραγμένα τοῖς λεγομένοις προσεῖχεν, ἀλλ’ ὑπεδήλου τῇ πολλῇ σιωπῇ Καίσαρα μὲν οἰκτίρων, [8] αἰδούμενος δὲ Βροῦτον· ἡ δὲ σύγκλητος ἀμνηστίας τινὰς καὶ συμβάσεις πράττουσα πᾶσι, Καίσαρα μὲν ὡς θεὸν τιμᾶν ἐψηφίσατο καὶ κινεῖν μηδὲ τὸ μικρότατον ὧν [9] ἐκεῖνος ἄρχων ἐβούλευσε, τοῖς δὲ περὶ Βροῦτον ἐπαρχίας τε διένειμε καὶ τιμὰς ἀπέδωκε πρεπούσας, ὥστε πάντας οἴεσθαι τὰ πράγματα κατάστασιν ἔχειν καὶ σύγκρασιν ἀπειληφέναι τὴν ἀρίστην.

[68] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν διαθηκῶν τῶν Καίσαρος ἀνοιχθεισῶν εὑρέθη δεδομένη Ῥωμαίων ἑκάστῳ δόσις ἀξιόλογος, καὶ τὸ σῶμα κομιζόμενον δι’ ἀγορᾶς ἐθεάσαντο ταῖς πληγαῖς διαλελωβημένον, οὐκέτι κόσμον εἶχεν οὐδὲ τάξιν αὐτῶν τὸ πάθος, ἀλλὰ τῷ μὲν νεκρῷ περισωρεύσαντες ἐξ ἀγορᾶς βάθρα καὶ κιγκλίδας καὶ τραπέζας, ὑφῆψαν [2] αὐτοῦ καὶ κατέκαυσαν, ἀράμενοι δὲ δαλοὺς διαπύρους ἔθεον ἐπὶ τὰς οἰκίας τῶν ἀνῃρηκότων ὡς καταφλέξοντες, ἄλλοι δ’ ἐφοίτων πανταχόσε τῆς πόλεως, συλλαβεῖν καὶ διασπάσασθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας ζητοῦντες. οἷς ἐκείνων μὲν οὐδεὶς ἀπήντησεν, ἀλλ’ εὖ πεφραγμένοι πάντες ἦσαν· [3] Κίννας δέ τις τῶν Καίσαρος ἑταίρων ἔτυχε μὲν ὥς φασι τῆς παρῳχημένης νυκτὸς ὄψιν ἑωρακὼς ἄτοπον· ἐδόκει γὰρ ὑπὸ Καίσαρος ἐπὶ δεῖπνον καλεῖσθαι, παραιτούμενος δ’ ἄγεσθαι τῆς χειρὸς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, μὴ βουλόμενος ἀλλ’ [4] ἀντιτείνων. ὡς δ’ ἤκουσεν ἐν ἀγορᾷ τὸ σῶμα καίεσθαι τοῦ Καίσαρος, ἀναστὰς ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ τιμῇ, καίπερ ὑφορώμενός [5] τε τὴν ὄψιν ἅμα καὶ πυρέττων. καί τις ὀφθέντος αὐτοῦ τῶν πολλῶν ἔφρασεν ἑτέρῳ τοὔνομα πυνθανομένῳ, κἀκεῖνος ἄλλῳ, καὶ διὰ πάντων θροῦς ἦν, ὡς οὗτός [6] ἐστιν ὁ ἀνὴρ τῶν ἀνῃρηκότων Καίσαρα· καὶ γὰρ ἦν τις ὁμώνυμος ἐκείνῳ Κίννας ἐν τοῖς συνομοσαμένοις, ὃν τοῦτον εἶναι προλαβόντες, ὥρμησαν εὐθὺς καὶ διέσπασαν [7] ἐν μέσῳ τὸν ἄνθρωπον. τοῦτο μάλιστα δείσαντες οἱ περὶ Βροῦτον καὶ Κάσσιον οὐ πολλῶν ἡμερῶν διαγενομένων ἀπεχώρησαν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως. ἃ δὲ καὶ πράξαντες καὶ παθόντες ἐτελεύτησαν, ἐν τοῖς περὶ Βρούτου γέγραπται.

[69] [1] Θνῄσκει δὲ Καῖσαρ τὰ μὲν πάντα γεγονὼς ἔτη πεντήκοντα καὶ ἕξ, Πομπηΐῳ δ’ ἐπιβιώσας οὐ πολὺ πλέον ἐτῶν τεσσάρων, ἣν δὲ τῷ βίῳ παντὶ δυναστείαν καὶ ἀρχὴν διὰ κινδύνων τοσούτων διώκων μόλις κατειργάσατο, ταύτης οὐδὲν ὅτι μὴ τοὔνομα μόνον καὶ τὴν ἐπίφθονον καρπωσάμενος δόξαν παρὰ τῶν πολιτῶν.

[2] Ὁ μέντοι μέγας αὐτοῦ δαίμων, ᾧ παρὰ τὸν βίον ἐχρήσατο, καὶ τελευτήσαντος ἐπηκολούθησε τιμωρὸς τοῦ φόνου, διά τε γῆς πάσης καὶ θαλάττης ἐλαύνων καὶ ἀνιχνεύων ἄχρι τοῦ μηδένα λιπεῖν τῶν ἀπεκτονότων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς καθ’ ὁτιοῦν ἢ χειρὶ τοῦ ἔργου θιγόντας [3] ἢ γνώμῃ μετασχόντας ἐπεξελθεῖν. θαυμασιώτατον δὲ τῶν μὲν ἀνθρωπίνων τὸ περὶ Κάσσιον· ἡττηθεὶς γὰρ ἐν Φιλίπποις, ἐκείνῳ τῷ ξιφιδίῳ διέφθειρεν ἑαυτὸν ᾧ [4] κατὰ Καίσαρος ἐχρήσατο· τῶν δὲ θείων ὅ τε μέγας κομήτης (ἐφάνη γὰρ ἐπὶ νύκτας ἑπτὰ μετὰ τὴν Καίσαρος σφαγὴν διαπρεπής, εἶτ’ ἠφανίσθη), καὶ τὸ περὶ τὸν [5] ἥλιον ἀμαύρωμα τῆς αὐγῆς. ὅλον γὰρ ἐκεῖνον τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν ὠχρὸς μὲν ὁ κύκλος καὶ μαρμαρυγὰς οὐκ ἔχων ἀνέτελλεν, ἀδρανὲς δὲ καὶ λεπτὸν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ κατῄει τὸ θερμόν, ὥστε τὸν μὲν ἀέρα δνοφερὸν καὶ βαρὺν ἀσθενείᾳ τῆς διακρινούσης αὐτὸν ἀλέας ἐπιφέρεσθαι, τοὺς δὲ καρποὺς ἡμιπέπτους καὶ ἀτελεῖς ἀπανθῆσαι καὶ παρακμάσαι διὰ τὴν ψυχρότητα τοῦ περιέχοντος.

[6] Μάλιστα δὲ τὸ Βρούτῳ γενόμενον φάσμα τὴν Καίσαρος ἐδήλωσε σφαγὴν οὐ γενομένην θεοῖς ἀρεστήν· ἦν δὲ [7] τοιόνδε. μέλλων τὸν στρατὸν ἐξ Ἀβύδου διαβιβάζειν εἰς τὴν ἑτέραν ἤπειρον, ἀνεπαύετο νυκτὸς ὥσπερ εἰώθει κατὰ σκηνήν, οὐ καθεύδων, ἀλλὰ φροντίζων περὶ τοῦ [8] μέλλοντος· λέγεται γὰρ οὗτος ἁνὴρ ἥκιστα δὴ τῶν στρατηγῶν ὑπνώδης γενέσθαι καὶ πλεῖστον ἑαυτῷ χρόνον [9] ἐγρηγορότι χρῆσθαι πεφυκώς· ψόφου δέ τινος αἰσθέσθαι περὶ τὴν θύραν ἔδοξε, καὶ πρὸς τὸ τοῦ λύχνου φῶς ἤδη καταφερομένου σκεψάμενος, ὄψιν εἶδε φοβερὰν [10] ἀνδρὸς ἐκφύλου τὸ μέγεθος καὶ χαλεποῦ τὸ εἶδος. ἐκπλαγεὶς δὲ τὸ πρῶτον, ὡς ἑώρα μήτε πράττοντά τι μήτε φθεγγόμενον, ἀλλ’ ἑστῶτα σιγῇ παρὰ τὴν κλίνην, ἠρώτα [11] [ὅς]τίς ἐστιν. ἀποκρίνεται δ’ αὐτῷ τὸ φάσμα· ὁ σὸς ὦ Βροῦτε δαίμων κακός· ὄψει δέ με περὶ Φιλίππους. τότε μὲν οὖν ὁ Βροῦτος εὐθαρσῶς ὄψομαι εἶπε, καὶ [12] τὸ δαιμόνιον εὐθὺς ἐκποδὼν ἀπῄει. τῷ δ’ ἱκνουμένῳ χρόνῳ περὶ τοὺς Φιλίππους ἀντιταχθεὶς Ἀντωνίῳ καὶ Καίσαρι, τῇ μὲν πρώτῃ μάχῃ κρατήσας τὸ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐτρέψατο, καὶ διεξήλασε πορθῶν τὸ Καίσαρος στρατόπεδον· [13] τὴν δὲ δευτέραν αὐτῷ μάχεσθαι μέλλοντι φοιτᾷ τὸ αὐτὸ φάσμα τῆς νυκτὸς αὖθις, οὐχ ὥστε τι προσειπεῖν, ἀλλὰ συνεὶς ὁ Βροῦτος τὸ πεπρωμένον, ἔρριψε φέρων ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὸν κίνδυνον.

[14] Οὐ μὴν ἔπεσεν ἀγωνιζόμενος, ἀλλὰ τῆς τροπῆς γενομένης ἀναφυγὼν πρός τι κρημνῶδες, καὶ τῷ ξίφει γυμνῷ προσβαλὼν τὸ στέρνον, ἅμα καὶ φίλου τινὸς ὥς φασι συνεπιρρώσαντος τὴν πληγήν, ἀπέθανεν.

Phocion

[1] [1] Δημάδης ὁ ῥήτωρ, ἰσχύων μὲν ἐν ταῖς Ἀθήναις διὰ τὸ πρὸς χάριν πολιτεύεσθαι Μακεδόνων καὶ Ἀντιπάτρου, πολλὰ δὲ γράφειν καὶ λέγειν ἀναγκαζόμενος παρὰ τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς πόλεως καὶ τὸ ἦθος, ἔλεγε (fg. 17 de Falco) συγγνώμης ἄξιος εἶναι, πολιτευόμενος τὰ ναυάγια τῆς πόλεως.

[2] τοῦτο δ’ εἰ καὶ τῷ ῥήτορι θρασύτερον εἴρηται, δόξειεν ἂν ἀληθὲς εἶναι [3] μετενεχθὲν ἐπὶ τὴν Φωκίωνος πολιτείαν. Δημάδης μὲν γὰρ αὐτὸς ἦν ναυάγιον τῆς πόλεως, οὕτως ἀσελγῶς βιώσας καὶ πολιτευσάμενος, ὥστ’ Ἀντίπατρον εἰπεῖν ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ γέροντος ἤδη γεγονότος, ὅτι καθάπερ [4] ἱερείου διαπεπραγμένου γλῶσσα καὶ κοιλία μόνον ἀπολείπεται. τὴν δὲ Φωκίωνος ἀρετήν, ὥσπερ ἀνταγωνιστῇ βαρεῖ καὶ βιαίῳ καιρῷ συλλαχοῦσαν, [5] αἱ τύχαι τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀμαυρὰν καὶ ἀλαμπῆ πρὸς δόξαν ἐποίησαν. οὐ γὰρ Σοφοκλεῖ γε προσεκτέον, ἀσθενῆ ποιοῦντι τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐν οἷς φησιν (Ant. 563)·

ἀλλ’ οὐ γὰρ ὦναξ οὐδ’ ὃς ἂν βλάστῃ μένει

νοῦς τοῖς κακῶς πράξασιν, ἀλλ’ ἐξίσταται·

[6] τοσοῦτον δὲ τῇ τύχῃ δοτέον ἀντιταττομένῃ πρὸς τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας ἰσχύειν, ὅσον ἀντὶ τῆς ἀξίας τιμῆς καὶ χάριτος ἐνίοις ψόγους πονηροὺς καὶ διαβολὰς ἐπιφέρουσαν, τὴν πίστιν ἀσθενεστέραν ποιεῖν τῆς ἀρετῆς.

[2] [1] Καίτοι δοκοῦσιν οἱ δῆμοι μᾶλλον εἰς τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ἐξυβρίζειν ὅταν εὐτυχῶσιν, ὑπὸ πραγμάτων μεγάλων καὶ δυνάμεως ἐπαιρόμενοι· συμβαίνει [2] δὲ τοὐναντίον. αἱ γὰρ συμφοραὶ πικρὰ μὲν τὰ ἤθη καὶ μικρόλυπα καὶ ἀκροσφαλῆ πρὸς ὀργὰς ποιοῦσι, δύσκολον δὲ τὴν ἀκοὴν καὶ τραχεῖαν, ὑπὸ παντὸς λόγου καὶ ῥήματος τόνον ἔχοντος ἐνοχλουμένην· ὁ δ’ ἐπιτιμῶν τοῖς ἐξαμαρτανομένοις ἐξονειδίζειν τὰ δυστυχήματα δοκεῖ, καὶ καταφρονεῖν [3] ὁ παρρησιαζόμενος. καὶ καθάπερ τὸ μέλι λυπεῖ τὰ τετρωμένα καὶ ἡλκωμένα μέρη τοῦ σώματος, οὕτω πολλάκις οἱ ἀληθινοὶ καὶ νοῦν ἔχοντες λόγοι δάκνουσι καὶ παροξύνουσι τοὺς κακῶς πράττοντας, ἐὰν μὴ προσηνεῖς ὦσι καὶ συνείκοντες, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει τὸ ἡδὺ μενοεικὲς ὁ ποιητὴς κέκληκεν, ὡς τῷ ἡδομένῳ τῆς ψυχῆς ὑπεῖκον καὶ μὴ [4] μαχόμενον μηδ’ ἀντιτυποῦν. καὶ γὰρ ὄμμα φλεγμαῖνον ἥδιστα τοῖς σκιεροῖς καὶ ἀλαμπέσιν ἐνδιατρίβει χρώμασι, τὰ δ’ αὐγὴν ἔχοντα καὶ φῶς ἀποστρέφεται, καὶ πόλις ἐν τύχαις ἀβουλήτοις γενομένη ψοφοδεὲς καὶ τρυφερόν ἐστι δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀνέχεσθαι παρρησίας ὅτε μάλιστα δεῖται, [5] τῶν πραγμάτων ἀναφορὰν ἁμαρτήματος οὐκ ἐχόντων. διὸ πάντῃ σφαλερὸν ἡ τοιαύτη πολιτεία· συναπόλλυσι γὰρ τὸν πρὸς χάριν λέγοντα, καὶ [6] προαπόλλυσι τὸν μὴ χαριζόμενον. ὥσπερ οὖν τὸν ἥλιον οἱ μαθηματικοὶ λέγουσι μήτε τὴν αὐτὴν τῷ οὐρανῷ φερόμενον φοράν, μήτ’ ἄντικρυς ἐναντίαν καὶ ἀντιβατικήν, ἀλλὰ λοξῷ καὶ παρεγκεκλιμένῳ πορείας σχήματι χρώμενον, ὑγρὰν καὶ εὐκαμπῆ καὶ παρελιττομένην ἕλικα ποιεῖν, ᾗ [7] σῴζεται πάντα καὶ λαμβάνει τὴν ἀρίστην κρᾶσιν, οὕτως ἄρα τῆς πολιτείας ὁ μὲν ὄρθιος ἄγαν καὶ πρὸς ἅπαντα τοῖς δημοτικοῖς ἀντιβαίνων τόνος ἀπηνὴς καὶ σκληρός, ὥσπερ αὖ πάλιν ἐπισφαλὲς καὶ κάταντες τὸ συνεφελκόμενον [8] οἷς ἁμαρτάνουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ συνεπιρρέπον· ἡ δ’ ἀνθυπείκουσα πειθομένοις καὶ διδοῦσα τὸ πρὸς χάριν, εἶτ’ ἀπαιτοῦσα τὸ συμφέρον ἐπιστασία καὶ κυβέρνησις ἀνθρώπων, πολλὰ πρᾴως καὶ χρησίμως ὑπουργούντων, εἰ μὴ πάντα δεσποτικῶς καὶ βιαίως ἄγοιντο, σωτήριος, ἐργώδης [9] δὲ καὶ χαλεπὴ καὶ τὸ σεμνὸν ἔχουσα τῷ ἐπιεικεῖ δύσμεικτον· ἐὰν δὲ μειχθῇ, τοῦτ’ ἔστιν ἡ πάντων μὲν ῥυθμῶν, πασῶν δ’ ἁρμονιῶν ἐμμελεστάτη καὶ μουσικωτάτη κρᾶσις, ᾗ καὶ τὸν κόσμον ὁ θεὸς λέγεται διοικεῖν, οὐ βιαζόμενος, ἀλλὰ πειθοῖ καὶ λόγῳ παράγων τὴν ἀνάγκην.

[3] [1] Ταῦτα δὲ καὶ Κάτωνι τῷ νέῳ συνέβη. καὶ γὰρ οὗτος οὐ πιθανὸν ἔσχεν οὐδὲ προσφιλὲς ὄχλῳ τὸ ἦθος, οὐδ’ ἤνθησεν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ πρὸς [2] χάριν. ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν Κικέρων φησὶν αὐτὸν ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ Πλάτωνος πολιτείᾳ καὶ οὐκ ἐν τῇ Ῥωμύλου πολιτευόμενον ὑποστάθμῃ τῆς ὑπατείας ἐκπεσεῖν· ἐμοὶ δὲ ταὐτὸ δοκεῖ παθεῖν τοῖς μὴ καθ’ ὥραν ἐκφανεῖσι καρποῖς.

[3] ὡς γὰρ ἐκείνους ἡδέως ὁρῶντες καὶ θαυμάζοντες οὐ χρῶνται, οὕτως ἡ Κάτωνος ἀρχαιοτροπία, διὰ χρόνων πολλῶν ἐπιγενομένη βίοις διεφθορόσι καὶ πονηροῖς ἔθεσι, δόξαν μὲν εἶχε μεγάλην καὶ κλέος, οὐκ ἐνήρμοσε δὲ ταῖς χρείαις διὰ βάρος καὶ μέγεθος τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀσύμμετρον τοῖς καθεστῶσι [4] καιροῖς. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς οὐ κεκλιμένης μὲν ἤδη τῆς πατρίδος, ὥσπερ ὁ Φωκίων, πολὺν δὲ χειμῶνα καὶ σάλον ἐχούσης, ὅσον ἱστίων καὶ κάλων ἐπιλαβέσθαι καὶ παραστῆναι τοῖς πλέον δυναμένοις πολιτευσάμενος, οἰάκων δὲ καὶ κυβερνήσεως ἀπωσθείς, ὅμως μέγαν ἀγῶνα τῇ τύχῃ περιέστησεν.

[5] εἷλε μὲν γὰρ καὶ κατέβαλε τὴν πολιτείαν δι’ ἄλλους, μόλις δὲ καὶ βραδέως καὶ χρόνῳ πολλῷ καὶ παρὰ μικρὸν ἐλθοῦσαν περιγενέσθαι [6] διὰ Κάτωνα καὶ τὴν Κάτωνος ἀρετήν. ᾗ παραβάλλομεν τὴν Φωκίωνος [7] οὐ κατὰ κοινὰς ὁμοιότητας, ὡς ἀγαθῶν καὶ πολιτικῶν ἀνδρῶν· ἔστι γὰρ ἀμέλει καὶ ἀνδρίας διαφορὰ πρὸς ἀνδρίαν, ὡς τῆς Ἀλκιβιάδου πρὸς τὴν Ἐπαμεινώνδου, καὶ φρονήσεως πρὸς φρόνησιν, ὡς τῆς Θεμιστοκλέους πρὸς τὴν Ἀριστείδου, καὶ δικαιοσύνης πρὸς δικαιοσύνην, ὡς [8] τῆς Νομᾶ πρὸς τὴν Ἀγησιλάου. τούτων δὲ τῶν ἀνδρῶν αἱ ἀρεταὶ μέχρι τῶν τελευταίων καὶ ἀτόμων διαφορῶν ἕνα χαρακτῆρα καὶ μορφὴν καὶ χρῶμα κοινὸν ἤθους ἐγκεκραμένον ἐκφέρουσιν, ὥσπερ ἴσῳ μέτρῳ μεμειγμένου πρὸς τὸ αὐστηρὸν τοῦ φιλανθρώπου, καὶ πρὸς τὸ ἀσφαλὲς τοῦ ἀνδρείου, καὶ τῆς ὑπὲρ ἄλλων μὲν κηδεμονίας, ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν δ’ ἀφοβίας, καὶ πρὸς μὲν τὸ αἰσχρὸν εὐλαβείας, πρὸς δὲ τὸ δίκαιον εὐτονίας συνηρμοσμένης [9] ὁμοίως· ὥστε λεπτοῦ πάνυ λόγου δεῖσθαι καθάπερ ὀργάνου πρὸς διάκρισιν καὶ ἀνεύρεσιν τῶν διαφερόντων.

[4] [1] Τὸ μὲν οὖν Κάτωνος ὡμολόγηται γένος ἐκ λαμπρῶν ὑπάρχειν, ὡς λεχθήσεται (Cat. c. 1)· Φωκίωνα δὲ τεκμαίρομαι μὴ παντάπασιν εἶναι γένους [2] ἀτίμου καὶ καταπεπτωκότος. εἰ γὰρ ἦν, ὥς φησιν Ἰδομενεύς (FGrH 338 F 15), δοιδυκοποιοῦ πατρός, οὐκ ἂν ἐν τῷ λόγῳ Γλαύκιππος ὁ Ὑπερείδου μυρία συνειλοχὼς καὶ εἰρηκὼς κατ’ αὐτοῦ κακὰ τὴν δυσγένειαν παρῆκεν, οὐδ’ ἂν οὕτως ἐλευθερίου [βίου] καὶ σώφρονος [καὶ] παιδείας μετέσχεν, ὥστε τῆς Πλάτωνος ἔτι μειράκιον ὤν, ὕστερον δὲ τῆς Ξενοκράτους διατριβῆς ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ μετασχεῖν, καὶ τῶν ἀρίστων ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπιτηδευμάτων ζηλωτὴς [3] γενέσθαι. Φωκίωνα γὰρ οὔτε γελάσαντά τις οὔτε κλαύσαντα ῥᾳδίως Ἀθηναίων εἶδεν, οὐδ’ ἐν βαλανείῳ δημοσιεύοντι λουσάμενον, ὡς ἱστόρηκε Δοῦρις (FGrH 76 F 50), οὐδ’ ἐκτὸς ἔχοντα τὴν χεῖρα τῆς περιβολῆς, ὅτε [4] τύχοι περιβεβλημένος. ἐπεὶ κατά γε τὴν χώραν καὶ τὰς στρατείας ἀνυπόδητος ἀεὶ καὶ γυμνὸς ἐβάδιζεν, εἰ μὴ ψῦχος ὑπερβάλλον εἴη καὶ δυσκαρτέρητον, ὥστε καὶ παίζοντας ἤδη τοὺς ‹συ›στρατευομένους σύμβολον μεγάλου ποιεῖσθαι χειμῶνος ἐνδεδυμένον Φωκίωνα.

[5] [1] Τῷ δ’ ἤθει προσηνέστατος ὢν καὶ φιλανθρωπότατος, ἀπὸ τοῦ προσώπου δυσξύμβολος ἐφαίνετο καὶ σκυθρωπός, ὥστε μὴ ῥᾳδίως ἄν τινα [2] μόνον ἐντυχεῖν αὐτῷ τῶν ἀσυνήθων. διὸ καὶ Χάρητί ποτε πρὸς τὰς ὀφρῦς αὐτοῦ λέγοντι τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐπιγελώντων, οὐδὲν εἶπεν αὕτη ὑμᾶς λελύπηκεν ἡ ὀφρύς· ὁ δὲ τούτων γέλως πολλὰ κλαῦσαι τὴν πόλιν πεποίηκεν.

[3] ὁμοίως δέ πως τοῦ Φωκίωνος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν ἐπὶ χρηστοῖς ἐνθυμήμασι καὶ διανοήμασι σωτήριος, προστακτικήν τινα καὶ αὐστηρὰν καὶ ἀνήδυντον [4] ἔχων βραχυλογίαν. ὡς γὰρ ὁ Ζήνων ἔλεγεν, ὅτι δεῖ τὸν φιλόσοφον εἰς νοῦν ἀποβάπτοντα προφέρεσθαι τὴν λέξιν, οὕτως ὁ Φωκίωνος λόγος [5] πλεῖστον ἐν ἐλαχίστῃ λέξει νοῦν εἶχε. καὶ πρὸς τοῦτ’ ἔοικεν ἀπιδὼν ὁ Σφήττιος Πολύευκτος εἰπεῖν, ὅτι ῥήτωρ μὲν ἄριστος εἴη Δημοσθένης, [6] εἰπεῖν δὲ δεινότατος ὁ Φωκίων. ὡς γὰρ ἡ τοῦ νομίσματος ἀξία πλείστην ἐν ὄγκῳ βραχυτάτῳ δύναμιν ἔχει, οὕτω λόγου δεινότης [ἐ]δοκεῖ πολλὰ [7] σημαίνειν ἀπ’ ὀλίγων. καὶ μέντοι καὶ αὐτόν ποτε τὸν Φωκίωνά φασι πληρουμένου τοῦ θεάτρου περιπατεῖν ὑπὸ σκηνήν, αὐτὸν ὄντα πρὸς ἑαυτῷ [8] τὴν διάνοιαν· εἰπόντος δέ τινος τῶν φίλων σκεπτομένῳ Φωκίων ἔοικας, ναὶ μὰ τὸν Δία φάναι, σκέπτομαι εἴ τι δύναμαι τοῦ λόγου περιελεῖν [9] ὃν μέλλω λέγειν πρὸς Ἀθηναίους. ὁ δὲ Δημοσθένης τῶν μὲν ἄλλων κατεφρόνει πολὺ ῥητόρων, ἀνισταμένου δὲ Φωκίωνος εἰώθει λέγειν ἀτρέμα [10] πρὸς τοὺς φίλους· ἡ τῶν ἐμῶν λόγων κοπὶς πάρεστιν. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ἴσως πρὸς τὸ ἦθος ἀνοιστέον· ἐπεὶ καὶ ῥῆμα καὶ νεῦμα μόνον ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ μυρίοις ἐνθυμήμασι καὶ περιόδοις ἀντίρροπον ἔχει πίστιν.

[6] [1] Νέος δ’ ὢν Χαβρίᾳ προσέμειξεν ἑαυτὸν τῷ στρατηγῷ καὶ παρείπετο, πολλὰ μὲν εἰς ἐμπειρίαν τῶν πολεμικῶν ὠφελούμενος, ἔστι δ’ ἐν οἷς ἐπανορθούμενος [2] τὴν ἐκείνου φύσιν, ἀνώμαλον οὖσαν καὶ ἄκρατον. νωθρὸς γὰρ ὢν ὁ Χαβρίας καὶ δυσκίνητος ἄλλως, ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς ἀγῶσιν ὤργα καὶ διεπυροῦτο τῷ θυμῷ, καὶ συνεξέπιπτε τοῖς θρασυτάτοις παραβολώτερον, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ κατέστρεψε τὸν βίον ἐν Χίῳ, πρῶτος εἰσελάσας τῇ [3] τριήρει καὶ βιαζόμενος πρὸς τὴν ἀπόβασιν. ἀσφαλὴς οὖν ἅμα καὶ δραστήριος ὁ Φωκίων φαινόμενος, τήν τε μέλλησιν ἀνεθέρμαινε τοῦ Χαβρίου, [4] καὶ πάλιν ἀφῄρει τὴν ἄκαιρον ὀξύτητα τῆς ὁρμῆς. ὅθεν εὐμενὴς ὢν ὁ Χαβρίας καὶ χρηστός, ἠγάπα καὶ προῆγεν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πράξεις καὶ ἡγεμονίας, γνώριμον ποιῶν τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ τὰ πλείστης ἄξια σπουδῆς ἐκείνῳ [5] χρώμενος. κἀκ τῆς περὶ Νάξον ναυμαχίας ὄνομα καὶ δόξαν οὐ μικρὰν Φωκίωνι περιεποίησε· τοῦ γὰρ εὐωνύμου κέρως ἀπέδωκεν αὐτῷ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, καθ’ ὃ καὶ τὴν μάχην ὀξεῖαν εἶχεν ὁ ἀγὼν καὶ κρίσιν ἐποίησε [6] ταχεῖαν. πρώτην οὖν ἐκείνην ναυμαχίαν ἡ πόλις αὐτὴ δι’ αὑτῆς ἀγωνισαμένη τοῖς Ἕλλησι μετὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν καὶ κατατυχοῦσα, τόν τε Χαβρίαν ὑπερηγάπησε, καὶ τοῦ Φωκίωνος ὡς ἀνδρὸς ἡγεμονικοῦ λόγον ἔσχεν.

[7] ἐνίκων δὲ μεγάλοις μυστηρίοις, καὶ παρεῖχεν οἰνοχόημα Χαβρίας Ἀθηναίοις καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν τῇ ἕκτῃ ἐπὶ δέκα τοῦ Βοηδρομιῶνος.

[7] [1] Ἐκ τούτου λέγεται πέμποντος αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὰς νησιωτικὰς συντάξεις τοῦ Χαβρίου καὶ ναῦς εἴκοσι διδόντος εἰπεῖν, εἰ μὲν ὡς πολεμήσων πέμποιτο, μείζονος δεῖν δυνάμεως, εἰ δ’ ὡς πρὸς συμμάχους, ἀρκεῖν ναῦν [2] μίαν· καὶ πλεύσαντα τῇ αὑτοῦ τριήρει καὶ διαλεχθέντα ταῖς πόλεσι καὶ συγγενόμενον τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ἐπιεικῶς καὶ ἀφελῶς, καταπλεῦσαι μετὰ πολλῶν νεῶν ἃς ἀπέστειλαν οἱ σύμμαχοι, τὰ χρήματα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις [3] κομιζούσας. οὐ μόνον δὲ ζῶντα τὸν Χαβρίαν θεραπεύων διετέλει καὶ τιμῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τελευτήσαντος αὐτοῦ τῶν προσηκόντων καλῶς ἐπεμελεῖτο, καὶ τὸν παῖδα Κτήσιππον ἐβούλετο μὲν ἄνδρα ποιεῖν ἀγαθόν, ἔμπληκτον δ’ ὁρῶν καὶ ἀνάγωγον, ὅμως οὐκ ἀπεῖπεν ἐπανορθούμενος καὶ ἀποκρύπτων [4] τὰ αἴσχη. πλὴν ἅπαξ λέγεται, παρενοχλοῦντος ἐν στρατείᾳ τινὶ τοῦ νεανίσκου καὶ κόπτοντος αὐτὸν ἐρωτήμασιν ἀκαίροις καὶ συμβουλίαις, οἷον ἐπανορθουμένου καὶ παραστρατηγοῦντος, εἰπεῖν· ὦ Χαβρία Χαβρία, [5] μεγάλην γέ σοι χάριν ἐκτίνω τῆς φιλίας, ὑπομένων σου τὸν υἱόν. ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς τὰ κοινὰ πράσσοντας τότε διῃρημένους ὥσπερ ἀπὸ κλήρου τὸ στρατήγιον καὶ τὸ βῆμα, καὶ τοὺς μὲν λέγοντας ἐν τῷ δήμῳ καὶ γράφοντας μόνον, ὧν Εὔβουλος ἦν καὶ Ἀριστοφῶν καὶ Δημοσθένης καὶ Λυκοῦργος καὶ Ὑπερείδης, Διοπείθη δὲ καὶ Μενεσθέα καὶ Λεωσθένη καὶ Χάρητα τῷ στρατηγεῖν καὶ πολεμεῖν αὔξοντας ἑαυτούς, ἐβούλετο τὴν Περικλέους καὶ Ἀριστείδου καὶ Σόλωνος πολιτείαν ὥσπερ ὁλόκληρον καὶ διηρμοσμένην [6] ἐν ἀμφοῖν ἀναλαβεῖν καὶ ἀποδοῦναι. καὶ γὰρ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐκείνων ἕκαστος ἐφαίνετο κατὰ τὸν Ἀρχίλοχον (fg. 1 Diehl)

ἀμφότερον, θεράπων μὲν Ἐνυαλίοιο θεοῖο,

καὶ Μουσέων ἐρατᾶν δῶρον ἐπιστάμενος,

καὶ τὴν θεὸν ἑώρα πολεμικήν θ’ ἅμα καὶ πολιτικὴν οὖσαν καὶ προσαγορευομένην.

[8] [1] Οὕτω δὲ συντάξας ἑαυτόν, ἐπολιτεύετο μὲν ἀεὶ πρὸς εἰρήνην καὶ ἡσυχίαν, ἐστρατήγησε δὲ πλείστας οὐ μόνον τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν πρὸ αὑτοῦ στρατηγίας, οὐ παραγγέλλων οὐδὲ μετιών, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ [2] φεύγων οὐδ’ ἀποδιδράσκων τῆς πόλεως καλούσης. ὁμολογεῖται γὰρ ὅτι πέντε καὶ τεσσαράκοντα στρατηγίας ἔλαβεν, οὐδ’ ἅπαξ ἀρχαιρεσίοις παρατυχών, ἀλλ’ ἀπόντα μεταπεμπομένων αὐτὸν ἀεὶ καὶ χειροτονούντων· [3] ὥστε θαυμάζειν τοὺς οὐκ εὖ φρονοῦντας τὸν δῆμον ὅτι, πλεῖστα τοῦ Φωκίωνος ἀντικρούοντος αὐτῷ καὶ μηδὲν εἰπόντος πώποτε μηδὲ πράξαντος πρὸς χάριν, ὥσπερ ἀξιοῦσι τοὺς βασιλεῖς τοῖς κόλαξι χρῆσθαι μετὰ τὸ κατὰ χειρὸς ὕδωρ, ἐχρῆθ’ οὗτος τοῖς μὲν κομψοτέροις καὶ ἱλαροῖς ἐν παιδιᾶς μέρει δημαγωγοῖς, ἐπὶ δὲ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἀεὶ νήφων καὶ σπουδάζων τὸν αὐστηρότατον καὶ φρονιμώτατον ἐκάλει τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ μόνον ἢ μάλιστα ταῖς βουλήσεσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ ὁρμαῖς ἀντιτασσόμενον.

[4] χρησμοῦ μὲν γὰρ ἐκ Δελφῶν ἀναγνωσθέντος, ὅτι τῶν ἄλλων Ἀθηναίων ὁμοφρονούντων εἷς ἀνὴρ ἐναντία φρονοίη τῇ πόλει, παρελθὼν ὁ Φωκίων ἀμελεῖν ἐκέλευσεν, ὡς αὐτὸς ὢν ὁ ζητούμενος· μόνῳ γὰρ αὐτῷ μηδὲν [5] ἀρέσκειν τῶν πραττομένων. ἐπεὶ δὲ λέγων ποτὲ γνώμην πρὸς τὸν δῆμον εὐδοκίμει, καὶ πάντας ὁμαλῶς ἑώρα τὸν λόγον ἀποδεχομένους, ἐπιστραφεὶς πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἶπεν· οὐ δήπου τι κακὸν λέγων ἐμαυτὸν λέληθα;

[9] [1] Πρὸς δὲ θυσίαν τινὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων αἰτούντων ἐπιδόσεις, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιδιδόντων, κληθεὶς πολλάκις ἔφη· τούτους αἰτεῖτε τοὺς πλουσίους· ἐγὼ δ’ αἰσχυνοίμην ἄν, εἰ τούτῳ μὴ ἀποδιδοὺς ὑμῖν ἐπι‹δι›δοίην, [2] δείξας Καλλικλέα τὸν δανειστήν. ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἐπαύοντο κεκραγότες καὶ καταβοῶντες, λόγον εἶπεν αὐτοῖς τοῦτον· ἀνὴρ δειλὸς ἐπὶ πόλεμον ἐξῄει, φθεγξαμένων δὲ κοράκων, τὰ ὅπλα θεὶς ἡσύχαζεν· εἶτ’ ἀναλαβὼν αὖθις ἐξῄει, καὶ φθεγγομένων πάλιν ὑπέστη· καὶ τέλος εἶπεν· ὑμεῖς [3] κεκράξεσθε μὲν μέγιστον ὡς δυνατόν, ἐμοῦ δ’ οὐ γεύσεσθε. πάλιν δέ ποτε τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐξαγαγεῖν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους κελευόντων, ὡς ‹δ’› οὐκ ἐβούλετο, δειλὸν καὶ ἄνανδρον ἀποκαλούντων, οὔθ’ ὑμεῖς εἶπεν ἐμὲ δύνασθε ποιῆσαι θαρσαλέον, οὔτ’ ἐγὼ ὑμᾶς δειλούς. οὐ μὴν [4] ἀλλ’ ἴσμεν ἀλλήλους. ἐν δὲ καιροῖς ἐπισφαλέσι τραχυνομένου τοῦ δήμου πρὸς αὐτὸν σφόδρα, καὶ τῆς στρατηγίας εὐθύνας ἀπαιτοῦντος, σώθητε [5] εἶπεν ὦ μακάριοι πρῶτον. ἐπεὶ δὲ πολεμοῦντες μὲν ἦσαν ταπεινοὶ καὶ περιδεεῖς, γενομένης δ’ εἰρήνης ἐθρασύνοντο καὶ κατεβόων τοῦ Φωκίωνος ὡς ἀφῃρημένου τὴν νίκην αὐτῶν, εὐτυχεῖτε εἶπεν ἔχοντες στρατηγὸν [6] εἰδόθ’ ὑμᾶς· ἐπεὶ πάλαι ἂν ἀπωλώλειτε. τοῖς δὲ Βοιωτοῖς οὐ βουλομένων αὐτῶν δικάζεσθαι περὶ τῆς χώρας, ἀλλὰ πολεμεῖν, συνεβούλευε διὰ τῶν λόγων ἐν οἷς εἰσι κρείττους, μὴ διὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἐν οἷς ἥττους, μάχεσθαι.

[7] λέγοντα δ’ αὐτὸν οὐ προσιεμένων οὐδ’ ὑπομενόντων ἀκούειν, ἐμέ εἶπεν ὑμεῖς ἃ μὴ βούλομαι ποιεῖν βιάσασθαι δύνασθε, λέγειν δ’ [8] ἃ μὴ δεῖ παρὰ γνώμην οὐκ ἀναγκάσετε. τῶν δ’ ἀντιπολιτευομένων αὐτῷ ῥητόρων, Δημοσθένους μὲν εἰπόντος ἀποκτενοῦσί σ’ Ἀθηναῖοι, [9] Φωκίων· ἂν μανῶσιν, εἶπε· σὲ δ’ ἂν σωφρον‹ής›ωσι· Πολύευκτον δὲ τὸν Σφήττιον ὁρῶν ἐν καύματι συμβουλεύοντα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις πολεμεῖν πρὸς Φίλιππον, εἶθ’ ὑπ’ ἄσθματος πολλοῦ καὶ ἱδρῶτος, ἅτε δὴ καὶ ὑπέρπαχυν ὄντα, πολλάκις ἐπιρροφοῦντα τοῦ ὕδατος, ἄξιον ἔφη τούτῳ πιστεύσαντας ὑμᾶς ψηφίσασθαι τὸν πόλεμον, ὃν τί οἴεσθε ποιήσειν ἐν τῷ θώρακι καὶ τῇ ἀσπίδι τῶν πολεμίων ἐγγὺς ὄντων, ὅτε [10] λέγων πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἃ ἔσκεπται κινδυνεύει πνιγῆναι; τοῦ δὲ Λυκούργου πολλὰ βλάσφημα πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ, καὶ πρὸς ἅπασιν ὅτι δέκα τῶν πολιτῶν ἐξαιτοῦντος Ἀλεξάνδρου συνεβούλευεν ἐκδοῦναι, εἶπε· πόλλ’ ἐγὼ συμβεβούλευκα καλὰ καὶ συμφέροντα τούτοις, ἀλλ’ οὐ πείθονταί μοι.

[10] [1] Ἦν δέ τις Ἀρχιβιάδης ἐπικαλούμενος Λακωνιστής, πώγωνά τε καθειμένος ὑπερφυῆ μεγέθει, καὶ τρίβωνα φορῶν ἀεὶ καὶ σκυθρωπάζων. τοῦτον ἐν βουλῇ θορυβούμενος ὁ Φωκίων ἐπεκαλεῖτο τῷ λόγῳ μάρτυν [2] ἅμα καὶ βοηθόν. ὡς δ’ ἀναστὰς ἐκεῖνος ἃ πρὸς χάριν ἦν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις συνεβούλευεν, ἁψάμενος αὐτοῦ τῶν γενείων· ὦ Ἀρχιβιάδη εἶπε, τί [3] οὖν οὐκ ἀπεκείρω; Ἀριστογείτονος δὲ τοῦ συκοφάντου πολεμικοῦ μὲν ὄντος ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις καὶ παροξύνοντος ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις τὸν δῆμον, ἐν δὲ τῷ καταλόγῳ προσελθόντος ἐπὶ βακτηρίᾳ τὼ σκέλη καταδεδεμένου, πόρρωθεν αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος ἰδὼν ὁ Φωκίων ἀνέκραγε· γράφε καὶ [4] Ἀριστογείτονα χωλὸν καὶ πονηρόν. ὥστε θαυμάζειν, ὅπως καὶ ὁπόθεν τραχὺς οὕτως ἀνὴρ καὶ σκυθρωπὸς ἐκτήσατο τὴν τοῦ χρηστοῦ προσηγορίαν.

[5] ἔστι δ’ οἶμαι χαλεπόν, οὐ μὴν ἀδύνατον, ὥσπερ οἶνον καὶ ἄνθρωπον τὸν αὐτὸν ἡδὺν ἅμα καὶ αὐστηρὸν εἶναι· καθάπερ ἕτεροι πάλιν, φαινόμενοι [6] γλυκεῖς, ἀηδέστατοι τοῖς χρωμένοις εἰσὶ καὶ βλαβερώτατοι. καίτοι φασὶν Ὑπερείδην ποτ’ εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὸν δῆμον· ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, μὴ σκοπεῖτε μόνον εἰ πικρός, ἀλλ’ εἰ προῖκ’ εἰμι πικρός, ὥσπερ τοὺς πλεονεξίᾳ μόνον ἐπαχθεῖς καὶ λυπηροὺς ὄντας, οὐχὶ μᾶλλον ὅσοι πρὸς ὕβριν καὶ φθόνον ἢ ὀργὴν ἢ φιλονεικίαν τινὰ χρῶνται τῷ δύνασθαι, τούτους δεδιότων καὶ [7] προβαλλομένων τῶν πολλῶν. Φωκίων τοίνυν ἔχθρᾳ μὲν οὐδένα τῶν πολιτῶν κακῶς ἐποίησεν οὐδ’ ἐνόμιζεν ἐχθρόν, ἀλλ’ ὅσον ἔδει μόνον τῶν ἐνισταμένων οἷς ἔπραττεν ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος κατεξαναστῆναι, τραχὺς ὢν καὶ δυσεκβίαστος καὶ ἀπαραίτητος, εἰς τὸν ἄλλον βίον εὐμενῆ πᾶσι καὶ [8] κοινὸν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ἑαυτὸν παρεῖχεν· ὥστε καὶ πταίσασι βοηθεῖν καὶ κινδυνεύουσι συνεξετάζεσθαι τοῖς διαφόροις· ἐγκαλούντων δὲ τῶν φίλων ὅτι πονηρῷ τινι κρινομένῳ συνεῖπε, τοὺς χρηστοὺς ἔφη μὴ δεῖσθαι [9] βοηθείας. Ἀριστογείτονος δὲ τοῦ συκοφάντου μετὰ τὴν καταδίκην πέμψαντος καὶ δεηθέντος ἐλθεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν, ὑπακούσας ἐβάδιζεν εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον· οὐκ ἐώντων δὲ τῶν φίλων, ἐάσατ’ εἶπεν ὦ μακάριοι· ποῦ γὰρ ἄν τις ἥδιον Ἀριστογείτονι συμβάλοι;

[11] [1] Καὶ μὴν οἵ γε σύμμαχοι καὶ οἱ νησιῶται τοὺς Ἀθήνηθεν ἀποστόλους ἑτέρου μὲν ἐκπλέοντος στρατηγοῦ πολεμίους νομίζοντες, ἐφράγνυντο τείχη, καὶ λιμένας ἀπεχώννυσαν, καὶ κατεκόμιζον ἀπὸ τῆς χώρας εἰς τὰς πόλεις βοσκήματα καὶ ἀνδράποδα καὶ γυναῖκας καὶ παῖδας, εἰ δὲ Φωκίων ἡγοῖτο, πόρρω ναυσὶν ἰδίαις ἀπαντῶντες ἐστεφανωμένοι καὶ χαίροντες, ὡς αὑτοὺς κατῆγον.

[12] Παραδυομένου δ’ εἰς τὴν Εὔβοιαν τοῦ Φιλίππου, καὶ δύναμιν ἐκ Μακεδονίας διαβιβάζοντος, καὶ τὰς πόλεις οἰκειουμένου διὰ τυράννων, Πλουτάρχου δὲ τοῦ Ἐρετριέως καλοῦντος τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, καὶ δεομένου τὴν νῆσον ἐξελέσθαι καταλαμβανομένην ὑπὸ τοῦ Μακεδόνος, ἀπεστάλη στρατηγὸς ὁ Φωκίων ἔχων δύναμιν οὐ πολλήν, ὡς τῶν ἐκεῖ συστησομένων [2] ἑτοίμως πρὸς αὐτόν. εὑρὼν δὲ προδοτῶν ἅπαντα μεστὰ καὶ νοσοῦντα καὶ διορωρυγμένα δωροδοκίαις, εἰς κίνδυνον μέγαν κατέστη, καί τινα λόφον χαράδρᾳ βαθείᾳ τῶν περὶ τὰς Ταμύνας ἐπιπέδων ἀποκρινόμενον καταλαβών, συνεῖχεν ἐν τούτῳ καὶ συνεκρότει τὸ μαχιμώτατον τῆς δυνάμεως.

[3] τῶν δ’ ἀτάκτων καὶ λάλων καὶ πονηρῶν διαδιδρασκόντων ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ ἀποχωρούντων, ἐκέλευσεν ἀμελεῖν τοὺς ἡγεμόνας· καὶ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα δυσχρήστους ὑπ’ ἀταξίας ἔσεσθαι καὶ βλαβεροὺς τοῖς μαχομένοις, κἀκεῖ τοιαῦτα συνειδότας αὑτοῖς ἧττον αὐτοῦ καταβοήσασθαι καὶ μὴ πάνυ συκοφαντήσειν.

[13] [1] Ὡς δ’ ἐπῄεσαν οἱ πολέμιοι, κελεύσας ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἀτρεμεῖν ἄχρι ἂν αὐτὸς σφαγιάσηται, πλείω διέτριβε χρόνον, ἢ δυσιερῶν ἢ βουλόμενος [2] ἐγγυτέρω τοὺς πολεμίους ἐπισπάσασθαι. διὸ πρῶτον μὲν ὁ Πλούταρχος οἰόμενος ἀποδειλιᾶν καὶ κατοκνεῖν ἐκεῖνον, ἐξέδραμε μετὰ τῶν ξένων· ἔπειτα τοῦτον ἰδόντες οἱ ἱππεῖς οὐκ ἐκαρτέρησαν, ἀλλ’ ἤλαυνον εὐθὺς εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους, ἀσύντακτοι καὶ σποράδες ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου προσφερόμενοι.

[3] νικωμένων δὲ τῶν πρώτων, ἅπαντες ἐσκεδάσθησαν, καὶ ὁ Πλούταρχος ἔφυγε, καὶ τῷ χάρακι προσμείξαντες ἔνιοι τῶν πολεμίων [4] ἐκκόπτειν ἐπειρῶντο καὶ διασπᾶν, ὡς ἁπάντων κεκρατηκότες. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τῶν ἱερῶν γενομένων, τοὺς μὲν εὐθὺς ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου προσπεσόντες οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι τρέπουσι, καὶ καταβάλλουσι τοὺς πλείστους περὶ τοῖς ἐρύμασι φεύγοντας, ὁ δὲ Φωκίων τὴν μὲν φάλαγγα προσέταξεν ἐφεδρεύειν, ἀναλαμβάνουσαν ἅμα καὶ προσδεχομένην τοὺς ἐν τῇ φυγῇ πρότερον διασπαρέντας, [5] αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς ἐπιλέκτους ἔχων ἐνέβαλε τοῖς πολεμίοις, καὶ μάχης καρτερᾶς γενομένης, πάντες μὲν ἐκθύμως ἠγωνίσαντο καὶ ἀφειδῶς, Θάλλος δ’ ὁ Κινέου καὶ Γλαῦκος ὁ Πολυμήδους περὶ αὐτὸν τεταγμένοι [6] τὸν στρατηγὸν ἠρίστευσαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ Κλεοφάνης ἄξιον πλείστου παρέσχεν ἑαυτὸν ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ μάχῃ· τοὺς γὰρ ἱππεῖς ἀνακαλούμενος ἐκ τῆς τροπῆς καὶ βοῶν καὶ διακελευόμενος κινδυνεύοντι τῷ στρατηγῷ βοηθεῖν, [7] ἐποίησεν ἀναστρέψαντας ἐπιρρῶσαι τὸ νίκημα τῶν ὁπλιτῶν. ἐκ τούτου τόν τε Πλούταρχον ἐξέβαλεν ἐκ τῆς Ἐρετρίας, καὶ Ζάρητρα φρούριον ἑλὼν ἐπικαιρότατον, ᾗ μάλιστα συνελαύνεται τὸ πλάτος εἰς βραχὺ διάζωμα τῆς νήσου, σφιγγομένης ἑκατέρωθεν ταῖς θαλάσσαις, οὓς ἔλαβεν αἰχμαλώτους Ἕλληνας ἀφῆκε, φοβηθεὶς τοὺς ῥήτορας τῶν Ἀθηναίων, μὴ πρὸς ὀργήν τι βιάσωνται τὸν δῆμον ἀγνωμονῆσαι περὶ αὐτούς.

[14] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῦτα διαπραξάμενος ἀπέπλευσεν ὁ Φωκίων, ταχὺ μὲν ἐπόθησαν οἱ σύμμαχοι τὴν χρηστότητα καὶ δικαιοσύνην αὐτοῦ, ταχὺ [2] δ’ ἔγνωσαν οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι τὴν ἐμπειρίαν καὶ ῥώμην τοῦ ἀνδρός. ὁ γὰρ μετ’ ἐκεῖνον ἐλθὼν ἐπὶ τὰ πράγματα Μολοσσὸς οὕτως ἐπολέμησεν, ὥστε καὶ ζῶν αὐτὸς ὑποχείριος γενέσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις.

[3] Ἐπεὶ δὲ μεγάλα ταῖς ἐλπίσι περινοῶν ὁ Φίλιππος εἰς Ἑλλήσποντον ἦλθε μετὰ πάσης τῆς δυνάμεως, ὡς Χερρόνησον ἐν ταὐτῷ καὶ Πέρινθον ἕξων καὶ Βυζάντιον, ὡρμημένων δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων βοηθεῖν οἱ ῥήτορες ἠγωνίσαντο [4] τὸν Χάρητα στρατηγὸν ἀποσταλῆναι, καὶ πλεύσας ἐκεῖνος οὐδὲν ἄξιον τῆς δυνάμεως ἔπραττεν, οὐδ’ αἱ πόλεις ἐδέχοντο τὸν στόλον, ἀλλ’ ὕποπτος ὢν πᾶσιν ἐπλανᾶτο, χρηματιζόμενος ἀπὸ τῶν συμμάχων καὶ καταφρονούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, ὁ δὲ δῆμος ὑπὸ τῶν ῥητόρων παροξυνόμενος ἠγανάκτει καὶ μετενόει τοῖς Βυζαντίοις πέμψας τὴν βοήθειαν, [5] ἀναστὰς ὁ Φωκίων εἶπεν, ὅτι δεῖ μὴ τοῖς ἀπιστοῦσιν ὀργίζεσθαι τῶν συμμάχων, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἀπιστουμένοις τῶν στρατηγῶν· οὗτοι γὰρ ὑμᾶς ποιοῦσι φοβεροὺς καὶ τοῖς χωρὶς ὑμῶν σῴζεσθαι μὴ δυναμένοις.

[6] κινηθεὶς οὖν ὁ δῆμος ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου καὶ μεταπεσών, ἐκέλευεν αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον ἑτέραν προσλαβόντα δύναμιν βοηθεῖν τοῖς συμμάχοις εἰς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον· ὃ μεγίστην ῥοπὴν ἐποίησε πρὸς τὸ σωθῆναι τὸ Βυζάντιον.

[7] ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἤδη μεγάλη δόξα τοῦ Φωκίωνος· ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ Λέων, ἀνὴρ Βυζαντίων πρῶτος ἀρετῇ καὶ τῷ Φωκίωνι γεγονὼς ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ συνήθης, ἀνεδέξατο τὴν πίστιν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, οὐκ εἴασαν ἔξω στρατοπεδεῦσαι βουλόμενον, ἀλλ’ ἀνοίξαντες τὰς πύλας ἐδέξαντο καὶ κατέμειξαν ἑαυτοῖς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, οὐ μόνον ἀνεγκλήτους ταῖς διαίταις καὶ σώφρονας, ἀλλὰ καὶ προθυμοτάτους ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι διὰ τὴν πίστιν [8] γενομένους. οὕτω μὲν ὁ Φίλιππος ἐξέπεσε τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου τότε καὶ κατεφρονήθη, δοκῶν ἄμαχός τις εἶναι καὶ ἀνανταγώνιστος, ὁ δὲ Φωκίων καὶ ναῦς τινας εἷλεν αὐτοῦ, καὶ φρουρουμένας πόλεις ἀνέλαβε, καὶ πολλαχόθι τῆς χώρας ἀποβάσεις ποιούμενος ἐπόρθει καὶ κατέτρεχε, μέχρι οὗ τραύματα λαβὼν ὑπὸ τῶν προσβοηθούντων ἀπέπλευσε.

[15] [1] Τῶν δὲ Μεγαρέων ἐπικαλουμένων κρύφα, φοβούμενος ὁ Φωκίων τοὺς Βοιωτοὺς μὴ προαισθόμενοι φθάσωσι τὴν βοήθειαν, ἐκκλησίαν συνήγαγεν ἕωθεν, καὶ προσαγγείλας τὰ παρὰ τῶν Μεγαρέων τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ὡς ἐπεψηφίσαντο, τῇ σάλπιγγι σημήνας εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας [2] ἦγεν αὐτοὺς τὰ ὅπλα λαβόντας. δεξαμένων δὲ τῶν Μεγαρέων προθύμως, τήν τε Νίσαιαν ἐτείχισε, καὶ διὰ μέσου σκέλη δύο πρὸς τὸ ἐπίνειον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἄστεος ἐνέβαλε, καὶ συνῆψε τῇ θαλάττῃ τὴν πόλιν, ὥστε τῶν κατὰ γῆν πολεμίων ὀλίγον ἤδη φροντίζουσαν ἐξηρτῆσθαι τῶν Ἀθηναίων.

[16] [1] Ἤδη δὲ πρὸς Φίλιππον ἐκπεπολεμωμένων παντάπασι, καὶ στρατηγῶν αὐτοῦ μὴ παρόντος ἑτέρων ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον ᾑρημένων, ὡς κατέπλευσεν ἀπὸ τῶν νήσων, πρῶτον μὲν ἔπειθε τὸν δῆμον, εἰρηνικῶς ἔχοντος τοῦ Φιλίππου καὶ φοβουμένου τὸν κίνδυνον ἰσχυρῶς, δέχεσθαι τὰς διαλύσεις· [2] καί τινος ἀντικρούσαντος αὐτῷ τῶν εἰωθότων κυλινδεῖσθαι περὶ τὴν Ἡλιαίαν καὶ συκοφαντεῖν καὶ εἰπόντος σὺ δὲ τολμᾷς ὦ Φωκίων ἀποτρέπειν Ἀθηναίους, ἤδη τὰ ὅπλα διὰ χειρῶν ἔχοντας; ἔγωγ’ εἶπε, καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰδὼς ὅτι πολέμου μὲν ὄντος ἐγὼ σοῦ, εἰρήνης δὲ γενομένης [3] σὺ ἐμοῦ ἄρξεις. ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἔπειθεν, ἀλλ’ ὁ Δημοσθένης ἐκράτει κελεύων ὡς πορρωτάτω τῆς Ἀττικῆς θέσθαι μάχην τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ὦ τᾶν ἔφη, μὴ ποῦ μαχώμεθα σκοπῶμεν, ἀλλὰ πῶς νικήσωμεν. οὕτω γὰρ ἔσται μακρὰν ὁ πόλεμος, ἡττωμένοις δὲ πᾶν ἀεὶ δεινὸν ἐγγὺς πάρεστι.

[4] γενομένης δὲ τῆς ἥττης, καὶ τῶν θορυβοποιῶν καὶ νεωτεριστῶν ἐν ἄστει τὸν Χαρίδημον ἑλκόντων ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ στρατηγεῖν ἀξιούντων, ἐφοβήθησαν οἱ βέλτιστοι, καὶ τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴν ἔχοντες ἐν τῷ δήμῳ, δεόμενοι καὶ δακρύοντες μόλις ἔπεισαν ἐπιτρέψαι τῷ Φωκίωνι [5] τὴν πόλιν. ὁ δὲ τὴν μὲν ἄλλην τοῦ Φιλίππου πολιτείαν καὶ φιλανθρωπίαν ᾤετο δεῖν προσδέχεσθαι· Δημάδου δὲ γράψαντος ὅπως ἡ πόλις μετέχοι τῆς κοινῆς εἰρήνης καὶ τοῦ συνεδρίου τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, οὐκ εἴα πρὸ τοῦ γνῶναι, τίνα Φίλιππος αὑτῷ γενέσθαι παρὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀξιώσει· [6] κρατηθεὶς δὲ τῇ γνώμῃ διὰ τὸν καιρόν, ὡς εὐθὺς ἑώρα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους μεταμελομένους ὅτι καὶ τριήρεις ἔδει παρέχειν τῷ Φιλίππῳ καὶ ἱππεῖς, [7] ταῦτ’ ἔφη φοβούμενος ἠναντιούμην· ἐπεὶ δὲ συνέθεσθε, δεῖ μὴ βαρέως φέρειν μηδ’ ἀθυμεῖν, μεμνημένους ὅτι καὶ οἱ πρόγονοί ποτε μὲν ἄρχοντες, ποτὲ δ’ ἀρχόμενοι, καλῶς δ’ ἀμφότερα ταῦτα ποιοῦντες, καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἔσωσαν καὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας.

[8] Φιλίππου δ’ ἀποθανόντος εὐαγγέλια θύειν τὸν δῆμον οὐκ εἴα· καὶ γὰρ ἀγεννὲς εἶναι ‹τὸ› ἐπιχαίρειν, καὶ τὴν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ παραταξαμένην πρὸς αὐτοὺς δύναμιν ἑνὶ σώματι μόνον ἐλάττω γενέσθαι.

[17] [1] Δημοσθένους δὲ λοιδοροῦντος τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἤδη προσάγοντα ταῖς Θήβαις, ἔφη (Od. 9, 494)·

σχέτλιε, τίπτ’ ἐθέλεις ἐρεθιζέμεν ἄγριον ἄνδρα

καὶ δόξης μεγάλης ὀρεγόμενον; ἢ βούλει πυρκαϊᾶς τηλικαύτης οὔσης ἐγγὺς ῥιπίσαι τὴν πόλιν; ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς οὐδὲ βουλομένοις ἀπολέσθαι τούτοις [2] ἐπιτρέψομεν, οἱ διὰ τοῦτο στρατηγεῖν ὑπομένοντες. ὡς δ’ ἀπωλώλεισαν αἱ Θῆβαι, καὶ ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐξῃτεῖτο τοὺς περὶ Δημοσθένην καὶ Λυκοῦργον καὶ Ὑπερείδην καὶ Χαρίδημον, ἡ δ’ ἐκκλησία πρὸς ἐκεῖνον [3] ἀπέβλεπεν, ὀνομαστὶ πολλάκις καλούμενος ἀνέστη· καὶ τῶν φίλων ἕνα παραστησάμενος, ᾧ μάλιστα χρώμενος διετέλει καὶ πιστεύων καὶ ἀγαπῶν· εἰς τὰ τοιαῦτ’ ἔφη τὴν πόλιν οὗτοι παραγηόχασιν, ὥστ’ ἔγωγε κἂν Νικοκλέα τις τοῦτον ἐξαιτῇ, διδόναι κελεύσω. τὸ μὲν γὰρ αὐτὸς [4] ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἁπάντων ἀποθανεῖν εὐτυχίαν ‹ἂν› ἐμαυτοῦ θείμην. ἐλεῶ δ’ εἶπεν ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ τοὺς ἐκ Θηβῶν δεῦρο πεφευγότας, ἀρκεῖ δὲ τὰς Θήβας κλαίειν τοῖς Ἕλλησι. διὸ βέλτιόν ἐστιν ὑπὲρ ἀμφοῖν πείθειν [5] καὶ παραιτεῖσθαι τοὺς κρατοῦντας ἢ μάχεσθαι. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ψήφισμα λέγεται ‹τὸν› Ἀλέξανδρον ὡς ἔλαβε ῥῖψαι, καὶ φυγεῖν ἀποστρα[6]φέντα τοὺς πρέσβεις· τὸ δὲ δεύτερον ἐδέξατο κομισθὲν ὑπὸ Φωκίωνος, τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἀκούων ὅτι καὶ Φίλιππος ἐθαύμαζε τὸν ἄνδρα τοῦτον, καὶ οὐ μόνον τὴν ἔντευξιν ὑπέμεινεν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δέησιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ συμβουλεύοντος [7] ἤκουσε. συνεβούλευε δ’ ὁ Φωκίων, εἰ μὲν ἡσυχίας ὀρέγεται, θέσθαι τὸν πόλεμον· εἰ δὲ δόξης, μεταθέσθαι, πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀπὸ [8] τῶν Ἑλλήνων τραπόμενον. καὶ πολλὰ πρὸς τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου φύσιν καὶ βούλησιν εὐστόχως εἰπών, οὕτω μετέβαλε καὶ κατεπράϋνεν αὐτόν, ὥστ’ εἰπεῖν ὅπως προσέξουσι τὸν νοῦν Ἀθηναῖοι τοῖς πράγμασιν, ὡς εἴ τι [9] γένοιτο περὶ αὐτόν, ἐκείνοις ἄρχειν προσῆκον. ἰδίᾳ δὲ τὸν Φωκίωνα ποιησάμενος αὑτοῦ φίλον καὶ ξένον, εἰς τοσαύτην ἔθετο τιμὴν ὅσην εἶχον [10] ὀλίγοι τῶν ἀεὶ συνόντων. ὁ γοῦν Δοῦρις (FGrH 76 F 51) εἴρηκεν, ὡς μέγας γενόμενος καὶ Δαρείου κρατήσας ἀφεῖλε τῶν ἐπιστολῶν τὸ χαίρειν, πλὴν ἐν ὅσαις ἔγραφε Φωκίωνι· τοῦτον δὲ μόνον ὥσπερ Ἀντίπατρον μετὰ τοῦ χαίρειν προσηγόρευε. τοῦτο δὲ καὶ Χάρης ἱστόρηκε (FGrH 125 F 10).

[18] [1] Τὸ μέντοι περὶ τῶν χρημάτων ὁμολογούμενόν ἐστιν, ὅτι δωρεὰν αὐτῷ κατέπεμψεν ἑκατὸν τάλαντα. τούτων κομισθέντων εἰς Ἀθήνας, ἠρώτησεν ὁ Φωκίων τοὺς φέροντας, τί δή ποτε πολλῶν ὄντων Ἀθηναίων [2] αὐτῷ μόνῳ τοσαῦτα δίδωσιν Ἀλέξανδρος. εἰπόντων δ’ ἐκείνων ὅτι σὲ κρίνει μόνον ἄνδρα καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθόν, οὐκοῦν εἶπεν ὁ Φωκίων [3] ἐασάτω με καὶ δοκεῖν [ἀεὶ] καὶ εἶναι τοιοῦτον. ὡς δ’ ἀκολουθήσαντες εἰς οἶκον αὐτῷ πολλὴν ἑώρων εὐτέλειαν, τὴν μὲν γυναῖκα μάττουσαν, ὁ δὲ Φωκίων αὐτὸς ἀνιμήσας ὕδωρ ἐκ τοῦ φρέατος ἀπενίπτετο τοὺς πόδας, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐνέκειντο καὶ ἠγανάκτουν, δεινὸν εἶναι λέγοντες, εἰ φίλος ὢν τοῦ [4] βασιλέως οὕτω διαιτήσεται πονηρῶς. ἰδὼν οὖν ὁ Φωκίων πένητα πρεσβύτην ἐν τριβωνίῳ ῥυπαρῷ πορευόμενον, ἠρώτησεν εἰ τούτου χείρονα νομίζουσιν αὐτόν. εὐφημεῖν δ’ ἐκείνων δεομένων, καὶ μὴν οὗτος εἶπεν ἀπ’ ἐλαττόνων ἐμοῦ ζῇ καὶ ἀρκεῖται. τὸ δ’ ὅλον ἢ μὴ χρώμενος ἔφη μάτην ἕξω τοσοῦτον χρυσίον, ἢ χρώμενος ἐμαυτὸν [5] ἅμα κἀκεῖνον διαβαλῶ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν. οὕτω μὲν οὖν ἐπανῆλθε πάλιν τὰ χρήματ’ ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν, ἐπιδείξαντα τοῖς Ἕλλησι πλουσιώτερον τοῦ διδόντος [6] τοσαῦτα τὸν μὴ δεόμενον. ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ἠγανάκτησε καὶ πάλιν ἔγραψε τῷ Φωκίωνι φίλους μὴ νομίζειν τοὺς μηδὲν αὐτοῦ δεομένους, χρήματα μὲν οὐδ’ ὣς ὁ Φωκίων ἔλαβεν, ἀφεθῆναι δ’ ἠξίωσε τὸν σοφιστὴν Ἐχεκρατίδην καὶ τὸν Ἴμβριον Ἀθηνόδωρον καὶ Ῥοδίους δύο, Δημάρατον καὶ Σπάρτωνα, συνειλημμένους ἐπ’ αἰτίαις τισὶ καὶ καθειργμένους ἐν [7] Σάρδεσι. τούτους μὲν οὖν εὐθὺς ἀπέλυσεν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος, Κρατερὸν δ’ ἀποστέλλων εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἐκέλευσε τεττάρων πόλεων ἐν Ἀσίᾳ, Κίου Γεργίθου Μυλάσων Ἐλαίας, μίαν ἣν ἂν αἱρῆται παραδοῦναι τῷ Φωκίωνι, [8] διατεινάμενος ἔτι μᾶλλον ὡς χαλεπανεῖ μὴ λαβόντος. ἀλλ’ οὔτε Φωκίων ἔλαβεν, ὅ τ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ταχέως ἀπέθανεν. ἡ δ’ οἰκία τοῦ Φωκίωνος ἔτι νῦν ἐν Μελίτῃ δείκνυται, χαλκαῖς λεπίσι κεκοσμημένη, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα λιτὴ καὶ ἀφελής.

[19] [1] Τῶν δὲ γυναικῶν ἃς ἔγημε περὶ τῆς προτέρας οὐθὲν ἱστορεῖται, πλὴν ὅτι Κηφισόδοτος ἦν ὁ πλάστης ἀδελφὸς αὐτῆς· τῆς δὲ δευτέρας οὐκ ἐλάττων ἐπὶ σωφροσύνῃ καὶ ἀφελείᾳ λόγος ἦν παρὰ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἢ [2] Φωκίωνος ἐπὶ χρηστότητι. καί ποτε θεωμένων καινοὺς τραγῳδοὺς Ἀθηναίων, ὁ μὲν τραγῳδὸς εἰσιέναι μέλλων βασιλίδος πρόσωπον, ᾔτει κεκοσμημένας πολλὰς πολυτελῶς ὀπαδοὺς τὸν χορηγόν, καὶ μὴ παρέχοντος, [3] ἠγανάκτει καὶ κατεῖχε τὸ θέατρον, οὐ βουλόμενος προελθεῖν. ὁ δὲ χορηγὸς Μελάνθιος ὠθῶν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ μέσον ἐβόα· τὴν τοῦ Φωκίωνος οὐχ ὁρᾷς γυναῖκα προϊοῦσαν ἀεὶ μετὰ μιᾶς θεραπαινίδος; ἀλλ’ ἀλαζονεύῃ καὶ διαφθείρεις τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν. ἐξακούστου δὲ τῆς φωνῆς γενομένης, ἐδέξατο [4] κρότῳ πολλῷ καὶ θορύβῳ τὸ θέατρον. αὐτὴ δ’ ἡ γυνή, ξένης τινὸς Ἰωνικῆς ἐπιδειξαμένης χρυσοῦν καὶ λιθοκόλλητον κόσμον ‹ἐν› ἐμπλοκίοις καὶ περιδεραίοις, ἐμοὶ δ’ ἔφη κόσμος ἐστὶ Φωκίων, εἰκοστὸν ἔτος ἤδη στρατηγῶν Ἀθηναίων.

[20] [1] Φώκῳ δὲ τῷ υἱῷ βουλομένῳ ‹δι›αγωνίσασθαι Παναθηναίοις ἀποβάτην ἐφῆκεν, οὐχὶ τῆς νίκης ὀρεγόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὅπως ἐπιμεληθεὶς καὶ ἀσκήσας τὸ σῶμα βελτίων ἔσοιτο· καὶ γὰρ ἦν ἄλλως φιλοπότης καὶ ἄτακτος [2] ὁ νεανίσκος. νικήσαντος δὲ καὶ πολλῶν αἰτουμένων ἑστιᾶσαι τὰ νικητήρια, τοὺς ἄλλους Φωκίων παραιτησάμενος, ἑνὶ τὴν φιλοτιμίαν [3] ταύτην συνεχώρησεν. ὡς δ’ ἐλθὼν ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον ἄλλην τε σοβαρὰν ἑώρα παρασκευὴν καὶ ποδανιπτῆρας οἴνου δι’ ἀρωμάτων προσφερομένους τοῖς εἰσιοῦσι, καλέσας τὸν υἱὸν οὐ παύσεις ἔφη τὸν ἑταῖρον ὦ Φῶκε διαφθείροντά [4] σου τὴν νίκην; βουλόμενος δὲ καὶ καθόλου μεταστῆσαι τὸ μειράκιον ἐκ τῆς διαίτης ἐκείνης, ἀπήγαγεν εἰς Λακεδαίμονα καὶ κατέμειξε [5] τοῖς ἀγομένοις τὴν λεγομένην ἀγωγὴν νεανίσκοις. καὶ τοῦτο τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐλύπησεν, ὡς ὑπερορῶντος καὶ ὑπερφρονοῦντος τὰ οἰκεῖα [6] τοῦ Φωκίωνος. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ Δημάδου πρὸς αὐτόν· τί οὐ πείθομεν ὦ Φωκίων Ἀθηναίους τὴν Λακωνικὴν προσδέξασθαι πολιτείαν; ἐὰν γὰρ σὺ κελεύῃς, ἐγὼ γράφειν καὶ λέγειν ἕτοιμός εἰμι, πάνυ γοῦν ἔφη πρέψειεν ἄν σοι, μύρου τοσοῦτον ὄζοντι καὶ χλαμύδα τοιαύτην φοροῦντι, συμβουλεύειν Ἀθηναίοις περὶ φιδιτίων καὶ τὸν Λυκοῦργον ἐπαινεῖν.

[21] [1] Γράψαντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου περὶ τριήρων ὅπως ἀποστείλωσιν αὐτῷ, καὶ τῶν ῥητόρων ἐνισταμένων, τῆς δὲ βουλῆς τὸν Φωκίωνα λέγειν κελευούσης, λέγω τοίνυν ὑμῖν εἶπεν ἢ τοῖς ὅπλοις κρατεῖν ἢ τοῖς κρατοῦσι φίλους εἶναι.

[2] Πρὸς δὲ Πυθέαν, ἀρχόμενον τότε πρῶτον ἐντυγχάνειν Ἀθηναίοις, ἤδη δὲ λάλον ὄντα καὶ θρασύν, οὐ σιωπήσεις ἔφη, καὶ ταῦτα νεώνητος ὢν τῷ δήμῳ;

[3] Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἅρπαλος μετὰ χρημάτων πολλῶν ἀποδρὰς Ἀλέξανδρον ἐκ τῆς Ἀσίας τῇ Ἀττικῇ προσέβαλε, καὶ τῶν εἰωθότων ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος χρηματίζεσθαι δρόμος ἦν καὶ ἅμιλλα φθειρομένων πρὸς αὐτόν, τούτοις μὲν ἀπὸ πολλῶν μικρὰ δελεάζων προήκατο καὶ διέρριψε, τῷ δὲ Φωκίωνι προσέπεμψε διδοὺς ἑπτακόσια τάλαντα, καὶ τἆλλα πάντα καὶ μετὰ πάντων [4] ἑαυτὸν [ἐπ’] ἐκείνῳ μόνῳ παρακατατιθέμενος. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τραχέως τοῦ Φωκίωνος, οἰμώξεσθαι τὸν Ἅρπαλον εἰ μὴ παύσεται διαφθείρων τὴν πόλιν, τότε μὲν συσταλεὶς ἀπέστη, μετ’ ὀλίγον δὲ βουλευομένων Ἀθηναίων ἑώρα τοὺς μὲν εἰληφότας τὰ χρήματα παρ’ αὐτοῦ μεταβαλλομένους καὶ κατηγοροῦντας, ἵνα μὴ φανεροὶ γένωνται, Φωκίωνα δὲ τὸν μηδὲν λαβόντα μετὰ τοῦ κοινοῦ συμφέροντος ἅμα καὶ τὴν ἐκείνου σωτηρίαν ἔν τινι [5] λόγῳ τιθέμενον. πάλιν οὖν ἐνεχθεὶς ἐπὶ τὸ θεραπεύειν ἐκεῖνον, αὐτὸν μὲν ὡς ἔρυμα πανταχόθεν ἀνάλωτον ὑπὸ τοῦ χρυσίου περιοδεύων ἑώρα, Χαρικλέα δὲ τὸν γαμβρὸν αὐτοῦ ποιησάμενος συνήθη καὶ φίλον ἐνέπλησε δόξης πονηρᾶς, πάντα πιστεύων καὶ πάντα χρώμενος ἐκείνῳ.

[22] [1] Καὶ δὴ καὶ Πυθονίκης τῆς ἑταίρας ἀποθανούσης, ἣν εἶχεν ὁ Ἅρπαλος ἐρῶν καὶ θυγατρίου πατὴρ ἐξ αὐτῆς γεγονώς, μνημεῖον ἀπὸ χρημάτων πολλῶν ἐπιτελέσαι θελήσας, προσέταξε τῷ Χαρικλεῖ τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν.

[2] οὖσαν δὲ τὴν ὑπουργίαν ταύτην ἀγεννῆ, προσκατῄσχυνεν ὁ τάφος συντελεσθείς - διαμένει γὰρ ἔτι νῦν ἐν Ἑρμείῳ, ᾗ βαδίζομεν ἐξ ἄστεος εἰς Ἐλευσῖνα - μηδὲν ἔχων τῶν τριάκοντα ταλάντων ἄξιον, ὅσα τῷ Ἁρπάλῳ [3] λογισθῆναί φασιν εἰς τὸ ἔργον ὑπὸ τοῦ Χαρικλέους. καὶ μέντοι καὶ τελευτήσαντος αὐτοῦ τὸ παιδάριον ὑπὸ τοῦ Χαρικλέους καὶ τοῦ Φωκίωνος [4] ἀναληφθὲν ἐτύγχανε πάσης ἐπιμελείας. κρινομένου μέντοι τοῦ Χαρικλέους ἐπὶ τοῖς Ἁρπαλείοις καὶ δεομένου βοηθεῖν αὐτῷ τὸν Φωκίωνα καὶ συνεισελθεῖν εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον, οὐκ ἠθέλησεν εἰπών· ἐγώ σ’ ὦ Χαρίκλεις ἐπὶ πᾶσι τοῖς δικαίοις γαμβρὸν ἐποιησάμην.

[5] Πρώτου δ’ Ἀθηναίοις Ἀσκληπιάδου τοῦ Ἱππάρχου τεθνάναι προσαγγείλαντος Ἀλέξανδρον, ὁ μὲν Δημάδης (fg. 53 de Falco) ἐκέλευε μὴ προσέχειν· πάλαι γὰρ ἂν ὅλην ὄζειν νεκροῦ τὴν οἰκουμένην· ὁ δὲ Φωκίων ἐπηρμένον ὁρῶν πρὸς τὸ νεωτερίζειν τὸν δῆμον, ἐπειρᾶτο παρηγορεῖν [6] καὶ κατέχειν. ἀναπηδώντων δὲ πολλῶν ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ βοώντων ἀληθῆ τὸν Ἀσκληπιάδην ἀπαγγέλλειν καὶ τεθνάναι τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, οὐκοῦν εἶπεν εἰ σήμερον τέθνηκε, καὶ αὔριον ἔσται καὶ εἰς τρίτην τεθνηκώς, ὥσθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ βουλεύσασθαι, μᾶλλον δὲ μετ’ ἀσφαλείας.

[23] [1] Ὡς δὲ φέρων ἐνέσεισεν ὁ Λεωσθένης τὴν πόλιν εἰς τὸν Ἑλληνικὸν πόλεμον, καὶ τοῦ Φωκίωνος δυσχεραίνοντος ἠρώτα καταγελῶν, τί πεποίηκεν ἀγαθὸν τὴν πόλιν ἔτη τοσαῦτα στρατηγῶν, οὐ μικρόν ἔφη, τὸ [2] τοὺς πολίτας ἐν τοῖς ἰδίοις μνήμασι θάπτεσθαι. πολλὰ δὲ θρασυνομένου καὶ κομπάζοντος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ τοῦ Λεωσθένους, ὁ Φωκίων οἱ λόγοι σου εἶπεν ὦ μειράκιον ἐοίκασι κυπαρίττοις· μεγάλοι γὰρ ὄντες καὶ ὑψηλοί, [3] καρποὺς οὐ φέρουσιν. ὡς δ’ ἐπαναστὰς ὁ Ὑπερείδης ἠρώτησε· πότ’ οὖν ὦ Φωκίων συμβουλεύσεις πολεμεῖν Ἀθηναίοις; ὅταν εἶπε τοὺς μὲν νέους ἴδω τὴν τάξιν βουλομένους φυλάττειν, τοὺς δὲ πλουσίους εἰσφέρειν, [4] τοὺς δὲ ῥήτορας ἀπέχεσθαι τοῦ κλέπτειν τὰ δημόσια. θαυμαζόντων δὲ πολλῶν τὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ Λεωσθένους συνηγμένην δύναμιν καὶ τοῦ Φωκίωνος πυνθανομένων, πῶς τι παρεσκευάσθαι δοκοῦσιν αὐτῷ, καλῶς ἔφη πρὸς τὸ στάδιον· τὸν δὲ δόλιχον τοῦ πολέμου φοβοῦμαι, μήτε χρήματα [5] τῆς πόλεως ἕτερα μήτε ναῦς μήθ’ ὁπλίτας ἐχούσης. ἐμαρτύρει δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ τὰ ἔργα. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ὁ Λεωσθένης λαμπρὸς ἤρθη ταῖς πράξεσι, τῶν τε Βοιωτῶν μάχῃ κρατήσας καὶ τὸν Ἀντίπατρον εἰς Λαμίαν [6] συνελάσας· ὅτε καί φασι τὴν μὲν πόλιν ἐλπίδος μεγάλης γενομένην ἑορτάζειν εὐαγγέλια συνεχῶς καὶ θύειν τοῖς θεοῖς, τὸν δὲ Φωκίωνα πρὸς τοὺς ἐλέγχειν αὐτὸν οἰομένους καὶ πυνθανομένους, εἰ ταῦτ’ οὐκ ἂν ἤθελεν αὑτῷ πεπρᾶχθαι, πάνυ μὲν οὖν φάναι, βεβουλεῦσθαι δ’ ἐκεῖνα· [7] καὶ πάλιν ἄλλων ἐπ’ ἄλλοις εὐαγγελίων γραφομένων καὶ φερομένων ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατοπέδου, πότ’ ἄρα φάναι παυσόμεθα νικῶντες;

[24] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ Λεωσθένους ἀποθανόντος οἱ φοβούμενοι τὸν Φωκίωνα, μὴ στρατηγὸς ἐκπεμφθεὶς καταλύσῃ τὸν πόλεμον, ἄνθρωπόν τινα τῶν οὐκ ἐπιφανῶν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ παρεσκεύασαν ἀναστάντα λέγειν, ὅτι φίλος ὢν τοῦ Φωκίωνος καὶ συμπεφοιτηκὼς παραινεῖ φείδεσθαι τοῦ ἀνδρὸς καὶ φυλάσσειν, ὡς ἄλλον ὅμοιον οὐκ ἔχοντας, ἐκπέμπειν δ’ Ἀντίφιλον ἐπὶ [2] τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ ταῦτα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις συνεδόκει, παρελθὼν ὁ Φωκίων ἔλεγε, μήτε συμπεφοιτηκέναι ποτὲ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ μήτ’ ἄλλως γεγονέναι γνώριμος ἢ συνήθης· ἀλλὰ νῦν εἶπεν ἀπὸ τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας καὶ φίλον σε ποιοῦμαι καὶ οἰκεῖον· ἃ γὰρ ἦν ἐμοὶ συμφέροντα, συμβεβούλευκας.

[3] ὡρμημένων δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐπὶ τοὺς Βοιωτοὺς στρατεύειν, πρῶτον μὲν ἀντεῖχε, καὶ τῶν φίλων λεγόντων ὡς ἀποθανεῖται προσκρούων τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ἀδίκως εἶπεν, ἂν ποιῶ τὸ συμφέρον· ἂν δὲ παραβαίνω, [4] δικαίως. ἔπειθ’ ὁρῶν οὐκ ἀνιέντας ἀλλὰ βοῶντας, ἐκέλευσε τὸν κήρυκ’ ἀνειπεῖν Ἀθηναίων τοὺς ἄχρι ἑξήκοντ’ ἐτῶν ἀφ’ ἥβης πένθ’ ἡμερῶν [5] σιτία λαβόντας εὐθὺς ἀκολουθεῖν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας· θορύβου δὲ πολλοῦ γενομένου, καὶ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων βοώντων καὶ ἀναπηδώντων, οὐδέν ἔφη δεινόν· ἐγὼ γὰρ ὁ στρατηγὸς ὀγδοηκοστὸν ἔχων ἔτος ἔσομαι μεθ’ ὑμῶν. καὶ τότε μὲν οὕτως κατέπαυσεν αὐτοὺς καὶ μετέβαλε.

[25] [1] Πορθουμένης δὲ τῆς παραλίας ὑπὸ Μικίωνος, συχνοῖς Μακεδόσι καὶ μισθοφόροις ἀποβεβηκότος εἰς Ῥαμνοῦντα καὶ κατατρέχοντος τὴν [2] χώραν, ἐξήγαγε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐπ’ αὐτόν. ὡς δὲ προστρέχοντες ἀλλαχόθεν ἄλλος διεστρατήγουν καὶ συνεβούλευον, αὐτοῦ τὸν λόφον καταλαβεῖν, ἐκεῖ περιπέμψαι τοὺς ἱππέας, ἐνταῦθα παρεμβαλεῖν, ὦ Ἡράκλεις [3] εἶπεν, ὡς πολλοὺς ὁρῶ στρατηγούς, ὀλίγους δὲ στρατιώτας. ἐπεὶ δὲ παρατάξαντος αὐτοῦ τοὺς ὁπλίτας εἷς πολὺ πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων προῆλθεν, εἶτ’ ἀντιστάντος ἀνδρὸς πολεμίου δείσας πάλιν εἰς τὴν τάξιν ἀνεχώρησεν, ὦ μειράκιον εἶπεν, οὐκ αἰδῇ δύο τάξεις ἀπολελοιπώς, ἣν ἐτάχθης [4] ὑπὸ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ, καὶ πάλιν ἐφ’ ἣν σεαυτὸν ἔταξας; ἐμβαλὼν δὲ τοῖς πολεμίοις καὶ κατὰ κράτος τρεψάμενος, αὐτόν τε τὸν Μικίωνα καὶ ἄλλους πολλοὺς ἀπέκτεινε.

[5] Τὸ δ’ Ἑλληνικὸν ἐν Θετταλίᾳ στράτευμα, συμμείξαντος Ἀντιπάτρῳ Λεοννάτου καὶ τῶν ἐξ Ἀσίας Μακεδόνων, ἐνίκα μαχόμενον, καὶ Λεοννάτος ἔπεσεν, ἡγουμένου τῆς μὲν φάλαγγος Ἀντιφίλου, τῶν δ’ ἱππέων τοῦ Θεσσαλοῦ Μένωνος.

[26] [1] Ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον χρόνῳ Κρατεροῦ διαβάντος ἐξ Ἀσίας μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως, καὶ γενομένης πάλιν ἐν Κραννῶνι παρατάξεως, ἡττήθησαν μὲν οἱ Ἕλληνες οὔτε μεγάλην ἧτταν οὔτε πολλῶν πεσόντων, ἀπειθείᾳ δὲ πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ νέους ὄντας, καὶ ἅμα τὰς πόλεις αὐτῶν πειρῶντος Ἀντιπάτρου, διαρρυέντες αἴσχιστα προήκαντο τὴν ἐλευθερίαν.

[2] εὐθὺς οὖν ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας ἄγοντος τοῦ Ἀντιπάτρου τὴν δύναμιν, οἱ μὲν [3] περὶ Δημοσθένην καὶ Ὑπερείδην ἀπηλλάγησαν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως. Δημάδης δὲ μηθὲν μέρος ὧν ὤφειλε χρημάτων ἐπὶ ταῖς καταδίκαις ἐκτεῖσαι τῇ πόλει δυνάμενος - ἡλώκει γὰρ ἑπτὰ γραφὰς παρανόμων, καὶ γεγονὼς ἄτιμος ἐξείργετο τοῦ λέγειν - , ἄδειαν εὑρόμενος τότε γράφει ψήφισμα, [καὶ] πέμπειν πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον ὑπὲρ εἰρήνης πρέσβεις αὐτοκράτορας.

[4] φοβουμένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου καὶ καλοῦντος Φωκίωνα καὶ μόνῳ πιστεύειν ἐκείνῳ λέγοντος, ἀλλ’ εἴγ’ ἐπιστευόμην εἶπεν ἐγὼ συμβουλεύων [5] ὑμῖν, οὐκ ἂν νῦν ἐβουλευόμεθα περὶ πραγμάτων τοιούτων. οὕτω δὲ τοῦ ψηφίσματος ἐπικυρωθέντος, ἀπεστάλη πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον, ἐν τῇ Καδμείᾳ στρατοπεδεύοντα καὶ παρασκευαζόμενον εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν βαδίζειν, καὶ τοῦτο πρῶτον ᾐτεῖτο, μένοντα κατὰ χώραν ποιήσασθαι τὰς διαλύσεις.

[6] τοῦ δὲ Κρατεροῦ λέγοντος ὡς οὐ δίκαια πείθει Φωκίων ἡμᾶς, τὴν τῶν συμμάχων καὶ φίλων καθημένους χώραν κακῶς ποιεῖν, δυναμένους ἐκ τῆς τῶν πολεμίων ὠφελεῖσθαι, λαβόμενος αὐτοῦ τῆς δεξιᾶς ὁ Ἀντίπατρος [7] δοτέον εἶπε Φωκίωνι ταύτην τὴν χάριν. περὶ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἐκέλευεν αὐτοῖς ἐπιτρέπειν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ὥσπερ ἐν Λαμίᾳ Λεωσθένης ἐκεῖνον.

[27] [1] Ὡς οὖν ἐπανῆλθεν ὁ Φωκίων εἰς τὸ ἄστυ καὶ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ταῦτ’ ἔδοξεν ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης, αὖθις εἰς Θήβας ἐβάδιζε μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων πρέσβεων, [2] Ξενοκράτην τὸν φιλόσοφον τῶν Ἀθηναίων προσελομένων. τοσοῦτον γὰρ ἦν ἀξίωμα τῆς ἀρετῆς τοῦ Ξενοκράτους καὶ δόξα καὶ λόγος παρὰ πᾶσιν, ὥστ’ οἴεσθαι μήθ’ ὕβριν εἶναι μήτ’ ὠμότητα μήτε θυμὸν ἐν ἀνθρωπίνῃ ψυχῇ φυόμενον, ᾧ Ξενοκράτους μόνον ὀφθέντος οὐκ ἂν αἰδοῦς τι καὶ τιμῆς [3] ἐγγένοιτο πρὸς αὐτόν. ἀπέβη δὲ τοὐναντίον ἀγνωμοσύνῃ τινὶ καὶ μισαγαθίᾳ τοῦ Ἀντιπάτρου. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἠσπάσατο τὸν Ξενοκράτην, τοὺς ἄλλους δεξιωσάμενος· ἐφ’ ᾧ φασιν εἰπεῖν ἐκεῖνον, ὡς Ἀντίπατρος καλῶς ποιεῖ μόνον αὐτὸν αἰσχυνόμενος ἐφ’ οἷς ἀγνωμονεῖν μέλλει πρὸς [4] τὴν πόλιν· ἔπειτα λέγειν ἀρξάμενον οὐχ ὑπομένων, ἀλλ’ ἀντικρούων καὶ δυσκολαίνων, ἐποίησεν ἀποσιωπῆσαι.

[5] Τῶν δὲ περὶ τὸν Φωκίωνα διαλεχθέντων, ἀπεκρίνατο φιλίαν ἔσεσθαι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις καὶ συμμαχίαν, ἐκδοῦσι μὲν τοὺς περὶ Δημοσθένην καὶ Ὑπερείδην, πολιτευομένοις δὲ τὴν πάτριον ἀπὸ τιμήματος πολιτείαν, δεξαμένοις δὲ φρουρὰν εἰς τὴν Μουνυχίαν, ἔτι δὲ χρήματα τοῦ πολέμου [6] καὶ ζημίαν προσεκτείσασιν. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι πρέσβεις ἠγάπησαν ὡς φιλανθρώπους τὰς διαλύσεις, πλὴν τοῦ Ξενοκράτους· ἔφη γὰρ ὡς μὲν δούλοις [7] μετρίως κεχρῆσθαι τὸν Ἀντίπατρον, ὡς δ’ ἐλευθέροις βαρέως. τοῦ δὲ Φωκίωνος παραιτουμένου τὴν φρουρὰν καὶ δεομένου, λέγεται τὸν Ἀντίπατρον εἰπεῖν· ὦ Φωκίων, ἡμεῖς πάντα σοι χαρίζεσθαι βουλόμεθα [8] πλὴν τῶν καὶ σὲ ἀπολούντων καὶ ἡμᾶς. οἱ δ’ οὐχ οὕτως φασίν, ἀλλ’ ἐρωτῆσαι τὸν Ἀντίπατρον, εἰ τὴν φρουρὰν ἀνέντος αὐτοῦ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ὁ Φωκίων ἐγγυᾶται τὴν πόλιν ἐμμενεῖν τῇ εἰρήνῃ καὶ μηθὲν πολυπραγμονήσειν· [9] σιωπῶντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ διαμέλλοντος, ἀναπηδήσαντα Καλλιμέδοντα τὸν Κάραβον, ἄνδρα θρασὺν καὶ μισόδημον, εἰπεῖν· ἐὰν δ’ οὗτος ὦ Ἀντίπατρε φλυαρῇ, σὺ πιστεύσεις καὶ οὐ πράξεις ἃ διέγνωκας;

[28] [1] Οὕτω μὲν ἐδέξαντο φρουρὰν Μακεδόνων Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ Μένυλλον ἡγεμόνα, τῶν ἐπιεικῶν τινα καὶ τοῦ Φωκίωνος ἐπιτηδείων. ἐφάνη δ’ ὑπερήφανον τὸ πρόσταγμα καὶ μᾶλλον ἐξουσίας ὕβρει χρωμένης ἐπίδειξις [2] ἢ πραγμάτων ἕνεκα γιγνομένη κατάληψις. οὐ μικρὸν δὲ τῷ πάθει προσέθηκεν ὁ καιρός. εἰκάδι γὰρ ἡ φρουρὰ Βοηδρομιῶνος εἰσήχθη μυστηρίων ὄντων, ᾗ τὸν Ἴακχον ἐξ ἄστεος Ἐλευσινάδε πέμπουσιν, ὥστε τῆς τελετῆς συγχυθείσης ἀναλογίζεσθαι τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ τὰ πρεσβύτερα τῶν θείων [3] καὶ τὰ πρόσφατα. πάλαι μὲν γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἀρίστοις εὐτυχήμασι τὰς μυστικὰς ὄψεις καὶ φωνὰς παραγενέσθαι σὺν ἐκπλήξει καὶ θάμβει τῶν πολεμίων, νῦν δὲ τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἱεροῖς τὰ δυσχερέστατα πάθη τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐπισκοπεῖν τοὺς θεούς, καὶ καθυβρίζεσθαι τὸν ἁγιώτατον τοῦ χρόνου καὶ [4] ἥδιστον αὐτοῖς, ἐπώνυμον τῶν μεγίστων κακῶν γενόμενον. πρότερον μὲν οὖν ὀλίγοις ἔτεσι χρησμὸν ἐξήνεγκαν αἱ Δωδωνίδες τῇ πόλει τὰ ἀκρωτήρια [5] τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος φυλάσσειν, ὅπως ἄλλοι μὴ λάβωσι· τότε δὲ περὶ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας αἱ ταινίαι μὲν αἷς περιελίττουσι τὰς μυστικὰς κίστας, βαπτόμεναι θάψινον ἀντὶ φοινικοῦ χρῶμα καὶ νεκρῶδες ἀνήνεγκαν· ὃ δὲ μεῖζον ἦν, [6] τὰ παραβαπτόμενα τῶν ἰδιωτικῶν πάντα τὸ προσῆκον ἄνθος ἔσχε. μύστην δὲ λούοντα χοιρίδιον ἐν Κανθάρῳ λιμένι κῆτος συνέλαβε, καὶ τὰ κάτω μέρη τοῦ σώματος ἄχρι τῆς κοιλίας κατέπιε, προδεικνύντος αὐτοῖς τοῦ θεοῦ προφανῶς, ὅτι τῶν κάτω καὶ πρὸς θαλάσσῃ στερηθέντες τὴν ἄνω πόλιν διαφυλάξουσιν.

[7] Ἡ μὲν οὖν φρουρὰ διὰ Μένυλλον οὐδὲν ἠνίασε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους· τῶν δ’ ἀποψηφισθέντων τοῦ πολιτεύματος διὰ πενίαν, ὑπὲρ μυρίους καὶ δισχιλίους γενομένων, οἵ τε μένοντες ἐδόκουν σχέτλια καὶ ἄτιμα πάσχειν, οἵ τε διὰ τοῦτο τὴν πόλιν ἐκλιπόντες καὶ μεταστάντες εἰς Θρᾴκην, Ἀντιπάτρου γῆν καὶ πόλιν αὐτοῖς παρασχόντος, ἐκπεπολιορκημένοις ἐῴκεσαν.

[29] [1] Ὁ δὲ Δημοσθένους ἐν Καλαυρείᾳ καὶ Ὑπερείδου πρὸς Κλεωναῖς θάνατος, περὶ ὧν ἐν ἄλλοις γέγραπται, μονονοὺκ ἔρωτα καὶ πόθον Ἀθηναίοις [2] Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ Φιλίππου παρίστη. καὶ [τοῦτο] ὅπερ ὕστερον, ἀναιρεθέντος Ἀντιγόνου καὶ τῶν ἀνελόντων ἐκεῖνον ἀρξαμένων βιάζεσθαι καὶ λυπεῖν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ἀνὴρ ἄγροικος ἐν Φρυγίᾳ χωρίον ὀρύττων πυθομένου τινός τί ποιεῖς; στενάξας Ἀντίγονον εἶπε ζητῶ, [3] τοῦτο πολλοῖς ἐπῄει λέγειν, διαμνημονεύουσι τὸν ἐκείνων τῶν βασιλέων θυμόν, ὡς τὸ μέγα καὶ γενναῖον εὐπαραίτητον εἶχον, οὐχ ὥσπερ Ἀντίπατρος ἰδιώτου προσώπῳ καὶ φαυλότητι χλαμυδίου καὶ διαίτης εὐτελείᾳ κατειρωνευόμενος τὴν ἐξουσίαν, ἐπαχθέστερος ἦν τοῖς πάσχουσι κακῶς [4] δεσπότης καὶ τύραννος. ὅμως δ’ οὖν ὁ Φωκίων καὶ φυγῆς ἀπήλλαξε πολλούς, δεηθεὶς τοῦ Ἀντιπάτρου, καὶ φεύγουσι διεπράξατο μὴ καθάπερ οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν μεθισταμένων ὑπὲρ τὰ Κεραύνια ὄρη καὶ τὸν Ταίναρον ἐκπεσεῖν τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἀλλ’ ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ κατοικεῖν, ὧν καὶ Ἁγνωνίδης [5] ἦν ὁ συκοφάντης. ἐπιμελόμενος δὲ τῶν κατὰ τὴν πόλιν πρᾴως καὶ νομίμως, τοὺς μὲν ἀστείους καὶ χαρίεντας ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ἀεὶ συνεῖχε, τοὺς δὲ πολυπράγμονας καὶ νεωτεριστάς, αὐτῷ τῷ μὴ ἄρχειν μηδὲ θορυβεῖν ἀπομαραινομένους, ἐδίδαξε φιλοχωρεῖν καὶ ἀγαπᾶν γεωργοῦντας.

[6] ὁρῶν δὲ τὸν Ξενοκράτην τελοῦντα τὸ μετοίκιον, ἐβούλετο γράψαι πολίτην· ὁ δ’ ἀπεῖπε, φήσας οὐκ ἂν μετασχεῖν ταύτης τῆς πολιτείας περὶ ἧς ἐπρέσβευεν ἵνα μὴ γένηται.

[30] [1] Τοῦ δὲ Μενύλλου δωρεὰν αὐτῷ [καὶ] χρήματα διδόντος, ἀπεκρίνατο μήτ’ ἐκεῖνον Ἀλεξάνδρου βελτίον’ εἶναι, μήτε κρείττονα τὴν αἰτίαν ἐφ’ ᾗ [2] λήψεται νῦν ὁ τότε μὴ δεξάμενος. ἀλλὰ Φώκῳ γε τῷ παιδὶ λαβεῖν δεομένου τοῦ Μενύλλου, Φώκῳ δ’, εἶπεν ἐὰν μὲν σωφρονῇ μεταβαλόμενος, [3] ἀρκέσει τὰ τοῦ πατρός· ὡς δ’ ἔχει νῦν, οὐδὲν ἱκανόν ἐστιν. Ἀντιπάτρῳ δὲ τραχύτερον ἀπεκρίνατο, βουλομένῳ τι γενέσθαι δι’ αὐτοῦ τῶν μὴ πρεπόντων· οὐ δύναται γὰρ εἶπεν Ἀντίπατρος ἅμα μοι καὶ φίλῳ καὶ [4] κόλακι χρῆσθαι. τὸν δ’ Ἀντίπατρον αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν λέγουσιν, ὡς δυοῖν αὐτῷ φίλων Ἀθήνησιν ὄντων Φωκίωνος καὶ Δημάδου, τὸν μὲν λαβεῖν [5] οὐ πέπεικε, τὸν δὲ διδοὺς οὐκ ἐμπέπληκε. καὶ μέντοι Φωκίων μὲν ὡς ἀρετὴν ἐπεδείκνυτο τὴν πενίαν, [ἐν] ᾗ τοσαυτάκις Ἀθηναίων στρατηγήσας καὶ βασιλεῦσι φίλοις χρησάμενος ἐγκατεγήρασε, Δημάδης δὲ τῷ πλούτῳ [6] καὶ παρανομῶν ἐκαλλωπίζετο. νόμου γὰρ ὄντος Ἀθήνησι τότε μὴ χορεύειν ξένον ἢ χιλίας ἀποτίνειν τὸν χορηγόν, ἅπαντας εἰσαγαγὼν ξένους τοὺς χορεύοντας ἑκατὸν ὄντας, ἅμα καὶ τὴν ζημίαν ἀνὰ χιλίας ὑπὲρ [7] ἑκάστου ‹συν›εισήνεγκεν εἰς τὸ θέατρον. Δημέᾳ δὲ τῷ υἱῷ νύμφην ἀγόμενος, ἐμοῦ μέν εἶπεν (fg. 55 de Falco) ὦ παῖ τὴν σὴν μητέρα γαμοῦντος οὐδ’ ὁ γείτων ᾔσθετο· τοῖς δὲ σοῖς γάμοις καὶ βασιλεῖς καὶ δυνάσται [8] συγχορηγοῦσιν. ἐνοχλούντων δὲ τῷ Φωκίωνι τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ὅπως ἀπαλλάξῃ τὴν φρουρὰν πείσας τὸν Ἀντίπατρον, εἴτε μὴ προσδοκῶν πείσειν, εἴτε μᾶλλον ὁρῶν σωφρονοῦντα τὸν δῆμον καὶ πολιτευόμενον εὐτάκτως διὰ τὸν φόβον, ἐκείνην μὲν ἀεὶ διωθεῖτο τὴν πρεσβείαν, τὰ δὲ χρήματα μὴ πράττειν, ἀλλὰ μέλλειν καὶ ἀναβάλλεσθαι τὸν Ἀντίπατρον [9] ἔπεισε. μεταβάντες οὖν Δημάδην παρεκάλουν. ὁ δὲ προθύμως ὑπέστη, καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἔχων ἀπῆρεν εἰς Μακεδονίαν, ὑπὸ δαίμονός τινος ὡς ἔοικεν εἰς τοῦτο καιροῦ κομισθείς, ἐν ᾧ κατείχετο μὲν Ἀντίπατρος ἤδη νόσῳ, Κάσσανδρος δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων ἐγκρατὴς γεγονώς, εὗρεν ἐπιστολὴν Δημάδου γεγραμμένην πρὸς Ἀντίγονον εἰς Ἀσίαν (fg. 58 de Falco), παρακαλοῦντος αὐτὸν ἐπιφανῆναι τοῖς περὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ Μακεδονίαν, ἐκ παλαιοῦ καὶ σαπροῦ κρεμαμένοις στήμονος, τὸν Ἀντίπατρον οὕτω σκώψαντος.

[10] ὡς οὖν εἶδεν αὐτὸν ἀφιγμένον ὁ Κάσσανδρος, συνέλαβε, καὶ πρῶτα μὲν τὸν υἱὸν ἐγγὺς προσαγαγὼν ἔσφαξεν, ὥστε καταδέξασθαι τοῖς κόλποις τὸ αἷμα τὸν πατέρα καὶ καταπλησθῆναι τοῦ φόνου, μετὰ ταῦτα δ’ εἰς ἀχαριστίαν αὐτὸν καὶ προδοσίαν πολλὰ λοιδορήσας καὶ καθυβρίσας ἀπέκτεινεν.

[31] Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀντίπατρος ἀποδείξας Πολυπέρχοντα στρατηγόν, Κάσσανδρον δὲ χιλίαρχον, ἐξέλιπεν, εὐθὺς διαναστὰς ὁ Κάσσανδρος καὶ προκαταλαμβάνων τὰ πράγματα, πέμπει κατὰ τάχος Νικάνορα τῷ Μενύλλῳ διάδοχον τῆς φρουραρχίας, πρὶν ἔκδηλον τὸν Ἀντιπάτρου θάνατον γενέσθαι [11] κελεύσας τὴν Μουνυχίαν παραλαβεῖν. γενομένου δὲ τούτου, καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας πυθομένων τῶν Ἀθηναίων ὅτι τέθνηκεν ὁ Ἀντίπατρος, ἐν αἰτίαις ὁ Φωκίων ἦν καὶ κακῶς ἤκουεν ὡς προαισθόμενος καὶ κατασιωπήσας [12] χάριτι τοῦ Νικάνορος. ὁ δὲ τούτων μὲν οὐκ ἐφρόντιζεν, ἐντυγχάνων δὲ τῷ Νικάνορι καὶ διαλεγόμενος, εἴς τε τἆλλα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις πρᾷον αὐτὸν καὶ κεχαρισμένον παρεῖχε, καὶ φιλοτιμίας τινὰς ἔπεισε καὶ δαπάνας ὑποστῆναι γενόμενον ἀγωνοθέτην.

[32] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Πολυπέρχων, τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπιμέλειαν ἔχων ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ καὶ καταπολιτευόμενος τὸν Κάσσανδρον, ἔπεμψεν ἐπιστολὴν τοῖς ἐν ἄστει γεγραμμένην, ὡς τοῦ βασιλέως ἀποδιδόντος αὐτοῖς τὴν δημοκρατίαν καὶ πολιτεύεσθαι κατὰ τὰ πάτρια πάντας Ἀθηναίους κελεύοντος.

[2] ἦν δὲ τοῦτο κατὰ τοῦ Φωκίωνος ἐπιβουλή. συσκευαζόμενος γὰρ εἰς ἑαυτόν, ὡς μικρὸν ὕστερον ἔδειξε τοῖς ἔργοις, ὁ Πολυπέρχων τὴν πόλιν, [3] οὐδὲν ἤλπιζε περαίνειν μὴ τοῦ Φωκίωνος ἐκπεσόντος· ἐκπεσεῖσθαι δ’ ἐκεῖνον ἅμα τῶν ἀπεψηφισμένων ἐπιχυθέντων τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ πάλιν τὸ [4] βῆμα δημαγωγῶν κατασχόντων καὶ συκοφαντῶν. ὑποκινουμένων δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα τῶν Ἀθηναίων, βουλόμενος ἐντυχεῖν αὐτοῖς ὁ Νικάνωρ, ἐν Πειραιεῖ [5] βουλῆς γενομένης, παρῆλθε τῷ Φωκίωνι ἐμπιστεύσας τὸ σῶμα. Δερκύλλου δὲ τοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς χώρας στρατηγοῦ συλλαβεῖν αὐτὸν ἐπιχειρήσαντος, ἐκεῖνος μὲν προαισθόμενος ἐξεπήδησε καὶ φανερὸς ἦν εὐθὺς ἀμυνούμενος [6] τὴν πόλιν· ὁ δὲ Φωκίων ἐπὶ τῷ προέσθαι τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ μὴ κατασχεῖν ἐγκαλούμενος, ἔφη πιστεύειν μὲν τῷ Νικάνορι καὶ μηδὲν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ προσδοκᾶν δεινόν· εἰ δὲ μή, μᾶλλον ἐθέλειν ἀδικούμενος ἢ ἀδικῶν φανερὸς [7] γενέσθαι. τοῦτο δὲ ‹τὸ› ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ μὲν ἄν τινι σκοποῦντι δοκοίη καλοκαγαθικῶς λελέχθαι καὶ γενναίως· ὁ δ’ εἰς πατρίδος ἀποκινδυνεύων σωτηρίαν, καὶ ταῦτα στρατηγὸς καὶ ἄρχων, οὐκ οἶδα μὴ μεῖζόν τι παραβαίνει [8] καὶ πρεσβύτερον, τὸ πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας δίκαιον. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐκεῖν’ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν, ὅτι φοβούμενος μὲν εἰς πόλεμον ἐμβαλεῖν τὴν πόλιν ὁ Φωκίων ἀπέσχετο τοῦ Νικάνορος, ἄλλως δὲ προὐβάλετο τὴν πίστιν καὶ τὸ δίκαιον, ὅπως αἰδούμενος ἐκεῖνος ἡσυχίαν ἄγῃ καὶ μηδὲν ἀδικῇ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους· [9] ἀλλ’ ὄντως ἔοικεν ἰσχυρά τις αὐτῷ περὶ τοῦ Νικάνορος ἐγγενέσθαι πίστις, ὅν γε πολλῶν προδιαβαλλόντων καὶ κατηγορούντων ἐπιτίθεσθαι τῷ Πειραιεῖ καὶ διαβιβάζειν εἰς Σαλαμῖνα ξένους καὶ διαφθείρειν τινὰς τῶν ἐν [10] Πειραιεῖ κατοικούντων, οὐ προσήκατο τὸν λόγον οὐδ’ ἐπίστευσεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Φιλομήλου τοῦ Λαμπτρέως ψήφισμα γράψαντος, Ἀθηναίους ἅπαντας ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις εἶναι καὶ τῷ στρατηγῷ Φωκίωνι προσέχειν, ἠμέλησεν, ἄχρι οὗ προσάγων ὁ Νικάνωρ ἐκ τῆς Μουνυχίας τὰ ὅπλα τὸν Πειραιᾶ περιετάφρευσε.

[33] [1] Πραττομένων δὲ τούτων, ὁ μὲν Φωκίων ἐθορυβεῖτο καὶ κατεφρονεῖτο τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐξάγειν βουλόμενος, Ἀλέξανδρος δ’ ὁ Πολυπέρχοντος υἱὸς ἧκε μετὰ δυνάμεως, λόγῳ μὲν ἐπὶ τὸν Νικάνορα τοῖς ἐν ἄστει βοηθήσων, ἔργῳ δὲ τὴν πόλιν εἰ δύναιτο καταληψόμενος, αὐτὴν ἑαυτῇ [2] περιπετῆ γενομένην. οἵ τε γὰρ φυγάδες αὐτῷ συνεισβαλόντες εὐθὺς ἦσαν ἐν ἄστει, καὶ τῶν ξένων ἅμα καὶ τῶν ἀτίμων πρὸς αὐτοὺς συνδραμόντων, ἐκκλησία παμμιγὴς ἠθροίσθη καὶ ἄτακτος, ἐν ᾗ τὸν Φωκίωνα τῆς ἀρχῆς [3] ἀπολύσαντες ἑτέρους εἵλοντο στρατηγούς. εἰ δὲ μὴ συνιὼν εἰς λόγους ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος τῷ Νικάνορι μόνος παρὰ τὸ τεῖχος ὤφθη, καὶ τοῦτο ποιοῦντες πολλάκις ὑποψίαν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις παρέσχον, οὐκ ἂν ἡ πόλις διέφυγε τὸν κίνδυνον.

[4] Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἁγνωνίδης ὁ ῥήτωρ εὐθὺς ἐπεφύετο τοῖς περὶ τὸν Φωκίωνα καὶ κατηγόρει προδοσίας, οἱ μὲν περὶ Καλλιμέδοντα καὶ Χαρικλέα φοβηθέντες ἀπῆλθον ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, ὁ δὲ Φωκίων καὶ μετ’ αὐτοῦ τῶν φίλων οἱ παραμείναντες [5] ᾤχοντο πρὸς Πολυπέρχοντα, καὶ συνεξῆλθον αὐτοῖς χάριτι τοῦ Φωκίωνος ὁ Πλαταιεὺς Σόλων καὶ Δείναρχος ὁ Κορίνθιος, ἐπιτήδειοι τοῦ [6] Πολυπέρχοντος εἶναι δοκοῦντες καὶ συνήθεις. ἀρρωστίᾳ δὲ χρησαμένου τοῦ Δεινάρχου, συχνὰς ἡμέρας ἐν Ἐλατείᾳ διέτριψαν, ἐν αἷς Ἁγνωνίδου πείσαντος, Ἀρχεστράτου δὲ τὸ ψήφισμα γράψαντος, ἔπεμπε πρεσβείαν ὁ [7] δῆμος κατηγορήσουσαν τοῦ Φωκίωνος. ἅμα δὲ καὶ συνέμειξαν ἀμφότεροι τῷ Πολυπέρχοντι, μετὰ τοῦ βασιλέως πορευομένῳ, περὶ κώμην τινὰ τῆς Φωκίδος Φαρύγας, κειμένην ὑπὸ τὸ Ἀκρούριον ὄρος, ὃ νῦν Γαλάτην καλοῦσιν.

[8] ἐνταῦθα δὴ θεὶς ὁ Πολυπέρχων τὸν χρυσοῦν οὐρανίσκον, καὶ καθίσας ὑπ’ αὐτῷ τὸν βασιλέα καὶ τοὺς φίλους, τὸν μὲν Δείναρχον εὐθὺς ἐκ προσόδου λαβεῖν ἐκέλευσε καὶ στρεβλώσαντας ἀποκτεῖναι, τοῖς δ’ Ἀθηναίοις [9] ἀπέδωκε λόγον. ὡς δὲ θόρυβον καὶ κραυγὴν ἐποίουν, ἀντικατηγοροῦντες ἀλλήλων ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ, καὶ προσελθὼν ὁ Ἁγνωνίδης εἶπεν ἅπαντας ἡμᾶς εἰς μίαν ἐμβαλόντες γαλεάγραν Ἀθηναίοις ἀναπέμψατε λόγον ὑφέξοντας, ὁ μὲν βασιλεὺς ἐγέλασεν, οἱ δὲ περιεστῶτες τῷ συνεδρίῳ Μακεδόνες καὶ ξένοι σχολὴν ἄγοντες ἐπεθύμουν ἀκούειν, καὶ τοὺς πρέσβεις παρεκάλουν ἀπὸ νεύματος ἐνταῦθα ποιεῖσθαι τὴν κατηγορίαν.

[10] ἦν δ’ οὐδὲν ἴσον, ἀλλὰ τῷ μὲν Φωκίωνι πολλάκις ἀντέκρουσεν ὁ Πολυπέρχων λέγοντι, μέχρι οὗ τῇ βακτηρίᾳ πατάξας τὴν γῆν ἀπέστη καὶ [11] κατεσιώπησεν. Ἡγήμονος δὲ φήσαντος ὅτι μάρτυς αὐτῷ τῆς πρὸς τὸν δῆμον εὐνοίας Πολυπέρχων ἐστί, καὶ τοῦ Πολυπέρχοντος ἀποκριναμένου πρὸς ὀργὴν παῦσαί μου πρὸς τὸν βασιλέα καταψευδόμενος, ἀναπηδήσας [12] ὁ βασιλεὺς ὥρμησε λόγχῃ τὸν Ἡγήμονα πατάξαι. ταχὺ δὲ τοῦ Πολυπέρχοντος περιλαβόντος αὐτόν, οὕτω διελύθη τὸ συνέδριον.

[34] [1] Τὸν δὲ Φωκίωνα καὶ τοὺς μετ’ αὐτοῦ φυλακῆς περισχούσης, ὅσοι τῶν ἑταίρων ἔτυχον οὐκ ἐγγὺς ἑστῶτες, ὡς τοῦτ’ εἶδον ἐγκαλυψάμενοι [2] καὶ διαφυγόντες ἐσώθησαν. ἐκείνους δὲ Κλεῖτος εἰς Ἀθήνας ἀνῆγε, λόγῳ [3] μὲν κριθησομένους, ἔργῳ δ’ ἀποθανεῖν κατακεκριμένους. καὶ προσῆν τὸ σχῆμα τῇ κομιδῇ λυπηρόν, ἐφ’ ἁμάξαις κομιζομένων αὐτῶν διὰ τοῦ Κεραμεικοῦ πρὸς τὸ θέατρον· ἐκεῖ γὰρ αὐτοὺς προσαγαγὼν ὁ Κλεῖτος συνεῖχεν, ἄχρι οὗ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἐπλήρωσαν οἱ ἄρχοντες, οὐ δοῦλον, οὐ ξένον, οὐκ ἄτιμον ἀποκρίναντες, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι καὶ πάσαις ἀναπεπταμένον τὸ βῆμα καὶ [4] τὸ θέατρον παρασχόντες. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἥ τ’ ἐπιστολὴ τοῦ βασιλέως ἀνεγνώσθη, λέγοντος αὐτῷ μὲν ἐγνῶσθαι προδότας γεγονέναι τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἐκείνοις δὲ διδόναι τὴν κρίσιν, ἐλευθέροις τε δὴ καὶ αὐτονόμοις οὖσι, καὶ τοὺς [5] ἄνδρας ὁ Κλεῖτος εἰσήγαγεν, οἱ μὲν βέλτιστοι τῶν πολιτῶν ὀφθέντος τοῦ Φωκίωνος ἐνεκαλύψαντο καὶ κάτω κύψαντες ἐδάκρυον, εἷς δ’ ἀναστὰς ἐτόλμησεν εἰπεῖν ὅτι, τηλικαύτην κρίσιν ἐγκεχειρικότος τῷ δήμῳ τοῦ βασιλέως, καλῶς ἔχει τοὺς δούλους καὶ τοὺς ξένους ἀπελθεῖν ἐκ τῆς [6] ἐκκλησίας. οὐκ ἀνασχομένων δὲ τῶν πολλῶν, ἀλλ’ ἀνακραγόντων βάλλειν τοὺς ὀλιγαρχικοὺς καὶ μισοδήμους, ἄλλος μὲν οὐδεὶς ὑπὲρ τοῦ Φωκίωνος [7] ἐπεχείρησεν εἰπεῖν, αὐτὸς δὲ χαλεπῶς καὶ μόλις ἐξακουσθείς, πότερον εἶπεν ἀδίκως ἢ δικαίως ἀποκτεῖναι βούλεσθ’ ἡμᾶς; ἀποκριναμένων δέ τινων ὅτι δικαίως, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔφη πῶς γνώσεσθε μὴ ἀκούσαντες; [8] ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐθὲν μᾶλλον ἤκουον, ἐγγυτέρω προσελθών, ἐγὼ μὲν εἶπεν ἀδικεῖν ὁμολογῶ, καὶ θανάτου τιμῶμαι τὰ πεπολιτευμέν’ ἐμαυτῷ· [9] τούτους δ’ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι διὰ τί ἀποκτενεῖτε μηδὲν ἀδικοῦντας; ἀποκριναμένων δὲ πολλῶν ὅτι σοὶ φίλοι εἰσίν, ὁ μὲν Φωκίων ἀποστὰς ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν, ὁ δ’ Ἁγνωνίδης ψήφισμα γεγραμμένον ἔχων ἀνέγνω, καθ’ ὃ τὸν δῆμον ἔδει χειροτονεῖν περὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν εἰ δοκοῦσιν ἀδικεῖν, τοὺς δ’ ἄνδρας ἂν καταχειροτονηθῶσιν ἀποθνῄσκειν.

[35] [1] Ἀναγνωσθέντος δὲ τοῦ ψηφίσματος, ἠξίουν τινὲς προσγράφειν ὅπως καὶ στρεβλωθεὶς Φωκίων ἀποθάνοι, καὶ τὸν τροχὸν εἰσφέρειν καὶ [2] τοὺς ὑπηρέτας καλεῖν προσέταττον. ὁ δ’ Ἁγνωνίδης καὶ τὸν Κλεῖτον ὁρῶν δυσχεραίνοντα, καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα βαρβαρικὸν εἶναι καὶ μιαρὸν ἡγούμενος, ὅταν ἔφη Καλλιμέδοντα τὸν μαστιγίαν λάβωμεν ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, [3] στρεβλώσομεν· περὶ δὲ Φωκίωνος οὐδὲν ἐγὼ γράφω τοιοῦτον. ἐνταῦθα τῶν ἐπιεικῶν τις ὑπεφώνησεν· ὀρθῶς γε σὺ ποιῶν· ἂν γὰρ Φωκίωνα [4] βασανίσωμεν, σὲ τί ποιήσομεν; ἐπικυρωθέντος δὲ τοῦ ψηφίσματος καὶ τῆς χειροτονίας ἀποδοθείσης, οὐδεὶς καθήμενος, ἀλλὰ πάντες ἐξαναστάντες, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι καὶ στεφανωσάμενοι, κατεχειροτόνησαν αὐτῶν θάνατον. [5] ἦσαν δὲ σὺν τῷ Φωκίωνι Νικοκλῆς Θούδιππος Ἡγήμων Πυθοκλῆς· Δημητρίου δὲ τοῦ Φαληρέως καὶ Καλλιμέδοντος καὶ Χαρικλέους καί τινων ἄλλων ἀπόντων κατεψηφίσθη θάνατος.

[36] [1] Ὡς οὖν διαλύσαντες τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἦγον εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον τοὺς ἄνδρας, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι, περιπλεκομένων τῶν φίλων αὐτοῖς καὶ οἰκείων, ὀδυρόμενοι καὶ καταθρηνοῦντες ἐβάδιζον, τὸ δὲ Φωκίωνος πρόσωπον οἷον ὅτε στρατηγῶν ἀπ’ ἐκκλησίας προὐπέμπετο βλέποντες, ἐθαύμαζον τὴν [2] ἀπάθειαν καὶ μεγαλοψυχίαν τοῦ ἀνδρός. οἱ δ’ ἐχθροὶ κακῶς ἔλεγον παρατρέχοντες, εἷς δὲ καὶ προσέπτυσεν ἐξ ἐναντίας προσελθών. ὅτε καὶ τὸν Φωκίωνα λέγεται βλέψαντα πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας εἰπεῖν· οὐ παύσει τις [3] ἀσχημονοῦντα τοῦτον; ἐπεὶ δὲ Θούδιππος ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ γενόμενος, καὶ τὸ κώνειον ὁρῶν τριβόμενον, ἠγανάκτει καὶ κατέκλαιε τὴν συμφοράν, ὡς οὐ προσηκόντως τῷ Φωκίωνι συναπολλύμενος, εἶτ’ οὐκ ἀγαπᾷς [4] εἶπεν ὅτι μετὰ Φωκίωνος ἀποθνῄσκεις; ἐρομένου δέ τινος τῶν φίλων εἴ τι πρὸς Φῶκον λέγει τὸν υἱόν, πάνυ μὲν οὖν ἔφη, λέγω μὴ μνησικακεῖν [5] Ἀθηναίοις. τοῦ δὲ Νικοκλέους, ὃς ἦν αὐτῷ πιστότατος τῶν φίλων, παρακαλοῦντος ὅπως αὐτὸν ἐάσῃ τὸ φάρμακον πιεῖν πρότερον, βαρὺ μὲν εἶπεν ὦ Νικόκλεις ἐμοὶ τὸ αἴτημα καὶ λυπηρόν, ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐδ’ ἄλλ’ οὐδέποτέ [6] σοι παρὰ τὸν βίον οὐδὲν ἠχαρίστησα, καὶ τοῦτο συγχωρῶ. πεπωκότων δ’ ἤδη πάντων, τὸ φάρμακον ἐπέλιπε, καὶ ὁ δημόσιος οὐκ ἔφη τρίψειν [7] ἕτερον, εἰ μὴ λάβοι δώδεκα δραχμάς, ὅσου τὴν ὁλκὴν ὠνεῖται. χρόνου δ’ ‹ἐγ›γενομένου καὶ διατριβῆς, ὁ Φωκίων καλέσας τινὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ εἰπών, εἰ μηδ’ ἀποθανεῖν Ἀθήνησι δωρεὰν ἔστιν, ἐκέλευε τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ δοῦναι τὸ κερμάτιον.

[37] [1] Ἦν δ’ ἡμέρα μηνὸς Μουνυχιῶνος ἐνάτη ἐπὶ δέκα, καὶ τῷ Διῒ τὴν πομπὴν πέμποντες οἱ ἱππεῖς παρεξῄεσαν· ὧν οἱ μὲν ἀφείλοντο τοὺς στεφάνους, [2] οἱ δὲ πρὸς τὰς θύρας δεδακρυμένοι τῆς εἱρκτῆς ἀπέβλεψαν. ἐφάνη δὲ τοῖς μὴ παντάπασιν ὠμοῖς καὶ διεφθαρμένοις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ φθόνου τὴν ψυχὴν ἀνοσιώτατον γεγονέναι τὸ μηδ’ ἐπισχεῖν τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην, μηδὲ καθαρεῦσαι δημοσίου φόνου τὴν πόλιν ἑορτάζουσαν.

[3] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐνδεέστερον ἠγωνισμένοις τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἔδοξε καὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Φωκίωνος ἐξορίσαι, καὶ μηδὲ πῦρ ἐναῦσαι μηδένα πρὸς τὴν [4] ταφὴν Ἀθηναίων. διὸ φίλος μὲν οὐδεὶς ἐτόλμησεν ἅψασθαι τοῦ σώματος, Κωνωπίων δέ τις, ὑπουργεῖν εἰθισμένος τὰ τοιαῦτα μισθοῦ, κομισθέντα [5] τὸν νεκρὸν ὑπὲρ τὴν Ἐλευσῖνα πῦρ λαβὼν ἐκ τῆς Μεγαρικῆς ἔκαυσεν. ἡ δὲ [Μεγαρικὴ] γυνὴ παροῦσα μετὰ τῶν θεραπαινίδων, ἔχωσε μὲν αὐτόθι χῶμα κενὸν καὶ κατέσπεισεν, ἐνθεμένη δὲ τῷ κόλπῳ τὰ ὀστᾶ καὶ κομίσασα νύκτωρ εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν, κατώρυξε παρὰ τὴν ἑστίαν, εἰποῦσα· σοὶ ὦ φίλη ἑστία παρακατατίθεμαι ταῦτ’ ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ λείψανα· σὺ δ’ αὐτὰ τοῖς πατρῴοις ἀπόδος ἠρίοις, ὅταν Ἀθηναῖοι σωφρονήσωσι.

[38] [1] Καὶ μέντοι χρόνου βραχέος διαγενομένου, καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων διδασκόντων οἷον ἐπιστάτην καὶ φύλακα σωφροσύνης καὶ δικαιοσύνης ὁ δῆμος ἀπώλεσεν, ἀνδριάντα μὲν αὐτοῦ χαλκοῦν ἔστησαν, ἔθαψαν δὲ δημοσίοις [2] τέλεσι τὰ ὀστᾶ. τῶν δὲ κατηγόρων Ἁγνωνίδην μὲν αὐτοὶ θάνατον καταχειροτονήσαντες ἀπέκτειναν, Ἐπίκουρον δὲ καὶ Δημόφιλον ἀποδράντας ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἀνευρὼν ὁ τοῦ Φωκίωνος υἱὸς ἐτιμωρήσατο.

[3] Τοῦτον οὔτε τἆλλα σπουδαῖον ἄνδρα γενέσθαι φασί, καὶ παιδίσκης ἐρῶντα παρὰ πορνοβοσκῷ τρεφομένης κατὰ τύχην Θεοδώρῳ τῷ ἀθέῳ παραγενέσθαι, λόγον ἐν Λυκείῳ διαλεγομένῳ τοιοῦτον· εἰ τὸ φίλον λύσασθαι μὴ αἰσχρόν ἐστιν, οὐδὲ τὸ φίλην· ὁμοίως ‹δ’› εἰ [δὲ] μὴ τὸ ἑταῖρον, [4] οὐδὲ τὸ ἑταίραν. θέμενον οὖν ἑαυτῷ πρὸς τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν τὸν λόγον ὡς εὖ ἔχοντα, λύσασθαι τὴν ἑταίραν.

[5] Ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν περὶ Φωκίωνα πραχθέντα τῶν περὶ Σωκράτην πάλιν ἀνέμνησε τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὡς ὁμοιοτάτης ἐκείνῃ τῆς ἁμαρτίας τύτης καὶ δυστυχίας τῇ πόλει γενομένης.

Cato Minor

[1] [1]  Κάτωνι δὲ τὸ μὲν γένος ἀρχὴν ἐπιφανείας ἔλαβε καὶ δόξης ἀπὸ τοῦ προπάππου Κάτωνος, ἀνδρὸς ἐν δόξῃ καὶ δυνάμει μάλιστα Ῥωμαίων γενομένου δι’ ἀρετήν, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γέγραπται (Cat. Mai. 27, 7). κατελείφθη δὲ γονέων ὀρφανὸς μετ’ ἀδελφοῦ Καιπίωνος καὶ Πορκίας [2] ἀδελφῆς· ἦν δὲ καὶ Σερβιλία Κάτωνος ὁμομήτριος ἀδελφή. καὶ πάντες οὗτοι παρὰ Λιβίῳ Δρούσῳ τροφὴν καὶ δίαιταν εἶχον, θείῳ μὲν ὄντι τῆς μητρός, ἄγοντι δὲ τὴν πολιτείαν τότε· καὶ γὰρ εἰπεῖν δεινότατος ἦν, καὶ τἆλλα σώφρων ἀνὴρ ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα, καὶ φρονήματος οὐδενὶ Ῥωμαίων ὑφιέμενος.

[3] Λέγεται δὲ Κάτων εὐθὺς ἐκ παιδίου τῇ τε φωνῇ καὶ τῷ προσώπῳ καὶ ταῖς περὶ τὰς παιδιὰς διατριβαῖς ἦθος ὑποφαίνειν ἄτρεπτον καὶ ἀπαθὲς [4] καὶ βέβαιον ἐν πᾶσιν. ἰσχύν τε γὰρ εἶχον αὐτοῦ παρ’ ἡλικίαν τελεσιουργὸν αἱ ὁρμαί, καὶ τοῖς κολακεύουσι τραχὺς ὢν καὶ προσάντης, ἔτι μᾶλλον [5] ἐκράτει τῶν ἐκφοβούντων. ἦν δὲ καὶ πρὸς γέλωτα κομιδῇ δυσκίνητος, ἄχρι μειδιάματος σπανίως τῷ προσώπῳ διαχεόμενος, καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν οὐ ταχὺς [6] οὐδ’ ὀλισθηρός, ὀργισθεὶς δὲ δυσπαραίτητος. ὡς οὖν εἰς τὸ μανθάνειν ἧκε, νωθρὸς ἦν ἀναλαβεῖν καὶ βραδύς, ἀναλαβὼν δὲ κάτοχος καὶ μνημονικός.

[7] ὃ δὴ καὶ πέφυκεν ἄλλως, τοὺς μὲν εὐφυεῖς ἀναμνηστικοὺς μᾶλλον εἶναι, μνημονικοὺς δὲ τοὺς μετὰ πόνου καὶ πραγματείας παραδεχομένους· [8] γίνεται γὰρ οἷον ἔγκαυμα τῆς ψυχῆς τῶν μαθημάτων ἕκαστον. ἔοικε δὲ καὶ τὸ δύσπειστον τῷ Κάτωνι ποιεῖν ἐργωδεστέραν τὴν μάθησιν· πάσχειν γάρ τι τὸ μανθάνειν ἀτεχνῶς ἐστι, καὶ τὸ πείθεσθαι ταχὺ τοῖς ἧττον [9] ἀντέχειν δυναμένοις συμβέβηκε. διὸ πείθονται μᾶλλον νέοι γερόντων, καὶ νοσοῦντες ὑγιαινόντων, καὶ ὅλως ἐν οἷς τὸ ἀποροῦν ἀσθενέστατόν ἐστι, [10] ῥᾷστον τὸ προστιθέμενον. τῷ μέντοι παιδαγωγῷ τὸν Κάτωνα πείθεσθαι μὲν λέγουσι καὶ ποιεῖν ἅπαν τὸ προσταττόμενον, ἑκάστου δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπαιτεῖν, καὶ τὸ διὰ τί πυνθάνεσθαι· καὶ γὰρ ἦν χαρίεις ὁ παιδαγωγὸς αὐτοῦ, καὶ λόγον ἔχων τοῦ κονδύλου προχειρότερον, ὄνομα Σαρπηδών.

[2] [1] Ἔτι δὲ παιδὸς τοῦ Κάτωνος ὄντος, ἔπραττον οἱ σύμμαχοι τῶν [2] Ῥωμαίων ὅπως μεθέξουσι τῆς ἐν Ῥώμῃ πολιτείας· καί τις Πομπαίδιος Σίλλων, ἀνὴρ πολεμικὸς καὶ μέγιστον ἔχων ἀξίωμα, τοῦ δὲ Δρούσου φίλος, κατέλυσε παρ’ αὐτῷ πλείονας ἡμέρας, ἐν αἷς γεγονὼς τοῖς παιδίοις συνήθης, ἄγ’ εἶπεν ὅπως ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν δεήσεσθε τοῦ θείου συναγωνίσασθαι [3] περὶ τῆς πολιτείας. ὁ μὲν οὖν Καιπίων διαμειδιάσας ἐπένευσε, τοῦ δὲ Κάτωνος οὐδὲν ἀποκριναμένου καὶ βλέποντος εἰς τοὺς ξένους ἀτενὲς καὶ βλοσυρόν, ὁ Πομπαίδιος σὺ δ’ εἶπεν ἡμῖν ὦ νεανία τί λέγεις; οὐχ [4] οἷος εἶ τοῖς ξένοις συλλαμβάνεσθαι πρὸς τὸν θεῖον ὥσπερ ὁ ἀδελφός; μὴ φθεγγομένου δὲ τοῦ Κάτωνος, ἀλλὰ τῇ σιωπῇ καὶ τῷ προσώπῳ δοκοῦντος ἀπολέγεσθαι τὴν δέησιν, ἀράμενος αὐτὸν ὁ Πομπαίδιος ὑπὲρ θυρίδος ὡς ἀφήσων, ὁμολογεῖν ἐκέλευεν, ἢ ῥίψειν ἔφασκεν, ἅμα τῇ τε φωνῇ τραχυτέρᾳ χρώμενος, καὶ ταῖς χερσὶν ἀπηρτημένον τὸ σῶμα πολλάκις ὑπὲρ τῆς [5] θυρίδος κραδαίνων. ἐπεὶ δὲ πολὺν χρόνον οὕτω διεκαρτέρησεν ὁ Κάτων ἀνέκπληκτος καὶ ἀδεής, καταθέμενος αὐτὸν ὁ Πομπαίδιος ἡσυχῇ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἶπεν· οἷον εὐτύχημα τῆς Ἰταλίας ὅ‹τι› παῖς οὗτός ἐστιν· εἰ δ’ ἀνὴρ ἦν, μίαν οὐκ ἂν οἶμαι ψῆφον ἡμῖν ἐν τῷ δήμῳ γενέσθαι.

[6] Πάλιν δὲ συγγενοῦς τινος ἐν γενεθλίοις καλέσαντος ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἄλλους τε παῖδας καὶ τοὺς περὶ Κάτωνα, σχολὴν ἄγοντες ἔν τινι μέρει τῆς οἰκίας ἔπαιζον αὐτοὶ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἀναμεμειγμένοι νεώτεροι καὶ πρεσβύτεροι, τὸ δὲ παιζόμενον ἦν δίκαι καὶ κατηγορίαι καὶ ἀγωγαὶ τῶν ἁλισκομένων.

[7] εἷς οὖν τῶν ἑαλωκότων παίδων εὐπρεπὴς τὴν ὄψιν ὑπὸ πρεσβυτέρου παιδὸς ἀχθεὶς εἴς τι δωμάτιον καὶ εἱρχθείς, ἐπεκαλεῖτο τὸν Κάτωνα. [8] ταχὺ δὴ τὸ γινόμενον συνεὶς ἧκεν ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας ὁ Κάτων, καὶ διωσάμενος τοὺς προεστῶτας καὶ διακωλύοντας, ἐξήγαγε τὸν παῖδα, καὶ μετ’ ὀργῆς ἔχων ἀπῆλθεν οἴκαδε, καὶ παῖδες ἕτεροι συνηκολούθησαν.

[3] [1] Οὕτω δ’ ἦν περιβόητος ὥστ’, ἐπεὶ Σύλλας τὴν παιδικὴν καὶ ἱερὰν ἱπποδρομίαν ἣν καλοῦσι Τροίαν ἐπὶ θέᾳ διδάσκων, καὶ συναγαγὼν τοὺς εὐγενεῖς παῖδας, ἀπέδειξεν ἡγεμόνας δύο, τὸν μὲν ἕτερον οἱ παῖδες ἐδέξαντο [2] διὰ τὴν μητέρα, Μετέλλης γὰρ ἦν υἱὸς τῆς Σύλλα γυναικός, τὸν δ’ ἕτερον, ἀδελφιδοῦν ὄντα Πομπηΐου, Σέξτον, οὐκ εἴων οὐδ’ ἐβούλοντο μελετᾶν οὐδ’ ἕπεσθαι, πυνθανομένου δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα τίνα βούλοιντο πάντες ἐβόησαν Κάτωνα, [καὶ] ὅ τε Σέξτος αὐτὸς εἴξας παρῆκεν ὡς κρείττονι τὴν φιλοτιμίαν.

[3] Ἔτυχε δὲ καὶ φίλος ὢν ὁ Σύλλας πατρικὸς αὐτοῖς, καί ποτε προσηγάγετο καὶ προσωμίλησεν, ὀλίγοις πάνυ νέμων τὴν τοιαύτην φιλοφροσύνην [4] διὰ βάρος καὶ ὄγκον ἧς εἶχεν ἀρχῆς καὶ δυνάμεως. μέγα δὴ ποιούμενος ὁ Σαρπηδὼν τοῦτο πρὸς τιμὴν ἅμα καὶ ἀσφάλειαν, ἦγεν ἀσπασόμενον τὸν Κάτωνα συνεχῶς εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ Σύλλα, μηδὲν τότε προσιδεῖν ἀσεβῶν [5] χώρου διαφέρουσαν ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν ἀγομένων καὶ στρεβλουμένων. ἦν μὲν οὖν ἔτος ἐκεῖνο τῷ Κάτωνι τεσσαρεσκαιδέκατον· ἰδὼν δὲ κεφαλὰς ἀνδρῶν ἐπιφανῶν λεγομένων ἐκκομιζομένας, καὶ κρύφα τοὺς παρόντας ἐπιστένοντας, ἠρώτησε τὸν παιδαγωγόν, ὅ τι δὴ τοῦτον τὸν ἄνθρωπον οὐδεὶς [6] ἀποκτίννυσιν. εἰπόντος δ’ ἐκείνου φοβοῦνται γὰρ αὐτὸν ὦ παῖ μᾶλλον ἢ μισοῦσι, τί οὖν εἶπεν οὐκ ἐμοὶ ξίφος ἔδωκας, ἵν’ αὐτὸν [7] ἀνελὼν ἀπήλλαξα δουλείας τὴν πατρίδα; τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ἀκούσας ὁ Σαρπηδών, ἅμα δὲ καὶ τὸ βλέμμα καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ πιμπλάμενον ὀργῆς καὶ μένους κατιδών, οὕτως ἔδεισεν, ὥστε τὸ λοιπὸν ἤδη προσέχειν ἀκριβῶς καὶ παραφυλάττειν, μή τι τολμήσῃ παραβολώτερον.

[8] Ἔτι μὲν οὖν παιδάριον ὢν μικρόν, ἀπεκρίνατο τοῖς ἐρωτῶσι τίνα φιλεῖ μάλιστα, τὸν ἀδελφόν· τίνα δεύτερον, ὁμοίως τὸν ἀδελφόν, καὶ τρίτον, [9] ἄχρι οὗ πολλάκις λέγοντος ἀπεῖπεν ὁ ἐρωτῶν. γενόμενος δ’ ἐν ἡλικίᾳ, μᾶλλον ἐβεβαίου τὴν πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν εὔνοιαν. ἔτη γὰρ εἴκοσι γεγονώς, χωρὶς Καιπίωνος οὐκ ἐδείπνησεν, οὐκ ἀπεδήμησεν, εἰς ἀγορὰν οὐ προῆλθε. μύρον δ’ ἐκείνου λαμβάνοντος, αὐτὸς παρῃτεῖτο, καὶ τἆλλα τὰ περὶ τὴν [10] δίαιταν ἦν ἀκριβὴς καὶ σύντονος. ὁ γοῦν Καιπίων ἐπὶ σωφροσύνῃ καὶ μετριότητι θαυμαζόμενος, ὡμολόγει τοιοῦτος εἶναι πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους ἐξεταζόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἔφη παρὰ τὸν Κάτωνος βίον παραβάλλω τὸν ἐμόν, οὐδὲν ἐμαυτῷ φαίνομαι Σιττίου διαφέρειν, τῶν ἐπὶ τρυφῇ τινα καὶ μαλακίᾳ περιβοήτων ὀνομάσας.

[4] [1] Ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἐπειδὴ τὴν ἱερωσύνην ἔλαβε τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος, μετοικήσας καὶ νειμάμενος μοῖραν τῶν πατρῴων, ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι ταλάντων γενομένην, [2] τὴν μὲν δίαιταν ἔτι μᾶλλον συνέστειλεν, Ἀντίπατρον δὲ Τύριον τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς στοᾶς φιλοσόφων προσεταιρισάμενος, τοῖς ἠθικοῖς μάλιστα καὶ πολιτικοῖς ἐνεφύετο δόγμασι, περὶ πᾶσαν μὲν ἀρετὴν ὥσπερ ἐπιπνοίᾳ τινὶ κατάσχετος γεγονώς, διαφόρως δὲ τοῦ καλοῦ τὸ περὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην ἀτενὲς καὶ ἄκαμπτον εἰς ἐπιείκειαν ἢ χάριν ὑπερηγαπηκώς.

[3] Ἤσκει δὲ καὶ τὸν ὀργανικὸν εἰς πλήθη λόγον, ἀξιῶν ὥσπερ ἐν πόλει [4] μεγάλῃ τῇ πολιτικῇ φιλοσοφίᾳ καὶ μάχιμον εἶναί τι παρατρεφόμενον. οὐ μέντοι μεθ’ ἑτέρων ἐποιεῖτο τὰς μελέτας, οὐδ’ ἠκροάσατο λέγοντος οὐδείς, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρός τινα τῶν ἑταίρων εἰπόντα μέμφονταί σου Κάτων οἱ ἄνθρωποι τὴν σιωπήν, μόνον ἔφη μὴ τὸν βίον. ἄρξομαι δὲ λέγειν, ὅταν μὴ μέλλω λέγειν ἄξια σιωπῆς.

[5] [1] Ἡ δὲ καλουμένη Πορκία βασιλικὴ τιμητικὸν ἦν ἀνάθημα τοῦ παλαιοῦ Κάτωνος. εἰωθότες οὖν ἐκεῖ χρηματίζειν οἱ δήμαρχοι, καὶ κίονος τοῖς δίφροις ἐμποδὼν εἶναι δοκοῦντος, ἔγνωσαν ὑφελεῖν αὐτὸν ἢ μεταστῆσαι.

[2] τοῦτο Κάτωνα πρῶτον εἰς ἀγορὰν ἄκοντα προήγαγεν· ἀντέστη γὰρ αὐτοῖς, [3] καὶ πεῖραν ἅμα τοῦ λόγου καὶ τοῦ φρονήματος δούς, ἐθαυμάσθη. καὶ γὰρ ὁ λόγος νεαρὸν μὲν οὐδὲν οὐδὲ κομψὸν εἶχεν, ἀλλ’ ἦν ὄρθιος καὶ περιπαθὴς καὶ τραχύς. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ χάρις ἀγωγὸς ἀκοῆς ἐπέτρεχε τῇ τραχύτητι τῶν νοημάτων, καὶ τὸ ἦθος αὐτοῦ καταμειγνύμενον ἡδονήν τινα καὶ μειδίαμα [4] τῷ σεμνῷ παρεῖχεν οὐκ ἀπάνθρωπον. ἡ δὲ φωνὴ μεγέθει μὲν ‹ἦν› ἀποχρῶσα καὶ διαρκὴς εἰς τοσοῦτον ἐξικέσθαι δῆμον, ἰσχὺν δὲ καὶ τόνον ἄρρηκτον εἶχε καὶ ἄτρυτον· ἡμέραν γὰρ ὅλην εἰπὼν πολλάκις οὐκ ἀπηγόρευσε.

[5] τότε δ’ οὖν κρατήσας τῆς δίκης, πάλιν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὴν σιωπὴν καὶ τὴν ἄσκησιν συνέστειλε.

[6] Καὶ διεπόνει τὸ σῶμα γυμνασίοις ἐνεργοῖς, ἐθιζόμενος ἀνέχεσθαι καὶ καύματα καὶ νιφετὸν ἀκαλύπτῳ κεφαλῇ, καὶ βαδίζειν ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς [7] πᾶσαν ὥραν ἄτερ ὀχήματος. τῶν δὲ φίλων οἱ συνεκδημοῦντες ἵπποις ἐχρῶντο, καὶ πολλάκις ἑκάστῳ παρέβαλλεν ὁ Κάτων ἐν μέρει προσδιαλεγόμενος, [8] περιπατῶν αὐτὸς ὀχουμένων. θαυμαστῇ δὲ καὶ παρὰ τὰς νόσους ὑπομονῇ μετ’ ἐγκρατείας ἐχρῆτο· πυρέττων γὰρ μόνος ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ διημέρευε μηδένα προσιέμενος, ἄχρι οὗ βέβαιον αἴσθοιτο ῥᾳστώνην καὶ μεταβολὴν τοῦ νοσήματος.

[6] [1] Ἐν δὲ τοῖς δείπνοις ἐκληροῦτο περὶ τῶν μερίδων· εἰ δ’ ἀπολάχοι, πρῶτον αἴρειν τῶν φίλων κελευόντων, ἔλεγε μὴ καλῶς ἔχειν ἀκούσης τῆς [2] Ἀφροδίτης. καὶ κατ’ ἀρχὰς μὲν ἅπαξ ἐπιπιὼν [ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον] ἀνέλυε, προϊόντι δὲ τῷ χρόνῳ μάλιστα προσίετο ‹τὸ› πίνειν, ὥστε πολλάκις ἐν [3] οἴνῳ διάγειν εἰς ὄρθρον. αἰτίαν δ’ ἔλεγον οἱ φίλοι τούτου τὴν πολιτείαν καὶ τὰ δημόσια πράγματα, πρὸς οἷς ὅλας τὸν Κάτωνα τὰς ἡμέρας ὄντα, καὶ κωλυόμενον φιλολογεῖν, νύκτωρ καὶ παρὰ πότον συγγίνεσθαι τοῖς [4] φιλοσόφοις. διὸ καὶ Μεμμίου τινὸς ἐν συλλόγῳ φήσαντος ὅλας τὸν Κάτωνα μεθύσκεσθαι τὰς νύκτας, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Κικέρων ἐκεῖνο δ’ οὐ λέγεις [5] εἶπεν ὅτι καὶ τὰς ἡμέρας ὅλας κυβεύει; καθόλου δὲ τοῖς τότε βίοις καὶ τοῖς ἐπιτηδεύμασιν ὁ Κάτων τὴν ἐναντίαν ὁδὸν οἰόμενος δεῖν βαδίζειν, ὡς οὖσι φαύλοις καὶ μεγάλης δεομένοις μεταβολῆς, ἐπεὶ πορφύραν ἑώρα τὴν κατακόρως ἐρυθρὰν καὶ ὀξεῖαν ἀγαπωμένην, αὐτὸς ἐφόρει τὴν μέλαιναν.

[6] πολλάκις δ’ ἀνυπόδητος καὶ ἀχίτων εἰς τὸ δημόσιον προῄει μετ’ ἄριστον, οὐ δόξαν ἐκ ταύτης τῆς καινότητος θηρώμενος, ἀλλ’ ἐθίζων ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς αἰσχροῖς αἰσχύνεσθαι μόνοις, τῶν δ’ ἄλλως ἀδόξων καταφρονεῖν.

[7] καὶ κληρονομίαν δ’ αὐτῷ προσγενομένην ἀνεψιοῦ Κάτωνος ἑκατὸν ταλάντων εἰς ἀργύριον συναγαγών, παρεῖχεν ἄνευ τόκων χρῆσθαι τῷ δεομένῳ τῶν φίλων· ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ χωρία καὶ θεράποντας αὐτοῦ διδόντος καὶ βεβαιοῦντος ὑπέθεντο πρὸς τὸ δημόσιον.

[7] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὥραν ᾤετο πρὸς γάμον ἔχειν, οὐδεμιᾷ γυναικὶ συνεληλυθώς, ἡρμόσατο Λεπίδαν, πρότερον μὲν ἐγγυηθεῖσαν Σκιπίωνι Μετέλλῳ, τότε δ’ ἀπειπαμένου τοῦ Σκιπίωνος καὶ τῆς ἐγγύης λυθείσης σχολάζουσαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πρὸ τοῦ γάμου μεταμεληθεὶς πάλιν ὁ Σκιπίων καὶ πάντα ποιήσας [2] ἔλαβε τὴν κόρην. ὁ δὲ Κάτων σφόδρα παροξυνθεὶς καὶ διακαείς, ἐπεχείρησε μὲν ἐπεξελθεῖν διὰ δίκης, ὡς δ’ οἱ φίλοι τοῦτ’ ἐκώλυσαν, ὀργῇ καὶ νεότητι τρέψας ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἰάμβους, πολλὰ τὸν Σκιπίωνα καθύβρισε, τῷ πικρῷ προσχρησάμενος τοῦ Ἀρχιλόχου, τὸ δ’ ἀκόλαστον ἀφεὶς καὶ [3] παιδαριῶδες. ἔγημε δ’ Ἀτιλίαν Σερρανοῦ θυγατέρα, καὶ ταύτῃ πρώτῃ συνῆλθεν, οὐ μόνῃ δέ, καθάπερ Λαίλιος ὁ Σκιπίωνος ἑταῖρος· ἀλλ’ εὐτυχέστερος ἐκεῖνος, ἐν πολλοῖς οἷς ἐβίωσε χρόνοις μίαν ἣν ἔγημεν ἐξ ἀρχῆς γνοὺς γυναῖκα.

[8] [1] Τοῦ δὲ δουλικοῦ πολέμου συνεστῶτος, ὃν Σπαρτάκειον ἐκάλουν, Γέλλιος μὲν ἐστρατήγει, Κάτων δὲ τῆς στρατείας μετεῖχεν ἐθελοντὴς διὰ [2] τὸν ἀδελφόν· ἐχιλιάρχει γὰρ ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ Καιπίων. καὶ χρήσασθαι μὲν εἰς ὅσον ἐβούλετο τῇ προθυμίᾳ καὶ ἀσκήσει τῆς ἀρετῆς οὐχ ὑπῆρξεν αὐτῷ διὰ τὸ μὴ καλῶς στρατηγεῖσθαι τὸν πόλεμον, ἄλλως δὲ παρὰ πολλὴν μαλακίαν καὶ τρυφὴν τῶν ἐκεῖ στρατευομένων ἐπιδεικνύμενος εὐταξίαν καὶ [ἀναγκαίαν] ἀνδρίαν καὶ τὸ θαρραλέον ἐν πᾶσι καὶ ξυνετόν, ἐδόκει [3] μηθὲν ἀποδεῖν τοῦ παλαιοῦ Κάτωνος. ὁ δὲ Γέλλιος ἀριστεῖα καὶ τιμὰς αὐτῷ διαπρεπεῖς ἔγραψεν, ἃς ἐκεῖνος οὐκ ἔλαβεν οὐδὲ προσήκατο, φήσας ἄξιον μηθὲν εἰργάσθαι τιμῶν.

[4] Ἔκ τε δὴ τούτων ἀλλόκοτος ἐδόκει, καὶ νόμου γραφέντος ὅπως τοῖς παραγγέλλουσιν εἰς ἀρχὴν ὀνοματολόγοι μὴ παρῶσι, χιλιαρχίαν μετιὼν [5] μόνος ἐπείθετο τῷ νόμῳ, καὶ δι’ αὑτοῦ ποιησάμενος ἔργον ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ προσαγορεύειν τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας, οὐδ’ αὐτοῖς ἀνεπαχθὴς ἦν τοῖς ἐπαινοῦσιν, ὅσον μᾶλλον ἐνόουν τὸ καλὸν ὧν ἐπετήδευε, τὸ δυσμίμητον αὐτῶν βαρυνομένοις.

[9] [1] Ἀποδειχθεὶς δὲ χιλίαρχος, εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἐπέμπετο πρὸς Ῥούβριον τὸν στρατηγόν. ἔνθα δὴ λέγεται, τῆς γυναικὸς ἀχθομένης καὶ δακρυούσης, ἕνα τῶν φίλων τοῦ Κάτωνος Μουνάτιον εἰπεῖν· ὦ Ἀτιλία [2] θάρσει· τοῦτον ἐγώ σοι φυλάξω· πάνυ μὲν οὖν, φάναι τὸν Κάτωνα, καὶ προελθόντων μιᾶς ἡμέρας ὁδόν, εὐθὺς εἰπεῖν μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον· ἄγ’ ὅπως ὦ Μουνάτιε τῇ Ἀτιλίᾳ τὴν ὑπόσχεσιν ἐμπεδώσεις, μήθ’ ἡμέρας [3] ἐμοῦ μήτε νυκτὸς ἀφιστάμενος. ἐκ δὲ τούτου δύο κλίνας εἰς ταὐτὸ δωμάτιον ἐκέλευσε τίθεσθαι καὶ τὸν Μουνάτιον οὕτως ἀεὶ καθεύδειν, μετὰ [4] παιδιᾶς φυλασσόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ Κάτωνος. εἵποντο δ’ αὐτῷ πεντεκαίδεκα μὲν οἰκέται, δύο δ’ ἀπελεύθεροι, φίλοι δὲ τέσσαρες, ὧν ὀχουμένων ἵπποις, αὐτὸς ἀεὶ περιπατῶν ἑκάστῳ παρέβαλλεν ἐν μέρει προσδιαλεγόμενος.

[5] ἐπεὶ δ’ ἧκεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, πλειόνων ταγμάτων ὄντων ἑνὸς ἄρχων ἀποδειχθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ, τῆς μὲν ἰδίας ἀρετῆς μιᾶς οὔσης μικρὸν ἔργον ἡγεῖτο καὶ οὐ †βασιλικὸν τὴν ἐπίδειξιν, αὑτῷ δὲ ποιῆσαι τοὺς ἀρχομένους ὁμοίους μάλιστα φιλοτιμούμενος, οὐ τὸν φόβον ἀφεῖλε τῆς ἐξουσίας, [6] ἀλλὰ προσέθηκε τὸν λόγον· ᾧ πείθων περὶ ἑκάστου καὶ διδάσκων, ἑπομένης τιμῆς καὶ κολάσεως, χαλεπὸν ἦν εἰπεῖν, πότερον εἰρηνικοὺς μᾶλλον ἢ πολεμικούς, καὶ προθυμοτέρους ἢ δικαιοτέρους παρεσκεύασε τοὺς [7] ἄνδρας· οὕτως ἐφαίνοντο φοβεροὶ μὲν τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἥμεροι δὲ τοῖς συμμάχοις, ἄτολμοι δὲ πρὸς τὸ ἀδικεῖν, φιλότιμοι δὲ πρὸς τοὺς ἐπαίνους.

[8] οὗ δ’ ἥκιστα Κάτων ἐπεμελήθη, τοῦτο πλεῖστον ὑπῆρχεν αὐτῷ, καὶ δόξα καὶ χάρις καὶ ὑπερβάλλουσα τιμὴ καὶ φιλοφροσύνη παρὰ τῶν στρατιωτῶν.

[9] ἃ γὰρ ἑτέροις ἐπέταττεν, ἑκουσίως διαπονῶν, καὶ στολὴν μὰν καὶ δίαιταν καὶ πορείαν ἐκείνοις μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὁμοιούμενος, ἤθει δὲ καὶ φρονήματι καὶ λόγῳ πάντας ὑπεραίρων τοὺς αὐτοκράτορας καὶ στρατηγοὺς προσαγορευομένους, ἔλαθε διὰ τούτων ἅμα τὴν πρὸς αὑτὸν εὔνοιαν [10] ‹ἐν›εργασάμενος τοῖς ἀνδράσιν. ἀρετῆς γὰρ ἀληθινὸς οὐκ ἐγγίνεται ζῆλος ἢ δι’ ἄκρας τοῦ παραδιδόντος εὐνοίας καὶ τιμῆς· οἱ δ’ ἄνευ τοῦ φιλεῖν ἐπαινοῦντες τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς αἰδοῦνται ‹μὲν› τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν, οὐ θαυμάζουσι δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν οὐδὲ μιμοῦνται.

[10] [1] Πυθόμενος δ’ Ἀθηνόδωρον τὸν ἐπικαλούμενον Κορδυλίωνα, μεγάλην ἕξιν ἐν τοῖς Στωϊκοῖς λόγοις ἔχοντα, διατρίβειν περὶ Πέργαμον, ἤδη γηραιὸν ὄντα, καὶ πάσαις ἐρρωμενέστατα ταῖς ἡγεμονικαῖς καὶ βασιλικαῖς [2] συνηθείαις καὶ φιλίαις διαμεμαχημένον, οὐδὲν ᾤετο πέμπων καὶ γράφων περαίνειν πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἔχων παρὰ τοῦ νόμου δεδομένην ἀποδημίαν δυεῖν μηνῶν, ἔπλευσεν εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνδρα, πιστεύων τοῖς ἐν [3] αὑτῷ καλοῖς μὴ ἀτυχήσειν τῆς ἄγρας. συγγενόμενος δὲ καὶ καταγωνισάμενος καὶ μεταστήσας ἐκ τῆς προαιρέσεως αὐτόν, ἧκεν ἄγων εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον περιχαρὴς καὶ μεγαλοφρονῶν, ὥς τι κάλλιον ᾑρηκὼς καὶ λαμπρότερον, ὧν Πομπήϊος τότε καὶ Λεύκολλος ἐθνῶν καὶ βασιλειῶν κατεστρέφοντο, σὺν ὅπλοις περιϊόντες.

[11] [1] Ἔτι δ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ τὴν στρατείαν ὄντος, ὁ ἀδελφὸς εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν [2] βαδίζων ἐνόσησε περὶ Θρᾴκην ἐν Αἴνῳ. καὶ γράμματα μὲν εὐθὺς ἧκε πρὸς τὸν Κάτωνα· χειμῶνος δὲ πολλοῦ κατέχοντος τὴν θάλατταν, καὶ νεὼς ἱκανῆς μεγέθει μὴ παρούσης, εἰς μικρὰν ὁλκάδα μόνον δύο [3] φίλους καὶ τρεῖς οἰκέτας παραλαβών, ἐκ Θεσσαλονίκης ἀνήχθη· καὶ παρ’ οὐδὲν ἐλθὼν καταποντωθῆναι, τύχῃ τινὶ παραλόγῳ σωθεὶς ἄρτι τεθνηκότος τοῦ Καιπίωνος, ἐμπαθέστερον ἔδοξεν ἢ φιλοσοφώτερον ἐνεγκεῖν τὴν συμφοράν, οὐ μόνον κλαυθμοῖς καὶ περιπτύξεσι τοῦ νεκροῦ καὶ βαρύτητι λύπης, ἀλλὰ καὶ δαπάνῃ περὶ τὴν ταφὴν καὶ πραγματείαις, θυμιαμάτων καὶ ἱματίων πολυτελῶν συγκατακαέντων, καὶ μνήματος ξεστοῦ λίθων Θασίων ἀπὸ ταλάντων ὀκτὼ κατασκευασθέντος ἐν τῇ Αἰνίων ἀγορᾷ.

[4] ταῦτα γὰρ [ἔνιοι] ἐσυκοφάντουν πρὸς τὴν ἄλλην ἀτυφίαν τοῦ Κάτωνος, οὐ καθορῶντες ὅσον ἐν τῷ πρὸς ἡδονὰς καὶ φόβους καὶ δεήσεις ἀναισχύντους [5] ἀγνάμπτῳ καὶ στερρῷ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς τὸ ἥμερον ἐνῆν καὶ φιλόστοργον. εἰς δὲ ταῦτα καὶ πόλεις αὐτῷ καὶ δυνάσται πολλὰ κατὰ τιμὴν τοῦ τεθνεῶτος ἔπεμπον, ὧν ἐκεῖνος χρήματα μὲν παρ’ οὐδενὸς ἐδέξατο, θυμιάματα δὲ [6] καὶ κόσμον ἐλάμβανε, ‹τὴν› τιμὴν ἀποδιδοὺς τοῖς πέμπουσι. τῆς δὲ κληρονομίας εἰς αὐτόν τε καὶ τὸ θυγάτριον τοῦ Καιπίωνος ἡκούσης, οὐθὲν ὧν [7] ἀνάλωσε περὶ τὸν τάφον ἀπῄτησεν ἐν τῇ νεμήσει. καὶ ταῦτα πράξαντος αὐτοῦ καὶ παθόντος ἦν ὁ γράψας, ὅτι κοσκίνῳ τὴν τέφραν τοῦ νεκροῦ [8] μετέβαλε καὶ διήθησε, χρυσίον ζητῶν κατακεκαυμένον. οὕτως οὐ τῷ ξίφει μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ γραφείῳ τὸ ἀνυπεύθυνον καὶ ἀνυπόδικον ‹δι›επίστευσεν.

[12] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τέλος εἶχεν ἡ στρατεία τῷ Κάτωνι, προεπέμφθη ‹μὲν› οὐκ εὐχαῖς, ὃ κοινόν ἐστιν, οὐδ’ ἐπαίνοις, ἀλλὰ δάκρυσι καὶ περιβολαῖς ἀπλήστοις, ὑποτιθέντων τὰ ἱμάτια τοῖς ποσὶν ᾗ βαδίζοι, καὶ καταφιλούντων τὰς χεῖρας, ἃ τῶν αὐτοκρατόρων ὀλίγοις μόλις ἐποίουν οἱ τότε Ῥωμαῖοι.

[2] Βουληθεὶς δὲ πρὸ τοῦ πολιτείᾳ προσελθεῖν ἅμα μὲν πλανηθῆναι καθ’ ἱστορίαν τῆς Ἀσίας καὶ γενέσθαι θεατὴς ἠθῶν καὶ βίων καὶ δυνάμεως τῆς περὶ ἑκάστην ἐπαρχίαν, ἅμα δὲ τῷ Γαλάτῃ Δηϊοτάρῳ, διὰ ξενίαν καὶ φιλίαν πατρῴαν δεομένῳ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐλθεῖν, μὴ ἀχαριστῆσαι, τοῦτον τὸν [3] τρόπον ἐποιεῖτο τὴν ἀποδημίαν. προὔπεμπεν ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὸν ἀρτοποιὸν καὶ τὸν μάγειρον, ὅπου καταλύσειν ἔμελλεν. οἱ δὲ πάνυ κοσμίως καὶ μεθ’ ἡσυχίας εἰσελθόντες ἂν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, εἰ μηδεὶς τύχοι τῷ Κάτωνι φίλος ὢν αὐτόθι πατρῷος ἢ γνώριμος, ἐν πανδοκείῳ τὴν ὑποδοχὴν αὐτῷ παρεσκεύαζον, [4] ἐνοχλοῦντες οὐδενί· πανδοκείου δὲ μὴ ὄντος, οὕτως πρὸς τοὺς [5] ἄρχοντας τραπόμενοι ξενίαν ἐλάμβανον, ἀγαπῶντες τὴν δοθεῖσαν. πολλάκις δ’ ἀπιστούμενοι καὶ περιορώμενοι διὰ τὸ μὴ θορύβῳ μηδ’ ἀπειλῇ ταῦτα πράσσειν πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας, ὑπὸ τοῦ Κάτωνος ἄπρακτοι κατελαμβάνοντο, καὶ μᾶλλον αὐτὸς ὀφθεὶς ὠλιγωρεῖτο, καὶ παρεῖχεν ἐπὶ τῶν φορτίων σιωπῇ καθεζόμενος ὑπόνοιαν ἀνθρώπου ταπεινοῦ καὶ περιδεοῦς.

[6] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ προσκαλούμενος αὐτοὺς εἰώθει λέγειν· ὦ μοχθηροί, μεταβάλεσθε ταύτης τῆς κακοξενίας. οὐ πάντες ὑμῖν ἀφίξονται Κάτωνες. ἀμβλύνατε ταῖς φιλοφροσύναις τὴν ἐξουσίαν αὐτῶν, δεομένων προφάσεως ἵνα βίᾳ λαμβάνωσιν, ὡς παρ’ ἑκόντων μὴ τυγχάνοντες.

[13] [1] Ἐν δὲ Συρίᾳ καὶ γελοῖόν τι λέγεται παθεῖν. βαδίζων γὰρ εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν, εἶδε περὶ τὰς πύλας ἔξω πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων ἑκατέρωθεν τῆς ὁδοῦ παρακεκριμένων, ἐν οἷς ἔφηβοι μὲν χωρὶς ἐν χλαμύσι καὶ παῖδες ἑτέρωθι κοσμίως εἱστήκεσαν, ἐσθῆτας δὲ καθαρὰς ἔνιοι καὶ στρεφάνους εἶχον, [2] ἱερεῖς θεῶν ὄντες ἢ ἄρχοντες. πάντων οὖν μᾶλλον οἰηθεὶς ὁ Κάτων αὐτῷ τινα πράττεσθαι τιμὴν καὶ δεξίωσιν ὑπὸ τῆς πόλεως, ὠργίζετο μὲν τοῖς προπεμφθεῖσι τῶν ἰδίων, ὡς μὴ κωλύσασιν, ἐκέλευσε δὲ καταβῆναι τοὺς [3] φίλους, καὶ πεζῇ προῄει μετ’ αὐτῶν. ὡς δ’ ἐγγὺς ἦσαν, ὁ πάντα διακοσμῶν ἐκεῖνα καὶ τὸν ὄχλον εἰς τάξιν καθιστάς, ἀνὴρ πρεσβύτερος ἤδη, ῥάβδον ἐν τῇ χειρὶ καὶ στέφανον κρατῶν, ἀπήντησε τῷ Κάτωνι πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων, καὶ μηδ’ ἀσπασάμενος ἠρώτα, ποῦ Δημήτριον ἀπολελοίπασι, καὶ [4] πηνίκα παρέσται. Πομπηΐου δ’ ἦν γεγονὼς ὁ Δημήτριος οἰκέτης· τότε δὲ πάντων ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἀνθρώπων εἰς Πομπήϊον ἀποβλεπόντων, ἐθεραπεύετο [5] παρ’ ἀξίαν, μέγα παρ’ αὐτῷ δυνάμενος. τοῖς μὲν οὖν φίλοις τοῦ Κάτωνος γέλως ἐνέπεσε τοσοῦτος, ὥστ’ ἀναλαβεῖν ἑαυτοὺς οὐκ ἐδύναντο, διὰ τοῦ πλήθους ἅμα βαδίζοντες, ὁ δὲ Κάτων τότε μὲν ἰσχυρῶς διατραπείς, ὦ τῆς κακοδαίμονος ἔφη πόλεως, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν ἐφθέγξατο· χρόνῳ δ’ ὕστερον εἰώθει γελᾶν καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τούτῳ, καὶ διηγούμενος καὶ μνημονεύων.

[14] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ Πομπήϊος αὐτὸς ἐπέστρεψε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, οὕτω [2] πλημμελοῦντας εἰς τὸν Κάτωνα δι’ ἄγνοιαν. ὡς γὰρ εἰς Ἔφεσον ἐλθὼν ἐπορεύετο πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀσπασόμενος πρεσβύτερον ὄντα καὶ δόξῃ πολὺ προήκοντα καὶ δυνάμεων τότε μεγίστων ἡγούμενον, ἰδὼν ὁ Πομπήϊος οὐκ ἔμεινεν οὐδ’ εἴασε καθεζομένῳ προσελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὥς τινι τῶν κρειττόνων [3] ἀναθορὼν ἀπήντησε, καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν ἐνέβαλε. καὶ πολλὰ μὲν εὐθὺς ἐν τῷ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι καὶ ἀσπάζεσθαι παρόντα, πλείω δ’ ἔτι μεταστάντος ἐγκώμια διῆλθεν αὐτοῦ τῆς ἀρετῆς, ὥστε πάντας ἐπιστρεφομένους καὶ προσέχοντας ἤδη τῷ Κάτωνι, θαυμάζειν ἐξ ὧν πρότερον κατεφρονεῖτο, [4] καὶ ‹τὴν› πρᾳότητα καὶ μεγαλοψυχίαν ἀναθεωρεῖν. καὶ γὰρ ἡ Πομπηΐου σπουδὴ περὶ αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐλάνθανε θεραπεύοντος οὖσα μᾶλλον ἢ φιλοῦντος, [5] ἀλλ’ ἔγνωσαν ὅτι θαυμάζει μὲν παρόντα, χαίρει δ’ ἀπερχομένῳ. τοὺς γὰρ ἄλλους νέους, ὅσοι παρ’ αὐτὸν ἀφικνοῦντο, φιλοτιμούμενος κατεῖχε καὶ ποθῶν αὑτῷ συνεῖναι, τοῦ δὲ Κάτωνος οὐδὲν ἐδεήθη τοιοῦτον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οὐκ ἀνυπεύθυνος ἄρχων ἐκείνου παρόντος, ἐξέπεμψεν ἄσμενος, μόνῳ σχεδὸν ἐκείνῳ τῶν εἰς Ῥώμην πλεόντων τὰ τέκνα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα [6] παρακαταθέμενος, ἄλλως αὐτῷ προσήκοντα καὶ διὰ συγγένειαν. ἐκ τούτου δόξα καὶ σπουδὴ καὶ ἅμιλλα περὶ αὐτὸν ἦν τῶν πόλεων καὶ δεῖπνα καὶ κλήσεις, ἐν οἷς τοὺς φίλους ἐκέλευε προσέχειν αὐτῷ μὴ λάθῃ βεβαιώσας [7] τὸν Κουρίωνος λόγον. ὁ γὰρ Κουρίων, ἀχθόμενος τῷ αὐστηρῷ τοῦ Κάτωνος, φίλου καὶ συνήθους ὄντος, ἠρώτησεν αὐτὸν εἰ πρόθυμός ἐστι μετὰ [8] τὴν στρατείαν γενέσθαι τῆς Ἀσίας θεατής. τοῦ δὲ καὶ πάνυ φήσαντος, εὖ λέγεις εἶπεν ὁ Κουρίων, ἡδίων γὰρ ἐπανήξεις ἐκεῖθεν καὶ μᾶλλον ἥμερος, οὕτω πως καὶ τῷ ῥήματι χρησάμενος.

[15] [1] Δηϊόταρος δ’ ὁ Γαλάτης μετεπέμψατο μὲν τὸν Κάτωνα, πρεσβύτερος ὢν ἤδη παραθέσθαι τοὺς παῖδας αὐτῷ βουλόμενος καὶ τὸν οἶκον, ἐλθόντι δὲ προσφέρων δῶρα παντοδαπὰ καὶ πειρῶν καὶ δεόμενος πάντα τρόπον, οὕτω παρώξυνεν, ὥστε δείλης ἐλθόντα καὶ νυκτερεύσαντα τῇ [2] ὑστεραίᾳ περὶ τρίτην ὥραν ἀπᾶραι. προελθὼν μέντοι μιᾶς ἡμέρας ὁδόν, εὗρεν ἐν Πεσσινοῦντι πλείονα τῶν ἐκεῖ δώρων αὖθις αὐτὸν ὑπομένοντα καὶ γράμματα τοῦ Γαλάτου δεομένου, λαβεῖν αὐτὸς εἰ μὴ πρόθυμός ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς φίλους ἐᾶσαι, πάντως μὲν ἀξίους ὄντας εὖ παθεῖν δι’ ἐκεῖνον, [3] οὐκ ὄντων δὲ τῶν ἰδίων τοῦ Κάτωνος τοσούτων. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τούτοις ἐνέδωκεν ὁ Κάτων, καίπερ ἐνίους τῶν φίλων μαλασσομένους καὶ ὑπομεμφομένους ὁρῶν, ἀλλὰ φήσας ὅτι πᾶσα δωροδοκία προφάσεως ἂν εὐπορήσειεν, οἱ δὲ φίλοι μεθέξουσιν ὧν ἂν ἔχῃ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως κτησάμενος, ἀπέπεμψε τὰ δῶρα πρὸς τὸν Δηϊόταρον.

[4] Ἐπεὶ δὲ μέλλοντος ἀπαίρειν εἰς τὸ Βρεντέσιον ᾤοντο δεῖν οἱ φίλοι τὰ λείψανα τοῦ Καιπίωνος εἰς ἕτερον θέσθαι πλοῖον, εἰπὼν ὅτι τῆς ψυχῆς μεθήσεται μᾶλλον ἢ τούτων, ἀνήχθη· καὶ μέντοι λέγεται κατὰ τύχην ἐπισφαλέστατα περᾶσαι, τῶν ἄλλων μετρίως κομιζομένων.

[16] [1] Ἐπανελθὼν δ’ εἰς Ῥώμην, τὸν μὲν ἄλλον χρόνον κατ’ οἶκον Ἀθηνοδώρῳ ‹συσχολάζων› ἢ κατ’ ἀγορὰν τοῖς φίλοις παριστάμενος διετέλεσεν.

[2] Ἐπιβάλλουσαν δ’ αὐτῷ τὴν ταμιευτικὴν ἀρχὴν οὐ πρότερον μετῆλθεν, ἢ τούς τε νόμους ἀναγνῶναι τοὺς ταμιευτικοὺς καὶ διαπυθέσθαι τῶν ἐμπείρων ἕκαστα καὶ τύπῳ τινὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς τὴν δύναμιν περιλαβεῖν.

[3] ὅθεν εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν καταστάς, μεγάλην ἐποίησε μεταβολὴν τῶν περὶ τὸ ταμιεῖον ὑπηρετῶν καὶ γραμματέων, οἳ διὰ χειρὸς ἀεὶ τὰ δημόσια γράμματα καὶ τοὺς νόμους ἔχοντες, εἶτα νέους ἄρχοντας παραλαμβάνοντες, δι’ ἀπειρίαν καὶ ἄγνοιαν ἀτεχνῶς διδασκάλων ἑτέρων καὶ παιδαγωγῶν δεομένους, οὐχ ὑφίεντο τῆς ἐξουσίας ἐκείνοις, ἀλλ’ ἦσαν ἄρχοντες [4] αὐτοί, μέχρι οὗ Κάτων ἐπιστὰς τοῖς πράγμασι νεανικῶς, οὐκ ὄνομα ‹μόνον› καὶ τιμὴν ἔχων ἄρχοντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ νοῦν καὶ φρόνημα καὶ λόγον, ὑπηρέταις, ὅπερ ἦσαν, ἠξίου χρῆσθαι τοῖς γραμματεῦσι, τὰ μὲν ἐξελέγχων [5] κακουργοῦντας αὐτούς, τὰ δ’ ἁμαρτάνοντας ἀπειρίᾳ διδάσκων. ὡς δ’ ἦσαν ἰταμοὶ καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐθώπευον ὑποτρέχοντες, ἐκείνῳ δ’ ἐπολέμουν, τὸν μὲν πρῶτον αὐτὸς καταγνοὺς περὶ πίστιν ἐν κληρονομίᾳ γεγονέναι πονηρόν, ἀπήλασε τοῦ ταμιείου, δευτέρῳ δέ τινι ῥᾳδιουργίας προὔ[6]θηκε κρίσιν. ᾧ Κάτλος Λουτάτιος ὁ τιμητὴς ἀνέβη βοηθήσων, ἀνὴρ μέγα τὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἔχων ἀξίωμα, τὸ δὲ τῆς ἀρετῆς [ἔχων] μέγιστον, ὡς πάντων δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ σωφροσύνῃ Ῥωμαίων διαφέρων· ἦν δὲ καὶ τοῦ Κάτωνος [7] ἐπαινέτης καὶ συνήθης διὰ τὸν βίον. ὡς οὖν ἡττώμενος τοῖς δικαίοις ἐξῃτεῖτο φανερῶς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οὐκ εἴα ταῦτα ποιεῖν αὐτὸν ὁ Κάτων· ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον προσλιπαροῦντος, αἰσχρόν εἶπεν ὦ Κάτλε, σὲ τὸν τιμητὴν καὶ τοὺς ἡμετέρους βίους ὀφείλοντα δοκιμάζειν, ὑπὸ τῶν ἡμετέρων ὑπηρετῶν [8] ἐκβάλλεσθαι. ταύτην τὴν φωνὴν ἀφέντος τοῦ Κάτωνος, ὁ Κάτλος προσέβλεψε μὲν αὐτὸν ὡς ἀμειψόμενος, εἶπε δ’ οὐδέν, ἀλλ’ [9] εἴθ’ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς εἴθ’ ὑπ’ αἰσχύνης ἀπῆλθε σιωπῇ διηπορημένος. οὐ μὴν ἥλω γ’ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ μιᾷ ψήφῳ τὰς ἀφιείσας ὑπερέβαλλον αἱ καθαιροῦσαι, καὶ Λόλλιος Μᾶρκος εἷς συνάρχων τοῦ Κάτωνος ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας ἀπελέλειπτο τῆς δίκης, πέμπει πρὸς τοῦτον ὁ Κάτλος, δεόμενος βοηθῆσαι τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, κἀκεῖνος ἐν φορείῳ ‹μετα›κομισθεὶς ‹εἰς› [10] [μετὰ] τὴν δίκην, ἔθετο τὴν ἀπολύουσαν. οὐ μὴν ἐχρήσατό γε τῷ γραμματεῖ [ὁ] Κάτων, οὐδὲ τὸν μισθὸν ἀπέδωκεν, οὐδ’ ὅλως ἐνάριθμον τοῦ Λολλίου τὴν ψῆφον ἔσχεν.

[17] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τοὺς γραμματεῖς ταπεινώσας καὶ ποιήσας ὑποχειρίους, καὶ τοῖς πράγμασιν ὡς αὐτὸς ἐβούλετο χρώμενος, ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ τὸ ταμιεῖον ἀπέδειξε τοῦ βουλευτηρίου σεμνότερον, ὡς καὶ λέγειν καὶ φρονεῖν ἅπαντας [2] ὅτι Κάτων ὑπατείας ἀξίωμα τῇ ταμιείᾳ περιέθηκε. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ εὑρὼν χρέα παλαιὰ τῷ δημοσίῳ πολλοὺς ὀφείλοντας, καὶ πολλοῖς τὸ δημόσιον, ἅμα τὴν πόλιν ἔπαυσεν ἀδικουμένην καὶ ἀδικοῦσαν, τοὺς μὲν εὐτόνως καὶ ἀπαραιτήτως ἀπαιτῶν, τοῖς δὲ ταχέως ἀποδιδοὺς καὶ προθύμως, ὥστε τὸν δῆμον ἥδεσθαι, τοὺς μὲν οἰομένους ἀποστερήσειν ἐκτίνοντας [3] ὁρῶντα, τοὺς δ’ ἃ μὴ προσεδόκων ἀπολαμβάνοντας. ἔπειτα γράμματα [τῶν] πολλῶν οὐ προσηκόντως ἀναφερόντων καὶ δόγματα ψευδῆ παραδέχεσθαι χάριτι καὶ δεήσει τῶν προτέρων εἰωθότων, οὐδὲν αὐτὸν ἔλαθε [4] γενόμενον τοιοῦτον, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ ἑνός ποτε δόγματος ἐνδοιάσας εἰ κύριον γέγονε, πολλῶν μαρτυρούντων οὐκ ἐπίστευσεν οὐδὲ κατέταξε πρότερον [5] ἢ τοὺς ὑπάτους ἐπομόσαι παραγενομένους. ὄντων δὲ πολλῶν οἷς Σύλλας ἐκεῖνος ἀποκτείνασιν ἄνδρας ἐκ προγραφῆς γέρας ἔδωκεν ἀνὰ μυρίας δισχιλίας δραχμάς, ἅπαντες μὲν αὐτοὺς ὡς ἐναγεῖς καὶ μιαροὺς ἑμίσουν, [6] ἀμύνασθαι δ’ οὐδεὶς ἐτόλμα· Κάτων δὲ προσκαλούμενος ἕκαστον ‹ὡς› ἔχοντα δημόσιον ἀργύριον ἀδίκως ἐξέπραττεν, ἅμα θυμῷ καὶ λόγῳ τὸ [7] τῆς πράξεως ἀνόσιον καὶ παράνομον ἐξονειδίζων. οἱ δὲ τοῦτο παθόντες εὐθὺς ἦσαν ἔνοχοι φόνῳ, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ προηλωκότες ἀπήγοντο πρὸς τοὺς δικαστὰς καὶ δίκας ἔτινον, ἡδομένων πάντων καὶ νομιζόντων συνεξαλείφεσθαι τὴν τότε τυραννίδα καὶ Σύλλαν αὐτὸν ἐφορᾶν κολαζόμενον.

[18] [1] Ἥιρει δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ τὸ ἐνδελεχὲς αὐτοῦ τῆς ἐπιμελείας καὶ ἄτρυτον. οὔτε γὰρ πρότερός τις ἀνέβη τῶν συναρχόντων εἰς τὸ ταμιεῖον [2] Κάτωνος, οὔθ’ ὕστερος ἀπῆλθεν. ἐκκλησίαν δὲ καὶ βουλὴν οὐδεμίαν παρῆκε, δεδιὼς καὶ παραφυλάττων τοὺς ἑτοίμως καὶ πρὸς χάριν ὀφλημάτων [3] καὶ τελῶν ἀνέσεις ἢ δόσεις οἷς ἔτυχεν ἐπιψηφιζομένους. ἐπιδεικνύμενος δὲ τὸ ταμιεῖον ἄβατόν τε καὶ καθαρὸν συκοφαντῶν, πλῆρες δὲ [4] χρημάτων, ἐδίδασκεν ὅτι τῇ πόλει πλουτεῖν ἔξεστι μὴ ἀδικούσῃ. κατ’ ἀρχὰς δὲ τῶν συναρχόντων ἐνίοις ἐπαχθὴς καὶ χαλεπὸς φανείς, ὕστερον ἠγαπᾶτο, ταῖς ἐκ τοῦ μὴ χαρίζεσθαι τὰ δημόσια μηδὲ κρίνειν κακῶς ἀπεχθείαις ὑποτιθεὶς ἑαυτὸν ἀντὶ πάντων, καὶ παρέχων ἀπολογεῖσθαι πρὸς τοὺς δεομένους καὶ βιαζομένους ἐκείνοις, ὡς ἀμήχανόν ἐστιν ἄκοντος Κάτωνος.

[5] Τῶν δ’ ἡμερῶν τῇ τελευταίᾳ σχεδὸν ὑπὸ πάντων τῶν πολιτῶν προπεμφθεὶς εἰς οἶκον, ἤκουσεν ὅτι Μαρκέλλῳ πολλοὶ συνήθεις καὶ δυνατοὶ προσπεσόντες ἐν τῷ ταμιείῳ καὶ περιέχοντες, ἐκβιάζονται γράψαι τινὰ δόσιν [6] χρημάτων ‹οὐκ› ὀφειλομένην. ἦν δ’ ὁ Μάρκελλος ἐκ παίδων φίλος τῷ Κάτωνι καὶ σὺν ἐκείνῳ βέλτιστος ἄρχων, αὐτὸς δὲ καθ’ αὑτὸν ἀγώγιμος [7] ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς τοῖς δεομένοις καὶ κατάντης πρὸς πᾶσαν χάριν. εὐθὺς οὖν ὁ Κάτων ἐπιστρέψας καὶ τὸν Μάρκελλον εὑρὼν ἐκβεβιασμένον γράψαι τὴν [8] δόσιν, ᾔτησε τὰς δέλτους καὶ ἀπήλειψεν αὐτοῦ παρεστῶτος σιωπῇ· καὶ τοῦτο πράξας κατήγαγεν αὐτὸν ἐκ τοῦ ταμιείου καὶ κατέστησεν εἰς οἶκον, οὔτε τότε μεμψάμενον οὔθ’ ὕστερον, ἀλλ’ ἐμμείναντα τῇ συνηθείᾳ καὶ [9] φιλίᾳ μέχρι παντός. οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ἀπαλλαγεὶς τῆς ταμιείας ἀφῆκε τῆς φρουρᾶς ἔρημον τὸ ταμιεῖον, ἀλλ’ οἰκέται μὲν αὐτοῦ καθ’ ἡμέραν ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰς διοικήσεις παρῆσαν, αὐτὸς δὲ βιβλία λόγους περιέχοντα δημοσίων οἰκονομιῶν ἀπὸ τῶν Σύλλα χρόνων εἰς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ταμιείαν ὠνησάμενος πέντε ταλάντων, ἀεὶ διὰ χειρὸς εἶχεν.

[19] [1] Εἰς δὲ σύγκλητον εἰσῄει τε πρῶτος καὶ τελευταῖος ἀπηλλάττετο· πολλάκις δὲ τῶν ἄλλων σχολῇ συναγομένων, καθεζόμενος ἀνεγίνωσκεν ἡσυχῇ, τὸ ἱμάτιον τοῦ βιβλίου προϊσχόμενος· ἀπεδήμησε δ’ [2] οὐδέποτε βουλῆς γενομένης. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὕστερον οἱ περὶ Πομπήϊον, ὁρῶντες αὐτὸν ἐν οἷς ἐσπούδαζον ἀδίκως ἀμετάπειστον καὶ δυσεκβίαστον ἀεί, διεμηχανῶντο φιλικαῖς τισι συνηγορίαις ἢ διαίταις ἢ πραγματείαις ἔξω περισπᾶν, συνεὶς [οὖν] ταχὺ τὴν ἐπιβουλήν, ἀπεῖπε πᾶσι καὶ παρετάξατο [3] βουλῆς ἀγομένης μηδὲν ἄλλο πράττειν. οὔτε γὰρ δόξης χάριν οὔτε πλεονεξίας οὔτ’ αὐτομάτως καὶ κατὰ τύχην ὥσπερ ἕτεροί τινες ἐμπεσὼν εἰς τὸ πράττειν τὰ τῆς πόλεως, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἴδιον ἔργον ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ τὴν πολιτείαν ἑλόμενος, μᾶλλον ᾤετο δεῖν προσέχειν τοῖς κοινοῖς ἢ τῷ κηρίῳ τὴν μέλιτταν· [4] ὅς γε καὶ τὰ τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν πράγματα καὶ δόγματα καὶ κρίσεις [καὶ πράξεις] τὰς μεγίστας ἔργον πεποίητο διὰ τῶν ἑκασταχόθι ξένων καὶ [5] φίλων πέμπεσθαι πρὸς αὐτόν. ἐνστὰς δέ ποτε Κλωδίῳ τῷ δημαγωγῷ, κινοῦντι καὶ πράττοντι μεγάλων ἀρχὰς νεωτερισμῶν, καὶ διαβάλλοντι πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἱερεῖς καὶ ἱερείας, ἐν οἷς καὶ Φαβία Τερεντίας ἀδελφὴ τῆς [6] Κικέρωνος γυναικὸς ἐκινδύνευσε, τὸν μὲν Κλώδιον αἰσχύνῃ περιβαλὼν ἠνάγκασεν ὑπεκστῆναι τῆς πόλεως, τοῦ δὲ Κικέρωνος εὐχαριστοῦντος, τῇ πόλει δεῖν ἔχειν ἔφη χάριν αὐτόν, ὡς ἐκείνης ἕνεκα πάντα ποιῶν καὶ [7] πολιτευόμενος. ἐκ τούτου μεγάλη δόξα περὶ αὐτὸν ἦν, ὥστε ῥήτορα μὲν ‹ἐν› δίκῃ τινὶ μαρτυρίας μιᾶς φερομένης εἰπεῖν πρὸς τοὺς δικαστάς, ὡς ἑνὶ μαρτυροῦντι προσέχειν οὐδὲ Κάτωνι καλῶς ἔχει, πολλοὺς δ’ ἤδη περὶ τῶν ἀπίστων καὶ παραδόξων ὥσπερ ἐν παροιμίᾳ τινὶ λέγειν, ὅτι τοῦτο μὲν [8] οὐδὲ Κάτωνος λέγοντος πιθανόν ἐστι. μοχθηροῦ δ’ ἀνθρώπου καὶ πολυτελοῦς λόγον ἐν συγκλήτῳ διαθεμένου πρὸς εὐτέλειαν καὶ σωφρονισμόν, ἐπαναστὰς Ἀμναῖος ὦ ἄνθρωπ’ εἶπε, τίς ἀνέξεταί σου, δειπνοῦντος μὲν ὡς Κράσσου, οἰκοδομοῦντος δ’ ὡς Λευκόλλου, δημηγοροῦντος δ’ [9] ἡμῖν ὡς Κάτωνος; καὶ τῶν ἄλλων δὲ τοὺς φαύλους καὶ ἀκολάστους, τοῖς λόγοις δὲ σεμνοὺς καὶ αὐστηρούς, χλευάζοντες ἐκάλουν ‹Ψευδο›κάτωνας.

[20] [1] Πολλῶν δ’ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ δημαρχίαν καλούντων, οὐκ ᾤετο καλῶς ἔχειν μεγάλης ἐξουσίας καὶ ἀρχῆς ὥσπερ ἰσχυροῦ φαρμάκου δύναμιν ἐν [2] πράγμασιν οὐκ ἀναγκαίοις ἐξαναλῶσαι. καὶ ἅμα σχολῆς οὔσης τῶν δημοσίων, παραλαβὼν βιβλία καὶ φιλοσόφους ἐβάδιζεν εἰς Λευκανίαν, ἀγροὺς [3] αὐτόθι κεκτημένος ἔχοντας οὐκ ἀνελευθέρους διατριβάς. εἶτα καθ’ ὁδὸν πολλοῖς τισιν ὑποζυγίοις καὶ σκεύεσι καὶ ἀκολούθοις ἀπαντήσας, καὶ πυθόμενος Νέπωτα Μέτελλον εἰς Ῥώμην ἐπανέρχεσθαι, δημαρχίαν μετιέναι παρεσκευασμένον, ἐπέστη σιωπῇ, καὶ διαλιπὼν μικρόν, ἐκέλευσεν [4] ἀναστρέφειν ὀπίσω τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ. τῶν δὲ φίλων θαυμασάντων, οὐκ ἴστ’ εἶπεν ὅτι καὶ καθ’ αὑτὸν ὑπ’ ἐμπληξίας φοβερός ἐστι Μέτελλος, καὶ νῦν ἐκ τῆς Πομπηΐου γνώμης ἀφιγμένος εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν ἐμπεσεῖται δίκην [5] σκηπτοῦ, πάντα πράγματα ταράττων; οὔκουν σχολῆς οὐδ’ ἀποδημίας καιρός, ἀλλὰ δεῖ κρατῆσαι τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἢ καλῶς ἀποθανεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς [6] ἐλευθερίας ἀγωνιζόμενον. ὅμως δὲ τῶν φίλων παραινεσάντων ἀφίκετο πρῶτον εἰς τὰ χωρία καὶ διέτριψεν οὐ πολὺν χρόνον, εἶτ’ ἐπανῆκεν εἰς [7] πόλιν. ἑσπέρας δ’ ἐλθών, εὐθὺς ἕωθεν εἰς ἀγορὰν κατέβαινε δημαρχίαν [8] μετιών, ὡς ἀντιταξόμενος πρὸς τὸν Μέτελλον. τὸ γὰρ ἰσχυρὸν ἡ ἀρχὴ πρὸς τὸ κωλύειν ἔχει μᾶλλον ἢ πρὸς τὸ πράττειν, κἂν πάντες οἱ λοιποὶ παρ’ ἕνα ψηφίσωνται, τοῦ μὴ θέλοντος μηδ’ ἐῶντος τὸ κράτος ἐστί.

[21] [1] Τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ὀλίγοι περὶ τὸν Κάτωνα τῶν φίλων ἦσαν· φανερᾶς δὲ τῆς γνώμης αὐτοῦ γενομένης, ὀλίγου χρόνου πάντες οἱ χρηστοὶ καὶ γνώριμοι συνέτρεχον, καὶ παρεκάλουν καὶ παρεθάρρυνον αὐτὸν ὡς οὐ λαμβάνοντα χάριν, ἀλλὰ τὴν μεγίστην διδόντα τῇ πατρίδι καὶ τοῖς ἐπιεικεστάτοις τῶν πολιτῶν, ὅτι πολλάκις ἀπραγμόνως ἄρξαι παρὸν οὐ θελήσας, νῦν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας [καὶ πολιτείας] ἀγωνιούμενος οὐκ ἀκινδύνως [2] κάτεισι. λέγεται δὲ πολλῶν ὑπὸ σπουδῆς καὶ φιλοφροσύνης ὠθουμένων πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐν κινδύνῳ γενόμενος μόλις ἐξικέσθαι διὰ πλῆθος εἰς τὴν ἀγοράν.

[3] Ἀποδειχθεὶς δὲ δήμαρχος σὺν ἑτέροις καὶ τῷ Μετέλλῳ, τὰς ὑπατικὰς ἀρχαιρεσίας ὁρῶν ὠνίους οὔσας, ἐπετίμησε τῷ δήμῳ, καὶ καταπαύων τὸν λόγον ἐπώμοσε τοῦ δόντος ἀργύριον ὅστις ἂν ᾖ κατηγορήσειν, ἕνα Σιλανὸν ὑπεξελόμενος δι’ οἰκειότητα· Σερβιλίαν γὰρ ἀδελφὴν Κάτωνος [4] ὁ Σιλανὸς εἶχε. διὸ τοῦτον μὲν παρῆκε, Λεύκιον δὲ Μουρρήναν ἐδίωκεν, [5] ἀργυρίῳ διαπραξάμενον ἄρχοντα μετὰ τοῦ Σιλανοῦ γενέσθαι. νόμῳ δέ τινι τοῦ φεύγοντος ἀεὶ φύλακα τῷ κατηγόρῳ διδόντος, ὥστε μὴ λαθεῖν ἃ συνάγει καὶ παρασκευάζεται πρὸς τὴν κατηγορίαν, ὁ τῷ Κάτωνι δοθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Μουρρήνα παρακολουθῶν καὶ παραφυλάττων, ὡς ἑώρα μηθὲν ἐπιβούλως πράττοντα μηδ’ ἀδίκως, ἀλλὰ γενναίως τε καὶ φιλανθρώπως [6] ἁπλῆν τινα τῆς κατηγορίας καὶ δικαίαν ὁδὸν πορευόμενον, οὕτως ἐθαύμαζε τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὸ ἦθος, ὥστε κατ’ ἀγορὰν προσιὼν καὶ φοιτῶν ἐπὶ θύρας πυνθάνεσθαι τοῦ Κάτωνος, εἰ μέλλει τι σήμερον πραγματεύσεσθαι [7] τῶν περὶ τὴν κατηγορίαν· εἰ δὲ μὴ φαίη, πιστεύων ἀπῄει. τῆς δὲ δίκης λεγομένης ὁ Κικέρων, ὕπατος ὢν τότε καὶ τῷ Μουρρήνᾳ συνδικῶν, πολλὰ διὰ τὸν Κάτωνα τοὺς Στωϊκοὺς φιλοσόφους καὶ ταῦτα δὴ τὰ παράδοξα καλούμενα δόγματα χλευάζων καὶ παρασκώπτων, γέλωτα παρεῖχε τοῖς [8] δικασταῖς. τὸν οὖν Κάτωνά φασι διαμειδιάσαντα πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας [9] εἰπεῖν· ὦ ἄνδρες, ὡς γελοῖον ὕπατον ἔχομεν. ἀποφυγὼν δ’ ὁ Μουρρήνας οὐ πονηροῦ πάθος οὐδ’ ἄφρονος ἔπαθεν ἀνθρώπου πρὸς τὸν Κάτωνα· καὶ γὰρ ὑπατεύων ἐχρῆτο συμβούλῳ περὶ τῶν μεγίστων, καὶ τἆλλα τιμῶν [10] καὶ πιστεύων διετέλεσεν. αἴτιος δ’ ἦν ὁ Κάτων αὐτός, ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος καὶ τοῦ συνεδρίου χαλεπὸς ὢν καὶ φοβερὸς ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίων, εἶτα πᾶσιν εὐνοϊκῶς καὶ φιλανθρώπως προσφερόμενος.

[22] [1] Πρὶν δ’ εἰς τὴν δημαρχίαν καθίστασθαι, Κικέρωνος ὑπατεύοντος ἄλλοις τε πολλοῖς ἀγῶσι τὴν ἀρχὴν ὤρθωσεν αὐτοῦ, καὶ ταῖς περὶ Κατιλίναν πράξεσι μεγίσταις καὶ καλλίσταις γενομέναις τέλος ἐπέθηκεν.

[2] αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ ὁ Κατιλίνας, ὀλέθριόν τε καὶ παντελῆ μεταβολὴν ἐπάγων τοῖς Ῥωμαίων πράγμασι καὶ στάσεις ὁμοῦ καὶ πολέμους ταράττων ἐξελεγχθεὶς [3] ὑπὸ τοῦ Κικέρωνος, ἐξέπεσε τῆς πόλεως· Λέντλος δὲ καὶ Κέθηγος καὶ μετ’ αὐτῶν ἕτεροι συχνοὶ δεξάμενοι τὴν συνωμοσίαν, καὶ τῷ Κατιλίνᾳ δειλίαν καὶ μικρολογίαν τῶν τολμημάτων ἐπικαλοῦντες, αὐτοὶ διενοοῦντο τὴν πόλιν ἄρδην ἀναιρεῖν πυρί, καὶ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἐθνῶν ἀποστάσεσι καὶ [4] πολέμοις ἀλλοφύλοις ἀνατρέπειν. φανερᾶς δὲ τῆς παρασκευῆς αὐτῶν γενομένης, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ Κικέρωνος γέγραπται, ... ἐν βουλῇ γνώμην προθέντος, ὁ μὲν πρῶτος εἰπὼν Σιλανὸς ἀπεφήνατο δοκεῖν αὐτῷ τὰ ἔσχατα παθεῖν χρῆναι τοὺς ἄνδρας, οἱ δὲ μετ’ αὐτὸν ἐφεξῆς ἠκολούθησαν [5] ἄχρι Καίσαρος. Καῖσαρ δ’ ἀναστάς, ἅτε δὴ καὶ δεινὸς εἰπεῖν, καὶ πᾶσαν ἐν τῇ πόλει μεταβολὴν καὶ κίνησιν, ὥσπερ ὕλην ὧν αὐτὸς διενοεῖτο, βουλόμενος αὔξειν μᾶλλον ἢ σβεννυμένην περιορᾶν, ἐπαγωγὰ πολλὰ καὶ φιλάνθρωπα διαλεχθείς, ἀποκτεῖναι μὲν ἀκρίτους οὐκ εἴα τοὺς ἄνδρας, [6] εἱρχθέντας δὲ τηρεῖν ἐκέλευσεν. οὕτω δὲ τὰς γνώμας μετέστησε τῆς βουλῆς φοβηθείσης τὸν δῆμον, ὥστε καὶ Σιλανὸν ἔξαρνον εἶναι καὶ λέγειν ὡς οὐδ’ αὐτὸς εἴποι θάνατον, ἀλλ’ εἱργμόν· ἔσχατον γὰρ ἀνδρὶ Ῥωμαίῳ τοῦτο κακῶν ἁπάντων.

[23] [1] Γενομένης δὲ τοιαύτης τῆς τροπῆς, καὶ ἁπάντων ἐπὶ τὸ πρᾳότερον ῥυέντων καὶ φιλανθρωπότερον, ὁ Κάτων πρὸς τὴν γνώμην ἀναστὰς εὐθὺς ἵετο τῷ λόγῳ (fg. 13 Malc.) μετ’ ὀργῆς καὶ πάθους, τόν τε Σιλανὸν κακίζων τῆς μεταβολῆς, καὶ καθαπτόμενος τοῦ Καίσαρος ὡς σχήματι δημοτικῷ καὶ λόγῳ φιλανθρώπῳ τὴν πόλιν ἀνατρέποντος, καὶ δεδιττομένου τὴν βουλὴν ἐφ’ οἷς αὐτὸν ἔδει δεδιέναι καὶ ἀγαπᾶν εἰ τῶν γεγονότων ἀθῷος ἀπαλλάξει [2] καὶ ἀνύποπτος, οὕτως περιφανῶς καὶ ἰταμῶς τοὺς κοινοὺς ἐξαρπάζων πολεμίους καὶ τὴν παρ’ οὐδὲν ἐλθοῦσαν ἀπολέσθαι πατρίδα τοιαύτην καὶ τοσαύτην ὁμολογῶν μὴ ἐλεεῖν, ἀλλ’ οὓς ἔδει μὴ γενέσθαι μηδὲ φῦναι δακρύων καὶ ἀνακλαιόμενος, εἰ φόβων μεγάλων καὶ κινδύνων ἀπαλλάξουσι [3] τὴν πόλιν ἀποθανόντες. τοῦτον μόνον ὧν Κάτων εἶπε διασῴζεσθαί φασι τὸν λόγον, Κικέρωνος τοῦ ὑπάτου τοὺς διαφέροντας ὀξύτητι τῶν γραφέων σημεῖα προδιδάξαντος, ἐν μικροῖς καὶ βραχέσι τύποις πολλῶν γραμμάτων ἔχοντα δύναμιν, εἶτ’ ἄλλον ἀλλαχόσε τοῦ βουλευτηρίου σποράδην ἐμβαλόντος.

[4] οὔπω γὰρ ἤσκουν οὐδ’ ἐκέκτηντο τοὺς καλουμένους σημειογράφους, [5] ἀλλὰ τότε πρῶτον εἰς ἴχνος τι καταστῆναι λέγουσιν. ἐκράτησε δ’ οὖν ὁ Κάτων καὶ μετέστησε τὰς γνώμας, ὥστε θάνατον καταψηφίσασθαι τῶν ἀνδρῶν.

[24] [1] Εἰ δὲ δεῖ μηδὲ τὰ μικρὰ τῶν ἠθῶν σημεῖα παραλιπεῖν, ὥσπερ εἰκόνα ψυχῆς ὑπογραφομένους· λέγεται τότε, πολλὴν ἅμιλλαν καὶ μέγαν ἀγῶνα πρὸς τὸν Κάτωνα τοῦ Καίσαρος ἔχοντος, καὶ τῆς βουλῆς εἰς ἐκείνους ἀνηρτημένης, δελτάριόν τι μικρὸν ἔξωθεν εἰσκομισθῆναι τῷ Καίσαρι· [2] τοῦ δὲ Κάτωνος εἰς ὑποψίαν ἄγοντος τὸ πρᾶγμα, καὶ διαβάλλοντος εἶναί τινας τοὺς κοινουμένους, καὶ κελεύοντος ἀναγιγνώσκειν τὰ γεγραμμένα, τὸν Καίσαρα τῷ Κάτωνι προσδοῦναι τὸ δελτάριον ἐγγὺς ἑστῶτι.

[3] τὸν δ’ ἀναγνόντα Σερβιλίας τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἐπιστόλιον ἀκόλαστον πρὸς τὸν Καίσαρα γεγραμμένον, ἐρώσης καὶ διεφθαρμένης ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, προσρῖψαί τε τῷ Καίσαρι καὶ εἰπεῖν κράτει μέθυσε, καὶ πάλιν οὕτως ἐπὶ τὸν ἐξ ἀρχῆς λόγον τραπέσθαι.

[4] Φαίνεται δ’ ὅλως ἀτύχημα γενέσθαι τοῦ Κάτωνος ἡ γυναικωνῖτις. αὕτη μὲν γὰρ ἐπὶ Καίσαρι κακῶς ἤκουσε· τὰ δὲ τῆς ἑτέρας Σερβιλίας, [5] ἀδελφῆς δὲ Κάτωνος, οὐκ εὐσχημονέστερα. Λευκόλλῳ γὰρ γαμηθεῖσα, πρωτεύσαντι Ῥωμαίων κατὰ δόξαν ἀνδρί, καὶ τεκοῦσα παιδίον, ἐξέπεσε [6] τοῦ οἴκου δι’ ἀκολασίαν. τὸ δ’ αἴσχιστον, οὐδ’ ἡ γυνὴ τοῦ Κάτωνος Ἀτιλία τοιούτων ἐκαθάρευσεν ἁμαρτημάτων, ἀλλὰ καίπερ ἐξ αὐτῆς δύο παιδία πεποιημένος, ἀνάγκην ἔσχεν ἐκβαλεῖν ἀσχημονοῦσαν.

[25] [1] Εἶτ’ ἔγημε θυγατέρα Φιλίππου Μαρκίαν, ἐπιεικῆ δοκοῦσαν εἶναι γυναῖκα. περὶ ἧς ὁ πλεῖστος λόγος· καθάπερ ‹γὰρ› ἐν δράματι τῷ βίῳ τοῦτο [2] τὸ μέρος προβληματῶδες γέγονε καὶ ἄπορον. ἐπράχθη δὲ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Θρασέας (HRR II 43. 99), εἰς Μουνάτιον, ἄνδρα Κάτωνος ἑταῖρον [3] καὶ συμβιωτήν, ἀναφέρων τὴν πίστιν. ἐν πολλοῖς ἐρασταῖς καὶ θαυμασταῖς τοῦ Κάτωνος ἦσαν ἑτέρων ἕτεροι μᾶλλον ἔκδηλοι καὶ διαφανεῖς, ὧν καὶ Κόϊντος Ὁρτήσιος, ἀνὴρ ἀξιώματός τε λαμπροῦ καὶ τὸν τρόπον [4] ἐπιεικής. ἐπιθυμῶν οὖν τῷ Κάτωνι μὴ συνήθης εἶναι μηδ’ ἑταῖρος μόνον, ἀλλ’ ἁμῶς γέ πως εἰς οἰκειότητα καταμεῖξαι καὶ κοινωνίαν πάντα τὸν οἶκον καὶ τὸ γένος, ἐπεχείρησε συμπείθειν, ὅπως τὴν θυγατέρα Πορκίαν, Βύβλῳ συνοικοῦσαν καὶ πεποιημένην ἐκείνῳ δύο παῖδας, αὑτῷ πάλιν [5] ὥσπερ εὐγενῆ χώραν ἐντεκνώσασθαι παράσχῃ. δόξῃ μὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώπων ἄτοπον εἶναι τὸ τοιοῦτον, φύσει δὲ καλὸν καὶ πολιτικόν, ἐν ὥρᾳ καὶ ἀκμῇ γυναῖκα μήτ’ ἀργεῖν τὸ γόνιμον ἀποσβέσασαν, μήτε πλείονα τῶν ἱκανῶν [6] ἐπιτίκτουσαν ἐνοχλεῖν καὶ καταπτωχεύειν ‹οἶκον› οὐδὲν δεόμενον· κοινουμένους δὲ τὰς διαδοχὰς ἀξίους ἄνδρας τήν τ’ ἀρετὴν ἄφθονον ποιεῖν καὶ πολύχουν τοῖς γένεσι, καὶ τὴν πόλιν αὐτὴν πρὸς αὑτὴν ἀνακεραννύναι [7] ταῖς οἰκειότησιν. εἰ δὲ πάντως περιέχοιτο τῆς γυναικὸς ὁ Βύβλος, ἀποδώσειν εὐθὺς τεκοῦσαν, οἰκειότερος αὐτῷ τε Βύβλῳ καὶ Κάτωνι κοινωνίᾳ [8] παίδων γενόμενος. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Κάτωνος, ὡς Ὁρτήσιον μὲν ἀγαπᾷ καὶ δοκιμάζει κοινωνὸν οἰκειότητος, ἄτοπον δ’ ἡγεῖται ποιεῖσθαι [9] λόγον περὶ γάμου θυγατρὸς ἑτέρῳ δεδομένης, μεταβαλὼν ἐκεῖνος οὐκ ὤκνησεν ἀποκαλυψάμενος αἰτεῖν τὴν αὐτοῦ γυναῖκα Κάτωνος, νέαν μὲν οὖσαν ἔτι πρὸς τὸ τίκτειν, ἔχοντος δὲ τοῦ Κάτωνος ἀποχρῶσαν διαδοχήν.

[10] καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ὡς ταῦτ’ ἔπραττεν εἰδὼς οὐ προσέχοντα τῇ Μαρκίᾳ [11] τὸν Κάτωνα· κύουσαν γὰρ αὐτὴν τότε τυγχάνειν λέγουσιν. ὁ δ’ οὖν Κάτων ὁρῶν τὴν τοῦ Ὁρτησίου σπουδὴν καὶ προθυμίαν, οὐκ ἀντεῖπεν, ἀλλ’ ἔφη [12] δεῖν καὶ Φιλίππῳ ταῦτα συνδόξαι τῷ πατρὶ τῆς Μαρκίας. ὡς οὖν ὁ Φίλιππος ἐντευχθεὶς ἔγνω τὴν συγχώρησιν, οὐκ ἄλλως ἐνεγγύησε τὴν Μαρκίαν [13] ἢ παρόντος τοῦ Κάτωνος αὐτοῦ καὶ συνεγγυῶντος. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν, εἰ καὶ χρόνοις ὕστερον ἐπράχθη, μνησθέντι μοι τὸ τῶν γυναικῶν προλαβεῖν ἔδοξε.

[26] [1] Τῶν δὲ περὶ τὸν Λέντλον ἀναιρεθέντων, καὶ τοῦ Καίσαρος, περὶ ὧν εἰσηγγέλθη καὶ διεβλήθη πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον, εἰς τὸν δῆμον καταφυγόντος καὶ τὰ πολλὰ νοσοῦντα καὶ διεφθαρμένα τῆς πολιτείας μέρη ταράττοντος καὶ συνάγοντος πρὸς αὑτόν, ὁ Κάτων φοβηθεὶς ἔπεισε τὴν βουλὴν ἀναλαβεῖν τὸν ἄπορον καὶ ἀνέμητον ὄχλον εἰς τὸ σιτηρέσιον, ἀναλώματος μὲν ὄντος ἐνιαυσίου χιλίων καὶ διακοσίων καὶ πεντήκοντα ταλάντων, περιφανῶς δὲ τῇ φιλανθρωπίᾳ ταύτῃ καὶ χάριτι τῆς ἀπειλῆς ἐκείνης διαλυθείσης.

[2] Ἐντεῦθεν εἰς τὴν δημαρχίαν ἐμπεσὼν ὁ Μέτελλος ἐκκλησίας τε θορυβώδεις συνῆγε, καὶ νόμον ἔγραψε Πομπήϊον Μᾶγνον ἰέναι κατὰ τάχος μετὰ τῶν δυνάμεων εἰς Ἰταλίαν καὶ παραλαβόντα σῴζειν τὴν πόλιν, ὡς [3] ὑπὸ Κατιλίνα κινδυνεύουσαν. ἦν δὲ τοῦτο λόγος εὐπρεπής, ἔργον δὲ τοῦ νόμου καὶ τέλος ἐγχειρίσαι τὰ πράγματα Πομπηΐῳ καὶ παραδοῦναι τὴν [4] ἡγεμονίαν. γενομένης δὲ βουλῆς, καὶ τοῦ Κάτωνος οὐχ ὥσπερ εἰώθει τῷ Μετέλλῳ σφοδρῶς ἐμπεσόντος, ἀλλ’ ἐπιεικῆ πολλὰ καὶ μέτρια παραινέσαντος, τέλος δὲ καὶ πρὸς δεήσεις τραπομένου καὶ τὴν Μετέλλων οἰκίαν ἀεὶ γενομένην ἀριστοκρατικὴν ἐπαινέσαντος, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐξαρθεὶς καὶ καταφρονήσας ὁ Μέτελλος, ὡς ἐνδιδόντος αὐτοῦ καὶ πτήσσοντος, εἰς ὑπερηφάνους ἀπειλὰς καὶ λόγους θρασεῖς ἐξέπεσεν, ὡς βίᾳ πάντα τῆς [5] βουλῆς διαπραξόμενος. οὕτω δὴ μεταβαλὼν ὁ Κάτων καὶ σχῆμα καὶ φωνὴν καὶ λόγον, ἐπειπὼν δὲ πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις διατεταμένως, ὅτι ζῶντος αὐτοῦ Πομπήϊος οὐ παρέσται μεθ’ ὅπλων εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἐκεῖνο τῇ βουλῇ παρέστησεν, ὡς οὐδέτερος μὲν καθέστηκεν οὐδὲ χρῆται λογισμοῖς ἀσφαλέσιν, ἔστι δ’ ἡ μὲν Μετέλλου πολιτεία μανία, δι’ ὑπερβολὴν κακίας φερομένη πρὸς ὄλεθρον καὶ σύγχυσιν ἁπάντων, ἡ δὲ Κάτωνος ἀρετῆς ἐνθουσιασμός, ὑπὲρ τῶν καλῶν καὶ δικαίων ἀγωνιζομένης.

[27] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν ψῆφον ὑπὲρ τοῦ νόμου φέρειν ὁ δῆμος ἔμελλε, καὶ Μετέλλῳ μὲν ὅπλα καὶ ξένοι καὶ μονομάχοι καὶ θεράποντες ἐπὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν τεταγμένοι παρῆσαν, καὶ τὸ ποθοῦν μεταβολῆς ἐλπίδι Πομπήϊον ὑπῆρχε τοῦ δήμου μέρος οὐκ ὀλίγον, ἦν δὲ μεγάλη καὶ ἀπὸ Καίσαρος ῥώμη στρατηγοῦντος [2] τότε, Κάτωνι δ’ οἱ πρῶτοι τῶν πολιτῶν συνηγανάκτουν καὶ συνηδικοῦντο μᾶλλον ἢ συνηγωνίζοντο, πολλὴ δὲ τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ κατήφεια καὶ φόβος εἶχεν, ὥστε τῶν φίλων ἐνίους ἀσίτους διαγρυπνῆσαι μετ’ ἀλλήλων, ἐν ἀπόροις ὄντας ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ λογισμοῖς, καὶ γυναῖκα καὶ ἀδελφὰς [3] ποτνιωμένας καὶ δακρυούσας, αὐτὸς [δ’] ἀδεῶς καὶ τεθαρρηκότως ἐντυχὼν πᾶσι καὶ παρηγορήσας, καὶ γενόμενος περὶ δεῖπνον ὥσπερ εἰώθει καὶ νυκτερεύσας, ὑφ’ ἑνὸς τῶν συναρχόντων Μινυκίου Θέρμου βαθέως [4] καθεύδων ἐπηγέρθη. καὶ κατέβησαν εἰς ἀγοράν, ὀλίγων μὲν αὐτοὺς προπεμπόντων, πολλῶν δ’ ἀπαντώντων καὶ φυλάττεσθαι διακελευομένων.

[5] ὡς οὖν ἐπιστὰς ὁ Κάτων κατεῖδε τὸν νεὼν τῶν Διοσκούρων ὅπλοις περιεχόμενον καὶ τὰς ἀναβάσεις φρουρουμένας ὑπὸ μονομάχων, αὐτὸν δὲ καθήμενον ἄνω μετὰ Καίσαρος τὸν Μέτελλον, ἐπιστρέψας πρὸς τοὺς φίλους, ὢ θρασέος εἶπεν ἀνθρώπου καὶ δειλοῦ, ὃς καθ’ ἑνὸς ἀνόπλου [6] καὶ γυμνοῦ τοσούτους ἐστρατολόγησεν. ἅμα δ’ εὐθὺς ἐβάδιζε μετὰ τοῦ Θέρμου. καὶ διέστησαν αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις οἱ τὰς ἀναβάσεις κατέχοντες, ἄλλον δ’ οὐδένα παρῆκαν, ἢ μόλις ἐπισπάσας τῆς χειρὸς ὁ Κάτων τὸν [7] Μουνάτιον ἀνήγαγε· καὶ βαδίζων εὐθὺς ὡς εἶχε καθίζει, μέσον ἐμβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν τοῦ Μετέλλου καὶ τοῦ Καίσαρος, ὥστε διακόψαι τὴν κοινολογίαν.

[8] κἀκεῖνοι μὲν διηπόρησαν, οἱ δὲ χαρίεντες θεασάμενοι καὶ θαυμάσαντες τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὸ θάρσος τοῦ Κάτωνος, ἐγγυτέρω προσῆλθον καὶ βοῇ διεκελεύσαντο, τῷ μὲν Κάτωνι θαρρεῖν, μένειν δ’ ἀλλήλοις καὶ συστρέφεσθαι καὶ μὴ προδιδόναι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν καὶ τὸν ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς ἀγωνιζόμενον.

[28] [1] Ἔνθα δὴ τοῦ ὑπηρέτου τὸν νόμον προχειρισαμένου, τοῦ δὲ Κάτωνος οὐκ ἐῶντος ἀναγινώσκειν, τοῦ δὲ Μετέλλου παραλαβόντος αὐτὸν καὶ ἀναγινώσκοντος, ὁ μὲν Κάτων ἐξήρπασε τὸ βιβλίον, ὁ δὲ Θέρμος ἀπὸ στόματος τοῦ Μετέλλου τὸν νόμον ἐπισταμένου καὶ λέγοντος ἐπέσχε τῇ [2] χειρὶ τὸ στόμα καὶ τὴν φωνὴν ἀπέκλεισεν, ἄχρι οὗ, ἄμαχον ὁρῶν ἀγῶνα τοὺς ἄνδρας ὁ Μέτελλος ἀγωνιζομένους, καὶ τὸν δῆμον ἡττώμενον πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον καὶ τρεπόμενον, ἐκέλευσεν †οἴκοθεν ὁπλίτας μετὰ φόβου [3] καὶ κραυγῆς ἐπιτρέχειν. γενομένου δὲ τούτου καὶ πάντων διασκεδασθέντων, ὑποστάντα μόνον τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ βαλλόμενον λίθοις καὶ ξύλοις ἄνωθεν οὐ περιεῖδε Μουρρήνας, ὁ τὴν δίκην φυγὼν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ κατηγορηθείς, ἀλλὰ τὴν τήβεννον προϊσχόμενος καὶ βοῶν ἀνασχεῖν τοῖς βάλλουσι, καὶ τέλος αὐτὸν τὸν Κάτωνα πείθων καὶ περιπτύσσων, εἰς τὸν νεὼν [4] τῶν Διοσκούρων ἀπήγαγεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ κατεῖδεν ὁ Μέτελλος ἐρημίαν περὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ φυγὴν δι’ ἀγορᾶς τῶν ἐναντιουμένων, παντάπασι πεισθεὶς κρατεῖν ἐκέλευσεν ἀπιέναι πάλιν τοὺς ὁπλοφόρους καὶ προσελθὼν κοσ[5]μίως αὐτὸς ἐπεχείρει πράττειν τὰ περὶ τὸν νόμον. οἱ δ’ ἐναντίοι ταχέως ἀναλαβόντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐκ τῆς τροπῆς, ἐπῄεσαν αὖθις ἐμβοήσαντες μέγα καὶ θαρραλέον, ὥστε τοῖς περὶ τὸν Μέτελλον ἐμπεσεῖν ταραχὴν καὶ δέος, οἰομένοις ὅπλων ποθὲν εὐπορήσαντας αὐτοὺς ἐπιφέρεσθαι, καὶ μηθένα [6] μένειν, ἀλλὰ φεύγειν ἅπαντας ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος. οὕτω δὴ σκεδασθέντων ἐκείνων, τοῦ δὲ Κάτωνος προσελθόντος καὶ τὰ μὲν ἐπαινέσαντος, τὰ δ’ ἐπιρρώσαντος τὸν δῆμον, οἵ τε πολλοὶ παρετάξαντο παντὶ τρόπῳ καταλῦσαι τὸν Μέτελλον, ἥ τε σύγκλητος ἀθροισθεῖσα παρήγγειλεν ἀρχῆθεν βοηθεῖν τῷ Κάτωνι καὶ διαμάχεσθαι πρὸς τὸν νόμον, ὡς στάσιν ἐπεισάγοντα τῇ Ῥώμῃ καὶ πόλεμον ἐμφύλιον.

[29] [1] Ὁ δὲ Μέτελλος αὐτὸς μὲν ἦν ἄτρεπτος καὶ θρασὺς ἔτι, ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν ἐκπεπληγμένους κομιδῇ τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ νομίζοντας ἄμαχον καὶ δυσεκβίαστον, αἰφνίδιον ἐξεπήδησεν εἰς τὴν ἀγοράν, καὶ συναγαγὼν τὸν δῆμον ἄλλα τε πολλὰ περὶ τοῦ Κάτωνος ἐπίφθονα διῆλθε, καὶ φεύγειν τὴν τυραννίδα βοῶν τὴν ἐκείνου καὶ τὴν κατὰ Πομπηΐου συνωμοσίαν, ἐφ’ ᾗ μετανοήσειν ταχὺ τὴν πόλιν ἀτιμάζουσαν ἄνδρα τοσοῦτον, ὥρμησεν εὐθὺς εἰς Ἀσίαν, ὡς ταῦτα πρὸς ἐκεῖνον κατηγορήσων.

[2] Ἦν οὖν δόξα μεγάλη τοῦ Κάτωνος, ἄχθος οὐ μικρὸν ἀπεσκευασμένου τῆς δημαρχίας καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τὴν Πομπηΐου δύναμιν ἐν Μετέλλῳ καθῃρηκότος.

[3] ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον εὐδοκίμησε τὴν σύγκλητον ὡρμημένην ἀτιμοῦν καὶ ἀποψηφίζεσθαι τὸν Μέτελλον οὐκ ἐάσας, ἀλλ’ ἐναντιωθεὶς καὶ παραιτησάμενος.

[4] οἵ τε γὰρ πολλοὶ φιλανθρωπίας ἐποιοῦντο καὶ μετριότητος τὸ μὴ ἐπεμβῆναι τῷ ἐχθρῷ μηδ’ ἐνυβρίσαι κατὰ κράτος περιγενόμενον, τοῖς τε φρονίμοις ὀρθῶς ἐφαίνετο καὶ συμφερόντως μὴ παροξῦναι Πομπήϊον.

[5] Ἐκ τούτου Λεύκολλος ἐπανελθὼν ἐκ τῆς στρατείας, ἧς ἔδοξε τὸ τέλος καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἀφῃρῆσθαι Πομπήϊος, εἰς κίνδυνον ἦλθε τοῦ μὴ θριαμβεῦσαι, Γαΐου Μεμμίου καταστασιάζοντος αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ δήμῳ καὶ δίκας [6] ἐπάγοντος εἰς τὴν Πομπηΐου χάριν μᾶλλον ἢ κατ’ ἔχθος ἴδιον. ὁ δὲ Κάτων, οἰκειότητός τε πρὸς Λεύκολλον αὐτῷ γεγενημένης, ἔχοντα Σερβιλίαν τὴν ἀδελφὴν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα δεινὸν ἡγούμενος, ἀντέστη τῷ Μεμμίῳ [7] καὶ πολλὰς ὑπέμεινε διαβολὰς καὶ κατηγορίας. τέλος δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐκβαλλόμενος ὡς τυραννίδος, τοσοῦτον ἐκράτησεν ὥστε τὸν Μέμμιον αὐτὸν [8] ἀναγκάσαι τῶν δικῶν ἀποστῆναι καὶ φυγεῖν τὸν ἀγῶνα. Λεύκολλος μὲν οὖν θριαμβεύσας ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐνεφύετο τῇ φιλίᾳ τοῦ Κάτωνος, ἔχων ἔρυμα καὶ πρόβλημα μέγα πρὸς τὴν Πομπηΐου δύναμιν.

[30] [1] Πομπήϊος δὲ μέγας ἀπὸ τῆς στρατείας ἐπανιών, καὶ τῇ λαμπρότητι καὶ προθυμίᾳ τῆς ὑποδοχῆς πεποιθὼς οὐδὲν ἂν δεηθεὶς ἀποτυχεῖν τῶν πολιτῶν, προὔπεμψεν ἀξιῶν τὰς ὑπατικὰς ἀρχαιρεσίας ἀναβαλέσθαι [2] τὴν σύγκλητον, ὡς [ἂν] αὐτὸς παρὼν Πείσωνι συναρχαιρεσιάσῃ. τῶν δὲ πλείστων ὑπεικόντων, οὐ τὴν ἀναβολὴν μέγιστον ὁ Κάτων ἡγούμενος, ἀλλὰ τὴν πεῖραν ἀποκόψαι καὶ τὴν ἐλπίδα τοῦ Πομπηΐου βουλόμενος, ἀντεῖπε [3] καὶ μετέστησε τὴν βουλήν, ὥστ’ ἀποψηφίσασθαι. τοῦτο τὸν Πομπήϊον οὐχ ἡσυχῇ διετάραξε, καὶ νομίζων οὐ μικρὰ προσπταίσειν τῷ Κάτωνι μὴ φίλῳ γενομένῳ, μετεπέμψατο Μουνάτιον ἑταῖρον αὐτοῦ, καὶ δύο τοῦ Κάτωνος ἀδελφιδᾶς ἐπιγάμους ἔχοντος, ᾔτει τὴν μὲν πρεσβυτέραν ἑαυτῷ γυναῖκα, τὴν δὲ νεωτέραν τῷ υἱῷ· τινὲς δέ φασιν οὐ τῶν ἀδελφιδῶν, ἀλλὰ [4] τῶν θυγατέρων τὴν μνηστείαν γενέσθαι. τοῦ δὲ Μουνατίου ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὰς ἀδελφὰς φράσαντος, αἱ μὲν ὑπερηγάπησαν τὴν οἰκειότητα πρὸς τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ ἀξίωμα τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὁ δὲ Κάτων οὔτ’ ἐπισχὼν οὔτε βουλευσάμενος, ἀλλὰ †πληγεὶς εὐθὺς εἶπε· [5] βάδιζε Μουνάτιε βάδιζε, καὶ λέγε πρὸς Πομπήϊον, ὡς Κάτων οὐκ ἔστι διὰ τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος ἁλώσιμος, ἀλλὰ τὴν μὲν εὔνοιαν ἀγαπᾷ καὶ τὰ δίκαια ποιοῦντι φιλίαν παρέξει πάσης πιστοτέραν οἰκειότητος, ὅμηρα δ’ οὐ [6] προήσεται τῇ Πομπηΐου δόξῃ κατὰ τῆς πατρίδος. ἐπὶ τούτοις ἤχθοντο μὲν αἱ γυναῖκες, ᾐτιῶντο δ’ οἱ φίλοι τοῦ Κάτωνος ὡς ἄγροικον ἅμα καὶ [7] ὑπερήφανον τὴν ἀπόκρισιν. εἶτα μέντοι πράττων τινὶ τῶν φίλων ὑπατείαν ὁ Πομπήϊος ἀργύριον εἰς τὰς φυλὰς ἔνεμε, καὶ περιβόητος ὁ δεκασμὸς ἦν, [8] ἐν κήποις ἐκείνου τῶν χρημάτων ἀριθμουμένων. εἰπόντος οὖν τοῦ Κάτωνος πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας, ὅτι τοιούτων ἦν κοινωνεῖν καὶ ἀναπίμπλασθαι πραγμάτων ἀνάγκη Πομπηΐῳ συναφθέντα δι’ οἰκειότητος, ὡμολόγουν [9] ἐκεῖναι κάλλιον αὐτὸν βεβουλεῦσθαι διακρουσάμενον. εἰ δὲ δεῖ πρὸς τὰ συμβάντα κρίνειν, τοῦ παντὸς ἔοικεν ὁ Κάτων ἁμαρτεῖν, τὴν οἰκειότητα μὴ δεξάμενος, ἀλλ’ ἐάσας πρὸς Καίσαρα τραπέσθαι καὶ γῆμαι γάμον, ὃς τὴν Πομπηΐου δύναμιν καὶ Καίσαρος εἰς ταὐτὸ συνενεγκών, ‹δι’› ὀλίγου τὰ μὲν Ῥωμαίων ἀνέτρεψε πράγματα, τὴν δὲ πολιτείαν ἀνεῖλεν· ὧν [10] οὐθὲν ἂν ἴσως συνέπεσεν, εἰ μὴ Κάτων τὰ μικρὰ τοῦ Πομπηΐου φοβηθεὶς ἁμαρτήματα τὸ μέγιστον περιεῖδεν, αὐτὸν ἑτέρων δυνάμει προσ‹θήκην› γενόμενον.

[31] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔμελλεν ἔτι. Λευκόλλου δὲ περὶ τῶν ἐν Πόντῳ διατάξεων στασιάσαντος πρὸς Πομπήϊον - ἠξίουν γὰρ ἰσχύειν ἑκάτερος τὰ ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ γενόμενα - καὶ Λευκόλλῳ Κάτωνος ἀδικουμένῳ περιφανῶς προσαμύνοντος, ἐλαττούμενος ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐν συγκλήτῳ καὶ δημαγωγῶν [2] ἐπὶ νομὴν χώρας ἐκάλει τὸ στρατιωτικόν. ὡς δὲ κἀνταῦθα Κάτων ἐνιστάμενος ἐξέκρουσε τὸν νόμον, οὕτω Κλωδίου τε περιείχετο τοῦ τότε θρασυτάτου τῶν δημαγωγῶν, καὶ Καίσαρα προσήγετο, τρόπον [3] τινὰ Κάτωνος αὐτοῦ παρασχόντος ἀρχήν. ὁ γὰρ Καῖσαρ ἀπὸ τῆς ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ στρατηγίας ἐπανήκων, ἅμα μὲν ὑπατείαν ἐβούλετο παραγγέλλειν, ἅμα [4] δ’ ᾔτει θρίαμβον. ἐπεὶ δὲ κατὰ νόμον ἔδει τοὺς μὲν ἀρχὴν μετιόντας παρεῖναι, τοὺς δὲ μέλλοντας εἰσελαύνειν θρίαμβον ἔξω τείχους ὑπομένειν, [5] ἠξίου παρὰ τῆς βουλῆς αὐτῷ δοθῆναι δι’ ἑτέρων αἰτεῖσθαι τὴν ἀρχήν. βουλομένων δὲ πολλῶν, ἀντέλεγεν ὁ Κάτων· ὡς δ’ ᾔσθετο χαριζομένους τῷ Καίσαρι, λέγων ὅλην κατανάλωσε τὴν ἡμέραν, καὶ τὴν βουλὴν [6] οὕτως ἐξέκρουσε. χαίρειν οὖν ἐάσας τὸν θρίαμβον ὁ Καῖσαρ εἰσελθὼν εὐθὺς εἴχετο Πομπηΐου καὶ τῆς ὑπατείας· ἀποδειχθεὶς δ’ ὕπατος, τήν τ’ Ἰουλίαν ἐνεγγύησεν αὐτῷ, καὶ συστάντες ἤδη μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν, ὁ μὲν εἰσέφερε νόμους, τοῖς πένησι κληρουχίαν καὶ νομὴν χώρας [7] διδόντας, ὁ δὲ παρῆν τοῖς νόμοις βοηθῶν. οἱ δὲ περὶ Λεύκολλον καὶ Κικέρωνα Βύβλῳ τῷ ἑτέρῳ τῶν ὑπάτων συντάξαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἀντέπραττον, μάλιστα δὲ Κάτων, ἤδη μὲν ὑφορώμενος τὴν Καίσαρος καὶ Πομπηΐου φιλίαν καὶ σύστασιν ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ δικαίῳ γεγενημένην, φοβεῖσθαι δὲ φάσκων οὐ τὴν νομὴν τῆς χώρας, ἀλλ’ ὃν ἀντὶ ταύτης ἀπαιτήσουσι μισθὸν οἱ χαριζόμενοι καὶ δελεάζοντες τὸ πλῆθος.

[32] [1] Ὡς δὲ ταῦτα λέγων τήν τε βουλὴν ὁμόψηφον εἶχε καὶ τῶν ἐκτὸς ἀνθρώπων οὐκ ὀλίγοι παρίσταντο, δυσχεραίνοντες τὴν ἀτοπίαν τοῦ [2] Καίσαρος - ἃ γὰρ οἱ θρασύτατοι δήμαρχοι καὶ ὀλιγωρότατοι πρὸς χάριν ἐπολιτεύοντο τῶν πολλῶν, ταῦτ’ ἀπ’ ἐξουσίας ὑπατικῆς αἰσχρῶς καὶ ταπεινῶς [3] ὑποδυόμενος τὸν δῆμον ἔπραττε - , φοβηθέντες οὖν ἐχώρουν διὰ βίας, καὶ πρῶτον μὲν αὐτῷ τῷ Βύβλῳ καταβαίνοντι κοπρίων ἐπεσκεδάσθη [4] κόφινος, ἔπειτα τοῖς ῥαβδούχοις προσπεσόντες αὐτοῦ κατέκλασαν τὰς ῥάβδους· τέλος δὲ καὶ βελῶν φερομένων καὶ πολλῶν συντιτρωσκομένων, ἔφυγον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς, δρόμῳ μὲν οἱ λοιποὶ πάντες, ἔσχατος δὲ Κάτων ἀπῄει βάδην, μεταστρεφόμενος καὶ μαρτυρόμενος τοὺς [5] πολίτας. οὐ μόνον οὖν τὴν διανομὴν ἐκύρωσαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσεψηφίσαντο τὴν σύγκλητον ὀμόσαι πᾶσαν, ἦ μὴν ἐπιβεβαιώσειν τὸν νόμον καὶ βοηθήσειν, ἄν τις τἀναντία πράττῃ, μεγάλα τάξαντες ἐπιτίμια κατὰ τῶν [6] μὴ ὀμοσάντων. ὤμνυσαν οὖν ἅπαντες ἐξ ἀνάγκης, τὸ Μετέλλου τοῦ παλαιοῦ πάθος ἐν νῷ λαμβάνοντες, ὃν εἰς νόμον ὅμοιον ὀμόσαι μὴ θελήσαντα [7] περιεῖδεν ὁ δῆμος ἐκπεσόντα φυγῇ τῆς Ἰταλίας. διὸ καὶ τὸν Κάτωνα πολλὰ μὲν αἱ γυναῖκες οἴκοι δακρύουσαι καθικέτευον εἶξαι καὶ ὀμόσαι, [8] πολλὰ δ’ οἱ φίλοι καὶ συνήθεις. ὁ δὲ μάλιστα συμπείσας καὶ ἀγαγὼν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὸν ὅρκον ἦν Κικέρων ὁ ῥήτωρ, παραινῶν καὶ διδάσκων, ὡς τάχα μὲν οὐδὲ δίκαιόν ἐστι τοῖς ἐγνωσμένοις κοινῇ μόνον οἴεσθαι δεῖν ἀπειθεῖν, ἐν δ’ ἀδυνάτῳ τῷ μεταστῆσαί τι τῶν γεγονότων ἀφειδεῖν ἑαυτοῦ [9] παντάπασιν ἀνόητον καὶ μανικόν· ἔσχατον δὲ κακῶν, εἰ δι’ ἣν ἅπαντα πράττει πόλιν ἀφεὶς καὶ προέμενος τοῖς ἐπιβουλεύουσιν, ὥσπερ ἄσμενος [10] ἀπαλλάξεται τῶν ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς ἀγώνων· καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ Κάτων τῆς Ῥώμης, ἀλλ’ ἡ Ῥώμη δεῖται Κάτωνος, δέονται δὲ καὶ οἱ φίλοι πάντες· ὧν αὑτὸν εἶναι πρῶτον ὁ Κικέρων ἔλεγεν, ἐπιβουλευόμενον ὑπὸ Κλωδίου, διὰ δημαρχίας [11] ἄντικρυς ἐπ’ αὐτὸν βαδίζοντος. ὑπὸ τούτων φασὶ καὶ τοιούτων τὸν Κάτωνα λόγων καὶ δεήσεων μαλασσόμενον οἴκοι καὶ κατ’ ἀγοράν, ἐκβιασθῆναι μόλις καὶ προσελθεῖν πρὸς τὸν ὅρκον ἔσχατον ἁπάντων, πλὴν ἑνὸς Φαωνίου τῶν φίλων καὶ συνήθων.

[33] [1] Ἐπαρθεὶς οὖν ὁ Καῖσαρ ἄλλον εἰσέφερε νόμον, τὴν Καμπανίαν σχεδὸν ὅλην προσκατανέμοντα τοῖς ἀπόροις καὶ πένησιν· ἀντέλεγε δ’ οὐδεὶς [2] πλὴν τοῦ Κάτωνος, καὶ τοῦτον ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος ὁ Καῖσαρ εἷλκεν εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον, οὐδέν τι μᾶλλον ὑφιέμενον τῆς παρρησίας, ἀλλ’ ἐν τῷ βαδίζειν ἅμα περὶ τοῦ νόμου διαλεγόμενον καὶ παραινοῦντα παύσασθαι τοιαῦτα [3] πολιτευομένους. ἐπηκολούθει δ’ ἡ βουλὴ μετὰ κατηφείας καὶ τοῦ δήμου τὸ βέλτιστον ἀγανακτοῦν σιωπῇ καὶ ἀχθόμενον, ὥστε τὸν Καίσαρα μὴ λανθάνειν βαρέως φέροντας, ἀλλὰ φιλονικῶν καὶ περιμένων ὑπὸ τοῦ [4] Κάτωνος ἐπίκλησιν γενέσθαι καὶ δέησιν, προῆγεν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἦν δῆλος οὐδὲ μέλλων ‹τούτων› τι ποιήσειν, ἡττηθεὶς ὑπ’ αἰσχύνης καὶ ἀδοξίας ὁ Καῖσαρ αὐτός τινα τῶν δημάρχων ὑφῆκε, πείσας ἐξελέσθαι τὸν Κάτωνα.

[5] Τοῖς μέντοι νόμοις ἐκείνοις καὶ ταῖς χάρισι τιθασσεύσαντες τὸν ὄχλον, ἐψηφίσαντο Καίσαρι μὲν Ἰλλυριῶν καὶ Γαλατίας ἀρχὴν ἁπάσης καὶ τέσσαρα τάγματα στρατιᾶς εἰς πενταετίαν, προλέγοντος Κάτωνος, ‹ὡς› [6] εἰς ἀκρόπολιν τὸν τύραννον αὐτοὶ ταῖς ἑαυτῶν ψήφοις ἱδρύουσι. Πόπλιον δὲ Κλώδιον ἐκ πατρικίων εἰς δημοτικοὺς παρανόμως μεταστήσαντες, ἀπέδειξαν δήμαρχον, ἐπὶ μισθῷ τῇ Κικέρωνος ἐξελάσει πάντα πρὸς χάριν [7] ἐκείνοις πολιτευόμενον, ὑπάτους δὲ Πείσωνά τε Καλπούρνιον, ὃς ἦν πατὴρ τῆς Καίσαρος γυναικός, καὶ Γαβίνιον Αὖλον, ἐκ τῶν Πομπηΐου κόλπων ἄνθρωπον, ὥς φασιν οἱ τὸν τρόπον αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν βίον εἰδότες.

[34] [1] Ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτως τὰ πράγματα κατειληφότες ἐγκρατῶς, καὶ τὸ μὲν χάριτι τῆς πόλεως, τὸ δὲ φόβῳ μέρος ὑφ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἔχοντες, ὅμως [2] ἐφοβοῦντο τὸν Κάτωνα. καὶ γάρ, ἐν οἷς περιῆσαν αὐτοῦ, τό τε χαλεπῶς καὶ μετὰ πόνων καὶ μὴ χωρὶς αἰσχύνης, ἀλλ’ ἐλεγχομένους βιάζεσθαι [3] μόλις, ἀνιαρὸν ἦν καὶ πρόσαντες. ὁ δὲ Κλώδιος οὐδὲ Κικέρωνα καταλύσειν ἤλπιζε Κάτωνος παρόντος, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο διαμηχανώμενος, πρῶτον ὡς εἰς ἀρχὴν κατέστη, μετεπέμψατο τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ λόγους αὐτῷ προσήνεγκεν, ὡς πάντων ἐκεῖνον ἡγούμενος ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων καθαρώτατον, ἔργῳ διδόναι [4] πίστιν ἕτοιμός ἐστι· πολλῶν γὰρ αἰτουμένων τὴν ἐπὶ Κύπρον καὶ Πτολεμαῖον ἀρχὴν καὶ δεομένων ἀποσταλῆναι, μόνον ἄξιον ἐκεῖνον ἡγεῖσθαι [5] καὶ διδόναι τὴν χάριν ἡδέως. ἀνακραγόντος δὲ τοῦ Κάτωνος, ὡς ἐνέδρα τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ προπηλακισμός, οὐ χάρις, ἐστίν, ὑπερηφάνως ὁ Κλώδιος καὶ ὀλιγώρως οὐκοῦν εἶπεν εἰ μὴ χάριν ἔχεις, ἀνιώμενος πλεύσῃ, καὶ προσελθὼν εὐθὺς εἰς τὸν δῆμον ἐκύρωσε νόμῳ τὴν ἔκπεμψιν [6] τοῦ Κάτωνος. ἐξιόντι δ’ οὐ ναῦν, οὐ στρατιώτην, οὐχ ὑπηρέτην ἔδωκε, πλὴν ἢ δύο γραμματεῖς μόνον, ὧν ὁ μὲν κλέπτης καὶ παμπόνηρος, ἅτερος [7] δὲ Κλωδίου πελάτης. ὡς δὲ μικρὸν ἔργον αὐτῷ Κύπρον καὶ Πτολεμαῖον ἀναθείς, ἔτι καὶ Βυζαντίων φυγάδας κατάγειν προσέταξε, βουλόμενος ὅτι πλεῖστον χρόνον ἐκποδὼν ἄρχοντος αὐτοῦ γενέσθαι τὸν Κάτωνα.

[35] [1] Τοιαύτῃ δὲ καταληφθεὶς ἀνάγκῃ, Κικέρωνι μὲν ἐλαυνομένῳ παρῄνεσε μὴ στασιάσαι μηδ’ εἰς ὅπλα καὶ φόνους τὴν πόλιν ἐμβαλεῖν, ἀλλ’ [2] ὑπεκστάντα τῷ καιρῷ πάλιν γενέσθαι σωτῆρα τῆς πατρίδος· Κανίδιον δέ τινα τῶν φίλων προπέμψας εἰς Κύπρον, ἔπειθε τὸν Πτολεμαῖον ἄνευ μάχης εἴκειν, ὡς οὔτε χρημάτων οὔτε τιμῆς ἐνδεᾶ βιωσόμενον· ἱερωσύνην [3] γὰρ αὐτῷ τῆς ἐν Πάφῳ θεοῦ δώσειν τὸν δῆμον. αὐτὸς δὲ διέτριβεν ἐν [4] Ῥόδῳ, παρασκευαζόμενος ἅμα καὶ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις ἀναμένων. ἐν δὲ τούτῳ Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Αἰγύπτου βασιλεύς, ὑπ’ ὀργῆς τινος καὶ διαφορᾶς πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας ἀπολελοιπὼς μὲν Ἀλεξάνδρειαν, εἰς δὲ Ῥώμην πλέων, ὡς Πομπηΐου καὶ Καίσαρος αὖθις αὐτὸν μετὰ δυνάμεως καταξόντων, ἐντυχεῖν τῷ Κάτωνι βουληθεὶς προσέπεμψεν, ἐλπίζων ἐκεῖνον ὡς αὐτὸν [5] ἥξειν. ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἐτύγχανε μὲν ὢν τότε περὶ κοιλίας κάθαρσιν, ἥκειν δὲ τὸν Πτολεμαῖον εἰ βούλοιτο κελεύσας πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς δ’ ἦλθεν οὔτ’ ἀπαντήσας οὔθ’ ὑπεξαναστάς, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἕνα τῶν ἐπιτυχόντων ἀσπασάμενος καὶ καθίσαι κελεύσας, πρῶτον αὐτοῖς τούτοις διετάραξε, θαυμάζοντα πρὸς τὸ δημοτικὸν καὶ λιτὸν αὐτοῦ τῆς κατασκευῆς τὴν ὑπεροψίαν καὶ βαρύτητα [6] τοῦ ἤθους. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ διαλέγεσθαι περὶ τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν ἀρξάμενος ἠκροάσατο λόγων νοῦν πολὺν ἐχόντων καὶ παρρησίαν, ἐπιτιμῶντος αὐτῷ τοῦ Κάτωνος καὶ διδάσκοντος, ὅσην εὐδαιμονίαν ἀπολιπὼν ὅσαις ἑαυτὸν ὑποτίθησι λατρείαις καὶ πόνοις καὶ δωροδοκίαις καὶ πλεονεξίαις τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ δυνατῶν, οὓς μόλις ἐξαργυρισθεῖσαν ἐμπλήσειν Αἴγυπτον, συμβουλεύοντος δὲ πλεῖν ὀπίσω καὶ διαλλάττεσθαι τοῖς πολίταις, αὐτοῦ δὲ καὶ [7] συμπλεῖν καὶ συνδιαλλάττειν ἑτοίμως ἔχοντος, οἷον ἐκ μανίας τινὸς ἢ παρακοπῆς ὑπὸ τῶν λόγων ἔμφρων καθιστάμενος, καὶ κατανοῶν τὴν ἀλήθειαν καὶ τὴν σύνεσιν τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὥρμησε μὲν χρῆσθαι τοῖς ἐκείνου λογισμοῖς, ἀνατραπεὶς δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων αὖθις, ἅμα τῷ πρῶτον ἐν Ῥώμῃ γενέσθαι καὶ θύραις ἑνὸς ἄρχοντος προσελθεῖν ἔστενε τὴν αὑτοῦ κακοβουλίαν, ὡς οὐκ ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ λόγων, θεοῦ δὲ μαντείας καταφρονήσας.

[36] [1] Ὁ δ’ ἐν Κύπρῳ Πτολεμαῖος εὐτυχίᾳ τινὶ τοῦ Κάτωνος ἑαυτὸν [2] φαρμάκοις ἀπέκτεινε. πολλῶν δὲ χρημάτων ἀπολελεῖφθαι λεγομένων, αὐτὸς μὲν ἔγνω πλεῖν εἰς Βυζαντίους, πρὸς δὲ τὴν Κύπρον ἐξέπεμψε τὸν [3] ἀδελφιδοῦν Βροῦτον, οὐ πάνυ τι πιστεύων τῷ Κανιδίῳ. τοὺς δὲ φυγάδας διαλλάξας καὶ καταλιπὼν ἐν ὁμονοίᾳ τὸ Βυζάντιον, οὕτως εἰς Κύπρον [4] ἔπλευσεν. οὔσης δὲ πολλῆς καὶ βασιλικῆς ἐν ἐκπώμασι καὶ τραπέζαις καὶ λίθοις καὶ πορφύραις κατασκευῆς, ἣν ἔδει πραθεῖσαν ἐξαργυρισθῆναι, πάντα βουλόμενος ἐξακριβοῦν καὶ πάντα κατατείνειν εἰς ἄκραν τιμὴν καὶ πᾶσιν αὐτὸς παρεῖναι καὶ προσάγειν τὸν ἔσχατον ἐκλογισμόν, οὐδὲ τοῖς ἐθάσι τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἐπίστευεν, ἀλλ’ ὑπονοῶν ὁμοῦ πάντας, ὑπηρέτας, κήρυκας, ὠνητάς, φίλους, τέλος αὐτὸς ἰδίᾳ τοῖς ὠνουμένοις διαλεγόμενος καὶ προσβιβάζων ἕκαστον, οὕτω τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἀγορασμάτων ἐπώλει.

[5] διὸ τοῖς τ’ ἄλλοις φίλοις ὡς ἀπιστῶν προσέκρουσε, καὶ τὸν συνηθέστατον ἁπάντων Μουνάτιον εἰς ὀργὴν ὀλίγου δεῖν ἀνήκεστον γενομένην ἐνέβαλεν, ὥστε καὶ Καίσαρι γράφοντι λόγον κατὰ τοῦ Κάτωνος πικροτάτην τοῦτο τὸ μέρος τῆς κατηγορίας διατριβὴν παρασχεῖν.

[37] [1] Ὁ μέντοι Μουνάτιος οὐκ ἀπιστίᾳ τοῦ Κάτωνος, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνου μὲν ὀλιγωρίᾳ πρὸς αὑτόν, αὑτοῦ δέ τινι ζηλοτυπίᾳ πρὸς τὸν Κανίδιον ἱστορεῖ γενέσθαι τὴν ὀργήν. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς σύγγραμμα περὶ τοῦ Κάτωνος ἐξέδωκεν, [2] ᾧ μάλιστα Θρασέας ἐπηκολούθησε. λέγει δ’ ὕστερος μὲν εἰς Κύπρον ἀφικέσθαι καὶ λαβεῖν παρημελημένην ξενίαν, ἐλθὼν δ’ ἐπὶ θύρας ἀπωσθῆναι, [3] σκευωρουμένου τι τοῦ Κάτωνος οἴκοι σὺν τῷ Κανιδίῳ· μεμψάμενος δὲ μετρίως οὐ μετρίας τυχεῖν ἀποκρίσεως, ὅτι κινδυνεύει τὸ λίαν φιλεῖν, ὥς φησι Θεόφραστος (frg. 82 Wimmer), αἴτιον τοῦ μισεῖν γίνεσθαι [4] πολλάκις· ἐπεὶ καὶ σὺ φάναι τῷ μάλιστα φιλεῖν ἧττον οἰόμενος ἢ προσήκει τιμᾶσθαι, χαλεπαίνεις. Κανιδίῳ δὲ καὶ δι’ ἐμπειρίαν χρῶμαι καὶ διὰ πίστιν ἑτέρων μᾶλλον, ἐξ ἀρχῆς μὲν ἀφιγμένῳ, καθαρῷ δὲ φαινομένῳ.

[5] ταῦτα μέντοι μόνον αὐτῷ μόνῳ διαλεχθέντα τὸν Κάτωνα πρὸς τὸν Κανίδιον ἐξενεγκεῖν. αἰσθόμενος οὖν αὐτὸς οὔτ’ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἔτι φοιτᾶν οὔτε σύμβουλος [6] ὑπακούειν καλούμενος. ἀπειλοῦντος δὲ τοῦ Κάτωνος ὥσπερ εἰώθασι τῶν ἀπειθούντων ἐνέχυρα λήψεσθαι, μηδὲν φροντίσας κελεῦσαι, καὶ πολὺν [7] χρόνον ἐν ὀργῇ διατελεῖν· εἶτα τῆς Μαρκίας (ἔτι γὰρ συνῴκει) τῷ Κάτωνι διαλεχθείσης, τυχεῖν μὲν ὑπὸ Βάρκα κεκλημένος ἐπὶ δεῖπνον, εἰσελθόντα δ’ ὕστερον τὸν Κάτωνα, τῶν ἄλλων κατακειμένων, ἐρωτᾶν ὅπου κατακλιθείη.

[8] τοῦ δὲ Βάρκα κελεύσαντος ὅπου βούλεται, περιβλεψάμενον εἰπεῖν ὅτι παρὰ Μουνάτιον· καὶ παρελθόντα πλησίον αὐτοῦ κατακλιθῆναι, πλέον [9] δὲ μηθὲν φιλοφρονήσασθαι παρὰ τὸ δεῖπνον. ἀλλὰ πάλιν τῆς Μαρκίας δεομένης, τὸν μὲν Κάτωνα γράψαι πρὸς αὐτὸν ὡς ἐντυχεῖν τι βουλόμενον, αὐτὸς δ’ ἥκειν ἕωθεν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ ὑπὸ τῆς Μαρκίας κατασχεθῆναι, μέχρι πάντες ἀπηλλάγησαν, οὕτω δ’ εἰσελθόντα τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ περιβαλόντα [10] τὰς χεῖρας ἀμφοτέρας ἀσπάσασθαι καὶ φιλοφρονήσασθαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οὐχ ἧττον οἰόμενοι τῶν ὑπαίθρων καὶ μεγάλων πράξεων πρὸς ἔνδειξιν ἤθους καὶ κατανόησιν ἔχειν τινὰ σαφήνειαν, ἐπὶ πλέον διήλθομεν.

[38] [1] Τῷ δὲ Κάτωνι συνήχθη μὲν ἀργυρίου τάλαντα μικρὸν ἑπτακισχιλίων ἀποδέοντα, δεδιὼς δὲ τοῦ πλοῦ τὸ μῆκος, ἀγγεῖα πολλὰ κατασκευάσας, ὧν ἕκαστον ἐχώρει δύο τάλαντα καὶ δραχμὰς πεντακοσίας, καλώδιον ἑκάστῳ μακρὸν προσήρτησεν, οὗ τῇ ἀρχῇ προσείχετο φελλὸς εὐμεγέθης, ὅπως εἰ ῥαγείη τὸ πλοῖον, ‹ἀν›έχων διὰ βυθοῦ τὸ ἄρτημα σημαίνοι [2] τὸν τόπον. τὰ μὲν οὖν χρήματα πλὴν ὀλίγων τινῶν ἀσφαλῶς διεκομίσθη, λόγους δὲ πάντων ὧν διῴκησε γεγραμμένους ἐπιμελῶς ἔχων ἐν [3] δυσὶ βιβλίοις, οὐδέτερον ἔσωσεν, ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν ἀπελεύθερος αὐτοῦ κομίζων, ὄνομα Φιλάργυρος, ἐκ Κεγχρεῶν ἀναχθεὶς ἀνετράπη καὶ συναπώλεσε τοῖς φορτίοις, τὸ δ’ αὐτὸς ἄχρι Κερκύρας φυλάξας, ἐν ἀγορᾷ κατεσκήνωσε· τῶν δὲ ναυτῶν διὰ τὸ ῥιγοῦν πυρὰ πολλὰ καιόντων τῆς νυκτός, ἥφθησαν [4] αἱ σκηναί, καὶ τὸ βιβλίον ἠφανίσθη. τοὺς μὲν οὖν ἐχθροὺς καὶ συκοφάντας ἐπιστομιεῖν ἤμελλον οἱ βασιλικοὶ διοικηταὶ παρόντες, ἄλλως δὲ τῷ Κάτωνι τὸ πρᾶγμα δηγμὸν ἤνεγκεν· οὐ γὰρ εἰς πίστιν ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ τοὺς λόγους, ἀλλὰ παράδειγμα τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀκριβείας ἐξενεγκεῖν φιλοτιμούμενος, ἐνεμεσήθη.

[39] [1] Περαιωθεὶς δὲ ταῖς ναυσὶν οὐκ ἔλαθε τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ἀλλὰ πάντες μὲν ἄρχοντες καὶ ἱερεῖς, πᾶσα δ’ ἡ βουλή, πολὺ δὲ τοῦ δήμου μέρος ἀπήντων πρὸς τὸν ποταμόν, ὥστε τὰς ὄχθας ἀμφοτέρας ἀποκεκρύφθαι καὶ [2] θριάμβου μηδὲν ὄψει καὶ φιλοτιμίᾳ λείπεσθαι τὸν ἀνάπλουν αὐτοῦ. καίτοι σκαιὸν ἐνίοις τοῦτ’ ἐφαίνετο καὶ αὔθαδες, ὅτι τῶν ὑπάτων καὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν παρόντων οὔτ’ ἀπέβη πρὸς αὐτούς, οὔτ’ ἐπέσχε τὸν πλοῦν, ἀλλὰ ῥοθίῳ τὴν ὄχθην παρεξελαύνων ἐπὶ νεὼς ἑξήρους βασιλικῆς, οὐκ ἀνῆκε [3] πρότερον ἢ καθορμίσαι τὸν στόλον εἰς τὸ νεώριον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῶν χρημάτων παρακομιζομένων δι’ ἀγορᾶς, ὅ τε δῆμος ἐθαύμαζε τὸ πλῆθος, ἥ τε βουλὴ συναχθεῖσα μετὰ τῶν πρεπόντων ἐπαίνων ἐψηφίσατο τῷ Κάτωνι στρατηγίαν ἐξαίρετον δοθῆναι, καὶ τὰς θέας αὐτὸν ἐν ἐσθῆτι περιπορφύρῳ [4] θεάσασθαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὁ Κάτων παρῃτήσατο, Νικίαν δὲ τὸν οἰκονόμον τῶν βασιλικῶν ἐλεύθερον ἔπεισε τὴν βουλὴν ἀφεῖναι, μαρτυρήσας ἐπιμέλειαν [5] καὶ πίστιν. ὑπάτευε δὲ Φίλιππος ὁ πατὴρ τῆς Μαρκίας, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ ἡ δύναμις εἰς Κάτωνα περιῆλθεν, οὐκ ἐλάττονα τοῦ συνάρχοντος δι’ ἀρετὴν ἢ δι’ οἰκειότητα τοῦ Φιλίππου τῷ Κάτωνι τιμὴν προστιθέντος.

[40] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Κικέρων ἐκ τῆς φυγῆς ἣν ἔφυγεν ὑπὸ Κλωδίου κατελθών, καὶ δυνάμενος μέγα, τὰς δημαρχικὰς δέλτους ἃς ὁ Κλώδιος ἔθηκεν ἀναγράψας εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον ἀπέσπασε βίᾳ καὶ καθεῖλε τοῦ Κλωδίου μὴ παρόντος, ἐπὶ τούτοις δὲ βουλῆς ἀθροισθείσης καὶ τοῦ Κλωδίου κατηγοροῦντος ἔλεγε, παρανόμως τῷ Κλωδίῳ τῆς δημαρχίας γενομένης, ἀτελῆ καὶ [2] ἄκυρα δεῖν εἶναι τὰ τότε πραχθέντα καὶ γραφέντα, προσέκρουσεν ὁ Κάτων αὐτῷ λέγοντι, καὶ τέλος ἀναστὰς ἔφη τῆς μὲν Κλωδίου πολιτείας μηδὲν ὑγιὲς μηδὲ χρηστὸν ὅλως νομίζειν, εἰ δ’ ἀναιρεῖ τις ὅσα δημαρχῶν ἔπραξεν, ἀναιρεῖσθαι πᾶσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν περὶ Κύπρον πραγματείαν, καὶ μὴ γεγονέναι [3] τὴν ἀποστολὴν νόμιμον ἄρχοντος παρανόμου ψηφισαμένου· παρανόμως μὲν οὖν ‹οὐ› δήμαρχον αἱρεθῆναι τὸν Κλώδιον, ἐκ πατρικίων μεταστάντα νόμου διδόντος εἰς δημοτικὸν οἶκον· εἰ δὲ μοχθηρὸς ὥσπερ ἄλλοι γέγονεν ἄρχων, αὐτὸν εὐθύνειν τὸν ἀδικήσαντα, μὴ λύειν τὴν συναδικηθεῖσαν ἀρχὴν [4] εἶναι προσῆκον. ἐκ τούτου δι’ ὀργῆς ὁ Κικέρων ἔσχε τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ φίλῳ χρώμενος ἐπαύσατο χρόνον πολύν· εἶτα μέντοι διηλλάγησαν.

[41] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Πομπήϊος καὶ Κράσσος ὑπερβαλόντι τὰς Ἄλπεις Καίσαρι συγγενόμενοι γνώμην ἐποιήσαντο κοινῇ δευτέραν ὑπατείαν μετιέναι, καὶ καταστάντες εἰς αὐτὴν Καίσαρι μὲν τῆς ἀρχῆς ἄλλον τοσοῦτον ἐπιψηφίζεσθαι χρόνον, αὑτοῖς δὲ τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν τὰς μεγίστας καὶ χρήματα καὶ [2] στρατιωτικὰς δυνάμεις. ὅπερ ἦν ἐπὶ νεμήσει τῆς ἡγεμονίας καὶ καταλύσει [3] τῆς πολιτείας συνωμοσία. πολλῶν δὲ καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν μετιέναι τὴν ἀρχὴν τότε παρασκευαζομένων, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ὀφθέντες ἐν ταῖς παραγγελίαις ἀπέτρεψαν, μόνον δὲ Λεύκιον Δομίτιον Πορκίᾳ συνοικοῦντα τῇ ἀδελφῇ Κάτων ἔπεισε μὴ ἐκστῆναι μηδ’ ὑφέσθαι, τοῦ ἀγῶνος οὐ περὶ [4] ἀρχῆς ὄντος, ἀλλὰ περὶ τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἐλευθερίας. καὶ μέντοι καὶ λόγος ἐχώρει διὰ τοῦ σωφρονοῦντος ἔτι τῆς πόλεως μέρους, ὡς οὐ περιοπτέον, εἰς ταὐτὸ τῆς Κράσσου καὶ Πομπηΐου δυνάμεως συνελθούσης, παντάπασιν ὑπέρογκον καὶ βαρεῖαν τὴν ἀρχὴν γενομένην, ἀλλ’ ἀφαιρετέον αὐτῆς τὸν [5] ἕτερον. καὶ συνίσταντο πρὸς τὸν Δομίτιον, παρορμῶντες καὶ παραθαρρύνοντες ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι· πολλοὺς γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ τῶν σιωπώντων διὰ [6] δέος ἐν ταῖς ψήφοις ὑπάρξειν. τοῦτο δὴ δείσαντες οἱ περὶ τὸν Πομπήϊον, ὑφεῖσαν ἐνέδραν τῷ Δομιτίῳ, καταβαίνοντι ‹περὶ› ὄρθρον ὑπὸ λαμπάδων [7] εἰς τὸ πεδίον. καὶ πρῶτος μὲν ὁ προφαίνων †ἐπιστὰς τῷ Δομιτίῳ πληγεὶς καὶ πεσὼν ἀπέθανε· μετὰ δὲ τοῦτον ἤδη καὶ τῶν ἄλλων συντιτρωσκομέ[8]νων, ἐγίνετο φυγὴ πλὴν Κάτωνος καὶ Δομιτίου. κατεῖχε γὰρ αὐτὸν ὁ Κάτων, καίπερ αὐτὸς εἰς τὸν βραχίονα τετρωμένος, καὶ παρεκελεύετο μένειν καὶ μὴ προλιπεῖν ἕως ἐμπνέωσι τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἀγῶνα πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους, οἳ τίνα τρόπον χρήσονται τῇ ἀρχῇ, δηλοῦσι διὰ τηλικούτων ἀδικημάτων ἐπ’ αὐτὴν βαδίζοντες.

[42] [1] Οὐχ ὑποστάντος δὲ τοῦ Δομιτίου τὸ δεινόν, ἀλλ’ εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν καταφυγόντος, ᾑρέθησαν μὲν ὕπατοι Πομπήϊος καὶ Κράσσος, οὐκ ἀπέκαμε δ’ ὁ Κάτων, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς προελθὼν στρατηγίαν μετῄει, βουλόμενος ὁρμητήριον ἔχειν τῶν πρὸς ἐκείνους ἀγώνων καὶ πρὸς ἄρχοντας ἀντικαθίστασθαι [2] μὴ ἰδιώτης. οἱ δὲ καὶ τοῦτο δείσαντες, ὡς τῆς στρατηγίας ἀξιομάχου διὰ Κάτωνα πρὸς τὴν ὑπατείαν γενησομένης, πρῶτον μὲν ἐξαίφνης καὶ τῶν πολλῶν ἀγνοούντων βουλὴν συναγαγόντες, ἐψηφίσαντο τοὺς αἱρεθέντας στρατηγοὺς εὐθὺς ἄρχειν καὶ μὴ διαλιπόντας τὸν νόμιμον χρόνον, ἐν [3] ᾧ ‹δί›και τοῖς δεκάσασι τὸν δῆμον ἦσαν. ἔπειτα διὰ τοῦ ψηφίσματος τὸ διδόναι δίκης ἀνυπεύθυνον κατασκευάσαντες, ὑπηρέτας αὑτῶν καὶ φίλους ἐπὶ τὴν στρατηγίαν προῆγον, αὐτοὶ μὲν διδόντες ἀργύριον, αὐτοὶ δὲ ταῖς [4] ψήφοις φερομέναις ἐφεστῶτες. ὡς δὲ καὶ τούτων ἡ Κάτωνος ἀρετὴ καὶ δόξα περιῆν, ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς τῶν πολλῶν ἐν δεινῷ [πολλῷ] τιθεμένων ἀποδόσθαι Κάτωνα ταῖς ψήφοις, ὃν καλῶς εἶχε πρίασθαι τῇ πόλει στρατηγόν, ἥ τε πρώτη κληθεῖσα τῶν φυλῶν ἐκεῖνον ἀπέδειξεν, ἐξαίφνης ὁ Πομπήϊος βροντῆς ἀκηκοέναι ψευσάμενος αἴσχιστα, ἔλυσε τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, εἰθισμένων ἀφοσιοῦσθαι τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ μηδὲν ἐπικυροῦν διοσημίας γενομένης.

[5] αὖθις δὲ πολλῷ χρησάμενοι τῷ δεκασμῷ, ‹καὶ› τοὺς βελτίστους ὤσαντες ἐκ τοῦ πεδίου βίᾳ, διεπράξαντο Βατίνιον ἀντὶ Κάτωνος αἱρεθῆναι στρατηγόν.

[6] ἔνθα δὴ λέγεται τοὺς μὲν οὕτω παρανόμως καὶ ἀδίκως θεμένους τὴν ψῆφον εὐθὺς ὥσπερ ἀποδράντας οἴχεσθαι, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις συνισταμένοις καὶ ἀγανακτοῦσι δημάρχου τινὸς αὐτόθι παρασχόντος ἐκκλησίαν, καταστάντα τὸν Κάτωνα, ἅπαντα μὲν ὥσπερ ἐκ θεῶν ἐπίπνουν τὰ μέλλοντα τῇ πόλει προειπεῖν (fg. 24 Malc.), παρορμῆσαι δὲ τοὺς πολίτας ἐπὶ Πομπήϊον καὶ Κράσσον, ὡς τοιαῦτα συνειδότας αὑτοῖς καὶ τοιαύτης ἁπτομένους πολιτείας, [7] δι’ ἣν ἔδεισαν Κάτωνα μὴ στρατηγῶν αὐτῶν περιγένηται. τέλος δ’ ἀπιόντα εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν προὔπεμψε πλῆθος τοσοῦτον, ὅσον οὐδὲ σύμπαντας ἅμα τοὺς ἀποδεδειγμένους στρατηγούς.

[43] [1] Γαΐου δὲ Τρεβωνίου γράψαντος νόμον ὑπὲρ νομῆς ἐπαρχιῶν τοῖς ὑπάτοις, ὥστε τὸν μὲν Ἰβηρίαν ἔχοντα καὶ Λιβύην ὑφ’ αὑτῷ, τὸν δὲ Συρίαν καὶ Αἴγυπτον, οἷς βούλοιντο πολεμεῖν καὶ καταστρέφεσθαι ναυτικαῖς [2] καὶ πεζικαῖς δυνάμεσιν ἐπιόντας, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τὴν ἀντίπραξιν καὶ κώλυσιν ἀπεγνωκότες, ἐξέλιπον καὶ τὸ ἀντειπεῖν, Κάτωνι δ’ ἀναβάντι πρὸ τῆς ψηφοφορίας ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ βουλομένῳ λέγειν μόλις ὡρῶν δυεῖν [3] λόγον ἔδωκαν. ὡς δὲ πολλὰ λέγων καὶ διδάσκων καὶ προθεσπίζων κατανάλωσε τὸν χρόνον, οὐκέτι λέγειν αὐτὸν εἴων, ἀλλ’ ἐπιμένοντα κατέσπασεν [4] ὑπηρέτης προσελθών. ὡς δὲ καὶ κάτωθεν ἱστάμενος ἐβόα καὶ τοὺς ἀκούοντας καὶ συναγανακτοῦντας εἶχε, πάλιν ὁ ὑπηρέτης ἐπιλαβόμενος καὶ [5] ἀγαγὼν αὐτὸν ἔξω τῆς ἀγορᾶς κατέστησε. καὶ οὐκ ἔφθη πρῶτον ἀφεθείς, καὶ πάλιν ἀναστρέψας ἵετο πρὸς τὸ βῆμα, μετὰ κραυγῆς ἐγκελευόμενος [6] τοῖς πολίταις ἀμύνειν. πολλάκις δὲ τούτου γενομένου, περιπαθῶν ὁ Τρεβώνιος ἐκέλευσεν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον ἄγεσθαι, καὶ πλῆθος ἐπηκολούθει, λέγοντος ἅμα [σὺν] τῷ βαδίζειν ἀκροώμενον, ὥστε δείσαντα τὸν [7] Τρεβώνιον ἀφεῖναι. κἀκείνην μὲν οὕτω τὴν ἡμέραν ὁ Κάτων κατανάλωσε· ταῖς δ’ ἐφεξῆς οὓς μὲν δεδιξάμενοι τῶν πολιτῶν, οὓς δὲ συσκευασάμενοι χάρισι καὶ δωροδοκίαις, ἕνα δὲ τῶν δημάρχων Ἀκύλλιον ὅπλοις εἴρξαντες ἐκ τοῦ βουλευτηρίου προελθεῖν, αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Κάτωνα βροντὴν γεγονέναι βοῶντα τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἐκβαλόντες, οὐκ ὀλίγους δὲ τρώσαντες, ἐνίων δὲ καὶ πεσόντων, βίᾳ τὸν νόμον ἐκύρωσαν, ὥστε πολλοὺς συστραφέντας ὀργῇ [8] τοὺς Πομπηΐου βάλλειν ἀνδριάντας. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ἐπελθὼν ὁ Κάτων διεκώλυσε· τῷ δὲ Καίσαρι πάλιν νόμου γραφομένου περὶ τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν καὶ τῶν στρατοπέδων, οὐκέτι πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ὁ Κάτων, ἀλλὰ πρὸς αὐτὸν τραπόμενος [9] Πομπήϊον, ἐμαρτύρατο καὶ προὔλεγεν, ὡς ἐπὶ τὸν αὑτοῦ τράχηλον ἀναλαμβάνων Καίσαρα νῦν μὲν οὐκ οἶδεν, ὅταν δ’ ἄρχηται βαρύνεσθαι καὶ κρατεῖσθαι, μήτ’ ἀποθέσθαι δυνάμενος, μήτε φέρειν ὑπομένων, εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἐμπεσεῖται σὺν αὐτῷ, καὶ μεμνήσεται τότε τῶν Κάτωνος παραινέσεων, ὡς οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐν αὐταῖς τὸ Πομπηΐου συμφέρον ἐνῆν ἢ τὸ καλὸν [10] καὶ δίκαιον. ταῦτα πολλάκις ἀκούων ὁ Πομπήϊος ἠμέλει καὶ παρέπεμπεν, ἀπιστίᾳ τῆς Καίσαρος μεταβολῆς διὰ πίστιν εὐτυχίας τῆς ἑαυτοῦ καὶ δυνάμεως.

[44] [1] Εἰς δὲ τὸ ἑξῆς ἔτος αἱρεθεὶς ὁ Κάτων στρατηγός, οὐδὲν ἔδοξε προστιθέναι τῇ ἀρχῇ τοσοῦτον εἰς σεμνότητα καὶ μέγεθος ἄρχων καλῶς, ὅσον ἀφαιρεῖν καὶ καταισχύνειν ἀνυπόδητος καὶ ἀχίτων πολλάκις ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα προερχόμενος, καὶ θανατικὰς δίκας ἐπιφανῶν ἀνδρῶν οὕτω βραβεύων.

[2] ἔνιοι δέ φασι καὶ μετ’ ἄριστον οἶνον πεπωκότα χρηματίζειν· ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἀληθῶς λέγεται.

[3] Διαφθειρομένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου ταῖς δωροδοκίαις ὑπὸ τῶν φιλαρχούντων, καὶ χρωμένων τῷ δεκάζεσθαι καθάπερ ἐργασίᾳ συνήθει τῶν πολλῶν, βουλόμενος ἐκκόψαι παντάπασι τὸ νόσημα τοῦτο τῆς πόλεως, ἔπεισε δόγμα θέσθαι τὴν σύγκλητον, ὅπως οἱ κατασταθέντες ἄρχοντες, εἰ μηδένα κατήγορον ἔχοιεν, αὐτοὶ παριόντες ἐξ ἀνάγκης εἰς ἔνορκον δικαστήριον [4] εὐθύνας διδῶσιν. ἐπὶ τούτῳ χαλεπῶς μὲν ἔσχον οἱ μετιόντες ἀρχάς, ἔτι δὲ χαλεπώτερον ὁ μισθαρνῶν ὄχλος. ἕωθεν οὖν ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα τοῦ Κάτωνος προελθόντος, ἀθρόοι προσπεσόντες ἐβόων, ἐβλασφήμουν, ἔβαλλον, ὥστε φεύγειν ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος ἅπαντας, αὐτὸν δ’ ἐκεῖνον ἐξωσθέντα τῷ πλήθει [5] καὶ παραφερόμενον, μόλις ἐπιλαβέσθαι τῶν ἐμβόλων. ἐνταῦθα καταστάς, τῷ μὲν ἰταμῷ καὶ θαρροῦντι τῆς ὄψεως εὐθὺς ἐκράτησε τοῦ θορύβου καὶ τὴν κραυγὴν ἔπαυσεν, εἰπὼν δὲ τὰ πρέποντα καὶ μεθ’ ἡσυχίας [6] ἀκουσθείς, παντάπασι διέλυσε τὴν ταραχήν. ἐπαινούσης δὲ τῆς βουλῆς αὐτόν, ἐγὼ δ’ εἶπεν ὑμᾶς οὐκ ἐπαινῶ, κινδυνεύοντα στρατηγὸν ἐγκαταλιπόντας [7] καὶ μὴ προσαμύναντας. τῶν δὲ μετιόντων ἀρχὴν ἕκαστος ἀπόρῳ πάθει συνείχετο, φοβούμενος μὲν αὐτὸς δεκάζειν, φοβούμενος δ’ [8] ἑτέρου τοῦτο πράξαντος ἐκπεσεῖν τῆς ἀρχῆς. ἔδοξεν οὖν αὐτοῖς εἰς ταὐτὸ συνελθοῦσι παραβαλέσθαι δραχμῶν ἕκαστον ἀργυρίου δεκαδύο ἥμισυ μυριάδας, εἶτα μετιέναι τὴν ἀρχὴν πάντας ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως· τὸν δὲ [9] παραβάντα καὶ χρησάμενον δεκασμῷ στέρεσθαι τοῦ ἀργυρίου. ταῦθ’ ὁμολογήσαντες αἱροῦνται φύλακα καὶ βραβευτὴν καὶ μάρτυρα τὸν Κάτωνα, καὶ ‹τὰ› χρήματα φέροντες ἐκείνῳ παρετίθεντο, καὶ τὰς συνθήκας ἐγράψαντο πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, ἀντὶ τῶν χρημάτων ἐγγυητὰς λαβόντα, τὰ δὲ χρήματα [10] μὴ δεξάμενον. ὡς δ’ ἧκεν ἡ κυρία τῆς ἀναδείξεως, παραστὰς ὁ Κάτων τῷ βραβεύοντι δημάρχῳ καὶ παραφυλάξας τὴν ψῆφον, ἕνα τῶν παραβαλομένων ἀπέφηνε κακουργοῦντα, καὶ προσέταξεν ἀποδοῦναι τοῖς [11] ἄλλοις τὸ ἀργύριον. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν ἐπαινέσαντες αὐτοῦ τὴν ὀρθότητα καὶ θαυμάσαντες ἀνεῖλον τὸ πρόστιμον, ὡς ἱκανὴν δίκην ἔχοντες παρὰ τοῦ ἀδικήσαντος· τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐλύπησεν ὁ Κάτων καὶ φθόνον ἔσχεν ἀπὸ τούτου πλεῖστον, ὡς βουλῆς καὶ δικαστηρίων καὶ ἀρχόντων δύναμιν [12] αὑτῷ περιποιησάμενος. οὐδεμιᾶς γὰρ ἀρετῆς δόξα καὶ πίστις ἐπιφθόνους ποιεῖ μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς δικαιοσύνης, ὅτι καὶ δύναμις αὐτῇ καὶ πίστις ἕπεται [13] μάλιστα παρὰ τῶν πολλῶν. οὐ γὰρ τιμῶσι μόνον ὡς τοὺς ἀνδρείους, οὐδὲ θαυμάζουσιν ὡς τοὺς φρονίμους, ἀλλὰ καὶ φιλοῦσι τοὺς δικαίους, [14] καὶ θαρροῦσιν αὐτοῖς καὶ πιστεύουσιν. ἐκείνων δὲ τοὺς μὲν φοβοῦνται, τοῖς δ’ ἀπιστοῦσι· πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἐκείνους μὲν οἴονται φύσει μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ βούλεσθαι διαφέρειν, ἀνδρίαν καὶ φρόνησιν τὴν μὲν ὀξύτητά τινα, τὴν δ’ εὐρωστίαν ψυχῆς τιθέμενοι· δικαίῳ δ’ ὑπάρχοντος εὐθὺς εἶναι τῷ βουλομένῳ, μάλιστα τὴν ἀδικίαν ὡς κακίαν ἀπροφάσιστον αἰσχύνονται.

[45] [1] Διὸ καὶ τῷ Κάτωνι πάντες οἱ μεγάλοι προσεπολέμουν ὡς ἐλεγχόμενοι, Πομπήϊος δὲ καὶ κατάλυσιν τῆς ἑαυτοῦ δυνάμεως τὴν ἐκείνου [2] δόξαν ἡγούμενος, ἀεί τινας προσέβαλλεν αὐτῷ λοιδορησομένους· ὧν καὶ Κλώδιος ἦν ὁ δημαγωγός, αὖθις εἰς Πομπήϊον ὑπορρυεὶς καὶ καταβοῶν τοῦ Κάτωνος ὡς πολλὰ μὲν ἐκ Κύπρου χρήματα νοσφισαμένου, [3] Πομπηΐῳ δὲ πολεμοῦντος ἀπαξιώσαντι γάμον αὐτοῦ θυγατρός. ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἔλεγεν, ὅτι χρήματα μὲν ἐκ Κύπρου τοσαῦτα τῇ πόλει συναγάγοι, μήθ’ ἵππον ἕνα μήτε στρατιώτην λαβών, ὅσα Πομπήϊος ἐκ πολέμων [4] τοσούτων καὶ θριάμβων τὴν οἰκουμένην κυκήσας οὐκ ἀνήνεγκε· κηδεστὴν δὲ μηδέποτε προελέσθαι Πομπήϊον, οὐκ ἀνάξιον ἡγούμενος, ἀλλ’ ὁρῶν [5] τὴν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ διαφοράν. αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ ἔφη διδομένης μοι μετὰ τὴν στρατηγίαν ἐπαρχίας ἀπέστην, οὗτος δὲ τὰς μὲν ἔχει λαβών, τὰς δὲ [6] δίδωσιν ἑτέροις· νυνὶ δὲ καὶ τέλος, ἑξακισχιλίων ὁπλιτῶν δύναμιν, Καίσαρι κέχρηκεν εἰς Γαλατίαν· ἣν οὔτ’ ἐκεῖνος ᾔτησε παρ’ ὑμῶν, οὔθ’ οὗτος ἔδωκε μεθ’ ὑμῶν, ἀλλὰ δυνάμεις τηλικαῦται καὶ ὅπλα καὶ ἵπποι χάριτές [7] εἰσιν ἰδιωτῶν καὶ ἀντιδόσεις. καλούμενος δ’ αὐτοκράτωρ καὶ στρατηγός, ἄλλοις τὰ στρατεύματα καὶ τὰς ἐπαρχίας παραδέδωκεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τῇ πόλει παρακάθηται, στάσεις ἀγωνοθετῶν ἐν ταῖς παραγγελίαις καὶ θορύβους μηχανώμενος, ἐξ ὧν οὐ λέληθε δι’ ἀναρχίας μοναρχίαν ἑαυτῷ μνηστευόμενος.

[46] [1] Οὕτως μὲν ἠμύνατο τὸν Πομπήϊον. ἦν δὲ Μᾶρκος Φαώνιος ἑταῖρος αὐτοῦ καὶ ζηλωτής, οἷος ὁ Φαληρεὺς Ἀπολλόδωρος ἱστορεῖται περὶ Σωκράτην γενέσθαι τὸν παλαιόν, ἐμπαθὴς καὶ παρακεκινηκὼς πρὸς τὸν λόγον, οὐ σχέδην οὐδὲ πρᾴως, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἶνον ἄκρατον αὐτοῦ καθαψάμενον [2] καὶ μανικώτερον. οὗτος ἀγορανομίαν μετιὼν ἡττᾶτο, συμπαρὼν δ’ [3] ὁ Κάτων προσέσχε ταῖς δέλτοις μιᾷ χειρὶ γεγραμμέναις, καὶ τὴν κακουργίαν ἐξελέγξας, τότε μὲν ἐπικλήσει δημάρχων ἔλυσε τὴν ἀνάδειξιν, ὕστερον δὲ τοῦ Φαωνίου κατασταθέντος ἀγορανόμου, τά τ’ ἄλλα τῆς [4] ἀρχῆς ἐπεμελεῖτο καὶ τὰς θέας διεῖπεν ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ, διδοὺς [καὶ] τοῖς θυμελικοῖς στεφάνους μὲν οὐ χρυσοῦς, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ κοτίνων, δῶρα δ’ ἀντὶ τῶν πολυτελῶν τοῖς μὲν Ἕλλησι τεῦτλα καὶ θρίδακας καὶ ῥαφανῖδας καὶ ἀπίους, τοῖς δὲ Ῥωμαίοις οἴνου κεράμια καὶ κρέα ὕεια καὶ [5] σῦκα καὶ σικύους καὶ ξύλων ἀγκαλίδας· ὧν τὴν εὐτέλειαν οἱ μὲν ἐγέλων, οἱ δ’ ἥδοντο τοῦ Κάτωνος τὸ αὐστηρὸν καὶ κατεστυμμένον ὁρῶντες ἡσυχῇ [6] μεταβάλλον εἰς διάχυσιν. τέλος δ’ ὁ Φαώνιος εἰς τὸν ὄχλον ἐμβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν καὶ καθεζόμενος ἐν τοῖς θεαταῖς, ἐκρότει τὸν Κάτωνα καὶ διδόναι τοῖς εὐημεροῦσι καὶ τιμᾶν ἐβόα καὶ συμπαρεκάλει τοὺς θεατάς, ὡς ἐκείνῳ [7] τὴν ἐξουσίαν παραδεδωκώς. ἐν δὲ τῷ ἑτέρῳ θεάτρῳ Κουρίων ὁ Φαωνίου συνάρχων ἐχορήγει πολυτελῶς· ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνον ἀπολείποντες οἱ ἄνθρωποι μετέβαινον ἐνταῦθα καὶ συνέπαιζον προθύμως ὑποκρινομένῳ τῷ Φαωνίῳ [8] τὸν ἰδιώτην καὶ τῷ Κάτωνι τὸν ἀγωνοθέτην. ἔπραττε δὲ ταῦτα διασύρων τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ διδάσκων, ὅτι παίζοντα δεῖ τῇ παιδιᾷ χρῆσθαι καὶ χάριτι παραπέμπειν ἀτύφῳ μᾶλλον ἢ παρασκευαῖς καὶ πολυτελείαις, εἰς τὰ μηδενὸς ἄξια φροντίδας μεγάλας καὶ σπουδὰς κατατιθέμενον.

[47] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Σκιπίωνος καὶ Ὑψαίου καὶ Μίλωνος ὑπατείαν μετερχομένων οὐ μόνον ἐκείνοις τοῖς συντρόφοις ἤδη καὶ συμπολιτευομένοις ἀδικήμασι, δωροδοκίαις καὶ δεκασμοῖς, ἀλλ’ ἄντικρυς δι’ ὅπλων καὶ φόνων εἰς ἐμφύλιον πόλεμον ὠθουμένων τόλμῃ καὶ ἀπονοίᾳ, Πομπήϊόν τινες ἠξίουν ἐπιστῆναι ταῖς ἀρχαιρεσίαις, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἀντεῖπεν ὁ Κάτων, οὐ τοῖς νόμοις ἐκ Πομπηΐου φάμενος, ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῶν νόμων Πομπηΐῳ [2] δεῖν ὑπάρχειν τὴν ἀσφάλειαν· ὡς δὲ πολὺν χρόνον ἀναρχίας οὔσης καὶ τριῶν στρατοπέδων τὴν ἀγορὰν ὁσημέραι περιεχόντων, ὀλίγον ἀπέλιπεν ἀνεπίσχετον γεγονέναι τὸ κακόν, ἔγνω τὰ πράγματα πρὸ τῆς ἐσχάτης ἀνάγκης εἰς Πομπήϊον ἑκουσίῳ χάριτι τῆς βουλῆς περιστῆσαι, καὶ τῷ μετριωτάτῳ τῶν παρανομημάτων χρησάμενος ἰάματι τῆς τῶν μεγίστων καταστάσεως τὴν μοναρχίαν ἐπαγαγέσθαι μᾶλλον, ἢ περιϊδεῖν τὴν [3] στάσιν εἰς ἀναρχίαν τελευτῶσαν. εἶπεν οὖν ἐν τῇ βουλῇ γνώμην Βύβλος οἰκεῖος ὢν Κάτωνος, ὡς χρὴ μόνον ἑλέσθαι Πομπήϊον ὕπατον· ἢ γὰρ ἕξειν καλῶς τὰ πράγματ’ ἐκείνου καταστήσαντος, ἢ τῷ κρατίστῳ δουλεύσειν [4] τὴν πόλιν· ἀναστὰς δ’ ὁ Κάτων οὐδενὸς ἂν προσδοκήσαντος ἐπῄνεσε τὴν γνώμην καὶ συνεβούλευσε πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν ὡς ἀναρχίας κρείττονα· Πομπήϊον δὲ καὶ προσδοκᾶν ἄριστα τοῖς παροῦσι χρήσεσθαι πράγμασι καὶ φυλάξειν διαπιστευθέντα τὴν πόλιν.

[48] [1] Οὕτω δ’ ἀποδειχθεὶς ὕπατος ὁ Πομπήϊος ἐδεήθη τοῦ Κάτωνος [2] ἐλθεῖν πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ προάστειον. ἐλθόντα δὲ δεξάμενος φιλοφρόνως ἀσπασμοῖς καὶ δεξιώσεσι καὶ χάριν ὁμολογήσας, παρεκάλει σύμβουλον [3] αὑτῷ καὶ πάρεδρον εἶναι τῆς ἀρχῆς. ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἀπεκρίνατο, μήτε τὰ πρότερα πρὸς ἀπέχθειαν εἰπεῖν Πομπηΐου, μήτε ταῦτα πρὸς χάριν, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ [4] συμφέροντι πάντα τῆς πόλεως· ἰδίᾳ μὲν οὖν αὐτῷ παρακαλοῦντι σύμβουλος ἔσεσθαι, δημοσίᾳ δὲ κἂν μὴ παρακαλῆται πάντως ἐρεῖν τὸ φαινόμενον.

[5] καὶ ταῦτ’ ἔπραττεν ὡς εἶπε. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἐπὶ τοὺς δεκάσαντας ἤδη τὸν δῆμον ἐπιτίμια καινὰ καὶ δίκας μεγάλας τοῦ Πομπηΐου νομοθετοῦντος, [6] ἀμελεῖν ἐκέλευσε τῶν γεγονότων καὶ προσέχειν τοῖς μέλλουσιν· οὔτε γὰρ ὅπου στήσεται τὰ προημαρτημένα ζητῶν ὁρίσαι ῥᾴδιον, ἐάν τε νεώτερα γράφηται τῶν ἀδικημάτων ἐπιτίμια, δεινὰ πείσεσθαι τοὺς ὃν οὐ παρέβαινον [7] ὅτ’ ἠδίκουν νόμον, κατὰ τοῦτον κολαζομένους. ἔπειτα πολλῶν κρινομένων ἐπιφανῶν ἀνδρῶν, ἐνίων δὲ καὶ φίλων τοῦ Πομπηΐου καὶ οἰκείων, ὁρῶν αὐτὸν ἐνδιδόντα [ἐν] πολλοῖς καὶ καμπτόμενον, ἐπετίμα [8] σφοδρῶς καὶ διήγειρεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ νόμῳ τοὺς εἰωθότας λέγεσθαι περὶ τῶν κρινομένων ἐπαίνους αὐτὸς ἀφελών, Μουνατίῳ Πλάγκῳ συγγράψας ἔπαινον ἐπὶ τῆς δίκης ἔδωκεν, ἐπισχόμενος ὁ Κάτων τὰ ὦτα ταῖς χερσὶν (ἔτυχε γὰρ δικάζων) ἐκώλυεν ἀναγινώσκεσθαι τὴν μαρτυρίαν· ὁ δὲ Πλάγκος ἀπέλεξεν αὐτὸν ἐκ τῶν δικαστῶν μετὰ τοὺς λόγους, καὶ οὐδὲν ἧττον [9] ἥλω. καὶ ὅλως ἄπορον ἦν πρᾶγμα καὶ δυσμεταχείριστον ὁ Κάτων τοῖς φεύγουσι, μήτε βουλομένοις αὐτὸν ἀπολιπεῖν δικαστήν, μήτ’ ἀπολέγειν [10] τολμῶσιν. ἥλωσαν γὰρ οὐκ ὀλίγοι τῷ Κάτωνα φεύγειν δόξαντες οὐ θαρρεῖν τοῖς δικαίοις· ἐνίοις δὲ καὶ προὔφερον οἱ λοιδοροῦντες ὡς ὄνειδος μέγα τὸ μὴ δέξασθαι κριτὴν Κάτωνα προτεινόμενον.

[49] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Καίσαρος αὐτοῦ μὲν ἐμπεφυκότος τοῖς στρατεύμασιν ἐν Γαλατίᾳ καὶ τῶν ὅπλων ἐχομένου, δώροις δὲ καὶ χρήμασι καὶ φίλοις μάλιστα πρὸς τὴν ἐν τῇ πόλει χρωμένου δύναμιν, ἤδη μὲν αἱ Κάτωνος προαγορεύσεις ἀνέφερον τὸν Πομπήϊον, ἐκ πολλῆς [ἤδη] τῆς πρόσθεν ἀπιστίας ὀνειροπολοῦντα τὸ δεινόν, ἔτι δ’ ἦν ὄκνου καὶ μελλήσεως ἀτόλμου [2] πρὸς τὸ κωλύειν καὶ ἐπιχειρεῖν ὑπόπλεως, ὥρμησεν ὁ Κάτων ὑπατείαν παραγγέλλειν, ὡς ἀφαιρησόμενος εὐθὺς τὰ ὅπλα τοῦ Καίσαρος ἢ τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν [3] ἐξελέγξων. οἱ δ’ ἀντιπαραγγέλλοντες αὐτῷ χαρίεντες μὲν ἦσαν ἀμφότεροι, Σουλπίκιος δὲ καὶ πολλὰ τῆς τοῦ Κάτωνος ἐν τῇ πόλει δόξης [4] τε καὶ δυνάμεως ἀπολελαυκώς. οὐ μέτριον οὖν ἐδόκει πρᾶγμα ποιεῖν οὐδ’ εὐχάριστον· οὐ μὴν ὅ γε Κάτων ἐνεκάλει· τί γὰρ ἔφη θαυμαστόν, εἰ [5] ὅ τις νομίζει τῶν ἀγαθῶν μέγιστον, ἑτέρῳ μὴ παρίησι; πείσας δὲ τὴν βουλὴν ψηφίσασθαι τοὺς μετιόντας τὴν ἀρχὴν αὐτοὺς ‹δι’ αὑτοὺς› δεξιοῦσθαι τὸν δῆμον, δι’ ἑτέρους δὲ μὴ δεῖσθαι μηδ’ ἐντυγχάνειν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν περιιόντας, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐξηγρίαινε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, εἰ μὴ μόνον λαβεῖν μισθόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ διδόναι χάριν αὐτοὺς ἀφῃρημένος, ἄπορον καὶ ἄτιμον [6] ὁμοῦ τὸν δῆμον πεποίηκε. πρὸς δὲ τούτῳ μήτ’ αὐτὸς ἐντυχεῖν ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ πιθανὸς ὤν, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἤθει, τὸ τοῦ βίου μᾶλλον ἀξίωμα βουλόμενος φυλάσσειν ἢ προσλαβεῖν τὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς, ποιούμενος τὰς δεξιώσεις, μήτε τοὺς φίλους ἐάσας οἷς ὄχλος ἁλίσκεται καὶ θεραπεύεται ποιεῖν, ἀπέτυχε τῆς ἀρχῆς.

[50] [1] Φέροντος δὲ τοῦ πράγματος οὐκ αὐτοῖς μόνοις τοῖς ἀποτυχοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ φίλοις αὐτῶν καὶ οἰκείοις σὺν αἰσχύνῃ τινὶ κατήφειαν καὶ πένθος ἐφ’ ἡμέρας πολλάς, οὕτως ἤνεγκε ῥᾳθύμως τὸ συμβεβηκός, ὥστ’ ἀλειψάμενος μὲν ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ σφαιρίσαι, μετ’ ἄριστον δὲ πάλιν ὥσπερ εἴθιστο καταβὰς εἰς ἀγορὰν ἀνυπόδητος καὶ ἀχίτων περιπατῆσαι μετὰ τῶν [2] συνήθων. αἰτιᾶται δὲ Κικέρων ὅτι, τῶν πραγμάτων ἄρχοντος τοιούτου δεομένων, οὐκ ἐποιήσατο σπουδὴν οὐδ’ ὑπῆλθεν ὁμιλίᾳ φιλανθρώπῳ τὸν δῆμον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὸ λοιπὸν ἐξέκαμε καὶ ἀπηγόρευσε, καίτοι τὴν [3] στρατηγίαν αὖθις ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς μετελθών. ἔλεγεν οὖν ὁ Κάτων, ὅτι τῆς μὲν στρατηγίας οὐ κατὰ γνώμην ἐξέπεσε τῶν πολλῶν, ἀλλὰ βιασθέντων ἢ διαφθαρέντων, ἐν δὲ ταῖς ὑπατικαῖς ψήφοις μηδεμιᾶς κακουργίας γενομένης ἔγνωκε τῷ δήμῳ προσκεκρουκὼς διὰ τὸν αὑτοῦ τρόπον, ὃν οὔτε μεταθέσθαι πρὸς ἑτέρων χάριν οὔτε χρώμενον ὁμοίῳ πάλιν ὅμοια παθεῖν νοῦν ἔχοντος ἀνδρός ἐστι.

[51] [1] Τοῦ δὲ Καίσαρος ἐμβαλόντος εἰς ἔθνη μάχιμα καὶ παραβόλως κρατήσαντος, Γερμανοῖς δὲ καὶ σπονδῶν γενομένων δοκοῦντος ἐπιθέσθαι καὶ καταβαλεῖν τριάκοντα μυριάδας, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τὸν δῆμον ἠξίουν εὐαγγέλια θύειν, ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἐκέλευεν ἐκδιδόναι τὸν Καίσαρα τοῖς παρανομηθεῖσι, καὶ μὴ τρέπειν εἰς αὑτοὺς μηδ’ ἀναδέχεσθαι τὸ ἄγος εἰς τὴν [2] πόλιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς ἔφη θύωμεν, ὅτι τῆς τοῦ στρατηγοῦ μανίας καὶ ἀπονοίας τὴν δίκην εἰς τοὺς στρατιώτας οὐ τρέπουσιν, ἀλλὰ [3] φείδονται τῆς πόλεως. ἐκ τούτου Καῖσαρ ἐπιστολὴν γράψας ἀπέστειλεν εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον· ὡς δ’ ἀνεγνώσθη βλασφημίας πολλὰς ἔχουσα καὶ κατηγορίας τοῦ Κάτωνος, ἀναστὰς ἐκεῖνος οὐχ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς οὐδὲ φιλονεικίας, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐκ λογισμοῦ καὶ παρασκευῆς, τὰ μὲν εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐγκλήματα λοιδορίαις καὶ σκώμμασιν ὅμοια καὶ παιδιάν τινα καὶ βωμολοχίαν [4] τοῦ Καίσαρος ἀπέδειξεν· ἁψάμενος δὲ τῶν ἐκείνου βουλευμάτων ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, καὶ πᾶσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν διάνοιαν ὥσπερ οὐκ ἐχθρός, ἀλλὰ συνωμότης καὶ κοινωνὸς ἐκκαλύψας, καὶ διδάξας ὡς οὐ Βρεττανῶν οὐδὲ Κελτῶν παῖδας, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνον αὐτὸν εἰ σωφρονοῦσι φοβητέον ἐστὶν αὐτοῖς, οὕτως [5] ἐπέστρεψε καὶ παρώξυνεν, ὡς τοὺς φίλους τοῦ Καίσαρος μετανοεῖν, ὅτι τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἀναγνόντες ἐν τῇ βουλῇ καιρὸν τῷ Κάτωνι λόγων δικαίων καὶ κατηγοριῶν ἀληθῶν παρέσχον.

[6] Ἐκυρώθη μὲν οὖν οὐδέν, ἀλλ’ ἐλέχθη μόνον ὅτι καλῶς ἔχει διάδοχον [7] Καίσαρι δοθῆναι. τῶν δὲ φίλων ἀξιούντων καὶ Πομπήϊον ἐξ ἴσου τὰ ὅπλα καταθέσθαι καὶ ἀποδοῦναι τὰς ἐπαρχίας, ἢ μηδὲ Καίσαρα, νῦν ἐκεῖνα βοῶν ὁ Κάτων ἃ προὔλεγεν αὐτοῖς ἥκειν καὶ βιάζεσθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἀναφανδὸν ἤδη τῇ δυνάμει χρώμενον ἣν ἔσχεν ἐξαπατῶν καὶ φενακίζων τὴν πόλιν, ἔξω μὲν οὐδὲν ἐπέραινε, τοῦ δήμου θέλοντος ἀεὶ τὸν Καίσαρα μέγιστον εἶναι, τὴν δὲ σύγκλητον εἶχε πειθομένην καὶ φοβουμένην τὸν δῆμον.

[52] [1] Ὡς δ’ Ἀρίμινον κατείληπτο καὶ Καῖσαρ κατηγγέλλετο μετὰ στρατιᾶς ἐλαύνειν ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν, ἐνταῦθα δὴ πάντες ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον ἀφεώρων, οἵ τε πολλοὶ καὶ Πομπήϊος, ὡς μόνον μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς προαισθόμενον, πρῶτον [2] δὲ φανερῶς προειπόντα τὴν Καίσαρος γνώμην. εἶπεν οὖν ὁ Κάτων· ἀλλ’ εἴ γ’ οἷς ἐγὼ προὔλεγον ἀεὶ καὶ συνεβούλευον ἐπείσθη τις ὑμῶν ἄνδρες, [3] οὔτ’ ἂν ἕν’ ἐφοβεῖσθε νῦν, οὔτ’ ἐν ἑνὶ τὰς ἐλπίδας εἴχετε. Πομπηΐου δ’ εἰπόντος, μαντικώτερα μὲν εἰρῆσθαι Κάτωνι, φιλικώτερα δ’ αὐτῷ πεπρᾶχθαι, συνεβούλευεν ὁ Κάτων ἑνὶ Πομπηΐῳ τὰ πράγματα τὴν σύγκλητον ἐγχειρίσαι· τῶν γὰρ αὐτῶν εἶναι καὶ ποιεῖν τὰ μεγάλα κακὰ [4] καὶ παύειν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Πομπήϊος οὔτε δύναμιν ἔχων ἑτοίμην, οὔθ’ οὓς κατέλεγε τότε προθύμους ὁρῶν, ἐξέλιπε τὴν Ῥώμην, ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἕπεσθαι καὶ συμφεύγειν ἐγνωκώς, τὸν μὲν νεώτερον υἱὸν εἰς Βρεττίους [5] ὑπεξέθετο πρὸς Μουνάτιον, τὸν δὲ πρεσβύτερον εἶχε σὺν ἑαυτῷ. τῆς δ’ οἰκίας καὶ τῶν θυγατέρων κηδεμόνος δεομένων, ἀνέλαβε πάλιν τὴν Μαρκίαν, χηρεύουσαν ἐπὶ χρήμασι πολλοῖς· ὁ γὰρ Ὁρτήσιος θνῄσκων [6] ἐκείνην ἀπέλιπε κληρονόμον. εἰς ὃ δὴ μάλιστα λοιδορούμενος ὁ Καῖσαρ [7] τῷ Κάτωνι φιλοπλουτίαν προφέρει καὶ μισθαρνίαν ἐπὶ τῷ γάμῳ. τί γὰρ ἔδει παραχωρεῖν δεόμενον γυναικός, ἢ τί μὴ δεόμενον αὖθις ἀναλαμβάνειν, εἰ μὴ δέλεαρ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὑφείθη τὸ γύναιον Ὁρτησίῳ καὶ νέαν ἔχρησεν ἵνα [8] πλουσίαν ἀπολάβῃ; πρὸς μὲν οὖν ταῦτα μετρίως ἔχει τὸ Εὐριπίδειον ἐκεῖνο (Herc. 174)·

πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τἄρρητ’· ἐν ἀρρήτοισι γὰρ

τὴν σὴν νομίζω δειλίαν, ὦ Ἡράκλεις·

ὅμοιον γάρ ἐστι τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ μαλακίαν ὀνειδίζειν καὶ κατηγορεῖν αἰσχροκέρδειαν Κάτωνος· εἰ δ’ ἄλλῃ πῃ μὴ καλῶς πέπρακται τὰ περὶ τὸν γάμον, [9] ἐπισκεπτέον. ἐγγυησάμενος γοῦν τὴν Μαρκίαν ὁ Κάτων καὶ τὸν οἶκον ἐπιτρέψας ἐκείνῃ καὶ τὰς θυγατέρας, αὐτὸς ἐδίωκε Πομπήϊον.

[53] [1] Ἀπ’ ἐκείνης δὲ λέγεται τῆς ἡμέρας μήτε κεφαλὴν ἔτι κείρασθαι μήτε γένεια, μήτε στέφανον ἐπιθέσθαι, πένθους δὲ καὶ κατηφείας καὶ βαρύτητος ἐπὶ ταῖς συμφοραῖς τῆς πατρίδος ἓν σχῆμα νικώντων ὁμοίως καὶ νικωμένων ἄχρι τελευτῆς διαφυλάξαι.

[2] Τότε δὲ κλήρῳ λαχὼν Σικελίαν, διέβη μὲν εἰς Συρακούσας, πυθόμενος δ’ Ἀσίννιον Πολλίωνα παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων ἀφῖχθαι μετὰ δυνάμεως εἰς [3] Μεσσήνην, ἔπεμψε λόγον ἀπαιτῶν παρ’ αὐτοῦ τῆς διαβάσεως. ἀνταπαιτηθεὶς δὲ λόγον ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τῆς τῶν πραγμάτων μεταβολῆς, καὶ Πομπήϊον ἀκούσας ἐκλελοιπότα παντελῶς Ἰταλίαν ἐν Δυρραχίῳ στρατοπεδεύειν, πολὺν ἔφη περὶ τὰ θεῖα πλάνον εἶναι καὶ ἀσάφειαν, εἰ Πομπήϊον, ἐν οἷς ὑγιὲς οὐδὲν οὐδὲ δίκαιον ἔπραττεν ἀήττητον γενόμενον, νῦν ὅτε τὴν πατρίδα βούλεται σῴζειν καὶ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ὑπερμάχεται, προλέλοιπε τὸ [4] εὐτυχεῖν. Ἀσίννιον μὲν οὖν ἔφη δυνατὸς εἶναι Σικελίας ἐκβαλεῖν, ἄλλης δὲ μείζονος ἐπερχομένης δυνάμεως οὐ βούλεσθαι τὴν νῆσον ἐκπολεμώ‹σας› ἀπολέσαι· χωρεῖν δὲ πρὸς τὸ κρατοῦν καὶ σῴζεσθαι παραινέσας Συρακοσίοις, ἐξέπλευσεν.

[5] Ἀφικόμενος δὲ πρὸς Πομπήϊον, ἀεὶ μὲν εἴχετο μιᾶς γνώμης, χρονοτριβεῖν τὸν πόλεμον, ἐλπίζων διαλύσεις, καὶ μὴ βουλόμενος ἐν ἀγῶνι χειρῶν γενομένην τὴν πόλιν αὐτὴν ὑφ’ αὑτῆς παθεῖν τὰ ἔσχατα, σιδήρῳ διακριθεῖσαν.

[6] ἄλλα δὲ τούτων ἀδελφὰ Πομπήϊον ἔπεισε καὶ τοὺς συνέδρους ψηφίσασθαι, μήτε πόλιν ὑπήκοον Ῥωμαίων διαρπάζειν, μήτ’ ἄνδρα Ῥωμαῖον ἔξω παρατάξεως ἀναιρεῖν, καὶ δόξαν ἤνεγκε καὶ προσηγάγετο πολλοὺς τῇ Πομπηΐου μερίδι, τὴν ἐπιείκειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ ἥμερον ἀσπασαμένους.

[54] [1] Ἐκπεμφθεὶς δ’ εἰς Ἀσίαν, ὡς τοῖς ἐκεῖ συνάγουσι πλοῖα καὶ στρατιὰν ὠφέλιμος γένοιτο, Σερβιλίαν ἐπηγάγετο τὴν ἀδελφὴν καὶ τὸ Λευκόλλου [2] παιδίον ἐξ ἐκείνης γεγονός. ἠκολούθησε γὰρ αὐτῷ χηρεύουσα καὶ πολὺ τῶν εἰς τὸ ἀκόλαστον αὐτῆς διαβολῶν ἀφεῖλεν, ὑποδῦσα τὴν ὑπὸ Κάτωνι φρουρὰν καὶ πλάνην καὶ δίαιταν ἑκουσίως· ἀλλ’ ὅ γε Καῖσαρ [3] οὐδὲ τῶν ἐπ’ ἐκείνῃ βλασφημιῶν τοῦ Κάτωνος ἐφείσατο. πρὸς μὲν οὖν τἆλλα τοῦ Κάτωνος οὐδὲν ὡς ἔοικεν ἐδεήθησαν οἱ Πομπηΐου στρατηγοί, Ῥοδίους δὲ πειθοῖ προσαγαγόμενος καὶ τὴν Σερβιλίαν αὐτόθι καὶ τὸ παιδίον ἀπολιπών, ἐπανῆλθε πρὸς Πομπήϊον, ἤδη πεζικῆς τε λαμπρᾶς [4] καὶ ναυτικῆς δυνάμεως περὶ αὐτὸν οὔσης. ἔνθα δὴ καὶ μάλιστα τῆς γνώμης [5] κατάφωρος ἔδοξε γεγονέναι Πομπήϊος. ὥρμησε μὲν γὰρ ἐγχειρίσαι τῷ Κάτωνι τὴν τῶν νεῶν ἡγεμονίαν· ἦσαν δὲ πεντακοσίων μὲν οὐκ ἐλάττους αἱ μάχιμοι, λιβυρνικὰ δὲ καὶ κατασκοπικὰ καὶ ἄφρακτα παμπληθῆ· [6] ταχὺ δ’ ἐννοήσας ἢ διδαχθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων, ὡς ἕν ἐστι κεφάλαιον Κάτωνι πάσης πολιτείας ἐλευθερῶσαι τὴν πατρίδα, κἂν γένηται κύριος τηλικαύτης δυνάμεως, ἧς ἂν ἡμέρας καταγωνίσωνται Καίσαρα, τῆς αὐτῆς ἐκείνης ἀξιώσει καὶ Πομπήϊον τὰ ὅπλα καταθέσθαι καὶ τοῖς νόμοις ἕπεσθαι, μετέγνω, καίπερ ἤδη διειλεγμένος αὐτῷ, καὶ Βύβλον ἀπέδειξε [7] ναύαρχον. οὐ μὴν ᾔσθετό γε παρὰ τοῦτο τῆς προθυμίας τοῦ Κάτωνος ἀμβλυτέρας, ἀλλὰ καὶ λέγεται πρός τινα μάχην περὶ τὸ Δυρράχιον αὐτοῦ τε Πομπηΐου παρορμῶντος τὴν δύναμιν, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἕκαστον ἡγεμόνων εἰπεῖν τι καὶ προτρέψασθαι κελεύοντος, ἀργῶς καὶ σιωπῇ τοὺς στρατιώτας [8] ἀκούειν, Κάτωνος δὲ μετὰ πάντας, ὅσα καιρὸν εἶχε τῶν ἀπὸ φιλοσοφίας [ἀκούειν] λεγομένων περὶ ἐλευθερίας καὶ ἀρετῆς καὶ θανάτου καὶ δόξης, διελθόντος αὐτοπαθῶς, καὶ τελευτῶντα τρέψαντος τὸν λόγον εἰς θεῶν ἀνάκλησιν, ὡς παρόντων καὶ ἐφορώντων τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος [9] ἀγῶνα, τηλικοῦτον ἀλαλαγμὸν γενέσθαι καὶ τοσοῦτον κίνημα τῆς στρατιᾶς ἐπαρθείσης, ὥστε πάντας ἐλπίδων μεστοὺς ἐπὶ τὸν κίνδυνον ὁρμῆσαι [10] τοὺς ἡγεμόνας. τρεψαμένων δὲ καὶ κρατησάντων, ἀφείλετο τὴν παντελῆ νίκην ὁ Καίσαρος δαίμων, τῇ Πομπηΐου χρησάμενος εὐλαβείᾳ καὶ ἀπιστίᾳ [11] περὶ τὸ εὐτύχημα· ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Πομπηΐου γέγραπται. χαιρόντων δὲ πάντων καὶ μεγαλυνόντων τὸ ἔργον, ὁ Κάτων ἀπεδάκρυε τὴν πατρίδα καὶ τὴν ὀλέθριον καὶ κακοδαίμονα φιλαρχίαν ὠδύρετο, πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ὁρῶν πολίτας ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων πεπτωκότας.

[55] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Καίσαρα διώκων Πομπήϊος εἰς Θεσσαλίαν ἀνεζεύγνυε, πολλὰ καταλιπὼν περὶ Δυρράχιον ὅπλα καὶ χρήματα καὶ σώματα συγγενῆ καὶ οἰκεῖα, πάντων ἀπέδειξεν ἡγεμόνα καὶ φύλακα τὸν Κάτωνα, πεντεκαίδεκα σπείρας ἔχοντα στρατιωτῶν, διὰ πίστιν ἅμα καὶ φόβον τοῦ ἀνδρός.

[2] ἡττωμένῳ μὲν γὰρ πάντων εἶναι βεβαιότατον ἐνόμιζεν, εἰ δὲ νικῴη, μὴ [3] ἐπιτρέψειν παρόντα χρήσασθαι τοῖς πράγμασιν ὡς προῄρηται. πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ ‹ἄλλοι› τῶν ἐπιφανῶν ἀνδρῶν ἀπερρίφησαν ἐν Δυρραχίῳ μετὰ Κάτωνος.

[4] Γενομένης δὲ τῆς κατὰ Φάρσαλον ἥττης, οὕτως ἔστη τοῖς λογισμοῖς ὁ Κάτων, ὡς εἰ μὲν τεθνήκοι Πομπήϊος, εἰς Ἰταλίαν τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ περαιώσων, αὐτὸς δὲ προσωτάτω τῆς τυραννίδος ἐπὶ φυγῇ βιωσόμενος· εἰ δὲ [5] σῴζοιτο, πάντως ἐκείνῳ διαφυλάξων τὴν δύναμιν. οὕτω δὴ διαβαλὼν εἰς Κέρκυραν, ὅπου τὸ ναυτικὸν ἦν, ἐξίστατο μὲν Κικέρωνι τῆς ἀρχῆς ὡς [6] ὑπατικῷ στρατηγικός, οὐ δεξαμένου δὲ Κικέρωνος, ἀλλ’ ἀπαίροντος εἰς Ἰταλίαν, ἰδὼν τὸν ‹νέον› Πομπήϊον ὑπ’ αὐθαδείας καὶ φρονήματος ἀκαίρου βουλόμενον κολάζειν τοὺς ἀποπλέοντας, πρώτῳ δὲ μέλλοντα τῷ Κικέρωνι προσφέρειν τὰς χεῖρας, ἐνουθέτησεν ἰδίᾳ καὶ κατεπράϋνεν, ὥστε τὸν Κικέρωνα περισῶσαι σαφῶς ἐκ θανάτου, καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἄδειαν παρασχεῖν.

[56] [1] Τεκμαιρόμενος δὲ Πομπήϊον Μᾶγνον εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἢ Λιβύην διεκπεσεῖσθαι καὶ σπεύδων πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, ἀνήχθη μὲν ἔχων ἅπαντας, ἔπλει δὲ πρῶτον ἀπιέναι διδοὺς καὶ ὑπολείπεσθαι τοὺς οὐ προθύμως συστρατευομένους.

[2] ἁψάμενος δὲ Λιβύης καὶ παραπλέων, ἐντυγχάνει Σέξτῳ τῷ νεωτέρῳ τῶν Πομπηΐου παίδων, ἀγγέλλοντι τὴν ἐπ’ Αἰγύπτου τοῦ πατρὸς [3] τελευτήν. πάντες μὲν οὖν βαρέως ἤνεγκαν, οὐδεὶς δὲ μετὰ Πομπήϊον ἠξίου [4] Κάτωνος παρόντος οὐδ’ ἀκούειν ἄλλον ἡγεμόνα. διὸ καὶ Κάτων αἰδούμενος καὶ οἰκτίρων ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς καὶ πίστεως δεδωκότας πεῖραν ἐπὶ ξένης ἐρήμους καὶ ἀπόρους ἀπολιπεῖν, ὑπέστη τε τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ παρῆλθεν εἰς Κυρήνην· ἐδέξαντο γὰρ ἐκεῖνον, ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις ἔμπροσθεν ἀποκλείσαντες [5] Λαβιηνόν. ἐνταῦθα πυνθανόμενος Σκιπίωνα τὸν Πομπηΐου πενθερὸν ὑπ’ Ἰόβα τοῦ βασιλέως ἀνειλῆφθαι, καὶ Οὐᾶρον Ἄττιον, ὃς ἦν ὑπὸ Πομπηΐου Λιβύης ἀποδεδειγμένος ἡγεμών, εἶναι σὺν αὐτοῖς μετὰ δυνάμεως, [6] ἐξώρμησε πεζῇ χειμῶνος ὥρᾳ, πολλοὺς μὲν ὄνους ὕδωρ κομίζοντας συναγαγών, πολλὴν δὲ λείαν ἐλαύνων, ἔτι δ’ ἅρματα καὶ τοὺς καλουμένους Ψύλλους ἐπαγόμενος, οἳ τά τε δήγματα τῶν θηρίων ἰῶνται, τοῖς στόμασιν ἕλκοντες τὸν ἰόν, αὐτά τε τὰ θηρία κατεπᾴδοντες ἀμβλύνουσι καὶ κηλοῦσιν.

[7] ἡμέρας δὲ συνεχῶς †ἑπτὰ τῆς πορείας γενομένης, πρῶτος ἡγήσατο, μήθ’ ἵππῳ μήθ’ ὑποζυγίῳ χρησάμενος· ἐδείπνει δὲ καθήμενος, ἀφ’ ἧς ἡμέρας τὴν κατὰ Φάρσαλον ἧτταν ἔγνω, καὶ τοῦτο τῷ λοιπῷ προσέθηκε [8] πένθει, τὸ μὴ κατακλιθῆναι πλὴν καθεύδων. ἐν δὲ Λιβύῃ διαγαγὼν ... τοῦ χειμῶνος, ἐξήτασε τὴν στρατιάν· ἦσαν δὲ μυρίων ὀλίγον ἀποδέοντες.

[57] [1] Τὰ δὲ πράγματα κακῶς εἶχε τοῖς περὶ Σκιπίωνα καὶ Οὐᾶρον, ἐκ διαφορᾶς καὶ στάσεως ὑποδυομένοις καὶ θεραπεύουσι τὸν Ἰόβαν, οὐκ ἀνεκτὸν ὄντα βαρύτητι φρονήματος καὶ ὄγκῳ διὰ πλοῦτον καὶ δύναμιν· [2] ὅς γε Κάτωνι πρῶτον ἐντυγχάνειν μέλλων, μέσον ἔθηκε τὸν ἑαυτοῦ [3] θρόνον τοῦ Σκιπίωνος καὶ τοῦ Κάτωνος· ὁ μέντοι Κάτων ὡς εἶδεν, ἄρας τὸν ἑαυτοῦ μετέθηκεν ἐπὶ θάτερα, μέσον λαμβάνων τὸν Σκιπίωνα, καίπερ ἐχθρὸν ὄντα καί τι καὶ βιβλίον ἐκδεδωκότα βλασφημίας ἔχον τοῦ [4] Κάτωνος. εἶτα τοῦτο μὲν εἰς οὐδένα τίθενται λόγον, εἰ δὲ Φιλόστρατον [5] ἐν Σικελίᾳ μέσον εἶχε περιπατῶν ἐπὶ τιμῇ φιλοσοφίας, ἐγκαλοῦσι. τότε δ’ οὖν καὶ τὸν Ἰόβαν ἔπαυσε μονονουχὶ σατράπας πεποιημένον ἑαυτοῦ [6] τοὺς περὶ τὸν Σκιπίωνα, κἀκείνους διήλλαξεν. ἀξιούντων δὲ πάντων ἄρχειν αὐτόν, καὶ πρώτων τῶν περὶ Σκιπίωνα καὶ Οὐᾶρον ἐξισταμένων καὶ παραδιδόντων τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, οὐκ ἔφη καταλύσειν τοὺς νόμους περὶ ὧν τῷ καταλύοντι πολεμοῦσιν, οὐδ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀντιστράτηγον ὄντα [7] παρόντος ἀνθυπάτου προτάξειν. ἀνθύπατος γὰρ ὁ Σκιπίων ἀπεδέδεικτο, καὶ θάρσος εἶχον οἱ πολλοὶ διὰ τοὔνομα, κατορθώσειν ἄρχοντος ἐν Λιβύῃ Σκιπίωνος.

[58] [1] Ἐπεὶ μέντοι τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁ Σκιπίων παραλαβὼν εὐθὺς ἐβούλετο ‹τῷ› Ἰόβᾳ χαριζόμενος Ἰτυκαίους ἡβηδὸν ἀποκτεῖναι καὶ κατασκάψαι τὴν πόλιν ὡς τὰ Καίσαρος φρονοῦσαν, οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν ὁ Κάτων, ἀλλὰ μαρτυρόμενος καὶ κεκραγὼς ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ καὶ θεοκλυτῶν, μόλις ἐξείλετο [2] τῆς ὠμότητος αὐτῶν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, καὶ τὰ μὲν αὐτῶν δεηθέντων, τὰ δὲ τοῦ Σκιπίωνος ἀξιοῦντος, ἀνεδέξατο φρουρήσειν τὴν πόλιν, ὡς [3] μήτ’ ἄκουσα μήθ’ ἑκοῦσα Καίσαρι προσγένοιτο. καὶ γὰρ ἦν εἰς ἅπαντα τὸ χωρίον ὠφέλιμον καὶ διαρκὲς τοῖς ἔχουσιν· ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τοῦ Κάτωνος [4] ἐρρώσθη. καὶ γὰρ σῖτον εἰσήγαγεν ὑπερβάλλοντα πλήθει, καὶ κατεσκεύασε τὰ τείχη, πύργους ἐπαιρόμενος καὶ τάφρους ὀχυρὰς καὶ χαρακώματα [5] πρὸ τῆς πόλεως βαλλόμενος. Ἰτυκαίων δὲ τοὺς μὲν ἡβῶντας ἐν τοῖς χαρακώμασιν ἔταξεν οἰκεῖν, τὰ ὅπλα παραδόντας αὐτῷ, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐν τῇ πόλει συνεῖχεν ἰσχυρῶς ἐπιμελόμενος μὴ ἀδικεῖσθαι μηδὲ πάσχειν [6] κακῶς ὑπὸ τῶν Ῥωμαίων. ὅπλα δὲ πολλὰ καὶ χρήματα καὶ σῖτον ἐξέπεμψε τοῖς ἐπὶ στρατοπέδου, καὶ ὅλως εἶχε τοῦ πολέμου τὴν πόλιν ταμιεῖον.

[7] ἃ δὲ Πομπηΐῳ συνεβούλευε πρότερον καὶ τότε Σκιπίωνι, μὴ μάχεσθαι πρὸς ἄνδρα πολεμιστὴν καὶ δεινόν, ἀλλὰ τῷ χρόνῳ χρῆσθαι, πᾶσαν ἀκμὴν ᾗ τυραννὶς ἰσχύει μαραίνοντι, τούτων ὁ Σκιπίων ὑπ’ αὐθαδείας [8] κατεφρόνει· καί ποτε τῷ Κάτωνι δειλίαν ὀνειδίζων ἔγραψεν, εἰ μὴ μόνον αὐτὸς ἀγαπᾷ καθήμενος ἐν πόλει καὶ τείχεσιν, ἀλλὰ μηδ’ ἑτέρους ἐᾷ πρὸς [9] τὸν καιρὸν εὐθαρσῶς χρῆσθαι τοῖς λογισμοῖς. πρὸς ταῦθ’ ὁ Κάτων ἀντέγραψεν, ὡς ἕτοιμός ἐστιν οὓς ἤγαγεν αὐτὸς εἰς Λιβύην ὁπλίτας καὶ ἱππεῖς παραλαβὼν εἰς Ἰταλίαν περαιοῦν καὶ Καίσαρα μεθιστάναι καὶ τρέπειν [10] ἀπ’ ἐκείνων πρὸς αὑτόν. ὡς δὲ καὶ τούτων ὁ Σκιπίων κατεγέλα, πάνυ δῆλος ἦν ἀχθόμενος ὁ Κάτων τῇ παραχωρήσει τῆς ἀρχῆς, ὡς οὔτε τῷ πολέμῳ καλῶς τὸν Σκιπίωνα χρησόμενον, οὔτ’ ἂν παραλόγως εὐτυχήσῃ, [11] μέτριον ἐν τῷ κρατεῖν πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας ἐσόμενον. διὸ καὶ γνώμην εἶχεν ὁ Κάτων καὶ πρὸς τοὺς συνήθεις ἔλεγεν, οὐ χρηστὰς μὲν ἐλπίδας ἔχειν [12] ὑπὲρ τοῦ πολέμου δι’ ἀπειρίαν καὶ θρασύτητα τῶν ἡγεμόνων· εἰ δ’ οὖν εὐτυχία τις γένοιτο καὶ καταλυθείη Καῖσαρ, οὐ μενεῖν ἐν Ῥώμῃ, φεύξεσθαι δὲ τὴν χαλεπότητα καὶ πικρίαν τοῦ Σκιπίωνος, ἤδη τότε δεινὰς καὶ ὑπερηφάνους ποιουμένου κατὰ πολλῶν ἀπειλάς.

[13] Ἀπέβη δὲ μᾶλλον ᾗ προσεδόκα· καὶ περὶ ἑσπέραν βαθεῖαν ἧκέ τις ἀπὸ στρατοπέδου τριταῖος ἀγγέλλων, ὅτι μάχης μεγάλης πρὸς Θάψῳ γενομένης διέφθαρται παντάπασι τὰ πράγματα καὶ κρατεῖ Καῖσαρ τῶν στρατοπέδων, Σκιπίων δὲ καὶ Ἰόβας σὺν ὀλίγοις ἐκπεφεύγασιν, ἡ δ’ ἄλλη δύναμις ἀπόλωλε.

[59] [1] Τούτων προσπεσόντων ἡ μὲν πόλις, οἷον εἰκὸς ἐν νυκτὶ καὶ πολέμῳ, πρὸς τοιοῦτον ἄγγελμα μικροῦ δεῖν ἔκφρων γενομένη μόλις ἑαυτὴν ἐντὸς [2] τειχῶν κατεῖχεν· ὁ δὲ Κάτων προελθὼν τότε μέν, ὡς ἑκάστοις ἀπήντα διαθέουσι καὶ βοῶσιν, ἐπιλαμβανόμενος καὶ παραμυθούμενος ἀφῄρει τοῦ δέους τὸ περιθαμβὲς καὶ ταραχῶδες, ὡς οὐ τηλικούτων ἴσως γεγονότων, [3] ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ μεῖζον αἰρομένων τῷ λόγῳ, καὶ κατέστησε τὸν θόρυβον· ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τοὺς τριακοσίους, οἷς ἐχρῆτο βουλῇ, Ῥωμαίους μὲν ὄντας, ἐν δὲ Λιβύῃ πραγματευομένους ἀπ’ ἐμπορίας καὶ δανεισμῶν, εἰς ἱερὸν Διὸς ἐκήρυττε συνιέναι, καὶ ὅσοι παρῆσαν ἀπὸ συγκλήτου καὶ παῖδας αὐτῶν.

[4] ἔτι δὲ συλλεγομένων ἐκείνων, προσελθὼν ἀθορύβως καὶ μετ’ εὐσταθείας, ὥσπερ οὐδενὸς καινοῦ γεγονότος, βιβλίον ἔχων ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν ἀνεγίνωσκεν· ἦν δ’ ἀναγραφὴ τῶν πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ὀργάνων, ὅπλων, σίτου, [5] τόξων, πλοίων. ἐπεὶ δὲ συνῆλθον, ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ τῶν τριακοσίων, καὶ διελθὼν πολὺν ἔπαινον τῆς προθυμίας αὐτῶν καὶ τῆς πίστεως, ἣν ἐπεδείξαντο καὶ χρήμασι καὶ σώμασι καὶ βουλαῖς ὠφελιμώτατοι γενόμενοι, παρεκάλει μὴ διαλυθῆναι ταῖς ἐλπίσιν, ἕκαστον αὑτῷ φυγὴν ἰδίαν ἢ ἀπόδρασίν [6] τινα ποριζόμενον. ἂν γὰρ ἐν ταὐτῷ συμμένωσι, καὶ πολεμούντων [7] ἧττον καταφρονήσειν Καίσαρα καὶ φείσεσθαι μᾶλλον δεομένων. βουλεύεσθαι δ’ ἐκέλευεν αὐτοὺς ὑπὲρ αὑτῶν, οὐδέτερα μεμψόμενος, ἀλλ’ εἰ μὲν τρέποιντο τῇ γνώμῃ πρὸς τὴν τύχην, τῆς ἀνάγκης θησόμενος τὴν μεταβολήν· [8] ἱσταμένων δὲ πρὸς τὰ δεινὰ καὶ δεχομένων τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας κίνδυνον, οὐκ ἐπαινεσόμενος μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ θαυμασόμενος τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ παρέξων ἑαυτὸν ἄρχοντα καὶ συναγωνιζόμενον, ἄχρι οὗ τὴν ἐσχάτην τύχην τῆς πατρίδος ἐξελέγξωσιν, ἣν οὐκ Ἰτύκην οὐδ’ Ἀδρούμητον οὖσαν, ἀλλὰ Ῥώμην, πολλάκις ἐκ χαλεπωτέρων σφαλμάτων ὑπὸ μεγέθους [9] ἀναφέρεσθαι. πολλῶν δ’ αὐτοῖς εἰς σωτηρίαν καὶ ἀσφάλειαν ὑποκειμένων, καὶ μεγίστου ‹τοῦ› πρὸς ἄνδρα πολεμεῖν ἐπὶ πολλὰ τοῖς καιροῖς ἀνθελκόμενον, Ἰβηρίας τε πρὸς Πομπήϊον ἀφεστώσης τὸν νέον, αὐτῆς τε τῆς Ῥώμης οὔπω δι’ ἀήθειαν παντάπασι δεδεγμένης τὸν χαλινόν, ἀλλ’ ἀναξιοπαθούσης [10] καὶ συνεξανισταμένης πρὸς πᾶσαν μεταβολήν, οὐδὲ τὸν κίνδυνον εἶναι φευκτέον, ἀλλ’ ἔχειν διδάσκαλον τὸν πολέμιον, ἀφειδοῦντα τῆς ψυχῆς ἐπὶ ταῖς μεγίσταις ἀδικίαις, οὐχ ὥσπερ ἑαυτοῖς εἰς τὸν εὐτυχέστατον βίον κατορθοῦσιν, ἢ πταίουσιν εἰς τὸν εὐκλεέστατον θάνατον, τὴν [11] ἀδηλότητα τοῦ πολέμου τελευτᾶν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐκείνους γε δεῖν ἔφη βουλεύεσθαι καθ’ ἑαυτούς, συνευχόμενος ἀντὶ τῆς πρόσθεν ἀρετῆς καὶ προθυμίας αὐτοῖς τὰ δόξαντα συνενεγκεῖν.

[60] [1] Τοιαῦτα τοῦ Κάτωνος εἰπόντος, ἦσαν μὲν οἱ καὶ τοῖς λόγοις ἀγόμενοι πρὸς τὸ θαρρεῖν, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι πρὸς τὸ ἀδεὲς καὶ γενναῖον αὐτοῦ καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ὀλίγου δεῖν ἐκλαθόμενοι τῶν παρόντων, ὡς μόνον ὄντα τοῦτον ἀήττητον ἡγεμόνα καὶ πάσης κρείττονα τύχης, ἐδέοντο χρῆσθαι [2] καὶ σώμασιν αὐτῶν καὶ χρήμασι καὶ ὅπλοις, ὅπως αὐτὸς ἔγνωκε· κρεῖττον γὰρ ἐκείνῳ πειθομένους ἀποθανεῖν ἢ σῴζεσθαι προδόντας ἀρετὴν τοσαύτην.

[3] εἰπόντος δέ τινος ὡς χρὴ ψηφίσασθαι δούλοις ἐλευθερίαν, καὶ τῶν πλείστων συνεπαινεσάντων, οὐκ ἔφη τοῦτο ποιήσειν ὁ Κάτων· οὐ γὰρ εἶναι νόμιμον οὐδὲ δίκαιον· αὐτῶν μέντοι τῶν δεσποτῶν ἀφιέντων τοὺς [4] ἐν ἡλικίᾳ δέχεσθαι. γενομένων δὲ πολλῶν ὑποσχέσεων, κελεύσας ἀπογράφεσθαι τὸν βουλόμενον ἀπηλλάττετο.

[5] Καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ἧκεν αὐτῷ γράμματα παρ’ Ἰόβα καὶ Σκιπίωνος, Ἰόβα μὲν ἐν ὄρει κεκρυμμένου μετ’ ὀλίγων ἐρωτῶντος, ὅ τι πράττειν δέδοκται τῷ Κάτωνι· καὶ γὰρ περιμενεῖν Ἰτύκην ἐκλιπόντα, καὶ πολιορκουμένῳ μετὰ στρατιᾶς ἐπιβοηθήσειν, Σκιπίωνος δὲ πρὸς ἄκρᾳ τινὶ ναυλοχοῦντος οὐ πόρρω τῆς Ἰτύκης ἐπὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς καραδοκοῦντος.

[61] [1] Ἔδοξεν οὖν τῷ Κάτωνι τοὺς γραμματοφόρους ἐπισχεῖν, ἄχρι οὗ [2] βεβαιώσῃ τὰ παρὰ τῶν τριακοσίων. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἀπὸ βουλῆς ἦσαν πρόθυμοι καὶ τοὺς οἰκέτας εὐθὺς ἀφιέντες ἐλευθέρους ὥπλιζον· τῶν δὲ τριακοσίων, ἅτε δὴ πλωτικῶν καὶ δανειστικῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐν τοῖς οἰκέταις τῆς οὐσίας ἐχόντων, οὐ πολὺν οἱ Κάτωνος λόγοι χρόνον ἐμμείναντες [3] ἐξερρύησαν· καθάπερ ‹γὰρ› τῶν σωμάτων τὰ μ[εν]ανὰ δέχεται ῥᾳδίως τὴν θερμότητα, καὶ πάλιν μεθίησι τοῦ πυρὸς ἀπαχθέντος ψυχούμενα, παραπλησίως ἐκείνους ὁ μὲν Κάτων ὁρώμενος ἀνεζωπύρει καὶ διεθέρμαινεν, αὐτοὺς δ’ ἑαυτοῖς λόγον διδόντας ὁ Καίσαρος φόβος ἐξέκρουσε [4] τῆς πρὸς Κάτωνα καὶ τὸ καλὸν αἰδοῦς. τίνες γὰρ ἔφασαν ὄντες [καὶ] τίνι τὸ προστασσόμενον ποιεῖν ἀπαξιοῦμεν; οὐχὶ Καῖσαρ μὲν οὗτος, εἰς ὃν ἡ Ῥωμαίων ἅπασα περιέστηκεν ἰσχύς; ἡμῶν δὲ Σκιπίων [5] οὐδεὶς οὐδὲ Πομπήϊος οὐδὲ Κάτων. ἀλλ’ ἐν οἷς καιροῖς πάντες ἄνθρωποι ταπεινότερα τῶν προσηκόντων διὰ φόβον φρονοῦσιν, ἐν τούτοις ἡμεῖς ὑπερμαχοῦντες τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἐλευθερίας πολεμοῦμεν ἐξ Ἰτύκης, ᾧ [6] Κάτων μετὰ Πομπηΐου Μάγνου φεύγων ὑφεῖτο τῆς Ἰταλίας; καὶ δούλους ἐλευθεροῦμεν κατὰ Καίσαρος, οἷς αὐτοῖς ἐλευθερίας ὅσον ἂν ἐκεῖνος θέλῃ μέτεστιν; ἀλλ’ ἔτι νῦν ὦ μοχθηροὶ γνόντες ἑαυτοὺς παραιτώμεθα [7] τὸν κρατοῦντα καὶ πέμψωμεν τοὺς δεησομένους. ταῦθ’ οἱ μετριώτατοι τῶν τριακοσίων παρῄνουν· οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι τοῖς συγκλητικοῖς ἐπεβούλευον, ὡς εἰ τούτους συλλάβοιεν ἱλασόμενοι τὴν πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὀργὴν τοῦ Καίσαρος.

[62] [1] Ὁ δὲ Κάτων ὑπονοῶν τὴν μεταβολὴν οὐκ ἤλεγχε, τῷ μέντοι Σκιπίωνι καὶ τῷ Ἰόβᾳ γράψας ἀπέχεσθαι τῆς Ἰτύκης ἀπιστίᾳ τῶν τριακοσίων, ἐξέπεμψε τοὺς γραμματοφόρους.

[2] Τῶν δ’ ἱππέων οἱ διαφυγόντες ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης, ἀριθμὸς οὐκ εὐκαταφρόνητος, προσελάσαντες τῇ Ἰτύκῃ πέμπουσι πρὸς τὸν Κάτωνα τρεῖς ἄνδρας, [3] οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν γνώμην ἀπὸ πάντων ἔχοντας. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἀπιέναι πρὸς Ἰόβαν, οἱ δὲ τῷ Κάτωνι προσχωρεῖν ὥρμηντο, τοὺς δὲ καὶ δέος εἶχεν εἰς Ἰτύκην [4] παριέναι. ταῦθ’ ὁ Κάτων ἀκούσας, τοῖς μὲν τριακοσίοις ἐκέλευσε προσέχειν Μᾶρκον Ῥούβριον, ἀτρέμα τὰς ἀπογραφὰς τῶν ἐλευθερούντων δεχόμενον [5] καὶ μὴ προσβιαζόμενον· αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς συγκλητικοὺς ἀναλαβὼν προῆλθεν ἔξω τῆς Ἰτύκης καὶ τοῖς ἱππάρχοις ἐνέτυχε, δεόμενος μὴ προέσθαι Ῥωμαίων ἄνδρας ἀπὸ βουλῆς τοσούτους, μηδ’ Ἰόβαν ἑλέσθαι στρατηγὸν ἀντὶ Κάτωνος, ἀλλὰ σῴζεσθαι κοινῇ καὶ σῴζειν, παρελθόντας εἰς πόλιν οὔτε κατ’ ἄκρας ἁλώσιμον, εἰς ἔτη πάμπολλα σῖτον καὶ τὴν [6] ἄλλην παρασκευὴν ἔχουσαν. ταῦτα δὲ καὶ τῶν συγκλητικῶν δεομένων καὶ δακρυόντων, οἱ μὲν ἵππαρχοι διελέγοντο τοῖς ἱππεῦσιν, ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἐπὶ χώματός τινος καθίσας μετὰ τῶν συγκλητικῶν ἀνέμενε τὰς ἀποκρίσεις.

[63] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ παρῆν ὁ Ῥούβριος, σὺν ὀργῇ κατηγορῶν τῶν τριακοσίων ἀκοσμίαν πολλὴν καὶ θόρυβον, ὡς ἀφισταμένων καὶ διαταραττόντων [2] τὴν πόλιν. ἐφ’ οἷς οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι παντάπασιν ἀπογνόντες ἑαυτῶν εἰς δάκρυα καὶ ὀδυρμοὺς ἐξέπεσον, ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἐκείνους τε θαρσύνειν [3] ἐπειρᾶτο, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς τριακοσίους ἔπεμψεν ἀναμεῖναι κελεύων. οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν ἱππέων ἧκον οὐ μέτρια προστάττοντες· ἔφασαν γὰρ οὔτ’ Ἰόβα δεῖσθαι μισθοδοτοῦντος, οὔτε Καίσαρα φοβεῖσθαι Κάτωνος αὐτῶν ἄρχοντος· [4] Ἰτυκαίοις δέ, Φοίνιξιν ἀνθρώποις εὐμεταβόλοις, συγκαθείργνυσθαι δεινὸν εἶναι· καὶ γὰρ εἰ νῦν ἀτρεμοῦσιν, ὅταν Καῖσαρ ἐπίῃ συνεπιθήσεσθαι καὶ [5] προδώσειν. εἴπερ οὖν δεῖταί τις αὐτῶν συμπολεμούντων καὶ συμπαρόντων, ἐκβαλὼν ἅπαντας Ἰτυκαίους ἢ διαφθείρας, οὕτως εἰς πόλιν καθαρὰν πολεμίων [6] καὶ βαρβάρων καλείτω. ταῦθ’ ὁ Κάτων ἄγρια μὲν δεινῶς ἡγεῖτο καὶ βάρβαρα, πρᾴως δ’ ἀπεκρίνατο βουλεύσεσθαι μετὰ τῶν τριακοσίων.

[7] καὶ παρελθὼν αὖθις εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἐνετύγχανε τοῖς ἀνδράσιν οὐκέτι σκήψεις οὐδὲ παραγωγὰς πλασσομένοις ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς πρὸς αὐτόν, ἄντικρυς δὲ χαλεπαίνουσιν, εἴ τις αὐτοὺς βιάζοιτο πολεμεῖν Καίσαρι μὴ δυναμένους [8] μηδὲ βουλομένους. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ παρεφθέγγοντο περὶ τῶν συγκλητικῶν, ὡς καθεκτέον ἐν τῇ πόλει Καίσαρος ‹προσι›όντος· ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ὡς [9] οὐκ ἀκούσας ὁ Κάτων παρῆκε· καὶ γὰρ ἦν ὑποκωφότερος. ὡς δέ τις αὐτῷ προσελθὼν ἀπήγγειλε τοὺς [μὲν] ἱππεῖς ἀπιέναι, φοβηθεὶς μὴ παντάπασιν οἱ τριακόσιοι κατὰ τῶν συγκλητικῶν ἀπονοηθῶσιν, ἐβάδιζε μετὰ τῶν [10] φίλων ἐξαναστάς. καὶ θεασάμενος ἤδη προκεχωρηκότας, ἵππον λαβὼν ἐδίωκε πρὸς αὐτούς· οἱ δ’ ἰδόντες ἄσμενοι προσελαύνοντα καὶ ἐδέξαντο [11] καὶ παρεκάλουν σῴζεσθαι μετ’ αὐτῶν. τότε καὶ δακρῦσαι τὸν Κάτωνά φασιν, ὑπὲρ τῶν συγκλητικῶν δεόμενον καὶ προτείνοντα τὰς χεῖρας, ἐνίων δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἵππους ἀναστρέφοντα καὶ τῶν ὅπλων ἀντιλαμβανόμενον, μέχρι οὗ κατειργάσατο τὴν γοῦν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἐπιμείναντας ἀσφαλῆ τοῖς ἀνδράσι φυγὴν παρασχεῖν.

[64] [1] Ὡς οὖν ἔχων αὐτοὺς ἀφίκετο καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἐπὶ τὰς πύλας κατέστησε, τοῖς δὲ τὴν ἄκραν φυλάττειν παρέδωκεν, ἔδεισαν οἱ τριακόσιοι μὴ δίκην δῶσι τῆς μεταβολῆς, καὶ πρὸς τὸν Κάτωνα πέμποντες ἐδέοντο πάντως [2] ἀφικέσθαι πρὸς αὑτούς· οἱ δὲ συγκλητικοὶ περιχυθέντες οὐκ εἴων οὐδ’ ἔφασαν προήσεσθαι τὸν κηδεμόνα καὶ σωτῆρα τοῖς ἀπίστοις καὶ προδόταις.

[3] σαφεστάτη γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν αἴσθησις τότε παρέστη καὶ πόθος καὶ θαῦμα τῆς τοῦ Κάτωνος ἀρετῆς πᾶσιν ὁμαλῶς τοῖς ἐν τῇ Ἰτύκῃ γενομένοις, ὡς οὐδὲν ἄρα κίβδηλον οὐδ’ ἀπατηλὸν ‹ἐν›εμέμεικτο τοῖς πραττομένοις ὑπ’ [4] αὐτοῦ. πάλαι δ’ ἅνθρωπος ἑαυτὸν ἐγνωκὼς ἀνελεῖν, δεινοὺς πόνους ἐπόνει καὶ φροντίδας καὶ ὠδῖνας εἶχεν ὑπὲρ ἄλλων, ὅπως εἰς ἀσφαλὲς καταστήσας ἅπαντας ἀπαλλάξαιτο τοῦ ζῆν· οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἄδηλος ἡ πρὸς τὸν θάνατον [5] αὐτοῦ φορά, καίπερ οὐ φάσκοντος. ὑπήκουσεν οὖν τότε τοῖς τριακοσίοις, παραμυθησάμενος τοὺς συγκλητικούς, καὶ μόνος ἧκε πρὸς αὐτούς, χάριν ἔχειν ὁμολογοῦντας καὶ δεομένους τὰ μὲν ἄλλα χρῆσθαι καὶ πιστεύειν, εἰ δὲ Κάτωνες οὐκ εἰσὶν οὐδὲ τὸ Κάτωνος φρόνημα χωροῦσιν, οἰκτίρειν τὴν [6] ἀσθένειαν αὐτῶν· ἐγνωκότες δ’ οὖν Καίσαρος δεῖσθαι καὶ πέμπειν πρὸς αὐτόν, ὑπὲρ ἐκείνου μάλιστα καὶ πρώτου ποιήσεσθαι δέησιν· εἰ δὲ μὴ πείθοιεν, οὐδ’ αὐτοῖς διδομένην δέξεσθαι τὴν χάριν, ἀλλ’ ἄχρι ἂν ἐμπνέωσι [7] πολεμήσειν ὑπὲρ ἐκείνου. πρὸς ταῦθ’ ὁ Κάτων ἐπαινέσας τὴν εὔνοιαν ἔφη χρῆναι τῆς αὐτῶν σωτηρίας ἕνεκα πέμπειν κατὰ τάχος, ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ δὲ μὴ δεῖσθαι· κεκρατημένων γὰρ εἶναι δέησιν, καὶ ἀδικούντων παραίτησιν· [8] αὐτὸς δ’ οὐ μόνον ἀήττητος γεγονέναι παρὰ πάντα τὸν βίον, ἀλλὰ καὶ νικᾶν ἐφ’ ὅσον ἐβούλετο καὶ κρατεῖν Καίσαρος τοῖς καλοῖς καὶ δικαίοις· [9] ἐκεῖνον δ’ εἶναι τὸν ἑαλωκότα καὶ νενικημένον· ἃ γὰρ ἠρνεῖτο πράττων κατὰ τῆς πατρίδος πάλαι, νῦν ἐξηλέγχθαι καὶ πεφωρᾶσθαι.

[65] [1] Τοιαῦτα διαλεχθεὶς τοῖς τριακοσίοις ἀπηλλάττετο, καὶ πυθόμενος Καίσαρα πᾶσαν ἄγοντα τὴν στρατιὰν ἤδη καθ’ ὁδὸν εἶναι, παπαὶ [2] εἶπεν, ὡς ἐπ’ ἄνδρας ἡμᾶς ἐκεῖνος, καὶ τραπόμενος πρὸς τοὺς συγκλητικοὺς ἐκέλευε μὴ μέλλειν, ἀλλ’ ἕως παραμένουσιν οἱ ἱππεῖς σῴζεσθαι.

[3] καὶ τὰς μὲν ἄλλας ἀπέκλεισε θύρας, μιᾷ δὲ τῇ πρὸς θάλασσαν φερούσῃ ... τά τε πλοῖα τοῖς ὑφ’ ἑαυτὸν διένειμε καὶ τάξεως ἐπεμελεῖτο, παύων τὰς ἀδικίας καὶ διαλύων τοὺς θορύβους, καὶ τοὺς ἀπόρως ἔχοντας [4] ἐφοδιάζων. ἐπεὶ δὲ Μᾶρκος Ὀκτάβιος ἄγων δύο τάγματα πλησίον κατεστρατοπέδευσε καὶ πέμπων ἠξίου τὸν Κάτωνα περὶ ἀρχῆς διορίσασθαι [5] πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐκείνῳ μὲν οὐθὲν ἀπεκρίνατο, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς φίλους εἶπεν· εἶτα θαυμάζομεν ὅπως ἀπόλωλε τὰ πράγματα, τὴν φιλαρχίαν ὁρῶντες [6] ἡμῖν ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ ὀλέθρῳ βεβηκόσι παραμένουσαν; ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἀκούσας ἀπιόντας ἤδη φέρειν καὶ ἄγειν τὰ τῶν Ἰτυκαίων ὥσπερ λάφυρα, δρόμῳ συνέτεινε πρὸς αὐτούς, καὶ τοῖς πρώτοις ἐντυχὼν ἀφῃρεῖτο, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἕκαστος ἔφθανε ῥίπτων καὶ κατατιθέμενος, πάντες [7] δ’ ὑπ’ αἰσχύνης σιωπῇ καὶ κάτω βλέποντες ἀπῄεσαν. ὁ δὲ Κάτων εἰς τὴν πόλιν τοὺς Ἰτυκαίους συναγαγών, ἐδεῖτο περὶ τῶν τριακοσίων, μὴ παροξῦναι Καίσαρα κατ’ αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ κοινῇ τὴν σωτηρίαν πράττειν [8] ἀλλήλοις. εἶτα πάλιν τραπόμενος πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν, ἐπεσκόπει τοὺς ἐμβαίνοντας, καὶ τῶν φίλων καὶ ξένων ὅσους ἔπεισεν ἠσπάζετο καὶ [9] προὔπεμπε. τὸν δ’ υἱὸν οὐκ ἔπεισε λαβεῖν πλοῖον, οὐδ’ ᾤετο δεῖν ἀποτρέπειν [10] περιεχόμενον τοῦ πατρός. ἦν δέ τις Στατύλλιος, ἀνὴρ τῇ μὲν ἡλικίᾳ νέος, ἰσχυρὸς δὲ τῇ γνώμῃ βουλόμενος εἶναι καὶ τοῦ Κάτωνος ἀπομιμεῖσθαι [11] τὴν ἀπάθειαν. τοῦτον ἠξίου πλεῖν· καὶ γὰρ ἦν καταφανὴς μισοκαῖσαρ· ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἤθελεν, Ἀπολλωνίδῃ τῷ Στωϊκῷ καὶ Δημητρίῳ τῷ Περιπατητικῷ προσβλέψας ὁ Κάτων, ὑμέτερον εἶπεν ἔργον οἰδοῦντα τοῦτον [12] μαλάξαι καὶ καταρτίσαι πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον. αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς λοιποὺς συνεκπέμπων καὶ χρηματίζων τοῖς δεομένοις, τήν τε νύκτα διέτριβε περὶ ταῦτα καὶ τῆς ἐπιούσης ἡμέρας τὸ πλεῖστον μέρος.

[66] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Λεύκιος Καῖσαρ, οἰκεῖος μὲν ὢν Καίσαρος ἐκείνου, μέλλων δὲ πρεσβεύειν ὑπὲρ τῶν τριακοσίων, παρεκάλει τὸν Κάτωνα λόγον αὐτῷ συνυποθέσθαι πιθανόν, ᾧ χρήσεται περὶ ἐκείνων, ὑπὲρ σοῦ μὲν γὰρ αὐτοῦ καὶ χειρῶν ἐμοὶ καλὸν ἅψασθαι καὶ γόνασι προσπεσεῖν Καίσαρος, [2] οὐκ εἴα ταῦτα ποιεῖν ὁ Κάτων αὐτόν. ἐμοὶ γὰρ εἶπεν εἰ σῴζεσθαι χάριτι Καίσαρος ἐβουλόμην, αὐτῷ βαδιστέον ἦν πρὸς ἐκεῖνον μόνον. οὐ βούλομαι δὲ τῷ τυράννῳ χάριν ἔχειν ὑπὲρ ὧν παρανομεῖ· παρανομεῖ δὲ σῴζων ὡς κύριος, ὧν αὐτῷ δεσπόζειν οὐδὲν προσῆκεν. ὅπως μέντοι παραιτήσῃ [3] τοὺς τριακοσίους, κοινῇ σκοπῶμεν εἰ βούλει. γενόμενος δὲ πρὸς τούτῳ μετὰ τοῦ Λευκίου, τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῷ συνέστησε καὶ τοὺς ἑταίρους [4] ἀπιόντι· καὶ προπέμψας ἐκεῖνον καὶ δεξιωσάμενος ἐπανῆλθεν οἴκαδε, καὶ τὸν υἱὸν καὶ τοὺς φίλους συναγαγὼν ἄλλα τε πολλὰ διελέχθη, καὶ πολιτείας [5] ἀπεῖπεν ἅψασθαι τῷ μειρακίῳ· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀξίως Κάτωνος οὐκέτι τὰ πράγματα δέξασθαι, τὸ δ’ ἄλλως αἰσχρὸν εἶναι.

[6] Καὶ περὶ ἑσπέραν ἤδη τρέπεται πρὸς τὸ βαλανεῖον. ἐν δὲ τῷ λούεσθαι τοῦ Στατυλλίου μνησθεὶς καὶ μέγα φθεγξάμενος, ἐξέπεμψας εἶπεν ὦ Ἀπολλωνίδη τὸν Στατύλλιον, ἀπὸ τοῦ φρονήματος ἐκείνου καθελών; [7] καὶ πέπλευκεν ὁ ἀνὴρ μηδ’ ἀσπασάμενος ἡμᾶς; πόθεν; εἶπεν ὁ Ἀπολλωνίδης, καίτοι πολλὰ διελέχθημεν· ἀλλ’ ὑψηλός ἐστι καὶ ἄτρεπτος [8] καὶ μένειν φησὶ καὶ πράττειν ὅ τι ἂν σὺ πράττῃς. πρὸς ταῦτά φασι τὸν Κάτωνα μειδιᾶσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν· ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν αὐτίκα φανεῖται.

[67] [1] Λουσάμενος δὲ μετὰ πολλῶν ἐδείπνει καθήμενος, ὥσπερ εἰώθει μετὰ τὴν μάχην· οὐ γὰρ κατεκλίθη πλὴν καθεύδων· συνεδείπνουν δὲ [2] πάντες οἱ ἑταῖροι καὶ τῶν Ἰτυκαίων οἱ ἄρχοντες. καὶ μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ὁ πότος ἔσχε μοῦσαν πολλὴν καὶ χάριν, ἄλλων ἐπ’ ἄλλοις λόγων φιλοσόφων κυκλούντων, ἄχρι οὗ περιῆλθεν ἡ ζήτησις εἰς ταῦτα δὴ τὰ παράδοξα καλούμενα τῶν Στωϊκῶν, τὸ μόνον εἶναι τὸν ἀγαθὸν ἐλεύθερον, δούλους [3] δὲ τοὺς φαύλους ἅπαντας. ἐνταῦθα δή, ὡς εἰκός, ἀντιβάντος τοῦ Περιπατητικοῦ, σφοδρὸς ἐμπεσὼν ὁ Κάτων, καὶ τόνον προσθεὶς καὶ τραχύτητα φωνῆς, ἀπέτεινε πορρωτάτω τὸν λόγον, ἀγῶνι θαυμαστῷ χρησάμενος, ὥστε μηδένα λαθεῖν ὅτι τῷ βίῳ πέρας ἔγνωκεν ἐπιθεὶς ἀπαλλάττεσθαι [4] τῶν παρόντων. διὸ καὶ μετὰ τὸν λόγον σιωπῆς καὶ κατηφείας γενομένης ἐν πᾶσιν, ἀναλαμβάνων αὐτοὺς καὶ ἀπάγων τῆς ὑποψίας ὁ Κάτων αὖθις ὑπὲρ τῶν παρόντων ἐνέβαλλεν ἐρωτήματα καὶ φροντίδας, ὡς δεδιὼς μὲν ὑπὲρ τῶν πλεόντων, δεδιὼς δ’ ὑπὲρ τῶν ὁδευόντων ἐρημίαν ἄνυδρον καὶ βάρβαρον.

[68] [1] Οὕτω δὲ διαλύσας τὸ σύνδειπνον, καὶ περιπατήσας μετὰ τῶν φίλων τὸν συνήθη μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον περίπατον, καὶ τοῖς ἄρχουσι τῶν φυλάκων ἃ καιρὸς ἦν προστάξας, ἀπιὼν εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον ἤδη τόν τε παῖδα καὶ τῶν φίλων ἕκαστον μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον εἰώθει προσαγαγόμενος καὶ φιλοφρονηθείς, [2] πάλιν ὑποψίαν παρέσχε τοῦ μέλλοντος. εἰσελθὼν δὲ καὶ κατακλιθεὶς ἔλαβεν εἰς χεῖρας τῶν Πλάτωνος διαλόγων τὸν περὶ ψυχῆς, καὶ διελθὼν τοῦ βιβλίου τὸ πλεῖστον καὶ ἀναβλέψας ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς ὡς οὐκ εἶδε κρεμάμενον τὸ ξίφος (ὑφῄρητο γὰρ ὁ παῖς ἔτι δειπνοῦντος αὐτοῦ), καλέσας [3] οἰκέτην ἠρώτησεν, ὅστις λάβοι τὸ ἐγχειρίδιον. σιωπῶντος δ’ ἐκείνου πάλιν ἦν πρὸς τῷ βιβλίῳ, καὶ μικρὸν διαλιπών, ὥσπερ οὐ σπεύδων οὐδ’ [4] ἐπειγόμενος, ἄλλως δὲ τὸ ξίφος ἐπιζητῶν, ἐκέλευσε κομίσαι. διατριβῆς δὲ γινομένης καὶ μηδενὸς κομίζοντος, ἐξαναγνοὺς τὸ βιβλίον αὖθις ἐκάλει καθ’ ἕνα τῶν οἰκετῶν, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐνέτεινε τὴν φωνὴν τὸ ξίφος ἀπαιτῶν· [5] ἑνὸς δὲ καὶ πὺξ τὸ στόμα πατάξας ᾕμαξε τὴν ἑαυτοῦ χεῖρα, χαλεπαίνων καὶ βοῶν ἤδη μέγα, παραδίδοσθαι τῷ πολεμίῳ γυμνὸς ὑπὸ τοῦ παιδὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν, ἄχρι οὗ κλαίων ὁ υἱὸς εἰσέδραμε μετὰ τῶν φίλων [6] καὶ περιπεσὼν ὠδύρετο καὶ καθικέτευεν. ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἐξαναστὰς ἐνέβλεψέ τε δεινὸν καὶ πότ’ εἶπεν ἐγὼ καὶ ποῦ λέληθα παρανοίας ἡλωκώς, ὅτι διδάσκει μέν ‹μ’› οὐδεὶς οὐδὲ μεταπείθει περὶ ὧν δοκῶ κακῶς βεβουλεῦσθαι, κωλύομαι δὲ χρῆσθαι τοῖς ἐμαυτοῦ λογισμοῖς καὶ παροπλίζομαι; [7] τί δ’ οὐχὶ καὶ συνδεῖς ὦ γενναῖε τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἀποστρέφεις, [8] μέχρι ἂν ἐλθὼν Καῖσαρ εὕρῃ με μηδ’ ἀμύνασθαι δυνάμενον; οὐ γὰρ ἐπ’ ἐμαυτόν γε δέομαι ξίφους, ὅπου καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα βραχὺν χρόνον ἐπισχόντα καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἅπαξ πατάξαντα πρὸς τὸν τοῖχον ἀποθανεῖν ἔνεστι.

[69] [1] Ταῦτα λέγοντος αὐτοῦ τὸ μὲν μειράκιον ἐξῆλθε μετὰ κλαυθμοῦ καὶ πάντες οἱ λοιποί, τῷ δὲ Δημητρίῳ καὶ τῷ Ἀπολλωνίδῃ μόνοις ὑπολειφθεῖσι [2] πρᾳότερον ἤδη λαλῶν, ἦ που καὶ ὑμῖν ἔφη δέδοκται βίᾳ κατέχειν ἄνδρα τοσοῦτον ἡλικίας ἐν τῷ βίῳ, καὶ καθημένους αὐτοῦ σιωπῇ παραφυλάσσειν, ἢ λόγον ἥκετε κομίζοντες, ὡς οὐ δεινὸν οὐδ’ αἰσχρόν ἐστιν ἀποροῦντα σωτηρίας ἑτέρας Κάτωνα τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ πολεμίου [3] περιμένειν; τί οὖν οὐ λέγετε πείθοντες ἡμᾶς ταῦτα καὶ μεταδιδάσκοντες, ἵνα τὰς προτέρας δόξας ἐκείνας καὶ λόγους οἷς συμβεβιώκαμεν ἐκβαλόντες, [4] καὶ γενόμενοι διὰ Καίσαρα σοφώτεροι, μείζονα χάριν εἰδῶμεν αὐτῷ; καίτοι βεβούλευμαι μὲν οὐθὲν ἔγωγε περὶ ἐμαυτοῦ, δεῖ δέ με βουλευσάμενον [5] εἶναι κύριον οἷς ἔγνωκα χρῆσθαι. βουλεύσομαι δὲ τρόπον τινὰ μεθ’ ὑμῶν, βουλευόμενος μετὰ τῶν λόγων οἷς καὶ ὑμεῖς φιλ[οσοφ]εῖτε χρῆσθαι. θαρροῦντες οὖν ἄπιτε καὶ κελεύετε τὸν υἱόν, ἃ μὴ δύναται τὸν πατέρα πείθειν, μὴ βιάζεσθαι.

[70] [1] Πρὸς ταῦτα μηθὲν ἀντειπόντες οἱ περὶ τὸν Δημήτριον, ἀλλὰ δακρύσαντες, ὑπεξῆλθον. εἰσπέμπεται δὲ διὰ παιδίου μικροῦ τὸ ἐγχειρίδιον, [2] καὶ λαβὼν ἐσπάσατο καὶ κατενόησεν. ὡς δ’ εἶδεν ἑστῶτα τὸν ἀθέρα καὶ τὴν ἀκμὴν διαμένουσαν, εἰπὼν νῦν ἐμός εἰμι, τὸ μὲν ξίφος ἔθηκε, τὸ δὲ βιβλίον αὖθις ἀνεγίνωσκε, καὶ λέγεται δὶς ὅλον διεξελθεῖν.

[3] Εἶτα κοιμηθεὶς ὕπνον βαθύν, ὥστε τοὺς ἐκτὸς αἰσθέσθαι, περὶ μέσας νύκτας ἐκάλει τῶν ἀπελευθέρων Κλεάνθην τὸν ἰατρὸν καὶ Βούταν, ᾧ [4] μάλιστα πρὸς τὰς πολιτικὰς πράξεις ἐχρῆτο. καὶ τοῦτον μὲν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ἔπεμψεν, ὅπως σκεψάμενος, εἰ πάντες ἀνηγμένοι τυγχάνουσι, φράσοι πρὸς αὐτόν· τῷ δ’ ἰατρῷ τὴν χεῖρα φλεγμαίνουσαν ὑπὸ τῆς πληγῆς ἣν ἔπληξε τὸν οἰκέτην ἐπιδῆσαι παρέσχε· καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐποίησεν ἡδίους ἅπαντας, ὡς [5] ζωτικῶς ἔχοντος αὐτοῦ. μετ’ ὀλίγον δὲ παρῆν ὁ Βούτας, ἀπαγγέλλων τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἀνῆχθαι, Κράσσον δὲ λείπεσθαι ὑπ’ ἀσχολίας τινός, ὅσον δ’ οὔπω καὶ τοῦτον ἐμβαίνειν, πολὺν δὲ χειμῶνα καὶ μέγα πνεῦμα [6] κατέχειν τὴν θάλασσαν. τοῦτ’ ἀκούσας ὁ Κάτων ἐστέναξεν οἴκτῳ τῶν πλεόντων, καὶ πάλιν ἔπεμψε τὸν Βούταν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν, εἴ τις ἄρα παλινδρομήσας δέοιτό τινος τῶν ἀναγκαίων, ἀπαγγελοῦντα πρὸς αὐτόν· ἤδη [7] δ’ ὄρνιθες ᾖδον, καὶ μικρὸν αὖθις κατηνέχθη πρὸς ὕπνον. ἐπανελθόντος δὲ τοῦ Βούτα καὶ φράσαντος πολλὴν ἡσυχίαν περὶ τοὺς λιμένας εἶναι, προσέταξεν αὐτῷ τὴν θύραν κλεῖσαι καὶ καθῆκεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὸ κλινίδιον, ὡς τὸ λοιπὸν ἔτι τῆς νυκτὸς ἀναπαυσόμενος.

[8] Ἐξελθόντος δὲ τοῦ Βούτα, σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος ἔωσε μὲν ὑπὸ τὸ στῆθος, τῇ δὲ χειρὶ κουφότερον διὰ τὴν φλεγμονὴν χρησάμενος, οὐκ εὐθὺς ἀπήλλαξεν ἑαυτόν, ἀλλὰ δυσθανατῶν ἐξέπεσε τῆς κλίνης, καὶ ψόφον ἐποίησε καταβαλὼν ἀβάκιόν τι τῶν γεωμετρικῶν παρακείμενον, ὥστε τοὺς θεράποντας αἰσθομένους ἀναβοῆσαι καὶ τὸν υἱὸν αὐτίκα καὶ τοὺς [9] φίλους ἐπεισελθεῖν. ἰδόντες δὲ πεφυρμένον αἵματι καὶ τῶν ἐντέρων τὰ πολλὰ προπεπτωκότα, ζῶντα δ’ αὐτὸν ἔτι καὶ βλέποντα, δεινῶς μὲν ἅπαντες ἔσχον, ὁ δ’ ἰατρὸς προσελθὼν ἐπειρᾶτο, τῶν ἐντέρων ἀτρώτων διαμεινάντων, [10] ταῦτά τε καθιστάναι καὶ τὸ τραῦμα διαρράπτειν. ὡς οὖν ἀνήνεγκεν ὁ Κάτων καὶ συνεφρόνησε, τὸν μὲν ἰατρὸν ἀπεώσατο, ταῖς χερσὶ δὲ τὰ ἔντερα σπαράξας καὶ τὸ τραῦμ’ ἐπαναρρήξας, ἀπέθανεν.

[71] [1] Ἐν ᾧ δ’ οὐκ ἄν τις ᾤετο χρόνῳ τοὺς κατὰ τὴν οἰκίαν πάντας ᾐσθῆσθαι τὸ πάθος, ἐπὶ ταῖς θύραις ἦσαν οἱ τριακόσιοι, καὶ μικρὸν ὕστερον ὁ δῆμος ἤθροιστο τῶν Ἰτυκαίων, μιᾷ φωνῇ τὸν εὐεργέτην καὶ σωτῆρα καὶ [2] μόνον ἐλεύθερον καὶ μόνον ἀήττητον καλούντων. καὶ ταῦτ’ ἔπραττον ἀγγελλομένου προσιέναι Καίσαρος· ἀλλ’ οὔτε φόβος αὐτοὺς οὔτε κολακεία τοῦ κρατοῦντος οὔθ’ ἡ πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαφορὰ καὶ στάσις ἀμβλυτέρους [3] ἐποίησε τῇ πρὸς Κάτωνα τιμῇ. κοσμήσαντες δὲ τὸ σῶμα λαμπρῶς καὶ πομπὴν ἐπιφανῆ παρασχόντες καὶ θάψαντες παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν, οὗ νῦν ἀνδριὰς ἐφέστηκεν αὐτοῦ ξιφήρης, οὕτως ἐτράποντο πρὸς τὸ σῴζειν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ τὴν πόλιν.

[72] [1] Καῖσαρ δὲ πυνθανόμενος παρὰ τῶν ἀφικνουμένων ὑπομένειν ἐν Ἰτύκῃ τὸν Κάτωνα μηδὲ φεύγειν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἄλλους προπέμπειν, αὐτὸν δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἑταίρους καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἀδεῶς ἀναστρέφεσθαι, δυστέκμαρτον ἡγεῖτο τὴν γνώμην τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἅτε δὲ τὸν πλεῖστον λόγον ἔχων ἐκείνου, [2] [καὶ] προσῆγε μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως ἐπειγόμενος. ὡς δ’ ἤκουσε τὸν θάνατον αὐτοῦ, λέγεται τοσοῦτον εἰπεῖν· ὦ Κάτων, φθονῶ σοι τοῦ [3] θανάτου· καὶ γὰρ ἐμοὶ σὺ τῆς σαυτοῦ σωτηρίας ἐφθόνησας. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι σωθῆναι Κάτων ἀνασχόμενος ὑπὸ Καίσαρος οὐκ ἂν οὕτω δοκεῖ καταισχῦναι τὴν αὑτοῦ δόξαν ὡς κοσμῆσαι τὴν ἐκείνου. τὸ δὲ πραχθὲν ‹ἂν› ἄδηλον· εἰκάζεται δὲ τὰ χρηστότερα περὶ Καίσαρος.

[73] [2] Ἐτελεύτησε δὲ Κάτων ἔτη δυεῖν δέοντα πεντήκοντα βεβιωκώς. ὁ δ’ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ παρὰ Καίσαρος μὲν οὐδὲν ἠδικήθη· λέγεται δὲ ῥᾴθυμος [3] γενέσθαι καὶ περὶ γυναῖκας οὐκ ἀνεπίληπτος. ἐν δὲ Καππαδοκίᾳ ξένῳ τινὶ χρησάμενος Μαρφαδάτῃ τῶν βασιλικῶν, ἔχοντι γύναιον εὐπρεπές, καὶ πλείονα παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἢ καλῶς εἶχε διατρίβων χρόνον, ἐσκώπτετο τοιαῦτα γραφόντων εἰς αὐτόν·

[4] αὔριον Κάτων βαδίζει - μετὰ τριάκονθ’ ἡμέρας,

καὶ

Πόρκιος καὶ Μαρφαδάτης, δύο φίλοι, ψυχὴ μία·

Ψυχὴ γὰρ ἐκαλεῖτο τοῦ Μαρφαδάτου τὸ γύναιον· καὶ ἔτι

εὐγενὴς καὶ λαμπρὸς ὁ Κάτων· βασιλικὴν ψυχὴν ἔχει.

[5] ἀλλὰ πᾶσάν γε τὴν τοιαύτην ἐξήλειψε καὶ ἠφάνισε τῷ θανάτῳ δύσκλειαν. ἀγωνιζόμενος γὰρ ἐν Φιλίπποις πρὸς Καίσαρα καὶ Ἀντώνιον ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας, καὶ κλινομένης τῆς φάλαγγος οὔτε φυγεῖν οὔτε λαθεῖν ἀξιώσας, ἀλλὰ προκαλούμενος τοὺς πολεμίους, πατρόθεν ἑαυτὸν ἐμφανίζων καὶ συνεξορμῶν τοὺς συμμένοντας, ἔπεσε, θαῦμα τῆς ἀρετῆς τοῖς ἐναντίοις [6] παρασχών· ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἡ θυγάτηρ τοῦ Κάτωνος, οὔτε σωφροσύνης οὔτ’ ἀνδρίας ἀπολειφθεῖσα· Βρούτῳ γὰρ συνῴκει τῷ κτείναντι Καίσαρα, αὐτή τε τῆς συνωμοσίας μετέσχε καὶ προήκατο τὸν βίον ἀξίως τῆς εὐγενείας καὶ ἀρετῆς, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ Βρούτου γέγραπται (c. 13. 53, 5).

[7] Στατύλλιος δ’ ‹ὁ› φήσας μιμεῖσθαι Κάτωνα τότε μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν φιλοσόφων ἐκωλύθη βουλόμενος ἑαυτὸν ἀνελεῖν, ὕστερον δὲ τῷ Βρούτῳ πιστότατον ἑαυτὸν παρασχὼν καὶ χρησιμώτατον, ἐν Φιλίπποις ἀπέθανεν.

Agis et Cleomenes

[1] [1] Οὐκ ἀτόπως τινὲς οὐδὲ φαύλως συγκεῖσθαι πρὸς τοὺς φιλοδόξους ὑπονοοῦσι τὸν ἐπὶ τῷ Ἰξίονι μῦθον, ὡς δὴ λαβόντι τὴν Νεφέλην ἀντὶ τῆς Ἥρας, καὶ τῶν Κενταύρων [2] οὕτως γενομένων. καὶ γὰρ οὗτοι τῆς ἀρετῆς ὥσπερ εἰδώλῳ τινὶ τῇ δόξῃ συνόντες, οὐδὲν εἰλικρινὲς οὐδ’ ὡμολογημένον, ἀλλὰ νόθα καὶ μεικτὰ πολλὰ πράττουσιν, ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλας φορὰς φερόμενοι, ζήλοις καὶ πάθεσιν [3] ἐπακολουθοῦντες. ὅπερ ‹οὖν› οἱ Σοφοκλέους βοτῆρες ἐπὶ τῶν ποιμνίων λέγουσιν (fr. 464 N.²)·

τούτοις γὰρ ὄντες δεσπόται δουλεύομεν,

καὶ τῶνδ’ ἀνάγκη καὶ σιωπώντων κλύειν,

τοῦτ’ ἀληθῶς οἱ πρὸς ἐπιθυμίας ὄχλων καὶ ὁρμὰς πολιτευόμενοι πάσχουσι, δουλεύοντες καὶ ἀκολουθοῦντες, [4] ἵνα δημαγωγοὶ καὶ ἄρχοντες ὀνομάζωνται. καθάπερ γὰρ οἱ πρωρεῖς, τὰ ἔμπροσθεν προορώμενοι τῶν κυβερνητῶν, ἀφορῶσι πρὸς ἐκείνους καὶ τὸ προστασσόμενον ὑπ’ ἐκείνων ποιοῦσιν, οὕτως οἱ πολιτευόμενοι καὶ πρὸς δόξαν ὁρῶντες ὑπηρέται μὲν τῶν πολλῶν εἰσιν, ὄνομα δ’ ἀρχόντων ἔχουσιν.

[2] [1] Ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἀπηκριβωμένος καὶ τελείως ἀγαθὸς οὐδ’ ἂν ὅλως δόξης δέοιτο, πλὴν ὅση πάροδον ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις [καὶ] διὰ τοῦ πιστεύεσθαι δίδωσι· νέῳ δ’ ἔτι ὄντι καὶ φιλοτίμῳ δοτέον ἀπὸ τῶν καλῶν ἔργων καὶ δόξῃ τι [2] καλλωπίσασθαι καὶ κομπάσαι. φυόμεναι γὰρ ἐν τοῖς τηλικούτοις αἱ ἀρεταὶ καὶ βλαστάνουσαι, τῶν τε κατορθουμένων ὥς φησι Θεόφραστος (fr. 143 W.) ἐκβεβαιοῦνται τοῖς ἐπαίνοις, καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν αὔξονται μετὰ [3] φρονήματος ἐπαιρόμεναι. τὸ δ’ ἄγαν πανταχοῦ μὲν ἐπισφαλές, ἐν δὲ ταῖς πολιτικαῖς φιλοτιμίαις ὀλέθριον. ἐκφέρει γὰρ εἰς μανίαν καὶ παραφροσύνην ὕπαιθρον ἐξουσίας μεγάλης ἐπιλαβομένους, ὅταν μὴ τὸ καλὸν ἔνδοξον εἶναι θέλωσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀγαθὸν ἡγῶνται τὸ ἔνδοξον [4] εἶναι. ὅπερ οὖν Φωκίων πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον ἀξιοῦντά τι παρ’ αὐτοῦ τῶν μὴ καλῶν οὐ δύνασαι εἶπεν ἅμα καὶ φίλῳ Φωκίωνι χρῆσθαι καὶ κόλακι, τοῦτο λεκτέον ἢ ὅμοιόν τι τούτῳ πρὸς τοὺς πολλούς· οὐ δύνασθε τὸν [5] αὐτὸν ἔχειν καὶ ἄρχοντα καὶ ἀκόλουθον. ἐπεὶ συμβαίνει γε καὶ οὕτως τὸ τοῦ δράκοντος, οὗ φησιν ὁ μῦθος τὴν οὐρὰν τῇ κεφαλῇ στασιάσασαν ἀξιοῦν ἡγεῖσθαι παρὰ μέρος καὶ μὴ διὰ παντὸς ἀκολουθεῖν ἐκείνῃ, λαβοῦσαν δὲ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν αὐτήν τε κακῶς ἀπαλλάττειν ἀνοδίαις πορευομένην, καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν καταξαίνειν, τυφλοῖς καὶ κωφοῖς μέρεσιν ἀναγκαζομένην παρὰ φύσιν ἕπεσθαι.

[6] τοῦτο πολλοὺς τῶν πρὸς χάριν ἅπαντα πεπολιτευμένων ὁρῶμεν πεπονθότας· ἐξαρτήσαντες γὰρ αὑτοὺς ὄχλων εἰκῇ φερομένων, οὔτ’ ἀναλαβεῖν ὕστερον οὔτ’ ἐπιστῆσαι τὴν ἀταξίαν ἐδυνήθησαν.

[7] Ταῦτα δ’ ἡμῖν εἰς τὴν παρὰ τῶν πολλῶν δόξαν ἐπῆλθεν εἰπεῖν, ἐννοήσασιν ἡλίκην ἔχει δύναμιν ἐκ τῶν Τιβερίῳ καὶ Γαΐῳ τοῖς Γράγχοις συμπεσόντων, οὓς κάλλιστα μὲν φύντας, κάλλιστα δὲ τραφέντας, καλλίστην δὲ τῆς πολιτείας ὑπόθεσιν λαβόντας, ἀπώλεσεν οὐχ οὕτως ἐπιθυμία δόξης ἄμετρος, ὡς φόβος ἀδοξίας ἐκ προφάσεως [8] οὐκ ἀγεννοῦς πεφυκώς. μεγάλην γὰρ εὔνοιαν προειληφότες παρὰ τῶν πολιτῶν, ᾐσχύνθησαν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν ὥσπερ χρέος· ἁμιλλώμενοι δ’ ἀεὶ πολιτεύμασι χρηστοῖς τὰς τιμὰς ὑπερβάλλεσθαι, καὶ τιμώμενοι μᾶλλον ἐξ ὧν ἐπολιτεύοντο κεχαρισμένως, καὶ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ἴσῃ φιλοτιμίᾳ πρός τε τὸν δῆμον ἑαυτοὺς καὶ τὸν δῆμον πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς ἐκκαύσαντες, ἔλαθον ἁψάμενοι πραγμάτων, ἐν οἷς οὐκέτ’ ἦν - ἐπεὶ τὸ μὴ καλὸν αἰσχρὸν ἤδη - τὸ παύσασθαι.

[9] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐπικρινεῖς αὐτὸς ἐκ τῆς διηγήσεως· παραβάλωμεν δ’ αὐτοῖς Λακωνικὸν ζεῦγος δημαγωγῶν, [10] Ἆγιν καὶ Κλεομένη τοὺς βασιλεῖς. καὶ γὰρ οὗτοι τὸν δῆμον αὔξοντες ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνοι, καὶ πολιτείαν καλὴν καὶ δικαίαν ἐκλελοιπυῖαν πολὺν χρόνον ἀναλαμβάνοντες, ὁμοίως ἀπηχθάνοντο τοῖς δυνατοῖς, μὴ βουλομένοις ἀφεῖναι [11] τὴν συνήθη πλεονεξίαν. ἀδελφοὶ μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἦσαν ἀλλήλων οἱ Λάκωνες, συγγενοῦς δὲ καὶ ἀδελφῆς ἥψαντο πολιτείας, ἀρχὴν τοιαύτην λαβόντες.

[3] [1] Ἐπεὶ παρεισέδυ πρῶτον εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἀργύρου καὶ χρυσοῦ ζῆλος, καὶ συνηκολούθησε τοῦ πλούτου τῇ μὲν κτήσει πλεονεξία καὶ μικρολογία, τῇ δὲ χρήσει καὶ ἀπολαύσει τρυφὴ καὶ μαλακία καὶ πολυτέλεια, τῶν πλείστων ἐξέπεσεν ἡ Σπάρτη καλῶν, καὶ ταπεινὰ πράττουσα παρ’ ἀξίαν διετέλει μέχρι τῶν χρόνων ἐκείνων, [2] ἐν οἷς Ἆγις καὶ Λεωνίδας ἐβασίλευον, Ἆγις μὲν Εὐρυπωντίδης καὶ Εὐδαμίδα παῖς, ἕκτος ἀπ’ Ἀγησιλάου τοῦ διαβάντος εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν καὶ μέγιστον Ἑλλήνων δυνηθέντος· [3] ἦν γὰρ Ἀγησιλάου μὲν Ἀρχίδαμος ὁ περὶ Μανδόριον τῆς Ἰταλίας ὑπὸ Μεσσαπίων ἀποθανών, Ἀρχιδάμου δὲ πρεσβύτερος μὲν υἱὸς Ἆγις, Εὐδαμίδας δὲ νεώτερος, ὃς Ἄγιδος ὑπ’ Ἀντιπάτρου περὶ Μεγάλην πόλιν ἀναιρεθέντος ἀτέκνου τὴν βασιλείαν ἔσχε, τούτου δ’ Ἀρχίδαμος, Ἀρχιδάμου δ’ ἕτερος Εὐδαμίδας, Εὐδαμίδα [4] δ’ Ἆγις, περὶ οὗ τάδε γέγραπται. Λεωνίδας δ’ ὁ Κλεωνύμου τῆς μὲν ἑτέρας οἰκίας ἦν Ἀγιάδης, ὄγδοος δ’ ἀπὸ Παυσανίου τοῦ νικήσαντος ἐν Πλαταιαῖς μάχῃ [5] Μαρδόνιον. Παυσανίας γὰρ υἱὸν ἔσχε Πλειστώνακτα, Πλειστῶναξ δὲ Παυσανίαν, οὗ φυγόντος εἰς Τεγέαν ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος ὅ τε πρεσβύτερος υἱὸς Ἀγησίπολις ἐβασίλευσε, καὶ τούτου τελευτήσαντος ἀτέκνου Κλεόμβροτος [6] ὁ νεώτερος. ἐκ δὲ Κλεομβρότου πάλιν ἄλλος Ἀγησίπολις ἦν καὶ Κλεομένης, ὧν Ἀγησίπολις μὲν οὔτ’ ἦρξε πολὺν χρόνον οὔτε παῖδας ἔσχε, Κλεομένης δὲ βασιλεύσας μετ’ Ἀγησίπολιν τὸν μὲν πρεσβύτερον τῶν υἱῶν Ἀκρότατον ἔτι ζῶν ἀπέβαλε, νεώτερον δὲ Κλεώνυμον κατέλιπεν, ὃς οὐκ ἐβασίλευσεν, ἀλλ’ Ἄρευς υἱωνὸς [7] ὢν Κλεομένους, Ἀκροτάτου δ’ υἱός [Ἄρευς]· Ἄρεως δὲ πεσόντος περὶ Κόρινθον υἱὸς ὢν Ἀκρότατος τὴν βασιλείαν κατέσχεν. ἀπέθανε δὲ καὶ οὗτος ἡττηθεὶς μάχῃ περὶ Μεγάλην πόλιν ὑπ’ Ἀριστοδήμου τοῦ τυράννου, [8] καταλιπὼν ἐγκύμονα τὴν γυναῖκα. παιδίου δ’ ἄρρενος γενομένου, Λεωνίδας ὁ Κλεωνύμου τὴν ἐπιτροπὴν ἔσχεν, εἶτα πρὶν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ γενέσθαι τελευτήσαντος, οὕτως εἰς αὐτὸν ἡ βασιλεία περιῆλθεν, οὐ πάνυ τοῖς πολίταις εὐάρμοστον [9] ὄντα. καίπερ γὰρ ἐγκεκλικότων ἤδη τῇ διαφθορᾷ τοῦ πολιτεύματος ὁμαλῶς ἁπάντων, ἦν τις ἐν τῷ Λεωνίδᾳ τῶν πατρῴων ἐπιφανὴς ἐκδιαίτησις, ἅτε δὴ χρόνον ἠλινδημένῳ πολὺν ἐν αὐλαῖς σατραπικαῖς καὶ τεθεραπευκότι Σέλευκον, εἶτα τὸν ἐκεῖθεν ὄγκον εἰς Ἑλληνικὰ πράγματα καὶ νόμιμον ἀρχὴν οὐκ ἐμμελῶς μεταφέροντι.

[4] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἆγις οὕτω πολὺ παρήλλαττεν εὐφυΐᾳ καὶ φρονήματι ψυχῆς οὐ μόνον τοῦτον, ἀλλὰ σχεδὸν ἅπαντας ὅσοι μετ’ Ἀγησίλαον τὸν μέγαν ἐβασίλευσαν, ὥστε μηδέπω γεγονὼς εἰκοστὸν ἔτος, ἐντεθραμμένος δὲ πλούτοις καὶ τρυφαῖς γυναικῶν, τῆς τε μητρὸς Ἀγησιστράτας καὶ τῆς μάμμης Ἀρχιδαμίας, αἳ πλεῖστα χρήματα [2] Λακεδαιμονίων ἐκέκτηντο, πρός τε τὰς ἡδονὰς εὐθὺς ἀπισχυρίσασθαι, καὶ τὸν ἐπιπρέψαι μάλιστα τῇ χάριτι τῆς μορφῆς ὡραϊσμὸν δοκοῦντα περισπάσας τοῦ σώματος, καὶ πᾶσαν ἐκδὺς καὶ διαφυγὼν πολυτέλειαν, ἐγκαλλωπίζεσθαι τῷ τριβωνίῳ, καὶ δεῖπνα καὶ λουτρὰ καὶ διαίτας Λακωνικὰς ζητεῖν, καὶ λέγειν ὡς οὐδὲν δέοιτο τῆς βασιλείας, εἰ μὴ δι’ αὐτὴν ἀναλήψοιτο τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὴν πάτριον ἀγωγήν.

[5] [1] Ἀρχὴν μὲν οὖν διαφθορᾶς καὶ τοῦ νοσεῖν ἔσχε τὰ πράγματα τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων σχεδὸν ἀφ’ οὗ τὴν Ἀθηναίων καταλύσαντες ἡγεμονίαν χρυσίου τε καὶ ἀργυρίου [2] κατέπλησαν ἑαυτούς. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν οἴκων ὃν ὁ Λυκοῦργος ὥρισε φυλαττόντων ἀριθμὸν ἐν ταῖς διαδοχαῖς, καὶ πατρὸς παιδὶ τὸν κλῆρον ἀπολείποντος, ἁμῶς γέ πως ἡ τάξις αὕτη καὶ ἰσότης διαμένουσα τὴν [3] πόλιν ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων ἀνέφερεν ἁμαρτημάτων. ἐφορεύσας δέ τις ἀνὴρ δυνατός, αὐθάδης δὲ καὶ χαλεπὸς τὸν τρόπον, Ἐπιτάδευς ὄνομα, πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῷ γενομένης διαφορᾶς, ῥήτραν ἔγραψεν ἐξεῖναι τὸν οἶκον αὑτοῦ καὶ τὸν κλῆρον ᾧ τις ἐθέλοι καὶ ζῶντα δοῦναι καὶ [4] καταλιπεῖν διατιθέμενον. οὗτος μὲν οὖν αὑτοῦ τινα θυμὸν ἀποπιμπλὰς ἴδιον εἰσήνεγκε τὸν νόμον· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι πλεονεξίας ἕνεκα δεξάμενοι καὶ κυρώσαντες, ἀπώλεσαν [5] τὴν ἀρίστην κατάστασιν. ἐκτῶντο γὰρ ἀφειδῶς ἤδη παρωθοῦντες οἱ δυνατοὶ τοὺς προσήκοντας ἐκ τῶν διαδοχῶν, καὶ ταχὺ τῆς εὐπορίας εἰς ὀλίγους συρρυείσης, πενία τὴν πόλιν κατέσχεν, ἀνελευθερίαν καὶ τῶν καλῶν ἀσχολίαν ἐπιφέρουσα μετὰ φθόνου καὶ δυσμενείας [6] πρὸς τοὺς ἔχοντας. ἀπελείφθησαν οὖν ἑπτακοσίων οὐ πλείονες Σπαρτιᾶται, καὶ τούτων ἴσως ἑκατὸν ἦσαν οἱ [7] γῆν κεκτημένοι καὶ κλῆρον· ὁ δ’ ἄλλος ὄχλος ἄπορος καὶ ἄτιμος ἐν τῇ πόλει παρεκάθητο, τοὺς μὲν ἔξωθεν πολέμους ἀργῶς καὶ ἀπροθύμως ἀμυνόμενος, ἀεὶ δέ τινα καιρὸν ἐπιτηρῶν μεταβολῆς καὶ μεταστάσεως τῶν παρόντων.

[6] [1] Διὰ ταῦτα δὴ καλὸν ὁ Ἆγις, ὥσπερ ἦν, ποιούμενος ἐξισῶσαι καὶ ἀναπληρῶσαι τὴν πόλιν, ἐπειρᾶτο τῶν ἀνθρώπων. οἱ μὲν οὖν νέοι ταχὺ καὶ παρ’ ἐλπίδας ὑπήκουσαν αὐτῷ καὶ συναπεδύσαντο πρὸς τὴν ἀρετήν, ὥσπερ ἐσθῆτα τὴν δίαιταν ἐπ’ ἐλευθερίᾳ συμμεταβάλλοντες.

[2] τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων, ἅτε δὴ πόρρω διαφθορᾶς γεγονότων, συνέβαινε τοὺς πλείστους, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ δεσπότην ἀγομένους ἐκ δρασμοῦ, δεδιέναι καὶ τρέμειν τὸν Λυκοῦργον, καὶ καθήπτοντο τοῦ Ἄγιδος, ὀδυρομένου τὰ παρόντα πράγματα καὶ τὸ παλαιὸν ἀξίωμα τῆς Σπάρτης [3] ἐπιποθοῦντος. Λύσανδρος δ’ ὁ Λίβυος καὶ Μανδροκλείδας ὁ Ἐκφάνους, ἔτι δ’ Ἀγησίλαος ἀπεδέξαντο [4] καὶ συμπαρώρμησαν αὐτοῦ τὴν φιλοτιμίαν. ἦν δὲ Λύσανδρος μὲν ἐν δόξῃ μάλιστα τῶν πολιτῶν, Μανδροκλείδας δὲ δεινότατος Ἑλλήνων πράγματα συσκευάσασθαι καὶ τὸ συνετὸν τοῦτο καὶ δολερὸν τόλμῃ μεμειγμένον [5] ἔχων· Ἀγησίλαον μέν‹τοι›, θεῖον ὄντα τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ δυνατὸν εἰπεῖν, ἄλλως δὲ μαλακὸν καὶ φιλοχρήματον, ἐμφανῶς μὲν ὁ υἱὸς Ἱππομέδων ἐκίνει καὶ παρεθάρρυνεν, εὐδόκιμος ἐν πολλοῖς πολέμοις ἀνὴρ καὶ μέγα δι’ εὔνοιαν [6] τῶν νέων δυνάμενος· ἡ δ’ ἀληθῶς ἀναπείσασα τὸν Ἀγησίλαον αἰτία τῶν πραττομένων μετασχεῖν ὀφλημάτων πλῆθος ἦν, ὧν ἤλπιζεν ἀπαλλαγήσεσθαι μεταβάλλων [7] τὴν πολιτείαν. ὡς οὖν τάχιστα προσηγάγετο τοῦτον ὁ Ἆγις, εὐθὺς ἐπιχειρεῖ μετ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν μητέρα πείθειν, ἀδελφὴν οὖσαν τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου, πλήθει δὲ πελατῶν καὶ φίλων καὶ χρεωστῶν μέγα δυναμένην ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ πολλὰ τῶν κοινῶν διαπραττομένην.

[7] [1] Ἡ δ’ ἀκούσασα τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἐξεπλάγη καὶ κατέπαυε τὸ μειράκιον, ὡς οὔτε δυνατῶν οὔτε λυσιτελῶν [2] ἐφιέμενον· ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῦτα μὲν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἐδίδασκεν ὡς καλῶς ἕξει καὶ πραχθήσεται συμφερόντως, αὐτὸς δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐδεῖτο τῆς μητρὸς ἐπιδοῦναι πρὸς δόξαν αὐτῷ καὶ φιλοτιμίαν τὸν πλοῦτον, ὡς χρήμασι μὲν οὐ δυνάμενος πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους βασιλεῖς ἐξισωθῆναι - σατραπῶν γὰρ οἰκέτας καὶ δούλους ἐπιτρόπων Πτολεμαίου καὶ Σελεύκου κεκτῆσθαι πλείονα συμπάντων ὁμοῦ τῶν ἐν Σπάρτῃ [3] βασιλέων - , ἐὰν δὲ σωφροσύνῃ καὶ λιτότητι καὶ μεγαλοψυχίᾳ τὰς ἐκείνων ὑπερβαλόμενος τρυφὰς ἰσότητα καὶ κοινωνίαν καταστήσῃ τοῖς πολίταις, ὄνομα καὶ δόξαν ὡς [4] ἀληθῶς βασιλέως μεγάλου κτησόμενος, οὕτω μετέπεσον ταῖς γνώμαις αἱ γυναῖκες, ὑπὸ τῆς φιλοτιμίας ἐπαρθεῖσαι τοῦ νεανίσκου, καὶ τοσαύτῃ κατεσχέθησαν οἷον ἐπιπνοίᾳ πρὸς τὸ καλόν, ὥστε τὸν μὲν Ἆγιν συνεξορμᾶν καὶ συνεπιταχύνειν, μεταπεμπομένας δὲ τοὺς φίλους παρακαλεῖν καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις διαλέγεσθαι γυναιξίν, ἅτε δὴ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἐπισταμένας κατηκόους ὄντας ἀεὶ τῶν γυναικῶν, καὶ πλεῖον ἐκείναις τῶν δημοσίων ἢ τῶν ἰδίων [5] αὑτοῖς πολυπραγμονεῖν διδόντας. ἦν δὲ τότε τῶν Λακωνικῶν πλούτων ἐν ταῖς γυναιξὶ τὸ πλεῖστον, καὶ τοῦτο τὴν [6] πρᾶξιν τῷ Ἄγιδι δύσεργον καὶ χαλεπὴν ἐποίησεν. ἀντέστησαν γὰρ αἱ γυναῖκες, οὐ μόνον τρυφῆς ἐκπίπτουσαι δι’ ἀπειροκαλίαν εὐδαιμονιζομένης, ἀλλὰ καὶ τιμὴν καὶ δύναμιν, ἣν ἐκ τοῦ πλουτεῖν ἐκαρποῦντο, περικοπτομένην [7] αὑτῶν ὁρῶσαι. καὶ πρὸς τὸν Λεωνίδαν τραπόμεναι παρεκάλουν ὄντα πρεσβύτερον ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι τοῦ Ἄγιδος καὶ τὰ [8] πραττόμενα διακωλύειν. ἐβούλετο μὲν οὖν ὁ Λεωνίδας τοῖς πλουσίοις βοηθεῖν, δεδιὼς δὲ τὸν δῆμον ἐπιθυμοῦντα τῆς μεταβολῆς, οὐδὲν ἀντέπραττε φανερῶς, λάθρα δὲ τὴν πρᾶξιν ἐζήτει κακουργεῖν καὶ διαφθείρειν, ἐντυγχάνων τοῖς ἄρχουσι καὶ διαβάλλων τὸν Ἆγιν, ὡς τυραννίδος μισθὸν τοῖς πένησι τὰ τῶν πλουσίων προπίνοντα καὶ γῆς μεταδόσεσι καὶ χρεῶν ἀφέσεσι πολλοὺς ὠνούμενον ἑαυτῷ δορυφόρους, οὐ τῇ Σπάρτῃ πολίτας.

[8] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ διαπραξάμενος ὁ Ἆγις ἔφορον γενέσθαι τὸν Λύσανδρον, εὐθὺς εἰσέφερε δι’ αὐτοῦ ῥήτραν εἰς τοὺς γέροντας, ἧς ἦν κεφάλαια χρεῶν μὲν ἀφεθῆναι τοὺς ὀφείλοντας, τῆς δὲ γῆς ἀναδασθείσης τὴν μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ κατὰ Πελλήνην χαράδρου πρὸς τὸ Ταΰγετον καὶ Μαλέαν καὶ Σελλασίαν κλήρους γενέσθαι τετρακισχιλίους πεντακοσίους, [2] τὴν δ’ ἔξω μυρίους πεντακισχιλίους· καὶ ταύτην μὲν τοῖς ὅπλα φέρειν δυναμένοις τῶν περιοίκων μερισθῆναι, [3] τὴν δ’ ἐντὸς αὐτοῖς Σπαρτιάταις· ἀναπληρωθῆναι δὲ τούτους ἔκ τε περιοίκων καὶ ξένων, ὅσοι τροφῆς μετεσχηκότες ἐλευθερίου καὶ χαρίεντες ἄλλως τοῖς σώμασι [4] καὶ καθ’ ἡλικίαν ἀκμάζοντες εἶεν· σύνταξιν δὲ τούτων εἰς πεντεκαίδεκα γενέσθαι φιδίτια κατὰ τετρακοσίους καὶ διακοσίους, καὶ δίαιταν ἣν εἶχον οἱ πρόγονοι διαιτᾶσθαι.

[9] [1] Γραφείσης δὲ τῆς ῥήτρας καὶ τῶν γερόντων εἰς ταὐτὸ ταῖς γνώμαις οὐ συμφερομένων, ἐκκλησίαν συναγαγὼν ὁ Λύσανδρος αὐτός τε διελέχθη τοῖς πολίταις, καὶ Μανδροκλείδας καὶ Ἀγησίλαος ἐδέοντο μὴ δι’ ὀλίγους ἐντρυφῶντας αὐτοῖς περιιδεῖν ἐρριμμένον τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς Σπάρτης, ἀλλὰ τῶν ‹τε› προτέρων χρησμῶν μνημονεῦσαι, τὴν φιλοχρημοσύνην ὡς ὀλέθριον τῇ Σπάρτῃ φυλάττεσθαι διακελευομένων, καὶ τῶν ἔναγχος [2] ἐκ Πασιφάας κεκομισμένων αὐτοῖς. ἱερὸν δὲ Πασιφάας καὶ μαντεῖον ἦν ἐν Θαλάμαις τιμώμενον, ἥν τινες μὲν ἱστοροῦσι τῶν Ἀτλαντίδων μίαν οὖσαν [τῶν] ἐκ Διὸς τὸν Ἄμμωνα τεκεῖν, τινὲς δὲ Κασάνδραν τὴν Πριάμου, τελευτήσασαν ἐνταῦθα καὶ διὰ τὸ πᾶσι φαίνειν τὰ μαντεῖα [3] Πασιφάαν προσαγορευθεῖσαν. ὁ δὲ Φύλαρχος (FGrH 81 F 32b) Ἀμύκλα θυγατέρα Δάφνην τοὔνομά φησιν ὑποφυγοῦσαν Ἀπόλλωνα βουλόμενον αὐτῇ μιγῆναι, καὶ μεταβαλοῦσαν εἰς τὸ φυτόν, ἐν τιμῇ τοῦ θεοῦ γενέσθαι [4] καὶ μαντικὴν λαβεῖν δύναμιν. ἔφασαν οὖν καὶ τὰ παρὰ ταύτης μαντεῖα προστάττειν τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις ἴσους γενέσθαι πάντας καθ’ ὃν ὁ Λυκοῦργος ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἔταξε [5] νόμον. ἐπὶ πᾶσι δ’ ‹ὁ› βασιλεὺς Ἆγις εἰς μέσον προελθὼν καὶ βραχέα διαλεχθεὶς ἔφη συμβολὰς διδόναι τῇ πολιτείᾳ μεγίστας ἣν καθίστησι· τὴν γὰρ αὑτοῦ πρῶτον οὐσίαν εἰς μέσον τιθέναι, πολλὴν μὲν οὖσαν ἐν τοῖς γεωργουμένοις καὶ νεμομένοις, ἄνευ δὲ τούτων ἑξακόσια τάλαντα νομίσματος [6] ἔχουσαν· τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ καὶ τὰς μητέρας ποιεῖν καὶ τοὺς φίλους καὶ οἰκείους, πλουσιωτάτους ὄντας Σπαρτιατῶν.

[10] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν δῆμος ἐξεπλάγη τὴν μεγαλοψυχίαν τοῦ νεανίσκου καὶ περιχαρὴς ἦν, ὡς δι’ ἐτῶν ὁμοῦ τριακοσίων πεφηνότος ἀξίου τῆς Σπάρτης βασιλέως· ὁ δὲ Λεωνίδας τότε δὴ μάλιστα πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἐφιλονίκησε.

[2] λογιζόμενος γάρ, ὅτι ταὐτὰ μὲν ἀναγκασθήσεται ποιεῖν, οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν δὲ χάριν ἕξει παρὰ τοῖς πολίταις, ἀλλὰ πάντων ὁμοίως ἃ κέκτηνται κατατιθεμένων, μόνῳ τῷ ἀρξαμένῳ προσθήσουσι τὴν τιμήν, ἠρώτα τὸν Ἆγιν εἰ δίκαιον ἄνδρα καὶ σπουδαῖον ἡγεῖται γεγονέναι Λυκοῦργον.

[3] ὁμολογήσαντος δ’ ἐκείνου, ποῦ τοίνυν ἔφη Λυκοῦργος ἢ χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς ἔδωκεν ἢ ξένους κατέταξεν εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν, ὃς οὐδ’ ὅλως ἐνόμιζεν ὑγιαίνειν [4] τὴν πόλιν μὴ χρωμένην ξενηλασίαις; ὁ δ’ Ἆγις ἀπεκρίνατο μὴ θαυμάζειν τὸν Λεωνίδαν, εἰ τεθραμμένος ἐν ξένῃ καὶ πεπαιδοποιημένος ἐκ γάμων σατραπικῶν ἀγνοεῖ τὸν Λυκοῦργον, ὅτι τὸ μὲν ὀφείλειν καὶ δανείζειν ἅμα τῷ νομίσματι συνεξέβαλεν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, τῶν δ’ ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι ξένων τοὺς τοῖς ἐπιτηδεύμασι καὶ ταῖς [5] διαίταις ἀσυμφύλους μᾶλλον ἐδυσχέραινε· καὶ γὰρ ἐκείνους ἤλαυνεν οὐ τοῖς σώμασι πολεμῶν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς βίους αὐτῶν καὶ τοὺς τρόπους δεδιώς, μὴ συναναχρωννύμενοι τοῖς πολίταις τρυφῆς καὶ μαλακίας καὶ πλεονεξίας ἐντέκωσι [6] ζῆλον· ἐπεὶ Τέρπανδρόν γε καὶ Θάλητα καὶ Φερεκύδην ξένους ὄντας, ὅτι τὰ αὐτὰ τῷ Λυκούργῳ διετέλουν ᾄδοντες καὶ φιλοσοφοῦντες, ἐν Σπάρτῃ τιμηθῆναι διαφερόντως.

[7] σὺ δ’ Ἐκπρέπη μὲν ἔφησεν ἐπαινεῖς, ὃς ἐφορεύων Φρύνιδος τοῦ μουσικοῦ σκεπάρνῳ τὰς δύο τῶν ἐννέα χορδῶν ἐξέτεμε, καὶ τοὺς ἐπὶ Τιμοθέῳ πάλιν τὸ αὐτὸ [8] τοῦτο πράξαντας, ἡμᾶς δὲ μέμφῃ τρυφὴν καὶ πολυτέλειαν καὶ ἀλαζονείαν ἐκ τῆς Σπάρτης ἀναιροῦντας, ὥσπερ οὐχὶ κἀκείνων τὸ ἐν μουσικῇ σοβαρὸν καὶ περιττὸν ὅπως ἐνταῦθα μὴ προέλθῃ φυλαττομένων, ὅπου γενομένων βίων καὶ τρόπων ἀμετρία καὶ πλημμέλεια τὴν πόλιν ἀσύμφωνον καὶ ἀνάρμοστον ἑαυτῇ πεποίηκεν.

[11] [1] Ἐκ τούτου τῷ μὲν Ἄγιδι τὸ πλῆθος ἐπηκολούθησεν, οἱ δὲ πλούσιοι τόν τε Λεωνίδαν παρεκάλουν μὴ σφᾶς προέσθαι, καὶ τοὺς γέροντας, οἷς τὸ κράτος ἦν ἐν τῷ προβουλεύειν, δεόμενοι καὶ πείθοντες ἴσχυσαν, ὅσον ἑνὶ πλείονας γενέσθαι τοὺς ἀποψηφισαμένους τὴν ῥήτραν.

[2] Ὁ δὲ Λύσανδρος ἔτι τὴν ἀρχὴν ἔχων ὥρμησε τὸν Λεωνίδαν διώκειν κατὰ δή τινα νόμον παλαιόν, ὃς οὐκ ἐᾷ τὸν Ἡρακλείδην ἐκ γυναικὸς ἀλλοδαπῆς τεκνοῦσθαι, τὸν δ’ ἀπελθόντα τῆς Σπάρτης ἐπὶ μετοικισμῷ πρὸς [3] ἑτέρους ἀποθνῄσκειν κελεύει. ταῦτα κατὰ τοῦ Λεωνίδα λέγειν ἑτέρους διδάξας, αὐτὸς παρεφύλαττε μετὰ τῶν [4] συναρχόντων τὸ σημεῖον. ἔστι δὲ τοιόνδε· δι’ ἐτῶν ἐννέα λαβόντες οἱ ἔφοροι νύκτα καθαρὰν καὶ ἀσέληνον [5] σιωπῇ καθέζονται πρὸς οὐρανὸν ἀποβλέποντες. ἐὰν οὖν ἐκ μέρους τινὸς εἰς ἕτερον μέρος ἀστὴρ διᾴξῃ, κρίνουσι τοὺς βασιλεῖς ὡς περὶ τὸ θεῖον ἐξαμαρτάνοντας καὶ καταπαύουσι τῆς ἀρχῆς, μέχρι ἂν ἐκ Δελφῶν ἢ Ὀλυμπίας [6] χρησμὸς ἔλθῃ τοῖς ἡλωκόσι τῶν βασιλέων βοηθῶν. τοῦτο δὴ τὸ σημεῖον αὑτῷ γεγονέναι λέγων ὁ Λύσανδρος κρίσιν τῷ Λεωνίδᾳ προὔθηκε, καὶ μάρτυρας παρεῖχεν, ὡς ἐκ γυναικὸς Ἀσιανῆς, ἣν τῶν Σελεύκου τινὸς ὑπάρχων αὐτῷ συνοικίσαντος ἔσχε, τεκνώσαιτο δύο παιδία, δυσχεραινόμενος δὲ καὶ μισούμενος ὑπὸ τῆς γυναικὸς ἐπανέλθοι παρὰ γνώμην οἴκαδε, καὶ διαδοχῆς ἔρημον ἀνέλοι τὴν [7] βασιλείαν. ἅμα δὲ τῇ δίκῃ Κλεόμβροτον ἔπειθε τῆς βασιλείας ἀντιποιεῖσθαι, γαμβρὸν ὄντα τοῦ Λεωνίδα, [8] γένους δὲ τοῦ βασιλικοῦ. φοβηθεὶς οὖν ὁ Λεωνίδας ἱκέτης γίνεται τῆς Χαλκιοίκου, καὶ συνικέτευεν ἡ θυγάτηρ τῷ [9] πατρί, τὸν Κλεόμβροτον ἀπολιποῦσα. καλουμένου δὲ πρὸς τὴν δίκην αὐτοῦ καὶ μὴ καταβαίνοντος, ἐκεῖνον ἀποψηφισάμενοι τὴν βασιλείαν τῷ Κλεομβρότῳ παρέδωκαν.

[12] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς ὁ Λύσανδρος ἀπηλλάγη, τοῦ χρόνου διελθόντος. οἱ δὲ κατασταθέντες ἔφοροι τὸν μὲν Λεωνίδαν ἀνέστησαν ἱκετεύοντα, τῷ δὲ Λυσάνδρῳ καὶ τῷ Μανδροκλείδᾳ δίκην ἐπῆγον, ὡς παρὰ τὸν νόμον χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς καὶ γῆν ἀναδάσασθαι ψηφισαμένοις.

[2] κινδυνεύοντες οὖν ἐκεῖνοι πείθουσι τοὺς βασιλεῖς ὁμοῦ γενομένους χαίρειν ἐᾶν τὰ τῶν ἐφόρων βουλεύματα· τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ ἀρχεῖον ἰσχύειν ἐκ διαφορᾶς τῶν βασιλέων, τῷ τὰ βελτίονα λέγοντι προστιθέμενον τὴν [3] ψῆφον, ὅταν ἅτερος ἐρίζῃ πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον· ἀμφοῖν δὲ ταὐτὰ βουλευομένων ἄλυτον εἶναι τὴν ἐξουσίαν, καὶ παρανόμως μαχεῖσθαι πρὸς τοὺς βασιλεῖς, ὧν μαχομένων διαιτᾶν καὶ βραβεύειν αὐτοῖς εἶναι προσῆκον, οὐχὶ [4] πολυπραγμονεῖν ὁμοφρονούντων. οὕτω δὴ πεισθέντες ἀμφότεροι καὶ μετὰ τῶν φίλων εἰς ἀγορὰν καταβάντες ἀνέστησαν μὲν ἐκ τῶν δίφρων τοὺς ἐφόρους, ἄλλους δ’ [5] ἀντ’ αὐτῶν ἀπέδειξαν, ὧν εἷς ἦν Ἀγησίλαος. ὁπλίσαντες δὲ τῶν νέων πολλοὺς καὶ λύσαντες τοὺς δεδεμένους, ἐγένοντο φοβεροὶ τοῖς ὑπεναντίοις, ὡς πολλοὺς ἀποκτενοῦντες.

[6] ἀπέθανε δ’ οὐδεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Λεωνίδαν εἰς Τεγέαν ὑπεξιόντα βουληθέντος διαφθεῖραι τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου καὶ πέμψαντος ἐπ’ αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν ὁδὸν ἄνδρας, πυθόμενος ὁ Ἆγις ἑτέρους ἀπέστειλε πιστούς, οἳ τὸν Λεωνίδαν περισχόντες ἀσφαλῶς εἰς Τεγέαν κατέστησαν.

[13] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τῆς πράξεως αὐτοῖς ὁδῷ βαδιζούσης, καὶ μηδενὸς ἐνισταμένου μηδὲ διακωλύοντος, εἷς ἀνὴρ Ἀγησίλαος ἀνέτρεψε πάντα καὶ διελυμήνατο, κάλλιστον διανόημα καὶ Λακωνικώτατον αἰσχίστῳ νοσήματι τῇ [2] φιλοπλουτίᾳ διαφθείρας. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἐκέκτητο μὲν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα πολλὴν καὶ ἀγαθὴν χώραν, ὤφειλε δὲ πάμπολλα, μήτε διαλῦσαι δυνάμενος τὰ χρέα, μήτε τὴν χώραν προέσθαι βουλόμενος, ἔπεισε τὸν Ἆγιν, ὡς ἀμφοτέρων μὲν ἅμα πραττομένων μέγας ἔσοιτο περὶ τὴν πόλιν ὁ νεωτερισμός, εἰ δὲ τῇ τῶν χρεῶν ἀφέσει θεραπευθεῖεν οἱ κτηματικοὶ πρότερον, εὐκόλως ἂν αὐτῶν καὶ καθ’ [3] ἡσυχίαν ὕστερον ἐνδεξομένων τὸν ἀναδασμόν. ταῦτα δὲ καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Λύσανδρον ἐδόκει, συνεξαπατωμένοις ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου, καὶ τὰ παρὰ τῶν χρεωστῶν γραμματεῖα συνενέγκαντες εἰς ἀγοράν, ἃ κλάρια καλοῦσι, [4] καὶ πάντα συνθέντες εἰς ἓν συνέπρησαν. ἀρθείσης δὲ φλογός, οἱ μὲν πλούσιοι καὶ δανειστικοὶ περιπαθοῦντες ἀπῆλθον, ὁ δ’ Ἀγησίλαος ὥσπερ ἐφυβρίζων οὐκ ἔφη λαμπρότερον ἑωρακέναι φῶς οὐδὲ πῦρ ἐκείνου καθαρώτερον.

[5] ἀξιούντων δὲ τῶν πολλῶν καὶ τὴν γῆν εὐθὺς νέμεσθαι, καὶ τῶν βασιλέων οὕτω ποιεῖν κελευόντων, ἀσχολίας τινὰς ἐμβάλλων ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἀεὶ καὶ προφάσεις λέγων παρῆγε τὸν χρόνον, ἄχρι οὗ στρατεία συνέβη τῷ Ἄγιδι, μεταπεμπομένων τῶν Ἀχαιῶν συμμάχων ὄντων [6] βοήθειαν ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος. Αἰτωλοὶ γὰρ ἦσαν ἐπίδοξοι διὰ τῆς Μεγαρικῆς ἐμβαλοῦντες εἰς Πελοπόννησον· καὶ τοῦτο κωλύσων Ἄρατος ὁ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν στρατηγὸς ἤθροιζε δύναμιν καὶ τοῖς ἐφόροις ἔγραφεν.

[14] [1] Οἱ δὲ τὸν Ἆγιν εὐθὺς ἐξέπεμπον, ἐπηρμένον τῇ [2] φιλοτιμίᾳ καὶ προθυμίᾳ τῶν συστρατευομένων. νέοι γὰρ ὄντες οἱ πλεῖστοι καὶ πένητες, καὶ τὴν μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν χρεῶν ἄδειαν ἔχοντες ἤδη καὶ λελυμένοι, τοὺς δ’ ἀγροὺς ἐλπίζοντες ἂν ἐπανέλθωσιν ἐκ τῆς στρατείας νεμηθήσεσθαι, [3] θαυμαστοὺς τῷ Ἄγιδι παρεῖχον ἑαυτούς· καὶ θέαμα ταῖς πόλεσιν ἦσαν, ἀβλαβῶς καὶ πράως καὶ μονονοὺκ ἀψοφητὶ διαπορευόμενοι τὴν Πελοπόννησον, ὥστε θαυμάζειν καὶ διαλογίζεσθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας, οἷος ἦν ἄρα κόσμος Λακωνικοῦ στρατεύματος Ἀγησίλαον ἔχοντος ἢ Λύσανδρον ἐκεῖνον ἢ Λεωνίδαν τὸν παλαιὸν ἡγούμενον, ὅπου πρὸς μειράκιον ὀλίγου δεῖν νεώτατον ἁπάντων αἰδὼς τοσαύτη καὶ φόβος ἐστὶ τῶν στρατευομένων.

[4] καὶ μέντοι καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ νεανίσκος εὐτελείᾳ καὶ φιλοπονίᾳ καὶ τῷ μηδὲν ἰδιώτου λαμπρότερον ἠμφιέσθαι καὶ ὡπλίσθαι σεμνυνόμενος, ἀξιοθέατος ἦν καὶ ζηλωτὸς ὑπὸ [5] τῶν πολλῶν· ἐπεὶ τοῖς γε πλουσίοις οὐκ ἤρεσκεν ὁ νεωτερισμὸς αὐτοῦ, δεδιόσι μὴ κίνημα καὶ παράδειγμα τοῖς πανταχόσε δήμοις γένηται.

[15] [1] Συμμείξας δὲ τῷ Ἀράτῳ περὶ Κόρινθον ὁ Ἆγις ἔτι βουλευομένῳ περὶ μάχης καὶ παρατάξεως πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, ἐπεδείξατο καὶ προθυμίαν πολλὴν καὶ τόλμαν [2] οὐ νεανικὴν οὐδ’ ἀλόγιστον. ἔφη γὰρ αὐτῷ μὲν δοκεῖν διαμάχεσθαι καὶ μὴ παριέναι τὸν πόλεμον εἴσω, τὰς πύλας τῆς Πελοποννήσου προεμένους, ποιήσειν δὲ τὸ [3] δοκοῦν Ἀράτῳ· καὶ γὰρ πρεσβύτερόν τ’ εἶναι καὶ στρατηγεῖν Ἀχαιῶν, οἷς οὐχὶ προστάξων οὐδ’ ἡγησόμενος, ἀλλὰ [4] συστρατευσόμενος ἥκοι καὶ βοηθήσων. ὁ δὲ Σινωπεὺς Βάτων (FGrH 268 F 7) αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐθέλειν μάχεσθαί φησι τὸν Ἆγιν Ἀράτου κελεύοντος, οὐκ ἐντετυχηκὼς οἷς Ἄρατος (FGrH 231 F 1) γέγραφε περὶ τούτων, ἀπολογιζόμενος ὅτι βέλτιον ἡγεῖτο, τοὺς καρποὺς σχεδὸν ἅπαντας συγκεκομισμένων ἤδη τῶν γεωργῶν, παρελθεῖν τοὺς πολεμίους ἢ μάχῃ διακινδυνεῦσαι περὶ τῶν ὅλων.

[5] ἐπεὶ δ’ οὖν Ἄρατος ἀπέγνω μάχεσθαι καὶ τοὺς συμμάχους ἐπαινέσας διαφῆκε, θαυμασθεὶς ὁ Ἆγις ἀνεζεύγνυεν, ἤδη τῶν ἔνδον ἐν Σπάρτῃ θόρυβον πολὺν ἐχόντων καὶ μεταβολήν.

[16] [1] Ὁ γὰρ Ἀγησίλαος ἐφορεύων, ἀπηλλαγμένος οἷς ταπεινὸς ἦν πρότερον, οὐδενὸς ἐφείδετο φέροντος ἀργύριον ἀδικήματος, ἀλλὰ ‹καὶ› μῆνα τρισκαιδέκατον, οὐκ ἀπαιτούσης τότε τῆς περιόδου, παρὰ τὴν νενομισμένην τάξιν τῶν χρόνων ἐνέβαλε τοῖς τέλεσι καὶ παρέπραττε.

[2] δεδιὼς δὲ τοὺς ἀδικουμένους καὶ μισούμενος ὑπὸ πάντων, ἔτρεφε μαχαιροφόρους καὶ φυλαττόμενος ὑπὸ τούτων [3] κατέβαινεν εἰς τὸ ἀρχεῖον. καὶ τῶν βασιλέων τοῦ μὲν ὅλως καταφρονεῖν, τὸν δ’ Ἆγιν ἐβούλετο δοκεῖν διὰ τὴν συγγένειαν μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν ἔν τινι τιμῇ τίθεσθαι. διέδωκε δὲ λόγον ὡς καὶ αὖθις ἐφορεύσων.

[4] Διὸ καὶ θᾶσσον ἀποκινδυνεύσαντες οἱ ἐχθροὶ καὶ συστάντες ἐκ Τεγέας ἀναφανδὸν τὸν Λεωνίδαν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν κατήγαγον, ἡδέως καὶ τῶν πολλῶν θεασαμένων· ὠργίζοντο γὰρ πεφενακισμένοι, τῆς χώρας μὴ νεμηθείσης.

[5] τὸν μὲν οὖν Ἀγησίλαον ὁ υἱὸς Ἱππομέδων, δεόμενος τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ πᾶσι προσφιλὴς ὢν δι’ ἀνδραγαθίαν, ὑπεξήγαγε [6] καὶ διέσωσε· τῶν δὲ βασιλέων ὁ μὲν Ἆγις ἐπὶ τὴν Χαλκίοικον κατέφυγεν, ὁ δὲ Κλεόμβροτος εἰς τὸ τοῦ [7] Ποσειδῶνος ἱερὸν ἐλθὼν ἱκέτευε· καὶ γὰρ ἐδόκει τούτῳ μᾶλλον ὁ Λεωνίδας χαλεπὸς εἶναι, καὶ παρεὶς τὸν Ἆγιν ἐπὶ τοῦτον ἀνέβη στρατιώτας ἔχων, καὶ κατηγόρει μετ’ ὀργῆς, ὅτι γαμβρὸς ὢν ἐπεβούλευσεν αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν ἀφείλετο καὶ συνεξέβαλε τῆς πατρίδος.

[17] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Κλεόμβροτος οὐδὲν εἶχεν εἰπεῖν, ἀλλ’ [2] ἠπορημένος ἐκάθητο καὶ σιωπῶν· ἡ δὲ Χιλωνίς, ἡ τοῦ Λεωνίδου θυγάτηρ, πρότερον μὲν ἀδικουμένῳ τῷ πατρὶ συνηδικεῖτο, καὶ τοῦ Κλεομβρότου τὴν βασιλείαν παραλαβόντος ἀποστᾶσα τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς συμφορὰν ἐθεράπευε, καὶ παρόντι μὲν συνικέτευε, φεύγοντος δὲ πενθοῦσα καὶ [3] χαλεπῶς ἔχουσα πρὸς τὸν Κλεόμβροτον διετέλει· τότε δ’ αὖ πάλιν ταῖς τύχαις συμμεταβαλοῦσα μετὰ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἱκέτις ὤφθη καθεζομένη, περιβεβληκυῖα τὰς χεῖρας ἐκείνῳ καὶ τῶν παιδίων τὸ μὲν ἔνθεν, τὸ δ’ ἔνθεν [4] ὑφ’ αὑτὴν ἔχουσα. θαυμαζόντων δὲ πάντων καὶ δακρυόντων ἐπὶ τῇ χρηστότητι καὶ φιλοστοργίᾳ τῆς γυναικός, ἁψαμένη [5] τῶν πέπλων καὶ τῆς κόμης ἀτημελῶς ἐχόντων, τοῦτο εἶπεν ὦ πάτερ ἐμοὶ τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὴν ὄψιν οὐχ ὁ Κλεομβρότου περιτέθεικεν ἔλεος, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τῶν σῶν κακῶν καὶ τῆς σῆς φυγῆς μεμένηκέ μοι σύντροφον καὶ σύνοικον [6] τὸ πένθος. πότερον οὖν δεῖ με σοῦ βασιλεύοντος ἐν Σπάρτῃ καὶ νικῶντος ἐγκαταβιῶναι ταύταις ταῖς συμφοραῖς, ἢ λαβεῖν ἐσθῆτα λαμπρὰν καὶ βασιλικήν, ἐπιδοῦσαν [7] ὑπὸ σοῦ τὸν παρθένιον ἄνδρα φονευόμενον; ὃς εἰ μὴ παραιτεῖταί σε μηδὲ πείθει τέκνων καὶ γυναικὸς δάκρυσι, χαλεπωτέραν ἢ σὺ βούλει δίκην ὑφέξει τῆς κακοβουλίας, [8] ἐπιδὼν ἐμὲ τὴν φιλτάτην αὐτῷ προαποθανοῦσαν. τίνι γὰρ ἐμὲ δεῖ ζῆν παρρησίᾳ πρὸς ἄλλας γυναῖκας, ᾗ μήτε παρ’ ἀνδρὸς δεομένῃ μήτε παρὰ πατρὸς ἔλεός ἐστιν; ἀλλὰ καὶ γυνὴ καὶ θυγάτηρ συνατυχεῖν καὶ συνατιμάζεσθαι [9] τοῖς ἐμαυτῆς ἐγενόμην. τούτῳ μὲν οὖν εἰ καί τις ἦν λόγος εὐπρεπής, ἐγὼ τοῦτον ἀφειλόμην, τότε σοὶ συνεξετασθεῖσα [10] καὶ καταμαρτυρήσασα τῶν ὑπὸ τούτου γενομένων· σὺ δ’ αὐτῷ τὸ ἀδίκημα ποιεῖς εὐαπολόγητον, οὕτω μέγα καὶ περιμάχητον ἀποφαίνων τὸ βασιλεύειν, ὥστε δι’ αὐτὸ καὶ γαμβροὺς φονεύειν καὶ τέκνων ἀμελεῖν εἶναι δίκαιον.

[18] [1] Ἡ μὲν Χιλωνὶς τοιαῦτα ποτνιωμένη τό τε πρόσωπον ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπέθηκε τοῦ Κλεομβρότου καὶ τὸ βλέμμα διεφθαρμένον καὶ συντετηκὸς ὑπὸ λύπης περιήνεγκεν εἰς [2] τοὺς παρόντας. ὁ δὲ Λεωνίδας διαλεχθεὶς τοῖς φίλοις, τὸν μὲν Κλεόμβροτον ἐκέλευσεν ἀναστάντα φεύγειν, τῆς δὲ παιδὸς μένειν ἐδεῖτο καὶ μὴ καταλιπεῖν ἑαυτόν, οὕτω φιλοῦντα καὶ δεδωκότα χάριν τὴν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῇ [3] σωτηρίαν. οὐ μὴν ἔπεισεν, ἀλλ’ ἀνισταμένῳ τῷ ἀνδρὶ θάτερον τῶν παιδίων ἐγχειρίσασα, θάτερον δ’ Ἀναλαβοῦσα καὶ προσκυνήσασα τὸν βωμὸν τῆς θεοῦ συνεξῆλθεν, ὥστ’ εἰ μὴ πάνυ διεφθαρμένος ἦν ὑπὸ κενῆς δόξης ὁ Κλεόμβροτος, εὐτύχημα ἂν ἡγήσατο τὴν φυγὴν αὑτῷ τῆς βασιλείας μεῖζον εἶναι διὰ τὴν γυναῖκα.

[4] Μεταστησάμενος δὲ τὸν Κλεόμβροτον ὁ Λεωνίδας καὶ τοὺς προτέρους ἐφόρους ἐκβαλὼν τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἑτέρους δὲ [5] ποιησάμενος, εὐθὺς ἐπεβούλευε τῷ Ἄγιδι. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἔπειθεν αὐτὸν ἀναστῆναι καὶ συμβασιλεύειν, ὡς δεδωκότων συγγνώμην τῶν πολιτῶν· συνεξηπατῆσθαι [6] γὰρ ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου νέον ὄντα καὶ φιλότιμον. ἐκείνου δ’ ὑφορωμένου καὶ κατὰ χώραν μένοντος, αὐτὸς [7] μὲν ἐπαύσατο φενακίζων καὶ κατειρωνευόμενος, Ἀμφάρης δὲ καὶ Δαμοχάρης καὶ Ἀρκεσίλαος ἀναβαίνοντες εἰώθεσαν αὐτῷ διαλέγεσθαι· καί ποτε καὶ παραλαβόντες ἐπὶ λουτρὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἱεροῦ κατήγαγον, καὶ λουσάμενον [8] πάλιν εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν κατέστησαν. καὶ ἦσαν πάντες μὲν αὐτῷ συνήθεις, ὁ δ’ Ἀμφάρης καὶ κεχρημένος ἔναγχος ἱμάτια καὶ ποτήρια τῶν πολυτελῶν παρὰ τῆς Ἀγησιστράτας, ἐπεβούλευε διὰ ταῦτα τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ ταῖς γυναιξὶν [9] ὡς ἀποστερήσων. καὶ μάλιστά γ’ οὗτος ὑπακοῦσαι τῷ Λεωνίδᾳ λέγεται καὶ παροξῦναι τοὺς ἐφόρους, ὧν καὶ αὐτὸς εἷς ἦν.

[19] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Ἆγις τὸν μὲν ἄλλον ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ διέτριβε χρόνον, εἰώθει δὲ καταβαίνειν ὅτε τύχοι πρὸς τὸ λουτρόν, ἐκεῖ συλλαβεῖν αὐτὸν ἔγνωσαν, ὅταν ἔξω τοῦ ἱεροῦ γένηται. [2] καὶ παραφυλάξαντες λελουμένον, ἀπήντησαν καὶ ἠσπάσαντο καὶ συμπροῆγον ἅμα διαλεγόμενοι καὶ παίζοντες [3] ὡς πρὸς συνήθη καὶ νέον. ἐκτροπὴν δέ τινα τῆς ὁδοῦ πλαγίαν πρὸς τὸ δεσμωτήριον ἐχούσης, ὡς ἐγένοντο κατ’ αὐτὴν βαδίζοντες, ὁ μὲν Ἀμφάρης διὰ τὸ ἄρχειν ἁψάμενος τοῦ Ἄγιδος, ἄγω σε εἶπεν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐφόρους ὦ Ἆγι, [4] λόγον ὑφέξοντα τῶν πεπολιτευμένων· ὁ δὲ Δαμοχάρης, εὔρωστος ὢν καὶ μέγας, τὸ ἱμάτιον περιβαλὼν περὶ τὸν τράχηλον εἷλκεν. ἄλλων δ’ ἐπωθούντων ὄπισθεν ἐκ παρασκευῆς, οὐδενὸς δὲ βοηθοῦντος, ἀλλ’ ἐρημίας οὔσης, [5] ἐμβάλλουσιν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον. εὐθὺς δὲ παρῆν ὁ μὲν Λεωνίδας μισθοφόρους ἔχων πολλοὺς καὶ τὸ οἴκημα περιέσχεν ἔξωθεν, οἱ δ’ ἔφοροι πρὸς τὸν Ἆγιν εἰσῆλθον, καὶ τῶν γερόντων εἰς τὸ οἴκημα μεταπεμψάμενοι τοὺς ταὐτὰ βουλομένους, ὡς δὴ κρίσεως αὐτῷ γινομένης, [6] ἐκέλευον ὑπὲρ τῶν πεπραγμένων ἀπολογεῖσθαι. γελάσαντος δὲ τοῦ νεανίσκου πρὸς τὴν εἰρωνείαν αὐτῶν, ὁ μὲν Ἀμφάρης οἰμωξόμενον ἐκάλει καὶ δίκην ὑφέξοντα τῆς ἰταμότητος· ἄλλος δέ ‹τις› τῶν ἐφόρων, οἷον ἐνδιδοὺς τῷ Ἄγιδι καὶ δεικνύων ἀποφυγὴν τῆς αἰτίας, ἠρώτησεν εἰ ταῦτ’ [7] ἔπραξεν ὑπὸ Λυσάνδρου καὶ Ἀγησιλάου βιασθείς. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Ἄγιδος, ὡς βιασθεὶς μὲν ὑπ’ οὐδενός, ζηλῶν δὲ καὶ μιμούμενος τὸν Λυκοῦργον ἐπὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἔλθοι πολιτείαν, πάλιν ὁ αὐτὸς ἠρώτησεν, εἰ μετανοεῖ τοῖς [8] πεπραγμένοις. φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ νεανίσκου μὴ μετανοεῖν ἐπὶ τοῖς κάλλιστα βεβουλευμένοις, κἂν τὰ ἔσχατα πεισόμενον αὑτὸν ἴδῃ, θάνατον αὐτοῦ κατεψηφίσαντο, καὶ τοὺς ὑπηρέτας ἐκέλευον ἄγειν εἰς τὴν καλουμένην Δεχάδα· τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶν οἴκημα τῆς εἱρκτῆς ἐν ᾧ θανατοῦσι [9] τοὺς καταδίκους ἀποπνίγοντες. ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς ὑπηρέτας ὁ Δαμοχάρης οὐ τολμῶντας ἅψασθαι τοῦ Ἄγιδος, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τῶν μισθοφόρων τοὺς παρεστῶτας ἀποστρεφομένους καὶ φεύγοντας τὸ ἔργον, ὡς οὐ θεμιτὸν οὐδὲ νενομισμένον βασιλέως σώματι τὰς χεῖρας προσφέρειν, διαπειλησάμενος αὐτοῖς καὶ λοιδορηθεὶς εἷλκεν αὐτὸς [10] εἰς τὸ οἴκημα τὸν Ἆγιν. ἤδη γὰρ ᾔσθηντο πολλοὶ τὴν σύλληψιν, καὶ θόρυβος ἦν ἐπὶ ταῖς θύραις καὶ φῶτα πολλά, καὶ παρῆσαν ἥ τε μήτηρ τοῦ Ἄγιδος καὶ ἡ μάμμη, βοῶσαι καὶ δεόμεναι τὸν βασιλέα τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν [11] λόγου καὶ κρίσεως τυχεῖν ἐν τοῖς πολίταις. διὸ καὶ μάλιστα κατήπειξαν τὴν ἀναίρεσιν, ὡς ἐξαρπαγησομένου νυκτὸς ἂν πλείονες ἐπέλθωσιν.

[20] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἆγις ἐπὶ τὴν στραγγάλην πορευόμενος, ὡς εἶδέ τινα τῶν ὑπηρετῶν δακρύοντα καὶ περιπαθοῦντα, παῦσαί με εἶπεν ὦ ἄνθρωπε κλαίων· καὶ γὰρ οὕτως παρανόμως καὶ ἀδίκως ἀπολλύμενος κρείττων εἰμὶ τῶν ἀναιρούντων· καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν παρέδωκε τῷ βρόχῳ τὸν τράχηλον ἑκουσίως.

[2] Ὁ δ’ Ἀμφάρης προελθὼν ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας καὶ τὴν Ἀγησιστράταν προσπεσοῦσαν αὐτῷ διὰ συνήθειαν καὶ φιλίαν ἀναστήσας, οὐδὲν ἔφη περὶ τὸν Ἆγιν ἔσεσθαι βίαιον οὐδ’ ἀνήκεστον· ἐκέλευε δὲ κἀκείνην εἰ βούλοιτο πρὸς τὸν [3] υἱὸν εἰσελθεῖν. ἐκείνης δὲ καὶ τὴν μητέρα μετ’ αὐτῆς παρεῖναι δεομένης, οὐδὲν ἔφη κωλύειν ὁ Ἀμφάρης· καὶ δεξάμενος ἀμφοτέρας καὶ πάλιν κλεῖσαι τὰς θύρας τοῦ δεσμωτηρίου κελεύσας, προτέραν μὲν τὴν Ἀρχιδαμίαν παρέδωκεν, ἤδη σφόδρα πρεσβῦτιν οὖσαν καὶ καταγεγηρακυῖαν ἐν ἀξιώματι μεγίστῳ τῶν πολιτίδων· ἀποθανούσης δ’ ἐκείνης ἐκέλευσε τὴν Ἀγησιστράταν ἔσω [4] βαδίζειν. ὡς δ’ εἰσελθοῦσα τόν θ’ υἱὸν ἐθεάσατο χαμαὶ κείμενον καὶ τὴν μητέρα νεκρὰν ἐκ τοῦ βρόχου κρεμαμένην, ἐκείνην μὲν αὐτὴ τοῖς ὑπηρέταις συγκαθεῖλε, καὶ παρεκτείνασα τῷ Ἄγιδι τὸ σῶμα περιέστειλε καὶ κατεκάλυψε· [5] τῷ δ’ υἱῷ προσπεσοῦσα καὶ φιλήσασα τὸ πρόσωπον, ἡ πολλή σε εἶπεν ὦ παῖ εὐλάβεια καὶ τὸ πρᾶον καὶ [6] τὸ φιλάνθρωπον ἀπώλεσε μεθ’ ἡμῶν. ὁ δ’ Ἀμφάρης ἀπὸ τῆς θύρας ὁρῶν τὰ γινόμενα καὶ τὰς φωνὰς ἀκούων, ἐπεισῆλθε καὶ πρὸς τὴν Ἀγησιστράταν μετ’ ὀργῆς εἶπεν· εἰ τοίνυν ἔφη ταὐτὰ ἐδοκίμαζες τῷ υἱῷ, ταὐτὰ καὶ πείσῃ.

[7] καὶ ἡ Ἀγησιστράτα πρὸς τὸν βρόχον ἀνισταμένη μόνον ἔφη συνενέγκαι ταῦτα τῇ Σπάρτῃ.

[21] [1] Τοῦ δὲ πάθους εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἐξαγγελθέντος καὶ τῶν τριῶν σωμάτων ἐκκομιζομένων, οὐκ ἦν ὁ φόβος οὕτω μέγας, ὥστε μὴ καταφανεῖς εἶναι τοὺς πολίτας ἀλγοῦντας μὲν ἐπὶ τοῖς γεγονόσι, μισοῦντας δὲ τὸν Λεωνίδαν καὶ τὸν Ἀμφάρην, μηδὲν δεινότερον μηδ’ ἀνοσιώτερον, ἐξ οὗ Δωριεῖς Πελοπόννησον οἰκοῦσιν, οἰομένους [2] ἐν Σπάρτῃ πεπρᾶχθαι. βασιλεῖ γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε Λακεδαιμονίων οὐδ’ οἱ πολέμιοι ῥᾳδίως ἐν ταῖς μάχαις ἀπαντῶντες προσέφερον τὰς χεῖρας, ἀλλ’ ἀπετρέποντο δεδιότες [3] καὶ σεβόμενοι τὸ ἀξίωμα. διὸ καὶ πολλῶν γεγονότων Λακεδαιμονίοις ἀγώνων πρὸς Ἕλληνας, εἷς μόνος ἀνῃρέθη πρὸ τῶν Φιλιππικῶν δόρατι πληγεὶς περὶ Λεῦκτρα [4] Κλεόμβροτος. Μεσσηνίων δὲ καὶ Θεόπομπον ὑπ’ Ἀριστομένους πεσεῖν λεγόντων, οὔ φασι Λακεδαιμόνιοι, πληγῆναι δὲ μόνον· ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἔχει τινὰς ἀμφιλογίας.

[5] ἐν δὲ Λακεδαίμονι πρῶτος Ἆγις βασιλεύων ὑπ’ ἐφόρων ἀπέθανε, καλὰ μὲν ἔργα καὶ πρέποντα τῇ Σπάρτῃ προελόμενος, ἡλικίας δὲ γεγονὼς ἐν ᾗ ἁμαρτάνοντες ἄνθρωποι συγγνώμης τυγχάνουσι, μεμφθεὶς δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων δικαιότερον ἢ τῶν ἐχθρῶν, ὅτι καὶ Λεωνίδαν περιέσωσε καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐπίστευσεν, ἡμερώτατος καὶ πραότατος γενόμενος.

[22] [1] Ἀποθανόντος δ’ αὐτοῦ, τὸν μὲν ἀδελφὸν Ἀρχίδαμον οὐκ ἔφθη συλλαβεῖν ὁ Λεωνίδας εὐθὺς ἐκφυγόντα, τὴν δὲ γυναῖκα παιδίον ἔχουσαν νεογνὸν ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας ἀπαγαγὼν βίᾳ Κλεομένει τῷ υἱῷ συνῴκισεν, οὐ πάνυ γάμων ὥραν ἔχοντι, τὴν δ’ ἄνθρωπον ἄλλῳ δοθῆναι [2] μὴ βουλόμενος. ἦν γὰρ οὐσίας τε μεγάλης ἐπίκληρος ἡ Ἀγιᾶτις Γυλίππου τοῦ πατρός, ὥρᾳ τε καὶ κάλλει πολὺ τῶν Ἑλληνίδων διαφέρουσα καὶ τὸν τρόπον ἐπιεικής.

[3] διὸ πολλὰ μὲν ἐποίησεν ὥς φασι μὴ βιασθῆναι δεομένη, συνελθοῦσα δ’ εἰς ταὐτὸ τῷ Κλεομένει, τὸν μὲν Λεωνίδαν ἐμίσει, περὶ δ’ αὐτὸν τὸν νεανίσκον ἦν ἀγαθὴ γυνὴ καὶ φιλόστοργος, ἐρωτικῶς ἅμα τῷ λαβεῖν πρὸς αὐτὴν διατεθέντα καί τινα τρόπον συμπαθοῦντα τῇ πρὸς τὸν Ἆγιν εὐνοίᾳ καὶ μνήμῃ τῆς γυναικός, ὥστε καὶ πυνθάνεσθαι πολλάκις περὶ τῶν γεγονότων καὶ προσέχειν ἐπιμελῶς διηγουμένης ἐκείνης ἣν ὁ Ἆγις ἔσχε διάνοιαν καὶ προαίρεσιν.

[4] Ἦν δὲ καὶ φιλότιμος μὲν καὶ μεγαλόφρων ὁ Κλεομένης καὶ πρὸς ἐγκράτειαν καὶ ἀφέλειαν οὐχ ἧττον τοῦ Ἄγιδος εὖ πεφυκώς, τὸ δ’ εὐλαβὲς ἄγαν ἐκεῖνο καὶ πρᾶον οὐκ εἶχεν, ἀλλὰ κέντρον τι θυμοῦ τῇ φύσει προσέκειτο καὶ μετὰ σφοδρότητος ὁρμὴ πρὸς τὸ φαινόμενον ἀεὶ καλόν.

[5] ἐφαίνετο δὲ κάλλιστον μὲν αὐτῷ κρατεῖν ἑκόντων, καλὸν δὲ καὶ μὴ πειθομένων περιεῖναι, πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον ἐκβιαζόμενον.

[23] [1] Οὐκ ἤρεσκε μὲν οὖν αὐτῷ τὰ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν, ἀπραγμοσύνῃ καὶ ἡδονῇ κατακεκηλημένων τῶν πολιτῶν, καὶ τοῦ βασιλέως πάντα τὰ πράγματα χαίρειν ἐῶντος, εἰ μηδεὶς αὐτὸν ἐνοχλοίη σχολάζειν ἐν ἀφθόνοις καὶ τρυφᾶν βουλόμενον, ἀμελουμένων δὲ τῶν κοινῶν, κατ’ ἰδίαν ἑκάστου πρὸς αὑτὸν ἕλκοντος τὸ κερδαλέον· ἀσκήσεως δὲ καὶ σωφροσύνης νέων καὶ καρτερίας καὶ ἰσότητος οὐδ’ ἀσφαλὲς ἦν, ‹διὰ› τοῦτο τῶν περὶ Ἆγιν ἀπολωλότων, [2] μνημονεύειν. λέγεται δὲ καὶ λόγων φιλοσόφων τὸν Κλεομένη μετασχεῖν ἔτι μειράκιον ὄντα, Σφαίρου τοῦ Βορυσθενίτου (SVF I 140) παραβάλλοντος εἰς τὴν Λακεδαίμονα καὶ περὶ τοὺς νέους καὶ τοὺς ἐφήβους οὐκ [3] ἀμελῶς διατρίβοντος. ὁ δὲ Σφαῖρος ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις ἐγεγόνει τῶν Ζήνωνος τοῦ Κιτιέως μαθητῶν, καὶ τοῦ Κλεομένους ἔοικεν ἀγαπῆσαί τε τῆς φύσεως τὸ ἀνδρῶδες [4] καὶ προσεκκαῦσαι τὴν φιλοτιμίαν. Λεωνίδαν μὲν γὰρ τὸν παλαιὸν λέγουσιν ἐπερωτηθέντα, ποῖός τις αὐτῷ φαίνεται ποιητὴς γεγονέναι Τυρταῖος, εἰπεῖν· ἀγαθὸς [5] νέων ψυχὰς κακκανῆν. ἐμπιπλάμενοι γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν ποιημάτων ἐνθουσιασμοῦ παρὰ τὰς μάχας ἠφείδουν [6] ἑαυτῶν. ὁ δὲ Στωϊκὸς λόγος ἔχει τι πρὸς τὰς μεγάλας φύσεις καὶ ὀξείας ἐπισφαλὲς καὶ παράβολον, βαθεῖ δὲ καὶ πράῳ κεραννύμενος ἤθει μάλιστ’ εἰς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἀγαθὸν ἐπιδίδωσιν.

[24] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τελευτήσαντος τοῦ Λεωνίδου τὴν βασιλείαν παρέλαβε καὶ τοὺς πολίτας τότε δὴ παντάπασιν ἐκλελυμένους ἑώρα, τῶν μὲν πλουσίων καθ’ ἡδονὰς ἰδίας καὶ πλεονεξίας παρορώντων τὰ κοινά, τῶν δὲ πολλῶν διὰ τὸ πράττειν κακῶς περὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ἀπροθύμων καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἀγωγὴν ἀφιλοτίμων γεγονότων, αὐτοῦ δ’ ὄνομα βασιλεύοντος ἦν μόνον, ἡ δ’ [2] ἀρχὴ πᾶσα τῶν ἐφόρων, εὐθὺς μὲν εἰς νοῦν ἔθετο τὰ παρόντα μεθιστάναι καὶ κινεῖν, ὄντος δ’ αὐτῷ φίλου Ξενάρους, ἐραστοῦ γεγονότος - τοῦτο δ’ ἐμπνεῖσθαι Λακεδαιμόνιοι καλοῦσιν - , ἀπεπειρᾶτο τούτου, διαπυνθανόμενος τὸν Ἆγιν ὁποῖος γένοιτο βασιλεὺς καὶ τίνι [3] τρόπῳ καὶ μετὰ τίνων ἐπὶ ταύτην ἔλθοι τὴν ὁδόν. ὁ δὲ Ξενάρης τὸ μὲν πρῶτον οὐκ ἀηδῶς ἐμέμνητο τῶν πραγμάτων ἐκείνων, ὡς ἐπράχθη καθ’ ἕκαστα μυθολογῶν [4] καὶ διηγούμενος· ὡς δ’ ἦν καταφανὴς [αὐτῷ] ὁ Κλεομένης ἐμπαθέστερον προσέχων καὶ κινούμενος ὑπερφυῶς πρὸς τὴν καινοτομίαν τοῦ Ἄγιδος καὶ ταὐτὰ πολλάκις ἀκούειν βουλόμενος, ἐπέπληξεν αὐτῷ πρὸς ὀργὴν ὁ Ξενάρης ὡς οὐχ ὑγιαίνοντι, καὶ τέλος ἀπέστη τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι καὶ φοιτᾶν πρὸς αὐτόν· οὐδενὶ μέντοι τὴν αἰτίαν ἔφρασε τῆς διαφορᾶς, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἔφη γινώσκειν ἐκεῖνον.

[5] οὕτω δὲ τοῦ Ξενάρους ἀντικρούσαντος, ὁ Κλεομένης καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ὁμοίως ἔχειν ἡγούμενος, αὐτὸς ἐν ἑαυτῷ [6] συνετίθει τὴν πρᾶξιν. οἰόμενος δ’ ἂν ἐν πολέμῳ μᾶλλον ἢ κατ’ εἰρήνην μεταστῆσαι τὰ παρόντα, συνέκρουσε πρὸς τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς τὴν πόλιν, αὐτοὺς διδόντας ἐγκλημάτων [7] προφάσεις. ὁ γὰρ Ἄρατος ἰσχύων μέγιστον ἐν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς ἐβούλετο μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς εἰς μίαν σύνταξιν ἀγαγεῖν Πελοποννησίους, καὶ τοῦτο τῶν πολλῶν στρατηγιῶν αὐτῷ καὶ τῆς μακρᾶς πολιτείας ἦν τέλος, ἡγουμένῳ μόνως ἂν οὕτως [8] ἀνεπιχειρήτους ἔσεσθαι τοῖς ἐκτὸς πολεμίοις. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων σχεδὸν ἁπάντων αὐτῷ προσγεγονότων ἀπελείποντο Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ Ἠλεῖοι καὶ ὅσοι Λακεδαιμονίοις Ἀρκάδων προσεῖχον, ἅμα τῷ τὸν Λεωνίδαν ἀποθανεῖν παρηνώχλει τοῖς Ἀρκάσι καὶ περιέκοπτεν αὐτῶν μάλιστα τοὺς τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς ὁμοροῦντας, ἀποπειρώμενος τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων καὶ τοῦ Κλεομένους ὡς νέου καὶ ἀπείρου καταφρονῶν.

[25] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Κλεομένη πρῶτον οἱ ἔφοροι πέμπουσι καταληψόμενον τὸ περὶ τὴν Βέλβιναν Ἀθήναιον· ἐμβολὴ δὲ τῆς Λακωνικῆς τὸ χωρίον ἐστί, καὶ τότε πρὸς [2] τοὺς Μεγαλοπολίτας ἦν ἐπίδικον. καταλαβόντος δὲ τοῦτο καὶ τειχίσαντος τοῦ Κλεομένους, ὁ Ἄρατος οὐθὲν ἐγκαλέσας, ἀλλὰ νυκτὸς ἐκστρατεύσας ἐπεχείρησε Τεγεάταις καὶ [3] Ὀρχομενίοις. τῶν δὲ προδοτῶν ἀποδειλιασάντων, ὁ μὲν Ἄρατος ἀνεχώρησε λεληθέναι νομίζων, ὁ δὲ Κλεομένης εἰρωνείᾳ χρώμενος ἔγραψε πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς δὴ παρὰ φίλου [4] πυνθανόμενος, ποῦ τῆς νυκτὸς ἐξέλθοι. τοῦ δ’ ἀντιγράψαντος ὡς ἐκεῖνον Βέλβιναν μέλλειν τειχίζειν ἀκούσας καταβαίη τοῦτο κωλύσων, πάλιν ὁ Κλεομένης ἐπιστείλας τοῦτο μὲν οὕτως ἔχειν ἔφη πεπεῖσθαι· τοὺς δὲ φανοὺς καὶ τὰς κλίμακας εἶπεν εἰ μή τί σοι διαφέρει, γράψον ἡμῖν [5] ἐπὶ τί σοι παρηκολούθουν. τοῦ δ’ Ἀράτου πρὸς τὸ σκῶμμα γελάσαντος καὶ πυνθανομένου, ποῖός τις ὁ νεανίσκος εἴη, Δαμοκράτης ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος φυγάς εἴ τι πράττεις ἔφη πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους, ὥρα σοι ταχύνειν [6] πρὸ τοῦ κέντρα φῦσαι τοῦτον τὸν νεοσσόν. ἐκ τούτου Κλεομένει μεθ’ ἱππέων ὀλίγων καὶ πεζῶν τριακοσίων ἐν Ἀρκαδίᾳ στρατοπεδευομένῳ προσέταξαν ἀναχωρεῖν οἱ [7] ἔφοροι, φοβούμενοι τὸν πόλεμον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀναχωρήσαντος αὐτοῦ Καφύας ἔλαβεν ὁ Ἄρατος, αὖθις ἐξέπεμπον τὸν [8] Κλεομένη. λαβόντος δ’ αὐτοῦ Μεθύδριον καὶ τὴν Ἀργολικὴν καταδραμόντος, ἐξεστράτευσαν οἱ Ἀχαιοὶ δισμυρίοις πεζοῖς καὶ χιλίοις ἱππεῦσιν Ἀριστομάχου στρατηγοῦντος.

[9] ἀπαντήσαντος δὲ περὶ Παλλάντιον Κλεομένους καὶ βουλομένου μάχεσθαι, φοβηθεὶς τὴν τόλμαν ὁ Ἄρατος οὐκ εἴασε διακινδυνεῦσαι τὸν στρατηγόν, ἀλλ’ ἀπῆλθε, λοιδορούμενος μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, χλευαζόμενος δὲ καὶ καταφρονούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, οὐδὲ πεντακισχιλίων [10] τὸ πλῆθος ὄντων. μέγας οὖν τῷ φρονήματι γεγονὼς ὁ Κλεομένης ἐθρασύνετο πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας, καὶ τῶν παλαιῶν τινος αὐτοὺς ἀνεμίμνῃσκε βασιλέως εἰπόντος ὅτι μάτην Λακεδαιμόνιοι πυνθάνονται περὶ τῶν πολεμίων, οὐ πόσοι εἰσίν, ἀλλὰ ποῦ εἰσιν.

[26] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῖς Ἠλείοις πολεμουμένοις ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν βοηθήσας, καὶ περὶ τὸ Λύκαιον ἀπιοῦσιν ἤδη τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς ἐπιβαλών, ἅπαν μὲν ἐτρέψατο καὶ διεπτόησεν αὐτῶν τὸ στράτευμα, συχνοὺς δ’ ἀνεῖλε καὶ ζῶντας ἔλαβεν, ὥστε καὶ περὶ Ἀράτου φήμην ἐκπεσεῖν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὡς τεθνηκότος, ὁ μὲν Ἄρατος ἄριστα τῷ καιρῷ χρησάμενος ἐκ τῆς τροπῆς ἐκείνης εὐθὺς ἐπὶ Μαντίνειαν ἦλθε καὶ μηδενὸς ἂν προσδοκήσαντος εἷλε τὴν [2] πόλιν καὶ κατέσχε, τῶν δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων παντάπασι ταῖς γνώμαις ἀναπεσόντων καὶ τῷ Κλεομένει πρὸς τὰς στρατείας ἐνισταμένων, ὥρμησε μεταπέμπεσθαι τὸν Ἄγιδος ἀδελφὸν Ἀρχίδαμον ἐκ Μεσσήνης, ᾧ ‹συμ›βασιλεύειν ἀπὸ τῆς ἑτέρας οἰκίας ἦν προσῆκον, οἰόμενος ἀμβλυτέραν τὴν τῶν ἐφόρων ἀρχὴν ἔσεσθαι τῆς βασιλείας [3] ἰσορρόπου καὶ ὁλοκλήρου γενομένης. οἱ δ’ ἀνῃρηκότες πρότερον τὸν Ἆγιν αἰσθόμενοι τοῦτο, καὶ φοβηθέντες μὴ δίκην δῶσι τοῦ Ἀρχιδάμου κατελθόντος, ἐδέξαντο μὲν αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν πόλιν παραγενόμενον κρύφα καὶ συγκατῆγον, εὐθὺς δ’ ἀπέκτειναν, εἴτ’ ἄκοντος τοῦ Κλεομένους ὡς οἴεται Φύλαρχος (FGrH 81 f 51), εἴτε πεισθέντος ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων καὶ προεμένου τὸν ἄνθρωπον [4] αὐτοῖς. τῆς γὰρ αἰτίας τὸ πλεῖστον ἐπ’ ἐκείνους ἦλθε, βεβιάσθαι τὸν Κλεομένη δοκοῦντας.

[27] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ κινεῖν εὐθὺς ἐγνωκὼς τὰ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν, ἔπεισε τοὺς ἐφόρους χρήμασιν ὅπως αὐτῷ [2] ψηφίσωνται στρατείαν. ἐθεράπευσε δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων συχνοὺς διὰ τῆς μητρὸς Κρατησικλείας, ἀφειδῶς συγχορηγούσης καὶ συμφιλοτιμουμένης· ἥ γε καὶ γάμου μὴ δεομένη λέγεται διὰ τὸν υἱὸν ἄνδρα λαβεῖν πρωτεύοντα [3] δόξῃ καὶ δυνάμει τῶν πολιτῶν. ἐξαγαγὼν δὲ τὴν στρατιάν, καταλαμβάνει τῆς Μεγαλοπολίτιδος χωρίον Λεῦκτρα· καὶ γενομένης πρὸς αὐτὸν ὀξείας τῶν Ἀχαιῶν βοηθείας Ἀράτου στρατηγοῦντος, ὑπὸ τὴν πόλιν αὐτὴν παραταξάμενος ἡττήθη μέρει τινὶ τοῦ στρατεύματος.

[4] ἐπεὶ δὲ χαράδραν τινὰ βαθεῖαν οὐκ εἴασε διαβῆναι τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς ὁ Ἄρατος, ἀλλ’ ἐπέστησε τὴν δίωξιν, ἀγανακτῶν δὲ Λυδιάδας ὁ Μεγαλοπολίτης συνεξώρμησε τοὺς περὶ αὑτὸν ἱππεῖς καὶ διώκων εἰς χωρίον ἀμπέλων καὶ τάφρων καὶ τειχῶν μεστὸν ἐνσείσας καὶ διασπασθεὶς περὶ ταῦτα κακῶς ἀπήλλαττε, κατιδὼν ὁ Κλεομένης ἀνῆκε τοὺς Ταραντίνους καὶ τοὺς Κρῆτας ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ὑφ’ ὧν ὁ Λυδιάδας [5] ἀμυνόμενος εὐρώστως ἔπεσε. πρὸς τοῦτο θαρρήσαντες οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι μετὰ βοῆς ἐνέβαλον τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς καὶ [6] τροπὴν ὅλου τοῦ στρατεύματος ἐποίησαν. ἀποθανόντων δὲ συχνῶν, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ὑποσπόνδους ὁ Κλεομένης ἀπέδωκε, τὸν δὲ Λυδιάδα νεκρὸν ἀχθῆναι πρὸς αὑτὸν κελεύσας, κοσμήσας πορφυρίδι καὶ στέφανον ἐπιθεὶς πρὸς τὰς [7] πύλας τῶν Μεγαλοπολιτῶν ἀπέστειλεν. οὗτος ἦν Λυδιάδας ὁ καταθέμενος τὴν τυραννίδα καὶ τοῖς πολίταις ἀποδοὺς τὴν ἐλευθερίαν καὶ τὴν πόλιν προσκομίσας Ἀχαιοῖς.

[28] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Κλεομένης μέγα φρονῶν ἤδη καὶ πεπεισμένος, ἂν ὡς βούλεται τοῖς πράγμασι χρώμενος πολεμῇ πρὸς τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, ῥᾳδίως ἐπικρατήσειν, ἐδίδασκε τὸν τῆς μητρὸς ἄνδρα Μεγιστόνουν, ὡς χρὴ τῶν ἐφόρων ἀπαλλαγέντας εἰς μέσον θεῖναι τὰ κτήματα τοῖς πολίταις καὶ τὴν Σπάρτην ἴσην γενομένην ἐγείρειν καὶ [2] προάγειν ἐπὶ τὴν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἡγεμονίαν. πεισθέντος δ’ ἐκείνου, δύο τῶν ἄλλων φίλων ἢ τρεῖς προσέλαβε.

[3] συνέβη δὲ περὶ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας καὶ τῶν ἐφόρων ἕνα κοιμώμενον ἐν Πασιφάας ὄναρ ἰδεῖν θαυμαστόν· ἐδόκει γάρ, ἐν ᾧ τόπῳ τοῖς ἐφόροις ‹ἔθος› ἐστὶ καθεζομένοις χρηματίζειν, ἕνα δίφρον κεῖσθαι, τοὺς δὲ τέτταρας ἀνῃρῆσθαι, καὶ θαυμάζοντος αὐτοῦ φωνὴν ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ γενέσθαι, φράζουσαν ὡς τοῦτο τῇ Σπάρτῃ λῷόν ἐστι.

[4] ταύτην τὴν ὄψιν διηγουμένου τοῦ ἐφόρου πρὸς τὸν Κλεομένη, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον διεταράχθη, καθ’ ὑποψίαν τινὰ πειράζεσθαι δοκῶν, ὡς δ’ ἐπείσθη μὴ ψεύδεσθαι [5] τὸν διηγούμενον, ἐθάρρησε. καὶ λαβὼν ὅσους ὑπώπτευε μάλιστα τῶν πολιτῶν ἐναντιώσεσθαι πρὸς τὴν πρᾶξιν, Ἡραίαν καὶ Ἀσέαν [τὰς] πόλεις ταττομένας ὑπὸ τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς εἷλε, καὶ σῖτον εἰσήγαγεν Ὀρχομενίοις, καὶ Μαντινείᾳ παρεστρατοπέδευσε, καὶ ὅλως ἄνω καὶ κάτω μακραῖς πορείαις ἀποτρύσας τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, ἀπέλιπεν αὐτῶν δεηθέντων τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐν Ἀρκαδίᾳ, τοὺς δὲ μισθοφόρους ἔχων αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τὴν Σπάρτην ἐχώρει.

[6] καὶ καθ’ ὁδὸν οἷς ἐπίστευε μάλιστα καλῶς πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔχειν ἀνεκοινοῦτο τὴν γνώμην, καὶ προῄει σχέδην, ὡς περὶ τὸ δεῖπνον οὖσι τοῖς ἐφόροις ἐπιπέσοι.

[29] [1] Γενόμενος δὲ τῆς πόλεως ἐγγύς, Εὐρυκλείδαν μὲν εἰς τὸ τῶν ἐφόρων συσσίτιον ἀπέστειλεν ὥς τινα παρ’ αὐτοῦ λόγον ἀπὸ στρατιᾶς κομίζοντα, Θηρυκίων δὲ καὶ Φοῖβις, [καὶ] δύο τῶν συντρόφων τοῦ Κλεομένους, οὓς μόθακας καλοῦσιν, ἐπηκολούθουν στρατιώτας ὀλίγους [2] ἔχοντες. ἔτι δὲ τοῦ Εὐρυκλείδα διαλεγομένου τοῖς ἐφόροις, ἐπιδραμόντες ἐσπασμέναις ταῖς μαχαίραις ἔπαιον αὐτούς.

[3] ὁ μὲν οὖν πρῶτος Ἀγύλαιος ὡς ἐπλήγη πεσὼν καὶ τεθνάναι δόξας, ἀτρέμα συναγαγὼν καὶ παρέλκων ἑαυτὸν ἐκ τοῦ οἰκήματος ἔλαθεν εἴς τι δωμάτιον εἰσερπύσας μικρόν, ὃ Φόβου μὲν ἦν ἱερόν, ἄλλως δὲ κεκλεισμένον ἀεὶ τότ’ [δὲ] ἐκ τύχης ἀνεῳγμένον ἐτύγχανεν. εἰς τοῦτο [4] συνεισενεγκὼν ἑαυτὸν ἀπέκλεισε τὸ θύριον. οἱ δὲ τέσσαρες ἀνῃρέθησαν καὶ τῶν ἐπιβοηθούντων αὐτοῖς ‹οὐ› πλείονες ἢ δέκα. τοὺς γὰρ ἡσυχίαν ἄγοντας οὐκ ἔκτεινον, οὐδὲ τοὺς ἀπιόντας ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἐκώλυον. ἐφείσαντο δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἀγυλαίου μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ προελθόντος.

[30] [1] Ἔστι δὲ Λακεδαιμονίοις οὐ Φόβου μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ Θανάτου καὶ Γέλωτος καὶ τοιούτων ἄλλων παθημάτων [2] ἱερά. τιμῶσι δὲ τὸν Φόβον οὐχ ὥσπερ οὓς ἀποτρέπονται δαίμονας ἡγούμενοι βλαβερόν, ἀλλὰ τὴν πολιτείαν [3] μάλιστα συνέχεσθαι φόβῳ νομίζοντες. διὸ καὶ προεκήρυττον οἱ ἔφοροι τοῖς πολίταις εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν εἰσιόντες, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 539 R.) φησί, κείρεσθαι τὸν μύστακα καὶ προσέχειν τοῖς νόμοις, ἵνα μὴ χαλεποὶ ὦσιν αὐτοῖς, τὸ τοῦ μύστακος οἶμαι προτείνοντες, ὅπως καὶ [4] περὶ τὰ μικρότατα τοὺς νέους πειθαρχεῖν ἐθίζωσι. καὶ τὴν ἀνδρείαν δέ μοι δοκοῦσιν οὐκ ἀφοβίαν, ἀλλὰ φόβον [5] ψόγου καὶ δέος ἀδοξίας οἱ παλαιοὶ νομίζειν. οἱ γὰρ δειλότατοι πρὸς τοὺς νόμους θαρραλεώτατοι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους εἰσί, καὶ τὸ παθεῖν ἥκιστα δεδίασιν οἱ μάλιστα [6] φοβούμενοι τὸ κακῶς ἀκοῦσαι. διὸ καὶ καλῶς ὁ εἰπών (EGF p. 30 Kinkel)·

ἵνα γὰρ δέος, ἔνθα καὶ αἰδώς·

καὶ Ὅμηρος (Il. 3, 172)·

αἰδοῖός τέ μοί ἐσσι φίλε ἑκυρὲ δεινός τε·

καί (Il. 4, 431)·

σιγῇ δειδιότες σημάντορας.

[7] τὸ γὰρ αἰσχύνεσθαι μάλιστα συμβαίνει πρὸς οὓς καὶ τὸ δεδοικέναι τοῖς πολλοῖς. διὸ καὶ παρὰ τὸ τῶν ἐφόρων συσσίτιον τὸν Φόβον ἵδρυνται Λακεδαιμόνιοι, μοναρχίας ἐγγυτάτω κατασκευασάμενοι τὸ ἀρχεῖον.

[31] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Κλεομένης ἡμέρας γενομένης προέγραψεν ὀγδοήκοντα τῶν πολιτῶν, οὓς ἔδει μεταστῆναι, καὶ τοὺς δίφρους ἀνεῖλε τῶν ἐφόρων πλὴν ἑνός, ἐν ᾧ [2] καθήμενος ἔμελλεν αὐτὸς χρηματίζειν. ἐκκλησίαν δὲ ποιήσας ἀπελογεῖτο περὶ τῶν πεπραγμένων. ἔφη γὰρ ὑπὸ τοῦ Λυκούργου τοῖς βασιλεῦσι συμμειχθῆναι τοὺς γέροντας, καὶ πολὺν χρόνον οὕτω διοικεῖσθαι τὴν πόλιν, [3] οὐδὲν ἑτέρας ἀρχῆς δεομένην· ὕστερον δὲ τοῦ πρὸς Μεσσηνίους πολέμου μακροῦ γενομένου, τοὺς βασιλεῖς διὰ τὰς στρατείας ἀσχόλους ὄντας αὐτοὺς πρὸς τὸ κρίνειν αἱρεῖσθαί τινας ἐκ τῶν φίλων καὶ ἀπολείπειν τοῖς [4] πολίταις ἀνθ’ ἑαυτῶν, ἐφόρους προσαγορευθέντας· καὶ διατελεῖν γε τούτους τὸ πρῶτον ὑπηρέτας τῶν βασιλέων ὄντας, εἶτα κατὰ μικρὸν εἰς ἑαυτοὺς τὴν ἐξουσίαν ἐπιστρέφοντας, [καὶ] οὕτως λαθεῖν ἴδιον ἀρχεῖον κατασκευασαμένους.

[5] σημεῖον δὲ τούτου τὸ μέχρι νῦν μεταπεμπομένων τὸν βασιλέα τῶν ἐφόρων τὸ πρῶτον ἀντιλέγειν καὶ τὸ δεύτερον, τὸ δὲ τρίτον καλούντων ἀναστάντα βαδίζειν πρὸς αὐτούς· καὶ τὸν πρῶτον ἐπισφοδρύναντα τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ ἀνατεινάμενον Ἀστερωπὸν ἡλικίαις ὕστερον πολλαῖς [6] ἔφορον γενέσθαι. μετριάζοντας μὲν οὖν αὐτούς, ἔφη, κρεῖττον ἦν ὑπομένειν, ἐξουσίᾳ δ’ ἐπιθέτῳ τὴν πάτριον καταλύοντας ἀρχήν, ὥστε τῶν βασιλέων τοὺς μὲν ἐξελαύνειν, τοὺς δ’ ἀποκτιννύειν ἀκρίτους, ἀπειλεῖν δὲ τοῖς ποθοῦσιν αὖθις ἐπιδεῖν τὴν καλλίστην καὶ θειοτάτην ἐν Σπάρτῃ κατάστασιν, [7] οὐκ ἀνεκτόν. εἰ μὲν οὖν δυνατὸν ἦν ἄνευ σφαγῆς ἀπαλλάξαι τὰς ἐπεισάκτους τῆς Λακεδαίμονος κῆρας, τρυφὰς καὶ πολυτελείας καὶ χρέα καὶ δανεισμοὺς καὶ τὰ πρεσβύτερα τούτων κακά, πενίαν καὶ πλοῦτον, εὐτυχέστατον ἂν ἡγεῖσθαι πάντων βασιλέων ἑαυτόν, ὥσπερ [8] ἰατρὸν ἀνωδύνως ἰασάμενον τὴν πατρίδα· νῦν δὲ τῆς ἀνάγκης ἔχειν συγγνώμονα τὸν Λυκοῦργον, ὃς οὔτε βασιλεὺς ὢν οὔτ’ ἄρχων, ἰδιώτης δέ, βασιλεύειν ἐπιχειρῶν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις προῆλθεν εἰς ἀγοράν, ὥστε δείσαντα τὸν [9] βασιλέα Χάριλλον ἐπὶ βωμὸν καταφυγεῖν. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνον μὲν ὄντα χρηστὸν καὶ φιλόπατριν ταχὺ τῷ Λυκούργῳ τῶν πραττομένων μετασχεῖν καὶ τὴν μεταβολὴν δέξασθαι τῆς πολιτείας, ἔργῳ δὲ μαρτυρῆσαι τὸν Λυκοῦργον, ὅτι πολιτείαν μεταβαλεῖν ἄνευ βίας καὶ φόβου χαλεπόν ἐστιν· [10] οἷς αὑτὸν ἔφη μετριώτατα κεχρῆσθαι, τοὺς ἐνισταμένους [11] τῇ σωτηρίᾳ τῆς Λακεδαίμονος ἐκποδὼν ποιησάμενον. τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις ἔφη πᾶσι τήν τε γῆν ἅπασαν εἰς μέσον τιθέναι, καὶ χρεῶν τοὺς ὀφείλοντας ἀπαλλάττειν, καὶ τῶν ξένων κρίσιν ποιεῖν καὶ δοκιμασίαν, ὅπως οἱ κράτιστοι γενόμενοι Σπαρτιᾶται σῴζωσι τὴν πόλιν τοῖς ὅπλοις, καὶ παυσώμεθα τὴν Λακωνικὴν Αἰτωλῶν καὶ Ἰλλυριῶν λείαν οὖσαν ἐρημίᾳ τῶν ἀμυνόντων ἐφορῶντες.

[32] [1] Ἐκ τούτου πρῶτον μὲν αὐτὸς εἰς μέσον τὴν οὐσίαν ἔθηκε, καὶ Μεγιστόνους ὁ πατρῳὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων φίλων ἕκαστος, ἔπειτα καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ πολῖται [2] πάντες, ἡ δὲ χώρα διενεμήθη. κλῆρον δὲ καὶ τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ γεγονότων φυγάδων ἀπένειμεν ἑκάστῳ, καὶ κατάξειν ἅπαντας ὡμολόγησε τῶν πραγμάτων ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ [3] γενομένων. ἀναπληρώσας δὲ τὸ πολίτευμα τοῖς χαριεστάτοις τῶν περιοίκων, ὁπλίτας τετρακισχιλίους ἐποίησε, καὶ διδάξας αὐτοὺς ἀντὶ δόρατος χρῆσθαι σαρίσῃ δι’ ἀμφοτέρων καὶ τὴν ἀσπίδα φορεῖν δι’ ὀχάνης, μὴ διὰ πόρπακος, ἐπὶ τὴν παιδείαν τῶν νέων ἐτράπη καὶ τὴν λεγομένην [4] ἀγωγήν· ἧς τὰ πλεῖστα παρὼν ὁ Σφαῖρος (SVF I 140) αὐτῷ συγκαθίστη, ταχὺ τὸν προσήκοντα τῶν τε γυμνασίων καὶ τῶν συσσιτίων κόσμον ἀναλαμβανόντων, καὶ συστελλομένων ὀλίγων μὲν ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης, ἑκουσίως δὲ τῶν πλείστων εἰς τὴν εὐτελῆ καὶ Λακωνικὴν [5] ἐκείνην δίαιταν. ὅμως δὲ τὸ τῆς μοναρχίας ὄνομα παραμυθούμενος ἀπέδειξε μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ βασιλέα τὸν ἀδελφὸν Εὐκλείδαν. καὶ τότε μόνον Σπαρτιάταις ἐκ μιᾶς οἰκίας συνέβη δύο σχεῖν βασιλέας.

[33] [1] Αἰσθόμενος δὲ τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς καὶ τὸν Ἄρατον, ὡς ἐπισφαλῶς αὐτῷ τῶν πραγμάτων ἐχόντων διὰ τὸν νεωτερισμόν, οὐκ ἂν οἰομένους προελθεῖν ἔξω τῆς Λακεδαίμονος οὐδ’ ἀπολιπεῖν μετέωρον ἐν κινήματι τηλικούτῳ τὴν πόλιν, οὐκ ἀγεννὲς οὐδ’ ἄχρηστον ἡγήσατο τὴν [ἐπιθυμίαν καὶ] προθυμίαν τοῦ στρατεύματος ἐπιδεῖξαι [2] τοῖς πολεμίοις. ἐμβαλὼν οὖν εἰς τὴν Μεγαλοπολιτικήν, ὠφελείας τε μεγάλας ἤθροισε καὶ φθορὰν [3] πολλὴν ἀπειργάσατο τῆς χώρας. τέλος δὲ τοὺς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνίτας ἐκ Μεσσήνης διαπορευομένους λαβών, καὶ πηξάμενος θέατρον ἐν τῇ πολεμίᾳ καὶ προθεὶς ἀπὸ τετταράκοντα μνῶν ἀγῶνα, μίαν ἡμέραν ἐθεᾶτο καθήμενος, οὐ δεόμενος θέας, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐντρυφῶν τοῖς πολεμίοις καὶ περιουσίαν τινὰ τοῦ κρατεῖν πολὺ τῷ [4] καταφρονεῖν ἐπιδεικνύμενος. ἐπεὶ ἄλλως γε τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν καὶ βασιλικῶν στρατευμάτων ἐκεῖνο μόνον οὐ μίμους παρακολουθοῦντας εἶχεν, οὐ θαυματοποιούς, οὐκ ὀρχηστρίδας, οὐ ψαλτρίας, ἀλλὰ πάσης ἀκολασίας καὶ βωμολοχίας καὶ πανηγυρισμοῦ καθαρὸν ἦν, τὰ μὲν πολλὰ μελετώντων τῶν νέων καὶ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων διδασκόντων, τὰς δὲ παιδιὰς ὁπότε σχολάζοιεν ταῖς συνήθεσιν εὐτραπελίαις καὶ τῷ λέγειν τι χαρίεν καὶ Λακωνικὸν [5] πρὸς ἀλλήλους διατιθεμένων. ἣν δ’ ἔχει τὸ τοιοῦτον τῆς παιδιᾶς εἶδος ὠφέλειαν, ἐν τῷ Λυκούργου βίῳ (c. 12. 19) γέγραπται.

[34] [1] Πάντων δ’ αὐτὸς ἐγίγνετο διδάσκαλος, εὐτελῆ καὶ ἀφελῆ καὶ φορτικὸν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ὑπὲρ τοὺς πολλοὺς ἔχοντα τὸν ἑαυτοῦ βίον ὥσπερ παράδειγμα σωφροσύνης ἐν μέσῳ θέμενος· ὃ καὶ πρὸς τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς πράξεις ῥοπήν [2] τινα παρέσχεν αὐτῷ. τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοις ἐντυγχάνοντες οἱ ἄνθρωποι βασιλεῦσιν οὐχ οὕτω κατεπλήττοντο τοὺς πλούτους καὶ τὰς πολυτελείας, ὡς ἐβδελύττοντο τὴν ὑπεροψίαν αὐτῶν καὶ τὸν ὄγκον, ἐπαχθῶς καὶ τραχέως [3] προσφερομένων τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι· πρὸς δὲ Κλεομένη βαδίζοντες, ὄντα τε δὴ βασιλέα καὶ καλούμενον, εἶθ’ ὁρῶντες οὐ πορφύρας τινὰς οὐδὲ χλαίνας περὶ αὐτὸν οὐδὲ κλινιδίων καὶ φορείων κατασκευάς, οὐδ’ ὑπ’ ἀγγέλων ὄχλου καὶ θυρωρῶν ἢ διὰ γραμματέων χρηματίζοντα χαλεπῶς καὶ μόλις, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἐν ἱματίῳ τῷ τυχόντι πρὸς τὰς δεξιώσεις ἀπαντῶντα καὶ διαλεγόμενον καὶ σχολάζοντα τοῖς χρῄζουσιν ἱλαρῶς καὶ φιλανθρώπως, ἐκηλοῦντο καὶ κατεδημαγωγοῦντο καὶ μόνον ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους ἐκεῖνον [4] ἔφασαν γεγονέναι. τῶν δὲ δείπνων αὐτοῦ τὸ μὲν καθημερινὸν ἦν ἐν τρικλίνῳ σφόδρα συνεσταλμένον καὶ Λακωνικόν· εἰ δὲ πρέσβεις ἢ ξένους δέχοιτο, δύο μὲν ἄλλαι προσπαρεβάλλοντο κλῖναι, μικρῷ δὲ μᾶλλον οἱ ὑπηρέται τὴν τράπεζαν ἐπελάμπρυνον, οὐ καρυκείαις τισὶν οὐδὲ πέμμασιν, ἀλλ’ ὥστ’ ἀφθονωτέρας εἶναι τὰς [5] παραθέσεις καὶ φιλανθρωπότερον τὸν οἶνον. καὶ γὰρ ἐπετίμησέ τινι τῶν φίλων, ἀκούσας ὅτι ξένους ἑστιῶν ζωμὸν αὐτοῖς μέλανα καὶ μάζαν ὥσπερ ἔθος ἦν ἐν τοῖς φιδιτίοις παρέθηκεν· οὐ γὰρ ἔφη δεῖν ἐν τούτοις οὐδὲ [6] πρὸς τοὺς ξένους λίαν ἀκριβῶς λακωνίζειν. ἀπαρθείσης δὲ τῆς τραπέζης, εἰσεκομίζετο τρίπους κρατῆρα χαλκοῦν ἔχων οἴνου μεστὸν καὶ φιάλας ἀργυρᾶς δικοτύλους δύο καὶ ποτήρια τῶν ἀργυρῶν ὀλίγα παντάπασιν, ἐξ ὧν ἔπινεν ὁ βουλόμενος, ἄκοντι δ’ οὐδεὶς ποτήριον προσέφερεν.

[7] ἀκρόαμα δ’ οὔτ’ ἦν οὔτ’ ἐπεζητεῖτο· ‹δι›επαιδαγώγει γὰρ αὐτὸς ὁμιλίᾳ τὸν πότον, τὰ μὲν ἐρωτῶν, τὰ δὲ διηγούμενος, οὔτε τὴν σπουδὴν ἀηδῆ τῶν λόγων τήν [8] τε παιδιὰν ἐπίχαριν καὶ ἀσόλοικον ἐχόντων. ἃς μὲν γὰρ οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν βασιλέων ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους θήρας ἐποιοῦντο, χρήμασι καὶ δωρεαῖς δελεάζοντες αὐτοὺς καὶ [9] διαφθείροντες, ἀτέχνους καὶ ἀδίκους ἐνόμιζεν εἶναι· τὸ δ’ ὁμιλίᾳ καὶ λόγῳ χάριν ἔχοντι καὶ πίστιν οἰκειοῦσθαι καὶ προσάγεσθαι τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας ἐφαίνετο κάλλιστον αὐτῷ καὶ βασιλικώτατον, ὡς οὐδενὶ φίλου διαφέροντα μισθωτὸν ἢ τῷ τὸν μὲν ἤθει καὶ λόγῳ, τὸν δ’ ὑπὸ χρημάτων ἁλίσκεσθαι.

[35] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν οἱ Μαντινεῖς αὐτὸν ἐπηγάγοντο, καὶ νύκτωρ εἰς τὴν πόλιν παρεισπεσόντι τὴν φρουρὰν τῶν Ἀχαιῶν συνεκβαλόντες ἐνεχείρισαν αὑτούς. ὁ δὲ καὶ τοὺς νόμους αὐτοῖς καὶ τὴν πολιτείαν ἀποδούς, [2] αὐθημερὸν ἀπῆλθεν εἰς Τεγέαν. ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἐκπεριελθὼν δι’ Ἀρκαδίας κατέβαινεν ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀχαϊκὰς Φαράς, βουλόμενος ἢ μάχην θέσθαι πρὸς τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς ἢ διαβάλλειν τὸν Ἄρατον ὡς ἀποδιδράσκοντα καὶ προιέμενον [3] αὐτῷ τὴν χώραν. ἐστρατήγει μὲν γὰρ Ὑπερβατᾶς τότε, τοῦ δ’ Ἀράτου τὸ πᾶν ἦν κράτος ἐν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς.

[4] ἐξελθόντων δὲ πανδημεὶ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν καὶ στρατοπεδευσαμένων ἐν Δύμαις περὶ τὸ Ἑκατόμβαιον, ἐπελθὼν ὁ Κλεομένης ἔδοξε μὲν οὐ καλῶς ἐν μέσῳ τῆς τε Δυμαίων πόλεως πολεμίας οὔσης καὶ τοῦ στρατεύματος τῶν Ἀχαιῶν [5] αὐλίσασθαι, τολμηρῶς δὲ προκαλούμενος τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς ἠνάγκασε συμβαλεῖν, καὶ νικήσας κατὰ κράτος καὶ τρεψάμενος τὴν φάλαγγα, πολλοὺς μὲν ἐν τῇ μάχῃ διέφθειρεν αὐτῶν, πολλῶν δὲ καὶ ζώντων ἐκυρίευσεν, ἐπελθὼν δὲ Λάγγωνι καὶ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν τοὺς φρουροῦντας ἐξελάσας, ἀπέδωκεν Ἠλείοις τὴν πόλιν.

[36] [1] Οὕτω δὲ συντετριμμένοις τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς ὁ μὲν Ἄρατος, εἰωθὼς παρ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἀεὶ στρατηγεῖν, ἀπείπατο τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ παρῃτήσατο καλούντων καὶ δεομένων, οὐ καλῶς οἷον ἐν χειμῶνι πραγμάτων μείζονι μεθεὶς [2] ἑτέρῳ τὸν οἴακα καὶ προέμενος τὴν ἐξουσίαν. ὁ δὲ Κλεομένης πρῶτον μὲν ‹οὐ› μέτρια τοῖς Ἀχαιῶν ἐδόκει πρέσβεσιν ἐπιτάττειν, ἑτέρους δὲ πεμπ‹όντ›ων ἐκέλευεν αὐτῷ παραδιδόναι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, ὡς τἆλλα μὴ διοισόμενος πρὸς αὐτούς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους εὐθὺς ἀποδώσων [3] καὶ τὰ χωρία. βουλομένων δὲ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐπὶ τούτοις δέχεσθαι τὰς διαλύσεις καὶ τὸν Κλεομένη καλούντων εἰς Λέρναν, ὅπου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἔμελλον ἔχειν, ἔτυχε τὸν Κλεομένη συντόνως ὁδεύσαντα καὶ χρησάμενον ὑδροποσίᾳ παρὰ καιρὸν αἵματος πλῆθος ἀνενεγκεῖν [4] καὶ τὴν φωνὴν ἀποκοπῆναι. διὸ τῶν μὲν αἰχμαλώτων ἀπέπεμψε τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους, τὸν δὲ σύλλογον ὑπερθέμενος ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς Λακεδαίμονα.

[37] [1] Τοῦτο διελυμήνατο τὰ πράγματα τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἁμῶς γέ πως ἐκ τῶν παρόντων ἀναλαβεῖν αὑτὴν ἔτι καὶ διαφυγεῖν τὴν Μακεδόνων ὕβριν καὶ πλεονεξίαν [2] δυναμένης. ὁ γὰρ Ἄρατος, εἴτ’ ἀπιστίᾳ καὶ φόβῳ τοῦ Κλεομένους, εἴτε φθονῶν εὐτυχοῦντι παρ’ ἐλπίδα καὶ νομίζων, ἔτη τρία καὶ τριάκοντα πρωτεύοντος αὐτοῦ, δεινὸν εἶναι τὴν δόξαν ἅμα καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἐπιφύντα νέον ἄνδρα καθελεῖν καὶ παραλαβεῖν πραγμάτων ηὐξημένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ κεκρατημένων χρόνον τοσοῦτον ἀρχήν, πρῶτον μὲν ἐπειρᾶτο τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς παραβιάζεσθαι [3] καὶ διακωλύειν· ὡς δ’ οὐ προσεῖχον αὐτῷ, τοῦ Κλεομένους ἐκπεπληγμένοι τὸ θράσος, ἀλλὰ καὶ δικαίαν ἐποιοῦντο τὴν ἀξίωσιν τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων εἰς τὸ πάτριον σχῆμα κοσμούντων τὴν Πελοπόννησον, τρέπεται πρὸς ἔργον οὐδενὶ μὲν τῶν Ἑλλήνων προσῆκον, αἴσχιστον δ’ ἐκείνῳ καὶ τῶν πεπραγμένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ πεπολιτευμένων ἀναξιώτατον, Ἀντίγονον ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα καλεῖν καὶ Μακεδόνων ἐμπιπλάναι τὴν Πελοπόννησον, [4] οὓς αὐτὸς ἐκ Πελοποννήσου μειράκιον ὢν ἐξήλασεν, ἐλευθερώσας τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον, καὶ πᾶσι μὲν τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν ὕποπτος καὶ διάφορος γενόμενος, τουτονὶ δ’ αὐτὸν Ἀντίγονον εἰρηκὼς κακὰ μυρία δι’ ὧν [5] ἀπολέλοιπεν ὑπομνημάτων (FGrH 231 F 4b). καίτοι πολλὰ παθεῖν καὶ παραβαλέσθαι φησὶν αὐτὸς ὑπὲρ Ἀθηναίων, ὅπως ἡ πόλις ἀπαλλαγείη φρουρᾶς καὶ Μακεδόνων· εἶτα τούτους ἐπὶ τὴν πατρίδα καὶ τὴν ἑστίαν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ μεθ’ ὅπλων εἰσήγαγεν ἄχρι τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος· [6] τὸν δ’ ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους γεγονότα καὶ βασιλεύοντα Σπαρτιατῶν καὶ τὴν πάτριον πολιτείαν, ὥσπερ ἁρμονίαν ἐκλελυμένην, ἀνακρουόμενον αὖθις ἐπὶ τὸν σώφρονα καὶ Δώριον ἐκεῖνον τοῦ Λυκούργου νόμον καὶ βίον, οὐκ ἠξίου Σικυωνίων ἡγεμόνα καὶ Τριταιέων γράφεσθαι· [7] φεύγων δὲ τὴν μάζαν καὶ τὸν τρίβωνα, καὶ τὸ δεινότατον ὧν κατηγόρει Κλεομένους, ἀναίρεσιν πλούτου καὶ πενίας ἐπανόρθωσιν, διαδήματι καὶ πορφύρᾳ καὶ Μακεδονικοῖς καὶ σατραπικοῖς προστάγμασιν ὑπέρριψε μετὰ τῆς Ἀχαΐας αὑτόν, ἵνα μὴ Κλεομένει ποιεῖν δοκῇ τὸ προσταττόμενον, Ἀντιγόνεια θύων καὶ παιᾶνας ᾄδων αὐτὸς ἐστεφανωμένος εἰς ἄνθρωπον ὑπὸ φθόης κατασηπόμενον.

[8] ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν οὐκ Ἀράτου βουλόμενοι κατηγορεῖν γράφομεν - ἐν πολλοῖς γὰρ ὁ ἀνὴρ οὗτος Ἑλληνικὸς γέγονε καὶ μέγας - , οἰκτίροντες δὲ τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης φύσεως τὴν ἀσθένειαν, εἰ μηδ’ ἐν ἤθεσιν οὕτως ἀξιολόγοις καὶ διαφόροις πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἐκφέρειν δύναται τὸ καλὸν ἀνεμέσητον.

[38] [1] Ἐλθόντων δὲ ‹τῶν› Ἀχαιῶν εἰς Ἄργος αὖθις ἐπὶ τὸν σύλλογον, καὶ τοῦ Κλεομένους ἐκ Τεγέας καταβεβηκότος, ἐλπὶς ἦν πολλὴ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἔσεσθαι τὴν διάλυσιν.

[2] ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος, ἤδη διωμολογημένων αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν Ἀντίγονον τῶν μεγίστων, φοβούμενος τὸν Κλεομένη μὴ πάντα διαπράξηται καθομιλήσας τὸ πλῆθος ἢ καὶ βιασάμενος, ἠξίου λαβόντα τριακοσίους ὁμήρους μόνον εἰσιέναι πρὸς αὐτούς, ἢ κατὰ γυμνάσιον ἔξωθεν τὸ Κυλλαράβιον προσελθόντα μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως διαλέγεσθαι.

[3] ταῦτ’ ἀκούσας ὁ Κλεομένης ἄδικα πάσχειν ἔφασκε· δεῖν γὰρ εὐθὺς αὐτῷ τότε προειπεῖν, οὐ νῦν, ἥκοντος ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας τὰς ἐκείνων, ἀπιστεῖν καὶ ἀπελαύνειν.

[4] γράψας δὲ περὶ τούτων ἐπιστολὴν πρὸς τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, ἧς ἦν τὸ πλεῖστον Ἀράτου κατηγορία, πολλὰ δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἀράτου λοιδορήσαντος αὐτὸν πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος, ἀνέζευξε διὰ ταχέων καὶ κήρυκα πόλεμον προεροῦντα τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς ἔπεμψεν, οὐκ εἰς Ἄργος, ἀλλ’ εἰς Αἴγιον, ὥς φησιν Ἄρτος (FGrH 231 F 5), ὅπως φθάσῃ τὴν [5] παρασκευὴν αὐτῶν. ἐγεγόνει δὲ κίνημα τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, καὶ πρὸς ἀπόστασιν ὥρμησαν αἱ πόλεις, τῶν μὲν δήμων νομήν τε χώρας καὶ χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς ἐλπισάντων, τῶν δὲ πρώτων πολλαχοῦ βαρυνομένων τὸν Ἄρατον, ἐνίων δὲ καὶ δι’ ὀργῆς ἐχόντων ὡς ἐπάγοντα τῇ Πελοποννήσῳ Μακεδόνας.

[6] διὸ τούτοις ἐπαρθεὶς ὁ Κλεομένης εἰς Ἀχαΐαν ἐνέβαλε· καὶ πρῶτον μὲν εἷλε Πελλήνην ἐξαπίνης ἐπιπεσὼν καὶ τοὺς φρουροῦντας ἐξέβαλε [μετὰ] τῶν Ἀχαιῶν· μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα Φενεὸν προσηγάγετο καὶ Πεντέλειον.

[7] ἐπεὶ δὲ φοβηθέντες οἱ Ἀχαιοὶ προδοσίαν τινὰ πραττομένην ἐν Κορίνθῳ καὶ Σικυῶνι τοὺς ἱππεῖς καὶ τοὺς ξένους ἀπέστειλαν ἐξ Ἄργους ἐκεῖ παραφυλάξοντας, αὐτοὶ δὲ τὰ Νέμεια καταβάντες εἰς Ἄργος ἦγον, ἐλπίσας, ὅπερ ἦν, ὁ Κλεομένης ὄχλου πανηγυρικοῦ καὶ θεατῶν τὴν πόλιν γέμουσαν ἀπροσδοκήτως ἐπελθὼν μᾶλλον ταράξειν, νυκτὸς ἦγε πρὸς τὰ τείχη τὸ στράτευμα, [8] καὶ τὸν περὶ τὴν Ἀσπίδα τόπον καταλαβὼν ὑπὲρ τοῦ θεάτρου χαλεπὸν ὄντα καὶ δυσπρόσοδον, οὕτως τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐξέπληξεν, ὥστε μηδένα τραπέσθαι πρὸς ἀλκήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ φρουρὰν λαβεῖν καὶ δοῦναι τῶν πολιτῶν ὁμήρους εἴκοσι καὶ γενέσθαι συμμάχους Λακεδαιμονίων, ἔχοντος ἐκείνου τὴν ἡγεμονίαν.

[39] [1] Οὐ μικρὸν οὖν τοῦτο καὶ πρὸς δόξαν αὐτῷ καὶ δύναμιν ὑπῆρχεν. οὔτε γὰρ οἱ πάλαι βασιλεῖς Λακεδαιμονίων πολλὰ πραγματευσάμενοι προσαγαγέσθαι τὸ Ἄργος βεβαίως ἠδυνήθησαν, ὅ τε δεινότατος τῶν στρατηγῶν Πύρρος εἰσελθὼν καὶ βιασάμενος οὐ κατέσχε τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλ’ ἀπέθανε, καὶ πολὺ συνδιεφθάρη μέρος αὐτῷ [2] τῆς δυνάμεως. ὅθεν ἐθαύμαζον τὴν ὀξύτητα καὶ διάνοιαν τοῦ Κλεομένους· καὶ οἱ πρότερον αὐτοῦ τὸν Σόλωνα καὶ τὸν Λυκοῦργον ἀπομιμήσασθαι φάσκοντος ἐν τῇ τῶν χρεῶν ἀφέσει καὶ τῇ τῶν κτημάτων ἐξισώσει καταγελῶντες, τότε παντελῶς ἐπείθοντο τοῦτον αἴτιον γεγονέναι [3] τῆς περὶ τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας μεταβολῆς. οὕτω γὰρ ἔπραττον τὸ πρὶν ταπεινὰ καὶ βοηθεῖν αὑτοῖς ἀδυνάτως εἶχον, ὥστε πέντε μυριάδας ἀνδραπόδων ἐμβαλόντας εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν Αἰτωλοὺς ἀπαγαγεῖν, ὅτε φασὶν εἰπεῖν τινα τῶν πρεσβυτέρων Σπαρτιατῶν, ὡς ὤνησαν οἱ πολέμιοι τὴν [4] Λακωνικὴν ἀποκουφίσαντες. ὀλίγου δὲ χρόνου διελθόντος, ἁψάμενοι μόνον τῶν πατρίων ἐθῶν καὶ καταστάντες εἰς ἴχνος ἐκείνης τῆς ἀγωγῆς, ὥσπερ παρόντι καὶ συμπολιτευομένῳ τῷ Λυκούργῳ πολλὴν ἐπίδειξιν ἀνδρείας ἐποιοῦντο καὶ πειθαρχίας, τὴν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀναλαμβάνοντες ἡγεμονίαν τῇ Λακεδαίμονι καὶ ἀνακτώμενοι τὴν Πελοπόννησον.

[40] [1] Ἑαλωκότος δ’ Ἄργους καὶ κατόπιν εὐθὺς προσθεμένων τῷ Κλεομένει Κλεωνῶν καὶ Φλιοῦντος, ἐτύγχανε μὲν ὁ Ἄρατος ἐν Κορίνθῳ ποιούμενός τινα [2] τῶν λεγομένων λακωνίζειν ἐξέτασιν· ἀγγελίας δὲ περὶ τούτων προσπεσούσης, διαταραχθεὶς καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀποκλίνουσαν αἰσθόμενος πρὸς τὸν Κλεομένη καὶ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἀπαλλαγῆναι βουλομένην, ἐκάλει μὲν εἰς τὸ βουλευτήριον τοὺς πολίτας, ἔλαθε δὲ διολισθὼν ἄχρι [3] τῆς πύλης. ἐκεῖ δὲ τοῦ ἵππου προσαχθέντος ἀναβὰς [4] ἔφυγεν εἰς Σικυῶνα. τῶν δὲ Κορινθίων ἁμιλλωμένων εἰς Ἄργος πρὸς τὸν Κλεομένη φησὶν ὁ Ἄρατος (FGrH 231 F 6) τοὺς ἵππους πάντας ῥαγῆναι, τὸν δὲ Κλεομένη μέμφεσθαι τοὺς Κορινθίους, μὴ συλλαβόντας αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ [5] ἐάσαντας διαφυγεῖν· οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐλθεῖν Μεγιστόνουν παρὰ τοῦ Κλεομένους, δεομένου παραλαβεῖν τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον - εἶχε γὰρ φρουρὰν Ἀχαιῶν - καὶ πολλὰ χρήματα διδόντος· ἀποκρίνασθαι δ’ αὐτόν, ὡς οὐκ ἔχει τὰ πράγματα, μᾶλλον δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων [6] αὐτὸς ἔχεται. ταῦτα μὲν ὁ Ἄρατος γέγραφεν. ὁ δὲ Κλεομένης ἐκ τοῦ Ἄργους ἐπελθὼν καὶ προσαγαγόμενος Τροιζηνίους Ἐπιδαυρίους Ἑρμιονέας, ἧκεν εἰς Κόρινθον· [7] καὶ τὴν μὲν ἄκραν περιεχαράκωσε, τῶν Ἀχαιῶν οὐ βουλομένων ἐκλιπεῖν, τοῦ δ’ Ἀράτου τοὺς φίλους καὶ τοὺς ἐπιτρόπους μεταπεμψάμενος ἐκέλευσε τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ [8] τὰ χρήματα λαβόντας φυλάττειν καὶ διοικεῖν. Τριτύμαλλον δὲ πάλιν τὸν Μεσσήνιον ἀπέστειλε πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀξιῶν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν καὶ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ὁμοῦ φυλάττεσθαι τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τῷ Ἀράτῳ διπλῆν ἐπαγγελλόμενος τὴν σύνταξιν ἧς ἐλάμβανε παρὰ Πτολεμαίου τοῦ [9] βασιλέως. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Ἄρατος οὐχ ὑπήκουσεν, ἀλλὰ τόν θ’ υἱὸν ἔπεμψε πρὸς τὸν Ἀντίγονον μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ὁμήρων καὶ ψηφίσασθαι τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς ἔπεισεν Ἀντιγόνῳ παραδιδόναι τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον, οὕτως ὁ Κλεομένης τήν τε Σικυωνίαν ἐμβαλὼν ἐπόρθησε, καὶ τὰ χρήματα τοῦ Ἀράτου τῶν Κορινθίων αὐτῷ ψηφισαμένων δωρεὰν ἔλαβε.

[41] [1] Τοῦ δ’ Ἀντιγόνου μετὰ πολλῆς τῆς δυνάμεως τὴν Γεράνειαν ὑπερβάλλοντος, οὐκ ᾤετο δεῖν τὸν Ἰσθμόν, ἀλλὰ τὰ Ὄνεια χαρακώσας καὶ τειχίσας φυλάττειν, καὶ τοπομαχῶν ἀποτρίβεσθαι τοὺς Μακεδόνας μᾶλλον ἢ [2] συμπλέκεσθαι πρὸς φάλαγγα συνησκημένην. καὶ τούτοις χρώμενος τοῖς λογισμοῖς, εἰς ἀπορίαν καθίστη τὸν Ἀντίγονον· οὔτε γὰρ σῖτον εἶχεν ἐκ παρασκευῆς ἱκανόν, οὔτε βιάσασθαι τὴν πάροδον, καθημένου τοῦ Κλεομένους, [3] ἦν ῥᾴδιον· ἐπιχειρήσας δὲ παραδύεσθαι διὰ τοῦ Λεχαίου νυκτός, ἐξέπεσε καί τινας ἀπέβαλε τῶν στρατιωτῶν, ὥστε παντάπασι θαρρῆσαι τὸν Κλεομένη καὶ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν ἐπηρμένους τῇ νίκῃ τραπέσθαι πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον, ἀθυμεῖν δὲ τὸν Ἀντίγονον, εἰς οὐκ εὐπόρους κατακλειόμενον [4] ὑπὸ τῆς ἀνάγκης λογισμούς. ἐβουλεύετο γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν ἄκραν ἀναζευγνύναι τὸ Ἡραῖον κἀκεῖθεν εἰς Σικυῶνα πλοίοις περαιῶσαι τὴν δύναμιν· ὃ καὶ χρόνου πολλοῦ καὶ [5] παρασκευῆς ἦν οὐ τῆς τυχούσης. ἤδη δὲ πρὸς ἑσπέραν ἧκον ἐξ Ἄργους κατὰ θάλατταν ἄνδρες Ἀράτου φίλοι, καλοῦντες αὐτὸν ὡς ἀφισταμένων τῶν Ἀργείων τοῦ [6] Κλεομένους. ὁ δὲ πράττων [μὲν] ἦν τὴν ἀπόστασιν Ἀριστοτέλης· καὶ τὸ πλῆθος οὐ χαλεπῶς ἔπεισεν, ἀγανακτοῦν ὅτι χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς οὐκ ἐποίησεν αὐτοῖς ὁ [7] Κλεομένης ἐλπίσασι. λαβὼν οὖν ὁ Ἄρατος παρ’ Ἀντιγόνου στρατιώτας χιλίους καὶ πεντακοσίους, παρέπλευσεν εἰς [8] Ἐπίδαυρον. ὁ δ’ Ἀριστοτέλης ἐκεῖνον οὐ περιέμενεν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς πολίτας παραλαβὼν προσεμάχετο τοῖς φρουροῦσι τὴν ἀκρόπολιν· καὶ παρῆν αὐτῷ Τιμόξενος μετὰ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐκ Σικυῶνος βοηθῶν.

[42] [1] Ταῦτα περὶ δευτέραν φυλακὴν τῆς νυκτὸς ἀκούσας ὁ Κλεομένης μετεπέμψατο Μεγιστόνουν καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν ἐκέλευσεν εὐθὺς εἰς Ἄργος βοηθεῖν· ὁ γὰρ ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἀργείων μάλιστα καταπιστωσάμενος πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνος ἦν, καὶ διεκώλυσεν ἐκβαλεῖν τοὺς ὑπόπτους.

[2] ἀπολύσας οὖν τὸν Μεγιστόνουν μετὰ δισχιλίων στρατιωτῶν, αὐτὸς προσεῖχε τῷ Ἀντιγόνῳ καὶ τοὺς Κορινθίους παρεθάρρυνεν, ὡς οὐδενὸς μεγάλου περὶ τὸ Ἄργος, ἀλλὰ [3] ταραχῆς τινος ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων ὀλίγων γεγενημένης. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Μεγιστόνους τε παρεισπεσὼν εἰς τὸ Ἄργος ἀνῃρέθη μαχόμενος καὶ μόγις ἀντεῖχον οἱ φρουροὶ καὶ διεπέμποντο συχνοὺς πρὸς τὸν Κλεομένη, φοβηθεὶς μὴ τοῦ Ἄργους οἱ πολέμιοι κρατήσαντες καὶ τὰς παρόδους ἀποκλείσαντες αὐτοὶ πορθῶσιν ἀδεῶς τὴν Λακωνικὴν καὶ πολιορκῶσι τὴν Σπάρτην ἔρημον οὖσαν, ἀπῆγεν ἐκ Κορίνθου τὸ στράτευμα.

[4] καὶ ταύτης μὲν εὐθὺς ἐστέρητο τῆς πόλεως, εἰσελθόντος [5] Ἀντιγόνου καὶ φρουρὰν ‹ἐγ›καταστήσαντος· ἐπιβαλὼν δὲ τῷ Ἄργει κατὰ τὸ τεῖχος ἐπεχείρησε μὲν εἰσαλέσθαι καὶ συνέστρεψεν ἐκ τῆς πορείας τὴν δύναμιν, ἐκκόψας δὲ τὰς ὑπὸ τὴν Ἀσπίδα ψαλίδας ἀνέβη καὶ συνέμειξε τοῖς ἔνδον ἔτι πρὸς τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς ἀντέχουσι, καὶ τῶν ἐντὸς ἔνια κλίμακας προσθεὶς κατέλαβε, καὶ τοὺς στενωποὺς ἐρήμους πολεμίων ἐποίησε, τοῖς βέλεσι χρήσασθαι προστάξας [6] τοὺς Κρῆτας. ὡς δὲ κατεῖδε τὸν Ἀντίγονον ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων εἰς τὸ πεδίον καταβαίνοντα μετὰ τῆς φάλαγγος, τοὺς δ’ ἱππεῖς ἤδη ῥύδην ἐλαύνοντας εἰς τὴν πόλιν, [7] ἀπέγνω κρατήσειν· καὶ συναγαγὼν ἅπαντας πρὸς αὑτόν, ἀσφαλῶς κατέβη καὶ παρὰ τὸ τεῖχος ἀπηλλάττετο, μεγίστων μὲν ἐν ἐλαχίστῳ χρόνῳ πραγμάτων ἐπικρατήσας, καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ὅλης ὁμοῦ τι μιᾷ περιόδῳ Πελοποννήσου κύριος γενέσθαι δεήσας, ταχὺ δ’ αὖθις ἐκπεσὼν [8] ἁπάντων. οἱ μὲν γὰρ εὐθὺς ἀπεχώρησαν αὐτοῦ τῶν ‹συ›στρατευομένων, οἱ δ’ ὀλίγον ὕστερον τῷ Ἀντιγόνῳ τὰς πόλεις παρέδωκαν.

[43] [1] Οὕτω δ’ αὐτῷ πεπραγότι κατὰ τὴν στρατείαν καὶ ἀπαγαγόντι τὴν δύναμιν, ἑσπέρας ἤδη περὶ Τεγέαν ἀφίκοντό τινες ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος οὐκ ἐλάττονα τῆς ἐν χερσὶ δυστυχίαν ἀπαγγέλλοντες, τεθνάναι τὴν γυναῖκα, δι’ ἣν οὐδὲ ταῖς πάνυ κατορθουμέναις ἐκεῖνος ἐνεκαρτέρει στρατείαις, ἀλλὰ συχνῶς κατέβαινεν εἰς Σπάρτην, ἐρῶν τῆς Ἀγιάτιδος καὶ περὶ πλείστου ποιούμενος [2] ἐκείνην. ἐπλήγη μὲν οὖν καὶ ἤλγησεν, ὡς εἰκὸς ἦν νέον ἄνδρα καλλίστης καὶ σωφρονεστάτης ἀφῃρημένον γυναικός, οὐ μὴν κατῄσχυνεν οὐδὲ προήκατο τῷ πάθει τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τῆς ψυχῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ φωνὴν καὶ σχῆμα καὶ μορφὴν ἐν ᾧ πρότερον εἶχεν ἤθει διαφυλάττων, τά τε προστάγματα τοῖς ἡγεμόσιν ἐδίδου [3] καὶ περὶ τῆς ἀσφαλείας τῶν Τεγεατῶν ἐφρόντιζεν. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ κατέβαινεν εἰς Λακεδαίμονα, καὶ μετὰ τῆς μητρὸς οἴκοι καὶ τῶν παίδων ἀπαλγήσας τὸ πένθος, εὐθὺς ἦν ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῶν ὅλων λογισμοῖς.

[4] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Πτολεμαῖος ὁ τῆς Αἰγύπτου βασιλεὺς ἐπαγγελλόμενος αὐτῷ βοήθειαν ἠξίου λαβεῖν ὅμηρα τοὺς παῖδας καὶ τὴν μητέρα, χρόνον μὲν συχνὸν ᾐσχύνετο φράσαι τῇ μητρί, καὶ πολλάκις εἰσελθὼν καὶ πρὸς αὐτῷ γενόμενος τῷ λόγῳ κατεσιώπησεν, ὥστε κἀκείνην ὑπονοεῖν καὶ παρὰ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ διαπυνθάνεσθαι, [5] μή τι κατοκνεῖ βουλόμενος ἐντυχεῖν αὐτῇ. τέλος δὲ τοῦ Κλεομένους ἀποτολμήσαντος εἰπεῖν, ἐξεγέλασέ τε μέγα καὶ τοῦτ’ ἦν εἶπεν ὃ πολλάκις ὁρμήσας λέγειν ἀπεδειλίασας; οὐ θᾶττον ἡμᾶς ἐνθέμενος εἰς πλοῖον ἀποστελεῖς, ὅπου ποτὲ τῇ Σπάρτῃ νομίζεις τὸ σῶμα τοῦτο χρησιμώτατον ἔσεσθαι, πρὶν ὑπὸ γήρως αὐτοῦ καθήμενον [6] διαλυθῆναι; πάντων οὖν ἑτοίμων γενομένων, ἀφίκοντο μὲν εἰς Ταίναρον πεζῇ, καὶ προὔπεμπεν ἡ δύναμις αὐτοὺς ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις· μέλλουσα δὲ τῆς νεὼς ἐπιβαίνειν ἡ Κρατησίκλεια τὸν Κλεομένη μόνον εἰς τὸν νεὼν τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ἀπήγαγε, καὶ περιβαλοῦσα καὶ [7] κατασπασαμένη διαλγοῦντα καὶ συντεταραγμένον ἄγε εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ Λακεδαιμονίων, ὅπως ἐπὰν ἔξω γενώμεθα μηδεὶς ἴδῃ δακρύοντας ἡμᾶς μηδ’ ἀνάξιόν τι τῆς Σπάρτης ποιοῦντας. τοῦτο γὰρ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν μόνον· αἱ [8] τύχαι δ’ ὅπως ἂν ὁ δαίμων διδῷ πάρεισι. ταῦτα δ’ εἰποῦσα καὶ καταστήσασα τὸ πρόσωπον ἐπὶ τὴν ναῦν ἐχώρει τὸ παιδίον ἔχουσα, καὶ διὰ τάχους ἐκέλευσεν ἀπαίρειν [9] τὸν κυβερνήτην. ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἀφίκετο καὶ τὸν Πτολεμαῖον ἐπύθετο λόγους παρ’ Ἀντιγόνου καὶ πρεσβείας δεχόμενον, περὶ δὲ τοῦ Κλεομένους ἤκουσεν, ὅτι, τῶν Ἀχαιῶν προκαλουμένων αὐτὸν εἰς διαλύσεις, φοβοῖτο δι’ ἐκείνην ἄνευ Πτολεμαίου καταθέσθαι τὸν πόλεμον, ἐπέστειλεν αὐτῷ τὰ τῇ Σπάρτῃ πρέποντα καὶ συμφέροντα πράττειν καὶ μὴ διὰ μίαν γραῦν καὶ παιδάριον [10] ἀεὶ δεδιέναι Πτολεμαῖον. αὕτη μὲν οὖν παρὰ τὰς τύχας τοιαύτη λέγεται γεγενῆσθαι.

[44] [1] Τοῦ δ’ Ἀντιγόνου Τεγέαν μὲν παραλαβόντος, Ὀρχομενὸν δὲ καὶ Μαντίνειαν διαρπάσαντος, εἰς αὐτὴν τὴν Λακωνικὴν συνεσταλμένος ὁ Κλεομένης, τῶν μὲν εἱλώτων τοὺς πέντε μνᾶς Ἀττικὰς καταβαλόντας ἐλευθέρους ἐποίει καὶ τάλαντα πεντακόσια συνέλεξε, δισχιλίους δὲ προσκαθοπλίσας Μακεδονικῶς ἀντίταγμα τοῖς παρ’ Ἀντιγόνου λευκάσπισιν, ἔργον ἐπὶ νοῦν βάλλεται [2] μέγα καὶ πᾶσιν ἀπροσδόκητον. ἡ Μεγάλη πόλις ἦν μὲν τότε καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν οὐδέν τι μείων οὐδ’ ἀσθενεστέρα τῆς Λακεδαίμονος, εἶχε δὲ τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν καὶ τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου βοήθειαν, ἐν πλευραῖς καθεζομένου καὶ δοκοῦντος ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐπικεκλῆσθαι μάλιστα [3] τῶν Μεγαλοπολιτῶν σπουδασάντων. ταύτην [δι]ἁρπάσαι διανοηθεὶς ὁ Κλεομένης - οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ᾧ μᾶλλον ἔοικε τὸ ταχὺ καὶ ἀπροσδόκητον ἐκείνης τῆς πράξεως - ἡμερῶν πέντε σιτία λαβεῖν κελεύσας ἐξῆγε τὴν δύναμιν ἐπὶ [4] τὴν Σελλασίαν, ὡς τὴν Ἀργολικὴν κακουργήσων· ἐκεῖθεν δὲ καταβὰς ἐπὶ τὴν Μεγαλοπολιτικὴν καὶ δειπνοποιησάμενος περὶ τὸ †Ῥοίτειον, εὐθὺς ἐπορεύετο τὴν δι’ Ἑλισσοῦντος [5] ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν· ἀποσχὼν δ’ οὐ πολὺ Παντέα μὲν ἔχοντα δύο τάγματα τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἀπέστειλε, καταλαβέσθαι κελεύσας μεσοπύργιον, ὃ τῶν τειχῶν ἐρημότατον εἶναι τοῖς Μεγαλοπολίταις ἐπυνθάνετο, τῇ δ’ [6] ἄλλῃ δυνάμει σχολαίως ἐπηκολούθει. τοῦ δὲ Παντέως οὐ μόνον ἐκεῖνον τὸν τόπον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πολὺ μέρος τοῦ τείχους ἀφύλακτον εὑρόντος, καὶ τὰ μὲν καθαιροῦντος εὐθύς, τὰ δὲ διασκάπτοντος, τῶν δὲ φρουρῶν οἷς ἐνέτυχε πάντας ἀποκτείναντος, ἔφθασε προσμείξας ὁ Κλεομένης, καὶ πρὶν αἰσθέσθαι τοὺς Μεγαλοπολίτας ἔνδον ἦν μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως.

[45] [1] Φανεροῦ δὲ μόλις τοῦ κακοῦ γενομένου τοῖς κατὰ τὴν πόλιν, οἱ μὲν εὐθὺς ἐξέπιπτον, ὅσα τυγχάνοι τῶν χρημάτων λαμβάνοντες, οἱ δὲ συνεστρέφοντο μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων, καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐνιστάμενοι καὶ προσβάλλοντες, ἐκείνους μὲν οὐκ ἴσχυσαν ἐκκροῦσαι, τοῖς δὲ φεύγουσι τῶν πολιτῶν ἀσφαλῶς ἀπελθεῖν παρέσχον, ὥστε μὴ πλείονα τῶν χιλίων ἐγκαταληφθῆναι σώματα, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἅπαντας ὁμοῦ μετὰ τέκνων καὶ γυναικῶν φθάσαι διαφυγόντας [2] εἰς Μεσσήνην. ἐσώθη δὲ καὶ τῶν προσβοηθούντων καὶ μαχομένων τὸ πλῆθος· ὀλίγοι δὲ παντάπασιν ἥλωσαν, ὧν ἦν Λυσανδρίδας τε καὶ Θεαρίδας, ἄνδρες ἔνδοξοι καὶ δυνατοὶ μάλιστα τῶν Μεγαλοπολιτῶν. διὸ καὶ λαβόντες αὐτοὺς εὐθὺς οἱ στρατιῶται τῷ Κλεομένει προσῆγον.

[3] ὁ δὲ Λυσανδρίδας ὡς εἶδε τὸν Κλεομένη πόρρωθεν, ἀναβοήσας ἔξεστί σοι νῦν εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ Λακεδαιμονίων ἔργον ἀποδειξαμένῳ τοῦ πεπραγμένου κάλλιον καὶ βασιλικώτερον ἐνδοξοτάτῳ γενέσθαι. [ὁ] [4] Κλεομένης δ’ ὑποτοπήσας αὐτοῦ τὴν ἔντευξιν τί δέ εἶπεν ὦ Λυσανδρίδα λέγεις; οὐ γὰρ δή πού με τὴν [5] πόλιν ὑμῖν ἀποδοῦναι κελεύσεις; καὶ ὁ Λυσανδρίδας αὐτὸ μὲν οὖν ἔφη ‹τοῦτο› λέγω καὶ συμβουλεύω, μὴ διαφθεῖραι πόλιν τηλικαύτην, ἀλλ’ ἐμπλῆσαι φίλων καὶ συμμάχων πιστῶν καὶ βεβαίων, ἀποδόντα Μεγαλοπολίταις τὴν πατρίδα καὶ σωτῆρα δήμου τοσούτου γενόμενον.

[6] μικρὸν οὖν ὁ Κλεομένης διασιωπήσας χαλεπὸν μέν ἔφη τὸ πιστεῦσαι ταῦτα, νικάτω δὲ τὸ πρὸς δόξαν [7] ἀεὶ μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ λυσιτελὲς παρ’ ἡμῖν. καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἀπέστειλε τοὺς ἄνδρας εἰς Μεσσήνην καὶ κήρυκα παρ’ ἑαυτοῦ, τοῖς Μεγαλοπολίταις ἀποδιδοὺς τὴν πόλιν ἐπὶ τῷ συμμάχους εἶναι καὶ φίλους, ἀποστάντας Ἀχαιῶν. [8] οὕτω δὲ τοῦ Κλεομένους εὐγνώμονα καὶ φιλάνθρωπα προτείναντος, οὐκ εἴασε τοὺς Μεγαλοπολίτας ὁ Φιλοποίμην ἐγκαταλιπεῖν τὴν πρὸς τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς πίστιν, ἀλλὰ κατηγορῶν τοῦ Κλεομένους, ὡς οὐ ζητοῦντος ἀποδοῦναι τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλὰ προσλαβεῖν τοὺς πολίτας, ἐξέβαλε τὸν Θεαρίδαν καὶ τὸν Λυσανδρίδαν ἐκ τῆς Μεσσήνης.

[9] οὗτος ἦν Φιλοποίμην ὁ πρωτεύσας ὕστερον Ἀχαιῶν καὶ μεγίστην κτησάμενος ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησι δόξαν, ὡς ἰδίᾳ περὶ αὐτοῦ γέγραπται.

[46] [1] Τούτων δ’ ἀπαγγελθέντων τῷ Κλεομένει, τετηρηκὼς τὴν πόλιν ἄθικτον καὶ ἀκέραιον, ὥστε μηδένα λαθεῖν μηδὲ τοὐλάχιστον λαβόντα, τότε παντάπασι τραχυνθεὶς καὶ ἀγανακτήσας τὰ μὲν χρήματα διήρπασεν, ἀνδριάντας δὲ καὶ γραφὰς ἀπέστειλεν εἰς Σπάρτην, τῆς δὲ πόλεως τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ μέγιστα μέρη κατασκάψας καὶ διαφθείρας ἀνέζευξεν ἐπ’ οἴκου, φοβούμενος τὸν Ἀντίγονον [2] καὶ τοὺς Ἀχαιούς. ἐπράχθη δ’ οὐδὲν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν. ἐτύγχανον μὲν γὰρ ἐν Αἰγίῳ βουλὴν ἔχοντες· ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἄρατος ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα πολὺν μὲν χρόνον ἔκλαιε, τὴν χλαμύδα θέμενος πρὸ τοῦ προσώπου, θαυμαζόντων δὲ καὶ λέγειν κελευόντων εἶπεν, ὅτι Μεγάλη πόλις ἀπόλωλεν ὑπὸ Κλεομένους, ἡ μὲν σύνοδος εὐθὺς διελύθη τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, καταπλαγέντων τὴν ὀξύτητα καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ πάθους, [3] ὁ δ’ Ἀντίγονος ἐπιχειρήσας βοηθεῖν, εἶτα βραδέως αὐτῷ τῆς δυνάμεως ἐκ τῶν χειμαδίων ἀνισταμένης, ταύτην μὲν αὖθις ἐκέλευσε κατὰ χώραν μένειν, αὐτὸς δὲ παρῆλθεν εἰς Ἄργος, ‹οὐ› πολλοὺς ἔχων στρατιώτας [4] μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ. διὸ καὶ τὸ δεύτερον ἐγχείρημα τοῦ Κλεομένους ἔδοξε μὲν τετολμῆσθαι παραβόλως καὶ μανικῶς, ἐπράχθη δὲ μετὰ πολλῆς προνοίας, ὥς φησι Πολύβιος [5] (2, 64, 2). εἰδὼς γὰρ εἰς τὰ χειμάδια διεσπαρμένους κατὰ πόλεις [ὥς φησι] τοὺς Μακεδόνας, καὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον οὐ πολλοὺς ἔχοντα μισθοφόρους ἐν Ἄργει διαχειμάζοντα μετὰ τῶν φίλων, ἐνέβαλεν εἰς τὴν Ἀργείαν, λογιζόμενος ἢ δι’ αἰσχύνην τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου παροξυνθέντος ἐπικρατήσειν, ἢ μὴ τολμήσαντα μάχεσθαι διαβαλεῖν πρὸς τοὺς [6] Ἀργείους. ὃ καὶ συνέβη. διαφθειρομένης γὰρ τῆς χώρας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ πάντων ἀγομένων καὶ φερομένων, οἱ μὲν Ἀργεῖοι δυσανασχετοῦντες ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας συνεστρέφοντο τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ κατεβόων, μάχεσθαι κελεύοντες ἢ τοῖς [7] κρείττοσιν ἐξίστασθαι τῆς ἡγεμονίας· ὁ δ’ Ἀντίγονος, ὡς ἔδει στρατηγὸν ἔμφρονα, τὸ κινδυνεῦσαι παραλόγως καὶ προέσθαι τὴν ἀσφάλειαν αἰσχρόν, οὐ τὸ κακῶς ἀκοῦσαι παρὰ τοῖς ἐκτὸς ἡγούμενος, οὐ προῆλθεν, ἀλλ’ [8] ἐνέμενε [ἐν] τοῖς αὑτοῦ λογισμοῖς. ὁ δὲ Κλεομένης ἄχρι τῶν τειχῶν τῷ στρατῷ προσελθὼν καὶ καθυβρίσας καὶ διαλυμηνάμενος, ἀδεῶς ἀνεχώρησεν.

[47] [1] Ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον αὖθις εἰς Τεγέαν ἀκούσας προϊέναι τὸν Ἀντίγονον, ὡς ἐκεῖθεν εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἐμβαλοῦντα, ταχὺ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀναλαβὼν καὶ καθ’ ἑτέρας ὁδοὺς παραλλάξας, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ πρὸς τῇ πόλει τῶν Ἀργείων ἀνεφάνη, πορθῶν τὸ πεδίον καὶ τὸν σῖτον οὐ κείρων, ὥσπερ οἱ λοιποί, δρεπάναις καὶ μαχαίραις, ἀλλὰ κόπτων ξύλοις μεγάλοις εἰς σχῆμα ῥομφαίας ἀπειργασμένοις, ‹οἷς› ὡς ἐπὶ παιδιᾷ χρωμένους ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι σὺν μηδενὶ πόνῳ πάντα συγκατατρῖψαι καὶ διαφθεῖραι [2] τὸν καρπόν. ὡς μέντοι κατὰ τὴν Κυλλάραβιν γενόμενοι τὸ γυμνάσιον ἐπεχείρουν προσφέρειν πῦρ, ἐκώλυσεν, ὡς καὶ τῶν περὶ Μεγάλην πόλιν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς μᾶλλον ἢ καλῶς [3] αὐτῷ πεπραγμένων. τοῦ δ’ Ἀντιγόνου πρῶτον μὲν εὐθὺς εἰς Ἄργος ἀναχωρήσαντος, ἔπειτα τὰ ὄρη καὶ τὰς ὑπερβολὰς πάσας φυλακαῖς καταλαβόντος, ἀμελεῖν καὶ καταφρονεῖν προσποιούμενος ἔπεμψε κήρυκας, τὰς κλεῖς ἀξιῶν τοῦ Ἡραίου λαβεῖν, ὅπως ἀπαλλάττοιτο τῇ θεῷ [4] θύσας. οὕτω δὲ παίξας καὶ κατειρωνευσάμενος καὶ τῇ θεῷ θύσας ὑπὸ τὸν νεὼν κεκλεισμένον, ἀπήγαγεν εἰς [5] Φλιοῦντα τὸν στρατόν. ἐκεῖθεν δὲ τοὺς φρουροῦντας τὸν Ὀλύγυρτον ἐξελάσας, κατέβη παρὰ τὸν Ὀρχομενόν, οὐ μόνον τοῖς πολίταις φρόνημα καὶ θάρσος ἐμπεποιηκώς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀνὴρ ἡγεμονικὸς δοκῶν εἶναι καὶ [6] πραγμάτων μεγάλων ἄξιος. τὸ γὰρ ἐκ μιᾶς πόλεως ὁρμώμενον ὁμοῦ τῇ Μακεδόνων δυνάμει καὶ Πελοποννησίοις ἅπασι καὶ χορηγίᾳ βασιλικῇ πολεμεῖν, [καὶ] μὴ μόνον ἄθικτον διαφυλάττοντα τὴν Λακωνικήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ χώραν κακῶς ποιοῦντα τὴν ἐκείνων καὶ πόλεις αἱροῦντα τηλικαύτας, οὐ τῆς τυχούσης ἐδόκει δεινότητος εἶναι καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνης.

[48] [1] Ἀλλ’ ὁ πρῶτος τὰ χρήματα νεῦρα τῶν πραγμάτων προσειπὼν εἰς τὰ τοῦ πολέμου πράγματα μάλιστα [2] βλέψας τοῦτ’ εἰπεῖν ἔοικε. καὶ Δημάδης (fr. IX p. 23 de Falco) τὰς τριήρεις μὲν καθέλκειν καὶ πληροῦν ποτε τῶν Ἀθηναίων κελευόντων, χρήματα δ’ οὐκ ἐχόντων, πρότερόν ἐστιν ἔφη †τοῦ πρωρατεῦσαι τὸ φυρᾶσαι.

[3] λέγεται δὲ καὶ Ἀρχίδαμος ὁ παλαιὸς ὑπὸ τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ Πελοποννησιακοῦ πολέμου, κελευόντων ‹τὰς› εἰσφορὰς τάξαι τῶν συμμάχων αὐτόν, εἰπεῖν ὡς ὁ πόλεμος οὐ [4] τεταγμένα σιτεῖται. καθάπερ γὰρ οἱ σεσωμασκηκότες ἀθληταὶ τῷ χρόνῳ καταβαροῦσι καὶ καταγωνίζονται τοὺς εὐρύθμους καὶ τεχνίτας, οὕτως καὶ ὁ Ἀντίγονος, ἐκ πολλῆς ἀναφέρων δυνάμεως πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ἐξεπόνει καὶ κατήθλει τὸν Κλεομένη, γλίσχρως καὶ μόλις πορίζοντα [5] τοῖς ξένοις μισθὸν καὶ τροφὴν τοῖς πολίταις. ἐπεὶ τἆλλά γε πρὸς τοῦ Κλεομένους ὁ χρόνος ἦν, τῶν οἴκοι πραγμάτων [6] ἀνιστάντων τὸν Ἀντίγονον. βάρβαροι γὰρ περιέκοπτον ἀπόντος καὶ κατέτρεχον τὴν Μακεδονίαν, καὶ τότε δὴ πολὺς ἄνωθεν Ἰλλυριῶν ἐμβεβλήκει στρατός, ὑφ’ οὗ πορθούμενοι μετεπέμποντο τὸν Ἀντίγονον οἱ Μακεδόνες.

[7] καὶ παρ’ ὀλίγον πρὸ τῆς μάχης συνέτυχε ταῦτα τὰ γράμματα κομισθῆναι πρὸς αὐτόν· ὧν κομισθέντων εὐθὺς [8] ἂν ἀπῆλθε μακρὰ χαίρειν φράσας Ἀχαιοῖς. ἀλλ’ ἡ τὰ μέγιστα τῶν πραγμάτων κρίνουσα τῷ παρὰ μικρὸν τύχη τηλικαύτην ἀπεδείξατο ῥοπὴν καιροῦ καὶ δύναμιν, ὥστε, τῆς μάχης ἐν Σελλασίᾳ γενομένης καὶ τοῦ Κλεομένους ἀποβεβληκότος τὴν δύναμιν καὶ τὴν πόλιν, εὐθὺς [9] παρεῖναι τοὺς καλοῦντας τὸν Ἀντίγονον. ὃ καὶ μάλιστα τὴν δυστυχίαν τοῦ Κλεομένους οἰκτροτέραν ἐποίησεν.

[10] εἰ γὰρ ἡμέρας δύο μόνας ἐπέσχε καὶ παρήγαγε φυγομαχῶν, οὐκ ἂν ἐδέησεν αὐτῷ μάχης, ἀλλ’ ἐφ’ οἷς ἐβούλετο διηλλάγη πρὸς τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς ἀπελθόντων τῶν [11] Μακεδόνων· νῦν δ’ ὥσπερ εἴρηται διὰ τὴν ἀχρηματίαν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις τὸ πᾶν θέμενος, ἠναγκάσθη δισμυρίοις, ὡς Πολύβιός (2, 65, 17) φησι, πρὸς τρισμυρίους ἀντιπαρατάξασθαι.

[49] [1] Καὶ θαυμαστὸν μὲν ἐν τῷ κινδύνῳ παρασχὼν ἑαυτὸν στρατηγόν, ἐκθύμοις δὲ χρησάμενος τοῖς πολίταις, οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ τῶν ξένων μεμπτῶς ἀγωνισαμένων, τῷ τρόπῳ τῆς ὁπλίσεως καὶ τῷ βάρει τῆς ὁπλιτικῆς φάλαγγος [2] ἐξεθλίβη. Φύλαρχος (FGrH 81 F 59) δὲ καὶ προδοσίαν γενέσθαι φησὶ τὴν μάλιστα τῷ Κλεομένει τὰ [3] πράγματα διεργασαμένην. τοῦ γὰρ Ἀντιγόνου τοὺς Ἰλλυριοὺς καὶ τοὺς Ἀκαρνᾶνας ἐκπεριελθεῖν κρύφα κελεύσαντος καὶ κυκλώσασθαι θάτερον κέρας, ἐφ’ οὗ τεταγμένος ἦν Εὐκλείδας ὁ τοῦ Κλεομένους ἀδελφός, εἶτα τὴν ἄλλην ἐπὶ μάχῃ δύναμιν ἐκτάττοντος, ἀπὸ σκοπῆς θεωρῶν ὁ Κλεομένης, ὡς οὐδαμοῦ τὰ ὅπλα τῶν Ἰλλυριῶν καὶ τῶν Ἀκαρνάνων κατεῖδεν, ἐφοβήθη μὴ πρός τι [4] τοιοῦτον αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἀντίγονος κέχρηται. καλέσας δὲ Δαμοτέλη τὸν ἐπὶ τῆς κρυπτείας τεταγμένον, ὁρᾶν ἐκέλευσε καὶ ζητεῖν, ὅπως ἔχει τὰ κατὰ νώτου καὶ κύκλῳ τῆς [5] παρατάξεως. τοῦ δὲ Δαμοτέλους - ἦν γὰρ ὡς λέγεται χρήμασι πρότερον ὑπ’ Ἀντιγόνου διεφθαρμένος - ἀμελεῖν ἐκείνων εἰπόντος ὡς καλῶς ἐχόντων, τοῖς δὲ συνάπτουσιν ἐξ ἐναντίας προσέχειν καὶ τούτους ἀμύνεσθαι, πιστεύσας ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον ἐχώρει, καὶ τῇ ῥύμῃ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν Σπαρτιατῶν ὠσάμενος τὴν φάλαγγα τῶν Μακεδόνων ἐπὶ πέντε που σταδίους ὑποχωρούντων, ἐκβιαζόμενος καὶ [6] κρατῶν ἠκολούθησεν. εἶτα τῶν περὶ τὸν Εὐκλείδαν ἀπὸ θατέρου κυκλωθέντων, ἐπιστὰς καὶ κατιδὼν τὸν κίνδυνον οἴχῃ μοι φίλτατ’ ἀδελφέ εἶπεν, οἴχῃ, γενναῖος ὢν καὶ [7] παισὶ ζηλωτὸς Σπαρτιατῶν καὶ γυναιξὶν ἀοίδιμος. οὕτω δὲ τῶν περὶ τὸν Εὐκλείδαν ἀναιρεθέντων, καὶ τῶν ἐκεῖθεν ὡς ἐκράτουν ἐπιφερομένων, ταραττομένους ὁρῶν τοὺς στρατιώτας καὶ μένειν οὐκέτι τολμῶντας, ἔσῳζεν ἑαυτόν.

[8] ἀποθανεῖν δὲ καὶ τῶν ξένων ‹τοὺς› πολλοὺς λέγουσι καὶ ‹τοὺς› Λακεδαιμονίους ἅπαντας πλὴν διακοσίων, ἑξακισχιλίους ὄντας.

[50] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἀφίκετο, τοῖς μὲν ἀπαντήσασι τῶν πολιτῶν παρῄνει δέχεσθαι τὸν Ἀντίγονον, αὐτὸς δ’ εἶπεν εἴτε ζῶν εἴτ’ ἀποθανών, ὃ μέλλοι [2] τῇ Σπάρτῃ συνοίσειν, τοῦτο πράξειν. ὁρῶν δὲ τὰς γυναῖκας τοῖς μετ’ αὐτοῦ πεφευγόσι προστρεχούσας καὶ δεχομένας τὰ ὅπλα καὶ ποτὸν προσφερούσας, αὐτὸς εἰσῆλθε μὲν εἰς [3] τὴν οἰκίαν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ· τῆς δὲ παιδίσκης, ἣν εἶχεν ἐλευθέραν οὖσαν ἐκ Μεγάλης πόλεως ἀνειληφὼς μετὰ τὴν τῆς γυναικὸς τελευτήν, ὡς εἴθιστο προσιούσης καὶ βουλομένης ἀπὸ στρατείας ἥκοντα θεραπεύειν, οὔτε πιεῖν ἐκδεδιψηκὼς ὑπέμεινεν οὔτε καθίσαι κεκμηκώς, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐτύγχανε τεθωρακισμένος τῶν κιόνων τινὶ τὴν χεῖρα προσβαλὼν πλαγίαν καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ἐπὶ τὸν πῆχυν ἐπιθείς, καὶ χρόνον οὐ πολὺν οὕτω διαναπαύσας τὸ σῶμα καὶ τῇ διανοίᾳ περιδραμὼν ἅπαντας τοὺς λογισμούς, ὥρμησε μετὰ τῶν φίλων εἰς τὸ Γύθιον.

[4] κἀκεῖθεν ἐπιβάντες ἐπ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτο παρεσκευασμένων πλοίων ἀνήχθησαν.

[51] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἀντίγονος ἐξ ἐφόδου παραλαβὼν τὴν πόλιν καὶ χρησάμενος τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις φιλανθρώπως, καὶ τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς Σπάρτης οὐ προπηλακίσας οὐδ’ ἐνυβρίσας, ἀλλὰ καὶ νόμους καὶ πολιτείαν ἀποδοὺς καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς θύσας, ἀνεχώρησεν ἡμέρᾳ τρίτῃ, πυθόμενος ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ πολὺν πόλεμον εἶναι καὶ πορθεῖσθαι [2] τὴν χώραν ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων. ἤδη δὲ καὶ τὸ νόσημα κατεῖχεν αὐτόν, εἰς φθίσιν ἐκβεβηκὸς ἰσχυρὰν καὶ [3] κατάρρουν σύντονον. οὐ μὴν ἀπεῖπεν, ἀλλ’ ἀντήρκεσε πρὸς τοὺς οἰκείους ἀγῶνας, ὅσον ἐπὶ νίκῃ μεγίστῃ καὶ φόνῳ πλείστῳ τῶν βαρβάρων εὐκλεέστερον ἀποθανεῖν, ὡς μὲν εἰκός ἐστι καὶ λέγουσιν οἱ περὶ Φύλαρχον (FGrH 81 F 60), αὐτῇ τῇ περὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα κραυγῇ τὸ σῶμα προσαναρρήξας· [4] ἐν δὲ ταῖς σχολαῖς ἦν ἀκούειν, ὅτι βοῶν μετὰ τὴν νίκην ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ὦ καλῆς ἡμέρας πλῆθος αἵματος ἀνήγαγε καὶ πυρέξας συντόνως ἐτελεύτησε. ταῦτα μὲν τὰ περὶ Ἀντίγονον.

[52] [1] Κλεομένης δὲ πλέων ἀπὸ Κυθήρων εἰς νῆσον [2] ἑτέραν, Αἰγιαλίαν, κατέσχεν. ὅθεν εἰς Κυρήνην περαιοῦσθαι μέλλοντος αὐτοῦ, τῶν φίλων εἷς ὄνομα Θηρυκίων, ἀνὴρ πρός τε τὰς πράξεις φρονήματι κεχρημένος μεγάλῳ καὶ τοῖς λόγοις γεγονώς τις ὑψηλὸς ἀεὶ [3] καὶ μεγάλαυχος, ἐντυχὼν αὐτῷ κατ’ ἰδίαν τὸν μὲν κάλλιστον εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ θάνατον ‹τὸν› ἐν τῇ μάχῃ προηκάμεθα· καίτοι πάντες ἤκουσαν ἡμῶν λεγόντων, ὡς οὐχ ὑπερβήσεται τὸν βασιλέα τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν Ἀντίγονος [4] εἰ μὴ νεκρόν. ὁ δὲ δεύτερος δόξῃ καὶ ἀρετῇ νῦν ἔτι πάρεστιν ἡμῖν. ποῖ πλέομεν ἀλογίστως, ἀποφεύγοντες ἐγγὺς ὂν κακὸν καὶ μακρὰν διώκοντες; εἰ γὰρ οὐκ αἰσχρόν ἐστι δουλεύειν τοῖς ἀπὸ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τοὺς ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους, πλοῦν πολὺν κερδανοῦμεν Ἀντιγόνῳ παραδόντες ἑαυτούς, ὃν εἰκός ἐστι Πτολεμαίου διαφέρειν ὅσον [5] Αἰγυπτίων Μακεδόνας. εἰ δ’ ὑφ’ ὧν κεκρατήμεθα τοῖς ὅπλοις οὐκ ἀξιοῦμεν ἄρχεσθαι, τί τὸν μὴ νενικηκότα δεσπότην ποιοῦμεν αὑτῶν, ἵν’ ἀνθ’ ἑνὸς δυεῖν κακίους φανῶμεν, Ἀντίγονον μὲν φεύγοντες, Πτολεμαῖον δὲ [6] κολακεύοντες; ἢ διὰ τὴν μητέρα φήσομεν εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἥκειν; καλὸν μεντἂν αὐτῇ θέαμα γένοιο καὶ ζηλωτόν, ἐπιδεικνυμένῃ ταῖς Πτολεμαίου γυναιξὶν αἰχμάλωτον ἐκ [7] βασιλέως καὶ φυγάδα τὸν υἱόν. οὐχ, ἕως ἔτι τῶν ἰδίων ξιφῶν ἄρχομεν καὶ τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἀφορῶμεν, ἐνταῦθα τῆς τύχης ἀπαλλάξαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἀπολογησόμεθα τοῖς ἐν Σελλασίᾳ κειμένοις ὑπὲρ τῆς Σπάρτης, ἀλλ’ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ καθεδούμεθα πυνθανόμενοι, τίνα τῆς Λακεδαίμονος [8] σατράπην Ἀντίγονος ἀπολέλοιπε; τοιαῦτα τοῦ Θηρυκίωνος εἰπόντος, ὁ Κλεομένης ἀπεκρίνατο· τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων τὸ ῥᾷστον ὦ πόνηρε καὶ πᾶσιν ἐν ἑτοίμῳ διώκων, ἀποθανεῖν, ἀνδρεῖος εἶναι δοκεῖς, φεύγων αἰσχίονα φυγὴν [9] τῆς πρότερον. πολεμίοις μὲν γὰρ ἐνέδωκαν ἤδη καὶ κρείττονες ἡμῶν, ἢ τύχῃ σφαλέντες, ἢ βιασθέντες ὑπὸ πλήθους· ὁ δὲ πρὸς πόνους καὶ ταλαιπωρίας ἢ ψόγους καὶ δόξας ἀνθρώπων ἀπαγορεύων ἡττᾶται τῆς αὑτοῦ [10] μαλακίας. δεῖ γὰρ τὸν αὐθαίρετον θάνατον οὐ φυγὴν εἶναι πράξεων, ἀλλὰ πρᾶξιν. αἰσχρὸν γὰρ ‹καὶ› ζῆν μόνοις ἑαυτοῖς καὶ ἀποθνῄσκειν· ἐφ’ ὃ νῦν σὺ παρακαλεῖς ἡμᾶς, σπεύδων ἀπαλλαγῆναι τῶν παρόντων, καλὸν δ’ οὐδὲν [11] οὐδὲ χρήσιμον ἄλλο διαπραττόμενος. ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ σὲ καὶ ἐμαυτὸν οἴομαι δεῖν τὰς ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἐλπίδας μὴ καταλιπεῖν· ὅπου δ’ ἂν ἡμᾶς ἐκεῖναι καταλίπωσι, ῥᾷστα [12] βουλομένοις ἀποθανεῖν ὑπάρξει. πρὸς ταῦτα Θηρυκίων οὐδὲν ἀντειπών, ὅτε πρῶτον ἔσχε καιρὸν ἀποστῆναι τοῦ Κλεομένους, ἐκτραπόμενος παρὰ τὸν αἰγιαλὸν ἔσφαξεν ἑαυτόν.

[53] [1] Ὁ δὲ Κλεομένης ἀπὸ τῶν Αἰγιαλῶν ἀναχθεὶς τῇ Λιβύῃ προσέβαλε, καὶ διὰ τῶν βασιλικῶν παραπεμπόμενος [2] ἧκεν εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν. ὀφθεὶς δὲ τῷ Πτολεμαίῳ, κατ’ ἀρχὰς μὲν ἐτύγχανε κοινῶς φιλανθρώπου καὶ [3] μετρίως πρὸς αὐτόν· ἐπεὶ δὲ γνώμης διδοὺς πεῖραν ἀνὴρ ἐφαίνετ’ ἔμφρων, καὶ τῆς καθ’ ἡμέραν ὁμιλίας αὐτοῦ τὸ Λακωνικὸν καὶ ἀφελὲς τὴν χάριν ἐλευθέριον εἶχε, καὶ τὴν εὐγένειαν οὐδαμῇ καταισχύνων οὐδὲ γναμπτόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης, τῶν πρὸς ἡδονὴν καὶ κολακείαν διαλεγομένων [4] πιθανώτερος ἐφαίνετο, πολλὴ μὲν αἰδὼς καὶ μετάνοια τὸν Πτολεμαῖον εἶχεν, ἀνδρὸς ἀμελήσαντα τοιούτου καὶ προέμενον τῷ Ἀντιγόνῳ, δόξαν ἅμα κεκτημένῳ τηλικαύτην καὶ δύναμιν, ἀναλαμβάνων δὲ τιμαῖς καὶ φιλοφροσύναις τὸν Κλεομένη παρεθάρρυνεν, ὡς μετὰ νεῶν καὶ χρημάτων ἀποστελῶν αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ καταστήσων [5] εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν. ἐδίδου δὲ καὶ σύνταξιν αὐτῷ τέσσαρα καὶ εἴκοσι τάλαντα καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν. ἀφ’ ὧν ἐκεῖνος αὑτὸν καὶ τοὺς φίλους εὐτελῶς καὶ σωφρόνως διοικῶν, τὰ πλεῖστα κατανήλισκεν εἰς φιλανθρωπίας καὶ μεταδόσεις τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἐκπεπτωκότων.

[54] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν πρεσβύτερος Πτολεμαῖος πρὶν ἐκτελέσαι τῷ Κλεομένει τὴν ἔκπεμψιν ἐτελεύτησε· τῆς δὲ βασιλείας εὐθὺς εἰς πολλὴν ἀσέλγειαν καὶ παροινίαν καὶ γυναικοκρασίαν ἐκπεσούσης, ἠμελεῖτο καὶ τὰ τοῦ [2] Κλεομένους. ὁ μὲν γὰρ βασιλεὺς αὐτὸς οὕτω διέφθαρτο τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπὸ γυναικῶν καὶ πότων, ὥσθ’, ὁπότε νήφοι μάλιστα καὶ σπουδαιότατος αὑτοῦ γένοιτο, τελετὰς τελεῖν καὶ τύμπανον ἔχων ἐν τοῖς βασιλείοις ἀγείρειν, τὰ δὲ μέγιστα τῆς ἀρχῆς πράγματα διοικεῖν Ἀγαθόκλειαν τὴν ἐρωμένην τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ τὴν ταύτης μητέρα [3] καὶ πορνοβοσκὸν Οἰνάνθην. ὅμως δ’ οὖν ἔδοξέ τις ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ τοῦ Κλεομένους χρεία γεγονέναι. δεδιὼς γὰρ Μάγαν τὸν ἀδελφὸν Πτολεμαῖος, ὡς ἰσχύοντα διὰ τῆς μητρὸς ἐν τῷ στρατιωτικῷ, τὸν Κλεομένη προσελάμβανε καὶ μετεδίδου τῶν ἀπορρήτων συνεδρίων, [4] βουλευόμενος ἀνελεῖν τὸν ἀδελφόν. ὁ δέ, καίπερ ἁπάντων τοῦτο πράττειν κελευόντων, μόνος ἀπηγόρευσεν, εἰπὼν ὡς μᾶλλον, εἰ δυνατὸν ἦν, ἔδει φῦσαι τῷ βασιλεῖ πλείονας ἀδελφοὺς πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν καὶ διαμονὴν [5] τῶν πραγμάτων. Σωσιβίου δὲ τοῦ πλεῖστον ἐν τοῖς φίλοις δυναμένου φήσαντος οὐκ εἶναι τὰ τῶν μισθοφόρων αὐτοῖς βέβαια τοῦ Μάγα ζῶντος, ἀμελεῖν ἐκέλευεν ὁ [6] Κλεομένης ἕνεκά γε τούτου· πλείους γὰρ ἢ τρισχιλίους τῶν ξένων εἶναι Πελοποννησίους, προσέχοντας αὐτῷ κἂν μόνον νεύσῃ προθύμως μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων παρεσομένους.

[7] οὗτος ὁ λόγος τότε μὲν οὐ μικρὰν τῷ Κλεομένει καὶ πίστιν εὐνοίας καὶ δόκησιν ἰσχύος προσέθηκεν, ὕστερον δέ, τοῦ Πτολεμαίου τῆς ἀσθενείας ἐπιτεινούσης τὴν δειλίαν, καὶ καθάπερ εἴωθεν ἐν τῷ μηδὲν φρονεῖν, τοῦ πάντα δεδοικέναι καὶ πᾶσιν ἀπιστεῖν ἀσφαλεστάτου δοκοῦντος εἶναι, φοβερὸν ἐποίει τὸν Κλεομένη τοῖς αὐλικοῖς, ὡς ἰσχύοντα [8] παρὰ τοῖς ξένοις· καὶ πολλῶν ἦν ἀκούειν λεγόντων ὅτι οὗτος ὁ λέων ἐν τούτοις τοῖς προβάτοις ἀναστρέφεται. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι τοιοῦτον διέφαινεν ἦθος ἐν τοῖς βασιλικοῖς, ὑποβλέπων ἀτρέμα καὶ παρεπισκοπῶν τὰ πραττόμενα.

[55] [1] Ναῦς μὲν οὖν αἰτῶν καὶ στρατιὰν ἀπεῖπε· πυνθανόμενος δὲ τεθνάναι τὸν Ἀντίγονον, Αἰτωλικῷ δὲ πολέμῳ συμπεπλέχθαι τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, τὰ δὲ πράγματα ποθεῖν αὐτὰ καὶ παρακαλεῖν ἐκεῖνον, ἐν ταραχῇ καὶ διασπασμῷ τῆς Πελοποννήσου γεγενημένης, ἠξίου μὲν [2] μόνος ἀποσταλῆναι μετὰ τῶν φίλων, ἔπειθε δ’ οὐδένα, τοῦ μὲν βασιλέως οὐκ εἰσακούοντος, ἀλλ’ ἐν γυναιξὶ καὶ θιάσοις καὶ κώμοις συνέχοντος ἑαυτόν, ὁ δὲ τῶν ὅλων προεστηκὼς καὶ προβουλεύων Σωσίβιος μένοντα μὲν τὸν Κλεομένη παρὰ γνώμην ἡγεῖτο δυσμεταχείριστον εἶναι καὶ φοβερόν, ‹φοβερώτερον δ’› ἀφεθέντα, τολμηρὸν ἄνδρα καὶ μεγαλοπράγμονα καὶ τῆς βασιλείας νοσούσης θεατὴν [3] γεγενημένον. οὐδὲ γὰρ αἱ δωρεαὶ κατεπράυνον αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τὸν Ἆπιν ἐν ἀφθόνοις διαιτώμενον καὶ τρυφᾶν δοκοῦντα τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν βίου καὶ δρόμων ἀφέτων καὶ σκιρτήσεων ἵμερος ἔχει, καὶ δῆλός ἐστι δυσανασχετῶν τὴν ἐν ταῖς χερσὶ τῶν ἱερέων διατριβήν, οὕτως ἐκεῖνον οὐδὲν ἤρεσκε τῶν μαλθακῶν,

ἀλλὰ φθινύθεσκε φίλον κῆρ (Il. 1, 491),

ὥσπερ Ἀχιλλεύς,

αὖθι μένων, ποθέεσκε δ’ ἀυτήν τε πτόλεμόν τε.

[56] [1] Τοιούτων δὲ τῶν κατ’ αὐτὸν ὄντων πραγμάτων, ἀφικνεῖται Νικαγόρας ὁ Μεσσήνιος εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν, ἀνὴρ μισῶν μὲν τὸν Κλεομένη, προσποιούμενος δὲ φίλος εἶναι· χωρίον γάρ ποτε καλὸν αὐτῷ πεπρακώς, δι’ ἀπορίαν ‹δ’› οἶμαι καὶ δι’ ἀσχολίαν ὡς ἔοικε καὶ διὰ πολέμους οὐκ [2] ἀπειληφὼς τὸ ἀργύριον. τοῦτον οὖν ἐκβαίνοντα τότε τῆς ὁλκάδος ἰδὼν ὁ Κλεομένης - ἔτυχε γὰρ ἐν τῇ κρηπῖδι τοῦ λιμένος περιπατῶν - ἠσπάζετο προθύμως, καὶ τίς [3] αὐτὸν εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἄγοι πρόφασις ἠρώτα. τοῦ δὲ Νικαγόρου φιλοφρόνως ἀντασπαζομένου, καὶ φήσαντος ἵππους ἄγειν τῷ βασιλεῖ καλοὺς τῶν πολεμιστηρίων, γελάσας ὁ Κλεομένης ἐβουλόμην ἄν ἔφη σε μᾶλλον ἥκειν ἄγοντα σαμβυκιστρίας καὶ κιναίδους· ταῦτα γὰρ νῦν μάλιστα [4] κατεπείγει τὸν βασιλέα. καὶ ὁ Νικαγόρας τότε μὲν ἐμειδίασεν· ἡμέραις δ’ ὕστερον ὀλίγαις ὑπομνήσας τοῦ χωρίου τὸν Κλεομένη, νῦν γοῦν ἐδεῖτο τὴν τιμὴν ἀπολαβεῖν, ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἐνοχλήσας εἰ μὴ περὶ τὴν τῶν φορτίων [5] διάθεσιν μετρίως ἐζημιοῦτο. τοῦ δὲ Κλεομένους φήσαντος οὐδὲν αὐτῷ περιεῖναι τῶν δεδομένων, λυπηθεὶς ὁ Νικαγόρας ἐκφέρει τῷ Σωσιβίῳ τὸ σκῶμμα τοῦ Κλεομένους.

[6] ὁ δὲ καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἀσμένως ἔλαβεν, ἐκ δὲ μείζονος αἰτίας τὸν βασιλέα παροξῦναι ζητῶν, ἔπεισε τὸν Νικαγόραν ἐπιστολὴν γράψαντα κατὰ τοῦ Κλεομένους ἀπολιπεῖν, ὡς ἐγνωκότος, εἰ λάβοι τριήρεις καὶ στρατιώτας παρ’ αὐτοῦ, [7] Κυρήνην κατασχεῖν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Νικαγόρας ταῦτα γράψας ἀπέπλευσε· τοῦ δὲ Σωσιβίου μετὰ τέσσαρας ἡμέρας τὴν ἐπιστολὴν πρὸς τὸν Πτολεμαῖον ἀνενεγκόντος ὡς ἀρτίως αὐτῷ δεδομένην, καὶ παροξύναντος τὸ μειράκιον, ἔδοξεν εἰς οἰκίαν μεγάλην εἰσαγαγεῖν τὸν Κλεομένη, καὶ τὴν ἄλλην ὁμοίως παρέχοντας δίαιταν ἐξόδων εἴργειν.

[57] [1] Ἦν μὲν οὖν καὶ ταῦτα λυπηρὰ τῷ Κλεομένει, μοχθηροτέρας δὲ τὰς περὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἐλπίδας ἔσχεν ἐκ [2] τοιαύτης συντυχίας. Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Χρυσέρμου φίλος ὢν τοῦ βασιλέως πάντα τὸν χρόνον ἐπιεικῶς διείλεκτο τῷ Κλεομένει, καὶ συνήθειά τις ὑπῆρχεν αὐτοῖς καὶ παρρησία [3] πρὸς ἀλλήλους. οὗτος οὖν τότε, τοῦ Κλεομένους δεηθέντος ἐλθεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν, ἦλθε μὲν καὶ διελέχθη μέτρια, τὸ ὕποπτον ἐξαιρῶν καὶ περὶ τοῦ βασιλέως ἀπολογούμενος· [4] ἀπιὼν δὲ πάλιν ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας, καὶ μὴ προνοήσας ἐξόπισθεν ἄχρι τῶν θυρῶν ἐπακολουθοῦντα τὸν Κλεομένη, πικρῶς ἐπετίμησε τοῖς φύλαξιν, ὡς δὴ μέγα θηρίον [5] καὶ δυστήρητον ἀμελῶς φυλάττουσι καὶ ῥᾳθύμως. τούτων ὁ Κλεομένης αὐτήκοος γενόμενος, καὶ πρὶν αἰσθέσθαι τὸν [6] Πτολεμαῖον ἀναχωρήσας, ἔφρασε τοῖς φίλοις. εὐθὺς οὖν πάντες ἃς πρότερον εἶχον ἐλπίδας ἐκβαλόντες, πρὸς ὀργὴν ἐβουλεύσαντο τοῦ Πτολεμαίου τὴν ἀδικίαν ἀμυνάμενοι καὶ τὴν ὕβριν ἀξίως τῆς Σπάρτης ἀποθανεῖν, καὶ μὴ περιμένειν [7] ὥσπερ ἱερεῖα πιανθέντας κατακοπῆναι· δεινὸν γάρ, εἰ τὰς πρὸς Ἀντίγονον, ἄνδρα πολεμιστὴν καὶ δραστήριον, διαλύσεις ὑπεριδὼν Κλεομένης κάθηται μητραγύρτου βασιλέως σχολὴν ἀναμένων, ὅταν πρῶτον ἀπόθηται τὸ τύμπανον καὶ καταπαύσῃ τὸν θίασον, ἀποκτενοῦντος αὐτόν.

[58] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἔδοξε ταῦτα καὶ κατὰ τύχην ὁ Πτολεμαῖος εἰς Κάνωβον ἐξώρμησε, πρῶτον μὲν διέδωκαν λόγον, ὡς παραλύοιτο τῆς φυλακῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως· [2] ἔπειτ’ ἔκ τινος ἔθους βασιλικοῦ τοῖς μέλλουσιν ἐξ εἱρκτῆς ἀπολύεσθαι δείπνου τε πεμπομένου καὶ ξενίων, οἱ φίλοι πολλὰ τοιαῦτα τῷ Κλεομένει παρασκευάσαντες ἔξωθεν εἰσέπεμψαν, ἐξαπατῶντες τοὺς φύλακας, οἰομένους ὑπὸ [3] τοῦ βασιλέως ἀπεστάλθαι. καὶ γὰρ ἔθυε καὶ μετεδίδου τούτων ἀφθόνως αὐτοῖς, καὶ ἐπιθεὶς στεφάνους καὶ [4] κατακλιθεὶς εἱστιᾶτο μετὰ τῶν φίλων. λέγεται δὲ τάχιον ἢ διεγνώκει πρὸς τὴν πρᾶξιν ὁρμῆσαι, συναισθόμενος οἰκέτην ἕνα τῶν συνειδότων τὴν πρᾶξιν ἔξω παρὰ γυναικὶ [5] κεκοιμημένον ἧς ἤρα· καὶ φοβηθεὶς μήνυσιν, ἐπειδὴ μέσον ἡμέρας ἦν καὶ τοὺς φύλακας ᾔσθετο καθεύδοντας ὑπὸ τῆς μέθης, ἐνδυσάμενος τὸν χιτῶνα καὶ τὴν ῥαφὴν ἐκ τοῦ δεξιοῦ παραλυσάμενος ὤμου, γυμνῷ τῷ ξίφει μετὰ τῶν φίλων ἐξεπήδησεν ἐνεσκευασμένων ὁμοίως, δεκατριῶν [6] ὄντων. Ἱππίτας δὲ χωλὸς ὢν τῇ μὲν πρώτῃ συνεξέπεσεν ὁρμῇ προθύμως, ὡς δ’ ἑώρα σχολαίτερον πορευομένους δι’ αὐτόν, ἐκέλευσεν ἀνελεῖν καὶ μὴ διαφθείρειν τὴν [7] πρᾶξιν, ἄχρηστον ἄνθρωπον περιμένοντας. ἔτυχε δὲ τῶν Ἀλεξανδρέων τις ἵππον ἄγων παρὰ τὰς θύρας· τοῦτον ἀφελόμενοι καὶ τὸν Ἱππίταν ἀναβαλόντες, ἐφέροντο δρόμῳ διὰ τῶν στενωπῶν καὶ παρεκάλουν τὸν ὄχλον ἐπὶ [8] τὴν ἐλευθερίαν. τοῖς δὲ τοσοῦτον ὡς ἔοικεν ἀλκῆς μετῆν, ὅσον ἐπαινεῖν καὶ θαυμάζειν τὴν τοῦ Κλεομένους τόλμαν, [9] ἀκολουθεῖν δὲ καὶ βοηθεῖν οὐδεὶς ἐθάρρει. τὸν μὲν οὖν τοῦ Χρυσέρμου Πτολεμαῖον ἐκ τῆς αὐλῆς ἐξιόντα τρεῖς εὐθὺς προσπεσόντες ἀπέκτειναν· ἑτέρου δὲ Πτολεμαίου τοῦ φυλάσσοντος τὴν πόλιν ἐλαύνοντος ἅρματι πρὸς αὐτούς, ὁρμήσαντες ἐναντίοι τοὺς μὲν ὑπηρέτας καὶ δορυφόρους διεσκέδασαν, αὐτὸν δὲ κατασπάσαντες ἀπὸ [10] τοῦ ἅρματος ἀπέκτειναν. εἶτα πρὸς τὴν ἄκραν ἐχώρουν, ἀναρρῆξαι διανοούμενοι τὸ δεσμωτήριον καὶ χρήσασθαι [11] τῷ πλήθει τῶν δεδεμένων. ἔφθασαν δὲ φραξάμενοι καλῶς οἱ φύλακες, ὥστε καὶ ταύτης ἀποκρουσθέντα τῆς πείρας τὸν Κλεομένη διαφέρεσθαι καὶ πλανᾶσθαι κατὰ τὴν πόλιν, οὐδενὸς αὐτῷ προσχωροῦντος, ἀλλὰ φευγόντων καὶ φοβουμένων [12] ἁπάντων. οὕτως οὖν ἐπιστὰς καὶ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἰπών οὐδὲν ἦν ἄρα θαυμαστὸν ἄρχειν γυναῖκας ἀνθρώπων φευγόντων τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, παρεκάλεσε [13] πάντας ἀξίως αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν πεπραγμένων τελευτᾶν. καὶ πρῶτος μὲν Ἱππίτας ὑπὸ τῶν νεωτέρων τινὸς ἐπλήγη δεηθείς, ἔπειτα τῶν ἄλλων ἕκαστος εὐκόλως καὶ ἀδεῶς ἑαυτὸν ἀποσφάττει, πλὴν Παντέως τοῦ πρώτου Μεγάλην [14] πόλιν καταλαβόντος. τοῦτον δὲ κάλλιστον ὥρᾳ καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἀγωγὴν εὐφυέστατον τῶν νέων γενόμενον ἐρώμενον ἐσχηκὼς ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐκέλευσεν, ὅταν αὐτόν τε [15] καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἴδῃ πεπτωκότας, οὕτω τελευτᾶν. ἤδη δὲ κειμένων ἁπάντων, ἐπιπορευόμενος ὁ Παντεὺς καὶ τῷ ξιφιδίῳ παραπτόμενος καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀπεπειρᾶτο, μή τις [16] διαλανθάνοι ζῶν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὸν Κλεομένη νύξας παρὰ τὸ σφυρὸν εἶδε συστρέψαντα τὸ πρόσωπον, ἐφίλησεν αὐτόν, εἶτα παρεκάθισε· καὶ τέλος ἔχοντος ἤδη, περιβαλὼν τὸν νεκρὸν ἑαυτὸν ἐπικατέσφαξε.

[59] [1] Κλεομένης μὲν οὖν ἑκκαίδεκα τῆς Σπάρτης βασιλεύσας ἔτη καὶ τοιοῦτος ἀνὴρ γενόμενος, οὕτω κατέστρεψε.

[2] Τῆς δὲ φήμης εἰς τὴν πόλιν ὅλην σκεδασθείσης, ἡ μὲν Κρατησίκλεια, καίπερ οὖσα γενναία γυνή, προὔδωκε τὸ φρόνημα πρὸς τὸ τῆς συμφορᾶς μέγεθος, καὶ περιβαλοῦσα [3] τὰ παιδία τοῦ Κλεομένους ὠλοφύρετο. τῶν δὲ παιδίων τὸ πρεσβύτερον ἀποπηδῆσαν, οὐδενὸς ἂν προσδοκήσαντος, ἀπὸ τοῦ τέγους ἐπὶ κεφαλὴν ἔρριψεν ἑαυτό· καὶ κακῶς μὲν ἔσχεν, οὐ μὴν ἀπέθανεν, ἀλλ’ ἤρθη βοῶν [4] καὶ ἀγανακτοῦν ἐπὶ τῷ διακωλύεσθαι τελευτᾶν. ὁ δὲ Πτολεμαῖος ὡς ἔγνω ταῦτα, προσέταξε τὸ μὲν σῶμα τοῦ Κλεομένους κρεμάσαι καταβυρσώσαντας, ἀποκτεῖναι δὲ τὰ παιδία καὶ τὴν μητέρα καὶ τὰς περὶ αὐτὴν γυναῖκας.

[5] ἐν δὲ ταύταις ἦν καὶ Παντέως γυνή, καλλίστη καὶ γενναιοτάτη τὸ εἶδος. ἔτι δ’ αὐτοῖς νεογάμοις οὖσιν ἐν [6] ἀκμαῖς ἐρώτων αἱ τύχαι συνέβησαν. εὐθὺς μὲν οὖν συνεκπλεῦσαι τῷ Παντεῖ βουλομένην αὐτὴν οὐκ εἴασαν οἱ γονεῖς, ἀλλὰ βίᾳ κατακλείσαντες ἐφύλαττον· ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἵππον ἑαυτῇ παρασκευάσασα καὶ χρυσίδιον οὐ πολὺ νυκτὸς ἀπέδρα, καὶ διώξασα συντόνως ἐπὶ Ταίναρον, [7] ἐκεῖθεν ἐπέβη νεὼς εἰς Αἴγυπτον πλεούσης· καὶ διεκομίσθη πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ συνδιήνεγκεν αὐτῷ τὸν ἐπὶ ξένης [8] βίον ἀλύπως καὶ ἱλαρῶς. αὕτη τότε τὴν Κρατησίκλειαν ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἐξαγομένην ἐχειραγώγει, τόν τε πέπλον αὐτῆς ὑπολαμβάνουσα καὶ θαρρεῖν παρακαλοῦσα, μηδέν τι μηδ’ αὐτὴν ἐκπεπληγμένην τὸν θάνατον, ἀλλ’ [9] ἓν μόνον αἰτουμένην, πρὸ τῶν παιδίων ἀποθανεῖν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἦλθον εἰς τὸν τόπον ἐν ᾧ ταῦτα δρᾶν εἰώθεσαν οἱ ὑπηρέται, πρῶτον μὲν τὰ παιδία τῆς Κρατησικλείας ὁρώσης ἔσφαττον, εἶτ’ ἐκείνην, ἓν τοῦτο μόνον ἐπὶ τηλικούτοις φθεγξαμένην πάθεσιν· ὦ τέκνα, ποῖ [10] ἐμόλετε; ἡ δὲ Παντέως γυνὴ περιζωσαμένη τὸ ἱμάτιον, εὔρωστος οὖσα καὶ μεγάλη, τῶν ἀποθνῃσκουσῶν ἑκάστην σιωπῇ καὶ μεθ’ ἡσυχίας ἐθεράπευε καὶ περιέστελλεν [11] ἐκ τῶν ἐνδεχομένων. τέλος δὲ μετὰ πάσας ἑαυτὴν κοσμήσασα καὶ καταγαγοῦσα τὴν περιβολήν, καὶ μηδένα προσελθεῖν ἐάσασα μηδὲ θιγεῖν ἄλλον ἢ τὸν ἐπὶ τῆς σφαγῆς τεταγμένον, ἡρωικῶς κατέστρεψεν, οὐδενὸς δεηθεῖσα κοσμοῦντος καὶ περικαλύπτοντος μετὰ τὴν [12] τελευτήν. οὕτω παρέμεινε τῷ θανάτῳ τὸ κόσμιον τῆς ψυχῆς, καὶ διεφύλαξεν ἣν ζῶσα φρουρὰν τῷ σώματι περιέθηκεν.

[60] [1] Ἡ μὲν οὖν Λακεδαίμων ἐφαμίλλως ἀγωνισαμένη τῷ γυναικείῳ δράματι πρὸς τὸ ἀνδρεῖον, ἐν τοῖς ἐσχάτοις καιροῖς ἐπέδειξε τὴν ἀρετὴν ὑβρισθῆναι μὴ [2] δυναμένην ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης. ὀλίγαις δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέραις οἱ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Κλεομένους ἀνεσταυρωμένον παραφυλάττοντες εἶδον εὐμεγέθη δράκοντα τῇ κεφαλῇ περιπεπλεγμένον καὶ ἀποκρύπτοντα τὸ πρόσωπον, ὥστε μηδὲν [3] ὄρνεον ἐφίπτασθαι σαρκοφάγον. ἐκ δὲ τούτου δεισιδαιμονία προσέπεσε τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ φόβος, ἄλλων καθαρμῶν ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἀρχὴν παρασχών, ὡς ἀνδρὸς ἀνῃρημένου [4] θεοφιλοῦς καὶ κρείττονος τὴν φύσιν, οἱ δ’ Ἀλεξανδρεῖς καὶ προσετρέποντο φοιτῶντες ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον, ἥρωα τὸν Κλεομένη καὶ θεῶν παῖδα προσαγορεύοντες, [5] ἄχρι οὗ κατέπαυσαν αὐτοὺς οἱ σοφώτεροι, διδόντες λόγον, ὡς μελίττας μὲν βόες, σφῆκας δ’ ἵπποι κατασαπέντες ἐξανθοῦσι, κάνθαροι δ’ ὄνων τὸ αὐτὸ παθόντων ζῳογονοῦνται, τὰ δ’ ἀνθρώπινα σώματα, τῶν περὶ τὸν μυελὸν ἰχώρων συρροήν τινα καὶ σύστασιν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς λαβόντων, [6] ὄφεις ἀναδίδωσι. καὶ τοῦτο κατιδόντες οἱ παλαιοὶ μάλιστα τῶν ζῴων τὸν δράκοντα τοῖς ἥρωσι συνῳκείωσαν.

Tiberius et Gaius Gracchus

[1] [1] Ἡμεῖς δὲ τὴν πρώτην ἱστορίαν ἀποδεδωκότες, ἔχομεν οὐκ ἐλάττονα πάθη τούτων ἐν τῇ Ῥωμαϊκῇ συζυγίᾳ θεωρῆσαι, τὸν Τιβερίου καὶ Γαΐου βίον ἀντιπαραβάλλοντες.

[2] οὗτοι Τιβερίου Γράγχου παῖδες ἦσαν, ᾧ τιμητῇ τε Ῥωμαίων γενομένῳ καὶ δὶς ὑπατεύσαντι καὶ θριάμβους δύο καταγαγόντι λαμπρότερον ἦν τὸ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρετῆς [3] ἀξίωμα. διὸ καὶ τὴν Σκιπίωνος τοῦ καταπολεμήσαντος Ἀννίβαν θυγατέρα Κορνηλίαν, οὐκ ὢν φίλος, ἀλλὰ καὶ διάφορος τῷ ἀνδρὶ γεγονώς, λαβεῖν ἠξιώθη μετὰ τὴν [4] ἐκείνου τελευτήν. λέγεται δέ ποτε συλλαβεῖν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης ζεῦγος δρακόντων, τοὺς δὲ μάντεις σκεψαμένους τὸ τέρας, ἄμφω μὲν οὐκ ἐᾶν ἀνελεῖν οὐδ’ ἀφεῖναι, περὶ δ’ ἑκατέρου διαιρεῖν, ὡς ὁ μὲν ἄρρην τῷ Τιβερίῳ φέροι θάνατον ἀναιρεθείς, ἡ δὲ θήλεια τῇ Κορνηλίᾳ.

[5] τὸν οὖν Τιβέριον, καὶ φιλοῦντα τὴν γυναῖκα, καὶ μᾶλλον αὐτῷ προσήκειν ὄντι πρεσβυτέρῳ τελευτᾶν ἡγούμενον ἔτι νέας οὔσης ἐκείνης, τὸν μὲν ἄρρενα κτεῖναι τῶν δρακόντων, ἀφεῖναι δὲ τὴν θήλειαν· εἶθ’ ὕστερον οὐ πολλῷ χρόνῳ τελευτῆσαι, δεκαδύο παῖδας ἐκ τῆς Κορνηλίας [6] αὐτῷ γεγονότας καταλιπόντα. Κορνηλία δ’ ἀναλαβοῦσα τοὺς παῖδας καὶ τὸν οἶκον, οὕτω σώφρονα καὶ φιλότεκνον καὶ μεγαλόψυχον αὑτὴν παρέσχεν, ὥστε μὴ κακῶς δόξαι βεβουλεῦθαι τὸν Τιβέριον ἀντὶ τοιαύτης [7] γυναικὸς ἀποθανεῖν ἑλόμενον· ἥ γε καὶ Πτολεμαίου τοῦ βασιλέως κοινουμένου τὸ διάδημα καὶ μνωμένου τὸν γάμον αὐτῆς ἠρνήσατο, καὶ χηρεύουσα τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἀπέβαλε παῖδας, μίαν δὲ τῶν θυγατέρων, ἣ Σκιπίωνι τῷ νεωτέρῳ συνῴκησε, καὶ δύο υἱοὺς περὶ ὧν τάδε γέγραπται, Τιβέριον καὶ Γάιον, διαγενομένους οὕτως φιλοτίμως ἐξέθρεψεν, ὥστε πάντων εὐφυεστάτους Ῥωμαίων ὁμολογουμένως γεγονότας, πεπαιδεῦσθαι δοκεῖν βέλτιον ἢ πεφυκέναι πρὸς ἀρετήν.

[2] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’, ὥσπερ ἡ τῶν πλασσομένων καὶ γραφομένων Διοσκούρων ὁμοιότης ἔχει τινὰ τοῦ πυκτικοῦ πρὸς τὸν δρομικὸν ἐπὶ τῆς μορφῆς διαφοράν, οὕτω τῶν νεανίσκων ἐκείνων ἐν πολλῇ τῇ πρὸς ἀνδρείαν καὶ σωφροσύνην, ἔτι δ’ ἐλευθεριότητα καὶ λογιότητα καὶ μεγαλοψυχίαν ἐμφερείᾳ μεγάλαι περὶ τὰ ἔργα καὶ τὰς πολιτείας οἷον ἐξήνθησαν καὶ διεφάνησαν ἀνομοιότητες, οὐ χεῖρον εἶναί μοι δοκεῖ [2] ταύτας προεκθέσθαι. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν (cf. ORF 148 Malcov.4`3) ἰδέᾳ προσώπου καὶ βλέμματι κακινήματι πρᾶος καὶ καταστηματικὸς ἦν ὁ Τιβέριος, ἔντονος δὲ καὶ σφοδρὸς ὁ Γάιος, ὥστε καὶ δημηγορεῖν τὸν μὲν ἐν μιᾷ χώρᾳ βεβηκότα κοσμίως, τὸν δὲ Ῥωμαίων πρῶτον ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος περιπάτῳ τε χρήσασθαι καὶ περισπάσαι τὴν τήβεννον ἐξ ὤμου λέγοντα, καθάπερ Κλέωνα τὸν Ἀθηναῖον ἱστόρηται (Plut. Nic. 8, 6) περισπάσαι τε τὴν περιβολὴν καὶ τὸν μηρὸν πατάξαι πρῶτον τῶν δημηγορούντων· [3] ἔπειθ’ ὁ λόγος τοῦ μὲν Γαΐου φοβερὸς καὶ περιπαθὴς εἰς δείνωσιν, ἡδίων δ’ ὁ τοῦ Τιβερίου καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπαγωγὸς οἴκτου· τῇ δὲ λέξει καθαρὸς καὶ διαπεπονημένος ἀκριβῶς [4] ἐκεῖνος, ὁ δὲ Γαΐου πιθανὸς καὶ γεγανωμένος. οὕτω δὲ καὶ περὶ δίαιταν καὶ τράπεζαν εὐτελὴς καὶ ἀφελὴς ὁ Τιβέριος, ὁ δὲ Γάιος τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις παραβαλεῖν σώφρων καὶ αὐστηρός, τῇ δὲ πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν διαφορᾷ νεοπρεπὴς καὶ περίεργος, ὡς οἱ περὶ Δροῦσον ἤλεγχον ὅτι δελφῖνας ἀργυροῦς ἐπρίατο τιμῆς εἰς ἑκάστην λίτραν δραχμῶν [5] χιλίων καὶ διακοσίων πεντήκοντα. τῷ δ’ ἤθει κατὰ τὴν τοῦ λόγου διαφορὰν ὁ μὲν ἐπιεικὴς καὶ πρᾶος, ὁ δὲ τραχὺς καὶ θυμοειδής, ὥστε καὶ παρὰ γνώμην ἐν τῷ λέγειν ἐκφερόμενον πολλάκις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς τήν τε φωνὴν ἀποξύνειν [6] καὶ βλασφημεῖν καὶ συνταράττειν τὸν λόγον. ὅθεν καὶ βοήθημα τῆς ἐκτροπῆς ταύτης ἐποιήσατο [τὸν] Λικίννιον οἰκέτην οὐκ ἀνόητον, ὃς ἔχων φωνασκικὸν ὄργανον, ᾧ τοὺς φθόγγους ἀναβιβάζουσιν, ὄπισθεν ἑστὼς τοῦ Γαΐου λέγοντος, ὁπηνίκα τραχυνόμενον αἴσθοιτο τῇ φωνῇ καὶ παραρρηγνύμενον δι’ ὀργήν, ἐνεδίδου τόνον μαλακόν, ᾧ τὸ σφοδρὸν εὐθὺς ἐκεῖνος ἅμα τοῦ πάθους καὶ τῆς φωνῆς ἀνιεὶς ἐπραΰνετο καὶ παρεῖχεν ἑαυτὸν εὐανάκλητον.

[3] [1] Αἱ μὲν οὖν διαφοραὶ τοιαῦταί τινες ἦσαν αὐτῶν· ἀνδραγαθία δὲ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ὑπηκόους δικαιοσύνη, καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐπιμέλεια, καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἡδονὰς ἐγκράτεια ... ἀπαράλλακτος. ἦν δὲ [2] πρεσβύτερος ἐνιαυτοῖς ἐννέα ὁ Τιβέριος· καὶ τοῦτο τὴν ἑκατέρου πολιτείαν ἀπηρτημένην τοῖς χρόνοις ἐποίησε καὶ τὰς πράξεις οὐχ ἥκιστα διελυμήνατο, μὴ συνακμασάντων μηδὲ συμβαλόντων εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ τὴν δύναμιν, μεγάλην ἂν ἐξ ἀμφοῖν ὁμοῦ καὶ ἀνυπέρβλητον γενομένην.

[3] λεκτέον οὖν ἰδίᾳ περὶ [τοῦ] ἑκατέρου, καὶ περὶ τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου πρότερον.

[4] [1] Ἐκεῖνος τοίνυν εὐθὺς ἐκ παίδων γενόμενος οὕτως ἦν περιβόητος, ὥστε τῆς τῶν αὐγούρων λεγομένης ἱερωσύνης ἀξιωθῆναι δι’ ἀρετὴν μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ τὴν εὐγένειαν.

[2] ἐδήλωσε δ’ Ἄππιος Κλαύδιος, ἀνὴρ ὑπατικὸς καὶ τιμητικὸς καὶ προγεγραμμένος κατ’ ἀξίωμα τῆς Ῥωμαίων βουλῆς καὶ πολὺ φρονήματι τοὺς καθ’ αὑτὸν ὑπεραίρων· ἑστιωμένων γὰρ ἐν ταὐτῷ τῶν ἱερέων, προσαγορεύσας τὸν Τιβέριον καὶ φιλοφρονηθεὶς αὐτὸς ἐμνᾶτο τῇ θυγατρὶ [3] νυμφίον. δεξαμένου δ’ ἀσμένως ἐκείνου καὶ τῆς καταινέσεως οὕτως γενομένης, εἰσιὼν ὁ Ἄππιος οἴκαδε πρὸς αὑτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς θύρας εὐθὺς ἐκάλει τὴν γυναῖκα, [καὶ] μεγάλῃ τῇ φωνῇ βοῶν· ὦ Ἀντιστία, τὴν Κλαυδίαν ἡμῶν ἀνδρὶ καθωμολόγηκα. κἀκείνη θαυμάσασα τίς εἶπεν ἡ σπουδή, ἢ τί τὸ τάχος; εἰ δὲ Τιβέριον αὐτῇ [4] Γράγχον εὑρήκεις νυμφίον. οὐκ ἀγνοῶ δ’ ὅτι τοῦτό τινες ἐπὶ τὸν πατέρα τῶν Γράγχων Τιβέριον καὶ Σκιπίωνα τὸν Ἀφρικανὸν ἀναφέρουσιν, ἀλλ’ οἱ πλείους ὡς ἡμεῖς γράφομεν ἱστοροῦσι, καὶ Πολύβιος (31, 27) μετὰ τὴν Σκιπίωνος Ἀφρικανοῦ τελευτὴν τοὺς οἰκείους φησὶν ἐκ πάντων προκρίναντας τὸν Τιβέριον δοῦναι τὴν Κορνηλίαν, ὡς ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς ἀνέκδοτον καὶ ἀνέγγυον ἀπολειφθεῖσαν.

[5] Ὁ δ’ οὖν νεώτερος Τιβέριος στρατευόμενος ἐν Λιβύῃ μετὰ τοῦ δευτέρου Σκιπίωνος, ἔχοντος αὐτοῦ τὴν ἀδελφήν, ὁμοῦ συνδιαιτώμενος ὑπὸ σκηνὴν τῷ στρατηγῷ, ταχὺ μὲν αὐτοῦ τὴν φύσιν κατέμαθε, πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα πρὸς ζῆλον ἀρετῆς καὶ μίμησιν ἐπὶ τῶν πράξεων ἐκφέρουσαν, ταχὺ δὲ τῶν νέων πάντων ἐπρώτευεν εὐταξίᾳ [6] καὶ ἀνδρείᾳ· καὶ τοῦ γε τείχους ἐπέβη τῶν πολεμίων πρῶτος, ὥς φησι Φάννιος (HRR I² 139), λέγων καὶ αὐτὸς τῷ Τιβερίῳ συνεπιβῆναι καὶ συμμετασχεῖν ἐκείνης τῆς ἀριστείας. πολλὴν δὲ καὶ παρὼν εὔνοιαν εἶχεν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ καὶ πόθον ἀπαλλαττόμενος αὑτοῦ κατέλιπε.

[5] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν στρατείαν ἐκείνην αἱρεθεὶς ταμίας, ἔλαχε τῶν ὑπάτων Γαΐῳ Μαγκίνῳ συστρατεύειν ἐπὶ Νομαντίνους, ἀνθρώπῳ μὲν οὐ πονηρῷ, βαρυποτμοτάτῳ [2] δὲ Ῥωμαίων στρατηγῷ. διὸ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐν τύχαις παραλόγοις καὶ πράγμασιν ἐναντίοις τοῦ Τιβερίου διέλαμψεν οὐ μόνον τὸ συνετὸν καὶ ἀνδρεῖον, ἀλλ’, ὃ θαυμάσιον ἦν, αἰδώς τε πολλὴ καὶ τιμὴ τοῦ ἄρχοντος, ὑπὸ τῶν κακῶν [3] οὐδ’ ἑαυτὸν εἰ στρατηγός ἐστιν ἔτι γινώσκοντος. ἡττηθεὶς γὰρ μάχαις μεγάλαις, ἐπεχείρησε μὲν ἀναζευγνύναι, νυκτὸς ἐκλιπὼν τὸ στρατόπεδον· αἰσθομένων δὲ τῶν Νομαντίνων καὶ τὸ μὲν στρατόπεδον εὐθὺς λαβόντων, τοῖς δ’ ἀνθρώποις ἐπιπεσόντων φεύγουσι καὶ τοὺς ἐσχάτους φονευόντων, τὸ δὲ πᾶν ἐγκυκλουμένων στράτευμα καὶ συνωθούντων εἰς τόπους χαλεποὺς καὶ διάφευξιν οὐκ ἔχοντας, ἀπογνοὺς τὴν ἐκ τοῦ βιάζεσθαι σωτηρίαν ὁ Μαγκῖνος ἐπεκηρυκεύετο περὶ σπονδῶν καὶ διαλύσεων πρὸς αὐτούς.

[4] οἱ δὲ πιστεύειν ἔφασαν οὐδενὶ πλὴν μόνῳ Τιβερίῳ, καὶ [5] τοῦτον ἐκέλευον ἀποστέλλειν πρὸς αὐτούς. ἐπεπόνθεσαν δὲ τοῦτο καὶ δι’ αὐτὸν τὸν νεανίσκον - ἦν γὰρ αὐτοῦ πλεῖστος λόγος ἐπὶ στρατιᾶς - καὶ μεμνημένοι τοῦ πατρὸς [Τιβερίου], ὃς πολεμήσας Ἴβηρσι καὶ πολλοὺς καταστρεψάμενος εἰρήνην ἔθετο πρὸς τοὺς Νομαντίνους καὶ ταύτην ἐμπεδοῦντα τὸν δῆμον ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως [6] ἀεὶ παρέσχεν. οὕτω δὴ πεμφθεὶς ὁ Τιβέριος καὶ συγγενόμενος τοῖς ἀνδράσι, καὶ τὰ μὲν πείσας, τὰ δὲ δεξάμενος, ἐσπείσατο καὶ δισμυρίους ἔσωσε περιφανῶς Ῥωμαίων πολίτας, ἄνευ ‹τῆς› θεραπείας καὶ τῶν ἔξω τάξεως ἑπομένων.

[6] [1] Τὰ δ’ ἐν τῷ χάρακι λειφθέντα χρήματα πάντα κατέσχον οἱ Νομαντῖνοι καὶ διεπόρθησαν. ἐν δὲ τούτοις καὶ πινακίδες ἦσαν τοῦ Τιβερίου, γράμματα καὶ λόγους ἔχουσαι τῆς ταμιευτικῆς ἀρχῆς, ἃς περὶ πολλοῦ ποιούμενος ἀπολαβεῖν, ἤδη τοῦ στρατοῦ προκεχωρηκότος, ἀνέστρεψε πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, ἔχων μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ τρεῖς ἢ τέτταρας [2] ἑταίρους. ἐκκαλέσας δὲ τῶν Νομαντίνων τοὺς ἄρχοντας, ἠξίου κομίσασθαι τὰς δέλτους, ὡς μὴ παράσχοι τοῖς ἐχθροῖς διαβολήν, οὐκ ἔχων ἀπολογίσασθαι περὶ [3] τῶν ᾠκονομημένων. ἡσθέντες οὖν οἱ Νομαντῖνοι τῇ συντυχίᾳ τῆς χρείας, παρεκάλουν αὐτὸν εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν πόλιν· ὡς δ’ εἱστήκει βουλευόμενος, ἐγγὺς προσελθόντες ἐνεφύοντο ταῖς χερσὶ καὶ λιπαρεῖς ἦσαν δεόμενοι μηκέτι νομίζειν αὐτοὺς πολεμίους, ἀλλ’ ὡς φίλοις χρῆσθαι [4] καὶ πιστεύειν. ἔδοξεν οὖν τῷ Τιβερίῳ ταῦτα ποιεῖν, τῶν τε δέλτων περιεχομένῳ καὶ δεδοικότι παροξύνειν [5] ὡς ἀπιστουμένους τοὺς Νομαντίνους. εἰσελθόντι δ’ εἰς τὴν πόλιν πρῶτον μὲν ἄριστον παρέθεσαν, καὶ πᾶσαν ἐποιήσαντο δέησιν ἐμφαγεῖν τι κοινῇ μετ’ αὐτῶν καθήμενον, ἔπειτα τὰς δέλτους ἀπέδοσαν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἃ [6] βούλοιτο χρημάτων λαβεῖν ἐκέλευον. ὁ δ’ οὐδὲν ἢ τὸν λιβανωτὸν ᾧ πρὸς τὰς δημοσίας ἐχρῆτο θυσίας λαβών, ἀπῆλθεν ἀσπασάμενος καὶ φιλοφρονηθεὶς τοὺς ἄνδρας.

[7] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰς Ῥώμην ἐπανῆλθεν, ἡ μὲν ὅλη πρᾶξις ὡς δεινὴ καὶ καταισχύνουσα τὴν Ῥώμην αἰτίαν εἶχε καὶ κατηγορίαν, οἱ δὲ τῶν στρατιωτῶν οἰκεῖοι καὶ φίλοι μέγα μέρος ὄντες τοῦ δήμου συνέτρεχον πρὸς τὸν Τιβέριον, τὰ μὲν αἰσχρὰ τῶν γεγονότων ἀναφέροντες εἰς τὸν ἄρχοντα, δι’ αὐτὸν δὲ σῴζεσθαι τοσούτους πολίτας φάσκοντες.

[2] οἱ μέντοι δυσχεραίνοντες τὰ πεπραγμένα μιμεῖσθαι τοὺς προγόνους ἐκέλευον· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι τοὺς ἀγαπήσαντας ὑπὸ Σαυνιτῶν ἀφεθῆναι στρατηγοὺς αὐτούς τε τοῖς πολεμίοις γυμνοὺς προσέρριψαν, καὶ τοὺς ‹συν›εφαψαμένους καὶ μετασχόντας τῶν σπονδῶν οἷον ταμίας καὶ χιλιάρχους ὁμοίως προὔβαλον, εἰς ἐκείνους τὴν ἐπιορκίαν καὶ τὴν διάλυσιν τῶν ὡμολογημένων τρέποντες.

[3] ἔνθα δὴ καὶ μάλιστα τὴν πρὸς τὸν Τιβέριον εὔνοιαν καὶ [4] σπουδὴν ἐξέφηνεν ὁ δῆμος. τὸν μὲν γὰρ ὕπατον ἐψηφίσαντο γυμνὸν καὶ δεδεμένον παραδοῦναι τοῖς Νομαντίνοις, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἐφείσαντο πάντων διὰ Τιβέριον.

[5] δοκεῖ δὲ καὶ Σκιπίων βοηθῆσαι, μέγιστος ὢν τότε καὶ πλεῖστον δυνάμενος Ῥωμαίων· ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐν αἰτίαις ἦν, ὅτι τὸν Μαγκῖνον οὐ περιέσωσεν, οὐδὲ τὰς σπονδὰς ἐμπεδωθῆναι τοῖς Νομαντίνοις ἐσπούδασε, δι’ ἀνδρὸς [6] οἰκείου καὶ φίλου τοῦ Τιβερίου γενομένας. τὸ δὲ πλεῖστον ἔοικεν ἐκ φιλοτιμίας καὶ τῶν ἐπαιρόντων τὸν Τιβέριον φίλων καὶ σοφιστῶν ἐγγενέσθαι τὰ τῆς διαφορᾶς· ἀλλ’ αὕτη γε πρὸς οὐδὲν ἀνήκεστον οὐδὲ φαῦλον ἐξέπεσε.

[7] δοκεῖ δ’ ἄν μοι μηδαμῶς περιπεσεῖν ὁ Τιβέριος οἷς ἔπαθεν, εἰ παρῆν αὐτοῦ τοῖς πολιτεύμασι Σκιπίων ὁ Ἀφρικανός· νῦν δ’ ἐκείνου περὶ Νομαντίαν ὄντος ἤδη καὶ πολεμοῦντος, ἥψατο τῆς περὶ τοὺς νόμους πολιτείας ἐκ τοιαύτης αἰτίας.

[8] [1] Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς τῶν ἀστυγειτόνων χώρας ὅσην ἀπετέμνοντο πολέμῳ, τὴν μὲν ἐπίπρασκον, τὴν δὲ ποιούμενοι δημοσίαν ἐδίδοσαν νέμεσθαι τοῖς ἀκτήμοσι καὶ ἀπόροις τῶν πολιτῶν, ἀποφορὰν οὐ πολλὴν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον [2] τελοῦσιν. ἀρξαμένων δὲ τῶν πλουσίων ὑπερβάλλειν τὰς ἀποφορὰς καὶ τοὺς πένητας ἐξελαυνόντων, ἐγράφη νόμος οὐκ ἐῶν πλέθρα γῆς ἔχειν πλείονα τῶν [3] πεντακοσίων. καὶ βραχὺν μὲν χρόνον ἐπέσχε τὴν πλεονεξίαν τὸ γράμμα τοῦτο καὶ τοῖς πένησιν ἐβοήθησε, κατὰ χώραν μένουσιν ἐπὶ τῶν μεμισθωμένων καὶ νεμομένοις ἣν [4] ἕκαστος ἐξ ἀρχῆς εἶχε μοῖραν. ὕστερον δὲ τῶν γειτνιώντων πλουσίων ὑποβλήτοις προσώποις μεταφερόντων τὰς μισθώσεις εἰς ἑαυτούς, τέλος δὲ φανερῶς ἤδη δι’ ἑαυτῶν τὰ πλεῖστα κατεχόντων, ἐξωσθέντες οἱ πένητες οὔτε ταῖς στρατείαις ἔτι προθύμους παρεῖχον ἑαυτούς, ἠμέλουν τε παίδων ἀνατροφῆς, ὡς ταχὺ τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἅπασαν ὀλιγανδρίας ἐλευθέρων αἰσθέσθαι, δεσμωτηρίων δὲ βαρβαρικῶν ἐμπεπλῆσθαι, δι’ ὧν ἐγεώργουν οἱ πλούσιοι [5] τὰ χωρία, τοὺς πολίτας ἐξελάσαντες. ἐπεχείρησε μὲν οὖν τῇ διορθώσει Γάιος Λαίλιος ὁ Σκιπίωνος ἑταῖρος, ἀντικρουσάντων δὲ τῶν δυνατῶν φοβηθεὶς τὸν θόρυβον καὶ παυσάμενος, ἐπεκλήθη σοφὸς ἢ φρόνιμος· ἑκάτερον [6] γὰρ δοκεῖ σημαίνειν ὁ σαπίηνς. ὁ Τιβέριος δὲ δήμαρχος ἀποδειχθεὶς εὐθὺς ἐπ’ αὐτὴν ὥρμησε τὴν πρᾶξιν, ὡς μὲν οἱ πλεῖστοι λέγουσι, Διοφάνους τοῦ ῥήτορος καὶ Βλοσσίου τοῦ φιλοσόφου παρορμησάντων αὐτόν, ὧν ὁ μὲν Διοφάνης φυγὰς ἦν Μιτυληναῖος, ὁ δ’ αὐτόθεν ἐξ Ἰταλίας Κυμαῖος, Ἀντιπάτρου τοῦ Ταρσέως γεγονὼς ἐν ἄστει συνήθης, καὶ τετιμημένος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ προσφωνήσεσι γραμμάτων φιλοσόφων [7] (SVF III 245 sq.). ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ Κορνηλίαν συνεπαιτιῶνται τὴν μητέρα, πολλάκις τοὺς υἱοὺς ὀνειδίζουσαν, ὅτι Ῥωμαῖοι Σκιπίωνος αὐτὴν ἔτι πενθεράν, οὔπω δὲ [8] μητέρα Γράγχων προσαγορεύουσιν. ἄλλοι δὲ Σπόριόν τινα Ποστούμιον γενέσθαι λέγουσιν αἴτιον, ἡλικιώτην τοῦ Τιβερίου καὶ πρὸς δόξαν ἐφάμιλλον αὐτῷ περὶ τὰς συνηγορίας, ὃν ὡς ἐπανῆλθεν ἀπὸ τῆς στρατιᾶς εὑρὼν πολὺ τῇ δόξῃ καὶ τῇ δυνάμει παρηλλαχότα καὶ θαυμαζόμενον, ἠθέλησεν ὡς ἔοικεν ὑπερβαλέσθαι, πολιτεύματος παραβόλου [9] καὶ μεγάλην προσδοκίαν ἔχοντος ἁψάμενος. ὁ δ’ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ Γάιος (HRR I² 119) ἔν τινι βιβλίῳ γέγραφεν, εἰς Νομαντίαν πορευόμενον διὰ τῆς Τυρρηνίας τὸν Τιβέριον καὶ τὴν ἐρημίαν τῆς χώρας ὁρῶντα καὶ τοὺς γεωργοῦντας ἢ νέμοντας οἰκέτας ἐπεισάκτους καὶ βαρβάρους, τότε πρῶτον ἐπὶ νοῦν βαλέσθαι τὴν μυρίων [10] κακῶν ἄρξασαν αὐτοῖς πολιτείαν. τὴν δὲ πλείστην αὐτὸς ὁ δῆμος ὁρμὴν καὶ φιλοτιμίαν ἐξῆψε, προκαλούμενος διὰ γραμμάτων αὐτὸν ἐν στοαῖς καὶ τοίχοις καὶ μνήμασι καταγραφομένων, ἀναλαβεῖν τοῖς πένησι τὴν δημοσίαν χώραν.

[9] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἐφ’ αὑτοῦ γε συνέθηκε τὸν νόμον, τοῖς δὲ πρωτεύουσιν ἀρετῇ καὶ δόξῃ τῶν πολιτῶν συμβούλοις χρησάμενος, ὧν καὶ Κράσσος ἦν ὁ ἀρχιερεὺς καὶ Μούκιος Σκαιβόλας ὁ νομοδείκτης ὑπατεύων τότε καὶ Κλαύδιος [2] Ἄππιος ὁ κηδεστὴς τοῦ Τιβερίου. καὶ δοκεῖ νόμος εἰς ἀδικίαν καὶ πλεονεξίαν τοσαύτην μηδέποτε πραότερος γραφῆναι καὶ μαλακώτερος. οὓς γὰρ ἔδει δίκην τῆς ἀπειθείας δοῦναι καὶ μετὰ ζημίας ἣν παρὰ τοὺς νόμους ἐκαρποῦντο χώραν ἀφεῖναι, τούτους ἐκέλευσε τιμὴν προσλαμβάνοντας ἐκβαίνειν ὧν ἀδίκως ἐκέκτηντο, καὶ παραδέχεσθαι τοὺς βοηθείας δεομένους τῶν πολιτῶν.

[3] ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτω τῆς ἐπανορθώσεως οὔσης εὐγνώμονος, ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἠγάπα παρεὶς τὰ γεγενημένα παύσασθαι τὸ λοιπὸν ἀδικούμενος, οἱ δὲ πλούσιοι καὶ κτηματικοὶ πλεονεξίᾳ μὲν τὸν νόμον, ὀργῇ δὲ καὶ φιλονικίᾳ τὸν νομοθέτην δι’ ἔχθους ἔχοντες, ἐπεχείρουν ἀποτρέπειν τὸν δῆμον, ὡς γῆς ἀναδασμὸν ἐπὶ συγχύσει τῆς πολιτείας εἰσάγοντος τοῦ Τιβερίου καὶ πάντα πράγματα [4] κινοῦντος. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἐπέραινον· ὁ γὰρ Τιβέριος πρὸς καλὴν ὑπόθεσιν καὶ δικαίαν ἀγωνιζόμενος λόγῳ καὶ φαυλότερα κοσμῆσαι δυναμένῳ πράγματα, δεινὸς ἦν καὶ ἄμαχος, ὁπότε τοῦ δήμου τῷ βήματι περικεχυμένου [5] καταστὰς λέγοι περὶ τῶν πενήτων (ORF 149 Malc.4`3), ὡς τὰ μὲν θηρία τὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν νεμόμενα καὶ φωλεὸν ἔχει, καὶ κοιταῖόν ἐστιν αὐτῶν ἑκάστῳ καὶ κατάδυσις, τοῖς δ’ ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἰταλίας μαχομένοις καὶ ἀποθνῄσκουσιν ἀέρος καὶ φωτός, ἄλλου δ’ οὐδενὸς μέτεστιν, ἀλλ’ ἄοικοι καὶ ἀνίδρυτοι μετὰ τέκνων πλανῶνται καὶ γυναικῶν, οἱ δ’ αὐτοκράτορες ψεύδονται τοὺς στρατιώτας ἐν ταῖς μάχαις παρακαλοῦντες ὑπὲρ τάφων καὶ ἱερῶν ἀμύνεσθαι τοὺς [6] πολεμίους· οὐδενὶ γάρ ἐστιν οὐ βωμὸς πατρῷος, οὐκ ἠρίον προγονικὸν τῶν τοσούτων Ῥωμαίων, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ ἀλλοτρίας τρυφῆς καὶ πλούτου πολεμοῦσι καὶ ἀποθνῄσκουσι, κύριοι τῆς οἰκουμένης εἶναι λεγόμενοι, μίαν δὲ βῶλον ἰδίαν οὐκ ἔχοντες.

[10] [1] Τούτους ἀπὸ φρονήματος μεγάλου καὶ πάθους ἀληθινοῦ τοὺς λόγους κατιόντας εἰς τὸν δῆμον ‹συν›ενθουσιῶντα καὶ συνεξανιστάμενον οὐδεὶς ὑφίστατο τῶν ἐναντίων. ἐάσαντες οὖν τὸ ἀντιλέγειν ἐπὶ Μᾶρκον Ὀκτάβιον τρέπονται τῶν δημάρχων ἕνα, νεανίαν ἐμβριθῆ τὸ ἦθος καὶ κόσμιον, ἑταῖρον δὲ τοῦ Τιβερίου καὶ συνήθη.

[2] διὸ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον αἰδούμενος ἐκεῖνον ἀνεδύετο· πολλῶν δὲ καὶ δυνατῶν δεομένων καὶ λιπαρούντων, ὥσπερ ἐκβιασθεὶς ἀντικαθίστατο τῷ Τιβερίῳ καὶ διεκρούετο τὸν [3] νόμον. ἔστι δὲ τοῦ κωλύοντος ἐν τοῖς δημάρχοις τὸ κράτος· οὐδὲν γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ κελεύοντες περαίνουσιν ἑνὸς [4] ἐνισταμένου. πρὸς τοῦτο παροξυνθεὶς ὁ Τιβέριος τὸν μὲν φιλάνθρωπον ἐπανείλετο νόμον, τὸν δ’ ἡδίω τε τοῖς πολλοῖς καὶ σφοδρότερον ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀδικοῦντας εἰσέφερεν, ἤδη κελεύων ἐξίστασθαι τῆς χώρας ἣν ἐκέκτηντο παρὰ [5] τοὺς προτέρους νόμους. ἦσαν οὖν ὁμοῦ τι καθ’ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν ἀγῶνες αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν Ὀκτάβιον ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος, ἐν οἷς, καίπερ ἐξ ἄκρας σπουδῆς καὶ φιλονικίας ἀντερείδοντες, οὐδὲν εἰπεῖν λέγονται περὶ ἀλλήλων φλαῦρον, οὐδὲ ῥῆμα προπεσεῖν θατέρου πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον δι’ ὀργὴν [6] ἀνεπιτήδειον. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐν βακχεύμασιν (cf. Eur. Bacch. 317) ὡς ἔοικεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν φιλοτιμίαις καὶ ὀργαῖς τὸ πεφυκέναι καλῶς καὶ πεπαιδεῦσθαι σωφρόνως ἐφίστησι [7] καὶ κατακοσμεῖ τὴν διάνοιαν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἑώρα τὸν Ὀκτάβιον ἐνεχόμενον τῷ νόμῳ καὶ κατέχοντα τῆς δημοσίας χώρας συχνὴν ὁ Τιβέριος, ἐδεῖτο παρεῖναι τὴν φιλονικίαν, ὑφιστάμενος αὐτῷ τὴν τιμὴν ἀποδώσειν ἐκ [8] τῶν ἰδίων, καίπερ οὐ λαμπρῶν ὄντων. οὐκ ἀνασχομένου δὲ τοῦ Ὀκταβίου, διαγράμματι τὰς ἄλλας ἀρχὰς ἁπάσας ἐκώλυσε χρηματίζειν, ἄχρι ἂν ἡ περὶ τοῦ νόμου διενεχθῇ ψῆφος· τῷ δὲ τοῦ Κρόνου ναῷ σφραγῖδας ἰδίας ἐπέβαλεν, ὅπως οἱ ταμίαι μηδὲν ἐξ αὐτοῦ λαμβάνοιεν μηδ’ εἰσφέροιεν, καὶ τοῖς ἀπειθήσασι τῶν στρατηγῶν ζημίαν ἐπεκήρυξεν, ὥστε πάντας ὑποδείσαντας ἀφεῖναι τὴν [9] ἑκάστῳ προσήκουσαν οἰκονομίαν. ἐντεῦθεν οἱ κτηματικοὶ τὰς μὲν ἐσθῆτας μετέβαλον, καὶ περιῄεσαν οἰκτροὶ καὶ ταπεινοὶ κατὰ τὴν ἀγοράν, ἐπεβούλευον δὲ τῷ Τιβερίῳ κρύφα καὶ συνίστασαν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν τοὺς ἀναιρήσοντας, ὥστε κἀκεῖνον οὐδενὸς ἀγνοοῦντος ὑποζώννυσθαι ξιφίδιον λῃστρικόν, ὃ δόλωνα καλοῦσιν.

[11] [1] Ἐνστάσης δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας καὶ τὸν δῆμον αὐτοῦ καλοῦντος ἐπὶ τὴν ψῆφον, ἡρπάσθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν πλουσίων αἱ ὑδρίαι, καὶ τὰ γινόμενα πολλὴν εἶχε σύγχυσιν.

[2] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῶν περὶ Τιβέριον πλήθει βιάσασθαι δυναμένων καὶ συστρεφομένων ἐπὶ τοῦτο, Μάλλιος καὶ Φούλβιος ἄνδρες ὑπατικοὶ προσπεσόντες τῷ Τιβερίῳ καὶ χειρῶν ἁπτόμενοι καὶ δακρύοντες ἐδέοντο παύσασθαι.

[3] τοῦ δὲ καὶ τὸ μέλλον ὅσον οὔπω δεινὸν ἤδη συμφρονοῦντος, καὶ δι’ αἰδῶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν πυθομένου τί κελεύουσι πράττειν αὐτόν, οὐκ ἔφασαν ἀξιόχρεῳ πρὸς τηλικαύτην εἶναι συμβουλίαν, ἐπιτρέψαι δὲ τῇ βουλῇ [4] κελεύοντες καὶ δεόμενοι συνέπεισαν. ὡς δ’ οὐδὲν ἐπέραινεν ἡ βουλὴ συνελθοῦσα διὰ τοὺς πλουσίους ἰσχύοντας ἐν αὐτῇ, τρέπεται πρὸς ἔργον οὐ νόμιμον οὐδ’ ἐπιεικές, ἀφελέσθαι τῆς ἀρχῆς τὸν Ὀκτάβιον, ἀμηχανῶν [5] ἄλλως ἐπαγαγεῖν τῷ νόμῳ τὴν ψῆφον. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐδεῖτο φανερῶς αὐτοῦ, λόγους τε προσφέρων φιλανθρώπους καὶ χειρῶν ἁπτόμενος, ἐνδοῦναι καὶ χαρίσασθαι τῷ δήμῳ, δίκαια μὲν ἀξιοῦντι, μικρὰ δ’ ἀντὶ μεγάλων πόνων [6] καὶ κινδύνων ληψομένῳ. διωθουμένου δὲ τοῦ Ὀκταβίου τὴν ἔντευξιν, ὑπειπὼν ὁ Τιβέριος, ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν ἄρχοντας ἀμφοτέρους καὶ περὶ πραγμάτων μεγάλων ἀπ’ ἴσης ἐξουσίας διαφερομένους ἄνευ πολέμου διεξελθεῖν τὸν χρόνον, ἓν ἴαμα τούτου μόνον ὁρᾶν ἔφη τὸ παύσασθαι τῆς [7] ἀρχῆς τὸν ἕτερον. καὶ περὶ αὐτοῦ γε προτέρου τὸν Ὀκτάβιον ἐκέλευσε τῷ δήμῳ ψῆφον ἀναδοῦναι· καταβήσεσθαι γὰρ εὐθὺς ἰδιώτης γενόμενος, ἂν τοῦτο δόξῃ τοῖς πολίταις.

[8] τοῦ δ’ Ὀκταβίου μὴ θέλοντος, αὐτὸς ἔφη περὶ ἐκείνου ψῆφον ἀναδώσειν, ἐὰν μὴ μεταγνῷ βουλευσάμενος.

[12] [1] Καὶ τότε μὲν ἐπὶ τούτοις διέλυσε τὴν ἐκκλησίαν· τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ τοῦ δήμου συνελθόντος, ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα πάλιν ἐπειρᾶτο πείθειν τὸν Ὀκτάβιον· ὡς δ’ ἦν ἀμετάπειστος, εἰσήνεγκε νόμον ἀφαιρούμενον αὐτοῦ τὴν δημαρχίαν, καὶ τοὺς πολίτας εὐθὺς ἐκάλει τὴν ψῆφον [2] ἐπιφέροντας. οὐσῶν δὲ πέντε καὶ τριάκοντα φυλῶν, ὡς αἱ δεκαεπτὰ τὴν ψῆφον ἐπενηνόχεισαν, καὶ μιᾶς ἔτι προσγενομένης ἔδει τὸν Ὀκτάβιον ἰδιώτην γενέσθαι, κελεύσας ἐπισχεῖν αὖθις ἐδεῖτο τοῦ Ὀκταβίου, καὶ περιέβαλλεν αὐτὸν ἐν ὄψει τοῦ δήμου καὶ κατησπάζετο, λιπαρῶν καὶ δεόμενος μήθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἄτιμον περιιδεῖν γενόμενον, μήτ’ ἐκείνῳ βαρέος οὕτω καὶ σκυθρωποῦ πολιτεύματος αἰτίαν [3] προσάψαι. τούτων τῶν δεήσεων οὐ παντελῶς ἄτεγκτον οὐδ’ ἀτενῆ λέγουσιν ἀκροᾶσθαι τὸν Ὀκτάβιον, ἀλλὰ καὶ δακρύων ὑποπίμπλασθαι τὰ ὄμματα καὶ σιωπᾶν ἐπὶ πολὺν [4] χρόνον· ὡς μέντοι πρὸς τοὺς πλουσίους καὶ [τοὺς] κτηματικοὺς συνεστῶτας ἀπέβλεψεν, αἰδεσθεὶς δοκεῖ καὶ φοβηθεὶς τὴν παρ’ ἐκείνοις ἀδοξίαν ὑποστῆναι [καὶ] πᾶν δεινὸν οὐκ ἀγεννῶς, ‹καὶ› κελεῦσαι πράττειν ὃ βούλεται τὸν [5] Τιβέριον. οὕτω δὴ τοῦ νόμου κυρωθέντος, ὁ μὲν Τιβέριος τῶν ἀπελευθέρων τινὶ προσέταξεν ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος ἑλκύσαι τὸν Ὀκτάβιον· ἐχρῆτο δ’ ὑπηρέταις ἀπελευθέροις ἰδίοις, καὶ τοῦτο τὴν ὄψιν οἰκτροτέραν τοῦ [6] Ὀκταβίου παρέσχεν ἑλκομένου πρὸς ὕβριν. ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἐφώρμησεν αὐτῷ, καὶ τῶν πλουσίων συνδραμόντων καὶ διασχόντων τὰς χεῖρας, ὁ μὲν Ὀκτάβιος ἐσώθη μόλις ἐξαρπαγεὶς καὶ διαφυγὼν τὸν ὄχλον, οἰκέτην δ’ αὐτοῦ πιστὸν ἔμπροσθεν ἑστῶτα καὶ προτεταγμένον ἐξετύφλωσαν, ἄκοντος τοῦ Τιβερίου καὶ πρὸς τὸν θόρυβον ὡς ᾔσθετο τὰ γινόμενα πολλῇ σπουδῇ καταδραμόντος.

[13] [1] Ἐκ τούτου κυροῦται μὲν ὁ περὶ τῆς χώρας νόμος, αἱροῦνται δὲ τρεῖς ἄνδρες ἐπὶ τὴν διάκρισιν καὶ διανομήν, αὐτὸς Τιβέριος καὶ Κλαύδιος Ἄππιος ὁ πενθερὸς καὶ Γάιος Γράγχος ὁ ἀδελφός, οὐ παρὼν οὗτος, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ [2] Σκιπίωνι πρὸς Νομαντίαν στρατευόμενος. ταῦτα τοῦ Τιβερίου διαπραξαμένου καθ’ ἡσυχίαν μηδενὸς ἐνισταμένου, καὶ πρὸς τούτοις δήμαρχον ἀντικαταστήσαντος οὐδένα τῶν ἐπιφανῶν, ἀλλὰ Μούκιόν τινα πελάτην αὐτοῦ, πρὸς πάντα δυσχεραίνοντες οἱ δυνατοὶ καὶ φοβούμενοι τοῦ Τιβερίου τὴν αὔξησιν, ἐν τῇ βουλῇ προεπηλάκιζον αὐτόν, [3] αἰτουμένῳ μὲν ὡς ἔθος ἐστὶν ἐκ δημοσίου σκηνήν, ὅπως ἔχοι διανέμων τὴν χώραν, οὐ δόντες, ἑτέρων ἐπ’ ἐλάττοσι χρείαις πολλάκις λαβόντων, ἀνάλωμα δ’ εἰς ἑκάστην ἡμέραν ἐννέα ὀβολοὺς τάξαντες, εἰσηγουμένου ταῦτα Ποπλίου Νασικᾶ, [καὶ] δεδωκότος ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὴν πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἔχθραν ἀφειδῶς· πλείστην γὰρ ἐκέκτητο γῆν δημοσίαν, καὶ χαλεπῶς ἔφερεν ἐκβαίνειν αὐτῆς ἀναγκαζόμενος.

[4] ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐξεκᾴετο· καὶ φίλου τινὸς τῷ Τιβερίῳ τελευτήσαντος αἰφνιδίως, καὶ σημείων τῷ νεκρῷ μοχθηρῶν ἐπιδραμόντων, βοῶντες ὑπὸ φαρμάκων ἀνῃρῆσθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκφορὰν συνέδραμον καὶ τὸ λέχος ἤραντο καὶ θαπτομένῳ παρέστησαν, οὐ [5] φαύλως ὑπονοῆσαι τὴν φαρμακείαν δόξαντες· ἐρράγη γὰρ ὁ νεκρὸς καὶ διεφθορότων ὑγρῶν πλῆθος ἐξέβλυσεν, ὥστ’ ἀποσβέσαι τὴν φλόγα· καὶ φερόντων ἄλλην αὖθις οὐκ ἐκᾴετο πρὶν εἰς ἕτερον τόπον μετακομισθῆναι, καὶ πολλὰ [6] πραγματευσαμένων μόλις ἥψατο τὸ πῦρ αὐτοῦ. πρὸς ταῦτα τοὺς πολλοὺς ἔτι μᾶλλον ὁ Τιβέριος παροξύνων μετέβαλε τὴν ἐσθῆτα, καὶ τοὺς παῖδας προαγαγὼν ἐδεῖτο τοῦ δήμου τούτων κήδεσθαι καὶ τῆς μητρός, ὡς αὐτὸς ἀπεγνωκὼς ἑαυτόν.

[14] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ Φιλομήτορος Ἀττάλου τελευτήσαντος Εὔδημος ὁ Περγαμηνὸς ἀνήνεγκε διαθήκην, ἐν ᾗ κληρονόμος ἐγέγραπτο τοῦ βασιλέως ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος, εὐθὺς ὁ Τιβέριος δημαγωγῶν εἰσήνεγκε νόμον, ὅπως τὰ βασιλικὰ χρήματα κομισθέντα τοῖς τὴν χώραν διαλαγχάνουσι τῶν πολιτῶν ὑπάρχοι πρὸς κατασκευὴν καὶ γεωργίας ἀφορμήν.

[2] περὶ δὲ τῶν πόλεων ὅσαι τῆς Ἀττάλου βασιλείας ἦσαν, οὐδὲν ἔφη τῇ συγκλήτῳ βουλεύεσθαι προσήκειν, ἀλλὰ [3] τῷ δήμῳ γνώμην αὐτὸς προθήσειν. ἐκ τούτου μάλιστα προσέκρουσε τῇ βουλῇ, καὶ Πομπήιος μὲν ἀναστὰς ἔφη γειτνιᾶν τῷ Τιβερίῳ, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο γινώσκειν Εὔδημον αὐτῷ τὸν Περγαμηνὸν τῶν βασιλικῶν διάδημα δεδωκότα [4] καὶ πορφύραν, ὡς μέλλοντι βασιλεύειν ἐν Ῥώμῃ· Κόιντος δὲ Μέτελλος ὠνείδισε τὸν Τιβέριον, ὅτι τοῦ μὲν πατρὸς αὐτοῦ τιμητεύοντος, ὁσάκις ἀναλύοι‹εν› μετὰ δεῖπνον οἴκαδε, τὰ φῶτα κατεσβέννυσαν οἱ πολῖται, φοβούμενοι μὴ πορρωτέρω τοῦ μετρίου δόξωσιν ἐν συνουσίαις εἶναι καὶ πότοις, τούτῳ δὲ προφαίνουσι νυκτὸς οἱ θρασύτατοι καὶ [5] ἀπορώτατοι τῶν δημοτῶν· Τίτος δ’ Ἄννιος (ORF 105 sq. Malc.4`3) οὐκ ἐπιεικὴς μὲν ὢν οὐδὲ σώφρων ἄνθρωπος, ἐν δὲ λόγοις περὶ τὰς ἐρωτήσεις καὶ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις ἄμαχος εἶναι δοκῶν, εἰς ὁρισμόν τινα προὐκαλεῖτο τὸν Τιβέριον, ἦ μὴν ἱερὸν ὄντα καὶ ἄσυλον ἐκ τῶν νόμων ἠτιμωκέναι τὸν [6] συνάρχοντα. θορυβούντων δὲ πολλῶν, ἐκπηδήσας ὁ Τιβέριος τόν τε δῆμον συνεκάλει, καὶ τὸν Ἄννιον ἀχθῆναι κελεύσας [7] ἐβούλετο κατηγορεῖν. ὁ δὲ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ καὶ τῇ δόξῃ πολὺ λειπόμενος, εἰς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ δεινότητα κατεδύετο, καὶ παρεκάλει μικρὰ πρὸ τῶν λόγων ἀποκρίνασθαι [8] τὸν Τιβέριον. συγχωροῦντος δ’ ἐρωτᾶν ἐκείνου καὶ σιωπῆς γενομένης, εἶπεν ὁ Ἄννιος· ἂν σὺ μὲν ἀτιμοῦν με βούλῃ καὶ προπηλακίζειν, ἐγὼ δέ τινα τῶν σῶν ἐπικαλέσωμαι συναρχόντων, ὁ δ’ ἀναβῇ βοηθήσων, σὺ δ’ ὀργισθῇς, [9] ἆρά γ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀφαιρήσῃ; πρὸς ταύτην λέγεται τὴν ἐρώτησιν οὕτως διαπορηθῆναι τὸν Τιβέριον, ὥστε πάντων ὄντα καὶ τῷ λέγειν ἑτοιμότατον καὶ τῷ θαρρεῖν ἰταμώτατον ἀποσιωπῆσαι.

[15] [1] Τότε μὲν οὖν διέλυσε τὴν ἐκκλησίαν. αἰσθανόμενος δὲ τῶν πολιτευμάτων τὸ περὶ τὸν Ὀκτάβιον οὐ τοῖς δυνατοῖς μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἐπαχθέστερον ‹ὄν› - μέγα γάρ τι καὶ καλὸν ἐδόκει τὸ τῶν δημάρχων ἀξίωμα μέχρι τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης διατετηρημένον ἀνῃρῆσθαι καὶ καθυβρίσθαι - , λόγον ἐν τῷ δήμῳ διεξῆλθεν, οὗ μικρὰ παραθέσθαι τῶν ἐπιχειρημάτων οὐκ ἄτοπον ἦν, ὥσθ’ ὑπονοηθῆναι τὴν πιθανότητα καὶ πυκνότητα [2] τοῦ ἀνδρός (ORF 151 Malc.4`3). ἔφη γὰρ ἱερὸν τὸν δήμαρχον εἶναι καὶ ἄσυλον, ὅτι τῷ δήμῳ καθωσίωται καὶ τοῦ δήμου προέστηκεν. ἂν οὖν μεταβαλόμενος τὸν δῆμον ἀδικῇ καὶ τὴν ἰσχὺν κολούῃ καὶ παραιρῆται τὴν ψῆφον, αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀπεστέρηκε τῆς τιμῆς, ἐφ’ οἷς [3] ἔλαβεν οὐ ποιῶν. ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ Καπετώλιον κατασκάπτοντα καὶ τὸ νεώριον ἐμπιπράντα δήμαρχον ἐᾶν δεήσει· καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ποιῶν δήμαρχός ἐστι πονηρός· ἐὰν δὲ [4] καταλύῃ τὸν δῆμον, οὐ δήμαρχός ἐστι. πῶς οὖν οὐ δεινόν, εἰ τὸν μὲν ὕπατον ὁ δήμαρχος ἄξει, τὸν δὲ δήμαρχον οὐκ ἀφαιρήσεται τὴν ἐξουσίαν ὁ δῆμος, ὅταν αὐτῇ κατὰ τοῦ δεδωκότος χρῆται· καὶ γὰρ ὕπατον καὶ δήμαρχον ὁμοίως [5] ‹ὁ› δῆμος αἱρεῖται. καὶ μὴν ἥ γε βασιλεία πρὸς τῷ πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν ἔχειν ἐν ἑαυτῇ συλλαβοῦσα καὶ ταῖς μεγίσταις ἱερουργίαις καθωσίωται πρὸς τὸ θεῖον· ἀλλὰ Ταρκύνιον ἐξέβαλεν ἡ πόλις ἀδικοῦντα, καὶ δι’ ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς ὕβριν ἡ [6] πάτριος ἀρχὴ καὶ κτίσασα τὴν Ῥώμην κατελύθη. τί δ’ οὕτως ἅγιον ἐν Ῥώμῃ καὶ σεμνόν, ὡς αἱ περιέπουσαι παρθένοι καὶ φυλάττουσαι τὸ ἄφθιτον πῦρ; ἀλλ’ εἴ τις ἂν αὐτῶν ἁμάρτῃ, ζῶσα κατορύσσεται· τὸ γὰρ ἄσυλον οὐ φυλάττουσιν ἀσεβοῦσαι [εἰς] τοὺς θεούς, ὃ διὰ τοὺς θεοὺς [7] ἔχουσιν. οὔκουν οὐδὲ δήμαρχος ἀδικῶν ‹τὸν› δῆμον ἔχειν τὴν διὰ τὸν δῆμον ἀσυλίαν δίκαιός ἐστιν· ᾗ γὰρ ἰσχύει δυνάμει, ταύτην ἀναιρεῖ. καὶ μὴν εἰ δικαίως ἔλαβε τὴν δημαρχίαν τῶν πλείστων φυλῶν ψηφισαμένων, πῶς οὐχὶ κἂν ἀφαιρεθείη δικαιότερον πασῶν ἀποψηφισαμένων; [8] ἱερὸν δὲ καὶ ἄσυλον οὐδὲν οὕτως ἐστίν, ὡς τὰ τῶν θεῶν ἀναθήματα· χρῆσθαι δὲ τούτοις καὶ κινεῖν καὶ μεταφέρειν ὡς βούλεται τὸν δῆμον οὐδεὶς κεκώλυκεν. ἐξῆν οὖν αὐτῷ [9] καὶ τὴν δημαρχίαν ὡς ἀνάθημα μετενεγκεῖν εἰς ἕτερον. ὅτι δ’ οὐκ ἄσυλον οὐδ’ ἀναφαίρετον ἡ ἀρχή, δῆλόν ἐστι τῷ πολλάκις ἔχοντας ἀρχήν τινας ἐξόμνυσθαι καὶ παραιτεῖσθαι δι’ αὑτῶν.

[16] [1] Τοιαῦτα μὲν ἦν τὰ κεφάλαια τῆς τοῦ Τιβερίου δικαιολογίας.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ συνορῶντες οἱ φίλοι τὰς ἀπειλὰς καὶ τὴν σύστασιν ᾤοντο δεῖν ἑτέρας περιέχεσθαι δημαρχίας εἰς τὸ μέλλον, αὖθις ἄλλοις νόμοις ἀνελάμβανε τὸ πλῆθος, τοῦ τε χρόνου τῶν στρατειῶν ἀφαιρῶν, καὶ διδοὺς ἐπικαλεῖσθαι τὸν δῆμον ἀπὸ τῶν δικαστῶν, καὶ τοῖς κρίνουσι τότε συγκλητικοῖς οὖσι καταμειγνὺς ἐκ τῶν ἱππέων τὸν ἴσον ἀριθμόν, καὶ πάντα τρόπον ἤδη τῆς βουλῆς τὴν ἰσχὺν κολούων πρὸς ὀργὴν καὶ φιλονικίαν μᾶλλον ἢ τὸν [2] τοῦ δικαίου καὶ συμφέροντος λογισμόν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῆς ψήφου φερομένης ᾔσθοντο τοὺς ἐναντίους κρατοῦντας - οὐ γὰρ παρῆν ἅπας ὁ δῆμος - , πρῶτον μὲν εἰς βλασφημίας τραπόμενοι τῶν συναρχόντων εἷλκον τὸν χρόνον· ἔπειτα τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἀφῆκαν, εἰς τὴν ὑστεραίαν ἀπαντᾶν [3] κελεύσαντες. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν καταβὰς ὁ Τιβέριος ἱκέτευε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ταπεινὸς καὶ δεδακρυμένος, ἔπειτα δεδοικέναι φήσας, μὴ νυκτὸς ἐκκόψωσι τὴν οἰκίαν οἱ ἐχθροὶ καὶ διαφθείρωσιν αὐτόν, οὕτω τοὺς ἀνθρώπους διέθηκεν, ὥστε περὶ τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ παμπόλλους τινὰς αὐλίσασθαι καὶ διανυκτερεῦσαι παραφυλάττοντας.

[17] [1] Ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ παρῆν ὁ τὰς ὄρνιθας αἷς διαμαντεύονται κομίζων, καὶ προέβαλλε τροφὴν αὐταῖς. αἱ δ’ οὐ προῆλθον εἰ μὴ μία μόνη, διασείσαντος εὖ μάλα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὸ ἀγγεῖον. οὐδ’ αὕτη δὲ τῆς τροφῆς ἔθιγεν, ἀλλ’ ἐπάρασα τὴν ἀριστερὰν πτέρυγα καὶ παρατείνασα [2] τὸ σκέλος, πάλιν εἰς τὸ ἀγγεῖον κατέφυγε. τοῦτο καὶ τοῦ προτέρου σημείου τὸν Τιβέριον ἀνέμνησεν. ἦν γὰρ αὐτῷ κράνος ᾧ πρὸς τὰς μάχας ἐχρῆτο, κεκοσμημένον ἐκπρεπῶς καὶ διάσημον· εἰς τοῦτο καταδύντες ὄφεις ἔλαθον ἐντεκόντες ᾠά, καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐξεγλύψαντο. διὸ καὶ μᾶλλον ὁ [3] Τιβέριος τοῖς περὶ τὰς ὄρνιθας ἐταράττετο. προῄει δ’ ὅμως, ἄνω τὸν δῆμον ἠθροῖσθαι περὶ τὸ Καπετώλιον πυνθανόμενος· καὶ πρὶν ἐξελθεῖν προσέπταισε πρὸς τὸν οὐδόν, σφοδρᾶς οὕτω πληγῆς γενομένης, ὥστε τὸν μὲν ὄνυχα τοῦ μεγάλου δακτύλου ῥαγῆναι, τὸ δ’ αἷμα διὰ τοῦ [4] ὑποδήματος ἔξω φέρεσθαι. μικρὸν δ’ αὐτοῦ προελθόντος, ὤφθησαν ὑπὲρ κεράμου μαχόμενοι κόρακες ἐν ἀριστερᾷ· καὶ πολλῶν ὡς εἰκὸς ἀνθρώπων παρερχομένων, κατ’ αὐτὸν τὸν Τιβέριον λίθος ἀπωσθεὶς ὑπὸ θατέρου τῶν [5] κοράκων ἔπεσε παρὰ τὸν πόδα. τοῦτο καὶ τοὺς θρασυτάτους τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἐπέστησεν· ἀλλὰ Βλόσσιος ὁ Κυμαῖος παρὼν αἰσχύνην ἔφη καὶ κατήφειαν ἂν εἶναι πολλήν, εἰ Τιβέριος, Γράγχου μὲν υἱός, Ἀφρικανοῦ δὲ Σκιπίωνος θυγατριδοῦς, προστάτης δὲ τοῦ Ῥωμαίων δήμου, κόρακα δείσας οὐχ ὑπακούσειε τοῖς πολίταις [6] καλοῦσι· τοῦτο μέντοι τὸ αἰσχρὸν οὐκ ἐν γέλωτι θήσεσθαι τοὺς ἐχθρούς, ἀλλ’ ὡς τυραννοῦντος καὶ τρυφῶντος ἤδη καταβοήσεσθαι πρὸς τὸν δῆμον. ἅμα δὲ καὶ προσέθεον πολλοὶ τῷ Τιβερίῳ παρὰ τῶν ἐν Καπετωλίῳ φίλων, [7] ἐπείγεσθαι κελεύοντες ὡς τῶν ἐκεῖ καλῶς ἐχόντων. καὶ τά γε πρῶτα λαμπρῶς ἀπήντα τῷ Τιβερίῳ, φανέντι μὲν εὐθὺς ἀραμένων βοὴν φίλιον, ἀναβαίνοντα δὲ προθύμως δεχομένων καὶ περὶ αὐτὸν ὡς μηδεὶς πελάσειεν ἀγνὼς προταττομένων.

[18] [1] Ἀρξαμένου δὲ πάλιν τοῦ Μουκίου τὰς φυλὰς ἀναγορεύειν, οὐδὲν ἐπεραίνετο τῶν εἰωθότων διὰ τὸν ἀπὸ τῶν ἐσχάτων θόρυβον, ὠθουμένων καὶ ὠθούντων τοὺς [2] ἐναντίους εἰσβιαζομένους καὶ ἀναμειγνυμένους. ἐν δὲ τούτῳ Φούλβιος Φλάκκος ἀπὸ βουλῆς ἀνὴρ εἰς ἐμφανὲς καταστάς, ὡς οὐκ ἦν φθεγγόμενον ἐφικέσθαι, διεσήμηνε τῇ χειρὶ φράσαι τι βουλόμενος αὐτὸς ἰδίᾳ τῷ Τιβερίῳ.

[3] καὶ κελεύσαντος ἐκείνου διασχεῖν τὸ πλῆθος, ἀναβὰς μόλις καὶ προσελθὼν ἀπήγγειλεν, ὅτι τῆς βουλῆς συγκαθεζομένης οἱ πλούσιοι τὸν ὕπατον μὴ πείθοντες αὐτοὶ διανοοῦνται καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἀποκτιννύναι τὸν Τιβέριον, πολλοὺς ἐπὶ τοῦτο δούλους καὶ φίλους ὡπλισμένους ἔχοντες.

[19] [1] Ὡς οὖν ταῦτα τοῖς περὶ αὑτὸν ἐξήγγειλεν ὁ Τιβέριος, οὗτοι μὲν εὐθὺς τάς τε τηβέννους περιεζώννυντο, καὶ τὰ τῶν ὑπηρετῶν δόρατα συγκλῶντες οἷς ἀνείργουσι τὸν ὄχλον διελάμβανον, ὡς ἀμυνούμενοι τοῖς κλάσμασι τοὺς [2] ἐπερχομένους. τῶν δ’ ἀπωτέρω θαυμαζόντων τὰ γινόμενα καὶ πυνθανομένων, ὁ Τιβέριος ἥψατο τῇ χειρὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς, ἐνδεικνύμενος τῇ ὄψει τὸν κίνδυνον, ἐπεὶ τῆς φωνῆς οὐκ [3] ἐπήκουον. οἱ δ’ ἐναντίοι τοῦτ’ ἰδόντες, ἔθεον πρὸς τὴν βουλὴν ἀπαγγέλλοντες αἰτεῖν διάδημα τὸν Τιβέριον· καὶ τούτου σημεῖον εἶναι τὸ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἐπιθιγγάνειν. πάντες μὲν οὖν ἐθορυβήθησαν· ὁ δὲ Νασικᾶς ἠξίου τὸν ὕπατον τῇ [4] πόλει βοηθεῖν καὶ καταλύειν τὸν τύραννον. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ πράως ἐκείνου, βίας μὲν οὐδεμιᾶς ὑπάρξειν οὐδ’ ἀναιρήσειν οὐδένα τῶν πολιτῶν ἄκριτον· εἰ μέντοι ψηφίσαιτό τι τῶν παρανόμων ὁ δῆμος ὑπὸ τοῦ Τιβερίου [5] πεισθεὶς ἢ βιασθείς, τοῦτο κύριον μὴ φυλάξειν, ἀναπηδήσας ὁ Νασικᾶς ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ἔφη προδίδωσιν ὁ ἄρχων τὴν πόλιν, οἱ βουλόμενοι τοῖς νόμοις βοηθεῖν ἀκολουθεῖτε. καὶ ταῦτα λέγων ἅμα καὶ τὸ κράσπεδον τοῦ ἱματίου θέμενος ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς, ἐχώρει πρὸς τὸ [6] Καπετώλιον. ἕκαστος δὲ τῶν ἑπομένων αὐτῷ τῇ χειρὶ τὴν τήβεννον περιελίξας ἐώθει τοὺς ἐμποδών, οὐδενὸς ἐνισταμένου πρὸς τὸ ἀξίωμα τῶν ἀνδρῶν, ἀλλὰ φευγόντων [7] καὶ πατούντων ἀλλήλους. οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ αὐτοὺς [8] ῥόπαλα καὶ σκυτάλας ἐκόμιζον οἴκοθεν· αὐτοὶ δὲ τῶν δίφρων καταγνυμένων ὑπὸ τοῦ φεύγοντος ὄχλου τὰ κλάσματα καὶ τοὺς πόδας λαμβάνοντες ἀνέβαινον ἐπὶ τὸν [9] Τιβέριον, ἅμα παίοντες τοὺς προτεταγμένους. καὶ τούτων μὲν ἦν τροπὴ καὶ φόνος· αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ Τιβερίου φεύγοντος ἀντελάβετό τις τῶν ἱματίων. ὁ δὲ τὴν τήβεννον ἀφεὶς καὶ φεύγων ἐν τοῖς χιτῶσιν ἐσφάλη καὶ κατηνέχθη περί τινας [10] τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ πεπτωκότας. ἀνιστάμενον δ’ αὐτὸν ὁ μὲν ἐμφανῶς καὶ πρῶτος εἰς τὴν κεφαλὴν πατάξας ποδὶ δίφρου Πόπλιος ἦν Σατυρήιος εἷς τῶν συναρχόντων· τῆς δὲ δευτέρας ἀντεποιεῖτο πληγῆς Λεύκιος Ῥοῦφος, ὡς ἐπὶ καλῷ τινι σεμνυνόμενος. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἀπέθανον ὑπὲρ τριακοσίους ξύλοις καὶ λίθοις συγκοπέντες, σιδήρῳ δ’ οὐδείς.

[20] [1] Ταύτην πρώτην ἱστοροῦσιν ἐν Ῥώμῃ στάσιν, ἀφ’ οὗ τὸ βασιλεύεσθαι κατέλυσαν, αἵματι καὶ φόνῳ πολιτῶν διακριθῆναι· τὰς δ’ ἄλλας οὔτε μικρὰς οὔτε περὶ μικρῶν γενομένας ἀνθυπείκοντες ἀλλήλοις, φόβῳ μὲν οἱ δυνατοὶ τῶν πολλῶν, αἰδούμενοι δὲ τὴν βουλὴν ὁ δῆμος, ἔπαυον.

[2] ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ τότε μὴ χαλεπῶς ἂν ἐνδοῦναι παρηγορηθεὶς ὁ Τιβέριος, ἔτι δὲ ῥᾷον εἶξαι δίχα φόνου καὶ τραυμάτων ἐπιοῦσιν· οὐ γὰρ πλείονες ἢ τρισχίλιοι περὶ αὐτὸν ἦσαν.

[3] ἀλλ’ ἔοικεν ὀργῇ τῶν πλουσίων καὶ μίσει πλέον ἢ δι’ ἃς ἐσκήπτοντο προφάσεις ἡ σύστασις ἐπ’ αὐτὸν γενέσθαι· καὶ τούτου μέγα τεκμήριον ὠμῶς καὶ παρανόμως ὑβρισθεὶς [4] ὁ νεκρός. οὐ γὰρ ἐπέτρεψαν ἀνελέσθαι τὸ σῶμα τῷ ἀδελφῷ δεομένῳ καὶ θάψαι νυκτός, ἀλλὰ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων νεκρῶν εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν ἔρριψαν. καὶ τοῦτο πέρας οὐκ ἦν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ τοὺς μὲν ἐξεκήρυττον ἀκρίτους, τοὺς δὲ συλλαμβάνοντες ἀπεκτίννυσαν· ἐν οἷς καὶ Διο[5]φάνης ὁ ῥήτωρ ἀπώλετο. Γάιον δέ τινα Βίλλιον εἰς ἀγγεῖον καθείρξαντες καὶ συνεμβαλόντες ἐχίδνας καὶ δράκοντας οὕτω διέφθειραν. ὁ δὲ Κυμαῖος Βλόσσιος ἀνήχθη μὲν ἐπὶ τοὺς ὑπάτους, ἐρωτώμενος δὲ περὶ τῶν γεγονότων [6] ὡμολόγει πεποιηκέναι πάντα Τιβερίου κελεύοντος. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ Νασικᾶ πρὸς αὐτόν· τί οὖν εἴ σε Τιβέριος ἐκέλευσεν ἐμπρῆσαι τὸ Καπετώλιον; τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἀντέλεγεν, ὡς οὐκ ἂν τοῦτο Τιβερίου κελεύσαντος· πολλάκις δὲ καὶ πολλῶν τὸ αὐτὸ πυνθανομένων, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνου γε προστάσσοντος ἔφη κἀμοὶ τοῦτο πρᾶξαι καλῶς εἶχεν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν Τιβέριος τοῦτο προσέταξεν, εἰ [7] μὴ τῷ δήμῳ συνέφερεν. οὗτος μὲν οὖν διαφυγὼν ὕστερον ᾤχετο πρὸς Ἀριστόνικον εἰς Ἀσίαν, καὶ τῶν ἐκείνου πραγμάτων διαφθαρέντων ἑαυτὸν ἀνεῖλεν.

[21] [1] Ἡ δὲ βουλὴ θεραπεύουσα τὸν δῆμον ἐκ τῶν παρόντων, οὔτε πρὸς τὴν διανομὴν ἔτι τῆς χώρας ἠναντιοῦτο, καὶ ἀντὶ τοῦ Τιβερίου προὔθηκε τοῖς πολλοῖς [2] ὁριστὴν ἑλέσθαι. λαβόντες δὲ τὰς ψήφους εἵλοντο Πόπλιον Κράσσον, οἰκεῖον ὄντα Γράγχῳ· θυγάτηρ γὰρ αὐτοῦ [3] Λικιννία Γαΐῳ Γράγχῳ συνῴκει. καίτοι Νέπως ὁ Κορνήλιός (HRR II 37) φησιν οὐ Κράσσου, Βρούτου δὲ τοῦ θριαμβεύσαντος ἀπὸ Λυσιτανῶν θυγατέρα γῆμαι Γάιον· [4] ἀλλ’ οἱ πλείους ὡς ἡμεῖς γράφομεν ἱστοροῦσιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ χαλεπῶς μὲν ὁ δῆμος εἶχε τῷ θανάτῳ τοῦ Τιβερίου, καὶ φανερὸς ἦν ἀμύνης περιμένων καιρόν, ἤδη δὲ καὶ δίκαι τῷ Νασικᾷ προανεσείοντο, δείσασα περὶ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἡ βουλὴ ψηφίζεται μηδὲν δεομένη πέμπειν αὐτὸν εἰς Ἀσίαν.

[5] οὐ γὰρ ἀπεκρύπτοντο κατὰ τὰς ἀπαντήσεις οἱ ἄνθρωποι τὴν δυσμένειαν, ἀλλ’ ἐξηγριαίνοντο καὶ κατεβόων ὅπου προστύχοιεν, ἐναγῆ καὶ τύραννον καὶ μεμιαγκότα φόνῳ σώματος ἀσύλου καὶ ἱεροῦ τὸ ἁγιώτατον καὶ φρικωδέστατον [6] ἐν τῇ πόλει τῶν ἱερῶν ἀποκαλοῦντες. οὕτω μὲν ὑπεξῆλθε τῆς Ἰταλίας ὁ Νασικᾶς, καίπερ ἐνδεδεμένος ταῖς μεγίσταις ἱερουργίαις· ἦν γὰρ ὁ μέγιστος καὶ πρῶτος τῶν ἱερέων. ἔξω δ’ ἀλύων καὶ πλανώμενος ἀδόξως, οὐ μετὰ [7] πολὺν χρόνον κατέστρεψε περὶ Πέργαμον. οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν, εἰ Νασικᾶν μεμίσηκεν οὕτως ὁ δῆμος, ὅπου καὶ Σκιπίων ὁ Ἀφρικανός, οὗ δοκοῦσι Ῥωμαῖοι μηδένα δικαιότερον μηδὲ μᾶλλον ἀγαπῆσαι, παρὰ μικρὸν ἦλθεν ἐκπεσεῖν καὶ στέρεσθαι τῆς πρὸς τὸν δῆμον εὐνοίας, ὅτι πρῶτον μὲν ἐν Νομαντίᾳ τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦ Τιβερίου πυθόμενος, ἀνεφώνησεν ἐκ τῶν Ὁμηρικῶν (Od. 1, 47)·

ὣς ἀπόλοιτο καὶ ἄλλος ὅτις τοιαῦτά γε ῥέζοι,

[8] ἔπειτα τῶν περὶ Γάιον καὶ Φούλβιον αὐτοῦ δι’ ἐκκλησίας πυνθανομένων, τί φρονοίη περὶ τῆς Τιβερίου τελευτῆς, οὐκ ἀρεσκομένην τοῖς ὑπ’ ἐκείνου πεπολιτευμένοις ἀπόκρισιν ἔδωκεν. ἐκ τούτου γὰρ ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἀντέκρουσεν αὐτῷ λέγοντι, μηδέπω τοῦτο ποιήσας πρότερον, αὐτὸς [9] δὲ τὸν δῆμον εἰπεῖν κακῶς προήχθη. περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων ἐν τῷ Σκιπίωνος βίῳ (fr. 3 Sandbach) τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα γέγραπται.

[22] [1] Γάιος δὲ Γράγχος ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν ἢ δεδιὼς τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ἢ φθόνον συνάγων ἐπ’ αὐτούς, ὑπεξέστη τε τῆς ἀγορᾶς καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἡσυχίαν ἔχων διέτριβεν, ὡς ἄν τις ἔν τε τῷ παρόντι ταπεινὰ πράττων καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν οὕτως ἀπραγμόνως βιωσόμενος, ὥστε καὶ λόγον τισὶ καθ’ αὑτοῦ παρασχεῖν ὡς δυσχεραίνοντος καὶ προβεβλημένου [2] τὴν τοῦ Τιβερίου πολιτείαν. ἦν δὲ καὶ μειράκιον παντάπασιν· ἐννέα γὰρ ἐνιαυτοῖς ἐλείπετο τἀδελφοῦ καθ’ ἡλικίαν, ἐκεῖνος δ’ οὔπω τριάκοντα γεγονὼς [3] ἀπέθανεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ προϊόντος τοῦ χρόνου τόν τε τρόπον ἡσυχῇ διέφαινεν ἀργίας καὶ μαλακίας καὶ πότων καὶ χρηματισμῶν ἀλλότριον ὄντα, καὶ τὸν λόγον ὥσπερ ὠκύπτερα κατασκευαζόμενος ἐπὶ τὴν πολιτείαν δῆλος ἦν οὐκ ἠρεμήσων, δίκην τέ τινι τῶν φίλων φεύγοντι Βεττίῳ συνειπών (ORF 177 Malc.4`3), τοῦ δήμου συνενθουσιῶντος ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς καὶ βακχεύοντος περὶ αὐτόν, ἀπέδειξε τοὺς ἄλλους ῥήτορας παίδων μηδὲν διαφέροντας, εἰς φόβον αὖθις οἱ δυνατοὶ καθίσταντο, καὶ πολὺς ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς λόγος ὡς οὐκ ἐάσουσιν ἐπὶ δημαρχίαν τὸν Γάιον [4] προελθεῖν. συντυγχάνει δ’ ἀπὸ ταὐτομάτου λαχεῖν αὐτὸν εἰς Σαρδὼ ταμίαν Ὀρέστῃ τῷ ὑπάτῳ· καὶ τοῦτο τοῖς μὲν ἐχθροῖς καθ’ ἡδονὴν ἐγεγόνει, τὸν δὲ Γάιον οὐκ ἐλύπησεν.

[5] ἅτε γὰρ ὢν πολεμικὸς καὶ χεῖρον οὐδὲν πρὸς στρατείας ἠσκημένος ἢ δίκας, ἔτι δὲ τὴν πολιτείαν καὶ τὸ βῆμα φρίττων, ἀντέχειν δὲ καλοῦντι τῷ δήμῳ καὶ τοῖς φίλοις οὐ δυνάμενος, παντάπασι τὴν ἀποδημίαν ἐκείνην ἠγάπησε.

[6] καίτοι κρατεῖ δόξα πολλὴ τοῦτον ἄκρατον γενέσθαι δημαγωγὸν καὶ πολὺ τοῦ Τιβερίου λαμυρώτερον πρὸς τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν ὄχλων δόξαν. οὐκ ἔχει δ’ οὕτω τὸ ἀληθές, ἀλλ’ ἔοικεν ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης τινὸς μᾶλλον οὗτος ἢ [7] προαιρέσεως ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν. ἱστορεῖ δὲ καὶ Κικέρων ὁ ῥήτωρ (de div. 1, 56. 2, 136), ὡς ἄρα φεύγοντι πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν τῷ Γαΐῳ καὶ μεθ’ ἡσυχίας ᾑρημένῳ ζῆν ὁ ἀδελφὸς ὄναρ φανεὶς καὶ προσαγορεύσας τί δῆτα φαίη Γάιε βραδύνεις; οὐκ ἔστιν ἀπόδρασις, ἀλλ’ εἷς μὲν ἡμῖν ἀμφοτέροις βίος, εἷς δὲ θάνατος ὑπὲρ τοῦ δήμου πολιτευομένοις πέπρωται.

[23] [1] Γενόμενος οὖν ὁ Γάιος ἐν Σαρδόνι πᾶσαν ἀρετῆς ἀπόδειξιν ἐδίδου, καὶ πολὺ πάντων διέφερε τῶν νέων ἐν τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ἀγῶσι καὶ ἐν τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς ὑπηκόους δικαίοις ‹καὶ› ἐν τῇ πρὸς τὸν στρατηγὸν εὐνοίᾳ καὶ τιμῇ, σωφροσύνῃ δὲ καὶ λιτότητι καὶ φιλοπονίᾳ [2] παρήλλαττε καὶ τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους. ἰσχυροῦ δὲ καὶ νοσώδους ἅμα χειμῶνος ἐν Σαρδόνι γενομένου, καὶ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τὰς πόλεις ἐσθῆτα τοῖς στρατιώταις αἰτοῦντος, [3] ἔπεμψαν εἰς Ῥώμην παραιτούμενοι. δεξαμένης δὲ τῆς βουλῆς τὴν παραίτησιν αὐτῶν καὶ τὸν στρατηγὸν ἄλλοθεν ἀμφιέζειν τοὺς στρατιώτας κελευούσης, ἀποροῦντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν κακοπαθούντων, ἐπελθὼν τὰς πόλεις ὁ Γάιος αὐτοὺς ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν ἔπεισεν ἐσθῆτα [4] πέμψαι καὶ βοηθῆσαι τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις. ταῦτα πάλιν εἰς Ῥώμην ἀπαγγελλόμενα καὶ δοκοῦντα δημαγωγίας προάγωνες [5] εἶναι, διετάραττε τὴν βουλήν. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐκ Λιβύης παρὰ Μικίψα τοῦ βασιλέως πρέσβεις παραγενομένους καὶ λέγοντας, ὡς ὁ βασιλεὺς χάριτι Γαΐου Γράγχου πέμψειεν εἰς Σαρδόνα σῖτον τῷ στρατηγῷ, δυσχεραίνοντες [6] ἐξέβαλον· ἔπειτα δόγμα ποιοῦνται τοῖς μὲν στρατιώταις διαδοχὴν ἀποσταλῆναι, τὸν δ’ Ὀρέστην ἐπιμένειν, ὡς δὴ [7] καὶ τοῦ Γαΐου διὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν παραμενοῦντος. ὁ δὲ τούτων αὐτῷ προσπεσόντων εὐθὺς ἐξέπλευσε πρὸς ὀργήν, καὶ φανεὶς ἐν Ῥώμῃ παρ’ ἐλπίδας οὐ μόνον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν αἰτίαν εἶχεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀλλόκοτον ἐδόκει τὸ [8] ταμίαν ὄντα προαποστῆναι τοῦ ἄρχοντος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ κατηγορίας αὐτῷ γενομένης ἐπὶ τῶν τιμητῶν, αἰτησάμενος λόγον οὕτω μετέστησε τὰς γνώμας τῶν ἀκουσάντων, ὡς [9] ἀπελθεῖν ἠδικῆσθαι τὰ μέγιστα δόξας. ἐστρατεῦσθαι μὲν γὰρ ἔφη (ORF 180 Malc.4`3) δώδεκα ἔτη, τῶν ἄλλων δέκα στρατευομένων ἐν ἀνάγκαις, ταμιεύων δὲ τῷ στρατηγῷ παραμεμενηκέναι τριετίαν, τοῦ νόμου μετ’ ἐνιαυτὸν [10] ἐπανελθεῖν διδόντος· μόνος δὲ τῶν στρατευσαμένων πλῆρες τὸ βαλλάντιον ἐξενηνοχὼς κενὸν εἰσενηνοχέναι, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐκπιόντας ὃν εἰσήνεγκαν οἶνον, ἀργυρίου καὶ χρυσίου μεστοὺς δεῦρο τοὺς ἀμφορεῖς ἥκειν κομίζοντας.

[24] [1] Ἐκ τούτου πάλιν ἄλλας αἰτίας αὐτῷ καὶ δίκας ἐπῆγον, ὡς τοὺς συμμάχους ἀφιστάντι καὶ κεκοινωνηκότι τῆς περὶ Φρέγελλαν ἐνδειχθείσης συνωμοσίας.

[2] ὁ δὲ πᾶσαν ὑποψίαν ἀπολυσάμενος καὶ φανεὶς καθαρὸς (ORF 182 Malc.4`3), εὐθὺς ἐπὶ δημαρχίαν ὥρμησε, τῶν μὲν γνωρίμων ἀνδρῶν ὁμαλῶς ἁπάντων ἐναντιουμένων πρὸς αὐτόν, ὄχλου δὲ τοσούτου συρρέοντος εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας καὶ συναρχαιρεσιάζοντος, ὡς πολλοῖς μὲν οἰκήσεις ἐπιλιπεῖν, τοῦ δὲ πεδίου μὴ δεξαμένου τὸ πλῆθος ἀπὸ τῶν τεγῶν καὶ τῶν κεράμων τὰς φωνὰς συνηχεῖν.

[3] τοσοῦτον δ’ οὖν ἐξεβιάσαντο τὸν δῆμον οἱ δυνατοὶ καὶ τῆς ἐλπίδος τοῦ Γαΐου καθεῖλον, ὅσον οὐχ ὡς προσεδόκησε [4] πρῶτον, ἀλλὰ τέταρτον ἀναγορευθῆναι. παραλαβὼν δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν εὐθὺς ἦν ἁπάντων πρῶτος, ἰσχύων τε τῷ λέγειν ὡς ἄλλος οὐδείς, καὶ τοῦ πάθους αὐτῷ παρρησίαν πολλὴν διδόντος, ἀνακλαιομένῳ (ORF 183 Malc.4`3) [5] τὸν ἀδελφόν. ἐνταῦτα γὰρ ἐξ ἁπάσης προφάσεως περιῆγε τὸν δῆμον, ἀναμιμνῄσκων τῶν γεγονότων καὶ παρατιθεὶς τὰ τῶν προγόνων, ὡς ἐκεῖνοι μὲν καὶ Φαλίσκοις ἐπολέμησαν ὑπὲρ Γενυκίου τινὸς δημάρχου λοιδορηθέντος, καὶ Γαΐου Βετουρίου θάνατον κατέγνωσαν, ὅτι δημάρχῳ [6] πορευομένῳ δι’ ἀγορᾶς οὐχ ὑπεξέστη μόνος· ὑμῶν δ’ ὁρώντων ἔφη Τιβέριον ξύλοις συνέκοπτον οὗτοι, καὶ διὰ μέσης τῆς πόλεως ἐσύρετο νεκρὸς ἐκ Καπετωλίου, ῥιφησόμενος εἰς τὸν ποταμόν· οἱ δ’ ἁλισκόμενοι τῶν [7] φίλων ἀπέθνῃσκον ἄκριτοι. καίτοι πάτριόν ἐστιν ἡμῖν, εἴ τις ἔχων δίκην θανατικὴν μὴ ὑπακούει, τούτου πρὸς τὰς θύρας ἕωθεν ἐλθόντα σαλπιγκτὴν ἀνακαλεῖσθαι τῇ σάλπιγγι, καὶ μὴ πρότερον ἐπιφέρειν ψῆφον αὐτῷ τοὺς δικαστάς. οὕτως εὐλαβεῖς καὶ πεφυλαγμένοι περὶ τὰς κρίσεις ἦσαν.

[25] [1] Τοιούτοις λόγοις προανασείσας τὸν δῆμον - ἦν δὲ καὶ μεγαλοφωνότατος καὶ ῥωμαλεώτατος ἐν τῷ λέγειν - δύο νόμους εἰσέφερε, τὸν μέν, εἴ τινος ἄρχοντος ἀφῃρῇτο τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁ δῆμος, οὐκ ἐῶντα τούτῳ δευτέρας ἀρχῆς μετουσίαν εἶναι· τὸν δ’, εἴ τις ἄρχων ἄκριτον ἐκκεκηρύχοι πολίτην, κατὰ τούτου κρίσιν διδόντα τῷ δήμῳ.

[2] τούτων τῶν νόμων ἄντικρυς ὁ μὲν Μᾶρκον Ὀκτάβιον ἠτίμου, τὸν ὑπὸ Τιβερίου τῆς δημαρχίας ἐκπεσόντα, τῷ δ’ ἐνείχετο Ποπίλλιος· οὗτος γὰρ στρατηγῶν τοὺς τοῦ Τιβερίου [3] φίλους ἐξεκήρυξε. καὶ Ποπίλλιος μὲν οὐχ ὑποστὰς τὴν κρίσιν ἔφυγεν ἐξ Ἰταλίας· τὸν δ’ ἕτερον νόμον Γάιος αὐτὸς ἐπανείλετο, φήσας τῇ μητρὶ Κορνηλίᾳ δεηθείσῃ χαρίζεσθαι [4] τὸν Ὀκτάβιον. καὶ ὁ δῆμος ἠγάσθη καὶ συνεχώρησε, τιμῶν τὴν Κορνηλίαν οὐδὲν ἧττον ἀπὸ τῶν παίδων ἢ τοῦ πατρός, ἧς γε καὶ χαλκῆν εἰκόνα στήσας [5] ὕστερον ἐπέγραψε Κορνηλίαν μητέρα Γράγχων. ἀπομνημονεύεται δὲ καὶ τοῦ Γαΐου πολλὰ ῥητορικῶς καὶ ἀγοραίως ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς εἰρημένα πρός τινα τῶν ἐχθρῶν (ORF 197 sq. Malc.4`3) σὺ γάρ ἔφη Κορνηλίαν λοιδορεῖς [6] τὴν Τιβέριον τεκοῦσαν; ἐπεὶ δὲ διαβεβλημένος ἦν εἰς μαλακίαν ὁ λοιδορηθείς, τίνα δ’ εἶπεν ἔχων παρρησίαν συγκρίνεις Κορνηλίᾳ σεαυτόν; ἔτεκες γὰρ ὡς ἐκείνη; καὶ μὴν πάντες ἴσασι Ῥωμαῖοι πλείω χρόνον ἐκείνην ἀπ’ ἀνδρὸς οὖσαν ἢ σὲ τὸν ἄνδρα. τοιαύτη μὲν ἡ πικρία τῶν λόγων ἦν αὐτοῦ, καὶ πολλὰ λαβεῖν ἐκ τῶν γεγραμμένων ἔστιν ὅμοια.

[26] [1] Τῶν δὲ νόμων, οὓς εἰσέφερε τῷ δήμῳ χαριζόμενος καὶ καταλύων τὴν σύγκλητον, ὁ μὲν ἦν κληρουχικός, διανέμων τοῖς πένησι τὴν δημοσίαν· ὁ δὲ στρατιωτικός, ἐσθῆτά τε κελεύων δημοσίᾳ χορηγεῖσθαι καὶ μηδὲν εἰς τοῦτο τῆς μισθοφορᾶς ὑφαιρεῖσθαι τῶν στρατευομένων, καὶ νεώτερον ἐτῶν ἑπτακαίδεκα μὴ καταλέγεσθαι [2] στρατιώτην· ὁ δὲ συμμαχικός, ἰσοψήφους ποιῶν τοῖς πολίταις τοὺς Ἰταλιώτας· ὁ δὲ σιτικός, ἐπευωνίζων τοῖς πένησι τὴν ἀγοράν· ὁ δὲ δικαστικός, ᾧ τὸ πλεῖστον [3] ἀπέκοψε τῆς τῶν συγκλητικῶν δυνάμεως. μόνοι γὰρ ἔκρινον τὰς δίκας, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο φοβεροὶ τῷ τε δήμῳ καὶ τοῖς ἱππεῦσιν ἦσαν· ὁ δὲ τριακοσίους τῶν ἱππέων προσκατέλεξεν αὐτοῖς οὖσι τριακοσίοις, καὶ τὰς κρίσεις κοινὰς [4] τῶν ἑξακοσίων ἐποίησε. τοῦτον τὸν νόμον εἰσφέρων τά τ’ ἄλλα λέγεται σπουδάσαι διαφερόντως, καὶ τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ πάντων δημαγωγῶν πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ἀφορώντων καὶ τὸ καλούμενον κομίτιον, πρῶτος τότε στραφεὶς ἔξω πρὸς τὴν ἀγορὰν δημηγορῆσαι, καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν οὕτω ποιεῖν ἐξ ἐκείνου, μικρᾷ παρεγκλίσει καὶ μεταθέσει σχήματος μέγα πρᾶγμα κινήσας, καὶ μετενεγκὼν τρόπον τινὰ τὴν πολιτείαν ἐκ τῆς ἀριστοκρατίας εἰς τὴν δημοκρατίαν, ὡς τῶν πολλῶν δέον, οὐ τῆς βουλῆς, στοχάζεσθαι τοὺς λέγοντας.

[27] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐ μόνον ἐδέξατο τὸν νόμον τοῦτον ὁ δῆμος, ἀλλὰ κἀκείνῳ τοὺς κρίνοντας ἐκ τῶν ἱππέων ἔδωκε καταλέξαι, μοναρχική τις ἰσχὺς ἐγεγόνει περὶ αὐτόν, ὥστε καὶ τὴν σύγκλητον ἀνέχεσθαι συμβουλεύοντος αὐτοῦ. συνεβούλευε δ’ ἀεί τι τῶν ἐκείνῃ πρεπόντων [2] εἰσηγούμενος· οἷον ἦν καὶ τὸ περὶ τοῦ σίτου δόγμα μετριώτατον καὶ κάλλιστον, ὃν ἔπεμψε μὲν ἐξ Ἰβηρίας Φάβιος ἀντιστράτηγος, ἐκεῖνος δ’ ἔπεισε τὴν βουλὴν ἀποδομένην τὸν σῖτον ἀναπέμψαι ταῖς πόλεσι τὸ ἀργύριον καὶ προσεπαιτιάσασθαι τὸν Φάβιον, ὡς ἐπαχθῆ καὶ ἀφόρητον ποιοῦντα τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις· ἐφ’ ᾧ μεγάλην ἔσχε δόξαν μετ’ εὐνοίας ἐν ταῖς ἐπαρχίαις.

[3] ἔγραψε δὲ καὶ πόλεις ἀποικίδας ἐκπέμπεσθαι, καὶ τὰς ὁδοὺς ποιεῖσθαι, καὶ κατασκευάζεσθαι σιτοβόλια, τούτοις ἅπασι πραττομένοις αὑτὸν ἄρχοντα καὶ διοικητὴν ἐφιστάς, καὶ πρὸς οὐδὲν ἀποτρυόμενος τῶν τοσούτων καὶ τηλικούτων, ἀλλὰ καὶ θαυμαστῷ τινι τάχει καὶ πόνῳ τῶν γινομένων ὡς μόνον ἕκαστον ἐξεργαζόμενος, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς πάνυ μισοῦντας αὐτὸν καὶ δεδοικότας ἐκπλήττεσθαι τὸ διὰ πάντων ἀνύσιμον καὶ τελεσιουργόν.

[4] οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ τὴν ὄψιν αὐτὴν ἐθαύμαζον, ἐξηρτημένον ὁρῶντες αὐτοῦ πλῆθος ἐργολάβων, τεχνιτῶν, πρεσβευτῶν, ἀρχόντων, στρατιωτῶν, φιλολόγων, οἷς πᾶσιν ἐντυγχάνων μετ’ εὐκολίας, καὶ τὸ σεμνὸν ἐν τῷ φιλανθρώπῳ διαφυλάττων, καὶ νέμων αὐτοῦ τὸ ἁρμόττον οἰκείως ἑκάστῳ, χαλεποὺς ἀπεδείκνυε συκοφάντας τοὺς φοβερὸν αὐτὸν ἢ φορτικὸν ὅλως ἢ βίαιον ἀποκαλοῦντας.

[5] οὕτω δεινότερος ἦν ἐν ταῖς ὁμιλίαις καὶ ταῖς πράξεσιν ἢ τοῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος λόγοις δημαγωγός.

[28] [1] Ἐσπούδασε δὲ μάλιστα περὶ τὴν ὁδοποιίαν, τῆς τε χρείας ἅμα καὶ τοῦ πρὸς χάριν καὶ κάλλος ἐπιμεληθείς. εὐθεῖαι γὰρ ἤγοντο διὰ τῶν χωρίων ἀτρεμεῖς, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐστόρνυτο πέτρᾳ ξεστῇ, τὸ δ’ ἄμμου χώμασι [2] νακτῆς ἐπυκνοῦτο. πιμπλαμένων δὲ τῶν κοίλων, καὶ ζευγνυμένων γεφύραις ὅσα χείμαρροι διέκοπτον ἢ φάραγγες, ὕψος τε τῶν ἑκατέρωθεν ἴσον καὶ παράλληλον λαμβανόντων, ὁμαλὴν καὶ καλὴν ὄψιν εἶχε δι’ ὅλου τὸ [3] ἔργον. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις διαμετρήσας κατὰ μίλιον ὁδὸν πᾶσαν - τὸ δὲ μίλιον ὀκτὼ σταδίων ὀλίγον ἀποδεῖ - , [4] κίονας λιθίνους σημεῖα τοῦ μέτρου κατέστησεν. ἄλλους δὲ λίθους ἔλαττον ἀπέχοντας ἀλλήλων ἑκατέρωθεν τῆς ὁδοῦ διέθηκεν, ὡς εἴη ῥᾳδίως τοῖς ἵππους ἔχουσιν ἐπιβαίνειν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἀναβολέως μὴ δεομένοις.

[29] [1] Ἐπὶ τούτοις τοῦ δήμου μεγαλύνοντος αὐτὸν καὶ πᾶν ὁτιοῦν ἑτοίμως ἔχοντος ἐνδείκνυσθαι πρὸς εὔνοιαν, ἔφη ποτὲ δημηγορῶν αὐτὸς αἰτήσειν χάριν, ἣν λαβὼν μὲν ἀντὶ παντὸς ἕξειν, εἰ δ’ ἀποτύχοι, μηδὲν ἐκείνοις μεμψιμοιρήσειν. τοῦτο ῥηθὲν ἔδοξεν αἴτησις ὑπατείας εἶναι, καὶ προσδοκίαν πᾶσιν ὡς ἅμα μὲν ὑπατείαν, [2] ἅμα δὲ δημαρχίαν μετιὼν παρέσχεν. ἐνστάντων δὲ τῶν ὑπατικῶν ἀρχαιρεσιῶν καὶ μετεώρων ὄντων ἁπάντων, ὤφθη Γάιον Φάννιον κατάγων εἰς τὸ πεδίον καὶ συναρχαιρεσιάζων ἐκείνῳ μετὰ τῶν φίλων (ORF 190 Malc.4`3). τοῦτο ῥοπὴν ἤνεγκε τῷ Φαννίῳ μεγάλην, κἀκεῖνος μὲν ὕπατος, Γάιος δὲ δήμαρχος ἀπεδείχθη τὸ δεύτερον, οὐ παραγγέλλων οὐδὲ μετιών, ἀλλὰ τοῦ δήμου [3] σπουδάσαντος. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἑώρα τὴν μὲν σύγκλητον ἐχθρὰν ἄντικρυς, ἀμβλὺν δὲ τῇ πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐνοίᾳ τὸν Φάννιον, αὖθις ἑτέροις νόμοις ἀπηρτήσατο τὸ πλῆθος, ἀποικίας μὲν εἰς Τάραντα καὶ Καπύην πέμπεσθαι γράφων, καλῶν δ’ ἐπὶ κοινωνίᾳ πολιτείας τοὺς Λατίνους.

[4] Ἡ δὲ βουλὴ δείσασα μὴ παντάπασιν ἄμαχος γένηται, καινὴν καὶ ἀσυνήθη πεῖραν ἐπῆγε τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀποτροπῆς, ἀντιδημαγωγοῦσα καὶ χαριζομένη παρὰ τὸ βέλτιστον.

[5] ἦν γὰρ εἷς τῶν τοῦ Γαΐου συναρχόντων Λίβιος Δροῦσος, ἀνὴρ οὔτε γεγονώς τινος Ῥωμαίων οὔτε τεθραμμένος χεῖρον, ἤθει δὲ καὶ λόγῳ καὶ πλούτῳ [ἐν] τοῖς μάλιστα τιμωμένοις καὶ δυναμένοις ἀπὸ τούτων [6] ἐνάμιλλος. ἐπὶ τοῦτον [μὲν] οὖν οἱ γνωριμώτατοι τρέπονται, καὶ παρεκάλουν αὐτὸν ἅψασθαι τοῦ Γαΐου καὶ μετ’ αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνδρα συστῆναι, μὴ βιαζόμενον μηδ’ ἀντικρούοντα τοῖς πολλοῖς, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἄρχοντα καὶ χαριζόμενον ὑπὲρ ὧν καὶ ἀπεχθάνεσθαι καλῶς εἶχεν.

[30] [1] Ἐπιδοὺς οὖν ὁ Λίβιος εἰς ταῦτα τῇ βουλῇ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ δημαρχίαν, νόμους ἔγραψεν, οὔτε τῶν καλῶν τινος οὔτε τῶν λυσιτελῶν ἐχόμενος, ἀλλ’ ἓν μόνον, ὑπερβαλέσθαι τὸν Γάιον ἡδονῇ καὶ χάριτι τῶν πολλῶν, ὥσπερ ἐν [2] κωμῳδίᾳ σπεύδων καὶ διαμιλλώμενος. ᾧ καὶ καταφανεστάτην ἐποίησεν ἑαυτὴν ἡ σύγκλητος οὐ δυσχεραίνουσα τοῖς τοῦ Γαΐου πολιτεύμασιν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον ἀνελεῖν [3] ἢ ταπεινῶσαι παντάπασι βουλομένη. τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἀποικίας δύο γράψαντα καὶ τοὺς χαριεστάτους τῶν πολιτῶν εἰσάγοντα δημοκοπεῖν ᾐτιῶντο, Λιβίῳ δὲ δώδεκα κατοικίζοντι καὶ τρισχιλίους εἰς ἑκάστην ἀποστέλλοντι τῶν [4] ἀπόρων συνελαμβάνοντο. κἀκείνῳ μὲν ὅτι χώραν διένειμε τοῖς πένησι, προστάξας ἑκάστῳ τελεῖν ἀποφορὰν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον, ὡς κολακεύοντι τοὺς πολλοὺς ἀπηχθάνοντο, Λίβιος δὲ καὶ τὴν ἀποφορὰν ταύτην τῶν νειμαμένων [5] ἀφαιρῶν ἤρεσκεν αὐτοῖς. ἔτι δ’ ὁ μὲν τοῖς Λατίνοις ἰσοψηφίαν διδοὺς ἐλύπει, τοῦ δ’ ὅπως μηδ’ ἐπὶ στρατιᾶς ἐξῇ τινα Λατίνων ῥάβδοις αἰκίσασθαι γράψαντος, ἐβοήθουν [6] τῷ νόμῳ. καὶ μέντοι καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Λίβιος ἀεὶ δημηγορῶν ἔλεγεν, ὡς γράφοι ταῦτα τῇ βουλῇ δοκοῦντα κηδομένῃ τῶν πολλῶν. ὃ δὴ καὶ μόνον ἀπὸ τῶν πολιτευμάτων [7] αὐτοῦ χρήσιμον ὑπῆρχεν. ἡμερώτερον γὰρ ἔσχε πρὸς τὴν βουλὴν ὁ δῆμος, καὶ τοὺς γνωριμωτάτους αὐτοῦ πρότερον ὑφορωμένου καὶ μισοῦντος, ἐξέλυσε καὶ κατεπράυνε τὴν μνησικακίαν καὶ χαλεπότητα ταύτην ὁ Λίβιος, ὡς ἐκ τῆς ἐκείνων ὁρμώμενος γνώμης ἐπὶ τὸ δημαγωγεῖν καὶ χαρίζεσθαι τοῖς πολλοῖς.

[31] [1] Μεγίστη δὲ τῷ Δρούσῳ πίστις εὐνοίας πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἐγίνετο καὶ δικαιοσύνης τὸ μηδὲν αὑτῷ μηδ’ ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ φαίνεσθαι γράφοντα· καὶ γὰρ οἰκιστὰς ἑτέρους ἐξέπεμπε τῶν πόλεων, καὶ διοικήσεσι χρημάτων οὐ προσῄει, τοῦ Γαΐου τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν [2] τοιούτων αὑτῷ προστιθέντος. ἐπεὶ δὲ Ῥουβρίου τῶν συναρχόντων ἑνὸς οἰκίζεσθαι Καρχηδόνα γράψαντος ἀνῃρημένην ὑπὸ Σκιπίωνος, κλήρῳ λαχὼν ὁ Γάιος ἐξέπλευσεν εἰς Λιβύην ἐπὶ τὸν κατοικισμόν, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐπιβὰς ὁ Δροῦσος ἀπόντος αὐτοῦ τὸν δῆμον ὑπελάμβανε καὶ προσήγετο, μάλιστα ταῖς κατὰ τοῦ Φουλβίου διαβολαῖς.

[3] ὁ δὲ Φούλβιος οὗτος ἦν τοῦ Γαΐου φίλος καὶ συνάρχων ἐπὶ τὴν διανομὴν τῆς χώρας ᾑρημένος. ἦν δὲ θορυβώδης καὶ μισούμενος μὲν ὑπὸ τῆς βουλῆς ἄντικρυς, ὕποπτος δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὡς τὰ συμμαχικὰ διακινῶν καὶ [4] παροξύνων κρύφα τοὺς Ἰταλιώτας πρὸς ἀπόστασιν. οἷς ἀναποδείκτως καὶ ἀνελέγκτως λεγομένοις αὐτὸς προσετίθει πίστιν ὁ Φούλβιος, οὐχ ὑγιαινούσης οὐδ’ εἰρηνικῆς ὢν προαιρέσεως. τοῦτο μάλιστα κατέλυε τὸν Γάιον, [5] ἀπολαύοντα τοῦ μίσους. καὶ ὅτε Σκιπίων ὁ Ἀφρικανὸς ἐξ οὐδενὸς αἰτίου προφανοῦς ἐτελεύτησε, καὶ σημεῖά τινα τῷ νεκρῷ πληγῶν καὶ βίας ἐπιδραμεῖν ἔδοξεν, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γέγραπται (fr. 4 Sandbach), τὸ μὲν πλεῖστον ἐπὶ τὸν Φούλβιον ἦλθε τῆς διαβολῆς, ἐχθρὸν ὄντα καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος τῷ Σκιπίωνι [6] λελοιδορημένον, ἥψατο δὲ καὶ τοῦ Γαΐου ἡ ὑπόνοια. καὶ δεινὸν οὕτως ἔργον ἐπ’ ἀνδρὶ τῷ πρώτῳ καὶ μεγίστῳ Ῥωμαίων τολμηθὲν οὐκ ἔτυχε δίκης οὐδ’ εἰς ἔλεγχον προῆλθεν· ἐνέστησαν γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ κατέλυσαν τὴν κρίσιν, ὑπὲρ τοῦ Γαΐου φοβηθέντες μὴ περιπετὴς τῇ αἰτίᾳ τοῦ φόνου ζητουμένου γένηται. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐγεγόνει πρότερον.

[32] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῇ Λιβύῃ περὶ τὸν τῆς Καρχηδόνος κατοικισμόν, ἣν ὁ Γάιος Ἰουνωνίαν - ὅπερ ἐστὶν Ἡραίαν - ὠνόμασε, πολλὰ κωλύματα γενέσθαι παρὰ τοῦ [2] δαιμονίου λέγουσιν. ἥ τε γὰρ πρώτη σημαία, πνεύματος ἀφαρπάζοντος αὐτήν, τοῦ δὲ φέροντος ἐγκρατῶς ἀντεχομένου, συνετρίβη, καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ τοῖς βωμοῖς ἐπικείμενα διεσκέδασεν ἀνέμου θύελλα καὶ διέρριψεν ὑπὲρ τοὺς ὅρους τῆς γεγενημένης ὑπογραφῆς, αὐτοὺς δὲ τοὺς ὅρους ἀνέσπασαν ἐπελθόντες λύκοι καὶ μακρὰν ᾤχοντο φέροντες.

[3] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πάντα συντάξας καὶ διακοσμήσας ὁ Γάιος ἡμέραις ἑβδομήκοντα ταῖς πάσαις ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς Ῥώμην, πιέζεσθαι τὸν Φούλβιον ὑπὸ τοῦ Δρούσου πυνθανόμενος, καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων τῆς αὐτοῦ παρουσίας δεομένων.

[4] Λεύκιος γὰρ Ὀπίμιος, ἀνὴρ ὀλιγαρχικὸς καὶ δυνατὸς ἐν τῇ βουλῇ, πρότερον μὲν ἐξέπεσεν ὑπατείαν παραγγέλλων, τοῦ Γαΐου τὸν Φάννιον προαγαγόντος, ἐκεῖνον δὲ καταρχαιρεσιάσαντος· [5] τότε δὲ πολλῶν βοηθούντων ἐπίδοξος ἦν ὑπατεύσειν, ὑπατεύων δὲ καταλύσειν τὸν Γάιον, ἤδη τρόπον τινὰ τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ μαραινομένης, καὶ τοῦ δήμου μεστοῦ γεγονότος τῶν τοιούτων πολιτευμάτων διὰ τὸ πολλοὺς τοὺς πρὸς χάριν δημαγωγοῦντας εἶναι καὶ τὴν βουλὴν ὑπείκειν ἑκοῦσαν.

[33] [1] Ἐπανελθὼν δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ἐκ τοῦ Παλατίου μετῴκησεν εἰς τὸν ὑπὸ τὴν ἀγορὰν τόπον, ὡς δημοτικώτερον ὅπου πλείστοις τῶν ταπεινῶν καὶ πενήτων [2] συνέβαινεν οἰκεῖν. ἔπειτα τῶν νόμων ἐξέθηκε τοὺς λοιπούς, ὡς ἐπάξων τὴν ψῆφον αὐτοῖς· ὄχλου δὲ πανταχόθεν αὐτῷ συνιόντος, ἔπεισεν ἡ βουλὴ τὸν ὕπατον Φάννιον ἐκβαλεῖν τοὺς ἄλλους πλὴν Ῥωμαίων ἅπαντας.

[3] γενομένου δὲ κηρύγματος ἀήθους καὶ ἀλλοκότου, μηδένα τῶν συμμάχων μηδὲ τῶν φίλων ἐν Ῥώμῃ φανῆναι περὶ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας, ἀντεξέθηκεν ὁ Γάιος διάγραμμα, κατηγορῶν τοῦ ὑπάτου καὶ τοῖς συμμάχοις ἂν μένωσι [4] βοηθήσειν ἐπαγγελλόμενος. οὐ μὴν ἐβοήθησεν, ἀλλ’ ὁρῶν ἕνα τῶν ξένων αὐτοῦ καὶ συνήθων ἑλκόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ὑπηρετῶν τοῦ Φαννίου, παρῆλθε καὶ οὐ προσήμυνεν, εἴτε τὴν ἰσχὺν ἐπιλείπουσαν ἤδη δεδιὼς ἐλέγχειν, εἴτε μὴ βουλόμενος ὡς ἔλεγεν ἁψιμαχίας αὐτὸς καὶ συμπλοκῆς [5] ἀρχὰς ζητοῦσι τοῖς ἐχθροῖς παρασχεῖν. συνέτυχε δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς συνάρχοντας ἐν ὀργῇ γενέσθαι διὰ τοιαύτην αἰτίαν. ἔμελλεν ὁ δῆμος θεᾶσθαι μονομάχους ἐν ἀγορᾷ, καὶ τῶν ‹συν›αρχόντων οἱ πλεῖστοι θεωρητήρια [6] κύκλῳ κατασκευάσαντες ἐξεμίσθουν. ταῦθ’ ὁ Γάιος ἐκέλευεν αὐτοὺς καθαιρεῖν, ὅπως οἱ πένητες ἐκ τῶν τόπων ἐκείνων ἀμισθὶ θεάσασθαι δύνωνται· μηδενὸς δὲ προσέχοντος, ἀναμείνας τὴν πρὸ τῆς θέας νύκτα, καὶ τῶν τεχνιτῶν ὅσους εἶχεν ἐργολάβους ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ παραλαβών, τὰ θεωρητήρια καθεῖλε καὶ τῷ δήμῳ σχολάζοντα μεθ’ [7] ἡμέραν ἀπέδειξε τὸν τόπον. ἐφ’ ᾧ τοῖς μὲν πολλοῖς ἀνὴρ ἔδοξεν εἶναι, τοὺς δὲ συνάρχοντας ὡς ἰταμὸς καὶ βίαιος ἐλύπησεν· ἐκ τούτου καὶ τὴν τρίτην ἔδοξε δημαρχίαν ἀφῃρῆσθαι, ψήφων μὲν αὐτῷ πλείστων γενομένων, ἀδίκως δὲ καὶ κακούργως τῶν συναρχόντων ποιησαμένων τὴν ἀναγόρευσιν καὶ ἀνάδειξιν· ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἀμφισβήτησιν [8] εἶχεν. ἤνεγκε δ’ οὐ μετρίως ἀποτυχών, καὶ πρός γε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ἐπεγγελῶντας αὐτῷ λέγεται θρασύτερον τοῦ δέοντος εἰπεῖν, ὡς Σαρδόνιον γέλωτα γελῶσιν, οὐ γιγνώσκοντες ὅσον αὐτοῖς σκότος ἐκ τῶν αὐτοῦ περικέχυται πολιτευμάτων.

[34] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὸν Ὀπίμιον καταστήσαντες ὕπατον τῶν νόμων πολλοὺς διέγραφον καὶ τὴν Καρχηδόνος ἐκίνουν διάταξιν, ἐρεθίζοντες τὸν Γάιον ὡς ἂν αἰτίαν ‹ὑπ’› ὀργῆς παρασχὼν ἀναιρεθείη, τὸν μὲν πρῶτον χρόνον ἐκαρτέρει, τῶν δὲ φίλων καὶ μάλιστα τοῦ Φουλβίου παροξύνοντος, ὥρμησε πάλιν συνάγειν τοὺς ἀντιταξομένους [2] πρὸς τὸν ὕπατον. ἐνταῦθα καὶ τὴν μητέρα λέγουσιν αὐτῷ συστασιάσαι, μισθουμένην ἀπὸ τῆς ξένης κρύφα καὶ πέμπουσαν εἰς Ῥώμην ἄνδρας, ὡς δὴ θεριστάς· ταῦτα γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἐπιστολίοις αὐτῆς (cf. HRR II 38) ᾐνιγμένα γεγράφθαι πρὸς τὸν υἱόν. ἕτεροι δὲ καὶ πάνυ τῆς Κορνηλίας δυσχεραινούσης ταῦτα πράττεσθαι λέγουσιν.

[3] ᾗ δ’ οὖν ἔμελλον ἡμέρᾳ τοὺς νόμους λύσειν οἱ περὶ τὸν Ὀπίμιον, κατείληπτο μὲν ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων ἕωθεν εὐθὺς τὸ Καπετώλιον· θύσαντος δὲ τοῦ ὑπάτου, τῶν ὑπηρετῶν τις αὐτοῦ Κόιντος Ἀντύλλιος διαφέρων ἑτέρωσε τὰ σπλάγχνα πρὸς τοὺς περὶ τὸν Φούλβιον εἶπε· [4] δότε τόπον ἀγαθοῖς κακοὶ πολῖται. τινὲς δέ φασιν ἅμα τῇ φωνῇ ταύτῃ καὶ τὸν βραχίονα γυμνὸν οἷον ἐφ’ ὕβρει σχηματίζοντα παρενεγκεῖν. ἀποθνῄσκει γοῦν εὐθὺς ὁ Ἀντύλλιος ἐκεῖ, μεγάλοις γραφείοις κεντούμενος, ἐπ’ [5] αὐτὸ τοῦτο πεποιῆσθαι λεγομένοις. καὶ τὸ μὲν πλῆθος διεταράχθη πρὸς τὸν φόνον, ἐναντία δὲ τοὺς ἡγεμόνας ἔσχε διάθεσις. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Γάιος ἤχθετο καὶ κακῶς ἔλεγε τοὺς περὶ αὑτόν, ὡς αἰτίαν δεομένοις πάλαι καθ’ ἑαυτῶν τοῖς ἐχθροῖς δεδωκότας, ὁ δ’ Ὀπίμιος ὥσπερ ἐνδόσιμον λαβὼν ἐπῆρτο, καὶ παρώξυνε τὸν δῆμον ἐπὶ τὴν ἄμυναν.

[35] [1] Καὶ τότε μὲν ὄμβρου γενομένου διελύθησαν· ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὴν μὲν βουλὴν ὁ ὕπατος συναγαγὼν ἔνδον ἐχρημάτιζεν, ἕτεροι δὲ τὸ τοῦ Ἀντυλλίου σῶμα γυμνὸν ἐπὶ κλίνης προθέμενοι, δι’ ἀγορᾶς παρὰ τὸ βουλευτήριον ἐπίτηδες παρεκόμιζον, οἰμωγῇ χρώμενοι καὶ θρήνῳ, γιγνώσκοντος μὲν τοῦ Ὀπιμίου τὰ πραττόμενα, προσποιουμένου δὲ θαυμάζειν, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς βουλευτὰς [2] προελθεῖν. κατατεθείσης δὲ τῆς κλίνης εἰς μέσον, οἱ μὲν ἐσχετλίαζον ὡς ἐπὶ δεινῷ καὶ μεγάλῳ πάθει, τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς ἐπῄει μισεῖν καὶ προβάλλεσθαι τοὺς ὀλιγαρχικούς, ὡς Τιβέριον μὲν Γράγχον ἐν Καπετωλίῳ φονεύσαντες αὐτοὶ δήμαρχον ὄντα καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν προσεξέβαλον, ὁ δ’ ὑπηρέτης Ἀντύλλιος, οὐ δίκαια μὲν ἴσως πεπονθώς, τὴν δὲ πλείστην αἰτίαν εἰς τὸ παθεῖν αὑτῷ παρασχών, ἐν ἀγορᾷ πρόκειται, καὶ περιέστηκεν ἡ Ῥωμαίων βουλή, θρηνοῦσα καὶ συνεκκομίζουσα μισθωτὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐπὶ τῷ τὸν ἔτι λειπόμενον ἀνελεῖν τῶν τοῦ [3] δήμου κηδομένων. ἐκ τούτου πάλιν εἰς τὸ βουλευτήριον ἀπελθόντες, ἐψηφίσαντο καὶ προσέταξαν Ὀπιμίῳ τῷ ὑπάτῳ σῴζειν τὴν πόλιν ὅπως δύναιτο καὶ καταλύειν [4] τοὺς τυράννους. ἐκείνου δὲ προειπόντος ἐπὶ τὰ ὅπλα χωρεῖν τοὺς συγκλητικούς, καὶ τῶν ἱππέων ἑκάστῳ παράγγελμα δόντος ἄγειν ἕωθεν οἰκέτας δύο καθωπλισμένους, ὁ μὲν Φούλβιος ἀντιπαρεσκευάζετο καὶ συνῆγεν ὄχλον, ὁ δὲ Γάιος ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἀπερχόμενος ἔστη κατὰ τὸν πατρὸς ἀνδριάντα, καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἐμβλέψας εἰς αὐτὸν οὐδὲν ἐφθέγξατο, δακρύσας δὲ καὶ στενάξας ἀπῄει.

[5] τοῦτο πολλοῖς τῶν ἰδόντων οἰκτῖραι τὸν Γάιον ἐπῆλθε, καὶ κακίσαντες αὑτοὺς ὡς ἐγκαταλείποντες τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ προδιδόντες, ἧκον ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ παρενυκτέρευον ἐπὶ τῶν θυρῶν, οὐχ ὁμοίως τοῖς τὸν Φούλβιον φυλάττουσιν.

[6] ἐκεῖνοι μὲν γὰρ ἐν κρότοις καὶ ἀλαλαγμοῖς πίνοντες καὶ θρασυνόμενοι διετέλεσαν, αὐτοῦ τοῦ Φουλβίου πρώτου μεθυσκομένου καὶ πολλὰ φορτικῶς παρ’ ἡλικίαν φθεγγομένου καὶ πράττοντος· οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Γάιον ὡς ἐπὶ συμφορᾷ κοινῇ τῆς πατρίδος ἡσυχίαν ἄγοντες καὶ περισκοπούμενοι τὸ μέλλον ἐν μέρει φυλάττοντες καὶ ἀναπαυόμενοι διῆγον.

[36] [1] Ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὸν μὲν Φούλβιον ἐκ τοῦ πότου καθεύδοντα μόλις ἐπεγείραντες, ὡπλίζοντο τοῖς περὶ τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ λαφύροις, ἃ Γαλάτας νενικηκὼς ὅθ’ ὑπάτευεν εἰλήφει, καὶ μετὰ πολλῆς ἀπειλῆς καὶ κραυγῆς ἐχώρουν [2] καταληψόμενοι τὸν Ἀβεντῖνον λόφον. ὁ δὲ Γάιος ὁπλίσασθαι μὲν οὐκ ἠθέλησεν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ εἰς ἀγορὰν ἐν τηβέννῳ προῄει, μικρὸν ὑπεζωσμένος ἐγχειρίδιον, ἐξιόντι δ’ αὐτῷ περὶ τὰς θύρας ἡ γυνὴ προσπεσοῦσα καὶ περιπτύξασα τῶν χειρῶν τῇ μὲν αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον, τῇ δὲ τὸ παιδίον, [3] οὐκ ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμά σε εἶπεν ὦ Γάιε προπέμπω δήμαρχον ὡς πρότερον καὶ νομοθέτην, οὐδ’ ἐπὶ πόλεμον ἔνδοξον, ἵνα μοι καὶ παθών τι τῶν κοινῶν ἀπολίπῃς τιμώμενον γοῦν πένθος, ἀλλὰ τοῖς Τιβερίου φονεῦσιν ὑποβάλλεις ἑαυτόν, ἄνοπλον μὲν καλῶς ἵνα πάθῃς τι μᾶλλον ἢ δράσῃς, [4] πρὸς οὐδὲν δὲ τοῖς κοινοῖς ὄφελος ἀπολῇ. κεκράτηκεν ἤδη τὰ χείρω· βίᾳ καὶ σιδήρῳ τὰς δίκας πράττουσιν. εἰ περὶ Νομαντίαν ὁ σὸς ἀδελφὸς ἔπεσεν, ὑπόσπονδος ἂν ἡμῖν ἀπεδόθη νεκρός· νῦν δ’ ἴσως κἀγὼ ποταμοῦ τινος ἢ θαλάσσης ἱκέτις ἔσομαι, φῆναί ποτε τὸ σὸν σῶμα φρουρούμενον. τί γὰρ ἢ νόμοις ἔτι πιστὸν ἢ θεοῖς μετὰ [5] τὸν Τιβερίου φόνον; τοιαῦτα τῆς Λικιννίας ὀδυρομένης, ἀτρέμα τὰς περιβολὰς ἀπολυσάμενος αὐτῆς ὁ Γάιος ἐχώρει σιωπῇ μετὰ τῶν φίλων. ἡ δὲ τοῦ ἱματίου λαβέσθαι γλιχομένη, καταρρυεῖσα πρὸς τοὔδαφος ἔκειτο πολὺν χρόνον ἄναυδος, μέχρι οὗ λιποθυμήσασαν αὐτὴν οἱ θεράποντες ἀράμενοι πρὸς Κράσσον ᾤχοντο τὸν ἀδελφὸν κομίζοντες.

[37] [1] Ὁ δὲ Φούλβιος, ὡς ἐγένοντο πάντες ἀθρόοι, πεισθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Γαΐου πέμπει τῶν υἱῶν τὸν νεώτερον ἔχοντα κηρύκειον εἰς ἀγοράν. ἦν δὲ κάλλιστος ὁ νεανίσκος ὀφθῆναι· καὶ τότε καταστὰς κοσμίως καὶ μετ’ αἰδοῦς, δεδακρυμένος ἐποιήσατο συμβατικοὺς λόγους πρὸς [2] τὸν ὕπατον καὶ τὴν σύγκλητον. οἱ μὲν οὖν πολλοὶ τῶν παρόντων οὐκ ἀηδῶς πρὸς τὰς διαλύσεις εἶχον· ὁ δ’ Ὀπίμιος οὐ δι’ ἀγγέλων ἔφη χρῆναι πείθειν τὴν σύγκλητον, ἀλλὰ καταβάντας ὡς ὑπευθύνους πολίτας ἐπὶ κρίσιν καὶ παραδόντας αὑτούς, οὕτως παραιτεῖσθαι τὴν ὀργήν· τῷ δὲ μειρακίῳ καὶ διηγόρευσεν ἐπὶ τούτοις κατιέναι πάλιν [3] ἢ μὴ κατιέναι. Γάιος μὲν οὖν ὥς φασιν ἐβούλετο βαδίζειν καὶ πείθειν τὴν σύγκλητον· οὐδενὸς δὲ τῶν ἄλλων συγχωροῦντος, αὖθις ἔπεμψεν ὁ Φούλβιος τὸν παῖδα [4] διαλεξόμενον ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν ὅμοια τοῖς προτέροις. ὁ δ’ Ὀπίμιος σπεύδων μάχην συνάψαι, τὸ μὲν μειράκιον εὐθὺς συνέλαβε καὶ παρέδωκεν εἰς φυλακήν, τοῖς δὲ περὶ τὸν Φούλβιον ἐπῄει μετὰ πολλῶν ὁπλιτῶν καὶ τοξοτῶν Κρητῶν, οἳ μάλιστα βάλλοντες αὐτοὺς καὶ τραυματίζοντες [5] συνετάραξαν. γενομένης δὲ τῆς τροπῆς, ὁ μὲν Φούλβιος εἴς τι βαλανεῖον ἠμελημένον καταφυγὼν καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ἀνευρεθεὶς κατεσφάγη μετὰ τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου παιδός, ὁ δὲ Γάιος ὤφθη μὲν ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς μαχόμενος, ἀλλὰ δυσανασχετῶν τοῖς γινομένοις ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς τὸ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος [6] ἱερόν· ἐκεῖ δὲ βουλόμενος ἑαυτὸν ἀνελεῖν, ὑπὸ τῶν πιστοτάτων ἑταίρων ἐκωλύθη Πομπωνίου καὶ Λικιννίου· παρόντες γὰρ οὗτοι τό τε ξίφος ἀφείλοντο καὶ [7] πάλιν φεύγειν ἐπῆραν αὐτόν. ἔνθα δὴ λέγεται καθεσθεὶς εἰς γόνυ καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἀνατείνας πρὸς τὴν θεὸν ἐπεύξασθαι τὸν Ῥωμαίων δῆμον ἀντὶ τῆς ἀχαριστίας ἐκείνης καὶ προδοσίας μηδέποτε παύσασθαι δουλεύοντα· φανερῶς γὰρ οἱ πλεῖστοι μετεβάλοντο κηρύγματι δοθείσης ἀδείας.

[38] [1] Φεύγοντι δ’ οὖν τῷ Γαΐῳ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἐπιφερομένων καὶ καταλαμβανόντων περὶ τὴν ξυλίνην γέφυραν, οἱ μὲν δύο φίλοι προχωρεῖν ἐκεῖνον κελεύσαντες, αὐτοὶ τοὺς διώκοντας ὑπέστησαν καὶ μαχόμενοι πρὸ τῆς [2] γεφύρας οὐδένα παρῆκαν ἕως ἀπέθανον. τῷ δὲ Γαΐῳ συνέφευγεν εἷς οἰκέτης ὄνομα Φιλοκράτης, πάντων μὲν ὥσπερ ἐν ἁμίλλῃ παρακελευομένων, οὐδενὸς δὲ βοηθοῦντος οὐδ’ ἵππον αἰτουμένῳ παρασχεῖν ἐθελήσαντος· [3] ἐπέκειντο γὰρ ἐγγὺς οἱ διώκοντες. ὁ δὲ φθάνει μικρὸν εἰς ἱερὸν ἄλσος Ἐρινύων καταφυγών, κἀκεῖ διαφθείρεται, τοῦ Φιλοκράτους ἀνελόντος ἐκεῖνον, εἶθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐπισφάξαντος· ὡς δ’ ἔνιοί φασιν, ἀμφότεροι μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων κατελήφθησαν ζῶντες, τοῦ δὲ θεράποντος τὸν δεσπότην περιβαλόντος, οὐδεὶς ἐκεῖνον ἠδυνήθη πατάξαι πρότερον ἢ [4] τοῦτον ὑπὸ πολλῶν παιόμενον ἀναιρεθῆναι. τὴν δὲ κεφαλὴν τοῦ Γαΐου λέγουσιν ἄλλον μὲν ἀποκόψαι καὶ κομίζειν, ἀφελέσθαι δὲ τούτου φίλον Ὀπιμίου τινὰ Σεπτουμουλήιον· ἦν γὰρ προκεκηρυγμένον ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς μάχης ἰσοστάσιον χρυσίον τοῖς ἀνενεγκοῦσι τὴν Γαΐου καὶ Φουλβίου κεφαλήν.

[5] ἀνηνέχθη δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Σεπτουμουληίου περιπεπαρμένη δόρατι πρὸς τὸν Ὀπίμιον, καὶ ζυγοῦ κομισθέντος ἐντεθεῖσα λίτρας ἑπτακαίδεκα καὶ δίμοιρον εἵλκυσε, τοῦ Σεπτουμουληίου καὶ περὶ τοῦτο μιαροῦ γενομένου καὶ κακουργήσαντος· ἐξελὼν γὰρ τὸν ἐγκέφαλον ἐνέτηξε μόλυβδον. οἱ δὲ τοῦ Φουλβίου τὴν κεφαλὴν κομίσαντες - [6] ἦσαν γὰρ τῶν ἀσημοτέρων - οὐδὲν ἔλαβον. τὰ δὲ σώματα καὶ τούτων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν ἐρρίφη, τρισχιλίων ἀναιρεθέντων, καὶ τὰς οὐσίας αὐτῶν ἀπέδοντο πρὸς τὸ δημόσιον· ἀπεῖπαν δὲ πενθεῖν ταῖς γυναιξί, τὴν δὲ Γαΐου Λικιννίαν καὶ τῆς προικὸς ἀπεστέρησαν.

[7] ὠμότατον δὲ προσειργάσαντο τοῦ Φουλβίου τὸν νεώτερον υἱόν, οὔτε χεῖρας ἀνταράμενον οὔτ’ ἐν τοῖς μαχομένοις γενόμενον, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ σπονδὰς ἐλθόντα πρὸ τῆς μάχης [8] συλλαβόντες καὶ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἀνελόντες. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων μᾶλλον ἠνίασε τοὺς πολλοὺς τὸ κατασκευασθὲν Ὁμονοίας ἱερὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ Ὀπιμίου· σεμνύνεσθαι γὰρ ἐδόκει καὶ μέγα φρονεῖν καὶ τρόπον τινὰ θριαμβεύειν ἐπὶ φόνοις τοσούτοις πολιτῶν.

[9] διὸ καὶ νυκτὸς ὑπὸ τὴν ἐπιγραφὴν τοῦ νεὼ παρενέγραψάν τινες τὸν στίχον τοῦτον· ἔργον ἀπονοίας ναὸν ὁμονοίας ποιεῖ.

[39] [1] Οὗτος μέντοι πρῶτος ἐξουσίᾳ δικτάτορος ἐν ὑπατείᾳ χρησάμενος, καὶ κατακτείνας ἀκρίτους ἐπὶ τρισχιλίοις πολίταις Γάιον Γράγχον καὶ Φούλβιον Φλάκκον, ὧν ὁ μὲν ἦν ὑπατικὸς καὶ θριαμβικός, ὁ δὲ τῆς καθ’ αὑτὸν ἡλικίας ἀρετῇ καὶ δόξῃ πεπρωτευκώς, οὐκ ἀπέσχετο κλοπῆς, ἀλλὰ πεμφθεὶς ὡς Ἰουγούρθαν τὸν Νομάδα [2] πρεσβευτής, διεφθάρη χρήμασιν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ· καὶ δίκην ὀφλὼν αἰσχίστην δωροδοκίας, ἐν ἀτιμίᾳ κατεγήρασε, μισούμενος καὶ προπηλακιζόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου, παρ’ αὐτὰ μὲν τὰ πραχθέντα ταπεινοῦ γενομένου καὶ συσταλέντος, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἐκφήναντος, ὅσον εἶχεν ἱμέρου [3] καὶ πόθου τῶν Γράγχων. εἰκόνας τε γὰρ αὐτῶν ἀναδείξαντες ἐν φανερῷ προὐτίθεντο, καὶ τοὺς τόπους ἐν οἷς ἐφονεύθησαν ἀφιερώσαντες, ἀπήρχοντο μὲν ὧν ὧραι φέρουσι πάντων, ἔθυον δὲ καθ’ ἡμέραν πολλοὶ καὶ προσέπιπτον, ὥσπερ θεῶν ἱεροῖς ἐπιφοιτῶντες.

[40] [1] Καὶ μέντοι καὶ ἡ Κορνηλία λέγεται τά τ’ ἄλλα τῆς συμφορᾶς εὐγενῶς καὶ μεγαλοψύχως ἐνεγκεῖν, καὶ περὶ τῶν ἱερῶν ἐν οἷς ἀνῃρέθησαν εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἀξίους οἱ [2] νεκροὶ τάφους ἔχουσιν. αὐτὴ δὲ περὶ τοὺς καλουμένους Μισηνοὺς διέτριβεν, οὐδὲν μεταλλάξασα τῆς συνήθους διαίτης. ἦν δὲ καὶ πολύφιλος καὶ διὰ φιλοξενίαν εὐτράπεζος, ἀεὶ μὲν Ἑλλήνων καὶ φιλολόγων περὶ αὐτὴν ὄντων, ἁπάντων δὲ τῶν βασιλέων καὶ δεχομένων παρ’ αὐτῆς [3] δῶρα καὶ πεμπόντων. ἡδίστη μὲν οὖν ἦν [αὕτη] τοῖς ἀφικνουμένοις καὶ συνοῦσι διηγουμένη τὸν τοῦ πατρὸς Ἀφρικανοῦ βίον καὶ δίαιταν, θαυμασιωτάτη δὲ τῶν παίδων ἀπενθὴς καὶ ἀδάκρυτος μνημονεύουσα καὶ πάθη καὶ πράξεις αὐτῶν ὥσπερ ἀρχαίων τινῶν ἐξηγουμένη τοῖς [4] πυνθανομένοις. ὅθεν ἔδοξεν ἐνίοις ἔκνους ὑπὸ γήρως ἢ μεγέθους κακῶν γεγονέναι καὶ τῶν ἀτυχημάτων ἀναίσθητος, αὐτοῖς ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀναισθήτοις οὖσιν, ὅσον ἐξ εὐφυΐας καὶ τοῦ γεγονέναι καὶ τεθράφθαι καλῶς ὄφελός ἐστι πρὸς ἀλυπίαν ἀνθρώποις, καὶ ὅτι τῆς ἀρετῆς ἡ τύχη φυλαττομένης μὲν τὰ κακὰ πολλάκις περίεστιν, ἐν δὲ τῷ πταῖσαι τὸ φέρειν εὐλογίστως οὐ παραιρεῖται.

Comparison Agidis et Cleomenis cum Tiberio et Gaio Graccho

[1] [1] Ἡμῖν δὲ καὶ ταύτης πέρας ἐχούσης τῆς διηγήσεως ὑπολείπεται λαβεῖν ἐκ παραλλήλου τῶν βίων [2] τὴν ἀποθεώρησιν. τοὺς μὲν οὖν Γράγχους οὐδ’ οἱ πάνυ τἆλλα κακῶς λέγοντες καὶ μισοῦντες ἐτόλμησαν εἰπεῖν, ὡς οὐκ εὐφυέστατοι πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἐγένοντο Ῥωμαίων ἁπάντων καὶ τροφῆς τε καὶ παιδεύσεως ἐκπρεποῦς ἔτυχον· [3] ἡ δ’ Ἄγιδος καὶ Κλεομένους φύσις ἐρρωμενεστέρα φαίνεται τῆς ἐκείνων γενομένη, παρ’ ὅσον οὔτε παιδείας μεταλαβόντες ὀρθῆς, ἔθεσί τε καὶ διαίταις ἐντραφέντες, ὑφ’ ὧν οἱ πρεσβύτεροι πάλαι διεφθόρεισαν, αὑτοὺς [4] ἡγεμόνας εὐτελείας καὶ σωφροσύνης παρέσχον. ἔτι δ’ οἱ μέν, ὅτε λαμπρότατον εἶχεν ἡ Ῥώμη καὶ μέγιστον ἀξίωμα, [καὶ] καλῶν ἔργων ζῆλον ὥσπερ διαδοχὴν ἀρετῆς [5] πατρῴας καὶ προγονικῆς ᾐσχύνθησαν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν· οἱ δὲ καὶ πατέρων τἀναντία προῃρημένων γεγονότες, καὶ τὴν πατρίδα μοχθηρὰ πράττουσαν καὶ νοσοῦσαν παραλαβόντες, οὐδέν τι διὰ ταῦτα τὴν πρὸς τὸ καλὸν ἀπήμβλυναν [6] ὁρμήν. καὶ μὴν τῆς γε Γράγχων ἀφιλοχρηματίας καὶ πρὸς ἀργύριον ἐγκρατείας μέγιστόν ἐστιν. ὅτι λημμάτων ἀδίκων καθαροὺς ἐν ἀρχαῖς καὶ πολιτείαις διεφύλαξαν [7] ἑαυτούς· Ἆγις δὲ κἂν διηγανάκτησεν ἐπὶ τῷ μηδὲν ἀλλότριον λαβεῖν ἐπαινούμενος, ὃς τὴν οὐσίαν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ τοῖς πολίταις ἐπέδωκεν, ἄνευ τῶν ἄλλων κτημάτων [8] ἑξακόσια τάλαντα νομίσματος ἔχουσαν. πηλίκον οὖν ἐνόμιζε κακὸν εἶναι τὸ κερδαίνειν ἀδίκως ὁ καὶ δικαίως πλέον ἔχειν ἑτέρου πλεονεξίαν ἡγούμενος;

[2] [1] Ἥ γε μὴν ἐπιβολὴ καὶ τόλμα τῶν καινοτομουμένων πολὺ τῷ μεγέθει παρήλλαττεν. ἐπολιτεύοντο γὰρ οἱ μὲν ὁδῶν κατασκευὰς καὶ πόλεων κτίσεις, καὶ τὸ πάντων νεανικώτατον ἦν Τιβερίῳ μὲν ἀναδάσασθαι δημοσίους ἀγρούς, Γαΐῳ δὲ μεῖξαι τὰ δικαστήρια, προσεμβαλόντι [2] τῶν ἱππικῶν τριακοσίους· ὁ δ’ Ἄγιδος καὶ Κλεομένους νεωτερισμός, τὸ μικρὰ καὶ κατὰ μέρος τῶν ἡμαρτημένων ἰᾶσθαι καὶ ἀποκόπτειν ὕδραν τινὰ τέμνοντος, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (rep. 4, 426a), ἡγησαμένων εἶναι, τὴν ἅμα πάντ’ ἀπαλλάξαι κακὰ καὶ κατασκευάσαι δυναμένην [3] μεταβολὴν ἐπῆγε τοῖς πράγμασιν· ἀληθέστερον δ’ ἴσως εἰπεῖν ἐστιν, ὅτι τὴν πάντ’ ἀπεργασαμένην κακὰ μεταβολὴν ἐξήλαυνεν, ἐπανάγων καὶ καθιστὰς εἰς τὸ οἰκεῖον [4] σχῆμα τὴν πόλιν. ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῦτ’ ἄν τις εἴποι, τῇ μὲν Γράγχων πολιτείᾳ τοὺς μεγίστους ἐνίστασθαι Ῥωμαίων, οἷς δ’ Ἆγις ἐνεχείρησε, Κλεομένης δὲ τὸ ἔργον ἐπέθηκε, τῶν παραδειγμάτων τὸ κάλλιστον ὑπέκειτο καὶ μεγαλοπρεπέστατον, αἱ πάτριοι ῥῆτραι περὶ σωφροσύνης καὶ ἰσότητος, ὧν τούτοις μὲν ὁ Λυκοῦργος, ἐκείνῳ δ’ ὁ Πύθιος [5] βεβαιωτής. ὃ δὲ μέγιστον, ὅτι τοῖς μὲν ἐκείνων πολιτεύμασιν εἰς οὐδὲν ἡ Ῥώμη μεῖζον ἐπέδωκε τῶν ὑπαρχόντων, ἐκ δ’ ὧν ὁ Κλεομένης ἔπραξεν, ὀλίγου χρόνου τὴν Σπάρτην τῆς Πελοποννήσου κρατοῦσαν ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἐπεῖδε καὶ τοῖς τότε μέγιστον δυναμένοις διαγωνιζομένην ἀγῶνα τὸν περὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας, οὗ τέλος ἦν ἀπαλλαγεῖσαν Ἰλλυρικῶν ὅπλων καὶ Γαλατικῶν τὴν Ἑλλάδα κοσμεῖσθαι πάλιν ὑφ’ Ἡρακλείδαις.

[3] [1] Οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τὰς τελευτὰς τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐμφαίνειν τινὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς διαφοράν. ἐκεῖνοι μὲν γὰρ μαχόμενοι πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας, εἶτα φεύγοντες ἐτελεύτησαν· τούτων δ’ Ἆγις μὲν ὑπὲρ τοῦ μηδένα κτεῖναι τῶν πολιτῶν ὀλίγου δεῖν ἑκὼν ἀπέθανε, Κλεομένης δὲ προπηλακισθεὶς καὶ ἀδικηθεὶς ὥρμησε μὲν ἀμύνασθαι, τοῦ δὲ [2] καιροῦ μὴ παρασχόντος αὑτὸν εὐτόλμως ἀνεῖλε. πάλιν δὲ τἀναντία σκοποῦσιν, Ἆγις μὲν οὐδὲν ἀπεδείξατο στρατηγίας ἔργον, ἀλλὰ προανῃρέθη, ταῖς δὲ Κλεομένους νίκαις πολλαῖς καὶ καλαῖς γενομέναις παραβαλεῖν ἔστι Τιβερίου τὴν ἐν Καρχηδόνι τοῦ τείχους κατάληψιν, οὐ μικρὸν ἔργον, καὶ τὰς ἐν Νομαντίᾳ σπονδάς, αἷς δισμυρίους Ῥωμαίων στρατιώτας οὐκ ἔχοντας ἄλλην ἐλπίδα σωτηρίας [3] περιεποίησε· καὶ Γάιος δὲ πολλὴν μὲν αὐτόθι, πολλὴν δ’ ἐν Σαρδόνι στρατευόμενος ἀνδραγαθίαν ‹ἀν›έφηνεν, ὥστε τοῖς πρώτοις ‹ἂν› ἐναμίλλους Ῥωμαίων γενέσθαι στρατηγοῖς, εἰ μὴ προανῃρέθησαν.

[4] [1] Τῆς δὲ πολιτείας ὁ μὲν Ἆγις ἔοικεν ἅψασθαι μαλακώτερον, ἐκκρουσθεὶς ὑπ’ Ἀγησιλάου καὶ ψευσάμενος τὸν ἀναδασμὸν τοῖς πολίταις, καὶ ὅλως ἐλλιπὴς καὶ ἀτελὴς ὧν προείλετο καὶ κατήγγειλεν ὑπ’ ἀτολμίας διὰ τὴν [2] ἡλικίαν γενόμενος· ὁ δὲ Κλεομένης τοὐναντίον θρασύτερον καὶ βιαιότερον ἐπὶ τὴν μεταβολὴν ἦλθε τῆς πολιτείας, ἀποκτείνας τοὺς ἐφόρους παρανόμως, οὓς καὶ προσαγαγέσθαι τοῖς ὅπλοις κρατοῦντα καὶ μεταστῆσαι ῥᾴδιον ἦν, ὥσπερ [3] οὐκ ὀλίγους ἄλλους μετέστησεν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως. τὸ γὰρ ἄνευ τῆς ἐσχάτης ἀνάγκης ἐπιφέρειν σίδηρον οὔτ’ ἰατρικὸν οὔτε πολιτικόν, ἀλλ’ ἀτεχνίας μὲν ἀμφότερα, τούτῳ δὲ καὶ [4] τὸ ἀδικεῖν μετ’ ὠμότητος πρόσεστι. τῶν δὲ Γράγχων οὐδέτερος μὲν ἤρξατο σφαγῆς ἐμφυλίου, Γάιος δὲ λέγεται μηδὲ βαλλόμενος ὁρμῆσαι πρὸς ἄμυναν, ἀλλὰ λαμπρότατος ὢν ἐν τοῖς πολεμικοῖς ἀργότατος ἐν τῇ στάσει γενέσθαι.

[5] καὶ γὰρ προῆλθεν ἄνοπλος, καὶ μαχομένων ἀνεχώρησε, καὶ ὅλως πλείονα τοῦ μή τι δρᾶσαι πρόνοιαν ἢ τοῦ μὴ [6] παθεῖν ἔχων ἑωρᾶτο. διὸ καὶ τὴν φυγὴν αὐτῶν οὐκ ἀτολμίας σημεῖον, ἀλλ’ εὐλαβείας ποιητέον· ἔδει γὰρ ὑπεῖξαι τοῖς ἐπιφερομένοις, ἢ μένοντας ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ παθεῖν τῷ δρᾶν ἀμύνασθαι.

[5] [1] Τῶν τοίνυν ἐγκλημάτων τῶν κατὰ Τιβερίου μέγιστόν ἐστιν, ὅτι τὸν συνάρχοντα τῆς δημαρχίας ἐξέβαλε καὶ δευτέραν αὐτὸς αὑτῷ δημαρχίαν μετῄει· Γαΐῳ δὲ τὸν Ἀντυλλίου φόνον οὐ δικαίως οὐδ’ ἀληθῶς προσετρίβοντο· διεφθάρη γὰρ ἄκοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀγανακτοῦντος.

[2] Κλεομένης δ’, ἵνα τὰς σφαγὰς τῶν ἐφόρων ἐάσωμεν, ἠλευθέρωσε μὲν ἅπαντας τοὺς οἰκέτας, ἐβασίλευσε δὲ τῷ μὲν ἔργῳ μόνος, τῷ δ’ ὀνόματι δεύτερος, Εὐκλείδαν τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἐκ μιᾶς οἰκίας αὑτῷ προσελόμενος, Ἀρχίδαμον δ’, ᾧ προσῆκον ἦν ἀπὸ τῆς ἑτέρας οἰκίας ὄντι συμβασιλεύειν, ἔπεισε μὲν ἐκ Μεσσήνης κατελθεῖν, ἀποθανόντος δὲ τὸν φόνον οὐκ ἐπεξελθών, ἐβεβαίωσε τὴν [3] αἰτίαν καθ’ αὑτοῦ τῆς ἀναιρέσεως. καίτοι Λυκοῦργος, ὃν προσεποιεῖτο μιμεῖσθαι, τὴν μὲν βασιλείαν ἑκὼν ἀπέδωκε τῷ παιδὶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ Χαρίλλῳ, φοβούμενος δὲ μή, κἂν ἄλλως ἀποθάνῃ τὸ μειράκιον, αἰτία τις ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἔλθῃ, πολὺν χρόνον ἔξω πλανηθεὶς οὐ πρότερον ἐπανῆλθεν, [4] ἢ παῖδα τῷ Χαρίλλῳ γενέσθαι διάδοχον τῆς ἀρχῆς. ἀλλὰ Λυκούργῳ μὲν οὐδ’ ἄλλος τις Ἑλλήνων παραβλητὸς οὐδείς· ὅτι δὲ τοῖς Κλεομένους πολιτεύμασι καινοτομίαι καὶ παρανομίαι μείζονες ἔνεισι, δεδήλωται.

[5] Καὶ μὴν οἵ γε τὸν τρόπον αὐτῶν ψέγοντες, τούτοις μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς τυραννικὸν καὶ πολεμοποιὸν αἰτιῶνται γενέσθαι, τῇ δ’ ἐκείνων φύσει φιλοτιμίας ἀμετρίαν, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδέν, οἱ φθονοῦντες ἐπικαλεῖν εἶχον, ἐκριπισθέντας δὲ τῷ πρὸς τοὺς ἐνισταμένους ἀγῶνι καὶ θυμῷ παρὰ τὴν αὑτῶν φύσιν, ὥσπερ πνοαῖς ἐφεῖναι περὶ τὰ ἔσχατα τὴν πολιτείαν [6] ὡμολόγουν. ἐπεὶ τῆς γε πρώτης ὑποθέσεως τί κάλλιον ἢ δικαιότερον ἦν, εἰ μὴ κατὰ βίαν καὶ δυναστείαν ἐπιχειρήσαντες ἐξῶσαι τὸν νόμον οἱ πλούσιοι περιέστησαν ἀμφοτέροις ἀγῶνας, τῷ μὲν φοβουμένῳ περὶ αὑτοῦ, τῷ δ’ ἐκδικοῦντι τὸν ἀδελφόν, ἄνευ δίκης καὶ δόγματος οὐδ’ ὑπ’ ἄρχοντος ἀναιρεθέντα;

[7] Συνορᾷς μὲν οὖν καὶ αὐτὸς ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων τὴν διαφοράν· εἰ δὲ δεῖ καὶ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀποφήνασθαι, Τιβέριον μὲν ἀρετῇ πεπρωτευκέναι τίθημι πάντων, ἐλάχιστα δ’ ἡμαρτηκέναι τὸ μειράκιον Ἆγιν, πράξει δὲ καὶ τόλμῃ Γάιον οὐκ ὀλίγῳ Κλεομένους ὕστερον γεγονέναι.

Demosthenes

[1] [1] Ὁ μὲν γράψας τὸ ἐπὶ τῇ νίκῃ τῆς Ὀλυμπίασιν ἱπποδρομίας εἰς Ἀλκιβιάδην ἐγκώμιον, εἴτ’ Εὐριπίδης (PLG II p. 266 B⁴) ὡς ὁ πολὺς κρατεῖ λόγος, εἴθ’ ἕτερός τις ἦν, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, φησὶ χρῆναι τῷ εὐδαίμονι πρῶτον ὑπάρξαι τὰν πόλιν εὐδόκιμον· ἐγὼ δὲ τῷ μὲν εὐδαιμονήσειν μέλλοντι τὴν ἀληθινὴν εὐδαιμονίαν, ἧς ἐν ἤθει καὶ διαθέσει τὸ πλεῖστόν ἐστιν, οὐδὲν ἡγοῦμαι διαφέρειν ἀδόξου καὶ ταπεινῆς πατρίδος ἢ μητρὸς ἀμόρφου καὶ μικρᾶς [2] γενέσθαι. γελοῖον γάρ, εἴ τις οἴοιτο τὴν Ἰουλίδα, μέρος μικρὸν οὖσαν οὐ μεγάλης νήσου τῆς Κέω, καὶ τὴν Αἴγιναν, ἣν τῶν Ἀττικῶν τις ἐκέλευεν ὡς λήμην τοῦ Πειραιῶς ἀφελεῖν, ὑποκριτὰς μὲν ἀγαθοὺς τρέφειν καὶ ποιητάς, ἄνδρα δ’ οὐκ ἄν ποτε δύνασθαι δίκαιον καὶ αὐτάρκη καὶ [3] νοῦν ἔχοντα καὶ μεγαλόψυχον ἐξενεγκεῖν. τὰς μὲν γὰρ ἄλλας τέχνας εἰκός ἐστι, πρὸς ἐργασίαν καὶ δόξαν συνισταμένας, ἐν ταῖς ἀδόξοις καὶ ταπειναῖς πόλεσιν ἀπομαραίνεσθαι, τὴν δ’ ἀρετὴν ὥσπερ ἰσχυρὸν καὶ διαρκὲς φυτὸν ἐν ἅπαντι ῥιζοῦσθαι τόπῳ, φύσεώς γε χρηστῆς καὶ φιλοπόνου [4] ψυχῆς ἐπιλαμβανομένην. ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἡμεῖς, εἴ τι τοῦ φρονεῖν ὡς δεῖ καὶ βιοῦν ἐλλείπομεν, τοῦτο τῇ μικρότητι τῆς πατρίδος, ἀλλ’ αὑτοῖς δικαίως ἀναθήσομεν.

[2] [1] Τῷ μέντοι σύνταξιν ὑποβεβλημένῳ καὶ ἱστορίαν, ἐξ οὐ προχείρων οὐδ’ οἰκείων, ἀλλὰ ξένων τε τῶν πολλῶν καὶ διεσπαρμένων ἐν ἑτέροις συνιοῦσαν ἀναγνωσμάτων, τῷ ὄντι χρῆν πρῶτον ὑπάρχειν καὶ μάλιστα τὰν πόλιν εὐδόκιμον καὶ φιλόκαλον καὶ πολυάνθρωπον, ὡς βιβλίων τε παντοδαπῶν ἀφθονίαν ἔχων, καὶ ὅσα τοὺς γράφοντας διαφυγόντα σωτηρίᾳ μνήμης ἐπιφανεστέραν εἴληφε πίστιν, ὑπολαμβάνων ἀκοῇ καὶ διαπυνθανόμενος, [2] μηδενὸς τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἐνδεὲς ἀποδιδοίη τὸ ἔργον. ἡμεῖς δὲ μικρὰν μὲν οἰκοῦντες πόλιν, καὶ ἵνα μὴ μικροτέρα γένηται φιλοχωροῦντες, ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ καὶ ταῖς περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν διατριβαῖς οὐ σχολῆς οὔσης γυμνάζεσθαι περὶ τὴν Ῥωμαϊκὴν διάλεκτον ὑπὸ χρειῶν πολιτικῶν καὶ τῶν διὰ φιλοσοφίαν πλησιαζόντων, ὀψέ ποτε καὶ πόρρω τῆς ἡλικίας ἠρξάμεθα Ῥωμαϊκοῖς συντάγμασιν ἐντυγχάνειν, [3] καὶ πρᾶγμα θαυμαστὸν μέν, ἀλλ’ ἀληθὲς ἐπάσχομεν. οὐ γὰρ οὕτως ἐκ τῶν ὀνομάτων τὰ πράγματα συνιέναι καὶ γνωρίζειν συνέβαινεν ἡμῖν, ὡς ἐκ τῶν πραγμάτων, ‹ὧν› ἁμῶς γέ πως εἴχομεν ἐμπειρίαν, ἐπακολουθεῖν δι’ αὐτὰ [4] καὶ τοῖς ὀνόμασι. κάλλους δὲ Ῥωμαϊκῆς ἀπαγγελίας καὶ τάχους αἰσθάνεσθαι καὶ μεταφορᾶς ὀνομάτων καὶ ἁρμονίας καὶ τῶν ἄλλων, οἷς ὁ λόγος ἀγάλλεται, χαρίεν μὲν ἡγούμεθα καὶ οὐκ ἀτερπές· ἡ δὲ πρὸς τοῦτο μελέτη καὶ ἄσκησις οὐκ εὐχερής, ἀλλ’ οἷστισι πλείων τε σχολὴ καὶ τὰ τῆς ὥρας ἔτι [πρὸς] τὰς τοιαύτας ἐπιχωρεῖ φιλοτιμίας.

[3] [1] Διὸ καὶ γράφοντες ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τούτῳ, τῶν παραλλήλων βίων ὄντι πέμπτῳ, περὶ Δημοσθένους καὶ Κικέρωνος, ἀπὸ τῶν πράξεων καὶ τῶν πολιτειῶν τὰς φύσεις αὐτῶν καὶ τὰς διαθέσεις πρὸς ἀλλήλας ἐπισκεψόμεθα, τὸ δὲ τοὺς λόγους ἀντεξετάζειν καὶ ἀποφαίνεσθαι, πότερος [2] ἡδίων ἢ δεινότερος εἰπεῖν, ἐάσομεν. κακὴ γὰρ ὥς φησιν ὁ Ἴων (TGF p. 744 N²) δελφῖνος ἐν χέρσῳ βία, ἣν ὁ περιττὸς ἐν ἅπασι Καικίλιος ἀγνοήσας, ἐνεανιεύσατο σύγκρισιν τοῦ Δημοσθένους λόγου καὶ Κικέρωνος ἐξενεγκεῖν. ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἴσως, εἰ παντὸς ἦν τὸ γνῶθι σαυτὸν ἔχειν πρόχειρον, οὐκ ἂν ἐδόκει τὸ [3] πρόσταγμα θεῖον εἶναι. Δημοσθένει γὰρ Κικέρωνα τὸν αὐτὸν ἔοικε πλάττων ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὁ δαίμων πολλὰς μὲν εἰς τὴν φύσιν ἐμβαλεῖν αὐτοῦ τῶν ὁμοιοτήτων, ὥσπερ τὸ φιλότιμον καὶ φιλελεύθερον ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ, πρὸς δὲ κινδύνους καὶ πολέμους ἄτολμον, πολλὰ δ’ ἀναμεῖξαι καὶ [4] τῶν τυχηρῶν. δύο γὰρ ἑτέρους οὐκ ἂν εὑρεθῆναι δοκῶ ῥήτορας ἐκ μὲν ἀδόξων καὶ μικρῶν ἰσχυροὺς καὶ μεγάλους γενομένους, προσκρούσαντας δὲ βασιλεῦσι καὶ τυράννοις, θυγατέρας δ’ ἀποβαλόντας, ἐκπεσόντας δὲ τῶν πατρίδων, κατελθόντας δὲ μετὰ τιμῆς, ἀποδράντας δ’ αὖθις καὶ ληφθέντας ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, ἅμα δὲ παυσαμένῃ τῇ τῶν πολιτῶν ἐλευθερίᾳ τὸν βίον συγκαταστρέψαντας· [5] ὥστ’ εἰ γένοιτο τῇ φύσει καὶ τῇ τύχῃ καθάπερ τεχνίταις ἅμιλλα, χαλεπῶς ἂν διακριθῆναι, πότερον αὕτη τοῖς τρόποις ἢ τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐκείνη τοὺς ἄνδρας ὁμοιοτέρους ἀπείργασται. λεκτέον δὲ περὶ τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου πρότερον.

[4] [1] Δημοσθένης ὁ πατὴρ Δημοσθένους ἦν μὲν τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Θεόπομπος (FGrH 115 F 325), ἐπεκαλεῖτο δὲ μαχαιροποιός, ἐργαστήριον ἔχων [2] μέγα καὶ δούλους τεχνίτας τοὺς τοῦτο πράττοντας. ἃ δ’ Αἰσχίνης ὁ ῥήτωρ (3, 171) εἴρηκε περὶ τῆς μητρός, ὡς ἐκ Γύλωνός τινος ἐπ’ αἰτίᾳ προδοσίας φεύγοντος ἐξ ἄστεος γεγόνοι καὶ βαρβάρου γυναικός, οὐκ ἔχομεν εἰπεῖν εἴτ’ ἀληθῶς εἴρηκεν εἴτε βλασφημῶν καὶ καταψευδόμενος.

[3] ἀπολειφθεὶς δ’ ὁ Δημοσθένης ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς ἑπταέτης ἐν εὐπορίᾳ - μικρὸν γὰρ ἀπέλιπεν ἡ σύμπασα τίμησις αὐτοῦ τῆς οὐσίας πεντεκαίδεκα ταλάντων - ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπιτρόπων ἠδικήθη, τὰ μὲν νοσφισαμένων, τὰ δ’ ἀμελησάντων, ὥστε καὶ τῶν διδασκάλων αὐτοῦ τὸν μισθὸν [4] ἀποστερῆσαι. διά τε δὴ ταῦτα τῶν ἐμμελῶν καὶ προσηκόντων ἐλευθέρῳ παιδὶ μαθημάτων ἀπαίδευτος δοκεῖ γενέσθαι, καὶ διὰ τὴν τοῦ σώματος ἀσθένειαν καὶ θρύψιν, οὐ προϊεμένης τοῖς πόνοις τῆς μητρὸς αὐτὸν οὐδὲ [5] προσβιαζομένων τῶν παιδαγωγῶν. ἦν γὰρ ἐξ ἀρχῆς κάτισχνος καὶ νοσώδης, διὸ καὶ τὴν λοιδορουμένην ἐπωνυμίαν, τὸν Βάταλον, εἰς τὸ σῶμα λέγεται σκωπτόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν [6] παίδων λαβεῖν. ἦν δ’ ὁ Βάταλος, ὡς μὲν ἔνιοί φασιν, αὐλητὴς τῶν κατεαγότων, καὶ δραμάτιον εἰς τοῦτο κωμῳδῶν αὐτὸν Ἀντιφάνης (fr. 57 CAF II 35) πεποίηκεν. ἕτεροι δέ τινες ὡς ποιητοῦ τρυφερὰ καὶ παροίνια γράφοντος τοῦ [7] Βατάλου μέμνηνται. δοκεῖ δὲ καὶ τῶν οὐκ εὐπρεπῶν τι λεχθῆναι τοῦ σώματος μορίων παρὰ τοῖς Ἀττικοῖς τότε [8] καλεῖσθαι βάταλος. ὁ δ’ Ἀργᾶς - καὶ τοῦτο γάρ φασι τῷ Δημοσθένει γενέσθαι παρωνύμιον - ἢ πρὸς τὸν τρόπον ὡς θηριώδη καὶ πικρὸν ἐτέθη· τὸν γὰρ ὄφιν ἔνιοι τῶν ποιητῶν ἀργᾶν ὀνομάζουσιν· ἢ πρὸς τὸν λόγον, ὡς ἀνιῶντα τοὺς ἀκροωμένους· καὶ γὰρ Ἀργᾶς τοὔνομα ποιητὴς ἦν νόμων πονηρῶν καὶ ἀργαλέων. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ταύτῃ [κατὰ Πλάτωνα].

[5] [1] Τῆς δὲ πρὸς τοὺς λόγους ὁρμῆς ἀρχὴν αὐτῷ φασι τοιαύτην γενέσθαι. Καλλιστράτου τοῦ ῥήτορος ἀγωνίζεσθαι τὴν περὶ Ὠρωποῦ κρίσιν ἐν τῷ δικαστηρίῳ μέλλοντος, ἦν προσδοκία τῆς δίκης μεγάλη διά τε τὴν τοῦ ῥήτορος δύναμιν, ἀνθοῦντος τότε μάλιστα τῇ δόξῃ, καὶ [2] διὰ τὴν πρᾶξιν οὖσαν περιβόητον. ἀκούσας οὖν ὁ Δημοσθένης τῶν διδασκάλων καὶ τῶν παιδαγωγῶν συντιθεμένων τῇ δίκῃ παρατυχεῖν, ἔπεισε τὸν ἑαυτοῦ παιδαγωγὸν δεόμενος καὶ προθυμούμενος, ὅπως αὐτὸν ἀγάγοι πρὸς [3] τὴν ἀκρόασιν. ὁ δ’ ἔχων πρὸς τοὺς ἀνοίγοντας τὰ δικαστήρια δημοσίους συνήθειαν, εὐπόρησε χώρας ἐν ᾗ καθήμενος [4] ὁ παῖς ἀδήλως ἀκροάσεται τῶν λεγόντων. εὐημερήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Καλλιστράτου καὶ θαυμασθέντος ὑπερφυῶς, ἐκείνου μὲν ἐζήλωσε τὴν δόξαν, ὁρῶν προπεμπόμενον ὑπὸ πολλῶν καὶ μακαριζόμενον, τοῦ δὲ λόγου μᾶλλον ἐθαύμασε καὶ κατενόησε τὴν ἰσχὺν ὡς πάντα [5] χειροῦσθαι καὶ τιθασεύειν πεφυκότος. ὅθεν ἐάσας τὰ λοιπὰ μαθήματα καὶ τὰς παιδικὰς διατριβάς, αὐτὸς αὑτὸν ἤσκει καὶ διεπόνει ταῖς μελέταις, ὡς ἂν τῶν λεγόντων ἐσόμενος [6] καὶ αὐτός. ἐχρήσατο δ’ Ἰσαίῳ πρὸς τὸν λόγον ὑφηγητῇ, καίπερ Ἰσοκράτους τότε σχολάζοντος, εἴθ’ ὥς τινες λέγουσι τὸν ὡρισμένον μισθὸν Ἰσοκράτει τελέσαι μὴ δυνάμενος τὰς δέκα μνᾶς διὰ τὴν ὀρφανίαν, εἴτε μᾶλλον τοῦ Ἰσαίου τὸν λόγον ὡς δραστήριον καὶ πανοῦργον εἰς [7] τὴν χρείαν ἀποδεχόμενος. Ἕρμιππος (FGH III 49) δέ φησιν ἀδεσπότοις ὑπομνήμασιν ἐντυχεῖν, ἐν οἷς ἐγέγραπτο τὸν Δημοσθένη συνεσχολακέναι Πλάτωνι καὶ πλεῖστον εἰς τοὺς λόγους ὠφελῆσθαι, Κτησιβίου δὲ μέμνηται λέγοντος παρὰ Καλλίου τοῦ Συρακουσίου καί τινων ἄλλων τὰς Ἰσοκράτους τέχνας καὶ τὰς Ἀλκιδάμαντος κρύφα λαβόντα τὸν Δημοσθένη καταμαθεῖν.

[6] [1] Ὡς δ’ οὖν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ γενόμενος τοῖς ἐπιτρόποις ἤρξατο δικάζεσθαι καὶ λογογραφεῖν ἐπ’ αὐτούς, πολλὰς διαδύσεις καὶ παλινδικίας εὑρίσκοντας, ἐγγυμνασάμενος κατὰ τὸν Θουκυδίδην (1, 18, 3) ταῖς μελέταις οὐκ ἀκινδύνως οὐδ’ ἀργῶς, κατευτυχήσας ἐκπρᾶξαι μὲν οὐδὲ πολλοστὸν ἠδυνήθη μέρος τῶν πατρῴων, τόλμαν δὲ πρὸς τὸ λέγειν καὶ συνήθειαν ἱκανὴν λαβών, καὶ γευσάμενος τῆς περὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας φιλοτιμίας καὶ δυνάμεως, ἐνεχείρησεν [2] εἰς μέσον παριέναι καὶ τὰ κοινὰ πράττειν, καὶ καθάπερ Λαομέδοντα τὸν Ὀρχομένιον λέγουσι καχεξίαν τινὰ σπληνὸς ἀμυνόμενον δρόμοις μακροῖς χρῆσθαι τῶν ἰατρῶν κελευσάντων, εἶθ’ οὕτως διαπονήσαντα τὴν ἕξιν ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς στεφανίταις ἀγῶσι καὶ τῶν ἄκρων γενέσθαι δολιχοδρόμων, οὕτως τῷ Δημοσθένει συνέβη τὸ πρῶτον ἐπανορθώσεως ἕνεκα τῶν ἰδίων ἀποδύντι πρὸς τὸ λέγειν, ἐκ δὲ τούτου κτησαμένῳ δεινότητα καὶ δύναμιν, ἐν τοῖς πολιτικοῖς ἤδη καθάπερ στεφανίταις ἀγῶσι πρωτεύειν τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος ἀγωνιζομένων πολιτῶν.

[3] καίτοι τό γε πρῶτον ἐντυγχάνων τῷ δήμῳ θορύβοις περιέπιπτε καὶ κατεγελᾶτο δι’ ἀήθειαν, τοῦ λόγου συγκεχύσθαι ταῖς περιόδοις καὶ βεβασανίσθαι τοῖς ἐνθυμήμασι [4] πικρῶς ἄγαν καὶ κατακόρως δοκοῦντος. ἦν δέ τις ὡς ἔοικε καὶ φωνῆς ἀσθένεια καὶ γλώττης ἀσάφεια καὶ πνεύματος κολοβότης, ἐπιταράττουσα τὸν νοῦν τῶν λεγομένων [5] τῷ διασπᾶσθαι τὰς περιόδους. τέλος δ’ ἀποστάντα τοῦ δήμου καὶ ῥεμβόμενον ἐν Πειραιεῖ δι’ ἀθυμίαν Εὔνομος ὁ Θριάσιος ἤδη πάνυ γέρων θεασάμενος ἐπετίμησεν, ὅτι τὸν λόγον ἔχων ὁμοιότατον τῷ Περικλέους, προδίδωσιν ὑπ’ ἀτολμίας καὶ μαλακίας ἑαυτόν, οὔτε τοὺς ὄχλους ὑφιστάμενος εὐθαρσῶς, οὔτε τὸ σῶμα πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας ἐξαρτυόμενος, ἀλλὰ τρυφῇ περιορῶν μαραινόμενον.

[7] [1] Πάλιν δέ ποτέ φασιν ἐκπεσόντος αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀπιόντος οἴκαδε συγκεχυμένου καὶ βαρέως φέροντος, ἐπακολουθῆσαι Σάτυρον τὸν ὑποκριτὴν ἐπιτήδειον ὄντα καὶ συνεισελθεῖν.

[2] ὀδυρομένου δὲ τοῦ Δημοσθένους πρὸς αὐτόν, ὅτι πάντων φιλοπονώτατος ὢν τῶν λεγόντων καὶ μικροῦ δέων καταναλωκέναι τὴν τοῦ σώματος ἀκμὴν εἰς τοῦτο, χάριν οὐκ ἔχει πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, ἀλλὰ κραιπαλῶντες ἄνθρωποι ναῦται καὶ ἀμαθεῖς ἀκούονται καὶ κατέχουσι τὸ [3] βῆμα, παρορᾶται δ’ αὐτός, ἀληθῆ λέγεις ὦ Δημόσθενες φάναι τὸν Σάτυρον, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ τὸ αἴτιον ἰάσομαι ταχέως, ἄν μοι τῶν Εὐριπίδου τινὰ ῥήσεων ἢ Σοφοκλέους [4] ἐθελήσῃς εἰπεῖν ἀπὸ στόματος. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ Δημοσθένους, μεταλαβόντα τὸν Σάτυρον οὕτω πλάσαι καὶ διεξελθεῖν ἐν ἤθει πρέποντι καὶ διαθέσει τὴν αὐτὴν ῥῆσιν, ὥστ’ εὐθὺς ὅλως ἑτέραν τῷ Δημοσθένει φανῆναι.

[5] πεισθέντα δ’ ὅσον ἐκ τῆς ὑποκρίσεως τῷ λόγῳ κόσμου καὶ χάριτος πρόσεστι, μικρὸν ἡγήσασθαι καὶ τὸ μηδὲν εἶναι τὴν ἄσκησιν ἀμελοῦντι τῆς προφορᾶς καὶ διαθέσεως τῶν [6] λεγομένων. ἐκ δὲ τούτου κατάγειον μὲν οἰκοδομῆσαι μελετητήριον, ὃ δὴ διεσῴζετο καὶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς, ἐνταῦθα δὲ πάντως μὲν ἑκάστης ἡμέρας κατιόντα πλάττειν τὴν ὑπόκρισιν καὶ διαπονεῖν τὴν φωνήν, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ μῆνας ἑξῆς δύο καὶ τρεῖς συνάπτειν, ξυρούμενον τῆς κεφαλῆς θάτερον μέρος ὑπὲρ τοῦ μηδὲ βουλομένῳ πάνυ προελθεῖν ἐνδέχεσθαι δι’ αἰσχύνην.

[8] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς πρὸς τοὺς ἐκτὸς ἐντεύξεις καὶ λόγους καὶ ἀσχολίας ὑποθέσεις ἐποιεῖτο καὶ ἀφορμὰς τοῦ φιλοπονεῖν. ἀπαλλαγεὶς γὰρ αὐτῶν τάχιστα κατέβαινεν εἰς τὸ μελετητήριον, καὶ διεξῄει τάς τε πράξεις [2] ἐφεξῆς καὶ τοὺς ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν ἀπολογισμούς. ἔτι δὲ τοὺς λόγους οἷς παρέτυχε λεγομένοις ἀναλαμβάνων πρὸς ἑαυτὸν εἰς γνώμας ἀνῆγε καὶ περιόδους, ἐπανορθώσεις τε παντοδαπὰς καὶ μεταφράσεις ἐκαινοτόμει τῶν εἰρημένων ὑφ’ ἑτέρου πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἢ ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ πάλιν πρὸς ἄλλον.

[3] ἐκ δὲ τούτου δόξαν ἔσχεν ὡς οὐκ εὐφυὴς ὤν, ἀλλ’ ἐκ πόνου συγκειμένῃ δεινότητι καὶ δυνάμει χρώμενος, ἐδόκει τε τούτου σημεῖον εἶναι μέγα καὶ τὸ μὴ ῥᾳδίως ἀκοῦσαί τινα Δημοσθένους ἐπὶ καιροῦ λέγοντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ καθήμενον ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ πολλάκις τοῦ δήμου καλοῦντος ὀνομαστὶ μὴ παρελθεῖν, εἰ μὴ τύχοι πεφροντικὼς καὶ παρεσκευασμένος.

[4] εἰς τοῦτο δ’ ἄλλοι τε πολλοὶ τῶν δημαγωγῶν ἐχλεύαζον αὐτόν, καὶ Πυθέας ἐπισκώπτων ἐλλυχνίων ἔφησεν ὄζειν αὐτοῦ τὰ ἐνθυμήματα. τοῦτον μὲν [5] οὖν ἠμείψατο πικρῶς ὁ Δημοσθένης· οὐ ταὐτά γὰρ εἶπεν ἐμοὶ καὶ σοὶ ὁ λύχνος ὦ Πυθέα σύνοιδε. πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους οὐ παντάπασιν ἦν ἔξαρνος, ἀλλ’ οὔτε [6] γράψας οὔτ’ ἄγραφα κομιδῇ λέγειν ὡμολόγει, καὶ μέντοι δημοτικὸν ἀπέφαινεν ἄνδρα τὸν λέγειν μελετῶντα· θεραπείας γὰρ εἶναι τοῦ[το] δήμου ‹τὴν› παρασκευήν, τὸ δ’ ὅπως ἕξουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ πρὸς τὸν λόγον ἀφροντιστεῖν [7] ὀλιγαρχικοῦ καὶ βίᾳ μᾶλλον ἢ πειθοῖ προσέχοντος. τῆς δὲ πρὸς καιρὸν ἀτολμίας αὐτοῦ καὶ τοῦτο ποιοῦνται σημεῖον, ὅτι Δημάδης μὲν ἐκείνῳ θορυβηθέντι πολλάκις ἀναστὰς ἐκ προχείρου συνεῖπεν, ἐκεῖνος δ’ οὐδέποτε Δημάδῃ.

[9] [1] Πόθεν οὖν, φαίη τις ἄν, ὁ Αἰσχίνης (3, 152) πρὸς τὴν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις τόλμαν θαυμασιώτατον ἀπεκάλει τὸν ἄνδρα; πῶς δὲ Πύθωνι τῷ Βυζαντίῳ, θρασυνομένῳ καὶ ῥέοντι πολλῷ κατὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ἀναστὰς μόνος ἀντεῖπεν, ἢ Λαμάχου τοῦ Σμυρναίου γεγραφότος ἐγκώμιον Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ Φιλίππου τῶν βασιλέων, ἐν ᾧ πολλὰ Θηβαίους καὶ Ὀλυνθίους εἰρήκει κακῶς, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἀναγινώσκοντος Ὀλυμπίασι, παραναστὰς καὶ διεξελθὼν μεθ’ ἱστορίας καὶ ἀποδείξεως, ὅσα Θηβαίοις καὶ Χαλκιδεῦσιν ὑπάρχει καλὰ πρὸς τὴν Ἑλλάδα, καὶ πάλιν ὅσων αἴτιοι γεγόνασι κακῶν οἱ κολακεύοντες Μακεδόνας, οὕτως ἐπέστρεψε τοὺς παρόντας, ὥστε δείσαντα τῷ θορύβῳ τὸν [2] σοφιστὴν ὑπεκδῦναι τῆς πανηγύρεως; ἀλλ’ ἔοικεν ὁ ἀνὴρ τοῦ Περικλέους τὰ μὲν ἄλλα μὴ πρὸς αὑτὸν ἡγήσασθαι, τὸ δὲ πλάσμα καὶ τὸν σχηματισμὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ μὴ ταχέως μηδὲ περὶ παντὸς ἐκ τοῦ παρισταμένου λέγειν, ὥσπερ ἐκ τούτων μεγάλου γεγονότος, ζηλῶν καὶ μιμούμενος, οὐ πάνυ προσίεσθαι τὴν ἐν τῷ καιρῷ δόξαν, οὐδ’ ἐπὶ τῇ τύχῃ πολλάκις ἑκὼν εἶναι ποιεῖσθαι τὴν δύναμιν.

[3] ἐπεὶ τόλμαν γε καὶ θάρσος οἱ λεχθέντες ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λόγοι τῶν γραφέντων μᾶλλον εἶχον, εἴ τι δεῖ πιστεύειν Ἐρατοσθένει καὶ Δημητρίῳ τῷ Φαληρεῖ καὶ τοῖς κωμικοῖς.

[4] ὧν Ἐρατοσθένης (FGrH 241 F 32) μέν φησιν αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις πολλαχοῦ γεγονέναι παράβακχον, ὁ δὲ Φαληρεὺς (FGrH 228 F 16) τὸν ἔμμετρον ἐκεῖνον ὅρκον ὀμόσαι ποτὲ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ὥσπερ ἐνθουσιῶντα (CAF II 128. 466)

μὰ γῆν, μὰ κρήνας, μὰ ποταμούς, μὰ νάματα.

[5] τῶν δὲ κωμικῶν ὁ μέν τις αὐτὸν ἀποκαλεῖ ῥωποπερπερήθραν, ὁ δὲ παρασκώπτων ὡς χρώμενον τῷ ἀντιθέτῳ φησὶν οὕτως (Antiphan. fr. 169 CAF II 80)·

ἀπέλαβεν ὥσπερ ἔλαβεν. ‹Β.› ἠγάπησεν ἂν

τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο παραλαβὼν Δημοσθένης.

[6] ἐκτὸς εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία πρὸς τὸν ὑπὲρ Ἁλοννήσου λόγον ὁ Ἀντιφάνης καὶ τουτὶ πέπαιχεν, ἣν Ἀθηναίοις Δημοσθένης (7, 5) συνεβούλευε μὴ λαμβάνειν, ἀλλ’ ἀπολαμβάνειν παρὰ Φιλίππου, περὶ συλλαβῶν διαφερόμενος.

[10] [1] Πλὴν τόν γε Δημάδην πάντες ὡμολόγουν τῇ φύσει χρώμενον ἀνίκητον εἶναι καὶ παραφέρειν αὐτοσχεδιάζοντα [2] τὰς τοῦ Δημοσθένους σκέψεις καὶ παρασκευάς. Ἀρίστων δ’ ὁ Χῖος (I p. 87 n. 381 Arn.) καὶ Θεοφράστου (fr. 144 W.) τινὰ δόξαν ἱστόρηκε περὶ τῶν ῥητόρων· ἐρωτηθέντα γὰρ ὁποῖός τις αὐτῷ φαίνεται ῥήτωρ ὁ Δημοσθένης, εἰπεῖν· ἄξιος τῆς πόλεως· ὁποῖος δέ τις ὁ Δημάδης· ὑπὲρ [3] τὴν πόλιν. ὁ δ’ αὐτὸς φιλόσοφος Πολύευκτον ἱστορεῖ τὸν Σφήττιον, ἕνα τῶν τότε πολιτευομένων Ἀθήνησιν, ἀποφαίνεσθαι, μέγιστον μὲν εἶναι ῥήτορα Δημοσθένην, δυνατώτατον δ’ εἰπεῖν Φωκίωνα· πλεῖστον γὰρ ἐν βραχυτάτῃ λέξει νοῦν [4] ἐκφέρειν. καὶ μέντοι καὶ τὸν Δημοσθένην φασὶν αὐτόν, ὁσάκις ἀντερῶν αὐτῷ Φωκίων ἀναβαίνοι, λέγειν πρὸς τοὺς συνήθεις· ἡ τῶν ἐμῶν λόγων κοπὶς ἀνίσταται.

[5] τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ἄδηλον εἴτε πρὸς τὸν λόγον τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὁ Δημοσθένης εἴτε πρὸς τὸν βίον καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἐπεπόνθει, πολλῶν πάνυ καὶ μακρῶν περιόδων ἓν ῥῆμα καὶ νεῦμα πίστιν ἔχοντος ἀνθρώπου κυριώτερον ἡγούμενος.

[11] [1] Τοῖς δὲ σωματικοῖς ἐλαττώμασι τοιαύτην ἐπῆγεν ἄσκησιν, ὡς ὁ Φαληρεὺς Δημήτριος (FGrH 228 F 17) ἱστορεῖ, λέγων αὐτοῦ Δημοσθένους ἀκοῦσαι πρεσβύτου γεγονότος· τὴν μὲν γὰρ ἀσάφειαν καὶ τραυλότητα τῆς γλώττης ἐκβιάζεσθαι καὶ διαρθροῦν εἰς τὸ στόμα ψήφους λαμβάνοντα καὶ ῥήσεις ἅμα λέγοντα, τὴν δὲ φωνὴν γυμνάζειν ἐν τοῖς δρόμοις καὶ ταῖς πρὸς τὰ σιμ’ ἀναβάσεσι διαλεγόμενον καὶ λόγους τινὰς ἢ στίχους ἅμα τῷ πνεύματι πυκνουμένῳ προφερόμενον· εἶναι δ’ αὐτῷ μέγα κάτοπτρον οἴκοι, καὶ πρὸς [2] τοῦτο τὰς μελέτας ἱστάμενον ἐξ ἐναντίας περαίνειν. λέγεται δ’ ἀνθρώπου προσελθόντος αὐτῷ δεομένου συνηγορίας καὶ διεξιόντος ὡς ὑπό του λάβοι πληγάς, ἀλλὰ σύ γε, φάναι τὸν Δημοσθένην, τούτων ὧν λέγεις οὐδὲν πέπονθας. ἐπιτείναντος δὲ τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ βοῶντος ἐγὼ Δημόσθενες οὐδὲν πέπονθα; νὴ Δία φάναι, νῦν [3] ἀκούω φωνὴν ἀδικουμένου καὶ πεπονθότος. οὕτως ᾤετο μέγα πρὸς πίστιν εἶναι τὸν τόνον καὶ τὴν ὑπόκρισιν τῶν λεγόντων. τοῖς μὲν οὖν πολλοῖς ὑποκρινόμενος ἤρεσκε θαυμαστῶς, οἱ δὲ χαρίεντες ταπεινὸν ἡγοῦντο καὶ ἀγεννὲς αὐτοῦ τὸ πλάσμα καὶ μαλακόν, ὧν καὶ Δημήτριος ὁ Φαληρεύς [4] (FGrH 228 F 18) ἐστιν. Αἰσίωνα δέ φησιν Ἕρμιππος (FHG III 50) ἐπερωτηθέντα περὶ τῶν πάλαι ῥητόρων καὶ τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἀκούων μὲν ἄν τις ἐθαύμασεν ἐκείνους εὐκόσμως καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς τῷ δήμῳ διαλεγομένους, ἀναγινωσκόμενοι δ’ οἱ Δημοσθένους λόγοι πολὺ [5] τῇ κατασκευῇ καὶ δυνάμει διαφέρουσιν. οἱ μὲν οὖν γεγραμμένοι τῶν λόγων ὅτι τὸ αὐστηρὸν πολὺ καὶ πικρὸν ἔχουσι, τί ἂν λέγοι τις; ἐν δὲ ταῖς παρὰ τὸν καιρὸν ἀπαντήσεσιν ἐχρῆτο καὶ τῷ γελοίῳ. Δημάδου (fr. 54 de F.) μὲν γὰρ εἰπόντος ἐμὲ Δημοσθένης; ἡ ὗς τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν, αὕτη εἶπεν ἡ Ἀθηνᾶ πρώην ἐν Κολλυτῷ μοιχεύουσα ἐλήφθη.

[6] πρὸς δὲ τὸν κλέπτην ὃς ἐπεκαλεῖτο Χαλκοῦς καὶ αὐτὸν εἰς τὰς ἀγρυπνίας αὐτοῦ καὶ νυκτογραφίας πειρώμενόν τι λέγειν· οἶδα εἶπεν ὅτι σε λυπῶ λύχνον καίων. ὑμεῖς δ’ ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι μὴ θαυμάζετε τὰς γινομένας κλοπάς, ὅταν τοὺς μὲν κλέπτας χαλκοῦς, τοὺς δὲ τοίχους πηλίνους [7] ἔχωμεν. ἀλλὰ περὶ μὲν τούτων καὶ ἑτέρων γελοίων καίπερ ἔτι πλείω λέγειν ἔχοντες, ἐνταῦθα παυσόμεθα· τὸν δ’ ἄλλον αὐτοῦ τρόπον καὶ τὸ ἦθος ἀπὸ τῶν πράξεων καὶ τῆς πολιτείας θεωρεῖσθαι δίκαιόν ἐστιν.

[12] [1] Ὥρμησε μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τὸ πράττειν τὰ κοινὰ τοῦ Φωκικοῦ πολέμου συνεστῶτος, ὡς αὐτός τέ φησι (18, 18) [2] καὶ λαβεῖν ἔστιν ἀπὸ τῶν Φιλιππικῶν δημηγοριῶν. αἱ μὲν γὰρ ἤδη διαπεπραγμένων ἐκείνων γεγόνασιν, αἱ δὲ πρεσβύταται [3] τῶν ἔγγιστα πραγμάτων ἅπτονται. δῆλος δ’ ἐστὶ καὶ τὴν κατὰ Μειδίου παρασκευασάμενος εἰπεῖν δίκην δύο μὲν ἐπὶ τοῖς τριάκοντα γεγονὼς ἔτη, μηδέπω δ’ ἔχων [4] ἰσχὺν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ μηδὲ δόξαν. ὃ καὶ μάλιστά μοι δοκεῖ δείσας ἐπ’ ἀργυρίῳ καταθέσθαι τὴν πρὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἔχθραν (Il. 20, 467)·

οὐ γάρ τι γλυκύθυμος ἀνὴρ ἦν οὐδ’ ἀγανόφρων,

[5] ἀλλ’ ἔντονος καὶ βίαιος περὶ τὰς ἀμύνας. ὁρῶν δ’ οὐ φαῦλον οὐδὲ τῆς αὑτοῦ δυνάμεως ἔργον ἄνδρα καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ λόγῳ καὶ φίλοις εὖ πεφραγμένον καθελεῖν τὸν Μειδίαν, [6] ἐνέδωκε τοῖς ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ δεομένοις. αἱ δὲ τρισχίλιαι καθ’ ἑαυτὰς οὐκ ἄν μοι δοκοῦσι τὴν Δημοσθένους ἀμβλῦναι πικρίαν, ἐλπίζοντος καὶ δυναμένου περιγενέσθαι.

[7] Λαβὼν δὲ τῆς πολιτείας καλὴν ὑπόθεσιν τὴν πρὸς Φίλιππον ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἑλλήνων δικαιολογίαν, καὶ πρὸς ταύτην ἀγωνιζόμενος ἀξίως, ταχὺ δόξαν ἔσχε καὶ περίβλεπτος ὑπὸ τῶν λόγων ἤρθη καὶ τῆς παρρησίας, ὥστε θαυμάζεσθαι μὲν ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι, θεραπεύεσθαι δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως, πλεῖστον δ’ αὐτοῦ λόγον εἶναι παρὰ τῷ Φιλίππῳ τῶν δημαγωγούντων, ὁμολογεῖν δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἀπεχθανομένους, ὅτι πρὸς ἔνδοξον αὐτοῖς ἄνθρωπον ὁ ἀγών ἐστι.

[8] καὶ γὰρ Αἰσχίνης καὶ Ὑπερείδης (or. 1 col. 22, 10 Jens.) τοιαῦτα περὶ αὐτοῦ κατηγοροῦντες εἰρήκασιν.

[13] [1] Ὅθεν οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως παρέστη Θεοπόμπῳ (FGrH 115 F 326) λέγειν, αὐτὸν ἀβέβαιον τῷ τρόπῳ γεγονέναι καὶ μήτε πράγμασι μήτ’ ἀνθρώποις πολὺν χρόνον τοῖς αὐτοῖς [2] ἐπιμένειν δυνάμενον. φαίνεται γάρ, εἰς ἣν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς τῶν πραγμάτων μερίδα καὶ τάξιν αὑτὸν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ κατέστησε, ταύτην ἄχρι τέλους διαφυλάξας καὶ οὐ μόνον ἐν τῷ βίῳ μὴ μεταβαλόμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν βίον ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ [3] μεταβαλέσθαι προέμενος. οὐ γάρ - ὡς Δημάδης ἀπολογούμενος τὴν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ μεταβολὴν ἔλεγεν, αὑτῷ μὲν αὐτὸς τἀναντία πολλάκις εἰρηκέναι, τῇ δὲ πόλει μηδέποτε, καὶ Μελάνωπος ἀντιπολιτευόμενος Καλλιστράτῳ καὶ πολλάκις ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ χρήμασι μετατιθέμενος εἰώθει λέγειν πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ὁ μὲν ἀνὴρ ἐχθρός, τὸ δὲ τῆς πόλεως [4] νικάτω συμφέρον, Νικόδημος δ’ ὁ Μεσσήνιος Κασσάνδρῳ προστιθέμενος πρότερον, εἶτ’ αὖθις ὑπὲρ Δημητρίου πολιτευόμενος, οὐκ ἔφη τἀναντία λέγειν, ἀεὶ γὰρ εἶναι συμφέρον ἀκροᾶσθαι τῶν κρατούντων - , οὕτω καὶ περὶ Δημοσθένους ἔχομεν εἰπεῖν οἷον ἐκτρεπομένου καὶ πλαγιάζοντος ἢ φωνὴν ἢ πρᾶξιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀφ’ ἑνὸς καὶ ἀμεταβόλου διαγράμματος τῆς πολιτείας ἕνα τόνον ἔχων ἐν τοῖς [5] πράγμασιν ἀεὶ διετέλεσε. Παναίτιος δ’ ὁ φιλόσοφος (fr. 94 v. Str.) καὶ τῶν λόγων αὐτοῦ φησιν οὕτω γεγράφθαι τοὺς πλείστους, ὡς μόνου τοῦ καλοῦ δι’ αὐτὸ αἱρετοῦ ὄντος, τὸν περὶ τοῦ στεφάνου, τὸν κατ’ Ἀριστοκράτους, τὸν ὑπὲρ [6] τῶν ἀτελειῶν, τοὺς Φιλιππικούς· ἐν οἷς πᾶσιν οὐ πρὸς τὸ ἥδιστον ἢ ῥᾷστον ἢ λυσιτελέστατον ἄγει ποὺς πολίτας, ἀλλὰ πολλαχοῦ τὴν ἀσφάλειαν καὶ τὴν σωτηρίαν οἴεται δεῖν ἐν δευτέρᾳ τάξει τοῦ καλοῦ ποιεῖσθαι καὶ τοῦ πρέποντος, ὡς εἴγε τῇ περὶ τὰς ὑποθέσεις αὐτοῦ φιλοτιμίᾳ καὶ τῇ τῶν λόγων εὐγενείᾳ παρῆν ἀνδρεία τε πολεμιστήριος καὶ τὸ καθαρῶς ἕκαστα πράττειν, οὐκ ἐν τῷ κατὰ Μοιροκλέα καὶ Πολύευκτον καὶ Ὑπερείδην ἀριθμῷ τῶν ῥητόρων, ἀλλ’ ἄνω μετὰ Κίμωνος καὶ Θουκυδίδου καὶ Περικλέους ἄξιος ἦν τίθεσθαι.

[14] [1] Τῶν γοῦν κατ’ αὐτὸν ὁ Φωκίων, οὐκ ἐπαινουμένης προϊστάμενος πολιτείας, ἀλλὰ δοκῶν μακεδονίζειν, ὅμως δι’ ἀνδρείαν καὶ δικαιοσύνην οὐδὲν οὐδαμῇ χείρων ἔδοξεν Ἐφιάλτου καὶ Ἀριστείδου καὶ Κίμωνος ἀνὴρ γενέσθαι.

[2] Δημοσθένης δ’ οὐκ ὢν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἀξιόπιστος, ὥς φησιν ὁ Δημήτριος (FGrH 228 F 19), οὐδὲ πρὸς τὸ λαμβάνειν παντάπασιν ἀπωχυρωμένος, ἀλλὰ τῷ μὲν παρὰ Φιλίππου καὶ ἐκ Μακεδονίας ἀνάλωτος ὤν, τῷ δ’ ἄνωθεν ἐκ Σούσων καὶ Ἐκβατάνων ἐπιβατὸς χρυσίῳ γεγονὼς καὶ κατακεκλυσμένους, ἐπαινέσαι μὲν ἦν ἱκανώτατος τὰ τῶν [3] προγόνων καλά, μιμήσασθαι δ’ οὐχ ὁμοίως. ἐπεὶ τούς γε καθ’ αὑτὸν ῥήτορας - ἔξω δὲ λόγου τίθεμαι Φωκίωνα - καὶ τῷ βίῳ παρῆλθε. φαίνεται δὲ καὶ μετὰ παρρησίας μάλιστα τῷ δήμῳ διαλεγόμενος, καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἐπιθυμίας τῶν πολλῶν ἀντιτείνων, καὶ τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασιν αὐτῶν ἐπιφυόμενος, [4] ὡς ἐκ τῶν λόγων αὐτῶν λαβεῖν ἔστιν. ἱστορεῖ δὲ καὶ Θεόφραστος, ὅτι τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐπί τινα προβαλλομένων αὐτὸν κατηγορίαν, εἶθ’ ὡς οὐχ ὑπήκουε θορυβούντων, ἀναστὰς εἶπεν ὑμεῖς ἐμοὶ ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι συμβούλῳ μέν, κἂν μὴ θέλητε, χρήσεσθε· συκοφάντῃ δ’ οὐδ’ [5] ἂν θέλητε. σφόδρα δ’ ἀριστοκρατικὸν αὐτοῦ πολίτευμα καὶ τὸ περὶ Ἀντιφῶντος· ὃν ὑπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἀφεθέντα συλλαβὼν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴν ἀνήγαγε, καὶ παρ’ οὐδὲν τὸ προσκροῦσαι τῷ δήμῳ θέμενος, ἤλεγξεν ὑπεσχημένον Φιλίππῳ τὰ νεώρια ἐμπρήσειν, καὶ παραδοθεὶς [6] ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὑπὸ τῆς βουλῆς ἀπέθανε. κατηγόρησε δὲ καὶ τῆς ἱερείας Θεωρίδος ὡς ἄλλα τε ῥᾳδιουργούσης πολλὰ καὶ τοὺς δούλους ἐξαπατᾶν διδασκούσης, καὶ θανάτου τιμησάμενος ἀπέκτεινε.

[15] [1] Λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸν κατὰ Τιμοθέου τοῦ στρατηγοῦ λόγον, ᾧ χρησάμενος Ἀπολλόδωρος εἷλε τὸν ἄνδρα τοῦ ὀφλήματος, Δημοσθένης γράψαι τῷ Ἀπολλοδώρῳ, καθάπερ καὶ τοὺς πρὸς Φορμίωνα καὶ Στέφανον, ἐφ’ οἷς εἰκότως [2] ἠδόξησε. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Φορμίων ἠγωνίζετο λόγῳ Δημοσθένους πρὸς τὸν Ἀπολλόδωρον, ἀτεχνῶς καθάπερ ἐξ ἑνὸς μαχαιροπωλίου τὰ κατ’ ἀλλήλων ἐγχειρίδια πωλοῦντος [3] αὐτοῦ τοῖς ἀντιδίκοις. τῶν δὲ δημοσίων λόγων ὁ μὲν κατ’ Ἀνδροτίωνος καὶ κατὰ Τιμοκράτους καὶ ‹κατ’› Ἀριστοκράτους ἑτέροις ἐγράφησαν, οὔπω τῇ πολιτείᾳ προσεληλυθότος αὐτοῦ· δοκεῖ γὰρ δυεῖν ἢ τριῶν δέοντα ἔτη τριάκοντα γεγονὼς ἐξενεγκεῖν τοὺς λόγους ἐκείνους· τοῖς δὲ κατ’ Ἀριστογείτονος αὐτὸς ἠγωνίσατο, καὶ τὸν περὶ τῶν ἀτελειῶν διὰ τὸν Χαβρίου παῖδα Κτήσιππον, ὥς φησιν αὐτός, ὡς δ’ ἔνιοι λέγουσι, τὴν μητέρα τοῦ νεανίσκου [4] μνώμενος. οὐ μὴν ἔγημε ταύτην, ἀλλὰ Σαμίᾳ τινὶ συνῴκησεν, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Δημήτριος ὁ Μάγνης ἐν τοῖς περὶ συνωνύμων.

[5] ὁ δὲ κατ’ Αἰσχίνου ‹περὶ› τῆς παραπρεσβείας ἄδηλον εἰ λέλεκται· καίτοι φησὶν Ἰδομενεὺς (FGrH 338 F 10) παρὰ τριάκοντα μόνας τὸν Αἰσχίνην ἀποφυγεῖν. ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔοικεν οὕτως ἔχειν τὸ ἀληθές, εἰ δεῖ τοῖς περὶ τοῦ στεφάνου [6] γεγραμμένοις ἑκατέρῳ λόγοις τεκμαίρεσθαι. μέμνηται γὰρ οὐδέτερος αὐτῶν ἐναργῶς οὐδὲ τρανῶς ἐκείνου τοῦ ἀγῶνος ὡς ἄχρι δίκης προελθόντος. ταυτὶ μὲν οὖν ἕτεροι διακρινοῦσι μᾶλλον.

[16] [1] Ἡ δὲ τοῦ Δημοσθένους πολιτεία φανερὰ μὲν ἦν ἔτι καὶ τῆς εἰρήνης ὑπαρχούσης οὐδὲν ἐῶντος ἀνεπιτίμητον τῶν πραττομένων ὑπὸ τοῦ Μακεδόνος, ἀλλ’ ἐφ’ ἑκάστῳ χαράττοντος τοὺς Ἀθηναίους καὶ διακαίοντος ἐπὶ τὸν [2] ἄνθρωπον. διὸ καὶ παρὰ Φιλίππῳ πλεῖστος ἦν λόγος αὐτοῦ, καὶ ὅτε πρεσβεύων δέκατος ἧκεν εἰς Μακεδονίαν, ἤκουσε μὲν ἁπάντων ὁ Φίλιππος, ἀντεῖπε δὲ μετὰ πλείστης [3] ἐπιμελείας πρὸς τὸν ἐκείνου λόγον. οὐ μὴν ἔν γε ταῖς ἄλλαις τιμαῖς καὶ φιλοφροσύναις ὅμοιον αὑτὸν τῷ Δημοσθένει παρεῖχεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσήγετο τοὺς περὶ Αἰσχίνην [4] καὶ Φιλοκράτην μᾶλλον. ὅθεν ἐπαινούντων ἐκείνων τὸν Φίλιππον, ὡς καὶ λέγειν δυνατώτατον καὶ κάλλιστον ὀφθῆναι καὶ νὴ Δία συμπιεῖν ἱκανώτατον, ἠναγκάζετο βασκαίνων ἐπισκώπτειν, ὡς τὸ μὲν σοφιστοῦ, τὸ δὲ γυναικός, τὸ δὲ σπογγιᾶς εἴη, βασιλέως δ’ οὐδὲν ἐγκώμιον.

[17] [1] Ἐπειδὴ δ’ εἰς τὸ πολεμεῖν ἔρρεπε τὰ πράγματα, τοῦ μὲν Φιλίππου μὴ δυναμένου τὴν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων ἐγειρομένων ὑπὸ τοῦ Δημοσθένους, πρῶτον μὲν εἰς Εὔβοιαν ἐξώρμησε τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, καταδεδουλωμένην ὑπὸ τῶν τυράννων Φιλίππῳ, καὶ διαβάντες, ἐκείνου τὸ ψήφισμα γράψαντος, ἐξήλασαν τοὺς Μακεδόνας.

[2] δεύτερον δὲ Βυζαντίοις ἐβοήθησε καὶ Περινθίοις ὑπὸ τοῦ Μακεδόνος πολεμουμένοις, πείσας τὸν δῆμον, ἀφέντα τὴν ἔχθραν καὶ τὸ μεμνῆσθαι τῶν περὶ τὸν συμμαχικὸν ἡμαρτημένων ἑκατέροις πόλεμον, ἀποστεῖλαι δύναμιν αὐτοῖς, [3] ὑφ’ ἧς ἐσώθησαν. ἔπειτα πρεσβεύων καὶ διαλεγόμενος τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ παροξύνων, συνέστησε πλὴν ὀλίγων ἅπαντας ἐπὶ τὸν Φίλιππον, ὥστε σύνταξιν γενέσθαι πεζῶν μὲν μυρίων καὶ πεντακισχιλίων, ἱππέων δὲ δισχιλίων ἄνευ τῶν πολιτικῶν δυνάμεων, χρήματα δὲ καὶ μισθοὺς εἰσφέρεσθαι [4] τοῖς ξένοις προθύμως. ὅτε καί φησι Θεόφραστος, (fr. 145 W.), ἀξιούντων τῶν συμμάχων ὁρισθῆναι τὰς εἰσφοράς, εἰπεῖν Κρωβύλον τὸν δημαγωγόν, ὡς οὐ τεταγμένα σιτεῖται [5] πόλεμος. ἐπηρμένης δὲ τῆς Ἑλλάδος πρὸς τὸ μέλλον, καὶ συνισταμένων κατ’ ἔθνη καὶ πόλεις Εὐβοέων, Ἀχαιῶν, Κορινθίων, Μεγαρέων, Λευκαδίων, Κερκυραίων, ὁ μέγιστος ὑπελείπετο Δημοσθένει τῶν ἀγώνων, Θηβαίους προσαγαγέσθαι τῇ συμμαχίᾳ, χώραν τε σύνορον τῆς Ἀττικῆς καὶ δύναμιν ἐναγώνιον ἔχοντας καὶ μάλιστα τότε [6] τῶν Ἑλλήνων εὐδοκιμοῦντας ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις. ἦν δ’ οὐ ῥᾴδιον ἐπὶ προσφάτοις εὐεργετήμασι τοῖς περὶ τὸν Φωκικὸν πόλεμον τετιθασσευμένους ὑπὸ τοῦ Φιλίππου μεταστῆσαι τοὺς Θηβαίους, καὶ μάλιστα ταῖς διὰ τὴν γειτνίασιν ἁψιμαχίαις ἀναξαινομένων ἑκάστοτε τῶν πολεμικῶν πρὸς ἀλλήλας διαφορῶν ταῖς πόλεσιν.

[18] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ Φίλιππος ὑπὸ τῆς περὶ τὴν Ἄμφισσαν εὐτυχίας ἐπαιρόμενος εἰς τὴν Ἐλάτειαν ἐξαίφνης ἐνέπεσε καὶ τὴν Φωκίδα κατέσχεν, ἐκπεπληγμένων τῶν Ἀθηναίων καὶ μηδενὸς τολμῶντος ἀναβαίνειν ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα μηδ’ ἔχοντος ὅ τι χρὴ λέγειν, ἀλλ’ ἀπορίας οὔσης ἐν μέσῳ καὶ σιωπῆς, παρελθὼν μόνος ὁ Δημοσθένης συνεβούλευε τῶν Θηβαίων ἔχεσθαι, καὶ τἆλλα παραθαρρύνας καὶ μετεωρίσας ὥσπερ εἰώθει ταῖς ἐλπίσι τὸν δῆμον, ἀπεστάλη πρεσβευτὴς [2] μεθ’ ἑτέρων εἰς Θήβας. ἔπεμψε δὲ καὶ Φίλιππος, ὡς Μαρσύας (FGrH 135 136 F 20) φησίν, Ἀμύνταν μὲν καὶ Κλέανδρον καὶ Κάσανδρον Μακεδόνας, Δάοχον δὲ Θεσσαλὸν καὶ Θρασυδαῖον ἀντεροῦντας. τὸ μὲν οὖν συμφέρον οὐ διέφευγε τοὺς τῶν Θηβαίων λογισμούς, ἀλλ’ ἐν ὄμμασιν ἕκαστος εἶχε τὰ τοῦ πολέμου δεινά, τῶν Φωκικῶν ἔτι τραυμάτων νεαρῶν παραμενόντων· ἡ δὲ τοῦ ῥήτορος δύναμις, ὥς φησι Θεόπομπος (FGrH 115 F 328), ἐκριπίζουσα τὸν θυμὸν αὐτῶν καὶ διακαίουσα τὴν φιλοτιμίαν, ἐπεσκότησε τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν, ὥστε καὶ φόβον καὶ λογισμὸν καὶ χάριν ἐκβαλεῖν αὐτούς, ἐνθουσιῶντας ὑπὸ τοῦ [3] λόγου πρὸς τὸ καλόν. οὕτω δὲ μέγα καὶ λαμπρὸν ἐφάνη τὸ τοῦ ῥήτορος ἔργον, ὥστε τὸν μὲν Φίλιππον εὐθὺς ἐπικηρυκεύεσθαι δεόμενον εἰρήνης, ὀρθὴν δὲ τὴν Ἑλλάδα γενέσθαι καὶ συνεξαναστῆναι πρὸς τὸ μέλλον, ὑπηρετεῖν δὲ μὴ μόνον τοὺς στρατηγοὺς τῷ Δημοσθένει, ποιοῦντας τὸ προσταττόμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς βοιωτάρχας, διοικεῖσθαι δὲ καὶ τὰς ἐκκλησίας ἁπάσας οὐδὲν ἧττον ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τότε τὰς Θηβαίων ἢ τὰς Ἀθηναίων, ἀγαπωμένου παρ’ ἀμφοτέροις καὶ δυναστεύοντος οὐκ ἀδίκως οὐδὲ παρ’ ἀξίαν, καθάπερ ἀποφαίνεται Θεόπομπος (FGrH 115 F 328), ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ προσηκόντως.

[19] [1] Τύχη δέ τις [ὡς] ἔοικε δαιμόνιος ἢ περιφορὰ πραγμάτων, εἰς ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ συμπεραίνουσα τὴν ἐλευθερίαν τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἐναντιοῦσθαι τοῖς πραττομένοις καὶ πολλὰ σημεῖα τοῦ μέλλοντος ἀναφαίνειν, ἐν οἷς ἥ τε Πυθία δεινὰ προὔφερε μαντεύματα, καὶ χρησμὸς ᾔδετο παλαιὸς ἐκ τῶν Σιβυλλείων (Hendess 137)·

τῆς ἐπὶ Θερμώδοντι μάχης ἀπάνευθε γενοίμην,

αἰετὸς ἐν νεφέεσσι καὶ ἠέρι θηήσασθαι.

κλαίει ὁ νικηθείς, ὁ δὲ νικήσας ἀπόλωλε.

[2] τὸν δὲ Θερμώδοντά φασιν εἶναι παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ ποτάμιον μικρὸν εἰς τὸν Κηφισὸν ἐμβάλλον. ἡμεῖς δὲ νῦν μὲν οὐδὲν οὕτω τῶν ῥευμάτων ἴσμεν ὀνομαζόμενον, εἰκάζομεν δὲ τὸν καλούμενον Αἵμονα Θερμώδοντα τότε λέγεσθαι· καὶ γὰρ παραρρεῖ παρὰ τὸ Ἡράκλειον, ὅπου κατεστρατοπέδευον οἱ Ἕλληνες· καὶ τεκμαιρόμεθα τῆς μάχης γενομένης αἵματος ἐμπλησθέντα καὶ νεκρῶν τὸν ποταμὸν [3] ταύτην διαλλάξαι τὴν προσηγορίαν. ὁ δὲ Δοῦρις (FGrH 76 F 40) οὐ ποταμὸν εἶναι τὸν Θερμώδοντά φησιν, ἀλλ’ ἱστάντας τινὰς σκηνὴν καὶ περιορύττοντας ἀνδριαντίσκον εὑρεῖν λίθινον, ὑπὸ γραμμάτων τινῶν διασημαινόμενον ὡς εἴη Θερμώδων, ἐν ταῖς ἀγκάλαις Ἀμαζόνα φέροντα τετρωμένην. πρὸς δὲ τούτῳ χρησμὸν ἄλλον ᾄδεσθαι λέγει (Hendess 138)·

τὴν δ’ ἐπὶ Θερμώδοντι μάχην μένε, παμμέλαν ὄρνι·

τηνεί τοι κρέα πολλὰ παρέσσεται ἀνθρώπεια.

[20] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὅπως ἔχει, διαιτῆσαι χαλεπόν· ὁ δὲ Δημοσθένης λέγεται, τοῖς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὅπλοις ἐκτεθαρρηκὼς καὶ λαμπρὸς ὑπὸ ῥώμης καὶ προθυμίας ἀνδρῶν τοσούτων προκαλουμένων τοὺς πολεμίους αἰρόμενος, οὔτε χρησμοῖς ἐᾶν προσέχειν οὔτε μαντείας ἀκούειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν Πυθίαν ὑπονοεῖν ὡς φιλιππίζουσαν, ἀναμιμνῄσκων Ἐπαμεινώνδου τοὺς Θηβαίους καὶ Περικλέους τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ὡς ἐκεῖνοι τὰ τοιαῦτα πάντα δειλίας ἡγούμενοι [2] προφάσεις ἐχρῶντο τοῖς λογισμοῖς. μέχρι μὲν οὖν τούτων ἦν ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός· ἐν δὲ τῇ μάχῃ καλὸν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ὁμολογούμενον ἔργον οἷς εἶπεν ἀποδειξάμενος, ᾤχετο λιπὼν τὴν τάξιν, ἀποδρὰς αἴσχιστα καὶ τὰ ὅπλα ῥίψας, οὐδὲ τὴν ἐπιγραφὴν τῆς ἀσπίδος ὡς ἔλεγε Πυθέας (fr. 8 M.) αἰσχυνθείς, ἐπιγεγραμμένης γράμμασι χρυσοῖς· ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ.

[3] Παραυτίκα μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τῇ νίκῃ διὰ τὴν χαρὰν ὁ Φίλιππος ἐξυβρίσας καὶ κωμάσας ἐπὶ τοὺς νεκροὺς μεθύων ᾖδε τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ Δημοσθένους ψηφίσματος, πρὸς πόδα διαιρῶν καὶ ὑποκρούων·

Δημοσθένης Δημοσθένους Παιανιεὺς τάδ’ εἶπεν·

ἐκνήψας δὲ καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ περιστάντος αὐτὸν ἀγῶνος ἐν νῷ λαβών, ἔφριττε τὴν δεινότητα καὶ τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ ῥήτορος, ἐν μέρει μικρῷ μιᾶς ἡμέρας τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἡγεμονίας καὶ τοῦ σώματος ἀναρρῖψαι κίνδυνον ἀναγκασθεὶς [4] ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ. διῖκτο δ’ ἡ δόξα μέχρι τοῦ Περσῶν βασιλέως, κἀκεῖνος ἔπεμψε τοῖς σατράπαις ἐπὶ θάλασσαν γράμματα καὶ χρήματα, Δημοσθένει διδόναι κελεύων καὶ προσέχειν ἐκείνῳ μάλιστα τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ὡς περισπάσαι δυναμένῳ καὶ κατασχεῖν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς ταραχαῖς τὸν [5] Μακεδόνα. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον ἐφώρασεν Ἀλέξανδρος, ἐν Σάρδεσιν ἐπιστολάς τινας ἀνευρὼν τοῦ Δημοσθένους καὶ γράμματα τῶν βασιλέως στρατηγῶν, δηλοῦντα τὸ πλῆθος τῶν δοθέντων αὐτῷ χρημάτων.

[21] [1] Τότε δὲ τῆς ἀτυχίας τοῖς Ἕλλησι γεγενημένης, οἱ μὲν ἀντιπολιτευόμενοι ῥήτορες ἐπεμβαίνοντες τῷ Δημοσθένει [2] κατεσκεύαζον εὐθύνας καὶ γραφὰς ἐπ’ αὐτόν· ὁ δὲ δῆμος οὐ μόνον τούτων ἀπέλυεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τιμῶν διετέλει καὶ προκαλούμενος αὖθις ὡς εὔνουν εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν, ὥστε καὶ τῶν ὀστῶν ἐκ Χαιρωνείας κομισθέντων καὶ θαπτομένων, τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἔπαινον εἰπεῖν ἀπέδωκεν, οὐ ταπεινῶς οὐδ’ ἀγεννῶς φέρων τὸ συμβεβηκός, ὡς γράφει καὶ τραγῳδεῖ Θεόπομπος, (FGrH 115 F 329), ἀλλὰ τῷ τιμᾶν μάλιστα καὶ κοσμεῖν τὸν σύμβουλον ἐπιδεικνύμενος τὸ μὴ μεταμέλεσθαι τοῖς βεβουλευμένοις.

[3] τὸν μὲν οὖν λόγον εἶπεν ὁ Δημοσθένης, τοῖς δὲ ψηφίσμασιν οὐχ ἑαυτόν, ἀλλ’ ἐν μέρει τῶν φίλων ἕκαστον ἐπέγραφεν, ἐξοιωνιζόμενος τὸν ἴδιον δαίμονα καὶ τὴν τύχην, ἕως αὖθις ἀνεθάρρησε Φιλίππου τελευτήσαντος.

[4] ἐτελεύτησε δὲ τῇ περὶ Χαιρώνειαν εὐτυχίᾳ χρόνον οὐ πολὺν ἐπιβιώσας· καὶ τοῦτο δοκεῖ τῷ τελευταίῳ τῶν ἐπῶν ὁ χρησμὸς ἀποθεσπίσαι·

κλαίει ὁ νικηθείς, ὁ δὲ νικήσας ἀπόλωλεν.

[22] [1] Ἔγνω μὲν οὖν κρύφα τὴν τοῦ Φιλίππου τελευτὴν ὁ Δημοσθένης, προκαταλαμβάνων δὲ τὸ θαρρύνειν ἐπὶ τὰ μέλλοντα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, προῆλθε φαιδρὸς εἰς τὴν βουλήν, ὡς ὄναρ ἑωρακὼς ἀφ’ οὗ τι μέγα προσδοκᾶν Ἀθηναίοις ἀγαθόν· καὶ μετ’ οὐ πολὺ παρῆσαν οἱ τὸν Φιλίππου [2] θάνατον ἀπαγγέλλοντες. εὐθὺς οὖν ἔθυον εὐαγγέλια [3] καὶ στεφανοῦν ἐψηφίσαντο Παυσανίαν, καὶ προῆλθεν ὁ Δημοσθένης ἔχων λαμπρὸν ἱμάτιον ἐστεφανωμένος, ἑβδόμην ἡμέραν τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ τεθνηκυίας, ὡς Αἰσχίνης (3, 77) φησί, λοιδορῶν ἐπὶ τούτῳ καὶ κατηγορῶν αὐτοῦ μισοτεκνίαν, αὐτὸς ὢν ἀγεννὴς καὶ μαλακός, εἰ τὰ πένθη καὶ τοὺς ὀδυρμοὺς ἡμέρου καὶ φιλοστόργου ψυχῆς ἐποιεῖτο σημεῖα, τὸ δ’ ἀλύπως φέρειν [4] ταῦτα καὶ πρᾴως ἀπεδοκίμαζεν. ἐγὼ δ’ ὡς μὲν ἐπὶ θανάτῳ βασιλέως, ἡμέρως οὕτω καὶ φιλανθρώπως ἐν οἷς εὐτύχησε χρησαμένου πταίσασιν αὐτοῖς, στεφανηφορεῖν καλῶς εἶχε καὶ θύειν, οὐκ ἂν εἴποιμι· πρὸς γὰρ τῷ νεμεσητῷ καὶ ἀγεννές, ζῶντα μὲν τιμᾶν καὶ ποιεῖσθαι πολίτην, πεσόντος δ’ ὑφ’ ἑτέρου μὴ φέρειν τὴν χαρὰν μετρίως, ἀλλ’ ἐπισκιρτᾶν τῷ νεκρῷ καὶ παιωνίζειν, ὥσπερ [5] αὐτοὺς ἀνδραγαθήσαντας· ὅτι μέντοι τὰς οἴκοι τύχας καὶ δάκρυα καὶ ὀδυρμοὺς ἀπολιπὼν ταῖς γυναιξὶν ὁ Δημοσθένης, ἃ τῇ πόλει συμφέρειν ᾤετο, ταῦτ’ ἔπραττεν, ἐπαινῶ, καὶ τίθεμαι πολιτικῆς καὶ ἀνδρώδους ψυχῆς, ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν ἱστάμενον καὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα πράγματα καὶ πάθη τοῖς δημοσίοις ἐπανέχοντα τηρεῖν τὸ ἀξίωμα, πολὺ μᾶλλον ἢ τοὺς ὑποκριτὰς τῶν βασιλικῶν καὶ τυραννικῶν προσώπων, οὓς ὁρῶμεν οὔτε κλαίοντας οὔτε γελῶντας ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις ὡς αὐτοὶ θέλουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ὁ ἀγὼν ἀπαιτεῖ πρὸς [6] τὴν ὑπόθεσιν. χωρὶς δὲ τούτων, εἰ δεῖ τὸν ἀτυχήσαντα μὴ περιορᾶν ἀπαρηγόρητον ἐν τῷ πάθει κείμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ λόγοις χρῆσθαι κουφίζουσι καὶ πρὸς ἡδίω πράγματα τρέπειν τὴν διάνοιαν, ὥσπερ οἱ τοὺς ὀφθαλμιῶντας ἀπὸ τῶν λαμπρῶν καὶ ἀντιτύπων ἐπὶ τὰ χλωρὰ καὶ μαλακὰ χρώματα τὴν ὄψιν ἀπάγειν κελεύοντες, πόθεν ἄν τις ἐπάγοιτο βελτίω παρηγορίαν, ἢ πατρίδος εὐτυχούσης ἐκ τῶν κοινῶν παθῶν ἐπὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα σύγκρασιν ποριζόμενος, [7] τοῖς βελτίοσιν ἐναφανίζουσαν τὰ χείρω; ταῦτα μὲν οὖν εἰπεῖν προήχθημεν, ὁρῶντες ἐπικλῶντα πολλοὺς καὶ ἀποθηλύνοντα τὸν Αἰσχίνην τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ πρὸς οἶκτον.

[23] [1] Αἱ δὲ πόλεις, πάλιν τοῦ Δημοσθένους ἀναρριπίζοντος αὐτάς, συνίσταντο, καὶ Θηβαῖοι μὲν ἐπέθεντο τῇ φρουρᾷ καὶ πολλοὺς ἀνεῖλον, ὅπλα τοῦ Δημοσθένους αὐτοῖς συμπαρασκευάσαντος, Ἀθηναῖοι δ’ ὡς πολεμήσοντες [2] μετ’ αὐτῶν παρεσκευάζοντο, καὶ τὸ βῆμα κατεῖχεν ὁ Δημοσθένης, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ στρατηγοὺς τοῦ βασιλέως ἔγραφε, τὸν ἐκεῖθεν ἐπεγείρων πόλεμον Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, παῖδα καὶ Μαργίτην ἀποκαλῶν αὐτόν. ἐπεὶ μέντοι τὰ περὶ τὴν χώραν θέμενος, παρῆν αὐτὸς μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως εἰς τὴν Βοιωτίαν, ἐξεκέκοπτο μὲν ἡ θρασύτης τῶν Ἀθηναίων, καὶ ὁ Δημοσθένης ἀπεσβήκει, Θηβαῖοι δὲ προδοθέντες ὑπ’ ἐκείνων ἠγωνίσαντο καθ’ αὑτοὺς καὶ [3] τὴν πόλιν ἀπέβαλον. θορύβου δὲ μεγάλου τοὺς Ἀθηναίους περιεστῶτος, ἀπεστάλη μὲν ὁ Δημοσθένης αἱρεθεὶς μεθ’ ἑτέρων πρεσβευτὴς πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον, δείσας δὲ τὴν ὀργὴν ἐκ τοῦ Κιθαιρῶνος ἀνεχώρησεν ὀπίσω καὶ τὴν πρεσβείαν [4] ἀφῆκεν. εὐθὺς δ’ ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐξῄτει πέμπων τῶν δημαγωγῶν δέκα μὲν ὡς Ἰδομενεὺς (FGrH 338 F 11) καὶ Δοῦρις (FGrH 76 F 39) εἰρήκασιν, ὀκτὼ δ’ ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι καὶ δοκιμώτατοι τῶν συγγραφέων, τούσδε· Δημοσθένην, Πολύευκτον, Ἐφιάλτην, Λυκοῦργον, Μοιροκλέα, Δήμωνα, [5] Καλλισθένην, Χαρίδημον. ὅτε καὶ τὸν περὶ τῶν προβάτων λόγον ὁ Δημοσθένης, ἃ τοῖς λύκοις τοὺς κύνας ἐξέδωκε, διηγησάμενος, αὑτὸν μὲν εἴκασε καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὑτῷ κυσὶν ὑπὲρ τοῦ δήμου μαχομένοις, Ἀλέξανδρον δὲ τὸν [6] Μακεδόνα μονόλυκον προσηγόρευσεν. ἔτι δ’ ὥσπερ ἔφη τοὺς ἐμπόρους ὁρῶμεν, ὅταν ἐν τρυβλίῳ δεῖγμα περιφέρωσι, δι’ ὀλίγων πυρῶν τοὺς πολλοὺς πιπράσκοντας, οὕτως [ἐν] ἡμῖν λανθάνετε πάντας αὑτοὺς συνεκδιδόντες. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Ἀριστόβουλος ὁ Κασσανδρεὺς (FGrH 139 F 3) ἱστόρηκε. βουλευομένων δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων καὶ διαπορούντων, ὁ Δημάδης (fr. 15 M.) λαβὼν πέντε τάλαντα παρὰ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ὡμολόγησε πρεσβεύσειν καὶ δεήσεσθαι τοῦ βασιλέως ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν, εἴτε τῇ φιλίᾳ πιστεύων, εἴτε προσδοκῶν μεστὸν εὑρήσειν ὥσπερ λέοντα φόνου κεκορεσμένον. ἔπεισε δ’ οὖν καὶ παρῃτήσατο τοὺς ἄνδρας ὁ Φωκίων καὶ διήλλαξεν αὐτῷ τὴν πόλιν.

[24] [1] Ἀπελθόντος δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου μεγάλοι μὲν ἦσαν οὗτοι, ταπεινὰ δ’ ἔπραττεν ὁ Δημοσθένης. κινουμένῳ δ’ Ἄγιδι τῷ Σπαρτιάτῃ βραχέα συνεκινήθη πάλιν, εἶτ’ ἔπτηξε, τῶν μὲν Ἀθηναίων οὐ συνεξαναστάντων, τοῦ δ’ Ἄγιδος [2] πεσόντος καὶ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων συντριβέντων. εἰσήχθη δὲ τότε καὶ ἡ περὶ τοῦ στεφάνου γραφὴ κατὰ Κτησιφῶντος, γραφεῖσα μὲν ἐπὶ Χαιρώνδου ἄρχοντος μικρὸν ἐπάνω τῶν Χαιρωνικῶν, κριθεῖσα δ’ ὕστερον ἔτεσι δέκα ἐπ’ Ἀριστοφῶντος, γενομένη δ’ ὡς οὐδεμία τῶν δημοσίων περιβόητος διά τε τὴν δόξαν τῶν λεγόντων καὶ τὴν τῶν δικαζόντων εὐγένειαν, οἳ τοῖς ἐλαύνουσι τὸν Δημοσθένη τότε πλεῖστον δυναμένοις καὶ μακεδονίζουσιν οὐ προήκαντο τὴν κατ’ αὐτοῦ ψῆφον, ἀλλ’ οὕτω λαμπρῶς ἀπέλυσαν, ὥστε τὸ πέμπτον μέρος τῶν ψήφων Αἰσχίνην μὴ μεταλαβεῖν.

[3] ἐκεῖνος μὲν οὖν εὐθὺς ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ᾤχετ’ ἀπιὼν καὶ περὶ Ῥόδον καὶ Ἰωνίαν σοφιστεύων κατεβίωσε.

[25] [1] Μετ’ οὐ πολὺ δ’ Ἅρπαλος ἧκεν ἐξ Ἀσίας εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας ἀποδρὰς Ἀλέξανδρον, αὑτῷ τε πράγματα συνειδὼς πονηρὰ δι’ ἀσωτίαν, κἀκεῖνον ἤδη χαλεπὸν ὄντα τοῖς [2] φίλοις δεδοικώς. καταφυγόντος δὲ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον αὐτοῦ, καὶ μετὰ τῶν χρημάτων καὶ τῶν νεῶν αὑτὸν παραδιδόντος, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι ῥήτορες εὐθὺς ἐποφθαλμιάσαντες πρὸς τὸν πλοῦτον ἐβοήθουν καὶ συνέπειθον τοὺς Ἀθηναίους δέχεσθαι [3] καὶ σῴζειν τὸν ἱκέτην. ὁ δὲ Δημοσθένης πρῶτον μὲν ἀπελαύνειν συνεβούλευε τὸν Ἅρπαλον καὶ φυλάττεσθαι, μὴ τὴν πόλιν ἐμβάλωσιν εἰς πόλεμον ἐξ οὐκ ἀναγκαίας καὶ ἀδίκου προφάσεως· ἡμέραις δ’ ὀλίγαις ὕστερον ἐξεταζομένων τῶν χρημάτων, ἰδὼν αὐτὸν ὁ Ἅρπαλος ἡσθέντα βαρβαρικῇ κύλικι καὶ καταμανθάνοντα τὴν τορείαν καὶ τὸ εἶδος, ἐκέλευσε διαβαστάσαντα τὴν ὁλκὴν τοῦ χρυσίου [4] σκέψασθαι. θαυμάσαντος δὲ τοῦ Δημοσθένους τὸ βάρος καὶ πυθομένου πόσον ἄγει, μειδιάσας ὁ Ἅρπαλος ἄξει σοι φησίν εἴκοσι τάλαντα, καὶ γενομένης τάχιστα τῆς νυκτὸς ἔπεμψεν αὐτῷ τὴν κύλικα μετὰ τῶν εἴκοσι ταλάντων.

[5] ἦν δ’ ἄρα δεινὸς ὁ Ἅρπαλος ἐρωτικοῦ πρὸς χρυσίον ἀνδρὸς ὄψει καὶ διαχύσει καὶ βολαῖς ὀμμάτων ἐνευρεῖν ἦθος. οὐ γὰρ ἀντέσχεν ὁ Δημοσθένης, ἀλλὰ πληγεὶς ὑπὸ τῆς δωροδοκίας ὥσπερ παραδεδεγμένος φρουρὰν προσκεχωρήκει τῷ Ἁρπάλῳ, καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν εὖ καὶ καλῶς ἐρίοις καὶ ταινίαις κατὰ τοῦ τραχήλου καθελιξάμενος εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν προῆλθε, καὶ κελευόντων ἀνίστασθαι καὶ λέγειν, [6] διένευεν ὡς ἀποκεκομμένης αὐτῷ τῆς φωνῆς. οἱ δ’ εὐφυεῖς χλευάζοντες οὐχ ὑπὸ συνάγχης ἔφραζον, ἀλλ’ ἀργυράγχης εἰλῆφθαι νύκτωρ τὸν δημαγωγόν. ὕστερον δὲ τοῦ δήμου παντὸς αἰσθομένου τὴν δωροδοκίαν καὶ βουλόμενον ἀπολογεῖσθαι καὶ πείθειν οὐκ ἐῶντος, ἀλλὰ χαλεπαίνοντος καὶ θορυβοῦντος, ἀναστάς τις ἔσκωψεν εἰπών· οὐκ ἀκούσεσθε ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι τοῦ τὴν κύλικα [7] ἔχοντος; τότε μὲν οὖν ἀπέπεμψαν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως τὸν Ἅρπαλον, δεδιότες δὲ μὴ λόγον ἀπαιτῶνται τῶν χρημάτων ἃ διηρπάκεισαν οἱ ῥήτορες, ζήτησιν ἐποιοῦντο νεανικήν, καὶ τὰς οἰκίας ἐπιόντες ἠρεύνων πλὴν τῆς Καλλικλέους [8] τοῦ Ἀρρενείδου. μόνην γὰρ τὴν τούτου νεωστὶ γεγαμηκότος οὐκ εἴασαν ἐλεγχθῆναι νύμφης ἔνδον οὔσης, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Θεόφραστος.

[26] [1] Ὁ δὲ Δημοσθένης ὁμόσε χωρῶν εἰσήνεγκε ψήφισμα, τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴν ἐξετάσαι τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ [2] τοὺς ἐκείνῃ δόξαντας ἀδικεῖν δοῦναι δίκην. ἐν δὲ πρώτοις αὐτοῦ τῆς βουλῆς καταψηφισαμένης, εἰσῆλθε μὲν εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον, ὀφλὼν δὲ πεντήκοντα ταλάντων δίκην καὶ παραδοθεὶς εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον, αἰσχύνῃ τῆς αἰτίας φησὶ καὶ δι’ ἀσθένειαν τοῦ σώματος οὐ δυνάμενος φέρειν τὸν εἱργμὸν ἀποδρᾶναι, τοὺς μὲν λαθών, τῶν δὲ λαθεῖν ἐξουσίαν [3] δόντων. λέγεται γοῦν, ὡς οὐ μακρὰν τοῦ ἄστεος φεύγων αἴσθοιτό τινας τῶν διαφόρων αὐτῷ πολιτῶν ἐπιδιώκοντας, [καὶ] βούλεσθαι μὲν αὑτὸν ἀποκρύπτειν, ὡς δ’ ἐκεῖνοι φθεγξάμενοι τοὔνομα καὶ προσελθόντες ἐγγὺς ἐδέοντο λαβεῖν ἐφόδιον παρ’ αὐτῶν, ἐπ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτο κομίζοντες ἀργύριον οἴκοθεν καὶ τούτου χάριν ἐπιδιώξαντες αὐτόν, ἅμα δὲ θαρρεῖν παρεκάλουν καὶ μὴ φέρειν ἀνιαρῶς τὸ συμβεβηκός, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἀνακλαύσασθαι τὸν Δημοσθένην καὶ [4] εἰπεῖν· πῶς δ’ οὐ μέλλω φέρειν βαρέως, ἀπολείπων πόλιν ἐχθροὺς τοιούτους ἔχουσαν, οἵους ἐν ἑτέρᾳ φίλους εὑρεῖν οὐ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστιν;

[5] Ἤνεγκε δὲ τὴν φυγὴν μαλακῶς, ἐν Αἰγίνῃ καὶ Τροιζῆνι καθήμενος τὰ πολλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἀποβλέπων δεδακρυμένος, ὥστε φωνὰς οὐκ εὐγνώμονας οὐδ’ ὁμολογουμένας τοῖς ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ νεανιεύμασιν ἀπομνημονεύεσθαι.

[6] λέγεται γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ ἄστεος ἀπαλλαττόμενος καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν ἀνατείνας τὰς χεῖρας εἰπεῖν· ὦ δέσποινα Πολιάς, τί δὴ τρισὶ τοῖς χαλεπωτάτοις χαίρεις [7] θηρίοις, γλαυκὶ καὶ δράκοντι καὶ δήμῳ; τοὺς δὲ προσιόντας αὐτῷ καὶ συνδιατρίβοντας νεανίσκους ἀποτρέπειν τῆς πολιτείας, λέγων ὡς εἰ, δυεῖν αὐτῷ προκειμένων ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ὁδῶν, τῆς μὲν ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, τῆς δ’ ἄντικρυς εἰς τὸν ὄλεθρον, ἐτύγχανε προειδὼς τὰ κατὰ τὴν πολιτείαν κακά, φόβους καὶ φθόνους καὶ διαβολὰς καὶ ἀγῶνας, ἐπὶ ταύτην ἂν ὁρμήσαι τὴν εὐθὺ τοῦ θανάτου τείνουσαν.

[27] [1] Ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἔτι φεύγοντος αὐτοῦ τὴν εἰρημένην φυγήν, Ἀλέξανδρος μὲν ἐτελεύτησε, τὰ δ’ Ἑλληνικὰ συνίστατο πάλιν, Λεωσθένους ἀνδραγαθοῦντος καὶ περιτειχίζοντος [2] Ἀντίπατρον ἐν Λαμίᾳ πολιορκούμενον. Πυθέας μὲν οὖν ὁ ῥήτωρ καὶ Καλλιμέδων ὁ Κάραβος ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν φεύγοντες Ἀντιπάτρῳ προσεγένοντο, καὶ μετὰ τῶν ἐκείνου φίλων καὶ πρέσβεων περιιόντες οὐκ εἴων ἀφίστασθαι [3] τοὺς Ἕλληνας οὐδὲ προσέχειν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις· Δημοσθένης δὲ τοῖς ἐξ ἄστεος πρεσβεύουσι καταμείξας ἑαυτὸν ‹συν›ηγωνίζετο καὶ συνέπραττεν, ὅπως αἱ πόλεις συνεπιθήσονται τοῖς Μακεδόσι καὶ συνεκβαλοῦσιν αὐτοὺς τῆς Ἑλλάδος.

[4] ἐν δ’ Ἀρκαδίᾳ καὶ λοιδορίαν τοῦ Πυθέου καὶ τοῦ Δημοσθένους γενέσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους εἴρηκεν ὁ Φύλαρχος (FGrH 81 F 75) ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ, τοῦ μὲν ὑπὲρ τῶν Μακεδόνων, τοῦ [5] δ’ ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἑλλήνων λέγοντος. λέγεται δὲ τότε τὸν μὲν Πυθέαν (fr. 13 M.) εἰπεῖν, ὅτι καθάπερ οἰκίαν, εἰς ἣν ὄνειον εἰσφέρεται γάλα, κακόν τι πάντως ἔχειν νομίζομεν, οὕτω καὶ πόλιν ἀνάγκη νοσεῖν εἰς ἣν Ἀθηναίων πρεσβεία παραγίνεται· τὸν δὲ Δημοσθένη τρέψαι τὸ παράδειγμα, φήσαντα καὶ τὸ γάλα τὸ ὄνειον ἐφ’ ὑγιείᾳ καὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους [6] ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ παραγίνεσθαι τῶν νοσούντων. ἐφ’ οἷς ἡσθεὶς ὁ τῶν Ἀθηναίων δῆμος ψηφίζεται τῷ Δημοσθένει κάθοδον. τὸ μὲν οὖν ψήφισμα Δήμων ὁ Παιανιεύς, ἀνεψιὸς ὢν Δημοσθένους, εἰσήνεγκεν· ἐπέμφθη δὲ τριήρης ἐπ’ αὐτὸν [7] εἰς Αἴγιναν. ἐκ δὲ Πειραιῶς ἀνέβαινεν οὔτ’ ἄρχοντος οὔθ’ ἱερέως ἀπολειφθέντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν ὁμοῦ τι πάντων ἀπαντώντων καὶ δεχομένων προθύμως. ὅτε καί φησιν αὐτὸν ὁ Μάγνης Δημήτριος ἀνατείναντα τὰς χεῖρας μακαρίσαι τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης ἑαυτόν, ὡς βέλτιον Ἀλκιβιάδου κατιόντα· πεπεισμένους γάρ, [8] οὐ βεβιασμένους, ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ δέχεσθαι τοὺς πολίτας. τῆς δὲ χρηματικῆς ζημίας αὐτῷ μενούσης - οὐ γὰρ ἐξῆν χάριτι λῦσαι καταδίκην - ἐσοφίσαντο πρὸς τὸν νόμον. εἰωθότες γὰρ ἐν τῇ θυσίᾳ τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἀργύριον τελεῖν τοῖς κατασκευάζουσι καὶ κοσμοῦσι τὸν βωμόν, ἐκείνῳ τότε ταῦτα ποιῆσαι καὶ παρασχεῖν πεντήκοντα ταλάντων ἐξέδωκαν, ὅσον ἦν τὸ τίμημα τῆς καταδίκης.

[28] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἀπέλαυσε τῆς πατρίδος κατελθών, ἀλλὰ ταχὺ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν πραγμάτων συντριβέντων, Μεταγειτνιῶνος μὲν ἡ περὶ Κραννῶνα μάχη συνέπεσε, Βοηδρομιῶνος δὲ παρῆλθεν εἰς Μουνυχίαν ἡ φρουρά, Πυανεψιῶνος δὲ Δημοσθένης ἀπέθανε τόνδε τὸν τρόπον.

[2] ὡς Ἀντίπατρος καὶ Κρατερὸς ἠγγέλλοντο προσιόντες ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας, οἱ μὲν περὶ τὸν Δημοσθένην φθάσαντες ὑπεξῆλθον ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, ὁ δὲ δῆμος αὐτῶν θάνατον κατέγνω [3] Δημάδου γράψαντος. ἄλλων δ’ ἀλλαχοῦ διασπαρέντων, ὁ Ἀντίπατρος περιέπεμπε τοὺς συλλαμβάνοντας, ὧν ἦν ἡγεμὼν Ἀρχίας ὁ κληθεὶς Φυγαδοθήρας. τοῦτον δὲ Θούριον ὄντα τῷ γένει λόγος ἔχει τραγῳδίας ὑποκρίνασθαί ποτε, καὶ τὸν Αἰγινήτην Πῶλον τὸν ὑπερβαλόντα τῇ τέχνῃ πάντας ἐκείνου γεγονέναι μαθητὴν ἱστοροῦσιν. Ἕρμιππος (FHG III 51) δὲ τὸν Ἀρχίαν ἐν τοῖς Λακρίτου τοῦ ῥήτορος μαθηταῖς ἀναγράφει· Δημήτριος (FGrH 228 F 20) δὲ τῆς [4] Ἀναξιμένους διατριβῆς μετεσχηκέναι φησὶν αὐτόν. οὗτος οὖν ὁ Ἀρχίας Ὑπερείδην μὲν τὸν ῥήτορα καὶ Ἀριστόνικον τὸν Μαραθώνιον καὶ τὸν Δημητρίου τοῦ Φαληρέως ἀδελφὸν Ἱμεραῖον, ἐν Αἰγίνῃ καταφυγόντας ἐπὶ τὸ Αἰάκειον, ἔπεμψεν ἀποσπάσας εἰς Κλεωνὰς πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον, κἀκεῖ διεφθάρησαν· Ὑπερείδου δὲ καὶ τὴν γλῶτταν ἐκτμηθῆναι ζῶντος λέγουσι.

[29] [1] Τὸν δὲ Δημοσθένην πυθόμενος ἱκέτην ἐν Καλαυρείᾳ ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ Ποσειδῶνος καθέζεσθαι, διαπλεύσας ὑπηρετικοῖς καὶ ἀποβὰς μετὰ Θρᾳκῶν δορυφόρων ἔπειθεν ἀναστάντα βαδίζειν μετ’ αὐτοῦ πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον, ὡς δυσχερὲς πει[2]σόμενον οὐδέν. ὁ δὲ Δημοσθένης ἐτύγχανεν ὄψιν ἑωρακὼς κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ἐκείνης τῆς νυκτὸς ἀλλόκοτον. ἐδόκει γὰρ ἀνταγωνίζεσθαι τῷ Ἀρχίᾳ τραγῳδίαν ὑποκρινόμενος, εὐημερῶν δὲ καὶ κατέχων τὸ θέατρον ἐνδείᾳ παρασκευῆς [3] καὶ χορηγίας κρατεῖσθαι. διὸ τοῦ Ἀρχίου πολλὰ φιλάνθρωπα διαλεχθέντος, ἀναβλέψας πρὸς αὐτόν, ὥσπερ ἐτύγχανε καθήμενος, ὦ Ἀρχία εἶπεν οὔθ’ ὑποκρινόμενός με πώποτ’ ἔπεισας, οὔτε νῦν πείσεις ἐπαγγελλόμενος. ἀρξαμένου δ’ ἀπειλεῖν μετ’ ὀργῆς τοῦ Ἀρχίου νῦν ἔφη λέγεις τὰ ἐκ τοῦ Μακεδονικοῦ τρίποδος, ἄρτι δ’ ὑπεκρίνου. μικρὸν οὖν ἐπίσχες, ὅπως ἐπιστείλω τι τοῖς οἴκοι.

[4] καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἐντὸς ἀνεχώρησε τοῦ ναοῦ, καὶ λαβὼν βιβλίον, ὡς γράφειν μέλλων προσήνεγκε τῷ στόματι τὸν κάλαμον, καὶ δακών, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ διανοεῖσθαι καὶ γράφειν εἰώθει, χρόνον τινὰ κατέσχεν, εἶτα συγκαλυψάμενος [5] ἀπέκλινε τὴν κεφαλήν. οἱ μὲν οὖν παρὰ τὰς θύρας ἑστῶτες δορυφόροι κατεγέλων ὡς ἀποδειλιῶντος αὐτοῦ, καὶ μαλακὸν ἀπεκάλουν καὶ ἄνανδρον, ὁ δ’ Ἀρχίας προσελθὼν ἀνίστασθαι παρεκάλει, καὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἀνακυκλῶν λόγους αὖθις ἐπηγγέλλετο διαλλαγὰς [6] πρὸς τὸν Ἀντίπατρον. ἤδη δὲ συνῃσθημένος ὁ Δημοσθένης ἐμπεφυκότος αὐτῷ τοῦ φαρμάκου καὶ νεκροῦντος, ἐξεκαλύψατο καὶ ἀποβλέψας πρὸς τὸν Ἀρχίαν οὐκ ἂν φθάνοις εἶπεν ἤδη τὸν ἐκ τῆς τραγῳδίας ὑποκρινόμενος Κρέοντα καὶ τὸ σῶμα τουτὶ ῥίπτων ἄταφον. ἐγὼ δ’ ὦ φίλε Πόσειδον ἔτι ζῶν ἐξίσταμαι τοῦ ἱεροῦ· τὸ δ’ ἐπ’ Ἀντιπάτρῳ καὶ Μακεδόσιν οὐδ’ ὁ σὸς νεὼς καθαρὸς ἀπολέλειπται.

[7] ταῦτα δ’ εἰπὼν καὶ κελεύσας ὑπολαβεῖν αὐτὸν ἤδη τρέμοντα καὶ σφαλλόμενον, ἅμα τῷ προελθεῖν καὶ παραλλάξαι τὸν βωμὸν ἔπεσε καὶ στενάξας ἀφῆκε τὴν ψυχήν.

[30] [1] Τὸ δὲ φάρμακον Ἀρίστων (I p. 87 n. 380 Arn.) μὲν ἐκ τοῦ καλάμου φησὶ λαβεῖν αὐτόν, ὡς εἴρηται· Πάππος δέ τις, οὗ τὴν ἱστορίαν Ἕρμιππος (FHG III 50) ἀνείληφε, φησὶ πεσόντος αὐτοῦ παρὰ τὸν βωμὸν ἐν μὲν τῷ βιβλίῳ γεγραμμένην ἐπιστολῆς ἀρχὴν εὑρεθῆναι Δημοσθένης [2] Ἀντιπάτρῳ καὶ μηδὲν ἄλλο· θαυμαζομένης δὲ τῆς περὶ τὸν θάνατον ὀξύτητος, διηγήσασθαι τοὺς παρὰ ταῖς θύραις Θρᾷκας, ὡς ἔκ τινος ῥακίου λαβὼν εἰς τὴν χεῖρα προσθοῖτο τῷ στόματι καὶ καταπίοι τὸ φάρμακον· αὐτοὶ δ’ ἄρα χρυσίον ᾠήθησαν εἶναι τὸ καταπινόμενον· ἡ δ’ ὑπηρετοῦσα παιδίσκη, πυνθανομένων τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἀρχίαν, φαίη πολὺν εἶναι χρόνον ἐξ οὗ φοροίη τὸν ἀπόδεσμον [3] ἐκεῖνον ὁ Δημοσθένης ὡς φυλακτήριον. Ἐρατοσθένης (FGrH 241 F 31) δέ φησι καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν κρίκῳ κοίλῳ τὸ φάρμακον φυλάττειν· τὸν δὲ κρίκον εἶναι τοῦτον αὐτῷ [4] φόρημα περιβραχιόνιον. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ὅσοι γεγράφασι περὶ αὐτοῦ - πάμπολλοι δ’ εἰσί - τὰς διαφορὰς οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον ἐπεξιέναι· πλὴν ὅτι Δημοχάρης (FGrH 75 F 3) ὁ τοῦ Δημοσθένους οἰκεῖος οἴεσθαί φησιν αὐτὸν οὐχ ὑπὸ φαρμάκου, θεῶν δὲ τιμῇ καὶ προνοίᾳ τῆς Μακεδόνων ὠμότητος ἐξαρπαγῆναι, συντόμως καταστρέψαντα καὶ [5] ἀλύπως. κατέστρεψε δ’ ἕκτῃ ἐπὶ δέκα τοῦ Πυανεψιῶνος μηνός, ἐν ᾗ τὴν σκυθρωποτάτην τῶν Θεσμοφορίων ἡμέραν ἄγουσαι παρὰ τῇ θεῷ νηστεύουσιν αἱ γυναῖκες.

Τούτῳ μὲν οὖν ὀλίγον ὕστερον ὁ τῶν Ἀθηναίων δῆμος ἀξίαν ἀποδιδοὺς τιμήν, εἰκόνα τε χαλκῆν ἀνέστησε, καὶ τὸν πρεσβύτατον ἐψηφίσατο τῶν ἀπὸ γένους ἐν Πρυτανείῳ σίτησιν ἔχειν, καὶ τὸ ἐπίγραμμα τὸ θρυλούμενον ἐπιγραφῆναι τῇ βάσει τοῦ ἀνδριάντος (PLG⁴ II p. 331)·

εἴπερ ἴσην γνώμῃ ῥώμην Δημόσθενες ἔσχες,

οὔποτ’ ἂν Ἑλλήνων ἦρξεν Ἄρης Μακεδών.

[6] οἱ γὰρ αὐτὸν τὸν Δημοσθένην τοῦτο ποιῆσαι λέγοντες ἐν Καλαυρείᾳ, μέλλοντα τὸ φάρμακον προσφέρεσθαι, κομιδῇ φλυαροῦσι.

[31] [1] Μικρῷ δὲ πρόσθεν ἢ παραβαλεῖν ἡμᾶς Ἀθήναζε λέγεται τὸ τοιόνδε συμβῆναι. στρατιώτης ἐπὶ κρίσιν τινὰ καλούμενος ὑφ’ ἡγεμόνος, ὅσον εἶχε χρυσίδιον εἰς τὰς [2] χεῖρας ἐνέθηκε τοῦ ἀνδριάντος. ἕστηκε δὲ τοὺς δακτύλους συνέχων δι’ ἀλλήλων, καὶ παραπέφυκεν οὐ μεγάλη πλάτανος. ἀπὸ ταύτης πολλὰ τῶν φύλλων, εἴτε πνεύματος ἐκ τύχης καταβαλόντος, εἴτ’ αὐτὸς οὕτως ὁ θεὶς ἐπεκάλυψε, περικείμενα καὶ συμπεσόντα λαθεῖν ἐποίησε τὸ [3] χρυσίον οὐκ ὀλίγον χρόνον. ὡς δ’ ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐπανελθὼν ἀνεῦρε, καὶ διεδόθη λόγος ὑπὲρ τούτου, πολλοὶ τῶν εὐφυῶν ὑπόθεσιν λαβόντες εἰς τὸ ἀδωροδόκητον τοῦ Δημοσθένους διημιλλῶντο τοῖς ἐπιγράμμασι.

[4] Δημάδην δὲ χρόνον οὐ πολὺν ἀπολαύσαντα μισουμένης δόξης ἡ Δημοσθένους δίκη κατήγαγεν εἰς Μακεδονίαν, οὓς ἐκολάκευσεν αἰσχρῶς, ὑπὸ τούτων ἐξολούμενον δικαίως, ἐπαχθῆ μὲν ὄντα καὶ πρότερον αὐτοῖς, τότε [5] δ’ εἰς αἰτίαν ἄφυκτον ἐμπεσόντα. γράμματα γὰρ ἐξέπεσεν αὐτοῦ, δι’ ὧν παρεκάλει Περδίκκαν ἐπιχειρεῖν Μακεδονίᾳ καὶ σῴζειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὡς ἀπὸ σαπροῦ καὶ παλαιοῦ στήμονος - λέγων τὸν Ἀντίπατρον - ἠρτημένους.

[6] ἐφ’ οἷς Δεινάρχου τοῦ Κορινθίου κατηγορήσαντος, παροξυνθεὶς ὁ Κάσσανδρος ἐγκατέσφαξεν αὐτοῦ τῷ κόλπῳ τὸν υἱόν, εἶθ’ οὕτως ἐκεῖνον ἀνελεῖν προσέταξε, [ἐν] τοῖς μεγίστοις διδασκόμενον ἀτυχήμασιν, ὅτι πρώτους ἑαυτοὺς οἱ προδόται πωλοῦσιν, ὃ πολλάκις Δημοσθένους προαγορεύοντος οὐκ ἐπίστευσε.

[7] Τὸν μὲν οὖν Δημοσθένους ἀπέχεις ὦ Σόσσιε βίον ἐξ ὧν ἡμεῖς ἀνέγνωμεν ἢ διηκούσαμεν.

Cicero

[1] [1] Κικέρωνος δὲ τὴν μὲν μητέρα λέγουσιν Ἑλβίαν καὶ γεγονέναι καλῶς καὶ βεβιωκέναι, περὶ δὲ τοῦ πατρὸς [8] οὐδὲν ἦν πυθέσθαι μέτριον. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν γναφείῳ τινὶ καὶ γενέσθαι καὶ τραφῆναι τὸν ἄνδρα λέγουσιν, οἱ δ’ εἰς Τύλλον Ἄττιον ἀνάγουσι τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ γένους, βασιλεύσαντα λαμπρῶς ἐν Οὐολούσκοις καὶ πολεμήσαντα Ῥωμαίοις [2] οὐκ ἀδυνάτως. ὁ μέντοι πρῶτος ἐκ τοῦ γένους Κικέρων ἐπονομασθεὶς ἄξιος λόγου δοκεῖ γενέσθαι· διὸ τὴν ἐπίκλησιν οὐκ ἀπέρριψαν οἱ μετ’ αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἠσπάσαντο, [3] καίπερ ὑπὸ πολλῶν χλευαζομένην. κίκερ γὰρ οἱ Λατῖνοι τὸν ἐρέβινθον καλοῦσι, κἀκεῖνος ἐν τῷ πέρατι τῆς ῥινὸς διαστολὴν ὡς ἔοικεν ἀμβλεῖαν εἶχεν ὥσπερ ἐρεβίνθου διαφυήν, ἀφ’ ἧς ἐκτήσατο τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν. [4] αὐτός γε μὴν Κικέρων, ὑπὲρ οὗ τάδε γέγραπται, τῶν φίλων αὐτὸν οἰομένων δεῖν, ὅτε πρῶτον ἀρχὴν μετῄει καὶ πολιτείας ἥπτετο, φυγεῖν τοὔνομα καὶ μεταθέσθαι, λέγεται νεανιευσάμενος εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἀγωνιεῖται τὸν Κικέρωνα τῶν Σκαύρων καὶ τῶν Κάτλων ἐνδοξότερον ἀποδεῖξαι. [5] ταμιεύων δ’ ἐν Σικελίᾳ καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς ἀνάθημα ποιούμενος ἀργυροῦν, τὰ μὲν πρῶτα δύο τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐπέγραψε, τόν τε Μᾶρκον καὶ τὸν Τύλλιον, ἀντὶ δὲ τοῦ τρίτου σκώπτων ἐρέβινθον ἐκέλευσε παρὰ τὰ γράμματα τὸν τεχνίτην ἐντορεῦσαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν περὶ τοῦ ὀνόματος ἱστόρηται.

[2] [1] Τεχθῆναι δὲ Κικέρωνα λέγουσιν ἀνωδύνως καὶ ἀπόνως λοχευθείσης αὐτοῦ τῆς μητρὸς ἡμέρᾳ τρίτῃ τῶν νέων Καλανδῶν, ἐν ᾗ νῦν οἱ ἄρχοντες εὔχονται καὶ θύουσιν ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἡγεμόνος. τῇ δὲ τίτθῃ φάσμα δοκεῖ γενέσθαι καὶ προειπεῖν ὡς ὄφελος μέγα πᾶσι Ῥωμαίοις ἐκτρεφούσῃ.

[2] ταῦτα δ’ ἄλλως ὀνείρατα καὶ φλύαρον εἶναι δοκοῦντα ταχέως αὐτὸς ἀπέδειξε μαντείαν ἀληθινὴν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ τοῦ μανθάνειν γενόμενος καὶ δι’ εὐφυΐαν ἐκλάμψας καὶ λαβὼν ὄνομα καὶ δόξαν ἐν τοῖς παισίν, ὥστε τοὺς πατέρας αὐτῶν ἐπιφοιτᾶν τοῖς διδασκαλείοις, ὄψει τε βουλομένους ἰδεῖν τὸν Κικέρωνα καὶ τὴν ὑμνουμένην αὐτοῦ περὶ τὰς μαθήσεις ὀξύτητα καὶ σύνεσιν ἱστορῆσαι, τοὺς δ’ ἀγροικοτέρους ὀργίζεσθαι τοῖς υἱέσιν, ὁρῶντας ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς [3] τὸν Κικέρωνα μέσον αὑτῶν ἐπὶ τιμῇ λαμβάνοντας. γενόμενος δ’, ὥσπερ ὁ Πλάτων (resp. 475 b) ἀξιοῖ τὴν φιλομαθῆ καὶ φιλόσοφον φύσιν, οἷος ἀσπάζεσθαι πᾶν μάθημα καὶ μηδὲν λόγου μηδὲ παιδείας ἀτιμάζειν εἶδος, ἐρρύη πως προθυμότερον ἐπὶ ποιητικήν, καί τι καὶ διασῴζεται ποιημάτιον ἔτι παιδὸς αὐτοῦ Πόντιος Γλαῦκος, ἐν τετραμέτρῳ [4] πεποιημένον. προϊὼν δὲ τῷ χρόνῳ καὶ ποικιλώτερον ἁπτόμενος τῆς περὶ ταῦτα μούσης, ἔδοξεν οὐ μόνον ῥήτωρ, [5] ἀλλὰ καὶ ποιητὴς ἄριστος εἶναι Ῥωμαίων. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τῇ ῥητορικῇ δόξα μέχρι νῦν διαμένει, καίπερ οὐ μικρᾶς γεγενημένης περὶ τοὺς λόγους καινοτομίας, τὴν δὲ ποιητικὴν αὐτοῦ, πολλῶν εὐφυῶν ἐπιγενομένων, παντάπασιν ἀκλεῆ καὶ ἄτιμον ἔρρειν συμβέβηκεν.

[3] [1] Ἀπαλλαγεὶς δὲ τῶν ἐν παισὶ διατριβῶν, Φίλωνος ἤκουσε τοῦ ἐξ Ἀκαδημείας, ὃν μάλιστα Ῥωμαῖοι τῶν Κλειτομάχου συνήθων καὶ διὰ τὸν λόγον ἐθαύμασαν καὶ [2] διὰ τὸν τρόπον ἠγάπησαν. ἅμα δὲ τοῖς περὶ Μούκιον ἀνδράσι πολιτικοῖς καὶ πρωτεύουσι τῆς βουλῆς συνών, εἰς ἐμπειρίαν τῶν νόμων ὠφελεῖτο, καί τινα χρόνον καὶ στρατείας μετέσχεν ὑπὸ Σύλλᾳ περὶ τὸν Μαρσικὸν πόλεμον.

[3] εἶθ’ ὁρῶν εἰς στάσιν, ἐκ δὲ τῆς στάσεως εἰς ἄκρατον ἐμπίπτοντα τὰ πράγματα μοναρχίαν, ἐπὶ τὸν σχολαστὴν καὶ θεωρητικὸν ἀνελθὼν βίον Ἕλλησί τε συνῆν φιλολόγοις καὶ προσεῖχε τοῖς μαθήμασιν, ἄχρι οὗ Σύλλας ἐκράτησε καὶ [4] κατάστασίν τινα λαμβάνειν ἔδοξεν ἡ πόλις. ἐν δὲ τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ Χρυσόγονος ἀπελεύθερος Σύλλα προσαγγείλας τινὸς οὐσίαν, ὡς ἐκ προγραφῆς ἀναιρεθέντος, [5] αὐτὸς ἐωνήσατο δισχιλίων δραχμῶν. ἐπεὶ δὲ Ῥώσκιος ὁ υἱὸς καὶ κληρονόμος τοῦ τεθνηκότος ἠγανάκτει καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν ἐπεδείκνυε πεντήκοντα καὶ διακοσίων ταλάντων ἀξίαν οὖσαν, ὅ τε Σύλλας ἐλεγχόμενος ἐχαλέπαινε καὶ δίκην πατροκτονίας ἐπῆγε τῷ Ῥωσκίῳ, τοῦ Χρυσογόνου κατασκευάσαντος, ἐβοήθει δ’ οὐδείς, ἀλλ’ ἀπετρέποντο, τοῦ Σύλλα τὴν χαλεπότητα δεδοικότες, οὕτω δὴ δι’ ἐρημίαν τοῦ μειρακίου τῷ Κικέρωνι προσφυγόντος οἱ φίλοι συμπαρώρμων, ὡς οὐκ ἂν αὐτῷ λαμπροτέραν αὖθις ἀρχὴν [6] πρὸς δόξαν ἑτέραν οὐδὲ καλλίω γενησομένην. ἀναδεξάμενος οὖν τὴν συνηγορίαν καὶ κατορθώσας ἐθαυμάσθη, δεδιὼς δὲ τὸν Σύλλαν ἀπεδήμησεν εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα, διασπείρας [7] λόγον ὡς τοῦ σώματος αὐτῷ θεραπείας δεομένου. καὶ γὰρ ἦν ὄντως τὴν ἕξιν ἰσχνὸς καὶ ἄσαρκος, ἀρρωστίᾳ τοῦ στομάχου μικρὰ καὶ γλίσχρα μόλις ὀψὲ τῆς ὥρας προσφερόμενος· ἡ δὲ φωνὴ πολλὴ μὲν καὶ ἀγαθή, σκληρὰ δὲ καὶ ἄπλαστος, ὑπὸ δὲ τοῦ λόγου σφοδρότητα καὶ πάθος ἔχοντος ἀεὶ διὰ τῶν ἄνω τόνων ἐλαυνομένη, φόβον παρεῖχεν ὑπὲρ τοῦ σώματος.

[4] [1] Ἀφικόμενος δ’ εἰς Ἀθήνας Ἀντιόχου τοῦ Ἀσκαλωνίτου διήκουσε, τῇ μὲν εὐροίᾳ τῶν λόγων αὐτοῦ καὶ τῇ χάριτι κηλούμενος, ἃ δ’ ἐν τοῖς δόγμασιν ἐνεωτέριζεν, οὐκ ἐπαινῶν.

[2] ἤδη γὰρ ἐξίστατο τῆς νέας λεγομένης Ἀκαδημείας ὁ Ἀντίοχος καὶ τὴν Καρνεάδου στάσιν ἐγκατέλειπεν, εἴτε καμπτόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς ἐναργείας καὶ τῶν αἰσθήσεων, εἴθ’, ὥς φασιν ἔνιοι, φιλοτιμίᾳ τινὶ καὶ διαφορᾷ πρὸς τοὺς Κλειτομάχου καὶ Φίλωνος συνήθεις τὸν Στωικὸν ἐκ μεταβολῆς [3] θεραπεύων λόγον ἐν τοῖς πλείστοις. ὁ δὲ Κικέρων ἐκεῖν’ ἠγάπα κἀκείνοις προσεῖχε μᾶλλον, διανοούμενος, εἰ παντάπασιν ἐκπέσοι τοῦ τὰ κοινὰ πράσσειν, δεῦρο μετενεγκάμενος τὸν βίον ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς καὶ τῆς πολιτείας ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ [4] μετὰ φιλοσοφίας καταζῆν. ἐπεὶ δ’ αὐτῷ Σύλλας τε προσηγγέλθη τεθνηκώς, καὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῖς γυμνασίοις ἀναρρωννύμενον εἰς ἕξιν ἐβάδιζε νεανικήν, ἥ τε φωνὴ λαμβάνουσα πλάσιν ἡδεῖα μὲν πρὸς ἀκοὴν ἐτέθραπτο καὶ πολλή, μετρίως δὲ πρὸς τὴν ἕξιν τοῦ σώματος ἥρμοστο, πολλὰ μὲν τῶν ἀπὸ Ῥώμης φίλων γραφόντων καὶ δεομένων, πολλὰ δ’ Ἀντιόχου παρακελευομένου τοῖς κοινοῖς ἐπιβαλεῖν πράγμασιν, αὖθις ὥσπερ ὄργανον ἐξηρτύετο τὸν ῥητορικὸν λόγον καὶ ἀνεκίνει τὴν πολιτικὴν δύναμιν, αὑτόν τε ταῖς μελέταις διαπονῶν καὶ τοὺς ἐπαινουμένους μετιὼν [5] ῥήτορας. ὅθεν εἰς Ἀσίαν καὶ Ῥόδον ἔπλευσε, καὶ τῶν μὲν Ἀσιανῶν ῥητόρων Ξενοκλεῖ τῷ Ἀδραμυττηνῷ καὶ Διονυσίῳ τῷ Μάγνητι καὶ Μενίππῳ τῷ Καρὶ συνεσχόλασεν, ἐν δὲ Ῥόδῳ ῥήτορι μὲν Ἀπολλωνίῳ τῷ Μόλωνος, φιλοσόφῳ [6] δὲ Ποσειδωνίῳ. λέγεται δὲ τὸν Ἀπολλώνιον οὐ συνιέντα τὴν Ῥωμαϊκὴν διάλεκτον δεηθῆναι τοῦ Κικέρωνος Ἑλληνιστὶ μελετῆσαι· τὸν δ’ ὑπακοῦσαι προθύμως, οἰόμενον [7] οὕτως ἔσεσθαι βελτίονα τὴν ἐπανόρθωσιν· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐμελέτησε, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἐκπεπλῆχθαι καὶ διαμιλλᾶσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους τοῖς ἐπαίνοις, τὸν δ’ Ἀπολλώνιον οὔτ’ ἀκροώμενον αὐτοῦ διαχυθῆναι, καὶ παυσαμένου σύννουν καθέζεσθαι πολὺν χρόνον· ἀχθομένου δὲ τοῦ Κικέρωνος εἰπεῖν· σὲ μὲν ὦ Κικέρων ἐπαινῶ καὶ θαυμάζω, τῆς δ’ Ἑλλάδος οἰκτίρω τὴν τύχην, ὁρῶν, ἃ μόνα τῶν καλῶν ἡμῖν ὑπελείπετο, καὶ ταῦτα Ῥωμαίοις διὰ σοῦ προσγινόμενα, παιδείαν καὶ λόγον.

[5] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Κικέρων ἐλπίδων μεστὸς ἐπὶ τὴν πολιτείαν φερόμενος, ὑπὸ χρησμοῦ τινος ἀπημβλύνθη τὴν ὁρμήν. ἐρομένῳ γὰρ αὐτῷ τὸν ἐν Δελφοῖς θεὸν ὅπως ἂν ἐνδοξότατος γένοιτο, προσέταξεν ἡ Πυθία τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν, ἀλλὰ μὴ τὴν τῶν πολλῶν δόξαν ἡγεμόνα ποιεῖσθαι τοῦ [2] βίου. καὶ τόν γε πρῶτον ἐν Ῥώμῃ χρόνον εὐλαβῶς διῆγε καὶ ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ὀκνηρῶς προσῄει καὶ παρημελεῖτο, ταῦτα δὴ τὰ Ῥωμαίων τοῖς βαναυσοτάτοις πρόχειρα καὶ συνήθη [3] ῥήματα Γραικὸς καὶ σχολαστικὸς ἀκούων. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ φύσει φιλότιμος ὢν καὶ παροξυνόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τῶν φίλων ἐπέδωκεν εἰς τὸ συνηγορεῖν ἑαυτόν, οὐκ ἠρέμα τῷ πρωτείῳ προσῆλθεν, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἐξέλαμψε τῇ δόξῃ καὶ διέφερε πολὺ τῶν ἀγωνιζομένων ἐπ’ ἀγορᾶς.

[4] λέγεται δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς οὐδὲν ἧττον νοσήσας τοῦ Δημοσθένους περὶ τὴν ὑπόκρισιν, τοῦτο μὲν Ῥωσκίῳ τῷ κωμῳδῷ, τοῦτο δ’ Αἰσώπῳ τῷ τραγῳδῷ προσέχειν ἐπιμελῶς.

[5] τὸν δ’ Αἴσωπον τοῦτον ἱστοροῦσιν ὑποκρινόμενον ἐν θεάτρῳ τὸν περὶ τῆς τιμωρίας τοῦ Θυέστου βουλευόμενον Ἀτρέα, τῶν ὑπηρετῶν τινος ἄφνω παραδραμόντος, ἔξω τῶν ἑαυτοῦ λογισμῶν διὰ τὸ πάθος ὄντα τῷ σκήπτρῳ πατάξαι [6] καὶ ἀνελεῖν. οὐ μικρὰ δὴ πρὸς τὸ πείθειν ὑπῆρχεν ἐκ τοῦ ὑποκρίνεσθαι ῥοπὴ τῷ Κικέρωνι, καὶ τούς γε τῷ μέγα βοᾶν χρωμένους ῥήτορας ἐπισκώπτων, ἔλεγε δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἐπὶ τὴν κραυγὴν ὥσπερ χωλοὺς ἐφ’ ἵππον πηδᾶν. ἡ δὲ περὶ τὰ σκώμματα καὶ τὴν παιδιὰν ταύτην εὐτραπελία δικανικὸν μὲν ἐδόκει καὶ γλαφυρὸν εἶναι, χρώμενος δ’ αὐτῇ κατακόρως, πολλοὺς ἐλύπει καὶ κακοηθείας ἐλάμβανε δόξαν.

[6] [1] Ἀποδειχθεὶς δὲ ταμίας ἐν σιτοδείᾳ καὶ λαχὼν Σικελίαν, ἠνώχλησε τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐν ἀρχῇ, σῖτον εἰς Ῥώμην ἀποστέλλειν ἀναγκαζομένοις. ὕστερον δὲ τῆς ἐπιμελείας καὶ δικαιοσύνης καὶ πρᾳότητος αὐτοῦ πεῖραν λαμβάνοντες, [2] ὡς οὐδένα τῶν πώποθ’ ἡγεμόνων ἐτίμησαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλοὶ τῶν ἀπὸ Ῥώμης νέων ἔνδοξοι καὶ γεγονότες καλῶς, αἰτίαν ἔχοντες ἀταξίας καὶ μαλακίας περὶ τὸν πόλεμον, ἀνεπέμφθησαν ἐπὶ τὸν στρατηγὸν τῆς Σικελίας, συνεῖπεν [3] αὐτοῖς ὁ Κικέρων ἐπιφανῶς καὶ περιεποίησεν. ἐπὶ τούτοις οὖν μέγα φρονῶν, εἰς Ῥώμην βαδίζων γελοῖόν τι παθεῖν φησι (pro Planc. 26, 64). συντυχὼν γὰρ ἀνδρὶ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν φίλῳ δοκοῦντι περὶ Καμπανίαν, ἐρέσθαι τίνα δὴ τῶν πεπραγμένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λόγον ἔχουσι Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ τί φρονοῦσιν, ὡς ὀνόματος καὶ δόξης τῶν πεπραγμένων αὑτῷ τὴν [4] πόλιν ἅπασαν ἐμπεπληκώς· τὸν δ’ εἰπεῖν· ποῦ γὰρ ἦς ὦ Κικέρων τὸν χρόνον τοῦτον; τότε μὲν οὖν ἐξαθυμῆσαι παντάπασιν, εἴ γε καθάπερ εἰς πέλαγος ἀχανὲς τὴν πόλιν ἐμπεσὼν ὁ περὶ αὐτοῦ λόγος οὐδὲν εἰς δόξαν ἐπίδηλον πεποίηκεν· ὕστερον δὲ λογισμὸν αὑτῷ διδοὺς πολὺ τῆς φιλοτιμίας ὑφελεῖν, ὡς πρὸς ἀόριστον πρᾶγμα τὴν δόξαν [5] ἁμιλλώμενος καὶ πέρας ἐφικτὸν οὐκ ἔχουσαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τό γε χαίρειν ἐπαινούμενον διαφερόντως καὶ πρὸς δόξαν ἐμπαθέστερον ἔχειν ἄχρι παντὸς αὐτῷ παρέμεινε καὶ πολλοὺς πολλάκις τῶν ὀρθῶν ἐπετάραξε λογισμῶν.

[7] [1] Ἁπτόμενος δὲ τῆς πολιτείας προθυμότερον, αἰσχρὸν ἡγεῖτο τοὺς μὲν βαναύσους, ὀργάνοις χρωμένους καὶ σκεύεσιν ἀψύχοις, μηδενὸς ἀγνοεῖν ὄνομα μηδὲ χώραν ἢ δύναμιν αὐτῶν, τὸν δὲ πολιτικόν, ᾧ δι’ ἀνθρώπων αἱ κοιναὶ πράξεις περαίνονται, ῥᾳθύμως καὶ ἀμελῶς ἔχειν περὶ τὴν [2] τῶν πολιτῶν γνῶσιν. ὅθεν οὐ μόνον τῶν ὀνομάτων μνημονεύειν εἴθιζεν ἑαυτόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν τόπον ἐν ᾧ τῶν γνωρίμων ἕκαστος οἰκεῖ, καὶ χωρίον ὃ κέκτηται, καὶ φίλους οἷστισι χρῆται καὶ γείτονας γινώσκειν, καὶ πᾶσαν ὁδὸν τῆς Ἰταλίας διαπορευομένῳ Κικέρωνι πρόχειρον ἦν εἰπεῖν καὶ ἐπιδεῖξαι τοὺς τῶν φίλων ἀγροὺς καὶ τὰς ἐπαύλεις.

[3] οὐσίαν δὲ μικρὰν μέν, ἱκανὴν δὲ καὶ ταῖς δαπάναις ἐπαρκῆ κεκτημένος, ἐθαυμάζετο μήτε μισθοὺς μήτε δῶρα προσιέμενος ἀπὸ τῆς συνηγορίας, μάλιστα δ’ ὅτε τὴν κατὰ [4] Βέρρου δίκην ἀνέλαβε. τοῦτον γὰρ στρατηγὼν γεγονότα τῆς Σικελίας καὶ πολλὰ πεπονηρευμένον τῶν Σικελιωτῶν διωκόντων εἷλεν, οὐκ εἰπών, ἀλλ’ ἐξ αὐτοῦ τρόπον [5] τινὰ τοῦ μὴ εἰπεῖν. τῶν γὰρ στρατηγῶν τῷ Βέρρῃ χαριζομένων καὶ τὴν κρίσιν ὑπερθέσεσι καὶ διακρούσεσι πολλαῖς εἰς τὴν ὑστάτην ἐκβαλλόντων, ὡς ἦν πρόδηλον ὅτι τοῖς λόγοις ὁ τῆς ἡμέρας οὐκ ἐξαρκέσει χρόνος οὐδὲ λήψεται πέρας ἡ κρίσις, ἀναστὰς ὁ Κικέρων ἔφη μὴ δεῖσθαι λόγων, ἀλλ’ ἐπαγαγὼν τοὺς μάρτυρας καὶ ἀνακρίνας, ἐκέλευσε [6] φέρειν τὴν ψῆφον τοὺς δικαστάς. ὅμως δὲ πολλὰ χαρίεντα διαμνημονεύεται καὶ περὶ ἐκείνην αὐτοῦ τὴν δίκην. βέρρην γὰρ οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι τὸν ἐκτετμημένον χοῖρον καλοῦσιν. ὡς οὖν ἀπελευθερικὸς ἄνθρωπος ἔνοχος τῷ ἰουδαΐζειν ὄνομα Κεκίλιος ἐβούλετο παρωσάμενος τοὺς Σικελιώτας κατηγορεῖν τοῦ Βέρρου, τί Ἰουδαίῳ πρὸς χοῖρον; [7] ἔφη ὁ Κικέρων. ἦν δὲ τῷ Βέρρῃ ἀντίπαις υἱὸς οὐκ ἐλευθερίως δοκῶν προΐστασθαι τῆς ὥρας. λοιδορηθεὶς οὖν ὁ Κικέρων εἰς μαλακίαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Βέρρου, τοῖς υἱοῖς εἶπεν [8] ἐντὸς θυρῶν δεῖ λοιδορεῖσθαι. τοῦ δὲ ῥήτορος Ὁρτησίου τὴν μὲν εὐθεῖαν τῷ Βέρρῃ συνειπεῖν μὴ θελήσαντος, ἐν δὲ τῷ τιμήματι πεισθέντος παραγενέσθαι καὶ λαβόντος ἐλεφαντίνην Σφίγγα μισθόν, εἶπέ τι πλαγίως ὁ Κικέρων πρὸς αὐτόν· τοῦ δὲ φήσαντος αἰνιγμάτων λύσεως ἀπείρως ἔχειν, καὶ μὴν ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας ἔφη τὴν Σφίγγα ἔχεις.

[8] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τοῦ Βέρρου καταδικασθέντος, ἑβδομήκοντα πέντε μυριάδων τιμησάμενος τὴν δίκην ὁ Κικέρων διαβολὴν ἔσχεν, ὡς ἐπ’ ἀργυρίῳ τὸ τίμημα καθυφειμένος.

[2] οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ οἱ Σικελιῶται χάριν εἰδότες ἀγορανομοῦντος αὐτοῦ πολλὰ μὲν ἄγοντες ἀπὸ τῆς νήσου, πολλὰ δὲ φέροντες ἧκον, ὧν οὐδὲν ἐποιήσατο κέρδος, ἀλλ’ ὅσον ἐπευωνίσαι τὴν ἀγορὰν ἀπεχρήσατο τῇ φιλοτιμίᾳ τῶν ἀνθρώπων.

[3] Ἐκέκτητο δὲ χωρίον καλὸν ἐν Ἄρποις, καὶ περὶ Νέαν πόλιν ἦν ἀγρὸς καὶ περὶ Πομπηίους ἕτερος, οὐ μεγάλοι, φερνή τε Τερεντίας τῆς γυναικὸς προσεγένετο μυριάδων δώδεκα, καὶ κληρονομία τις εἰς ἐννέα συναχθεῖσα δηναρίων [4] μυριάδας. ἀπὸ τούτων ἐλευθερίως ἅμα καὶ σωφρόνως διῆγε μετὰ τῶν συμβιούντων Ἑλλήνων καὶ Ῥωμαίων φιλολογῶν, σπάνιον εἴ ποτε πρὸ δυσμῶν ἡλίου κατακλινόμενος, οὐχ οὕτω δι’ ἀσχολίαν ὡς διὰ τὸ σῶμα τῷ στομάχῳ [5] μοχθηρῶς διακείμενον. ἦν δὲ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην περὶ τὸ σῶμα θεραπείαν ἀκριβὴς καὶ περιττός, ὥστε καὶ τρίψεσι καὶ περιπάτοις ἀριθμῷ τεταγμένοις χρῆσθαι, καὶ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον διαπαιδαγωγῶν τὴν ἕξιν ἄνοσον καὶ διαρκῆ πρὸς πολλοὺς καὶ μεγάλους ἀγῶνας καὶ πόνους συνεῖχεν.

[6] οἰκίαν δὲ τὴν μὲν πατρῴαν τῷ ἀδελφῷ παρεχώρησεν, αὐτὸς δ’ ᾤκει περὶ τὸ Παλάτιον ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ μακρὰν βαδίζοντας ἐνοχλεῖσθαι τοὺς θεραπεύοντας αὐτόν. ἐθεράπευον δὲ καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπὶ θύρας φοιτῶντες οὐκ ἐλάσσονες ἢ Κράσσον ἐπὶ πλούτῳ καὶ Πομπήιον διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς στρατεύμασι δύναμιν, θαυμαζομένους μάλιστα Ῥωμαίων καὶ [7] μεγίστους ὄντας. Πομπήιος δὲ καὶ Κικέρωνα ἐθεράπευε, καὶ μέγα πρὸς δύναμιν αὐτῷ καὶ δόξαν ἡ Κικέρωνος συνέπραξε πολιτεία.

[9] [1] Στρατηγίαν δὲ μετιόντων ἅμα σὺν αὐτῷ πολλῶν καὶ γενναίων, πρῶτος ἁπάντων ἀνηγορεύθη, καὶ τὰς κρίσεις [2] ἔδοξε καθαρῶς καὶ καλῶς βραβεῦσαι. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Λικίνιος Μᾶκερ, ἀνὴρ καὶ καθ’ αὑτὸν ἰσχύων ἐν τῇ πόλει μέγα καὶ Κράσσῳ χρώμενος βοηθῷ, κρινόμενος κλοπῆς ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ, τῇ δὲ δυνάμει καὶ σπουδῇ πεποιθώς, ἔτι τὴν ψῆφον τῶν κριτῶν διαφερόντων, ἀπαλλαγεὶς οἴκαδε κείρασθαί τε τὴν κεφαλὴν κατὰ τάχος καὶ καθαρὸν ἱμάτιον λαβὼν ὡς νενικηκὼς αὖθις εἰς ἀγορὰν προϊέναι, τοῦ δὲ Κράσσου περὶ τὴν αὔλειον ἀπαντήσαντος αὐτῷ καὶ φράσαντος ὅτι πάσαις ἑάλωκε ταῖς ψήφοις, ἀναστρέψας καὶ κατακλινεὶς ἀποθανεῖν. τὸ δὲ πρᾶγμα τῷ Κικέρωνι δόξαν ἤνεγκεν ὡς ἐπιμελῶς βραβεύσαντι τὸ δικαστήριον.

[3] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Οὐατίνιος, ἀνὴρ ἔχων τι τραχὺ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας ὀλίγωρον ἐν ταῖς συνηγορίαις, χοιράδων δὲ τὸν τράχηλον περίπλεως, ᾐτεῖτό τι καταστὰς παρὰ τοῦ Κικέρωνος, καὶ μὴ διδόντος, ἀλλὰ βουλευομένου πολὺν χρόνον, εἶπεν ὡς οὐκ ἂν αὐτός γε διστάσειε περὶ τούτου στρατηγῶν, ἐπιστραφεὶς ὁ Κικέρων ἀλλ’ ἔγωγε εἶπεν οὐκ ἔχω τηλικοῦτον τράχηλον.

[4] Ἔτι δ’ ἡμέρας δύο ἢ τρεῖς ἔχοντι τῆς ἀρχῆς αὐτῷ προσήγαγέ τις Μανίλιον εὐθύνων κλοπῆς. ὁ δὲ Μανίλιος οὗτος εὔνοιαν εἶχε καὶ σπουδὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου, δοκῶν ἐλαύνεσθαι [5] διὰ Πομπήιον· ἐκείνου γὰρ ἦν φίλος. αἰτουμένου δ’ ἡμέρας αὐτοῦ, μίαν ὁ Κικέρων μόνην τὴν ἐπιοῦσαν ἔδωκε, καὶ ὁ δῆμος ἠγανάκτησεν, εἰθισμένων τῶν στρατηγῶν [6] δέκα τοὐλάχιστον ἡμέρας διδόναι τοῖς κινδυνεύουσι. τῶν δὲ δημάρχων ἀγαγόντων αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ κατηγορούντων, ἀκουσθῆναι δεηθεὶς εἶπεν, ὅτι τοῖς κινδυνεύουσιν ἀεί, καθ’ ὅσον οἱ νόμοι παρείκουσι, κεχρημένος ἐπιεικῶς καὶ φιλανθρώπως, δεινὸν ἡγεῖτο τῷ Μανιλίῳ ταὐτὰ μὴ παρασχεῖν· ἧς οὖν ἔτι μόνης κύριος ἦν ἡμέρας στρατηγῶν, ταύτην ἐπίτηδες ὁρίσαι· τὸ γὰρ εἰς ἄλλον ἄρχοντα τὴν κρίσιν ἐκβαλεῖν οὐκ εἶναι βουλομένου βοηθεῖν.

[7] ταῦτα λεχθέντα θαυμαστὴν ἐποίησε τοῦ δήμου μεταβολήν, καὶ πολλὰ κατευφημοῦντες αὐτόν, ἐδέοντο τὴν ὑπὲρ τοῦ Μανιλίου συνηγορίαν ἀναλαβεῖν. ὁ δ’ ὑπέστη προθύμως, οὐχ ἥκιστα διὰ Πομπήιον ἀπόντα, καὶ καταστὰς πάλιν ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς ἐδημηγόρησε, νεανικῶς τῶν ὀλιγαρχικῶν καὶ τῷ Πομπηίῳ φθονούντων καθαπτόμενος.

[10] [1] Ἐπὶ δὲ τὴν ὑπατείαν οὐχ ἧττον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀριστοκρατικῶν ἢ τῶν πολλῶν προήχθη, διὰ τὴν πόλιν ἐξ αἰτίας [2] αὐτῷ τοιᾶσδε συναγωνισαμένων. τῆς ὑπὸ Σύλλα γενομένης μεταβολῆς περὶ τὴν πολιτείαν ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν ἀτόπου φανείσης τοῖς πολλοῖς, τότε δ’ ὑπὸ χρόνου καὶ συνηθείας ἤδη τινὰ κατάστασιν ἔχειν οὐ φαύλην δοκούσης, ἦσαν οἱ τὰ παρόντα διασεῖσαι καὶ μεταθεῖναι ζητοῦντες ἰδίων ἕνεκα πλεονεξιῶν, οὐ πρὸς τὸ βέλτιστον, Πομπηίου μὲν ἔτι τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν ἐν Πόντῳ καὶ Ἀρμενίᾳ διαπολεμοῦντος, ἐν δὲ τῇ Ῥώμῃ μηδεμιᾶς ὑφεστώσης πρὸς τοὺς νεωτερίζοντας [3] ἀξιομάχου δυνάμεως. οὗτοι κορυφαῖον εἶχον ἄνδρα τολμητὴν καὶ μεγαλοπράγμονα καὶ ποικίλον τὸ ἦθος, Λεύκιον Κατιλίναν, ὃς αἰτίαν ποτὲ πρὸς ἄλλοις ἀδικήμασι μεγάλοις ἔλαβε παρθένῳ συγγεγονέναι θυγατρί, κτείνας δ’ ἀδελφὸν αὑτοῦ καὶ δίκην ἐπὶ τούτῳ φοβούμενος, ἔπεισε Σύλλαν ὡς ἔτι ζῶντα τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐν τοῖς [4] ἀποθανουμένοις προγράψαι. τοῦτον οὖν προστάτην οἱ πονηροὶ λαβόντες, ἄλλας τε πίστεις ἔδοσαν ἀλλήλοις καὶ καταθύσαντες ἄνθρωπον ἐγεύσαντο τῶν σαρκῶν. διέφθαρτο δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πολὺ μέρος τῆς ἐν τῇ πόλει νεότητος, ἡδονὰς καὶ πότους καὶ γυναικῶν ἔρωτας ἀεὶ προξενοῦντος ἑκάστῳ καὶ τὴν εἰς ταῦτα δαπάνην ἀφειδῶς παρασκευάζοντος.

[5] ἐπῆρτο δ’ ἥ τε Τυρρηνία πρὸς ἀπόστασιν ὅλη καὶ τὰ πολλὰ τῆς ἐντὸς Ἄλπεων Γαλατίας. ἐπισφαλέστατα δ’ ἡ Ῥώμη πρὸς μεταβολὴν εἶχε διὰ τὴν ἐν ταῖς οὐσίαις ἀνωμαλίαν, τῶν μὲν ἐν δόξῃ μάλιστα καὶ φρονήματι κατεπτωχευμένων εἰς θέατρα καὶ δεῖπνα καὶ φιλαρχίας καὶ οἰκοδομίας, τῶν δὲ πλούτων εἰς ἀγεννεῖς καὶ ταπεινοὺς συνερρυηκότων ἀνθρώπους, ὥστε μικρᾶς ῥοπῆς δεῖσθαι τὰ πράγματα καὶ πᾶν εἶναι τοῦ τολμήσαντος ἐκστῆσαι τὴν πολιτείαν, αὐτὴν ὑφ’ αὑτῆς νοσοῦσαν.

[11] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ βουλόμενος ὁ Κατιλίνας ἰσχυρόν τι προκαταλαβεῖν ὁρμητήριον, ὑπατείαν μετῄει, καὶ λαμπρὸς ἦν ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ὡς Γαΐῳ Ἀντωνίῳ συνυπατεύσων, ἀνδρὶ καθ’ αὑτὸν μὲν οὔτε πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον οὔτε πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον ἡγεμονικῷ, προσθήκῃ δ’ ἄγοντος ἑτέρου δυνάμεως ἐσομένῳ.

[2] ταῦτα δὴ τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν οἱ πλεῖστοι προαισθόμενοι, τὸν Κικέρωνα προῆγον ἐπὶ τὴν ὑπατείαν, καὶ τοῦ δήμου δεξαμένου προθύμως, ὁ μὲν Κατιλίνας ἐξέπεσε, [3] Κικέρων δὲ καὶ Γάιος Ἀντώνιος ᾑρέθησαν. καίτοι τῶν μετιόντων ὁ Κικέρων μόνος ἦν ἐξ ἱππικοῦ πατρός, οὐ βουλευτοῦ, γεγονώς.

[12] [1] Καὶ τὰ μὲν περὶ Κατιλίναν ἔμελλεν ἔτι, τοὺς πολλοὺς λανθάνοντα, προάγωνες δὲ μεγάλοι τὴν Κικέρωνος [2] ὑπατείαν ἐξεδέξαντο. τοῦτο μὲν γὰρ οἱ κεκωλυμένοι κατὰ τοὺς Σύλλα νόμους ἄρχειν, οὔτ’ ἀσθενεῖς ὄντες οὔτ’ ὀλίγοι, μετιόντες ἀρχὰς ἐδημαγώγουν, πολλὰ τῆς Σύλλα τυραννίδος ἀληθῆ μὲν καὶ δίκαια κατηγοροῦντες, οὐ μὴν ἐν δέοντι τὴν πολιτείαν οὐδὲ σὺν καιρῷ κινοῦντες, τοῦτο δὲ νόμους εἰσῆγον οἱ δήμαρχοι πρὸς τὴν αὐτὴν ὑπόθεσιν, δεκαδαρχίαν καθιστάντες ἀνδρῶν αὐτοκρατόρων, οἷς ἐφεῖτο πάσης μὲν Ἰταλίας, πάσης δὲ Συρίας καὶ ὅσα διὰ Πομπηίου νεωστὶ προσώριστο, κυρίους ὄντας πωλεῖν τὰ δημόσια, κρίνειν οὓς δοκοίη, φυγάδας ἐκβάλλειν, συνοικίζειν πόλεις, χρήματα λαμβάνειν ἐκ τοῦ ταμιείου, στρατιώτας [3] τρέφειν καὶ καταλέγειν ὁπόσων δέοιντο. διὸ καὶ τῷ νόμῳ προσεῖχον ἄλλοι τε τῶν ἐπιφανῶν καὶ πρῶτος Ἀντώνιος ὁ τοῦ Κικέρωνος συνάρχων, ὡς τῶν δέκα γενησόμενος· ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ τὸν Κατιλίνα νεωτερισμὸν εἰδὼς οὐ [4] δυσχεραίνειν ὑπὸ πλήθους δανείων. ὃ μάλιστα τοῖς ἀρίστοις φόβον παρεῖχε. καὶ τοῦτο πρῶτον θεραπεύων ὁ Κικέρων, ἐκείνῳ μὲν ἐψηφίσατο τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν Μακεδονίαν, ἑαυτῷ δὲ τὴν Γαλατίαν διδομένην παρῃτήσατο, καὶ κατειργάσατο τῇ χάριτι ταύτῃ τὸν Ἀντώνιον ὥσπερ ὑποκριτὴν [5] ἔμμισθον αὐτῷ τὰ δεύτερα λέγειν ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος. ὡς δ’ οὗτος ἑαλώκει καὶ χειροήθης ἐγεγόνει, μᾶλλον ἤδη θαρρῶν ὁ Κικέρων ἐνίστατο πρὸς τοὺς καινοτομοῦντας. ἐν μὲν οὖν τῇ βουλῇ κατηγορίαν τινὰ τοῦ νόμου διαθέμενος, οὕτως ἐξέπληξεν αὐτοὺς τοὺς εἰσφέροντας, ὥστε [6] μηδέν’ ἀντιλέγειν. ἐπεὶ δ’ αὖθις ἐπεχείρουν καὶ παρασκευασάμενοι προεκαλοῦντο τοὺς ὑπάτους ἐπὶ τὸν δῆμον, οὐδὲν ὑποδείσας ὁ Κικέρων, ἀλλὰ τὴν βουλὴν ἕπεσθαι κελεύσας καὶ προελθών, οὐ μόνον ἐκεῖνον ἐξέβαλε τὸν νόμον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀπογνῶναι τοὺς δημάρχους ἐποίησε, παρὰ τοσοῦτον τῷ λόγῳ κρατηθέντας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ.

[13] [1] Μάλιστα γὰρ οὗτος ὁ ἀνὴρ ἐπέδειξε Ῥωμαίοις, ὅσον ἡδονῆς λόγος τῷ καλῷ προστίθησι, καὶ ὅτι τὸ δίκαιον ἀήττητόν ἐστιν, ἂν ὀρθῶς λέγηται, καὶ δεῖ τὸν ἐμμελῶς πολιτευόμενον ἀεὶ τῷ μὲν ἔργῳ τὸ καλὸν ἀντὶ τοῦ κολακεύοντος αἱρεῖσθαι, τῷ δὲ λόγῳ τὸ λυποῦν ἀφαιρεῖν [2] τοῦ συμφέροντος. δεῖγμα δ’ αὐτοῦ τῆς περὶ τὸν λόγον χάριτος καὶ τὸ παρὰ τὰς θέας ἐν τῇ ὑπατείᾳ γενόμενον. τῶν γὰρ ἱππικῶν πρότερον ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις ἀναμεμειγμένων τοῖς πολλοῖς καὶ μετὰ τοῦ δήμου θεωμένων ὡς ἔτυχε, πρῶτος διέκρινεν ἐπὶ τιμῇ τοὺς ἱππέας ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν Μᾶρκος Ὄθων στρατηγῶν, καὶ κατένειμεν ἰδίαν ἐκείνοις θέαν, ἣν ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἐξαίρετον ἔχουσι.

[3] τοῦτο πρὸς ἀτιμίαν ὁ δῆμος ἔλαβε, καὶ φανέντος ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ τοῦ Ὄθωνος ἐφυβρίζων ἐσύριττεν, οἱ δ’ ἱππεῖς ὑπέλαβον κρότῳ τὸν ἄνδρα λαμπρῶς· αὖθις δ’ ὁ δῆμος ἐπέτεινε τὸν [4] συριγμόν, εἶτ’ ἐκεῖνοι τὸν κρότον. ἐκ δὲ τούτου τραπόμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐχρῶντο λοιδορίαις, καὶ τὸ θέατρον ἀκοσμία κατεῖχεν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Κικέρων ἧκε πυθόμενος, καὶ τὸν δῆμον ἐκκαλέσας πρὸς τὸ τῆς Ἐνυοῦς ἱερὸν ἐπετίμησε καὶ παρῄνεσεν, ἀπελθόντες εἰς τὸ θέατρον αὖθις ἐκρότουν τὸν Ὄθωνα λαμπρῶς, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἱππέας ἅμιλλαν ἐποιοῦντο περὶ τιμῶν καὶ δόξης τοῦ ἀνδρός.

[14] [1] Ἡ δὲ περὶ τὸν Κατιλίναν συνωμοσία, πτήξασα καὶ καταδείσασα τὴν ἀρχήν, αὖθις ἀνεθάρρει, καὶ συνῆγον ἀλλήλους καὶ παρεκάλουν εὐτολμότερον ἅπτεσθαι τῶν πραγμάτων πρὶν ἐπανελθεῖν Πομπήιον, ἤδη λεγόμενον [2] ὑποστρέφειν μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως. μάλιστα δὲ τὸν Κατιλίναν ἐξηρέθιζον οἱ Σύλλα πάλαι στρατιῶται, διαπεφυκότες μὲν ὅλης τῆς Ἰταλίας, πλεῖστοι δὲ καὶ μαχιμώτατοι ταῖς Τυρρηνίσιν ἐγκατεσπαρμένοι πόλεσιν, ἁρπαγὰς δὲ πάλιν καὶ διαφορήσεις πλούτων ἑτοίμων ὀνειροπολοῦντες.

[3] οὗτοι γὰρ ἡγεμόνα Μάλλιον ἔχοντες, ἄνδρα τῶν ἐπιφανῶς ὑπὸ Σύλλᾳ στρατευσαμένων, συνίσταντο τῷ Κατιλίνᾳ καὶ παρῆσαν εἰς Ῥώμην συναρχαιρεσιάσοντες. ὑπατείαν γὰρ αὖθις μετῄει, βεβουλευμένος ἀνελεῖν τὸν [4] Κικέρωνα περὶ αὐτὸν τὸν τῶν ἀρχαιρεσιῶν θόρυβον. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ τὸ δαιμόνιον προσημαίνειν τὰ πρασσόμενα σεισμοῖς καὶ κεραυνοῖς καὶ φάσμασιν. αἱ δ’ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων μηνύσεις ἀληθεῖς μὲν ἦσαν, οὔπω δ’ εἰς ἔλεγχον ἀποχρῶσαι κατ’ ἀνδρὸς ἐνδόξου καὶ δυναμένου μέγα τοῦ Κατιλίνα· [5] διὸ τὴν ἡμέραν τῶν ἀρχαιρεσιῶν ὑπερθέμενος ὁ Κικέρων ἐκάλει τὸν Κατιλίναν εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον καὶ περὶ τῶν [6] λεγομένων ἀνέκρινεν. ὁ δὲ πολλοὺς οἰόμενος εἶναι τοὺς πραγμάτων καινῶν ἐφιεμένους ἐν τῇ βουλῇ, καὶ ἅμα τοῖς συνωμόταις ἐνδεικνύμενος, ἀπεκρίνατο τῷ Κικέρωνι μανικὴν ἀπόκρισιν. τί γάρ ἔφη πράττω δεινόν, εἰ δυοῖν σωμάτων ὄντων, τοῦ μὲν ἰσχνοῦ καὶ κατεφθινηκότος, ἔχοντος δὲ κεφαλήν, τοῦ δ’ ἀκεφάλου μέν, ἰσχυροῦ δὲ καὶ μεγάλου, τούτῳ κεφαλὴν αὐτὸς ἐπιτίθημι; [7] τούτων εἴς τε τὴν βουλὴν καὶ τὸν δῆμον ᾐνιγμένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, μᾶλλον ὁ Κικέρων ἔδεισε, καὶ τεθωρακισμένον αὐτὸν οἵ τε δυνατοὶ πάντες ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκίας καὶ τῶν νέων [8] πολλοὶ κατῆγον εἰς τὸ πεδίον. τοῦ δὲ θώρακος ἐπίτηδες ὑπέφαινέ τι παραλύσας ἐκ τῶν ὤμων τοῦ χιτῶνος, ἐνδεικνύμενος τοῖς ὁρῶσι τὸν κίνδυνον. οἱ δ’ ἠγανάκτουν καὶ συνεστρέφοντο περὶ αὐτόν, καὶ τέλος ἐν ταῖς ψήφοις τὸν μὲν Κατιλίναν αὖθις ἐξέβαλον, εἵλοντο δὲ Σιλανὸν ὕπατον καὶ Μουρήναν.

[15] [1] Οὐ πολλῷ δ’ ὕστερον τούτων ἤδη τῷ Κατιλίνᾳ τῶν ἐν Τυρρηνίᾳ στρατευμάτων συνερχομένων καὶ καταλοχιζομένων, καὶ τῆς ὡρισμένης πρὸς τὴν ἐπίθεσιν ἡμέρας ἐγγὺς οὔσης, ἧκον ἐπὶ τὴν Κικέρωνος οἰκίαν περὶ μέσας νύκτας ἄνδρες οἱ πρῶτοι καὶ δυνατώτατοι Ῥωμαίων, Μᾶρκος τε Κράσσος καὶ Μᾶρκος Μάρκελλος καὶ Σκιπίων Μέτελλος, κόψαντες δὲ τὰς θύρας καὶ καλέσαντες τὸν θυρωρόν, ἐκέλευον ἐπεγεῖραι καὶ φράσαι Κικέρωνι τὴν παρουσίαν [2] αὐτῶν. ἦν δὲ τοιόνδε· τῷ Κράσσῳ μετὰ δεῖπνον ἐπιστολὰς ἀποδίδωσιν ὁ θυρωρός, ὑπὸ δή τινος ἀνθρώπου κομισθείσας ἀγνῶτος, ἄλλας ἄλλοις ἐπιγεγραμμένας, αὐτῷ [3] δὲ Κράσσῳ μίαν ἀδέσποτον. ἣν μόνην ἀναγνοὺς ὁ Κράσσος, ὡς ἔφραζε τὰ γράμματα φόνον γενησόμενον πολὺν διὰ Κατιλίνα καὶ παρῄνει τῆς πόλεως ὑπεξελθεῖν, τὰς ἄλλας οὐκ ἔλυσεν, ἀλλ’ ἧκεν εὐθὺς πρὸς τὸν Κικέρωνα, πληγεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ δεινοῦ καί τι καὶ τῆς αἰτίας ἀπολυόμενος, ἣν [4] ἔσχε διὰ φιλίαν τοῦ Κατιλίνα. βουλευσάμενος οὖν ὁ Κικέρων ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ βουλὴν συνήγαγε, καὶ τὰς ἐπιστολὰς κομίσας ἀπέδωκεν οἷς ἦσαν ἐπεσταλμέναι, κελεύσας φανερῶς ἀναγνῶναι. πᾶσαι δ’ ὁμοίως τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν ἔφραζον.

[5] ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ Κόιντος Ἄρριος, ἀνὴρ στρατηγικός, εἰσήγγελλε τοὺς ἐν Τυρρηνίᾳ καταλοχισμούς, καὶ Μάλλιος ἀπηγγέλλετο σὺν χειρὶ μεγάλῃ περὶ τὰς πόλεις ἐκείνας αἰωρούμενος ἀεί τι προσδοκᾶν καινὸν ἀπὸ τῆς Ῥώμης, γίνεται δόγμα τῆς βουλῆς παρακαταθέσθαι τοῖς ὑπάτοις τὰ πράγματα, δεξαμένους δ’ ἐκείνους ὡς ἐπίστανται διοικεῖν καὶ σῴζειν τὴν πόλιν. τοῦτο δ’ οὐ πολλάκις, ἀλλ’ ὅταν τι μέγα δείσῃ, ποιεῖν εἴωθεν ἡ σύγκλητος.

[16] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ταύτην λαβὼν τὴν ἐξουσίαν ὁ Κικέρων τὰ μὲν ἔξω πράγματα Κοΐντῳ Μετέλλῳ διεπίστευσε, τὴν δὲ πόλιν εἶχε διὰ χειρὸς καὶ καθ’ ἡμέραν προῄει δορυφορούμενος ὑπ’ ἀνδρῶν τοσούτων τὸ πλῆθος, ὥστε τῆς ἀγορᾶς πολὺ μέρος κατέχειν ἐμβάλλοντος αὐτοῦ τοὺς παραπέμποντας, οὐκέτι καρτερῶν τὴν μέλλησιν ὁ Κατιλίνας, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐκπηδᾶν ἔγνω πρὸς τὸν Μάλλιον ἐπὶ τὸ στράτευμα, [καὶ] Μάρκιον δὲ καὶ Κέθηγον ἐκέλευσε ξίφη λαβόντας ἐλθεῖν ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας ἕωθεν ὡς ἀσπασομένους τὸν Κικέρωνα καὶ [2] διαχρήσασθαι προσπεσόντας. τοῦτο Φουλβία, γυνὴ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν, ἐξήγγειλε τῷ Κικέρωνι, νυκτὸς ἐλθοῦσα καὶ [3] διακελευσαμένη φυλάττεσθαι τοὺς περὶ τὸν Κέθηγον. οἱ δ’ ἧκον ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ, καὶ κωλυθέντες εἰσελθεῖν ἠγανάκτουν καὶ κατεβόων ἐπὶ ταῖς θύραις, ὥσθ’ ὑποπτότεροι γενέσθαι. προελθὼν δ’ ὁ Κικέρων ἐκάλει τὴν σύγκλητον εἰς τὸ τοῦ Στησίου Διὸς ἱερόν, ὃν Στάτορα Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν, ἱδρυμένον ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς ἱερᾶς ὁδοῦ πρὸς τὸ Παλάτιον ἀνιόντων.

[4] ἐνταῦθα καὶ τοῦ Κατιλίνα μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἐλθόντος ὡς ἀπολογησομένου, συγκαθίσαι μὲν οὐδεὶς ὑπέμεινε τῶν συγκλητικῶν, ἀλλὰ πάντες ἀπὸ τοῦ βάθρου μετῆλθον.

[5] ἀρξάμενος δὲ λέγειν ἐθορυβεῖτο, καὶ τέλος ἀναστὰς ὁ Κικέρων προσέταξεν αὐτῷ τῆς πόλεως ἀπαλλάττεσθαι· δεῖν γὰρ αὐτοῦ μὲν ἐν λόγοις, ἐκείνου δ’ ἐν ὅπλοις πολιτευομένου, [6] μέσον εἶναι τὸ τεῖχος. ὁ μὲν οὖν Κατιλίνας εὐθὺς ἐξελθὼν μετὰ τριακοσίων ὁπλοφόρων, καὶ περιστησάμενος αὑτῷ ῥαβδουχίας ὡς ἄρχοντι καὶ πελέκεις καὶ σημαίας ἐπαράμενος, πρὸς τὸν Μάλλιον ἐχώρει, καὶ δισμυρίων ὁμοῦ τι συνηθροισμένων ἐπῄει τὰς πόλεις ἀφιστὰς καὶ ἀναπείθων, ὥστε τοῦ πολέμου φανεροῦ γεγονότος τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἀποσταλῆναι διαμαχούμενον.

[17] [1] Τοὺς δ’ ὑπολειφθέντας ἐν τῇ πόλει τῶν διεφθαρμένων ὑπὸ τοῦ Κατιλίνα συνῆγε καὶ παρεθάρρυνε Κορνήλιος Λέντλος Σούρας ἐπίκλησιν, ἀνὴρ γένους μὲν ἐνδόξου, βεβιωκὼς δὲ φαύλως καὶ δι’ ἀσέλγειαν ἐξεληλαμένος τῆς βουλῆς πρότερον, τότε δὲ στρατηγῶν τὸ δεύτερον, ὡς ἔθος ἐστὶ τοῖς ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς ἀνακτωμένοις τὸ βουλευτικὸν [2] ἀξίωμα. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐπίκλησιν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τὸν Σούραν ἐξ αἰτίας τοιαύτης. ἐν τοῖς κατὰ Σύλλαν χρόνοις ταμιεύων, συχνὰ τῶν δημοσίων χρημάτων ἀπώλεσε καὶ [3] διέφθειρεν. ἀγανακτοῦντος δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα καὶ λόγον ἀπαιτοῦντος ἐν τῇ συγκλήτῳ, προελθὼν ὀλιγώρως πάνυ καὶ καταφρονητικῶς, λόγον μὲν οὐκ ἔφη διδόναι, παρεῖχε δὲ τὴν κνήμην, ὥσπερ εἰώθασιν οἱ παῖδες ὅταν ἐν τῷ σφαιρίζειν [4] διαμάρτωσιν. ἐκ τούτου Σούρας παρωνομάσθη· σούραν γὰρ Ῥωμαῖοι τὴν κνήμην λέγουσι. πάλιν δὲ δίκην ἔχων καὶ διαφθείρας ἐνίους τῶν δικαστῶν, ἐπεὶ δυσὶ μόναις ἀπέφυγε ψήφοις, ἔφη παρανάλωμα γεγονέναι τὸ θατέρῳ κριτῇ δοθέν· ἀρκεῖν γὰρ εἰ καὶ μιᾷ ψήφῳ μόνον ἀπελύθη.

[5] τοῦτον ὄντα τῇ φύσει τοιοῦτον καὶ κεκινημένον ὑπὸ τοῦ Κατιλίνα προσδιέφθειραν ἐλπίσι κεναῖς ψευδομάντεις τινὲς καὶ γόητες, ἔπη πεπλασμένα καὶ χρησμοὺς ᾄδοντες ὡς ἐκ τῶν Σιβυλλείων, προδηλοῦντας εἱμαρμένους εἶναι τῇ Ῥώμῃ Κορνηλίους τρεῖς μονάρχους, ὧν δύο μὲν ἤδη πεπληρωκέναι τὸ χρεών, Κίνναν τε καὶ Σύλλαν, τρίτῳ δὲ λοιπῷ Κορνηλίων ἐκείνῳ φέροντα τὴν μοναρχίαν ἥκειν τὸν δαίμονα, καὶ δεῖν πάντως δέχεσθαι καὶ μὴ διαφθείρειν μέλλοντα τοὺς καιροὺς ὥσπερ Κατιλίναν.

[18] [1] Οὐδὲν οὖν ἐπενόει κακὸν ὁ Λέντλος ἰάσιμον, ἀλλ’ ἐδέδοκτο τὴν βουλὴν ἅπασαν ἀναιρεῖν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν ὅσους δύναιντο, τήν τε πόλιν αὐτὴν καταπιμπράναι, φείδεσθαι δὲ μηδενὸς ἢ τῶν Πομπηίου τέκνων· ταῦτα δ’ ἐξαρπασαμένους ἔχειν ὑφ’ αὑτοῖς καὶ φυλάττειν ὅμηρα τῶν πρὸς Πομπήιον διαλύσεων· ἤδη γὰρ ἐφοίτα πολὺς λόγος καὶ βέβαιος ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ κατιόντος ἀπὸ τῆς μεγάλης [2] στρατείας. καὶ νὺξ μὲν ὥριστο πρὸς τὴν ἐπίθεσιν μία τῶν Κρονιάδων, ξίφη δὲ καὶ στυππεῖον καὶ θεῖον εἰς τὴν Κεθήγου [3] φέροντες οἰκίαν ἀπέκρυψαν. ἄνδρας δὲ τάξαντες ἑκατὸν καὶ μέρη τοσαῦτα τῆς Ῥώμης, ἕκαστον ἐφ’ ἑκάστῳ διεκλήρωσαν, ὡς δι’ ὀλίγου πολλῶν ἀναψάντων φλέγοιτο πανταχόθεν ἡ πόλις. ἄλλοι δὲ τοὺς ὀχετοὺς ἔμελλον ἐμφράξαντες [4] ἀποσφάττειν τοὺς ὑδρευομένους. πραττομένων δὲ τούτων ἔτυχον ἐπιδημοῦντες Ἀλλοβρίγων δύο πρέσβεις, ἔθνους μάλιστα δὴ τότε πονηρὰ πράττοντος καὶ βαρυνομένου [5] τὴν ἡγεμονίαν. τούτους οἱ περὶ Λέντλον ὠφελίμους ἡγούμενοι πρὸς τὸ κινῆσαι καὶ μεταβαλεῖν τὴν Γαλατίαν, ἐποιήσαντο συνωμότας, καὶ γράμματα μὲν αὐτοῖς πρὸς τὴν ἐκεῖ βουλήν, γράμματα δὲ πρὸς Κατιλίναν ἔδοσαν, τῇ μὲν ὑπισχνούμενοι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, τὸν δὲ Κατιλίναν παρακαλοῦντες ἐλευθερώσαντα τοὺς δούλους [6] ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ἐλαύνειν. συναπέστελλον δὲ μετ’ αὐτῶν πρὸς τὸν Κατιλίναν Τίτον τινὰ Κροτωνιάτην, κομίζοντα [7] τὰς ἐπιστολάς. οἷα δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἀσταθμήτων καὶ μετ’ οἴνου τὰ πολλὰ καὶ γυναικῶν ἀλλήλοις ἐντυγχανόντων βουλεύματα πόνῳ καὶ λογισμῷ νήφοντι καὶ συνέσει περιττῇ διώκων ὁ Κικέρων, καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν ἔχων ἔξωθεν ἐπισκοποῦντας τὰ πραττόμενα καὶ συνεξιχνεύοντας αὐτῷ, πολλοῖς δὲ τῶν μετέχειν τῆς συνωμοσίας δοκούντων διαλεγόμενος κρύφα καὶ πιστεύων, ἔγνω τὴν πρὸς τοὺς ξένους κοινολογίαν, καὶ νυκτὸς ἐνεδρεύσας ἔλαβε τὸν Κροτωνιάτην καὶ τὰ γράμματα, συνεργούντων [ἀλλήλοις] ἀδήλως τῶν Ἀλλοβρίγων.

[19] [1] Ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ βουλὴν ἀθροίσας εἰς τὸ τῆς Ὁμονοίας ἱερόν, ἐξανέγνω τὰ γράμματα καὶ τῶν μηνυτῶν διήκουσεν. ἔφη δὲ καὶ Σιλανὸς Ἰούνιος ἀκηκοέναι τινὰς Κεθήγου λέγοντος, ὡς ὕπατοί τε τρεῖς καὶ στρατηγοὶ τέτταρες ἀναιρεῖσθαι μέλλουσι. τοιαῦτα δ’ ἕτερα καὶ Πείσων, ἀνὴρ [2] ὑπατικός, εἰσήγγειλε. Γάιος δὲ Σουλπίκιος, εἷς τῶν στρατηγῶν, ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν πεμφθεὶς τοῦ. Κεθήγου, πολλὰ μὲν ἐν αὐτῇ βέλη καὶ ὅπλα, πλεῖστα δὲ ξίφη καὶ μαχαίρας εὗρε, [3] νεοθήκτους ἁπάσας. τέλος δὲ τῷ Κροτωνιάτῃ ψηφισαμένης ἄδειαν ἐπὶ μηνύσει τῆς βουλῆς, ἐξελεγχθεὶς ὁ Λέντλος ἀπωμόσατο τὴν ἀρχήν - στρατηγῶν γὰρ ἐτύγχανε - , καὶ τὴν περιπόρφυρον ἐν τῇ βουλῇ καταθέμενος, διήλλαξεν [4] ἐσθῆτα τῇ συμφορᾷ πρέπουσαν. οὗτος μὲν οὖν καὶ οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ παρεδόθησαν εἰς ἄδεσμον φυλακὴν τοῖς στρατηγοῖς. ἤδη δ’ ἑσπέρας οὔσης καὶ τοῦ δήμου παραμένοντος ἀθρόως, προελθὼν ὁ Κικέρων καὶ φράσας τὸ πρᾶγμα τοῖς πολίταις καὶ προπεμφθείς, παρῆλθεν εἰς οἰκίαν φίλου γειτνιῶντος, ἐπεὶ τὴν ἐκείνου γυναῖκες κατεῖχον ἱεροῖς ἀπορρήτοις ὀργιάζουσαι θεόν, ἣν Ῥωμαῖοι μὲν Ἀγαθήν, Ἕλληνες [5] δὲ Γυναικείαν ὀνομάζουσι. θύεται δ’ αὐτῇ κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τοῦ ὑπάτου διὰ γυναικὸς ἢ μητρὸς αὐτοῦ, τῶν Ἑστιάδων παρθένων παρουσῶν. εἰσελθὼν οὖν ὁ Κικέρων καὶ γενόμενος καθ’ αὑτόν, ὀλίγων παντάπασιν αὐτῷ παρόντων, ἐφρόντιζεν ὅπως χρήσαιτο τοῖς ἀνδράσι.

[6] τήν τε γὰρ ἄκραν καὶ προσήκουσαν ἀδικήμασι τηλικούτοις τιμωρίαν ἐξηυλαβεῖτο καὶ κατώκνει δι’ ἐπιείκειαν ἤθους ἅμα καὶ ὡς μὴ δοκοίη τῆς ἐξουσίας ἄγαν ἐμφορεῖσθαι καὶ πικρῶς ἐπεμβαίνειν ἀνδράσι γένει τε πρώτοις καὶ φίλους δυνατοὺς ἐν τῇ πόλει κεκτημένοις, μαλακώτερον δὲ χρησάμενος [7] ὠρρώδει τὸν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν κίνδυνον. οὐ γὰρ ἀγαπήσειν μετριώτερόν τι θανάτου παθόντας, ἀλλ’ εἰς ἅπαν ἀναρραγήσεσθαι τόλμης, τῇ παλαιᾷ κακίᾳ νέαν ὀργὴν προσλαβόντας, αὐτός τε δόξειν ἄνανδρος καὶ μαλακός, οὐδ’ ἄλλως δοκῶν εὐτολμότατος εἶναι τοῖς πολλοῖς.

[20] [1] Ταῦτα τοῦ Κικέρωνος διαποροῦντος, γίνεταί τι ταῖς γυναιξὶ σημεῖον θυούσαις. ὁ γὰρ βωμός, ἤδη τοῦ πυρὸς κατακεκοιμῆσθαι δοκοῦντος, ἐκ τῆς τέφρας καὶ τῶν κατακεκαυμένων φλοιῶν φλόγα πολλὴν ἀνῆκε καὶ λαμπράν.

[2] ὑφ’ ἧς αἱ μὲν ἄλλαι διεπτοήθησαν, αἱ δ’ ἱεραὶ παρθένοι τὴν τοῦ Κικέρωνος γυναῖκα Τερεντίαν ἐκέλευσαν ᾗ τάχος χωρεῖν πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ κελεύειν, οἷς ἔγνωκεν ἐγχειρεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος, ὡς μέγα πρός τε σωτηρίαν καὶ δόξαν [3] αὐτῷ τῆς θεοῦ φῶς διδούσης. ἡ δὲ Τερεντία - καὶ γὰρ οὐδ’ ἄλλως ἦν πρᾳεῖά τις οὐδ’ ἄτολμος τὴν φύσιν, ἀλλὰ φιλότιμος γυνὴ καὶ μᾶλλον, ὡς αὐτός φησιν ὁ Κικέρων, τῶν πολιτικῶν μεταλαμβάνουσα παρ’ ἐκείνου φροντίδων ἢ μεταδιδοῦσα τῶν οἰκιακῶν ἐκείνῳ - ταῦτά τε πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔφρασε καὶ παρώξυνεν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ Κόιντος ὁ ἀδελφὸς καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ φιλοσοφίας ἑταίρων Πόπλιος Νιγίδιος, ᾧ τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ μέγιστα παρὰ τὰς πολιτικὰς ἐχρῆτο πράξεις.

[4] Τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ γιγνομένων ἐν συγκλήτῳ λόγων περὶ τιμωρίας τῶν ἀνδρῶν, ὁ πρῶτος ἐρωτηθεὶς γνώμην Σιλανὸς εἶπε τὴν ἐσχάτην δίκην δοῦναι προσήκειν, ἀχθέντας [5] εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον, καὶ τούτῳ προσετίθεντο πάντες ἐφεξῆς μέχρι Γαΐου Καίσαρος τοῦ μετὰ ταῦτα δικτάτορος [6] γενομένου. τότε δὲ νέος ὢν ἔτι καὶ τὰς πρώτας ἔχων τῆς αὐξήσεως ἀρχάς, ἤδη δὲ τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ ταῖς ἐλπίσιν εἰς ἐκείνην τὴν ὁδὸν ἐμβεβηκὼς ᾗ τὰ Ῥωμαίων εἰς μοναρχίαν μετέστησε πράγματα, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἐλάνθανε, τῷ δὲ Κικέρωνι πολλὰς μὲν ὑποψίας, λαβὴν δ’ εἰς ἔλεγχον οὐδεμίαν παρέδωκεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ λεγόντων ἦν ἐνίων ἀκούειν, ὡς [7] ἐγγὺς ἐλθὼν ἁλῶναι διεκφύγοι τὸν ἄνδρα. τινὲς δέ φασι περιιδεῖν ἑκόντα καὶ παραλιπεῖν τὴν κατ’ ἐκείνου μήνυσιν φόβῳ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως· παντὶ γὰρ εἶναι πρόδηλον, ὅτι μᾶλλον ἂν ἐκεῖνοι γένοιντο προσθήκη Καίσαρι σωτηρίας ἢ Καῖσαρ ἐκείνοις κολάσεως.

[21] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὖν ἡ γνώμη περιῆλθεν εἰς αὐτόν, ἀναστὰς ἀπεφήνατο μὴ θανατοῦν τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἀλλὰ τὰς οὐσίας εἶναι δημοσίας, αὐτοὺς δ’ ἀπαχθέντας εἰς πόλεις τῆς Ἰταλίας, ἃς ἂν δοκῇ Κικέρωνι, τηρεῖσθαι δεδεμένους, ἄχρι ἂν [2] οὗ καταπολεμηθῇ Κατιλίνας. οὔσης δὲ τῆς γνώμης ἐπιεικοῦς καὶ τοῦ λέγοντος εἰπεῖν δυνατωτάτου, ῥοπὴν ὁ Κικέρων [3] προσέθηκεν οὐ μικράν. αὐτὸς γὰρ ἀναστὰς ἐνεχείρησεν εἰς ἑκάτερον, τὰ μὲν τῇ προτέρᾳ, τὰ δὲ τῇ Καίσαρος γνώμῃ συνειπών, οἵ τε φίλοι πάντες οἰόμενοι τῷ Κικέρωνι λυσιτελεῖν τὴν Καίσαρος γνώμην - ἧττον γὰρ ἐν αἰτίαις ἔσεσθαι μὴ θανατώσαντα τοὺς ἄνδρας - ᾑροῦντο τὴν δευτέραν μᾶλλον γνώμην, ὥστε καὶ τὸν Σιλανὸν αὖθις μεταβαλόμενον παραιτεῖσθαι καὶ λέγειν, ὡς οὐδ’ αὐτὸς εἴποι θανατικὴν γνώμην· ἐσχάτην γὰρ ἀνδρὶ βουλευτῇ [4] Ῥωμαίων εἶναι δίκην τὸ δεσμωτήριον· εἰρημένης δὲ τῆς γνώμης, πρῶτος ἀντέκρουσεν αὐτῇ Κάτλος Λουτάτιος, εἶτα διαδεξάμενος Κάτων, καὶ τῷ λόγῳ σφοδρῶς συνεπερείσας ἐπὶ τὸν Καίσαρα τὴν ὑπόνοιαν, ἐνέπλησε θυμοῦ καὶ φρονήματος τὴν σύγκλητον, ὥστε θάνατον καταψηφίσασθαι [5] τῶν ἀνδρῶν. περὶ δὲ δημεύσεως χρημάτων ἐνίστατο Καῖσαρ, οὐκ ἀξιῶν τὰ φιλάνθρωπα τῆς ἑαυτοῦ γνώμης ἐκβαλόντας ἑνὶ χρήσασθαι τῷ σκυθρωποτάτῳ. βιαζομένων δὲ πολλῶν, ἐπεκαλεῖτο τοὺς δημάρχους· οἱ δ’ οὐχ ὑπήκουον, ἀλλὰ Κικέρων αὐτὸς ἐνδοὺς ἀνῆκε τὴν περὶ δημεύσεως γνώμην.

[22] [1] Ἐχώρει δὲ μετὰ τῆς βουλῆς ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας. οὐκ ἐν ταὐτῷ δὲ πάντες ἦσαν, ἄλλος δ’ ἄλλον ἐφύλαττε τῶν [2] στρατηγῶν. καὶ πρῶτον ἐκ Παλατίου παραλαβὼν τὸν Λέντλον ἦγε διὰ τῆς ἱερᾶς ὁδοῦ καὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς μέσης, τῶν μὲν ἡγεμονικωτάτων ἀνδρῶν κύκλῳ περιεσπειραμένων καὶ δορυφορούντων, τοῦ δὲ δήμου φρίττοντος τὰ δρώμενα καὶ παριέντος σιωπῇ, μάλιστα δὲ τῶν νέων, ὥσπερ ἱεροῖς τισι πατρίοις ἀριστοκρατικῆς τινος ἐξουσίας [3] τελεῖσθαι μετὰ φόβου καὶ θάμβους δοκούντων. διελθὼν δὲ τὴν ἀγορὰν καὶ γενόμενος πρὸς τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ, παρέδωκε τὸν Λέντλον τῷ δημίῳ καὶ προσέταξεν ἀνελεῖν, εἶθ’ ἑξῆς τὸν Κέθηγον, καὶ οὕτω τῶν ἄλλων ἕκαστον [4] καταγαγὼν ἀπέκτεινεν. ὁρῶν δὲ πολλοὺς ἔτι τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς συνωμοσίας ἐν ἀγορᾷ συνεστῶτας ἀθρόους, καὶ τὴν μὲν πρᾶξιν ἀγνοοῦντας, τὴν δὲ νύκτα προσμένοντας, ὡς ἔτι ζώντων τῶν ἀνδρῶν καὶ δυναμένων ἐξαρπαγῆναι, φθεγξάμενος μέγα πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἔζησαν εἶπεν· οὕτω δὲ Ῥωμαίων οἱ δυσφημεῖν μὴ βουλόμενοι τὸ τεθνάναι [5] σημαίνουσιν. ἤδη δ’ ἦν ἑσπέρα, καὶ δι’ ἀγορὰς ἀνέβαινεν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν, οὐκέτι σιωπῇ τῶν πολιτῶν οὐδὲ τάξει προπεμπόντων αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ φωναῖς καὶ κρότοις δεχομένων καθ’ οὓς γένοιτο, σωτῆρα καὶ κτίστην ἀνακαλούντων τῆς πατρίδος. τὰ δὲ φῶτα πολλὰ κατέλαμπε τοὺς στενωπούς, [6] λαμπάδια καὶ δᾷδας ἱστάντων ἐπὶ ταῖς θύραις. αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες ἐκ τῶν τεγῶν προὔφαινον ἐπὶ τιμῇ καὶ θέᾳ τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὑπὸ πομπῇ τῶν ἀρίστων μάλα σεμνῶς ἀνιόντος· ὧν οἱ πλεῖστοι πολέμους τε κατειργασμένοι μεγάλους καὶ διὰ θριάμβων εἰσεληλακότες καὶ προσεκτημένοι γῆν καὶ θάλατταν οὐκ ὀλίγην, ἐβάδιζον ἀνομολογούμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους, πολλοῖς μὲν τῶν τόθ’ ἡγεμόνων καὶ στρατηγῶν πλούτου καὶ λαφύρων καὶ δυνάμεως χάριν ὀφείλειν τὸν Ῥωμαίων δῆμον, ἀσφαλείας δὲ καὶ σωτηρίας ἑνὶ μόνῳ Κικέρωνι, τηλικοῦτον ἀφελόντι καὶ τοσοῦτον αὐτοῦ κίνδυνον.

[7] οὐ γὰρ τὸ κωλῦσαι τὰ πραττόμενα καὶ κολάσαι τοὺς πράττοντας ἐδόκει θαυμαστόν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι μέγιστον τῶν πώποτε νεωτερισμῶν οὗτος ἐλαχίστοις κακοῖς ἄνευ [8] στάσεως καὶ ταραχῆς κατέσβεσε. καὶ γὰρ τὸν Κατιλίναν οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν συνερρυηκότων πρὸς αὐτὸν ἅμα τῷ πυθέσθαι τὰ περὶ Λέντλον καὶ Κέθηγον ἐγκαταλιπόντες ᾤχοντο, καὶ μετὰ τῶν συμμεμενηκότων αὐτῷ διαγωνισάμενος πρὸς Ἀντώνιον αὐτός τε διεφθάρη καὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[23] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἦσαν οἱ τὸν Κικέρωνα παρεσκευασμένοι καὶ λέγειν ἐπὶ τούτοις καὶ ποιεῖν κακῶς, ἔχοντες ἡγεμόνας τῶν εἰς τὸ μέλλον ἀρχόντων Καίσαρα μὲν στρατηγοῦντα, Μέτελλον δὲ καὶ Βηστίαν δημαρχοῦντας.

[2] οἳ τὴν ἀρχὴν παραλαβόντες, ἔτι τοῦ Κικέρωνος ἡμέρας ὀλίγας ἄρχοντος, οὐκ εἴων δημηγορεῖν αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐμβόλων βάθρα θέντες οὐ παρίεσαν οὐδ’ ἐπέτρεπον λέγειν, ἀλλ’ ἐκέλευον, εἰ βούλοιτο, μόνον περὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς [3] ἀπομόσαντα καταβαίνειν, κἀκεῖνος ἐπὶ τούτοις ὡς ὀμόσων προῆλθε· καὶ γενομένης αὐτῷ σιωπῆς, ἀπώμνυεν οὐ τὸν πάτριον, ἀλλ’ ἴδιόν τινα καὶ καινὸν ὅρκον, ἦ μὴν σεσωκέναι τὴν πατρίδα καὶ διατετηρηκέναι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν.

[4] ἐπώμνυε δὲ τὸν ὅρκον αὐτῷ σύμπας ὁ δῆμος. ἐφ’ οἷς ἔτι μᾶλλον ὅ τε Καῖσαρ οἵ τε δήμαρχοι χαλεπαίνοντες, ἄλλας τε τῷ Κικέρωνι ταραχὰς ἐμηχανῶντο, καὶ νόμος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν εἰσήγετο καλεῖν Πομπήιον μετὰ τῆς στρατιᾶς, ὡς [5] δὴ καταλύσοντα τὴν Κικέρωνος δυναστείαν. ἀλλ’ ἦν ὄφελος μέγα τῷ Κικέρωνι καὶ πάσῃ τῇ πόλει δημαρχῶν τότε Κάτων καὶ τοῖς ἐκείνων πολιτεύμασιν ἀπ’ ἴσης μὲν ἐξουσίας, [6] μείζονος δὲ δόξης ἀντιτασσόμενος. τά τε γὰρ ἄλλα ῥᾳδίως ἔλυσε, καὶ τὴν Κικέρωνος ὑπατείαν οὕτως ἦρε τῷ λόγῳ δημηγορήσας, ὥστε τιμὰς αὐτῷ τῶν πώποτε μεγίστας ψηφίσασθαι καὶ προσαγορεῦσαι πατέρα πατρίδος. πρώτῳ γὰρ ἐκείνῳ δοκεῖ τοῦθ’ ὑπάρξαι, Κάτωνος αὐτὸν οὕτως ἐν τῷ δήμῳ προσαγορεύσαντος.

[24] [1] Καὶ μέγιστον μὲν ἴσχυσεν ἐν τῇ πόλει τότε, πολλοῖς δ’ ἐπίφθονον ἑαυτὸν ἐποίησεν ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ἔργου πονηροῦ, τῷ δ’ ἐπαινεῖν ἀεὶ καὶ μεγαλύνειν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ὑπὸ πολλῶν [2] δυσχεραινόμενος. οὔτε γὰρ βουλὴν οὔτε δῆμον οὔτε δικαστήριον ἦν συνελθεῖν, ἐν ᾧ μὴ Κατιλίναν ἔδει θρυλούμενον [3] ἀκοῦσαι καὶ Λέντλον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ βιβλία τελευτῶν κατέπλησε καὶ τὰ συγγράμματα τῶν ἐγκωμίων, καὶ τὸν λόγον, ἥδιστον ὄντα καὶ χάριν ἔχοντα πλείστην, ἐπαχθῆ καὶ φορτικὸν ἐποίησε τοῖς ἀκροωμένοις, ὥσπερ τινὸς ἀεὶ [4] κηρὸς αὐτῷ τῆς ἀηδίας ταύτης προσούσης. ὅμως δέ, καίπερ οὕτως ἀκράτῳ φιλοτιμίᾳ συνών, ἀπήλλακτο τοῦ φθονεῖν ἑτέροις, ἀφθονώτατος ὢν ἐν τῷ τοὺς πρὸ αὑτοῦ καὶ τοὺς καθ’ αὑτὸν ἄνδρας ἐγκωμιάζειν, ὡς ἐκ τῶν συγγραμμάτων [5] λαβεῖν ἔστι. πολλὰ δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀπομνημονεύουσιν, οἷον περὶ Ἀριστοτέλους, ὅτε χρυσοῦ ποταμὸς εἴη ῥέοντος (Lucull. 38, 119), καὶ περὶ τῶν Πλάτωνος διαλόγων, ὡς τοῦ Διός, εἰ λόγῳ χρῆσθαι πέφυκεν, οὕτως ‹ἂν› διαλεγομένου [6] (Brut. 31, 121). τὸν δὲ Θεόφραστον εἰώθει τρυφὴν ἰδίαν ἀποκαλεῖν. περὶ δὲ τῶν Δημοσθένους λόγων ἐρωτηθείς, τίνα δοκοίη κάλλιστον εἶναι, τὸν μέγιστον εἶπε. καίτοι τινὲς τῶν προσποιουμένων δημοσθενίζειν ἐπιφύονται φωνῇ τοῦ Κικέρωνος, ἣν πρός τινα τῶν ἑταίρων ἔθηκεν ἐν ἐπιστολῇ γράψας, ἐνιαχοῦ τῶν λόγων ὑπονυστάζειν τὸν Δημοσθένην· τῶν δὲ μεγάλων καὶ θαυμαστῶν ἐπαίνων, οἷς πολλαχοῦ χρῆται περὶ τοῦ ἀνδρός, καὶ ὅτι περὶ οὓς μάλιστα τῶν ἰδίων ἐσπούδασε λόγους, τοὺς κατ’ Ἀντωνίου, [7] Φιλιππικοὺς ἐπέγραψεν, ἀμνημονοῦσι. τῶν δὲ κατ’ αὐτὸν ἐνδόξων ἀπὸ λόγου καὶ φιλοσοφίας οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδεὶς ὃν οὐκ ἐποίησεν ἐνδοξότερον, ἤ τι λέγων ἢ γράφων εὐμενῶς περὶ ἑκάστου. Κρατίππῳ δὲ τῷ περιπατητικῷ διεπράξατο μὲν Ῥωμαίῳ γενέσθαι παρὰ Καίσαρος ἄρχοντος ἤδη, διεπράξατο δὲ ‹καὶ› τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴν ψηφίσασθαι [καὶ] δεηθῆναι μένειν αὐτὸν ἐν Ἀθήναις [8] καὶ διαλέγεσθαι τοῖς νέοις, ὡς κοσμοῦντα τὴν πόλιν. ἐπιστολαὶ δὲ περὶ τούτων Κικέρωνος εἰσὶ πρὸς Ἡρώδην, ἕτεραι δὲ πρὸς τὸν υἱόν, ἐγκελευομένου συμφιλοσοφεῖν Κρατίππῳ. Γοργίαν δὲ τὸν ῥητορικὸν αἰτιώμενος πρὸς ἡδονὰς προάγειν καὶ πότους τὸ μειράκιον, ἀπελαύνει τῆς συνουσίας [9] αὐτοῦ, καὶ σχεδὸν αὕτη γε τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν μία καὶ δευτέρα πρὸς Πέλοπα τὸν Βυζάντιον ἐν ὀργῇ τινι γέγραπται, τὸν μὲν Γοργίαν αὐτοῦ προσηκόντως ἐπικόπτοντος, εἴπερ ἦν φαῦλος καὶ ἀκόλαστος ὥσπερ ἐδόκει, πρὸς δὲ τὸν Πέλοπα μικρολογουμένου καὶ μεμψιμοιροῦντος, ὥσπερ ἀμελήσαντα τιμάς τινας αὐτῷ καὶ ψηφίσματα παρὰ Βυζαντίων γενέσθαι.

[25] [1] Ταῦτά τε δὴ φιλότιμα, καὶ τὸ πολλάκις ἐπαιρόμενον τοῦ λόγου τῇ δεινότητι τὸ πρέπον προΐεσθαι. Μουνατίῳ μὲν γάρ ποτε συνηγορήσας, ὡς ἀποφυγὼν τὴν δίκην ἐκεῖνος ἐδίωκεν ἑταῖρον αὐτοῦ Σαβῖνον, οὕτω λέγεται προπεσεῖν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ὁ Κικέρων, ὥστ’ εἰπεῖν· σὺ γὰρ ἐκείνην ὦ Μουνάτιε τὴν δίκην ἀπέφυγες διὰ σεαυτόν, οὐκ ἐμοῦ [2] πολὺ σκότος ἐν φωτὶ τῷ δικαστηρίῳ περιχέαντος; Μᾶρκον δὲ Κράσσον ἐγκωμιάζων ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος εὐημέρησε, καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέρας αὖθις ὀλίγας λοιδορῶν αὐτόν, ὡς ἐκεῖνος εἶπεν οὐ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα πρώην αὐτὸς ἡμᾶς ἐπῄνεις; ναί φησι, μελέτης ἕνεκα γυμνάζων τὸν λόγον εἰς φαύλην [3] ὑπόθεσιν. εἰπόντος δέ ποτε τοῦ Κράσσου μηδένα Κράσσον ἐν Ῥώμῃ βεβιωκέναι μακρότερον ἑξηκονταετίας, εἶθ’ ὕστερον ἀρνουμένου καὶ λέγοντος τί δ’ ἂν ἐγὼ παθὼν τοῦτ’ εἶπον; ᾔδεις ἔφη Ῥωμαίους ἡδέως ἀκουσομένους, [4] καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ ἐδημαγώγεις. ἀρέσκεσθαι δὲ τοῦ Κράσσου τοῖς Στωικοῖς φήσαντος, ὅτι πλούσιον εἶναι τὸν ἀγαθὸν ἀποφαίνουσιν, ὅρα μὴ μᾶλλον εἶπεν ὅτι πάντα τοῦ σοφοῦ λέγουσιν εἶναι. διεβάλλετο δ’ εἰς φιλαργυρίαν [5] ὁ Κράσσος. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ Κράσσου τῶν παίδων ὁ ἕτερος, Ἀξίῳ τινὶ δοκῶν ὅμοιος εἶναι καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τῇ μητρὶ προστριβόμενος αἰσχρὰν ἐπὶ τῷ Ἀξίῳ διαβολήν, εὐδοκίμησε λόγον ἐν βουλῇ διελθών, ἐρωτηθεὶς ὁ Κικέρων, τί φαίνεται αὐτῷ, ἄξιος εἶπε Κράσσου.

[26] [1] Μέλλων δ’ ὁ Κράσσος εἰς Συρίαν ἀπαίρειν, ἐβούλετο τὸν Κικέρωνα φίλον αὐτῷ μᾶλλον ἢ ἐχθρὸν εἶναι, καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος ἔφη βούλεσθαι δειπνῆσαι παρ’ αὐτῷ, κἀκεῖνος [2] ὑπεδέξατο προθύμως. ὀλίγαις δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέραις περὶ Βατινίου φίλων τινῶν ἐντυγχανόντων ὡς μνωμένου διαλύσεις καὶ φιλίαν - ἦν γὰρ ἐχθρός - , οὐ δήπου καὶ Βατίνιος εἶπε δειπνῆσαι παρ’ ἐμοὶ βούλεται; [3] πρὸς μὲν οὖν Κράσσον τοιοῦτος. αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Βατίνιον, ἔχοντα χοιράδας ἐν τῷ τραχήλῳ καὶ λέγοντα δίκην, οἰδοῦντα ῥήτορα προσεῖπεν. ἀκούσας δ’ ὅτι τέθνηκεν, εἶτα μετὰ μικρὸν πυθόμενος σαφῶς ὅτι ζῇ· κακὸς τοίνυν [4] ἀπόλοιτο κακῶς ὁ ψευσάμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ Καίσαρι ψηφισαμένῳ τὴν ἐν Καμπανίᾳ χώραν κατανεμηθῆναι τοῖς στρατιώταις πολλοὶ μὲν ἐδυσχέραινον ἐν τῇ βουλῇ, Λεύκιος δὲ Γέλλιος ὁμοῦ τι πρεσβύτατος ὢν εἶπεν, ὡς οὐ γενήσεται τοῦτο ζῶντος αὐτοῦ, περιμείνωμεν ὁ Κικέρων ἔφη· μακρὰν γὰρ οὐκ αἰτεῖται Γέλλιος ὑπέρθεσιν.

[5] ἦν δέ τις Ὀκταούιος αἰτίαν ἔχων ἐκ Λιβύης γεγονέναι· πρὸς τοῦτον ἔν τινι δίκῃ λέγοντα τοῦ Κικέρωνος μὴ ἐξακούειν καὶ μὴν οὐκ ἔχεις εἶπε τὸ οὖς ἀτρύπητον.

[6] Μετέλλου δὲ Νέπωτος εἰπόντος, ὅτι πλείονας καταμαρτυρῶν ἀνῄρηκεν ἢ συνηγορῶν σέσωκεν, ὁμολογῶ γάρ [7] ἔφη πίστεως ἐν ἐμοὶ πλέον ἢ δεινότητος εἶναι. νεανίσκου δέ τινος, αἰτίαν ἔχοντος ἐν πλακοῦντι φάρμακον τῷ πατρὶ δεδωκέναι, θρασυνομένου καὶ λέγοντος ὅτι λοιδορήσει τὸν Κικέρωνα, τοῦτ’ ἔφη παρὰ σοῦ βούλομαι μᾶλλον [8] ἢ πλακοῦντα. Ποπλίου δὲ Σηστίου συνήγορον μὲν αὐτὸν ἔν τινι δίκῃ παραλαβόντος μεθ’ ἑτέρων, αὐτοῦ δὲ πάντα βουλομένου λέγειν καὶ μηδενὶ παριέντος εἰπεῖν, ὡς δῆλος ἦν ἀφιέμενος ὑπὸ τῶν δικαστῶν ἤδη τῆς ψήφου φερομένης, χρῶ σήμερον ἔφη τῷ καιρῷ Σήστιε· μέλλεις [9] γὰρ αὔριον ἰδιώτης εἶναι. Πόπλιον δὲ Κώσταν, νομικὸν εἶναι βουλόμενον, ὄντα δ’ ἀφυῆ καὶ ἀμαθῆ, πρός τινα δίκην ἐκάλεσε μάρτυρα. τοῦ δὲ μηδὲν εἰδέναι φάσκοντος, ἴσως ἔφη δοκεῖς περὶ τῶν νομικῶν ἐρωτᾶσθαι. Μετέλλου δὲ Νέπωτος ἐν διαφορᾷ τινι πολλάκις λέγοντος τίς σοῦ πατήρ ἐστιν ὦ Κικέρων, σοὶ ταύτην ἔφη τὴν ἀπόκρισιν ἡ μήτηρ χαλεπωτέραν πεποίηκεν· [10] ἐδόκει δ’ ἀκόλαστος ἡ μήτηρ εἶναι τοῦ Νέπωτος, αὐτὸς δέ τις εὐμετάβολος, καί ποτε τὴν δημαρχίαν ἀπολιπὼν ἄφνω πρὸς Πομπήιον ἐξέπλευσεν εἰς Συρίαν, εἶτ’ ἐκεῖθεν [11] ἐπανῆλθεν ἀλογώτερον. θάψας δὲ Φίλαγρον τὸν καθηγητὴν ἐπιμελέστερον, ἐπέστησεν αὐτοῦ τῷ τάφῳ κόρακα λίθινον, καὶ ὁ Κικέρων τοῦτο ἔφη σοφώτατον ἐποίησας· [12] πέτεσθαι γάρ σε μᾶλλον ἢ λέγειν ἐδίδαξεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ Μᾶρκος Ἄππιος ἔν τινι δίκῃ προοιμιαζόμενος εἶπε φίλον αὐτοῦ δεδεῆσθαι παρασχεῖν ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ λογιότητα καὶ πίστιν, εἶθ’ οὕτως ἔφη σιδηροῦς γέγονας ἄνθρωπος, ὥστε μηδὲν ἐκ τοσούτων ὧν ᾐτήσατο φίλῳ παρασχεῖν;

[27] [1] Τὸ μὲν οὖν πρὸς ἐχθροὺς ἢ πρὸς ἀντιδίκους σκώμμασι χρῆσθαι πικροτέροις δοκεῖ ῥητορικὸν εἶναι· τὸ δ’ οἷς ἔτυχε προσκρούειν ἕνεκα τοῦ γελοίου πολὺ συνῆγε μῖσος [2] αὐτῷ. γράψω δὲ καὶ τούτων ὀλίγα. Μᾶρκον Ἀκύλλιον [3] ἔχοντα δύο γαμβροὺς φυγάδας Ἄδραστον ἐκάλει. Λευκίου δὲ Κόττα τὴν τιμητικὴν ἔχοντος ἀρχήν, φιλοινοτάτου δ’ ὄντος, ὑπατείαν μετιὼν ὁ Κικέρων ἐδίψησε, καὶ τῶν φίλων κύκλῳ περιστάντων ὡς ἔπινεν, ὀρθῶς φοβεῖσθε ἔφη μή μοι γένηται χαλεπὸς ὁ τιμητὴς ὅτι [4] ὕδωρ πίνω. Βοκωνίῳ δ’ ἀπαντήσας, ἄγοντι μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ τρεῖς ἀμορφοτάτας θυγατέρας, ἀνεφθέγξατο (TGF p. 911 N²)·

Φοίβου ποτ’ οὐκ ἐῶντος ἔσπειρεν τέκνα.

[5] Μάρκου δὲ Γελλίου δοκοῦντος οὐκ ἐξ ἐλευθέρων γεγονέναι, λαμπρᾷ δὲ τῇ φωνῇ καὶ μεγάλῃ γράμματα πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον ἐξαναγνόντος, μὴ θαυμάζετε εἶπε· καὶ [6] αὐτὸς εἷς ἐστι τῶν ἀναπεφωνηκότων. ἐπεὶ δὲ Φαῦστος ὁ Σύλλα, τοῦ μοναρχήσαντος ἐν Ῥώμῃ καὶ πολλοὺς ἐπὶ θανάτῳ προγράψαντος, ἐν δανείοις γενόμενος καὶ πολλὰ τῆς οὐσίας διασπαθήσας ἀπαρτίαν προέγραψε, ταύτην ἔφη μᾶλλον αὐτῷ τὴν προγραφὴν ἀρέσκειν ἢ τὴν πατρῴαν.

[28] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τούτων ἐγίνετο πολλοῖς ἐπαχθής, καὶ οἱ μετὰ Κλωδίου συνέστησαν ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ἀρχὴν τοιαύτην λαβόντες. ἦν Κλώδιος ἀνὴρ εὐγενής, τῇ μὲν ἡλικίᾳ νέος, τῷ δὲ [2] φρονήματι θρασὺς καὶ αὐθάδης. οὗτος ἐρῶν Πομπηίας τῆς Καίσαρος γυναικός, εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ παρεισῆλθε κρύφα, λαβὼν ἐσθῆτα καὶ σκευὴν ψαλτρίας· ἔθυον γὰρ ἐν τῇ Καίσαρος οἰκίᾳ τὴν ἀπόρρητον ἐκείνην καὶ ἀθέατον ἀνδράσι θυσίαν αἱ γυναῖκες, καὶ παρῆν ἀνὴρ οὐδείς· ἀλλὰ μειράκιον ὢν ἔτι καὶ μήπω γενειῶν ὁ Κλώδιος ἤλπιζε λήσεσθαι [3] διαδὺς πρὸς τὴν Πομπηίαν διὰ τῶν γυναικῶν. ὡς δ’ εἰσῆλθε νυκτὸς εἰς οἰκίαν μεγάλην, ἠπόρει τῶν διόδων, καὶ πλανώμενον αὐτὸν ἰδοῦσα θεραπαινὶς Αὐρηλίας τῆς Καίσαρος μητρός, ᾔτησεν ὄνομα. φθέγξασθαι δ’ ἀναγκασθέντος αὐτοῦ καὶ φήσαντος ἀκόλουθον Πομπηίας ζητεῖν Ἄβραν τοὔνομα, συνεῖσα τὴν φωνὴν οὐ γυναικείαν οὖσαν ἀνέκραγε [4] καὶ συνεκάλει τὰς γυναῖκας. αἱ δ’ ἀποκλείσασαι τὰς θύρας καὶ πάντα διερευνώμεναι, λαμβάνουσι τὸν Κλώδιον, εἰς οἴκημα παιδίσκης ᾗ συνεισῆλθε καταπεφευγότα. τοῦ δὲ πράγματος περιβοήτου γενομένου, Καῖσάρ τε τὴν Πομπηίαν ἀφῆκε, καὶ δίκην τις ‹τῶν δημάρχων› ἀσεβείας ἐγράψατο τῷ Κλωδίῳ.

[29] [1] Κικέρων δ’ ἦν μὲν αὐτοῦ φίλος, καὶ τῶν περὶ Κατιλίναν πραττομένων ἐκέχρητο προθυμοτάτῳ συνεργῷ καὶ φύλακι τοῦ σώματος, ἰσχυριζομένου δὲ πρὸς τὸ ἔγκλημα τῷ μηδὲ γεγονέναι κατ’ ἐκεῖνον ἐν Ῥώμῃ τὸν χρόνον, ἀλλ’ ἐν τοῖς πορρωτάτω χωρίοις διατρίβειν, κατεμαρτύρησεν ὡς ἀφιγμένου τε πρὸς αὐτὸν οἴκαδε καὶ διειλεγμένου περί [2] τινων· ὅπερ ἦν ἀληθές. οὐ μὴν ἐδόκει μαρτυρεῖν ὁ Κικέρων διὰ τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὴν αὑτοῦ γυναῖκα Τερεντίαν [3] ἀπολογούμενος. ἦν γὰρ αὐτῇ πρὸς τὸν Κλώδιον ἀπέχθεια διὰ τὴν ἀδελφὴν τὴν ἐκείνου Κλωδίαν, ὡς τῷ Κικέρωνι βουλομένην γαμηθῆναι καὶ τοῦτο διὰ Τύλλου τινὸς Ταραντίνου πράττουσαν, ὃς ἑταῖρος μὲν ἦν καὶ συνήθης ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα Κικέρωνος, ἀεὶ δὲ πρὸς τὴν Κλωδίαν φοιτῶν καὶ θεραπεύων ἐγγὺς οἰκοῦσαν, ὑποψίαν τῇ Τερεντίᾳ παρέσχε.

[4] χαλεπὴ δὲ τὸν τρόπον οὖσα καὶ τοῦ Κικέρωνος ἄρχουσα, παρώξυνε τῷ Κλωδίῳ συνεπιθέσθαι καὶ καταμαρτυρῆσαι. κατεμαρτύρουν δὲ τοῦ Κλωδίου πολλοὶ τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐπιορκίας, ῥᾳδιουργίας, ὄχλων δεκασμούς, φθορὰς γυναικῶν. Λεύκολλος δὲ καὶ θεραπαινίδας παρεῖχεν, ὡς συγγένοιτο τῇ νεωτάτῃ τῶν ἀδελφῶν [5] ὁ Κλώδιος, ὅτε Λευκόλλῳ συνῴκει. πολλὴ δ’ ἦν δόξα καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις δυσὶν ἀδελφαῖς πλησιάζειν τὸν Κλώδιον, ὧν Τερτίαν μὲν Μάρκιος ‹ὁ› Ῥήξ, Κλωδίαν δὲ Μέτελλος ὁ Κέλερ εἶχεν, ἣν Κουαδρανταρίαν ἐκάλουν, ὅτι τῶν ἐραστῶν τις αὐτῇ χαλκοῦς ἐμβαλὼν εἰς βαλάντιον ὡς ἀργύριον εἰσέπεμψε· τὸ δὲ λεπτότατον τοῦ χαλκοῦ νομίσματος κουαδράντην Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν. ἐπὶ ταύτῃ μάλιστα [6] τῶν ἀδελφῶν κακῶς ἤκουσεν ὁ Κλώδιος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τότε τοῦ δήμου πρὸς τοὺς καταμαρτυροῦντας αὐτοῦ καὶ συνεστῶτας ἀντιταττομένου, φοβηθέντες οἱ δικασταὶ φυλακὴν περιεστήσαντο, καὶ τὰς δέλτους οἱ πλεῖστοι συγκεχυμένοις τοῖς γράμμασιν ἤνεγκαν. ὅμως δὲ πλείονες ἔδοξαν οἱ ἀπολύοντες γενέσθαι, καί τις ἐλέχθη καὶ δεκασμὸς [7] διελθεῖν. ὅθεν ὁ μὲν Κάτλος ἀπαντήσας τοῖς δικασταῖς, ὑμεῖς εἶπεν ὡς ἀληθῶς ὑπὲρ ἀσφαλείας ᾐτήσασθε τὴν φυλακήν, φοβούμενοι μή τις ὑμῶν ἀφέληται τὸ ἀργύριον.

[8] Κικέρων δὲ τοῦ Κλωδίου πρὸς αὐτὸν λέγοντος, ὅτι μαρτυρῶν οὐκ ἔσχε πίστιν παρὰ τοῖς δικασταῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐμοὶ μέν εἶπεν οἱ πέντε καὶ εἴκοσι τῶν δικαστῶν ἐπίστευσαν· τοσοῦτοι γάρ σου κατεψηφίσαντο· σοὶ δ’ οἱ τριάκοντα οὐκ ἐπίστευσαν· οὐ γὰρ πρότερον ἀπέλυσαν ἢ [9] ἔλαβον τὸ ἀργύριον. ὁ μέντοι Καῖσαρ οὐ κατεμαρτύρησε κληθεὶς ἐπὶ τὸν Κλώδιον, οὐδ’ ἔφη μοιχείαν κατεγνωκέναι τῆς γυναικός, ἀφεικέναι δ’ αὐτὴν ὅτι τὸν Καίσαρος ἔδει γάμον οὐ πράξεως αἰσχρᾶς μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ φήμης καθαρὸν εἶναι.

[30] [1] Διαφυγὼν δὲ τὸν κίνδυνον ὁ Κλώδιος καὶ δήμαρχος αἱρεθείς, εὐθὺς εἴχετο τοῦ Κικέρωνος, πάνθ’ ὁμοῦ πράγματα καὶ πάντας ἀνθρώπους συνάγων καὶ ταράττων ἐπ’ [2] αὐτόν. τόν τε γὰρ δῆμον ᾠκειώσατο νόμοις φιλανθρώποις, καὶ τῶν ὑπάτων ἑκατέρῳ μεγάλας ἐπαρχίας ἐψηφίσατο, Πείσωνι μὲν Μακεδονίαν, Γαβινίῳ δὲ Συρίαν· πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ τῶν ἀπόρων συνέτασσεν εἰς τὸ πολίτευμα, [3] καὶ δούλους ὡπλισμένους περὶ αὑτὸν εἶχε. τῶν δὲ πλεῖστον δυναμένων τότε τριῶν ἀνδρῶν, Κράσσου μὲν ἄντικρυς Κικέρωνι πολεμοῦντος, Πομπηίου δὲ θρυπτομένου πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους, Καίσαρος δὲ μέλλοντος εἰς Γαλατίαν ἐξιέναι μετὰ στρατεύματος, ὑπὸ τοῦτον ὑποδὺς ὁ Κικέρων, καίπερ οὐκ ὄντα φίλον, ἀλλ’ ὕποπτον ἐκ τῶν περὶ Κατιλίναν, [4] ἠξίωσε πρεσβευτὴς αὐτῷ συστρατεύειν. δεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ Καίσαρος, ὁ Κλώδιος ὁρῶν ἐκφεύγοντα τὴν δημαρχίαν αὐτοῦ τὸν Κικέρωνα, προσεποιεῖτο συμβατικῶς ἔχειν, καὶ τῇ Τερεντίᾳ τὴν πλείστην ἀνατιθεὶς αἰτίαν, ἐκείνου δὲ μεμνημένος ἐπιεικῶς ἀεὶ καὶ λόγους εὐγνώμονας ἐνδιδούς, ὡς ἄν τις οὐ μισῶν οὐδὲ χαλεπαίνων, ἀλλ’ ἐγκαλῶν μέτρια καὶ φιλικά, παντάπασιν αὐτοῦ τὸν φόβον ἀνῆκεν, ὥστ’ ἀπειπεῖν τῷ Καίσαρι τὴν πρεσβείαν καὶ [5] πάλιν ἔχεσθαι τῆς πολιτείας. ἐφ’ ᾧ παροξυνθεὶς ὁ Καῖσαρ, τόν τε Κλώδιον ἐπέρρωσε, καὶ Πομπήιον ἀπέστρεψε κομιδῇ τοῦ Κικέρωνος, αὐτός τε κατεμαρτύρησεν ἐν τῷ δήμῳ, μὴ δοκεῖν αὐτῷ καλῶς μηδὲ νομίμως ἄνδρας ἀκρίτους [6] ἀνῃρῆσθαι τοὺς περὶ Λέντλον καὶ Κέθηγον. αὕτη γὰρ ἦν ἡ κατηγορία, καὶ ἐπὶ τούτῳ [ὁ] Κικέρων ἐνεκαλεῖτο. κινδυνεύων οὖν καὶ διωκόμενος, ἐσθῆτά τε μετήλλαξε καὶ κόμης ἀνάπλεως περιιὼν ἱκέτευε τὸν δῆμον.

[7] πανταχοῦ δ’ ὁ Κλώδιος ἀπήντα κατὰ τοὺς στενωπούς, ἀνθρώπους ἔχων ὑβριστὰς περὶ αὑτὸν καὶ θρασεῖς, οἳ πολλὰ μὲν χλευάζοντες ἀκολάστως εἰς τὴν μεταβολὴν καὶ τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ Κικέρωνος, πολλαχοῦ δὲ πηλῷ καὶ λίθοις βάλλοντες, ἐνίσταντο ταῖς ἱκεσίαις.

[31] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῷ Κικέρωνι πρῶτον μὲν ὀλίγου δεῖν σύμπαν τὸ τῶν ἱππικῶν πλῆθος συμμετέβαλε τὴν ἐσθῆτα, καὶ δισμυρίων οὐκ ἐλάττους νέων παρηκολούθουν κομῶντες καὶ συνικετεύοντες· ἔπειτα τῆς βουλῆς συνελθούσης, ὅπως ψηφίσαιτο τὸν δῆμον ὡς ἐπὶ πένθει συμμεταβαλεῖν τὰ ἱμάτια, καὶ τῶν ὑπάτων ἐναντιωθέντων, Κλωδίου δὲ σιδηροφορουμένου περὶ τὸ βουλευτήριον, ἐξέδραμον οὐκ ὀλίγοι τῶν συγκλητικῶν καταρρηγνύμενοι τοὺς χιτῶνας [2] καὶ βοῶντες. ὡς δ’ ἦν οὔτ’ οἶκτος οὔτε τις αἰδὼς πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, ἀλλ’ ἔδει τὸν Κικέρωνα φεύγειν ἢ βίᾳ καὶ σιδήρῳ διακριθῆναι πρὸς τὸν Κλώδιον, ἐδεῖτο Πομπηίου βοηθεῖν, ἐπίτηδες ἐκποδὼν γεγονότος καὶ διατρίβοντος ἐν ἀγροῖς περὶ τὸ Ἀλβανόν, καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἔπεμψε Πείσωνα τὸν γαμβρὸν δεησόμενον, [3] ἔπειτα καὶ αὐτὸς ἀνέβη. πυθόμενος δ’ ὁ Πομπήιος οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν εἰς ὄψιν ἐλθεῖν - δεινὴ γὰρ αὐτὸν αἰδὼς εἶχε πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα, μεγάλους ἠγωνισμένον ἀγῶνας ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ καὶ πολλὰ πρὸς χάριν ἐκείνῳ πεπολιτευμένον - , ἀλλὰ Καίσαρι γαμβρὸς ὢν δεομένῳ προὔδωκε τὰς παλαιὰς χάριτας, καὶ κατὰ θύρας ἄλλας ὑπεξελθὼν ἀπεδίδρασκε τὴν [4] ἔντευξιν. οὕτω δὴ προδοθεὶς ὁ Κικέρων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ γεγονὼς ἔρημος, ἐπὶ τοὺς ὑπάτους κατέφυγε. καὶ Γαβίνιος μὲν ἦν χαλεπὸς ἀεί, Πείσων δὲ διελέχθη πρᾳότερον αὐτῷ, παραινῶν ἐκστῆναι καὶ ὑποχωρῆσαι τῇ τοῦ Κλωδίου ῥύμῃ, καὶ τὴν μεταβολὴν τῶν καιρῶν ἐνεγκεῖν, καὶ γενέσθαι πάλιν σωτῆρα τῆς πατρίδος, ἐν στάσεσι καὶ [5] κακοῖς δι’ ἐκεῖνον οὔσης. τοιαύτης τυχὼν ἀποκρίσεως ὁ Κικέρων ἐβουλεύετο σὺν τοῖς φίλοις, καὶ Λεύκολλος μὲν ἐκέλευε μένειν ὡς περιεσόμενον, ἄλλοι δὲ φεύγειν, ὡς ταχὺ τοῦ δήμου ποθήσοντος αὐτόν, ὅταν ἐμπλησθῇ τῆς [6] Κλωδίου μανίας καὶ ἀπονοίας. ταῦτ’ ἔδοξε Κικέρωνι, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἄγαλμα τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς, ὃ πολὺν χρόνον ἔχων ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας ἱδρυμένον ἐτίμα διαφερόντως, εἰς Καπιτώλιον κομίσας ἀνέθηκεν, ἐπιγράψας Ἀθηνᾷ Ῥώμης φύλακι, πομποὺς δὲ παρὰ τῶν φίλων λαβών, περὶ μέσας νύκτας ὑπεξῆλθε τῆς πόλεως καὶ πεζῇ διὰ Λευκανίας ἐπορεύετο, λαβέσθαι Σικελίας βουλόμενος.

[32] [1] Ὡς δ’ ἦν φανερὸς ἤδη πεφευγώς, ἐπήγαγεν αὐτῷ φυγῆς ψῆφον ὁ Κλώδιος, καὶ διάγραμμα προὔθηκεν εἴργειν πυρὸς καὶ ὕδατος τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ μὴ παρέχειν στέγην [2] ἐντὸς μιλίων πεντακοσίων Ἰταλίας. τοῖς μὲν οὖν ἄλλοις ἐλάχιστος ἦν τοῦ διαγράμματος τούτου λόγος αἰδουμένοις τὸν Κικέρωνα, καὶ πᾶσαν ἐνδεικνύμενοι φιλοφροσύνην παρέπεμπον αὐτόν· ἐν δ’ Ἱππωνίῳ, πόλει τῆς Λευκανίας ἣν Οὐιβῶνα νῦν καλοῦσιν, Οὐίβιος Σίκκας, ἀνὴρ ἄλλα τε πολλὰ τῆς Κικέρωνος φιλίας ἀπολελαυκώς, καὶ γεγονὼς ὑπατεύοντος αὐτοῦ τεκτόνων ἔπαρχος, οἰκίᾳ μὲν οὐκ ἐδέξατο, [τὸ] χωρίον δὲ καταγράψειν ἐπηγγέλλετο, καὶ Γάιος Οὐεργίλιος ὁ τῆς Σικελίας στρατηγός, ἀνὴρ ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα Κικέρωνι κεχρημένος, ἔγραψεν ἀπέχεσθαι τῆς Σικελίας.

[3] ἐφ’ οἷς ἀθυμήσας ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ Βρεντέσιον, κἀκεῖθεν εἰς Δυρράχιον ἀνέμῳ φορῷ περαιούμενος, ἀντιπνεύσαντος πελαγίου μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπαλινδρόμησεν, εἶτ’ αὖθις ἀνήχθη.

[4] λέγεται δὲ καὶ καταπλεύσαντος εἰς Δυρράχιον αὐτοῦ καὶ μέλλοντος ἀποβαίνειν, σεισμόν τε τῆς γῆς καὶ σπασμὸν ἅμα γενέσθαι τῆς θαλάσσης. ἀφ’ ὧν συνέβαλον οἱ μαντικοὶ μὴ μόνιμον αὐτῷ τὴν φυγὴν ἔσεσθαι· μεταβολῆς γὰρ εἶναι [5] ταῦτα σημεῖα. πολλῶν δὲ φοιτώντων ἀνδρῶν ὑπ’ εὐνοίας καὶ τῶν Ἑλληνίδων πόλεων διαμιλλωμένων ἀεὶ ταῖς πρεσβείαις πρὸς αὐτόν, ὅμως ἀθυμῶν καὶ περίλυπος διῆγε τὰ πολλά, πρὸς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ὥσπερ οἱ δυσέρωτες ἀφορῶν, καὶ τῷ φρονήματι μικρὸς ἄγαν καὶ ταπεινὸς ὑπὸ τῆς συμφορᾶς γεγονὼς καὶ συνεσταλμένος, ὡς οὐκ ἄν τις ἄνδρα [6] παιδείᾳ συμβεβιωκότα τοσαύτῃ προσεδόκησε. καίτοι πολλάκις αὐτὸς ἠξίου τοὺς φίλους μὴ ῥήτορα καλεῖν αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ φιλόσοφον· φιλοσοφίαν γὰρ ὡς ἔργον ᾑρῆσθαι, ῥητορικῇ δ’ ὀργάνῳ χρῆσθαι πολιτευόμενος ἐπὶ τὰς χρείας.

[7] ἀλλ’ ἡ δόξα δεινὴ τὸν λόγον ὥσπερ βαφὴν ἀποκλύσαι τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τὰ τῶν πολλῶν ἐνομόρξασθαι πάθη δι’ ὁμιλίαν καὶ συνήθειαν τοῖς πολιτευομένοις, ἂν μή τις εὖ μάλα φυλαττόμενος οὕτω συμφέρηται τοῖς ἐκτός, ὡς τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῶν, οὐ τῶν ἐπὶ τοῖς πράγμασι παθῶν συμμεθέξων.

[33] [1] Ὁ δὲ Κλώδιος ἐξελάσας αὐτὸν κατέπρησε μὲν αὐτοῦ τὰς ἐπαύλεις, κατέπρησε δὲ τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ τῷ τόπῳ ναὸν Ἐλευθερίας ἐπῳκοδόμησε, τὴν δ’ ἄλλην οὐσίαν ἐπώλει καὶ διεκήρυττε καθ’ ἡμέραν, μηδὲν ὠνουμένου μηδενός. [2] ἐκ δὲ τούτου φοβερὸς ὢν τοῖς ἀριστοκρατικοῖς καὶ τὸν δῆμον ἀνειμένον εἰς ὕβριν πολλὴν καὶ θρασύτητα συνεφελκόμενος, ἐπεχείρει Πομπηίῳ, τῶν διῳκημένων αὐτῷ [3] κατὰ τὴν στρατείαν ἔνια σπαράττων. ἐφ’ οἷς ὁ Πομπήιος ἀδοξῶν, ἐκάκιζεν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν προέμενος τὸν Κικέρωνα, καὶ πάλιν ἐκ μεταβολῆς παντοῖος ἐγένετο, πράττων κάθοδον αὐτῷ μετὰ τῶν φίλων. ἐνισταμένου δὲ τοῦ Κλωδίου, συνέδοξε τῇ βουλῇ μηδὲν διὰ μέσου πρᾶγμα κυροῦν μηδὲ [4] πράττειν δημόσιον, εἰ μὴ Κικέρωνι κάθοδος γένοιτο. τῶν δὲ περὶ Λέντλον ὑπατευόντων καὶ τῆς στάσεως πρόσω βαδιζούσης, ὥστε τρωθῆναι μὲν ἐν ἀγορᾷ δημάρχους, Κόιντον δὲ τὸν Κικέρωνος ἀδελφὸν ἐν τοῖς νεκροῖς ὡς τεθνηκότα κείμενον διαλαθεῖν, ὅ τε δῆμος ἤρχετο τρέπεσθαι τῇ γνώμῃ, καὶ τῶν δημάρχων Ἄννιος Μίλων πρῶτος ἐτόλμησε τὸν Κλώδιον εἰς δίκην ὑπάγειν βιαίων, καὶ Πομπηίῳ πολλοὶ συνῆλθον ἔκ τε τοῦ δήμου καὶ τῶν πέριξ [5] πόλεων. μεθ’ ὧν προελθὼν καὶ τὸν Κλώδιον ἀναστείλας ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς, ἐπὶ τὴν ψῆφον ἐκάλει τοὺς πολίτας, καὶ λέγεται μηδέποτε μηδὲν ἐκ τοσαύτης ὁμοφροσύνης ἐπιψηφίσασθαι [6] τὸν δῆμον. ἡ δὲ σύγκλητος ἁμιλλωμένη πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἔγραψεν ἐπαινεθῆναι τὰς πόλεις, ὅσαι τὸν Κικέρωνα παρὰ τὴν φυγὴν ἐθεράπευσαν, καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτῷ καὶ τὰς ἐπαύλεις, ἃς Κλώδιος διεφθάρκει, τέλεσι δημοσίοις ἀνασταθῆναι.

[7] Κατῄει δὲ Κικέρων ἑκκαιδεκάτῳ μηνὶ μετὰ τὴν φυγήν, καὶ τοσαύτη τὰς πόλεις χαρὰ καὶ σπουδὴ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους περὶ τὴν ἀπάντησιν εἶχεν, ὥστε τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ Κικέρωνος [8] ὕστερον ἐνδεέστερον εἶναι τῆς ἀληθείας. ἔφη γὰρ (sen. grat. 15, 39) αὑτὸν ἐπὶ τῶν ὤμων τὴν Ἰταλίαν φέρουσαν εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην εἰσενεγκεῖν. ὅπου καὶ Κράσσος, ἐχθρὸς ὢν αὐτῷ πρὸ τῆς φυγῆς, τότε προθύμως ἀπήντα καὶ διελύετο, τῷ παιδὶ Ποπλίῳ χαριζόμενος ὡς ἔλεγε, ζηλωτῇ τοῦ Κικέρωνος ὄντι.

[34] [1] Χρόνον δ’ οὐ πολὺν διαλιπὼν καὶ παραφυλάξας ἀποδημοῦντα τὸν Κλώδιον, ἐπῆλθε μετὰ πολλῶν τῷ Καπιτωλίῳ, καὶ τὰς δημαρχικὰς δέλτους, ἐν αἷς ἀναγραφαὶ τῶν [2] διῳκημένων ἦσαν, ἀπέσπασε καὶ διέφθειρεν. ἐγκαλοῦντος δὲ περὶ τούτων τοῦ Κλωδίου, τοῦ δὲ Κικέρωνος λέγοντος ὡς παρανόμως ἐκ πατρικίων εἰς δημαρχίαν παρέλθοι, καὶ κύριον οὐδὲν εἴη τῶν πεπραγμένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, Κάτων ἠγανάκτησε καὶ ἀντεῖπε, τὸν μὲν Κλώδιον οὐκ ἐπαινῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δυσχεραίνων τοῖς πεπολιτευμένοις, δεινὸν δὲ καὶ βίαιον ἀποφαίνων ἀναίρεσιν ψηφίσασθαι δογμάτων καὶ πράξεων τοσούτων τὴν σύγκλητον, ἐν αἷς εἶναι καὶ τὴν [3] ἑαυτοῦ τῶν περὶ Κύπρον καὶ Βυζάντιον διοίκησιν. ἐκ τούτου προσέκρουσεν ὁ Κικέρων αὐτῷ πρόσκρουσιν εἰς οὐδὲν ἐμφανὲς προελθοῦσαν, ἀλλ’ ὥστε τῇ φιλοφροσύνῃ χρῆσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀμαυρότερον.

[35] [1] Μετὰ ταῦτα Κλώδιον μὲν ἀποκτίννυσι Μίλων, καὶ διωκόμενος φόνου Κικέρωνα παρεστήσατο συνήγορον. ἡ δὲ βουλὴ φοβηθεῖσα, μὴ κινδυνεύοντος ἀνδρὸς ἐνδόξου καὶ θυμοειδοῦς τοῦ Μίλωνος ταραχὴ γένηται περὶ τὴν δίκην, ἐπέτρεψε Πομπηίῳ ταύτην τε καὶ τὰς ἄλλας κρίσεις βραβεῦσαι, παρέχοντα τῇ πόλει καὶ τοῖς δικαστηρίοις [2] ἀσφάλειαν. ἐκείνου δὲ τὴν ἀγορὰν ἔτι νυκτὸς ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων στρατιώταις ἐμπεριλαβόντος, ὁ Μίλων τὸν Κικέρωνα, δείσας μὴ πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν ἀηθείᾳ διαταραχθεὶς χεῖρον ἀγωνίσηται, συνέπεισεν ἐν φορείῳ κομισθέντα πρὸς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἡσυχάζειν, ἄχρι οὗ συνίασιν οἱ κριταὶ καὶ πληροῦται [3] τὸ δικαστήριον. ὁ δ’ οὐ μόνον ἦν ὡς ἔοικεν ἐν ὅπλοις ἀθαρσής, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ λέγειν μετὰ φόβου προσῄει, καὶ μόλις ἂν ἐπαύσατο παλλόμενος καὶ τρέμων ἐπὶ πολλῶν [4] ἀγώνων ἀκμὴν τοῦ λόγου καὶ κατάστασιν λαβόντος. Λικινίῳ δὲ Μουρήνᾳ φεύγοντι δίκην ὑπὸ Κάτωνος βοηθῶν, καὶ φιλοτιμούμενος Ὁρτήσιον ὑπερβαλεῖν εὐημερήσαντα, μέρος οὐδὲν ἀνεπαύσατο τῆς νυκτός, ὥσθ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ σφόδρα φροντίσαι καὶ διαγρυπνῆσαι κακωθεὶς ἐνδεέστερος αὑτοῦ [5] φανῆναι. τότε δ’ οὖν ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ Μίλωνος δίκην ἐκ τοῦ φορείου προελθών, καὶ θεασάμενος τὸν Πομπήιον ἄνω καθεζόμενον ὥσπερ ἐν στρατοπέδῳ καὶ κύκλῳ τὰ ὅπλα περιλάμποντα τὴν ἀγοράν, συνεχύθη καὶ μόλις ἐνήρξατο τοῦ λόγου, κραδαινόμενος τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὴν φωνὴν ἐπεχόμενος, αὐτοῦ τοῦ Μίλωνος εὐθαρσῶς καὶ ἀδεῶς παρισταμένου τῷ ἀγῶνι καὶ κόμην θρέψαι καὶ μεταβαλεῖν ἐσθῆτα φαιὰν ἀπαξιώσαντος· ὅπερ οὐχ ἥκιστα δοκεῖ συναίτιον αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τῆς καταδίκης· ἀλλ’ ὅ γε Κικέρων διὰ ταῦτα φιλέταιρος μᾶλλον ἢ δειλὸς ἔδοξεν εἶναι.

[36] [1] Γίνεται δὲ καὶ τῶν ἱερέων, οὓς αὔγουρας Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν, ἀντὶ Κράσσου τοῦ νέου μετὰ τὴν ἐν Πάρθοις αὐτοῦ τελευτήν. εἶτα κλήρῳ λαχὼν τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν Κιλικίαν καὶ στρατὸν ὁπλιτῶν μυρίων καὶ δισχιλίων, ἱππέων δὲ χιλίων καὶ ἑξακοσίων, ἔπλευσε, προσταχθὲν αὐτῷ καὶ τὰ περὶ Καππαδοκίαν Ἀριοβαρζάνῃ τῷ βασιλεῖ φίλα καὶ [2] πειθήνια παρασχεῖν. ταῦτα τε δὴ παρεστήσατο καὶ συνήρμοσεν ἀμέμπτως ἄνευ πολέμου, τούς τε Κίλικας ὁρῶν πρὸς τὸ Παρθικὸν πταῖσμα Ῥωμαίων καὶ τὸν ἐν Συρίᾳ [3] νεωτερισμὸν ἐπηρμένους, κατεπράυνεν ἡμέρως ἄρχων. καὶ δῶρα μὲν οὐδὲ τῶν βασιλέων διδόντων ἔλαβε, δείπνων δὲ τοὺς ἐπαρχικοὺς ἀνῆκεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς χαρίεντας ἀνελάμβανε καθ’ ἡμέραν ἑστιάσεσιν, οὐ πολυτελῶς, ἀλλ’ ἐλευθερίως.

[4] ἡ δ’ οἰκία θυρωρὸν οὐκ εἶχεν, οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ὤφθη κατακείμενος ὑπ’ οὐδενός, ἀλλ’ ἕωθεν ἑστὼς ἢ περιπατῶν πρὸ τοῦ δωματίου τοὺς ἀσπαζομένους ἐδεξιοῦτο.

[5] λέγεται δὲ μήτε ῥάβδοις αἰκίσασθαί τινα, μήτ’ ἐσθῆτα περισχίσαι, μήτε βλασφημίαν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἢ ζημίαν προσβαλεῖν μεθ’ ὕβρεως. ἀνευρὼν δὲ πάμπολλα τῶν δημοσίων κεκλεμμένα, τάς τε πόλεις εὐπόρους ἐποίησε, καὶ τοὺς ἀποτίνοντας οὐδὲν τούτου πλέον παθόντας ἐπιτίμους διεφύλαξεν.

[6] ἥψατο δὲ καὶ πολέμου, λῃστὰς τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἀμανὸν οἰκούντων τρεψάμενος, ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ αὐτοκράτωρ ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀνηγορεύθη. Καιλίου δὲ τοῦ ῥήτορος δεομένου παρδάλεις αὐτῷ πρός τινα θέαν εἰς Ῥώμην ἐκ Κιλικίας ἀποστεῖλαι, καλλωπιζόμενος ἐπὶ τοῖς πεπραγμένοις γράφει πρὸς αὐτὸν (fam. 2, 11, 2) οὐκ εἶναι παρδάλεις ἐν Κιλικίᾳ· πεφευγέναι γὰρ εἰς Καρίαν ἀγανακτούσας ὅτι μόναι πολεμοῦνται, πάντων εἰρήνην ἐχόντων.

[7] Πλέων δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ἐπαρχίας τοῦτο μὲν Ῥόδῳ προσέσχε, τοῦτο δ’ Ἀθήναις ἐνδιέτριψεν, ἄσμενος πόθῳ τῶν πάλαι διατριβῶν. ἀνδράσι δὲ τοῖς πρώτοις ἀπὸ παιδείας συγγενόμενος, καὶ τούς [τό]τε φίλους καὶ συνήθεις ἀσπασάμενος, καὶ τὰ πρέποντα θαυμασθεὶς ὑπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἐπανῆλθεν, ἤδη τῶν πραγμάτων ὥσπερ ὑπὸ φλεγμονῆς διισταμένων ἐπὶ τὸν ἐμφύλιον πόλεμον.

[37] [1] Ἐν μὲν οὖν τῇ βουλῇ ψηφιζομένων αὐτῷ θρίαμβον, ἥδιον ἂν ἔφη παρακολουθῆσαι Καίσαρι θριαμβεύοντι συμβάσεων γενομένων· ἰδίᾳ δὲ συνεβούλευε πολλὰ μὲν Καίσαρι γράφων, πολλὰ δ’ αὖ τοῦ Πομπηίου δεόμενος, [2] πραΰνων ἑκάτερον καὶ παραμυθούμενος. ὡς δ’ ἦν ἀνήκεστα, καὶ Καίσαρος ἐπερχομένου Πομπήιος οὐκ ἔμεινεν, ἀλλὰ μετὰ πολλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν τὴν πόλιν ἐξέλιπε, ταύτης μὲν ἀπελείφθη τῆς φυγῆς ὁ Κικέρων, ἔδοξε δὲ Καίσαρι προστίθεσθαι, καὶ δῆλός ἐστι τῇ γνώμῃ πολλὰ ῥιπτασθεὶς [3] ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα καὶ διστάσας. γράφει γὰρ ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς (Att. 8, 7, 2) διαπορεῖν, ποτέρωσε χρὴ τραπέσθαι, Πομπηίου μὲν ἔνδοξον καὶ καλὴν ὑπόθεσιν πρὸς τὸ πολεμεῖν ἔχοντος, Καίσαρος δ’ ἄμεινον τοῖς πράγμασι χρωμένου καὶ μᾶλλον ἑαυτὸν καὶ τοὺς φίλους σῴζοντος, ὥστ’ [4] ἔχειν μὲν ὃν φύγῃ, μὴ ἔχειν δὲ πρὸς ὃν φύγῃ. Τρεβατίου δέ τινος τῶν Καίσαρος ἑταίρων γράψαντος ἐπιστολήν, ὅτι Καῖσαρ οἴεται δεῖν μάλιστα μὲν αὐτὸν ἐξετάζεσθαι μεθ’ αὑτοῦ καὶ τῶν ἐλπίδων μετέχειν, εἰ δ’ ἀναδύεται διὰ γῆρας, εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα βαδίζειν κἀκεῖ καθήμενον ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, ἐκποδὼν ἀμφοτέροις γενόμενον, θαυμάσας ὁ Κικέρων ὅτι Καῖσαρ αὐτὸς οὐκ ἔγραψεν, ἀπεκρίνατο πρὸς ὀργὴν ὡς οὐδὲν ἀνάξιον πράξει τῶν πεπολιτευμένων. τὰ μὲν οὖν ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς γεγραμμένα τοιαῦτ’ ἐστι.

[38] [1] Τοῦ δὲ Καίσαρος εἰς Ἰβηρίαν ἀπάραντος, εὐθὺς πρὸς Πομπήιον ἔπλευσε, καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἀσμένοις ὤφθη, Κάτων δ’ αὐτὸν ἰδίᾳ πολλὰ κατεμέμψατο Πομπηίῳ προσθέμενον· αὑτῷ μὲν γὰρ οὐχὶ καλῶς ἔχειν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν ἣν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς εἵλετο τῆς πολιτείας τάξιν, ἐκεῖνον δὲ χρησιμώτερον ὄντα τῇ πατρίδι καὶ τοῖς φίλοις, εἰ μένων ἴσος ἐκεῖ πρὸς τὸ ἀποβαῖνον ἡρμόζετο, κατ’ οὐδένα λογισμὸν οὐδ’ ἐξ ἀνάγκης πολέμιον γεγονέναι Καίσαρι [2] καὶ τοσούτου μεθέξοντα κινδύνου δεῦρ’ ἥκειν. οὗτοί τε δὴ τοῦ Κικέρωνος ἀνέστρεφον οἱ λόγοι τὴν γνώμην, καὶ τὸ μέγα μηδὲν αὐτῷ χρῆσθαι Πομπήιον. αἴτιος δ’ ἦν αὐτός, οὐκ ἀρνούμενος μεταμέλεσθαι, φλαυρίζων δὲ τοῦ Πομπηίου τὴν παρασκευήν, καὶ πρὸς τὰ βουλεύματα δυσχεραίνων ὑπούλως, καὶ τοῦ παρασκώπτειν τι καὶ λέγειν ἀεὶ χαρίεν εἰς τοὺς συμμάχους οὐκ ἀπεχόμενος, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς μὲν ἀγέλαστος ἀεὶ περιιὼν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ καὶ σκυθρωπός, [3] ἑτέροις δὲ παρέχων γέλωτα μηδὲν δεομένοις. βέλτιον δὲ καὶ τούτων ὀλίγα παραθέσθαι. Δομιτίου τοίνυν ἄνθρωπον εἰς τάξιν ἡγεμονικὴν ἄγοντος οὐ πολεμικόν, καὶ λέγοντος ὡς ἐπιεικὴς τὸν τρόπον ἐστὶ καὶ σώφρων, τί οὖν εἶπεν οὐκ ἐπίτροπον αὐτὸν τοῖς τέκνοις φυλάσσεις; [4] ἐπαινούντων δέ τινων Θεοφάνην τὸν Λέσβιον, ὃς ἦν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τεκτόνων ἔπαρχος, ὡς εὖ παραμυθήσαιτο Ῥοδίους τὸν στόλον ἀποβαλόντας, ἡλίκον εἶπεν ἀγαθόν [5] ἐστι Γραικὸν ἔχειν ἔπαρχον. Καίσαρος δὲ κατορθοῦντος τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ τρόπον τινὰ πολιορκοῦντος αὐτούς, Λέντλῳ μὲν εἰπόντι πυνθάνεσθαι στυγνοὺς εἶναι τοὺς Καίσαρος φίλους ἀπεκρίνατο λέγεις αὐτοὺς [6] δυσνοεῖν Καίσαρι. †Μορίκκου δέ τινος ἥκοντος ἐξ Ἰταλίας νεωστὶ καὶ λέγοντος ἐν Ῥώμῃ φήμην ἐπικρατεῖν, ὡς πολιορκοῖτο Πομπήιος, εἶτ’ ἐξέπλευσας εἶπεν ἵνα τοῦτο [7] πιστεύσῃς αὐτὸς θεασάμενος; μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἧτταν Νωνίου μὲν εἰπόντος ὅτι δεῖ χρηστὰς ἐλπίδας ἔχειν, ἑπτὰ γὰρ ἀετοὺς ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τοῦ Πομπηίου λελεῖφθαι, καλῶς [8] ἄν ἔφη παρῄνεις, εἰ κολοιοῖς ἐπολεμοῦμεν. Λαβιηνοῦ δὲ μαντείαις τισὶν ἰσχυριζομένου καὶ λέγοντος, ὡς δεῖ περιγενέσθαι Πομπήιον, οὐκοῦν ἔφη στρατηγήματι τούτῳ χρώμενοι νῦν ἀποβεβλήκαμεν τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[39] [1] Ἀλλὰ γὰρ γενομένης τῆς κατὰ Φάρσαλον μάχης, ἧς οὐ μετέσχε δι’ ἀρρωστίαν, καὶ Πομπηίου φυγόντος, ὁ μὲν Κάτων καὶ στράτευμα συχνὸν ἐν Δυρραχίῳ καὶ στόλον ἔχων μέγαν ἐκεῖνον ἠξίου στρατηγεῖν κατὰ νόμον, [2] ὡς τῷ τῆς ὑπατείας ἀξιώματι προὔχοντα. διωθούμενος δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁ Κικέρων καὶ ὅλως φεύγων τὸ συστρατεύεσθαι, παρ’ οὐδὲν ἦλθεν ἀναιρεθῆναι, Πομπηίου τοῦ νέου καὶ τῶν φίλων προδότην ἀποκαλούντων καὶ τὰ ξίφη σπασαμένων, εἰ μὴ Κάτων ἐνστὰς μόλις ἀφείλετο καὶ [3] διῆκεν αὐτὸν ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου. καταχθεὶς δ’ εἰς Βρεντέσιον ἐνταῦθα διέτριβε, Καίσαρα περιμένων βραδύνοντα [4] διὰ τὰς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ καὶ περὶ Αἴγυπτον ἀσχολίας. ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰς Τάραντα καθωρμισμένος ἀπηγγέλλετο καὶ πεζῇ παριὼν ἐκεῖθεν εἰς Βρεντέσιον, ὥρμησε πρὸς αὐτόν, οὐ πάνυ μὲν ὢν δύσελπις, αἰδούμενος δὲ πολλῶν παρόντων ἀνδρὸς [5] ἐχθροῦ καὶ κρατοῦντος λαμβάνειν πεῖραν. οὐ μὴν ἐδέησεν αὐτῷ πρᾶξαί τι παρ’ ἀξίαν ἢ εἰπεῖν· ὁ γὰρ Καῖσαρ ὡς εἶδεν αὐτὸν πολὺ πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἀπαντῶντα, κατέβη καὶ ἠσπάσατο καὶ διαλεγόμενος μόνῳ συχνῶν σταδίων ὁδὸν προῆλθεν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου διετέλει τιμῶν καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος, ὥστε καὶ γράψαντι λόγον ἐγκώμιον Κάτωνος ἀντιγράφων τόν τε λόγον αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν βίον ὡς μάλιστα τῷ [6] Περικλέους ἐοικότα καὶ Θηραμένους ἐπαινεῖν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Κικέρωνος λόγος Κάτων, ὁ δὲ Καίσαρος Ἀντικάτων ἐπιγέγραπται. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Κοΐντου Λιγαρίου δίκην φεύγοντος, ὅτι τῶν Καίσαρος πολεμίων εἷς ἐγεγόνει, καὶ Κικέρωνος αὐτῷ βοηθοῦντος, εἰπεῖν τὸν Καίσαρα πρὸς τοὺς φίλους· τί κωλύει διὰ χρόνου Κικέρωνος ἀκοῦσαι λέγοντος, ἐπεὶ πάλαι γε κέκριται πονηρὸς ἅνθρωπος καὶ πολέμιος; [7] ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀρξάμενος λέγειν ὁ Κικέρων ὑπερφυῶς ἐκίνει, καὶ προὔβαινεν αὐτῷ πάθει τε ποικίλος καὶ χάριτι θαυμαστὸς ὁ λόγος, πολλὰς μὲν ἱέναι χρόας ἐπὶ τοῦ προσώπου τὸν Καίσαρα, πάσας δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς τρεπόμενον τροπὰς κατάδηλον εἶναι, τέλος δὲ τῶν κατὰ Φάρσαλον ἁψαμένου τοῦ ῥήτορος ἀγώνων, ἐκπαθῆ γενόμενον τιναχθῆναι τῷ σώματι καὶ τῆς χειρὸς ἐκβαλεῖν ἔνια τῶν γραμματείων. τὸν δ’ οὖν ἄνθρωπον ἀπέλυσε τῆς αἰτίας βεβιασμένος.

[40] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Κικέρων, εἰς μοναρχίαν τῆς πολιτείας μεθεστώσης, ἀφέμενος τοῦ τὰ κοινὰ πράττειν ἐσχόλαζε τοῖς βουλομένοις φιλοσοφεῖν τῶν νέων, καὶ σχεδὸν ἐκ τῆς πρὸς τούτους συνηθείας, εὐγενεστάτους καὶ πρώτους [2] ὄντας, αὖθις ἴσχυεν ἐν τῇ πόλει μέγιστον. αὐτῷ δ’ ἔργον μὲν ἦν τότε τοὺς φιλοσόφους συντελεῖν διαλόγους καὶ μεταφράζειν, καὶ τῶν διαλεκτικῶν ἢ φυσικῶν ὀνομάτων ἕκαστον εἰς τὴν Ῥωμαϊκὴν μεταβάλλειν διάλεκτον· ἐκεῖνος γάρ ἐστιν ὥς φασιν ὁ καὶ τὴν φαντασίαν καὶ τὴν ἐποχὴν καὶ τὴν συγκατάθεσιν καὶ τὴν κατάληψιν, ἔτι δὲ τὴν ἄτομον, τὸ ἀμερές, τὸ κενὸν καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ τῶν τοιούτων ἐξονομάσας πρῶτος ἢ μάλιστα Ῥωμαίοις, τὰ μὲν μεταφοραῖς, τὰ δ’ οἰκειότησιν ἄλλαις γνώριμα καὶ προσήγορα [3] μηχανησάμενος. τῇ δὲ πρὸς τὴν ποίησιν εὐκολίᾳ παίζων ἐχρῆτο· λέγεται γάρ, ὁπηνίκα ῥυείη πρὸς τὸ τοιοῦτον, τῆς νυκτὸς ἔπη ποιεῖν πεντακόσια.

Τὸν μὲν οὖν πλεῖστον τοῦ χρόνου τούτου περὶ Τοῦσκλον ἐν χωρίοις αὑτοῦ διάγων, ἔγραφε πρὸς τοὺς φίλους Λαέρτου βίον ζῆν, εἴτε παίζων ὡς ἔθος εἶχεν, εἴθ’ ὑπὸ φιλοτιμίας σπαργῶν πρὸς τὴν πολιτείαν καὶ ἀδημονῶν τοῖς [4] καθεστῶσι. σπάνιον δ’ εἰς ἄστυ θεραπείας ἕνεκα τοῦ Καίσαρος κατῄει, καὶ πρῶτος ἦν τῶν συναγορευόντων ταῖς τιμαῖς καὶ λέγειν ἀεί τι καινὸν εἰς τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τὰ πραττόμενα φιλοτιμουμένων. οἷόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ περὶ τῶν Πομπηίου λεχθὲν εἰκόνων, ἃς ἀνῃρημένας καὶ καταβεβλημένας ὁ Καῖσαρ ἐκέλευσεν ἀνασταθῆναι, καὶ ἀνεστάθησαν.

[5] ἔφη γὰρ ὁ Κικέρων, ὅτι ταύτῃ τῇ φιλανθρωπίᾳ Καῖσαρ τοὺς μὲν Πομπηίου ἵστησι, τοὺς δ’ αὑτοῦ πήγνυσιν ἀνδριάντας.

[41] [1] Διανοούμενος δ’ ὡς λέγεται τὴν πάτριον ἱστορίαν γραφῇ περιλαβεῖν, καὶ πολλὰ συμμεῖξαι τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν, καὶ ὅλως τοὺς συνηγμένους λόγους αὐτῷ καὶ μύθους ἐνταῦθα τρέψαι, πολλοῖς μὲν δημοσίοις, πολλοῖς δὲ ἰδίοις κατελήφθη πράγμασιν ἀβουλήτοις καὶ πάθεσιν, ὧν αὐθαίρετα [2] δοκεῖ τὰ πλεῖστα συμβῆναι. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἀπεπέμψατο τὴν γυναῖκα Τερεντίαν, ἀμεληθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτῆς παρὰ τὸν πόλεμον, ὥστε καὶ τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἐφοδίων ἐνδεὴς ἀποσταλῆναι, καὶ μηδ’ ὅτε κατῆρεν αὖθις εἰς Ἰταλίαν [3] τυχεῖν εὐγνώμονος. αὐτὴ μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἦλθεν, ἐν Βρεντεσίῳ διατρίβοντος αὐτοῦ πολὺν χρόνον, ἐρχομένῃ δὲ τῇ θυγατρί, παιδίσκῃ νέᾳ, τοσαύτην ὁδὸν οὐ πομπὴν πρέπουσαν, οὐ χορηγίαν παρέσχεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τῷ Κικέρωνι πάντων ἔρημον καὶ κενὴν ἀπέδειξεν ἐπὶ πολλοῖς ὀφλήμασι καὶ μεγάλοις. αὗται γάρ εἰσιν αἱ λεγόμεναι τῆς [4] διαστάσεως εὐπρεπέσταται προφάσεις. τῇ δὲ Τερεντίᾳ καὶ ταύτας ἀρνουμένῃ λαμπρὰν ἐποίησε τὴν ἀπολογίαν αὐτὸς ἐκεῖνος, μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον γήμας παρθένον, ὡς μὲν ἡ Τερεντία κατεφήμιζεν, ἔρωτι τῆς ὥρας, ὡς δὲ Τίρων ὁ τοῦ Κικέρωνος ἀπελεύθερος γέγραφεν (HRR II 6), [5] εὐπορίας ἕνεκα πρὸς διάλυσιν δανείων. ἦν γὰρ ἡ παῖς πλουσία σφόδρα, καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτῆς ὁ Κικέρων ἐν πίστει κληρονόμος ἀπολειφθεὶς διεφύλαττεν. ὀφείλων δὲ πολλὰς μυριάδας, ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων καὶ οἰκείων ἐπείσθη τὴν παῖδα γῆμαι παρ’ ἡλικίαν καὶ τοὺς δανειστὰς ἀπαλλάξαι [6] τοῖς ἐκείνης χρησάμενος. Ἀντώνιος δὲ τοῦ γάμου μνησθεὶς ἐν ταῖς πρὸς τοὺς Φιλιππικοὺς ἀντιγραφαῖς, ἐκβαλεῖν φησιν αὐτὸν γυναῖκα παρ’ ἣν ἐγήρασε, χαριέντως ἅμα τὴν οἰκουρίαν ὡς ἀπράκτου καὶ ἀστρατεύτου παρασκώπτων [7] τοῦ Κικέρωνος. γήμαντι δ’ αὐτῷ μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἡ θυγάτηρ ἀπέθανε τίκτουσα παρὰ Λέντλῳ· τούτῳ γὰρ ἐγαμήθη μετὰ τὴν Πείσωνος τοῦ προτέρου ἀνδρὸς [8] τελευτήν· καὶ συνῆλθον μὲν ἐπὶ τὴν παραμυθίαν τῷ Κικέρωνι πανταχόθεν οἱ φιλόσοφοι, βαρέως δ’ ἄγαν ἤνεγκε τὸ συμβεβηκός, ὥστε καὶ τὴν γαμηθεῖσαν ἀποπέμψασθαι, δόξασαν ἡσθῆναι τῇ τελευτῇ τῆς Τυλλίας.

[42] [1] Τὰ μὲν οὖν κατ’ οἶκον οὕτως εἶχε τῷ Κικέρωνι. τῆς δ’ ἐπὶ Καίσαρα συνισταμένης πράξεως οὐ μετέσχε, καίπερ ὢν ἑταῖρος ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα Βρούτου καὶ βαρύνεσθαι τὰ παρόντα καὶ τὰ πάλαι ποθεῖν πράγματα δοκῶν [2] ὡς ἕτερος οὐδείς. ἀλλ’ ἔδεισαν οἱ ἄνδρες αὐτοῦ τήν τε φύσιν ὡς ἐνδεᾶ τόλμης τόν τε χρόνον, ἐν ᾧ καὶ ταῖς ἐρρωμενεστάταις [3] φύσεσιν ἐπιλείπει τὸ θαρρεῖν. ὡς δ’ οὖν ἐπέπρακτο τοῖς περὶ Βροῦτον καὶ Κάσσιον τὸ ἔργον, καὶ τῶν Καίσαρος φίλων συνισταμένων ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας αὖθις ἦν δέος ἐμφυλίοις πολέμοις περιπετῆ γενέσθαι τὴν πόλιν, Ἀντώνιος μὲν ὑπατεύων τὴν βουλὴν συνήγαγε καὶ βραχέα διελέχθη περὶ ὁμονοίας, Κικέρων δὲ πολλὰ πρὸς τὸν καιρὸν οἰκείως διελθών, ἔπεισε τὴν σύγκλητον Ἀθηναίους μιμησαμένην ἀμνηστίαν τῶν ἐπὶ Καίσαρι ψηφίσασθαι, νεῖμαι δὲ τοῖς περὶ Κάσσιον καὶ Βροῦτον ἐπαρχίας.

[4] ἔσχε δὲ τούτων τέλος οὐδέν. ὁ γὰρ δῆμος αὐτὸς μὲν ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ πρὸς οἶκτον ἐξαχθείς, ὡς εἶδε τὸν νεκρὸν ἐκκομιζόμενον δι’ ἀγορᾶς, Ἀντωνίου δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐσθῆτα δείξαντος αὐτοῖς αἵματος κατάπλεων καὶ κεκομμένην πάντῃ τοῖς ξίφεσιν, ἐκμανέντες ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἐν ἀγορᾷ ζήτησιν ἐποιοῦντο τῶν ἀνδρῶν, καὶ πῦρ ἔχοντες ἐπὶ τὰς οἰκίας [5] ἔθεον ὡς ὑφάψοντες. οἱ δὲ τοῦτον μὲν τῷ προπεφυλάχθαι διέφυγον τὸν κίνδυνον, ἑτέρους δὲ πολλοὺς καὶ μεγάλους προσδοκῶντες, ἐξέλιπον τὴν πόλιν.

[43] [1] Εὐθὺς οὖν ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐπῆρτο, καὶ πᾶσι μὲν ἦν φοβερὸς ὡς μοναρχήσων, τῷ δὲ Κικέρωνι φοβερώτατος. ἀναρρωννυμένην τε γὰρ αὐτῷ πάλιν ὁρῶν τὴν δύναμιν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ τοῖς περὶ Βροῦτον ἐπιτήδειον εἰδώς, [2] ἤχθετο παρόντι. καί πού τι καὶ προϋπῆρχεν ὑποψίας αὐτοῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλους κατὰ τὴν τῶν βίων ἀνομοιότητα [3] καὶ διαφοράν. ταῦτα δὴ δείσας ὁ Κικέρων πρῶτον μὲν ὥρμησε πρεσβευτὴς Δολοβέλλᾳ συνεκπλεῦσαι εἰς Συρίαν· ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ μέλλοντες ὑπατεύειν μετ’ Ἀντώνιον, Ἵρτιος καὶ Πάνσας, ἄνδρες ἀγαθοὶ καὶ ζηλωταὶ τοῦ Κικέρωνος, ἐδέοντο μὴ σφᾶς ἐγκαταλιπεῖν, ἀναδεχόμενοι καταλύσειν τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἐκείνου παρόντος, ὁ δ’ οὔτ’ ἀπιστῶν παντάπασιν οὔτε πιστεύων, Δολοβέλλαν μὲν εἴασε χαίρειν, ὁμολογήσας δὲ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἵρτιον τὸ θέρος ἐν Ἀθήναις διάξειν, ὅταν δ’ ἐκεῖνοι παραλάβωσι τὴν ἀρχήν, [4] ἀφίξεσθαι πάλιν, αὐτὸς καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐξέπλευσε. γενομένης δὲ περὶ τὸν πλοῦν διατριβῆς, καὶ λόγων ἀπὸ Ῥώμης οἷα φιλεῖ καινῶν προσπεσόντων, μεταβεβλῆσθαι μὲν Ἀντώνιον θαυμαστὴν μεταβολὴν καὶ πάντα πράττειν καὶ πολιτεύεσθαι πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον, ἐνδεῖν δὲ τῆς ἐκείνου παρουσίας τὰ πράγματα μὴ τὴν ἀρίστην ἔχειν διάθεσιν, καταμεμψάμενος αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ τὴν πολλὴν εὐλάβειαν ἀνέστρεψεν [5] αὖθις εἰς Ῥώμην. καὶ τῶν πρώτων οὐ διήμαρτεν ἐλπίδων. τοσοῦτο πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων ὑπὸ χαρᾶς καὶ πόθου πρὸς τὴν ἀπάντησιν ἐξεχύθη, καὶ σχεδὸν ἡμερήσιον ἀνάλωσαν χρόνον αἱ περὶ τὰς πύλας καὶ τὴν εἴσοδον αὐτοῦ [6] δεξιώσεις καὶ φιλοφροσύναι. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ βουλὴν συναγαγόντος Ἀντωνίου καὶ καλοῦντος αὐτόν, οὐκ ἦλθεν, ἀλλὰ κατέκειτο, μαλακῶς ἔχειν ἐκ τοῦ κόπου σκηπτόμενος. ἐδόκει δὲ τὸ ἀληθὲς ἐπιβουλῆς εἶναι φόβος ἔκ τινος ὑποψίας [7] καὶ μηνύσεως καθ’ ὁδὸν αὐτῷ προσπεσούσης. Ἀντώνιος δὲ χαλεπῶς μὲν ἔσχεν ἐπὶ τῇ διαβολῇ καὶ στρατιώτας ἔπεμψεν, ἄγειν αὐτὸν ἢ καταπρῆσαι τὴν οἰκίαν κελεύσας, ἐνστάντων δὲ πολλῶν καὶ δεηθέντων, ἐνέχυρα λαβὼν [8] μόνον ἐπαύσατο, καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν οὕτως ἀντιπαρεξιόντες ἀτρέμα καὶ φυλαττόμενοι διετέλουν, ἄχρι οὗ Καῖσαρ ὁ νέος ἐξ Ἀπολλωνίας παραγενόμενος τόν τε κλῆρον ἀνεδέξατο τοῦ Καίσαρος ἐκείνου καὶ περὶ τῶν δισχιλίων πεντακοσίων μυριάδων, ἃς ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας κατεῖχεν, εἰς διαφορὰν κατέστη πρὸς αὐτόν.

[44] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου Φίλιππος ὁ τὴν μητέρα τοῦ νέου Καίσαρος ἔχων καὶ Μάρκελλος ὁ τὴν ἀδελφὴν ἀφικόμενοι μετὰ τοῦ νεανίσκου πρὸς τὸν Κικέρωνα συνέθεντο, Κικέρωνα μὲν ἐκείνῳ τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς πολιτείας δύναμιν ἔν τε τῇ βουλῇ καὶ τῷ δήμῳ παρέχειν, ἐκεῖνον δὲ Κικέρωνι τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν χρημάτων καὶ τῶν ὅπλων ἀσφάλειαν. ἤδη γὰρ οὐκ ὀλίγους τῶν ὑπὸ Καίσαρι στρατευσαμένων [2] περὶ αὑτὸν εἶχε τὸ μειράκιον. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ μείζων τις αἰτία γεγονέναι τοῦ τὸν Κικέρωνα δέξασθαι προθύμως [3] τὴν Καίσαρος φιλίαν. ἔτι γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε Πομπηίου ζῶντος καὶ Καίσαρος, ἔδοξε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ὁ Κικέρων καλεῖν τινα τοὺς τῶν συγκλητικῶν παῖδας εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον, ὡς μέλλοντος ἐξ αὐτῶν ἕνα τοῦ Διὸς ἀποδεικνύναι τῆς Ῥώμης ἡγεμόνα· τοὺς δὲ πολίτας ὑπὸ σπουδῆς θέοντας ἵστασθαι περὶ τὸν νεών, καὶ τοὺς παῖδας ἐν ταῖς [4] περιπορφύροις καθέζεσθαι σιωπὴν ἔχοντας. ἐξαίφνης δὲ τῶν θυρῶν ἀνοιχθεισῶν, καθ’ ἕνα τῶν παίδων ἀνιστάμενον κύκλῳ περὶ τὸν θεὸν παραπορεύεσθαι, τὸν δὲ πάντας ἐπισκοπεῖν καὶ ἀποπέμπειν ἀχθομένους. ὡς δ’ οὗτος ἦν προσιὼν κατ’ αὐτόν, ἐκτεῖναι τὴν δεξιὰν καὶ εἰπεῖν ὦ Ῥωμαῖοι, πέρας ὑμῖν ἐμφυλίων πολέμων οὗτος ἡγεμὼν [5] γενόμενος. τοιοῦτό φασιν ἐνύπνιον ἰδόντα τὸν Κικέρωνα, τὴν μὲν ἰδέαν τοῦ παιδὸς ἐκμεμάχθαι καὶ κατέχειν ἐναργῶς, αὐτὸν δ’ οὐκ ἐπίστασθαι. μεθ’ ἡμέραν δὲ καταβαίνοντος εἰς τὸ πεδίον τὸ Ἄρειον αὐτοῦ, τοὺς παῖδας ἤδη γεγυμνασμένους ἀπέρχεσθαι, κἀκεῖνον ὀφθῆναι τῷ Κικέρωνι πρῶτον οἷος ὤφθη καθ’ ὕπνον· ἐκπλαγέντα δὲ πυνθάνεσθαι [6] τίνων εἴη γονέων. ἦν δὲ πατρὸς μὲν Ὀκταουΐου τῶν οὐκ ἄγαν ἐπιφανῶν, Ἀττίας δὲ μητρός, ἀδελφιδῆς Καίσαρος. ὅθεν Καῖσαρ αὐτῷ παῖδας οὐκ ἔχων ἰδίους καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τὸν οἶκον ἐν ταῖς διαθήκαις ἔδωκεν.

[7] ἐκ τούτου φασὶ τὸν Κικέρωνα τῷ παιδὶ κατὰ τὰς ἀπαντήσεις ἐντυγχάνειν ἐπιμελῶς, κἀκεῖνον οἰκείως δέχεσθαι τὰς φιλοφροσύνας· καὶ γὰρ ἐκ τύχης αὐτῷ γεγονέναι συμβεβήκει Κικέρωνος ὑπατεύοντος.

[45] [1] Αὗται μὲν οὖν ἴσως προφάσεις ἦσαν λεγόμεναι· τὸ δὲ πρὸς Ἀντώνιον μῖσος Κικέρωνα πρῶτον, εἶθ’ ἡ φύσις ἥττων οὖσα τιμῆς προσεποίησε Καίσαρι, νομίζοντα προσλαμβάνειν [2] τῇ πολιτείᾳ τὴν ἐκείνου δύναμιν. οὕτω γὰρ ὑπῄει τὸ μειράκιον αὐτόν, ὥστε καὶ πατέρα προσαγορεύειν. ἐφ’ ᾧ σφόδρα Βροῦτος ἀγανακτῶν ἐν ταῖς πρὸς Ἀττικὸν ἐπιστολαῖς (Brut. 1, 17, 5) καθήψατο τοῦ Κικέρωνος, ὅτι διὰ φόβον Ἀντωνίου θεραπεύων Καίσαρα δῆλός ἐστιν οὐκ ἐλευθερίαν τῇ πατρίδι πράττων, ἀλλὰ δεσπότην φιλάνθρωπον [3] αὑτῷ μνώμενος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τόν γε παῖδα τοῦ Κικέρωνος ὁ Βροῦτος ἐν Ἀθήναις διατρίβοντα παρὰ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ἀναλαβὼν ἔσχεν ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίαις, καὶ πολλὰ [4] χρώμενος αὐτῷ κατώρθου. τοῦ δὲ Κικέρωνος ἀκμὴν ἔσχεν ἡ δύναμις ἐν τῇ πόλει τότε μεγίστην, καὶ κρατῶν ὅσον ἐβούλετο τὸν μὲν Ἀντώνιον ἐξέκρουσε καὶ κατεστασίασε, καὶ πολεμήσοντας αὐτῷ τοὺς δύο ὑπάτους, Ἵρτιον καὶ Πάνσαν, ἐξέπεμψε, Καίσαρι δὲ ῥαβδούχους καὶ στρατηγικὸν κόσμον, ὡς δὴ προπολεμοῦντι τῆς πατρίδος, ἔπεισε ψηφίσασθαι τὴν σύγκλητον. ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀντώνιος μὲν ἥττητο, τῶν δ’ ὑπάτων ἀμφοτέρων ἐκ τῆς μάχης ἀποθανόντων [5] πρὸς Καίσαρα συνέστησαν αἱ δυνάμεις, δείσασα δ’ ἡ βουλὴ νέον ἄνδρα καὶ τύχῃ λαμπρᾷ κεχρημένον, ἐπειρᾶτο τιμαῖς καὶ δωρεαῖς ἀποκαλεῖν αὐτοῦ τὰ στρατεύματα καὶ περισπᾶν τὴν δύναμιν, ὡς μὴ δεομένη τῶν προπολεμούντων Ἀντωνίου πεφευγότος, οὕτως ὁ Καῖσαρ φοβηθεὶς ὑπέπεμπε τῷ Κικέρωνι τοὺς δεομένους καὶ πείθοντας, ὑπατείαν μὲν ἀμφοτέροις ὁμοῦ πράττειν, χρῆσθαι δὲ τοῖς πράγμασιν ὅπως αὐτὸς ἔγνωκε παραλαβόντα τὴν ἀρχήν, καὶ τὸ μειράκιον [6] διοικεῖν, ὀνόματος καὶ δόξης γλιχόμενον. ὁμολογεῖ δ’ οὖν ὁ Καῖσαρ αὐτός (HHR II 56), ὡς δεδιὼς κατάλυσιν καὶ κινδυνεύων ἔρημος γενέσθαι χρήσαιτο τῇ Κικέρωνος ἐν δέοντι φιλαρχίᾳ, προτρεψάμενος αὐτὸν ὑπατείαν μετιέναι συμπράττοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ συναρχαιρεσιάζοντος.

[46] [1] Ἐνταῦθα μέντοι μάλιστα Κικέρων ἐπαρθεὶς ὑπὸ νέου γέρων καὶ φενακισθεὶς καὶ συναρχαιρεσιάσας καὶ παρασχὼν αὐτῷ τὴν σύγκλητον, εὐθὺς μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων αἰτίαν ἔσχεν, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον αὑτὸν ἀπολωλεκὼς ᾔσθετο [2] καὶ τοῦ δήμου προέμενος τὴν ἐλευθερίαν. αὐξηθεὶς γὰρ ὁ νεανίας καὶ τὴν ὑπατείαν λαβών, Κικέρωνα μὲν εἴασε χαίρειν, Ἀντωνίῳ δὲ καὶ Λεπίδῳ φίλος γενόμενος καὶ τὴν δύναμιν εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συνενεγκών, ὥσπερ ἄλλο τι κτῆμα τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἐνείματο πρὸς αὐτούς, καὶ κατεγράφησαν [3] ἄνδρες οὓς ἔδει θνῄσκειν ὑπὲρ διακοσίους. πλείστην δὲ τῶν ἀμφισβητημάτων αὐτοῖς ἔριν ἡ Κικέρωνος προγραφὴ παρέσχεν, Ἀντωνίου μὲν ἀσυμβάτως ἔχοντος, εἰ μὴ πρῶτος ἐκεῖνος ἀποθνῄσκοι, Λεπίδου δ’ Ἀντωνίῳ προστιθεμένου, [4] Καίσαρος δὲ πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους ἀντέχοντος. ἐγίγνοντο δ’ αἱ σύνοδοι μόνοις ἀπόρρητοι περὶ πόλιν Βονωνίαν ἐφ’ ἡμέρας τρεῖς, καὶ συνῄεσαν εἰς τόπον τινὰ πρόσω τῶν [5] στρατοπέδων, ποταμῷ περιρρεόμενον. λέγεται δὲ τὰς πρώτας ἡμέρας διαγωνισάμενος ὑπὲρ τοῦ Κικέρωνος ὁ Καῖσαρ ἐνδοῦναι τῇ τρίτῃ καὶ προέσθαι τὸν ἄνδρα. τὰ δὲ τῆς ἀντιδόσεως οὕτως εἶχεν. ἔδει Κικέρωνος μὲν ἐκστῆναι Καίσαρα, Παύλου δὲ τἀδελφοῦ Λέπιδον, Λευκίου δὲ Καίσαρος Ἀντώνιον, ὃς ἦν θεῖος αὐτῷ πρὸς μητρός.

[6] οὕτως ἐξέπεσον ὑπὸ θυμοῦ καὶ λύσσης τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων λογισμῶν, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀπέδειξαν ὡς οὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου θηρίον ἐστὶν ἀγριώτερον ἐξουσίαν πάθει προσλαβόντος.

[47] [1] Πραττομένων δὲ τούτων ὁ Κικέρων ἦν μὲν ἐν ἀγροῖς ἰδίοις περὶ Τοῦσκλον, ἔχων τὸν ἀδελφὸν σὺν αὑτῷ· πυθόμενοι δὲ τὰς προγραφάς, ἔγνωσαν εἰς Ἄστυρα μεταβῆναι, χωρίον παράλιον τοῦ Κικέρωνος, ἐκεῖθεν δὲ πλεῖν εἰς Μακεδονίαν πρὸς Βροῦτον· ἤδη γὰρ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ λόγος [2] ἐφοίτα κρατοῦντος. ἐκομίζοντο δ’ ἐν φορείοις, ἀπειρηκότες ὑπὸ λύπης, καὶ κατὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἐφιστάμενοι καὶ τὰ [3] φορεῖα παραβάλλοντες ἀλλήλοις προσωλοφύροντο. μᾶλλον δ’ ὁ Κόιντος ἠθύμει, καὶ λογισμὸς αὐτὸν εἰσῄει τῆς ἀπορίας· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἔφθη λαβεῖν οἴκοθεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ Κικέρωνι γλίσχρον ἦν ἐφόδιον· ἄμεινον οὖν εἶναι τὸν μὲν Κικέρωνα προλαμβάνειν τῆς φυγῆς, αὐτὸν δὲ μεταθεῖν [4] οἴκοθεν συσκευασάμενον. ταῦτ’ ἔδοξε, καὶ περιβαλόντες ἀλλήλους καὶ ἀνακλαυσάμενοι διελύθησαν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Κόιντος οὐ πολλαῖς ὕστερον ἡμέραις ὑπὸ τῶν οἰκετῶν προδοθεὶς τοῖς ζητοῦσιν, ἀνῃρέθη μετὰ τοῦ παιδός. ὁ δὲ Κικέρων εἰς Ἄστυρα κομισθεὶς καὶ πλοῖον εὑρών, εὐθὺς ἐνέβη καὶ παρέπλευσεν ἄχρι Κιρκαίου πνεύματι [5] χρώμενος. ἐκεῖθεν δὲ βουλομένων εὐθὺς αἴρειν τῶν κυβερνητῶν, εἴτε δείσας τὴν θάλασσαν, εἴτ’ οὔπω παντάπασι τὴν Καίσαρος ἀπεγνωκὼς πίστιν, ἀπέβη καὶ παρῆλθε [6] πεζῇ σταδίους ἑκατὸν ὡς εἰς Ῥώμην πορευόμενος. αὖθις δ’ ἀλύων καὶ μεταβαλλόμενος, κατῄει πρὸς θάλασσαν εἰς Ἄστυρα, κἀκεῖ διενυκτέρευσεν ἐπὶ δεινῶν καὶ ἀπόρων λογισμῶν, ὅς γε καὶ παρελθεῖν εἰς τὴν Καίσαρος οἰκίαν διενοήθη κρύφα καὶ σφάξας ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ τῆς ἑστίας ἀλάστορα [7] προσβαλεῖν. ἀλλὰ καὶ ταύτης αὐτὸν ἀπέκρουσε τῆς ὁδοῦ δέος βασάνων, καὶ πολλὰ ταραχώδη καὶ παλίντροπα βουλεύματα τῇ γνώμῃ μεταλαμβάνων, παρέδωκε τοῖς οἰκέταις ἑαυτὸν εἰς Καιήτας κατὰ πλοῦν κομίζειν, ἔχων ἐκεῖ χωρία καὶ καταφυγὴν ὥρᾳ θέρους φιλάνθρωπον, [8] ὅταν ἥδιστον οἱ ἐτησίαι καταπνέωσιν. ἔχει δ’ ὁ τόπος καὶ ναὸν Ἀπόλλωνος μικρὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς θαλάσσης. ἐντεῦθεν ἀρθέντες ἀθρόοι κόρακες ὑπὸ κλαγγῆς προσεφέροντο τῷ πλοίῳ τοῦ Κικέρωνος ἐπὶ γῆν ἐρεσσομένῳ, καὶ κατασχόντες ἐπὶ τὴν κεραίαν ἑκατέρωθεν οἱ μὲν ἐβόων, οἱ δ’ ἔκοπτον τὰς τῶν μηρυμάτων ἀρχάς, καὶ πᾶσιν ἐδόκει τὸ [9] σημεῖον εἶναι πονηρόν. ἀπέβη δ’ οὖν ὁ Κικέρων, καὶ παρελθὼν εἰς τὴν ἔπαυλιν, ὡς ἀναπαυσόμενος κατεκλίθη. τῶν δὲ κοράκων οἱ πολλοὶ μὲν ἐπὶ τῆς θυρίδος διεκάθηντο φθεγγόμενοι θορυβῶδες, εἷς δὲ καταβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ κλινίδιον ἐγκεκαλυμμένου τοῦ Κικέρωνος ἀπῆγε τῷ στόματι κατὰ [10] μικρὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ προσώπου τὸ ἱμάτιον. οἱ δ’ οἰκέται ταῦθ’ ὁρῶντες καὶ κακίσαντες αὑτούς, εἰ περιμένουσι τοῦ δεσπότου φονευομένου θεαταὶ γενέσθαι, θηρία δ’ αὐτῷ βοηθεῖ καὶ προκήδεται παρ’ ἀξίαν πράττοντος, αὐτοὶ δ’ οὐκ ἀμύνουσι, τὰ μὲν δεόμενοι, τὰ δὲ βίᾳ λαβόντες ἐκόμιζον ἐν τῷ φορείῳ πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν.

[48] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δ’ οἱ σφαγεῖς ἐπῆλθον, ἑκατοντάρχης Ἑρέννιος καὶ Ποπίλλιος χιλίαρχος, ᾧ πατροκτονίας ποτὲ δίκην φεύγοντι συνεῖπεν ὁ Κικέρων, ἔχοντες ὑπηρέτας.

[2] ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰς θύρας κεκλεισμένας εὑρόντες ἐξέκοψαν, οὐ φαινομένου τοῦ Κικέρωνος οὐδὲ τῶν ἔνδον εἰδέναι φασκόντων, λέγεται νεανίσκον τινά, τεθραμμένον μὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ Κικέρωνος ἐν γράμμασιν ἐλευθερίοις καὶ μαθήμασιν, ἀπελεύθερον δὲ Κοΐντου τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ, Φιλόλογον τοὔνομα, φράσαι τῷ χιλιάρχῳ τὸ φορεῖον κομιζόμενον διὰ τῶν καταφύτων καὶ συσκίων περιπάτων ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν. [3] ὁ μὲν οὖν χιλίαρχος ὀλίγους ἀναλαβὼν μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ περιέθει πρὸς τὴν ἔξοδον, τοῦ δ’ Ἑρεννίου δρόμῳ φερομένου διὰ τῶν περιπάτων ὁ Κικέρων ᾔσθετο, καὶ τοὺς οἰκέτας ἐκέλευσεν [4] ἐνταῦθα καταθέσθαι τὸ φορεῖον. αὐτὸς δ’ ὥσπερ εἰώθει τῇ ἀριστερᾷ χειρὶ τῶν γενείων ἁπτόμενος, ἀτενὲς ‹ἐν›εώρα τοῖς σφαγεῦσιν, αὐχμοῦ καὶ κόμης ἀνάπλεως καὶ συντετηκὼς ὑπὸ φροντίδων τὸ πρόσωπον, ὥστε τοὺς πλείστους ἐγκαλύψασθαι τοῦ Ἑρεννίου σφάζοντος αὐτόν.

[5] ἐσφάγη δὲ τὸν τράχηλον ἐκ τοῦ φορείου προτείνας, ἔτος [6] ἐκεῖνο γεγονὼς ἑξηκοστὸν καὶ τέταρτον. τὴν δὲ κεφαλὴν ἀπέκοψαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰς χεῖρας, Ἀντωνίου κελεύσαντος, αἷς τοὺς Φιλιππικοὺς ἔγραψεν. αὐτός τε γὰρ ὁ Κικέρων τοὺς κατ’ Ἀντωνίου λόγους Φιλιππικοὺς ἐπέγραψε, καὶ μέχρι νῦν [τὰ βιβλία] Φιλιππικοὶ καλοῦνται.

[49] [1] Τῶν δ’ ἀκρωτηρίων εἰς Ῥώμην κομισθέντων, ἔτυχε μὲν ἀρχαιρεσίας συντελῶν ὁ Ἀντώνιος, ἀκούσας δὲ καὶ [2] ἰδὼν ἀνεβόησεν, ὡς νῦν αἱ προγραφαὶ τέλος ἔχοιεν. τὴν δὲ κεφαλὴν καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἐκέλευσεν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐμβόλων ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος θεῖναι, θέαμα Ῥωμαίοις φρικτόν, οὐ τὸ Κικέρωνος ὁρᾶν πρόσωπον οἰομένοις, ἀλλὰ τῆς Ἀντωνίου ψυχῆς εἰκόνα. πλὴν ἕν γέ τι φρονήσας μέτριον ἐν τούτοις, Πομπωνίᾳ τῇ Κοΐντου γυναικὶ τὸν Φιλόλογον παρέδωκεν.

[3] ἡ δὲ κυρία γενομένη τοῦ σώματος, ἄλλαις τε δειναῖς ἐχρήσατο τιμωρίαις, καὶ τὰς σάρκας ἀποτέμνοντα τὰς ἑαυτοῦ κατὰ μικρὸν ὀπτᾶν, εἶτ’ ἐσθίειν ἠνάγκασεν.

[4] οὕτω γὰρ ἔνιοι τῶν συγγραφέων ἱστορήκασιν· ὁ δ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ Κικέρωνος ἀπελεύθερος Τίρων τὸ παράπαν οὐδὲ μέμνηται τῆς τοῦ Φιλολόγου προδοσίας.

[5] Πυνθάνομαι δὲ Καίσαρα χρόνοις πολλοῖς ὕστερον εἰσελθεῖν πρὸς ἕνα τῶν θυγατριδῶν· τὸν δὲ βιβλίον ἔχοντα Κικέρωνος ἐν ταῖς χερσίν, ἐκπλαγέντα τῷ ἱματίῳ περικαλύπτειν· ἰδόντα δὲ τὸν Καίσαρα λαβεῖν καὶ διελθεῖν ἑστῶτα μέρος πολὺ τοῦ βιβλίου, πάλιν δ’ ἀποδιδόντα τῷ μειρακίῳ φάναι λόγιος ἁνὴρ ὦ παῖ, λόγιος καὶ φιλόπατρις.

[6] Ἐπεὶ μέντοι τάχιστα κατεπολέμησεν ὁ Καῖσαρ Ἀντώνιον, ὑπατεύων αὐτὸς εἵλετο συνάρχοντα τοῦ Κικέρωνος τὸν υἱόν, ἐφ’ οὗ τάς τ’ εἰκόνας ἡ βουλὴ καθεῖλεν Ἀντωνίου, καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἁπάσας ἠκύρωσε τιμάς, καὶ προσεψηφίσατο μηδενὶ τῶν Ἀντωνίων ὄνομα Μᾶρκον εἶναι. οὕτω τὸ δαιμόνιον εἰς τὸν Κικέρωνος οἶκον ἐπανήνεγκε τὸ τέλος τῆς Ἀντωνίου κολάσεως.

Comparison Demosthenis et Ciceronis

[1] [] Ἃ μὲν οὖν ἄξια μνήμης τῶν περὶ Δημοσθένους καὶ Κικέρωνος ἱστορουμένων εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν ἀφῖκται [2] γνῶσιν, ταῦτ’ ἐστίν. ἀφεικὼς δὲ τὸ συγκρίνειν τὴν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἕξιν αὐτῶν, ἐκεῖνό μοι δοκῶ μὴ παρήσειν ἄρρητον, ὅτι Δημοσθένης μὲν εἰς τὸ ῥητορικὸν ἐνέτεινε πᾶν ὅσον εἶχεν ἐκ φύσεως ἢ ἀσκήσεως λόγιον, ὑπερβαλλόμενος ἐναργείᾳ μὲν καὶ δεινότητι τοὺς ἐπὶ τῶν ἀγώνων καὶ τῶν δικῶν συνεξεταζομένους, ὄγκῳ δὲ καὶ μεγαλοπρεπείᾳ τοὺς ἐπιδεικτικούς, ἀκριβείᾳ δὲ καὶ τέχνῃ τοὺς [3] σοφιστάς· Κικέρων δὲ καὶ πολυμαθὴς καὶ ποικίλος τῇ περὶ τοὺς λόγους σπουδῇ γενόμενος, συντάξεις μὲν ἰδίας φιλοσόφους ἀπολέλοιπεν οὐκ ὀλίγας εἰς τὸν Ἀκαδημαϊκὸν τρόπον, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τῶν πρὸς τὰς δίκας καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας γραφομένων λόγων δῆλός ἐστιν ἐμπειρίαν τινὰ [4] γραμμάτων παρενδείκνυσθαι βουλόμενος. ἔστι δέ τις καὶ τοῦ ἤθους ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἑκατέρου δίοψις. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Δημοσθενικὸς ἔξω παντὸς ὡραϊσμοῦ καὶ παιδιᾶς εἰς δεινότητα καὶ σπουδὴν συνηγμένος οὐκ ἐλλυχνίων ὄδωδεν, ὥσπερ ὁ Πυθέας ἔσκωπτεν, ἀλλ’ ὑδροποσίας καὶ φροντίδων καὶ τῆς λεγομένης πικρίας τοῦ τρόπου καὶ στυγνότητος· Κικέρων δὲ πολλαχοῦ τῷ σκωπτικῷ πρὸς τὸ βωμολόχον ἐκφερόμενος, καὶ πράγματα σπουδῆς ἄξια γέλωτι καὶ παιδιᾷ κατειρωνευόμενος ἐν ταῖς δίκαις εἰς τὸ χρειῶδες, ἠφείδει τοῦ πρέποντος, ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ Καιλίου συνηγορίᾳ (17, 41) μηδὲν ἄτοπον ‹φήσας› ποιεῖν αὐτὸν ἐν τοσαύτῃ τρυφῇ καὶ πολυτελείᾳ ταῖς ἡδοναῖς χρώμενον· τὸ γὰρ ὧν ἔξεστι μὴ μετέχειν μανικὸν εἶναι, καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐν ἡδονῇ τὸ εὐδαιμονοῦν [5] τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων φιλοσόφων τιθεμένων. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Κάτωνος Μουρήναν διώκοντος ὑπατεύων ἀπολογεῖσθαι καὶ πολλὰ διὰ τὸν Κάτωνα κωμῳδεῖν τὴν Στωικὴν αἵρεσιν ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀτοπίαις τῶν παραδόξων λεγομένων δογμάτων· γέλωτος δὲ λαμπροῦ κατιόντος ἐκ τῶν περιεστώτων εἰς τοὺς δικαστάς, ἡσυχῇ διαμειδιάσας ‹ὁ Κάτων› πρὸς τοὺς παρακαθημένους εἰπεῖν· ὡς γελοῖον [6] ὦ ἄνδρες ἔχομεν ὕπατον. δοκεῖ δὲ καὶ γέλωτος οἰκεῖος ὁ Κικέρων γεγονέναι καὶ φιλοσκώπτης, τό τε πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ μειδίαμα καὶ γαλήνη κατεῖχε· τῷ δὲ Δημοσθένους ἀεί τις ἐπῆν σπουδή, καὶ τὸ πεφροντικὸς τοῦτο καὶ σύννουν οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἀπέλειπεν· ὅθεν καὶ δύσκολον αὐτὸν οἱ ἐχθροὶ καὶ δύστροπον, ὡς αὐτὸς εἴρηκεν (Phil. 2, 30), ἀπεκάλουν προδήλως.

[2] [1] Ἔτι τοίνυν ἐν τοῖς συγγράμμασι κατιδεῖν ἔστι τὸν μὲν ἐμμελῶς καὶ ἀνεπαχθῶς τῶν εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἁπτόμενον ἐγκωμίων, ὅτε τούτου δεήσαι πρὸς ἕτερόν τι μεῖζον, τἆλλα δ’ εὐλαβῆ καὶ μέτριον· ἡ δὲ Κικέρωνος ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἀμετρία τῆς περιαυτολογίας ἀκρασίαν τινὰ κατηγόρει πρὸς δόξαν, βοῶντος ὡς τὰ ὅπλα δεῖ τῇ τηβέννῳ καὶ τῇ γλώττῃ τὴν θριαμβικὴν ὑπείκειν δάφνην. τελευτῶν δ’ οὐ τὰ ἔργα καὶ τὰς πράξεις μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς λόγους ἐπῄνει τοὺς εἰρημένους ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ καὶ γεγραμμένους, ὥσπερ Ἰσοκράτει καὶ Ἀναξιμένει τοῖς σοφισταῖς διαμειρακιευόμενος, οὐ τὸν Ῥωμαίων δῆμον ἄγειν ἀξιῶν καὶ ὀρθοῦν,

βριθύν, ὁπλιτοπάλαν, δάιον ἀντιπάλοις (Aeschyl. fr. 4 D.).

ἰσχύειν μὲν γὰρ διὰ λόγου τὸν πολιτευόμενον ἀναγκαῖον, ἀγαπᾶν δ’ ἀγεννὲς καὶ λιχνεύειν τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ λόγου δόξαν. ὅθεν ἐμβριθέστερος ταύτῃ καὶ μεγαλοπρεπέστερος ὁ Δημοσθένης, τὴν μὲν αὑτοῦ δύναμιν ἐμπειρίαν τινὰ πολλῆς δεομένην τῆς παρὰ τῶν ἀκροωμένων εὐνοίας ἀποφαινόμενος (18, 277), ἀνελευθέρους δὲ καὶ βαναύσους, ὥσπερ εἰσί, τοὺς ἐπὶ τούτῳ φυσωμένους ἡγούμενος.

[3] Ἡ μὲν οὖν ἐν τῷ δημηγορεῖν καὶ πολιτεύεσθαι δύναμις ὁμαλῶς ἀμφοτέροις ὑπῆρξεν, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς τῶν ὅπλων καὶ στρατοπέδων κυρίους δεῖσθαι, Δημοσθένους μὲν Χάρητα καὶ Διοπείθη καὶ Λεωσθένην, Κικέρωνος δὲ Πομπήιον καὶ Καίσαρα τὸν νέον, ὡς αὐτὸς ὁ Καῖσαρ ἐν τοῖς πρὸς Ἀγρίππαν καὶ Μαικήναν ὑπομνήμασιν εἴρηκεν [2] (HRR II 56). ὃ δὲ δοκεῖ μάλιστα καὶ λέγεται τρόπον ἀνδρὸς ἐπιδεικνύναι καὶ βασανίζειν, ἐξουσία καὶ ἀρχὴ πᾶν πάθος κινοῦσα καὶ πᾶσαν ἀποκαλύπτουσα κακίαν, Δημοσθένει μὲν οὐχ ὑπῆρξεν, οὐδ’ ἔδωκε τοιαύτην διάπειραν αὑτοῦ, μηδεμίαν ἀρχὴν τῶν ἐπιφανῶν ἄρξας, ὃς οὐδὲ τῆς ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ συντεταγμένης ἐπὶ Φίλιππον ἐστρατήγησε δυνάμεως· [3] Κικέρων δὲ ταμίας εἰς Σικελίαν καὶ ἀνθύπατος εἰς Κιλικίαν καὶ Καππαδοκίαν ἀποσταλείς, ἐν ᾧ καιρῷ τῆς φιλοπλουτίας ἀκμαζούσης καὶ τῶν πεμπομένων στρατηγῶν καὶ ἡγεμόνων, ὡς τοῦ κλέπτειν ἀγεννοῦς ὄντος, ἐπὶ τὸ ἁρπάζειν τρεπομένων, οὐ τὸ λαμβάνειν ἐδόκει δεινόν, ἀλλ’ ὁ μετρίως τοῦτο ποιῶν ἠγαπᾶτο, πολλὴν μὲν ἐπίδειξιν ὑπεροψίας χρημάτων ἐποιήσατο, πολλὴν δὲ φιλανθρωπίας [4] καὶ χρηστότητος. ἐν αὐτῇ δὲ τῇ Ῥώμῃ λόγῳ μὲν ἀποδειχθεὶς ὕπατος, ἐξουσίαν δὲ λαβὼν αὐτοκράτορος καὶ δικτάτορος ἐπὶ τοὺς περὶ Κατιλίναν, ἐμαρτύρησε τῷ Πλάτωνι (resp. 473d) μαντευομένῳ παῦλαν ἕξειν κακῶν τὰς πόλεις, ὅταν εἰς ταὐτὸ δύναμίς τε μεγάλη καὶ φρόνησις ἔκ τινος τύχης χρηστῆς ἀπαντήσῃ μετὰ δικαιοσύνης.

[5] Χρηματίσασθαι τοίνυν ἀπὸ τοῦ λόγου Δημοσθένης μὲν ἐπιψόγως λέγεται, λογογραφῶν κρύφα τοῖς περὶ Φορμίωνα καὶ Ἀπολλόδωρον ἀντιδίκοις, καὶ διαβληθεὶς μὲν ἐπὶ τοῖς βασιλικοῖς χρήμασιν, ὀφλὼν δὲ τῶν Ἁρπαλείων.

[6] εἰ δὲ ταῦτα τοὺς γράφοντας (οὐκ ὀλίγοι δ’ εἰσὶν οὗτοι) ψεύδεσθαι φαίημεν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι γε πρὸς δωρεὰς βασιλέων σὺν χάριτι καὶ τιμῇ διδομένας ἀντιβλέψαι Δημοσθένης οὐκ ἂν ἐτόλμησεν (οὐδ’ ἦν τοῦτ’ ἔργον ἀνθρώπου [7] δανείζοντος ἐπὶ ναυτικοῖς), ἀμήχανον ἀντειπεῖν· περὶ δὲ Κικέρωνος, ὅτι καὶ Σικελιωτῶν ἀγορανομοῦντι καὶ βασιλέως τοῦ Καππαδοκῶν ἀνθυπατεύοντι καὶ τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ φίλων, ὅτε τῆς πόλεως ἐξέπιπτε, δωρουμένων πολλὰ καὶ δεομένων λαβεῖν ἀντέσχεν, εἴρηται.

[4] [1] Καὶ μὴν ἥ γε φυγὴ τῷ μὲν αἰσχρὰ κλοπῆς ἁλόντι συνέπεσε, τῷ δὲ διὰ κάλλιστον ἔργον, ἀνθρώπους [2] ἀλιτηρίους τῆς πατρίδος ἐκκόψαντι. διὸ τοῦ μὲν οὐδεὶς λόγος ἐκπίπτοντος, ἐφ’ ᾧ δ’ ἡ σύγκλητος ἐσθῆτά τε διήλλαξε καὶ πένθος ἔσχε καὶ γνώμην ὑπὲρ οὐδενὸς εἰπεῖν ἐπείσθη πρότερον ἢ Κικέρωνι κάθοδον ψηφίσασθαι. τὴν μέντοι φυγὴν ἀργῶς ὁ Κικέρων διήνεγκεν ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ καθήμενος, τῷ δὲ Δημοσθένει καὶ ἡ φυγὴ μέρος μέγα [3] τῆς πολιτείας γέγονε. συναγωνιζόμενος γὰρ ὡς εἴρηται τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ τοὺς Μακεδόνων πρέσβεις ἐξελαύνων ἐπήρχετο τὰς πόλεις, πολὺ βελτίων Θεμιστοκλέους καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδου παρὰ τὰς αὐτὰς τύχας διαφανεὶς πολίτης· καὶ μέντοι καὶ κατελθὼν αὖθις αὑτὸν ἐπέδωκεν εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν ταύτην πολιτείαν, καὶ διετέλει πολεμῶν πρὸς [4] Ἀντίπατρον καὶ Μακεδόνας. Κικέρωνα δ’ ὠνείδισεν ἐν τῇ βουλῇ Λαίλιος, αἰτουμένου Καίσαρος ὑπατείαν μετιέναι παρὰ νόμον οὔπω γενειῶντος, σιωπῇ καθήμενον. ἔγραφε δὲ καὶ Βροῦτος (Brut. 1, 16) ἐγκαλῶν ὡς μείζονα καὶ βαρυτέραν πεπαιδοτριβηκότι τυραννίδα τῆς ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ καταλυθείσης.

[5] [1] Ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ τῆς τελευτῆς τὸν μὲν οἰκτίσαι τις ‹ἄν›, ἄνδρα πρεσβύτην δι’ ἀγέννειαν ὑπ’ οἰκετῶν ἄνω καὶ κάτω περιφερόμενον καὶ φεύγοντα τὸν θάνατον καὶ ἀποκρυπτόμενον τοὺς οὐ πολὺ πρὸ τῆς φύσεως ἥκοντας [2] ἐπ’ αὐτόν, εἶτ’ ἀποσφαγέντα· τοῦ δ’, εἰ καὶ μικρὰ πρὸς τὴν ἱκεσίαν ἐνέδωκεν, ἀγαστὴ μὲν ἡ παρασκευὴ τοῦ φαρμάκου καὶ τήρησις, ἀγαστὴ δ’ ἡ χρῆσις, ὅτι τοῦ θεοῦ μὴ παρέχοντος αὐτῷ τὴν ἀσυλίαν, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ μείζονα βωμὸν καταφυγών, ἐκ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τῶν δορυφόρων λαβὼν ἑαυτὸν ᾤχετο, τῆς Ἀντιπάτρου καταγελάσας ὠμότητος.

Demetrius

[1] [1] Οἱ πρῶτοι τὰς τέχνας ἐοικέναι ταῖς αἰσθήσεσιν ὑπολαβόντες οὐχ ἥκιστά μοι δοκοῦσι τὴν περὶ τὰς κρίσεις αὐτῶν κατανοῆσαι δύναμιν, ᾗ τῶν ἐναντίων ὁμοίως ἑκατέρῳ γένει πεφύκαμεν ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι. τοῦτο γὰρ αὐταῖς κοινόν ἐστι· τῇ δὲ πρὸς τὰ τέλη τῶν κρινομένων [2] ἀναφορᾷ διαλλάττουσιν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ αἴσθησις οὐδέν τι μᾶλλον ἐπὶ λευκῶν ἢ μελάνων διαγνώσει γέγονεν, οὐδὲ γλυκέων ἢ πικρῶν, οὐδὲ μαλακῶν καὶ εἰκόντων ἢ σκληρῶν καὶ ἀντιτύπων, ἀλλ’ ἔργον αὐτῆς, ἑκάστοις ἐντυγχάνουσαν ὑπὸ πάντων τε κινεῖσθαι καὶ κινουμένην πρὸς τὸ φρονοῦν [3] ἀναφέρειν ὡς πέπονθεν. αἱ δὲ τέχναι μετὰ λόγου συνεστῶσαι πρὸς αἵρεσιν καὶ λῆψιν οἰκείου τινός, φυγὴν δὲ καὶ διάκρουσιν ἀλλοτρίου, τὰ μὲν ἀφ’ αὑτῶν καὶ προηγουμένως, τὰ δ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ φυλάξασθαι κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς ἐπιθεωροῦσι· καὶ γὰρ ἰατρικῇ τὸ νοσερὸν καὶ ἁρμονικῇ τὸ ἐκμελές, ὅπως ἔχει, σκοπεῖν συμβέβηκε πρὸς τὴν [4] τῶν ἐναντίων ἀπεργασίαν· αἵ τε πασῶν τελεώταται τεχνῶν, σωφροσύνη καὶ δικαιοσύνη καὶ φρόνησις, οὐ καλῶν μόνον καὶ δικαίων καὶ ὠφελίμων, ἀλλὰ καὶ βλαβερῶν καὶ αἰσχρῶν καὶ ἀδίκων κρίσεις οὖσαι, τὴν ἀπειρίᾳ τῶν κακῶν καλλωπιζομένην ἀκακίαν οὐκ ἐπαινοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀβελτερίαν ἡγοῦνται καὶ ἄγνοιαν ὧν μάλιστα γινώσκειν προσήκει [5] τοὺς ὀρθῶς βιωσομένους. οἱ μὲν οὖν παλαιοὶ Σπαρτιᾶται τοὺς εἵλωτας ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς πολὺν ἀναγκάζοντες πίνειν ἄκρατον εἰσῆγον εἰς τὰ συμπόσια, τοῖς νέοις οἷόν ἐστι τὸ μεθύειν ἐπιδεικνύντες· ἡμεῖς δὲ τὴν μὲν ἐκ διαστροφῆς ἑτέρων ἐπανόρθωσιν οὐ πάνυ φιλάνθρωπον οὐδὲ πολιτικὴν ἡγούμεθα, τῶν δὲ κεχρημένων ἀσκεπτότερον αὑτοῖς καὶ γεγονότων ἐν ἐξουσίαις καὶ πράγμασι μεγάλοις ἐπιφανῶν εἰς κακίαν οὐ χεῖρον ἴσως ἐστὶ συζυγίαν μίαν ἢ δύο παρεμβαλεῖν εἰς τὰ παραδείγματα τῶν βίων, οὐκ ἐφ’ ἡδονῇ μὰ Δία καὶ διαγωγῇ τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων ποικίλλοντας τὴν γραφήν, [6] ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ Ἰσμηνίας ὁ Θηβαῖος ἐπιδεικνύμενος τοῖς μαθηταῖς καὶ τοὺς εὖ καὶ τοὺς κακῶς αὐλοῦντας εἰώθει λέγειν οὕτως αὐλεῖν δεῖ καὶ πάλιν οὕτως αὐλεῖν οὐ δεῖ, ὁ δ’ Ἀντιγενείδας καὶ ἥδιον ᾤετο τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀκροᾶσθαι τοὺς νέους αὐλητῶν, ‹ἤν τ›ινα καὶ τῶν φαύλων πεῖραν λαμβάνωσιν, οὕτως μοι δοκοῦμεν ἡμεῖς προθυμότεροι τῶν βελτιόνων ἔσεσθαι καὶ θεαταὶ καὶ μιμηταὶ βίων, εἰ μηδὲ τῶν φαύλων καὶ ψεγομένων ἀνιστορήτως ἔχοιμεν.

[7] Περιέξει δὴ τοῦτο τὸ βιβλίον τὸν Δημητρίου τοῦ Πολιορκητοῦ βίον καὶ τὸν Ἀντωνίου τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος, ἀνδρῶν μάλιστα δὴ τῷ Πλάτωνι μαρτυρησάντων, ὅτι καὶ κακίας [8] μεγάλας ὥσπερ ἀρετὰς αἱ μεγάλαι φύσεις ἐκφέρουσι. γενόμενοι δ’ ὁμοίως ἐρωτικοὶ ποτικοὶ στρατιωτικοὶ μεγαλόδωροι πολυτελεῖς ὑβρισταί, καὶ τὰς κατὰ τύχην ὁμοιότητας ἀκολούθους ἔσχον. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐν τῷ λοιπῷ βίῳ μεγάλα μὲν κατορθοῦντες, μεγάλα δὲ σφαλλόμενοι, πλείστων δ’ ἐπικρατοῦντες, πλεῖστα δ’ ἀποβάλλοντες, ἀπροσδοκήτως δὲ πταίοντες, ἀνελπίστως δὲ πάλιν ἀναφέροντες διετέλεσαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατέστρεψεν ὁ μὲν ἁλοὺς ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, ὁ δ’ ἔγγιστα τοῦ παθεῖν τοῦτο γενόμενος.

[2] [1] Ἀντιγόνῳ τοίνυν δυοῖν υἱῶν ἐκ Στρατονίκης τῆς Κορράγου γενομένων, τὸν μὲν ἐπὶ τἀδελφῷ Δημήτριον, τὸν δ’ ἐπὶ τῷ πατρὶ Φίλιππον ὠνόμασεν. οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τῶν πλείστων λόγος. ἔνιοι δὲ τὸν Δημήτριον οὐχ υἱόν, ἀλλ’ ἀδελφιδοῦν γενέσθαι τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου λέγουσιν· ἐπὶ νηπίῳ γὰρ αὐτῷ παντάπασι τοῦ πατρὸς τελευτήσαντος, εἶτα τῆς μητρὸς εὐθὺς τῷ Ἀντιγόνῳ γαμηθείσης, υἱὸν [2] ἐκείνου νομισθῆναι. τὸν μὲν οὖν Φίλιππον οὐ πολλοῖς ἔτεσι τοῦ Δημητρίου νεώτερον ὄντα συνέβη τελευτῆσαι. Δημήτριος δὲ μεγέθει μὲν ἦν τοῦ πατρὸς ἐλάττων, καίπερ ὢν μέγας, ἰδέᾳ δὲ καὶ κάλλει προσώπου θαυμαστὸς καὶ περιττός, ὥστε τῶν πλαττόντων καὶ γραφόντων μηθένα τῆς ὁμοιότητος ἐφικέσθαι· τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ χάριν καὶ βάρος καὶ φόβον καὶ ὥραν εἶχε, καὶ συνεκέκρατο τῷ νεαρῷ καὶ ἰταμῷ δυσμίμητος ἡρωική τις ἐπιφάνεια καὶ βασιλικὴ [3] σεμνότης. οὕτω δέ πως καὶ τὸ ἦθος ἐπεφύκει πρὸς ἔκπληξιν ἀνθρώπων ἅμα καὶ χάριν. ἥδιστος γὰρ ὢν συγγενέσθαι, σχολάζων τε περὶ πότους καὶ τρυφὰς καὶ διαίτας ἁβροβιώτατος βασιλέων, ἐνεργότατον αὖ πάλιν καὶ σφοδρότατον τὸ περὶ τὰς πράξεις ἐνδελεχὲς εἶχε καὶ δραστήριον· ᾗ καὶ μάλιστα τῶν θεῶν ἐζήλου τὸν Διόνυσον, ὡς πολέμῳ τε χρῆσθαι δεινότατον, εἰρήνην τ’ αὖθις ἐκ πολέμου τρέψαι [καὶ] πρὸς εὐφροσύνην καὶ χάριν ἐμμελέστατον.

[3] [1] Ἦν μὲν οὖν καὶ φιλοπάτωρ διαφερόντως· τῇ δὲ περὶ τὴν μητέρα σπουδῇ καὶ τὸν πατέρα τιμῶν ἐφαίνετο δι’ εὔνοιαν ἀληθινὴν μᾶλλον ἢ θεραπείαν τῆς δυνάμεως.

[2] καί ποτε πρεσβείᾳ τινὶ τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου σχολάζοντος, ἀπὸ θήρας ὁ Δημήτριος ἐπέστη, καὶ προσελθὼν τῷ πατρὶ καὶ φιλήσας, ὥσπερ εἶχε τὰς βολίδας ἐκάθισε παρ’ αὐτόν. ὁ δ’ Ἀντίγονος ἀπιόντας ἤδη τοὺς πρέσβεις ἔχοντας τὰς ἀποκρίσεις μεγάλῃ φωνῇ προσαγορεύσας, καὶ τοῦτο εἶπεν ὦ ἄνδρες ἀπαγγέλλετε περὶ ἡμῶν, ὅτι πρὸς ἀλλήλους οὕτως ἔχομεν, ὡς ἰσχύν τινα πραγμάτων βασιλικῶν καὶ δυνάμεως ἐπίδειξιν οὖσαν [3] τὴν πρὸς υἱὸν ὁμόνοιαν καὶ πίστιν. οὕτως ἄρα πάντῃ δυσκοινώνητον ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ μεστὸν ἀπιστίας καὶ δυσνοίας, ὥστ’ ἀγάλλεσθαι τὸν μέγιστον τῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου διαδόχων καὶ πρεσβύτατον, ὅτι μὴ φοβεῖται τὸν υἱόν, ἀλλὰ [4] προσίεται τὴν λόγχην ἔχοντα τοῦ σώματος πλησίον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ μόνος ὡς εἰπεῖν ὁ οἶκος οὗτος ἐπὶ πλείστας διαδοχὰς τῶν τοιούτων κακῶν ἐκαθάρευσε, μᾶλλον δ’ εἷς μόνος τῶν ἀπ’ Ἀντιγόνου Φίλιππος ἀνεῖλεν [5] υἱόν. αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι σχεδὸν ἅπασαι διαδοχαὶ πολλῶν μὲν ἔχουσι παίδων, πολλῶν δὲ μητέρων φόνους καὶ γυναικῶν· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀδελφοὺς ἀναιρεῖν, ὥσπερ οἱ γεωμέτραι τὰ αἰτήματα λαμβάνουσιν, οὕτω συνεχωρεῖτο, κοινόν τι νομιζόμενον αἴτημα καὶ βασιλικὸν ὑπὲρ ἀσφαλείας.

[4] [1] Τοῦ μέντοι καὶ φιλάνθρωπον φύσει καὶ φιλέταιρον γεγονέναι τὸν Δημήτριον ἐν ἀρχῇ παράδειγμα τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν εἰπεῖν. Μιθριδάτης ὁ Ἀριοβαρζάνου παῖς ἑταῖρος ἦν αὐτοῦ καὶ καθ’ ἡλικίαν συνήθης, ἐθεράπευε δ’ Ἀντίγονον οὔτ’ ὢν οὔτε δοκῶν πονηρός. ἐκ δ’ ἐνυπνίου [2] τινὸς ὑποψίαν Ἀντιγόνῳ παρέσχεν. ἐδόκει γὰρ μέγα καὶ καλὸν πεδίον ἐπιὼν ὁ Ἀντίγονος ψῆγμά τι χρυσίου κατασπείρειν, ἐξ αὐτοῦ δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ὑποφύεσθαι θέρος χρυσοῦν, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἐπελθὼν ἰδεῖν οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ τετμημένην καλάμην· λυπούμενος δὲ καὶ περιπαθῶν ἀκοῦσαί τινων λεγόντων, ὡς ἄρα Μιθριδάτης εἰς Πόντον Εὔξεινον οἴχεται τὸ χρυσοῦν θέρος ἐξαμησάμενος.

[3] ἐκ τούτου διαταραχθεὶς καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ὁρκώσας σιωπήσειν, ἔφρασε τὴν ὄψιν αὐτῷ καὶ ὅτι πάντως τὸν ἄνθρωπον [4] ἐκποδὼν ποιεῖσθαι καὶ διαφθείρειν ἔγνωκεν. ἀκούσας δ’ ὁ Δημήτριος ἠχθέσθη σφόδρα, καὶ τοῦ νεανίσκου καθάπερ εἰώθει γενομένου παρ’ αὐτῷ καὶ συνόντος ἐπὶ σχολῆς, φθέγξασθαι μὲν οὐκ ἐτόλμησεν οὐδὲ τῇ φωνῇ κατειπεῖν διὰ τὸν ὅρκον, ὑπαγαγὼν δὲ κατὰ μικρὸν ἀπὸ τῶν φίλων, ὡς ἐγεγόνεσαν μόνοι καθ’ αὑτούς, τῷ στύρακι τῆς λόγχης κατέγραψεν εἰς τὴν γῆν ὁρῶντος αὐτοῦ· φεῦγε Μιθριδάτα. συνεὶς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἀπέδρα νυκτὸς εἰς Καππαδοκίαν, καὶ ταχὺ τὴν Ἀντιγόνῳ γενομένην ὄψιν ὕπαρ αὐτῷ συνετέλει [5] τὸ χρεών· πολλῆς γὰρ καὶ ἀγαθῆς ἐκράτησε χώρας, καὶ τὸ τῶν Ποντικῶν βασιλέων γένος ὀγδόῃ που διαδοχῇ παυσάμενον ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ἐκεῖνος παρέσχε. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν εὐφυΐας δείγματα τοῦ Δημητρίου πρὸς ἐπιείκειαν καὶ δικαιοσύνην.

[5] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς Ἐμπεδοκλέους στοιχείοις διὰ τὸ νεῖκος ἔνεστι διαφορὰ πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ πόλεμος, μᾶλλον δὲ τοῖς ἀλλήλων ἁπτομένοις καὶ πελάζουσιν, οὕτω τὸν πᾶσι τοῖς Ἀλεξάνδρου διαδόχοις πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὄντα συνεχῆ πόλεμον αἱ τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ τῶν τόπων συνάφειαι πρὸς ἐνίους ἐποίουν ἐπιφανέστερον καὶ μᾶλλον ἐξέκᾳον, ὥσπερ Ἀντιγόνῳ τότε πρὸς Πτολεμαῖον, αὐτὸς μὲν Ἀντίγονος ἐν Φρυγίᾳ διέτριβε, Πτολεμαῖον δ’ ἀκούων ἐκ Κύπρου διαβάντα πορθεῖν Συρίαν καὶ τὰς πόλεις [2] [ἀπ]ἄγειν καὶ βιάζεσθαι, κατέπεμψε τὸν υἱὸν Δημήτριον, δύο καὶ εἴκοσιν ἐτῶν ὄντα καὶ στρατείας τότε πρῶτον [3] αὐτοτελῶς ἐπὶ πράγμασι μεγάλοις ἁπτόμενον. οἷα δὲ νέος καὶ ἄπειρος ἀνδρὶ συμπεσὼν ἐκ τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου παλαίστρας, ἠθληκότι πολλοὺς καὶ μεγάλους καθ’ αὑτὸν ἀγῶνας, ἐσφάλη περὶ πόλιν Γάζαν ἡττηθείς, ὀκτακισχιλίων ἁλόντων [4] καὶ πεντακισχιλίων ἀποθανόντων. ἀπέβαλε δὲ καὶ σκηνὴν καὶ χρήματα καὶ ὅλως σύμπασαν τὴν περὶ τὸ σῶμα θεραπείαν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν αὐτῷ Πτολεμαῖος ἀπέπεμψε μετὰ τῶν φίλων, εὐγνώμονα καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ἀνειπὼν λόγον, ὡς οὐ περὶ πάντων ἅμα, περὶ δόξης δὲ [5] καὶ ἀρχῆς πολεμητέον ἐστὶν αὐτοῖς. Δημήτριος δὲ δεξάμενος ηὔξατο τοῖς θεοῖς μὴ πολὺν χρόνον ὀφειλέτην Πτολεμαίῳ γενέσθαι χάριτος, ἀλλὰ ταχέως ἀμείψασθαι [6] διὰ τῶν ὁμοίων. καὶ πάθος οὐ μειρακίου παθὼν ἐν ἀρχῇ πράξεων ἀνατραπέντος, ἀλλ’ ἐμβριθοῦς στρατηγοῦ κεχρημένου πραγμάτων μεταβολαῖς, ἀνδρῶν τε συλλογῆς καὶ κατασκευῆς ὅπλων ἐπεμελεῖτο, καὶ τὰς πόλεις διὰ χειρὸς εἶχε καὶ τοὺς ἀθροιζομένους ἐγύμναζεν.

[6] [1] Ἀντίγονος δὲ τὴν μάχην πυθόμενος, Πτολεμαῖον μὲν ἀγενείους νενικηκότα ἔφη νῦν αὖθις ἀγωνιεῖσθαι πρὸς ἄνδρας, τοῦ δ’ υἱοῦ τὸ φρόνημα καθελεῖν καὶ κολοῦσαι μὴ βουλόμενος, οὐκ ἐνέστη πάλιν αἰτουμένῳ μάχεσθαι καθ’ [2] αὑτόν, ἀλλ’ ἐφῆκε. καὶ μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἀφῖκτο Κίλλης Πτολεμαίου στρατηγὸς μετὰ λαμπρᾶς δυνάμεως, ὡς ἐξελάσων Συρίας Δημήτριον ἁπάσης, τῷ προηττῆσθαι [3] καταφρονούμενον. ὁ δ’ ἐξαίφνης ἐπιπεσὼν οὐ προαισθομένῳ καὶ φοβήσας, ἔλαβεν αὐτῷ στρατηγῷ τὸ στρατόπεδον, καὶ στρατιώτας μὲν ἑπτακισχιλίους ζῶντας εἷλε, [4] χρημάτων δὲ παμπόλλων ἐκυρίευσεν. ἔχαιρε δὲ νικήσας οὐχ οἷς ἕξειν, ἀλλ’ οἷς ἀποδώσειν ἔμελλε, καὶ τῆς νίκης οὐ τὸν πλοῦτον οὕτως οὐδὲ τὴν δόξαν ὡς τὴν διάλυσιν τοῦ φιλανθρωπεύματος ἐκείνου καὶ τὴν χάριν ἠγάπησεν. οὐ μὴν αὐτογνωμόνως ταῦτ’ ἔπραξεν, ἀλλ’ ἔγραψε τῷ πατρί.

[5] δόντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ κελεύσαντος ὃν βούλεται πᾶσι χρήσασθαι τρόπον, αὐτόν τε τὸν Κίλλην καὶ ‹τοὺς› φίλους αὐτῷ δωρησάμενος ἀφθόνως ἀπέπεμψε. τοῦτο τὸ πάθος Συρίας ἐξήλασε Πτολεμαῖον, Ἀντίγονον δὲ κατήγαγεν ἐκ Κελαινῶν χαίροντα τῇ νίκῃ καὶ ποθοῦντα θεάσασθαι τὸν υἱόν.

[7] [1] Ἐκ τούτου δὲ τῶν Ἀράβων τοὺς καλουμένους Ναβαταίους ὑπαγαγέσθαι πεμφθεὶς ὁ Δημήτριος, ἐκινδύνευσε μὲν εἰς τόπους ἀνύδρους ἐμπεσών, τῷ δὲ μὴ διαταραχθῆναι μηδ’ ἐκπλαγῆναι καταπληξάμενος τοὺς βαρβάρους, λείαν τε λαβὼν πολλὴν καὶ καμήλους ἑπτακοσίας παρ’ αὐτῶν ἀνεχώρησεν.

[2] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Σέλευκος ἐκπεσὼν μὲν ὑπ’ Ἀντιγόνου τῆς Βαβυλωνίας πρότερον, ὕστερον δ’ ἀναλαβὼν τὴν ἀρχὴν δι’ αὑτοῦ καὶ κρατῶν ἀνέβη μετὰ δυνάμεως τὰ συνοροῦντα τοῖς Ἰνδοῖς ἔθνη καὶ τὰς περὶ Καύκασον ἐπαρχίας [3] προσαξόμενος, ἐλπίζων Δημήτριος ἔρημον εὑρήσειν τὴν Μεσοποταμίαν καὶ περάσας ἄφνω τὸν Εὐφράτην, εἰς τὴν Βαβυλῶνα παρεισπεσὼν ἔφθη, καὶ τῆς ἑτέρας ἄκρας - δύο γὰρ ἦσαν - ἐκκρούσας τὴν Σελεύκου φρουρὰν καὶ κρατήσας, ἰδίους ἐγκατέστησεν ἑπτακισχιλίους ἄνδρας.

[4] ἐκ δὲ τῆς χώρας ὅσα φέρειν ἢ ἄγειν ἠδύναντο τοὺς στρατιώτας ὠφελεῖσθαι καὶ λαμβάνειν κελεύσας, ἐπανῆλθεν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν, βεβαιοτέραν Σελεύκῳ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπολιπών· ἐξίστασθαι γὰρ ἐδόκει τῷ κακοῦν ὡς μηκέτι προσήκουσαν αὐτοῖς.

[5] Πτολεμαίου μέντοι πολιορκοῦντος Ἁλικαρνασόν, ὀξέως βοηθήσας ἐξήρπασε τὴν πόλιν.

[8] [1] Ἐνδόξου δὲ τῆς φιλοτιμίας ταύτης γενομένης, ὁρμὴ παρέστη θαυμάσιος αὐτοῖς ἐλευθεροῦν τὴν Ἑλλάδα, πᾶσαν ὑπὸ Κασσάνδρου καὶ Πτολεμαίου καταδεδουλωμένην.

[2] τούτου πόλεμον οὐδεὶς ἐπολέμησε τῶν βασιλέων καλλίω καὶ δικαιότερον· ἃς γὰρ ἅμα τοὺς βαρβάρους ταπεινοῦντες εὐπορίας συνήγαγον, εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὑπὲρ [3] εὐδοξίας καὶ τιμῆς ἀνήλισκον. ὡς δὲ πρῶτον ἐδόκει πλεῖν ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας, τῶν φίλων εἰπόντος τινὸς πρὸς τὸν Ἀντίγονον, ὅτι δεῖ ταύτην τὴν πόλιν ἂν ἕλωσι κατέχειν δι’ αὑτῶν, ἐπιβάθραν τῆς Ἑλλάδος οὖσαν, οὐ προσέσχεν ὁ Ἀντίγονος, ἀλλ’ ἐπιβάθραν μὲν ἔφη καλὴν καὶ ἀσάλευτον εἶναι τὴν εὔνοιαν, τὰς δ’ Ἀθήνας, ὥσπερ σκοπὴν τῆς οἰκουμένης, ταχὺ τῇ δόξῃ διαπυρσεύσειν εἰς ἅπαντας [4] ἀνθρώπους τὰς πράξεις. ἔπλει δὲ Δημήτριος ἔχων ἀργυρίου πεντακισχίλια τάλαντα καὶ στόλον νεῶν πεντήκοντα καὶ διακοσίων ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας, τὸ μὲν ἄστυ Δημητρίου τοῦ Φαληρέως Κασσάνδρῳ διοικοῦντος, ἐν δὲ τῇ Μουνυχίᾳ [5] φρουρᾶς καθεστώσης. εὐτυχίᾳ δ’ ἅμα καὶ προνοίᾳ χρησάμενος ἐπεφαίνετο τῷ Πειραιεῖ πέμπτῃ φθίνοντος Θαργηλιῶνος, προαισθομένου μὲν οὐδενός, ἐπεὶ δ’ ὤφθη πλησίον ὁ στόλος, ἁπάντων ὡς Πτολεμαϊκὰς τὰς ναῦς ὑποδέχεσθαι παρασκευαζομένων. ὀψὲ ‹δὲ› συμφρονήσαντες ἐβοήθουν οἱ στρατηγοί, καὶ θόρυβος ἦν οἷον εἰκὸς ἐν ἀπροσδοκήτῳ πολεμίους ἀποβαίνοντας ἀναγκαζομένων ἀμύνεσθαι.

[6] τοῖς γὰρ στόμασι τῶν λιμένων ἀκλείστοις ἐπιτυχὼν ὁ Δημήτριος καὶ διεξελάσας, ἐντὸς ἦν ἤδη καταφανὴς πᾶσι, καὶ διεσήμηνεν ἀπὸ τῆς νεὼς αἴτησιν ἡσυχίας [7] καὶ σιωπῆς. γενομένου δὲ τούτου κήρυκα παραστησάμενος ἀνεῖπεν, ὅτι πέμψειεν αὐτὸν ὁ πατὴρ ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ, ‹τοὺς› Ἀθηναίους ἐλευθερώσοντα καὶ τὴν φρουρὰν ἐκβαλοῦντα καὶ τοὺς νόμους αὐτοῖς καὶ τὴν πάτριον ἀποδώσοντα πολιτείαν.

[9] [1] Ἀναρρηθέντων δὲ τούτων οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ παραχρῆμα τὰς ἀσπίδας θέμενοι πρὸ τῶν ποδῶν ἀνεκρότησαν, καὶ [2] βοῶντες ἐκέλευον ἀποβαίνειν τὸν Δημήτριον, εὐεργέτην καὶ σωτῆρα προσαγορεύοντες· οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Φαληρέα πάντως μὲν ᾤοντο δεῖν δέχεσθαι τὸν κρατοῦντα, κἂν μηδὲν ὧν ἐπαγγέλλεται μέλλῃ βεβαιοῦν, ὅμως δὲ πρέσβεις δεομένους ἀπέστειλαν, οἷς ὁ Δημήτριος ἐντυχὼν φιλανθρώπως συνέπεμψε παρ’ ἑαυτοῦ τῶν πατρῴων φίλων τὸν [3] Μιλήσιον Ἀριστόδημον. τοῦ δὲ Φαληρέως διὰ τὴν μεταβολὴν τῆς πολιτείας μᾶλλον τοὺς πολίτας ἢ τοὺς πολεμίους δεδοικότος οὐκ ἠμέλησεν ὁ Δημήτριος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν δόξαν αἰδεσθεὶς καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ ἀνδρός, εἰς Θήβας αὐτὸν ὥσπερ ἐβούλετο μετ’ ἀσφαλείας συνεξέπεμψεν.

[4] αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν μὲν πόλιν οὐκ ἂν ἔφη καίπερ ἐπιθυμῶν ἰδεῖν πρότερον ἢ παντάπασιν ἐλευθερῶσαι, τῆς φρουρᾶς ἀπαλλάξας, τῇ δὲ Μουνυχίᾳ χαράκωμα καὶ τάφρον περιβαλών, διὰ μέσου Μεγάροις ἐπέπλευσεν ὑπὸ Κασσάνδρου φρουρουμένοις.

[5] Πυθόμενος δὲ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Πολυπέρχοντος γενομένην γυναῖκα Κρατησίπολιν ἐν Πάτραις διατρίβουσαν οὐκ ἂν ἀηδῶς γενέσθαι μετ’ αὐτοῦ, περιβόητον οὖσαν ἐπὶ κάλλει, καταλιπὼν τὴν δύναμιν ἐν τῇ Μεγαρικῇ [6] προῆλθεν εὐζώνους τινὰς ἔχων σὺν αὑτῷ, καὶ τούτους πάλιν ἀποστρέψας ἀπεσκήνωσε χωρὶς ὑπὲρ τοῦ λαθεῖν τὴν γυναῖκα συνελθοῦσαν αὐτῷ. τοῦτό τινες αἰσθόμενοι [7] τῶν πολεμίων ἐξαίφνης κατέδραμον ἐπ’ αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ φοβηθεὶς καὶ λαβὼν χλαμύδιον εὐτελὲς δρόμῳ φεύγων ἐξέφυγεν, ὀλίγου δεήσας αἰσχίστην ἅλωσιν ἐξ ἀκρασίας ἁλῶναι. τὴν δὲ σκηνὴν μετὰ τῶν χρημάτων ᾤχοντο λαβόντες οἱ πολέμιοι.

[8] Τῶν δὲ Μεγάρων ἁλόντων καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἐφ’ ἁρπαγὴν τραπομένων, Ἀθηναῖοι παρῃτήσαντο τοὺς Μεγαρεῖς πολλῇ δεήσει, καὶ τὴν φρουρὰν ὁ Δημήτριος ἐκβαλὼν [9] ἠλευθέρωσε τὴν πόλιν. ἔτι δὲ τοῦτο πράττων τοῦ φιλοσόφου Στίλπωνος ἐμνήσθη, δόξαν ἔχοντος ἀνδρὸς ᾑρημένου πως ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ καταβιῶναι. μεταπεμψάμενος οὖν αὐτὸν ἠρώτα, μή τις εἴληφέ τι τῶν ἐκείνου. καὶ ὁ Στίλπων οὐδείς εἶπεν· οὐδένα γὰρ εἶδον ἐπιστάμαν ἀποφέροντα.

[10] τῶν δὲ θεραπόντων σχεδὸν ἁπάντων διακλαπέντων, ἐπεὶ πάλιν αὐτὸν ὁ Δημήτριος ἐφιλοφρονεῖτο καὶ τέλος ἀπαλλαττόμενος εἶπεν· ἐλευθέραν ὑμῶν ὦ Στίλπων ἀπολείπω τὴν πόλιν, ὀρθῶς ἔφη λέγεις· οὐδένα γὰρ ἁμῶν δοῦλον ἀπολέλοιπας.

[10] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ πάλιν ἐπανελθὼν πρὸς τὴν Μουνυχίαν καὶ στρατοπεδεύσας ἐξέκοψε τὴν φρουρὰν καὶ κατέσκαψε τὸ φρούριον, οὕτως ἤδη τῶν Ἀθηναίων δεχομένων καὶ καλούντων παρελθὼν εἰς τὸ ἄστυ καὶ συναγαγὼν τὸν δῆμον ἀπέδωκε τὴν πάτριον πολιτείαν, καὶ προσυπέσχετο παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῖς ἀφίξεσθαι σίτου πεντεκαίδεκα μυριάδας μεδίμνων καὶ ξύλων ναυπηγησίμων [2] πλῆθος εἰς ἑκατὸν τριήρεις. Ἀθηναῖοι δ’ ἀπολαβόντες τὴν δημοκρατίαν ἔτει πεντεκαιδεκάτῳ, τὸν διὰ μέσου χρόνον ἀπὸ τῶν Λαμιακῶν καὶ τῆς περὶ Κραννῶνα μάχης λόγῳ μὲν ὀλιγαρχικῆς, ἔργῳ δὲ μοναρχικῆς καταστάσεως γενομένης διὰ τὴν τοῦ Φαληρέως δύναμιν, οὕτως λαμπρὸν ἐν ταῖς εὐεργεσίαις καὶ μέγαν φανέντα τὸν Δημήτριον ἐπαχθῆ καὶ βαρὺν ἐποίησαν [3] τῶν τιμῶν ταῖς ἀμετρίαις ἃς ἐψηφίσαντο. πρῶτοι μὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώπων ἁπάντων τὸν Δημήτριον καὶ Ἀντίγονον βασιλεῖς ἀνηγόρευσαν, ἄλλως ἀφοσιουμένους τοὔνομα, [καὶ] τοῦτο δὴ μόνον τῶν βασιλικῶν ἔτι τοῖς ἀπὸ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου περιεῖναι δοκοῦν ἄθικτον ἑτέροις καὶ [4] ἀκοινώνητον· μόνοι δὲ σωτῆρας ἀνέγραψαν θεούς, καὶ τὸν ἐπώνυμον καὶ πάτριον ἄρχοντα καταπαύσαντες, ἱερέα σωτήρων ἐχειροτόνουν καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν, καὶ τοῦτον ἐπὶ τῶν ψηφισμάτων καὶ τῶν συμβολαίων προέγραφον.

[5] ἐνυφαίνεσθαι δὲ τῷ πέπλῳ μετὰ τῶν θεῶν αὐτοὺς ἐψηφίσαντο, καὶ τὸν τόπον ὅπου πρῶτον ἀπέβη τοῦ ἅρματος καθιερώσαντες καὶ βωμὸν ἐπιθέντες Δημητρίου [6] Καταιβάτου προσηγόρευσαν· ταῖς δὲ φυλαῖς δύο προσέθεσαν, Δημητριάδα καὶ Ἀντιγονίδα, καὶ τὴν βουλὴν τῶν πεντακοσίων πρότερον ἑξακοσίων ἐποίησαν, ἅτε δὴ φυλῆς ἑκάστης πεντήκοντα βουλευτὰς παρεχομένης.

[11] [1] Τὸ δ’ ὑπερφυέστατον ἐνθύμημα τοῦ Στρατοκλέους (οὗτος γὰρ ἦν ὁ τῶν σοφῶν τούτων καὶ περιττῶν καινουργὸς ἀρεσκευμάτων)· ἔγραψεν ὅπως οἱ πεμπόμενοι κατὰ ψήφισμα δημοσίᾳ πρὸς Ἀντίγονον ἢ Δημήτριον ἀντὶ πρεσβευτῶν θεωροὶ λέγοιντο, καθάπερ οἱ Πυθοῖ καὶ Ὀλυμπίαζε τὰς πατρίους θυσίας ὑπὲρ τῶν πόλεων ἀνάγοντες ἐν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς ἑορταῖς.

[2] Ἦν δὲ καὶ τἆλλα παράτολμος ὁ Στρατοκλῆς, καὶ βεβιωκὼς ἀσελγῶς καὶ τῇ βωμολοχίᾳ καὶ βδελυρίᾳ τοῦ παλαιοῦ Κλέωνος ἀπομιμεῖσθαι δοκῶν τὴν πρὸς τὸν δῆμον [3] εὐχέρειαν. ἔσχε δὲ τὴν ἑταίραν Φυλάκιον ἀνειληφώς, καί ποτ’ αὐτῷ πρὸς δεῖπνον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς πριαμένης ἐγκεφάλους καὶ τραχήλους παπαί εἶπε τοιαῦτά γ’ ὠψώνηκας [4] οἷς σφαιρίζομεν οἱ πολιτευόμενοι. τῆς δὲ περὶ Ἀμοργὸν ἥττης τῶν νεῶν συμβάσης τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, φθάσας τοὺς ἀπαγγέλλοντας εἰσήλασεν ἐστεφανωμένος διὰ τοῦ Κεραμεικοῦ, καὶ προσαγγείλας ὅτι νενικήκασιν εὐαγγέλια θύειν ἔγραψε καὶ κρεωδαισίαν τινὰ κατὰ φυλὴν [5] ἐποίησεν. ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον τῶν τὰ ναυάγια κομιζόντων ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης παραγενομένων καὶ τοῦ δήμου πρὸς ὀργὴν καλοῦντος αὐτόν, ἰταμῶς ὑποστὰς τὸν θόρυβον εἶτ’ ἔφη τί πεπόνθατε δεινόν, εἰ δύο ἡμέρας ἡδέως γεγόνατε; τοιαύτη μὲν ἡ τοῦ Στρατοκλέους θρασύτης.

[12] [1] Ἦν δ’ ἄρα καὶ πυρὸς ἕτερα θερμότερα κατὰ τὸν Ἀριστοφάνη (equ. 382)· γράφει γάρ τις ἄλλος ὑπερβαλλόμενος ἀνελευθερίᾳ τὸν Στρατοκλέα, δέχεσθαι Δημήτριον ὁσάκις ἂν ἀφίκηται τοῖς Δήμητρος καὶ Διονύσου ξενισμοῖς, τῷ δ’ ὑπερβαλλομένῳ λαμπρότητι καὶ πολυτελείᾳ τὴν ὑποδοχὴν [2] ἀργύριον εἰς ἀνάθημα δημοσίᾳ δίδοσθαι. τέλος δὲ τῶν τε μηνῶν τὸν Μουνυχιῶνα Δημητριῶνα καὶ τῶν ἡμερῶν τὴν ἕνην καὶ νέαν Δημητριάδα προσηγόρευσαν, καὶ τῶν [3] ἑορτῶν τὰ Διονύσια μετωνόμασαν Δημήτρια. ἐπεσήμηνε δὲ τοῖς πλείστοις τὸ θεῖον· ὁ μὲν γὰρ πέπλος, ὥσπερ ἐψηφίσαντο μετὰ τοῦ Διὸς καὶ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς προσενυφηναμένων Δημήτριον καὶ Ἀντίγονον, πεμπόμενος διὰ τοῦ Κεραμεικοῦ [4] μέσος ἐρράγη θυέλλης ἐμπεσούσης. περὶ δὲ τοὺς βωμοὺς τοὺς ἐκείνων ἐξήνθησεν ἡ γῆ κύκλῳ πολὺ κώνειον, [5] μηδ’ ἄλλως τῆς χώρας πολλαχοῦ φυόμενον. ᾗ δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὰ τῶν Διονυσίων ἐγίνετο, τὴν πομπὴν κατέλυσαν ἰσχυρῶν πάγων γενομένων παρ’ ὥραν, καὶ πάχνης βαθείας ἐπιπεσούσης οὐ μόνον ἀμπέλους καὶ συκᾶς ἁπάσας ἀπέκαυσε τὸ ψῦχος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ σίτου τὸν πλεῖστον ἐν χλόῃ διέφθειρε.

[6] διὸ καὶ Φιλιππίδης ἐχθρὸς ὢν τοῦ Στρατοκλέους ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐποίησε ταῦτα (CAF III 308)·

[7] δι’ ὃν ἀπέκαυσεν ἡ πάχνη τὰς ἀμπέλους,

δι’ ὃν ἀσεβοῦνθ’ ὁ πέπλος ἐρράγη μέσος,

ποιοῦντα τιμὰς τὰς [τῶν] θεῶν ἀνθρωπίνας.

ταῦτα καταλύει δῆμον, οὐ κωμῳδία.

[8] ἦν δ’ ὁ Φιλιππίδης Λυσιμάχου φίλος, καὶ πολλὰ δι’ αὐτὸν ὁ δῆμος εὖ ἔπαθεν ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ πρὸς πρᾶξιν αὐτῷ καὶ πρὸς στρατείαν εὐσύμβολος ἀπαντήσας εἶναι καὶ ὀφθείς. ἄλλως δὲ καὶ διὰ τὸ ἦθος εὐδοκίμει, μηθὲν ἐνοχλῶν μηδ’ αὐλικῆς περιεργίας ἀναπιμπλάμενος.

[9] φιλοφρονουμένου δέ ποτε τοῦ Λυσιμάχου πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ εἰπόντος ὦ Φιλιππίδη, τίνος σοι τῶν ἐμῶν μεταδῶ; μόνον ἔφη βασιλεῦ μὴ τῶν ἀπορρήτων. τοῦτον μὲν οὖν ἐπίτηδες ἐκείνῳ παρεθήκαμεν, τῷ ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς θυμέλης.

[13] [1] Ὃ δὲ μάλιστα τῶν τιμῶν ὑπερφυὲς ἦν καὶ ἀλλόκοτον, ἔγραψε Δρομοκλείδης ὁ Σφήττιος, ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν ἀσπίδων ἀναθέσεως εἰς Δελφοὺς παρὰ Δημητρίου λαβεῖν χρησμόν. [2] αὐτὴν δὲ παραγράψω τὴν λέξιν ἐκ τοῦ ψηφίσματος οὕτως ἔχουσαν· ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ· δεδόχθαι τῷ δήμῳ, χειροτονῆσαι τὸν δῆμον ἕνα ἄνδρα ἐξ Ἀθηναίων, ὅστις ἀφικόμενος πρὸς τὸν Σωτῆρα καὶ καλλιερησάμενος ἐπερωτήσει [Δημήτριον] τὸν Σωτῆρα, πῶς ‹ἂν› εὐσεβέστατα καὶ κάλλιστα καὶ τὴν ταχίστην ὁ δῆμος τὴν ἀποκατάστασιν [3] ποιήσαιτο τῶν ἀναθημάτων. ὅ τι δ’ ἂν χρήσῃ, ταῦτα πράττειν τὸν δῆμον. οὕτω καταμωκώμενοι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, προσδιέφθειραν αὐτόν, οὐδ’ ἄλλως ὑγιαίνοντα τὴν διάνοιαν.

[14] [1] Ἀλλ’ ἔν γε ταῖς Ἀθήναις τότε σχολάζων ἠγάγετο χηρεύουσαν Εὐρυδίκην, ἣ Μιλτιάδου μὲν ἦν ἀπόγονος τοῦ παλαιοῦ, συνοικήσασα δ’ Ὀφέλλᾳ τῷ Κυρήνης ἄρξαντι, μετὰ τὴν ἐκείνου τελευτὴν ἀφίκετο πάλιν [2] εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας. οἱ μὲν οὖν Ἀθηναῖοι τὸν γάμον τοῦτον εἰς χάριν ἔθεντο καὶ τιμὴν τῆς πόλεως· ἄλλως δ’ ὁ Δημήτριος εὐχερής τις ἦν περὶ γάμους καὶ πολλαῖς ἅμα συνῆν γυναιξίν, ὧν ἀξίωμα μέγιστον εἶχε καὶ τιμὴν Φίλα δι’ Ἀντίπατρον τὸν πατέρα καὶ διὰ τὸ προσυνῳκηκέναι Κρατερῷ, τῷ πλείστην εὔνοιαν αὑτοῦ παρὰ [3] Μακεδόσι τῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου διαδόχων ἀπολιπόντι. ταύτην ὡς ἔοικε κομιδῇ νέον ὄντα τὸν Δημήτριον ἔπειθεν ὁ πατήρ, οὐκ οὖσαν αὐτῷ καθ’ ὥραν ἀλλὰ πρεσβυτέραν, λαβεῖν· ἀπροθύμως δ’ ἔχοντι λέγεται πρὸς τὸ οὖς τὸ Εὐριπίδειον εἰπεῖν (Phoen. 395)·

ὅπου τὸ κέρδος, παρὰ φύσιν γαμητέον,

[4] ὁμοιόπτωτόν τι τῷ δουλευτέον εὐθυρρημονήσας. τοιαύτη μὲν οὖν τις ἦν ἡ τοῦ Δημητρίου τιμὴ πρός τε Φίλαν καὶ τὰς ἄλλας γαμετάς, ὥστε πολλαῖς μὲν ἀνέδην ἑταίραις, πολλαῖς δ’ ἐλευθέραις συνεῖναι γυναιξί, καὶ μάλιστα δὴ περὶ τὴν ἡδονὴν ταύτην κακῶς ἀκοῦσαι τῶν τότε βασιλέων.

[15] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτὸν ἐκάλει Πτολεμαίῳ περὶ Κύπρου πολεμήσοντα, πείθεσθαι μὲν ἦν ἀναγκαῖον, ἀχθόμενος δ’ ὅτι τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος πόλεμον ὄντα καλλίω καὶ λαμπρότερον ἀπολείπει, προσέπεμψε Κλεωνίδῃ τῷ Πτολεμαίου στρατηγῷ φρουροῦντι Σικυῶνα καὶ Κόρινθον, χρήματα προτείνων ὥστ’ ἐλευθέρας ἀφεῖναι [2] τὰς πόλεις. οὐ προσδεξαμένου δ’ ἐκείνου, διὰ ταχέων ἀναχθεὶς καὶ προσλαβὼν δύναμιν ἐπέπλευσε Κύπρῳ, καὶ Μενέλαον μὲν ἀδελφὸν Πτολεμαίου μάχην συνάψας εὐθὺς [3] ἐνίκησεν· αὐτοῦ δὲ Πτολεμαίου μετὰ δυνάμεως πεζικῆς ἅμα καὶ ναυτικῆς μεγάλης ἐπιφανέντος, ἐγένοντο μὲν ἀπειλαί τινες καὶ διάλογοι κομπώδεις, τοῦ μὲν ἀποπλεῖν Δημήτριον κελεύοντος πρὶν ὑπὸ τῆς δυνάμεως πάσης ἀθροισθείσης καταπατηθῆναι, Δημητρίου δ’ ἐκεῖνον ἀφεῖναι φάσκοντος, ἂν ὁμολογήσῃ Σικυῶνα καὶ Κόρινθον [4] ἀπαλλάξειν τῆς φρουρᾶς. ὁ δ’ ἀγὼν οὐ μόνον αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασι δυνάσταις πολλὴν εἶχε προσδοκίαν τῆς ἐπικρεμαμένης ἀδηλότητος, ὡς οὐ Κύπρον οὐδὲ Συρίαν, ἀλλὰ τὸ μέγιστον εὐθὺς εἶναι πάντων τῷ κρατοῦντι τῆς νίκης προστιθείσης.

[16] [1] Αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ὁ Πτολεμαῖος ἐπέπλει πεντήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν ναῦς ἔχων, ἐκ δὲ Σαλαμῖνος ἐκέλευσε Μενέλαον ἑξήκοντα ναυσίν, ὅταν μάλιστα σύστασιν ὁ ἀγὼν ἔχῃ, προσφερόμενον τὰς Δημητρίου κόπτειν ἐξόπισθεν καὶ [2] διαταράττειν τὴν τάξιν. Δημήτριος δὲ ταῖς μὲν ἑξήκοντα ταύταις ἀντέταξε δέκα ναῦς - τοσαῦται γὰρ ἤρκουν στενὸν ὄντα τοῦ λιμένος ἐμφράξαι τὸν ἔκπλουν - , αὐτὸς δὲ τὸ πεζὸν ἐκτάξας καὶ τοῖς ἀνατείνουσιν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ἀκρωτηρίοις περιχεάμενος, οὕτως ἀνήχθη ναυσὶν ἑκατὸν [3] ὀγδοήκοντα· προσμείξας δὲ ῥώμῃ καὶ βίᾳ πολλῇ, κατὰ κράτος ἐτρέψατο τὸν Πτολεμαῖον, αὐτὸν μὲν ὡς ἐνικήθη διὰ ταχέων φυγόντα ναυσὶν ὀκτὼ μόναις - τοσαῦται γὰρ ἐκ πασῶν περιεσώθησαν, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων αἱ μὲν ἐν τῇ ναυμαχίᾳ διεφθάρησαν, ἑβδομήκοντα δ’ ἥλωσαν αὔτανδροι - , [4] τοῦ δ’ ἐν ὁλκάσι παρορμοῦντος ὄχλου θεραπόντων καὶ φίλων καὶ γυναικῶν, ἔτι δ’ ὅπλων καὶ χρημάτων καὶ μηχανημάτων, ἁπλῶς οὐδὲν ἐξέφυγε τὸν Δημήτριον, ἀλλ’ [5] ἔλαβε πάντα καὶ κατήγαγεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον. ἐν δὲ τούτοις ἡ περιβόητος ἦν Λάμια, τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν σπουδασθεῖσα διὰ τὴν τέχνην - ἐδόκει γὰρ αὐλεῖν οὐκ εὐκαταφρονήτως - , ὕστερον δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἐρωτικοῖς λαμπρὰ γενομένη.

[6] τότε γοῦν ἤδη λήγουσα τῆς ὥρας καὶ πολὺ νεώτερον ἑαυτῆς λαβοῦσα τὸν Δημήτριον, ἐκράτησε τῇ χάριτι καὶ κατέσχεν, ὥστ’ ἐκείνης εἶναι μόνης ἐραστήν, τῶν δ’ [7] ἄλλων ἐρώμενον γυναικῶν. μετὰ δὲ τὴν ναυμαχίαν οὐδ’ ὁ Μενέλαος ἀντέσχεν, ἀλλὰ τήν τε Σαλαμῖνα παρέδωκε τῷ Δημητρίῳ καὶ τὰς ναῦς καὶ τὸ πεζόν, ἱππεῖς τε χιλίους καὶ διακοσίους καὶ μυρίους καὶ δισχιλίους ὁπλίτας.

[17] [1] Οὕτω δὲ λαμπρὰν καὶ καλὴν τὴν νίκην γενομένην ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐπικοσμῶν ὁ Δημήτριος εὐγνωμοσύνῃ καὶ φιλανθρωπίᾳ, τοὺς νεκροὺς τῶν πολεμίων ἔθαψε μεγαλοπρεπῶς καὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους ἀφῆκεν, Ἀθηναίοις δὲ χιλίας καὶ διακοσίας ἀπὸ τῶν λαφύρων ἐδωρήσατο πανοπλίας.

[2] Αὐτάγγελον δὲ τῆς νίκης τῷ πατρὶ τὸν Μιλήσιον Ἀριστόδημον ἔπεμψε, πρωτεύοντα κολακείᾳ τῶν αὐλικῶν ἁπάντων, καὶ τότε παρεσκευασμένον ὡς ἔοικε τῶν κολακευμάτων [3] τὸ μέγιστον ἐπενεγκεῖν τοῖς πράγμασιν. ὡς γὰρ ἐπέρασεν ἀπὸ τῆς Κύπρου, προσέχειν μὲν οὐκ εἴασε τῇ γῇ τὸ πλοῖον, ἀγκύρας δ’ ἀφεῖναι κελεύσας καὶ κατὰ ναῦν ἔχειν ἀτρέμα πάντας, αὐτὸς ἐμβὰς εἰς τὸ ἐφόλκιον ἐξῆλθε μόνος καὶ πρὸς τὸν Ἀντίγονον ἀνέβαινε, μετέωρον ὄντα τῇ προσδοκίᾳ τῆς μάχης καὶ διακείμενον ὡς εἰκός ἐστι διακεῖσθαι τοὺς περὶ πραγμάτων τηλικούτων [4] ἀγωνιῶντας. τότε γε μὴν ἀκούσας ἐκεῖνον ἥκειν, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον ἔσχε ταραχωδῶς, καὶ μόλις μὲν αὑτὸν οἴκοι κατεῖχεν, ἄλλους δ’ ἐπ’ ἄλλοις ἔπεμπεν ὑπηρέτας καὶ φίλους πευσομένους τοῦ Ἀριστοδήμου περὶ τῶν [5] γεγονότων. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ μηδὲν αὐτοῦ μηδενί, βάδην δὲ καὶ συνεστῶτι τῷ προσώπῳ μετὰ πολλῆς σιωπῆς προσιόντος, ἐκπλαγεὶς κομιδῇ καὶ μηκέτι καρτερῶν ὁ Ἀντίγονος ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας ἀπήντησε, πολλοῦ παραπέμποντος ἤδη τὸν Ἀριστόδημον ὄχλου καὶ συντρέχοντος [6] ἐπὶ τὸ βασίλειον. ὡς οὖν ἐγγὺς ἦλθεν, ἐκτείνας τὴν δεξιὰν ἀνεβόησε μεγάλῃ τῇ φωνῇ· χαῖρε βασιλεῦ Ἀντίγονε, νικῶμεν [βασιλέα] Πτολεμαῖον ναυμαχίᾳ, καὶ Κύπρον ἔχομεν καὶ στρατιώτας αἰχμαλώτους μυρίους ἑξακισχιλίους ὀκτακοσίους. ὁ δ’ Ἀντίγονος καὶ σὺ νὴ Δία χαῖρε εἶπεν· οὕτω δ’ ἡμᾶς βασανίσας δίκην ὑφέξεις· βράδιον γὰρ ἀπολήψῃ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον.

[18] [1] Ἐκ τούτου πρῶτον ἀνεφώνησε τὸ πλῆθος Ἀντίγονον καὶ Δημήτριον βασιλέας. Ἀντίγονον μὲν οὖν εὐθὺς ἀνέδησαν οἱ φίλοι, Δημητρίῳ δ’ ὁ πατὴρ ἔπεμψε διάδημα [2] καὶ γράφων ἐπιστολὴν βασιλέα προσεῖπεν. οἱ δ’ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ τούτων ἀπαγγελλομένων καὶ αὐτοὶ βασιλέα τὸν Πτολεμαῖον ἀνηγόρευσαν, ὡς μὴ δοκεῖν τοῦ φρονήματος [3] ὑφίεσθαι διὰ τὴν ἧτταν. ἐπενείματο δ’ οὕτως τὸ πρᾶγμα τῷ ζήλῳ τοὺς ‹ἄλλους› διαδόχους· καὶ γὰρ Λυσίμαχος ἤρξατο φορεῖν διάδημα, καὶ Σέλευκος ἐντυγχάνων τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἐπεὶ τοῖς γε βαρβάροις ‹καὶ› πρότερον οὗτος ὡς βασιλεὺς [4] ἐχρημάτιζε. Κάσσανδρος δέ, τῶν ἄλλων αὐτὸν βασιλέα καὶ γραφόντων καὶ καλούντων, αὐτὸς ὥσπερ πρότερον [5] εἰώθει τὰς ἐπιστολὰς ἔγραφε. τοῦτο δ’ οὐ προσθήκην ὀνόματος καὶ σχήματος ἐξαλλαγὴν εἶχε μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ φρονήματα τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐκίνησε καὶ τὰς γνώμας ἐπῆρε, καὶ τοῖς βίοις καὶ ταῖς ὁμιλίαις αὐτῶν ὄγκον ἐνεποίησε καὶ βαρύτητα, καθάπερ τραγικῶν ὑποκριτῶν ἅμα τῇ σκευῇ συμμεταβαλόντων καὶ βάδισμα καὶ φωνὴν καὶ [6] κατάκλισιν καὶ προσαγόρευσιν. ἐκ δὲ τούτων ἐγίνοντο καὶ περὶ τὰς δικαιώσεις βιαιότεροι, τὴν εἰς πολλὰ παρέχουσαν αὐτοὺς ἐλαφροτέρους καὶ μαλακωτέρους τοῖς ὑπηκόοις [7] πρότερον εἰρωνείαν τῆς ἐξουσίας ἀφελόντες. τοσοῦτον ἴσχυσε κόλακος φωνὴ μία καὶ τοσαύτης ἐνέπλησε τὴν οἰκουμένην μεταβολῆς.

[19] [1] Ἀντίγονος δὲ τοῖς πεπραγμένοις ὑπὸ Δημητρίου περὶ Κύπρον ἐπαρθείς, εὐθὺς ἐστράτευσεν ἐπὶ Πτολεμαῖον, αὐτὸς μὲν ἄγων πεζῇ τὴν δύναμιν, Δημητρίου δὲ [2] μεγάλῳ στόλῳ συμπαραπλέοντος. ὃν δὲ τρόπον ἤμελλε κρίνεσθαι τὰ πράγματα, Μήδιος Ἀντιγόνου φίλος ὄψιν εἶδε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους. ἐδόκει γὰρ αὐτὸν Ἀντίγονον ἀγωνίζεσθαι μετὰ τῆς στρατιᾶς ἁπάσης δίαυλον, εὐρώστως καὶ ταχὺ τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα κατὰ μικρὸν ἐνδιδόναι τὴν δύναμιν αὐτῷ, καὶ τέλος ὡς ἔκαμψεν ἀσθενῆ γενόμενον [3] καὶ μεστὸν ἄσθματος οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἀναφέρειν. αὐτός τ’ οὖν ἐντυχὼν κατὰ γῆν πολλαῖς ἀπορίαις, καὶ Δημητρίου χειμῶνι μεγάλῳ καὶ κλύδωνι κινδυνεύσαντος εἰς τόπους ἀλιμένους καὶ χαλεποὺς ἐκριφῆναι, πολλὰς δὲ τῶν νεῶν ἀπολέσαντος, ἐπανῆλθεν ἄπρακτος.

[4] Ἦν δὲ τότε μικρὸν ἀπολείποντα γεγονὼς ἔτη τῶν ὀγδοήκοντα· μεγέθει δὲ καὶ βαρύτητι σώματος μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ τὸ γῆρας ἐπὶ τὰς στρατείας γεγονὼς δυσπαρακόμιστος, ἐχρῆτο τῷ παιδί, καὶ δι’ εὐτυχίαν καὶ δι’ ἐμπειρίαν ἤδη τὰ μέγιστα καλῶς διοικοῦντι, τρυφὰς δὲ καὶ [5] πολυτελείας καὶ πότους αὐτοῦ μὴ βαρυνόμενος. εἰρήνης γὰρ οὔσης ἀφύβριζεν εἰς ταῦτα, καὶ σχολάζων ἐχρῆτο πρὸς τὰς ἡδονὰς ἀνειμένως αὑτῷ καὶ κατακόρως, ἐν δὲ [6] τοῖς πολέμοις ὡς οἱ φύσει σώφρονες ἔνηφε. λέγεται δὲ τῆς Λαμίας ἀναφανδὸν ἤδη κρατούσης τὸν Ἀντίγονον ὑπὸ τοῦ Δημητρίου καταφιλούμενον ἥκοντος ἀπὸ ξένης εἰπεῖν ἅμα γελῶντα· δοκεῖς Λάμιαν ὦ παῖ καταφιλεῖν.

[7] πάλιν δέ ποτε πλείονας ἡμέρας ἐν πότοις γενομένου, καὶ πρόφασιν λέγοντος ὡς ῥεῦμα διοχλήσειεν αὐτόν, ἐπυθόμην, φάναι τὸν Ἀντίγονον, ἀλλὰ πότερον Θάσιον ἢ [8] Χῖον ἦν τὸ ῥεῦμα; πυθόμενος δ’ αὖθις ἀσθενῶς ἔχειν αὐτὸν ἐβάδιζεν ὀψόμενος, καὶ τῶν καλῶν τινι περὶ θύρας ἀπήντησεν· εἰσελθὼν δὲ καὶ καθίσας παρ’ αὐτὸν ἥψατο τῆς χειρός· ἐκείνου δ’ εἰπόντος ὅτι νῦν ὁ πυρετὸς ἀποκεχώρηκεν, ἀμέλει παιδίον ἔφη καὶ ἐμοὶ νῦν περὶ [9] θύρας ἀπιὼν ἀπήντηκε. ταῦτα δ’ οὕτω πράως ἔφερε τοῦ [10] Δημητρίου διὰ τὴν ἄλλην πρᾶξιν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ Σκύθαι πίνοντες καὶ μεθυσκόμενοι παραψάλλουσι τὰς νευρὰς τῶν τόξων, οἷον ἐκλυόμενον ὑπὸ τῆς ἡδονῆς ἀνακαλούμενοι τὸν θυμόν, ἐκεῖνος δὲ τὰ μὲν ἡδονῇ διδοὺς ἁπλῶς ἑαυτόν, τὰ δὲ σπουδῇ, καὶ θάτερα τῶν ἑτέρων ἄκρατα μεταχειριζόμενος, οὐχ ἧττον ἦν δεινὸς ἐν ταῖς τοῦ πολέμου παρασκευαῖς.

[20] [1] Ἀλλὰ καὶ παρασκευάσασθαι δύναμιν ἢ χρήσασθαι βελτίων ἐδόκει στρατηγὸς εἶναι, πάντα μὲν ἐκ περιουσίας ὑπάρχειν βουλόμενος ἐπὶ τὰς χρείας, τῆς δὲ περὶ τὰς ναῦς καὶ τὰ μηχανήματα μεγαλουργίας καὶ καθ’ ἡδονήν τινα [2] τοῦ θεωρεῖν ἀπλήστως ἔχων. εὐφυὴς γὰρ ὢν καὶ θεωρητικός, οὐκ εἰς παιδιὰς οὐδ’ εἰς διαγωγὰς ἀχρήστους ἔτρεψε τὸ φιλότεχνον, ὥσπερ ἄλλοι βασιλεῖς αὐλοῦντες [3] καὶ ζωγραφοῦντες καὶ τορεύοντες. Ἀέροπος γὰρ ὁ Μακεδὼν τραπέζια μικρὰ καὶ λυχνίδια τεκταινόμενος ὁπότε σχολάζοι διῆγεν. Ἄτταλος δ’ ὁ Φιλομήτωρ ἐκήπευε τὰς φαρμακώδεις βοτάνας, οὐ μόνον ὑοσκύαμον καὶ ἐλλέβορον, ἀλλὰ καὶ κώνειον καὶ ἀκόνιτον καὶ δορύκνιον, αὐτὸς ἐν τοῖς βασιλείοις σπείρων καὶ φυτεύων, ὀπούς τε καὶ καρπὸν αὐτῶν ἔργον πεποιημένος εἰδέναι καὶ κομίζεσθαι καθ’ ὥραν.

[4] οἱ δὲ Πάρθων βασιλεῖς ἐσεμνύνοντο τὰς ἀκίδας τῶν βελῶν [5] χαράττοντες αὐτοὶ καὶ παραθήγοντες. ἀλλὰ μὴν Δημητρίου καὶ τὸ βάναυσον ἦν βασιλικόν, καὶ μέγεθος ἡ μέθοδος εἶχεν, ἅμα τῷ περιττῷ καὶ φιλοτέχνῳ τῶν ἔργων ὕψος τι διανοίας καὶ φρονήματος συνεκφερόντων, ὥστε μὴ μόνον γνώμης καὶ περιουσίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ χειρὸς [6] ἄξια φαίνεσθαι βασιλικῆς. μεγέθει μὲν γὰρ ἐπέπληττε καὶ τοὺς φίλους, κάλλει δὲ καὶ τοὺς πολεμίους ἔτερπε· [7] τοῦτο δ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἀληθῶς ἢ κομψῶς εἴρηται. καὶ τὰς μὲν ἑκκαιδεκήρεις αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰς πεντεκαιδεκήρεις ἐθαύμαζον ἑστῶτες οἱ πολέμιοι παρὰ τὴν γῆν αὐτῶν πλεούσας, αἱ δ’ ἑλεπόλεις ὡς θέαμα τοῖς πολιορκουμένοις [8] ἦσαν, ὡς αὐτὰ τὰ πράγματα μαρτυρεῖ. Λυσίμαχος μὲν γάρ, ἔχθιστος ὢν Δημητρίῳ τῶν βασιλέων καὶ πολιορκοῦντι Σόλους τοὺς Κιλικίους ἀντιτεταγμένος, ἔπεμψε παρακαλῶν ἐπιδεῖξαι τὰς μηχανὰς αὐτῷ καὶ τὰς [9] ναῦς πλεούσας· ἐπιδείξαντος δὲ θαυμάσας ἀπῆλθε. Ῥόδιοι δὲ πολὺν χρόνον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πολιορκηθέντες, ἐπεὶ κατελύσαντο τὸν πόλεμον, ᾐτήσαντο τῶν μηχανῶν ἐνίας, ὅπως ὑπόμνημα τῆς ἐκείνου δυνάμεως ἅμα καὶ τῆς αὑτῶν ἀνδραγαθίας ἔχωσιν.

[21] [1] Ἐπολέμησε δὲ Ῥοδίοις Πτολεμαίου συμμάχοις οὖσι, καὶ τὴν μεγίστην ἑλέπολιν τοῖς τείχεσι προσήγαγεν, ἧς ἕδρα μὲν ἦν τετράγωνος, ἑκάστην ἔχουσα τοῦ κάτω πλαισίου πλευρὰν ὀκτὼ καὶ τεσσαράκοντα πηχῶν, ἓξ δὲ καὶ ἑξήκοντα πηχῶν ὕψος εἶχεν, εἰς κορυφὴν συννεύουσα [2] ταῖς ἄνω πλευραῖς στενοτέραν τῆς βάσεως. ἔνδοθεν μὲν οὖν στέγαις διεπέφρακτο καὶ χώραις πολλαῖς, τὸ δὲ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους αὐτῆς μέτωπον ἀνέῳκτο [καὶ] καθ’ ἑκάστην στέγην θυρίσιν, καὶ διὰ τούτων ἐξέπιπτε βέλη παντοδαπά· μεστὴ γὰρ ἦν ἀνδρῶν μαχομένων πᾶσαν [3] ἰδέαν μάχης. καὶ τὸ μὴ κραδαινόμενον αὐτῆς μηδὲ κλινόμενον ἐν ταῖς κινήσεσιν, ἀλλ’ ὀρθὸν ἐν ἕδρᾳ καὶ ἀσάλευτον ἰσορρόπως ἅμα ῥοίζῳ καὶ τόνῳ πολλῷ προχωροῦν θάμβος ἅμα τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ χάριν τινὰ τῇ ὄψει τῶν [4] θεωμένων παρεῖχε. πρὸς δὲ τοῦτον τὸν πόλεμον αὐτῷ καὶ θώρακες ἐκομίσθησαν ἐκ Κύπρου δύο σιδηροῖ, μνῶν [5] ὁλκῆς ἑκάτερος τεσσαράκοντα. δυσπάθειαν δὲ καὶ ῥώμην αὐτῶν ἐπιδεικνύμενος ὁ τεχνίτης Ζωίλος ἐκέλευσεν ἐξ εἴκοσι βημάτων ἀφεῖναι καταπελτικὸν βέλος, οὗ προσπεσόντος ἀρραγὴς διέμεινεν ὁ σίδηρος, ἀμυχὴν δὲ μόλις [6] ἔσχεν ἀμβλεῖαν οἷον ἀπὸ γραφείου. τοῦτον αὐτὸς ἐφόρει, τὸν δ’ ἕτερον Ἄλκιμος ὁ Ἠπειρώτης, ἀνὴρ πολεμικώτατος τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ καὶ ῥωμαλεώτατος, ὃς μόνος ἐχρῆτο διταλάντῳ πανοπλίᾳ, τῶν ἄλλων χρωμένων ταλαντιαίᾳ, καὶ μαχόμενος ἐν Ῥόδῳ περὶ τὸ θέατρον ἔπεσεν.

[22] [1] Εὐρώστως δὲ τῶν Ῥοδίων ἀμυνομένων, οὐδὲν ἄξιον λόγου πράττων ὁ Δημήτριος ὅμως ἐθυμομάχει πρὸς αὐτούς, ὅτι Φίλας τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτῷ γράμματα καὶ στρώματα καὶ ἱμάτια πεμψάσης, λαβόντες τὸ πλοῖον ὥσπερ εἶχε πρὸς Πτολεμαῖον ἀπέστειλαν, καὶ τὴν Ἀθηναίων [2] οὐκ ἐμιμήσαντο φιλανθρωπίαν, οἳ Φιλίππου πολεμοῦντος αὐτοῖς γραμματοφόρους ἑλόντες, τὰς μὲν ἄλλας ἀνέγνωσαν ἐπιστολάς, μόνην δὲ τὴν Ὀλυμπιάδος οὐκ ἔλυσαν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἦν κατασεσημασμένη πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἀπέστειλαν.

[3] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καίπερ ἐπὶ τούτῳ σφόδρα δηχθεὶς ὁ Δημήτριος εὐθὺς παρασχόντας λαβὴν οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν [4] ἀντιλυπῆσαι τοὺς Ῥοδίους. ἔτυχε γὰρ αὐτοῖς ὁ Καύνιος Πρωτογένης γράφων τὴν περὶ τὸν Ἰάλυσον διάθεσιν, καὶ τὸν πίνακα μικρὸν ἀπολείποντα τοῦ τέλος ἔχειν ἔν [5] τινι τῶν προαστίων ἔλαβεν ὁ Δημήτριος. πεμψάντων δὲ κήρυκα τῶν Ῥοδίων καὶ δεομένων φείσασθαι καὶ μὴ διαφθεῖραι τὸ ἔργον, ἀπεκρίνατο τὰς τοῦ πατρὸς ἂν εἰκόνας ἐμπρῆσαι μᾶλλον ἢ τέχνης πόνον τοσοῦτον. ἑπτὰ γὰρ ἔτεσι λέγεται συντελέσαι τὴν γραφὴν ὁ Πρωτογένης.

[6] καί φησιν Ἀπελλῆς οὕτως ἐκπλαγῆναι θεασάμενος τὸ ἔργον, ὥστε καὶ φωνὴν ἐπιλιπεῖν αὐτόν, ὀψὲ δ’ εἰπεῖν ὅτι μέγας ὁ πόνος καὶ θαυμαστὸν τὸ ἔργον, οὐ μὴν ἔχειν γε χάριτας δι’ ἃς οὐρανοῦ ψαύειν τὰ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ [7] γραφόμενα. ταύτην μὲν οὖν τὴν γραφὴν εἰς ταὐτὸ ταῖς ἄλλαις συνωσθεῖσαν ἐν Ῥώμῃ τὸ πῦρ ἐπενείματο.

[8] Τῶν δὲ Ῥοδίων κατεξανισταμένων τοῦ πολέμου, δεόμενον προφάσεως τὸν Δημήτριον Ἀθηναῖοι παραγενόμενοι διήλλαξαν ἐπὶ τῷ συμμαχεῖν Ῥοδίους Ἀντιγόνῳ καὶ Δημητρίῳ πλὴν ἐπὶ Πτολεμαῖον.

[23] [1] Ἐκάλουν δὲ τὸν Δημήτριον οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι, Κασσάνδρου [2] τὸ ἄστυ πολιορκοῦντος. ὁ δὲ ναυσὶν ἐπιπλεύσας τριακοσίαις τριάκοντα καὶ πολλοῖς ὁπλίταις, οὐ μόνον ἐξήλασε τῆς Ἀττικῆς τὸν Κάσσανδρον, ἀλλὰ καὶ φεύγοντα μέχρι Θερμοπυλῶν διώξας καὶ τρεψάμενος, Ἡράκλειαν ἔλαβεν ἑκουσίως αὐτῷ προσθεμένην καὶ τῶν Μακεδόνων ἑξακισχιλίους μεταβαλομένους πρὸς αὐτόν.

[3] ἐπανιὼν δὲ τοὺς ἐντὸς Πυλῶν Ἕλληνας ἠλευθέρου, καὶ Βοιωτοὺς ἐποιήσατο συμμάχους, καὶ Κεγχρέας εἷλε· καὶ Φυλὴν καὶ Πάνακτον, ἐπιτειχίσματα τῆς Ἀττικῆς ὑπὸ Κασσάνδρου φρουρούμενα, καταστρεψάμενος ἀπέδωκε [4] τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις. οἱ δὲ καίπερ ἐκκεχυμένοι πρότερον εἰς αὐτὸν καὶ κατακεχρημένοι πᾶσαν φιλοτιμίαν, ἐξεῦρον ὅμως καὶ τότε πρόσφατοι καὶ καινοὶ ταῖς κολακείαις [5] φανῆναι. τὸν γὰρ ὀπισθόδομον τοῦ Παρθενῶνος ἀπέδειξαν αὐτῷ κατάλυσιν, κἀκεῖ δίαιταν εἶχε, τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς λεγομένης ὑποδέχεσθαι καὶ ξενίζειν αὐτόν, οὐ πάνυ κόσμιον [6] ξένον οὐδ’ ὡς παρθένῳ πράως ἐπισταθμεύοντα. καίτοι τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ Φίλιππον αἰσθόμενός ποθ’ ὁ πατὴρ ἐν οἰκίᾳ καταλύοντα τρεῖς ἐχούσῃ νέας γυναῖκας, πρὸς ἐκεῖνον μὲν οὐδὲν ἐφθέγξατο, παρόντος δ’ ἐκείνου τὸν σταθμοδότην μεταπεμψάμενος οὗτος εἶπεν, οὐκ ἐξάξεις μου τὸν υἱὸν ἐκ τῆς στενοχωρίας;

[24] [1] Δημήτριος δέ, τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν αὐτῷ προσῆκον εἰ δι’ ἄλλο μηδὲν ὥς γε πρεσβυτέραν ἀδελφὴν αἰσχύνεσθαι (τοῦτο γὰρ ἐβούλετο λέγεσθαι), τοσαύτην ὕβριν εἰς παῖδας ἐλευθέρους καὶ γυναῖκας ἀστὰς κατεσκέδασε τῆς ἀκροπόλεως, ὥστε δοκεῖν τότε μάλιστα καθαρεύειν τὸν τόπον, ὅτε Χρυσίδι καὶ Λαμίᾳ καὶ Δημοῖ καὶ Ἀντικύρᾳ ταῖς πόρναις [2] ἐκείναις συνακολασταίνοι. τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλα σαφῶς ἀπαγγέλλειν οὐ πρέπει διὰ τὴν πόλιν, τὴν δὲ Δημοκλέους ἀρετὴν καὶ σωφροσύνην ἄξιόν ἐστι μὴ παρελθεῖν.

[3] ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ἦν ἔτι παῖς ἄνηβος, οὐκ ἔλαθε δὲ τὸν Δημήτριον ἔχων τῆς εὐμορφίας τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν κατήγορον· [4] ἐκαλεῖτο γὰρ Δημοκλῆς ὁ καλός. ὡς δὲ πολλὰ πειρώντων καὶ διδόντων καὶ φοβούντων ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἡλίσκετο, τέλος δὲ φεύγων τὰς παλαίστρας καὶ τὸ γυμνάσιον εἴς τι βαλανεῖον ἰδιωτικὸν ἐφοίτα λουσόμενος, ἐπιτηρήσας [5] τὸν καιρὸν ὁ Δημήτριος ἐπεισῆλθεν αὐτῷ μόνῳ. καὶ ὁ παῖς ὡς συνεῖδε τὴν περὶ αὑτὸν ἐρημίαν καὶ τὴν ἀνάγκην, ἀφελὼν τὸ πῶμα τοῦ χαλκώματος εἰς ζέον ὕδωρ ἐνήλατο καὶ διέφθειρεν αὑτόν, ἀνάξια μὲν παθών, ἄξια δὲ τῆς [6] πατρίδος καὶ τοῦ κάλλους φρονήσας, οὐχ ὡς Κλεαίνετος ὁ Κλεομέδοντος, ὃς ὠφληκότι τῷ πατρὶ δίκην πεντήκοντα ταλάντων ἀφεθῆναι διαπραξάμενος, καὶ γράμματα παρὰ Δημητρίου κομίσας πρὸς τὸν δῆμον, οὐ μόνον ἑαυτὸν [7] κατῄσχυνεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν πόλιν συνετάραξε. τὸν μὲν γὰρ Κλεομέδοντα τῆς δίκης ἀφῆκαν, ἐγράφη δὲ ψήφισμα μηδένα τῶν πολιτῶν ἐπιστολὴν παρὰ Δημητρίου κομίζειν.

[8] ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀκούσας ἐκεῖνος οὐκ ἤνεγκε μετρίως, ἀλλ’ ἠγανάκτησε, δείσαντες αὖθις οὐ μόνον τὸ ψήφισμα καθεῖλον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν εἰσηγησαμένων καὶ συνειπόντων [9] τοὺς μὲν ἀπέκτειναν, τοὺς δ’ ἐφυγάδευσαν· ἔτι δὲ προσεψηφίσαντο, δεδόχθαι τῷ δήμῳ τῶν Ἀθηναίων, πᾶν ὅ τι ἂν ὁ βασιλεὺς Δημήτριος κελεύσῃ, τοῦτο καὶ πρὸς θεοὺς [10] ὅσιον καὶ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους εἶναι δίκαιον. εἰπόντος δέ τινος τῶν καλῶν κἀγαθῶν μαίνεσθαι τὸν Στρατοκλέα τοιαῦτα γράφοντα, Δημοχάρης ὁ Λευκονοεὺς μαίνοιτο [11] μέντἂν εἶπεν εἰ μὴ μαίνοιτο. πολλὰ γὰρ ὁ Στρατοκλῆς ὠφελεῖτο διὰ τὴν κολακείαν. ὁ δὲ Δημοχάρης ἐπὶ τούτῳ [12] διαβληθεὶς ἐφυγαδεύθη. τοιαῦτα ἔπραττον Ἀθηναῖοι, φρουρᾶς ἀπηλλάχθαι καὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἔχειν δοκοῦντες.

[25] [1] Δημήτριος δὲ παρελθὼν εἰς Πελοπόννησον, οὐδενὸς ὑφισταμένου τῶν ἐναντίων, ἀλλὰ φευγόντων καὶ προϊεμένων τὰς πόλεις, προσηγάγετο τήν τε καλουμένην Ἀκτὴν καὶ Ἀρκαδίαν πλὴν Μαντινείας, καὶ Ἄργος καὶ Σικυῶνα καὶ Κόρινθον ἐλύσατο, τάλαντα δοὺς [2] ἑκατὸν τοῖς φρουροῦσιν. ἐν Ἄργει μὲν οὖν τῆς τῶν Ἡραίων ἑορτῆς καθηκούσης ἀγωνοθετῶν καὶ συμπανηγυρίζων τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἔγημε τὴν Αἰακίδου θυγατέρα τοῦ Μολοττῶν βασιλέως, ἀδελφὴν δὲ Πύρρου, Δηιδάμειαν.

[3] Σικυωνίους δὲ φήσας παρὰ τὴν πόλιν οἰκεῖν τὴν πόλιν, ἔπεισεν οὗ νῦν οἰκοῦσι μετοικίσασθαι· τῷ δὲ τόπῳ καὶ τοὔνομα τὴν πόλιν συμμεταβαλοῦσαν ἀντὶ Σικυῶνος [4] Δημητριάδα προσηγόρευσεν. ἐν δ’ Ἰσθμῷ κοινοῦ συνεδρίου γενομένου καὶ πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων συνελθόντων, ἡγεμὼν ἀνηγορεύθη τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὡς πρότερον οἱ περὶ Φίλιππον [5] καὶ Ἀλέξανδρον· ὧν ἐκεῖνος οὐ παρὰ μικρὸν ἐνόμιζεν ἑαυτὸν εἶναι βελτίονα, τῇ τύχῃ τῇ παρούσῃ καὶ τῇ [6] δυνάμει τῶν πραγμάτων ἐπαιρόμενος. Ἀλέξανδρος γοῦν οὐδένα τῶν ἄλλων βασιλέων ἀπεστέρησε τῆς ὁμωνυμίας οὐδ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀνεῖπε βασιλέων βασιλέα, καίτοι πολλοῖς [7] τὸ καλεῖσθαι καὶ εἶναι βασιλέας αὐτὸς δεδωκώς· ἐκεῖνος δὲ χλευάζων καὶ γελῶν τοὺς ἄλλον τινὰ πλὴν τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ αὐτοῦ βασιλέα προσαγορεύοντας, ἡδέως ἤκουε τῶν παρὰ πότον ἐπιχύσεις λαμβανόντων Δημητρίου βασιλέως, Σελεύκου δ’ ἐλεφαντάρχου, Πτολεμαίου δὲ ναυάρχου, Λυσιμάχου δὲ γαζοφύλακος, Ἀγαθοκλέους δὲ τοῦ Σικελιώτου [8] νησιάρχου. τούτων δὲ πρὸς τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἐκφερομένων, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι [βασιλεῖς] κατεγέλων, Λυσίμαχος δ’ ἠγανάκτει μόνος εἰ σπάδοντα νομίζει Δημήτριος αὐτόν· ἐπιεικῶς γὰρ εἰώθεισαν εὐνούχους ἔχειν γαζοφύλακας. [9] ἦν δὲ καὶ πάντων ἀπεχθέστατος ὁ Λυσίμαχος αὐτῷ, καὶ λοιδορῶν εἰς τὸν ἔρωτα τῆς Λαμίας ἔλεγε νῦν πρῶτον ἑωρακέναι πόρνην προερχομένην ἐκ τραγικῆς σκηνῆς· ὁ δὲ Δημήτριος ἔφη τὴν ἑαυτοῦ πόρνην σωφρονεστέραν εἶναι τῆς ἐκείνου Πηνελόπης.

[26] [1] Τότε δ’ οὖν ἀναζευγνύων εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας ἔγραψεν, ὅτι βούλεται παραγενόμενος εὐθὺς μυηθῆναι καὶ τὴν τελετὴν ἅπασαν ἀπὸ τῶν μικρῶν ἄχρι τῶν ἐποπτικῶν [2] παραλαβεῖν. τοῦτο δ’ οὐ θεμιτὸν ἦν οὐδὲ γεγονὸς πρότερον, ἀλλὰ τὰ μικρὰ τοῦ Ἀνθεστηριῶνος ἐτελοῦντο, τὰ δὲ μεγάλα τοῦ Βοηδρομιῶνος· ἐπώπτευον δὲ τοὐλάχιστον [3] ἀπὸ τῶν μεγάλων ἐνιαυτὸν διαλείποντες. ἀναγνωσθέντων δὲ τῶν γραμμάτων, μόνος ἐτόλμησεν ἀντειπεῖν Πυθόδωρος ὁ δᾳδοῦχος, ἐπέρανε δ’ οὐδέν· ἀλλὰ Στρατοκλέους γνώμην εἰπόντος, Ἀνθεστηριῶνα τὸν Μουνυχιῶνα ψηφισαμένους καλεῖν καὶ νομίζειν, ἐτέλουν τῷ Δημητρίῳ τὰ πρὸς [4] Ἄγραν· καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα πάλιν ἐξ Ἀνθεστηριῶνος ὁ Μουνυχιὼν γενόμενος Βοηδρομιὼν ἐδέξατο τὴν λοιπὴν τελετήν, ἅμα καὶ τὴν ἐποπτείαν τοῦ Δημητρίου προσεπιλαβόντος.

[5] διὸ καὶ Φιλιππίδης τὸν Στρατοκλέα λοιδορῶν ἐποίησεν (CAF III 308)·

ὁ τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν συντεμὼν εἰς μῆν’ ἕνα,

καὶ περὶ τῆς ἐν τῷ Παρθενῶνι κατασκηνώσεως·

ὁ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν πανδοκεῖον ὑπολαβών,

καὶ τὰς ἑταίρας εἰσαγαγὼν τῇ παρθένῳ.

[27] [1] Πολλῶν δὲ γενομένων ἐν τῇ πόλει τότε πλημμελημάτων καὶ παρανομημάτων ἐκεῖνο μάλιστα λέγεται λυπῆσαι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ὅτι διακόσια καὶ πεντήκοντα τάλαντα πορίσαι ταχὺ καὶ δοῦναι προσταχθὲν αὐτοῖς, καὶ τῆς εἰσπράξεως συντόνου καὶ ἀπαραιτήτου γενομένης, ἰδὼν ἠθροισμένον τὸ ἀργύριον ἐκέλευσε Λαμίᾳ καὶ ταῖς [2] περὶ αὐτὴν ἑταίραις εἰς σμῆγμα δοθῆναι. ἡ γὰρ αἰσχύνη τῆς ζημίας καὶ τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦ πράγματος μᾶλλον ἠνώχλησε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. ἔνιοι δὲ τοῦτο Θετταλοῖς, οὐκ Ἀθηναίοις, [3] ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ συμβῆναι λέγουσι. χωρὶς δὲ τούτων αὐτὴ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ἡ Λάμια τῷ βασιλεῖ παρασκευάζουσα δεῖπνον ἠργυρολόγησε πολλούς, καὶ τὸ δεῖπνον οὕτως ἤνθησε τῇ δόξῃ διὰ τὴν πολυτέλειαν, ὥσθ’ ὑπὸ Λυγκέως τοῦ [4] Σαμίου συγγεγράφθαι. διὸ καὶ τῶν κωμικῶν τις οὐ φαύλως τὴν Λάμιαν Ἑλέπολιν ἀληθῶς προσεῖπε. Δημοχάρης δ’ ὁ Σόλιος τὸν Δημήτριον αὐτὸν ἐκάλει Μῦθον· [5] εἶναι γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ Λάμιαν. οὐ μόνον δὲ ταῖς γαμεταῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς φίλοις τοῦ Δημητρίου ζῆλον καὶ φθόνον [6] εὐημεροῦσα καὶ στεργομένη παρεῖχεν. ἀφίκοντο γοῦν τινες παρ’ αὐτοῦ κατὰ πρεσβείαν πρὸς Λυσίμαχον, οἷς ἐκεῖνος ἄγων σχολὴν ἐπέδειξεν ἔν τε τοῖς μηροῖς καὶ τοῖς βραχίοσιν ὠτειλὰς βαθείας ὀνύχων λεοντείων, καὶ διηγεῖτο τὴν γενομένην αὐτῷ μάχην πρὸς τὸ θηρίον, [7] ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου συγκαθειρχθέντι τοῦ βασιλέως. οἱ δὲ γελῶντες ἔφασαν καὶ τὸν αὑτῶν βασιλέα δεινοῦ θηρίου [8] δήγματα φέρειν ἐν τῷ τραχήλῳ, Λαμίας. ἦν δὲ θαυμαστόν, ὅτι τῆς Φίλας ἐν ἀρχῇ τὸ μὴ καθ’ ἡλικίαν δυσχεραίνων, ἥττητο τῆς Λαμίας καὶ τοσοῦτον ἤρα χρόνον ἤδη παρηκμακυίας.

[9] Δημὼ γοῦν ἡ ἐπικαλουμένη Μανία, παρὰ δεῖπνον αὐλούσης τῆς Λαμίας καὶ τοῦ Δημητρίου πυθομένου [10] τί σοι δοκεῖ; γραῦς εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ. πάλιν δὲ τραγημάτων παρατεθέντων, κἀκείνου πρὸς αὐτὴν εἰπόντος· ὁρᾷς ὅσα μοι Λάμια πέμπει; πλείονα ἔφη πεμφθήσεταί σοι παρὰ τῆς ἐμῆς μητρός, ἐὰν θέλῃς καὶ [11] μετ’ αὐτῆς καθεύδειν. ἀπομνημονεύεται δὲ τῆς Λαμίας καὶ πρὸς τὴν λεγομένην Βοκχώρεως κρίσιν ἀντίρρησις.

[12] ἐπεὶ γάρ τις ἐρῶν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ τῆς ἑταίρας Θώνιδος ᾐτεῖτο συχνὸν χρυσίον, εἶτα κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους δόξας αὐτῇ συγγενέσθαι τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἐπαύσατο, δίκην ἔλαχεν [13] ἡ Θῶνις αὐτῷ τοῦ μισθώματος. ἀκούσας δὲ τὸν λόγον ὁ Βόκχωρις ἐκέλευσε τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὅσον ᾐτήθη χρυσίον ἠριθμημένον ἐν τῷ ἀγγείῳ διαφέρειν δεῦρο κἀκεῖσε τῇ χειρί, τὴν δ’ ἑταίραν ἔχεσθαι τῆς σκιᾶς, ὡς τὴν δόξαν [14] τῆς ἀληθείας σκιὰν οὖσαν. οὐκ ᾤετο ταύτην εἶναι τὴν κρίσιν ἡ Λάμια δικαίαν· οὐ γὰρ ἀπέλυσεν ἡ σκιὰ τῆς ἐπιθυμίας τοῦ ἀργυρίου τὴν ἑταίραν, τὸ δ’ ὄναρ ἔπαυσεν ἐρῶντα τὸν νεανίσκον. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν περὶ Λαμίας.

[28] [1] Τὴν δὲ διήγησιν ὥσπερ ἐκ κωμικῆς σκηνῆς πάλιν εἰς τραγικὴν μετάγουσιν αἱ τύχαι καὶ αἱ πράξεις τοῦ [2] ἀνδρὸς ὃν διηγούμεθα. τῶν γὰρ ἄλλων βασιλέων ἁπάντων συνισταμένων ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον καὶ συμφερόντων εἰς ταὐτὸ τὰς δυνάμεις, ἀπῆρεν ὁ Δημήτριος ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, καὶ τῷ πατρὶ συμμείξας φιλοτιμουμένῳ παρ’ ἡλικίαν [3] πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ἔτι μᾶλλον αὐτὸς ἐπερρώσθη. καίτοι δοκεῖ γ’ Ἀντίγονος, εἰ μικρῶν τινων ὑφεῖτο καὶ τῆς ἄγαν φιλαρχίας ἐχάλασε, μέχρι παντὸς ἂν αὑτῷ διαφυλάξαι [4] κἀκείνῳ καταλιπεῖν τὸ πρῶτον εἶναι. φύσει δὲ βαρὺς ὢν καὶ ὑπερόπτης καὶ τοῖς λόγοις οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τοῖς πράγμασι τραχύς, πολλοὺς καὶ νέους καὶ δυνατοὺς ἄνδρας ἐξηγρίαινε [5] καὶ παρώξυνε· καὶ τήν γε τότε σύστασιν καὶ κοινωνίαν αὐτῶν ἔλεγεν ὥσπερ ὀρνίθων σπερμολόγων συνδρομὴν [6] ἑνὶ λίθῳ καὶ ψόφῳ συνδιαταράξειν. ἦγε δὲ πεζοὺς μὲν ἑπτακισμυρίων πλείους, ἱππεῖς δὲ μυρίους, ἐλέφαντας δ’ ἑβδομήκοντα πέντε, τῶν ἐναντίων ἐχόντων πεζοὺς μὲν ἑξακισμυρίους καὶ τετρακισχιλίους, ἱππεῖς δὲ πεντακοσίοις τῶν ἐκείνου πλείονας, ἐλέφαντας δὲ τετρακοσίους, [7] ἅρματα δ’ ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι. γενομένῳ δ’ ἐγγὺς αὐτῶν τροπὴν ἔσχεν ἡ διάνοια τῆς ἐλπίδος μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς [8] γνώμης. ὑψηλὸς γὰρ εἶναι καὶ γαῦρος εἰωθὼς ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι, καὶ χρώμενος φωνῇ τε μεγάλῃ καὶ λόγοις σοβαροῖς, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ τῷ παρασκῶψαί τι καὶ γελοῖον εἰπεῖν τῶν πολεμίων ἐν χερσὶν ὄντων ἐπιδειξάμενος εὐστάθειαν καὶ καταφρόνησιν, τότε σύννους ἑωρᾶτο καὶ σιωπηλὸς τὰ πολλά, καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἀπέδειξε τῷ πλήθει καὶ συνέστησε [9] διάδοχον. ὃ δὲ μάλιστα πάντες ἐθαύμασαν, ἐν τῇ σκηνῇ μόνος διελέχθη πρὸς αὐτόν, οὐκ εἰθισμένος ἔχειν οὐδὲ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἀπορρήτους κοινολογίας, ἀλλ’ ἴδιος ὢν γνώμῃ, εἶτα προστάττων φανερῶς καὶ χρώμενος οἷς βουλεύσαιτο [10] καθ’ ἑαυτόν. λέγεται γοῦν μειράκιον ἔτι ὄντα τὸν Δημήτριον αὐτοῦ πυθέσθαι, πότε μέλλουσιν ἀναζευγνύειν· τὸν δ’ εἰπεῖν πρὸς ὀργήν· ἀγωνιᾷς μὴ μόνος σὺ τῆς σάλπιγγος οὐκ ἀκούσῃς;

[29] [1] Τότε μέντοι καὶ σημεῖα μοχθηρὰ κατεδουλοῦτο τὴν [2] γνώμην αὐτῶν. Δημήτριος μὲν γὰρ ἔδοξε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους Ἀλέξανδρον ὡπλισμένον λαμπρῶς ἐρωτᾶν, ὁποῖόν τι σύνθημα διδόναι πρὸς τὴν μάχην μέλλουσιν· αὐτοῦ δὲ φήσαντος Δία καὶ Νίκην, ἄπειμι τοίνυν φάναι πρὸς τοὺς ἐναντίους· ἐκεῖνοι γάρ με παραλαμβάνουσιν.

[3] Ἀντίγονος δὲ παραταττομένης ἤδη τῆς φάλαγγος ἐξιὼν προσέπταισεν, ὥστε πεσεῖν ὅλος ἐπὶ στόμα καὶ διατεθῆναι χαλεπῶς· ἀναστὰς δὲ καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἀνατείνας πρὸς τὸν οὐρανόν, ᾐτήσατο νίκην παρὰ τῶν θεῶν ἢ θάνατον ἀναίσθητον [4] πρὸ τῆς ἥττης. γενομένης δὲ τῆς μάχης ἐν χερσί, Δημήτριος ἔχων τοὺς πλείστους καὶ κρατίστους τῶν ἱππέων Ἀντιόχῳ τῷ Σελεύκου συνέπεσε, καὶ μέχρι τροπῆς τῶν πολεμίων λαμπρῶς ἀγωνισάμενος, ἐν τῇ διώξει σοβαρᾷ καὶ φιλοτίμῳ παρὰ καιρὸν γενομένῃ τὴν νίκην [5] διέφθειρεν. αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἔσχε πάλιν ἀναστρέψας συμμεῖξαι τοῖς πεζοῖς, τῶν ἐλεφάντων ἐν μέσῳ γενομένων, τὴν δὲ φάλαγγα γυμνὴν ἱππέων κατιδόντες οἱ περὶ Σέλευκον οὐκ ἐνέβαλον μέν, ὡς δ’ ἐμβαλοῦντες ἐφόβουν [6] καὶ περιήλαυνον, μεταβάλλεσθαι διδόντες αὐτοῖς. ὃ καὶ συνέβη· πολὺ γὰρ μέρος ἀπορραγὲν ἑκουσίως μετεχώρησε [7] πρὸς ἐκείνους, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν ἐτράπη. φερομένων δὲ πολλῶν ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον, καί τινος τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν εἰπόντος· ἐπὶ σὲ οὗτοι βασιλεῦ τίνα γάρ εἶπε ‹πλὴν› ἐμοῦ σκοπὸν ἔχουσιν; ἀλλὰ Δημήτριος ἀφίξεται βοηθῶν.

[8] καὶ τοῦτο μέχρι παντὸς ἐλπίζων καὶ περισκοπῶν τὸν υἱόν, ἅμα πολλῶν ἀκοντισμάτων εἰς αὐτὸν ἀφεθέντων ἔπεσε, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀπολιπόντων ὀπαδῶν καὶ φίλων μόνος παρέμεινε τῷ νεκρῷ Θώραξ ὁ Λαρισσαῖος.

[30] [1] Οὕτω δὲ κριθείσης τῆς μάχης, οἱ μὲν νενικηκότες βασιλεῖς τὴν ὑπ’ Ἀντιγόνῳ καὶ Δημητρίῳ πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν ὥσπερ μέγα σῶμα κατακόπτοντες ἐλάμβανον μερίδας, καὶ προσδιενείμαντο τὰς ἐκείνων ἐπαρχίας αἷς εἶχον αὐτοὶ [2] πρότερον. Δημήτριος δὲ μετὰ πεντακισχιλίων πεζῶν καὶ τετρακισχιλίων ἱππέων φεύγων καὶ συντόνως ἐλάσας εἰς Ἔφεσον, οἰομένων ἁπάντων ἀποροῦντα χρημάτων αὐτὸν οὐκ ἀφέξεσθαι τοῦ ἱεροῦ, φοβηθεὶς τοὺς στρατιώτας μὴ τοῦτο ποιήσωσιν, ἀνέστη διὰ ταχέων καὶ τὸν πλοῦν ἐπὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐποιεῖτο, τῶν λοιπῶν ἐλπίδων ἐν Ἀθηναίοις [3] ἔχων τὰς μεγίστας. καὶ γὰρ καὶ ναῦς ἐκεῖ καὶ χρήματα καὶ γυναῖκα Δηιδάμειαν ἐτύγχανε καταλελοιπώς, καὶ βεβαιοτέραν οὐκ ἐνόμιζε καταφυγὴν εἶναι τοῖς πράγμασι [4] τῆς Ἀθηναίων εὐνοίας. ὅθεν ἐπεὶ γενομένῳ περὶ τὰς Κυκλάδας αὐτῷ πρέσβεις Ἀθηναίων ἀπήντησαν, ἀπέχεσθαι τῆς πόλεως παρακαλοῦντες, ὡς ἐψηφισμένου τοῦ δήμου μηδένα δέχεσθαι τῇ πόλει τῶν βασιλέων, τὴν δὲ Δηιδάμειαν εἰς Μέγαρα ἐξέπεμψαν μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ πομπῆς πρεπούσης, τοῦ καθεστηκότος ἐξέστη δι’ ὀργὴν [αὐτοῦ], καίπερ ἐνηνοχὼς ῥᾷστα τὴν ἄλλην ἀτυχίαν καὶ γεγονὼς ἐν τοιαύτῃ μεταβολῇ πραγμάτων οὐ ταπεινὸς [5] οὐδ’ ἀγεννής. ἀλλὰ τὸ παρ’ ἐλπίδα διεψεῦσθαι τῶν Ἀθηναίων, καὶ τὴν δοκοῦσαν εὔνοιαν ἐξεληλέγχθαι τοῖς πράγμασι κενὴν καὶ πεπλασμένην οὖσαν, ὀδυνηρὸν ἦν αὐτῷ.

[6] τὸ γὰρ φαυλότατον ὡς ἔοικεν εὐνοίας ὄχλων βασιλεῦσι καὶ δυνάσταις τεκμήριόν ἐστιν ὑπερβολὴ τιμῶν, ἧς ἐν τῇ προαιρέσει τῶν ἀποδιδόντων ἐχούσης τὸ καλὸν ἀφαιρεῖ τὴν πίστιν ὁ φόβος· τὰ γὰρ αὐτὰ καὶ δεδιότες ψηφίζονται [7] καὶ φιλοῦντες. διόπερ οἱ νοῦν ἔχοντες οὐκ εἰς ἀνδριάντας οὐδὲ γραφὰς οὐδ’ ἀποθεώσεις, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον εἰς τὰ ἔργα καὶ τὰς πράξεις τὰς ἑαυτῶν ἀποβλέποντες, ἢ πιστεύουσιν ὡς τιμαῖς, ἢ ἀπιστοῦσιν ὡς ἀνάγκαις· [8] ὡς οἵ γε δῆμοι πολλάκις ἐν αὐταῖς μάλιστα ταῖς τιμαῖς μισοῦσι τοὺς ἀμέτρως καὶ ὑπερόγκως καὶ παρ’ ἀκόντων λαμβάνοντας.

[31] [1] Ὁ γοῦν Δημήτριος τότε δεινὰ μὲν ἡγούμενος πάσχειν, ἀδύνατος δ’ ὢν ἀμύνασθαι, προσέπεμψε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἐγκαλῶν μετρίως, ἀξιῶν δὲ τὰς ναῦς ἀπολαβεῖν, [2] ἐν αἷς ἦν καὶ ἡ τρισκαιδεκήρης. κομισάμενος δὲ παρέπλευσεν εἰς Ἰσθμόν, καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῷ κακῶς ἐχόντων - ἐξέπιπτον γὰρ ἑκασταχόθεν αἱ φρουραὶ καὶ πάντα μεθίστατο πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους - , ἀπολιπὼν ἐπὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος Πύρρον, αὐτὸς ἄρας ἐπὶ τὴν Χερρόνησον [3] ἔπλευσε, καὶ κακῶς ἅμα ποιῶν Λυσίμαχον, ὠφέλει καὶ συνεῖχε τὴν περὶ αὑτὸν δύναμιν, ἀρχομένην ἀναλαμβάνειν [4] καὶ γίνεσθαι πάλιν οὐκ εὐκαταφρόνητον. ὁ δὲ Λυσίμαχος ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων βασιλέων ἠμελεῖτο, μηδὲν ἐπιεικέστερος ἐκείνου δοκῶν εἶναι, τῷ ‹δὲ› μᾶλλον ἰσχύειν καὶ φοβερώτερος.

[5] Οὐ πολλῷ δ’ ὕστερον Σέλευκος ἐμνᾶτο πέμπων τὴν Δημητρίου καὶ Φίλας θυγατέρα Στρατονίκην, ἔχων μὲν ἐξ Ἀπάμας τῆς Περσίδος υἱὸν Ἀντίοχον, οἰόμενος δὲ τὰ πράγματα καὶ διαδόχοις ἀρκεῖν πλείοσι καὶ δεῖσθαι τῆς πρὸς ἐκεῖνον οἰκειότητος, ἐπεὶ καὶ Λυσίμαχον ἑώρα τῶν Πτολεμαίου θυγατέρων τὴν μὲν ἑαυτῷ, τὴν δ’ Ἀγαθοκλεῖ [6] τῷ υἱῷ λαμβάνοντα. Δημητρίῳ δ’ ἦν ἀνέλπιστος εὐτυχία κηδεῦσαι Σελεύκῳ, καὶ τὴν κόρην ἀναλαβὼν ἔπλει ταῖς ναυσὶ πάσαις εἰς Συρίαν, τῇ τ’ ἄλλῃ γῇ προσέχων ἀναγκαίως καὶ τῆς Κιλικίας ἁπτόμενος, ἣν Πλείσταρχος εἶχε, μετὰ τὴν πρὸς Ἀντίγονον μάχην ἐξαίρετον αὐτῷ δοθεῖσαν ὑπὸ τῶν βασιλέων· ἦν δὲ Κασσάνδρου Πλείσταρχος [7] ἀδελφός. ἀδικεῖσθαι δὲ τὴν χώραν αὑτοῦ νομίζων ὑπὸ Δημητρίου κατὰ τὰς ἀποβάσεις καὶ μέμψασθαι βουλόμενος τὸν Σέλευκον, ὅτι τῷ κοινῷ διαλλάττεται πολεμίῳ δίχα τῶν ἄλλων βασιλέων, ἀνέβη πρὸς αὐτόν.

[32] [1] Αἰσθόμενος δὲ τοῦτο Δημήτριος ὥρμησεν ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ἐπὶ Κυΐνδων, καὶ τῶν χρημάτων εὑρὼν ἔτι λοιπὰ χίλια καὶ διακόσια τάλαντα, ταῦτα συσκευασάμενος [2] καὶ φθάσας ἐμβαλέσθαι διὰ ταχέων ἀνήχθη. καὶ παρούσης ἤδη Φίλας τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτῷ περὶ Ῥωσσὸν ἀπήντησε Σέλευκος, καὶ τὴν ἔντευξιν εὐθὺς ἄδολον καὶ ἀνύποπτον καὶ βασιλικὴν ἐποιοῦντο, πρότερον μὲν Σέλευκος ἑστιάσας ἐπὶ σκηνῆς ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ Δημήτριον, αὖθις δὲ [3] Δημήτριος ἐκεῖνον ἐν τῇ τρισκαιδεκήρει δεξάμενος. ἦσαν δὲ καὶ σχολαὶ καὶ κοινολογίαι καὶ συνδιημερεύσεις ἀφρούρων καὶ ἀνόπλων, ἄχρι οὗ Σέλευκος τὴν Στρατονίκην ἀναλαβὼν λαμπρῶς εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν ἀνέβη.

[4] Δημήτριος δὲ Κιλικίαν κατέσχε, καὶ Φίλαν τὴν γυναῖκα πρὸς Κάσσανδρον ἔπεμψε τὸν ἀδελφόν, ἀπολυσομένην [5] τὰς Πλειστάρχου κατηγορίας. ἐν δὲ τούτῳ Δηιδάμεια πλεύσασα πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος καὶ συγγενομένη χρόνον οὐ πολύν, ἐξ ἀρρωστίας τινὸς [6] ἐτελεύτησε. γενομένης δ’ ‹αὐτῷ› πρὸς Πτολεμαῖον διὰ Σελεύκου φιλίας [αὐτῷ], ὡμολογήθη Πτολεμαΐδα τὴν [7] Πτολεμαίου θυγατέρα λαβεῖν αὐτὸν γυναῖκα. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἀστεῖα τοῦ Σελεύκου. Κιλικίαν δ’ ἀξιῶν χρήματα λαβόντα παραδοῦναι Δημήτριον, ὡς ‹δ’› οὐκ ἔπειθε Σιδῶνα καὶ Τύρον ἀπαιτῶν πρὸς ὀργήν, ἐδόκει βίαιος εἶναι καὶ δεινὰ ποιεῖν, εἰ τὴν ἀπ’ Ἰνδῶν ἄχρι τῆς κατὰ Συρίαν θαλάσσης ἅπασαν ὑφ’ αὑτῷ πεποιημένος, οὕτως ἐνδεής ἐστιν ἔτι πραγμάτων καὶ πτωχός, ὡς ὑπὲρ δυεῖν πόλεων ἄνδρα κηδεστὴν καὶ μεταβολῇ τύχης κεχρημένον [8] ἐλαύνειν, λαμπρὰν τῷ Πλάτωνι μαρτυρίαν διδούς, διακελευομένῳ (leg. 5, 736e) μὴ τὴν οὐσίαν πλείω, τὴν δ’ ἀπληστίαν ποιεῖν ἐλάσσω τόν γε βουλόμενον ὡς ἀληθῶς εἶναι πλούσιον, ὡς ὅ γε μὴ παύων φιλοπλουτίαν [οὗτος] οὔτε πενίας οὔτ’ ἀπορίας ἀπήλλακται.

[33] [1] Οὐ μὴν ὑπέπτηξε Δημήτριος, ἀλλὰ φήσας οὐδ’ ἂν μυρίας ἡττηθῇ μάχας ἄλλας ἐν Ἴψῳ γαμβρὸν ἀγαπήσειν ἐπὶ μισθῷ Σέλευκον, τὰς μὲν πόλεις ἐκρατύνατο φρουραῖς, αὐτὸς δὲ πυθόμενος Λαχάρη στασιάζουσιν Ἀθηναίοις ἐπιθέμενον τυραννεῖν, ἤλπιζε ῥᾳδίως ἐπιφανεὶς [2] λήψεσθαι τὴν πόλιν. καὶ τὸ μὲν πέλαγος ἀσφαλῶς διεπεραιώθη μεγάλῳ στόλῳ, παρὰ δὲ τὴν Ἀττικὴν παραπλέων ἐχειμάσθη, καὶ τὰς πλείστας ἀπέβαλε τῶν νεῶν, καὶ συνδιεφθάρη πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων οὐκ ὀλίγον.

[3] αὐτὸς δὲ σωθεὶς ἥψατο μέν τινος πολέμου πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ὡς δ’ οὐδὲν ἐπέραινε, πέμψας ναυτικὸν αὖθις ἀθροίσοντας, αὐτὸς εἰς Πελοπόννησον παρῆλθε καὶ [4] Μεσσήνην ἐπολιόρκει. καὶ προσμαχόμενος τοῖς τείχεσιν ἐκινδύνευσε, καταπελτικοῦ βέλους εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον [5] αὐτῷ καὶ τὸ στόμα διὰ τῆς σιαγόνος ἐμπεσόντος. ἀναληφθεὶς δὲ καὶ πόλεις τινὰς ἀφεστώσας προσαγαγόμενος, πάλιν εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἐνέβαλε, καὶ κρατήσας Ἐλευσῖνος καὶ Ῥαμνοῦντος ἔφθειρε τὴν χώραν, καὶ ναῦν τινα λαβὼν ἔχουσαν σῖτον καὶ εἰσάγουσαν τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ἐκρέμασε τὸν ἔμπορον καὶ τὸν κυβερνήτην, ὥστε τῶν ἄλλων ἀποτρεπομένων διὰ φόβον σύντονον λιμὸν ἐν ἄστει [6] γενέσθαι, πρὸς δὲ τῷ λιμῷ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀπορίαν. ἁλῶν γοῦν μέδιμνον ὠνοῦντο τετταράκοντα δραχμῶν, ὁ δὲ τῶν [7] πυρῶν [μόδιος] ὤνιος ἦν τριακοσίων. μικρὰν δὲ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἀναπνοὴν παρέσχον ἑκατὸν πεντήκοντα νῆες φανεῖσαι περὶ Αἴγιναν, ἃς ἔπεμψεν ἐπικούρους αὐτοῖς [8] Πτολεμαῖος. εἶτα Δημητρίῳ πολλῶν μὲν ἐκ Πελοποννήσου, πολλῶν δ’ ἀπὸ Κύπρου νεῶν παραγενομένων, ὥστε συμπάσας ἀθροισθῆναι τριακοσίας, ἔφυγον ἄραντες οἱ Πτολεμαίου, καὶ Λαχάρης ὁ τύραννος ἀπέδρα προέμενος τὴν πόλιν.

[34] [1] Οἱ δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι, καίπερ ψηφισάμενοι θάνατον εἰ μνησθείη τις εἰρήνης καὶ διαλλαγῆς πρὸς Δημήτριον, εὐθὺς ἀνεῴγνυσαν τὰς ἐγγὺς πύλας καὶ πρέσβεις ἔπεμπον, οὐδὲν μὲν ἀπ’ ἐκείνου χρηστὸν προσδοκῶντες, ἐκβιαζομένης [2] δὲ τῆς ἀπορίας· ἐν ᾗ δυσχερῶν πολλῶν συμπεσόντων λέγεταί τι καὶ τοιοῦτον γενέσθαι· πατέρα καὶ υἱὸν ἐν οἰκήματι καθέζεσθαι τὰ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἀπεγνωκότας, ἐκ δὲ τῆς ὀροφῆς μῦν νεκρὸν ἐκπεσεῖν, τοὺς δ’ ὡς εἶδον [3] ἀναπηδήσαντας ἀμφοτέρους διαμάχεσθαι περὶ αὐτοῦ. τότε καὶ τὸν φιλόσοφον Ἐπίκουρον ἱστοροῦσι διαθρέψαι τοὺς συνήθεις κυάμους πρὸς ἀριθμὸν μετ’ αὐτῶν διανεμόμενον.

[4] οὕτως οὖν τῆς πόλεως ἐχούσης, εἰσελθὼν ὁ Δημήτριος καὶ κελεύσας εἰς τὸ θέατρον ἀθροισθῆναι πάντας, ὅπλοις μὲν συνέφραξε τὴν σκηνὴν καὶ δορυφόροις τὸ λογεῖον περιέλαβεν, αὐτὸς δὲ καταβὰς ὥσπερ οἱ τραγῳδοὶ διὰ τῶν ἄνω παρόδων, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐκπεπληγμένων τῶν Ἀθηναίων, τὴν [5] ἀρχὴν τοῦ λόγου πέρας ἐποιήσατο τοῦ δέους αὐτῶν. καὶ γὰρ τόνου φωνῆς καὶ ῥημάτων πικρίας φεισάμενος, ἐλαφρῶς δὲ καὶ φιλικῶς μεμψάμενος αὐτοῖς διηλλάσσετο, καὶ δέκα μυριάδας σίτου μεδίμνων ἐπέδωκε, καὶ κατέστησεν [6] ἀρχὰς αἳ μάλιστα τῷ δήμῳ προσφιλεῖς ἦσαν. συνιδὼν δὲ Δρομοκλείδης ὁ ῥήτωρ ὑπὸ χαρᾶς τὸν δῆμον ἔν τε φωναῖς ὄντα παντοδαπαῖς καὶ τοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος ἐπαίνους τῶν δημαγωγῶν ἁμιλλώμενον ὑπερβαλέσθαι, γνώμην ἔγραψε Δημητρίῳ τῷ βασιλεῖ τὸν Πειραιᾶ παραδοθῆναι [7] καὶ τὴν Μουνυχίαν. ἐπιψηφισθέντων δὲ τούτων ὁ Δημήτριος αὐτὸς ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ προσενέβαλε φρουρὰν εἰς τὸ Μουσεῖον, ὡς μὴ πάλιν ἀναχαιτίσαντα τὸν δῆμον ἀσχολίας αὐτῷ πραγμάτων ἑτέρων παρασχεῖν.

[35] [1] Ἐχομένων δὲ τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, εὐθὺς ἐπεβούλευε τῇ Λακεδαίμονι, καὶ περὶ Μαντίνειαν Ἀρχιδάμου τοῦ βασιλέως ἀπαντήσαντος αὐτῷ, νικήσας μάχῃ καὶ τρεψάμενος [2] εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἐνέβαλε, καὶ πρὸς αὐτῇ τῇ Σπάρτῃ πάλιν ἐκ παρατάξεως ἑλὼν πεντακοσίους καὶ διαφθείρας διακοσίους, ὅσον οὔπω τὴν πόλιν ἔχειν ἐδόκει, μέχρι τῶν χρόνων ἐκείνων ἀνάλωτον οὖσαν.

[3] Ἀλλ’ ἡ τύχη περὶ οὐδένα τῶν βασιλέων ἔοικεν οὕτως τροπὰς λαβεῖν μεγάλας καὶ ταχείας, οὐδ’ ἐν ἑτέροις πράγμασι τοσαυτάκις μικρὰ καὶ πάλιν μεγάλη, καὶ ταπεινὴ μὲν ἐκ λαμπρᾶς, ἰσχυρὰ δ’ αὖθις ἐκ φαύλης γενέσθαι.

[4] διὸ καί φασιν αὐτὸν ἐν ταῖς χείροσι μεταβολαῖς πρὸς τὴν Τύχην ἀναφθέγγεσθαι τὸ Αἰσχύλειον (fr. 259 N.²)·

σύ τοί με φυσᾷς, σύ με καταίθειν μοι δοκεῖς.

[5] καὶ γὰρ τότε τῶν πραγμάτων οὕτως εὐπόρως αὐτῷ πρὸς ἀρχὴν καὶ δύναμιν ἐπιδιδόντων, ἀγγέλλεται Λυσίμαχος μὲν πρῶτος ἀφῃρημένος αὐτοῦ τὰς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ πόλεις, Κύπρον δὲ Πτολεμαῖος ᾑρηκὼς ἄνευ μιᾶς πόλεως Σαλαμῖνος, ἐν δὲ Σαλαμῖνι πολιορκῶν τοὺς παῖδας αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν μητέρα [6] κατειλημμένους. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡ Τύχη, καθάπερ ἡ παρ’ Ἀρχιλόχῳ (fr. 86 D.) γυνὴ

τῇ μὲν ὕδωρ ἐφόρει

δολοφρονέουσα χειρί, θἠτέρῃ δὲ πῦρ,

δεινοῖς αὐτὸν οὕτω καὶ φοβεροῖς ἀγγέλμασιν ἀποστήσασα τῆς Λακεδαίμονος, εὐθὺς ἑτέρας πραγμάτων καινῶν καὶ μεγάλων ἐπήνεγκεν ἐλπίδας ἐκ τοιαύτης αἰτίας.

[36] [1] Ἐπεὶ Κασσάνδρου τελευτήσαντος ὁ πρεσβύτατος αὐτοῦ τῶν παίδων Φίλιππος οὐ πολὺν χρόνον βασιλεύσας Μακεδόνων ἀπέθανεν, οἱ λοιποὶ δύο πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐστασίαζον, θατέρου δ’ αὐτῶν Ἀντιπάτρου τὴν μητέρα Θεσσαλονίκην φονεύσαντος, ἅτερος ἐκάλει βοηθοὺς ἐκ μὲν Ἠπείρου Πύρρον, ἐκ δὲ Πελοποννήσου Δημήτριον.

[2] ἔφθασε δὲ Πύρρος ἐλθών, καὶ πολὺ μέρος Μακεδονίας ἀποτεμόμενος τῆς βοηθείας μισθόν, φοβερὸς μὲν ἦν ἤδη [3] παροικῶν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ· Δημητρίου δ’ ὡς ἐδέξατο τὰ γράμματα μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως προσιόντος, ἔτι μᾶλλον ὁ νεανίας τοῦτον φοβηθεὶς διὰ τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ τὴν δόξαν, ἀπήντησεν αὐτῷ περὶ Δῖον, ἀσπαζόμενος μὲν καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος, οὐδὲν δὲ φάσκων ἔτι τῆς ἐκείνου δεῖσθαι [4] τὰ πράγματα παρουσίας. ἦσαν οὖν ἐκ τούτων ὑποψίαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους αὐτοῖς, καὶ βαδίζοντι Δημητρίῳ πρὸς δεῖπνον ὑπὸ τοῦ νεανίσκου παρακεκλημένῳ μηνύει τις ἐπιβουλήν, ὡς ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ πότῳ μελλόντων αὐτὸν ἀνελεῖν.

[5] ὁ δὲ μηδὲν διαταραχθείς, ἀλλὰ μικρὸν ὑφεὶς τῆς πορείας ἐκέλευσε τοὺς μὲν ἡγεμόνας ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις τὴν στρατιὰν ἔχειν, ἀκολούθους δὲ καὶ παῖδας ὅσοι περὶ αὐτὸν ἦσαν - ἦσαν δὲ πολὺ πλείους τῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου - συνεισελθεῖν εἰς [6] τὸν ἀνδρῶνα καὶ παραμένειν ἄχρι ἂν ἐξαναστῇ. τοῦτο δείσαντες οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον οὐκ ἐτόλμησαν ἐπιχειρῆσαι· καὶ ὁ μὲν Δημήτριος οὐκ ἔχειν αὐτῷ τὸ σῶμα ποτικῶς [7] σκηψάμενος, διὰ ταχέων ἀπῆλθε. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ περὶ ἀναζυγὴν εἶχε, πράγματα νεώτερα προσπεπτωκέναι φάμενος αὐτῷ, καὶ παρῃτεῖτο συγγνώμην ἔχειν τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον εἰ τάχιον ἀπαίρει· συνέσεσθαι γὰρ αὐτῷ μᾶλλον [8] ἄλλοτε σχολάζων. ἔχαιρεν οὖν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ὡς οὐ πρὸς ἔχθραν, ἀλλ’ ἑκουσίως ἐκ τῆς χώρας ἀπαίροντος αὐτοῦ, [9] καὶ προέπεμπεν ἄχρι Θετταλίας. ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰς Λάρισσαν ἧκον, αὖθις ἀλλήλοις ἐπήγγελλον ἑστιάσεις ἀντεπιβουλεύοντες· ὃ δὴ μάλιστα τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ὑποχείριον [10] ἐποίησε τῷ Δημητρίῳ. φυλάττεσθαι γὰρ ὀκνῶν, ὡς μὴ κἀκεῖνον ἀντιφυλάττεσθαι διδάξῃ, παθὼν ἔφθασε, †δρᾶν μέλλοντος αὐτοῦ μὴ διαφυγεῖν ἐκεῖνον , ὃ ἐμηχανᾶτο.

[11] κληθεὶς γὰρ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἦλθε πρὸς τὸν Δημήτριον. ὡς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἐξανέστη μεταξὺ δειπνῶν, φοβηθεὶς ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος συνεξανέστη καὶ κατὰ πόδας αὐτῷ πρὸς τὰς θύρας [12] συνηκολούθει. γενόμενος οὖν ὁ Δημήτριος πρὸς ταῖς θύραις καὶ κατὰ τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ δορυφόρους καὶ τοῦτο μόνον εἰπών· κόπτε τὸν ἑπόμενον, αὐτὸς μὲν ὑπεξῆλθεν, ὁ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ὑπ’ ἐκείνων κατεκόπη καὶ τῶν φίλων οἱ προσβοηθοῦντες, ὧν ἕνα λέγουσι σφαττόμενον εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ φθάσειεν αὐτοὺς ὁ Δημήτριος.

[37] [1] Ἡ μὲν οὖν νὺξ οἷον εἰκὸς θόρυβον ἔσχεν. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ ταραττομένοις τοῖς Μακεδόσι καὶ φοβουμένοις τὴν τοῦ Δημητρίου δύναμιν, ὡς ἐπῄει μὲν οὐδεὶς φοβερός, ὁ δὲ Δημήτριος ἔπεμπε βουλόμενος ἐντυχεῖν καὶ περὶ τῶν πεπραγμένων ἀπολογήσασθαι, θαρρεῖν παρέστη καὶ δέχεσθαι [2] φιλανθρώπως αὐτόν. ὡς δ’ ἦλθεν, οὐ μακρῶν ἐδέησεν αὐτῷ λόγων, ἀλλὰ τῷ μισεῖν μὲν τὸν Ἀντίπατρον φονέα μητρὸς ὄντα, βελτίονος δ’ ἀπορεῖν, ἐκεῖνον ἀνηγόρευσαν βασιλέα Μακεδόνων καὶ παραλαβόντες εὐθὺς κατῆγον εἰς [3] Μακεδονίαν. ἦν δὲ καὶ τοῖς οἴκοι Μακεδόσιν οὐκ ἀκούσιος ἡ μεταβολή, μεμνημένοις ἀεὶ καὶ μισοῦσιν ἃ Κάσσανδρος [4] εἰς Ἀλέξανδρον τεθνηκότα παρηνόμησεν. εἰ δέ τις ἔτι μνήμη τῆς Ἀντιπάτρου τοῦ παλαιοῦ μετριότητος ὑπελείπετο, καὶ ταύτην Δημήτριος ἐκαρποῦτο, Φίλᾳ συνοικῶν καὶ τὸν ἐξ ἐκείνης υἱὸν ἔχων διάδοχον τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἤδη τότε μειράκιον ὄντα καὶ τῷ πατρὶ συστρατευόμενον.

[38] [1] Οὕτω δὲ λαμπρᾷ κεχρημένος εὐτυχίᾳ, πυνθάνεται μὲν περὶ τῶν τέκνων καὶ τῆς μητρὸς ὡς μεθεῖνται, δῶρα καὶ τιμὰς Πτολεμαίου προσθέντος αὐτοῖς, πυνθάνεται δὲ περὶ τῆς Σελεύκῳ γαμηθείσης θυγατρός, ὡς Ἀντιόχῳ τῷ Σελεύκου συνοικεῖ καὶ βασίλισσα τῶν ἄνω βαρβάρων [2] ἀνηγόρευται. συνέβη γάρ, ὡς ἔοικε, τὸν Ἀντίοχον ἐρασθέντα τῆς Στρατονίκης νέας οὔσης, ἤδη δὲ παιδίον ἐχούσης ἐκ τοῦ Σελεύκου, διακεῖσθαι κακῶς καὶ πολλὰ ποιεῖν τῷ πάθει διαμαχόμενον, τέλος δ’ ἑαυτοῦ καταγνόντα δεινῶν μὲν ἐπιθυμεῖν, ἀνήκεστα δὲ νοσεῖν, κεκρατῆσθαι δὲ τῷ λογισμῷ, τρόπον ἀπαλλαγῆς τοῦ βίου ζητεῖν καὶ παραλύειν ἀτρέμα καὶ θεραπείας ἀμελείᾳ καὶ τροφῆς ἀποχῇ τὸ σῶμα, νοσεῖν τινα νόσον σκηπτόμενον.

[3] Ἐρασίστρατον δὲ τὸν ἰατρὸν αἰσθέσθαι μὲν οὐ χαλεπῶς ἐρῶντος αὐτοῦ, τὸ δ’ οὗτινος ἐρᾷ δυστόπαστον ὂν ἐξανευρεῖν βουλόμενον ἀεὶ μὲν ἐν τῷ δωματίῳ διημερεύειν, εἰ δέ τις εἰσίοι τῶν ἐν ὥρᾳ μειρακίων ἢ γυναικῶν, ἐγκαθορᾶν τε τῷ προσώπῳ τοῦ Ἀντιόχου καὶ τὰ συμπάσχειν μάλιστα τῇ ψυχῇ τρεπομένῃ πεφυκότα μέρη καὶ κινήματα [4] τοῦ σώματος ἐπισκοπεῖν. ὡς οὖν τῶν μὲν ἄλλων εἰσιόντων ὁμοίως εἶχε, τῆς δὲ Στρατονίκης καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν καὶ μετὰ τοῦ Σελεύκου φοιτώσης πολλάκις ἐγίνετο τὰ τῆς Σαπφοῦς (fr. 2, 7 sqq. D.) ἐκεῖνα περὶ αὐτὸν πάντα, φωνῆς ἐπίσχεσις, ἐρύθημα πυρῶδες, ὄψεων ὑπολείψεις, ἱδρῶτες ὀξεῖς, ἀταξία καὶ θόρυβος ἐν τοῖς σφυγμοῖς, τέλος δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς κατὰ κράτος ἡττημένης ἀπορία καὶ θάμβος [5] καὶ ὠχρίασις, ἐπὶ τούτοις προσλογιζόμενον τὸν Ἐρασίστρατον κατὰ τὸ εἰκός, ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἑτέρας ἐρῶν βασιλέως υἱὸς ἐνεκαρτέρει τῷ σιωπᾶν μέχρι θανάτου, χαλεπὸν μὲν ἡγεῖσθαι τὸ φράσαι ταῦτα καὶ κατειπεῖν, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πιστεύοντα τῇ πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν εὐνοίᾳ τοῦ Σελεύκου παρακινδυνεῦσαί ποτε καὶ εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἔρως μὲν εἴη τοῦ νεανίσκου [6] τὸ πάθος, ἔρως δ’ ἀδύνατος καὶ ἀνίατος. ἐκπλαγέντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ πυθομένου πῶς ἀνίατος, ὅτι νὴ Δία φάναι τὸν Ἐρασίστρατον ἐρᾷ τῆς ἐμῆς γυναικός.

[7] εἶτ’ οὐκ ἄν εἰπεῖν τὸν Σέλευκον ἐπιδοίης Ἐρασίστρατε τῷ ἐμῷ παιδὶ φίλος ὢν τὸν γάμον, καὶ ταῦθ’ ὁρῶν ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ τούτῳ μόνῳ σαλεύοντας; οὐδὲ γὰρ ἂν σύ φάναι τοῦτο πατὴρ ὢν ἐποίησας, εἰ Στρατονίκης Ἀντίοχος [8] ἐπεθύμησε. καὶ τὸν Σέλευκον εἴθε γὰρ ἑταῖρε εἰπεῖν ταχὺ μεταστρέψαι τις ἐπὶ ταῦτα καὶ μεταβάλοι θεῶν ἢ ἀνθρώπων τὸ πάθος· ὡς ἐμοὶ καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν ἀφεῖναι [9] καλὸν Ἀντιόχου περιεχομένῳ. ταῦτ’ ἐμπαθῶς σφόδρα τοῦ Σελεύκου καὶ μετὰ πολλῶν δακρύων λέγοντος, ἐμβαλόντα τὴν δεξιὰν αὐτῷ τὸν Ἐρασίστρατον εἰπεῖν, ὡς οὐδὲν Ἐρασιστράτου δέοιτο· καὶ γὰρ πατὴρ καὶ ἀνὴρ ὢν καὶ βασιλεὺς αὐτὸς ἅμα καὶ ἰατρὸς εἴη τῆς οἰκίας [10] ἄριστος. ἐκ τούτου τὸν Σέλευκον ἐκκλησίαν ἀθροίσαντα πάνδημον εἰπεῖν, ὅτι βούλεται καὶ διέγνωκε τῶν ἄνω πάντων τόπων Ἀντίοχον ἀποδεῖξαι βασιλέα καὶ Στρατονίκην [11] βασιλίδα, ἀλλήλοις συνοικοῦντας· οἴεσθαι δὲ τὸν μὲν υἱὸν εἰθισμένον ἅπαντα πείθεσθαι καὶ κατήκοον ὄντα μηθὲν ἀντερεῖν αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν γάμον· εἰ δ’ ἡ γυνὴ τῷ μὴ νενομισμένῳ δυσκολαίνοι, παρακαλεῖν τοὺς φίλους, ὅπως διδάσκωσιν αὐτὴν καὶ πείθωσι καλὰ καὶ δίκαια τὰ [12] δοκοῦντα βασιλεῖ μετὰ τοῦ συμφέροντος ἡγεῖσθαι. τὸν μὲν οὖν Ἀντιόχου καὶ Στρατονίκης γάμον ἐκ τοιαύτης γενέσθαι προφάσεως λέγουσι.

[39] [1] Δημήτριος δὲ μετὰ Μακεδονίαν καὶ Θετταλίαν ἦν παρειληφώς. ἔχων δὲ καὶ Πελοποννήσου τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ τῶν ἐντὸς Ἰσθμοῦ Μέγαρα καὶ Ἀθήνας, ἐπὶ Βοιωτοὺς [2] ἐστράτευσε. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐγένοντο συμβάσεις μέτριαι περὶ φιλίας πρὸς αὐτόν· ἔπειτα Κλεωνύμου τοῦ Σπαρτιάτου παραβαλόντος εἰς Θήβας μετὰ στρατιᾶς, ἐπαρθέντες οἱ Βοιωτοί, καὶ Πείσιδος ἅμα τοῦ Θεσπιέως, ὃς ἐπρώτευε δόξῃ καὶ δυνάμει τότε, συμπαρορμῶντος αὐτούς, [3] ἀπέστησαν. ὡς δὲ ταῖς Θήβαις ἐπαγαγὼν τὰς μηχανὰς ὁ Δημήτριος ἐπολιόρκει καὶ φοβηθεὶς ὑπεξῆλθεν ὁ Κλεώνυμος, καταπλαγέντες οἱ Βοιωτοὶ παρέδωκαν [4] ἑαυτούς. ὁ δὲ ταῖς πόλεσιν ἐμβαλὼν φρουρὰν καὶ πραξάμενος πολλὰ χρήματα καὶ καταλιπὼν αὐτοῖς ἐπιμελητὴν καὶ ἁρμοστὴν Ἱερώνυμον τὸν ἱστορικόν, ἔδοξεν ἠπίως [5] κεχρῆσθαι, καὶ μάλιστα διὰ Πεῖσιν. ἑλὼν γὰρ αὐτὸν οὐδὲν κακὸν ἐποίησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσαγορεύσας καὶ φιλο[6]φρονηθεὶς πολέμαρχον ἐν Θεσπιαῖς ἀπέδειξεν. οὐ πολλῷ δ’ ὕστερον ἁλίσκεται Λυσίμαχος ὑπὸ Δρομιχαίτου, καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο Δημητρίου κατὰ τάχος ἐξορμήσαντος ἐπὶ Θρᾴκην ὥσπερ ἔρημα καταληψομένου, πάλιν ἀπέστησαν οἱ Βοιωτοί, καὶ Λυσίμαχος ἅμα διειμένος ἀπηγγέλλετο.

[7] ταχέως οὖν καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν ἀναστρέψας ὁ Δημήτριος εὗρεν ἡττημένους ὑπὸ τοῦ παιδὸς Ἀντιγόνου μάχῃ τοὺς Βοιωτούς, καὶ τὰς Θήβας αὖθις ἐπολιόρκει.

[40] [1] Πύρρου δὲ Θεσσαλίαν κατατρέχοντος καὶ μέχρι Θερμοπυλῶν παραφανέντος, Ἀντίγονον ἐπὶ τῆς πολιορκίας [2] ἀπολιπὼν αὐτὸς ὥρμησεν ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον. ὀξέως δὲ φυγόντος, ἐν Θεσσαλίᾳ καταστήσας μυρίους ὁπλίτας καὶ χιλίους ἱππεῖς, αὖθις ἐνέκειτο ταῖς Θήβαις καὶ προσῆγε τὴν λεγομένην ἑλέπολιν, πολυπόνως καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ὑπὸ βρίθους καὶ μεγέθους μοχλευομένην, ὡς μόλις ἐν δυσὶ μησὶ [3] δύο σταδίους προελθεῖν. τῶν δὲ Βοιωτῶν ἐρρωμένως ἀμυνομένων, καὶ τοῦ Δημητρίου πολλάκις φιλονικίας ἕνεκα μᾶλλον ἢ χρείας μάχεσθαι καὶ κινδυνεύειν τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀναγκάζοντος, ὁρῶν ὁ Ἀντίγονος πίπτοντας οὐκ ὀλίγους καὶ περιπαθῶν τί ὦ πάτερ ἔφη παραναλισκομένους [4] οὐκ ἀναγκαίως τούτους περιορῶμεν; ὁ δὲ παροξυνθεὶς σὺ δέ ἔφη τί δυσχεραίνεις; ἢ διάμετρον ὀφείλεις [5] τοῖς ἀποθνῄσκουσιν; οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ βουλόμενός γε μὴ δοκεῖν ἑτέρων ἀφειδεῖν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ συγκινδυνεύειν τοῖς μαχομένοις, διελαύνεται τὸν τράχηλον ὀξυβελεῖ. καὶ δεινῶς μὲν ἔσχεν, οὐ μὴν ἀνῆκεν, ἀλλ’ εἷλε [6] τὰς Θήβας πάλιν. καὶ παρελθὼν ἀνάτασιν μὲν καὶ φόβον ὡς τὰ δεινότατα πεισομένοις παρέσχεν, ἀνελὼν δὲ τρισκαίδεκα καὶ μεταστήσας τινάς, ἀφῆκε τοὺς ἄλλους. ταῖς μὲν οὖν Θήβαις οὔπω δέκατον οἰκουμέναις ἔτος ἁλῶναι δὶς ἐν τῷ χρόνῳ συνέπεσε.

[7] Τῶν δὲ Πυθίων καθηκόντων, πρᾶγμα καινότατον ἐπέτρεψεν [8] αὑτῷ ποιεῖν ὁ Δημήτριος. ἐπεὶ γὰρ Αἰτωλοὶ τὰ περὶ Δελφοὺς στενὰ κατεῖχον, ἐν Ἀθήναις αὐτὸς ἦγε τὸν ἀγῶνα καὶ τὴν πανήγυριν, ὡς δὴ προσῆκον αὐτόθι μάλιστα τιμᾶσθαι τὸν θεόν, οἷς καὶ πατρῷός ἐστι καὶ λέγεται τοῦ γένους ἀρχηγός.

[41] [1] Ἐντεῦθεν ἐπανελθὼν εἰς Μακεδονίαν, καὶ μήτ’ αὐτὸς ἄγειν ἡσυχίαν πεφυκὼς τούς τ’ ἄλλους ὁρῶν ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις μᾶλλον αὐτῷ προσέχοντας, οἴκοι δὲ ταραχώδεις καὶ πολυπράγμονας ὄντας, ἐστράτευσεν ἐπ’ Αἰτωλούς· [2] καὶ τὴν χώραν κακώσας καὶ Πάνταυχον ἐν αὐτῇ μέρος ἔχοντα τῆς δυνάμεως οὐκ ὀλίγον ἀπολιπών, ἐπὶ [3] Πύρρον αὐτὸς ἐχώρει, καὶ Πύρρος ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον· ἀλλήλων δὲ διαμαρτόντες, ὁ μὲν ἐπόρθει τὴν Ἤπειρον, ὁ δὲ Πανταύχῳ περιπεσὼν καὶ μάχην συνάψας, αὐτὸν μὲν ἄχρι τοῦ δοῦναι καὶ λαβεῖν πληγὴν ἐν χερσὶ γενόμενον ἐτρέψατο, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων πολλοὺς μὲν ἀπέκτεινεν, ἐζώγρησε [4] δὲ πεντακισχιλίους. καὶ τοῦτο μάλιστα Δημήτριον ἐκάκωσεν· οὐ γὰρ οὕτως μισηθεὶς ὁ Πύρρος ἀφ’ ὧν ἔπραξεν, ὡς θαυμασθεὶς διὰ τὸ πλεῖστα τῇ χειρὶ κατεργάσασθαι, μέγα καὶ λαμπρὸν ἔσχεν ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης ἐκείνης [5] ὄνομα παρὰ τοῖς Μακεδόσι· καὶ πολλοῖς ἐπῄει λέγειν τῶν Μακεδόνων, ὡς ἐν μόνῳ τούτῳ τῶν βασιλέων εἴδωλον ἐνορῷτο τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου τόλμης, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι, καὶ μάλιστα Δημήτριος, ὡς ἐπὶ σκηνῆς τὸ βάρος ὑποκρίνοιντο καὶ τὸν ὄγκον τοῦ ἀνδρός.

[6] Ἦν δ’ ὡς ἀληθῶς τραγῳδία μεγάλη περὶ τὸν Δημήτριον, οὐ μόνον ἀμπεχόμενον καὶ διαδούμενον περιττῶς καυσίαις διμίτροις καὶ χρυσοπαρύφοις ἁλουργίσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τοῖς ποσὶν ἐκ πορφύρας ἀκράτου συμπεπιλημένης [7] χρυσοβαφεῖς πεποιημένον ἐμβάδας. ἦν δέ τις ὑφαινομένη χλαμὺς αὐτῷ πολὺν χρόνον, ἔργον ὑπερήφανον, εἴκασμα τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τῶν κατ’ οὐρανὸν φαινομένων· [8] ὃ κατελείφθη μὲν ἡμιτελὲς ἐν τῇ μεταβολῇ τῶν πραγμάτων, οὐδεὶς δ’ ἐτόλμησεν αὐτῇ χρήσασθαι, καίπερ οὐκ ὀλίγων ὕστερον ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ σοβαρῶν γενομένων βασιλέων.

[42] [1] Οὐ μόνον δὲ τούτοις τοῖς θεάμασιν ἐλύπει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἀήθεις ὄντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τρυφὴν καὶ δίαιταν ἐβαρύνοντο, καὶ μάλιστα δὴ τὸ δυσόμιλον αὐτοῦ καὶ δυσπρόσοδον· ἢ γὰρ οὐ παρεῖχε καιρὸν ἐντυχεῖν, ἢ χαλεπὸς [2] ἦν καὶ τραχὺς τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν. Ἀθηναίων μὲν γάρ, περὶ οὓς ἐσπουδάκει μάλιστα τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ἔτη δύο πρεσβείαν κατέσχεν, ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος δ’ ἑνὸς πρεσβευτοῦ παραγενομένου, καταφρονεῖσθαι δοκῶν ἠγανάκτησεν.

[3] ἀστείως μέντοι καὶ Λακωνικῶς ἐκεῖνος, εἰπόντος αὐτοῦ τί σὺ λέγεις; ἕνα Λακεδαιμόνιοι πρεσβευτὴν ἔπεμψαν; [4] ναί εἶπεν ὦ βασιλεῦ, πρὸς ἕνα. δόξαντος δ’ αὐτοῦ ποτε δημοτικώτερον ἐξελαύνειν καὶ πρὸς ἔντευξιν ἔχειν οὐκ ἀηδῶς, συνέδραμόν τινες ἐγγράφους ἀξιώσεις ἀναδιδόντες.

[5] δεξαμένου δὲ πάσας καὶ τῇ χλαμύδι συλλαβόντος, ἥσθησαν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καὶ παρηκολούθουν· ὡς δ’ ἦλθεν ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ Ἀξιοῦ γέφυραν, ἀναπτύξας τὴν χλαμύδα πάσας [6] εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν ἐξέρριψε. καὶ τοῦτο δὴ δεινῶς ἠνίασε τοὺς Μακεδόνας, ὑβρίζεσθαι δοκοῦντας, οὐ βασιλεύεσθαι, καὶ Φιλίππου μνημονεύοντας ἢ τῶν μνημονευόντων ἀκούοντας, [7] ὡς μέτριος ἦν περὶ ταῦτα καὶ κοινός. καί ποτε πρεσβυτέρου γυναίου κόπτοντος αὐτὸν ἐν παρόδῳ τινὶ καὶ δεομένου πολλάκις ἀκουσθῆναι, φήσας μὴ σχολάζειν, ἐγκραγόντος ἐκείνου καὶ μὴ βασίλευε [εἰπόντος], δηχθεὶς σφόδρα καὶ πρὸς τούτῳ γενόμενος, ἀνέστρεψεν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν, καὶ πάντα ποιησάμενος ὕστερα τοῖς ἐντυχεῖν βουλομένοις, ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ τῆς πρεσβύτιδος [8] ἐκείνης, ἐπὶ πολλὰς ἡμέρας ἐσχόλασεν. οὐδὲν γὰρ οὕτως βασιλεῖ προσῆκον ὡς τὸ τῆς δίκης ἔργον. Ἄρης μὲν γὰρ τύραννος, ὥς φησι Τιμόθεος (6c D.), νόμος δὲ πάντων [9] βασιλεὺς κατὰ Πίνδαρόν (fr. 169, 1) ἐστι· καὶ τοὺς βασιλεῖς Ὅμηρός φησιν οὐχ ἑλεπόλεις οὐδὲ ναῦς χαλκήρεις, ἀλλὰ θέμιστας παρὰ τοῦ Διὸς λαμβάνοντας ῥύεσθαι καὶ φυλάσσειν (Il. 1, 238), καὶ τοῦ Διὸς οὐ τὸν πολεμικώτατον οὐδὲ τὸν ἀδικώτατον καὶ φονικώτατον τῶν βασιλέων, ἀλλὰ τὸν [10] δικαιότατον ὀαριστὴν καὶ μαθητὴν προσηγόρευκεν (Od. 19, 179). ἀλλὰ Δημήτριος ἔχαιρε τῷ βασιλεῖ τῶν θεῶν ἀνομοιοτάτην ἐπιγραφόμενος προσωνυμίαν· ὁ μὲν γὰρ Πολιεὺς [11] καὶ Πολιοῦχος, ὁ δὲ Πολιορκητὴς ἐπίκλησιν ἔσχεν. οὕτως ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ καλοῦ χώραν τὸ αἰσχρὸν ὑπὸ δυνάμεως ἀμαθοῦς ἐπελθὸν συνῳκείωσε τῇ δόξῃ τὴν ἀδικίαν.

[43] [1] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Δημήτριος ἐπισφαλέστατα νοσήσας ἐν Πέλλῃ, μικροῦ τότε Μακεδονίαν ἀπέβαλε, καταδραμόντος ὀξέως Πύρρου καὶ μέχρι Ἐδέσσης προελθόντος.

[2] ἅμα δὲ τῷ κουφότερος γενέσθαι πάνυ ῥᾳδίως ἐξελάσας αὐτόν, ἐποιήσατό τινας ὁμολογίας, οὐ βουλόμενος ἐμποδὼν ὄντι συνεχῶς προσπταίων καὶ τοπομαχῶν ἧττον εἶναι [3] πρὸς οἷς διενοεῖτο. διενοεῖτο δ’ οὐθὲν ὀλίγον, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν ἀναλαμβάνειν τὴν ὑπὸ τῷ πατρὶ γενομένην ἀρχήν. καὶ τῆς ἐλπίδος ταύτης καὶ τῆς ἐπιβολῆς οὐκ ἀπελείπετο τὰ τῆς παρασκευῆς, ἀλλὰ στρατιᾶς μὲν ἤδη συνετέτακτο πεζῆς μυριάδας δέκα δισχιλίων ἀνδρῶν ἀποδεούσας, καὶ χωρὶς ἱππέας ὀλίγῳ δισχιλίων καὶ μυρίων [4] ἐλάττους. στόλον δὲ νεῶν ἅμα πεντακοσίων καταβαλλόμενος, τὰς μὲν ἐν Πειραιεῖ τρόπεις ἔθετο, τὰς δ’ ἐν Κορίνθῳ, τὰς δ’ ἐν Χαλκίδι, τὰς δὲ περὶ Πέλλαν, αὐτὸς ἐπιὼν ἑκασταχόσε καὶ διδάσκων ἃ χρὴ καὶ συντεχνώμενος, ἐκπληττομένων ἁπάντων οὐ τὰ πλήθη μόνον, [5] ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ μεγέθη τῶν ἔργων. οὐδεὶς γὰρ εἶδεν ἀνθρώπων οὔτε πεντεκαιδεκήρη ναῦν πρότερον οὔθ’ ἑκκαιδεκήρη· ὕστερον δὲ καὶ τεσσαρακοντήρη Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Φιλοπάτωρ ἐναυπηγήσατο, μῆκος διακοσίων ὀγδοήκοντα πηχῶν, ὕψος δ’ ἕως ἀκροστολίου πεντήκοντα δυεῖν δεόντων, ναύταις δὲ χωρὶς ἐρετῶν ἐξηρτυμένην τετρακοσίοις, ἐρέταις δὲ τετρακισχιλίοις, χωρὶς δὲ τούτων ὁπλίτας δεχομένην ἐπί τε τῶν παρόδων καὶ τοῦ [6] καταστρώματος ὀλίγῳ τρισχιλίων ἀποδέοντας. ἀλλὰ θέαν μόνην ἐκείνη παρέσχε, καὶ μικρὸν ὅσον διαφέρουσα τῶν μονίμων οἰκοδομημάτων, φανῆναι πρὸς ἐπίδειξιν, οὐ [7] χρείαν, ἐπισφαλῶς καὶ δυσέργως ἐκινήθη. τῶν δὲ Δημητρίου νεῶν οὐκ ἦν τὸ καλὸν ἀναγώνιστον, οὐδὲ τῷ περιττῷ τῆς κατασκευῆς ἀπεστεροῦντο τὴν χρείαν, ἀλλὰ τὸ τάχος καὶ τὸ ἔργον ἀξιοθεατότερον τοῦ μεγέθους παρεῖχον.

[44] [1] Αἰρομένης οὖν τοσαύτης δυνάμεως ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν, ὅσην μετ’ Ἀλέξανδρον οὐδεὶς ἔσχε πρότερον, οἱ τρεῖς συνέστησαν ἐπὶ τὸν Δημήτριον, Σέλευκος Πτολεμαῖος [2] Λυσίμαχος. ἔπειτα κοινῇ πρὸς Πύρρον ἀποστείλαντες, ἐκέλευον ἐξάπτεσθαι Μακεδονίας καὶ μὴ νομίζειν σπονδὰς αἷς Δημήτριος οὐκ ἐκείνῳ τὸ μὴ πολεμεῖσθαι δέδωκεν, ἀλλ’ εἴληφεν ἑαυτῷ τὸ πολεμεῖν οἷς βούλεται πρότερον.

[3] δεξαμένου δὲ Πύρρου, πολὺς περιέστη πόλεμος ἔτι μέλλοντα Δημήτριον. ἅμα γὰρ τὴν μὲν Ἑλλάδα πλεύσας στόλῳ μεγάλῳ Πτολεμαῖος ἀφίστη, Μακεδονίαν δὲ Λυσίμαχος ἐκ Θρᾴκης, ἐκ δὲ τῆς ὁμόρου Πύρρος ἐμβαλόντες [4] ἐλεηλάτουν. ὁ δὲ τὸν μὲν υἱὸν ἐπὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος κατέλιπεν, αὐτὸς δὲ βοηθῶν Μακεδονίᾳ πρῶτον ὥρμησεν [5] ἐπὶ Λυσίμαχον. ἀγγέλλεται δ’ αὐτῷ Πύρρος ᾑρηκὼς πόλιν Βέροιαν. καὶ τοῦ λόγου ταχέως εἰς τοὺς Μακεδόνας ἐκπεσόντος, οὐδὲν ἔτι τῷ Δημητρίῳ κατὰ κόσμον εἶχεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὀδυρμῶν καὶ δακρύων καὶ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ὀργῆς καὶ βλασφημιῶν μεστὸν ἦν τὸ στρατόπεδον, καὶ συμμένειν οὐκ ἤθελον, ἀλλ’ ἀπιέναι, τῷ μὲν λόγῳ πρὸς τὰ [6] οἴκοι, τῇ δ’ ἀληθείᾳ πρὸς τὸν Λυσίμαχον. ἔδοξεν οὖν τῷ Δημητρίῳ Λυσιμάχου μὲν ἀποστῆναι πορρωτάτω, πρὸς δὲ Πύρρον τρέπεσθαι· τὸν μὲν γὰρ ὁμόφυλον εἶναι καὶ πολλοῖς συνήθη δι’ Ἀλέξανδρον, ἔπηλυν δὲ καὶ ξένον ἄνδρα [7] τὸν Πύρρον οὐκ ἂν αὑτοῦ προτιμῆσαι Μακεδόνας. τούτων μέντοι πολὺ διεψεύσθη τῶν λογισμῶν. ὡς γὰρ ἐγγὺς ἐλθὼν τῷ Πύρρῳ παρεστρατοπέδευσεν, ἀεὶ μὲν αὐτοῦ τὴν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις λαμπρότητα θαυμάζοντες, ἔκ τε τοῦ παλαιοτάτου καὶ βασιλικώτατον εἰθισμένοι νομίζειν τὸν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις κράτιστον, τότε δὲ καὶ πράως κεχρῆσθαι τοῖς ἁλισκομένοις πυνθανόμενοι, πάντως δὲ καὶ πρὸς ἕτερον καὶ πρὸς τοῦτον ἀπαλλαγῆναι τοῦ Δημητρίου [8] ζητοῦντες, ἀπεχώρουν λάθρα καὶ κατ’ ὀλίγους τό γε πρῶτον, εἶτα φανερῶς ἅπαν εἶχε κίνησιν καὶ ταραχὴν τὸ στρατόπεδον, τέλος δὲ τῷ Δημητρίῳ τολμήσαντές τινες προσελθεῖν, ἐκέλευον ἀπιέναι καὶ σῴζειν αὑτόν· ἀπειρηκέναι γὰρ ἤδη Μακεδόνας ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐκείνου τρυφῆς [9] πολεμοῦντας. οὗτοι μετριώτατοι τῶν λόγων ἐφαίνοντο τῷ Δημητρίῳ πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἄλλων τραχύτητα, καὶ παρελθὼν ἐπὶ σκηνήν, ὥσπερ οὐ βασιλεύς, ἀλλ’ ὑποκριτής, μεταμφιέννυται χλαμύδα φαιὰν ἀντὶ τῆς τραγικῆς [10] ἐκείνης, καὶ διαλαθὼν ὑπεχώρησεν. ὁρμησάντων δὲ τῶν πλείστων εὐθὺς ἐφ’ ἁρπαγὴν καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαμαχομένων καὶ τὴν σκηνὴν διασπώντων, ἐπιφανεὶς ὁ Πύρρος ἐκράτησεν αὐτοβοεὶ καὶ κατέσχε τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[11] καὶ γίνεται πρὸς Λυσίμαχον αὐτῷ συμπάσης Μακεδονίας νέμησις, ἑπταετίαν ὑπὸ Δημητρίου βεβαίως ἀρχθείσης.

[45] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τοῦ Δημητρίου τῶν πραγμάτων ἐκπεσόντος καὶ καταφυγόντος εἰς Κασσάνδρειαν, ἡ γυνὴ Φίλα περιπαθὴς γενομένη προσιδεῖν μὲν οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν αὖθις ἰδιώτην καὶ φυγάδα τὸν τλημονέστατον βασιλέων Δημήτριον, ἀπειπαμένη δὲ πᾶσαν ἐλπίδα καὶ μισήσασα τὴν τύχην αὐτοῦ βεβαιοτέραν ἐν τοῖς κακοῖς οὖσαν ἢ [2] τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς, πιοῦσα φάρμακον ἀπέθανε. Δημήτριος δ’ ἔτι τῶν λοιπῶν ναυαγίων ἔχεσθαι διανοηθεὶς ἀπῆρεν εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ τοὺς ἐκεῖ στρατηγοὺς καὶ φίλους [3] συνῆγεν. ἣν οὖν ὁ Σοφοκλέους Μενέλαος εἰκόνα ταῖς αὑτοῦ τύχαις παρατίθησιν·

ἀλλ’ οὑμὸς ἀεὶ πότμος ἐν πυκνῷ θεοῦ

τροχῷ κυκλεῖται καὶ μεταλλάσσει φύσιν,

ὥσπερ σελήνης δ’ ὄψις εὐφρόναις δύο

στῆναι δύναιτ’ ἂν οὔποτ’ ἐν μορφῇ μιᾷ,

ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀδήλου πρῶτον ἔρχεται νέα,

πρόσωπα καλλύνουσα καὶ πληρουμένη,

χὤτανπερ αὑτῆς εὐγενεστάτη φανῇ,

πάλιν διαρρεῖ κεἰς τὸ μηδὲν ἔρχεται,

[4] ταύτῃ μᾶλλον ἄν τις ἀπεικάσαι τὰ Δημητρίου πράγματα καὶ τὰς περὶ αὐτὸν αὐξήσεις καὶ φθίσεις καὶ ἀναπληρώσεις καὶ ταπεινότητας, οὗ γε καὶ τότε παντάπασιν ἀπολείπειν καὶ κατασβέννυσθαι δοκοῦντος ἀνέλαμπεν αὖθις ἡ ἀρχή, καὶ δυνάμεις τινὲς ἐπιρρέουσαι κατὰ μικρὸν [5] ἀνεπλήρουν τὴν ἐλπίδα. καὶ τό γε πρῶτον ἰδιώτης καὶ τῶν βασιλικῶν κοσμίων ἔρημος ἐπεφοίτα ταῖς πόλεσι, καί τις αὐτὸν ἐν Θήβαις τοιοῦτον θεασάμενος ἐχρήσατο τοῖς Εὐριπίδου στίχοις οὐκ ἀηδῶς (Bacch. 4)·

μορφὴν ἀμείψας ἐκ θεοῦ βροτησίαν

πάρεστι Δίρκης νάμαθ’ Ἱσμηνοῦ θ’ ὕδωρ·

[46] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἅπαξ ὥσπερ εἰς ὁδὸν βασιλικὴν τὴν ἐλπίδα κατέστη, καὶ συνίστατο πάλιν σῶμα καὶ σχῆμα περὶ αὑτὸν ἀρχῆς, Θηβαίοις μὲν ἀπέδωκε τὴν πολιτείαν· [2] Ἀθηναῖοι δ’ ἀπέστησαν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τόν τε Δίφιλον, ὃς ἦν ἱερεὺς τῶν Σωτήρων ἀναγεγραμμένος, ἐκ τῶν ἐπωνύμων ἀνεῖλον, ἄρχοντας αἱρεῖσθαι πάλιν ὥσπερ ἦν πάτριον ψηφισάμενοι, τόν τε Πύρρον ἐκ Μακεδονίας μετεπέμποντο, μᾶλλον ἢ προσεδόκησαν ἰσχύοντα τὸν Δημήτριον ὁρῶντες.

[3] ὁ δ’ ὀργῇ μὲν ἐπῆλθεν αὐτοῖς καὶ πολιορκίαν περὶ τὸ ἄστυ συνεστήσατο καρτεράν, Κράτητος δὲ τοῦ φιλοσόφου πεμφθέντος ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀνδρὸς ἐνδόξου καὶ συνετοῦ, τὰ μὲν οἷς ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐδεῖτο πεισθείς, τὰ δ’ ἐξ ὧν ἐδίδασκε περὶ τῶν ἐκείνῳ συμφερόντων [4] νοήσας, ἔλυσε τὴν πολιορκίαν, καὶ συναγαγὼν ὅσαι νῆες ἦσαν αὐτῷ, καὶ στρατιώτας μυρίους καὶ χιλίους σὺν ἱππεῦσιν ἐμβιβάσας, ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν ἔπλει, Λυσιμάχου [5] Καρίαν καὶ Λυδίαν ἀποστήσων. δέχεται δ’ αὐτὸν Εὐρυδίκη περὶ Μίλητον ἀδελφὴ Φίλας, ἄγουσα τῶν αὐτῆς καὶ Πτολεμαίου θυγατέρων Πτολεμαΐδα, καθωμολογημένην ἐκείνῳ πρότερον διὰ Σελεύκου· ταύτην γαμεῖ Δημήτριος [6] Εὐρυδίκης ἐκδιδούσης. καὶ μετὰ τὸν γάμον εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις τρέπεται, πολλῶν μὲν ἑκουσίως προστιθεμένων, πολλὰς δὲ καὶ βιαζόμενος. ἔλαβε δὲ καὶ Σάρδεις· καί τινες τῶν Λυσιμάχου στρατηγῶν ἀπεχώρησαν πρὸς αὐτόν, [7] χρήματα καὶ στρατιὰν κομίζοντες. ἐπερχομένου δ’ Ἀγαθοκλέους τοῦ Λυσιμάχου μετὰ δυνάμεως, ἀνέβαινεν εἰς Φρυγίαν, ἐγνωκὼς ἄνπερ Ἀρμενίας ἐπιλάβηται Μηδίαν κινεῖν καὶ τῶν ἄνω πραγμάτων ἔχεσθαι, πολλὰς [8] ἐξωθουμένῳ περιφυγὰς καὶ ἀναχωρήσεις ἐχόντων. ἑπομένου δ’ Ἀγαθοκλέους, ἐν ταῖς συμπλοκαῖς περιῆν, ἐπισιτισμοῦ δὲ καὶ προνομῶν εἰργόμενος ἠπορεῖτο, καὶ τοῖς στρατιώταις δι’ ὑποψίας ἦν ὡς ἐπ’ Ἀρμενίαν καὶ Μηδίαν [9] ἐκτοπίζων. ἅμα δὲ μᾶλλον ὁ λιμὸς ἐπέτεινε, καὶ διαμαρτία τις γενομένη περὶ τὴν τοῦ Λύκου διάβασιν πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων [10] ἁρπασθὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ ῥεύματος ἀπώλεσεν. ὅμως δὲ τοῦ σκώπτειν οὐκ ἀπείχοντο· προγράφει δέ τις αὐτοῦ πρὸ τῆς σκηνῆς τὴν τοῦ Οἰδίποδος ἀρχὴν μικρὸν παραλλάξας (Soph. Oed. Col. 1)·

τέκνον τυφλοῦ γέροντος Ἀντιγόνου, τίνας

χώρους ἀφίγμεθα;

[47] [1] Τέλος δὲ καὶ νόσου τῷ λιμῷ συνεπιτιθεμένης ὥσπερ εἴωθεν, ἐπὶ βρώσεις ἀναγκαίας τρεπομένων, τοὺς πάντας οὐκ ἐλάσσονας ὀκτακισχιλίων ἀποβαλών, ἀνῆγεν ὀπίσω [2] τοὺς λοιπούς· καὶ καταβὰς εἰς Ταρσόν, ἐβούλετο μὲν ἀπέχεσθαι τῆς χώρας οὔσης ὑπὸ Σελεύκῳ τότε καὶ πρόφασιν ἐκείνῳ μηδεμίαν παρασχεῖν, ὡς δ’ ἦν ἀμήχανον, ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ὄντων ἀπορίαις τῶν στρατιωτῶν, καὶ τοῦ Ταύρου τὰς ὑπερβολὰς Ἀγαθοκλῆς ἀπετείχισε, [3] γράφει πρὸς Σέλευκον ἐπιστολήν, μακρόν τινα τῆς αὑτοῦ τύχης ὀδυρμόν, εἶτα πολλὴν ἱκεσίαν καὶ δέησιν ἔχουσαν, ἀνδρὸς οἰκείου λαβεῖν οἶκτον, ἄξια καὶ πολεμίοις συναλγῆσαι [4] πεπονθότος. ἐπικλασθέντος δέ πως Σελεύκου καὶ γράψαντος τοῖς ἐκεῖ στρατηγοῖς, ὅπως αὐτῷ τε τῷ Δημητρίῳ χορηγίαν βασιλικὴν καὶ τῇ δυνάμει τροφὴν ἄφθονον παρέχωσιν, ἐπελθὼν Πατροκλῆς, ἀνὴρ συνετὸς εἶναι δοκῶν καὶ Σελεύκῳ φίλος πιστός, οὐ τὸ τῆς δαπάνης ἔφη πλεῖστον εἶναι τῶν Δημητρίου στρατιωτῶν τρεφομένων, ἀλλ’ ἐνδιατρίβοντα τῇ χώρᾳ Δημήτριον οὐ καλῶς περιορᾶν αὐτόν, ὃς ἀεὶ βιαιότατος ὢν καὶ μεγαλοπραγμονέστατος βασιλέων, νῦν ἐν τύχαις γέγονεν αἳ καὶ τοὺς φύσει μετρίους ἐξάγουσι τολμᾶν καὶ ἀδικεῖν.

[5] ἐκ τούτου παροξυνθεὶς ὁ Σέλευκος ἐξώρμησεν εἰς Κιλικίαν [6] μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως. ὁ δὲ Δημήτριος ἐκπλαγεὶς τῇ δι’ ὀλίγου μεταβολῇ τοῦ Σελεύκου καὶ φοβηθείς, ὑπέστειλε τοῖς ὀχυρωτάτοις τοῦ Ταύρου, καὶ διαπεμπόμενος ἠξίου μάλιστα μὲν αὐτὸν περιιδεῖν τῶν αὐτονόμων τινὰ βαρβάρων κτησάμενον ἀρχήν, ἐν ᾗ καταβιώσεται πλάνης καὶ φυγῆς παυσάμενος, εἰ δὲ μή, τὸν χειμῶνα διαθρέψαι τὴν δύναμιν αὐτόθι καὶ μὴ πάντων ἐνδεᾶ καὶ γυμνὸν ἐξελαύνειν καὶ προβάλλειν τοῖς πολεμίοις.

[48] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Σέλευκος ταῦτα πάντα ὑποπτεύων ἐκέλευσεν αὐτόν, εἰ βούλεται, δύο μῆνας ἐν τῇ Καταονίᾳ χειμάσαι, δόντα τοὺς πρώτους τῶν φίλων ὁμήρους, ἅμα δὲ τὰς εἰς Συρίαν ἀπετείχιζεν ὑπερβολάς, ἐγκλειόμενος ὡς θηρίον ὁ Δημήτριος κύκλῳ καὶ περιβαλλόμενος, ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης τρέπεται πρὸς ἀλκήν, καὶ τήν τε χώραν κατέτρεχε καὶ τῷ Σελεύκῳ προσβάλλοντι συμπλεκόμενος ἀεὶ [2] πλέον εἶχε. καί ποτε τῶν δρεπανηφόρων εἰς αὐτὸν ἀφεθέντων, ὑποστὰς τροπὴν ἐποιήσατο, καὶ τῶν εἰς Συρίαν [3] ὑπερβολῶν τοὺς ἀποτειχίζοντας ἐξελάσας ἐκράτησε. καὶ ὅλως ἐπῆρτο τῇ γνώμῃ, καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀνατεθαρρηκότας ὁρῶν παρεσκευάζετο διαγωνίσασθαι πρὸς τὸν Σέλευκον ἐπὶ τοῖς μεγίστοις ἄθλοις, ἠπορημένον ἤδη [4] καὶ αὐτόν. ἀπέστρεψε μὲν γὰρ τὴν παρὰ Λυσιμάχου βοήθειαν ἀπιστῶν καὶ φοβούμενος, αὐτὸς δὲ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ὤκνει τῷ Δημητρίῳ συνάψαι, δεδιὼς τὴν ἀπόνοιαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἀεὶ μεταβολὴν ἐκ τῶν ἐσχάτων ἀποριῶν τὰς [5] μεγίστας εὐτυχίας ἐπιφέρουσαν. νόσος μέντοι βαρεῖα τὸν Δημήτριον ἐν τούτῳ καταλαβοῦσα, τό τε σῶμα δεινῶς ἐκάκωσε καὶ τὰ πράγματα παντάπασι διέφθειρεν· οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἀπεχώρησαν πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, οἱ δὲ διερρύησαν [6] αὐτοῦ τῶν στρατιωτῶν. μόλις δ’ ἐν ἡμέραις τεσσαράκοντα ῥαΐσας καὶ τοὺς ὑπολοίπους ἀναλαβὼν καὶ ὁρμήσας, ὅσον ἰδεῖν καὶ δοξάσαι τοὺς πολεμίους, ἐπὶ Κιλικίας, εἶτα νυκτὸς ἄνευ σάλπιγγος ἄρας ἐπὶ θάτερα καὶ τὸν Ἀμανὸν ὑπερβαλών, ἐπόρθει τὴν κάτω χώραν ἄχρι τῆς Κυρρηστικῆς.

[49] [1] Ἐπιφανέντος δὲ τοῦ Σελεύκου καὶ ποιουμένου τὰς καταλύσεις ἐγγύς, ἀναστήσας ὁ Δημήτριος τὸ στράτευμα νυκτὸς ἐβάδιζεν ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ἀγνοοῦντα μέχρι πολλοῦ καὶ [2] κοιμώμενον. αὐτομόλων δέ τινων παραγενομένων καὶ φρασάντων τὸν κίνδυνον, ἐκπλαγεὶς καὶ ἀναπηδήσας ἐκέλευσε σημαίνειν, ἅμα τὰς κρηπῖδας ὑποδούμενος καὶ βοῶν πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους, ὡς θηρίῳ δεινῷ συμπέπλεκται.

[3] Δημήτριος δὲ τῷ θορύβῳ τῶν πολεμίων αἰσθόμενος ὅτι μεμήνυται, κατὰ τάχος ἀπῆγεν. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ προσκειμένου τοῦ Σελεύκου, πέμψας τινὰ τῶν περὶ αὑτὸν ἐπὶ θάτερον κέρας, ἐποίησέ τινα τροπὴν τῶν ἐναντίων.

[4] εἶτα μέντοι Σέλευκος αὐτὸς ἀφεὶς τὸν ἵππον καὶ τὸ κράνος ἀποθέμενος καὶ λαβὼν πέλτην ἀπήντα τοῖς μισθοφόροις, ἐπιδεικνύμενος αὑτὸν καὶ μεταβαλέσθαι παρακαλῶν ἤδη ποτὲ συμφρονήσαντας, ὅτι φειδόμενος ἐκείνων, οὐ Δημητρίου, χρόνον πολὺν διατετέλεκεν. ἐκ τούτου πάντες ἀσπαζόμενοι καὶ βασιλέα προσαγορεύοντες μεθίσταντο.

[5] Δημήτριος δὲ πολλῶν μεταβολῶν αἰσθόμενος ἐσχάτην ἐκείνην ἥκουσαν ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ἐκκλίνας ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀμανίδας ἔφευγε πύλας, καὶ καταβαλὼν εἰς ὕλην τινὰ συνηρεφῆ μετὰ φίλων τινῶν καὶ ἀκολούθων ὀλίγων παντάπασιν ὄντων, προσέμενε τὴν νύκτα, βουλόμενος εἰ δύναιτο τῆς ἐπὶ Καῦνον ὁδοῦ λαβέσθαι καὶ διεκπεσεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκεῖ θάλασσαν, οὗ τὸν ναύσταθμον εὑρήσειν [6] ἤλπιζεν. ὡς δ’ ἔγνω μηδ’ ἐκείνης τῆς ἡμέρας ἐφόδιον [7] ἔχοντας αὐτούς, ἐπ’ ἄλλων ἐγίνετο λογισμῶν. εἶτα μέντοι Σωσιγένης ἐπῆλθεν ἑταῖρος αὐτοῦ, χρυσοῦς τετρακοσίους ὑπεζωσμένος, καὶ ἀπὸ τούτων ἐλπίζοντες ἄχρι θαλάσσης διαγενήσεσθαι, πρὸς τὰς ὑπερβολὰς ἐχώρουν σκοταῖοι.

[8] πυρῶν δὲ καιομένων πρὸς αὐταῖς πολεμίων, ἀπογνόντες ἐκείνην τὴν ὁδὸν αὖθις ἀνεχώρησαν εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν τόπον, οὔτε πάντες - ἔνιοι γὰρ ἀπέδρασαν - οὔθ’ ὁμοίως οἱ [9] παραμένοντες πρόθυμοι. τολμήσαντος δέ τινος εἰπεῖν [τι] ὡς Σελεύκῳ χρὴ τὸ σῶμα παραδοῦναι Δημήτριον, ὥρμησε μὲν τὸ ξίφος σπασάμενος ἀνελεῖν ἑαυτόν, οἱ δὲ φίλοι περιστάντες καὶ παραμυθούμενοι συνέπεισαν οὕτω ποιῆσαι. καὶ πέμπει πρὸς Σέλευκον ἐπιτρέπων ἐκείνῳ τὰ καθ’ ἑαυτόν.

[50] [1] Ἀκούσας δὲ Σέλευκος οὐκ ἔφη τῇ Δημητρίου τύχῃ σῴζεσθαι Δημήτριον, ἀλλὰ τῇ αὑτοῦ, μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων καλῶν αὐτῷ φιλανθρωπίας καὶ χρηστότητος ἐπίδειξιν [2] διδούσῃ. καλέσας δὲ τοὺς ἐπιμελητάς, σκηνήν τε πηγνύναι βασιλικὴν ἐκέλευσε καὶ τἆλλα πάντα ποιεῖν καὶ παρασκευάζειν εἰς ὑποδοχὴν καὶ θεραπείαν μεγαλοπρεπῶς.

[3] ἦν δέ τις Ἀπολλωνίδης παρὰ τῷ Σελεύκῳ, τοῦ Δημητρίου γεγονὼς συνήθης· τοῦτον εὐθὺς ἐξέπεμψε πρὸς αὐτόν, ὅπως ἡδίων γένηται καὶ θαρρῶν ὡς [4] πρὸς οἰκεῖον ἄνδρα καὶ κηδεστὴν ἀπαντᾶν. φανερᾶς δὲ τῆς γνώμης αὐτοῦ γενομένης, ὀλίγοι τὸ πρῶτον, εἶθ’ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν φίλων ἐξεπήδων παρὰ τὸν Δημήτριον, ἁμιλλώμενοι καὶ φθάνοντες ἀλλήλους· ἠλπίζετο γὰρ [5] εὐθὺς παρὰ τῷ Σελεύκῳ μέγιστος ἔσεσθαι. τοῦτο δ’ ἐκείνῳ μὲν εἰς φθόνον μετέβαλε τὸν ἔλεον, τοῖς δὲ κακοήθεσι καὶ βασκάνοις παρέσχεν ἀποτρέψαι καὶ διαφθεῖραι τὴν φιλανθρωπίαν τοῦ βασιλέως, ἐκφοβήσασιν αὐτόν, ὡς οὐκ εἰς ἀναβολάς, ἀλλ’ ἅμα τῷ πρῶτον ὀφθῆναι τὸν ἄνδρα μεγάλων ἐσομένων ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ [6] νεωτερισμῶν. ἄρτι δὴ τοῦ Ἀπολλωνίδου πρὸς τὸν Δημήτριον ἀφιγμένου περιχαροῦς, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπερχομένων καὶ λόγους θαυμαστοὺς ἀπαγγελλόντων περὶ τοῦ Σελεύκου, καὶ τοῦ Δημητρίου μετὰ τηλικαύτην δυστυχίαν καὶ κακοπραγίαν, εἰ καὶ πρότερον ἐδόκει τὴν παράδοσιν τοῦ σώματος αἰσχρὰν πεποιῆσθαι, τότε μετεγνωκότος διὰ τὸ θαρρεῖν καὶ πιστεύειν ταῖς ἐλπίσιν, ἦλθε Παυσανίας ἔχων στρατιώτας ὁμοῦ πεζοὺς καὶ ἱππεῖς [7] περὶ χιλίους. καὶ τούτοις περισχὼν τὸν Δημήτριον ἄφνω, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἀποστήσας, Σελεύκῳ μὲν αὐτὸν εἰς ὄψιν οὐ κατέστησεν, εἰς δὲ Χερρόνησον τὴν Συριακὴν [8] ἀπήγαγεν· ὅπου τὸ λοιπὸν ἰσχυρᾶς φυλακῆς ἐπισταθείσης, θεραπεία μὲν ἧκεν ἱκανὴ παρὰ Σελεύκου, καὶ χρήματα καὶ δίαιτα παρεσκευάζετο καθ’ ἡμέραν οὐ μεμπτή, δρόμοι δὲ καὶ περίπατοι βασιλικοὶ καὶ παράδεισοι [9] θήρας ἔχοντες ἀπεδείχθησαν· ἦν δὲ καὶ τῶν φίλων τῶν συμφυγόντων τῷ βουλομένῳ συνεῖναι, καὶ παρ’ αὐτοῦ τινες ὅμως ἐπιφοιτῶντες [ἀπὸ τοῦ Σελεύκου] ἧκον, κομίζοντες ἐπιεικεῖς λόγους καὶ θαρρεῖν παρακαλοῦντες, ὡς ὅταν πρῶτον Ἀντίοχος ἀφίκηται σὺν Στρατονίκῃ διεθησόμενον.

[51] [1] Ὁ δὲ Δημήτριος ἐν τῇ τοιαύτῃ τύχῃ γεγονώς, ἐπέστειλε τοῖς περὶ τὸν υἱὸν καὶ τοῖς περὶ Ἀθήνας καὶ Κόρινθον ἡγεμόσι καὶ φίλοις, μήτε γράμμασιν αὐτοῦ μήτε σφραγῖδι πιστεύειν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τεθνηκότος Ἀντιγόνῳ τὰς πόλεις καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ πράγματα διαφυλάττειν.

[2] Ἀντίγονος δὲ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς σύλληψιν πυθόμενος, καὶ βαρέως ἐνεγκὼν καὶ πενθίμην ἀναλαβὼν ἐσθῆτα πρός τε τοὺς ἄλλους βασιλεῖς ἔγραψε καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν Σέλευκον, δεόμενος καὶ πᾶν ὅ τι λοιπὸν ἦν αὐτοῖς παραδιδούς, καὶ πρὸ παντὸς ὁμηρεύειν ἕτοιμος ὢν αὐτὸς ὑπὲρ τοῦ [3] πατρός. καὶ συνεδέοντο ταῦτα πόλεις τε πολλαὶ καὶ δυνάσται πλὴν Λυσιμάχου· Λυσίμαχος δὲ καὶ χρήματα πολλὰ πέμπων ὑπισχνεῖτο Σελεύκῳ κτείναντι Δημήτριον.

[4] ὁ δ’ ἐκεῖνον μὲν ‹καὶ› ἄλλως προβαλλόμενος, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐπὶ τούτῳ μιαρὸν ἡγεῖτο καὶ βάρβαρον, Ἀντιόχῳ δὲ τῷ παιδὶ καὶ Στρατονίκῃ φυλάττων Δημήτριον, ὡς ἐκείνων ἡ χάρις γένοιτο, παρῆγε τὸν χρόνον.

[52] [1] Ὁ δὲ Δημήτριος ὡς ἐν ἀρχῇ τὴν τύχην προσπεσοῦσαν ὑπέμεινε καὶ ῥᾷον ἤδη φέρειν εἰθίζετο τὰ παρόντα, πρῶτον μὲν ἁμῶς γέ πως ἐκίνει τὸ σῶμα, θήρας [2] ἐφ’ ὅσον ἦν καὶ δρόμων ἁπτόμενος· ἔπειτα κατὰ μικρὸν ὄκνου πρὸς αὐτὰ καὶ νωθείας ἐπίμπλατο, καὶ φέρων ἑαυτὸν εἰς πότους καὶ κύβους κατέβαλε, καὶ τοῦ χρόνου [3] τὸν πλεῖστον ἐν τούτοις διῆγεν, εἴτε τοὺς ἐν τῷ νήφειν ἀναλογισμοὺς τῶν παρόντων ἀποδιδράσκων καὶ παρακαλυπτόμενος τῇ μέθῃ τὴν διάνοιαν, εἴτε συγγνοὺς ἑαυτῷ τοῦτον εἶναι τὸν βίον, ὃν ἔκπαλαι ποθῶν καὶ διώκων ἄλλως ὑπ’ ἀνοίας καὶ κενῆς δόξης ἐπλάζετο καὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἑαυτῷ, πολλὰ δ’ ἑτέροις πράγματα παρεῖχεν, ἐν ὅπλοις καὶ στόλοις καὶ στρατοπέδοις τὸ ἀγαθὸν ζητῶν, ὃ νῦν ἐν ἀπραγμοσύνῃ καὶ σχολῇ καὶ ἀναπαύσει μὴ προσδοκήσας [4] ἀνεύρηκε. τί γὰρ ἄλλο τῶν πολέμων καὶ τῶν κινδύνων πέρας ἐστὶ τοῖς φαύλοις βασιλεῦσι, κακῶς καὶ ἀνοήτως διακειμένοις, οὐχ ὅτι μόνον τρυφὴν καὶ ἡδονὴν ἀντὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς καὶ τοῦ καλοῦ διώκουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι μηδ’ ἥδεσθαι μηδὲ τρυφᾶν ὡς ἀληθῶς ἴσασιν.

[5] Ὁ δ’ οὖν Δημήτριος ἔτος τρίτον ἐν τῇ Χερρονήσῳ καθειργμένος, ὑπ’ ἀργίας καὶ πλησμονῆς καὶ οἴνου νοσήσας ἀπέθανεν, ἔτη τέσσαρα καὶ πεντήκοντα βεβιωκώς.

[6] καὶ Σέλευκος ἤκουσέ τε κακῶς καὶ μετενόησεν οὐ μετρίως ἐν ὑποψίᾳ τὸν Δημήτριον θέμενος τότε, καὶ μηδὲ Δρομιχαίτην ἄνδρα βάρβαρον Θρᾷκα μιμησάμενος, οὕτω φιλανθρώπως καὶ βασιλικῶς ἁλόντι Λυσιμάχῳ χρησάμενον.

[53] [1] Ἔσχε μέντοι καὶ τὰ περὶ τὴν ταφὴν αὐτοῦ τραγικήν [2] τινα καὶ θεατρικὴν διάθεσιν. ὁ γὰρ υἱὸς Ἀντίγονος ὡς ᾔσθετο τὰ λείψανα κομιζόμενα, πάσαις ἀναχθεὶς ταῖς ναυσὶν ἐπὶ νήσων ἀπήντησε· καὶ δεξάμενος εἰς τὴν μεγίστην τῶν ναυαρχίδων ἔθετο τὴν ὑδρίαν χρυσήλατον [3] οὖσαν. αἱ δὲ πόλεις, αἷς προσεῖχον, τοῦτο μὲν στεφάνους ἐπέφερον τῇ ὑδρίᾳ, τοῦτο δ’ ἄνδρας ἐν σχήματι πενθίμῳ [4] συνθάψοντας καὶ συμπαραπέμψοντας ἀπέστελλον. εἰς δὲ Κόρινθον τοῦ στόλου καταπλέοντος, ἥ τε κάλπις ἐκ πρύμνης περιφανὴς ἑωρᾶτο πορφύρᾳ βασιλικῇ καὶ διαδήματι κεκοσμημένη, καὶ παρειστήκεισαν ἐν ὅπλοις νεανίσκοι [5] δορυφοροῦντες. ὁ δὲ τῶν τότ’ αὐλητῶν ἐλλογιμώτατος Ξενόφαντος ἐγγὺς καθεζόμενος προσηύλει τῶν μελῶν τὸ ἱερώτατον· καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο τῆς εἰρεσίας ἀναφερομένης μετὰ ῥυθμοῦ τινος, ἀπήντα ψόφος ὥσπερ ἐν κοπετῷ ταῖς [6] τῶν αὐλημάτων περιόδοις. τὸν δὲ πλεῖστον οἶκτον καὶ ὀλοφυρμὸν αὐτὸς Ἀντίγονος τοῖς ἠθροισμένοις ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν ὀφθεὶς ταπεινὸς καὶ δεδακρυμένος παρέσχεν.

[7] ἐπενεχθεισῶν δὲ ταινιῶν καὶ στεφάνων περὶ Κόρινθον, εἰς Δημητριάδα κομίσας ἔθηκε τὰ λείψανα, πόλιν ἐπώνυμον ἐκείνου, ‹συν›οικισθεῖσαν ἐκ μικρῶν τῶν περὶ τὴν Ἰωλκὸν πολιχνίων.

[8] Ἀπέλιπε δὲ γενεὰν ὁ Δημήτριος Ἀντίγονον μὲν ἐκ Φίλας καὶ Στρατονίκην, δύο δὲ Δημητρίους, τὸν μὲν Λεπτὸν ἐξ Ἰλλυρίδος γυναικός, τὸν δ’ ἄρξαντα Κυρήνης ἐκ Πτολεμαΐδος, ἐκ δὲ Δηιδαμείας Ἀλέξανδρον, ὃς ἐν [9] Αἰγύπτῳ κατεβίωσε. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Κόρραγον υἱὸν ἐξ Εὐρυδίκης αὐτῷ γενέσθαι. κατέβη δὲ ταῖς διαδοχαῖς τὸ γένος αὐτοῦ βασιλεῦον εἰς Περσέα τελευταῖον, ἐφ’ οὗ Ῥωμαῖοι Μακεδονίαν ὑπηγάγοντο.

[10] Διηγωνισμένου δὲ τοῦ Μακεδονικοῦ δράματος, ὥρα τὸ Ῥωμαϊκὸν ἐπεισαγαγεῖν.

Antonius

[1] [1] Ἀντωνίου πάππος μὲν ἦν ὁ ῥήτωρ Ἀντώνιος, ὃν τῆς Σύλλα γενόμενον στάσεως Μάριος ἀπέκτεινε, πατὴρ δ’ ὁ Κρητικὸς ἐπικληθεὶς Ἀντώνιος, οὐχ οὕτω μὲν εὐδόκιμος ἐν τοῖς πολιτικοῖς ἀνὴρ οὐδὲ λαμπρός, εὐγνώμων δὲ καὶ χρηστὸς ἄλλως τε καὶ πρὸς τὰς μεταδόσεις ἐλευθέριος, [2] ὡς ἀφ’ ἑνὸς ἄν τις ἔργου καταμάθοι. κεκτημένος γὰρ οὐ πολλὰ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τῇ φιλανθρωπίᾳ χρῆσθαι κωλυόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς γυναικός, ἐπεί τις ἀφίκετο τῶν συνήθων πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀργυρίου δεόμενος, ἀργύριον μὲν οὐκ εἶχε, παιδαρίῳ δὲ προσέταξεν εἰς ἀργυροῦν σκύφον ὕδωρ ἐμβαλόντι κομίσαι· καὶ κομίσαντος ὡς ξύρεσθαι μέλλων κατέβρεχε τὰ [3] γένεια. τοῦ δὲ παιδαρίου καθ’ ἑτέραν πρόφασιν ἐκποδὼν γενομένου, τὸν μὲν σκύφον ἔδωκε τῷ φίλῳ χρῆσθαι κελεύσας, ζητήσεως δὲ πολλῆς ἐν τοῖς οἰκέταις οὔσης, ὁρῶν χαλεπαίνουσαν τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ βουλομένην καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐξετάζειν, ὡμολόγησε συγγνώμην ἔχειν δεηθείς.

[2] [1] Ἦν δ’ αὐτῷ γυνὴ Ἰουλία τοῦ Καισάρων οἴκου, ταῖς ἀρίσταις τότε καὶ σωφρονεστάταις ἐνάμιλλος. ὑπὸ ταύτης ὁ υἱὸς Ἀντώνιος ἐτράφη, μετὰ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς τελευτὴν Κορνηλίῳ Λέντλῳ γαμηθείσης, ὃν Κικέρων ἀπέκτεινε [2] τῶν Κατιλίνα συνωμοτῶν γενόμενον. αὕτη δοκεῖ τῆς σφοδρᾶς ἔχθρας Ἀντωνίῳ πρὸς Κικέρωνα πρόφασις καὶ ἀρχὴ γενέσθαι. φησὶ γοῦν Ἀντώνιος (ORF 473 Malcov.³) οὐδὲ τὸν νεκρὸν αὐτοῖς ἀποδοθῆναι τοῦ Λέντλου πρότερον ἢ τῆς γυναικὸς τοῦ Κικέρωνος τὴν μητέρα δεηθῆναι.

[3] τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ὁμολογουμένως ψεῦδός ἐστιν· οὐδεὶς γὰρ εἴρχθη ταφῆς τῶν τότε κολασθέντων ὑπὸ τοῦ Κικέρωνος.

[4] Ἀντωνίῳ δὲ λαμπρῷ καθ’ ὥραν γενομένῳ τὴν Κουρίωνος φιλίαν καὶ συνήθειαν ὥσπερ τινὰ κῆρα προσπεσεῖν λέγουσιν, αὐτοῦ τε περὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς ἀπαιδεύτου γενομένου, καὶ τὸν Ἀντώνιον ὡς μᾶλλον εἴη χειροήθης εἰς πότους καὶ γύναια καὶ δαπάνας πολυτελεῖς καὶ ἀκολάστους [5] ἐμβαλόντος. ἐξ ὧν ὄφλημα βαρὺ καὶ παρ’ ἡλικίαν αὐτῷ συνήχθη πεντήκοντα καὶ διακοσίων ταλάντων. τοῦτο πᾶν ἐγγυησαμένου τοῦ Κουρίωνος, ὁ πατὴρ αἰσθόμενος [6] ἐξήλασε τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας. ὁ δὲ βδαχὺν μέν τινα χρόνον τῇ Κλωδίου τοῦ θρασυτάτου καὶ βδελυρωτάτου τῶν τότε δημαγωγῶν φορᾷ πάντα τὰ πράγματα [7] ταραττούσῃ προσέμειξεν ἑαυτόν· ταχὺ δὲ τῆς ἐκείνου μανίας μεστὸς γενόμενος καὶ φοβηθεὶς τοὺς συνισταμένους ἐπὶ τὸν Κλώδιον, ἀπῆρεν ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα, καὶ διέτριβε τό τε σῶμα γυμνάζων πρὸς τοὺς στρατιωτικοὺς [8] ἀγῶνας καὶ λέγειν μελετῶν. ἐχρῆτο δὲ τῷ καλουμένῳ μὲν Ἀσιανῷ ζήλῳ τῶν λόγων, ἀνθοῦντι μάλιστα κατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον, ἔχοντι δὲ πολλὴν ὁμοιότητα πρὸς τὸν βίον αὐτοῦ, κομπώδη καὶ φρυαγματίαν ὄντα καὶ κενοῦ γαυριάματος καὶ φιλοτιμίας ἀνωμάλου μεστόν.

[3] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Γαβίνιος ἀνὴρ ὑπατικὸς εἰς Συρίαν πλέων ἀνέπειθεν αὐτὸν ὁρμῆσαι πρὸς τὴν στρατείαν, ἰδιώτης μὲν οὐκ ἂν ἔφη συνεξελθεῖν, ἀποδειχθεὶς δὲ τῶν ἱππέων [2] ἄρχων συνεστράτευε. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐπ’ Ἀριστόβουλον Ἰουδαίους ἀφιστάντα πεμφθείς, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐπέβη τοῦ μεγίστου τῶν ἐρυμάτων πρῶτος, ἐκεῖνον δὲ πάντων [3] ἐξήλασεν· εἶτα μάχην συνάψας, καὶ τρεψάμενος ὀλίγοις τοῖς σὺν αὑτῷ τοὺς ἐκείνου πολλαπλασίους ὄντας, ἀπέκτεινε πλὴν ὀλίγων ἅπαντας· αὐτὸς δὲ μετὰ τοῦ παιδὸς [4] Ἀριστόβουλος ἥλω. μετὰ ταῦτα Γαβίνιον ἐπὶ μυρίοις ταλάντοις Πτολεμαίου πείθοντος εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἅμα συνεμβαλεῖν αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν ἀναλαβεῖν, οἱ μὲν πλεῖστοι τῶν ἡγεμόνων ἠναντιοῦντο, καὶ Γαβίνιον δ’ ὄκνος τις εἶχε τοῦ πολέμου, καίπερ ἐξηνδραποδισμένον [5] κομιδῇ τοῖς μυρίοις ταλάντοις, Ἀντώνιος δὲ καὶ πράξεων μεγάλων ἐφιέμενος καὶ τῷ Πτολεμαίῳ χαριζόμενος δεομένῳ, συνέπεισε μὲν καὶ συνεξώρμησεν ἐπὶ τὴν [6] στρατείαν τὸν Γαβίνιον· ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ πολέμου μᾶλλον ἐφοβοῦντο τὴν ἐπὶ τὸ Πηλούσιον ὁδόν, ἅτε δὴ διὰ ψάμμου βαθείας καὶ ἀνύδρου παρὰ τὸ Ἔκρηγμα καὶ τὰ τῆς Σερβωνίδος ἕλη γινομένης αὐτοῖς τῆς πορείας, ἃς Τυφῶνος μὲν ἐκπνοὰς Αἰγύπτιοι καλοῦσι, τῆς δ’ Ἐρυθρᾶς θαλάσσης ὑπονόστησις εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ διήθησις, ᾗ βραχυτάτῳ [7] διορίζεται πρὸς τὴν ἐντὸς θάλασσαν ἰσθμῷ, πεμφθεὶς μετὰ τῶν ἱππέων ὁ Ἀντώνιος οὐ μόνον τὰ στενὰ κατέσχεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Πηλούσιον ἑλών, πόλιν μεγάλην, καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ φρουρῶν κρατήσας, ἅμα καὶ τὴν ὁδὸν ἀσφαλῆ τῷ στρατεύματι καὶ τὴν ἐλπίδα τῆς νίκης ἐποίησε τῷ στρατηγῷ [8] βέβαιον. ἀπέλαυσαν δὲ τῆς φιλοτιμίας αὐτοῦ καὶ οἱ πολέμιοι· Πτολεμαίου γὰρ ἅμα τῷ παρελθεῖν εἰς τὸ Πηλούσιον ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ μίσους ὡρμημένου φονεύειν [9] τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους, ἐνέστη καὶ διεκώλυσεν. ἐν δὲ ταῖς μάχαις καὶ τοῖς ἀγῶσι μεγάλοις καὶ συχνοῖς γενομένοις πολλὰ καὶ τόλμης ἔργα καὶ προνοίας ἡγεμονικῆς ἀποδειξάμενος, ἐμφανέστατα δὲ τῷ κυκλώσασθαι καὶ περιβαλεῖν κατόπιν τοὺς πολεμίους τὴν νίκην τοῖς κατὰ στόμα [10] παρασχών, ἀριστεῖα καὶ τιμὰς ἔλαβε πρεπούσας. οὐ διέλαθε δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς οὐδ’ ἡ πρὸς Ἀρχέλαον αὐτοῦ τεθνηκότα φιλανθρωπία· γεγονὼς γὰρ αὐτῷ συνήθης καὶ ξένος, ἐπολέμει μὲν ἀναγκαίως ζῶντι, τὸ δὲ σῶμα πεσόντος [11] ἐξευρὼν καὶ κοσμήσας βασιλικῶς ἐκήδευσεν. ἐπὶ τούτοις Ἀλεξανδρεῦσί τε πλεῖστον αὑτοῦ λόγον κατέλιπε, καὶ Ῥωμαίων τοῖς στρατευομένοις ἀνὴρ ἔδοξε λαμπρότατος εἶναι.

[4] [1] Προσῆν δὲ καὶ μορφῆς ἐλευθέριον ἀξίωμα, καὶ πώγων τις οὐκ ἀγεννὴς καὶ πλάτος μετώπου καὶ γρυπότης μυκτῆρος ἐδόκει τοῖς γραφομένοις καὶ πλαττομένοις [2] Ἡρακλέους προσώποις ἐμφερὲς ἔχειν τὸ ἀρρενωπόν. ἦν δὲ καὶ λόγος παλαιὸς Ἡρακλείδας εἶναι τοὺς Ἀντωνίους, [3] ἀπ’ Ἄντωνος παιδὸς Ἡρακλέους γεγονότας. καὶ τοῦτον ᾤετο τὸν λόγον τῇ τε μορφῇ τοῦ σώματος ὥσπερ εἴρηται καὶ τῇ στολῇ βεβαιοῦν· ἀεὶ γὰρ ὅτε μέλλοι πλείοσιν ὁρᾶσθαι, χιτῶνα εἰς μηρὸν ἔζωστο καὶ μάχαιρα μεγάλη [4] παρήρτητο, καὶ σάγος περιέκειτο τῶν στερεῶν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις φορτικὰ δοκοῦντα, μεγαλαυχία καὶ σκῶμμα καὶ κώθων ἐμφανὴς καὶ καθίσαι παρὰ τὸν ἐσθίοντα καὶ φαγεῖν ἐπιστάντα τραπέζῃ στρατιωτικῇ, θαυμαστὸν ὅσον εὐνοίας καὶ πόθου πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐνεποίει [5] τοῖς στρατιώταις. ἦν δέ που καὶ τὸ ἐρωτικὸν οὐκ ἀναφρόδιτον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτῳ πολλοὺς ἐδημαγώγει, συμπράττων τε τοῖς ἐρῶσι καὶ σκωπτόμενος οὐκ ἀηδῶς εἰς [6] τοὺς ἰδίους ἔρωτας. ἡ δ’ ἐλευθεριότης καὶ τὸ μηδὲν ὀλίγῃ χειρὶ μηδὲ φειδομένῃ χαρίζεσθαι στρατιώταις καὶ φίλοις ἀρχήν τε λαμπρὰν ἐπὶ τὸ ἰσχύειν αὐτῷ παρέσχε, καὶ μεγάλου γενομένου τὴν δύναμιν ἐπὶ πλεῖον ἐπῆρεν, [7] ἐκ μυρίων ἄλλων ἁμαρτημάτων ἀνατρεπομένην. ἓν δέ τι τοῦ μεγαλοδώρου παράδειγμα διηγήσομαι. τῶν φίλων τινὶ μυριάδας ἐκέλευσε πέντε καὶ εἴκοσι δοθῆναι· τοῦτο [8] Ῥωμαῖοι δεκίης καλοῦσι. τοῦ δ’ ἐπιτρόπου θαυμάσαντος, καὶ ἵνα δείξῃ τὸ πλῆθος αὐτῷ καταβαλόντος ἐν μέσῳ [9] τὸ ἀργύριον, ἠρώτησε παριὼν ὅ τι δὴ τοῦτ’ εἴη. τοῦ δ’ ἐπιτρόπου φήσαντος ὡς ὃ κελεύσειε δοθῆναι, συμβαλὼν αὐτοῦ τὴν κακοήθειαν ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐγὼ πλεῖον ᾤμην ἔφη τὸ δεκίης εἶναι· τοῦτο δὲ μικρόν ἐστιν· ὥστ’ ἄλλο πρόσθες αὐτῷ τοσοῦτον.

[5] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰ Ῥωμαίων πράγματα διέστη, τῶν μὲν ἀριστοκρατικῶν Πομπηίῳ παρόντι προσθεμένων, τῶν δὲ δημοτικῶν Καίσαρα καλούντων ἐκ [2] Γαλατίας ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ὄντα, Κουρίων ὁ Ἀντωνίου φίλος ἐκ μεταβολῆς θεραπεύων τὰ Καίσαρος Ἀντώνιον προσηγάγετο, καὶ μεγάλην μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ λέγειν ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς ἔχων ἰσχύν, χρώμενος δὲ καὶ δαπάναις ἀφειδῶς ἀφ’ ὧν Καῖσαρ ἐχορήγει, δήμαρχον ἀπέδειξε τὸν Ἀντώνιον, εἶτα [3] τῶν ἐπ’ οἰωνοῖς ἱερέων οὓς Αὔγουρας καλοῦσιν. ὁ δ’ εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν παρελθὼν οὐ μικρὸν ἦν ὄφελος τοῖς [4] πολιτευομένοις ὑπὲρ Καίσαρος. ἀλλὰ πρῶτον μὲν Μαρκέλλου τοῦ ὑπάτου Πομπηίῳ τούς τε συνειλεγμένους ἤδη στρατιώτας παρεγγυῶντος καὶ καταλέγειν ἑτέρους διδόντος, ἐμποδὼν ἔστη διάταγμα γράψας, ὅπως ἡ μὲν ἠθροισμένη δύναμις εἰς Συρίαν πλέῃ καὶ Βύβλῳ βοηθῇ πολεμοῦντι Πάρθοις, οὓς δὲ Πομπήιος καταλέγει, μὴ προσέχωσιν [5] αὐτῷ· δεύτερον δὲ τὰς Καίσαρος ἐπιστολὰς οὐ προσιεμένων οὐδ’ ἐώντων ἀναγινώσκεσθαι τῶν συγκλητικῶν, αὐτὸς ἰσχύων διὰ τὸ ἄρχειν ἀνέγνω, καὶ πολλοὺς μετέστησε τῇ γνώμῃ, δίκαια καὶ μέτρια Καίσαρος ἀξιοῦν [6] ἀφ’ ὧν ἔγραψε δόξαντος. τέλος δὲ δυεῖν ἐρωτήσεων ἐν τῇ βουλῇ γενομένων, τῆς μὲν εἰ δοκεῖ Πομπήιον ἀφεῖναι τὰ στρατεύματα, τῆς δ’ εἰ Καίσαρα, καὶ Πομπήιον μὲν ὀλίγων τὰ ὅπλα καταθέσθαι, Καίσαρα δὲ πάντων παρ’ ὀλίγους κελευόντων, ἀναστὰς Ἀντώνιος ἠρώτησεν, εἰ δοκεῖ καὶ Πομπήιον ὁμοῦ καὶ Καίσαρα τὰ ὅπλα καταθέσθαι [7] καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις ἀφεῖναι. ταύτην ἐδέξαντο λαμπρῶς τὴν γνώμην ἅπαντες, καὶ μετὰ βοῆς ἐπαινοῦντες τὸν Ἀντώνιον [8] ἠξίουν ἐπιψηφίζεσθαι. μὴ βουλομένων δὲ τῶν ὑπάτων, αὖθις ἑτέρας οἱ Καίσαρος φίλοι προὔτειναν ἐπιεικεῖς εἶναι δοκούσας ἀξιώσεις, αἷς ὅ τε Κάτων ἀντέπιπτε, καὶ [9] Λέντλος ὑπατεύων ἐξέβαλε τῆς βουλῆς τὸν Ἀντώνιον. ὁ δὲ πολλὰ μὲν αὐτοῖς ἐξιὼν ἐπηράσατο, λαβὼν δὲ θεράποντος ἐσθῆτα καὶ μισθωσάμενος μετὰ Κασσίου Κοΐντου ζεῦγος, [10] ἐξώρμησε πρὸς Καίσαρα· καὶ κατεβόων εὐθὺς ὀφθέντες ὡς οὐδένα κόσμον ἔτι τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ πραγμάτων ἐχόντων, ὅτε μηδὲ δημάρχοις παρρησίας μέτεστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐλαύνεται καὶ κινδυνεύει πᾶς ὁ φθεγξάμενος ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίων.

[6] [1] Ἐκ τούτου λαβὼν τὴν στρατιὰν ὁ Καῖσαρ εἰς Ἰταλίαν ἐνέβαλε. διὸ καὶ Κικέρων ἐν τοῖς Φιλιππικοῖς (2, 55) ἔγραψε, τοῦ μὲν Τρωικοῦ πολέμου τὴν Ἑλένην, τοῦ δ’ ἐμφυλίου τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἀρχὴν γενέσθαι, περιφανῶς [2] ψευδόμενος. οὐ γὰρ οὕτως εὐχερὴς ἦν οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιος ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἐκπεσεῖν τῶν λογισμῶν Γάιος Καῖσαρ, ὥστ’ εἰ μὴ ταῦτα πάλαι ‹δι›έγνωστο πράττειν, οὕτως ἂν ἐπὶ καιροῦ τὸν κατὰ τῆς πατρίδος ἐξενεγκεῖν πόλεμον, ὅτι φαύλως ἠμφιεσμένον εἶδεν Ἀντώνιον καὶ Κάσσιον ἐπὶ ζεύγους μισθίου πεφευγότας πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα πάλαι δεομένῳ προφάσεως σχῆμα καὶ λόγον εὐπρεπῆ τοῦ πολέμου [3] παρέσχεν. ἦγε δ’ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πάντας ἀνθρώπους, ἃ καὶ πρότερον Ἀλέξανδρον καὶ πάλαι Κῦρον, ἔρως ἀπαρηγόρητος ἀρχῆς καὶ περιμανὴς ἐπιθυμία τοῦ πρῶτον εἶναι καὶ μέγιστον· ὧν τυχεῖν οὐκ ἦν μὴ Πομπηίου καταλυθέντος.

[4] ὡς δ’ οὖν ἐπελθὼν ἐκράτησε τῆς Ῥώμης καὶ Πομπήιον ἐξήλασε τῆς Ἰταλίας, καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ Πομπηίου δυνάμεις ἐπιστρέφειν ἔγνω πρότερον, εἶθ’ οὕτως παρασκευασάμενος στόλον ἐπὶ Πομπήιον διαβαίνειν, Λεπίδῳ μὲν στρατηγοῦντι τὴν Ῥώμην, Ἀντωνίῳ δὲ δημαρχοῦντι τὰ στρατεύματα καὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν [5] ἐπέτρεψεν. ὁ δὲ τοῖς μὲν στρατιώταις εὐθὺς προσφιλὴς ἦν, συγγυμναζόμενος καὶ συνδιαιτώμενος τὰ πολλὰ καὶ δωρούμενος ἐκ τῶν παρόντων, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις ἐπαχθής.

[6] καὶ γὰρ ἀδικουμένων ὑπὸ ῥᾳθυμίας ὠλιγώρει, καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν ἠκροᾶτο τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων, καὶ κακῶς ἐπὶ γυναιξὶν [7] ἀλλοτρίαις ἤκουε. καὶ ὅλως τὴν Καίσαρος ἀρχήν, πάντα μᾶλλον ἢ τυραννίδα δι’ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον φανεῖσαν, οἱ φίλοι διέβαλλον, ὧν Ἀντώνιος ἀπ’ ἐξουσίας μεγίστης ἁμαρτάνειν μέγιστα δόξας τὴν πλείστην αἰτίαν ἔλαβεν.

[7] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐπανελθὼν ὁ Καῖσαρ ἐκ τῆς Ἰβηρίας τὰ μὲν ἐγκλήματα παρεῖδεν αὐτοῦ, πρὸς δὲ τὸν πόλεμον ὡς ἐνεργῷ καὶ ἀνδρείῳ καὶ ἡγεμονικῷ χρώμενος [2] οὐδαμῇ διήμαρτεν. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν μετ’ ὀλίγων ἀπὸ Βρεντεσίου διαπεράσας τὸν Ἰόνιον, ἔπεμψεν ὀπίσω τὰ πλοῖα Γαβινίῳ καὶ Ἀντωνίῳ, τὰς δυνάμεις ἐμβιβάζειν καὶ περαιοῦν κατὰ τάχος εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἐπιστείλας.

[3] Γαβινίου δὲ πρὸς τὸν πλοῦν χαλεπὸν ὄντα χειμῶνος ὥρᾳ καταδειλιάσαντος καὶ πεζῇ μακρὰν ὁδὸν περιάγοντος τὸν στρατόν, Ἀντώνιος ὑπὲρ Καίσαρος ἐν πολλοῖς ἀπειλημμένου πολεμίοις φοβηθείς, Λίβωνα μὲν ἐφορμοῦντα τῷ στόματι τοῦ λιμένος ἀπεκρούσατο, πολλὰ τῶν λεπτῶν ἀκατίων ταῖς τριήρεσιν αὐτοῦ περιστήσας, ἐμβιβάσας δὲ ταῖς ναυσὶν ἱππεῖς ὀκτακοσίους καὶ δισμυρίους ὁπλίτας [4] ἀνήχθη. καὶ γενόμενος καταφανὴς τοῖς πολεμίοις καὶ διωκόμενος, τὸν μὲν ἐκ τούτων κίνδυνον διέφυγε, λαμπροῦ νότου κῦμα μέγα καὶ κοίλην θάλατταν ταῖς τριήρεσιν αὐτῶν περιστήσαντος, ἐκφερόμενος δὲ ταῖς ναυσὶ πρὸς κρημνοὺς καὶ φάραγγας ἀγχιβαθεῖς, οὐδεμίαν [5] ἐλπίδα σωτηρίας εἶχεν. ἄφνω δὲ τοῦ κόλπου πολὺν ἐκπνεύσαντος λίβα, καὶ τοῦ κλύδωνος ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς εἰς τὸ πέλαγος διαχεομένου, μεταβαλόμενος ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς καὶ πλέων σοβαρῶς ὁρᾷ ναυαγίων περίπλεων τὸν αἰγιαλόν.

[6] ἐνταῦθα γὰρ ἐξέβαλε τὸ πνεῦμα τὰς διωκούσας αὐτὸν τριήρεις, καὶ διεφθάρησαν οὐκ ὀλίγαι· καὶ σωμάτων πολλῶν καὶ χρημάτων ἐκράτησεν Ἀντώνιος, καὶ Λίσσον εἷλε, καὶ μέγα Καίσαρι παρέσχε θάρσος, ἐν καιρῷ μετὰ τηλικαύτης ἀφικόμενος δυνάμεως.

[8] [1] Πολλῶν δὲ γινομένων καὶ συνεχῶν ἀγώνων, ἐν πᾶσι μὲν ἦν διαπρεπής, δὶς δὲ φεύγοντας προτροπάδην τοὺς Καίσαρος ἀπαντήσας ἀνέστρεψε, καὶ στῆναι καὶ συμβαλεῖν [2] αὖθις τοῖς διώκουσιν ἀναγκάσας ἐνίκησεν. ἦν οὖν αὐτοῦ μετὰ Καίσαρα πλεῖστος ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ λόγος. ἐδήλωσε [3] δὲ Καῖσαρ ἣν ἔχοι περὶ αὐτοῦ δόξαν. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἔμελλε τὴν τελευταίαν καὶ τὰ ὅλα κρίνασαν ἐν Φαρσάλῳ μάχην μάχεσθαι, τὸ μὲν δεξιὸν αὐτὸς εἶχε κέρας, τοῦ δ’ εὐωνύμου τὴν ἡγεμονίαν Ἀντωνίῳ παρέδωκεν ὡς πολεμικωτάτῳ τῶν ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ.

[4] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν νίκην δικτάτωρ ἀναγορευθείς, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐδίωκε Πομπήιον, Ἀντώνιον δ’ ἵππαρχον ἑλόμενος εἰς [5] Ῥώμην ἔπεμψεν. ἔστι δ’ ἡ ἀρχὴ δευτέρα τοῦ δικτάτορος παρόντος· ἂν δὲ μὴ παρῇ, πρώτη καὶ μόνη σχεδόν· ἡ γὰρ δημαρχία διαμένει, τὰς δ’ ἄλλας καταλύουσι πάσας δικτάτορος αἱρεθέντος.

[9] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τότε δημαρχῶν Δολοβέλλας, νέος ἀνὴρ καὶ νέων πραγμάτων ὀρεγόμενος, εἰσηγεῖτο χρεῶν ἀποκοπάς, καὶ τὸν Ἀντώνιον αὐτῷ τε φίλον ὄντα καὶ βουλόμενον ἀεὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀρέσκειν ἔπειθε συμπράττειν [2] καὶ κοινωνεῖν τοῦ πολιτεύματος. Ἀσινίου δὲ καὶ Τρεβελλίου τἀναντία παρακαλούντων, ὑπόνοια δεινὴ κατὰ τύχην τῷ Ἀντωνίῳ προσέπεσεν ὡς ἀδικουμένῳ περὶ τὸν γάμον ὑπὸ [3] τοῦ Δολοβέλλα. καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα βαρέως ἐνεγκών, τήν τε γυναῖκα τῆς οἰκίας ἐξήλασεν ἀνεψιὰν οὖσαν αὐτοῦ - θυγάτηρ γὰρ ἦν Γαΐου Ἀντωνίου τοῦ Κικέρωνι συνυπατεύσαντος - καὶ τοὺς περὶ Ἀσίνιον δεξάμενος ἐπολέμει τῷ [4] Δολοβέλλᾳ. κατέλαβε γὰρ τὴν ἀγορὰν ἐκεῖνος ὡς βίᾳ κυρώσων τὸν νόμον. Ἀντώνιος δέ, καὶ τῆς βουλῆς ψηφισαμένης ὅπλων δεῖν ἐπὶ τὸν Δολοβέλλαν, ἐπελθὼν καὶ μάχην συνάψας ἀπέκτεινέ τέ τινας τῶν ἐκείνου καὶ τῶν ἰδίων [5] ἀπέβαλε. τοῖς μὲν οὖν πολλοῖς ἐκ τούτων ἀπηχθάνετο, τοῖς δὲ χρηστοῖς καὶ σώφροσι διὰ τὸν ἄλλον βίον οὐκ ἦν ἀρεστός, ὡς Κικέρων φησίν, ἀλλ’ ἐμισεῖτο, βδελυττομένων αὐτοῦ μέθας ἀώρους καὶ δαπάνας ἐπαχθεῖς καὶ κυλινδήσεις ἐν γυναίοις, καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν μὲν ὕπνους καὶ περιπάτους ἀλύοντος καὶ κραιπαλῶντος, νύκτωρ δὲ κώμους καὶ θέατρα καὶ διατριβὰς ἐν γάμοις μίμων καὶ γελωτοποιῶν.

[6] λέγεται γοῦν, ὡς Ἱππίου ποτὲ τοῦ μίμου γάμους ἑστιαθεὶς καὶ πιὼν διὰ νυκτός, εἶτα πρῲ τοῦ δήμου καλοῦντος εἰς ἀγορὰν προελθὼν ἔτι τροφῆς μεστὸς [7] ἐμέσειε, τῶν φίλων τινὸς ὑποσχόντος τὸ ἱμάτιον. ἦν δὲ καὶ Σέργιος ὁ μῖμος τῶν μέγιστον παρ’ αὐτῷ δυναμένων, καὶ Κυθηρὶς ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς παλαίστρας γύναιον ἀγαπώμενον, ὃ δὴ καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἐπιὼν ἐν φορείῳ περιήγετο, καὶ τὸ φορεῖον οὐκ ἐλάττους ἢ τὸ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ [8] περιέποντες ἠκολούθουν. ἐλύπουν δὲ καὶ χρυσῶν ἐκπωμάτων ὥσπερ ἐν πομπαῖς ταῖς ἀποδημίαις διαφερομένων ὄψεις, καὶ στάσεις ἐνόδιοι σκηνῶν καὶ πρὸς ἄλσεσι καὶ ποταμοῖς ἀρίστων πολυτελῶν διαθέσεις, καὶ λέοντες ἅρμασιν ὑπεζευγμένοι, καὶ σωφρόνων ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν οἰκίαι χαμαιτύπαις καὶ σαμβυκιστρίαις [9] ἐπισταθμευόμεναι. δεινὸν γὰρ ἐποιοῦντο Καίσαρα μὲν αὐτὸν ἔξω τῆς Ἰταλίας θυραυλεῖν, τὰ περιόντα τοῦ πολέμου μεγάλοις πόνοις καὶ κινδύνοις ἀνακαθαιρόμενον, ἑτέρους δὲ δι’ ἐκεῖνον τρυφᾶν τοῖς πολίταις ἐνυβρίζοντας.

[10] [1] Ταῦτα καὶ τὴν στάσιν αὐξῆσαι δοκεῖ καὶ τὸ στρατιωτικὸν [2] εἰς ὕβρεις δεινὰς καὶ πλεονεξίας ἀνεῖναι. διὸ καὶ Καῖσαρ ἐπανελθὼν Δολοβέλλᾳ τε συγγνώμην ἔδωκε, καὶ τὸ τρίτον αἱρεθεὶς ὕπατος οὐκ Ἀντώνιον, ἀλλὰ Λέπιδον [3] εἵλετο συνάρχοντα. τὴν δὲ Πομπηίου πωλουμένην οἰκίαν ὠνήσατο μὲν Ἀντώνιος, ἀπαιτούμενος δὲ τὴν τιμὴν ἠγανάκτει· καί φησιν αὐτὸς διὰ τοῦτο μὴ μετασχεῖν Καίσαρι τῆς εἰς Λιβύην στρατείας, ἐπὶ τοῖς προτέροις κατορθώμασιν οὐ τυχὼν ἀμοιβῆς.

[4] Ἔοικε μέντοι τὸ πολὺ τῆς ἀβελτερίας αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀσωτίας ἀφελεῖν ὁ Καῖσαρ, οὐκ ἀναισθήτως τὰ πλημμελήματα [5] δεξάμενος. ἀπαλλαγεὶς γὰρ ἐκείνου τοῦ βίου γάμῳ προσέσχε, Φουλβίαν ἀγαγόμενος τὴν Κλωδίῳ τῷ δημαγωγῷ συνοικήσασαν, οὐ ταλασίαν οὐδ’ οἰκουρίαν φρονοῦν γύναιον οὐδ’ ἀνδρὸς ἰδιώτου κρατεῖν ἀξιοῦν, ἀλλ’ ἄρχοντος ἄρχειν καὶ στρατηγοῦντος στρατηγεῖν βουλόμενον, [6] ὥστε Κλεοπάτραν διδασκάλια Φουλβίᾳ τῆς Ἀντωνίου γυναικοκρασίας ὀφείλειν, πάνυ χειροήθη καὶ πεπαιδαγωγημένον ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἀκροᾶσθαι γυναικῶν παραλαβοῦσαν [7] αὐτόν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ κἀκείνην ἐπειρᾶτο προσπαίζων καὶ μειρακιευόμενος ἱλαρωτέραν ποιεῖν ὁ Ἀντώνιος· οἷον ὅτε Καίσαρι πολλῶν ἀπαντώντων μετὰ τὴν ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ νίκην, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐξῆλθεν· εἶτ’ ἄφνω φήμης εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἐμπεσούσης, ὡς ἐπίασιν οἱ πολέμιοι Καίσαρος [8] τεθνηκότος, ἀνέστρεψεν εἰς Ῥώμην. λαβὼν δὲ θεράποντος ἐσθῆτα, νύκτωρ ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ἦλθε, καὶ φήσας ἐπιστολὴν Φουλβίᾳ παρ’ Ἀντωνίου κομίζειν, εἰσήχθη [9] πρὸς αὐτὴν ἐγκεκαλυμμένος. εἶθ’ ἡ μὲν ἐκπαθὴς οὖσα, πρὶν ἢ τὰ γράμματα λαβεῖν ἠρώτησεν εἰ ζῇ Ἀντώνιος· ὁ δὲ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν σιωπῇ προτείνας, ἀρξαμένην λύειν [10] καὶ ἀναγινώσκειν περιβαλὼν κατεφίλησε. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὀλίγα πολλῶν ὄντων ἕνεκα δείγματος ἐξενηνόχαμεν.

[11] [1] Ἐκ δ’ Ἰβηρίας ἐπανιόντι Καίσαρι πάντες μὲν οἱ πρῶτοι πολλῶν ἡμερῶν ὁδὸν ἀπήντων, ἐτιμήθη δ’ Ἀντώνιος [2] ἐκπρεπῶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ. κομιζόμενος γὰρ ἐπὶ ζεύγους διὰ τῆς Ἰταλίας, Ἀντώνιον εἶχε μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ συνοχούμενον, ὄπισθεν δὲ Βροῦτον Ἀλβῖνον καὶ τὸν τῆς ἀδελφῆς υἱὸν Ὀκταουϊανόν, ὃς μετὰ ταῦτα Καῖσαρ ὠνομάσθη καὶ [3] Ῥωμαίων ἦρξε πλεῖστον χρόνον. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ πέμπτον ἀπεδείχθη Καῖσαρ ὕπατος, προσείλετο μὲν εὐθὺς συνάρχοντα τὸν Ἀντώνιον, ἐβούλετο δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπειπάμενος Δολοβέλλᾳ παρεγγυῆσαι· καὶ τοῦτο πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον [4] ἐξήνεγκεν. Ἀντωνίου δὲ τραχέως ἀντιπεσόντος καὶ πολλὰ μὲν εἰπόντος κακὰ Δολοβέλλαν, οὐκ ἐλάττονα δ’ ἀκούσαντος, τότε μὲν αἰσχυνθεὶς τὴν ἀκοσμίαν ὁ Καῖσαρ [5] ἀπηλλάγη. μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα προελθὼν ἀναγορεῦσαι τὸν Δολοβέλλαν, Ἀντωνίου δὲ τοὺς οἰωνοὺς ἐναντιοῦσθαι βοῶντος, εἶξε καὶ προήκατο Δολοβέλλαν ἀχθόμενον.

[6] ἐδόκει δὲ κἀκεῖνον οὐδὲν ἧττον τοῦ Ἀντωνίου βδελύττεσθαι· λέγεται γὰρ ὡς, ἀμφοτέρους τινὸς ὁμοῦ διαβάλλοντος πρὸς αὐτόν, εἴποι μὴ δεδιέναι τοὺς παχεῖς τούτους καὶ κομήτας, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ὠχροὺς καὶ λεπτοὺς ἐκείνους, Βροῦτον ‹λέγων› καὶ Κάσσιον, ὑφ’ ὧν ἔμελλεν ἐπιβουλευθεὶς ἀναιρεῖσθαι.

[12] [1] Κἀκείνοις δὲ τὴν εὐπρεπεστάτην πρόφασιν ἄκων παρέσχεν Ἀντώνιος. ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἡ τῶν Λυκαίων ἑορτὴ Ῥωμαίοις ἣν Λουπερκάλια καλοῦσι, Καῖσαρ δὲ κεκοσμημένος ἐσθῆτι θριαμβικῇ καὶ καθήμενος ὑπὲρ βήματος [2] ἐν ἀγορᾷ τοὺς διαθέοντας ἐθεᾶτο· διαθέουσι δὲ τῶν εὐγενῶν νέοι πολλοὶ καὶ τῶν ἀρχόντων ἀληλιμμένοι λίπα, σκύτεσι λασίοις καθικνούμενοι μετὰ παιδιᾶς τῶν [3] ἐντυγχανόντων. ἐν τούτοις ὁ Ἀντώνιος διαθέων τὰ μὲν πάτρια χαίρειν εἴασε, διάδημα δὲ δάφνης στεφάνῳ περιελίξας προσέδραμε τῷ βήματι, καὶ συνεξαρθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν συνθεόντων ἐπέθηκε τῇ κεφαλῇ τοῦ Καίσαρος, ὡς [4] δὴ βασιλεύειν αὐτῷ προσῆκον. ἐκείνου δὲ θρυπτομένου καὶ διακλίνοντος, ἡσθεὶς ὁ δῆμος ἀνεκρότησε· καὶ πάλιν [5] ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐπῆγε, καὶ πάλιν ἐκεῖνος ἀπετρίβετο. καὶ πολὺν χρόνον οὕτω διαμαχομένων, Ἀντωνίῳ μὲν ὀλίγοι τῶν φίλων βιαζομένῳ, Καίσαρι δ’ ἀρνουμένῳ πᾶς ὁ δῆμος ἐπεκρότει μετὰ βοῆς· ὃ καὶ θαυμαστὸν ἦν, ὅτι τοῖς ἔργοις τὰ τῶν βασιλευομένων ὑπομένοντες, τοὔνομα τοῦ [6] βασιλέως ὡς κατάλυσιν τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἔφευγον. ἀνέστη μὲν οὖν ὁ Καῖσαρ ἀχθεσθεὶς ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος, καὶ τὸ ἱμάτιον ἀπάγων ἀπὸ τοῦ τραχήλου τῷ βουλομένῳ παρέχειν [7] τὴν σφαγὴν ἐβόα. τὸν δὲ στέφανον ἑνὶ τῶν ἀνδριάντων αὐτοῦ περιτεθέντα δήμαρχοί τινες κατέσπασαν, οὓς ὁ δῆμος εὐφημῶν μετὰ κρότου παρείπετο, Καῖσαρ δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀπέστησεν.

[13] [1] Ταῦτα τοὺς περὶ Βροῦτον καὶ Κάσσιον ἐπέρρωσε· καὶ τῶν φίλων τοὺς πιστοὺς καταλέγοντες ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν, [2] ἐσκέπτοντο περὶ Ἀντωνίου. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων προσιεμένων τὸν ἄνδρα, Τρεβώνιος ἀντεῖπεν· ἔφη γὰρ ὑφ’ ὃν χρόνον ἀπήντων ἐξ Ἰβηρίας ἐπανιόντι Καίσαρι, τοῦ Ἀντωνίου συσκηνοῦντος αὐτῷ καὶ συνοδεύοντος, ἅψασθαι τῆς γνώμης ἀτρέμα πως καὶ μετ’ εὐλαβείας, τὸν δὲ νοῆσαι μέν, οὐ δέξασθαι δὲ τὴν πεῖραν, οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ πρὸς Καίσαρα κατειπεῖν, ἀλλὰ πιστῶς κατασιωπῆσαι τὸν λόγον.

[3] ἐκ τούτου πάλιν ἐβουλεύοντο Καίσαρα κτείναντες ἐπισφάττειν Ἀντώνιον· ἐκώλυσε δὲ Βροῦτος, ἀξιῶν τὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν νόμων καὶ τῶν δικαίων τολμωμένην πρᾶξιν εἰλικρινῆ [4] καὶ καθαρὰν ἀδικίας εἶναι. φοβούμενοι δὲ τήν τε ῥώμην τοῦ Ἀντωνίου καὶ τὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀξίωμα, τάττουσιν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἐνίους τῶν ἐκ τῆς συνωμοσίας, ὅπως ὅταν εἰσίῃ Καῖσαρ εἰς τὴν βουλὴν καὶ μέλλῃ δρᾶσθαι τὸ ἔργον, ἔξω διαλεγόμενοί τι καὶ σπουδάζοντες κατέχωσιν αὐτόν.

[14] [1] Τούτων δὲ πραττομένων ὡς συνετέθη, καὶ πεσόντος ἐν τῇ βουλῇ τοῦ Καίσαρος, εὐθὺς μὲν ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐσθῆτα [2] θεράποντος μεταλαβὼν ἔκρυψεν αὑτόν. ὡς δ’ ἔγνω τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπιχειροῦντας μὲν οὐδενί, συνηθροισμένους δ’ εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον, ἔπεισε καταβῆναι λαβόντας ὅμηρον παρ’ αὐτοῦ τὸν υἱόν· καὶ Κάσσιον μὲν αὐτὸς ἐδείπνισε, Βροῦτον [3] δὲ Λέπιδος. συναγαγὼν δὲ βουλήν, αὐτὸς μὲν ὑπὲρ ἀμνηστίας εἶπε καὶ διανομῆς ἐπαρχιῶν τοῖς περὶ Κάσσιον καὶ Βροῦτον, ἡ δὲ σύγκλητος ἐκύρωσε ταῦτα, καὶ τῶν ὑπὸ [4] Καίσαρος γεγονότων ἐψηφίσαντο μηδὲν ἀλλάττειν. ἐξῄει δὲ τῆς βουλῆς λαμπρότατος ἀνθρώπων ὁ Ἀντώνιος, ἀνῃρηκέναι δοκῶν ἐμφύλιον πόλεμον καὶ πράγμασι δυσκολίας ἔχουσι καὶ ταραχὰς οὐ τὰς τυχούσας ἐμφρονέστατα [5] κεχρῆσθαι καὶ πολιτικώτατα. τούτων μέντοι ταχὺ τῶν λογισμῶν ἐξέσεισεν αὐτὸν ἡ παρὰ τῶν ὄχλων δόξα, πρῶτον ἐλπίσαντα βεβαίως ἔσεσθαι Βρούτου καταλυθέντος.

[6] ἔτυχε μὲν οὖν ἐκκομιζομένου Καίσαρος ὥσπερ ἔθος ἦν ἐν ἀγορᾷ διεξιὼν ἐγκώμιον (ORF 471 Malcov.4`3)· [7] ὁρῶν δὲ τὸν δῆμον ὑπερφυῶς ἀγόμενον καὶ κηλούμενον, ἐνέμειξε τοῖς ἐπαίνοις οἶκτον ἅμα καὶ δείνωσιν ἐπὶ τῷ πάθει, καὶ τῷ λόγῳ τελευτῶντι τοὺς χιτωνίσκους τοῦ τεθνηκότος ᾑμαγμένους καὶ διακεκομμένους τοῖς ξίφεσιν ἀνασείων, καὶ τοὺς εἰργασμένους ταῦτα καλῶν παλαμναίους καὶ ἀνδροφόνους, τοσοῦτον ὀργῆς ἐνέβαλε τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, [8] ὥστε τὸ μὲν σῶμα τοῦ Καίσαρος ἐν ἀγορᾷ καθαγίσαι συνενεγκαμένους τὰ βάθρα καὶ τὰς τραπέζας, ἁρπάζοντας δὲ τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς πυρᾶς δαλοὺς ἐπὶ τὰς οἰκίας θεῖν τῶν ἀπεκτονότων καὶ προσμάχεσθαι.

[15] [1] Διὰ ταῦτα τῶν περὶ Βροῦτον ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἀπελθόντων, οἵ τε φίλοι τοῦ Καίσαρος συνίσταντο πρὸς τὸν Ἀντώνιον, ἥ τε γυνὴ Καλπουρνία πιστεύσασα τῶν χρημάτων τὰ πλεῖστα κατέθετο πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας, [2] εἰς λόγον τὰ σύμπαντα τετρακισχιλίων ταλάντων. ἔλαβε δὲ καὶ τὰ βιβλία τοῦ Καίσαρος, ἐν οἷς ὑπομνήματα τῶν [3] κεκριμένων καὶ δεδογμένων ἦν ἀναγεγραμμένα· καὶ τούτοις παρεγγράφων οὓς ἐβούλετο, πολλοὺς μὲν ἄρχοντας ἀπεδείκνυε, πολλοὺς δὲ βουλευτάς, ἐνίους δὲ καὶ κατῆγε πεφυγαδευμένους καὶ καθειργμένους ἔλυεν, ὡς δὴ ταῦτα [4] τῷ Καίσαρι δόξαντα. διὸ τούτους ἅπαντας ἐπισκώπτοντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι Χαρωνίτας ἐκάλουν· ἐλεγχόμενοι γὰρ εἰς τοὺς [5] τοῦ νεκροῦ κατέφευγον ὑπομνηματισμούς. καὶ τἆλλα δ’ ἔπραττεν αὐτοκρατορικῶς ὁ Ἀντώνιος, αὐτὸς μὲν ὑπατεύων, τοὺς δ’ ἀδελφοὺς ἔχων συνάρχοντας, Γάιον μὲν στρατηγόν, Λεύκιον δὲ δήμαρχον.

[16] [1] Ἐνταῦθα δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων ὄντων, ὁ νέος ἀφικνεῖται Καῖσαρ εἰς Ῥώμην, ἀδελφῆς μὲν ὢν τοῦ τεθνηκότος υἱὸς ὡς εἴρηται (p. 71, 12), κληρονόμος δὲ τῆς οὐσίας ἀπολελειμμένος, ἐν Ἀπολλωνίᾳ δὲ διατρίβων ὑφ’ [2] ὃν χρόνον ἀνῃρεῖτο Καῖσαρ. οὗτος εὐθὺς Ἀντώνιον ὡς δὴ πατρῷον φίλον ἀσπασάμενος, τῶν παρακαταθηκῶν ἐμέμνητο· καὶ γὰρ ὤφειλε Ῥωμαίων ἑκάστῳ δραχμὰς ἑβδομήκοντα πέντε δοῦναι, Καίσαρος ἐν ταῖς διαθήκαις [3] γράψαντος. Ἀντώνιος δὲ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ὡς μειρακίου καταφρονῶν, ἔλεγεν οὐχ ὑγιαίνειν αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ φρενῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ φίλων ἔρημον ὄντα φορτίον ἀβάστακτον [4] αἴρεσθαι τὴν Καίσαρος διαδοχήν· μὴ πειθομένου δὲ τούτοις, ἀλλ’ ἀπαιτοῦντος τὰ χρήματα, πολλὰ καὶ λέγων [5] πρὸς ὕβριν αὐτοῦ καὶ πράττων διετέλει. δημαρχίαν τε γὰρ ἐνέστη μετιόντι, καὶ δίφρον χρυσοῦν τοῦ πατρὸς ὥσπερ ἐψήφιστο τιθέντος, ἠπείλησεν εἰς φυλακὴν ἀπάξειν [6] εἰ μὴ παύσαιτο δημαγωγῶν. ἐπεὶ μέντοι Κικέρωνι δοὺς ἑαυτὸν ὁ νεανίας καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὅσοι τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἐμίσουν, δι’ ἐκείνων μὲν ᾠκειοῦτο τὴν βουλήν, αὐτὸς δὲ τὸν δῆμον ἀνελάμβανε καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀπὸ τῶν κατοικιῶν συνῆγε, δείσας ὁ Ἀντώνιος εἰς λόγους αὐτῷ [7] συνῆλθεν ἐν Καπιτωλίῳ, καὶ διηλλάγησαν. εἶτα κοιμώμενος ἐκείνης τῆς νυκτὸς ὄψιν εἶδεν ἄτοπον ὁ Ἀντώνιος· ἐδόκει γὰρ αὑτοῦ τὴν δεξιὰν χεῖρα βεβλῆσθαι κεραυνῷ. καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας ἐνέπεσε λόγος ὡς ἐπιβουλεύοι Καῖσαρ αὐτῷ.

[8] Καῖσαρ δ’ ἀπελογεῖτο μέν, οὐκ ἔπειθε δέ· καὶ πάλιν ἦν ἐνεργὸς ἡ ἔχθρα, καὶ περιθέοντες ἀμφότεροι τὴν Ἰταλίαν, τὸ μὲν ἱδρυμένον ἐν ταῖς κατοικίαις ἤδη τοῦ στρατιωτικοῦ μεγάλοις ἀνίστασαν μισθοῖς, τὸ δ’ ἐν ὅπλοις ἔτι τεταγμένον ὑποφθάνοντες ἀλλήλους προσήγοντο.

[17] Τῶν δ’ ἐν τῇ πόλει Κικέρων μέγιστον δυνάμενος καὶ παροξύνων ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους, τέλος ἔπεισε τὴν βουλὴν ἐκεῖνον μὲν πολέμιον ψηφίσασθαι, Καίσαρι δὲ ῥαβδουχίαν πέμψαι καὶ στρατηγικὰ κόσμια, Πάνσαν δὲ καὶ Ἵρτιον ἀποστέλλειν ἐξελῶντας Ἀντώνιον [9] ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας. οὗτοι δ’ ἦσαν ὕπατοι τότε· καὶ συμβαλόντες Ἀντωνίῳ περὶ πόλιν Μυτίνην, Καίσαρος παρόντος καὶ συμμαχομένου, τοὺς μὲν πολεμίους ἐνίκων, αὐτοὶ δ’ ἀπέθανον.

[10] Φεύγοντι δ’ Ἀντωνίῳ πολλὰ συνέπιπτε τῶν ἀπόρων, [11] ὁ δὲ λιμὸς ἀπορώτατον. ἀλλὰ φύσει παρὰ τὰς κακοπραγίας ἐγίνετο βέλτιστος ἑαυτοῦ, καὶ δυστυχῶν ὁμοιότατος ἦν ἀγαθῷ, κοινοῦ μὲν ὄντος τοῦ αἰσθάνεσθαι τῆς ἀρετῆς τοῖς δι’ ἀπορίαν τινὰ σφαλλομένοις, οὐ μὴν ἁπάντων ἃ ζηλοῦσι μιμεῖσθαι καὶ φεύγειν ἃ δυσχεραίνουσιν ἐρρωμένων ἐν ταῖς μεταβολαῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐνίων τοῖς ἔθεσιν ἐνδιδόντων ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας καὶ θραυομένων τὸν [12] λογισμόν. ὁ δ’ οὖν Ἀντώνιος τότε θαυμαστὸν ἦν παράδειγμα τοῖς στρατιώταις, ἀπὸ τρυφῆς τοσαύτης καὶ πολυτελείας ὕδωρ τε πίνων διεφθαρμένον εὐκόλως καὶ [13] καρποὺς ἀγρίους καὶ ῥίζας προσφερόμενος. ἐβρώθη δὲ καὶ φλοιὸς ὡς λέγεται, καὶ ζῴων ἀγεύστων πρότερον ἥψαντο τὰς Ἄλπεις ὑπερβάλλοντες.

[18] [1] Ἦν δ’ ὁρμὴ τοῖς ἐπέκεινα στρατεύμασιν ἐντυχεῖν, ὧν Λέπιδος ἦρχε, φίλος εἶναι δοκῶν Ἀντωνίου καὶ πολλὰ [2] τῆς Καίσαρος φιλίας ἀπολελαυκέναι δι’ αὐτόν. ἐλθὼν δὲ καὶ παραστρατοπεδεύσας πλησίον, ὡς οὐθὲν ἀπήντα φιλάνθρωπον, ἔγνω παραβαλέσθαι. καὶ κόμη μὲν ἀτημελὴς καὶ βαθὺς πώγων μετὰ τὴν ἧτταν εὐθὺς ἦν αὐτῷ καθειμένος, λαβὼν δὲ φαιὸν ἱμάτιον ἐγγὺς προσῆγε τῷ χάρακι [3] τοῦ Λεπίδου καὶ λέγειν ἤρξατο. πολλῶν δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν ἐπικλωμένων καὶ τοῖς λόγοις ἀγομένων, δείσας ὁ Λέπιδος τὰς σάλπιγγας ἐκέλευσε συνηχούσας ἀφελέσθαι [4] τὸ κατακούεσθαι τὸν Ἀντώνιον. οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται μᾶλλον ᾤκτιραν καὶ διελέγοντο κρύφα, Λαίλιον καὶ Κλώδιον ἀποστείλαντες πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐσθῆτας λαβόντας ἑταιρευομένων γυναικῶν, οἳ τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἐκέλευον ἐπιχειρεῖν θαρροῦντα τῷ χάρακι· πολλοὺς γὰρ εἶναι ‹τοὺς› δεξομένους [5] καὶ τὸν Λέπιδον εἰ βούλοιτο κτενοῦντας. Ἀντώνιος δὲ Λεπίδου μὲν οὐκ εἴασεν ἅψασθαι, μεθ’ ἡμέραν δὲ τὸν στρατὸν ἔχων ἀπεπειρᾶτο τοῦ ποταμοῦ. καὶ πρῶτος αὐτὸς ἐμβὰς ἐπορεύετο πρὸς τὴν ἀντιπέρας ὄχθην, ὁρῶν ἤδη πολλοὺς τῶν Λεπίδου στρατιωτῶν τάς τε χεῖρας ὀρέγοντας [6] αὐτῷ καὶ τὸν χάρακα διασπῶντας. εἰσελθὼν δὲ καὶ κρατήσας ἁπάντων, ἡμερώτατα Λεπίδῳ προσηνέχθη· πατέρα γὰρ προσηγόρευσεν αὐτὸν ἀσπασάμενος, καὶ τῷ μὲν ἔργῳ πάντων αὐτὸς ἦν κύριος, ἐκείνῳ δ’ ὄνομα καὶ [7] τιμὴν αὐτοκράτορος διετέλει φυλάττων. τοῦτο καὶ Πλάγκον αὐτῷ Μουνάτιον ἐποίησε προσθέσθαι, καθήμενον [8] οὐ πρόσω μετὰ συχνῆς δυνάμεως. οὕτω δὲ μέγας ἀρθείς, αὖθις ὑπερέβαλε τὰς Ἄλπεις, εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἄγων ἑπτακαίδεκα τέλη πεζῶν σὺν αὑτῷ καὶ μυρίους ἱππεῖς· χωρὶς δὲ φρουρὰν Γαλατίας ἓξ τάγματα λελοίπει μετὰ Οὐαρίου τινὸς τῶν συνήθων καὶ συμποτῶν, ὃν Κοτύλωνα προσηγόρευον.

[19] [1] Καῖσαρ δὲ Κικέρωνι μὲν οὐκέτι προσεῖχε, τῆς ἐλευθερίας ὁρῶν περιεχόμενον, Ἀντώνιον δὲ προὐκαλεῖτο διὰ τῶν φίλων εἰς διαλύσεις. καὶ συνελθόντες οἱ τρεῖς εἰς νησῖδα ποταμῷ περιρρεομένην, ἐπὶ τρεῖς ἡμέρας [2] συνήδρευσαν. καὶ τἆλλα μὲν ἐπιεικῶς ὡμολογεῖτο, καὶ διενείμαντο τὴν σύμπασαν ἀρχὴν ὥσπερ οὐσίαν πατρῴαν ἐν ἀλλήλοις, ἡ δὲ περὶ τῶν ἀπολουμένων ἀνδρῶν ἀμφισβήτησις αὐτοῖς πλεῖστα πράγματα παρέσχε, τοὺς μὲν ἐχθροὺς ἀνελεῖν ἑκάστου, σῶσαι δὲ τοὺς προσήκοντας [3] ἀξιοῦντος. τέλος δὲ τῇ πρὸς τοὺς μισουμένους ὀργῇ καὶ συγγενῶν τιμὴν καὶ φίλων εὔνοιαν προέμενοι, Κικέρωνος μὲν Ἀντωνίῳ Καῖσαρ ἐξέστη, τούτῳ δ’ Ἀντώνιος Λευκίου Καίσαρος, ὃς ἦν θεῖος αὐτῷ πρὸς μητρός· ἐδόθη δὲ καὶ Λεπίδῳ Παῦλον ἀνελεῖν τὸν ἀδελφόν· οἱ δέ φασιν ἐκστῆναι τοῦ Παύλου τὸν Λέπιδον ἐκείνοις, [4] ἀποθανεῖν αὐτὸν αἰτησαμένοις. οὐδὲν ὠμότερον οὐδ’ ἀγριώτερον τῆς διαμείψεως ταύτης δοκῶ γενέσθαι· φόνων γὰρ ἀντικαταλλασσόμενοι φόνους, ὁμοίως μὲν οἷς ἐλάμβανον ἀνῄρουν οὓς ἐδίδοσαν, ἀδικώτεροι δὲ περὶ τοὺς φίλους ἦσαν οὓς ἀπεκτίννυσαν μηδὲ μισοῦντες.

[20] [1] Ἐπὶ δ’ οὖν ταῖς διαλλαγαῖς ταύταις οἱ στρατιῶται περιστάντες ἠξίουν καὶ γάμῳ τινὶ τὴν φιλίαν συνάψαι Καίσαρα, λαβόντα τὴν Φουλβίας τῆς Ἀντωνίου γυναικὸς [2] θυγατέρα Κλωδίαν. ὁμολογηθέντος δὲ καὶ τούτου, τριακόσιοι μὲν ἐκ προγραφῆς ἐθανατώθησαν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν.

[3] Κικέρωνος δὲ σφαγέντος ἐκέλευσεν Ἀντώνιος τήν τε κεφαλὴν ἀποκοπῆναι καὶ τὴν χεῖρα τὴν δεξιάν, ᾗ τοὺς [4] κατ’ αὐτοῦ λόγους ἔγραψε. καὶ κομισθέντων ἐθεᾶτο γεγηθὼς καὶ ἀνακαγχάζων ὑπὸ χαρᾶς πολλάκις· εἶτ’ ἐμπλησθεὶς ἐκέλευσεν ὑπὲρ τοῦ βήματος ἐν ἀγορᾷ τεθῆναι, καθάπερ εἰς τὸν νεκρὸν ὑβρίζων, οὐχ αὑτὸν ἐνυβρίζοντα τῇ τύχῃ καὶ καταισχύνοντα τὴν ἐξουσίαν [5] ἐπιδεικνύμενος. ὁ δὲ θεῖος αὐτοῦ Καῖσαρ ζητούμενος καὶ διωκόμενος κατέφυγε πρὸς τὴν ἀδελφήν. ἡ δέ, τῶν σφαγέων ἐπιστάντων καὶ βιαζομένων εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον αὐτῆς, ἐν ταῖς θύραις στᾶσα καὶ διασχοῦσα τὰς χεῖρας ἐβόα πολλάκις· οὐκ ἀποκτενεῖτε Καίσαρα Λεύκιον, ἐὰν μὴ πρότερον ἐμὲ ἀποκτείνητε τὴν τὸν αὐτοκράτορα [6] τεκοῦσαν. ἐκείνη μὲν οὖν τοιαύτη γενομένη διέκλεψε καὶ διέσωσε τὸν ἀδελφόν.

[21] [1] Ἦν δὲ καὶ τὰ πολλὰ Ῥωμαίοις ἐπαχθὴς ἡ τῶν τριῶν ἀρχή, καὶ τὸ πλεῖστον ὁ Ἀντώνιος τῆς αἰτίας εἶχε, πρεσβύτερος μὲν ὢν Καίσαρος, Λεπίδου δὲ δυνατώτερος, εἰς δὲ τὸν βίον ἐκεῖνον αὖθις τὸν ἡδυπαθῆ καὶ ἀκόλαστον, ὡς πρῶτον ἀνεχαίτισε τῶν πραγμάτων, [2] ἐκκεχυμένος. προσῆν δὲ τῇ κοινῇ κακοδοξίᾳ τὸ διὰ τὴν οἰκίαν οὐ μικρὸν μῖσος ἣν ᾤκει, Πομπηίου τοῦ Μεγάλου γενομένην, ἀνδρὸς οὐχ ἧττον ἐπὶ σωφροσύνῃ καὶ τῷ τεταγμένως καὶ δημοτικῶς διαιτᾶσθαι θαυμασθέντος [3] ἢ διὰ τοὺς τρεῖς θριάμβους. ἤχθοντο γὰρ ὁρῶντες αὐτὴν τὰ πολλὰ κεκλεισμένην μὲν ἡγεμόσι καὶ στρατηγοῖς καὶ πρέσβεσιν, ὠθουμένοις πρὸς ὕβριν ἀπὸ τῶν θυρῶν, μεστὴν δὲ μίμων καὶ θαυματοποιῶν καὶ κολάκων κραιπαλώντων, εἰς οὓς τὰ πλεῖστα κατανηλίσκετο τῶν χρημάτων, τῷ βιαιοτάτῳ καὶ χαλεπωτάτῳ τρόπῳ [4] ποριζομένων. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐπώλουν οὐσίας τῶν φονευομένων, ἐπισυκοφαντοῦντες οἰκείους καὶ γυναῖκας αὐτῶν, οὐδὲ τελῶν πᾶν ἐκίνησαν γένος, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρὰ ταῖς Ἑστιάσι πυθόμενοι παρθένοις παρακαταθήκας τινὰς κεῖσθαι καὶ ξένων καὶ πολιτῶν, ἔλαβον ἐπελθόντες.

[5] ὡς δ’ οὐδὲν ἦν ἱκανὸν Ἀντωνίῳ, Καῖσαρ ἠξίωσε νείμασθαι τὰ χρήματα πρὸς αὐτόν. ἐνείμαντο δὲ καὶ τὸν στρατόν, ἐπὶ Βροῦτον καὶ Κάσσιον εἰς Μακεδονίαν στρατεύοντες ἀμφότεροι, Λεπίδῳ δὲ τὴν Ῥώμην ἐπέτρεψαν.

[22] [1] Ὡς μέντοι διαβάντες ἥψαντο πολέμου καὶ παρεστρατοπέδευσαν τοῖς πολεμίοις, Ἀντωνίου μὲν ἀντιτεταγμένου Κασσίῳ, Βρούτῳ δὲ Καίσαρος, οὐθὲν ἔργον ἐφάνη μέγα τοῦ Καίσαρος, ἀλλ’ Ἀντώνιος ἦν ὁ νικῶν [2] πάντα καὶ κατορθῶν. τῇ μέν γε προτέρᾳ μάχῃ Καῖσαρ ὑπὸ Βρούτου κατὰ κράτος ἡττηθείς, ἀπέβαλε τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ μικρὸν ἔφθη τοὺς διώκοντας ὑπεκφυγών· ὡς δ’ αὐτὸς ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασι γέγραφε (HRR II 58), τῶν φίλων τινὸς ὄναρ ἰδόντος ἀνεχώρησε πρὸ τῆς μάχης.

[3] Ἀντώνιος δὲ Κάσσιον ἐνίκησε· καίτοι γεγράφασιν ἔνιοι μὴ παραγενέσθαι τῇ μάχῃ τὸν Ἀντώνιον, ἀλλὰ προσγενέσθαι [4] μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἤδη διώκουσι. Κάσσιον δὲ Πίνδαρος τῶν πιστῶν τις ἀπελευθέρων αὐτοῦ δεομένου καὶ κελεύοντος ἔσφαξεν· οὐ γὰρ ἔγνω νενικηκότα Βροῦτον.

[5] ὀλίγων δ’ ἡμερῶν διαγενομένων πάλιν ἐμαχέσαντο· καὶ Βροῦτος μὲν ἡττηθεὶς ἑαυτὸν ἀνεῖλεν, Ἀντώνιος δὲ τῆς νίκης ἠνέγκατο τῇ δόξῃ τὸ πλεῖστον, ἅτε δὴ καὶ [6] νοσοῦντος τοῦ Καίσαρος. ἐπιστὰς δὲ τῷ Βρούτου νεκρῷ, μικρὰ μὲν ὠνείδισεν ὑπὲρ τῆς Γαΐου τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ τελευτῆς - ἀνῃρήκει γὰρ ἐκεῖνον ὁ Βροῦτος ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ Κικέρωνι τιμωρῶν - , φήσας δὲ μᾶλλον Ὁρτήσιον ἢ Βροῦτον αἰτιᾶσθαι τῆς τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ σφαγῆς, Ὁρτήσιον [7] μὲν ἐκέλευσεν ἐπισφάξαι τῷ μνήματι, Βρούτῳ δὲ τὴν αὑτοῦ φοινικίδα πολλῶν χρημάτων ἀξίαν οὖσαν ἐπέρριψε, καὶ τῶν ἀπελευθέρων τινὶ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ προσέταξε τῆς ταφῆς [8] ἐπιμεληθῆναι. τοῦτον ὕστερον γνοὺς οὐ συγκατακαύσαντα τὴν φοινικίδα τῷ νεκρῷ καὶ πολλὰ τῆς εἰς τὴν ταφὴν δαπάνης ὑφῃρημένον ἀπέκτεινεν.

[23] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Καῖσαρ μὲν εἰς Ῥώμην ἐκομίζετο, δοκῶν οὐ περιέσεσθαι πολὺν χρόνον ἐκ τῆς ἀρρωστίας, Ἀντώνιος δὲ τὰς πρὸς ἕω πάσας ἐπαρχίας ἀργυρολογήσων διέβαινεν εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα, πολλὴν στρατιὰν ἄγων· ὑπεσχημένοι γὰρ ἑκάστῳ στρατιώτῃ δραχμὰς πεντακισχιλίας, ἐδέοντο συντονωτέρου χρηματισμοῦ καὶ δασμολογίας.

[2] τοῖς μὲν οὖν Ἕλλησιν οὐκ ἄτοπος οὐδὲ φορτικὸς συνηνέχθη τό γε πρῶτον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ παῖζον αὑτοῦ πρὸς ἀκροάσεις φιλολόγων καὶ θέας ἀγώνων καὶ μυήσεις ἔτρεπε, καὶ περὶ τὰς κρίσεις ἦν ἐπιεικής, καὶ φιλέλλην ἀκούων ἔχαιρεν, ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον φιλαθήναιος προσαγορευόμενος, [3] καὶ τῇ πόλει πλείστας δωρεὰς ἔδωκε. βουλομένων δέ τι καὶ Μεγαρέων καλὸν ἀντεπιδείξασθαι ταῖς Ἀθήναις καὶ τὸ βουλευτήριον ἰδεῖν αὐτὸν ἀξιωσάντων, ἀναβὰς καὶ θεασάμενος, ὡς ἐπυνθάνοντο τί δοκοίη, [4] μικρὸν μέν ἔφη σαπρὸν δέ. [πρὸς δὲ] καὶ τὸν τοῦ Πυθίου νεὼν κατεμέτρησεν ὡς συντελέσων· τοῦτο γὰρ ὑπέσχετο πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον.

[24] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Λεύκιον Κηνσωρῖνον ἐπὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος καταλιπὼν εἰς Ἀσίαν διέβη καὶ τῶν ἐκεῖ πλούτων ἥψατο, καὶ βασιλεῖς ἐπὶ θύρας ἐφοίτων, καὶ βασιλέων γυναῖκες ἁμιλλώμεναι δωρεαῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλας καὶ κάλλεσιν ἐφθείροντο πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐν Ῥώμῃ δὲ Καίσαρος στάσεσι [2] καὶ πολέμοις ἀποτρυχομένου, πολλὴν αὐτὸς ἄγων σχολὴν καὶ εἰρήνην ἀνεκυκλεῖτο τοῖς πάθεσιν εἰς τὸν συνήθη βίον, Ἀναξήνορες δὲ κιθαρῳδοὶ καὶ Ξοῦθοι χοραῦλαι καὶ Μητρόδωρός τις ὀρχηστὴς καὶ τοιοῦτος ἄλλος Ἀσιανῶν ἀκροαμάτων θίασος, ὑπερβαλλομένων λαμυρίᾳ καὶ βωμολοχίᾳ τὰς ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας κῆρας, εἰσερρύη καὶ διῴκει τὴν αὐλήν, οὐδὲν ἦν ἀνεκτόν, εἰς ταῦτα φορουμένων [3] ἁπάντων. ἡ γὰρ Ἀσία πᾶσα, καθάπερ ἡ Σοφόκλειος (Oed. R. 1 sq.) ἐκείνη πόλις, ὁμοῦ μὲν θυμιαμάτων ἔγεμεν,

ὁμοῦ δὲ παιάνων τε καὶ στεναγμάτων·

[4] εἰς γοῦν Ἔφεσον εἰσιόντος αὐτοῦ, γυναῖκες μὲν εἰς Βάκχας, ἄνδρες δὲ καὶ παῖδες εἰς Σατύρους καὶ Πᾶνας ἡγοῦντο διεσκευασμένοι, κιττοῦ δὲ καὶ θύρσων καὶ ψαλτηρίων καὶ συρίγγων καὶ αὐλῶν ἡ πόλις ἦν πλέα, Διόνυσον αὐτὸν ἀνακαλουμένων Χαριδότην καὶ Μειλίχιον.

[5] ἦν γὰρ ἀμέλει τοιοῦτος ἐνίοις, τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς Ὠμηστὴς καὶ Ἀγριώνιος. ἀφῃρεῖτο γὰρ εὐγενεῖς ἀνθρώπους τὰ [6] ὄντα, μαστιγίαις καὶ κόλαξι χαριζόμενος. πολλῶν δὲ καὶ ζώντων ὡς τεθνηκότων αἰτησάμενοί τινες οὐσίας ἔλαβον. ἀνδρὸς δὲ Μάγνητος οἶκον ἐδωρήσατο μαγείρῳ [7] περὶ ἓν ὡς λέγεται δεῖπνον εὐδοκιμήσαντι. τέλος δὲ ταῖς πόλεσι δεύτερον ἐπιβάλλοντος φόρον, ἐτόλμησεν Ὑβρέας ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἀσίας λέγων εἰπεῖν ἀγοραίως μὲν ἐκεῖνα καὶ πρὸς τὸν Ἀντωνίου ζῆλον οὐκ ἀηδῶς· εἰ δύνασαι δὶς λαβεῖν ἑνὸς ἐνιαυτοῦ φόρον, δύνασαι καὶ δὶς ἡμῖν ποιήσασθαι [8] θέρος καὶ δὶς ὀπώραν; πρακτικῶς δὲ καὶ παραβόλως συναγαγών, ὅτι μυριάδας εἴκοσι ταλάντων ἡ Ἀσία δέδωκε, ταῦτα εἶπεν εἰ μὲν οὐκ εἴληφας, ἀπαίτει παρὰ τῶν λαβόντων· εἰ δὲ λαβὼν οὐκ ἔχεις, [9] ἀπολώλαμεν. ἐτρέψατο τοῦτο δεινῶς τὸν Ἀντώνιον· ἠγνόει γὰρ τὰ πολλὰ τῶν γιγνομένων, οὐχ οὕτω ῥᾴθυμος ὢν ὡς δι’ ἁπλότητα πιστεύων τοῖς περὶ αὑτόν.

[10] ἐνῆν γὰρ ἁπλότης τῷ ἤθει καὶ βραδεῖα μὲν αἴσθησις, αἰσθανομένῳ δὲ τῶν ἁμαρτανομένων ἰσχυρὰ μετάνοια καὶ πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἐξομολόγησις τοὺς ἀγνωμονηθέντας, μέγεθος δὲ καὶ περὶ τὰς ἀμοιβὰς καὶ περὶ τὰς τιμωρίας· μᾶλλόν γε μὴν ἐδόκει χαριζόμενος ἢ κολάζων ὑπερβάλλειν [11] τὸ μέτριον. ἡ δὲ περὶ τὰς παιδιὰς καὶ τὰς ἐπισκώψεις ὕβρις ἐν αὑτῇ τὸ φάρμακον εἶχεν· ἀντισκῶψαι γὰρ ἐξῆν καὶ ἀνθυβρίσαι, καὶ γελώμενος οὐχ ἧττον ἢ γελῶν [12] ἔχαιρε. καὶ τοῦτο διελυμήνατο τὰ πολλὰ τῶν πραγμάτων. τοὺς γὰρ ἐν τῷ παίζειν παρρησιαζομένους οὐκ ἂν οἰηθεὶς σπουδάζοντας κολακεύειν αὐτόν, ἡλίσκετο ῥᾳδίως ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπαίνων, ἀγνοῶν ὅτι τὴν παρρησίαν τινὲς ὡς ὑποστῦφον ἥδυσμα τῇ κολακείᾳ παραμειγνύντες ἀφῄρουν τὸ πλήσμιον, τῇ παρὰ τὴν κύλικα θρασύτητι καὶ λαλιᾷ διαμηχανώμενοι τὴν ἐπὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ὕφεσιν καὶ συγκατάθεσιν μὴ πρὸς χάριν ὁμιλούντων, ἀλλὰ τὸ φρονεῖν ἡττωμένων φαίνεσθαι.

[25] [1] Τοιούτῳ δ’ οὖν ὄντι τὴν φύσιν Ἀντωνίῳ τελευταῖον κακὸν ὁ Κλεοπάτρας ἔρως ἐπιγενόμενος καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἔτι κρυπτομένων ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ ἀτρεμούντων παθῶν ἐγείρας καὶ ἀναβακχεύσας, εἴ τι χρηστὸν ἢ σωτήριον ὅμως ἀντεῖχεν, ἠφάνισε καὶ προσδιέφθειρεν. ἁλίσκεται δὲ [2] τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον. ἁπτόμενος τοῦ Παρθικοῦ πολέμου, ἔπεμψε πρὸς αὐτὴν κελεύων εἰς Κιλικίαν ἀπαντῆσαι, λόγον ὑφέξουσαν ὧν ἐνεκαλεῖτο τοῖς περὶ Κάσσιον δοῦναι [3] πολλὰ καὶ συμβαλέσθαι πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον. ὁ δὲ πεμφθεὶς Δέλλιος ὡς εἶδε τὴν ὄψιν καὶ κατέμαθε τὴν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις δεινότητα καὶ πανουργίαν, εὐθὺς αἰσθόμενος ὅτι κακὸν μὲν οὐδὲ μελλήσει τι ποιεῖν γυναῖκα τοιαύτην Ἀντώνιος, ἔσται δὲ μεγίστη παρ’ αὐτῷ, τρέπεται πρὸς τὸ θεραπεύειν καὶ προτρέπεσθαι τὴν Αἰγυπτίαν, τοῦτο δὴ τὸ Ὁμηρικόν (Il. 14, 162), ἐλθεῖν εἰς Κιλικίαν εὖ ἐντύνασαν ἓ αὐτὴν, καὶ μὴ φοβεῖσθαι τὸν Ἀντώνιον, ἥδιστον ἡγεμόνων ὄντα [4] καὶ φιλανθρωπότατον. ἡ δὲ καὶ Δελλίῳ πεισθεῖσα, καὶ τοῖς πρὸς Καίσαρα καὶ Γναῖον τὸν Πομπηίου παῖδα πρότερον αὐτῇ γενομένοις ἀφ’ ὥρας συμβολαίοις τεκμαιρομένη, [5] ῥᾷον ἤλπιζεν ὑπάξεσθαι τὸν Ἀντώνιον. ἐκεῖνοι μὲν γὰρ αὐτὴν ἔτι κόρην καὶ πραγμάτων ἄπειρον ἔγνωσαν, πρὸς δὲ τοῦτον ἔμελλε φοιτήσειν ἐν ᾧ μάλιστα καιροῦ γυναῖκες ὥραν τε λαμπροτάτην ἔχουσι καὶ τὸ φρονεῖν [6] ἀκμάζουσι. διὸ πολλὰ μὲν συνεσκευάσατο δῶρα καὶ χρήματα καὶ κόσμον, οἷον εἰκὸς ἦν ἀπὸ πραγμάτων μεγάλων καὶ βασιλείας εὐδαίμονος κομίζειν, τὰς δὲ πλείστας ἐν ἑαυτῇ καὶ τοῖς περὶ αὑτὴν μαγγανεύμασι καὶ φίλτροις ἐλπίδας θεμένη παρεγένετο.

[26] [1] Πολλὰ δὲ καὶ παρ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ παρὰ τῶν φίλων δεχομένη γράμματα καλούντων, οὕτως κατεφρόνησε καὶ κατεγέλασε τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὥστε πλεῖν ἀνὰ τὸν Κύδνον ποταμὸν ἐν πορθμείῳ χρυσοπρύμνῳ, τῶν μὲν ἱστίων ἁλουργῶν ἐκπεπετασμένων, τῆς δ’ εἰρεσίας ἀργυραῖς κώπαις ἀναφερομένης πρὸς αὐλὸν ἅμα σύριγξι καὶ κιθάραις [2] συνηρμοσμένον. αὐτὴ δὲ κατέκειτο μὲν ὑπὸ σκιάδι χρυσοπάστῳ, κεκοσμημένη γραφικῶς ὥσπερ Ἀφροδίτη, παῖδες δὲ τοῖς γραφικοῖς Ἔρωσιν εἰκασμένοι παρ’ ἑκάτερον [3] ἑστῶτες ἐρρίπιζον. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ θεραπαινίδες αἱ καλλιστεύουσαι Νηρηίδων ἔχουσαι καὶ Χαρίτων στολάς, αἱ μὲν πρὸς οἴαξιν, αἱ δὲ πρὸς κάλοις ἦσαν. ὀδμαὶ δὲ θαυμασταὶ τὰς ὄχθας ἀπὸ θυμιαμάτων πολλῶν κατεῖχον.

[4] τῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων οἱ μὲν εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ παρωμάρτουν ἑκατέρωθεν, οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς πόλεως κατέβαινον ἐπὶ τὴν θέαν. ἐκχεομένου δὲ τοῦ κατὰ τὴν ἀγορὰν ὄχλου, τέλος αὐτὸς ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐπὶ βήματος καθεζόμενος ἀπελείφθη [5] μόνος. καί τις λόγος ἐχώρει διὰ πάντων, ὡς ἡ Ἀφροδίτη κωμάζοι πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ τῆς Ἀσίας.

[6] Ἔπεμψε μὲν οὖν καλῶν αὐτὴν ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον· ἡ δὲ μᾶλλον ἐκεῖνον ἠξίου πρὸς ἑαυτὴν ἥκειν. εὐθὺς οὖν τινα βουλόμενος εὐκολίαν ἐπιδείκνυσθαι καὶ φιλοφροσύνην, ὑπήκουσε καὶ ἦλθεν. ἐντυχὼν δὲ παρασκευῇ λόγου κρείττονι, μάλιστα τῶν φώτων τὸ πλῆθος ἐξεπλάγη.

[7] τοσαῦτα γὰρ λέγεται καθίεσθαι καὶ ἀναφαίνεσθαι πανταχόθεν ἅμα, καὶ τοιαύταις πρὸς ἄλληλα κλίσεσι καὶ θέσεσι διακεκοσμημένα καὶ συντεταγμένα πλαισίων καὶ περιφερῶν τρόπῳ, ὥστε τῶν ἐν ὀλίγοις ἀξιοθεάτων καὶ καλῶν ἐκείνην γενέσθαι τὴν ὄψιν.

[27] [1] Τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ πάλιν ἀνθεστιῶν αὐτήν, ἐφιλοτιμήθη μὲν ὑπερβαλέσθαι τὴν λαμπρότητα καὶ τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν, ἀμφοῖν δὲ λειπόμενος καὶ κρατούμενος ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις, πρῶτος ἔσκωπτεν εἰς αὐχμὸν καὶ ἀγροικίαν τὰ [2] παρ’ αὑτῷ. πολὺ δ’ ἡ Κλεοπάτρα καὶ τοῖς σκώμμασι τοῦ Ἀντωνίου τὸ στρατιωτικὸν ἐνορῶσα καὶ βάναυσον, ἐχρῆτο καὶ τούτῳ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀνειμένως ἤδη καὶ κατατεθαρρηκότως.

[3] καὶ γὰρ ἦν ὡς λέγουσιν αὐτὸ μὲν καθ’ αὑτὸ τὸ κάλλος αὐτῆς οὐ πάνυ δυσπαράβλητον οὐδ’ οἷον ἐκπλῆξαι τοὺς ἰδόντας, ἁφὴν δ’ εἶχεν ἡ συνδιαίτησις ἄφυκτον, ἥ τε μορφὴ μετὰ τῆς ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι πιθανότητος καὶ τοῦ περιθέοντος ἅμα πως περὶ τὴν ὁμιλίαν ἤθους ἀνέφερέ τι [4] κέντρον. ἡδονὴ δὲ καὶ φθεγγομένης ἐπῆν τῷ ἤχῳ· καὶ τὴν γλῶτταν ὥσπερ ὄργανόν τι πολύχορδον εὐπετῶς τρέπουσα καθ’ ἣν βούλοιτο διάλεκτον, ὀλίγοις παντάπασι δι’ ἑρμηνέως ἐνετύγχανε βαρβάροις, τοῖς δὲ πλείστοις αὐτὴ δι’ αὑτῆς ἀπεδίδου τὰς ἀποκρίσεις, οἷον Αἰθίοψι Τρωγλοδύταις Ἑβραίοις Ἄραψι Σύροις Μήδοις Παρθυαίοις.

[5] πολλῶν δὲ λέγεται καὶ ἄλλων ἐκμαθεῖν γλώττας, τῶν πρὸ αὐτῆς βασιλέων οὐδὲ τὴν Αἰγυπτίαν ἀνασχομένων παραλαβεῖν διάλεκτον, ἐνίων δὲ καὶ τὸ μακεδονίζειν ἐκλιπόντων.

[28] [1] Οὕτω δ’ οὖν τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἥρπασεν, ὥστε πολεμούσης μὲν ἐν Ῥώμῃ Καίσαρι Φουλβίας τῆς γυναικὸς ὑπὲρ τῶν ἐκείνου πραγμάτων, αἰωρουμένης δὲ Παρθικῆς στρατιᾶς περὶ τὴν Μεσοποταμίαν, ἧς Λαβιηνὸν οἱ βασιλέως στρατηγοὶ Παρθικὸν ἀναγορεύσαντες αὐτοκράτορα Συρίας ἐπιβατεύσειν ἔμελλον, οἴχεσθαι φερόμενον ὑπ’ αὐτῆς εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν, ἐκεῖ δὲ μειρακίου σχολὴν ἄγοντος διατριβαῖς καὶ παιδιαῖς χρώμενον, ἀναλίσκειν καὶ καθηδυπαθεῖν τὸ πολυτελέστατον ὡς Ἀντιφῶν (fr. 77 Diels) εἶπεν [2] ἀνάλωμα, τὸν χρόνον. ἦν γάρ τις αὐτοῖς σύνοδος Ἀμιμητοβίων λεγομένη, καὶ καθ’ ἡμέραν εἱστίων ἀλλήλους, ἄπιστόν [3] τινα ποιούμενοι τῶν ἀναλισκομένων ἀμετρίαν. διηγεῖτο γοῦν ἡμῶν τῷ πάππῳ Λαμπρίᾳ Φιλώτας ὁ Ἀμφισσεὺς ἰατρός, εἶναι μὲν ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ τότε μανθάνων τὴν τέχνην, γενόμενος δέ τινι τῶν βασιλικῶν ὀψοποιῶν συνήθης, ἀναπεισθῆναι νέος ὢν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν πολυτέλειαν καὶ τὴν παρασκευὴν τοῦ δείπνου θεάσασθαι.

[4] παρεισαχθεὶς οὖν εἰς τοὐπτανεῖον, ὡς τά τ’ ἄλλα πάμπολλα ἑώρα καὶ σῦς ἀγρίους ὀπτωμένους ὀκτώ, θαυμάσαι [5] τὸ πλῆθος τῶν δειπνούντων. τὸν δ’ ὀψοποιὸν γελάσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν, ὅτι πολλοὶ μὲν οὐκ εἰσὶν οἱ δειπνοῦντες, ἀλλὰ περὶ δώδεκα· δεῖ δ’ ἀκμὴν ἔχειν τῶν παρατιθεμένων [6] ἕκαστον, ἣν ἀκαρὲς ὥρας μαραίνει. καὶ γὰρ αὐτίκα γένοιτ’ ἂν Ἀντώνιον δείπνου δεηθῆναι καὶ μετὰ μικρόν, ἂν δ’ οὕτω τύχῃ παραγαγεῖν αἰτήσαντα ποτήριον ἢ λόγου τινὸς ἐμπεσόντος. ὅθεν οὐχ ἕν, ἀλλὰ πολλά, φάναι, δεῖπνα [7] συντέτακται· δυσστόχαστος γὰρ ὁ καιρός. ταῦτ’ οὖν ὁ Φιλώτας ἔλεγε, καὶ χρόνου προϊόντος ἐν τοῖς θεραπεύουσι γενέσθαι τὸν πρεσβύτατον τῶν Ἀντωνίου παίδων ὃν ἐκ Φουλβίας εἶχε, καὶ συνδειπνεῖν παρ’ αὐτῷ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἑταίρων ἐπιεικῶς, ὁπότε μὴ δειπνοίη μετὰ τοῦ πατρός.

[8] ἰατρὸν οὖν ποτε θρασυνόμενον καὶ πράγματα πολλὰ παρέχοντα δειπνοῦσιν αὐτοῖς ἐπιστομίσαι τοιούτῳ σοφίσματι· τῷ πως πυρέττοντι δοτέον ψυχρόν· πᾶς δ’ ὁ πυρέττων πως πυρέττει· παντὶ ἄρα πυρέττοντι δοτέον [9] ψυχρόν. πληγέντος δὲ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ σιωπήσαντος, ἡσθέντα τὸν παῖδα γελάσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν ταῦτ’ ὦ Φιλώτα χαρίζομαι πάντα σοι, δείξαντα πολλῶν τινων καὶ μεγάλων [10] ἐκπωμάτων μεστὴν τράπεζαν. αὐτοῦ δὲ τὴν προθυμίαν ἀποδεξαμένου, πόρρω δ’ ὄντος τοῦ νομίζειν ἐξουσίαν εἶναι παιδὶ τηλικούτῳ δωρεῖσθαι τοσαῦτα, μετὰ μικρὸν ῥαψάμενόν τινα τῶν παίδων ἐν ἀγγείῳ τὰ ἐκπώματα προσφέρειν [11] καὶ σημήνασθαι κελεύειν. ἀφοσιουμένου δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ δεδοικότος λαβεῖν, τί ὦ πόνηρε φάναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὀκνεῖς; οὐκ οἶδας ὡς ὁ διδοὺς Ἀντωνίου παῖς ἐστιν, ᾧ τοσαῦτα πάρεστι χρυσᾶ χαρίσασθαι; ἐμοὶ μέντοι πειθόμενος πάντα διάμειψαι πρὸς ἀργύριον ἡμῖν· ἴσως γὰρ ἂν καὶ ποθήσειεν ὁ πατὴρ ἔνια, τῶν παλαιῶν ὄντα καὶ [12] σπουδαζομένων κατὰ τὴν τέχνην ἔργων. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἡμῖν ἔλεγεν ὁ πάππος ἑκάστοτε διηγεῖσθαι τὸν Φιλώταν.

[29] [1] Ἡ δὲ Κλεοπάτρα τὴν κολακείαν οὐχ ὥσπερ ὁ Πλάτων φησὶ (Gorg. 464c) τετραχῇ, πολλαχῇ δὲ διελοῦσα, καὶ σπουδῆς ἁπτομένῳ καὶ παιδιᾶς ἀεί τινα καινὴν ἡδονὴν ἐπιφέρουσα καὶ χάριν, [ᾗ] διεπαιδαγώγει τὸν Ἀντώνιον οὔτε [2] νυκτὸς οὔθ’ ἡμέρας ἀνιεῖσα. καὶ γὰρ συνεκύβευε καὶ συνέπινε καὶ συνεθήρευε καὶ γυμναζόμενον ἐν ὅπλοις ἐθεᾶτο, καὶ νύκτωρ προσισταμένῳ θύραις καὶ θυρίσι δημοτῶν καὶ σκώπτοντι τοὺς ἔνδον συνεπλανᾶτο καὶ συνήλυε, θεραπαινιδίου [3] στολὴν λαμβάνουσα. καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος οὕτως ἐπειρᾶτο σκευάζειν ἑαυτόν. ὅθεν ἀεὶ σκωμμάτων, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ πληγῶν ἀπολαύσας ἐπανήρχετο· τοῖς δὲ πλείστοις [4] ἦν δι’ ὑπονοίας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ προσέχαιρον αὐτοῦ τῇ βωμολοχίᾳ καὶ συνέπαιζον οὐκ ἀρρύθμως οὐδ’ ἀμούσως οἱ Ἀλεξανδρεῖς, ἀγαπῶντες καὶ λέγοντες ὡς τῷ τραγικῷ πρὸς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους χρῆται προσώπῳ, τῷ δὲ κωμικῷ [5] πρὸς αὐτούς. τὰ μὲν οὖν πολλὰ τῶν τόθ’ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ παιζομένων διηγεῖσθαι πολὺς ἂν εἴη φλύαρος· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἁλιεύων ποτὲ καὶ δυσαγρῶν ἤχθετο παρούσης τῆς Κλεοπάτρας, ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ἁλιεῖς ὑπονηξαμένους κρύφα τῷ ἀγκίστρῳ περικαθάπτειν ἰχθῦς τῶν προεαλωκότων, καὶ δὶς ἢ τρὶς [6] ἀνασπάσας οὐκ ἔλαθε τὴν Αἰγυπτίαν. προσποιουμένη δὲ θαυμάζειν τοῖς φίλοις διηγεῖτο, καὶ παρεκάλει τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ γενέσθαι θεατάς. ἐμβάντων δὲ πολλῶν εἰς τὰς ἁλιάδας καὶ τοῦ Ἀντωνίου τὴν ὁρμιὰν καθέντος, ἐκέλευσέ τινα τῶν αὑτῆς ὑποφθάσαντα καὶ προσνηξάμενον τῷ ἀγκίστρῳ [7] περιπεῖραι Ποντικὸν τάριχος. ὡς δ’ ἔχειν πεισθεὶς ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἀνεῖλκε, γέλωτος οἷον εἰκὸς γενομένου, παράδος ἡμῖν ἔφη τὸν κάλαμον αὐτόκρατορ τοῖς Φαρίταις καὶ Κανωβίταις βασιλεῦσιν· ἡ δὲ σὴ θήρα πόλεις εἰσὶ καὶ βασιλεῖαι καὶ ἤπειροι.

[30] [1] Τοιαῦτα ληροῦντα καὶ μειρακιευόμενον τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἀγγελίαι δύο καταλαμβάνουσιν, ἡ μὲν ἀπὸ Ῥώμης, Λεύκιον τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ Φουλβίαν τὴν γυναῖκα πρῶτον ἀλλήλοις στασιάσαντας, εἶτα Καίσαρι πολεμήσαντας, ἀποβεβληκέναι τὰ πράγματα καὶ φεύγειν [2] ἐξ Ἰταλίας, ἑτέρα δὲ ταύτης οὐδὲν ἐπιεικεστέρα, Λαβιηνὸν ἐπάγοντα Πάρθους τὴν ἀπ’ Εὐφράτου καὶ Συρίας [3] ἄχρι Λυδίας καὶ Ἰωνίας Ἀσίαν καταστρέφεσθαι. μόλις οὖν ὥσπερ ἐξυπνισθεὶς καὶ ἀποκραιπαλήσας, ὥρμησε μὲν Πάρθοις ἐνίστασθαι καὶ μέχρι Φοινίκης προῆλθε, Φουλβίας δὲ γράμματα θρήνων μεστὰ πεμπούσης, ἐπέστρεψεν [4] εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἄγων ναῦς διακοσίας. ἀναλαβὼν δὲ κατὰ πλοῦν τῶν φίλων τοὺς πεφευγότας, ἐπυνθάνετο τοῦ πολέμου τὴν Φουλβίαν αἰτίαν γεγονέναι, φύσει μὲν οὖσαν πολυπράγμονα καὶ θρασεῖαν, ἐλπίζουσαν δὲ τῆς Κλεοπάτρας ἀπάξειν τὸν Ἀντώνιον, εἴ τι γένοιτο κίνημα περὶ [5] τὴν Ἰταλίαν. συμβαίνει δ’ ἀπὸ τύχης καὶ Φουλβίαν πλέουσαν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν Σικυῶνι νόσῳ τελευτῆσαι· διὸ [6] καὶ μᾶλλον αἱ πρὸς Καίσαρα διαλλαγαὶ καιρὸν ἔσχον. ὡς γὰρ προσέμειξε τῇ Ἰταλίᾳ καὶ Καῖσαρ ἦν φανερὸς ἐκείνῳ μὲν οὐθὲν ἐγκαλῶν, αὐτὸς δ’ ὧν ἐνεκαλεῖτο τὰς αἰτίας τῇ Φουλβίᾳ προστριβόμενος, οὐκ εἴων [δ’] ἐξελέγχειν οἱ φίλοι τὴν πρόφασιν, ἀλλὰ διέλυον ἀμφοτέρους καὶ διῄρουν τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, ὅρον ποιούμενοι τὸν Ἰόνιον, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἑῷα νέμοντες Ἀντωνίῳ, τὰ δ’ ἑσπέρια Καίσαρι, Λέπιδον δὲ Λιβύην ἔχειν ἐῶντες, ὑπατεύειν δὲ τάξαντες, ὅτε μὴ δόξειεν αὐτοῖς, φίλους ἑκατέρων παρὰ μέρος.

[31] [1] Ταῦτ’ ἔχειν καλῶς δοκοῦντα πίστεως ἐδεῖτο σφοδροτέρας, ἣν ἡ τύχη παρέσχεν. Ὀκταουία γὰρ ἦν ἀδελφὴ πρεσβυτέρα μέν, οὐχ ὁμομητρία δὲ Καίσαρι· ἐγεγόνει γὰρ ἐξ Ἀγχαρίας, ὁ δ’ ὕστερον ἐξ Ἀτίας.

[2] ἔστεργε δ’ ὑπερφυῶς τὴν ἀδελφήν, χρῆμα θαυμαστὸν ὡς λέγεται γυναικὸς γενομένην. αὕτη, Γαΐου Μαρκέλλου τοῦ γήμαντος αὐτὴν οὐ πάλαι τεθνηκότος, ἐχήρευεν.

[3] ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ Φουλβίας ἀποιχομένης χηρεύειν Ἀντώνιος, ἔχειν μὲν οὐκ ἀρνούμενος Κλεοπάτραν, γάμῳ δ’ οὐχ ὁμολογῶν ἀλλ’ ἔτι τῷ λόγῳ περί γε τούτου πρὸς τὸν [4] ἔρωτα τῆς Αἰγυπτίας μαχόμενος. τοῦτον ἅπαντες εἰσηγοῦντο τὸν γάμον, ἐλπίζοντες τὴν Ὀκταουίαν, ἐπὶ κάλλει τοσούτῳ σεμνότητα καὶ νοῦν ἔχουσαν, εἰς ταὐτὸν τῷ Ἀντωνίῳ παραγενομένην καὶ στερχθεῖσαν ὡς εἰκὸς τοιαύτην γυναῖκα, πάντων πραγμάτων αὐτοῖς σωτηρίαν [5] ἔσεσθαι καὶ σύγκρασιν. ὡς οὖν ἔδοξεν ἀμφοτέροις, ἀναβάντες εἰς Ῥώμην ἐπετέλουν τὸν Ὀκταουίας γάμον, οὐκ ἐῶντος μὲν νόμου πρὸ δέκα μηνῶν ἀνδρὸς τελευτήσαντος γαμεῖσθαι, τῆς δὲ συγκλήτου δόγματι τὸν χρόνον ἐκείνοις ἀνείσης.

[32] [1] Σέξτου δὲ Πομπηίου Σικελίαν μὲν ἔχοντος, Ἰταλίαν δὲ πορθοῦντος, λῃστρίσι δὲ ναυσὶ πολλαῖς, ὧν Μηνᾶς ὁ πειρατὴς καὶ Μενεκράτης ἦρχον, ἄπλουν τὴν θάλασσαν πεποιηκότος, Ἀντωνίῳ δὲ κεχρῆσθαι δοκοῦντος φιλανθρώπως - ὑπεδέξατο γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὴν μητέρα τῇ Φουλβίᾳ συνεκπεσοῦσαν - , ἔδοξε καὶ πρὸς τοῦτον διαλυθῆναι. [2] καὶ συνῆλθον εἰς ταὐτὸν κατὰ τὴν ἐν Μισηνοῖς ἄκραν καὶ τὸ χῶμα, Πομπηίῳ μὲν τοῦ στόλου παρορμοῦντος, Ἀντωνίῳ δὲ καὶ Καίσαρι τῶν πεζῶν παρακεκριμένων.

[3] ἐπεὶ δὲ συνέθεντο Πομπήιον ἔχοντα Σαρδόνα καὶ Σικελίαν καθαράν τε λῃστηρίων παρέχειν τὴν θάλατταν καὶ σίτου τι τεταγμένον ἀποστέλλειν εἰς Ῥώμην, ἐκάλουν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἀλλήλους. κληρουμένων δὲ πρῶτος ἑστιᾶν [4] αὐτοὺς ἔλαχε Πομπήιος. ἐρομένου δ’ αὐτὸν Ἀντωνίου ποῦ δειπνήσουσιν, ἐνταῦθα ἔφη δείξας τὴν στρατηγίδα ναῦν οὖσαν ἑξήρη, πατρῷος γὰρ οἶκος αὕτη Πομπηίῳ λέλειπται. ταῦτα δ’ εἰς τὸν Ἀντώνιον ὀνειδίζων ἔλεγεν, ἐπεὶ τὴν Πομπηίου τοῦ πατρὸς γενομένην οἰκίαν ἐκεῖνος [5] εἶχεν. ὁρμίσας δὲ τὴν ναῦν ἐπ’ ἀγκυρῶν καὶ διάβασίν τινα γεφυρώσας ἀπὸ τῆς ἄκρας, ἀνελάμβανεν αὐτοὺς [6] προθύμως. ἀκμαζούσης δὲ τῆς συνουσίας, καὶ τῶν εἰς Κλεοπάτραν καὶ Ἀντώνιον ἀνθούντων σκωμμάτων, Μηνᾶς ὁ πειρατὴς τῷ Πομπηίῳ προσελθών, ὡς μὴ κατακούειν ἐκείνους βούλει φησί τὰς ἀγκύρας τῆς νεὼς ὑποτέμω καὶ ποιήσω σε μὴ Σικελίας καὶ Σαρδόνος, ἀλλὰ τῆς Ῥωμαίων [7] κύριον ἡγεμονίας; ὁ δὲ Πομπήιος ἀκούσας καὶ πρὸς αὑτῷ γενόμενος βραχὺν χρόνον, ἔδει σε φησίν ὦ Μηνᾶ τοῦτ’ ἐμοὶ μὴ προειπόντα ποιῆσαι· νυνὶ δὲ [8] τὰ παρόντα στέργωμεν· ἐπιορκεῖν γὰρ οὐκ ἐμόν. οὗτος μὲν οὖν πάλιν ἀνθεστιαθεὶς ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων εἰς τὴν Σικελίαν ἀπέπλευσεν.

[33] [1] Ἀντώνιος δὲ μετὰ τὰς διαλύσεις Οὐεντίδιον μὲν εἰς Ἀσίαν προὔπεμπε, Πάρθοις ἐμποδὼν ἐσόμενον τοῦ πρόσω χωρεῖν, αὐτὸς δὲ Καίσαρι χαριζόμενος ἱερεὺς ἀπεδείχθη τοῦ προτέρου Καίσαρος· καὶ τἆλλα κοινῶς καὶ φιλικῶς ἐν τοῖς πολιτικοῖς καὶ μεγίστοις ἔπραττον.

[2] αἱ δὲ περὶ τὰς παιδιὰς ἅμιλλαι τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἐλύπουν, ἀεὶ τοῦ Καίσαρος ἔλαττον φερόμενον. ἦν γάρ τις ἀνὴρ σὺν αὐτῷ μαντικὸς ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου τῶν τὰς γενέσεις ἐπισκοπούντων, ὃς εἴτε Κλεοπάτρᾳ χαριζόμενος εἴτε χρώμενος ἀληθείᾳ πρὸς τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἐπαρρησιάζετο, λέγων τὴν τύχην αὐτοῦ λαμπροτάτην οὖσαν καὶ μεγίστην ὑπὸ τῆς Καίσαρος ἀμαυροῦσθαι, καὶ συνεβούλευε πορρωτάτω [3] τοῦ νεανίσκου ποιεῖν ἑαυτόν. ὁ γὰρ σός ἔφη δαίμων τὸν τούτου φοβεῖται· καὶ γαῦρος ὢν καὶ ὑψηλὸς ὅταν ᾖ καθ’ ἑαυτόν, ὑπ’ ἐκείνου γίνεται ταπεινότερος [4] ἐγγίσαντος καὶ ἀγεννέστερος. καὶ μέντοι τὰ γινόμενα τῷ Αἰγυπτίῳ μαρτυρεῖν ἐδόκει. λέγεται γὰρ ὅτι κληρουμένων μετὰ παιδιᾶς ἐφ’ ὅτῳ τύχοιεν ἑκάστοτε καὶ κυβευόντων ἔλαττον ἔχων ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἀπῄει· πολλάκις δὲ συμβαλόντων ἀλεκτρυόνας, πολλάκις δὲ μαχίμους ὄρτυγας, ἐνίκων οἱ [5] Καίσαρος. ἐφ’ οἷς ἀνιώμενος ἀδήλως ὁ Ἀντώνιος καὶ μᾶλλόν τι τῷ Αἰγυπτίῳ προσέχων, ἀπῆρεν ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας, ἐγχειρίσας Καίσαρι τὰ οἰκεῖα· τὴν δ’ Ὀκταουίαν ἄχρι τῆς [6] Ἑλλάδος ἐπήγετο θυγατρίου γεγονότος αὐτοῖς. διαχειμάζοντι δ’ αὐτῷ περὶ Ἀθήνας ἀπαγγέλλεται τὰ πρῶτα τῶν Οὐεντιδίου κατορθωμάτων, ὅτι μάχῃ τοὺς Πάρθους κρατήσας Λαβιηνὸν ἀπεκτόνοι καὶ Φρανιπάτην, ἡγεμονικώτατον [7] τῶν Ὀρώδου βασιλέως στρατηγῶν. ἐπὶ τούτοις εἱστία τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ἐγυμνασιάρχει δ’ Ἀθηναίοις, καὶ τὰ τῆς ἡγεμονίας παράσημα καταλιπὼν οἴκοι, μετὰ τῶν γυμνασιαρχικῶν ῥάβδων ἐν ἱματίῳ καὶ φαικασίοις προῄει, καὶ διαλαμβάνων τοὺς νεανίσκους ἐτραχήλιζεν.

[34] [1] Ἐξιέναι δὲ μέλλων ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον, ἀπὸ τῆς ἱερᾶς ἐλαίας στέφανον ἔλαβε, καὶ κατά τι λόγιον ἀπὸ τῆς Κλεψύδρας [2] ὕδατος ἐμπλησάμενος ἀγγεῖον ἐκόμιζεν. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Πάκορον τὸν ‹τοῦ› βασιλέως παῖδα μεγάλῳ στρατῷ Πάρθων αὖθις ἐπὶ Συρίαν ἐλαύνοντα συμπεσὼν Οὐεντίδιος ἐν τῇ Κυρρηστικῇ τρέπεται καὶ διαφθείρει παμπόλλους, [3] ἐν πρώτοις Πακόρου πεσόντος. τοῦτο τὸ ἔργον ἐν τοῖς ἀοιδιμωτάτοις γενόμενον, Ῥωμαίοις τε τῶν κατὰ Κράσσον ἀτυχημάτων ἔκπλεω ποινὴν παρέσχε, καὶ Πάρθους αὖθις εἴσω Μηδίας καὶ Μεσοποταμίας συνέστειλε, τρισὶ μάχαις ἐφεξῆς κατὰ κράτος ἡττημένους.

[4] Οὐεντίδιος δὲ Πάρθους μὲν προσωτέρω διώκειν ἀπέγνω, φθόνον Ἀντωνίου δείσας, τοὺς δ’ ἀφεστῶτας ἐπιὼν κατεστρέφετο καὶ τὸν Κομμαγηνὸν Ἀντίοχον ἐν πόλει [5] Σαμοσάτοις ἐπολιόρκει. δεομένου δὲ χίλια τάλαντα δοῦναι καὶ ποιεῖν Ἀντωνίῳ τὸ προσταττόμενον, ἐκέλευε [6] πέμπειν πρὸς Ἀντώνιον. ἤδη γὰρ ἐγγὺς ἦν ἐπιών, καὶ τὸν Οὐεντίδιον οὐκ εἴα σπένδεσθαι τῷ Ἀντιόχῳ, βουλόμενος ἕν γε τοῦτο τῶν ἔργων ἐπώνυμον αὑτοῦ γενέσθαι [7] καὶ μὴ πάντα διὰ Οὐεντιδίου κατορθοῦσθαι. τῆς δὲ πολιορκίας μῆκος λαμβανούσης, καὶ τῶν ἔνδον ὡς ἀπέγνωσαν τὰς διαλύσεις πρὸς ἀλκὴν τρεπομένων, πράττων μὲν οὐδέν, ἐν αἰσχύνῃ δὲ καὶ μεταγνώσει γενόμενος, ἀγαπητῶς ἐπὶ τριακοσίοις σπένδεται ταλάντοις [8] πρὸς τὸν Ἀντίοχον. καὶ μικρὰ τῶν ἐν Συρίᾳ καταστησάμενος εἰς Ἀθήνας ἐπανῆλθε, καὶ τὸν Οὐεντίδιον οἷς [9] ἔπρεπε τιμήσας ἔπεμψεν ἐπὶ τὸν θρίαμβον. οὗτος ἀπὸ Πάρθων ἄχρι δεῦρο τεθριάμβευκε μόνος, ἀνὴρ γένει μὲν ἀφανής, ἀπολαύσας δὲ τῆς Ἀντωνίου φιλίας τὸ λαβεῖν ἀφορμὰς πράξεων μεγάλων, αἷς κάλλιστα χρησάμενος ἐβεβαίωσε τὸν περὶ Ἀντωνίου λεγόμενον καὶ Καίσαρος λόγον, ὡς εὐτυχέστεροι δι’ ἑτέρων ἦσαν ἢ δι’ αὑτῶν [10] στρατηγεῖν. καὶ γὰρ Σόσσιος Ἀντωνίου στρατηγὸς ἐν Συρίᾳ πολλὰ διεπράττετο, καὶ Κανίδιος ἀπολειφθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ Ἀρμενίαν, τούτους τε νικῶν καὶ τοὺς Ἰβήρων καὶ Ἀλβανῶν βασιλέας ἄχρι τοῦ Καυκάσου προῆλθεν. ἀφ’ ὧν ἐν τοῖς βαρβάροις ὄνομα καὶ κλέος ηὔξετο τῆς Ἀντωνίου δυνάμεως.

[35] [1] Αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν ἔκ τινων διαβολῶν παροξυνθεὶς πρὸς Καίσαρα, ναυσὶ τριακοσίαις ἔπλει πρὸς τὴν Ἰταλίαν· οὐ δεξαμένων δὲ τῶν Βρεντεσινῶν τὸν στόλον εἰς Τάραντα [2] περιώρμισεν. ἐνταῦθα τὴν Ὀκταουίαν - συνέπλει γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος αὐτῷ - δεηθεῖσαν ἀποπέμπει πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφόν, ἔγκυον μὲν οὖσαν, ἤδη δὲ καὶ δεύτερον ἐξ [3] αὐτοῦ θυγάτριον ἔχουσαν. ἡ δ’ ἀπαντήσασα καθ’ ὁδὸν Καίσαρι καὶ παραλαβοῦσα τῶν ἐκείνου φίλων Ἀγρίππαν καὶ Μαικήναν, ἐνετύγχανε πολλὰ ποτνιωμένη καὶ πολλὰ δεομένη μὴ περιιδεῖν αὐτὴν ἐκ μακαριωτάτης γυναικὸς [4] ἀθλιωτάτην γενομένην. νῦν μὲν γὰρ ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους εἰς αὐτὴν ἀποβλέπειν, αὐτοκρατόρων δυεῖν τοῦ μὲν γυναῖκα τοῦ δ’ ἀδελφὴν οὖσαν· εἰ δὲ τὰ χείρω κρατήσειεν ἔφη καὶ γένοιτο πόλεμος, ὑμῶν μὲν ἄδηλον ὅτῳ κρατεῖν ἢ κρατεῖσθαι πέπρωται, τὰ ἐμὰ δ’ ἀμφοτέρως [5] ἄθλια. τούτοις ἐπικλασθεὶς ὁ Καῖσαρ ἧκεν εἰρηνικῶς εἰς Τάραντα, καὶ θέαμα κάλλιστον οἱ παρόντες ἐθεῶντο, πολὺν μὲν ἐκ γῆς στρατὸν ἡσυχάζοντα, πολλὰς δὲ ναῦς ἀτρέμα πρὸς τοῖς αἰγιαλοῖς ἐχούσας, αὐτῶν δὲ καὶ φίλων [6] ἀπαντήσεις καὶ φιλοφροσύνας. εἱστία δ’ Ἀντώνιος πρότερος, [7] καὶ τοῦτο τῇ ἀδελφῇ Καίσαρος δόντος. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὡμολόγητο Καίσαρα μὲν Ἀντωνίῳ δοῦναι δύο τάγματα πρὸς τὸν Παρθικὸν πόλεμον, Ἀντώνιον δὲ Καίσαρι χαλκεμβόλους ἑκατόν, Ὀκταουία τῶν ὡμολογημένων χωρὶς ᾐτήσατο τῷ μὲν ἀδελφῷ παρὰ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς εἴκοσι μυοπάρωνας, τῷ δ’ ἀνδρὶ παρὰ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ στρατιώτας [8] χιλίους. οὕτω δ’ ἀλλήλων διακριθέντες, ὁ μὲν εὐθὺς εἴχετο τοῦ πρὸς Πομπήιον πολέμου Σικελίας ἐφιέμενος, Ἀντώνιος δ’ Ὀκταουίαν μετὰ τῶν ἐξ ἐκείνης καὶ τοὺς ἐκ Φουλβίας παῖδας αὐτῷ παρακαταθέμενος, εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν ἀπεπέρασεν.

[36] [1] Εὕδουσα δ’ ἡ δεινὴ συμφορὰ χρόνον πολύν, ὁ Κλεοπάτρας ἔρως, δοκῶν κατευνάσθαι καὶ κατακεκηλῆσθαι τοῖς βελτίοσι λογισμοῖς, αὖθις ἀνέλαμπε καὶ ἀνεθάρρει Συρίᾳ [2] πλησιάζοντος αὐτοῦ. καὶ τέλος, ὥσπερ φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων (Phaedr. 254a) τὸ δυσπειθὲς καὶ ἀκόλαστον τῆς ψυχῆς ὑποζύγιον, ἀπολακτίσας τὰ καλὰ καὶ σωτήρια πάντα, Καπίτωνα Φοντήιον ἔπεμψεν ἄξοντα Κλεοπάτραν εἰς [3] Συρίαν. ἐλθούσῃ δὲ χαρίζεται καὶ προστίθησι μικρὸν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ὀλίγον, ἀλλὰ Φοινίκην, Κοίλην Συρίαν, Κύπρον, Κιλικίας πολλήν· ἔτι δὲ τῆς τ’ Ἰουδαίων τὴν τὸ βάλσαμον φέρουσαν καὶ τῆς Ναβαταίων Ἀραβίας ὅση πρὸς τὴν ἐκτὸς [4] ἀποκλίνει θάλασσαν. αὗται μάλιστα Ῥωμαίους ἠνίασαν αἱ δωρεαί. καίτοι πολλοῖς ἐχαρίζετο τετραρχίας καὶ βασιλείας ἐθνῶν μεγάλων ἰδιώταις οὖσι, πολλοὺς δ’ ἀφῃρεῖτο βασιλείας ὡς Ἀντίγονον τὸν Ἰουδαῖον, ὃν καὶ προαγαγὼν ἐπελέκισεν, οὐδενὸς πρότερον ἑτέρου βασιλέως οὕτω κολασθέντος. ἀλλὰ τὸ αἰσχρὸν ἦν τῶν Κλεοπάτρας [5] τιμῶν ἀνιαρότατον. ηὔξησε δὲ τὴν διαβολὴν παῖδας ἐξ αὐτῆς διδύμους ἀνελόμενος, καὶ προσαγορεύσας τὸν μὲν Ἀλέξανδρον, τὴν δὲ Κλεοπάτραν, ἐπίκλησιν δὲ τὸν μὲν [6] Ἥλιον, τὴν δὲ Σελήνην. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἀγαθὸς ὢν ἐγκαλλωπίσασθαι τοῖς αἰσχροῖς, ἔλεγε τῆς μὲν Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίας οὐ δι’ ὧν λαμβάνουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐν οἷς χαρίζονται φαίνεσθαι τὸ μέγεθος· διαδοχαῖς δὲ καὶ τεκνώσεσι πολλῶν βασιλέων [7] πλατύνεσθαι τὰς εὐγενείας. οὕτω γοῦν ὑφ’ Ἡρακλέους τεκνωθῆναι τὸν αὑτοῦ πρόγονον, οὐκ ἐν μιᾷ γαστρὶ θεμένου τὴν διαδοχὴν οὐδὲ νόμους Σολωνείους καὶ κυήσεως εὐθύνας δεδοικότος, ἀλλὰ τῇ φύσει πολλὰς γενῶν ἀρχὰς καὶ καταβολὰς ἀπολιπεῖν ἐφιέντος.

[37] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Φραάτου κτείναντος Ὀρώδην τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν κατασχόντος, ἄλλοι τε Πάρθων ἀπεδίδρασκον οὐκ ὀλίγοι, καὶ Μοναίσης ἀνὴρ ἐπιφανὴς καὶ δυνατὸς ἧκε φεύγων πρὸς Ἀντώνιον, τὰς μὲν ἐκείνου τύχας ταῖς Θεμιστοκλέους εἰκάσας, περιουσίαν δὲ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνην τοῖς Περσῶν βασιλεῦσι παραβαλών, ἐδωρήσατο τρεῖς πόλεις αὐτῷ, Λάρισσαν καὶ Ἀρέθουσαν καὶ Ἱερὰν πόλιν ἣν Βαμβύκην πρότερον [2] ἐκάλουν. τοῦ δὲ Πάρθων βασιλέως τῷ Μοναίσῃ δεξιὰν καταπέμψαντος, ἄσμενος αὐτὸν ἀπέστειλεν ὁ Ἀντώνιος, ἐξαπατᾶν μὲν ἐγνωκὼς τὸν Φραάτην ὡς εἰρήνης ἐσομένης, ἀξιῶν δὲ τὰς ἁλούσας ἐπὶ Κράσσου σημαίας καὶ [3] τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἀπολαβεῖν τοὺς περιόντας. αὐτὸς δὲ Κλεοπάτραν εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἀποπέμψας, ἐχώρει δι’ Ἀραβίας καὶ Ἀρμενίας, ὅπου συνελθούσης αὐτῷ τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ τῶν συμμάχων βασιλέων - πάμπολλοι δ’ ἦσαν οὗτοι, μέγιστος δὲ πάντων ὁ τῆς Ἀρμενίας Ἀρταουάσδης, ἑξακισχιλίους ἱππεῖς καὶ πεζοὺς ἑπτακισχιλίους παρέχων - ἐξήτασε [4] τὸν στρατόν. ἦσαν δὲ Ῥωμαίων μὲν αὐτῶν ἑξακισμύριοι πεζοί, καὶ τὸ Ῥωμαίοις συντεταγμένον ἱππικὸν Ἰβήρων καὶ Κελτῶν μύριοι, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἐθνῶν ἐγένοντο τρεῖς μυριάδες σὺν ἱππεῦσιν ὁμοῦ καὶ [5] ψιλοῖς. τοσαύτην μέντοι παρασκευὴν καὶ δύναμιν, ἣ καὶ τοὺς πέραν Βάκτρων Ἰνδοὺς ἐφόβησε καὶ πᾶσαν ἐκράδανε τὴν Ἀσίαν, ἀνόνητον αὐτῷ διὰ Κλεοπάτραν γενέσθαι [6] λέγουσι. σπεύδοντα γὰρ ἐκείνῃ συνδιαχειμάσαι, τὸν πόλεμον ἐξενεγκεῖν πρὸ καιροῦ καὶ πᾶσι χρήσασθαι τεταραγμένως, οὐκ ὄντα τῶν ἑαυτοῦ λογισμῶν, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ φαρμάκων τινῶν ἢ γοητείας παπταίνοντα πρὸς ἐκείνην ἀεί, καὶ πρὸς τὸ τάχιον ἐπανελθεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ πρὸς τὸ κρατῆσαι τῶν πολεμίων γενόμενον.

[38] [1] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν αὐτοῦ δέον ἐν Ἀρμενίᾳ διαχειμάσαι καὶ διαναπαῦσαι τὸν στρατόν, ὀκτακισχιλίων σταδίων ἀποτετρυμένον πορείᾳ, καὶ πρὶν ἢ κινεῖν ἐκ τῶν χειμαδίων Πάρθους ἔαρος ἀρχῇ Μηδίαν καταλαβεῖν, οὐκ ἠνέσχετο τὸν χρόνον, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἦγεν ἐν ἀριστερᾷ λαβὼν Ἀρμενίαν, καὶ τῆς Ἀτροπατηνῆς ἁψάμενος ἐπόρθει τὴν χώραν.

[2] ἔπειτα μηχανημάτων αὐτῷ πρὸς πολιορκίαν ἀναγκαίων τριακοσίαις ἁμάξαις παραπεμπομένων, ἐν οἷς καὶ κριὸς ἦν ὀγδοήκοντα ποδῶν μῆκος, ὧν οὐδὲν ἐνεχώρει διαφθαρὲν ἐπὶ καιροῦ πάλιν γενέσθαι διὰ τὸ τὴν ἄνω χώραν πᾶν ξύλον ἀγεννὲς εἰς μῆκος καὶ μαλθακὸν ἐκφέρειν, ἐπειγόμενος [3] ὡς ἐμπόδια τοῦ ταχύνειν ἀπέλιπε, φυλακήν τινα καὶ Στατιανὸν ἡγεμόνα τῶν ἁμαξῶν ἐπιστήσας, αὐτὸς δὲ Φραάτα μεγάλην πόλιν, ἐν ᾗ καὶ τέκνα καὶ γυναῖκες [4] ἦσαν τοῦ τῆς Μηδίας βασιλέως, ἐπολιόρκει. τῆς δὲ χρείας εὐθὺς ὅσον ἥμαρτε τὰς μηχανὰς ἀπολιπὼν ἐξελεγχούσης, ὁμόσε χωρῶν ἔχου πρὸς τὴν πόλιν χῶμα σχολῇ καὶ πολυπόνως [5] ἀνιστάμενον. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ καταβαίνων στρατιᾷ μεγάλῃ Φραάτης, ὡς ἤκουσε τὴν ἀπόλειψιν τῶν μηχανοφόρων ἁμαξῶν, ἔπεμψε τῶν ἱππέων πολλοὺς ἐπ’ αὐτάς, ὑφ’ ὧν περιληφθεὶς ὁ Στατιανὸς ἀποθνῄσκει μὲν αὐτός, [6] ἀποθνῄσκουσι δὲ μύριοι τῶν μετ’ αὐτοῦ. τὰς δὲ μηχανὰς ἑλόντες οἱ βάρβαροι διέφθειραν. εἷλον δὲ παμπόλλους, ἐν οἷς καὶ Πολέμων ἦν ὁ βασιλεύς.

[39] [1] Τοῦτο πάντας μὲν ὡς εἰκὸς ἠνίασε τοὺς περὶ Ἀντώνιον, ἀνελπίστως ἐν ἀρχῇ πληγέντας· ὁ δ’ Ἀρμένιος Ἀρταουάσδης ἀπογνοὺς τὰ Ῥωμαίων ᾤχετο τὴν αὑτοῦ στρατιὰν ἀναλαβών, καίπερ αἰτιώτατος τοῦ πολέμου γενόμενος. ἐπιφανέντων δὲ λαμπρῶς τοῖς πολιορκοῦσι τῶν [2] Πάρθων καὶ χρωμένων ἀπειλαῖς πρὸς ὕβριν, οὐ βουλόμενος Ἀντώνιος ἡσυχάζοντι τῷ στρατῷ τὸ δυσθυμοῦν καὶ καταπεπληγμένον ἐμμένειν καὶ αὔξεσθαι, δέκα τάγματα λαβὼν καὶ τρεῖς στρατηγίδας σπείρας ὁπλιτῶν, τοὺς δ’ ἱππεῖς ἅπαντας, ἐξήγαγε πρὸς σιτολογίαν, ἡγούμενος οὕτως ἂν ἐπισπασθέντων μάλιστα τῶν πολεμίων [3] ἐκ παρατάξεως μάχην γενέσθαι. προελθὼν δὲ μιᾶς ὁδὸν ἡμέρας, ὡς ἑώρα τοὺς Πάρθους κύκλῳ περιχεομένους καὶ προσπεσεῖν καθ’ ὁδὸν αὐτῷ ζητοῦντας, ἐξέθηκε μὲν τὸ τῆς μάχης σύμβολον ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, καθελὼν δὲ τὰς σκηνὰς ὡς οὐ μαχησόμενος, ἀλλ’ ἀπάξων, παρημείβετο τῶν βαρβάρων τὴν τάξιν οὖσαν μηνοειδῆ, κελεύσας, ὅταν οἱ πρῶτοι τοῖς ὁπλίταις ἐν ἐφικτῷ δοκῶσιν [4] εἶναι, τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἐναντίους εἰσελαύνειν. τοῖς δὲ Πάρθοις παρακεκριμένοις λόγου κρείττων ἡ τάξις ἐφαίνετο τῶν Ῥωμαίων, καὶ κατεθεῶντο παρεξιόντας ἐν διαστήμασιν ἴσοις ἀθορύβως καὶ σιωπῇ τοὺς ὑσσοὺς κραδαίνοντας.

[5] ὡς δὲ τὸ σημεῖον ἤρθη καὶ προσεφέροντο μετὰ κραυγῆς ἐπιστρέψαντες οἱ ἱππεῖς, τούτους μὲν ἠμύνοντο δεξάμενοι, καίπερ εὐθὺς ἐντὸς τοξεύματος γενομένους, τῶν δ’ ὁπλιτῶν συναπτόντων ἅμα βοῇ καὶ πατάγῳ τῶν ὅπλων, οἵ θ’ ἵπποι τοῖς Πάρθοις ἐξίσταντο ταρβοῦντες, [6] καὶ αὐτοὶ πρὶν εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν ἔφευγον. ὁ δ’ Ἀντώνιος ἐνέκειτο τῇ διώξει καὶ μεγάλας εἶχεν ἐλπίδας, ὡς τοῦ πολέμου τὸ σύμπαν ἢ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐκείνῃ τῇ μάχῃ διαπεπραγμένος.

[7] ἐπεὶ δὲ τῆς διώξεως γενομένης τοῖς μὲν πεζοῖς ἐπὶ πεντήκοντα στάδια, τοῖς δ’ ἱππεῦσιν ἐπὶ τρὶς τοσαῦτα, τοὺς πεπτωκότας τῶν πολεμίων καὶ τοὺς ἡλωκότας ἐπισκοποῦντες εὗρον αἰχμαλώτους μὲν τριάκοντα, νεκροὺς δ’ ὀγδοήκοντα μόνους, ἀπορία καὶ δυσθυμία πᾶσι παρέστη, δεινὸν εἶναι λογιζομένοις, εἰ νικῶντες μὲν οὕτως ὀλίγους κτενοῦσιν, ἡττώμενοι δὲ στερήσονται τοσούτων ὅσους [8] ἀπέβαλον περὶ ταῖς ἁμάξαις. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ συσκευασάμενοι τὴν ἐπὶ Φραάτων καὶ τοῦ στρατοπέδου προῆγον. ἐντυχόντες δὲ κατὰ τὴν ὁδὸν πρῶτον μὲν ὀλίγοις τῶν πολεμίων, ἔπειτα πλείοσι, τέλος δὲ πᾶσιν ὥσπερ ἀηττήτοις καὶ νεαλέσι, προκαλουμένοις καὶ προσβάλλουσι πανταχόθεν, μοχθηρῶς καὶ πολυπόνως ἀπεσώθησαν εἰς τὸ [9] στρατόπεδον. τῶν δὲ Μήδων ἐκδρομήν τινα ποιησαμένων ἐπὶ τὸ χῶμα καὶ τοὺς προμαχομένους φοβησάντων, ὀργισθεὶς ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐχρήσατο τῇ λεγομένῃ δεκατείᾳ πρὸς τοὺς ἀποδειλιάσαντας· διελὼν γὰρ εἰς δεκάδας τὸ πλῆθος, ἀφ’ ἑκάστης ἕνα τὸν λαχόντα κλήρῳ διέφθειρε, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις ἀντὶ πυρῶν ἐκέλευε κριθὰς μετρεῖσθαι.

[40] [1] Χαλεπὸς δ’ ἀμφοτέροις ἦν ὁ πόλεμος, καὶ τὸ μέλλον αὐτοῦ φοβερώτερον, Ἀντωνίῳ μὲν προσδοκῶντι λιμόν· οὐκέτι γὰρ ἦν ἄνευ τραυμάτων καὶ νεκρῶν πολλῶν [2] ἐπισιτίσασθαι· Φραάτης δὲ τοὺς Πάρθους ἐπιστάμενος πάντα μᾶλλον ἢ χειμῶνος ἔξω προσταλαιπωρεῖν καὶ θυραυλεῖν δυναμένους, ἐφοβεῖτο μὴ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐγκαρτερούντων καὶ παραμενόντων ἀπολίπωσιν αὐτόν, ἤδη τοῦ ἀέρος συνισταμένου μετὰ φθινοπωρινὴν ἰσημερίαν.

[3] δόλον οὖν συντίθησι τοιόνδε. Πάρθων οἱ γνωριμώτατοι περὶ τὰς σιτολογίας καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἀπαντήσεις μαλακώτερον τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις προσεφέροντο, λαμβάνειν τε παριέντες αὐτοῖς ἔνια καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐπαινοῦντες, ὡς πολεμικωτάτων ἀνδρῶν καὶ θαυμαζομένων ὑπὸ τοῦ σφετέρου [4] βασιλέως δικαίως. ἐκ δὲ τούτου προσελαύνοντες ἐγγυτέρω καὶ τοὺς ἵππους ἀτρέμα παραβάλλοντες, ἐλοιδόρουν τὸν Ἀντώνιον, ὅτι βουλομένῳ Φραάτῃ διαλλαγῆναι καὶ φείσασθαι τοιούτων ἀνδρῶν καὶ τοσούτων ἀφορμὴν οὐ δίδωσιν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς χαλεποὺς καὶ μεγάλους κάθηται πολεμίους ἀναμένων, λιμὸν καὶ χειμῶνα, δι’ ὧν ἔργον ἐστὶ καὶ προπεμπομένους ὑπὸ Πάρθων ἀποφεύγειν.

[5] πολλῶν δὲ ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἀναφερόντων, μαλασσόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς ἐλπίδος, ὅμως οὐ πρότερον ἐπεκηρυκεύσατο πρὸς τὸν Πάρθον, ἢ πυθέσθαι τῶν φιλοφρονουμένων ἐκείνων βαρβάρων, εἰ τοῦ βασιλέως [6] ταῦτα φρονοῦντος διαλέγοιντο. φασκόντων δὲ καὶ παρακαλούντων μὴ δεδιέναι μηδ’ ἀπιστεῖν, ἔπεμψέ τινας τῶν ἑταίρων, πάλιν τὰς σημαίας ἀξιῶν ἀπολαβεῖν καὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους, ὡς δὴ μὴ παντάπασιν ἀγαπᾶν τὸ σωθῆναι [7] καὶ διαφυγεῖν νομισθείη. τοῦ δὲ Πάρθου ταῦτα μὲν ἐᾶν κελεύοντος, ἀπιόντι δ’ εὐθὺς εἰρήνην καὶ ἀσφάλειαν εἶναι φήσαντος, ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις συσκευασάμενος ἀνεζεύγνυεν.

[8] ὢν δὲ καὶ δήμῳ πιθανὸς ἐντυχεῖν καὶ στρατὸν ἄγειν διὰ λόγου παρ’ ὁντινοῦν τῶν τότε πεφυκώς, ἐξέλιπεν αὐτὸς αἰσχύνῃ καὶ κατηφείᾳ τὸ παραθαρρῦναι τὸ πλῆθος, [9] Δομίτιον δ’ Ἀηνόβαρβον ἐκέλευε τοῦτο ποιῆσαι. καί τινες μὲν ἠγανάκτησαν ὡς ὑπερορώμενοι, τὸ δὲ πλεῖστον ἐπεκλάσθη καὶ συνεφρόνησε τὴν αἰτίαν· διὸ καὶ μᾶλλον ᾤοντο δεῖν ἀνταιδεῖσθαι καὶ πείθεσθαι τῷ στρατηγῷ.

[41] [1] Μέλλοντος δ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν αὐτὴν ὁδὸν ἄγειν ὀπίσω πεδινὴν καὶ ἄδενδρον οὖσαν, ἀνὴρ τῷ γένει Μάρδος, πολλὰ τοῖς Πάρθων ἤθεσιν ἐνωμιληκώς, ἤδη δὲ Ῥωμαίοις πιστὸς ἐν τῇ μάχῃ τῇ περὶ τὰς μηχανὰς γεγονώς, Ἀντωνίῳ προσελθὼν ἐκέλευε φεύγειν ἐν δεξιᾷ τῶν ὀρῶν ἐπιλαβόμενον, καὶ μὴ στρατὸν ὁπλίτην καὶ βαρὺν ἐν δρόμοις γυμνοῖς καὶ ἀναπεπταμένοις ὑποβάλλειν ἵππῳ τοσαύτῃ καὶ τοξεύμασιν, ὃ δὴ τεχνώμενον τὸν Φραάτην ἀναστῆσαι τῆς πολιορκίας αὐτὸν ὁμολογίαις φιλανθρώποις· [2] ἔσεσθαι δ’ αὐτὸς ἡγεμὼν ὁδοῦ βραχυτέρας καὶ [3] μᾶλλον εὐπορίαν τῶν ἐπιτηδείων ἐχούσης. ταῦτ’ ἀκούσας ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐβουλεύετο, καὶ Πάρθοις μὲν οὐκ ἐβούλετο δοκεῖν ἀπιστεῖν μετὰ σπονδάς, τὴν δὲ συντομίαν τῆς ὁδοῦ καὶ τὸ παρὰ κώμας οἰκουμένας ἔσεσθαι τὴν πορείαν [4] ἐπαινῶν, πίστιν ᾔτει τὸν Μάρδον. ὁ δὲ δῆσαι παρεῖχεν αὑτὸν ἄχρι οὗ καταστήσαι τὸν στρατὸν εἰς Ἀρμενίαν, καὶ [5] δεθεὶς ἡγεῖτο δύο ἡμέρας καθ’ ἡσυχίαν. τῇ δὲ τρίτῃ παντάπασι τοὺς Πάρθους ἀπεγνωκότος Ἀντωνίου καὶ βαδίζοντος ἀνειμένως διὰ τὸ θαρρεῖν, ἰδὼν ὁ Μάρδος ἀπόχωσιν ἐμβολῆς ποταμοῦ νεωστὶ διεσπασμένην καὶ τὸ ῥεῦμα πολὺ πρὸς τὴν ὁδὸν ᾗ πορευτέον ἦν ἐκχεόμενον, συνῆκεν ὅτι τῶν Πάρθων ἔργον εἴη τοῦτο, δυσκολίας ἕνεκα καὶ διατριβῆς ἐμποδὼν αὐτοῖς τὸν ποταμὸν τιθεμένων, καὶ τὸν Ἀντώνιον ὁρᾶν ἐκέλευε καὶ προσέχειν, ὡς [6] τῶν πολεμίων ἐγγὺς ὄντων. ἄρτι δ’ αὐτοῦ καθιστάντος εἰς τάξιν τὰ ὅπλα καὶ δι’ αὐτῶν τοῖς ἀκοντισταῖς καὶ σφενδονήταις ἐκδρομὴν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους παρασκευάζοντος, ἐπεφάνησαν οἱ Πάρθοι καὶ περιήλαυνον, ὡς κυκλωσόμενοι καὶ συνταράξοντες πανταχόθεν τὸν στρατόν.

[7] ἐκδραμόντων δὲ τῶν ψιλῶν ἐπ’ αὐτούς, πολλὰς μὲν δόντες ἀπὸ τόξων, οὐκ ἐλάττονας δὲ ταῖς μολυβδίσι καὶ [8] τοῖς ἀκοντίοις πληγὰς λαβόντες, ἀνεχώρουν. εἶτ’ ἐπῆγον αὖθις, ἄχρι οὗ συστρέψαντες οἱ Κελτοὶ τοὺς ἵππους ἐνέβαλον καὶ διεσκέδασαν αὐτούς, οὐκέτι τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης †ὑπόδειγμα γενομένους.

[42] [1] Ἐκ τούτου μαθὼν ὁ Ἀντώνιος ὃ ποιεῖν ἔδει, πολλοῖς ἀκοντισταῖς καὶ σφενδονήταις οὐ μόνον τὴν οὐραγίαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς πλευρὰς ἑκατέρας στομώσας, ἐν πλαισίῳ τὸν στρατὸν ἦγε, καὶ τοῖς ἱππόταις εἴρητο προσβάλλοντας τρέπεσθαι, τρεψαμένους δὲ μὴ πόρρω διώκειν, ὥστε τοὺς Πάρθους τὰς ἐφεξῆς τέσσαρας ἡμέρας οὐθὲν πλέον δράσαντας ἢ παθόντας ἀμβλυτέρους γενέσθαι καὶ τὸν χειμῶνα ποιουμένους πρόφασιν ἀπιέναι διανοεῖσθαι.

[2] Τῇ δὲ πέμπτῃ Φλαούϊος Γάλλος, ἀνὴρ πολεμικὸς καὶ δραστήριος ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίας τεταγμένος, ᾔτησεν Ἀντώνιον προσελθὼν πλείονας ψιλοὺς ἀπ’ οὐρᾶς καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ στόματος ἱππέων τινάς, ὡς μέγα κατόρθωμα ποιήσων.

[3] δόντος δέ, προσβάλλοντας ἀνέκοπτε τοὺς πολεμίους, οὐχ ὡς πρότερον ὑπάγων ἅμα πρὸς τοὺς ὁπλίτας καὶ ἀναχωρῶν, ἀλλ’ ὑφιστάμενος καὶ συμπλεκόμενος παραβολώτερον.

[4] ὁρῶντες δ’ αὐτὸν οἱ τῆς οὐραγίας ἡγεμόνες ἀπορρηγνύμενον, ἐκάλουν πέμποντες· ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἐπείθετο. Τίτιον δέ φασι τὸν ταμίαν καὶ τῶν σημαιῶν ἐπιλαβόμενον στρέφειν ὀπίσω καὶ λοιδορεῖν τὸν Γάλλον ὡς ἀπολλύντα [5] πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας. ἀντιλοιδοροῦντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ διακελευομένου τοῖς περὶ αὑτὸν μένειν, ὁ μὲν Τίτιος ἀπεχώρει· τὸν δὲ Γάλλον ὠθούμενον εἰς τοὺς κατὰ στόμα λανθάνουσι πολλοὶ περισχόντες ἐκ τῶν ὄπισθεν.

[6] βαλλόμενος δὲ πανταχόθεν ἐκάλει πέμπων ἀρωγήν. οἱ δὲ τοὺς ὁπλίτας ἄγοντες, ὧν καὶ Κανίδιος ἦν, ἀνὴρ παρ’ Ἀντωνίῳ δυνάμενος μέγιστον, οὐ μικρὰ δοκοῦσι [7] διαμαρτεῖν. δέον γὰρ ἀθρόαν ἐπιστρέψαι τὴν φάλαγγα, πέμποντες κατ’ ὀλίγους ἐπιβοηθοῦντας, καὶ πάλιν ἡττωμένων τούτων ἑτέρους ἀποστέλλοντες, ἔλαθον ὀλίγου δεῖν ἥττης καὶ φυγῆς ὅλον ἀναπλήσαντες τὸ στρατόπεδον, [8] εἰ μὴ ταχὺ μὲν αὐτὸς Ἀντώνιος μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἀπὸ τοῦ στόματος ἦγεν ὑπαντιάζων, ταχὺ δὲ τὸ τρίτον τάγμα διὰ τῶν φευγόντων ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους ὠσάμενον ἔσχε τοῦ πρόσω διώκειν.

[43] [1] Ἀπέθανον δὲ τρισχιλίων οὐκ ἐλάττους, ἐκομίσθησαν δ’ ἐπὶ σκηνὰς τραυματίαι πεντακισχίλιοι· καὶ Γάλλος ἦν ἐν τούτοις, τέτταρσιν ἐναντίοις διαπεπαρμένος [2] τοξεύμασιν. ἀλλ’ οὗτος μὲν ἐκ τῶν τραυμάτων οὐκ ἀνήνεγκε, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους περιιὼν ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐπεσκόπει καὶ παρεθάρρυνε δεδακρυμένος καὶ περιπαθῶν. οἱ δὲ φαιδροὶ τῆς δεξιᾶς αὐτοῦ λαμβανόμενοι, παρεκάλουν ἀπιόντα θεραπεύειν αὑτὸν καὶ μὴ κακοπαθεῖν, αὐτοκράτορα καλοῦντες καὶ σῴζεσθαι λέγοντες, ἂν ἐκεῖνος ὑγιαίνῃ.

[3] Καθόλου μὲν γὰρ οὔτ’ ἀλκαῖς οὔθ’ ὑπομοναῖς οὐθ’ ἡλικίᾳ λαμπρότερον ἄλλος αὐτοκράτωρ στρατὸν ἐκείνου [4] δοκεῖ συναγαγεῖν ἐν τοῖς τότε χρόνοις· ἡ δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν αἰδὼς τὸν ἡγεμόνα καὶ πειθαρχία μετ’ εὐνοίας, καὶ τὸ πάντας ὁμαλῶς, ἐνδόξους ἀδόξους, ἄρχοντας ἰδιώτας, τὴν παρ’ Ἀντωνίῳ τιμὴν καὶ χάριν μᾶλλον αἱρεῖσθαι τῆς σωτηρίας καὶ τῆς ἀσφαλείας, οὐδὲ τοῖς πάλαι Ῥωμαίοις [5] ἀπέλιπεν ὑπερβολήν. τούτου δ’ αἰτίαι πλείονες ἦσαν, ὡς προειρήκαμεν (cap. 4)· εὐγένεια, λόγου δύναμις, ἁπλότης, τὸ φιλόδωρον καὶ μεγαλόδωρον, ἥ τε περὶ τὰς [6] παιδιὰς καὶ τὰς ὁμιλίας εὐτραπελία. τότε δὲ καὶ συμπονῶν καὶ συναλγῶν τοῖς κακοπαθοῦσι καὶ μεταδιδοὺς οὗ τις δεηθείη, προθυμοτέρους τῶν ἐρρωμένων τοὺς νοσοῦντας καὶ τετρωμένους ἐποίησε.

[44] [1] Τοὺς μέντοι πολεμίους ἀπαγορεύοντας ἤδη καὶ κάμνοντας οὕτως ἐπῆρεν ἡ νίκη, καὶ τοσοῦτον τῶν Ῥωμαίων κατεφρόνησαν, ὥστε καὶ νυκτὸς ἐπαυλίσασθαι τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, προσδοκῶντες αὐτίκα μάλα σκηνὰς ἐρήμους [2] καὶ χρήματα διαρπάσειν ἀποδιδρασκόντων. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ πολὺ πλείονες ἐπηθροίζοντο, καὶ λέγονται τετρακισμυρίων οὐκ ἐλάττονες ἱππόται γενέσθαι, βασιλέως καὶ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν ἀεὶ τεταγμένους ὡς ἐπὶ σαφεῖ καὶ βεβαίῳ κατορθώματι πέμψαντος· αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ οὐδεμιᾷ [3] μάχῃ παρέτυχεν. Ἀντώνιος δὲ βουλόμενος προσαγορεῦσαι τοὺς στρατιώτας, ᾔτησε φαιὸν ἱμάτιον, ὡς οἰκτρότερος ὀφθείη. τῶν δὲ φίλων ἐναντιωθέντων, ἐν τῇ στρατηγικῇ φοινικίδι προελθὼν ἐδημηγόρησε, τοὺς μὲν νενικηκότας [4] ἐπαινῶν, ὀνειδίζων δὲ τοὺς φυγόντας. τῶν δ’ οἱ μὲν παρεκελεύοντο θαρρεῖν, οἱ δ’ ἀπολογούμενοι σφᾶς αὐτοὺς παρεῖχον, εἴτε βούλοιτο δεκατεύειν εἴτ’ ἄλλῳ τρόπῳ κολάζειν· μόνον παύσασθαι δυσφοροῦντα καὶ [5] λυπούμενον ἐδέοντο. πρὸς ταῦτα τὰς χεῖρας ἀνατείνας ἐπεύξατο τοῖς θεοῖς, εἴ τις ἄρα νέμεσις τὰς πρόσθεν εὐτυχίας αὐτοῦ μέτεισιν, εἰς αὐτὸν ἐλθεῖν, τῷ δ’ ἄλλῳ στρατῷ σωτηρίαν δοῦναι καὶ νίκην.

[45] [1] Τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ φραξάμενοι βέλτιον προῆγον, καὶ [2] τοῖς Πάρθοις ἐπιχειροῦσι πολὺς ἀπήντα παράλογος. οἰόμενοι γὰρ ἐφ’ ἁρπαγὴν καὶ λεηλασίαν, οὐ μάχην, ἐλαύνειν, εἶτα πολλοῖς βέλεσιν ἐντυγχάνοντες, ἐρρωμένους δὲ καὶ νεαλεῖς ταῖς προθυμίαις ὁρῶντες, αὖθις ἐξέκαμνον.

[3] ἐπεὶ δὲ καταβαίνουσιν αὐτοῖς ἀπὸ λόφων τινῶν ἐπικλινῶν ἐπέθεντο καὶ βραδέως ὑπεξάγοντας ἔβαλλον, ἐπιστρέψαντες οἱ θυρεοφόροι συνέκλεισαν εἴσω τῶν ὅπλων τοὺς ψιλούς, αὐτοὶ δὲ καθέντες εἰς γόνυ προὐβάλοντο τοὺς θυρεούς· οἱ δ’ ὄπισθεν ὑπερέσχον αὐτῶν τὰ ὅπλα, κἀκείνων [4] ὁμοίως ἕτεροι. τὸ δὲ σχῆμα παραπλήσιον ἐρέψει γινόμενον ὄψιν τε θεατρικὴν παρέχει, καὶ τῶν προβλημάτων στεγανώτατόν ἐστι πρὸς τοὺς ὀιστοὺς ἀπολισθάνοντας.

[5] οἱ μέντοι Πάρθοι τὴν εἰς γόνυ κλίσιν τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἀπαγόρευσιν ἡγούμενοι καὶ κάματον εἶναι, τὰ μὲν τόξα κατέθεντο, τοὺς δὲ κοντοὺς διαλαβόντες ἐγγὺς [6] προσέμειξαν. οἱ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι συναλαλάξαντες ἐξαίφνης ἀνέθορον, καὶ τοῖς ὑσσοῖς παίοντες ἐκ χειρὸς ἔκτεινάν τε τοὺς πρώτους καὶ τροπὴν ἔθεντο τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων.

[7] ἐγίνετο δὲ ταῦτα καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις ἡμέραις, ἐπὶ μικρὸν ἀνυόντων τῆς ὁδοῦ. καὶ λιμὸς ἥπτετο τοῦ στρατοῦ, σῖτόν τε βραχὺν καὶ διὰ μάχης ποριζομένου καὶ τῶν πρὸς ἀλετὸν σκευῶν οὐκ εὐποροῦντος. τὰ γὰρ πολλὰ κατελείπετο, τῶν μὲν ἀποθνῃσκόντων ὑποζυγίων, τῶν δὲ [8] τοὺς νοσοῦντας καὶ τραυματίας φερόντων. λέγεται δὲ χοῖνιξ Ἀττικὴ πυρῶν πεντήκοντα δραχμῶν ὤνιος γενέσθαι, τοὺς δὲ κριθίνους ἄρτους πρὸς ἀργύριον ἱστάντες [9] ἀπεδίδοντο. τραπόμενοι δὲ πρὸς λάχανα καὶ ῥίζας, ὀλίγοις μὲν ἐνετύγχανον τῶν συνήθων, ἀναγκαζόμενοι δὲ πειρᾶσθαι καὶ τῶν ἀγεύστων πρότερον, ἥψαντό τινος πόας [10] ἐπὶ θάνατον διὰ μανίας ἀγούσης. ὁ γὰρ φαγὼν οὐδὲν ἐμέμνητο τῶν ἄλλων οὐδ’ ἐγίνωσκεν, ἓν δ’ ἔργον εἶχε κινεῖν καὶ στρέφειν πάντα λίθον, ὥς τι μεγάλης σπουδῆς [11] ἄξιον διαπραττόμενος. ἦν δὲ μεστὸν τὸ πεδίον κεκυφότων χαμᾶζε καὶ τοὺς λίθους περιορυττόντων καὶ μεθιστάντων· τέλος δὲ χολὴν ἐμοῦντες ἔθνῃσκον, ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ μόνον [12] ἀντιπαθές, οἶνος, ἐξέλιπε. φθειρομένων δὲ πολλῶν καὶ τῶν Πάρθων οὐκ ἀφισταμένων, πολλάκις ἀναφθέγξασθαι τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἱστοροῦσιν ὦ μύριοι, θαυμάζοντα τοὺς μετὰ Ξενοφῶντος, ὅτι καὶ πλείονα καταβαίνοντες ὁδὸν ἐκ τῆς Βαβυλωνίας καὶ πολλαπλασίοις μαχόμενοι πολεμίοις ἀπεσώθησαν.

[46] [1] Οἱ δὲ Πάρθοι διαπλέξαι μὲν οὐ δυνάμενοι τὸν στρατὸν οὐδὲ διασπάσαι τὴν τάξιν, ἤδη δὲ πολλάκις ἡττημένοι καὶ πεφευγότες, αὖθις εἰρηνικῶς ἀνεμείγνυντο [2] τοῖς ἐπὶ χιλὸν ἢ σῖτον προερχομένοις, καὶ τῶν τόξων τὰς νευρὰς ἐπιδεικνύντες ἀνειμένας ἔλεγον, ὡς αὐτοὶ μὲν ἀπίασιν ὀπίσω καὶ τοῦτο ποιοῦνται πέρας ἀμύνης, ὀλίγοι δὲ Μήδων ἀκολουθήσουσιν ἔτι μιᾶς ἢ δευτέρας ὁδὸν ἡμέρας, οὐδὲν παρενοχλοῦντες, ἀλλὰ τὰς ἀπωτέρω [3] κώμας φυλάττοντες. τούτοις τοῖς λόγοις ἀσπασμοί τε καὶ φιλοφροσύναι προσῆσαν, ὥστε πάλιν τοὺς Ῥωμαίους εὐθαρσεῖς γενέσθαι, καὶ τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἀκούσαντα τῶν πεδίων ἐφίεσθαι μᾶλλον, ἀνύδρου λεγομένης εἶναι τῆς [4] διὰ τῶν ὀρῶν. οὕτω δὲ ποιεῖν μέλλοντος, ἧκεν ἀνὴρ ἐπὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον ἐκ τῶν πολεμίων ὄνομα Μιθριδάτης, ἀνεψιὸς Μοναίσου τοῦ παρ’ Ἀντωνίῳ γενομένου καὶ τὰς τρεῖς πόλεις δωρεὰν λαβόντος. ἠξίου δ’ αὐτῷ προσελθεῖν τινα τῶν Παρθιστὶ διαλεχθῆναι δυναμένων ἢ [5] Συριστί. καὶ προσελθόντος Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Ἀντιοχέως, ὃς ἦν Ἀντωνίῳ συνήθης, ὑπειπὼν ὃς εἴη, καὶ Μοναίσῃ τὴν χάριν ἀνάπτων, ἠρώτησε τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, εἰ λόφους [6] συνεχεῖς καὶ ὑψηλοὺς ὁρᾷ πρόσωθεν. φήσαντος δ’ ὁρᾶν, ὑπ’ ἐκείνοις ἔφη πανστρατιᾷ Πάρθοι λοχῶσιν ὑμᾶς. τὰ γὰρ μεγάλα πεδία τῶν λόφων τούτων ἐξήρτηται, καὶ προσδοκῶσιν ὑμᾶς ἐξηπατημένους ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἐνταῦθα [7] τρέψεσθαι, τὴν διὰ τῶν ὀρῶν ἀπολιπόντας. ἐκείνη μὲν οὖν ἔχει δίψος καὶ πόνον ὑμῖν συνήθη, ταύτῃ δὲ χωρῶν Ἀντώνιος ἴστω τὰς Κράσσου τύχας αὐτὸν ἐκδεχομένας.

[47] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὕτω φράσας ἀπῆλθεν· Ἀντώνιος δ’ ἀκούσας καὶ διαταραχθεὶς συνεκάλει τοὺς φίλους καὶ τὸν ἡγεμόνα [2] τῆς ὁδοῦ Μάρδον, οὐδ’ αὐτὸν ἄλλως φρονοῦντα. καὶ γὰρ καὶ ἄνευ πολεμίων ἐγίνωσκε τὰς διὰ τῶν πεδίων ἀνοδίας καὶ πλάνας χαλεπὰς καὶ δυστεκμάρτους οὔσας, τὴν δὲ τραχεῖαν ἀπέφαινεν οὐδὲν ἄλλο δυσχερὲς ἢ μιᾶς [3] ἡμέρας ἀνυδρίαν ἔχουσαν. οὕτω δὴ τραπόμενος ταύτην ἦγε νυκτός, ὕδωρ ἐπιφέρεσθαι κελεύσας. ἀγγείων δ’ ἦν ἀπορία τοῖς πολλοῖς· διὸ καὶ τὰ κράνη πιμπλάντες ὕδατος [4] ἐκόμιζον, οἱ δὲ διφθέραις ὑπολαμβάνοντες. ἤδη δὲ προχωρῶν ἀγγέλλεται τοῖς Πάρθοις· καὶ παρὰ τὸ εἰωθὸς ἔτι νυκτὸς ἐδίωκον. ἡλίου δ’ ἀνίσχοντος ἥπτοντο τῶν [5] ἐσχάτων, ἀγρυπνίᾳ καὶ πόνῳ κακῶς διακειμένων· τεσσαράκοντα γὰρ καὶ διακοσίους ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ σταδίους κατηνύκεισαν· καὶ τὸ μὴ προσδοκῶσιν οὕτω ταχέως ἐπελθεῖν τοὺς πολεμίους ἀθυμίαν παρεῖχε, καὶ τὸ δίψος δ’ ἐπέτεινεν [6] ὁ ἀγών· ἀμυνόμενοι γὰρ ἅμα προῆγον. οἱ δὲ πρῶτοι βαδίζοντες ἐντυγχάνουσι ποταμῷ, ψυχρὸν μὲν ἔχοντι καὶ διαυγές, ἁλμυρὸν δὲ καὶ φαρμακῶδες ὕδωρ, ὃ ποθὲν εὐθὺς ὀδύνας ἑλκομένης τῆς κοιλίας καὶ τοῦ δίψους ἀναφλεγομένου [7] παρεῖχε. καὶ ταῦτα τοῦ Μάρδου προλέγοντος, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐκβιαζόμενοι τοὺς ἀνείργοντας ἔπινον. Ἀντώνιος δὲ περιιὼν ἐδεῖτο βραχὺν ἐγκαρτερῆσαι χρόνον· ἕτερον γὰρ οὐ πόρρω ποταμὸν εἶναι πότιμον, εἶτα τὴν λοιπὴν ἄφιππον καὶ τραχεῖαν, ὥστε παντάπασιν ἀποστρέψεσθαι [8] τοὺς πολεμίους. ἅμα δὲ καὶ τοὺς μαχομένους ἀνεκαλεῖτο καὶ κατάζευξιν ἐσήμαινεν, ὡς σκιᾶς γοῦν μεταλάβοιεν οἱ στρατιῶται.

[48] [1] Πηγνυμένων οὖν τῶν σκηνῶν, καὶ τῶν Πάρθων εὐθὺς ὥσπερ εἰώθεισαν ἀπαλλαττομένων, ἧκεν αὖθις ὁ Μιθριδάτης, καὶ τοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου προελθόντος παρῄνει μικρὸν ἡσυχάσαντα τὸν στρατὸν ἀνιστάναι καὶ σπεύδειν ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμόν, ὡς οὐ διαβησομένων Πάρθων, ἄχρι δ’ [2] ἐκείνου διωξόντων. ταῦτ’ ἀπαγγείλας πρὸς Ἀντώνιον ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐκφέρει παρ’ αὐτοῦ χρυσᾶ ποτήρια πάμπολλα καὶ φιάλας, ὧν ἐκεῖνος ὅσα τῇ ἐσθῆτι κατακρύψαι δυνατὸς [3] ἦν λαβὼν ἀπήλαυνεν. ἔτι δ’ ἡμέρας οὔσης ἀναζεύξαντες ἐπορεύοντο, τῶν πολεμίων οὐ παρενοχλούντων, αὐτοὶ δ’ ἑαυτοῖς νύκτα χαλεπωτάτην πασῶν ἐκείνην καὶ φοβερωτάτην [4] ἀπεργασάμενοι. τοὺς γὰρ ἔχοντας ἀργύριον ἢ χρυσίον ἀποκτιννύντες ἐσύλων, καὶ τὰ χρήματα τῶν ὑποζυγίων ἀφήρπαζον· τέλος δὲ τοῖς Ἀντωνίου σκευοφόροις ἐπιχειρήσαντες, ἐκπώματα καὶ τραπέζας πολυτελεῖς κατέκοπτον [5] καὶ διενέμοντο. θορύβου δὲ πολλοῦ καὶ πλάνου τὸ στράτευμα πᾶν ἐπέχοντος - ᾤοντο γὰρ ἐπιπεπτωκότων τῶν πολεμίων τροπὴν γεγονέναι καὶ διασπασμόν - , Ἀντώνιος καλέσας ἕνα τῶν δορυφορούντων αὐτὸν ἀπελευθέρων ὄνομα Ῥάμνον, ὥρκωσεν ὅταν κελεύσῃ τὸ ξίφος αὐτοῦ διεῖναι καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποτεμεῖν, ὡς μήθ’ ἁλῴη ζῶν [6] ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων μήτε γνωσθείη τεθνηκώς. ἐκδακρυσάντων δὲ τῶν φίλων, ὁ Μάρδος ἐθάρρυνε τὸν Ἀντώνιον, ὡς ἐγγὺς ὄντος τοῦ ποταμοῦ· καὶ γὰρ αὔρα τις ἀπορρέουσα νοτερὰ καὶ ψυχρότερος ἀὴρ ἀπαντῶν ἡδίω τὴν ἀναπνοὴν ἐποίει, καὶ τὸν χρόνον ἔφη τῆς πορείας οὕτω συμπεραίνειν τὸ μέτρον· οὐκέτι γὰρ ἦν πολὺ τὸ [7] λειπόμενον τῆς νυκτός. ἅμα δ’ ἀπήγγελλον ἕτεροι τὸν θόρυβον ἐκ τῆς πρὸς αὑτοὺς ἀδικίας καὶ πλεονεξίας εἶναι. διὸ καὶ καταστῆσαι τὸ πλῆθος εἰς τάξιν ἐκ τῆς πλάνης καὶ τοῦ διασπασμοῦ βουλόμενος, ἐκέλευσε σημαίνειν κατάζευξιν.

[49] [1] Ἤδη δ’ ὑπέλαμπεν ἡμέρα, καὶ τοῦ στρατοῦ κόσμον ἀρχομένου τινὰ λαμβάνειν καὶ ἡσυχίαν, προσέπιπτε τοῖς τελευταίοις τὰ τῶν Πάρθων τοξεύματα, καὶ μάχης σημεῖον ἐδόθη τοῖς ψιλοῖς. οἱ δ’ ὁπλῖται πάλιν ὁμοίως κατερέψαντες ἀλλήλους τοῖς θυρεοῖς, ὑπέμενον τοὺς βάλλοντας, [2] ἐγγὺς οὐ τολμῶντας συνελθεῖν. ὑπαγόντων δὲ κατὰ μικρὸν οὕτως τῶν πρώτων, ὁ ποταμὸς ἐφάνη, καὶ τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἐπ’ αὐτῷ παρατάξας Ἀντώνιος ἐναντίους τοῖς πολεμίοις, διεβίβαζε τοὺς ἀσθενεῖς πρώτους. ἤδη δὲ καὶ τοῖς μαχομένοις [3] ἄδεια καὶ ῥᾳστώνη τοῦ πιεῖν ἦν. ὡς γὰρ εἶδον οἱ Πάρθοι τὸν ποταμόν, τάς τε νευρὰς ἀνῆκαν καὶ θαρροῦντας ἐκέλευον διαπερᾶν τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, πολλὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν αὐτῶν ἐγκωμιάζοντες. διαβάντες οὖν καθ’ ἡσυχίαν αὑτοὺς ἀνελάμβανον, εἶθ’ ὥδευον οὐ πάνυ τι τοῖς Πάρθοις πιστεύοντες.

[4] Ἕκτῃ δ’ ἡμέρᾳ μετὰ τὴν τελευταίαν μάχην ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀράξην ποταμὸν ἧκον, ὁρίζοντα Μηδίαν καὶ Ἀρμενίαν. ἐφάνη δὲ καὶ βάθει καὶ τραχύτητι χαλεπός, καὶ λόγος διῆλθεν ἐνεδρεύοντας αὐτόθι τοὺς πολεμίους ἐπιθήσεσθαι [5] διαβαίνουσιν αὐτοῖς. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀσφαλῶς διαπεράσαντες ἐπέβησαν τῆς Ἀρμενίας, ὥσπερ ἄρτι γῆν ἐκείνην ἰδόντες ἐκ πελάγους, προσεκύνουν καὶ πρὸς δάκρυα καὶ [6] περιβολὰς ἀλλήλων ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ἐτρέποντο. προϊόντες δὲ διὰ χώρας εὐδαίμονος καὶ χρώμενοι πᾶσιν ἀνέδην ἐκ πολλῆς ἀπορίας, ὑδερικοῖς καὶ κοιλιακοῖς περιέπιπτον ἀρρωστήμασιν.

[50] [1] Ἐνταῦθα ποιησάμενος ἐξέτασιν αὐτῶν Ἀντώνιος, εὗρε δισμυρίους πεζοὺς καὶ τετρακισχιλίους ἱππεῖς ἀπολωλότας, οὐ πάντας ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ ἡμίσεις [2] νοσήσαντας. ὥδευσαν μὲν οὖν ἀπὸ Φραάτων ἡμέρας ἑπτὰ καὶ εἴκοσι, μάχαις δ’ ὀκτὼ καὶ δέκα Πάρθους ἐνίκησαν, αἱ δὲ νῖκαι κράτος οὐκ εἶχον οὐδὲ βεβαιότητα, [3] μικρὰς ποιουμένων καὶ ἀτελεῖς τὰς διώξεις. ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα κατάδηλος ἦν Ἀρταουάσδης ὁ Ἀρμένιος Ἀντώνιον [4] ἐκείνου τοῦ πολέμου τὸ τέλος ἀφελόμενος. εἰ γὰρ οὓς ἀπήγαγεν ἐκ Μηδίας ἱππεῖς ἑξακισχίλιοι καὶ μύριοι παρῆσαν, ἐσκευασμένοι παραπλησίως Πάρθοις καὶ συνήθεις μάχεσθαι πρὸς αὐτούς, Ῥωμαίων μὲν μαχομένους τρεπομένων, ἐκείνων δὲ φεύγοντας αἱρούντων, οὐκ ἂν ὑπῆρξεν αὐτοῖς ἡττωμένοις ἀναφέρειν καὶ ἀνατολμᾶν [5] τοσαυτάκις. ἅπαντες οὖν ὀργῇ παρώξυνον ἐπὶ τὴν τιμωρίαν τοῦ Ἀρμενίου τὸν Ἀντώνιον. ὁ δὲ λογισμῷ χρησάμενος, οὔτ’ ἐμέμψατο τὴν προδοσίαν οὔτ’ ἀφεῖλε τῆς συνήθους φιλοφροσύνης καὶ τιμῆς πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀσθενὴς τῷ στρατῷ καὶ ἄπορος γεγονώς.

[6] Ὕστερον μέντοι πάλιν ἐμβαλὼν εἰς Ἀρμενίαν, καὶ πολλαῖς ὑποσχέσεσι καὶ προκλήσεσι πείσας αὐτὸν ἐλθεῖν εἰς χεῖρας, συνέλαβε καὶ δέσμιον καταγαγὼν εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν [7] ἐθριάμβευσεν. ᾧ μάλιστα Ῥωμαίους ἐλύπησεν, ὡς τὰ καλὰ καὶ σεμνὰ τῆς πατρίδος Αἰγυπτίοις διὰ Κλεοπάτραν χαριζόμενος. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον ἐπράχθη.

[51] [1] Τότε δὲ διὰ πολλοῦ χειμῶνος ἤδη καὶ νιφετῶν ἀπαύστων ἐπειγόμενος, ὀκτακισχιλίους ἀπέβαλε καθ’ [2] ὁδόν. αὐτὸς δὲ καταβὰς ὀλιγοστὸς ἐπὶ θάλασσαν, ἐν χωρίῳ τινὶ μεταξὺ Βηρυτοῦ κειμένῳ καὶ Σιδῶνος - Λευκὴ κώμη [3] καλεῖται - Κλεοπάτραν περιέμενε· καὶ βραδυνούσης ἀδημονῶν ἤλυε, ταχὺ μὲν εἰς τὸ πίνειν καὶ μεθύσκεσθαι διδοὺς ἑαυτόν, οὐ καρτερῶν δὲ κατακείμενος, ἀλλὰ μεταξὺ πινόντων ἀνιστάμενος καὶ ἀναπηδῶν πολλάκις ἐπὶ σκοπήν, ἕως ἐκείνη κατέπλευσεν ἐσθῆτα πολλὴν καὶ χρήματα [4] κομίζουσα τοῖς στρατιώταις. εἰσὶ δ’ οἱ λέγοντες ὅτι τὴν μὲν ἐσθῆτα παρ’ ἐκείνης λαβών, τὸ δ’ ἀργύριον ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων διένειμεν ὡς ἐκείνης διδούσης.

[52] [1] Τῷ δὲ βασιλεῖ τῶν Μήδων γίνεται διαφορὰ πρὸς Φραάτην τὸν Πάρθον, ἀρξαμένη μὲν ὥς φασιν ὑπὲρ τῶν Ῥωμαϊκῶν λαφύρων, ὑπόνοιαν δὲ τῷ Μήδῳ καὶ φόβον [2] ἀφαιρέσεως τῆς ἀρχῆς παρασχοῦσα. διὸ καὶ πέμπων ἐκάλει τὸν Ἀντώνιον, ἐπαγγελλόμενος συμπολεμήσειν μετὰ [3] τῆς ἑαυτοῦ δυνάμεως. γενόμενος οὖν ἐπ’ ἐλπίδος μεγάλης ὁ Ἀντώνιος - ᾧ γὰρ ἐδόκει μόνῳ τοῦ κατεργάσασθαι Πάρθους ἀπολιπεῖν, ἱππέων πολλῶν καὶ τοξοτῶν ἐνδεὴς ἐλθών, τοῦθ’ ἑώρα προσγινόμενον αὐτῷ χαριζομένῳ μᾶλλον ἢ δεομένῳ - παρεσκευάζετο δι’ Ἀρμενίας αὖθις ἀναβαίνειν καὶ συγγενόμενος τῷ Μήδῳ περὶ ποταμὸν Ἀράξην οὕτω κινεῖν τὸν πόλεμον.

[53] [1] Ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ βουλομένης Ὀκταουίας πλεῦσαι πρὸς Ἀντώνιον, ἐπέτρεψε Καῖσαρ, ὡς οἱ πλείους λέγουσιν οὐκ ἐκείνῃ χαριζόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὅπως περιυβρισθεῖσα καὶ καταμεληθεῖσα πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον αἰτίαν εὐπρεπῆ παράσχοι.

[2] γενομένη δ’ ἐν Ἀθήναις, ἐδέξατο γράμματα παρ’ Ἀντωνίου, κελεύοντος αὐτόθι προσμένειν καὶ τὰ περὶ τὴν ἀνάβασιν δηλοῦντος. ἡ δὲ καίπερ ἀχθομένη καὶ νοοῦσα τὴν πρόφασιν, ὅμως ἔγραψε πυνθανομένη ποῦ κελεύει [3] πεμφθῆναι τὰ κομιζόμενα πρὸς αὐτόν. ἐκόμιζε δὲ πολλὴν μὲν ἐσθῆτα στρατιωτικήν, πολλὰ δ’ ὑποζύγια καὶ χρήματα καὶ δῶρα τοῖς περὶ αὐτὸν ἡγεμόσι καὶ φίλοις· ἐκτὸς δὲ τούτων στρατιώτας ἐπιλέκτους δισχιλίους, εἰς στρατηγικὰς σπείρας κεκοσμημένους ἐκπρεπέσι πανοπλίαις.

[4] ταῦτα Νίγρος τις Ἀντωνίου φίλος ἀποσταλεὶς παρ’ αὐτῆς ἔφραζε, καὶ προσετίθει τοὺς ἀξίους καὶ πρέποντας [5] ἐπαίνους. αἰσθομένη δ’ ἡ Κλεοπάτρα τὴν Ὀκταουίαν ὁμόσε χωροῦσαν αὑτῇ, καὶ φοβηθεῖσα μὴ τοῦ τρόπου τῇ σεμνότητι καὶ τῇ Καίσαρος δυνάμει προσκτησαμένη τὸ καθ’ ἡδονὴν ὁμιλεῖν καὶ θεραπεύειν Ἀντώνιον, ἄμαχος γένηται καὶ κρατήσῃ παντάπασι τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἐρᾶν αὐτὴ προσεποιεῖτο τοῦ Ἀντωνίου, καὶ τὸ σῶμα λεπταῖς καθῄρει [6] διαίταις· τὸ δὲ βλέμμα προσιόντος ἐκπεπληγμένον, ἀπερχομένου δὲ τηκόμενον καὶ ταπεινούμενον ὑπεφαίνετο.

[7] πραγματευομένη δὲ πολλάκις ὀφθῆναι δακρύουσα, ταχὺ τὸ δακρῦον ἀφῄρει καὶ ἀπέκρυπτεν, ὡς δὴ βουλομένη λανθάνειν ἐκεῖνον. ἐπράττετο δὲ ταῦτα μέλλοντος τοῦ [8] ἀνδρὸς ἐκ Συρίας ἀναβαίνειν πρὸς τὸν Μῆδον. οἱ δὲ κόλακες σπουδάζοντες ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς ἐλοιδόρουν τὸν Ἀντώνιον ὡς σκληρὸν καὶ ἀπαθῆ καὶ παραπολλύντα γύναιον εἰς ἕνα [9] καὶ μόνον ἐκεῖνον ἀνηρτημένον. Ὀκταουίαν μὲν γὰρ πραγμάτων ἕνεκα διὰ τὸν ἀδελφὸν συνελθεῖν καὶ τὸ τῆς [10] γαμετῆς ὄνομα καρποῦσθαι· Κλεοπάτραν δὲ τοσούτων ἀνθρώπων βασιλεύουσαν ἐρωμένην Ἀντωνίου καλεῖσθαι, καὶ τοὔνομα τοῦτο μὴ φεύγειν μηδ’ ἀπαξιοῦν, ἕως ὁρᾶν ἐκεῖνον ἔξεστι καὶ συζῆν· ἀπελαυνομένην δὲ τούτου μὴ [11] περιβιώσεσθαι. τέλος δ’ οὖν οὕτω τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐξέτηξαν καὶ ἀπεθήλυναν, ὥστε δείσαντα μὴ Κλεοπάτρα πρόηται τὸν βίον, εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν ἐπανελθεῖν, τὸν δὲ Μῆδον εἰς ὥραν ἔτους ἀναβαλέσθαι, καίπερ ἐν στάσει τῶν Παρθικῶν [12] εἶναι λεγομένων. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῦτον μὲν ἀναβὰς αὖθις εἰς φιλίαν προσηγάγετο, καὶ λαβὼν ἑνὶ τῶν ἐκ Κλεοπάτρας υἱῶν γυναῖκα μίαν αὐτοῦ τῶν θυγατέρων ἔτι μικρὰν οὖσαν [ἐγγυήσας] ἐπανῆλθεν, ἤδη πρὸς τὸν ἐμφύλιον πόλεμον τετραμμένος.

[54] [1] Ὀκταουίαν δὲ Καῖσαρ ὑβρίσθαι δοκοῦσαν, ὡς [2] ἐπανῆλθεν ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν, ἐκέλευσε καθ’ ἑαυτὴν οἰκεῖν. ἡ δ’ οὐκ ἔφη τὸν οἶκον ἀπολείψειν τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖνον αὐτόν, εἰ μὴ δι’ ἑτέρας αἰτίας ἔγνωκε πολεμεῖν Ἀντωνίῳ, παρεκάλει τὰ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ἐᾶν, ὡς οὐδ’ ἀκοῦσαι καλόν, εἰ τῶν μεγίστων αὐτοκρατόρων ὁ μὲν δι’ ἔρωτα γυναικός, ὁ δὲ διὰ ζηλοτυπίαν εἰς ἐμφύλιον πόλεμον [3] Ῥωμαίους κατέστησε. ταῦτα δὲ λέγουσα μᾶλλον ἐβεβαίου δι’ ἔργων. καὶ γὰρ ᾤκει τὴν οἰκίαν ὥσπερ αὐτοῦ παρόντος ἐκείνου, καὶ τῶν τέκνων οὐ μόνον τῶν ἐξ ἑαυτῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἐκ Φουλβίας γεγονότων καλῶς καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς [4] ἐπεμελεῖτο· καὶ τοὺς πεμπομένους ἐπ’ ἀρχάς τινας ἢ πράγματα τῶν Ἀντωνίου φίλων ὑποδεχομένη, [5] συνέπραττεν ὧν παρὰ Καίσαρος δεηθεῖεν. ἄκουσα δ’ ἔβλαπτε διὰ τούτων Ἀντώνιον· ἐμισεῖτο γὰρ ἀδικῶν γυναῖκα τοιαύτην. ἐμισήθη δὲ καὶ διὰ τὴν διανέμησιν ἣν ἐποιήσατο τοῖς τέκνοις ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ, τραγικὴν καὶ [6] ὑπερήφανον καὶ μισορρώμαιον φανεῖσαν. ἐμπλήσας γὰρ ὄχλου τὸ γυμνάσιον, καὶ θέμενος ἐπὶ βήματος ἀργυροῦ δύο θρόνους χρυσοῦς, τὸν μὲν ἑαυτῷ, τὸν δὲ Κλεοπάτρᾳ, καὶ τοῖς παισὶν ἑτέρους ταπεινοτέρους, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπέφηνε Κλεοπάτραν βασίλισσαν Αἰγύπτου καὶ Κύπρου καὶ Λιβύης καὶ Κοίλης Συρίας, συμβασιλεύοντος αὐτῇ Καισαρίωνος, ὃς ἐκ Καίσαρος ἐδόκει τοῦ προτέρου [7] γεγονέναι, Κλεοπάτραν ἔγκυον καταλιπόντος· δεύτερον δὲ τοὺς ἐξ αὑτοῦ καὶ Κλεοπάτρας υἱοὺς βασιλεῖς βασιλέων ἀναγορεύσας, Ἀλεξάνδρῳ μὲν Ἀρμενίαν ἀπένειμε καὶ Μηδίαν καὶ τὰ Πάρθων ὅταν ὑπαγάγηται, Πτολεμαίῳ [8] δὲ Φοινίκην καὶ Συρίαν καὶ Κιλικίαν. ἅμα δὲ καὶ προήγαγε τῶν παίδων Ἀλέξανδρον μὲν ἐσθῆτι [τε] Μηδικῇ τιάραν καὶ κίταριν ὀρθὴν ἐχούσῃ, Πτολεμαῖον δὲ κρηπῖσι καὶ χλαμύδι καὶ καυσίᾳ διαδηματοφόρῳ κεκοσμημένον· αὕτη γὰρ ἦν σκευὴ τῶν ἀπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου βασιλέων, ἐκείνη δὲ [9] Μήδων καὶ Ἀρμενίων. ἀσπασαμένων δὲ τῶν παίδων τοὺς γονεῖς, τὸν μὲν Ἀρμενίων φυλακὴ περιίστατο, τὸν δὲ Μακεδόνων. Κλεοπάτρα μὲν γὰρ καὶ τότε καὶ τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον εἰς πλῆθος ἐξιοῦσα στολὴν [ἑτέραν] ἱερὰν Ἴσιδος ἐλάμβανε καὶ νέα Ἶσις ἐχρημάτιζε.

[55] [1] Ταῦτα δ’ εἰς σύγκλητον ἐκφέρων Καῖσαρ καὶ πολλάκις ἐν τῷ δήμῳ κατηγορῶν, παρώξυνε τὸ πλῆθος [2] ἐπ’ Ἀντώνιον. ἔπεμπε δὲ καὶ Ἀντώνιος ἀντεγκαλῶν ἐκείνῳ. μέγιστα δ’ ἦν ὧν ἐνεκάλει, πρῶτον μὲν ὅτι Πομπηίου Σικελίαν ἀφελόμενος οὐκ ἔνειμε μέρος αὐτῷ τῆς νήσου· δεύτερον ὅτι χρησάμενος ναῦς παρ’ αὐτοῦ [3] πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ἀπεστέρησε· τρίτον ὅτι τὸν συνάρχοντα Λέπιδον ἐκβαλὼν τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ ποιήσας ἄτιμον, αὐτὸς ἔχει στρατὸν καὶ χώραν καὶ προσόδους τὰς ἐκείνῳ προσνεμηθείσας· ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ὅτι τοῖς αὑτοῦ στρατιώταις ἅπασαν ὀλίγου δεῖν Ἰταλίαν κατακεκληρούχηκε, μηδὲν [4] λιπὼν τοῖς ἐκείνου. πρὸς ταῦτα Καῖσαρ ἀπελογεῖτο, Λέπιδον μὲν ὑβρίζοντα καταπαῦσαι τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἃ δ’ ἔσχηκε πολεμήσας, νεμήσεσθαι πρὸς Ἀντώνιον, ὅταν κἀκεῖνος Ἀρμενίαν πρὸς αὐτόν· τοῖς δὲ στρατιώταις Ἰταλίας μὴ μετεῖναι· Μηδίαν γὰρ ἔχειν καὶ Παρθίαν αὐτούς, ἃς προσεκτήσαντο Ῥωμαίοις καλῶς ἀγωνισάμενοι μετὰ τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος.

[56] [1] Ταῦτ’ ἐν Ἀρμενίᾳ διατρίβων Ἀντώνιος ἤκουσε· καὶ Κανίδιον εὐθὺς ἐκέλευσεν ἑκκαίδεκα τέλη λαβόντα καταβαίνειν ἐπὶ θάλατταν. αὐτὸς δὲ Κλεοπάτραν ἀναλαβὼν [2] εἰς Ἔφεσον ἧκε. καὶ τὸ ναυτικὸν ἐκεῖ συνῄει πανταχόθεν, ὀκτακόσιαι σὺν ὁλκάσι νῆες, ὧν Κλεοπάτρα παρεῖχε διακοσίας καὶ τάλαντα δισμύρια καὶ τροφὴν τῷ [3] στρατῷ παντὶ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον. Ἀντώνιος δὲ πεισθεὶς ὑπὸ Δομιτίου καί τινων ἄλλων, ἐκέλευε Κλεοπάτραν πλεῖν ἐπ’ Αἰγύπτου κἀκεῖ διακαραδοκεῖν τὸν πόλεμον.

[4] ἡ δὲ φοβουμένη τὰς δι’ Ὀκταουίας πάλιν αὐτοῦ διαλύσεις, ἔπεισε πολλοῖς Κανίδιον χρήμασιν Ἀντωνίῳ διαλεχθῆναι περὶ αὐτῆς, ὡς οὔτε δίκαιον ἀπελαύνεσθαι τοῦ πολέμου γυναῖκα συμβολὰς τηλικαύτας διδοῦσαν, οὔτε συμφέρον ἀθυμοτέρους ποιεῖν τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους, μέγα [5] μέρος τῆς ναυτικῆς δυνάμεως ὄντας· ἄλλως δὲ μηδ’ ὁρᾶν, οὗτινος τῶν συστρατευόντων βασιλέων ἀπολείποιτο τὸ φρονεῖν Κλεοπάτρα, πολὺν μὲν χρόνον δι’ αὑτῆς κυβερνῶσα βασιλείαν τοσαύτην, πολὺν δ’ ἐκείνῳ συνοῦσα καὶ [6] μανθάνουσα χρῆσθαι πράγμασι μεγάλοις. ταῦτ’ - ἔδει γὰρ εἰς Καίσαρα πάντα περιελθεῖν - ἐνίκα· καὶ συνιουσῶν τῶν δυνάμεων, πλεύσαντες εἰς Σάμον ἐν εὐπαθείαις [7] ἦσαν. ὥσπερ γὰρ βασιλεῦσι καὶ δυνάσταις καὶ τετράρχαις ἔθνεσί τε καὶ πόλεσι πάσαις ταῖς μεταξὺ Συρίας καὶ Μαιώτιδος καὶ Ἀρμενίας καὶ Ἰλλυριῶν προείρητο πέμπειν καὶ κομίζειν τὰς εἰς τὸν πόλεμον παρασκευάς, οὕτω πᾶσι τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνίταις [8] ἐπάναγκες ἦν εἰς Σάμον ἀπαντᾶν· καὶ τῆς ἐν κύκλῳ σχεδὸν ἁπάσης οἰκουμένης περιθρηνουμένης καὶ περιστεναζομένης, μία νῆσος ἐφ’ ἡμέρας πολλὰς κατηυλεῖτο καὶ κατεψάλλετο, πληρουμένων θεάτρων καὶ χορῶν ἀγωνιζομένων.

[9] συνέθυε δὲ καὶ πόλις πᾶσα βοῦν πέμπουσα, καὶ βασιλεῖς διημιλλῶντο ταῖς ὑποδοχαῖς καὶ δωρεαῖς [10] πρὸς ἀλλήλους. ὥστε καὶ λόγος διῄει, τίνες ἔσονται κρατήσαντες ἐν τοῖς ἐπινικίοις οἱ τοῦ πολέμου τὰς παρασκευὰς οὕτω πολυτελῶς ἑορτάζοντες.

[57] [1] Γενόμενος δ’ ἀπὸ τούτων, τοῖς μὲν περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνίταις Πριήνην ἔδωκεν οἰκητήριον, αὐτὸς δὲ πλεύσας εἰς Ἀθήνας πάλιν ἐν παιδιαῖς ἦν καὶ θεάτροις.

[2] ζηλοτυποῦσα δὲ Κλεοπάτρα τὰς Ὀκταουίας ἐν τῇ πόλει τιμάς - ἠγαπήθη γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἡ Ὀκταουία [3] μάλιστα - , πολλαῖς ἀνελάμβανε φιλοτιμίαις τὸν δῆμον. οἱ δὲ τιμὰς αὐτῇ ψηφισάμενοι, πρέσβεις ἔπεμψαν ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τὸ ψήφισμα κομίζοντας, ὧν εἷς ἦν Ἀντώνιος ὡς δὴ πολίτης Ἀθηναῖος· καὶ δὴ καταστὰς ἐπ’ αὐτῆς λόγον [4] ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως διεξῆλθεν. εἰς δὲ Ῥώμην ἔπεμψε τοὺς Ὀκταουίαν ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας ἐκβαλοῦντας. ἀπελθεῖν δέ φασιν αὐτὴν τὰ μὲν τέκνα πάντα ‹τὰ› Ἀντωνίου μεθ’ ἑαυτῆς ἔχουσαν ἄνευ τοῦ πρεσβυτάτου τῶν ἐκ Φουλβίας - ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ἦν παρὰ τῷ πατρί - , κλαίουσαν δὲ καὶ δυσφοροῦσαν, εἰ δόξει μία τῶν αἰτιῶν τοῦ πολέμου καὶ [5] αὐτὴ γεγονέναι. Ῥωμαῖοι δ’ ᾤκτιρον οὐκ ἐκείνην ἀλλ’ Ἀντώνιον, καὶ μᾶλλον οἱ Κλεοπάτραν ἑωρακότες οὔτε κάλλει τῆς Ὀκταουίας οὔθ’ ὥρᾳ διαφέρουσαν.

[58] [1] Καῖσαρ δὲ τὸ τάχος καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τῆς παρασκευῆς ἀκούσας ἐθορυβήθη, μὴ τοῦ θέρους ἐκείνου διαπολεμεῖν [2] ἀναγκασθῇ. καὶ γὰρ ἐνέδει πολλά, καὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐλύπουν αἱ τῶν χρημάτων εἰσπράξεις· ἀναγκαζόμενοι γὰρ οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τὰ τέταρτα τῶν καρπῶν, οἱ δ’ ἐξελευθερικοὶ τῶν κτημάτων αὐτῶν τὰς ὀγδόας ἀποφέρειν, κατεβόων αὐτοῦ, καὶ ταραχαὶ κατεῖχον ἐκ τούτων [3] ἅπασαν τὴν Ἰταλίαν. ὅθεν ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις ἁμαρτήμασιν Ἀντωνίου τὴν ἀναβολὴν τοῦ πολέμου τίθενται. καὶ γὰρ παρασκευάσασθαι χρόνον ἔδωκε Καίσαρι, καὶ τὰς ταραχὰς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐξέλυσε. πραττόμενοι γὰρ [4] ἠγριαίνοντο, πραχθέντες δὲ καὶ δόντες ἡσύχαζον. Τίτιος δὲ καὶ Πλάγκος, Ἀντωνίου φίλοι τῶν ὑπατικῶν, ὑπὸ Κλεοπάτρας προπηλακιζόμενοι - πλεῖστα γὰρ ἠναντιώθησαν αὐτῇ περὶ τοῦ συστρατεύειν - , ἀποδράντες ᾤχοντο πρὸς Καίσαρα καὶ περὶ τῶν Ἀντωνίου διαθηκῶν [5] ἐγίνοντο μηνυταί, τὰ γεγραμμένα συνειδότες. ἀπέκειντο δ’ αὗται παρὰ ταῖς Ἑστιάσι παρθένοις, καὶ Καίσαρος αἰτοῦντος οὐκ ἔδωκαν· εἰ δὲ βούλοιτο λαμβάνειν, [6] ἐλθεῖν αὐτὸν ἐκέλευον. ἔλαβεν οὖν ἐλθών, καὶ πρῶτον μὲν αὐτὸς ἰδίᾳ τὰ γεγραμμένα διῆλθε, καὶ παρεσημήνατο τόπους τινὰς εὐκατηγορήτους, ἔπειτα τὴν βουλὴν ἀθροίσας ἀνεγίνωσκε, τῶν πλείστων ἀηδῶς ἐχόντων.

[7] ἀλλόκοτον γὰρ ἔδοξεν εἶναι καὶ δεινόν, εὐθύνας τινὰ διδόναι ζῶντα περὶ ὧν ἐβουλήθη γενέσθαι μετὰ [8] τὴν τελευτήν. ἐπεφύετο δὲ τῶν γεγραμμένων μάλιστα τῷ περὶ τῆς ταφῆς. ἐκέλευε γὰρ αὑτοῦ τὸ σῶμα, κἂν ἐν Ῥώμῃ τελευτήσῃ, δι’ ἀγορᾶς πομπευθὲν εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν [9] ὡς Κλεοπάτραν ἀποσταλῆναι. Καλουΐσιος δὲ Καίσαρος ἑταῖρος ἔτι καὶ ταῦτα τῶν εἰς Κλεοπάτραν ἐγκλημάτων Ἀντωνίῳ προὔφερε· χαρίσασθαι μὲν αὐτῇ τὰς ἐκ Περγάμου βυβλιοθήκας, ἐν αἷς εἴκοσι μυριάδες [10] βυβλίων ἁπλῶν ἦσαν· ἐν δὲ συνδείπνῳ πολλῶν παρόντων ἀναστάντα τρίβειν αὐτῆς τοὺς πόδας ἔκ τινος ὁρισμοῦ [11] καὶ συνθήκης γενομένης· Ἐφεσίους δ’ ἀνασχέσθαι παρόντος αὐτοῦ κυρίαν τὴν Κλεοπάτραν ἀσπασαμένους· δικάζοντα δὲ πολλάκις τετράρχαις καὶ βασιλεῦσιν ἐπὶ βήματος, δελτάρια τῶν ἐρωτικῶν ὀνύχινα καὶ κρυστάλλινα δέχεσθαι παρ’ αὐτῆς καὶ ἀναγινώσκειν· Φουρνίου δὲ λέγοντος, ὃς ἦν ἀξιώματος μεγάλου καὶ δεινότατος εἰπεῖν Ῥωμαίων, τὴν μὲν Κλεοπάτραν ἐν φορείῳ διὰ τῆς ἀγορᾶς κομίζεσθαι, τὸν δ’ Ἀντώνιον ὡς εἶδεν ἀναπηδήσαντα τὴν μὲν δίκην ἀπολιπεῖν, ἐκκρεμαννύμενον δὲ τοῦ φορείου παραπέμπειν ἐκείνην.

[59] [1] Ἀλλὰ τούτων μὲν ἐδόκει τὰ πλεῖστα καταψεύδεσθαι [2] Καλουΐσιος. - οἱ δὲ φίλοι τοῦ Ἀντωνίου περιιόντες ἐν Ῥώμῃ τὸν δῆμον ἱκέτευον, ἕνα δ’ ἐξ αὑτῶν ἔπεμψαν Γεμίνιον, δεόμενοι τοῦ Ἀντωνίου μὴ περιιδεῖν αὑτὸν ἀποψηφισθέντα τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ πολέμιον Ῥωμαίων [3] ἀναγορευθέντα. Γεμίνιος δὲ πλεύσας εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα, Κλεοπάτρᾳ μὲν ἦν ὕποπτος ὡς ὑπὲρ Ὀκταουίας πράττων, σκωπτόμενος δὲ παρὰ δεῖπνον ἀεὶ καὶ κλισίαις ἀτίμοις προπηλακιζόμενος, ἠνείχετο καιρὸν ἐντεύξεως ἀναμένων· [4] κελευσθεὶς δὲ λέγειν ἐφ’ οἷς ἥκει παρὰ τὸ δεῖπνον, τὴν μὲν ἄλλην ἔφη νήφοντος εἶναι διάλεξιν, ἓν δὲ καὶ νήφων ἐπίστασθαι καὶ μεθύων, ὅτι καλῶς ἕξει πάντα Κλεοπάτρας [5] εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἀπαλλαγείσης. πρὸς τοῦτο τοῦ Ἀντωνίου χαλεπήναντος, ἡ Κλεοπάτρα καλῶς ἔφη πεποίηκας ὦ Γεμίνιε, τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἄνευ βασάνων ἐξομολογησάμενος. Γεμίνιος μὲν οὖν μετ’ ὀλίγας ἡμέρας [6] ἀποδρὰς εἰς Ῥώμην ᾤχετο. πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων φίλων οἱ Κλεοπάτρας κόλακες ἐξέβαλον, τὰς παροινίας καὶ βωμολοχίας οὐχ ὑπομένοντας, ὧν καὶ Μᾶρκος ἦν [7] Σιλανὸς καὶ Δέλλιος ὁ ἱστορικός. οὗτος δὲ καὶ δεῖσαί φησιν (HRR II 53 sq.) ἐπιβουλὴν ἐκ Κλεοπάτρας, Γλαύκου [8] τοῦ ἰατροῦ φράσαντος αὐτῷ. προσέκρουσε δὲ Κλεοπάτρᾳ παρὰ δεῖπνον εἰπών, αὐτοῖς μὲν ὀξίνην ἐγχεῖσθαι, Σάρμεντον δὲ πίνειν ἐν Ῥώμῃ Φαλερῖνον· ὁ δὲ Σάρμεντος ἦν τῶν Καίσαρος παιγνίων παιδάριον, ἃ δηλίκια Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν.

[60] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ παρεσκεύαστο Καῖσαρ ἱκανῶς, ψηφίζεται Κλεοπάτρᾳ πολεμεῖν, ἀφελέσθαι δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς Ἀντώνιον ἧς ἐξέστη γυναικί· καὶ προσεπεῖπε Καῖσαρ, ὡς Ἀντώνιος μὲν ὑπὸ φαρμάκων οὐδ’ αὑτοῦ κρατοίη, πολεμοῦσι δ’ αὐτοῖς Μαρδίων ὁ εὐνοῦχος καὶ Ποθεινὸς καὶ Εἰρὰς ἡ Κλεοπάτρας κουρεύτρια καὶ Χάρμιον, ὑφ’ ὧν τὰ μέγιστα διοικεῖται τῆς ἡγεμονίας.

[2] Σημεῖα δὲ πρὸ τοῦ πολέμου τάδε γενέσθαι λέγεται. Πείσαυρα μέν, Ἀντωνίου πόλις κληρουχία ᾠκισμένη παρὰ [3] τὸν Ἀδρίαν, χασμάτων ὑπορραγέντων κατεπόθη. τῶν δὲ περὶ Ἄλβαν Ἀντωνίου λιθίνων ἀνδριάντων ἑνὸς ἱδρὼς ἀνεπίδυεν ἡμέρας πολλάς, ἀποματτόντων τινῶν οὐ παυόμενος.

[4] ἐν δὲ Πάτραις διατρίβοντος αὐτοῦ, κεραυνοῖς ἐνεπρήσθη τὸ Ἡράκλειον· καὶ τῆς Ἀθήνησι γιγαντομαχίας ὑπὸ πνευμάτων ὁ Διόνυσος ἐκσεισθεὶς εἰς τὸ θέατρον [5] κατηνέχθη· προσῳκείου δ’ ἑαυτὸν Ἀντώνιος Ἡρακλεῖ κατὰ γένος καὶ Διονύσῳ κατὰ τὸν τοῦ βίου ζῆλον ὥσπερ εἴρηται (4, 2 sq. 24, 4), Διόνυσος νέος προσαγορευόμενος.

[6] ἡ δ’ αὐτὴ θύελλα καὶ τοὺς Εὐμένους καὶ Ἀττάλου κολοσσοὺς ἐπιγεγραμμένους Ἀντωνιείους Ἀθήνησιν ἐμπεσοῦσα [7] μόνους ἐκ πολλῶν ἀνέτρεψε. ἡ δὲ Κλεοπάτρας ναυαρχὶς ἐκαλεῖτο μὲν Ἀντωνιάς, σημεῖον δὲ περὶ αὐτὴν δεινὸν ἐφάνη· χελιδόνες γὰρ ὑπὸ τὴν πρύμναν ἐνεόττευσαν, ἕτεραι δ’ ἐπελθοῦσαι καὶ ταύτας ἐξήλασαν καὶ τὰ νεόττια διέφθειραν.

[61] [1] Συνιόντων δὲ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, Ἀντωνίῳ μὲν ἦσαν αἱ μάχιμοι νῆες οὐκ ἐλάττους πεντακοσίων, ἐν αἷς ὀκτήρεις πολλαὶ καὶ δεκήρεις, κεκοσμημέναι σοβαρῶς καὶ πανηγυρικῶς, στρατοῦ δὲ μυριάδες δέκα, δισχίλιοι δ’ ἱππεῖς [2] ἐπὶ μυρίοις. βασιλεῖς δ’ ὑπήκοοι συνεμάχουν Βόκχος ὁ Λιβύων καὶ Ταρκόνδημος ὁ τῆς ἄνω Κιλικίας, καὶ Καππαδοκίας μὲν Ἀρχέλαος, Παφλαγονίας δὲ Φιλάδελφος, Κομμαγηνῆς δὲ Μιθριδάτης, Σαδάλας δὲ Θρᾴκης.

[3] οὗτοι μὲν αὐτῷ παρῆσαν, ἐκ δὲ Πόντου Πολέμων στρατὸν ἔπεμπε, καὶ Μάλχος ἐξ Ἀραβίας καὶ Ἡρώδης ὁ Ἰουδαῖος, ἔτι δ’ Ἀμύντας ὁ Λυκαόνων καὶ Γαλατῶν βασιλεύς· ἦν δὲ καὶ παρὰ τοῦ Μήδων βασιλέως ἀπεσταλμένη βοήθεια.

[4] Καίσαρι δὲ νῆες ἦσαν πρὸς ἀλκὴν πεντήκοντα καὶ διακόσιαι, στρατοῦ δ’ ὀκτὼ μυριάδες, ἱππεῖς δὲ παραπλήσιοι [5] τὸ πλῆθος τοῖς πολεμίοις. ἦρχον δ’ Ἀντώνιος μὲν τῆς ἀπ’ Εὐφράτου καὶ Ἀρμενίας μέχρι πρὸς τὸν Ἰόνιον καὶ Ἰλλυριούς, Καῖσαρ δ’ ἀπ’ Ἰλλυριῶν τῆς ἐπὶ τὸν ἑσπέριον ὠκεανὸν καθηκούσης καὶ τῆς ἀπ’ ὠκεανοῦ πάλιν ἐπὶ τὸ [6] Τυρρηνικὸν καὶ Σικελικὸν πέλαγος. Λιβύης δὲ τὴν Ἰταλίᾳ καὶ Γαλατίᾳ καὶ Ἰβηρίᾳ μέχρι στηλῶν Ἡρακλείων ἀντιπαρήκουσαν εἶχε Καῖσαρ· τὰ δ’ ἀπὸ Κυρήνης μέχρι Αἰθιοπίας Ἀντώνιος.

[62] [1] Οὕτω δ’ ἄρα προσθήκη τῆς γυναικὸς ἦν, ὥστε τῷ πεζῷ πολὺ διαφέρων ἐβούλετο τοῦ ναυτικοῦ τὸ κράτος εἶναι διὰ Κλεοπάτραν, καὶ ταῦτα πληρωμάτων ἀπορίᾳ συναρπαζομένους ὁρῶν ὑπὸ τῶν τριηραρχῶν ἐκ τῆς πολλὰ δὴ τλάσης (Eur. Herc. 1250) Ἑλλάδος ὁδοιπόρους ὀνηλάτας θεριστὰς ἐφήβους, καὶ οὐδ’ οὕτω πληρουμένας τὰς ναῦς, [2] ἀλλὰ τὰς πλείστας ἀποδεεῖς καὶ μοχθηρῶς πλεούσας. Καῖσαρ δ’ οὐ πρὸς ὕψος οὐδ’ ὄγκον ἐπιδεικτικῶς πεπηγυίαις ναυσίν, εὐστρόφοις δὲ καὶ ταχείαις καὶ πεπληρωμέναις ἀκριβῶς ἐξηρτυμένον ἐν Τάραντι καὶ Βρεντεσίῳ συνέχων ναυτικόν, ἔπεμπε πρὸς Ἀντώνιον ἀξιῶν μὴ διατρίβειν τὸν χρόνον, [3] ἀλλ’ ἔρχεσθαι μετὰ τῶν δυνάμεων· αὐτὸς δὲ τῷ μὲν στόλῳ παρέξειν ὅρμους ἀκωλύτους καὶ λιμένας, ὑποχωρήσειν δὲ τῷ πεζῷ τῆς παραλίας ἵππου δρόμον ἀπὸ θαλάσσης, [4] μέχρι ἂν ἀσφαλῶς ἀποβῇ καὶ στρατοπεδεύσηται. τούτοις ἀντικομπάζων Ἀντώνιος αὐτὸν μὲν εἰς μονομαχίαν προὐκαλεῖτο καίπερ ὢν πρεσβύτερος, εἰ δὲ φεύγοι τοῦτο, περὶ Φάρσαλον ἠξίου τοῖς στρατεύμασιν ὡς πάλαι Καῖσαρ [5] καὶ Πομπήιος διαγωνίσασθαι. φθάνει δὲ Καῖσαρ, Ἀντωνίου περὶ τὸ Ἄκτιον ὁρμοῦντος, ἐν ᾧ τόπῳ νῦν ἡ Νικόπολις ἵδρυται, διαβαλὼν τὸν Ἰόνιον καὶ τῆς Ἠπείρου χωρίον [6] ὃ Τορύνη καλεῖται κατασχών· θορυβουμένων δὲ τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἀντώνιον - ὑστέρει γὰρ ὁ πεζὸς αὐτοῖς - , ἡ μὲν Κλεοπάτρα σκώπτουσα τί δεινόν ἔλεγεν εἰ Καῖσαρ ἐπὶ τῇ τορύνῃ κάθηται;

[63] [1] Ἀντώνιος δ’ ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν πολεμίων ἐπιπλεόντων, φοβηθεὶς μὴ τῶν ἐπιβατῶν ἐρήμους ἕλωσι τὰς ναῦς, τοὺς μὲν ἐρέτας ὁπλίσας ἐπὶ τῶν καταστρωμάτων παρέταξεν ὄψεως ἕνεκα, τοὺς δὲ ταρσοὺς τῶν νεῶν ἐγείρας καὶ πτερώσας ἑκατέρωθεν, ἐν τῷ στόματι περὶ τὸ Ἄκτιον ἀντιπρῴρους συνεῖχεν, ὡς ἐνήρεις καὶ παρεσκευασμένας [2] ἀμύνεσθαι. καὶ Καῖσαρ μὲν οὕτω καταστρατηγηθεὶς ἀπεχώρησεν. ἔδοξε δὲ καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ εὐμηχάνως ἐρύμασί τισιν ἐμπεριλαβὼν ἀφελέσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους, τῶν ἐν [3] κύκλῳ χωρίων ὀλίγον καὶ πονηρὸν ἐχόντων. εὐγνωμόνως δὲ καὶ Δομιτίῳ προσηνέχθη παρὰ τὴν Κλεοπάτρας γνώμην. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ἤδη πυρέττων εἰς μικρὸν ἐμβὰς ἀκάτιον πρὸς Καίσαρα μετέστη, βαρέως ἐνεγκὼν ὁ Ἀντώνιος ὅμως πᾶσαν αὐτῷ τὴν ἀποσκευὴν μετὰ τῶν [4] φίλων καὶ τῶν θεραπόντων ἀπέπεμψε. καὶ Δομίτιος μέν, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ λαθεῖν τὴν ἀπιστίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ [5] προδοσίαν, μεταβαλόμενος εὐθὺς ἐτελεύτησεν. ἐγένοντο δὲ καὶ βασιλέων ἀποστάσεις Ἀμύντου καὶ Δηιοτάρου πρὸς Καίσαρα. τὸ δὲ ναυτικὸν ἐν παντὶ δυσπραγοῦν καὶ πρὸς ἅπασαν ὑστερίζον βοήθειαν, αὖθις ἠνάγκαζε τῷ [6] πεζῷ προσέχειν τὸν Ἀντώνιον. ἔσχε δὲ καὶ Κανίδιον τὸν ἄρχοντα τοῦ πεζοῦ μεταβολὴ γνώμης παρὰ τὰ δεινά, καὶ συνεβούλευε Κλεοπάτραν μὲν ἀποπέμπειν, ἀναχωρήσαντα [7] δ’ εἰς Θρᾴκην ἢ Μακεδονίαν πεζομαχίᾳ κρῖναι. καὶ γὰρ Δικόμης ὁ Γετῶν βασιλεὺς ὑπισχνεῖτο πολλῇ στρατιᾷ βοηθήσειν· οὐκ εἶναι δ’ αἰσχρόν, εἰ Καίσαρι γεγυμνασμένῳ περὶ τὸν Σικελικὸν πόλεμον ἐκστήσονται τῆς θαλάσσης, ἀλλὰ δεινόν, εἰ τῶν πεζῶν ἀγώνων ἐμπειρότατος ὢν Ἀντώνιος οὐ χρήσεται ῥώμῃ καὶ παρασκευῇ τοσούτων ὁπλιτῶν, εἰς ναῦς διανέμων καὶ καταναλίσκων [8] τὴν δύναμιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐξενίκησε Κλεοπάτρα διὰ τῶν νεῶν κριθῆναι τὸν πόλεμον, ἤδη πρὸς φυγὴν ὁρῶσα καὶ τιθεμένη τὰ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν οὐχ ὅπου πρὸς τὸ νικᾶν ἔσται χρήσιμος, ἀλλ’ ὅθεν ἄπεισι ῥᾷστα τῶν πραγμάτων ἀπολλυμένων.

[9] Ἦν δὲ μακρὰ σκέλη κατατείνοντα πρὸς τὸν ναύσταθμον τῆς στρατοπεδείας, δι’ ὧν ὁ Ἀντώνιος εἰώθει [10] παριέναι μηδὲν ὑφορώμενος. οἰκέτου δὲ Καίσαρι φράσαντος, ὡς δυνατὸν εἴη κατιόντα διὰ τῶν σκελῶν συλλαβεῖν [11] αὐτόν, ἔπεμψε τοὺς ἐνεδρεύσοντας. οἱ δὲ παρὰ τοσοῦτον ἦλθον ὥστε συναρπάσαι τὸν προηγούμενον αὐτοῦ προεξαναστάντες· αὐτὸς δὲ δρόμῳ μόλις ὑπεξέφυγεν.

[64] [1] Ὡς δὲ ναυμαχεῖν ἐδέδοκτο, τὰς μὲν ἄλλας ἐνέπρησε ναῦς πλὴν ἑξήκοντα τῶν Αἰγυπτίων, τὰς δ’ ἀρίστας καὶ μεγίστας ἀπὸ τριήρους μέχρι δεκήρους ἐπλήρου, δισμυρίους ἐμβιβάζων ὁπλίτας καὶ δισχιλίους τοξότας.

[2] ἔνθα πεζομάχον ἄνδρα τῶν ταξιαρχῶν λέγουσι παμπόλλους ἠγωνισμένον ἀγῶνας Ἀντωνίῳ καὶ κατατετριμμένον τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Ἀντωνίου παριόντος ἀνακλαύσασθαι [3] καὶ εἰπεῖν· ὦ αὐτόκρατορ, τί τῶν τραυμάτων τούτων ἢ τοῦ ξίφους καταγνοὺς ἐν ξύλοις πονηροῖς ἔχεις τὰς ἐλπίδας; Αἰγύπτιοι καὶ Φοίνικες ἐν θαλάσσῃ μαχέσθωσαν, ἡμῖν δὲ γῆν δὸς ἐφ’ ἧς εἰώθαμεν ἑστῶτες ἀποθνῄσκειν [4] ἢ νικᾶν τοὺς πολεμίους. πρὸς ταῦτα μηδὲν ἀποκρινάμενος, ἀλλὰ τῇ χειρὶ καὶ τῷ προσώπῳ μόνον οἷον ἐγκελευσάμενος τὸν ἄνδρα θαρρεῖν παρῆλθεν, οὐ χρηστὰς ἔχων ἐλπίδας, ὅς γε καὶ τοὺς κυβερνήτας τὰ ἱστία βουλομένους ἀπολιπεῖν ἠνάγκασεν ἐμβαλέσθαι καὶ κομίζειν, λέγων ὅτι δεῖ μηδένα φεύγοντα τῶν πολεμίων διαφυγεῖν.

[65] [1] Ἐκείνην μὲν οὖν τὴν ἡμέραν καὶ τρεῖς τὰς ἐφεξῆς μεγάλῳ πνεύματι κυμανθὲν τὸ πέλαγος τὴν μάχην ἐπέσχε, πέμπτῃ δὲ νηνεμίας καὶ γαλήνης ἀκλύστου γενομένης συνῄεσαν, Ἀντώνιος μὲν τὸ δεξιὸν κέρας ἔχων καὶ Ποπλικόλας, Κοίλιος δὲ τὸ εὐώνυμον, ἐν μέσῳ δὲ [2] Μᾶρκος Ὀκτάβιος καὶ Μᾶρκος Ἰνστήιος. Καῖσαρ δ’ ἐπὶ τοῦ εὐωνύμου τάξας Ἀγρίππαν, αὑτῷ τὸ δεξιὸν κατέλιπε.

[3] τῶν δὲ πεζῶν τὸν μὲν Ἀντωνίου Κανίδιος, τὸν δὲ Καίσαρος Ταῦρος ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης παρατάξαντες ἡσύχαζον.

[4] αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν ἡγεμόνων Ἀντώνιος μὲν ἐπεφοίτα πανταχόσε κωπήρει, τοὺς στρατιώτας παρακαλῶν ὑπὸ βρίθους τῶν νεῶν ὥσπερ ἐκ γῆς ἑδραίους μάχεσθαι, τοῖς δὲ κυβερνήταις διακελευόμενος ὥσπερ ὁρμούσαις ἀτρέμα ταῖς ναυσὶ δέχεσθαι τὰς ἐμβολὰς τῶν πολεμίων, τὴν [5] περὶ τὸ στόμα δυσχωρίαν φυλάττοντας. Καίσαρι δὲ λέγεται μὲν ἔτι σκότους ἀπὸ τῆς σκηνῆς κύκλῳ περιιόντι πρὸς τὰς ναῦς ἄνθρωπος ἐλαύνων ὄνον ἀπαντῆσαι, πυθομένῳ δὲ τοὔνομα γνωρίσας αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν· ἐμοὶ μὲν Εὔτυχος ὄνομα, τῷ δ’ ὄνῳ Νίκων. διὸ καὶ τοῖς ἐμβόλοις τὸν τόπον κοσμῶν ὕστερον, ἔστησε χαλκοῦν ὄνον [6] καὶ ἄνθρωπον. ἐπιδὼν δὲ τὴν ἄλλην παράταξιν ἐν πλοίῳ πρὸς τὸ δεξιὸν κομισθείς, ἐθαύμασεν ἀτρεμοῦντας ἐν τοῖς στενοῖς τοὺς πολεμίους· ἡ γὰρ ὄψις ἦν τῶν νεῶν ἐπ’ ἀγκύραις ὁρμουσῶν. καὶ τοῦτο μέχρι πολλοῦ πεπεισμένος, ἀνεῖχε τὰς ἑαυτοῦ περὶ ὀκτὼ στάδια τῶν ἐναντίων [7] ἀφεστώσας. ἕκτη δ’ ἦν ὥρα, καὶ πνεύματος αἰρομένου πελαγίου δυσανασχετοῦντες οἱ Ἀντωνίου πρὸς τὴν διατριβήν, καὶ τοῖς ὕψεσι καὶ μεγέθεσι τῶν οἰκείων νεῶν [8] πεποιθότες ὡς ἀπροσμάχοις, τὸ εὐώνυμον ἐκίνησαν. ἰδὼν δὲ Καῖσαρ ἥσθη καὶ πρύμναν ἐκρούσατο τῷ δεξιῷ, βουλόμενος ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐκ τοῦ κόλπου καὶ τῶν στενῶν ἔξω τοὺς πολεμίους ἐπισπάσασθαι, καὶ περιπλέων εὐήρεσι σκάφεσι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ συμπλέκεσθαι πρὸς [τὰς] ναῦς ὑπ’ ὄγκου καὶ πληρωμάτων ὀλιγότητος ἀργὰς καὶ βραδείας.

[66] [1] Ἀρχομένου δὲ τοῦ ἀγῶνος ἐν χερσὶν εἶναι, ἐμβολαὶ μὲν οὐκ ἦσαν οὐδ’ ἀναρρήξεις νεῶν, τῶν μὲν Ἀντωνίου διὰ βάρος ῥύμην οὐκ ἐχουσῶν, ἣ μάλιστα ποιεῖ τὰς τῶν ἐμβόλων πληγὰς ἐνεργούς, τῶν δὲ Καίσαρος οὐ μόνον ἀντιπρῴρων συμφέρεσθαι πρὸς χαλκώματα στερεὰ καὶ τραχέα φυλασσομένων, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ κατὰ πλευρὰν ἐμβολὰς [2] διδόναι θαρρούντων. ἀπεθραύοντο γὰρ τὰ ἔμβολα ῥᾳδίως ᾗ προσπέσοιεν σκάφεσι τετραγώνων ξύλων μεγάλων σιδήρῳ [3] συνηρμοσμένων πρὸς ἄλληλα †δεδεμένοις. ἦν οὖν πεζομαχίᾳ προσφερὴς ὁ ἀγών, τὸ δ’ ἀληθέστερον εἰπεῖν, τειχομαχίᾳ. τρεῖς γὰρ ἅμα καὶ τέσσαρες περὶ μίαν τῶν Ἀντωνίου συνείχοντο, γέρροις καὶ δόρασι καὶ κοντοῖς χρωμένων καὶ πυροβόλοις· οἱ δ’ Ἀντωνίου καὶ καταπέλταις [4] ἀπὸ ξυλίνων πύργων ἔβαλλον· Ἀγρίππου δὲ θάτερον κέρας εἰς κύκλωσιν ἐκτείνοντος, ἀντανάγειν Ποπλικόλας ἀναγκαζόμενος ἀπερρήγνυτο τῶν μέσων.

[5] θορυβουμένων δὲ τούτων καὶ συμπλεκομένων τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἀρρούντιον, ἀκρίτου δὲ καὶ κοινῆς ἔτι τῆς ναυμαχίας συνεστώσης, αἰφνίδιον αἱ Κλεοπάτρας ἑξήκοντα νῆες ὤφθησαν αἰρόμεναι πρὸς ἀπόπλουν τὰ ἱστία καὶ διὰ μέσου φεύγουσαι τῶν μαχομένων· ἦσαν γὰρ ὀπίσω τεταγμέναι τῶν μεγάλων καὶ διεκπίπτουσαι ταραχὴν [6] ἐποίουν. οἱ δ’ ἐναντίοι θαυμάζοντες ἐθεῶντο, τῷ πνεύματι χρωμένας ὁρῶντες ἐπεχούσας πρὸς τὴν Πελοπόννησον.

[7] ἔνθα δὴ φανερὸν αὑτὸν Ἀντώνιος ἐποίησεν οὔτ’ ἄρχοντος οὔτ’ ἀνδρὸς οὔθ’ ὅλως ἰδίοις λογισμοῖς διοικούμενον, ἀλλ’ - ὅπερ τις παίζων εἶπε τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ ἐρῶντος ἐν ἀλλοτρίῳ σώματι ζῆν - ἑλκόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς [8] γυναικὸς ὥσπερ συμπεφυκὼς καὶ συμμεταφερόμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἔφθη τὴν ἐκείνης ἰδὼν ναῦν ἀποπλέουσαν, καὶ πάντων ἐκλαθόμενος, καὶ προδοὺς καὶ ἀποδρὰς τοὺς ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ μαχομένους καὶ θνῄσκοντας, εἰς πεντήρη μεταβάς, Ἀλεξᾶ τοῦ Σύρου καὶ Σκελλίου μόνων αὐτῷ συνεμβάντων, ἐδίωκε τὴν ‹ἑαυτὴν› ἀπολωλεκυῖαν ἤδη καὶ προσαπολοῦσαν αὐτόν.

[67] [1] Ἐκείνη δὲ γνωρίσασα σημεῖον ἀπὸ τῆς νεὼς ἀνέσχε, καὶ προσενεχθεὶς οὕτω καὶ ἀναληφθείς, ἐκείνην μὲν οὔτ’ εἶδεν οὔτ’ ὤφθη, παρελθὼν δὲ μόνος εἰς πρῴραν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ καθῆστο σιωπῇ, ταῖς χερσὶν ἀμφοτέραις ἐχόμενος [2] τῆς κεφαλῆς. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ λιβυρνίδες ὤφθησαν διώκουσαι παρὰ Καίσαρος· ὁ δ’ ἀντίπρῳρον ἐπιστρέφειν τὴν ναῦν κελεύσας, τὰς μὲν ἄλλας ἀνέστειλεν, Εὐρυκλῆς δ’ ὁ Λάκων ἐνέκειτο σοβαρῶς, λόγχην τινὰ κραδαίνων ἀπὸ [3] τοῦ καταστρώματος ὡς ἀφήσων ἐπ’ αὐτόν. ἐπιστάντος δὲ τῇ πρῴρᾳ τοῦ Ἀντωνίου καὶ τίς οὗτος εἰπόντος ὁ διώκων Ἀντώνιον; ἐγώ εἶπεν Εὐρυκλῆς ὁ Λαχάρους, τῇ Καίσαρος τύχῃ τὸν τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκδικῶν θάνατον. ὁ δὲ Λαχάρης ὑπ’ Ἀντωνίου λῃστείας αἰτίᾳ περιπεσὼν ἐπελεκίσθη.

[4] πλὴν οὐκ ἐνέβαλεν ὁ Εὐρυκλῆς εἰς τὴν Ἀντωνίου ναῦν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἑτέραν τῶν ναυαρχίδων - δύο γὰρ ἦσαν - τῷ χαλκώματι πατάξας περιερρόμβησε, καὶ ταύτην τε πλαγίαν περιπεσοῦσαν εἷλε καὶ τῶν ἄλλων μίαν, ἐν ᾗ [5] πολυτελεῖς σκευαὶ τῶν περὶ δίαιταν ἦσαν. ἀπαλλαγέντος δὲ τούτου, πάλιν ὁ Ἀντώνιος εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ σχῆμα καθεὶς ἑαυτὸν ἡσυχίαν ἦγε· καὶ τρεῖς ἡμέρας καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐν πρῴρᾳ διαιτηθείς, εἴθ’ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς εἴτ’ αἰδούμενος ἐκείνην, [6] Ταινάρῳ προσέσχεν. ἐνταῦθα δ’ αὐτοὺς αἱ συνήθεις γυναῖκες πρῶτον μὲν εἰς λόγους ἀλλήλοις συνήγαγον, εἶτα [7] συνδειπνεῖν καὶ συγκαθεύδειν ἀνέπεισαν. ἤδη δὲ καὶ τῶν στρογγύλων πλοίων οὐκ ὀλίγα καὶ τῶν φίλων τινὲς ἐκ τῆς τροπῆς ἠθροίζοντο πρὸς αὐτούς, ἀγγέλλοντες ἀπολωλέναι τὸ ναυτικόν, οἴεσθαι δὲ τὸ πεζὸν συνεστάναι.

[8] Ἀντώνιος δὲ πρὸς μὲν Κανίδιον ἀγγέλους ἔπεμπεν, ἀναχωρεῖν διὰ Μακεδονίας εἰς Ἀσίαν τῷ στρατῷ κατὰ τάχος κελεύων, αὐτὸς δὲ μέλλων ἀπὸ Ταινάρου πρὸς τὴν Λιβύην διαίρειν, ὁλκάδα μίαν πολὺ μὲν νόμισμα, πολλοῦ δ’ ἀξίας ἐν ἀργύρῳ καὶ χρυσῷ κατασκευὰς τῶν βασιλικῶν κομίζουσαν ἐξελόμενος τοῖς φίλοις ἐπέδωκε κοινῇ, [9] νείμασθαι καὶ σῴζειν ἑαυτοὺς κελεύσας. ἀρνουμένους δὲ καὶ κλαίοντας εὐμενῶς πάνυ καὶ φιλοφρόνως παραμυθησάμενος καὶ δεηθεὶς ἀπέστελλε, γράψας πρὸς Θεόφιλον τὸν ἐν Κορίνθῳ διοικητήν, ὅπως ἀσφάλειαν ἐκπορίσῃ καὶ ἀποκρύψῃ τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἄχρι ἂν ἱλάσασθαι [10] Καίσαρα δυνηθῶσιν. οὗτος ἦν Θεόφιλος Ἱππάρχου πατὴρ τοῦ πλεῖστον παρ’ Ἀντωνίῳ δυνηθέντος, πρώτου δὲ πρὸς Καίσαρα τῶν ἀπελευθέρων μεταβαλομένου καὶ κατοικήσαντος ὕστερον ἐν Κορίνθῳ.

[68] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τὰ κατ’ Ἀντώνιον. ἐν Ἀκτίῳ δὲ πολὺν ὁ στόλος ἀντισχὼν Καίσαρι χρόνον, καὶ μέγιστον βλαβεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ κλύδωνος ὑψηλοῦ κατὰ πρῴραν ἱσταμένου, [2] μόλις ὥρας δεκάτης ἀπεῖπε. καὶ νεκροὶ μὲν οὐ πλείους ἐγένοντο πεντακισχιλίων, ἑάλωσαν δὲ τριακόσιαι νῆες, ὡς [3] αὐτὸς ἀνέγραψε Καῖσαρ (HRR II 56). ᾔσθοντο δ’ οὐ πολλοὶ πεφευγότος Ἀντωνίου, καὶ τοῖς πυθομένοις τὸ πρῶτον ἄπιστος ἦν ὁ λόγος, εἰ δέκα καὶ ἐννέα τάγματα πεζῶν ἀηττήτων καὶ δισχιλίους ἐπὶ μυρίοις ἱππεῖς ἀπολιπὼν οἴχεται, καθάπερ οὐ πολλάκις ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα τῇ τύχῃ κεχρημένος, οὐδὲ μυρίων ἀγώνων καὶ πολέμων μεταβολαῖς [4] ἐγγεγυμνασμένος. οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται καὶ πόθον τινὰ καὶ προσδοκίαν εἶχον, ὡς αὐτίκα ποθὲν ἐπιφανησομένου, καὶ τοσαύτην ἐπεδείξαντο πίστιν καὶ ἀρετήν, ὥστε καὶ τῆς φυγῆς αὐτοῦ φανερᾶς γενομένης ἡμέρας ἑπτὰ συμμεῖναι, [5] περιορῶντες ἐπιπρεσβευόμενον αὐτοῖς Καίσαρα. τέλος δὲ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ Κανιδίου νύκτωρ ἀποδράντος καὶ καταλιπόντος τὸ στρατόπεδον, γενόμενοι πάντων ἔρημοι καὶ προδοθέντες ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχόντων, τῷ κρατοῦντι προσεχώρησαν.

[6] Ἐκ τούτου Καῖσαρ μὲν ἐπ’ Ἀθήνας ἔπλευσε, καὶ διαλλαγεὶς τοῖς Ἕλλησι τὸν περιόντα σῖτον ἐκ τοῦ πολέμου διένειμε ταῖς πόλεσι, πραττούσαις ἀθλίως καὶ περικεκομμέναις [7] χρημάτων, ἀνδραπόδων, ὑποζυγίων. ὁ γοῦν πρόπαππος ἡμῶν Νίκαρχος διηγεῖτο τοὺς πολίτας ἅπαντας ἀναγκάζεσθαι τοῖς ὤμοις καταφέρειν μέτρημα πυρῶν τεταγμένον ἐπὶ τὴν πρὸς Ἀντίκυραν θάλασσαν, ὑπὸ [8] μαστίγων ἐπιταχυνομένους· καὶ μίαν μὲν οὕτω φορὰν ἐνεγκεῖν, τὴν δὲ δευτέραν ἤδη μεμετρημένοις καὶ μέλλουσιν αἴρεσθαι νενικημένον Ἀντώνιον ἀγγελῆναι, καὶ τοῦτο διασῶσαι τὴν πόλιν· εὐθὺς γὰρ τῶν Ἀντωνίου διοικητῶν καὶ στρατιωτῶν φυγόντων, διανείμασθαι τὸν σῖτον αὐτούς.

[69] [1] Ἀντώνιος δὲ Λιβύης ἁψάμενος, καὶ Κλεοπάτραν εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἐκ Παραιτονίου προπέμψας, αὐτὸς ἀπέλαυεν ἐρημίας ἀφθόνου, σὺν δυσὶ φίλοις ἀλύων καὶ πλανώμενος, Ἕλληνι μὲν Ἀριστοκράτει ῥήτορι, Ῥωμαίῳ δὲ Λουκιλίῳ, [2] περὶ οὗ δι’ ἑτέρων (Brut. c. 50) γεγράφαμεν, ὡς ἐν Φιλίπποις ὑπὲρ τοῦ διαφυγεῖν Βροῦτον αὐτὸς αὑτὸν ὡς δὴ Βροῦτος ὢν ἐνεχείρισε τοῖς διώκουσι, καὶ διασωθεὶς ὑπ’ Ἀντωνίου, διὰ τοῦτο πιστὸς αὐτῷ καὶ βέβαιος ἄχρι τῶν [3] ἐσχάτων καιρῶν παρέμεινεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐν Λιβύῃ δύναμιν ὁ πεπιστευμένος ἀπέστησεν, ὁρμήσας ἑαυτὸν ἀνελεῖν, καὶ διακωλυθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων καὶ ἀνακομισθεὶς εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν, εὗρε Κλεοπάτραν ἐπιτολμῶσαν ἔργῳ [4] παραβόλῳ καὶ μεγάλῳ. τοῦ γὰρ εἴργοντος ἰσθμοῦ τὴν Ἐρυθρὰν ἀπὸ τῆς κατ’ Αἴγυπτον θαλάσσης καὶ δοκοῦντος Ἀσίαν καὶ Λιβύην ὁρίζειν, ᾗ σφίγγεται μάλιστα τοῖς πελάγεσι καὶ βραχύτατος εὖρός ἐστι, τριακοσίων σταδίων ὄντων, ἐνεχείρησεν ἄρασα τὸν στόλον ὑπερνεωλκῆσαι, καὶ καθεῖσα τὰς ναῦς εἰς τὸν Ἀραβικὸν κόλπον μετὰ χρημάτων πολλῶν καὶ δυνάμεως ἔξω κατοικεῖν, ἀποφυγοῦσα [5] δουλείαν καὶ πόλεμον. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰς πρώτας ἀνελκομένας τῶν νεῶν οἱ περὶ τὴν Πέτραν Ἄραβες κατέκαυσαν, ἔτι δ’ Ἀντώνιος τὸν ἐν Ἀκτίῳ στρατὸν ᾤετο συμμένειν, ἐπαύσατο καὶ τὰς ἐμβολὰς ἐφύλαττεν.

[6] Ἀντώνιος δὲ τὴν πόλιν ἐκλιπὼν καὶ τὰς μετὰ τῶν φίλων διατριβάς, οἴκησιν ἔναλον κατεσκεύαζεν αὑτῷ περὶ [7] τὴν Φάρον, εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν χῶμα προβαλών· καὶ διῆγεν αὐτόθι φυγὰς ἀνθρώπων, καὶ τὸν Τίμωνος ἀγαπᾶν καὶ ζηλοῦν βίον ἔφασκεν, ὡς δὴ πεπονθὼς ὅμοια· καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἀδικηθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων καὶ ἀχαριστηθείς, διὰ τοῦτο καὶ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἀπιστεῖν καὶ δυσχεραίνειν.

[70] [1] Ὁ δὲ Τίμων ἦν Ἀθηναῖος [ὃς] καὶ γέγονεν ἡλικίᾳ μάλιστα κατὰ τὸν Πελοποννησιακὸν πόλεμον, ὡς ἐκ τῶν Ἀριστοφάνους (av. 1549. Lys. 809 sq.) καὶ Πλάτωνος [2] (fr. 218 K.) δραμάτων λαβεῖν ἔστι· κωμῳδεῖται γὰρ ἐν ἐκείνοις ὡς δυσμενὴς καὶ μισάνθρωπος· ἐκκλίνων δὲ καὶ διωθούμενος ἅπασαν ἔντευξιν, Ἀλκιβιάδην νέον ὄντα καὶ θρασὺν ἠσπάζετο καὶ κατεφίλει προθύμως. Ἀπημάντου δὲ θαυμάσαντος καὶ πυθομένου τὴν αἰτίαν, φιλεῖν ἔφη τὸν νεανίσκον εἰδὼς ὅτι πολλῶν Ἀθηναίοις κακῶν [3] αἴτιος ἔσοιτο. τὸν δ’ Ἀπήμαντον μόνον ὡς ὅμοιον αὐτῷ καὶ ζηλοῦντα τὴν δίαιταν ἔστιν ὅτε προσίετο· καί ποτε τῆς τῶν Χοῶν οὔσης ἑορτῆς, εἱστιῶντο καθ’ αὑτοὺς οἱ δύο. τοῦ δ’ Ἀπημάντου φήσαντος ὡς καλὸν ὦ Τίμων τὸ [4] συμπόσιον ἡμῶν εἴγε σύ ἔφη μὴ παρῆς. λέγεται δ’ Ἀθηναίων ἐκκλησιαζόντων ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα ποιῆσαι σιωπὴν καὶ προσδοκίαν μεγάλην διὰ τὸ παράδοξον, εἶτ’ [5] εἰπεῖν· ἔστι μοι μικρὸν οἰκόπεδον ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, καὶ συκῆ τις ἐν αὐτῷ πέφυκεν, ἐξ ἧς ἤδη συχνοὶ τῶν πολιτῶν ἀπήγξαντο. μέλλων οὖν οἰκοδομεῖν τὸν τόπον, ἐβουλήθην δημοσίᾳ προειπεῖν, ἵν’, ἂν ἄρα τινὲς ἐθέλωσιν [6] ὑμῶν, πρὶν ἐκκοπῆναι τὴν συκῆν ἀπάγξωνται. τελευτήσαντος δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ταφέντος Ἁλῆσι παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν, ὤλισθε τὰ προὔχοντα τοῦ αἰγιαλοῦ, καὶ τὸ κῦμα περιελθὸν ἄβατον καὶ ἀπροσπέλαστον ἀνθρώπῳ πεποίηκε τὸν [7] τάφον. ἦν δ’ ἐπιγεγραμμένον (264 Preger)·

ἐνθάδ’ ἀπορρήξας ψυχὴν βαρυδαίμονα κεῖμαι.

τοὔνομα δ’ οὐ πεύσεσθε, κακοὶ δὲ κακῶς ἀπόλοισθε.

[8] καὶ τοῦτο μὲν αὐτὸν ἔτι ζῶντα πεποιηκέναι λέγουσι, τὸ δὲ περιφερόμενον Καλλιμάχειόν ἐστι·

Τίμων μισάνθρωπος ἐνοικέω. ἀλλὰ πάρελθε,

οἰμώζειν εἴπας πολλά, πάρελθε μόνον.

[71] [1] Ταῦτα μὲν περὶ Τίμωνος ἀπὸ πολλῶν ὀλίγα.

Τῷ δ’ Ἀντωνίῳ Κανίδιός τε τῆς ἀποβολῆς τῶν ἐν Ἀκτίῳ δυνάμεων αὐτάγγελος ἦλθε, καὶ τὸν Ἰουδαῖον Ἡρώδην ἔχοντά τινα τάγματα καὶ σπείρας ἤκουσε Καίσαρι προσκεχωρηκέναι, καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ὁμοίως δυνάστας [2] ἀφίστασθαι καὶ μηδὲν ἔτι συμμένειν τῶν ἐκτός. οὐ μὴν διετάραξέ τι τούτων αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἄσμενος τὸ ἐλπίζειν ἀποτεθειμένος ἵνα καὶ τὸ φροντίζειν, τὴν μὲν ἔναλον [3] ἐκείνην δίαιταν ἣν Τιμώνειον ὠνόμαζεν ἐξέλιπεν, ἀναληφθεὶς δ’ ὑπὸ τῆς Κλεοπάτρας εἰς τὰ βασίλεια, πρὸς δεῖπνα καὶ πότους καὶ διανομὰς ἔτρεψε τὴν πόλιν, ἐγγράφων μὲν εἰς ἐφήβους τὸν Κλεοπάτρας παῖδα καὶ Καίσαρος, τὸ δ’ ἀπόρφυρον καὶ τέλειον ἱμάτιον Ἀντύλλῳ τῷ ἐκ Φουλβίας περιτιθείς, ἐφ’ οἷς ἡμέρας πολλὰς συμπόσια [4] καὶ κῶμοι καὶ θαλίαι τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρειαν κατεῖχον. αὐτοὶ δὲ τὴν μὲν τῶν Ἀμιμητοβίων ἐκείνην σύνοδον κατέλυσαν, ἑτέραν δὲ συνέταξαν οὐδέν τι λειπομένην ἐκείνης ἁβρότητι καὶ τρυφαῖς καὶ πολυτελείαις, ἣν Συναποθανουμένων [5] ἐκάλουν. ἀπεγράφοντο γὰρ οἱ φίλοι συναποθανουμένους ἑαυτούς, καὶ διῆγον εὐπαθοῦντες ἐν δείπνων περιόδοις.

[6] Κλεοπάτρα δὲ φαρμάκων θανασίμων συνῆγε παντοδαπὰς δυνάμεις, ὧν ἑκάστης τὸ ἀνώδυνον ἐλέγχουσα, προὔβαλλε [7] τοῖς ἐπὶ θανάτῳ φρουρουμένοις. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἑώρα τὰς μὲν ὠκυμόρους τὴν ὀξύτητα τοῦ θανάτου δι’ ὀδύνης ἐπιφερούσας, τὰς δὲ πραοτέρας τάχος οὐκ ἐχούσας, τῶν θηρίων ἀπεπειρᾶτο, θεωμένης αὐτῆς ἕτερον ἑτέρῳ προσφερόντων.

[8] ἐποίει δὲ τοῦτο καθ’ ἡμέραν· καὶ σχεδὸν ἐν πᾶσι μόνον εὕρισκε τὸ δῆγμα τῆς ἀσπίδος ἄνευ σπασμοῦ καὶ στεναγμοῦ κάρον ὑπνώδη καὶ καταφορὰν ἐφελκόμενον, ἱδρῶτι μαλακῷ τοῦ προσώπου καὶ τῶν αἰσθητηρίων ἀμαυρώσει παραλυομένων ῥᾳδίως, καὶ δυσχεραινόντων πρὸς τὰς ἐξεγέρσεις καὶ ἀνακλήσεις ὥσπερ οἱ βαθέως καθεύδοντες.

[72] [1] Ἅμα δὲ καὶ πρὸς Καίσαρα πρέσβεις ἔπεμπον εἰς Ἀσίαν, ἡ μὲν αἰτουμένη τὴν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ τοῖς παισὶν ἀρχήν, ὁ δ’ ἀξιῶν Ἀθήνησιν, εἰ μὴ δοκοίη περὶ Αἴγυπτον, [2] ἰδιώτης καταβιῶναι. φίλων δ’ ἀπορίᾳ καὶ ἀπιστίᾳ διὰ τὰς αὐτομολίας ὁ τῶν παίδων διδάσκαλος ἐπέμφθη [3] πρεσβεύων Εὐφρόνιος. καὶ γὰρ Ἀλεξᾶς ὁ Λαοδικεύς, γνωρισθεὶς μὲν ἐν Ῥώμῃ διὰ Τιμαγένους καὶ πλεῖστον Ἑλλήνων δυνηθείς, γενόμενος δὲ τῶν Κλεοπάτρας ἐπ’ Ἀντώνιον ὀργάνων τὸ βιαιότατον καὶ τῶν ὑπὲρ Ὀκταουίας ἱσταμένων ἐν αὐτῷ λογισμῶν ἀνατροπεύς, ἐπέμφθη μὲν Ἡρώδην τὸν βασιλέα τῆς μεταβολῆς ἐφέξων, αὐτοῦ δὲ καταμείνας καὶ προδοὺς Ἀντώνιον, ἐτόλμησεν εἰς [4] ὄψιν ἐλθεῖν Καίσαρος, Ἡρώδῃ πεποιθώς. ὤνησε δ’ αὐτὸν οὐδὲν Ἡρώδης, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς εἱρχθεὶς καὶ κομισθεὶς εἰς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ πατρίδα δέσμιος, ἐκεῖ Καίσαρος κελεύσαντος ἀνῃρέθη. τοιαύτην μὲν Ἀλεξᾶς ἔτι ζῶντι δίκην Ἀντωνίῳ τῆς ἀπιστίας ἐξέτεισε.

[73] [1] Καῖσαρ δὲ τοὺς μὲν ὑπὲρ Ἀντωνίου λόγους οὐκ ἠνέσχετο, Κλεοπάτραν δ’ ἀπεκρίνατο μηδενὸς ἁμαρτήσεσθαι τῶν ἐπιεικῶν, ἀνελοῦσαν Ἀντώνιον ἢ ἐκβαλοῦσαν.

[2] συνέπεμψε δὲ καὶ παρ’ αὑτοῦ τινα τῶν ἀπελευθέρων Θύρσον, οὐκ ἀνόητον ἄνθρωπον οὐδ’ ἀπιθάνως ἂν ἀφ’ ἡγεμόνος νέου διαλεχθέντα πρὸς γυναῖκα σοβαρὰν καὶ [3] θαυμαστὸν ὅσον ἐπὶ κάλλει φρονοῦσαν. οὗτος ἐντυγχάνων αὐτῇ μακρότερα τῶν ἄλλων καὶ τιμώμενος διαφερόντως, ὑπόνοιαν τῷ Ἀντωνίῳ παρέσχε, καὶ συλλαβὼν αὐτὸν ἐμαστίγωσεν, εἶτ’ ἀφῆκε πρὸς Καίσαρα, γράψας ὡς ἐντρυφῶν καὶ περιφρονῶν παροξύνειεν αὐτόν, εὐπαρόξυντον [4] ὑπὸ κακῶν ὄντα. σὺ δ’ εἰ μὴ φέρεις τὸ πρᾶγμα ἔφη μετρίως, ἔχεις ἐμὸν ἀπελεύθερον Ἵππαρχον. τοῦτον [5] κρεμάσας μαστίγωσον, ἵν’ ἴσον ἔχωμεν. ἐκ τούτου Κλεοπάτρα μὲν ἀπολυομένη τὰς αἰτίας καὶ ὑπονοίας ἐθεράπευεν αὐτὸν περιττῶς· καὶ τὴν ἑαυτῆς γενέθλιον ταπεινῶς διαγαγοῦσα καὶ ταῖς τύχαις πρεπόντως, τὴν ἐκείνου πᾶσαν ὑπερβαλλομένη λαμπρότητα καὶ πολυτέλειαν ἑώρτασεν, ὥστε πολλοὺς τῶν κεκλημένων ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον [6] πένητας ἐλθόντας ἀπελθεῖν πλουσίους. Καίσαρα δ’ Ἀγρίππας ἀνεκαλεῖτο πολλάκις ἀπὸ Ῥώμης γράφων, ὡς τῶν ἐκεῖ πραγμάτων τὴν παρουσίαν αὐτοῦ ποθούντων.

[74] [1] Ἔσχεν οὖν ἀναβολὴν ὁ πόλεμος τότε· τοῦ δὲ χειμῶνος παρελθόντος αὖθις ἐπῄει διὰ Συρίας, οἱ δὲ στρατηγοὶ διὰ Λιβύης. ἁλόντος δὲ Πηλουσίου, λόγος ἦν ἐνδοῦναι Σέλευκον οὐκ ἀκούσης τῆς Κλεοπάτρας.

[2] ἡ δ’ ἐκείνου μὲν γυναῖκα καὶ παῖδας Ἀντωνίῳ κτεῖναι παρεῖχεν, αὐτὴ δὲ θήκας ἔχουσα καὶ μνήματα κατεσκευασμένα περιττῶς εἴς τε κάλλος καὶ ὕψος, ἃ προσῳκοδόμησε τῷ ναῷ τῆς Ἴσιδος, ἐνταῦθα τῶν βασιλικῶν συνεφόρει τὰ πλείστης ἄξια σπουδῆς, χρυσὸν ἄργυρον [3] σμάραγδον μαργαρίτην ἔβενον ἐλέφαντα κινάμωμον, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ δᾷδα πολλὴν καὶ στυππεῖον, ὥστε δείσαντα περὶ τῶν χρημάτων Καίσαρα, μὴ τραπομένη πρὸς ἀπόγνωσιν ἡ γυνὴ διαφθείρῃ καὶ καταφλέξῃ τὸν πλοῦτον, ἀεί τινας ἐλπίδας αὐτῇ φιλανθρώπους προσπέμπειν, ἅμα [4] τῷ στρατῷ πορευόμενον ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν. ἱδρυθέντος δ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸν ἱππόδρομον, Ἀντώνιος ἐπεξελθὼν ἠγωνίσατο λαμπρῶς καὶ τροπὴν τῶν Καίσαρος ἱππέων [5] ἐποίησε, καὶ κατεδίωξεν ἄχρι τοῦ στρατοπέδου. μεγαλυνόμενος δὲ τῇ νίκῃ παρῆλθεν εἰς τὰ βασίλεια, καὶ τὴν Κλεοπάτραν κατεφίλησεν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις, καὶ τὸν ἠγωνισμένον [6] προθυμότατα τῶν στρατιωτῶν συνέστησεν. ἡ δ’ ἀριστεῖον αὐτῷ θώρακα χρυσοῦν καὶ κράνος ἔδωκεν· ἐκεῖνος μὲν οὖν ὁ ἄνθρωπος λαβὼν ταῦτα διὰ νυκτὸς ηὐτομόλησεν ὡς Καίσαρα.

[75] [1] Πάλιν δ’ Ἀντώνιος ἔπεμπε Καίσαρα μονομαχῆσαι προκαλούμενος. ἀποκριναμένου δ’ ἐκείνου πολλὰς ὁδοὺς Ἀντωνίῳ παρεῖναι θανάτου, συμφρονήσας ὅτι τοῦ διὰ μάχης οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτῷ βελτίων θάνατος, ἔγνω καὶ κατὰ [2] γῆν ἅμα καὶ θάλατταν ἐπιχειρεῖν. καὶ παρὰ δεῖπνον ὡς λέγεται τοὺς οἰκέτας ἐκέλευεν ἐπεγχεῖν καὶ προθυμότερον εὐωχεῖν αὐτόν· ἄδηλον γὰρ εἰ τοῦτο ποιήσουσιν αὔριον ἢ δεσπόταις ἑτέροις ὑπηρετήσουσιν, αὐτὸς δὲ κείσεται [3] σκελετὸς καὶ τὸ μηδὲν γενόμενος. τοὺς δὲ φίλους ἐπὶ τούτοις δακρύοντας ὁρῶν, ἔφη μὴ προάξειν ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, ἐξ ἧς αὑτῷ θάνατον εὐκλεᾶ μᾶλλον ἢ σωτηρίαν ζητεῖν καὶ [4] νίκην. ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ νυκτὶ λέγεται μεσούσῃ σχεδόν, ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ καὶ κατηφείᾳ τῆς πόλεως διὰ φόβον καὶ προσδοκίαν τοῦ μέλλοντος οὔσης, αἰφνίδιον ὀργάνων τε παντοδαπῶν ἐμμελεῖς φωνὰς ἀκουσθῆναι καὶ βοὴν ὄχλου μετ’ εὐασμῶν καὶ πηδήσεων σατυρικῶν, ὥσπερ θιάσου τινὸς οὐκ ἀθορύβως [5] ἐξελαύνοντος· εἶναι δὲ τὴν ὁρμὴν ὁμοῦ τι διὰ τῆς πόλεως μέσης ἐπὶ τὴν πύλην ἔξω τὴν τετραμμένην πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ ταύτῃ τὸν θόρυβον ἐκπεσεῖν [6] πλεῖστον γενόμενον. ἐδόκει δὲ τοῖς ἀναλογιζομένοις τὸ σημεῖον ἀπολείπειν ὁ θεὸς Ἀντώνιον, ᾧ μάλιστα συνεξομοιῶν καὶ συνοικειῶν ἑαυτὸν διετέλεσεν.

[76] [1] Ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τὸν πεζὸν αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τῶν πρὸ τῆς πόλεως λόφων ἱδρύσας, ἐθεᾶτο τὰς ναῦς ἀνηγμένας καὶ ταῖς τῶν πολεμίων προσφερομένας, καὶ περιμένων ἔργον [2] τι παρ’ ἐκείνων ἰδεῖν ἡσύχαζεν. οἱ δ’ ὡς ἐγγὺς ἐγένοντο, ταῖς κώπαις ἠσπάσαντο τοὺς Καίσαρος, ἐκείνων τ’ ἀντασπασαμένων μετεβάλοντο, καὶ πάσαις ἅμα ταῖς ναυσὶν ὁ στόλος εἷς γενόμενος ἐπέπλει πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ἀντίπρῳρος.

[3] τοῦτ’ Ἀντώνιος ἰδὼν ἀπελείφθη μὲν εὐθὺς ὑπὸ τῶν ἱππέων μεταβαλομένων, ἡττηθεὶς δὲ τοῖς πεζοῖς ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ὑπὸ Κλεοπάτρας προδεδόσθαι βοῶν [4] οἷς δι’ ἐκείνην ἐπολέμησεν. ἡ δὲ τὴν ὀργὴν αὐτοῦ φοβηθεῖσα καὶ τὴν ἀπόνοιαν, εἰς τὸν τάφον κατέφυγε καὶ τοὺς καταρράκτας ἀφῆκε κλείθροις καὶ μοχλοῖς καρτεροὺς ὄντας· πρὸς δ’ Ἀντώνιον ἔπεμψε τοὺς ἀπαγγελοῦντας [5] ὅτι τέθνηκε. πιστεύσας δ’ ἐκεῖνος καὶ εἰπὼν πρὸς αὑτόν τί ἔτι μέλλεις Ἀντώνιε; τὴν μόνην ἡ τύχη καὶ λοιπὴν ἀφῄρηκε τοῦ φιλοψυχεῖν πρόφασιν, εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸ [6] δωμάτιον· καὶ τὸν θώρακα παραλύων καὶ διαστέλλων, ὦ Κλεοπάτρα εἶπεν οὐκ ἄχθομαί σου στερόμενος, αὐτίκα γὰρ εἰς ταὐτὸν ἀφίξομαι, ἀλλ’ ὅτι γυναικὸς ὁ τηλικοῦτος αὐτοκράτωρ εὐψυχίᾳ πεφώραμαι λειπόμενος.

[7] ἦν δέ τις οἰκέτης αὐτῷ πιστὸς Ἔρως ὄνομα. τοῦτον ἐκ πολλοῦ παρακεκληκὼς εἰ δεήσειεν ἀνελεῖν αὐτόν, ἀπῄτει [8] τὴν ὑπόσχεσιν. ὁ δὲ σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος, ἀνέσχε μὲν ὡς παίσων ἐκεῖνον, ἀποστρέψαντος δὲ τὸ πρόσωπον, [9] ἑαυτὸν ἀπέκτεινε. πεσόντος δ’ αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοὺς πόδας, ὁ Ἀντώνιος εὖγε εἶπεν ὦ Ἔρως, ὅτι μὴ δυνηθεὶς αὐτὸς ἐμὲ ποιεῖν ὃ δεῖ διδάσκεις. καὶ παίσας διὰ τῆς κοιλίας [10] ἑαυτὸν ἀφῆκεν εἰς τὸ κλινίδιον. ἦν δ’ οὐκ εὐθυθάνατος ἡ πληγή. διὸ καὶ τῆς φορᾶς τοῦ αἵματος ἐπεὶ κατεκλίθη παυσαμένης, ἀναλαβὼν ἐδεῖτο τῶν παρόντων ἐπισφάττειν [11] αὐτόν. οἱ δ’ ἔφευγον ἐκ τοῦ δωματίου βοῶντος καὶ σφαδάζοντος, ἄχρι οὗ παρὰ Κλεοπάτρας ἧκε Διομήδης ὁ γραμματεύς, κομίζειν αὐτὸν ὡς ἐκείνην εἰς τὸν τάφον κελευσθείς.

[77] [1] Γνοὺς οὖν ὅτι ζῇ, προθύμως ἐκέλευσεν ἄρασθαι τοῖς ὑπηρέταις τὸ σῶμα, καὶ διὰ χειρῶν προσεκομίσθη [2] ταῖς θύραις τοῦ οἰκήματος. ἡ δὲ Κλεοπάτρα τὰς μὲν θύρας οὐκ ἀνέῳξεν, ἐκ δὲ θυρίδων τινῶν φανεῖσα σειρὰς καὶ καλώδια καθίει, καὶ τούτοις ἐναψάντων τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἀνεῖλκεν αὐτὴ καὶ δύο γυναῖκες, ἃς μόνας [3] ἐδέξατο μεθ’ αὑτῆς εἰς τὸν τάφον. οὐδὲν ἐκείνου λέγουσιν οἰκτρότερον γενέσθαι οἱ παραγενόμενοι θέαμα. πεφυρμένος γὰρ αἵματι καὶ δυσθανατῶν εἵλκετο, τὰς [4] χεῖρας ὀρέγων εἰς ἐκείνην καὶ παραιωρούμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἦν γυναικὶ ῥᾴδιον τὸ ἔργον, ἀλλὰ μόλις ἡ Κλεοπάτρα ταῖν χεροῖν ἐμπεφυκυῖα καὶ κατατεινομένη τῷ προσώπῳ τὸν δεσμὸν ἀνελάμβανεν, ἐπικελευομένων τῶν κάτωθεν αὐτῇ [5] καὶ συναγωνιώντων. δεξαμένη δ’ αὐτὸν οὕτως καὶ κατακλίνασα, περιερρήξατό τε τοὺς πέπλους ἐπ’ αὐτῷ, καὶ τὰ στέρνα τυπτομένη καὶ σπαράττουσα ταῖς χερσί, καὶ τῷ προσώπῳ τοῦ αἵματος ἀναματτομένη, δεσπότην ἐκάλει καὶ ἄνδρα καὶ αὐτοκράτορα· καὶ μικροῦ δεῖν ἐπιλέληστο [6] τῶν αὑτῆς κακῶν οἴκτῳ τῶν ἐκείνου. καταπαύσας δὲ τὸν θρῆνον αὐτῆς Ἀντώνιος ᾔτησε πιεῖν οἶνον, εἴτε [7] διψῶν εἴτε συντομώτερον ἐλπίζων ἀπολυθήσεσθαι. πιὼν δὲ παρῄνεσεν αὐτῇ, τὰ μὲν ἑαυτῆς ἂν ᾖ μὴ μετ’ αἰσχύνης σωτήρια τίθεσθαι, μάλιστα τῶν Καίσαρος ἑταίρων Προκληίῳ πιστεύουσαν, αὐτὸν δὲ μὴ θρηνεῖν ἐπὶ ταῖς ὑστάταις μεταβολαῖς, ἀλλὰ μακαρίζειν ὧν ἔτυχε καλῶν, ἐπιφανέστατος ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος καὶ πλεῖστον ἰσχύσας, καὶ νῦν οὐκ ἀγεννῶς Ῥωμαῖος ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίου κρατηθείς.

[78] [1] Ὅσον οὔπω δ’ ἐκλιπόντος αὐτοῦ, Προκλήιος ἧκε παρὰ Καίσαρος. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἑαυτὸν πατάξας ὁ Ἀντώνιος ᾤχετο πρὸς Κλεοπάτραν κομιζόμενος, Δερκεταῖός τις τῶν δορυφόρων λαβὼν τὸ ἐγχειρίδιον αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀποκρύψας ὑπεξῆλθε, καὶ δραμὼν πρὸς Καίσαρα πρῶτος ἤγγειλε τὴν Ἀντωνίου τελευτήν, καὶ τὸ ξίφος ἔδειξεν [2] ᾑμαγμένον. ὁ δ’ ὡς ἤκουσεν, ἐνδοτέρω τῆς σκηνῆς ὑποστὰς ἀπεδάκρυσεν ἄνδρα κηδεστὴν γενόμενον καὶ συνάρχοντα [3] καὶ πολλῶν ἀγώνων καὶ πραγμάτων κοινωνόν. εἶτα τὰς ἐπιστολὰς λαβὼν καὶ τοὺς φίλους καλέσας ἀνεγίνωσκεν, ὡς εὐγνώμονα γράφοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ δίκαια φορτικὸς [4] ἦν καὶ ὑπερήφανος ἀεὶ περὶ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις ἐκεῖνος. ἐκ δὲ τούτου τὸν Προκλήιον ἔπεμψε, κελεύσας ἢν δύνηται μάλιστα τῆς Κλεοπάτρας ζώσης κρατῆσαι· καὶ γὰρ ἐφοβεῖτο περὶ τῶν χρημάτων, καὶ μέγα πρὸς δόξαν ἡγεῖτο [5] τοῦ θριάμβου καταγαγεῖν ἐκείνην. εἰς μὲν οὖν χεῖρας τῷ Προκληίῳ συνελθεῖν οὐκ ἠθέλησεν· ἐγίνοντο δὲ λόγοι [ἐν] τῷ οἰκήματι προσελθόντος ἔξωθεν αὐτοῦ κατὰ θύρας ἐπιπέδους, ἀποκεκλειμένας μὲν ὀχυρῶς, φωνῇ δὲ διέξοδον [6] ἐχούσας. καὶ διελέχθησαν, ἡ μὲν αἰτουμένη τοῖς παισὶ τὴν βασιλείαν, ὁ δὲ θαρρεῖν καὶ πάντα πιστεύειν Καίσαρι κελεύων.

[79] [1] Ὡς δὲ κατιδὼν τὸν τόπον ἀπήγγειλε Καίσαρι, Γάλλος μὲν ἐπέμφθη πάλιν ἐντευξόμενος αὐτῇ, καὶ πρὸς [2] τὰς θύρας ἐλθὼν ἐπίτηδες ἐμήκυνε τὸν λόγον. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Προκλήιος κλίμακος προστεθείσης διὰ τῆς θυρίδος εἰσῆλθεν, ᾗ τὸν Ἀντώνιον αἱ γυναῖκες ἐδέξαντο, καὶ πρὸς τὰς θύρας [αὐτοῦ] εὐθύς, αἷς ἡ Κλεοπάτρα παρειστήκει προσέχουσα τῷ Γάλλῳ, κατέβαινεν ὑπηρέτας ἔχων δύο [3] μεθ’ αὑτοῦ. τῶν δὲ συγκαθειργμένων τῇ Κλεοπάτρᾳ γυναικῶν τῆς ἑτέρας ἀνακραγούσης τάλαινα Κλεοπάτρα, ζωγρεῖ, μεταστραφεῖσα καὶ θεασαμένη τὸν Προκλήιον, ὥρμησε μὲν αὑτὴν πατάξαι· παρεζωσμένη γὰρ ἐτύγχανέ [4] τι τῶν λῃστρικῶν ξιφιδίων. προσδραμὼν δὲ ταχὺ καὶ περισχὼν αὐτὴν ταῖς χερσὶν ἀμφοτέραις ὁ Προκλήιος ἀδικεῖς εἶπεν ὦ Κλεοπάτρα καὶ σεαυτὴν καὶ Καίσαρα, μεγάλην ἀφαιρουμένη χρηστότητος ἐπίδειξιν αὐτοῦ καὶ διαβάλλουσα τὸν πραότατον ἡγεμόνων ὡς ἄπιστον καὶ [5] ἀδιάλλακτον. ἅμα δὲ καὶ τὸ ξίφος αὐτῆς παρείλετο καὶ [6] τὴν ἐσθῆτα μὴ κρύπτοι τι φάρμακον ἐξέσεισεν. ἐπέμφθη δὲ καὶ παρὰ Καίσαρος τῶν ἀπελευθέρων Ἐπαφρόδιτος, ᾧ προσετέτακτο ζῶσαν αὐτὴν φυλάττειν ἰσχυρῶς ἐπιμελόμενον, τἆλλα ‹δὲ› πρὸς τὸ ῥᾷστον ἐνδιδόναι καὶ ἥδιστον.

[80] [1] Αὐτὸς δὲ Καῖσαρ εἰσήλαυνεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, Ἀρείῳ τῷ φιλοσόφῳ προσδιαλεγόμενος καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν ἐνδεδωκώς, ἵν’ εὐθὺς ἐν τοῖς πολίταις περίβλεπτος εἴη καὶ [2] θαυμάζοιτο τιμώμενος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ διαπρεπῶς. εἰς δὲ τὸ γυμνάσιον εἰσελθὼν καὶ ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ βῆμά τι πεποιημένον, ἐκπεπληγμένων ὑπὸ δέους τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ προσπιπτόντων, ἀναστῆναι κελεύσας ἔφη πάσης αἰτίας τὸν δῆμον ἀφιέναι, πρῶτον μὲν διὰ τὸν κτίστην Ἀλέξανδρον, δεύτερον δὲ τῆς πόλεως θαυμάζων τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὸ [3] μέγεθος, τρίτον δ’ Ἀρείῳ τῷ ἑταίρῳ χαριζόμενος. ταύτης δὴ τῆς τιμῆς ἔτυχε παρὰ Καίσαρος Ἄρειος, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐξῃτήσατο συχνούς· ὧν ἦν καὶ Φιλόστρατος, ἀνὴρ εἰπεῖν μὲν ἐξ ἐπιδρομῆς τῶν τότε σοφιστῶν ἱκανώτατος, εἰσποιῶν δὲ μὴ προσηκόντως ἑαυτὸν τῇ Ἀκαδημείᾳ· διὸ καὶ Καῖσαρ αὐτοῦ βδελυττόμενος τὸν τρόπον, οὐ προσίετο [4] τὰς δεήσεις. ὁ δὲ πώγωνα πολιὸν καθεὶς καὶ φαιὸν ἱμάτιον περιβαλόμενος, ἐξόπισθεν Ἀρείῳ παρηκολούθει, τοῦτον ἀεὶ τὸν στίχον ἀναφθεγγόμενος (fr. adesp. 422 N.²)·

σοφοὶ σοφοὺς σῴζουσιν, ἂν ὦσιν σοφοί.

[5] πυθόμενος δὲ Καῖσαρ, καὶ τοῦ φθόνου μᾶλλον Ἄρειον ἢ τοῦ δέους Φιλόστρατον ἀπαλλάξαι βουλόμενος, διῆκε.

[81] [1] Τῶν δ’ Ἀντωνίου παίδων ὁ μὲν ἐκ Φουλβίας Ἄντυλλος ὑπὸ Θεοδώρου τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ παραδοθεὶς [2] ἀπέθανε· καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀποτεμνόντων, ὁ παιδαγωγὸς ἀφελὼν ὃν ἐφόρει περὶ τῷ τραχήλῳ πολυτιμότατον λίθον εἰς τὴν ζώνην κατέρραψεν· [3] ἀρνησάμενος δὲ καὶ φωραθεὶς ἀνεσταυρώθη. τὰ δὲ Κλεοπάτρας παιδία φρουρούμενα μετὰ τῶν τρεφόντων [4] ἐλευθέριον εἶχε δίαιταν. Καισαρίωνα δὲ τὸν ἐκ Καίσαρος γεγονέναι λεγόμενον ἡ μὲν μήτηρ ἐξέπεμψε μετὰ χρημάτων πολλῶν εἰς τὴν Ἰνδικὴν δι’ Αἰθιοπίας, ἕτερος δὲ παιδαγωγὸς ὅμοιος Θεοδώρῳ Ῥόδων ἀνέπεισεν ἐπανελθεῖν, ὡς Καίσαρος αὐτὸν ἐπὶ βασιλείαν καλοῦντος.

[5] βουλευομένου δὲ Καίσαρος, Ἄρειον εἰπεῖν λέγουσιν (Il. 2, 204)·

οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πολυκαισαρίη.

[82] [1] Τοῦτον μὲν οὖν ὕστερον ἀπέκτεινε μετὰ τὴν Κλεοπάτρας [2] τελευτήν. Ἀντώνιον δὲ πολλῶν αἰτουμένων θάψαι καὶ βασιλέων καὶ στρατηγῶν, οὐκ ἀφείλετο Κλεοπάτρας τὸ σῶμα Καῖσαρ, ἀλλ’ ἐθάπτετο ταῖς ἐκείνης χερσὶ πολυτελῶς καὶ βασιλικῶς, πᾶσιν ὡς ἐβούλετο χρῆσθαι [3] λαβούσης. ἐκ δὲ λύπης ἅμα τοσαύτης καὶ ὀδύνης - ἀνεφλέγμηνε γὰρ αὐτῆς τὰ στέρνα τυπτομένης καὶ ἥλκωτο - πυρετῶν ἐπιλαβόντων, ἠγάπησε τὴν πρόφασιν, ὡς ἀφεξομένη τροφῆς διὰ τοῦτο καὶ παραλύσουσα [4] τοῦ ζῆν ἀκωλύτως ἑαυτήν. ἦν δ’ ἰατρὸς αὐτῇ συνήθης Ὄλυμπος, ᾧ φράσασα τἀληθὲς ἐχρῆτο συμβούλῳ καὶ συνεργῷ τῆς καθαιρέσεως, ὡς αὐτὸς ὁ Ὄλυμπος εἴρηκεν, ἱστορίαν τινὰ τῶν πραγμάτων τούτων ἐκδεδωκώς [5] (FGrH 198). ὑπονοήσας δὲ Καῖσαρ ἀπειλὰς μέν τινας αὐτῇ καὶ φόβους περὶ τῶν τέκνων προσέβαλλεν, οἷς ἐκείνη καθάπερ μηχανήμασιν ὑπηρείπετο, καὶ παρεδίδου τὸ σῶμα θεραπεύειν καὶ τρέφειν τοῖς χρῄζουσιν.

[83] [1] Ἧκε δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς ἡμέρας ὀλίγας διαλιπὼν ἐντευξόμενος αὐτῇ καὶ παρηγορήσων. ἡ δ’ ἔτυχε μὲν ἐν στιβάδι κατακειμένη ταπεινῶς, εἰσιόντι δ’ αὐτῷ μονοχίτων ἀναπηδήσασα προσπίπτει, δεινῶς μὲν ἐξηγριωμένη κεφαλὴν καὶ πρόσωπον, ὑπότρομος δὲ τῇ φωνῇ καὶ συντετηκυῖα [2] ταῖς ὄψεσιν. ἦν δὲ πολλὰ καὶ τῆς περὶ τὸ στέρνον αἰκίας καταφανῆ, καὶ ὅλως οὐθὲν ἐδόκει τὸ σῶμα τῆς [3] ψυχῆς ἔχειν βέλτιον. ἡ μέντοι χάρις ἐκείνη καὶ τὸ τῆς ὥρας ἰταμὸν οὐ κατέσβεστο παντάπασιν, ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτως διακειμένης ἔνδοθέν ποθεν ἐξέλαμπε καὶ συνεπεφαίνετο [4] τοῖς κινήμασι τοῦ προσώπου. κελεύσαντος δὲ τοῦ Καίσαρος αὐτὴν κατακλιθῆναι καὶ πλησίον αὐτῆς καθίσαντος, ἥψατο μέν τινος δικαιολογίας, εἰς ἀνάγκην καὶ φόβον Ἀντωνίου τὰ πεπραγμένα τρεπούσης· ἐνισταμένου δὲ πρὸς ἕκαστον αὐτῇ τοῦ Καίσαρος, ἐξελεγχομένη ταχὺ πρὸς οἶκτον μεθηρμόσατο καὶ δέησιν, ὡς δή τις ἂν μάλιστα [5] τοῦ ζῆν περιεχομένη. τέλος δὲ τοῦ πλήθους τῶν χρημάτων ἀναγραφὴν ἔχουσα προσέδωκεν αὐτῷ· Σελεύκου δέ τινος τῶν ἐπιτρόπων ἐλέγχοντος ὡς ἔνια κρύπτουσαν καὶ διακλέπτουσαν, ἀναπηδήσασα καὶ τῶν τριχῶν αὐτοῦ λαβομένη, πολλὰς ἐνεφόρει τῷ προσώπῳ πληγάς.

[6] τοῦ δὲ Καίσαρος μειδιῶντος καὶ καταπαύοντος αὐτήν, ἀλλ’ οὐ δεινόν εἶπεν ὦ Καῖσαρ, εἰ σὺ μὲν ἠξίωσας ἀφικέσθαι πρὸς ἐμὲ καὶ προσειπεῖν οὕτω πράττουσαν, οἱ δὲ δοῦλοί μου κατηγοροῦσιν, εἴ τι τῶν γυναικείων ἀπεθέμην, οὐκ ἐμαυτῇ δήπουθεν, ἡ τάλαινα, κόσμον, ἀλλ’ ὅπως Ὀκταουίᾳ καὶ Λιβίᾳ τῇ σῇ μικρὰ δοῦσα, δι’ [7] ἐκείνων ἵλεώ σου τύχοιμι καὶ πραοτέρου; τούτοις ὁ Καῖσαρ ἥδετο, παντάπασιν αὐτὴν φιλοψυχεῖν οἰόμενος. εἰπὼν οὖν ὅτι καὶ ταῦτα ἐπιτρέπει καὶ τἆλλα πάσης ἐλπίδος αὐτῇ χρήσεται λαμπρότερον, ᾤχετο ἀπιών, ἐξηπατηκέναι μὲν οἰόμενος, ἐξηπατημένος δὲ μᾶλλον.

[84] [1] Ἦν δὲ Κορνήλιος Δολοβέλλας ἐπιφανὴς νεανίσκος [2] ἐν τοῖς Καίσαρος ἑταίροις. οὗτος εἶχε πρὸς τὴν Κλεοπάτραν οὐκ ἀηδῶς· καὶ τότε χαριζόμενος αὐτῇ δεηθείσῃ κρύφα πέμψας ἐξήγγειλεν, ὡς αὐτὸς μὲν ὁ Καῖσαρ ἀναζεύγνυσι πεζῇ διὰ Συρίας, ἐκείνην δὲ μετὰ τῶν τέκνων ἀποστέλλειν εἰς ‹Ῥώμην μετὰ› τρίτην ἡμέραν ἔγνωκεν. [3] ἡ δ’ ἀκούσασα ταῦτα πρῶτον μὲν ἐδεήθη Καίσαρος, ὅπως αὐτὴν ἐάσῃ χοὰς ἐπενεγκεῖν Ἀντωνίῳ· καὶ συγχωρήσαντος, ἐπὶ τὸν τάφον κομισθεῖσα καὶ περιπεσοῦσα τῇ [4] σορῷ μετὰ τῶν συνήθων γυναικῶν ὦ φίλ’ Ἀντώνιε εἶπεν ἔθαπτον μέν σε πρώην ἔτι χερσὶν ἐλευθέραις, σπένδω δὲ νῦν αἰχμάλωτος οὖσα καὶ φρουρουμένη μήτε κοπετοῖς μήτε θρήνοις αἰκίσασθαι τὸ δοῦλον τοῦτο σῶμα [5] καὶ τηρούμενον ἐπὶ τοὺς κατὰ σοῦ θριάμβους. ἄλλας δὲ μὴ προσδέχου τιμὰς ἢ χοάς· ἀλλ’ αὗταί σοι τελευταῖαι [6] Κλεοπάτρας ἀγομένης. ζῶντας μὲν γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐθὲν ἀλλήλων διέστησε, κινδυνεύομεν δὲ τῷ θανάτῳ διαμείψασθαι τοὺς τόπους, σὺ μὲν ὁ Ῥωμαῖος ἐνταῦθα κείμενος, ἐγὼ δ’ ἡ δύστηνος ἐν Ἰταλίᾳ, τοσοῦτο τῆς σῆς μεταλαβοῦσα [7] χώρας μόνον. ἀλλ’ εἰ δή τις τῶν ἐκεῖ θεῶν ἀλκὴ καὶ δύναμις - οἱ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα προὔδωκαν ἡμᾶς - , μὴ πρόῃ ζῶσαν τὴν σεαυτοῦ γυναῖκα, μηδ’ ἐν ἐμοὶ περιίδῃς θριαμβευόμενον σεαυτόν, ἀλλ’ ἐνταῦθά με κρύψον μετὰ σεαυτοῦ καὶ σύνθαψον, ὡς ἐμοὶ μυρίων κακῶν ὄντων οὐδὲν οὕτω μέγα καὶ δεινόν ἐστιν, ὡς ὁ βραχὺς οὗτος χρόνος ὃν σοῦ χωρὶς ἔζηκα.

[85] [1] Τοιαῦτ’ ὀλοφυραμένη καὶ στέψασα καὶ κατασπασαμένη τὴν σορόν, ἐκέλευσεν αὑτῇ λουτρὸν γενέσθαι. λουσαμένη δὲ καὶ κατακλιθεῖσα, λαμπρὸν ἄριστον ἠρίστα.

[2] καί τις ἧκεν ἀπ’ ἀγροῦ κίστην τινὰ κομίζων· τῶν δὲ φυλάκων ὅ τι φέροι πυνθανομένων, ἀνοίξας καὶ ἀφελὼν τὰ [3] θρῖα σύκων ἐπίπλεων τὸ ἀγγεῖον ἔδειξε. θαυμασάντων δὲ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὸ μέγεθος, μειδιάσας παρεκάλει λαβεῖν· [4] οἱ δὲ πιστεύσαντες ἐκέλευον εἰσενεγκεῖν. μετὰ δὲ τὸ ἄριστον ἡ Κλεοπάτρα δέλτον ἔχουσα γεγραμμένην καὶ κατασεσημασμένην ἀπέστειλε πρὸς Καίσαρα, καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐκποδὼν ποιησαμένη πλὴν τῶν δυεῖν ἐκείνων [5] γυναικῶν, τὰς θύρας ἔκλεισε. Καῖσαρ δὲ λύσας τὴν δέλτον, ὡς ἐνέτυχε λιταῖς καὶ ὀλοφυρμοῖς δεομένης αὐτὴν σὺν Ἀντωνίῳ θάψαι, ταχὺ συνῆκε τὸ πεπραγμένον. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν αὐτὸς ὥρμησε βοηθεῖν, ἔπειτα τοὺς σκεψομένους κατὰ τάχος ἔπεμψεν. ἐγεγόνει δ’ ὀξὺ τὸ πάθος.

[6] δρόμῳ γὰρ ἐλθόντες, καὶ τοὺς μὲν φυλάττοντας οὐδὲν ᾐσθημένους καταλαβόντες, τὰς δὲ θύρας ἀνοίξαντες, εὗρον αὐτὴν τεθνηκυῖαν ἐν χρυσῇ κατακειμένην κλίνῃ κεκοσμημένην [7] βασιλικῶς. τῶν δὲ γυναικῶν ἡ μὲν Εἰρὰς λεγομένη πρὸς τοῖς ποσὶν ἀπέθνῃσκεν, ἡ δὲ Χάρμιον ἤδη σφαλλομένη καὶ καρηβαροῦσα κατεκόσμει τὸ διάδημα τὸ περὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτῆς. εἰπόντος δέ τινος ὀργῇ· [8] καλὰ ταῦτα Χάρμιον; κάλλιστα μὲν οὖν ἔφη καὶ πρέποντα τῇ τοσούτων ἀπογόνῳ βασιλέων. πλέον δ’ οὐδὲν εἶπεν, ἀλλ’ αὐτοῦ παρὰ τὴν κλίνην ἔπεσε.

[86] [1] Λέγεται δὲ τὴν ἀσπίδα κομισθῆναι σὺν τοῖς σύκοις ἐκείνοις καὶ τοῖς θρίοις ἄνωθεν ἐπικαλυφθεῖσαν· οὕτω γὰρ τὴν Κλεοπάτραν κελεῦσαι, μηδ’ αὐτῆς ἐπισταμένης τῷ [2] σώματι προσπεσεῖν τὸ θηρίον· ὡς δ’ ἀφαιροῦσα τῶν σύκων εἶδεν, εἰπεῖν· ἐνταῦθ’ ἦν ἄρα τοῦτο. καὶ τὸν [3] βραχίονα παρασχεῖν τῷ δήγματι γυμνώσασαν. οἱ δὲ τηρεῖσθαι μὲν ἐν ὑδρίᾳ τὴν ἀσπίδα καθειργμένην φάσκουσιν, ἠλακάτῃ δέ τινι χρυσῇ τῆς Κλεοπάτρας ἐκκαλουμένης αὐτὴν καὶ διαγριαινούσης, ὁρμήσασαν ἐμφῦναι τῷ [4] βραχίονι. τὸ δ’ ἀληθὲς οὐδεὶς οἶδεν· ἐπεὶ καὶ φάρμακον αὐτὴν ἐλέχθη φορεῖν ἐν κνηστίδι κοίλῃ, τὴν δὲ κνηστίδα κρύπτειν τῇ κόμῃ· πλὴν οὔτε κηλὶς ἐξήνθησε τοῦ σώματος [5] οὔτ’ ἄλλο φαρμάκου σημεῖον. οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ τὸ θηρίον ἐντὸς ὤφθη, συρμοὺς δέ τινας αὐτοῦ παρὰ θάλασσαν, ᾗ τὸ δωμάτιον ἀφεώρα καὶ θυρίδες ἦσαν, ἰδεῖν ἔφασκον· ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τὸν βραχίονα τῆς Κλεοπάτρας ὀφθῆναι δύο νυγμὰς ἔχοντα λεπτὰς καὶ ἀμυδράς. οἷς ἔοικε πιστεῦσαι καὶ ὁ [6] Καῖσαρ. ἐν γὰρ τῷ θριάμβῳ τῆς Κλεοπάτρας αὐτῆς εἴδωλον ἐκομίζετο καὶ τῆς ἀσπίδος ἐμπεφυκυίας. ταῦτα [7] μὲν οὖν οὕτω λέγεται γενέσθαι. Καῖσαρ δέ, καίπερ ἀχθεσθεὶς ἐπὶ τῇ τελευτῇ τῆς γυναικός, ἐθαύμασε τὴν εὐγένειαν αὐτῆς, καὶ ταφῆναι τὸ σῶμα σὺν Ἀντωνίῳ λαμπρῶς καὶ βασιλικῶς ἐκέλευσεν. ἐντίμου δὲ καὶ τὰ γύναια κηδείας ἔτυχεν αὐτοῦ προστάξαντος.

[8] Ἐτελεύτησε δὲ Κλεοπάτρα μὲν ἑνὸς δέοντα τεσσαράκοντα ἔτη βιώσασα, καὶ τούτων δύο καὶ εἴκοσι βασιλεύσασα, συνάρξασα δ’ Ἀντωνίῳ πλείω τῶν δεκατεσσάρων. Ἀντώνιον δ’ οἱ μὲν ἕξ, οἱ δὲ τρισὶ τὰ πεντήκοντα ὑπερβαλεῖν [9] φασιν. αἱ μὲν οὖν Ἀντωνίου καθῃρέθησαν εἰκόνες, αἱ δὲ Κλεοπάτρας κατὰ χώραν ἔμειναν, Ἀρχιβίου τινὸς τῶν φίλων αὐτῆς δισχίλια τάλαντα Καίσαρι δόντος, ἵνα μὴ τὸ αὐτὸ ταῖς Ἀντωνίου πάθωσιν.

[87] [1] Ἀντωνίου δὲ γενεὰν ἀπολιπόντος ἐκ τριῶν γυναικῶν ἑπτὰ παῖδας, ὁ πρεσβύτατος Ἄντυλλος ὑπὸ Καίσαρος ἀνῃρέθη μόνος· τοὺς δὲ λοιποὺς Ὀκταουία παραλαβοῦσα [2] μετὰ τῶν ἐξ ἑαυτῆς ἔθρεψε. καὶ Κλεοπάτραν μὲν τὴν ἐκ Κλεοπάτρας Ἰόβᾳ τῷ χαριεστάτῳ βασιλέων συνῴκισεν, Ἀντώνιον δὲ τὸν ἐκ Φουλβίας οὕτω μέγαν ἐποίησεν, ὥστε τὴν πρώτην παρὰ Καίσαρι τιμὴν Ἀγρίππου, τὴν δὲ δευτέραν τῶν Λιβίας παίδων ἐχόντων, τρίτον εἶναι [3] καὶ δοκεῖν Ἀντώνιον, ἐκ δὲ Μαρκέλλου δυεῖν αὐτῇ θυγατέρων οὐσῶν, ἑνὸς δ’ υἱοῦ Μαρκέλλου, τοῦτον μὲν ἅμα παῖδα καὶ γαμβρὸν ἐποιήσατο Καῖσαρ, τῶν δὲ θυγατέρων [4] Ἀγρίππᾳ τὴν ἑτέραν ἔδωκεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ Μάρκελλος ἐτελεύτησε κομιδῇ νεόγαμος, καὶ Καίσαρι γαμβρὸν ἔχοντα πίστιν οὐκ εὔπορον ἦν ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων φίλων ἑλέσθαι, λόγον ἡ Ὀκταουία προσήνεγκεν ὡς χρὴ τὴν Καίσαρος θυγατέρα λαβεῖν Ἀγρίππαν, ἀφέντα τὴν ἑαυτῆς.

[5] πεισθέντος δὲ Καίσαρος πρῶτον, εἶτ’ Ἀγρίππου, τὴν μὲν αὑτῆς ἀπολαβοῦσα συνῴκισεν Ἀντωνίῳ, τὴν δὲ Καίσαρος [6] Ἀγρίππας ἔγημεν. ἀπολειπομένων δὲ τῶν Ἀντωνίου καὶ Ὀκταουίας δυεῖν θυγατέρων τὴν μὲν Δομίτιος Ἀηνόβαρβος ἔλαβε, τὴν δὲ σωφροσύνῃ καὶ κάλλει περιβόητον Ἀντωνίαν [7] Δροῦσος, ὁ Λιβίας υἱός, πρόγονος δὲ Καίσαρος. ἐκ τούτων ἐγένετο Γερμανικὸς καὶ Κλαύδιος· ὧν Κλαύδιος μὲν ὕστερον [8] ἦρξε· τῶν δὲ Γερμανικοῦ παίδων Γάιος μὲν ἄρξας ἐπιφανῶς οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἀνῃρέθη μετὰ τέκνου καὶ γυναικός, Ἀγριππίνα δ’ υἱὸν ἐξ Ἀηνοβάρβου Λεύκιον Δομίτιον ἔχουσα, Κλαυδίῳ Καίσαρι συνῴκησε· καὶ θέμενος τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῆς Κλαύδιος Νέρωνα Γερμανικὸν [9] προσωνόμασεν. οὗτος ἄρξας ἐφ’ ἡμῶν ἀπέκτεινε τὴν μητέρα καὶ μικρὸν ἐδέησεν ὑπ’ ἐμπληξίας καὶ παραφροσύνης ἀνατρέψαι τὴν Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίαν, πέμπτος ἀπ’ Ἀντωνίου κατ’ ἀριθμὸν διαδοχῆς γενόμενος.

Comparison Demetrii et Antonii

[1] [1] Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν μεγάλαι περὶ ἀμφοτέρους γεγόνασι μεταβολαί, πρῶτον τὰ τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ τῆς ἐπιφανείας σκοπῶμεν, ὅτι τῷ μὲν ἦν πατρῷα καὶ προκατειργασμένα, μέγιστον ἰσχύσαντος Ἀντιγόνου τῶν διαδόχων καὶ πρὸ τοῦ Δημήτριον ἐν ἡλικίᾳ γενέσθαι τὰ πλεῖστα [2] τῆς Ἀσίας ἐπελθόντος καὶ κρατήσαντος· Ἀντώνιος δὲ χαρίεντος μὲν ἄλλως, ἀπολέμου δὲ καὶ μέγα μηδὲν εἰς δόξαν αὐτῷ καταλιπόντος γενόμενος πατρός, ἐπὶ τὴν Καίσαρος ἐτόλμησεν ἀρχὴν οὐδὲν αὐτῷ κατὰ γένος προσήκουσαν ἐλθεῖν, καὶ τοῖς ἐκείνῳ προπεπονημένοις αὐτὸς [3] ἑαυτὸν εἰσεποίησε διάδοχον. καὶ τοσοῦτον ἴσχυσεν ἐκ μόνων τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ὑπαρχόντων ὁρμώμενος, ὥστε δύο μοίρας τὰ σύμπαντα ποιησάμενος, τὴν ἑτέραν ἑλέσθαι καὶ λαβεῖν τὴν ἐπιφανεστέραν, ἀπὼν δ’ αὐτὸς ὑπηρέταις τε καὶ ὑποστρατήγοις Πάρθους τε νικῆσαι πολλάκις καὶ τὰ περὶ Καύκασον ἔθνη βάρβαρα μέχρι τῆς [4] Κασπίας ὤσασθαι θαλάσσης. μαρτύρια δὲ τοῦ μεγέθους [5] αὐτῷ καὶ δι’ ἃ κακῶς ἀκούει. Δημητρίῳ μὲν γὰρ ὁ πατὴρ ἠγάπησε τὴν Ἀντιπάτρου Φίλαν ὡς κρείττονα συνοικίσαι παρ’ ἡλικίαν, Ἀντωνίῳ δ’ ὁ Κλεοπάτρας γάμος ὄνειδος ἦν, γυναικὸς ὑπερβαλομένης δυνάμει καὶ λαμπρότητι πάντας πλὴν Ἀρσάκου τοὺς καθ’ αὑτὴν βασιλεῖς. [6] ἀλλ’ οὕτως ἐποίησε μέγαν ἑαυτόν, ὥστε τοῖς ἄλλοις μειζόνων ἢ ἐβούλετο δοκεῖν ἄξιος.

[2] [1] Ἡ μέντοι προαίρεσις, ἀφ’ ἧς ἐκτήσαντο τὴν ἀρχήν, ἄμεμπτός ἐστιν ἡ τοῦ Δημητρίου, κρατεῖν καὶ βασιλεύειν ἀνθρώπων εἰθισμένων κρατεῖσθαι καὶ βασιλεύεσθαι ζητοῦντος, ἡ δ’ Ἀντωνίου χαλεπὴ καὶ τυραννική, καταδουλουμένου τὸν Ῥωμαίων δῆμον ἄρτι διαφυγόντα [2] τὴν ὑπὸ Καίσαρι μοναρχίαν. ὃ δ’ οὖν μέγιστον αὐτῷ καὶ λαμπρότατόν ἐστι τῶν εἰργασμένων, ὁ πρὸς Κάσσιον καὶ Βροῦτον πόλεμος, ἐπὶ τῷ τὴν πατρίδα καὶ τοὺς πολίτας [3] ἀφελέσθαι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἐπολεμήθη. Δημήτριος δὲ καί, πρὶν εἰς τύχας ἐλθεῖν ἀναγκαίας, ἐλευθερῶν τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ τῶν πόλεων ἐξελαύνων τὰς φρουρὰς διετέλεσεν, οὐχ ὥσπερ Ἀντώνιος, ὅτι τοὺς ἐλευθερώσαντας [4] τὴν Ῥώμην ἀπέκτεινεν ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ, σεμνυνόμενος. ἓν τοίνυν ἐστὶ τῶν ἐπαινουμένων Ἀντωνίου, τὸ φιλόδωρον καὶ μεγαλόδωρον, ἐν ᾧ τοσοῦτον ὑπεραίρει Δημήτριος, ὥστε χαρίσασθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις ὅσα τοῖς φίλοις οὐκ [5] ἔδωκεν Ἀντώνιος. καίτοι ταφῆναί γε καὶ περισταλῆναι κελεύσας Βροῦτον ἐκεῖνος εὐδοκίμησεν· οὗτος δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἀποθανόντας τῶν πολεμίων πάντας ἐκήδευσε, καὶ τοὺς ἁλόντας Πτολεμαίῳ μετὰ χρημάτων καὶ δωρεῶν ἀπέπεμψεν.

[3] [1]

Ὑβρισταὶ μὲν εὐτυχοῦντες ἀμφότεροι καὶ πρὸς [2] τρυφὰς ἀνειμένοι καὶ ἀπολαύσεις. οὐκ ἂν εἴποι δέ τις, ὡς Δημήτριον ἐν εὐπαθείαις καὶ συνουσίαις ὄντα πράξεων καιρὸς ἐξέφυγεν, ἀλλὰ τῇ περιουσίᾳ τῆς σχολῆς ἐπεισῆγε τὰς ἡδονάς, καὶ τὴν Λάμιαν ὥσπερ τὴν μυθικὴν ἀτεχνῶς παίζων καὶ νυστάζων ἐποιεῖτο διαγωγήν· [3] ἐν δὲ ταῖς τοῦ πολέμου παρασκευαῖς οὐκ εἶχεν αὐτοῦ τὸ δόρυ κιττόν, οὐδὲ μύρων ὠδώδει τὸ κράνος, οὐδὲ γεγανωμένος καὶ ἀνθηρὸς ἐπὶ τὰς μάχας ἐκ τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος προῄει, κοιμίζων δὲ τοὺς θιάσους καὶ τὰ βακχεῖα καταπαύων, ἀμφίπολος Ἄρεος ἀνιέρου, κατὰ τὸν Εὐριπίδην (fr. 992 N.²), ἐγίνετο, καὶ δι’ ἡδονὴν ἢ ῥᾳθυμίαν [4] οὐθὲν ἁπλῶς ἔπταισεν. Ἀντώνιον δ’, ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς γραφαῖς ὁρῶμεν τοῦ Ἡρακλέους τὴν Ὀμφάλην ὑφαιροῦσαν τὸ ῥόπαλον καὶ τὴν λεοντῆν ἀποδύουσαν, οὕτω πολλάκις Κλεοπάτρα παροπλίσασα καὶ καταθέλξασα συνέπεισεν ἀφέντα μεγάλας πράξεις ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν καὶ στρατείας ἀναγκαίας ἐν ταῖς περὶ Κάνωβον καὶ Ταφόσιριν [5] ἀκταῖς ἀλύειν καὶ παίζειν μετ’ αὐτῆς. τέλος δ’ ὡς ὁ Πάρις ἐκ τῆς μάχης ἀποδρὰς εἰς τοὺς ἐκείνης κατεδύετο κόλπους (Il. 3, 380 sq.)· μᾶλλον δ’ ὁ μὲν Πάρις ἡττηθεὶς ἔφευγεν εἰς τὸν θάλαμον, Ἀντώνιος δὲ Κλεοπάτραν διώκων ἔφευγε καὶ προήκατο τὴν νίκην.

[4] [1] Ἔτι Δημήτριος μέν, οὐ κεκωλυμένον, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου γεγονὸς ἐν ἔθει τοῖς Μακεδόνων βασιλεῦσιν, ἐγάμει γάμους πλείονας ὥσπερ Λυσίμαχος καὶ [2] Πτολεμαῖος, ἔσχε δὲ διὰ τιμῆς ὅσας ἔγημεν· Ἀντώνιος δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ὁμοῦ δύο γυναῖκας ἠγάγετο, πρᾶγμα μηδενὶ Ῥωμαίῳ τετολμημένον, ἔπειτα τὴν ἀστὴν καὶ δικαίως γαμηθεῖσαν ἐξήλασε, τῇ ξένῃ καὶ μὴ κατὰ νόμους συνούσῃ χαριζόμενος· ὅθεν ἐκ γάμου τῷ μὲν οὐθέν, τῷ δὲ [3] τὰ μέγιστα τῶν κακῶν ἀπήντησεν. ἀσέβημα μέντοι τοσοῦτον δι’ ἀσέλγειαν οὐθὲν ταῖς Ἀντωνίου πράξεσιν ὅσον ταῖς Δημητρίου πρόσεστιν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἱστορικοί φασι καὶ τῆς ἀκροπόλεως ὅλης εἴργεσθαι τὰς κύνας διὰ τὸ τὴν [4] μεῖξιν ἐμφανῆ μάλιστα τοῦτο ποιεῖσθαι τὸ ζῷον· ὁ δ’ ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ Παρθενῶνι ταῖς τε πόρναις συνῆν καὶ τῶν [5] ἀστῶν κατεπόρνευσε πολλάς· καὶ οὗ τις ἂν ἥκιστα τὰς τοιαύτας τρυφὰς καὶ ἀπολαύσεις οἴοιτο μετέχειν κακοῦ, τῆς ὠμότητος, τοῦτ’ ‹ἔν›εστι τῇ Δημητρίου φιληδονίᾳ, περιιδόντος, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀναγκάσαντος οἰκτρῶς ἀποθανεῖν τὸν κάλλιστον καὶ σωφρονέστατον Ἀθηναίων, φεύγοντα [6] τὸ καθυβρισθῆναι. συνελόντι δ’ εἰπεῖν, Ἀντώνιος μὲν ἑαυτὸν διὰ τὴν ἀκρασίαν, Δημήτριος δ’ ἄλλους ἠδίκησε.

[5] [1] Πρὸς μέντοι γονεῖς ἄμεμπτον ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἅπαντα [2] παρέσχεν ὁ Δημήτριος· Ἀντώνιος δὲ τὸν ἀδελφὸν τῆς μητρὸς ἐξέδωκεν ἐπὶ τῷ Κικέρωνα ἀποκτεῖναι, πρᾶγμα καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὸ μιαρὸν καὶ ὠμόν, ὡς μόλις ‹ἂν› Ἀντώνιον ἐπ’ αὐτῷ συγγνώμης τυχεῖν, εἰ σωτηρίας τοῦ θείου [3] μισθὸς ἦν ὁ Κικέρωνος θάνατος. ἃ τοίνυν ἐπιώρκησαν ἀμφότεροι καὶ παρεσπόνδησαν, ὁ μὲν Ἀρταουάσδην συλλαβών, ὁ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρον ἀποκτείνας, Ἀντωνίῳ μὲν ἔχει τὴν πρόφασιν ὁμολογουμένην· ἀπελείφθη γὰρ ἐν Μήδοις [4] ὑπ’ Ἀρταουάσδου καὶ προεδόθη· Δημήτριον δὲ πολλοὶ λέγουσι ψευδεῖς αἰτίας ἐφ’ οἷς ἔδρασε πλασάμενον κατηγορεῖν [5] ἀδικηθέντος, οὐκ ἀδικήσαντα ἀμύνασθαι. πάλιν δὲ τῶν μὲν κατορθωμάτων αὐτουργὸς ὁ Δημήτριος γέγονε, καὶ τοὐναντίον ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἐν οἷς οὐ παρῆν καλλίστας καὶ μεγίστας διὰ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἀνῃρεῖτο νίκας.

[6] [1] Ἐξέπεσον δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων ἀμφότεροι μὲν δι’ αὑτούς, οὐ μὴν ὁμοίως, ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ἐγκαταλειφθείς, ἀπέστησαν γὰρ αὐτοῦ Μακεδόνες, ὁ δ’ ἐγκαταλιπών, [2] ἔφυγε γὰρ τοὺς ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ κινδυνεύοντας· ὥστε τοῦ μὲν ἔγκλημα εἶναι τὸ δυσμενεῖς οὕτω πρὸς αὑτὸν ἀπεργάσασθαι τοὺς μαχομένους, τοῦ δὲ τὸ παρεσκευασμένην [3] εὔνοιαν τοιαύτην καὶ πίστιν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν. τὸν δὲ θάνατον οὐδετέρου μὲν ἔστιν ἐπαινέσαι, ψεκτὸς δ’ ὁ Δημητρίου μᾶλλον· αἰχμάλωτός τε γὰρ ὑπέμεινε γενέσθαι, καὶ καθειρχθεὶς ἠγάπησεν ἐπικερδᾶναι τριετίαν οἴνῳ καὶ [4] γαστρί, καθάπερ τὰ ζῷα χειροήθης γενόμενος. Ἀντώνιος δὲ δειλῶς μὲν καὶ οἰκτρῶς καὶ ἀτίμως, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πρό γε τοῦ κύριον γενέσθαι τὸν πολέμιον τοῦ σώματος ἑαυτὸν ἐξήγαγεν.

Dion

[1] [1] Ἆρά γ’, ὥσπερ ὁ Σιμωνίδης φησίν (fg. 36 D.), ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, τοῖς Κορινθίοις οὐ μηνίειν τὸ Ἴλιον ἐπιστρατεύσασι μετὰ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, ὅτι κἀκείνοις οἱ περὶ Γλαῦκον ἐξ ἀρχῆς Κορίνθιοι γεγονότες συνεμάχουν προθύμως, οὕτως εἰκὸς τῇ Ἀκαδημείᾳ μήτε Ῥωμαίους μήθ’ Ἕλληνας ἐγκαλεῖν, ἴσον φερομένους ἐκ τῆς γραφῆς ταύτης, ἣ τόν τε Βρούτου περιέχει βίον [2] καὶ τὸν Δίωνος; ὧν ὁ μὲν αὐτῷ Πλάτωνι πλησιάσας, ὁ δὲ τοῖς λόγοις ἐντραφεὶς τοῖς Πλάτωνος, ὥσπερ ἐκ μιᾶς ὥρμησαν ἀμφότεροι παλαίστρας ἐπὶ [3] τοὺς μεγίστους ἀγῶνας. καὶ τὸ μὲν ὅμοια πολλὰ καὶ ἀδελφὰ πράξαντας μαρτυρῆσαι τῷ καθηγεμόνι τῆς ἀρετῆς, ὅτι δεῖ φρονήσει καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ δύναμιν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ τύχην συνελθεῖν, ἵνα κάλλος ἅμα καὶ μέγεθος αἱ [4] πολιτικαὶ πράξεις λάβωσιν, οὐ θαυμαστόν ἐστιν. ὡς γὰρ Ἱππόμαχος ὁ ἀλείπτης ἔλεγε τοὺς γεγυμνασμένους παρ’ αὐτῷ κἂν κρέας ἐξ ἀγορᾶς ἰδὼν φέροντας ἐπιγνῶναι πόρρωθεν, οὕτω τὸν λόγον ἐστὶν εἰκὸς τῶν πεπαιδευμένων ὁμοίως ἕπεσθαι ταῖς πράξεσιν, ἐμμέλειάν τινα καὶ ῥυθμὸν ἐπιφέροντα μετὰ τοῦ πρέποντος.

[2] [1] Αἱ δὲ τύχαι, τοῖς συμπτώμασι μᾶλλον ἢ ταῖς προαιρέσεσιν οὖσαι αἱ [2] αὐταί, συνάγουσι τῶν ἀνδρῶν τοὺς βίους εἰς ὁμοιότητα. προανῃρέθησαν γὰρ ἀμφότεροι τοῦ τέλους, εἰς ὃ προὔθεντο τὰς πράξεις ἐκ πολλῶν καὶ [3] μεγάλων ἀγώνων καταθέσθαι μὴ δυνηθέντες. ὃ δὲ πάντων θαυμασιώτατον, ὅτι καὶ τὸ δαιμόνιον ἀμφοτέροις ὑπεδήλωσε τὴν τελευτήν, ὁμοίως [4] ἑκατέρῳ φάσματος εἰς ὄψιν οὐκ εὐμενοῦς παραγενομένου. καίτοι λόγος τίς ἐστι τῶν ἀναιρούντων τὰ τοιαῦτα, μηδενὶ ἂν νοῦν ἔχοντι προσπεσεῖν φάντασμα δαίμονος μηδ’ εἴδωλον, ἀλλὰ παιδάρια καὶ γύναια καὶ παραφόρους δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀνθρώπους ἔν τινι πλάνῳ ψυχῆς ἢ δυσκρασίᾳ σώματος γενομένους, δόξας ἐφέλκεσθαι κενὰς καὶ ἀλλοκότους, δαίμονα πονηρὸν ἐν [5] αὑτοῖς [εἶναι] δεισιδαιμονίαν ἔχοντας. εἰ δὲ Δίων καὶ Βροῦτος, ἄνδρες ἐμβριθεῖς καὶ φιλόσοφοι καὶ πρὸς οὐδὲν ἀκροσφαλεῖς οὐδ’ εὐάλωτοι πάθος, οὕτως ὑπὸ φάσματος διετέθησαν, ὥστε καὶ φράσαι πρὸς ἑτέρους, οὐκ οἶδα μὴ τῶν πάνυ παλαιῶν τὸν ἀτοπώτατον ἀναγκασθῶμεν προσδέχεσθαι [6] λόγον, ὡς τὰ φαῦλα δαιμόνια καὶ βάσκανα, προσφθονοῦντα τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἀνδράσι καὶ ταῖς πράξεσιν ἐνιστάμενα, ταραχὰς καὶ φόβους ἐπάγει, σείοντα καὶ σφάλλοντα τὴν ἀρετήν, ὡς μὴ διαμείναντες ἀπτῶτες ἐν τῷ καλῷ καὶ ἀκέραιοι βελτίονος ἐκείνων μοίρας μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν τύχωσιν.

[7] Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν εἰς ἄλλον ἀνακείσθω λόγον. ἐν τούτῳ δέ, δωδεκάτῳ τῶν παραλλήλων ὄντι βίων, τὸν τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου προεισαγάγωμεν.

[3] [1] Διονύσιος ὁ πρεσβύτερος εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν καταστάς, εὐθὺς ἔγημε τὴν [2] Ἑρμοκράτους τοῦ Συρακοσίου θυγατέρα. ταύτην, οὔπω τῆς τυραννίδος ἱδρυμένης βεβαίως, ἀποστάντες οἱ Συρακόσιοι δεινὰς καὶ παρανόμους ὕβρεις εἰς τὸ σῶμα καθύβρισαν, ἐφ’ αἷς προήκατο τὸν βίον ἑκουσίως.

[3] Διονύσιος δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀναλαβὼν καὶ κρατυνάμενος, αὖθις ἄγεται δύο γυναῖκας ἅμα, τὴν μὲν ἐκ Λοκρῶν ὄνομα Δωρίδα, τὴν δ’ ἐπιχώριον Ἀριστομάχην, θυγατέρα Ἱππαρίνου, πρωτεύσαντος ἀνδρὸς Συρακοσίων καὶ Διονυσίῳ συνάρξαντος, ὅτε πρῶτον αὐτοκράτωρ ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον [4] ᾑρέθη στρατηγός. λέγεται δ’ ἡμέρᾳ μὲν ἀμφοτέρας ἀγαγέσθαι μιᾷ, καὶ μηδενὶ γενέσθαι φανερὸς ἀνθρώπων, ὁποτέρᾳ προτέρᾳ συνέλθοι, τὸν δ’ ἄλλον χρόνον ἴσον νέμων ἑαυτὸν διατελεῖν ἑκατέρᾳ, κοινῇ μὲν εἰθισμένων [5] δειπνεῖν μετ’ αὐτοῦ, παρὰ νύκτα δ’ ἐν μέρει συναναπαυομένων. καίτοι τῶν Συρακοσίων ἐβούλετο τὸ πλῆθος τὴν ἐγγενῆ πλέον ἔχειν τῆς ξένης ἀλλ’ ὑπῆρχεν ἐκείνῃ προτέρᾳ τεκούσῃ τὸν πρεσβεύοντα τῆς Διονυσίου [6] γενεᾶς υἱὸν [αὐτῇ] βοηθεῖν πρὸς τὸ γένος. ἡ δ’ Ἀριστομάχη πολὺν χρόνον ἄπαις συνῴκει τῷ Διονυσίῳ, καίπερ σπουδάζοντι περὶ τὴν ἐκ ταύτης τέκνωσιν, ὅς γε καὶ τὴν μητέρα τῆς Λοκρίδος, αἰτιασάμενος καταφαρμακεύειν Ἀριστομάχην, ἀπέκτεινε.

[4] [1] Ταύτης ἀδελφὸς ὢν ὁ Δίων, ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν εἶχε τιμὴν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀδελφῆς, ὕστερον δὲ τοῦ φρονεῖν διδοὺς πεῖραν ἤδη καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἠγαπᾶτο παρὰ [2] τῷ τυράννῳ, καὶ πρὸς ἅπασι τοῖς ἄλλοις εἴρητο τοῖς ταμίαις, ὅ τι ἂν αἰτῇ [3] Δίων διδόναι, [δι]δόντας δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν αὐθημερὸν φράζειν. ὢν δὲ καὶ πρότερον ὑψηλὸς τῷ ἤθει καὶ μεγαλόφρων καὶ ἀνδρώδης, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐπέδωκε πρὸς ταῦτα θείᾳ τινὶ τύχῃ Πλάτωνος εἰς Σικελίαν παραβαλόντος [4] κατ’ οὐδένα λογισμὸν ἀνθρώπινον· ἀλλὰ δαίμων τις ὡς ἔοικε, πόρρωθεν ἀρχὴν ἐλευθερίας [παρα]βαλλόμενος Συρακοσίοις καὶ τυραννίδος κατάλυσιν μηχανώμενος, ἐκόμισεν ἐξ Ἰταλίας εἰς Συρακούσας Πλάτωνα καὶ [5] Δίωνα συνήγαγεν εἰς λόγους αὐτῷ, νέον μὲν ὄντα κομιδῇ, πολὺ δ’ εὐμαθέστατον ἁπάντων τῶν Πλάτωνι συγγεγονότων καὶ ὀξύτατον ὑπακοῦσαι [6] πρὸς ἀρετήν, ὡς αὐτὸς γέγραφε Πλάτων (ep. 7, 327a) καὶ τὰ πράγματα μαρτυρεῖ. τραφεὶς γὰρ ἐν ἤθεσιν ὑπὸ τυράννῳ ταπεινοῖς, καὶ βίου μὲν ἀνίσου καὶ καταφόβου, θεραπείας δὲ νεοπλούτου καὶ τρυφῆς ἀπειροκάλου καὶ διαίτης ἐν ἡδοναῖς καὶ πλεονεξίαις τιθεμένης τὸ καλὸν ἐθὰς καὶ μεστὸς [7] γενόμενος, ὡς πρῶτον ἐγεύσατο λόγου καὶ φιλοσοφίας ἡγεμονικῆς πρὸς ἀρετήν, ἀνεφλέχθη τὴν ψυχὴν ταχύ, καὶ τῇ περὶ αὐτὸν εὐπαθείᾳ τῶν καλῶν ἀκάκως πάνυ καὶ νεωτερικῶς προσδοκήσας ὑπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν λόγων ὅμοια πείσεσθαι Διονύσιον, ἐσπούδασε καὶ διεπράξατο ποιησάμενον σχολὴν αὐτὸν ἐντυχεῖν Πλάτωνι καὶ ἀκοῦσαι.

[5] [1] Γενομένης δὲ τῆς συνουσίας αὐτοῖς τὸ μὲν ὅλον περὶ [ἀνδρὸς] ἀρετῆς, πλείστων δὲ περὶ ἀνδρείας διαπορηθέντων, ὡς πάντα μᾶλλον ὁ Πλάτων ἢ τοὺς τυράννους ἀπέφαινεν ἀνδρείους, ἐκ δὲ τούτου τραπόμενος περὶ δικαιοσύνης ἐδίδασκεν, ὡς μακάριος μὲν ὁ τῶν δικαίων, ἄθλιος δ’ ὁ τῶν [2] ἀδίκων βίος, οὔτε τοὺς λόγους ἔφερεν ὁ τύραννος, ὥσπερ ἐξελεγχόμενος, ἤχθετό τε τοῖς παροῦσι θαυμαστῶς ἀποδεχομένοις τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ κηλουμένοις [3] ὑπὸ τῶν λεγομένων. τέλος δὲ θυμωθεὶς καὶ παροξυνθείς, ἠρώτησεν [4] αὐτόν, ὅ τι δὴ βουλόμενος εἰς Σικελίαν παραγένοιτο. τοῦ δὲ φήσαντος ἀγαθὸν ἄνδρα ζητεῖν, ὑπολαβὼν ἐκεῖνος ἀλλὰ νὴ τοὺς θεοὺς εἶπε καὶ [5] φαίνῃ μήπω τοιοῦτον εὑρηκώς. οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ τὸν Δίωνα τοῦτ’ ‹οὔπω› τέλος ᾤοντο τῆς ὀργῆς γεγονέναι, καὶ τὸν Πλάτωνα σπεύδοντες συνεξέπεμπον ἐπὶ τριήρους, ἣ Πόλλιν ἐκόμιζεν εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα τὸν Σπαρτιάτην.

[6] ὁ δὲ Διονύσιος κρύφα τοῦ Πόλλιδος ἐποιήσατο δέησιν, μάλιστα μὲν ἀποκτεῖναι τὸν ἄνδρα κατὰ πλοῦν, εἰ δὲ μή, πάντως ἀποδόσθαι· βλαβήσεσθαι γὰρ οὐδέν, ἀλλ’ εὐδαιμονήσειν ὁμοίως δίκαιον ὄντα, κἂν δοῦλος [7] γένηται. διὸ καὶ λέγεται Πόλλις εἰς Αἴγιναν φέρων ἀποδόσθαι Πλάτωνα, πολέμου πρὸς Ἀθηναίους ὄντος αὐτοῖς καὶ ψηφίσματος ὅπως ὁ ληφθεὶς Ἀθηναίων ἐν Αἰγίνῃ πιπράσκηται.

[8] Οὐ μὴν ὅ γε Δίων ἔλαττον εἶχε παρὰ τῷ Διονυσίῳ τιμῆς ἢ πίστεως, ἀλλὰ πρεσβείας τε τὰς μεγίστας διῴκει, πεμπόμενος πρὸς Καρχηδονίους, ἐθαυμάσθη τε διαφερόντως, καὶ τὴν παρρησίαν ἔφερεν αὐτοῦ μόνου σχεδόν, ἀδεῶς λέγοντος τὸ παριστάμενον, ὡς καὶ τὴν περὶ Γέλωνος ἐπίπληξιν.

[9] χλευαζομένης γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε τῆς Γέλωνος ἀρχῆς, αὐτόν τε τὸν Γέλωνα τοῦ Διονυσίου γέλωτα τῆς Σικελίας γεγονέναι φήσαντος, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τὸ σκῶμμα προσεποιοῦντο θαυμάζειν, ὁ δὲ Δίων δυσχεράνας καὶ μὴν ἔφη σὺ τυραννεῖς διὰ Γέλωνα πιστευθείς· διὰ σὲ δ’ οὐδεὶς ἕτερος πιστευθήσεται.

[10] τῷ γὰρ ὄντι φαίνεται κάλλιστον μὲν Γέλων ἐπιδειξάμενος θέαμα μοναρχουμένην πόλιν, αἴσχιστον δὲ Διονύσιος.

[6] [1] Ὄντων δὲ Διονυσίῳ παίδων τριῶν μὲν ἐκ τῆς Λοκρίδος, τεττάρων δ’ ἐξ Ἀριστομάχης, ὧν δύο ἦσαν θυγατέρες, Σωφροσύνη καὶ Ἀρετή, Σωφροσύνην μὲν Διονυσίῳ τῷ υἱῷ συνῴκισεν, Ἀρετὴν δὲ Θεαρίδῃ τῷ ἀδελφῷ. τελευτήσαντος δὲ τοῦ [ἀδελφοῦ] Θεαρίδου, Δίων ἔλαβε τὴν Ἀρετήν, ἀδελφιδῆν οὖσαν.

[2] Ἐπεὶ δὲ νοσῶν ἔδοξεν ὁ Διονύσιος ἀβιώτως ἔχειν, ἐπεχείρησεν αὐτῷ διαλέγεσθαι περὶ τῶν ἐκ τῆς Ἀριστομάχης τέκνων ὁ Δίων, οἱ δ’ ἰατροὶ τῷ [3] μέλλοντι τὴν ἀρχὴν διαδέχεσθαι χαριζόμενοι, καιρὸν οὐ παρέσχον· ὡς δὲ Τίμαιός φησι (FGrH 566 F 109), καὶ φάρμακον ὑπνωτικὸν αἰτοῦντι δόντες, ἀφείλοντο τὴν αἴσθησιν αὐτοῦ, θανάτῳ συνάψαντες τὸν ὕπνον.

[4] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ συλλόγου πρώτου τῶν φίλων γενομένου παρὰ τὸν νέον Διονύσιον, οὕτω διελέχθη περὶ τῶν συμφερόντων πρὸς τὸν καιρὸν ὁ Δίων, ὥστε τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας τῇ μὲν φρονήσει παῖδας ἀποδεῖξαι, τῇ δὲ παρρησίᾳ δούλους τῆς τυραννίδος, ἀγεννῶς καὶ περιφόβως τὰ πολλὰ [5] πρὸς χάριν τῷ μειρακίῳ συμβουλεύοντας. μάλιστα δ’ αὐτοὺς ἐξέπληξε, τὸν ἀπὸ Καρχηδόνος κίνδυνον ἐπικρεμάμενον τῇ ἀρχῇ δεδοικότας, ὑποσχόμενος, εἰ μὲν εἰρήνης δέοιτο Διονύσιος, πλεύσας εὐθὺς εἰς Λιβύην ὡς ἄριστα διαθήσεσθαι τὸν πόλεμον· εἰ δὲ πολεμεῖν προθυμοῖτο, θρέψειν αὐτὸς ἰδίοις τέλεσι καὶ παρέξειν εἰς τὸν πόλεμον αὐτῷ πεντήκοντα τριήρεις πλεούσας.

[7] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Διονύσιος ὑπερφυῶς τὴν μεγαλοψυχίαν ἐθαύμασε καὶ [2] τὴν προθυμίαν ἠγάπησεν· οἱ δ’ ἐλέγχεσθαι τῇ λαμπρότητι καὶ ταπεινοῦσθαι τῇ δυνάμει τοῦ Δίωνος οἰόμενοι, ταύτην εὐθὺς ἀρχὴν λαβόντες οὐδεμιᾶς ἐφείδοντο φωνῆς, ᾗ τὸ μειράκιον ἐξαγριαίνειν ἔμελλον πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς ὑπερχόμενον διὰ τῆς θαλάττης τυραννίδα καὶ περισπῶντα ταῖς ναυσὶ [3] τὴν δύναμιν εἰς τοὺς Ἀριστομάχης παῖδας, ἀδελφιδοῦς ὄντας αὐτῷ. φανερώταται δὲ καὶ μέγισται τῶν εἰς φθόνον καὶ μῖσος αἰτιῶν ὑπῆρχον ἡ [4] τοῦ βίου διαφορὰ καὶ τὸ τῆς διαίτης ἄμεικτον. οἱ μὲν γὰρ εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς νέου τυράννου καὶ τεθραμμένου φαύλως ὁμιλίαν καὶ συνήθειαν ἡδοναῖς καὶ κολακείαις καταλαμβάνοντες, ἀεί τινας ἔρωτας καὶ διατριβὰς ἐμηχανῶντο ῥεμβώδεις περὶ πότους καὶ γυναῖκας καὶ παιδιὰς ἑτέρας ἀσχήμονας, [5] ὑφ’ ὧν ἡ τυραννὶς ὥσπερ σίδηρος μαλασσομένη, τοῖς μὲν ἀρχομένοις ἐφάνη φιλάνθρωπος καὶ τὸ λίαν ἀπάνθρωπον ὑπανῆκεν, οὐκ ἐπιεικείᾳ [6] τινὶ μᾶλλον ἢ ῥᾳθυμίᾳ τοῦ κρατοῦντος ἀμβλυνομένη· ἐκ δὲ τούτου προϊοῦσα καὶ νεμομένη κατὰ μικρὸν ἡ περὶ τὸ μειράκιον ἄνεσις τοὺς ἀδαμαντίνους δεσμοὺς ἐκείνους, οἷς ὁ πρεσβύτερος Διονύσιος ἔφη δεδεμένην [7] ἀπολείπειν τὴν μοναρχίαν, ἐξέτηξε καὶ διέφθειρεν. ἡμέρας γὰρ ὥς φασιν ἐνενήκοντα συνεχῶς ἔπινεν ἀρξάμενος, καὶ τὴν αὐλὴν ἐν τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ, σπουδαίοις ἀνδράσι καὶ λόγοις ἄβατον καὶ ἀνείσοδον οὖσαν, μέθαι καὶ σκώμματα καὶ ψαλμοὶ καὶ ὀρχήσεις καὶ βωμολοχίαι κατεῖχον.

[8] [1] Ἦν οὖν ὡς εἰκὸς ὁ Δίων ἐπαχθής, εἰς οὐδὲν ἡδὺ καὶ νεωτερικὸν ἐνδιδοὺς ἑαυτόν. διὸ καὶ πιθανὰ κακιῶν προσρήματα ταῖς ἀρεταῖς ἐπιφέροντες αὐτοῦ διέβαλλον, ὑπεροψίαν τὴν σεμνότητα καὶ τὴν παρρησίαν αὐθάδειαν ἀποκαλοῦντες, καὶ νουθετῶν κατηγορεῖν ἐδόκει, καὶ μὴ συνεξαμαρτάνων [2] καταφρονεῖν. ἀμέλει δὲ καὶ φύσει τινὰ τὸ ἦθος ὄγκον εἶχεν [3] αὐτοῦ καὶ τραχύτητα δυσπρόσοδον ἐντεύξει καὶ δυσξύμβολον. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἀνδρὶ νέῳ καὶ διατεθρυμμένῳ τὰ ὦτα κολακείαις ἄχαρις ἦν συγγενέσθαι καὶ προσάντης, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ τῶν πάνυ χρωμένων αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν ἁπλότητα καὶ τὸ γενναῖον ἀγαπώντων τοῦ τρόπου κατεμέμφοντο τῆς ὁμιλίας, ὡς ἀγροικότερον καὶ βαρύτερον πολιτικῶν χρειῶν τοῖς δεομένοις [4] συναλλάσσοντα. περὶ ὧν καὶ Πλάτων ὕστερον ὥσπερ ἀποθεσπίζων ἔγραψε πρὸς αὐτόν (ep. 4, 321b), ἐξευλαβεῖσθαι τὴν αὐθάδειαν, ὡς ἐρημίᾳ συνοικοῦσαν.

[5] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τότε πλείστου δοκῶν ἄξιος ὑπάρχειν διὰ τὰ πράγματα, καὶ μόνος ἢ μάλιστα τὴν τυραννίδα σαλεύουσαν ἂν ὀρθοῦν καὶ διαφυλάττειν, ἐγίνωσκεν οὐ πρὸς χάριν ἀλλ’ ἄκοντος ὑπὸ χρείας τοῦ τυράννου πρῶτος ὢν καὶ μέγιστος.

[9] [1] Αἰτίαν δὲ τούτου τὴν ἀπαιδευσίαν εἶναι νομίζων, ἐμβαλεῖν αὐτὸν εἰς διατριβὰς ἐλευθερίους ἐφιλοτιμεῖτο καὶ γεῦσαι λόγων καὶ μαθημάτων ἠθοποιῶν, ὡς ἀρετήν τε παύσαιτο δεδιὼς καὶ τοῖς καλοῖς χαίρειν ἐθισθείη.

[2] φύσει γὰρ οὐ γεγόνει τῶν φαυλοτάτων τυράννων ὁ Διονύσιος, ἀλλ’ ὁ πατὴρ δεδοικώς, μὴ φρονήματος μεταλαβὼν καὶ συγγενόμενος νοῦν ἔχουσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐπιβουλεύσειεν αὐτῷ καὶ παρέλοιτο τὴν ἀρχήν, ἐφρούρει κατάκλειστον οἴκοι, δι’ ἐρημίαν ὁμιλίας ἑτέρας καὶ ἀπειρίᾳ πραγμάτων ὥς φασιν ἁμάξια καὶ λυχνίας καὶ δίφρους ξυλίνους καὶ τραπέζας τεκταινόμενον.

[3] Οὕτω γὰρ ἦν ἄπιστος καὶ πρὸς ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους ὕποπτος καὶ προβεβλημένος διὰ φόβον ὁ πρεσβύτερος Διονύσιος, ὥστε μηδὲ τῆς κεφαλῆς τὰς τρίχας ἀφελεῖν κουρικαῖς μαχαίραις, ἀλλὰ τῶν πλαστῶν τις ἐπιφοιτῶν [4] ἄνθρακι τὴν κόμην περιέκαιεν. εἰσῄει δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον οὔτ’ ἀδελφὸς οὔθ’ υἱὸς ὡς ἔτυχεν ἠμφιεσμένος, ἀλλ’ ἔδει πρὶν εἰσελθεῖν ἀποδύντα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ στολὴν ἕκαστον ἑτέραν ἀναλαβεῖν, ὁραθέντα γυμνὸν [5] ὑπὸ τῶν φυλαττόντων. ἐπεὶ δὲ Λεπτίνης ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτῷ ποτε χωρίου φύσιν ἐξηγούμενος, λαβὼν λόγχην παρά τινος τῶν δορυφόρων, ὑπέγραψε τὸν τόπον, ἐκείνῳ μὲν ἰσχυρῶς ἐχαλέπηνε, τὸν δὲ δόντα τὴν λόγχην [6] ἀπέκτεινεν. ἔλεγε δὲ τοὺς φίλους φυλάττεσθαι, νοῦν ἔχοντας εἰδὼς καὶ [7] βουλομένους μᾶλλον τυραννεῖν ἢ τυραννεῖσθαι. καὶ Μαρσύαν δέ τινα τῶν προηγμένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τεταγμένων ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίας ἀνεῖλε, δόξαντα κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους σφάττειν αὐτόν, ὡς ἀπ’ ἐννοίας μεθημερινῆς καὶ διαλογισμοῦ [8] τῆς ὄψεως ταύτης εἰς τὸν ὕπνον αὐτῷ παραγενομένης. ὁ μὲν δὴ Πλάτωνι θυμωθείς, ὅτι μὴ πάντων αὐτὸν ἀνθρώπων ἀνδρειότατον [ὄντα] ἀπέφηνεν, οὕτω περίφοβον καὶ τοσούτων ὑπὸ δειλίας κακῶν μεστὴν εἶχε τὴν ψυχήν.

[10] [1] Τὸν δ’ υἱὸν αὐτοῦ καθάπερ εἴρηται διαλελωβημένον ἀπαιδευσίᾳ καὶ συντετριμμένον τὸ ἦθος ὁ Δίων ὁρῶν, παρεκάλει πρὸς παιδείαν τραπέσθαι καὶ δεηθῆναι τοῦ πρώτου τῶν φιλοσόφων πᾶσαν δέησιν, ἐλθεῖν εἰς [2] Σικελίαν, ἐλθόντι δὲ παρασχεῖν αὑτόν, ὅπως διακοσμηθεὶς τὸ ἦθος εἰς ἀρετὴν λόγῳ, καὶ πρὸς τὸ θειότατον ἀφομοιωθεὶς παράδειγμα τῶν ὄντων καὶ κάλλιστον, ᾧ τὸ πᾶν ἡγουμένῳ πειθόμενον ἐξ ἀκοσμίας κόσμος ἐστί, [3] πολλὴν μὲν εὐδαιμονίαν ἑαυτῷ μηχανήσεται, πολλὴν δὲ τοῖς πολίταις, ὅσα νῦν ἐν ἀθυμίᾳ διοικοῦσι πρὸς ἀνάγκην τῆς ἀρχῆς, ταῦτα σωφροσύνῃ καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ μετ’ εὐμενείας πατρονομουμένοις παρασχών, καὶ γενόμενος [4] βασιλεὺς ἐκ τυράννου. τοὺς γὰρ ἀδαμαντίνους δεσμοὺς οὐχ, ὥσπερ ὁ πατὴρ ἔλεγεν αὐτοῦ, φόβον καὶ βίαν καὶ νεῶν πλῆθος εἶναι καὶ βαρβάρων μυρίανδρον φυλακήν, εὔνοιαν δὲ καὶ προθυμίαν καὶ χάριν ἐγγενομένην ὑπ’ ἀρετῆς καὶ δικαιοσύνης, ἃ καίπερ ὄντα μαλακώτερα τῶν συντόνων καὶ σκληρῶν ἐκείνων, ἰσχυρότερα πρὸς διαμονὴν ἡγεμονίας ὑπάρχειν.

[5] χωρὶς δὲ τούτων ἀφιλότιμον εἶναι καὶ ἄζηλον τὸν ἄρχοντα, τὸ μὲν σῶμα [τι] περιττῶς ἀμπεχόμενον, καὶ τῇ περὶ τὴν οἴκησιν ἁβρότητι καὶ κατασκευῇ λαμπρυνόμενον, ὁμιλίᾳ δὲ καὶ λόγῳ μηδὲν ὄντα τοῦ προστυχόντος σεμνότερον, μηδὲ τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ βασίλειον ἀξιοῦντα κεκοσμημένον ἔχειν βασιλικῶς καὶ πρεπόντως.

[11] [1] Ταῦτα πολλάκις τοῦ Δίωνος παραινοῦντος, καὶ τῶν λόγων τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἔστιν οὕστινας ὑποσπείροντος, ἔσχεν ἔρως τὸν Διονύσιον ὀξὺς [2] καὶ περιμανὴς τῶν τε λόγων καὶ τῆς συνουσίας τοῦ Πλάτωνος. εὐθὺς οὖν Ἀθήναζε πολλὰ μὲν ἐφοίτα γράμματα παρὰ τοῦ Διονυσίου, πολλαὶ δ’ ἐπισκήψεις παρὰ τοῦ Δίωνος, ἄλλαι δ’ ἐξ Ἰταλίας παρὰ τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν, διακελευομένων παραγενέσθαι καὶ νέας ψυχῆς ἐξουσίᾳ μεγάλῃ καὶ δυνάμει παραφερομένης ἐπιλαβέσθαι καὶ κατασχεῖν ἐμβριθεστέροις λογισμοῖς.

[3] Πλάτων μὲν οὖν, ὥς φησιν αὐτός (ep. 7, 328c), ἑαυτὸν αἰσχυνθεὶς μάλιστα, μὴ δόξειεν ἐν λόγοις εἶναί ‹τις› μόνον, ἔργου δ’ ἑκὼν οὐδενὸς ἂν ἅψασθαι, καὶ προσδοκήσας δι’ ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς ὥσπερ ἡγεμονικοῦ μέρους ἐκκαθαρθέντος ὅλην ἰατρεύσειν Σικελίαν νοσοῦσαν, ὑπήκουσεν.

[4] Οἱ δὲ τῷ Δίωνι πολεμοῦντες, φοβούμενοι τὴν τοῦ Διονυσίου μεταβολήν, ἔπεισαν αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς φυγῆς μεταπέμπεσθαι Φίλιστον, ἄνδρα καὶ πεπαιδευμένον περὶ λόγους καὶ τυραννικῶν ἠθῶν ἐμπειρότατον, ὡς ἀντίταγμα [5] πρὸς Πλάτωνα καὶ φιλοσοφίαν ἐκεῖνον ἕξοντες. ὁ γὰρ δὴ Φίλιστος ἐξ ἀρχῆς τε τῇ τυραννίδι καθισταμένῃ προθυμότατον ἑαυτὸν παρέσχε, καὶ τὴν ἄκραν διεφύλαξε φρουραρχῶν ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον. ἦν δὲ λόγος ὡς καὶ τῇ μητρὶ πλησιάζοι τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου Διονυσίου, τοῦ τυράννου [6] μὴ παντάπασιν ἀγνοοῦντος. ἐπεὶ δὲ Λεπτίνης, ἐκ γυναικὸς ἣν διαφθείρας ἑτέρῳ συνοικοῦσαν ἔσχε γενομένων αὐτῷ δυοῖν θυγατέρων, τὴν ἑτέραν ἔδωκε Φιλίστῳ, μηδὲ φράσας πρὸς Διονύσιον, ὀργισθεὶς ἐκεῖνος τὴν μὲν γυναῖκα [τοῦ Λεπτίνου] δήσας ἐν πέδαις καθεῖρξε, τὸν δὲ Φίλιστον ἐξήλασε Σικελίας, φυγόντα παρὰ ξένους τινὰς εἰς τὸν Ἀδρίαν, ὅπου καὶ [7] δοκεῖ τὰ πλεῖστα συνθεῖναι τῆς ἱστορίας σχολάζων. οὐ γὰρ ἐπανῆλθε τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου ζῶντος, ἀλλὰ μετὰ τὴν ἐκείνου τελευτήν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, κατήγαγεν αὐτὸν ὁ πρὸς Δίωνα τῶν ἄλλων φθόνος, ὡς αὐτοῖς τε μᾶλλον ἐπιτήδειον ὄντα καὶ τῇ τυραννίδι βεβαιότερον.

[12] [1] Οὗτος μὲν οὖν εὐθὺς κατελθὼν διεπεφύκει τῆς τυραννίδος· τῷ δὲ Δίωνι καὶ παρ’ ἄλλων ἐτύγχανον οὖσαι διαβολαὶ καὶ κατηγορίαι πρὸς τὸν τύραννον, ὡς διειλεγμένῳ περὶ καταλύσεως τῆς ἀρχῆς πρός τε Θεοδότην [2] καὶ πρὸς Ἡρακλείδην. ἤλπιζε μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε διὰ Πλάτωνος παραγενομένου τὸ δεσποτικὸν καὶ λίαν ἄκρατον ἀφελὼν τῆς τυραννίδος, [3] ἐμμελῆ τινα καὶ νόμιμον ἄρχοντα τὸν Διονύσιον καταστήσειν· εἰ δ’ ἀντιβαίνοι καὶ μὴ μαλάσσοιτο, καταλύσας ἐκεῖνον ἐγνώκει τὴν πολιτείαν ἀποδιδόναι Συρακοσίοις, οὐκ ἐπαινῶν μὲν δημοκρατίαν, πάντως δὲ βελτίω τυραννίδος ἡγούμενος τοῖς διαμαρτάνουσιν ὑγιαινούσης ἀριστοκρατίας.

[13] [1] Ἐν τοιαύτῃ δὲ καταστάσει τῶν πραγμάτων ὄντων, Πλάτων εἰς Σικελίαν ἀφικόμενος περὶ μὲν τὰς πρώτας ἀπαντήσεις θαυμαστῆς ἐτύγχανε [2] φιλοφροσύνης καὶ τιμῆς. καὶ γὰρ ἅρμα τῶν βασιλικῶν αὐτῷ παρέστη κεκοσμημένον διαπρεπῶς ἀποβάντι τῆς τριήρους, καὶ θυσίαν ἔθυσεν ὁ [3] τύραννος ὡς εὐτυχήματος μεγάλου τῇ ἀρχῇ προσγεγονότος. αἰδὼς δὲ συμποσίων καὶ σχηματισμὸς αὐλῆς καὶ πρᾳότης αὐτοῦ τοῦ τυράννου περὶ ἕκαστα τῶν χρηματιζομένων θαυμαστὰς ἐνέδωκεν ἐλπίδας μεταβολῆς [4] τοῖς πολίταις. φορὰ δέ τις ἦν ἐπὶ λόγους καὶ φιλοσοφίαν ἁπάντων, καὶ τὸ τυραννεῖον ὥς φασι κονιορτὸς ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν γεωμετρούντων κατεῖχεν.

[5] ἡμερῶν δ’ ὀλίγων διαγενομένων θυσία μὲν ἦν πάτριος ἐν τοῖς τυραννείοις· τοῦ δὲ κήρυκος ὥσπερ εἰώθει κατευξαμένου διαμένειν τὴν τυραννίδα ἀσάλευτον πολλοὺς χρόνους, ὁ Διονύσιος λέγεται παρεστὼς οὐ παύσῃ [6] φάναι καταρώμενος ἡμῖν; τοῦτο κομιδῇ τοὺς περὶ τὸν Φίλιστον ἐλύπησεν, ἄμαχόν τινα τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἡγουμένους ἔσεσθαι χρόνῳ καὶ συνηθείᾳ τὴν δύναμιν, εἰ νῦν ἐκ συνουσίας ὀλίγης ἠλλοίωκεν οὕτω καὶ μεταβέβληκε τὴν γνώμην τὸ μειράκιον.

[14] [1] Οὐκέτ’ οὖν καθ’ ἕνα καὶ λαθραίως, ἀλλὰ πάντες ἀναφανδὸν ἐλοιδόρουν τὸν Δίωνα, λέγοντες ὡς οὐ λέληθε κατεπᾴδων καὶ καταφαρμάσσων τῷ Πλάτωνος λόγῳ Διονύσιον, ὅπως ἀφέντος ἑκουσίως αὐτοῦ καὶ προεμένου τὴν ἀρχὴν ὑπολαβὼν εἰς τοὺς Ἀριστομάχης περιστήσῃ παῖδας, [2] ὧν θεῖός ἐστιν. ἔνιοι δὲ προσεποιοῦντο δυσχεραίνειν, εἰ πρότερον μὲν Ἀθηναῖοι ναυτικαῖς καὶ πεζικαῖς δυνάμεσι μεγάλαις δεῦρο πλεύσαντες [3] ἀπώλοντο καὶ διεφθάρησαν πρότερον ἢ λαβεῖν Συρακούσας, νυνὶ δὲ δι’ ἑνὸς σοφιστοῦ καταλύσουσι τὴν Διονυσίου τυραννίδα, συμπείσαντες αὐτὸν ἐκ τῶν μυρίων δορυφόρων ἀποδράντα, καὶ καταλιπόντα τὰς τετρακοσίας τριήρεις καὶ τοὺς μυρίους ἱππεῖς καὶ τοὺς πολλάκις τοσούτους ὁπλίτας, ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ τὸ σιωπώμενον ἀγαθὸν ζητεῖν καὶ διὰ γεωμετρίας εὐδαίμονα γενέσθαι, τὴν ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ χρήμασι καὶ τρυφαῖς εὐδαιμονίαν Δίωνι καὶ τοῖς Δίωνος ἀδελφιδοῖς προέμενον.

[4] Ἐκ τούτων ὑποψίας πρῶτον, εἶτα καὶ φανερωτέρας ὀργῆς καὶ διαφορᾶς γενομένης, ἐκομίσθη τις ἐπιστολὴ κρύφα πρὸς Διονύσιον, ἣν ἐγεγράφει Δίων πρὸς τοὺς Καρχηδονίων ἐπιμελητάς, κελεύων ὅταν Διονυσίῳ περὶ τῆς εἰρήνης διαλέγωνται, μὴ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ποιήσασθαι τὴν ἔντευξιν, ὡς [5] πάντα θησομένους ἀμεταπτώτως δι’ αὐτοῦ. ταύτην ἀναγνοὺς Διονύσιος Φιλίστῳ καὶ μετ’ ἐκείνου βουλευσάμενος, ὥς φησι Τίμαιος (FGrH 566 [6] F 113), ὑπῆλθε τὸν Δίωνα πεπλασμέναις διαλύσεσι· καὶ μέτρια σκηψάμενος διαλλάττεσθαί τε φήσας μόνον τ’ ἀπαγαγὼν ὑπὸ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν, ἔδειξε τὴν ἐπιστολὴν καὶ κατηγόρησεν ὡς συνισταμένου [7] μετὰ Καρχηδονίων ἐπ’ αὐτόν. ἀπολογεῖσθαι δὲ βουλομένου τοῦ Δίωνος οὐκ ἀνασχόμενος, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ὡς εἶχεν ἐνθέμενος εἰς ἀκάτιον, προσέταξε τοῖς ναύταις κομίζοντας αὐτὸν ἐκθεῖναι περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν.

[15] [1] Γενομένου δὲ τούτου καὶ φανέντος ὠμοῦ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, τὴν μὲν οἰκίαν τοῦ τυράννου πένθος εἶχε διὰ τὰς γυναῖκας, ἡ δὲ πόλις ἡ τῶν Συρακοσίων ἐπῆρτο, πράγματα νεώτερα καὶ μεταβολὴν προσδεχομένη ταχεῖαν ἐκ τοῦ περὶ Δίωνα θορύβου καὶ τῆς πρὸς τὸν τύραννον ἀπιστίας [2] τῶν ἄλλων. ἃ δὴ συνορῶν ὁ Διονύσιος καὶ δεδοικώς, τοὺς μὲν φίλους παρεμυθεῖτο καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας, ὡς οὐ φυγῆς, ἀλλ’ ἀποδημίας τῷ Δίωνι γεγενημένης, ὡς μή τι χεῖρον ὀργῇ πρὸς τὴν αὐθάδειαν αὐτοῦ παρόντος ἁμαρτεῖν [3] βιασθείη· δύο δὲ ναῦς παραδοὺς τοῖς Δίωνος οἰκείοις ἐκέλευσεν ἐνθεμένοις ὅσα βούλοιντο τῶν ἐκείνου χρήματα καὶ θεράποντας ἀπάγειν πρὸς [4] αὐτὸν εἰς Πελοπόννησον. ἦν δ’ οὐσία μεγάλη τῷ Δίωνι καὶ σχεδόν τι τυραννικὴ πομπὴ καὶ κατασκευὴ περὶ τὴν δίαιταν, ἣν οἱ φίλοι συλλαβόντες [5] ἐκόμιζον. ἄλλα δ’ ἐπέμπετο πολλὰ παρὰ τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ τῶν ἑταίρων, ὥστε χρημάτων ἕνεκα καὶ πλούτου λαμπρὸν ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν εἶναι, καὶ διαφανῆναι τῇ τοῦ φυγάδος εὐπορίᾳ τὴν τῆς τυραννίδος δύναμιν.

[16] [1] Πλάτωνα δὲ Διονύσιος εὐθὺς μὲν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν μετέστησεν, ἔντιμον αὐτῷ σχήματι ξενίας φιλανθρώπου φρουρὰν μηχανησάμενος, ὡς [2] μὴ συμπλέοι Δίωνι μάρτυς ὧν ἠδίκητο. χρόνῳ δὲ καὶ συνδιαιτήσει, καθάπερ ψαῦσιν ἀνθρώπου θηρίον ἐθισθεὶς ὑπομένειν [τε] τήν ‹θ’› ὁμιλίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν λόγον, ἠράσθη τυραννικὸν ἔρωτα, μόνος ἀξιῶν ὑπὸ Πλάτωνος ἀντερᾶσθαι καὶ θαυμάζεσθαι μάλιστα πάντων, ἕτοιμος ὢν ἐπιτρέπειν τὰ πράγματα καὶ τὴν τυραννίδα μὴ προτιμῶντι τὴν πρὸς Δίωνα φιλίαν τῆς [3] πρὸς αὐτόν. ἦν οὖν τῷ Πλάτωνι συμφορὰ τὸ πάθος αὐτοῦ τοῦτο, μαινομένου καθάπερ οἱ δυσέρωτες ὑπὸ ζηλοτυπίας καὶ πολλὰς μὲν ὀργὰς ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ, πολλὰς δὲ διαλλαγὰς καὶ δεήσεις ποιουμένου πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀκροᾶσθαι δὲ τῶν λόγων καὶ κοινωνεῖν τῆς περὶ φιλοσοφίαν πραγματείας σπουδάζοντος μὲν ὑπερφυῶς, αἰδουμένου δὲ τοὺς ἀποτρέποντας ὡς διαφθαρησομένου.

[4] ἐν τούτῳ δὲ πολέμου τινὸς ἐμπεσόντος, ἀποπέμπει τὸν [5] Πλάτωνα, συνθέμενος εἰς ὥραν ἔτους μεταπέμψασθαι Δίωνα. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν εὐθὺς ἐψεύσατο, τὰς δὲ προσόδους τῶν κτημάτων ἀπέπεμψεν αὐτῷ, [6] ἀξιῶν Πλάτωνα συγγνῶναι περὶ τοῦ χρόνου διὰ τὸν πόλεμον· εἰρήνης γὰρ γενομένης τάχιστα μεταπέμψεσθαι τὸν Δίωνα, καὶ ἀξιοῦν αὐτὸν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν καὶ μηδὲν νεωτερίζειν μηδὲ βλασφημεῖν κατ’ αὐτοῦ πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας.

[17] [1] Ταῦτ’ ἐπειρᾶτο ποιεῖν Πλάτων, καὶ Δίωνα τρέψας ἐπὶ φιλοσοφίαν [2] ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ συνεῖχεν. ᾤκει μὲν οὖν ἐν ἄστει παρὰ Καλλίππῳ τινὶ τῶν γνωρίμων, ἀγρὸν δὲ διαγωγῆς χάριν ἐκτήσατο, καὶ τοῦτον ὕστερον εἰς [3] Σικελίαν πλέων Σπευσίππῳ δωρεὰν ἔδωκεν· ᾧ μάλιστα τῶν Ἀθήνησι φίλων ἐχρῆτο καὶ συνδιῃτᾶτο, βουλομένου τοῦ Πλάτωνος ὁμιλίᾳ χάριν ἐχούσῃ καὶ παιδιᾶς ἐμμελοῦς κατὰ καιρὸν ἁπτομένῃ κεραννύμενον ἐφηδύνεσθαι [4] τοῦ Δίωνος τὸ ἦθος. τοιοῦτος δέ τις ὁ Σπεύσιππος ἦν· ᾗ καὶ ‘σκῶψαι ἀγαθὸν’ αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς Σίλλοις ὁ Τίμων προσηγόρευσεν (fg. 13 W.).

[5] αὐτῷ δὲ Πλάτωνι χορηγοῦντι παίδων χορῷ τόν τε χορὸν ἤσκησεν ὁ Δίων, καὶ τὸ δαπάνημα πᾶν ἐτέλεσε παρ’ ἑαυτοῦ, συγχωροῦντος τοῦ Πλάτωνος τὴν τοιαύτην φιλοτιμίαν πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, ὡς ἐκείνῳ μᾶλλον εὔνοιαν [6] ἢ δόξαν αὐτῷ φέρουσαν. ἐπεφοίτα δὲ καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις πόλεσιν ὁ Δίων, καὶ συνεσχόλαζε καὶ συνεπανηγύριζε τοῖς ἀρίστοις καὶ πολιτικωτάτοις ἀνδράσιν, οὐδὲν ἐν τῇ διαίτῃ σόλοικον ἐπιδεικνύμενος οὐδὲ τυραννικὸν οὐδὲ διατεθρυμμένον, ἀλλὰ σωφροσύνην καὶ ἀρετὴν καὶ ἀνδρίαν καὶ περὶ λόγους [7] καὶ περὶ φιλοσοφίαν εὐσχήμονας διατριβάς. ἐφ’ οἷς εὔνοια παρὰ πάντων ἐγίνετο καὶ ζῆλος αὐτῷ, τιμαί τε δημοσίᾳ καὶ ψηφίσματα παρὰ τῶν πόλεων.

[8] Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ καὶ Σπαρτιάτην αὐτὸν ἐποιήσαντο, τῆς Διονυσίου καταφρονήσαντες ὀργῆς, καίπερ αὐτοῖς τότε προθύμως ἐπὶ τοὺς Θηβαίους [9] συμμαχοῦντος. λέγεται δέ ποτε τὸν Δίωνα τοῦ Μεγαρέως Πτοιοδώρου δεόμενον ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ἐλθεῖν· ἦν δ’ ὡς ἔοικε τῶν πλουσίων τις καὶ δυνατῶν [10] ὁ Πτοιόδωρος· ὄχλον οὖν ἐπὶ θύραις ἰδὼν ὁ Δίων καὶ πλῆθος ἀσχολιῶν καὶ δυσέντευκτον αὐτὸν καὶ δυσπρόσοδον, ἀπιδὼν πρὸς τοὺς φίλους, δυσχεραίνοντας καὶ ἀγανακτοῦντας, τί τοῦτον ἔφη μεμφόμεθα; καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ πάντως ἐν Συρακούσαις ὅμοια τούτοις ἐποιοῦμεν.

[18] [1] Χρόνου δὲ προϊόντος, ὁ Διονύσιος ζηλοτυπῶν καὶ δεδοικὼς τοῦ Δίωνος τὴν παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν εὔνοιαν, ἐπαύσατο τὰς προσόδους ἀποστέλλων [2] καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν παρέδωκεν ἰδίοις ἐπιτρόποις. βουλόμενος δὲ καὶ τὴν εἰς τοὺς φιλοσόφους διὰ Πλάτωνα κακοδοξίαν ἀναμάχεσθαι, πολλοὺς [3] συνῆγε τῶν πεπαιδεῦσθαι δοκούντων. φιλοτιμούμενος δὲ τῷ διαλέγεσθαι περιεῖναι πάντων, ἠναγκάζετο τοῖς Πλάτωνος παρακούσμασι [4] κακῶς χρῆσθαι, καὶ πάλιν ἐκεῖνον ἐπόθει καὶ κατεγίνωσκεν αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ [5] μὴ χρησάμενος παρόντι μηδὲ διακούσας ὅσα καλῶς εἶχεν. οἷα δὲ τύραννος ἔμπληκτος ἀεὶ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ πρὸς πᾶσαν ὀξύρροπος σπουδήν, εὐθὺς ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ τὸν Πλάτωνα, καὶ πᾶσαν μηχανὴν αἴρων συνέπεισε τοὺς περὶ Ἀρχύταν Πυθαγορικούς, τῶν ὁμολογουμένων ἀναδόχους γενομένους καλεῖν Πλάτωνα· δι’ ἐκείνου γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἐγεγόνει φιλία καὶ ξενία τὸ [6] πρῶτον. οἱ δ’ ἔπεμψαν Ἀρχέδημον παρ’ αὐτόν· ἔπεμψε δὲ καὶ Διονύσιος [7] τριήρεις καὶ φίλους δεησομένους τοῦ Πλάτωνος, αὐτός τε σαφῶς καὶ διαρρήδην ἔγραψεν, ὡς οὐδὲν ἂν γένοιτο τῶν μετρίων Δίωνι μὴ πεισθέντος [8] Πλάτωνος ἐλθεῖν εἰς Σικελίαν, πεισθέντος δὲ πάντα. πολλαὶ δ’ ἀφίκοντο πρὸς Δίωνα παρὰ τῆς ἀδελφῆς καὶ γυναικὸς ἐπισκήψεις, δεῖσθαι Πλάτωνος [9] ὑπακοῦσαι Διονυσίῳ καὶ μὴ πρόφασιν παρασχεῖν. οὕτω μὲν δή φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (ep. 7, 345e) ἐλθεῖν τὸ τρίτον εἰς τὸν πορθμὸν τὸν περὶ Σικελίαν (Od. 12, 428),

ὄφρ’ ἔτι τὴν ὀλοὴν ἀναμετρήσειε Χάρυβδιν.

[19] [1] Ἐλθὼν δὲ μεγάλης μὲν αὐτὸν ἐνέπλησε χαρᾶς, μεγάλης δὲ πάλιν ἐλπίδος Σικελίαν, συνευχομένην καὶ συμφιλοτιμουμένην, Πλάτωνα μὲν [2] Φιλίστου περιγενέσθαι, φιλοσοφίαν δὲ τυραννίδος. ἦν δὲ πολλὴ μὲν τῶν [3] γυναικῶν σπουδὴ περὶ αὐτόν, ἐξαίρετος δὲ παρὰ τῷ Διονυσίῳ πίστις, ἣν οὐδεὶς ἄλλος εἶχεν, ἀδιερεύνητον αὐτῷ πλησιάζειν. δωρεὰς δὲ χρημάτων πολλῶν καὶ πολλάκις τοῦ μὲν διδόντος, τοῦ δὲ μὴ δεχομένου, παρὼν Ἀρίστιππος ὁ Κυρηναῖος ἀσφαλῶς ἔφη μεγαλόψυχον εἶναι Διονύσιον· αὐτοῖς μὲν γὰρ μικρὰ διδόναι πλειόνων δεομένοις, Πλάτωνι δὲ πολλὰ μηδὲν λαμβάνοντι.

[4] Μετὰ δὲ τὰς πρώτας φιλοφροσύνας ἀρξαμένου Πλάτωνος ἐντυγχάνειν [5] περὶ Δίωνος, ὑπερθέσεις τὸ πρῶτον ἦσαν, εἶτα μέμψεις καὶ διαφοραὶ λανθάνουσαι τοὺς ἐκτός, ἐπικρυπτομένου Διονυσίου καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις τὸν Πλάτωνα θεραπείαις καὶ τιμαῖς πειρωμένου παράγειν ἀπὸ τῆς Δίωνος εὐνοίας, οὐδ’ αὐτὸν ἔν γε τοῖς πρώτοις χρόνοις ἀποκαλύπτοντα τὴν ἀπιστίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ ψευδολογίαν, ἀλλ’ ἐγκαρτεροῦντα καὶ σχηματιζόμενον.

[6] οὕτω δὲ διακειμένων πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ λανθάνειν πάντας οἰομένων, Ἑλίκων ὁ Κυζικηνός, εἷς τῶν Πλάτωνος συνήθων, ἡλίου προεῖπεν ἔκλειψιν, καὶ γενομένης ὡς προεῖπε, θαυμασθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ τυράννου δωρεὰν [7] ἔλαβεν ἀργυρίου τάλαντον. Ἀρίστιππος δὲ παίζων πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους φιλοσόφους ἔφη τι καὶ αὐτὸς ἔχειν τῶν παραδόξων προειπεῖν· ἐκείνων δὲ φράσαι δεομένων, προλέγω τοίνυν εἶπεν ὀλίγου χρόνου Πλάτωνα καὶ [8] Διονύσιον ἐχθροὺς γενησομένους. τέλος δὲ τὴν μὲν οὐσίαν τοῦ Δίωνος ὁ Διονύσιος ἐπώλει καὶ τὰ χρήματα κατεῖχε, Πλάτωνα δ’ ἐν τῷ περὶ τὴν οἰκίαν κήπῳ διαιτώμενον εἰς τοὺς μισθοφόρους μετέστησε, πάλαι μισοῦντας αὐτὸν καὶ ζητοῦντας ἀνελεῖν ὡς πείθοντα Διονύσιον ἀφεῖναι τὴν τυραννίδα καὶ ζῆν ἀδορυφόρητον.

[20] [1] Ἐν τοιούτῳ δὲ κινδύνῳ γενομένου τοῦ Πλάτωνος, οἱ περὶ Ἀρχύταν πυθόμενοι ταχὺ πέμπουσι πρεσβείαν καὶ τριακόντορον, ἀπαιτοῦντες τὸν ἄνδρα παρὰ Διονυσίου καὶ λέγοντες, ὡς αὐτοὺς λαβὼν ἀναδόχους τῆς [2] ἀσφαλείας πλεύσειεν εἰς Συρακούσας. ἀπολεγομένου δὲ τοῦ Διονυσίου τὴν ἔχθραν ἑστιάσεσι καὶ φιλοφροσύναις περὶ τὴν προπομπήν, ἓν δέ τι προαχθέντος πρὸς αὐτὸν τοιοῦτον εἰπεῖν· ἦ που Πλάτων πολλὰ καὶ δεινὰ [3] κατηγορήσεις ἡμῶν πρὸς τοὺς συμφιλοσοφοῦντας, ὑπομειδιάσας ἐκεῖνος ἀπεκρίνατο· μὴ τοσαύτη λόγων ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ γένοιτο σπάνις, ὥστε [4] σοῦ τινα μνημονεῦσαι. τοιαύτην μὲν τὴν ἀποστολὴν τοῦ Πλάτωνος γενέσθαι λέγουσιν· οὐ μέντοι τὰ Πλάτωνος αὐτοῦ πάνυ τούτοις συνᾴδει.

[21] [1] Δίων δὲ καὶ τούτοις ἐχαλέπαινε, καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον ἐξεπολεμώθη παντάπασι πυθόμενος τὸ περὶ τὴν γυναῖκα, περὶ οὗ καὶ Πλάτων ᾐνίξατο [2] γράφων πρὸς Διονύσιον (ep. 13, 362e). ἦν δὲ τοιοῦτον. μετὰ τὴν ἐκβολὴν τοῦ Δίωνος ἀποπέμπων Πλάτωνα Διονύσιος ἐκέλευσεν αὐτοῦ δι’ [3] ἀπορρήτων πυθέσθαι, μή τι κωλύοι τὴν γυναῖκα πρὸς γάμον ἑτέρῳ δοθῆναι· καὶ γὰρ ἦν λόγος, εἴτ’ ἀληθὴς εἴτε συντεθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν Δίωνα μισούντων, ὡς οὐ καθ’ ἡδονὴν ὁ γάμος εἴη Δίωνι γεγονὼς οὐδ’ εὐάρμοστος ἡ [4] πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα συμβίωσις. ὡς οὖν ἧκεν ὁ Πλάτων Ἀθήναζε καὶ τῷ Δίωνι περὶ πάντων ἐνέτυχε, γράφει πρὸς τὸν τύραννον ἐπιστολήν, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα σαφῶς πᾶσιν, αὐτὸ δὲ τοῦτο μόνῳ γνώριμον ἐκείνῳ φράζουσαν, ὡς διαλεχθείη Δίωνι περὶ τοῦ πράγματος ἐκείνου καὶ σφόδρα δῆλος εἴη χαλεπαίνων [5] ‹ἄν›, εἰ τοῦτο Διονύσιος ἐξεργάσαιτο. καὶ τότε μὲν ἔτι πολλῶν ἐλπίδων οὐσῶν πρὸς τὰς διαλύσεις, οὐδὲν ἔπραξε περὶ τὴν ἀδελφὴν νεώτερον, [6] ἀλλ’ εἴα μένειν αὐτὴν μετὰ τοῦ παιδίου τοῦ Δίωνος οἰκοῦσαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ παντάπασιν ἀσυμβάτως εἶχε, καὶ Πλάτων αὖθις ἐλθὼν ἀπεπέμφθη πρὸς ἀπέχθειαν, οὕτω τὴν Ἀρετὴν ἄκουσαν ἑνὶ τῶν φίλων Τιμοκράτει δίδωσιν, [7] οὐ μιμησάμενος τὴν κατά γε τοῦτο τοῦ πατρὸς ἐπιείκειαν. ἐγεγόνει γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε κἀκείνῳ Πολύξενος ὁ τὴν ἀδελφὴν ἔχων αὐτοῦ Θέστην πολέμιος· ἀποδράντος οὖν αὐτοῦ διὰ φόβον καὶ φυγόντος ἐκ Σικελίας, μεταπεμψάμενος ᾐτιᾶτο τὴν ἀδελφήν, ὅτι συνειδυῖα τὴν φυγὴν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς οὐ κατεῖπε πρὸς [8] αὐτόν. ἡ δ’ ἀνεκπλήκτως καὶ νὴ Δί’ ἀφόβως εἶθ’ οὕτω σοι δοκῶ Διονύσιε φαύλη γυνὴ γεγονέναι καὶ ἄνανδρος, ὥστε προγνοῦσα τὴν φυγὴν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς οὐκ ἂν συνεκπλεῦσαι καὶ μετασχεῖν τῆς αὐτῆς τύχης; ἀλλ’ οὐ προέγνων· ἐπεὶ καλῶς εἶχέ μοι μᾶλλον Πολυξένου γυναῖκα φεύγοντος ἢ [9] σοῦ τυραννοῦντος ἀδελφὴν λέγεσθαι. ταῦτα τῆς Θέστης παρρησιασαμένης, θαυμάσαι λέγουσι τὸν τύραννον· ἐθαύμασαν δὲ καὶ οἱ Συρακόσιοι τὴν ἀρετὴν τῆς γυναικός, ὥστε καὶ μετὰ τὴν κατάλυσιν τῆς τυραννίδος ἐκείνῃ τιμὴν καὶ θεραπείαν βασιλικὴν παρέχειν, ἀποθανούσης δὲ δημοσίᾳ πρὸς τὴν ταφὴν ἐπακολουθῆσαι τοὺς πολίτας. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἄχρηστον ἔχει τὴν παρέκβασιν.

[22] [1] Ὁ δὲ Δίων ἐντεῦθεν ἤδη τρέπεται πρὸς πόλεμον, αὐτοῦ μὲν Πλάτωνος ἐκποδὼν ἱσταμένου δι’ αἰδῶ τῆς πρὸς Διονύσιον ξενίας καὶ γῆρας, Σπευσίππου δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἑταίρων τῷ Δίωνι συλλαμβανόντων καὶ παρακελευομένων ἐλευθεροῦν Σικελίαν, χεῖρας ὀρέγουσαν αὐτῷ καὶ προθύμως [2] ὑποδεχομένην. ὅτε γὰρ ἐν Συρακούσαις Πλάτων διέτριβεν, οἱ περὶ Σπεύσιππον ὡς ἔοικε μᾶλλον ἀναμειγνύμενοι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις κατεμάνθανον [3] τὴν διάνοιαν αὐτῶν. καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἐφοβοῦντο τὴν παρρησίαν, ὡς διάπειραν οὖσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ τυράννου, χρόνῳ δ’ ἐπίστευσαν. ὁ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἦν παρὰ πάντων λόγος, δεομένων καὶ παρακελευομένων ἐλθεῖν Δίωνα μὴ ναῦς ἔχοντα μηδ’ ὁπλίτας μηδ’ ἵππους, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν εἰς ὑπηρετικὸν ἐμβάντα χρῆσαι τὸ σῶμα καὶ τοὔνομα Σικελιώταις ἐπὶ τὸν Διονύσιον.

[4] ταῦτα τῶν περὶ Σπεύσιππον ἀγγελλόντων, ἐπιρρωσθεὶς ἐξενολόγει κρύφα [5] καὶ δι’ ἑτέρων, ἐπικρυπτόμενος τὴν διάνοιαν. συνέπραττον δὲ καὶ τῶν πολιτικῶν πολλοὶ καὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων, ὅ τε Κύπριος Εὔδημος, εἰς ὃν Ἀριστοτέλης ἀποθανόντα τὸν περὶ ψυχῆς διάλογον ἐποίησε (fg. 37 R.), καὶ Τιμωνίδης [6] ὁ Λευκάδιος. συνέστησαν δὲ καὶ Μιλτᾶν αὐτῷ τὸν Θεσσαλόν, ἄνδρα [7] μάντιν καὶ μετεσχηκότα τῆς ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ διατριβῆς. τῶν δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ τυράννου πεφυγαδευμένων, οὐ μεῖον ἢ χιλίων ὄντων, πέντε καὶ εἴκοσι μόνοι τῆς στρατείας ἐκοινώνησαν, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι προὔδοσαν ἀποδειλιάσαντες.

[8] Ὁρμητήριον δ’ ἦν ἡ Ζακυνθίων νῆσος, εἰς ἣν οἱ στρατιῶται συνελέγησαν, ὀκτακοσίων ἐλάττους γενόμενοι, γνώριμοι δὲ πάντες ἐκ πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων στρατειῶν καὶ τοῖς σώμασιν ἠσκημένοι διαφερόντως, ἐμπειρίᾳ δὲ καὶ τόλμῃ πολὺ πάντων κράτιστοι καὶ δυνάμενοι πλῆθος, ὅσον ἤλπιζεν ἕξειν ἐν Σικελίᾳ Δίων, ὑπεκκαῦσαι καὶ συνεξορμῆσαι πρὸς ἀλκήν.

[23] [1] Οὗτοι τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἀκούσαντες ἐπὶ Διονύσιον καὶ Σικελίαν αἴρεσθαι τὸν στόλον, ἐξεπλάγησαν καὶ κατέγνωσαν ὡς ὀργῆς τινος παραφροσύνῃ καὶ μανίᾳ τοῦ Δίωνος ἢ χρηστῶν ἐλπίδων ἀπορίᾳ ῥιπτοῦντος ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἀπεγνωσμένας πράξεις, καὶ τοῖς ἑαυτῶν ἡγεμόσι καὶ ξενολό[2]γοις ὠργίζοντο, μὴ προειποῦσιν εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς τὸν πόλεμον. ἐπεὶ δὲ Δίων τῷ λόγῳ τὰ σαθρὰ τῆς τυραννίδος ἐπεξιὼν ἐδίδασκεν, ὡς οὐ στρατιώτας, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἡγεμόνας αὐτοὺς κομίζοι Συρακοσίων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Σικελιωτῶν, πάλαι πρὸς ἀπόστασιν ἑτοίμων ὑπαρχόντων, μετὰ δὲ τὸν Δίωνα διαλεχθέντος αὐτοῖς Ἀλκιμένους, ὃς πρῶτος ὢν Ἀχαιῶν δόξῃ [3] καὶ γένει συνεστράτευεν, ἐπείσθησαν. ἦν μὲν οὖν θέρους ἀκμή, καὶ κατεῖχον ἐτησίαι τὸ πέλαγος, ἡ δὲ σελήνη διχομηνίαν ἦγε· τῷ δ’ Ἀπόλλωνι θυσίαν μεγαλοπρεπῆ παρασκευάσας ὁ Δίων ἐπόμπευσε μετὰ τῶν στρατιωτῶν, [4] κεκοσμημένων ταῖς πανοπλίαις πρὸς τὸ ἱερόν, καὶ μετὰ τὴν θυσίαν ἐν τῷ σταδίῳ τῶν Ζακυνθίων κατακλιθέντας αὐτοὺς εἱστία, θαυμάζοντας ἀργυρῶν καὶ χρυσῶν ἐκπωμάτων καὶ τραπεζῶν ὑπερβάλλουσαν ἰδιωτικὸν πλοῦτον λαμπρότητα, καὶ λογιζομένους ὅτι παρηκμακὼς ἀνὴρ ἤδη καὶ τοσαύτης εὐπορίας κύριος οὐκ ἂν ἐπιχειροίη παραβόλοις πράγμασι χωρὶς ἐλπίδος βεβαίου καὶ φίλων ἐνδιδόντων ἐκεῖθεν αὐτῷ τὰς πλείστας καὶ μεγίστας ἀφορμάς.

[24] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὰς σπονδὰς καὶ τὰς νενομισμένας κατευχὰς ἐξέλιπεν ἡ σελήνη. καὶ τοῖς μὲν περὶ τὸν Δίωνα θαυμαστὸν οὐδὲν ἦν, λογιζομένοις τὰς ἐκλειπτικὰς περιόδους καὶ τὴν γινομένην τοῦ σκιάσματος ἀπάντησιν [2] πρὸς τὴν σελήνην καὶ τῆς γῆς τὴν ἀντίφραξιν πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῖς στρατιώταις διαταραχθεῖσιν ἔδει τινὸς παρηγορίας, Μιλτᾶς ὁ μάντις ἐν μέσῳ καταστὰς ἐκέλευε θαρρεῖν αὐτοὺς καὶ προσδοκᾶν τὰ κράτιστα· [3] σημαίνειν γὰρ τὸ δαιμόνιον ἔκλειψίν τινος τῶν νῦν ἐπιφανῶν· ἐπιφανέστερον δὲ μηδὲν εἶναι τῆς Διονυσίου τυραννίδος, ἧς τὸ λαμπρὸν ἀποσβέσειν [4] ἐκείνους εὐθὺς ἁψαμένους Σικελίας. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ὁ Μιλτᾶς εἰς μέσον ἐξέθηκε πᾶσι· τὸ δὲ τῶν μελισσῶν, αἳ περὶ τὰ πλοῖα τοῦ Δίωνος ὤφθησαν ἑσμὸν λαμβάνουσαι κατὰ πρύμναν, ἰδίᾳ πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ τοὺς φίλους ἔφραζε δεδιέναι, μὴ καλαὶ μὲν αἱ πράξεις αὐτοῦ γένωνται, χρόνον δ’ ὀλίγον ἀνθήσασαι μαρανθῶσι.

[5] Λέγεται δὲ καὶ τῷ Διονυσίῳ πολλὰ τερατώδη παρὰ τοῦ δαιμονίου [6] γενέσθαι σημεῖα. ἀετὸς μὲν γὰρ ἁρπάσας δοράτιόν τινος τῶν δορυφόρων, [7] ἀράμενος ὑψοῦ καὶ φέρων ἀφῆκεν εἰς τὸν βυθόν· ἡ δὲ προσκλύζουσα πρὸς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν θάλασσα μίαν ἡμέραν τὸ ὕδωρ γλυκὺ καὶ πότιμον παρέσχεν, [8] ὥστε γευσαμένοις πᾶσι κατάδηλον εἶναι. χοῖροι δ’ ἐτέχθησαν αὐτῷ [9] τῶν μὲν ἄλλων οὐδενὸς ἐνδεεῖς μορίων, ὦτα δ’ οὐκ ἔχοντες. ἀπεφαίνοντο δ’ οἱ μάντεις, τοῦτο μὲν ἀποστάσεως καὶ ἀπειθείας εἶναι σημεῖον, ὡς οὐκέτι τῶν πολιτῶν ἀκουσομένων τῆς τυραννίδος, τὴν δὲ γλυκύτητα τῆς θαλάσσης μεταβολὴν καιρῶν ἀνιαρῶν καὶ πονηρῶν εἰς πράγματα χρηστὰ [10] φέρειν Συρακοσίοις. ἀετὸς δὲ θεράπων Διός, λόγχη δὲ παράσημον ἀρχῆς καὶ δυναστείας· ἀφανισμὸν οὖν καὶ κατάλυσιν τῇ τυραννίδι δηλοῦν τὸν τῶν θεῶν μέγιστον. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Θεόπομπος ἱστόρηκε (FGrH 115 F 311).

[25] [1] Τοὺς δὲ στρατιώτας τοῦ Δίωνος ἐξεδέξαντο στρογγύλαι δύο ναῦς, [2] τρίτον δὲ πλοῖον οὐ μέγα καὶ δύο τριακόντοροι παρηκολούθουν. ὅπλα δέ, χωρὶς ὧν εἶχον οἱ στρατιῶται, δισχιλίας μὲν ἐκόμιζεν ἀσπίδας, βέλη δὲ καὶ δόρατα πολλὰ καὶ πλῆθος ἐφοδίων ἄφθονον, ὅπως ἐπιλίπῃ μηδὲν αὐτοὺς ποντοποροῦντας, ἅτε δὴ τὸ σύμπαν ἐπὶ πνεύμασι καὶ θαλάσσῃ πεποιημένους τὸν πλοῦν διὰ τὸ τὴν γῆν φοβεῖσθαι καὶ πυνθάνεσθαι Φίλιστον [3] ἐν Ἰαπυγίᾳ ναυλοχοῦντα παραφυλάττειν. ἀραιῷ δὲ καὶ μαλακῷ πνεύματι πλεύσαντες ἡμέρας δώδεκα, τῇ τρισκαιδεκάτῃ κατὰ Πάχυνον [4] ἦσαν, ἄκραν τῆς Σικελίας, καὶ Πρῶτος μὲν ὁ κυβερνήτης κατὰ τάχος ἐκέλευσεν ἀποβαίνειν, ὡς ἂν ἀποσπασθῶσι τῆς γῆς καὶ τὴν ἄκραν ἑκόντες ἀφῶσι, πολλὰς ἡμέρας καὶ νύκτας ἐν τῷ πελάγει τριβησομένους, ὥρᾳ [5] θέρους νότον περιμένοντας. Δίων δὲ τὴν ἐγγὺς τῶν πολεμίων ἀπόβασιν δεδιὼς καὶ τῶν πρόσω μᾶλλον ἅψασθαι βουλόμενος, παρέπλευσε τὸν [6] Πάχυνον. ἐκ δὲ τούτου τραχὺς μὲν ἀπαρκτίας ἐπιπεσὼν ἤλαυνε πολλῷ κλύδωνι τὰς ναῦς ἀπὸ τῆς Σικελίας, ἀστραπαὶ δὲ καὶ βρονταὶ φανέντος Ἀρκτούρου συμπεσοῦσαι πολὺν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ χειμῶνα καὶ ῥαγδαῖον ὄμβρον [7] ἐξέχεαν· ᾧ τῶν ναυτῶν συνταραχθέντων καὶ πλάνης γενομένης, καθορῶσιν αἰφνίδιον ὑπὸ τοῦ κύματος ὠθουμένας τὰς ναῦς ἐπὶ τὴν πρὸς Λιβύῃ Κέρκιναν, ᾗ μάλιστα κρημνώδης ἀπήντα καὶ τραχεῖα προσφερομένοις [8] αὐτοῖς ἡ νῆσος. μικρὸν οὖν δεήσαντες ἐκριφῆναι καὶ συντριβῆναι περὶ τὰς πέτρας, ἐβιάζοντο πρὸς κοντὸν παραφερόμενοι μόλις, ἕως ὁ χειμὼν ἐλώφησε καὶ πλοίῳ συντυχόντες ἔγνωσαν ἐπὶ ταῖς καλουμέναις κεφαλαῖς τῆς [9] μεγάλης Σύρτεως ὄντες. ἀθυμοῦσι δ’ αὐτοῖς πρὸς τὴν γαλήνην καὶ διαφερομένοις αὔραν τινὰ κατέσπειρεν ἡ χώρα νότιον, οὐ πάνυ προσδεχομένοις [10] νότον οὐδὲ πιστεύουσι τῇ μεταβολῇ. κατὰ μικρὸν δὲ ῥωννυμένου τοῦ πνεύματος καὶ μέγεθος λαμβάνοντος, ἐκτείναντες ὅσον ἦν ἱστίων καὶ προσευξάμενοι τοῖς θεοῖς πελάγιοι πρὸς τὴν Σικελίαν ἔφευγον ἀπὸ τῆς Λιβύης, [11] καὶ θέοντες ἐλαφρῶς πεμπταῖοι κατὰ Μίνῳαν ὡρμίσαντο, πολισμάτιον ἐν τῇ Σικελίᾳ τῆς Καρχηδονίων ἐπικρατείας.

[12] Ἔτυχε δὲ παρὼν ὁ Καρχηδόνιος ἄρχων Σύναλος ἐν τῷ χωρίῳ, ξένος ὢν καὶ φίλος Δίωνος· ἀγνοῶν δὲ τὴν παρουσίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν στόλον, ἐπειρᾶτο [13] κωλύειν τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀποβαίνοντας. οἱ δὲ μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἐκδραμόντες ἀπέκτειναν μὲν οὐδένα, ἀπειρήκει γὰρ ὁ Δίων διὰ τὴν οὖσαν αὐτῷ φιλίαν πρὸς τὸν Καρχηδόνιον, φεύγουσι δὲ συνεισπεσόντες αἱροῦσι [14] τὸ χωρίον. ὡς δ’ ἀπήντησαν ἀλλήλοις οἱ ἡγεμόνες καὶ ἠσπάσαντο, Δίων μὲν ἀπέδωκε τὴν πόλιν Συνάλῳ, οὐδὲν ἀδικήσας, Σύναλος δὲ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἐξένιζε καὶ συμπαρεσκεύαζεν ὧν Δίων ἐδεῖτο.

[26] [1] Μάλιστα δ’ αὐτοὺς ἐθάρρυνε τὸ συμβεβηκὸς αὐτομάτως περὶ τὴν ἀποδημίαν τοῦ Διονυσίου· νεωστὶ γὰρ ἐκπεπλευκὼς ἐτύγχανεν ὀγδοήκοντα [2] ναυσὶν εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν. διὸ καὶ τοῦ Δίωνος παρακαλοῦντος ἐνταῦθα τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀναλαμβάνειν, πολὺν χρόνον ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ κεκακωμένους, οὐχ ὑπέμειναν, αὐτοὶ σπεύδοντες ἁρπάσαι τὸν καιρόν, ἀλλ’ ἐκέλευον [3] ἡγεῖσθαι τὸν Δίωνα πρὸς τὰς Συρακούσας. ἀποσκευασάμενος οὖν τὰ περιόντα τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τῶν φορτίων ἐκεῖ, καὶ τοῦ Συνάλου δεηθεὶς ὅταν ᾖ καιρὸς ἀποστεῖλαι πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ τὰς Συρακούσας.

[4] πορευομένῳ δ’ αὐτῷ πρῶτον μὲν Ἀκραγαντίνων προσεχώρησαν ἱππεῖς διακόσιοι τῶν περὶ τὸ Ἔκνομον οἰκούντων, μετὰ δὲ τούτους Γελῷοι.

[5] Ταχὺ δὲ τῆς φήμης διαδραμούσης εἰς Συρακούσας, Τιμοκράτης ὁ τῇ Δίωνος γυναικὶ συνοικῶν [Διονυσίου ἀδελφῇ], τῶν ‹δ’› ἀπολελειμμένων ἐν τῇ πόλει φίλων προεστώς, ἐκπέμπει κατὰ τάχος ἄγγελον τῷ Διονυσίῳ, [6] γράμματα κομίζοντα περὶ τῆς Δίωνος ἀφίξεως. αὐτὸς δὲ τοῖς κατὰ τὴν πόλιν προσεῖχε θορύβοις καὶ κινήμασιν, ἐπηρμένων μὲν πάντων, διὰ [7] δ’ ἀπιστίαν ἔτι καὶ φόβον ἡσυχαζόντων. τῷ δὲ πεμφθέντι γραμματοφόρῳ τύχη τις συμπίπτει παράλογος. διαπλεύσας γὰρ εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν καὶ τὴν Ῥηγίνην διελθὼν ἐπειγόμενος εἰς Καυλωνίαν πρὸς Διονύσιον, ἀπήντησέ τινι τῶν συνήθων ἱερεῖον νεωστὶ τεθυμένον κομίζοντι, καὶ λαβὼν παρ’ [8] αὐτοῦ μοῖραν τῶν κρεῶν, ἐχώρει σπουδῇ. τῆς δὲ νυκτὸς μέρος ὁδεύσας καὶ μικρὸν ἀποδαρθεῖν ὑπὸ κόπου βιασθείς, ὡς εἶχε παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἐν [9] ὕλῃ τινὶ κατέκλινεν ἑαυτόν. πρὸς δὲ τὴν ὀσμὴν λύκος ἐπελθὼν καὶ λαβόμενος τῶν κρεῶν ἀναδεδεμένων ἐκ τῆς πήρας, ᾤχετο φέρων ἅμα σὺν [10] αὐτοῖς τὴν πήραν, ἐν ᾗ τὰς ἐπιστολὰς ὁ ἄνθρωπος εἶχεν. ὡς δὲ διεγερθεὶς ᾔσθετο, καὶ πολλὰ μάτην πλανηθεὶς καὶ διώξας οὐχ εὗρεν, ἔγνω μὴ πορεύεσθαι δίχα τῶν γραμμάτων πρὸς τὸν τύραννον, ἀλλ’ ἀποδρὰς ἐκποδὼν γενέσθαι.

[27] [1] Διονύσιος μὲν οὖν ὀψὲ καὶ παρ’ ἑτέρων ἔμελλε πυνθάνεσθαι τὸν ἐν Σικελίᾳ πόλεμον, Δίωνι δὲ πορευομένῳ Καμαριναῖοί τε προσέθεντο, καὶ τῶν κατ’ ἀγροὺς Συρακοσίων ἀνισταμένων ἐπέρρει πλῆθος οὐκ ὀλίγον.

[2] οἱ δὲ μετὰ Τιμοκράτους τὰς Ἐπιπολὰς φυλάσσοντες Λεοντῖνοι καὶ Καμπανοί, λόγον ψευδῆ προσπέμψαντος εἰς αὐτοὺς τοῦ Δίωνος, ὡς ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις πρῶτον τρέποιτο τὰς ἐκείνων, ἀπολιπόντες ᾤχοντο τὸν Τιμοκράτην, [3] τοῖς οἰκείοις βοηθήσοντες. ὡς δ’ ἀπηγγέλη ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Δίωνα, περὶ τὰς Ἄκρας στρατοπεδεύοντα, νυκτὸς ἔτι τοὺς στρατιώτας ἀναστήσας πρὸς τὸν Ἄναπον ποταμὸν ἧκεν, ἀπέχοντα τῆς πόλεως δέκα σταδίους.

[4] ἐνταῦθα δὲ τὴν πορείαν ἐπιστήσας ἐσφαγιάζετο πρὸς τὸν ποταμόν, ἀνατέλλοντι τῷ ἡλίῳ προσευξάμενος· ἅμα δ’ οἱ μάντεις παρὰ τῶν θεῶν νίκην ἔφραζον αὐτῷ, καὶ θεασάμενοι τὸν Δίωνα διὰ τὴν θυσίαν ἐστεφανωμένον [5] οἱ παρόντες, ἀπὸ μιᾶς ὁρμῆς ἐστεφανοῦντο πάντες. ἦσαν δὲ πεντακισχιλίων οὐκ ἐλάττους ‹οἱ› προσγεγονότες κατὰ τὴν ὁδόν· ὡπλισμένοι δὲ φαύλως ἐκ τοῦ προστυχόντος, ἀνεπλήρουν τῇ προθυμίᾳ τὴν τῆς παρασκευῆς ἔνδειαν, ὥστε κινήσαντος τοῦ Δίωνος δρόμῳ χωρεῖν, μετὰ χαρᾶς καὶ βοῆς ἀλλήλους παρακαλοῦντας ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν.

[28] [1] Τῶν δ’ ἐν τῇ πόλει Συρακοσίων οἱ μὲν γνώριμοι καὶ χαρίεντες ἐσθῆτα καθαρὰν ἔχοντες ἀπήντων ἐπὶ τὰς πύλας, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τοῖς ‹τοῦ› τυράννου φίλοις ἐπετίθεντο καὶ συνήρπαζον τοὺς καλουμένους προσαγωγίδας, ἀνθρώπους ἀνοσίους καὶ θεοῖς ἐχθρούς, οἳ περιενόστουν ἐν τῇ πόλει καταμεμειγμένοι τοῖς Συρακοσίοις, πολυπραγμονοῦντες καὶ διαγγέλλοντες [2] τῷ τυράννῳ τάς τε διανοίας καὶ τὰς φωνὰς ἑκάστων. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν πρῶτοι δίκην ἐδίδοσαν, ὑπὸ τῶν προστυγχανόντων ἀποτυμπανιζόμενοι· Τιμοκράτης δὲ συμμεῖξαι τοῖς φρουροῦσι τὴν ἀκρόπολιν μὴ δυνηθείς, ἵππον λαβὼν διεξέπεσε τῆς πόλεως, καὶ πάντα φεύγων ἐνέπλησε φόβου καὶ ταραχῆς, ἐπὶ μεῖζον αἴρων τὰ τοῦ Δίωνος, ὡς μὴ δοκοίη μέτριόν τι δείσας [3] ἀποβεβληκέναι τὴν πόλιν. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ καὶ Δίων προσερχόμενος ἤδη καταφανὴς ἦν πρῶτος αὐτὸς ὡπλισμένος λαμπρῶς, καὶ παρ’ αὐτὸν ἔνθεν μὲν ὁ [4] ἀδελφὸς Μεγακλῆς, ἔνθεν δὲ Κάλλιππος ὁ Ἀθηναῖος, ἐστεφανωμένοι. τῶν δὲ ξένων ἑκατὸν μὲν εἵποντο φύλακες περὶ τὸν Δίωνα, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἦγον οἱ λοχαγοὶ διακεκοσμημένους, θεωμένων τῶν Συρακοσίων καὶ δεχομένων ὥσπερ ἱεράν τινα καὶ θεοπρεπῆ πομπὴν ἐλευθερίας καὶ δημοκρατίας, δι’ ἐτῶν ὀκτὼ καὶ τετταράκοντα κατιούσης εἰς τὴν πόλιν.

[29] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰσῆλθεν ὁ Δίων κατὰ τὰς ‹Τε›μενίτιδας πύλας, τῇ σάλπιγγι καταπαύσας τὸν θόρυβον ἐκήρυξεν, ὅτι Δίων καὶ Μεγακλῆς ἥκοντες ἐπὶ καταλύσει τῆς τυραννίδος ἐλευθεροῦσι Συρακοσίους καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους [2] Σικελιώτας ἀπὸ τοῦ τυράννου. βουλόμενος δὲ καὶ δι’ ἑαυτοῦ προσαγορεῦσαι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ἀνῄει διὰ τῆς Ἀχραδινῆς, ἑκατέρωθεν παρὰ τὴν ὁδὸν τῶν Συρακοσίων ἱερεῖα καὶ τραπέζας καὶ κρατῆρας ἱστάντων, καὶ καθ’ οὓς γένοιτο προχύταις τε βαλλόντων καὶ προστρεπομένων ὥσπερ [3] θεὸν κατευχαῖς. ἦν δ’ ὑπὸ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν καὶ τὰ Πεντάπυλα, Διονυσίου κατασκευάσαντος, ἡλιοτρόπιον καταφανὲς καὶ ὑψηλόν. ἐπὶ τοῦτο προβὰς ἐδημηγόρησε καὶ παρώρμησε τοὺς πολίτας ἀντέχεσθαι τῆς ἐλευθερίας.

[4] οἱ δὲ χαίροντες καὶ φιλοφρονούμενοι κατέστησαν ἀμφοτέρους αὐτοκράτορας στρατηγούς, καὶ προσείλοντο βουλομένων καὶ δεομένων ἐκείνων αὐτοῖς συνάρχοντας εἴκοσιν, ὧν ἡμίσεις ἦσαν ἐκ τῶν μετὰ Δίωνος ἀπὸ τῆς φυγῆς [5] συγκατερχομένων. τοῖς δὲ μάντεσιν αὖθις ἐδόκει τὸ μὲν ὑπὸ πόδας λαβεῖν τὸν Δίωνα δημηγοροῦντα τὴν φιλοτιμίαν καὶ τὸ ἀνάθημα τοῦ τυράννου λαμπρὸν εἶναι σημεῖον· ὅτι δ’ ἡλιοτρόπιον ἦν ἐφ’ οὗ βεβηκὼς ᾑρέθη στρατηγός, ὠρρώδουν μὴ τροπήν τινα τῆς τύχης αἱ πράξεις ταχεῖαν λάβωσιν.

[6] ἐκ τούτου τὰς μὲν Ἐπιπολὰς ἑλὼν τοὺς καθειργμένους τῶν πολιτῶν ἔλυσε, τὴν δ’ ἀκρόπολιν ἀπετείχισεν.

[7] Ἑβδόμῃ δ’ ἡμέρᾳ Διονύσιος κατέπλευσεν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, καὶ Δίωνι [8] προσῆγον ἅμαξαι ‹τὰς› πανοπλίας ἃς Συνάλῳ κατέλιπε. ταύτας διένειμε τοῖς πολίταις, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἕκαστος ἑαυτὸν ὡς δυνατὸν ἦν ἐκόσμει καὶ παρεῖχεν ὁπλίτην πρόθυμον.

[30] [1] Διονύσιος δὲ πρῶτον ἰδίᾳ πρὸς Δίωνα πρέσβεις ἔπεμπεν ἀποπειρώμενος· ἔπειτα κελεύσαντος ἐκείνου διαλέγεσθαι κοινῇ Συρακοσίοις ὡς ἐλευθέροις οὖσιν, ἐγένοντο λόγοι διὰ τῶν πρέσβεων παρὰ τοῦ τυράννου φιλάνθρωποι, φόρων ὑπισχνουμένου μετριότητα καὶ ῥᾳστώνην στρατειῶν, ὧν ‹ἂν μὴ› αὐτοὶ σύμψηφοι γένωνται. ταῦτ’ ἐχλεύαζον οἱ Συρακόσιοι.

[2] Δίων δ’ ἀπεκρίνατο τοῖς πρέσβεσι μὴ διαλέγεσθαι πρὸς αὐτοὺς Διονύσιον, εἰ μὴ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀφίησιν· ἀφέντι δὲ συμπράξειν ἄδει‹αν› αὐτός, κἂν ἄλλο [3] τι τῶν μετρίων δύνηται, μεμνημένος τῆς οἰκειότητος. ταῦτα Διονύσιος ἐπῄνει καὶ πάλιν ἔπεμπε πρέσβεις, κελεύων ἥκειν τινὰς εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν τῶν Συρακοσίων, οἷς τὰ μὲν πείθων, τὰ δὲ πειθόμενος, διαλέξεται περὶ [4] τῶν κοινῇ συμφερόντων. ἐπέμφθησαν οὖν ἄνδρες πρὸς αὐτὸν οὓς Δίων ἐδοκίμασε, καὶ λόγος πολὺς ἐκ τῆς ἄκρας εἰς τοὺς Συρακοσίους κατῄει, Διονύσιον ἀφήσειν τὴν τυραννίδα καὶ μᾶλλον ἑαυτοῦ ποιήσεσθαι χάριν ἢ [5] Δίωνος. ἦν δὲ δόλος ἡ προσποίησις αὕτη τοῦ τυράννου καὶ σκευωρία κατὰ τῶν Συρακοσίων. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἐλθόντας πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως συγκλείσας εἶχε, τοὺς δὲ μισθοφόρους πρὸς ὄρθρον ἐμπλήσας ἀκράτου, [6] δρόμῳ πρὸς τὸ περιτείχισμα τῶν Συρακοσίων ἀφῆκε. γενομένης δὲ τῆς προσβολῆς ἀνελπίστου, καὶ τῶν βαρβάρων θράσει πολλῷ καὶ θορύβῳ καθαιρούντων τὸ διατείχισμα καὶ τοῖς Συρακοσίοις ἐπιφερομένων, οὐδεὶς ἐτόλμα μένων ἀμύνεσθαι πλὴν τῶν ξένων τοῦ Δίωνος, οἳ πρῶτον αἰσθόμενοι [7] τὸν θόρυβον ἐξεβοήθησαν. οὐδ’ οὗτοι δὲ τῆς βοηθείας τὸν τρόπον συνεφρόνουν οὐδ’ εἰσήκουον ὑπὸ κραυγῆς καὶ πλάνης τῶν φευγόντων Συρακοσίων, ἀναπεφυρμένων αὐτοῖς καὶ διεκθεόντων, πρίν γε δὴ Δίων, ἐπεὶ λέγοντος οὐδεὶς κατήκουεν, ἔργῳ τὸ πρακτέον ὑφηγήσασθαι βουλόμενος [8] ἐμβάλλει πρῶτος εἰς τοὺς βαρβάρους. καὶ γίνεται περὶ αὐτὸν ὀξεῖα καὶ δεινὴ μάχη, γινωσκόμενον οὐχ ἧττον ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ἢ τῶν φίλων· [9] ὥρμησαν γὰρ ἅμα πάντες ἐμβοήσαντες. ὁ δ’ ἦν μὲν ἤδη βαρύτερος δι’ ἡλικίαν ἢ κατὰ τοιούτους ἀγῶνας, ἀλκῇ δὲ καὶ θυμῷ ‹τοὺς› προσφερομένους ὑφιστάμενος καὶ ἀνακόπτων, τιτρώσκεται λόγχῃ τὴν χεῖρα, πρὸς δὲ τὰ ἄλλα βέλη καὶ τὰς ἐκ χειρὸς πληγὰς μόλις ὁ θώραξ ἤρκεσε, διὰ τῆς ἀσπίδος δόρασι πολλοῖς καὶ λόγχαις τυπτόμενος· ὧν κατακλασθέντων [10] κατέπεσεν ὁ Δίων. εἶτ’ ἀναρπασθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν, ἐκείνοις μὲν ἡγεμόνα Τιμωνίδην ἐπέστησεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν πόλιν ἵππῳ περιελαύνων, τούς τε Συρακοσίους ἔπαυε φυγῆς καὶ τῶν ξένων τοὺς φυλάττοντας τὴν Ἀχραδινὴν ἀναστήσας ἐπῆγε τοῖς βαρβάροις, ἀκμῆτας ἐκπεπονημένοις [11] καὶ προθύμους ἀπαυδῶσιν ἤδη πρὸς τὴν πεῖραν. ἐλπίσαντες γὰρ ἅμα τῇ πρώτῃ ῥύμῃ τὴν πόλιν ἅπασαν ἐξ ἐπιδρομῆς καθέξειν, εἶτα παρὰ δόξαν ἐντυγχάνοντες ἀνδράσι πλήκταις καὶ μαχίμοις, ἀνεστέλλοντο πρὸς τὴν [12] ἀκρόπολιν. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ὡς ἐνέδωκαν ἐπικειμένων τῶν Ἑλλήνων, τραπόμενοι κατεκλείσθησαν εἰς τὸ τεῖχος, ἑβδομήκοντα μὲν καὶ τέσσαρας ἀποκτείναντες τῶν μετὰ Δίωνος, ἑαυτῶν δὲ πολλοὺς ἀποβαλόντες.

[31] Γενομένης δὲ λαμπρᾶς τῆς νίκης οἱ μὲν Συρακόσιοι τοὺς ξένους ἑκατὸν μναῖς ἐστεφάνωσαν, οἱ δὲ ξένοι Δίωνα χρυσῷ στεφάνῳ.

[13] Κήρυκες δὲ παρὰ τοῦ Διονυσίου κατέβαινον, ἐπιστολὰς πρὸς Δίωνα παρὰ τῶν οἰκείων γυναικῶν κομίζοντες· μία δ’ ἦν ἔξωθεν ἐπιγεγραμμένη [14] τῷ πατρὶ παρ’ Ἱππαρίνου· τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν ὄνομα τῷ Δίωνος υἱῷ. καίτοι φησὶ Τίμαιος (FGrH 566 F 114) Ἀρεταῖον αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς μητρὸς Ἀρετῆς καλεῖσθαι. Τιμωνίδῃ (FGrH 561 F 1) δὲ μᾶλλον ὡς οἴομαι περί γε [15] τούτων πιστευτέον, ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ καὶ συστρατιώτῃ Δίωνος. αἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλαι τοῖς Συρακοσίοις ἀνεγνώσθησαν ἐπιστολαί, πολλὰς ἱκεσίας καὶ δεήσεις ἔχουσαι παρὰ τῶν γυναικῶν, τὴν δὲ παρὰ τοῦ παιδὸς εἶναι δοκοῦσαν οὐκ [16] ἐώντων φανερῶς λυθῆναι, βιασάμενος ὁ Δίων ἔλυσεν. ἦν δὲ παρὰ τοῦ Διονυσίου, τοῖς μὲν γράμμασι πρὸς τὸν Δίωνα, τοῖς δὲ πράγμασι πρὸς τοὺς Συρακοσίους διαλεγομένου, σχῆμα μὲν ἔχουσα δεήσεως καὶ δικαιολογίας, [17] συγκειμένη δὲ πρὸς διαβολὴν τοῦ Δίωνος. ὑπομνήσεις τε γὰρ ἦσαν ὧν ὑπὲρ τῆς τυραννίδος ἔπραξε προθύμως, καὶ κατὰ τῶν φιλτάτων ἀπειλαὶ σωμάτων, ἀδελφῆς καὶ τέκνου καὶ γυναικός, ἐπισκήψεις τε δειναὶ μετ’ ὀλοφυρμῶν ... καί, τὸ μάλιστα κινῆσαν αὐτόν, ἀξιοῦντος μὴ καθαιρεῖν, ἀλλὰ παραλαμβάνειν τὴν τυραννίδα, μηδ’ ἐλευθεροῦν μισοῦντας ἀνθρώπους καὶ μνησικακοῦντας, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἄρχειν, παρέχοντα τοῖς φίλοις καὶ οἰκείοις τὴν ἀσφάλειαν.

[32] [1] Ἀναγινωσκομένων δὲ τούτων οὐχ, ὅπερ ἦν δίκαιον, εἰσῄει τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἐκπλήττεσθαι τὴν ἀπάθειαν καὶ τὴν μεγαλοψυχίαν τοῦ Δίωνος, ὑπὲρ τῶν καλῶν καὶ δικαίων ἀπισχυριζομένου πρὸς τοιαύτας οἰκειότητας, [2] ἀλλ’ ὑποψίας καὶ φόβου λαβόντες ἀρχήν, ὡς μεγάλης οὔσης ἀνάγκης ἐκείνῳ φείδεσθαι τοῦ τυράννου, πρὸς ἑτέρους ἤδη προστάτας ἀπέβλεπον, καὶ μάλιστα πυνθανόμενοι καταπλεῖν Ἡρακλείδην ἀνεπτοήθησαν.

[3] Ἦν δὲ τῶν φυγάδων Ἡρακλείδης, στρατηγικὸς μὲν ἄνθρωπος καὶ γνώριμος ἀφ’ ἡγεμονίας ἣν ἔσχε παρὰ τοῖς τυράννοις, οὐκ ἀραρὼς δὲ τὴν γνώμην, ἀλλὰ πρὸς πάντα κοῦφος, ἥκιστα δὲ βέβαιος ἐν κοινωνίᾳ πραγμάτων [4] ἀρχὴν ἐχόντων καὶ δόξαν. οὗτος ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ πρὸς Δίωνα στασιάσας ἔγνω καθ’ αὑτὸν ἰδιόστολος πλεῖν ἐπὶ τὸν τύραννον, εἴς τε Συρακούσας ἀφικόμενος ἑπτὰ τριήρεσι καὶ τρισὶ πλοίοις Διονύσιον μὲν [5] αὖθις εὗρε περιτετειχισμένον, ἐπηρμένους δὲ τοὺς Συρακοσίους. εὐθὺς οὖν ὑπεδύετο τὴν τῶν πολλῶν χάριν, ἔχων μέν τι καὶ φύσει πιθανὸν καὶ κινητικὸν ὄχλου θεραπεύεσθαι ζητοῦντος, ὑπολαμβάνων δὲ καὶ μετάγων ῥᾷον αὐτούς, οἳ τὸ σεμνὸν τοῦ Δίωνος ὡς βαρὺ καὶ δυσπολίτευτον ἀπεστρέφοντο, διὰ τὴν γεγενημένην ἐκ τοῦ κρατεῖν ἄνεσιν καὶ θρασύτητα πρὸ τοῦ δῆμος εἶναι τὸ δημαγωγεῖσθαι θέλοντες.

[33] [1] Καὶ πρῶτον μὲν εἰς ἐκκλησίαν ἐφ’ αὑτῶν συνδραμόντες, εἵλοντο τὸν [2] Ἡρακλείδην ναύαρχον. ἐπεὶ δὲ Δίων παρελθὼν ᾐτιᾶτο τὴν ἐκείνῳ διδομένην ἀρχὴν ἀφαίρεσιν εἶναι τῆς πρότερον αὐτῷ δεδομένης, οὐκέτι γὰρ αὐτοκράτωρ μένειν, ἂν ἄλλος ἡγῆται τῶν κατὰ θάλασσαν, ἄκοντες οἱ [3] Συρακόσιοι πάλιν ἀπεψηφίσαντο τὸν Ἡρακλείδην. γενομένων δὲ τούτων, μεταπεμψάμενος αὐτὸν ὁ Δίων οἴκαδε καὶ μικρὰ μεμψάμενος, ὡς οὐ καλῶς οὐδὲ συμφερόντως ὑπὲρ δόξης στασιάζοντα πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν καιρῷ ῥοπῆς ὀλίγης δεομένῳ πρὸς ἀπώλειαν, αὖθις ἐκκλησίαν αὐτὸς συναγαγών, ναύαρχον ἀπέδειξε τὸν Ἡρακλείδην καὶ τοῦ σώματος ἔπεισε φυλακὴν δοῦναι [4] τοὺς πολίτας, ὥσπερ αὐτὸς εἶχεν. ὁ δὲ τῷ μὲν λόγῳ καὶ τῷ σχήματι τὸν Δίωνα θεραπεύων καὶ χάριν ὁμολογῶν ἔχειν παρηκολούθει ταπεινός, ὑπηρετῶν τὸ κελευόμενον, κρύφα δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ νεωτεριστὰς διαφθείρων καὶ ὑποκινῶν θορύβοις τὸν Δίωνα περιέβαλλεν, εἰς ἅπασαν ἀπορίαν [5] καθιστάμενον. εἴτε γὰρ ἀφιέναι κελεύοι Διονύσιον ὑπόσπονδον ἐκ τῆς ἄκρας, διαβολὴν εἶχε φείδεσθαι καὶ περισῴζειν ἐκεῖνον, εἴτε λύειν μὴ βουλόμενος ἐπὶ τῆς πολιορκίας ἡσυχάζοι, διατηρεῖν ἐδόκει τὸν πόλεμον, ὡς μᾶλλον ἄρχοι καὶ καταπλήττοιτο τοὺς πολίτας.

[34] [1] Ἦν δέ τις Σῶσις, ἄνθρωπος ἐκ πονηρίας καὶ θρασύτητος εὐδοκιμῶν παρὰ τοῖς Συρακοσίοις, περιουσίαν ἡγουμένοις ἐλευθερίας τὸ μέχρι [2] τοιούτων ἀνεῖσθαι τὴν παρρησίαν. οὗτος ἐπιβουλεύων Δίωνι, πρῶτον μὲν ἐκκλησίας οὔσης ἀναστὰς πολλὰ τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἐλοιδόρησεν, εἰ μὴ συνιᾶσιν ὡς ἐμπλήκτου καὶ μεθυούσης ἀπηλλαγμένοι τυραννίδος ἐγρηγορότα [3] καὶ νήφοντα δεσπότην εἰλήφασιν· ἔπειτα, φανερὸν τοῦ Δίωνος ἐχθρὸν ἀναδείξας ἑαυτόν, τότε μὲν ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἀπῆλθε, τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ γυμνὸς ὤφθη διὰ τῆς πόλεως θέων, ἀνάπλεως αἵματος τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ τὸ [4] πρόσωπον, ὡς δή τινας φεύγων διώκοντας. ἐμβαλὼν δὲ τοιοῦτος εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἔλεγεν ὑπὸ τῶν ξένων τοῦ Δίωνος ἐπιβεβουλεῦσθαι, καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπεδείκνυε τετρωμένην, καὶ πολλοὺς εἶχε τοὺς συναγανακτοῦντας καὶ συνισταμένους κατὰ τοῦ Δίωνος, ὡς δεινὰ καὶ τυραννικὰ πράττοντος, [5] εἰ φόνοις καὶ κινδύνοις τῶν πολιτῶν ἀφαιρεῖται τὴν παρρησίαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καίπερ ἀκρίτου καὶ ταραχώδους ἐκκλησίας γενομένης, παρελθὼν ὁ Δίων ἀπελογεῖτο, καὶ τὸν Σῶσιν ἀπέφαινε τῶν Διονυσίου δορυφόρων ἑνὸς ἀδελφὸν ὄντα καὶ δι’ ἐκείνου πεπεισμένον στασιάσαι καὶ συνταράξαι τὴν πόλιν, οὐδεμιᾶς Διονυσίῳ σωτηρίας οὔσης πλὴν τῆς ἐκείνων ἀπιστίας [6] καὶ διαφορᾶς πρὸς αὑτούς. ἅμα δ’ οἱ μὲν ἰατροὶ τοῦ Σώσιδος τὸ τραῦμα καταμανθάνοντες εὕρισκον ἐξ ἐπιπολῆς μᾶλλον ἢ καταφορᾶς γεγενημένον.

[7] αἱ μὲν γὰρ ὑπὸ [τοῦ] ξίφους πληγαὶ μάλιστα τὸ μέσον ὑπὸ βάρους πιέζουσι, τὸ δὲ τοῦ Σώσιδος λεπτὸν ἦν διόλου καὶ πολλὰς εἶχεν ἀρχάς, ὡς [8] εἰκὸς ὑπ’ ἀλγηδόνος ἀνιέντος, εἶτ’ αὖθις ἐπάγοντος. ἧκον δέ τινες τῶν γνωρίμων, ξυρὸν κομίζοντες εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν καὶ διηγούμενοι βαδίζουσιν αὐτοῖς καθ’ ὁδὸν ἀπαντῆσαι τὸν Σῶσιν ᾑμαγμένον καὶ λέγοντα φεύγειν [9] τοὺς Δίωνος ξένους, ὡς ἀρτίως ὑπ’ ἐκείνων τετρωμένον· εὐθὺς οὖν διώκοντες ἄνθρωπον μὲν οὐδένα λαβεῖν, ὑπὸ πέτραν δὲ κοίλην κείμενον ἰδεῖν ξυρὸν ὅθεν ἐκεῖνος ὤφθη προσερχόμενος.

[35] [1] Ἦν μὲν οὖν ἤδη μοχθηρὰ τὰ περὶ τὸν Σῶσιν· προσγενομένων δὲ τούτοις τοῖς ἐλέγχοις οἰκετῶν καταμαρτυρούντων, ὡς ἔτι νυκτὸς ἐξέλθοι μόνος ἔχων τὸ ξυρόν, οἵ τε κατηγοροῦντες τοῦ Δίωνος ὑπεχώρησαν, ὅ τε δῆμος καταψηφισάμενος θάνατον τοῦ Σώσιδος διηλλάσσετο τῷ Δίωνι.

[2] Τοὺς δὲ μισθοφόρους οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐν ὑποψίαις εἶχον, καὶ μάλιστα τῶν πλείστων ἀγώνων πρὸς τὸν τύραννον ἤδη γινομένων κατὰ θάλατταν, ἐπειδὴ Φίλιστος ἧκεν ἐξ Ἰαπυγίας ἔχων πολλὰς τριήρεις Διονυσίῳ βοηθήσων, καὶ τῶν ξένων ὄντων ὁπλιτῶν οὐδεμίαν ἔτι χρῆσιν ἐνόμιζον εἶναι πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ἀλλὰ κἀκείνους ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῖς ἔσεσθαι, ναυβάταις οὖσι [3] καὶ τὸ κράτος ἐκ τῶν νεῶν κτωμένοις. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτοὺς ἐπῆρεν εὐτυχία τις γενομένη κατὰ θάλασσαν, ἐν ᾗ νικήσαντες τὸν Φίλιστον, ὠμῶς καὶ [4] βαρβαρικῶς αὐτῷ προσηνέχθησαν. Ἔφορος μὲν οὖν φησιν (FGrH 70 F 219), ὡς ἁλισκομένης τῆς νεὼς ἑαυτὸν ἀνέλοι, Τιμωνίδης δέ, πραττομέναις ἐξ ἀρχῆς ταῖς πράξεσι ταύταις μετὰ Δίωνος παραγενόμενος καὶ γράφων πρὸς Σπεύσιππον τὸν φιλόσοφον, ἱστορεῖ (FGrH 561 F 2) ζῶντα [5] ληφθῆναι τῆς τριήρους εἰς τὴν γῆν ἐκπεσούσης τὸν Φίλιστον· καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἀποδύσαντας αὐτοῦ τὸν θώρακα τοὺς Συρακοσίους καὶ γυμνὸν ἐπιδειξαμένους τὸ σῶμα προπηλακίζειν ὄντος ἤδη γέροντος· ἔπειτα τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποτεμεῖν καὶ τοῖς παισὶ παραδοῦναι τὸ σῶμα, κελεύσαντας ἕλκειν [6] διὰ τῆς Ἀχραδινῆς καὶ καταβαλεῖν εἰς τὰς Λατομίας. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐφυβρίζων ὁ Τίμαιος (FGrH 566 F 115) ἐκ τοῦ σκέλους φησὶ τοῦ χωλοῦ τὰ παιδάρια τὸν νεκρὸν ἐφαψάμενα τοῦ Φιλίστου σύρειν διὰ τῆς πόλεως, χλευαζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν Συρακοσίων πάντων, ὁρώντων τοῦ σκέλους ἑλκόμενον τὸν εἰπόντα μὴ δεῖν ἐκ τυραννίδος φεύγειν Διονύσιον ἵππῳ ταχεῖ [7] χρώμενον, ἀλλὰ τοῦ σκέλους ἑλκόμενον. καίτοι τοῦτο Φίλιστος ὡς ὑφ’ ἑτέρου λεχθέν, οὐχ ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ, πρὸς Διονύσιον ἐξήγγελκεν (FGrH 556 F 59).

[36] [1] Ἀλλὰ Τίμαιος, οὐκ ἄδικον λαβὼν πρόφασιν τὴν ὑπὲρ τῆς τυραννίδος τοῦ Φιλίστου σπουδὴν καὶ πίστιν, ἐμπίπλαται τῶν κατ’ αὐτοῦ βλασφημιῶν (FGrH 566 F 154), ᾧ τοὺς μὲν ἀδικηθέντας τότε συγγνωστόν [2] ἐστιν ἴσως ἄχρι τῆς εἰς ἀναίσθητον ὀργῆς χαλεποὺς γενέσθαι, τοὺς δ’ ὕστερον συγγράφοντας τὰ πεπραγμένα, καὶ τῷ μὲν βίῳ μὴ λυπηθέντας αὐτοῦ, τῷ δὲ λόγῳ χρωμένους, ἡ δόξα παραιτεῖται μὴ μεθ’ ὕβρεως μηδὲ μετὰ βωμολοχίας ὀνειδίζειν τὰς συμφοράς, ὧν οὐδὲν ἀπέχει καὶ τὸν ἄριστον [3] ἀνδρῶν ἐκ τύχης μετασχεῖν. οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ Ἔφορος (FGrH 70 F 220) ὑγιαίνει τὸν Φίλιστον ἐγκωμιάζων, ὃς καίπερ ὢν δεινότατος ἀδίκοις πράγμασι καὶ πονηροῖς ἤθεσιν εὐσχήμονας αἰτίας περιβαλεῖν καὶ λόγους ἔχοντας κόσμον ἐξευρεῖν, αὐτὸς αὑτὸν οὐ δύναται πάντα μηχανώμενος ἐξελέσθαι τῆς γραφῆς, ὡς οὐ φιλοτυραννότατος ἀνθρώπων γένοιτο καὶ μάλιστα πάντων ἀεὶ ζηλώσας καὶ θαυμάσας τρυφὴν καὶ δύναμιν καὶ πλούτους [4] καὶ γάμους τοὺς τῶν τυράννων. ἀλλὰ γὰρ Φιλίστου μὲν ὁ μήτε τὰς πράξεις ἐπαινῶν μήτε τὰς τύχας ὀνειδίζων ἐμμελέστατος.

[37] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν Φιλίστου τελευτὴν Διονύσιος ἔπεμπε πρὸς Δίωνα, τὴν μὲν ἀκρόπολιν ἐκείνῳ παραδιδοὺς καὶ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τοὺς μισθοφόρους καὶ [2] πέντε μηνῶν ἐντελῆ τούτοις μισθόν, αὐτὸς δ’ ἀξιῶν ὑπόσπονδος εἰς Ἰταλίαν ἀπελθεῖν, κἀκεῖ κατοικῶν καρποῦσθαι τῆς Συρακοσίας τὸν καλούμενον Γύατα, πολλὴν καὶ ἀγαθὴν χώραν ἀνήκουσαν ἀπὸ θαλάττης εἰς τὴν [3] μεσόγειον. οὐ προσδεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ Δίωνος, ἀλλὰ δεῖσθαι τῶν Συρακοσίων κελεύσαντος, οἱ μὲν Συρακόσιοι ζῶντα λήψεσθαι τὸν Διονύσιον [4] ἐλπίσαντες ἀπήλασαν τοὺς πρέσβεις, ἐκεῖνος δὲ τὴν μὲν ἄκραν Ἀπολλοκράτει τῷ πρεσβυτέρῳ τῶν παίδων παρέδωκεν, αὐτὸς δὲ πνεῦμα τηρήσας ἐπίφορον, καὶ τὰ τιμιώτατα τῶν σωμάτων καὶ τῶν χρημάτων ἐνθέμενος [5] εἰς τὰς ναῦς, λαθὼν τὸν ναύαρχον Ἡρακλείδην ἐξέπλευσεν. ὁ δὲ κακῶς ἀκούων καὶ θορυβούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν, Ἵππωνά τινα τῶν δημαγωγῶν καθίησι προκαλεῖσθαι τὸν δῆμον ἐπὶ γῆς ἀναδασμόν, ὡς ἐλευθερίας [6] ἀρχὴν οὖσαν τὴν ἰσότητα, δουλείας δὲ τὴν πενίαν τοῖς ἀκτήμοσι. συνηγορῶν δὲ τούτῳ καὶ τὸν Δίωνα καταστασιάζων ἐναντιούμενον, ἔπεισε τοὺς Συρακοσίους ταῦτά ‹τε› ψηφίσασθαι καὶ τῶν ξένων τὸν μισθὸν ἀποστερεῖν καὶ στρατηγοὺς ἑτέρους ἑλέσθαι, τῆς ἐκείνου βαρύτητος ἀπαλλαγέντας.

[7] οἱ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐκ μακρᾶς ἀρρωστίας τῆς τυραννίδος εὐθὺς ἐπιχειροῦντες ἐξανίστασθαι καὶ πράττειν τὰ τῶν αὐτονομουμένων παρὰ καιρόν, ἐσφάλλοντο μὲν αὐτοὶ ταῖς πράξεσιν, ἐμίσουν δὲ τὸν Δίωνα, βουλόμενον ὥσπερ ἰατρὸν ἐν ἀκριβεῖ καὶ σωφρονούσῃ διαίτῃ κατέχειν τὴν πόλιν.

[38] [1] Ἐκκλησιάζουσι δ’ αὐτοῖς ἐπὶ νέαις ἀρχαῖς θέρους μεσοῦντος ἐξαίσιοι βρονταὶ καὶ διοσημίαι πονηραὶ συνέβαινον ἐφ’ ἡμέρας δεκαπέντε συνεχῶς, ἀνιστᾶσαι τὸν δῆμον, ὑπὸ δεισιδαιμονίας κωλυόμενον ἑτέρους [2] ἀποδεῖξαι στρατηγούς. ἐπεὶ δὲ φυλάξαντες εὐδίαν σταθερὰν οἱ δημαγωγοὶ συνετέλουν τὰς ἀρχαιρεσίας, βοῦς ἁμαξεὺς οὐκ ἀήθης οὐδ’ ἄπειρος ὄχλων, ἄλλως δέ πως τότε πρὸς τὸν ἐλαύνοντα θυμωθεὶς καὶ φυγὼν ἀπὸ [3] τοῦ ζυγοῦ, δρόμῳ πρὸς τὸ θέατρον ὥρμησε, καὶ τὸν μὲν δῆμον εὐθὺς ἀνέστησε καὶ διεσκέδασεν, οὐδενὶ κόσμῳ φεύγοντα, τῆς δ’ ἄλλης πόλεως [4] ἐπέδραμε σκιρτῶν καὶ ταράττων ὅσον ὕστερον οἱ πολέμιοι κατέσχον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ταῦτα χαίρειν ἐάσαντες οἱ Συρακόσιοι πέντε καὶ εἴκοσι στρατηγοὺς ἐχειροτόνησαν, ὧν εἷς ἦν Ἡρακλείδης, καὶ τοὺς ξένους ὑποπέμποντες κρύφα τοῦ Δίωνος ἀφίστασαν καὶ μετεκάλουν πρὸς αὑτούς, ἐπαγγελλόμενοι [5] καὶ τῆς πολιτείας ἰσομοιρίαν. οἱ δὲ ταῦτα μὲν οὐ προσεδέξαντο, τὸν δὲ Δίωνα πιστῶς καὶ προθύμως μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ἀναλαβόντες καὶ συμφράξαντες ὑπῆγον ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, ἀδικοῦντες μὲν οὐδένα, πολλὰ δὲ τοὺς [6] ἐντυγχάνοντας εἰς ἀχαριστίαν καὶ μοχθηρίαν ὀνειδίζοντες. οἱ δὲ καὶ τῆς ὀλιγότητος αὐτῶν καὶ τοῦ μὴ προεπιχειρεῖν καταφρονήσαντες, καὶ γενόμενοι πολὺ πλείους ἐκείνων, ἐφώρμησαν ὡς ῥᾳδίως ἐπικρατήσοντες ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ πάντας αὐτοὺς κατακτενοῦντες.

[39] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ γεγονὼς ἀνάγκης καὶ τύχης ὁ Δίων, ἢ μάχεσθαι τοῖς πολίταις ἢ μετὰ τῶν ξένων ἀποθανεῖν, πολλὰ μὲν ἱκέτευεν ὀρέγων τὰς χεῖρας τοῖς Συρακοσίοις καὶ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν περίπλεων πολεμίων οὖσαν ὑπερφαινομένων τὰ τείχη καὶ τὰ γινόμενα καθορώντων ἐπιδεικνύμενος· [2] ὡς δ’ ἦν ἀπαραίτητος ἡ τῶν πολλῶν φορά, καὶ κατεῖχεν ὥσπερ ἐν πελάγει τὸ τῶν δημαγωγῶν πνεῦμα τὴν πόλιν, ἐμβολῆς μὲν ἀποσχέσθαι τοῖς ξένοις προσέταξεν, ὅσον δ’ ἐπιδραμόντων μετὰ βοῆς καὶ τοῖς ὅπλοις τιναξαμένων, οὐδεὶς ἔμεινε τῶν Συρακοσίων, ἀλλ’ ᾤχοντο φεύγοντες ἀνὰ τὰς ἀγυιάς, οὐδενὸς ἐπιδιώκοντος· εὐθὺς γὰρ ἀπέστρεψεν ὁ Δίων τοὺς ξένους [3] καὶ προῆγεν εἰς Λεοντίνους. οἱ δ’ ἄρχοντες τῶν Συρακοσίων καταγέλαστοι γεγονότες ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ τὴν αἰσχύνην ἀναλαβεῖν ζητοῦντες, [4] αὖθις ὁπλίσαντες τοὺς πολίτας ἐδίωκον τὸν Δίωνα, καὶ κατέλαβον μὲν ἐπὶ διαβάσει τινὸς ποταμοῦ, καὶ προσίππευσαν ἁψιμαχοῦντες· ὡς δ’ ἑώρων οὐκέτι πρᾴως οὐδὲ πατρικῶς ὑπομένοντα τὰς ἁμαρτίας αὐτῶν, ἀλλὰ θυμῷ τοὺς ξένους ἐπιστρέφοντα καὶ παραταττόμενον, αἰσχίονα φυγὴν τῆς προτέρας φυγόντες ὑπεχώρησαν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, οὐ πολλῶν ἀποθανόντων.

[40] [1]

Δίωνα δὲ Λεοντῖνοι λαμπραῖς ἐδέχοντο τιμαῖς, καὶ τοὺς ξένους ἀνελάμβανον μισθοῖς καὶ πολιτείαις, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἐπρέσβευον, [2] ἀξιοῦντες τὰ δίκαια τοῖς ξένοις ποιεῖν. οἱ δὲ πρέσβεις ἔπεμψαν κατηγορήσοντας Δίωνος· τῶν δὲ συμμάχων ἁπάντων εἰς Λεοντίνους ἁθροισθέντων καὶ γενομένων λόγων ἐν αὐτοῖς, ἔδοξαν ἀδικεῖν οἱ Συρακόσιοι· [3] τοῖς δὲ κριθεῖσιν ὑπὸ τῶν συμμάχων οὐκ ἐνέμειναν, τρυφῶντες ἤδη καὶ μεγαλοφρονοῦντες ἐπὶ τῷ μηδενὸς ἀκούειν, ἀλλὰ χρῆσθαι δουλεύουσι καὶ φοβουμένοις τὸν δῆμον στρατηγοῖς.

[41] [1] Ἐκ τούτου καταπλέουσιν εἰς τὴν πόλιν παρὰ Διονυσίου τριήρεις, Νύψιον ἄγουσαι τὸν Νεαπολίτην, σῖτον καὶ χρήματα κομίζοντα τοῖς [2] πολιορκουμένοις. γενομένης δὲ ναυμαχίας ἐνίκων μὲν οἱ Συρακόσιοι καὶ τέσσαρας τῶν τυραννικῶν νεῶν ἔλαβον, ὑβρίσαντες δὲ τῇ νίκῃ καὶ δι’ ἀναρχίαν τὸ χαῖρον εἰς πότους καὶ συνουσίας νεανικὰς τρέψαντες, οὕτω τῶν χρησίμων ἠμέλησαν, ὥστε τὴν ἀκρόπολιν ἔχειν δοκοῦντες ἤδη, καὶ τὴν [3] πόλιν προσαπέβαλον. ὁ γὰρ Νύψιος ὁρῶν οὐδὲν ὑγιαῖνον ἐν τῇ πόλει μέρος, ἀλλὰ τὸν μὲν ὄχλον αὐλήμασι καὶ μέθαις εἰς νύκτα βαθεῖαν ἀφ’ ἡμέρας κατεχόμενον, τοὺς δὲ στρατηγοὺς ἐπιτερπομένους τε τούτῳ τῷ πανηγυρισμῷ [4] καὶ προσάγειν ἀνάγκην μεθύουσιν ἀνθρώποις ὀκνοῦντας, ἄριστα τῷ καιρῷ χρησάμενος ἐπεχείρησε τῷ τειχίσματι, καὶ κρατήσας καὶ διαθρύψας ἀφῆκε τοὺς βαρβάρους, κελεύσας χρῆσθαι τοῖς προστυγχάνουσιν [5] ὡς βούλονται καὶ δύνανται. ταχέως μὲν οὖν οἱ Συρακόσιοι τὸ κακὸν [6] ᾔσθοντο, βραδέως δὲ καὶ χαλεπῶς συνεβοήθουν ἐκπεπληγμένοι. πόρθησις γὰρ ἦν τὰ γινόμενα τῆς πόλεως, τῶν μὲν ἀνδρῶν φονευομένων, τῶν δὲ τειχῶν κατασκαπτομένων, γυναικῶν δὲ καὶ παίδων ἀγομένων εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν μετ’ οἰμωγῆς, ἀπεγνωκότων δὲ τὰ πράγματα τῶν στρατηγῶν καὶ χρῆσθαι μὴ δυναμένων τοῖς πολίταις πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, ἀναπεφυρμένους καὶ συμμεμειγμένους αὐτοῖς πανταχόθεν.

[42] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τῶν κατὰ τὴν πόλιν ἐχόντων καὶ τοῦ κινδύνου πρὸς τὴν Ἀχραδινὴν πλησιάζοντος, εἰς ὃν μόνον ἦν καὶ λοιπὸν ἀπερείσασθαι τὴν ἐλπίδα, πάντες μὲν ἐφρόνουν, ἔλεγε δ’ οὐδείς, αἰσχυνόμενοι τὴν ἀχαριστίαν [2] καὶ τὴν ἀβουλίαν τὴν πρὸς Δίωνα. πλήν γε δὴ τῆς ἀνάγκης ἐκβιαζομένης, παρὰ τῶν συμμάχων καὶ τῶν ἱππέων γίνεται φωνὴ καλεῖν Δίωνα [3] καὶ μεταπέμπεσθαι τοὺς Πελοποννησίους ἐκ Λεοντίνων. ὡς δὲ πρῶτον ἠκούσθη καὶ ἀπετολμήθη τοῦτο, κραυγὴ καὶ χαρὰ καὶ δάκρυα τοὺς Συρακοσίους κατεῖχεν, εὐχομένους ἐπιφανῆναι τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ποθοῦντας τὴν ὄψιν αὐτοῦ καὶ μεμνημένους τῆς παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ ῥώμης καὶ προθυμίας, ὡς οὐ μόνον αὐτὸς ἦν ἀνέκπληκτος, ἀλλὰ κἀκείνους παρεῖχε θαρροῦντας καὶ [4] ἀδεῶς τοῖς πολεμίοις συμφερομένους. εὐθὺς οὖν ἐκπέμπουσι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀπὸ μὲν τῶν συμμάχων Ἀρχωνίδην καὶ Τελεσίδην, ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν ἱππέων [5] πέντε τοὺς περὶ Ἑλλάνικον. οὗτοι διελάσαντες τὴν ὁδὸν ἵπποις ἀπὸ ῥυτῆρος, [6] ἧκον εἰς Λεοντίνους τῆς ἡμέρας ἤδη καταφερομένης. ἀποπηδήσαντες δὲ τῶν ἵππων καὶ τῷ Δίωνι πρώτῳ προσπεσόντες δεδακρυμένοι, τὰς [7] συμφορὰς τῶν Συρακοσίων ἔφραζον. ἤδη δὲ καὶ τῶν Λεοντίνων τινὲς ἀπήντων, καὶ τῶν Πελοποννησίων ἡθροίζοντο πρὸς τὸν Δίωνα πολλοί, τῇ [8] σπουδῇ καὶ τῇ δεήσει τῶν ἀνδρῶν ὑπονοοῦντες εἶναί τι καινότερον. εὐθὺς οὖν ἡγεῖτο πρὸς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν αὐτοῖς, καὶ συνδραμόντων προθύμως, οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀρχωνίδην καὶ τὸν Ἑλλάνικον εἰσελθόντες ἐξήγγειλάν τε βραχέως τὸ μέγεθος τῶν κακῶν καὶ παρεκάλουν τοὺς ξένους ἐπαμῦναι τοῖς Συρακοσίοις, τὸ μνησικακεῖν ἀφέντας, ὡς μείζονα δίκην δεδωκότων αὐτῶν, ἢ λαβεῖν ἂν οἱ κακῶς πεπονθότες ἠξίωσαν.

[43] [1] Παυσαμένων δὲ τούτων, σιγὴ μὲν εἶχε πολλὴ τὸ θέατρον· ἀναστάντος δὲ τοῦ Δίωνος καὶ λέγειν ἀρξαμένου πολλὰ τῶν δακρύων ἐκπίπτοντα [2] τὴν φωνὴν ἐπέσχεν· οἱ δὲ ξένοι παρεκάλουν θαρρεῖν καὶ συνήχθοντο. μικρὸν οὖν ἀναλαβὼν ἐκ τοῦ πάθους ἑαυτὸν ὁ Δίων, ἄνδρες ἔφη Πελοποννήσιοι καὶ σύμμαχοι, βουλευσομένους ὑμᾶς ἐνταῦθα περὶ ὑμῶν αὐτῶν [3] συνήγαγον. ἐμοὶ δὲ περὶ ἐμαυτοῦ βουλεύεσθαι καλῶς οὐκ ἔχει Συρακουσῶν ἀπολλυμένων, ἀλλ’ εἰ σῶσαι μὴ δυναίμην, ἄπειμι τῷ πυρὶ καὶ τῷ [4] πτώματι τῆς πατρίδος ἐνταφησόμενος. ὑμεῖς δὲ βουλόμενοι μὲν ἔτι καὶ νῦν βοηθεῖν τοῖς ἀβουλοτάτοις ἡμῖν καὶ δυστυχεστάτοις, ὑμέτερον ἔργον [5] οὖσαν ὀρθοῦτε τὴν Συρακοσίων πόλιν· εἰ δὲ μεμφόμενοι Συρακοσίοις ὑπερόψεσθε, τῆς γε πρότερον ἀρετῆς καὶ προθυμίας περὶ ἐμὲ χάριν ἀξίαν κομίζοισθε παρὰ τῶν θεῶν, μεμνημένοι Δίωνος ὡς οὔθ’ ὑμᾶς ἀδικουμένους πρότερον οὔθ’ ὕστερον τοὺς πολίτας δυστυχοῦντας ἐγκαταλιπόντος.

[6] ἔτι δ’ αὐτοῦ λέγοντος οἱ μὲν ξένοι μετὰ κραυγῆς ἀνεπήδησαν, ἄγειν καὶ βοηθεῖν κατὰ τάχος κελεύοντες, οἱ δὲ πρέσβεις τῶν Συρακοσίων περιβαλόντες ἠσπάσαντο, πολλὰ μὲν ἐκείνῳ, πολλὰ δὲ τοῖς ξένοις ἀγαθὰ [7] παρὰ τῶν θεῶν εὐχόμενοι. καταστάντος δὲ τοῦ θορύβου παρήγγειλεν ὁ Δίων εὐθὺς ἀπιόντας παρασκευάζεσθαι καὶ δειπνήσαντας ἥκειν μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων εἰς αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον τὸν τόπον, ἐγνωκὼς διὰ νυκτὸς βοηθεῖν.

[44] [1] Ἐν δὲ ταῖς Συρακούσαις τῶν Διονυσίου στρατηρῶν, ἄχρι μὲν ἦν ἡμέρα, πολλὰ κακὰ τὴν πόλιν ἐργασαμένων, γενομένης δὲ νυκτὸς ἀναχωρησάντων εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, καί τινας ἐξ ἑαυτῶν ὀλίγους ἀποβαλόντων, [2] ἀναθαρρήσαντες οἱ δημαγωγοὶ τῶν Συρακοσίων καὶ τοὺς πολεμίους ἐλπίσαντες ἀτρεμήσειν ἐπὶ τοῖς διαπεπραγμένοις, παρεκάλουν τοὺς πολίτας αὖθις ἐᾶν Δίωνα, κἂν προσίῃ μετὰ τῶν ξένων, μὴ δέχεσθαι μηδὲ παραχωρεῖν τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐκείνοις ὡς κρείττοσιν, ἀλλὰ σῴζειν τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὴν [3] ἐλευθερίαν αὐτοὺς δι’ ἑαυτῶν. πάλιν οὖν ἐπέμποντο πρὸς τὸν Δίωνα, παρὰ μὲν τῶν στρατηγῶν ἀποτρέποντες, παρὰ δὲ τῶν ἱππέων καὶ τῶν [4] γνωρίμων πολιτῶν ἐπισπεύδοντες τὴν πορείαν. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο βραδέως [5] ἅμα καὶ κατὰ σχολὴν πορευόμενος προσῄει. τῆς δὲ νυκτὸς προελθούσης οἱ μὲν μισοῦντες τὸν Δίωνα κατεῖχον τὰς πύλας ὡς ἀποκλείσοντες αὐτόν, ὁ δὲ Νύψιος ἐκ τῆς ἄκρας αὖθις πολλῷ προθυμοτέρους γεγονότας καὶ πλείονας ἐφιεὶς τοὺς μισθοφόρους, τὸ μὲν προτείχισμα πᾶν εὐθὺς κατέσκαπτε, [6] τὴν δὲ πόλιν κατέτρεχε καὶ διήρπαζεν. ἦν δὲ φόνος μὲν οὐκέτι μόνον ἀνδρῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ γυναικῶν καὶ παίδων, ἁρπαγαὶ δ’ ὀλίγαι, φθόρος [7] δὲ πάντων πολύς. ἀπεγνωκότος γὰρ ἤδη τὰ πράγματα τοῦ ‹υἱοῦ τοῦ› Διονυσίου καὶ τοὺς Συρακοσίους δεινῶς μεμισηκότος, ὥσπερ ἐνταφιάσαι [8] τὴν τυραννίδα τῇ πόλει πίπτουσαν ἐβούλετο. καὶ τοῦ Δίωνος προκαταλαμβάνοντες τὴν βοήθειαν, ἐπὶ τὸν ὀξύτατον διὰ πυρὸς πάντων ὄλεθρον καὶ ἀφανισμὸν ἐχώρησαν, τὰ μὲν ἐγγὺς ἀπὸ χειρῶν δᾳσὶ καὶ λαμπάσιν ὑποπιμπράντες, εἰς δὲ τὰ πρόσω διασπείροντες ἀπὸ τόξων πυροβόλους.

[9] φευγόντων δὲ τῶν Συρακοσίων οἱ μὲν ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς ἐφονεύοντο καταλαμβανόμενοι, τὸ δ’ εἰς τὰς οἰκίας καταδυόμενον αὖθις ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐξέπιπτε, πολλῶν ἤδη φλεγομένων καὶ καταφερομένων ἐπὶ τοὺς διαθέοντας.

[45] [1] Τοῦτο τὸ πάθος μάλιστα τὴν πόλιν ἀνέῳξε Δίωνι, πάντων συμφωνησάντων.

[2] ἔτυχε μὲν γὰρ οὐκέτι σπουδῇ πορευόμενος, ὡς ἤκουσεν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν κατακεκλεῖσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους. προϊούσης δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας πρῶτον ἱππεῖς ἀπήντησαν αὐτῷ, τὴν δευτέραν κατάληψιν ἀπαγγέλλοντες· ἔπειτα καὶ τῶν ὑπεναντιουμένων ἔνιοι παρῆσαν, ἐπείγεσθαι δεόμενοι· [3] συντείνοντος δὲ τοῦ κακοῦ μᾶλλον, Ἡρακλείδης τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἐξέπεμψεν, εἶτα Θεοδότην τὸν θεῖον, ἱκετεύων ἀρήγειν, ὡς μηδενὸς ἀντέχοντος τοῖς πολεμίοις, αὐτοῦ δὲ τετρωμένου, τῆς δὲ πόλεως μικρὸν ἀπεχούσης ἀνατετράφθαι [4] καὶ καταπεπρῆσθαι. τοιούτων ἀγγελμάτων τῷ Δίωνι προσπεσόντων ἔτι μὲν ἑξήκοντα σταδίους τῶν πυλῶν ἀπεῖχε· φράσας δὲ τὸν κίνδυνον τοῖς ξένοις καὶ παρακελευσάμενος, οὐκέτι βάδην ἦγεν ἀλλὰ δρόμῳ τὸ στράτευμα πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, ἄλλων ἐπ’ ἄλλοις ἀντιαζόντων καὶ [5] δεομένων ἐπείγεσθαι. χρησάμενος δὲ θαυμαστῷ τάχει καὶ προθυμίᾳ τῶν [6] ξένων, εἰσέβαλε διὰ τῶν πυλῶν εἰς τὴν Ἑκατόμπεδον λεγομένην· καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἐλαφροὺς εὐθὺς εἰσελθὼν ἀφῆκε πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, ὡς ἰδοῦσι θαρσῆσαι τοῖς Συρακοσίοις ἐγγένοιτο, τοὺς δ’ ὁπλίτας αὐτὸς συνέταττε καὶ τῶν πολιτῶν τοὺς ἐπιρρέοντας καὶ συνισταμένους, ὀρθίους λόχους ποιῶν καὶ διαιρῶν τὰς ἡγεμονίας, ὅπως [ὁμοῦ] πολλαχόθεν ἅμα προσφέροιτο φοβερώτερον.

[46] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῦτα παρασκευασάμενος καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς προσευξάμενος ὤφθη διὰ τῆς πόλεως ἄγων ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, κραυγὴ καὶ χαρὰ καὶ πολὺς ἀλαλαγμὸς εὐχαῖς ὁμοῦ καὶ παρακλήσεσι μεμειγμένος ἐγίνετο παρὰ τῶν Συρακοσίων, τὸν μὲν Δίωνα ‹πατέρα καὶ› σωτῆρα καὶ θεὸν ἀποκαλούντων, [2] τοὺς δὲ ξένους ἀδελφοὺς καὶ πολίτας. οὐδεὶς δὲ φίλαυτος ‹οὕτως› ἦν καὶ φιλόψυχος παρὰ τὸν τότε καιρόν, ὃς οὐ μᾶλλον ὑπὲρ μόνου Δίωνος ἢ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ἀγωνιῶν ἐφαίνετο, πρώτου πρὸς τὸν κίνδυνον πορευομένου δι’ αἵματος καὶ πυρὸς καὶ νεκρῶν πολλῶν κειμένων ἐν ταῖς [3] πλατείαις. ἦν μὲν οὖν καὶ τὰ παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων φοβερά, παντάπασιν ἀπηγριωμένων καὶ παρατεταγμένων παρὰ τὸ τείχισμα, χαλεπὴν ἔχον καὶ δυσεκβίαστον τὴν πρόσοδον· ὁ δ’ ἐκ τοῦ πυρὸς κίνδυνος ἐτάραττε μᾶλλον [4] τοὺς ξένους καὶ δύσεργον ἐποίει τὴν πορείαν. κύκλῳ γὰρ ὑπὸ τῆς φλογὸς περιελάμποντο, τὰς οἰκίας περινεμομένης, καὶ διαπύροις ἐπιβαίνοντες ἐρειπίοις καὶ καταφερομένοις ἀπορρήγμασι μεγάλοις ὑποτρέχοντες ἐπισφαλῶς, καὶ πολὺν ὁμοῦ καπνῷ διαπορευόμενοι κονιορτόν, ἐπειρῶντο [5] συνέχειν καὶ μὴ διασπᾶν τὴν τάξιν. ὡς δὲ προσέμειξαν τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἐν χερσὶ μὲν ὀλίγων πρὸς ὀλίγους ἐγίνετο μάχη διὰ τὴν στενότητα καὶ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν τοῦ τόπου, κραυγῇ δὲ καὶ προθυμίᾳ τῶν Συρακοσίων ἐπιρρωσάντων, [6] ἐβιάσθησαν οἱ περὶ τὸν Νύψιον, καὶ τὸ μὲν πλεῖστον αὐτῶν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν ἐγγὺς οὖσαν ἀναφεῦγον ἐσῴζετο, τοὺς δ’ ἐναπολειφθέντας [7] ἔξω καὶ διασπαρέντας ἀνῄρουν οἱ ξένοι διώκοντες. ἀπόλαυσιν δὲ τῆς νίκης ἐν τῷ παραυτίκα καὶ χαρὰν καὶ περιβολὰς ἔργῳ τηλικούτῳ πρεπούσας οὐ παρέσχεν ὁ καιρός, ἐπὶ τὰς οἰκίας τραπομένων τῶν Συρακοσίων καὶ τὸ πῦρ μόλις ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ κατασβεσάντων.

[47] [1] Ἡμέρα δ’ ὡς ἦν, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων οὐδεὶς ὑπέμεινε δημαγωγῶν, ἀλλὰ καταγνόντες ἑαυτῶν ἔφυγον, Ἡρακλείδης δὲ καὶ Θεοδότης αὐτοὶ κομίσαντες ἑαυτοὺς τῷ Δίωνι παρέδωκαν, ἀδικεῖν ὁμολογοῦντες καὶ δεόμενοι [2] βελτίονος ἐκείνου τυχεῖν, ἢ γεγόνασιν αὐτοὶ περὶ ἐκεῖνον· πρέπειν δὲ Δίωνι, τὴν ἄλλην ἅπασαν ἀρετὴν ἀσύγκριτον ἔχοντι, καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν κρείττονι φανῆναι τῶν ἠγνωμονηκότων, οἳ περὶ οὗ πρότερον ἐστασίασαν [3] πρὸς αὐτόν, νῦν ἥκουσιν ἡττᾶσθαι τῆς ἀρετῆς ὁμολογοῦντες. ταῦτα τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἡρακλείδην δεομένων, οἱ μὲν φίλοι παρεκελεύοντο τῷ Δίωνι μὴ φείδεσθαι κακῶν καὶ βασκάνων ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς στρατιώταις χαρίσασθαι τὸν Ἡρακλείδην, καὶ τοῦ πολιτεύματος ἐξελεῖν δημοκοπίαν, [4] ἐπιμανὲς νόσημα τυραννίδος οὐκ ἔλαττον. ὁ δὲ Δίων παραμυθούμενος αὐτοὺς ἔλεγεν, ὡς τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις στρατηγοῖς πρὸς ὅπλα καὶ πόλεμον ἡ πλείστη τῆς ἀσκήσεώς ἐστιν, αὐτῷ δὲ πολὺν χρόνον ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ μεμελέτηται [5] θυμοῦ περιεῖναι καὶ φθόνου καὶ φιλονικίας ἁπάσης· ὧν ἐπίδειξίς ἐστιν οὐχ ἡ πρὸς φίλους καὶ χρηστοὺς μετριότης, ἀλλ’ εἴ τις ἀδικούμενος [6] εὐπαραίτητος εἴη καὶ πρᾷος τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι· βούλεσθαι δ’ Ἡρακλείδου μὴ τοσοῦτον δυνάμει καὶ φρονήσει κρατῶν ὅσον χρηστότητι [7] καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ φανῆναι. τὸ γὰρ ἀληθῶς βέλτιον ἐν τούτοις· αἱ δὲ τοῦ πολέμου κατορθώσεις, εἰ καὶ ἀνθρώπων μηδένα, τήν γε τύχην διαμφισβητοῦσαν [8] ἔχουσιν. εἰ δ’ Ἡρακλείδης ἄπιστος καὶ κακὸς διὰ φθόνον, οὔ τοι καὶ Δίωνα δεῖ θυμῷ διαφθεῖραι τὴν ἀρετήν· τὸ γὰρ ἀντιτιμωρεῖσθαι τοῦ προαδικεῖν νόμῳ δικαιότερον ὡρίσθαι, φύσει γινόμενον ἀπὸ μιᾶς ἀσθενείας.

[9] ἀνθρώπου δὲ κακίαν, εἰ καὶ χαλεπόν ἐστιν, οὐχ οὕτως ἄγριον εἶναι παντάπασι καὶ δύσκολον, ὥστε μὴ μεταβάλλειν χάριτι νικηθεῖσαν ὑπὸ τῶν πολλάκις εὖ ποιούντων.

[48] [1] Τοιούτοις χρησάμενος λογισμοῖς ὁ Δίων ἀφῆκε τοὺς περὶ τὸν Ἡρακλείδην.

[2] Τραπόμενος δὲ πρὸς τὸ διατείχισμα, τῶν μὲν Συρακοσίων ἕκαστον ἐκέλευσεν ἕνα κόψαντα σταυρὸν ἐγγὺς καταβάλλειν, τοὺς δὲ ξένους ἐπιστήσας διὰ νυκτός, ἀναπαυομένων τῶν Συρακοσίων, ἔλαθεν ἀποσταυρώσας τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, ὥστε μεθ’ ἡμέραν τὸ τάχος καὶ τὴν ἐργασίαν θεασαμένους [3] ὁμοίως θαυμάζειν τοὺς πολίτας καὶ τοὺς πολεμίους. θάψας δὲ τοὺς τεθνηκότας τῶν Συρακοσίων καὶ λυσάμενος τοὺς ἑαλωκότας, δισχιλίων [4] οὐκ ἐλάττονας ὄντας, ἐκκλησίαν συνήγαγε. καὶ παρελθὼν Ἡρακλείδης εἰσηγήσατο γνώμην, αὐτοκράτορα στρατηγὸν ἑλέσθαι Δίωνα [5] κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλασσαν. ἀποδεξαμένων δὲ τῶν ἀρίστων καὶ χειροτονεῖν κελευόντων, ἐθορύβησεν ὁ ναυτικὸς ὄχλος καὶ βάναυσος, ἀχθόμενος ἐκπίπτοντι τῆς ναυαρχίας τῷ Ἡρακλείδῃ καὶ νομίζων αὐτόν, εἰ καὶ τἆλλα μηδενὸς ἄξιός ἐστι, δημοτικώτερόν γε πάντως εἶναι τοῦ Δίωνος καὶ μᾶλλον [6] ὑπὸ χεῖρα τοῖς πολλοῖς. ὁ δὲ Δίων τοῦτο μὲν ἐφῆκεν αὐτοῖς καὶ τὴν κατὰ θάλατταν ἀρχὴν ἀπέδωκε τῷ Ἡρακλείδῃ, πρὸς δὲ τῆς γῆς καὶ τῶν οἰκιῶν τὸν ἀναδασμὸν ὡρμημένοις ἐναντιωθείς, καὶ τὰ πρότερον ψηφισθέντα [7] περὶ τούτων ἀκυρώσας, ἐλύπησεν. ὅθεν εὐθὺς ἑτέραν ἀρχὴν λαβὼν ὁ Ἡρακλείδης, τοὺς συνεκπλεύσαντας μετ’ αὐτοῦ στρατιώτας καὶ ναύτας ἐν Μεσσήνῃ καθήμενος ἐδημαγώγει καὶ παρώξυνε κατὰ τοῦ Δίωνος, ὡς τυραννεῖν μέλλοντος· αὐτὸς δὲ πρὸς Διονύσιον ἐποιεῖτο συνθήκας κρύφα [8] διὰ Φάρακος τοῦ Σπαρτιάτου. καὶ τοῦτο τῶν γνωριμωτάτων Συρακοσίων ὑπονοησάντων, στάσις ἦν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ καὶ δι’ αὐτὴν ἀπορία [9] καὶ σπάνις ἐν ταῖς Συρακούσαις· ὥστε παντάπασιν ἀμηχανεῖν τὸν Δίωνα καὶ κακῶς ἀκούειν ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων, οὕτω δυσμεταχείριστον ἄνθρωπον καὶ διεφθαρμένον ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ πονηρίας αὐξήσαντα καθ’ αὑτοῦ τὸν Ἡρακλείδην.

[49] [1] Φάρακος δὲ πρὸς Νέᾳ πόλει τῆς Ἀκραγαντίνης στρατοπεδεύοντος, ἐξαγαγὼν τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἐβούλετο μὲν ἐν ἑτέρῳ καιρῷ διαγωνίσασθαι πρὸς αὐτόν, Ἡρακλείδου δὲ καὶ τῶν ναυτῶν καταβοώντων, ὡς οὐ βούλεται μάχῃ κρῖναι τὸν πόλεμον Δίων, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ μένοντος ἄρχειν, ἀναγκασθεὶς [2] συνέβαλε καὶ ἡττήθη. γενομένης δὲ τῆς τροπῆς οὐ βαρείας, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὑφ’ ἑαυτῶν καὶ τοῦ στασιάζειν ταραχθέντων, αὖθις ὁ Δίων παρεσκευάζετο [3] μάχεσθαι καὶ συνέταττε πείθων καὶ παραθαρρύνων. τῆς δὲ νυκτὸς ἀρχομένης ἀγγέλλεται πρὸς αὐτὸν Ἡρακλείδην ἄραντα τὸν στόλον πλεῖν ἐπὶ Συρακουσῶν, ἐγνωκότα τὴν πόλιν καταλαβεῖν κἀκεῖνον ἀποκλεῖσαι [4] μετὰ τοῦ στρατεύματος. εὐθὺς οὖν ἀναλαβὼν τοὺς δυνατωτάτους καὶ προθυμοτάτους ἱππάσατο διὰ τῆς νυκτός, καὶ περὶ τρίτην ὥραν τῆς [5] ἡμέρας πρὸς ταῖς πύλαις ἦν, σταδίους κατηνυκὼς ἑπτακοσίους. Ἡρακλείδης δὲ ταῖς ναυσὶν ὡς ἁμιλλώμενος ὑστέρησεν, ἀποπλεύσας καὶ πλανώμενος ἐν ταῖς πράξεσιν ἀσκόπως, ἐπιτυγχάνει Γαισύλῳ τῷ Σπαρτιάτῃ, φάσκοντι πλεῖν ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίᾳ Σικελιωτῶν ἐκ Λακεδαίμονος, ὡς πρότερόν [6] ποτε Γύλιππος. ἄσμενος οὖν ἀναλαβὼν τοῦτον τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ περιαψάμενος ὥσπερ ἀλεξιφάρμακον τοῦ Δίωνος, ἐπεδείκνυτο τοῖς συμμάχοις, καὶ κήρυκα πέμπων εἰς τὰς Συρακούσας ἐκέλευε δέχεσθαι τὸν Σπαρτιάτην [7] ἄρχοντα τοὺς πολίτας. ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Δίωνος ὡς εἰσὶν ἄρχοντες ἱκανοὶ τοῖς Συρακοσίοις, εἰ δὲ πάντως δέοι καὶ Σπαρτιάτου τοῖς πράγμασιν, αὐτὸς οὗτος εἶναι, κατὰ ποίησιν γεγονὼς Σπαρτιάτης, τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν ὁ Γαισύλος ἀπέγνω, πλεύσας δὲ πρὸς τὸν Δίωνα διήλλαξε τὸν Ἡρακλείδην, ὅρκους δόντα καὶ πίστεις τὰς μεγίστας, αἷς αὐτὸς ὁ Γαισύλος ὤμοσε τιμωρὸς ἔσεσθαι Δίωνι καὶ κολαστὴς Ἡρακλείδου κακοπραγμονοῦντος.

[50] [1] Ἐκ τούτου κατέλυσαν μὲν οἱ Συρακόσιοι τὸ ναυτικόν· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἦν ἔργον αὐτοῦ, μεγάλαι δὲ δαπάναι τοῖς πλέουσι καὶ στάσεως ἀφορμαὶ τοῖς ἄρχουσι· τὴν δ’ ἄκραν ἐπολιόρκουν, ἐξοικοδομήσαντες τὸ περιτείχισμα.

[2] μηδενὸς δὲ τοῖς πολιορκουμένοις βοηθοῦντος, ἐπιλείποντος δὲ σίτου, τῶν δὲ μισθοφόρων γινομένων πονηρῶν, ἀπογνοὺς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ Διονυσίου τὰ πράγματα καὶ σπεισάμενος πρὸς τὸν Δίωνα, τὴν μὲν ἄκραν ἐκείνῳ μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τῆς ἄλλης κατασκευῆς παρέδωκεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν μητέρα καὶ τὰς ἀδελφὰς ἀναλαβὼν καὶ πέντε πληρωσάμενος τριήρεις, [3] ἐξέπλει πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, τοῦ Δίωνος ἀσφαλῶς μὲν ἐκπέμποντος, οὐδενὸς δὲ τῶν ἐν Συρακούσαις ἀπολείποντος ἐκείνην τὴν ὄψιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς μὴ περιόντας ἐπιβοωμένων, ὅτι τὴν ἡμέραν ταύτην καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἐλευθέραις [4] ἀνίσχοντα ταῖς Συρακούσαις οὐκ ἐφορῶσιν. ὅπου γὰρ ἔτι νῦν τῶν λεγομένων κατὰ τῆς τύχης παραδειγμάτων ἐμφανέστατόν ἐστι καὶ μέγιστον ἡ Διονυσίου φυγή, τίνα χρὴ δοκεῖν αὐτῶν ἐκείνων τὴν τότε χαρὰν γενέσθαι, καὶ πηλίκον φρονῆσαι τοὺς τὴν μεγίστην τῶν πώποτε τυραννίδων καθελόντας ἐλαχίσταις ἀφορμαῖς;

[51] [1] Ἐκπλεύσαντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀπολλοκράτους καὶ τοῦ Δίωνος εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν βαδίζοντος, οὐκ ἐκαρτέρησαν αἱ γυναῖκες οὐδ’ ἀνέμειναν εἰσελθεῖν αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας ἐξέδραμον, ἡ μὲν Ἀριστομάχη τὸν υἱὸν ἄγουσα τοῦ Δίωνος, ἡ δ’ Ἀρετὴ κατόπιν εἵπετο δακρύουσα καὶ διαποροῦσα, πῶς ἀσπάσηται καὶ προσείπῃ τὸν ἄνδρα, κοινωνίας αὐτῇ πρὸς [2] ἕτερον γεγενημένης. ἀσπασαμένου δ’ αὐτοῦ πρῶτον τὴν ἀδελφήν, εἶτα τὸ παιδίον, ἡ Ἀριστομάχη προσαγαγοῦσα τὴν Ἀρετήν, ἠτυχοῦμεν ἔφη [3] ὦ Δίων σοῦ φεύγοντος· ἥκων δὲ καὶ νικῶν ἀφῄρηκας ἡμῶν ἁπάντων τὰς κατηφείας, πλὴν μόνης ταύτης, ἣν ἐπεῖδον ἡ δυστηχὴς ἐγὼ σοῦ ζῶντος [4] ἑτέρῳ συνελθεῖν βιασθεῖσαν. ὅτ’ οὖν σε κύριον ἡμῶν ἡ τύχη πεποίηκε, πῶς αὐτῇ διαιτᾷς ἐκείνην τὴν ἀνάγκην; πότερον ὡς θεῖον ἢ καὶ ὡς ἄνδρα [5] σ’ ἀσπάσεται; τοιαῦτα τῆς Ἀριστομάχης λεγούσης, ὁ Δίων ἐκδακρύσας προσηγάγετο φιλοστόργως τὴν γυναῖκα, καὶ παραδοὺς αὐτῇ τὸν υἱὸν ἐκέλευσεν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τὴν αὑτοῦ βαδίζειν, ὅπου καὶ αὐτὸς διῃτᾶτο, τὴν ἄκραν ἐπὶ τοῖς Συρακοσίοις ποιησάμενος.

[52] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῷ προκεχωρηκότων, οὐδὲν ἀπολαῦσαι πρότερον ἠξίωσε τῆς παρούσης εὐτυχίας, ἢ τὸ καὶ φίλοις χάριτας καὶ συμμάχοις δωρεάς, μάλιστα δὲ τοῖς ἐν ἄστει συνήθεσι καὶ ξένοις ἀπονεῖμαί τινα φιλανθρωπίας καὶ τιμῆς μερίδα, τῇ μεγαλοψυχίᾳ τὴν δύναμιν ὑπερβαλλόμενος.

[2] ἑαυτὸν δὲ λιτῶς καὶ σωφρόνως ἐκ τῶν τυχόντων διῴκει, θαυμαζόμενος ὅτι μὴ μόνον Σικελίας τε καὶ Καρχηδόνος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὅλης ἀποβλεπούσης πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐημεροῦντα, καὶ μηδὲν οὕτω μέγα τῶν τότε νομιζόντων, μηδ’ ἐπιφανεστέρας περὶ ἄλλον ἡγεμόνα τόλμης [3] καὶ τύχης γεγονέναι δοκούσης, οὕτω παρεῖχεν ἑαυτὸν ἐσθῆτι καὶ θεραπείᾳ καὶ τραπέζῃ μέτριον, ὥσπερ ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ συσσιτῶν μετὰ Πλάτωνος, οὐκ ἐν ξεναγοῖς καὶ μισθοφόροις διαιτώμενος, οἷς αἱ καθ’ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν πλησμοναὶ καὶ ἀπολαύσεις παραμυθία τῶν πόνων καὶ τῶν κινδύνων εἰσίν.

[4] ἀλλ’ ἐκείνῳ μὲν Πλάτων ἔγραφεν (ep. 4, 320d), ὡς πρὸς ἕνα νῦν τῆς οἰκουμένης τοῦτον ἅπαντες ἀποβλέπουσιν· αὐτὸς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ὡς ἔοικεν ἀφεώρα πρὸς ἓν χωρίον μιᾶς πόλεως τὴν Ἀκαδήμειαν, καὶ τοὺς αὐτόθι καὶ θεατὰς καὶ δικαστὰς ἐγίνωσκεν οὔτε πρᾶξιν οὔτε τόλμαν οὔτε νίκην τινὰ θαυμάζοντας, ἀλλὰ μόνον εἰ κοσμίως καὶ σωφρόνως τῇ τύχῃ χρῆται καὶ παρέχει [5] μέτριον ἑαυτὸν ἐν πράγμασι μεγάλοις ἀποσκοποῦντας. τοῦ μέντοι περὶ τὰς ὁμιλίας ὄγκου καὶ τοῦ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἀτενοῦς ἐφιλονίκει μηδὲν ὑφελεῖν μηδὲ χαλάσαι, καίτοι τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῷ χάριτος ἐνδεῶν ὄντων καὶ Πλάτωνος ἐπιτιμῶντος, ὡς εἰρήκαμεν (c. 8, 4), καὶ γράφοντος (ep.

[6] 4, 321c), ὅτι ἡ αὐθάδεια ἐρημίᾳ σύνοικός ἐστιν. ἀλλὰ φύσει τε φαίνεται πρὸς τὸ πιθανὸν δυσκεράστῳ κεχρημένος, ἀντισπᾶν τε τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἄγαν ἀνειμένους καὶ διατεθρυμμένους προθυμούμενος.

[53] [1] Ὁ γὰρ Ἡρακλείδης αὖθις ἐπέκειτο· καὶ πρῶτον μὲν εἰς συνέδριον παρακαλούμενος, οὐκ ἐβούλετο βαδίζειν· ἰδιώτης γὰρ ὤν, μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων [2] ἐκκλησιάζειν πολιτῶν. ἔπειτα κατηγόρει τοῦ Δίωνος, ὅτι τὴν ἄκραν οὐ κατέσκαψε καὶ τῷ δήμῳ τὸν Διονυσίου τάφον ὡρμημένῳ λῦσαι καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν ἐκβαλεῖν οὐκ ἐπέτρεψε, μεταπέμπεται δ’ ἐκ Κορίνθου συμβούλους [3] καὶ συνάρχοντας, ἀπαξιῶν τοὺς πολίτας. τῷ δ’ ὄντι μετεπέμπετο τοὺς Κορινθίους ὁ Δίων, ἣν ἐπενόει πολιτείαν ῥᾷον ἐλπίζων καταστήσειν ἐκείνων [4] παραγενομένων. ἐπενόει δὲ τὴν μὲν ἄκρατον δημοκρατίαν, ὡς οὐ πολιτείαν ἀλλὰ παντοπώλιον οὖσαν πολιτειῶν κατὰ τὸν Πλάτωνα (rep. 8, 557d), καταλύειν, Λακωνικὸν δέ τι καὶ Κρητικὸν σχῆμα μειξάμενος ἐκ δήμου καὶ βασιλείας, ἀριστοκρατίαν ἔχον τὴν ἐπιστατοῦσαν καὶ βραβεύουσαν τὰ μέγιστα, καθιστάναι καὶ κοσμεῖν, ὁρῶν καὶ τοὺς Κορινθίους ὀλιγαρχικώτερόν τε πολιτευομένους καὶ μὴ πολλὰ τῶν κοινῶν ἐν τῷ δήμῳ πράττοντας.

[5] ὡς οὖν μάλιστα πρὸς ταῦτα τὸν Ἡρακλείδην ἐναντιώσεσθαι προσεδόκα, καὶ τἆλλα ταραχώδης καὶ εὐμετάβολος καὶ στασιαστικὸς ἦν, οὓς πάλαι βουλομένους αὐτὸν ἀνελεῖν ἐκώλυεν, τούτοις ἐπέτρεψε τότε· [6] καὶ παρελθόντες εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν ἀποκτιννύουσιν αὐτόν. ἐλύπησε δὲ σφόδρα τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἀποθανών· ὅμως δὲ τοῦ Δίωνος ταφάς τε λαμπρὰς παρασκευάσαντος καὶ μετὰ τοῦ στρατεύματος ἑπομένου προπέμψαντος τὸν νεκρόν, εἶτα διαλεχθέντος αὐτοῖς, συνέγνωσαν ὡς οὐ δυνατὸν ἦν ταρασσομένην παύσασθαι τὴν πόλιν Ἡρακλείδου καὶ Δίωνος ἅμα πολιτευομένων.

[54] [1] Ἦν δέ τις ἑταῖρος τοῦ Δίωνος ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν, Κάλλιππος, ὅν φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (ep. 7, 333e) οὐκ ἀπὸ παιδείας, ἀλλ’ ἐκ μυσταγωγιῶν καὶ τῆς περιτρεχούσης ἑταιρείας γνώριμον αὐτῷ γενέσθαι καὶ συνήθη, μετασχὼν δὲ τῆς στρατείας καὶ τιμώμενος, ὥστε καὶ συνεισελθεῖν εἰς τὰς Συρακούσας πρῶτος τῶν ἑταίρων ἁπάντων ἐστεφανωμένος· ἦν ‹δὲ› καὶ λαμπρὸς ἐν τοῖς [2] ἀγῶσι καὶ διάσημος. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν πρώτων καὶ βελτίστων φίλων τοῦ Δίωνος ἀνηλωμένων ὑπὸ τοῦ πολέμου, καὶ τεθνηκότος Ἡρακλείδου, τόν τε δῆμον ἑώρα τῶν Συρακοσίων ἔρημον ἡγεμόνος ὄντα, καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας τοὺς [3] μετὰ Δίωνος προσέχοντας αὐτῷ μάλιστα, μιαρώτατος ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος καὶ παντάπασιν ἐλπίσας Σικελίαν ἆθλον ἕξειν τῆς ξενοκτονίας, ὡς δέ φασιν ἔνιοι, καὶ τάλαντα προσλαβὼν εἴκοσι τοῦ φόνου μισθὸν παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων, διέφθειρε καὶ παρεσκεύαζέ τινας τῶν ξένων ἐπὶ τὸν Δίωνα, [4] κακοηθεστάτην ἀρχὴν καὶ πανουργοτάτην ποιησάμενος. ἀεὶ γάρ τινας φωνὰς τῶν στρατιωτῶν πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἢ λελεγμένας ἀληθῶς ἀναφέρων ἢ πεπλασμένας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, τοιαύτην ἐξουσίαν ἔλαβε διὰ τὴν πίστιν, ὥστ’ ἐντυγχάνειν κρύφα καὶ διαλέγεσθαι μετὰ παρρησίας οἷς βούλοιτο κατὰ τοῦ Δίωνος, αὐτοῦ κελεύοντος, ἵνα μηδεὶς λανθάνῃ τῶν ὑπούλως καὶ δυσμενῶς [5] ἐχόντων. ἐκ δὲ τούτων συνέβαινε τοὺς μὲν πονηροὺς καὶ νοσοῦντας εὑρίσκειν ταχὺ καὶ συνιστάναι τὸν Κάλλιππον, εἰ δέ τις ἀπωσάμενος τοὺς λόγους αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν πεῖραν ἐξείποι πρὸς τὸν Δίωνα, μὴ ταράττεσθαι μηδὲ χαλεπαίνειν ἐκεῖνον, ὡς ἃ προσέταττε τοῦ Καλλίππου περαίνοντος.

[55] [1] Συνισταμένης δὲ τῆς ἐπιβουλῆς, φάσμα γίνεται τῷ Δίωνι μέγα καὶ τερατῶδες. ἐτύγχανε μὲν γὰρ ὀψὲ τῆς ἡμέρας καθεζόμενος ἐν παστάδι [2] τῆς οἰκίας, μόνος ὢν πρὸς ἑαυτῷ τὴν διάνοιαν. ἐξαίφνης δὲ ψόφου γενομένου πρὸς θατέρῳ πέρατι τῆς στοᾶς, ἀποβλέψας ἔτι φωτὸς ὄντος εἶδε γυναῖκα μεγάλην, στολῇ μὲν καὶ προσώπῳ μηδὲν Ἐρινύος τραγικῆς παραλλάττουσαν, [3] σαίρουσαν δὲ καλλύντρῳ τινὶ τὴν οἰκίαν. ἐκπλαγεὶς δὲ δεινῶς καὶ περίφοβος γενόμενος, μετεπέμψατο τοὺς φίλους καὶ διηγεῖτο τὴν ὄψιν αὐτοῖς, καὶ παραμένειν ἐδεῖτο καὶ συννυκτερεύειν, παντάπασιν ἐκστατικῶς ἔχων καὶ δεδοικὼς μὴ πάλιν εἰς ὄψιν αὐτῷ μονωθέντι τὸ τέρας [4] ἀφίκηται. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν αὖθις οὐ συνέπεσε. μεθ’ ἡμέρας δ’ ὀλίγας ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ, σχεδὸν ἀντίπαις ὤν, ἔκ τινος λύπης καὶ ὀργῆς μικρὰν καὶ παιδικὴν ἀρχὴν λαβούσης ἔρριψεν ἑαυτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ τέγους ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ διεφθάρη.

[56] [1] Ἐν τοιούτοις δὲ τοῦ Δίωνος ὄντος, ὁ Κάλλιππος ἔτι μᾶλλον εἴχετο τῆς ἐπιβουλῆς, καὶ λόγον εἰς τοὺς Συρακοσίους ἐξέδωκεν, ὡς ὁ Δίων ἄπαις γεγονὼς ἔγνωκε τὸν ‹υἱὸν› τοῦ Διονυσίου καλεῖν Ἀπολλοκράτην καὶ ποιεῖσθαι διάδοχον, ἀδελφιδοῦν μὲν ὄντα τῆς ἑαυτοῦ γυναικός, θυγατριδοῦν [2] δὲ τῆς ἀδελφῆς. ἤδη δὲ καὶ τὸν Δίωνα καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ὑπόνοια [3] τῶν πραττομένων εἶχε, καὶ μηνύσεις ἐγίγνοντο πανταχόθεν. ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν Δίων ὡς ἔοικεν ἐπὶ τοῖς κατὰ τὸν Ἡρακλείδην ἀχθόμενος, καὶ τὸν φόνον ἐκεῖνον ὥς τινα τοῦ βίου καὶ τῶν πράξεων αὐτῷ κηλῖδα περικειμένην δυσχεραίνων ἀεὶ καὶ βαρυνόμενος, εἶπεν ὅτι πολλάκις ἤδη θνῄσκειν ἕτοιμός ἐστι καὶ παρέχειν τῷ βουλομένῳ σφάττειν αὐτόν, εἰ ζῆν δεήσει [4] μὴ μόνον τοὺς ἐχθρούς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς φίλους φυλαττόμενον. τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας ὁρῶν ὁ Κάλλιππος ἐξεταζούσας ἀκριβῶς τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ φοβηθείς, ἦλθε πρὸς αὐτὰς ἀρνούμενος καὶ δακρύων, καὶ πίστιν ἣν βούλονται διδόναι [5] βουλόμενος. αἱ δ’ ἠξίουν αὐτὸν ὀμόσαι τὸν μέγαν ὅρκον. ἦν δὲ τοιοῦτος· καταβὰς εἰς τὸ τῶν Θεσμοφόρων τέμενος ὁ διδοὺς τὴν πίστιν, ἱερῶν τινων γενομένων, περιβάλλεται τὴν πορφυρίδα τῆς θεοῦ καὶ λαβὼν δᾷδα [6] καιομένην ἀπόμνυσι. ταῦτα ποιήσας ὁ Κάλλιππος πάντα καὶ τὸν ὅρκον ἀπομόσας, οὕτω κατεγέλασε τῶν θεῶν, ὥστε περιμείνας τὴν ἑορτὴν ἧς ὤμοσε θεοῦ δρᾷ τὸν φόνον ἐν τοῖς Κορείοις, οὐδὲν ἴσως τὸ περὶ τὴν ἡμέραν τῆς θεοῦ ποιησάμενος, ὡς ἀσεβουμένης πάντως, εἰ καὶ κατ’ ἄλλον χρόνον ἔσφαττε τὸν μύστην αὐτῆς ὁ μυσταγωγός.

[57] [1] Ὄντων δὲ πλειόνων ἐν τῇ κοινωνίᾳ τῆς πράξεως, καθεζομένου Δίωνος ἐν οἰκήματι κλίνας τινὰς ἔχοντι μετὰ τῶν φίλων, οἱ μὲν ἔξω τὴν οἰκίαν περιέστησαν, οἱ δὲ πρὸς ταῖς θύραις τοῦ οἴκου καὶ ταῖς θυρίσιν [2] ἦσαν. αὐτοὶ δ’ οἱ προσφέρειν τὰς χεῖρας μέλλοντες Ζακύνθιοι παρῆλθον ἄνευ ξιφῶν ἐν τοῖς χιτῶσιν· ἅμα δ’ οἱ μὲν ἔξω τὰς θύρας ἐπισπασάμενοι κατεῖχον, οἱ δὲ τῷ Δίωνι προσπεσόντες κατάγχειν ἐπειρῶντο καὶ συντρίβειν [3] αὐτόν. ὡς δ’ οὐδὲν ἐπέραινον, ᾔτουν ξίφος· οὐδεὶς δ’ ἐτόλμα τὰς θύρας ἀνοῖξαι, συχνοὶ γὰρ ἦσαν ἔνδον οἱ μετὰ τοῦ Δίωνος, ὧν ἕκαστος [4] οἰόμενος, ἂν ἐκεῖνον προῆται, διασώσειν ἑαυτόν, οὐκ ἐτόλμα βοηθεῖν. διατριβῆς δὲ γενομένης, Λύκων ὁ Συρακόσιος ὀρέγει τινὶ τῶν Ζακυνθίων διὰ τῆς θυρίδος ἐγχειρίδιον, ᾧ καθάπερ ἱερεῖον τὸν Δίωνα κρατούμενον [5] πάλαι καὶ δεδιττόμενον ἀπέσφαξαν. εὐθὺς δὲ καὶ τὴν ἀδελφὴν μετὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ἐγκύμονος οὔσης εἰς τὴν εἱρκτὴν ἐνέβαλον, καὶ συνέβη τῇ γυναικὶ τλημονέστατα λοχευθείσῃ τεκεῖν ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ παιδάριον ἄρρεν, ὅπερ θρέψαι καὶ μᾶλλον παρεβάλοντο πείσασαι τοὺς φύλακας, ἤδη τοῦ Καλλίππου θορυβουμένου τοῖς πράγμασιν.

[58] [1] Ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν γὰρ ἀποκτείνας τὸν Δίωνα λαμπρὸς ἦν καὶ κατεῖχε τὰς Συρακούσας, καὶ πρὸς τὴν Ἀθηναίων ἔγραφε πόλιν, ἣν μάλιστα μετὰ τοὺς θεοὺς ὤφειλεν αἰδεῖσθαι καὶ δεδιέναι, τηλικούτου μύσους ἁψάμενος.

[2] ἀλλ’ ἔοικεν ἀληθῶς λέγεσθαι τὸ τὴν πόλιν ἐκείνην φέρειν ἄνδρας ἀρετῇ τε τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ἀρίστους καὶ κακίᾳ τοὺς φαύλους πονηροτάτους, καθάπερ αὐτῶν καὶ ἡ χώρα κάλλιστον μέλι καὶ κώνειον ὠκυμορώτατον ἀναδίδωσιν.

[3] οὐ μὴν πολὺν χρόνον ὁ Κάλλιππος ἔγκλημα τῆς τύχης καὶ τῶν θεῶν περιῆν, ὡς περιορώντων ἐξ ἀσεβήματος ἄνθρωπον τηλικούτου [4] κτώμενον ἡγεμονίας καὶ πράγματα, ταχὺ δ’ ἀξίαν δίκην ἔδωκεν. ὁρμήσας μὲν γὰρ Κατάνην λαβεῖν, εὐθὺς ἀπέβαλε τὰς Συρακούσας· ὅτε καί φασιν [5] αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν ὅτι πόλιν ἀπολωλεκὼς τυρόκνηστιν εἴληφεν. ἐπιθέμενος δὲ Μεσσηνίοις, καὶ τοὺς πλείστους στρατιώτας ἀπολέσας, ἐν οἷς ἦσαν οἱ Δίωνα κατακτείναντες, οὐδεμιᾶς δὲ πόλεως αὐτὸν ἐν Σικελίᾳ προσδεχομένης, ἀλλὰ μισούντων ἁπάντων καὶ προβαλλομένων, Ῥήγιον κατέσχεν. [6] ἐκεῖ δὲ λυπρῶς πράττων καὶ κακῶς διατρέφων τοὺς μισθοφόρους, ὑπὸ Λεπτίνου καὶ Πολυπέρχοντος ἀνῃρέθη, χρησαμένων ξιφιδίῳ ‹τῷ αὐτῷ› [7] κατὰ τύχην ᾧ καὶ Δίωνα πληγῆναί φασιν. ἐγνώσθη δὲ τῷ μεγέθει (βραχὺ γὰρ ἦν ὥσπερ τὰ Λακωνικά) καὶ τῇ κατασκευῇ τῆς τέχνης, εἰργασμένον γλαφυρῶς καὶ περιττῶς. τοιαύτην μὲν οὖν τίσιν Κάλλιππος ἔδωκε.

[8] Τὴν δ’ Ἀριστομάχην καὶ τὴν Ἀρετήν, ὡς ἀφείθησαν ἐκ τῆς εἱρκτῆς, ἀναλαβὼν Ἱκέτης ὁ Συρακόσιος, εἷς τῶν Δίωνος φίλων γεγονώς, ἐδόκει [9] πιστῶς καὶ καλῶς περιέπειν. εἶτα συμπεισθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν Δίωνος ἐχθρῶν καὶ παρασκευάσας πλοῖον αὐταῖς, ὡς εἰς Πελοπόννησον ἀποσταλησομέναις, ἐκέλευσε κατὰ πλοῦν ἀποσφάξαντας ἐκβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν· οἱ δὲ ζώσας ἔτι καταποντισθῆναι λέγουσι, καὶ τὸ παιδίον μετ’ αὐτῶν.

[10] περιῆλθε δὲ καὶ τοῦτον ἀξία ποινὴ τῶν τετολμημένων· αὐτός τε γὰρ ὑπὸ Τιμολέοντος ἁλοὺς ἀπέθανε, καὶ θυγατέρας δύο προσαπέκτειναν αὐτοῦ Δίωνι τιμωροῦντες οἱ Συρακόσιοι· περὶ ὧν ἐν τῷ Τιμολέοντος βίῳ ‹τὰ› καθ’ ἕκαστα γέγραπται (c. 33).

Brutus

[1] [1] Μάρκου δὲ Βρούτου πρόγονος ἦν Ἰούνιος Βροῦτος, ὃν ἀνέστησαν ἐν Καπιτωλίῳ χαλκοῦν οἱ πάλαι Ῥωμαῖοι μέσον τῶν βασιλέων ἐσπασμένον [2] ξίφος, ὡς βεβαιότατα καταλύσαντα Ταρκυνίους. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος μέν, ὥσπερ τὰ ψυχρήλατα τῶν ξιφῶν, σκληρὸν ἐκ φύσεως καὶ οὐ μαλακὸν ἔχων ὑπὸ λόγου τὸ ἦθος, ἄχρι παιδοφονίας ἐξώκειλε τῷ θυμῷ τῷ κατὰ [3] τῶν τυράννων· οὑτοσὶ δ’ ὑπὲρ οὗ γράφεται ταῦτα, παιδείᾳ καὶ λόγῳ διὰ φιλοσοφίας καταμείξας τὸ ἦθος, καὶ τὴν φύσιν ἐμβριθῆ καὶ πρᾳεῖαν οὖσαν ἐπεγείρας ταῖς πρακτικαῖς ὁρμαῖς, ἐμμελέστατα δοκεῖ κραθῆναι [4] πρὸς τὸ καλόν, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς ἀπεχθανομένους αὐτῷ διὰ τὴν ἐπὶ Καίσαρα συνωμοσίαν, εἰ μέν τι γενναῖον ἡ πρᾶξις ἤνεγκε, Βρούτῳ προσάπτειν, τὰ δυσχερέστερα δὲ τῶν γεγονότων τρέπειν εἰς Κάσσιον, οἰκεῖον μὲν ὄντα Βρούτου καὶ φίλον, ἁπλοῦν δὲ τῷ τρόπῳ καὶ καθαρὸν οὐχ [5] ὁμοίως. Σερβιλία δ’ ἡ μήτηρ ἀνέφερε τὸ γένος εἰς Ἄλαν Σερβίλιον, ὃς Μαιλίου Σπορίου τυραννίδα κατασκευαζομένου καὶ ταράττοντος τὸν δῆμον, ἐγχειρίδιον λαβὼν ὑπὸ μάλης προῆλθεν εἰς ἀγοράν, καὶ παραστὰς τῷ ἀνδρὶ πλησίον, ὡς ἐντυγχάνειν τι μέλλων καὶ διαλέγεσθαι, προσνεύσαντα [6] πατάξας ἀπέκτεινε. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ὁμολογούμενόν ἐστι· τὸ δὲ πατρῷον γένος οἱ διὰ τὸν Καίσαρος φόνον ἔχθραν τινὰ καὶ δυσμένειαν ἀποδεικνύμενοι πρὸς Βροῦτον οὔ φασιν εἰς τὸν ἐκβαλόντα Ταρκυνίους ἀνήκειν· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐκείνῳ λειφθῆναι γένος, ἀνελόντι τοὺς υἱούς· ἀλλὰ δημότην τοῦτον οἶκον ὁμώνυμον ὄντα Βρούτοις ἄρτι καὶ πρῴην εἰς ἄρχοντας προελθεῖν.

[7] Ποσειδώνιος δ’ ὁ φιλόσοφος (FGrH 87 F 40) τοὺς μὲν ἐνηλίκους φησὶν ἀπολέσθαι τοῦ Βρούτου παῖδας, ὡς ἱστόρηται (Popl. 6, 4), τρίτον [8] δὲ λειφθῆναι νήπιον, ἀφ’ οὗ τὸ γένος ὡρμῆσθαι· καὶ τῶν γε καθ’ αὑτὸν ἐν τῆς οἰκίας γεγονότων ἐπιφανῶν ἀνδρῶν ἀναφέρειν ἐνίους πρὸς τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦ Βρούτου τὴν ὁμοιότητα τῆς ἰδέας. περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων τοσαῦτα.

[2] [1] Σερβιλίας δὲ τῆς Βρούτου μητρὸς ἀδελφὸς ἦν Κάτων ὁ φιλόσοφος, ὃν μάλιστα Ῥωμαίων ἐζήλωσεν οὗτος, θεῖον ὄντα καὶ πενθερὸν ὕστερον [2] γενόμενον. τῶν δ’ Ἑλληνικῶν φιλοσόφων οὐδενὸς μὲν ὡς ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν ἀνήκοος ἦν οὐδ’ ἀλλότριος, διαφερόντως δ’ ἐσπουδάκει πρὸς τοὺς ἀπὸ [3] Πλάτωνος· καὶ τὴν νέαν καὶ μέσην λεγομένην Ἀκαδήμειαν οὐ πάνυ προσιέμενος, ἐξήρτητο τῆς παλαιᾶς, καὶ διετέλει θαυμάζων μὲν Ἀντίοχον τὸν Ἀσκαλωνίτην, φίλον δὲ καὶ συμβιωτὴν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ πεποιημένος Ἄριστον, ἄνδρα τῇ μὲν ἐν λόγοις ἕξει πολλῶν φιλοσόφων λειπόμενον, [4] εὐταξίᾳ δὲ καὶ πρᾳότητι τοῖς πρώτοις ἐνάμιλλον. ὁ δ’ Ἔμπυλος, οὗ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς καὶ οἱ φίλοι μέμνηνται πολλάκις ὡς συμβιοῦντος αὐτῷ, ῥήτωρ [μὲν] ἦν, καὶ καταλέλοιπε μικρὸν μέν, οὐ φαῦλον δὲ σύγγραμμα περὶ τῆς Καίσαρος ἀναιρέσεως, ὃ Βροῦτος ἐπιγέγραπται (FGrH [5] 191 T 1). Ῥωμαϊστὶ μὲν οὖν ἤσκητο πρὸς τὰς ‹δι›εξόδους καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας ἱκανῶς ὁ Βροῦτος, Ἑλληνιστὶ δὲ τὴν ἀποφθεγματικὴν καὶ Λακωνικὴν ἐπιτηδεύων βραχυλογίαν ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς ἐνιαχοῦ παράσημός [6] ἐστιν. οἷον ἤδη καθεστηκὼς εἰς τὸν πόλεμον γράφει Περγαμηνοῖς· ἀκούω ὑμᾶς Δολοβέλλᾳ δεδωκέναι χρήματα· ἃ εἰ μὲν ἑκόντες ἔδοτε, ὁμολογεῖτε ἀδικεῖν· εἰ δ’ ἄκοντες, ἀποδείξατε τῷ ἐμοὶ ἑκόντες δοῦναι.

[7] πάλιν Σαμίοις· αἱ βουλαὶ ὑμῶν ὀλίγωροι, αἱ ὑπουργίαι βραδεῖαι. τί [8] τούτων τέλος ἐννοεῖσθε; καὶ [περὶ Παταρέων] ἑτέραν· Ξάνθιοι τὴν ἐμὴν εὐεργεσίαν ὑπεριδόντες τάφον ἀπονοίας ἐσχήκασι τὴν πατρίδα· Παταρεῖς δὲ πιστεύσαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐμοὶ οὐδὲν ἐλλείπουσι διοικοῦντες τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα τῆς ἐλευθερίας. ἐξὸν οὖν καὶ ὑμῖν ἢ τὴν Παταρέων κρίσιν ἢ τὴν Ξανθίων τύχην ἑλέσθαι. τὸ μὲν οὖν τῶν παρασήμων γένος ἐπιστολίων τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν.

[3] [1] Ἔτι δὲ μειράκιον ὢν Κάτωνι τῷ θείῳ συναπεδήμησεν, εἰς [2] Κύπρον ἐπὶ Πτολεμαῖον ἀποσταλέντι. Πτολεμαίου δὲ διαφθείραντος ἑαυτόν, ὁ Κάτων αὐτὸς ἐν Ῥόδῳ διατριβὴν ἔχων ἀναγκαίαν, ἔτυχε μὲν ἤδη τινὰ τῶν φίλων Κανίδιον ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν χρημάτων φυλακὴν ἀπεσταλκώς, δείσας δ’ ἐκεῖνον ὡς οὐκ ἀφεξόμενον κλοπῆς, ἔγραψε τῷ Βρούτῳ πλεῖν τὴν ταχίστην εἰς Κύπρον ἐκ Παμφυλίας· ἐκεῖ γὰρ ἑαυτὸν ἀναλαμβάνων [3] ἔκ τινος ἀσθενείας διῆγεν. ὁ δὲ καὶ μάλ’ ἄκων ἔπλευσε, τόν τε Κανίδιον αἰδούμενος ὡς ἀτίμως ἀπερριμμένον ὑπὸ τοῦ Κάτωνος, καὶ ὅλως τὴν τοιαύτην ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ διοίκησιν, ἅτε δὴ νέος καὶ σχολαστής, [4] οὐκ ἐλευθέριον οὐδ’ ἑαυτοῦ ποιούμενος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ ταῦτα συντείνας ἑαυτὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ Κάτωνος ἐπῃνέθη, καὶ τῆς οὐσίας ἐξαργυρισθείσης, ἀναλαβὼν τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν χρημάτων εἰς Ῥώμην ἔπλευσεν.

[4] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰ πράγματα διέστη, Πομπηΐου καὶ Καίσαρος ἐξενεγκαμένων τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ταραχθείσης, ἐπίδοξος μὲν ἦν αἱρήσεσθαι τὰ Καίσαρος· ὁ γὰρ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ διὰ τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐτεθνήκει πρότερον· [2] ἀξιῶν δὲ τὰ κοινὰ τῶν ἰδίων ἐπίπροσθεν ποιεῖσθαι, καὶ τὴν Πομπηΐου νομίζων ὑπόθεσιν βελτίονα πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον εἶναι τῆς Καίσαρος, [3] ἐκείνῳ προσέθετο. καίτοι πρότερον ἀναντήσας οὐδὲ προσεῖπε τὸν Πομπήϊον, ἄγος ἡγούμενος μέγα πατρὸς φονεῖ διαλέγεσθαι· τότε δ’ ὡς ἄρχοντι τῆς πατρίδος ὑποτάξας ἑαυτόν, εἰς Κιλικίαν ἔπλευσε πρεσβευτὴς μετὰ [4] Σηστίου τοῦ λαχόντος τὴν ἐπαρχίαν. ὡς δ’ ἐκεῖ πράττειν οὐδὲν ἦν μέγα, καὶ συνῄεσαν εἰς ταὐτὸ ἤδη Πομπήϊος καὶ Καῖσαρ, ἀγωνιζόμενοι περὶ [5] τῶν ὅλων, ἧκεν εἰς Μακεδονίαν, ἐθελοντὴς τοῦ κινδύνου μεθέξων· ὅτε καί φασι Πομπήϊον ἡσθέντα καὶ θαυμάσαντα προσιόντος αὐτοῦ καθεζόμενον [6] ἐξαναστῆναι καὶ περιβαλεῖν ὡς κρείττονα πάντων ὁρώντων. ἐν δὲ τῇ στρατείᾳ, τῆς ἡμέρας ὅσα μὴ Πομπηΐῳ συνῆν, περὶ λόγους καὶ βιβλία διέτριβεν, οὐ μόνον τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸ τῆς [ἄλλης] μεγάλης [7] μάχης. ἦν μὲν ἀκμὴ θέρους καὶ καῦμα πολύ, πρὸς ἑλώδεσι χωρίοις στρατοπεδευόντων, τῷ δ’ [Βρούτῳ] οὐ ταχέως ἧκον οἱ τὴν σκηνὴν κομίζοντες.

[8] ἐκπονηθεὶς δὲ περὶ ταῦτα μεσημβρίας μόλις ἀλειψάμενος καὶ φαγὼν ὀλίγα, τῶν ἄλλων ἢ καθευδόντων ἢ πρὸς ἐπινοίᾳ καὶ φροντίδι τοῦ μέλλοντος ὄντων, αὐτὸς ἄχρι τῆς ἑσπέρας ἔγραφε συντάττων ἐπιτομὴν Πολυβίου.

[5] [1] Λέγεται δὲ καὶ Καίσαρ’ οὐκ ἀμελεῖν τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἀλλὰ καὶ προειπεῖν τοῖς ὑφ’ ἑαυτὸν ἡγεμόσιν, ἐν τῇ μάχῃ μὴ κτείνειν Βροῦτον ἀλλὰ φείδεσθαι, καὶ παρασχόντα μὲν ἑκουσίως ἄγειν, εἰ δ’ ἀπομάχοιτο πρὸς τὴν σύλληψιν, ἐᾶν καὶ μὴ βιάζεσθαι· καὶ ταῦτα ποιεῖν τῇ μητρὶ τοῦ Βρούτου Σερβιλίᾳ [2] χαριζόμενον. ἐγνώκει γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε νεανίας ὢν ἔτι τὴν Σερβιλίαν ἐπιμανεῖσαν αὐτῷ, καὶ καθ’ οὓς μάλιστα χρόνους ὁ ἔρως ἐπέφλεγε γενόμενον τὸν [3] Βροῦτον ἐπέπειστό πως ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ γεγονέναι. λέγεται δὲ τῶν περὶ Κατιλίναν πραγμάτων μεγάλων ἐμπεπτωκότων εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον, ἃ μικρὸν ἐδέησεν ἀνατρέψαι τὴν πόλιν, ἑστάναι μὲν ὁμοῦ Κάτωνα καὶ Καίσαρα διαφερομένους περὶ γνώμης, ἐν τούτῳ δὲ γραμματιδίου μικροῦ προσδοθέντος ἔξωθεν Καίσαρι, τὸν μὲν ἀναγινώσκειν σιωπῇ, Κάτωνα δὲ βοᾶν ὡς δεινὰ ποιεῖ Καῖσαρ, ἐντεύξεις καὶ γράμματα παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων προσδεχόμενος.

[4] θορυβησάντων δὲ πολλῶν, καὶ τοῦ Καίσαρος τὸ δελτάριον ὡς εἶχε τῷ Κάτωνι προσδόντος, ἀναγνόντα Σερβιλίας τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἀκόλαστον ἐπιστόλιον, ἐκεῖνο μὲν ῥῖψαι πρὸς τὸν Καίσαρα καὶ εἰπεῖν κράτει μέθυσε, πρὸς δὲ τὴν γνώμην καὶ τὸν λόγον αὖθις ἐξ ἀρχῆς τραπέσθαι. οὕτω μὲν ἦν ὁ πρὸς Καίσαρα Σερβιλίας ἔρως περιβόητος.

[6] [1] Γενομένης δὲ τῆς κατὰ Φάρσαλον ἥττης, καὶ Πομπηΐου μὲν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν διεκπεσόντος, πολιορκουμένου δὲ τοῦ χάρακος, ἔλαθεν ὁ Βροῦτος κατὰ πύλας [ἔρχεσθαι] πρὸς τόπον ἑλώδη καὶ μεστὸν ὑδάτων καὶ καλάμου φερούσας ἐξελθών, καὶ διὰ νυκτὸς ἀποσωθεὶς εἰς Λάρισσαν.

[2] ἐκεῖθεν δὲ γράψαντος αὐτοῦ, Καῖσαρ ἥσθη τε σῳζομένῳ καὶ κελεύσας πρὸς αὑτὸν ἐλθεῖν οὐ μόνον ἀφῆκε τῆς αἰτίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τιμώμενον ἐν τοῖς [3] μάλιστα περὶ αὑτὸν εἶχεν. οὐδενὸς δ’ ὅπῃ φεύγοι Πομπήϊος εἰπεῖν ἔχοντος, ἀλλ’ ἀπορίας οὔσης, ὁδόν τινα σὺν τῷ Βρούτῳ βαδίζων μόνος ἀπεπειρᾶτο [4] τῆς γνώμης, καὶ δόξαντος ἔκ τινων διαλογισμῶν ἄριστα περὶ τῆς Πομπηΐου τεκμαίρεσθαι φυγῆς, ἀφεὶς τἆλλα τὴν ἐπ’ Αἰγύπτου συνέτεινεν.

[5] ἀλλὰ Πομπήϊον μὲν ὥσπερ εἴκασε Βροῦτος Αἰγύπτῳ προσβαλόντα τὸ πεπρωμένον [6] ἐδέξατο· Καίσαρα δὲ καὶ πρὸς Κάσσιον ἐπράϋνε Βροῦτος, καὶ Δηιοτάρῳ τῷ τῶν Γαλατῶν βασιλεῖ προηγορῶν ἡττᾶτο μὲν τοῦ μεγέθους τῶν κατηγοριῶν, δεόμενος δὲ καὶ παραιτούμενος [περὶ τούτου] πολλὴν [7] αὐτῷ διέσωσε τῆς ἀρχῆς. λέγεται δὲ Καῖσαρ, ὅτε πρῶτον ἤκουσεν αὐτοῦ λέγοντος, εἰπεῖν πρὸς τοὺς φίλους· οὗτος ὁ νεανίας οὐκ οἶδα μὲν ὃ βούλεται, [8] πᾶν δ’ ὃ βούλεται σφόδρα βούλεται. τὸ γὰρ ἐμβριθὲς αὐτοῦ καὶ μὴ ῥᾳδίως μηδὲ παντὸς ὑπήκοον τοῦ δεομένου πρὸς χάριν, ἀλλ’ ἐκ λογισμοῦ καὶ προαιρέσεως τῶν καλῶν πρακτικόν, ὅποι τρέψειεν, ἰσχυραῖς [9] ἐχρῆτο ταῖς ὁρμαῖς καὶ τελεσιουργοῖς. πρὸς δὲ τὰς ἀδίκους δεήσεις ἀκολάκευτος ἦν, καὶ τὴν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀναισχύντως λιπαρούντων ἧτταν (ἣν ἔνιοι δυσωπεῖσθαι καλοῦσιν) αἰσχίστην ἀνδρὶ μεγάλῳ ποιούμενος, εἰώθει λέγειν ὡς οἱ μηδὲν ἀρνεῖσθαι δυνάμενοι δοκοῦσιν αὐτῷ μὴ καλῶς τὴν ὥραν διατεθεῖσθαι.

[10] Μέλλων δὲ διαβαίνειν εἰς Λιβύην Καῖσαρ ἐπὶ Κάτωνα καὶ Σκιπίωνα, Βρούτῳ τὴν ἐντὸς Ἄλπεων Γαλατίαν ἐπέτρεψεν εὐτυχίᾳ τινὶ τῆς ἐπαρχίας· [11] τὰς γὰρ ἄλλας ὕβρει καὶ πλεονεξίᾳ τῶν πεπιστευμένων ὥσπερ αἰχμαλώτους διαφορούντων, ἐκείνῃ καὶ τῶν πρόσθεν ἀτυχημάτων παῦλα καὶ παραμυθία [12] Βροῦτος ἦν, καὶ τὴν χάριν εἰς Καίσαρα πάντων ἀνῆπτεν, ὡς αὐτῷ μετὰ τὴν ἐπάνοδον περιϊόντι τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἥδιστον θέαμα τὰς ὑπὸ Βρούτῳ πόλεις γενέσθαι καὶ Βροῦτον αὐτόν, αὔξοντα τὴν ἐκείνου τιμὴν καὶ συνόντα κεχαρισμένως.

[7] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ πλειόνων στρατηγιῶν οὐσῶν τὴν μέγιστον ἔχουσαν ἀξίωμα, καλουμένην δὲ πολιτικήν, ἐπίδοξος ἦν ἢ Βροῦτος ἕξειν ἢ Κάσσιος, οἱ μὲν αὐτοὺς λέγουσιν, ἐξ αἰτιῶν προτέρων ἡσυχῇ διαφερομένους, ἔτι μᾶλλον ὑπὲρ τούτου διαστασιάσαι, καίπερ οἰκείους ὄντας (Ἰουνίᾳ γὰρ ἀδελφῇ [2] Βρούτου συνῴκει Κάσσιος)· οἱ δὲ Καίσαρος ἔργον γενέσθαι τὴν φιλονικίαν ταύτην, ἑκατέρῳ κρύφα δι’ ἐλπίδων ἐνδιδόντος ἑαυτόν, ἄχρι οὗ [3] προαχθέντες οὕτω καὶ παροξυνθέντες εἰς ἀγῶνα κατέστησαν. ἠγωνίζετο δὲ Βροῦτος εὐκλείᾳ καὶ ἀρετῇ πρὸς πολλὰ τοῦ Κασσίου καὶ λαμπρὰ τὰ [4] Παρθικὰ νεανιεύματα. Καῖσαρ δ’ ἀκούσας καὶ βουλευόμενος ἐν τοῖς φίλοις εἶπε· δικαιότερα μὲν λέγει Κάσσιος, Βρούτῳ δὲ τὴν πρώτην δοτέον.

[5] ἀπεδείχθη δὲ Κάσσιος ἐφ’ ἑτέρᾳ στρατηγός, οὐ τοσοῦτον εὐνοίας ἔχων δι’ ἣν ἔλαβεν, ὅσον ὀργῆς ὧν ἀπέτυχε.

[6] Βροῦτος δὲ καὶ τἆλλα μετεῖχε τῆς Καίσαρος δυνάμεως ὅσον ἐβούλετο· βουλομένῳ γὰρ ὑπῆρχεν εἶναι τῶν φίλων πρώτῳ καὶ δύνασθαι πλεῖστον.

[7] ἀλλ’ εἷλκεν αὐτὸν ἡ περὶ Κάσσιον ἑταιρεία καὶ ἀπέστρεφεν, αὐτῷ μὲν οὔπω Κασσίῳ διηλλαγμένον ἐξ ἐκείνης τῆς φιλοτιμίας, ἀκούοντα δὲ τῶν φίλων διακελευομένων μὴ περιορᾶν αὑτὸν ὑπὸ Καίσαρος μαλασσόμενον καὶ κηλούμενον, ἀλλὰ φεύγειν τὰς τυραννικὰς φιλοφροσύνας καὶ χάριτας, αἷς οὐ τιμῶντα τὴν ἀρετήν, ἀλλ’ ἐκτέμνοντα τὴν ἀλκὴν καὶ τὸν θυμὸν ὑπερείποντα, χρῆσθαι πρὸς αὐτόν.

[8] [1] Οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ Καῖσαρ ἀνύποπτος ἦν πάμπαν οὐδ’ ἀδιάβλητος πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν φρόνημα καὶ τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ τοὺς φίλους ἐδεδίει τοῦ [2] ἀνδρός, ἐπίστευε δὲ τῷ ἤθει. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν Ἀντωνίου καὶ Δολοβέλλα λεγομένων νεωτερίζειν, οὐκ ἔφη τοὺς παχεῖς καὶ κομήτας ἐνοχλεῖν ‹αὐτόν›, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ὠχροὺς καὶ ἰσχνοὺς ἐκείνους, Βροῦτον λέγων καὶ [3] Κάσσιον· ἔπειτα τὸν Βροῦτον τινῶν διαβαλλόντων καὶ φυλάττεσθαι παρακελευομένων, τῇ χειρὶ τοῦ σώματος ἁπτόμενος εἶπε· τί δέ; οὐκ ἂν ὑμῖν δοκεῖ Βροῦτος ἀναμεῖναι τουτὶ τὸ σαρκίον; ὡς οὐδενὶ προσῆκον ἄλλῳ [4] μεθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἢ Βρούτῳ δύνασθαι τοσοῦτον. καὶ μέντοι δοκεῖ πρῶτος ἂν ἐν τῇ πόλει γενέσθαι βεβαίως, ὀλίγον χρόνον ἀνασχόμενος Καίσαρι δευτερεῦσαι, καὶ παρακμάσαι τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ καὶ μαρανθῆναι τὴν ἐπὶ τοῖς [5] κατορθώμασιν ἐάσας δόξαν. ἀλλὰ Κάσσιος, ἀνὴρ θυμοειδὴς καὶ μᾶλλον [6] ἰδίᾳ μισοκαῖσαρ ἢ κοινῇ μισοτύραννος, ἐξέκαυσε καὶ κατήπειξε. λέγεται δὲ Βροῦτος μὲν τὴν ἀρχὴν βαρύνεσθαι, Κάσσιος δὲ τὸν ἄρχοντα μισεῖν, ἄλλα τε κατ’ αὐτοῦ ποιούμενος ἐγκλήματα καὶ λεόντων ἀφαίρεσιν, οὓς Κάσσιος μὲν ἀγορανομεῖν μέλλων παρεσκευάσατο, Καῖσαρ δὲ καταληφθέντας [7] ἐν Μεγάροις, ὅθ’ ἡ πόλις ἥλω διὰ Καλήνου, κατέσχε. ταῦτα τὰ θηρία συμφορὰν λέγεται μεγάλην γενέσθαι Μεγαρεῦσιν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἤδη τῆς πόλεως καταλαμβανομένης διέσπασαν τὰ κλεῖθρα καὶ τοὺς δεσμοὺς ἀνῆκαν, ὡς ἐμποδὼν εἴη τὰ θηρία τοῖς ἐπιφερομένοις, τὰ δ’ ὤρουσεν εἰς αὐτοὺς ἐκείνους καὶ διαθέοντας ἀνόπλους ἥρπασεν, ὥστε καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις τὴν ὄψιν οἰκτρὰν γενέσθαι.

[9] [1] Τῷ δ’ οὖν Κασσίῳ ταύτην μάλιστά φασιν αἰτίαν ὑπάρξαι τῆς ἐπιβουλῆς, οὐκ ὀρθῶς λέγοντες. ἐξ ἀρχῆς γὰρ ‹ἐν›ῆν τῇ φύσει τοῦ Κασσίου δυσμένειά τις καὶ χαλεπότης πρὸς τὸ γένος τῶν τυράννων, ὡς ἐδήλωσεν ἔτι παῖς ὢν βαδίζων εἰς ταὐτὸ τῷ τοῦ Σύλλα παιδὶ Φαύστῳ διδασκαλεῖον.

[2] ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐν τοῖς παισὶ μεγαληγορῶν τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς ἐπῄνει μοναρχίαν, [3] ὁ δὲ Κάσσιος ἐπαναστὰς κονδύλους ἐνέτριβεν αὐτῷ. βουλομένων δὲ τῶν ἐπιτρόπων τοῦ Φαύστου καὶ οἰκείων ἐπεξιέναι καὶ δικάζεσθαι, Πομπήϊος ἐκώλυσε καὶ συναγαγὼν εἰς ταὐτὸ τοὺς παῖδας ἀμφοτέρους ἀνέκρινε περὶ [4] τοῦ πράγματος. ἔνθα δὴ λέγεται τὸν Κάσσιον εἰπεῖν· ἄγε δὴ ὦ Φαῦστε, τόλμησον ἐναντίον τούτου φθέγξασθαι τὸν λόγον ἐκεῖνον ἐφ’ ᾧ παρωξύνθην, ἵνα σου πάλιν ἐγὼ συντρίψω τὸ στόμα.

[5] Τοιοῦτος μὲν ὁ Κάσσιος· Βροῦτον δὲ πολλοὶ μὲν λόγοι παρὰ τῶν συνήθων, πολλαῖς δὲ φήμαις καὶ γράμμασιν ἐξεκαλοῦντο καὶ παρώρμων [6] ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν οἱ πολῖται. τῷ μὲν γὰρ ἀνδριάντι τοῦ προπάτορος Βρούτου, ‹τοῦ› καταλύσαντος τὴν τῶν βασιλέων ἀρχήν, ἐπέγραφον· εἴθε νῦν [7] ἦς [Βροῦτος], καὶ ὤφελε ζῆν Βροῦτος. τὸ δ’ αὐτοῦ Βρούτου βῆμα στρατηγοῦντος εὑρίσκετο μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἀνάπλεων γραμμάτων τοιούτων· [8] Βροῦτε καθεύδεις, καὶ οὐκ εἶ Βροῦτος ἀληθῶς. αἴτιοι δὲ τούτων οἱ Καίσαρος κόλακες, ἄλλας τε τιμὰς ἐπιφθόνους ἀνευρίσκοντες αὐτῷ, καὶ διαδήματα τοῖς ἀνδριᾶσι νύκτωρ ἐπιτιθέντες, ὡς τοὺς πολλοὺς ὑπαξόμενοι [9] βασιλέα προσειπεῖν ἀντὶ δικτάτορος. τοὐναντίον δ’ ἀπήντησεν, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ Καίσαρος ἀκριβῶς γέγραπται (c. 60. 61).

[10] [1] Κασσίῳ δὲ πειρῶντι τοὺς φίλους ἐπὶ Καίσαρα πάντες ὡμολόγουν, εἰ Βροῦτος ἡγοῖτο· δεῖσθαι γὰρ οὐ χειρῶν οὐδὲ τόλμης τὴν πρᾶξιν, ἀλλὰ δόξης ἀνδρὸς οἷος οὗτός ἐστιν, ὥσπερ καταρχομένου καὶ βεβαιοῦντος [2] αὐτῷ τῷ παρεῖναι τὸ δίκαιον· εἰ δὲ μή, καὶ δρῶντας ἀθυμοτέρους ἔσεσθαι, καὶ δράσαντας ὑποπτοτέρους, ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἐκείνου τὸ ἔργον, εἰ καλὴν αἰτίαν [3] εἶχεν, ἀπειπαμένου. ταῦτα συμφρονήσας ἐνέτυχε Βρούτῳ πρότερος ἐκ τῆς διαφορᾶς ἐκείνης, καὶ μετὰ τὰς διαλύσεις καὶ φιλοφροσύνας ἠρώτησεν, εἰ τῇ νουμηνίᾳ τοῦ Μαρτίου μηνὸς ἔγνωκεν εἰς σύγκλητον παρεῖναι· πυνθάνεσθαι γὰρ ὡς λόγον ὑπὲρ βασιλείας Καίσαρος οἱ φίλοι τότε καθήσοιεν. [4] φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Βρούτου μὴ παρεῖναι, τί οὖν εἶπεν ὁ Κάσσιος, ἂν καλῶσιν ἡμᾶς; ἐμὸν ἔργον ἔφη ὁ Βροῦτος ἤδη τὸ μὴ σιωπᾶν, ἀλλ’ [5] ἀμύνειν καὶ προαποθνῄσκειν τῆς ἐλευθερίας. καὶ ὁ Κάσσιος ἐπαρθείς, [6] τίς δ’ εἶπε Ῥωμαίων ἀνέξεται σοῦ προαποθνῄσκοντος; ἆρ’ ἀγνοεῖς ὦ Βροῦτε σεαυτόν; ἢ τὸ βῆμά σου δοκεῖς καταγράφειν τοὺς ὑφάντας καὶ τοὺς καπήλους, οὐχὶ τοὺς πρώτους καὶ κρατίστους ταῦτα ποιεῖν, παρὰ μὲν τῶν ἄλλων στρατηγῶν ἐπιδόσεις καὶ θέατρα καὶ μονομάχους, παρὰ σοῦ δ’ ὡς ὄφλημα πατρικὸν τὴν κατάλυσιν τῆς τυραννίδος ἀπαιτοῦντας, αὐτοὺς δ’ ὑπὲρ σοῦ πάντα πάσχειν προθύμους ὄντας, οἷον ἀξιοῦσι καὶ [7] προσδέχονται φανέντος; ἐκ τούτου περιβαλὼν τὸν Βροῦτον ἠσπάζετο, καὶ διαλυθέντες οὕτως ἐτρέποντο πρὸς τοὺς φίλους.

[11] [1] Ἦν δέ τις Γάϊος Λιγάριος τῶν Πομπηΐου φίλων, ὃν ἐπὶ τούτῳ [2] κατηγορηθέντα Καῖσαρ ἀπέλυσεν. οὗτος οὐχ ἧς ἀφείθη δίκης χάριν ἔχων, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἣν ἐκινδύνευσεν ἀρχὴν βαρυνόμενος, ἐχθρὸς ἦν Καίσαρι, [3] τῶν δὲ περὶ Βροῦτον ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα συνήθης. πρὸς τοῦτον ἀσθενοῦντα Βροῦτος εἰσελθών, ὦ Λιγάριε εἶπεν, ἐν οἵῳ καιρῷ νοσεῖς. κἀκεῖνος εὐθὺς εἰς ἀγκῶνα διαναστὰς καὶ λαβόμενος αὐτοῦ τῆς δεξιᾶς, ἀλλ’ εἴ τι φησὶν ὦ Βροῦτε σεαυτοῦ φρονεῖς ἄξιον, ὑγιαίνω.

[12] [1] Ἐκ τούτου διαπειρώμενοι κρύφα τῶν γνωρίμων οἷς ἐπίστευον ἀνεκοινοῦντο καὶ προσελάμβανον, οὐ μόνον τῶν συνήθων ποιούμενοι τὴν αἵρεσιν, ἀλλ’ ὅσους ἠπίσταντο τολμητὰς ὄντας ἀγαθοὺς καὶ θανάτου [2] καταφρονητάς. διὸ καὶ Κικέρωνα, τοῦτο μὲν πίστεως τοῦτο δ’ εὐνοίας ἕνεκα πρῶτον ὄντα παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ἀπεκρύψαντο, μὴ τῷ φύσει τόλμης ἐνδεὴς εἶναι προσειληφὼς ὑπὸ χρόνου γεροντικὴν εὐλάβειαν, εἶτα πάντα καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀνάγων τοῖς λογισμοῖς εἰς ἄκραν ἀσφάλειαν, ἀμβλύνῃ τὴν ἀκμὴν [3] αὐτῶν τῆς προθυμίας, τάχους δεομένην. ἐπεὶ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἑταίρων ὁ Βροῦτος Στα‹τύ›λλιόν τε παρέλιπε τὸν Ἐπικούρειον καὶ Φαώνιον ἐραστὴν Κάτωνος, ὅτι πόρρωθεν αὐτοῖς τοιαύτην τινὰ κύκλῳ προσβαλόντος ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι καὶ συμφιλοσοφεῖν πεῖραν, ὁ μὲν Φαώνιος ἀπεκρίνατο χεῖρον εἶναι μοναρχίας παρανόμου πόλεμον ἐμφύλιον, ὁ δὲ Στα‹τύ›λλιος ἔφη τῷ σοφῷ καὶ νοῦν ἔχοντι διὰ φαύλους καὶ ἀνοήτους κινδυνεύειν καὶ [4] ταράττεσθαι μὴ καθήκειν· παρὼν δὲ Λαβεὼν ἀντεῖπεν ἀμφοτέροις. καὶ ὁ Βροῦτος τότε μέν, ὡς ἔχοντός τι τοῦ λόγου χαλεπὸν καὶ δύσκριτον, [5] ἀπεσιώπησεν, ὕστερον δὲ Λαβεῶνι κοινοῦται τὸ βούλευμα. δεξαμένου δὲ προθύμως, τὸν ἕτερον Βροῦτον ἐπίκλησιν Ἀλβῖνον, ἄλλως μὲν οὐκ ὄντα ῥέκτην οὐδὲ θαρραλέον, ἐρρωμένον δὲ πλήθει μονομάχων οὓς ἐπὶ θέᾳ Ῥωμαίων ἔτρεφε, καὶ παρὰ Καίσαρι πιστευόμενον, ἐδόκει προσάγεσθαι.

[6] Κασσίου δὲ καὶ Λαβεῶνος αὐτῷ διαλεγομένων, οὐδὲν ἀπεκρίνατο, Βρούτῳ δ’ αὐτὸς ἐντυχὼν ἰδίᾳ, καὶ μαθὼν ὅτι τῆς πράξεως ἡγεμών ἐστιν, ὡμολόγησε [7] συμπράξειν προθύμως. καὶ τῶν ἄλλων δὲ τοὺς πλείστους καὶ τοὺς [8] ἀρίστους ἡ δόξα τοῦ Βρούτου προσήγετο, καὶ μήθ’ ὅρκον συνομόσαντες, μήτε πίστιν καθ’ ἱερῶν λαβόντες ἢ δόντες, οὕτως ἅπαντες ἔσχον ἐν ἑαυτοῖς καὶ κατεσιώπησαν καὶ συνδιήνεγκαν, ὥστε μαντείαις καὶ φάσμασι καὶ ἱεροῖς ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν προδεικνυμένην ἄπιστον γενέσθαι τὴν πρᾶξιν.

[13] [1] Ὁ δὲ Βροῦτος, ἅτε δὴ τὰ πρῶτα τῆς Ῥώμης φρονήματα καὶ γένη καὶ ἀρετὰς ἐξηρτημένος ἑαυτοῦ καὶ περινοῶν πάντα τὸν κίνδυνον, ἔξω [2] μὲν ἐπειρᾶτο κατέχειν παρ’ ἑαυτῷ καὶ κατακοσμεῖν τὴν διάνοιαν, οἴκοι δὲ καὶ νύκτωρ οὐκ ἦν ὁ αὐτός, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν ἄκοντα τῶν ὕπνων αὐτὸν ἡ φροντὶς ἐξέφερε, τὰ δὲ μᾶλλον ἐνδυόμενος τῷ λογισμῷ καὶ ‹ἐν›διατρίβων [ἐν] ταῖς ἀπορίαις, οὐκ ἐλάνθανε τὴν γυναῖκα συναναπαυομένην, ὅτι μεστός ἐστι ταραχῆς ἀήθους καὶ κυκλεῖ τι παρ’ ἑαυτῷ δύσφορον βούλευμα καὶ [3] δυσεξέλικτον. ἡ δὲ Πορκία θυγάτηρ μὲν ὥσπερ εἴρηται (c. 2, 1) Κάτωνος ἦν, εἶχε δ’ αὐτὴν ὁ Βροῦτος ἀνεψιὸς ὢν οὐκ ἐκ παρθενίας, ἀλλὰ τοῦ προτέρου τελευτήσαντος ἀνδρὸς ἔλαβε, κόρην οὖσαν ἔτι καὶ παιδίον ἔχουσαν ἐξ ἐκείνου μικρόν, ᾧ Βύβλος ἦν ὄνομα, καί τι βιβλίδιον μικρὸν ἀπομνημονευμάτων [4] Βρούτου γεγραμμένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ διασῴζεται. φιλόστοργος δ’ ἡ Πορκία καὶ φίλανδρος οὖσα καὶ μεστὴ φρονήματος νοῦν ἔχοντος, οὐ πρότερον ἐπεχείρησεν ἀνερέσθαι τὸν ἄνδρα περὶ τῶν ἀπορρήτων, ἢ λαβεῖν ἑαυτῆς [5] τοιαύτην διάπειραν. λαβοῦσα μαχαίριον, ᾧ τοὺς ὄνυχας οἱ κουρεῖς ἀφαιροῦσι, καὶ πάσας ἐξελάσασα τοῦ θαλάμου τὰς ὀπαδούς, τομὴν ἐνέβαλε τῷ μηρῷ βαθεῖαν, ὥστε ῥύσιν αἵματος πολλὴν γενέσθαι καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ὀδύνας τε νεανικὰς καὶ φρικώδεις πυρετοὺς ἐπιλαβεῖν ἐκ τοῦ τραύματος.

[6] ἀγωνιῶντος δὲ τοῦ Βρούτου καὶ δυσφοροῦντος, ἐν ἀκμῇ τῆς ἀλγηδόνος [7] οὖσα διελέχθη πρὸς αὐτὸν οὕτως· ἐγὼ Βροῦτε Κάτωνος οὖσα θυγάτηρ εἰς τὸν σὸν ἐδόθην οἶκον οὐχ ὥσπερ αἱ παλλακευόμεναι, κοίτης μεθέξουσα καὶ τραπέζης μόνον, ἀλλὰ κοινωνὸς μὲν ἀγαθῶν εἶναι, κοινωνὸς δ’ ἀνιαρῶν.

[8] τὰ μὲν οὖν σὰ πάντα περὶ τὸν γάμον ἄμεμπτα· τῶν δὲ παρ’ ἐμοῦ τίς ἀπόδειξις ἢ χάρις, εἰ μήτε σοι πάθος ἀπόρρητον συνδιοίσω μήτε φροντίδα [9] πίστεως δεομένην; οἶδ’ ὅτι γυναικεία φύσις ἀσθενὴς δοκεῖ λόγον ἐνεγκεῖν ἀπόρρητον· ἀλλ’ ἔστι τις ὦ Βροῦτε καὶ τροφῆς ἀγαθῆς καὶ ὁμιλίας [10] χρηστῆς εἰς ἦθος ἰσχύς· ἐμοὶ δὲ καὶ τὸ Κάτωνος εἶναι θυρατέρα καὶ τὸ Βρούτου γυναῖκα πρόσεστιν· οἷς πρότερον μὲν ἧττον ἐπεποίθειν, νῦν [11] δ’ ἐμαυτὴν ἔγνωκα καὶ πρὸς πόνον ἀήττητον εἶναι. ταῦτ’ εἰποῦσα δείκνυσιν αὐτῷ τὸ τραῦμα καὶ διηγεῖται τὴν πεῖραν. ὁ δ’ ἐκπλαγεὶς καὶ ἀνατείνας τὰς χεῖρας ἐπεύξατο δοῦναι τοὺς θεοὺς αὐτῷ κατορθοῦντι τὴν πρᾶξιν ἀνδρὶ Πορκίας ἀξίῳ φανῆναι. καὶ τότε μὲν ἀνελάμβανε τὴν γυναῖκα.

[14] [1] Προγραφείσης δὲ βουλῆς, εἰς ἣν ἐπίδοξος ἦν ἀφίξεσθαι Καῖσαρ, ἔγνωσαν ἐπιχειρεῖν· καὶ γὰρ ἁθρόοι μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἀνυπόπτως ἔσεσθαι τότε, καὶ πάντας ἕξειν ὁμοῦ τοὺς ἀρίστους καὶ πρώτους ἄνδρας, ἔργου [2] μεγάλου πραχθέντος εὐθὺς ἀντιλαμβανομένους τῆς ἐλευθερίας. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ τὸ τοῦ τόπου θεῖον εἶναι καὶ πρὸς αὐτῶν· στοὰ γὰρ ἦν μία τῶν περὶ τὸ θέατρον ἐξέδραν ἔχουσα, ἐν ᾗ Πομπηΐου τις εἰκὼν εἱστήκει, τῆς πόλεως στησαμένης, ὅτε ταῖς στοαῖς καὶ τῷ θεάτρῳ τὸν τόπον ἐκεῖνον [3] ἐκόσμησεν. εἰς ταύτην οὖν ἡ σύγκλητος ἐκαλεῖτο τοῦ Μαρτίου μηνὸς μάλιστα μεσοῦντος (εἰδοὺς Μαρτίας τὴν ἡμέραν Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν), ὥστε καὶ δαίμων τις ἐδόκει τὸν ἄνδρα τῇ Πομπηΐου δίκῃ προσάξειν.

[4] ἐλθούσης δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας, Βροῦτος μὲν ὑπεζωσάμενος ἐγχειρίδιον μόνης συνειδυίας τῆς γυναικὸς προῆλθεν, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι πρὸς Κάσσιον ἁθροισθέντες τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸ καλούμενον ἀνδρεῖον ἱμάτιον ἀναλαμβάνοντα κατῆγον [5] εἰς ἀγοράν. ἐκεῖθεν δὲ πάντες εἰς τὴν Πομπηΐου στοὰν ἐμβαλόντες διέτριβον, [6] ὡς αὐτίκα Καίσαρος ἀφιξομένου πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον. ἔνθα δὴ μάλιστα τῶν ἀνδρῶν τὸ ἀπαθὲς καὶ παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ καθεστηκὸς ἐθαύμασεν ἄν τις εἰδὼς τὸ μέλλον, ὅτι πολλοῖς διὰ τὸ στρατηγεῖν ἀναγκαζόμενοι χρηματίζειν, οὐ μόνον πρᾴως ἠκροῶντο τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων καὶ διαφερομένων ὥσπερ σχολάζοντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς κρίσεις ἑκάστοις ἀκριβεῖς καὶ [7] μετὰ γνώμης ἐδίδοσαν, ἐπιμελῶς προσέχοντες. ἐπεὶ δέ τις μὴ βουλόμενος δίκην ὑποσχεῖν ἐπεκαλεῖτο Καίσαρα καὶ πολὺς ἦν βοῶν καὶ μαρτυρόμενος, ἀποβλέψας ὁ Βροῦτος εἰς τοὺς παρόντας, ἐμὲ Καῖσαρ εἶπεν οὔτε κωλύει ποιεῖν τὰ κατὰ τοὺς νόμους οὔτε κωλύσει.

[15] [1] Καίτοι πολλὰ θορυβώδη κατὰ τύχην αὐτοῖς προσέπεσε· πρῶτον μὲν καὶ μάλιστα τὸ βραδύνειν τὸν Καίσαρα, τῆς ἡμέρας προηκούσης, καὶ δυσιεροῦντα κατέχεσθαι μὲν ὑπὸ τῆς γυναικὸς οἴκοι, κωλύεσθαι δὲ προελθεῖν [2] ὑπὸ τῶν μάντεων. δεύτερον δὲ Κάσκᾳ τῶν συνειδότων ἑνὶ προσελθών τις καὶ λαβόμενος τῆς δεξιᾶς, σὺ μὲν εἶπεν ἀπεκρύψω τὸ ἀπόρρητον [3] ὦ Κάσκα πρὸς ἡμᾶς, Βροῦτος δέ μοι πάντα μεμήνυκεν. ἐκπλαγέντος δὲ τοῦ Κάσκα, γελάσας ἐκεῖνος πόθεν ἔφη ταχέως οὕτως ὦ μακάριε πεπλούτηκας, ὥστ’ εἰς ἀγορανομίαν ἀποδύεσθαι; παρὰ τοσοῦτον μὲν ὁ Κάσκας ἦλθε σφαλεὶς ἀμφιβολίᾳ προέσθαι τὸ ἀπόρρητον· [4] αὐτὸν δὲ Βροῦτον καὶ Κάσσιον ἀνὴρ βουλευτικὸς Ποπίλιος Λαίνας ἀσπασάμενος προθυμότερον καὶ ψιθυρίσας ἠρέμα, συνεύχομαι φησὶν ὑμῖν ἐκτελεῖν ἃ κατὰ νοῦν ἔχετε, καὶ παρακελεύομαι μὴ βραδύνειν· οὐ γὰρ σιωπᾶται τὸ πρᾶγμα. καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἀπέστη, πολλὴν ὑποψίαν ἐμβαλὼν [5] τοῦ πεπύσθαι τὴν πρᾶξιν. ἐν τούτῳ δέ τις οἴκοθεν ἔθει πρὸς τὸν Βροῦτον, [6] ἀγγέλλων αὐτῷ τὴν γυναῖκα θνῄσκειν. ἡ γὰρ Πορκία πρὸς τὸ μέλλον ἐκπαθὴς οὖσα καὶ τὸ μέγεθος μὴ φέρουσα τῆς φροντίδος, ἑαυτήν τε μόλις οἴκοι κατεῖχε καὶ πρὸς πάντα θόρυβον καὶ βοήν, ὥσπερ αἱ κατάσχετοι τοῖς βακχικοῖς πάθεσιν, ἐξᾴττουσα, τῶν μὲν εἰσιόντων ἀπ’ ἀγορᾶς ἕκαστον [7] ἀνέκρινεν ὅ τι πράττοι Βροῦτος, ἑτέρους δὲ συνεχῶς ἐξέπεμπε. τέλος δὲ τοῦ χρόνου μῆκος λαμβάνοντος, οὐκέτ’ ἀντεῖχεν ἡ τοῦ σώματος δύναμις, ἀλλ’ ἐξελύθη καὶ κατεμαραίνετο, τῆς ψυχῆς ἀλυούσης διὰ τὴν ἀπορίαν· καὶ παρελθεῖν μὲν εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον οὐκ ἔφθη, περιΐστατο δ’ αὐτὴν ὥσπερ ἐτύγχανεν ἐν μέσῳ καθεζομένην λιποθυμία καὶ θάμβος ἀμήχανον, ἥ τε [8] χρόα μεταβολὴν ἐλάμβανε, καὶ τὴν φωνὴν ἐπέσχητο παντάπασιν. αἱ δὲ θεράπαιναι πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν ἀνωλόλυξαν, καὶ τῶν γειτόνων συνδραμόντων ἐπὶ θύρας, ταχὺ προῆλθε φήμη καὶ διεδόθη λόγος ὡς τεθνηκυίας αὐτῆς.

[9] οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐκείνην μὲν ἀναλάμψασαν ἐν βραχεῖ καὶ παρ’ ἑαυτῇ γενομένην αἱ γυναῖκες ἐθεράπευον· ὁ δὲ Βροῦτος ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου προσπεσόντος αὐτῷ συνεταράχθη μὲν ὡς εἰκός, οὐ μὴν [δὲ] κατέλιπε τὸ κοινὸν οὐδ’ ἐρρύη πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους.

[16] [1] Ἤδη δὲ Καῖσαρ ἀπηγγέλλετο προσιών, ἐν φορείῳ κομιζόμενος· ἐγνώκει γὰρ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἱεροῖς ἀθυμῶν μηδὲν ἐπικυροῦν τότε τῶν μειζόνων, [2] ἀλλ’ ὑπερβάλλεσθαι σκηψάμενος ἀσθένειαν. ἐκβάντι δ’ αὐτῷ τοῦ φορείου προσρυεὶς Ποπίλιος Λαίνας ἐκεῖνος ὁ μικρῷ πρόσθεν εὐξάμενος τοῖς περὶ Βροῦτον ἐπιτυγχάνειν καὶ κατορθοῦν, διελέγετο πλείω χρόνον ἐφισταμένῳ [3] καὶ προσέχοντι τὸν νοῦν. οἱ δὲ συνωμόται (λεγέσθω γὰρ οὕτως), τῆς μὲν φωνῆς οὐκ ἐπαΐοντες αὐτοῦ, τεκμαιρόμενοι δ’ ἀφ’ ὧν ὑπενόουν μήνυσιν εἶναι τῆς ἐπιβουλῆς τὴν κοινολογίαν, ἀνέπεσόν τε ταῖς γνώμαις καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔβλεψαν, ἀνθομολογούμενοι διὰ τῶν προσώπων, ὡς χρὴ [4] μὴ περιμένειν σύλληψιν, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἀποθνῄσκειν δι’ αὑτῶν. Κασσίου δ’ ἤδη καί τινων ἄλλων τὰς χεῖρας ἐπιβεβληκότων ταῖς λαβαῖς ὑπὸ τὰ ἱμάτια καὶ σπωμένων τὰ ἐγχειρίδια, Βροῦτος ἐγκατιδὼν τῷ τοῦ Λαίνα σχήματι δεομένου σπουδὴν καὶ οὐχὶ κατηγοροῦντος, ἐφθέγξατο μὲν οὐδὲν διὰ τὸ πολλοὺς ἀλλοτρίους ἀναμεμεῖχθαι, φαιδρῷ δὲ τῷ προσώπῳ τοὺς [5] περὶ Κάσσιον ἐθάρρυνε. καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ὁ Λαίνας τὴν δεξιὰν τοῦ Καίσαρος καταφιλήσας ἀπέστη, φανερὸς γενόμενος ὡς ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν αὑτῷ τινος διαφερόντων ἐποιεῖτο τὴν ἔντευξιν.

[17] [1] Τῆς δὲ βουλῆς εἰς τὴν ἐξέδραν προεισελθούσης, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τὸν δίφρον τοῦ Καίσαρος περιέστησαν, ὡς ἐντυγχάνειν τι μέλλοντες αὐτῷ, [2] καὶ Κάσσιον μὲν λέγεται τρέποντα τὸ πρόσωπον εἰς τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ Πομπηΐου παρακαλεῖν ὥσπερ αἰσθανόμενον, Τρεβώνιος δὲ περὶ τὰς θύρας [3] Ἀντώνιον ἐπισπασάμενος καὶ προσομιλῶν ἔξω κατέσχε. Καίσαρι δ’ εἰσιόντι μὲν ἡ σύγκλητος ὑπεξανέστη, καθεζόμενον δ’ εὐθὺς ἐκεῖνοι περιέσχον ἁθρόοι, Τίλλιον Κίμβρον ἐξ ἑαυτῶν προβάλλοντες, ὑπὲρ ἀδελφοῦ φυγάδος δεόμενον, καὶ συνεδέοντο πάντες, ἁπτόμενοί τε χειρῶν καὶ [4] στέρνα καὶ κεφαλὴν καταφιλοῦν‹τες›. ἀποτριβομένου δὲ τὰς δεήσεις τὸ πρῶτον, εἶθ’ ὡς οὐκ ἀνίεσαν ἐξανισταμένου βίᾳ, Τίλλιος μὲν ἀμφοτέραις ταῖς χερσὶν ἐκ τῶν ὤμων κατέσπασε τὸ ἱμάτιον, Κάσκας δὲ πρῶτος (εἱστήκει γὰρ ὄπισθεν) ἀνασπάσας τὸ ξίφος διελαύνει παρὰ τὸν ὦμον, [5] οὐκ εἰς βάθος. ἀντιλαμβανομένου δὲ τῆς λαβῆς τοῦ Καίσαρος καὶ μέγα Ῥωμαϊστὶ ἀνακραγόντος ἀνόσιε Κάσκα, τί ποιεῖς; ἐκεῖνος Ἑλληνιστὶ [6] τὸν ἀδελφὸν προσαγορεύσας ἐκέλευσε βοηθεῖν. ἤδη δὲ παιόμενος ὑπὸ πολλῶν καὶ κύκλῳ περιβλέπων καὶ διώσασθαι βουλόμενος, ὡς εἶδε Βροῦτον ἑλκόμενον ξίφος ἐπ’ αὐτόν, τὴν χεῖρα τοῦ Κάσκα κρατῶν ἀφῆκε, καὶ τῷ ἱματίῳ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐγκαλυψάμενος, παρέδωκε τὸ σῶμα ταῖς [7] πληγαῖς. οἱ δ’ ἀφειδῶς ἀναπεπλεγμένοι πολλοῖς περὶ τὸ σῶμα χρώμενοι τοῖς ξίφεσιν, ἀλλήλους ἐτίτρωσκον, ὥστε καὶ Βροῦτον εἰς τὴν χεῖρα πληγὴν λαβεῖν, τοῦ φόνου συνεφαπτόμενον, πίμπλασθαι δὲ τοῦ αἵματος ἅπαντας.

[18] [1] Οὕτω δ’ ἀποθανόντος αὐτοῦ, Βροῦτος μὲν εἰς μέσον προελθὼν ἐβούλετο λέγειν καὶ κατεῖχε θαρρύνων τὴν σύγκλητον· ἡ δ’ ὑπὸ δέους ἔφευγεν ἀτάκτως, καὶ περὶ τὰς θύρας ὠθισμὸς ἦν καὶ τάραχος, οὐδενὸς [2] διώκοντος οὐδὲ κατεπείγοντος. ἰσχυρῶς γὰρ ἐδέδοκτο μηδένα κτείνειν [3] ἕτερον, ἀλλὰ πάντας ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀνακαλεῖσθαι. καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις πᾶσιν, ὁπηνίκα διεσκοποῦντο τὴν πρᾶξιν, ἤρεσκεν Ἀντώνιον ἐπισφάττειν Καίσαρι, μοναρχικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ὑβριστὴν ἰσχύν τε πεποιημένον ὁμιλίᾳ καὶ συνηθείᾳ πρὸς τὸ στρατιωτικόν, καὶ μάλισθ’ ὅτι τῷ φύσει σοβαρῷ καὶ μεγαλοπράγμονι προσειλήφει τὸ τῆς ὑπατείας ἀξίωμα, τότε [4] Καίσαρι συνάρχων. ἀλλὰ Βροῦτος ἐνέστη πρὸς τὸ βούλευμα, πρῶτον μὲν ἰσχυριζόμενος τῷ δικαίῳ, δεύτερον δ’ ὑπο‹τι›θεὶς ἐλπίδα τῆς μεταβολῆς.

[5] οὐ γὰρ ἀπεγίνωσκεν εὐφυᾶ καὶ φιλότιμον ἄνδρα καὶ δόξης ἐραστὴν τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἐκποδὼν Καίσαρος γενομένου συνεφάψεσθαι τῇ πατρίδι τῆς [6] ἐλευθερίας, ἐπισπασθέντα τῷ ζήλῳ πρὸς τὸ καλὸν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν. οὕτω μὲν Ἀντώνιον Βροῦτος περιεποίησεν· ἐν δὲ τῷ τότε φόβῳ μεταβαλὼν ἐσθῆτα [7] δημοτικὴν ἔφυγεν. οἱ δὲ περὶ Βροῦτον εἰς τὸ Καπετώλιον ἐχώρουν, ᾑμαγμένοι ‹τε› τὰς χεῖρας καὶ τὰ ξίφη γυμνὰ δεικνύντες ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν [8] παρεκάλουν τοὺς πολίτας. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ἦσαν ἀλαλαγμοί, καὶ διαδρομαὶ τῷ πάθει κατὰ τύχην ἐπιγινόμεναι πλείονα τὸν θόρυβον ἐποίησαν· [9] ὡς δ’ οὔτε φόνος ἄλλος οὔθ’ ἁρπαγή τινος ἐγίνετο τῶν κειμένων, θαρροῦντες ἀνέβαινον οἵ τε βουλευταὶ καὶ τῶν δημοτῶν πολλοὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἄνδρας [10] εἰς τὸ Καπετώλιον. ἁθροισθέντος δὲ τοῦ πλήθους, διελέχθη Βροῦτος [11] ἐπαγωγὰ τοῦ δήμου καὶ πρέποντα τοῖς πεπραγμένοις. ἐπαινούντων δὲ καὶ κατιέναι βοώντων, θαρροῦντες κατέβαινον εἰς ἀγοράν, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι συνεπόμενοι μετ’ ἀλλήλων, Βροῦτον δὲ πολλοὶ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν περιέποντες ἐν μέσῳ πάνυ λαμπρῶς κατῆγον ἀπὸ τῆς ἄκρας καὶ κατέστησαν ἐπὶ [12] τῶν ἐμβόλων. πρὸς δὲ τὴν ὄψιν οἱ πολλοί, καίπερ μιγάδες ὄντες καὶ παρεσκευασμένοι θορυβεῖν, διέτρεσαν καὶ τὸ μέλλον ἐδέχοντο κόσμῳ [13] καὶ σιωπῇ· προελθόντος δ’ αὐτοῦ πάντες ἡσυχίαν τῷ λόγῳ παρέσχον. ὅτι δ’ οὐ πᾶσι πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἐγεγόνει τὸ ἔργον, ἐδήλωσαν ἀρξαμένου λέγειν Κίννα καὶ κατηγορεῖν Καίσαρος, ἀναρρηγνύμενοι πρὸς ὀργὴν καὶ κακῶς τὸν Κίνναν λέγοντες, ὥστε πάλιν τοὺς ἄνδρας εἰς τὸ Καπετώλιον ἀπελθεῖν.

[14] ἔνθα δὴ δεδιὼς πολιορκίαν ὁ Βροῦτος ἀπέπεμπε τοὺς ἀρίστους τῶν συναναβάντων, οὐκ ἀξιῶν τῆς αἰτίας μὴ μετέχοντας αὐτοὺς συνυποδύεσθαι τὸν κίνδυνον.

[19] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ τῆς βουλῆς συνελθούσης εἰς τὸ τῆς Γῆς ἱερόν, Ἀντωνίου δὲ καὶ Πλάγκου καὶ Κικέρωνος εἰπόντων περὶ ἀμνηστίας καὶ ὁμονοίας, ἔδοξε μὴ μόνον ἄδειαν εἶναι τοῖς ἀνδράσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ γνώμην ὑπὲρ τιμῶν προθεῖναι τοὺς ὑπάτους· καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐπιψηφισάμενοι [2] διελύθησαν. Ἀντωνίου δὲ τὸν υἱὸν εἰς τὸ Καπετώλιον ὁμηρεύσοντα πέμψαντος, κατῆλθον οἱ περὶ Βροῦτον, ἀσπασμοί τε καὶ δεξιώσεις ἐγένοντο [3] πάντων ἀναμειχθέντων, καὶ Κάσσιον μὲν Ἀντώνιος εἱστία παραλαβών, Βροῦτον δὲ Λέπιδος, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ὥς τις εἶχε πρὸς ἕκαστον ἢ συνηθείας [4] ἢ φιλοφροσύνης. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ πάλιν συνελθόντες οἱ βουλευταί, πρῶτον μὲν Ἀντωνίῳ τιμὰς ἔδοσαν, ὡς καταπαύσαντι πολέμων ἐμφυλίων ἀρχήν, ἔπειτα τῶν περὶ Βροῦτον ἦσαν ἔπαινοι τῶν παρόντων, καὶ τέλος ἐπαρχιῶν [5] διανομαί. Βρούτῳ μὲν γὰρ ἐψηφίσαντο Κρήτην, Κασσίῳ δὲ Λιβύην, Τρεβωνίῳ δ’ Ἀσίαν, καὶ Κίμβρῳ Βιθυνίαν, τῷ δ’ ἑτέρῳ Βρούτῳ τὴν περὶ τὸν Ἠριδανὸν Γαλατίαν.

[20] [1] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα περὶ τῶν Καίσαρος διαθηκῶν καὶ ταφῆς αὐτοῦ λόγων ἐμπεσόντων, καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἀντώνιον ἀξιούντων τάς τε διαθήκας ἀναγνωσθῆναι καὶ τοῦ σώματος ἐκφορὰν γενέσθαι μὴ κεκρυμμένην μηδ’ ἄτιμον, ὡς μὴ καὶ τοῦτο παροξύνῃ τὸν δῆμον, Κάσσιος μὲν ἰσχυρῶς ἀντέλεγεν, εἶξε δὲ Βροῦτος καὶ συνεχώρησε, δεύτερον ἁμαρτεῖν τοῦτο δόξας.

[2] καὶ γὰρ Ἀντωνίου φεισάμενος αἰτίαν ἔσχεν ἐπιτειχίσαι τῇ συνωμοσίᾳ βαρὺν καὶ δύσμαχον πολέμιον, καὶ τὰ περὶ τὴν ταφὴν ὃν ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἠξίου [3] τρόπον ἐάσας γενέσθαι τοῦ παντὸς σφαλῆναι. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἐν ταῖς διαθήκαις δεδομένων κατ’ ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίοις πᾶσι δραχμῶν ἑβδομήκοντα πέντε, καὶ τῷ δήμῳ τῶν πέραν τοῦ ποταμοῦ κήπων ἀπολελειμμένων, οὗ νῦν ἐστι Τύχης ἱερόν, εὔνοια θαυμαστὴ καὶ πόθος αὐτοῦ τοὺς πολίτας [4] εἷλεν· ἔπειτα, τοῦ σώματος εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν κομισθέντος, Ἀντώνιος ἔπαινον ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστὶ διεξελθών, καὶ τὰ πλήθη κινούμενα πρὸς τὸν λόγον ὁρῶν, εἰς οἶκτον μετέβαλε, καὶ τὴν ἐσθῆτα λαβὼν τοῦ Καίσαρος ᾑμαγμένην ἀνέπτυξεν, ἐπιδεικνύμενος τὰς διακοπὰς καὶ τῶν τραυμάτων τὸ πλῆθος.

[5] ἦν οὖν ἰδεῖν οὐδὲν ἔτι κόσμῳ γινόμενον, ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν ἐβόων τοὺς ἀνδροφόνους ἀναιρεῖν, οἱ δ’, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ Κλωδίου τοῦ δημαγωγοῦ πρότερον, ἀπὸ τῶν ἐργαστηρίων τὰ βάθρα καὶ τὰς τραπέζας ἀνασπῶντες καὶ συγκομίζοντες [6] εἰς ταὐτό, παμμεγέθη πυρὰν ἔνησαν, καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν ἐπιθέντες ἐν μέσῳ πολλῶν μὲν ἱερῶν πολλῶν δ’ ἀσύλων καὶ ἀβεβήλων τόπων καθήγιζον.

[7] ὡς δὲ τὸ πῦρ ἐξέλαμψεν, ἀλλαχόθεν ἄλλος προσφερόμενοι καὶ δαλοὺς ἀνασπῶντες ἡμιφλέκτους, διέθεον ἐπὶ τὰς οἰκίας τῶν ἀνῃρηκότων αὐτὸν ὡς ἐμπρήσοντες· ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν εὖ πεφραγμένοι πρότερον, ἀπεκρούσαντο [8] τὸν κίνδυνον· ἦν δέ τις Κίννας, ποιητικὸς ἀνὴρ οὐδὲν τῆς αἰτίας [9] μετέχων, ἀλλὰ καὶ φίλος Καίσαρος γεγονώς. οὗτος ὄναρ ᾤετο καλούμενος ὑπὸ Καίσαρος ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἀρνεῖσθαι, τὸν δὲ λιπαρεῖν καὶ βιάζεσθαι, τέλος δ’ ἄγειν λαβόμενον τῆς χειρὸς εἰς ἀχανῆ τόπον καὶ σκοτεινόν, αὐτὸν [10] δ’ ἄκοντα καὶ τεθαμβημένον ἕπεσθαι. ταύτην ἰδόντι τὴν ὄψιν αὐτῷ συνέβη πυρέττειν διὰ νυκτός· ὅμως δ’ ἕωθεν ἐκκομιζομένου τοῦ σώματος, αἰδούμενος μὴ παρεῖναι, προῆλθεν εἰς τὸν ὄχλον ἤδη διαγριαινόμενον.

[11] ὀφθεὶς δὲ καὶ δόξας οὐχ ὅσπερ ἦν Κίννας εἶναι, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος ὁ Καίσαρα πρὸς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἔναγχος λοιδορήσας, διεσπάσθη.

[21] [1] Τοῦτο τὸ πάθος μάλιστα μετά γε τὴν Ἀντωνίου μεταβολὴν δείσαντες οἱ περὶ Βροῦτον ἀνεχώρησαν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, καὶ διέτριβον ἐν Ἀντίῳ τὸ πρῶτον, ὡς ὅταν παρακμάσῃ καὶ μαρανθῇ τὸ τῆς ὀργῆς, αὖθις εἰς [2] Ῥώμην κατιόντες. ὃ ῥᾳδίως ἔσεσθαι προσεδόκων ἐν πλήθεσι φορὰς ἀσταθμήτους καὶ ταχείας φερομένοις, καὶ τὴν σύγκλητον εὔνουν ἔχοντες, ἣ τοὺς Κίνναν διασπασαμένους χαίρειν ἐάσασα, τοὺς ἐπὶ τὰς οἰκίας τὰς [3] ἐκείνων ἐπελθόντας ἀνεζήτει καὶ συνελάμβανεν. ἤδη δὲ καὶ ὁ δῆμος ἀχθόμενος, Ἀντωνίου σχεδὸν εἰς μοναρχίαν καθισταμένου, Βροῦτον ἐπόθει, καὶ προσεδοκᾶτο τὰς θέας ἄξειν παρὼν αὐτός, ἃς ὤφειλε στρατηγῶν [4] παρασχεῖν. αἰσθόμενος δὲ πολλοὺς τῶν ὑπὸ Καίσαρι στρατευσαμένων καὶ γῆν καὶ πόλεις παρ’ ἐκείνου λαβόντων ἐπιβουλεύοντας αὐτῷ καὶ κατ’ ὀλίγους παρεισρέοντας εἰς τὴν πόλιν, οὐκ ἐθάρρησεν ἐλθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὁ δῆμος ἐθεᾶτο μὴ παρόντος ἐκείνου τὰς θέας, ἀφειδῶς πάνυ χορηγουμένας [5] καὶ περιττῶς. θηρία τε γὰρ πάμπολλα συνεωνημένος, ἐκέλευσε μηδὲν ἀποδόσθαι μηδ’ ὑπολιπεῖν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι καταχρήσασθαι, καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν [6] Διόνυσον τεχνιτῶν αὐτὸς εἰς Νέαν πόλιν καταβὰς ἐνέτυχε πλείστοις· περὶ δὲ Κανουτίου τινὸς εὐημεροῦντος ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις ἔγραφε πρὸς τοὺς φίλους, ὅπως πείσαντες αὐτὸν εἰσαγάγωσιν· Ἑλλήνων γὰρ οὐδένα βιασθῆναι προσήκειν. ἔγραφε δὲ καὶ Κικέρωνι πάντως παρατυχεῖν ταῖς θέαις δεόμενος (cf. Cic. ad Att. 15, 26, 1).

[22] [1] Ἐν τοιαύτῃ δὲ καταστάσει τῶν πραγμάτων ὄντων, ἑτέρα γίνεται μεταβολή, τοῦ νέου Καίσαρος ἐπελθόντος. οὗτος ἦν μὲν ἐξ ἀδελφιδῆς Καίσαρος, γράμματι δὲ παῖς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ κληρονόμος ἀπολελειμμένος.

[2] ἐν δ’ Ἀπολλωνίᾳ διέτριβεν ὅτε Καῖσαρ ἀνῃρέθη, σχολάζων περὶ λόγους [3] κἀκεῖνον ἐπὶ Πάρθους ἐλαύνειν εὐθὺς ἐγνωκότα προσμένων. ἅμα δὲ τῷ πυθέσθαι τὸ πάθος ἦλθεν εἰς Ῥώμην, καὶ δημαγωγίας ἀρχὴν τοὔνομα Καίσαρος θέμενος ἑαυτῷ, καὶ διανέμων τὸ καταλειφθὲν ἀργύριον τοῖς πολίταις, Ἀντώνιόν τε κατεστασίαζε, καὶ χρήματα διαδιδοὺς συνίστη καὶ [4] συνῆγε πολλοὺς τῶν ὑπὸ Καίσαρι στρατευσαμένων. ἐπεὶ δὲ Κικέρων τῷ πρὸς Ἀντώνιον μίσει τὰ Καίσαρος ἔπραττε, τούτῳ μὲν ὁ Βροῦτος ἐπέπληττεν ἰσχυρῶς, γράφων ὡς οὐ δεσπότην βαρύνοιτο Κικέρων, ἀλλὰ μισοῦντα δεσπότην φοβοῖτο, καὶ πολιτεύοιτο δουλείας αἵρεσιν φιλανθρώπου, γράφων καὶ λέγων (fam. 10, 28, 3) ὡς χρηστός ἐστι Καῖσαρ· οἱ δὲ πρόγονοι [5] φησὶν ἡμῶν οὐδὲ πατέρας δεσπότας ὑπέμενον, αὐτῷ δ’ εἰς τοῦτο καιροῦ μήτε πολεμεῖν βεβαίως δεδόχθαι μήθ’ ἡσυχάζειν, ἀλλ’ ἓν μόνον εἶναι [6] βεβουλευμένον, τὸ μὴ δουλεύειν. θαυμάζειν δὲ Κικέρωνος, εἰ πόλεμον μὲν ἐμφύλιον καὶ κινδυνώδη δέδοικεν, αἰσχρὰν δὲ καὶ ἄδοξον εἰρήνην οὐ φοβεῖται, τοῦ δ’ Ἀντώνιον ἐκβαλεῖν τῆς τυραννίδος μισθὸν αἰτεῖ τὸ Καίσαρα καταστῆσαι τύραννον.

[23] [1] Ἐν μὲν οὖν ταῖς πρώταις ἐπιστολαῖς τοιοῦτος ὁ Βροῦτος· ἤδη δὲ τῶν μὲν ὡς Καίσαρα, τῶν δ’ ὡς Ἀντώνιον διισταμένων, ὠνίων δὲ τῶν στρατοπέδων ὥσπερ ὑπὸ κήρυκι προστιθεμένων τῷ πλέον διδόντι, παντάπασιν ἀπογνοὺς τῶν πραγμάτων ἔγνω καταλιπεῖν Ἰταλίαν, καὶ πεζῇ διὰ [2] Λευκανίας εἰς Ἐλέαν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ἧκεν. ὅθεν ἡ Πορκία μέλλουσα πάλιν εἰς Ῥώμην ἀποτραπέσθαι, λανθάνειν μὲν ἐπειρᾶτο περιπαθῶς ἔχουσα, [3] γραφὴ δέ τις αὐτὴν προὔδωκε, τἆλλα γενναίαν οὖσαν. ἦν γὰρ ἐκ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν διάθεσις, προπεμπόμενος Ἕκτωρ ὑπ’ Ἀνδρομάχης, κομιζομένης [4] παρ’ αὐτοῦ τὸ παιδίον, ἐκείνῳ δὲ προσβλεπούσης. ταῦτα θεωμένην τὴν Πορκίαν ἡ τοῦ πάθους εἰκὼν ἐξέτηξεν εἰς δάκρυα, καὶ πολλάκις φοιτῶσα [5] τῆς ἡμέρας ἔκλαιεν. Ἀκιλίου δέ τινος τῶν Βρούτου φίλων τὰ πρὸς Ἕκτορα τῆς Ἀνδρομάχης ἔπη διελθόντος (Il. 6, 429 sq.)·

Ἕκτορ, ἀτὰρ σύ μοί ἐσσι πατὴρ καὶ πότνια μήτηρ

ἠδὲ κασίγνητος, σὺ δέ μοι θαλερὸς παρακοίτης,

[6] μειδιάσας ὁ Βροῦτος ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐμοί γ’ εἶπε πρὸς Πορκίαν ἔπεισι φάναι τὰ τοῦ Ἕκτορος (Il. 6, 490 sq.)·

‹ἀλλ’ εἰς οἶκον ἰοῦσα τὰ σαυτῆς ἔργα κόμιζε,›

ἱστόν τ’ ἠλακάτην τε καὶ ἀμφιπόλοισι κέλευε·

[7] σώματος γὰρ ἀπολείπεται φύσει τῶν ἴσων ἀνδραγαθημάτων, γνώμῃ δ’ ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς ἀριστεύσει. ταῦτα μὲν ὁ τῆς Πορκίας υἱὸς ἱστόρηκε Βύβλος (HRR II 51).

[24] [1] Ἀναχθεὶς δ’ ὁ Βροῦτος ἐκεῖθεν ἐπ’ Ἀθηνῶν ἔπλει. δεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου προθύμως αὐτὸν εὐφημίαις καὶ ψηφίσμασι, διῃτᾶτο μὲν παρὰ ξένῳ τινί, Θεομνήστου δ’ ἀκροώμενος τοῦ Ἀκαδημιακοῦ καὶ Κρατίππου τοῦ Περιπατητικοῦ καὶ συμφιλοσοφῶν, ἐδόκει παντάπασιν ἀργεῖν καὶ [2] σχολάζειν. ἔπραττε δὲ τὰ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον ἀνυπόπτως. καὶ γὰρ εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἔπεμψεν Ἡρόστρατον, οἰκειούμενος τοὺς ἐπὶ τῶν ἐκεῖ στρατοπέδων, καὶ τοὺς σχολάζοντας ἀπὸ Ῥώμης ἐν ἄστει νέους ἀνελάμβανε καὶ [3] συνεῖχεν. ὧν ἦν καὶ Κικέρωνος υἱός, ὃν ἐπαινεῖ διαφερόντως καί φησιν, (cf. Cic. ad Brut. 9, 3 `2, 3] 6), εἴτ’ ἐγρήγορεν εἴτ’ ἐνυπνιάζεται, θαυμάζειν [4] οὕτω γενναῖον ὄντα καὶ μισοτύραννον. ἀρξάμενος δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων ἀναφανδὸν ἅπτεσθαι, καὶ πυθόμενος πλοῖα Ῥωμαϊκὰ μεστὰ χρημάτων ἐξ Ἀσίας προσφέρεσθαι καὶ στρατηγὸν ἐπιπλεῖν ‹Ἀπουλήιον›, ἄνδρα χαρίεντα [5] καὶ γνώριμον, ἀπήντησεν αὐτῷ περὶ Κάρυστον. ἐντυχὼν δὲ καὶ πείσας καὶ παραλαβὼν τὰ πλοῖα, λαμπροτέραν ὑποδοχὴν ἐποιεῖτο· καὶ γὰρ [6] ἦν ἡμέρα καθ’ ἣν ἐγεγόνει πρῶτον ὁ Βροῦτος. ὡς οὖν ἐλθόντες εἰς τὸ πίνειν ἐπιχύσεις ἐποιοῦντο νίκης τε Βρούτου καὶ Ῥωμαίων ἐλευθερίας, ἔτι μᾶλλον αὐτοὺς ῥῶσαι βουλόμενος, ᾔτησε ποτήριον μεῖζον, καὶ λαβὼν ἀπ’ οὐδεμιᾶς προφάσεως ἀνεφώνησε τὸν στίχον τοῦτον (Il. 16, 849)·

ἀλλά με μοῖρ’ ὀλοὴ καὶ Λητοῦς ἔκτανεν υἱός.

[7] ἔτι δὲ καὶ πρὸς τούτοις ἱστοροῦσιν, ὅτε τὴν τελευταίαν ἐν Φιλίπποις μαχούμενος ἐξῄει μάχην, σύνθημα παρ’ αὐτοῦ τοῖς στρατιώταις Ἀπόλλωνα δοθῆναι. διὸ καὶ τῆς συμφορᾶς τίθενται σημεῖον ἐκείνην τὴν ἀναφώνησιν.

[25] [1] Ἐκ τούτου πεντήκοντα μὲν αὐτῷ μυριάδας Ἀντίστιος ἀφ’ ὧν ἦγε καὶ αὐτὸς εἰς Ἰταλίαν χρημάτων δίδωσιν, ὅσοι δὲ περὶ Θεσσαλίαν ἔτι τῆς Πομπηΐου στρατιᾶς ἐπλανῶντο, συνέρρεον ἀσμένως πρὸς αὐτόν· ἱππεῖς δὲ πεντακοσίους ἀφείλετο Κίννα πρὸς Δολοβέλλαν ἄγοντος εἰς Ἀσίαν, [2] ἐπιπλεύσας τε τῇ Δημητριάδι πολλῶν ὅπλων ἐξαγομένων πρὸς Ἀντώνιον, ἃ Καίσαρος τοῦ προτέρου κελεύσαντος ἐπὶ τὸν Παρθικὸν ἐποιήθη πόλεμον, ἐκράτησεν.

[3] Ὁρτησίου δὲ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ παραδόντος αὐτῷ Μακεδονίαν καὶ τῶν ἐν κύκλῳ βασιλέων καὶ δυναστῶν συνισταμένων καὶ προστιθεμένων, ἀγγέλλεται Γάϊος ὁ Ἀντωνίου ἀδελφὸς ἐξ Ἰταλίας διαβεβηκὼς [καὶ] βαδίζειν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὰς δυνάμεις, ἃς ἐν Ἐπιδάμνῳ καὶ Ἀπολλωνίᾳ Βατίνιος συνεῖχε.

[4] βουλόμενος οὖν φθάσαι καὶ προλαβεῖν ὁ Βροῦτος, ἐξαίφνης ἀναστήσας τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ, διὰ χωρίων χαλεπῶν νιφόμενος ἐπορεύετο, καὶ πολὺ προῆλθε τοὺς κομίζοντας τὸ ἄριστον. ἐγγὺς οὖν Ἐπιδάμνου γενόμενος διὰ [5] κόπον καὶ ψῦχος ἐβουλιμίασε. συμπίπτει δὲ μάλιστα τὸ πάθος χιόνος οὔσης πονοῦσι καὶ κτήνεσι καὶ ἀνθρώποις, εἴτε τοῦ θερμοῦ διὰ περίψυξιν καὶ πύκνωσιν, ὅταν ἐντὸς ἅπαν καθειρχθῇ, τὴν τροφὴν ἁθρόως ἀναλίσκοντος, εἴτε δριμεῖα καὶ λεπτὴ τῆς χιόνος διαλυομένης ἰοῦσα πνοὴ τέμνει [6] τὸ σῶμα καὶ διαφθείρει τὸ θερμὸν ἐξ αὐτοῦ θύραζε διασπειρόμενον. τὰς γὰρ ἐφιδρώσεις παρέχειν δοκεῖ τὸ θερμὸν ἀπαντῶντι τῷ ψυχρῷ, περὶ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν σβεννύμενον. ὑπὲρ ὧν ἐν ἑτέροις μᾶλλον ἠπόρηται (quaest. conviv. 6, 8 6 mor. 693f sqq.)

[26] [1] Λιποθυμοῦντος δὲ τοῦ Βρούτου, καὶ μηδενὸς ἔχοντος ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ μηδὲν ἐδώδιμον, ἠναγκάσθησαν οἱ περὶ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους [2] καταφυγεῖν, καὶ ταῖς πύλαις προσελθόντες ἄρτον ᾔτουν τοὺς φύλακας. οἱ δὲ διακούσαντες τὸ σύμπτωμα τοῦ Βρούτου, παρῆσαν αὐτοί, καὶ σιτία καὶ ποτὰ κομίζοντες. ἀνθ’ ὧν ὁ Βροῦτος, ὡς τὴν πόλιν παρέλαβεν, οὐ μόνον τούτοις, ἀλλὰ καὶ πᾶσι διὰ τούτους φιλανθρώπως ἐχρήσατο.

[3] Γάϊος δ’ Ἀντώνιος Ἀπολλωνίᾳ προσβαλών, ἐκεῖ τοὺς ἐγγὺς ὄντας ἐκάλει στρατιώτας. ἐπεὶ δ’ οὗτοί τε πρὸς Βροῦτον ᾤχοντο, καὶ τοὺς Ἀπολλωνιάτας ᾔσθετο τὰ Βρούτου φρονοῦντας, ἐκλιπὼν τὴν πόλιν εἰς [4] Βουθρωτὸν ἐβάδιζε. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἀπόλλυσι τρεῖς σπείρας, καθ’ ὁδὸν ὑπὸ Βρούτου κατακοπείσας· ἔπειτα τοὺς περὶ τὴν Βυλλίδα τόπους προκαταληφθέντας ἐπιχειρῶν ἐκβιάζεσθαι καὶ μάχην συνάψας Κικέρωνι, νικᾶται· τούτῳ γὰρ ὁ Βροῦτος ἐχρῆτο στρατηγῷ, καὶ πολλὰ δι’ αὐτοῦ [5] κατώρθωσε. λαβὼν δὲ τὸν Γάϊον ἐν χωρίοις ἑλώδεσι μακρὰν διεσπασμένον, οὐκ εἴασεν ἐμβαλεῖν, ἀλλὰ περιίππευσε φείδεσθαι κελεύων, ὡς μετὰ μικρὸν ἰδίων ἐσομένων. ὃ καὶ συνέβη· παρέδοσαν γὰρ ἑαυτοὺς καὶ τὸν [6] στρατηγόν, ὥστε μεγάλην ἤδη περὶ τὸν Βροῦτον δύναμιν εἶναι. χρόνον μὲν οὖν πολὺν ἐν τιμῇ τὸν Γάϊον ἦγε, καὶ τὰ παράσημα τῆς ἀρχῆς οὐκ ἀφῄρει, καίπερ ὥς φασιν ἄλλων τε πολλῶν καὶ Κικέρωνος ἀπὸ Ῥώμης γραφόντων καὶ κελευόντων ἀναιρεῖν (ad Brut. 9, 5 [2, 5], 5. 9, 7 [1, 2], [7] 3. 9. 10 [1, 3a])· ἀρξάμενον δὲ κρύφα τοῖς ἡγεμόσι διαλέγεσθαι καὶ [8] ποιήσαντα νεωτερισμὸν ἐνθέμενος εἰς ναῦν ἐφύλαττε. τῶν δὲ διαφθαρέντων στρατιωτῶν εἰς Ἀπολλωνίαν ἀποστάντων καὶ καλούντων ἐκεῖ τὸν Βροῦτον, οὐκ ἔφη τοῦτο πάτριον εἶναι Ῥωμαίοις, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνους πρὸς τὸν ἄρχοντα χρῆναι βαδίζοντας αὐτοὺς παραιτεῖσθαι τὴν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἡμαρτημένοις ὀργήν. ἐλθοῦσι δὲ καὶ δεομένοις συγγνώμην ἔδωκε.

[27] [1] Μέλλοντι δ’ αὐτῷ διαβαίνειν εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν ἧκεν ἀγγελία περὶ τῆς ἐν Ῥώμῃ μεταβολῆς. ὁ γὰρ νέος Καῖσαρ ηὐξήθη μὲν ὑπὸ τῆς βουλῆς ἐπ’ Ἀντώνιον, ἐκβαλὼν δὲ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐκεῖνον, αὐτὸς ἤδη φοβερὸς ἦν, ὑπατείαν τε μνώμενος παρὰ νόμον καὶ στρατεύματα τρέφων μεγάλα, τῆς [2] πόλεως οὐδὲν δεομένης. ὁρῶν δὲ καὶ ταῦτα τὴν βουλὴν βαρυνομένην, καὶ πρὸς τὸν Βροῦτον ἀφορῶσαν ἔξω, καὶ ψηφιζομένην ἐκείνῳ καὶ βεβαιοῦσαν [3] τὰς ἐπαρχίας, ἔδεισε, καὶ τὸν μὲν Ἀντώνιον πέμπων εἰς φιλίαν προὐκαλεῖτο, τὰς δὲ δυνάμεις τῇ πόλει περιστήσας, ὑπατείαν ἔλαβεν οὔπω πάνυ μειράκιον ὤν, ἀλλ’ εἰκοστὸν ἄγων ἔτος, ὡς αὐτὸς ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν εἴρηκεν [4] (HRR II 57). εὐθὺς δὲ δίκας φόνου κατὰ τῶν περὶ τὸν Βροῦτον εἰσῆγεν, ὡς ἄνδρα πρῶτον ἐν ἀρχαῖς ταῖς μεγίσταις ἀνῃρηκότων ἄκριτον, καὶ κατήγορον ἐπέστησε Βρούτου μὲν Λεύκιον Κορνιφίκιον, Κασσίου δὲ Μᾶρκον Ἀγρίππαν· ὠφλίσκανον οὖν τὰς δίκας ἐρήμας, ἀναγκαζομένων [5] φέρειν ψῆφον τῶν δικαστῶν. λέγεται δὲ τοῦ κήρυκος ὥσπερ εἴωθεν ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος τὸν Βροῦτον ἐπὶ τὴν δίκην καλοῦντος, τὸ μὲν πλῆθος ἐπιδήλως στενάξαι, τοὺς δ’ ἀρίστους κύψαντας εἰς γῆν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, Πόπλιον δὲ Σιλίκιον ὀφθῆναι δακρύσαντα, καὶ διὰ τὴν αἰτίαν ταύτην ὀλίγον ὕστερον [6] ἕνα τῶν προγραφέντων ἐπὶ θανάτῳ γενέσθαι. μετὰ ταῦτα διαλλαγέντες οἱ τρεῖς, Καῖσαρ Ἀντώνιος Λέπιδος, διενείμαντο τὰς ἐπαρχίας σφαγάς τε καὶ προγραφὰς ἀνδρῶν διακοσίων ἐποίησαν, ἐν οἷς καὶ Κικέρων ἀπέθανε.

[28] [1]

Τούτων οὖν εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἀπαγγελέντων, ἐκβιασθεὶς ὁ Βροῦτος ἔγραψεν Ὁρτησίῳ κτεῖναι Γάϊον Ἀντώνιον, ὡς δὴ Βρούτῳ τε καὶ Κικέρωνι τιμωρῶν, τῷ μὲν ὄντι φίλῳ, τῷ δὲ καὶ κατὰ γένος προσήκοντι. διὰ ταῦθ’ ὕστερον Ἀντώνιος Ὁρτήσιον ἐν Φιλίπποις λαβὼν τῷ μνήματι τοῦ [2] ἀδελφοῦ προσέσφαξε. Βροῦτος δὲ τῆς Κικέρωνος τελευτῆς τῇ αἰτίᾳ φησὶν αἰσχύνεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ πάθει συναλγεῖν, ἐγκαλεῖν δὲ τοῖς ἐπὶ Ῥώμης φίλοις· δουλεύειν γὰρ αὑτῶν αἰτίᾳ μᾶλλον ἢ τῶν τυραννούντων, καὶ καρτερεῖν ὁρῶντας καὶ παρόντας ἃ μηδ’ ἀκούειν αὐτοῖς ἀνεκτὸν ἦν.

[3] Περαιώσας δὲ τὸν στρατὸν εἰς Ἀσίαν ἤδη λαμπρὸν ὄντα, ναυτικὸν μὲν ἐξηρτύετο στόλον ἐν Βιθυνίᾳ καὶ περὶ Κύζικον, πεζῇ δ’ αὐτὸς ἐπιὼν καθίστατο τὰς πόλεις, καὶ τοῖς δυνάσταις ἐχρημάτιζε, καὶ πρὸς Κάσσιον [4] ἔπεμπεν εἰς Συρίαν, ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου μετακαλῶν· οὐ γὰρ ἀρχὴν κτωμένους αὑτοῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐλευθεροῦντας τὴν πατρίδα τὴν δύναμιν ᾗ καταλύσουσι τοὺς [5] τυράννους συνάγοντας πλανᾶσθαι· δεῖν οὖν μεμνημένους καὶ φυλάττοντας τὴν ὑπόθεσιν μὴ μακρὰν ἀπηρτῆσθαι τῆς Ἰταλίας, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖσε σπεύδειν [6] καὶ βοηθεῖν τοῖς πολίταις, ὑπακούσαντος δὲ τοῦ Κασσίου καὶ καταβαίνοντος, ἀπήντα, καὶ περὶ Σμύρναν ἀλλήλοις ἐνετύγχανον, ἀφ’ οὗ πρῶτον ἐν [7] Πειραιεῖ χωρισθέντες ὥρμησαν, ὁ μὲν εἰς Συρίαν, ὁ δ’ εἰς Μακεδονίαν. ἦν οὖν ἡδονή τε μεγάλη καὶ θάρσος αὐτοῖς ἐκ τῆς παρούσης ἑκατέρῳ δυνάμεως. ὁρμήσαντες γὰρ ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ὅμοια φυγάδων τοῖς ἀτιμοτάτοις ἀχρήματοι καὶ ἄνοπλοι, μὴ ναῦν ἑνήρη, μὴ στρατιώτην ἕνα, μὴ πόλιν ἔχοντες, οὐ πολλοῦ πάνυ χρόνου διαγενομένου συνῆλθον εἰς ταὐτό, καὶ ναυσὶ καὶ πεζῷ καὶ ἵπποις καὶ χρήμασιν ἀξιόμαχοι διαγωνίσασθαι περὶ τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίας ὄντες.

[29] [1] Ἐβούλετο μὲν οὖν ἴσον ἔχειν τιμῆς καὶ παρέχειν ὁ Κάσσιος, ἔφθανε δ’ ὁ Βροῦτος ὡς τὰ πολλὰ φοιτῶν πρὸς αὐτόν, ἡλικίᾳ τε προὔχοντα καὶ [2] σώματι πονεῖν ὁμοίως μὴ δυναμένῳ χρώμενον. ἦν δὲ δόξα Κάσσιον μὲν εἶναι δεινὸν ἐν τοῖς πολεμικοῖς, ὀργῇ δὲ τραχὺν καὶ φόβῳ μᾶλλον ἄρχοντα, [3] πρὸς δὲ τοὺς συνήθεις ὑγρότερον τῷ γελοίῳ καὶ φιλοσκώπτην· Βροῦτον δὲ λέγουσι δι’ ἀρετὴν φιλεῖσθαι μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν, ἐρᾶσθαι δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων, θαυμάζεσθαι δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρίστων, μισεῖσθαι δὲ μηδ’ ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, ὅτι πρᾷος ‹ἦν› ὁ ἀνὴρ διαφερόντως καὶ μεγαλόφρων καὶ πρὸς πᾶσαν ὀργὴν καὶ ἡδονὴν καὶ πλεονεξίαν ἀπαθής, ὄρθιον δὲ τὴν γνώμην [4] καὶ ἄκαμπτον ἑστῶσαν ὑπὲρ τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ δικαίου διαφυλάττων. καὶ μέγιστον ὑπῆρχεν αὐτῷ πρὸς εὔνοιαν καὶ δόξαν ἡ τῆς προαιρέσεως πίστις. οὔτε γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ὁ μέγας Πομπήϊος, εἰ Καίσαρα καθεῖλεν, ἠλπίζετο βεβαίως προήσεσθαι τοῖς νόμοις τὴν δύναμιν, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ τὰ πράγματα καθέξειν, ὑπατείας ὀνόματι καὶ δικτατορίας ἤ τινος ἄλλης μαλακωτέρας ἀρχῆς [5] παραμυθούμενος τὸν δῆμον· Κάσσιόν τε τοῦτον, σφοδρὸν ἄνδρα καὶ θυμοειδῆ καὶ πολλαχοῦ πρὸς τὸ κερδαλέον ἐκφερόμενον τοῦ δικαίου, παντὸς μᾶλλον ᾤοντο πολεμεῖν καὶ πλανᾶσθαι καὶ κινδυνεύειν αὑτῷ τινα δυναστείαν [6] κατασκευαζόμενον, οὐκ ἐλευθερίαν τοῖς πολίταις. τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἔτι τούτων πρεσβύτερα, Κίνναι καὶ Μάριοι καὶ Κάρβωνες, ἆθλον ἐν μέσῳ καὶ λείαν προθέμενοι τὴν πατρίδα, μονονουχὶ ῥητῶς ὑπὲρ τυραννίδος [7] ἐπολέμησαν. Βρούτῳ δὲ λέγουσι μηδὲ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς προβαλεῖν τοιαύτην διαβολήν, ἀλλ’ Ἀντωνίου γε καὶ πολλοὺς ἀκοῦσαι λέγοντος, ὡς μόνον οἴοιτο Βροῦτον ἐπιθέσθαι Καίσαρι προαχθέντα τῇ λαμπρότητι καὶ τῷ φαινομένῳ καλῷ τῆς πράξεως, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνδρα συστῆναι [8] μισοῦντας καὶ φθονοῦντας. ὅθεν Βροῦτος οὐ τῇ δυνάμει τοσοῦτον ὅσον τῇ [9] ἀρετῇ δῆλός ἐστιν ἐξ ὧν γράφει πεποιθώς. γράφει δὲ πρὸς Ἀττικόν, ἤδη τῷ κινδύνῳ πλησιάζων, ἐν τῷ καλλίστῳ τῆς τύχης εἶναι τὰ καθ’ αὑτόν· ἢ γὰρ νικήσας ἐλευθερώσειν τὸν Ῥωμαίων δῆμον, ἢ δουλείας ἀποθανὼν ἀπαλλαγήσεσθαι, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀσφαλῶς αὐτοῖς καὶ βεβαίως ἐχόντων, ἓν ἄδηλον εἶναι, πότερον βιώσονται μετ’ ἐλευθερίας ἢ τεθνήξονται.

[10] Μᾶρκον δ’ Ἀντώνιον ἀξίαν φησὶ τῆς ἀνοίας διδόναι δίκην, ὃς ἐν Βρούτοις καὶ Κασσίοις καὶ Κάτωσι συναριθμεῖσθαι δυνάμενος, προσθήκην ἑαυτὸν [11] Ὀκταβίῳ δέδωκε· κἂν μὴ νῦν ἡττηθῇ μετ’ ἐκείνου, μικρὸν ὕστερον ἐκείνῳ μαχεῖται. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἀποθεσπίσαι καλῶς πρὸς τὸ μέλλον ἔοικεν.

[30] [1] Ἐν δὲ τῇ Σμύρνῃ τότε τῶν χρημάτων, ἃ πολλὰ συνειλόχει Κάσσιος, ἠξίου μεταλαβεῖν· τὰ γὰρ ὄντα κατανηλωκέναι, ναυπηγούμενος στόλον [2] τοσοῦτον ᾧ πᾶσαν ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῖς ἕξουσι τὴν ἐντὸς θάλασσαν. οὐκ εἴων μὲν οὖν τὸν Κάσσιον οἱ φίλοι διδόναι, λέγοντες ὡς οὐ δίκαιον, ἃ σὺ φειδόμενος διαφυλάττεις καὶ ‹σὺν› φθόνῳ συνάγεις, ἐκεῖνον λαβόντα δημαγωγεῖν καὶ χαρίζεσθαι τοῖς στρατιώταις· οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ τρίτον μέρος ἁπάντων.

[3] Καὶ πάλιν διαστάντες ἐπὶ τὰς προσηκούσας ἑκατέρῳ πράξεις, Κάσσιος μὲν ἑλὼν Ῥόδον οὐκ ἐπιεικῶς ἐχρῆτο τοῖς πράγμασι, καὶ ταῦτα περὶ τὴν εἴσοδον τοῖς προσαγορεύουσιν αὐτὸν βασιλέα καὶ κύριον ἀποκρινάμενος· οὔτε βασιλεὺς οὔτε κύριος, τοῦ δὲ κυρίου καὶ βασιλέως φονεὺς καὶ κολαστής· [4] Βροῦτος δὲ Λυκίους ᾔτει χρήματα καὶ στρατόν. ἐπεὶ δὲ Ναυκράτης ὁ δημαγωγὸς ἀνέπεισε τὰς πόλεις ἀφίστασθαι, καὶ λόφους τινὰς ὡς εἴρξοντες παρόδου τὸν Βροῦτον κατελάβοντο, πρῶτον μὲν ἀριστοποιουμένοις αὐτοῖς ἐπέπεμψεν ἱππεῖς, ὑφ’ ὧν ἑξακόσιοι διεφθάρησαν· [5] ἔπειτα [τὰ] χωρία καὶ πολίχνας λαμβάνων, ἀπέλυεν ἄνευ λύτρων ἅπαντας, [6] ὡς προσαξόμενος εὐνοίᾳ τὸ ἔθνος. οἱ δ’ ἦσαν αὐθάδεις, ἃ μὲν ἐβλάπτοντο πρὸς ὀργὴν τιθέμενοι, τῆς δ’ ἐπιεικείας καὶ φιλανθρωπίας καταφρονοῦντες, ἄχρι οὗ συνελάσας εἰς Ξάνθον αὐτῶν τοὺς μαχιμωτάτους ἐπολιόρκει.

[7] τοῦ δὲ ποταμοῦ παρὰ τὴν πόλιν παραρρέοντος ὑπονηχόμενοι διεδίδρασκον· ἡλίσκοντο δὲ δικτύων διὰ πόρου καθιεμένων εἰς βυθόν, ὧν τὰ ἄκρα [8] κώδωσι προσηρτημένοις διεσήμαινεν εὐθὺς τὸν ἐνσχεθέντα. μηχαναῖς δέ τισι τῶν Ξανθίων νύκτωρ ἐπιδραμόντων καὶ πῦρ ἐμβαλόντων, ὡς ἀπεκλείσθησαν αἰσθομένων τῶν Ῥωμαίων πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος, καὶ πνεῦμα λαμπρὸν ἀνερρίπιζεν ἐπὶ τὰς ἐπάλξεις τὴν φλόγα, τῶν ἐγγὺς οἰκιῶν ἀντιλαμβανομένην, δείσας ὁ Βροῦτος ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως ἐκέλευσε κατασβεννύναι καὶ βοηθεῖν.

[31] [1] Τοὺς δὲ Λυκίους δεινή τις ἐξαίφνης πρὸς ἀπόνοιαν ὁρμὴ καὶ λόγου [2] κρείσσων κατέσχεν, ἣν ἄν τις ἔρωτι θανάτου μάλιστα προσεικάσειεν· οἵ γε μετὰ παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν, ἐλεύθεροί τε καὶ δοῦλοι καὶ πᾶσ’ ἡλικία, τοὺς μὲν πολεμίους πρὸς τὴν φλόγα βοηθοῦντας ἀπὸ τῶν τειχῶν ἔβαλλον, αὐτοὶ δὲ κάλαμον καὶ ξύλα καὶ πᾶν ὑπέκκαυμα προσφέροντες, ἦγον ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν τὸ πῦρ ὀρέγοντες αὐτῷ πᾶσαν ὕλην καὶ πάντα τρόπον ἐξερεθίζοντες [3] καὶ συνεκτρέφοντες. ὡς δ’ ἡ φλὸξ ῥυεῖσα καὶ διαζώσασα πανταχόθεν τὴν πόλιν διέλαμψε πολλή, περιπαθῶν ἐπὶ τοῖς γινομένοις ὁ Βροῦτος ἔξωθεν παρίππευε, προθυμούμενος βοηθεῖν, καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ὀρέγων τοῖς Ξανθίοις ἐδεῖτο φείδεσθαι καὶ σῴζειν τὴν πόλιν, οὐδενὸς αὐτῷ προσέχοντος, [4] ἀλλὰ πάντα τρόπον ἑαυτοὺς ἀπολλύντων, οὐ μόνον ἀνδρῶν τε καὶ γυναικῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ παιδία τὰ μικρὰ μετὰ κραυγῆς καὶ ἀλαλαγμοῦ, τὰ μὲν εἰς πῦρ ἥλλετο, τὰ δ’ ἄνωθεν ἀπὸ τῶν τειχῶν ἐξετραχήλιζεν αὑτά, τὰ δὲ τοῖς ξίφεσι τῶν πατέρων ὑπέβαλλε τὰς σφαγὰς γυμνοῦντα καὶ κελεύοντα [5] παίειν. ὤφθη δὲ τῆς πόλεως διαφθαρείσης γυνή, κρεμαμένη μὲν ἐξ ἀγχόνης, παιδίον δὲ νεκρὸν ἐξηρτημένη τοῦ τραχήλου, λαμπάδι δὲ καιομένῃ [6] τὴν οἰκίαν ὑφάπτουσα. καὶ τοῦ θεάματος τραγικοῦ φανέντος, ἰδεῖν μὲν οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν ὁ Βροῦτος, ἐδάκρυσε δ’ ἀκούσας, καὶ γέρας ἐκήρυξε τῶν στρατιωτῶν ὅστις ἂν δυνηθῇ Λύκιον ἄνδρα περισῶσαι· φασὶ δὲ μόνους [7] ἑκατὸν πεντήκοντα γενέσθαι τοὺς μὴ διαφυγόντας τὸ σωθῆναι. Ξάνθιοι μὲν οὖν διὰ πολλῶν χρόνων ὥσπερ εἱμαρμένην περίοδον διαφθορᾶς ἀποδιδόντες, τὴν τῶν προγόνων ἀνενεώσαντο τῇ τόλμῃ τύχην· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι τὴν πόλιν ὁμοίως ἐπὶ τῶν Περσικῶν κατακαύσαντες ἑαυτοὺς διέφθειραν.

[32] [1] Βροῦτος δὲ τὴν Παταρέων πόλιν ὁρῶν ἀπισχυριζομένην πρὸς αὐτόν, ὤκνει μὲν ἐπιχειρεῖν καὶ διηπορεῖτο, τὴν αὐτὴν δεδιὼς ἀπόνοιαν, ἔχων δὲ [2] γυναῖκας αὐτῶν αἰχμαλώτους ἀφῆκεν ἄνευ λύτρων. αἱ δ’ ἀνδρῶν τε καὶ πατέρων ἐπιφανῶν οὖσαι, διηγούμεναι τὸν Βροῦτον ὡς ἀνὴρ εἴη σωφρονέστατος [3] καὶ δικαιότατος, ἔπεισαν εἶξαι καὶ παραδοῦναι τὴν πόλιν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου καὶ πάντες οἱ λοιποὶ προσεχώρησαν, ἐπιτρέψαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐκείνῳ, [4] τυχόντες δὲ χρηστοῦ καὶ παρ’ ἐλπίδας εὐγνώμονος, ὅς γε, Κασσίου Ῥοδίους ὑπὸ τὸν αὐτὸν χρόνον ἀναγκάσαντος ἰδίᾳ μὲν ὃν ἐκέκτηντο χρυσὸν καὶ ἄργυρον εἰσενεγκεῖν ἅπαντας (ἐξ οὗ συνήχθη περὶ ὀκτακισχίλια τάλαντα), δημοσίᾳ δὲ τὴν πόλιν ἄλλοις πεντακοσίοις ζημιώσαντος, αὐτὸς ἑκατὸν καὶ πεντήκοντα τάλαντα Λυκίους πραξάμενος, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν ἀδικήσας, ἀνέζευξεν ἐπ’ Ἰωνίας.

[33] [1] Πολλὰ μὲν οὖν ἄξια μνήμης ἔργα καὶ τιμαῖς ἀπεδείξατο καὶ κολάσεσι τῶν ἀξίων· ᾧ δ’ αὐτός θ’ ἥσθη μάλιστα καὶ Ῥωμαίων οἱ κράτιστοι, [2] τοῦτο διηγήσομαι. Πομπηΐου Μάγνου προσβαλόντος Αἰγύπτῳ κατὰ Πηλούσιον, ὁπηνίκα τὴν μεγάλην μάχην ἀποβαλὼν ὑπὸ Καίσαρος ἔφυγεν, οἱ τοῦ βασιλέως ἔτι παιδὸς ὄντος ἐπιτροπεύοντες ἐν βουλῇ μετὰ τῶν φίλων ἦσαν, οὐ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ταῖς γνώμαις φερόμενοι· τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ἐδόκει δέχεσθαι, [3] τοῖς δ’ ἀπωθεῖν Αἰγύπτου τὸν ἄνδρα. Θεόδοτος δέ τις Χῖος, ἐπὶ μισθῷ ῥητορικῶν λόγων διδάσκαλος τῷ βασιλεῖ συνών, ἠξιωμένος δὲ τότε τοῦ συνεδρίου δι’ ἐρημίαν ἀνδρῶν βελτιόνων, ἀμφοτέρους διαμαρτάνοντας ἀπέφηνε, καὶ τοὺς ἀναλαβεῖν καὶ τοὺς ἀφεῖναι κελεύοντας τὸν [4] Πομπήϊον· ἓν γὰρ εἶναι συμφέρον ἐκ τῶν παρόντων, δεξαμένους ἀποκτεῖναι· [5] καὶ προσεπεῖπε τοῦ λόγου παυόμενος, ὅτι νεκρὸς οὐ δάκνει. προσθεμένου δὲ τῇ γνώμῃ τοῦ συνεδρίου, παράδειγμα τῶν ἀπίστων καὶ ἀπροσδοκήτων ἔκειτο Πομπήϊος Μᾶγνος, τῆς Θεοδότου ῥητορείας καὶ δεινότητος [6] ἔργον, ὡς αὐτὸς ὁ σοφιστὴς ἔλεγε μεγαλαυχούμενος. ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἐπελθόντος Καίσαρος, οἱ μὲν δίκας τιννύοντες ἀπώλλυντο κακοὶ κακῶς, Θεόδοτος δὲ παρὰ τῆς τύχης χρόνον εἰς ἄδοξον καὶ ἄπορον καὶ πλάνητα βίον ἐπιδανεισάμενος, τότε Βροῦτον ἐπιόντα τὴν Ἀσίαν οὐκ ἔλαθεν, ἀλλ’ ἀναχθεὶς καὶ κολασθεὶς ὄνομα τοῦ θανάτου πλέον ἔσχεν ἢ τοῦ βίου.

[34] [1] Κάσσιον δὲ Βροῦτος εἰς Σάρδεις ἐκάλει, καὶ προσιόντι μετὰ τῶν φίλων ἀπήντησε, καὶ πᾶς ὁ στρατὸς ὡπλισμένος αὐτοκράτορας ἀμφοτέρους [2] προσηγόρευσεν. οἷα δ’ ἐν πράγμασι μεγάλοις καὶ φίλοις πολλοῖς καὶ ἡγεμόσιν αἰτιῶν αὐτοῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐγγενομένων καὶ διαβολῶν, πρὶν ἕτερόν τι ποιεῖν, εὐθὺς ἐκ πορείας καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἐν οἰκήματι γενόμενοι, κεκλεισμένων τῶν θυρῶν καὶ μηδενὸς παρόντος, ἐχρῶντο μέμψεσι πρῶτον, [3] εἶτ’ ἐλέγχοις καὶ κατηγορίαις. ἐκ δὲ τούτου πρὸς δάκρυα καὶ παρρησίαν μετὰ πάθους ἐκφερομένων, θαυμάζοντες οἱ φίλοι τὴν τραχύτητα τῆς ὀργῆς καὶ τὸν τόνον, ἔδεισαν μή τι ἐκ τούτου γένηται· προσελθεῖν [4] δ’ ἀπείρητο. Μᾶρκος δὲ Φαώνιος, ἐραστὴς γεγονὼς Κάτωνος, οὐ λόγῳ μᾶλλον ἢ φορᾷ τινι καὶ πάθει μανικῷ φιλοσοφῶν, ἐβάδιζεν εἴσω πρὸς [5] αὐτούς, κωλυόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν οἰκετῶν. ἀλλ’ ἔργον ἦν ἐπιλαβέσθαι Φαωνίου πρὸς ὁτιοῦν ὀρούσαντος· σφοδρὸς γὰρ ἦν ἐν πᾶσι καὶ πρόχειρος. ἐπεὶ τό γε βουλευτὴν εἶναι Ῥωμαίων ἑαυτὸν οὐδενὸς ἄξιον ἡγεῖτο, τῷ δὲ κυνικῷ τῆς παρρησίας πολλάκις ἀφῄρει τὴν χαλεπότητα, καὶ τὸ ἄκαιρον [6] αὐτοῦ μετὰ παιδιᾶς δεχομένων. βίᾳ δὴ τότε τῶν παρόντων διωσάμενος τὰς θύρας εἰσῆλθε, μετὰ πλάσματος φωνῆς ἔπη περαίνων οἷς τὸν Νέστορα χρώμενον Ὅμηρος πεποίηκεν (Il. 1, 259)·

ἀλλὰ πίθεσθ’· ἄμφω δὲ νεωτέρω ἐστὸν ἐμεῖο,

[7] καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. ἐφ’ οἷς ὁ μὲν Κάσσιος ἐγέλασεν, ὁ δὲ Βροῦτος ἐξέβαλεν αὐτόν, ἁπλόκυνα καὶ ψευδόκυνα προσαγορεύων. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τότε τοῦτο τῆς πρὸς [8] ἀλλήλους διαφορᾶς ποιησάμενοι πέρας, εὐθὺς διελύθησαν. καὶ Κασσίου δεῖπνον παρέχοντος ἐκάλει τοὺς φίλους Βροῦτος. ἤδη δὲ κατακειμένων, Φαώνιος ἧκε λελουμένος· μαρτυρομένου δὲ Βρούτου μὴ κεκλημένον αὐτὸν ἥκειν καὶ κελεύοντος ἀπάγειν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀνωτάτω κλίνην, βίᾳ παρελθὼν εἰς τὴν μέσην κατεκλίθη, καὶ παιδιὰν ὁ πότος ἔσχεν οὐκ ἄχαριν οὐδ’ ἀφιλόσοφον.

[35] [1] Τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ Βροῦτος ἄνδρα Ῥωμαῖον ἐστρατηγηκότα καὶ πεπιστευμένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, Λεύκιον Ὁκέλλαν, Σαρδιανῶν κατηγορούντων [2] ἐπὶ κλοπαῖς, δημοσίᾳ καταγνοὺς ἠτίμωσε. καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα Κάσσιον οὐ μετρίως ἐλύπησεν· αὐτὸς γὰρ ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις ἔμπροσθεν ἐπὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐλεγχθέντας ἀδικήμασι δύο φίλους ἰδίᾳ νουθετήσας, φανερῶς ἀφῆκε, [3] καὶ διετέλει χρώμενος. ὅθεν ᾐτιᾶτο τὸν Βροῦτον ὡς ἄγαν ὄντα νόμιμον καὶ [4] δίκαιον ἐν καιρῷ πολιτείας δεομένῳ καὶ φιλανθρωπίας. ὁ δὲ τῶν εἰδῶν τῶν Μαρτίων ἐκέλευεν αὐτὸν μνημονεύειν ἐκείνων, ἐν αἷς Καίσαρα ἔκτειναν, οὐκ αὐτὸν ἄγοντα καὶ φέροντα πάντας ἀνθρώπους, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρων †[5]δύναμιν ὄντα ταῦτα πρασσόντων· ὡς εἴ τις ἔστι πρόφασις καλὴ μεθ’ ἧς ἀμελεῖται τὸ δίκαιον, ἄμεινον ἦν τοὺς Καίσαρος φίλους ὑπομένειν ἢ τοὺς [6] ἑαυτῶν περιορᾶν ἀδικοῦντας. ἐκείνοις μὲν γὰρ ἀνανδρίας , ἀδικίας δὲ δόξα μετὰ κινδύνων ἡμῖν καὶ πόνων πρόσεστι. τοιαύτη μὲν οὖν ἡ τοῦ Βρούτου προαίρεσις ἦν.

[36] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ διαβαίνειν ἐξ Ἀσίας ἔμελλον, λέγεται τῷ Βρούτῳ μέγα σημεῖον [2] γενέσθαι. φύσει μὲν γὰρ ἦν ἐπεγρήγορος ὁ ἀνήρ, καὶ τὸν ὕπνον εἰς ὀλίγου χρόνου μόριον ἀσκήσει καὶ σωφροσύνῃ συνῆγεν, ἡμέρας μὲν οὐδέποτε κοιμώμενος, νύκτωρ δὲ τοσοῦτον ὅσον οὔτε τι πράττειν οὔτε [3] τῳ διαλέγεσθαι, πάντων ἀναπαυομένων, παρεῖχε. τότε δὲ τοῦ πολέμου συνεστῶτος, ἐν χερσὶν ἔχων τὰς ὑπὲρ τῶν ὅλων πράξεις καὶ τεταμένος τῇ φροντίδι πρὸς τὸ μέλλον, ὁπηνίκα πρῶτον ἀφ’ ἑσπέρας ἐπινυστάξειε τοῖς σιτίοις, ἤδη τὸ λοιπὸν ἐχρῆτο τῇ νυκτὶ πρὸς τὰ κατεπείγοντα τῶν πραγμάτων.

[4] εἰ δὲ συνέλοι καὶ κατοικονομήσειε τὴν περὶ ταῦτα χρείαν, ἀνεγίνωσκε βιβλίον μέχρι τρίτης φυλακῆς, καθ’ ἣν εἰώθεσαν ἑκατόνταρχοι [5] καὶ χιλίαρχοι φοιτᾶν πρὸς αὐτόν. ὡς οὖν ἔμελλεν ἐξ Ἀσίας διαβιβάζειν τὸ στράτευμα, νὺξ μὲν ἦν βαθυτάτη, φῶς δ’ εἶχεν οὐ πάνυ λαμπρὸν ἡ σκηνή, [6] πᾶν δὲ τὸ στρατόπεδον σιωπὴ κατεῖχεν. ὁ δὲ συλλογιζόμενός τι καὶ σκοπῶν πρὸς ἑαυτόν, ἔδοξεν αἰσθέσθαι τινὸς εἰσιόντος· ἀποβλέψας δὲ πρὸς τὴν εἴσοδον, ὁρᾷ δεινὴν καὶ ἀλλόκοτον ὄψιν ἐκφύλου σώματος καὶ [7] φοβεροῦ, σιωπῇ παρεστῶτος αὐτῷ. τολμήσας δ’ ἐρέσθαι, τίς ποτ’ ὢν εἶπεν ἀνθρώπων ἢ θεῶν, ἢ τί βουλόμενος ἥκεις ὡς ἡμᾶς; ὑποφθέγγεται δ’ αὐτῷ τὸ φάσμα ὁ σὸς ὦ Βροῦτε δαίμων κακός· ὄψει δέ με περὶ Φιλίππους. καὶ ὁ Βροῦτος οὐ διαταραχθεὶς ὄψομαι εἶπεν.

[37] [1] Ἀφανισθέντος δ’ αὐτοῦ τοὺς παῖδας ἐκάλει, καὶ μήτ’ ἀκοῦσαί τινα φωνὴν μήτ’ ἰδεῖν ὄψιν φασκόντων, τότε μὲν ἐπηγρύπνησεν· ἅμα δ’ [2] ἡμέρᾳ τραπόμενος πρὸς Κάσσιον ἔφραζε τὴν ὄψιν. ὁ δὲ τοῖς Ἐπικούρου λόγοις χρώμενος, καὶ περὶ τούτων ἔθος ἔχων διαφέρεσθαι πρὸς τὸν Βροῦτον, ἡμέτερος οὗτος εἶπεν ὦ Βροῦτε λόγος, ὡς οὐ πάντα πάσχομεν ἀληθῶς οὐδ’ ὁρῶμεν, ἀλλ’ ὑγρὸν μέν τι χρῆμα καὶ ἀπατηλὸν ἡ αἴσθησις, ἔτι δ’ ὀξυτέρα ἡ διάνοια κινεῖν αὑτὴν καὶ μεταβάλλειν [3] ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ὑπάρχοντος ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἰδέαν. κηρῷ μὲν γὰρ ἔξωθεν ἡ τύπωσις, ψυχῇ δ’ ἀνθρώπου, τὸ πλαττόμενον καὶ τὸ πλάττον ἐχούσῃ τὸ αὐτό, [4] ῥᾷστα ποικίλλειν αὑτὴν καὶ σχηματίζειν δι’ ἑαυτῆς ὑπάρχει. δηλοῦσι δ’ αἱ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους τροπαὶ τῶν ὀνείρων, ἃς τρέπεται τὸ φανταστικόν, ἐξ [5] ἀρχῆς βραχείας ‹πρὸς› παντοδαπὰ καὶ πάθη καὶ εἴδωλα κινούμενον· κινεῖσθαι δ’ ἀεὶ πέφυκε· κίνησις δ’ αὐτῷ φαντασία τις ἢ νόησις. σοὶ δὲ καὶ τὸ [6] σῶμα ταλαιπωρούμενον φύσει τὴν διάνοιαν αἰωρεῖ καὶ παρατρέπει. δαίμονας δ’ οὔτ’ εἶναι πιθανόν, οὔτ’ ὄντας ἀνθρώπων ἔχειν εἶδος ἢ φωνὴν ἢ δύναμιν εἰς ἡμᾶς διήκουσαν· ὡς ἔγωγ’ ἂν ἐβουλόμην, ἵνα μὴ μόνον ὅπλοις καὶ ἵπποις καὶ ναυσὶ τοσαύταις, ἀλλὰ καὶ θεῶν ἀρωγαῖς ἐπεθαρροῦμεν, ὁσιωτάτων ἔργων καὶ καλλίστων ἡγεμόνες ὄντες. τοιούτοις μὲν [7] ὁ Κάσσιος ἐπράϋνε λόγοις τὸν Βροῦτον· ἐμβαινόντων δὲ τῶν στρατιωτῶν, ἐπὶ τὰς πρώτας σημαίας ἀετοὶ δύο [συγ]κατασκήψαντες ὁμοῦ συνδιεκομίζοντο, καὶ παρηκολούθουν ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν τρεφόμενοι μέχρι Φιλίππων. ἐκεῖ δ’ ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ πρὸ τῆς μάχης ᾤχοντ’ ἀποπτάμενοι.

[38] [1] Τὰ μὲν οὖν πλεῖστα τῶν ἐν ποσὶν ἐθνῶν ἐτύγχανεν ὁ Βροῦτος ὑπήκοα πεποιημένος. εἰ δέ τις ἢ πόλις ἢ δυνάστης παρεῖτο, τότε πάντας [2] προσαγόμενοι μέχρι τῆς κατὰ Θάσον θαλάσσης προῆλθον. ἐκεῖ δὲ τῶν περὶ Νωρβανὸν ἐν τοῖς Στενοῖς λεγομένοις καὶ περὶ τὸ Σύμβολον στρατοπεδευόντων, περιελθόντες αὐτοὺς ἠνάγκασαν ἀποστῆναι καὶ προέσθαι τὰ [3] χωρία. μικροῦ δὲ καὶ τὴν δύναμιν αὐτῶν λαβεῖν ἐδέησαν, ὑπολειπομένου διὰ νόσον Καίσαρος, εἰ μὴ προσεβοήθησεν Ἀντώνιος ὀξύτητι θαυμαστῇ [4] χρησάμενος, ὥστ’ ἀπιστεῖν τοὺς περὶ Βροῦτον. ἦλθε δὲ Καῖσαρ ὕστερον ἡμέραις δέκα, καὶ κατεστρατοπέδευσεν ἐναντίον Βρούτου, Κασσίου δ’ Ἀντώνιος· τὰ δ’ ἐν μέσῳ τῶν στρατοπέδων πεδία Ῥωμαῖοι κάμπους [5] Φιλίππους καλοῦσι. καὶ μέγισται τότε Ῥωμαίων δυνάμεις ἀλλήλαις συνεφέροντο. πλήθει μὲν οὖν οὐ παρ’ ὀλίγον ἐλείποντο τῶν περὶ Καίσαρα, κόσμῳ δ’ ὅπλων καὶ λαμπρότητι θαυμαστὸν ἐξεφάνη τὸ Βρούτου στράτευμα.

[6] χρυσὸς γὰρ ἦν αὐτοῖς τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ὅπλων καὶ ἄργυρος ἀφειδῶς καταχορηγηθείς, καίπερ εἰς τἆλλα τοῦ Βρούτου σώφρονι διαίτῃ καὶ [7] κεκολασμένῃ χρῆσθαι τοὺς ἡγεμόνας ἐθίζοντος· τὸν δ’ ἐν χερσὶ καὶ περὶ τὸ σῶμα πλοῦτον ᾤετό τι καὶ φρονήματος παρέχειν τοῖς φιλοτιμοτέροις, τοὺς δὲ φιλοκερδεῖς καὶ μαχιμωτέρους ποιεῖν, ὥσπερ κτημάτων τῶν ὅπλων περιεχομένους.

[39] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ Καίσαρα καθαρμὸν ἐν τῷ χάρακι ποιησάμενοι [2] μικρόν τι σίτου καὶ δραχμὰς κατ’ ἄνδρα πέντε διένειμαν εἰς θυσίαν· οἱ δὲ περὶ Βροῦτον καταγνόντες αὐτῶν τῆς ἀπορίας ἢ μικρολογίας, πρῶτον μὲν ἐν ὑπαίθρῳ τὸν στρατὸν ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστὶν ἐκάθηραν, ἔπειθ’ ἱερείων πλήθη κατὰ λόχους καὶ δραχμὰς ἑκάστῳ πεντήκοντα διαδόντες, εὐνοίᾳ [3] καὶ προθυμίᾳ τῆς δυνάμεως πλέον εἶχον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ σημεῖον ἐν τῷ καθαρμῷ μοχθηρὸν ἔδοξε Κασσίῳ γενέσθαι· τὸν γὰρ στέφανον αὐτῷ [4] κατεστραμμένον ὁ ῥαβδοῦχος προσήνεγκε. λέγεται δὲ καὶ πρότερον ἐν θέᾳ τινὶ καὶ πομπῇ χρυσῆν Κασσίου Νίκην διαφερομένην πεσεῖν, ὀλισθόντος [5] τοῦ φέροντος. ἔτι δ’ ὄρνεά τε σαρκοφάγα πολλὰ καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπεφαίνετο τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, καὶ μελισσῶν ὤφθησαν ἑσμοὶ συνιστάμενοι [6] περὶ τόπον τινὰ τοῦ χάρακος ἐντός· ὃν ἐξέκλεισαν οἱ μάντεις, ἀφοσιούμενοι τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν, ἀτρέμα καὶ τὸν Κάσσιον αὐτὸν ὑπεκφέρουσαν τῶν Ἐπικούρου λόγων, τοὺς δὲ στρατιώτας παντάπασι δεδουλωμένην.

[7] ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἦν πρόθυμος διὰ μάχης ἐν τῷ παρόντι γενέσθαι τὴν κρίσιν, ἀλλὰ τρίβειν ἠξίου χρόνῳ τὸν πόλεμον, ἐρρωμένους χρήμασιν, ὅπλων δὲ [8] καὶ σωμάτων πλήθει λειπομένους. Βροῦτος δὲ καὶ πρότερον ἔσπευδε τῷ ταχίστῳ τῶν κινδύνων διακριθεὶς ἢ τῇ πατρίδι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀναλαβεῖν, ἢ πάντας ἀνθρώπους ἐνοχλουμένους δαπάναις καὶ στρατείαις καὶ προστάγμασιν ἀπαλλάξαι κακῶν, καὶ τότε τοὺς περὶ αὑτὸν ἱππεῖς ὁρῶν ἐν τοῖς προάγωσι καὶ ταῖς ἁψιμαχίαις εὐημεροῦντας καὶ κρατοῦντας, ἐξῆρτο τὸ [9] φρόνημα, καί τινες αὐτομολίαι γενόμεναι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ διαβολαὶ καθ’ ἑτέρων καὶ ὑπόνοιαι πολλοὺς τῶν Κασσίου φίλων μετέστησαν [10] ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ πρὸς Βροῦτον. εἷς δὲ τῶν Βρούτου φίλων Ἀτέλλιος ἠναντιοῦτο, τόν γε χειμῶνα περιμεῖναι κελεύων. ἐρομένου δὲ τοῦ Βρούτου, τί δὴ βελτίων ἔσεσθαι νομίζει μετ’ ἐνιαυτόν, εἰ μηδὲν εἶπεν ἄλλο, [11] πλείω βιώσομαι χρόνον. πρὸς τοῦτο Κάσσιος ἐδυσχέρανε, καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις προσέκρουσεν οὐ μετρίως ὁ Ἀτέλλιος. ἐδέδοκτο δὴ μάχεσθαι τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ.

[40] [1] Καὶ Βροῦτος μὲν ἐν ἐλπίσι καλαῖς καὶ λογισμοῖς φιλοσόφοις γενόμενος παρὰ τὸ δεῖπνον, ἀνεπαύετο· Κάσσιον δὲ Μεσσάλας (HRR II 65) φησὶ δειπνεῖν τε καθ’ ἑαυτόν, ὀλίγους τῶν συνήθων παραλαβόντα, καὶ [2] σύννουν ὁρᾶσθαι καὶ σιωπηλόν, οὐ φύσει τοιοῦτον ὄντα· παυσαμένου δὲ τοῦ δείπνου, λαβόμενον τῆς χειρὸς αὐτοῦ σφόδρα τοσοῦτον εἰπεῖν, ὥσπερ [3] εἰώθει φιλοφρονούμενος, Ἑλληνικῇ φωνῇ· μαρτύρομαί σε Μεσσάλα ταὐτὰ Πομπηΐῳ Μάγνῳ πάσχων, ἀναγκαζόμενος διὰ μιᾶς μάχης ἀναρρῖψαι τὸν περὶ τῆς πατρίδος κύβον. ἀγαθὴν μέντοι ψυχὴν ἔχωμεν, εἰς τὴν Τύχην ἀφορῶντες, ᾗ, κἂν βουλευσώμεθα κακῶς, ἀπιστεῖν οὐ δίκαιον.

[4] ταῦτ’ εἰπόντα φησὶν ὁ Μεσσάλας τελευταῖα πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀσπάσασθαι τὸν Κάσσιον· εἶναι δὲ κεκλημένος εἰς τὴν ὑστεραίαν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, [5] γενέθλιον οὖσαν. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ προὔκειτο μὲν ‹ἐν› τῷ Βρούτου χάρακι καὶ τῷ Κασσίου σύμβολον ἀγῶνος φοινικοῦς χιτών, αὐτοὶ δὲ συνῆλθον [6] εἰς τὸ μέσον τῶν στρατοπέδων, καὶ λέγει Κάσσιος· εἴη μὲν ὦ Βροῦτε νικᾶν καὶ συνεῖναι τὸν πάντα χρόνον ἀλλήλοις εὖ πράξαντας. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰ μέγιστα τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ἀδηλότατα, καὶ τῆς μάχης παρὰ γνώμην κριθείσης οὐ ῥᾴδιον αὖθις ἀλλήλους ἰδεῖν, τί γινώσκεις περὶ φυγῆς καὶ τελευτῆς; [7] καὶ ὁ Βροῦτος ἀπεκρίνατο· νέος ὢν ἐγὼ Κάσσιε καὶ πραγμάτων ἄπειρος, οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ λόγον ἀφῆκα μέγαν· ᾐτιασάμην Κάτωνα διαχρησάμενον ἑαυτόν, ὡς οὐχ ὅσιον οὐδ’ ἀνδρὸς ἔργον ὑποχωρεῖν τῷ δαίμονι καὶ μὴ δέχεσθαι τὸ συμπῖπτον ἀδεῶς, ἀλλ’ ἀποδιδράσκειν.

[8] νυνὶ δ’ ἀλλοῖος ἐν ταῖς τύχαις γίνομαι, καὶ θεοῦ καλῶς τὰ παρόντα μὴ βραβεύσαντος, οὐ δέομαι πάλιν ἄλλας ἐλπίδας ἐξελέγχειν καὶ παρασκευάς, ἀλλ’ ἀπαλλάξομαι, τὴν τύχην ἐπαινῶν, ὅτι Μαρτίαις εἰδοῖς δοὺς τῇ [9] πατρίδι τὸν ἐμαυτοῦ βίον, ἄλλον ἔζησα δι’ ἐκείνην ἐλεύθερον καὶ ἔνδοξον. ἐπὶ τούτοις Κάσσιος ἐμειδίασε, καὶ τὸν Βροῦτον ἀσπασάμενος, ταῦτ’ ἔφη φρονοῦντες ἴωμεν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους. ἢ γὰρ νικήσομεν, ἢ νικῶντας οὐ φοβηθησόμεθα.

[10] Μετὰ ταῦτα περὶ τάξεως αὐτοῖς λόγος ἐγένετο, τῶν φίλων παρόντων. καὶ Βροῦτος ᾐτεῖτο Κάσσιον αὐτὸς ἡγεῖσθαι τοῦ δεξιοῦ κέρατος, ὃ δι’ [11] ἐμπειρίαν καὶ ἡλικίαν μᾶλλον ᾤοντο Κασσίῳ προσήκειν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο Κάσσιος ἔδωκε, καὶ τῶν ταγμάτων τὸ μαχιμώτατον ἔχοντα Μεσσάλαν [12] ἐκέλευσεν ἐπὶ τοῦ δεξιοῦ καταστῆναι. καὶ Βροῦτος εὐθὺς ἐξῆγε τοὺς ἱππεῖς, κεκοσμημένους διαπρεπῶς, καὶ τὸ πεζὸν οὐ σχολαίτερον παρενέβαλλεν.

[41] [1] Ἔτυχον δ’ οἱ περὶ Ἀντώνιον ἀπὸ τῶν ἑλῶν, οἷς παρεστρατοπέδευον, ἐμβάλλοντες τάφρους εἰς τὸ πεδίον καὶ τὰς ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ὁδοὺς τοῦ Κασσίου [2] περικόπτοντες. ἐφήδρευε δὲ Καῖσαρ, οὐ παρὼν αὐτὸς δι’ ἀσθένειαν, ἀλλ’ ἡ δύναμις, οὐ πάνυ μαχεῖσθαι προσδοκῶσα τοὺς πολεμίους, ἀλλὰ μόνον ἐκδρομαῖς χρήσεσθαι πρὸς τὰ ἔργα καὶ βέλεσιν ἐλαφροῖς καὶ θορύβοις [3] τοὺς ὀρύσσοντας ἐπιταράξειν· καὶ τοῖς ἀντιτεταγμένοις οὐ προσέχοντες, ἐθαύμαζον τὴν περὶ τὰς τάφρους κραυγήν, ἄσημον οὖσαν καὶ πολλὴν [4] προσφερομένην. ἐν τούτῳ γραμματείων τε παρὰ Βρούτου τοῖς ἡγεμόσι φοιτώντων, ἐν οἷς ἦν τὸ σύνθημα γεγραμμένον, αὐτοῦ τε παρεξιόντος ἵππῳ τὰ τάγματα καὶ παραθαρρύνοντος, ὀλίγοι μὲν ἔφθασαν ἀκοῦσαι τὸ σύνθημα παρεγγυώμενον, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι μὴ προσμείναντες ὁρμῇ μιᾷ καὶ [5] ἀλαλαγμῷ προσεφέροντο τοῖς πολεμίοις. γενομένης δὲ δι’ ἀταξίαν ταύτην ἀνωμαλίας καὶ διασπασμοῦ τῶν ταγμάτων, τὸ Μεσσάλα πρῶτον, εἶτα τὰ [6] συνεζευγμένα, παρήλλαττε τὸ Καίσαρος ἀριστερόν· καὶ βραχέα τῶν ἐσχάτων θιγόντες καὶ καταβαλόντες οὐ πολλούς, ἀλλ’ ὑπερκεράσαντες, [7] ἐμπίπτουσιν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον. καὶ Καῖσαρ μέν, ὡς αὐτὸς ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν ἱστορεῖ (HRR II 58), τῶν φίλων τινὸς Ἀρτωρίου Μάρκου καθ’ ὕπνον ἰδόντος ὄψιν, κελεύουσαν ἐκστῆναι Καίσαρα καὶ μετελθεῖν ἐκ τοῦ [8] χάρακος, ἔφθασε μικρὸν ὑπεκκομισθεὶς ἔδοξέ τε τεθνάναι. τὸ γὰρ φορεῖον κενὸν ἀκοντίοις καὶ ὑσσοῖς βαλόντες διήλασαν. ἦν δὲ φόνος ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τῶν ἁλισκομένων, καὶ δισχίλιοι Λακεδαιμονίων ἥκοντες ἐπίκουροι νεωστὶ συγκατεκόπησαν.

[42] [1] Οἱ δὲ μὴ κυκλωσάμενοι τοὺς Καίσαρος, ἀλλὰ συμπεσόντες, ῥᾳδίως μὲν [ἀπ]ἐτρέψαντο τεταραγμένους καὶ διέφθειραν ἐν χερσὶ τρία τάγματα, καὶ συνεισέπεσον εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον τοῖς φεύγουσιν, ὑπὸ ῥύμης τοῦ [2] κρατεῖν συνενεχθέντες, μεθ’ ἑαυτῶν ἔχοντες τὸν Βροῦτον. ὃ δ’ οὐ συνεῖδον οἱ νικῶντες, ἐδείκνυε τοῖς ἡττημένοις ὁ καιρός. εἰς γὰρ τὰ γυμνὰ καὶ παραρρηγνύμενα τῆς ἐναντίας φάλαγγος, ᾗ τὸ δεξιὸν ἀπεσπάσθη πρὸς τὴν δίωξιν, ὠσάμενοι τὸ μὲν μέσον οὐκ ἐξέωσαν, ἀλλ’ ἀγῶνι μεγάλῳ συνείχοντο, τὸ δ’ εὐώνυμον ἀταξίᾳ καὶ ἀγνοίᾳ τῶν γενομένων ἐτρέψαντο, καὶ καταδιώξαντες εἰς τὸν χάρακα διεπόρθουν, οὐδετέρου τῶν αὐτοκρα[3]τόρων παρόντος. Ἀντώνιός τε γὰρ ὥς φασιν ἐκκλίνας ἐν ἀρχῇ τὴν ἔφοδον εἰς τὸ ἕλος ἀνεχώρησε, καὶ Καῖσαρ οὐδαμοῦ φανερὸς ἦν, ἐκπεσὼν τοῦ χάρακος, ἀλλὰ Βρούτῳ τινὲς ὡς ἀνῃρηκότες αὐτὸν ἐπεδείκνυον ᾑμαγμένα [4] τὰ ξίφη, φράζοντες ἰδέαν ἣν εἶχε καὶ ἡλικίαν. ἤδη δὲ τὸ μέσον ἐξεώκει φόνῳ πολλῷ τοὺς ἀντιτεταγμένους, καὶ παντελῶς ἐδόκει κρατεῖν ὁ [5] Βροῦτος, ὥσπερ ὁ Κάσσιος κρατεῖσθαι. καὶ τοῦτο μόνον αὐτῶν διέφθειρε τὰ πράγματα, τοῦ μὲν ὡς νικῶντι Κασσίῳ μὴ βοηθήσαντος, τοῦ δὲ Βροῦτον ὡς ἀπολωλότα μὴ περιμείναντος· ἐπεὶ τῆς γε νίκης ὅρον ὁ Μεσσάλας (HRR II 66) τίθεται τὸ τρεῖς ἀετοὺς καὶ πολλὰ σημεῖα λαβεῖν τῶν πολεμίων, [6] ἐκείνους δὲ μηδέν. ἀναχωρῶν δ’ ὁ Βροῦτος ἤδη, διαπεπορθημένων τῶν Καίσαρος, ἐθαύμασε τὸ Κασσίου στρατήγιον οὐχ ὁρῶν ὑψηλὸν ὥσπερ εἰώθει περιφαινόμενον, οὐδὲ τἆλλα κατὰ χώραν· ‹ἐρ›ήριπτο γὰρ [7] εὐθὺς τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ κατέσπαστο τῶν πολεμίων ἐμπεσόντων. ἀλλ’ οἱ δοκοῦντες ὀξύτερον βλέπειν τῶν ἑταίρων ἔφραζον αὐτῷ πολλὰ μὲν ὁρᾶν κράνη λάμποντα, πολλοὺς δ’ ἀργυροῦς θυρεοὺς ἐν τῷ χάρακι τοῦ Κασσίου [8] διαφερομένους· οὔκουν δοκεῖν αὐτοῖς οὔτ’ ἀριθμὸν οὔθ’ ὁπλισμὸν εἶναι τῶν ἀπολελειμμένων φυλάκων· οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ πλῆθος ἐπέκεινα φαίνεσθαι νεκρῶν, ὅσον εἰκὸς ἦν νενικημένων κατὰ κράτος ταγμάτων τοσούτων.

[9] ταῦτα πρῶτον ἔννοιαν παρέστησε τῷ Βρούτῳ τοῦ συμπτώματος, καὶ καταλιπὼν φρουρὰν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τῶν πολεμίων, ἀνεκαλεῖτο τοὺς διώκοντας καὶ συνῆγεν, ὡς Κασσίῳ βοηθήσων.

[43] [1] Ἐπέπρακτο δ’ οὕτω τὰ κατ’ αὐτόν. οὔτε τὴν πρώτην ἐκδρομὴν τῶν περὶ Βροῦτον ἡδέως εἶδεν, ἄνευ συνθήματος καὶ προστάγματος γενομένην, οὔθ’ ὅτε κρατοῦντες εὐθὺς ὥρμησαν ἐφ’ ἁρπαγὴν καὶ ὠφέλειαν, τοῦ περιϊέναι καὶ κυκλοῦσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους ἀμελήσαντες, ἤρεσκεν [2] αὐτῷ τὰ πραττόμενα. μελλήσει δέ τινι καὶ διατριβῇ μᾶλλον ἢ προθυμίᾳ καὶ λογισμῷ στρατηγῶν, ὑπὸ τοῦ δεξιοῦ τῶν πολεμίων περιελαμβάνετο, καὶ τῶν ἱππέων εὐθὺς ἀπορραγέντων φυγῇ πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν, ὁρῶν καὶ [3] τοὺς πεζοὺς ἐνδιδόντας, ἐπειρᾶτο κατέχειν καὶ παρακαλεῖν. ἑνὸς δὲ σημειοφόρου φεύγοντος ἀφαρπάσας τὸ σημεῖον ἔπηξε πρὸ τῶν ποδῶν, μηδὲ [4] τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα τεταγμένων αὐτοῦ προθύμως ἔτι συμμενόντων. οὕτω δὴ βιασθεὶς ἀνεχώρησε μετ’ ὀλίγων ἐπὶ λόφον, ἔχοντα πρὸς τὸ πεδίον σκοπάς. ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς μὲν οὐδὲν κατεῖδεν ἢ μόλις τὸν χάρακα πορθούμενον (ἦν γὰρ ἀσθενὴς τὴν ὄψιν), οἱ δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν ἱππεῖς ἑώρων πολλοὺς προσελαύνοντας· [5] οὓς ὁ Βροῦτος ἔπεμψεν, εἴκασε δ’ ὁ Κάσσιος πολεμίους εἶναι καὶ διώκειν ἐπ’ αὐτόν· ὅμως δὲ τῶν παρόντων ἕνα Τιτίνιον ἀπέστειλε [6] κατοψόμενον. οὗτος οὐκ ἔλαθε τοὺς ἱππέας προσιών, ἀλλ’ ὡς εἶδον ἄνδρα φίλον καὶ Κασσίῳ πιστόν, ἀλαλάξαντες ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς οἱ μὲν συνήθεις ἠσπάζοντό τε καὶ ἐδεξιοῦντο καταπηδῶντες ἀπὸ τῶν ἵππων, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι περὶ αὐτὸν ἐν κύκλῳ περιελαύνοντες ἅμα παιᾶνι καὶ πατάγῳ, διὰ χαρᾶς [7] ἀμετρίαν τὸ μέγιστον ἀπειργάσαντο κακόν. ἔδοξε γὰρ ὁ Κάσσιος ἀληθῶς ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ἔχεσθαι τὸν Τιτίνιον, καὶ τοῦτο δὴ φήσας φιλοψυχοῦντες ἀνεμείναμεν ἄνδρα φίλον ἁρπαζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ἰδεῖν, ὑπεχώρησεν εἴς τινα σκηνὴν ἔρημον, ἕνα τῶν ἀπελευθέρων ἐφελκυσάμενος Πίνδαρον, ὃν ἐκ τῶν κατὰ Κράσσον ἀτυχημάτων ἐπὶ ταύτην εἶχε τὴν [8] ἀνάγκην ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ παρεσκευασμένον. ἀλλὰ Πάρθους μὲν διέφυγε, τότε δὲ τὰς χλαμύδας ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀναγαγὼν καὶ γυμνώσας τὸν τράχηλον, ἀποκόψαι παρέσχεν· εὑρέθη γὰρ ἡ κεφαλὴ δίχα τοῦ σώματος· τὸν δὲ Πίνδαρον οὐδεὶς εἶδεν ἀνθρώπων μετὰ τὸν φόνον, ἐξ οὗ καὶ παρέσχεν [9] ἐνίοις δόξαν ἀνελεῖν τὸν ἄνδρα μὴ κελευσθείς. ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον οἵ θ’ ἱππεῖς ἐγένοντο φανεροί, καὶ Τιτίνιος ἐστεφανωμένος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀνῄει πρὸς Κάσσιον. ὡς δὲ κλαυθμῷ καὶ βοῇ τῶν φίλων ὀδυρομένων καὶ δυσφορούντων ἔγνω τὸ πάθος τοῦ στρατηγοῦ καὶ τὴν ἄγνοιαν, ἐσπάσατο τὸ ξίφος καὶ πολλὰ κακίσας τῆς βραδυτῆτος ἑαυτὸν ἀπέσφαξε.

[44] [1] Βροῦτος δὲ τὴν μὲν ἧτταν ἐγνωκὼς τοῦ Κασσίου προσήλαυνε, τὸν [2] δὲ θάνατον ἐγγὺς ἤδη τοῦ χάρακος ἤκουσε. καὶ τὸ μὲν σῶμα περικλαύσας καὶ προσαγορεύσας ἔσχατον ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων τὸν Κάσσιον, ὡς οὐκέτι τῇ πόλει τηλικούτου φρονήματος ἐγγενέσθαι δυναμένου, περιέστειλε καὶ ἀπέπεμψεν εἰς Θάσον, ὡς μὴ σύγχυσιν αὐτόθι παράσχοι κηδευόμενον.

[3] αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς στρατιώτας συναγαγὼν παρεμυθήσατο, καὶ πάντων ὁρῶν ἀπεστερημένους τῶν ἀναγκαίων, ὑπέσχετο κατ’ ἄνδρα δισχιλίας δραχμὰς [4] ἀντὶ τῶν ἀπολωλότων. οἱ δὲ πρός τε τοὺς λόγους ἀνεθάρρησαν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τῆς δωρεᾶς ἐθαύμασαν τὸ μέγεθος, καὶ μετὰ βοῆς προὔπεμψαν ἀπιόντα, μεγαλύνοντες ὡς μόνον ἀήττητον ἐν τῇ μάχῃ τῶν τεσσάρων αὐτοκρατόρων [5] γεγενημένον. ἐμαρτύρει δὲ τὸ ἔργον, ὅτι τῇ μάχῃ περιέσεσθαι καλῶς [6] ἐπίστευεν· ὀλίγοις γὰρ τάγμασιν ἅπαντας ἐτρέψατο τοὺς ἀντιστάντας. εἰ δὲ πᾶσιν ἐχρήσατο πρὸς τὴν μάχην, καὶ μὴ παρελθόντες οἱ πλεῖστοι τοὺς πολεμίους ἐπὶ τὰ τῶν πολεμίων ὥρμησαν, οὐδὲν ἂν ἐδόκει μέρος αὐτῶν ἀπολιπεῖν ἀήττητον.

[45] [1] Ἔπεσον δὲ τούτων μὲν ὀκτακισχίλιοι σὺν τοῖς στρατευομένοις οἰκέταις, οὓς Βρίγας ὁ Βροῦτος ὠνόμαζε· τῶν δ’ ἐναντίων Μεσσάλας [2] φησὶν (HRR II 66) οἴεσθαι πλείους ἢ διπλασίους. διὸ καὶ μᾶλλον ἠθύμουν ἐκεῖνοι, πρὶν ἢ Κασσίου θεράπων ὄνομα Δημήτριος ἀφίκετο πρὸς Ἀντώνιον ἑσπέρας εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ νεκροῦ, τὰς χλαμύδας λαβὼν καὶ τὸ ξίφος. ὧν κομισθέντων οὕτως ἐθάρρησαν, ὥσθ’ ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ προάγειν ὡπλισμένην [3] ἐπὶ μάχῃ τὴν δύναμιν. Βρούτῳ δὲ τῶν στρατοπέδων ἑκατέρου σαλεύοντος ἐπισφαλῶς (τὸ μὲν γὰρ αὐτοῦ καταπεπλησμένον αἰχμαλώτων ἐδεῖτο φυλακῆς ἀκριβοῦς, τὸ δὲ Κασσίου τὴν μεταβολὴν τοῦ ἄρχοντος οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἔφερεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ φθόνου τι καὶ μίσους ἡττημένοις ἐνῆν αὐτοῖς πρὸς τὸ νενικηκός), ὁπλίσαι μὲν ἔδοξε τὸ στράτευμα, μάχης δ’ ἀπέσχετο.

[4] τῶν δ’ αἰχμαλώτων τὸ μὲν δουλικὸν πλῆθος ἐνειλούμενον ὑπόπτως τοῖς ὅπλοις ἐκέλευσεν ἀναιρεθῆναι, τῶν δ’ ἐλευθέρων τοὺς μὲν ἀπέλυε, φάσκων ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων μᾶλλον αὐτοὺς ἡλωκέναι, καὶ παρ’ ἐκείνοις αἰχμαλώτους εἶναι καὶ δούλους, παρ’ αὑτῷ δ’ ἐλευθέρους καὶ πολίτας· [5] οἷς δὲ τοὺς φίλους ἑώρα καὶ τοὺς ἡγεμόνας ἀδιαλλάκτως ἔχοντας, ἀποκρύπτων καὶ συνεκπέμπων ἔσῳζεν.

[6] Ἦν δέ τις Βολούμνιος μῖμος καὶ Σακκουλίων γελωτοποιὸς ἡλωκότες, οὓς ἐν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ τιθεμένου τοῦ Βρούτου προσ‹αγ›αγόντες οἱ φίλοι κατηγόρουν, ὡς οὐδὲ νῦν τοῦ λέγειν καὶ σκώπτειν πρὸς ὕβριν αὐτῶν ἀπεχομένους.

[7] ἐπεὶ δὲ Βροῦτος μὲν ἐσίγα, πρὸς ἑτέραις ὢν φροντίσι, Μεσσάλας δὲ Κορβῖνος ἐδικαίου πληγαῖς κολασθέντας ἐπὶ σκηνῆς γυμνοὺς ἀποδοθῆναι τοῖς στρατηγοῖς τῶν πολεμίων, ὅπως εἰδῶσιν οἵων δέονται στρατευόμενοι συμποτῶν καὶ συνήθων, ἔνιοι μὲν τῶν παρόντων ἐγέλασαν· [8] Πόπλιος δὲ Κάσκας, ὁ πρῶτος Καίσαρα πατάξας, οὐ καλῶς ἔφη τεθνηκότι Κασσίῳ παίζοντες καὶ γελωτοποιοῦντες ἐναγίζομεν· σὺ δ’ εἶπεν ὦ Βροῦτε δείξεις, ὅπως ἔχεις μνήμης πρὸς τὸν στρατηγόν, ἢ κολάσας [9] ἢ φυλάξας τοὺς χλευασομένους καὶ κακῶς ἐροῦντας αὐτόν. πρὸς τοῦτο Βροῦτος εὖ μάλα δυσχεράνας, τί οὖν εἶπεν ἐμοῦ πυνθάνεσθε Κάσκα, καὶ οὐ πράττετε τὸ δόξαν ὑμῖν; ταύτην ἐκεῖνοι τὴν ἀπόκρισιν συγκατάθεσιν ποιησάμενοι κατὰ τῶν ἀθλίων ἀνθρώπων, διέφθειραν αὐτοὺς ἀπαγαγόντες.

[46] Ἐκ τούτου τὴν δωρεὰν ἀπέδωκε τοῖς στρατιώταις, καὶ μικρὰ μεμψάμενος ἐπὶ τῷ τὸ σύνθημα μὴ λαβόντας ἄνευ παραγγέλματος ἀτακτότερον ἐναλέσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις, ὑπέσχετο καλῶς ἀγωνισαμένοις δύο πόλεις εἰς ἁρπαγὴν καὶ ὠφέλειαν ἀνήσειν, Θεσσαλονίκην καὶ Λακεδαίμονα.

[10] τοῦτο τῷ Βρούτου βίῳ μόνον ἔνεστι τῶν ἐγκλημάτων ἀναπολόγητον, εἰ καὶ πολὺ τούτων δεινότερα νικητήρια τοῖς στρατευομένοις Ἀντώνιος καὶ Καῖσαρ ἐξέτεισαν, ὀλίγου δεῖν πάσης Ἰταλίας τοὺς παλαιοὺς οἰκήτορας ἐξελάσαντες, ἵνα χώραν ἐκεῖνοι καὶ πόλεις τὰς μὴ προσηκούσας λάβωσιν.

[11] ἀλλὰ τούτοις μὲν ἄρχειν καὶ κρατεῖν ὑπέκειτο [τὸ] τοῦ πολέμου τέλος, Βρούτῳ δὲ διὰ δόξαν ἀρετῆς οὔτε νικᾶν οὔτε σῴζεσθαι συνεχωρεῖτο παρὰ τῶν πολλῶν ἢ μετὰ τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ δικαίου, καὶ ταῦτα δὴ Κασσίου τεθνηκότος, [12] ὃς αἰτίαν εἶχε καὶ Βροῦτον ἐνάγειν εἰς ἔνια τῶν βιαιοτέρων. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν πλῷ πηδαλίου συντριβέντος ἕτερα ξύλα προσηλοῦν καὶ προσαρμόττειν ἐπιχειροῦσιν, οὐκ εὖ μέν, ἀναγκαίως δὲ μαχόμενοι πρὸς τὴν χρείαν, οὕτω Βροῦτος ἐν δυνάμει τοσαύτῃ μετεώροις πράγμασιν οὐκ ἔχων ἰσορροποῦντα στρατηγόν, ἠναγκάζετο χρῆσθαι τοῖς παροῦσι καὶ [13] πολλὰ πράσσειν καὶ λέγειν τῶν ἐκείνοις δοκούντων. ἐδόκει δ’ ὅσα τοὺς Κασσίου στρατιώτας ᾤοντο βελτίους παρέξειν· δυσμεταχείριστοι γὰρ ἦσαν, ἐν μὲν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ δι’ ἀναρχίαν θρασυνόμενοι, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς πολεμίους διὰ τὴν ἧτταν ἀποδειλιῶντες.

[47] [1] Οὐδὲν δὲ βέλτιον εἶχε τὰ πράγματα τοῖς περὶ Καίσαρα καὶ Ἀντώνιον, ἀγορᾷ τε χρωμένοις ἀναγκαίᾳ, καὶ διὰ κοιλότητα τοῦ στρατοπέδου [2] χειμῶνα μοχθηρὸν προσδοκῶσιν. εἱλούμενοι γὰρ πρὸς ἕλεσι, καὶ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ὄμβρων φθινοπωρινῶν ἐπιγενομένων, πηλοῦ κατεπίμπλαντο [3] τὰς σκηνὰς καὶ ὕδατος παραχρῆμα πηγνυμένου διὰ ψῦχος. ἐν τούτῳ δ’ οὖσιν αὐτοῖς ἧκεν ἀγγελία περὶ τῆς κατὰ θάλατταν γενομένης ἀτυχίας περὶ τὴν στρατιάν. ἐξ Ἰταλίας γὰρ πολλὴν κομιζομένην παρὰ Καίσαρος αἱ Βρούτου νῆες ἐπιπεσοῦσαι διέφθειραν, ὧν ὀλίγοι παντάπασι τοὺς πολεμίους διαφυγόντες, ὑπὸ λιμοῦ τῶν ἱστίων καὶ τῶν σχοινίων ἐσθίοντες [4] διεγένοντο. ταῦτ’ ἀκούσαντες ἔσπευδον διὰ μάχης κριθῆναι, πρὶν αἰσθέσθαι [5] τὸν Βροῦτον ὅσον αὐτῷ γέγονεν εὐτυχίας. καὶ γὰρ ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ συνέβη τόν τε κατὰ γῆν ἅμα καὶ τὸν κατὰ θάλατταν ἀγῶνα κριθῆναι. τύχῃ δέ τινι μᾶλλον ἢ κακίᾳ τῶν ἐν ταῖς ναυσὶν ἡγεμόνων ἠγνόησε τὸ κατόρθωμα [6] Βροῦτος, ἡμερῶν εἴκοσι διαγενομένων. οὐ γὰρ ἂν εἰς δευτέραν μάχην προῆλθε, τὰ μὲν ἀναγκαῖα τῇ στρατιᾷ παρεσκευασμένος εἰς πολὺν χρόνον, ἐν καλῷ δὲ τῆς χώρας ἱδρυμένος, ὥστε καὶ χειμῶνος ἀπαθὲς καὶ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους δυσεκβίαστον ἔχειν τὸ στρατόπεδον, τῷ δὲ κρατεῖν βεβαίως τῆς θαλάττης καὶ νενικηκέναι πεζῇ τὸ καθ’ αὑτὸν ἐπ’ ἐλπίδων [7] μεγάλων καὶ φρονήματος γεγονώς. ἀλλὰ τῶν πραγμάτων ὡς ἔοικεν οὐκέτι πολλοῖς ὄντων καθεκτῶν, ἀλλὰ μοναρχίας δεομένων, ὁ θεὸς ἐξ‹αγ›αγεῖν καὶ μεταστῆσαι τὸν μόνον ἐμποδὼν ὄντα τῷ κρατεῖν δυναμένῳ βουλόμενος, ἀπέκοψε τὴν τύχην ἐκείνην, καίπερ ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ μὴ λαθεῖν [8] τὸν Βροῦτον ἀφικομένην. μέλλοντος γὰρ αὐτοῦ μάχεσθαι, πρὸ μιᾶς ἡμέρας ὀψὲ Κλώδιός τις ἐκ τῶν πολεμίων αὐτόμολος ἧκεν ἀγγέλλων, ὅτι διεφθαρμένον ᾐσθημένοι τὸν στόλον οἱ περὶ Καίσαρα σπεύδουσι διαγωνίσασθαι.

[9] ταῦτα λέγων ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὐκ εἶχε πίστιν οὐδ’ εἰς ὄψιν ἦλθε τῷ Βρούτῳ, καταφρονηθεὶς παντάπασιν ὡς μηδὲν ἀκηκοὼς ὑγιές, ἢ τὰ ψευδῆ πρὸς χάριν ἀπαγγέλλων.

[48] [1] Ἐν ἐκείνῃ δὲ τῇ νυκτὶ πάλιν φασὶν εἰς ὄψιν ἐλθεῖν τὸ φάσμα τῷ Βρούτῳ, καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἐπιδειξάμενον ὄψιν, οὐδὲν εἰπεῖν ἀλλ’ οἴχεσθαι.

[2] Πόπλιος δὲ Βολούμνιος (HRR II 52), ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος καὶ συνεστρατευμένος ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς Βρούτῳ, τοῦτο μὲν οὐ λέγει τὸ σημεῖον, μελισσῶν δέ [3] φησι τὸν πρῶτον ἀετὸν ἀνάπλεων γενέσθαι, καὶ τῶν ταξιάρχων τινὸς ἀπ’ αὐτομάτου τὸν βραχίονα μύρον ῥόδινον ἐξανθεῖν, καὶ πολλάκις ἐξαλείφοντας [4] καὶ ἀπομάττοντας μηδὲν περαίνειν, καὶ πρὸ τῆς μάχης αὐτῆς ἀετοὺς δύο συμπεσόντας ἀλλήλοις ἐν μεταιχμίῳ τῶν στρατοπέδων μάχεσθαι, καὶ σιγὴν ἄπιστον ἔχειν τὸ πεδίον, θεωμένων ἁπάντων, εἶξαι δὲ [5] καὶ φυγεῖν τὸν κατὰ Βροῦτον. ὁ δ’ Αἰθίοψ περιβόητος γέγονεν, ὁ τῆς πύλης ἀνοιχθείσης ἀπαντήσας τῷ φέροντι τὸν ἀετὸν καὶ κατακοπεὶς ταῖς μαχαίραις ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν οἰωνισαμένων.

[49] [1] Προαγαγὼν δὲ τὴν φάλαγγα καὶ καταστήσας ἐναντίαν τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἐπεῖχε πολὺν χρόνον· ὑποψίαι γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ μηνύσεις κατά τινων [2] προσέπιπτον ἐπισκοποῦντι τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ τοὺς ἱππέας ἑώρα μάχης ἄρχειν οὐ πάνυ προθύμους ὄντας, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ προσμένοντας τὸ τῶν πεζῶν [3] ἔργον. εἶτ’ ἐξαίφνης ἀνὴρ πολεμικὸς καὶ τετιμημένος ἐπ’ ἀνδρείᾳ διαπρεπῶς παρὰ τὸν Βροῦτον αὐτὸν ἐξιππασάμενος μεταβάλλεται πρὸς τοὺς [4] πολεμίους· Καμουλᾶτος δ’ ἐκαλεῖτο. τοῦτον ἰδὼν ὁ Βροῦτος ἤλγησεν ἰσχυρῶς, καὶ τὰ μὲν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς, τὰ δὲ φόβῳ μείζονος μεταβολῆς καὶ προδοσίας, εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐναντίους ἦγεν εἰς ὥραν ἐνάτην, τοῦ ἡλίου καταφερομένου.

[5] καὶ τῷ μὲν καθ’ αὑτὸν ἐκράτησε μέρει καὶ προῆλθεν, ὑποχωροῦντι τῷ ἀριστερῷ τῶν πολεμίων ἐγκείμενος, καὶ συνεπέρρωσαν οἱ [6] ἱππεῖς, ἅμα τοῖς πεζοῖς ἐμβαλόντες τεταραγμένοις· τὸ δ’ ἕτερον κέρας, ὡς μὴ κυκλωθείη τῶν ἡγεμόνων ἀντιπαρεξαγόντων, πλήθει δὲ λειπόμενον, διεσπᾶτο μέσον, καὶ γιγνόμενον ἀσθενὲς οὐκ ἀντεῖχε τοῖς ἐναντίοις, ἀλλ’ [7] ἔφευγε πρῶτον. οἱ δὲ τοῦτο διακόψαντες εὐθὺς ἐκυκλοῦντο τὸν Βροῦτον, αὐτὸν μὲν ὅσα καὶ στρατηγικῆς καὶ στρατιωτικῆς ἀρετῆς ἔργα καὶ χειρὶ καὶ γνώμῃ παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ πρὸς τὸ νικᾶν ἀποδεικνύμενον, ᾧ δὲ πλέον ἔσχε [8] τῇ προτέρᾳ μάχῃ, τούτῳ βλαπτόμενον. τῶν μὲν γὰρ πολεμίων τὸ νικηθὲν εὐθὺς ἀπωλώλει τότε· τῶν δὲ Κασσίου τραπέντων ὀλίγοι διεφθάρησαν, οἱ δὲ σῳζόμενοι τῷ προηττῆσθαι περιδεεῖς ὄντες, ἀνέπλησαν ἀθυμίας καὶ [9] ταραχῆς τὸ πλεῖστον τοῦ στρατεύματος. ἐνταῦθα καὶ Μᾶρκος ὁ Κάτωνος υἱός, ἐν τοῖς ἀρίστοις καὶ γενναιοτάτοις τῶν νέων ταττόμενος, οὐκ εἶξε καταπονούμενος οὐδ’ ἔφυγεν, ἀλλὰ χρώμενός τε τῇ χειρὶ καὶ φράζων ὅστις εἴη καὶ πατρόθεν ‹ἑαυτὸν› ὀνομάζων, ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ πολλοῖς τῶν [10] πολεμίων νεκροῖς. ἔπιπτον δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων οἱ κράτιστοι, τοῦ Βρούτου προκινδυνεύοντες.

[50] [1] Ἦν δέ τις Λουκίλλιος ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς ἐν τοῖς ἑταίροις. οὗτος ὁρῶν βαρβάρους τινὰς ἱππέας ἐν τῇ διώξει τῶν μὲν ἄλλων οὐδένα ποιουμένους λόγον, ἐλαύνοντας δὲ ῥύδην ἐπὶ τὸν Βροῦτον, ἔγνω παρακινδυνεύσας ἐμποδὼν [2] αὐτοῖς γενέσθαι, καὶ μικρὸν ὑπολειφθεὶς αὐτὸς ἔφη Βροῦτος εἶναι, καὶ πιθανὸς ἦν πρὸς Ἀντώνιον δεόμενος ἄγειν ἑαυτόν, ὡς Καίσαρα δεδοικώς, [3] ἐκείνῳ δὲ θαρρῶν. οἱ δ’ ἀσπασάμενοι τὸ εὕρημα καὶ τύχῃ τινὶ θαυμαστῇ κεχρῆσθαι νομίζοντες, ἦγον τὸν ἄνδρα σκότους ἤδη, προπέμψαντες [4] ἐξ αὑτῶν τινας ἀγγέλους παρὰ τὸν Ἀντώνιον. αὐτός τ’ οὖν ἡσθεὶς ἀπήντα τοῖς ἄγουσι, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων οἱ πυνθανόμενοι ζῶντα Βροῦτον κομίζεσθαι συνετρόχαζον, οἱ μὲν ἐλεεινὸν ἡγούμενοι τῆς τύχης, οἱ δὲ τῆς δόξης ἀνάξιον, [5] ἄγραν βαρβάρων ὑπὸ φιλοψυχίας γενόμενον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐγγὺς ἦσαν, ὁ μὲν Ἀντώνιος ὑπέστη διαπορῶν ὅπως χρὴ δέξασθαι τὸν Βροῦτον, ὁ δὲ Λουκίλλιος προσαχθεὶς μάλα τεθαρρηκότως Μᾶρκον μὲν εἶπε Βροῦτον Ἀντώνιε οὐδεὶς ᾕρηκεν οὐδ’ ἂν ἕλοι πολέμιος· μὴ τοσοῦτον ἡ τύχη [6] κρατήσειε τῆς ἀρετῆς. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος εὑρεθήσεται ζῶν ἤ που καὶ νεκρὸς ἀξίως κείμενος ἑαυτοῦ. ἐγὼ δὲ τοὺς σοὺς στρατιώτας παρακρουσάμενος ἥκω, παθεῖν οὐδὲν ἐπὶ τούτῳ τῶν ἀνηκέστων παραιτούμενος.

[7] ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος τοῦ Λουκιλλίου καὶ πάντων ἐκπλαγέντων, Ἀντώνιος πρὸς τοὺς κομίσαντας αὐτὸν ἀποβλέψας, ἦπου χαλεπῶς εἶπεν ὦ συστρατιῶται [8] φέρετε τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ, περιυβρίσθαι δοκοῦντες. ἀλλ’ εὖ ἴστε κρείττονα τῆς ζητουμένης ἄγραν ᾑρηκότες. πολέμιον γὰρ ζητοῦντες, ἥκετε φίλον ἡμῖν κομίζοντες· ὡς ἐγὼ Βρούτῳ μὲν οὐκ οἶδα μὰ τοὺς θεοὺς ὅ τι ἂν ἐχρησάμην ζῶντι, τοιούτων δ’ ἀνδρῶν φίλων τυγχάνοιμι μᾶλλον ἢ [9] πολεμίων. ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν καὶ τὸν Λουκίλλιον ἀσπασάμενος, τότε μὲν ἑνὶ τῶν φίλων συνέστησεν, ὕστερον δὲ χρώμενος εἰς πάντα πιστῷ καὶ βεβαίῳ διετέλεσε.

[51] [1] Βροῦτος δὲ διαβάς τι ῥεῖθρον ὑλῶδες καὶ παράκρημνον ἤδη σκότους ὄντος οὐ πολὺ προῆλθεν, ἀλλ’ ἐν τόπῳ κοίλῳ καὶ πέτραν ἔχοντι μεγάλην προκειμένην καθίσας, ὀλίγων περὶ αὐτὸν ἡγεμόνων καὶ φίλων ὄντων, πρῶτα μὲν ἀποβλέψας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀστέρων ὄντα μεστόν, ἀνεφθέγξατο δύο στίχους, ὧν τὸν ἕτερον Βολούμνιος ἀνέγραψε (Eur. Med. 332).

Ζεῦ, μὴ λάθοι σε τῶνδ’ ὃς αἴτιος κακῶν,

[2] τοῦ δ’ ἑτέρου φησὶν ἐπιλαθέσθαι (HRR II 53). μετὰ δὲ μικρὸν τῶν ἐν τῇ μάχῃ πρὸ αὐτοῦ πεσόντων ἑταίρων ἕκαστον ὀνομάζων, μάλιστα τῇ Φλαβίου μνήμῃ καὶ τῇ Λαβεῶνος ἐπεστέναξεν· ἦν δ’ αὐτοῦ πρεσβευτὴς ὁ [3] Λαβεών, ὁ δὲ Φλάβιος ἔπαρχος τῶν τεχνιτῶν. ἐν τούτῳ δέ τις, αὐτός τε διψήσας καὶ τὸν Βροῦτον ὁρῶν ὁμοίως ἔχοντα, λαβὼν κράνος ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμὸν κατέδραμε. ψόφου δὲ κατὰ θάτερα προσπεσόντος, Βολούμνιος [4] προῆλθε κατοψόμενος καὶ σὺν αὐτῷ Δάρδανος ὁ ὑπασπιστής. ἐπανελθόντες δὲ μετὰ μικρὸν ἠρώτησαν περὶ τοῦ πόματος. ἠθικῶς δὲ σφόδρα μειδιάσας ὁ Βροῦτος πρὸς τὸν Βολούμνιον ἐκπέποται εἶπεν, ἀλλ’ ἕτερον ὑμῖν κομισθήσεται. πεμφθεὶς δ’ ὁ αὐτὸς ἐκινδύνευσεν ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων [5] ἁλῶναι, καὶ μόλις ἐσώθη τετρωμένος. εἰκάζοντι δ’ αὐτῷ μὴ πολλοὺς ἐν τῇ μάχῃ τεθνάναι, Στατύλλιος ὑπέστη διὰ τῶν πολεμίων ἐκπαισάμενος (ἄλλως γὰρ οὐκ ἦν) κατόψεσθαι τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ πυρσὸν ἄρας, ἄνπερ [6] εὕρῃ τἀκεῖ σῳζόμενα, πάλιν ἀφίξεσθαι πρὸς αὐτόν. ὁ μὲν οὖν πυρσὸς ἤρθη τοῦ Στατυλλίου παρελθόντος εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἐπανῄει χρόνῳ πολλῷ, Βροῦτος εἶπεν· ἂν ζῇ Στατύλλιος, ἀφίξεται. συνέβη δ’ αὐτὸν ἐπανερχόμενον ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ διαφθαρῆναι.

[52] [1] Προϊούσης δὲ τῆς νυκτός, ἀποκλίνας ὡς ἔτυχε καθεζόμενος πρὸς οἰκέτην ἑαυτοῦ Κλεῖτον ἐλάλει. σιωπῶντος δὲ τοῦ Κλείτου καὶ δακρύοντος, αὖθις ἐπισπασάμενος τὸν ὑπασπιστὴν Δάρδανον, ἰδίᾳ τινὰς αὐτῷ [2] προσέφερε λόγους. τέλος δὲ τὸν Βολούμνιον αὐτὸν Ἑλληνιστὶ τῶν λόγων καὶ τῆς ἀσκήσεως ὑπεμίμνῃσκε, καὶ παρεκάλει τῇ χειρὶ συνεφάψασθαι [3] τοῦ ξίφους αὐτῷ καὶ συνεπερεῖσαι τὴν πληγήν. τοῦ δὲ Βολουμνίου διωσαμένου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὁμοίως ἐχόντων, εἰπόντος δέ τινος ὡς δεῖ μὴ μένειν ἀλλὰ φεύγειν, ἐξαναστὰς πάνυ μὲν οὖν ἔφη φευκτέον, ἀλλὰ διὰ τῶν [4] χειρῶν, οὐ διὰ τῶν ποδῶν. ἐμβαλὼν δὲ τὴν δεξιὰν ἑκάστῳ μάλα φαιδρός, ἥδεσθαι μὲν ἔφη μεγάλην ἡδονήν, ὅτι τῶν φίλων αὐτὸν οὐδεὶς ἐψεύσατο· [5] τῇ τύχῃ δ’ ἐγκαλεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος, ἑαυτὸν δὲ τῶν νενικηκότων μακαριώτερον νομίζειν, οὐκ ἐχθὲς οὐδὲ πρώην μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν, ἀπολείποντα δόξαν ἀρετῆς, ἣν οὔθ’ ὅπλοις οὔτε χρήμασιν ἀπολείψουσιν οἱ κεκρατηκότες, ὡς μὴ δοκεῖν, ὅτι δικαίους ἄνδρας ἄδικοι καὶ κακοὶ χρηστοὺς [6] ἀπολέσαντες οὐ προσηκόντως ἄρχουσι. δεηθεὶς δὲ καὶ παρακαλέσας σῴζειν ἑαυτούς, ἀνεχώρησεν ἀπωτέρω μετὰ δυεῖν ἢ τριῶν, ἐν οἷς ἦν καὶ [7] Στράτων ὁ ἀπὸ λόγων ῥητορικῶν γεγονὼς αὐτῷ συνήθης. καὶ τοῦτον ἔγγιστα παραστησάμενος ἑαυτῷ, καὶ τὸ ξίφος γυμνὸν ἐπὶ τῆς λαβῆς ταῖς [8] χερσὶν ἀμφοτέραις ἐρείσας καὶ περιπεσών, ἐτελεύτησεν. οἱ δέ φασιν οὐκ αὐτὸν ἀλλὰ τὸν Στράτωνα, πολλὰ πάνυ τοῦ Βρούτου δεηθέντος, ἀποστρέψαντα τὴν ὄψιν ὑποστῆσαι τὸ ξίφος, ἐκεῖνον δὲ ῥύμῃ προσβαλόντα τὸ στέρνον καὶ διώσαντα συντόμως ἀποθανεῖν.

[53] [1] Τοῦτον δὲ τὸν Στράτωνα Μεσσάλας, ἑταῖρος ὢν Βρούτῳ, Καίσαρι διαλλαγεὶς ἐπὶ σχολῆς ποτε προσήγαγε, καὶ δακρύσας εἶπεν· οὗτός ἐστιν ὦ Καῖσαρ ὁ ἀνήρ, ὁ τῷ ἐμῷ Βρούτῳ τὴν τελευταίαν ὑπουργήσας [2] χάριν. ἀποδεξάμενος οὖν ὁ Καῖσαρ ἔσχεν αὐτὸν ἔν τε τοῖς πόνοις καὶ ἐν τοῖς περὶ Ἄκτιον ἀγῶσιν ἕνα τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἀγαθῶν γενομένων Ἑλλήνων.

[3] αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Μεσσάλαν λέγουσιν ὕστερον ἐπαινούμενον ὑπὸ Καίσαρος, ὅτι καίπερ ἐν Φιλίπποις πολεμιώτατος αὐτοῖς γενόμενος διὰ Βροῦτον, ἐν Ἀκτίῳ προθυμότατον ἑαυτὸν παρέσχεν, ἐγώ τοι φάναι ὦ Καῖσαρ ἀεὶ τῆς βελτίονος καὶ δικαιοτέρας [τιμῆς καὶ] μερίδος ἐγενόμην.

[4] Τὸν δὲ Βροῦτον ὁ Ἀντώνιος ἀνευρὼν τεθνηκότα, τὸ μὲν σῶμα τῇ πολυτελεστάτῃ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ φοινικίδων περιβαλεῖν ἐκέλευσεν· ὕστερον δὲ τὴν φοινικίδα κεκλεμμένην αἰσθόμενος, ἀπέκτεινε τὸν ὑφελόμενον. τὰ δὲ λείψανα πρὸς τὴν μητέρα τοῦ Βρούτου Σερβιλίαν ἀπέπεμψε.

[5] Πορκίαν δὲ τὴν Βρούτου γυναῖκα Νικόλαος ὁ φιλόσοφος ἱστορεῖ (FGrH 90 F 99) καὶ Οὐαλέριος Μάξιμος (4, 6, 5) βουλομένην ἀποθανεῖν, ὡς οὐδεὶς ἐπέτρεπε τῶν φίλων, ἀλλὰ προσέκειντο καὶ παρεφύλαττον, ἐκ τοῦ πυρὸς ἀναρπάσασαν ἄνθρακας καταπιεῖν, καὶ τὸ [στόμα συγκλείσασαν καὶ] [6] μύσασαν, οὕτω διαφθαρῆναι. καίτοι φέρεταί τις ἐπιστολὴ Βρούτου πρὸς τοὺς φίλους, ἐγκαλοῦντος αὐτοῖς καὶ ὀλοφυρομένου περὶ τῆς Πορκίας ὡς ἀμεληθείσης ὑπ’ αὐτῶν καὶ προελομένης διὰ νόσον καταλιπεῖν τὸν βίον.

[7] ἔοικεν οὖν ὁ Νικόλαος ἠγνοηκέναι τὸν χρόνον, ἐπεὶ τό γε πάθος καὶ τὸν ἔρωτα τῆς γυναικὸς καὶ τὸν τρόπον τῆς τελευτῆς ὑπονοῆσαι δίδωσι καὶ τὸ ἐπιστόλιον, εἴπερ ἄρα τῶν γνησίων ἐστίν.

Comparison Dionis et Bruti

[1] [1] Πολλῶν τοίνυν τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ὑπαρξάντων καλῶν, ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις δὲ τοῦ μεγίστους ἐλαχίσταις ἀφορμαῖς γενέσθαι, τοῦτο τῷ Δίωνι [2] κάλλιστόν ἐστιν. οὐ γὰρ εἶχε τὸν ἀμφισβητοῦντα, καθάπερ ὁ Βροῦτος Κάσσιον, ἄνδρα πρὸς μὲν ἀρετὴν καὶ δόξαν οὐχ ὁμοίως ἀξιόπιστον, εἰς δὲ τὸν πόλεμον οὐκ ἐλάττονας τόλμῃ καὶ δεινότητι καὶ πράξει συμβολὰς [3] παρασχόμενον, ᾧ γε καὶ τοῦ παντὸς ἔργου προσποιοῦσιν ἔνιοι τὴν ἀρχήν, ἡγεμόνα τῆς ἐπὶ Καίσαρα γνώμης τοῦτον ἀτρεμοῦντι Βρούτῳ γενέσθαι [4] λέγοντες. Δίων δ’ ὥσπερ ὅπλα καὶ πλοῖα καὶ στρατιωτικὴν δύναμιν, οὕτω καὶ φίλους καὶ συνεργοὺς ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ φαίνεται [5] κτησάμενος. οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ὡς Βροῦτος ἐκ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῶν καὶ τοῦ πολέμου πλοῦτον ἔσχε καὶ δύναμιν, οὕτω καὶ Δίων, ἀλλὰ τῷ πολέμῳ προεισήνεγκεν αὐτὸς τὸν ἑαυτοῦ πλοῦτον, ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν πολιτῶν ἐλευθερίας [6] τοῖς τῆς φυγῆς ἐφοδίοις προκαταχρησάμενος. ἔτι δὲ Βροῦτος μὲν καὶ Κάσσιος, οὐκ ὂν ἀσφαλὲς ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν ἐκπεσοῦσι τῆς πατρίδος [Ῥώμης], ἀλλ’ ὠφληκόσι δίκην θανάτου καὶ διωκομένοις, ἀναγκαίως εἰς τὸν πόλεμον κατέφυγον, καὶ τὰ σώματα τοῖς ὅπλοις παρακαταθέμενοι, [7] διεκινδύνευσαν ὑπὲρ αὑτῶν τὸ πλέον ἢ τῶν πολιτῶν· Δίων δ’ ἀδεέστερον ‹ἐν› τῇ φυγῇ τοῦ φυγαδεύσαντος τυράννου καὶ ἥδιον διάγων, ἀνέρριψεν ἑκὼν κίνδυνον τοσοῦτον ἐπὶ τῷ σῶσαι Σικελίαν.

[2] [1] Καὶ μὴν οὐχ ὅμοιον Διονυσίου Συρακοσίοις καὶ Καίσαρος ἀπαλλαγῆναι Ῥωμαίοις. ὁ μὲν γὰρ οὐδ’ ἠρνεῖτο τύραννος εἶναι, κακῶν τε [2] μυρίων ἐμπεπλήκει Σικελίαν· ἡ δὲ Καίσαρος ἀρχὴ συνισταμένη μὲν οὐκ ὀλίγα τοῖς ἐναντιουμένοις πράγματα παρέσχε, δεξαμένοις δὲ καὶ κρατηθεῖσιν ὄνομα καὶ δόκησις ἐφάνη μόνον, ἔργον δ’ ἀπ’ αὐτῆς οὐδὲν ὠμὸν οὐδὲ τυραννικὸν ὑπῆρξεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δεομένοις ἔδοξε τοῖς πράγμασι μοναρχίας [3] ὥσπερ πρᾳότατος ἰατρὸς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ δαίμονος δεδόσθαι. διὸ Καίσαρα μὲν εὐθὺς ἐπόθησεν ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος, ὥστε χαλεπὸς γενέσθαι καὶ ἀπαραίτητος τοῖς ἀπεκτονόσι, Δίωνα δ’ ἡ Διονυσίου πάρεσις ἐκ Συρακουσῶν καὶ τὸ μὴ κατασκάψαι τοῦ προτέρου τυράννου τὸν τάφον ἐπαίτιον μάλιστα πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας ἐποίησεν.

[3] [1] Ἐν αὐταῖς τοίνυν ταῖς πολεμικαῖς πράξεσιν, ὁ μὲν Δίων ἄμεμπτος γέγονε στρατηγός, ὧν μὲν αὐτὸς ἐβουλεύετο, τοῖς πράγμασιν ἄριστα χρώμενος, ἃ δ’ ἐπταίσθη δι’ ἑτέρους, ἀναλαβὼν καὶ μεταστήσας ἐπὶ τὸ [2] βέλτιον· ὁ δὲ Βροῦτος τὸν ἔσχατον ἀγῶνα ὑπὲρ τῶν ὅλων οὔθ’ ὑποστῆναι δοκεῖ φρονίμως, οὔτε σφαλεὶς ἐπανόρθωσιν εὑρεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἀπεῖπε καὶ [3] προεῖτο τὰς ἐλπίδας, οὐδ’ ὅσον Πομπήϊος ἐπιτολμήσας τῇ τύχῃ· καὶ ταῦτα πολλῆς μὲν αὐτόθι λειπομένης ἐλπίδος ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις, ταῖς δὲ ναυσὶ κρατῶν πάσης βεβαίως τῆς θαλάσσης.

[4] Ὃ δὲ μέγιστόν ἐστιν ὧν ἐγκαλοῦσι Βρούτῳ, τὸ σωθέντα τῇ Καίσαρος χάριτι καὶ σώσαντα τῶν συνεαλωκότων ὅσους ἐβούλετο καὶ φίλον νομιζόμενον καὶ προτιμηθέντα πολλῶν, αὐτόχειρα τοῦ σώσαντος γενέσθαι, [5] τοῦτ’ οὐκ ἄν τις εἴποι κατὰ Δίωνος. ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον οἰκεῖος μὲν ὢν Διονυσίῳ καὶ φίλος, ὤρθου τὰ πράγματα καὶ συνδιεφύλαττεν, ἐκπεσὼν δὲ τῆς πατρίδος καὶ ἀδικηθεὶς περὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν ἀπολέσας, [6] ἐκ προφανοῦς εἰς πόλεμον κατέστη νόμιμον καὶ δίκαιον. ἢ τοῦτ’ ἀντιστρέφει πρῶτον; ὃ γὰρ εἰς ἔπαινον ὑπάρχει τοῖς ἀνδράσι μέγιστον, ἡ πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους ἀπέχθεια καὶ μισοπονηρία, τοῦτ’ εἰλικρινές ἐστι τῷ Βρούτῳ καὶ καθαρόν· ἰδίᾳ γὰρ οὐδὲν ἐγκαλῶν Καίσαρι, τῆς κοινῆς προεκινδύνευεν [7] ἐλευθερίας. ὁ δ’ εἰ μὴ κακῶς ἔπαθεν αὐτός, οὐκ ἂν ἐπολέμησε. καὶ τοῦτο δηλοῦται ταῖς Πλάτωνος ἐπιστολαῖς (3. 4. 7. 8. 13), ἐξ ὧν δῆλός ἐστιν ὡς ἀποβληθεὶς τῆς τυραννίδος, οὐκ ἀποστάς, κατέλυσε [8] Διονύσιον. ἔτι Βροῦτον μὲν καὶ Πομπηΐῳ φίλον ἐποίησεν ἐχθρὸν ὄντα καὶ πολέμιον Καίσαρι τὸ κοινῇ συμφέρον, ὡς ἔχθρας ὅρῳ καὶ φιλίας [9] ἑνὶ χρώμενον τῷ δικαίῳ· Δίων δὲ πρὸς χάριν ὤρθου πολλὰ Διονύσιον ὅτ’ [10] ἦν βέβαιος αὐτῷ, καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν ἀπιστηθεὶς ἐπολέμησε. διὸ τούτῳ μὲν οὐδ’ οἱ φίλοι πάντες ἐπίστευσαν, ὡς μεταστήσας Διονύσιον οὐκ ἂν βεβαιώσαιτο τὴν ἀρχὴν αὑτῷ, πρᾳοτέρῳ τυραννίδος ὀνόματι παραγαγὼν [11] τοὺς πολίτας· περὶ δὲ τοῦ Βρούτου ‹καὶ› τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἦν ἀκούειν, ὅτι μόνος τῶν ἐπὶ Καίσαρα συναραμένων ἕνα προὔθετο σκοπὸν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἄχρι τέλους, τὴν πάτριον ἀποδοῦναι Ῥωμαίοις πολιτείαν.

[4] [1] Ἄνευ γε μὴν τούτων ὁ πρὸς Διονύσιον ἀγὼν οὐχ ὅμοιος ἦν [2] δήπου τῷ πρὸς Καίσαρα. Διονυσίου μὲν γὰρ οὐδεὶς ὅστις οὐκ ἂν κατεφρόνησε τῶν συνήθων, ἐν μέθαις καὶ κύβοις καὶ γυναιξὶ τὰς πλείστας ποιουμένου [3] διατριβάς· τὸ δὲ τὴν Καίσαρος κατάλυσιν εἰς νοῦν ἐμβαλέσθαι καὶ μὴ φοβηθῆναι τὴν δεινότητα καὶ δύναμιν καὶ τύχην, οὗ καὶ τοὔνομα τοὺς Παρθυαίων καὶ Ἰνδῶν βασιλεῖς οὐκ εἴα καθεύδειν, ὑπερφυοῦς ἦν ψυχῆς [4] καὶ πρὸς μηθὲν ὑφίεσθαι φόβῳ τοῦ φρονήματος δυναμένης. διὸ τῷ μὲν ὀφθέντι μόνον ἐν Σικελίᾳ μυριάδες οὐκ ὀλίγαι συνέστησαν ἐπὶ Διονύσιον· ἡ δὲ Καίσαρος δόξα καὶ πεσόντος ὤρθου τοὺς φίλους, καὶ τοὔνομα τὸν χρησάμενον ἦρεν ἐκ παιδὸς ἀμηχάνου πρῶτον εὐθὺς εἶναι Ῥωμαίων, ὡς ἀλεξιφάρμακον τοῦτο πρὸς τὴν Ἀντωνίου περιαψάμενον ἔχθραν καὶ δύναμιν.

[5] εἰ δὲ φήσει τις ὅτι μεγάλοις μὲν ἀγῶσιν ὁ Δίων ἐξέβαλε τὸν τύραννον, Καίσαρα δὲ Βροῦτος ἔκτεινε γυμνὸν καὶ ἀφύλακτον, αὐτὸ τοῦτο δεινότητος ἄκρας καὶ στρατηγίας ἦν ἔργον, ἄνδρα τοσαύτην περιβεβλημένον [6] δύναμιν ἀφύλακτον λαβεῖν καὶ γυμνόν. οὐ γὰρ ἐξαίφνης οὐδὲ μόνος ἢ σὺν ὀλίγοις ἐπιπεσὼν ἀνεῖλεν, ἀλλ’ ἐκ πολλοῦ συνθεὶς τὸ βούλευμα καὶ μετὰ πολλῶν ἐπιθέμενος, ὧν οὐδεὶς ἐψεύσατ’ αὐτόν· ἢ γὰρ εὐθὺς ἔκρινε τοὺς [7] ἀρίστους, ἢ τῷ προκρῖναι τοὺς πιστευθέντας ἀγαθοὺς ἐποίησε. Δίων δ’ εἴτε κρίνας κακῶς ἐπίστευσεν ἑαυτὸν πονηροῖς, εἴτε χρώμενος ἐποίησεν [8] ἐκ χρηστῶν πονηρούς, οὐδέτερον παθεῖν ἀνδρὶ φρονίμῳ προσῆκον. ἐπιτιμᾷ δὲ καὶ Πλάτων αὐτῷ, τοιούτους ἑλομένῳ φίλους ὑφ’ ὧν ἀπώλετο.

[5] [1] Καὶ Δίωνος μὲν τιμωρὸς οὐδεὶς ἐφάνη πεσόντος· ἀλλὰ Βροῦτον καὶ τῶν πολεμίων Ἀντώνιος μὲν ἔθαψεν ἐνδόξως, Καῖσαρ δὲ καὶ τὰς τιμὰς [2] ἐτήρησεν. ἕστηκε γὰρ χαλκοῦς ἀνδριὰς ἐν Μεδιολάνῳ τῆς ἐντὸς Ἄλπεων Γαλατίας. τοῦτον ὕστερον ἰδὼν ὁ Καῖσαρ, εἰκονικὸν ὄντα καὶ χαριέντως εἰργασμένον, παρῆλθεν· εἶτ’ ἐπιστὰς μετὰ μικρὸν ἀκροωμένων πολλῶν τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἐκάλει, φάσκων ἔκσπονδον αὐτῶν τὴν πόλιν εἰληφέναι, πολέμιον [3] ἔχουσαν παρ’ αὑτῇ. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ὡς εἰκὸς ἠρνοῦντο, καὶ τίνα λέγοι διαποροῦντες εἰς ἀλλήλους ἀπέβλεψαν. ὡς δ’ ἐπιστρέψας ὁ Καῖσαρ πρὸς τὸν ἀνδριάντα καὶ συναγαγὼν τὸ πρόσωπον, ἀλλ’ οὐχ οὗτος ἔφη πολέμιος ὢν ἡμέτερος ἐνταῦθ’ ἕστηκεν; ἔτι μᾶλλον καταπλαγέντες [4] ἐσιώπησαν. ὁ δὲ μειδιάσας ἐπῄνεσέ τε τοὺς Γαλάτας, ὡς τοῖς φίλοις καὶ παρὰ τὰς τύχας βεβαίους ὄντας, καὶ τὸν ἀνδριάντα κατὰ χώραν μένειν ἐκέλευσεν.

Aratus

[1] [1]  Παροιμίαν τινὰ παλαιὰν ὦ Πολύκρατες, δείσας μοι δοκεῖ τὸ δύσφημον αὐτῆς, ὁ φιλόσοφος Χρύσιππος (SVF III 202) οὐχ ὃν ἔχει τρόπον, ἀλλ’ ὡς αὐτὸς ᾤετο βέλτιον εἶναι, διατίθεται·

τίς πατέρ’ αἰνήσει, εἰ μὴ εὐδαίμονες υἱοί;

[2] Διονυσόδωρος δ’ ὁ Τροιζήνιος (Paroem. Gr. I p. VII Schneidewin) ἐλέγχων αὐτὸν ἀντεκτίθησι τὴν ἀληθινὴν οὕτως ἔχουσαν·

τίς πατέρ’ αἰνήσει, εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

καί φησι τοὺς ἀφ’ αὑτῶν οὐδενὸς ἀξίους ὄντας, ὑποδυομένους δὲ προγόνων τινῶν ἀρετὰς καὶ πλεονάζοντας ἐν τοῖς ἐκείνων ἐπαίνοις, ὑπὸ τῆς παροιμίας ἐπιστομίζεσθαι.

[3] ἀλλ’ οἷς γε φύσει τὸ γενναῖον ἐπιπρέπει ἐκ πατέρων κατὰ Πίνδαρον (Pyth. 8, 44) ὥσπερ σοί, πρὸς τὸ κάλλιστον ἀφομοιοῦντι τῶν οἴκοθεν παραδειγμάτων τὸν βίον, εὔδαιμον ἂν εἴη τὸ μεμνῆσθαι τῶν ἀπὸ γένους [4] ἀρίστων, ἀκούοντας περὶ αὐτῶν ἀεί τι καὶ λέγοντας. οὐ γὰρ ἰδίων ἀπορίᾳ καλῶν ἐξαρτῶσιν ἀλλοτρίων ἐπαίνων τὴν δόξαν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἐκείνων τὰ οἰκεῖα συνάπτοντες, ὡς καὶ τοῦ γένους καὶ τοῦ βίου καθηγεμόνας εὐφημοῦσι.

[5] Διὸ κἀγὼ τὸν Ἀράτου τοῦ σοῦ πολίτου καὶ προπάτορος βίον, ὃν οὔτε τῇ δόξῃ τῇ περὶ σεαυτὸν οὔτε τῇ δυνάμει καταισχύνεις, ἀπέσταλκά σοι συγγραψάμενος, οὐχ ὡς οὐχὶ πάντων ἀκριβέστατά σοι μεμεληκὸς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπίστασθαι τὰς ἐκείνου πράξεις, ἀλλ’ ὅπως οἱ παῖδές σου Πολυκράτης καὶ Πυθοκλῆς οἰκείοις παραδείγμασιν ἐντρέφωνται, τὰ μὲν ἀκούοντες, τὰ δ’ ἀναγινώσκοντες ἅπερ [6] [οὖν] αὐτοὺς μιμεῖσθαι προσήκει· φιλαύτου γὰρ ἀνδρός, οὐ φιλοκάλου, πάντως ἀεὶ βέλτιστον ‹ἑαυτὸν› ἡγεῖσθαι.

[2] [1] Ἡ Σικυωνίων πόλις ἐπεὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἐκ τῆς ἀκράτου καὶ Δωρικῆς ἀριστοκρατίας ὥσπερ ἁρμονίας συγχυθείσης εἰς στάσεις ἐνέπεσε καὶ φιλοτιμίας δημαγωγῶν, οὐκ ἐπαύσατο νοσοῦσα καὶ ταραττομένη καὶ τύραννον ἐκ τυράννου μεταβάλλουσα, μέχρι οὗ Κλέωνος ἀναιρεθέντος εἵλοντο Τιμοκλείδαν ἄρχοντα καὶ Κλεινίαν, ἄνδρας ἐνδόξους τὰ μάλιστα καὶ ἐν δυνάμει τῶν πολιτῶν [2] ὄντας. ἤδη δέ τινα τῆς πολιτείας κατάστασιν ἔχειν δοκούσης, Τιμοκλείδας μὲν ἀπέθανεν, Ἀβαντίδας δ’ ὁ Πασέου τυραννίδα πράττων ἑαυτῷ τὸν Κλεινίαν ἀπέκτεινε, καὶ τῶν φίλων καὶ οἰκείων τοὺς μὲν ἐξέβαλε, τοὺς δ’ ἀνεῖλεν· ἐζήτει δὲ καὶ τὸν υἱὸν [αὐτοῦ] ἀνελεῖν Ἄρατον, [3] ἑπταετῆ καταλελειμμένον. ἐν δὲ τῇ περὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ταραχῇ συνεκπεσὼν τοῖς φεύγουσιν ὁ παῖς καὶ πλανώμενος ἐν τῇ πόλει περίφοβος καὶ ἀβοήθητος, κατὰ τύχην ἔλαθεν εἰς οἰκίαν παρελθὼν γυναικός, ἀδελφῆς μὲν Ἀβαντίδου, Προφάντῳ δὲ τῷ Κλεινίου ἀδελφῷ γεγαμημένης, ὄνομα [4] Σωσοῦς. αὕτη δὲ καὶ τὸ ἦθος οὖσα γενναία, καὶ σὺν θεῷ τινι τὸ παιδίον οἰομένη καταπεφευγέναι πρὸς αὐτήν, ἀπέκρυψεν ἔνδον, εἶτα νυκτὸς εἰς Ἄργος ὑπεξέπεμψεν.

[3] [1] Οὕτω δ’ ἐκκλαπέντι τῷ Ἀράτῳ καὶ διαφυγόντι τὸν κίνδυνον, εὐθὺς μὲν ἐνεφύετο καὶ συνηύξετο τὸ σφοδρὸν καὶ διάπυρον μῖσος ἐπὶ τοὺς τυράννους· τρεφόμενος δὲ παρὰ τοῖς ἐν Ἄργει ξένοις καὶ φίλοις πατρῴοις ἐλευθερίως, καὶ τὸ σῶμα βλαστάνον ὁρῶν εἰς εὐεξίαν καὶ μέγεθος, ἐπέδωκεν ἑαυτὸν ἀσκήσει τῇ περὶ παλαίστραν, ὥστε καὶ [2] πένταθλον ἀγωνίσασθαι καὶ στεφάνων τυχεῖν. ἐπιφαίνεται δ’ ἀμέλει καὶ ταῖς εἰκόσιν ἀθλητική τις ἰδέα, καὶ τὸ συνετὸν τοῦ προσώπου καὶ βασιλικὸν οὐ παντάπασιν [3] ἀρνεῖται τὴν ἀδηφαγίαν καὶ τὸ σκαφεῖον. ὅθεν ἐνδεέστερον ἴσως ἢ πολιτικῷ προσῆκον ἦν ἀνδρὶ περὶ τὸν λόγον ἐσπούδασε· καίτοι γέγονε[ναι] κομψότερος εἰπεῖν ἢ δοκεῖ τισιν ἐκ τῶν ὑπομνημάτων (FGrH 231 T 6) κρίνουσιν, ἃ παρέργως καὶ ὑπὸ χεῖρα διὰ τῶν ἐπιτυχόντων ὀνομάτων ἁμιλλησάμενος κατέλιπε.

[4] Χρόνῳ δ’ ὕστερον Ἀβαντίδαν μὲν οἱ περὶ Δεινίαν καὶ Ἀριστοτέλη τὸν διαλεκτικόν, εἰωθότα τοῖς λόγοις αὐτῶν κατ’ ἀγορὰν σχολαζόντων ἑκάστοτε παρεῖναι καὶ συμφιλονικεῖν, ἐμβαλόντες εἰς τοιαύτην διατριβὴν καὶ κατασκευάσαντες ἐπιβουλὴν ἀνεῖλον, Πασέαν δὲ τὸν Ἀβαντίδου πατέρα τὴν ἀρχὴν ὑπολαβόντα Νικοκλῆς δολοφονήσας [5] ἑαυτὸν ἀνέδειξε τύραννον. τοῦτον ἐμφερέστατον λέγουσι τὴν ὄψιν Περιάνδρῳ τῷ Κυψέλου γενέσθαι, καθάπερ Ἀλκμαίωνι μὲν τῷ Ἀμφιάρεω τὸν Πέρσην Ὀρόντην, Ἕκτορι δὲ τὸν Λακεδαιμόνιον νεανίσκον, ὃν ἱστορεῖ Μυρσίλος (FGrH 477 F 13) ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν θεωμένων ὡς τοῦτ’ ἔγνωσαν καταπατηθῆναι.

[4] [1] Τοῦ δὲ Νικοκλέους τέσσαρας μῆνας τυραννοῦντος, ἐν οἷς πολλὰ κακὰ τὴν πόλιν ἐργασάμενος ἐκινδύνευεν ὑπ’ Αἰτωλῶν ἐπιβουλευομένην αὐτὴν ἀποβαλεῖν, ἤδη μειράκιον ὁ Ἄρατος ὢν ἀξίωμα λαμπρὸν εἶχε δι’ εὐγένειαν καὶ φρόνημα, ὃ διέφαινεν οὐ μικρὸν οὐδ’ ἀργόν, ἐμβριθὲς δὲ καὶ [2] παρ’ ἡλικίαν ἀσφαλεστέρᾳ γνώμῃ κεκραμένον. ὅθεν οἵ τε φυγάδες μάλιστα τὸν νοῦν ἐκείνῳ προσεῖχον, ὅ τε Νικοκλῆς οὐκ ἠμέλει τῶν πραττομένων, ἀλλ’ ἀδήλως ἀπεθεώρει καὶ παρεφύλαττεν αὐτοῦ τὴν ὁρμήν, τόλμημα μὲν οὐδὲν τηλικοῦτον δεδιὼς οὐδ’ ἔργον οὐδὲν οὕτω παρακεκινδυνευμένον, ὑποπτεύων δὲ τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν αὐτὸν διαλέγεσθαι φίλοις οὖσι καὶ ξένοις πατρῴοις.

[3] Καὶ γὰρ ἀληθῶς ὁ Ἄρατος ἐπεχείρησε τὴν ὁδὸν ἐκείνην βαδίζειν. ὡς δ’ Ἀντίγονος μὲν ὑπισχνούμενος ἠμέλει καὶ παρῆγε τὸν χρόνον, αἱ δ’ ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου καὶ παρὰ Πτολεμαίου μακρὰν ἦσαν ἐλπίδες, ἔγνω δι’ αὑτοῦ καταλύειν τὸν τύραννον.

[5] [1] Πρώτοις δὲ κοινοῦται τὴν γνώμην Ἀριστομάχῳ καὶ Ἐκδήλῳ. τούτων ὁ μὲν ἐκ Σικυῶνος ἦν φυγάς, ὁ δ’ Ἔκδηλος Ἀρκὰς ἐκ Μεγάλης πόλεως, ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος καὶ πρακτικός, Ἀρκεσιλάου τοῦ Ἀκαδημιακοῦ γεγονὼς ἐν [2] ἄστει συνήθης. δεξαμένων δὲ τούτων προθύμως, διελέγετο τοῖς ἄλλοις φυγάσιν, ὧν ὀλίγοι μὲν αἰσχυνθέντες ἐγκαταλιπεῖν τὴν ἐλπίδα μετεῖχον τῶν πραττομένων, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ τὸν Ἄρατον ἐπειρῶντο κατακωλύειν ὡς ἀπειρίᾳ πραγμάτων [3] θρασυνόμενον. βουλευομένου δ’ αὐτοῦ χωρίον τι τῆς Σικυωνίας καταλαβεῖν, ὅθεν ὡρμημένος διαπολεμήσει πρὸς τὸν τύραννον, ἧκεν εἰς Ἄργος ἀνὴρ Σικυώνιος ἐκ τῆς εἱρκτῆς ἀποδεδρακώς· ἦν δὲ τῶν φυγάδων ἑνὸς Ξενοκλέους ἀδελφός· καὶ τῷ Ἀράτῳ προσαχθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Ξενοκλέους, ἔλεγε τοῦ τείχους, καθ’ ὃν ὑπερβὰς αὐτὸς ἐσώθη τόπον, ἐντὸς μὲν ὀλίγου δεῖν ἐπίπεδον εἶναι, προσπεφυκότα χωρίοις πετρώδεσι καὶ ὑψηλοῖς, τὸ δ’ [4] ἔξωθεν ὕψος ὑπὸ κλιμάκων οὐ πάνυ ἀνέφικτον. ὡς δὲ ταῦτ’ ἤκουσεν ὁ Ἄρατος, ἐκπέμπει μετὰ τοῦ Ξενοκλέους οἰκέτας ἰδίους δύο Σεύθαν τε καὶ Τέχνωνα κατασκεψομένους τὸ τεῖχος, ἐγνωκὼς εἰ δύναιτο κρύφα καὶ πρὸς ἕνα κίνδυνον ὀξέως τὸ πᾶν ἀναρρῖψαι μᾶλλον ἢ μακρῷ πολέμῳ καὶ φανεροῖς ἀγῶσιν ἰδιώτης ἀντικαθίστασθαι πρὸς [5] τύραννον. ὡς δ’ ἐπανῆλθον οἱ περὶ τὸν Ξενοκλέα, τοῦ μὲν τείχους εἰληφότες μέτρα καὶ τοῦ τόπου τὴν φύσιν ἀπαγγέλλοντες οὐκ ἄπορον οὐδὲ χαλεπήν, τὸ δὲ λαθεῖν προσελθόντας ἐργῶδες εἶναι φάσκοντες ὑπὸ κηπουροῦ τινος κυναρίων, μικρῶν μέν, ἐκτόπως δὲ μαχίμων καὶ ἀπαρηγορήτων, εὐθὺς ἐνίστατο τὴν πρᾶξιν.

[6] [1] Ἡ μὲν οὖν τῶν ὅπλων παρασκευὴ συνήθης ἦν, πάντων ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν τότε κλωπείαις χρωμένων καὶ καταδρομαῖς ἐπ’ ἀλλήλους· τὰς δὲ κλίμακας Εὐφράνωρ ὁ μηχανοποιὸς ἀναφανδὸν ἐπήξατο, τῆς τέχνης αὐτῷ τὸ ἀνύποπτον διδούσης, ἐπεὶ καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν τῶν φυγάδων.

[2] ἄνδρας δ’ αὐτῷ τῶν μὲν ἐν Ἄργει φίλων ἕκαστος †ἐξ ὀλίγων δέκα παρέσχεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τῶν ἰδίων οἰκετῶν τριάκοντα καθώπλισεν. ἐμισθώσατο δὲ καὶ διὰ Πρώτου ‹καὶ› Ξενοφίλου τῶν ἀρχικλώπων οὐ πολλοὺς στρατιώτας, οἷς διεδόθη λόγος ὡς ἐπὶ τὰς ἵππους τὰς βασιλικὰς εἰς τὴν Σικυωνίαν ἔξοδος ἔσοιτο. καὶ προεπέμφθησαν οἱ πολλοὶ σποράδες ἐπὶ τὸν Πολυγνώτου πύργον, ἐκεῖ κελευσθέντες [3] περιμεῖναι. προεπέμφθη δὲ καὶ Καφισίας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ μετὰ τεσσάρων ἄλλων εὔζωνος, οὓς ἔδει πρὸς τὸν κηπουρὸν ἀφικέσθαι σκοταίους, φάσκοντας ὁδοιπόρους εἶναι, καὶ καταυλισαμένους αὐτόν τε συγκλεῖσαι καὶ τοὺς κύνας· οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἄλλῃ παρελθεῖν. τὰς δὲ κλίμακας διαλυτὰς οὔσας ἐμβαλόντες εἰς ἀχάνας καὶ κατακαλύψαντες [4] ἐφ’ ἁμαξῶν προαπέστειλαν. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ κατασκόπων τινῶν ἐν Ἄργει τοῦ Νικοκλέους φανέντων καὶ περιιέναι λεγομένων ἀδήλως καὶ παραφυλάττειν τὸν Ἄρατον, ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ προελθὼν καὶ φανερὸς ὢν ἐν ἀγορᾷ διέτριβε μετὰ τῶν φίλων· εἶτ’ ἀλειψάμενος ἐν τῷ γυμνασίῳ καὶ παραλαβών τινας ἐκ τῆς παλαίστρας τῶν εἰωθότων πίνειν καὶ ῥᾳθυμεῖν μετ’ αὐτοῦ νεανίσκων ἀπῆγεν οἴκαδε· καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ἑωρᾶτο τῶν οἰκετῶν αὐτοῦ δι’ ἀγορᾶς ὁ μὲν στεφάνους φέρων, ὁ δὲ λαμπάδας ὠνούμενος, ὁ δὲ τοῖς εἰθισμένοις παρὰ πότον ψάλλειν καὶ αὐλεῖν γυναίοις [5] διαλεγόμενος. ταῦτα δ’ οἱ κατάσκοποι πάνθ’ ὁρῶντες ἐξηπάτηντο καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀναγελῶντες ἔλεγον· οὐδὲν ἦν ἄρα τυράννου δειλότερον, εἰ καὶ Νικοκλῆς τηλικαύτην πόλιν ἔχων καὶ τοσαύτην δύναμιν ὀρρωδεῖ μειράκιον εἰς ἡδονὰς καὶ πότους μεθημερινοὺς τὰ τῆς φυγῆς ἐφόδια καταχρώμενον.

[7] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν οὕτω παραλογισθέντες ἀπηλλάγησαν. ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος εὐθὺς μετ’ ἄριστον ἐξελθὼν καὶ συνάψας πρὸς τὸν Πολυγνώτου πύργον τοῖς στρατιώταις εἰς Νεμέαν προῆγεν, ὅπου τὴν πρᾶξιν ἐξέφηνε τοῖς πολλοῖς τότε πρῶτον, ὑποσχέσεις τε καὶ παρακλήσεις ἐποιήσατο.

[2] καὶ σύνθημα παραδοὺς Ἀπόλλωνα ὑπερδέξιον, προῆγεν ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν, συμμέτρως τῇ περιφορᾷ τῆς σελήνης ἐπιταχύνων καὶ πάλιν ἀνιεὶς τὴν πορείαν, ὥστε τῷ μὲν φωτὶ χρῆσθαι καθ’ ὁδόν, ἤδη δὲ δυομένης περὶ τὸν κῆπον [3] εἶναι πλησίον τοῦ τείχους. ἐνταῦθα Καφισίας ἀπήντησεν αὐτῷ, τῶν μὲν κυναρίων οὐ κρατήσας - ἔφθη γὰρ ἀποπηδήσαντα - , τὸν δὲ κηπουρὸν ἐγκεκλεικώς. ἀθύμους δὲ τοὺς πλείστους γενομένους καὶ κελεύοντας ἀπαλλάττεσθαι παρεθάρρυνεν ὁ Ἄρατος, ὡς ἀπάξων ἂν οἱ κύνες [4] ἄγαν ἐνοχλῶσιν αὐτοῖς. ἅμα δὲ τοὺς τὰς κλίμακας φέροντας προπέμψας, ὧν Ἔκδηλος ἡγεῖτο καὶ Μνασίθεος, αὐτὸς ἐπηκολούθει σχολαίως, ἤδη τῶν κυναρίων εὐτόνως ὑλακτούντων καὶ συμπαρατρεχόντων τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἔκδηλον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ προσέμειξάν τε τῷ τείχει καὶ [5] προσήρεισαν τὰς κλίμακας ἀσφαλῶς. ἀναβαινόντων δὲ τῶν πρώτων, ὁ τὴν ἑωθινὴν φυλακὴν παραδιδοὺς ἐφώδευε κώδωνι, καὶ φῶτα πολλὰ καὶ θόρυβος ἦν τῶν ἐπιπορευομένων. οἱ δ’ ὥσπερ εἶχον αὐτοῦ πτήξαντες ἐπὶ τῶν κλιμάκων, τούτους μὲν οὐ χαλεπῶς ἔλαθον, ἄλλης δὲ φυλακῆς ἐναντίας ταύτῃ προσερχομένης εἰς τὸν ἔσχατον [6] κίνδυνον ἦλθον. ὡς δὲ κἀκείνην διέφυγον παρελθοῦσαν, εὐθὺς ἀνέβαινον οἱ περὶ τὸν Μνασίθεον καὶ Ἔκδηλον, καὶ τὰς ἑκατέρωθεν ὁδοὺς τοῦ τείχους διαλαβόντες, ἀπέστελλον Τέχνωνα πρὸς Ἄρατον ἐπείγεσθαι κελεύοντες.

[8] [1] Ἦν δ’ οὐ πολὺ διάστημα ἀπὸ τοῦ κήπου πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος καὶ τὸν πύργον, ἐν ᾧ κύων μέγας ἐφρούρει θηρατικός. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν οὐκ ᾔσθετο τὴν ἔφοδον, εἴτε φύσει νωθὴς ὢν εἴτε μεθ’ ἡμέραν κατάκοπος γεγονώς. τῶν δὲ τοῦ κηπουροῦ κυναρίων κάτωθεν ἐκκαλουμένων αὐτόν, ὑπεφθέγγετο τυφλὸν καὶ ἄσημον τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα μᾶλλον [2] ἐπέτεινε παρερχομένων· καὶ κατεῖχεν ἤδη πολὺς ὑλαγμὸς τὸ χωρίον, ὥστε τὸν πέραν φύλακα κραυγῇ μεγάλῃ πυνθάνεσθαι τοῦ κυνηγοῦ, πρὸς τίνα τραχέως οὕτως ὁ [3] κύων ὑλακτεῖ, καὶ μή τι γίνεται καινότερον. ὁ δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ πύργου ‹πρὸς› αὐτὸν ἀντεφώνησε μηδὲν εἶναι δεινόν, ἀλλὰ τὸν κύνα πρὸς τὸ φῶς τῶν τειχοφυλάκων καὶ τὸν ψόφον τῶν κωδώνων παρωξύνθαι. τοῦτο μάλιστα τοὺς Ἀράτου στρατιώτας ἐπέρρωσεν, οἰομένους τὸν κυνηγὸν ἐπικρύπτειν κοινωνοῦντα τῇ πράξει, εἶναι δὲ πολλοὺς καὶ ἄλλους ἐν [4] τῇ πόλει τοὺς συνεργοῦντας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῷ τείχει προσβαλόντων, χαλεπὸς ἦν ὁ κίνδυνος καὶ μῆκος ἐλάμβανε, τῶν κλιμάκων κραδαινομένων, εἰ μὴ καθ’ ἕνα καὶ σχολαίως ἀναβαίνοιεν· ἡ δ’ ὥρα κατήπειγεν, ἤδη φθεγγομένων ἀλεκτρυόνων καὶ ὅσον οὔπω τῶν ἐξ ἀγροῦ τι [5] φέρειν εἰωθότων πρὸς ἀγορὰν ἐπερχομένων. διὸ καὶ σπεύδων ὁ Ἄρατος ἀνέβαινε, τεσσαράκοντα τῶν πάντων ἀναβεβηκότων πρὸ αὐτοῦ· καὶ προσδεξάμενος ἔτι τῶν κάτωθεν ὀλίγους, ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ τυράννου καὶ τὸ στρατήγιον ἀνῆλθεν· ἐνταῦθα γὰρ οἱ μισθοφόροι παρενυκτέρευον. ἄφνω δ’ ἐπιπεσὼν αὐτοῖς καὶ συλλαβὼν ἅπαντας, οὐδένα δ’ ἀποκτείνας, εὐθὺς διεπέμπετο πρὸς [6] τοὺς φίλους ἀνακαλούμενος ἕκαστον ἀπ’ οἰκίας. καὶ συνδραμόντων πανταχόθεν, ἡμέρα μὲν ὑπέλαμπεν ἤδη καὶ τὸ θέατρον ἦν ὄχλου μεστόν, ἔτι πρὸς τὴν ἄδηλον αἰωρουμένων φήμην καὶ σαφὲς οὐδὲν εἰδότων ὑπὲρ τῶν πραττομένων, πρίν γε δὴ προελθὼν ὁ κῆρυξ εἶπεν, ὡς Ἄρατος ὁ Κλεινίου παρακαλεῖ τοὺς πολίτας ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν.

[9] [1] Τότε δὲ πιστεύσαντες ἥκειν ἃ πάλαι προσεδόκων, ὥρμησαν ἀθρόοι πρὸς τὰς θύρας τοῦ τυράννου πῦρ ἐπιφέροντες. ἤρθη δὲ φλὸξ μεγάλη καὶ καταφανὴς μέχρι Κορίνθου τῆς οἰκίας ἀναφθείσης, ὥστε θαυμάσαντας τοὺς ἐν Κορίνθῳ παρὰ μικρὸν ὁρμῆσαι πρὸς τὴν βοήθειαν.

[2] ὁ μὲν οὖν Νικοκλῆς ἔλαθε διά τινων ὑπονόμων ὑπεκδὺς καὶ ἀποδρὰς ἐκ τῆς πόλεως, οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται καταπαύσαντες μετὰ τῶν Σικυωνίων τὸ πῦρ διήρπαζον τὴν οἰκίαν, καὶ οὔτε ταῦτ’ ἐκώλυσεν ὁ Ἄρατος, τά τε λοιπὰ χρήματα [3] τῶν τυράννων εἰς μέσον ἔθηκε τοῖς πολίταις. ἀπέθανε δ’ οὐδεὶς οὐδ’ ἐτρώθη τὸ παράπαν τῶν ἐπελθόντων οὐδὲ τῶν πολεμίων, ἀλλὰ καθαρὰν καὶ ἄθικτον αἵματος ἐμφυλίου τὴν πρᾶξιν ἡ τύχη διεφύλαξε.

[4] Κατήγαγε δὲ φυγάδας, τοὺς μὲν ὑπὸ Νικοκλέους ἐκπεπτωκότας ὀγδοήκοντα, τοὺς δ’ ἐπὶ τῶν ἔμπροσθεν τυράννων οὐκ ἐλάττους πεντακοσίων, οἷς μακρὰ μὲν ἡ [5] πλάνη καὶ ὁμοῦ τι πεντηκονταετὴς ἐγεγόνει. κατελθόντες δ’ οἱ πλεῖστοι πένητες, ὧν κύριοι πρότερον ἦσαν ἐπελαμβάνοντο, καὶ βαδίζοντες ἐπὶ τὰ χωρία καὶ τὰς οἰκίας δεινὴν ἀπορίαν τῷ Ἀράτῳ παρεῖχον, ἐπιβουλευομένην μὲν ἔξωθεν καὶ φθονουμένην ὑπ’ Ἀντιγόνου τὴν πόλιν ὁρῶντι διὰ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, ταραττομένην δ’ ὑφ’ αὑτῆς [6] καὶ στασιάζουσαν. ὅθεν ἐκ τῶν παρόντων ἄριστα κρίνας προσέμειξεν αὐτὴν φέρων τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, καὶ Δωριεῖς ὄντες ὑπέδυσαν ἑκουσίως ὄνομα καὶ πολιτείαν τὴν Ἀχαιῶν, οὔτ’ ἀξίωμα λαμπρὸν οὔτε μεγάλην ἰσχὺν ἐχόντων τότε. μικροπολῖται γὰρ ἦσαν οἱ πολλοί, καὶ γῆν οὔτε χρηστὴν οὔτ’ ἄφθονον ἐκέκτηντο, καὶ θαλάττῃ προσῴκουν ἀλιμένῳ, τὰ πολλὰ κατὰ ῥαχίας ἐκφερομένῃ πρὸς τὴν ἤπειρον.

[7] ἀλλὰ μάλιστα δὴ διέδειξαν οὗτοι τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν ἀλκὴν ἀπρόσμαχον οὖσαν, ὁσάκις τύχοι κόσμου καὶ συντάξεως ὁμοφρονούσης καὶ νοῦν ἔχοντος ἡγεμόνος, οἳ τῆς μὲν πάλαι τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀκμῆς οὐδὲν ὡς εἰπεῖν μέρος ὄντες, ἐν δὲ τῷ τότε μιᾶς ἀξιολόγου πόλεως σύμπαντες ὁμοῦ δύναμιν οὐκ ἔχοντες, εὐβουλίᾳ καὶ ὁμονοίᾳ, καὶ ὅτι τῷ πρώτῳ κατ’ ἀρετὴν ἐδύναντο μὴ φθονεῖν, ἀλλὰ πείθεσθαι καὶ ἀκολουθεῖν, οὐ μόνον αὑτοὺς ἐν μέσῳ πόλεων καὶ δυνάμεων τηλικούτων καὶ τυραννίδων διεφύλαξαν ἐλευθέρους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων ὡς πλείστους ἐλευθεροῦντες καὶ σῴζοντες διετέλουν.

[10] [1] Ἦν δ’ Ἄρατος τῷ τρόπῳ πολιτικός, μεγαλόφρων, ἀκριβέστερος εἰς τὰ κοινὰ μᾶλλον τῶν ἰδίων, πικρῶς μισοτύραννος, ἔχθρας ὅρῳ καὶ φιλίας ἀεὶ τῷ κοινῷ συμφέροντι [2] χρώμενος. ὅθεν οὐχ οὕτως δοκεῖ γεγονέναι φίλος ἀκριβής, ὡς ἐχθρὸς εὐγνώμων καὶ πρᾶος, ὑπὸ τῆς πολιτείας ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα τῷ καιρῷ ‹συμ›μεταβαλλόμενος, ὁμονοίας ἐθνῶν καὶ κοινωνίας πόλεων καὶ συνεδρίου καὶ θεάτρου μίαν φωνὴν ἀφιέντος ὡς οὐδενὸς ἄλλου τῶν καλῶν ἐραστής, πολέμῳ καὶ ἀγῶνι χρήσασθαι φανερῶς ἀθαρσὴς καὶ δύσελπις, κλέψαι δὲ πράγματα καὶ συσκευάσασθαι [3] κρύφα πόλεις καὶ τυράννους ἐπηβολώτατος. διὸ καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἀνελπίστων κατορθώσας ἐν οἷς ἐτόλμησεν, οὐκ ἐλάττονα δοκεῖ τῶν δυνατῶν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν δι’ εὐλάβειαν.

[4] οὐ γὰρ μόνον ὡς ἔοικε θηρίων τινῶν ὄψεις, ἐνεργοὶ διὰ σκότους οὖσαι, μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἀποτυφλοῦνται ξηρότητι καὶ λεπτότητι τῆς περὶ τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν ὑγρότητος, μὴ φερούσης τὴν πρὸς τὸ φῶς σύγκρασιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δεινότης τίς ἐστιν ἀνθρώπου καὶ σύνεσις ἐν τοῖς ὑπαίθροις καὶ διακεκηρυγμένοις εὐτάρακτος φύσει, πρὸς δὲ τὰς ἐπικρύφους [5] καὶ λαθραίους ἀναθαρσοῦσα πράξεις. τὴν δὲ τοιαύτην ἀνωμαλίαν ἔνδεια λόγου φιλοσόφου περὶ τὰς εὐφυΐας ἀπεργάζεται, τὴν ἀρετὴν ὥσπερ καρπὸν αὐτοφυῆ καὶ ἀγεώργητον ἐκφερούσας δίχα τῆς ἐπιστήμης. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐξεταζέσθω τοῖς παραδείγμασιν.

[11] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος ἐπεὶ κατέμειξε τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς ἑαυτὸν καὶ τὴν πόλιν, ἐν τοῖς ἱππεῦσι στρατευόμενος ἠγαπᾶτο δι’ εὐπείθειαν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχόντων, ὅτι καίπερ συμβολὰς τῷ κοινῷ μεγάλας δεδωκὼς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ δόξαν καὶ τὴν τῆς πατρίδος δύναμιν, ὡς ἑνὶ τῶν ἐπιτυχόντων χρῆσθαι παρεῖχεν αὑτῷ τὸν ἀεὶ στρατηγοῦντα τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, εἴτε Δυμαῖος εἴτε Τριταιεὺς εἴτε μικροτέρας τινὸς ὢν τύχοι [2] πόλεως. ἧκε δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ χρημάτων δωρεὰ παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως πέντε καὶ εἴκοσι τάλαντα. ταῦτ’ ἔλαβε μὲν ὁ Ἄρατος, λαβὼν δὲ τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πολίταις ἐπέδωκεν ἀπορουμένοις εἴς τε τἆλλα καὶ λύτρωσιν αἰχμαλώτων.

[12] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ φυγάδες ἦσαν ἀπαρηγόρητοι τοῖς ἔχουσι τὰς κτήσεις ἐνοχλοῦντες, ἥ τε πόλις ἐκινδύνευεν ἀνάστατος γενέσθαι, μίαν ὁρῶν ἐλπίδα τὴν Πτολεμαίου φιλανθρωπίαν, ὥρμησεν ἐκπλεῦσαι καὶ δεηθῆναι τοῦ βασιλέως, ὅπως αὐτῷ χρήματα συμβάληται πρὸς τὰς [2] διαλύσεις. ἀνήχθη μὲν οὖν ἀπὸ Μεθώνης ὑπὲρ Μαλέας, ὡς τῷ διὰ πόρου δρόμῳ χρησόμενος. πρὸς δὲ μέγα πνεῦμα καὶ πολλὴν θάλασσαν ἐκ πελάγους κατιοῦσαν ἐνδόντος τοῦ κυβερνήτου, παραφερόμενος μόλις ἥψατο τῆς Ὑδρίας [3] πολεμίας οὔσης· ἐκρατεῖτο γὰρ ὑπ’ Ἀντιγόνου καὶ φυλακὴν εἶχεν· ἣν φθάσας ἀπέβη, καὶ τὴν ναῦν καταλιπὼν ἀπεχώρησε μακρὰν ἀπὸ θαλάσσης, ἔχων ἕνα τῶν φίλων σὺν αὑτῷ Τιμάνθη, καὶ καταβαλόντες ἑαυτοὺς εἴς τινα [4] τόπον ὕλης γέμοντα χαλεπῶς ἐνυκτέρευον. ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ὁ φρούραρχος ἐπελθὼν καὶ ζητῶν τὸν Ἄρατον, ὑπὸ τῶν θεραπόντων ἐξηπατήθη τῶν ἐκείνου, δεδιδαγμένων λέγειν ὡς εὐθὺς ἀποδρὰς εἰς Εὔβοιαν ἐξέπλευσε. τὰ μέντοι κομιζόμενα καὶ τὴν ναῦν καὶ τοὺς θεράποντας [5] ἀπέφηνε πολέμια καὶ κατέσχε. μετὰ δ’ ἡμέρας οὐ πολλὰς ἐν ἀπόροις ὄντι τῷ Ἀράτῳ γίνεταί τις εὐτυχία, Ῥωμαϊκῆς νεὼς παραβαλούσης κατὰ τὸν τόπον, ἐν ᾧ τὰ μὲν ἐπὶ σκοπὴν ἀνιών, τὰ δὲ κρυπτόμενος διῆγεν. ἔπλει μὲν οὖν ἡ ναῦς εἰς Συρίαν, ἐπέβη δὲ πείσας τὸν ναύκληρον ἄχρι Καρίας διακομισθῆναι· καὶ διεκομίσθη κινδύνοις [6] αὖθις οὐκ ἐλάττοσι χρησάμενος κατὰ θάλατταν. ἐκ δὲ Καρίας χρόνῳ πολλῷ περαιωθεὶς εἰς Αἴγυπτον, πατρόθεν τε τῷ βασιλεῖ διακειμένῳ πρὸς αὐτὸν οἰκείως ἐνέτυχε καὶ τεθεραπευμένῳ γραφαῖς καὶ πίναξιν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἐν οἷς κρίσιν ἔχων οὐκ ἄμουσον ὁ Ἄρατος ἀεί τι τῶν τεχνικῶν καὶ περιττῶν, μάλιστα δὲ Παμφίλου καὶ Μελάνθου, συνάγων καὶ κτώμενος ἀπέστελλεν.

[13] [1] Ἤνθει γὰρ ἔτι δόξα τῆς Σικυωνίας μούσης καὶ χρηστογραφίας, ὡς μόνης ἀδιάφθορον ἐχούσης τὸ καλόν, ὥστε καὶ Ἀπελλῆν ἐκεῖνον ἤδη θαυμαζόμενον ἀφικέσθαι καὶ συγγενέσθαι τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἐπὶ ταλάντῳ, τῆς δόξης [2] μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς τέχνης δεόμενον μεταλαβεῖν. διὸ τὰς μὲν ἄλλας εἰκόνας τῶν τυράννων ἀνεῖλεν εὐθὺς ὁ Ἄρατος ὅτε τὴν πόλιν ἠλευθέρωσε, περὶ δὲ τῆς Ἀριστράτου τοῦ κατὰ Φίλιππον ἀκμάσαντος ἐβουλεύσατο πολὺν χρόνον. ἐγράφη μὲν γὰρ ὑπὸ [πάντων] τῶν περὶ τὸν Μέλανθον ἅρματι νικηφόρῳ παρεστὼς ὁ Ἀρίστρατος, Ἀπελλοῦ συνεφαψαμένου τῆς γραφῆς, ὡς Πολέμων ὁ περιηγητὴς (FHG III 120) [3] ἱστόρηκεν. ἦν δὲ τὸ ἔργον ἀξιοθέατον, ὥστε γνάμπτεσθαι τὸν Ἄρατον ὑπὸ τῆς τέχνης, αὖθίς τε μίσει τῷ πρὸς τοὺς [4] τυράννους ἐξαγόμενον κελεύειν καθαιρεῖν. τὸν οὖν ζωγράφον Νεάλκη φίλον ὄντα τοῦ Ἀράτου παραιτεῖσθαί φασι καὶ δακρύειν, ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἔπειθεν, εἰπεῖν ὅτι τοῖς τυράννοις πολεμητέον, οὐ τοῖς τῶν τυράννων· ἐάσωμεν οὖν τὸ ἅρμα καὶ τὴν Νίκην, αὐτὸν δέ σοι παρέξω τὸν Ἀρίστρατον [5] ἐγὼ παραχωροῦντα τοῦ πίνακος. ἐπιτρέψαντος οὖν τοῦ Ἀράτου, διήλειφεν ὁ Νεάλκης τὸν Ἀρίστρατον, εἰς δὲ τὴν χώραν φοίνικα μόνον ἐνέγραψεν, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν ἐτόλμησε παραβαλεῖν· τοὺς δὲ πόδας ἐξαλειφομένου τοῦ Ἀριστράτου [6] διαλαθεῖν ὑπὸ τὸ ἅρμα λέγουσιν. ἔκ τε δὴ τούτων ὁ Ἄρατος ἠγαπᾶτο, καὶ διδοὺς πεῖραν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἥψατο τοῦ βασιλέως, καὶ δωρεὰν ἔλαβε τῇ πόλει πεντήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν τάλαντα. καὶ τούτων τεσσαράκοντα μὲν εὐθὺς μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ κομίζων εἰς Πελοπόννησον κατῆρε, τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ διελὼν εἰς δόσεις ὁ βασιλεὺς ὕστερον κατὰ μέρος ἀπέστειλεν.

[14] [1] Ἦν μὲν οὖν μέγα καὶ τὸ χρήματα τοσαῦτα πορίσαι τοῖς πολίταις, ὅσων μικρὸν μέρος ἄλλοι στρατηγοὶ καὶ δημαγωγοὶ λαμβάνοντες παρὰ βασιλέων ἠδίκουν καὶ κατεδουλοῦντο καὶ προέπινον αὐτοῖς τὰς πατρίδας, μεῖζον δ’ ἡ διὰ τῶν χρημάτων τούτων κατασκευασθεῖσα τοῖς μὲν ἀπόροις πρὸς τοὺς πλουσίους διάλυσις καὶ ὁμόνοια, τῷ δὲ δήμῳ παντὶ σωτηρία καὶ ἀσφάλεια, θαυμαστὴ δ’ ἡ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐν δυνάμει τοσαύτῃ μετριότης.

[2] ἀποδειχθεὶς γὰρ αὐτοκράτωρ διαλλακτὴς καὶ κύριος ὅλως ἐπὶ τὰς φυγαδικὰς οἰκονομίας, μόνος οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν, ἀλλὰ πεντεκαίδεκα τῶν πολιτῶν προσκατέλεξεν ἑαυτῷ, μεθ’ ὧν πόνῳ πολλῷ καὶ μεγάλαις πραγματείαις κατειργάσατο καὶ συνήρμοσε φιλίαν καὶ εἰρήνην τοῖς πολίταις.

[3] ἐφ’ οἷς οὐ μόνον κοινῇ σύμπαντες οἱ πολῖται τιμὰς ἀπέδοσαν αὐτῷ πρεπούσας, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατ’ ἰδίαν οἱ φυγάδες εἰκόνα χαλκῆν ἀναστήσαντες ἐπέγραψαν τόδε τὸ ἐλεγεῖον (150 Preger)·

[4] βουλαὶ μὲν καὶ ἄεθλα καὶ ἁ περὶ Ἑλλάδος ἀλκά

τοῦδ’ ἀνδρὸς στάλᾳ πλάθεται Ἡρακλέους·

ἄμμες δ’ εἰκόν’ Ἄρατε τεὰν νόστοιο τυχόντες

στάσαμεν ἀντ’ ἀρετᾶς ἠδὲ δικαιοσύνας,

σωτῆρος σωτῆρσι θεοῖς, ὅτι πατρίδι τᾷ σᾷ

δᾶμον ἴσον θείαν τ’ ὤπασας εὐνομίαν.

[15] [1] Ταῦτα διαπραξάμενος ὁ Ἄρατος τοῦ μὲν πολιτικοῦ φθόνου μείζων ἐγεγόνει διὰ τὰς χάριτας· Ἀντίγονος δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἀνιώμενος ἐπ’ αὐτῷ, καὶ βουλόμενος ἢ μετάγειν ὅλως τῇ φιλίᾳ πρὸς αὑτὸν ἢ διαβάλλειν πρὸς τὸν Πτολεμαῖον, ἄλλας τε φιλανθρωπίας ἐνεδείκνυτο μὴ πάνυ προσιεμένῳ, καὶ θύων θεοῖς ἐν Κορίνθῳ μερίδας [2] εἰς Σικυῶνα τῷ Ἀράτῳ διέπεμπε. καὶ παρὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ἑστιωμένων πολλῶν εἰς μέσον φθεγξάμενος ᾤμην ἔφη τὸν Σικυώνιον τοῦτον νεανίσκον ἐλευθέριον εἶναι τῇ φύσει μόνον καὶ φιλοπολίτην· ὁ δὲ καὶ βίων ἔοικε καὶ [3] πραγμάτων βασιλικῶν ἱκανὸς εἶναι κριτής. πρότερον γὰρ ἡμᾶς ὑπερεώρα, ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἔξω βλέπων, καὶ τὸν Αἰγύπτιον ἐθαύμαζε πλοῦτον, ἐλέφαντας καὶ στόλους καὶ αὐλὰς ἀκούων, νυνὶ δ’ ὑπὸ σκηνὴν ἑωρακὼς πάντα τὰ ἐκεῖ πράγματα τραγῳδίαν ὄντα καὶ σκηνογραφίαν, ὅλος ἡμῖν προσκεχώρηκεν. αὐτός τ’ οὖν ἀποδέχομαι τὸ μειράκιον ἐγνωκὼς εἰς ἅπαντα χρῆσθαι, καὶ ὑμᾶς ἀξιῶ φίλον [4] νομίζειν. τούτους τοὺς λόγους ὑπόθεσιν λαβόντες οἱ φθονεροὶ καὶ κακοήθεις, διημιλλῶντο ταῖς ἐπιστολαῖς ‹πρὸς› ἀλλήλους, πολλὰ καὶ δυσχερῆ κατὰ τοῦ Ἀράτου τῷ Πτολεμαίῳ γράφοντες, ὥστε κἀκεῖνον ἐγκαλοῦντα [5] πέμψαι. ταῖς μὲν οὖν περιμαχήτοις καὶ διαπύρῳ τοξευομέναις ἔρωτι φιλίαις βασιλέων καὶ τυράννων τοσοῦτον προσῆν φθόνου καὶ κακοηθείας.

[16] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος αἱρεθεὶς στρατηγὸς τὸ πρῶτον ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, τὴν μὲν ἀντιπέρας Λοκρίδα καὶ Καλυδωνίαν ἐπόρθησε, Βοιωτοῖς δὲ μετὰ μυρίων στρατιωτῶν βοηθῶν, ὑστέρησε τῆς μάχης, ἣν ὑπ’ Αἰτωλῶν περὶ Χαιρώνειαν ἡττήθησαν, Ἀβοιοκρίτου τε τοῦ βοιωτάρχου καὶ χιλίων σὺν αὐτῷ πεσόντων.

[2] Ἐνιαυτῷ δ’ ὕστερον αὖθις στρατηγῶν, ἐνίστατο τὴν περὶ τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον πρᾶξιν, οὐ Σικυωνίων οὐδ’ Ἀχαιῶν κηδόμενος, ἀλλὰ κοινήν τινα τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὅλης τυραννίδα, τὴν Μακεδόνων φρουράν, ἐκεῖθεν ἐξελάσαι [3] διανοούμενος. Χάρης μὲν γὰρ ὁ Ἀθηναῖος ἔν τινι μάχῃ πρὸς τοὺς βασιλέως στρατηγοὺς εὐτυχήσας, ἔγραψε τῷ δήμῳ τῶν Ἀθηναίων, ὡς νενικήκοι τῆς ἐν Μαραθῶνι [4] μάχης ἀδελφήν· ταύτην δὲ τὴν πρᾶξιν οὐκ ἂν ἁμάρτοι τις ἀδελφὴν προσειπὼν τῆς Πελοπίδου τοῦ Θηβαίου καὶ Θρασυβούλου τοῦ Ἀθηναίου τυραννοκτονίας, πλὴν ὅτι τῷ μὴ πρὸς Ἕλληνας, ἀλλ’ ἐπακτὸν ἀρχὴν γεγονέναι καὶ [5] ἀλλόφυλον αὕτη διήνεγκεν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ἰσθμὸς ἐμφράσσων τὰς θαλάσσας εἰς ταὐτὸ συνάγει τῷ τόπῳ καὶ συνάπτει τὴν ἤπειρον ἡμῶν, ὁ δ’ Ἀκροκόρινθος, ὑψηλὸν ὄρος ἐκ μέσης ἀναπεφυκὸς τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ὅταν λάβῃ φρουράν, ἐνίσταται καὶ ἀποκόπτει τὴν ἐντὸς Ἰσθμοῦ πᾶσαν ἐπιμειξιῶν τε καὶ παρόδων καὶ στρατειῶν ἐργασίας τε κατὰ γῆν [6] καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν, καὶ ἕνα κύριον ποιεῖ καὶ ἄρχοντα τὸν κατέχοντα φρουρᾷ τὸ χωρίον, ὥστε μὴ παίζοντα δοκεῖν τὸν νεώτερον Φίλιππον, ἀλλ’ ἀληθῶς ἑκάστοτε πέδας τῆς Ἑλλάδος τὴν Κορινθίων πόλιν προσαγορεύειν.

[17] [1] Πᾶσι μὲν οὖν περιμάχητος ἦν ὁ τόπος ἀεὶ καὶ βασιλεῦσι καὶ δυνάσταις, ἡ δ’ Ἀντιγόνου σπουδὴ περὶ αὐτὸν οὐδὲν ἀπέλειπε πάθει τῶν ἐμμανεστάτων ἐρώτων, ἀλλ’ ὅλος ἀνήρτητο ταῖς φροντίσιν, ὅπως ἀφαιρήσεται δόλῳ τοὺς ἔχοντας, ἐπεὶ φανερῶς ἀνέλπιστος ἦν ἡ ἐπιχείρησις.

[2] Ἀλεξάνδρου γὰρ ὑφ’ ὃν τὸ χωρίον ἦν ἀποθανόντος (ὡς λέγεται) φαρμάκοις ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, Νικαίας δὲ τῆς ἐκείνου γυναικὸς ἐπὶ τῶν πραγμάτων γενομένης καὶ φυλαττούσης τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον, εὐθὺς ὑποπέμπων Δημήτριον τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῇ, καὶ γλυκείας ἐλπίδας ἐνδιδοὺς γάμων βασιλικῶν καὶ συμβιώσεως πρὸς οὐκ ἀηδὲς ἐντυχεῖν γυναικὶ πρεσβυτέρᾳ μειράκιον, αὐτὴν μὲν ᾑρήκει, τῷ παιδὶ χρησάμενος ὥσπερ ἄλλῳ τινὶ τῶν δελεασμάτων ἐπ’ αὐτῇ, [3] τὸν δὲ τόπον οὐ προϊεμένης, ἀλλ’ ἐγκρατῶς φυλαττούσης, ἀμελεῖν προσποιούμενος ἔθυε γάμους αὐτῶν ἐν Κορίνθῳ, καὶ θέας ἐπετέλει καὶ πότους συνῆγε καθ’ ἡμέραν, ὡς ἄν τις μάλιστα παίζειν καὶ σχολάζειν τὴν διάνοιαν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς [4] καὶ φιλοφροσύνης ἀφεικώς. ἐπεὶ δὲ καιρὸς ἦν, ᾄδοντος Ἀμοιβέως ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ, παρέπεμπε τὴν Νίκαιαν αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τὴν θέαν ἐν φορείῳ κεκοσμημένῳ βασιλικῶς, ἀγαλλομένην τε τῇ τιμῇ καὶ πορρωτάτω τοῦ μέλλοντος οὖσαν. [5] γενόμενος δὲ τῆς ὁδοῦ κατὰ τὴν ἐκτροπὴν τὴν ἄνω φέρουσαν, ἐκείνην μὲν ἐκέλευσε προάγειν εἰς τὸ θέατρον, αὐτὸς δὲ χαίρειν μὲν Ἀμοιβέα, χαίρειν δὲ τοὺς γάμους ἐάσας, ἀνῄει πρὸς τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον ἁμιλλώμενος παρ’ ἡλικίαν· καὶ κεκλεισμένην τὴν πύλην εὑρών, ἔκοπτε τῇ βακτηρίᾳ κελεύων ἀνοίγειν· οἱ δ’ ἔνδον ἀνέῳξαν καταπλαγέντες.

[6] οὕτω δὲ τοῦ τόπου κρατήσας, οὐ κατέσχεν αὑτόν, ἀλλ’ ἔπινε παίζων ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ἐν τοῖς στενωποῖς, καὶ δι’ ἀγορᾶς αὐλητρίδας ἔχων καὶ στεφάνους περικείμενος, ἀνὴρ γέρων καὶ τηλικαύταις πραγμάτων μεταβολαῖς κεχρημένος, ἐκώμαζε δεξιούμενος καὶ προσαγορεύων [7] τοὺς ἀπαντῶντας. οὕτως ἄρα καὶ λύπης καὶ φόβου μᾶλλον ἐξίστησι καὶ σάλον παρέχει τῇ ψυχῇ τὸ χαίρειν ἄνευ λογισμοῦ παραγινόμενον.

[18] [1] Ἀλλὰ γὰρ Ἀντίγονος μὲν ὥσπερ εἴρηται κτησάμενος τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον ἐφύλαττε, μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων οἷς ἐπίστευε μάλιστα καὶ Περσαῖον ἐπιστήσας ἄρχοντα τὸν [2] φιλόσοφον. ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος ἔτι μὲν καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου ζῶντος ἐπεχείρησε τῇ πράξει, γενομένης δὲ συμμαχίας τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς πρὸς τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐπαύσατο. τότε δ’ αὖθις ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς ἑτέραν ἔλαβε τῆς πράξεως ὑπόθεσιν τοιαύτην.

[3] Ἦσαν ἐν Κορίνθῳ τέσσαρες ἀδελφοὶ Σύροι τὸ γένος, ὧν εἷς ὄνομα Διοκλῆς ἐν τῷ φρουρίῳ μισθοφορῶν διέτριβεν.

[4] οἱ δὲ τρεῖς κλέψαντες βασιλικὸν χρυσίον, ἦλθον εἰς Σικυῶνα πρὸς Αἰγίαν τινὰ τραπεζίτην, ᾧ διὰ τὴν ἐργασίαν ὁ Ἄρατος ἐχρῆτο. καὶ μέρος μὲν εὐθὺς διέθεντο τοῦ χρυσίου, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν εἷς αὐτῶν Ἐργῖνος ἐπιφοιτῶν ἡσυχῇ [5] κατήλλαττεν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου γενόμενος τῷ Αἰγίᾳ συνήθης, καὶ προαχθεὶς εἰς λόγον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ τῆς φρουρᾶς, ἔφη πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀναβαίνων παρὰ τὸ κρημνῶδες ἐντομὴν καθεωρακέναι πλαγίαν, ‹ἀν›άγουσαν ᾗ χθαμαλώτατον [6] ἐπῳκοδόμηται τῷ φρουρίῳ τὸ τεῖχος. προσπαίξαντος δ’ αὐτῷ τοῦ Αἰγίου καὶ εἰπόντος· εἶτ’ ὦ βέλτιστε διὰ σμικρὸν οὕτω χρυσίον ἀνασπᾶτε τὰς βασιλικὰς φράξεις, δυνάμενοι μίαν ὥραν πολλῶν ἀποδόσθαι χρημάτων; ἢ γὰρ οὐχὶ καὶ τοιχωρύχοις καὶ προδόταις ἁλοῦσιν ἅπαξ ἀποθανεῖν [7] ὑπάρχει; γελάσας ὁ Ἐργῖνος τότε μὲν ὡμολόγησεν ἀποπειράσεσθαι τοῦ Διοκλέους, τοῖς γὰρ ἄλλοις ἀδελφοῖς μὴ πάνυ τι πιστεύειν, ὀλίγαις δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέραις ἐπανελθὼν συντίθεται τὸν Ἄρατον ἄξειν πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος, ὅπου τὸ ὕψος οὐ μεῖζον ᾖ πεντεκαίδεκα ποδῶν, καὶ τἆλλα συμπράξειν μετὰ τοῦ Διοκλέους.

[19] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος ἐκείνοις μὲν ἑξήκοντα τάλαντα δώσειν κατορθώσας ὡμολόγησεν, ἢν δ’ ἀποτύχῃ, σωθῇ δὲ μετ’ [2] ἐκείνων, οἰκίαν ἑκατέρῳ καὶ τάλαντον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἔδει παρὰ τῷ Αἰγίᾳ τὰ ἑξήκοντα τάλαντα κεῖσθαι τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἐργῖνον, ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος οὔτ’ αὐτὸς εἶχεν οὔτ’ ἐβούλετο δανειζόμενος αἴσθησιν ἑτέρῳ τῆς πράξεως παρασχεῖν, λαβὼν τῶν ἐκπωμάτων τὰ πολλὰ καὶ τὰ χρυσία τῆς γυναικὸς ὑπέθηκε τῷ Αἰγίᾳ πρὸς τὸ ἀργύριον. [ὁ δὲ] [3] οὕτω γὰρ ἐπῆρτο τῇ ψυχῇ, καὶ τοσοῦτον ἔρωτα τῶν καλῶν πράξεων εἶχεν, ὥστε τὸν Φωκίωνα καὶ τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ἐπιστάμενος Ἑλλήνων δικαιοτάτους καὶ κρατίστους γεγονέναι δοκοῦντας ἐπὶ τῷ διώσασθαι δωρεὰς μεγάλας καὶ μὴ προέσθαι χρημάτων τὸ καλόν, αὐτὸς εἰς ταῦτα δαπανᾶσθαι κρύφα καὶ προεισφέρειν, ἐν οἷς ἐκινδύνευε μόνος ὑπὲρ πάντων οὐδ’ εἰδότων τὰ πραττόμενα, ‹προ›ῃρεῖτο.

[4] τίς γὰρ οὐκ ἂν θαυμάσειε καὶ συναγωνίσαιτ’ ἔτι νῦν τῇ μεγαλοψυχίᾳ τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὠνουμένου χρημάτων τοσούτων κίνδυνον τηλικοῦτον καὶ τὰ τιμιώτατα δοκοῦντα τῶν κτημάτων ὑποτιθέντος, ὅπως παρεισαχθεὶς νυκτὸς εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους διαγωνίσηται περὶ τῆς ψυχῆς, ἐνέχυρον λαβὼν τὴν ἐλπίδα τοῦ καλοῦ παρ’ αὐτῶν, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδέν;

[20] [1] Οὖσαν δὲ καθ’ αὑτὴν ἐπισφαλῆ τὴν πρᾶξιν ἐπισφαλεστέραν ἐποίησεν ἁμαρτία τις εὐθὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ συμβᾶσα [2] δι’ ἄγνοιαν. ὁ γὰρ οἰκέτης τοῦ Ἀράτου Τέχνων ἐπέμφθη μὲν ὡς μετὰ τοῦ Διοκλέους κατασκεψόμενος τὸ τεῖχος, οὔπω δ’ ἦν τῷ Διοκλεῖ πρότερον ἐντετυχηκὼς κατ’ ὄψιν, ἀλλὰ τὴν μορφὴν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶδος δοκῶν κατέχειν, ἐξ ὧν ὁ Ἐργῖνος ἐπεσήμηνεν οὐλοκόμην καὶ μελάγχρουν καὶ [3] ἀγένειον· ἐλθὼν οὖν ὅπου συνετέτακτο, τὸν Ἐργῖνον ὡς ἀφιξόμενον μετὰ τοῦ Διοκλέους ἀνέμενε πρὸ τῆς πόλεως [4] πρὸ τοῦ καλουμένου Ὄρνιθος. ἐν δὲ τούτῳ πρῶτος ἀδελφὸς Ἐργίνου καὶ Διοκλέους ὄνομα Διονύσιος, οὐ συνειδὼς τὴν πρᾶξιν οὐδὲ κοινωνῶν, ὅμοιος δὲ τῷ Διοκλεῖ, προσῄει κατὰ τύχην. ὁ δὲ Τέχνων πρὸς τὰ σημεῖα τῆς μορφῆς τῇ ὁμοιότητι κινηθείς, ἠρώτησε τὸν ἄνθρωπον εἴ [5] τι συμβόλαιον αὐτῷ πρὸς Ἐργῖνον εἴη. φήσαντος δ’ ἀδελφὸν εἶναι, παντάπασιν ὁ Τέχνων ἐπείσθη τῷ Διοκλεῖ διαλέγεσθαι, καὶ μήτε τοὔνομα πυθόμενος μήτ’ ἄλλο μηδὲν προσμείνας τεκμήριον, ἐμβάλλει τε τὴν δεξιὰν αὐτῷ καὶ περὶ τῶν συγκειμένων πρὸς τὸν Ἐργῖνον ἐλάλει κἀκεῖνον [6] ἀνέκρινεν. ὁ δὲ δεξάμενος αὐτοῦ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν, πανούργως ὡμολόγει τε πάντα καὶ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ἀναστρέψας [7] ὑπῆγεν ἀνυπόπτως διαλεγόμενος. ἤδη δὲ πλησίον ὄντος αὐτοῦ καὶ μέλλοντος ὅσον οὔπω τὸν Τέχνωνα διαλαμβάνειν, ἀπὸ τύχης αὖ πάλιν ὁ Ἐργῖνος αὐτοῖς ἀπήντησεν. αἰσθόμενος δὲ τὴν ἀπάτην καὶ τὸν κίνδυνον, διὰ νεύματος ἐδήλωσε τῷ Τέχνωνι φεύγειν· καὶ ἀποπηδήσαντες [8] ἀμφότεροι δρόμῳ πρὸς τὸν Ἄρατον ἀπεσώθησαν. οὐ μὴν ἀπέκαμε ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἐκεῖνος, ἀλλ’ ἔπεμψεν εὐθὺς τὸν Ἐργῖνον, χρυσίον τε τῷ Διονυσίῳ κομίζοντα καὶ δεησόμενον αὐτοῦ σιωπᾶν. ὁ δὲ καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐποίησε καὶ τὸν Διονύσιον ἄγων μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ πρὸς τὸν Ἄρατον ἦλθεν.

[9] ἐλθόντα δ’ αὐτὸν οὐκέτι διῆκαν, ἀλλὰ δήσαντες ἐφύλαττον ἐν οἰκίσκῳ κατακεκλεισμένον· αὐτοὶ δὲ παρεσκευάζοντο πρὸς τὴν ἐπίθεσιν.

[21] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἦν ἕτοιμα πάντα, τὴν μὲν ἄλλην δύναμιν ἐκέλευσεν ἐπὶ τῶν ὅπλων νυκτερεύειν, ἀναλαβὼν δὲ λογάδας τετρακοσίους, οὐδ’ αὐτοὺς εἰδότας τὰ πραττόμενα [2] πλὴν ὀλίγων, ἦγε πρὸς τὰς πύλας παρὰ τὸ Ἡραῖον. ἦν δὲ τοῦ ἔτους ἡ περὶ θέρος ἀκμάζον ὥρα, τοῦ δὲ μηνὸς πανσέληνος, ἡ δὲ νὺξ ἀνέφελος καὶ καταφανής, ὥστε καὶ φόβον τὰ ὅπλα παρέχειν ἀντιλάμποντα πρὸς τὴν σελήνην, μὴ τοὺς φύλακας οὐ λάθωσιν. ἤδη δὲ τῶν πρώτων ἐγγὺς ὄντων, ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ἀνέδραμε νέφη καὶ κατέσχε τήν τε [3] πόλιν αὐτὴν καὶ τὸν ἔξω τόπον ἐπίσκιον γενόμενον. ἐνταῦθα δ’ οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι συγκαθίσαντες ὑπελύοντο τὰς κρηπῖδας· οὔτε γὰρ ψόφον ποιοῦσι πολὺν οὔτ’ ὀλισθήματα λαμβάνουσιν ‹οἱ› γυμνοῖς τοῖς ποσὶν ἀντιλαμβανόμενοι τῶν κλιμάκων· ὁ δ’ Ἐργῖνος ἑπτὰ λαβὼν νεανίσκους ἐσταλμένους ὁδοιπορικῶς, ἔλαθε τῇ πύλῃ προσμείξας, καὶ τὸν πυλωρὸν ἀποκτιννύουσι καὶ τοὺς μετ’ αὐτοῦ φύλακας.

[4] ἅμα δ’ αἵ τε κλίμακες προσετίθεντο, καὶ κατὰ σπουδὴν ὁ Ἄρατος ὑπερβιβάσας ἑκατὸν ἄνδρας, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἕπεσθαι κελεύσας ὡς ἂν δύνωνται τάχιστα, τὰς κλίμακας ἀνασπάσας ἐχώρει διὰ τῆς πόλεως μετὰ τῶν ἑκατὸν ἐπὶ τὴν ἄκραν, ἤδη περιχαρὴς διὰ τὸ λανθάνειν ὡς κατορθῶν. [5] καί πως ἔτι πρόσωθεν αὐτοῖς ἀπήντα σὺν φωτὶ φυλακὴ τεσσάρων ἀνδρῶν οὐ καθορωμένοις· ἔτι γὰρ ἦσαν ἐν τῷ σκιαζομένῳ τῆς σελήνης, ἐκείνους δὲ προσιόντας ἐξ ἐναντίας [6] καθορῶσι. μικρὸν οὖν ὑποστείλας τειχίοις τισὶ καὶ οἰκοπέδοις, ἐνέδραν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας καθίζει· καὶ τρεῖς μὲν αὐτῶν ἐμπεσόντες ἀποθνῄσκουσιν, ὁ δὲ τέταρτος πληγεὶς ξίφει τὴν κεφαλήν, ἔφυγε βοῶν ἔνδον εἶναι τοὺς [7] πολεμίους. καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν αἵ τε σάλπιγγες ἐπεσήμαινον, ἥ τε πόλις ἐξανίστατο πρὸς τὰ γινόμενα, πλήρεις τ’ ἦσαν οἱ [τε] στενωποὶ διαθεόντων, καὶ φῶτα πολλὰ τὰ μὲν κάτωθεν ἤδη, τὰ δ’ ἄνωθεν ἀπὸ τῆς ἄκρας περιέλαμπε, καὶ κραυγὴ συνερρήγνυτο πανταχόθεν ἄσημος.

[22] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δ’ ὁ μὲν Ἄρατος ἐμφὺς τῇ πορείᾳ παρὰ τὸ κρημνῶδες ἡμιλλᾶτο, βραδέως καὶ ταλαιπώρως τὸ πρῶτον, οὐ κατακρατῶν, ἀλλ’ ἀποπλανώμενος τοῦ τρίβου παντάπασιν ἐνδεδυκότος καὶ περισκιαζομένου ταῖς τραχύτησι, καὶ διὰ [τῶν] πολλῶν ἑλιγμῶν καὶ παραβολῶν περαίνοντος [2] πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος. εἶτα θαυμάσιον οἷον ἡ σελήνη λέγεται διαστέλλουσα τὰ νέφη καὶ ὑπολάμπουσα τῆς ὁδοῦ τὸ χαλεπώτατον σαφηνίζειν, ἕως ἥψατο τοῦ τείχους καθ’ ὃν ἔδει τόπον· ἐκεῖ δὲ πάλιν συνεσκίασε καὶ ἀπέκρυψε νεφῶν [3] συνελθόντων. οἱ δὲ περὶ τὰς πύλας ἔξω περὶ τὸ Ἡραῖον ἀπολειφθέντες τοῦ Ἀράτου στρατιῶται τριακόσιοι τὸ πλῆθος ὄντες, ὥς ποτε παρεισέπεσον εἰς τὴν πόλιν θορύβου τε παντοδαποῦ καὶ φώτων γέμουσαν, οὐ δυνηθέντες ἐξανευρεῖν τὸν αὐτὸν τρίβον οὐδ’ εἰς ἴχνος ἐμβῆναι τῆς ἐκείνων πορείας, ἔπτηξαν ἀθρόοι πρός τινι παλινσκίῳ λαγόνι τοῦ κρημνοῦ συστείλαντες ἑαυτούς, καὶ διεκαρτέρουν [4] ἐνταῦθα περιπαθοῦντες καὶ δυσανασχετοῦντες. βαλλομένων γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς ἄκρας ἤδη τῶν περὶ τὸν Ἄρατον καὶ μαχομένων, ἀλαλαγμὸς ἐναγώνιος ἐχώρει κάτω, καὶ κραυγὴ περιήχει διὰ τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν ὀρῶν ἀνάκλασιν συγκεχυμένη [5] καὶ ἄδηλος ὅθεν εἴληφε τὴν ἀρχήν. διαπορούντων δ’ αὐτῶν ἐφ’ ὅ τι χρὴ τραπέσθαι μέρος, Ἀρχέλαος ὁ τῶν βασιλικῶν ἡγεμὼν στρατιώτας ἔχων πολλοὺς μετὰ κραυγῆς ἀνέβαινε καὶ σαλπίγγων, ἐπιφερόμενος τοῖς περὶ [6] τὸν Ἄρατον, καὶ παρήλλαττε τοὺς τριακοσίους. οἱ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐξ ἐνέδρας ἀναστάντες, ἐμβάλλουσιν αὐτῷ καὶ διαφθείρουσιν οἷς ἐπέθεντο πρώτοις, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους καὶ τὸν Ἀρχέλαον φοβήσαντες ἐτρέψαντο καὶ κατεδίωξαν ἄχρι τοῦ [7] σκεδασθῆναι περὶ τὴν πόλιν διαλυθέντας. ἄρτι δὲ τούτων νενικηκότων, Ἐργῖνος ἀπὸ τῶν ἄνω μαχομένων ἦλθεν, ἀγγέλλων συμπεπλέχθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις τὸν Ἄρατον ἀμυνομένοις εὐρώστως, καὶ μέγαν ἀγῶνα περὶ αὐτὸ τὸ τεῖχος [8] εἶναι, καὶ τάχους δεῖν τῆς βοηθείας. οἱ δ’ εὐθὺς ἐκέλευον ἡγεῖσθαι, καὶ προσβαίνοντες ἅμα φωνῇ διεσήμαινον ἑαυτούς, ἐπιθαρρύνοντες τοὺς φίλους· ἥ τε πανσέληνος ἀπέφαινε τὰ ὅπλα πλείονα φαινόμενα τοῖς πολεμίοις διὰ τὸ μῆκος τῆς πορείας, καὶ τὸ τῆς νυκτὸς ἠχῶδες τὸν ἀλαλαγμὸν ἀπὸ πολλαπλασιόνων ἢ τοσούτων ἐποίει δοκεῖν φέρεσθαι.

[9] τέλος δὲ συνερείσαντες ἐξωθοῦσι τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ καθυπέρτεροι τῆς ἄκρας ἦσαν καὶ τὸ φρούριον εἶχον. ἡμέρας ‹δ’› ἤδη διαυγούσης ὅ θ’ ἥλιος εὐθὺς ἐπέλαμπε τῷ ἔργῳ, καὶ παρῆν ἐκ Σικυῶνος ἡ λοιπὴ δύναμις τῷ Ἀράτῳ, δεχομένων κατὰ πύλας τῶν Κορινθίων προθύμως καὶ τοὺς βασιλικοὺς συλλαμβανόντων.

[23] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀσφαλῶς ἐδόκει πάντ’ ἔχειν, κατέβαινεν εἰς τὸ θέατρον ἀπὸ τῆς ἄκρας, πλήθους ἀπείρου συρρέοντος ἐπιθυμίᾳ τῆς τ’ ὄψεως αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν λόγων οἷς [2] ἔμελλε χρῆσθαι πρὸς τοὺς Κορινθίους. ἐπιστήσας δὲ ταῖς παρόδοις ἑκατέρωθεν τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, αὐτὸς ἀπὸ τῆς σκηνῆς εἰς μέσον προῆλθε, τεθωρακισμένος καὶ τῷ προσώπῳ διὰ τὸν κόπον καὶ τὴν ἀγρυπνίαν ἠλλοιωμένος, ὥστε τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ γαυρούμενον καὶ χαῖρον ὑπὸ τῆς περὶ τὸ σῶμα [3] βαρύτητος κεκρατῆσθαι. τῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἅμα τῷ προελθεῖν αὐτὸν ἐκχυθέντων ταῖς φιλοφροσύναις, μεταλαβὼν εἰς τὴν δεξιὰν τὸ δόρυ, καὶ τὸ γόνυ καὶ τὸ σῶμα τῇ ῥοπῇ μικρὸν ἐγκλίνας καὶ ἐπερεισάμενος, εἱστήκει πολὺν χρόνον σιωπῇ δεχόμενος αὐτῶν τοὺς κρότους καὶ τὰς ἐπιβοήσεις, ἐπαινούντων μὲν τὴν ἀρετήν, ζηλούντων δὲ τὴν [4] τύχην. ὡς δ’ ἐπαύσαντο καὶ κατέστησαν, συναγαγὼν ἑαυτὸν διεξῆλθε λόγον ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν τῇ πράξει πρέποντα, καὶ συνέπεισε τοὺς Κορινθίους Ἀχαιοὺς γενέσθαι, καὶ τῶν πυλῶν τὰς κλεῖς ἀπέδωκε, τότε πρῶτον ἀπὸ τῶν Φιλιππικῶν [5] καιρῶν ὑπ’ ἐκείνοις γενομένας. τῶν δ’ Ἀντιγόνου στρατηγῶν Ἀρχέλαον μὲν ἀφῆκεν ὑποχείριον γενόμενον, Θεόφραστον δ’ ἀνεῖλεν οὐ βουλόμενον ἀπαλλάττεσθαι· Περσαῖος δὲ τῆς ἄκρας ἁλισκομένης εἰς Κεγχρεὰς διεξέπεσεν.

[6] ὕστερον δὲ λέγεται σχολάζων πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα μόνον αὐτῷ δοκεῖν στρατηγὸν εἶναι τὸν σοφόν ἀλλὰ νὴ θεούς φάναι τοῦτο μάλιστα κἀμοί ποτε τῶν Ζήνωνος ἤρεσκε δογμάτων· νῦν δὲ μεταβάλλομαι, νουθετηθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Σικυωνίου νεανίου (SVF I 98). ταῦτα μὲν περὶ Περσαίου πλείονες ἱστοροῦσιν.

[24] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος εὐθὺς τό θ’ Ἡραῖον ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ καὶ τὸ Λέχαιον ἐποιήσατο, καὶ νεῶν μὲν εἰκοσιπέντε βασιλικῶν ἐκυρίευσεν, ἵππους δὲ πεντακοσίους καὶ Σύρους τετρακοσίους ἀπέδοτο· τόν τ’ Ἀκροκόρινθον ἐφύλαττον οἱ Ἀχαιοὶ τετρακοσίοις ὁπλίταις καὶ πεντήκοντα κυσὶ καὶ κυνηγοῖς ἴσοις ἐν τῷ φρουρίῳ τρεφομένοις.

[2] Οἱ μὲν οὖν Ῥωμαῖοι τὸν Φιλοποίμενα θαυμάζοντες Ἑλλήνων ἔσχατον προσηγόρευον, ὡς μηδενὸς μεγάλου μετ’ ἐκεῖνον ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησι γενομένου. ἐγὼ δὲ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν πράξεων ταύτην ἐσχάτην καὶ νεωτάτην φαίην ἂν πεπρᾶχθαι, τοῦτο μὲν τόλμῃ, τοῦτο δὲ τύχῃ ταῖς ἀρίσταις ἐνάμιλλον, ὡς ἐδήλωσεν εὐθὺς τὰ γινόμενα.

[3] Μεγαρεῖς τε γὰρ ἀποστάντες Ἀντιγόνου τῷ Ἀράτῳ προσέθεντο, καὶ Τροιζήνιοι μετ’ Ἐπιδαυρίων συνετάχθησαν εἰς τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, ἔξοδόν τε πρώτην θέμενος εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἐνέβαλε, καὶ τὴν Σαλαμῖνα διαβὰς ἐλεηλάτησεν, ὥσπερ ἐξ εἱρκτῆς λελυμένῃ τῇ δυνάμει τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐφ’ [4] ὅ τι βούλοιτο χρώμενος. Ἀθηναίοις δὲ τοὺς ἐλευθέρους ἀφῆκεν ἄνευ λύτρων, ἀρχὰς ἀποστάσεως ἐνδιδοὺς αὐτοῖς. Πτολεμαῖον δὲ σύμμαχον ἐποίησε, τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἡγεμονίαν ἔχοντα πολέμου καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν.

[5] οὕτω δ’ ἴσχυσεν ἐν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, ὥστ’ ‹ἐπ›εὶ μὴ κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐξῆν, παρ’ ἐνιαυτὸν αἱρεῖσθαι στρατηγὸν αὐτόν, ἔργῳ δὲ καὶ γνώμῃ διὰ παντὸς ἄρχειν. ἑώρων γὰρ αὐτὸν οὐ πλοῦτον, οὐ δόξαν, οὐ φιλίαν βασιλικήν, οὐ τὸ τῆς αὑτοῦ πατρίδος συμφέρον, οὐκ ἄλλο τι τῆς αὐξήσεως [6] τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐπίπροσθεν ποιούμενον. ἡγεῖτο γὰρ ἀσθενεῖς ἰδίᾳ τὰς πόλεις ὑπαρχούσας σῴζεσθαι δι’ ἀλλήλων, ὥσπερ ἐνδεδεμένας τῷ κοινῷ συμφέροντι, καὶ καθάπερ τὰ μέρη τοῦ σώματος, ζῶντα καὶ συμπνέοντα διὰ τὴν πρὸς ἄλληλα συμφυΐαν, ὅταν ἀποσπασθῇ καὶ γένηται χωρίς, ἀτροφεῖ καὶ σήπεται, παραπλησίως τὰς πόλεις ἀπόλλυσθαι μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν διασπώντων τὸ κοινόν, αὔξεσθαι δ’ ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων, ὅταν ὅλου τινὸς μεγάλου μέρη γενόμεναι κοινῆς προνοίας τυγχάνωσιν.

[25] [1] Ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς ἀρίστους τῶν προσοίκων αὐτονομουμένους, Ἀργείοις δὲ δουλεύουσιν ἀχθόμενος, ἐπεβούλευεν ἀνελεῖν τὸν τύραννον αὐτῶν Ἀριστόμαχον, ἅμα τῇ τε πόλει θρεπτήρια τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀποδοῦναι φιλοτιμούμενος, [2] καὶ τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς προσκομίσαι τὴν πόλιν. οἱ μὲν οὖν τολμῶντες εὑρέθησαν, ὧν Αἰσχύλος προειστήκει καὶ Χαριμένης ὁ μάντις, ξίφη δ’ οὐκ εἶχον, ἀλλ’ ἀπείρητο κεκτῆσθαι, καὶ ζημίαι μεγάλαι τοῖς κεκτημένοις ἐπῆσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ τυράννου. κατασκευάσας οὖν ὁ Ἄρατος αὐτοῖς ἐν Κορίνθῳ μικρὰς παραξιφίδας ἐνέρραψεν εἰς σάγματα· καὶ ταῦτα περιθεὶς ὑποζυγίοις σκεύη τινὰ παρημελημένα [3] κομίζουσιν εἰς Ἄργος ἀπέστειλε. Χαριμένους δὲ τοῦ μάντεως προσλαβόντος ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν †ἄνθρωπον, οἱ περὶ τὸν Αἰσχύλον ἠγανάκτουν καὶ δι’ ἑαυτῶν ἔπραττον, τοῦ Χαριμένους καταγνόντες. αἰσθόμενος δ’ ἐκεῖνος ὀργῇ κατεμήνυσε τοὺς ἄνδρας ἤδη βαδίζοντας ἐπὶ τὸν τύραννον· ὧν οἱ πλεῖστοι φθάσαντες ἐξ ἀγορᾶς ἀπέφυγον καὶ [4] διεξέπεσον εἰς Κόρινθον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ χρόνου βραχέος διελθόντος, ἀποθνῄσκει μὲν ὑπὸ δούλων Ἀριστόμαχος, ὑπολαμβάνει δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν φθάσας Ἀρίστιππος, ἐξωλέστερος ἐκείνου τύραννος. ὅσοι δὴ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ παρόντες ἔτυχον, τούτους ἀναλαβὼν ὁ Ἄρατος ἐβοήθει πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ὀξέως, οἰόμενος εὑρήσειν τὰ τῶν Ἀργείων [5] πρόθυμα. τῶν δὲ πολλῶν ἤδη διὰ συνήθειαν ἐθελοδούλως ἐχόντων, καὶ μηδενὸς ἀφισταμένου πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀνεχώρησεν ἔγκλημα κατεσκευακὼς τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, ὡς ἐν εἰρήνῃ πόλεμον ἐξενηνοχόσι. καὶ δίκην ἔσχον ἐπὶ τούτῳ παρὰ Μαντινεῦσιν, ἣν Ἀράτου μὴ παρόντος Ἀρίστιππος [6] εἷλε διώκων, καὶ μνῶν ἐτιμήθη τριάκοντα. τὸν δ’ Ἄρατον αὐτὸν ἅμα καὶ μισῶν καὶ δεδοικώς, ἐπεβούλευεν ἀνελεῖν, συνεργοῦντος Ἀντιγόνου τοῦ βασιλέως· καὶ πανταχοῦ σχεδὸν ἦσαν οἱ τοῦτο ‹συμ›πράττοντες [7] αὐτοῖς καὶ καιρὸν ἐπιτηροῦντες. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν οἷον ἀληθινὴ καὶ βέβαιος εὔνοια φυλακτήριον ἀνδρὸς ἄρχοντος. ὅταν γὰρ ἐθισθῶσιν οἵ τε πολλοὶ καὶ οἱ δυνατοὶ μὴ τὸν ἡγούμενον, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἡγουμένου δεδιέναι, πολλοῖς μὲν ὄμμασιν ὁρᾷ, διὰ πολλῶν δ’ ὤτων ἀκούει καὶ προαισθάνεται τὰ γινόμενα.

[8] Διὸ καὶ βούλομαι τὸν λόγον ἐπιστήσας ἐνταῦθά που διεξελθεῖν περὶ τῆς Ἀριστίππου διαίτης, ἣν ἡ ζηλοτυπουμένη τυραννὶς αὐτῷ καὶ ὁ τῆς μακαρίας καὶ περιβοήτου μοναρχίας ὄγκος περιέθηκεν.

[26] [1] Ἐκεῖνος γὰρ Ἀντίγονον μὲν ἔχων σύμμαχον, τρέφων δὲ πολλοὺς ἕνεκα τῆς τοῦ σώματος ἀσφαλείας, οὐδένα δ’ ἐν τῇ πόλει ζῶντα τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὑπολελοιπώς, τοὺς μὲν δορυφόρους καὶ φύλακας ἔξω παρεμβάλλειν ἐκέλευεν ἐν [2] τῷ περιστύλῳ, τοὺς δ’ οἰκέτας ὁπότε δειπνήσαι τάχιστα πάντας ἐξελαύνων, καὶ τὴν μέταυλον ἀποκλείων, μετὰ τῆς ἐρωμένης αὐτὸς εἰς οἴκημα κατεδύετο μικρὸν ὑπερῷον, θύρᾳ καταρρακτῇ κλειόμενον· ἧς ὑπεράνω τὴν κλίνην ἐπιτιθεὶς ἐκάθευδεν, ὡς εἰκὸς καθεύδειν τὸν οὕτως ἔχοντα, [3] ταραχωδῶς καὶ περιφόβως. τὸ δὲ κλιμάκιον ἡ τῆς ἐρωμένης μήτηρ ὑφαιροῦσα κατέκλειεν εἰς ἕτερον οἴκημα, καὶ πάλιν ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ προσετίθει καὶ κατεκάλει τὸν θαυμαστὸν [4] τύραννον, ὥσπερ ἑρπετὸν ἐκ φωλεοῦ κατερχόμενον. ὁ δ’ οὐχ ὅπλοις κατὰ βίαν, νόμῳ δ’ ὑπ’ ἀρετῆς ἀκατάπαυστον ἀρχὴν περιπεποιημένος, ἐν ἱματίῳ καὶ χλαμυδίῳ τῷ τυχόντι, τῶν πώποτε τυράννων κοινὸς ἀποδεδειγμένος ἐχθρός, ἄχρι τῆς τήμερον ἡμέρας γένος εὐδοκιμώτατον [5] ἀπολέλοιπεν ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν. ἐκείνων δὲ τῶν τὰς ἄκρας καταλαμβανόντων καὶ τοὺς δορυφόρους τρεφόντων καὶ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τὰς πύλας καὶ τοὺς καταρράκτας προβαλλομένων ὑπὲρ τῆς τοῦ σώματος ἀσφαλείας ὀλίγοι τὸν ἐκ πληγῆς θάνατον ὥσπερ οἱ λαγωοὶ διέφυγον· οἶκος δ’ ἢ γένος ἢ τάφος ἔχων τιμωμένην μνήμην οὐδενὸς λέλειπται.

[27] [1] Πρὸς δ’ οὖν τὸν Ἀρίστιππον ὁ Ἄρατος καὶ κρύφα πολλάκις καὶ φανερῶς προσέπταισεν, ἐπιχειρήσας καταλαμβάνειν τὸ Ἄργος. ἅπαξ δὲ κλίμακας προσθεὶς μετ’ ὀλίγων ἐπὶ τὸ τεῖχος ἀνέβη παραβόλως, καὶ τοὺς βοηθοῦντας [2] ἐνταῦθα τῶν φυλάκων ἀπέκτεινεν. εἶθ’ ἡμέρας ἐπιφανείσης, καὶ τοῦ τυράννου πανταχόθεν αὐτῷ προσβάλλοντος, οἱ μὲν Ἀργεῖοι, καθάπερ οὐχ ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐκείνων ἐλευθερίας τῆς μάχης οὔσης, ἀλλ’ ὡς τὸν ἀγῶνα τῶν Νεμείων βραβεύοντες, ἴσοι καὶ δίκαιοι θεαταὶ καθῆντο [3] τῶν γινομένων, πολλὴν ἡσυχίαν ἄγοντες, ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος εὐρώστως ἀμυνόμενος λόγχῃ μὲν ἐκ χειρὸς διελαύνεται τὸν μηρόν, ἐκράτησε δὲ τῶν τόπων ἐν οἷς ἦν καὶ οὐκ ἐξεώσθη μέχρι νυκτὸς ἐνοχλούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων.

[4] εἰ δὲ καὶ τὴν νύκτα τῷ πόνῳ προσεταλαιπώρησεν, οὐκ ἂν διήμαρτεν· ὁ γὰρ τύραννος ἤδη περὶ δρασμὸν εἶχε, καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἰδίων ἐπὶ θάλασσαν προεξέπεμψε. νῦν δὲ τοῦτο μὲν οὐδενὸς ἐξαγγείλαντος πρὸς τὸν Ἄρατον, ὕδατος δ’ ἐπιλείποντος, ἑαυτῷ δὲ χρήσασθαι διὰ τὸ τραῦμα μὴ δυνάμενος, ἀπήγαγε τοὺς στρατιώτας.

[28] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ ταύτην ἀπέγνω τὴν ὁδόν, ἐμβαλὼν φανερῶς τῷ στρατοπέδῳ τὴν Ἀργολίδα χώραν ἐπόρθει, καὶ περὶ τὸν Χάρητα ποταμὸν ἰσχυρᾶς μάχης γενομένης πρὸς Ἀρίστιππον, αἰτίαν ἔσχεν ὡς ἐγκαταλιπὼν τὸν [2] ἀγῶνα καὶ προέμενος τὸ νίκημα. τῆς γὰρ ἄλλης δυνάμεως ὁμολογουμένως ἐπικρατούσης καὶ τῷ διωγμῷ πολὺ προελθούσης εἰς τοὔμπροσθεν, αὐτὸς οὐχ οὕτως ἐκβιασθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν καθ’ αὑτόν, ὡς ἀπιστῶν τῷ κατορθώματι καὶ φοβηθείς, ἀνεχώρησε τεταραγμένος εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[3] ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς διώξεως ἐπανελθόντες οἱ λοιποὶ χαλεπῶς ἔφερον, ὅτι τρεψάμενοι τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ πολὺ πλείονας ἐκείνων καταβαλόντες ἢ σφῶν αὐτῶν ἀπολέσαντες παραλελοίπασι τοῖς ἡττημένοις στῆσαι κατ’ αὐτῶν τρόπαιον, αἰσχυνθεὶς πάλιν ἔγνω διαμάχεσθαι περὶ τοῦ τροπαίου, καὶ μίαν ἡμέραν διαλιπὼν αὖθις [4] ἐξέταττε τὴν στρατιάν. ὡς δ’ ᾔσθετο πλείονας γεγονότας καὶ θαρραλεώτερον ἀνθισταμένους τοὺς περὶ τὸν τύραννον, οὐκ ἐτόλμησεν, ἀλλ’ ἀπῆλθε, τοὺς νεκροὺς [5] ὑποσπόνδους ἀνελόμενος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῇ περὶ τὴν ὁμιλίαν καὶ πολιτείαν ἐμπειρίᾳ καὶ χάριτι τὴν διαμαρτίαν ταύτην ἀναμαχόμενος, προσηγάγετο τὰς Κλεωνὰς τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, καὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα τῶν Νεμείων ἤγαγεν ἐν Κλεωναῖς, ὡς πάτριον ὄντα καὶ μᾶλλον προσήκοντα τούτοις.

[6] ἤγαγον δὲ καὶ Ἀργεῖοι, καὶ συνεχύθη τότε πρῶτον ἡ δεδομένη τοῖς ἀγωνισταῖς ἀσυλία καὶ ἀσφάλεια, πάντας τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, ὅσους ἔλαβον ἠγωνισμένους ἐν Ἄργει, διὰ τῆς χώρας πορευομένους ὡς πολεμίους ἀποδομένων. οὕτω σφοδρὸς ἦν καὶ ἀπαραίτητος ἐν τῷ μισεῖν τοὺς τυράννους.

[29] [1] Ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἀκούσας τὸν Ἀρίστιππον ἐπιβουλεύειν μὲν ταῖς Κλεωναῖς, φοβεῖσθαι δ’ ἐκεῖνον ἐν Κορίνθῳ καθεζόμενον, ἤθροισεν ἐκ παραγγέλματος [2] στρατιάν. καὶ σιτία κελεύσας πλειόνων ἡμερῶν κομίζειν εἰς Κεγχρεὰς κατῆλθεν, ἐκκαλούμενος δι’ ἀπάτης τὸν Ἀρίστιππον ὡς αὐτοῦ μὴ παρόντος ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς Κλεωναίοις. ὃ καὶ συνέβη· παρῆν γὰρ εὐθὺς ἐξ Ἄργους ἔχων [3] τὴν δύναμιν. ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος εἰς Κόρινθον ἤδη σκοταῖος ἐκ Κεγχρεῶν ὑποστρέψας, καὶ τὰς ὁδοὺς φυλακαῖς διαλαβών, ἦγε τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς ἑπομένους οὕτω μὲν εὐτάκτως, οὕτω δὲ ταχέως καὶ προθύμως, ὥστε μὴ μόνον ὁδεύοντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρελθόντας εἰς τὰς Κλεωνὰς ἔτι νυκτὸς οὔσης καὶ συνταξαμένους ἐπὶ μάχην ἀγνοεῖσθαι καὶ λανθάνειν [4] τὸν Ἀρίστιππον. ἅμα δ’ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν πυλῶν ἀνοιχθεισῶν καὶ τῆς σάλπιγγος ἐγκελευσαμένης, δρόμῳ καὶ ἀλαλαγμῷ προσπεσὼν τοῖς πολεμίοις εὐθὺς ἐτρέψατο, καὶ κατεῖχε διώκων ᾗ μάλιστα φεύγειν ὑπενόει τὸν Ἀρίστιππον, [5] ἐκτροπὰς πολλὰς τῶν χωρίων ἐχόντων. γενομένης δὲ τῆς διώξεως ἄχρι Μυκηνῶν, ὁ μὲν τύραννος ὑπὸ Κρητός τινος, ὡς Δεινίας ἱστορεῖ (FGrH 306 F 4), τοὔνομα Τραγίσκου καταληφθεὶς ἀποσφάττεται, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἔπεσον [6] ὑπὲρ χιλίους πεντακοσίους. ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος οὕτως λαμπρῶς εὐτυχήσας, καὶ μηδένα τῶν αὑτοῦ στρατιωτῶν ἀποβαλών, ὅμως οὐκ ἔλαβε τὸ Ἄργος οὐδ’ ἠλευθέρωσε τοὺς ἐν αὐτῷ, τῶν περὶ Ἀγίαν καὶ τὸν νεώτερον Ἀριστόμαχον μετὰ δυνάμεως βασιλικῆς παρεισπεσόντων καὶ κατασχόντων [7] τὰ πράγματα. τὸ μὲν οὖν πολὺ τῆς διαβολῆς καὶ λόγους καὶ σκώμματα καὶ βωμολοχίας παρείλετο τῶν κολακευόντων τοὺς τυράννους καὶ διεξιόντων ἐκείνοις χαριζομένων, ὡς τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐκταράττοιτο μὲν ἡ κοιλία παρὰ τὰς μάχας, κάρος δὲ προσπίπτοι καὶ ἴλιγγος ἅμα τῷ παραστῆναι τὸν σαλπιγκτήν, ἐκτάξας δὲ τὴν δύναμιν καὶ τὸ σύνθημα παρεγγυήσας, καὶ πυθόμενος τῶν ὑποστρατήγων καὶ λοχαγῶν, μή τις αὐτοῦ χρεία παρόντος - βεβλῆσθαι γὰρ τοὺς ἀστραγάλους - , ἀπέρχοιτο [8] καραδοκήσων πόρρωθεν τὸ συμβησόμενον. ταῦτα γὰρ οὕτως ἴσχυσεν, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς φιλοσόφους ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς ζητοῦντας, εἰ τὸ πάλλεσθαι τὴν καρδίαν καὶ τὸ χρῶμα τρέπεσθαι καὶ τὴν κοιλίαν ἐξυγραίνεσθαι παρὰ τὰ φαινόμενα δεινὰ δειλίας ἐστὶν ἢ δυσκρασίας τινὸς περὶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ ψυχρότητος, ὀνομάζειν ἀεὶ τὸν Ἄρατον, ὡς ἀγαθὸν μὲν ὄντα στρατηγόν, ἀεὶ δὲ ταῦτα πάσχοντα παρὰ τοὺς ἀγῶνας.

[30] [1] Ὡς δ’ οὖν τὸν Ἀρίστιππον ἀνεῖλεν, εὐθὺς ἐπεβούλευσε Λυδιάδῃ τῷ Μεγαλοπολίτῃ, τυραννοῦντι τῆς ἑαυτοῦ [2] πατρίδος. ὁ δ’ οὐκ ὢν ἀγεννὴς οὐδ’ ἀφιλότιμος τὴν φύσιν, οὐδ’ ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν μονάρχων ἀκρασίᾳ καὶ πλεονεξίᾳ πρὸς ταύτην ῥυεὶς τὴν ἀδικίαν, ἀλλ’ ἐπαρθεὶς ἔρωτι δόξης ἔτι νέος καὶ λόγους ψευδεῖς καὶ κενοὺς λεγομένους περὶ τυραννίδος, ὡς μακαρίου καὶ θαυμαστοῦ πράγματος, εἰς μέγα φρόνημα παραδεξάμενος ἀνοήτως, καὶ καταστήσας ἑαυτὸν τύραννον, ταχὺ μεστὸς ἦν τῆς ἐκ μοναρχίας βαρύτητος.

[3] ἅμα δὲ ζηλῶν εὐημεροῦντα καὶ δεδοικὼς ἐπιβουλεύοντα τὸν Ἄρατον, ὥρμησε καλλίστην ὁρμὴν μεταβαλόμενος, πρῶτον μὲν ἑαυτὸν ἐλευθερῶσαι μίσους καὶ φόβου καὶ φρουρᾶς καὶ δορυφόρων, εἶτα τῆς πατρίδος εὐεργέτης [4] γενέσθαι. καὶ μεταπεμψάμενος τὸν Ἄρατον ἀφῆκε τὴν ἀρχήν, καὶ τὴν πόλιν εἰς τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς μετεκόμισεν. ἐφ’ οἷς μεγαλύνοντες αὐτὸν οἱ Ἀχαιοὶ στρατηγὸν εἵλοντο.

[5] φιλοτιμούμενος δ’ εὐθὺς ὑπερβαλεῖν δόξῃ τὸν Ἄρατον, ἄλλας τε πολλὰς πράξεις οὐκ ἀναγκαίας εἶναι δοκούσας [6] καὶ στρατείαν ἐπὶ Λακεδαιμονίους παρήγγελλεν. ἐνιστάμενος δ’ ὁ Ἄρατος αὐτῷ φθονεῖν ἐδόκει, καὶ τό γε δεύτερον ὁ Λυδιάδης στρατηγὸς ᾑρέθη, ἀντιπράττοντος ἄντικρυς Ἀράτου καὶ σπουδάζοντος ἑτέρῳ παραδοθῆναι τὴν ἀρχήν· αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ ὡς εἴρηται (24, 5) παρ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἦρχε.

[7] μέχρι μὲν οὖν τρίτης στρατηγίας ὁ Λυδιάδης εὖ φερόμενος διετέλει, καὶ παρ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἦρχεν, [μὲν] ἐναλλὰξ τῷ Ἀράτῳ στρατηγῶν· φανερὰν δ’ ἐξενεγκάμενος ἔχθραν καὶ πολλάκις αὐτοῦ κατηγορήσας ἐν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, ἀπερρίφη καὶ παρώφθη, πεπλασμένῳ δοκῶν ἤθει πρὸς ἀληθινὴν [8] καὶ ἀκέραιον ἀρετὴν ἁμιλλᾶσθαι. καὶ καθάπερ τῷ κόκκυγί φησιν Αἴσωπος (198 Halm; deest ap. Hausrath) ἐρωτῶντι τοὺς λεπτοὺς ὄρνιθας, ὅ τι φεύγοιεν αὐτόν, εἰπεῖν ἐκείνους, ὡς ἔσται ποθ’ ἱέραξ, οὕτως ἔοικε τῷ Λυδιάδῃ παρακολουθεῖν ἐκ τῆς τυραννίδος ὑποψία, βλάπτουσα τὴν πίστιν αὐτοῦ τῆς μεταβολῆς.

[31] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος εὐδοκίμησε καὶ περὶ τὰς Αἰτωλικὰς πράξεις, ὅτε συμβαλεῖν μὲν αὐτοῖς πρὸ τῆς Μεγαρικῆς ὡρμημένων τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, καὶ τοῦ βασιλέως τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων Ἄγιδος ἀφικομένου μετὰ δυνάμεως καὶ συνεξορμῶντος [2] ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, ἐναντιωθεὶς καὶ πολλὰ μὲν ὀνείδη, πολλὰ δ’ εἰς μαλακίαν καὶ ἀτολμίαν [καὶ] σκώμματα καὶ χλευασμὸν ὑπομείνας, οὐ προήκατο τὸν τοῦ συμφέροντος λογισμὸν διὰ τὸ φαινόμενον αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ παρεχώρησε τοῖς πολεμίοις ὑπερβαλοῦσι τὴν [3] Γεράνειαν ἀμαχεὶ παρελθεῖν εἰς Πελοπόννησον. ὡς μέντοι παρελθόντες ἐξαίφνης Πελλήνην κατέλαβον, οὐκέτ’ ἦν ὁ αὐτός, οὐδ’ ἔμελλε διατρίβων καὶ περιμένων ἀθροισθῆναι καὶ συνελθεῖν εἰς ταὐτὸ πανταχόθεν τὴν δύναμιν, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ὥρμησε μετὰ τῶν παρόντων ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, ἐν τῷ κρατεῖν ἀσθενεστάτους δι’ ἀταξίαν καὶ ὕβριν [4] ὄντας. ἅμα γὰρ τῷ παρελθεῖν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, οἱ μὲν στρατιῶται διασπαρέντες ἐν ταῖς οἰκίαις ἦσαν, ἐξωθοῦντες ἀλλήλους καὶ διαμαχόμενοι περὶ τῶν χρημάτων, ἡγεμόνες δὲ καὶ λοχαγοὶ τὰς γυναῖκας καὶ τὰς θυγατέρας τῶν Πελληνέων περιιόντες ἥρπαζον, καὶ τὰ κράνη τὰ αὑτῶν ἀφαιροῦντες ἐκείναις περιετίθεσαν τοῦ μηδένα λαβεῖν ἄλλον, [5] ἀλλὰ τῷ κράνει δῆλον εἶναι τὸν δεσπότην ἑκάστης. οὕτω δὲ διακειμένοις αὐτοῖς καὶ ταῦτα πράττουσιν ἐξαίφνης ὁ Ἄρατος ἐπιπεσὼν προσηγγέλθη, καὶ γενομένης ἐκπλήξεως, οἵαν εἰκὸς ἐν ἀταξίᾳ τοιαύτῃ, πρὶν ἢ πάντας πυθέσθαι τὸν κίνδυνον, οἱ πρῶτοι περὶ τὰς πύλας τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς καὶ τὰ προάστεια συμπεσόντες ἔφευγον ἤδη νενικημένοι, καὶ κατεπίμπλασαν ἐλαυνόμενοι προτροπάδην ἀπορίας τοὺς συνισταμένους καὶ προσβοηθοῦντας.

[32] [1] Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τῷ ταράχῳ μία τῶν αἰχμαλώτων, Ἐπιγήθους ἀνδρὸς ἐνδόξου θυγάτηρ, αὐτὴ δὲ κάλλει καὶ μεγέθει σώματος εὐπρεπής, ἔτυχε μὲν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ καθεζομένη τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος, οὗ κατέστησεν αὐτὴν ὁ ἐπιλεκτάρχης, [2] ἑλὼν ἑαυτῷ καὶ περιθεὶς τὴν τριλοφίαν, ἄφνω δ’ ἐκδραμοῦσα πρὸς τὸν θόρυβον, ὡς ἔστη πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν τοῦ ἱεροῦ καὶ κατέβλεψεν εἰς τοὺς μαχομένους ἄνωθεν ἔχουσα τὴν τριλοφίαν, αὐτοῖς τε τοῖς πολίταις θέαμα σεμνότερον ἢ κατ’ ἄνθρωπον ἐφάνη, καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις φάσμα θεῖον ὁρᾶν δοκοῦσι φρίκην ἐνέβαλε καὶ θάμβος, [3] ὥστε μηδένα τρέπεσθαι πρὸς ἀλκήν. αὐτοὶ δὲ Πελληνεῖς λέγουσι τὸ βρέτας τῆς θεοῦ τὸν μὲν ἄλλον ἀποκεῖσθαι χρόνον ἄψαυστον, ὅταν δὲ κινηθὲν ὑπὸ τῆς ἱερείας ἐκφέρηται, μηδένα προσβλέπειν ἐναντίον, ἀλλ’ ἀποτρέπεσθαι πάντας· οὐ γὰρ ἀνθρώποις μόνον ὅραμα φρικτὸν εἶναι καὶ χαλεπόν, ἀλλὰ ‹καὶ› δένδρα ποιεῖν ἄφορα καὶ καρποὺς [4] ἀπαμβλίσκειν δι’ ὧν ἂν κομίζηται. τοῦτο δὴ τότε τὴν ἱέρειαν ἐξενεγκαμένην καὶ τρέπουσαν ἀεὶ κατὰ τοὺς Αἰτωλοὺς ἀντιπρόσωπον, ἔκφρονας καταστῆσαι καὶ [5] παρελέσθαι τὸν λογισμόν. ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος οὐδὲν ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν (FGrH 231 F 2) εἴρηκε τοιοῦτον, ἀλλά φησι τρεψάμενος τοὺς Αἰτωλοὺς καὶ φεύγουσι συνεισπεσὼν εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἐξελάσαι κατὰ κράτος, ἑπτακοσίους δ’ ἀποκτεῖναι.

[6] τὸ δ’ ἔργον ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις διεβοήθη, καὶ Τιμάνθης ὁ ζωγράφος ἐποίησεν ἐμφαντικῶς τῇ διαθέσει τὴν μάχην ἔχουσαν.

[33] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πολλῶν ἐθνῶν καὶ δυναστῶν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς συνισταμένων, εὐθὺς ὁ Ἄρατος ἔπραττε φιλίαν πρὸς τοὺς Αἰτωλούς, καὶ Πανταλέοντι τῷ πλεῖστον Αἰτωλῶν δυναμένῳ συνεργῷ χρησάμενος, οὐ μόνον εἰρήνην, ἀλλὰ καὶ συμμαχίαν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς πρὸς τοὺς Αἰτωλοὺς ἐποίησε.

[2] Τοὺς δ’ Ἀθηναίους σπουδάζων ἐλευθερῶσαι, διεβλήθη καὶ κακῶς ἤκουσεν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, ὅτι σπονδὰς πεποιημένων αὐτῶν πρὸς τοὺς Μακεδόνας καὶ ἀνοχὰς ἀγόντων, [3] ἐπεχείρησε τὸν Πειραιᾶ καταλαβεῖν. αὐτὸς δ’ ἀρνούμενος ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν (FGrH 231 F 3) οἷς ἀπολέλοιπεν Ἐργῖνον αἰτιᾶται, μεθ’ οὗ τὰ περὶ τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον ἔπραξεν. ἐκεῖνον γὰρ ἰδίᾳ τῷ Πειραιεῖ προσβαλόντα καὶ τῆς κλίμακος συντριβείσης διωκόμενον ὀνομάζειν καὶ καλεῖν συνεχῶς Ἄρατον ὥσπερ παρόντα, καὶ διαφυγεῖν [4] οὕτως ἐξαπατήσαντα τοὺς πολεμίους. οὐ μὴν δοκεῖ πιθανῶς ἀπολογεῖσθαι. τὸν γὰρ Ἐργῖνον, ἄνθρωπον ἰδιώτην καὶ Σύρον, ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ἦν εἰκότος ἐπὶ νοῦν βαλέσθαι τὴν τηλικαύτην πρᾶξιν, εἰ μὴ τὸν Ἄρατον εἶχεν ἡγεμόνα καὶ παρ’ ἐκείνου τὴν δύναμιν καὶ τὸν καιρὸν [5] εἰλήφει πρὸς τὴν ἐπίθεσιν. ἐδήλωσε δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Ἄρατος, οὐ δὶς οὐδὲ τρίς, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις ὥσπερ οἱ δυσέρωτες ἐπιχειρήσας τῷ Πειραιεῖ, καὶ πρὸς τὰς διαμαρτίας οὐκ ἀποκαμών, ἀλλὰ τῷ παρὰ μικρὸν ἀεὶ καὶ σύνεγγυς ἀποσφάλλεσθαι τῶν ἐλπίδων πρὸς τὸ θαρρεῖν ἀνακαλούμενος.

[6] ἅπαξ δὲ καὶ τὸ σκέλος ἔσπασε διὰ τοῦ Θριασίου φεύγων, καὶ τομὰς ἔλαβε πολλὰς θεραπευόμενος, καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἐν φορείῳ κομιζόμενος ἐποιεῖτο τὰς στρατείας.

[34] [1] Ἀντιγόνου δ’ ἀποθανόντος καὶ Δημητρίου τὴν βασιλείαν παραλαβόντος, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐνέκειτο ταῖς Ἀθήναις, [2] καὶ ὅλως κατεφρόνει τῶν Μακεδόνων. διὸ καὶ κρατηθέντος αὐτοῦ μάχῃ περὶ Φυλακίαν ὑπὸ Βίθυος τοῦ Δημητρίου στρατηγοῦ, καὶ λόγου γενομένου πολλοῦ μὲν ὡς ἑάλωκε, πολλοῦ δ’ ὡς τέθνηκεν, ὁ μὲν τὸν Πειραιᾶ φρουρῶν Διογένης ἔπεμψεν ἐπιστολὴν εἰς Κόρινθον, ἐξίστασθαι τῆς πόλεως κελεύων τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, ἐπειδή‹περ› Ἄρατος [3] ἀπέθανεν· ἔτυχε δὲ τῶν γραμμάτων κομισθέντων παρὼν αὐτὸς ἐν Κορίνθῳ, καὶ διατριβὴν οἱ τοῦ Διογένους καὶ γέλωτα πολὺν παρασχόντες ἀπηλλάγησαν. αὐτὸς δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐκ Μακεδονίας ναῦν ἔπεμψεν, ἐφ’ ἧς κομισθήσεται [4] πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Ἄρατος δεδεμένος. πᾶσαν δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι κουφότητα κολακείας τῆς πρὸς Μακεδόνας ὑπερβάλλοντες, ἐστεφανηφόρησαν ὅτε πρῶτον ἠγγέλθη τεθνηκώς. διὸ καὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν εὐθὺς ἐκστρατεύσας ἐπ’ αὐτούς, ἄχρι τῆς Ἀκαδημείας προῆλθεν· εἶτα πεισθεὶς [5] οὐδὲν ἠδίκησεν. οἱ δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι συμφρονήσαντες αὐτοῦ τὴν ἀρετήν, ἐπεὶ Δημητρίου τελευτήσαντος ὥρμησαν ἐπὶ [6] τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, ἐκεῖνον ἐκάλουν. ὁ δέ, καίπερ ἑτέρου μὲν ἄρχοντος τότε τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, αὐτὸς δὲ δι’ ἀρρωστίαν τινὰ μακρὰν κλινήρης ὑπάρχων, ὅμως ἐν φορείῳ κομιζόμενος ὑπήντησε τῇ πόλει πρὸς τὴν χρείαν, καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ τῆς φρουρᾶς Διογένη συνέπεισεν ἀποδοῦναι τόν τε Πειραιᾶ καὶ τὴν Μουνυχίαν καὶ τὴν Σαλαμῖνα καὶ τὸ Σούνιον τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἐπὶ πεντήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν ταλάντοις, ὧν [7] αὐτὸς ὁ Ἄρατος εἴκοσι τῇ πόλει συνεβάλετο. προσεχώρησαν δ’ εὐθὺς Αἰγινῆται καὶ Ἑρμιονεῖς τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, ἥ τε πλείστη τῆς Ἀρκαδίας αὐτοῖς συνετέλει. καὶ Μακεδόνων μὲν ἀσχόλων ὄντων διά τινας προσοίκους καὶ ὁμόρους πολέμους, Αἰτωλῶν δὲ συμμαχούντων, ἐπίδοσιν μεγάλην ἡ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐλάμβανε δύναμις.

[35] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος ἐξεργαζόμενος τὴν παλαιὰν ὑπόθεσιν, καὶ δυσανασχετῶν τὴν ἐν Ἄργει τυραννίδα γειτνιῶσαν αὐτοῖς, ἔπειθε πέμπων τὸν Ἀριστόμαχον εἰς μέσον θεῖναι καὶ προσαγαγεῖν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς τὴν πόλιν, καὶ ζηλώσαντα Λυδιάδην ἔθνους τηλικούτου μετ’ εὐφημίας καὶ τιμῆς στρατηγὸν εἶναι μᾶλλον ἢ μιᾶς πόλεως κινδυνεύοντα [2] καὶ μισούμενον τύραννον. ὑπακούσαντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀριστομάχου καὶ κελεύσαντος αὐτῷ πεντήκοντα τάλαντα πέμψαι τὸν Ἄρατον, ὅπως ἀπαλλάξῃ καὶ διαλύσηται τοὺς παρ’ αὐτῷ στρατευομένους, καὶ τῶν χρημάτων ποριζομένων [3] ὁ Λυδιάδης ἔτι στρατηγῶν καὶ φιλοτιμούμενος ἴδιον αὐτοῦ πολίτευμα τοῦτο πρὸς τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς γενέσθαι, τοῦ μὲν Ἀράτου κατηγόρει πρὸς Ἀριστόμαχον, ὡς δυσμενῶς καὶ ἀδιαλλάκτως ἀεὶ πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους ἔχοντος, αὑτῷ δὲ πείσας τὴν πρᾶξιν ἐπιτρέψαι, προσήγαγε τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς τὸν [4] ἄνθρωπον. ἔνθα δὴ μάλιστα φανερὰν ἐποίησαν οἱ σύνεδροι τῶν Ἀχαιῶν τὴν πρὸς τὸν Ἄρατον εὔνοιαν καὶ πίστιν. ἀντειπόντος μὲν γὰρ αὐτοῦ δι’ ὀργήν, ἀπήλασαν τοὺς [5] περὶ τὸν Ἀριστόμαχον· ἐπεὶ δὲ συμπεισθεὶς πάλιν αὐτὸς ἤρξατο περὶ αὐτῶν διαλέγεσθαι παρών, πάντα ταχέως καὶ προθύμως ἐψηφίσαντο, καὶ προσεδέξαντο μὲν τοὺς Ἀργείους καὶ Φλιασίους εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν, ἐνιαυτῷ δ’ ὕστερον καὶ τὸν Ἀριστόμαχον εἵλοντο στρατηγόν.

[6] Ὁ δ’ εὐημερῶν παρὰ τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς καὶ βουλόμενος εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἐμβαλεῖν, ἐκάλει τὸν Ἄρατον ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν. ὁ δ’ ἔγραφε μὲν αὐτῷ τὴν στρατείαν ἀπαγορεύων καὶ τῷ Κλεομένει θράσος ἔχοντι καὶ παραβόλως αὐξανομένῳ συμπλέκεσθαι τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς μὴ βουλόμενος. ὡρμημένου δὲ [7] πάντως ὑπήκουσε καὶ παρὼν συνεστράτευεν. ὅτε δὴ καὶ κωλύσας, περὶ τὸ Παλλάντιον τοῦ Κλεομένους ἐπιφανέντος αὐτοῖς, μάχην συνάψαι τὸν Ἀριστόμαχον, ὑπὸ Λυδιάδου κατηγορήθη, καὶ περὶ τῆς στρατηγίας εἰς ἀγῶνα καὶ ἀντιπαραγγελίαν αὐτῷ καταστάς, ἐκράτησε τῇ χειροτονίᾳ καὶ τὸ δωδέκατον ᾑρέθη στρατηγός.

[36] [1] Ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ στρατηγίᾳ περὶ τὸ Λύκαιον ἡττηθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Κλεομένους ἔφευγε, καὶ πλανηθεὶς νυκτὸς ἔδοξε μὲν τεθνάναι, καὶ πάλιν οὗτος ὁ λόγος κατ’ αὐτοῦ [2] πολὺς ἐξεφοίτησεν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας· ἀνασωθεὶς δὲ καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας συναγαγών, οὐκ ἠγάπησεν ἀσφαλῶς ἀπελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἄριστα τῷ καιρῷ χρησάμενος, οὐδενὸς προσδοκῶντος οὐδὲ συλλογιζομένου τὸ μέλλον, ἐξαίφνης ἐπέπεσε Μαντινεῦσι, συμμάχοις οὖσι τοῦ Κλεομένους.

[3] καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἑλών, φρουρὰν ἐνέβαλε καὶ τοὺς μετοίκους πολίτας ἐποίησεν αὐτῶν, καὶ μόνος, ἃ νικῶντες οὐκ ἂν ῥᾳδίως ἔσχον, ἐκτήσατο νενικημένοις τοῖς [4] Ἀχαιοῖς. αὖθις δὲ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἐπὶ Μεγάλην πόλιν στρατευσάντων, βοηθήσας ὤκνει μὲν ἁψιμαχοῦντι τῷ Κλεομένει λαβὴν παρασχεῖν, καὶ τοῖς Μεγαλοπολίταις [5] βιαζομένοις ἀντεῖχεν, οὔτ’ ἄλλως πρὸς τὰς κατὰ στόμα μάχας εὖ πεφυκώς, καὶ τότε λειπόμενός τε πλήθει καὶ πρὸς ἄνδρα τολμητὴν καὶ νέον ἤδη παρακμάζοντι τῷ θυμῷ καὶ κεκολασμένῃ τῇ φιλοτιμίᾳ συνεστηκώς, καὶ νομίζων, ἣν διὰ τοῦ τολμᾶν ἐκεῖνος ἐξ οὐχ ὑπαρχόντων ἐκτᾶτο δόξαν, αὑτῷ κεκτημένῳ φυλακτέον εἶναι διὰ τῆς εὐλαβείας.

[37] [1] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῶν ψιλῶν ἐκδραμόντων καὶ ὠσαμένων τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας ἄχρι τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ περὶ τὰς σκηνὰς διασπαρέντων, ὁ μὲν Ἄρατος οὐδ’ ὣς ἐπήγαγεν, ἀλλ’ ἐν μέσῳ λαβὼν χαράδραν ἐπέστησε καὶ κατεκώλυσε [2] διαβῆναι τοὺς ὁπλίτας· ὁ δὲ Λυδιάδης περιπαθῶν πρὸς τὰ γιγνόμενα καὶ τὸν Ἄρατον κακίζων, ἀνεκαλεῖτο τοὺς ἱππεῖς ὡς αὑτόν, ἀξιῶν ἐπιφανῆναι τοῖς διώκουσι καὶ μὴ προέσθαι τὸ νίκημα μήδ’ ἐγκαταλιπεῖν αὑτὸν ὑπὲρ [3] τῆς πατρίδος ἀγωνιζόμενον. πολλῶν δὲ συστραφέντων καὶ ἀγαθῶν, ἐπιρρωσθεὶς ἐνέβαλε τῷ δεξιῷ τῶν πολεμίων, καὶ τρεψάμενος ἐδίωκεν, ὑπὸ θυμοῦ καὶ φιλοτιμίας ἀταμιεύτως ἐπισπασθεὶς εἰς χωρία σκολιὰ καὶ μεστὰ δένδρων πεφυτευμένων καὶ τάφρων πλατειῶν, ἐν οἷς ἐπιθεμένου τοῦ Κλεομένους, ἔπεσε λαμπρῶς ἀγωνισάμενος τὸν κάλλιστον τῶν ἀγώνων ἐπὶ θύραις τῆς πατρίδος.

[4] οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι φεύγοντες εἰς τὴν φάλαγγα καὶ συνταράξαντες τοὺς ὁπλίτας, ὅλον τὸ στράτευμα τῆς ἥττης ἀνέπλησαν.

[5] αἰτίαν δὲ μεγάλην ὁ Ἄρατος ἔλαβε, δόξας προέσθαι τὸν Λυδιάδην· καὶ βιασθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἀπερχομένων πρὸς ὀργήν, ἠκολούθησεν αὐτοῖς εἰς Αἴγιον. ἐκεῖ δὲ συνελθόντες ἐψηφίσαντο μὴ διδόναι χρήματ’ αὐτῷ μηδὲ μισθοφόρους τρέφειν, ἀλλ’ αὑτῷ πορίζειν εἰ δέοιτο πολεμεῖν.

[38] Οὕτω δὲ προπηλακισθείς, ἐβουλεύσατο μὲν εὐθὺς ἀποθέσθαι τὴν σφραγῖδα καὶ τὴν στρατηγίαν ἀφεῖναι, λογισμῷ δὲ χρησάμενος τότε μὲν ὑπέμεινε, καὶ πρὸς Ὀρχομενὸν ἐξαγαγὼν τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, μάχην ἔθετο πρὸς Μεγιστόνουν τὸν Κλεομένους πατρῳόν, ἐν ᾗ κρατήσας τριακοσίους μὲν ἀπέκτεινε, ζῶντα δὲ τὸν Μεγιστόνουν συνέλαβεν.

[6] Εἰωθὼς δὲ στρατηγεῖν παρ’ ἐνιαυτόν, ὡς ἡ τάξις αὐτῷ περιῆλθε, καλούμενος ἐξωμόσατο, καὶ Τιμόξενος ᾑρέθη [7] στρατηγός. ἐδόκει δ’ ἡ μὲν πρὸς τοὺς ὄχλους ὀργὴ πρόφασις εἶναι λεγομένη τῆς ἐξωμοσίας ἀπίθανος, αἰτία [8] δ’ ἀληθὴς τὰ περιεστῶτα τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, οὐκέθ’ ὡς πρότερον ἀτρέμα καὶ σχέδην τοῦ Κλεομένους ἐπιβαίνοντος οὐδ’ ἐμπλεκομένου ταῖς πολιτικαῖς ἀρχαῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ τοὺς ἐφόρους ἀποκτείνας καὶ τὴν χώραν ἀναδασάμενος καὶ πολλοὺς τῶν μετοίκων ἐμβαλὼν εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν ἔσχεν ἰσχὺν ἀνυπεύθυνον, εὐθὺς ἐπικειμένου τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς καὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἑαυτὸν ἀξιοῦντος.

[9] Διὸ καὶ μέμφονται τὸν Ἄρατον, ἐν σάλῳ μεγάλῳ καὶ χειμῶνι τῶν πραγμάτων φερομένων, ὥσπερ κυβερνήτην ἀφέντα καὶ προέμενον ἑτέρῳ τοὺς οἴακας, ὅτε καλῶς εἶχε [10] καὶ ἀκόντων ἐπιστάντα σῴζειν τὸ κοινόν, ἀπεγνωκότα ‹δὲ› τὰ πράγματα καὶ τὴν δύναμιν τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, εἶξαι τῷ Κλεομένει, καὶ μὴ πάλιν τὴν Πελοπόννησον ἐκβαρβαρῶσαι φρουραῖς Μακεδόνων, μηδὲ πληρῶσαι τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον Ἰλλυρικῶν ὅπλων καὶ Γαλατικῶν, μηδ’ οὓς αὐτὸς ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι καταστρατηγῶν καὶ καταπολιτευόμενος, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ὑπομνήμασι (FGrH 231 F 4a) λοιδορῶν διετέλει, τούτους ἐπάγεσθαι δεσπότας ταῖς πόλεσι, [11] συμμάχους ὑποκοριζόμενον. εἰ δὲ Κλεομένης ἦν - λεγέσθω γὰρ οὕτως - παράνομος καὶ τυραννικός, ἀλλ’ Ἡρακλεῖδαι πατέρες αὐτῷ καὶ Σπάρτη πατρίς, ἧς τὸν ἀφανέστατον ἦν ἄξιον ἀντὶ τοῦ πρώτου Μακεδόνων ἡγεμόνα ποιεῖσθαι τοὺς ἔν τινι λόγῳ τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν τιθεμένους εὐγένειαν.

[12] καὶ ‹μέν›τοι ‹καὶ› Κλεομένης ᾔτει τὴν ἀρχὴν παρὰ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ὡς πολλὰ ποιήσων ἀγαθὰ τὰς πόλεις ἀντὶ τῆς [13] τιμῆς καὶ τῆς προσηγορίας ἐκείνης· Ἀντίγονος δὲ καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν αὐτοκράτωρ ἡγεμὼν ἀναγορευθείς, οὐχ ὑπήκουσε πρὶν τὸν μισθὸν αὐτῷ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ὁμολογηθῆναι τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον, ἀτεχνῶς τὸν Αἰσώπου (175 [14] Halm; 238 Hausrath) μιμησάμενος κυνηγόν. οὐ γὰρ πρότερον ἐπέβη τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς δεομένοις καὶ ὑποβάλλουσιν αὑτοὺς διὰ τῶν πρεσβειῶν καὶ τῶν ψηφισμάτων, ἢ τῇ φρουρᾷ καὶ [15] τοῖς ὁμήροις ὥσπερ χαλινουμένους ἀνασχέσθαι. καίτοι πᾶσαν ὁ Ἄρατος (FGrH 231 F 4a) ἀφίησι φωνὴν ἀπολογιζόμενος τὴν ἀνάγκην. ὁ Πολύβιος (2, 47, 4 sq.) δ’ αὐτὸν ἐκ πολλοῦ φησι καὶ πρὸ τῆς ἀνάγκης, ὑφορώμενον τὸ θράσος τὸ τοῦ Κλεομένους, κρύφα τῷ Ἀντιγόνῳ διαλέγεσθαι, καὶ τοὺς Μεγαλοπολίτας προκαθιέναι δεομένους Ἀχαιῶν ἐπικαλεῖσθαι τὸν Ἀντίγονον· οὗτοι γὰρ ἐπιέζοντο τῷ πολέμῳ μάλιστα, συνεχῶς ἄγοντος αὐτοὺς καὶ φέροντος [16] τοῦ Κλεομένους. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ Φύλαρχος (FGrH 81 F 52) ἱστόρηκε περὶ τούτων, ᾧ μὴ τοῦ Πολυβίου μαρτυροῦντος οὐ πάνυ τι πιστεύειν ἄξιον ἦν· ἐνθουσιᾷ γὰρ ὅταν ἅψηται τοῦ Κλεομένους ὑπ’ εὐνοίας, καὶ καθάπερ ἐν δίκῃ τῇ ἱστορίᾳ τῷ μὲν ἀντιδικῶν διατελεῖ, τῷ δὲ συναγορεύων.

[39] [1] Ἀπέβαλον δ’ οὖν οἱ Ἀχαιοὶ τὴν Μαντίνειαν, πάλιν ἑλόντος αὐτὴν τοῦ Κλεομένους, καὶ μάχῃ μεγάλῃ περὶ τὸ Ἑκατόμβαιον ἡττηθέντες οὕτω κατεπλάγησαν, ὥστε πέμπειν εὐθὺς ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίᾳ τὸν Κλεομένη καλοῦντες [2] εἰς Ἄργος. ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος ὡς ᾔσθετο βαδίζοντα καὶ περὶ Λέρναν ὄντα μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως, φοβηθεὶς ἀπέστελλε πρέσβεις τοὺς ἀξιοῦντας, ὡς παρὰ φίλους καὶ συμμάχους αὐτὸν ἥκειν μετὰ τριακοσίων· εἰ δ’ ἀπιστεῖ, λαβεῖν [3] ὁμήρους. ταῦθ’ ὕβριν εἶναι καὶ χλευασμὸν αὑτοῦ φήσας ὁ Κλεομένης ἀνέζευξεν, ἐπιστολὴν γράψας τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, ἐγκλήματα πολλὰ κατὰ τοῦ Ἀράτου καὶ διαβολὰς ἔχουσαν· γέγραφε δὲ κἀκεῖνος ἐπιστολὰς κατὰ τοῦ Κλεομένους, καὶ ἐφέροντο λοιδορίαι καὶ βλασφημίαι, μέχρι γάμων καὶ γυναικῶν ἀλλήλους κακῶς λεγόντων.

[4] Ἐκ τούτου κήρυκα πέμψας ὁ Κλεομένης πόλεμον προεροῦντα τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, μικροῦ μὲν ἔλαθε τὴν Σικυωνίων πόλιν ἁρπάσας διὰ προδοσίας, ἐγγύθεν δ’ ἀποτραπεὶς Πελλήνῃ προσέβαλε, καὶ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐκπεσόντος ἔσχε τὴν πόλιν· ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον καὶ Φενεὸν [5] ἔλαβε καὶ Πεντέλειον. εἶτ’ εὐθὺς Ἀργεῖοι προσεχώρησαν αὐτῷ, καὶ Φλιάσιοι φρουρὰν ἐδέξαντο, καὶ ὅλως οὐδὲν ἔτι τῶν ἐπικτήτων βέβαιον ἦν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, ἀλλὰ θόρυβος πολὺς ἄφνω περιειστήκει τὸν Ἄρατον, ὁρῶντα τὴν Πελοπόννησον κραδαινομένην καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἐξανισταμένας ὑπὸ τῶν νεωτεριζόντων πανταχόθεν.

[40] [1] Ἠτρέμει μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἔστεργεν ἐπὶ τοῖς παροῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Σικυωνίων αὐτῶν καὶ Κορινθίων ἐγένοντο πολλοὶ καταφανεῖς διειλεγμένοι τῷ Κλεομένει, καὶ πάλαι πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν ἰδίων ἐπιθυμίᾳ δυναστειῶν [2] ὑπούλως ἔχοντες. ἐπὶ τούτους ἐξουσίαν ἀνυπεύθυνον ὁ Ἄρατος λαβών, τοὺς μὲν ἐν Σικυῶνι διεφθαρμένους ἀπέκτεινε, τοὺς δ’ ἐν Κορίνθῳ πειρώμενος ἀναζητεῖν καὶ κολάζειν, ἐξηγρίαινε τὸ πλῆθος, ἤδη νοσοῦν καὶ βαρυνόμενον [3] τὴν ὑπὸ τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς πολιτείαν. συνδραμόντες οὖν εἰς τὸ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἱερόν, μετεπέμποντο τὸν Ἄρατον, [4] ἀνελεῖν ἢ συλλαβεῖν πρὸ τῆς ἀποστάσεως ἐγνωκότες. ὁ δ’ ἧκε μὲν αὐτὸς ἐφελκόμενος τὸν ἵππον, ὡς οὐκ ἀπιστῶν οὐδ’ ὑποπτεύων, ἀναπηδησάντων δὲ πολλῶν καὶ λοιδορουμένων αὐτῷ καὶ κατηγορούντων, εὖ πως καθεστῶτι τῷ προσώπῳ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ πράως ἐκέλευε καθίσαι καὶ μὴ βοᾶν ἀτάκτως ἑστῶτας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς περὶ θύρας ὄντας εἴσω παριέναι· καὶ ταῦθ’ ἅμα λέγων ὑπεξῄει βάδην ὡς [5] παραδώσων τινὶ τὸν ἵππον. οὕτως δ’ ὑπεκδύς, καὶ τοῖς ἀπαντῶσι τῶν Κορινθίων ἀθορύβως διαλεγόμενος καὶ κελεύων πρὸς τὸ Ἀπολλώνιον βαδίζειν, ὡς ἔλαθε πλησίον τῆς ἄκρας γενόμενος, ἀναπηδήσας ἐπὶ τὸν ἵππον καὶ Κλεοπάτρῳ τῷ ἄρχοντι τῆς φρουρᾶς διακελευσάμενος ἐγκρατῶς φυλάττειν, ἀφίππευσεν εἰς Σικυῶνα, τριάκοντα μὲν αὐτῷ στρατιωτῶν ἑπομένων, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἐγκαταλιπόντων [6] καὶ διαρρυέντων. αἰσθόμενοι δ’ οἱ Κορίνθιοι μετ’ ὀλίγον τὴν ἀπόδρασιν αὐτοῦ καὶ διώξαντες ὡς οὐ κατέλαβον, μετεπέμψαντο τὸν Κλεομένη καὶ παρέδοσαν τὴν πόλιν, οὐδὲν οἰομένῳ λαμβάνειν παρ’ αὐτῶν τοσοῦτον, [7] ὅσου διήμαρτον ἀφέντες τὸν Ἄρατον. οὗτος μὲν οὖν, προσγενομένων αὐτῷ τῶν τὴν λεγομένην Ἀκτὴν κατοικούντων καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἐγχειρισάντων, ἀπεσταύρου καὶ περιετείχιζε τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον.

[41] [1] Τῷ δ’ Ἀράτῳ συνῆλθον εἰς Σικυῶνα τῶν Ἀχαιῶν οἱ πολλοί, καὶ γενομένης ἐκκλησίας ᾑρέθη στρατηγὸς [2] αὐτοκράτωρ. καὶ περιεστήσατο φρουρὰν ἐκ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ πολιτῶν, τριάκοντα μὲν ἔτη καὶ τρία πεπολιτευμένος ἐν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς, πεπρωτευκὼς δὲ καὶ δυνάμει καὶ δόξῃ τῶν Ἑλλήνων, τότε δ’ ἔρημος καὶ ἄπορος, συντετριμμένης ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ναυαγίου τῆς πατρίδος ἐν τοσούτῳ σάλῳ καὶ [3] κινδύνῳ διαφερόμενος. καὶ γὰρ Αἰτωλοὶ δεομένου βοηθεῖν ἀπείπαντο, καὶ τὴν Ἀθηναίων πόλιν χάριτι τοῦ Ἀράτου πρόθυμον οὖσαν οἱ περὶ Εὐρυκλείδην καὶ Μικίωνα [4] διεκώλυσαν. ὄντων δὲ τῷ Ἀράτῳ καὶ χρημάτων ἐν Κορίνθῳ καὶ οἰκίας, ὁ Κλεομένης ἥψατο μὲν οὐδενός, οὐδ’ ἄλλον εἴασε, μεταπεμψάμενος δὲ τοὺς φίλους αὐτοῦ καὶ τοὺς διοικητάς, ἐκέλευε πάντα διοικεῖν καὶ φυλάσσειν [5] ὡς Ἀράτῳ λόγον ὑφέξοντας· ἰδίᾳ δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔπεμψε Τρίπυλον καὶ πάλιν Μεγιστόνουν τὸν πατρῳόν, ὑπισχνούμενος ἄλλα τε πολλὰ καὶ δώδεκα τάλαντα σύνταξιν ἐνιαύσιον, ὑπερβαλλόμενος τῷ ἡμίσει Πτολεμαῖον· ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ἓξ τάλαντα τῷ Ἀράτῳ κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἀπέστελλεν.

[6] ἠξίου δὲ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἡγεμὼν ἀναγορευθῆναι καὶ κοινῇ [7] μετ’ αὐτῶν φυλάσσειν τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον. τοῦ δ’ Ἀράτου φήσαντος, ὡς οὐκ ἔχοι τὰ πράγματα, μᾶλλον δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἔχοιτο, καὶ κατειρωνεύσασθαι δόξαντος, ἐμβαλὼν εὐθὺς τὴν Σικυωνίαν ἐπόρθει καὶ κατέφθειρε, καὶ προσεκάθητο τῇ πόλει τρεῖς μῆνας, ἐγκαρτεροῦντος τοῦ Ἀράτου καὶ διαποροῦντος, εἰ δέξεται τὸν Ἀντίγονον ἐπὶ τῷ παραδοῦναι τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον· ἄλλως γὰρ οὐκ ἐβούλετο βοηθεῖν.

[42] [1] Οἱ μὲν οὖν Ἀχαιοὶ συνεληλυθότες εἰς Αἴγιον, ἐκεῖ τὸν Ἄρατον ἐκάλουν. ἦν δὲ κίνδυνος, τοῦ Κλεομένους πρὸς τῇ πόλει στρατοπεδεύοντος, διελθεῖν. καὶ κατεῖχον οἱ πολῖται, δεόμενοι καὶ προήσεσθαι τὸ σῶμα τῶν πολεμίων ἐγγὺς ὄντων οὐ φάσκοντες· ἐξήρτηντο δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ γυναῖκες ἤδη καὶ παῖδες, ὥσπερ πατρὸς κοινοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος [2] περιεχόμενοι καὶ δακρύοντες. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ θαρρύνας καὶ παραμυθησάμενος αὐτούς, ἐξίππευσεν ἐπὶ τὴν θάλατταν, ἔχων δέκα φίλους καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἤδη νεανίαν ὄντα· καὶ παρορμούντων ἐκεῖ πλοίων ἐπιβάντες εἰς Αἴγιον παρεκομίσθησαν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, ἐν ᾗ καλεῖν τὸν Ἀντίγονον [3] ἐψηφίσαντο καὶ παραδιδόναι τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον. ἔπεμψε δὲ καὶ τὸν υἱὸν Ἄρατος πρὸς αὐτὸν μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ὁμήρων. ἐφ’ οἷς οἱ Κορίνθιοι χαλεπῶς φέροντες, τά τε χρήματα διήρπασαν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τῷ Κλεομένει δωρεὰν ἔδωκαν.

[43] [1] Τοῦ δ’ Ἀντιγόνου προσιόντος ἤδη μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως - ἦγε δὲ πεζοὺς δισμυρίους Μακεδόνας, ἱππεῖς δὲ χιλίους καὶ τριακοσίους - , ἀπήντα μετὰ τῶν δημιουργῶν ὁ Ἄρατος αὐτῷ κατὰ θάλατταν εἰς Πηγάς, λαθὼν τοὺς πολεμίους, οὐ πάνυ τι θαρρῶν τὸν Ἀντίγονον οὐδὲ [2] πιστεύων τοῖς Μακεδόσιν. ᾔδει γὰρ ηὐξημένον ἑαυτὸν ἐξ ὧν ἐκείνους κακῶς ἐποίησε, καὶ πρώτην εἰληφότα ‹καὶ› μεγίστην ὑπόθεσιν τῆς πολιτείας τὴν πρὸς Ἀντίγονον τὸν παλαιὸν ἔχθραν. ἀλλ’ ὁρῶν ἀπαραίτητον ἐπικειμένην ‹τὴν› ἀνάγκην καὶ τὸν καιρόν, ᾧ δουλεύουσιν οἱ δοκοῦντες [3] ἄρχειν, ἐχώρει πρὸς τὸ δεινόν. ὁ δ’ Ἀντίγονος, ὥς τις αὐτῷ προσιόντα τὸν Ἄρατον ἔφρασε, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἠσπάσατο μετρίως καὶ κοινῶς, ἐκεῖνον δὲ καὶ περὶ τὴν πρώτην ἀπάντησιν ἐδέξατο τῇ τιμῇ περιττῶς, καὶ τἆλλα πειρώμενος ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ καὶ νοῦν ἔχοντος, ἐνδοτέρω τῆς χρείας προσηγάγετο.

[4] Καὶ γὰρ ἦν ὁ Ἄρατος οὐ μόνον ἐν πράγμασι μεγάλοις ὠφέλιμος, ἀλλὰ καὶ σχολάζοντι βασιλεῖ συγγενέσθαι παρ’ [5] ὁντινοῦν ἐπίχαρις. διό, καίπερ ὢν νέος ὁ Ἀντίγονος, ὡς κατενόησε τὴν φύσιν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς †μηδὲν ἀργὸν εἰς φιλίαν βασιλικὴν οὖσαν, οὐ μόνον Ἀχαιῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Μακεδόνων τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ πάντ‹ων μάλιστ›α χρώμενος ἐκείνῳ [6] διετέλει. καὶ τὸ σημεῖον ἀπέβαινεν, ὡς ὁ θεὸς ἐπὶ τῶν ἱερῶν ἔδειξε. λέγεται γὰρ οὐ πρὸ πολλοῦ θύοντι τῷ Ἀράτῳ δύο χολὰς ἐν ἥπατι φανῆναι, μιᾷ πιμελῇ περιεχομένας, καὶ τὸν μάντιν εἰπεῖν, ὡς ταχὺ πρὸς τὰ ἔχθιστα [7] καὶ πολεμιώτατα σύνεισιν εἰς ἄκραν φιλίαν. τότε μὲν οὖν παρήνεγκε τὸ ῥηθέν, οὐδ’ ἄλλως πολὺ νέμων πίστεως [8] ἱεροῖς καὶ μαντεύμασιν, ἀλλὰ τῷ λογισμῷ χρώμενος. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὕστερον εὖ χωροῦντι τῷ πολέμῳ συναγαγὼν ὁ Ἀντίγονος ἑστίασιν ἐν Κορίνθῳ, καὶ πολλοὺς ὑποδεχόμενος τὸν Ἄρατον ἐπάνω κατέκλινεν ἑαυτοῦ, καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν αἰτήσας περιβόλαιον ἠρώτησεν, εἰ δοκεῖ κἀκείνῳ ψῦχος εἶναι, τοῦ δὲ καὶ πάνυ ῥιγοῦν φήσαντος, ἐκέλευσε προσχωρεῖν ἐγγυτέρω, καὶ δάπιδος κομισθείσης ἀμφοτέρους [9] ὁμοῦ περιέβαλον οἱ παῖδες, τότε δὴ τὸν Ἄρατον ἀναμνησθέντα τῶν ἱερῶν ἐκείνων γέλως ἔλαβε, καὶ διηγεῖτο τῷ βασιλεῖ τὸ σημεῖον καὶ τὴν προαγόρευσιν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἐπράχθη χρόνοις ὕστερον.

[44] [1] Ἐν δὲ ταῖς Πηγαῖς δόντες καὶ λαβόντες ὅρκους, εὐθὺς ἐβάδιζον ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους. καὶ περὶ τὴν ‹Κορινθίων› πόλιν ἀγῶνες ἦσαν, εὖ πεφραγμένου τοῦ Κλεομένους [2] καὶ τῶν Κορινθίων ἀμυνομένων προθύμως. ἐν τούτῳ δ’ Ἀριστοτέλης ὁ Ἀργεῖος φίλος ὢν Ἀράτου διαπέμπεται κρύφα πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς ἀποστήσων τὴν πόλιν, εἰ στρατιώτας [3] ἐκεῖνος ἔχων ἔλθοι. τοῦ δ’ Ἀράτου φράσαντος τῷ Ἀντιγόνῳ καὶ μετὰ χιλίων καὶ πεντακοσίων εἰς Ἐπίδαυρον ἐξ Ἰσθμοῦ πλοίοις κομιζομένου κατὰ τάχος, οἱ μὲν Ἀργεῖοι προεξαναστάντες ἐπέθεντο τοῖς τοῦ Κλεομένους καὶ κατέκλεισαν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, ὁ δὲ Κλεομένης πυθόμενος ταῦτα, καὶ δείσας μὴ κατασχόντες οἱ πολέμιοι τὸ Ἄργος ἀποκόψωσιν αὐτὸν τῆς οἴκαδε σωτηρίας, ἐκλιπὼν τὸν [4] Ἀκροκόρινθον ἔτι νυκτὸς ἐβοήθει. καὶ παρελθὼν μὲν εἰς Ἄργος ἔφθη καὶ τροπήν τινα τῶν πολεμίων ἐποίησεν, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον Ἀράτου προσφερομένου καὶ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπιφαινομένου μετὰ τῆς δυνάμεως, ἀπεχώρησεν εἰς [5] Μαντίνειαν. ἐκ τούτου τοῖς μὲν Ἀχαιοῖς πάλιν αἱ πόλεις ἅπασαι προσεχώρησαν, Ἀντίγονος δὲ τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον παρέλαβεν, Ἄρατος δὲ στρατηγὸς αἱρεθεὶς ὑπ’ Ἀργείων, ἔπεισεν αὐτοὺς Ἀντιγόνῳ τά τε τῶν τυράννων καὶ τὰ τῶν προδοτῶν χρήματα δωρεὰν δοῦναι.

[6] Τὸν δ’ Ἀριστόμαχον ἐν Κεγχρεαῖς στρεβλώσαντες κατεπόντισαν, ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα κακῶς ἤκουσεν ὁ Ἄρατος, ὡς ἄνθρωπον οὐ πονηρόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ κεχρημένον ἐκείνῳ καὶ πεπεισμένον ἀφεῖναι τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ προσαγαγεῖν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς τὴν πόλιν, ὅμως περιιδὼν παρανόμως ἀπολόμενον.

[45] [1] Ἤδη δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐκείνῳ τὰς αἰτίας ἐπέφερον, οἷον ὅτε τὴν μὲν Κορινθίων πόλιν Ἀντιγόνῳ δωρεὰν ἔδωκαν ὥσπερ κώμην τὴν τυχοῦσαν, τὸν Ὀρχομενὸν δὲ συνεχώρησαν αὐτῷ διαρπάσαντι φρουρὰν ἐμβαλεῖν Μακεδονικήν, [2] ἐψηφίσαντο δ’ ἄλλῳ μὴ γράφειν βασιλεῖ μηδὲ πρεσβεύειν πρὸς ἄλλον ἄκοντος Ἀντιγόνου, τρέφειν δὲ καὶ [3] μισθοδοτεῖν ἠναγκάζοντο τοὺς Μακεδόνας, θυσίας δὲ καὶ πομπὰς καὶ ἀγῶνας Ἀντιγόνῳ συνετέλουν, ἀρξαμένων τῶν Ἀράτου πολιτῶν καὶ δεξαμένων τῇ πόλει τὸν Ἀντίγονον [4] ὑπ’ Ἀράτου ξενιζόμενον, ᾐτιῶντο πάντων ἐκεῖνον, ἀγνοοῦντες ὅτι τὰς ἡνίας ἐκείνῳ παραδεδωκὼς καὶ τῇ ῥύμῃ τῆς βασιλικῆς ἐφελκόμενος ἐξουσίας οὐδενὸς ἦν ἢ μόνης φωνῆς ἔτι κύριος, ἐπισφαλῆ τὴν παρρησίαν ἐχούσης.

[5] ἐπεὶ φανερῶς γε πολλὰ τῶν πραττομένων ἐλύπει τὸν Ἄρατον, ὥσπερ τὸ περὶ τῶν εἰκόνων· ὁ γὰρ Ἀντίγονος τὰς μὲν τῶν ἐν Ἄργει τυράννων καταβεβλημένας ἀνέστησε, τὰς δὲ τῶν ἑλόντων τὸν Ἀκροκόρινθον ἑστώσας ἀνέτρεψε, πλὴν μιᾶς τῆς ἐκείνου· καὶ πολλὰ περὶ τούτων δεηθεὶς [6] ὁ Ἄρατος οὐκ ἔπεισεν. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ Μαντίνειαν οὐχ Ἑλληνικῶς διῳκῆσθαι τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς. κρατήσαντες γὰρ αὐτῶν δι’ Ἀντιγόνου, τοὺς μὲν ἐνδοξοτάτους καὶ πρώτους ἀπέκτειναν, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων τοὺς μὲν ἀπέδοντο, τοὺς δ’ εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἀπέστειλαν πέδαις δεδεμένους, παῖδας δὲ καὶ γυναῖκας ἠνδραποδίσαντο, τοῦ δὲ συναχθέντος ἀργυρίου τὸ τρίτον αὐτοὶ διείλοντο, τὰς δὲ δύο [7] μοίρας ἔνειμαν τοῖς Μακεδόσι. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἔσχε τὸν τῆς ἀμύνης νόμον· καὶ γὰρ εἰ δεινὸν ἄνδρας ὁμοφύλους καὶ συγγενεῖς οὕτω μεταχειρίσασθαι δι’ ὀργήν, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἀνάγκαις γλυκὺ γίνεται καὶ τὸ σκληρόν, κατὰ Σιμωνίδην (fr. 226 B.4`4), ὥσπερ ἀλγοῦντι τῷ θυμῷ καὶ φλεγμαίνοντι [8] θεραπείαν καὶ ἀναπλήρωσιν προσφερόντων. τὰ δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα πραχθέντα περὶ τὴν πόλιν οὔτ’ εἰς καλὴν οὔτ’ εἰς ἀναγκαίαν ἔστι θέσθαι τῷ Ἀράτῳ πρόφασιν. τῶν γὰρ Ἀχαιῶν τὴν πόλιν παρ’ Ἀντιγόνου δωρεὰν λαβόντων καὶ κατοικίζειν ἐγνωκότων, αὐτὸς οἰκιστὴς αἱρεθεὶς καὶ στρατηγὸς ὢν ἐψηφίσατο μηκέτι καλεῖν Μαντίνειαν, ἀλλ’ [9] Ἀντιγόνειαν, ὃ καὶ μέχρι νῦν καλεῖται. καὶ δοκεῖ δι’ ἐκεῖνον ἡ μὲν ἐρατεινὴ Μαντίνεια (Hom. Il. 2, 607) παντάπασιν ἐξαληλίφθαι, διαμένει δ’ ἡ πόλις ἐπώνυμος τῶν ἀπολεσάντων καὶ ἀνελόντων τοὺς πολίτας.

[46] [1] Ἐκ τούτου Κλεομένης μὲν ἡττηθεὶς μάχῃ μεγάλῃ περὶ Σελλασίαν ἐξέλιπε τὴν Σπάρτην καὶ ἀπέπλευσεν εἰς Αἴγυπτον, Ἀντίγονος δὲ πάντα τὰ δίκαια καὶ φιλάνθρωπα τῷ Ἀράτῳ πεποιηκὼς ἀνέζευξεν εἰς Μακεδονίαν, [2] κἀκεῖ νοσῶν ἤδη τὸν διάδοχον τῆς βασιλείας Φίλιππον, οὔπω πάνυ μειράκιον ὄντα, πέμπων εἰς Πελοπόννησον Ἀράτῳ μάλιστα προσέχειν ἐκέλευσε καὶ δι’ ἐκείνου ταῖς [3] πόλεσιν ἐντυχεῖν καὶ γνωρισθῆναι τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς. καὶ μέντοι καὶ παραλαβὼν αὐτὸν ὁ Ἄρατος οὕτως διέθηκεν, ὥστε πολλῆς μὲν εὐνοίας πρὸς αὐτόν, πολλῆς δὲ πρὸς τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς πράξεις φιλοτιμίας καὶ ὁρμῆς μεστὸν εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἀποστεῖλαι.

[47] [1] Τελευτήσαντος δ’ Ἀντιγόνου, καταφρονήσαντες Αἰτωλοὶ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν διὰ τὴν ῥᾳθυμίαν - ἐθισθέντες γὰρ ἀλλοτρίαις σῴζεσθαι χερσὶ καὶ τοῖς Μακεδόνων ὅπλοις αὑτοὺς ὑπεσταλκότες, ἐν ἀργίᾳ πολλῇ καὶ ἀταξίᾳ διῆγον - [2] ἐπέθεντο τοῖς κατὰ Πελοπόννησον πράγμασι· καὶ τὴν μὲν Πατρέων καὶ Δυμαίων λεηλασίαν ὁδοῦ πάρεργον [3] ἐποιήσαντο, τὴν δὲ Μεσσήνην ἐμβαλόντες ἐπόρθουν. ἐφ’ οἷς ὁ Ἄρατος ἀγανακτῶν, καὶ τὸν στρατηγοῦντα τότε τῶν Ἀχαιῶν Τιμόξενον ὁρῶν ὀκνοῦντα καὶ διατρίβοντα τὸν χρόνον, ἤδη τῆς στρατηγίας αὐτῷ τελευτώσης, αὐτὸς ᾑρημένος ἄρχειν μετ’ ἐκεῖνον προέλαβεν ἡμέραις πέντε [4] τὴν ἀρχὴν ἕνεκα τοῦ βοηθῆσαι Μεσσηνίοις. καὶ συναγαγὼν τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, τοῖς τε σώμασιν ἀγυμνάστους ὄντας καὶ ταῖς διανοίαις ἐκλελυμένους πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον, ἡττᾶται [5] περὶ Καφύας· καὶ θυμικώτερον ἐστρατηγηκέναι δόξας, οὕτως αὖ πάλιν ἀπημβλύνθη καὶ προήκατο τὰ πράγματα καὶ τὰς ἐλπίδας, ὥστε πολλάκις λαβὴν τοὺς Αἰτωλοὺς παρασχόντας ἀνέχεσθαι καὶ περιορᾶν ὥσπερ κωμάζοντας ἐν τῇ Πελοποννήσῳ μετὰ πολλῆς ἀσελγείας καὶ θρασύτητος.

[6] αὖθις οὖν τὰς χεῖρας ὀρέγοντες εἰς Μακεδονίαν, ἐπεσπῶντο καὶ κατῆγον ἐπὶ τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς πράξεις τὸν Φίλιππον, οὐχ ἥκιστα διὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸν Ἄρατον εὔνοιαν αὐτοῦ καὶ πίστιν ἐλπίζοντες εὐκόλῳ περὶ πάντα χρήσεσθαι καὶ χειροήθει.

[48] [1] Καὶ τότε πρῶτον Ἀπελλοῦ καὶ Μεγαλέου καί τινων αὐλικῶν ἄλλων διαβαλλόντων τὸν Ἄρατον, ἀναπεισθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς καὶ συναρχαιρεσιάσας τοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς ἐναντίας στάσεως, ἐσπούδασε τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς ἑλέσθαι [2] στρατηγὸν Ἐπήρατον. ὡς δ’ ἐκείνου μὲν καταφρονουμένου τελέως ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, τοῦ δ’ Ἀράτου παραμελοῦντος, ἐγίνετο τῶν χρησίμων οὐδέν, ἔγνω διαμαρτάνων [3] τοῦ παντὸς ὁ Φίλιππος. καὶ ἀνακρουσάμενος αὖθις ἐπὶ τὸν Ἄρατον, ὅλος ἦν ἐκείνου, καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῷ πρός τε δύναμιν καὶ πρὸς εὐδοξίαν ἐπιδιδόντων, ἐξήρτητο τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὡς δι’ ἐκεῖνον εὐδοκιμῶν καὶ [4] αὐξόμενος· ἐδόκει τε πᾶσιν ὁ Ἄρατος οὐ μόνον δημοκρατίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ βασιλείας ἀγαθὸς εἶναι παιδαγωγός· [5] ἡ γὰρ προαίρεσις αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ ἦθος ὡς χρῶμα ταῖς πράξεσι τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπεφαίνετο. καὶ γὰρ ἡ πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους ἁμαρτόντας μετριότης τοῦ νεανίσκου, καὶ ἡ πρὸς Κρῆτας ὁμιλία δι’ ἧς ὅλην προσηγάγετο τὴν νῆσον ἡμέραις ὀλίγαις, ἥ τε πρὸς Αἰτωλοὺς στρατεία γενομένη θαυμαστῶς ἐνεργός, εὐπειθείας μὲν τῷ Φιλίππῳ δόξαν, [6] εὐβουλίας δὲ τῷ Ἀράτῳ προσετίθει. καὶ διὰ ταῦτα μᾶλλον οἱ βασιλικοὶ φθονοῦντες, ὡς οὐδὲν ἐπέραινον κρύφα διαβάλλοντες, ἀναφανδὸν ἐλοιδοροῦντο καὶ προσέκρουον αὐτῷ παρὰ τοὺς πότους μετὰ πολλῆς ἀσελγείας καὶ βωμολοχίας· ἅπαξ δὲ καὶ λίθοις βάλλοντες ἀπιόντα εἰς τὴν [7] σκηνὴν μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον κατεδίωξαν. ἐφ’ οἷς ὁ Φίλιππος ὀργισθείς, εὐθὺς μὲν αὐτοὺς ἐζημίωσεν εἴκοσι ταλάντοις, ὕστερον δὲ λυμαίνεσθαι τὰ πράγματα καὶ ταράττειν δοκοῦντας ἀπέκτεινεν.

[49] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τῆς τύχης εὐροούσης ἐπαιρόμενος τοῖς πράγμασι πολλὰς μὲν ἀνέφυε καὶ μεγάλας ἐπιθυμίας, ἡ δ’ ἔμφυτος κακία, τὸν παρὰ φύσιν σχηματισμὸν ἐκβιαζομένη καὶ ἀναδύουσα, κατὰ μικρὸν ἀπεγύμνου καὶ [2] διέφαινεν αὐτοῦ τὸ ἦθος, πρῶτον μὲν ἰδίᾳ τὸν νεώτερον Ἄρατον ἠδίκει περὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἐλάνθανεν, ἐφέστιος ὢν καὶ ξενιζόμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν· ἔπειτα πρὸς τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς ἐξετραχύνετο πολιτείας, καὶ φανερὸς [3] ἦν ἤδη τὸν Ἄρατον ἀποσειόμενος. ἀρχὴν δ’ ὑποψίας τὰ Μεσσηνιακὰ παρέσχε. στασιασάντων γὰρ αὐτῶν, ὁ μὲν Ἄρατος ὑστέρει βοηθῶν, ὁ δὲ Φίλιππος ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ πρότερον ἐλθὼν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, εὐθὺς οἶστρόν τινα κατ’ [4] ἀλλήλων ἐνέβαλε τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ἰδίᾳ μὲν ἐρωτῶν τοὺς στρατηγοὺς τῶν Μεσσηνίων, εἰ νόμους κατὰ τῶν πολλῶν οὐκ ἔχουσιν, ἰδίᾳ δὲ πάλιν τοὺς τῶν πολλῶν προεστῶτας, εἰ χεῖρας κατὰ τῶν τυραννούντων οὐκ ἔχουσιν.

[5] ἐκ δὲ τούτου θαρρήσαντες, οἱ μὲν ἄρχοντες ἐπελαμβάνοντο τῶν δημαγωγῶν, ἐκεῖνοι δὲ μετὰ τῶν πολλῶν ἐπελθόντες τούς τ’ ἄρχοντας ἀπέκτειναν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὀλίγον ἀπολείποντας διακοσίων.

[50] [1] Οὕτω δὲ δεινὸν ἔργον ἐξειργασμένου τοῦ Φιλίππου καὶ συγκρούοντος ἔτι μᾶλλον ἑαυτοῖς τοὺς Μεσσηνίους, ἐπελθὼν ὁ Ἄρατος αὐτός τε δῆλος ἦν φέρων βαρέως, καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἐπιτιμῶντα πικρῶς τῷ Φιλίππῳ καὶ λοιδορούμενον [2] οὐκ ἐκώλυσεν. ἐδόκει δ’ ὁ νεανίσκος ἐρᾶν τοῦ Φιλίππου, καὶ τότε λέγων εἶπε πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς οὐδὲ καλὸς ἔτι φαίνοιτο τὴν ὄψιν αὐτῷ τοιαῦτα δράσας, ἀλλὰ πάντων [3] αἴσχιστος. ὁ δὲ Φίλιππος ἐκείνῳ μὲν οὐδὲν ἀντεῖπε, καίπερ ἐπίδοξος ὢν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ πολλάκις ἐξυλακτήσας λέγοντος αὐτοῦ, τὸν δὲ πρεσβύτερον, ὡς ἐνηνοχὼς πράως τὰ λεχθέντα καί τις ὢν μέτριος καὶ πολιτικὸς τὴν φύσιν, ἀνέστησεν ἐκ τοῦ θεάτρου τὴν δεξιὰν ἐμβαλὼν καὶ προῆγεν εἰς τὸν Ἰθωμάταν, τῷ τε Διὶ θύσων καὶ [4] θεωρήσων τὸν τόπον. ἔστι γὰρ οὐχ ἧττον εὐερκὴς τοῦ Ἀκροκορίνθου, καὶ λαβὼν φρουρὰν γίνεται χαλεπὸς καὶ [5] δυσεκβίαστος τοῖς παροικοῦσιν. ἀναβὰς δὲ καὶ θύσας, ὡς προσήνεγκεν αὐτῷ τὰ σπλάγχνα τοῦ βοὸς ὁ μάντις, ἀμφοτέραις ταῖς χερσὶν ὑπολαβὼν ἐδείκνυε τῷ τ’ Ἀράτῳ καὶ τῷ Φαρίῳ Δημητρίῳ, παρὰ μέρος ἀποκλίνων εἰς ἑκάτερον καὶ πυνθανόμενος, τί καθορῶσιν ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς, κρατοῦντα τῆς ἄκρας αὐτὸν ἢ τοῖς Μεσσηνίοις [6] ἀποδιδόντα. γελάσας οὖν ὁ Δημήτριος εἰ μὲν ἔφη μάντεως ἔχεις ψυχήν, ἀφήσεις τὸν τόπον· εἰ δὲ βασιλέως, ἀμφοτέρων τῶν κεράτων τὸν βοῦν καθέξεις, αἰνιττόμενος τὴν Πελοπόννησον, ὡς, εἰ προσλάβοι τὸν Ἰθωμάταν τῷ Ἀκροκορίνθῳ, παντάπασιν ἐσομένην ὑποχείριον [7] καὶ ταπεινήν. ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος ἐπὶ πολὺ μὲν ἡσύχαζε, δεομένου δὲ τοῦ Φιλίππου τὸ φαινόμενον λέγειν, πολλὰ μὲν εἶπεν ὦ Φίλιππε Κρητῶν ὄρη καὶ μεγάλα, πολλαὶ δὲ Βοιωτῶν ἄκραι καὶ Φωκέων ἐκπεφύκασι τῆς γῆς· εἰσὶ δέ που πολλοὶ καὶ τῆς Ἀκαρνάνων, τοῦτο μὲν χερσαῖοι, τοῦτο δ’ ἔναλοι τόποι, θαυμαστὰς ὀχυρότητας [8] ἔχοντες. ἀλλ’ οὐδένα τούτων κατείληφας, καὶ πάντες ἑκουσίως σοι ποιοῦσι τὸ προστασσόμενον. λῃσταὶ γὰρ ἐμφύονται πέτραις καὶ κρημνῶν περιέχονται, βασιλεῖ δὲ πίστεως καὶ χάριτος ἰσχυρότερον οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ὀχυρώτερον.

[9] ταῦτά σοι τὸ Κρητικὸν ἀνοίγει πέλαγος, ταῦτα τὴν Πελοπόννησον, ἀπὸ τούτων ὁρμώμενος σὺ τοσοῦτος ἡλικίαν τῶν μὲν ἡγεμών, τῶν δὲ κύριος ἤδη καθέστηκας.

[10] ἔτι ‹δὲ› λέγοντος αὐτοῦ, τὰ μὲν σπλάγχνα τῷ μάντει παρέδωκεν ὁ Φίλιππος, ἐκεῖνον δὲ τῆς χειρὸς ἐπισπασάμενος δεῦρο τοίνυν ἔφη τὴν αὐτὴν ὁδὸν ἴωμεν, ὥσπερ ἐκβεβιασμένος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀφῃρημένος.

[51] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἄρατος ἀπορρέων ἤδη τῆς αὐλῆς καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ἑαυτὸν ἀνακομιζόμενος ἐκ τῆς πρὸς τὸν Φίλιππον συνηθείας, διαβαίνοντος εἰς Ἤπειρον αὐτοῦ καὶ δεομένου συστρατεύειν, ἀπείπατο καὶ κατέμεινε, δεδιὼς ἀναπλησθῆναι δόξης πονηρᾶς ἀφ’ ὧν ἐκεῖνος ἔπραττεν.

[2] ἐπεὶ δὲ τάς τε ναῦς ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ἀπολέσας αἴσχιστα καὶ ὅλως ἀποτυχὼν ταῖς πράξεσιν ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς Πελοπόννησον, καὶ τοὺς Μεσσηνίους αὖθις ἐπιχειρήσας φενακίζειν καὶ μὴ λαθὼν ἠδίκει φανερῶς καὶ τὴν χώραν [3] αὐτῶν ἐπόρθει, παντάπασιν ὁ Ἄρατος ἀπεστράφη καὶ διεβλήθη πρὸς αὐτόν, ἤδη καὶ τῶν περὶ τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν ἀδικημάτων αἰσθόμενος, καὶ φέρων ἀνιαρῶς αὐτός, ἀποκρυπτόμενος δὲ τὸν υἱόν· εἰδέναι γὰρ ὑβρισμένον [4] περιῆν, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδέν, ἀμύνασθαι μὴ δυναμένῳ. μεγίστην γὰρ ὁ Φίλιππος δοκεῖ καὶ παραλογωτάτην μεταβαλέσθαι μεταβολήν, ἐξ ἡμέρου βασιλέως καὶ μειρακίου σώφρονος ἀνὴρ ἀσελγὴς καὶ τύραννος ἐξώλης γενόμενος. τὸ δ’ οὐκ ἦν ἄρα μεταβολὴ φύσεως, ἀλλ’ ἐπίδειξις ἐν ἀδείᾳ κακίας, πολὺν χρόνον διὰ φόβον ἀγνοηθείσης.

[52] [1] Ὅτι γὰρ ἦν μεμειγμένον αἰσχύνῃ καὶ φόβῳ τὸ πρὸς τὸν Ἄρατον αὐτοῦ πάθος ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς συντεθραμμένον, [2] ἐδήλωσεν οἷς ἔπραξε περὶ αὐτόν. ἐπιθυμῶν γὰρ ἀνελεῖν τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ νομίζων οὐδ’ ἂν ἐλεύθερος ἐκείνου ζῶντος εἶναι, μή τί γε τύραννος ἢ βασιλεύς, βίᾳ μὲν οὐδὲν ἐπεχείρησε, Ταυρίωνα δὲ τῶν στρατηγῶν τινα καὶ φίλων ἐκέλευσεν [ἐν] ἀδήλῳ τρόπῳ τοῦτο πρᾶξαι, μάλιστα διὰ [3] φαρμάκων, αὐτοῦ μὴ παρόντος. ὁ δὲ ποιησάμενος τὸν Ἄρατον συνήθη, φάρμακον αὐτῷ δίδωσιν, οὐκ ὀξὺ καὶ σφοδρόν, ἀλλὰ τῶν θέρμας τε μαλακὰς τὸ πρῶτον ἐν τῷ σώματι καὶ βῆχα κινούντων ἀμβλεῖαν, εἶθ’ οὕτως [4] κατὰ μικρὸν εἰς φθόαν περαινόντων. οὐ μὴν ἔλαθέ γε τὸν Ἄρατον· ἀλλ’ ὡς οὐδὲν ἦν ὄφελος ἐλέγχοντι, πράως καὶ σιωπῇ τὸ πάθος ὡς δή τινα νόσον κοινὴν καὶ συνήθη νοσῶν διήντλει· πλὴν ἑνός γε τῶν συνήθων ἐν τῷ δωματίῳ παρόντος, ἀναπτύσας δίαιμον, ἰδόντος ἐκείνου καὶ θαυμάσαντος, ταῦτα εἶπεν ὦ Κεφάλων τἀπίχειρα τῆς βασιλικῆς φιλίας.

[53] [1] Οὕτω δ’ αὐτοῦ τελευτήσαντος ἐν Αἰγίῳ, τὸ ἑπτακαιδέκατον στρατηγοῦντος, καὶ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν φιλοτιμουμένων ἐκεῖ γενέσθαι ταφὰς καὶ μνήματα πρέποντα τῷ βίῳ τοῦ ἀνδρός, Σικυώνιοι συμφορὰν ἐποιοῦντο μὴ [2] παρ’ αὐτοῖς τεθῆναι τὸ σῶμα. καὶ τοὺς μὲν Ἀχαιοὺς ἔπεισαν ἐφιέναι, νόμου δ’ ὄντος ἀρχαίου μηδένα θάπτεσθαι τειχῶν ἐντός, ἰσχυρᾶς τε τῷ νόμῳ δεισιδαιμονίας προσούσης, ἔπεμψαν εἰς Δελφοὺς ὑπὲρ τούτων ἐρησόμενοι τὴν Πυθίαν. ἡ δ’ αὐτοῖς ἀναιρεῖ τὸν χρησμὸν τόνδε (150 Hendess)·

[3] βουλεύῃ Σικυὼν ζωάγριον αἰὲν Ἀράτου

ἀμφ’ ὁσίῃ θαλίῃ τε κατοιχομένοιο ἄνακτος;

ὡς τὸ βαρυνόμενον τῷδ’ ἀνέρι καὶ τὸ βαρῦνον

γαίης ἔστ’ ἀσέβημα καὶ οὐρανοῦ ἠδὲ θαλάσσης.

[4] κομισθείσης δὲ τῆς μαντείας, οἵ τ’ Ἀχαιοὶ σύμπαντες ἥσθησαν διαφερόντως, καὶ οἱ Σικυώνιοι μεταβαλόντες εἰς ἑορτὴν τὸ πένθος εὐθὺς ἐκ τοῦ Αἰγίου τὸν νεκρὸν ἐστεφανωμένοι καὶ λευχειμονοῦντες ὑπὸ παιάνων καὶ χορῶν εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἀνῆγον, καὶ τόπον ἐξελόμενοι περίοπτον ὥσπερ οἰκιστὴν καὶ σωτῆρα τῆς πόλεως ἐκήδευσαν.

[5] καὶ καλεῖται μέχρι νῦν Ἀράτειον, καὶ θύουσιν αὐτῷ θυσίας, τὴν μέν, ᾗ τὴν πόλιν ἀπήλλαξε τῆς τυραννίδος, ἡμέρᾳ πέμπτῃ Δαισίου μηνός, ὃν Ἀθηναῖοι καλοῦσιν Ἀνθεστηριῶνα, καὶ τὴν θυσίαν ἐκείνην Σωτήρια προσαγορεύουσι, τὴν δὲ τοῦ μηνὸς ἐν ᾧ γενέσθαι [6] τὸν ἄνδρα διαμνημονεύουσι. τῆς μὲν οὖν προτέρας ‹ὁ› τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Σωτῆρος κατήρχετο θυηπόλος, τῆς δὲ δευτέρας ὁ τοῦ Ἀράτου, στρόφιον οὐχ ὁλόλευκον, ἀλλὰ μεσοπόρφυρον ἔχων· μέλη δ’ ᾔδετο πρὸς κιθάραν ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνιτῶν, καὶ συνεπόμπευεν ὁ γυμνασίαρχος, ἡγούμενος τῶν τε παίδων καὶ τῶν ἐφήβων, εἶτ’ ἐφείπεθ’ ἡ βουλὴ στεφανηφοροῦσα, καὶ τῶν [7] ἄλλων πολιτῶν ὁ βουλόμενος. ὧν ἔτι δείγματα μικρὰ ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις ἐξοσιούμενοι διαφυλάττουσιν· αἱ δὲ πλεῖσται τῶν τιμῶν ὑπὸ χρόνου καὶ πραγμάτων ἄλλων ἐκλελοίπασιν.

[54] [1] Ἀλλὰ γὰρ ὁ μὲν πρεσβύτερος Ἄρατος οὕτω βιῶσαι [2] καὶ τοιοῦτος γενέσθαι τὴν φύσιν ἱστορεῖται. τὸν δ’ υἱὸν αὐτοῦ μιαρὸς ὢν φύσει καὶ μετ’ ὠμότητος ὑβριστὴς ὁ Φίλιππος οὐ θανασίμοις, ἀλλὰ μανικοῖς ἐξέστησε [3] τοῦ λογισμοῦ φαρμάκοις, καὶ παρέτρεψεν εἰς δεινὰς καὶ ἀλλοκότους ἐπιφοράς, πράξεων ἀτόπων καὶ σὺν αἰσχύνῃ παθῶν ὀλεθρίων ὀρεγόμενον, ὥστε τὸν θάνατον αὐτῷ, καίπερ ὄντι νέῳ καὶ ἀνθοῦντι, μὴ συμφοράν, ἀλλ’ ἀπόλυσιν κακῶν καὶ σωτηρίαν γενέσθαι.

[4] Δίκας γε μὴν ὁ Φίλιππος οὐ μεμπτὰς Διὶ ξενίῳ καὶ [5] φιλίῳ τῆς ἀνοσιουργίας ταύτης τίνων διετέλεσε. καταπολεμηθεὶς μὲν γὰρ ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων, ἐπέτρεψεν ἐκείνοις τὰ καθ’ αὑτόν, ἐκπεσὼν δὲ τῆς ἄλλης ἀρχῆς καὶ τὰς ναῦς πλὴν πέντε πάσας προέμενος καὶ χίλια προσεκτείσειν ὁμολογήσας τάλαντα καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ὁμηρεύσοντα παραδούς, δι’ οἶκτον ἔτυχε Μακεδονίας καὶ τῶν συντελούντων.

[6] ἀποκτείνων δ’ ἀεὶ τοὺς ἀρίστους καὶ συγγενεστάτους, φρίκης ἐνέπλησε καὶ μίσους ὅλην τὴν βασιλείαν πρὸς αὑτόν.

[7] ἓν δὲ μόνον ἐν τοσούτοις κακοῖς εὐτύχημα κτησάμενος, υἱὸν ἀρετῇ διαφέροντα, τοῦτον φθόνῳ καὶ ζηλοτυπίᾳ τῆς παρὰ Ῥωμαίοις τιμῆς ἀνεῖλε, Περσεῖ δὲ θατέρῳ τὴν ἀρχὴν παρέδωκεν, ὃν οὐ γνήσιον, ἀλλ’ ὑπόβλητον εἶναί [8] φασιν, ἐκ Γναθαινίου τινὸς ἀκεστρίας γενόμενον. τοῦτον Αἰμίλιος ἐθριάμβευσε· καὶ κατέστρεψεν ἐνταῦθα τῆς Ἀντιγονικῆς βασιλείας ἡ διαδοχή. τὸ δ’ Ἀράτου γένος ἔν τε ‹τῇ› Σικυῶνι καὶ τῇ Πελλήνῃ διέμεινε καθ’ ἡμᾶς.

Artaxerxes

[1] [1]  Ὁ μὲν πρῶτος Ἀρτοξέρξης, τῶν ἐν Πέρσαις βασιλέων πραότητι καὶ μεγαλοψυχίᾳ πρωτεύσας, Μακρόχειρ ἐπεκαλεῖτο, τὴν δεξιὰν μείζονα τῆς ἑτέρας ἔχων, Ξέρξου δ’ ἦν υἱός· ὁ δὲ δεύτερος, περὶ οὗ τάδε γράφεται, Μνήμων [2] ἐπικληθείς, ἐκ θυγατρὸς ἦν ἐκείνου. Δαρείου γὰρ καὶ Παρυσάτιδος παῖδες ἐγένοντο τέσσαρες, πρεσβύτατος μὲν Ἀρτοξέρξης, μετ’ ἐκεῖνον δὲ Κῦρος, νεώτεροι [3] δὲ τούτων Ὀστάνης καὶ Ὀξάθρης. ὁ μὲν οὖν Κῦρος ἀπὸ Κύρου τοῦ παλαιοῦ τοὔνομα ἔσχεν, ἐκείνῳ δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου γενέσθαι φασί· Κῦρον γὰρ καλεῖν Πέρσας τὸν [4] ἥλιον. ὁ δ’ Ἀρτοξέρξης Ἀρσίκας πρότερον ἐκαλεῖτο· καίτοι Δείνων (FGrH 690 F 14) φησὶν ὅτι Ὀάρσης· ἀλλὰ τὸν Κτησίαν (FGrH 688 F 15a), εἰ καὶ τἆλλα μύθων ἀπιθάνων καὶ παραφόρων ἐμβέβληκεν εἰς τὰ βιβλία παντοδαπὴν πυλαίαν, οὐκ εἰκός ἐστιν ἀγνοεῖν τοὔνομα τοῦ βασιλέως, παρ’ ᾧ διέτριβε θεραπεύων αὐτὸν καὶ γυναῖκα καὶ μητέρα καὶ παῖδας.

[2] [1] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Κῦρος ἔντονόν τι καὶ σφοδρὸν εὐθὺς ἐκ πρώτης ἡλικίας εἶχεν, ἅτερος δὲ πραότερος ἐδόκει περὶ πάντα καὶ ταῖς ὁρμαῖς φύσει μαλακώτερος εἶναι. [2] γυναῖκα δὲ καλὴν καὶ ἀγαθὴν ἔλαβε μὲν τῶν γονέων κελευόντων, ἐφύλαξε δὲ κωλυόντων. τὸν γὰρ ἀδελφὸν αὐτῆς ἀποκτείνας ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐβουλεύετο κἀκείνην ἀνελεῖν· ὁ δ’ Ἀρσίκας τῆς μητρὸς ἱκέτης γενόμενος καὶ πολλὰ κατακλαύσας, μόλις ἔπεισε μήτ’ ἀποκτεῖναι μήτ’ αὐτοῦ [3] διαστῆσαι τὴν ἄνθρωπον. ἡ δὲ μήτηρ ὑπῆρχε τὸν Κῦρον μᾶλλον φιλοῦσα καὶ βουλομένη βασιλεύειν ἐκεῖνον. διὸ καὶ τοῦ πατρὸς νοσοῦντος ἤδη μετάπεμπτος ἀπὸ θαλάσσης γενόμενος, παντάπασιν ἀνέβαινεν εὔελπις ὤν, ὡς κατειργασμένης ἐκείνης διάδοχον αὐτὸν ἀποδειχθῆναι [4] τῆς ἀρχῆς. καὶ γὰρ εἶχεν εὐπρεπῆ λόγον ἡ Παρύσατις, ᾧ καὶ Ξέρξης ὁ παλαιὸς ἐχρήσατο Δημαράτου διδάξαντος, ὡς Ἀρσίκαν μὲν ἰδιώτῃ, Κῦρον δὲ βασιλεύοντι [5] Δαρείῳ τεκεῖν. οὐ μὴν ἔπεισεν, ἀλλ’ ὁ πρεσβύτερος ἀπεδείχθη βασιλεύς, Ἀρτοξέρξης μετονομασθείς, Κῦρος δὲ Λυδίας σατράπης καὶ τῶν ἐπὶ θαλάσσῃ στρατηγός.

[3] [1] Ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἢ τελευτῆσαι Δαρεῖον, ἐξήλασεν εἰς Πασαργάδας ὁ βασιλεύς, ὅπως τελεσθείη τὴν βασιλικὴν [2] τελετὴν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐν Πέρσαις ἱερέων. ἔστι δ’ ‹ἐκεῖ› θεᾶς πολεμικῆς ἱερόν, ἣν Ἀθηνᾷ τις ‹ἂν› εἰκάσειεν. εἰς τοῦτο δεῖ τὸν τελούμενον παρελθόντα τὴν μὲν ἰδίαν ἀποθέσθαι στολήν, ἀναλαβεῖν δ’ ἣν Κῦρος ὁ παλαιὸς ἐφόρει, πρὶν ἢ βασιλεὺς γενέσθαι, καὶ σύκων παλάθης ἐμφαγόντα τερμίνθου κατατραγεῖν, καὶ ποτήριον ἐκπιεῖν ὀξυγάλακτος· εἰ δὲ πρὸς τούτοις ἕτερ’ ἄττα δρῶσιν, ἄδηλόν ἐστι τοῖς [3] ἄλλοις. ταῦτα δρᾶν Ἀρτοξέρξου μέλλοντος, ἀφίκετο Τισσαφέρνης πρὸς αὐτὸν ἄγων ἕνα τῶν ἱερέων, ὃς ἐν παισὶ Κύρου τῆς νομιζομένης ἀγωγῆς ἐπιστάτης γενόμενος καὶ διδάξας μαγεύειν αὐτόν, οὐδενὸς ἧττον ἐδόκει Περσῶν ἀνιᾶσθαι, μὴ ἀποδειχθέντος ἐκείνου βασιλέως· διὸ καὶ [4] πίστιν ἔσχε κατηγορῶν Κύρου. κατηγόρει δ’ ὡς μέλλοντος ἐνεδρεύειν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ, καὶ ἐπειδὰν ἐκδύηται τὴν ἐσθῆτα [5] ὁ βασιλεύς, ἐπιτίθεσθαι καὶ διαφθείρειν αὐτόν. οἱ μὲν ‹οὖν› ἐκ ταύτης τῆς διαβολῆς τὴν σύλληψιν γενέσθαι φασίν, οἱ δὲ καὶ παρελθεῖν τὸν Κῦρον εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν [6] καὶ παραδοθῆναι κρυπτόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ ἱερέως. μέλλοντα δ’ αὐτὸν ἤδη [ἀπο]θνῄσκειν ἡ μήτηρ περισχοῦσα ταῖς ἀγκάλαις καὶ τοῖς βοστρύχοις περιελίξασα καὶ συλλαβοῦσα τὸν ἐκείνου τράχηλον πρὸς τὸν αὑτῆς ὀδυρομένη πολλὰ καὶ ποτνιωμένη παρῃτήσατο, καὶ κατέπεμψεν αὖθις ἐπὶ θάλατταν, οὐκ ἀγαπῶντα τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐκείνην, οὐδὲ μεμνημένον τῆς διέσεως, ἀλλὰ τῆς συλλήψεως, καὶ δι’ ὀργὴν σπαργῶντα μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον ἐπὶ τὴν βασιλείαν.

[4] [1] Ἔνιοι δέ φασιν οὐκ ἀρκούμενον οἷς ἐλάμβανεν εἰς τὸ καθ’ ἡμέραν δεῖπνον ἀποστῆναι βασιλέως, εὐήθη λέγοντες. εἰ γὰρ ἄλλο μηδέν, ἀλλ’ ἡ μήτηρ ὑπῆρχε, χρῆσθαι καὶ λαμβάνειν ὅσα βούλοιτο τῶν αὑτῆς παρέχουσα [2] καὶ διδοῦσα. μαρτυρεῖ δὲ τῷ πλούτῳ καὶ τὸ μισθοφορικόν, πολλαχόθι διὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ ξένων αὐτῷ παρατρεφόμενον, [3] ὡς Ξενοφῶν (an. 1, 1, 611) εἴρηκεν. ἀθρόους μὲν γὰρ οὐ συνῆγεν, ἔτι τὴν παρασκευὴν ἐπικρυπτόμενος, ἀλλαχόθι δ’ ἄλλους ἐπὶ πολλαῖς προφάσεσι ξενολογοῦντας εἶχε. βασιλέως δ’ ἥ τε μήτηρ παροῦσα τὰς ὑποψίας ἀφῄρει, καὶ Κῦρος αὐτὸς ἀεὶ θεραπευτικῶς ἔγραφε, τὰ μὲν αἰτούμενος παρ’ αὐτοῦ, τὰ δὲ Τισσαφέρνους ἀντικατηγορῶν, ὡς δὴ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον αὐτῷ ζήλου καὶ ἀγῶνος ὄντος.

[4] Ἦν δέ τις καὶ μέλλησις ἐν τῇ φύσει τοῦ βασιλέως, ἐπιείκεια φαινομένη τοῖς πολλοῖς. ἐν ἀρχῇ δὲ καὶ πάνυ ζηλοῦν ἔδοξε τὴν Ἀρτοξέρξου τοῦ ὁμωνύμου πραότητα, ἡδίω θ’ ἑαυτὸν παρέχων ἐντυγχάνεσθαι, καὶ περὶ τὸ τιμᾶν καὶ χαρίζεσθαι τὸ κατ’ ἀξίαν ὑπερβάλλων, κολάσεως δὲ πάσης ἀφαιρῶν τὸ ἐφυβρίζον καὶ ἡδόμενον, ἐν ‹δὲ› τῷ δέχεσθαι χάριτας οὐχ ἧττον τοῖς διδοῦσιν ἢ τοῖς λαμβάνουσιν ἐν [δὲ] τῷ διδόναι φαινόμενος εὔχαρις [5] καὶ φιλάνθρωπος. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἦν οὕτω σμικρόν τι τῶν διδομένων, ὃ μὴ προσεδέξατο προθύμως, ἀλλὰ καὶ ῥόαν μίαν ὑπερφυῆ μεγέθει προσενέγκαντος Ὠμίσου τινὸς αὐτῷ, νὴ τὸν Μίθραν εἶπεν οὗτος ὁ ἀνὴρ καὶ πόλιν ἂν ἐκ μικρᾶς ταχὺ ποιήσειε μεγάλην πιστευθείς.

[5] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἄλλων ἄλλα προσφερόντων καθ’ ὁδὸν αὐτουργὸς ἄνθρωπος οὐδὲν ἐπὶ καιροῦ φθάσας εὑρεῖν τῷ ποταμῷ προσέδραμε, καὶ ταῖν χεροῖν ὑπολαβὼν τοῦ ὕδατος προσήνεγκεν, ἡσθεὶς ὁ Ἀρτοξέρξης φιάλην ἔπεμψεν [2] αὐτῷ χρυσῆν καὶ χιλίους δαρεικούς. Εὐκλείδᾳ δὲ τῷ Λάκωνι πολλὰ παρρησιαζομένῳ πρὸς αὐτὸν αὐθαδῶς ἐκέλευσεν εἰπεῖν τὸν χιλίαρχον ὅτι σοὶ μὲν ἔξεστιν εἰπεῖν ἃ [βασιλεῖ] βούλει, ἐμοὶ δὲ καὶ λέγειν καὶ ποιεῖν.

[3] ἐν δὲ θήρᾳ τινὶ Τιριβάζου δείξαντος αὐτῷ τὸν κάνδυν ἐσχισμένον, ἠρώτησεν ὅ τι δεῖ ποιεῖν. ἐκείνου δ’ εἰπόντος ἄλλον αὐτὸς ἔνδυσαι, τοῦτον δ’ ἐμοὶ δός, οὕτως ἐποίησεν εἰπών· δίδωμι μὲν ὦ Τιρίβαζε σοὶ τοῦτον, [4] φορεῖν δ’ ἀπαγορεύω. τοῦ δὲ Τιριβάζου μὴ φροντίσαντος, - ἦν γὰρ οὐ πονηρός, ὑπόκουφος δὲ καὶ παράφορος - , ἀλλὰ τόν τε κάνδυν εὐθὺς ἐκεῖνον ἐνδύντος καὶ δέραια χρυσᾶ [καὶ γυναικεῖα] τῶν βασιλικῶν περιθεμένου, πάντες μὲν ἠγανάκτουν· οὐ γὰρ ἐξῆν· ὁ μέντοι βασιλεὺς κατεγέλασε καὶ εἶπε· δίδωμί σοι καὶ τὰ χρυσία φορεῖν [5] ὡς γυναικὶ καὶ τὴν στολὴν ὡς μαινομένῳ. τραπέζης δὲ τῆς αὐτῆς μηδενὸς μετέχοντος ἀλλ’ ἢ μητρὸς βασιλέως καὶ γαμετῆς γυναικός, καθεζομένων τῆς μὲν ὑπ’ αὐτόν, τῆς δὲ μητρὸς ὑπὲρ αὐτόν, Ἀρτοξέρξης καὶ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ἐπὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἐκάλει τράπεζαν, Ὀστάνην καὶ Ὀξάθρην, [6] νεωτέρους ὄντας. ἐν δὲ τοῖς μάλιστα κεχαρισμένην ὄψιν παρεῖχε τοῖς Πέρσαις ἡ τῆς γυναικὸς Στατείρας ἁρμάμαξα, γυμνὴ τῶν παραπετασμάτων ἀεὶ προφερομένη καὶ διδοῦσα ταῖς δημότισιν ἀσπάσασθαί ‹τ’› αὐτὴν καὶ προσελθεῖν· ὅθεν ἠγαπᾶτο τοῖς πολλοῖς ἡ βασίλεια.

[6] [1] Τὸν μέντοι Κῦρον οἱ νεωτερισταὶ καὶ πολυπράγμονες ὡς λαμπρὸν ἄνδρα τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ πολεμικὸν διαφερόντως καὶ φιλέταιρον ᾤοντο τὰ πράγματα ποθεῖν, καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τῆς ἡγεμονίας βασιλέως δεῖσθαι φρόνημα καὶ φιλοτιμίαν [2] ἔχοντος. οὐχ ἧττον οὖν τοῖς ἄνω πιστεύων ὁ Κῦρος ἢ τοῖς [3] περὶ αὑτόν, ἐπεχείρει τῷ πολέμῳ· καὶ Λακεδαιμονίοις ἔγραφε, παρακαλῶν βοηθεῖν καὶ συνεκπέμπειν ἄνδρας, οἷς ἔφη δώσειν, ἂν μὲν πεζοὶ παρῶσιν, ἵππους, ἂν δ’ ἱππεῖς, συνωρίδας· ἐὰν δ’ ἀγροὺς ἔχωσι, κώμας· ἐὰν δὲ κώμας, πόλεις· μισθοῦ δὲ τοῖς στρατευομένοις οὐκ ἀριθμόν, [4] ἀλλὰ μέτρον ἔσεσθαι. μεγαληγορῶν δὲ περὶ αὑτοῦ πολλά, καὶ καρδίαν ἔφη τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ φορεῖν βαρυτέραν, καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν μᾶλλον, καὶ μαγεύειν βέλτιον, οἶνον δὲ πλείονα πίνειν καὶ φέρειν· ἐκεῖνον δ’ ὑπὸ δειλίας καὶ μαλακίας ἐν μὲν τοῖς κυνηγεσίοις μηδ’ ἐφ’ ἵππου, ἐν δὲ τοῖς κινδύνοις μηδ’ [5] ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου καθῆσθαι. Λακεδαιμόνιοι μὲν οὖν σκυτάλην πρὸς Κλέαρχον ἀπέστειλαν, ὑπηρετεῖν Κύρῳ πάντα κελεύοντες. ὁ δὲ Κῦρος ἀνέβαινεν ἐπὶ βασιλέα, βαρβαρικήν τε πολλὴν ἔχων δύναμιν καὶ μισθοφόρους Ἕλληνας ὀλίγῳ τρισχιλίων καὶ μυρίων ἀποδέοντας, ἄλλας ἐπ’ ἄλλαις ποιούμενος [6] προφάσεις τῆς στρατείας. οὐ μὴν ἔλαθέ γ’ εἰς πολὺν χρόνον, ἀλλ’ ἧκε βασιλεῖ Τισσαφέρνης αὐτάγγελος, καὶ πολὺς θόρυβος εἶχε τὰ βασίλεια, τῆς τε Παρυσάτιδος τὴν πλείστην αἰτίαν τοῦ πολέμου φερομένης, καὶ τῶν φίλων [7] αὐτῆς ἐν ὑποψίαις ὄντων καὶ διαβολαῖς. μάλιστα δ’ ἠνία τὴν Παρύσατιν ἡ Στάτειρα, τῷ πολέμῳ περιπαθοῦσα καὶ βοῶσα· ποῦ νῦν αἱ πίστεις ἐκεῖναι; ποῦ δ’ αἱ δεήσεις, αἷς ἐξελομένη τὸν ἐπιβουλεύσαντα τῷ ἀδελφῷ πολέμου [8] καὶ κακῶν ἐμπέπληκας ἡμᾶς; ἐκ δὴ τούτων μισοῦσα τὴν Στάτειραν ἡ Παρύσατις, καὶ φύσει βαρύθυμος οὖσα καὶ βάρβαρος ἐν ὀργαῖς καὶ μνησικακίαις, ἐπεβούλευεν [9] αὐτὴν ἀνελεῖν. ἐπεὶ δὲ Δείνων (FGrH 690 F 15a) μὲν ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ συντελεσθῆναι τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν εἴρηκε, Κτησίας (FGrH 688 F 29a) δ’ ὕστερον, ὃν οὔτ’ ἀγνοεῖν τὸν χρόνον εἰκός ἐστι παρόντα ταῖς πράξεσιν, οὔθ’ ἑκὼν αἰτίαν εἶχεν ἐκ τοῦ χρόνου μεταστῆσαι τὸ ἔργον ὡς ἐπράχθη διηγούμενος - οἷα πάσχει πολλάκις ὁ λόγος αὐτοῦ, πρὸς τὸ μυθῶδες καὶ δραματικὸν ἐκτρεπόμενος τῆς ἀληθείας - , τοῦτο μὲν ἣν ἐκεῖνος ἀπέδωκε χώραν ἕξει (c. 19).

[7] [1] Κύρῳ δὲ προιόντι φῆμαι καὶ λόγοι προσέπιπτον, ὡς οὐ μάχεσθαι βασιλέως εὐθὺς ἐγνωκότος οὐδὲ συνδραμεῖν εἰς χεῖρας αὐτῷ σπεύδοντος, ἀλλ’ ἐν Πέρσαις ὑπομένειν, ἄχρι ἂν αἱ δυνάμεις ἐκεῖ πανταχόθεν συνέλθωσι.

[2] καὶ γὰρ τάφρον εὖρος ὀργυιῶν δέκα καὶ βάθος ἴσων ἐπὶ σταδίους διὰ τοῦ πεδίου τετρακοσίους ἐνέβαλε· καὶ ταύτης τε περιεῖδε τὸν Κῦρον ἐντὸς παρελθόντα, καὶ [3] Βαβυλῶνος αὐτῆς οὐ μακρὰν γενόμενον. Τιριβάζου δ’ ὥς φασι πρώτου τολμήσαντος εἰπεῖν, ὡς οὐ δεῖ φυγομαχεῖν οὐδὲ Μηδίας ἐκστάντα καὶ Βαβυλῶνος ἅμα καὶ Σούσων ἐνδύεσθαι τῇ Περσίδι, πολλαπλασίαν μὲν ἔχοντα δύναμιν τῶν πολεμίων, μυρίους δὲ σατράπας καὶ στρατηγούς, Κύρου καὶ φρονεῖν καὶ μάχεσθαι βελτίονας, ὥρμησε [4] διαγωνίσασθαι τὴν ταχίστην. καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἐξαίφνης καταφανεὶς ἐνενήκοντα μυριάσι στρατοῦ διακεκοσμημέναις λαμπρῶς, τοὺς πολεμίους ἀσυντάκτους καὶ ἀνόπλους διὰ τὸ θαρρεῖν καὶ καταφρονεῖν ὁδοιποροῦντας ἐξέπληξε καὶ συνετάραξεν, ὥστε σὺν θορύβῳ καὶ βοῇ πολλῇ μόλις εἰς τάξιν [5] καθίστασθαι τὸν Κῦρον· ἔπειτα σιγῇ καὶ σχέδην ἐπάγων θαῦμα τοῖς Ἕλλησι τῆς εὐταξίας παρεῖχε, κραυγὰς ἀτάκτους καὶ σκιρτήματα καὶ πολὺν τάραχον αὐτῶν καὶ [6] διασπασμὸν ἐν πλήθει τοσούτῳ προσδεχομένοις. εὖ δὲ καὶ κατὰ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀντέταξε τῶν δρεπανηφόρων τὰ ῥωμαλεώτατα πρὸ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ φάλαγγος, ὡς πρὶν ἐν χερσὶ γενέσθαι διακόψοντα τὰς τάξεις βίᾳ τῆς εἰσελάσεως.

[8] [1] Τὴν δὲ μάχην ἐκείνην πολλῶν μὲν ἀπηγγελκότων, Ξενοφῶντος (an. 1, 8) δὲ μονονουχὶ δεικνύοντος ὄψει καὶ τοῖς πράγμασιν ὡς οὐ γεγενημένοις, ἀλλὰ γινομένοις ἐφιστάντος ἀεὶ τὸν ἀκροατὴν ἐμπαθῆ καὶ συγκινδυνεύοντα διὰ τὴν ἐνάργειαν, οὐκ ἔστι νοῦν ἔχοντος ἐπεξηγεῖσθαι, πλὴν ὅσα τῶν ἀξίων λόγου παρῆλθεν εἰπεῖν [2] ἐκεῖνον. ὁ μὲν οὖν τόπος ἐν ᾧ παρετάξαντο Κούναξα καλεῖται καὶ Βαβυλῶνος ἀπέχει σταδίους πεντακοσίους. Κῦρον δὲ πρὸ τῆς μάχης Κλεάρχου παρακαλοῦντος ἐξόπισθε τῶν μαχομένων εἶναι καὶ μὴ κινδυνεύειν αὐτόν, εἰπεῖν φασι· τί λέγεις ὦ Κλέαρχε; σὺ κελεύεις με τὸν [3] βασιλείας ὀρεγόμενον ἀνάξιον εἶναι βασιλείας; ἁμαρτόντος δὲ Κύρου μέγα τῷ δῦναι προπετῶς εἰς μέσα τὰ δεινὰ καὶ μὴ φυλάξασθαι τὸν κίνδυνον, οὐχ ἧττον ἥμαρτεν εἰ μὴ καὶ μᾶλλον Κλέαρχος, ἀντιτάξαι κατὰ τὸν βασιλέα μὴ θελήσας τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ἀλλὰ προσμείξας τῷ ποταμῷ [4] τὸ δεξιόν, ὡς μὴ κυκλωθείη. τὸν γὰρ ἀσφάλειαν ἐξ ἅπαντος διώκοντα καὶ πλεῖστον λόγον ἔχοντα τοῦ μηδὲν παθεῖν οἴκοι μένειν ἦν κράτιστον. ὁ δὲ μυρίους σταδίους ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ἐν ὅπλοις ἀναβεβηκώς, μηδενὸς ἀναγκάζοντος, ἀλλ’ ὅπως Κῦρον εἰς τὸν θρόνον καθίσῃ τὸν βασίλειον, εἶτα περισκοπῶν χώραν καὶ τάξιν, οὐκ ἀφ’ ἧς σώσει τὸν ἡγεμόνα καὶ μισθοδότην, ἀλλ’ ἐν τίνι θέμενος ἑαυτὸν ἀσφαλῶς μαχεῖται καθ’ ἡσυχίαν, ὅμοιος ἦν ὑπὸ δέους τῶν παρόντων ἐκβεβληκότι τοὺς περὶ τῶν ὅλων λογισμοὺς [5] καὶ προιεμένῳ τὴν τῆς στρατείας ὑπόθεσιν. ὅτι γὰρ οὐδεὶς ἂν ὑπέμεινε τῶν τεταγμένων περὶ βασιλέα τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐμπεσόντας, ὠσθέντων δ’ ἐκείνων καὶ βασιλέως φυγόντος ἢ πεσόντος ὑπῆρχε Κύρῳ νικῶντι σῴζεσθαι καὶ βασιλεύειν, ἐκ τῶν πεπραγμένων δῆλόν [6] ἐστι. διὸ τὴν Κλεάρχου μᾶλλον εὐλάβειαν ἢ τὸ Κύρου θράσος αἰτιατέον ὡς τὰ πράγματα καὶ Κῦρον ἀπολέσασαν.

[7] εἰ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐσκόπει βασιλεύς, ὅπου τάξας τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀβλαβεστάτοις χρήσεται πολεμίοις, οὐκ ἂν ἑτέραν ἐξεῦρεν ἢ τὴν ἀπωτάτω χώραν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν περὶ ἑαυτόν, ἀφ’ ἧς οὔτε νικηθεὶς αὐτὸς ᾔσθετο καὶ Κῦρος ἔφθη κατακοπεὶς ἢ χρησάμενός τι τῇ Κλεάρχου [8] νίκῃ. καίτοι Κῦρος τὸ συμφέρον οὐκ ἠγνόησεν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖ Κλέαρχον ἐκέλευε τάττεσθαι κατὰ μέσον. ὁ δ’ αὑτῷ μέλειν εἰπὼν ὅπως ἕξει κάλλιστα, τὸ πᾶν διέφθειρεν.

[9] [1] Οἱ μὲν γὰρ Ἕλληνες ὅσον ἐβούλοντο τοὺς βαρβάρους ἐνίκων καὶ διώκοντες ἐπὶ πλεῖστον προῆλθον· Κύρῳ δὲ γενναῖον ἵππον, ἄστομον δὲ καὶ ὑβριστὴν ἐλαύνοντι, Πασακᾶν καλούμενον, ὡς Κτησίας (FGrH 688 F 19) φησίν, ἀντεξήλασεν ὁ Καδουσίων ἄρχων Ἀρταγέρσης, [2] μέγα βοῶν· ὦ τὸ κάλλιστον ἐν Πέρσαις ὄνομα Κύρου καταισχύνων, ἀδικώτατε ἀνδρῶν καὶ ἀφρονέστατε, κακοὺς μὲν Ἕλληνας ἔρχῃ κακὴν ὁδὸν ἄγων ἐπὶ τὰ Περσῶν ἀγαθά, δεσπότην δὲ σεαυτοῦ καὶ ἀδελφὸν ἐλπίζων ἀναιρήσειν, ὃς σοῦ μυριάκις μυρίους δούλους ἔχει κρείσσονας. αὐτίκα δὲ πειράσῃ· πρότερον γὰρ ἀπολεῖς ἐνταῦθα τὴν σεαυτοῦ κεφαλὴν ἢ θεάσασθαι τὸ βασιλέως πρόσωπον.

[3] ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἐξηκόντισεν ἐπ’ αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ θώραξ στερεῶς ἀντέσχε, καὶ οὐκ ἐτρώθη μὲν ὁ Κῦρος, ἐκραδάνθη δὲ τῆς πληγῆς ἰσχυρᾶς προσπεσούσης. ἀποστρέψαντος δὲ τὸν ἵππον τοῦ Ἀρταγέρσου, βαλὼν ὁ Κῦρος ἔτυχε καὶ διήλασε παρὰ τὴν κλεῖδα διὰ τοῦ τραχήλου τὴν αἰχμήν.

[4] Τὸν μὲν οὖν Ἀρταγέρσην ἀποθανεῖν ὑπὸ Κύρου σχεδὸν ἅπαντες ὁμολογοῦσι· περὶ δὲ τῆς αὐτοῦ Κύρου τελευτῆς ἐπεὶ Ξενοφῶν (an. 1, 8, 26 sq.) ἁπλῶς καὶ συντόμως, ἅτε δὴ μὴ παρὼν αὐτός, εἶπεν, οὐδὲν ἴσως κωλύει τὰ Δείνωνος ἰδίᾳ καὶ πάλιν τὰ Κτησίου διελθεῖν.

[10] [1] Φησὶν οὖν ὁ μὲν Δείνων (FGrH 690 F 17), ὅτι τοῦ Ἀρταγέρσου πεσόντος εἰσελάσας βιαίως ὁ Κῦρος εἰς τοὺς προτεταγμένους τοῦ βασιλέως κατέτρωσεν αὐτοῦ τὸν ἵππον, ὁ δ’ ἀπερρύη· Τιριβάζου δ’ ἀναβαλόντος αὐτὸν ἐπ’ ἄλλον ἵππον ταχὺ καὶ εἰπόντος ὦ βασιλεῦ, μέμνησο τῆς ἡμέρας ταύτης· οὐ γὰρ ἀξία λήθης ἐστί, πάλιν ὁ Κῦρος [2] ἐνσείσας τῷ ἵππῳ κατέβαλε τὸν Ἀρτοξέρξην. πρὸς δὲ τὴν τρίτην ἐπέλασιν δυσανασχετήσας ὁ βασιλεὺς καὶ εἰπὼν πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ὡς βέλτιόν ἐστι μὴ ζῆν, ἀντεξήλαυνε τῷ Κύρῳ, προπετῶς καὶ ἀπερισκέπτως εἰς ἐναντία βέλη φερομένῳ. καὶ βάλλει μὲν αὐτὸς ἀκοντίῳ, [3] βάλλουσι δ’ οἱ περὶ αὐτόν. πίπτει δ’ ὁ Κῦρος, ὡς μὲν ἔνιοι λέγουσι, πληγεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως, ὡς δ’ ἕτεροί τινες, Καρὸς ἀνθρώπου πατάξαντος, ᾧ γέρας ἔδωκε τῆς πράξεως ταύτης ὁ βασιλεὺς ἀλεκτρυόνα χρυσοῦν ἐπὶ δόρατος ἀεὶ πρὸ τῆς τάξεως ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις κομίζειν· καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὺς τοὺς Κᾶρας ἀλεκτρυόνας οἱ Πέρσαι διὰ τοὺς λόφους οἷς κοσμοῦσι τὰ κράνη προσηγόρευον.

[11] [1] Ἡ δὲ Κτησίου (FGrH 688 F 20) διήγησις, ὡς ἐπιτεμόντι πολλὰ συντόμως ἀπαγγεῖλαι, τοιαύτη τίς ἐστι. Κῦρος ἀποκτείνας Ἀρταγέρσην ἤλαυνεν εἰς αὐτὸν βασιλέα τὸν ἵππον, καὶ αὐτὸς εἰς ἐκεῖνον, ἀμφότεροι σιωπῇ. φθάνει δὲ βαλὼν Ἀριαῖος ὁ Κύρου φίλος βασιλέα, καὶ οὐκ ἔτρωσε.

[2] βασιλεὺς δ’ ἀφεὶς τὸ δόρυ Κύρου μὲν οὐκ ἔτυχε, Σατιφέρνην δὲ πιστὸν ἄνδρα Κύρῳ καὶ γενναῖον ἔβαλε καὶ κατέκτεινε. Κῦρος δ’ ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἐξακοντίσας διὰ τοῦ θώρακος ἔτρωσε τὸ στῆθος, ὅσον ἐνδῦναι δύο δακτύλους τὸ ἀκόντιον, πεσεῖν [3] δ’ αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τῆς πληγῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ ἵππου. φυγῆς δὲ καὶ ταραχῆς τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν γενομένης, ὁ μὲν ἀναστὰς μετ’ ὀλίγων, ἐν οἷς καὶ Κτησίας ἦν, λόφον τινὰ πλησίον καταλαβὼν ἡσύχαζε· Κῦρον δὲ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐνειλούμενον ὁ ἵππος ἐξέφερεν ὑπὸ θυμοῦ μακράν, ἤδη σκότους ὄντος ἀγνοούμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων καὶ ζητούμενον ὑπὸ τῶν [4] φίλων. ἐπαιρόμενος δὲ τῇ νίκῃ καὶ μεστὸς ὢν ὀργῆς καὶ θράσους, διεξήλαυνε βοῶν ἐξίστασθε πενιχροί. τοῦτο δὲ περσιστὶ πολλάκις αὐτοῦ βοῶντος, οἱ μὲν ἐξίσταντο προσκυνοῦντες, ἀποπίπτει δὲ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἡ τιάρα τοῦ [5] Κύρου. καὶ παρατρέχων νεανίας Πέρσης ὄνομα Μιθριδάτης ἀκοντίῳ βάλλει τὸν κρόταφον αὐτοῦ παρὰ τὸν ὀφθαλμόν, ἀγνοῶν ὅστις εἴη. πολὺ δ’ αἷμα τοῦ τραύματος ἐκβαλόντος, [6] ἰλιγγιάσας καὶ καρωθεὶς ὁ Κῦρος ἔπεσε. καὶ ὁ μὲν ἵππος ὑπεκφυγὼν ἐπλάζετο, τὸν δ’ ἐφίππειον πῖλον ἀπορρυέντα λαμβάνει τοῦ τὸν Κῦρον βαλόντος ἀκόλουθος [7] αἵματος περίπλεω. τὸν δὲ Κῦρον ἐκ τῆς πληγῆς ἀναφέροντα χαλεπῶς καὶ μόλις εὐνοῦχοί τινες ὀλίγοι παρόντες ἐπεχείρουν ἐπ’ ἄλλον ἵππον ἀναθέσθαι καὶ σῴζειν.

[8] ἀδυνάτως δ’ ἔχοντα καὶ δι’ αὑτοῦ προθυμούμενον βαδίζειν ὑπολαβόντες ἦγον, τῷ μὲν σώματι καρηβαροῦντα καὶ σφαλλόμενον, οἰόμενον δὲ νικᾶν, ἀκούοντα τῶν φευγόντων ἀνακαλουμένων Κῦρον βασιλέα καὶ φείδεσθαι δεομένων.

[9] ἐν δὲ τούτῳ Καύνιοί τινες ἄνθρωποι, κακόβιοι καὶ ἄποροι καὶ ταπεινῶν ὑπουργημάτων ἕνεκα τῇ τοῦ βασιλέως στρατιᾷ παρακολουθοῦντες, ἔτυχον συναναμειχθέντες ὡς φίλοις τοῖς περὶ τὸν Κῦρον. ὡς δὲ μόλις συνεῖδον τὰ ἐπιθωρακίδια φοινικᾶ, λευκοῖς χρωμένων τῶν βασιλικῶν [10] ἁπάντων, ἔγνωσαν πολεμίους ὄντας. εἷς οὖν ἐκείνων ἐτόλμησεν ἀγνοῶν ἐξόπισθεν βαλεῖν τὸν Κῦρον ἀκοντίῳ. τῆς δὲ περὶ τὴν ἰγνύαν φλεβὸς ἀναρραγείσης, πεσὼν ὁ Κῦρος ἅμα παίει πρός τινι λίθῳ τὸν τετρωμένον κρόταφον, [11] καὶ ἀποθνῄσκει. τοιοῦτος μὲν ὁ Κτησίου λόγος, ᾧ καθάπερ ἀμβλεῖ ξιφιδίῳ μόλις ἀναιρῶν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἀνῄρηκεν.

[12] [1] Ἤδη δ’ αὐτοῦ τεθνηκότος, Ἀρτασύρας ὁ βασιλέως ὀφθαλμὸς ἔτυχεν ἵππῳ παρεξελαύνων. γνωρίσας οὖν τοὺς εὐνούχους ὀλοφυρομένους, ἠρώτησε τὸν πιστότατον αὐτῶν· τίνα τοῦτον ὦ Παρίσκα κλαίεις παρακαθήμενος; ὁ δ’ εἶπεν· οὐχ ὁρᾷς ὦ Ἀρτασύρα Κῦρον [2] τεθνηκότα; θαυμάσας οὖν ὁ Ἀρτασύρας τῷ μὲν εὐνούχῳ θαρρεῖν παρεκελεύσατο καὶ φυλάττειν τὸν νεκρόν, αὐτὸς δὲ συντείνας πρὸς τὸν Ἀρτοξέρξην, ἀπεγνωκότα μὲν ἤδη τὰ πράγματα, κακῶς δὲ καὶ τὸ σῶμα διακείμενον ὑπό τε δίψης καὶ τοῦ τραύματος, χαίρων [3] φράζει, ὡς αὐτὸς ἴδοι τεθνηκότα Κῦρον. ὁ δὲ πρῶτον μὲν εὐθὺς ὥρμησεν αὐτὸς ἰέναι, καὶ τὸν Ἀρτασύραν ἄγειν ἐκέλευσεν ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον· ἐπεὶ δὲ πολὺς ἦν λόγος τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ φόβος, ὡς διωκόντων καὶ πάντα νικώντων καὶ κρατούντων, ἔδοξε πλείονας πέμψαι τοὺς κατοψομένους, καὶ τριάκοντα λαμπάδας ἔχοντες ἐπέμφθησαν.

[4] αὐτῷ δὲ μικρὸν ἀπολείποντι τοῦ τεθνάναι διὰ τὸ διψῆν Σατιβαρζάνης ὁ εὐνοῦχος περιθέων ἐζήτει ποτόν· οὐ γὰρ εἶχε τὸ χωρίον ὕδωρ, οὐδ’ ἦν ἐγγὺς τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[5] μόλις οὖν ἐπιτυγχάνει τῶν Καυνίων ἐκείνων τῶν κακοβίων ἑνὸς ἐν ἀσκίῳ φαύλῳ διεφθαρμένον ὕδωρ καὶ πονηρὸν ἔχοντος, ὅσον ὀκτὼ κοτύλας· καὶ λαβὼν τοῦτο [6] καὶ κομίσας τῷ βασιλεῖ δίδωσιν. ἐκπιόντα δ’ ἅπαν ἠρώτησεν, εἰ μὴ πάνυ δυσχεραίνει τὸ ποτόν. ὁ δ’ ὤμοσε τοὺς θεοὺς μήτ’ οἶνον ἡδέως οὕτως πώποτε πεπωκέναι μήθ’ ὕδωρ τὸ κουφότατον καὶ καθαρώτατον, ὥστ’ ἔφη τὸν δόντα σοι τοῦτ’ ἄνθρωπον, ἂν ἐγὼ μὴ δυνηθῶ ζητήσας ἀμείψασθαι, τοὺς θεοὺς εὔχομαι ποιῆσαι μακάριον καὶ πλούσιον.

[13] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ προσήλαυνον οἱ τριάκοντα λαμπροὶ καὶ περιχαρεῖς, ἀναγγέλλοντες αὐτῷ τὴν ἀνέλπιστον εὐτυχίαν. ἤδη δὲ καὶ πλήθει τῶν συντρεχόντων πάλιν πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ συνισταμένων ἐθάρρει, καὶ κατέβαινεν [2] ἀπὸ τοῦ λόφου, φωτὶ πολλῷ περιλαμπόμενος. ὡς δ’ ἐπέστη τῷ νεκρῷ, καὶ κατὰ δή τινα νόμον Περσῶν ἡ δεξιὰ χεὶρ ἀπεκόπη καὶ ἡ κεφαλὴ τοῦ σώματος, ἐκέλευσε τὴν κεφαλὴν αὑτῷ κομισθῆναι, καὶ τῆς κόμης δραξάμενος οὔσης βαθείας καὶ λασίας, ἐπεδείκνυε τοῖς ἀμφιδοξοῦσιν [3] ἔτι καὶ φεύγουσιν. οἱ δ’ ἐθαύμαζον καὶ προσεκύνουν, ὥστε ταχὺ μυριάδας ἑπτὰ περὶ αὐτὸν γενέσθαι καὶ συνεισελάσαι πάλιν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον. ἐξεληλάκει δ’, ὡς ὁ Κτησίας (FGrH 688 F 22) φησίν, ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην τεσσαράκοντα μυριάσιν. οἱ δὲ περὶ Δείνωνα (FGrH 690 F 16) καὶ Ξενοφῶντα (an. 1, 7, 11. 12) πολὺ πλείονας [4] γενέσθαι λέγουσι τὰς μεμαχημένας. ἀριθμὸν δὲ νεκρῶν ὁ Κτησίας (F 22) ἐνακισχιλίους ἀνενεχθῆναί φησι πρὸς τὸν Ἀρτοξέρξην, αὐτῷ δὲ δισμυρίων οὐκ ἐλάττους φανῆναι τοὺς κειμένους. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔχει διαμφισβήτησιν· [5] ἐκεῖνο δὲ τοῦ Κτησίου (F 23) λαμπρὸν ἤδη ψεῦσμα, τὸ πεμφθῆναι φάναι πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας αὐτὸν μετὰ Φαλλύνου [6] τοῦ Ζακυνθίου καί τινων ἄλλων. ὁ γὰρ Ξενοφῶν ἠπίστατο συνδιατρίβοντα βασιλεῖ Κτησίαν· μέμνηται γὰρ αὐτοῦ (an. 1, 8, 26. 27), καὶ τοῖς βιβλίοις τούτοις ἐντετυχηκὼς δῆλός ἐστιν· οὐκ ἂν οὖν ἐλθόντα καὶ λόγων τοσούτων ἑρμηνέα γενόμενον παρῆκεν ἀνώνυμον, Φαλῖνον [7] δὲ τὸν Ζακύνθιον ὠνόμαζεν (an. 2, 1, 723). ἀλλὰ δαιμονίως ὁ Κτησίας ὡς ἔοικε φιλότιμος ὤν, καὶ οὐχ ἧττον φιλολάκων καὶ φιλοκλέαρχος, ἀεί τινας ἐν τῇ διηγήσει χώρας ἑαυτῷ δίδωσιν, ἐν αἷς γενόμενος πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ μεμνήσεται Κλεάρχου καὶ τῆς Λακεδαίμονος.

[14] [1] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην δῶρα κάλλιστα μὲν ἐξέπεμψε καὶ μέγιστα τῷ Ἀρταγέρσου παιδὶ τοῦ πεσόντος ὑπὸ Κύρου, καλῶς δὲ καὶ Κτησίαν καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους [ἐπ]ἐτίμησε.

[2] τὸν δὲ Καύνιον ἐκεῖνον ἐξανευρών, ὃς ἐπέδωκε τὸ ἀσκίον, ἐξ ἀδόξου καὶ πένητος ἔντιμον καὶ πλούσιον [3] ἐποίησεν. ἦν δέ τις ἐπιμέλεια καὶ περὶ τὰς τῶν ἐξαμαρτόντων δικαιώσεις. Ἀρβάκην μὲν γάρ τινα Μῆδον, ἐν τῇ μάχῃ πρὸς Κῦρον φυγόντα καὶ πάλιν ἐκείνου πεσόντος μεταστάντα, δειλίαν καὶ μαλακίαν καταγνούς, οὐ προδοσίαν οὐδὲ κακόνοιαν, ἐκέλευσε γυμνὴν ἀναλαβόντα πόρνην περιβάδην ἐπὶ τοῦ τραχήλου δι’ ἡμέρας ὅλης ἐν ἀγορᾷ [4] περιφέρειν. ἑτέρου δὲ πρὸς τῷ μεταστῆναι ψευσαμένου καταβαλεῖν δύο τῶν πολεμίων, προσέταξε διαπεῖραι τρισὶ [5] βελόναις τὴν γλῶτταν. οἰόμενος δὲ καὶ βουλόμενος δοκεῖν καὶ λέγειν πάντας ἀνθρώπους, ὡς αὐτὸς ἀπεκτόνοι Κῦρον, Μιθριδάτῃ τε τῷ βαλόντι πρώτῳ Κῦρον ἐξέπεμψε δῶρα καὶ λέγειν ἐκέλευσε τοὺς διδόντας ὡς τούτοις σε τιμᾷ [ὁ] βασιλεύς, ὅτι τὸν ἐφίππειον Κύρου πῖλον εὑρὼν [6] ἀνήνεγκας, τοῦ τε Καρός, ὑφ’ οὗ τὴν ἰγνύαν πληγεὶς ὁ Κῦρος ἔπεσε, καὶ αὐτοῦ δωρεὰν αἰτοῦντος, ἐκέλευσεν εἰπεῖν τοὺς διδόντας ὅτι σοὶ ταῦτα δίδωσι βασιλεὺς εὐαγγελίων δευτερεῖα· πρῶτος γὰρ Ἀρτασύρας, μετ’ [7] ἐκεῖνον δὲ σὺ τὴν Κύρου τελευτὴν ἀπήγγειλας. ὁ μὲν οὖν Μιθριδάτης ἀπῆλθε σιωπῇ λυπούμενος· τὸν δ’ ἄθλιον [8] Κᾶρα κοινόν τι πάθος ἐξ ἀβελτερίας κατέσχε. διαφθαρεὶς γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν παρόντων ὡς ἔοικεν ἀγαθῶν, καὶ ἀναπεισθεὶς εὐθὺς ἀντιποιεῖσθαι τῶν ὑπὲρ αὐτόν, οὐκ ἠξίου τὰ δοθέντα μισθὸν εὐαγγελίων ἔχειν, ἀλλ’ ἠγανάκτει μαρτυρόμενος καὶ βοῶν, ὅτι Κῦρον οὐδεὶς ἕτερος ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ἀπεκτόνοι καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἀδίκως ἀποστεροῖτο.

[9] ταῦτα δ’ ἀκούσας ὁ βασιλεὺς σφόδρα παρωξύνθη, καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐκέλευσεν ἀποτεμεῖν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. παροῦσα δ’ ἡ μήτηρ μὴ σύ γε εἶπεν οὕτω τὸν Κᾶρα τοῦτον ὦ βασιλεῦ τὸν ὄλεθρον ἀπαλλάξῃς, ἀλλὰ παρ’ ἐμοῦ τὸν ἄξιον [10] ἀπολήψεται μισθὸν ὧν τολμᾷ λέγειν. ἐπιτρέψαντος δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως, ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ἐπὶ τῶν τιμωριῶν ἡ Παρύσατις λαβόντας τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐφ’ ἡμέρας δέκα στρεβλοῦν, εἶτα τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἐξορύξαντας εἰς τὰ ὦτα θερμὸν ἐντήκειν χαλκὸν ἕως ἀποθάνῃ.

[15] [1] Κακῶς δ’ ἀπώλετο καὶ Μιθριδάτης μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς ἀβελτερίας. κληθεὶς γὰρ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον, ἔνθα καὶ βασιλέως καὶ τῆς μητρὸς εὐνοῦχοι παρῆσαν, ἧκεν ἐσθῆτι καὶ χρυσῷ κεκοσμημένος οἷς ἔλαβε παρὰ [2] βασιλέως. ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰς τὸ πίνειν ἀφίκοντο, λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ μέγιστον δυνάμενος τῶν Παρυσάτιδος εὐνούχων· ὡς καλὴν μὲν ἐσθῆτά σοι ταύτην ὦ Μιθριδάτα [ὁ] βασιλεὺς δέδωκε, καλὰ δὲ στρεπτὰ καὶ ψέλια, πολλοῦ δ’ ἄξιος ὁ ἀκινάκης. ἦ μακάριόν σε καὶ περίβλεπτον [3] ἅπασι πεποίηκεν. ἤδη δὲ μεθύων ὁ Μιθριδάτης τί δὲ ταῦτ’ ἔστιν εἶπεν ὦ Σπαραμίζη; μειζόνων γὰρ ἐγὼ καὶ καλλιόνων βασιλεῖ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἄξιον [4] ἐμαυτὸν παρέσχον. καὶ ὁ Σπαραμίζης ἐπιμειδιάσας φθόνος μὲν οὐδεὶς ὦ Μιθριδάτα εἶπεν· ἐπεὶ δέ φασιν Ἕλληνες οἶνον καὶ ἀλήθειαν εἶναι, τί λαμπρὸν ὦ τᾶν ἢ μέγα, πῖλον εὑρεῖν ἵππου περιρρυέντα καὶ τοῦτον [5] ἀνενεγκεῖν; ταῦτα δ’ οὐκ ἀγνοῶν τὸ ἀληθὲς ἔλεγεν, ἀλλὰ βουλόμενος ἐκκαλύψαι πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ὑπεκίνει τὴν κουφότητα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, λάλου καὶ ἀκρατοῦς [6] γεγονότος διὰ τὸν οἶνον. εἶπεν οὖν μὴ κατασχών· ὑμεῖς μὲν ὅ τι βούλεσθε πίλους λέγετε καὶ φλυάρους· ἐγὼ δ’ ὑμῖν λέγω διαρρήδην ὑπὸ ταύτης ἀνῃρῆσθαι Κῦρον τῆς χειρός. οὐ γὰρ ὡς Ἀρταγέρσης ἠκόντισα κενὸν καὶ μάταιον, ἀλλὰ τοῦ μὲν ὀφθαλμοῦ μικρὸν ἥμαρτον, τοῦ δὲ κροτάφου τυχὼν καὶ διελάσας κατέβαλον τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τέθνηκεν ὑπ’ [7] ἐκείνου τοῦ τραύματος. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι τὸ τέλος ἤδη τοῦ Μιθριδάτου καὶ τὴν κακοδαιμονίαν ὁρῶντες, εἰς τὴν γῆν ἔκυψαν. ὁ δ’ ἑστιῶν αὐτούς ὦ τᾶν ἔφη Μιθριδάτα, πίνωμεν ἐν τῷ παρόντι καὶ ἐσθίωμεν, τὸν βασιλέως δαίμονα προσκυνοῦντες, λόγους δὲ μείζους ἢ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐάσωμεν.

[16] [1] Ἐκ τούτου τῇ μὲν Παρυσάτιδι φράζει τὸν λόγον ὁ εὐνοῦχος, ἐκείνη δὲ βασιλεῖ· βασιλεὺς δ’ ἠγανάκτησεν ὥσπερ ἐξελεγχόμενος καὶ τὸ κάλλιστον καὶ ἥδιστον [2] ἀπολλύων τῆς νίκης. ἐβούλετο γὰρ βαρβάρους ἅπαντας πεπεῖσθαι καὶ Ἕλληνας, ὡς ἐν ταῖς ἐξελάσεσι καὶ συμπλοκαῖς δοὺς καὶ λαβὼν πληγήν, ἐτρώθη μὲν αὐτός, ἔκτεινε δ’ ἐκεῖνον. ἐκέλευσεν οὖν τὸν Μιθριδάτην ἀποθανεῖν [3] σκαφευθέντα. τὸ δὲ σκαφευθῆναι τοιοῦτόν ἐστι· σκάφας δύο πεποιημένας ἐφαρμόζειν ἀλλήλαις λαβόντες, εἰς τὴν [4] ἑτέραν κατακλίνουσι τὸν κολαζόμενον ὕπτιον· εἶτα τὴν ἑτέραν ἐπάγοντες καὶ συναρμόζοντες, ὥστε τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἔξω καὶ τοὺς πόδας ἀπολαμβάνεσθαι, τὸ δ’ ἄλλο σῶμα πᾶν ἀποκεκρύφθαι, διδόασιν ἐσθίειν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, κἂν μὴ θέλῃ, προσβιάζονται κεντοῦντες τὰ ὄμματα· φαγόντι δὲ πιεῖν μέλι καὶ γάλα συγκεκραμένον ἐγχέουσιν εἰς τὸ στόμα καὶ κατὰ τοῦ προσώπου καταχέουσιν.

[5] εἶτα πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ἀεὶ στρέφουσιν ἐναντία τὰ ὄμματα, καὶ μυιῶν προσκαθημένων ‹ὑπὸ› πλήθους πᾶν ἀποκρύπτεται [6] τὸ πρόσωπον. ἐντὸς δὲ ποιοῦντος ὅσα ποιεῖν ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν ἐσθίοντας ἀνθρώπους καὶ πίνοντας, εὐλαὶ καὶ σκώληκες ὑπὸ φθορᾶς καὶ σηπεδόνος ἐκ τοῦ περιττώματος ἀναζέουσιν, ὑφ’ ὧν ἀναλίσκεται τὸ σῶμα [7] διαδυομένων εἰς τὰ ἐντός. ὅταν γὰρ ἤδη φανερὸς ᾖ τεθνηκὼς ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἀφαιρεθείσης τῆς ἐπάνω σκάφης ὁρῶσι τὴν μὲν σάρκα κατεδηδεσμένην, περὶ δὲ τὰ σπλάγχνα τοιούτων θηρίων ἑσμοὺς ἐσθιόντων καὶ προσπεφυκότων. οὕτως ὁ Μιθριδάτης ἑπτακαίδεκα ἡμέρας φθειρόμενος μόλις ἀπέθανε.

[17] [1] Λοιπὸς δ’ ἦν τῇ Παρυσάτιδι σκοπὸς ὁ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποτεμὼν καὶ τὴν χεῖρα τοῦ Κύρου Μασαβάτης βασιλέως [2] εὐνοῦχος. ὡς οὖν αὐτὸς οὐδεμίαν καθ’ ἑαυτοῦ λαβὴν παρεδίδου, τοιοῦτον ἐπιβουλῆς τρόπον ἡ Παρύσατις [3] συνέθηκεν. ἦν τά τ’ ἄλλα θυμόσοφος γυνὴ καὶ δεινὴ κυβεύειν· διὸ καὶ βασιλεῖ πρὸ τοῦ πολέμου πολλάκις [4] συνεκύβευε· μετὰ δὲ τὸν πόλεμον διαλυθεῖσα πρὸς αὐτόν, οὐκ ἔφευγε τὰς φιλοφροσύνας, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνέπαιζε καὶ τῶν ἐρωτικῶν ἐκοινώνει συμπράττουσα καὶ παροῦσα, καὶ ὅλως μικρότατον αὐτοῦ τῇ Στατείρᾳ μετεδίδου χρῆσθαι καὶ συνεῖναι, μισοῦσά τε μάλιστα πάντων [5] ἐκείνην καὶ μέγιστον αὐτὴ βουλομένη δύνασθαι. λαβοῦσα δή ποτε τὸν Ἀρτοξέρξην ὡρμημένον ἀλύειν σχολῆς οὔσης, προὐκαλεῖτο περὶ χιλίων δαρεικῶν κυβεῦσαι· καὶ κυβεύοντα περιεῖδε νικῆσαι καὶ τὸ χρυσίον ἀπέδωκε. προσποιουμένη δ’ ἀνιᾶσθαι καὶ φιλονικεῖν, ἐκέλευσεν αὖθις ἐξ ἀρχῆς περὶ [6] εὐνούχου διακυβεῦσαι, κἀκεῖνος ὑπήκουσε. ποιησάμενοι δὲ συνθήκας, πέντε μὲν ἑκάτερον ὑπεξελέσθαι τοὺς πιστοτάτους, ἐκ δὲ τῶν λοιπῶν, ὃν ἂν ὁ νικῶν ἕληται, [7] δοῦναι τὸν ἡττώμενον, ἐπὶ τούτοις ἐκύβευον. σφόδρα δὴ γενομένη πρὸς τῷ πράγματι καὶ σπουδάσασα περὶ τὴν παιδιάν, εὖ δέ πως αὐτῇ καὶ τῶν κύβων πεσόντων, νικήσασα λαμβάνει τὸν Μασαβάτην· οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἐν τοῖς ὑπεξῃρημένοις. καὶ πρὶν ἐν ὑποψίᾳ γενέσθαι βασιλέα τοῦ πράγματος, ἐγχειρίσασα τοῖς ἐπὶ τῶν τιμωριῶν προσέταξεν ἐκδεῖραι ζῶντα, καὶ τὸ μὲν σῶμα πλάγιον διὰ τριῶν σταυρῶν ἀναπῆξαι, τὸ δὲ δέρμα χωρὶς διαπατταλεῦσαι.

[8] γενομένων δὲ τούτων, καὶ βασιλέως χαλεπῶς φέροντος καὶ παροξυνομένου πρὸς αὐτήν, εἰρωνευομένη μετὰ γέλωτος ὡς ἡδύς ἔφασκεν εἶ καὶ μακάριος, εἰ χαλεπαίνεις διὰ γέροντα πονηρὸν εὐνοῦχον, ἐγὼ δὲ χιλίους [9] ἐκκυβευθεῖσα δαρεικοὺς σιωπῶ καὶ στέργω. βασιλεὺς μὲν οὖν ἐφ’ οἷς ἐξηπατήθη μεταμελόμενος ἡσυχίαν ἦγεν, ἡ δὲ Στάτειρα καὶ πρὸς τἆλλα φανερῶς ἠναντιοῦτο, καὶ τούτοις ἐδυσχέραινεν, ὡς ἄνδρας εὐνοϊκοὺς καὶ πιστοὺς βασιλεῖ διὰ Κῦρον ὠμῶς καὶ παρανόμως ἀπολλυούσης αὐτῆς.

[18] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Κλέαρχον καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους στρατηγοὺς Τισσαφέρνης ἐξηπάτησε καὶ παρεσπόνδησεν ὅρκων γενομένων, καὶ συλλαβὼν ἀνέπεμψεν ἐν πέδαις δεδεμένους, δεηθῆναί φησιν αὐτοῦ τὸν Κλέαρχον ὁ Κτησίας (FGrH 688 [2] F 28), ὅπως κτενὸς εὐπορήσειε. τυχόντα δὲ καὶ τημελήσαντα τὴν κεφαλήν, ἡσθῆναί τε τῇ χρείᾳ καὶ τὸν δακτύλιον αὐτῷ δοῦναι σύμβολον φιλίας πρὸς τοὺς ἐν Λακεδαίμονι συγγενεῖς καὶ οἰκείους· εἶναι δὲ γλυφὴν ἐν τῇ σφραγῖδι [3] Καρυάτιδας ὀρχουμένας. τὰ δὲ πεμπόμενα σιτία τῷ Κλεάρχῳ τοὺς συνδεδεμένους στρατιώτας ἀφαιρεῖσθαι καὶ καταναλίσκειν, ὀλίγα τῷ Κλεάρχῳ διδόντας ἀπ’ αὐτῶν. ἰάσασθαι δὲ καὶ τοῦτό φησιν ὁ Κτησίας, πλείονα τῷ Κλεάρχῳ πέμπεσθαι διαπραξάμενος, ἰδίᾳ δ’ ἕτερα τοῖς στρατιώταις δίδοσθαι· καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ὑπουργῆσαι καὶ [4] παρασχεῖν χάριτι καὶ γνώμῃ τῆς Παρυσάτιδος. πεμπομένου δὲ καθ’ ἡμέραν τῷ Κλεάρχῳ κωλῆνος ἐπὶ τοῖς σιτίοις, παρακαλεῖν αὐτὸν καὶ διδάσκειν, ὡς χρὴ μικρὸν εἰς τὸ κρέας ἐμβαλόντα μαχαίριον ἀποκρύψαντα πέμψαι, καὶ μὴ περιιδεῖν ἐν τῇ βασιλέως ὠμότητι τὸ τέλος αὐτοῦ [5] γενόμενον· αὐτὸν δὲ φοβούμενον μὴ ἐθελῆσαι. βασιλέα δὲ τῇ μὲν μητρὶ παραιτουμένῃ μὴ κτεῖναι τὸν Κλέαρχον ὁμολογῆσαι καὶ ὀμόσαι· πεισθέντα δ’ αὖθις ὑπὸ τῆς [6] Στατείρας, ἀποκτεῖναι πάντας πλὴν Μένωνος. ἐκ δὲ τούτου τὴν Παρύσατιν ἐπιβουλεῦσαι τῇ Στατείρᾳ καὶ συσκευάσασθαι τὴν φαρμακείαν κατ’ αὐτῆς, οὐκ εἰκότα λέγων ἀλλὰ πολλὴν ἀλογίαν ἔχοντα τῆς αἰτίας, εἰ δεινὸν ἔργον οὕτως ἔδρασε καὶ παρεκινδύνευσεν ἡ Παρύσατις διὰ Κλέαρχον, ἀνελεῖν τολμήσασα τὴν γνησίαν βασιλέως γυναῖκα καὶ τέκνων κοινωνὸν ἐπὶ βασιλείᾳ [7] τρεφομένων. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν οὐκ ἄδηλον ὡς ἐπιτραγῳδεῖ τῇ Κλεάρχου μνήμῃ. καὶ γὰρ ἀναιρεθέντων φησὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ὑπὸ κυνῶν σπαράττεσθαι καὶ ὀρνέων, τῷ δὲ Κλεάρχου νεκρῷ θύελλαν ἀνέμου γῆς θῖνα πολλὴν φέρουσαν ἐπιχῶσαι καὶ ἐπικρύψαι [8] τὸ σῶμα· φοινίκων δέ τινων διασπαρέντων, ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ θαυμαστὸν ἄλσος ἀναφῦναι καὶ κατασκιάσαι τὸν τόπον, ὥστε καὶ βασιλεῖ σφόδρα μεταμέλειν, ὡς ἄνδρα θεοῖς φίλον ἀνῃρηκότι τὸν Κλέαρχον.

[19] Ἡ δ’ οὖν Παρύσατις, μίσους τε πρὸς τὴν Στάτειραν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὑποκειμένου καὶ ζηλοτυπίας, ὁρῶσα τὴν μὲν αὑτῆς δύναμιν αἰδουμένου βασιλέως καὶ τιμῶντος οὖσαν, τὴν δ’ ἐκείνης ἔρωτι καὶ πίστει βέβαιον καὶ ἰσχυράν, ἐπεβούλευσεν, ὑπὲρ τῶν μεγίστων ὡς ᾤετο παραβαλλομένη.

[9] θεράπαιναν εἶχε πιστὴν καὶ δυναμένην παρ’ αὐτῇ μέγιστον ὄνομα Γίγιν, ἣν ὁ μὲν Δείνων (FGrH 690 F 15b) ὑπουργῆσαι τῇ φαρμακείᾳ φησί, συγγνῶναι δὲ μόνον ἄκουσαν ὁ Κτησίας (FGrH 688 F 29b)· τὸν δὲ δόντα τὸ φάρμακον οὗτος μὲν ὀνομάζει Βελιτάραν, ὁ δὲ Δείνων [10] Μελάνταν. ἐκ δὲ τῆς πρόσθεν ὑποψίας καὶ διαφορᾶς ἀρξάμεναι πάλιν εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ φοιτᾶν καὶ συνδειπνεῖν ἀλλήλαις, ὅμως ‹διὰ› τὸ δεδιέναι καὶ φυλάττεσθαι τοῖς [11] αὐτοῖς σιτίοις καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν ἐχρῶντο. γίνεται δὲ μικρὸν ἐν Πέρσαις ὀρνίθιον, ᾧ περιττώματος οὐδὲν ‹ἔν›εστιν, ἀλλ’ ὅλον διάπλεων πιμελῆς τὰ ἐντός, ᾗ καὶ νομίζουσιν ἀνέμῳ καὶ δρόσῳ τρέφεσθαι τὸ ζῷον· ὀνομάζεται [12] δὲ ῥυντάκης. τοῦτό φησιν ὁ Κτησίας (FGrH 688 F 29b) μικρᾷ μαχαιρίδι κεχρισμένῃ τῷ φαρμάκῳ κατὰ θάτερα τὴν Παρύσατιν διαιροῦσαν, ἐκμάξαι τῷ ἑτέρῳ μέρει τὸ φάρμακον· καὶ τὸ μὲν ἄχραντον καὶ καθαρὸν εἰς τὸ στόμα βαλοῦσαν αὐτὴν ἐσθίειν, δοῦναι δὲ τῇ Στατείρᾳ [13] τὸ πεφαρμαγμένον· ὁ δὲ Δείνων (FGrH 690 F 15b) οὐ τὴν Παρύσατιν, ἀλλὰ τὸν Μελάνταν τέμνοντα τῷ μαχαιρίῳ τὰ φαρμασσόμενα τῶν κρεῶν τιθέναι κατὰ τὴν [14] Στάτειραν. ἀποθνῄσκουσα ‹δ’› οὖν ἡ γυνὴ μετὰ πόνων μεγάλων καὶ σπαραγμῶν, αὐτή τε συνῃσθάνετο τοῦ κακοῦ, καὶ βασιλεῖ παρέσχεν ὑποψίαν κατὰ τῆς μητρός, [15] εἰδότι τὸ θηριῶδες αὐτῆς καὶ δυσμείλικτον. ὅθεν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὴν ζήτησιν ὁρμήσας, τοὺς μὲν ὑπηρέτας καὶ τραπεζοκόμους τῆς μητρὸς συνέλαβε καὶ κατεστρέβλωσε, τὴν δὲ Γίγιν ἡ Παρύσατις πολὺν χρόνον εἶχεν οἴκοι μεθ’ αὑτῆς, καὶ βασιλέως ἐξαιτοῦντος οὐκ ἔδωκεν, ἀλλ’ ὕστερον αὐτῆς δεηθείσης εἰς τὸν οἶκον ἀφεθῆναι νυκτός, αἰσθόμενος καὶ λόχον ὑφεὶς συνήρπασε καὶ κατέγνω θάνατον.

[16] ἀποθνῄσκουσι δ’ οἱ φαρμακεῖς ἐν Πέρσαις κατὰ νόμον οὕτως· λίθος ἐστὶ πλατύς, ἐφ’ οὗ τὴν κεφαλὴν καταθέντες αὐτῶν ἑτέρῳ λίθῳ παίουσι καὶ πιέζουσιν, ἄχρι οὗ [17] συνθλάσωσι τὸ πρόσωπον καὶ τὴν κεφαλήν. ἡ ‹μὲν› οὖν Γίγις οὕτως ἀπέθανε, τὴν δὲ Παρύσατιν ὁ Ἀρτοξέρξης ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν οὔτ’ εἶπε κακὸν οὔτ’ ἐποίησεν, εἰς δὲ Βαβυλῶνα βουλομένην ἐξέπεμψεν, εἰπὼν ἕως ἐκείνη περίεστιν αὐτὸς οὐκ ὄψεσθαι Βαβυλῶνα. τὰ μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὴν οἰκίαν οὕτως εἶχεν.

[20] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοὺς Κύρῳ συναναβάντας Ἕλληνας σπουδάσας λαβεῖν ὁ βασιλεὺς οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ Κύρου περιγενέσθαι καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν κατασχεῖν, οὐκ ἔλαβεν, ἀλλὰ Κῦρον τὸν ἡγεμόνα καὶ τοὺς αὑτῶν στρατηγοὺς ἀποβαλόντες, ἐξ αὐτῶν μονονουχὶ τῶν βασιλείων ἐσώθησαν, ἐξελέγξαντες καὶ ἀποφήναντες τὰ Περσῶν καὶ βασιλέως πράγματα χρυσὸν ὄντα πολὺν καὶ τρυφὴν καὶ γυναῖκας, [2] τὰ δ’ ἄλλα τῦφον καὶ ἀλαζονείαν, πᾶσα μὲν ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἐξεθάρρησε καὶ κατεφρόνησε τῶν βαρβάρων, Λακεδαιμονίοις δὲ καὶ δεινὸν ἐφαίνετο, μὴ νῦν γε δουλείας ἐξελέσθαι τοὺς τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικοῦντας Ἕλληνας μηδὲ παῦσαι [3] προπηλακιζομένους ὑπ’ αὐτῶν. πρότερον δὲ διὰ Θίμβρωνος, εἶτα διὰ Δερκυλλίδου πολεμοῦντες, οὐδὲν δὲ πράττοντες ἀξιόλογον, Ἀγησιλάῳ τῷ βασιλεῖ τὸν πόλεμον ἐπέτρεψαν. ὁ δὲ περαιωθεὶς ναυσὶν εἰς Ἀσίαν, εὐθὺς ἦν ἐνεργὸς καὶ δόξαν εἶχε μεγάλην, καὶ Τισσαφέρνην [4] παραταξάμενος ἐνίκησε καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἀφίστη. τούτων δὲ γενομένων, συμφρονήσας ὁ Ἀρτοξέρξης ὃν τρόπον αὐτοῖς ἐστι πολεμητέον, ἔπεμψε Τιμοκράτην τὸν Ῥόδιον εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα χρυσίον πολὺ κομίζοντα, διδόναι καὶ διαφθείρειν τοὺς πλεῖστον ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι δυναμένους κελεύσας καὶ πόλεμον Ἑλληνικὸν κινεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν Λακεδαίμονα.

[5] τοῦ δὲ Τιμοκράτους ταῦτα πράσσοντος, καὶ τῶν μεγίστων πόλεων συνισταμένων, καὶ τῆς Πελοποννήσου διαταραττομένης, μετεπέμποντο τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἐκ [6] τῆς Ἀσίας οἱ ἄρχοντες. ὅτε δὴ καί φασιν αὐτὸν ἀπιόντα πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἰπεῖν, ὡς τρισμυρίοις τοξόταις ἐξελαύνοιτο τῆς Ἀσίας ὑπὸ βασιλέως· τὸ γὰρ Περσικὸν νόμισμα τοξότην ἐπίσημον εἶχεν.

[21] [1] Ἐξέβαλε δὲ καὶ τῆς θαλάττης Λακεδαιμονίους, Κόνωνι τῷ Ἀθηναίῳ μετὰ Φαρναβάζου στρατηγῷ χρησάμενος. ὁ γὰρ Κόνων διέτριβε μὲν ἐν Κύπρῳ μετὰ τὴν ἐν Αἰγὸς ποταμοῖς ναυμαχίαν, οὐ τὴν ἀσφάλειαν ἀγαπῶν, ἀλλὰ τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων μεταβολὴν ὥσπερ ἐν πελάγει [2] τροπὴν περιμένων. ὁρῶν δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ λογισμοὺς δυνάμεως καὶ τὴν βασιλέως δύναμιν ἀνδρὸς ἔμφρονος δεομένην, ἔπεμψεν ἐπιστολὴν βασιλεῖ περὶ ὧν διενοεῖτο.

[3] καὶ ταύτην ἐκέλευσε τὸν κομίζοντα μάλιστα μὲν ἀποδοῦναι διὰ Ζήνωνος τοῦ Κρητὸς ἢ Πολυκρίτου τοῦ Μενδαίου· τούτων δ’ ἦν ὁ μὲν Ζήνων ὀρχηστής, ὁ δὲ Πολύκριτος ἰατρός· ἂν δ’ οὗτοι μὴ παρῶσι, διὰ Κτησίου τοῦ ἰατροῦ.

[4] λέγεται δ’ ὁ Κτησίας τὴν ἐπιστολὴν λαβὼν παρεγγράψαι τοῖς ὑπὸ τοῦ Κόνωνος ἐπεσταλμένοις, ὅπως καὶ Κτησίαν ἀποστείλῃ πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς ὠφέλιμον ὄντα ταῖς ἐπὶ θαλάσσῃ πράξεσιν· ὁ δὲ Κτησίας (FGrH 688 F 32) αὐτὸν ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ βασιλέα φησὶ προσθεῖναι τὴν λειτουργίαν αὐτῷ ταύτην.

[5] Ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ κρατήσας τῇ περὶ Κνίδον ναυμαχίᾳ διὰ Φαρναβάζου καὶ Κόνωνος ἀφείλετο τὴν κατὰ θάλατταν ἀρχὴν Λακεδαιμονίους, ἐπέστρεψε πᾶσαν ὁμοῦ τὴν Ἑλλάδα πρὸς αὑτόν, ὥστε καὶ τὴν περιβόητον εἰρήνην βραβεῦσαι τοῖς Ἕλλησι τὴν ἐπ’ Ἀνταλκίδου προσαγορευομένην.

[6] ὁ δ’ Ἀνταλκίδας Σπαρτιάτης ἦν Λέοντος υἱός, καὶ ‹συ›σπουδάσας βασιλεῖ διεπράξατο τὰς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ πόλεις Ἑλληνίδας ἁπάσας καὶ νήσους, ὅσαι προσκυροῦσιν Ἀσίᾳ, παρεῖναι Λακεδαιμονίους αὐτῷ κεκτῆσθαι φόρων ὑποτελεῖς, εἰρήνης γενομένης τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, εἰ δεῖ τὴν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὕβριν καὶ προδοσίαν εἰρήνην καλεῖν, ἧς πόλεμος οὐδεὶς ἀκλεέστερον ἤνεγκε τέλος τοῖς κρατηθεῖσι.

[22] [1] Διὸ καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους Σπαρτιάτας ἀεὶ βδελυττόμενος ὁ Ἀρτοξέρξης, καὶ νομίζων, ὥς φησι Δείνων (FGrH 690 F 19), ἀνθρώπων ἁπάντων ἀναιδεστάτους εἶναι, τὸν [2] Ἀνταλκίδαν ὑπερηγάπησεν εἰς Πέρσας ἀναβάντα. καί ποτε λαβὼν ἕνα τῶν ἀνθινῶν στεφάνων, καὶ βάψας εἰς μύρον τὸ πολυτελέστατον, ἀπὸ δείπνου ἔπεμψε τῷ [3] Ἀνταλκίδᾳ, καὶ πάντες ἐθαύμασαν τὴν φιλοφροσύνην. ἦν δ’ ὡς ἔοικεν ἐπιτήδειος οὗτος ἐντρυφηθῆναι καὶ τοιοῦτον λαβεῖν στέφανον, ἐξορχησάμενος ἐν Πέρσαις τὸν Λεωνίδαν [4] καὶ τὸν Καλλικρατίδαν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ἀγησίλαος ὡς ἔοικε πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα· φεῦ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὅπου μηδίζουσιν ἡμῖν οἱ Λάκωνες οὐ μᾶλλον εἶπεν οἱ Μῆδοι λακωνίζουσι; [5] τοῦ δὲ ῥήματος ἡ κομψότης τὴν τοῦ πράγματος αἰσχύνην οὐκ ἀφεῖλεν, ἀλλὰ τὴν μὲν ἡγεμονίαν ἀπώλεσαν ἐν Λεύκτροις ἀγωνισάμενοι κακῶς, ἡ δὲ δόξα τῆς Σπάρτης [6] προαπώλετο ταῖς ὁμολογίαις ἐκείναις. ἄχρι μὲν οὖν ἐπρώτευεν ἡ Σπάρτη, ξένον ἐποιεῖτο καὶ φίλον ὠνόμαζεν ἑαυτοῦ τὸν Ἀνταλκίδαν· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡττήθησαν ἐν Λεύκτροις, ταπεινὰ πράττοντες ἐδέοντο μὲν χρημάτων καὶ τὸν Ἀγησίλαον εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἐξέπεμψαν, ὁ δ’ Ἀνταλκίδας ἀνέβη πρὸς τὸν Ἀρτοξέρξην, παρακαλῶν ἐπαρκέσαι τοῖς [7] Λακεδαιμονίοις. ὁ δ’ οὕτως ἐξημέλησε καὶ παρεῖδε καὶ ἀπέρριψεν αὐτόν, ὥστε καταβάντα καὶ χλευαζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν, φοβούμενον δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἐφόρους, ἀποκαρτερῆσαι.

[8] Ἀνέβη δὲ πρὸς τὸν βασιλέα καὶ Ἰσμηνίας ὁ Θηβαῖος καὶ Πελοπίδας, ἤδη τὴν ἐν Λεύκτροις μάχην νενικηκώς. ἀλλ’ οὗτος μὲν οὐδὲν αἰσχρὸν ἐποίησεν· Ἰσμηνίας δὲ προσκυνῆσαι κελευόμενος ἐξέβαλε πρὸ αὑτοῦ χαμᾶζε τὸν δακτύλιον, εἶτα κύψας ἀνείλετο καὶ παρέσχε δόξαν [9] προσκυνοῦντος. Τιμαγόρᾳ δὲ τῷ Ἀθηναίῳ, διὰ Βηλούριδος τοῦ γραμματέως εἰσπέμψαντι γραμματίδιον ἀπόρρητον, ἡσθεὶς μυρίους τε δαρεικοὺς ἔδωκε, καὶ γάλακτος βοείου δεομένῳ δι’ ἀσθένειαν ὀγδοήκοντα βοῦς ἀμέλγεσθαι [10] παρηκολούθουν· ἔτι δὲ κλίνην καὶ στρώματα καὶ τοὺς στρωννύντας ἔπεμψεν, ὡς οὐ μεμαθηκότων Ἑλλήνων ὑποστρωννύναι, καὶ φορεῖς τοὺς κομίζοντας αὐτὸν μέχρι [11] θαλάσσης μαλακῶς ἔχοντα. παρόντι δὲ δεῖπνον ἐπέμπετο λαμπρότατον, ὥστε καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ βασιλέως Ὀστάνην ὦ Τιμαγόρα φάναι μέμνησο ταύτης τῆς τραπέζης· οὐ γὰρ ἐπὶ μικροῖς οὕτω σοι κεκοσμημένη [12] παράκειται. τοῦτο δ’ ἦν ὀνειδισμὸς εἰς προδοσίαν μᾶλλον ἢ χάριτος ὑπόμνησις. Τιμαγόρου μὲν οὖν διὰ τὴν δωροδοκίαν Ἀθηναῖοι θάνατον κατέγνωσαν.

[23] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἀρτοξέρξης ἓν ἀντὶ πάντων ὧν ἐλύπει τοὺς Ἕλληνας ηὔφραινε, Τισσαφέρνην τὸν ἔχθιστον αὐτοῖς καὶ δυσμενέστατον ἀποκτείνας· ἀπέκτεινε δὲ ταῖς διαβολαῖς [2] αὐτοῦ τῆς Παρυσάτιδος συνεπιθεμένης. οὐ γὰρ ἐνέμεινε τῇ ὀργῇ πολὺν χρόνον ὁ βασιλεύς, ἀλλὰ διηλλάγη τῇ μητρὶ καὶ μετεπέμψατο, νοῦν μὲν ὁρῶν ἔχουσαν καὶ φρόνημα βασιλείας ἄξιον, αἰτίας δὲ μηδεμιᾶς οὔσης ἐμποδὼν ἔτι δι’ [3] ἣν ὑπόψονται συνόντες ἀλλήλους ἢ λυπήσουσιν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου πάντα πρὸς χάριν ὑπουργοῦσα βασιλεῖ, καὶ τῷ πρὸς μηδὲν ὧν ἐκεῖνος ἔπραττε δυσκολαίνειν ἔχουσα τὸ δύνασθαι παρ’ αὐτῷ καὶ τυγχάνειν ἁπάντων, ᾔσθετο τῆς ἑτέρας τῶν θυγατέρων Ἀτόσσης ἐρῶντος ἔρωτα δεινόν, ἐπικρυπτομένου δὲ δι’ ἐκείνην οὐχ ἥκιστα καὶ κολάζοντος τὸ πάθος ὥς φασιν ἔνιοι, καίτοι γεγενημένης ἤδη πρὸς τὴν [4] παρθένον ὁμιλίας αὐτῷ λαθραίας. ὡς οὖν ὑπώπτευσεν ἡ Παρύσατις, τὴν παῖδα μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον ἠσπάζετο, καὶ πρὸς τὸν Ἀρτοξέρξην ἐπῄνει τό τε κάλλος αὐτῆς καὶ τὸ [5] ἦθος, ὡς βασιλικῆς καὶ μεγαλοπρεποῦς. τέλος δ’ οὖν γῆμαι τὴν κόρην ἔπεισε καὶ γνησίαν ἀποδεῖξαι γυναῖκα, χαίρειν ἐάσαντα δόξας Ἑλλήνων καὶ νόμους, Πέρσαις δὲ νόμον αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ δικαιωτὴν αἰσχρῶν καὶ [6] καλῶν ἀποδεδειγμένον. ἔνιοι μέντοι λέγουσιν, ὧν ἐστι καὶ Ἡρακλείδης ὁ Κυμαῖος (FGrH 689 F 7a), οὐ μίαν μόνον τῶν θυγατέρων, ἀλλὰ καὶ δευτέραν Ἄμηστριν γῆμαι τὸν Ἀρτοξέρξην, περὶ ἧς ὀλίγον ὕστερον ἀπαγγελοῦμεν [7] (c. 27, 7). τὴν δ’ Ἄτοσσαν οὕτως ἠγάπησεν ὁ πατὴρ συνοικοῦσαν, ὥστ’ ἀλφοῦ κατανεμηθέντος αὐτῆς τὸ σῶμα, δυσχερᾶναι μὲν ἐπὶ τούτῳ μηδ’ ὁτιοῦν, εὐχόμενος δὲ περὶ αὐτῆς τῇ Ἥρᾳ προσκυνῆσαι μόνην θεῶν ἐκείνην, ταῖς χερσὶ τῆς γῆς ἁψάμενος, δῶρά τε τῇ θεῷ τοσαῦτα πέμψαι τοὺς σατράπας καὶ φίλους αὐτοῦ κελεύσαντος, ὥστε τὰ μεταξὺ τοῦ ἱεροῦ καὶ τῶν βασιλείων ἑκκαίδεκα στάδια χρυσοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ πορφύρας καὶ ἵππων ἐμπλησθῆναι.

[24] [1] Πόλεμον δὲ πρὸς μὲν Αἰγυπτίους διὰ Φαρναβάζου καὶ Ἰφικράτους ἐξενεγκὼν ἀπέτυχε, στασιασάντων [2] ἐκείνων. ἐπὶ δὲ Καδουσίους αὐτὸς ἐστράτευσε τριάκοντα μυριάσι πεζῶν καὶ μυρίοις ἱππεῦσιν. ἐμβαλὼν δ’ εἰς χώραν τραχύτητι χαλεπὴν καὶ ὁμιχλώδη καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ σπόρου καρπῶν ἄγονον, ἀπίοις δὲ καὶ μήλοις καὶ τοιούτοις ἄλλοις ἀκροδρύοις τρέφουσαν ἀνθρώπους πολεμικοὺς καὶ θυμοειδεῖς, ἔλαθε μεγάλαις ἀπορίαις καὶ [3] κινδύνοις περιπεσών. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐδώδιμον ἦν λαμβάνειν οὐδ’ ἔξωθεν ἐπεισάγεσθαι, τὰ δ’ ὑποζύγια μόνον κατέκοπτον, ὥστ’ ὄνου κεφαλὴν μόλις δραχμῶν ἑξήκοντα ὤνιον εἶναι. τὸ δὲ βασιλικὸν δεῖπνον ἐξελείφθη, καὶ τῶν ἵππων ὀλίγοι περιῆσαν ἔτι, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἐσθίοντες [4] κατανηλώκεσαν. ἐνταῦθα Τιρίβαζος, ἀνὴρ πολλάκις μὲν ἐν πρώτῃ δι’ ἀνδραγαθίαν τάξει γενόμενος, πολλάκις δ’ ἀπορριφεὶς διὰ κουφότητα, καὶ τότε ταπεινὰ πράττων καὶ [5] περιορώμενος, ἔσωσε βασιλέα καὶ τὸν στρατόν. ὄντων γὰρ δυεῖν ἐν τοῖς Καδουσίοις βασιλέων, ἑκατέρου δὲ χωρὶς στρατοπεδεύοντος, ἐντυχὼν τῷ Ἀρτοξέρξῃ, καὶ φράσας περὶ ὧν διενοεῖτο πράττειν, ἐβάδιζεν αὐτὸς πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον τῶν Καδουσίων, καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον κρύφα τὸν [6] υἱὸν ἔπεμπεν. ἐξηπάτα δ’ ἑκάτερον ἑκάτερος, λέγων ὡς ἅτερος ἐπιπρεσβεύεται πρὸς τὸν Ἀρτοξέρξην, φιλίαν μόνῳ πράττων ἑαυτῷ καὶ συμμαχίαν· οὐκοῦν εἰ σωφρονεῖ, χρῆναι πρότερον ἐντυγχάνειν ἐκείνῳ, αὐτὸν δὲ συμπράξειν [7] ἅπαντα. τούτοις ἐπείσθησαν ἀμφότεροι, καὶ φθάνειν ἀλλήλους νομίζοντες, ὁ μὲν τῷ Τιριβάζῳ συνέπεμψε [8] πρέσβεις, ὁ δὲ τῷ παιδὶ τοῦ Τιριβάζου. διατριβῆς δὲ γενομένης, ὑποψίαι καὶ διαβολαὶ κατὰ τοῦ Τιριβάζου τῷ Ἀρτοξέρξῃ προσέπιπτον· αὐτὸς δὲ δυσθύμως εἶχε καὶ μετενόει πιστεύσας τῷ Τιριβάζῳ, καὶ τοῖς φθονοῦσιν [9] ἐγκαλεῖν παρεῖχεν, ἐπεὶ δ’ ἧκεν ὁ Τιρίβαζος, ἧκε δ’ ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ, τοὺς Καδουσίους ἄγοντες, ἐγένοντο δὲ σπονδαὶ πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους καὶ εἰρήνη, μέγας ὢν ὁ Τιρίβαζος ἤδη καὶ λαμπρὸς ἀνεζεύγνυε μετὰ τοῦ βασιλέως, ἐπιδεικνυμένου πᾶσαν τὴν δειλίαν καὶ τὴν μαλακίαν οὐ τρυφῆς καὶ πολυτελείας - ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσιν - ἔκγονον οὖσαν, ἀλλὰ μοχθηρᾶς φύσεως καὶ ἀγεννοῦς καὶ δόξαις [10] πονηραῖς ἑπομένης. οὔτε γὰρ χρυσὸς οὔτε κάνδυς οὔθ’ ὁ τῶν μυρίων καὶ δισχιλίων ταλάντων περικείμενος ἀεὶ τῷ βασιλέως σώματι κόσμος ἐκεῖνον ἀπεκώλυε πονεῖν καὶ ταλαιπωρεῖν ὥσπερ οἱ τυχόντες, ἀλλὰ τήν τε φαρέτραν ἐνημμένος καὶ τὴν πέλτην φέρων αὐτὸς ἐβάδιζε πρῶτος ὁδοὺς ὀρεινὰς καὶ προσάντεις, ἀπολιπὼν τὸν ἵππον, ὥστε τοὺς ἄλλους πτεροῦσθαι καὶ συνεπικουφίζεσθαι, [11] τὴν ἐκείνου προθυμίαν καὶ ῥώμην ὁρῶντας· καὶ γὰρ διακοσίων καὶ πλειόνων σταδίων κατήνυεν ἡμέρας ἑκάστης πορείαν.

[25] [1] Ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰς σταθμὸν κατέβη βασιλικόν, παραδείσους ἔχοντα θαυμαστοὺς καὶ κεκοσμημένους διαπρεπῶς ἐν τῷ πέριξ ἀδένδρῳ καὶ ψιλῷ χωρίῳ, κρύους ὄντος ἐπέτρεψε τοῖς στρατιώταις ἐκ τοῦ παραδείσου ξυλίζεσθαι τὰ δένδρα κόπτοντας, μήτε πεύκης μήτε κυπαρίττου [2] φειδομένους. ὀκνούντων δὲ καὶ φειδομένων διὰ τὰ κάλλη καὶ τὰ μεγέθη, λαβὼν πέλεκυν αὐτὸς ὅπερ ἦν μέγιστον καὶ κάλλιστον τῶν φυτῶν ἔκοψεν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου ξυλιζόμενοι [3] καὶ πολλὰ πυρὰ ποιοῦντες εὐμαρῶς ἐνυκτέρευσαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἀποβαλὼν ἄνδρας, ἵππους δ’ ὁμοῦ τι πάντας, ἐπανῆλθε, καὶ δόξας καταφρονεῖσθαι διὰ τὴν ἀτυχίαν καὶ τὴν ἀπότευξιν τῆς στρατείας, ἐν ὑποψίαις εἶχε τοὺς πρώτους· καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν ἀνῄρει δι’ ὀργήν, [4] πλείονας δὲ φοβούμενος. ἡ γὰρ δειλία φονικώτατόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς τυραννίσιν, ἵλεων δὲ καὶ πρᾶον καὶ ἀνύποπτον ἡ θαρραλεότης. διὸ καὶ τῶν θηρίων τὰ ἀτιθάσσευτα καὶ δυσεξημέρωτα ψοφοδεῆ καὶ δειλά, τὰ δὲ γενναῖα πιστεύοντα μᾶλλον διὰ τὸ θαρρεῖν οὐ φεύγει τὰς φιλοφροσύνας.

[26] [1] Ὁ δ’ Ἀρτοξέρξης ἤδη πρεσβύτερος ὢν ᾐσθάνετο τοὺς υἱοὺς ἀγῶνα περὶ τῆς βασιλείας ἐν τοῖς φίλοις καὶ τοῖς δυνατοῖς ἔχοντας. οἱ μὲν γὰρ εὐγνώμονες ἠξίουν, ὡς ἔλαβεν αὐτός, οὕτως ἀπολιπεῖν πρεσβεῖα Δαρείῳ τὴν [2] ἀρχήν. ὁ δὲ νεώτατος Ὦχος ὀξὺς ὢν καὶ βίαιος, εἶχε μὲν καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸ βασίλειον οὐκ ὀλίγους σπουδαστάς, ἤλπιζε δὲ μάλιστα κατεργάσεσθαι τὸν πατέρα διὰ τῆς Ἀτόσσης.

[3] ἐκείνην γὰρ ἐθεράπευεν ὡς γαμησομένην καὶ συμβασιλεύσουσαν αὐτῷ μετὰ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς τελευτήν. ἦν δὲ λόγος ὅτι καὶ ζῶντος ἐλάνθανεν αὐτῇ πλησιάζων· ἀλλὰ [4] τοῦτο μὲν ἠγνόησεν ὁ Ἀρτοξέρξης· ταχὺ δὲ βουλόμενος ἐκκροῦσαι τῆς ἐλπίδος τὸν Ὦχον, ὅπως μὴ τὰ αὐτὰ Κύρῳ τολμήσαντος αὐτοῦ πόλεμοι καὶ ἀγῶνες αὖθις καταλάβωσι τὴν βασιλείαν, ἀνέδειξε τὸν Δαρεῖον βασιλέα πεντηκοστὸν ἔτος γεγονότα, καὶ τὴν καλουμένην κίταριν ὀρθὴν φέρειν [5] ἔδωκε. νόμου δ’ ὄντος ἐν Πέρσαις δωρεὰν αἰτεῖν τὸν ἀναδειχθέντα, καὶ διδόναι τὸν ἀναδείξαντα πᾶν τὸ αἰτηθὲν ἄνπερ ᾖ δυνατόν, ᾔτησεν Ἀσπασίαν ὁ Δαρεῖος τὴν μάλιστα σπουδασθεῖσαν ὑπὸ Κύρου, τότε δὲ τῷ βασιλεῖ παλλακευομένην. ἦν δὲ Φωκαῒς τὸ γένος ἀπ’ Ἰωνίας, ἐλευθέρων [6] γονέων καὶ τεθραμμένη κοσμίως. ἐπεὶ δὲ Κύρου δειπνοῦντος εἰσήχθη μεθ’ ἑτέρων γυναικῶν, αἱ μὲν ἄλλαι παρακαθεζόμεναι, προσπαίζοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ ἁπτομένου καὶ σκώπτοντος, οὐκ ἀηδῶς ἐνεδέχοντο τὰς φιλοφροσύνας, [7] ἐκείνη δὲ παρὰ τὴν κλίνην εἱστήκει σιωπῇ, καὶ Κύρου καλοῦντος οὐχ ὑπήκουε· βουλομένων δὲ προσάγειν τῶν κατευναστῶν οἰμώξεται μέντοι τούτων εἶπεν ὃς ἂν ἐμοὶ προσαγάγῃ τὰς χεῖρας. ἔδοξεν οὖν [8] ἄχαρις τοῖς παροῦσιν εἶναι καὶ ἄγροικος. ὁ δὲ Κῦρος ἡσθεὶς ἐγέλασε καὶ εἶπε πρὸς τὸν ἀγαγόντα τὰς γυναῖκας ἆρ’ ἤδη συνορᾷς ὅτι μοι μόνην ταύτην ἐλευθέραν [9] καὶ ἀδιάφθορον ἥκεις κομίζων; ἐκ δὲ τούτου προσεῖχεν ἀρξάμενος αὐτῇ, καὶ μάλιστα πασῶν ἔστερξε καὶ σοφὴν προσηγόρευσεν. ἑάλω δὲ Κύρου πεσόντος ἐν τῇ μάχῃ καὶ διαρπαζομένου τοῦ στρατοπέδου.

[27] [1] Ταύτην ὁ Δαρεῖος αἰτήσας, ἠνίασε τὸν πατέρα· δύσζηλα γὰρ τὰ βαρβαρικὰ δεινῶς περὶ τὸ ἀκόλαστον, ὥστε μὴ μόνον τὸν προσελθόντα καὶ θιγόντα παλλακῆς βασιλέως, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ἐν πορείᾳ παρεξελθόντα καὶ διεξελάσαντα τὰς ἁμάξας ἐφ’ αἷς κομίζονται θανάτῳ [2] κολάζεσθαι. καίτοι τὴν μὲν Ἄτοσσαν εἶχεν, ἔρωτι ποιησάμενος γυναῖκα παρὰ τὸν νόμον, ἑξήκοντα δὲ καὶ τριακόσιαι παρετρέφοντο κάλλει διαφέρουσαι παλλακίδες.

[3] οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ αἰτηθεὶς ἐκείνην ἐλευθέραν ἔφησεν εἶναι, καὶ λαμβάνειν ἐκέλευσε βουλομένην, ἄκουσαν δὲ μὴ βιάζεσθαι. μεταπεμφθείσης δὲ τῆς Ἀσπασίας, καὶ παρ’ ἐλπίδας τοῦ βασιλέως ἑλομένης τὸν Δαρεῖον, ἔδωκε μὲν ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης τοῦ νόμου, δοὺς δ’ ὀλίγον ὕστερον [4] ἀφείλετο. τῆς γὰρ Ἀρτέμιδος τῆς ἐν Ἐκβατάνοις, ἣν Ἀναῗτιν καλοῦσιν, ἱέρειαν ἀνέδειξεν αὐτήν, ὅπως ἁγνὴ διάγῃ τὸν ἐπίλοιπον βίον, οἰόμενος οὐ χαλεπήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ μετρίαν τινὰ καὶ παιδιᾷ μεμειγμένην ταύτην λήψεσθαι [5] δίκην παρὰ τοῦ παιδός. ὁ δ’ ἤνεγκεν οὐ μετρίως, εἴτ’ ἔρωτι τῆς Ἀσπασίας περιπαθὴς γεγονώς, εἴθ’ ὑβρίσθαι καὶ κεχλευάσθαι νομίζων ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός.

[6] Αἰσθόμενος δ’ αὐτὸν οὕτως ἔχοντα Τιρίβαζος ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐξετράχυνεν, ἐν τοῖς ἐκείνου συνιδὼν τὰ καθ’ αὑτόν.

[7] ἦν δὲ τοιαῦτα. πλειόνων οὐσῶν βασιλεῖ θυγατέρων, ὡμολόγησε Φαρναβάζῳ μὲν Ἀπάμαν δώσειν γυναῖκα, [8] Ῥοδογούνην δ’ Ὀρόντῃ, Τιριβάζῳ δ’ Ἄμηστριν. καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἔδωκε, Τιρίβαζον δ’ ἐψεύσατο, γήμας αὐτὸς τὴν Ἄμηστριν, ἀντ’ ἐκείνης δὲ τῷ Τιριβάζῳ τὴν νεωτάτην [9] Ἄτοσσαν ἐνεγύησεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ ταύτην ἐρασθεὶς ἔγημεν ὡς εἴρηται, παντάπασι δυσμενῶς πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Τιρίβαζος εἶχεν, οὐδ’ ἄλλως στάσιμος ὢν τὸ ἦθος, ἀλλ’ ἀνώμαλος [10] καὶ παράφορος. διὸ καὶ νῦν μὲν εὐημερῶν ὅμοια τοῖς πρώτοις, νῦν δὲ προσκρούων καὶ σκορακιζόμενος, οὐδεμίαν ἔφερεν ἐμμελῶς μεταβολήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τιμώμενος ἦν ἐπαχθὴς ὑπὸ χαυνότητος, καὶ τὸ κολουόμενον οὐ ταπεινὸν οὐδ’ ἡσυχαῖον, ἀλλὰ τραχὺ καὶ ἀγέρωχον εἶχε.

[28] [1] Πῦρ οὖν ἐπὶ πῦρ ἐγένετο τῷ νεανίσκῳ προσκείμενος ὁ Τιρίβαζος ἀεὶ καὶ λέγων, ὡς οὐδὲν ὀνίνησιν ἡ κίταρις περιεστῶσα τῇ κεφαλῇ τοὺς ὑφ’ αὑτῶν μὴ ζητοῦντας ὀρθοῦσθαι τοῖς πράγμασι, κἀκεῖνον ἀβέλτερα φρονεῖν, ‹εἰ› τοῦ μὲν ἀδελφοῦ διὰ τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος ἐνδυομένου τοῖς πράγμασι, τοῦ δὲ πατρὸς οὕτως ἔμπληκτον ἦθος καὶ ἀβέβαιον ἔχοντος, οἴεται βέβαιον αὐτῷ τὴν διαδοχὴν [2] ὑπάρχειν. ὁ γὰρ Ἑλληνικοῦ χάριν γυναίου τὸν ἄψευστον ἐν Πέρσαις ψευσάμενος νόμον οὐ δή που πιστός ἐστι [3] τὰς περὶ τῶν μεγίστων ὁμολογίας ἐμπεδώσειν. οὐ ταὐτὸ δ’ εἶναι τὸ μὴ τυχεῖν Ὤχῳ κἀκείνῳ τὸ στέρεσθαι τῆς βασιλείας· Ὦχον μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν κωλύσειν ἰδιώτην βιοῦν μακαρίως, ἐκείνῳ δ’ ἀποδεδειγμένῳ βασιλεῖ βασιλεύειν [4] ἀνάγκην ἢ μηδὲ ζῆν εἶναι. καθόλου μὲν οὖν ἴσως, τὸ Σοφόκλειον (fr. 786 N. ²),

ταχεῖα πειθὼ τῶν κακῶν ὁδοιπορεῖ·

λεία γάρ τις ἡ πορεία καὶ κατάντης ἐπὶ τὸ βουλόμενον· βούλονται δ’ οἱ πλεῖστοι τὰ φαῦλα δι’ ἀπειρίαν τῶν καλῶν [5] καὶ ἄγνοιαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τὸ μέγεθος [τὸ] τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ τὸ πρὸς τὸν Ὦχον τοῦ Δαρείου δέος ὑπόθεσιν τῷ Τιριβάζῳ παρεῖχε, Κυπρογένεια δ’ οὐ πάμπαν ἀναίτιος, ἡ τῆς Ἀσπασίας ἀφαίρεσις.

[29] [1] Ἐπέδωκεν οὖν ἑαυτὸν τῷ Τιριβάζῳ· καὶ πολλῶν ἤδη συνισταμένων, εὐνοῦχος ἐδήλωσε τῷ βασιλεῖ τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν καὶ τὸν τρόπον, εἰδὼς ἀκριβῶς ὅτι νυκτὸς ἐγνώκασιν ἐν τῷ θαλάμῳ κατακείμενον ἀναιρεῖν αὐτὸν [2] ἐπεισελθόντες. ἀκούσαντι δὲ τῷ Ἀρτοξέρξῃ καὶ τὸ παριδεῖν κίνδυνον τηλικοῦτον ἀμελήσαντα τῆς διαβολῆς δεινὸν ἐδόκει, καὶ τὸ πιστεῦσαι μηδενὸς ἐλέγχου γενομένου [3] δεινότερον. οὕτως οὖν ἐποίει· τὸν μὲν εὐνοῦχον ἐκείνοις ἐκέλευσε παρεῖναι καὶ παρακολουθεῖν, αὐτὸς δὲ τοῦ θαλάμου τὸν ὄπισθεν τῆς κλίνης τοῖχον ἐκκόψας καὶ [4] θυρώσας, κατεκάλυψεν αὐλαίᾳ τὰς θύρας. ἐνστάσης δὲ τῆς ὥρας καὶ φράσαντος τοῦ εὐνούχου τὸν καιρόν, ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης ὑπέμεινε καὶ οὐκ ἐξανέστη πρότερον ἢ τῶν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἐρχομένων τὰ πρόσωπα κατιδεῖν καὶ γνωρίσαι [5] σαφῶς ἕκαστον. ὡς δ’ εἶδεν ἐσπασμένους τὰ ἐγχειρίδια καὶ προσφερομένους, ταχὺ τὴν αὐλαίαν ὑπολαβὼν ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς τὸ ἐντὸς οἴκημα, καὶ τὰς θύρας ἐπήρραξε [6] κράζων. ὀφθέντες δ’ οὖν οἱ σφαγεῖς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, πράξαντες δὲ μηθέν, ἀπεχώρουν φυγῇ διὰ θυρῶν, καὶ τοὺς περὶ τὸν Τιρίβαζον ἐκέλευον ἀποχωρεῖν ὡς φανεροὺς γεγονότας.

[7] οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι διαλυθέντες ἔφυγον· ὁ δὲ Τιρίβαζος συλλαμβανόμενος πολλοὺς ἀπέκτεινε τῶν βασιλέως δορυφόρων, [8] καὶ μόγις ἀκοντίῳ πληγεὶς πόρρωθεν ἔπεσε. τῷ δὲ Δαρείῳ μετὰ τῶν τέκνων ἀναχθέντι καθίσας τοὺς βασιλείους δικαστάς, οὐ παρὼν αὐτός, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρων κατηγορησάντων, ἐκέλευσεν ὑπηρέτας τὴν ἑκάστου [9] γραψαμένους ἀπόφασιν ὡς αὐτὸν ἐπανενεγκεῖν. ἀποφηναμένων δὲ πάντων ὁμοίως καὶ καταγνόντων τοῦ Δαρείου θάνατον, οἱ μὲν ὑπηρέται συλλαβόντες αὐτὸν εἰς οἴκημα πλησίον ἀπήγαγον, ὁ δὲ δήμιος κληθεὶς ἧκε μὲν ξυρὸν ἔχων ᾧ τὰς κεφαλὰς ἀποτέμνουσι τῶν κολαζομένων, ἰδὼν δὲ τὸν Δαρεῖον ἐξεπλάγη καὶ ἀνεχώρει πρὸς τὰς θύρας ἀποβλέπων, ὡς οὐ δυνησόμενος οὐδὲ τολμήσων [10] αὐτόχειρ γενέσθαι βασιλέως. ἔξωθεν δὲ τῶν δικαστῶν ἀπειλούντων καὶ διακελευομένων, ἀναστρέψας καὶ τῇ ἑτέρᾳ χειρὶ δραξάμενος τῆς κόμης αὐτοῦ καὶ καταγαγών, [11] ἀπέτεμε τῷ ξυρῷ τὸν τράχηλον. ἔνιοι δέ φασι τὴν κρίσιν γενέσθαι βασιλέως αὐτοῦ παρόντος, τὸν δὲ Δαρεῖον, ὡς κατελαμβάνετο τοῖς ἐλέγχοις, ἐπὶ στόμα πεσόντα δεῖσθαι καὶ ἱκετεύειν· τὸν δ’ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἀναστάντα καὶ σπασάμενον [12] τὸν ἀκινάκην τύπτειν ἕως ἀπέκτεινεν· εἶτ’ εἰς τὴν αὐλὴν προελθόντα τὸν Ἥλιον προσκυνῆσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν· εὐφραίνεσθ’ ἀπιόντες ὦ Πέρσαι, καὶ λέγετε τοῖς ἄλλοις, ὅτι τοῖς ἄθεσμα καὶ παράνομα διανοηθεῖσιν ὁ μέγας Ὡραμάζης δίκην ἐπιτέθεικεν.

[30] [1] Ἡ μὲν οὖν ἐπιβουλὴ τοιοῦτον ἔσχε τέλος, ὁ δ’ Ὦχος ἤδη μὲν ἦν ταῖς ἐλπίσι λαμπρός, ὑπὸ τῆς Ἀτόσσης ἐπαιρόμενος, ἔτι δ’ ἐφοβεῖτο τῶν μὲν γνησίων τὸν [2] ὑπόλοιπον Ἀριάσπην, τῶν δὲ νόθων Ἀρσάμην. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ἀριάσπης οὐ διὰ τὸ πρεσβύτερος εἶναι τοῦ Ὤχου, πρᾶος δὲ καὶ ἁπλοῦς καὶ φιλάνθρωπος, ἠξιοῦτο βασιλεύειν ὑπὸ τῶν Περσῶν· ὁ δ’ Ἀρσάμης καὶ νοῦν ἔχειν ἐδόκει, καὶ μάλιστα τῷ πατρὶ προσφιλὴς ὢν οὐκ ἐλάνθανε [3] τὸν Ὦχον. ἐπιβουλεύων οὖν ἀμφοτέροις, καὶ δολερὸς ὢν ὁμοῦ καὶ φονικός, ἐχρήσατο τῇ μὲν ὠμότητι τῆς φύσεως πρὸς τὸν Ἀρσάμην, τῇ δὲ κακουργίᾳ καὶ δεινότητι [4] πρὸς τὸν Ἀριάσπην. ὑπέπεμψε γὰρ πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐνούχους καὶ φίλους βασιλέως, ἀπειλάς τινας ἀεὶ καὶ λόγους φοβεροὺς ἀπαγγέλλοντας, ὡς τοῦ πατρὸς ἐγνωκότος [5] ἀποκτιννύειν αὐτὸν ὠμῶς καὶ ἐφυβρίστως. οἱ δὲ ταῦτα καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐκφέρειν δοκοῦντες ὡς ἀπόρρητα, καὶ τὰ μὲν μέλλειν, τὰ δ’ ὅσον οὔπω πράσσειν βασιλέα λέγοντες, οὕτως ἐξέπληξαν τὸν ἄνθρωπον, καὶ τοσαύτην ἐνέβαλον πτοίαν αὐτῷ καὶ ταραχὴν καὶ δυσθυμίαν εἰς τοὺς λογισμούς, ὥστε φάρμακον σκευάσαντα τῶν θανασίμων [6] καὶ πιόντα τοῦ ζῆν ἀπαλλαγῆναι. πυθόμενος δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς τὸν τρόπον τῆς τελευτῆς, ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἀπέκλαυσε, [7] τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν ὑπώπτευεν. ἐλέγχειν δὲ καὶ ζητεῖν ἐξαδυνατῶν διὰ γῆρας, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἠσπάζετο τὸν Ἀρσάμην καὶ δῆλος ἦν μάλιστα πιστεύων ἐκείνῳ καὶ παρρησιαζόμενος.

[8] ὅθεν οἱ περὶ τὸν Ὦχον οὐκ ἀνεβάλοντο τὴν πρᾶξιν, ἀλλ’ Ἀρπάτην υἱὸν Τιριβάζου παρασκευάσαντες, ἀπέκτειναν δι’ ἐκείνου τὸν ἄνθρωπον.

[9] Ἦν μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ ῥοπῆς μικρᾶς ὁ Ἀρτοξέρξης διὰ τὸ γῆρας ἤδη τότε· προσπεσόντος δ’ αὐτῷ τοῦ περὶ τὸν Ἀρσάμην πάθους, οὐδ’ ὀλίγον ἀντέσχεν, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ὑπὸ λύπης καὶ δυσθυμίας ἀπεσβέσθη, βιώσας μὲν ἐνενήκοντα καὶ τέσσαρ’ ἔτη, βασιλεύσας δὲ δύο καὶ ἑξήκοντα, δόξας δὲ πρᾶος εἶναι καὶ φιλυπήκοος οὐχ ἥκιστα διὰ τὸν υἱὸν Ὦχον, ὠμότητι καὶ μιαιφονίᾳ πάντας ὑπερβαλόμενον.

Galba

[1] [1] Ὁ μὲν Ἀθηναῖος Ἰφικράτης τὸν μισθοφόρον ἠξίου στρατιώτην καὶ φιλόπλουτον εἶναι καὶ φιλήδονον, ὅπως ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις χορηγίαν ἐπιζητῶν ἀγωνίζηται παραβολώτερον, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι, καθάπερ ἐρρωμένον σῶμα, τὸ στρατιωτικὸν ἀξιοῦσιν ἰδίᾳ μηδέποτε χρώμενον ὁρμῇ συγκινεῖσθαι [2] τῇ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ. διὸ καὶ Παῦλον Αἰμίλιον λέγουσι τὴν ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ δύναμιν παραλαβόντα λαλιᾶς καὶ περιεργίας, οἷον διαστρατηγοῦσαν, ἀνάπλεων, παρεγγυῆσαι τὴν χεῖρα ποιεῖν ἑτοίμην καὶ τὴν μάχαιραν ὀξεῖαν ἕκαστον, αὐτῷ δὲ [3] τῶν ἄλλων μελήσειν. ὁ δὲ Πλάτων οὐδὲν ἔργον ὁρῶν ἄρχοντος ἀγαθοῦ καὶ στρατηγοῦ στρατιᾶς μὴ σωφρονούσης μηδὲ ὁμοπαθούσης, ἀλλὰ τὴν πειθαρχικὴν ἀρετὴν ὁμοίως τῇ βασιλικῇ νομίζων φύσεως γενναίας καὶ τροφῆς φιλοσόφου δεῖσθαι, μάλιστα τῷ πρᾴῳ καὶ φιλανθρώπῳ τὸ θυμοειδὲς καὶ δραστήριον ἐμμελῶς ἀνακεραννυμένης, ἄλλα τε πάθη πολλὰ καὶ τὰ Ῥωμαίοις συμπεσόντα μετὰ τὴν Νέρωνος τελευτὴν ἔχει μαρτύρια καὶ παραδείγματα τοῦ μηδὲν εἶναι φοβερώτερον ἀπαιδεύτοις χρωμένης καὶ ἀλόγοις ὁρμαῖς ἐν ἡγεμονίᾳ [4] στρατιωτικῆς δυνάμεως. Δημάδης μὲν γὰρ Ἀλεξάνδρου τελευτήσαντος εἴκαζε τὴν Μακεδόνων στρατιὰν ἐκτετυφλωμένῳ τῷ Κύκλωπι, πολλὰς κινουμένην ὁρῶν κινήσεις ἀτάκτους καὶ παραφόρους· τὴν δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίαν ὅμοια τοῖς λεγομένοις Τιτανικοῖς πάθεσι καὶ κινήμασι κατελάμβανεν, εἰς πολλὰ διασπωμένην ἅμα καὶ πολλαχόθεν αὖθις ἑαυτῇ συμπίπτουσαν, οὐχ οὕτως ὑπὸ φιλαρχίας τῶν ἀναγορευομένων αὐτοκρατόρων, ὡς φιλοπλουτίας καὶ ἀκολασίας τοῦ στρατιωτικοῦ δι’ ἀλλήλων ὥσπερ ἥλους τοὺς [5] ἡγεμόνας ἐκκρούοντος. καίτοι Διονύσιος Φεραῖον ἄρξαντα Θετταλῶν δέκα μῆνας, εἶτα εὐθὺς ἀναιρεθέντα, τὸν τραγικὸν ἀνεκάλει τύραννον, ἐπισκώπτων τὸ τάχος τῆς μεταβολῆς. ἡ δὲ τῶν Καισάρων ἑστία, τὸ Παλάτιον, ἐν ἐλάσσονι χρόνῳ τέσσαρας αὐτοκράτορας ὑπεδέξατο, τὸν μὲν εἰσαγόντων ὥσπερ διὰ σκηνῆς, τὸν δ’ ἐξαγόντων. ἀλλ’ ἦν γε παραμυθία τοῖς κακῶς πάσχουσι μία τὸ μὴ δεηθῆναι δίκης ἑτέρας ἐπὶ τοὺς αἰτίους, ἀλλ’ ὁρᾶν αὐτοὺς ὑφ’ ἑαυτῶν φονευομένους, πρῶτον δὲ καὶ δικαιότατα πάντων τὸν δελεάσαντα καὶ διδάξαντα τοσοῦτον ἐλπίζειν ἐπὶ μεταβολῇ Καίσαρος ὅσον αὐτὸς ὑπέσχετο, κάλλιστον ἔργον διαβαλὼν τῷ μισθῷ, τὴν ἀπὸ Νέρωνος ἀποστασίαν προδοσίαν γενομένην.

[2] [1] Νυμφίδιος γὰρ Σαβῖνος ὢν ἔπαρχος, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, μετὰ Τιγελλίνου τῆς αὐλῆς, ἐπεὶ τὰ Νέρωνος ἀπέγνωστο παντάπασι καὶ δῆλος ἦν ἀποδρασόμενος εἰς Αἴγυπτον, ἔπεισε τὸ στρατιωτικόν, ὡς μηκέτι παρόντος, ἀλλ’ ἤδη πεφευγότος, [2] αὐτοκράτορα Γάλβαν ἀναγορεῦσαι, καὶ δωρεὰν ὑπέσχετο κατ’ ἄνδρα τοῖς αὐλικοῖς καὶ στρατηγικοῖς προσαγορευομένοις δραχμὰς ἑπτακισχιλίας πεντακοσίας, τοῖς δὲ ἐκτὸς στρατευομένοις πεντήκοντα καὶ διακοσίας ἐπὶ χιλίαις, ὅσον ἀμήχανον ἦν συναγαγεῖν μὴ πλείονα μυριάκις κακὰ παρασχόντα [3] πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ὧν Νέρων παρέσχε. τοῦτο γὰρ εὐθὺς μὲν ἀπώλεσε Νέρωνα, μετ’ ὀλίγον δὲ Γάλβαν· τὸν μὲν γὰρ ὡς ληψόμενοι προήκαντο, τὸν δὲ μὴ λαμβάνοντες ἀπέκτειναν. εἶτα τὸν τοσοῦτον δώσοντα ζητοῦντες ἔφθησαν ἐν ταῖς ἀποστάσεσι καὶ προδοσίαις ἀναλώσαντες αὑτοὺς ἢ τυχόντες ὧν ἤλπισαν. τὰ μὲν οὖν καθ’ ἕκαστα τῶν γενομένων ἀπαγγέλλειν ἀκριβῶς τῆς πραγματικῆς ἱστορίας ἐστίν, ὅσα δὲ ἄξια λόγου τοῖς τῶν Καισάρων ἔργοις καὶ πάθεσι συμπέπτωκεν, οὐδὲ ἐμοὶ προσήκει παρελθεῖν.

[3] [1] Γάλβας Σουλπίκιος ὅτι μὲν ἰδιώτης πλουσιώτατος ἁπάντων εἰς τὸν Καισάρων παρῆλθεν οἶκον, ὁμολογεῖται· μέγα δὲ ἔχων εὐγενείας ἀξίωμα τὸν Σερουΐων οἶκον, αὐτὸς ἐφρόνει μεῖζον ἐπὶ τῇ Κάτλου συγγενείᾳ, πρωτεύσαντος ἀνδρὸς ἀρετῇ καὶ δόξῃ τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτόν, εἰ καὶ τὸ δύνασθαι [2] μᾶλλον ἑκὼν ἑτέροις παρῆκεν. ἦν δέ τι καὶ Λιβίᾳ τῇ Καίσαρος γυναικὶ κατὰ γένος προσήκων ὁ Γάλβας, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο Λιβίας παρασχούσης ὕπατος ἐκ Παλατίου προῆλθε. λέγεται δὲ καὶ στρατεύματος ἐν Γερμανίᾳ καλῶς ἄρξαι καὶ Λιβύης ἀνθύπατος γενόμενος σὺν ὀλίγοις ἐπαινεθῆναι. τὸ δὲ εὔκολον αὐτοῦ τῆς διαίτης καὶ φειδωλὸν ἐν δαπάναις καὶ ἀπέριττον αἰτίαν ἔσχεν αὐτοκράτορος γενομένου μικρολογίας, ἣν ἕωλόν τινα δόξαν εὐταξίας ἔφερε καὶ σωφροσύνης.

[3] ἐπέμφθη δὲ ὑπὸ Νέρωνος Ἰβηρίας ἄρχων, οὔπω δεδιδαγμένου φοβεῖσθαι τοὺς ἐν ἀξιώμασι μεγάλους τῶν πολιτῶν. ἐκείνῳ δὲ καὶ φύσει δοκοῦντι πρᾴῳ γεγονέναι προσετίθει πίστιν εὐλαβείας τὸ γῆρας.

[4] [1] Ἐπεὶ δέ, τῶν ἀλιτηρίων ἐπιτρόπων ὠμῶς καὶ ἀγρίως τὰς ἐπαρχίας ἐκείνῳ διαφορούντων, ἄλλο μὲν εἶχεν οὐδὲν βοηθεῖν, αὐτῷ δὲ τῷ φανερὸς εἶναι συναλγῶν καὶ συναδικούμενος ἁμῶς γέ πως ἀναπνοήν τινα καὶ παραμυθίαν τοῖς καταδικαζομένοις καὶ πωλουμένοις παρέσχε· καὶ ποιημάτων εἰς Νέρωνα γινομένων καὶ πολλαχοῦ περιφερομένων καὶ ᾀδομένων, οὐκ ἐκώλυεν οὐδὲ συνηγανάκτει τοῖς ἐπιτρόποις· ἐφ’ οἷς ἔτι μᾶλλον ἠγαπᾶτο ὑπὸ [2] τῶν ἀνθρώπων. καὶ γὰρ ἦν ἤδη συνήθης, ἔτος ὄγδοον ἐκεῖνο τὴν ἀρχὴν ἔχων ἐν ᾧ Ἰούνιος Οὐίνδιξ ἐπανέστη Νέρωνι, Γαλατίας ὢν στρατηγός. λέγεται μὲν οὖν καὶ πρὸ τῆς ἐμφανοῦς ἀποστάσεως γράμματα πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀφικέσθαι παρὰ τοῦ Οὐίνδικος, οἷς μήτε πιστεῦσαι μήτε μηνῦσαι καὶ κατειπεῖν, ὡς ἕτεροι τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν ἐπιστολὰς αὐτοῖς γραφείσας ἔπεμψαν πρὸς Νέρωνα καὶ διέφθειραν ὅσον ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς τὴν πρᾶξιν, ἧς ὕστερον μετασχόντες ὡμολόγησαν αὑτῶν οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ ἐκείνου [3] προδόται γεγονέναι. ἀλλ’ ἐπειδὴ λαμπρῶς τὸν πόλεμον ἐκφήνας ὁ Οὐίνδιξ ἔγραψε τῷ Γάλβᾳ παρακαλῶν ἀναδέξασθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν καὶ παρασχεῖν ἑαυτὸν ἰσχυρῷ σώματι ζητοῦντι κεφαλήν, ταῖς Γαλατίαις δέκα μυριάδας ἀνδρῶν ὡπλισμένων ἐχούσαις ἄλλας τε πλείονας ὁπλίσαι δυναμέναις, προὔθηκε βουλὴν τοῖς φίλοις. ὧν οἱ μὲν ἠξίουν περιμένειν καραδοκοῦντα τίνα κίνησιν ἡ [4] Ῥώμη καὶ φορὰν ἕξει πρὸς τὸν νεωτερισμόν· Τίτος δὲ Οὐίνιος ὁ τοῦ στρατηγικοῦ τάγματος ἡγεμὼν αὐτοῖς εἶπεν· “Ὦ Γάλβα, τίνα τρόπον βουλεύεσθε; τὸ γὰρ ζητεῖν Νέρωνι εἰ πιστοὶ μενοῦμεν, οὐκ ἤδη μενόντων ἐστίν. ὡς οὖν ὑπάρχοντος ἐχθροῦ Νέρωνος οὐ δὴ προετέον τὴν τοῦ Οὐίνδικος φιλίαν, ἢ καὶ κατηγορητέον εὐθὺς αὐτοῦ καὶ πολεμητέον, ὅτι σὲ βούλεται Ῥωμαίους ἔχειν ἄρχοντα μᾶλλον ἢ Νέρωνα τύραννον.”

[5] [1] Ἐκ τούτου προγράμματι μὲν ἐδήλωσεν ὁ Γάλβας ἡμέραν ἐν ᾗ τὰς κατὰ μέρος ἐλευθερώσεις ἀποδώσει τοῖς δεομένοις, λαλιὰ δὲ καὶ φήμη προεκπεσοῦσα πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων ἤθροισε προθύμων ἐπὶ τὸν νεωτερισμόν. οὐκ ἔφθη γοῦν φανερὸς ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος γενόμενος, καὶ πάντες [2] αὐτὸν ὁμοφώνως αὐτοκράτορα προσεῖπον. ὁ δὲ ταύτην μὲν εὐθὺς οὐ προσεδέξατο τὴν προσηγορίαν, κατηγορήσας δὲ τοῦ Νέρωνος, καὶ τῶν ἀνῃρημένων ἀνδρῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους ὀλοφυράμενος, ὡμολόγησεν ἐπιδώσειν τῇ πατρίδι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ πρόνοιαν, οὔτε Καῖσαρ οὔτ’ αὐτοκράτωρ, στρατηγὸς δὲ συγκλήτου καὶ δήμου Ῥωμαίων ὀνομαζόμενος.

[3] Ὅτι δ’ ὀρθῶς ὁ Οὐίνδιξ καὶ λελογισμένως ἐξεκαλεῖτο τὸν Γάλβαν ἐπὶ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, ἐπιστώσατο μάρτυρι τῷ Νέρωνι. προσποιούμενος γὰρ ἐκείνου καταφρονεῖν καὶ παρ’ οὐδὲν ἡγεῖσθαι τὰ Γαλατῶν, ἅμα τῷ πυθέσθαι τὰ περὶ Γάλβαν (ἔτυχε δὲ λελουμένος καὶ ἀριστῶν) ἀνέτρεψε τὴν [4] τράπεζαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ συγκλήτου ψηφισαμένης πολέμιον τὸν Γάλβαν αὐτός τε παίζειν καὶ θρασύνεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς φίλους βουλόμενος, οὐ φαύλην ἔφη πρόρρησιν ἐμπεπτωκέναι λογισμοῦ δεομένῳ χρημάτων αὐτῷ· καὶ τὰ μὲν Γαλατῶν, ὅταν ὑποχείριοι γένωνται, λαφυραγωγήσεσθαι, ἡ δὲ Γάλβα πάρεστιν οὐσία χρῆσθαι καὶ πωλεῖν ἤδη πολεμίου πεφηνότος. οὗτός τε δὴ τὰ Γάλβα πιπράσκειν ἐκέλευε, καὶ Γάλβας ἀκούσας, ὅσα Νέρωνος ἦν ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ κηρύττων εὕρισκε πολλοὺς προθυμοτέρους ὠνητάς.

[6] [1] Ἀφισταμένων δὲ πολλῶν τοῦ Νέρωνος καὶ πάντων ἐπιεικῶς τῷ Γάλβᾳ προστιθεμένων, μόνος Κλώδιος Μάκρος ἐν Λιβύῃ καὶ Οὐεργίνιος Ῥοῦφος ἐν Γαλατίᾳ τοῦ Γερμανικοῦ στρατεύματος ἡγούμενος αὐτοὶ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἔπραττον, οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν [2] αἵρεσιν ἔχοντες. ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν Κλώδιος, ἐν ἁρπαγαῖς πραγμάτων γεγονὼς καὶ φόνοις ἀνδρῶν δι’ ὠμότητα καὶ πλεονεξίαν, δῆλος ἦν ἐν τῷ μήτε κατέχειν μήτε ἀφιέναι τὴν ἀρχὴν δύνασθαι περιφερόμενος, Οὐεργίνιος δὲ ταγμάτων ἐπιστατῶν δυνατωτάτων πολλάκις αὐτὸν ἀναγορευόντων αὐτοκράτορα καὶ βιαζομένων οὔτε αὐτὸς ἔφη λήψεσθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν οὔτε ἄλλῳ περιόψεσθαι διδομένην, ὃν ἂν μὴ ἡ [3] σύγκλητος ἕληται. ταῦτα τὸν Γάλβαν οὐ μετρίως ἐθορύβει τὸ πρῶτον· ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰ Οὐεργινίου καὶ Οὐίνδικος στρατεύματα τρόπον τινὰ βίᾳ τοὺς ἡγεμόνας, ὥσπερ ἡνιόχους κρατῆσαι χαλινῶν μὴ δυνηθέντας, εἰς μάχην ἐξενεγκόντα μεγάλην συνέρραξαν, καὶ Οὐίνδικος ἑαυτὸν ἀνελόντος ἐπὶ δισμυρίοις Γαλατῶν πεσοῦσι, διῆλθε λόγος ὡς βουλομένων πάντων ἐπὶ νίκῃ τοσαύτῃ τὸν Οὐεργίνιον ἀναδέξασθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἢ πάλιν [4] μεταβαλουμένων πρὸς Νέρωνα, τότε δὴ παντάπασι περίφοβος γενόμενος ὁ Γάλβας ἔγραψε τῷ Οὐεργινίῳ, παρακαλῶν κοινοπραγεῖν καὶ διαφυλάσσειν ἅμα τὴν ἡγεμονίαν καὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν Ῥωμαίοις· αὖθις δὲ μετὰ τῶν φίλων εἰς Κλουνίαν, Ἰβηρικὴν πόλιν, ἀναχωρήσας ἐν τῷ μετανοεῖν περὶ τῶν γεγονότων καὶ ποθεῖν τὴν συνήθη καὶ σύντροφον ἀπραγμοσύνην μᾶλλον ἢ πράττειν τι τῶν ἀναγκαίων διέτριβεν.

[7] [1] Ἦν δὲ θέρος ἤδη, καὶ βραχὺ πρὸ δείλης ἧκεν ἀπὸ Ῥώμης Ἴκελος ἀνὴρ ἀπελεύθερος ἑβδομαῖος. πυθόμενος δὲ τὸν Γάλβαν ἀναπαύεσθαι καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐβάδιζε συντόνως ἐπὶ τὸ δωμάτιον αὐτοῦ, καὶ βίᾳ τῶν θαλαμηπόλων ἀνοίξας καὶ παρελθὼν [2] ἀπήγγειλεν ὅτι καὶ ζῶντος ἔτι τοῦ Νέρωνος, οὐκ ὄντος δὲ φανεροῦ, τὸ στράτευμα πρῶτον, εἶτα ὁ δῆμος καὶ ἡ σύγκλητος αὐτοκράτορα τὸν Γάλβαν ἀναγορεύσειεν, ὀλίγον δὲ ὕστερον ἀπαγγελθείη τεθνηκὼς ἐκεῖνος· οὐ μὴν αὐτός γε πιστεύσας ἔφη τοῖς ἀπαγγέλλουσιν, ἀλλὰ ἐπελθὼν τῷ νεκρῷ καὶ κείμενον θεασάμενος, οὕτως ἐξελθεῖν. [3] ταῦτα ἀπαγγελλόμενα λαμπρὸν ἦρε τὸν Γάλβαν, καὶ συνέδραμε πλῆθος ἀνδρῶν ἐπὶ θύρας ἐκτεθαρρηκότων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ βεβαίως. καίτοι τὸ τάχος ἦν ἄπιστον. ἀλλὰ καὶ δυσὶν ἡμέραις ὕστερον Οὐίνιος Τίτος ἀπὸ στρατοπέδου μεθ’ ἑτέρων ἀφίκετο τὰ δόξαντα τῇ συγκλήτῳ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀπαγγέλλων. οὗτος μὲν οὖν εἰς τάξιν ἔντιμον προήχθη· τῷ δ’ ἀπελευθέρῳ δακτυλίους τε χρυσοῦς ἔδωκε καὶ Μαρκιανὸς ὁ Ἴκελος ἤδη καλούμενος εἶχε τὴν πρώτην ἐν τοῖς ἀπελευθέροις δύναμιν.

[8] [1] Ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ Νυμφίδιος Σαβῖνος, οὐκ ἠρέμα καὶ κατὰ μικρόν, ἀλλὰ συλλήβδην ὁμοῦ, πάντα πράγματα φέρων περιήνεγκεν εἰς ἑαυτόν, ὡς Γάλβαν μὲν ὄντα πρεσβύτην καὶ μόλις εἰς Ῥώμην ἐξαρκέσοντα φοράδην κομισθῆναι διὰ γῆρας· ἦν γὰρ ἐτῶν τριῶν καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα· τὰ δὲ αὐτόθι στρατεύματα, καὶ πάλαι πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐνόως ἔχοντα καὶ νῦν ἑνὸς ἐξηρτημένα μόνου, διὰ τὸ τῆς δωρεᾶς μέγεθος εὐεργέτην ἐκεῖνον ἡγεῖσθαι, [2] Γάλβαν δὲ χρεωφειλέτην. εὐθὺς οὖν Τιγελλίνῳ μὲν τῷ συνάρχοντι προσέταξεν ἀποθέσθαι τὸ ξίφος, ὑποδοχὰς δὲ ποιούμενος ἐδείπνιζε τοὺς ὑπατικοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἡγεμονικούς, ἔτι τὸ Γάλβα προστιθεὶς ὄνομα ταῖς κλήσεσιν, ἔν τε τῷ στρατοπέδῳ πολλοὺς παρεσκεύασε λέγειν ὡς πεμπτέον ἐστὶ πρὸς Γάλβαν αἰτουμένους ἔπαρχον εἰσαεὶ Νυμφίδιον ἄνευ συνάρχοντος.

[3] Ἃ δὲ ἡ σύγκλητος εἰς τιμὴν ἔπραττεν αὐτοῦ καὶ δύναμιν, ἀνακαλοῦσα εὐεργέτην καὶ συντρέχουσα καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπὶ θύρας καὶ παντὸς ἐξάρχειν δόγματος ἀξιοῦσα καὶ βεβαιοῦν, ἔτι περαιτέρω τόλμης ἀνῆγεν αὐτόν, ὥστε ὀλίγου χρόνου τοῖς θεραπεύουσι μὴ μόνον ἐπίφθονον, ἀλλὰ καὶ φοβερὸν [4] εἶναι. τῶν δ’ ὑπάτων οἰκέτας δημοσίους προχειρισαμένων τὰ δόγματα κομίζοντας τῷ αὐτοκράτορι, καὶ τὰ καλούμενα διπλώματα σεσημασμένα δόντων, ἃ γνωρίζοντες οἱ κατὰ πόλιν ἄρχοντες ἐν ταῖς τῶν ὀχημάτων ἀμοιβαῖς ἐπιταχύνουσι τὰς προπομπὰς τῶν γραμματηφόρων, οὐ μετρίως ἠγανάκτησεν ὅτι μὴ παρ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ σφραγῖδα καὶ στρατιώτας λαβόντες ἀνέπεμψαν, ἀλλὰ λέγεται καὶ βουλεύσασθαι περὶ τῶν ὑπάτων, εἶτα τὴν ὀργὴν ἀπολογησαμένοις καὶ δεηθεῖσιν [5] ἀνῆκε. τῷ δὲ δήμῳ χαριζόμενος οὐκ ἐκώλυε τὸν παραπίπτοντα τῶν Νέρωνος ἀποτυμπανίζειν. Σπῖκλον μὲν οὖν τὸν μονομάχον ἀνδριάσι Νέρωνος ἑλκομένοις ὑποβαλόντες ἐν ἀγορᾷ διέφθειραν, Ἀπόνιον δέ τινα τῶν κατηγορικῶν ἀνατρέψαντες ἁμάξας λιθοφόρους ἐπήγαγον, ἄλλους δὲ διέσπασαν πολλούς, ἐνίους μηδὲν ἀδικοῦντας, ὥστε καὶ Μαύρικον, ἄνδρα τῶν ἀρίστων καὶ ὄντα καὶ δοκοῦντα, πρὸς τὴν σύγκλητον εἰπεῖν ὅτι φοβεῖται μὴ ταχὺ Νέρωνα ζητήσωσιν.

[9] [1] Οὕτω δὲ προσάγων ὁ Νυμφίδιος ἐγγυτέρω ταῖς ἐλπίσιν οὐκ ἔφευγε Γαΐου Καίσαρος υἱὸς λέγεσθαι τοῦ μετὰ Τιβέριον ἄρξαντος. ἐγνώκει γὰρ ὁ Γάϊος, ὡς ἔοικε, τὴν τεκοῦσαν αὐτὸν ἔτι μειράκιον ὢν οὐκ ἀειδῆ τὴν ὄψιν οὖσαν, ἐκ δ’ ἀκεστρίας ἐπιμισθίου Καλλίστῳ, Καίσαρος ἀπελευθέρῳ, [2] γεγενημένην. ἀλλ’ ἦν ἡ πρὸς Γάϊον ἔντευξις αὐτῆς, ὡς ἔοικε, νεωτέρα τῆς Νυμφιδίου γενέσεως, αἰτίαν δὲ ἔσχεν ἐκ Μαρτιανοῦ τοῦ μονομάχου γεγονέναι, τῆς Νυμφιδίας ἐρασθείσης διὰ δόξαν αὐτοῦ, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐδόκει καθ’ ὁμοιότητα [3] τῆς ἰδέας ἐκείνῳ προσήκειν. ἀλλ’ ὁμολογῶν γε Νυμφιδίας εἶναι μητρὸς ἔργον μὲν αὑτοῦ μόνου τὴν Νέρωνος ἐποιεῖτο κατάλυσιν, ἆθλα δὲ αὐτῆς οὐ νομίζων ἱκανὰ καρποῦσθαι τὰς τιμὰς καὶ τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὸ Σπόρῳ τοῦ Νέρωνος συγκαθεύδειν, ὃν εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῆς πυρᾶς ἔτι καιομένου τοῦ νεκροῦ μεταπεμψάμενος ἐκεῖνος ἐν γαμετῆς εἶχε τάξει καὶ Ποππαίαν προσηγόρευεν, ἐπὶ τὴν διαδοχὴν παρεδύετο [4] τῆς ἡγεμονίας. καὶ τὰ μὲν αὐτὸς ἐν Ῥώμῃ διὰ τῶν φίλων ὑπειργάζετο, καὶ γυναικῶν τινων αὐτῷ καὶ συγκλητικῶν ἀνδρῶν κρύφα συλλαμβανομένων, ἕνα δὲ τῶν φίλων, Γελλιανόν, εἰς Ἰβηρίαν ἔπεμψεν κατασκεψόμενον.

[10] [1] Τῷ δὲ Γάλβᾳ μετὰ τὴν Νέρωνος τελευτὴν ἐχώρει πάντα. Οὐεργίνιος δὲ Ῥοῦφος ἀμφίβολος ὢν ἔτι φροντίδα παρεῖχε, μὴ τῷ δυνάμεως πολλῆς καὶ μαχιμωτάτης ἄρχειν προσειληφὼς τὸ νενικηκέναι Οὐίνδικα καὶ κεχειρῶσθαι μέγα μέρος τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίας, ἐν σάλῳ γενομένην ἀποστατικῷ Γαλατίαν ἅπασαν, ὑπακούσαι τοῖς παρακαλοῦσιν [2] αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀρχήν. οὐδενὸς γὰρ ἦν ὄνομα μεῖζον, οὐδὲ εἶχε δόξαν οὐδεὶς ὅσην ὁ Οὐεργίνιος, ὡς μεγίστη ῥοπὴ τοῖς Ῥωμαίων πράγμασι τυραννίδος ὁμοῦ χαλεπῆς καὶ Γαλατικῶν πολέμων ἀπαλλαγῇ γενόμενος. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος τότε τοῖς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐμμένων λογισμοῖς ἐφύλαττε τῇ συγκλήτῳ τὴν αἵρεσιν τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος. καίτοι φανερᾶς γε τῆς Νέρωνος τελευτῆς γενομένης τό τε πλῆθος ἐνέκειτο τῷ Οὐεργινίῳ πάλιν, καὶ τῶν χιλιάρχων τις τῶν ἐν τῇ σκηνῇ σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος ἐκέλευε τὸν Οὐεργίνιον δέχεσθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν [3] ἢ τὸν σίδηρον. ἐπεὶ δὲ Φάβιος Οὐάλης ἄρχων ἑνὸς τάγματος ὥρκωσε πρῶτος εἰς Γάλβαν, καὶ γράμματα ἧκεν ἀπὸ Ῥώμης περὶ ὧν ἡ σύγκλητος ἐψηφίσατο, χαλεπῶς μὲν καὶ μόλις, ἔπεισε δ’ οὖν τοὺς στρατιώτας αὐτοκράτορα τὸν Γάλβαν ἀνειπεῖν· καὶ πέμψαντος αὐτοῦ διάδοχον Φλάκκον Ὁρδεώνιον ἐδέξατο. καὶ παραδοὺς ἐκείνῳ τὴν δύναμιν αὐτὸς ἀπήντησε τῷ Γάλβᾳ πρόσω χωροῦντι, καὶ συνανέστρεφεν, οὔτε ὀργῆς οὔτε τιμῆς [4] ἐπιδήλου τυγχάνων. αἴτιος δὲ τοῦ μὲν αὐτὸς ὁ Γάλβας αἰδούμενος τὸν ἄνδρα, τοῦ δὲ οἱ φίλοι καὶ μάλιστα Οὐίνιος Τίτος, ὑπὸ φθόνου τὸν Οὐεργίνιον οἰόμενος μὲν κολούειν, ἠγνόει δὲ ἄρα τῷ Οὐεργινίου χρηστῷ δαίμονι συνεργῶν, ἤδη τὸν ἄνδρα πολέμων καὶ κακῶν, ὅσα τοὺς ἄλλους ἡγεμόνας κατέσχεν, ἐκτὸς εἰς βίον ἀκύμονα καὶ γῆρας εἰρήνης καὶ ἡσυχίας μεστὸν ὑπεκτιθεμένῳ.

[11] [1] Γάλβαν δὲ περὶ Νάρβωνα, πόλιν Γαλατικήν, οἱ παρὰ τῆς συγκλήτου πρέσβεις ἐντυχόντες ἠσπάζοντο, καὶ παρεκάλουν ἐπιφανῆναι τῷ δήμῳ ποθοῦντι ταχέως. ὁ δὲ τάς τε ἄλλας παρεῖχεν ἐντεύξεις καὶ συνουσίας αὐτοῖς φιλανθρώπους καὶ δημοτικάς, πρός τε τὰς ἑστιάσεις πολλῆς κατασκευῆς καὶ θεραπείας βασιλικῆς παρούσης, ἣν ἐκ τῶν Νέρωνος ὁ Νυμφίδιος αὐτῷ προσέπεμψεν, οὐδενὶ χρώμενος ἐκείνων, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πᾶσιν, εὐδοκίμει, μεγαλόφρων ἀνὴρ καὶ κρείττων ἀπειροκαλίας [2] φαινόμενος. ταχὺ μέντοι τὰ γενναῖα ταῦτα καὶ ἄτυφα καὶ πολιτικὰ δημαγωγίαν Οὐίνιος ἀποφαίνων καὶ κομψότητα μεγάλων ἀπαξιοῦσαν αὑτήν, ἔπεισε χρήμασί τε χρῆσθαι τοῖς Νέρωνος καὶ περὶ τὰς ὑποδοχὰς μὴ φείδεσθαι τῆς βασιλικῆς πολυτελείας. καὶ ὅλως αἴσθησιν αὑτοῦ κατὰ μικρὸν ὑπὸ τῷ Οὐινίῳ γενησομένου παρεῖχεν ὁ πρεσβύτης.

[12] [1] Ἦν δὲ Οὐίνιος ἀργυρίου μὲν ἐσχάτως καὶ παρ’ ὁντινοῦν ἥττων, ἔνοχος δὲ καὶ τοῖς περὶ γυναῖκας ἁμαρτήμασιν. ἔτι γὰρ ὢν νέος καὶ στρατευόμενος ὑπὸ Καλβισίῳ Σαβίνῳ τὴν πρώτην στρατείαν ἀκόλαστον οὖσαν τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ ἡγεμόνος παρεισήγαγε νύκτωρ εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον ἐν ἐσθῆτι στρατιωτικῇ καὶ διέφθειρεν ἐν τοῖς [2] ἀρχείοις, ἃ πριγκίπια καλοῦσι Ῥωμαῖοι. ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ Γάϊος Καῖσαρ ἔδησεν αὐτόν· ἐκείνου δὲ ἀποθανόντος εὐτυχίᾳ χρησάμενος ἀπελύθη. δειπνῶν δὲ παρὰ Κλαυδίῳ Καίσαρι ποτήριον ἀργυροῦν ὑφείλετο· πυθόμενος δὲ ὁ Καῖσαρ τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ πάλιν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἐκάλεσεν, ἐλθόντι δὲ ἐκέλευσεν ἐκείνῳ μηδὲν ἀργυροῦν, ἀλλὰ κεράμεα πάντα προσφέρειν καὶ παρατιθέναι τοὺς ὑπηρέτας.

[3] τοῦτο μὲν οὖν διὰ τὴν Καίσαρος μετριότητα κωμικωτέραν γενομένην γέλωτος, οὐκ ὀργῆς ἄξιον ἔδοξεν· ἃ δὲ τὸν Γάλβαν ἔχων ὑφ’ αὑτῷ, καὶ δυνάμενος μέγιστον ἐπὶ χρήμασιν, ἔπραττε, τραγικῶν παθῶν καὶ συμφορῶν μεγάλων τοῖς μὲν αἰτίαν, τοῖς δὲ πρόφασιν παρέσχεν.

[13] [1] Ὁ γὰρ Νυμφίδιος εὐθὺς ἐπανελθόντος τοῦ Γελλιανοῦ πρὸς αὐτόν, ὃν ἔπεμψε τοῦ Γάλβα τρόπον τινὰ κατάσκοπον, ἀκούσας τῆς μὲν αὐλῆς καὶ τῶν δορυφόρων ἔπαρχον ἀποδεδεῖχθαι Κορνήλιον Λάκωνα, τὸ δὲ σύμπαν εἶναι τοῦ Οὐινίου κράτος, αὐτῷ δὲ μηδέποτε τοῦ Γάλβα στῆναι πλησίον ἐγγεγονέναι μηδὲ ἐντυχεῖν ἰδίᾳ, πάντων αὐτὸν ὑφορωμένων καὶ διαφυλαττόντων, ἐθορυβήθη· [2] καὶ συναγαγὼν τοὺς ἡγεμόνας τοῦ στρατεύματος ἔφη Γάλβαν μὲν αὐτὸν εἶναι πρεσβύτην ἐπιεικῆ καὶ μέτριον, ἐλάχιστα δὲ τοῖς αὑτοῦ χρώμενον λογισμοῖς ὑπὸ Οὐινίου καὶ Λάκωνος οὐκ εὖ διοικεῖσθαι. πρὶν οὖν λαθεῖν αὐτοὺς ἣν ἔσχε Τιγελλῖνος ἰσχὺν ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι κτησαμένους, πεμπτέον εἶναι πρὸς τὸν ἡγεμόνα πρέσβεις ἀπὸ στρατοπέδου τοὺς διδάξοντας ὅτι τῶν φίλων δύο μόνους τούτους ἀποσκευασάμενος ἡδίων παρέσται [3] πᾶσι καὶ ποθεινότερος. ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῦτα λέγων οὐκ ἔπειθεν, ἀλλ’ ἄτοπον ἐδόκει καὶ ἀλλόκοτον ἡγεμόνα πρεσβύτην, ὥσπερ ἄρτι γευόμενον ἐξουσίας μειράκιον, οἷς χρήσεται φίλοις ἢ μή, ῥυθμίζειν, ἑτέραν ὁδὸν τραπόμενος ἔγραφε τῷ Γάλβᾳ δεδιττόμενος, νῦν μὲν ὡς ὕπουλα καὶ μετέωρα πολλὰ τῆς πόλεως ἐχούσης, νῦν δὲ Κλώδιον Μάκρον ἐν Λιβύῃ τὰ σιτηγὰ κατέχειν, αὖθις δὲ παρακινεῖν τὰ Γερμανικὰ τάγματα, καὶ περὶ τῶν ἐν Συρίᾳ καὶ Ἰουδαίᾳ δυνάμεων ὅμοια πυνθάνεσθαι. [4] τοῦ δὲ Γάλβα μὴ πάνυ τὸν νοῦν προσέχοντος αὐτῷ μηδὲ πιστεύοντος ἔγνω προεπιχειρεῖν· καίτοι Κλώδιος Κέλσος Ἀντιοχεύς, ἀνὴρ ἔμφρων, εὔνους δὲ ἐκείνῳ καὶ πιστός, ἀπηγόρευε, λέγων οὐκ ἂν οἴεσθαι μίαν ἐν Ῥώμῃ συνοικίαν Καίσαρα προσειπεῖν Νυμφίδιον. ἀλλὰ πολλοὶ κατεγέλων, καὶ Μιθριδάτης ὁ Ποντικὸς ἐπισκώπτων τὴν φαλακρότητα καὶ ῥυσσότητα τοῦ Γάλβα νῦν ἔφη τινὰ δοκεῖν εἶναι Ῥωμαίοις, ὀφθέντα δὲ φανεῖσθαι τῶν ἡμερῶν τούτων ἃς καλεῖται Καῖσαρ, ὄνειδος.

[14] [1] Ἔδοξεν οὖν περὶ μέσας νύκτας εἰς τὴν παρεμβολὴν παραγαγόντας ἀναδεικνύειν αὐτοκράτορα τὸν Νυμφίδιον. πρῶτος δὲ τῶν χιλιάρχων Ἀντώνιος Ὁνωράτος ἑσπέρας γενομένης τοὺς ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ στρατιώτας συναγαγὼν ἐκάκιζε μὲν αὑτόν, ἐκάκιζε δὲ ἐκείνους ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ τροπὰς τοσαύτας τρεπομένους κατ’ οὐδένα λογισμὸν οὐδὲ αἵρεσιν ἀμεινόνων, ἀλλὰ δαίμονός τινος αὐτοὺς ἐκ προδοσίας εἰς προδοσίαν ἐλαύνοντος.

[2] καὶ τὰ μὲν πρῶτα προφάσεις ἔχειν τὰ Νέρωνος ἐγκλήματα· νῦν δὲ Γάλβαν προδιδόναι, τίνα φόνον μητρὸς ἐγκαλοῦντας ἢ σφαγὴν γυναικός, ἢ ποίαν αἰδουμένους θυμέλην ἢ τραγῳδίαν τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος; “Ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ ἐκεῖνον ἐπὶ τούτοις ὑπεμείναμεν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν, ἀλλὰ Νυμφιδίῳ πεισθέντες ὅτι πρῶτος ἡμᾶς ἐγκατέλιπε καὶ πέφευγεν εἰς [3] Αἴγυπτον. πότερον οὖν Νέρωνι Γάλβαν ἐπιθυσώμεθα, καὶ τὸν ἐκ Νυμφιδίας ἑλόμενοι Καίσαρα τὸν ἐκ Λιβίας ἀνέλωμεν, ὡς τὸν ἐξ Ἀγριππίνης ἀνείλομεν; ἢ τούτῳ δίκην ἐπιθέντες ὧν δέδρακε, τιμωροὶ μὲν Νέρωνος, Γάλβα δὲ φύλακες ἀγαθοὶ καὶ πιστοὶ φανῶμεν;”

Ταῦτα λέγοντι τῷ χιλιάρχῳ προσέθεντο πάντες οἱ στρατιῶται, καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους προσιόντες ἐμμένειν παρεκάλουν τῇ πρὸς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα πίστει· [4] καὶ τοὺς πλείους μετέστησαν. ἀρθείσης δὲ βοῆς, εἴτε πεισθεὶς ὁ Νυμφίδιος, ὥς φασιν ἔνιοι, καλεῖν αὐτὸν ἤδη τοὺς στρατιώτας, εἴτε προλαβεῖν σπεύδων τὸ θορυβοῦν ἔτι καὶ διστάζον, ὑπὸ φωτὶ πολλῷ προῄει, λόγον τινὰ κομίζων ἐν βιβλίῳ γεγραμμένον ὑπὸ Κιγγωνίου Βάρρωνος, ὃν ἐκμεμελετήκει [5] πρὸς τοὺς στρατιώτας εἰπεῖν. ἰδὼν δὲ κεκλεισμένας τοῦ στρατοπέδου τὰς πύλας καὶ περὶ τὰ τείχη πολλοὺς ὡπλισμένους ἔδεισε· καὶ προσιὼν ἠρώτα τί βούλονται καὶ τίνος κελεύσαντος ἐν ὅπλοις γεγόνασιν. ἀπαντώσης δ’ αὐτῷ παρὰ πάντων μιᾶς φωνῆς, Γάλβαν αὐτοκράτορα γινώσκειν, κἀκεῖνος ὁμόσε χωρῶν ἐπευφήμει καὶ [6] τοὺς ἑπομένους ἐκέλευε. τῶν δὲ παρὰ τὰς πύλας παρέντων αὐτὸν εἰσελθεῖν μετ’ ὀλίγων αὐτὸς ἀκοντίζεται λόγχῃ· καὶ ταύτην μὲν ἐδέξατο πρὸ αὐτοῦ θυρεῷ Σεπτίμιος, ἄλλων δὲ γυμνοῖς ξίφεσιν ἐπιφερομένων φυγὼν καὶ διωχθεὶς ἐν οἰκήματι στρατιώτου σφάττεται. καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν εἰς μέσον ἑλκύσαντες καὶ περιβαλόντες κιγκλίδα θέαμα τοῖς βουλομένοις μεθ’ ἡμέραν παρέσχον.

[15] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τοῦ Νυμφιδίου καταστρέψαντος ὁ Γάλβας πυθόμενος, καὶ τῶν συνωμοτῶν αὐτοῦ κελεύσας ἀποθανεῖν ὅσοι μὴ δι’ αὑτῶν εὐθὺς ἀπέθανον, ἐν οἷς ἦν καὶ Κιγγώνιος ὁ τὸν λόγον γράψας καὶ Μιθριδάτης ὁ Ποντικός, ἔδοξε μὴ νομίμως, εἰ καὶ δικαίως, μηδὲ δημοτικῶς ἀνῃρηκέναι πρὸ κρίσεως ἄνδρας οὐκ ἀσήμους. ἕτερον γὰρ ἡγεμονίας σχῆμα προσεδέχοντο πάντες, ἐξαπατώμενοι [2] συνήθως ὑπὸ τῶν ἐν ἀρχῇ λεγομένων. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἠνίασεν αὐτοὺς ἀνὴρ ὑπατικὸς καὶ Νέρωνι πιστὸς ἀποθανεῖν κελευσθείς, Πετρώνιος Τουρπιλιανός. Μάκρον γὰρ ἐν Λιβύῃ διὰ Τρεβωνίου καὶ Φοντήϊον ἐν Γερμανίᾳ διὰ Οὐάλεντος ἀνελὼν πρόφασιν εἶχεν ἐν ὅπλοις καὶ στρατοπέδοις ὄντας φοβηθῆναι. Τουρπιλιανὸν δέ, γέροντα γυμνὸν καὶ ἄνοπλον, λόγου μεταλαβεῖν οὐδὲν ἐκώλυεν, εἴ τις ἣν ἐπαγγέλλεται μετριότητα τοῖς πράγμασιν ἔργῳ φυλάξειν ἔμελλε.

[3] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τοιαύτας ἔχει μέμψεις. ἐπεὶ δὲ προσιὼν ἀπεῖχε τῆς πόλεως περὶ πέντε καὶ εἴκοσι σταδίους, ἐνετύγχανεν ἀκοσμίᾳ καὶ θορύβῳ τῶν ἐρετῶν τὴν ὁδὸν προκατεχόντων καὶ περικεχυμένων πανταχόθεν. οὗτοι δὲ ἦσαν οὓς εἰς ἓν τάγμα [4] ὁ Νέρων συλλοχίσας ἀπέφηνε στρατιώτας· καὶ τότε παρόντες ἐκβεβαιώσασθαι τὴν στρατείαν οὔτ’ ὀφθῆναι τοῖς ἀπαντῶσιν οὔτ’ ἀκουσθῆναι παρίεσαν τὸν αὐτοκράτορα, ἀλλ’ ἐθορύβουν βοῇ σημεῖα τῷ τάγματι καὶ χώραν αἰτοῦντες. ἐκείνου δὲ ὑπερτιθεμένου καὶ πάλιν εἰπεῖν κελεύσαντος, ἀρνήσεως σχῆμα τὴν ἀναβολὴν εἶναι φάσκοντες ἠγανάκτουν καὶ παρείποντο μὴ φειδόμενοι βοῆς. ἐνίων δὲ καὶ τὰς μαχαίρας σπασαμένων, ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ἱππεῖς ἐμβαλεῖν αὐτοῖς ὁ Γάλβας. ὑπέστη δὲ οὐδεὶς ἐκείνων, ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν εὐθὺς ἀνατραπέντες, οἱ δὲ φεύγοντες διεφθάρησαν, οὐ χρηστὸν οὐδὲ αἴσιον ποιοῦντες τῷ Γάλβᾳ τὸν οἰωνὸν εἰσιόντι διὰ πολλοῦ φόνου καὶ νεκρῶν τοσούτων εἰς τὴν πόλιν. ἀλλ’ εἰ καί τις αὐτοῦ κατεφρόνει πρότερον ἀσθενοῦς καὶ γέροντος ὁρωμένου, τότε πᾶσι φρικώδης καὶ φοβερὸς ἐγένετο.

[16] [1] Βουλόμενος δὲ τῆς περὶ τὰς δωρεὰς ἀμετρίας καὶ πολυτελείας τοῦ Νέρωνος ἀποδεικνύναι μεγάλην μεταβολήν, ἀστοχεῖν ἐδόκει τοῦ πρέποντος. Κάνου γὰρ αὐλήσαντος αὐτῷ παρὰ δεῖπνον (ἀκρόαμα δὲ ἦν ὁ Κάνος εὐδοκιμούμενον) ἐπαινέσας καὶ ἀποδεξάμενος ἐκέλευσεν αὑτῷ κομισθῆναι τὸ γλωσσόκομον· καὶ λαβὼν χρυσοῦς τινας ἐπέδωκε τῷ Κάνῳ, φήσας ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων, οὐκ [2] ἐκ τῶν δημοσίων χαρίζεσθαι. τὰς δὲ δωρεὰς ἃς Νέρων ἔδωκε τοῖς περὶ σκηνὴν καὶ παλαίστραν, ἀπαιτεῖσθαι συντόνως κελεύσας πλὴν τοῦ δεκάτου μέρους, εἶτα μικρὰ καὶ γλίσχρα κομιζόμενος (ἀνηλώκεσαν γὰρ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν λαβόντων, ἐφήμεροι καὶ σατυρικοὶ τοῖς βίοις ἄνθρωποι) τοὺς πριαμένους παρ’ αὐτῶν ἢ λαβόντας ὁτιοῦν [3] ἀνεζήτει καὶ παρ’ ἐκείνων ἐξέπραττε. τοῦ δὲ πράγματος ὅρον οὐκ ἔχοντος, ἀλλὰ πόρρω νεμομένου καὶ προϊόντος ἐπὶ πολλούς, αὐτὸς μὲν ἠδόξει, φθόνον δὲ καὶ μῖσος εἶχεν Οὐίνιος, ὡς τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἅπασιν ἀνελεύθερον παρέχων τὸν ἡγεμόνα καὶ μικρολόγον, αὐτὸς δὲ χρώμενος ἀσώτως καὶ λαμβάνων πάντα καὶ πιπράσκων.

[4] ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ἡσίοδος

ἀρχομένου τε πίθου καὶ λήγοντος κορέσασθαι

φησὶ δεῖν, ὁ δὲ Οὐίνιος ὁρῶν ἀσθενῆ καὶ γέροντα τὸν Γάλβαν ἐνεπίμπλατο τῆς τύχης, ὡς ἅμα μὲν ἀρχομένης, ἅμα δὲ φθινούσης.

[17] [1] Ὁ δὲ πρεσβύτης ἠδικεῖτο τὰ μὲν πρῶτα τοῦ Οὐινίου κακῶς διοικοῦντος, ἃ δὲ αὐτὸς ὀρθῶς προῃρεῖτο διαβάλλοντος ἢ κωλύοντος· οἷον ἦν τὸ περὶ τὰς κολάσεις τῶν Νερωνιανῶν.

[2] ἀπέκτεινε γὰρ τοὺς πονηρούς, ἐν οἷς ἦν ὁ Ἥλιος καὶ Πολύκλειτος καὶ Πετῖνος καὶ Πατρόβιος. ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἐκρότει, καὶ δι’ ἀγορᾶς αὐτῶν ἀγομένων ἐβόα καλὴν μὲν εἶναι καὶ θεοφιλῆ πομπήν, ἀπαιτεῖν δὲ καὶ θεοὺς καὶ ἀνθρώπους τὸν διδάσκαλον καὶ παιδαγωγὸν τῆς τυραννίδος Τιγελλῖνον. ἐφθάκει δὲ ὁ γενναῖος προειληφὼς ἀρραβῶσι [3] μεγάλοις τὸν Οὐίνιον. εἶτα Τουρπιλιανὸς μέν, ὅτι μὴ προεδίδου μηδὲ ἐμίσει τὸν ἡγεμόνα τοιοῦτον ὄντα μισούμενος, ἄλλο δὲ μηδὲ ἓν μέγα συναδικήσας, ἀπέθανεν· ὁ δὲ καὶ ποιήσας ἄξιον θανάτου Νέρωνα καὶ γενόμενον τοιοῦτον ἐγκαταλιπὼν καὶ προδοὺς περιῆν, μέγα δίδαγμα τοῦ μηδὲν ἄπρακτον εἶναι παρὰ Οὐινίῳ μηδὲ [4] ἀνέλπιστον τοῖς διδοῦσιν. οὐδενὸς γὰρ οὕτω θεάματος ἐρασθεὶς ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος ὡς τοῦ Τιγελλῖνον ἰδεῖν ἀπαγόμενον, οὐδὲ παυσάμενος ἐν πᾶσι θεάτροις καὶ σταδίοις αἰτούμενος ἐκεῖνον, ἐπεπλήχθη διαγράμματι τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος Τιγελλῖνον μὲν οὐ πολὺν ἔτι βιώσεσθαι φάσκοντος χρόνον ὑπὸ φθινάδος νόσου δαπανώμενον, ἐκείνους δὲ παραιτουμένου μὴ διαγριαίνειν [5] μηδὲ τυραννικὴν ποιεῖν τὴν ἡγεμονίαν. ἀχθομένου δὲ τοῦ δήμου καταγελῶντες ὁ μὲν Τιγελλῖνος ἔθυσε σωτήρια καὶ παρεσκεύασε λαμπρὰν ἑστίασιν, ὁ δὲ Οὐίνιος ἀναστὰς παρὰ τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος μετὰ δεῖπνον ἐκώμασεν ὡς ἐκεῖνον, ἄγων τὴν θυγατέρα χήραν οὖσαν. καὶ προὔπιεν ὁ Τιγελλῖνος αὐτῇ πέντε καὶ εἴκοσι μυριάδας ἀργυρίου, καὶ τῶν παλλακίδων τὴν ἀγελαρχοῦσαν ἐκέλευσε τὸν περιδέραιον κόσμον ἀφελομένην ἐκείνῃ περιάψαι, πεντεκαίδεκα μυριάδων εἶναι λεγόμενον.

[18] [1] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου καὶ τὰ μετρίως πραττόμενα διαβολὴν εἶχεν, ὡς τὰ πρὸς τοὺς Γαλάτας Οὐΐνδικι συναραμένους. ἐδόκουν γὰρ οὐ φιλανθρωπίᾳ τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος, ἀλλὰ ὠνούμενοι παρὰ Οὐινίου τυγχάνειν ἀνέσεώς τε δασμῶν καὶ [2] πολιτείας. οἱ μὲν οὖν πολλοὶ διὰ ταῦτα πρὸς τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἀπηχθάνοντο, τοὺς δὲ στρατιώτας τὴν δωρεὰν μὴ κομιζομένους ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν ἐλπὶς παρῆγεν ὡς, εἰ καὶ μὴ τοσοῦτον, ἀλλ’ ὅσον Νέρων ἔδωκεν, ἀποδώσοντος. ἐπεὶ δὲ μεμφομένους ἀκούσας ἀφῆκε φωνὴν ἡγεμόνι μεγάλῳ πρέπουσαν, εἰπὼν εἰωθέναι καταλέγειν στρατιώτας, οὐκ ἀγοράζειν, πυθομένοις τοῦτο δεινὸν εἰσῆλθε μῖσος καὶ ἄγριον πρὸς αὐτόν. ἐδόκει γὰρ οὐκ αὐτὸς ἀποστερεῖν μόνος, ἀλλὰ νομοθετεῖν καὶ διδάσκειν τοὺς μεθ’ αὑτὸν αὐτοκράτορας.

[3] Ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν ἐν Ῥώμῃ τυφλὸν ἦν ἔτι κίνημα, καί τις αἰδὼς ἅμα πρὸς παρόντα τὸν Γάλβαν ἀμβλύτητα καὶ μέλλησιν ἐνεποίει τῷ νεωτερισμῷ, καὶ τὸ μηδεμίαν ἀρχὴν ἐμφανῆ μεταβολῆς ὁρᾶσθαι συνέστελλε καὶ συνέκρυπτεν ἁμῶς γέ πως τὴν δυσμένειαν αὐτῶν. οἱ δὲ πρότερον ὑπὸ Οὐεργινίῳ γενόμενοι, τότε δ’ ὄντες ὑπὸ Φλάκκῳ περὶ Γερμανίαν, μεγάλων μὲν ἀξιοῦντες αὑτοὺς διὰ τὴν μάχην ἣν ἐμαχέσαντο πρὸς Οὐΐνδικα, μηδενὸς δὲ τυγχάνοντες, ἀπαρηγόρητοι τοῖς [4] ἄρχουσιν ἦσαν. αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Φλάκκον ὑπὸ συντόνου ποδάγρας ἀδύνατον ὄντα τῷ σώματι καὶ πραγμάτων ἄπειρον ἐν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ τὸ παράπαν ἐποιοῦντο. καί ποτε θέας οὔσης, καὶ τῶν χιλιάρχων καὶ λοχαγῶν τὸ Ῥωμαίοις σύνηθες εὐτυχίαν ἐπευχομένων τῷ αὐτοκράτορι Γάλβᾳ, διεθορύβησαν οἱ πολλοὶ τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα ταῖς εὐχαῖς ἐπιμενόντων ἐκείνων ἀντεφώνουν “Εἰ ἄξιος.”

[19] [1] Τοιαῦτα δὲ ἕτερα καὶ τῶν ὑπὸ Τιγελλίνῳ ταγμάτων ὑβριζόντων πολλάκις, ἐπέμπετο γράμματα τῷ Γάλβᾳ παρὰ τῶν ἐπιτρόπων· ὁ δὲ φοβηθεὶς ὡς μὴ μόνον διὰ τὸ γῆρας, ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τὴν ἀπαιδίαν καταφρονούμενος, ἐβουλεύετο παῖδα θέσθαι τῶν ἐπιφανῶν τινα νεανίσκον καὶ [2] διάδοχον ἀποδεῖξαι τῆς ἀρχῆς. ἦν δὲ Μάρκος Ὄθων, ἀνὴρ γένει μὲν οὐκ ἀφανής, τρυφῇ δὲ καὶ φιληδονίαις εὐθὺς ἐκ παίδων ἐν ὀλίγοις Ῥωμαίων διεφθαρμένος. ὡς δὲ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον Ὅμηρος “Ἑλένης πόσιν ἠϋκόμοιο,” μηδὲν ἔχοντα πρὸς δόξαν ἄλλο σεμνύνων ἀπὸ τῆς γυναικός, ὀνομάζει πολλάκις, οὕτως γεγονὼς περιβόητος ἐν Ῥώμῃ διὰ τὸν Ποππαίας γάμον, ἧς ἤρα μὲν ὁ Νέρων Κρισπίνῳ συνούσης, ἔτι δ’ αἰδούμενος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα καὶ τὴν μητέρα φοβούμενος ὑφῆκε τὸν [3] Ὄθωνα πειρῶντα τὴν Ποππαίαν. φίλῳ δὲ τῷ Ὄθωνι καὶ συμβιωτῇ διὰ τὴν ἀσωτίαν ἐχρῆτο, καὶ σκωπτόμενος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πολλάκις εἰς μικρολογίαν καὶ ἀνελευθερίαν ἔχαιρε. λέγεται δέ ποτε μύρῳ τῶν πολυτελῶν χρισαμένου τοῦ Νέρωνος καὶ τὸν Ὄθωνα καταβρέξαντος, ἐκεῖνος πάλιν τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ δεχόμενος αὐτὸν ἅμα πολλαχόθεν ἀργυροῦς καὶ χρυσοῦς προβαλεῖν ἄφνω σωλῆνας, ὥσπερ ὕδωρ τὸ μύρον ἐκχέοντας καὶ [4] κατακλύζοντας. ἀλλὰ τήν γε Ποππαίαν προμοιχεύσας τῷ Νέρωνι, καὶ διαφθείρας ταῖς εἰς ἐκεῖνον ἐλπίσιν, ἔπεισεν ἀποστῆναι τοῦ ἀνδρός. ἐλθούσης δὲ παρ’ αὐτὸν ὡς γαμετῆς οὐκ ἠγάπα μετέχων, ἀλλ’ ἤσχαλλε μεταδιδούς, οὐδὲ αὐτῆς ἀχθομένης, ὥς φασι, τῇ ζηλοτυπίᾳ τῆς Ποππαίας.

[5] καὶ γὰρ ἀποκλεῖσαι τὸν Νέρωνα λέγεται μὴ παρόντος τοῦ Ὄθωνος, εἴτε τῆς ἡδονῆς ἀφαιροῦσα τὸ πλήσμιον, εἴτε, ὥς φασιν ἔνιοι, βαρυνομένη τὸν Καίσαρος γάμον, ἐραστῇ δὲ μὴ φεύγουσα χρῆσθαι διὰ τὸ φιλακόλαστον. ἐκινδύνευσεν οὖν ὁ Ὄθων ἀποθανεῖν· καὶ παράλογον ἦν ὅτι τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ ἀδελφὴν ἀποκτείνας διὰ τὸν Ποππαίας γάμον ἐφείσατο τοῦ Ὄθωνος.

[20] [1] Σενέκαν δὲ εἶχεν εὔνουν· κἀκείνου τὸν Νέρωνα πείσαντος καὶ παραινέσαντος ἐξεπέμφθη Λυσιτανῶν στρατηγὸς ἐπὶ τὸν Ὠκεανόν. καὶ παρέσχεν ἑαυτὸν οὐκ ἄχαριν οὐδὲ ἐπαχθῆ τοῖς ὑπηκόοις, εἰδὼς φυγῆς ὑποκόρισμα καὶ παρακάλυμμα [2] τὴν ἀρχὴν αὐτῷ δεδομένην. ἀποστάντος δὲ Γάλβα πρῶτος αὐτῷ προσεχώρησε τῶν ἡγεμόνων, καὶ φέρων ὅσον εἶχεν ἐν ἐκπώμασι καὶ τραπέζαις ἄργυρον καὶ χρυσὸν ἔδωκε κατακόψαι ποιουμένῳ νόμισμα, καὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν ἐδωρήσατο τοὺς εἰθισμένους περὶ δίαιταν ἡγεμόνι ἐμμελῶς ὑπουργεῖν. καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πιστὸς ἦν αὐτῷ, καὶ διδοὺς πεῖραν οὐδενὸς ἧττον ἐδόκει πραγμάτων ἔμπειρος εἶναι· καὶ βαδίζοντι τὴν ὁδὸν ἅπασαν ἐφ’ ἡμέρας πολλὰς συνοχούμενος διετέλεσεν.

[3] ἐν δὲ τῇ συνοδίᾳ καὶ τῇ συνηθείᾳ τὸν Οὐίνιον ἐξεθεράπευσεν ὁμιλίᾳ καὶ δώροις, μάλιστα δὲ τῶν πρωτείων ὑφιέμενος αὐτῷ τό γε μετ’ ἐκεῖνον δύνασθαι δι’ ἐκεῖνον εἶχε βεβαίως. τῷ δὲ ἀνεπιφθόνῳ περιῆν, προῖκα συμπράττων πάντα τοῖς δεομένοις, καὶ παρέχων ἑαυτὸν εὐπροσήγορον καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ἅπασι. πλεῖστα δὲ τοῖς στρατιωτικοῖς συνελάμβανε καὶ προῆγε πολλοὺς ἐφ’ ἡγεμονίας, τὰ μὲν αἰτούμενος ἀπὸ τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος, [4] τὰ δὲ τὸν Οὐίνιον καὶ τοὺς ἀπελευθέρους παρακαλῶν Ἴκελον καὶ Ἀσιατικόν· οὗτοι γὰρ ἦσαν ἐν δυνάμει μάλιστα τῶν περὶ τὴν αὐλήν. ὁσάκις δὲ τὸν Γάλβαν εἱστία, τὴν παραφυλάττουσαν ἀεὶ σπεῖραν ἐδέκαζε χρυσοῦν ἑκάστῳ διανέμων, οἷς τιμᾶν αὐτὸν ἐδόκει καταπολιτευόμενος καὶ δημαγωγῶν τὸ στρατιωτικόν.

[21] [1] Ἀλλ’ οὖν βουλευομένου γε τοῦ Γάλβα περὶ διαδόχου τὸν Ὄθωνα παρεισῆγεν ὁ Οὐίνιος, οὐδὲ τοῦτο προῖκα πράσσων, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ γάμῳ τῆς θυγατρός, ὁμολογίας γενομένης γαμεῖν αὐτὴν τὸν Ὄθωνα παῖδα τοῦ Γάλβα καὶ διάδοχον ἀποδειχθέντα τῆς ἡγεμονίας. ὁ δὲ Γάλβας ἀεὶ μὲν ἦν δῆλος πρὸ τοῦ ἰδίου τὸ κοινὸν τιθέμενος καὶ ζητῶν οὐχ αὑτῷ θέσθαι τὸν ἥδιστον, ἀλλὰ Ῥωμαίοις [2] τὸν ὠφελιμώτατον. δοκεῖ δὲ μηδ’ ἂν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἰδίοις χρήμασι μόνον ἑλέσθαι τὸν Ὄθωνα κληρονόμον, ἀκόλαστον εἰδὼς καὶ πολυτελῆ καὶ πεντακισχιλίων μυριάδων ὀφλήμασι βεβαπτισμένον. ὅθεν ἀκούσας τοῦ Οὐινίου σιωπῇ καὶ πρᾴως ὑπερέθετο τὴν διάθεσιν. ἀποδείξας δ’ αὑτὸν ὕπατον καὶ συνάρχοντα τὸν Οὐίνιον ἐπίδοξος ἦν ἔτους ἀρχῇ τὸν διάδοχον ἀναγορεύσειν· καὶ τὸ στρατιωτικὸν ἡδέως εἶχε τὸν Ὄθωνα παρ’ ὁντινοῦν ἄλλον ἀναγορευθῆναι.

[22] [1] Καταλαμβάνει δ’ αὐτὸν ἔτι μέλλοντα καὶ βουλευόμενον ἐκραγέντα τὰ Γερμανικά. κοινῇ γὰρ ἅπαντες οἱ στρατευόμενοι τὸν Γάλβαν ἐμίσουν οὐκ ἀποδιδόντα τὴν δωρεάν, ἰδίας δὲ ἐκεῖνοι προφάσεις ἐποιοῦντο Οὐεργίνιόν τε Ῥοῦφον ἀπερριμμένον ἀτίμως καὶ Γαλατῶν τοὺς πολεμήσαντας [2] αὐτοῖς δωρεῶν τυγχάνοντας, ὅσοι δὲ μὴ προσέθεντο Οὐΐνδικι κολαζομένους, ᾧ μόνῳ τὸν Γάλβαν χάριν εἰδέναι καὶ τιμᾶν τεθνηκότα καὶ γεραίρειν δημοσίοις ἐναγισμοῖς, ὡς ὑπ’ ἐκείνου Ῥωμαίων [3] ἀποδεδειγμένον αὐτοκράτορα. τοιούτων ἀναφανδὸν ἤδη λόγων ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ περιφερομένων ἐπῆλθεν ἡ νουμηνία τοῦ πρώτου μηνός, ἣν καλάνδας Ἰανουαρίας καλοῦσι· τοῦ δὲ Φλάκκου συναγαγόντος αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ τὸν ὅρκον ὃν ἔθος ἐστὶν ὀμνύειν ὑπὲρ τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος, τὰς μὲν εἰκόνας τοῦ Γάλβα προσελθόντες ἀνέτρεψαν καὶ κατέσπασαν, αὐτοὶ δὲ ὀμόσαντες ὑπὲρ συγκλήτου καὶ [4] δήμου Ῥωμαίων διελύθησαν. εἶτα τοῖς ἡγεμονικοῖς παρίστατο δεδοικέναι τὴν ἀναρχίαν ὡς ἀπόστασιν. λέγει δέ τις ἐν αὐτοῖς· “Τί πάσχομεν, ὦ συστρατιῶται, μήτ’ ἄλλον ἡγεμόνα ποιούμενοι μήτε τὸν νῦν ὄντα φυλάττοντες, ὥσπερ οὐ Γάλβαν, ἀλλ’ ὅλως ἄρχοντα καὶ τὸ ἄρχεσθαι [5] φεύγοντες; Φλάκκον μὲν οὖν Ὁρδεώνιον οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ σκιὰν ὄντα Γάλβα καὶ εἴδωλον ἐατέον, ἡμέρας δὲ μιᾶς ὁδὸν ἀφέστηκεν ἡμῶν Οὐϊτέλλιος, ὁ τῆς ἑτέρας Γερμανίας ἡγούμενος, πατρός τε τιμητοῦ καὶ τρὶς ὑπάτου γενομένου καὶ Κλαυδίῳ Καίσαρι τρόπον τινὰ συνάρξαντος, αὐτός τε τὴν λοιδορουμένην ὑπ’ ἐνίων πενίαν δεῖγμα λαμπρὸν ἔχων χρηστότητος καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνης. φέρε, τοῦτον ἑλόμενοι δείξωμεν ἀνθρώποις πᾶσιν ὡς Ἰβήρων καὶ Λυσιτανῶν ἀμείνους ἐσμὲν αὐτοκράτορα αἱρεῖσθαι.”

[6] Ταῦτα τῶν μὲν ἤδη προσιεμένων, τῶν δ’ οὐ προσιεμένων, εἷς ὑπεξελθὼν σημαιοφόρος ἀπήγγειλε τῷ Οὐϊτελλίῳ νυκτός, ἑστιωμένων πολλῶν παρ’ αὐτῷ. τοῦ δὲ λόγου διαπεσόντος εἰς τὰ στρατεύματα πρῶτος Φάβιος Οὐάλης, ἡγεμὼν ἑνὸς τάγματος, τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ μετὰ ἱππέων συχνῶν ἐλάσας αὐτοκράτορα τὸν Οὐϊτέλλιον προσεῖπεν.

[7] ὁ δὲ τὰς μὲν ἔμπροσθεν ἡμέρας ἐδόκει διωθεῖσθαι καὶ ἀναδύεσθαι, τὸ μέγεθος τῆς ἀρχῆς φοβούμενος, τότε δέ φασιν οἴνου διάπλεων καὶ τροφῆς ὄντα μεσημβρινῆς προελθεῖν καὶ ὑπακοῦσαι Γερμανικὸν ὄνομα θεμένων αὐτῷ, τὸ δὲ Καίσαρος [8] οὐ προσδεξάμενον. εὐθὺς δὲ καὶ τὸ μετὰ Φλάκκου στράτευμα τοὺς καλοὺς ἐκείνους καὶ δημοκρατικοὺς εἰς σύγκλητον ὅρκους ἀφέντες ὤμοσαν Οὐϊτελλίῳ τῷ αὐτοκράτορι ποιήσειν τὸ προστασσόμενον.

[23] [1] Οὕτω μὲν ἀνηγορεύθη Οὐϊτέλλιος αὐτοκράτωρ ἐν Γερμανίᾳ. πυθόμενος δὲ τὸν ἐκεῖ νεωτερισμὸν ὁ Γάλβας οὐκέτι τὴν εἰσποίησιν ἀνεβάλλετο. γινώσκων δὲ τῶν φίλων ἐνίους μὲν ὑπὲρ Δολοβέλλα, τοὺς δὲ πλείστους ὑπὲρ Ὄθωνος ἀρχαιρεσιάζοντας, ὧν οὐδέτερον ἐδοκίμαζεν αὐτός, ἄφνω μηδὲν προειπὼν μετεπέμψατο Πείσωνα, Κράσσου καὶ Σκριβωνίας ἔκγονον, οὓς Νέρων [2] ἀνῃρήκει, νεανίαν ἐν τῇ πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν εὐφυΐᾳ τὸ κόσμιον καὶ αὐστηρὸν ἐμφανέστατα ἔχοντα· καὶ κατέβαινεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον ἐκεῖνον ἀποδείξων Καίσαρα καὶ διάδοχον. καίτοι μεγάλαι μὲν εὐθὺς ἐξιόντι διοσημίαι παρηκολούθουν, ἀρξαμένου δὲ τὰ μὲν λέγειν ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, τὰ δὲ ἀναγινώσκειν, τοσαυτάκις ἐβρόντησε καὶ κατήστραψε, καὶ τοσοῦτος ὄμβρος καὶ ζόφος ἐξεχύθη εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ τὴν πόλιν, ὡς κατάδηλον εἶναι μὴ προσιέμενον μηδὲ ἐπαινοῦν τὸ δαιμόνιον γινομένην οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ τὴν εἰσποίησιν.

[3] ἦν δὲ καὶ τὰ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ὕπουλα καὶ σκυθρωπὰ μηδὲ τότε δωρεᾶς αὐτοῖς δοθείσης.

Τοῦ δὲ Πείσωνος οἱ παρόντες ἐθαύμασαν τῇ τε φωνῇ τεκμαιρόμενοι καὶ τῷ προσώπῳ τὸ τηλικαύτην χάριν ἀνεμπλήκτως, οὐ μὴν ἀναισθήτως δεχόμενον, ὥσπερ αὖ τοῦ Ὄθωνος ἐπεφαίνετο πολλὰ σημεῖα τῇ μορφῇ πικρῶς καὶ σὺν ὀργῇ τῆς ἐλπίδος τὴν ἀπότευξιν φέροντος, ἧς πρῶτος ἀξιωθεὶς καὶ τοῦ τυχεῖν ἐγγυτάτω γενόμενος τὸ μὴ τυχεῖν ἐποιεῖτο σημεῖον ἔχθους ἅμα καὶ κακονοίας [4] τοῦ Γάλβα πρὸς αὐτόν. ὅθεν οὐδὲ ἄφοβος ἦν περὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν Πείσωνα δεδιὼς καὶ τὸν Γάλβαν προβαλλόμενος καὶ τῷ Οὐινίῳ χαλεπαίνων ἀπῄει πολλῶν παθῶν πλήρης. οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸ ἐλπίζον ἐκλιπεῖν οὐδὲ ἀπαγορεῦσαι παντάπασιν εἴων οἱ περὶ αὐτὸν ὄντες ἀεὶ μάντεις καὶ Χαλδαῖοι, εἰς τὰ μάλιστα δὲ Πτολεμαῖος ἰσχυριζόμενος τῷ προειπεῖν πολλάκις ὡς οὐκ ἀποκτενεῖ Νέρων αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ τεθνήξεται πρότερος, αὐτὸς δὲ περιέσται καὶ ἄρξει Ῥωμαίων (ἐκεῖνο γὰρ ἀληθὲς ἀποδείξας ἠξίου μηδὲ ταῦτα ἀπελπίζειν)· οὐχ ἥκιστα δ’ οἱ συναχθόμενοι κρύφα καὶ συνεπιστένοντες ὡς ἀχάριστα πεπονθότι. πλεῖστοι δὲ τῶν περὶ Τιγελλῖνον καὶ Νυμφίδιον ἐν τιμῇ γεγονότων ἀπερριμμένοι τότε καὶ ταπεινὰ πράττοντες ἐφθείροντο πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ συνηγανάκτουν καὶ παρώξυνον.

[24] [1] Ἐν δὲ τούτοις Οὐετούριος καὶ Βάρβιος, ὁ μὲν ὀπτίων, ὁ δὲ τεσσεράριος· οὕτω γὰρ καλοῦνται οἱ διαγγέλων καὶ διοπτήρων ὑπηρεσίας τελοῦντες. μεθ’ ὧν Ὄθωνος ἀπελεύθερος Ὀνόμαστος ἐπιφοιτῶν τοὺς μὲν ἀργυρίῳ, τοὺς δὲ ἐλπίσι διέφθειρεν ἤδη σαθροὺς ὄντας καὶ δεομένους προφάσεως. οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἡμερῶν τεσσάρων ἔργον ὑγιαίνοντος στρατοπέδου μεταστῆσαι πίστιν, ὅσαι μεταξὺ τῆς εἰσποιήσεως ἐγένοντο καὶ τῆς σφαγῆς. ἕκτῃ γὰρ ἀνῃρέθησαν, ἣν ἄγουσι Ῥωμαῖοι πρὸ δεκαοκτὼ καλανδῶν Φεβρουαρίων.

[2] Ἐκείνῃ γὰρ ἕωθεν εὐθὺς ὁ μὲν Γάλβας ἔθυεν ἐν Παλατίῳ τῶν φίλων παρόντων, ὁ δὲ θύτης Ὀμβρίκιος ἅμα τῷ λαβεῖν εἰς τὰς χεῖρας τοῦ ἱερείου τὰ σπλάγχνα καὶ προσιδεῖν οὐ δι’ αἰνιγμῶν, ἀλλ’ ἄντικρυς ἔφη σημεῖα μεγάλης ταραχῆς, καὶ μετὰ δόλου κίνδυνον ἐκ κεφαλῆς ἐπικείμενον τῷ αὐτοκράτορι, μονονουχὶ τὸν Ὄθωνα τοῦ θεοῦ [3] χειρὶ ληπτὸν παραδιδόντος. παρῆν γὰρ ὄπισθεν τοῦ Γάλβα, καὶ προσεῖχε τοῖς λεγομένοις καὶ δεικνυμένοις ὑπὸ τοῦ Ὀμβρικίου. θορυβουμένῳ δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ χρόας ἀμείβοντι παντοδαπὰς ὑπὸ δέους παραστὰς Ὀνόμαστος ἀπελεύθερος ἥκειν ἔφη καὶ περιμένειν αὐτὸν οἴκοι τοὺς ἀρχιτέκτονας. ἦν δὲ σύμβολον καιροῦ, πρὸς ὃν ἔδει ἀπαντῆσαι [4] τὸν Ὄθωνα τοῖς στρατιώταις. εἰπὼν οὖν, ὅτι παλαιὰν ἐωνημένος οἰκίαν βούλεται τὰ ὕποπτα δεῖξαι τοῖς πωληταῖς, ἀπῆλθε, καὶ διὰ τῆς Τιβερίου καλουμένης οἰκίας καταβὰς ἐβάδιζεν εἰς ἀγοράν, οὗ χρυσοῦς εἱστήκει κίων, εἰς ὃν αἱ τετμημέναι τῆς Ἰταλίας ὁδοὶ πᾶσαι τελευτῶσιν.

[25] [1] Ἐνταῦθα τοὺς πρώτους ἐκδεξαμένους αὐτὸν καὶ προσειπόντας αὐτοκράτορά φασι μὴ πλείους τριῶν καὶ εἴκοσι γενέσθαι. διό, καίπερ οὐ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ σώματος μαλακίαν καὶ θηλύτητα τῇ ψυχῇ διατεθρυμμένος, ἀλλὰ ἰταμὸς ὢν πρὸς [2] τὰ δεινὰ καὶ ἄτρεπτος, ἀπεδειλίασεν. οἱ δὲ παρόντες οὐκ εἴων, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ξίφεσι γυμνοῖς περιϊόντες αὐτοῦ τὸ φορεῖον ἐκέλευον αἴρεσθαι, παραφθεγγομένου πολλάκις ἀπολωλέναι καὶ τοὺς φορειαφόρους ἐπιταχύνοντος. ἐξήκουον γὰρ ἔνιοι θαυμάζοντες μᾶλλον ἢ ταραττόμενοι διὰ τὴν ὀλιγότητα τῶν ἀποτετολμημένων. φερομένῳ δὲ οὕτω δι’ ἀγορᾶς ἀπήντησαν ἕτεροι τοσοῦτοι, καὶ πάλιν κατὰ τρεῖς καὶ τέτταρας ἄλλοι προσεπέλαζον.

[3] εἶτα συνανέστρεφον ἅπαντες ἀνακαλούμενοι Καίσαρα καὶ γυμνὰ τὰ ξίφη προϊσχόμενοι. τῶν δὲ χιλιάρχων ὁ τὴν φυλακὴν ἔχων τοῦ στρατοπέδου Μαρτίαλις, ὥς φασι, μὴ συνειδώς, ἐκπλαγεὶς δὲ τῷ ἀπροσδοκήτῳ καὶ φοβηθεὶς ἐφῆκεν εἰσελθεῖν. γενομένῳ δὲ ἐντὸς οὐδεὶς ἀντέπεσεν. οἱ γὰρ ἀγνοοῦντες τὰ πραττόμενα τοῖς εἰδόσι καὶ συνεστῶσιν ἐκ παρασκευῆς ἐμπεριεχόμενοι καθ’ ἕνα καὶ δύο σποράδες, ὑπὸ δέους τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα πεισθέντες ἐπηκολούθησαν.

[4] Εἰς δὲ τὸ Παλάτιον εὐθὺς μὲν ἀπηγγέλη τῷ Γάλβᾳ παρόντος ἔτι τοῦ θύτου καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν ἐν χερσὶν ὄντων, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς πάνυ πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα δυσπειθῶς καὶ ἀτενῶς ἔχοντας ἐκπλήττεσθαι καὶ θαυμάζειν τὸ θεῖον· ὄχλου δὲ παντοδαποῦ συρρέοντος ἐξ ἀγορᾶς, αὐτῷ μὲν Οὐίνιος καὶ Λάκων καὶ τῶν ἀπελευθέρων ἔνιοι γυμνὰ τὰ ξίφη προϊσχόμενοι παρέστησαν, ὁ δὲ Πείσων προελθὼν τοῖς φυλάττουσι τὴν αὐλὴν δορυφόροις [5] ἐνετύγχανε. τοῦ δ’ Ἰλλυρικοῦ τάγματος ἐν τῇ καλουμένῃ παστάδι Βιψανίᾳ στρατοπεδεύοντος ἀπεστάλη Μάριος Κέλσος, ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός, προκαταληψόμενος.

[26] [1] Βουλευομένου δὲ τοῦ Γάλβα προελθεῖν, καὶ Οὐινίου μὲν οὐκ ἐῶντος, Κέλσου δὲ καὶ Λάκωνος παρορμώντων καὶ σφοδρότερον τοῦ Οὐινίου καθαπτομένων, θροῦς διῆλθε πολὺς ὡς ἀνῃρημένου τοῦ Ὄθωνος ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ· καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ὤφθη Ἰούλιος Ἄττικος τῶν οὐκ ἀσήμων ἐν τοῖς δορυφόροις στρατευόμενος γυμνῷ τῷ ξίφει προσφερόμενος καὶ βοῶν ἀνῃρηκέναι τὸν Καίσαρος πολέμιον· ὠσάμενος δὲ διὰ τῶν προεστώτων [2] ἔδειξε τῷ Γάλβᾳ τὸ ξίφος ᾑμαγμένον. ὁ δὲ βλέψας πρὸς αὐτόν, “Τίς σε,” εἶπεν, “ἐκέλευσε;” τοῦ δὲ ἀνθρώπου τὴν πίστιν εἰπόντος καὶ τὸν ὅρκον ὃν ὤμοσε, καὶ τοῦ πλήθους ἐπιβοῶντος ὡς εὖ, καὶ κροτοῦντος, ἐμβὰς εἰς τὸ φορεῖον ἐκομίζετο τῷ τε Διῒ θῦσαι καὶ φανῆναι τοῖς πολίταις βουλόμενος. ἐμβαλόντος δὲ εἰς τὴν ἀγοράν, ὥσπερ τροπαία πνεύματος, ἀπήντησε φήμη κρατεῖν [3] τὸν Ὄθωνα τοῦ στρατεύματος. οἷα δὲ ἐν πλήθει τοσούτῳ, τῶν μὲν ἀναστρέφειν, τῶν δὲ προϊέναι, τῶν δὲ θαρρεῖν, τῶν δὲ ἀπιστεῖν βοώντων, καὶ τοῦ φορείου, καθάπερ ἐν κλύδωνι, δεῦρο κἀκεῖ διαφερομένου καὶ πυκνὸν ἀπονεύοντος, ἐφαίνοντο πρῶτον ἱππεῖς, εἶτα ὁπλῖται διὰ τῆς Παύλου βασιλικῆς προσφερόμενοι, μιᾷ φωνῇ μέγα [4] βοῶντες ἐκποδὼν ἵστασθαι τὸν ἰδιώτην. τῶν μὲν οὖν πολλῶν δρόμος ἦν, οὐ φυγῇ σκιδναμένων, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τὰς στοὰς καὶ τὰ μετέωρα τῆς ἀγορᾶς, ὥσπερ θέαν καταλαμβανόντων. Ἀτιλλίου δὲ Βεργελίωνος εἰκόνα Γάλβα προσουδίσαντος, ἀρχὴν τοῦ πολέμου ποιησάμενοι περιηκόντισαν τὸ φορεῖον· ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἔτυχον αὐτοῦ, προσῆγον ἐσπασμένοις τοῖς ξίφεσιν. ἤμυνε δὲ οὐδεὶς οὐδὲ ὑπέστη πλὴν ἑνὸς ἀνδρός, ὃν μόνον ἥλιος ἐπεῖδεν ἐν μυριάσι τοσαύταις ἄξιον τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίας· [5] Σεμπρώνιος ἦν Δῆνσος ἑκατοντάρχης, οὐδὲν ἰδίᾳ χρηστὸν ὑπὸ Γάλβα πεπονθώς, τῷ δὲ καλῷ καὶ τῷ νόμῳ βοηθῶν προέστη τοῦ φορείου. καὶ τὸ κλῆμα πρῶτον, ᾧ κολάζουσιν ἑκατοντάρχαι τοὺς πληγῶν δεομένους, ἐπαράμενος τοῖς ἐπιφερομένοις ἐβόα καὶ διεκελεύετο φείδεσθαι τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος. ἔπειτα συμπλεκομένων αὐτῷ σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος ἠμύνατο πολὺν χρόνον, ἕως τυφθεὶς τὰς ἰγνύας ἔπεσε.

[27] [1] Τὸν δὲ Γάλβαν, ἀποκλιθέντος τοῦ φορείου περὶ τὸν Κουρτίου καλούμενον λάκκον, ἐκκυλισθέντα τεθωρακισμένον ἔτυπτον ἐπιδραμόντες. ὁ δὲ τὴν σφαγὴν προτείνας, “Δρᾶτε,” εἶπεν, “εἰ τοῦτο τῷ δήμῳ Ῥωμαίων ἄμεινόν ἐστι.”

[2] πολλὰς μὲν οὖν ἔλαβε πληγὰς εἴς τε τὰ σκέλη καὶ τοὺς βραχίονας, ἀπέσφαξε δὲ αὐτόν, ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι λέγουσι, Καμούριός τις ἐκ τοῦ πεντεκαιδεκάτου τάγματος. ἔνιοι δὲ Τερέντιον, οἱ δὲ Λεκάνιον ἱστοροῦσιν, οἱ δὲ Φάβιον Φάβουλον, ὃν καί φασιν ἀποκόψαντα τὴν κεφαλὴν κομίζειν τῷ ἱματίῳ συλλαβόντα, διὰ τὴν ψιλότητα δυσπερίληπτον [3] οὖσαν· ἔπειτα τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ κρύπτειν οὐκ ἐώντων, ἀλλ’ ἐκφανῆ πᾶσι ποιεῖν τὴν ἀνδραγαθίαν, περιπείραντα περὶ λόγχην καὶ ἀναπήλαντα πρεσβύτου πρόσωπον, ἄρχοντός τε κοσμίου καὶ ἀρχιερέως καὶ ὑπάτου, δρόμῳ χωρεῖν, ὥσπερ αἱ βάκχαι, πολλάκις μεταστρεφόμενον, καὶ κραδαίνοντα τὴν λόγχην αἵματι καταρρεομένην.

Τὸν δ’ Ὄθωνα, τῆς κεφαλῆς κομισθείσης, ἀνακραγεῖν λέγουσιν· “Οὐδέν ἐστι τοῦτο, ὦ συστρατιῶται, [4] τὴν Πείσωνός μοι κεφαλὴν δείξατε.” μετ’ ὀλίγον δὲ ἧκε κομιζομένη· τρωθεὶς γὰρ ἔφευγεν ὁ νεανίσκος, καὶ καταδιωχθεὶς ὑπὸ Μούρκου τινὸς ἀπεσφάγη πρὸς τῷ ἱερῷ τῆς Ἑστίας. ἀπεσφάττετο δὲ καὶ Οὐίνιος ὁμολογῶν κοινωνὸς γεγονέναι τῆς ἐπὶ τὸν Γάλβαν συνωμοσίας· ἐβόα γὰρ ἀποθνήσκειν παρὰ τὴν Ὄθωνος γνώμην. ἀλλὰ γὰρ καὶ τούτου τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποτεμόντες καὶ Λάκωνος ἐκόμισαν πρὸς τὸν Ὄθωνα δωρεὰς αἰτοῦντες.

[5] ὡς δέ φησιν Ἀρχίλοχος,

ἑπτὰ γὰρ νεκρῶν πεσόντων, οὓς ἐμάρψαμεν ποσίν,

χίλιοι φονῆες ἐσμέν,

οὕτως τότε πολλοὶ τοῦ φόνου μὴ συνεφαψάμενοι, χεῖρας δὲ καὶ ξίφη καθαιμάσσοντες ἐπεδείκνυντο καὶ δωρεὰς ᾔτουν βιβλία διδόντες τῷ Ὄθωνι. εἴκοσι γοῦν καὶ ἑκατὸν εὑρέθησαν ὕστερον ἐκ τῶν γραμματίων, οὓς ὁ Οὐϊτέλλιος [6] ἀναζητήσας ἅπαντας ἀπέκτεινεν. ἧκε δὲ καὶ Μάριος Κέλσος εἰς τὴν παρεμβολήν. καὶ πολλῶν αὐτοῦ κατηγορούντων ὅτι τοὺς στρατιώτας ἔπειθε τῷ Γάλβᾳ βοηθεῖν, καὶ τοῦ πλήθους ἀποκτιννύειν βοῶντος, Ὄθων οὐκ ἐβούλετο· φοβούμενος δὲ ἀντιλέγειν οὐχ οὕτως ἔφη ταχέως ἀποκτενεῖν αὐτόν· εἶναι γὰρ ἃ δεῖ πρότερον ἐκπυθέσθαι παρὰ τοῦ ἀνδρός. ἐκέλευσεν οὖν δήσαντας φυλάττειν, καὶ παρέδωκε τοῖς μάλιστα πιστευομένοις.

[28] [1] Εὐθὺς δὲ βουλὴ συνεκαλεῖτο. καὶ καθάπερ ἄλλοι γεγονότες ἢ θεῶν ἄλλων γεγονότων συνελθόντες ὤμνυον ὅρκον ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ὄθωνος, ὃν αὐτὸς ὀμόσας οὐκ ἐτήρησε· καὶ Καίσαρα καὶ Σεβαστὸν ἀνηγόρευον, ἔτι τῶν νεκρῶν ἀκεφάλων ἐν ταῖς ὑπατικαῖς ἐσθῆσιν ἐρριμμένων ἐπὶ τῆς [2] ἀγορᾶς. ταῖς δὲ κεφαλαῖς ὡς οὐδὲν εἶχον ἔτι χρῆσθαι, τὴν μὲν Οὐινίου τῇ θυγατρὶ δισχιλίων καὶ πεντακοσίων δραχμῶν ἀπέδοντο, τὴν δὲ Πείσωνος ἡ γυνὴ ἔλαβεν Οὐερανία δεηθεῖσα, τὴν δὲ Γάλβα τοῖς Πατροβίου δούλοις ἐδωρήσαντο.

[3] λαβόντες δὲ ἐκεῖνοι καὶ πάντα τρόπον αἰκισάμενοι καὶ καθυβρίσαντες ἔρριψαν ᾗ τοὺς ὑπὸ τῶν Καισάρων κολαζομένους θανατοῦσιν· ὁ δὲ τόπος Σεσσώριον καλεῖται. τὸ δὲ σῶμα τοῦ Γάλβα Πρίσκος Ἑλβίδιος ἀνείλετο, τοῦ Ὄθωνος ἐπιτρέψαντος· ἔθαψε δὲ νυκτὸς Ἀργεῖος ἀπελεύθερος.

[29] [1] Τοιαῦτα τὰ κατὰ τὸν Γάλβαν, ἄνδρα μήτε γένει μήτε πλούτῳ πολλῶν ἀπολειφθέντα Ῥωμαίων, ὁμοῦ δὲ πλούτῳ καὶ γένει πρωτεύσαντα πάντων τῶν καθ’ αὑτόν, πέντε αὐτοκρατόρων ἡγεμονίαις ἐμβιώσαντα μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ δόξης, ὥστε τῇ δόξῃ μᾶλλον ἢ τῇ δυνάμει καθελεῖν [2] Νέρωνα. τῶν γὰρ συνεπιτιθεμένων τότε τοὺς μὲν οὐδεὶς ἠξίωσε τῆς ἡγεμονίας, οἱ δ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἀπηξίωσαν, Γάλβας δὲ καὶ κληθεὶς καὶ ὑπακούσας αὐτοκράτωρ καὶ τῇ Οὐΐνδικος ἐμπαρασχὼν ὄνομα τόλμῃ, κίνημα καὶ νεωτερισμὸν αὐτοῦ λεγομένην τὴν ἀπόστασιν ἐποίησε πόλεμον [3] ἐμφύλιον, ἀνδρὸς ἡγεμονικοῦ τυχοῦσαν. ὅθεν οὐχ ἑαυτῷ τὰ πράγματα λαμβάνειν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον. ἑαυτὸν οἰόμενος διδόναι τοῖς πράγμασιν, ἄρχειν ἠξίου τῶν ὑπὸ Τιγελλίνου καὶ Νυμφιδίου τετιθασευμένων ὡς Σκηπίων ἦρχε καὶ Φαβρίκιος καὶ [4] Κάμιλλος τῶν τότε Ῥωμαίων. ὑπερειπόμενος δὲ τῷ γήρᾳ, ἄχρι τῶν ὅπλων καὶ τῶν στρατευμάτων ἄκρατος ἦν καὶ ἀρχαῖος αὐτοκράτωρ, Οὐινίῳ δὲ καὶ Λάκωνι καὶ τοῖς ἀπελευθέροις πάντα τὰ πράγματα πωλοῦσι παρέχων ἑαυτόν, οἷον Νέρων παρεῖχε τοῖς ἀπληστοτάτοις, οὐδένα ποθοῦντα τὴν ἀρχήν, οἰκτείραντας δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς τὸν θάνατον ἀπέλιπεν.

Otho

[1] [1]  Ὁ δὲ νεώτερος αὐτοκράτωρ ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ προελθὼν εἰς τὸ Καπιτώλιον ἔθυσε· καὶ κελεύσας Μάριον Κέλσον ἀχθῆναι πρὸς αὑτὸν ἠσπάσατο καὶ διελέχθη φιλανθρώπως, καὶ παρεκάλεσε τῆς αἰτίας ἐπιλαθέσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς ἀφέσεως μνημονεύειν. τοῦ δὲ Κέλσου μήτ’ ἀγεννῶς ἀποκριναμένου μήτ’ ἀναισθήτως, ἀλλὰ φήσαντος αὐτὸ τοῦ τρόπου διδόναι τὸ ἔγκλημα πίστιν, ἐγκεκλῆσθαι γὰρ ὅτι Γάλβᾳ βέβαιον ἑαυτὸν παρέσχεν, ᾧ χάριν οὐδεμίαν ὤφειλεν, ἠγάσθησαν οἱ παρόντες [2] ἀμφοτέρων καὶ τὸ στρατιωτικὸν ἐπῄνεσεν. ἐν δὲ συγκλήτῳ πολλὰ δημοτικὰ καὶ φιλάνθρωπα διαλεχθείς, ὃν μὲν αὐτὸς ὑπατεύειν χρόνον ἤμελλε, τούτου μέρος ἔνειμεν Οὐεργινίῳ Ῥούφῳ, τοῖς δὲ ἀποδεδειγμένοις ὑπὸ Νέρωνος ἢ Γάλβα πᾶσιν ἐτήρησε τὰς ὑπατείας. ἱερωσύναις δὲ τοὺς καθ’ [3] ἡλικίαν προήκοντας ἢ δόξαν ἐκόσμησε. τοῖς δὲ ἐπὶ Νέρωνος φυγοῦσι καὶ κατελθοῦσιν ἐπὶ Γάλβα συγκλητικοῖς πᾶσιν ἀπέδωκεν ὅσα μὴ πεπραμένα τῶν κτημάτων ἑκάστου ἐξεύρισκεν. ὅθεν οἱ πρῶτοι καὶ κράτιστοι πεφρικότες πρότερον ὡς οὐκ ἀνδρός, ἀλλά τινος ἢ Ποινῆς ἢ παλαμναίου δαίμονος ἄφνω τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐπιπεπτωκότος, ἡδίους ἐγένοντο ταῖς ἐλπίσι πρὸς τὴν ἠγεμονίαν ὥσπερ διαμειδιῶσαν.

[2] [1] Ὁμοῦ δὲ Ῥωμαίους πάντας οὐδὲν εὔφρανεν οὕτως οὐδὲ ᾠκειώσατο πρὸς αὐτὸν ὡς τὰ περὶ Τιγελλῖνον. ἐλελήθει μὲν γὰρ ἤδη κολαζόμενος αὐτῷ τῷ φόβῳ τῆς κολάσεως ἣν ὡς χρέος ἀπῄτει [2] δημόσιον ἡ πόλις, καὶ νοσήμασιν ἀνηκέστοις σώματος, αὐτάς τε τὰς ἀνοσίους καὶ ἀρρήτους ἐν γυναιξὶ πόρναις καὶ ἀκαθάρτοις ἐγκυλινδήσεις, αἷς ἔτι προσέσπαιρε δυσθανατοῦντος αὐτοῦ τὸ ἀκόλαστον ἐπιδραττόμενον, ἐσχάτην τιμωρίαν ἐποιοῦντο καὶ πολλῶν ἀντάξια θανάτων οἱ σωφρονοῦντες. ἠνία δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς ὅμως τὸν ἥλιον ὁρῶν μετὰ τοσούτους καὶ τοιούτους δι’ [3] αὐτὸν οὐχ ὁρῶντας. ἔπεμψεν οὖν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὁ Ὄθων εἰς τοὺς περὶ Σινόεσσαν ἀγρούς· ἐκεῖ γὰρ διῃτᾶτο, πλοίων παρορμούντων, ὡς φευξόμενος ἀπωτέρω. καὶ τόν γε πεμφθέντα χρυσίῳ πολλῷ πείθειν ἐπεχείρησε παρεῖναι· μὴ πεισθέντι δὲ δῶρα μὲν ἔδωκεν οὐδὲν ἧττον, ἐδεήθη δὲ ὑπομεῖναι ἕως ἂν ἀποξύρηται τὸ γένειον· καὶ λαβὼν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐλαιμοτόμησεν.

[3] [1] Οὕτω δὲ τῷ δήμῳ τὴν δικαιοτάτην ἡδονὴν ἀποδοὺς ὁ Καῖσαρ, αὐτὸς ἰδίας ἔχθρας οὐδενὶ τοπαράπαν ἐμνησικάκησε, τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς χαριζόμενος οὐκ ἔφευγε τὸ πρῶτον ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις Νέρων προσαγορεύεσθαι· καί τινων εἰκόνας Νέρωνος εἰς τοὐμφανὲς προθεμένων οὐκ ἐκώλυσε.

[2] Κλούβιος δὲ Ῥοῦφος εἰς Ἰβηρίαν φησὶ κομισθῆναι διπλώματα, οἷς ἐκπέμπουσι τοὺς γραμματηφόρους, τὸ τοῦ Νέρωνος θετὸν ὄνομα προσγεγραμμένον ἔχοντα τῷ τοῦ Ὄθωνος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοὺς πρώτους καὶ κρατίστους αἰσθόμενος ἐπὶ τούτῳ δυσχεραίνοντας ἐπαύσατο.

Τοιαύτην δὲ τῆς ἡγεμονίας κατάστασιν αὐτῷ λαμβανούσης, οἱ μισθοφόροι χαλεποὺς παρεῖχον ἑαυτούς, ἀπιστεῖν παρακελευόμενοι καὶ φυλάττεσθαι καὶ κολούειν τοὺς ἀξιολόγους, εἴτ’ ἀληθῶς φοβούμενοι δι’ εὔνοιαν, εἴτε προφάσει χρώμενοι [3] ταύτῃ τοῦ ταράττειν καὶ πολεμοποιεῖν. Κρισπῖνον δὲ πέμψαντος αὐτοῦ τὴν ἑπτακαιδεκάτην σπεῖραν Ὠστίας ἀπάξοντα, κἀκείνου νυκτὸς ἔτι συσκευαζομένου καὶ τὰ ὅπλα ταῖς ἁμάξαις ἐπιτιθέντος, οἱ θρασύτατοι πάντες ἐβόων οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς τὸν Κρισπῖνον ἥκειν διανοούμενον, ἀλλὰ τὴν σύγκλητον ἐπιχειρεῖν πράγμασι νεωτέροις, καὶ τὰ ὅπλα [4] κατὰ Καίσαρος, οὐ Καίσαρι παρακομίζεσθαι. τοῦ δὲ λόγου πολλῶν ἁπτομένου καὶ παροξύνοντος, οἱ μὲν ἐπελαμβάνοντο τῶν ἁμαξῶν, οἱ δὲ τοὺς ἐνισταμένους ἑκατοντάρχας δύο καὶ τὸν Κρισπῖνον αὐτὸν ἀπέκτειναν, πάντες δὲ διασκευασάμενοι καὶ παρακαλέσαντες ἀλλήλους Καίσαρι βοηθεῖν ἤλαυνον εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην· καὶ πυθόμενοι παρ’ αὐτῷ δειπνεῖν ὀγδοήκοντα συγκλητικούς, ἐφέροντο πρὸς τὰ βασίλεια, νῦν καιρὸν εἶναι λέγοντες ἐν ταὐτῷ [5] πάντας ἀνελεῖν τοὺς Καίσαρος πολεμίους. ἡ μὲν οὖν πόλις ὡς αὐτίκα διαρπαγησομένη θόρυβον εἶχε πολύν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς βασιλείοις ἦσαν διαδρομαί, καὶ τὸν Ὄθωνα δεινὴ κατελάμβανεν ἀπορία. φοβούμενος γὰρ ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀνδρῶν αὐτὸς ἦν φοβερὸς ἐκείνοις, καὶ πρὸς αὑτὸν ἀνηρτημένους ἑώρα ταῖς ὄψεσιν ἀναύδους καὶ περιδεεῖς, ἐνίους καὶ μετὰ [6] γυναικῶν ἥκοντας ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον. ἅμα δὲ τοὺς ἐπάρχους ἀπέστελλε τοῖς στρατιώταις διαλέγεσθαι καὶ πραΰνειν κελεύσας, ἅμα δὲ τοὺς κεκλημένους ἄνδρας ἀναστήσας καθ’ ἑτέρας θύρας ἀφῆκε· καὶ μικρὸν ἔφθησαν ὑπεκφυγόντες, διὰ τῶν μισθοφόρων ὠθουμένων εἰς τὸν ἀνδρῶνα καὶ πυνθανομένων τί γεγόνασιν οἱ Καίσαρος πολέμιοι.

[7] τότε μὲν οὖν ὀρθὸς ἀπὸ τῆς κλίνης πολλὰ παρηγορήσας καὶ δεηθεὶς καὶ μηδὲ δακρύων φεισάμενος μόλις ἀπέπεμψεν αὐτούς· τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ δωρησάμενος ἅπαντας κατ’ ἄνδρα χιλίαις καὶ διακοσίαις καὶ πεντήκοντα δραχμαῖς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸ [8] στρατόπεδον, καὶ τὸ μὲν πλῆθος ἐπῄνεσεν, ὡς πρὸς αὐτὸν εὔνουν καὶ πρόθυμον, ὀλίγους δέ τινας οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ φήσας ὑποικουρεῖν, διαβάλλοντας αὐτοῦ τὴν μετριότητα καὶ τὴν ἐκείνων εὐστάθειαν, ἠξίου συναγανακτεῖν καὶ συγκολάζειν. ἐπαινούντων δὲ πάντων καὶ κελευόντων, δύο μόνους παραλαβών, οἷς οὐδεὶς ἔμελλεν ἄχθεσθαι κολασθεῖσιν, ἀπηλλάγη.

[4] [1] Ταῦτα οἱ μὲν ἀγαπῶντες ἤδη καὶ πιστεύοντες ἐθαύμαζον τὴν μεταβολήν, οἱ δ’ ἀναγκαῖα πολιτεύματα πρὸς τὸν καιρὸν ἡγοῦντο, δημαγωγοῦντος αὐτοῦ διὰ τὸν πόλεμον. ἤδη γὰρ ἠγγέλλετο βεβαίως Οὐϊτέλλιος ἀξίωμα καὶ δύναμιν αὐτοκράτορος ἀνειληφώς· καὶ πτεροφόροι συνεχῶς ἐφοίτων ἀεί τι προσχωρεῖν ἐκείνῳ φράζοντες, ἕτεροι δὲ τὰ Παννονικὰ καὶ τὰ Δαλματικὰ καὶ τὰ περὶ Μυσίαν στρατεύματα δηλοῦντες [2] ᾑρῆσθαι μετὰ τῶν ἡγεμόνων Ὄθωνα. ταχὺ δὲ ἀφίκετο καὶ παρὰ Μουκιανοῦ γράμματα καὶ παρὰ Οὐεσπεσιανοῦ φίλια, τοῦ μὲν ἐν Συρίᾳ, τοῦ δὲ ἐν Ἰουδαίᾳ μεγάλας δυνάμεις ἐχόντων. ὑφ’ ὧν ἐπαιρόμενος ἔγραψεν Οὐϊτελλίῳ παραινῶν στρατιωτικὰ φρονεῖν, ὡς χρήματα πολλὰ δώσοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ πόλιν, ἐν ᾗ βιώσεται ῥᾷστον καὶ ἥδιστον [3] βίον μεθ’ ἡσυχίας. ἀντέγραψε δὲ κἀκεῖνος αὐτῷ κατειρωνευόμενος ἡσυχῆ πρῶτον· ἐκ δὲ τούτου διερεθιζόμενοι πολλὰ βλάσφημα καὶ ἀσελγῆ χλευάζοντες ἀλλήλοις ἔγραφον, οὐ ψευδῶς μέν, ἀνοήτως δὲ καὶ γελοίως θατέρου τὸν ἕτερον ἃ προσῆν ἀμφοτέροις ὀνείδη λοιδοροῦντος. ἀσωτίας γὰρ καὶ μαλακίας καὶ ἀπειρίας πολέμων καὶ τῶν πρόσθεν ἐπὶ πενίᾳ χρεῶν πλήθους ἔργον ἦν εἰπεῖν ὁποτέρῳ μεῖον αὐτῶν μέτεστι.

[4] Σημείων δὲ καὶ φαντασμάτων πολλῶν λεγομένων, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα φήμας ἀδεσπότους καὶ ἀμφιβόλους εἶχεν, ἐν δὲ Καπιτωλίῳ Νίκης ἐφεστώσης ἅρματι τὰς ἡνίας πάντες εἶδον ἀφειμένας ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν, ὥσπερ κρατεῖν μὴ δυναμένης, καὶ τὸν ἐν μεσοποταμίᾳ νήσῳ Γαΐου Καίσαρος ἀνδριάντα μήτε σεισμοῦ γεγονότος μήτε πνεύματος ἀφ’ ἑσπέρας [5] μεταστραφέντα πρὸς τὰς ἀνατολάς· ὅ φασι συμβῆναι περὶ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας ἐν αἷς οἱ περὶ Οὐεσπεσιανὸν ἐμφανῶς ἤδη τῶν πραγμάτων ἀντελαμβάνοντο. καὶ τὸ περὶ τὸν Θύμβριν δὲ σύμπτωμα σημεῖον ἐποιοῦντο οἱ πολλοὶ μοχθηρόν. ἦν μὲν γὰρ ὥρα περὶ ἣν μάλιστα οἱ ποταμοὶ πλήθουσιν, ἀλλ’ οὔπω τοσοῦτος ἤρθη πρότερον, οὐδὲ ἀπώλεσε τοσαῦτα καὶ διέφθειρεν, ὑπερχυθεὶς καὶ κατακλύσας πολὺ μέρος τῆς πόλεως, πλεῖστον δὲ ἐν ᾧ τὸν ἐπὶ πράσει διαπωλοῦσι σῖτον, ὡς δεινὴν ἀπορίαν ἡμερῶν συχνῶν κατασχεῖν.

[5] [1] Ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰς Ἄλπεις κατέχοντες ἤδη προσηγγέλλοντο Κεκίνας καὶ Οὐάλης Οὐϊτελλίῳ στρατηγοῦντες, ἐν Ῥώμῃ Δολοβέλλας, εὐπατρίδης ἀνήρ, ὑποψίαν παρεῖχε τοῖς μισθοφόροις νεώτερα φρονεῖν. ἐκεῖνον μὲν οὖν, εἴτε αὐτὸν εἴτε ἄλλον δεδοικώς, εἰς πόλιν Ἀκύνιον παρέπεμψε παραθαρρύνας. καταλέγων δὲ τῶν ἐν τέλει συνεκδήμους ἔταξεν ἐν τούτοις καὶ Λεύκιον τὸν Οὐϊτελλίου ἀδελφόν, οὔτε προσθεὶς οὐδὲν οὔτε ἀφελὼν ἧς [2] εἶχε τιμῆς. ἰσχυρῶς δὲ καὶ τῆς μητρὸς ἐπεμελήθη τοῦ Οὐϊτελλίου καὶ τῆς γυναικός, ὅπως μηδὲν φοβήσονται περὶ αὑτῶν. τῆς δὲ Ῥώμης φύλακα Φλαούιον Σαβῖνον, ἀδελφὸν Οὐεσπεσιανοῦ, κατέστησεν, εἴτε καὶ τοῦτο πράξας ἐπὶ τιμῇ Νέρωνος (παρ’ ἐκείνου γὰρ εἰλήφει τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁ Σαβῖνος, ἀφείλετο δὲ Γάλβας αὐτόν), εἴτε μᾶλλον εὔνοιαν ἐνεδείκνυτο Οὐεσπεσιανῷ καὶ πίστιν αὔξων Σαβῖνον.

[3] Αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ἐν Βριξίλλῳ, πόλει τῆς Ἰταλίας περὶ τὸν Ἠριδανὸν ἀπελείφθη, στρατηγοὺς δὲ τῶν δυνάμεων ἐξέπεμψε Μάριόν τε Κέλσον καὶ Σουητώνιον Παυλῖνον ἔτι τε Γάλλον καὶ Σπουρίναν, ἄνδρας ἐνδόξους, χρήσασθαι δὲ μὴ δυνηθέντας ἐπὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ὡς προῃροῦντο τοῖς ἑαυτῶν λογισμοῖς δι’ ἀταξίαν καὶ θρασύτητα τῶν [4] στρατιωτῶν. οὐ γὰρ ἠξίουν ἑτέρων ἀκούειν, ὡς παρ’ αὐτῶν τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος τὸ ἄρχειν ἔχοντος. ἦν μὲν οὖν οὐδὲ τὰ τῶν πολεμίων ὑγιαίνοντα παντάπασιν οὐδὲ χειροήθη τοῖς ἡγεμόσιν, ἀλλ’ ἔμπληκτα καὶ σοβαρὰ διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐκείνοις ἐμπειρία γε παρῆν τοῦ μάχεσθαι [5] καὶ τὸ κάμνειν ἐθάδες ὄντες οὐκ ἔφευγον, οὗτοι δὲ μαλακοὶ μὲν ἦσαν ὑπὸ σχολῆς καὶ διαίτης ἀπολέμου, πλεῖστον χρόνον ἐν θεάτροις καὶ πανηγύρεσι καὶ παρὰ σκηνὴν βεβιωκότες, ὕβρει δὲ καὶ κόμπῳ ἐπαμπέχειν ἐβούλοντο, προσποιήσασθαι τὰς λειτουργίας ὡς κρείττονες ἀπαξιοῦντες, οὐχ ὡς ἀδύνατοι φέρειν. ὁ δὲ Σπουρίνας προσβιαζόμενος αὐτοὺς ἐκινδύνευσε μικρὸν ἐλθόντας ἀνελεῖν [6] αὐτόν. ὕβρεως δὲ καὶ βλασφημίας οὐδεμιᾶς ἐφείσαντο, προδότην καὶ λυμεῶνα τῶν Καίσαρος καιρῶν καὶ πραγμάτων λέγοντες. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ μεθυσθέντες ἤδη νυκτὸς ἦλθον ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν ἐφόδιον αἰτοῦντες· εἶναι γὰρ αὐτοῖς πρὸς Καίσαρα βαδιστέον, ὅπως ἐκείνου κατηγορήσωσιν.

[6] [1] Ὤνησε δὲ τὰ πράγματα καὶ Σπουρίναν ἐν τῷ παραυτίκα λοιδορία περὶ Πλακεντίαν γενομένη τῶν στρατιωτῶν. οἱ γὰρ Οὐϊτελλίου τοῖς τείχεσι προσβάλλοντες ἐχλεύαζον τοὺς Ὄθωνος ἑστῶτας παρὰ τὰς ἐπάλξεις, σκηνικοὺς καὶ πυρριχιστὰς καὶ Πυθίων καὶ Ὀλυμπίων θεωρούς, πολέμου δὲ καὶ στρατείας ἀπείρους καὶ ἀθεάτους ἀποκαλοῦντες, καὶ μέγα φρονοῦντας ἐπὶ τῷ γέροντος ἀνόπλου κεφαλὴν ἀποτεμεῖν, τὸν Γάλβαν λέγοντες, εἰς δὲ ἀγῶνα καὶ μάχην ἀνδρῶν οὐκ ἂν ἐκφανῶς [2] καταβάντας. οὕτω γὰρ ἐταράχθησαν ὑπὸ τούτων τῶν ὀνειδῶν καὶ διεκάησαν ὥστε προσπεσεῖν τῷ Σπουρίνᾳ, δεόμενοι χρῆσθαι καὶ προστάττειν αὐτοῖς, οὐδένα κίνδυνον οὐδὲ πόνον ἀπολεγομένοις. ἰσχυρᾶς δὲ συστάσης τειχομαχίας καὶ μηχανημάτων πολλῶν προσαχθέντων ἐκράτησαν οἱ τοῦ Σπουρίνα, καὶ φόνῳ πολλῷ τοὺς ἐναντίους ἀποκρουσάμενοι διετήρησαν ἔνδοξον πόλιν καὶ τῶν Ἰταλῶν οὐδεμιᾶς ἧττον ἀνθοῦσαν.

[3] Ἦσαν δὲ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα τῶν Οὐϊτελλίου στρατηγῶν οἱ Ὄθωνος ἐντυχεῖν ἀλυπότεροι καὶ πόλεσι καὶ ἰδιώταις· ἐκείνων δὲ Κεκίνας μὲν οὔτε φωνὴν οὔτε σχῆμα δημοτικός, ἀλλ’ ἐπαχθὴς καὶ ἀλλόκοτος, σώματος μεγάλου, Γαλατικῶς ἀναξυρίσι καὶ χειρῖσιν ἐνεσκευασμένος, σημείοις καὶ ἄρχουσι [4] Ῥωμαϊκοῖς διαλεγόμενος. καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα παρέπεμπον αὐτῷ λογάδην ἱππεῖς ὀχουμένην ἵππῳ κεκοσμημένην ἐπιφανῶς. Φάβιον δὲ Οὐάλεντα τὸν ἕτερον στρατηγὸν οὔτε ἁρπαγαὶ πολεμίων οὔτε κλοπαὶ καὶ δωροδοκίαι παρὰ συμμάχων ἐνεπίμπλασαν χρηματιζόμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐδόκει διὰ τοῦτο βραδέως ὁδεύων ὑστερῆσαι τῆς προτέρας [5] μάχης. οἱ δὲ τὸν Κεκίναν αἰτιῶνται, σπεύδοντα τὴν νίκην ἑαυτοῦ γενέσθαι πρὶν ἐκεῖνον ἐλθεῖν, ἄλλοις τε μικροτέροις περιπεσεῖν ἁμαρτήμασι καὶ μάχην οὐ κατὰ καιρὸν οὐδὲ γενναίως συνάψαι, μικροῦ πάντα τὰ πράγματα διαφθείρασαν αὐτοῖς.

[7] [1] Ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἀποκρουσθεὶς τῆς Πλακεντίας ὁ Κεκίνας ἐπὶ Κρεμώνην ὥρμησεν, ἑτέραν πόλιν εὐδαίμονα καὶ μεγάλην, πρῶτος μὲν Ἄννιος Γάλλος πρὸς Πλακεντίαν Σπουρίνᾳ βοηθῶν, ὡς ἤκουσε καθ’ ὁδὸν τοὺς Πλακεντίνους περιγεγονέναι, κινδυνεύειν δὲ τοὺς ἐν Κρεμώνῃ, μετήγαγεν ἐκεῖ τὸ στράτευμα καὶ κατεστρατοπέδευσε πλησίον τῶν πολεμίων· ἔπειτα καὶ τῶν ἄλλων [2] ἕκαστος ἐβοήθει τῷ στρατηγῷ. τοῦ δὲ Κεκίνα λοχίσαντος εἰς λάσια χωρία καὶ ὑλώδη πολλοὺς ὁπλίτας, ἱππεῖς δὲ προεξελάσαι κελεύσαντος, κἂν συνάψωσιν οἱ πολέμιοι κατὰ μικρὸν ἀναχωρεῖν καὶ ἀναφεύγειν, ἄχρι ἂν ὑπάγοντες οὕτως ἐμβάλωσιν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὴν ἐνέδραν, ἐξήγγειλαν αὐτόμολοι τῷ Κέλσῳ. καὶ οὗτος μὲν ἱππεῦσιν ἀγαθοῖς ἀντεξελάσας, πεφυλαγμένως δὲ χρώμενος τῇ διώξει καὶ τὴν ἐνέδραν περισχὼν καὶ συνταράξας, ἐκάλει τοὺς ὁπλίτας ἐκ τοῦ στρατοπέδου.

[3] καὶ δοκοῦσιν ἂν ἐπελθόντες ἐν καιρῷ μηδένα λιπεῖν τῶν πολεμίων, ἀλλὰ πᾶν τὸ μετὰ Κεκίνα στράτευμα συντρῖψαι καὶ ἀνελεῖν ἐπισπόμενοι τοῖς ἱππεῦσι· νυνὶ δὲ ὁ Παυλῖνος ὀψὲ καὶ σχολῇ προσβοηθήσας αἰτίαν ἔσχεν ἐνδεέστερον [4] τῆς δόξης στρατηγῆσαι δι’ εὐλάβειαν. οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν καὶ προδοσίαν ἐνεκάλουν αὐτῷ, καὶ παρώξυνον τὸν Ὄθωνα, μεγαληγοροῦντες ὡς νενικηκότων αὐτῶν, τῆς δὲ νίκης οὐκ ἐπὶ πᾶν προελθούσης κακίᾳ τῶν στρατηγῶν. ὁ δὲ Ὄθων οὐχ οὕτως ἐπίστευεν αὐτοῖς ὡς ἐβούλετο μὴ δοκεῖν ἀπιστεῖν. ἔπεμψεν οὖν Τιτιανὸν ἐπὶ τὰ στρατεύματα τὸν ἀδελφὸν καὶ Πρόκλον τὸν ἔπαρχον, ὃς εἶχεν ἔργῳ τὴν πᾶσαν ἀρχήν, [5] πρόσχημα δὲ ἦν ὁ Τιτιανός. οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Κέλσον καὶ Παυλῖνον ἄλλως ἐφείλκοντο συμβούλων ὄνομα καὶ φίλων, ἐξουσίαν καὶ δύναμιν ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι μηδεμίαν ἔχοντες. ἦν δὲ θορυβώδη καὶ τὰ παρὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις, μάλιστα δὲ τοῖς ὑπὸ τῷ Οὐάλεντι· καὶ τῆς περὶ τὴν ἐνέδραν μάχης ἀπαγγελθείσης ἐχαλέπαινον ὅτι μὴ παρεγένοντο μηδὲ ἤμυναν ἀνδρῶν τοσούτων ἀποθανόντων. μόλις δὲ πείσας καὶ παραιτησάμενος ὡρμημένους αὐτοὺς βάλλειν ἀνέζευξε καὶ συνῆψε τοῖς περὶ Κεκίναν.

[8] [1] Ὁ δὲ Ὄθων παραγενόμενος εἰς Βητριακὸν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον (ἔστι δὲ πολίχνη πλησίον Κρεμώνης τὸ Βητριακόν) ἐβουλεύετο περὶ τῆς μάχης. καὶ Πρόκλῳ μὲν ἐδόκει καὶ Τιτιανῷ, τῶν στρατευμάτων ὄντων προθύμων καὶ προσφάτου τῆς νίκης, διαγωνίσασθαι καὶ μὴ καθῆσθαι τὴν ἀκμὴν ἀμβλύνοντα τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ περιμένοντα Οὐϊτέλλιον αὐτὸν ἐκ Γαλατίας ἐπελθεῖν· [2] Παυλῖνος δὲ τοῖς μὲν πολεμίοις ἔφη πάντα μεθ’ ὧν μαχοῦνται παρεῖναι, καὶ μηδὲν ἐνδεῖν, Ὄθωνι δὲ τῆς ἤδη παρούσης οὐκ ἐλάττονα προσδόκιμον εἶναι δύναμιν ἐκ Μυσίας καὶ Παννονίας, ἂν τὸν αὑτοῦ περιμένῃ καιρόν, ἀλλὰ μὴ στρατηγῇ πρὸς [3] τὸν τῶν πολεμίων. οὐ γὰρ ἀμβλυτέροις γε χρήσεσθαι τότε τοῖς νῦν θαρροῦσιν ἀπ’ ἐλαττόνων, ἂν πλείονας τοὺς ἀγωνιζομένους προσλάβωσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐκ περιουσίας ἀγωνιεῖσθαι· καὶ χωρὶς δὲ τούτου τὴν διατριβὴν εἶναι πρὸς αὐτῶν ἐν ἀφθόνοις πᾶσιν ὄντων, ἐκείνοις δὲ τὸν χρόνον ἀπορίαν παρέξειν τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἐν πολεμίᾳ καθεζομένοις.

[4] ταῦτα λέγοντι Παυλίνῳ Μάριος Κέλσος ἐγένετο σύμψηφος. Ἄννιος δὲ Γάλλος οὐ παρῆν μέν, ἀλλ’ ἐθεραπεύετο πεπτωκὼς ἀφ’ ἵππου, γράψαντος δὲ Ὄθωνος αὐτῷ συνεβούλευσε μὴ σπεύδειν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐκ Μυσίας περιμένειν δύναμιν ἤδη καθ’ ὁδὸν οὖσαν. οὐ μὴν ἐπείθετο τούτοις, ἀλλὰ ἐκράτησαν οἱ πρὸς τὴν μάχην παρορμῶντες.

[9] [1] Αἰτίαι δὲ πλείονες ἄλλαι ὑπ’ ἄλλων λέγονται· προδήλως δὲ οἱ στρατηγικοὶ προσαγορευόμενοι καὶ τάξιν ἔχοντες δορυφόρων, τότε μᾶλλον ἀληθινῆς γευόμενοι στρατείας καὶ τὰς ἐν Ῥώμῃ διατριβὰς καὶ διαίτας ἀπολέμους καὶ πανηγυρικὰς ποθοῦντες, οὐκ ἦσαν καθεκτοὶ σπεύδοντες ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, ὡς εὐθὺς ἐξ ἐπιδρομῆς ἀναρπασόμενοι [2] τοὺς ἐναντίους. δοκεῖ δὲ μηδὲ αὐτὸς Ὄθων ἐξαναφέρειν ἔτι πρὸς τὴν ἀδηλότητα μηδὲ ὑπομένειν ἀηθείᾳ καὶ μαλακότητι τοὺς περὶ τῶν δεινῶν λογισμούς, ἐκπονούμενος δὲ ταῖς φροντίσι σπεύδειν ἐγκαλυψάμενος, ὥσπερ ἀπὸ κρημνοῦ, [3] μεθεῖναι τὰ πράγματα πρὸς τὸ συντυχόν. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν διηγεῖτο Σεκοῦνδος ὁ ῥήτωρ ἐπὶ τῶν ἐπιστολῶν γενόμενος τοῦ Ὄθωνος. ἑτέρων δὲ ἦν ἀκούειν ὅτι τοῖς στρατεύμασιν ἀμφοτέροις παρίσταντο ὁρμαὶ πολλαὶ ὡς εἰς ταὐτὸ συνελθεῖν· καὶ μάλιστα μὲν αὐτοὺς ὁμοφρονήσαντας ἐκ τῶν παρόντων ἡγεμονικῶν ἑλέσθαι τὸν ἄριστον, εἰ δὲ μή, τὴν σύγκλητον ὁμοῦ καθίσαντας ἐφεῖναι τὴν [4] αἵρεσιν ἐκείνῃ τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος. καὶ οὐκ ἀπεικός ἐστι, μηδετέρου τότε τῶν προσαγορευομένων αὐτοκρατόρων εὐδοκιμοῦντος, ἐπιπίπτειν τοιούτους διαλογισμοὺς τοῖς γνησίοις καὶ διαπόνοις καὶ σωφρονοῦσι τῶν στρατιωτῶν, ὡς ἔχθιστον εἴη καὶ δεινόν, ἃ πάλαι διὰ Σύλλαν καὶ Μάριον, εἶτα Καίσαρα καὶ Πομπήϊον ᾠκτείροντο δρῶντες ἀλλήλους καὶ πάσχοντες οἱ πολῖται, ταῦτα νῦν ὑπομένειν ἢ Οὐϊτελλίῳ λαιμαργίας καὶ οἰνοφλυγίας ἢ τρυφῆς καὶ ἀκολασίας Ὄθωνι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν [5] χορήγημα προθεμένους. ταῦτ’ οὖν ὑπονοοῦσι τούς τε περὶ τὸν Κέλσον αἰσθανομένους ἐμβαλεῖν διατριβήν, ἐλπίζοντας ἄνευ μάχης καὶ πόνων κριθήσεσθαι τὰ πράγματα, καὶ τοὺς περὶ τὸν Ὄθωνα φοβουμένους ἐπιταχῦναι τὴν μάχην.

[10] [1] Αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν εἰς Βρίξιλλον ἀνεχώρησε, καὶ τοῦτο προσεξαμαρτών, οὐχ ὅτι μόνον τὴν ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς αὐτοῦ παρόντος αἰδῶ καὶ φιλοτιμίαν ἀφεῖλε τῶν ἀγωνιζομένων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἐρρωμενεστάτους καὶ προθυμοτάτους δι’ αὐτὸν ἱππεῖς καὶ πεζοὺς ἀπαγαγὼν φυλακὴν τοῦ σώματος ὡσπερεὶ στόμωμα τῆς δυνάμεως ἀπέκοψε.

[2] Συνέβη δὲ ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις καὶ περὶ τὸν Ἠριδανὸν ἀγῶνα γενέσθαι, τοῦ μὲν Κεκίνα ζευγνύντος τὴν διάβασιν, τῶν δὲ Ὄθωνος εἰργόντων καὶ προσμαχομένων. ὡς δὲ οὐδὲν ἐπέραινον, ἐνθεμένων εἰς τὰ πλοῖα δᾷδα θείου καὶ πίττης ἀνάπλεων, διὰ τοῦ πόρου πνεῦμα προσπεσὸν ἄφνω τὴν παρεσκευασμένην ὕλην ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους [3] ἐξερρίπιζε. καπνοῦ δὲ πρῶτον, εἶτα λαμπρᾶς φλογὸς ἐκπεσούσης, ταραττόμενοι καὶ ἀποπηδῶντες εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν τάς τε ναῦς ἀνέτρεπον καὶ τὰ σώματα τοῖς πολεμίοις μετὰ γέλωτος παρεῖχον. οἱ δὲ Γερμανοὶ τοῖς Ὄθωνος μονομάχοις περὶ νησῖδα τοῦ ποταμοῦ προσμίξαντες ἐκράτησαν καὶ διέφθειραν αὐτῶν οὐκ ὀλίγους.

[11] [1] Γενομένων δὲ τούτων, καὶ τῶν ἐν Βητριακῷ στρατιωτῶν τοῦ Ὄθωνος ἐκφερομένων μετ’ ὀργῆς ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, προήγαγεν αὐτοὺς ὁ Πρόκλος ἐκ τοῦ Βητριακοῦ, καὶ κατεστρατοπέδευσεν ἀπὸ πεντήκοντα σταδίων οὕτως ἀπείρως καὶ καταγελάστως ὥστε, τῆς μὲν ὥρας ἐαρινῆς οὔσης, τῶν δὲ κύκλῳ πεδίων πολλὰ νάματα καὶ ποταμοὺς [2] ἀεννάους ἐχόντων, ὕδατος σπάνει πιέζεσθαι. τῇ δὲ ὑστεραίᾳ βουλόμενον προάγειν ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους ὁδὸν οὐκ ἐλάττονα σταδίων ἑκατὸν οἱ περὶ τὸν Παυλῖνον οὐκ εἴων, ἀλλ’ ᾤοντο δεῖν περιμένειν καὶ μὴ προπονεῖν ἑαυτούς, μηδὲ εὐθὺς ἐκ πορείας μάχην τίθεσθαι πρὸς ἄνδρας ὡπλισμένους καὶ παρατεταγμένους καθ’ ἡσυχίαν, ἐν ὅσῳ χρόνῳ προΐασιν αὐτοὶ τοσαύτην ὁδὸν ἀναμεμιγμένων [3] ὑποζυγίων καὶ ἀκολούθων. οὔσης δὲ περὶ τούτων ἀντιλογίας ἐν τοῖς στρατηγοῖς ἦλθε παρ’ Ὄθωνος ἱππεὺς τῶν καλουμένων Νομάδων γράμματα κομίζων κελεύοντα μὴ μένειν μηδὲ διατρίβειν, ἀλλ’ ἄγειν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τοὺς πολεμίους. ἐκεῖνοι μὲν οὖν ἄραντες ἐχώρουν, ὁ δὲ Κεκίνας πυθόμενος τὴν ἔφοδον αὐτῶν ἐθορυβήθη, καὶ κατὰ σπουδὴν ἀπολιπὼν τὰ ἔργα καὶ τὸν ποταμὸν [4] ἧκεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον. ὡπλισμένων δὲ ἤδη τῶν πολλῶν, καὶ τὸ σύνθημα παραλαμβανόντων παρὰ τοῦ Οὐάλεντος, ἐν ὅσῳ τὴν τάξιν διελάγχανε τὰ τάγματα, τοὺς ἀρίστους τῶν ἱππέων προεξέπεμψαν.

[12] [1] Ἐμπίπτει δὲ τοῖς προτεταγμένοις τῶν Ὄθωνος ἐκ δή τινος αἰτίας δόξα καὶ λόγος ὡς μεταβαλουμένων τῶν Οὐϊτελλίου στρατηγῶν πρὸς αὐτούς. ὡς οὖν ἐγγὺς ἦσαν, ἠσπάσαντο φιλίως συστρατιώτας προσαγορεύσαντες. ἐκείνων δὲ τὴν προσαγόρευσιν οὐκ εὐμενῶς, ἀλλὰ μετὰ θυμοῦ καὶ φωνῆς πολεμικῆς ἀμειψαμένων, τοῖς μὲν ἀσπασαμένοις ἀθυμία, τοῖς δὲ λοιποῖς ὑπόνοια κατὰ τῶν ἀσπασαμένων ὡς προδιδόντων [2] παρέστη. καὶ τοῦτο πρῶτον αὐτοὺς ἐτάραξεν ἤδη τῶν πολεμίων ἐν χερσὶν ὄντων. εἶτα τῶν ἄλλων οὐδὲν ἦν κόσμῳ γινόμενον, ἀλλὰ πολλὴν μὲν ἀταξίαν τὰ σκευοφόρα τοῖς μαχομένοις ἐμπλαζόμενα παρεῖχε, πολλοὺς δὲ τὰ χωρία διασπασμοὺς ἐποίει τάφρων ὄντα μεστὰ καὶ ὀρυγμάτων, ἃ φοβούμενοι καὶ περιϊόντες ἠναγκάζοντο φύρδην καὶ κατὰ μέρη πολλὰ συμπλέκεσθαι τοῖς [3] ἐναντίοις. μόναι δὲ δύο λεγεῶνες (οὕτω γὰρ τὰ τάγματα Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν), ἐπίκλησιν ἡ μὲν Οὐϊτελλίου Ἅρπαξ, ἡ δὲ Ὄθωνος Βοηθός, εἰς πεδίον ἐξελίξασαι ψιλὸν καὶ ἀναπεπταμένον, νόμιμόν τινα μάχην, συμπεσοῦσαι φαλαγγηδόν, ἐμάχοντο πολὺν χρόνον. οἱ μὲν οὖν Ὄθωνος ἄνδρες ἦσαν εὔρωστοι καὶ ἀγαθοί, πολέμου δὲ καὶ μάχης τότε πρῶτον πεῖραν λαμβάνοντες· οἱ δὲ Οὐϊτελλίου πολλῶν ἀγώνων ἐθάδες, ἤδη δὲ γηραιοὶ καὶ παρακμάζοντες.

[4] Ὁρμήσαντες οὖν ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς οἱ Ὄθωνος ἐώσαντο καὶ τὸν ἀετὸν ἀφείλοντο, πάντας ὁμοῦ τι τοὺς προμάχους ἀποκτείναντες· οἱ δὲ ὑπὸ αἰσχύνης καὶ ὀργῆς ἐμπεσόντες αὐτοῖς τόν τε πρεσβευτὴν τοῦ τάγματος Ὀρφίδιον ἔκτειναν καὶ πολλὰ τῶν σημείων ἥρπασαν. τοῖς δὲ μονομάχοις ἐμπειρίαν τε καὶ θάρσος ἔχειν πρὸς τὰς συμπλοκὰς δοκοῦσιν ἐπήγαγεν Οὔαρος Ἀλφῆνος τοὺς καλουμένους [5] Βατάβους. εἰσὶ δὲ Γερμανῶν ἱππεῖς ἄριστοι, νῆσον οἰκοῦντες ὑπὸ τοῦ Ῥήνου περιρρεομένην. τούτους ὀλίγοι μὲν τῶν μονομάχων ὑπέστησαν, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι φεύγοντες ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμὸν ἐμπίπτουσιν εἰς σπείρας τῶν πολεμίων αὐτόθι τεταγμένας, ὑφ’ ὧν ἀμυνόμενοι πάντες ὁμαλῶς διεφθάρησαν.

[6] αἴσχιστα δὲ ἠγωνίσαντο πάντων οἱ στρατηγικοί, μηδὲ ὅσον ἐν χερσὶ γενέσθαι τοὺς ἐναντίους ὑπομείναντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἀηττήτους ἔτι φόβου καὶ ταραχῆς ἀνεπίμπλασαν φεύγοντες δι’ αὐτῶν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πολλοί γε τῶν Ὄθωνος νενικηκότες τοὺς καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἐβιάσαντο καὶ διεξέπεσον διὰ τῶν πολεμίων κρατούντων εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον.

[13] [1] Τῶν δὲ στρατηγῶν οὔτε Πρόκλος οὔτε Παυλῖνος συνεισελθεῖν ἐτόλμησαν, ἀλλ’ ἐξέκλιναν φοβούμενοι τοὺς στρατιώτας ἤδη τὴν αἰτίαν ἐπὶ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς τρέποντας. Ἄννιος δὲ Γάλλος ἀνελάμβανεν ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ παρεμυθεῖτο τοὺς ἐκ τῆς μάχης συλλεγομένους, ὡς ἀγχωμάλου γεγενημένης καὶ πολλοῖς κεκρατηκότας μέρεσι [2] τῶν πολεμίων. Μάριος δὲ Κέλσος τοὺς ἐν τέλει συναγαγὼν ἐκέλευσε σκοπεῖν τὸ κοινόν, ὡς ἐπὶ συμφορᾷ τηλικαύτῃ καὶ φόνῳ τοσούτῳ πολιτῶν μηδὲ Ὄθωνος, εἴπερ ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός ἐστιν, ἐθελήσοντος ἔτι πειρᾶσθαι τῆς τύχης, ὅπου καὶ Κάτων καὶ Σκηπίων, Καίσαρι κρατοῦντι μετὰ Φάρσαλον εἶξαι μὴ θελήσαντες, αἰτίαν ἔχουσιν ὡς πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας ἐν Λιβύῃ παραναλώσαντες οὐκ ἀναγκαίως, καίπερ ἀγωνιζόμενοι περὶ τῆς [3] Ῥωμαίων ἐλευθερίας. τὰ γὰρ ἄλλα κοινὴν ἡ τύχη παρέχουσα πᾶσιν ἑαυτὴν ἓν οὐκ ἀφαιρεῖται τῶν ἀγαθῶν, τὸ κἂν πταίσωσιν εὐλογιστεῖν πρὸς τὰ συντυγχάνοντα.

Ταῦτα λέγων ἔπειθε τοὺς ἡγεμονικούς. ἐπεὶ δὲ πειρώμενοι τοὺς στρατιώτας ἑώρων εἰρήνης δεομένους καὶ Τιτιανὸς ἐκέλευε πρεσβεύειν ὑπὲρ ὁμονοίας, ἔδοξε Κέλσῳ καὶ Γάλλῳ βαδίζειν καὶ διαλέγεσθαι τοῖς περὶ τὸν Κεκίναν καὶ Οὐάλεντα.

[4] βαδίζουσι δὲ αὐτοῖς ἀπήντησαν ἑκατοντάρχαι τὴν μὲν δύναμιν ἤδη κεκινημένην λέγοντες ἐρχομένην ἐπὶ τὸ Βητριακόν, αὐτοὶ δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἀπεστάλθαι περὶ ὁμονοίας. ἐπαινέσαντες οὖν οἱ περὶ τὸν Κέλσον ἐκέλευσαν αὐτοὺς ἀναστρέψαντας πάλιν ἀπαντᾶν μετ’ αὐτῶν τοῖς περὶ τὸν Κεκίναν. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἐγγὺς ἦσαν, ἐκινδύνευσεν ὁ Κέλσος. ἔτυχον γὰρ οἱ περὶ τὴν ἐνέδραν ἡττημένοι [5] πρότερον ἱππεῖς προεξελαύνοντες. ὡς οὖν προσιόντα τὸν Κέλσον κατεῖδον, εὐθὺς βοήσαντες ὥρμησαν ἐπ’ αὐτόν. οἱ δὲ ἑκατοντάρχαι προέστησαν ἀνείργοντες· καὶ τῶν ἄλλων λοχαγῶν φείδεσθαι βοώντων οἱ περὶ τὸν Κεκίναν πυθόμενοι καὶ προσελάσαντες τὴν ἀκοσμίαν ταχὺ τῶν ἱππέων ἔπαυσαν, τὸν δὲ Κέλσον ἀσπασάμενοι φιλοφρόνως ἐβάδιζον μετ’ αὐτῶν εἰς τὸ Βητριακόν.

[6] ἐν δὲ τούτῳ μετάνοια Τιτιανὸν ἔσχεν ἐκπέμψαντα τοὺς πρέσβεις· καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν τοὺς θρασυνομένους αὖθις ἀνεβίβαζεν ἐπὶ τὰ τείχη καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους παρεκάλει βοηθεῖν. τοῦ δὲ Κεκίνα προσελάσαντος τῷ ἵππῳ καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν ὀρέγοντος οὐδεὶς ἀντέσχεν, ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν τειχῶν ἠσπάζοντο τοὺς στρατιώτας, οἱ δὲ τὰς πύλας ἀνοίξαντες ἐξῄεσαν καὶ ἀνεμίγνυντο τοῖς προσήκουσιν.

[7] ἠδίκει δὲ οὐδείς, ἀλλὰ καὶ φιλοφροσύναι καὶ δεξιώσεις ἦσαν, ὤμοσαν δὲ πάντες περὶ τοῦ Οὐϊτελλίου καὶ προσεχώρησαν.

[14] [1] Οὕτω μὲν οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν παραγενομένων ἀπαγγέλλουσι γενέσθαι τὴν μάχην, οὐδὲ αὐτοὶ σαφῶς ὁμολογοῦντες εἰδέναι τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα διὰ τὴν ἀταξίαν καὶ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν. ἐμοὶ δὲ ὕστερον ὁδεύοντι διὰ τοῦ πεδίου Μέστριος Φλῶρος, ἀνὴρ ὑπατικὸς τῶν τότε μὴ κατὰ γνώμην, ἀλλ’ ἀνάγκῃ μετὰ τοῦ Ὄθωνος γενομένων, νεὼν ὄντα παλαιὸν ἐπιδείξας διηγεῖτο μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἐπελθὼν ἰδεῖν νεκρῶν σωρὸν τηλικοῦτον ὥστε [2] τοὺς ἐπιπολῆς ἅπτεσθαι τῶν ἀετῶν. καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἔφη ζητῶν οὔτε αὐτὸς εὑρεῖν οὔτε παρ’ ἄλλου του πυθέσθαι. θνήσκειν μὲν γὰρ παρὰ τοὺς ἐμφυλίους πολέμους, ὅταν τροπὴ γένηται, πλείονας εἰκός ἐστι, τῷ μηδένα ζωγρεῖν, χρῆσθαι γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι τοῖς ἁλισκομένοις, ἡ δ’ ἐπὶ τοσοῦτο σωρεία καὶ συμφόρησις οὐκ ἔχει τὴν αἰτίαν εὐσυλλόγιστον.

[15] [1] Τῷ δὲ Ὄθωνι πρῶτον μὲν ἀσαφής, ὥσπερ εἴωθε περὶ τῶν τηλικούτων, προσέπεσε λόγος· ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τετρωμένοι τινὲς ἧκον ἐκ τῆς μάχης ἀπαγγέλλοντες, τοὺς μὲν φίλους ἧττον ἄν τις ἐθαύμασεν οὐκ ἐῶντας ἀπαγορεύειν, ἀλλὰ θαρρεῖν παρακελευομένους, τὸ δὲ τῶν στρατιωτῶν πάθος ἅπασαν ὑπερέβαλε πίστιν. ὡς οὐδεὶς ἀπῆλθεν, [2] οὐδὲ μετέστη πρὸς τοὺς κρατοῦντας, οὐδ’ ὤφθη τὸ καθ’ αὑτὸν ζητῶν ἀπεγνωσμένου τοῦ ἡγεμόνος, πάντες δ’ ὁμαλῶς ἐπὶ θύρας ἦλθον, ἐκάλουν αὐτοκράτορα, προελθόντος ἐγίνοντο προστρόπαιοι, μετὰ βοῆς καὶ ἱκεσίας χειρῶν ἥπτοντο, προσέπιπτον, ἐδάκρυον, ἐδέοντο μὴ σφᾶς ἐγκαταλιπεῖν, μὴ προδοῦναι τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἀλλὰ χρῆσθαι μέχρι ἂν ἐμπνέωσι καὶ ψυχαῖς καὶ σώμασιν ὑπὲρ [3] αὑτοῦ. ταῦτα ὁμοῦ πάντες ἱκέτευον. εἷς δὲ τῶν ἀφανεστέρων ἀνατείνας τὸ ξίφος καὶ εἰπών, “Ἴσθι, Καῖσαρ, οὕτως ὑπὲρ σοῦ παρατεταγμένους ἅπαντας,” ἀπέσφαξεν ἑαυτόν.

Ἀλλὰ τούτων οὐδὲν ἐπέκλασε τὸν Ὄθωνα, φαιδρῷ δὲ καὶ καθεστῶτι προσώπῳ πανταχόσε τὰς ὄψεις περιαγαγών, “Ταύτην,” εἶπεν, “ὦ συστρατιῶται, τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνης, ἐν ᾗ με πρῶτον ἐποιήσατε αὐτοκράτορα, μακαριωτέραν ἡγοῦμαι, τοιούτους ὁρῶν ὑμᾶς καὶ τηλικούτων [4] ἀξιούμενος. ἀλλὰ μὴ μείζονος ἀποστερεῖτε, τοῦ καλῶς ἀποθανεῖν ὑπὲρ τοσούτων καὶ τοιούτων πολιτῶν. εἰ τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίας ἄξιος γέγονα, δεῖ με τῆς ἐμῆς ψυχῆς ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἀφειδεῖν. οἶδα τὴν νίκην τοῖς ἐναντίοις οὔτε βεβαίαν οὔτε ἰσχυρὰν οὖσαν. ἀπαγγέλλουσι τὴν ἐκ Μυσίας ἡμῶν δύναμιν οὐ πολλῶν ἡμερῶν ὁδὸν ἀπέχειν, [5] ἤδη καταβαίνουσαν ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀδρίαν. Ἀσία καὶ Συρία καὶ Αἴγυπτος καὶ τὰ πολεμοῦντα Ἰουδαίοις στρατεύματα μεθ’ ἡμῶν, ἥ τε σύγκλητος παρ’ ἡμῖν καὶ τέκνα τῶν ἐναντίων καὶ γυναῖκες. ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστι πρὸς Ἀννίβαν οὐδὲ Πύρρον οὐδὲ Κίμβρους ὁ πόλεμος ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἰταλίας, ἀλλὰ Ῥωμαίοις πολεμοῦντες ἀμφότεροι τὴν πατρίδα καὶ νικῶντες ἀδικοῦμεν καὶ νικώμενοι. καὶ γὰρ τὸ ἀγαθὸν τοῦ [6] κρατοῦντος ἐκείνῃ κακόν ἐστι. πιστεύσατε πολλάκις ὅτι δύναμαι κάλλιον ἀποθανεῖν ἢ ἄρχειν. οὐ γὰρ ὁρῶ τί τηλικοῦτον Ῥωμαίοις ὄφελος ἔσομαι κρατήσας, ἡλίκον ἐπιδοὺς ἐμαυτὸν ὑπὲρ εἰρήνης καὶ ὁμονοίας, καὶ τοῦ μὴ πάλιν ἡμέραν τοιαύτην ἐπιδεῖν τὴν Ἰταλίαν.”

[16] [1] Τοιαῦτα διαλεχθείς, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἐνίστασθαι καὶ παρακαλεῖν ἐπιχειροῦντας ἀπισχυρισάμενος, τούς τε φίλους ἐκέλευεν ἀπαλλάττεσθαι καὶ τῶν συγκλητικῶν τοὺς παρόντας· τοῖς δὲ μὴ παροῦσιν ἐπέστελλε καὶ γράμματα πρὸς τὰς πόλεις, ὅπως παρακομισθῶσιν ἐντίμως καὶ μετὰ [2] ἀσφαλείας. προσαγόμενος δὲ τὸν ἀδελφιδοῦν Κοκκήϊον, ἔτι μειράκιον ὄντα, θαρρεῖν παρεκάλει καὶ μὴ δεδιέναι Οὐϊτέλλιον, οὗ καὶ μητέρα καὶ γενεὰν καὶ γυναῖκα αὐτός, ὥσπερ οἰκείων κηδόμενος, διαφυλάξαι. διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ οὐδὲ θέσθαι παῖδα βουλόμενος αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἀναβαλέσθαι τὴν εἰσποίησιν, ὅπως συνάρχοι κρατήσαντος αὐτοῦ, μὴ προσαπόλοιτο πταίσαντος· “Ἐκεῖνο δέ,” εἶπεν, “ὦ παῖ, παρεγγυῶμαί σοι τελευταῖον, μήτε ἐπιλαθέσθαι παντάπασι μήτε ἄγαν μνημονεύειν ὅτι Καίσαρα θεῖον ἔσχες.”

[3] Γενόμενος δὲ ἀπὸ τούτων μετὰ μικρὸν ἤκουσε θορύβου καὶ βοῆς ἐπὶ θύραις. οἱ γὰρ στρατιῶται τῶν συγκλητικῶν τοῖς ἀπιοῦσι διηπείλουν ἀποσφάξειν, εἰ μὴ παραμενοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ οἰχήσονται τὸν αὐτοκράτορα καταλιπόντες. πάλιν οὖν προῆλθεν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀνδρῶν φοβηθείς, καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας, οὐκέτι δεητικὸς οὐδὲ πρᾷος, ἀλλὰ τραχὺς ὀφθείς, καὶ μετ’ ὀργῆς εἰς τὸ θορυβοῦν μάλιστα διαβλέψας, ἀπελθεῖν ἐποίησεν εἴξαντας καὶ διατρέσαντας.

[17] [1] Ἤδη δὲ ἑσπέρας οὔσης ἐδίψησε, καὶ πιὼν ὀλίγον ὕδατος, δυεῖν ὄντων αὐτῷ ξιφῶν, ἑκατέρου κατεμάνθανε τὸ σπάσμα πολὺν χρόνον, καὶ τὸ ἕτερον ἀπέδωκε, θάτερον δὲ εἰς τὰς ἀγκάλας ἀναλαβὼν τοὺς οἰκέτας προσεκαλεῖτο. καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος διένεμε τῶν χρημάτων τῷ μὲν πλέον, τῷ δὲ ἔλαττον, οὐχ ὥσπερ ἀλλοτρίων ἀφειδῶν, ἀλλὰ τὸ κατ’ ἀξίαν καὶ τὸ μέτριον [2] ἐπιμελῶς φυλάττων. ἀποπέμψας δὲ τούτους ἤδη τὸ λοιπὸν ἀνεπαύετο τῆς νυκτός, ὥστε τοὺς κατευναστὰς αἰσθάνεσθαι βαθέως αὐτοῦ καθεύδοντος. ὄρθρου δὲ καλέσας ἀπελεύθερον ᾧ συνδιῴκησε τὰ περὶ τοὺς συγκλητικούς, μαθεῖν προσέταξε· καὶ πυθόμενος γεγονέναι τοῖς ἀπερχομένοις ὧν ἕκαστος ἔχρῃζεν, “Ἴθι τοίνυν,” ἔφη, “σύ, καὶ ποίει τοῖς στρατιώταις ἐμφανῆ σεαυτόν, εἰ μὴ θέλεις κακῶς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀποθανεῖν ὡς ἐμοὶ [3] συμπράξας τὸν θάνατον.” ἐξελθόντος δὲ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὸ ξίφος ὑποστήσας ὀρθὸν ἀμφοτέραις ταῖς χερσί, καὶ περιπεσὼν ἄνωθεν, ὅσον ἅπαξ στενάξαι μόνον ᾔσθετο τοῦ πόνου καὶ τοῖς ἐκτὸς αἴσθησιν παρέσχεν. ἀραμένων δὲ τῶν παίδων οἰμωγὴν εὐθὺς ἅπαν τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐπεῖχε κλαυθμός· καὶ μετὰ βοῆς οἱ στρατιῶται εἰσέπεσον ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας καὶ ὠλοφύροντο, περιπαθοῦντες καὶ λοιδοροῦντες ἑαυτοὺς μὴ φυλάξαντας τὸν αὐτοκράτορα μηδὲ κωλύσαντας ἀποθανεῖν [4] ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν. ἀπέστη δὲ οὐδεὶς τῶν κατ’ αὐτόν, ἐγγὺς ὄντων τῶν πολεμίων, ἀλλὰ κοσμήσαντες τὸ σῶμα καὶ πυρὰν κατασκευάσαντες ἐξεκόμιζον ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις οἱ φθάσαντες ὑποδῦναι καὶ βαστάσαι τὸ λέχος ἐπιγαυρούμενοι. τῶν δὲ ἄλλων οἱ μὲν τὸ τραῦμα τοῦ νεκροῦ κατεφίλουν προσπίπτοντες, οἱ δὲ ἥπτοντο τῶν χειρῶν, οἱ δὲ προσεκύνουν πόρρωθεν. ἔνιοι δὲ τῇ πυρᾷ λαμπάδας ὑφέντες ἑαυτοὺς ἀπέσφαξαν, οὐδὲν ἐκδήλως οὔτε πεπονθότες χρηστὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ τεθνηκότος οὔτε πείσεσθαι δεινὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ κρατοῦντος δεδιότες.

[5] ἀλλ’ ἔοικε μηδενὶ τῶν πώποτε τυράννων ἢ βασιλέων δεινὸς οὕτως ἔρως ἐγγενέσθαι καὶ περιμανὴς τοῦ ἄρχειν, ὡς ἐκεῖνοι τοῦ ἄρχεσθαι καὶ ὑπακούειν Ὄθωνος ἠράσθησαν· οὕς γε μηδ’ ἀποθανόντος ὁ πόθος προὔλιπεν, ἀλλὰ παρέμεινεν εἰς ἀνήκεστον ἔχθος Οὐϊτελλίῳ τελευτήσας.

[18] [1] Τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλα καιρὸν οἰκεῖον ἔχει λεχθῆναι· κρύψαντες δὲ τῇ γῇ τὰ λείψανα τοῦ Ὄθωνος οὔτε μεγέθει σήματος οὔτ’ ἐπιγραφῆς ὄγκῳ τὸν τάφον ἐποίησαν ἐπίφθονον. εἶδον δὲ ἐν Βριξίλλῳ γενόμενος καὶ μνῆμα μέτριον καὶ τὴν ἐπιγραφὴν οὕτως ἔχουσαν, εἰ μεταφρασθείη· “Δηλώσει Μάρκου Ὄθωνος.”

[2] Ἀπέθανε δὲ Ὄθων ἔτη μὲν ἑπτὰ καὶ τριάκοντα βιώσας, ἄρξας δὲ τρεῖς μῆνας, ἀπολιπὼν δὲ μὴ χείρονας μηδ’ ἐλάττους τῶν τὸν βίον αὐτοῦ ψεγόντων τοὺς ἐπαινοῦντας τὸν θάνατον. βιώσας γὰρ οὐδὲν ἐπιεικέστερον Νέρωνος ἀπέθανεν εὐγενέστερον.

[3] Οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται Πολλίωνος τοῦ ἑτέρου τῶν ἐπάρχων ὀμνύειν εὐθὺς εἰς τὸν Οὐϊτέλλιον κελεύσαντος ἐδυσχέραινον· καὶ πυθόμενοι τῶν συγκλητικῶν ἐνίους ἔτι παρεῖναι τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἀφῆκαν, Οὐεργινίῳ δὲ Ῥούφῳ πράγματα παρεῖχον ἅμα τοῖς ὅπλοις ἐλθόντες ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ κατακαλοῦντες αὖθις καὶ κελεύοντες ἄρχειν ἢ [4] πρεσβεύειν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν. ὁ δὲ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἡττωμένων παραλαβεῖν, νενικηκότων πρότερον μὴ θελήσας, μανικὸν ἡγεῖτο· πρεσβεύειν δὲ πρὸς τοὺς Γερμανοὺς δεδιώς, πολλὰ βεβιάσθαι παρὰ γνώμην ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ δοκοῦντας, ἔλαθε δι’ ἑτέρων θυρῶν ἐκποδὼν ποιήσας ἑαυτόν. ὡς δὲ τοῦτο ἔγνωσαν οἱ στρατιῶται, τούς τε ὅρκους ἐδέξαντο καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Κεκίναν προσέθεντο συγγνώμης τυχόντες.

MORALIA - Ηθικά

De liberis educandis

[1] Τί τις ἂν ἔχοι εἰπεῖν περὶ τῆς τῶν ἐλευθέρων παίδων ἀγωγῆς καὶ τίνι χρώμενοι σπουδαῖοι τοὺς τρόπους ἂν ἀποβαῖεν, φέρε σκεψώμεθα.

Βέλτιον δ’ ἴσως ἀπὸ τῆς γενέσεως ἄρξασθαι πρῶτον. τοῖς τοίνυν ἐπιθυμοῦσιν ἐνδόξων τέκνων [b] γενέσθαι πατράσιν ὑποθείμην ἂν ἔγωγε μὴ ταῖς τυχούσαις γυναιξὶ συνοικεῖν, λέγω δ’ οἷον ἑταίραις ἢ παλλακαῖς· τοῖς γὰρ μητρόθεν ἢ πατρόθεν οὐκ εὖ γεγονόσιν ἀνεξάλειπτα παρακολουθεῖ τὰ τῆς δυσγενείας ὀνείδη παρὰ πάντα τὸν βίον καὶ πρόχειρα τοῖς ἐλέγχειν καὶ λοιδορεῖσθαι βουλομένοις. καὶ σοφὸς ἦν ἄρ’ ὁ ποιητὴς ὅς φησιν

ὅταν δὲ κρηπὶς μὴ καταβληθῇ γένους

ὀρθῶς, ἀνάγκη δυστυχεῖν τοὺς ἐκγόνους.

Καλὸς οὖν παρρησίας θησαυρὸς εὐγένεια, ἧς δὴ πλεῖστον λόγον ποιητέον τοῖς νομίμου παιδοποιίας γλιχομένοις. καὶ μὲν δὴ τὰ φρονήματα τῶν [c] ὑπόχαλκον καὶ κίβδηλον ἐχόντων τὸ γένος σφάλλεσθαι καὶ ταπεινοῦσθαι πέφυκε, καὶ μάλ’ ὀρθῶς λέγων ὁ ποιητής φησι

δουλοῖ γὰρ ἄνδρα, κἂν θρασύσπλαγχνός τις ᾖ,

ὅταν συνειδῇ μητρὸς ἢ πατρὸς κακά.

ὥσπερ ἀμέλει μεγαλαυχίας ἐμπίπλανται καὶ φρυάγματος οἱ γονέων διασήμων. Κλεόφαντον γοῦν τὸν Θεμιστοκλέους πολλάκις λέγουσι φάναι καὶ πρὸς πολλοὺς ὡς ὅ τι ἂν αὐτὸς βούληται, τοῦτο καὶ τῷ δήμῳ συνδοκεῖ τῷ τῶν Ἀθηναίων· ἃ μὲν γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐθέλει, καὶ ἡ μήτηρ· ἃ δ’ ἂν ἡ μήτηρ, καὶ [d] Θεμιστοκλῆς· ἃ δ’ ἂν Θεμιστοκλῆς, καὶ πάντες Ἀθηναῖοι. πάνυ δ’ ἄξιον ἐπαινεῖν καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους τῆς μεγαλοφροσύνης, οἵτινες Ἀρχίδαμον τὸν βασιλέα ἑαυτῶν ἐζημίωσαν χρήμασιν, ὅτι μικρὰν τὸ μέγεθος γυναῖκα γάμῳ λαβεῖν ὑπέμεινεν, ὑπειπόντες ὡς οὐ βασιλέας ἀλλὰ βασιλείδια παρασχεῖν αὐτοῖς διανοοῖτο.

Ἐχόμενον δ’ ἂν εἴη τούτων εἰπεῖν ὅπερ οὐδὲ τοῖς πρὸ ἡμῶν παρεωρᾶτο. τὸ ποῖον; ὅτι τοὺς ἕνεκα παιδοποιίας πλησιάζοντας ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἤτοι τὸ παράπαν ἀοίνους ἢ μετρίως γοῦν οἰνωμένους ποιεῖσθαι προσήκει τὸν συνουσιασμόν. φίλοινοι γὰρ καὶ μεθυστικοὶ γίγνεσθαι φιλοῦσιν ὧν ἂν τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς σπορᾶς οἱ πατέρες ἐν μέθῃ [2] [a] ποιησάμενοι τύχωσιν. ᾗ καὶ Διογένης μειράκιον ἐκστατικὸν ἰδὼν καὶ παραφρονοῦν “νεανίσκε” ἔφησεν, “ὁ πατήρ σε μεθύων ἔσπειρε.” καὶ περὶ μὲν τῆς γενέσεως τοσαῦτ’ εἰρήσθω μοι, περὶ δὲ τῆς ἀγωγῆς καὶ δὴ λεκτέον.

Καθόλου μὲν εἰπεῖν, ὃ κατὰ τῶν τεχνῶν καὶ τῶν ἐπιστημῶν λέγειν εἰώθαμεν, ταὐτὸ καὶ κατὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς φατέον ἐστίν, ὡς εἰς τὴν παντελῆ δικαιοπραγίαν τρία δεῖ συνδραμεῖν, φύσιν καὶ λόγον καὶ ἔθος. καλῶ δὲ λόγον μὲν τὴν μάθησιν, ἔθος δὲ τὴν ἄσκησιν. εἰσὶ δ’ αἱ μὲν ἀρχαὶ τῆς φύσεως, αἱ δὲ προκοπαὶ τῆς μαθήσεως, αἱ δὲ [b] χρήσεις τῆς μελέτης, αἱ δ’ ἀκρότητες πάντων. καθ’ ὃ δ’ ἂν λειφθῇ τούτων, κατὰ τοῦτ’ ἀνάγκη χωλὴν γίγνεσθαι τὴν ἀρετήν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ φύσις ἄνευ μαθήσεως τυφλόν, ἡ δὲ μάθησις δίχα φύσεως ἐλλιπές, ἡ δ’ ἄσκησις χωρὶς ἀμφοῖν ἀτελές. ὥσπερ δ’ ἐπὶ τῆς γεωργίας πρῶτον μὲν ἀγαθὴν ὑπάρξαι δεῖ τὴν γῆν, εἶτα δὲ τὸν φυτουργὸν ἐπιστήμονα, εἶτα τὰ σπέρματα σπουδαῖα, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον γῇ μὲν ἔοικεν ἡ φύσις, γεωργῷ δ’ ὁ παιδεύων, σπέρματι δ’ αἱ τῶν λόγων ὑποθῆκαι καὶ τὰ παραγγέλματα.

[c] ταῦτα πάντα διατεινάμενος ἂν εἴποιμ’ ὅτι συνῆλθε καὶ συνέπνευσεν εἰς τὰς τῶν παρ’ ἅπασιν ᾀδομένων ψυχάς, Πυθαγόρου καὶ Σωκράτους καὶ Πλάτωνος καὶ τῶν ὅσοι δόξης ἀειμνήστου τετυχήκασιν.

Εὔδαιμον μὲν οὖν καὶ θεοφιλὲς εἴ τῳ ταῦτα πάντα θεῶν τις ἀπέδωκεν. εἰ δέ τις οἴεται τοὺς οὐκ εὖ πεφυκότας μαθήσεως καὶ μελέτης τυχόντας ὀρθῆς πρὸς ἀρετὴν οὐκ ἂν τὴν τῆς φύσεως ἐλάττωσιν εἰς τοὐνδεχόμενον ἀναδραμεῖν, ἴστω πολλοῦ, μᾶλλον δὲ τοῦ παντὸς διαμαρτάνων. φύσεως μὲν γὰρ ἀρετὴν διαφθείρει ῥᾳθυμία, φαυλότητα δ’ ἐπανορθοῖ διδαχή· καὶ τὰ μὲν ῥᾴδια τοὺς ἀμελοῦντας φεύγει, τὰ δὲ χαλεπὰ ταῖς ἐπιμελείαις [d] ἁλίσκεται. καταμάθοις δ’ ἂν ὡς ἀνύσιμον πρᾶγμα καὶ τελεσιουργὸν ἐπιμέλεια καὶ πόνος ἐστίν, ἐπὶ πολλὰ τῶν γιγνομένων ἐπιβλέψας. σταγόνες μὲν γὰρ ὕδατος πέτρας κοιλαίνουσι, σίδηρος δὲ καὶ χαλκὸς ταῖς ἐπαφαῖς τῶν χειρῶν ἐκτρίβονται, οἱ δ’ ἁρμάτειοι τροχοὶ πόνῳ καμφθέντες οὐδ’ ἂν εἴ τι γένοιτο τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς δύναιντ’ ἀναλαβεῖν εὐθυωρίαν· τάς γε μὴν καμπύλας τῶν ὑποκριτῶν βακτηρίας ἀπευθύνειν ἀμήχανον, ἀλλὰ τὸ παρὰ φύσιν τῷ πόνῳ τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν ἐγένετο κρεῖττον. καὶ μόνα ἆρα ταῦτα τὴν τῆς ἐπιμελείας ἰσχὺν διαδείκνυσιν; οὔκ, ἀλλὰ καὶ μυρί’ ἐπὶ μυρίοις.

[e] ἀγαθὴ γῆ πέφυκεν· ἀλλ’ ἀμεληθεῖσα χερσεύεται, καὶ ὅσῳ τῇ φύσει βελτίων ἐστί, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον ἐξαργηθεῖσα δι’ ἀμέλειαν ἐξαπόλλυται. ἀλλ’ ἔστι τις ἀπόκροτος καὶ τραχυτέρα τοῦ δέοντος· ἀλλὰ γεωργηθεῖσα παραυτίκα γενναίους καρποὺς ἐξήνεγκε. ποῖα δὲ δένδρα οὐκ ὀλιγωρηθέντα μὲν στρεβλὰ φύεται καὶ ἄκαρπα καθίσταται, τυχόντα δ’ ὀρθῆς παιδαγωγίας ἔγκαρπα γίγνεται καὶ τελεσφόρα; ποία δὲ σώματος ἰσχὺς οὐκ ἐξαμβλοῦται καὶ καταφθίνει δι’ ἀμέλειαν καὶ τρυφὴν καὶ καχεξίαν; τίς δ’ ἀσθενὴς φύσις οὐ τοῖς γυμνασαμένοις καὶ καταθλήσασι πλεῖστον εἰς ἰσχὺν ἐπέδωκε; τίνες [f] δ’ ἵπποι καλῶς πωλοδαμνηθέντες οὐκ εὐπειθεῖς ἐγένοντο τοῖς ἀναβάταις; τίνες δ’ ἀδάμαστοι μείναντες οὐ σκληραύχενες καὶ θυμοειδεῖς ἀπέβησαν; καὶ τί δεῖ τἄλλα θαυμάζειν, ὅπου γε τῶν θηρίων τῶν ἀγριωτάτων ὁρῶμεν πολλὰ καὶ τιθασευόμενα καὶ χειροήθη γιγνόμενα τοῖς πόνοις; εὖ δὲ καὶ ὁ Θετταλὸς ἐρωτηθεὶς τίνες εἰσὶν οἱ ἠπιώτατοι Θετταλῶν, ἔφη “οἱ παυόμενοι πολεμεῖν.” καὶ τί δεῖ τὰ πολλὰ λέγειν; καὶ γὰρ τὸ ἦθος ἔθος ἐστὶ [3] [a] πολυχρόνιον, καὶ τὰς ἠθικὰς ἀρετὰς ἐθικὰς ἄν τις λέγῃ, οὐκ ἄν τι πλημμελεῖν δόξειεν. ἑνὶ δὲ περὶ τούτων ἔτι παραδείγματι χρησάμενος ἀπαλλάξομαι τοῦ ἔτι περὶ αὐτῶν μηκύνειν. Λυκοῦργος γὰρ ὁ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων νομοθέτης δύο σκύλακας τῶν αὐτῶν γονέων λαβὼν οὐδὲν ὁμοίως ἀλλήλοις ἤγαγεν, ἀλλὰ τὸν μὲν λίχνον ἀπέφηνε καὶ σινάμωρον, τὸν δ’ ἐξιχνεύειν καὶ θηρᾶν δυνατόν. εἶτά ποτε τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων εἰς ταὐτὸ συνειλεγμένων, “μεγάλη τοι ῥοπὴ πρὸς ἀρετῆς κύησίν ἐστιν, [b] ἄνδρες,” ἔφησε, “Λακεδαιμόνιοι, καὶ ἔθη καὶ παιδεῖαι καὶ διδασκαλίαι καὶ βίων ἀγωγαί, καὶ ἐγὼ ταῦθ’ ὑμῖν αὐτίκα δὴ μάλα ποιήσω φανερά.” εἶτα προσαγαγὼν τοὺς δύο σκύλακας διαφῆκε, καταθεὶς εἰς μέσον λοπάδα καὶ λαγωὸν κατευθὺ τῶν σκυλάκων. καὶ ὁ μὲν ἐπὶ τὸν λαγωὸν ᾖξεν, ὁ δ’ ἐπὶ τὴν λοπάδα ὥρμησε. τῶν δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων οὐδέπω συμβαλεῖν ἐχόντων τί ποτ’ αὐτῷ τοῦτο δύναται καὶ τί βουλόμενος τοὺς σκύλακας ἐπεδείκνυεν, “οὗτοι γονέων,” ἔφη, “τῶν αὐτῶν ἀμφότεροι, διαφόρου δὲ τυχόντες ἀγωγῆς ὁ μὲν λίχνος ὁ δὲ θηρευτὴς ἀποβέβηκε.” καὶ περὶ μὲν ἐθῶν καὶ βίων ἀρκείτω ταῦτα.

[c] Περὶ δὲ τροφῆς ἐχόμενον ἂν εἴη λέγειν. δεῖ δέ, ὡς ἐγὼ ἂν φαίην, αὐτὰς τὰς μητέρας τὰ τέκνα τρέφειν καὶ τούτοις τοὺς μαστοὺς ὑπέχειν· συμπαθέστερόν τε γὰρ θρέψουσι καὶ διὰ πλείονος ἐπιμελείας, ὡς ἂν ἔνδοθεν καὶ τὸ δὴ λεγόμενον ἐξ ὀνύχων ἀγαπῶσαι τὰ τέκνα. αἱ τίτθαι δὲ καὶ αἱ τροφοὶ τὴν εὔνοιαν ὑποβολιμαίαν καὶ παρέγγραπτον ἔχουσιν, ἅτε μισθοῦ φιλοῦσαι. δηλοῖ δὲ καὶ ἡ φύσις ὅτι δεῖ τὰς μητέρας ἃ γεγεννήκασιν αὐτὰς τιτθεύειν καὶ τρέφειν· διὰ γὰρ τοῦτο παντὶ ζῴῳ τεκόντι τὴν ἐκ τοῦ γάλακτος τροφὴν ἐχορήγησε. σοφὸν [d] δ’ ἄρα καὶ ἡ πρόνοια· διττοὺς ἐνέθηκε ταῖς γυναιξὶ τοὺς μαστούς, ἵνα, κἂν εἰ δίδυμα τέκοιεν, διττὰς ἔχοιεν τὰς τῆς τροφῆς πηγάς. χωρὶς δὲ τούτων εὐνούστεραι τοῖς τέκνοις γίγνοιντ’ ἂν καὶ φιλητικώτεραι. καὶ μὰ Δί’ οὐκ ἀπεικότως· ἡ συντροφία γὰρ ὥσπερ ἐπιτόνιόν ἐστι τῆς εὐνοίας. καὶ γὰρ τὰ θηρία τῶν συντρεφομένων ἀποσπώμενα ταῦτα ποθοῦντα φαίνεται. μάλιστα μὲν οὖν ὅπερ ἔφην αὐτὰς πειρατέον τὰ τέκνα τρέφειν τὰς μητέρας· εἰ δ’ ἄρ’ ἀδυνάτως ἔχοιεν ἢ διὰ σώματος ἀσθένειαν (γένοιτο γὰρ ἄν τι καὶ τοιοῦτον) ἢ πρὸς ἑτέρων τέκνων σπεύδουσαι γένεσιν, ἀλλὰ τάς γε τίτθας καὶ τροφοὺς οὐ τὰς τυχούσας ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα [e] σπουδαίας δοκιμαστέον ἐστί. πρῶτον μὲν τοῖς ἤθεσιν Ἑλληνίδας. ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰ μέλη τοῦ σώματος εὐθὺς ἀπὸ γενέσεως πλάττειν τῶν τέκνων ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν, ἵνα ταῦτ’ ὀρθὰ καὶ ἀστραβῆ φύηται, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον ἐξ ἀρχῆς τὰ τῶν τέκνων ἤθη ῥυθμίζειν προσήκει. εὔπλαστον γὰρ καὶ ὑγρὸν ἡ νεότης, καὶ ταῖς τούτων ψυχαῖς ἁπαλαῖς ἔτι τὰ μαθήματα ἐντήκεται· πᾶν δὲ τὸ σκληρὸν χαλεπῶς [f] μαλάττεται. καθάπερ γὰρ σφραγῖδες τοῖς ἁπαλοῖς ἐναπομάττονται κηροῖς, οὕτως αἱ μαθήσεις ταῖς τῶν ἔτι παιδίων ψυχαῖς ἐναποτυποῦνται. καί μοι δοκεῖ Πλάτων ὁ δαιμόνιος ἐμμελῶν παραινεῖν ταῖς τίτθαις μηδὲ τοὺς τυχόντας μύθους τοῖς παιδίοις λέγειν, ἵνα μὴ τὰς τούτων ψυχὰς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἀνοίας καὶ διαφθορᾶς ἀναπίμπλασθαι συμβαίνῃ. κινδυνεύει δὲ καὶ Φωκυλίδης ὁ ποιητὴς καλῶς παραινεῖν λέγων

χρὴ παῖδ’ ἔτ’ ἐόντα

καλὰ διδάσκειν ἔργα.

Οὐ τοίνυν οὐδὲ τοῦτο παραλιπεῖν ἄξιόν ἐστιν, ὅτι καὶ τὰ παιδία τὰ μέλλοντα τοῖς τροφίμοις ὑπηρετεῖν καὶ τούτοις σύντροφα γίγνεσθαι ζητητέον [4] [a] πρώτιστα μὲν σπουδαῖα τοὺς τρόπους, ἔτι μέντοι Ἑλληνικὰ καὶ περίτρανα λαλεῖν, ἵνα μὴ συναναχρωννύμενοι βαρβάροις καὶ τὸ ἦθος μοχθηροῖς ἀποφέρωνταί τι τῆς ἐκείνων φαυλότητος. καὶ οἱ παροιμιαζόμενοι δέ φασιν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου λέγοντες, ὅτι “ἂν χωλῷ παροικήσῃς, ὑποσκάζειν μαθήσῃ.”

Ἐπειδὰν τοίνυν ἡλικίαν λάβωσιν ὑπὸ παιδαγωγοῖς τετάχθαι, ἐνταῦθα δὴ πολλὴν ἐπιμέλειαν ἑκτέον ἐστὶ τῆς τούτων καταστάσεως, ὡς μὴ λάθωσιν ἀνδραπόδοις ἢ βαρβάροις ἢ παλιμβόλοις τὰ τέκνα παραδόντες. ἐπεὶ νῦν γε τὸ γιγνόμενον πολλοῖς ὑπερκαταγέλαστόν ἐστι. τῶν γὰρ δούλων [b] τῶν σπουδαίων τοὺς μὲν γεωργοὺς ἀποδεικνύουσι, τοὺς δὲ ναυκλήρους τοὺς δ’ ἐμπόρους τοὺς δ’ οἰκονόμους τοὺς δὲ δανειστάς· ὅ τι δ’ ἂν εὕρωσιν ἀνδράποδον οἰνόληπτον καὶ λίχνον, πρὸς πᾶσαν πραγματείαν ἄχρηστον, τούτῳ φέροντες ὑποβάλλουσι τοὺς υἱούς. δεῖ δὲ τὸν σπουδαῖον παιδαγωγὸν τοιοῦτον εἶναι τὴν φύσιν οἷόσπερ ἦν ὁ Φοῖνιξ ὁ τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως παιδαγωγός.

Τὸ δὲ πάντων μέγιστον καὶ κυριώτατον τῶν εἰρημένων ἔρχομαι φράσων. διδασκάλους γὰρ ζητητέον τοῖς τέκνοις, οἳ καὶ τοῖς βίοις εἰσὶν ἀδιάβλητοι καὶ τοῖς τρόποις ἀνεπίληπτοι καὶ ταῖς [c] ἐμπειρίαις ἄριστοι· πηγὴ γὰρ καὶ ῥίζα καλοκαγαθίας τὸ νομίμου τυχεῖν παιδείας. καὶ καθάπερ τὰς χάρακας οἱ γεωργοὶ τοῖς φυτοῖς παρατιθέασιν, οὕτως οἱ νόμιμοι τῶν διδασκάλων ἐμμελεῖς τὰς ὑποθήκας καὶ παραινέσεις παραπηγνύουσι τοῖς νέοις, ἵν’ ὀρθὰ τούτων βλαστάνῃ τὰ ἤθη. νῦν δέ τις κἂν καταπτύσειε τῶν πατέρων ἐνίων, οἵτινες πρὶν δοκιμάσαι τοὺς μέλλοντας διδάσκειν, δι’ ἄγνοιαν, ἔσθ’ ὅτε καὶ δι’ ἀπειρίαν, ἀνθρώποις ἀδοκίμοις καὶ παρασήμοις ἐγχειρίζουσι τοὺς παῖδας. καὶ οὔπω τοῦτ’ ἐστὶ καταγέλαστον εἰ δι’ ἀπειρίαν [d] αὐτὸ πράττουσιν, ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἐσχάτως ἄτοπον. τὸ ποῖον; ἐνίοτε γὰρ εἰδότες, αἰσθόμενοι δὲ καὶ ἄλλων αὐτοῖς τοῦτο λεγόντων, τὴν ἐνίων τῶν παιδευτῶν ἀπειρίαν ἅμα καὶ μοχθηρίαν, ὅμως τούτοις ἐπιτρέπουσι τοὺς παῖδας, οἱ μὲν ταῖς τῶν ἀρεσκευομένων ἡττώμενοι κολακείαις, εἰσὶ δ’ οἳ καὶ δεομένοις χαριζόμενοι φίλοις, παρόμοιον ποιοῦντες ὥσπερ ἂν εἴ τις τῷ σώματι κάμνων τὸν σὺν ἐπιστήμῃ δυνηθέντ’ ἂν σῶσαι παραλιπών, φίλῳ χαριζόμενος τὸν δι’ ἀπειρίαν ἀπολέσαντ’ ἂν αὐτὸν προέλοιτο, ἢ ναύκληρον τὸν ἄριστον ἀφεὶς τὸν [e] χείριστον δοκιμάσειε φίλου δεηθέντος. Ζεῦ καὶ θεοὶ πάντες, πατήρ τις καλούμενος πλείω λόγον τῆς τῶν δεομένων ποιεῖται χάριτος ἢ τῆς τῶν τέκνων παιδεύσεως; εἶτ’ οὐκ εἰκότα πολλάκις Σωκράτης ἐκεῖνος ὁ παλαιὸς ἔλεγεν, ὅτι εἴπερ ἄρα δυνατὸν ἦν, ἀναβάντα ἐπὶ τὸ μετεωρότατον τῆς πόλεως ἀνακραγεῖν μέρος “ὦ ἄνθρωποι, ποῖ φέρεσθε, οἵτινες χρημάτων μὲν κτήσεως πέρι πᾶσαν ποιεῖσθε σπουδήν, τῶν δ’ υἱέων, οἷς ταῦτα καταλείψετε, μικρὰ φροντίζετε;” τούτοις δ’ ἂν ἔγωγε προσθείην ὅτι οἱ τοιοῦτοι πατέρες παραπλήσιον ποιοῦσιν, οἷον εἴ τις τοῦ μὲν ὑποδήματος [f] φροντίζοι, τοῦ δὲ ποδὸς ὀλιγώρως ἔχοι. πολλοὶ δ’ εἰς τοσοῦτο τῶν πατέρων προβαίνουσι φιλαργυρίας ἅμα καὶ μισοτεκνίας, ὥσθ’ ἵνα μὴ πλείονα μισθὸν τελέσειαν, ἀνθρώπους τοῦ μηδενὸς τιμίους αἱροῦνται τοῖς τέκνοις παιδευτάς, εὔωνον ἀμαθίαν διώκοντες. ᾗ καὶ Ἀρίστιππος οὐκ ἀκόμψως ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ ἀστείως ἐπέσκωψε τῷ λόγῳ πατέρα νοῦ καὶ φρενῶν κενόν. ἐρωτήσαντος γάρ τινος αὐτὸν πόσον αἰτοίη μισθὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς τοῦ τέκνου παιδεύσεως, “χιλίας” ἔφησε “δραχμάς.” τοῦ δ’ “Ἡράκλεις” εἰπόντος, “ὡς ὑπέρπολυ τὸ αἴτημα· [5] [a] δύναμαι γὰρ ἀνδράποδον χιλίων πρίασθαι,” “τοιγαροῦν” εἶπε “δύο ἕξεις ἀνδράποδα, καὶ τὸν υἱὸν καὶ ὃν ἂν πρίῃ.” τὸ δ’ ὅλον πῶς οὐκ ἄτοπον τῇ μὲν δεξιᾷ συνεθίζειν τὰ παιδία δέχεσθαι τὰς τροφάς, κἂν εἰ προτείνειε τὴν ἀριστεράν, ἐπιτιμᾶν, μηδεμίαν δὲ ποιεῖσθαι πρόνοιαν τοῦ λόγων ἐπιδεξίων καὶ νομίμων ἀκούειν;

Τί οὖν συμβαίνει τοῖς θαυμαστοῖς πατράσιν, ἐπειδὰν κακῶς μὲν θρέψωσι κακῶς δὲ παιδεύσωσι τοὺς υἱεῖς, ἐγὼ φράσω. ὅταν γὰρ εἰς ἄνδρας ἐγγραφέντες τοῦ μὲν ὑγιαίνοντος καὶ τεταγμένου βίου καταμελήσωσιν, ἐπὶ δὲ τὰς ἀτάκτους καὶ [b] ἀνδραποδώδεις ἡδονὰς ἑαυτοὺς κρημνίσωσι, τότε δὴ μεταμέλονται τὴν τῶν τέκνων προδεδωκότες παιδείαν, ὅτ’ οὐδὲν ὄφελος, τοῖς ἐκείνων ἀδικήμασιν ἀδημονοῦντες. οἱ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν κόλακας καὶ παρασίτους ἀναλαμβάνουσιν, ἀνθρώπους ἀσήμους καὶ καταράτους καὶ τῆς νεότητος ἀνατροπέας καὶ λυμεῶνας, οἱ δέ τινες ἑταίρας καὶ χαμαιτύπας λυτροῦνται σοβαρὰς καὶ πολυτελεῖς, οἱ δὲ κατοψοφαγοῦσιν, οἱ δ’ εἰς κύβους καὶ κώμους ἐξοκέλλουσιν, ἤδη δέ τινες καὶ τῶν νεανικωτέρων ἅπτονται κακῶν, μοιχεύοντες καὶ κιττοφοροῦντες καὶ μίαν [c] ἡδονὴν θανάτου τιμώμενοι. φιλοσοφίᾳ δ’ ὁμιλήσαντες οὗτοι οὐ τοιούτοις ἴσως πράγμασιν ἑαυτοὺς ἂν καταπειθεῖς παρέσχοντο, καὶ τό γε παράγγελμα τοῦ Διογένους ἔμαθον ἄν, ὃς φορτικῶς μὲν τοῖς ῥήμασιν ἀληθῶς δὲ τοῖς πράγμασι παραινεῖ καί φησιν “εἴσελθε εἰς πορνεῖόν που, ἵνα μάθῃς ὅτι τῶν ἀναξίων τὰ τίμια οὐδὲν διαφέρει.”

Συνελὼν τοίνυν ἐγώ φημι (καὶ χρησμολογεῖν

μᾶλλον ἢ παραινεῖν δόξαιμ’ ἂν εἰκότως) ὅτι ἓν πρῶτον καὶ μέσον καὶ τελευταῖον ἐν τούτοις κεφάλαιον ἀγωγὴ σπουδαία καὶ παιδεία νόμιμός ἐστι, καὶ ταῦτα φορὰ καὶ συνεργὰ πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν φημί. καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνθρώπινα καὶ μικρὰ καὶ οὐκ ἀξιοσπούδαστα [d] καθέστηκεν. εὐγένεια καλὸν μέν, ἀλλὰ προγόνων ἀγαθόν. πλοῦτος δὲ τίμιον μέν, ἀλλὰ τύχης κτῆμα, ἐπειδὴ τῶν μὲν ἐχόντων πολλάκις ἀφείλετο, τοῖς δ’ οὐκ ἐλπίσασι φέρουσα προσήνεγκε, καὶ ὁ πολὺς πλοῦτος σκοπὸς ἔκκειται τοῖς βουλομένοις βαλλάντια τοξεύειν, κακούργοις οἰκέταις καὶ συκοφάνταις, καὶ τὸ μέγιστον, ὅτι καὶ τοῖς πονηροτάτοις μέτεστι. δόξα γε μὴν σεμνὸν μέν, ἀλλ’ ἀβέβαιον. κάλλος δὲ περιμάχητον μέν, ἀλλ’ ὀλιγοχρόνιον. ὑγίεια δὲ τίμιον μέν, ἀλλ’ εὐμετάστατον. ἰσχὺς δὲ ζηλωτὸν μέν, ἀλλὰ νόσῳ εὐάλωτον καὶ [e] γήρᾳ. τὸ δ’ ὅλον εἴ τις ἐπὶ τῇ τοῦ σώματος ῥώμῃ φρονεῖ, μαθέτω γνώμης διαμαρτάνων. πόστον γάρ ἐστιν ἰσχὺς ἀνθρωπίνη τῆς τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων δυνάμεως; λέγω δ’ οἷον ἐλεφάντων καὶ ταύρων καὶ λεόντων. παιδεία δὲ τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν μόνον ἐστὶν ἀθάνατον καὶ θεῖον. καὶ δύο τὰ πάντων ἐστὶ κυριώτατα ἐν ἀνθρωπίνῃ φύσει, νοῦς καὶ λόγος. καὶ ὁ μὲν νοῦς ἀρχικός ἐστι τοῦ λόγου, ὁ δὲ λόγος ὑπηρετικὸς τοῦ νοῦ, τύχῃ μὲν ἀνάλωτος, συκοφαντίᾳ δ’ ἀναφαίρετος, νόσῳ δ’ ἀδιάφθορος, γήρᾳ δ’ ἀλύμαντος. μόνος γὰρ ὁ νοῦς παλαιούμενος ἀνηβᾷ, καὶ ὁ χρόνος τἄλλα πάντ’ ἀφαιρῶν τῷ [f] γήρᾳ προστίθησι τὴν ἐπιστήμην. ὅ γε μὴν πόλεμος χειμάρρου δίκην πάντα σύρων καὶ πάντα παραφέρων μόνην οὐ δύναται παιδείαν παρελέσθαι. καί μοι δοκεῖ Στίλπων ὁ Μεγαρεὺς φιλόσοφος ἀξιομνημόνευτον ποιῆσαι ἀπόκρισιν, ὅτε Δημήτριος ἐξανδραποδισάμενος τὴν πόλιν εἰς ἔδαφος κατέβαλε καὶ τὸν Στίλπωνα ἤρετο μή τι ἀπολωλεκὼς εἴη. καὶ ὅς “οὐ δῆτα,” εἶπε, “πόλεμος γὰρ οὐ λαφυραγωγεῖ ἀρετήν.” [6] [a] σύμφωνος δὲ καὶ συνῳδὸς καὶ ἡ Σωκράτους ἀπόκρισις ταύτῃ φαίνεται. καὶ γὰρ οὗτος ἐρωτήσαντος αὐτόν μοι δοκεῖ Γοργίου ἣν ἔχει περὶ τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως ὑπόληψιν καὶ εἰ νομίζει τοῦτον εὐδαίμονα εἶναι, “οὐκ οἶδ’,” ἔφησε, “πῶς ἀρετῆς καὶ παιδείας ἔχει,” ὡς τῆς εὐδαιμονίας ἐν τούτοις, οὐκ ἐν τοῖς τυχηροῖς ἀγαθοῖς κειμένης.

Ὥσπερ δὲ παραινῶ τῆς παιδείας τῶν τέκνων μηδὲν ποιεῖσθαι προὐργιαίτερον, οὕτως αὖ πάλιν φημὶ δεῖν τῆς ἀδιαφθόρου καὶ ὑγιαινούσης ἔχεσθαι, τῶν δὲ πανηγυρικῶν λήρων ὡς πορρωτάτω τοὺς [b] υἱεῖς ἀπάγειν. τὸ γὰρ τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀρέσκειν τοῖς σοφοῖς ἐστιν ἀπαρέσκειν. μαρτυρεῖ δέ μου τῷ λόγῳ καὶ Εὐριπίδης λέγων

ἐγὼ δ’ ἄκομψος εἰς ὄχλον δοῦναι λόγον,

εἰς ἥλικας δὲ κὠλίγους σοφώτερος.

ἔχει δὲ μοῖραν καὶ τόδ’· οἱ γὰρ ἐν σοφοῖς

φαῦλοι παρ’ ὄχλῳ μουσικώτεροι λέγειν.

ὁρῶ δ’ ἔγωγε τοὺς τοῖς συρφετώδεσιν ὄχλοις ἀρεστῶς καὶ κεχαρισμένως ἐπιτηδεύοντας λέγειν καὶ τὸν βίον ὡς τὰ πολλὰ ἀσώτους καὶ φιληδόνους ἀποβαίνοντας. καὶ νὴ Δί’ εἰκότως. εἰ γὰρ ἄλλοις ἡδονὰς παρασκευάζοντες ἀμελοῦσι τοῦ [c] καλοῦ, σχολῇ γ’ ἂν τῆς ἰδίας ἡδυπαθείας καὶ τρυφῆς ὑπεράνω τὸ ὀρθὸν καὶ ὑγιὲς ποιήσαιντο ἢ τὸ σῶφρον ἀντὶ τοῦ τερπνοῦ διώξαιεν. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις τί ἂν τοὺς παῖδας ; καλὸν γάρ τοι μηδὲν εἰκῇ μήτε λέγειν μήτε πράττειν, καὶ κατὰ τὴν παροιμίαν “χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά.” οἱ δ’ αὐτοσχέδιοι τῶν λόγων πολλῆς εὐχερείας καὶ ῥᾳδιουργίας εἰσὶ πλήρεις, οὔθ’ ὅθεν ἀρκτέον οὔθ’ ὅποι παυστέον ἐστὶν εἰδότων. χωρὶς δὲ τῶν ἄλλων πλημμελημάτων οἳ ἂν ἐκ τοῦ παραχρῆμα λέγωσιν, εἰς ἀμετρίαν δεινὴν ἐκπίπτουσι καὶ πολυλογίαν. σκέψις δ’ οὐκ ἐᾷ τῆς ἱκνουμένης συμμετρίας τὸν λόγον [d] ἐκπίπτειν. ὁ Περικλῆς, “ὡς ἡμῖν ἀκούειν παραδέδοται,” καλούμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου πολλάκις οὐχ ὑπήκουσε, λέγων ἀσύντακτος εἶναι. ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ Δημοσθένης ζηλωτὴς τῆς τούτου πολιτείας γενόμενος καλούντων αὐτὸν τῶν Ἀθηναίων σύμβουλον ἀντέβαινεν “οὐ συντέταγμαι” λέγων. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἴσως ἀδέσποτός ἐστι καὶ πεπλασμένη παράδοσις· ἐν δὲ τῷ κατὰ Μειδίου τὴν τῆς σκέψεως ὠφέλειαν ἐναργῶς παρίστησι. φησὶ γοῦν “ἐγὼ δ’ ἐσκέφθαι μὲν ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι φημὶ κοὐκ ἂν ἀρνηθείην καὶ μεμελετηκέναι γ’ ὡς ἐνῆν μάλιστ’ ἐμοί· καὶ γὰρ ἂν ἄθλιος ἦν, εἰ τοιαῦτο παθὼν καὶ πάσχων ἠμέλουν ὧν περὶ τούτων ἐρεῖν [e] ἔμελλον πρὸς ὑμᾶς.” τὸ δὲ δεῖν παντάπασιν ἀποδοκιμάζειν τῶν λόγων τὴν ἑτοιμότητα ἢ πάλιν αὖ ταύτην οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀξίοις ἀσκεῖν οὐ φαίην ἂν ἔγωγε, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐν φαρμάκου μοίρᾳ τοῦτο ποιητέον ἐστί. μέχρι δὴ τῆς τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἡλικίας οὐδὲν ἐκ τοῦ παρατυχόντος ἀξιῶ λέγειν, ἀλλ’ ὅταν τις ῥιζώσῃ τὴν δύναμιν, τότε τοῦτον τῶν καιρῶν καλούντων [f] ἐλευθεριάζειν τοῖς λόγοις προσήκει. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ πολὺν χρόνον δεθέντες κἂν εἰ λυθεῖεν ὕστερον, ὑπὸ τῆς πολυχρονίου τῶν δεσμῶν συνηθείας οὐ δυνάμενοι βαδίζειν ὑποσκελίζονται, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον οἱ πολλῷ χρόνῳ τὸν λόγον σφίγξαντες, κἂν εἴ ποτε ἐκ τοῦ παραχρῆμα δεήσειεν εἰπεῖν, οὐδὲν ἧττον τὸν αὐτὸν τῆς ἑρμηνείας χαρακτῆρα φυλάττουσι. τὸ δ’ ἔτι παῖδας ὄντας ἐᾶν ἐπὶ καιροῦ λέγειν ματαιολογίας τῆς ἐσχάτης αἴτιον καθίσταται. [7] [a] ζῳγράφος φασὶν ἄθλιος Ἀπελλῇ δείξας εἰκόνα “ταύτην,” ἔφη, “νῦν γέγραφα,” ὁ δὲ “καὶ ἢν μὴ λέγῃς” εἶπεν “οἶδ’ ὅτι ταχὺ γέγραπται· θαυμάζω δὲ πῶς οὐχὶ τοιαύτας πλείους γέγραφας.”

Ὥσπερ τοίνυν (ἐπανάγω γὰρ πρὸς τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς τοῦ λόγου ὑπόθεσιν) τὴν θεατρικὴν καὶ παρατράγῳδον, οὕτως αὖ πάλιν καὶ τὴν σμικρολογίαν τῆς λέξεως καὶ ταπείνωσιν παραινῶ διευλαβεῖσθαι καὶ φεύγειν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ ὑπέρογκος ἀπολίτευτός ἐστιν, ἡ δ’ ἰσχνὴ λίαν ἀνέκπληκτος. καθάπερ δὲ [b] τὸ σῶμα οὐ μόνον ὑγιεινὸν ἀλλὰ καὶ εὐεκτικὸν εἶναι χρή, καὶ τὸν λόγον ὡσαύτως οὐκ ἄνοσον μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ εὔρωστον εἶναι δεῖ. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀσφαλὲς ἐπαινεῖται μόνον, τὸ δ’ ἐπικίνδυνον καὶ θαυμάζεται. τὴν αὐτὴν δὲ τυγχάνω γνώμην ἔχων καὶ περὶ τῆς ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ διαθέσεως. οὔτε γὰρ θρασὺν οὔτ’ ἄτολμον καὶ καταπλῆγα προσῆκεν εἶναι· τὸ μὲν γὰρ εἰς ἀναισχυντίαν, τὸ δ’ εἰς ἀνδραποδωδίαν περιίσταται· ἔντεχνον δὲ τὸ τὴν μέσην ἐν ἅπασι τέμνειν ἐμμελές τε.

Βούλομαι δ’, ἕως ἔτι μέμνημαι τῆς παιδείας ὡς ἔχω δόξης περὶ αὐτῆς, εἰπεῖν ὅτι τὸν μονόκωλον λόγον πρῶτον μὲν ἀμουσίας οὐ μικρὸν ποιοῦμαι τεκμήριον· ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἄσκησιν ἁψίκορον καὶ πάντη ἀνεπίμονον εἶναι νομίζω. μονῳδία γὰρ [c] ἐν ἅπασίν ἐστι πλήσμιον καὶ πρόσαντες, ἡ δὲ ποικιλία τερπνόν, καθάπερ κἀν τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν, οἷον ἀκούσμασιν ἢ θεάμασιν.

Δεῖ τοίνυν τὸν παῖδα τὸν ἐλεύθερον μηδενὸς μηδὲ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν καλουμένων ἐγκυκλίων παιδευμάτων μήτ’ ἀνήκοον μήτ’ ἀθέατον ἐᾶν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἐκ παραδρομῆς μαθεῖν ὡσπερεὶ γεύματος ἕνεκεν (ἐν ἅπασι γὰρ τὸ τέλειον ἀδύνατον), τὴν δὲ φιλοσοφίαν πρεσβεύειν. ἔχω δὲ δι’ εἰκόνος παραστῆσαι τὴν ἐμαυτοῦ γνώμην· ὥσπερ γὰρ [d] περιπλεῦσαι μὲν πολλὰς πόλεις καλόν, ἐνοικῆσαι δὲ τῇ κρατίστῃ χρήσιμον· ἀστείως δὲ καὶ Βίων ἔλεγεν ὁ φιλόσοφος ὅτι ὥσπερ οἱ μνηστῆρες τῇ Πηνελόπῃ πλησιάζειν μὴ δυνάμενοι ταῖς ταύτης ἐμίγνυντο θεραπαίναις, οὕτω καὶ οἱ φιλοσοφίας μὴ δυνάμενοι κατατυχεῖν ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις παιδεύμασι τοῖς οὐδενὸς ἀξίοις ἑαυτοὺς κατασκελετεύουσι. διὸ δεῖ τῆς ἄλλης παιδείας ὥσπερ κεφάλαιον ποιεῖν τὴν φιλοσοφίαν. περὶ μὲν γὰρ τὴν τοῦ σώματος ἐπιμέλειαν διττὰς εὗρον ἐπιστήμας οἱ ἄνθρωποι, τὴν ἰατρικὴν καὶ τὴν γυμναστικήν, ὧν ἡ μὲν τὴν ὑγίειαν, ἡ δὲ τὴν εὐεξίαν ἐντίθησι. τῶν δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀρρωστημάτων καὶ παθῶν ἡ φιλοσοφία μόνη φάρμακόν ἐστι. διὰ γὰρ ταύτην ἔστι καὶ μετὰ ταύτης γνῶναι τί τὸ καλὸν τί τὸ αἰσχρόν, τί τὸ δίκαιον τί τὸ ἄδικον, τί τὸ συλλήβδην αἱρετόν, [e] τί τὸ φευκτόν· πῶς θεοῖς πῶς γονεῦσι πῶς πρεσβυτέροις πῶς νόμοις πῶς ἀλλοτρίοις πῶς ἄρχουσι πῶς φίλοις πῶς γυναιξὶ πῶς τέκνοις πῶς οἰκέταις χρηστέον ἐστί· ὅτι δεῖ θεοὺς μὲν σέβεσθαι, γονέας δὲ τιμᾶν, πρεσβυτέρους αἰδεῖσθαι, νόμοις πειθαρχεῖν, ἄρχουσιν ὑπείκειν, φίλους ἀγαπᾶν, πρὸς γυναῖκας σωφρονεῖν, τέκνων στερκτικοὺς εἶναι, δούλους μὴ περιυβρίζειν· τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, μήτ’ ἐν ταῖς εὐπραγίαις περιχαρεῖς μήτ’ ἐν ταῖς συμφοραῖς περιλύπους ὑπάρχειν, μήτ’ ἐν ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ἐκλύτους εἶναι μήτ’ ἐν ταῖς ὀργαῖς ἐκπαθεῖς καὶ θηριώδεις.

[f] ἅπερ ἐγὼ πάντων τῶν ἐκ φιλοσοφίας περιγιγνομένων ἀγαθῶν πρεσβύτατα κρίνω. τὸ μὲν γὰρ εὐγενῶς εὐτυχεῖν ἀνδρός, τὸ δ’ ἀνεπιφθόνως εὐηνίου ἀνθρώπου, τὸ δὲ τοῖς λογισμοῖς περιεῖναι τῶν ἡδονῶν σοφοῦ, τὸ δ’ ὀργῆς κατακρατεῖν ἀνδρὸς οὐ τοῦ τυχόντος ἐστί. τελείους δ’ ἀνθρώπους ἡγοῦμαι τοὺς δυναμένους τὴν πολιτικὴν [8] [a] δύναμιν μεῖξαι καὶ κεράσαι τῇ φιλοσοφίᾳ, καὶ δυεῖν ὄντοιν μεγίστοιν ἀγαθοῖν ἐπηβόλους ὑπάρχειν ὑπολαμβάνω, τοῦ τε κοινωφελοῦς βίου πολιτευομένους, τοῦ τ’ ἀκύμονος καὶ γαληνοῦ διατρίβοντας περὶ φιλοσοφίαν. τριῶν γὰρ ὄντων βίων ὧν ὁ μέν ἐστι πρακτικὸς ὁ δὲ θεωρητικὸς ὁ δ’ ἀπολαυστικός, ὁ μέν, ἔκλυτος καὶ δοῦλος τῶν ἡδονῶν ὤν, ζῳώδης καὶ μικροπρεπής ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ θεωρητικός, τοῦ πρακτικοῦ διαμαρτάνων, ἀνωφελής, ὁ δὲ πρακτικός, ἀμοιρήσας φιλοσοφίας, ἄμουσος καὶ πλημμελής. πειρατέον οὖν εἰς δύναμιν καὶ τὰ κοινὰ [b] πράττειν καὶ τῆς φιλοσοφίας ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ παρεῖκον τῶν καιρῶν. οὕτως ἐπολιτεύσατο Περικλῆς, οὕτως Ἀρχύτας ὁ Ταραντῖνος, οὕτω Δίων ὁ Συρακόσιος, οὕτως Ἐπαμεινώνδας ὁ Θηβαῖος, ὧν ἅτερος Πλάτωνος ἐγένετο συνουσιαστής.

Καὶ περὶ μὲν παιδείας οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅ τι δεῖ πλείονα λέγοντα διατρίβειν· πρὸς δὲ τοῖς εἰρημένοις χρήσιμον, μᾶλλον δὲ ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι μηδὲ τῆς τῶν παλαιῶν συγγραμμάτων κτήσεως ὀλιγώρως ἔχειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτων ποιεῖσθαι συλλογὴν κατὰ τὸ γεωργῶδες. τὸν γὰρ αὐτὸν τρόπον ὄργανον τῆς παιδείας ἡ χρῆσις τῶν βιβλίων ἐστί, καὶ ἀπὸ πηγῆς τὴν ἐπιστήμην τηρεῖν συμβέβηκεν.

[c] Οὐ τοίνυν ἄξιον οὐδὲ τὴν τῶν σωμάτων ἀγωνίαν παρορᾶν, ἀλλὰ πέμποντας ἐς παιδοτρίβου τοὺς παῖδας ἱκανῶς ταῦτα διαπονεῖν, ἅμα μὲν τῆς τῶν σωμάτων εὐρυθμίας ἕνεκεν, ἅμα δὲ καὶ πρὸς ῥώμην· καλοῦ γὰρ γήρως θεμέλιος ἐν παισὶν ἡ τῶν σωμάτων εὐεξία. καθάπερ οὖν ἐν εὐδίᾳ τὰ πρὸς τὸν χειμῶνα προσῆκε παρασκευάζειν, οὕτως ἐν νεότητι τὴν εὐταξίαν καὶ τὴν σωφροσύνην ἐφόδιον [d] εἰς τὸ γῆρας ἀποτίθεσθαι. οὕτω δὲ δεῖ ταμιεύεσθαι τὸν τοῦ σώματος πόνον, ὡς μὴ καταξήρους γινομένους πρὸς τὴν τῆς παιδείας ἐπιμέλειαν ἀπαγορεύειν· κατὰ γὰρ Πλάτωνα ὕπνοι καὶ κόποι μαθήμασι πολέμιοι. καὶ τί ταῦτα; ἀλλ’ ὅπερ πάντων ἐστὶ κυριώτατον τῶν εἰρημένων σπεύδω λέγειν. πρὸς γὰρ τοὺς στρατιωτικοὺς ἀγῶνας τοὺς παῖδας ἀσκητέον ἐν ἀκοντισμοῖς αὐτοὺς καταθλοῦντας καὶ τοξείαις καὶ θήραις. “τὰ” γὰρ “τῶν ἡττωμένων” ἐν ταῖς μάχαις “ἀγαθὰ τοῖς νικῶσιν ἆθλα πρόκειται.” πόλεμος δ’ ἐσκιατραφημένην σωμάτων ἕξιν οὐ δέχεται, ἰσχνὸς δὲ στρατιώτης πολεμικῶν ἀγώνων ἐθὰς ἀθλητῶν πιμελώδων φάλαγγας διωθεῖ.

[e] Τί οὖν; ἄν τις εἴποι, σὺ δὲ δὴ περὶ τῆς ἐλευθέρων ἀγωγῆς ὑποσχόμενος παραγγέλματα δώσειν ἔπειτα φαίνῃ τῆς μὲν τῶν πενήτων καὶ δημοτικῶν παραμελῶν ἀγωγῆς, μόνοις δὲ τοῖς πλουσίοις ὁμολογεῖς τὰς ὑποθήκας διδόναι. πρὸς οὓς οὐ χαλεπὸν ἀπαντῆσαι. ἐγὼ γὰρ μάλιστ’ ἂν βουλοίμην πᾶσι κοινῇ χρήσιμον εἶναι τὴν ἀγωγήν· εἰ δέ τινες ἐνδεῶς τοῖς ἰδίοις πράττοντες ἀδυνατήσουσι τοῖς ἐμοῖς χρῆσθαι παραγγέλμασι, τὴν τύχην αἰτιάσθωσαν, οὐ τὸν ταῦτα συμβουλεύοντα. πειρατέον μὲν οὖν εἰς δύναμιν τὴν κρατίστην ἀγωγὴν ποιεῖσθαι τῶν παίδων καὶ τοῖς πένησιν· εἰ δὲ μή, τῇ γε δυνατῇ [f] χρηστέον. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν δὴ τῷ λόγῳ παρεφορτισάμην, ἵν’ ἐφεξῆς καὶ τἄλλα τὰ φέροντα πρὸς τὴν ὀρθὴν τῶν νέων ἀγωγὴν συνάψω.

Κἀκεῖνό φημι, δεῖν τοὺς παῖδας ἐπὶ τὰ καλὰ τῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων ἄγειν παραινέσεσι καὶ λόγοις, μὴ μὰ Δία πληγαῖς μηδ’ αἰκισμοῖς. δοκεῖ γάρ που ταῦτα τοῖς δούλοις μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ἐλευθέροις πρέπειν· ἀποναρκῶσι γὰρ καὶ φρίττουσι πρὸς τοὺς πόνους, τὰ μὲν διὰ τὰς ἀλγηδόνας τῶν πληγῶν, τὰ δὲ καὶ διὰ τὰς ὕβρεις. ἔπαινοι δὲ καὶ ψόγοι πάσης [9] [a] εἰσὶν αἰκίας ὠφελιμώτεροι τοῖς ἐλευθέροις, οἱ μὲν ἐπὶ τὰ καλὰ παρορμῶντες οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν αἰσχρῶν ἀνείργοντες.

Δεῖ δ’ ἐναλλὰξ καὶ ποικίλως χρῆσθαι ταῖς ἐπιπλήξεσι καὶ τοῖς ἐπαίνοις, κἀπειδάν ποτε θρασύνωνται, ταῖς ἐπιπλήξεσιν ἐν αἰσχύνῃ ποιεῖσθαι, καὶ πάλιν ἀνακαλεῖσθαι τοῖς ἐπαίνοις καὶ μιμεῖσθαι τὰς τίτθας, αἵτινες ἐπειδὰν τὰ παιδία κλαυθμυρίσωσιν, εἰς παρηγορίαν πάλιν τὸν μαστὸν ὑπέχουσι. δεῖ δ’ αὐτοὺς μηδὲ τοῖς ἐγκωμίοις ἐπαίρειν καὶ φυσᾶν· χαυνοῦνται γὰρ ταῖς ὑπερβολαῖς τῶν ἐπαίνων καὶ θρύπτονται.

[b] Ἤδη δέ τινας ἐγὼ εἶδον πατέρας, οἷς τὸ λίαν φιλεῖν τοῦ μὴ φιλεῖν αἴτιον κατέστη. τί οὖν ἐστιν ὃ βούλομαι λέγειν, ἵνα τῷ παραδείγματι φωτεινότερον ποιήσω τὸν λόγον; σπεύδοντες γὰρ τοὺς παῖδας ἐν πᾶσι τάχιον πρωτεῦσαι πόνους αὐτοῖς ὑπερμέτρους ἐπιβάλλουσιν, οἷς ἀπαυδῶντες ἐκπίπτουσι, καὶ ἄλλως βαρυνόμενοι ταῖς κακοπαθείαις οὐ δέχονται τὴν μάθησιν εὐηνίως. ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰ φυτὰ τοῖς μὲν μετρίοις ὕδασι τρέφεται, τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς πνίγεται, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον ψυχὴ τοῖς μὲν συμμέτροις αὔξεται πόνοις, τοῖς δ’ ὑπερβάλλουσι [c] βαπτίζεται. δοτέον οὖν τοῖς παισὶν ἀναπνοὴν τῶν συνεχῶν πόνων, ἐνθυμουμένους ὅτι πᾶς ὁ βίος ἡμῶν εἰς ἄνεσιν καὶ σπουδὴν διῄρηται. καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ οὐ μόνον ἐγρήγορσις ἀλλὰ καὶ ὕπνος εὑρέθη, οὐδὲ πόλεμος ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰρήνη, οὐδὲ χειμὼν ἀλλὰ καὶ εὐδία, οὐδ’ ἐνεργοὶ πράξεις ἀλλὰ καὶ ἑορταί. συνελόντι δ’ εἰπεῖν ἡ ἀνάπαυσις τῶν πόνων ἐστὶν ἄρτυμα. καὶ οὐκ ἐπὶ τῶν ζῴων μόνων τοῦτ’ ἂν ἴδοι τις γιγνόμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀψύχων· καὶ γὰρ τὰ τόξα καὶ τὰς λύρας ἀνίεμεν, ἵν’ ἐπιτεῖναι δυνηθῶμεν. καθόλου δὲ σῴζεται σῶμα μὲν ἐνδείᾳ καὶ πληρώσει, ψυχὴ δ’ ἀνέσει καὶ πόνῳ.

[d] Ἄξιον δ’ ἐπιτιμᾶν τῶν πατέρων ἐνίοις, οἵτινες παιδαγωγοῖς καὶ διδασκάλοις ἐπιτρέψαντες τοὺς υἱεῖς αὐτοὶ τῆς τούτων μαθήσεως οὔτ’ αὐτόπται γίγνονται τὸ παράπαν οὔτ’ αὐτήκοοι, πλεῖστον τοῦ δέοντος ἁμαρτάνοντες. αὐτοὺς γὰρ παρ’ ὀλίγας ἡμέρας δεῖ δοκιμασίαν λαμβάνειν τῶν παίδων, ἀλλὰ μὴ τὰς ἐλπίδας ἔχειν ἐν μισθωτοῦ διαθέσει· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι πλείονα ποιήσονται τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν τῶν παίδων, μέλλοντες ἑκάστοτε διδόναι τὰς εὐθύνας. κἀνταῦθα δὴ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ ἱπποκόμου χάριεν, ὡς οὐδὲν οὕτω πιαίνει τὸν ἵππον ὡς βασιλέως ὀφθαλμός.

[e] Πάντων δὲ μάλιστα τὴν μνήμην τῶν παίδων ἀσκεῖν καὶ συνεθίζειν· αὕτη γὰρ ὥσπερ τῆς παιδείας ἐστὶ ταμιεῖον, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μητέρα τῶν Μουσῶν ἐμυθολόγησαν εἶναι τὴν Μνημοσύνην, αἰνιττόμενοι καὶ παραδηλοῦντες ὅτι οὕτως οὐδὲν γεννᾶν καὶ τρέφειν ὡς ἡ μνήμη πέφυκε. καὶ τοίνυν ταύτην κατ’ ἀμφότερ’ ἐστὶν ἀσκητέον, εἴτ’ ἐκ φύσεως μνήμονες εἶεν οἱ παῖδες, εἴτε καὶ τοὐναντίον ἐπιλήσμονες. τὴν γὰρ πλεονεξίαν τῆς φύσεως ἐπιρρώσομεν, τὴν δ’ ἔλλειψιν ἀναπληρώσομεν· καὶ οἱ μὲν τῶν ἄλλων ἔσονται βελτίους, οἱ δ’ ἑαυτῶν. τὸ γὰρ Ἡσιόδειον καλῶς εἴρηται

εἰ γάρ κεν καὶ σμικρὸν ἐπὶ σμικρῷ καταθεῖο

[f] καὶ θαμὰ τοῦτ’ ἔρδοις, τάχα κεν μέγα καὶ τὸ γένοιτο.

μὴ λανθανέτω τοίνυν μηδὲ τοῦτο τοὺς πατέρας, ὅτι τὸ μνημονικὸν τῆς μαθήσεως μέρος οὐ μόνον πρὸς τὴν παιδείαν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὰς τοῦ βίου πράξεις οὐκ ἐλαχίστην συμβάλλεται μοῖραν. ἡ γὰρ τῶν γεγενημένων πράξεων μνήμη τῆς περὶ τῶν μελλόντων εὐβουλίας γίγνεται παράδειγμα.

Καὶ μέντοι καὶ τῆς αἰσχρολογίας ἀπακτέον

τοὺς υἱεῖς· “λόγος γὰρ ἔργου σκιή” κατὰ Δημόκριτον. [10] [a] εἶτά γε μὴν ἐντευκτικοὺς αὐτοὺς εἶναι παρασκευαστέον καὶ φιλοπροσηγόρους· οὐδὲν γὰρ ὡς τὰ ἀνέντευκτα τῶν ἠθῶν ἐστιν οὕτως ἀξιομίσητον. ἔτι τοίνυν οἱ παῖδες ἀμισεῖς γίγνοιντ’ ἂν τοῖς συνοῦσι μὴ παντελῶς ἐν ταῖς ζητήσεσιν ἀπαραχώρητοι γιγνόμενοι· οὐ γὰρ τὸ νικᾶν μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ἡττᾶσθαι ἐπίστασθαι καλὸν ἐν οἷς τὸ νικᾶν βλαβερόν. ἔστι γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ νίκη Καδμεία. ἔχω δὲ μάρτυρα τούτου Εὐριπίδην τὸν σοφὸν ἐπαγαγέσθαι λέγοντα

[b] δυοῖν λεγόντοιν, θατέρου θυμουμένου,

ὁ μὴ ἀντιτείνων τοῖς λόγοις σοφώτερος.

Ἃ τοίνυν τῶν εἰρημένων οὐδενὸς ἧττόν ἐστιν ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπιτηδευτέα τοῖς νέοις καὶ δὴ λεκτέον. ταῦτα δ’ ἐστὶ τὸ τὸν βίον ἀτύφωτον ἀσκεῖν, τὸ τὴν γλῶτταν κατέχειν, τὸ τῆς ὀργῆς ὑπεράνω γίγνεσθαι, τὸ τῶν χειρῶν κρατεῖν. τούτων ἕκαστον ἡλίκον ἐστὶ σκεπτέον· ἔσται δ’ ἐπὶ παραδειγμάτων γνωριμώτερα.

Οἷον ἵν’ ἀπὸ τοῦ τελευταίου πρῶτον ἄρξωμαι, τὰς χεῖράς τινες ὑποσχόντες λήμμασιν ἀδίκοις τὴν δόξαν τῶν προβεβιωμένων ἐξέχεαν· ὡς Γύλιππος [c] ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος τὰ σακκία τῶν χρημάτων παραλύσας φυγὰς ἀπηλάθη τῆς Σπάρτης.

Τό γε μὴν ἀόργητον ἀνδρός ἐστι σοφοῦ. Σωκράτης μὲν γάρ, λακτίσαντος αὐτὸν νεανίσκου θρασέος μάλα καὶ βδελυροῦ, τοὺς ἀμφ’ αὑτὸν ὁρῶν ἀγανακτοῦντας καὶ σφαδᾴζοντας ὡς καὶ διώκειν αὐτὸν ἐθέλειν, “ἆρ’,” ἔφησε, “καὶ εἴ μ’ ὄνος ἐλάκτισεν, ἀντιλακτίσαι τοῦτον ἠξιώσατ’ ἄν;” οὐ μὴν ἐκεῖνός γε παντελῶς κατεπροίξατο, πάντων δ’ αὐτὸν ὀνειδιζόντων καὶ λακτιστὴν ἀποκαλούντων ἀπήγξατο.

Ἀριστοφάνους δέ, ὅτε τὰς Νεφέλας ἐξέφερε, παντοίως πᾶσαν ὕβριν αὐτοῦ κατασκεδαννύντος, καί τινος τῶν παρόντων “κᾆτα τοιαῦτ’ ἀνακωμῳδοῦντος οὐκ ἀγανακτεῖς” εἰπόντος “ὦ Σώκρατες;”

[d] “μὰ Δί’ οὐκ ἔγωγ’,” ἔφησεν· “ὡς γὰρ ἐν συμποσίῳ μεγάλῳ τῷ θεάτρῳ σκώπτομαι.” ἀδελφὰ τούτοις καὶ σύζυγα φανήσονται πεποιηκότες Ἀρχύτας ὁ Ταραντῖνος καὶ Πλάτων. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐπανελθὼν ἀπὸ τοῦ πολέμου (στρατηγῶν δ’ ἐτύγχανε) γῆν καταλαβὼν κεχερσωμένην, τὸν ἐπίτροπον καλέσας αὐτῆς “ᾤμωξας ἄν,” ἔφησεν, “εἰ μὴ λίαν ὠργιζόμην.” Πλάτων δὲ δούλῳ λίχνῳ καὶ βδελυρῷ θυμωθείς, τὸν τῆς ἀδελφῆς υἱὸν Σπεύσιππον καλέσας “τοῦτον,” ἔφησεν ἀπελθών, “κρότησον· ἐγὼ γὰρ πάνυ θυμοῦμαι.” χαλεπὰ δὲ ταῦτα καὶ δυσμίμητα φαίη τις ἄν.

[e] οἶδα κἀγώ. πειρατέον οὖν εἰς ὅσον οἷόν τ’ ἐστὶ τούτοις παραδείγμασι χρωμένους τὸ πολὺ τῆς ἀκρατοῦς καὶ μαινομένης ὑφαιρεῖν ὀργῆς· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐς τἄλλα ἐνάμιλλοι ταῖς ἐκείνων ἐσμὲν οὔτ’ ἐμπειρίαις οὔτε καλοκαγαθίαις. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐκείνων, ὥσπερ θεῶν ἱεροφάνται καὶ δᾳδοῦχοι τῆς σοφίας ὄντες, ὅσαπέρ ἐστιν ἐν δυνατῷ, ταῦτα μιμεῖσθαι καὶ περικνίζειν ἐπιχειροῦμεν.

Τὸ τοίνυν τῆς γλώττης κρατεῖν (περὶ τούτου γάρ, ὧνπερ ὑπεθέμην, εἰπεῖν λοιπόν) εἴ τις μικρὸν καὶ φαῦλον ὑπείληφε, πλεῖστον διαμαρτάνει τῆς ἀληθείας. σοφὸν γὰρ εὔκαιρος σιγὴ καὶ παντὸς [f] λόγου κρεῖττον. καὶ διὰ τοῦτό μοι δοκεῖ τὰς μυστηριώδεις τελετὰς οἱ παλαιοὶ κατέδειξαν, ἵν’ ἐν ταύταις σιωπᾶν ἐθισθέντες ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων μυστηρίων πίστιν τὸν ἀπὸ τῶν θείων μεταφέρωμεν φόβον. καὶ γὰρ αὖ σιωπήσας μὲν οὐδεὶς μετενόησε, λαλήσαντες δὲ παμπληθεῖς. καὶ τὸ μὲν σιγηθὲν ἐξειπεῖν ῥᾴδιον, τὸ δὲ ῥηθὲν ἀναλαβεῖν ἀδύνατον. μυρίους δ’ ἔγωγ’ οἶδ’ ἀκούσας ταῖς μεγίσταις συμφοραῖς περιπεσόντας διὰ τὴν [11] [a] τῆς γλώττης ἀκρασίαν. ὧν τοὺς ἄλλους παραλιπὼν ἑνὸς ἢ δυεῖν τύπου ἕνεκεν ἐπιμνησθήσομαι. τοῦ γὰρ Φιλαδέλφου γήμαντος τὴν ἀδελφὴν Ἀρσινόην Σωτάδης εἰπών

εἰς οὐχ ὁσίην τρυμαλιὴν τὸ κέντρον ὠθεῖς

ἐν δεσμωτηρίῳ πολλοὺς κατεσάπη χρόνους καὶ τῆς ἀκαίρου λαλιᾶς οὐ μεμπτὴν ἔδωκε δίκην, ἵνα δὲ γέλωτα παράσχῃ τοῖς ἄλλοις, αὐτὸς πολὺν χρόνον ἔκλαυσεν. ἐνάμιλλα δὲ τούτοις καὶ σύζυγα καὶ Θεόκριτος ὁ σοφιστὴς εἶπέ τε καὶ ἔπαθε, καὶ πολὺ δεινότερα. Ἀλεξάνδρου γὰρ πορφυρᾶς ἐσθῆτας κελεύσαντος κατασκευάζειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ἵν’ [b] ἐπανελθὼν τὰ ἐπινίκια τοῦ πολέμου τοῦ κατὰ τῶν βαρβάρων θύσειε, καὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν κατὰ κεφαλὴν εἰσφερόντων ἄργυρον “πρότερον μέν,” ἔφησεν, “ἠμφισβήτουν, νῦν δ’ ᾔσθημαι σαφῶς ὅτι ὁ ‘πορφύρεος’ Ὁμήρου ‘θάνατος’ οὗτός ἐστιν.” ἐξ ὧν ἐχθρὸν ἐκτήσατο τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον. Ἀντίγονον δὲ τὸν βασιλέα τῶν Μακεδόνων ἑτερόφθαλμον ὄντα τὴν πήρωσιν προφέρων εἰς οὐ μετρίαν ὀργὴν κατέστησε. τὸν γὰρ ἀρχιμάγειρον Εὐτροπίωνα γεγενημένον ἐν τάξει πέμψας παραγενέσθαι πρὸς [c] αὐτὸν ἠξίου καὶ λόγον δοῦναι καὶ λαβεῖν. ταῦτα δ’ ἀπαγγέλλοντος ἐκείνου πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ πολλάκις προσιόντος “εὖ οἶδ’,” ἔφησεν, “ὅτι ὠμόν με θέλεις τῷ Κύκλωπι παραθεῖναι,” ὀνειδίζων τὸν μὲν ὅτι πηρός, τὸν δ’ ὅτι μάγειρος ἦν. κἀκεῖνος “τοιγαροῦν” εἰπών “τὴν κεφαλὴν οὐχ ἕξεις ἀλλὰ τῆς ἀθυροστομίας ταύτης καὶ μανίας δώσεις δίκην,” ἀπήγγειλε τὰ εἰρημένα τῷ βασιλεῖ, ὁ δὲ πέμψας ἀνεῖλε τὸν Θεόκριτον.

Παρὰ πάντα δὲ ταῦτα, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἱεροπρεπέστατον, ἐθίζειν τοὺς παῖδας τῷ τἀληθῆ λέγειν· τὸ γὰρ ψεύδεσθαι δουλοπρεπὲς καὶ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἄξιον μισεῖσθαι καὶ οὐδὲ μετρίοις δούλοις συγγνωστόν.

[d] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἐνδοιάσας οὐδὲ μελλήσας περὶ τῆς τῶν παίδων εὐκοσμίας καὶ σωφροσύνης διείλεγμαι· περὶ δὲ τοῦ ῥηθήσεσθαι μέλλοντος ἀμφίδοξός εἰμι καὶ διχογνώμων, καὶ τῇδε κἀκεῖσε μετακλίνων ὡς ἐπὶ πλάστιγγος πρὸς οὐδέτερον ῥέψαι δύναμαι, πολὺς δ’ ὄκνος ἔχει με καὶ τῆς εἰσηγήσεως καὶ τῆς ἀποτροπῆς τοῦ πράγματος. ἀποτολμητέον δ’ οὖν ὅμως εἰπεῖν αὐτό. τί οὖν τοῦτ’ ἐστί; πότερα δεῖ τοὺς ἐρῶντας τῶν παίδων [e] ἐᾶν τούτοις συνεῖναι καὶ συνδιατρίβειν, ἢ τοὐναντίον εἴργειν αὐτοὺς καὶ ἀποσοβεῖν τῆς πρὸς τούτους ὁμιλίας προσῆκεν; ὅταν μὲν γὰρ ἀποβλέψω πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας τοὺς αὐθεκάστους καὶ τὸν τρόπον ὀμφακίας καὶ στρυφνούς, οἳ τῶν τέκνων ὕβριν οὐκ ἀνεκτὴν τὴν τῶν ἐρώντων ὁμιλίαν ἡγοῦνται, εὐλαβοῦμαι ταύτης εἰσηγητὴς γενέσθαι καὶ σύμβουλος. ὅταν δ’ αὖ πάλιν ἐνθυμηθῶ τὸν Σωκράτη τὸν Πλάτωνα τὸν Ξενοφῶντα τὸν Αἰσχίνην τὸν Κέβητα, τὸν πάντα χορὸν ἐκείνων τῶν ἀνδρῶν οἳ τοὺς ἄρρενας ἐδοκίμασαν ἔρωτας καὶ τὰ μειράκια προήγαγον ἐπί τε παιδείαν καὶ δημαγωγίαν καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν τῶν τρόπων, πάλιν ἕτερος γίγνομαι [f] καὶ κάμπτομαι πρὸς τὸν ἐκείνων τῶν ἀνδρῶν ζῆλον. μαρτυρεῖ δὲ τούτοις Εὐριπίδης οὕτω λέγων

ἀλλ’ ἔστι δή τις ἄλλος ἐν βροτοῖς ἔρως,

ψυχῆς δικαίας σώφρονός τε κἀγαθῆς.

τὸ δὲ τοῦ Πλάτωνος σπουδῇ καὶ χαριεντισμῷ μεμιγμένον οὐ παραλειπτέον. ἐξεῖναι γάρ φησι δεῖν τοῖς ἀριστεύσασιν ὃν ἂν βούλωνται τῶν καλῶν φιλῆσαι. τοὺς μὲν οὖν τῆς ὥρας ἐπιθυμοῦντας ἀπελαύνειν προσῆκε, τοὺς δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐραστὰς ἐγκρίνειν κατὰ τὸ σύνολον. καὶ τοὺς μὲν Θήβησι καὶ τοὺς ἐν Ἤλιδι φευκτέον ἔρωτας καὶ τὸν ἐν [12] [a] Κρήτῃ καλούμενον ἁρπαγμόν, τοὺς δ’ Ἀθήνησι καὶ τοὺς ἐν Λακεδαίμονι ζηλωτέον.

Περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων, ὅπως ἕκαστος αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν πέπεικεν, οὕτως ὑπολαμβανέτω· ἐγὼ δ’ ἐπειδὴ περὶ τῆς τῶν παίδων εὐταξίας εἴρηκα καὶ κοσμιότητος, καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν μειρακίων ἡλικίαν ἤδη μεταβήσομαι καὶ μικρὰ παντάπασιν λέξω. πολλάκις γὰρ κατεμεμψάμην τοὺς μοχθηρῶν ἐθῶν γεγονότας εἰσηγητάς, οἵτινες τοῖς μὲν παισὶ παιδαγωγοὺς καὶ διδασκάλους ἐπέστησαν, τὴν δὲ τῶν μειρακίων ὁρμὴν ἄφετον εἴασαν νέμεσθαι, [b] δέον αὖ τοὐναντίον πλείω τῶν μειρακίων ποιεῖσθαι τὴν εὐλάβειαν καὶ φυλακὴν ἢ τῶν παίδων. τίς γὰρ οὐκ οἶδεν ὅτι τὰ μὲν τῶν παίδων πλημμελήματα μικρὰ καὶ παντελῶς ἐστιν ἰάσιμα, παιδαγωγῶν ἴσως ὀλιγωρία καὶ διδασκάλων παραγωγὴ καὶ ἀνηκουστία· τὰ δὲ τῶν ἤδη νεανισκευομένων ἀδικήματα πολλάκις ὑπερφυᾶ γίνεται καὶ σχέτλια, ἀμετρία γαστρὸς καὶ κλοπαὶ πατρῴων χρημάτων καὶ κύβοι καὶ κῶμοι καὶ πότοι καὶ παρθένων ἔρωτες καὶ γυναικῶν οἰκοφθορίαι γαμετῶν. οὐκοῦν τὰς τούτων ὁρμὰς ταῖς ἐπιμελείαις δεσμεύειν [c] καὶ κατέχειν προσῆκεν. ἀταμίευτον γὰρ τῶν ἡδονῶν ἡ ἀκμὴ καὶ σκιρτητικὸν καὶ χαλινοῦ δεόμενον, ὥσθ’ οἱ μὴ τῆς ἡλικίας ταύτης ἐρρωμένως ἀντιλαμβανόμενοι τῇ δὴ ἀνοίᾳ διδόασιν ἐξουσίαν ἐπὶ τὰ ἀδικήματα. ἔδει τοίνυν τοὺς ἔμφρονας πατέρας παρὰ τοῦτον μάλιστα τὸν καιρὸν φυλάττειν ἐγρηγορέναι σωφρονίζειν τοὺς μειρακίσκους διδάσκοντας ἀπειλοῦντας δεομένους, παραδείγματα δεικνύντας τῶν διὰ φιληδονίαν μὲν συμφοραῖς περιπεσόντων διὰ δὲ καρτερίαν ἔπαινον καὶ δόξαν ἀγαθὴν περιποιησαμένων. δύο γὰρ ταῦθ’ ὡσπερεὶ στοιχεῖα τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐστιν, ἐλπίς [d] τε τιμῆς καὶ φόβος τιμωρίας· ἡ μὲν γὰρ ὁρμητικωτέρους πρὸς τὰ κάλλιστα τῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων ἡ δ’ ὀκνηροὺς πρὸς τὰ φαῦλα τῶν ἔργων ἀπεργάζεται.

Καθόλου δ’ ἀπείργειν προσήκει τοὺς παῖδας τῆς πρὸς τοὺς πονηροὺς ἀνθρώπους συνουσίας· ἀποφέρονται γάρ τι τῆς τούτων κακίας. τοῦτο δὲ παρήγγειλε καὶ Πυθαγόρας αἰνίγμασιν ἅπερ ἐγὼ παραθεὶς ἐξηγήσομαι· καὶ γὰρ ταῦτα πρὸς ἀρετῆς κτῆσιν συμβάλλεται ῥοπὴν οὐκ ἐλαχίστην. οἷον·

[e] “Μὴ γεύεσθαι μελανούρων,” τουτέστι μὴ συνδιατρίβειν μέλασιν ἀνθρώποις διὰ κακοήθειαν.

“Μὴ ζυγὸν ὑπερβαίνειν,” τουτέστιν ὅτι δεῖ τῆς δικαιοσύνης πλεῖστον ποιεῖσθαι λόγον καὶ μὴ ταύτην ὑπερβαίνειν.

“Μὴ ἐπὶ χοίνικος καθίσαι,” ἤτοι φεύγειν ἀργίαν καὶ προνοεῖν ὅπως τὴν ἀναγκαίαν παρασκευάσωμεν τροφήν.

“Μὴ παντὶ ἐμβάλλειν δεξιάν,” ἀντὶ τοῦ προχείρως οὐ δεῖ συναλλάττειν.

“Μὴ φορεῖν στενὸν δακτύλιον,” ὅτι δεῖ τὸν βίον ἐπιτηδεύειν καὶ μηδενὶ δεσμῷ προσάπτειν αὐτόν.

“Πῦρ σιδήρῳ μὴ σκαλεύειν,” ἀντὶ τοῦ θυμούμενον μὴ ἐρεθίζειν· οὐ γὰρ προσῆκεν, ἀλλ’ ὑπείκειν τοῖς ὀργιζομένοις.

“Μὴ ἐσθίειν καρδίαν,” ἤτοι μὴ βλάπτειν τὴν ψυχὴν ταῖς φροντίσιν αὐτὴν κατατρύχοντα.

[f] “Κυάμων ἀπέχεσθαι,” ὅτι οὐ δεῖ πολιτεύεσθαι· κυαμευταὶ γὰρ ἦσαν ἔμπροσθεν αἱ ψηφοφορίαι δι’ ὧν πέρας ἐπετίθεσαν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς.

“Σιτίον εἰς ἀμίδα μὴ ἐμβάλλειν·” ἐπισημαίνει γὰρ ὅτι εἰς πονηρὰν ψυχὴν ἀστεῖον λόγον ἐμβάλλειν οὐ προσῆκεν· ὁ μὲν γὰρ λόγος τροφὴ διανοίας ἐστί, τοῦτον δ’ ἀκάθαρτον ἡ πονηρία ποιεῖ τῶν ἀνθρώπων.

“Μὴ ἐπιστρέφεσθαι ἐπὶ τοὺς ὅρους ἐλθόντας,” τουτέστι μέλλοντας ἀποθνήσκειν καὶ τὸν ὅρον τοῦ βίου πλησίον ὄντα ὁρῶντας φέρειν εὐκόλως καὶ μὴ ἀθυμεῖν.

Ἀνακάμψω δ’ ἐπὶ τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς τοῦ λόγου ὑπόθεσιν· ἁπάντων γὰρ ὅπερ ἔφην τῶν πονηρῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀπάγειν δεῖ τοὺς παῖδας, μάλιστα δὲ [13] [a] τῶν κολάκων. ὅπερ γὰρ πολλάκις καὶ πρὸς πολλοὺς τῶν πατέρων διατελῶ λέγων, καὶ νῦν ἂν εἴποιμι. γένος οὐδέν ἐστιν ἐξωλέστερον οὐδὲ μᾶλλον καὶ θᾶττον ἐκτραχηλίζον νεότητα τῶν κολάκων, οἳ καὶ τοὺς πατέρας καὶ τοὺς παῖδας προρρίζους ἐκτρίβουσι, τῶν μὲν τὸ γῆρας ἐπίλυπον, τῶν δὲ τὴν νεότητα ποιοῦντες, τῶν δὲ συμβουλευμάτων δέλεαρ ἀφύλακτον προτείνοντες τὴν ἡδονήν. τοῖς παισὶ τῶν πλουσίων οἱ πατέρες νήφειν παραινοῦσιν οἱ δὲ μεθύειν, σωφρονεῖν οἱ δ’ ἀσελγαίνειν, φυλάττειν οἱ δὲ δαπανᾶν, φιλεργεῖν οἱ δὲ ῥᾳθυμεῖν, [b] “στιγμὴ χρόνου πᾶς ἐστιν ὁ βίος” λέγοντες, “ζῆν οὐ παραζῆν προσῆκε. τί δὲ φροντιστέον ἡμῖν τῶν τοῦ πατρὸς ἀπειλῶν; κρονόληρος καὶ σοροδαίμων ἐστί, καὶ μετέωρον αὐτὸν ἀράμενοι τὴν ταχίστην ἐξοίσομεν.” καθῆκε δέ τις καὶ χαμαιτύπην καὶ προηγώγευσε γαμετήν, καὶ τὰ τῶν πατέρων ἐφόδια τοῦ γήρως ἐσύλησε καὶ περιέκοψε. μιαρὸν τὸ φῦλον, ὑποκριταὶ φιλίας, ἄγευστοι παρρησίας, πλουσίων μὲν κόλακες πενήτων δ’ ὑπερόπται, ὡς ἐκ λυρικῆς τέχνης ἐπὶ τοὺς νέους ἀγόμενοι, σεσηρότες ὅθ’ οἱ τρέφοντες γελῶσι, καὶ ψυχῆς ὑποβολιμαῖα καὶ νόθα μέρη βίου, πρὸς δὲ [c] τὸ τῶν πλουσίων νεῦμα ζῶντες, τῇ τύχῃ μὲν ἐλεύθεροι, τῇ προαιρέσει δὲ δοῦλοι· ὅταν δὲ μὴ ὑβρίζωνται, τόθ’ ὑβρίζεσθαι δοκοῦντες, ὅτι μάτην παρατρέφονται. ὥστ’ εἴ τῳ μέλει τῶν πατέρων τῆς τῶν τέκνων εὐαγωγίας, ἐκδιωκτέον τὰ μιαρὰ ταῦτα θρέμματα, ἐκδιωκτέον δ’ οὐχ ἥκιστα καὶ τὰς τῶν συμφοιτητῶν μοχθηρίας· καὶ γὰρ οὗτοι τὰς ἐπιεικεστάτας φύσεις ἱκανοὶ διαφθείρειν εἰσί.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν καλὰ καὶ συμφέροντα· ἃ δὲ [d] μέλλω λέγειν, ἀνθρώπινα. οὐδὲ γὰρ αὖ πάλιν τοὺς πατέρας ἔγωγ’ ἀξιῶ τελέως τραχεῖς καὶ σκληροὺς εἶναι τὴν φύσιν, ἀλλὰ πολλαχοῦ καὶ συγχωρῆσαί τινα τῷ νεωτέρῳ τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων, καὶ ἑαυτοὺς ἀναμιμνῄσκειν ὅτι ἐγένοντο νέοι. καὶ καθάπερ ἰατροὶ τὰ πικρὰ τῶν φαρμάκων τοῖς γλυκέσι χυμοῖς καταμιγνύντες τὴν τέρψιν ἐπὶ τὸ συμφέρον πάροδον εὗρον, οὕτω δεῖ τοὺς πατέρας τὴν τῶν ἐπιτιμημάτων ἀποτομίαν τῇ πραότητι [e] μιγνύναι, καὶ τοτὲ μὲν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τῶν παίδων ἐφεῖναι καὶ χαλάσαι τὰς ἡνίας, τοτὲ δ’ αὖ πάλιν ἀντιτεῖναι, καὶ μάλιστα μὲν εὐκόλως φέρειν τὰς ἁμαρτίας, εἰ δὲ μή γε, πρὸς καιρὸν ὀργισθέντας ταχέως ἀποφλεγμῆναι. μᾶλλον γὰρ ὀξύθυμον εἶναι δεῖ τὸν πατέρα ἢ βαρύθυμον, ὡς τό γε δυσμενὲς καὶ δυσκατάλλακτον μισοτεκνίας οὐ μικρὸν τεκμήριόν ἐστι. καλὸν δὲ καὶ ἔνια τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων μηδ’ εἰδέναι δοκεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὸ τοῦ γήρως ἀμβλυῶττον καὶ δύσκωφον ἐπὶ τὰ γιγνόμενα μεταφέρειν, ὡς ἔνια τῶν πραττομένων ὁρῶντας μὴ ὁρᾶν καὶ μὴ ἀκούειν ἀκούοντας. φίλων ἁμαρτήματα φέρομεν· τί θαυμαστὸν εἰ τέκνων; δούλων πολλάκις κραιπαλώντων μέθην οὐκ ἐξηλέγξαμεν. ἐφείσω ποτέ, ἀλλὰ καὶ χορήγησον· ἠγανάκτησάς ποτε, ἀλλὰ καὶ σύγγνωθι. ἐβουκόλησέ ποτε δι’ οἰκέτου· τὴν [f] ὀργὴν κάτασχε. ἐξ ἀγροῦ ποτε ζεῦγος ἀφείλετο, ἦλθέ ποτε χθιζῆς μέθης ἀποπνέων, ἀγνόησον· μύρων ὄζων, σίγησον. οὕτω σκιρτῶσα νεότης πωλοδαμνεῖται.

Πειρατέον δὲ τοὺς τῶν ἡδονῶν ἥττους καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἐπιτιμήσεις δυσηκόους γάμῳ καταζεῦξαι, δεσμὸς γὰρ οὗτος τῆς νεότητος ἀσφαλέστατος. ἐγγυᾶσθαι δὲ δεῖ τοῖς υἱέσι γυναῖκας μήτ’ εὐγενεστέρας πολλῷ μήτε πλουσιωτέρας· τὸ γὰρ “τὴν κατὰ σαυτὸν ἔλα” σοφόν. ὡς οἵ γε μακρῷ κρείττους ἑαυτῶν λαμβάνοντες οὐ τῶν γυναικῶν [14] [a] ἄνδρες, τῶν δὲ προικῶν δοῦλοι λανθάνουσι γιγνόμενοι.

Βραχέα δὲ προσθεὶς ἔτι περιγράψω τὰς ὑποθήκας. πρὸ πάντων γὰρ δεῖ τοὺς πατέρας τῷ μηδὲν ἁμαρτάνειν ἀλλὰ πάνθ’ ἃ δεῖ πράττειν ἐναργὲς αὑτοὺς παράδειγμα τοῖς τέκνοις παρέχειν, ἵνα πρὸς τὸν τούτων βίον ὥσπερ κάτοπτρον ἀποβλέποντες ἀποτρέπωνται τῶν αἰσχρῶν ἔργων καὶ λόγων. ὡς οἵτινες τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσιν υἱοῖς ἐπιτιμῶντες τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι περιπίπτουσιν, ἐπὶ τῷ ἐκείνων ὀνόματι λανθάνουσιν ἑαυτῶν κατήγοροι γιγνόμενοι· τὸ δ’ ὅλον φαύλως ζῶντες οὐδὲ τοῖς [b] δούλοις παρρησίαν ἄγουσιν ἐπιτιμᾶν, μή τί γε τοῖς υἱοῖς. χωρὶς δὲ τούτων γένοιντ’ ἂν αὐτοῖς τῶν ἀδικημάτων σύμβουλοι καὶ διδάσκαλοι. ὅπου γὰρ γέροντές εἰσιν ἀναίσχυντοι, ἐνταῦθ’ ἀνάγκη καὶ νέους ἀναιδεστάτους εἶναι.

Πειρατέον οὖν εἰς τὸν τῶν τέκνων σωφρονισμὸν πάνθ’ ὅσα προσῆκεν ἐπιτηδεύειν, ζηλώσαντας Εὐρυδίκην, ἥτις Ἰλλυρὶς οὖσα καὶ τριβάρβαρος, ὅμως ἐπὶ τῇ μαθήσει τῶν τέκνων ὀψὲ τῆς ἡλικίας ἥψατο παιδείας. ἱκανῶς δ’ αὐτῆς τὴν φιλοτεκνίαν σημαίνει τοὐπίγραμμα, ὅπερ ἀνέθηκε Μούσαις.

Εὐρυδίκη Ἱεραπολιῆτις τόνδ’ ἀνέθηκε

Μούσαις εὔιστον ψυχῇ ἑλοῦσα πόθον.

[c] γράμματα γὰρ μνημεῖα λόγων μήτηρ γεγαυῖα

παίδων ἡβώντων ἐξεπόνησε μαθεῖν.

Τὸ μὲν οὖν πάσας τὰς προειρημένας συμπεριλαβεῖν εὐχῆς ἴσως ἢ παραινέσεως ἔργον ἐστί· τὸ δὲ τὰς πλείους ζηλῶσαι καὶ αὐτὸ μὲν εὐμοιρίας δεόμενόν ἐστι καὶ πολλῆς ἐπιμελείας, ἀνυστὸν δ’ οὖν ἀνθρωπίνῃ φύσει καθέστηκεν.

Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat

[14] Εἰ μέν, ὡς Φιλόξενος ὁ ποιητὴς ἔλεγεν, ὦ [e] Μάρκε Σήδατε, τῶν κρεῶν τὰ μὴ κρέα ἥδιστά ἐστι καὶ τῶν ἰχθύων οἱ μὴ ἰχθύες, ἐκείνοις ἀποφαίνεσθαι παρῶμεν οἷς ὁ Κάτων ἔφη τῆς καρδίας τὴν ὑπερῴαν εὐαισθητοτέραν ὑπάρχειν. ὅτι δὲ τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ λεγομένων οἱ σφόδρα νέοι τοῖς μὴ δοκοῦσι φιλοσόφως μηδ’ ἀπὸ σπουδῆς λέγεσθαι χαίρουσι μᾶλλον καὶ παρέχουσιν ὑπηκόους ἑαυτοὺς καὶ χειροήθεις, δῆλόν ἐστιν ἡμῖν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον τὰ Αἰσώπεια μυθάρια καὶ τὰς ποιητικὰς ὑποθέσεις ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν Ἄβαριν τὸν Ἡρακλείδου καὶ τὸν Λύκωνα τὸν Ἀρίστωνος διερχόμενοι καὶ τὰ περὶ τῶν ψυχῶν δόγματα μεμιγμένα μυθολογίᾳ μεθ’ [f] ἡδονῆς ἐνθουσιῶσι. διὸ δεῖ μὴ μόνον ἐν ταῖς περὶ ἐδωδὴν καὶ πόσιν ἡδοναῖς διαφυλάττειν εὐσχήμονας αὐτούς, ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐν ταῖς ἀκροάσεσιν καὶ ἀναγνώσεσιν ἐθίζειν, ὥσπερ ὄψῳ χρωμένους μετρίως τῷ τέρποντι, τὸ χρήσιμον ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ σωτήριον διώκειν. οὔτε γὰρ πόλιν αἱ κεκλειμέναι πύλαι τηροῦσιν ἀνάλωτον, ἂν διὰ μιᾶς παραδέξηται τοὺς πολεμίους, οὔτε νέον αἱ περὶ [15] [a] τὰς ἄλλας ἡδονὰς ἐγκράτειαι σῴζουσιν, ἂν τῇ δι’ ἀκοῆς λάθῃ προέμενος αὑτόν, ἀλλ’ ὅσον μᾶλλον αὕτη τοῦ φρονεῖν καὶ λογίζεσθαι πεφυκότος ἅπτεται, τοσοῦτο μᾶλλον ἀμεληθεῖσα βλάπτει καὶ διαφθείρει τὸν παραδεξάμενον. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν οὔτ’ ἴσως δυνατόν ἐστιν οὔτ’ ὠφέλιμον ποιημάτων ἀπείργειν τὸν τηλικοῦτον ἡλίκος οὑμός τε τὸ νῦν Σώκλαρός ἐστι καὶ ὁ σὸς Κλέανδρος, εὖ μάλα παραφυλάττωμεν αὐτούς, ὡς ἐν ταῖς ἀναγνώσεσι μᾶλλον ἢ ταῖς ὁδοῖς παιδαγωγίας δεομένους. ἃ δ’ οὖν ἐμοὶ περὶ ποιημάτων εἰπεῖν πρῴην ἐπῆλθε, νῦν πρὸς σὲ [b] γεγραμμένα πέμψαι διενοήθην. καὶ λαβὼν ταῦτα δίελθε, κἂν δοκῇ σοι μηδὲν εἶναι φαυλότερα τῶν ἀμεθύστων καλουμένων, ἅτινες ἐν τοῖς πότοις περιάπτονται καὶ προλαμβάνουσι, μεταδίδου τῷ Κλεάνδρῳ καὶ προκαταλάμβανε τὴν φύσιν αὐτοῦ διὰ τὸ μηδαμοῦ νωθρὸν ἀλλὰ πανταχοῦ σφοδρὸν καὶ δεδορκὸς εὐαγωγοτέραν ὑπὸ τῶν τοιούτων οὖσαν.

πουλύποδος κεφαλῇ ἔνι μὲν κακὸν ἐν δὲ καὶ ἐσθλόν,

ὅτι βρωθῆναι μέν ἐστιν ἥδιστος, δυσόνειρον δ’ ὕπνον ποιεῖ, φαντασίας ταραχώδεις καὶ ἀλλοκότους [c] δεχόμενον, ὡς λέγουσιν. οὕτω δὴ καὶ ποιητικῇ πολὺ μὲν τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ τρόφιμον νέου ψυχῆς ἔνεστιν, οὐκ ἔλαττον δὲ τὸ ταρακτικὸν καὶ παράφορον, ἂν μὴ τυγχάνῃ παιδαγωγίας ὀρθῆς ἡ ἀκρόασις. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ὡς ἔοικε περὶ τῆς Αἰγυπτίων χώρας ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τῆς ποιητικῆς ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ὅτι

φάρμακα, πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ μεμιγμένα πολλὰ δὲ λυγρὰ

τοῖς χρωμένοις ἀναδίδωσιν.

ἔνθ’ ἔνι μὲν φιλότης, ἐν δ’ ἵμερος, ἐν δ’ ὀαριστὺς

πάρφασις, ἥ τ’ ἔκλεψε νόον πύκα περ φρονεόντων.

οὐ γὰρ ἅπτεται τὸ ἀπατηλὸν αὐτῆς ἀβελτέρων κομιδῇ [d] καὶ ἀνοήτων. διὸ καὶ Σιμωνίδης μὲν ἀπεκρίνατο πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα “τί δὴ μόνους οὐκ ἐξαπατᾷς Θετταλούς;” “ἀμαθέστεροι γάρ εἰσιν ἢ ὡς ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ ἐξαπατᾶσθαι.” Γοργίας δὲ τὴν τραγῳδίαν εἶπεν ἀπάτην, ἣν ὅ τ’ ἀπατήσας δικαιότερος τοῦ μὴ ἀπατήσαντος καὶ ὁ ἀπατηθεὶς σοφώτερος τοῦ μὴ ἀπατηθέντος. πότερον οὖν τῶν νέων ὥσπερ τῶν Ἰθακησίων σκληρῷ τινι τὰ ὦτα καὶ ἀτέγκτῳ κηρῷ καταπλάττοντες ἀναγκάζωμεν αὐτοὺς τὸ Ἐπικούρειον ἀκάτιον ἀραμένους ποιητικὴν φεύγειν καὶ παρεξελαύνειν, ἢ μᾶλλον ὀρθῷ τινι λογισμῷ παριστάντες καὶ καταδέοντες, τὴν κρίσιν, ὅπως μὴ παραφέρηται τῷ τέρποντι πρὸς τὸ βλάπτον, ἀπευθύνωμεν καὶ παραφυλάττωμεν;

[e] οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐδὲ Δρύαντος υἱὸς κρατερὸς Λυκόοργος

ὑγιαίνοντα νοῦν εἶχεν, ὅτι πολλῶν μεθυσκομένων καὶ παροινούντων τὰς ἀμπέλους περιιὼν ἐξέκοπτεν ἀντὶ τοῦ τὰς κρήνας ἐγγυτέρω προσαγαγεῖν καὶ “μαινόμενον” θεόν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, “ἑτέρῳ θεῷ νήφοντι κολαζόμενον” σωφρονίζειν. ἀφαιρεῖ γὰρ ἡ κρᾶσις τοῦ οἴνου τὸ βλάπτον, οὐ συναναιροῦσα τὸ χρήσιμον. μηδ’ ἡμεῖς οὖν τὴν ποιητικὴν [f] ἡμερίδα τῶν Μουσῶν ἐκκόπτωμεν μηδ’ ἀφανίζωμεν, ἀλλ’ ὅπου μὲν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἀκράτου πρὸς δόξαν αὐθάδως θρασυνόμενον ἐξυβρίζει καὶ ὑλομανεῖ τὸ μυθῶδες αὐτῆς καὶ θεατρικόν, ἐπιλαμβανόμενοι κολούωμεν καὶ πιέζωμεν· ὅπου δ’ ἅπτεταί τινος μούσης τῇ χάριτι καὶ τὸ γλυκὺ τοῦ λόγου καὶ ἀγωγὸν οὐκ ἄκαρπόν ἐστιν οὐδὲ κενόν, ἐνταῦθα φιλοσοφίαν εἰσάγωμεν καὶ καταμιγνύωμεν. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ μανδραγόρας ταῖς ἀμπέλοις παραφυόμενος καὶ διαδιδοὺς τὴν δύναμιν εἰς τὸν οἶνον μαλακωτέραν ποιεῖ τὴν καταφορὰν τοῖς πίνουσιν, οὕτω τοὺς λόγους ἡ ποίησις ἐκ φιλοσοφίας ἀναλαμβάνουσα μιγνυμένους πρὸς τὸ μυθῶδες ἐλαφρὰν καὶ προσφιλῆ παρέχει τοῖς νέοις τὴν μάθησιν. ὅθεν οὐ φευκτέον ἐστὶ τὰ ποιήματα τοῖς φιλοσοφεῖν μέλλουσιν, ἀλλὰ προφιλοσοφητέον τοῖς ποιήμασιν [16] [a] ἐθιζομένους ἐν τῷ τέρποντι τὸ χρήσιμον ζητεῖν καὶ ἀγαπᾶν· εἰ δὲ μή, διαμάχεσθαι καὶ δυσχεραίνειν. ἀρχὴ γὰρ αὕτη παιδεύσεως,

ἔργου δὲ παντὸς ἤν τις ἄρχηται καλῶς,

καὶ τὰς τελευτὰς εἰκός ἐσθ’ οὕτως ἔχειν

κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα.

Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν εἰσάγειν εἰς τὰ ποιήματα δεῖ τὸν νέον μηδὲν οὕτω μεμελετημένον ἔχοντα καὶ πρόχειρον ὡς τὸ “πολλὰ ψεύδονται ἀοιδοὶ” τὰ μὲν ἑκόντες τὰ δ’ ἄκοντες. ἑκόντες μέν, ὅτι πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἀκοῆς καὶ χάριν, ἣν οἱ πλεῖστοι διώκουσιν, [b] αὐστηροτέραν ἡγοῦνται τὴν ἀλήθειαν τοῦ ψεύδους. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἔργῳ γιγνομένη, κἂν ἀτερπὲς ἔχῃ τὸ τέλος, οὐκ ἐξίσταται· τὸ δὲ πλαττόμενον λόγῳ ῥᾷστα περιχωρεῖ καὶ τρέπεται πρὸς τὸ ἥδιον ἐκ τοῦ λυποῦντος. οὔτε γὰρ μέτρον οὔτε τρόπος οὔτε λέξεως ὄγκος οὔτ’ εὐκαιρία μεταφορᾶς οὔθ’ ἁρμονία καὶ σύνθεσις ἔχει τοσοῦτον αἱμυλίας καὶ χάριτος ὅσον εὖ πεπλεγμένη διάθεσις μυθολογίας· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν γραφαῖς κινητικώτερόν ἐστι χρῶμα γραμμῆς διὰ τὸ ἀνδρείκελον καὶ ἀπατηλόν, οὕτως [c] ἐν ποιήμασι μεμιγμένον πιθανότητι ψεῦδος ἐκπλήττει καὶ ἀγαπᾶται μᾶλλον τῆς ἀμύθου καὶ ἀπλάστου περὶ μέτρον καὶ λέξιν κατασκευῆς. ὅθεν ὁ Σωκράτης ἔκ τινων ἐνυπνίων ποιητικῆς ἁψάμενος αὐτὸς μέν, ἅτε δὴ γεγονὼς ἀληθείας ἀγωνιστὴς τὸν ἅπαντα βίον, οὐ πιθανὸς ἦν οὐδ’ εὐφυὴς ψευδῶν δημιουργός, τοὺς δ’ Αἰσώπου μύθους ἔπεσιν ἐνήρμοζεν ὡς ποίησιν οὐκ οὖσαν ᾗ ψεῦδος μὴ πρόσεστι. θυσίας μὲν γὰρ ἀχόρους καὶ ἀναύλους ἴσμεν, οὐκ ἴσμεν δ’ ἄμυθον οὐδ’ ἀψευδῆ ποίησιν. τὰ δ’ Ἐμπεδοκλέους ἔπη καὶ Παρμενίδου καὶ θηριακὰ Νικάνδρου καὶ γνωμολογίαι Θεόγνιδος λόγοι εἰσὶ κιχράμενοι παρὰ ποιητικῆς ὥσπερ ὄχημα τὸ μέτρον καὶ τὸν ὄγκον, ἵνα τὸ πεζὸν [d] διαφύγωσιν. ὅταν οὖν ἄτοπόν τι καὶ δυσχερὲς ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασι λέγηται περὶ θεῶν ἢ δαιμόνων ἢ ἀρετῆς ὑπ’ ἀνδρὸς ἐλλογίμου καὶ δόξαν ἔχοντος, ὁ μὲν ὡς ἀληθῆ προσδεξάμενος λόγον οἴχεται φερόμενος καὶ διέφθαρται τὴν δόξαν, ὁ δὲ μεμνημένος ἀεὶ καὶ κατέχων ἐναργῶς τῆς ποιητικῆς τὴν περὶ τὸ ψεῦδος γοητείαν καὶ δυνάμενος λέγειν ἑκάστοτε πρὸς αὐτὴν

“ὦ μηχάνημα λυγκὸς αἰολώτερον,

τί παίζουσα τὰς ὀφρῦς συνάγεις, τί δ’ ἐξαπατῶσα [e] προσποιῇ διδάσκειν;” οὐδὲν πείσεται δεινὸν οὐδὲ πιστεύσει φαῦλον, ἀλλ’ ἐπιλήψεται μὲν αὑτοῦ φοβουμένου τὸν Ποσειδῶνα καὶ ταρβοῦντος μὴ τὴν γῆν ἀναρρήξῃ καὶ ἀπογυμνώσῃ τὸν Ἅιδην, ἐπιλήψεται δὲ τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι χαλεπαίνοντος ὑπὲρ τοῦ πρώτου τῶν Ἀχαιῶν,

ὃν αὐτὸς ὑμνῶν αὐτὸς ἐν δαίτῃ παρὼν

αὐτὸς τάδ’ εἰπὼν αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ κτανών,

παύσεται δὲ τὸν φθιτὸν Ἀχιλλέα καὶ τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα τὸν καθ’ Ἅιδου δακρύων, ἀδυνάτους καὶ ἀσθενεῖς χεῖρας ἐπιθυμίᾳ τοῦ ζῆν ὀρέγοντας. ἂν δέ που συνταράττηται τοῖς πάθεσι καὶ κρατῆται φαρματτόμενος, οὐκ ὀκνήσει πρὸς ἑαυτὸν εἰπεῖν ἀλλὰ φόωσδε τάχιστα λιλαίεο· ταῦτα δὲ πάντα [f] ἴσθ’, ἵνα καὶ μετόπισθε τεῇ εἴπῃσθα γυναικί.

καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο χαριέντως Ὅμηρος εἰς τὴν νέκυιαν εἶπεν, ὡς γυναικὸς ἀκρόασιν οὖσαν διὰ τὸ μυθῶδες.

Τοιαῦτα γάρ ἐστιν ἃ πλάττουσιν ἑκόντες οἱ ποιηταί· πλείονα δ’ ἃ μὴ πλάττοντες ἀλλ’ οἰόμενοι καὶ δοξάζοντες αὐτοὶ προσαναχρώννυνται τὸ ψεῦδος ἡμῖν· οἷον ἐπὶ τοῦ Διὸς εἰρηκότος Ὁμήρου

[17] [a] ἐν δ’ ἐτίθει δύο κῆρε τανηλεγέος θανάτοιο,

τὴν μὲν Ἀχιλλῆος τὴν δ’ Ἕκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο,

ἕλκε δὲ μέσσα λαβών· ῥέπε δ’ Ἕκτορος αἴσιμον ἦμαρ,

ᾤχετο δ’ εἰς Ἀίδαο, λίπεν δέ ἑ Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων,

τραγῳδίαν ὁ Αἰσχύλος ὅλην τῷ μύθῳ περιέθηκεν, ἐπιγράψας Ψυχοστασίαν καὶ παραστήσας ταῖς πλάστιγξι τοῦ Διὸς ἔνθεν μὲν τὴν Θέτιν ἔνθεν δὲ τὴν Ἠῶ, δεομένας ὑπὲρ τῶν υἱέων μαχομένων. τοῦτο δὲ παντὶ δῆλον ὅτι μυθοποίημα καὶ πλάσμα πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἢ ἔκπληξιν ἀκροατοῦ γέγονε. τὸ δὲ

[b] Ζεύς, ὅς τ’ ἀνθρώπων ταμίης πολέμοιο τέτυκται

καὶ τὸ

θεὸς μὲν αἰτίαν φύει βροτοῖς,

ὅταν κακῶσαι δῶμα παμπήδην θέλῃ,

ταῦτα δ’ ἤδη κατὰ δόξαν εἴρηται καὶ πίστιν αὐτῶν, ἣν ἔχουσιν ἀπάτην περὶ θεῶν καὶ ἄγνοιαν εἰς ἡμᾶς ἐκφερόντων καὶ μεταδιδόντων. πάλιν αἱ περὶ τὰς νεκυίας τερατουργίαι καὶ διαθέσεις ὀνόμασι φοβεροῖς ἐνδημιουργοῦσαι φάσματα καὶ εἴδωλα ποταμῶν φλεγομένων καὶ τόπων ἀγρίων καὶ κολασμάτων σκυθρωπῶν οὐ πάνυ πολλοὺς διαλανθάνουσιν [c] ὅτι τὸ μυθῶδες αὐτοῖς πολὺ καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος ὥσπερ τροφαῖς τὸ φαρμακῶδες ἐγκέκραται. καὶ οὔθ’ Ὅμηρος οὔτε Πίνδαρος οὔτε Σοφοκλῆς πεπεισμένοι ταῦτ’ ἔχειν οὕτως ἔγραψαν·

ἔνθεν τὸν ἄπειρον ἐρεύγονται σκότον

βληχροὶ δνοφερᾶς νυκτὸς ποταμοί,

καὶ

πὰρ δ’ ἴσαν Ὠκεανοῦ τε ῥοὰς καὶ Λευκάδα πέτρην,

καὶ

στενωπὸς Ἅιδου καὶ παλιρροία βυθοῦ.

ὅσοι μέντοι τὸν θάνατον ὡς οἰκτρὸν ἢ τὴν ἀταφίαν ὡς δεινὸν ὀλοφυρόμενοι καὶ δεδιότες φωνὰς ἐξενηνόχασι

μή μ’ ἄκλαυτον ἄθαπτον ἰὼν ὄπιθεν καταλείπειν

καὶ

ψυχὴ δ’ ἐκ ῥεθέων πταμένη Ἀϊδόσδε βεβήκει,

[d] ὃν πότμον γοόωσα, λιποῦσ’ ἁδρότητα καὶ ἥβην

καὶ

μή μ’ ἀπολέσῃς ἄωρον· ἡδὺ γὰρ τὸ φῶς

λεύσσειν· τὰ δ’ ὑπὸ γῆς μή μ’ ἰδεῖν ἀναγκάσῃς,

αὗται πεπονθότων εἰσὶ καὶ προεαλωκότων ὑπὸ δόξης καὶ ἀπάτης. διὸ μᾶλλον ἅπτονται καὶ διαταράττουσιν ἡμᾶς, ἀναπιμπλαμένους τοῦ πάθους καὶ τῆς ἀσθενείας ἀφ’ ἧς λέγονται. πρὸς ταῦτα δὴ πάλιν παρασκευάζωμεν εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἔχειν ἔναυλον ὅτι ποιητικῇ μὲν οὐ πάνυ μέλον ἐστὶ τῆς ἀληθείας, ἡ δὲ περὶ ταῦτ’ ἀλήθεια καὶ τοῖς μηδὲν [e] ἄλλο πεποιημένοις ἔργον ἢ γνῶσιν καὶ μάθησιν τοῦ ὄντος εὖ μάλα δυσθήρατός ἐστι καὶ δύσληπτος, ὡς ὁμολογοῦσιν αὐτοί. καὶ τὰ Ἐμπεδοκλέους ἔστω πρόχειρα ταυτί·

οὕτως οὔτ’ ἐπιδερκτὰ τάδ’ ἀνδράσιν οὔτ’ ἐπακουστὰ

οὔτε νόῳ περιληπτά,

καὶ τὰ Ξενοφάνους·

καὶ τὸ μὲν οὖν σαφὲς οὔτις ἀνὴρ γένετ’ οὐδέ τις ἔσται

[f] εἰδὼς ἀμφὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἅσσα λέγω περὶ πάντων,

καὶ νὴ Δία τὰ Σωκράτους ἐξομνυμένου παρὰ Πλάτωνι τὴν περὶ τούτων γνῶσιν. ἧττον γὰρ ὡς εἰδόσι τι περὶ τούτων προσέξουσι τοῖς ποιηταῖς ἐν οἷς τοὺς φιλοσόφους ἰλιγγιῶντας ὁρῶσιν.

Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐπιστήσομεν αὐτὸν ἅμα τῷ προσάγειν τοῖς ποιήμασιν ὑπογράφοντες τὴν ποιητικὴν ὅτι μιμητικὴ τέχνη καὶ δύναμίς ἐστιν ἀντίστροφος τῇ ζῳγραφίᾳ. καὶ μὴ μόνον ἐκεῖνο τὸ θρυλούμενον ἀκηκοὼς ἔστω, ζῳγραφίαν μὲν εἶναι [18] [a] φθεγγομένην τὴν ποίησιν, ποίησιν δὲ σιγῶσαν τὴν ζῳγραφίαν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τούτῳ διδάσκωμεν αὐτὸν ὅτι γεγραμμένην σαύραν ἢ πίθηκον ἢ Θερσίτου πρόσωπον ἰδόντες ἡδόμεθα καὶ θαυμάζομεν οὐχ ὡς καλὸν ἀλλ’ ὡς ὅμοιον. οὐσίᾳ μὲν γὰρ οὐ δύναται καλὸν γενέσθαι τὸ αἰσχρόν· ἡ δὲ μίμησις, ἄν τε περὶ φαῦλον ἄν τε περὶ χρηστὸν ἐφίκηται τῆς ὁμοιότητος, ἐπαινεῖται. καὶ τοὐναντίον ἂν αἰσχροῦ σώματος εἰκόνα καλὴν παράσχῃ, τὸ πρέπον καὶ τὸ εἰκὸς οὐκ ἀπέδωκεν. γράφουσι δὲ καὶ πράξεις ἀτόπους ἔνιοι, καθάπερ Τιμόμαχος τὴν Μηδείας τεκνοκτονίαν καὶ Θέων τὴν Ὀρέστου μητροκτονίαν καὶ Παρράσιος τὴν Ὀδυσσέως προσποίητον μανίαν [b] καὶ Χαιρεφάνης ἀκολάστους ὁμιλίας γυναικῶν πρὸς ἄνδρας. ἐν οἷς μάλιστα δεῖ τὸν νέον ἐθίζεσθαι, διδασκόμενον ὅτι τὴν πρᾶξιν οὐκ ἐπαινοῦμεν ἧς γέγονεν ἡ μίμησις, ἀλλὰ τὴν τέχνην εἰ μεμίμηται προσηκόντως τὸ ὑποκείμενον. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν καὶ ποιητικὴ πολλάκις ἔργα φαῦλα καὶ πάθη μοχθηρὰ καὶ ἤθη μιμητικῶς ἀπαγγέλλει, δεῖ τὸ θαυμαζόμενον ἐν τούτοις καὶ κατορθούμενον μήτ’ ἀποδέχεσθαι τὸν νέον ὡς ἀληθὲς μήτε δοκιμάζειν ὡς καλόν, ἀλλ’ ἐπαινεῖν μόνον ὡς ἐναρμόττον τῷ ὑποκειμένῳ προσώπῳ καὶ οἰκεῖον. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὑὸς βοὴν καὶ ψόφον τροχιλίας καὶ πνευμάτων [c] ῥοῖζον καὶ θαλάττης κτύπον ἀκούοντες ἐνοχλούμεθα καὶ δυσχεραίνομεν, ἂν δέ τις πιθανῶς ταῦτα μιμῆται, καθάπερ Παρμένων τὴν ὗν καὶ Θεόδωρος τὰς τροχιλίας, ἡδόμεθα· καὶ νοσώδη μὲν ἄνθρωπον καὶ ὕπουλον ὡς ἀτερπὲς θέαμα φεύγομεν, τὸν δ’ Ἀριστοφῶντος Φιλοκτήτην καὶ τὴν Σιλανίωνος Ἰοκάστην ὁμοίους φθίνουσι καὶ ἀποθνῄσκουσι πεποιημένους ὁρῶντες χαίρομεν· οὕτως ὁ νέος ἀναγιγνώσκων ἃ Θερσίτης ὁ γελωτοποιὸς ἢ Σίσυφος ὁ φθορεὺς ἢ Βάτραχος ὁ πορνοβοσκὸς λέγων [d] ἢ πράττων πεποίηται, διδασκέσθω τὴν μιμουμένην ταῦτα δύναμιν καὶ τέχνην ἐπαινεῖν, ἃς δὲ διαθέσεις καὶ πράξεις μιμεῖται καὶ προβάλλεσθαι καὶ κακίζειν. οὐ γάρ ἐστι ταὐτὸ τὸ καλὸν καὶ καλῶς τι μιμεῖσθαι. καλῶς γάρ ἐστι τὸ πρεπόντως καὶ οἰκείως, οἰκεῖα δὲ καὶ πρέποντα τοῖς αἰσχροῖς τὰ αἰσχρά. καὶ γὰρ αἱ Δαμωνίδα τοῦ χωλοῦ κρηπῖδες, ἃς ἀπολέσας εὔχετο τοῖς τοῦ κλέψαντος ἐναρμόσαι ποσί, φαῦλαι μὲν ἦσαν ἐκείνῳ δ’ ἥρμοττον. καὶ τὸ

εἴπερ γὰρ ἀδικεῖν χρή, τυραννίδος πέρι

κάλλιστον ἀδικεῖν

[e] καὶ τὸ

τοῦ μὲν δικαίου τὴν δόκησιν ἄρνυσο

τὰ δ’ ἔργα τοῦ πᾶν δρῶντος· ἔνθα κερδανεῖς

καὶ

τάλαντον ἡ προίξ. μὴ λάβω; ζῆν δ’ ἔστι μοι

τάλαντον ὑπεριδόντι; τεύξομαι δ’ ὕπνου

προέμενος; οὐ δώσω δὲ κἀν Ἅιδου δίκην

ὡς ἠσεβηκὼς εἰς τάλαντον ἀργυροῦν;

μοχθηροὶ μέν εἰσι λόγοι καὶ ψευδεῖς, Ἐτεοκλεῖ δὲ καὶ Ἰξίονι καὶ τοκογλύφῳ πρεσβύτῃ πρέποντες. ἂν οὖν ὑπομιμνῄσκωμεν τοὺς παῖδας ὅτι ταῦτ’ οὐκ [f] ἐπαινοῦντες οὐδὲ δοκιμάζοντες ἀλλ’ ὡς ἄτοπα καὶ φαῦλα φαύλοις καὶ ἀτόποις ἤθεσι καὶ προσώποις περιτιθέντες γράφουσιν, οὐκ ἂν ὑπὸ τῆς δόξης βλάπτοιντο τῶν ποιητῶν. ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον ἡ πρὸς τὸ πρόσωπον ὑποψία διαβάλλει καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ τὸν λόγον, ὡς φαῦλον ὑπὸ φαύλου καὶ λεγόμενον καὶ πραττόμενον. οἷόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ τῆς συγκοιμήσεως τοῦ Πάριδος ἐκ τῆς μάχης ἀποδράντος. οὐδένα γὰρ ἄλλον ἀνθρώπων ἡμέρας συγκοιμώμενον γυναικὶ ποιήσας ἢ τὸν ἀκόλαστον καὶ μοιχικὸν ἐν αἰσχύνῃ δῆλός ἐστι καὶ ψόγῳ τιθέμενος τὴν τοιαύτην ἀκρασίαν.

[19] [a] Ἐν δὲ τούτοις εὖ μάλα προσεκτέον εἴ τινας ὁ ποιητὴς αὐτὸς ἐμφάσεις δίδωσι κατὰ τῶν λεγομένων ὡς δυσχεραινομένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ. καθάπερ ὁ Μένανδρος ἐν τῷ προλόγῳ τῆς Θαΐδος πεποίηκεν

ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν ἄειδε τοιαύτην, θεά,

θρασεῖαν ὡραίαν δὲ καὶ πιθανὴν ἅμα,

ἀδικοῦσαν ἀποκλείουσαν αἰτοῦσαν πυκνά,

μηδενὸς ἐρῶσαν, προσποιουμένην δ’ ἀεί.

[b]ἄριστα δ’ Ὅμηρος τῷ γένει τούτῳ κέχρηται· καὶ γὰρ προδιαβάλλει τὰ φαῦλα καὶ προσυνίστησι τὰ χρηστὰ τῶν λεγομένων. προσυνίστησι μὲν οὕτως

αὐτίκα μειλίχιον καὶ κερδαλέον φάτο μῦθον

καὶ

τὸν δ’ ἀγανοῖς ἐπέεσσιν ἐρητύσασκε παραστάς.

ἐν δὲ τῷ προδιαβάλλειν μονονοὺ μαρτύρεται καὶ διαγορεύει μήτε χρῆσθαι μήτε προσέχειν ὡς οὖσιν ἀτόποις καὶ φαύλοις. οἷον τόν τ’ Ἀγαμέμνονα μέλλων διηγεῖσθαι τῷ ἱερεῖ χρώμενον ἀπηνῶς προείρηκεν

ἀλλ’ οὐκ Ἀτρεΐδῃ Ἀγαμέμνονι ἥνδανε θυμῷ,

ἀλλὰ κακῶς ἀφίει,

[c] τουτέστιν ἀγρίως καὶ αὐθάδως καὶ παρὰ τὸ προσῆκον· τῷ τ’ Ἀχιλλεῖ τοὺς θρασεῖς λόγους περιτίθησιν

οἰνοβαρές, κυνὸς ὄμματ’ ἔχων, κραδίην δ’ ἐλάφοιο

τὴν αὑτοῦ κρίσιν ὑπειπὼν

Πηλεΐδης δ’ ἐξαῦτις ἀταρτηροῖς ἐπέεσσιν

Ἀτρεΐδην προσέειπε, καὶ οὔ πω λῆγε χόλοιο·

καλὸν γὰρ εἰκὸς οὐδὲν εἶναι μετ’ ὀργῆς καὶ αὐστηρῶς λεγόμενον. ὁμοίως καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν πράξεων

ἦ ῥα, καὶ Ἕκτορα δῖον ἀεικέα μήδετο ἔργα,

[d] πρηνέα πὰρ λεχέεσσι Μενοιτιάδαο τανύσσας.

εὖ δὲ καὶ ταῖς ἐπιρρήσεσι χρῆται, καθάπερ τινὰ ψῆφον ἰδίαν ἐπιφέρων τοῖς πραττομένοις ἢ λεγομένοις, ἐπὶ μὲν τῆς μοιχείας τοῦ Ἄρεος τοὺς θεοὺς ποιῶν λέγοντας

οὐκ ἀρετᾷ κακὰ ἔργα· κιχάνει τοι βραδὺς ὠκύν,

ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς τοῦ Ἕκτορος ὑπερφροσύνης καὶ μεγαλαυχίας

ὣς ἔφατ’ εὐχόμενος, νεμέσησε δὲ πότνια Ἥρη,

ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς Πανδάρου τοξείας

ὣς φάτ’ Ἀθηναίη, τῷ δὲ φρένας ἄφρονι πεῖθεν.

[e] αὗται μὲν οὖν αἱ τῶν λόγων ἀποφάσεις καὶ δόξαι παντός εἰσι κατιδεῖν τοῦ προσέχοντος· ἑτέρας δ’ ἐκ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῶν παρέχουσι μαθήσεις, ὥσπερ ὁ Εὐριπίδης εἰπεῖν λέγεται πρὸς τοὺς τὸν Ἰξίονα λοιδοροῦντας ὡς ἀσεβῆ καὶ μιαρόν, “οὐ μέντοι πρότερον αὐτὸν ἐκ τῆς σκηνῆς ἐξήγαγον ἢ τῷ τροχῷ προσηλῶσαι.” παρὰ δ’ Ὁμήρῳ σιωπώμενόν ἐστι τὸ τοιοῦτο γένος τῆς διδασκαλίας, ἔχον δ’ ἀναθεώρησιν ὠφέλιμον ἐπὶ τῶν διαβεβλημένων μάλιστα μύθων, οὓς ταῖς πάλαι μὲν ὑπονοίαις [f] ἀλληγορίαις δὲ νῦν λεγομέναις παραβιαζόμενοι καὶ διαστρέφοντες ἔνιοι μοιχευομένην φασὶν Ἀφροδίτην ὑπ’ Ἄρεος μηνύειν Ἥλιον, ὅτι τῷ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἀστέρι συνελθὼν ὁ τοῦ Ἄρεος μοιχικὰς ἀποτελεῖ γενέσεις, Ἡλίου δ’ ἐπαναφερομένου καὶ καταλαμβάνοντος οὐ λανθάνουσιν. τὸν δὲ τῆς Ἥρας καλλωπισμὸν ἐπὶ τὸν Δία καὶ τὰς περὶ τὸν κεστὸν γοητείας ἀέρος τινὰ κάθαρσιν εἶναι βούλονται τῷ πυρώδει πλησιάζοντος, ὥσπερ οὐκ αὐτοῦ τὰς λύσεις τοῦ ποιητοῦ διδόντος. ἐν μὲν γὰρ τοῖς περὶ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης διδάσκει τοὺς προσέχοντας, [20] [a] ὅτι μουσικὴ φαύλη καὶ ᾄσματα πονηρὰ καὶ λόγοι μοχθηρὰς ὑποθέσεις λαμβάνοντες ἀκόλαστα ποιοῦσιν ἤθη καὶ βίους ἀνάνδρους καὶ ἀνθρώπους τρυφὴν καὶ μαλακίαν καὶ γυναικοκρασίαν ἀγαπῶντας

εἵματά τ’ ἐξημοιβὰ λοετρά τε θερμὰ καὶ εὐνάς.

διὸ καὶ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα τῷ κιθαρῳδῷ προστάττοντα πεποίηκεν

ἀλλ’ ἄγε δὴ μετάβηθι καὶ ἵππου κόσμον ἄεισον,

καλῶς ὑφηγούμενος τὸ παρὰ τῶν φρονίμων καὶ νοῦν ἐχόντων χρῆναι λαμβάνειν τοὺς μουσικοὺς καὶ ποιητικοὺς τὰς ὑποθέσεις. ἐν δὲ τοῖς περὶ τῆς [b] Ἥρας ἄριστα τὴν ἀπὸ φαρμάκων καὶ γοητείας καὶ μετὰ δόλου πρὸς τοὺς ἄνδρας ὁμιλίαν καὶ χάριν ἔδειξεν οὐ μόνον ἐφήμερον καὶ ἁψίκορον καὶ ἀβέβαιον οὖσαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ μεταβάλλουσαν εἰς ἔχθραν καὶ ὀργήν, ὅταν τὰ τῆς ἡδονῆς ἀπομαρανθῇ. τοιαῦτα γὰρ ὁ Ζεὺς ἀπειλεῖ καὶ λέγει πρὸς αὐτὴν

ὄφρα ἴδῃς ἤν τοι χραίσμῃ φιλότης τε καὶ εὐνή,

ἣν ἐμίγης ἐλθοῦσα θεῶν ἄπο καί μ’ ἀπάτησας.

ἡ γὰρ τῶν φαύλων διάθεσις ἔργων καὶ μίμησις ἂν προσαποδῷ τὴν συμβαίνουσαν αἰσχύνην καὶ βλάβην τοῖς ἐργασαμένοις, ὠφέλησεν οὐκ ἔβλαψε τὸν ἀκροώμενον. οἱ γοῦν φιλόσοφοι παραδείγμασι χρῶνται, [c] νουθετοῦντες καὶ παιδεύοντες ἐξ ὑποκειμένων· οἱ δὲ ποιηταὶ ταὐτὰ ποιοῦσι πλάττοντες αὐτοὶ πράγματα καὶ μυθολογοῦντες. ὁ μὲν οὖν Μελάνθιος εἴτε παίζων εἴτε σπουδάζων ἔλεγε διασῴζεσθαι τὴν Ἀθηναίων πόλιν ὑπὸ τῆς τῶν ῥητόρων διχοστασίας καὶ ταραχῆς· οὐ γὰρ ἀποκλίνειν ἅπαντας εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν τοῖχον, ἀλλὰ γίγνεσθαί τινα τοῦ βλάπτοντος ἀνθολκὴν ἐν τῇ διαφορᾷ τῶν πολιτευομένων. αἱ δὲ τῶν ποιητῶν ὑπεναντιώσεις πρὸς αὑτοὺς ἀνταναφέρουσαι τὴν πίστιν οὐκ ἐῶσιν ἰσχυρὰν ῥοπὴν γενέσθαι πρὸς τὸ βλάπτον. ὅπου μὲν οὖν αὐτοῖς τὸ τιθέναι σύνεγγυς ἐκφανεῖς ποιεῖ τὰς ἀντιλογίας, δεῖ τῷ βελτίονι συνηγορεῖν ὥσπερ [d] ἐν τούτοις

πόλλ’, ὦ τέκνον, σφάλλουσιν ἀνθρώπους θεοί.

τὸ ῥᾷστον εἶπας, αἰτιάσασθαι θεούς.

καὶ πάλιν

χρυσοῦ σὲ πλήθει, τούσδε δ’ οὐ χαίρειν χρεών.

σκαιὸν τὸ πλουτεῖν κἄλλο μηδὲν εἰδέναι

καί

τί δῆτα θύειν δεῖ σε κατθανούμενον;

ἄμεινον· οὐδεὶς κάματος εὐσεβεῖν θεούς.

τὰ γὰρ τοιαῦτα τὰς λύσεις ἔχει προδήλους, ἄν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, πρὸς τὰ βελτίονα τῇ κρίσει τοὺς νέους κατευθύνωμεν. ὅσα δ’ εἴρηται μὲν ἀτόπως [e] εὐθὺς δ’ οὐ λέλυται, ταῦτα δεῖ τοῖς ἀλλαχόθι πρὸς τοὐναντίον εἰρημένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀνταναιρεῖν, μὴ ἀχθομένους τῷ ποιητῇ μηδὲ χαλεπαίνοντας ἀλλ’ ἐν ἤθει καὶ μετὰ παιδιᾶς λεγομένοις. εὐθύς, εἰ βούλει, πρὸς τὰς Ὁμηρικὰς τῶν θεῶν ῥίψεις ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων καὶ τρώσεις ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων καὶ διαφορὰς καὶ χαλεπότητας

οἶσθα καὶ ἄλλον μῦθον ἀμείνονα τοῦδε νοῆσαι

καὶ νοεῖς νὴ Δία καὶ λέγεις κρεῖττον ἀλλαχόθι καὶ βέλτιον τὰ τοιαῦτα

θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες

καὶ

τῷ ἔνι τέρπονται μάκαρες θεοὶ ἤματα πάντα

καὶ

[f] ὣς γὰρ ἐπεκλώσαντο θεοὶ δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσι,

ζώειν ἀχνυμένοις· αὐτοὶ δέ τ’ ἀκηδέες εἰσίν.

αὗται γάρ εἰσιν ὑγιαίνουσαι περὶ θεῶν δόξαι καὶ ἀληθεῖς, ἐκεῖνα δὲ πέπλασται πρὸς ἔκπληξιν ἀνθρώπων. πάλιν Εὐριπίδου λέγοντος

πολλαῖσι μορφαῖς οἱ θεοὶ σοφισμάτων

[21] [a] σφάλλουσιν ἡμᾶς κρείσσονες πεφυκότες

οὐ χεῖρόν ἐστιν ὑπενεγκεῖν τό

εἰ θεοί τι δρῶσι φαῦλον, οὔκ εἰσιν θεοί,

βέλτιον εἰρημένον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ. καὶ τοῦ Πινδάρου σφόδρα πικρῶς καὶ παροξυντικῶς εἰρηκότος

χρὴ δὲ πᾶν ἔρδοντ’ ἀμαυρῶσαι τὸν ἐχθρόν,

ἀλλ’ αὐτός γε σὺ λέγεις ὅτι

τὸ πὰρ δίκαν

γλυκὺ πικροτάτα μένει τελευτά,

καὶ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους

τὸ κέρδος ἡδύ, κἂν ἀπὸ ψευδῶν ἴῃ,

καὶ μὴν σοῦ γ’ ἀκηκόαμεν ὡς

οὐκ ἐξάγουσι καρπὸν οἱ ψευδεῖς λόγοι.

[b] πρὸς δ’ ἐκεῖνα τὰ περὶ τοῦ πλούτου

δεινὸς γὰρ ἕρπειν πλοῦτος ἔς τε τἄβατα

καὶ πρὸς βέβηλα, χὡπόθεν πένης ἀνὴρ

οὐδ’ ἐντυχὼν δύναιτ’ ἂν ὧν ἐρᾷ τυχεῖν.

καὶ γὰρ δυσειδὲς σῶμα καὶ δυσώνυμον

γλώσσῃ σοφὸν τίθησιν εὔμορφόν τ’ ἰδεῖν

ἀντιπαραθήσει πολλὰ τῶν Σοφοκλέους, ὧν καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐστὶ

γένοιτο κἂν ἄπλουτος ἐν τιμαῖς ἀνήρ

καὶ

οὐδὲν κακίων πτωχός, εἰ καλῶς φρονεῖ

καὶ

[c] ἀλλὰ τῶν πολλῶν καλῶν

τίς χάρις, εἰ κακόβουλος

φροντὶς ἐκτρέφει τὸν εὐαίωνα πλοῦτον;

ὁ δὲ Μένανδρος ἐπῆρε μὲν ἀμέλει τὴν φιληδονίαν καὶ ὑπεχαύνωσε τοῖς ἐρωτικοῖς καὶ διαπύροις ἐκείνοις

ἅπανθ’ ὅσα ζῇ καὶ τὸν ἥλιον βλέπει τὸν κοινὸν ἡμῖν, δοῦλα ταῦτ’ ἔσθ’ ἡδονῆς.

πάλιν δ’ ἐπέστρεψε καὶ περιέσπασε πρὸς τὸ καλὸν ἡμᾶς καὶ τὴν θρασύτητα τῆς ἀκολασίας ἐξέκοψεν εἰπὼν

ὄνειδος αἰσχρὸς βίος ὅμως κἂν ἡδὺς ᾖ.

[d]ταῦτα γὰρ ἐκείνοις μέν ἐστιν ὑπεναντία, βελτίω δὲ καὶ χρησιμώτερα. δυεῖν οὖν θάτερον ἡ τοιαύτη τῶν ἐναντίων ποιήσει παράθεσις καὶ κατανόησις, ἢ παράξει πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον ἢ καὶ τοῦ χείρονος ἀποστήσει τὴν πίστιν.

Ἂν δ’ αὐτοὶ μὴ διδῶσι τῶν ἀτόπως εἰρημένων λύσεις, οὐ χεῖρόν ἐστιν ἑτέρων ἐνδόξων ἀποφάσεις ἀντιτάττοντας ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ζυγοῦ ῥέπειν πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον. οἷον τοῦ Ἀλέξιδος κινοῦντος ἐνίους ὅταν λέγῃ

τὰς ἡδονὰς δεῖ συλλέγειν τὸν σώφρονα.

τρεῖς δ’ εἰσὶν αἵ γε τὴν δύναμιν κεκτημέναι

[e] τὴν ὡς ἀληθῶς συντελοῦσαν τῷ βίῳ,

τὸ φαγεῖν τὸ πιεῖν τὸ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης τυγχάνειν·

τὰ δ’ ἄλλα προσθήκας ἅπαντα χρὴ καλεῖν,

ὑπομνηστέον ὅτι Σωκράτης τοὐναντίον ἔλεγε, τοὺς μὲν φαύλους ζῆν τοῦ ἐσθίειν καὶ πίνειν ἕνεκα, τοὺς δ’ ἀγαθοὺς ἐσθίειν καὶ πίνειν ἕνεκα τοῦ ζῆν. πρὸς δὲ τὸν γράψαντα

ποτὶ τὸν πονηρὸν οὐκ ἄχρηστον ὅπλον ἁ

πονηρία,

τρόπον τινὰ συνεξομοιοῦσθαι κελεύοντα τοῖς πονηροῖς, τὸ τοῦ Διογένους παραβαλεῖν ἔστιν· ἐρωτηθεὶς [f] γὰρ ὅπως ἄν τις ἀμύναιτο τὸν ἐχθρόν, “αὐτός,” ἔφη, “καλὸς κἀγαθὸς γενόμενος.” δεῖ δὲ τῷ Διογένει καὶ πρὸς τὸν Σοφοκλέα χρήσασθαι· πολλὰς γὰρ ἀνθρώπων μυριάδας ἐμπέπληκεν ἀθυμίας περὶ τῶν μυστηρίων ταῦτα γράψας

ὡς τρισόλβιοι

κεῖνοι βροτῶν, οἳ ταῦτα δερχθέντες τέλη

μόλωσ’ ἐς Ἅιδου· τοῖσδε γὰρ μόνοις ἐκεῖ

ζῆν ἔστι, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοισι πάντ’ ἐκεῖ κακά.

Διογένης δ’ ἀκούσας τι τοιοῦτο “τί λέγεις;” ἔφη· “κρείττονα μοῖραν ἕξει Παταικίων ὁ κλέπτης ἀποθανὼν ἢ Ἐπαμεινώνδας ὅτι μεμύηται;”

[22] [a] Τιμοθέῳ μὲν γὰρ ᾄδοντι τὴν Ἄρτεμιν ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ

μαινάδα θυιάδα φοιβάδα λυσσάδα

Κινησίας εὐθὺς ἀντεφώνησε “τοιαύτη σοι θυγάτηρ γένοιτο.” χαρίεν δὲ καὶ τὸ τοῦ Βίωνος πρὸς τὸν Θέογνιν λέγοντα

πᾶς γὰρ ἀνὴρ πενίῃ δεδμημένος οὔτε τι εἰπεῖν

οὔτ’ ἔρξαι δύναται, γλῶσσα δέ οἱ δέδεται

“πῶς οὖν σὺ πένης ὢν φλυαρεῖς τοσαῦτα καὶ καταδολεσχεῖς ἡμῶν;”

[b] Δεῖ δὲ μηδὲ τὰς ἐκ τῶν παρακειμένων ἢ συμφραζομένων παραλιπεῖν ἀφορμὰς πρὸς τὴν ἐπανόρθωσιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ ἰατροὶ τῆς κανθαρίδος οὔσης θανασίμου τοὺς πόδας ὅμως καὶ τὰ πτερὰ βοηθεῖν οἴονται καὶ ἀναλύειν τὴν δύναμιν, οὕτως ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασι, κἂν ὄνομα κἂν ῥῆμα παρακείμενον ἀμβλυτέραν ποιῇ τὴν πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον ἀπαγωγήν, ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ προσδιασαφεῖν, ὡς ἐπὶ τούτων ἔνιοι ποιοῦσι

τοῦτό νύ που γέρας ἐστὶν ὀιζυροῖσι βροτοῖσι,

κείρασθαί τε κόμην βαλέειν τ’ ἀπὸ δάκρυ παρειῶν

καὶ

ὣς γὰρ ἐπεκλώσαντο θεοὶ δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσι,

ζώειν ἀχνυμένοις.

[c] οὐ γὰρ ἁπλῶς εἶπε καὶ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ὑπὸ θεῶν ἐπικεκλῶσθαι λυπηρὸν βίον, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἄφροσι καὶ ἀνοήτοις, οὓς δειλαίους καὶ οἰκτροὺς διὰ μοχθηρίαν ὄντας εἴωθε “δειλοὺς” καὶ “ὀιζυροὺς” προσαγορεύειν.

Ἄλλος τοίνυν τρόπος ἐστὶ τὰς ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασιν ὑποψίας πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον ἐκ τοῦ χείρονος μεθιστὰς ὁ διὰ τῶν ὀνομάτων τῆς συνηθείας, περὶ ὃν δεῖ τὸν νέον γεγυμνάσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ περὶ τὰς λεγομένας γλώττας. ἐκεῖνο μὲν γὰρ φιλόλογον καὶ οὐκ ἀηδὲς ὅτι “ῥιγεδανὸς” κακοθάνατός ἐστιν εἰδέναι (“δάνον” γὰρ Μακεδόνες τὸν θάνατον καλοῦσι), “καμμονίαν” δὲ νίκην Αἰολεῖς τὴν ἐξ [d] ἐπιμονῆς καὶ καρτερίας, Δρύοπες δὲ “πόπους” τοὺς δαίμονας. τουτὶ δ’ ἀναγκαῖον καὶ χρήσιμον, εἰ μέλλομεν ἐκ τῶν ποιημάτων ὠφεληθήσεσθαι καὶ μὴ βλαβήσεσθαι, τὸ γιγνώσκειν πῶς τοῖς τῶν θεῶν ὀνόμασιν οἱ ποιηταὶ χρῶνται καὶ πάλιν τοῖς τῶν κακῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν, καὶ τί τὴν Τύχην τί τὴν Μοῖραν νοοῦντες ὀνομάζουσι, καὶ πότερον ταῦτα τῶν ἁπλῶς ἢ τῶν πολλαχῶς λεγομένων ἐστὶ παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ὥσπερ ἄλλα πολλά. καὶ γὰρ “οἶκον” ποτὲ μὲν τὴν οἰκίαν καλοῦσιν

οἶκον ἐς ὑψόροφον

[e] ποτὲ δὲ τὴν οὐσίαν

ἐσθίεταί μοι οἶκος,

καὶ “βίοτον” ποτὲ μὲν τὸ ζῆν

ἀμενήνωσεν δέ οἱ αἰχμὴν

κυανοχαῖτα Ποσειδάων, βιότοιο μεγήρας

ποτὲ δὲ τὰ χρήματα

βίοτον δέ μοι ἄλλοι ἔδουσι,

καὶ τῷ “ἀλύειν” ποτὲ μὲν ἀντὶ τοῦ δάκνεσθαι καὶ ἀπορεῖσθαι κέχρηται

ὣς ἔφαθ’, ἡ δ’ ἀλύουσ’ ἀπεβήσετο, τείρετο δ’ αἰνῶς

ποτὲ δ’ ἀντὶ τοῦ γαυριᾶν καὶ χαίρειν

ἦ ἀλύεις ὅτι Ἶρον ἐνίκησας τὸν ἀλήτην;

καὶ τῷ “θοάζειν” ἢ τὸ κινεῖσθαι σημαίνουσιν, ὡς Εὐριπίδης

κῆτος θοάζον ἐξ Ἀτλαντικῆς ἁλός,

ἢ τὸ καθέζεσθαι καὶ θάσσειν, ὡς Σοφοκλῆς

[f] τίνας πόθ’ ἕδρας τάσδε μοι θοάζετε

ἱκτηρίοις κλάδοισιν ἐξεστεμμένοι;

χάριεν δὲ καὶ τὸ τὴν χρείαν τῶν ὀνομάτων συνοικειοῦν τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις πράγμασιν, ὡς οἱ γραμματικοὶ διδάσκουσιν, ἄλλοτε πρὸς ἄλλην δύναμιν λαμβάνοντες, οἷόν ἐστι

νῆ’ ὀλίγην αἰνεῖν, μεγάλῃ δ’ ἐνὶ φορτία θέσθαι.

τῷ μὲν γὰρ “αἰνεῖν” σημαίνεται τὸ ἐπαινεῖν, αὐτῷ δὲ τῷ ἐπαινεῖν ἀντὶ τοῦ παραιτεῖσθαι νῦν κέχρηται, καθάπερ ἐν τῇ συνηθείᾳ “καλῶς” φαμὲν “ἔχειν”

[23] [a] καὶ “χαίρειν” κελεύομεν, ὅταν μὴ δεώμεθα μηδὲ λαμβάνωμεν. οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὴν “ἐπαινὴν Περσεφόνειαν” ἔνιοί φασιν ὡς παραιτητὴν εἰρῆσθαι.

Ταύτην δὴ τὴν διαίρεσιν καὶ διάκρισιν τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐν τοῖς μείζοσι καὶ σπουδαιοτέροις παραφυλάττοντες ἀπὸ τῶν θεῶν ἀρχώμεθα διδάσκειν τοὺς νέους ὅτι χρῶνται τοῖς τῶν θεῶν ὀνόμασιν οἱ ποιηταὶ ποτὲ μὲν αὐτῶν ἐκείνων ἐφαπτόμενοι τῇ ἐννοίᾳ, ποτὲ δὲ δυνάμεις τινὰς ὧν οἱ θεοὶ δοτῆρές εἰσι καὶ καθηγεμόνες ὁμωνύμως προσαγορεύοντες. οἷον εὐθὺς ὁ Ἀρχίλοχος, ὅταν μὲν εὐχόμενος λέγῃ

[b] κλῦθ’ ἄναξ Ἥφαιστε καί μοι σύμμαχος γου νουμένῳ

ἵλαος γενοῦ, χαρίζευ δ’ οἷάπερ χαρίζεαι,

αὐτὸν τὸν θεὸν ἐπικαλούμενος δῆλός ἐστιν· ὅταν δὲ τὸν ἄνδρα τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἠφανισμένον ἐν θαλάττῃ καὶ μὴ τυχόντα νομίμου ταφῆς θρηνῶν λέγῃ μετριώτερον ἂν τὴν συμφορὰν ἐνεγκεῖν

εἰ κείνου κεφαλὴν καὶ χαρίεντα μέλεα

Ἥφαιστος καθαροῖσιν ἐν εἵμασιν ἀμφεπονήθη,

τὸ πῦρ οὕτως, οὐ τὸν θεὸν προσηγόρευσε. πάλιν δ’ ὁ μὲν Εὐριπίδης εἰπὼν ἐν ὅρκῳ

μὰ τὸν μετ’ ἄστρων Ζῆν’ Ἄρη τε φοίνιον

αὐτοὺς τοὺς θεοὺς ὠνόμασε· τοῦ δὲ Σοφοκλέους λέγοντος

[c] τυφλὸς γάρ, ὦ γυναῖκες, οὐδ’ ὁρῶν Ἄρης

συὸς προσώπῳ πάντα τυρβάζει κακὰ

τὸν πόλεμον ἔστιν ὑπακοῦσαι, καθάπερ αὖ τὸν χαλκὸν Ὁμήρου λέγοντος

τῶν νῦν αἷμα κελαινὸν ἐύρροον ἀμφὶ Σκάμανδρον

ἐσκέδασ’ ὀξὺς Ἄρης.

πολλῶν οὖν οὕτω λεγομένων εἰδέναι δεῖ καὶ μνημονεύειν ὅτι καὶ τῷ τοῦ Διὸς καὶ Ζηνὸς ὀνόματι [d] ποτὲ μὲν τὸν θεὸν ποτὲ δὲ τὴν τύχην πολλάκις δὲ τὴν εἱμαρμένην προσαγορεύουσιν. ὅταν μὲν γὰρ λέγωσι

Ζεῦ πάτερ, Ἴδηθεν μεδέων, κύδιστε μέγιστε,

δὸς νίκην Αἴαντι

καὶ

ὦ Ζεῦ, τίς εἶναί φησι σοῦ σοφώτερος;

τὸν θεὸν αὐτὸν λέγουσιν· ὅταν δὲ ταῖς αἰτίαις πάντων τῶν γιγνομένων ἐπονομάζωσι τὸν Δία καὶ λέγωσι

πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν

ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσι

οἰωνοῖσί τε δαῖτα, Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή,

τὴν εἱμαρμένην. οὐ γὰρ τὸν θεὸν ὁ ποιητὴς οἴεται κακὰ μηχανᾶσθαι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ἀλλὰ τὴν [e] τῶν πραγμάτων ἀνάγκην ὀρθῶς ὑποδείκνυσιν, ὅτι καὶ πόλεσι καὶ στρατοπέδοις καὶ ἡγεμόσιν, ἂν μὲν σωφρονῶσιν, εὖ πράττειν πέπρωται καὶ κρατεῖν τῶν πολεμίων, ἂν δ’ εἰς πάθη καὶ ἁμαρτίας ἐμπεσόντες ὥσπερ οὗτοι διαφέρωνται πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ στασιάζωσιν, ἀσχημονεῖν καὶ ταράττεσθαι καὶ κακῶς ἀπαλλάττειν, κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα·

εἱμαρμένον γὰρ τῶν κακῶν βουλευμάτων

κακὰς ἀμοιβάς ἐστι καρποῦσθαι βροτοῖς.

καὶ μὴν ὁ Ἡσίοδος τὸν Προμηθέα ποιῶν τῷ Ἐπιμηθεῖ παρακελευόμενον

μή ποτε δῶρα

δέξασθαι πὰρ Ζηνὸς Ὀλυμπίου ἀλλ’ ἀποπέμπειν,

[f] ἐπὶ τῇ τῆς τύχης δυνάμει τῷ τοῦ Διὸς ὀνόματι κέχρηται· τὰ γὰρ τυχηρὰ τῶν ἀγαθῶν Διὸς δῶρα κέκληκε, πλούτους καὶ γάμους καὶ ἀρχὰς καὶ πάνθ’ ὅλως τὰ ἐκτός, ὧν ἡ κτῆσις ἀνόνητός ἐστι τοῖς χρῆσθαι καλῶς μὴ δυναμένοις. διὸ καὶ τὸν Ἐπιμηθέα φαῦλον ὄντα καὶ ἀνόητον οἴεται δεῖν φυλάττεσθαι καὶ δεδιέναι τὰς εὐτυχίας, ὡς βλαβησόμενον καὶ διαφθαρησόμενον ὑπ’ αὐτῶν. καὶ πάλιν ὅταν λέγῃ

μηδέ ποτ’ οὐλομένην πενίην θυμοφθόρον ἀνδρὶ

τέτλαθ’ ὀνειδίζειν, μακάρων δόσιν αἰὲν ἐόντων,

θεόσδοτον νῦν τὸ τυχηρὸν εἴρηκεν, ὡς οὐκ ἄξιον ἐγκαλεῖν τοῖς διὰ τὴν τύχην πενομένοις, ἀλλὰ τὴν [24] [a] μετ’ ἀργίας καὶ μαλακίας καὶ πολυτελείας ἀπορίαν κακίζειν αἰσχρὰν καὶ ἐπονείδιστον οὖσαν. οὔπω γὰρ αὐτὸ τοὔνομα τῆς τύχης λέγοντες, εἰδότες δὲ τὴν τῆς ἀτάκτως καὶ ἀορίστως περιφερομένης αἰτίας δύναμιν ἰσχυρὰν καὶ ἀφύλακτον οὖσαν ἀνθρωπίνῳ λογισμῷ τοῖς τῶν θεῶν ὀνόμασιν ἐξέφραζον, ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς καὶ πράγματα καὶ ἤθη καὶ νὴ Δία καὶ λόγους καὶ ἄνδρας εἰώθαμεν δαιμονίους καὶ θείους προσαγορεύειν. οὕτω δὴ τὰ πολλὰ τῶν ἀτόπως περὶ τοῦ Διὸς λέγεσθαι δοκούντων ἐπανορθωτέον, ὧν ἐστι καὶ ταῦτα

δοιοὶ γάρ τε πίθοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὔδει

[b] κηρῶν ἔμπλειοι, ὁ μὲν ἐσθλῶν, αὐτὰρ ὁ δειλῶν

καὶ

ὅρκια μὲν Κρονίδης ὑψίζυγος οὐκ ἐτέλεσσεν,

ἀλλὰ κακὰ φρονέων τεκμαίρεται ἀμφοτέροισι

καὶ

τότε γάρ ῥα κυλίνδετο πήματος ἀρχὴ

Τρωσί τε καὶ Δαναοῖσι Διὸς μεγάλου διὰ βουλάς,

ὡς περὶ τῆς τύχης ἢ τῆς εἱμαρμένης λεγομένων, ἐν αἷς τὸ ἀσυλλόγιστον ἡμῖν τῆς αἰτίας σημαίνεται καὶ ὅλως οὐ καθ’ ἡμᾶς. ὅπου δὲ τὸ προσῆκον καὶ κατὰ λόγον καὶ εἰκός ἐστιν, ἐνταῦθα κυρίως ὀνομάζεσθαι τὸν θεὸν νομίζωμεν, ὥσπερ ἐν τούτοις

[c] αὐτὰρ ὁ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπεπωλεῖτο στίχας ἀνδρῶν,

Αἴαντος δ’ ἀλέεινε μάχην Τελαμωνιάδαο·

Ζεὺς γάρ οἱ νεμέσα ὅτ’ ἀμείνονι φωτὶ μάχοιτο

καὶ

Ζεὺς γὰρ τὰ μὲν μέγιστα φροντίζει βροτῶν,

τὰ μικρὰ δ’ ἄλλοις δαίμοσιν παρεὶς ἐᾷ.

Σφόδρα δὲ δεῖ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὀνόμασι προσέχειν, κατὰ πολλὰ πράγματα κινουμένοις καὶ μεθισταμένοις ὑπὸ τῶν ποιητῶν. οἷόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ τῆς ἀρετῆς. ἐπεὶ γὰρ οὐ μόνον ἔμφρονας παρέχεται καὶ [d] δικαίους καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἐν πράξεσι καὶ λόγοις, ἀλλὰ καὶ δόξας ἐπιεικῶς καὶ δυνάμεις περιποιεῖται, παρὰ τοῦτο ποιοῦνται καὶ τὴν εὐδοξίαν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν δύναμιν, ὀνομάζοντες ὥσπερ “ἐλαίαν” τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐλαίας, καὶ “φηγὸν” τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς φηγοῦ καρπὸν ὁμωνύμως τοῖς φέρουσιν. οὐκοῦν ὁ νέος ἡμῖν, ὅταν μὲν λέγωσι

τῆς δ’ ἀρετῆς ἱδρῶτα θεοὶ προπάροιθεν ἔθηκαν

καὶ

τῆμος σφῇ ἀρετῇ Δαναοὶ ῥήξαντο φάλαγγας

καὶ

εἰ δὲ θανεῖν θέμις, ὧδε θανεῖν καλόν,

εἰς ἀρετὴν καταλυσαμένους βίον,

[e] εὐθὺς οἰέσθω λέγεσθαι ταῦτα περὶ τῆς ἀρίστης καὶ θειοτάτης ἕξεως ἐν ἡμῖν, ἣν ὀρθότητα λόγου καὶ ἀκρότητα λογικῆς φύσεως καὶ διάθεσιν ὁμολογουμένην ψυχῆς νοοῦμεν. ὅταν δ’ ἀναγιγνώσκῃ πάλιν τό τε

Ζεὺς δ’ ἀρετὴν ἄνδρεσσιν ὀφέλλει τε μινύθει τε

καὶ τὸ

πλούτῳ δ’ ἀρετὴ καὶ κῦδος ὀπηδεῖ,

μὴ “καθήσθω” τοὺς πλουσίους ἐκπεπληγμένος καὶ “τεθηπὼς” καθάπερ ὤνιον εὐθὺς ἀργυρίου τὴν ἀρετὴν ἔχοντας, μηδ’ ἐπὶ τῇ τύχῃ κεῖσθαι τὴν αὑτοῦ φρόνησιν αὔξειν ἢ κολούειν νομίζων, ἀλλ’ ἀντὶ δόξης ἢ δυνάμεως ἢ εὐτυχίας ἤ τινος ὁμοίου [f] τῇ ἀρετῇ κεχρῆσθαι τὸν ποιητὴν ἡγείσθω. καὶ γὰρ τῇ κακότητι ποτὲ μὲν ἰδίως σημαίνουσι κακίαν καὶ μοχθηρίαν ψυχῆς, ὡς Ἡσίοδος

τὴν μὲν γὰρ κακότητα καὶ ἰλαδὸν ἔστιν ἑλέσθαι,

ποτὲ δ’ ἄλλην τινὰ κάκωσιν ἢ δυστυχίαν, ὡς Ὅμηρος

αἶψα γὰρ ἐν κακότητι βροτοὶ καταγηράσκουσιν.

ἐπεὶ καὶ τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν ἐξαπατηθείη τις ἂν οὕτω τοὺς ποιητὰς οἰόμενος λέγειν, ὡς οἱ φιλόσοφοι λέγουσι τὴν παντελῆ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἕξιν ἢ κτῆσιν ἢ [25] [a] καὶ τελειότητα βίου κατὰ φύσιν εὐροοῦντος, ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ καταχρωμένους πολλάκις τὸν πλούσιον εὐδαίμονα καλεῖν ἢ μακάριον καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἢ τὴν δόξαν εὐδαιμονίαν. Ὅμηρος μὲν γὰρ ὀρθῶς κέχρηται τοῖς ὀνόμασιν

ὣς οὔ τοι χαίρων τοῖσδε κτεάτεσσιν ἀνάσσω

καὶ Μένανδρος

ἔχω δὲ πολλὴν οὐσίαν καὶ πλούσιος

καλοῦμ’ ὑπὸ πάντων, μακάριος δ’ ὑπ’ οὐδενός,

Εὐριπίδης δὲ πολλὴν ἐργάζεται ταραχὴν καὶ σύγχυσιν ὅταν λέγῃ

[b] μή μοι γένοιτο λυπρὸς εὐδαίμων βίος

καὶ

τί τὴν τυραννίδ’, ἀδικίαν εὐδαίμονα,

τιμᾷς;

ἂν μή τις, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, ταῖς μεταφοραῖς καὶ καταχρήσεσι τῶν ὀνομάτων ἕπηται. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἱκανὰ περὶ τούτων.

Ἐκεῖνο δ’ οὐχ ἅπαξ ἀλλὰ πολλάκις ὑπομνηστέον ἐστὶ τοὺς νέους, ἐνδεικνυμένους αὐτοῖς ὅτι μιμητικὴν ἡ ποίησις ὑπόθεσιν ἔχουσα κόσμῳ μὲν καὶ λαμπρότητι χρῆται περὶ τὰς ὑποκειμένας πράξεις καὶ τὰ ἤθη, τὴν δ’ ὁμοιότητα τοῦ ἀληθοῦς [c] οὐ προλείπει, τῆς μιμήσεως ἐν τῷ πιθανῷ τὸ ἀγωγὸν ἐχούσης. διὸ καὶ κακίας καὶ ἀρετῆς σημεῖα μεμιγμένα ταῖς πράξεσιν ἡ μὴ παντάπασι τῆς ἀληθείας ὀλιγωροῦσα συνεκφέρει μίμησις, ὥσπερ ἡ Ὁμήρου πολλὰ πάνυ τοῖς Στωϊκοῖς χαίρειν φράζουσα, μήτε τι φαῦλον ἀρετῇ προσεῖναι μήτε κακίᾳ χρηστὸν ἀξιοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ πάντως μὲν ἐν πᾶσιν ἁμαρτωλὸν εἶναι τὸν ἀμαθῆ, περὶ πάντα δ’ αὖ κατορθοῦν τὸν ἀστεῖον. ταῦτα γὰρ ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς ἀκούομεν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς πράγμασι καὶ τῷ βίῳ τῶν πολλῶν κατὰ τὸν Εὐριπίδην

οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο χωρὶς ἐσθλὰ καὶ κακά,

[d] ἀλλ’ ἔστι τις σύγκρασις.

ἄνευ δὲ τοῦ ἀληθοῦς μάλιστα μὲν ἡ ποιητικὴ τῷ ποικίλῳ χρῆται καὶ πολυτρόπῳ. τὸ γὰρ ἐμπαθὲς καὶ παράλογον καὶ ἀπροσδόκητον, ᾧ πλείστη μὲν ἔκπληξις ἕπεται πλείστη δὲ χάρις, αἱ μεταβολαὶ παρέχουσι τοῖς μύθοις· τὸ δ’ ἁπλοῦν ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἄμουσον. ὅθεν οὔτε νικῶντας ἀεὶ πάντα ποιοῦσι τοὺς αὐτοὺς οὔτ’ εὐημεροῦντας οὔτε κατορθοῦντας. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τοῖς θεοῖς, ὅταν εἰς ἀνθρωπίνας ἐμπέσωσι πράξεις, ἀπαθέσι χρῶνται καὶ ἀναμαρτήτοις, ἵνα μηδαμοῦ τό τε ταράττον καὶ τὸ ἐκπλῆττον ἀργῇ τῆς ποιήσεως ἀκίνδυνον καὶ ἀναγώνιστον γιγνόμενον.

Οὕτως οὖν τούτων ἐχόντων ἐπάγωμεν τοῖς [e] ποιήμασι τὸν νέον μὴ τοιαύτας ἔχοντα δόξας περὶ τῶν καλῶν ἐκείνων καὶ μεγάλων ὀνομάτων, ὡς ἄρα σοφοὶ καὶ δίκαιοι οἱ ἄνδρες ἦσαν, ἄκροι τε βασιλεῖς καὶ κανόνες ἀρετῆς ἁπάσης καὶ ὀρθότητος. ἐπεὶ βλαβήσεται μεγάλα δοκιμάζων πάντα καὶ τεθηπώς, μὴ δυσχεραίνων δὲ μηδὲν μηδ’ ἀκούων μηδ’ ἀποδεχόμενος τοῦ ψέγοντος αὖ τοὺς τοιαῦτα πράττοντας καὶ λέγοντας

αἲ γάρ, Ζεῦ τε πάτερ καὶ Ἀθηναίη καὶ Ἄπολλον,

μήτε τις οὖν Τρώων θάνατον φύγοι, ὅσσοι ἔασι,

μήτε τις Ἀργείων, νῶιν δ’ ἐκδῦμεν ὄλεθρον,

[f] ὄφρ’ οἶοι Τροίης ἱερὰ κρήδεμνα λύοιμεν

καὶ

οἰκτροτάτην δ’ ἤκουσα ὄπα Πριάμοιο θυγατρὸς

Κασσάνδρης, τὴν κτεῖνε Κλυταιμνήστρη δολόμητις

ἀμφ’ ἐμοὶ

καὶ

παλλακίδι προμιγῆναι, ἵν’ ἐχθήρειε γέροντα.

τῇ πιθόμην καὶ ἔρεξα

καὶ

Ζεῦ πάτερ, οὔ τις σεῖο θεῶν ὀλοώτερος ἄλλος.

μηδὲν οὖν ἐπαινεῖν ἐθιζέσθω τοιοῦτον ὁ νέος, μηδὲ [26] [a] προφάσεις λέγων μηδὲ παραγωγάς τινας εὐπρεπεῖς ἐπὶ πράγμασι φαύλοις μηχανώμενος πιθανὸς ἔστω καὶ πανοῦργος, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο μᾶλλον οἰέσθω, μίμησιν εἶναι τὴν ποίησιν ἠθῶν καὶ βίων, καὶ ἀνθρώπων οὐ τελείων οὐδὲ καθαρῶν οὐδ’ ἀνεπιλήπτων παντάπασιν, ἀλλὰ μεμιγμένων πάθεσι καὶ δόξαις ψευδέσι καὶ ἀγνοίαις, διὰ δ’ εὐφυΐαν αὑτοὺς πολλάκις μετατιθέντων πρὸς τὸ κρεῖττον. ἡ γὰρ τοιαύτη παρασκευὴ τοῦ νέου καὶ διάνοια, τοῖς μὲν εὖ λεγομένοις καὶ πραττομένοις ἐπαιρομένου καὶ συνενθουσιῶντος, [b] τὰ δὲ φαῦλα μὴ προσιεμένου καὶ δυσχεραίνοντος, ἀβλαβῆ παρέξει τὴν ἀκρόασιν. ὁ δὲ πάντα θαυμάζων καὶ πᾶσιν ἐξοικειούμενος καὶ καταδεδουλωμένος τῇ δόξῃ τὴν κρίσιν ὑπὸ τῶν ἡρωϊκῶν ὀνομάτων, ὥσπερ οἱ τὴν Πλάτωνος ἀπομιμούμενοι κυρτότητα καὶ τὴν Ἀριστοτέλους τραυλότητα, λήσεται πρὸς πολλὰ τῶν φαύλων εὐχερὴς γενόμενος. δεῖ δὲ μὴ δειλῶς μηδ’ ὥσπερ ὑπὸ δεισιδαιμονίας ἐν ἱερῷ φρίττειν ἅπαντα καὶ προσκυνεῖν, ἀλλὰ θαρραλέως ἐθιζόμενον ἐπιφωνεῖν μηδὲν ἧττον τοῦ “ὀρθῶς” καὶ “πρεπόντως” τὸ “οὐκ ὀρθῶς” καὶ “οὐ προσηκόντως.” οἷον ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἐκκλησίαν συνάγει τῶν στρατιωτῶν νοσούντων, ἀσχάλλων [c] μὲν ἀργοῦντι τῷ πολέμῳ μάλιστα πάντων διὰ τὴν ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις ἐπιφάνειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ δόξαν, ἰατρικὸς δ’ ὢν καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐνάτην ᾗ ταῦτα κρίνεσθαι πέφυκεν αἰσθόμενος οὐκ οὖσαν συνήθη τὴν νόσον οὐδὲ συνεστῶσαν ἀπὸ κοινῶν αἰτιῶν, ἀναστὰς οὐ δημαγωγεῖ πρὸς τὸν ὄχλον, ἀλλὰ τῷ βασιλεῖ γίγνεται σύμβουλος

Ἀτρείδη, νῦν ἄμμε πάλιν πλαγχθέντας ὀίω

ἂψ ἀπονοστήσειν,

[d] ὀρθῶς ταῦτα καὶ μετρίως καὶ πρεπόντως. τοῦ δὲ μάντεως δεδιέναι φήσαντος τὴν ὀργὴν τοῦ δυνατωτάτου τῶν Ἑλλήνων, οὐκέτ’ ὀρθῶς οὐδὲ μετρίως, ἐπομόσας μηδένα προσοίσειν χεῖρας αὐτῷ ζῶντος αὐτοῦ, προστίθησιν

οὐδ’ ἢν Ἀγαμέμνονα εἴπῃς,

ἐνδεικνύμενος ὀλιγωρίαν καὶ περιφρόνησιν τοῦ ἄρχοντος. ἐκ δὲ τούτου μᾶλλον παροξυνθεὶς ἐπὶ τὸ ξίφος φέρεται σφάττειν διανοούμενος, οὔτε πρὸς τὸ καλὸν ὀρθῶς οὔτε πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον. εἶτ’ αὖθις μετανοήσας

ἂψ ἐς κουλεὸν ὦσε μέγα ξίφος, οὐδ’ ἀπίθησε

[e] μύθῳ Ἀθηναίης,

ὀρθῶς πάλιν καὶ καλῶς, ὅτι τὸν θυμὸν ἐκκόψαι παντάπασι μὴ δυνηθείς, ὅμως πρὶν ἀνήκεστόν τι δρᾶσαι μετέστησε καὶ κατέσχεν εὐπειθῆ τῷ λογισμῷ γενόμενον. πάλιν ὁ Ἀγαμέμνων ἐν μὲν τοῖς περὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν γιγνομένοις καὶ λεγομένοις ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καταγέλαστός ἐστιν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς περὶ Χρυσηίδα σεμνότερος καὶ βασιλικώτερος. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἀγομένης τῆς Βρισηίδος

δακρύσας ἑτάρων ἄφαρ ἕζετο νόσφι λιασθείς,

οὗτος δ’ αὐτὸς εἰς τὴν ναῦν ἐμβιβάζων καὶ παραδιδοὺς [f] καὶ ἀποπέμπων τὴν ἄνθρωπον ἣν ὀλίγῳ πρόσθεν εἴρηκε τῆς γαμετῆς τῇ εὐνοίᾳ προκρίνειν, οὐδὲν ἐρωτικὸν οὐδ’ αἰσχρὸν ἐποίησε. καὶ μὴν ὁ Φοῖνιξ διὰ τὴν παλλακίδα κατάρατος ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς γενόμενος

“τὸν μὲν ἐγώ,” φησί, “βούλευσα κατακτάμεν

ὀξέι χαλκῷ·

ἀλλά τις ἀθανάτων παῦσεν χόλον, ὅς ῥ’ ἐνὶ θυμῷ

δήμου θῆκε φάτιν καὶ ὀνείδεα πόλλ’ ἀνθρώπων,

ὡς μὴ πατροφόνος μετ’ Ἀχαιοῖσιν καλεοίμην.”

ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀρίσταρχος ἐξεῖλε ταῦτα τὰ ἔπη φοβηθείς· ἔχει δὲ πρὸς τὸν καιρὸν ὀρθῶς, τοῦ Φοίνικος τὸν Ἀχιλλέα διδάσκοντος οἷόν ἐστιν ὀργὴ καὶ ὅσα [27] [a] διὰ θυμὸν ἄνθρωποι τολμῶσι, μὴ χρώμενοι λογισμῷ μηδὲ πειθόμενοι τοῖς παρηγοροῦσι. καὶ γὰρ τὸν Μελέαγρον ἐπεισάγει τοῖς πολίταις ὀργιζόμενον, εἶτα πραϋνόμενον, ὀρθῶς τὰ πάθη ψέγων, τὸ δὲ μὴ συνακολουθεῖν ἀλλ’ ἀντιτάττεσθαι καὶ κρατεῖν καὶ μετανοεῖν ἐπαινῶν ὡς καλὸν καὶ συμφέρον.

Ἐνταῦθα μὲν οὖν ἡ διαφορὰ πρόδηλος· ὅπου δ’ ἀσαφῆ τὰ τῆς γνώμης, διοριστέον οὕτω πως ἐφιστάντας τὸν νέον. εἰ μὲν ἡ Ναυσικάα ξένον ἄνδρα τὸν Ὀδυσσέα θεασαμένη καὶ παθοῦσα τὸ τῆς Καλυψοῦς πάθος πρὸς αὐτόν, ἅτε δὴ τρυφῶσα καὶ γάμων ὥραν ἔχουσα, τοιαῦτα μωραίνει πρὸς [b] τὰς θεραπαινίδας

αἲ γὰρ ἐμεῦ τοιόσδε πόσις κεκλημένος εἴη

ἐνθάδε ναιετάων, καί οἱ ἅδοι αὐτόθι μίμνειν,

ψεκτέον τὸ θράσος αὐτῆς καὶ τὴν ἀκολασίαν· εἰ δὲ τοῖς λόγοις τοῦ ἀνδρὸς τὸ ἦθος ἐνιδοῦσα καὶ θαυμάσασα τὴν ἔντευξιν αὐτοῦ πολὺν νοῦν ἔχουσαν εὔχεται τοιούτῳ συνοικεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ πλωτικῷ τινι καὶ ὀρχηστικῷ τῶν πολιτῶν, ἄξιον ἄγασθαι. πάλιν τῆς Πηνελόπης τοῖς μνηστῆρσι προσδιαλεγομένης οὐκ ἀπανθρώπως, ἐκείνων δ’ αὐτῇ χαριζομένων ἱμάτια καὶ κόσμον ἄλλον, ἡδόμενος Ὀδυσσεὺς

[c] οὕνεκα τῶν μὲν δῶρα παρέλκετο, θέλγε δὲ θυμόν,

εἰ μὲν ἐπὶ τῇ δωροδοκίᾳ καὶ πλεονεξίᾳ χαίρει, τὸν κωμῳδούμενον ὑπερβάλλει μαστροπείᾳ Πολίαγρον

εὐδαίμων Πολίαγρος

οὐράνιον αἶγα πλουτοφόρον τρέφων·

εἰ δὲ μᾶλλον οἰόμενος ὑποχειρίους ἕξειν διὰ τὴν ἐλπίδα θαρροῦντας καὶ τὸ μέλλον οὐ προσδοκῶντας, λόγον ἔχει τὸ ἡδόμενον αὐτοῦ καὶ θαρροῦν. ὁμοίως ἐπὶ τῇ διαριθμήσει τῶν χρημάτων, ἃ συνεξέθηκαν οἱ Φαίακες αὐτῷ καὶ ἀπέπλευσαν, εἰ μὲν ἀληθῶς ἐν ἐρημίᾳ τοσαύτῃ καὶ τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν [d] ἀσαφείᾳ καὶ ἀδηλότητι γεγονὼς περὶ τῶν χρημάτων φοβεῖται

μή τί οἱ οἴχωνται κοίλης ἐπὶ νηὸς ἔχοντες,

οἰκτίρειν ἄξιον ἢ βδελύττεσθαι νὴ Δία τὴν φιλοπλουτίαν· εἰ δ’, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι λέγουσι, περὶ τῆς Ἰθάκης ἀμφιδοξῶν οἴεται τὴν τῶν χρημάτων σωτηρίαν ἀπόδειξιν εἶναι τῆς τῶν Φαιάκων ὁσιότητος (οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἀκερδῶς φέροντας αὐτὸν εἰς ἀλλοτρίαν ἐκβαλεῖν χώραν καὶ καταλιπεῖν, ἀποσχομένους τῶν χρημάτων), οὔτε φαύλῳ τεκμηρίῳ χρῆται καὶ τὴν πρόνοιαν [e] ἄξιον ἐπαινεῖν. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τὴν ἔκθεσιν αὐτὴν εἰ μὲν ἀληθῶς ἐγένετο καθεύδοντος ψέγουσι, καὶ Τυρρηνοὺς ἱστορίαν τινά φασι διαφυλάττειν ὡς ὑπνώδους φύσει τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως γενομένου καὶ δυσεντεύκτου διὰ τοῦτο τοῖς πολλοῖς ὄντος. εἰ δ’ οὐκ ἦν ἀληθὴς ὁ ὕπνος, ἀλλ’ αἰδούμενος μὲν ἀποπέμψαι τοὺς Φαίακας ἄνευ ξενίων καὶ φιλοφροσύνης, μὴ δυνάμενος δὲ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς λαθεῖν ἐκείνων συμπαρόντων ἐχρήσατο τῆς ἀπορίας παρακαλύμματι, κοιμωμένῳ ποιήσας ὅμοιον ἑαυτόν, ἀποδέχονται.

Καὶ ταῦτα δὴ τοῖς νέοις ὑποδεικνύοντες οὐκ ἐάσομεν φορὰν πρὸς τὰ φαῦλα γίγνεσθαι τῶν ἠθῶν ἀλλὰ τῶν βελτιόνων ζῆλον καὶ προαίρεσιν, [f] εὐθὺς τοῖς μὲν τὸ ψέγειν τοῖς δὲ τὸ ἐπαινεῖν ἀποδιδόντες. μάλιστα δὲ τοῦτο ποιεῖν δεῖ ἐν ταῖς τραγῳδίαις ὅσαι λόγους ἔχουσι πιθανοὺς καὶ πανούργους ἐν πράξεσιν ἀδόξοις καὶ πονηραῖς. οὐ πάνυ γὰρ ἀληθὲς τὸ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους λέγοντος

οὐκ ἔστ’ ἀπ’ ἔργων μὴ καλῶν ἔπη καλά·

καὶ γὰρ οὗτος εἴωθεν ἤθεσι φαύλοις καὶ ἀτόποις πράγμασι λόγους ἐπιγελῶντας καὶ φιλανθρώπους αἰτίας πορίζειν. καὶ ὁ σύσκηνος αὐτοῦ πάλιν ὁρᾷς [28] [a] ὅτι τήν τε Φαίδραν καὶ προσεγκαλοῦσαν τῷ Θησεῖ πεποίηκεν ὡς διὰ τὰς ἐκείνου παρανομίας ἐρασθεῖσαν τοῦ Ἱππολύτου. τοιαύτην δὲ καὶ τῇ Ἑλένῃ παρρησίαν κατὰ τῆς Ἑκάβης ἐν ταῖς Τρῳάσι δίδωσιν, οἰομένῃ δεῖν ἐκείνην κολάζεσθαι μᾶλλον ὅτι μοιχὸν αὐτῆς ἔτεκε. μηδὲν οὖν τούτων κομψὸν ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ πανοῦργον ὁ νέος ἐθιζέσθω, μηδὲ προσμειδιάτω ταῖς τοιαύταις εὑρησιλογίαις, ἀλλὰ βδελυττέσθω τοὺς λόγους μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ ἔργα τῆς ἀκολασίας.

Ἐπὶ πᾶσι τοίνυν καὶ τὸ τὴν αἰτίαν ἑκάστου τῶν λεγομένων ἐπιζητεῖν χρήσιμόν ἐστιν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Κάτων ἔτι παιδάριον ὢν ἔπραττε μὲν ὃ προστάξειεν ὁ παιδαγωγός, αἰτίαν δὲ καὶ λόγον ἀπῄτει τοῦ προστάγματος· τοῖς δὲ ποιηταῖς οὐ πειστέον ὥσπερ παιδαγωγοῖς ἢ νομοθέταις, ἂν μὴ λόγον ἔχῃ τὸ ὑποκείμενον. ἕξει δέ, ἄνπερ χρηστὸν ᾖ· ἂν δὲ μοχθηρόν, ὀφθήσεται κενὸν καὶ μάταιον. ἀλλ’ οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν μὲν τοιούτων τὰς αἰτίας πικρῶς ἀπαιτοῦσι καὶ διαπυνθάνονται πῶς λέλεκται

μηδέ ποτ’ οἰνοχόην τιθέμεν κρητῆρος ὕπερθεν

πινόντων

καὶ

ὃς δέ κ’ ἀνὴρ ἀπὸ ὧν ὀχέων ἕτερ’ ἅρμαθ’

ἵκηται,

[b] ἔγχει ὀρεξάσθω.

τῶν δὲ μειζόνων ἀβασανίστως δέχονται τὴν πίστιν, οἷα καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐστὶν

δουλοῖ γὰρ ἄνδρα, κἂν θρασύσπλαγχνός τις ᾖ,

ὅταν συνειδῇ μητρὸς ἢ πατρὸς κακά,

καὶ

σμικρὸν φρονεῖν χρὴ τὸν κακῶς πεπραγότα.

καίτοι ταῦτα τῶν ἠθῶν ἅπτεται καὶ τοὺς βίους διαταράττει, κρίσεις ἐμποιοῦντα φαύλας καὶ δόξας [c] ἀγεννεῖς, ἂν μὴ πρὸς ἕκαστον αὐτῶν εἰθισμένοι λέγωμεν “διὰ τί σμικρὸν φρονεῖν χρὴ τὸν κακῶς πεπραγότα καὶ μὴ μᾶλλον ἀνταίρειν τῇ τύχῃ καὶ ποιεῖν ὑψηλὸν ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἀταπείνωτον; διὰ τί δέ, ἂν ἐκ πατρὸς φαύλου καὶ ἀνοήτου γεγονὼς αὐτὸς ὦ χρηστὸς καὶ φρόνιμος, οὐ προσήκει μοι διὰ τὴν ἐμὴν ἀρετὴν μέγα φρονεῖν ἀλλὰ καταπεπλῆχθαι καὶ ταπεινὸν εἶναι διὰ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς ἀμαθίαν;” ὁ γὰρ οὕτως ἀπαντῶν καὶ ἀντερείδων καὶ μὴ παντὶ λόγῳ πλάγιον ὥσπερ πνεύματι παραδιδοὺς ἑαυτὸν ἀλλ’ ὀρθῶς ἔχειν νομίζων τὸ “βλὰξ ἄνθρωπος ἐπὶ παντὶ λόγῳ φιλεῖ ἐπτοῆσθαι,” πολλὰ διακρούσεται τῶν οὐκ ἀληθῶς οὐδ’ ὠφελίμως λεγομένων. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἀβλαβῆ παρέξει τὴν τῶν ποιημάτων ἀκρόασιν.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν ἀμπέλου φύλλοις καὶ [d] κλήμασιν εὐθαλοῦσι πολλάκις ὁ καρπὸς ἀποκρύπτεται καὶ λανθάνει κατασκιαζόμενος, οὕτως ἐν ποιητικῇ λέξει καὶ μυθεύμασι περικεχυμένοις πολλὰ διαφεύγει τὸν νέον ὠφέλιμα καὶ χρήσιμα (δεῖ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ πάσχειν μηδ’ ἀποπλανᾶσθαι τῶν πραγμάτων, ἀλλ’ ἐμφύεσθαι μάλιστα τοῖς πρὸς ἀρετὴν φέρουσι καὶ δυναμένοις πλάττειν τὸ ἦθος), οὐ χεῖρόν ἐστι καὶ περὶ τούτων διελθεῖν ἐν βραχέσιν, ἁψάμενον ὡς ἐν τύπῳ τῶν πραγμάτων, μήκη δὲ [e] καὶ κατασκευὰς καὶ παραδειγμάτων ὄχλον ἐῶντα τοῖς ἐπιδεικτικώτερον γράφουσι. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τὰ χρηστὰ καὶ τὰ φαῦλα γιγνώσκων ὁ νέος ἤθη καὶ πρόσωπα τοῖς λεγομένοις προσεχέτω καὶ ταῖς πράξεσιν ἃς ὁ ποιητὴς ἑκατέροις προσηκόντως ἀποδίδωσιν· οἷον ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς πρὸς τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα λέγει, καίπερ λέγων μετ’ ὀργῆς

οὐ γὰρ σοί ποτε ἶσον ἔχω γέρας, ὁππότ’ Ἀχαιοὶ

Τρώων ἐκπέρσωσ’ εὖ ναιόμενον πτολίεθρον,

ὁ δὲ Θερσίτης τῷ αὐτῷ λοιδορούμενος λέγει

πλεῖαί τοι χαλκοῦ κλισίαι, πολλαὶ δὲ γυναῖκες

εἰσὶν ἐνὶ κλισίῃς ἐξαίρετοι, ἅς τοι Ἀχαιοὶ

[29] [a] πρωτίστῳ δίδομεν, εὖτ’ ἂν πτολίεθρον ἕλωμεν,

καὶ πάλιν ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς

αἴ κέ ποθι Ζεὺς

δῷσι πόλιν Τροίην εὐτείχεον ἐξαλαπάξαι,

ὁ δὲ Θερσίτης

ὅν κεν ἐγὼ δήσας ἀγάγω ἢ ἄλλος Ἀχαιῶν.

πάλιν τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος ἐν τῇ ἐπιπωλήσει τὸν Διομήδην λοιδορήσαντος ὁ μὲν οὐδὲν ἀντεῖπεν

αἰδεσθεὶς βασιλῆος ἐνιπὴν αἰδοίοιο,

ὁ δὲ Σθένελος, οὗ μηδεὶς λόγος,

“Ἀτρείδη,” φησί, “μὴ ψεύδε’ ἐπιστάμενος σάφα εἰπεῖν.

[b] ἡμεῖς τοι πατέρων μέγ’ ἀμείνονες εὐχόμεθ’ εἶναι.”

ἡ γὰρ τοιαύτη διαφορὰ μὴ παρορωμένη διδάξει τὸν νέον ἀστεῖον ἡγεῖσθαι τὴν ἀτυφίαν καὶ μετριότητα, τὴν δὲ μεγαλαυχίαν καὶ περιαυτολογίαν ὡς φαῦλον εὐλαβεῖσθαι. χρήσιμον δὲ καὶ τὸ τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος κατανοεῖν ἐνταῦθα· τὸν μὲν γὰρ Σθένελον ἀπροσαύδητον παρῆλθε, τοῦ δ’ Ὀδυσσέως οὐκ ἠμέλησεν ἀλλ’ ἠμείψατο καὶ προσηγόρευσεν,

ὡς γνῶ χωομένοιο· πάλιν δ’ ὅ γε λάζετο μῦθον·

τὸ μὲν γὰρ πᾶσιν ἀπολογεῖσθαι θεραπευτικὸν καὶ [c] οὐκ ἀξιωματικόν· τὸ δὲ πάντων καταφρονεῖν ὑπερήφανον καὶ ἀνόητον. ἄριστα δ’ ὁ Διομήδης ἐν μὲν τῇ μάχῃ σιωπᾷ κακῶς ἀκούων ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως, μετὰ δὲ τὴν μάχην παρρησίᾳ χρῆται πρὸς αὐτόν

ἀλκὴν μέν μοι πρῶτον ὀνείδισας ἐν Δαναοῖσιν.

Εὖ δ’ ἔχει καὶ φρονίμου διαφορὰν ἀνδρὸς καὶ μάντεως πανηγυρικοῦ μὴ παραλιπεῖν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Κάλχας οὐ συνεῖδε τὸν καιρόν, ἀλλ’ ἐν πλήθει παρ’ οὐδὲν ἐποιήσατο κατηγορῆσαι τοῦ βασιλέως ὡς τὸν λοιμὸν αὐτοῖς ἐπαγαγόντος· ὁ δὲ Νέστωρ βουλόμενος ἐμβάλλειν λόγον ὑπὲρ τῶν πρὸς τὸν [d] Ἀχιλλέα διαλλαγῶν, ἵνα μὴ διαβάλλειν δοκῇ τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος ὡς ἁμαρτόντα καὶ χρησάμενον ὀργῇ,

δαίνυ δαῖτα γέρουσιν· ἔοικέ τοι, οὔ τοι ἀεικές.

πολλῶν δ’ ἀγρομένων τῷ πείσεαι ὅς κεν ἀρίστην

βουλὴν βουλεύσῃ.

καὶ μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ἐξαποστέλλει τοὺς πρέσβεις· τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν ἐπανόρθωσις ἁμαρτίας, ἐκεῖνο δὲ κατηγορία καὶ προπηλακισμός.

Ἔτι δὲ καὶ τὰς ἐν τοῖς γένεσι διαφορὰς σκεπτέον, ὧν τοιοῦτός ἐστιν ὁ τρόπος. οἱ μὲν Τρῶες ἐπίασι μετὰ κραυγῆς καὶ θράσους, οἱ δ’ Ἀχαιοί

σιγῇ δειδιότες σημάντορας.

[e] τὸ γὰρ ἐν χερσὶ τῶν πολεμίων ὄντων φοβεῖσθαι τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἀνδρείας ἅμα καὶ πειθαρχίας σημεῖον. ὅθεν ὁ μὲν Πλάτων ἐθίζει τοὺς ψόγους φοβεῖσθαι καὶ τὰ αἰσχρὰ μᾶλλον ἢ τοὺς πόνους καὶ τοὺς κινδύνους, ὁ δὲ Κάτων ἔλεγε φιλεῖν τοὺς ἐρυθριῶντας μᾶλλον ἢ τοὺς ὠχριῶντας.

Ἔστι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐπαγγελιῶν ἴδιος χαρακτήρ. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Δόλων ἐπαγγέλλεται

τόφρα γὰρ ἐς στρατὸν εἶμι διαμπερές, ὄφρ’ ἂν ἵκωμαι

νῆ’ Ἀγαμεμνονέην,

[f] ὁ δὲ Διομήδης ἐπαγγέλλεται μὲν οὐδέν, ἧττον δ’ ἄν φησι φοβηθῆναι μεθ’ ἑτέρου πεμπόμενος. Ἑλληνικὸν οὖν καὶ ἀστεῖον ἡ πρόνοια, βαρβαρικὸν δὲ καὶ φαῦλον ἡ θρασύτης· καὶ δεῖ τὸ μὲν ζηλοῦν τὸ δὲ δυσχεραίνειν. ἔχεται δέ τινος οὐκ ἀχρήστου θεωρίας καὶ τὸ περὶ τοὺς Τρῶας καὶ τὸν Ἕκτορα πάθος, τοῦ Αἴαντος αὐτῷ μονομαχεῖν μέλλοντος. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Αἰσχύλος Ἰσθμοῖ πύκτου πληγέντος εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον καὶ κραυγῆς γενομένης, “οἷον” εἶπεν “ἡ ἄσκησίς ἐστιν. οἱ θεώμενοι βοῶσιν, ὁ δὲ πληγεὶς σιωπᾷ.” τοῦ δὲ ποιητοῦ λέγοντος ὅτι τὸν Αἴαντα τῶν ὅπλων ποιούντων λαμπρὸν οἱ μὲν Ἕλληνες ἔχαιρον ὁρῶντες,

[30] [a] Τρῶας δὲ τρόμος αἰνὸς ἐπήλυθε γυῖα ἕκαστον,

Ἕκτορί τ’ αὐτῷ θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσι πάτασσε,

τίς οὐκ ἂν ἀγάσαιτο τὴν διαφοράν; τοῦ μὲν κινδυνεύοντος ἡ καρδία πηδᾷ μόνον, ὥσπερ παλαίειν νὴ Δί’ ἢ σταδιοδρομεῖν μέλλοντος, τῶν δὲ θεωμένων τρέμει καὶ πάλλεται τὸ σῶμα δι’ εὔνοιαν καὶ φόβον ὑπὲρ τοῦ βασιλέως. ἐνταῦθα δὲ καὶ τὴν τοῦ κρατίστου πρὸς τὸν κάκιστον διαφορὰν ἀποθεωρητέον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Θερσίτης

ἔχθιστος δ’ Ἀχιλῆι μάλιστ’ ἦν ἠδ’ Ὀδυσῆι,

[b] ὁ δ’ Αἴας ἀεί τε τῷ Ἀχιλλεῖ προσφιλὴς καὶ πρὸς τὸν Ἕκτορα λέγει περὶ αὐτοῦ

νῦν μὲν δὴ σάφα εἴσεαι οἰόθεν οἶος

οἷοι καὶ Δαναοῖσιν ἀριστῆες μετέασι,

καὶ μετ’ Ἀχιλλῆα ῥηξήνορα θυμολέοντα.

καὶ τοῦτο μὲν Ἀχιλλέως τὸ ἐγκώμιόν ἐστι, τὰ δ’ ἑξῆς ὑπὲρ ἁπάντων εἴρηται χρησίμως

ἡμεῖς δ’ εἰμὲν τοῖοι οἳ ἂν σέθεν ἀντιάσαιμεν

καὶ πολέες,

οὔτε μόνον οὔτ’ ἄριστον ἀποφαίνων ἑαυτὸν ἀλλὰ μετὰ πολλῶν ὁμοίως δυναμένων ἀμύνασθαι.

[c] Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἱκανὰ περὶ διαφορᾶς, ἂν μὴ κἀκεῖνο βουλώμεθα προσλαβεῖν, ὅτι τῶν Τρώων ἑαλώκασι καὶ πολλοὶ ζῶντες, οὐδεὶς δὲ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, καὶ τῶν μὲν ὑποπεπτώκασιν ἔνιοι τοῖς πολεμίοις, ὥσπερ ὁ Ἄδραστος, οἱ Ἀντιμάχου παῖδες, ὁ Λυκάων, αὐτὸς ὁ Ἕκτωρ δεόμενος περὶ ταφῆς τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως, ἐκείνων δ’ οὐδείς, ὡς βαρβαρικοῦ τοῦ ἱκετεύειν καὶ ὑποπίπτειν ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσιν ὄντος, Ἑλληνικοῦ δὲ τοῦ νικᾶν μαχόμενον ἢ ἀποθνῄσκειν.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς νομαῖς ἡ μὲν μέλιττα [d] διώκει τὸ ἄνθος, ἡ δ’ αἲξ τὸν θαλλόν, ἡ δ’ ὗς τὴν ῥίζαν, ἄλλα δὲ ζῷα τὸ σπέρμα καὶ τὸν καρπόν, οὕτως ἐν ταῖς ἀναγνώσεσι τῶν ποιημάτων ὁ μὲν ἀπανθίζεται τὴν ἱστορίαν, ὁ δ’ ἐμφύεται τῷ κάλλει καὶ τῇ κατασκευῇ τῶν ὀνομάτων, καθάπερ ὁ Ἀριστοφάνης περὶ τοῦ Εὐριπίδου φησί

χρῶμαι γὰρ αὐτοῦ τοῦ στόματος τῷ στρογγύλῳ·

οἳ δὲ τῶν πρὸς τὸ ἦθος εἰρημένων ὠφελίμως ἔχονται, πρὸς οὓς δὴ νῦν ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος ἐστίν, ὑπομιμνῄσκωμεν αὐτοὺς ὅτι δεινόν ἐστι τὸν μὲν φιλόμυθον μὴ λανθάνειν τὰ καινῶς ἱστορούμενα καὶ περιττῶς, μηδὲ τὸν φιλόλογον ἐκφεύγειν τὰ [e] καθαρῶς πεφρασμένα καὶ ῥητορικῶς, τὸν δὲ φιλότιμον καὶ φιλόκαλον καὶ μὴ παιγνίας ἀλλὰ παιδείας ἕνεκα ποιημάτων ἁπτόμενον ἀργῶς καὶ ἀμελῶς ἀκούειν τῶν πρὸς ἀνδρείαν ἢ σωφροσύνην ἢ δικαιοσύνην ἀναπεφωνημένων, οἷα καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐστὶ

Τυδείδη, τί παθόντε λελάσμεθα θούριδος ἀλκῆς;

ἀλλ’ ἄγε δεῦρο, πέπον, παρ’ ἔμ’ ἵστασο· δὴ γὰρ ἔλεγχος

ἔσσεται, εἴ κεν νῆας ἕλῃ κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ.

τὸ γὰρ ἐν κινδύνῳ τοῦ διαφθαρῆναι καὶ ἀπολέσθαι μετὰ πάντων ὄντα τὸν φρονιμώτατον ὁρᾶν τὸ αἰσχρὸν δεδοικότα καὶ τὸ ἐπονείδιστον ἀλλὰ μὴ τὸν θάνατον, ἐμπαθῆ ποιήσει πρὸς ἀρετὴν τὸν νέον. καὶ τῷ

χαῖρε δ’ Ἀθηναίη πεπνυμένῳ ἀνδρὶ δικαίῳ

[f] τοιοῦτον ἐπιλογισμὸν δίδωσι, μήτε πλουσίῳ τινὶ μήτε καλῷ τὸ σῶμα μήτ’ ἰσχυρῷ τὴν θεὸν χαίρουσαν ἀλλὰ φρονίμῳ καὶ δικαίῳ ποιήσας. καὶ πάλιν τὸν Ὀδυσσέα φάσκουσα μὴ περιορᾶν μηδὲ προλείπειν

οὕνεκ’ ἐπητής ἐστι καὶ ἀγχίνοος καὶ ἐχέφρων,

ἐνδείκνυται μόνον εἶναι τῶν ἡμετέρων θεοφιλὲς καὶ θεῖον ἀρετήν, εἴγε δὴ τὰ ὅμοια χαίρειν τοῖς ὁμοίοις πέφυκεν.

[31] [a] Ἐπεὶ δὲ μεγάλου δοκοῦντος εἶναι καὶ ὄντος τοῦ κρατεῖν ὀργῆς μεῖζόν ἐστιν ἡ φυλακὴ καὶ ἡ πρόνοια τοῦ μὴ περιπεσεῖν ὀργῇ μηδ’ ἁλῶναι, καὶ ταῦτα δεῖ τοῖς ἀναγιγνώσκουσιν ὑποδεικνύειν μὴ παρέργως, ὅτι τὸν Πρίαμον ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς οὐκ ἀνασχετικὸς ὢν οὐδὲ πρᾶος ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν κελεύει καὶ μὴ παροξύνειν αὐτόν, οὕτως

μηκέτι νῦν μ’ ἐρέθιζε, γέρον (νοέω δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς

Ἕκτορά τοι λῦσαι, Διόθεν δέ μοι ἄγγελος ἦλθε)

μή σε, γέρον, οὐδ’ αὐτὸν ἐνὶ κλισίῃσιν ἐάσω,

[b] καὶ ἱκέτην περ ἐόντα, Διὸς δ’ ἀλίτωμαι ἐφετμάς,

καὶ τὸν Ἕκτορα λούσας καὶ περιστείλας αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τὴν ἀπήνην τίθησι, πρὶν ᾐκισμένον ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς ὀφθῆναι,

μὴ ὁ μὲν ἀχνυμένῃ κραδίῃ χόλον οὐκ ἐρύσαιτο,

παῖδα ἰδών, Ἀχιλῆι δ’ ὀρινθείη φίλον ἦτορ

καί ἑ κατακτείνειε, Διὸς δ’ ἀλίτηται ἐφετμάς.

τὸ γὰρ ἐπισφαλῶς πρὸς ὀργὴν ἔχοντα καὶ φύσει τραχὺν ὄντα καὶ θυμοειδῆ μὴ λανθάνειν ἑαυτὸν ἀλλ’ ἐξευλαβεῖσθαι καὶ φυλάττεσθαι τὰς αἰτίας καὶ [c] προκαταλαμβάνειν τῷ λογισμῷ πόρρωθεν ὅπως οὐδ’ ἄκων τῷ πάθει περιπεσεῖται, θαυμαστῆς ἐστι προνοίας. οὕτω δὲ δεῖ καὶ πρὸς μέθην τὸν φίλοινον ἔχειν καὶ πρὸς ἔρωτα τὸν ἐρωτικόν· ὥσπερ ὁ Ἀγησίλαος οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν ὑπὸ τοῦ καλοῦ φιληθῆναι προσιόντος, ὁ δὲ Κῦρος οὐδ’ ἰδεῖν τὴν Πάνθειαν ἐτόλμησε, τῶν ἀπαιδεύτων τοὐναντίον ὑπεκκαύματα τοῖς πάθεσι συλλεγόντων καὶ πρὸς ἃ μάλιστα κακῶς καὶ ὀλισθηρῶς ἔχουσιν αὑτοὺς προϊεμένων. ὁ δ’ Ὀδυσσεὺς οὐ μόνον ἑαυτὸν ἀνέχει θυμούμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν Τηλέμαχον ἐκ [d] τοῦ λόγου συνιδὼν χαλεπὸν ὄντα καὶ μισοπόνηρον ἀμβλύνει καὶ παρασκευάζει πόρρωθεν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν καὶ ἀνέχεσθαι, κελεύων

εἰ δέ μ’ ἀτιμήσουσι δόμον κάτα, σὸν δὲ φίλον κῆρ

τετλάτω ἐν στήθεσσι κακῶς πάσχοντος ἐμεῖο,

ἤν περ καὶ διὰ δῶμα ποδῶν ἕλκωσι θύραζε

ἢ βέλεσιν βάλλωσι· σὺ δ’ εἰσορόων ἀνέχεσθαι.

ὥσπερ γὰρ τοὺς ἵππους οὐκ ἐν τοῖς δρόμοις χαλινοῦσιν ἀλλὰ πρὸ τῶν δρόμων, οὕτω τοὺς δυσκαθέκτους πρὸς τὰ δεινὰ καὶ θυμοειδεῖς προκαταλαμβάνοντες τοῖς λογισμοῖς καὶ προκαταρτύοντες ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας ἄγουσιν.

Δεῖ δὲ μηδὲ τῶν ὀνομάτων ἀμελῶς ἀκούειν, [e] ἀλλὰ τὴν μὲν Κλεάνθους παιδιὰν παραιτεῖσθαι· κατειρωνεύεται γὰρ ἔστιν ὅτε προσποιούμενος ἐξηγεῖσθαι τὸ

Ζεῦ πάτερ Ἴδηθεν μεδέων

καὶ τὸ

Ζεῦ ἄνα Δωδωναῖε

κελεύων ἀναγιγνώσκειν ὑφ’ ἕν, ὡς τὸν ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἀναθυμιώμενον ἀέρα διὰ τὴν ἀνάδοσιν ἀναδωδωναῖον ὄντα. καὶ Χρύσιππος δὲ πολλαχοῦ γλίσχρος ἐστίν, οὐ παίζων ἀλλ’ εὑρησιλογῶν ἀπιθάνως, καὶ παραβιαζόμενος εὐρύοπα Κρονίδην εἶναι τὸν δεινὸν ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι καὶ διαβεβηκότα τῇ δυνάμει τοῦ λόγου.

Βέλτιον δὲ ταῦτα τοῖς γραμματικοῖς παρέντας [f] ἐκεῖνα μᾶλλον πιέζειν οἷς ἅμα τὸ χρήσιμον καὶ πιθανὸν ἔνεστιν

οὐδέ με θυμὸς ἄνωγεν, ἐπεὶ μάθον ἔμμεναι ἐσθλὸς

καὶ

πᾶσιν γὰρ ἐπίστατο μείλιχος εἶναι.

τήν τε γὰρ ἀνδρείαν ἀποφαίνων μάθημα καὶ τὸ προσφιλῶς ἅμα καὶ κεχαρισμένως ἀνθρώποις ὁμιλεῖν ἀπ’ ἐπιστήμης καὶ κατὰ λόγον γίγνεσθαι νομίζων προτρέπει μὴ ἀμελεῖν ἑαυτῶν, ἀλλὰ μανθάνειν τὰ καλὰ καὶ προσέχειν τοῖς διδάσκουσιν, ὡς καὶ τὴν σκαιότητα καὶ τὴν δειλίαν ἀμαθίαν καὶ ἄγνοιαν οὖσαν. σφόδρα δὲ τούτοις κἀκεῖνα σύμφωνά ἐστιν ἃ λέγει περὶ τοῦ Διὸς καὶ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος

ἦ μὰν ἀμφοτέροισιν ὁμὸν γένος ἠδ’ ἴα πάτρη,

[32] [a] ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς πρότερος γεγόνει καὶ πλείονα ᾔδει.

θειότατον γὰρ ἀποφαίνει τὴν φρόνησιν καὶ βασιλικώτατον, ἐν ᾗ τίθεται τὴν μεγίστην ὑπεροχὴν τοῦ Διός, ἅτε δὴ καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἀρετὰς ἕπεσθαι ταύτῃ νομίζων.

Ἐθιστέον δ’ ἅμα καὶ τούτων ἐγρηγορότως τὸν νέον ἀκούειν

ψεῦδος δ’ οὐκ ἐρέει· μάλα γὰρ πεπνυμένος ἐστὶ

καὶ

Ἀντίλοχε, πρόσθεν πεπνυμένε, ποῖον ἔρεξας;

ᾔσχυνας μὲν ἐμὴν ἀρετήν, βλάψας δέ μοι ἵππους

καὶ

[b] Γλαῦκε, τίη δὲ σὺ τοῖος ἐὼν ὑπέροπλον ἔειπας;

ὦ πέπον, ἦ τ’ ἐφάμην σε περὶ φρένας ἔμμεναι ἄλλων,

ὡς οὔτε ψευδομένων τῶν φρονίμων οὔτε κακομαχούντων ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσιν οὔτε παρ’ ἀξίαν ἑτέροις ἐγκαλούντων. καὶ τὸν Πάνδαρον δὲ πεισθῆναι λέγων διὰ τὴν ἀφροσύνην τὰ ὅρκια συγχέαι δῆλός ἐστιν οὐκ ἂν ἀδικῆσαι τὸν φρόνιμον ἡγούμενος. ὅμοια δ’ ἔστι καὶ περὶ σωφροσύνης ὑποδεικνύειν ἐφιστάντα τοῖς οὕτω λεγομένοις

τῷ δὲ γυνὴ Προίτου ἐπεμήνατο, δῖ’ Ἄντεια,

κρυπταδίῃ φιλότητι μιγήμεναι· ἀλλὰ τὸν οὔ τι

[c] πεῖθ’ ἀγαθὰ φρονέοντα, δαΐφρονα Βελλεροφόντην

καὶ

ἡ δ’ ἤτοι τὸ πρὶν μὲν ἀναίνετο ἔργον ἀεικές,

δῖα Κλυταιμνήστρη· φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ’ ἀγαθῇσιν·

ἐν μὲν οὖν τούτοις τῇ φρονήσει τὴν τοῦ σωφρονεῖν αἰτίαν ἀποδίδωσιν, ἐν δὲ ταῖς παρὰ τὰς μάχας κελεύσεσιν ἑκάστοτε λέγων

αἰδώς, ὦ Λύκιοι. πόσε φεύγετε; νῦν θοοὶ ἔστε

καὶ

ἀλλ’ ἐν φρεσὶ θέσθε ἕκαστος

αἰδῶ καὶ νέμεσιν· δὴ γὰρ μέγα νεῖκος ὄρωρεν

ἀνδρείους ἔοικε ποιεῖν τοὺς σώφρονας διὰ τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι [d] τὰ αἰσχρὰ καὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς δυναμένους ὑπερβαίνειν καὶ τοὺς κινδύνους ὑφίστασθαι. ἀφ’ ὧν καὶ Τιμόθεος ὁρμηθεὶς οὐ κακῶς ἐν τοῖς Πέρσαις τοὺς Ἕλληνας παρεκάλει

σέβεσθ’ αἰδῶ συνεργὸν ἀρετᾶς δοριμάχου,

Αἰσχύλος δὲ καὶ τὸ πρὸς δόξαν ἔχειν ἀτύφως καὶ μὴ διασοβεῖσθαι μηδ’ ἐπαίρεσθαι τοῖς παρὰ τῶν πολλῶν ἐπαίνοις ἐν τῷ φρονεῖν τίθεται περὶ τοῦ Ἀμφιαράου γράφων

οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖν ἄριστος ἀλλ’ εἶναι θέλει,

[e] βαθεῖαν ἄλοκα διὰ φρενὸς καρπούμενος,

ἀφ’ ἧς τὰ κεδνὰ βλαστάνει βουλεύματα.

τὸ γὰρ ἐφ’ ἑαυτῷ καὶ τῇ διαθέσει τῇ περὶ αὑτὸν οὔσῃ κρατίστῃ μεγαλοφρονεῖν νοῦν ἔχοντος ἀνδρός ἐστι. πάντων οὖν ἀναγομένων εἰς τὴν φρόνησιν ἀποδείκνυται πᾶν εἶδος ἀρετῆς ἐπιγιγνόμενον ἐκ λόγου καὶ διδασκαλίας.

Ἡ μὲν οὖν μέλιττα φυσικῶς ἐν τοῖς δριμυτάτοις ἄνθεσι καὶ ταῖς τραχυτάταις ἀκάνθαις ἐξανευρίσκει τὸ λειότατον μέλι καὶ χρηστικώτατον, οἱ δὲ παῖδες, ἂν ὀρθῶς ἐντρέφωνται τοῖς ποιήμασιν, [f] καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν φαύλους καὶ ἀτόπους ὑποψίας ἐχόντων ἕλκειν τι χρήσιμον ἁμωσγέπως μαθήσονται καὶ ὠφέλιμον. αὐτίκα γοῦν ὕποπτός ἐστιν ὁ Ἀγαμέμνων ὡς διὰ δωροδοκίαν ἀφεὶς τῆς στρατείας τὸν πλούσιον ἐκεῖνον τὸν τὴν Αἴθην χαρισάμενον αὐτῷ

δῶρ’, ἵνα μή οἱ ἕποιθ’ ὑπὸ Ἴλιον ἠνεμόεσσαν

ἀλλ’ αὐτοῦ τέρποιτο μένων· μέγα γάρ οἱ ἔδωκεν

Ζεὺς ἄφενος.

ὀρθῶς δέ γ’ ἐποίησεν, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησίν, ἵππον ἀγαθὴν ἀνθρώπου τοιούτου προτιμήσας· οὐδὲ γὰρ κυνὸς ἀντάξιος οὐδ’ ὄνου μὰ Δία δειλὸς ἀνὴρ καὶ ἄναλκις, ὑπὸ πλούτου καὶ μαλακίας [33] [a] διερρυηκώς. πάλιν αἴσχιστα δοκεῖ τὸν υἱὸν ἡ Θέτις ἐφ’ ἡδονὰς παρακαλεῖν καὶ ἀναμιμνῄσκειν ἀφροδισίων. ἀλλὰ κἀνταῦθα δεῖ παραθεωρεῖν τὴν τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως ἐγκράτειαν, ὅτι τῆς Βρισηίδος ἐρῶν ἡκούσης πρὸς αὐτόν, εἰδὼς τὴν τοῦ βίου τελευτὴν ἐγγὺς οὖσαν οὐ σπεύδει τῶν ἡδονῶν πρὸς ἀπόλαυσιν οὐδ’ ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ πενθεῖ τὸν φίλον ἀπραξίᾳ καὶ παραλείψει τῶν καθηκόντων, ἀλλὰ τῶν μὲν ἡδονῶν διὰ τὴν λύπην ἀπέχεται, ταῖς δὲ πράξεσι καὶ ταῖς στρατηγίαις ἐνεργός ἐστι. πάλιν ὁ Ἀρχίλοχος οὐκ ἐπαινεῖται λυπούμενος μὲν ἐπὶ τῷ ἀνδρὶ τῆς ἀδελφῆς διεφθαρμένῳ [b] κατὰ θάλατταν, οἴνῳ δὲ καὶ παιδιᾷ πρὸς τὴν λύπην μάχεσθαι διανοούμενος. αἰτίαν μέντοι λόγον ἔχουσαν εἴρηκεν

οὔτε τι γὰρ κλαίων ἰήσομαι οὔτε κάκιον

θήσω τερπωλὰς καὶ θαλίας ἐφέπων.

εἰ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος οὐδὲν ἐνόμιζεν ποιήσειν κάκιον τερπωλὰς καὶ θαλίας ἐφέπων, πῶς ἡμῖν τὰ παρόντα χεῖρον ἕξει φιλοσοφοῦσι καὶ πολιτευομένοις καὶ [c] προιοῦσιν εἰς ἀγορὰν καὶ καταβαίνουσιν εἰς Ἀκαδήμειαν καὶ γεωργίαν ἐφέπουσιν; ὅθεν οὐδ’ αἱ παραδιορθώσεις φαύλως ἔχουσιν αἷς καὶ Κλεάνθης ἐχρήσατο καὶ Ἀντισθένης, ὁ μὲν εὖ μάλα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἰδὼν θορυβήσαντας ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ

τί δ’ αἰσχρὸν εἰ μὴ τοῖσι χρωμένοις δοκεῖ;

παραβάλλων εὐθὺς

αἰσχρὸν τό γ’ αἰσχρόν, κἂν δοκῇ κἂν μὴ δοκῇ,

ὁ δὲ Κλεάνθης περὶ τοῦ πλούτου

φίλοις τε δοῦναι σῶμά τ’ εἰς νόσους πεσὸν

δαπάναισι σῶσαι

μεταγράφων οὕτω

[d] πόρναις τε δοῦναι σῶμά τ’ εἰς νόσους πεσὸν

δαπάναις ἐπιτρῖψαι.

καὶ ὁ Ζήνων ἐπανορθούμενος τὸ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους

ὅστις δὲ πρὸς τύραννον ἐμπορεύεται,

κείνου ‘στὶ δοῦλος, κἂν ἐλεύθερος μόλῃ

μετέγραφεν

οὐκ ἔστι δοῦλος, ἢν ἐλεύθερος μόλῃ,

τῷ ἐλευθέρῳ νῦν συνεκφαίνων τὸν ἀδεᾶ καὶ μεγαλόφρονα καὶ ἀταπείνωτον. τί δὴ κωλύει καὶ ἡμᾶς ταῖς τοιαύταις ὑποφωνήσεσι τοὺς νέους παρακαλεῖν πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον, οὕτω πως χρωμένους τοῖς λεγομένοις;

[e] τόδ’ ἐστὶ τὸ ζηλωτὸν ἀνθρώποις, ὅτῳ

τόξον μερίμνης εἰς ὃ βούλεται πέσῃ.

οὔκ, ἀλλ’

ὅτῳ

τόξον μερίμνης εἰς ὃ συμφέρει πέσῃ.

τὸ γὰρ ἃ μὴ δεῖ βουλόμενον λαμβάνειν καὶ τυγχάνειν οἰκτρόν ἐστι καὶ ἄζηλον. καὶ

οὐκ ἐπὶ πᾶσίν σ’ ἐφύτευσ’ ἀγαθοῖς,

Ἀγάμεμνον, Ἀτρεύς.

δεῖ δέ σε χαίρειν καὶ λυπεῖσθαι.

μὰ Δία, φήσομεν, ἀλλὰ δεῖ σε χαίρειν, μὴ λυπεῖσθαι, τυγχάνοντα μετρίων·

οὐ γὰρ ἐπὶ πᾶσίν σ’ ἐφύτευσ’ ἀγαθοῖς

Ἀγάμεμνον, Ἀτρεύς.

αἰαῖ τόδ’ ἤδη θεῖον ἀνθρώποις κακόν,

[f] ὅταν τις εἰδῇ τἀγαθόν, χρῆται δὲ μή.

θηριῶδες μὲν οὖν καὶ ἄλογον καὶ οἰκτρὸν εἰδότα τὸ βέλτιον ὑπὸ τοῦ χείρονος ἐξ ἀκρασίας καὶ μαλακίας ἄγεσθαι.

τρόπος ἔσθ’ ὁ πείθων τοῦ λέγοντος, οὐ λόγος.

καὶ τρόπος μὲν οὖν καὶ λόγος ἢ τρόπος διὰ λόγου, καθάπερ ἱππεὺς διὰ χαλινοῦ καὶ διὰ πηδαλίου κυβερνήτης, οὐδὲν οὕτω φιλάνθρωπον οὐδὲ συγγενὲς ἐχούσης τῆς ἀρετῆς ὄργανον ὡς τὸν λόγον.

[34] [a] πρὸς θῆλυ νεύει μᾶλλον ἢ ‘πὶ τἄρρενα

ὅπου προσῇ τὸ κάλλος, ἀμφιδέξιος.

ἦν δὲ βέλτιον εἰπεῖν

ὅπου προσῇ τὸ σῶφρον, ἀμφιδέξιος

ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ ἰσόρροπος· ὁ δ’ ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς καὶ ὥρας ὧδε κἀκεῖ μετοιακιζόμενος ἐπαρίστερος καὶ ἀβέβαιος.

φόβος τὰ θεῖα τοῖσι σώφροσιν βροτῶν.

καὶ μὴν οὐδαμῶς, ἀλλὰ

θάρσος τὰ θεῖα τοῖσι σώφροσιν βροτῶν,

φόβος δὲ τοῖς ἄφροσι καὶ ἀνοήτοις καὶ ἀχαρίστοις, [b] ὅτι καὶ τὴν παντὸς αἰτίαν ἀγαθοῦ δύναμιν καὶ ἀρχὴν ὡς βλάπτουσαν ὑφορῶνται καὶ δεδίασι. τὸ μὲν οὖν τῆς ἐπανορθώσεως γένος τοιοῦτόν ἐστι.

Τὴν δ’ ἐπὶ πλέον τῶν λεγομένων χρῆσιν ὑπέδειξεν ὀρθῶς ὁ Χρύσιππος, ὅτι δεῖ μετάγειν καὶ διαβιβάζειν ἐπὶ τὰ ὁμοειδῆ τὸ χρήσιμον. ὅ τε γὰρ Ἡσίοδος εἰπὼν

οὐδ’ ἂν βοῦς ἀπόλοιτ’, εἰ μὴ γείτων κακὸς εἴη

καὶ περὶ κυνὸς ταὐτὸ καὶ περὶ ὄνου λέγει καὶ περὶ πάντων ὁμοίως τῶν ἀπολέσθαι δυναμένων. καὶ πάλιν τοῦ Εὐριπίδου λέγοντος

τίς δ’ ἐστὶ δοῦλος τοῦ θανεῖν ἄφροντις ὤν;

[c] ὑπακουστέον ὅτι καὶ περὶ πόνου καὶ νόσου ταὐτὰ εἴρηκεν. ὡς γὰρ φαρμάκου πρὸς ἓν ἁρμόσαντος νόσημα τὴν δύναμιν καταμαθόντες οἱ ἰατροὶ μετάγουσι καὶ χρῶνται πρὸς ἅπαν τὸ παραπλήσιον, οὕτω καὶ λόγον κοινοῦν καὶ δημοσιεύειν τὴν χρείαν δυνάμενον οὐ χρὴ περιορᾶν ἑνὶ πράγματι συνηρτημένον ἀλλὰ κινεῖν ἐπὶ πάντα τὰ ὅμοια, καὶ τοὺς νέους ἐθίζειν τὴν κοινότητα συνορᾶν καὶ μεταφέρειν ὀξέως τὸ οἰκεῖον, ἐν πολλοῖς παραδείγμασι ποιουμένους μελέτην καὶ ἄσκησιν ὀξυηκοΐας, ἵνα τοῦ Μενάνδρου λέγοντος

μακάριος ὅστις οὐσίαν καὶ νοῦν ἔχει

τοῦτο καὶ περὶ δόξης καὶ περὶ ἡγεμονίας καὶ περὶ [d] λόγου δυνάμεως εἰρῆσθαι νομίζωσι, τὴν δὲ πρὸς τὸν Ἀχιλλέα τὸν ἐν Σκύρῳ καθήμενον ἐν ταῖς παρθένοις γεγενημένην ἐπίπληξιν ὑπὸ τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως

σὺ δ’, ὦ τὸ λαμπρὸν φῶς ἀποσβεννὺς γένους,

ξαίνεις, ἀρίστου πατρὸς Ἑλλήνων γεγώς;

καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἄσωτον οἴωνται λέγεσθαι καὶ πρὸς τὸν αἰσχροκερδῆ καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἀμελῆ καὶ ἀπαίδευτον

πίνεις, ἀρίστου πατρὸς Ἑλλήνων γεγώς,

ἢ κυβεύεις ἢ ὀρτυγοκοπεῖς ἢ καπηλεύεις ἢ τοκογλυφεῖς, μηδὲν μέγα φρονῶν μηδ’ ἄξιον τῆς εὐγενείας;

μὴ πλοῦτον εἴπῃς. οὐχὶ θαυμάζω θεὸν

[e] ὃν χὠ κάκιστος ῥᾳδίως ἐκτήσατο.

οὐκοῦν μηδὲ δόξαν εἴπῃς μηδὲ σώματος εὐμορφίαν μηδὲ στρατηγικὴν χλαμύδα μηδ’ ἱερατικὸν στέφανον, ὧν καὶ τοὺς κακίστους ὁρῶμεν τυγχάνοντας.

τῆς δειλίας γὰρ αἰσχρὰ γίγνεται τέκνα

καὶ ναὶ μὰ Δία τῆς ἀκολασίας καὶ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας καὶ τοῦ φθόνου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων νοσημάτων ἁπάντων. ἄριστα δ’ εἰρηκότος Ὁμήρου τὸ

Δύσπαρι εἶδος ἄριστε

καὶ τὸ

[f] Ἕκτορ εἶδος ἄριστε

(ψόγου γὰρ ἀποφαίνει καὶ λοιδορίας ἄξιον ᾧ μηδέν ἐστιν ἀγαθὸν εὐμορφίας κάλλιον) ἐφαρμοστέον τοῦτο καὶ τοῖς ὁμοίοις, κολούοντα τοὺς μεγαλοφρονοῦντας ἐπὶ τοῖς μηδενὸς ἀξίοις, καὶ διδάσκοντα τοὺς νέους ὄνειδος ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ λοιδορίαν τὸ “χρήμασιν ἄριστε” καὶ “δείπνοις ἄριστε” καὶ “παισὶν ἢ ὑποζυγίοις ἄριστε” καὶ νὴ Δία τὸ [35] [a] λέγειν ἐφεξῆς “ἄριστε.” δεῖ γὰρ ἐκ τῶν καλῶν διώκειν τὴν ὑπεροχὴν καὶ περὶ τὰ πρῶτα πρῶτον εἶναι καὶ μέγαν ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις· ἡ δ’ ἀπὸ μικρῶν δόξα καὶ φαύλων ἄδοξός ἐστι καὶ ἀφιλότιμος.

Τοῦτο δ’ ἡμᾶς εὐθὺς ὑπομιμνῄσκει τὸ παράδειγμα τὸ τοὺς ψόγους ἀποθεωρεῖν καὶ τοὺς ἐπαίνους ἐν τοῖς Ὁμήρου μάλιστα ποιήμασιν· ἔμφασις γὰρ γίγνεται μεγάλη τοῦ τὰ σωματικὰ καὶ τυχηρὰ μὴ μεγάλης ἄξια σπουδῆς νομίζειν. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἐν ταῖς δεξιώσεσι καὶ ἀνακλήσεσιν οὐ καλοὺς οὐδὲ πλουσίους οὐδ’ ἰσχυροὺς προσαγορεύουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοιαύταις εὐφημίαις χρῶνται

[b] διογενὲς Λαερτιάδη, πολυμήχαν’ Ὀδυσσεῦ

καὶ

Ἕκτορ υἱὲ Πριάμοιο, Διὶ μῆτιν ἀτάλαντε

καὶ

ὦ Ἀχιλεῦ Πηλέος υἱέ, μέγα κῦδος Ἀχαιῶν

καὶ

δῖε Μενοιτιάδη, τῷ ἐμῷ κεχαρισμένε θυμῷ.

ἔπειτα λοιδοροῦσιν οὐδὲν ἐφαπτόμενοι τῶν σωματικῶν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι τοὺς ψόγους ἐπιφέροντες

οἰνοβαρές, κυνὸς ὄμματ’ ἔχων, κραδίην δ’ ἐλάφοιο

καὶ

[c] Αἶαν νεῖκος ἄριστε, κακοφραδὲς

καὶ

Ἰδομενεῦ, τί πάρος λαβρεύεαι; οὐδέ τί σε χρὴ

λαβραγόρην ἔμεναι

καὶ

Αἶαν ἁμαρτοεπὲς βουγάιε.

καὶ τέλος ὁ Θερσίτης ὑπὸ τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως οὐ χωλὸς οὐ φαλακρὸς οὐ κυρτὸς ἀλλ’ ἀκριτόμυθος λοιδορεῖται, τὸν δ’ Ἥφαιστον ἡ τεκοῦσα φιλοφρονουμένη προσηγόρευσεν ἀπὸ τῆς χωλότητος

ὄρσεο κυλλοπόδιον, ἐμὸν τέκος.

οὕτως Ὅμηρος καταγελᾷ τῶν αἰσχυνομένων ἐπὶ χωλότησιν ἢ τυφλότησιν, οὔτε ψεκτὸν ἡγούμενος τὸ μὴ αἰσχρὸν οὔτ’ αἰσχρὸν τὸ μὴ δι’ ἡμᾶς ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τύχης γιγνόμενον.

[d] Δύο δὴ περιγίγνεται μεγάλα τοῖς τῶν ποιημάτων ἐπιμελῶς ἐθιζομένοις ἀκούειν, τὸ μὲν εἰς μετριότητα, μηδενὶ τύχην ἐπαχθῶς καὶ ἀνοήτως ὀνειδίζειν, τὸ δ’ εἰς μεγαλοφροσύνην, αὐτοὺς χρησαμένους τύχαις μὴ ταπεινοῦσθαι μηδὲ ταράττεσθαι, φέρειν δὲ πράως καὶ σκώμματα καὶ λοιδορίας καὶ γέλωτας, μάλιστα μὲν τὸ τοῦ Φιλήμονος ἔχοντας πρόχειρον

ἥδιον οὐδὲν οὐδὲ μουσικώτερον

ἔστ’ ἢ δύνασθαι λοιδορούμενον φέρειν.

ἂν δὲ φαίνηταί τις ἐπιλήψεως δεόμενος, τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων καὶ τῶν παθῶν ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι, ὥσπερ ὁ τραγικὸς Ἄδραστος, τοῦ Ἀλκμέωνος εἰπόντος πρὸς αὐτὸν

[e] ἀνδροκτόνου γυναικὸς ὁμογενὴς ἔφυς,

ἀπεκρίνατο

σὺ δ’ αὐτόχειρ γε μητρὸς ἥ σ’ ἐγείνατο.

καθάπερ γὰρ οἱ τὰ ἱμάτια μαστιγοῦντες οὐχ ἅπτονται τοῦ σώματος, οὕτως οἱ δυστυχίας τινὰς ἢ δυσγενείας ὀνειδίζοντες εἰς τὰ ἐκτὸς ἐντείνονται κενῶς καὶ ἀνοήτως, τῆς ψυχῆς δ’ οὐ θιγγάνουσιν οὐδὲ τῶν ἀληθῶς ἐπανορθώσεως δεομένων καὶ δήξεως.

Καὶ μὴν ὥσπερ ἐπάνω πρὸς τὰ φαῦλα καὶ [f] βλαβερὰ ποιήματα λόγους καὶ γνώμας ἀντιτάττοντες ἐνδόξων καὶ πολιτικῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐδοκοῦμεν ἀφιστάναι καὶ ἀνακρούειν τὴν πίστιν, οὕτως ὅ τι ἂν ἀστεῖον εὕρωμεν παρ’ αὐτοῖς καὶ χρηστόν, ἐκτρέφειν χρὴ καὶ αὔξειν ἀποδείξεσι καὶ μαρτυρίαις φιλοσόφοις, ἀποδιδόντας τὴν εὕρεσιν ἐκείνοις. καὶ γὰρ δίκαιον καὶ ὠφέλιμον, ἰσχὺν τῆς πίστεως καὶ ἀξίωμα προσλαμβανούσης, ὅταν τοῖς ἀπὸ σκηνῆς λεγομένοις καὶ πρὸς λύραν ᾀδομένοις καὶ μελετωμένοις ἐν διδασκαλείῳ τὰ Πυθαγόρου δόγματα καὶ τὰ Πλάτωνος ὁμολογῇ, καὶ τὰ Χίλωνος παραγγέλματα καὶ τὰ Βίαντος ἐπὶ τὰς αὐτὰς ἄγῃ γνώμας ἐκείνοις τοῖς [36] [a] παιδικοῖς ἀναγνώσμασιν. ὅθεν οὐ παρέργως ὑποδεικτέον ὅτι τὸ μὲν

τέκνον ἐμόν, οὔ τοι δέδοται πολεμήια ἔργα,

ἀλλὰ σύ γ’ ἱμερόεντα μετέρχεο ἔργα γάμοιο

καὶ τὸ

Ζεὺς γάρ τοι νεμεσᾷ, ὅτ’ ἀμείνονι φωτὶ μάχοιο

οὐδὲν διαφέρει τοῦ “γνῶθι σαυτόν,” ἀλλὰ τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχει διάνοιαν ἐκείνῳ· τὸ δὲ

νήπιοι, οὐδ’ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντὸς

καὶ τὸ

ἡ δὲ κακὴ βουλὴ τῷ βουλεύσαντι κακίστη

ταὐτόν ἐστι τοῖς Πλάτωνος ἐν Γοργίᾳ καὶ Πολιτείᾳ [b] δόγμασι περὶ τοῦ “τὸ ἀδικεῖν κάκιον εἶναι τοῦ ἀδικεῖσθαι” καὶ τοῦ κακῶς πάσχειν τὸ ποιεῖν κακῶς βλαβερώτερον. ἐπιρρητέον δὲ καὶ τῷ τοῦ Αἰσχύλου

θάρσει· πόνου γὰρ ἄκρον οὐκ ἔχει χρόνον

ὅτι τοῦτ’ ἐστὶ τὸ παρ’ Ἐπικούρου θρυλούμενον ἀεὶ καὶ θαυμαζόμενον, ὡς “οἱ μεγάλοι πόνοι συντόμως ἐξάγουσιν, οἱ δὲ χρόνιοι μέγεθος οὐκ ἔχουσιν.” ὧν τὸ μὲν εἴρηκεν ὁ Αἰσχύλος ἐναργῶς, τὸ δὲ τῷ εἰρημένῳ παρακείμενόν ἐστιν· εἰ γὰρ ὁ μέγας καὶ σύντονος οὐ παραμένει πόνος, οὐκ ἔστι μέγας ὁ παραμένων οὐδὲ δυσκαρτέρητος. τὰ δὲ τοῦ Θέσπιδος ταυτί

ὁρᾷς ὅτι Ζεὺς τῷδε πρωτεύει θεῶν,

οὐ ψεῦδος οὐδὲ κόμπον οὐ μῶρον γέλων

[c] ἀσκῶν· τὸ δ’ ἡδὺ μοῦνος οὐκ ἐπίσταται

τί διαφέρει τοῦ “πόρρω γὰρ ἡδονῆς καὶ λύπης ἵδρυται τὸ θεῖον,” ὡς Πλάτων ἔλεγε; τὸ δὲ

φάσω μέγιστον

κῦδος ἔχειν ἀρετάν· πλοῦ τος δὲ καὶ δειλοῖσιν ἀνθρώπων ὁμιλεῖ

λεγόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ Βακχυλίδου καὶ πάλιν ὑπὸ τοῦ Εὐριπίδου παραπλησίως

ἐγὼ δ’

οὐδὲν πρεσβύτερον νομί ζω τᾶς σωφροσύνας, ἐπεὶ

τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἀεὶ ξύνεστι

καὶ τὸ

τί μάταν πέπασθε, πλούτῳ δ’ ἀρετὰν κατεργά σεσθαι δοκεῖτ’; ἐν ἐσθλοῖς δὲ καθήσεσθ’ ἄν ολβοι

[d] ἆρ’ οὐκ ἀπόδειξίς ἐστιν ὧν οἱ φιλόσοφοι λέγουσι περὶ πλούτου καὶ τῶν ἐκτὸς ἀγαθῶν, ὡς χωρὶς ἀρετῆς ἀνωφελῶν ὄντων καὶ ἀνονήτων τοῖς ἔχουσι;

Τὸ γὰρ οὕτω συνάπτειν καὶ συνοικειοῦν τοῖς δόγμασιν ἐξάγει τὰ ποιήματα τοῦ μύθου καὶ τοῦ προσωπείου, καὶ σπουδὴν περιτίθησιν αὖ τοῖς χρησίμως λεγομένοις· ἔτι δὲ προανοίγει καὶ προκινεῖ τὴν τοῦ νέου ψυχὴν τοῖς ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ λόγοις. ἔρχεται γὰρ οὐκ ἄγευστος αὐτῶν παντάπασιν [e] οὐδ’ ἀνήκοος, οὐδ’ ἀκρίτως ἀνάπλεως ὧν ἤκουε τῆς μητρὸς ἀεὶ καὶ τίτθης καὶ νὴ Δία τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ, τοὺς πλουσίους εὐδαιμονιζόντων καὶ σεβομένων, φριττόντων δὲ τὸν θάνατον καὶ τὸν πόνον, ἄζηλον δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὸ μηδὲν ἄνευ χρημάτων καὶ δόξης ἀγόντων. οἷς ἀντίφωνα τὰ τῶν φιλοσόφων ἀκούοντας αὐτοὺς τὸ πρῶτον ἔκπληξις ἴσχει καὶ ταραχὴ καὶ θάμβος, οὐ προσιεμένους οὐδ’ ὑπομένοντας, ἂν μὴ καθάπερ ἐκ σκότους πολλοῦ μέλλοντες ἥλιον ὁρᾶν ἐθισθῶσιν οἷον ἐν νόθῳ φωτὶ κεκραμένης μύθοις ἀληθείας αὐγὴν ἔχοντι μαλακὴν ἀλύπως διαβλέπειν τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ μὴ φεύγειν. προακηκοότες γὰρ ἐν [f] τοῖς ποιήμασι καὶ προανεγνωκότες

τὸν φύντα θρηνεῖν εἰς ὅσ’ ἔρχεται κακά,

τὸν δ’ αὖ θανόντα καὶ πόνων πεπαυμένον

χαίροντας εὐφημοῦντας ἐκπέμπειν δόμων

καὶ

ἐπεὶ τί δεῖ βροτοῖσι πλὴν δυεῖν μόνον,

Δήμητρος ἀκτῆς πώματός θ’ ὑδρηχόου;

καὶ

[37] [a] ἰὼ τυραννὶ βαρβάρων ἀνδρῶν φίλη

καὶ

ἡ βροτῶν τ’ εὐπραξία

τῶν τἀλάχιστα γίγνεται λυπουμένων

ἧττον ταράττονται καὶ δυσκολαίνουσι παρὰ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ἀκούοντες ὡς “ὁ θάνατος οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς” καὶ “ὁ τῆς φύσεως πλοῦτος ὥρισται” καὶ “τὸ εὔδαιμον καὶ μακάριον οὐ χρημάτων πλῆθος οὐδὲ πραγμάτων ὄγκος οὐδ’ ἀρχαί τινες ἔχουσιν οὐδὲ δυνάμεις, ἀλλ’ ἀλυπία καὶ πραότης παθῶν καὶ διάθεσις ψυχῆς τὸ κατὰ φύσιν ὁρίζουσα.”

[b] Διὸ καὶ τούτων ἕνεκα καὶ τῶν προειρημένων ἁπάντων ἀγαθῆς δεῖ τῷ νέῳ κυβερνήσεως περὶ τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν, ἵνα μὴ προδιαβληθεὶς ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον προπαιδευθεὶς εὐμενὴς καὶ φίλος καὶ οἰκεῖος ὑπὸ ποιητικῆς ἐπὶ φιλοσοφίαν προπέμπηται.

De recta ratione audiendi

[37] Τὴν γενομένην μοι σχολὴν περὶ τοῦ ἀκούειν, [c] ὦ Νίκανδρε, ἀπέσταλκά σοι γράψας, ὅπως εἰδῇς τοῦ πείθοντος ὀρθῶς ἀκούειν, ὅτε τῶν προσταττόντων ἀπήλλαξαι τὸ ἀνδρεῖον ἀνειληφὼς ἱμάτιον. ἀναρχία μὲν γάρ, ἣν ἔνιοι τῶν νέων ἐλευθερίαν [d] ἀπαιδευσίᾳ νομίζουσι, χαλεπωτέρους ἐκείνων τῶν ἐν παισὶ διδασκάλων καὶ παιδαγωγῶν δεσπότας ἐφίστησι τὰς ἐπιθυμίας ὥσπερ ἐκ δεσμῶν λυθείσας· καὶ καθάπερ Ἡρόδοτός φησιν ἅμα τῷ χιτῶνι συνεκδύεσθαι τὴν αἰδῶ τὰς γυναῖκας, οὕτως ἔνιοι τῶν νέων ἅμα τῷ τὸ παιδικὸν ἱμάτιον ἀποθέσθαι συναποθέμενοι τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι καὶ φοβεῖσθαι καὶ λύσαντες τὴν κατασχηματίζουσαν αὐτοὺς περιβολὴν εὐθὺς ἐμπίπλανται τῆς ἀναγωγίας. σὺ δὲ πολλάκις ἀκηκοὼς ὅτι ταὐτόν ἐστι τὸ ἕπεσθαι θεῷ καὶ τὸ πείθεσθαι λόγῳ, νόμιζε τὴν εἰς ἄνδρας ἐκ παίδων ἀγωγὴν οὐκ ἀρχῆς εἶναι τοῖς εὖ φρονοῦσιν [e] ἀποβολήν, ἀλλὰ μεταβολὴν ἄρχοντος, ἀντὶ μισθωτοῦ τινος ἢ ἀργυρωνήτου θεῖον ἡγεμόνα τοῦ βίου λαμβάνουσι τὸν λόγον, ᾧ τοὺς ἑπομένους ἄξιόν ἐστι μόνους ἐλευθέρους νομίζειν. μόνοι γὰρ ἃ δεῖ βούλεσθαι μαθόντες, ὡς βούλονται ζῶσι· ταῖς δ’ ἀπαιδεύτοις καὶ παραλόγοις ὁρμαῖς καὶ πράξεσιν ἀγεννὲς ἔνεστί τι καὶ μικρὸν ἐν πολλῷ τῷ μετανοοῦντι τὸ ἑκούσιον.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὥσπερ τῶν ἐγγραφομένων εἰς τὰς πολιτείας οἱ μὲν ἀλλοδαποὶ καὶ ξένοι κομιδῇ πολλὰ [f] μέμφονται καὶ δυσκολαίνουσι τῶν γιγνομένων, οἱ δ’ ἐκ μετοίκων σύντροφοι καὶ συνήθεις τῶν νόμων ὄντες οὐ χαλεπῶς προσδέχονται τὰ ἐπιβάλλοντα καὶ στέργουσιν, οὕτω σε δεῖ πολὺν χρόνον ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ παρατρεφόμενον καὶ πᾶν μάθημα καὶ ἄκουσμα παιδικὸν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἐθισθέντα προσφέρεσθαι λόγῳ φιλοσόφῳ μεμιγμένον, εὐμενῆ καὶ οἰκεῖον ἥκειν εἰς φιλοσοφίαν, ἣ μόνη τὸν ἀνδρεῖον καὶ τέλειον ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐκ λόγου τοῖς νέοις περιτίθησι κόσμον.

Οὐκ ἂν ἀηδῶς δ’ οἶμαί σε προακοῦσαι περὶ τῆς [38] [a] ἀκουστικῆς αἰσθήσεως, ἣν ὁ Θεόφραστος παθητικωτάτην εἶναί φησι πασῶν. οὔτε γὰρ ὁρατὸν οὐδὲν οὔτε γευστὸν οὔθ’ ἁπτὸν ἐκστάσεις ἐπιφέρει καὶ ταραχὰς καὶ πτοίας τηλικαύτας ἡλίκαι καταλαμβάνουσι τὴν ψυχὴν κτύπων τινῶν καὶ πατάγων καὶ ἤχων τῇ ἀκοῇ προσπεσόντων. ἔστι δὲ λογικωτέρα μᾶλλον ἢ παθητικωτέρα. τῇ μὲν γὰρ κακίᾳ πολλὰ χωρία καὶ μέρη τοῦ σώματος παρέχει δι’ αὐτῶν ἐνδῦσαν ἅψασθαι τῆς ψυχῆς, τῇ δ’ ἀρετῇ [b] μία λαβὴ τὰ ὦτα τῶν νέων ἐστίν, ἂν ᾖ καθαρὰ καὶ ἄθρυπτα κολακείᾳ καὶ λόγοις ἄθικτα φαύλοις ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς φυλάττηται. διὸ καὶ Ξενοκράτης τοῖς παισὶ μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ἀθληταῖς ἐκέλευε περιάπτειν ἀμφωτίδας, ὡς ἐκείνων μὲν τὰ ὦτα ταῖς πληγαῖς, τούτων δὲ τοῖς λόγοις τὰ ἤθη διαστρεφομένων, οὐκ ἀνηκοΐαν οὐδὲ κωφότητα προμνώμενος, ἀλλὰ τῶν λόγων τοὺς φαύλους φυλάττεσθαι παραινῶν, πρὶν ἑτέρους χρηστούς, ὥσπερ φύλακας ἐντραφέντας ὑπὸ φιλοσοφίας τῷ ἤθει, τὴν μάλιστα κινουμένην αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀναπειθομένην χώραν κατασχεῖν. καὶ Βίας ὁ παλαιὸς Ἀμάσιδι, κελευσθεὶς τὸ χρηστότατον ὁμοῦ καὶ φαυλότατον ἐκπέμψαι κρέας τοῦ ἱερείου, τὴν γλῶτταν ἐξελὼν ἀπέπεμψεν, ὡς καὶ βλάβας καὶ ὠφελείας τοῦ λέγειν ἔχοντος μεγίστας.

[c] οἵ τε πολλοὶ τὰ μικρὰ παιδία καταφιλοῦντες αὐτοί τε τῶν ὤτων ἅπτονται κἀκεῖνα τοῦτο ποιεῖν κελεύουσιν, αἰνιττόμενοι μετὰ παιδιᾶς ὅτι δεῖ φιλεῖν μάλιστα τοὺς διὰ τῶν ὤτων ὠφελοῦντας. ἐπεὶ ὅτι γε πάσης ἀκροάσεως ἀπειργόμενος ὁ νέος καὶ λόγου μηδενὸς γευόμενος οὐ μόνον ἄκαρπος ὅλως καὶ ἀβλαστὴς διαμένει πρὸς ἀρετήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ διαστρέφοιτ’ ἂν πρὸς κακίαν, ὥσπερ ἐκ χώρας ἀκινήτου καὶ ἀργῆς ἄγρια πολλὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀναδιδούς, δῆλόν ἐστι. τὰς γὰρ ἐφ’ ἡδονὴν ὁρμὰς [d] καὶ πρὸς πόνον ὑποψίας (οὐ θυραίους οὐδ’ ὑπὸ λόγων ἐπεισάκτους, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ αὐτόχθονας οὔσας μυρίων παθῶν καὶ νοσημάτων πηγάς) ἂν ἐᾷ τις ἀφέτους ᾗ πεφύκασι χωρεῖν καὶ μὴ λόγοις χρηστοῖς ἀφαιρῶν ἢ παρατρέπων καταρτύῃ τὴν φύσιν, οὐκ ἔστιν ὃ τῶν θηρίων οὐκ ἂν ἡμερώτερον ἀνθρώπου φανείη.

Διὸ δὴ μεγάλην μὲν ὠφέλειαν οὐκ ἐλάττω δὲ κίνδυνον τοῖς νέοις τοῦ ἀκούειν ἔχοντος, οἶμαι καλῶς ἔχειν καὶ πρὸς αὑτὸν ἀεὶ καὶ πρὸς ἕτερον [e] διαλέγεσθαι περὶ τοῦ ἀκούειν. ἐπεὶ καὶ τούτῳ κακῶς τοὺς πλείστους χρωμένους ὁρῶμεν, οἳ λέγειν ἀσκοῦσι πρὶν ἀκούειν ἐθισθῆναι· καὶ λόγων μὲν οἴονται μάθησιν εἶναι καὶ μελέτην, ἀκροάσει δὲ καὶ τοὺς ὁπωσοῦν χρωμένους ὠφελεῖσθαι. καίτοι τοῖς μὲν σφαιρίζουσιν ἅμα τοῦ βαλεῖν καὶ τοῦ λαβεῖν τὴν σφαῖραν ἡ μάθησις· ἐν δὲ τῇ τοῦ λόγου χρείᾳ τὸ δέξασθαι καλῶς τοῦ προέσθαι πρότερόν ἐστιν, ὥσπερ τοῦ τεκεῖν τὸ συλλαβεῖν καὶ κατασχεῖν τι τῶν γονίμων. ταῖς μὲν οὖν ὄρνισι τὰς ὑπηνεμίους λοχείας καὶ ὠδῖνας ἀτελῶν τινων καὶ ἀψύχων ὑπολειμμάτων ὀχείας λέγουσιν εἶναι· τῶν δ’ ἀκούειν μὴ δυναμένων νέων μηδ’ [f] ὠφελεῖσθαι δι’ ἀκοῆς ἐθισθέντων ὑπηνέμιος ὄντως ὁ λόγος ἐκπίπτων

ἀκλειὴς ἀίδηλος ὑπαὶ νεφέεσσι κεδάσθη.

τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἀγγεῖα πρὸς τὴν ὑποδοχὴν τῶν ἐγχεομένων ἐπικλίνουσι καὶ συνεπιστρέφουσιν, ἵν’ ἔγχυσις ἀληθῶς, μὴ ἔκχυσις γένηται, αὑτοὺς δὲ τῷ λέγοντι παρέχειν καὶ συναρμόττειν τῇ προσοχῇ τὴν ἀκρόασιν, ὡς μηδὲν ἐκφύγῃ τῶν χρησίμως λεγομένων, οὐ μανθάνουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὃ πάντων καταγελαστότατόν [39] [a] ἐστιν, ἂν μέν τινι προστύχωσι διηγουμένῳ δεῖπνον ἢ πομπὴν ἢ ὄνειρον ἢ λοιδορίαν γεγενημένην αὐτῷ πρὸς ἄλλον, ἀκροῶνται σιωπῇ καὶ προσλιπαροῦσιν· ἂν δέ τις αὐτοὺς ἐπισπασάμενος διδάσκῃ τι τῶν χρησίμων ἢ παραινῇ τῶν δεόντων ἢ νουθετῇ πλημμελοῦντας ἢ καταπραΰνῃ χαλεπαίνοντας, οὐχ ὑπομένουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἂν μὲν δύνωνται, περιγενέσθαι φιλοτιμούμενοι διαμάχονται πρὸς τὸν λόγον· εἰ δὲ μή, φεύγοντες ἀπίασι πρὸς ἑτέρους λόγους καὶ φλυάρους, ὡς ἀγγεῖα φαῦλα καὶ σαθρὰ τὰ ὦτα πάντων μᾶλλον ἢ τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἐμπιπλάντες.

[b] τοὺς μὲν οὖν ἵππους οἱ καλῶς τρέφοντες εὐστόμους τῷ χαλινῷ, τοὺς δὲ παῖδας εὐηκόους τῷ λόγῳ παρέχουσι, πολλὰ μὲν ἀκούειν μὴ πολλὰ δὲ λέγειν διδασκομένους. καὶ γὰρ τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ὁ Σπίνθαρος ἐπαινῶν ἔφη μήτε πλείονα γιγνώσκοντι μήτ’ ἐλάττονα φθεγγομένῳ ῥᾳδίως ἐντυχεῖν ἑτέρῳ. καὶ τὴν φύσιν ἡμῶν ἑκάστῳ λέγουσι δύο μὲν ὦτα δοῦναι, μίαν δὲ γλῶτταν, ὡς ἐλάττονα λέγειν ἢ ἀκούειν ὀφείλοντι.

Πανταχοῦ μὲν οὖν τῷ νέῳ κόσμος ἀσφαλής ἐστιν ἡ σιωπή, μάλιστα δ’ ὅταν ἀκούων ἑτέρου μὴ [c] συνταράττηται μηδ’ ἐξυλακτῇ πρὸς ἕκαστον, ἀλλὰ κἂν ὁ λόγος ᾖ μὴ λίαν ἀρεστός, ἀνέχηται καὶ περιμένῃ παύσασθαι τὸν διαλεγόμενον, καὶ παυσαμένου μὴ εὐθέως ἐπιβάλλῃ τὴν ἀντίρρησιν, ἀλλ’ ὡς Αἰσχίνης φησί, διαλείπῃ χρόνον, εἴτε προσθεῖναί τι βούλοιτο τοῖς λελεγμένοις ὁ εἰρηκώς, εἴτε μεταθέσθαι καὶ ἀφελεῖν. οἱ δ’ εὐθὺς ἀντικόπτοντες, οὔτ’ ἀκούοντες οὔτ’ ἀκουόμενοι λέγοντες δὲ πρὸς λέγοντας, ἀσχημονοῦσιν· ὁ δ’ ἐγκρατῶς καὶ μετ’ αἰδοῦς ἀκούειν ἐθισθεὶς τὸν μὲν ὠφέλιμον λόγον ἐδέξατο καὶ κατέσχε, τὸν δ’ ἄχρηστον ἢ ψευδῆ [d] μᾶλλον διεῖδε καὶ κατεφώρασε, φιλαλήθης φανείς, οὐ φιλόνεικος οὐδὲ προπετὴς καὶ δύσερις. ὅθεν οὐ κακῶς ἔνιοι λέγουσιν ὅτι δεῖ τῶν νέων μᾶλλον ἐκπνευματοῦν τὸ οἴημα καὶ τὸν τῦφον ἢ τῶν ἀσκῶν τὸν ἀέρα τοὺς ἐγχέαι τι βουλομένους χρήσιμον· εἰ δὲ μή, γέμοντες ὄγκου καὶ φυσήματος οὐ προσδέχονται.

Φθόνος τοίνυν μετὰ βασκανίας καὶ δυσμενείας οὐδενὶ μὲν ἔργῳ παρὼν ἀγαθόν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσιν ἐμπόδιος τοῖς καλοῖς, κάκιστος δ’ ἀκροωμένῳ πάρεδρος καὶ σύμβουλος, ἀνιαρὰ καὶ ἀηδῆ καὶ δυσπρόσδεκτα ποιῶν τὰ ὠφέλιμα διὰ τὸ πᾶσι μᾶλλον ἥδεσθαι τοὺς [e] φθονοῦντας ἢ τοῖς εὖ λεγομένοις. καίτοι πλοῦτος μὲν ὅντινα δάκνει καὶ δόξα καὶ κάλλος, ἑτέροις ὑπάρχοντα, φθονερός ἐστι μόνον· ἄχθεται γὰρ ἄλλων εὐτυχούντων· ὁ δὲ λόγῳ καλῶς λεγομένῳ δυσχεραίνων ὑπὸ τῶν ἰδίων ἀγαθῶν ἀνιᾶται. ὡς γὰρ τὸ φῶς τῶν βλεπόντων, καὶ ὁ λόγος τῶν ἀκουόντων ἀγαθόν ἐστιν, ἂν βούλωνται δέχεσθαι.

Τὸν μὲν οὖν ἐφ’ ἑτέροις φθόνον ἄλλαι τινὲς ἀπαίδευτοι καὶ κακαὶ διαθέσεις ἐμποιοῦσιν, ὁ δὲ πρὸς τοὺς λέγοντας ἐκ φιλοδοξίας ἀκαίρου καὶ φιλοτιμίας ἀδίκου γεννώμενος οὐδὲ προσέχειν ἐᾷ τοῖς λεγομένοις [f] τὸν οὕτω διακείμενον, ἀλλὰ θορυβεῖ καὶ περισπᾷ τὴν διάνοιαν, ἅμα μὲν τὴν ἑαυτῆς ἕξιν ἐπισκοποῦσαν εἰ λείπεται τῆς τοῦ λέγοντος, ἅμα δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐπιβλέπουσαν εἰ ἄγανται καὶ θαυμάζουσιν, ἐκπληττομένην τε ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπαίνων καὶ ἀγριαίνουσαν πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ἂν ἀποδέχωνται τὸν λέγοντα, τῶν δὲ λόγων τοὺς μὲν εἰρημένους ἐῶσαν καὶ προϊεμένην, ὅτι λυποῦσι μνημονευόμενοι, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς λείποντας ταραττομένην καὶ τρέμουσαν μὴ τῶν εἰρημένων βελτίονες γένωνται, σπεύδουσαν δὲ τάχιστα παύσασθαι τοὺς λέγοντας ὅταν κάλλιστα λέγωσι, [40] [a] λυθείσης δὲ τῆς ἀκροάσεως πρὸς οὐδενὶ τῶν εἰρημένων οὖσαν ἀλλὰ τὰς φωνὰς καὶ διαθέσεις τῶν παρόντων ἐπιψηφίζουσαν, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἐπαινοῦντας ὥσπερ ἐμμανῆ φεύγουσαν καὶ ἀποπηδῶσαν, προστρέχουσαν δὲ καὶ συναγελαζομένην τοῖς ψέγουσι τὰ εἰρημένα καὶ διαστρέφουσιν· ἂν δὲ μηδὲν ᾖ διαστρέψαι, παραβάλλουσαν ἑτέρους τινὰς ὡς ἄμεινον εἰρηκότας εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ δυνατώτερον, ἕως διαφθείρασα καὶ λυμηναμένη τὴν ἀκρόασιν ἀχρεῖον ἑαυτῇ καὶ ἀνόνητον ἀπεργάσηται.

[b] Διὸ δεῖ τῇ φιληκοΐᾳ πρὸς τὴν φιλοδοξίαν σπεισάμενον ἀκροᾶσθαι τοῦ λέγοντος ἵλεων καὶ πρᾶον, ὥσπερ ἐφ’ ἑστίασιν ἱερὰν καὶ θυσίας ἀπαρχὴν παρειλημμένον, ἐπαινοῦντα μὲν ἐν οἷς ἐπιτυγχάνει τὴν δύναμιν, ἀγαπῶντα δὲ τὴν προθυμίαν αὐτὴν τοῦ φέροντος εἰς μέσον ἃ γιγνώσκει καὶ πείθοντος ἑτέρους δι’ ὧν αὐτὸς πέπεισται. τοῖς μὲν οὖν κατορθουμένοις ἐπιλογιστέον ὡς οὐκ ἀπὸ τύχης οὐδ’ αὐτομάτως ἀλλ’ ἐπιμελείᾳ καὶ πόνῳ καὶ μαθήσει κατορθοῦνται, καὶ μιμητέον γε ταῦτα θαυμάζοντάς γε δὴ καὶ ζηλοῦντας· τοῖς δ’ ἁμαρτανομένοις ἐφιστάναι χρὴ τὴν διάνοιαν, ὑφ’ ὧν αἰτιῶν καὶ ὅθεν [c] ἡ παρατροπὴ γέγονεν. ὡς γὰρ ὁ Ξενοφῶν φησι τοὺς οἰκονομικοὺς καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν φίλων ὀνίνασθαι καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν, οὕτω τοὺς ἐγρηγορότας καὶ προσέχοντας οὐ μόνον κατορθοῦντες ἀλλὰ καὶ διαμαρτάνοντες ὠφελοῦσιν οἱ λέγοντες· καὶ γὰρ διανοήματος εὐτέλεια καὶ ῥήματος κενότης καὶ σχῆμα φορτικὸν καὶ πτόησις μετὰ χαρᾶς ἀπειροκάλου πρὸς ἔπαινον καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα μᾶλλον ἀκροωμένοις ἐφ’ ἑτέρων ἢ λέγουσιν ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν καταφαίνεται. διὸ δεῖ μεταφέρειν τὴν εὔθυναν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ λέγοντος, ἀνασκοποῦντας εἴ τι τοιοῦτο λανθάνομεν [d] ἁμαρτάνοντες. ῥᾷστον γάρ ἐστι τῶν ὄντων τὸ μέμψασθαι τὸν πλησίον, ἀχρήστως τε καὶ κενῶς γιγνόμενον, ἂν μὴ πρός τινα διόρθωσιν ἢ φυλακὴν ἀναφέρηται τῶν ὁμοίων. καὶ τὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος οὐκ ὀκνητέον ἀεὶ πρὸς αὑτὸν ἐπὶ τῶν ἁμαρτανόντων ἀναφθέγγεσθαι, “μή που ἄρ’ ἐγὼ τοιοῦτος;” ὡς γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ὄμμασι τῶν πλησίον ἐλλάμποντα τὰ ἑαυτῶν ὁρῶμεν, οὕτως ἐπὶ τῶν λόγων δεῖ τοὺς ἑαυτῶν ἐνεικονίζεσθαι τοῖς ἑτέρων, ἵνα μήτ’ ἄγαν θρασέως καταφρονῶμεν ἄλλων, αὑτοῖς τε προσέχωμεν [e] ἐν τῷ λέγειν ἐπιμελέστερον. χρήσιμον δὲ πρὸς τοῦτο καὶ τὸ τῆς παραβολῆς, ὅταν γενόμενοι καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς ἀκροάσεως καὶ λαβόντες τι τῶν μὴ καλῶς ἢ μὴ ἱκανῶς εἰρῆσθαι δοκούντων ἐπιχειρῶμεν εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ προάγωμεν αὑτοὺς τὰ μὲν ὥσπερ ἀναπληροῦν, τὰ δ’ ἐπανορθοῦσθαι, τὰ δ’ ἑτέρως φράζειν, τὰ δ’ ὅλως ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς εἰσφέρειν πειρώμενοι πρὸς τὴν ὑπόθεσιν. ὃ καὶ Πλάτων ἐποίησε πρὸς τὸν Λυσίου λόγον. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀντειπεῖν οὐ χαλεπὸν ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ ῥᾴδιον εἰρημένῳ λόγῳ· τὸ δ’ ἕτερον ἀνταναστῆσαι βελτίονα παντάπασιν ἐργῶδες. ὥσπερ ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος ἀκούσας ὅτι Φίλιππος Ὄλυνθον κατέσκαψεν “ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀναστῆσαί γε τοιαύτην” ἔφη “πόλιν ἐκεῖνος ἂν [f] δυνηθείη.” ὅταν οὖν ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι πρὸς τὴν τοιαύτην ὑπόθεσιν μὴ πολὺ φαινώμεθα τῶν εἰρηκότων διαφέροντες, πολὺ τοῦ καταφρονεῖν ἀφαιροῦμεν, καὶ τάχιστα κολούεται τὸ αὔθαδες ἡμῶν καὶ φίλαυτον ἐν ταῖς τοιαύταις ἐλεγχόμενον ἀντιπαραβολαῖς.

Τῷ τοίνυν καταφρονεῖν τὸ θαυμάζειν ἀντικείμενον εὐγνωμονεστέρας μέν ἐστι δήπου καὶ ἡμερωτέρας φύσεως, δεῖταί γε μὴν οὐδ’ αὐτὸ μικρᾶς εὐλαβείας, τάχα δὲ καὶ μείζονος· οἱ μὲν γὰρ καταφρονητικοὶ [41] [a] καὶ θρασεῖς ἧττον ὠφελοῦνται ὑπὸ τῶν λεγόντων, οἱ δὲ θαυμαστικοὶ καὶ ἄκακοι μᾶλλον βλάπτονται, καὶ τὸν Ἡράκλειτον οὐκ ἐλέγχουσιν εἰπόντα “βλὰξ ἄνθρωπος ἐπὶ παντὶ λόγῳ ἐπτοῆσθαι φιλεῖ.” δεῖ δὲ τὸν μὲν ἔπαινον ἀφελῶς τοῖς λέγουσι τὴν δὲ πίστιν εὐλαβῶς προΐεσθαι τοῖς λόγοις, καὶ τῆς μὲν λέξεως καὶ προφορᾶς τῶν ἀγωνιζομένων εὐμενῆ καὶ ἁπλοῦν εἶναι θεατήν, τῆς δὲ χρείας καὶ τῆς ἀληθείας τῶν λεγομένων ἀκριβῆ καὶ πικρὸν [b] ἐξεταστήν, ἵν’ οἱ μὲν λέγοντες μὴ μισῶσιν, οἱ δὲ λόγοι μὴ βλάπτωσιν· ὡς πολλὰ ψευδῆ καὶ πονηρὰ δόγματα λανθάνομεν εὐνοίᾳ καὶ πίστει τῇ πρὸς τοὺς λέγοντας ἐνδεχόμενοι. οἱ μὲν οὖν Λακεδαιμονίων ἄρχοντες ἀνδρὸς οὐκ εὖ βεβιωκότος γνώμην δοκιμάσαντες ἑτέρῳ προσέταξαν εἰπεῖν εὐδοκιμοῦντι περὶ τὸν βίον καὶ τὸ ἦθος, ὀρθῶς πάνυ καὶ πολιτικῶς ἐθίζοντες τὸν δῆμον ὑπὸ τοῦ τρόπου μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ λόγου τῶν συμβουλευόντων ἄγεσθαι. τοὺς δ’ ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ λόγους ἀφαιροῦντα χρὴ τὴν τοῦ λέγοντος δόξαν αὐτοὺς ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν ἐξετάζειν. ὡς γὰρ πολέμου, καὶ ἀκροάσεως πολλὰ τὰ κενά ἐστι. καὶ γὰρ πολιὰ τοῦ λέγοντος καὶ πλάσμα καὶ [c] ὀφρῦς καὶ περιαυτολογία, μάλιστα δ’ αἱ κραυγαὶ καὶ οἱ θόρυβοι καὶ τὰ πηδήματα τῶν παρόντων συνεκπλήττει τὸν ἄπειρον ἀκροατὴν καὶ νέον ὥσπερ ὑπὸ ῥεύματος παραφερόμενον. ἔχει δέ τι καὶ ἡ λέξις ἀπατηλόν, ὅταν ἡδεῖα καὶ πολλὴ καὶ μετ’ ὄγκου τινὸς καὶ κατασκευῆς ἐπιφέρηται τοῖς πράγμασιν. ὡς γὰρ τῶν ὑπ’ αὐλοῖς ᾀδόντων αἱ πολλαὶ τοὺς ἀκούοντας ἁμαρτίαι διαφεύγουσιν, οὕτω περιττὴ καὶ σοβαρὰ λέξις ἀντιλάμπει τῷ ἀκροατῇ πρὸς τὸ [d] δηλούμενον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Μελάνθιος, ὡς ἔοικε, περὶ τῆς Διογένους τραγῳδίας ἐρωτηθεὶς οὐκ ἔφη κατιδεῖν αὐτὴν ὑπὸ τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐπιπροσθουμένην· αἱ δὲ τῶν πολλῶν διαλέξεις καὶ μελέται σοφιστῶν οὐ μόνον τοῖς ὀνόμασι παραπετάσμασι χρῶνται τῶν διανοημάτων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν φωνὴν ἐμμελείαις τισὶ καὶ μαλακότησι καὶ παρισώσεσιν ἐφηδύνοντες ἐκβακχεύουσι καὶ παραφέρουσι τοὺς ἀκροωμένους, κενὴν ἡδονὴν διδόντες καὶ κενοτέραν δόξαν ἀντιλαμβάνοντες. ὥστ’ αὐτοῖς συμβαίνει τὸ ὑπὸ Διονυσίου ῥηθέν. ἐκεῖνος γάρ, ὡς ἔοικεν, εὐδοκιμοῦντι [e] κιθαρῳδῷ παρὰ τὴν θέαν ἐπαγγειλάμενος δωρεάς τινας μεγάλας ὕστερον οὐδὲν ἔδωκεν ὡς ἀποδεδωκὼς τὴν χάριν· “ὅσον γάρ,” ἔφη, “χρόνον εὔφραινες ᾄδων, τοσοῦτον ἔχαιρες ἐλπίζων.” τοῦτον δὲ τὸν ἔρανον αἱ τοιαῦται πληροῦσιν ἀκροάσεις τοῖς λέγουσι· θαυμάζονται γὰρ ἐφ’ ὅσον τέρπουσιν, εἶθ’ ἅμα τῆς ἀκοῆς ἐξερρύη τὸ ἡδὺ κἀκείνους προλέλοιπεν ἡ δόξα, καὶ μάτην τοῖς μὲν ὁ χρόνος τοῖς δὲ καὶ ὁ βίος ἀνάλωται.

Διὸ δεῖ τὸ πολὺ καὶ κενὸν ἀφαιροῦντα τῆς [f] λέξεως αὐτὸν διώκειν τὸν καρπὸν καὶ μιμεῖσθαι μὴ τὰς στεφανηπλόκους ἀλλὰ τὰς μελίττας. αἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐπιοῦσαι τὰ ἀνθηρὰ καὶ εὐώδη τῶν φύλλων συνείρουσι καὶ διαπλέκουσιν ἡδὺ μὲν ἐφήμερον δὲ καὶ ἄκαρπον ἔργον· αἱ δὲ πολλάκις ἴων καὶ ῥόδων καὶ ὑακίνθων διαπετόμεναι λειμῶνας ἐπὶ τὸν τραχύτατον καὶ δριμύτατον θύμον καταίρουσι καὶ τούτῳ προσκάθηνται

ξανθὸν μέλι μηδόμεναι,

καὶ λαβοῦσαί τι τῶν χρησίμων ἀποπέτονται πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἔργον. οὕτως οὖν δεῖ τὸν φιλότεχνον καὶ καθαρὸν ἀκροατὴν τὰ μὲν ἀνθηρὰ καὶ τρυφερὰ τῶν [42] [a] ὀνομάτων καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων τὰ δραματικὰ καὶ πανηγυρικὰ κηφήνων βοτάνην σοφιστιώντων ἡγούμενον ἐᾶν, αὐτὸν δὲ τῇ προσοχῇ καταδυόμενον εἰς τὸν νοῦν τοῦ λόγου καὶ τὴν διάθεσιν τοῦ λέγοντος ἕλκειν ἀπ’ αὐτῆς τὸ χρήσιμον καὶ ὠφέλιμον, μεμνημένον ὡς οὐκ εἰς θέατρον οὐδ’ ᾠδεῖον ἀλλ’ εἰς σχολὴν καὶ διδασκαλεῖον ἀφῖκται, τῷ λόγῳ τὸν βίον ἐπανορθωσόμενος. ὅθεν δὴ καὶ ποιητέον ἐπίσκεψιν καὶ κρίσιν τῆς ἀκροάσεως ἐξ αὑτοῦ καὶ τῆς περὶ αὑτὸν διαθέσεως, ἀναλογιζόμενον εἴ τι τῶν παθῶν γέγονε μαλακώτερον, εἴ τι τῶν ἀνιαρῶν κουφότερον, [b] εἰ θάρσος εἰ φρόνημα βέβαιον, εἰ πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ τὸ καλὸν ἐνθουσιασμός. οὐ γὰρ ἐκ κουρείου μὲν ἀναστάντα δεῖ τῷ κατόπτρῳ παραστῆναι καὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἅψασθαι, τὴν περικοπὴν τῶν τριχῶν ἐπισκοποῦντα καὶ τῆς κουρᾶς τὴν διαφοράν, ἐκ δὲ ἀκροάσεως ἀπιόντα καὶ σχολῆς οὐκ εὐθὺς ἀφορᾶν χρὴ πρὸς ἑαυτόν, καταμανθάνοντα τὴν ψυχὴν εἴ τι τῶν ὀχληρῶν ἀποτεθειμένη καὶ περιττῶν ἐλαφροτέρα γέγονε καὶ ἡδίων. “οὔτε γὰρ βαλανείου,” φησὶν ὁ Ἀρίστων, “οὔτε λόγου μὴ καθαίροντος ὄφελός ἐστιν.”

[c] Ἡδέσθω μὲν οὖν ὑπὸ λόγων ὠφελούμενος ὁ νέος· οὐ δεῖ δὲ τὸ ἡδὺ τῆς ἀκροάσεως ποιεῖσθαι τέλος, οὐδ’ οἴεσθαι δεῖν ἐκ σχολῆς ἀπιέναι φιλοσόφου μινυρίζοντα καὶ γεγανωμένον, οὐδὲ ζητεῖν μυρίζεσθαι δεόμενον ἐμβροχῆς καὶ καταπλάσματος, ἀλλὰ χάριν ἔχειν, ἄν τις ὥσπερ καπνῷ σμῆνος λόγῳ δριμεῖ τὴν διάνοιαν ἀχλύος πολλῆς καὶ ἀμβλύτητος γέμουσαν ἐκκαθήρῃ. καὶ γὰρ εἰ τοῖς λέγουσι προσήκει μὴ παντάπασιν ἡδονὴν ἐχούσης καὶ πιθανότητα λέξεως παραμελεῖν, ἐλάχιστα τούτου φροντιστέον τῷ νέῳ, τό γε πρῶτον. ὕστερον δέ [d] που, καθάπερ οἱ πίνοντες, ὅταν παύσωνται διψῶντες, τότε τὰ τορεύματα τῶν ἐκπωμάτων ὑποθεωροῦσι καὶ στρέφουσιν, οὕτως ἐμπλησθέντι δογμάτων καὶ ἀναπνεύσαντι δοτέον τὴν λέξιν εἴ τι κομψὸν ἔχει καὶ περιττὸν ἐπισκοπεῖν. ὁ δ’ εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς μὴ τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐμφυόμενος ἀλλὰ τὴν λέξιν Ἀττικὴν ἀξιῶν εἶναι καὶ ἰσχνὴν ὅμοιός ἐστι μὴ βουλομένῳ πιεῖν ἀντίδοτον, ἂν μὴ τὸ ἀγγεῖον ἐκ τῆς Ἀττικῆς κωλιάδος ᾖ κεκεραμευμένον, μηδ’ ἱμάτιον περιβαλέσθαι χειμῶνος, εἰ μὴ προβάτων Ἀττικῶν εἴη τὸ ἔριον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τρίβωνι Λυσιακοῦ λόγου λεπτῷ καὶ ψιλῷ καθήμενος [e] ἄπρακτος καὶ ἀκίνητος. ταῦτα γὰρ τὰ νοσήματα πολλὴν μὲν ἐρημίαν νοῦ καὶ φρενῶν ἀγαθῶν, πολλὴν δὲ τερθρείαν καὶ στωμυλίαν ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς πεποίηκε, τῶν μειρακίων οὔτε βίον οὔτε πρᾶξιν οὔτε πολιτείαν φιλοσόφου παραφυλαττόντων ἀνδρός, ἀλλὰ λέξεις καὶ ῥήματα καὶ τὸ καλῶς ἀπαγγέλλειν ἐν ἐπαίνῳ τιθεμένων, τὸ δ’ ἀπαγγελλόμενον εἴτε χρήσιμον εἴτ’ ἄχρηστον εἴτ’ ἀναγκαῖον εἴτε κενόν ἐστι καὶ περιττὸν οὐκ ἐπισταμένων οὐδὲ βουλομένων ἐξετάζειν.

Ἀκολουθεῖ δὲ τούτοις τὸ περὶ τῶν προβλημάτων [f] παράγγελμα. δεῖ γὰρ τὸν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἥκοντα τοῖς παρακειμένοις χρῆσθαι καὶ μηδὲν αἰτεῖν ἄλλο μηδ’ ἐξελέγχειν· ὁ δ’ ἐπὶ λόγων ἀφιγμένος ἑστίασιν, ἂν μὲν ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς, ἀκροάσθω σιωπῇ τοῦ λέγοντος (οἱ γὰρ εἰς ἄλλας ὑποθέσεις ἐξάγοντες καὶ παρεμβάλλοντες ἐρωτήματα καὶ προσδιαποροῦντες, οὐχ ἡδεῖς οὐδ’ εὐσυνάλλακτοι πρὸς ἀκρόασιν ὄντες, ὠφελοῦνται μὲν οὐδέν, τὸν δὲ λέγοντα καὶ τὸν λόγον ὁμοῦ συνταράττουσιν)· ὅταν δὲ τοὺς ἀκούοντας ὁ λέγων ἐρωτᾶν καὶ προβάλλειν κελεύσῃ, χρήσιμόν τι δεῖ καὶ ἀναγκαῖον ἀεὶ προβάλλοντα φαίνεσθαι. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς καταγελᾶται παρὰ τοῖς μνηστῆρσιν

[43] [a] αἰτίζων ἀκόλους, οὐκ ἄορας οὐδὲ λέβητας·

μεγαλοψυχίας γὰρ ἡγοῦνται σημεῖον, ὡς τὸ διδόναι τι τῶν μεγάλων, καὶ τὸ αἰτεῖν. μᾶλλον δ’ ἄν τις ἀκροατοῦ καταγελάσειεν εἰς μικρὰ καὶ γλίσχρα προβλήματα τὸν διαλεγόμενον κινοῦντος, οἷα τερθρευόμενοί τινες τῶν νέων καὶ παρεπιδεικνύμενοι διαλεκτικὴν ἢ μαθηματικὴν ἕξιν εἰώθασι προβάλλειν περὶ τῆς τῶν ἀορίστων τομῆς, καὶ τίς ἡ [b] κατὰ πλευρὰν ἢ κατὰ διάμετρον κίνησις. πρὸς οὓς ἔστιν εἰπεῖν τὸ ὑπὸ Φιλοτίμου πρὸς τὸν ἔμπυον καὶ φθισιῶντα ῥηθέν. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐλάλησεν αὐτῷ φαρμάκιον αἰτῶν πρὸς παρωνυχίαν, αἰσθόμενος ἀπὸ τῆς χρόας καὶ τῆς ἀναπνοῆς τὴν διάθεσιν “οὐκ ἔστι σοι,” φησίν, “ὦ βέλτιστε, περὶ παρωνυχίας ὁ λόγος.” οὐδὲ σοὶ τοίνυν, ὦ νεανία, περὶ τοιούτων ζητημάτων ὥρα σκοπεῖν, ἀλλὰ πῶς οἰήματος καὶ ἀλαζονείας ἐρώτων τε καὶ φλυαρίας ἀπολυθεὶς εἰς βίον ἄτυφον καὶ ὑγιαίνοντα καταστήσεις σαυτόν.

Εὖ μάλα δὲ χρὴ καὶ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ λέγοντος ἐμπειρίαν ἢ φυσικὴν δύναμιν ἡρμοσμένον, ἐν οἷς αὐτὸς ἑαυτοῦ κράτιστός ἐστι, ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ἐρωτήσεις, [c] καὶ μὴ παραβιάζεσθαι τὸν μὲν ἠθικώτερον φιλοσοφοῦντα φυσικὰς ἐπάγοντα καὶ μαθηματικὰς ἀπορίας, τὸν δὲ τοῖς φυσικοῖς σεμνυνόμενον εἰς συνημμένων ἐπικρίσεις ἕλκοντα καὶ ψευδομένων λύσεις. ὡς γὰρ ὁ τῇ κλειδὶ τὰ ξύλα σχίζειν τῇ δ’ ἀξίνῃ τὴν θύραν ἀνοίγειν πειρώμενος οὐκ ἐκεῖνα δόξειεν ἂν ἐπηρεάζειν, ἀλλ’ αὑτὸν ἀποστερεῖν τῆς ἑκατέρου χρείας καὶ δυνάμεως, οὕτως οἱ παρὰ τοῦ λέγοντος ὃ μὴ πέφυκε μηδ’ ἤσκηκεν αἰτοῦντες, ὃ δ’ ἔχει καὶ δίδωσι μὴ δρεπόμενοι μηδὲ λαμβάνοντες, [d] οὐ τοῦτο βλάπτονται μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ κακοήθειαν καὶ δυσμένειαν προσοφλισκάνουσι.

Φυλακτέον δὲ καὶ τὸ πολλὰ καὶ πολλάκις αὐτὸν προβάλλειν· ἔστι γὰρ καὶ τοῦτο τρόπον τινὰ παρεπιδεικνυμένου. τὸ δ’ ἑτέρου προτείνοντος ἀκροᾶσθαι μετ’ εὐκολίας φιλόλογον καὶ κοινωνικόν, ἂν μή τι τῶν ἰδίων ἐνοχλῇ καὶ κατεπείγῃ πάθος ἐπισχέσεως δεόμενον ἢ νόσημα παρηγορίας. τάχα μὲν γὰρ οὐδ’ “ἀμαθίην κρύπτειν ἄμεινον,” ὥς φησιν Ἡράκλειτος, ἀλλ’ εἰς μέσον τιθέναι καὶ θεραπεύειν. ἂν δ’ ὀργή τις ἢ προσβολὴ δεισιδαιμονίας ἢ διαφορὰ πρὸς οἰκείους σύντονος ἢ περιμανὴς ἐξ ἔρωτος ἐπιθυμία

[e] κινοῦσα χορδὰς τὰς ἀκινήτους φρενῶν

ἐπιταράξῃ τὴν διάνοιαν, οὐ φευκτέον εἰς ἑτέρους λόγους ἀποδιδράσκοντας τὸν ἔλεγχον, ἀλλὰ περὶ αὐτῶν τούτων ἀκουστέον ἐν ταῖς διατριβαῖς, καὶ μετὰ τὰς διατριβὰς ἰδίᾳ προσιόντας αὐτοὺς καὶ προσανακρίνοντας. ἀλλὰ μὴ τοὐναντίον, ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ χαίρουσι τοῖς φιλοσόφοις περὶ ἄλλων διαλεγομένοις καὶ θαυμάζουσιν· ἂν δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐάσας ὁ φιλόσοφος αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις ἰδίᾳ παρρησιάζηται περὶ τῶν διαφερόντων καὶ ὑπομιμνήσκῃ, δυσχεραίνουσι [f] καὶ περίεργον νομίζουσιν. ἐπιεικῶς γάρ, ὥσπερ τῶν τραγῳδῶν ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις, καὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς οἴονται δεῖν ἀκούειν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἔξω πράγμασιν οὐδὲν αὐτοὺς ἑαυτῶν διαφέρειν ἡγοῦνται, πρὸς μὲν τοὺς σοφιστὰς εἰκότως τοῦτο πεπονθότες (ἀναστάντες γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ θρόνου καὶ ἀποθέμενοι τὰ βιβλία καὶ τὰς εἰσαγωγὰς ἐν τοῖς ἀληθινοῖς τοῦ βίου μέρεσι μικροὶ καὶ ὑπὸ χεῖρα φαίνονται τοῖς πολλοῖς), πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ὄντως φιλοσόφους οὐ καλῶς, ἀγνοοῦντες ὅτι καὶ σπουδὴ καὶ παιδιὰ καὶ νεῦμα καὶ μειδίαμα καὶ σκυθρωπασμὸς αὐτῶν, μάλιστα [44] [a] δ’ ὁ πρὸς ἕκαστον ἰδίᾳ περαινόμενος λόγος ἔχει τινὰ καρπὸν ὠφέλιμον τοῖς ὑπομένειν καὶ προσέχειν ἐθισθεῖσι.

Δεῖται δὲ καὶ τὸ περὶ τοὺς ἐπαίνους καθῆκον εὐλαβείας τινὸς καὶ μετριότητος διὰ τὸ μήτε τὴν ἔλλειψιν αὐτοῦ μήτε τὴν ὑπερβολὴν ἐλευθέριον εἶναι. βαρὺς μὲν γὰρ ἀκροατὴς καὶ φορτικὸς ὁ πρὸς πᾶν ἄτεγκτος καὶ ἀτενὴς τὸ λεγόμενον, οἰήματος ὑπούλου καὶ περιαυτολογίας ἐνδιαθέτου μεστός, ὡς ἔχων τι τῶν λεγομένων βέλτιον εἰπεῖν, μήτ’ ὀφρῦν κατασχηματίζων μήτε φωνὴν εὐγνώμονος [b] μάρτυρα φιληκοΐας προϊέμενος, ἀλλὰ σιγῇ καὶ βαρύτητι καταπλάστῳ καὶ σχηματισμῷ θηρώμενος δόξαν εὐσταθοῦς καὶ βάθος ἔχοντος ἀνδρός, ὥσπερ χρημάτων τῶν ἐπαίνων ὅσον ἄλλῳ μεταδίδωσιν αὑτοῦ δοκῶν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι. πολλοὶ γάρ εἰσιν οἱ κακῶς καὶ παρὰ μέλος τὴν Πυθαγόρου φωνὴν ὑπολαμβάνοντες. ἐκεῖνος μὲν γὰρ ἐκ φιλοσοφίας ἔφησεν αὑτῷ περιγεγονέναι τὸ μηδὲν θαυμάζειν· οὗτοι δὲ τὸ μηδὲν ἐπαινεῖν μηδὲ τιμᾶν, ἐν τῷ καταφρονεῖν τιθέμενοι καὶ τὸ σεμνὸν ὑπεροψίᾳ διώκοντες. ὁ γὰρ φιλόσοφος λόγος τὸ μὲν ἐξ ἀπορίας καὶ ἀγνοίας θαῦμα καὶ θάμβος ἐξαιρεῖ γνώσει καὶ ἱστορίᾳ τῆς περὶ ἕκαστον αἰτίας, τὸ δ’ [c] εὔκολον καὶ μέτριον καὶ φιλάνθρωπον οὐκ ἀπόλλυσι. τοῖς γὰρ ἀληθινῶς καὶ βεβαίως ἀγαθοῖς τιμή τε καλλίστη τὸ τιμῆσαί τινα τῶν ἀξίων, καὶ κόσμος εὐπρεπέστατος τὸ ἐπικοσμῆσαι, περιουσίᾳ δόξης καὶ ἀφθονίᾳ γιγνόμενον. οἱ δὲ γλίσχροι περὶ τοὺς ἑτέρων ἐπαίνους ἔτι πένεσθαι καὶ πεινῆν ἐοίκασι τῶν ἰδίων.

Ὁ δ’ ἐναντίος αὖ πάλιν τούτων, μηδὲν ἐπικρίνων ἀλλὰ κατὰ ῥῆμα καὶ συλλαβὴν ἐφιστάμενος καὶ κεκραγώς, ἐλαφρός τις ὢν καὶ ὀρνεώδης, [d] πολλάκις μὲν οὐδ’ αὐτοῖς ἀρέσκει τοῖς ἀγωνιζομένοις, ἀεὶ δὲ λυπεῖ τοὺς ἀκροωμένους, ἀνασοβῶν καὶ συνεξανιστὰς παρὰ γνώμην, οἷον ἑλκομένους βίᾳ δι’ αἰδῶ καὶ συνεπηχοῦντας. οὐδὲν δ’ ὠφεληθεὶς διὰ τὸ ταραχώδη καὶ πολυπτόητον αὐτῷ περὶ τοὺς ἐπαίνους γεγονέναι τὴν ἀκρόασιν ἀπέρχεται τῶν τριῶν ἓν φερόμενος· εἴρων γὰρ ἢ κόλαξ ἢ περὶ λόγους ἀπειρόκαλος ἔδοξεν εἶναι.

[e] Δίκην μὲν οὖν δικάζοντα δεῖ μήτε πρὸς ἔχθραν τινὰ μήτε πρὸς χάριν ἀκούειν ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ γνώμης πρὸς τὸ δίκαιον· ἐν δὲ ταῖς φιλολόγοις ἀκροάσεσιν οὔτε νόμος οὐδεὶς οὔθ’ ὅρκος ἡμᾶς ἀπείργει μὴ μετ’ εὐνοίας ἀποδέχεσθαι τὸν διαλεγόμενον. ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν Ἑρμῆν ταῖς Χάρισιν οἱ παλαιοὶ συγκαθίδρυσαν, ὡς μάλιστα τοῦ λόγου τὸ κεχαρισμένον καὶ προσφιλὲς ἀπαιτοῦντος. οὐδὲ γὰρ οἷόν τε παντελῶς οὕτως ἐκβόλιμον εἶναι τὸν λέγοντα καὶ διημαρτημένον, ὥστε μήτε νοῦν τινα παρασχεῖν ἄξιον ἐπαίνου μήτ’ ἀπομνημόνευσιν ἑτέρων μήτ’ αὐτὴν τὴν ὑπόθεσιν τοῦ λόγου καὶ προαίρεσιν, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ λέξιν ἢ διάθεσιν τῶν λεγομένων,

[f] ὡς ἀν’ ἐχινόποδας καὶ ἀνὰ τρηχεῖαν ὄνωνιν

φύονται μαλακῶν ἄνθεα λευκοΐων.

ὅπου γὰρ ἐμέτου τινὲς ἐγκώμια καὶ πυρετοῦ καὶ νὴ Δία χύτρας ἐπιδεικνύμενοι πιθανότητος οὐκ ἀμοιροῦσιν, ἦ που λόγος ὑπ’ ἀνδρὸς ἁμωσγέπως δοκοῦντος ἢ καλουμένου φιλοσόφου περαινόμενος οὐκ ἂν ὅλως ἀναπνοήν τινα καὶ καιρὸν ἀκροαταῖς εὐμενέσι καὶ φιλανθρώποις παράσχοι πρὸς ἔπαινον; οἱ γοῦν ἐν ὥρᾳ πάντες, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, ἁμηγέπη δάκνουσι τὸν ἐρωτικόν, καὶ λευκοὺς μὲν [45] [a] θεῶν παῖδας ἀνακαλῶν μέλανας δ’ ἀνδρικούς, καὶ τὸν γρυπὸν βασιλικὸν καὶ τὸν σιμὸν ἐπίχαριν τὸν δ’ ὠχρὸν μελίχρουν ὑποκοριζόμενος ἀσπάζεται καὶ ἀγαπᾷ· δεινὸς γάρ ἐστιν ὁ ἔρως ὥσπερ κιττὸς αὑτὸν ἐκ πάσης ἀναδῆσαι προφάσεως. πολὺ δὴ μᾶλλον ὁ φιλήκοος καὶ φιλόλογος ἀεί τινος αἰτίας εὑρετικὸς ἔσται, δι’ ἣν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου τῶν λεγόντων ἕκαστον ἐπαινῶν φανεῖται. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Πλάτων τὸν Λυσίου λόγον οὔτε κατὰ τὴν εὕρεσιν ἐπαινῶν καὶ τῆς ἀταξίας αἰτιώμενος ὅμως αὐτοῦ τὴν ἀπαγγελίαν ἐπαινεῖ, καὶ ὅτι “τῶν ὀνομάτων σαφῶς καὶ στρογγύλως ἕκαστον ἀποτετόρνευται.” μέμψαιτο δ’ ἄν τις Ἀρχιλόχου μὲν τὴν ὑπόθεσιν, [b] Παρμενίδου δὲ τὴν στιχοποιίαν, Φωκυλίδου δὲ τὴν εὐτέλειαν, Εὐριπίδου δὲ τὴν λαλιάν, Σοφοκλέους δὲ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ τῶν ῥητόρων ἐστὶν ὁ μὲν οὐκ ἔχων ἦθος, ὁ δὲ πρὸς πάθος ἀργός, ὁ δ’ ἐνδεὴς χαρίτων· ἕκαστός γε μὴν ἐπαινεῖται κατὰ τὸ ἴδιον τῆς δυνάμεως, ᾧ κινεῖν καὶ ἄγειν πέφυκεν. ὥστε καὶ τοῖς ἀκούουσιν εὐπορίαν εἶναι καὶ ἀφθονίαν τοῦ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι τοὺς λέγοντας. ἐνίοις γὰρ ἐξαρκεῖ, κἂν μὴ διὰ φωνῆς ἐπιμαρτυρῶμεν, ὄμματος πραότητα καὶ γαλήνην προσώπου καὶ διάθεσιν εὐμενῆ καὶ ἄλυπον ἐμπαρασχεῖν.

[c] Ἐκεῖνα μὲν γὰρ ἤδη καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ὅλως ἀποτυγχάνοντας ὥσπερ ἐγκύκλια καὶ κοινὰ πάσης ἀκροάσεώς ἐστι, καθέδρα τέ τις ἄθρυπτος καὶ ἀκλινὴς ἐν ὀρθῷ σχήματι καὶ πρόσβλεψις αὐτῷ τῷ λέγοντι καὶ τάξις ἐνεργοῦ προσοχῆς, καὶ προσώπου κατάστασις καθαρὰ καὶ ἀνέμφαντος οὐχ ὕβρεως οὐδὲ δυσκολίας μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ φροντίδων ἄλλων καὶ ἀσχολιῶν· ὡς ἐν ἔργῳ γε παντὶ τὸ μὲν καλὸν ἐκ πολλῶν οἷον ἀριθμῶν εἰς ἕνα καιρὸν ἡκόντων ὑπὸ συμμετρίας τινὸς καὶ ἁρμονίας ἐπιτελεῖται, τὸ δ’ αἰσχρὸν ἐξ ἑνὸς τοῦ τυχόντος ἐλλείποντος ἢ προσόντος ἀτόπως εὐθὺς ἑτοίμην ἔχει τὴν γένεσιν, ὥσπερ [d] ἐπ’ αὐτῆς τῆς ἀκροάσεως οὐ μόνον βαρύτης ἐπισκυνίου καὶ ἀηδία προσώπου καὶ βλέμμα ῥεμβῶδες καὶ περίκλασις σώματος καὶ μηρῶν ἐπάλλαξις ἀπρεπὴς ἀλλὰ καὶ νεῦμα καὶ ψιθυρισμὸς πρὸς ἕτερον καὶ μειδίαμα χάσμαι τε ὑπνώδεις καὶ κατήφειαι καὶ πᾶν εἴ τι τούτοις ἔοικεν ὑπεύθυνόν ἐστι καὶ δεῖται πολλῆς εὐλαβείας.

Οἱ δὲ τοῦ μὲν λέγοντος οἴονταί τι ἔργον εἶναι, τοῦ δ’ ἀκούοντος οὐδέν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἀξιοῦσιν ἥκειν πεφροντικότα καὶ παρεσκευασμένον, αὐτοὶ δ’ ἄσκεπτοι καὶ ἀφρόντιδες τῶν καθηκόντων ἐμβαλόντες καθέζονται καθάπερ ἀτεχνῶς ἐπὶ δεῖπνον [e] ἥκοντες, εὖ παθεῖν πονουμένων ἑτέρων. καίτοι καὶ συνδείπνου τι χαρίεντος ἔργον ἐστί, πολὺ δὲ μᾶλλον ἀκροατοῦ. κοινωνὸς γάρ ἐστι τοῦ λόγου καὶ συνεργὸς τοῦ λέγοντος, καὶ οὐ τὰ μὲν ἐκείνου πλημμελήματα πικρῶς ἐξετάζειν ὀφείλει κατὰ ῥῆμα καὶ πρᾶγμα προσάγων τὴν εὔθυναν, αὐτὸς δ’ ἀνευθύνως ἀσχημονεῖν καὶ πολλὰ σολοικίζειν περὶ τὴν ἀκρόασιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ σφαιρίζειν τῷ βάλλοντι δεῖ συγκινούμενον εὐρύθμως φέρεσθαι τὸν δεχόμενον, οὕτως ἐπὶ τῶν λόγων ἔστι τις εὐρυθμία καὶ περὶ τὸν λέγοντα καὶ περὶ τὸν ἀκροώμενον, ἂν [f] ἑκάτερος τὸ προσῆκον αὑτῷ φυλάττῃ.

Δεῖ δὲ μηδὲ ταῖς φωναῖς τῶν ἐπαίνων ὡς ἔτυχε χρῆσθαι. καὶ γὰρ Ἐπίκουρος ἐπὶ τοῖς τῶν φίλων ἐπιστολίοις κροτοθορύβους γίγνεσθαι παρ’ αὐτῶν λέγων ἀηδής ἐστιν. οἱ δὲ τὰς ξένας φωνὰς τοῖς ἀκροατηρίοις νῦν ἐπεισάγοντες οὗτοι, καὶ “θείως” καὶ “θεοφορήτως” καὶ “ἀπροσίτως” ἐπιλέγοντες, ὡς οὐκέτι τοῦ “καλῶς” καὶ τοῦ “σοφῶς” καὶ τοῦ “ἀληθῶς” ἐξαρκοῦντος, οἷς οἱ περὶ Πλάτωνα καὶ Σωκράτη καὶ Ὑπερείδην ἐχρῶντο σημείοις τῶν ἐπαίνων, ὑπερασχημονοῦσι καὶ διαβάλλουσι τοὺς λέγοντας ὡς ὑπερηφάνων τινῶν καὶ [46] [a] περιττῶν δεομένους ἐπαίνων. σφόδρα δ’ ἀηδεῖς εἰσι καὶ οἱ μεθ’ ὅρκου τοῖς λέγουσιν ὥσπερ ἐν δικαστηρίῳ τὰς μαρτυρίας ἀποδιδόντες. οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τούτων οἱ περὶ τὰς ποιότητας ἀστοχοῦντες, ὅταν φιλοσόφῳ μὲν ἐπιφωνῶσι “δριμέως,” γέροντι δ’ “εὐφυῶς” ἢ “ἀνθηρῶς,” τὰς τῶν παιζόντων καὶ πανηγυριζόντων ἐν ταῖς σχολαστικαῖς μελέταις φωνὰς ἐπὶ τοὺς φιλοσόφους μετακομίζοντες καὶ λόγῳ σωφρονοῦντι προσφέροντες ἔπαινον ἑταιρικόν, [b] ὥσπερ ἀθλητῇ κρίνων ἢ ῥόδων στέφανον, οὐ δάφνης οὐδὲ κοτίνου περιτιθέντες. Εὐριπίδης μὲν οὖν ὁ ποιητής, ὡς ὑπολέγοντος αὐτοῦ τοῖς χορευταῖς ᾠδήν τινα πεποιημένην ἐφ’ ἁρμονίας εἷς ἐγέλασεν, “εἰ μή τις ἦς ἀναίσθητος” εἶπε “καὶ ἀμαθής, οὐκ ἂν ἐγέλασας ἐμοῦ μιξολυδιστὶ ᾄδοντος.” ἀνὴρ δ’ ἂν οἶμαι φιλόσοφος καὶ πολιτικὸς ἀκροατοῦ διακεχυμένου τρυφὴν ἐκκόψειεν εἰπών “σύ μοι δοκεῖς ἀνόητος εἶναι καὶ ἀνάγωγος· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἐμοῦ διδάσκοντος ἢ νουθετοῦντος ἢ διαλεγομένου περὶ θεῶν ἢ πολιτείας ἢ ἀρχῆς ἐτερέτιζες καὶ προσωρχοῦ τοῖς [c] λόγοις.” ὅρα γὰρ ἀληθῶς οἷόν ἐστι φιλοσόφου λέγοντος ἀπορεῖν τοὺς ἔξωθεν ὑπὸ τῶν ἔνδον βοώντων καὶ ἀλαλαζόντων πότερον αὐλοῦντος ἢ κιθαρίζοντος ἢ ὀρχουμένου τινὸς ὁ ἔπαινός ἐστι.

Καὶ μὴν τῶν γε νουθεσιῶν καὶ τῶν ἐπιπλήξεων οὔτ’ ἀναλγήτως οὔτ’ ἀνάνδρως ἀκουστέον. οἱ γὰρ εὐκόλως καὶ ὀλιγώρως τὸ κακῶς ἀκούειν ὑπὸ τῶν φιλοσόφων φέροντες, ὥστε γελᾶν ἐλεγχόμενοι καὶ τοὺς ἐλέγχοντας ἐπαινεῖν, ὥσπερ οἱ παράσιτοι τοὺς τρέφοντας, ὅταν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν λοιδορῶνται, παντάπασιν ἰταμοὶ καὶ θρασεῖς ὄντες, οὐ καλὴν οὐδ’ ἀληθῆ διδόασιν ἀπόδειξιν ἀνδρείας τὴν ἀναισχυντίαν.

[d] σκῶμμα μὲν γὰρ ἀνύβριστον ἐν παιδιᾷ τινι μετ’ εὐτραπελίας ἀφειμένον ἐνεγκεῖν ἀλύπως καὶ ἱλαρῶς οὐκ ἀγεννὲς οὐδ’ ἀπαίδευτον ἀλλ’ ἐλευθέριον πάνυ καὶ Λακωνικόν ἐστιν· ἐπαφῆς δὲ καὶ νουθεσίας πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν ἤθους ὥσπερ φαρμάκῳ δάκνοντι λόγῳ χρωμένης ἐλέγχοντι μὴ συνεσταλμένον ἀκούειν μηδ’ ἱδρῶτος καὶ ἰλίγγου μεστόν, αἰσχύνῃ φλεγόμενον τὴν ψυχήν, ἀλλ’ ἄτρεπτον καὶ σεσηρότα καὶ κατειρωνευόμενον, ἀνελευθέρου τινὸς δεινῶς καὶ ἀπαθοῦς πρὸς τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι νέου διὰ συνήθειαν ἁμαρτημάτων καὶ συνέχειαν, ὥσπερ ἐν σκληρᾷ σαρκὶ καὶ τυλώδει τῇ ψυχῇ μώλωπα μὴ λαμβάνοντος.

[e] Τούτων δὲ τοιούτων ὄντων οἱ τὴν ἐναντίαν διάθεσιν ἔχοντες νέοι κἂν ἅπαξ ποτὲ ἀκούσωσι κακῶς, φεύγοντες ἀνεπιστρεπτὶ καὶ δραπετεύοντες ἐκ φιλοσοφίας, καλὴν ἀρχὴν πρὸς τὸ σωθῆναι τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι παρὰ τῆς φύσεως ἔχοντες, ἀπολλύουσι διὰ τρυφὴν καὶ μαλακίαν, οὐκ ἐγκαρτεροῦντες τοῖς ἐλέγχοις οὐδὲ τὰς ἐπανορθώσεις δεχόμενοι γεννικῶς, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τὰς προσηνεῖς καὶ ἁπαλὰς ἀποστρέφοντες ὁμιλίας τὰ ὦτα κολάκων τινῶν ἢ σοφιστῶν ἀνωφελεῖς καὶ ἀνονήτους ἡδείας δὲ φωνὰς κατᾳδόντων. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ μετὰ τὴν τομὴν φεύγων τὸν ἰατρὸν καὶ τὸν ἐπίδεσμον μὴ προσιέμενος τὸ μὲν ἀλγεινὸν ἀνεδέξατο, [f] τὸ δ’ ὠφέλιμον οὐχ ὑπέμεινε τῆς θεραπείας, οὕτως ὁ τῷ χαράξαντι καὶ τρώσαντι λόγῳ τὴν ἀβελτερίαν ἀπουλῶσαι καὶ καταστῆσαι μὴ παρασχὼν ἀπῆλθε δηχθεὶς καὶ ἀλγήσας ἐκ φιλοσοφίας, ὠφεληθεὶς δὲ μηδέν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον, ὡς Εὐριπίδης φησί, τὸ Τηλέφου τραῦμα

πριστοῖσι λόγχης θέλγεται ῥινήμασιν,

[47] [a] ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ἐκ φιλοσοφίας ἐμφυόμενον εὐφυέσι νέοις δηγμὸν αὐτὸς ὁ τρώσας λόγος ἰᾶται. διὸ δεῖ πάσχειν μέν τι καὶ δάκνεσθαι, μὴ συντρίβεσθαι δὲ μηδ’ ἀθυμεῖν τὸν ἐλεγχόμενον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τελετῇ κατηργμένης αὐτοῦ φιλοσοφίας τοὺς πρώτους καθαρμοὺς καὶ θορύβους ἀνασχόμενον ἐλπίζειν τι γλυκὺ καὶ λαμπρὸν ἐκ τῆς παρούσης ἀδημονίας καὶ ταραχῆς. καὶ γὰρ ἂν ἀδίκως ἡ ἐπιτίμησις γίγνεσθαι δοκῇ, καλὸν ἀνασχέσθαι καὶ διακαρτερῆσαι λέγοντος· παυσαμένῳ δ’ αὐτὸν ἐντυχεῖν ἀπολογούμενον [b] καὶ δεόμενον τὴν παρρησίαν ἐκείνην καὶ τὸν τόνον, ᾧ νῦν κέχρηται πρὸς αὐτόν, εἴς τι τῶν ἀληθῶς ἁμαρτανομένων φυλάττειν.

Ἔτι τοίνυν ὥσπερ ἐν γράμμασι καὶ περὶ λύραν καὶ παλαίστραν αἱ πρῶται μαθήσεις πολὺν ἔχουσι θόρυβον καὶ πόνον καὶ ἀσάφειαν, εἶτα προιόντι κατὰ μικρὸν ὥσπερ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους συνήθεια πολλὴ καὶ γνῶσις ἐγγενομένη πάντα φίλα καὶ χειροήθη καὶ ῥᾴδια λέγειν τε καὶ πράττειν παρέσχεν, οὕτω δὴ καὶ φιλοσοφίας ἐχούσης τι καὶ γλίσχρον ἀμέλει καὶ ἀσύνηθες ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις ὀνόμασι καὶ πράγμασιν οὐ δεῖ φοβηθέντα τὰς ἀρχὰς ψοφοδεῶς [c] καὶ ἀτόλμως ἐγκαταλιπεῖν, ἀλλὰ πειρώμενον ἑκάστου καὶ προσλιπαροῦντα καὶ γλιχόμενον τοῦ πρόσω τὴν πᾶν τὸ καλὸν ἡδὺ ποιοῦσαν ἀναμένειν συνήθειαν. ἥξει γὰρ οὐ διὰ μακροῦ πολὺ φῶς ἐπιφέρουσα τῇ μαθήσει καὶ δεινοὺς ἔρωτας ἐνδιδοῦσα πρὸς τὴν ἀρετήν, ὧν ἄνευ πάνυ τλήμονος ἀνδρός ἐστιν ἢ δειλοῦ τὸν ἄλλον ὑπομένειν βίον, ἐκπεσόντα δι’ ἀνανδρίαν φιλοσοφίας.

Ἴσως μὲν οὖν ἔχει τι καὶ τὰ πράγματα τοῖς ἀπείροις καὶ νέοις ἐν ἀρχῇ δυσκατανόητον· οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τῇ γε πλείστῃ περιπίπτουσιν ἀσαφείᾳ καὶ ἀγνοίᾳ δι’ αὑτούς, ἀπ’ ἐναντίων φύσεων ταὐτὸν ἁμαρτάνοντες.

[d] οἱ μὲν γὰρ αἰσχύνῃ τινὶ καὶ φειδοῖ τοῦ λέγοντος ὀκνοῦντες ἀνερέσθαι καὶ βεβαιώσασθαι τὸν λόγον, ὡς ἔχοντες ἐν νῷ συνεπινεύουσιν, οἱ δ’ ὑπὸ φιλοτιμίας ἀώρου καὶ κενῆς πρὸς ἑτέρους ἁμίλλης ὀξύτητα καὶ δύναμιν εὐμαθείας ἐπιδεικνύμενοι, πρὶν ἢ λαβεῖν ἔχειν ὁμολογοῦντες, οὐ λαμβάνουσιν. εἶτα συμβαίνει τοῖς μὲν αἰδήμοσι καὶ σιωπηλοῖς ἐκείνοις, ὅταν ἀπέλθωσι, λυπεῖν αὑτοὺς καὶ ἀπορεῖσθαι, καὶ τέλος αὖθις ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ἐλαυνομένους σὺν αἰσχύνῃ μείζονι τοῖς εἰποῦσιν ἐνοχλεῖν ἀναπυνθανομένους καὶ μεταθέοντας, τοῖς δὲ φιλοτίμοις καὶ θρασέσιν ἀεὶ περιστέλλειν καὶ ἀποκρύπτειν συνοικοῦσαν τὴν ἀμαθίαν.

[e] Πᾶσαν οὖν ἀπωσάμενοι τὴν τοσαύτην βλακείαν καὶ ἀλαζονείαν καὶ πρὸς τὸ μαθεῖν ἰόντες καὶ περὶ τὸ λαβεῖν τῇ διανοίᾳ τὸ χρησίμως λεγόμενον ὄντες, ὑπομένωμεν τοὺς τῶν εὐφυῶν δοκούντων γέλωτας, ὥσπερ ὁ Κλεάνθης καὶ ὁ Ξενοκράτης βραδύτεροι δοκοῦντες εἶναι τῶν συσχολαστῶν οὐκ ἀπεδίδρασκον ἐκ τοῦ μανθάνειν οὐδ’ ἀπέκαμνον, ἀλλὰ φθάνοντες εἰς ἑαυτοὺς ἔπαιζον, ἀγγείοις τε βραχυστόμοις καὶ πινακίσι χαλκαῖς ἀπεικάζοντες, ὡς μόλις μὲν παραδεχόμενοι τοὺς λόγους, ἀσφαλῶς δὲ καὶ βεβαίως τηροῦντες. οὐ γὰρ μόνον, ὥς φησι Φωκυλίδης,

πόλλ’ ἀπατηθῆναι διζήμενον ἔμμεναι ἐσθλόν,

[f] ἀλλὰ καὶ γελασθῆναι δεῖ πολλὰ καὶ ἀδοξῆσαι, καὶ σκώμματα καὶ βωμολοχίας ἀναδεξάμενον ὤσασθαι παντὶ τῷ θυμῷ καὶ καταθλῆσαι τὴν ἀμαθίαν.

Οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ τῆς πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἁμαρτίας ἀμελητέον, ἣν ἁμαρτάνουσιν οἱ μὲν ὑπὸ νωθείας, ἀηδεῖς [48] [a] καὶ κοπώδεις ὄντες· οὐ γὰρ ἐθέλουσι γενόμενοι καθ’ αὑτοὺς πράγματα ἔχειν, ἀλλὰ παρέχουσι τῷ λέγοντι, πολλάκις ἐκπυνθανόμενοι περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν, ὥσπερ ἀπτῆνες νεοσσοὶ κεχηνότες ἀεὶ πρὸς ἀλλότριον στόμα καὶ πᾶν ἕτοιμον ἤδη καὶ διαπεπονημένον ὑπ’ ἄλλων ἐκλαμβάνειν ἐθέλοντες. ἕτεροι δὲ προσοχῆς καὶ δριμύτητος ἐν οὐ δέοντι θηρώμενοι δόξαν ἀποκναίουσι λαλιᾷ καὶ περιεργίᾳ τοὺς λέγοντας, ἀεί τι προσδιαποροῦντες τῶν οὐκ ἀναγκαίων καὶ ζητοῦντες ἀποδείξεις τῶν οὐ δεομένων·

οὕτως ὁδὸς βραχεῖα γίγνεται μακρά,

[b] ὥς φησι Σοφοκλῆς, οὐκ αὐτοῖς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις. ἀντιλαμβανόμενοι γὰρ ἑκάστοτε κεναῖς καὶ περιτταῖς ἐρωτήσεσι τοῦ διδάσκοντος, ὥσπερ ἐν συνοδίᾳ, τὸ ἐνδελεχὲς ἐμποδίζουσι τῆς μαθήσεως, ἐπιστάσεις καὶ διατριβὰς λαμβανούσης. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὸν Ἱερώνυμον ὥσπερ οἱ δειλοὶ καὶ γλίσχροι σκύλακες τὰ δέρματα δάκνοντες οἴκοι καὶ τὰ τίλματα τίλλοντες τῶν θηρίων αὐτῶν οὐχ ἅπτονται· τοὺς δ’ ἀργοὺς ἐκείνους παρακαλῶμεν, ὅταν τὰ κεφάλαια τῇ νοήσει περιλάβωσιν, αὐτοὺς δι’ αὑτῶν τὰ λοιπὰ συντιθέναι, καὶ τῇ μνήμῃ χειραγωγεῖν τὴν εὕρεσιν, καὶ τὸν [c] ἀλλότριον λόγον οἷον ἀρχὴν καὶ σπέρμα λαβόντας ἐκτρέφειν καὶ αὔξειν. οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἀγγεῖον ὁ νοῦς ἀποπληρώσεως ἀλλ’ ὑπεκκαύματος μόνον ὥσπερ ὕλη δεῖται, ὁρμὴν ἐμποιοῦντος εὑρετικὴν καὶ ὄρεξιν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν. ὥσπερ οὖν εἴ τις ἐκ γειτόνων πυρὸς δεόμενος, εἶτα πολὺ καὶ λαμπρὸν εὑρὼν αὐτοῦ καταμένοι διὰ τέλους θαλπόμενος, οὕτως εἴ τις ἥκων λόγου μεταλαβεῖν πρὸς ἄλλον οὐκ οἴεται δεῖν φῶς οἰκεῖον ἐξάπτειν καὶ νοῦν ἴδιον, ἀλλὰ χαίρων τῇ ἀκροάσει κάθηται θελγόμενος, [d] οἷον ἔρευθος ἕλκει καὶ γάνωμα τὴν δόξαν ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων, τὸν δ’ ἐντὸς εὐρῶτα τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ ζόφον οὐκ ἐκτεθέρμαγκεν οὐδ’ ἐξέωκε διὰ φιλοσοφίας.

Εἰ δεῖ τινος οὖν πρὸς ἀκρόασιν ἑτέρου παραγγέλματος, δεῖ καὶ τοῦ νῦν εἰρημένου μνημονεύοντας ἀσκεῖν ἅμα τῇ μαθήσει τὴν εὕρεσιν, ἵνα μὴ σοφιστικὴν ἕξιν μηδ’ ἱστορικὴν ἀλλ’ ἐνδιάθετον καὶ φιλόσοφον λαμβάνωμεν, ἀρχὴν τοῦ καλῶς βιῶναι τὸ καλῶς ἀκοῦσαι νομίζοντες.

Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur

[48] Τῷ σφόδρα φιλεῖν ἑαυτόν, ὦ Ἀντίοχε Φιλόπαππε, φάσκοντι συγγνώμην μὲν ἅπαντας ὁ Πλάτων [f] διδόναι φησί, κακίαν δὲ σὺν πολλαῖς ἄλλαις ἐγγίγνεσθαι μεγίστην, ὑφ’ ἧς οὐκ ἔστιν αὑτοῦ κριτὴν δίκαιον οὐδ’ ἀδέκαστον εἶναι· “τυφλοῦται γὰρ τὸ φιλοῦν περὶ τὸ φιλούμενον,” ἂν μή τις μαθὼν ἐθισθῇ τὰ καλὰ τιμᾶν καὶ διώκειν μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ συγγενῆ καὶ οἰκεῖα. τοῦτο τῷ κόλακι πολλὴν μεταξὺ τῆς φιλίας εὐρυχωρίαν δίδωσιν, ὁρμητήριον ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς εὐφυὲς ἔχοντι τὴν φιλαυτίαν, δι’ ἣν αὐτὸς [49] [a] αὑτοῦ κόλαξ ἕκαστος ὢν πρῶτος καὶ μέγιστος οὐ χαλεπῶς προσίεται τὸν ἔξωθεν ὧν οἴεται καὶ βούλεται μάρτυν ἅμ’ αὐτῷ καὶ βεβαιωτὴν προσγιγνόμενον. ὁ γὰρ λοιδορούμενος φιλοκόλαξ σφόδρα φίλαυτός ἐστι, δι’ εὔνοιαν ἑαυτῷ πάντα μὲν ὑπάρχειν βουλόμενος πάντα δ’ οἰόμενος ὧν ἡ μὲν βούλησις οὐκ ἄτοπος ἡ δ’ οἴησις ἐπισφαλὴς καὶ δεομένη πολλῆς εὐλαβείας. εἰ δὲ δὴ θεῖον ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ “πάντων μὲν ἀγαθῶν θεοῖς πάντων δ’ ἀνθρώποις”

[b] ἀρχὴ κατὰ Πλάτωνα, κινδυνεύει θεοῖς ἐχθρὸς ὁ κόλαξ εἶναι, τῷ δὲ Πυθίῳ διαφερόντως. ἀντιτάττεται γὰρ ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ “γνῶθι σαυτόν,” ἀπάτην ἑκάστῳ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐμποιῶν καὶ ἄγνοιαν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν περὶ αὑτὸν ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν, τὰ μὲν ἐλλιπῆ καὶ ἀτελῆ τὰ δ’ ὅλως ἀνεπανόρθωτα ποιῶν.

Εἰ μὲν οὖν, ὡς τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἄλλων κακῶν, ὁ κόλαξ ἥπτετο μόνον ἢ μάλιστα τῶν ἀγεννῶν καὶ φαύλων, οὐκ ἂν ἦν οὕτω δεινὸν οὐδὲ δυσφύλακτον· ἐπεὶ δ’ ὥσπερ οἱ θρῖπες ἐνδύονται μάλιστα τοῖς ἁπαλοῖς καὶ γλυκέσι ξύλοις, οὕτω τὰ φιλότιμα τῶν ἠθῶν καὶ χρηστὰ καὶ ἐπιεικῆ τὸν κόλακα δέχεται [c] καὶ τρέφει προσφυόμενον, ἔτι δ’ ὥσπερ ὁ Σιμωνίδης τὴν

“ἱπποτροφίαν,” φησίν, “οὐ Ζακύνθῳ ὀπαδεῖν

ἀλλ’ ἀρούραισι πυροφόροις,”

οὕτω τὴν κολακείαν ὁρῶμεν οὐ πένησιν οὐδ’ ἀδόξοις οὐδ’ ἀδυνάτοις ἀκολουθοῦσαν, ἀλλ’ οἴκων τε καὶ πραγμάτων μεγάλων ὀλίσθημα καὶ νόσημα γιγνομένην, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ βασιλείας καὶ ἡγεμονίας ἀνατρέπουσαν, οὐ μικρὸν ἔργον ἐστὶν οὐδὲ φαύλης δεόμενον προνοίας ἡ περὶ αὐτὴν ἐπίσκεψις, ὡς ἂν μάλιστα περίφωρος οὖσα μὴ βλάπτῃ μηδὲ διαβάλλῃ τὴν φιλίαν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ φθεῖρες ἀπίασιν ἀπὸ τῶν τελευτώντων καὶ ἀπολείπουσι τὰ σώματα [d] σβεννυμένου τοῦ αἵματος ἐξ οὗ τρέφονται, τοὺς δὲ κόλακας οὐδ’ ὅλως ἰδεῖν ἔστι πράγμασι ξηροῖς καὶ κατεψυγμένοις προσιόντας, ἀλλὰ ταῖς δόξαις καὶ ταῖς δυνάμεσιν ἐπιτίθενται καὶ αὔξονται, ταχὺ δ’ ἐν ταῖς μεταβολαῖς ὑπορρέουσιν. ἀλλὰ τὴν τότε πεῖραν οὐ δεῖ περιμένειν ἀνωφελῆ, μᾶλλον δὲ βλαβερὰν καὶ οὐκ ἀκίνδυνον οὖσαν. χαλεπὴ γὰρ ἐν καιρῷ δεομένῳ φίλων ἡ τῶν μὴ φίλων αἴσθησις, ἀντικαταλλαγὴν οὐκ ἔχουσα χρηστοῦ καὶ βεβαίου πρὸς ἀβέβαιον καὶ κίβδηλον. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ νόμισμα δεῖ τὸν φίλον ἔχειν πρὸ τῆς χρείας [e] δεδοκιμασμένον, μὴ ὑπὸ τῆς χρείας ἐλεγχόμενον. οὐ γὰρ δεῖ βλαβέντας αἰσθέσθαι, ἀλλ’ ὅπως μὴ βλαβῶμεν ἐμπειρίαν λαβεῖν καὶ κατανόησιν τοῦ κόλακος· εἰ δὲ μή, ταὐτὸ πεισόμεθα τοῖς αἰσθανομένοις τῷ προγεγεῦσθαι τῶν θανασίμων φαρμάκων, εἰς τὴν κρίσιν ἀπολλύντες ἑαυτοὺς καὶ διαφθείροντες. οὔτε γὰρ δὴ τούτους ἐπαινοῦμεν οὔθ’ ὅσοι τὸν φίλον εἰς τὸ καλὸν τιθέμενοι καὶ ὠφέλιμον οἴονται τοὺς κεχαρισμένως ὁμιλοῦντας εὐθὺς ἔχειν ἐπ’ αὐτοφώρῳ κόλακας εἰλημμένους. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀηδὴς ὁ φίλος οὐδ’ ἄκρατος, οὐδὲ τῷ [f] πικρῷ σεμνὸν ἡ φιλία καὶ αὐστηρῷ, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸ δὴ τοῦτο τὸ καλὸν καὶ τὸ σεμνὸν αὐτῆς ἡδὺ καὶ ποθούμενόν ἐστι,

πὰρ δ’ αὐτῇ Χάριτές τε καὶ Ἵμερος οἰκί’ ἔθεντο,

καὶ οὐ δυστυχοῦντι μόνον

εἰς ὄμματ’ εὔνου φωτὸς ἐμβλέψαι γλυκὺ

κατ’ Εὐριπίδην, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἧττον τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἡδονὴν ἐπιφέρουσα καὶ χάριν ἢ τῶν κακῶν ἀφαιροῦσα τὰς λύπας καὶ τὰς ἀπορίας παρέπεται.

[50] [a] καὶ καθάπερ ὁ Εὔηνος εἶπε, τῶν ἡδυσμάτων τὸ πῦρ εἶναι κράτιστον, οὕτω τῷ βίῳ μείξας τὴν φιλίαν ὁ θεὸς ἅπαντα φαιδρὰ καὶ γλυκέα καὶ προσφιλῆ ταύτης παρούσης καὶ συναπολαυούσης ἐποίησεν. ἐπεὶ πῶς ἂν ὁ κόλαξ ὑπεδύετο ταῖς ἡδοναῖς, εἰ τὴν φιλίαν ἑώρα τὸ ἡδὺ μηδαμοῦ προσιεμένην, οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τὰ ψευδόχρυσα καὶ τὰ κίβδηλα τὴν λαμπρότητα τοῦ χρυσοῦ καὶ τὸ γάνωμα μιμεῖται μόνον, οὕτως [b] ἔοικεν ὁ κόλαξ τοῦ φίλου τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ κεχαρισμένον ἐκμιμούμενος ἀεὶ παρέχειν ἱλαρὸν καὶ ἀνθηρὸν καὶ πρὸς μηδὲν ἀντιβαίνοντα μηδ’ ὑπεναντιούμενον ἑαυτόν. ὅθεν οὐδὲ τοὺς ἐπαινοῦντας εὐθὺς ὡς κολακεύοντας ἁπλῶς ὑφορατέον· ἔπαινος γὰρ οὐχ ἧττον ἐν καιρῷ ψόγου φιλίᾳ προσήκει, μᾶλλον δὲ τὸ μὲν δύσκολον ὅλως καὶ μεμψίμοιρον ἄφιλον καὶ ἀνομίλητον, τῆς δ’ ἀφθόνως καὶ προθύμως τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς καλοῖς ἀποδιδούσης ἔπαινον εὐνοίας καὶ τὸ νουθετοῦν αὖθις καὶ παρρησιαζόμενον ἐλαφρῶς καὶ ἀλύπως ὑπομένομεν, πιστεύοντες καὶ ἀγαπῶντες ὡς ἀναγκαίως ψέγοντα τὸν ἡδέως ἐπαινοῦντα.

[c] Χαλεπὸν οὖν φαίη τις ἄν ἐστι διακρῖναι τὸν κόλακα καὶ τὸν φίλον, εἰ μήθ’ ἡδονῇ μήτ’ ἐπαίνῳ διαφέρουσι· καὶ γὰρ ἐν ὑπουργίαις καὶ διακονίαις πολλάκις ἰδεῖν ἐστι τὴν φιλίαν ὑπὸ τῆς κολακείας παρατρεχομένην. τί δ’ οὐ μέλλει, φήσομεν, ἂν τὸν ἀληθινὸν κόλακα καὶ μετὰ δεινότητος καὶ τέχνης ἁπτόμενον τοῦ πράγματος διώκωμεν, ἀλλὰ μή, καθάπερ οἱ πολλοί, τοὺς αὐτοληκύθους τούτους λεγομένους καὶ τραπεζέας καὶ μετὰ τὸ κατὰ χειρὸς ὕδωρ ἀκουομένους ὥς τις εἶπε κόλακας νομίζωμεν, [d] ὧν ἐν μιᾷ λοπάδι καὶ κύλικι μετὰ βωμολοχίας καὶ βδελυρίας ἡ ἀνελευθερία γίγνεται κατάδηλος; οὐ γὰρ δήπου Μελάνθιον ἔδει τὸν Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Φεραίου παράσιτον ἐξελέγχειν, ὃς τοῖς ἐρωτῶσι πῶς Ἀλέξανδρος ἐσφάγη “διὰ τῆς πλευρᾶς” ἔλεγεν “εἰς τὴν γαστέρα τὴν ἐμήν,” οὐδὲ τοὺς ἀμφὶ πλουσίαν τράπεζαν ἐγκυκλουμένους, οὓς

οὐ πῦρ οὐδὲ σίδαρος

οὐδὲ χαλκὸς εἴργει

μὴ φοιτᾶν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον,

οὐδὲ τὰς ἐν Κύπρῳ κολακίδας, ἐπειδὴ διέβησαν εἰς Συρίαν, κλιμακίδας προσαγορευθείσας, ὅτι ταῖς [e] γυναιξὶ τῶν βασιλέων ἀναβαίνειν ἐπὶ τὰς ἁμάξας δι’ αὑτῶν ὑποκατακλινόμεναι παρεῖχον.

Τίνα οὖν δεῖ φυλάττεσθαι; τὸν μὴ δοκοῦντα μηδ’ ὁμολογοῦντα κολακεύειν, ὃν οὐκ ἔστι λαβεῖν περὶ τοὐπτάνιον, οὐδ’ ἁλίσκεται σκιὰν καταμετρῶν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον, οὐδ’ ἔρριπται μεθυσθεὶς ὅπως ἔτυχεν, ἀλλὰ νήφει τὰ πολλὰ καὶ πολυπραγμονεῖ καὶ πράξεων μετέχειν οἴεται δεῖν καὶ λόγων ἀπορρήτων βούλεται κοινωνὸς εἶναι, καὶ ὅλως τραγικός ἐστιν οὐ σατυρικὸς φιλίας ὑποκριτὴς οὐδὲ κωμικός. ὡς γὰρ ὁ Πλάτων φησίν, “ἐσχάτης ἀδικίας εἶναι [f] δοκεῖν δίκαιον μὴ ὄντα,” καὶ κολακείαν ἡγητέον χαλεπὴν τὴν λανθάνουσαν οὐ τὴν ὁμολογοῦσαν, οὐδὲ τὴν παίζουσαν ἀλλὰ τὴν σπουδάζουσαν· αὕτη γὰρ ἀναπίμπλησι καὶ τὴν ἀληθινὴν φιλίαν ἀπιστίας, συνεμπίπτουσαν αὐτῇ πολλάκις, ἂν μὴ προσέχωμεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Γωβρύας εἰς σκοτεινὸν οἴκημα τῷ μάγῳ φεύγοντι συνεισπεσὼν καὶ γενόμενος ἐν διαπάλαις ἐπιστάντα καὶ διαποροῦντα τὸν Δαρεῖον ἐκέλευσεν ὠθεῖν καὶ δι’ ἀμφοτέρων· ἡμεῖς δέ, εἰ μηδαμῆ μηδαμῶς ἐπαινοῦμεν τὸ “ἐρρέτω φίλος σὺν ἐχθρῷ,” διὰ πολλῶν ὁμοιοτήτων τὸν κόλακα τῷ φίλῳ συμπεπλεγμένον ἀποσπάσαι [51] [a] ζητοῦντες ὀφείλομεν εὖ μάλα φοβεῖσθαι μή πως ἢ τῷ κακῷ τὸ χρήσιμον συνεκβάλωμεν ἢ φειδόμενοι τοῦ οἰκείου τῷ βλάπτοντι περιπέσωμεν. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἶμαι τῶν ἀγρίων σπερμάτων ὅσα καὶ σχῆμα καὶ μέγεθος παραπλήσιον ἔχοντα τῷ πυρῷ συμμέμικται χαλεπὴν ἔχει τὴν ἀποκάθαρσιν (ἢ γὰρ οὐ διεκπίπτει τῶν στενοτέρων πόρων ἢ συνεκπίπτει διὰ τῶν ἀραιῶν), οὕτως ἡ κολακεία τῆς φιλίας εἰς πᾶν πάθος καὶ πᾶν κίνημα καὶ χρείαν καὶ συνήθειαν ἑαυτὴν καταμιγνύουσα δυσχώριστός ἐστιν.

Ὅτι μέντοι γε πάντων ἥδιστόν ἐστιν ἡ φιλία [b] καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο μᾶλλον εὐφραίνει, διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ὁ κόλαξ ἡδοναῖς ὑπάγεται καὶ περὶ ἡδονάς ἐστιν. ὅτι δ’ ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ χρεία τῇ φιλίᾳ παρέπεται (καθ’ ὃ δὴ καὶ λέγεται πυρὸς καὶ ὕδατος ὁ φίλος ἀναγκαιότερος εἶναι), διὰ τοῦτ’ ἐμβάλλων εἰς τὰς ὑπουργίας ἑαυτὸν ὁ κόλαξ ἁμιλλᾶται σπουδαστικὸς ἀεὶ φαίνεσθαι καὶ ἄοκνος καὶ πρόθυμος. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ μάλιστα φιλίας ἀρχὴν συνέχον ὁμοιότης ἐστὶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων καὶ ἠθῶν, καὶ ὅλως τὸ χαίρειν τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς καὶ τὸ ταὐτὰ φεύγειν πρῶτον εἰς ταὐτὸ συνάγει καὶ συνίστησι διὰ τῆς ὁμοιοπαθείας, [c] τοῦτο κατιδὼν ὁ κόλαξ αὑτὸν ὥσπερ ὕλην τινὰ ῥυθμίζει καὶ σχηματίζει, περιαρμόσαι καὶ περιπλάσαι ζητῶν οἷς ἂν ἐπιχειρῇ διὰ μιμήσεως, ὑγρὸς ὢν μεταβάλλεσθαι καὶ πιθανὸς ἐπὶ τὰς ἐξομοιώσεις, ὥστ’ εἰπεῖν

οὐ παῖς Ἀχιλλέως, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος αὐτὸς εἶ.

Ὃ δὲ πάντων ἐστὶν αὐτοῦ πανουργότατον, αἰσθανόμενος τὴν παρρησίαν καὶ λεγομένην καὶ δοκοῦσαν ἰδίαν εἶναι φωνὴν ὥσπερ τινὸς ζῴου τῆς φιλίας, τὸ δ’ ἀπαρρησίαστον ἄφιλον καὶ ἀγεννές, οὐδὲ ταύτην ἀμίμητον ἀπολέλοιπεν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ δεινοὶ τῶν ὀψοποιῶν τοῖς πικροῖς χυμοῖς καὶ αὐστηροῖς ἡδύσμασι χρῶνται, τῶν γλυκέων ἀφαιροῦντες τὸ πλήσμιον, οὕτως οἱ κόλακες οὐκ [d] ἀληθινὴν οὐδ’ ὠφέλιμον ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐπιλλώπτουσαν ἐξ ὀφρύος καὶ γαργαλίζουσαν ἀτεχνῶς παρρησίαν προσφέρουσιν. ἔστι μὲν οὖν διὰ ταῦτα δυσφώρατος ὁ ἀνήρ, ὥσπερ τῶν θηρίων ὅσα πεφυκότα τὴν χρόαν τρέπεσθαι συναφομοιοῦται τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις χρώμασι καὶ χωρίοις· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἐξαπατᾷ τε καὶ περικαλύπτεται ταῖς ὁμοιότησιν, ἡμέτερον ἔργον ἐστὶ ταῖς διαφοραῖς ἀνακαλύπτειν καὶ ἀπογυμνοῦν αὐτὸν “ἀλλοτρίοις χρώμασι καὶ σχήμασιν,” ᾗ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, “χήτει οἰκείων κοσμούμενον.”

Εὐθὺς οὖν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς σκοπῶμεν. ἀρχὴν δὴ φιλίας ἔφαμεν εἶναι τοῖς πλείστοις τὴν ταὐτὰ [e] μὲν ἐπιεικῶς ἀσπαζομένην ἔθη καὶ ἤθη τοῖς δ’ αὐτοῖς χαίρουσαν ἐπιτηδεύμασι καὶ πράγμασι καὶ διατριβαῖς ὁμοιοπαθῆ διάθεσιν καὶ φύσιν, ἐφ’ ἧς καὶ ταῦτ’ εἴρηται·

γέρων γέροντι γλῶσσαν ἡδίστην ἔχει,

παῖς παιδί, καὶ γυναικὶ πρόσφορον γυνή,

νοσῶν τ’ ἀνὴρ νοσοῦντι, καὶ δυσπραξίᾳ

ληφθεὶς ἐπῳδός ἐστι τῷ πειρωμένῳ.

εἰδὼς οὖν ὁ κόλαξ ὅτι τῷ χαίρειν τοῖς ὁμοίοις καὶ τὸ χρῆσθαι καὶ ἀγαπᾶν ἔμφυτόν ἐστι, ταύτῃ πρῶτον ἐπιχειρεῖ πλησιάζειν ἑκάστῳ καὶ παρασκηνοῦν, ὥσπερ ἔν τισι νομαῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐπιτηδεύμασι καὶ [f] διατριβαῖς περὶ ταὐτὰ καὶ σπουδαῖς καὶ διαίταις ἀτρέμα παραβάλλων καὶ προσαναχρωννύμενος, ἄχρι οὗ λαβὴν παραδῷ καὶ ψαύοντι τιθασὸς γένηται καὶ συνήθης, ψέγων μὲν οἷς ἐκεῖνον αἰσθάνεται πράγμασι καὶ βίοις καὶ ἀνθρώποις ἀχθόμενον, ἐπαινέτης δὲ τῶν ἀρεσκόντων οὐ μέτριος ἀλλ’ ὥσθ’ [52] [a] ὑπερβάλλειν σὺν ἐκπλήξει καὶ θαύματι φαινόμενος, βεβαιῶν δὲ τὸ φιλοῦν καὶ τὸ μισοῦν ὡς κρίσει μᾶλλον ἢ πάθει γιγνόμενον.

Πῶς οὖν ἐλέγχεται καὶ τίσιν ἁλίσκεται διαφοραῖς, οὐκ ὢν ὅμοιος οὐδὲ γιγνόμενος ἀλλὰ μιμούμενος ὅμοιον; πρῶτον μὲν ὁρᾶν δεῖ τὴν ὁμαλότητα τῆς προαιρέσεως καὶ τὸ ἐνδελεχές, εἰ χαίρει τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀεὶ καὶ ταὐτὰ ἐπαινεῖ καὶ πρὸς ἓν ἀπευθύνει καὶ καθίστησι παράδειγμα τὸν ἑαυτοῦ βίον, ὥσπερ ἐλευθέρῳ φιλίας ὁμοιοτρόπου καὶ συνηθείας ἐραστῇ προσήκει. τοιοῦτος γὰρ ὁ φίλος. ὁ δὲ κόλαξ ἅτε δὴ μίαν ἑστίαν ἤθους οὐκ ἔχων μόνιμον οὐδ’ ἑαυτῷ [b] βίον ζῶν αἱρετὸν ἀλλ’ ἑτέρῳ, καὶ πρὸς ἕτερον πλάττων καὶ προσαρμόττων ἑαυτὸν οὐχ ἁπλοῦς οὐδ’ εἷς ἀλλὰ παντοδαπός ἐστι καὶ ποικίλος, εἰς ἄλλον ἐξ ἄλλου τόπον ὥσπερ τὸ μετερώμενον ὕδωρ περιρρέων ἀεὶ καὶ συσχηματιζόμενος τοῖς ὑποδεχομένοις.

Ὁ μὲν γὰρ πίθηκος, ὡς ἔοικε, μιμεῖσθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐπιχειρῶν ἁλίσκεται συγκινούμενος καὶ συνορχούμενος, ὁ δὲ κόλαξ αὐτὸς ἑτέρους ἐπάγεται καὶ παλεύει, μιμούμενος οὐχ ὁμοίως ἅπαντας ἀλλὰ τῷ μὲν συνορχούμενος καὶ συνᾴδων, τῷ δὲ συμπαλαίων καὶ συγκονιόμενος· θηρατικοῦ δὲ καὶ κυνηγετικοῦ λαβόμενος μονονοὺ τὰ τῆς Φαίδρας ἀναβοῶν ἕπεται

[c] πρὸς θεῶν ἔραμαι κυσὶ θωΰξαι

βαλιαῖς ἐλάφοις ἐγχριμπτόμενος,

καὶ οὐδὲν αὐτῷ πρᾶγμα πρὸς τὸ θηρίον, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἐκσαγηνεύει καὶ περιβάλλεται τὸν κυνηγόν. ἂν δὲ θηρεύῃ φιλόλογον καὶ φιλομαθῆ νέον, αὖθις ἐν βιβλίοις ἐστὶ καὶ πώγων ποδήρης καθεῖται καὶ τριβωνοφορία τὸ χρῆμα καὶ ἀδιαφορία, καὶ διὰ στόματος οἵ τε ἀριθμοὶ καὶ τὰ ὀρθογώνια τρίγωνα Πλάτωνος. εἴ τε ῥᾴθυμός τις ἐμπέπαικεν αὖθις καὶ φιλοπότης καὶ πλούσιος,

αὐτὰρ ὁ γυμνώθη ῥακέων πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς,

[d] ἔρριπται μὲν ὁ τρίβων, κατακείρεται δ’ ὁ πώγων ὥσπερ ἄκαρπον θέρος, ψυκτῆρες δὲ καὶ φιάλαι καὶ γέλωτες ἐν περιπάτοις καὶ σκώμματα πρὸς τοὺς φιλοσοφοῦντας. ὥσπερ ἐν Συρακούσαις φασίν, ὁπηνίκα Πλάτων ἀφίκετο, καὶ Διονύσιον ζῆλος ἔσχε περιμανὴς φιλοσοφίας, τὰ βασίλεια κονιορτοῦ γέμειν ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν γεωμετρούντων· ἐπεὶ δὲ προσέκρουσε Πλάτων, καὶ Διονύσιος ἐκπεσὼν φιλοσοφίας πάλιν εἰς πότους καὶ γύναια καὶ τὸ ληρεῖν [e] καὶ ἀκολασταίνειν ἧκε φερόμενος, ἀθρόως ἅπαντας ὥσπερ ἐν Κίρκης μεταμορφωθέντας ἀμουσία καὶ λήθη καὶ εὐήθεια κατέσχε. μαρτυρεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰ τῶν μεγάλων ἔργα κολάκων καὶ τὰ τῶν δημαγωγῶν, ὧν ὁ μέγιστος Ἀλκιβιάδης, Ἀθήνησι μὲν σκώπτων καὶ ἱπποτροφῶν καὶ μετ’ εὐτραπελίας ζῶν καὶ χάριτος, ἐν δὲ Λακεδαίμονι κειρόμενος ἐν χρῷ καὶ τριβωνοφορῶν καὶ ψυχρολουτῶν, ἐν δὲ Θρᾴκῃ πολεμῶν καὶ πίνων, ἐπεὶ δὲ πρὸς Τισσαφέρνην ἀφίκετο, τρυφῇ καὶ ἁβρότητι καὶ ἀλαζονείᾳ χρώμενος, ἐδημαγώγει καὶ καθωμίλει τῷ συναφομοιοῦν καὶ συνοικειοῦν [f] ἑαυτὸν ἅπασιν. οὐ μὴν τοιοῦτος Ἐπαμεινώνδας οὐδ’ Ἀγησίλαος, ἀλλὰ πλείστοις ὁμιλήσαντες ἀνθρώποις καὶ πόλεσι καὶ βίοις τὸ προσῆκον ἦθος αὑτοῖς πανταχοῦ καὶ στολῇ καὶ διαίτῃ καὶ λόγῳ καὶ βίῳ διεφύλαττον. οὕτω καὶ Πλάτων ἐν Συρακούσαις οἷος ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ, καὶ πρὸς Διονύσιον οἷος πρὸς Δίωνα.

Τὰς δὲ τοῦ κόλακος ὥσπερ πολύποδος τροπὰς ῥᾷστα φωράσειεν ἄν τις αὐτὸς ἐπὶ πολλὰ δοκῶν τρέπεσθαι, καὶ ψέγων μὲν ὃν ἐπῄνει πρότερον βίον, οἷς δ’ ἤχθετο πράγμασιν ἢ διαίταις ἢ λόγοις ὡς [53] [a] ἀρέσκοντας ἐξαίφνης προσιέμενος. ὄψεται γὰρ αὐτὸν οὐδαμοῦ βέβαιον οὐδ’ ἴδιον οὐδ’ οἰκείῳ πάθει φιλοῦντα καὶ μισοῦντα καὶ χαίροντα καὶ λυπούμενον, ἀλλὰ δίκην κατόπτρου παθῶν ὀθνείων καὶ βίων καὶ κινημάτων εἰκόνας ἀναδεχόμενον. τοιοῦτος γὰρ οἷος, εἰ ψέγοις τινὰ τῶν φίλων πρὸς αὐτόν, εἰπεῖν “βραδέως πεφώρακας τὸν ἄνθρωπον· ἐμοὶ μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲ πρότερον ἤρεσκεν.” ἂν δ’ αὖ πάλιν ἐπαινῇς μεταβαλόμενος, νὴ Δία φήσει συνήδεσθαι καὶ χάριν ἔχειν αὐτὸς ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ πιστεύειν.

[b] ἂν δὲ βίον ἀλλακτέον ἕτερον εἴπῃς, οἷον εἰς ἀπραγμοσύνην καὶ ἡσυχίαν ἐκ πολιτείας μεταβαλόμενος, “πάλαι γ’ ἐχρῆν,” φησί, “θορύβων ἡμᾶς ἀπηλλάχθαι καὶ φθόνων.” ἂν δὲ πάλιν ὁρμᾶν δοκῆς ἐπὶ τὸ πράττειν καὶ λέγειν, ὑπεφώνησεν “ἄξια σαυτοῦ φρονεῖς· ἡ δ’ ἀπραγμοσύνη γλυκὺ μέν, ἀλλ’ ἄδοξον καὶ ταπεινόν.” εὐθὺς οὖν λέγειν χρὴ πρὸς τὸν τοιοῦτον

ἀλλοῖός μοι, ξεῖν’, ἐφάνης νέον ἠὲ πάροιθεν,

οὐ δέομαι φίλου συμμεθισταμένου καὶ συνεπινεύοντος (ἡ γὰρ σκιὰ ταῦτα ποιεῖ μᾶλλον), ἀλλὰ συναληθεύοντος καὶ συνεπικρίνοντος.

Εἷς μὲν οὖν τῶν ἐλέγχων τρόπος τοιοῦτός ἐστιν· [c] ἑτέραν δὲ δεῖ ταῖς ὁμοιώσεσι τοιαύτην παραφυλάττειν διαφοράν. ὁ μὲν ἀληθὴς φίλος οὔτε μιμητής ἐστι πάντων οὔτ’ ἐπαινέτης πρόθυμος, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἀρίστων μόνων·

οὐ γὰρ συνέχθειν ἀλλὰ συμφιλεῖν ἔφυ

κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα, καὶ νὴ Δία συγκατορθοῦν καὶ συμφιλοκαλεῖν, οὐ συναμαρτάνειν οὐδὲ συρρᾳδιουργεῖν, ἂν μή τις οἷον ὀφθαλμίας ἀπορροὴ καὶ ἀνάχρωσις ἄκοντα δι’ ὁμιλίαν καὶ συνήθειαν ἀναπλήσῃ φαυλότητος ἢ πλημμελείας τινός. ὥς που καὶ Πλάτωνος ἀπομιμεῖσθαί φασι τοὺς συνήθεις τὸ ἐπίκυρτον, [d] Ἀριστοτέλους δὲ τὸν τραυλισμόν, Ἀλεξάνδρου δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως τὴν ἔγκλισιν τοῦ τραχήλου καὶ τὴν ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι τραχύτητα τῆς φωνῆς· τὰ γὰρ πολλὰ λανθάνουσιν ἔνιοι καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἠθῶν καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν βίων ἀναλαμβάνοντες. ὁ δὲ κόλαξ ἀτεχνῶς τὸ τοῦ χαμαιλέοντος πέπονθεν. ἐκεῖνός τε γὰρ ἁπάσῃ χρόᾳ πλὴν τοῦ λευκοῦ συναφομοιοῦται, καὶ ὁ κόλαξ ἐν τοῖς ἀξίοις σπουδῆς ὅμοιον ἑαυτὸν ἐξαδυνατῶν παρέχειν οὐδὲν ἀπολείπει τῶν αἰσχρῶν ἀμίμητον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ φαῦλοι ζῳγράφοι τῶν καλῶν ἐφικνεῖσθαι μὴ δυνάμενοι δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἐν ῥυτίσι καὶ φακοῖς καὶ οὐλαῖς τὰς ὁμοιότητας ἀναφέρουσιν, [e] οὕτως ἐκεῖνος ἀκρασίας γίγνεται μιμητής, δεισιδαιμονίας, ἀκροχολίας, πικρίας πρὸς οἰκέτας, ἀπιστίας πρὸς οἰκείους καὶ συγγενεῖς. φύσει τε γὰρ ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ πρὸς τὰ χείρονα κατάντης ἐστί, καὶ δοκεῖ πορρωτάτω τοῦ ψέγειν τὸ αἰσχρὸν εἶναι μιμούμενος. ὕποπτοι γὰρ οἱ τὰ βελτίω ζητοῦντες καὶ δοκοῦντες ἄχθεσθαι καὶ δυσκολαίνειν τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι τῶν φίλων· ὃ δὴ καὶ Διονυσίῳ Δίωνα καὶ Σάμιον Φιλίππῳ καὶ Κλεομένη Πτολεμαίῳ διέβαλε καὶ ἀπώλεσεν. ὁ δὲ βουλόμενος εἶναι καὶ δοκεῖν ὁμοίως ἡδὺς ἅμα καὶ πιστὸς τοῖς χείροσι μᾶλλον ὑποκρίνεται χαίρειν, ὡς ὑπὸ τοῦ σφόδρα φιλεῖν οὐδὲ [f] τὰ φαῦλα δυσχεραίνων, ἀλλὰ συμπαθὴς πᾶσι καὶ συμφυὴς γιγνόμενος. ὅθεν οὐδὲ τῶν ἀβουλήτων καὶ τυχηρῶν ἀμοιρεῖν ἀξιοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ νοσεῖν ὅμοια προσποιοῦνται, κολακεύοντες τοὺς νοσώδεις, καὶ μήτε βλέπειν ὀξὺ μήτ’ ἀκούειν, ἂν ὑποτύφλοις ἢ ὑποκώφοις συνῷσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ Διονυσίου κόλακες ἀμβλυωποῦντος ἐμπίπτοντες ἀλλήλοις καὶ τὰς παροψίδας ἐν τῷ δειπνεῖν καταβάλλοντες. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ μᾶλλον ἁπτόμενοι τῶν παθῶν ἐνδοτέρω ποιοῦσιν [54] [a] ἑαυτούς, καὶ καταμιγνύουσιν ἄχρι τῶν ἀπορρήτων τὰς ὁμοιοπαθείας. αἰσθόμενοι γὰρ ἢ περὶ γάμον δυστυχοῦντας ἢ πρὸς υἱοὺς ἢ πρὸς οἰκείους ὑπόπτως ἔχοντας αὐτοὶ σφῶν αὐτῶν ἀφειδοῦσι καὶ ἀποδύρονται περὶ τέκνων ἰδίων ἢ γυναικὸς ἢ συγγενῶν ἢ οἰκείων, αἰτίας τινὰς ἀπορρήτους ἐξαγορεύοντες. ἡ γὰρ ὁμοιότης συμπαθεστέρους ποιεῖ, καὶ μᾶλλον ὥσπερ ὅμηρα δεδεγμένοι προΐενταί τι τῶν ἀπορρήτων αὐτοῖς, προέμενοι δὲ χρῶνται καὶ δεδίασιν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν τὴν πίστιν. ἐγὼ δ’ οἶδά τινα συνεκβαλόντα γαμετήν, ὡς ὁ φίλος ἀπεπέμψατο τὴν ἑαυτοῦ· [b] κρύφα δὲ φοιτῶν πρὸς αὐτὴν καὶ διαπεμπόμενος ἐφωράθη, συναισθομένης τῆς τοῦ φίλου γυναικός. οὕτως ἄπειρος ἦν κόλακος ὁ νομίζων τὰ ἰαμβεῖα ταυτὶ τῷ κόλακι μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ καρκίνῳ προσήκειν·

γαστὴρ ὅλον τὸ σῶμα, πανταχῆ βλέπων

ὀφθαλμός, ἕρπον τοῖς ὀδοῦσι θηρίον·

παρασίτου γὰρ ὁ τοιοῦτος εἰκονισμός ἐστι,

τῶν περὶ τάγηνον καὶ μετ’ ἄριστον φίλων,

ὡς Εὔπολίς φησιν.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν εἰς τὸν οἰκεῖον ἀναθώμεθα τοῦ λόγου τόπον· ἐκεῖνο δὲ μὴ παρῶμεν ἐν ταῖς μιμήσεσι τὸ σόφισμα τοῦ κόλακος, ὅτι κἂν [c] τῶν καλῶν τι μιμῆται τοῦ κολακευομένου, διαφυλάττει τὴν ὑπεροχὴν ἐκείνῳ. τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ἀληθῶς φίλοις οὔτε ζῆλος οὐδείς ἐστι πρὸς ἀλλήλους οὔτε φθόνος, ἀλλὰ κἂν ἴσον ἔχωσιν ἐν τῷ κατορθοῦν κἂν ἔλαττον, ἀνεπαχθῶς καὶ μετρίως φέρουσιν. ὁ δὲ κόλαξ ἀεὶ μνημονεύων τοῦ τὰ δεύτερα λέγειν ὑφίεται τῇ ὁμοιότητι τῆς ἰσότητος, ἡττᾶσθαι πανταχοῦ καὶ ἀπολείπεσθαι πλὴν τῶν φαύλων ὁμολογῶν. ἐν δὲ τοῖς φαύλοις οὐ παρίησι τὸ πρωτεῖον, ἀλλά φησιν, ἂν ἐκεῖνος ᾖ δύσκολος, αὑτὸν εἶναι μελαγχολικόν· ἂν ἐκεῖνος δεισιδαίμων, αὑτὸν θεοφόρητον· [d] ἐρᾶν ἐκεῖνον, μαίνεσθαι δ’ αὑτόν. “ἀκαίρως,” φησίν, “ἐγέλας, ἐγὼ δ’ ἐξέθνῃσκον ὑπὸ τοῦ γέλωτος.” ἀλλ’ ἔν γε τοῖς χρηστοῖς τοὐναντίον. αὐτός φησι ταχέως τρέχειν, ἵπτασθαι δ’ ἐκεῖνον· αὐτὸς ἱππεύειν ἐπιεικῶς, “ἀλλὰ τί πρὸς τὸν ἱπποκένταυρον τοῦτον; εὐφυής εἰμι ποιητὴς καὶ στίχον οὐ φαυλότατον γράφω,

βροντᾶν δ’ οὐκ ἐμὸν ἀλλὰ Διός.”

ἅμα γὰρ αὐτοῦ δοκεῖ καὶ τὴν προαίρεσιν ἀποφαίνειν καλὴν μιμούμενος καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἀνέφικτον ἡττώμενος.

Ἐν μὲν οὖν ταῖς ἐξομοιώσεσι τοιαῦταί τινές εἰσιν αἱ τοῦ κόλακος διαφοραὶ πρὸς τὸν φίλον.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὥσπερ εἴρηται καὶ τὸ τῆς ἡδονῆς κοινόν ἐστι (χαίρει γὰρ οὐχ ἧττον τοῖς φίλοις ὁ χρηστὸς ἢ τοῖς κόλαξιν ὁ φαῦλος), φέρε καὶ τοῦτο διορίσωμεν. ἔστι δὲ διορισμὸς ἡ πρὸς τὸ τέλος [e] ἀναφορὰ τῆς ἡδονῆς. σκόπει δ’ οὕτως· ἔνεστι μέν που τῷ μύρῳ τὸ εὐῶδες, ἔνεστι δ’ ἐν ἀντιδότῳ. διαφέρει δ’ ὅτι τοῦτο μὲν πρὸς ἡδονὴν καὶ πρὸς οὐδὲν ἕτερον γέγονεν, ἐκεῖ δὲ τὸ καθαῖρον ἢ τὸ θερμαῖνον ἢ τὸ σαρκοῦν τῆς δυνάμεως ἄλλως εὐῶδές ἐστι. πάλιν οἱ γραφεῖς ἀνθηρὰ χρώματα καὶ βάμματα μιγνύουσιν, ἔστι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἰατρικῶν φαρμάκων ἔνια τὴν ὄψιν ἀνθηρὰ καὶ τὴν χρόαν οὐκ ἀπάνθρωπον ἔχοντα. τί τοίνυν διαφέρει; ἢ δῆλον ὅτι τῷ τέλει τῆς χρείας διακρινοῦμεν; [f] οὐκοῦν ὁμοίως αἱ μὲν τῶν φίλων χάριτες ἐπὶ καλῷ τινι καὶ ὠφελίμῳ τὸ εὐφραῖνον ὥσπερ ἐπανθοῦν ἔχουσιν, ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ παιδιᾷ καὶ τραπέζῃ καὶ οἴνῳ καὶ νὴ Δία γέλωτι καὶ φλυάρῳ πρὸς ἀλλήλους οἷον ἡδύσμασιν ἐχρήσαντο τῶν καλῶν καὶ σπουδαίων. πρὸς ὃ δὴ καὶ λέλεκται τὸ

μύθοισιν τέρποντο πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐνέποντες

καὶ τὸ

οὐδέ κεν ἄλλο

ἄμμε διέκρινεν φιλέοντέ τε τερπομένω τε.

[55] [a] τοῦ δὲ κόλακος τοῦτ’ ἔργον ἐστὶ καὶ τέλος, ἀεί τινα παιδιὰν ἢ πρᾶξιν ἢ λόγον ἐφ’ ἡδονῇ καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὴν ὀψοποιεῖν καὶ καρυκεύειν. συνελόντι δ’ εἰπεῖν ὁ μὲν ἵν’ ἡδὺς ᾖ πάντα δεῖν οἴεται ποιεῖν, ὁ δ’ ἀεὶ ποιῶν ἃ δεῖ πολλάκις μὲν ἡδὺς πολλάκις δ’ ἀηδής ἐστιν, οὐ τοῦτο βουλόμενος, εἰ δὲ βέλτιον εἴη, μηδὲ τοῦτο φεύγων. ὥσπερ γὰρ ἰατρός, ἂν συμφέρῃ, κρόκον καὶ νάρδον ἐπέβαλε καὶ νὴ Δία πολλάκις ἔλουσε προσηνῶς καὶ ἔθρεψε φιλανθρώπως, ἔστι δ’ ὅπου ταῦτ’ ἐάσας καστόριον ἐνέσεισεν

ἢ πόλιον βαρύοσμον ὃ δὴ ῥίγιστον ὄδωδεν

[b] ἤ τινα ἐλλέβορον ἐκπιεῖν τρίψας ἠνάγκασεν, οὔτ’ ἐνταῦθα τὸ ἀηδὲς οὔτ’ ἐκεῖ τὸ ἡδὺ ποιούμενος τέλος ἀλλ’ ἐφ’ ἓν δι’ ἀμφοτέρων ἐπὶ τὸ συμφέρον ἄγων τὸν θεραπευόμενον, οὕτως ὁ φίλος ἔστι μὲν ὅτε σὺν ἐπαίνῳ καὶ χάριτι μεγαλύνων ἀεὶ καὶ εὐφραίνων ἄγει πρὸς τὸ καλόν, ὥσπερ οὗτος

Τεῦκρε, φίλη κεφαλή, Τελαμώνιε, κοίρανε λαῶν,

βάλλ’ οὕτω

καὶ

πῶς ἂν ἔπειτ’ Ὀδυσῆος ἐγὼ θείοιο λαθοίμην;

ὅπου δ’ αὖ πάλιν ἐπιστροφῆς δεῖται, λόγῳ δήκτῃ καὶ παρρησίᾳ κηδεμονικῇ καθαπτόμενος

[c] ἀφραίνεις, Μενέλαε διοτρεφές, οὐδέ τί σε χρὴ

ταύτης ἀφροσύνης.

ἔστι δ’ ὅπου καὶ τὸ ἔργον ἅμα τῷ λόγῳ συνῆψεν, ὡς Μενέδημος Ἀσκληπιάδου τοῦ φίλου τὸν υἱὸν ἄσωτον ὄντα καὶ ἄτακτον ἀποκλείων καὶ μὴ προσαγορεύων ἐσωφρόνισε, καὶ Βάτωνι τὴν σχολὴν ἀπεῖπεν Ἀρκεσίλαος, ὅτε πρὸς Κλεάνθην στίχον ἐποίησεν ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ, πείσαντος δὲ τὸν Κλεάνθην καὶ μεταμελομένου διηλλάγη. δεῖ γὰρ ὠφελοῦντα λυπεῖν τὸν φίλον, οὐ δεῖ δὲ λυποῦντα τὴν φιλίαν ἀναιρεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὡς φαρμάκῳ τῷ δάκνοντι χρῆσθαι, [d] σῴζοντι καὶ φυλάττοντι τὸ θεραπευόμενον. ὅθεν ὥσπερ ἁρμονικὸς ὁ φίλος τῇ πρὸς τὸ καλὸν καὶ συμφέρον μεταβολῇ τὰ μὲν ἐνδιδοὺς τὰ δ’ ἐπιτείνων πολλάκις μὲν ἡδὺς ἀεὶ δ’ ὠφέλιμός ἐστι· ὁ δὲ κόλαξ ἀφ’ ἑνὸς διαγράμματος ἀεὶ τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ τὸ πρὸς χάριν εἰωθὼς ὑποκρέκειν οὔτ’ ἔργον οἶδεν ἀντιτεῖνον οὔτε ῥῆμα λυποῦν, ἀλλὰ μόνῳ παρέπεται τῷ βουλομένῳ, συνᾴδων ἀεὶ καὶ συμφθεγγόμενος. ὥσπερ οὖν τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ὁ Ξενοφῶν ἡδέως ἐπαινεῖσθαί φησιν ὑπὸ τῶν καὶ ψέγειν ἐθελόντων, οὕτω δεῖ τὸ εὐφραῖνον καὶ χαριζόμενον ἡγεῖσθαι φιλικόν, ἂν καὶ λυπεῖν ποτε δύνηται καὶ ἀντιτείνειν, τὴν δὲ [e] συνεχῆ ταῖς ἡδοναῖς καὶ τὸ πρὸς χάριν ἔχουσαν ἄκρατον ἀεὶ καὶ ἄδηκτον ὁμιλίαν ὑπονοεῖν, καὶ νὴ Δία τὸ τοῦ Λάκωνος ἔχειν πρόχειρον, ὃς ἐπαινουμένου Χαρίλλου τοῦ βασιλέως “πῶς οὗτος” ἔφη “χρηστός, ὃς οὐδὲ τοῖς πονηροῖς πικρός ἐστι;”

Τοῖς μὲν οὖν ταύροις τὸν οἶστρον ἐνδύεσθαι παρὰ τὸ οὖς λέγουσι, καὶ τοῖς κυσὶ τὸν κρότωνα· τῶν δὲ φιλοτίμων ὁ κόλαξ τὰ ὦτα κατέχων τοῖς ἐπαίνοις καὶ προσπεφυκὼς δυσαπότριπτός ἐστιν. ὅθεν ἐνταῦθα δεῖ μάλιστα τὴν κρίσιν ἔχειν ἐγρηγορυῖαν [f] καὶ παραφυλάττουσαν πότερον τοῦ πράγματος ἢ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὁ ἔπαινός ἐστιν. ἔστι δὲ τοῦ πράγματος, ἂν ἀπόντας μᾶλλον ἢ παρόντας ἐπαινῶσιν, ἂν καὶ αὐτοὶ ταὐτὰ βουλόμενοι καὶ ζηλοῦντες μὴ μόνους ἡμᾶς ἀλλὰ πάντας ἐπὶ τοῖς ὁμοίοις ἐπαινῶσιν, ἂν μὴ νῦν μὲν ταῦτα νῦν δὲ τἀναντία πράττοντες καὶ λέγοντες φαίνωνται· τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, ἂν αὐτοὶ γιγνώσκωμεν ἑαυτοὺς μὴ μεταμελομένους ἐφ’ οἷς ἐπαινούμεθα μηδ’ αἰσχυνομένους μηδὲ μᾶλλον ἡμῖν τἀναντία τούτων πεπρᾶχθαι καὶ λελέχθαι βουλομένους. ἡ γὰρ οἴκοθεν κρίσις ἀντιμαρτυροῦσα καὶ μὴ προσδεχομένη τὸν ἔπαινον [56] [a] ἀπαθής ἐστι καὶ ἄθικτος καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ κολακεύοντος ἀνάλωτος. ἀλλ’ οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως οἱ πολλοὶ τὰς μὲν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀτυχήμασι παρηγορίας οὐχ ὑπομένουσιν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τῶν συνεπιθρηνούντων ἄγονται καὶ συνοδυρομένων· ὅταν δ’ ἁμαρτάνωσι καὶ πλημμελῶσιν, ὁ μὲν ἐλέγχῳ καὶ ψόγῳ δηγμὸν ἐμποιῶν καὶ μετάνοιαν ἐχθρὸς δοκεῖ καὶ κατήγορος, τὸν δ’ ἐπαινοῦντα καὶ κατευλογοῦντα τὰ πεπραγμένα ἀσπάζονται καὶ νομίζουσιν εὔνουν [b] καὶ φίλον. ὅσοι μὲν οὖν ἢ πρᾶξιν ἢ λόγον ἢ σπουδάσαντος ὁτιοῦν ἢ σκώψαντος εὐχερῶς ἐπαινοῦσι καὶ συνεπικροτοῦσιν, εἰς τὸ παρόν εἰσιν οὗτοι καὶ τὰ ὑπὸ χεῖρα βλαβεροὶ μόνον· ὅσοι δὲ πρὸς τὸ ἦθος ἐξικνοῦνται τοῖς ἐπαίνοις καὶ νὴ Δία τοῦ τρόπου τῇ κολακείᾳ θιγγάνουσι, ταὐτὸ ποιοῦσι τῶν οἰκετῶν τοῖς μὴ ἀπὸ τοῦ σωροῦ κλέπτουσιν ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ σπέρματος· σπέρμα γὰρ τῶν πράξεων οὖσαν τὴν διάθεσιν καὶ τὸ ἦθος ἀρχὴν καὶ πηγὴν τοῦ βίου διαστρέφουσι, τὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς ὀνόματα τῇ κακίᾳ περιτιθέντες. ἐν μὲν γὰρ ταῖς στάσεσι καὶ τοῖς πολέμοις ὁ Θουκυδίδης φησὶν ὅτι “τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ἀξίωσιν τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐς τὰ ἔργα ἀντήλλαξαν τῇ δικαιώσει. τόλμα μὲν [c] γὰρ ἀλόγιστος ἀνδρεία φιλέταιρος ἐνομίσθη, μέλλησις δὲ προμηθὴς δειλία εὐπρεπής, τὸ δὲ σῶφρον τοῦ ἀνάνδρου πρόσχημα, καὶ τὸ πρὸς ἅπαν συνετὸν ἐπὶ πᾶν ἀργόν.” ἐν δὲ ταῖς κολακείαις ὁρᾶν χρὴ καὶ παραφυλάττειν ἀσωτίαν μὲν ἐλευθεριότητα καλουμένην καὶ δειλίαν ἀσφάλειαν, ἐμπληξίαν δ’ ὀξύτητα, μικρολογίαν δὲ σωφροσύνην, τὸν δ’ ἐρωτικὸν φιλοσυνήθη καὶ φιλόστοργον, ἀνδρεῖον δὲ τὸν ὀργίλον καὶ ὑπερήφανον, φιλάνθρωπον δὲ [d] τὸν εὐτελῆ καὶ ταπεινόν. ὥς που καὶ Πλάτων φησὶ τὸν ἐραστὴν κόλακα τῶν ἐρωμένων ὄντα τὸν μὲν σιμὸν καλεῖν ἐπίχαριν, τὸν δὲ γρυπὸν βασιλικόν, μέλανας δ’ ἀνδρικούς, λευκοὺς δὲ θεῶν παῖδας· τὸ δὲ μελίχρουν ὅλως ἐραστοῦ προσποίημα εἶναι ὑποκοριζομένου καὶ εὐκόλως φέροντος τὴν ὠχρότητα. καίτοι καλὸς μὲν εἶναι πεισθεὶς ὁ αἰσχρὸς ἢ μέγας ὁ μικρὸς οὔτε χρόνον πολὺν τῇ ἀπάτῃ [e] σύνεστι καὶ βλάπτεται βλάβην ἐλαφρὰν καὶ οὐκ ἀνήκεστον. ὁ δὲ ταῖς κακίαις ἐθίζων ἔπαινος ὡς ἀρεταῖς μὴ ἀχθόμενον ἀλλὰ χαίροντα χρῆσθαι, καὶ τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι τῶν ἁμαρτανομένων ἀφαιρῶν, οὗτος ἐπέτριψε Σικελιώτας, τὴν Διονυσίου καὶ Φαλάριδος ὠμότητα μισοπονηρίαν προσαγορεύων, οὗτος Αἴγυπτον ἀπώλεσε, τὴν Πτολεμαίου θηλύτητα καὶ θεοληψίαν καὶ ὀλολυγμοὺς καὶ τυμπάνων ἐγχαράξεις εὐσέβειαν ὀνομάζων καὶ θεῶν λατρείαν, οὗτος τὰ Ῥωμαίων ἤθη τηνικαῦτα παρ’ οὐδὲν ἦλθεν ἀνατρέψαι καὶ ἀνελεῖν, τὰς Ἀντωνίου τρυφὰς καὶ ἀκολασίας καὶ πανηγυρισμοὺς ἱλαρὰ πράγματα καὶ φιλάνθρωπα χρωμένης ἀφθόνως [f] αὐτῷ δυνάμεως καὶ τύχης ὑποκοριζόμενος. Πτολεμαίῳ δὲ τί περιῆψεν ἄλλο φορβειὰν καὶ αὐλούς, τί δὲ Νέρωνι τραγικὴν ἐπήξατο σκηνὴν καὶ προσωπεῖα καὶ κοθόρνους περιέθηκεν; οὐχ ὁ τῶν κολακευόντων ἔπαινος; οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τῶν βασιλέων οὐκ Ἀπόλλωνες μὲν ἂν μινυρίσωσι, Διόνυσοι δ’ ἂν μεθυσθῶσιν, Ἡρακλεῖς δ’ ἂν παλαίσωσι προσαγορευόμενοι καὶ χαίροντες εἰς ἅπασαν αἰσχύνην ὑπὸ τῆς κολακείας ἐξάγονται;

Διὸ φυλακτέον ἐστὶ μάλιστα τὸν κόλακα περὶ τοὺς ἐπαίνους. ὅπερ οὐδ’ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον λέληθεν, [57] [a] ἀλλὰ δεινὸς ὢν φυλάττεσθαι τὸ ὕποπτον, ἂν μὲν εὐπαρύφου τινὸς ἢ ἀγροίκου λάβηται φορίνην παχεῖαν φέροντος, ὅλῳ τῷ μυκτῆρι χρῆται, καθάπερ ὁ Στρουθίας ἐμπεριπατῶν τῷ Βίαντι καὶ κατορχούμενος τῆς ἀναισθησίας αὐτοῦ τοῖς ἐπαίνοις

Ἀλεξάνδρου πλέον

τοῦ βασιλέως πέπωκας

καὶ

γελῶ τὸ πρὸς τὸν Κύπριον ἐννοούμενος.

τοὺς δὲ κομψοτέρους ὁρῶν ἐνταῦθα μάλιστα προσέχοντας αὐτῷ καὶ φυλαττομένους τὸ χωρίον τοῦτο καὶ τὸν τόπον οὐκ ἀπ’ εὐθείας ἐπάγει τὸν ἔπαινον, ἀλλ’ ἀπαγαγὼν πόρρω κυκλοῦται καὶ

[b] πρόσεισιν, οἷον ἀψοφητὶ θρέμματος

ἐπιψαύων καὶ ἀποπειρώμενος. νῦν μὲν γὰρ ἑτέρων περὶ αὐτοῦ τινων ἐπαίνους ἀπαγγέλλει, καθάπερ οἱ ῥήτορες, ἀλλοτρίῳ προσχρώμενος προσώπῳ, ξένοις λέγων ἢ πρεσβυτέροις ἐν ἀγορᾷ μάλ’ ἡδέως παραγενέσθαι πολλὰ κἀγαθὰ μεμνημένοις αὐτοῦ καὶ θαυμάζουσι· νῦν δ’ αὖ πάλιν αἰτίας ἐλαφρὰς καὶ ψευδεῖς πλασάμενος καὶ συνθεὶς ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ὡς ἀκηκοὼς ἑτέρων ἀφῖκται μετὰ σπουδῆς, πυνθανόμενος ποῦ τοῦτ’ εἶπεν ἢ ποῦ τοῦτ’ ἔπραξεν. ἀρνουμένου δ’, ὡς εἰκός, αὐτόθεν ἑλὼν ἐμβέβληκεν εἰς [c] τοὺς ἐπαίνους τὸν ἄνθρωπον, “ἐγὼ δ’ ἐθαύμαζον εἰ σὺ κακῶς τινα τῶν συνήθων εἶπας ὁ μηδὲ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς πεφυκώς, εἰ σὺ τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις ἐπεχείρησας ὁ τοσαῦτα τῶν ἰδίων δωρούμενος.”

Ἕτεροι τοίνυν, ὥσπερ οἱ ζῳγράφοι τὰ φωτεινὰ καὶ λαμπρὰ τοῖς σκιεροῖς καὶ σκοτεινοῖς ἐπιτείνουσιν ἐγγὺς παρατιθεμένοις, οὕτω τῷ ψέγειν τἀναντία καὶ λοιδορεῖν ἢ διασύρειν καὶ καταγελᾶν λανθάνουσι τὰ προσόντα κακὰ τοῖς κολακευομένοις ἐπαινοῦντες καὶ τρέφοντες. σωφροσύνην τε γὰρ ὡς ἀγροικίαν ψέγουσιν ἐν ἀσώτοις, κἀν πλεονέκταις καὶ κακούργοις καὶ πλουτοῦσιν ἀπὸ πραγμάτων [d] αἰσχρῶν καὶ πονηρῶν αὐτάρκειάν τε καὶ δικαιοσύνην ὡς ἀτολμίαν καὶ ἀρρωστίαν πρὸς τὸ πράττειν· ὅταν δὲ ῥᾳθύμοις σχολασταῖς καὶ τὰ μέσα φεύγουσι τῶν πόλεων ὁμιλῶσιν, οὐκ αἰσχύνονται πολιτείαν μὲν ἀλλοτριοπραγίαν ἐπίπονον, φιλοτιμίαν δὲ κενοδοξίαν ἄκαρπον ὀνομάζοντες. ἤδη δὲ καὶ ῥήτορος ἔστιν ὅτε κολακεία διασύρει φιλόσοφον, καὶ παρὰ γυναιξὶν ἀκολάστοις εὐδοκιμοῦσιν οἱ τὰς μονολεχεῖς καὶ φιλάνδρους ἀναφροδίτους καὶ ἀγροίκους ἀποκαλοῦντες. ὑπερβάλλει δὲ μοχθηρίᾳ τὸ μηδ’ ἑαυτῶν ἀπέχεσθαι τοὺς κόλακας. ὡς γὰρ οἱ παλαισταὶ τὸ σῶμα ποιοῦσι ταπεινόν, ὅπως ἑτέρους καταβάλωσιν, [e] οὕτω τῷ ψέγειν ἑαυτοὺς εἰς τὸ θαυμάζειν τοὺς πλησίον ὑπορρέουσιν. “ἀνδράποδόν εἰμι δειλὸν ἐν θαλάττῃ, πρὸς τοὺς πόνους ἀπαγορεύω, μαίνομαι κακῶς ἀκούσας ὑπ’ ὀργῆς· ἀλλὰ τούτῳ,” φησίν, “οὐδέν ἐστι δεινόν, οὐδὲν πονηρόν, ἀλλ’ ἴδιος ἄνθρωπος, πάντα πράως φέρει, πάντ’ ἀλύπως.” ἂν δ’ ᾖ τις οἰόμενος πολὺν ἔχειν νοῦν καὶ βουλόμενος αὐστηρὸς εἶναι καὶ αὐθέκαστος ὑπὸ δή τινος ὀρθότητος ἀεὶ προβάλληται τὸ

Τυδείδη, μήτ’ ἄρ με μάλ’ αἴνεε μήτε τι νείκει,

[f] οὐ ταύτῃ πρόσεισιν ὁ τεχνίτης κόλαξ, ἀλλ’ ἔστι τις ἑτέρα μηχανὴ πρὸς τὸν τοιοῦτον. ἥκει γὰρ αὐτῷ περὶ πραγμάτων ἰδίων ὡς δὴ φρονήσει περισσοτέρῳ συμβουλευσόμενος, καί φησι μᾶλλον μὲν ἑτέρους ἔχειν συνήθεις, ἐνοχλεῖν δ’ ἀναγκαίως ἐκείνῳ· “ποῖ γὰρ καταφύγωμεν οἱ γνώμης δεόμενοι, τίνι δὲ πιστεύσωμεν;” εἶτ’ ἀκούσας ὅ τι ἂν εἴπῃ, χρησμὸν εἰληφέναι φήσας οὐ γνώμην ἄπεισιν. ἂν δὲ καὶ λόγων [58] [a] τινὸς ἐμπειρίας ὁρᾷ μεταποιούμενον, ἔδωκέ τι τῶν αὑτῷ γεγραμμένων, ἀναγνῶναι καὶ διορθῶσαι κελεύσας. Μιθριδάτῃ δὲ τῷ βασιλεῖ φιλιατροῦντι καὶ τεμεῖν ἔνιοι καὶ καῦσαι παρέσχον αὑτοὺς τῶν ἑταίρων, ἔργῳ κολακεύοντες οὐλόγῳ· μαρτυρεῖσθαι γὰρ ἐμπειρίαν ἐδόκει πιστευόμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν.

πολλαὶ μορφαὶ τῶν δαιμονίων,

τὸ δὲ γένος τοῦτο τῶν ἀρνουμένων ἐπαίνων πανουργοτέρας δεόμενον εὐλαβείας ἐλεγκτέον ἐπίτηδες ἀτόπους ἐκτάττοντα συμβουλίας καὶ ὑποθήκας, καὶ [b] διορθώσεις ποιούμενον ἀλόγους. πρὸς μηδὲν γὰρ ἀντιλέγων, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι συνεπινεύων καὶ δεχόμενος πάντα καὶ βοῶν παρ’ ἕκαστον ὡς εὖ καὶ καλῶς, γίγνεται καταφανὴς

σύνθημ’ ἐρωτῶν, ἄλλο μαστεύων χρέος,

ἐπαινέσαι καὶ συνεπιτυφῶσαι βουλόμενος.

Ἔτι τοίνυν ὥσπερ ἔνιοι τὴν ζῳγραφίαν σιωπῶσαν ἀπεφήναντο ποιητικήν, οὕτως ἔστι τις κολακείας σιωπώσης ἔπαινος. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ θηρεύοντες ἂν μὴ τοῦτο ποιεῖν ἀλλ’ ὁδοιπορεῖν ἢ νέμειν ἢ γεωργεῖν δοκῶσι, μᾶλλον τὰ θηρευόμενα λανθάνουσιν, οὕτως οἱ κόλακες ἅπτονται μάλιστα τοῖς ἐπαίνοις, ὅταν ἐπαινεῖν μὴ δοκῶσιν ἀλλ’ ἕτερόν τι πράττειν. ὁ γὰρ ἕδρας εἴκων καὶ κλισίας ἐπιόντι καὶ λέγων [c] πρὸς δῆμον ἢ βουλὴν ἂν αἴσθηταί τινα τῶν πλουσίων βουλόμενον εἰπεῖν, ἀποσιωπῶν μεταξὺ καὶ παραδιδοὺς τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὸν λόγον ἐνδείκνυται σιωπῶν μᾶλλον τοῦ βοῶντος ὅτι κρείττονα νομίζει καὶ διαφέροντα τῷ φρονεῖν ἐκεῖνον. ὅθεν ὁρᾶν ἔστιν αὐτοὺς ἕδρας τε τὰς πρώτας ἐν ἀκροάσεσι καὶ θεάτροις καταλαμβάνοντας, οὐχ ὅτι τούτων ἀξιοῦσιν αὑτούς, ἀλλ’ ὅπως ὑπεξιστάμενοι τοῖς πλουσίοις κολακεύωσι, καὶ λόγου κατάρχοντας ἐν συνόδοις καὶ συνεδρίοις, εἶτα παραχωροῦντας ὡς κρείττοσι καὶ [d] μετατιθεμένους ῥᾷστα πρὸς τοὐναντίον, ἄνπερ ᾖ δυνατὸς ἢ πλούσιος ἢ ἔνδοξος ὁ ἀντιλέγων. ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα δεῖ τὰς τοιαύτας ὑποκατακλίσεις καὶ ἀναχωρήσεις ἐξελέγχειν, οὐκ ἐμπειρίαις οὐδ’ ἀρεταῖς οὐδ’ ἡλικίαις ὑφιεμένων ἀλλὰ πλούτοις καὶ δόξαις. Ἀπελλῆς μὲν γὰρ ὁ ζῳγράφος, Μεγαβύζου παρακαθίσαντος αὐτῷ καὶ περὶ γραμμῆς τι καὶ σκιᾶς βουλομένου λαλεῖν, “ὁρᾷς” ἔφη “τὰ παιδάρια ταυτὶ τὰ τὴν μηλίδα τρίβοντα; πάνυ σοι προσεῖχε τὸν νοῦν σιωπῶντι, καὶ τὴν πορφύραν ἐθαύμαζε καὶ τὰ [e] χρυσία· νῦν δέ σου καταγελᾷ περὶ ὧν οὐ μεμάθηκας ἀρξαμένου λαλεῖν.” καὶ Σόλων, Κροίσου περὶ εὐδαιμονίας πυνθανομένου, Τέλλον τινὰ τῶν οὐκ ἐπιφανῶν Ἀθήνησι καὶ Κλέοβιν καὶ Βίτωνα ἀπέφηνεν εὐποτμοτέρους. οἱ δὲ κόλακες τοὺς βασιλεῖς καὶ πλουσίους καὶ ἄρχοντας οὐκ ὀλβίους μόνον καὶ μακαρίους ἀλλὰ καὶ φρονήσει καὶ τέχνῃ καὶ ἀρετῇ πάσῃ πρωτεύοντας ἀναγορεύουσιν.

Εἶτα τῶν μὲν Στωϊκῶν οὐδ’ ἀκούειν ἔνιοι ὑπομένουσι τὸν σοφὸν ὁμοῦ πλούσιον καλὸν εὐγενῆ βασιλέα προσαγορευόντων, οἱ δὲ κόλακες τὸν πλούσιον ὁμοῦ καὶ ῥήτορα καὶ ποιητήν, ἂν δὲ βούληται, [f] καὶ ζῳγράφον καὶ αὐλητὴν ἀποφαίνουσι καὶ ποδώκη καὶ ῥωμαλέον, ὑποπίπτοντες ἐν τῷ παλαίειν καὶ ἀπολειπόμενοι θεόντων, ὥσπερ Κρίσων ὁ Ἱμεραῖος ἀπελείφθη διαθέων πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον, ὁ δ’ αἰσθόμενος ἠγανάκτησε. Καρνεάδης δ’ ἔλεγε ὅτι πλουσίων καὶ βασιλέων παῖδες ἱππεύειν μόνον, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν εὖ καὶ καλῶς μανθάνουσι· κολακεύει γὰρ αὐτοὺς ἐν ταῖς διατριβαῖς ὁ διδάσκαλος ἐπαινῶν καὶ ὁ προσπαλαίων ὑποκατακλινόμενος, ὁ δ’ ἵππος, οὐκ εἰδὼς οὐδὲ φροντίζων ὅστις ἰδιώτης ἢ ἄρχων ἢ πλούσιος ἢ πένης, ἐκτραχηλίζει τοὺς μὴ δυναμένους ὀχεῖσθαι. [59] [a]εὐήθη τοίνυν καὶ ἀβέλτερα τὰ τοῦ Βίωνος “εἰ τὸν ἀγρὸν ἔμελλεν ἐγκωμιάζων εὔφορον ποιεῖν καὶ εὔκαρπον, εἶτ’ οὐκ ἂν ἁμαρτάνειν ἐδόκει τοῦτο μὴ ποιῶν μᾶλλον ἢ σκάπτων καὶ πράγματα ἔχων; οὐ τοίνυν οὐδ’ ἄνθρωπος ἄτοπος ἂν ἐπαίνων εἴη, εἰ τοῖς ἐπαίνοις μόνοις ὠφέλιμός ἐστι καὶ πάμφορος.” ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἀγρὸς οὐ γίγνεται χείρων ἐπαινούμενος, ἄνθρωπον δὲ τυφοῦσι καὶ ἀπολλύουσιν οἱ ψευδῶς καὶ παρ’ ἀξίαν ἐπαινοῦντες.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἀπόχρη περὶ τούτων· ἐφεξῆς δὲ τὸ τῆς παρρησίας ἴδωμεν. ἔδει μὲν γάρ, ὡς ὁ [b] Πάτροκλος τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως τὰ ὅπλα περιβαλλόμενος καὶ τοὺς ἵππους ἐξελαύνων ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην μόνης οὐκ ἐτόλμησε τῆς Πηλιάδος θιγεῖν ἀλλ’ ἀφῆκεν, οὕτω τὸν κόλακα τοῖς τοῦ φίλου σκευοποιούμενον καὶ ἀναπλαττόμενον ἐπισήμοις καὶ συμβόλοις μόνην τὴν παρρησίαν ὥσπερ ἐξαίρετον βάσταγμα φιλίας

βριθὺ μέγα στιβαρὸν

καταλείπειν ἄθικτον καὶ ἀμίμητον. ἐπεὶ δὲ φεύγοντες τὸν ἐν γέλωτι καὶ ἀκράτῳ καὶ σκώμμασι καὶ παιδιαῖς ἔλεγχον εἰς ὀφρῦν αἴρουσιν ἤδη τὸ [c] πρᾶγμα καὶ κολακεύουσιν ἐσκυθρωπακότες καὶ ψόγον τινὰ καὶ νουθεσίαν παραμιγνύουσι, φέρε μηδὲ τοῦτο παραλίπωμεν ἀβασάνιστον. οἶμαι δέ, ὥσπερ ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ Μενάνδρου Ψευδηρακλῆς πρόσεισι ῥόπαλον οὐ στιβαρὸν κομίζων οὐδ’ ἰσχυρὸν ἀλλὰ χαῦνόν τι πλάσμα καὶ διάκενον, οὕτω τὴν τοῦ κόλακος παρρησίαν φανεῖσθαι πειρωμένοις μαλακὴν καὶ ἀβαρῆ καὶ τόνον οὐκ ἔχουσαν, ἀλλὰ ταὐτὰ τοῖς τῶν γυναικῶν προσκεφαλαίοις δρῶσαν, ἃ δοκοῦντα ταῖς κεφαλαῖς ἀντερείδειν καὶ ἀντέχειν ἐνδίδωσι καὶ [d] ὑπείκει μᾶλλον· ὥσπερ ἡ κίβδηλος αὕτη παρρησία κενὸν ἔχουσα καὶ ψευδῆ καὶ ὕπουλον ὄγκον ἐξήρθη καὶ ᾤδησεν, ἵνα συσταλεῖσα καὶ συμπεσοῦσα δέξηται καὶ συνεπισπάσηται τὸν καταφερόμενον εἰς αὐτήν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀληθὴς καὶ φιλικὴ παρρησία τοῖς ἁμαρτανομένοις ἐπιφύεται, σωτήριον ἔχουσα καὶ κηδεμονικὸν τὸ λυποῦν, ὥσπερ τὸ μέλι τὰ ἡλκωμένα δάκνουσα καὶ καθαίρουσα, τἄλλα δ’ ὠφέλιμος οὖσα καὶ γλυκεῖα, περὶ ἧς ἴδιος ἔσται λόγος. ὁ δὲ κόλαξ πρῶτον μὲν ἐνδείκνυται τὸ πικρὸς εἶναι καὶ περισπερχὴς καὶ ἀπαραίτητος ἐν τοῖς πρὸς ἑτέρους (οἰκέταις γὰρ αὑτοῦ χαλεπός ἐστι καὶ συγγενῶν καὶ οἰκείων ἐπεμβῆναι δεινὸς ἁμαρτήμασι καὶ μηδένα [e] θαυμάσαι μηδὲ σεμνῦναι τῶν ἐκτὸς ἀλλ’ ὑπερορᾶν, ἀσυγγνώμων δὲ καὶ διάβολος ἐν τῷ πρὸς ὀργὴν ἑτέρους παροξύνειν, θηρώμενος μισοπονηρίας δόξαν, ὡς οὐκ ἂν ἑκὼν ὑφέμενος παρρησίας αὐτοῖς οὐδὲ ποιήσας οὐδὲν οὐδ’ εἰπὼν πρὸς χάριν), ἔπειτα δὲ τῶν μὲν ἀληθινῶν καὶ μεγάλων ἁμαρτημάτων οὐδὲν εἰδέναι προσποιούμενος οὐδὲ γιγνώσκειν, πρὸς δὲ τὰ μικρὰ καὶ τὰ ἐκτὸς ἐλλείμματα δεινὸς ᾆξαι καὶ μετὰ τόνου καθάψασθαι καὶ σφοδρότητος, [f] ἂν σκεῦος ἀμελῶς ἴδῃ κείμενον, ἂν οἰκοῦντα φαύλως, ἂν ὀλιγωροῦντα κουρᾶς ἢ ἀμπεχόνης ἢ κυνός τινος ἢ ἵππου μὴ κατ’ ἀξίαν ἐπιμελόμενον· γονέων δὲ ὀλιγωρία καὶ παίδων ἀμέλεια καὶ ἀτιμία γαμετῆς καὶ πρὸς οἰκείους ὑπεροψία καὶ χρημάτων ὄλεθρος οὐδέν ἐστι πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἄφωνος ἐν τούτοις καὶ ἄτολμος, ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴν ἀλείπτης ἐῶν μεθύειν καὶ ἀκολασταίνειν, εἶτα περὶ ληκύθου χαλεπὸς ὢν καὶ στλεγγίδος, ἢ γραμματικὸς ἐπιπλήττων παιδὶ περὶ δέλτου καὶ γραφείου, σολοικίζοντος δὲ καὶ βαρβαρίζοντος οὐ δοκῶν ἀκούειν. τοιοῦτος γὰρ ὁ κόλαξ, οἷος ῥήτορος φαύλου καὶ καταγελάστου μηδὲν εἰπεῖν [60] [a] πρὸς τὸν λόγον, ἀλλὰ περὶ τῆς φωνῆς αἰτιᾶσθαι καὶ χαλεπῶς ἐγκαλεῖν ὅτι τὴν ἀρτηρίαν διαφθείρει ψυχροποτῶν, καὶ σύγγραμμα κελευσθεὶς ἄθλιον διελθεῖν αἰτιᾶσθαι τὸ χαρτίον ὡς δασὺ καὶ τὸν γραφέα μιαρὸν καὶ ὀλίγωρον ἀποκαλεῖν. οὕτω δὲ καὶ Πτολεμαίῳ φιλομαθεῖν δοκοῦντι περὶ γλώττης καὶ στιχιδίου μαχόμενοι καὶ ἱστορίας μέχρι μέσων νυκτῶν ἀπέτεινον· ὠμότητι δὲ χρωμένου καὶ ὕβρει καὶ τυμπανίζοντος καὶ τελοῦντος οὐδεὶς ἐνέστη τῶν [b] τοσούτων. ὥσπερ οὖν εἴ τις ἀνθρώπου φύματα καὶ σύριγγας ἔχοντος ἰατρικῷ σμιλίῳ τὰς τρίχας τέμνοι καὶ τοὺς ὄνυχας, οὕτως οἱ κόλακες τὴν παρρησίαν πρὸς τὰ μὴ λυπούμενα μέρη μηδ’ ἀλγοῦντα προσφέρουσιν.

Ἔτι δὲ τούτων ἕτεροι πανουργότεροι καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὴν χρῶνται τῷ παρρησιάζεσθαι καὶ ψέγειν. καθάπερ Ἆγις ὁ Ἀργεῖος, Ἀλεξάνδρου γελωτοποιῷ τινι μεγάλας δωρεὰς διδόντος, ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ λύπης ἐξέκραγεν “ὢ τῆς πολλῆς ἀτοπίας,” ἐπιστρέψαντος δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως πρὸς αὐτὸν ὀργῇ καὶ “τί δὴ σὺ λέγεις;” εἰπόντος “ὁμολογῶ,” φησίν, “ἄχθεσθαι καὶ ἀγανακτεῖν, ὁρῶν ὑμᾶς τοὺς ἐκ Διὸς γεγονότας ἅπαντας ὁμοίως [c] κόλαξιν ἀνθρώποις καὶ καταγελάστοις χαίροντας· καὶ γὰρ Ἡρακλῆς Κέρκωψί τισι, καὶ Σειληνοῖς ὁ Διόνυσος ἐτέρπετο, καὶ παρὰ σοὶ τοιούτους ἰδεῖν ἔστιν εὐδοκιμοῦντας.” Τιβερίου δὲ Καίσαρος εἰς τὴν σύγκλητόν ποτε παρελθόντος εἷς τῶν κολάκων ἀναστὰς ἔφη δεῖν ἐλευθέρους ὄντας παρρησιάζεσθαι καὶ μηδὲν ὑποστέλλεσθαι μηδ’ ἀποσιωπᾶν τῶν συμφερόντων· ἀνατείνας δὲ πάντας οὕτως, γενομένης αὐτῷ σιωπῆς καὶ τοῦ Τιβερίου προσέχοντος, “ἄκουσον,” ἔφη, “Καῖσαρ ἅ σοι πάντες ἐγκαλοῦμεν, οὐδεὶς δὲ τολμᾷ φανερῶς λέγειν. ἀμελεῖς σεαυτοῦ καὶ προΐεσαι τὸ σῶμα καὶ κατατρύχεις ἀεὶ φροντίσι καὶ πόνοις ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, οὔτε μεθ’ [d] ἡμέραν οὔτε νυκτὸς ἀναπαυόμενος.” πολλὰ δ’ αὐτοῦ τοιαῦτα συνείροντος, εἰπεῖν φασι τὸν ῥήτορα Κάσσιον Σευῆρον “αὕτη τοῦτον ἡ παρρησία τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἀποκτενεῖ.”

Καὶ ταυτὶ μὲν ἐλάττονά ἐστιν. ἐκεῖνα δ’ ἤδη χαλεπὰ καὶ λυμαινόμενα τοὺς ἀνοήτους, ὅταν εἰς τἀναντία πάθη καὶ νοσήματα κατηγορῶσιν (ὥσπερ Ἱμέριος ὁ κόλαξ τῶν πλουσίων τινὰ τὸν ἀνελευθερώτατον καὶ φιλαργυρώτατον Ἀθήνησιν ὡς ἄσωτον ἐλοιδόρει καὶ ἀμελῆ καὶ πεινήσοντα [e] κακῶς μετὰ τῶν τέκνων) ἢ τοὺς ἀσώτους αὖ πάλιν καὶ πολυτελεῖς εἰς μικρολογίαν καὶ ῥυπαρίαν ὀνειδίζωσιν (ὥσπερ Νέρωνα Τίτος Πετρώνιος) ἢ τοὺς ὠμῶς καὶ ἀγρίως προσφερομένους ἄρχοντας ὑπηκόοις ἀποθέσθαι κελεύωσι τὴν πολλὴν ἐπιείκειαν καὶ τὸν ἄκαιρον ἔλεον καὶ ἀσύμφορον. ὅμοιος δὲ τούτοις καὶ ὁ τὸν εὐήθη καὶ βλᾶκα καὶ ἀβέλτερον ὡς δεινόν τινα καὶ πανοῦργον καὶ φυλάττεσθαι καὶ δεδιέναι προσποιούμενος, καὶ ὁ τοῦ βασκάνου δὲ καὶ τῷ κακολογεῖν ἀεὶ καὶ ψέγειν χαίροντος, ἄν ποτε προαχθεὶς ἐπαινέσῃ τινὰ τῶν ἐνδόξων, καθαπτόμενος καὶ ἀντιλέγων ὡς νόσημα [f] τοῦτ’ ἔχοντος, ἀνθρώπους ἐπαινεῖν καὶ μηδενὸς ἀξίους. “τίς γὰρ οὗτός ἐστιν ἢ τί λαμπρὸν εἴρηκεν ἢ πεποίηκε;” μάλιστα δὲ περὶ τοὺς ἔρωτας τοῖς κολακευομένοις ἐπιτίθενται καὶ προσεκκάουσιν. ἀδελφοῖς μὲν γὰρ ὁρῶντες διαφερομένους ἢ γονέων ὑπερφρονοῦντας ἢ πρὸς γυναῖκας αὐτῶν ὑπεροπτικῶς ἔχοντας οὔτε νουθετοῦσιν οὔτ’ ἐγκαλοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσεπιτείνουσι τὰς ὀργάς. “οὐ γὰρ αἰσθάνῃ σαυτοῦ” καὶ “σὺ τούτων αἴτιος, ἀεὶ θεραπευτικῶς προσφερόμενος καὶ ταπεινῶς.”

[61] [a] ἂν δὲ πρὸς ἑταίραν ἢ μοιχεύτριαν ἐρωμένην κνησμός τις ἐξ ὀργῆς καὶ ζηλοτυπίας ἐγγένηται, πάρεστιν εὐθὺς μετὰ παρρησίας λαμπρᾶς ἡ κολακεία, πῦρ ἐπὶ πῦρ εἰσφέρουσα καὶ δικαιολογουμένη καὶ κατηγοροῦσα τοῦ ἐρῶντος ὡς ἀνέραστα πολλὰ καὶ σκληρὰ καὶ νεμεσητὰ ποιοῦντος·

ὦ δυσχάριστε, τῶν πυκνῶν φιλημάτων.

οὕτως Ἀντώνιον οἱ φίλοι τῆς Αἰγυπτίας ἐρῶντα καὶ καόμενον ἀνέπειθον ὡς ὑπ’ ἐκείνης ἐρῷτο, καὶ λοιδοροῦντες ἐκάλουν ἀπαθῆ καὶ ὑπερήφανον. “ἡ μὲν γὰρ γυνὴ καταλιποῦσα βασιλείαν τοσαύτην [b] καὶ διατριβὰς εὐδαίμονας φθείρεται μετὰ σοῦ στρατευομένη, σχῆμα παλλακίδος ἔχουσα·

σοὶ δέ τις ἐν στήθεσσιν ἀκήλητος νόος ἐστί

καὶ περιορᾷς αὐτὴν ἀνιωμένην.” ὁ δ’ ἡδέως ἐλεγχόμενος ὡς ἀδικῶν καὶ τοῖς κατηγοροῦσι χαίρων ὡς οὐδὲ τοῖς ἐπαινοῦσιν ἐλάνθανε τῷ νουθετεῖν δοκοῦντι προσδιαστρεφόμενος. ἔοικε γὰρ ἡ τοιαύτη παρρησία τοῖς τῶν ἀκολάστων δήγμασι γυναικῶν, ἐγείρουσα καὶ γαργαλίζουσα τῷ δοκοῦντι λυπεῖν τὸ ἡδόμενον. καὶ καθάπερ τὸν ἄκρατον ἄλλως βοηθοῦντα πρὸς τὸ κώνειον ἂν ἐμμείξωσι [c] προσεμβαλόντες αὐτῷ, κομιδῇ ποιοῦσι τὴν τοῦ φαρμάκου δύναμιν ἀβοήθητον, ὀξέως ἀναφερομένην ἐπὶ τὴν καρδίαν ὑπὸ θερμότητος, οὕτω τὴν παρρησίαν ἐπιστάμενοι μέγα βοήθημα πρὸς τὴν κολακείαν οὖσαν οἱ πονηροὶ δι’ αὐτῆς κολακεύουσι τῆς παρρησίας. ὅθεν οὐδ’ ὁ Βίας ἀπεκρίνατο καλῶς τῷ πυθομένῳ τί τῶν ζῴων χαλεπώτατόν ἐστιν, ἀποκρινάμενος ὅτι τῶν μὲν ἀγρίων ὁ τύραννος, τῶν δ’ ἡμέρων ὁ κόλαξ. ἀληθέστερον γὰρ ἦν εἰπεῖν ὅτι τῶν κολάκων ἥμεροι μέν εἰσιν οἱ περὶ [d] τὸ βαλανεῖον καὶ περὶ τὴν τράπεζαν, ὁ δ’ εἰς τὰ δωμάτια καὶ τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν ἐκτείνων ὥσπερ πλεκτάνας τὸ πολύπραγμον καὶ διάβολον καὶ κακόηθες ἄγριος καὶ θηριώδης καὶ δυσμεταχείριστος.

Εἷς δέ τις ἔοικε τρόπος εἶναι φυλακῆς τὸ γιγνώσκειν καὶ μνημονεύειν ἀεὶ ὅτι τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ μὲν ἀληθινὸν καὶ φιλόκαλον καὶ λογικὸν ἐχούσης, τὸ δ’ ἄλογον καὶ φιλοψευδὲς καὶ παθητικόν, ὁ μὲν φίλος ἀεὶ τῷ κρείττονι πάρεστι σύμβουλος καὶ συνήγορος, ὥσπερ ἰατρὸς τὸ ὑγιαῖνον αὔξων καὶ διαφυλάττων, ὁ δὲ κόλαξ τῷ παθητικῷ καὶ ἀλόγῳ [e] παρακάθηται, καὶ τοῦτο κνᾷ καὶ γαργαλίζει καὶ ἀναπείθει, καὶ ἀφίστησι τοῦ λογισμοῦ, μηχανώμενος αὐτῷ πονηράς τινας ἡδυπαθείας. ὥσπερ οὖν τῶν σιτίων ἔστιν ἃ μήθ’ αἵματι προσφύεται μήτε πνεύματι, μηδὲ νεύροις τινὰ τόνον ἢ μυελοῖς προστίθησιν, ἀλλ’ αἰδοῖα παρακινεῖ καὶ κοιλίαν ἐγείρει καὶ σάρκα ποιεῖ σαθρὰν καὶ ὕπουλον, οὕτως ὁ τοῦ κόλακος λόγος οὐδὲν τῷ φρονοῦντι καὶ λογιζομένῳ προστίθησιν, ἀλλ’ ἡδονήν τινα τιθασεύων ἔρωτος ἢ θυμὸν ἐντείνων ἀνόητον ἢ διερεθίζων φθόνον ἢ φρονήματος ὄγκον ἐμποιῶν ἐπαχθῆ καὶ κενὸν ἢ λύπῃ συνεπιθρηνῶν ἢ τὸ κακόηθες [f] καὶ ἀνελεύθερον καὶ ἄπιστον ἀεί τισι διαβολαῖς καὶ προαισθήσεσι δριμὺ καὶ ψοφοδεὲς ποιῶν καὶ ὕποπτον οὐ διαφεύξεται τοὺς προσέχοντας. ἀεὶ γὰρ ὑφορμεῖ τινι πάθει καὶ τοῦτο πιαίνει, καὶ πάρεστι βουβῶνος δίκην ἑκάστοτε τοῖς ὑπούλοις καὶ φλεγμαίνουσι τῆς ψυχῆς ἐπιγιγνόμενος. “ὀργίζῃ; κόλασον. ἐπιθυμεῖς; ὤνησαι. φοβῇ; φύγωμεν. ὑπονοεῖς; πίστευσον.”

Ἂν δὲ περὶ ταῦτα δυσφώρατος ᾖ τὰ πάθη, διὰ σφοδρότητα καὶ μέγεθος ἐκκρουομένου τοῦ λογισμοῦ, περὶ τὰ μικρὰ λαβὴν παρέξει μᾶλλον, ὅμοιος [62] [a] ὤν. καὶ γὰρ ἐν ὑποψίᾳ κραιπάλης τινὸς ἢ πλησμονῆς γενόμενον καὶ διστάζοντα περὶ λουτροῦ καὶ τροφῆς ὁ μὲν φίλος ἐφέξει, φυλάττεσθαι καὶ προσέχειν παραινῶν, ὁ δὲ κόλαξ εἰς τὸ βαλανεῖον ἕλκει, καὶ κελεύει νεαρόν τι παρατιθέναι καὶ μὴ κακοῦν ἀνατάσει τὸ σῶμα. καὶ πρὸς ὁδὸν ἢ πλοῦν ἤ τινα πρᾶξιν ὁρῶν ἀπομαλακιζόμενον οὐ φήσει κατεπείγειν τὸν καιρόν, ἀλλὰ ταὐτὸ ποιήσειν ὑπερθεμένους ἢ πέμψαντας ἕτερον. ἂν δ’ ὑπεσχημένος ἀργύριον οἰκείῳ τινὶ δανείσειν ἢ ἐπιδώσειν [b] μεταμέληται μὲν αἰδῆται δέ, τῇ χείρονι ῥοπῇ προστιθεὶς ἑαυτὸν ὁ κόλαξ ἐπέρρωσε τὴν εἰς τὸ βαλλάντιον γνώμην καὶ τὸ δυσωπούμενον ἐξέκοψεν, ὡς ἀναλίσκοντα πολλὰ καὶ πολλοῖς ἀρκεῖν ὀφείλοντα φείδεσθαι κελεύων. ὅθεν εἰ μὴ λανθάνομεν ἑαυτοὺς ἐπιθυμοῦντες ἀναισχυντοῦντες ἀποδειλιῶντες, ὁ κόλαξ ἡμᾶς οὐ λήσεται. ἔστι γὰρ συνηγορῶν ἀεὶ τούτοις τοῖς πάθεσι καὶ περὶ τὰς τούτων ἐκβάσεις παρρησιαζόμενος. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἱκανὰ περὶ τούτων.

Ἐπὶ δὲ τὰς χρείας καὶ τὰς ὑπουργίας ἴωμεν ἤδη· καὶ γὰρ ἐν ταύταις πολλὴν ἀπεργάζεται [c] σύγχυσιν καὶ ἀσάφειαν ὁ κόλαξ τῆς πρὸς τὸν φίλον διαφορᾶς ἄοκνος δοκῶν εἶναι καὶ πρόθυμος ἐν πᾶσι καὶ ἀπροφάσιστος. ὁ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ φίλου τρόπος ὥσπερ ὁ τῆς ἀληθείας μῦθος ἁπλοῦς ἐστι κατ’ Εὐριπίδην καὶ ἀφελὴς καὶ ἄπλαστος, ὁ δὲ τοῦ κόλακος ὄντως

νοσῶν ἐν αὑτῷ φαρμάκων δεῖται σοφῶν

καὶ πολλῶν νὴ Δία καὶ περιττῶν. ὥσπερ οὖν ἐν ταῖς ἀπαντήσεσιν ὁ μὲν φίλος ἔστιν ὅτε μήτ’ εἰπὼν μήτ’ ἀκούσας μηδὲν ἀλλὰ προσβλέψας καὶ μειδιάσας τὸ εὐμενὲς καὶ τὸ οἰκεῖον ἔνδοθεν δοὺς ταῖς ὄψεσι [d] καὶ δεξάμενος παρῆλθεν, ὁ δὲ κόλαξ τρέχει καταδιώκει δεξιοῦται πόρρωθεν, ἂν προσαγορευθῇ πρότερον ὀφθείς, ἀπολογεῖται μετὰ μαρτύρων καὶ ὅρκων πολλάκις, οὕτως ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι πολλὰ παραλείπουσιν οἱ φίλοι τῶν μικρῶν, οὐκ ἐξακριβοῦντες οὐδὲ πολυπραγμονοῦντες οὐδέν, οὐδ’ ἑαυτοὺς εἰς πᾶσαν ὑπουργίαν ἐμβάλλοντες. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος ἐνταῦθα συνεχὴς καὶ ἐνδελεχὴς καὶ ἄτρυτος, οὐ διδοὺς ἑτέρῳ τόπον οὐδὲ χώραν διακονίας, ἀλλὰ βουλόμενος κελεύεσθαι, κἂν μὴ κελευσθῇ, δακνόμενος, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἐξαθυμῶν καὶ ποτνιώμενος.

Ἔστι μὲν οὖν καὶ ταῦτα δηλώματα τοῖς [e] νοῦν ἔχουσιν οὐκ ἀληθινῆς φιλίας οὐδὲ σώφρονος ἀλλ’ ἑταιρούσης καὶ περιπλεκομένης ἑτοιμότερον τῶν δεομένων.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ δεῖ πρῶτον ἐν ταῖς ἐπαγγελίαις σκοπεῖν τὴν διαφοράν. εὖ γὰρ εἴρηται καὶ τοῖς πρὸ ἡμῶν φίλου μὲν ἐκείνην εἶναι τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν

εἰ δύναμαι τελέσαι γε καὶ εἰ τετελεσμένον ἐστί,

κόλακος δὲ ταύτην

αὔδα ὅ τι φρονέεις.

καὶ γὰρ οἱ κωμικοὶ τοιούτους εἰσάγουσιν

ἐμέ, Νικόμαχε, πρὸς τὸν στρατιώτην τάξατε,

ἂν μὴ ποιήσω πέπονα μαστιγῶν ὅλον,

ἂν μὴ ποιήσω σπογγιᾶς μαλακώτερον

τὸ πρόσωπον.

[f] ἔπειτα τῶν μὲν φίλων οὐδεὶς γίγνεται συνεργός, εἰ μὴ γένηται σύμβουλος πρότερον, ἀλλ’ ὅταν δοκιμάσῃ καὶ συγκαταστήσῃ τὴν πρᾶξιν εἰς τὸ πρέπον ἢ τὸ συμφέρον· ὁ δὲ κόλαξ, κἂν ἀποδῷ τις αὐτῷ τὸ συνδοκιμάσαι καὶ συναποφήνασθαι περὶ τοῦ πράγματος, οὐ μόνον ὑπείκειν καὶ χαρίζεσθαι βουλόμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ δεδιὼς ὑποψίαν ὀκνοῦντος παρέχειν καὶ φεύγοντος τὸ ἔργον, ἐνδίδωσι καὶ συνεξορμᾷ τῇ ἐπιθυμίᾳ. οὐδεὶς γάρ ἐστι ῥᾳδίως πλούσιος οὐδὲ βασιλεὺς οἷος εἰπεῖν

[63] [a] ἐμοὶ γὰρ εἴη πτωχός, εἰ δὲ βούλεται,

πτωχοῦ κακίων, ὅστις ὢν εὔνους ἐμοὶ

φόβον παρελθὼν τἀπὸ καρδίας ἐρεῖ,

ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ τραγῳδοὶ χοροῦ δέονται φίλων συνᾳδόντων ἢ θεάτρου συνεπικροτοῦντος. ὅθεν ἡ μὲν τραγικὴ Μερόπη παραινεῖ

φίλους δὲ τοὺς μὲν μὴ χαλῶντας ἐν λόγοις

κέκτησο, τοὺς δὲ πρὸς χάριν σὺν ἡδονῇ

τῇ σῇ πονηροὺς κλῇθρον εἰργέτω στέγης,

[b] οἱ δὲ τοὐναντίον δρῶσι, “τοὺς μὲν μὴ χαλῶντας ἐν λόγοις” ἀλλ’ ἀντιβαίνοντας ὑπὲρ τοῦ συμφέροντος ἀφοσιοῦνται, “τοὺς δὲ πρὸς χάριν πονηροὺς” καὶ ἀνελευθέρους καὶ γόητας οὐ μόνον “κλῄθρων καὶ στέγης” ἐντὸς ἀλλὰ καὶ παθῶν καὶ πραγμάτων ἀπορρήτων λαμβάνουσιν. ὧν ὁ μὲν ἁπλούστερος οὐκ οἴεται δεῖν οὐδ’ ἀξιοῖ σύμβουλος εἶναι πραγμάτων τηλικούτων ἀλλ’ ὑπουργὸς καὶ διάκονος, ὁ δὲ πανουργότερος ἔστη μὲν ἐν τῷ συνδιαπορεῖν καὶ τὰς ὀφρῦς συνάγειν καὶ συνδιανεύειν τῷ προσώπῳ, λέγει δ’ οὐδέν· ἂν δ’ ἐκεῖνος εἴπῃ τὸ φαινόμενον, “ὦ Ἡράκλεις, ἔφθης με,” φησί, “μικρὸν εἰπών, ἐγὼ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο λέγειν ἔμελλον.” ὡς γὰρ οἱ μαθηματικοὶ τὰς ἐπιφανείας καὶ [c] τὰς γραμμὰς λέγουσι μήτε κάμπτεσθαι μήτε διατείνεσθαι μήτε κινεῖσθαι καθ’ ἑαυτάς, νοητὰς καὶ ἀσωμάτους οὔσας, συγκάμπτεσθαι δὲ καὶ συνδιατείνεσθαι καὶ συμμεθίστασθαι τοῖς σώμασιν ὧν πέρατά εἰσιν, οὕτω τὸν κόλακα φωράσεις ἀεὶ συνεπιφάσκοντα καὶ συναποφαινόμενον καὶ συνηδόμενον νὴ Δία καὶ συνοργιζόμενον, ὥστε παντελῶς ἔν γε τούτοις εὐφώρατον εἶναι τὴν διαφοράν. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ τρόπῳ τῆς ὑπουργίας. ἡ μὲν γὰρ παρὰ τοῦ φίλου χάρις ὥσπερ ζῷον ἐν βάθει [d] τὰς κυριωτάτος ἔχει δυνάμεις, ἐπιδεικτικὸν δὲ καὶ πανηγυρικὸν οὐδὲν ἔπεστιν ἀλλὰ πολλάκις, ὥσπερ ἰατρὸς λαθὼν ἐθεράπευσε, καὶ φίλος ὠφέλησεν ἐντυχὼν ἢ διαλυσάμενος, ἀγνοοῦντος ἐπιμεληθείς. τοιοῦτος Ἀρκεσίλαος περί τε τἄλλα καὶ νοσοῦντος Ἀπελλοῦ τοῦ Χίου τὴν πενίαν καταμαθὼν ἐπανῆλθεν αὖθις ἔχων εἴκοσι δραχμάς, καὶ καθίσας πλησίον “ἐνταῦθα μέν,” εἶπεν, “οὐδὲν ἢ τὰ Ἐμπεδοκλέους στοιχεῖα ταυτὶ

πῦρ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ γαῖα καὶ αἰθέρος ἤπιον ὕψος.

ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ κατάκεισαι σὺ δεξιῶς,” ἅμα δὲ διακινῶν τὸ προσκεφάλαιον αὐτοῦ, λαθὼν ὑπέβαλε τὸ κερμάτιον.

[e] ὡς οὖν ἡ διακονοῦσα πρεσβῦτις εὗρε καὶ θαυμάσασα τῷ Ἀπελλῇ προσήγγειλε, γελάσας ἐκεῖνος “Ἀρκεσιλάου,” εἶπε, “τοῦτο τὸ κλέμμα.” καὶ μὴν ἐοικότα γε τέκνα φύεται γονεῦσιν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ. Λακύδης γοῦν ὁ Ἀρκεσιλάου γνώριμος ἀπ’ εἰσαγγελίας φεύγοντι δίκην Κηφισοκράτει μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων φίλων παρειστήκει. τοῦ δὲ κατηγόρου τὸν δακτύλιον αἰτήσαντος, ὁ μὲν ἡσυχῇ παρακαθῆκεν, αἰσθόμενος δ’ ὁ Λακύδης ἐπέβη τῷ ποδὶ καὶ ἐπέκρυψεν· ἦν γὰρ ὁ ἔλεγχος ἐν ἐκείνῳ. μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἀπόφασιν τοῦ Κηφισοκράτους δεξιουμένου τοὺς [f] δικαστὰς εἷς τις ὡς ἔοικεν ἑωρακὼς τὸ γενόμενον ἐκέλευσε Λακύδῃ χάριν ἔχειν καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα διηγήσατο, τοῦ Λακύδου πρὸς μηδένα φράσαντος. οὕτως οἶμαι καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς εὐεργετεῖν τὰ πολλὰ λανθάνοντας, αὐτῷ τῷ χαρίζεσθαι καὶ εὖ ποιεῖν φύσιν ἔχοντας ἥδεσθαι. τὸ δὲ τοῦ κόλακος ἔργον οὐδὲν ἔχει δίκαιον οὐδ’ ἀληθινὸν οὐδ’ ἁπλοῦν οὐδ’ ἐλευθέριον, ἀλλ’ ἱδρῶτα καὶ κραυγὴν καὶ διαδρομὴν καὶ σύντασιν προσώπου ποιοῦσαν ἔμφασιν καὶ δόκησιν [64] [a] ἐπιπόνου χρείας καὶ κατεσπευσμένης, ὥσπερ ζῳγράφημα περίεργον ἀναιδέσι φαρμάκοις καὶ κεκλασμέναις στολίσι καὶ ῥυτίσι καὶ γωνίαις ἐναργείας φαντασίαν ἐπαγόμενον. ἔστι δὲ καὶ διηγούμενος ἐπαχθὴς ὡς ἔπραξε πλάνας τινὰς ἐπ’ αὐτῷ καὶ φροντίδας, εἶτ’ ἀπεχθείας πρὸς ἑτέρους εἶτα πράγματα μυρία καὶ μεγάλα πάθη διεξιών, ὥστ’ εἰπεῖν οὐκ ἄξια ταῦτ’ ἐκείνων· πᾶσα μὲν γὰρ ὀνειδιζομένη χάρις ἐπαχθὴς καὶ ἄχαρις καὶ οὐκ ἀνεκτή, ταῖς δὲ τῶν κολάκων οὐχ ὕστερον ἀλλὰ πραττομέναις ἔνεστιν [b] εὐθὺς τὸ ἐπονείδιστον καὶ δυσωποῦν. ὁ δὲ φίλος, ἂν εἰπεῖν δεήσῃ τὸ πρᾶγμα, μετρίως ἀπήγγειλε, περὶ αὑτοῦ δ’ εἶπεν οὐδέν. ᾗ δὴ καὶ Λακεδαιμόνιοι Σμυρναίοις δεομένοις σῖτον πέμψαντες, ὡς ἐθαύμαζον ἐκεῖνοι τὴν χάριν, “οὐδέν,” ἔφασαν, “μέγα· μίαν γὰρ ἡμέραν ψηφισάμενοι τὸ ἄριστον ἀφελεῖν ἑαυτῶν καὶ τῶν ὑποζυγίων ταῦτ’ ἠθροίσαμεν.” οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐλευθέριος ἡ τοιαύτη χάρις, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς λαμβάνουσιν ἡδίων, ὅτι τοὺς ὠφελοῦντας οὐ μεγάλα βλάπτεσθαι νομίζουσιν.

Οὐ τοίνυν μάλιστα τῷ περὶ τὰς ὑπουργίας ἐπαχθεῖ τοῦ κόλακος οὐδὲ τῇ περὶ τὰς ἐπαγγελίας [c] εὐχερείᾳ γνοίη τις ἂν τὴν φύσιν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ καλῷ τῆς χρείας ἢ αἰσχρῷ καὶ διαφέροντι πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἢ ὠφέλειαν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ φίλος οὐχ, ὥσπερ ἀπεφαίνετο Γοργίας, αὑτῷ μὲν ἀξιώσει τὰ δίκαια τὸν φίλον ὑπουργεῖν, ἐκείνῳ δ’ αὐτὸς ὑπηρετήσει πολλὰ καὶ τῶν μὴ δικαίων·

συσσωφρονεῖν γάρ, οὐχὶ συννοσεῖν ἔφυ.

μᾶλλον οὖν κἀκεῖνον ἀποτρέψει τῶν μὴ προσηκόντων· ἂν δὲ μὴ πείθῃ, καλὸν τὸ Φωκίωνος πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον “οὐ δύνασαί μοι καὶ φίλῳ χρῆσθαι καὶ κόλακι,” τουτέστι καὶ φίλῳ καὶ μὴ φίλῳ. συνεργεῖν γὰρ δεῖ τῷ φίλῳ μὴ συμπανουργεῖν, καὶ συμβουλεύειν μὴ συνεπιβουλεύειν, καὶ συμμαρτυρεῖν μὴ συνεξαπατᾶν, καὶ συνατυχεῖν νὴ Δία μὴ [d] συναδικεῖν. οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸ συνειδέναι τοῖς φίλοις τὰ αἰσχρά, πόθεν γε δὴ τὸ συμπράττειν καὶ συνασχημονεῖν αἱρετόν ἐστιν; ὥσπερ οὖν Λακεδαιμόνιοι μάχῃ κρατηθέντες ὑπ’ Ἀντιπάτρου καὶ ποιούμενοι διαλύσεις ἠξίουν ὅ τι βούλεται ζημιῶδες, αἰσχρὸν δὲ μηδὲν ἐπιτάττειν αὐτοῖς, οὕτως ὁ φίλος, ἄν τις ἢ δαπάνην ἢ κίνδυνον ἢ πόνον ἔχουσα χρεία καταλαμβάνῃ, πρῶτος ἀξιῶν καλεῖσθαι καὶ μετέχειν ἀπροφασίστως καὶ προθύμως, ὅπου δὲ πρόσεστιν αἰσχύνη, μόνον ἐᾶν καὶ φείδεσθαι παραιτούμενος.

[e] ἀλλ’ ἥ γε κολακεία τοὐναντίον ἐν μὲν ταῖς ἐπιπόνοις καὶ κινδυνώδεσιν ὑπουργίαις ἀπαγορεύει, κἂν διαπειρώμενος κρούσῃς, σαθρὸν ἔκ τινος προφάσεως ὑπηχεῖ καὶ ἀγεννές· ἐν δὲ ταῖς αἰσχραῖς καὶ ταπειναῖς καὶ ἀδόξοις διακονίαις ἀπόχρησαι πάτησον, οὐδὲν ἡγεῖται δεινὸν οὐδ’ ὑβριστικόν.

Ὁρᾷς τὸν πίθηκον; οὐ δύναται τὴν οἰκίαν φυλάττειν ὡς ὁ κύων, οὐδὲ βαστάζειν ὡς ὁ ἵππος, οὐδ’ ἀροῦν τὴν γῆν ὡς οἱ βόες· ὕβριν οὖν φέρει καὶ βωμολοχίαν καὶ παιδιὰς ἀνέχεται, γέλωτος ὄργανον ἐμπαρέχων ἑαυτόν. οὕτω δὴ καὶ ὁ κόλαξ οὐ συνειπεῖν οὐ συνεισενεγκεῖν οὐ συναγωνίσασθαι δυνάμενος, πόνου τε καὶ σπουδῆς ἁπάσης ἀπολειπόμενος, [f] ἐν ταῖς ὑπὸ μάλης πράξεσιν ἀπροφάσιστός ἐστι, καὶ πιστὸς ἔρωτος ὑπηρέτης καὶ περὶ λύσιν πόρνης ἀκριβὴς καὶ πότου δαπάνης ἐκκαθῆραι λογισμὸν οὐκ ἀμελής, οὐδὲ ῥᾴθυμος ἐν δείπνων παρασκευαῖς, θεραπευτικὸς δὲ παλλακίδων, πρὸς δὲ κηδεστὰς ἀποθρασύνεσθαι κελευσθεὶς καὶ συνεκβαλεῖν γαμετὴν ἄτεγκτος καὶ ἀδυσώπητος. ὥστε [65] [a] μηδὲ ταύτῃ δυσφώρατον εἶναι τὸν ἄνδρα· προσταττόμενος γὰρ ὅ τι βούλει τῶν ἀδόξων καὶ μὴ καλῶν ἕτοιμος ἀφειδεῖν ἑαυτοῦ, τῷ προστάττοντι χαριζόμενος.

Οὐχ ἥκιστα δ’ ἄν τις αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους φίλους διαθέσει καταμάθοι πολὺ τοῦ φίλου διαφέροντα. τῷ μὲν γὰρ ἥδιστόν ἐστι μετὰ πολλῶν φιλεῖν καὶ φιλεῖσθαι, καὶ τοῦτο πράττων ἀεὶ διατελεῖ περὶ τὸν φίλον ὅπως πολύφιλος καὶ πολυτίμητος ἔσται· κοινὰ γὰρ τὰ φίλων ἡγούμενος οὐδὲν οὕτως οἴεται δεῖν κοινὸν ὡς τοὺς φίλους [b] ὑπάρχειν· ὁ δὲ ψευδὴς καὶ νόθος καὶ ὑπόχαλκος ὤν, ἅτε δὴ μάλιστα γιγνώσκων ἑαυτὸν ἀδικοῦντα τὴν φιλίαν ὥσπερ νόμισμα παράσημον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ γενομένην, ἔστι μὲν καὶ φύσει φθονερός, ἀλλὰ τῷ φθόνῳ χρῆται πρὸς τοὺς ὁμοίους, διαμιλλώμενος ὑπερβαλέσθαι βωμολοχίᾳ καὶ σπερμολογίᾳ, τὸν δὲ κρείττονα τρέμει καὶ δέδοικεν, οὐ μὰ Δία

παρὰ Λύδιον ἅρμα πεζὸς οἰχνεύων

ἀλλὰ

“παρὰ χρυσὸν ἑφθόν,” ὥς φησι Σιμωνίδης,

“ἀκήρατον οὐδὲ μόλυβδον ἔχων.”

ὅταν οὖν ἐλαφρὸς ὢν καὶ ἐπίτηκτος καὶ ἀπατηλὸς ἐγγύθεν ἀντεξετάζηται πρὸς ἀληθινὴν καὶ ἐμβριθῆ [c] φιλίαν καὶ σφυρήλατον, οὐκ ἀναφέρων ἀλλ’ ἐξελεγχόμευος ταὐτὸ ποιεῖ τῷ ζῳγραφήσαντι τοὺς ἀλεκτρυόνας ἀθλίως. ἐκεῖνός τε γὰρ ἐκέλευε τὸν παῖδα τοὺς ἀληθινοὺς ἀλεκτρυόνας ἀποσοβεῖν ἀπωτάτω τοῦ πίνακος, οὗτός τε τοὺς ἀληθινοὺς ἀποσοβεῖ φίλους καὶ οὐκ ἐᾷ πλησιάζειν· ἂν δὲ μὴ δύνηται, φανερῶς μὲν ὑποσαίνει καὶ περιέπει καὶ τέθηπεν ὡς ἀμείνονας, λάθρᾳ δ’ ὑφίησί τινας καὶ ὑποσπείρει διαβολάς. κρυφίου δὲ λόγου κνήσαντος ἕλκος, κἂν μὴ παντελῶς εὐθὺς ἐργάσηται, τὸ τοῦ Μηδίου φυλάττει μεμνημένος. ἦν δ’ ὁ Μήδιος τοῦ περὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον χοροῦ τῶν κολάκων οἷον ἔξαρχος καὶ σοφιστὴς [d] κορυφαῖος ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀρίστους συντεταγμένων. ἐκέλευεν οὖν θαρροῦντας ἅπτεσθαι καὶ δάκνειν ταῖς διαβολαῖς, διδάσκων ὅτι, κἂν θεραπεύσῃ τὸ ἕλκος ὁ δεδηγμένος, ἡ οὐλὴ μενεῖ τῆς διαβολῆς. ταύταις μέντοι ταῖς οὐλαῖς, μᾶλλον δὲ γαγγραίναις καὶ καρκινώμασι διαβρωθεὶς Ἀλέξανδρος ἀπώλεσε καὶ Καλλισθένη καὶ Παρμενίωνα καὶ Φιλώταν· Ἅγνωσι δὲ καὶ Βαγώαις καὶ Ἀγησίαις καὶ Δημητρίοις ἀφειδῶς ἐνέδωκεν ἑαυτὸν ὑποσκελίζεσθαι, προσκυνούμενον καὶ καταστολιζόμενον καὶ ἀναπλαττόμενον [e] ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ὥσπερ ἄγαλμα βαρβαρικόν. οὕτω μεγάλην ἔχει τὸ πρὸς χάριν δύναμιν, καὶ μεγίστην ὡς ἔοικεν ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις εἶναι δοκοῦσι· τὸ γὰρ οἴεσθαι τὰ κάλλιστα μετὰ τοῦ βούλεσθαι πίστιν ἅμα τῷ κόλακι καὶ θάρσος δίδωσι. τῶν μὲν γὰρ τόπων τὰ ὑψηλὰ δυσπρόσοδα καὶ δυσέφικτα γίγνεται τοῖς ἐπιβουλεύουσι, τὸ δ’ ἐν ψυχῇ νοῦν οὐκ ἐχούσῃ δι’ εὐτυχίαν ἢ δι’ εὐφυΐαν ὕψος καὶ φρόνημα τοῖς μικροῖς καὶ ταπεινοῖς μάλιστα βάσιμόν ἐστιν.

Ὅθεν ἀρχόμενοί τε τοῦ λόγου παρεκελευσάμεθα καὶ νῦν παρακελευόμεθα τὸ φίλαυτον ἐκκόπτειν [f] ἑαυτῶν καὶ τὴν οἴησιν· αὕτη γὰρ ἡμᾶς προκολακεύουσα μαλακωτέρους ποιεῖ τοῖς θυραίοις κόλαξιν, ὡς ἑτοίμους ὄντας. ἂν δὲ πειθόμενοι τῷ θεῷ καὶ τὸ “γνῶθι σαυτὸν” ὡς ἑκάστῳ τοῦ παντὸς ἄξιόν ἐστι μαθόντες ἅμα καὶ φύσιν καὶ τροφὴν καὶ παίδευσιν ἑαυτῶν ἀναθεωρῶμεν ἐλλείμματα μυρία τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ πολὺ τὸ φαύλως καὶ εἰκῇ συμμεμιγμένον ἔχουσαν ἐν πράξεσιν ἐν λόγοις ἐν πάθεσιν, οὐ πάνυ ῥᾳδίως ἐμπεριπατεῖν τοῖς κόλαξιν ἑαυτοὺς παρέξομεν. Ἀλέξανδρος μὲν γὰρ ἀπιστεῖν ἔφη τοῖς θεὸν αὐτὸν ἀναγορεύουσιν ἐν τῷ καθεύδειν μάλιστα καὶ ἀφροδισιάζειν, ὡς ἀγεννέστερος περὶ ταῦτα καὶ παθητικώτερος αὑτοῦ γιγνόμενος· [66] [a] ἡμεῖς δὲ πολλὰ πολλαχοῦ τῶν ἰδίων αἰσχρὰ καὶ λυπηρὰ καὶ ἀτελῆ καὶ ἡμαρτημένα καθορῶντες ἀεὶ φωράσομεν ἑαυτοὺς οὐκ ἐπαινοῦντος φίλου καὶ κατευλογοῦντος δεομένους, ἀλλ’ ἐλέγχοντος καὶ παρρησιαζομένου καὶ ψέγοντος ἡμᾶς νὴ Δία κακῶς πράττοντας. ὀλίγοι μὲν γὰρ ἐκ πολλῶν εἰσιν οἱ παρρησιάζεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ χαρίζεσθαι τοῖς φίλοις τολμῶντες· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ὀλίγοις αὖθις οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἂν εὕροις ἐπισταμένους τοῦτο ποιεῖν, ἀλλ’ οἰομένους, ἂν λοιδορῶσι καὶ ψέγωσι, παρρησίᾳ χρῆσθαι. καίτοι [b] καθάπερ ἄλλῳ τινὶ φαρμάκῳ, καὶ τῷ παρρησιάζεσθαι μὴ τυχόντι καιροῦ τὸ λυπεῖν ἀχρήστως καὶ ταράττειν περίεστι καὶ ποιεῖν τρόπον τινὰ μετ’ ἀλγηδόνος ὃ ποιεῖ μεθ’ ἡδονῆς τὸ κολακεύειν. βλάπτονται γὰρ οὐκ ἐπαινούμενοι μόνον ἀκαίρως ἀλλὰ καὶ ψεγόμενοι· καὶ τοῦτο μάλιστα τοῖς κόλαξιν εὐλήπτους καὶ πλαγίους παραδίδωσιν, ἀπὸ τῶν σφόδρα προσάντων καὶ ἀντιτύπων ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τὰ κοῖλα καὶ μαλακὰ δίκην ὕδατος ἀπολισθάνοντας. διὸ δεῖ τὴν παρρησίαν ἤθει κεκρᾶσθαι καὶ λόγον ἔχειν ἀφαιροῦντα τὸ ἄγαν καὶ τὸ ἄκρατον αὐτῆς ὥσπερ φωτός, ἵνα μὴ ταραττόμενοι μηδ’ ἀλγοῦντες ὑπὸ τῶν ἅπαντα μεμφομένων καὶ πᾶσιν ἐγκαλούντων καταφεύγωσιν εἰς τὴν τοῦ κόλακος σκιάν, καὶ πρὸς τὸ μὴ λυποῦν ἀποστρέφωνται.

[c] Πᾶσαν μὲν γάρ, ὦ Φιλόπαππε, κακίαν φευκτέον ἐστὶ δι’ ἀρετῆς, οὐχὶ διὰ τῆς ἐναντίας κακίας, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι δοκοῦσιν αἰσχυντηλίαν μὲν ἀναισχυντίᾳ φεύγειν ἀγροικίαν δὲ βωμολοχίᾳ, δειλίας δὲ καὶ μαλακίας ἀπωτάτω τίθεσθαι τὸν τρόπον ἂν ἔγγιστα φαίνωνται λαμυρίας καὶ θρασύτητος. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ δεισιδαιμονίας ἀθεότητα καὶ πανουργίαν ἀβελτερίας [d] ἀπολόγημα ποιοῦνται, καθάπερ ξύλον τὸ ἦθος ἐκ καμπῆς εἰς τοὐναντίον ἀπειρίᾳ τοῦ κατορθοῦν διαστρέφοντες. αἰσχίστη δὲ κολακείας ἄρνησις ἀνωφελῶς λυπηρὸν εἶναι, καὶ κομιδῇ τινος ἀμούσου καὶ ἀτέχνου πρὸς εὔνοιαν ὁμιλίας ἀηδίᾳ καὶ χαλεπότητι φεύγειν τὸ ἀγεννὲς ἐν φιλίᾳ καὶ ταπεινόν, ὥσπερ ἀπελεύθερον ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ τὴν κατηγορίαν ἰσηγορίας ἀπόλαυσιν ἡγούμενον.

Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν αἰσχρὸν μέν ἐστι κολακείᾳ περιπεσεῖν διώκοντα τὸ πρὸς χάριν, αἰσχρὸν δὲ φεύγοντα κολακείαν παρρησίας ἀμετρίᾳ διαφθεῖραι τὸ φιλικὸν καὶ κηδεμονικόν, δεῖ δὲ μηδέτερον παθεῖν ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἄλλῳ τινὶ καὶ τῇ παρρησίᾳ τὸ καλὸν ἐκ τοῦ [e] μετρίου λαβεῖν, αὐτὸς ἔοικεν ὁ λόγος ὁ τὸ ἐφεξῆς ἀπαιτῶν ἐπιτιθέναι τὴν κορωνίδα τῷ συγγράμματι.

Ὥσπερ οὖν κῆράς τινας ἐπούσας τῇ παρρησίᾳ πλείονας ὁρῶντες πρῶτον ἀφαιρῶμεν αὐτῆς τὴν φιλαυτίαν, εὖ μάλα φυλαττόμενοι μὴ διά τι τῶν ἰδίων οἷον ἀδικούμενοι καὶ ἀλγοῦντες ἐξονειδίζειν δοκῶμεν. οὔτε γὰρ ὑπ’ εὐνοίας ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς οἴονται γίγνεσθαι τὸν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ τοῦ λέγοντος γιγνόμενον λόγον, οὔτε νουθεσίαν ἀλλὰ μέμψιν εἶναι. φιλικὸν γὰρ ἡ παρρησία καὶ σεμνόν, ἡ δὲ μέμψις καὶ φίλαυτον καὶ μικρολόγον. ὅθεν αἰδοῦνται τοὺς παρρησιαζομένους καὶ θαυμάζουσι, τοῖς δὲ μεμφομένοις ἀντεγκαλοῦσι καὶ καταφρονοῦσιν.

[f] ὥσπερ ὁ Ἀγαμέμνων τὸν Ἀχιλλέα παρρησιάζεσθαι δοκοῦντα μετρίως οὐχ ὑπέμεινε, τοῦ δ’ Ὀδυσσέως καθαπτομένου πικρῶς καὶ λέγοντος

οὐλόμεν’, αἴθ’ ὤφελλες ἀεικελίου στρατοῦ ἄλλου

σημαίνειν

εἴκει καὶ καρτερεῖ, τῷ κηδεμονικῷ τοῦ λόγου καὶ νοῦν ἔχοντι συστελλόμενος. οὗτος μὲν γὰρ οὐκ [67] [a] ἔχων ἰδίας πρόφασιν ὀργῆς ἐπαρρησιάζετο πρὸς αὐτὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἐκεῖνος δὲ δι’ αὑτὸν ἐδόκει μάλιστα χαλεπαίνειν. αὐτός γε μὴν ὁ Ἀχιλλεύς, καίπερ οὐ γλυκύθυμος ὢν οὐδ’ ἀγανόφρων ἀλλὰ

δεινὸς ἀνήρ, οἷος καὶ ἀναίτιον αἰτιάασθαι,

παρεῖχε τῷ Πατρόκλῳ σιωπῇ καταφέρειν αὐτοῦ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα·

νηλεές, οὐκ ἄρα σοί γε πατὴρ ἦν ἱππότα Πηλεὺς

οὐδὲ Θέτις μήτηρ· γλαυκὴ δέ σε τίκτε θάλασσα

πέτραι τ’ ἠλίβατοι, ὅτι τοι νόος ἐστὶν ἀπηνής.

[b] ὥσπερ γὰρ Ὑπερείδης ὁ ῥήτωρ ἠξίου σκοπεῖν Ἀθηναίους μὴ μόνον εἰ πικρός ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ εἰ προῖκα πικρός, οὕτως ἡ τοῦ φίλου νουθεσία καθαρεύουσα παντὸς ἰδίου πάθους αἰδεστόν ἐστι καὶ σεμνὸν καὶ ἀναντίβλεπτον. ἐὰν δὲ δὴ καὶ φανερὸς ᾖ τις ἐν τῷ παρρησιάζεσθαι τὰ μὲν εἰς αὑτὸν ἁμαρτήματα τοῦ φίλου κομιδῇ προϊέμενος καὶ ἀπολείπων, ἄλλας δέ τινας αὐτοῦ πλημμελείας ἐλέγχων καὶ δάκνων ἐφ’ ἑτέροις καὶ μὴ φειδόμενος, ἄμαχος ὁ τόνος τῆς παρρησίας οὗτός ἐστι καὶ τῇ γλυκύτητι τοῦ νουθετοῦντος ἐπιτείνων τὸ πικρὸν καὶ αὐστηρὸν τῆς νουθεσίας. ὅθεν εὖ μὲν εἴρηται τὸ δεῖν ἐν ταῖς ὀργαῖς [c] καὶ ταῖς διαφοραῖς ταῖς πρὸς τοὺς φίλους μάλιστα πράττειν τι καὶ σκοπεῖν τῶν ἐκείνοις συμφερόντων ἢ πρεπόντων, οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τούτου φιλικόν ἐστι τὸ παρορᾶσθαι καὶ ἀμελεῖσθαι δοκοῦντας αὐτοὺς ὑπὲρ ἄλλων ἀμελουμένων παρρησιάζεσθαι καὶ ὑπομιμνῄσκειν. ὡς Πλάτων ἐν ταῖς πρὸς Διονύσιον ὑποψίαις καὶ διαφοραῖς ᾐτήσατο καιρὸν ἐντυχίας· εἶθ’ ὁ μὲν ἔδωκεν, οἰόμενος ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ τι ἔχειν μέμψασθαι τὸν Πλάτωνα καὶ διελθεῖν, ὁ δὲ Πλάτων οὕτω πως διελέχθη πρὸς αὐτόν. “εἴ τινα αἴσθοιο, Διονύσιε, [d] δυσμενῆ πεπλευκότα εἰς Σικελίαν, κακόν τί σε ποιῆσαι βουλόμενον οὐκ ἔχοντα δὲ καιρόν, ἆρ’ ἂν ἐάσειας αὐτὸν ἐκπλεῦσαι καὶ περιίδοις ἀθῷον ἀπαλλαγέντα;” “πολλοῦ δέω,” εἶπεν ὁ Διονύσιος, “ὦ Πλάτων· δεῖ γὰρ οὐ τὰ ἔργα τῶν ἐχθρῶν μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν προαίρεσιν μισεῖν καὶ κολάζειν.” “εἰ τοίνυν,” εἶπεν ὁ Πλάτων, “ἐπ’ εὐνοίᾳ τις ἀφιγμένος τῇ σῇ δεῦρο βούλεται μὲν ἀγαθοῦ τινος αἴτιός σοι γενέσθαι, σὺ δὲ καιρὸν οὐ παρέχεις, ἄξιόν ἐστι τοῦτον ἀχαρίστως προέσθαι καὶ ὀλιγώρως;” ἐρωτήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Διονυσίου τίς ἐστιν οὗτος, “Αἰσχίνης,” εἶπεν, “ἀνὴρ τῷ τε ἤθει παρ’ ὁντινοῦν τῶν Σωκράτους ἑταίρων ἐπιεικὴς καὶ τῷ λόγῳ δυνατὸς ἐπανορθοῦν οἷς συνείη· [e] πλεύσας δὲ δεῦρο πολλὴν θάλατταν, ὡς συγγένοιτό σοι διὰ φιλοσοφίας, ἠμέληται.” ταῦθ’ οὕτως ἐκίνησε τὸν Διονύσιον, ὥστε τὰς μὲν χεῖρας τῷ Πλάτωνι εὐθὺς περιβαλεῖν καὶ κατασπάζεσθαι, τὴν εὐμένειαν καὶ τὴν μεγαλοφροσύνην ἀγάμενον, τοῦ δ’ Αἰσχίνου καλῶς καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς ἐπιμεληθῆναι.

Δεύτερον τοίνυν ὥσπερ ἐκκαθαίροντες ὕβριν ἅπασαν καὶ γέλωτα καὶ σκῶμμα καὶ βωμολοχίαν ἡδύσματα πονηρὰ τῆς παρρησίας ἀφαιρῶμεν. ὥσπερ [f] γὰρ ἰατροῦ σάρκα τέμνοντος εὐρυθμίαν τινὰ δεῖ καὶ καθαριότητα τοῖς ἔργοις ἐπιτρέχειν, ὀρχηστικὴν δὲ καὶ παράβολον καὶ περιτρέχουσαν ὑγρότητα καὶ περιεργίαν ἀπεῖναι τῆς χειρός, οὕτως ἡ παρρησία δέχεται τὸ ἐπιδέξιον καὶ τὸ ἀστεῖον, ἂν ἡ χάρις τὴν σεμνότητα σῴζῃ, θρασύτης δὲ καὶ βδελυρία καὶ ὕβρις προσοῦσα πάνυ διαφθείρει καὶ ἀπόλλυσιν. ὅθεν ὁ μὲν ψάλτης οὐκ ἀπιθάνως οὐδ’ ἀμούσως ἐπεστόμισε τὸν Φίλιππον ἐπιχειροῦντα περὶ κρουμάτων διαφέρεσθαι πρὸς αὐτόν, εἰπὼν “μὴ γένοιτό [68] [a] σοι οὕτως, ὦ βασιλεῦ, κακῶς, ἵν’ ἐμοῦ ταῦτα σὺ βέλτιον εἰδῇς.” Ἐπίχαρμος δ’ οὐκ ὀρθῶς, τοῦ Ἱέρωνος ἀνελόντος ἐνίους τῶν συνήθων καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας καλέσαντος ἐπὶ δεῖπνον αὐτόν, “ἀλλὰ πρῴην,” ἔφη, “θύων τοὺς φίλους οὐκ ἐκάλεσας.” κακῶς δὲ καὶ Ἀντιφῶν, παρὰ Διονυσίῳ ζητήσεως οὔσης καὶ λόγου “ποῖος χαλκὸς ἄριστος,” “ἐκεῖνος,” εἶπεν, “ἐξ οὗ Ἀθήνησι κατεσκεύασαν τὰς Ἁρμοδίου καὶ Ἀριστογείτονος εἰκόνας.” οὔτε γὰρ ὠφελεῖ τούτων τὸ λυπηρὸν καὶ πικρόν, οὔτε τέρπει τὸ βωμολόχον καὶ παιδιῶδες, ἀλλ’ ἔστι κακοηθείᾳ καὶ ὕβρει μεμιγμένης [b] ἀκρασίας μετ’ ἔχθρας τὸ τοιοῦτον εἶδος, ᾧ χρώμενοι προσαπολλύουσιν αὑτούς, τὴν περὶ τὸ φρέαρ ὄρχησιν ἀτεχνῶς ὀρχούμενοι. καὶ γὰρ Ἀντιφῶν ἀπέθανεν ὑπὸ Διονυσίου καὶ Τιμαγένης ἐξέπεσε τῆς Καίσαρος φιλίας, ἐλευθέρᾳ μὲν οὐδέποτε φωνῇ χρησάμενος, ἐν δὲ τοῖς συμποσίοις καὶ τοῖς περιπάτοις ἑκάστοτε πρὸς οὐδ’ ἡντινοῦν σπουδὴν

ἀλλ’ ὅ τι οἱ εἴσαιτο γελοίιον Ἀργείοισιν

αἰτίαν φιλίας ὥσπερ σόφισμα λοιδορίας προφερόμενος.

Ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῖς κωμικοῖς πολλὰ πρὸς τὸ θέατρον αὐστηρὰ καὶ πολιτικὰ πεποίητο· συμμεμιγμένον δὲ [c] τὸ γελοῖον αὐτοῖς καὶ βωμολόχον, ὥσπερ σιτίοις ὑπότριμμα μοχθηρόν, ἐξίτηλον ἐποίει τὴν παρρησίαν καὶ ἄχρηστον, ὥστε περιῆν κακοηθείας δόξα καὶ βδελυρίας τοῖς λέγουσι, χρήσιμον δὲ τοῖς ἀκούουσιν οὐδὲν ἀπὸ τῶν λεγομένων. ἄλλως μὲν οὖν προσοιστέον ἐστὶ καὶ παιδιὰν καὶ γέλωτα τοῖς φίλοις· ἡ δὲ παρρησία σπουδὴν ἐχέτω καὶ ἦθος. ἂν δ’ ὑπὲρ μειζόνων ᾖ, καὶ πάθει καὶ σχήματι καὶ τόνῳ φωνῆς ὁ λόγος ἀξιόπιστος ἔστω καὶ κινητικός.

Ὁ δὲ καιρὸς ἐν παντὶ μὲν παρεθεὶς μεγάλα βλάπτει, μάλιστα δὲ τῆς παρρησίας διαφθείρει τὸ χρήσιμον. ὅτι μὲν οὖν ἐν οἴνῳ καὶ μέθῃ τὸ τοιοῦτο [d] φυλακτέον, εὔδηλόν ἐστιν. εὐδίᾳ γὰρ ἐπάγει νέφος ὁ κινῶν ἐν παιδιᾷ καὶ φιλοφροσύνῃ λόγον ὀφρῦν ἀνασπῶντα καὶ συνιστάντα τὸ πρόσωπον, ὥσπερ ἀντιταττόμενον τῷ Λυαίῳ θεῷ καὶ “λύοντι τὸ τῶν δυσφόρων σχοινίον μεριμνᾶν” κατὰ Πίνδαρον. ἔχει δὲ καὶ κίνδυνον ἡ ἀκαιρία μέγαν. ἀκροσφαλεῖς γάρ εἰσιν αἱ ψυχαὶ πρὸς ὀργὴν διὰ τὸν οἶνον, καὶ πολλάκις ἡ μέθη παραλαβοῦσα τὴν παρρησίαν ἔχθραν ἐποίησε. καὶ ὅλως οὐκ ἔστι γενναῖον οὐδὲ θαρραλέον ἀλλ’ ἄνανδρον ἐν τῷ νήφειν ἀπαρρησιάστου τὸ παρρησιάζεσθαι παρὰ τράπεζαν ὥσπερ οἱ δειλοὶ κύνες. οὐδὲν οὖν δεῖ περὶ τούτων λέγοντα μηκύνειν.

[e] Ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλοὶ τοὺς φίλους εὖ φερομένους ἐν τοῖς πράγμασιν οὔτ’ ἀξιοῦσιν οὔτε τολμῶσι ῥυθμίζειν, ἀλλ’ ὅλως ἀπρόσιτον καὶ ἀνέφικτον ἡγοῦνται νουθεσίᾳ τὸ εὐτυχοῦν εἶναι, σφαλλομένοις δὲ καὶ πταίουσιν ἐπιτίθενται καὶ πατοῦσιν ὑπὸ χεῖρα καὶ ταπεινοὺς γεγενημένους, ὥσπερ ῥεῦμα κεκρατημένον παρὰ φύσιν τὴν παρρησίαν ἀθρόως ἐφιέντες αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀπολαύοντες ἄσμενοι τῆς μεταβολῆς διὰ τὴν πρόσθεν ὑπεροψίαν ἐκείνων αὑτῶν δ’ ἀσθένειαν, οὐ χεῖρόν ἐστι καὶ περὶ τούτων διελθεῖν καὶ ἀποκρίνασθαι τῷ Εὐριπίδῃ λέγοντι

ὅταν δ’ ὁ δαίμων εὖ διδῷ, τί δεῖ φίλων;

[f] ὅτι δεῖ μάλιστα παρρησιαζομένων φίλων τοῖς εὐτυχοῦσι καὶ τὸ ἄγαν ὑφιέντων τοῦ φρονήματος. ὀλίγοι γάρ εἰσιν οἷς μετὰ τοῦ εὐτυχεῖν παραγίγνεται τὸ φρονεῖν· οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ φρενῶν ἐπεισάκτων δέονται καὶ λογισμῶν πιεζόντων ἔξωθεν αὐτοὺς ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης φυσωμένους καὶ σαλευομένους. ὅταν δ’ ὁ δαίμων καταβάλῃ καὶ περιέλῃ τὸν ὄγκον, αὐτοῖς τοῖς πράγμασιν ἔνεστι τὸ νουθετοῦν καὶ μετάνοιαν ἐμποιοῦν. ὅθεν οὐδὲν ἔργον τότε παρρησίας φιλικῆς οὐδὲ λόγων βάρος ἐχόντων καὶ δηγμόν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐν ταῖς τοιαύταις μεταβολαῖς

[69] [a] εἰς ὄμματ’ εὔνου φωτὸς ἐμβλέψαι γλυκὺ

παρηγοροῦντος καὶ παραθαρρύνοντος, ὥσπερ τοῦ Κλεάρχου τὸ πρόσωπον ὁ Ξενοφῶν ἐν ταῖς μάχαις καὶ παρὰ τὰ δεινά φησιν ὁρώμενον εὐμενὲς καὶ φιλάνθρωπον εὐθαρσεστέρους ποιεῖν τοὺς κινδυνεύοντας. ὁ δὲ παρρησίαν καὶ δηγμὸν ἀνθρώπῳ δυστυχοῦντι προσάγων ὥσπερ ὀξυδορκικὸν ὄμματι ταραττομένῳ καὶ φλεγμαίνοντι, θεραπεύει μὲν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἀφαιρεῖ τοῦ λυποῦντος, ὀργὴν δὲ τῇ λύπῃ [b] προστίθησι καὶ παροξύνει τὸν ἀνιώμενον. αὐτίκα γοῦν ὑγιαίνων μέν τις οὐ χαλεπός ἐστιν οὐδ’ ἄγριος παντάπασιν ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ ψέγοντι μὲν συνουσίας καὶ πότους αὐτοῦ ψέγοντι δ’ ἀργίαν καὶ ἀγυμνασίαν καὶ λουτρὰ συνεχῆ καὶ πλησμονὰς ἀκαίρους· νοσοῦντι δ’ οὐκ ἀνεκτὸν ἀλλὰ μείζων νόσος ἀκούειν ὅτι ταῦτά σοι γέγονεν ἐξ ἀκρασίας καὶ μαλακίας καὶ δι’ ὄψα καὶ γυναῖκας. ὢ τῆς ἀκαιρίας, ἄνθρωπε· διαθήκην γράφω καὶ παρασκευάζεταί μοι καστόριον ἢ σκαμώνιον ὑπὸ τῶν ἰατρῶν, σὺ δὲ νουθετεῖς καὶ φιλοσοφεῖς. οὕτω τοίνυν καὶ τὰ πράγματα τῶν δυστυχούντων οὐ παρρησίαν ἐνδέχεται καὶ γνωμολογίαν, [c] ἀλλ’ ἐπιεικείας δεῖται καὶ βοηθείας. καὶ γὰρ αἱ τίτθαι τοῖς παιδίοις πεσοῦσιν οὐ λοιδορησόμεναι προστρέχουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἤγειραν καὶ περιέπλυναν καὶ κατέστειλαν, εἶθ’ οὕτως ἐπιπλήττουσι καὶ κολάζουσι.

Λέγεται δὲ καὶ Δημήτριος ὁ Φαληρεὺς ὅτε τῆς πατρίδος ἐξέπεσε καὶ περὶ Θήβας ἀδοξῶν καὶ ταπεινὰ πράττων διῆγεν, οὐχ ἡδέως ἰδεῖν προσιόντα Κράτητα, παρρησίαν κυνικὴν καὶ λόγους τραχεῖς προσδεχόμενος· ἐντυχόντος δὲ πράως αὐτῷ τοῦ Κράτητος καὶ διαλεχθέντος περὶ φυγῆς ὡς οὐδὲν [d] ἔχοι κακὸν οὐδ’ ἄξιον φέρειν βαρέως πραγμάτων σφαλερῶν καὶ ἀβεβαίων ἀπηλλαγμένον, ἅμα δὲ θαρρεῖν ἑαυτῷ καὶ τῇ διαθέσει παρακαλοῦντος, ἡδίων γενόμενος καὶ ἀναθαρρήσας πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἶπε “φεῦ τῶν πράξεων ἐκείνων καὶ ἀσχολιῶν δι’ ἃς ἄνδρα τοιοῦτον οὐκ ἔγνωμεν.”

λυπουμένῳ γὰρ μῦθος εὐμενὴς φίλων,

ἄγαν δὲ μωραίνοντι νουθετήματα.

Οὗτος ὁ τρόπος τῶν γενναίων φίλων· οἱ δ’ ἀγεννεῖς καὶ ταπεινοὶ τῶν εὐτυχούντων κόλακες, [e] “ὥσπερ τὰ ῥήγματα καὶ τὰ σπάσματά,” φησι Δημοσθένης, “ὅταν τι κακὸν τὸ σῶμα λάβῃ τότε κινεῖσθαι,” καὶ οὗτοι ταῖς μεταβολαῖς ἐπιφύονται, καθάπερ ἡδόμενοι καὶ ἀπολαύοντες. καὶ γὰρ ἂν δέηταί τινος ὑπομνήσεως ἐν οἷς δι’ αὑτὸν ἔπταισε βουλευσάμενος κακῶς, ἱκανόν ἐστι τὸ

οὔ τι καθ’ ἡμέτερόν γε νόον· μάλα γάρ τοι ἔγωγε

πόλλ’ ἀπεμυθεόμην.

Ἐν τίσιν οὖν σφοδρὸν εἶναι δεῖ τὸν φίλον καὶ πότε τῷ τόνῳ χρῆσθαι τῆς παρρησίας; ὅταν ἡδονῆς ἢ ὀργῆς ἢ ὕβρεως ἐπιλαβέσθαι φερομένης οἱ [f] καιροὶ παρακαλῶσιν ἢ κολοῦσαι φιλαργυρίαν ἢ ἀπροσεξίαν ἀνασχεῖν ἀνόητον. οὕτως ἐπαρρησιάζετο Σόλων πρὸς Κροῖσον ὑπ’ εὐτυχίας ἀβεβαίου διεφθορότα καὶ τρυφῶντα, τὸ τέλος ὁρᾶν κελεύσας· οὕτω Σωκράτης Ἀλκιβιάδην ἐκόλουε, καὶ δάκρυον ἐξῆγεν ἀληθινὸν ἐξελεγχομένου καὶ τὴν καρδίαν ἔστρεφε. τοιαῦτα τὰ Κύρου πρὸς Κυαξάρην καὶ τὰ πρὸς Δίωνα Πλάτωνος, ὅτε λαμπρότατος ἦν καὶ πάντας εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἀνθρώπους ἐπέστρεφε διὰ τὸ [70] [a] κάλλος τῶν πράξεων καὶ τὸ μέγεθος, παρακελευομένου φυλάττεσθαι καὶ δεδιέναι τὴν “αὐθάδειαν, ὡς ἐρημίᾳ ξύνοικον.” ἔγραφε δὲ καὶ Σπεύσιππος αὐτῷ μὴ μέγα φρονεῖν εἰ πολὺς αὐτοῦ λόγος ἐστὶν ἐν παιδαρίοις καὶ γυναίοις, ἀλλ’ ὁρᾶν ὅπως ὁσιότητι καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ νόμοις ἀρίστοις κοσμήσας Σικελίαν “εὐκλεᾶ θήσει” τὴν Ἀκαδήμειαν. Εὖκτος δὲ καὶ Εὐλαῖος, ἑταῖροι Περσέως, εὐτυχοῦντι μὲν ἀεὶ πρὸς χάριν ὁμιλοῦντες καὶ συνεπινεύοντες ὥσπερ οἱ λοιποὶ παρηκολούθουν· ἐπεὶ δὲ Ῥωμαίοις συμβαλὼν περὶ Πύδναν ἔπταισε καὶ ἔφυγε, προσπεσόντες ἐπετίμων πικρῶς καὶ ἀνεμίμνῃσκον ὧν ἐξήμαρτεν ἢ παρεῖδεν, ἕκαστον ἐξονειδίζοντες, ἄχρι οὗ [b] διαλγήσας ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὑπὸ λύπης καὶ ὀργῆς ἀμφοτέρους τῷ ξιφιδίῳ παίων ἀνεῖλεν.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν κοινὸς οὕτω προωρίσθω καιρός· οὓς δὲ παρέχουσιν αὐτοὶ πολλάκις οὐ χρὴ προΐεσθαι τὸν κηδόμενον φίλον ἀλλὰ χρῆσθαι· καὶ γὰρ ἐρώτησις ἐνίοις καὶ διήγησις καὶ ψόγος ὁμοίων ἐφ’ ἑτέροις ἢ ἔπαινος ὥσπερ ἐνδόσιμον εἰς παρρησίαν ἐστίν. οἷον ἐλθεῖν Δημάρατον εἰς Μακεδονίαν λέγουσι καθ’ ὃν χρόνον ἐν διαφορᾷ πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα [c] καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ὁ Φίλιππος ἦν· ἀσπασαμένου δ’ αὐτὸν τοῦ Φιλίππου καὶ πυθομένου πῶς πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔχουσιν ὁμονοίας οἱ Ἕλληνες, εἰπεῖν τὸν Δημάρατον εὔνουν ὄντα καὶ συνήθη “πάνυ γοῦν, ὦ Φίλιππε, καλόν ἐστί σοι πυνθάνεσθαι μὲν περὶ τῆς Ἀθηναίων καὶ Πελοποννησίων ὁμοφροσύνης, τὴν δ’ οἰκίαν περιορᾶν τὴν σεαυτοῦ τοσαύτης στάσεως καὶ διχονοίας γέμουσαν.” εὖ δὲ καὶ Διογένης, ὃς ἐπεὶ παρελθὼν εἰς τὸ τοῦ Φιλίππου στρατόπεδον, ὅτε τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐβάδιζε μαχούμενος, ἀνήχθη πρὸς αὐτόν, ὁ δ’ ἀγνοῶν ἠρώτησεν εἰ κατάσκοπός ἐστι, “πάνυ μὲν οὖν,” ἔφη, “κατάσκοπος, ὦ Φίλιππε, τῆς [d] ἀβουλίας σου καὶ τῆς ἀνοίας, δι’ ἣν οὐδενὸς ἀναγκάζοντος ἔρχῃ περὶ βασιλείας καὶ τοῦ σώματος ὥρᾳ μιᾷ διακυβεύσων.”

Τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ἴσως σφοδρότερον· ἕτερος δὲ καιρός ἐστι νουθεσίας ὅταν ὑπ’ ἄλλων λοιδορηθέντες ἐφ’ οἷς ἁμαρτάνουσι ταπεινοί τε γένωνται καὶ συσταλῶσιν. ᾧ χρῷτ’ ἂν ἐμμελῶς ὁ χαρίεις τοὺς μὲν λοιδοροῦντας ἀνακόπτων καὶ διακρουόμενος, ἰδίᾳ δ’ αὐτὸς ἁπτόμενος τοῦ φίλου καὶ ὑπομιμνῄσκων ὡς εἰ διὰ μηδὲν ἄλλο προσεκτέον αὐτῷ, ὅπως γε μὴ θρασεῖς ὦσιν οἱ ἐχθροί. “ποῦ γὰρ ἔστι τούτοις τὸ στόμα διᾶραι, τί δὲ πρὸς σὲ εἰπεῖν, ἂν ἀφῇς ταῦτα [e] καὶ ῥίψῃς ἐφ’ οἷς κακῶς ἀκούεις;” γίγνεται γὰρ οὕτω τὸ μὲν λυπηρὸν τοῦ λοιδοροῦντος, τὸ δ’ ὠφέλιμον τοῦ νουθετοῦντος.

Ἔνιοι δὲ κομψότερον, ἄλλους ψέγοντες, ἐπιστρέφουσι τοὺς συνήθεις· κατηγοροῦσι γὰρ ἑτέρων ἃ πράττοντας ἐκείνους ἴσασιν. ὁ δ’ ἡμέτερος καθηγητὴς Ἀμμώνιος ἐν δειλινῇ διατριβῇ τῶν γνωρίμων τινὰς αἰσθόμενος ἠριστηκότας οὐχ ἁπλοῦν ἄριστον ἐκέλευσεν ἰδίῳ παιδὶ πληγὰς ἐμβαλεῖν τὸν ἀπελεύθερον, ἐπειπὼν ὅτι χωρὶς ὄξους ἀριστᾶν οὐ δύναται. καὶ ἅμα πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἀπέβλεψεν, ὥστε τῶν ἐνόχων ἅψασθαι τὴν ἐπιτίμησιν.

Ἔτι τοίνυν εὐλαβητέον ἐστὶν ἐν πολλοῖς παρρησίᾳ χρῆσθαι πρὸς φίλον, ἐνθυμούμενον τὸ τοῦ [f] Πλάτωνος. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ὁ Σωκράτης ἥψατό τινος τῶν συνήθων σφοδρότερον ἐπὶ ταῖς τραπέζαις διαλεγόμενος, “οὐκ ἄμεινον ἦν,” ὁ Πλάτων ἔφη, “ἰδίᾳ ταῦτα λελέχθαι;” καὶ ὁ Σωκράτης “σὺ δ’ οὐκ ἄμεινον,” εἶπεν, “ἐποίησας ἂν ἰδίᾳ πρὸς ἐμὲ τοῦτ’ εἰπών;” Πυθαγόρου δὲ τραχύτερον ἐν πολλοῖς γνωρίμῳ προσενεχθέντος ἀπάγξασθαι τὸ μειράκιον λέγουσιν, ἐκ τούτου δὲ μηδέποτε τὸν Πυθαγόραν αὖθις ἄλλου παρόντος ἄλλον νουθετῆσαι. δεῖ γὰρ ὡς νοσήματος οὐκ εὐπρεποῦς τῆς ἁμαρτίας τὴν νουθέτησιν καὶ ἀνακάλυψιν ἀπόρρητον εἶναι καὶ μὴ [71] [a] πανηγυρικὴν μηδ’ ἐπιδεικτικὴν μηδὲ μάρτυρας καὶ θεατὰς συνάγουσαν. οὐ γὰρ φιλικὸν ἀλλὰ σοφιστικὸν ἀλλοτρίοις ἐνευδοκιμεῖν σφάλμασι, καλλωπιζόμενον πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας, ὥσπερ οἱ χειρουργοῦντες ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις ἰατροὶ πρὸς ἐργολαβίαν. ἄνευ δὲ τῆς ὕβρεως, ἣν οὐδεμιᾷ θεραπείᾳ προσεῖναι δίκαιόν ἐστι, καὶ τὸ τῆς κακίας σκεπτέον φιλόνεικον καὶ αὔθαδες. οὐ γὰρ ἁπλῶς

νουθετούμενος ἔρως

μᾶλλον πιέζει

κατ’ Εὐριπίδην, ἀλλ’ ἂν νουθετῇ τις ἐν πολλοῖς καὶ μὴ φειδόμενος, πᾶν νόσημα καὶ πᾶν πάθος εἰς τὸ [b] ἀναίσχυντον καθίστησιν. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ Πλάτων τοὺς παρασκευάζοντας ἐν τοῖς νέοις αἰσχύνην γέροντας αὐτοὺς ἀξιοῖ πρῶτον αἰσχύνεσθαι τοὺς νέους, οὕτω τῶν φίλων ἡ δυσωπουμένη παρρησία δυσωπεῖ μάλιστα, καὶ τὸ μετ’ εὐλαβείας ἀτρέμα προσιέναι καὶ ἅπτεσθαι τοῦ ἁμαρτάνοντος ὑπερείπει καὶ διεργάζεται τὴν κακίαν ἀναπιμπλαμένην τοῦ αἰδεῖσθαι τὸ αἰδούμενον. ὅθεν ἄριστα μὲν ἔχει τὸ

ἄγχι σχὼν κεφαλήν, ἵνα μὴ πευθοίαθ’ οἱ ἄλλοι,

[c]ἥκιστα δὲ πρέπει γαμετῆς ἀκουούσης ἄνδρα καὶ παίδων ἐν ὄψει πατέρα καὶ ἐραστὴν ἐρωμένου παρόντος ἢ γνωρίμων διδάσκαλον ἀποκαλύπτειν· ἐξίστανται γὰρ ὑπὸ λύπης καὶ ὀργῆς ἐλεγχόμενοι παρ’ οἷς εὐδοκιμεῖν ἀξιοῦσιν. οἶμαι δὲ καὶ Κλεῖτος οὐχ οὕτω παρώξυνε διὰ τὸν οἶνον, ὡς ὅτι πολλῶν παρόντων ἐδόκει κολούειν Ἀλέξανδρον.

Καὶ Ἀριστομένης ὁ Πτολεμαίου καθηγητὴς ὅτι νυστάζοντα πρεσβείας παρούσης ἐπάταξεν ἐξεγείρων, λαβήν τινα παρέσχε τοῖς κόλαξι, προσποιουμένοις ἀγανακτεῖν ὑπὲρ τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ λέγουσιν [d] “εἰ τοσαῦτα κοπιῶν καὶ ἀγρυπνῶν κατηνέχθης, ἰδίᾳ σε νουθετεῖν ὀφείλομεν, οὐκ ἐναντίον ἀνθρώπων τοσούτων προσφέρειν τὰς χεῖρας.” ὁ δὲ φαρμάκου κύλικα πέμψας ἐκέλευσεν ἐκπιεῖν τὸν ἄνθρωπον. Ἀριστοφάνης δὲ καὶ τὸν Κλέωνα τοῦτ’ ἐγκαλεῖν φησιν ὅτι

ξένων παρόντων τὴν πόλιν κακῶς λέγει

καὶ παροξύνειν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους. διὸ δεῖ φυλάττεσθαι καὶ τοῦτο μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων τοὺς μὴ παρεπιδείκνυσθαι μηδὲ δημαγωγεῖν ἀλλ’ ὀνησιφόρως καὶ θεραπευτικῶς χρῆσθαι τῇ παρρησίᾳ βουλομένους.

[e] καὶ μὴν ὅπερ ὁ Θουκυδίδης τοὺς Κορινθίους λέγοντας περὶ αὑτῶν πεποίηκεν, ὡς “ἄξιοί” εἰσιν ἑτέροις “ἐπενεγκεῖν ψόγον,” οὐ κακῶς εἰρημένον, ἔδει παρεῖναι τοῖς παρρησιαζομένοις. Λύσανδρος μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε πρὸς τὸν ἐκ Μεγάρων ἐν τοῖς συμμάχοις παρρησιαζόμενον ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἔφη τοὺς λόγους αὐτοῦ πόλεως δεῖσθαι· παρρησία δὲ παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἤθους ἴσως δεῖται, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἀληθέστατόν ἐστιν ἐπὶ τῶν ἑτέρους νουθετούντων καὶ σωφρονιζόντων λεγόμενον. ὁ γοῦν Πλάτων ἔλεγε νουθετεῖν τῷ βίῳ τὸν Σπεύσιππον, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ Πολέμωνα Ξενοκράτης ὀφθεὶς μόνον ἐν τῇ [f] διατριβῇ καὶ ἀποβλέψας πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐτρέψατο καὶ μετέθηκεν. ἐλαφροῦ δὲ καὶ φαύλου τὸ ἦθος ἀνθρώπου λόγῳ παρρησίας ἁπτομένῳ περίεστι προσακοῦσαι τὸ

ἄλλων ἰατρὸς αὐτὸς ἕλκεσιν βρύων.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ φαύλους γε ὄντας αὐτοὺς ἑτέροις τε τοιούτοις ὁμιλοῦντας ἐξάγει τὰ πράγματα πολλάκις εἰς τὸ νουθετεῖν, ἐπιεικέστατος ἂν εἴη τρόπος ὁ συνεμπλέκων καὶ συμπεριλαμβάνων ἁμηγέπη τῷ ἐγκλήματι τὸν παρρησιαζόμενον· ἐφ’ ᾧ λέλεκται καὶ τὸ

Τυδείδη, τί παθόντε λελάσμεθα θούριδος ἀλκῆς;

[72][a] καὶ τὸ

νῦν δ’ οὐδ’ ἑνὸς ἄξιοί εἰμεν

Ἕκτορος.

καὶ ὁ Σωκράτης οὕτως ἀτρέμα τοὺς νέους ἤλεγχεν, ὡς μηδ’ αὐτὸς ἀπηλλαγμένος ἀμαθίας, ἀλλὰ μετ’ ἐκείνων οἰόμενος δεῖν ἀρετῆς ἐπιμελεῖσθαι καὶ ζητεῖν τἀληθές· καὶ γὰρ εὔνοιαν καὶ πίστιν ἔχουσιν οἱ ταὐτὰ μὲν ἁμαρτάνειν, ἐπανορθοῦσθαι δὲ τοὺς φίλους ὥσπερ αὑτοὺς δοκοῦντες. ὁ δὲ σεμνύνων ἑαυτὸν ἐν τῷ κολούειν ἕτερον, ὡς δή τις εἰλικρινὴς καὶ ἀπαθής, ἂν μὴ πολὺ καθ’ ἡλικίαν ᾖ προήκων μηδ’ ἔχων ἀρετῆς ὁμολογούμενον ἀξίωμα καὶ δόξης, [b] ἐπαχθὴς φανεὶς καὶ βαρὺς οὐδὲν ὠφέλησεν. ὅθεν οὐχ ἁπλῶς ὁ Φοῖνιξ ἐνέβαλε τὰ περὶ αὑτὸν ἀτυχήματα, δι’ ὀργὴν ἐπιχειρήσαντος ἀνελεῖν τὸν πατέρα καὶ ταχὺ μεταγνόντος,

ὡς μὴ πατροφόνος μετ’ Ἀχαιοῖσιν καλεοίμην,

ἵνα μὴ δοκῇ νουθετεῖν ἐκεῖνον ὡς αὐτὸς ἀπαθὴς ὢν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ ἀναμάρτητος. ἐνδύεται γὰρ ἠθικῶς τὰ τοιαῦτα, καὶ μᾶλλον εἴκουσι τοῖς ὁμοιοπαθεῖν ἀλλὰ μὴ περιφρονεῖν δοκοῦσιν.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὔτε φῶς λαμπρὸν ὄμματι φλεγμαίνοντι προσοιστέον, οὔτ’ ἐμπαθὴς ψυχὴ παρρησίαν ἀναδέχεται [c] καὶ νουθεσίαν ἄκρατον, ἐν τοῖς χρησιμωτάτοις ἐστὶ τῶν βοηθημάτων ὁ παραμιγνύμενος ἐλαφρὸς ἔπαινος, ὥσπερ ἐν τούτοις

ὑμεῖς δ’ οὐκέτι καλὰ μεθίετε θούριδος ἀλκῆς

πάντες ἄριστοι ἐόντες ἀνὰ στρατόν. οὐδ’ ἂν ἔγωγε

ἀνδρὶ μαχεσσαίμην ὅστις πολέμοιο μεθείη

λυγρὸς ἐών· ὑμῖν δὲ νεμεσσῶμαι περὶ κῆρι

καὶ

Πάνδαρε, ποῦ τοι τόξον ἰδὲ πτερόεντες ὀιστοὶ

καὶ κλέος, ᾧ οὔ τίς τοι ἐρίζεται ἐνθάδε γ’ ἀνήρ;

σφόδρα δ’ ἐμφανῶς ἀνακαλεῖται καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα τοὺς ὑποφερομένους

ὁ δ’ Οἰδίπους ποῦ καὶ τὰ κλείν’ αἰνίγματα;

καὶ

ὁ πολλὰ δὴ τλὰς Ἡρακλῆς λέγει τάδε;

[d] οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἀνίησι τοῦ ψόγου τὸ τραχὺ καὶ κελευστικόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ζῆλον ἐμποιεῖ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν αἰδουμένῳ τὰ αἰσχρὰ τῇ τῶν καλῶν ὑπομνήσει καὶ παράδειγμα ποιουμένῳ τῶν βελτιόνων ἑαυτόν. ὅταν δ’ ἑτέρους οἷον ἥλικας ἢ πολίτας ἢ συγγενεῖς παραβάλλωμεν, ἄχθεται καὶ διαγριαίνεται τὸ φιλόνεικον τῆς κακίας, καὶ τοῦτο πολλάκις εἴωθεν ὑποφωνεῖν μετ’ ὀργῆς “τί οὖν οὐκ ἄπει πρὸς τοὺς ἐμοῦ κρείττονας, ἐμοὶ δὲ μὴ παρέχεις πράγματα;” φυλακτέον οὖν ἑτέρους ἐπαινεῖν παρρησιαζόμενον πρὸς ἑτέρους, ἂν μὴ νὴ Δία γονεῖς ὦσιν. ὡς Ἀγαμέμνων

[e] ἦ ὀλίγον οἱ παῖδα ἐοικότα γείνατο Τυδεύς,

καὶ ὁ ἐν τοῖς Σκυρίοις Ὀδυσσεὺς

σὺ δ’, ὦ τὸ λαμπρὸν φῶς καταισχύνων γένους,

ξαίνεις, ἀρίστου πατρὸς Ἑλλήνων γεγώς;

Ἥκιστα δὲ προσήκει νουθετούμενον ἀντινουθετεῖν καὶ παρρησίᾳ παρρησίαν ἀντεισφέρειν· ταχὺ γὰρ ἐκκάει καὶ ποιεῖ διαφοράν, καὶ ὅλως οὐκ ἀντιπαρρησιαζομένου δόξειεν ἂν ἀλλὰ παρρησίαν μὴ [f] φέροντος ὁ τοιοῦτος ὠθισμὸς εἶναι. βέλτιον οὖν ὑπομένειν τὸν νουθετεῖν δοκοῦντα φίλον· ἂν γὰρ ὕστερον αὐτὸς ἁμαρτάνῃ καὶ δέηται νουθεσίας, αὐτὸ τοῦτο τῇ παρρησίᾳ τρόπον τινὰ παρρησίαν δίδωσιν. ὑπομιμνῃσκόμενος γὰρ ἄνευ μνησικακίας ὅτι τοὺς φίλους καὶ αὐτὸς εἰώθει μὴ περιορᾶν ἁμαρτάνοντας ἀλλ’ ἐξελέγχειν καὶ διδάσκειν, μᾶλλον ἐνδώσει καὶ παραδέξεται τὴν ἐπανόρθωσιν, ὡς οὖσαν εὐνοίας καὶ χάριτος οὐ μέμψεως ἀνταπόδοσιν οὐδ’ ὀργῆς.

[73] [a] Ἔτι τοίνυν ὁ μὲν Θουκυδίδης φησὶν “ὅστις ἐπὶ μεγίστοις τὸ ἐπίφθονον λαμβάνει, ὀρθῶς βουλεύεται”· τῷ δὲ φίλῳ προσήκει τὸ ἐκ τοῦ νουθετεῖν ἐπαχθὲς ὑπὲρ μεγάλων ἀναδέχεσθαι καὶ σφόδρα διαφερόντων. ἂν δ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσι καὶ πρὸς πάντα δυσκολαίνῃ καὶ μὴ φιλικῶς ἀλλὰ παιδαγωγικῶς προσφέρηται τοῖς συνήθεσιν, ἀμβλὺς ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις νουθετῶν ἔσται καὶ ἄπρακτος, ὥσπερ ἰατρὸς δριμὺ φάρμακον ἢ πικρὸν ἀναγκαῖον δὲ [b] καὶ πολυτελὲς εἰς πολλὰ καὶ μικρὰ καὶ οὐκ ἀναγκαῖα διελὼν τῇ παρρησίᾳ κατακεχρημένος. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν σφόδρα φυλάξεται τὸ συνεχὲς καὶ φιλαίτιον· ἑτέρου δὲ μικρολογουμένου περὶ πάντα καὶ παρασυκοφαντοῦντος ὥσπερ ἐνδόσιμον ἕξει πρὸς τὰ μείζονα τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων. καὶ γὰρ ἰατρὸς Φιλότιμος ἐμπύου τὸ ἧπαρ ἀνθρώπου δείξαντος αὐτῷ τὸν δάκτυλον ἡλκωμένον “οὐκ ἔστι σοι,” εἶπεν, “ὦ τᾶν, περὶ παρωνυχίας ὁ λόγος.” οὐκοῦν καὶ τῷ φίλῳ δίδωσιν ὁ καιρὸς εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὸν ἐπὶ μικροῖς καὶ μηδενὸς ἀξίοις ἐγκαλοῦντα “τί παιδιὰς καὶ πότους καὶ φλυάρους λέγομεν; οὗτος, ὦ τᾶν, ἀποπεμψάσθω τὴν ἑταίραν ἢ παυσάσθω κυβεύων, καὶ τἄλλα θαυμαστὸς ἡμῖν ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν.” ὁ [c] γὰρ εἰς τὰ μικρὰ συγγνώμην λαβὼν οὐκ ἀηδῶς εἰς τὰ μείζονα τῷ φίλῳ παρρησίαν δίδωσιν· ὁ δ’ ἐγκείμενος ἀεὶ καὶ πανταχοῦ πικρὸς καὶ ἀτερπὴς καὶ πάντα γιγνώσκων καὶ πολυπραγμονῶν οὐδὲ παισὶν ἀνεκτὸς οὐδ’ ἀδελφοῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ δούλοις ἀφόρητος.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὔτε τῷ γήρᾳ πάντα πρόσεστι κακὰ κατ’ Εὐριπίδην οὔτε τῇ τῶν φίλων ἀβελτερίᾳ, δεῖ μὴ μόνον ἁμαρτάνοντας ἀλλὰ καὶ κατορθοῦντας ἐπιτηρεῖν τοὺς φίλους, καὶ νὴ Δία προθύμως ἐπαινεῖν τὸ πρῶτον· εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ὁ σίδηρος πυκνοῦται [d] τῇ περιψύξει καὶ δέχεται τὴν στόμωσιν ἀνεθεὶς πρῶτον ὑπὸ θερμότητος καὶ μαλακὸς γενόμενος, οὕτω τοῖς φίλοις διακεχυμένοις καὶ θερμοῖς οὖσιν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπαίνων ὥσπερ βαφὴν ἀτρέμα τὴν παρρησίαν ἐπάγειν. δίδωσι γὰρ ὁ καιρὸς εἰπεῖν “ἆρ’ ἄξιον ἐκεῖνα τούτοις παραβάλλειν; ὁρᾷς τὸ καλὸν οἵους καρποὺς ἀποδίδωσι; ταῦτ’ ἀπαιτοῦμεν οἱ φίλοι, ταῦτ’ ἐστὶν οἰκεῖα, πρὸς ταῦτα πέφυκας· ἐκεῖνα δ’ ἀποδιοπομπητέον

εἰς ὄρος ἢ ἐς κῦμα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης.

ὡς γὰρ ἰατρὸς εὐγνώμων βούλοιτ’ ἂν ὕπνῳ καὶ τροφῇ μᾶλλον ἢ καστορίῳ καὶ σκαμωνίῳ τὸ νόσημα λῦσαι τοῦ κάμνοντος, οὕτω καὶ φίλος ἐπιεικὴς καὶ [e] πατὴρ χρηστὸς καὶ διδάσκαλος ἐπαίνῳ μᾶλλον ἢ ψόγῳ χαίρει πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν ἤθους χρώμενος. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄλλο ποιεῖ τὸν παρρησιαζόμενον ἥκιστα λυπεῖν καὶ μάλιστα θεραπεύειν ἢ τὸ φειδόμενον ὀργῆς ἐν ἤθει καὶ μετ’ εὐνοίας προσφέρεσθαι τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσιν. ὅθεν οὔτ’ ἀρνουμένους δεῖ πικρῶς ἐξελέγχειν οὔτε κωλύειν ἀπολογουμένους, ἀλλὰ καὶ προφάσεις εὐσχήμονας ἁμωσγέπως συνεκπορίζειν καὶ τῆς χείρονος αἰτίας ἀφισταμένους αὐτοὺς ἐνδιδόναι μετριωτέραν, ὡς ὁ Ἕκτωρ

δαιμόνι’, οὐ μὲν καλὰ χόλον τόνδ’ ἔνθεο θυμῷ

[f] πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφόν, ὡς οὐκ ἀπόδρασιν οὐδὲ δειλίαν οὖσαν ἀλλ’ ὀργὴν τὴν ἐκ τῆς μάχης ἀναχώρησιν αὐτοῦ. καὶ πρὸς τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα ὁ Νέστωρ

σὺ δὲ σῷ μεγαλήτορι θυμῷ

εἴξας.

ἠθικώτερον γὰρ οἶμαι τοῦ “ἠδίκησας” τὸ “ἠσχημόνησας” καὶ “οὐκ ἐπέστησας” τοῦ “ἠγνόησας,” καὶ τὸ “μὴ φιλονείκει πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν” ἢ τὸ [74] [a] “μὴ φθόνει τῷ ἀδελφῷ,” καὶ τὸ “φύγε τὴν γυναῖκα διαφθείρουσαν” ἢ τὸ “παῦσαι τὴν γυναῖκα διαφθείρων”· τοιοῦτον γὰρ ἡ θεραπευτικὴ παρρησία ζητεῖ τρόπον, ἡ δὲ πρακτικὴ τὸν ἐναντίον. ὅταν γὰρ ἢ μέλλοντας ἁμαρτάνειν ἐκκροῦσαι δεήσῃ ἢ πρὸς ὁρμήν τινα βίαιον ἱσταμένους ἐξ ἐναντίας φερομένην ἢ πρὸς τὰ καλὰ μαλακῶς καὶ ἀπροθύμως ἔχοντας ἐντεῖναι καὶ παρορμῆσαι θελήσωμεν, εἰς αἰτίας δεῖ περιφέρειν ἀτόπους καὶ μὴ πρεπούσας τὸ γιγνόμενον. ὡς ὁ παρὰ Σοφοκλεῖ τὸν Ἀχιλλέα παροξύνων Ὀδυσσεὺς οὔ φησιν ὀργίζεσθαι διὰ τὸ δεῖπνον, ἀλλ’

“ἤδη,” φησί, “τὰ Τροίας εἰσορῶν ἑδώλια

[b] δέδοικας,”

καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα πάλιν τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως διαγανακτοῦντος καὶ ἀποπλεῖν λέγοντος

ἐγᾦδ’ ὃ φεύγεις, οὐ τὸ μὴ κλύειν κακῶς,

ἀλλ’ ἐγγὺς Ἕκτωρ ἐστί· οὐ μένειν καλόν.

τὸν μὲν οὖν θυμοειδῆ καὶ ἀνδρώδη δειλίας δόξῃ, τὸν δὲ σώφρονα καὶ κόσμιον ἀκολασίας, τὸν δ’ ἐλευθέριον καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῆ μικρολογίας καὶ φιλαργυρίας δεδιττόμενοι παρορμῶσι πρὸς τὰ καλὰ καὶ τῶν αἰσχρῶν ἀπελαύνουσι, μέτριοι μὲν ἐν τοῖς [c] ἀνηκέστοις ἐξεταζόμενοι καὶ τὸ λυπούμενον καὶ τὸ συναλγοῦν πλέον ἐν τῷ παρρησιάζεσθαι τοῦ ψέγοντος ἔχοντες, ἐν δὲ ταῖς κωλύσεσι τῶν ἁμαρτανομένων καὶ πρὸς τὰ πάθη διαμάχαις σφοδροὶ καὶ ἀπαραίτητοι καὶ συνεχεῖς ὄντες· οὗτος γὰρ ὁ καιρὸς εὐνοίας ἀθρύπτου καὶ παρρησίας ἀληθινῆς ἐστι.

Τῷ δὲ ψέγειν τὰ πραχθέντα καὶ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς κατ’ ἀλλήλων ὁρῶμεν χρωμένους, ὥσπερ Διογένης ἔλεγεν ὅτι τῷ μέλλοντι σῴζεσθαι δεῖ φίλους ἀγαθοὺς ἢ διαπύρους ἐχθροὺς ὑπάρχειν· οἱ μὲν γὰρ διδάσκουσιν, οἱ δ’ ἐλέγχουσι. βέλτιον δὲ τὰς ἁμαρτίας φυλάττεσθαι τοῖς συμβουλεύουσι πειθόμενον ἢ μετανοεῖν ἁμαρτόντα διὰ τοὺς κακῶς [d] λέγοντας. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο δεῖ καὶ περὶ τὴν παρρησίαν φιλοτεχνεῖν, ὅσῳ μέγιστόν ἐστι καὶ κράτιστον ἐν φιλίᾳ φάρμακον, εὐστοχίας τε καιροῦ μάλιστα καὶ κράσεως μέτρον ἐχούσης ἀεὶ δεομένην.

Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, πολλάκις ἡ παρρησία τῷ θεραπευομένῳ λυπηρὰ πέφυκε, δεῖ μιμεῖσθαι τοὺς ἰατρούς· οὔτε γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι τέμνοντες ἐν τῷ πονεῖν καὶ ἀλγεῖν καταλείπουσι τὸ πεπονθός, ἀλλ’ ἐνέβρεξαν προσηνῶς καὶ κατῃόνησαν, οὔθ’ οἱ νουθετοῦντες ἀστείως τὸ πικρὸν καὶ δηκτικὸν προσβαλόντες ἀποτρέχουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὁμιλίαις ἑτέραις [e] καὶ λόγοις ἐπιεικέσιν ἐκπραΰνουσι καὶ διαχέουσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ λιθοξόοι τὰ πληγέντα καὶ περικοπέντα τῶν ἀγαλμάτων ἐπιλεαίνοντες καὶ γανοῦντες. ὁ δὲ πληγεὶς μὲν τῇ παρρησίᾳ καὶ χαραχθείς, ἀφεθεὶς δὲ τραχὺς καὶ οἰδῶν καὶ ἀνώμαλος ὑπ’ ὀργῆς δυσανάκλητος αὖθίς ἐστι καὶ δυσπαρηγόρητος. διὸ καὶ τοῦτο δεῖ παραφυλάττειν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα τοὺς νουθετοῦντας καὶ μὴ προαπολείπειν, μηδὲ ποιεῖσθαι πέρας ὁμιλίας καὶ συνουσίας τὸ λυποῦν καὶ παροξῦνον τοὺς συνήθεις.

Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus

ΠΩΣ ΑΝ ΤΙΣ ΑΙΣΘΟΙΤΟ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ ΠΡΟΚΟΠΤΟΝΤΟΣ ΕΠ’ ΑΡΕΤΗΙ

[75] Τίς τῶν λόγων, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, σώσει [b] τὴν ἑαυτοῦ βελτιουμένου πρὸς ἀρετὴν συναίσθησιν, εἰ μηδεμίαν αἱ προκοπαὶ ποιοῦσι τῆς ἀφροσύνης ἄνεσιν, ἀλλ’ ἴσῳ σταθμῷ πᾶσιν ἡ κακία περικειμένη

μολυβδὶς ὥστε δίκτυον κατέσπασεν;

οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐν μουσικοῖς τις ἢ γραμματικοῖς ἐπιδιδοὺς ἂν γνοίη μηδὲν ἐν τῷ μανθάνειν ἀπαρύτων τῆς περὶ ταῦτα ἀμαθίας ἀλλ’ ἴσης ἀεὶ τῆς ἀτεχνίας αὐτῷ παρούσης, οὐδὲ κάμνοντι θεραπεία μὴ ποιοῦσα ῥᾳστώνην μηδὲ κουφισμὸν ἁμωσγέπως τοῦ νοσήματος ὑπείκοντος καὶ χαλῶντος αἴσθησιν ἂν [c] παρέχοι διαφορᾶς, πρὶν εἰλικρινῆ τὴν ἐναντίαν ἕξιν ἐγγενέσθαι παντάπασιν ἀναρρωσθέντος τοῦ σώματος. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τούτοις οὐ προκόπτουσιν, ἂν προκόπτοντες ἀνέσει τοῦ βαρύνοντος οἷον ἐπὶ ζυγοῦ πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἀναφερόμενοι μὴ γιγνώσκωσι τὴν μεταβολήν, οὕτως ἐν τῷ φιλοσοφεῖν οὔτε προκοπὴν οὔτε τινὰ προκοπῆς αἴσθησιν ὑποληπτέον, εἰ μηδὲν ἡ ψυχὴ μεθίησι μηδ’ ἀποκαθαίρεται τῆς ἀβελτερίας, ἄχρι δὲ τοῦ λαβεῖν ἄκρατον τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ τέλειον ἀκράτῳ τῷ κακῷ χρῆται. καὶ γὰρ ἀκαρεὶ χρόνου [d] καὶ ὥρας ἐκ τῆς ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα φαυλότητος εἰς οὐκ ἔχουσαν ὑπερβολὴν ἀρετῆς διάθεσιν μεταβαλὼν ὁ σοφός, ἧς οὐδ’ ἐν χρόνῳ πολλῷ μέρος ἀφεῖλε κακίας ἅμα πᾶσαν ἐξαίφνης ἐκπέφευγε.

Καίτοι ἤδη τοὺς ταῦτά γε λέγοντας οἶσθα δήπου πάλιν πολλὰ παρέχοντας αὑτοῖς πράγματα καὶ μεγάλας ἀπορίας περὶ τοῦ διαλεληθότος, ὃς αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν οὐδέπω κατείληφε γεγονὼς σοφός, ἀλλ’ ἀγνοεῖ κἀμφιδοξεῖ τῷ κατὰ μικρὸν ἐν χρόνῳ πολλῷ τὰ μὲν ἀφαιροῦντι τὰ δὲ προστιθέντι γιγνομένην τὴν ἐπίδοσιν καθάπερ πορείαν τῇ ἀρετῇ λαθεῖν ἀτρέμα προσμείξασαν. εἰ δέ γε ἦν τάχος τοσοῦτον [e] τῆς μεταβολῆς καὶ μέγεθος, ὥστε τὸν πρωῒ κάκιστον ἑσπέρας γεγονέναι κράτιστον, ἢ ἂν οὕτω τινὶ συντύχῃ τὰ τῆς μεταβολῆς, καταδαρθόντα φαῦλον ἀνεγρέσθαι σοφὸν καὶ προσειπεῖν ἐκ τῆς ψυχῆς μεθεικότα τὰς χθιζὰς ἀβελτερίας καὶ ἀπάτας

ψευδεῖς ὄνειροι, χαίρετ’· οὐδὲν ἦτ’ ἄρα,

τίς ἂν ἀγνοήσειεν ἑαυτοῦ διαφορὰν ἐν αὑτῷ τοσαύτην γενομένην καὶ φρόνησιν ἀθρόον ἐκλάμψασαν; ἐμοὶ μὲν γὰρ δοκεῖ μᾶλλον ἄν τις, ὡς ὁ Καινεύς, γενόμενος κατ’ εὐχὴν ἀνὴρ ἐκ γυναικὸς ἀγνοῆσαι τὴν μετακόσμησιν, ἢ σώφρων καὶ φρόνιμος καὶ [f] ἀνδρεῖος ἐκ δειλοῦ καὶ ἀνοήτου καὶ ἀκρατοῦς ἀποτελεσθεὶς καὶ μεταβαλὼν εἰς θεῖον ἐκ θηριώδους βίον ἀκαρὲς διαλαθεῖν αὑτόν.

Ἀλλ’ ὀρθῶς μὲν εἴρηται τὸ

πρὸς στάθμῃ

πέτρον τίθεσθαι, μή τι πρὸς πέτρῳ στάθμην.

οἱ δὲ μὴ τιθέμενοι τὰ δόγματα πρὸς τοῖς πράγμασιν ἀλλὰ τὰ πράγματα πρὸς τὰς ἑαυτῶν ὑποθέσεις ὁμολογεῖν μὴ πεφυκότα καταβιαζόμενοι πολλῶν ἀποριῶν ἐμπεπλήκασι τὴν φιλοσοφίαν, μεγίστης δὲ [76] [a] τῆς εἰς μίαν ὁμοῦ κακίαν πάντας ἀνθρώπους πλὴν ἑνὸς τοῦ τελείου τιθεμένης, ὑφ’ ἧς αἴνιγμα γέγονεν ἡ λεγομένη προκοπή, μικρὸν ἀπολείπουσα ἀφροσύνης ἐσχάτης, τοὺς δὲ πάντων ἅμα παθῶν καὶ νοσημάτων ἀφειμένους ὑπ’ αὐτῆς ἔτι τοῖς μηδενὸς ἀπηλλαγμένοις τῶν κακίστων ὁμοίως παρέχουσα κακοδαιμονοῦντας. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν ἑαυτοὺς ἐλέγχουσιν, ἐν μὲν ταῖς σχολαῖς ἴσην ἀδικίαν τὴν Ἀριστείδου τῇ Φαλάριδος τιθέμενοι, καὶ δειλίαν τὴν [b] Βρασίδου τῇ Δόλωνος, καὶ νὴ Δία τῆς Μελήτου μηδ’ ὁτιοῦν τὴν Πλάτωνος ἀγνωμοσύνην διαφέρουσαν, ἐν δὲ τῷ βίῳ καὶ τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐκείνους μὲν ἐκτρεπόμενοι καὶ φεύγοντες ὡς ἀμειλίκτους, τούτοις δ’ ὡς ἀξίοις πολλοῦ τὰ μέγιστα καὶ χρώμενοι καὶ πιστεύοντες.

Ἡμεῖς δὲ παντὶ γένει κακοῦ, μάλιστα δὲ τῷ περὶ ψυχὴν ἀτάκτῳ καὶ ἀορίστῳ τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον προσγιγνόμενον ὁρῶντες (ᾗ καὶ διαφέρουσιν αἱ προκοπαί, καθάπερ, σκιᾶς ἀνέσει τῆς μοχθηρίας τοῦ λόγου διαφωτίζοντος ἀτρέμα τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ διακαθαίροντος) οὐκ ἄλογον οἰόμεθα τὴν συναίσθησιν εἶναι τῆς μεταβολῆς ὥσπερ ἐκ βυθοῦ τινὸς ἀναφερομένοις, [c] ἀλλ’ ἔχουσαν ἐπιλογισμούς. ὧν σκόπει τὸν πρῶτον εὐθύς. εἰ καθάπερ οἱ πρὸς ἀχανὲς θέοντες ἱστίοις πέλαγος ἅμα τῷ χρόνῳ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ πνεύματος ῥώμην ἀναμετροῦνται τὸν δρόμον, ὅσον εἰκὸς ἐν τοσούτῳ γεγονόσιν ὑπὸ τοσαύτης κομιζομένοις ἠνύσθαι δυνάμεως, οὕτως ἄν τις ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ τὸ ἐνδελεχὲς καὶ τὸ συνεχὲς τῆς πορείας καὶ μὴ πολλὰς διὰ μέσου ποιούμενον ἐπιστάσεις, εἶτ’ αὖθις ὁρμὰς καὶ ἐπιπηδήσεις, ἀλλὰ λείως καὶ ὁμαλῶς τοῦ πρόσθεν ἐπιλαμβανόμενον ἀεὶ καὶ διϊὸν ἀπταίστως διὰ τοῦ λόγου τεκμήριον ἑαυτῷ ποιήσαιτο προκοπῆς. τὸ γὰρ

εἰ καὶ σμικρὸν ἐπὶ σμικρῷ καταθεῖο

καὶ θαμὰ τοῦθ’ ἕρδοις

[d]οὐ πρὸς ἀργυρίου μόνον αὔξησιν εἴρηται καλῶς, ἀλλ’ εἰς ἅπαντα ποιεῖ, μάλιστα δ’ εἰς ἀρετῆς ἐπίδοσιν, πολὺ καὶ τελεσιουργὸν ἔθος τοῦ λόγου προσλαμβάνοντος· αἱ δ’ ἀνωμαλίαι καὶ ἀμβλύτητες τῶν φιλοσοφούντων οὐ μόνον μονὰς ποιοῦσι καὶ ἐποχὰς ὥσπερ ἐν ὁδῷ τῆς προκοπῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀναλύσεις, ἀεὶ τῷ παρείκοντι κατὰ σχολὴν τῆς κακίας ἐπιτιθεμένης καὶ πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἀνθυποφερούσης.

Τοὺς μὲν γὰρ πλάνητας οἱ μαθηματικοὶ στηρίζειν λέγουσι παυσαμένης τῆς εἰς τοὔμπροσθεν αὐτῶν πορείας, ἐν δὲ τῷ φιλοσοφεῖν οὐκ ἔστι ληγούσης [e] διάλειμμα προκοπῆς οὐδὲ στηριγμός, ἀλλ’ ἀεί τινας ἔχουσα κινήσεις ἡ φύσις ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ζυγοῦ ῥέπειν ἐθέλει καὶ κατατείνεσθαι ταῖς βελτίοσιν, ἢ ταῖς ἐναντίαις πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον οἴχεται φερομένη. ἂν οὖν κατὰ τὸν δοθέντα χρησμὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ “Κιρραίοις πάντ’ ἤματα καὶ πάσας νύκτας πολεμεῖν” οὕτω συνειδῇς σεαυτὸν ἡμέρας τε καὶ νύκτωρ ἀεὶ τῇ κακίᾳ διαμεμαχημένον, ἢ μὴ πολλάκις γε τὴν φρουρὰν ἀνεικότα μηδὲ συνεχῶς παρ’ αὐτῆς οἱονεὶ κήρυκας ἡδονάς τινας ἢ ῥᾳστώνας ἢ ἀσχολίας ἐπὶ σπονδαῖς προσδεδεγμένον, εἰκότως ἂν εὐθαρσὴς καὶ πρόθυμος βαδίζοις ἐπὶ τὸ λειπόμενον.

[f] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ κἂν ᾖ διαλείμματα γιγνόμενα τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν, τὰ δ’ ὕστερα τῶν πρότερον ἑδραιότερα καὶ μακρότερα, σημεῖον οὐ φαῦλόν ἐστιν ἐκθλιβομένης πόνῳ καὶ ἀσκήσει τῆς ῥᾳθυμίας· τὸ δ’ ἐναντίον πονηρόν, αἱ μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον πολλαὶ καὶ συνεχεῖς ἀνακοπαί, τῆς προθυμίας οἷον ἀπομαραινομένης. ὡς γὰρ ἡ τοῦ καλάμου βλάστησις, [77] [a] ὁρμὴν ἔχουσα πλείστην ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς εἰς μῆκος ὁμαλὸν καὶ συνεχές, τὸ πρῶτον ἐν διαστήμασι μεγάλοις ὀλίγας λαμβάνουσα προσκρούσεις καὶ ἀντικοπάς, εἶθ’ οἷον ὑπ’ ἄσθματος ἄνω δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀπαγορεύουσα πολλοῖς ἐνίσχεται καὶ πυκνοῖς τοῖς γόνασι, τοῦ πνεύματος πληγὰς καὶ τρόμους λαμβάνοντος, οὕτως ὅσοι τὸ πρῶτον μεγάλαις ἐκδρομαῖς ἐχρήσαντο πρὸς φιλοσοφίαν, εἶτα πολλὰ καὶ συνεχῆ προσκρούματα καὶ διασπάσματα λαμβάνουσι μηδενὸς [b] διαφόρου πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον ἐπαισθανόμενοι, τελευτῶντες ἐξέκαμον καὶ ἀπηγόρευσαν. “τῷ δ’ αὖτε πτερὰ γίγνετο” δι’ ὠφέλειαν φερομένῳ καὶ διακόπτοντι τὰς προφάσεις ὥσπερ ὄχλον ἐμποδὼν ὄντα ῥώμῃ καὶ προθυμίᾳ τῆς ἀνύσεως. καθάπερ οὖν ἔρωτος ἀρχομένου σημεῖόν ἐστιν οὐ τὸ χαίρειν τῷ καλῷ παρόντι (τοῦτο γὰρ κοινόν) ἀλλὰ τὸ δάκνεσθαι καὶ ἀλγεῖν ἀποσπώμενον, οὕτως ἄγονται μὲν ὑπὸ φιλοσοφίας πολλοὶ καὶ σφόδρα γε φιλοτίμως ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι τοῦ μανθάνειν δοκοῦσιν, ἂν δ’ ἀπελαθῶσι ὑπὸ πραγμάτων ἄλλων καὶ ἀσχολιῶν, ἐξερρύη τὸ πάθος αὐτῶν ἐκεῖνο, καὶ ῥᾳδίως φέρουσιν.

ὅτῳ δ’ ἔρωτος δῆγμα παιδικῶν

[c]πρόσεστι, μέτριος μὲν ἄν σοι φανείη καὶ πρᾶος ἐν τῷ παρεῖναι καὶ συμφιλοσοφεῖν ὅταν δ’ ἀποσπασθῇ καὶ χωρὶς γένηται, θεῶ φλεγόμενον καὶ ἀδημονοῦντα καὶ δυσκολαίνοντα πᾶσι πράγμασι καὶ ἀσχολίαις, μνήμην δὲ φιλῶν ὥσπερ ἄλογος ἐλαύνεται πόθῳ τῷ πρὸς φιλοσοφίαν. οὐ γὰρ δεῖ τοῖς λόγοις εὐφραίνεσθαι μὲν παρόντας ὥσπερ τοῖς μύροις, ἀποστάντας δὲ μὴ ζητεῖν μηδ’ ἀσχάλλειν, ἀλλὰ πείνῃ τινὶ καὶ δίψῃ πάθος ὅμοιον ἐν τοῖς ἀποσπασμοῖς πάσχοντας ἔχεσθαι τοῦ προκόπτοντος ἀληθῶς, ἄν τε γάμος ἄν τε πλοῦτος ἄν τε φιλία τις ἄν τε στρατεία [d] προσπεσοῦσα ποιήσῃ τὸν χωρισμόν. ὅσῳ γὰρ πλέον ἐστὶ τὸ προσειλημμένον ἐκ φιλοσοφίας, τοσούτῳ πλέον ἐνοχλεῖ τὸ ἀπολειπόμενον.

Τούτῳ δ’ ὁμοῦ τι ταὐτόν ἐστιν ἢ σύνεγγυς τὸ πρεσβύτατον δήλωμα προκοπῆς τοῦ Ἡσιόδου, μηκέτι προσάντη μηδ’ ὄρθιον ἄγαν ἀλλὰ ῥᾳδίαν καὶ λείαν καὶ δι’ εὐπετείας εἶναι τὴν ὁδόν, οἷον ἐκλεαινομένην τῇ ἀσκήσει καὶ φῶς ἐν τῷ φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ λαμπρότητα ποιοῦσαν ἐξ ἀπορίας καὶ πλάνης καὶ μεταμελειῶν, αἷς προστυγχάνουσιν οἱ φιλοσοφοῦντες τὸ πρῶτον, ὥσπερ οἱ γῆν ἀπολιπόντες [e] ἣν ἴσασι, μηδέπω δὲ καθορῶντες ἐφ’ ἣν πλέουσι. προέμενοι γὰρ τὰ κοινὰ καὶ συνήθη πρὶν ἢ τὰ βελτίονα γνῶναι καὶ λαβεῖν, ἐν μέσῳ περιφέρονται πολλάκις ὑποτρεπόμενοι. καθάπερ φασὶ Σέξτιον τὸν Ῥωμαῖον ἀφεικότα τὰς ἐν τῇ πόλει τιμὰς καὶ ἀρχὰς διὰ φιλοσοφίαν, ἐν δὲ τῷ φιλοσοφεῖν αὖ πάλιν δυσπαθοῦντα καὶ χρώμενον τῷ λόγῳ χαλεπῷ τὸ πρῶτον, ὀλίγου δεῆσαι καταβαλεῖν ἑαυτὸν ἔκ τινος διήρους. καὶ περὶ Διογένους ὅμοια τοῦ Σινωπέως ἱστοροῦσιν ἀρχομένου φιλοσοφεῖν, ὡς Ἀθηναίοις ἦν ἑορτὴ καὶ δεῖπνα δημοτελῆ καὶ θέατρα [f] καὶ συνουσίας μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἔχοντες ἐχρῶντο κώμοις καὶ παννυχίσιν, ὁ δ’ ἔν τινι γωνίᾳ συνεσπειραμένος ὡς καθευδήσων ἐνέπιπτεν εἰς λογισμοὺς τρέποντας αὐτὸν οὐκ ἀτρέμα καὶ θραύοντας, ὡς ἀπ’ οὐδεμιᾶς ἀνάγκης εἰς ἐπίπονον καὶ ἀλλόκοτον ἥκων βίον αὐτὸς ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ κάθηται τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἁπάντων ἐστερημένος. εἶτα μέντοι μῦν τινα προσερπύσαντα λέγεται περὶ τὰς ψίχας αὐτοῦ τῆς μάζης ἀναστρέφεσθαι, τὸν δ’ αὖθις ἀναφέρειν τῷ φρονήματι καὶ [78] [a] λέγειν πρὸς ἑαυτὸν οἷον ἐπιπλήττοντα καὶ κακίζοντα “τί φῄς, ὦ Διόγενες; τοῦτον μὲν εὐωχεῖ τὰ σὰ λείμματα, σὺ δ’ ὁ γενναῖος ὅτι μὴ μεθύεις ἐκεῖ κατακείμενος ἐν ἁπαλοῖς καὶ ἀνθίνοις στρώμασιν ὀδύρῃ καὶ θρηνεῖς σεαυτόν;” ὅταν οὖν οἱ τοιοῦτοι κατασπασμοὶ γένωνται μὴ πολλάκις, αἵ τε πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἐξαιρέσεις καὶ ἀνακρούσεις τοῦ φρονήματος ὥσπερ ἐκ τροπῆς ταχεῖαι παρῶσι καὶ διαλύωσι ῥᾳδίως τὸν ἄλυν καὶ τὴν ἀδημονίαν, ἔν τινι βεβαίῳ τὴν προκοπὴν εἶναι δεῖ νομίζειν.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐ μόνον ἐξ αὑτῶν τὰ κατασείοντα καὶ στρέφοντα πρὸς τοὐναντίον ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας ἐπιγίγνεται [b] τοῖς φιλοσοφοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ φίλων συμβουλαὶ μετὰ σπουδῆς καὶ διαφόρων ἀντιλήψεις ἐν γέλωτι καὶ παιδιᾷ γιγνόμεναι κάμπτουσι καὶ μαλάσσουσιν, ἐνίους δὲ καὶ τέλεον ἤδη φιλοσοφίας ἐξέσεισαν, οὐ φαῦλον ἄν τι προκοπῆς εἴη σημεῖον ἡ πρὸς ταῦτα πραότης ἑκάστου καὶ τὸ μὴ ταραττόμενον μηδὲ κνιζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν λεγόντων καὶ ὀνομαζόντων ἥλικάς τινας ἐν αὐλαῖς βασιλέων εὐημεροῦντας ἢ φερνὰς ἐπὶ γάμοις λαμβάνοντας ἢ κατιόντας ὑπὸ πλήθους εἰς ἀγορὰν ἐπ’ ἀρχήν τινα ἢ συνηγορίαν. ὁ γὰρ ἀνέκπληκτος ἐν τούτοις καὶ ἄτεγκτος ἤδη δῆλός ἐστιν εἰλημμένος ἣν προσήκει [c] λαβὴν ὑπὸ φιλοσοφίας. οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε παύσασθαι ζηλοῦντας ἅπερ οἱ πολλοὶ θαυμάζουσιν, οἷς ἂν μὴ τὸ θαυμάζειν ἀρετὴν ἐγγένηται. πρὸς μὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώπους θρασύνεσθαι καὶ δι’ ὀργὴν ἐνίοις παρέστη καὶ διὰ παραφροσύνην· ὧν δὲ θαυμάζουσιν ἄνθρωποι πραγμάτων οὐκ ἔστιν ἄνευ φρονήματος ἀληθινοῦ καὶ βεβαίου καταφρονῆσαι. διὸ καὶ ταῦτα παραβάλλοντες ἐκείνοις ἐπιγαυροῦσιν ἑαυτούς, ὥσπερ ὁ Σόλων

ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς αὐτοῖς οὐ διαμειψόμεθα τῆς ἀρετῆς τὸν πλοῦτον, ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν ἔμπεδον αἰεί,

χρήματα δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἄλλοτε ἄλλος ἔχει.

καὶ Διογένης τὴν εἰς Ἀθήνας ἐκ Κορίνθου καὶ [d] πάλιν εἰς Κόρινθον ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν μετάβασιν ἑαυτοῦ παρέβαλλε ταῖς βασιλέως ἔαρος μὲν ἐν Σούσοις καὶ χειμῶνος ἐν Βαβυλῶνι, θέρους δ’ ἐν Μηδίᾳ διατριβαῖς. καὶ Ἀγησίλαος περὶ τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως “τί γὰρ ἐμοῦ μείζων ἐκεῖνος, εἰ μὴ καὶ δικαιότερος;” ὁ δ’ Ἀριστοτέλης πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου γράφων ἔφη μὴ μόνον ἐκείνῳ προσήκειν ὅτι πολλῶν κρατεῖ μέγα φρονεῖν, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἧττον εἴ [e] τις ὀρθῶς γιγνώσκει περὶ θεῶν. ὁ δὲ Ζήνων ὁρῶν τὸν Θεόφραστον ἐπὶ τῷ πολλοὺς ἔχειν μαθητὰς θαυμαζόμενον, “ὁ ἐκείνου μὲν χορός,” ἔφη, “μείζων, οὑμὸς δὲ συμφωνότερος.”

Ὅταν οὖν οὕτω τὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς πρὸς τὰ ἐκτὸς ἀντιτιθεὶς ὑπεκχέῃς φθόνους καὶ ζηλοτυπίας καὶ τὰ κνίζοντα καὶ ταπεινοῦντα πολλοὺς τῶν ἀρχομένων φιλοσοφεῖν, μέγα καὶ τοῦτο δήλωμα σεαυτῷ τοῦ προκόπτειν ποιεῖς. οὐκ ἔστι δὲ μικρὸν οὐδ’ ἡ περὶ τοὺς λόγους μεταβολή. πάντες γὰρ ὡς εἰπεῖν οἱ φιλοσοφεῖν ἀρχόμενοι τοὺς πρὸς δόξαν διώκουσι μᾶλλον, οἱ μὲν ὥσπερ ὄρνιθες ἐπὶ τὴν λαμπρότητα τῶν φυσικῶν καὶ τὸ ὕψος ὑπὸ κουφότητος καὶ φιλοτιμίας καταίροντες, οἱ δ’ “ὥσπερ τὰ σκυλάκια,”

[f] φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων, “τῷ ἕλκειν καὶ σπαράττειν χαίροντες” ἐπὶ τὰς ἔριδας καὶ τὰς ἀπορίας χωροῦσι καὶ τὰ σοφίσματα, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι τοῖς διαλεκτικοῖς ἐνδύντες εὐθὺς ἐπισιτίζονται πρὸς σοφιστείαν, ἔνιοι δὲ χρείας καὶ ἱστορίας ἀναλεγόμενοι περιίασιν, ὥσπερ Ἀνάχαρσις ἔλεγε τῷ νομίσματι τοὺς Ἕλληνας πρὸς οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἢ τὸ ἀριθμεῖν χρωμένους ὁρᾶν, οὕτω τοὺς λόγους παραριθμούμενοι καὶ παραμετροῦντες, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν εἰς ὄνησιν αὑτῶν τιθέμενοι. [79] [a]συμβαίνει δὴ τὸ τοῦ Ἀντιφάνους, ὅ τις εἶπεν ἐπὶ τῶν Πλάτωνος συνήθων. ὁ γὰρ Ἀντιφάνης ἔλεγε παίζων ἔν τινι πόλει τὰς φωνὰς εὐθὺς λεγομένας πήγνυσθαι διὰ ψῦχος, εἶθ’ ὕστερον ἀνιεμένων ἀκούειν θέρους ἃ τοῦ χειμῶνος διελέχθησαν· οὕτω δὴ τῶν ὑπὸ Πλάτωνος ἔφη νέοις οὖσιν ἔτι λεχθέντων μόλις ὀψὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς αἰσθάνεσθαι γέροντας γενομένους. καὶ πρὸς ὅλην δὲ τοῦτο τὴν φιλοσοφίαν πεπόνθασιν, ἄχρι οὗ κατάστασιν ὑγιεινὴν ἡ κρίσις λαβοῦσα τοῖς ἦθος ἐμποιοῦσι καὶ μέγεθος ἄρξηται συμφέρεσθαι καὶ ζητεῖν λόγους, ὧν κατὰ τὸν Αἴσωπον εἴσω μᾶλλον ἢ [b] ἔξω τὰ ἴχνη τέτραπται. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ Σοφοκλῆς ἔλεγε τὸν Αἰσχύλου διαπεπαιχὼς ὄγκον εἶτα τὸ πικρὸν καὶ κατάτεχνον τῆς αὐτοῦ κατασκευῆς τρίτον ἤδη τὸ τῆς λέξεως μεταβάλλειν εἶδος, ὅπερ ἠθικώτατόν ἐστι καὶ βέλτιστον, οὕτως οἱ φιλοσοφοῦντες, ὅταν ἐκ τῶν πανηγυρικῶν καὶ κατατέχνων εἰς τὸν ἁπτόμενον ἤθους καὶ πάθους λόγον μεταβῶσιν, ἄρχονται τὴν ἀληθῆ προκοπὴν προκόπτειν καὶ ἄτυφον.

Ὅρα δὴ μὴ μόνον φιλοσόφων συγγράμματα [c] διεξιὼν καὶ λόγους ἀκούων εἰ μὴ πλέον τοῖς ὀνόμασι μόνοις προσέχεις ἢ τοῖς πράγμασι μηδὲ μᾶλλον ἐπιπηδᾷς τοῖς τὸ δύσκολον ἔχουσι καὶ περιττὸν ἢ τοῖς τὸ χρήσιμον καὶ σάρκινον καὶ ὠφέλιμον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ποιήμασιν ὁμιλῶν καὶ ἱστορίᾳ παραφύλαττε σεαυτὸν εἰ μηδέν σε διαφεύγει τῶν πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν ἤθους ἢ πάθους κουφισμὸν ἐμμελῶς λεγομένων. ὥσπερ γὰρ ἄνθεσιν ὁμιλεῖν ὁ Σιμωνίδης φησὶ τὴν μέλιτταν

ξανθὸν μέλι μηδομέναν,

οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι χρόαν αὐτῶν καὶ ὀσμὴν ἕτερον δ’ οὐδὲν ἀγαπῶσιν, οὐδὲ λαμβάνουσιν, οὕτω τῶν ἄλλων ἐν ποιήμασιν ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα καὶ παιδιᾶς ἀναστρεφομένων αὐτὸς εὑρίσκων τι καὶ συνάγων σπουδῆς ἄξιον ἔοικεν ἤδη γνωριστικὸς ὑπὸ συνηθείας καὶ φιλίας τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ οἰκείου γεγονέναι. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ Πλάτωνι καὶ Ξενοφῶντι χρωμένους διὰ τὴν λέξιν, ἕτερον δὲ μηδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸ καθαρόν τε καὶ Ἀττικὸν ὥσπερ δρόσον καὶ χνοῦν ἀποδρεπομένους τί ἂν ἄλλο φαίης ἢ φαρμάκων τὸ μὲν εὐῶδες καὶ ἀνθηρὸν ἀγαπᾶν, τὸ δ’ ἀνώδυνον καὶ καθαρτικὸν μὴ προσίεσθαι μηδὲ διαγιγνώσκειν; ἀλλ’ οἵ γε μᾶλλον ἔτι προκόπτοντες οὐκ ἀπὸ λόγων μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ θεαμάτων καὶ πραγμάτων πάντων ὠφελεῖσθαι [d] δύνανται καὶ συνάγειν τὸ οἰκεῖον καὶ χρήσιμον, οἷα καὶ περὶ Αἰσχύλου λέγουσι καὶ περὶ ἄλλων ὁμοίων. Αἰσχύλος μὲν γὰρ Ἰσθμοῖ θεώμενος ἀγῶνα πυκτῶν, ἐπεὶ πληγέντος τοῦ ἑτέρου τὸ θέατρον ἐξέκραγε, νύξας Ἴωνα τὸν Χῖον “ὁρᾷς,” ἔφη, “οἷον ἡ ἄσκησίς ἐστιν; ὁ πεπληγὼς σιωπᾷ, οἱ δὲ θεώμενοι βοῶσιν.” Βρασίδας δὲ μῦν τινα συλλαβὼν ἐν ἰσχάσι καὶ δηχθεὶς ἀφῆκεν· εἶτα πρὸς ἑαυτόν “ὦ Ἡράκλεις,” ἔφη, “ὡς οὐδέν ἐστι μικρὸν οὐδ’ ἀσθενές, ὃ μὴ ζήσεται τολμῶν ἀμύνεσθαι.” Διογένης δὲ τὸν πίνοντα ταῖς χερσὶ θεασάμενος τῆς πήρας [e] ἐξέβαλε τὸ ποτήριον. οὕτω τὸ προσέχειν καὶ τετάσθαι τὴν ἄσκησιν αἰσθητικοὺς καὶ δεκτικοὺς ποιεῖ τῶν πρὸς ἀρετὴν φερόντων ἁπανταχόθεν. γίγνεται δὲ τοῦτο μᾶλλον ἂν τοὺς λόγους ταῖς πράξεσι μιγνύωσι, μὴ μόνον, ὡς Θουκυδίδης ἔλεγε, “μετὰ κινδύνων ποιούμενοι τὰς μελέτας,” ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὰς καὶ πρὸς ἔριδας καὶ περὶ κρίσεις καὶ συνηγορίας καὶ ἀρχάς, οἷον ἀπόδειξιν αὑτοῖς τῶν δογμάτων διδόντες, μᾶλλον δὲ τῷ χρῆσθαι ποιοῦντες τὰ [80] [a] δόγματα. ὡς τούς γε μανθάνοντας ἔτι καὶ πραγματευομένους καὶ σκοποῦντας ὃ λαβόντες ἐκ φιλοσοφίας εὐθὺς εἰς ἀγορὰν ἢ νέων διατριβὴν ἢ βασιλικὸν συμπόσιον ἐκκυκλήσουσιν, οὐ μᾶλλον οἴεσθαι χρὴ φιλοσοφεῖν ἢ τοὺς τὰ φάρμακα πωλοῦντας ἰατρεύειν· μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως οὐδὲν ὁ τοιοῦτος σοφιστὴς διαφέρει τῆς Ὁμηρικῆς ὄρνιθος, ὅ τι ἂν λάβῃ τοῖς μαθηταῖς ὥσπερ “ἀπτῆσι νεοσσοῖς” προσφέρων διὰ τοῦ στόματος.

κακῶς δέ τέ οἱ πέλει αὐτῷ

μηδὲν εἰς ὄνησιν οἰκείαν ἀναδιδόντι μηδὲ καταπέττοντι τῶν λαμβανομένων.

[b] Ὅθεν ἐπισκοπεῖν ἀναγκαῖον εἰ χρώμεθα τῷ λόγῳ πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς μὲν χρηστικῶς, πρὸς ἑτέρους δὲ μὴ δόξης εἰκαίας ἕνεκα μηδ’ ἐκ φιλοτιμίας, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀκοῦσαί τι καὶ διδάξαι βουλόμενοι, μάλιστα δ’ εἰ τὸ φιλόνεικον καὶ δύσερι περὶ τὰς ζητήσεις ὑφεῖται καὶ πεπαύμεθα τοὺς λόγους ὥσπερ ἱμάντας ἢ σφαίρας ἐπιδούμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ τῷ πατάξαι καὶ καταβαλεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ μαθεῖν τι καὶ διδάξαι χαίροντες· ἡ γὰρ ἐν τούτοις ἐπιείκεια καὶ πραότης καὶ τὸ μὴ μετ’ ἀγῶνος συνίστασθαι μήτε [c] διαλύεσθαι μετ’ ὀργῆς τὰς κοινολογίας μηδ’ οἷον ἐφυβρίζειν ἐλέγξαντας ἢ χαλεπαίνειν ἐλεγχθέντας ἱκανῶς προκόπτοντός ἐστιν. ἐδήλωσε δ’ Ἀρίστιππος ἔν τινι λόγῳ κατασοφισθεὶς ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπου τόλμαν μὲν ἔχοντος, ἄλλως δ’ ἀνοήτου καὶ μανικοῦ. χαίροντα γὰρ ὁρῶν αὐτὸν καὶ τετυφωμένον “ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν,” εἶπεν, “ὁ ἐλεγχθεὶς ἄπειμι σοῦ τοῦ ἐλέγξαντος ἥδιον καθευδήσων.”

Ἔστι δὲ καὶ λέγοντας ἑαυτῶν λαμβάνειν διάπειραν, εἰ μήτε πολλῶν παρὰ προσδοκίαν συνελθόντων ὑπὸ δειλίας ἀναδυόμεθα, μήτ’ ἐν ὀλίγοις ἀθυμοῦμεν [d] ἀγωνιζόμενοι, μήτε πρὸς δῆμον ἢ πρὸς ἀρχὴν εἰπεῖν δεῆσαν ἐνδείᾳ τῆς περὶ τὴν λέξιν παρασκευῆς προϊέμεθα τὸν καιρόν, οἷα περὶ Δημοσθένους λέγουσι καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδου. καὶ γὰρ οὗτος νοῆσαι μὲν πράγματα δεινότατος ὢν περὶ δὲ τὴν λέξιν ἀθαρσέστερος ἑαυτὸν διέκρουεν ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι, καὶ πολλάκις ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ λέγειν ζητῶν καὶ διώκων ὄνομα καὶ ῥῆμα διαφεῦγον ἐξέπιπτεν· Ὅμηρος δὲ τὸν πρῶτον οὐ διηνέχθη τῶν στίχων ἐξενεγκὼν ἄμετρον· τοσοῦτο περιῆν αὐτῷ φρονήματος εἰς τὰ λοιπὰ διὰ [e] τὴν δύναμιν. οὐκοῦν μᾶλλον εἰκός ἐστιν, οἷς πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ τὸ καλὸν ἡ ἅμιλλα, τῷ καιρῷ καὶ τοῖς πράγμασι χρῆσθαι τῶν ἐπὶ ταῖς λέξεσι θορύβων καὶ κρότων ἐλάχιστα φροντίζοντας.

Οὐ μόνον δὲ δεῖ τοὺς λόγους ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς πράξεις ἕκαστον ἐπισκοπεῖν εἰ τὸ χρειῶδες τοῦ πανηγυρικοῦ καὶ τοῦ πρὸς ἐπίδειξιν αὐταῖς πλέον ἔνεστι τὸ πρὸς ἀλήθειαν. εἰ γὰρ ἀληθινὸς ἔρως παιδὸς ἢ γυναικὸς οὐ ζητεῖ μάρτυρας, ἀλλὰ καρποῦται τὸ ἡδὺ κἂν κρύφα κατεργάσηται τὸν πόθον, ἔτι μᾶλλον εἰκός ἐστι τὸν φιλόκαλον καὶ φιλόσοφον συνόντα διὰ τῶν πράξεων τῇ ἀρετῇ καὶ χρώμενον αὐτὸν ἐν ἑαυτῷ σιωπῇ μέγα φρονεῖν, ἐπαινετῶν καὶ [f] ἀκροατῶν μηδὲν δεόμενον. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ καλῶν ἐκεῖνος οἴκοι τὴν θεραπαινίδα καὶ βοῶν “θέασαι, Διονυσία, πέπαυμαι τετυφωμένος,” οὕτως ὁ ποιήσας τι χαρίεν καὶ ἀστεῖον εἶτα τοῦτο διηγούμενος καὶ περιφέρων ἁπανταχόσε δῆλός ἐστιν ἔξω βλέπων ἔτι καὶ πρὸς δόξαν ἑλκόμενος, οὔπω δὲ τῆς ἀρετῆς γεγονὼς θεατής, οὐδ’ ὕπαρ ἀλλ’ ὄναρ αὐτῆς ἐν σκιαῖς καὶ εἰδώλοις ῥεμβόμενος, εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ζωγράφημα προτιθεὶς ἐπὶ θέαν τὸ πεπραγμένον. ἔστιν [81] [a] οὖν τοῦ προκόπτοντος οὐ μόνον δόντα τῷ φίλῳ καὶ γνώριμον εὐεργετήσαντα μὴ φράσαι πρὸς ἑτέρους, ἀλλὰ καὶ ψῆφον ἐν πολλαῖς θέμενον ἀδίκοις δικαίαν καὶ πρὸς ἔντευξιν αἰσχρὰν πλουσίου τινὸς ἢ ἄρχοντος ἀπισχυρισάμενον καὶ δωρεὰς ὑπεριδόντα καὶ νὴ Δία διψήσαντα νύκτωρ καὶ μὴ πιόντα ἢ πρὸς φίλημα καλῆς ἢ καλοῦ διαμαχεσάμενον, ὡς ὁ Ἀγησίλαος, ἐν ἑαυτῷ κατασχεῖν καὶ σιγῆσαι. οὗτος γὰρ αὐτὸς εὐδοκιμῶν παρ’ ἑαυτῷ μὴ καταφρονῶν ἀλλὰ χαίρων κἀγαπῶν ὡς ἱκανὸς ὢν μάρτυς ἅμα καὶ [b] θεατὴς τῶν καλῶν δείκνυσι τὸν λόγον ἐντὸς ἤδη τρεφόμενον καὶ ῥιζούμενον ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ κατὰ Δημόκριτον αὐτὸν “ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ λαμβάνειν τὰς τέρψιας ἐθιζόμενον.” οἱ μὲν οὖν γεωργοὶ τῶν σταχύων ἥδιον ὁρῶσι τοὺς κεκλιμένους καὶ νεύοντας ἐπὶ γῆν, τοὺς δ’ ὑπὸ κουφότητος αἰρομένους ἄνω κενοὺς ἡγοῦνται καὶ ἀλαζόνας· οὕτω δὲ καὶ τῶν φιλοσοφεῖν βουλομένων νέων οἱ μάλιστα κενοὶ καὶ βάρος οὐκ ἔχοντες θράσος ἔχουσι καὶ σχῆμα καὶ βάδισμα καὶ πρόσωπον ὑπεροψίας καὶ ὀλιγωρίας μεστὸν ἀφειδούσης ἁπάντων, ἀρχόμενοι δὲ πληροῦσθαι καὶ συλλέγειν καρπὸν ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων τὸ σοβαρὸν καὶ [c] φλοιῶδες ἀποτίθενται. - καὶ καθάπερ ἀγγείων κενῶν ὑγρὸν δεχομένων ὁ ἐντὸς ἀὴρ ὑπέξεισιν ἐκθλιβόμενος, οὕτως ἀνθρώποις πληρουμένοις τῶν ἀληθινῶν ἀγαθῶν ἐνδίδωσιν ὁ τῦφος καὶ γίγνεται τὸ οἴημα μαλακώτερον, καὶ παυόμενοι τοῦ διὰ πώγωνα καὶ τρίβωνα φρονεῖν μέγα τὴν ἄσκησιν ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχὴν μεταφέρουσι, καὶ τῷ δηκτικῷ καὶ πικρῷ χρῶνται πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς μάλιστα, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις πραότερον ἐντυγχάνουσι. τὸ δὲ φιλοσοφίας ὄνομα καὶ τὴν τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν δόξαν οὐχ ἁρπάζουσιν ἑαυτοῖς ὡς [d] πρότερον οὐδὲ προσγράφουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσαγορευθεὶς ὑφ’ ἑτέρου τῇ προσηγορίᾳ ταύτῃ φθάσας ἂν εὐφυὴς νέος εἴποι μετ’ ἐρυθήματος,

οὔ τίς τοι θεός εἰμι· τί μ’ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐίσκεις;

“νέας” μὲν γὰρ “γυναικός,” ὡς Αἰσχύλος φησίν, “οὔ τι λανθάνει φλέγων

ὀφθαλμός, ἥτις ἀνδρὸς ᾖ γεγευμένη·”

νέῳ δ’ ἀνδρὶ γευσαμένῳ προκοπῆς ἀληθοῦς ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ τὰ Σαπφικὰ ταυτὶ παρέπεται

κὰμ μὲν γλῶσσα ἔαγε, λέπτον δ’

αὔτικα χρῷ πῦρ ὑποδεδρόμακεν,

ἀθόρυβον δ’ ὄψει καὶ πρᾶον ὄμμα, φθεγγομένου δ’ ἂν ἀκοῦσαι ποθήσειας. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ τελούμενοι κατ’ ἀρχὰς μὲν ἐν θορύβῳ καὶ βοῇ συνίασι πρὸς [e] ἀλλήλους ὠθούμενοι, δρωμένων δὲ καὶ δεικνυμένων τῶν ἱερῶν προσέχουσιν ἤδη μετὰ φόβου καὶ σιωπῆς, οὕτω καὶ φιλοσοφίας ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ περὶ θύρας πολὺν θόρυβον ὄψει καὶ λαλιὰν καὶ θρασύτητα, ὠθουμένων πρὸς τὴν δόξαν ἐνίων ἀγροίκως τε καὶ βιαίως· ὁ δ’ ἐντὸς γενόμενος καὶ μέγα φῶς ἰδών, οἷον ἀνακτόρων ἀνοιγομένων, ἕτερον λαβὼν σχῆμα καὶ σιωπὴν καὶ θάμβος ὥσπερ θεῷ τῷ λόγῳ “ταπεινὸς συνέπεται καὶ κεκοσμημένος.” εἰς δὲ τούτους ἔοικε καὶ τὸ Μενεδήμῳ πεπαιγμένον καλῶς λέγεσθαι· [f] καταπλεῖν γὰρ ἔφη τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐπὶ σχολὴν Ἀθήναζε, σοφοὺς τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα γίγνεσθαι φιλοσόφους, εἶτα ῥήτορας, τοῦ χρόνου δὲ προϊόντος ἰδιώτας, ὅσῳ μᾶλλον ἅπτονται τοῦ λόγου, μᾶλλον τὸ οἴημα καὶ τὸν τῦφον κατατιθεμένους.

Τῶν τοίνυν δεομένων ἰατρείας οἱ μὲν ὀδόντα πονοῦντες ἢ δάκτυλον αὐτόθεν βαδίζουσι παρὰ τοὺς θεραπεύοντας, οἱ δὲ πυρέττοντες οἴκαδε καλοῦσι καὶ δέονται βοηθεῖν, οἱ δ’ εἰς μελαγχολίαν ἢ φρενῖτιν ἢ παρακοπὴν ἥκοντες οὐδὲ φοιτῶντας ἐνιαχοῦ πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἀνέχονται, ἀλλ’ ἐξελαύνουσιν ἢ φεύγουσιν, [82] [a] μηδ’ ὅτι νοσοῦσιν ὑπὸ τοῦ σφόδρα νοσεῖν αἰσθανόμενοι. οὕτω δὴ καὶ τῶν ἁμαρτανόντων ἀνήκεστοι μέν εἰσιν οἱ πρὸς τοὺς ἐλέγχοντας καὶ νουθετοῦντας ἐχθρῶς καὶ ἀγρίως διατιθέμενοι καὶ χαλεπαίνοντες· οἱ δ’ ὑπομένοντες καὶ προσιέμενοι πραότερον ἔχουσι. τὸ δ’ ἑαυτὸν ἁμαρτάνοντα παρέχειν τοῖς ἐλέγχουσι καὶ τὸ πάθος λέγειν καὶ τὴν μοχθηρίαν ἀποκαλύπτειν καὶ μὴ χαίρειν λανθάνοντα μηδ’ ἀγαπᾶν ἀγνοούμενον ἀλλ’ ὁμολογεῖν καὶ δεῖσθαι τοῦ ἁπτομένου καὶ νουθετοῦντος οὐ φαῦλον ἂν εἴη προκοπῆς σημεῖον. ὥς που Διογένης ἔλεγε τῷ σωτηρίας δεομένῳ ζητεῖν προσήκειν ἢ φίλον σπουδαῖον ἢ διάπυρον ἐχθρόν, ὅπως ἐλεγχόμενος ἢ [b] θεραπευόμενος ἐκφεύγοι τὴν κακίαν. ἄχρι δ’ οὗ τις ἐπιδεικνύμενος ῥύπον ἢ κηλῖδα χιτῶνος ἢ διερρωγὸς ὑπόδημα καλλωπίζεται πρὸς τοὺς ἐκτὸς ἀτυφίᾳ κενῇ καὶ διασκώπτων αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ὡς μικρὸν ἢ ὡς κυρτὸν οἴεται νεανιεύεσθαι, τὰ δ’ ἐντὸς αἴσχη τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τὰ περὶ τὸν βίον ἐγχρέμματα καὶ μικρολογίας καὶ φιληδονίας καὶ κακοηθείας καὶ φθόνους ὥσπερ ἕλκη περιστέλλων καὶ ἀποκρύπτων οὐδένα θιγεῖν οὐδὲ προσιδεῖν ἐᾷ δεδιὼς τὸν ἔλεγχον, ὀλίγον αὐτῷ προκοπῆς μέτεστι, μᾶλλον δ’ οὐδέν.

[c] ἀλλ’ ὁ τούτοις ὁμόσε χωρῶν καὶ μάλιστα μὲν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀλγύνειν ἁμαρτάνοντα καὶ κακίζειν, δεύτερον δὲ παρέχειν ἑτέρου νουθετοῦντος ἐγκαρτεροῦντα καὶ καθαιρόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐλέγχων καὶ δυνάμενος καὶ βουλόμενος, οὗτος ἀποτριβομένῳ καὶ βδελυττομένῳ τὴν μοχθηρίαν ἀληθῶς ἔοικε. δεῖ μὲν γὰρ ἀμέλει καὶ τὸ δοκεῖν εἶναι πονηρὸν αἰδεῖσθαι καὶ φεύγειν· ὁ δὲ τὴν οὐσίαν μᾶλλον τῆς μοχθηρίας ἢ τὴν ἀδοξίαν δυσχεραίνων οὐ φεύγει τὸ κακῶς ἀκοῦσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν ἐπὶ τῷ βελτίων γενέσθαι. χαρίεν γὰρ τὸ τοῦ Διογένους πρός τινα νεανίσκον ὀφθέντα μὲν ἐν καπηλείῳ, καταφυγόντα δ’ εἰς τὸ [d] καπηλεῖον, “ὅσῳ,” γὰρ εἶπεν, “ἐνδοτέρω φεύγεις, μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ καπηλείῳ γίγνῃ.” καὶ τῶν φαύλων ἕκαστος ὅσῳ μᾶλλον ἀρνεῖται, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον ἐνδύεται καὶ καθείργνυσιν εἰς τὴν κακίαν ἑαυτόν. ἀμέλει τῶν πενομένων οἱ προσποιούμενοι πλουτεῖν ἔτι μᾶλλον πένονται διὰ τὴν ἀλαζονείαν· ὁ δὲ προκόπτων ἀληθῶς καὶ τὸν Ἱπποκράτη ποιεῖται παράδειγμα, τὸ περὶ τὰς ῥαφὰς τῆς κεφαλῆς ἀγνοηθὲν αὐτῷ καὶ ἐξαγορεύσαντα καὶ γράψαντα, λογιζόμενος ὅτι δεινόν ἐστιν ἐκεῖνον μέν, ὅπως ἂν ἕτεροι [e] μὴ τὸ αὐτὸ πάθωσιν, ἑαυτοῦ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν κατειπεῖν, αὐτὸν δέ τινα μέλλοντα σῴζεσθαι μὴ τολμᾶν ἐλέγχεσθαι μηδ’ ὁμολογεῖν τὴν ἀβελτερίαν καὶ ἀμαθίαν. καὶ μὴν τά γε Βίωνος καὶ Πύρρωνος οὐ προκοπῆς ἄν τις ἀλλ’ ἀμείνονος ἕξεως σημεῖα θεῖτο καὶ τελειοτέρας. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἠξίου τοὺς συνήθεις οἴεσθαι προκόπτειν ὅταν τῶν λοιδορούντων οὕτως ἀκούωσιν ὡς λεγόντων

ὦ ξέν’ ἐπεὶ οὔτε κακῷ οὔτ’ ἄφρονι φωτὶ ἔοικας,

οὖλέ τε καὶ μέγα χαῖρε, θεοὶ δέ τοι ὄλβια δοῖεν.

[f]Πύρρωνα δέ φασι πλέοντα καὶ κινδυνεύοντα χειμῶνος δελφάκιόν τι δεῖξαι χρώμενον ἀσμένως κριθαῖς παρεγκεχυμέναις, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους εἰπεῖν ὅτι τοιαύτην ἀπάθειαν παρασκευαστέον ἐκ λόγου καὶ φιλοσοφίας τὸν ὑπὸ τῶν προστυγχανόντων ταράττεσθαι μὴ βουλόμενον.

Ὅρα δὴ καὶ τὸ τοῦ Ζήνωνος ὁποῖόν ἐστιν. ἠξίου γὰρ ἀπὸ τῶν ὀνείρων ἕκαστον αὑτοῦ συναισθάνεσθαι προκόπτοντος, εἰ μήθ’ ἡδόμενον αἰσχρῷ τινι ἑαυτὸν μήτε τι προσιέμενον ἢ πράττοντα τῶν δεινῶν καὶ ἀτόπων ὁρᾷ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐν βυθῷ γαλήνης ἀκλύστου καταφανεῖ διαλάμπει τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ φανταστικὸν καὶ παθητικὸν διακεχυμένον [83] [a] ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου. τοῦτο δὲ καὶ Πλάτων, ὡς ἔοικε, συνιδὼν πρότερος ἐξεμόρφωσε καὶ διετύπωσε τῆς φύσει τυραννικῆς ψυχῆς τὸ φανταστικὸν καὶ ἄλογον οἷα κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους δρᾷ. “μητρί τε γὰρ ἐπιχειρεῖ μίγνυσθαι” καὶ περὶ βρώσεις ὁρμᾷ παντοδαπάς, παρανομοῦν καὶ χρώμενον ἑαυτοῦ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις οἷον λελυμέναις, ἃς μεθ’ ἡμέραν ὁ νόμος αἰσχύνῃ καὶ φόβῳ καθείργνυσιν. ὥσπερ οὖν τὰ πεπαιδευμένα καλῶς τῶν ὑποζυγίων, οὐδ’ ἂν ἀφῇ τὰς ἡνίας ὁ ἄρχων, ἐπιχειρεῖ παρατρέπεσθαι καὶ [b] ἀπολείπειν τὴν ὁδόν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ εἴθισται πρόεισιν ἐν τάξει, διαφυλάττοντα τὴν πορείαν ἄπταιστον, οὕτως οἷς ἂν εὐπειθὲς τὸ ἄλογον ἤδη καὶ πρᾶον ᾖ γεγονὸς ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου καὶ κεκολασμένον, οὔτε καθ’ ὕπνους οὔθ’ ὑπὸ νόσων ἔτι ῥᾳδίως ἐξυβρίζειν ἢ παρανομεῖν ἐθέλει ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις, ἀλλὰ τηρεῖ καὶ διαμνημονεύει τὸν ἐθισμόν, ἰσχὺν ἐμποιοῦντα τῇ προσοχῇ καὶ τόνον. εἰ γὰρ καὶ τὸ σῶμα τῇ ἀσκήσει τῆς ἀπαθείας ὑπήκοον ἑαυτὸ καὶ τὰ μέρη παρέχειν πέφυκεν, ὡς ὀφθαλμούς τε πρὸς οἶκτον ἴσχεσθαι δακρύων καὶ καρδίαν πηδήματος ἐν φόβοις, [c] αἰδοῖά τε σωφρόνως ἔχειν ἀτρέμα καὶ μηδὲν ἐνοχλεῖν παρὰ καλοῖς ἢ καλαῖς, πῶς οὐ μᾶλλον εἰκός ἐστι τῆς ψυχῆς τοῦ παθητικοῦ τὴν ἄσκησιν ἐπιλαβομένην οἷον ἐκλεαίνειν καὶ συσχηματίζειν τὰ φαντάσματα καὶ τὰ κινήματα μέχρι τῶν ὕπνων πιέζουσαν; οἷα λέγεται καὶ περὶ τοῦ φιλοσόφου Στίλπωνος, ὃς ἰδεῖν ἔδοξε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ὀργιζόμενον αὐτῷ τὸν Ποσειδῶνα μὴ θύσαντι βοῦν, ὥσπερ ἔθος ἦν ἱερεύειν· αὑτὸν δὲ μηδὲν ἐκπλαγέντα “τί λέγεις,” φάναι, “ὦ Πόσειδον; ὥσπερ παῖς ἥκεις μεμψιμοιρῶν ὅτι μὴ δανεισάμενος ἐνέπλησα [d] κνίσης τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλ’ ἀφ’ ὧν εἶχον ἔθυσά σοι μετρίως οἴκοθεν;” καὶ μέντοι δοκεῖν αὐτῷ τὸν Ποσειδῶνα μειδιάσαντα τὴν δεξιὰν προτεῖναι καὶ εἰπεῖν ὡς ἀφύων φορὰν Μεγαρεῦσι ποιήσει δι’ ἐκεῖνον. οἷς οὖν οὕτως εὐόνειρα καὶ φανὰ καὶ ἄλυπα, φοβερὸν δὲ μηδὲν ἢ τραχὺ μηδὲ κακόηθες ἢ σκολιὸν ἐκ τῶν ὕπνων ἐπαναφέρεται, ταῦτα τῆς προκοπῆς ἀπαυγασμούς τινας εἶναι λέγουσιν, οἴστρους δὲ καὶ πτοίας καὶ φυγὰς ἀγεννεῖς καὶ παιδικὰς περιχαρείας καὶ ὀλοφύρσεις ἐνυπνίων οἰκτρῶν καὶ ἀλλοκότων ῥαχίαις τέ τισι καὶ σάλοις ἐοικέναι, ψυχῆς οὔπω τὸ κοσμοῦν ἐχούσης οἰκεῖον, ἀλλὰ πλαττομένης ἔτι δόξαις καὶ νόμοις, ὧν ἀπωτάτω γιγνομένη [e] κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους αὖθις ἀναλύεται καὶ ἀνελίττεται τοῖς πάθεσι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν συνεπισκόπει καὶ αὐτός, εἴτε προκοπῆς ἐστιν εἴτε τινὸς ἕξεως ἤδη βεβαιότητα καὶ κράτος ἐχούσης ἐπὶ τοῖς λόγοις ἀσάλευτον.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡ παντελὴς ἀπάθεια μέγα καὶ θεῖον, ἡ προκοπὴ δ’ ὡς λέγουσιν ἔοικεν ἐνδόσει τινὶ παθῶν καὶ πραότητι, δεῖ καὶ πρὸς αὐτὰ καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα τὰ πάθη σκοποῦντας κρίνειν τὰς διαφοράς· πρὸς αὐτὰ μέν, εἰ νῦν ἐπιθυμίαις τε χρώμεθα μαλακωτέραις [f] τῶν πάλαι καὶ φόβοις καὶ ὀργαῖς, ταχὺ τῷ λόγῳ τὸ ἐξάπτον αὐτῶν καὶ φλεγμαῖνον ἀφαιροῦντες· πρὸς ἄλληλα δέ, εἰ μᾶλλον αἰσχυνόμεθα νῦν ἢ φοβούμεθα καὶ ζηλοῦμεν μᾶλλον ἢ φθονοῦμεν καὶ φιλοδοξοῦμεν ἢ φιλοχρηματοῦμεν, καὶ ὅλως εἰ Δωρίοις μᾶλλον ἢ Λυδίοις ὥσπερ οἱ μελῳδοῦντες ὑπερβολαῖς ἁμαρτάνομεν, σκληρότεροι περὶ τὴν δίαιταν ὄντες ἢ μαλακώτεροι, καὶ βραδύτεροι περὶ τὰς πράξεις ἢ προπετέστεροι, καὶ θαυμασταὶ παρ’ ὃ δεῖ [84] [a] λόγων καὶ ἀνθρώπων ἢ καταφρονηταί. καθάπερ γὰρ αἱ τῶν νόσων εἰς τὰ μὴ κύρια μέρη τοῦ σώματος ἐκτροπαὶ σημεῖόν εἰσιν οὐ φαῦλον, οὕτως ἡ κακία τῶν προκοπτόντων ἔοικεν εἰς ἐπιεικέστερα πάθη μεθισταμένη κατὰ μικρὸν ἐξαλείφεσθαι. Φρῦνιν μὲν γὰρ οἱ ἔφοροι ταῖς ἑπτὰ χορδαῖς δύο παρεντεινάμενον ἠρώτων πότερον τὰς ἄνωθεν ἢ τὰς κάτωθεν ἐκτεμεῖν αὐτοῖς ἐθέλει παρασχεῖν· ἡμῶν δὲ δεῖται μέν πως τὰ ἄνω καὶ τὰ κάτω περικοπῆς, εἰ μέλλομεν εἰς τὸ μέσον καθίστασθαι καὶ μέτριον· ἡ δὲ προκοπὴ τὰς ὑπερβολὰς πρότερον καὶ τὰς ὀξύτητας τῶν παθῶν ἀνίησι

[b] πρὸς ἅσπερ οἱ μαργῶντες ἐντονώτατοι

κατὰ Σοφοκλέα.

Καὶ μὴν ὅτι τὸ τὰς κρίσεις ἐπὶ τὰ ἔργα μετάγειν καὶ τοὺς λόγους μὴ λόγους ἐᾶν ἀλλὰ πράξεις ποιεῖν μάλιστα τῆς προκοπῆς ἴδιόν ἐστιν εἴρηται. δήλωμα δ’ αὐτοῦ πρῶτον μὲν ὁ πρὸς τὰ ἐπαινούμενα ζῆλος καὶ τὸ ποιεῖν εἶναι προθύμους ἃ θαυμάζομεν, ἃ δὲ ψέγομεν μὴ ἐθέλειν μηδ’ ὑπομένειν. ἐπεὶ πάντας μὲν Ἀθηναίους εἰκὸς ἦν ἐπαινεῖν τὴν Μιλτιάδου τόλμαν καὶ ἀνδρείαν, Θεμιστοκλῆς [c] δ’ εἰπὼν ὡς οὐκ ἐᾷ καθεύδειν αὐτὸν ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῶν ὕπνων ἀνίστησι τὸ Μιλτιάδου τρόπαιον, οὐκ ἐπαινῶν μόνον οὐδὲ θαυμάζων ἀλλὰ καὶ ζηλῶν καὶ μιμούμενος εὐθὺς ἦν καταφανής. σμικρὸν οὖν οἴεσθαι χρὴ προκόπτειν, ἄχρι οὗ τὸ θαυμάζειν τοὺς κατορθοῦντας ἀργὸν ἔχομεν καὶ ἀκίνητον ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ πρὸς μίμησιν. οὔτε γὰρ ἔρως σώματος ἐνεργός, εἰ μὴ μετὰ ζηλοτυπίας ἔνεστιν, οὔτ’ ἔπαινος ἀρετῆς διάπυρος καὶ δραστήριος ὁ μὴ νύττων μηδὲ κεντρίζων μηδὲ ποιῶν ἀντὶ φθόνου ζῆλον ἐπὶ τοῖς καλοῖς, [d] ἀναπληρώσεως ὀρεγόμενον. οὐ γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν λόγων δεῖ τοῦ φιλοσοφοῦντος μόνον ὥσπερ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἔλεγε τὴν καρδίαν στρέφεσθαι καὶ δάκρυα ἐκπίπτειν, ἀλλ’ ὅ γε προκόπτων ἀληθῶς, μᾶλλον ἔργοις καὶ πράξεσιν ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ καὶ τελείου παραβάλλων ἑαυτόν, ἅμα τῷ συνειδότι τοῦ ἐνδεοῦς δακνόμενος καὶ δι’ ἐλπίδα καὶ πόθον χαίρων καὶ μεστὸς ὢν ὁρμῆς οὐκ ἠρεμούσης οἷός ἐστι κατὰ Σιμωνίδην

ἄθηλος ἵππῳ πῶλος ὣς ἅμα τρέχειν,

[e]τῷ ἀγαθῷ μονονουχὶ συμφῦναι γλιχόμενος. καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο προκοπῆς ἀληθοῦς ἴδιόν ἐστι πάθος, ὧν ζηλοῦμεν τὰ ἔργα τὴν διάθεσιν φιλεῖν καὶ ἀγαπᾶν καὶ μετ’ εὐνοίας ἀεὶ τιμὴν εὔφημον ἀποδιδούσης ἐξομοιοῦσθαι. φιλονεικία δ’ ὅτῳ καὶ φθόνος ἐνέστακται πρὸς τοὺς κρείττονας, οὗτος ἴστω δόξης τινὸς ἢ δυνάμεως ζηλοτυπίᾳ κνιζόμενος, ἀρετὴν δὲ μὴ τιμῶν μηδὲ θαυμάζων.

Ὅταν οὖν οὕτως ἀρχώμεθα τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἐρᾶν, ὥστε μὴ μόνον κατὰ Πλάτωνα μακάριον μὲν αὐτὸν ἡγεῖσθαι τὸν σώφρονα, “μακάριον δὲ τὸν ξυνήκοον τῶν ἐκ τοῦ σωφρονοῦντος στόματος ἰόντων λόγων,” ἀλλὰ καὶ σχῆμα καὶ βάδισμα καὶ βλέμμα καὶ μειδίαμα θαυμάζοντες αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀγαπῶντες οἷον συναρμόττειν καὶ συγκολλᾶν ἑαυτοὺς ὦμεν [f] πρόθυμοι, τότε χρὴ νομίζειν ἀληθῶς προκόπτειν. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον, ἂν μὴ μόνον εὐημεροῦντας τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς θαυμάζωμεν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ ἐρῶντες καὶ τραυλότητας ἀσπάζονται τῶν ἐν ὥρᾳ καὶ ὠχρότητας, τῆς δὲ Πανθείας καὶ δάκρυα καὶ κατήφεια πενθούσης ἄρα καὶ κεκακωμένης ἐξέπληξε τὸν Ἀράσπην, οὕτως ἡμεῖς μήτε φυγὴν Ἀριστείδου μήθ’ εἱργμὸν Ἀναξαγόρου μήτε πενίαν Σωκράτους ἢ Φωκίωνος καταδίκην ὑποδειμαίνωμεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ μετὰ τούτων ἀξιέραστον ἡγούμενοι τὴν ἀρετὴν ὁμόσε χωρῶμεν αὐτῇ, τὸ Εὐριπίδειον ἐφ’ ἑκάστῳ φθεγγόμενοι

[85] [a] φεῦ, τοῖσι γενναίοισιν ὡς ἅπαν καλόν.

τὸν γὰρ ἄχρι τοῦ καὶ τὰ φαινόμενα δεινὰ μὴ δυσχεραίνειν ἀλλὰ θαυμάζειν καὶ ζηλοῦν ἐνθουσιασμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἔτι γε τῶν καλῶν οὐδεὶς ἀποτρέψειεν. ἤδη δὲ τοῖς τοιούτοις παρέπεται τὸ βαδίζουσιν ἐπὶ πράξεις τινὰς ἢ λαβοῦσιν ἀρχὴν ἢ χρησαμένοις τύχῃ τίθεσθαι πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν τοὺς ὄντας ἀγαθοὺς ἢ γενομένους, καὶ διανοεῖσθαι “τί δ’ ἂν ἔπραξεν ἐν τούτῳ Πλάτων, τί δ’ ἂν εἶπεν Ἐπαμεινώνδας, ποῖος [b] δ’ ἂν ὤφθη Λυκοῦργος ἢ Ἀγησίλαος,” οἷόν τι πρὸς ἔσοπτρα κοσμοῦντας ἑαυτοὺς ἢ μεταρρυθμίζοντας ἢ φωνῆς ἀγεννεστέρας αὑτῶν ἐπιλαμβανομένους ἢ πρός τι πάθος ἀντιβαίνοντας. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐκμεμαθηκότες τὰ τῶν Ἰδαίων ὀνόματα Δακτύλων χρῶνται πρὸς τοὺς φόβους αὐτοῖς ὡς ἀλεξικάκοις, ἀτρέμα καταλέγοντες ἕκαστον· ἡ δὲ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐπίνοια καὶ μνήμη ταχὺ παρισταμένη καὶ διαλαμβάνουσα τοὺς προκόπτοντας, ἐν πᾶσι πάθεσι καὶ ἀπορίαις ἁπάσαις ὀρθούς τε καὶ ἀπτῶτας διαφυλάττει. ὅθεν ἔστω σοι καὶ τοῦτο σημεῖον τοῦ πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἐπιδιδόντος.

Πρὸς δὲ τούτῳ τὸ μηκέτι ταράττεσθαι σφόδρα [c] μηδ’ ἐρυθριᾶν μηδὲ κατακρύπτειν ἢ μετασχηματίζειν τι τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτόν, ἀνδρὸς ἐνδόξου καὶ σώφρονος ἐξαπίνης ἐπιφανέντος, ἀλλὰ θαρρεῖν ὁμόσε χωροῦντα τοῖς τοιούτοις ἔχει τοῦ συνειδότος τινὰ βεβαίωσιν. Ἀλέξανδρος μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἄγγελον ἰδὼν περιχαρῆ προσθέοντα καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν προτείνοντα “τί μοι μέλλεις,” εἶπεν, “ὦ τᾶν ἀπαγγελεῖν; ἢ ὅτι Ὅμηρος ἀναβεβίωκεν;” οὐδενὸς αὐτῷ τὰ πράγματα πλὴν ὑστεροφημίας ἐνδεῖν οἰόμενος. νέῳ δ’ ἀνδρὶ βελτιουμένῳ τὸ ἦθος οὐδενὸς [d] ἔρως ἐμφύεται μᾶλλον ἢ καλοῖς κἀγαθοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἐγκαλλωπίσασθαι καὶ παρασχεῖν οἰκίαν αὑτοῦ καταφανῆ, τράπεζαν, γυναῖκα, παιδία, σπουδήν, λόγους λεγομένους ἢ γραφομένους, ὥστε καὶ δάκνεσθαι πατρὸς τεθνεῶτος ἢ καθηγητοῦ μεμνημένον οὐκ ἐπιδόντος αὐτὸν ἐν διαθέσει τοιαύτῃ, καὶ μηδὲν ἂν οὕτως εὔξασθαι παρὰ τῶν θεῶν, ὡς ἐκείνους ἀναβιώσαντας αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τοῦ βίου καὶ τῶν πράξεων θεατάς. ὥσπερ αὖ τοὐναντίον οἱ καταμελήσαντες ἑαυτῶν καὶ διαφθαρέντες οὐδ’ ἐν ὕπνῳ τοὺς προσήκοντας ἀτρέμα καὶ ἀδεῶς ὁρῶσιν.

[e] Ἔτι τοίνυν πρόσλαβε τοῖς εἰρημένοις σημεῖον οὐ μικρόν, εἰ βούλει, τὸ μηδὲν ἔτι μικρὸν ἡγεῖσθαι τῶν ἐξαμαρτανομένων ἀλλ’ ἐξευλαβεῖσθαι καὶ προσέχειν ἅπασιν. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ τὸ πλουτήσειν ἀπεγνωκότες ἐν οὐδενὶ τίθενται τὰ μικρὰ δαπανήματα, μηδὲν οἰόμενοι ποιήσειν μέγα τὸ μικρῷ τινι προστιθέμενον, ἡ δ’ ἐλπὶς ἐγγυτέρω τοῦ τέλους βαδίζουσα τῷ πλούτῳ συναύξει τὴν φιλοπλουτίαν, οὕτως ἐν τοῖς πρὸς ἀρετὴν πράγμασιν ὁ μὴ πολλὰ συγχωρῶν τῷ “τί γὰρ τὸ παρὰ τοῦτο;” καὶ “νῦν μὲν οὕτως αὖθις δὲ βέλτιον,” ἀλλὰ προσέχων ἑκάστῳ κἂν εἰς τὸ σμικρότατον ἡ κακία ποτὲ τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων [f] ἐνδῦσα συγγνώμην πορίζηται δυσανασχετῶν καὶ δυσκολαίνων, δῆλός ἐστιν ἤδη τι καθαρὸν κτώμενος ἑαυτῷ καὶ οὐδ’ ὁπωσοῦν ἀξιῶν ῥυπαίνεσθαι· τὸ δὲ μηδὲν οἴεσθαι καταισχύνειν μέγα μηδ’ ἔχειν εὐχερεῖς ποιεῖ καὶ ὀλιγώρους πρὸς τὰ μικρά. καὶ γὰρ αἱμασιάν τινα καὶ θριγκὸν οἰκοδομοῦσιν οὐ διαφέρει ξύλον τὸ τυχὸν ἢ λίθον ὑποβαλεῖν χυδαῖον ἢ στήλην ὑποθεῖναι παραπεσοῦσαν ἀπὸ μνήματος, οἷα ποιοῦσιν οἱ φαῦλοι, πᾶσαν ἐργασίαν καὶ πρᾶξιν ὡς ἔτυχε συμφοροῦντες εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ [86] [a] σωρεύοντες· ἀλλ’ οἵ γε προκόπτοντες, οἷς ἤδη, καθάπερ ἱεροῦ τινος οἰκοδομήματος καὶ βασιλικοῦ τοῦ βίου

κεκρότηται χρυσέα κρηπίς,

οὐδὲν εἰκῇ προσίενται τῶν γιγνομένων, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἀπὸ στάθμης τοῦ λόγου προσάγουσι καὶ προσαρμόττουσιν ἕκαστον. ὑπὲρ οὗ τὸν Πολύκλειτον οἰόμεθα λέγειν ὡς ἔστι χαλεπώτατον τὸ ἔργον οἷς ἂν εἰς ὄνυχα ὁ πηλὸς ἀφίκηται.

De capienda ex inimicis utilitate

ΠΩΣ ΑΝ ΤΙΣ ΥΠ’ ΕΧΘΡΩΝ ΩΦΕΛΟΙΤΟ

[86] Ὁρῶ μὲν ὅτι τὸν πραότατον, ὦ Κορνήλιε Ποῦλχερ, πολιτείας ᾕρησαι τρόπον, ἐν ᾧ μάλιστα τοῖς κοινοῖς ὠφέλιμος ὢν ἀλυπότατον ἰδίᾳ τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι [c] παρέχεις σεαυτόν. ἐπεὶ δὲ χώραν μὲν ἄθηρον ὥσπερ ἱστοροῦσι τὴν Κρήτην εὑρεῖν ἔστι, πολιτεία δὲ μήτε φθόνον ἐνηνοχυῖα μήτε ζῆλον ἢ φιλονεικίαν, ἔχθρας γονιμώτατα πάθη, μέχρι νῦν οὐ γέγονεν (ἀλλ’ εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο, ταῖς ἔχθραις αἱ φιλίαι συμπλέκουσιν ἡμᾶς· ὃ καὶ Χίλων ὁ σοφὸς νοήσας τὸν εἰπόντα μηδένα ἔχειν ἐχθρὸν ἠρώτησεν εἰ μηδὲ φίλον ἔχει), δοκεῖ μοι τά τ’ ἄλλα περὶ ἐχθρῶν τῷ πολιτικῷ διεσκέφθαι προσήκειν καὶ τοῦ Ξενοφῶντος ἀκηκοέναι μὴ παρέργως εἰπόντος ὅτι τοῦ νοῦν ἔχοντός ἐστι καὶ “ἀπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὠφελεῖσθαι.” ἅπερ οὖν εἰς τοῦτο πρῴην εἰπεῖν μοι παρέστη, συναγαγὼν ὁμοῦ τι τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν ἀπέσταλκά σοι, φεισάμενος ὡς ἐνῆν μάλιστα τῶν ἐν τοῖς Πολιτικοῖς Παραγγέλμασι γεγραμμένων, [d] ἐπεὶ κἀκεῖνο τὸ βιβλίον ὁρῶ σε πρόχειρον ἔχοντα πολλάκις.

Ἐξήρκει τοῖς παλαιοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων καὶ ἀγρίων ζῴων μὴ ἀδικεῖσθαι, καὶ τοῦτο τῶν πρὸς τὰ θηρία τέλος ἦν ἀγώνων ἐκείνοις· οἱ δ’ ὕστερον ἤδη χρῆσθαι μαθόντες αὐτοῖς καὶ ὠφελοῦνται σαρξὶ τρεφόμενοι καὶ θριξὶν ἀμφιεννύμενοι καὶ χολαῖς καὶ πυτίαις ἰατρευόμενοι καὶ δέρμασιν ὁπλίζοντες ἑαυτούς, ὥστ’ ἄξιον εἶναι δεδιέναι μὴ τῶν θηρίων ἐπιλιπόντων τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ θηριώδης ὁ βίος αὐτοῦ γένηται καὶ ἄπορος καὶ ἀνήμερος. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἱκανόν ἐστι τὸ μὴ πάσχειν [e] ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν κακῶς, τοὺς δὲ νοῦν ἔχοντας ὁ Ξενοφῶν καὶ ὠφελεῖσθαί φησιν ἀπὸ τῶν διαφερομένων, ἀπιστεῖν μὲν οὐ χρή, ζητεῖν δὲ μέθοδον καὶ τέχνην δι’ ἧς τοῦτο περιέσται τὸ καλὸν οἷς χωρὶς ἐχθροῦ ζῆν ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν.

Οὐ δύναται πᾶν ἐξημερῶσαι δένδρον ὁ γεωργὸς οὐδὲ πᾶν τιθασεῦσαι θηρίον ὁ κυνηγός· ἐζήτησαν οὖν καθ’ ἑτέρας χρείας ὁ μὲν ἐκ τῶν ἀκάρπων ὁ δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν ἀγρίων ὠφελεῖσθαι. τῆς θαλάττης τὸ ὕδωρ ἄποτόν ἐστι καὶ πονηρόν, ἀλλ’ ἰχθῦς τρέφει καὶ πόμπιμόν ἐστι πάντῃ καὶ πορεύσιμον ὄχημα τοῖς κομιζομένοις· τοῦ δὲ σατύρου τὸ πῦρ, ὡς [f] πρῶτον ὤφθη, βουλομένου φιλῆσαι καὶ περιβαλεῖν, ὁ Προμηθεύς

τράγος γένειον ἆρα πενθήσεις σύ γε·

καὶ γὰρ κάει τὸν ἁψάμενον, ἀλλὰ φῶς παρέχει καὶ θερμότητα καὶ τέχνης ἁπάσης ὄργανόν ἐστι τοῖς χρῆσθαι μαθοῦσι. σκόπει δὴ καὶ τὸν ἐχθρόν, εἰ βλαβερὸς ὢν τἄλλα καὶ δυσμεταχείριστος, ἁμωσγέπως ἁφὴν ἐνδίδωσιν αὑτοῦ καὶ χρῆσιν οἰκείαν [87] [a] καὶ ὠφέλιμός ἐστι. καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ἄφιλα πολλὰ καὶ ἀπεχθῆ καὶ ἀντίπαλα τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν· ἀλλ’ ὁρᾷς ὅτι καὶ νόσοις ἔνιοι σώματος εἰς ἀπραγμοσύνην ἐχρήσαντο, καὶ πόνοι πολλοῖς προσπεσόντες ἔρρωσαν καὶ ἤσκησαν. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ πατρίδος στέρησιν καὶ χρημάτων ἀποβολὴν ἐφόδιον σχολῆς ἐποιήσαντο καὶ φιλοσοφίας, ὡς Διογένης καὶ Κράτης· Ζήνων δέ, τῆς ναυκληρίας αὐτῷ συντριβείσης, πυθόμενος εἶπεν, “εὖ γ’, ὦ τύχη, ποιεῖς, εἰς τὸν τρίβωνα συνελαύνουσα ἡμᾶς.” ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰ ῥωμαλεώτατα τοὺς στομάχους καὶ ὑγιεινότατα τῶν ζῴων ὄφεις ἐσθίοντα καταπέττει [b] καὶ σκορπίους, ἔστι δ’ ἃ καὶ λίθοις καὶ ὀστράκοις τρέφεται (μεταβάλλουσι δὲ δι’ εὐτονίαν καὶ θερμότητα πνεύματος), οἱ δὲ σικχοὶ καὶ νοσώδεις ἄρτον καὶ οἶνον προσφερόμενοι ναυτιῶσιν, οὕτως οἱ μὲν ἀνόητοι καὶ τὰς φιλίας διαφθείρουσιν, οἱ δὲ φρόνιμοι καὶ ταῖς ἔχθραις ἐμμελῶς χρῆσθαι δύνανται.

Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν δοκεῖ μοι τῆς ἔχθρας τὸ βλαβερώτατον ὠφελιμώτατον ἂν γενέσθαι τοῖς προσέχουσιν. τί δὲ τοῦτ’ ἐστίν; ἐφεδρεύει σου τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐγρηγορὼς ὁ ἐχθρὸς ἀεὶ καὶ λαβὴν ζητῶν πανταχόθεν περιοδεύει τὸν βίον, οὐ διὰ δρυὸς μόνον ὁρῶν ὡς ὁ Λυγκεὺς οὐδὲ διὰ λίθων [c] καὶ ὀστράκων, ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ φίλου καὶ οἰκέτου καὶ διὰ συνήθους παντὸς ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστι φωρῶν τὰ πραττόμενα καὶ τὰ βουλευόμενα διορύττων καὶ διερευνώμενος. οἱ μὲν γὰρ φίλοι καὶ νοσοῦντες ἡμᾶς πολλάκις καὶ ἀποθνῄσκοντες λανθάνουσιν ἀμελοῦντας καὶ ὀλιγωροῦντας, τῶν δ’ ἐχθρῶν μονονουχὶ καὶ τοὺς ὀνείρους πολυπραγμονοῦμεν· νόσοι δὲ καὶ δανεισμοὶ καὶ διαφοραὶ πρὸς γυναῖκας αὐτοὺς ἐκείνους μᾶλλον ἢ τὸν ἐχθρὸν λανθάνουσι. μάλιστα δὲ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἔχεται καὶ ταύτας ἐξιχνεύει. καὶ καθάπερ οἱ γῦπες ἐπὶ τὰς ὀσμὰς [d] τῶν διεφθορότων σωμάτων φέρονται, τῶν δὲ καθαρῶν καὶ ὑγιαινόντων αἴσθησιν οὐκ ἔχουσιν, οὕτω τὰ νοσοῦντα τοῦ βίου καὶ φαῦλα καὶ πεπονθότα κινεῖ τὸν ἐχθρόν, καὶ πρὸς ταῦθ’ οἱ μισοῦντες ᾄττουσι καὶ τούτων ἅπτονται καὶ σπαράττουσι. τοῦτο οὖν ὠφέλιμόν ἐστι; πάνυ μὲν οὖν, εὐλαβούμενον ζῆν καὶ προσέχειν ἑαυτῷ καὶ μήτε πράττειν μηδὲν ὀλιγώρως καὶ ἀπερισκέπτως μήτε λέγειν, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ διαφυλάττειν ὥσπερ ἐν ἀκριβεῖ διαίτῃ τὸν βίον ἀνεπίληπτον· ἡ γὰρ οὕτω συστέλλουσα τὰ [e] πάθη καὶ συνέχουσα τὸν λογισμὸν εὐλάβεια μελέτην ἐμποιεῖ καὶ προαίρεσιν τοῦ ζῆν ἐπιεικῶς καὶ ἀνεγκλήτως. καθάπερ γὰρ αἱ πολέμοις ἀστυγειτονικοῖς καὶ στρατείαις ἐνδελεχέσι σωφρονιζόμεναι πόλεις εὐνομίαν καὶ πολιτείαν ὑγιαίνουσαν ἠγάπησαν, οὕτως οἱ δι’ ἔχθρας τινὰς ἀναγκασθέντες ἐπινήφειν τῷ βίῳ καὶ φυλάττεσθαι τὸ ῥᾳθυμεῖν καὶ καταφρονεῖν καὶ μετ’ εὐχρηστίας ἕκαστα πράττειν λανθάνουσιν εἰς τὸ ἀναμάρτητον ὑπὸ τῆς συνηθείας ἀγόμενοι καὶ κατακοσμούμενοι τὸν τρόπον, ἂν καὶ μικρὸν ὁ λόγος συνεπιλαμβάνηται. τὸ γάρ

[f] ἦ κεν γηθήσαι Πρίαμος Πριάμοιό τε παῖδες

οἷς ἐστιν ἀεὶ πρόχειρον, ἐπιστρέφει καὶ διατρέπει καὶ ἀφίστησι τῶν τοιούτων ἐφ’ οἷς οἱ ἐχθροὶ χαίρουσι καὶ καταγελῶσι. καὶ μὴν τοὺς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνίτας ὁρῶμεν ἐκλελυμένους καὶ ἀπροθύμους καὶ οὐκ ἀκριβῶς πολλάκις ἀγωνιζομένους ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν· ὅταν δ’ ἅμιλλα καὶ ἀγὼν γένηται πρὸς ἑτέρους, οὐ μόνον αὑτοὺς ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ ὄργανα μᾶλλον συνεπιστρέφουσι, χορδολογοῦντες καὶ ἀκριβέστερον ἁρμοζόμενοι καὶ καταυλοῦντες. ὅστις οὖν οἶδεν ἀνταγωνιστὴν βίου καὶ δόξης τὸν [88] [a] ἐχθρὸν ὄντα, προσέχει μᾶλλον αὑτῷ, καὶ τὰ πράγματα περισκοπεῖ καὶ διαρμόζεται τὸν βίον. ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῦτο τῆς κακίας ἴδιόν ἐστι, τὸ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς αἰσχύνεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ τοὺς φίλους ἐφ’ οἷς ἐξαμαρτάνομεν. ὅθεν ὁ Νασικᾶς, οἰομένων τινῶν καὶ λεγόντων ἐν ἀσφαλεῖ γεγονέναι τὰ Ῥωμαίων πράγματα Καρχηδονίων μὲν ἀνῃρημένων Ἀχαιῶν δὲ δεδουλωμένων, “νῦν μὲν οὖν,” εἶπεν, “ἐπισφαλῶς ἔχομεν, μήθ’ οὓς φοβηθῶμεν μήθ’ οὓς αἰσχυνθῶμεν ἑαυτοῖς ἀπολελοιπότες.”

[b] Ἔτι τοίνυν πρόσλαβε τὴν Διογένους ἀπόφασιν, φιλόσοφον σφόδρα καὶ πολιτικὴν οὖσαν· “πῶς ἀμυνοῦμαι τὸν ἐχθρόν;” “αὐτὸς καλὸς κἀγαθὸς γενόμενος.” ἵππους ἐχθρῶν ὁρῶντες εὐδοκιμοῦντας ἀνιῶνται καὶ κύνας ἐπαινουμένους. ἂν χωρίον ἐκπεπονημένον ἴδωσιν, ἂν εὐθαλοῦντα κῆπον, ἐπιστένουσι. τί οὖν οἴει, σεαυτὸν ἐπιδεικνύμενος ἄνδρα δίκαιον ἀρτίφρονα χρηστόν, ἐν λόγοις εὐδόκιμον, ἐν πράξεσι καθαρόν, ἐν διαίτῃ κόσμιον,

βαθεῖαν αὔλακα διὰ φρενὸς καρπούμενον,

ἐξ ἧς τὰ κεδνὰ βλαστάνει βουλεύματα;

“νικώμενοι,” φησὶ Πίνδαρος,

“ἄνδρες ἀγρυξίᾳ δέδενται,”

[c]οὐχ ἁπλῶς οὐδὲ πάντες, ἀλλ’ ὅσοι νικωμένους αὑτοὺς ὁρῶσιν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἐπιμελείᾳ χρηστότητι μεγαλοφροσύνῃ φιλανθρωπίαις εὐεργεσίαις· ταῦτ’ “ἀποστρέφει τὴν γλῶτταν,” ὡς ὁ Δημοσθένης φησίν, “ἐμφράττει τὸ στόμα, ἄγχει, σιωπᾶν ποιεῖ.”

σύ τοι διάφερε τῶν κακῶν· ἔξεστι γάρ.

εἰ θέλεις ἀνιᾶν τὸν μισοῦντα, μὴ λοιδόρει κίναιδον μηδὲ μαλακὸν μηδ’ ἀκόλαστον μηδὲ βωμολόχον μηδ’ ἀνελεύθερον, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ἀνὴρ ἴσθι καὶ σωφρόνει καὶ ἀλήθευε καὶ χρῶ φιλανθρώπως καὶ [d] δικαίως τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν. ἂν δὲ λοιδορῆσαι προαχθῇς, ἄπαγε πορρωτάτω σεαυτὸν ὧν λοιδορεῖς ἐκεῖνον. ἐνδύου τῇ ψυχῇ, περισκόπει τὰ σαθρά, μή τίς σοί ποθεν ὑποφθέγγηται κακία τὸ τοῦ τραγῳδοῦ

ἄλλων ἰατρὸς αὐτὸς ἕλκεσιν βρύων.

ἂν ἀπαίδευτον εἴπῃς, ἐπίτεινε τὸ φιλομαθὲς ἐν σεαυτῷ καὶ φιλόπονον· ἂν δειλόν, ἔγειρε μᾶλλον τὸ θαρραλέον καὶ ἀνδρῶδες· κἂν ἀσελγῆ καὶ ἀκόλαστον, ἐξάλειφε τῆς ψυχῆς εἴ τι λανθάνον ἐστὶ φιληδονίας ἴχνος. οὐδὲν γὰρ αἴσχιόν ἐστι βλασφημίας παλινδρομούσης οὐδὲ λυπηρότερον, ἀλλ’ ἔοικε καὶ τοῦ φωτὸς τὸ ἀνακλώμενον μᾶλλον ἐνοχλεῖν τὰς ἀσθενεῖς ὁράσεις καὶ τῶν ψόγων οἱ πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἀναφερόμενοι τοὺς ψέγοντας ὑπὸ τῆς [e] ἀληθείας. ὡς γὰρ ὁ καικίας τὰ νέφη, καὶ ὁ φαῦλος βίος ἐφ’ ἑαυτὸν ἕλκει τὰς λοιδορίας.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Πλάτων ὁσάκις ἀσχημονοῦσιν ἀνθρώποις παραγένοιτο, πρὸς αὑτὸν εἰώθει λέγειν “μή που ἄρ’ ἐγὼ τοιοῦτος;” ὁ δὲ λοιδορήσας τὸν ἑτέρου βίον ἂν εὐθὺς ἐπισκοπῇ τὸν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ μεθαρμόττῃ πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἀπευθύνων καὶ ἀποστρέφων, ἕξει τι χρήσιμον ἐκ τοῦ λοιδορεῖν, ἄλλως ἀχρήστου καὶ κενοῦ δοκοῦντος εἶναι καὶ ὄντος.

Οἱ μὲν οὖν πολλοὶ γελῶσιν, ἄν τις ὢν φαλακρὸς ἢ [f] κυρτὸς ἑτέρους εἰς ταῦτα λοιδορῇ καὶ σκώπτῃ· γελοῖον δ’ ὅλως ἐστὶ τὸ λοιδορεῖν καὶ σκώπτειν ὁτιοῦν ἀντιλοιδορηθῆναι δυνάμενον, ὡς Λέων ὁ Βυζάντιος ὑπὸ κυρτοῦ λοιδορηθεὶς εἰς τὴν τῶν ὀμμάτων ἀσθένειαν, “ἀνθρώπινον,” ἔφη, “πάθος ὀνειδίζεις, ἐπὶ τοῦ νώτου φέρων τὴν νέμεσιν.” οὐκοῦν μηδὲ μοιχὸν λοιδορήσῃς, αὐτὸς ὢν παιδομανής, μηδ’ ἄσωτον, αὐτὸς ὢν ἀνελεύθερος.

ἀνδροκτόνου γυναικὸς ὁμογενὴς ἔφυς

πρὸς τὸν Ἄδραστον ὁ Ἀλκμέων. τί οὖν ἐκεῖνος; οὐκ ἀλλότριον ἀλλ’ ἴδιον αὐτῷ προφέρων ὄνειδος

[89] [a] σὺ δ’ αὐτόχειρ γε μητρὸς ἥ σ’ ἐγείνατο.

πρὸς τὸν Κράσσον ὁ Δομίτιος, “οὐ σὺ μυραίνης ἐν ζωγρείῳ σοι τρεφομένης εἶτ’ ἀποθανούσης ἔκλαυσας;” καὶ ὁ ἕτερος “οὐ σὺ τρεῖς γυναῖκας ἐκκομίσας οὐκ ἐδάκρυσας;” οὐκ εὐφυῆ δεῖ τὸν λοιδορησόμενον εἶναι καὶ μεγαλόφωνον καὶ ἰταμόν, ἀλλ’ ἀλοιδόρητον καὶ ἀνέγκλητον· οὐδενὶ γὰρ οὕτως ἔοικε προστάττειν ὁ θεὸς ὡς τῷ μέλλοντι ψέγειν ἕτερον τὸ “γνῶθι σαυτόν,” ἵνα μὴ λέγοντες ἃ θέλουσιν ἀκούωσιν ἃ μὴ θέλουσι. “φιλεῖ” γὰρ ὁ τοιοῦτος κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα

[b] γλῶσσαν ἐκχέας μάτην

ἄκων ἀκούειν οὓς ἑκὼν εἴπῃ λόγους.

Τουτὶ μὲν οὖν ἔνεστι τῷ λοιδορεῖν τὸν ἐχθρὸν ὠφέλιμον καὶ χρήσιμον· οὐκ ἔλαττον δ’ ἑτέρῳ, τῷ λοιδορεῖσθαι καὶ κακῶς ἀκούειν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν. ὅθεν ὀρθῶς ὁ Ἀντισθένης εἶπεν ὅτι τοῖς μέλλουσι σῴζεσθαι φίλων δεῖ γνησίων ἢ διαπύρων ἐχθρῶν· οἱ μὲν γὰρ νουθετοῦντες τοὺς ἁμαρτάνοντας οἱ δὲ λοιδοροῦντες ἀποτρέπουσι. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡ φιλία τὰ νῦν ἰσχνόφωνος γέγονεν ἐν τῷ παρρησιάζεσθαι, καὶ τὸ κολακεῦον αὐτῆς λάλον ἐστί, τὸ [c] δὲ νουθετοῦν ἄναυδον, ἀκουστέον ἐστὶ παρὰ τῶν ἐχθρῶν τὴν ἀλήθειαν. ὡς γὰρ ὁ Τήλεφος οἰκείου μὴ τυγχάνων ἰατροῦ τῷ πολεμικῷ δόρατι τὸ ἕλκος ὑπέθηκεν, οὕτω τοὺς ἀποροῦντας εὐνοίας νουθετούσης ὑπομένειν ἀνάγκη μισοῦντος ἐχθροῦ λόγον, ἂν ἐλέγχῃ καὶ κολάζῃ τὴν κακίαν, σκοποῦντας τὸ ἔργον ἀλλὰ μὴ τὴν γνώμην τοῦ κακῶς λέγοντος. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ τὸν Θεσσαλὸν Προμηθέα κτεῖναι διανοηθεὶς ἔπαισε τῷ ξίφει τὸ φῦμα καὶ διεῖλεν οὕτως ὥστε σωθῆναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ ἀπαλλαγῆναι τοῦ φύματος ῥαγέντος, οὕτω πολλάκις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἢ ἔχθρας [d] προσπεσοῦσα λοιδορία κακὸν ψυχῆς ἢ ἀγνοούμενον ἢ ἀμελούμενον ἐθεράπευσεν. ἀλλ’ οἱ πολλοὶ λοιδορηθέντες οὐ σκοποῦσιν εἰ πρόσεστιν αὐτοῖς τὸ λεγόμενον, ἀλλὰ τί πρόσεστιν ἕτερον τῷ λοιδοροῦντι, καὶ καθάπερ οἱ παλαίοντες τὴν κόνιν οὐχ ἑαυτῶν ἀποψῶσι τὰς λοιδορίας, ἀλλὰ συμπάττουσιν ἀλλήλους εἶτα φύρονται καὶ ἀναχρώννυνται συμπεσόντες ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων. δεῖ δ’ ἀκούσαντα κακῶς ὑπ’ ἐχθροῦ τὸ μὲν προσὸν ἀφαιρεῖν αὑτοῦ μᾶλλον ἢ κηλῖδα προσοῦσαν ἱματίῳ καὶ δειχθεῖσαν· ἂν δέ τις λέγῃ τὰ μὴ προσόντα, ὅμως ζητεῖν τὴν αἰτίαν ἀφ’ [e] ἧς ἡ βλασφημία γέγονε, καὶ φυλάττεσθαι καὶ δεδιέναι μή τι λανθάνωμεν ἢ σύνεγγυς ἢ ὅμοιον τῷ λεγομένῳ παραμαρτάνοντες. οἷον Λακύδην τὸν Ἀργείων βασιλέα κόμης τινὸς διάθεσις καὶ βάδισμα τρυφερώτερον εἰς μαλακίαν διέβαλε, καὶ Πομπήιον τὸ ἑνὶ κνᾶσθαι τὴν κεφαλὴν δακτύλῳ πορρωτάτω θηλύτητος καὶ ἀκολασίας ὄντα. Κράσσος δὲ τῶν ἱερῶν μιᾷ παρθένων αἰτίαν ἔσχε πλησιάζειν, χωρίον τι καλὸν ὠνήσασθαι παρ’ αὐτῆς βουλόμενος καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πολλάκις ἐντυγχάνων ἰδίᾳ καὶ θεραπεύων. Ποστουμίαν δὲ τὸ γελᾶν [f] προχειρότερον καὶ λαλιᾷ χρῆσθαι θρασυτέρᾳ πρὸς ἄνδρας διέβαλεν, ὥστε κριθῆναι φθορᾶς. εὑρέθη μὲν οὖν καθαρὰ τῆς αἰτίας, ἀπολύσας δ’ αὐτὴν ὁ ἀρχιερεὺς Σπόριος Μινούκιος ὑπέμνησε μὴ χρῆσθαι λόγοις ἀσεμνοτέροις τοῦ βίου. Θεμιστοκλεῖ δὲ Παυσανίας μηδὲν ἀδικοῦντι προσετρίψατο τὴν ὑποψίαν τῆς προδοσίας διὰ τὸ χρῆσθαι φίλῳ καὶ γράφειν συνεχῶς καὶ πέμπειν πρὸς αὐτόν.

Ὅταν οὖν λεχθῇ τι μὴ ἀληθές, οὐχ ὅτι ψεῦδός ἐστι δεῖ καταφρονεῖν καὶ ἀμελεῖν, ἀλλὰ σκοπεῖν τί τῶν ὑπὸ σοῦ λεγομένων ἢ πραττομένων ἢ σπουδαζομένων [90] [a] ἢ συνόντων ὁμοιότητα τῇ διαβολῇ παρέσχηκε, καὶ τοῦτο διευλαβεῖσθαι καὶ φεύγειν. εἰ γὰρ ἕτεροι πράγμασιν ἀβουλήτοις περιπεσόντες διδάσκονται τὸ χρήσιμον, ὥσπερ ἡ Μερόπη φησίν

αἱ τύχαι δέ με

μισθὸν λαβοῦσαι τῶν ἐμῶν τὰ φίλτατα

σοφὴν ἔθηκαν,

τί κωλύει διδάσκαλον ἄμισθον λαβόντα τὸν ἐχθρὸν ὠφεληθῆναι καὶ μαθεῖν τι τῶν λανθανόντων; πολλὰ γὰρ ὁ ἐχθρὸς αἰσθάνεται τοῦ φίλου μᾶλλον (“τυφλοῦται” γὰρ “τὸ φιλοῦν περὶ τὸ φιλούμενον,” ὡς ὁ Πλάτων φησί), τῷ δὲ μισεῖν μετὰ τοῦ πολυπραγμονεῖν [b] καὶ τὸ λαλεῖν ἔνεστιν. ὁ Ἱέρων ὑπό τινος τῶν ἐχθρῶν εἰς τὴν δυσωδίαν ἐλοιδορήθη τοῦ στόματος. ἐλθὼν οὖν οἴκαδε πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα “τί λέγεις;” εἶπεν, “οὐδὲ σύ μοι τοῦτ’ ἔφρασας.” ἡ δ’ οὖσα σώφρων καὶ ἄκακος “ᾤμην,” εἶπεν, “ὅτι τοιοῦτο πάντες ὄζουσιν οἱ ἄνδρες.” οὕτω καὶ τὰ αἰσθητικὰ καὶ τὰ σωματικὰ καὶ τὰ καταφανῆ πᾶσι παρὰ τῶν ἐχθρῶν μαθεῖν πρότερον ἔστιν ἢ τῶν φίλων καὶ συνήθων.

Ἄνευ δὲ τούτου τὴν περὶ τὴν γλῶτταν ἐγκράτειαν, οὐ μικρὸν ἀρετῆς μέρος οὖσαν, ὑπήκοον [c] ἀεὶ τῷ λογισμῷ καὶ πειθήνιον ἔχειν οὐκ ἔνεστιν, ἂν μή τις ἀσκήσει καὶ μελέτῃ καὶ φιλοπονίᾳ τὰ κάκιστα τῶν παθῶν, οἷόν ἐστιν ἡ ὀργή, κατεργάσηται. ἡ γὰρ “ἀκουσίως ἐκπίπτουσα φωνὴ” καὶ τὸ

ἔπος φύγεν ἕρκος ὀδόντων,

καὶ τὸ

ἔνια ἐξίπτασθαι τῶν ῥημάτων αὐτόματα

τοῖς ἀνασκήτοις μάλιστα θυμοῖς οἷον ὀλισθάνουσι καὶ διαρρέουσιν ἐπιγίγνεται δι’ ἀσθένειαν θυμοῦ, δι’ ἀκρατῆ γνώμην, διὰ δίαιταν θρασεῖαν. λόγου δὲ κουφοτάτου πράγματος βαρυτάτη ζημία κατὰ τὸν θεῖον Πλάτωνα καὶ παρὰ θεῶν ἕπεται καὶ παρ’ [d] ἀνθρώπων. ἡ δὲ σιγὴ πανταχοῦ μὲν ἀνυπεύθυνον (οὐ μόνον ἄδιψον, ὥς φησιν Ἱπποκράτης), ἐν δὲ λοιδορίαις σεμνὸν καὶ Σωκρατικόν, μᾶλλον δ’ Ἡράκλειον, εἴ γε κἀκεῖνος

οὐδ’ ὅσσον μυίας στυγερῶν ἐμπάζετο μύθων.

οὔτι μὴν τούτου σεμνότερον καὶ κάλλιόν ἐστι, τοῦ λοιδοροῦντος ἐχθροῦ τὴν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν

λισσάδα πέτραν

φιλοκέρτομον ὣς παρανηχομένους,

ἀλλὰ μείζων ἡ ἄσκησις. ἂν ἐχθρὸν ἐθισθῇς λοιδοροῦντα φέρειν σιωπῇ, πάνυ ῥᾳδίως οἴσεις γυναικὸς ὁρμὴν κακῶς λεγούσης, καὶ φίλου φωνὰς καὶ ἀδελφοῦ πικροτάτας ἀκούων ὑπομενεῖς ἀθορύβως· πατρὶ δὲ καὶ μητρὶ τυπτόμενος καὶ βαλλόμενος [e] παρέξεις ἄθυμον καὶ ἀμήνιτον σεαυτόν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Σωκράτης ἔφερε τὴν Ξανθίππην θυμοειδῆ καὶ χαλεπὴν οὖσαν, ὡς εὐκόλως συνεσόμενος ἑτέροις, ἂν ἐκείνην ὑπομένειν ἐθισθῇ· πολὺ δὲ βέλτιον ἐχθρῶν καὶ ἀλλοτρίων ἐγγυμνασάμενον βδελυρίαις καὶ ὀργαῖς καὶ σκώμμασι καὶ λοιδορίαις ἐθίσαι τὸν θυμὸν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν μηδ’ ἀσχάλλειν ἐν τῷ λοιδορεῖσθαι.

Πραότητα μὲν οὖν καὶ ἀνεξικακίαν οὕτως ἔστιν ἐνεπιδείξασθαι ταῖς ἔχθραις, ἁπλότητα δὲ καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνην καὶ χρηστότητα μᾶλλον ἢ ταῖς [f] φιλίαις. φίλον μὲν γὰρ οὐχ οὕτω τὸ εὖ ποιεῖν καλόν, ὡς αἰσχρὸν τὸ μὴ ποιεῖν δεόμενον· ἐχθροῦ δὲ καὶ τὸ τιμωρίαν παραλιπεῖν ἐν καιρῷ παρασχόντος ἐπιεικές ἐστι. τὸν δὲ καὶ πταίσαντι συμπαθήσαντα καὶ δεηθέντι συλλαβόμενον καὶ παισὶν ἐχθροῦ καὶ οἰκείοις πράγμασιν ἐν χρείᾳ γενομένοις σπουδήν τινα καὶ προθυμίαν ἐνδειξάμενον ὅστις οὐκ ἀγαπᾷ τῆς εὐμενείας οὐδ’ ἐπαινεῖ τὴν χρηστότητα, ἐκεῖνος

ἐξ ἀδάμαντος

[91] [a] ἢ σιδάρου κεχάλκευται μέλαιναν καρδίαν.

Τῷ Καίσαρι κελεύσαντι τὰς Πομπηίου τιμὰς ἀνασταθῆναι καταβεβλημένας ὁ Κικέρων “τοὺς Πομπηίου,” φησίν, “ἀνδριάντας ἀνέστησας, τοὺς δὲ σοὺς ἔπηξας.” ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἐπαίνου φειστέον οὐδὲ τιμῆς περὶ ἀνδρὸς ἐχθροῦ δικαίως εὐδοκιμήσαντος. ἔπαινόν τε γὰρ φέρει μείζονα τοῖς ἐπαινοῦσι, καὶ πίστιν ἔχει πάλιν ἐγκαλῶν, ὡς οὐ τὸν ἄνδρα μισῶν ἀλλὰ τὴν πρᾶξιν ἀποδοκιμάζων· τὸ [b] δὲ κάλλιστον καὶ χρησιμώτατον, ἀπωτάτω καθίσταται τοῦ φθονεῖν καὶ φίλοις εὐτυχοῦσι καὶ κατορθοῦσιν οἰκείοις ὁ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ἐθισθεὶς ἐπαινεῖν καὶ μὴ δάκνεσθαι μηδὲ βασκαίνειν εὖ πραττόντων. καίτοι τίς ἄσκησις ἑτέρα μείζονα ὠφέλειαν ἐνεργάζεται ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἢ διάθεσιν κρείττονα τῆς ἀφαιρούσης τὸ δύσζηλον ἡμῶν καὶ φιλόφθονον; ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν πολέμῳ πολλὰ τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἄλλως δὲ φαύλων ἔθους λαβόντα καὶ νόμου δύναμιν οὐκ ἔστι ῥᾳδίως ἀπώσασθαι καὶ βλαπτομένους, οὕτως ἡ ἔχθρα συνεισάγουσα τῷ μίσει φθόνον, ζηλοτυπίαν ἐπιχαιρεκακίαν μνησικακίαν ἐναπολείπει. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις καὶ πανουργία καὶ [c] ἀπάτη καὶ ἐπιβουλή, δοκοῦσα μὴ φαῦλον εἶναι μηδ’ ἄδικον πρὸς ἐχθρόν, ἂν ἐγγένηται, παραμένει δυσαπάλλακτος· εἶτα χρῶνται πρὸς τοὺς φίλους αὐτοὶ ὑπὸ συνηθείας, ἂν μὴ φυλάξωνται πρὸς τοὺς ἐχθρούς. εἴπερ οὖν ὀρθῶς ὁ Πυθαγόρας, ἐν ἀλόγοις ζῴοις ἐθίζων ὠμότητος ἀπέχεσθαι καὶ πλεονεξίας, ὀρνέων τε θηρευτὰς παρῃτεῖτο καὶ βόλους ὠνούμενος ἰχθύων ἐκέλευεν ἀφιέναι, καὶ παντὸς ἡμέρου ζῴου φόνον ἀπηγόρευε, πολὺ δήπου σεμνότερόν [d] ἐστιν ἐν διαφοραῖς πρὸς ἀνθρώπους καὶ φιλονεικίαις, γενναῖον ἐχθρὸν ὄντα καὶ δίκαιον καὶ ἀψευδῆ, τὰ μοχθηρὰ καὶ ἀγεννῆ καὶ πανοῦργα πάθη κολάζειν καὶ ταπεινὰ ποιεῖν, ὅπως ἐν τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς φίλους συμβολαίοις παντάπασιν ἀτρεμῇ καὶ ἀπέχηται τοῦ κακουργεῖν. Σκαῦρος ἐχθρὸς ἦν Δομιτίου καὶ κατήγορος. οἰκέτης οὖν τοῦ Δομιτίου πρὸ τῆς δίκης ἧκε πρὸς αὐτὸν ὡς ἔχων τι μηνῦσαι τῶν λανθανόντων ἐκεῖνον, ὁ δ’ οὐκ εἴασεν εἰπεῖν, ἀλλὰ συλλαβὼν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἀπήγαγε πρὸς τὸν δεσπότην. Κάτωνι δὲ Μουρήναν διώκοντι δημοκοπίας καὶ συνάγοντι τοὺς ἐλέγχους ἐξ ἔθους παρηκολούθουν οἱ τὰ πραττόμενα παραφυλάττοντες.

[e] πολλάκις οὖν αὐτὸν ἠρώτων εἴ τι μέλλει σήμερον συνάγειν ἢ πραγματεύεσθαι πρὸς τὴν κατηγορίαν· εἰ δὲ μὴ φαίη, πιστεύοντες ἀπῄεσαν. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν αὐτοῦ τῆς δόξης ἔχει τεκμήριον μέγιστον· ἀλλὰ μεῖζον καὶ κάλλιστον, ὅτι τῷ δικαίῳ χρῆσθαι καὶ πρὸς ἐχθροὺς ἐθισθέντες οὐδέποτε μὴ προσενεχθῶμεν ἀδίκως καὶ πανούργως τοῖς συνήθεσι καὶ φίλοις.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ

πάσαις κορυδαλλίσι χρὴ λόφον ἐγγενέσθαι

κατὰ τὸν Σιμωνίδην, καὶ πᾶσα φύσις ἀνθρώπου φέρει φιλονεικίαν καὶ ζηλοτυπίαν καὶ φθόνον,

[f] κενεοφρόνων ἀνδρῶν ἑταῖρον,

ὥς φησι Πίνδαρος, οὐ μετρίως ἄν τις ὠφελοῖτο τῶν παθῶν τούτων ποιούμενος εἰς τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ἀποκαθάρσεις καὶ ἀποστρέφων ὥσπερ ὀχετοὺς πορρωτάτω τῶν ἑταίρων καὶ οἰκείων. καὶ τοῦτο, ὡς ἔοικε, συνιδὼν πολιτικὸς ἀνὴρ ὄνομα Δῆμος, ἐν Χίῳ τῆς κρατούσης μερίδος ἐν στάσει γενόμενος, παρῄνει τοῖς ἑταίροις μὴ πάντας ἐξελάσαι τοὺς ἀντιστασιάσαντας, ἀλλ’ ὑπολιπέσθαι τινάς, [92] [a] “ὅπως,” ἔφη, “μὴ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ἀρξώμεθα διαφέρεσθαι, τῶν ἐχθρῶν παντάπασιν ἀπαλλαγέντες.” οὐκοῦν καὶ ἡμῶν καταναλισκόμενα ταῦτα τὰ πάθη πρὸς τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ἧττον ἐνοχλήσει τοῖς φίλοις. οὐ γὰρ “κεραμεῖ” δεῖ “κεραμέα φθονεῖν” οὐδ’ “ἀοιδὸν ἀοιδῷ” καθ’ Ἡσίοδον, οὐδὲ γείτονα ζηλοῦν οὐδ’ ἀνεψιὸν οὐδ’ ἀδελφὸν “εἰς ἄφενος σπεύδοντα” καὶ τυγχάνοντα χρηστῶν πραγμάτων. ἀλλ’ εἰ μηδεὶς τρόπος ἐστὶν ἄλλος ἀπαλλαγῆς [b] ἐρίδων καὶ φθόνων καὶ φιλονεικιῶν, ἔθιζε σεαυτὸν δάκνεσθαι τῶν ἐχθρῶν εὐημερούντων, καὶ παρόξυνε καὶ χάραττε τὸ φιλόνεικον ἐν ἐκείνοις θηγόμενον. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ χαρίεντες γεωργοὶ τὰ ῥόδα καὶ τὰ ἴα βελτίω ποιεῖν νομίζουσι σκόροδα καὶ κρόμμυα παραφυτεύοντες (ἀποκρίνεται γὰρ εἰς ἐκεῖνα πᾶν ὅσον ἔνεστι τῇ τροφῇ δριμὺ καὶ δυσῶδες), οὕτω καὶ ὁ ἐχθρὸς ἀναλαμβάνων καὶ περισπῶν τὸ κακόηθες καὶ βάσκανον, εὐμενέστερον παρέξει σε τοῖς φίλοις εὖ πράττουσι καὶ ἀλυπότερον. διὸ καὶ τὰς ἁμίλλας πρὸς ἐκείνους ἐστὶ ποιητέον ὑπὲρ δόξης ἢ ἀρχῆς ἢ πορισμῶν δικαίων, μὴ δακνομένους μόνον, ἄν τι πλέον ἡμῶν ἔχωσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ [c] πάντα παραφυλάττοντας ἐξ ὧν πλέον ἔχουσι, καὶ πειρωμένους ὑπερβαλέσθαι ταῖς ἐπιμελείαις καὶ φιλοπονίαις καὶ τῷ σωφρονεῖν καὶ προσέχειν ἑαυτοῖς, ὡς Θεμιστοκλῆς ἔλεγεν οὐκ ἐᾶν αὐτὸν καθεύδειν τὴν ἐν Μαραθῶνι Μιλτιάδου νίκην. ὁ μὲν γὰρ εὐτυχίᾳ διαφέρειν αὐτοῦ τὸν ἐχθρὸν ἡγούμενος ἐν ἀρχαῖς ἢ συνηγορίαις ἢ πολιτείαις ἢ παρὰ φίλοις καὶ ἡγεμόσιν, ἐκ τοῦ πράττειν τι καὶ ζηλοῦν εἰς τὸ βασκαίνειν παντάπασι καὶ ἀθυμεῖν καταδυόμενος, ἀργῷ τῷ φθόνῳ καὶ ἀπράκτῳ σύνεστιν· ὁ δὲ μὴ τυφλούμενος περὶ τὸ μισούμενον ἀλλὰ καὶ βίου καὶ ἤθους καὶ λόγων καὶ ἔργων γιγνόμενος θεατὴς δίκαιος τὰ πλεῖστα κατόψεται [d] τῶν ζηλουμένων ἐξ ἐπιμελείας καὶ προνοίας καὶ πράξεων χρηστῶν περιγιγνόμενα τοῖς κεκτημένοις, καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα συντείνων ἐπασκήσει τὸ φιλότιμον αὑτοῦ καὶ φιλόκαλον, τὸ δὲ χασμῶδες ἐκκόψει καὶ ῥᾴθυμον.

Εἰ δέ τινας οἱ ἐχθροὶ κολακεύοντες ἢ πανουργοῦντες ἢ δεκάζοντες ἢ μισθαρνοῦντες αἰσχρὰς καὶ ἀνελευθέρους δοκοῦσι καρποῦσθαι δυνάμεις ἐν αὐλαῖς ἢ πολιτείαις, οὐκ ἐνοχλήσουσιν ἡμᾶς ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον εὐφρανοῦσι, τὴν αὑτῶν ἐλευθερίαν καὶ τὸ καθαρὸν τοῦ βίου καὶ ἀνύβριστον ἀντιτιθέντας· [e] “ἅπας” γὰρ “ὁ ὑπὲρ γῆς καὶ ὑπὸ γῆς χρυσὸς ἀρετῆς οὐκ ἀντάξιος” κατὰ Πλάτωνα, καὶ τὸ τοῦ Σόλωνος ἔχειν ἀεὶ δεῖ πρόχειρον

ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς αὐτοῖς οὐ διαμειψόμεθα

τῆς ἀρετῆς τὸν πλοῦτον

οὐδέ γε βοὰς δεδειπνισμένων θεάτρων οὐδὲ τιμὰς καὶ προεδρίας παρ’ εὐνούχοις καὶ παλλακαῖς καὶ σατραπείας βασιλέων· ζηλωτὸν γὰρ οὐδὲν οὐδὲ [f] καλὸν ἐξ αἰσχροῦ φυόμενον. ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ τυφλοῦται τὸ φιλοῦν περὶ τὸ φιλούμενον, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, καὶ μᾶλλον ἡμῖν οἱ ἐχθροὶ παρέχουσιν αἴσθησιν ἀσχημονοῦντες, δεῖ μήτε τὸ χαῖρον ἐφ’ οἷς ἁμαρτάνουσιν ἀργὸν εἶναι μήτε τὸ λυπούμενον ἐφ’ οἷς κατορθοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιλογίζεσθαι δι’ ἀμφοτέρων ὅπως τὰ μὲν φυλαττόμενοι βελτίονες ὦμεν αὐτῶν, τὰ δὲ μιμούμενοι μὴ χείρονες.

De amicorum multitudine

ΠΕΡΙ ΠΟΛΥΦΙΛΙΑΣ

[93] Μένωνα τὸν Θετταλὸν οἰόμενον ἐν λόγοις ἱκανῶς γεγυμνάσθαι καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ ὑπὸ τοῦ [b] Ἐμπεδοκλέους λεγόμενον

σοφίης ἐπ’ ἄκροισι θαμίζειν

ἠρώτησεν ὁ Σωκράτης τί ἀρετή ἐστιν· ἀποκριναμένου δ’ ἰταμῶς ἐκείνου καὶ προχείρως ὅτι καὶ παιδός ἐστιν ἀρετὴ καὶ πρεσβύτου καὶ ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς καὶ ἄρχοντος καὶ ἰδιώτου καὶ δεσπότου καὶ θεράποντος, “εὖ γ’,” εἶπεν ὁ Σωκράτης, “ὅτι μίαν ἀρετὴν αἰτηθεὶς σμῆνος ἀρετῶν κεκίνηκας,” οὐ κακῶς τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι μηδεμίαν εἰδὼς ἀρετὴν ὁ ἄνθρωπος πολλὰς ὠνόμαζεν. ἆρ’ οὖν οὐχὶ καὶ ἡμῖν ἄν τις ἐπιχλευάσειεν ὅτι μηδέπω [c] μίαν φιλίαν κεκτημένοι βεβαίως φοβούμεθα μὴ λάθωμεν εἰς πολυφιλίαν ἐμπεσόντες; σχεδὸν γὰρ οὐδὲν διαφέρομεν ἀνθρώπου κολοβοῦ καὶ τυφλοῦ, φοβουμένου μὴ Βριάρεως ὁ ἑκατόγχειρ καὶ Ἄργος ὁ πανόπτης γένηται. καίτοι τόν γε παρὰ τῷ Μενάνδρῳ νεανίσκον ὑπερφυῶς ἐπαινοῦμεν εἰπόντα θαυμαστὸν ὅσον νομίζειν

ἀγαθὸν ἕκαστον, ἂν ἔχῃ φίλου σκιάν.

Ἐναντίον δὲ μετὰ πολλῶν ἄλλων οὐχ ἥκιστα γ’ εἰς φιλίας κτῆσιν ἡμῖν ἡ τῆς πολυφιλίας ὄρεξις, ὥσπερ ἀκολάστων γυναικῶν, τῷ πολλάκις καὶ [d] πολλοῖς συμπλέκεσθαι τῶν πρώτων κρατεῖν μὴ δυναμένοις ἀμελουμένων καὶ ἀπορρεόντων· μᾶλλον δ’ ὥσπερ ὁ τῆς Ὑψιπύλης τρόφιμος εἰς τὸν λειμῶνα καθίσας ἔδρεπεν

ἕτερον ἐφ’ ἑτέρῳ αἰρόμενος

ἄγρευμ’ ἀνθέων ἡδομένᾳ ψυχᾷ

τὸ νήπιον ἄπληστον ἔχων,

οὕτως ἕκαστον ἡμῶν διὰ τὸ φιλόκαινον καὶ ἁψίκορον ὁ πρόσφατος ἀεὶ καὶ ἀνθῶν ἐπάγεται, καὶ μετατίθησι πολλὰς ὁμοῦ καὶ ἀτελεῖς ἀρχὰς πράττοντας φιλίας καὶ συνηθείας, ἔρωτι τοῦ διωκομένου παρερχομένους τὸν καταλαμβανόμενον.

[e] Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ὥσπερ ἀφ’ ἑστίας ἀρξάμενοι τῆς τοῦ βίου φήμης ἣν ὑπὲρ φίλων βεβαίων ἀπολέλοιπεν ἡμῖν, τὸν μακρὸν καὶ παλαιὸν αἰῶνα μάρτυρα ἅμα τοῦ λόγου καὶ σύμβουλον λάβωμεν, ἐν ᾧ κατὰ ζεῦγος φιλίας λέγονται Θησεὺς καὶ Πειρίθους, Ἀχιλλεὺς καὶ Πάτροκλος, Ὀρέστης καὶ Πυλάδης, Φιντίας καὶ Δάμων, Ἐπαμεινώνδας καὶ Πελοπίδας. σύννομον γὰρ ἡ φιλία ζῷον οὐκ ἀγελαῖόν ἐστιν οὐδὲ κολοιῶδες, καὶ τὸ ἄλλον αὑτὸν ἡγεῖσθαι τὸν φίλον καὶ προσαγορεύειν ἑταῖρον ὡς ἕτερον, οὐδέν ἐστιν ἢ μέτρῳ φιλίας τῇ δυάδι χρωμένων. οὔτε γὰρ δούλους οὔτε φίλους ἔστι κτήσασθαι πολλοὺς ἀπ’ ὀλίγου νομίσματος.

[f] τί οὖν νόμισμα φιλίας; εὔνοια καὶ χάρις μετ’ ἀρετῆς, ὧν οὐδὲν ἔχει σπανιώτερον ἡ φύσις. ὅθεν τὸ σφόδρα φιλεῖν καὶ φιλεῖσθαι πρὸς πολλοὺς οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ ποταμοὶ πολλὰς σχίσεις καὶ κατατομὰς λαμβάνοντες ἀσθενεῖς καὶ λεπτοὶ ῥέουσιν, οὕτω τὸ φιλεῖν ἐν ψυχῇ σφοδρὸν πεφυκὸς εἰς πολλοὺς μεριζόμενον ἐξαμαυροῦται. διὸ καὶ τῶν ζῴων τὸ φιλότεκνον τοῖς μονοτόκοις ἰσχυρότερον [94] [a] ἐμφύεται, καὶ Ὅμηρος ἀγαπητὸν υἱὸν ὀνομάζει “μοῦνον τηλύγετον,” τουτέστι τὸν τοῖς μήτ’ ἔχουσιν ἕτερον γονεῦσι μήθ’ ἕξουσι γεγενημένον.

Τὸν δὲ φίλον ἡμεῖς “μοῦνον” μὲν οὐκ ἀξιοῦμεν εἶναι, μετ’ ἄλλων δὲ “τηλύγετός” τις καὶ ὀψίγονος ἔστω, τὸν θρυλούμενον ἐκεῖνον χρόνῳ τῶν ἁλῶν συγκατεδηδοκὼς μέδιμνον, οὐχ ὥσπερ νῦν πολλοὶ φίλοι λεγόμενοι συμπιόντες ἅπαξ ἢ συσφαιρίσαντες ἢ συγκυβεύσαντες ἢ συγκαταλύσαντες, ἐκ πανδοκείου καὶ παλαίστρας καὶ ἀγορᾶς φιλίαν συλλέγουσιν.

Ἐν δὲ ταῖς τῶν πλουσίων καὶ ἡγεμονικῶν [b] οἰκίαις πολὺν ὄχλον καὶ θόρυβον ἀσπαζομένων καὶ δεξιουμένων καὶ δορυφορούντων ὁρῶντες εὐδαιμονίζουσι τοὺς πολυφίλους. καίτοι πλείονάς γε μυίας ἐν τοῖς ὀπτανίοις αὐτῶν ὁρῶσιν. ἀλλ’ οὔθ’ αὗται τῆς λιχνείας οὔτ’ ἐκεῖνοι τῆς χρείας ἐπιλιπούσης παραμένουσιν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡ ἀληθινὴ φιλία τρία ζητεῖ μάλιστα, τὴν ἀρετὴν ὡς καλόν, καὶ τὴν συνήθειαν ὡς ἡδύ, καὶ τὴν χρείαν ὡς ἀναγκαῖον (δεῖ γὰρ ἀποδέξασθαι κρίναντα καὶ χαίρειν συνόντα καὶ χρῆσθαι δεόμενον, ἃ πάντα πρὸς τὴν πολυφιλίαν ὑπεναντιοῦται, καὶ μάλιστά πως τὸ κυριώτατον ἡ κρίσις), σκεπτέον δὴ πρῶτον εἰ δυνατόν [c] ἐστιν ἐν βραχεῖ χρόνῳ δοκιμάσαι χορευτὰς συγχορευσομένους, ἐρέτας ὁμορροθήσοντας, οἰκέτας χρημάτων ἐπιτρόπους ἢ τέκνων παιδαγωγοὺς ἐσομένους, μήτι γε φίλους πολλοὺς εἰς ἀγῶνα πάσης τύχης συναποδυσομένους, ὧν ἕκαστος αὐτός θ’ αὑτόν

πράσσων εὖ τίθησιν εἰς μέσον,

τοῦ δυστυχοῦς τε λαγχάνων οὐκ ἄχθεται.

οὔτε ναῦς γὰρ ἐπὶ τοσούτους ἕλκεται χειμῶνας εἰς θάλατταν, οὔτε χωρίοις θριγχοὺς καὶ λιμέσι προβάλλουσιν ἕρκη καὶ χώματα τηλικούτους προσδεχόμενοι [d] κινδύνους καὶ τοσούτους, ὅσων ἐπαγγέλλεται φιλία καταφυγὴν καὶ βοήθειαν, ὀρθῶς καὶ βεβαίως ἐξετασθεῖσα· τῶν δ’ ἀνεξετάστως παραρρυέντων ὥσπερ νομισμάτων ἀδοκίμων ἐλεγχομένων

οἱ μὲν ἐστερημένοι

χαίρουσιν, οἱ δ’ ἔχοντες εὔχονται φυγεῖν.

ἔστι δὲ τοῦτο χαλεπὸν καὶ οὐ ῥᾴδιον τὸ φυγεῖν ἢ ἀποθέσθαι δυσαρεστουμένην φιλίαν. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ σιτίον βλαβερὸν καὶ δυσχεραινόμενον οὔτε κατέχειν οἷόν τε μὴ λυποῦν καὶ διαφθεῖρον οὔτ’ ἐκβάλλειν οἷον εἰσῆλθεν ἀλλ’ εἰδεχθὲς καὶ συμπεφυρμένον καὶ ἀλλόκοτον, οὕτω φίλος πονηρὸς ἢ σύνεστι λυπῶν καὶ λυμαινόμενος, ἢ βίᾳ μετ’ [e] ἔχθρας καὶ δυσμενείας ὥσπερ χολή τις ἐξέπεσε.

Διὸ δεῖ μὴ ῥᾳδίως προσδέχεσθαι μηδὲ κολλᾶσθαι τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι μηδὲ φιλεῖν τοὺς διώκοντας, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἀξίους φιλίας διώκειν. οὐ γὰρ αἱρετέον πάντως τὸ ῥᾳδίως ἁλισκόμενον. καὶ γὰρ ἀπαρίνην καὶ βάτον ἐπιλαμβανομένην ὑπερβάντες καὶ διωσάμενοι βαδίζομεν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλαίαν καὶ τὴν ἄμπελον. οὕτως ἀεὶ μὴ τὸν εὐχερῶς περιπλεκόμενον ποιεῖσθαι συνήθη καλόν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἀξίοις σπουδῆς καὶ ὠφελίμοις αὐτοὺς περιπλέκεσθαι [f] δοκιμάζοντας.

Ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ Ζεῦξις αἰτιωμένων αὐτόν τινων ὅτι ζωγραφεῖ βραδέως, “ὁμολογῶ,” εἶπεν, “ἐν πολλῷ χρόνῳ γράφειν, καὶ γὰρ εἰς πολύν,” οὕτω φιλίαν δεῖ καὶ συνήθειαν σῴζειν παραλαβόντας ἐν πολλῷ κριθεῖσαν. ἆρ’ οὖν κρῖναι μὲν οὐκ ἔστι πολλοὺς φίλους ῥᾴδιον, συνεῖναι δὲ πολλοῖς ὁμοῦ ῥᾴδιον, ἢ καὶ τοῦτο ἀδύνατον; καὶ μὴν ἀπόλαυσίς ἐστιν ἡ συνήθεια τῆς φιλίας, καὶ τὸ ἥδιστον ἐν τῷ συνεῖναι καὶ συνδιημερεύειν·

οὐ μὲν γὰρ ζωοί γε φίλων ἀπάνευθεν ἑταίρων

βουλὰς ἑζόμενοι βουλεύσομεν.

[95] [a] καὶ περὶ τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως ὁ Μενέλαος

οὐδέ κεν ἄλλο

ἄμμε διέκρινεν φιλέοντέ τε τερπομένω τε,

πρίν γ’ ὅτε δὴ θανάτοιο μέλαν νέφος ἀμφεκάλυψε.

τοὐναντίον οὖν ἔοικεν ἡ καλουμένη πολυφιλία ποιεῖν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ συνάγει καὶ συνίστησι καὶ συνέχει καταπυκνοῦσα ταῖς ὁμιλίαις καὶ φιλοφροσύναις

ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ὀπὸς γάλα λευκὸν ἐγόμφωσεν καὶ ἔδησε

[b] κατ’ Ἐμπεδοκλέα (τοιαύτην γὰρ ἡ φιλία βούλεται ποιεῖν ἑνότητα καὶ σύμπηξιν), ἡ δὲ πολυφιλία διίστησι καὶ ἀποσπᾷ καὶ ἀποστρέφει, τῷ μετακαλεῖν καὶ μεταφέρειν ἄλλοτε πρὸς ἄλλον οὐκ ἐῶσα κρᾶσιν οὐδὲ κόλλησιν εὐνοίας ἐν τῇ συνηθείᾳ περιχυθείσῃ καὶ παγείσῃ γενέσθαι. τοῦτο δ’ εὐθὺς ὑποβάλλει καὶ τὴν περὶ τὰς ὑπουργίας ἀνωμαλίαν καὶ δυσωπίαν· τὰ γὰρ εὔχρηστα τῆς φιλίας δύσχρηστα γίγνεται διὰ τὴν πολυφιλίαν.

“ἄλλον τρόπον” γὰρ “ἄλλων ἐγείρει φροντὶς

ἀνθρώπων·”

οὔτε γὰρ αἱ φύσεις ἡμῶν ἐπὶ ταὐτὰ ταῖς ὁρμαῖς ῥέπουσιν, οὔτε τύχαις ὁμοτρόποις ἀεὶ σύνεσμεν· οἵ [c] τε τῶν πράξεων καιροὶ καθάπερ τὰ πνεύματα τοὺς μὲν φέρουσι τοῖς δ’ ἀντιπίπτουσι.

Καίτοι κἂν πάντες ἅμα τῶν αὐτῶν οἱ φίλοι δέωνται, χαλεπὸν ἐξαρκέσαι πᾶσι βουλευομένοις ἢ πολιτευομένοις ἢ φιλοτιμουμένοις ἢ ὑποδεχομένοις. ἂν δ’ ἑνὶ καιρῷ διαφόροις πράγμασι καὶ πάθεσι προστυγχάνοντες ὁμοῦ παρακαλῶσιν ὁ μὲν πλέων συναποδημεῖν, ὁ δὲ κρινόμενος συνδικεῖν, ὁ δὲ κρίνων συνδικάζειν, ὁ δὲ πιπράσκων ἢ ἀγοράζων συνδιοικεῖν, ὁ δὲ γαμῶν συνθύειν, ὁ δὲ θάπτων συμπενθεῖν,

πόλις δ’ ὁμοῦ μὲν θυμιαμάτων γέμῃ,

ὁμοῦ δὲ παιάνων τε καὶ στεναγμάτων

[d] ἡ πολυφιλία. πᾶσι μὲν ἀμήχανον παρεῖναι, μηδενὶ δ’ ἄτοπον, ἑνὶ δ’ ὑπουργοῦντα προσκρούειν πολλοῖς ἀνιαρόν·

οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἀγαπῶν αὐτὸς ἀμελεῖθ’ ἡδέως.

Καίτοι τὰς ἀμελείας καὶ ῥᾳθυμίας τῶν φίλων πραότερον φέρουσι, καὶ τὰς τοιαύτας ἀπολογίας ἀμηνίτως δέχονται παρ’ αὐτῶν “ἐξελαθόμην” “ἠγνόησα.” ὁ δὲ λέγων “οὐ παρέστην σοι δίκην ἔχοντι, παριστάμην γὰρ ἑτέρῳ φίλῳ,” καὶ “πυρέττοντά σ’ οὐκ εἶδον, τῷ δεῖνι γὰρ φίλους ἑστιῶντι συνησχολούμην” αἰτίαν τῆς ἀμελείας τὴν ἑτέρων [e] ἐπιμέλειαν ποιούμενος οὐ λύει τὴν μέμψιν, ἀλλὰ προσεπιβάλλει ζηλοτυπίαν. ἀλλ’ οἱ πολλοὶ τὰς πολυφιλίας ἃ δύνανται παρέχειν μόνον ὡς ἔοικε σκοποῦσιν, ἃ δ’ ἀνταπαιτοῦσι παρορῶσι, καὶ οὐ μνημονεύουσιν ὅτι δεῖ τὸν πολλοῖς εἰς ἃ δεῖται χρώμενον πολλοῖς δεομένοις ἀνθυπουργεῖν. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ Βριάρεως ἑκατὸν χερσὶν εἰς πεντήκοντα φορῶν γαστέρας οὐδὲν ἡμῶν πλέον εἶχε τῶν ἀπὸ δυεῖν χεροῖν μίαν κοιλίαν διοικούντων, οὕτως ἐν τῷ φίλοις χρῆσθαι πολλοῖς καὶ τὸ λειτουργεῖν πολλοῖς ἔνεστι καὶ τὸ συναγωνιᾶν καὶ τὸ συνασχολεῖσθαι καὶ συγκάμνειν. οὐ γὰρ Εὐριπίδῃ πειστέον λέγοντι

χρῆν γὰρ μετρίαν εἰς ἀλλήλους

φιλίαν θνητοὺς ἀνακίρνασθαι

[f] καὶ μὴ πρὸς ἄκρον μυελὸν ψυχῆς,

εὔλυτα δ’ εἶναι θέλγητρα φρενῶν,

ἀπό τ’ ὤσασθαι καὶ ξυντεῖναι,

καθάπερ πόδα νεὼς ἐνδιδόντι καὶ προσάγοντι ταῖς χρείαις τὴν φιλίαν. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μέν, ὦ Εὐριπίδη, μεταθῶμεν ἐπὶ τὰς ἔχθρας, καὶ κελεύωμεν “μετρίας” ποιεῖσθαι τὰς διαφορὰς καὶ “μὴ πρὸς ἄκρον μυελὸν ψυχῆς, εὔλυτα δ’ εἶναι” μίση καὶ ὀργὰς [96] [a] καὶ μεμψιμοιρίας καὶ ὑπονοίας· ἐκεῖνο δὲ μᾶλλον ἡμῖν παραίνει τὸ Πυθαγορικὸν “μὴ πολλοῖς ἐμβάλλειν δεξιάν,” τουτέστι μὴ πολλοὺς ποιεῖσθαι φίλους μηδὲ πολύκοινον μηδὲ πάνδημον ἀσπάζεσθαι φιλίαν, καὶ πρὸς ἕν’ ἄν τις ᾖ μετὰ πολλῶν παθῶν εἰσιοῦσα, ὧν τὸ μὴ συναγωνιᾶν καὶ συνάχθεσθαι καὶ συμπονεῖν καὶ συγκινδυνεύειν πάνυ δύσοιστον τοῖς ἐλευθέροις καὶ γενναίοις ἐστίν.

Τὸ δὲ τοῦ σοφοῦ Χίλωνος ἀληθές, ὃς πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα μηδένα ἔχειν ἐχθρόν “ἔοικας,” ἔφη, “σὺ μηδὲ φίλον ἔχειν.” αἱ γὰρ ἔχθραι ταῖς φιλίαις εὐθὺς ἐπακολουθοῦσι καὶ συμπλέκονται, [b] ἐπείπερ οὐκ ἔστι φίλον μὴ συναδικεῖσθαι μηδὲ συναδοξεῖν μηδὲ συναπεχθάνεσθαι· οἱ γὰρ ἐχθροὶ τὸν φίλον εὐθὺς ὑφορῶνταί τε καὶ μισοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ φίλοι πολλάκις φθονοῦσί τε καὶ ζηλοτυποῦσι καὶ περισπῶσιν. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ τῷ Τιμησίᾳ περὶ τῆς ἀποικίας δοθεὶς χρησμὸς προηγόρευσε

σμῆνα μελισσάων τάχα τοι καὶ σφῆκες ἔσονται,

οὕτως οἱ φίλων ζητοῦντες ἑσμὸν ἔλαθον ἐχθρῶν σφηκιαῖς περιπεσόντες.

Καὶ οὐκ ἴσον ἄγει σταθμὸν ἐχθροῦ μνησικακία

καὶ φίλου χάρις. ὅρα δὲ τοὺς Φιλώτου καὶ [c] Παρμενίωνος φίλους καὶ οἰκείους ἃ διέθηκεν Ἀλέξανδρος, ἃ τοὺς Δίωνος Διονύσιος τοὺς Πλαύτου Νέρων καὶ τοὺς Σηιανοῦ Τιβέριος στρεβλοῦντες καὶ ἀποκτιννύοντες. ὡς γὰρ τὸν Κρέοντα τῆς θυγατρὸς οὐδὲν ὁ χρυσὸς οὐδ’ ὁ πέπλος ὠφέλει, τὸ δὲ πῦρ ἀναφθὲν αἰφνιδίως προσδραμόντα καὶ περιπτύξαντα κατέκαυσε καὶ συναπώλεσεν, οὕτως ἔνιοι τῶν φίλων οὐδὲν ἀπολαύσαντες εὐτυχούντων συναπόλλυνται δυστυχοῦσι. καὶ τοῦτο μάλιστα πάσχουσιν οἱ φιλόσοφοι καὶ χαρίεντες, ὡς Θησεὺς τῷ Πειρίθῳ κολαζομένῳ καὶ δεδεμένῳ

αἰδοῦς ἀχαλκεύτοισιν ἔζευκται πέδαις,

[d] ἐν δὲ τῷ λοιμῷ φησιν ὁ Θουκυδίδης τοὺς ἀρετῆς μάλιστα μεταποιουμένους συναπόλλυσθαι τοῖς φίλοις νοσοῦσιν· ἠφείδουν γὰρ σφῶν αὐτῶν ἰόντες παρὰ τοὺς ἐπιτηδείους.

Ὅθεν οὕτω τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀφειδεῖν οὐ προσῆκον ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλοις συνδέοντας αὐτὴν καὶ συμπλέκοντας, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἀξίοις τὴν αὐτὴν κοινωνίαν φυλάττειν, τουτέστι τοῖς ὁμοίως φιλεῖν καὶ κοινωνεῖν δυναμένοις. καὶ γὰρ δὴ τοῦτο πάντων μέγιστόν ἐστιν ἐναντίωμα πρὸς τὴν πολυφιλίαν, ὅτι τῇ φιλίᾳ γένεσις δι’ ὁμοιότητός ἐστιν. ὅπου γὰρ καὶ τὰ ἄψυχα τὰς μίξεις πρὸς τὰ ἀνόμοια ποιεῖται μετὰ [e] βίας ἀναγκαζόμενα καὶ ὀκλάζει καὶ ἀγανακτεῖ φεύγοντα ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων, τοῖς δὲ συγγενέσι καὶ οἰκείοις ὁμοπαθεῖ κεραννύμενα καὶ προσίεται τὴν κοινωνίαν λείως καὶ μετ’ εὐμενείας, πῶς οἷόν τε φιλίαν ἤθεσι διαφόροις ἐγγενέσθαι καὶ πάθεσιν ἀνομοίοις καὶ βίοις ἑτέρας προαιρέσεις ἔχουσιν; ἡ μὲν γὰρ περὶ ψαλμοὺς καὶ φόρμιγγας ἁρμονία δι’ ἀντιφώνων ἔχει τὸ σύμφωνον, ὀξύτησι καὶ βαρύτησιν ἁμωσγέπως ὁμοιότητος ἐγγιγνομένης· τῆς δὲ φιλικῆς συμφωνίας ταύτης καὶ ἁρμονίας οὐδὲν ἀνόμοιον οὐδ’ ἀνώμαλον οὐδ’ ἄνισον εἶναι δεῖ μέρος, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἁπάντων ὁμοίως ἐχόντων [f] ὁμολογεῖν καὶ ὁμοβουλεῖν καὶ ὁμοδοξεῖν καὶ συνομοπαθεῖν, ὥσπερ μιᾶς ψυχῆς ἐν πλείοσι διῃρημένης σώμασι.

Τίς οὖν ἐστιν οὕτως ἐπίπονος καὶ μετάβολος καὶ παντοδαπὸς ἄνθρωπος, ὥστε πολλοῖς ἑαυτὸν ἐξομοιοῦν καὶ προσαρμόττειν καὶ μὴ καταγελᾶν τοῦ Θεόγνιδος παραινοῦντος

πουλύποδος νόον ἴσχε πολυχρόου, ὃς ποτὶ πέτρῃ,

τῇ περ ὁμιλήσῃ, τοῖος ἰδεῖν ἐφάνη;

καίτοι τοῦ πολύποδος αἱ μεταβολαὶ βάθος οὐκ ἔχουσιν, ἀλλὰ περὶ αὐτὴν γίγνονται τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν, στυφότητι καὶ μανότητι τὰς ἀπορροίας τῶν [97] [a] πλησιαζόντων ἀναλαμβάνουσαν· αἱ δὲ φιλίαι τὰ ἤθη ζητοῦσι συνεξομοιοῦν καὶ τὰ πάθη καὶ τοὺς λόγους καὶ τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα καὶ τὰς διαθέσεις. Πρωτέως τινὸς οὐκ εὐτυχοῦς οὐδὲ πάνυ χρηστοῦ τὸ ἔργον, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ γοητείας ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἕτερον εἶδος ἐξ ἑτέρου μεταλλάττοντος ἐν ταὐτῷ πολλάκις, φιλολόγοις συναναγιγνώσκοντος καὶ παλαισταῖς συγκονιομένου καὶ φιλοθήροις συγκυνηγετοῦντος καὶ φιλοπόταις συμμεθυσκομένου καὶ πολιτικοῖς συναρχαιρεσιάζοντος, ἰδίαν ἤθους ἑστίαν οὐκ ἔχοντος. ὡς δὲ τὴν ἀσχημάτιστον οἱ φυσικοὶ καὶ [b] ἀχρώματον οὐσίαν καὶ ὕλην λέγουσιν ὑποκειμένην καὶ τρεπομένην ὑφ’ αὑτῆς νῦν μὲν φλέγεσθαι νῦν δ’ ἐξυγραίνεσθαι, τοτὲ δ’ ἐξαεροῦσθαι πήγνυσθαι δ’ αὖθις, οὕτως ἄρα τῇ πολυφιλίᾳ ψυχὴν ὑποκεῖσθαι δεήσει πολυπαθῆ καὶ πολύτροπον καὶ ὑγρὰν καὶ ῥᾳδίαν μεταβάλλειν. ἀλλ’ ἡ φιλία στάσιμόν τι ζητεῖ καὶ βέβαιον ἦθος καὶ ἀμετάπτωτον ἐν μιᾷ χώρᾳ καὶ συνηθείᾳ· διὸ καὶ σπάνιον καὶ δυσεύρετόν ἐστι φίλος βέβαιος.

De fortuna

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΥΧΗΣ

[97] Τύχη τὰ θνητῶν πράγματ’, οὐκ εὐβουλία.

πότερον οὐδὲ δικαιοσύνη τὰ θνητῶν πράγματα οὐδ’ ἰσότης οὐδὲ σωφροσύνη οὐδὲ κοσμιότης, ἀλλ’ ἐκ τύχης μὲν καὶ διὰ τύχην Ἀριστείδης ἐνεκαρτέρησε [d] τῇ πενίᾳ, πολλῶν χρημάτων κύριος γενέσθαι δυνάμενος, καὶ Σκιπίων Καρχηδόνα ἑλὼν οὐδὲν οὔτ’ ἔλαβεν οὔτ’ εἶδε τῶν λαφύρων, ἐκ τύχης δὲ καὶ διὰ τύχην Φιλοκράτης λαβὼν χρυσίον παρὰ Φιλίππου “πόρνας καὶ ἰχθῦς ἠγόραζε,” καὶ Λασθένης καὶ Εὐθυκράτης ἀπώλεσαν Ὄλυνθον, “τῇ γαστρὶ μετροῦντες καὶ τοῖς αἰσχίστοις τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν”; ἀπὸ τύχης δ’ ὁ μὲν Φιλίππου Ἀλέξανδρος αὐτός τε τῶν αἰχμαλώτων ἀπείχετο γυναικῶν καὶ τοὺς ὑβρίζοντας ἐκόλαζεν, ὁ δὲ Πριάμου δαίμονι κακῷ καὶ τύχῃ χρησάμενος συνεκοιμᾶτο τῇ τοῦ ξένου γυναικί, καὶ λαβὼν [e] αὐτὴν ἐνέπλησε πολέμου καὶ κακῶν τὰς δύο ἠπείρους; εἰ γὰρ ταῦτα γίγνεται διὰ τύχην, τί κωλύει καὶ τὰς γαλᾶς καὶ τοὺς τράγους καὶ τοὺς πιθήκους συνέχεσθαι φάναι διὰ τύχην ταῖς λιχνείαις καὶ ταῖς ἀκρασίαις καὶ ταῖς βωμολοχίαις;

Εἰ δ’ ἔστι σωφροσύνη καὶ δικαιοσύνη καὶ ἀνδρεία, πῶς λόγον ἔχει μὴ εἶναι φρόνησιν, εἰ δὲ φρόνησις, πῶς οὐ καὶ εὐβουλίαν; ἡ γὰρ σωφροσύνη φρόνησίς τίς ἐστιν ὥς φασι, καὶ ἡ δικαιοσύνη τῆς φρονήσεως δεῖται παρούσης· μᾶλλον δὲ τὴν εὐβουλίαν γέ τοι καὶ φρόνησιν ἐν μὲν ἡδοναῖς ἀγαθοὺς παρεχομένην ἐγκράτειαν καὶ σωφροσύνην καλοῦμεν, ἐν δὲ κινδύνοις καὶ πόνοις καρτερίαν καὶ ἀνδραγαθίαν, ἐν δὲ κοινωνήμασι καὶ πολιτείαις εὐνομίαν καὶ δικαιοσύνην. ὅθεν εἰ τὰ τῆς εὐβουλίας [f] ἔργα τῆς τύχης δικαιοῦμεν εἶναι, ἔστω τύχης καὶ τὰ τῆς δικαιοσύνης καὶ τὰ τῆς σωφροσύνης, καὶ νὴ Δία τὸ κλέπτειν τύχης ἔστω καὶ τὸ βαλλαντιοτομεῖν καὶ τὸ ἀκολασταίνειν, καὶ μεθέμενοι τῶν οἰκείων λογισμῶν εἰς τὴν τύχην ἑαυτοὺς ἀφῶμεν ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πνεύματος πολλοῦ κονιορτὸν ἢ συρφετὸν ἐλαυνομένους καὶ διαφερομένους. εὐβουλίας τοίνυν μὴ οὔσης οὐδὲ βουλὴν εἰκὸς εἶναι περὶ πραγμάτων οὐδὲ σκέψιν οὐδὲ ζήτησιν τοῦ συμφέροντος, ἀλλ’ ἐλήρησεν εἰπὼν ὁ Σοφοκλῆς ὅτι

[98] [a] πᾶν τὸ ζητούμενον

ἁλωτόν, ἐκφεύγει δὲ τἀμελούμενον

καὶ πάλιν αὖ τὰ πράγματα διαιρῶν

τὰ μὲν διδακτὰ μανθάνω, τὰ δ’ εὑρετὰ

ζητῶ, τὰ δ’ εὐκτὰ παρὰ θεῶν ᾐτησάμην.

τί γὰρ εὑρετὸν ἢ τί μαθητόν ἐστιν ἀνθρώποις, εἰ πάντα περαίνεται κατὰ τύχην; ποῖον δ’ οὐκ ἀναιρεῖται βουλευτήριον πόλεως ἢ ποῖον οὐ καταλύεται συνέδριον βασιλέως, εἰ ὑπὸ τῇ τύχῃ πάντ’ ἐστίν, ἣν τυφλὴν λοιδοροῦμεν, ὡς τυφλοὶ περιπίπτοντες [b] αὐτῇ; τί δ’ οὐ μέλλομεν, ὅταν ὥσπερ ὄμματα τὴν εὐβουλίαν ἐκκόψαντες αὑτῶν τοῦ βίου τυφλὴν χειραγωγὸν λαμβάνωμεν;

Καίτοι φέρε λέγειν τινὰ ἡμῶν ὡς τύχη τὰ τῶν βλεπόντων πράγματα, οὐκ ὄψις οὐδ’ “ὄμματα φωσφόρα,” φησὶ Πλάτων, καὶ τύχη τὰ τῶν ἀκουόντων, οὐ δύναμις ἀντιληπτικὴ πληγῆς ἀέρος δι’ ὠτὸς καὶ ἐγκεφάλου προσφερομένης· καλὸν ἦν, ὡς ἔοικεν, εὐλαβεῖσθαι τὴν αἴσθησιν. ἀλλὰ μὴν τὴν ὄψιν καὶ ἀκοὴν καὶ γεῦσιν καὶ ὄσφρησιν καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ μέρη τοῦ σώματος τάς τε δυνάμεις αὐτῶν ὑπηρεσίαν εὐβουλίας καὶ φρονήσεως ἡ [c] φύσις ἤνεγκεν ἡμῖν, καὶ

“νοῦς ὁρῇ καὶ νοῦς ἀκούει, τἄλλα” δὲ “κωφὰ

καὶ τυφλά.”

καὶ ὥσπερ ἡλίου μὴ ὄντος ἕνεκα τῶν ἄλλων ἄστρων εὐφρόνην ἂν ἤγομεν, ὥς φησιν Ἡράκλειτος, οὕτως ἕνεκα τῶν αἰσθήσεων, εἰ μὴ νοῦν μηδὲ λόγον ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἔσχεν, οὐδὲν ἂν διέφερε τῷ βίῳ τῶν θηρίων. νῦν δ’ οὐκ ἀπὸ τύχης οὐδ’ αὐτομάτως περίεσμεν αὐτῶν καὶ κρατοῦμεν, ἀλλ’ ὁ Προμηθεύς, τουτέστιν ὁ λογισμός, αἴτιος

ἵππων ὄνων τ’ ὀχεῖα καὶ ταύρων γονὰς

δοὺς ἀντίδουλα καὶ πόνων ἐκδέκτορα

[d] κατ’ Αἰσχύλον. ἐπεὶ τύχῃ γε καὶ φύσει γενέσεως ἀμείνονι τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἀλόγων κέχρηται. τὰ μὲν γὰρ ὥπλισται κέρασι καὶ ὀδοῦσι καὶ κέντροις,

“αὐτὰρ ἐχίνοις,” φησὶν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς,

“ὀξυβελεῖς χαῖται νώτοις ἐπιπεφρίκασι,”

τὰ δ’ ὑποδέδεται καὶ ἠμφίεσται φολίσι καὶ λάχναις καὶ χηλαῖς καὶ ὁπλαῖς ἀποκρότοις· μόνος δ’ ὁ ἄνθρωπος κατὰ τὸν Πλάτωνα “γυμνὸς καὶ ἄνοπλος καὶ ἀνυπόδετος καὶ ἄστρωτος” ὑπὸ τῆς φύσεως ἀπολέλειπται.

ἀλλ’ ἓν διδοῦσα πάντα μαλθάσσει τάδε,

[e] τὸν λογισμὸν καὶ τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ τὴν πρόνοιαν.

ἦ βραχὺ μὲν σθένος ἀνέρος· ἀλλὰ

ποικιλίᾳ πραπίδων

δεινὰ μὲν φῦλα πόντου

χθονίων τ’ ἀερίων τε

δάμναται βουλεύματα.

κουφότατον ἵπποι καὶ ὠκύτατον, ἀνθρώπῳ δὲ θέουσι· μάχιμον κύων καὶ θυμοειδές, ἀλλ’ ἄνθρωπον φυλάττει· ἡδύτατον ἰχθὺς καὶ πολύσαρκον ὗς, ἀνθρώπῳ δὲ τροφὴ καὶ ὄψον ἐστί. τί μεῖζον ἐλέφαντος ἢ φοβερώτερον ἰδεῖν; ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο παίγνιον γέγονεν ἀνθρώπου καὶ θέαμα πανηγυρικόν, ὀρχήσεις τε μανθάνει καὶ χορείας καὶ προσκυνήσεις, οὐκ ἀχρήστως τῶν τοιούτων παρεισαγομένων, [f] ἀλλ’ ἵνα μανθάνωμεν ποῦ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἡ φρόνησις αἴρει καὶ τίνων ὑπεράνω ποιεῖ, καὶ πῶς κρατεῖ πάντων καὶ περίεστιν.

οὐ γὰρ πυγμάχοι εἰμὲν ἀμύμονες οὐδὲ παλαισταί,

οὐδὲ ποσὶ κραιπνῶς θέομεν,

ἀλλ’ ἐν πᾶσι τούτοις ἀτυχέστεροι τῶν θηρίων ἐσμέν· ἐμπειρίᾳ δὲ καὶ μνήμῃ καὶ σοφίᾳ καὶ τέχνῃ κατ’ Ἀναξαγόραν σφῶν τ’ αὐτῶν χρώμεθα καὶ βλίττομεν καὶ ἀμέλγομεν καὶ φέρομεν καὶ ἄγομεν συλλαμβάνοντες· ὥστ’ ἐνταῦθα μηδὲν τῆς τύχης ἀλλὰ πάντα τῆς εὐβουλίας εἶναι καὶ τῆς προνοίας.

[99] [a] Ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ τὰ τεκτόνων δήπου “πράγματα θνητῶν” ἐστι, καὶ τὰ χαλκοτύπων καὶ οἰκοδόμων καὶ ἀνδριαντοποιῶν, ἐν οἷς οὐδὲν αὐτομάτως οὐδ’ ὡς ἔτυχε κατορθούμενον ὁρῶμεν. ὅτι γὰρ τούτοις βραχεῖά τις παρεμπίπτει τύχη, τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν ἔργων αἱ τέχναι συντελοῦσι δι’ αὑτῶν, καὶ οὗτος ὑποδεδήλωκε

βᾶτ’ εἰς ὁδὸν δὴ πᾶς ὁ χειρῶναξ λεώς,

οἳ τὴν Διὸς γοργῶπιν Ἐργάνην στατοῖς

λίκνοισι προστρέπεσθε.

[b] τὴν γὰρ Ἐργάνην καὶ τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν αἱ τέχναι πάρεδρον οὐ τὴν Τύχην ἔχουσι. ἕνα μέντοι φασὶν ἵππον ζωγραφοῦντα τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις κατορθοῦν εἴδεσι καὶ χρώμασι, τοῦ δ’ ἀφροῦ τὴν περὶ τῷ χαλινῷ κοπτομένην χαυνότητα καὶ τὸ συνεκπῖπτον ἆσθμα μὴ κατορθοῦντα γράφειν τε πολλάκις καὶ ἐξαλείφειν, τέλος δ’ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς προσβαλεῖν τῷ πίνακι τὸν σπόγγον ὥσπερ εἶχε τῶν φαρμάκων ἀνάπλεων, τὸν δὲ προσπεσόντα θαυμαστῶς ἐναπομάξαι καὶ ποιῆσαι τὸ δέον. τοῦτ’ ἔντεχνον τύχης μόνον ἱστορεῖται. κανόσι καὶ σταθμαῖς καὶ μέτροις καὶ ἀριθμοῖς πανταχοῦ χρῶνται, ἵνα μηδαμοῦ [c] τὸ εἰκῆ καὶ ὡς ἔτυχε τοῖς ἔργοις ἐγγένηται. καὶ μὴν αἱ τέχναι μικραί τινες εἶναι λέγονται φρονήσεις, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀπόρροιαι φρονήσεως καὶ ἀποτρίμματα ἐνδιεσπαρμένα ταῖς χρείαις περὶ τὸν βίον, ὥσπερ αἰνίττεται τὸ πῦρ ὑπὸ τοῦ Προμηθέως μερισθὲν ἄλλο ἄλλῃ διασπαρῆναι. καὶ γὰρ τῆς φρονήσεως μόρια καὶ σπάσματα μικρὰ θραυομένης καὶ κατακερματιζομένης εἰς τάξεις κεχώρηκε.

Θαυμαστὸν οὖν ἐστι πῶς αἱ μὲν τέχναι τῆς τύχης οὐ δέονται πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον τέλος, ἡ δὲ πασῶν μεγίστη καὶ τελειοτάτη τέχνη καὶ τὸ κεφάλαιον τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης εὐφημίας καὶ δικαιώσεως οὐδέν ἐστιν. ἀλλ’ ἐν ἐπιτάσει μὲν χορδῶν καὶ ἀνέσει εὐβουλία τίς ἐστιν ἣν μουσικὴν καλοῦσι, καὶ περὶ ἄρτυσιν ὄψων ἣν μαγειρικὴν ὀνομάζομεν, καὶ περὶ [d] πλύσιν ἱματίων ἣν γναφικήν· τοὺς δὲ παῖδας καὶ ὑποδεῖσθαι καὶ περιβάλλεσθαι διδάσκομεν καὶ τῇ δεξιᾷ λαμβάνειν τοῦ ὄψου τῇ δ’ ἀριστερᾷ κρατεῖν τὸν ἄρτον, ὡς οὐδὲ τούτων γιγνομένων ἀπὸ τύχης ἀλλ’ ἐπιστάσεως καὶ προσοχῆς δεομένων· τὰ δὲ μέγιστα καὶ κυριώτατα πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν οὐ παρακαλεῖ τὴν φρόνησιν, οὐδὲ μετέχει τοῦ κατὰ λόγον καὶ πρόνοιαν; ἀλλὰ γῆν μὲν οὐδεὶς ὕδατι δεύσας ἀφῆκεν, ὡς ἀπὸ τύχης καὶ αὐτομάτως πλίνθων ἐσομένων, οὐδ’ ἔρια καὶ σκύτη κτησάμενος κάθηται τῇ τύχῃ προσευχόμενος ἱμάτιον αὐτῷ καὶ ὑποδήματα γενέσθαι· χρυσίον δὲ πολὺ συμφορήσας [e] καὶ ἀργύριον καὶ πλῆθος ἀνδραπόδων καὶ πολυθύρους αὐλὰς περιβαλόμενος καὶ κλίνας προσθέμενος πολυτελεῖς καὶ τραπέζας οἴεται ταῦτα φρονήσεως αὐτῷ μὴ παραγενομένης εὐδαιμονίαν ἔσεσθαι καὶ βίον ἄλυπον καὶ μακάριον καὶ ἀμετάβλητον;

Ἠρώτα τις Ἰφικράτην τὸν στρατηγόν, ὥσπερ ἐξελέγχων, τίς ἐστιν; “οὔτε γὰρ ὁπλίτης οὔτε τοξότης οὔτε πελταστής.” κἀκεῖνος “ὁ τούτοις,” ἔφη, “πᾶσιν ἐπιτάττων καὶ χρώμενος.” οὐ [f] χρυσίον ἡ φρόνησίς ἐστιν οὐδ’ ἀργύριον οὐδὲ δόξα οὐδὲ πλοῦτος οὐδ’ ὑγίεια οὐδ’ ἰσχὺς οὐδὲ κάλλος. τί οὖν ἐστι; τὸ πᾶσι τούτοις καλῶς χρῆσθαι δυνάμενον καὶ δι’ ὃ τούτων ἕκαστον ἡδὺ γίγνεται καὶ ἔνδοξον καὶ ὠφέλιμον· ἄνευ δὲ τούτου δύσχρηστα καὶ ἄκαρπα καὶ βλαβερά, καὶ βαρύνει καὶ καταισχύνει τὸν κεκτημένον. ἦ που καλῶς ὁ Ἡσιόδου Προμηθεὺς τῷ Ἐπιμηθεῖ παρακελεύεται

μή ποτε δῶρα

δέξασθαι πὰρ Ζηνὸς Ὀλυμπίου ἀλλ’ ἀποπέμπειν,

[100] [a] τὰ τυχηρὰ λέγων καὶ τὰ ἐκτός, ὡς εἰ παρεκελεύετο μὴ συρίζειν ἄμουσον ὄντα μηδ’ ἀναγιγνώσκειν ἀγράμματον μηδ’ ἱππεύειν ἄνιππον, οὕτω παρακελευόμενος αὐτῷ μὴ ἄρχειν ἀνόητον ὄντα μηδὲ πλουτεῖν ἀνελεύθερον μηδὲ γαμεῖν κρατούμενον ὑπὸ γυναικός. οὐ γὰρ μόνον “τὸ εὖ πράττειν παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν ἀφορμὴ τοῦ κακῶς φρονεῖν τοῖς ἀνοήτοις γίγνεται,” ὡς Δημοσθένης εἶπεν, ἀλλὰ τὸ εὐτυχεῖν παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν ἀφορμὴ τοῦ κακῶς πράττειν τοῖς μὴ φρονοῦσιν.

De virtute et vitio

ΠΕΡΙ ΑΡΕΤΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΚΑΚΙΑΣ

[100] Τὰ ἱμάτια δοκεῖ θερμαίνειν τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οὐκ αὐτὰ δήπου θερμαίνοντα καὶ προσβάλλοντα τὴν θερμότητα (καθ’ ἑαυτὸ γὰρ ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ψυχρόν ἐστιν, ᾗ καὶ πολλάκις καυματιζόμενοι καὶ πυρέττοντες [c] ἐξ ἑτέρων ἕτερα μεταλαμβάνουσιν), ἀλλ’ ἣν ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἀναδίδωσιν ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ θερμότητα, ταύτην ἡ ἐσθὴς τῷ σώματι προσπεσοῦσα συνέχει καὶ περιστέλλει, καὶ καθειργνυμένην εἰς τὸ σῶμα οὐκ ἐᾷ πάλιν σκεδάννυσθαι. ταὐτὸ δὴ τοῦτο τοῖς πράγμασιν ὑπάρχον ἐξαπατᾷ τοὺς πολλούς, ὡς, ἂν οἰκίας μεγάλας περιβάλωνται καὶ πλῆθος ἀνδραπόδων καὶ χρημάτων συναγάγωσιν, ἡδέως βιωσομένους. τὸ δ’ ἡδέως ζῆν καὶ ἱλαρῶς οὐκ ἔξωθέν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον ὁ ἄνθρωπος τοῖς περὶ αὑτὸν πράγμασιν ἡδονὴν καὶ χάριν ὥσπερ ἐκ πηγῆς τοῦ ἤθους προστίθησιν.

[d] αἰθομένου δὲ πυρὸς γεραρώτερος οἶκος ἰδέσθαι, καὶ πλοῦτος ἡδίων καὶ δόξα λαμπροτέρα καὶ δύναμις, ἂν τὸ ἀπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἔχῃ γῆθος· ὅπου καὶ πενίαν καὶ φυγὴν καὶ γῆρας ἐλαφρῶς καὶ προσηνῶς πρὸς εὐκολίαν καὶ πραότητα τρόπου φέρουσιν.

Ὡς γὰρ ἀρώματα τρίβωνας εὐώδεις καὶ ῥάκια ποιεῖ, τοῦ δ’ Ἀγχίσου τὸ σῶμα ἰχῶρα πονηρὸν ἐξεδίδου

νώτου καταστάζοντα βύσσινον φάρος,

οὕτω μετ’ ἀρετῆς καὶ δίαιτα πᾶσα καὶ βίος ἄλυπός ἐστι καὶ ἐπιτερπής, ἡ δὲ κακία καὶ τὰ λαμπρὰ [e] φαινόμενα καὶ πολυτελῆ καὶ σεμνὰ μιγνυμένη λυπηρὰ καὶ ναυτιώδη καὶ δυσπρόσδεκτα παρέχει τοῖς κεκτημένοις.

οὗτος μακάριος ἐν ἀγορᾷ νομίζεται·

ἐπὰν δ’ ἀνοίξῃ τὰς θύρας, τρισάθλιος,

γυνὴ κρατεῖ πάντων, ἐπιτάττει, μάχετ’ ἀεί·

καίτοι γυναικὸς οὐ χαλεπῶς ἄν τις ἀπαλλαγείη πονηρᾶς ἀνὴρ ὤν, μὴ ἀνδράποδον· πρὸς δὲ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ κακίαν οὐκ ἔστι γραψάμενον ἀπόλειψιν ἤδη πραγμάτων ἀφεῖσθαι καὶ ἀναπαύεσθαι γενόμενον καθ’ αὑτόν, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ συνοικοῦσα τοῖς σπλάγχνοις καὶ προσπεφυκυῖα νύκτωρ καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν

εὕει ἄτερ δαλοῖο καὶ ὠμῷ γήραϊ δῶκεν,

[f] βαρεῖα συνέκδημος οὖσα δι’ ἀλαζονείαν καὶ πολυτελὴς σύνδειπνος ὑπὸ λιχνείας καὶ σύγκοιτος ὀδυνηρά, φροντίσι καὶ μερίμναις καὶ ζηλοτυπίαις ἐκκόπτουσα τὸν ὕπνον καὶ διαφθείρουσα. καὶ γὰρ ὃ καθεύδουσι τοῦ σώματος ὕπνος ἐστὶ καὶ ἀνάπαυσις, τῆς δὲ ψυχῆς πτοῖαι καὶ ὄνειροι καὶ ταραχαὶ διὰ δεισιδαιμονίαν.

ὅταν δὲ νυστάζοντά μ’ ἡ λύπη λάβῃ,

ἀπόλλυμ’ ὑπὸ τῶν ἐνυπνίων

φησί τις· οὕτω δὲ καὶ φθόνος καὶ φόβος καὶ θυμὸς καὶ ἀκολασία διατίθησι. μεθ’ ἡμέραν μὲν γὰρ ἔξω βλέπουσα καὶ συσχηματιζομένη πρὸς [101] [a] ἑτέρους ἡ κακία δυσωπεῖται καὶ παρακαλύπτει τὰ πάθη, καὶ οὐ παντάπασι ταῖς ὁρμαῖς ἐκδίδωσιν ἑαυτὴν ἀλλ’ ἀντιτείνει καὶ μάχεται πολλάκις· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ὕπνοις ἀποφυγοῦσα δόξας καὶ νόμους καὶ πορρωτάτω γενομένη τοῦ δεδιέναι τε καὶ αἰδεῖσθαι, πᾶσαν ἐπιθυμίαν κινεῖ καὶ ἐπανεγείρει τὸ κακόηθες καὶ ἀκόλαστον. “μητρί τε γὰρ ἐπιχειρεῖ μίγνυσθαι,” ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, καὶ βρώσεις ἀθέσμους προσφέρεται καὶ πράξεως οὐδεμιᾶς ἀπέχεται, ἀπολαύουσα τοῦ παρανομεῖν ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστιν εἰδώλοις καὶ φάσμασιν εἰς οὐδεμίαν ἡδονὴν οὐδὲ τελείωσιν τοῦ ἐπιθυμοῦντος τελευτῶσιν, [b] ἀλλὰ κινεῖν μόνον καὶ διαγριαίνειν τὰ πάθη καὶ τὰ νοσήματα δυναμένοις.

Ποῦ τοίνυν τὸ ἡδὺ τῆς κακίας ἐστίν, εἰ μηδαμοῦ τὸ ἀμέριμνον καὶ τὸ ἄλυπον μηδ’ αὐτάρκεια μηδ’ ἀταραξία μηδ’ ἡσυχία; ταῖς μὲν γὰρ τῆς σαρκὸς ἡδοναῖς ἡ τοῦ σώματος εὐκρασία καὶ ὑγίεια χώραν καὶ γένεσιν δίδωσι· τῇ δὲ ψυχῇ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐγγενέσθαι γῆθος οὐδὲ χαρὰν βέβαιον, ἂν μὴ τὸ εὔθυμον καὶ ἄφοβον καὶ θαρραλέον ὥσπερ ἕδραν ἢ γαλήνην ἄκλυστον ὑποβάληται, ἀλλὰ κἂν ὑπομειδιάσῃ τις ἐλπὶς ἢ τέρψις, αὕτη ταχὺ φροντίδος ἐκραγείσης ὥσπερ ἐν εὐδίᾳ σπιλάδος συνεχύθη καὶ συνεταράχθη.

[c] Ἅθροιζε χρυσίον, σύναγε ἀργύριον, οἰκοδόμει περιπάτους, ἔμπλησον ἀνδραπόδων τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ χρεωστῶν τὴν πόλιν· ἂν μὴ τὰ πάθη τῆς ψυχῆς καταστορέσῃς καὶ τὴν ἀπληστίαν παύσῃς καὶ φόβων καὶ φροντίδων ἀπαλλάξῃς σαυτόν, οἶνον διηθεῖς πυρέττοντι καὶ χολικῷ μέλι προσφέρεις καὶ σιτία καὶ ὄψα κοιλιακοῖς ἑτοιμάζεις καὶ δυσεντερικοῖς, μὴ στέγουσι μηδὲ ῥωννυμένοις ἀλλὰ προσδιαφθειρομένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν. οὐχ ὁρᾷς τοὺς νοσοῦντας ὅτι τῶν βρωμάτων τὰ καθαριώτατα καὶ πολυτελέστατα δυσχεραίνουσι καὶ διαπτύουσι [d] καὶ παραιτοῦνται προσφερόντων καὶ βιαζομένων, εἶτα, τῆς κράσεως μεταβαλούσης καὶ πνεύματος χρηστοῦ καὶ γλυκέος αἵματος ἐγγενομένου καὶ θερμότητος οἰκείας, ἀναστάντες ἄρτον λιτὸν ἐπὶ τυρῷ καὶ καρδάμῳ χαίρουσι καὶ ἀσμενίζουσιν ἐσθίοντες; τοιαύτην ὁ λόγος ἐμποιεῖ τῇ ψυχῇ διάθεσιν. αὐτάρκης ἔσῃ, ἂν μάθῃς τί τὸ καλὸν κἀγαθόν ἐστι· τρυφήσεις ἐν πενίᾳ καὶ βασιλεύσεις καὶ τὸν ἀπράγμονα βίον καὶ ἰδιώτην οὐδὲν ἧττον ἀγαπήσεις ἢ τὸν ἐπὶ στρατηγίαις καὶ ἡγεμονίαις· οὐ βιώσῃ φιλοσοφήσας ἀηδῶς, ἀλλὰ πανταχοῦ ζῆν ἡδέως μαθήσῃ καὶ ἀπὸ πάντων· εὐφρανεῖ σε [e] πλοῦτος πολλοὺς εὐεργετοῦντα καὶ πενία πολλὰ μὴ μεριμνῶντα καὶ δόξα τιμώμενον καὶ ἀδοξία μὴ φθονούμενον.

Consolatio ad Apollonium

ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΗΤΙΚΟΣ ΠΡΟΣ ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝΙΟΝ

[101] Καὶ πάλαι σοι συνήλγησα καὶ συνηχθέσθην, Ἀπολλώνιε, ἀκούσας περὶ τῆς τοῦ προσφιλεστάτου πᾶσιν ἡμῖν υἱοῦ σου προώρου μεταλλαγῆς τοῦ βίου, νεανίσκου κοσμίου πάνυ καὶ σώφρονος καὶ διαφερόντως τά τε πρὸς θεοὺς καὶ τὰ πρὸς γονεῖς [102] [a] καὶ φίλους ὅσια καὶ δίκαια διαφυλάξαντος. τότε μὲν οὖν ὑπὸ τὸν τῆς τελευτῆς καιρὸν ἐντυγχάνειν σοι καὶ παρακαλεῖν ἀνθρωπίνως φέρειν τὸ συμβεβηκὸς ἀνοίκειον ἦν, παρειμένῳ τό τε σῶμα καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπὸ τῆς παραλόγου συμφορᾶς, καὶ συμπαθεῖν δ’ ἦν ἀναγκαῖον· οὐδὲ γὰρ οἱ βέλτιστοι τῶν ἰατρῶν πρὸς τὰς ἀθρόας τῶν ῥευμάτων ἐπιφορὰς εὐθὺς προσφέρουσι τὰς διὰ τῶν φαρμάκων βοηθείας, ἀλλ’ ἐῶσι τὸ βαρῦνον τῆς φλεγμονῆς δίχα τῆς τῶν ἔξωθεν περιχρίστων ἐπιθέσεως αὐτὸ δι’ αὑτοῦ λαβεῖν πέψιν.

Ἐπειδὴ οὖν καὶ χρόνος ὁ πάντα πεπαίνειν [b] εἰωθὼς ἐγγέγονε τῇ συμφορᾷ καὶ ἡ περὶ σὲ διάθεσις ἀπαιτεῖν ἔοικε τὴν παρὰ τῶν φίλων βοήθειαν, καλῶς ἔχειν ὑπέλαβον τῶν παραμυθητικῶν σοι μεταδοῦναι λόγων πρὸς ἄνεσιν τῆς λύπης καὶ παῦλαν τῶν πενθικῶν καὶ ματαίων ὀδυρμῶν.

“ψυχῆς” γὰρ “νοσούσης εἰσὶν ἰατροὶ λόγοι,

ὅταν τις ἐν καιρῷ γε μαλθάσσῃ κέαρ.”

κατὰ γὰρ τὸν σοφὸν Εὐριπίδην

ἄλλο δέ γ’ ἐπ’ ἄλλῃ φάρμακον κεῖται νόσῳ·

λυπουμένῳ μὲν μῦθος εὐμενὴς φίλων,

ἄγαν δὲ μωραίνοντι νουθετήματα.

[c]πολλῶν γὰρ ὄντων ψυχικῶν παθῶν, ἡ λύπη τὸ χαλεπώτατον πέφυκεν εἶναι πάντων·

“διὰ λύπην γάρ,” φασί, “καὶ μανίαν γίγνεσθαι

πολλοῖσι καὶ νοσήματ’ οὐκ ἰάσιμα,

αὑτούς τ’ ἀνῃρήκασι διὰ λύπην τινές.”

Τὸ μὲν οὖν ἀλγεῖν καὶ δάκνεσθαι τελευτήσαντος υἱοῦ φυσικὴν ἔχει τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς λύπης, καὶ οὐκ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν. οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγε συμφέρομαι τοῖς ὑμνοῦσι τὴν ἄγριον καὶ σκληρὰν ἀπάθειαν, ἔξω καὶ τοῦ δυνατοῦ καὶ τοῦ συμφέροντος οὖσαν· ἀφαιρήσεται γὰρ ἡμῶν αὕτη τὴν ἐκ τοῦ φιλεῖσθαι [d] καὶ φιλεῖν εὔνοιαν, ἣν παντὸς μᾶλλον διασῴζειν ἀναγκαῖον. τὸ δὲ πέρα τοῦ μέτρου παρεκφέρεσθαι καὶ συναύξειν τὰ πένθη παρὰ φύσιν εἶναί φημι καὶ ὑπὸ τῆς ἐν ἡμῖν φαύλης γίγνεσθαι δόξης. διὸ καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἐατέον ὡς βλαβερὸν καὶ φαῦλον καὶ σπουδαίοις ἀνδράσιν ἥκιστα πρέπον, τὴν δὲ μετριοπάθειαν οὐκ ἀποδοκιμαστέον. “μὴ γὰρ νοσοῖμεν” φησὶν ὁ ἀκαδημαϊκὸς Κράντωρ, “νοσήσασι δὲ παρείη τις αἴσθησις, εἴτ’ οὖν τέμνοιτό τι τῶν ἡμετέρων εἴτ’ ἀποσπῷτο.” τὸ γὰρ ἀνώδυνον τοῦτ’ οὐκ ἄνευ μεγάλων ἐγγίγνεται μισθῶν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ· τεθηριῶσθαι γὰρ εἰκὸς ἐκεῖ μὲν σῶμα [e] τοιοῦτον ἐνταῦθα δὲ ψυχήν.

Οὔτ’ οὖν ἀπαθεῖς ἐπὶ τῶν τοιούτων συμφορῶν ὁ λόγος ἀξιοῖ γίγνεσθαι τοὺς εὖ φρονοῦντας οὔτε δυσπαθεῖς· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἄτεγκτον καὶ θηριῶδες, τὸ δ’ ἐκλελυμένον καὶ γυναικοπρεπές. εὐλόγιστος δ’ ὁ τὸν οἰκεῖον ὅρον ἔχων καὶ δυνάμενος φέρειν δεξιῶς τά τε προσηνῆ καὶ τὰ λυπηρὰ τῶν ἐν τῷ βίῳ συμβαινόντων, καὶ προειληφὼς ὅτι καθάπερ ἐν δημοκρατίᾳ κλῆρός ἐστι τῶν ἀρχῶν καὶ δεῖ λαχόντα μὲν ἄρχειν ἀπολαχόντα δὲ φέρειν ἀνεπαχθῶς τὴν τύχην, οὕτω καὶ τῇ διανομῇ τῶν πραγμάτων ἀνεγκλήτως καὶ πειθηνίως ἕπεσθαι. τοῦτο γὰρ οἱ μὴ δυνάμενοι ποιεῖν οὐδὲ τὰς εὐπραγίας [f] ἂν ἐμφρόνως φέρειν δύναιντο καὶ μετρίως.

Τῶν μὲν γὰρ καλῶς λεγομένων ἐστὶν ἐν ὑποθήκης μέρει καὶ τοῦτο,

μηδ’ εὐτύχημα μηδὲν ὧδ’ ἔστω μέγα,

ὅ σ’ ἐξεπαρεῖ μεῖζον ἢ χρεὼν φρονεῖν,

μηδ’ ἄν τι συμβῇ δυσχερές, δουλοῦ πάλιν,

ἀλλ’ αὑτὸς αἰεὶ μίμνε, τὴν σαυτοῦ φύσιν

σῴζων βεβαίως, ὥστε χρυσὸς ἐν πυρί.

πεπαιδευμένων δ’ ἐστὶ καὶ σωφρόνων ἀνδρῶν πρός [103] [a] τε τὰς δοκούσας εὐτυχίας τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι, καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἀτυχίας φυλάξαι γενναίως τὸ πρέπον. τῆς γὰρ εὐλογιστίας ἔργον ἐστὶν ἢ φυλάξασθαι τὸ κακὸν ἐπιφερόμενον ἢ διορθώσασθαι γενόμενον ἢ συστεῖλαι πρὸς τὸ βραχύτατον ἢ παρασκευάζειν αὑτῷ τὴν ὑπομονὴν ἄρρενα καὶ γενναίαν. καὶ γὰρ περὶ τἀγαθὸν ἡ φρόνησις πραγματεύεται τετραχῶς, ἢ κτωμένη τἀγαθὰ ἢ φυλάττουσα ἢ αὔξουσα ἢ χρωμένη δεξιῶς. οὗτοι τῆς φρονήσεως καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀρετῶν εἰσι κανόνες, οἷς πρὸς ἀμφότερα χρηστέον.

[b] “οὐκ ἔστιν” γὰρ “ὅστις πάντ’ ἀνὴρ εὐδαιμονεῖ”

καὶ νὴ Δία

τό τοι χρεὼν οὐκ ἔστι μὴ χρεὼν ποιεῖν.

Ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν φυτοῖς ποτὲ μὲν πολυκαρπίαι γίγνονται ποτὲ δ’ ἀκαρπίαι, καὶ ἐν ζῴοις ποτὲ μὲν πολυγονίαι ποτὲ δὲ καὶ ἀγονίαι, καὶ ἐν θαλάττῃ εὐδίαι τε καὶ χειμῶνες, οὕτω καὶ ἐν βίῳ πολλαὶ καὶ ποικίλαι περιστάσεις γιγνόμεναι πρὸς τὰς ἐναντίας περιάγουσι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τύχας. εἰς ἃς διαβλέψας ἄν τις οὐκ ἀπεικότως εἴποι,

οὐκ ἐπὶ πᾶσίν σ’ ἐφύτευσ’ ἀγαθοῖς,

[c] Ἀγάμεμνον, Ἀτρεύς.

δεῖ δέ σε χαίρειν καὶ λυπεῖσθαι·

θνητὸς γὰρ ἔφυς. κἂν μὴ σὺ θέλῃς,

τὰ θεῶν οὕτω βουλόμεν’ ἔσται

καὶ τὸ ὑπὸ Μενάνδρου ῥηθέν

εἰ γὰρ ἐγένου σύ, τρόφιμε, τῶν πάντων μόνος,

ὅτ’ ἔτικτεν ἡ μήτηρ σ’, ἐφ’ ᾧ τε διατελεῖν

πράττων ἃ βούλει καὶ διευτυχῶν ἀεί,

καὶ τοῦτο τῶν θεῶν τις ὡμολόγησέ σοι,

ὀρθῶς ἀγανακτεῖς· ἔστι γάρ σ’ ἐψευσμένος,

ἄτοπόν τε πεποίηκ’. εἰ δ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς νόμοις

ἐφ’ οἷσπερ ἡμεῖς ἔσπασας τὸν ἀέρα

[d] τὸν κοινόν, ἵνα σοι καὶ τραγικώτερον λαλῶ,

οἰστέον ἄμεινον ταῦτα καὶ λογιστέον.

τὸ δὲ κεφάλαιον τῶν λόγων, ἄνθρωπος εἶ,

οὗ μεταβολὴν θᾶττον πρὸς ὕψος καὶ πάλιν

ταπεινότητα ζῷον οὐδὲν λαμβάνει.

καὶ μάλα δικαίως· ἀσθενέστατον γὰρ ὂν

φύσει μεγίστοις οἰκονομεῖται πράγμασιν,

ὅταν πέσῃ δέ, πλεῖστα συντρίβει καλά.

σὺ δ’ οὔθ’ ὑπερβάλλοντα, τρόφιμ’, ἀπώλεσας

[e] ἀγαθά, τὰ νυνί τ’ ἐστὶ μέτριά σοι κακά.

ὥστ’ ἀνὰ μέσον που καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν ὂν φέρε.

ἀλλ’ ὅμως τοιούτων ὄντων τῶν πραγμάτων ἔνιοι διὰ τὴν ἀφροσύνην οὕτως εἰσὶν ἀβέλτεροι καὶ κεναυχεῖς, ὥστε μικρὸν ἐπαρθέντες ἢ διὰ χρημάτων περιουσίαν ἄφθονον ἢ διὰ μέγεθος ἀρχῆς ἢ διά τινας προεδρίας πολιτικὰς ἢ διὰ τιμὰς καὶ δόξας [f] ἐπαπειλεῖν τοῖς ἥττοσι καὶ ἐξυβρίζειν, οὐκ ἐνθυμούμενοι τὸ τῆς τύχης ἄστατον καὶ ἀβέβαιον, οὐδ’ ὅτι ῥᾳδίως τὰ ὑψηλὰ γίγνεται ταπεινὰ καὶ τὰ χθαμαλὰ πάλιν ὑψοῦται ταῖς ὀξυρρόποις μεθιστάμενα τῆς τύχης μεταβολαῖς. ζητεῖν οὖν ἐν ἀβεβαίοις βέβαιόν τι λογιζομένων ἐστὶ περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων οὐκ ὀρθῶς·

“τροχοῦ” γὰρ “περιστείχοντος ἄλλοθ’ ἡτέρα

ἁψὶς ὕπερθε γίγνετ’ ἄλλοθ’ ἡτέρα.”

Κράτιστον δὴ πρὸς ἀλυπίαν φάρμακον ὁ λόγος καὶ ἡ διὰ τούτου παρασκευὴ πρὸς πάσας τοῦ βίου τὰς μεταβολάς. χρὴ γὰρ οὐ μόνον ἑαυτὸν εἰδέναι θνητὸν ὄντα τὴν φύσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅτι θνητῷ σύγκληρός ἐστι βίῳ καὶ πράγμασι ῥᾳδίως μεθισταμένοις [104] [a] πρὸς τοὐναντίον. ἀνθρώπων γὰρ ὄντως θνητὰ μὲν καὶ ἐφήμερα τὰ σώματα, θνηταὶ δὲ τύχαι καὶ πάθη καὶ πάνθ’ ἁπλῶς τὰ κατὰ τὸν βίον, ἅπερ

οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν βροτὸν οὐδ’ ὑπαλύξαι

τὸ παράπαν ἀλλά

Ταρτάρου πυθμὴν πιέζει σ’ ἀφανοῦς σφυρηλάτοις

ἀνάγκαις

ὥς φησι Πίνδαρος. ὅθεν ὀρθῶς ὁ Φαληρεὺς Δημήτριος εἰπόντος Εὐριπίδου

ὁ δ’ ὄλβος οὐ βέβαιος ἀλλ’ ἐφήμερος

καὶ ὅτι

μίκρ’ ἄττα τὰ σφάλλοντα, καὶ μί’ ἡμέρα

τὰ μὲν καθεῖλεν ὑψόθεν τὰ δ’ ἦρ’ ἄνω

[b] τὰ μὲν ἄλλα καλῶς ἔφη λέγειν αὐτὸν βέλτιον δ’ ἔχειν ἄν, εἰ μὴ μίαν ἡμέραν ἀλλὰ στιγμὴν εἶπε χρόνου.

κύκλος γὰρ αὑτὸς καρπίμοις τε γῆς φυτοῖς

γένει βροτῶν τε. τοῖς μὲν αὔξεται βίος,

τῶν δὲ φθίνει τε κἀκθερίζεται πάλιν.

ὁ δὲ Πίνδαρος ἐν ἄλλοις

τί δέ τις; τί δ’ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ

ἄνθρωπος

ἐμφαντικῶς σφόδρα καὶ φιλοτέχνως ὑπερβολῇ χρησάμενος τὸν τῶν ἀνθρώπων βίον ἐδήλωσε. τί γὰρ σκιᾶς ἀσθενέστερον; τὸ δὲ ταύτης ὄναρ οὐδ’ [c] ἂν ἐκφράσαι τις ἕτερος δυνηθείη σαφῶς. τούτοις δ’ ἑπόμενος καὶ ὁ Κράντωρ παραμυθούμενος ἐπὶ τῇ τῶν τέκνων τελευτῇ τὸν Ἱπποκλέα φησί· “ταῦτα γὰρ πᾶσα αὕτη ἡ ἀρχαία φιλοσοφία λέγει τε καὶ παρακελεύεται. ὧν εἰ δή τι ἄλλο μὴ ἀποδεχόμεθα, τό γε πολλαχῆ εἶναι ἐργώδη καὶ δύσκολον τὸν βίον ἄγαν ἀληθές. καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ φύσει τοῦτον ἔχει τὸν τρόπον, ὑπό γ’ ἡμῶν εἰς τοῦτ’ ἀφῖκται διαφθορᾶς. ἥ τ’ ἄδηλος αὕτη τύχη πόρρωθεν ἡμῖν καὶ ἔτ’ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἠκολούθηκεν οὐδ’ ἐφ’ ἑνὶ ὑγιεῖ, φυομένοις τε μίγνυταί τις ἐν πᾶσι κακοῦ μοῖρα· τὰ γάρ τοι σπέρματα εὐθὺς θνητὰ ὄντα ταύτης κοινωνεῖ τῆς αἰτίας, ἐξ ἧς ἀφυΐα μὲν ψυχῆς, νόσοι τε καὶ κήδεα καὶ μοῖρα θνητῶν ἐκεῖθεν ἡμῖν ἕρπει.”

[d] Τοῦ δὴ χάριν ἐτραπόμεθα δεῦρο; ἵν’ εἰδείημεν ὅτι καινὸν ἀτυχεῖν οὐδὲν ἀνθρώπῳ ἀλλὰ πάντες ταὐτὸ πεπόνθαμεν. “ἄσκοπος γὰρ ἡ τύχη,” φησὶν ὁ Θεόφραστος, “καὶ δεινὴ παρελέσθαι τὰ προπεπονημένα καὶ μεταρρῖψαι τὴν δοκοῦσαν εὐημερίαν, οὐδένα καιρὸν ἔχουσα τακτόν.” ταῦτα δὲ καὶ ἄλλα τοιαῦτα καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἑκάστῳ λογίσασθαι ῥᾴδιον, καὶ ἄλλων ἀκοῦσαι παλαιῶν καὶ σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν· ὧν πρῶτος μέν ἐστιν ὁ θεῖος Ὅμηρος, εἰπών,

οὐδὲν ἀκιδνότερον γαῖα τρέφει ἀνθρώποιο.

οὐ μὲν γάρ ποτέ φησι κακὸν πείσεσθαι ὀπίσσω,

ὄφρ’ ἀρετὴν παρέχωσι θεοὶ καὶ γούνατ’ ὀρώρῃ·

ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ καὶ λυγρὰ θεοὶ μάκαρες τελέουσι,

[e] καὶ τὰ φέρει ἀεκαζόμενος τετληότι θυμῷ

καί

τοῖος γὰρ νόος ἐστὶν ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων,

οἷον ἐπ’ ἦμαρ ἄγῃσι πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε

καὶ ἐν ἄλλοις

“Τυδείδη μεγάθυμε, τίη γενεὴν ἐρεείνεις;

οἵη περ φύλλων γενεή, τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.

φύλλα τὰ μέν τ’ ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θ’ ὕλη

τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἔαρος δ’ ἐπιγίγνεται ὥρη·

ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ ἡ μὲν φύει ἡ δ’ ἀπολήγει.”

[f] ταύτῃ δ’ ὅτι καλῶς ἐχρήσατο τῇ εἰκόνι τοῦ ἀνθρωπείου βίου δῆλον ἐξ ὧν ἐν ἄλλῳ τόπῳ φησὶν οὕτω,

βροτῶν ἕνεκα πτολεμίζειν

δειλῶν, οἳ φύλλοισιν ἐοικότες, ἄλλοτε μέν τε

ζαφλεγέες τελέθουσιν ἀρούρης καρπὸν ἔδοντες,

ἄλλοτε δὲ φθινύθουσιν ἀκήριοι, οὐδέ τις ἀλκή.

[105] [a] Σιμωνίδης δ’ ὁ τῶν μελῶν ποιητής, Παυσανίου τοῦ βασιλέως τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων μεγαλαυχουμένου συνεχῶς ἐπὶ ταῖς αὑτοῦ πράξεσι καὶ κελεύοντος ἀπαγγεῖλαί τι αὐτῷ σοφὸν μετὰ χλευασμοῦ, συνεὶς αὐτοῦ τὴν ὑπερηφανίαν συνεβούλευε μεμνῆσθαι ὅτι ἄνθρωπός ἐστι.

Φίλιππος δ’ ὁ τῶν Μακεδόνων βασιλεὺς τριῶν αὐτῷ προσαγγελθέντων εὐτυχημάτων ὑφ’ ἕνα καιρόν, πρώτου μὲν ὅτι τεθρίππῳ νενίκηκεν Ὀλύμπια, δευτέρου δ’ ὅτι Παρμενίων ὁ στρατηγὸς μάχῃ [b] Δαρδανεῖς ἐνίκησε, τρίτου δ’ ὅτι ἄρρεν αὐτῷ παιδίον ἐκύησεν Ὀλυμπιάς, ἀνατείνας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν τὰς χεῖρας “ὦ δαῖμον,” εἶπε, “μέτριόν τι τούτοις ἀντίθες ἐλάττωμα,” εἰδὼς ὅτι τοῖς μεγάλοις εὐτυχήμασι φθονεῖν πέφυκεν ἡ τύχη.

Θηραμένης δ’ ὁ γενόμενος Ἀθήνησι τῶν τριάκοντα τυράννων, συμπεσούσης τῆς οἰκίας ἐν ᾗ μετὰ πλειόνων ἐδείπνει, μόνος σωθεὶς καὶ πρὸς πάντων εὐδαιμονιζόμενος, ἀναφωνήσας μεγάλῃ τῇ φωνῇ, “ὦ τύχη,” εἶπεν, “εἰς τίνα με καιρὸν ἄρα φυλάττεις;” μετ’ οὐ πολὺν δὲ χρόνον καταστρεβλωθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν συντυράννων ἐτελεύτησεν.

Ὑπερφυῶς δὲ φαίνεται περὶ τὴν παραμυθίαν [c] ὁ ποιητὴς εὐδοκιμεῖν, ποιήσας τὸν Ἀχιλλέα λέγοντα πρὸς τὸν Πρίαμον ἥκοντα ἐπὶ λύτρα τοῦ Ἕκτορος ταυτί·

ἀλλ’ ἄγε δὴ κατ’ ἄρ’ ἕζευ ἐπὶ θρόνου, ἄλγεα δ’ ἔμπης

ἐν θυμῷ κατακεῖσθαι ἐάσομεν ἀχνύμενοί περ·

οὐ γάρ τις πρῆξις πέλεται κρυεροῖο γόοιο.

ὣς γὰρ ἐπεκλώσαντο θεοὶ δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσι,

ζώειν ἀχνυμένοις· αὐτοὶ δέ τ’ ἀκηδέες εἰσί.

δοιοὶ γάρ τε πίθοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὔδει

δώρων οἷα δίδωσι, κακῶν, ἕτερος δὲ ἐάων.

ᾧ μέν κ’ ἀμμείξας δώῃ Ζεὺς τερπικέραυνος,

[d] ἄλλοτε μέν τε κακῷ ὅ γε κύρεται ἄλλοτε δ’ ἐσθλῷ·

ᾧ δέ κε τῶν λυγρῶν δώῃ, λωβητὸν ἔθηκε

καί ἑ κακὴ βούβρωστις ἐπὶ χθόνα δῖαν ἐλαύνει,

φοιτᾷ δ’ οὔτε θεοῖσι τετιμένος οὔτε βροτοῖσιν.

ὁ δὲ μετὰ τοῦτον καὶ τῇ δόξῃ καὶ τῷ χρόνῳ, καίτοι τῶν Μουσῶν ἀναγορεύων ἑαυτὸν μαθητὴν Ἡσίοδος, καὶ οὗτος ἐν πίθῳ καθείρξας τὰ κακά, τὴν Πανδώραν ἀνοίξασαν ἀποφαίνει σκεδάσαι τὸ πλῆθος ἐπὶ πᾶσαν γῆν καὶ θάλατταν, λέγων ὧδε·

ἀλλὰ γυνὴ χείρεσσι πίθου μέγα πῶμ’ ἀφελοῦσα

[e] ἐσκέδασ’· ἀνθρώποισι δὲ μήσατο κήδεα λυγρά.

μούνη δ’ αὐτόθι Ἐλπὶς ἐν ἀρρήκτοισι δόμοισιν

ἔνδον ἔμεινε πίθου ὑπὸ χείλεσιν, οὐδὲ θύραζε

ἐξέπτη· πρόσθεν γὰρ ἐπέλλαβε πῶμα πίθοιο.

ἄλλα δὲ μυρία λυγρὰ κατ’ ἀνθρώπους ἀλάληται.

πλείη μὲν γὰρ γαῖα κακῶν, πλείη δὲ θάλασσα.

νοῦσοι δ’ ἀνθρώποισιν ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ αἱ δ’ ἐπὶ νυκτὶ

αὐτόματοι φοιτῶσι, κακὰ θνητοῖσι φέρουσαι

σιγῇ, ἐπεὶ φωνὴν ἐξείλετο μητίετα Ζεύς.

[f] Ἀπηρτημένως δὲ τούτοις ὁ κωμικὸς ἐπὶ τῶν δυσπαθούντων ἐπὶ ταῖς τοιαύταις συμφοραῖς ταυτὶ λέγει·

εἰ τὰ δάκρυ’ ἡμῖν τῶν κακῶν ἦν φάρμακον,

ἀεί θ’ ὁ κλαύσας τοῦ πονεῖν ἐπαύετο,

ἠλλαττόμεσθ’ ἂν δάκρυα, δόντες χρυσίον.

νῦν δ’ οὐ προσέχει τὰ πράγματ’ οὐδ’ ἀποβλέπει

εἰς ταῦτα, δέσποτ’, ἀλλὰ τὴν αὐτὴν ὁδόν,

ἐάν τε κλάῃς ἄν τε μή, πορεύεται.

τί οὖν πλέον ποιοῦμεν; οὐδέν· ἡ λύπη δ’ ἔχει

[106] [a] ὥσπερ τὰ δένδρα ταῦτα καρπὸν τὰ δάκρυα.

ὁ δὲ παραμυθούμενος τὴν Δανάην δυσπαθοῦσαν Δίκτυς φησί·

δοκεῖς τὸν Ἅιδην σῶν τι φροντίζειν γόων

καὶ παῖδ’ ἀνήσειν τὸν σόν, εἰ θέλοις στένειν;

παῦσαι· βλέπουσα δ’ εἰς τὰ τῶν πέλας κακὰ

ῥᾴων γένοι’ ἄν, εἰ λογίζεσθαι θέλοις

ὅσοι τε δεσμοῖς ἐκμεμόχθηνται βροτῶν,

ὅσοι τε γηράσκουσιν ὀρφανοὶ τέκνων,

τούς τ’ ἐκ μέγιστον ὀλβίας τυραννίδος

[b] τὸ μηδὲν ὄντας. ταῦτά σε σκοπεῖν χρεών.

κελεύει γὰρ αὐτὴν ἐνθυμεῖσθαι τὰ τῶν ἴσα καὶ μείζω δυστυχούντων, ὡς ἐσομένην ἐλαφροτέραν.

Ἐνταῦθα γὰρ ἄν τις ἑλκύσειε καὶ τὴν τοῦ Σωκράτους φωνήν, τὴν οἰομένην, εἰ συνεισενέγκαιμεν εἰς τὸ κοινὸν τὰς ἀτυχίας, ὥστε διελέσθαι τὸ ἴσον ἕκαστον, ἀσμένως ἂν τοὺς πλείους τὰς αὑτῶν λαβόντας ἀπελθεῖν.

Ἐχρήσατο δὲ τῇ τοιαύτῃ ἀγωγῇ καὶ Ἀντίμαχος ὁ ποιητής. ἀποθανούσης γὰρ τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτῷ Λύδης, πρὸς ἣν φιλοστόργως εἶχε, παραμύθιον τῆς λύπης αὑτῷ ἐποίησε τὴν ἐλεγείαν τὴν καλουμένην [c] Λύδην, ἐξαριθμησάμενος τὰς ἡρωικὰς συμφοράς, τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις κακοῖς ἐλάττω τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ποιῶν λύπην. ὥστε καταφανὲς εἶναι ὅτι ὁ παραμυθούμενος τὸν λελυπημένον καὶ δεικνύων κοινὸν καὶ πολλῶν τὸ συμβεβηκὸς καὶ τῶν καὶ ἑτέροις συμβεβηκότων ἔλαττον τὴν δόξαν τοῦ λελυπημένου μεθίστησι καὶ τοιαύτην τινὰ ποιεῖ πίστιν αὐτῷ, ὅτι ἔλαττον ἢ ἡλίκον ᾤετο τὸ συμβεβηκός ἐστιν.

Ὁ δ’ Αἰσχύλος καλῶς ἔοικεν ἐπιπλήττειν τοῖς νομίζουσι τὸν θάνατον εἶναι κακόν, λέγων ὧδε·

ὡς οὐ δικαίως θάνατον ἔχθουσιν βροτοί,

ὅσπερ μέγιστον ῥῦμα τῶν πολλῶν κακῶν.

τοῦτον γὰρ ἀπεμιμήσατο καὶ ὁ εἰπών·

[d] ὦ θάνατε, παιὰν ἰατρὸς μόλοις.

“λιμὴν” γὰρ ὄντως “Ἀίδας ἀνιᾶν.”

μέγα γάρ ἐστι τὸ μετὰ πείσματος τεθαρρηκότος εἰπεῖν

τίς δ’ ἐστὶ δοῦλος τοῦ θανεῖν ἄφροντις ὤν;

καὶ

Ἅιδην δ’ ἔχων βοηθὸν οὐ τρέμω σκιάς.

τί γὰρ τὸ χαλεπόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ δυσανιῶν καὶ ἐν τῷ τεθνάναι; τὰ γὰρ τοῦ θανάτου μήποτε καὶ λίαν ἡμῖν ὄντα συνήθη καὶ συμφυῆ πάλιν οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως δυσαλγῆ δοκεῖ εἶναι. τί γὰρ θαυμαστὸν εἰ τὸ τμητὸν τέτμηται, εἰ τὸ τηκτὸν τέτηκται, εἰ τὸ καυστὸν [e] κέκαυται, εἰ τὸ φθαρτὸν ἔφθαρται; πότε γὰρ ἐν ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ θάνατος; καί, ᾗ φησιν Ἡράκλειτος, “ταὐτό γ’ ἔνι ζῶν καὶ τεθνηκὸς καὶ τὸ ἐγρηγορὸς καὶ τὸ καθεῦδον καὶ νέον καὶ γηραιόν· τάδε γὰρ μεταπεσόντα ἐκεῖνά ἐστι, κἀκεῖνα πάλιν μεταπεσόντα ταῦτα.” ὡς γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ πηλοῦ δύναταί τις πλάττων ζῷα συγχεῖν καὶ πάλιν πλάττειν καὶ συγχεῖν καὶ τοῦθ’ ἓν παρ’ ἓν ποιεῖν ἀδιαλείπτως, οὕτω καὶ ἡ φύσις ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς ὕλης [f] πάλαι μὲν τοὺς προγόνους ἡμῶν ἀνέσχεν, εἶτα συνεχεῖς αὐτοῖς ἐγέννησε τοὺς πατέρας, εἶθ’ ἡμᾶς, εἶτ’ ἄλλους ἐπ’ ἄλλοις ἀνακυκλήσει. καὶ ὁ τῆς γενέσεως ποταμὸς οὕτως ἐνδελεχῶς ῥέων οὔποτε στήσεται, καὶ πάλιν ὁ ἐξ ἐναντίας αὐτῷ ὁ τῆς φθορᾶς εἴτ’ Ἀχέρων εἴτε Κωκυτὸς καλούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ποιητῶν. ἡ πρώτη οὖν αἰτία ἡ δείξασα ἡμῖν τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου φῶς, ἡ αὐτὴ καὶ τὸν ζοφερὸν Ἅιδην ἄγει. καὶ μήποτε τοῦδ’ εἰκὼν ᾖ ὁ περὶ ἡμᾶς ἀήρ, ἓν παρ’ ἓν ἡμέραν καὶ νύκτα ποιῶν, ἐπαγωγοὺς ζωῆς τε καὶ θανάτου καὶ ὕπνου καὶ ἐγρηγόρσεως; διὸ καὶ μοιρίδιον χρέος εἶναι λέγεται τὸ ζῆν, ὡς ἀποδοθησόμενον ὃ ἐδανείσαντο [107] [a] ἡμῶν οἱ προπάτορες. ὃ δὴ καὶ εὐκόλως καταβλητέον καὶ ἀστενάκτως, ὅταν ὁ δανείσας ἀπαιτῇ· εὐγνωμονέστατοι γὰρ ἂν οὕτω φανείημεν.

Οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τὴν φύσιν ὁρῶσαν τό τ’ ἄτακτον καὶ βραχυχρόνιον τοῦ βίου ἄδηλον ποιῆσαι τὴν τοῦ θανάτου προθεσμίαν. τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν ἄμεινον· εἰ γὰρ προῄδειμεν, κἂν προεξετήκοντό τινες ταῖς λύπαις καὶ πρὶν ἀποθανεῖν ἐτεθνήκεσαν. ὅρα δὲ καὶ τοῦ βίου τὸ ὀδυνηρὸν καὶ τὸ πολλαῖς φροντίσιν ἐπηντλημένον, ἃς εἰ βουλοίμεθα καταριθμεῖσθαι, λίαν ἂν αὐτοῦ καταγνοίημεν, ἐπαληθεύσαιμεν δὲ καὶ τὴν παρ’ ἐνίοις κρατοῦσαν δόξαν ὡς ἄρα κρεῖττόν ἐστι τὸ τεθνάναι τοῦ ζῆν. ὁ γοῦν Σιμωνίδης,

[b] “ἀνθρώπων,” φησίν, “ὀλίγον μὲν κάρτος, ἄπρακτοι δὲ μεληδόνες,

αἰῶνι δὲ παύρῳ πόνος ἀμφὶ πόνῳ.

ὁ δ’ ἄφυκτος ὁμῶς ἐπικρέμαται θάνατος·

κείνου γὰρ ἴσον λάχον μέρος οἵ τ’ ἀγαθοί

ὅστις τε κακός.”

Πίνδαρος δέ·

ἓν παρ’ ἐσθλὸν σύνδυο πήματα δαίονται βροτοῖς

ἀθάνατοι. τὰ μὲν ὦν οὐ δύνανται νήπιοι κόσμῳ

φέρειν.

Σοφοκλῆς δέ·

σὺ δ’ ἄνδρα θνητὸν εἰ κατέφθιτο στένεις,

εἰδὼς τὸ μέλλον οὐδὲν εἰ κέρδος φέρει;

Εὐριπίδης δέ·

τὰ θνητὰ πράγματ’ οἶσθά γ’ ἣν ἔχει φύσιν;

[c] δοκῶ μὲν οὔ· πόθεν γάρ; ἀλλ’ ἄκουέ μου.

βροτοῖς ἅπασι κατθανεῖν ὀφείλεται,

κοὐκ ἔστιν αὐτῶν ὅστις ἐξεπίσταται

τὴν αὔριον μέλλουσαν εἰ βιώσεται.

τὸ τῆς τύχης γὰρ ἀφανὲς οἷ προβήσεται.

τοιούτου δὴ τοῦ βίου τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὄντος οἷον οὗτοί φασι, πῶς οὐκ εὐδαιμονίζειν μᾶλλον προσήκει τοὺς ἀπολυθέντας τῆς ἐν αὐτῷ λατρείας ἢ κατοικτίρειν τε καὶ θρηνεῖν, ὅπερ οἱ πολλοὶ δρῶσι δι’ ἀμαθίαν;

[d] Ὁ δὲ Σωκράτης παραπλήσιον ἔλεγεν εἶναι τὸν θάνατον ἤτοι τῷ βαθυτάτῳ ὕπνῳ ἢ ἀποδημίᾳ μακρᾷ καὶ πολυχρονίῳ ἢ τρίτον φθορᾷ τινι καὶ ἀφανισμῷ τοῦ τε σώματος καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς, κατ’ οὐδὲν δὲ τούτων κακὸν εἶναι. καὶ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐπεπορεύετο, καὶ πρῶτον τῷ πρώτῳ. εἰ γὰρ δὴ ὕπνος τίς ἐστιν ὁ θάνατος καὶ περὶ τοὺς καθεύδοντας μηδέν ἐστι κακόν, δῆλον ὡς οὐδὲ περὶ τοὺς τετελευτηκότας εἴη ἄν τι κακόν. ἀλλὰ μήν γ’ ὅτι ἥδιστός ἐστιν ὁ βαθύτατος τί δεῖ καὶ λέγειν; αὐτὸ γὰρ τὸ πρᾶγμα φανερόν ἐστι πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, μαρτυρεῖ δὲ καὶ Ὅμηρος ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ λέγων·

νήγρετος ἥδιστος, θανάτῳ ἄγχιστα ἐοικώς.

[e] ἀλλαχοῦ δὲ καὶ ταῦτα λέγει·

ἔνθ’ Ὕπνῳ ξύμβλητο, κασιγνήτῳ Θανάτοιο

καί·

Ὕπνῳ καὶ Θανάτῳ διδυμάοσιν,

ὄψει τὴν ὁμοιότητα αὐτῶν δηλῶν· τὰ γὰρ δίδυμα τὴν ὁμοιότητα μάλιστα παρεμφαίνει. πάλιν τέ πού φησι τὸν θάνατον εἶναι “χάλκεον ὕπνον,” τὴν ἀναισθησίαν ἡμῶν αἰνιττόμενος. οὐκ ἀμούσως δ’ ἔδοξεν ἀποφήνασθαι οὐδ’ ὁ εἰπὼν “τὸν ὕπνον τὰ μικρὰ τοῦ θανάτου μυστήρια”· προμύησις γὰρ ὄντως ἐστὶ τοῦ θανάτου ὁ ὕπνος. πάνυ δὲ σοφῶς καὶ ὁ κυνικὸς Διογένης κατενεχθεὶς εἰς ὕπνον καὶ [f] μέλλων ἐκλείπειν τὸν βίον, διεγείραντος αὐτὸν τοῦ ἰατροῦ καὶ πυθομένου μή τι περὶ αὐτὸν εἴη χαλεπόν, “οὐδέν,” ἔφη· “ὁ γὰρ ἀδελφὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν προλαμβάνει.”

Εἴ γε μὴν ἀποδημίᾳ προσέοικεν ὁ θάνατος,

οὐδ’ οὕτως ἐστὶ κακόν· μήποτε δὲ καὶ τοὐναντίον ἀγαθόν. τὸ γὰρ ἀδούλωτον τῇ σαρκὶ καὶ τοῖς ταύτης πάθεσι διάγειν, ὑφ’ ὧν κατασπώμενος ὁ νοῦς τῆς θνητῆς ἀναπίμπλαται φλυαρίας, εὔδαιμόν τι [108] [a] καὶ μακάριον. “μυρίας μὲν γὰρ ἡμῖν,” φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων, “ἀσχολίας παρέχει τὸ σῶμα διὰ τὴν ἀναγκαίαν τροφήν· ἔτι δ’ ἐάν τινες νόσοι προσπέσωσιν, ἐμποδίζουσιν ἡμῖν τὴν τοῦ ὄντος θήραν, ἐρώτων δὲ καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν καὶ φόβων καὶ εἰδώλων παντοδαπῶν καὶ φλυαρίας ἐμπίπλησιν ἡμᾶς, ὥστε τὸ λεγόμενον ὡς ἀληθῶς τῷ ὄντι ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ οὐδὲ φρονῆσαι ἡμῖν ἐγγίγνεται οὐδέποτ’ οὐδέν. καὶ γὰρ πολέμους καὶ στάσεις καὶ μάχας οὐδὲν ἄλλο παρέχει ἢ τὸ σῶμα καὶ αἱ τούτου ἐπιθυμίαι· διὰ γὰρ τὴν τῶν χρημάτων κτῆσιν πάντες οἱ πόλεμοι [b] γίγνονται· τὰ δὲ χρήματα ἀναγκαζόμεθα κτᾶσθαι διὰ τὸ σῶμα, δουλεύοντες τῇ τούτου θεραπείᾳ· καὶ ἐκ τούτου ἀσχολίαν ἄγομεν φιλοσοφίας πέρι διὰ ταῦτα πάντα. τὸ δ’ ἔσχατον πάντων, ὅτι ἐάν τις ἡμῖν καὶ σχολὴ γένηται ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τραπώμεθα πρὸς τὸ σκοπεῖν τι, ἐν ταῖς ζητήσεσι πανταχοῦ παραπῖπτον θόρυβον παρέχει καὶ ταραχὴν καὶ ἐκπλήττει, ὥστε μὴ δύνασθαι ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καθορᾶν τἀληθές. ἀλλὰ τῷ ὄντι ἡμῖν δέδεικται ὅτι εἰ μέλλομέν ποτε καθαρῶς τι εἴσεσθαι, ἀπαλλακτέον αὐτοῦ καὶ αὐτῇ τῇ ψυχῇ θεατέον αὐτὰ τὰ πράγματα· [c] καὶ τότε, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἡμῖν ἔσται οὗ ἐπιθυμοῦμεν καὶ οὗ φαμεν ἐρᾶν (ἔστι δὲ φρόνησις), ἐπειδὰν τελευτήσωμεν, ὡς ὁ λόγος σημαίνει, ζῶσι δ’ οὔ. εἰ γὰρ μὴ οἷόν τε μετὰ τοῦ σώματος μηδὲν καθαρῶς γνῶναι, δυοῖν θάτερον, ἢ οὐδαμοῦ ἔστι κτήσασθαι τὸ εἰδέναι ἢ τελευτήσασι· τότε γὰρ αὐτὴ καθ’ αὑτὴν ἔσται ἡ ψυχὴ χωρὶς τοῦ σώματος, πρότερον δ’ οὔ. καὶ ἐν ᾧ ἂν ζῶμεν, οὕτως, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐγγυτάτω ἐσόμεθα τοῦ εἰδέναι, ἐὰν ὅτι μάλιστα μηδὲν ὁμιλῶμεν τῷ σώματι μηδὲ κοινωνῶμεν, ὅτι μὴ πᾶσα ἀνάγκη, μηδὲ ἀναπιμπλώμεθα τῆς τούτου φύσεως, ἀλλὰ καθαρεύωμεν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ, [d] ἕως ἂν ὁ θεὸς αὐτὸς ἀπολύσῃ ἡμᾶς. καὶ οὕτω μὲν ἀπαλλαττόμενοι τῆς τοῦ σώματος ἀφροσύνης, ὡς τὸ εἰκός, μετὰ τοιούτων ἐσόμεθα, δι’ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν πᾶν τὸ εἰλικρινὲς ὁρῶντες· τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ τὸ ἀληθές. μὴ καθαρῷ γὰρ καθαροῦ ἐφάπτεσθαι μὴ οὐ θεμιτὸν ᾖ.”

Ὥστ’ εἰ καὶ προσέοικε μετάγειν εἰς ἕτερον τόπον ὁ θάνατος, οὐκ ἔστι κακόν· μήποτε γὰρ καὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀναφαίνηται, καθάπερ ἀπέδειξεν ὁ Πλάτων. διὸ καὶ πάνυ δαιμονίως ὁ Σωκράτης πρὸς [e] τοὺς δικαστὰς τοιαῦτ’ ἔφη· “τὸ γὰρ δεδιέναι, ὦ ἄνδρες, τὸν θάνατον οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἐστὶν ἢ δοκεῖν σοφὸν εἶναι μὴ ὄντα· δοκεῖν γὰρ εἰδέναι ἐστὶν ἃ οὐκ οἶδεν. οἶδε μὲν γὰρ οὐδεὶς τὸν θάνατον οὐδ’ εἰ τυγχάνει τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ μέγιστον πάντων ὂν τῶν ἀγαθῶν, δεδίασι δ’ ὡς εὖ εἰδότες ὅτι μέγιστον τῶν κακῶν ἐστιν.” οὐκ ἀπᾴδειν δ’ ἔοικε τούτων οὐδ’ ὁ εἰπών·

μηδεὶς φοβείσθω θάνατον ἀπόλυσιν πόνων,

ἀλλὰ καὶ κακῶν τῶν μεγίστων.

Λέγεται δὲ τούτοις μαρτυρεῖν καὶ τὸ θεῖον. πολλοὺς γὰρ παρειλήφαμεν δι’ εὐσέβειαν παρὰ θεῶν ταύτης τυχόντας τῆς δωρεᾶς. ὧν τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους φειδόμενος τῆς συμμετρίας τοῦ συγγράμματος παραλείψω· μνησθήσομαι δὲ τῶν ὄντων ἐμφανεστάτων καὶ πᾶσι διὰ στόματος.

[f] Πρῶτα δή σοι τὰ περὶ Κλέοβιν καὶ Βίτωνα τοὺς Ἀργείους νεανίσκους διηγήσομαι. φασὶ γὰρ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτῶν ἱερείας οὔσης τῆς Ἥρας ἐπειδὴ τῆς εἰς τὸν νεὼν ἀναβάσεως ἧκεν ὁ καιρός, τῶν ἑλκόντων τὴν ἀπήνην ὀρέων ὑστερησάντων καὶ τῆς ὥρας ἐπειγούσης, τούτους ὑποδύντας ὑπὸ τὴν ἀπήνην ἀγαγεῖν εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν τὴν μητέρα, τὴν δ’ ὑπερησθεῖσαν τῇ τῶν υἱῶν εὐσεβείᾳ κατεύξασθαι τὸ κράτιστον αὐτοῖς παρὰ τῆς θεοῦ δοθῆναι τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις, τοὺς δὲ κατακοιμηθέντας μηκέτ’ ἀναστῆναι, τῆς θεοῦ τὸν θάνατον αὐτοῖς τῆς εὐσεβείας ἀμοιβὴν δωρησαμένης.

[109] [a] Καὶ περὶ Ἀγαμήδους δὲ καὶ Τροφωνίου φησὶ Πίνδαρος τὸν νεὼν τὸν ἐν Δελφοῖς οἰκοδομήσαντας αἰτεῖν παρὰ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος μισθόν, τὸν δ’ αὐτοῖς ἐπαγγείλασθαι εἰς ἑβδόμην ἡμέραν ἀποδώσειν, ἐν τοσούτῳ δ’ εὐωχεῖσθαι παρακελεύσασθαι· τοὺς δὲ ποιήσαντας τὸ προσταχθὲν τῇ ἑβδόμῃ νυκτὶ κατακοιμηθέντας τελευτῆσαι.

Λέγεται δὲ καὶ αὐτῷ Πινδάρῳ ἐπισκήψαντι

τοῖς παρὰ τῶν Βοιωτῶν πεμφθεῖσιν εἰς θεοῦ [b] πυθέσθαι “τί ἄριστόν ἐστιν ἀνθρώποις” ἀποκρίνασθαι τὴν πρόμαντιν ὅτι οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ἀγνοεῖ, εἴ γε τὰ γραφέντα περὶ Τροφωνίου καὶ Ἀγαμήδους ἐκείνου ἐστίν· εἰ δὲ καὶ πειραθῆναι βούλεται, μετ’ οὐ πολὺ ἔσεσθαι αὐτῷ πρόδηλον. καὶ οὕτω πυθόμενον τὸν Πίνδαρον συλλογίζεσθαι τὰ πρὸς τὸν θάνατον, διελθόντος δ’ ὀλίγου χρόνου τελευτῆσαι.

Τὰ δὲ περὶ τὸν Ἰταλὸν Εὐθύνοον τοιαῦτά φασι γενέσθαι. εἶναι μὲν γὰρ αὐτὸν Ἠλυσίου πατρὸς τοῦ Τεριναίου, τῶν ἐκεῖ πρώτου καὶ ἀρετῇ καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ δόξῃ, τελευτῆσαι δ’ ἐξαπίνης αἰτίᾳ τινὶ ἀδήλῳ. τὸν οὖν Ἠλύσιον εἰσελθεῖν ὅπερ ἴσως κἂν ἄλλον εἰσῆλθε, μήποτ’ εἴη φαρμάκοις ἀπολωλώς· [c] τοῦτον γὰρ εἶναι μόνον αὐτῷ ἐπ’ οὐσίᾳ πολλῇ καὶ χρήμασιν. ἀποροῦντα δ’ ὅτῳ τρόπῳ βάσανον λάβοι τούτων, ἀφικέσθαι ἐπί τι ψυχομαντεῖον, προθυσάμενον δ’ ὡς νόμος ἐγκοιμᾶσθαι καὶ ἰδεῖν ὄψιν τοιάνδε. δόξαι παραγενέσθαι τὸν πατέρα τὸν ἑαυτοῦ· ἰδόντα δὲ διεξέρχεσθαι πρὸς αὐτὸν περὶ τῆς τύχης τῆς κατὰ τὸν υἱόν, καὶ ἀντιβολεῖν τε καὶ δεῖσθαι συνεξευρεῖν τὸν αἴτιον τοῦ θανάτου. καὶ τὸν “ἐπὶ τούτῳ,” φάναι, “ἥκω. ἀλλὰ δέξαι παρὰ τοῦδ’ ἅ σοι φέρει, ἐκ γὰρ τούτων ἅπαντ’ εἴσῃ ὧν πέρι λυπῇ.” εἶναι δ’ ὃν ἐσήμηνε νεανίσκον [d] ἑπόμενον αὐτῷ, ἐμφερῆ τε τῷ υἱῷ καὶ τὰ τοῦ χρόνου τε καὶ τὰ τῆς ἡλικίας ἐγγύς. ἐρέσθαι οὖν ὅστις εἴη. καὶ τὸν φάναι “δαίμων τοῦ υἱέος σου,” καὶ οὕτω δὴ ὀρέξαι οἱ γραμματείδιον. ἀνειλήσαντα οὖν αὐτὸ ἰδεῖν ἐγγεγραμμένα τρία ταῦτα·

ἦ που νηπιέῃσιν ἀλύουσιν φρένες ἀνδρῶν.

Εὐθύνοος κεῖται μοιριδίῳ θανάτῳ.

οὐκ ἦν γὰρ ζώειν καλὸν αὐτῷ οὐδὲ γονεῦσι.

Τοιαῦτα δή σοι καὶ τὰ τῶν διηγημάτων τῶν παρὰ τοῖς ἀρχαίοις ἀναγεγραμμένων.

[e] Εἴ γε μὴν ὁ θάνατος τελεία τίς ἐστι φθορὰ καὶ διάλυσις τοῦ τε σώματος καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς (τὸ τρίτον γὰρ ἦν τοῦτο τῆς Σωκρατικῆς εἰκασίας), οὐδ’ οὕτω κακόν ἐστιν· ἀναισθησία γάρ τις κατ’ αὐτὸν γίγνεται καὶ πάσης ἀπαλλαγὴ λύπης καὶ φροντίδος. ὥσπερ γὰρ οὔτ’ ἀγαθὸν ἡμῖν ἔπεστιν οὕτως οὐδὲ κακόν· περὶ γὰρ τὸ ὂν καὶ τὸ ὑφεστηκὸς καθάπερ τὸ ἀγαθὸν πέφυκε γίγνεσθαι, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον καὶ τὸ κακόν· περὶ δὲ τὸ μὴ ὂν ἀλλ’ ἠρμένον ἐκ τῶν ὄντων οὐδέτερον τούτων ὑπάρχει. εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν οὖν τάξιν οἱ τελευτήσαντες καθίστανται [f] τῇ πρὸ τῆς γενέσεως. ὥσπερ οὖν οὐδὲν ἦν ἡμῖν πρὸ τῆς γενέσεως οὔτ’ ἀγαθὸν οὔτε κακόν, οὕτως οὐδὲ μετὰ τὴν τελευτήν. καὶ καθάπερ τὰ πρὸ ἡμῶν οὐδὲν ἦν πρὸς ἡμᾶς, οὕτως οὐδὲ τὰ μεθ’ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ἔσται πρὸς ἡμᾶς·

“ἄλγος” γὰρ ὄντως “οὐδὲν ἅπτεται νεκροῦ.”

“τὸ” γὰρ “μὴ γενέσθαι τῷ θανεῖν ἴσον λέγω.”

ἡ γὰρ αὐτὴ κατάστασίς ἐστι τῇ πρὸ τῆς γενέσεως ἡ μετὰ τὴν τελευτήν. ἀλλ’ οἴει σὺ διαφορὰν εἶναι μὴ γενέσθαι ἢ γενόμενον ἀπογενέσθαι; εἰ μὴ καὶ τῆς οἰκίας καὶ τῆς ἐσθῆτος ἡμῶν μετὰ τὴν φθορὰν ὑπολαμβάνεις τινὰ διαφορὰν εἶναι πρὸς τὸν ὃν [110] [a] οὐδέπω κατεσκευάσθη χρόνον. εἰ δ’ ἐπὶ τούτων οὐδὲν ἔστι, δῆλον ὡς οὐδ’ ἐπὶ τοῦ θανάτου πρὸς τὴν πρὸ τῆς γενέσεως κατάστασιν ἔστι διαφορά. χάριεν γὰρ τὸ τοῦ Ἀρκεσιλάου. “τοῦτο,” φησί, “τὸ λεγόμενον κακὸν ὁ θάνατος μόνον τῶν ἄλλων τῶν νενομισμένων κακῶν παρὸν μὲν οὐδένα πώποτ’ ἐλύπησεν, ἀπὸν δὲ καὶ προσδοκώμενον λυπεῖ.” τῷ γὰρ ὄντι πολλοὶ διὰ τὴν οὐδένειαν καὶ τὴν πρὸς τὸν θάνατον διαβολὴν ἀποθνῄσκουσιν, ἵνα μὴ ἀποθάνωσι. καλῶς οὖν ὁ Ἐπίχαρμος

“συνεκρίθη” φησί “καὶ διεκρίθη καὶ ἀπῆνθεν

ὅθεν ἦνθε,”

[b] πάλιν

γᾶ μὲν εἰς γᾶν, πνεῦμ’ ἄνω. τί τῶνδε χαλεπόν;

οὐδέν.

ὁ Κρεσφόντης δέ που ὁ παρὰ τῷ Εὐριπίδῃ περὶ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους λέγων

“εἰ μὲν γὰρ οἰκεῖ,” φησί, “νερτέρας ὑπὸ χθονός

ἐν τοῖσιν οὐκέτ’ οὖσιν, οὐδὲν ἂν σθένοι.”

τοῦτο μεταποιήσας εἴποις ἄν·

εἰ μὲν γὰρ οἰκεῖ νερτέρας ὑπὸ χθονός

ἐν τοῖσιν οὐκέτ’ οὖσιν, οὐδὲν ἂν πάθοι.

γενναῖον δὲ καὶ τὸ Λακωνικόν

νῦν ἀμές, πρόσθ’ ἄλλοι ἐθάλεον, αὐτίκα δ’

ἄλλοι,

ὧν ἀμὲς γενεὰν οὐκέτ’ ἐποψόμεθα

καὶ πάλιν·

[c] οἳ θάνον οὐ τὸ ζῆν θέμενοι καλὸν οὐδὲ τὸ

θνῄσκειν,

ἀλλὰ τὸ ταῦτα καλῶς ἀμφότερ’ ἐκτελέσαι.

πάνυ δὲ καλῶς καὶ ὁ Εὐριπίδης ἐπὶ τῶν τὰς μακρὰς νοσηλείας ὑπομενόντων φησί·

μισῶ δ’ ὅσοι χρῄζουσιν ἐκτείνειν βίον,

βρωτοῖσι καὶ ποτοῖσι καὶ μαγεύμασι

παρεκτρέποντες ὀχετὸν ὥστε μὴ θανεῖν.

οὓς χρῆν, ἐπειδὰν μηδὲν ὠφελῶσι γῆν,

θανόντας ἔρρειν κἀκποδὼν εἶναι νέοις.

[d]ἡ δὲ Μερόπη λόγους ἀνδρώδεις προφερομένη κινεῖ τὰ θέατρα, λέγουσα τοιαῦτα·

τεθνᾶσι παῖδες οὐκ ἐμοὶ μόνῃ βροτῶν,

οὐδ’ ἀνδρὸς ἐστερήμεθ’, ἀλλὰ μυρίαι

τὸν αὐτὸν ἐξήντλησαν ὡς ἐγὼ βίον.

τούτοις γὰρ οἰκείως ἄν τις ταῦτα συνάψειε·

ποῦ γὰρ τὰ σεμνὰ κεῖνα, ποῦ δὲ Λυδίας

μέγας δυνάστης Κροῖσος ἢ Ξέρξης βαρὺν

ζεύξας θαλάσσης αὐχέν’ Ἑλλησποντίας;

[e] ἅπαντες Ἅιδην ἦλθον καὶ Λήθης δόμους,

τῶν χρημάτων ἅμα τοῖς σώμασι διαφθαρέντων.

Νὴ Δί’ ἀλλὰ τοὺς πολλοὺς κινεῖ πρὸς τὰ πένθη καὶ τοὺς θρήνους ὁ ἄωρος θάνατος. ἀλλὰ καὶ οὗτος οὕτως ἐστὶν εὐπαραμύθητος, ὥστε καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν τυχόντων ποιητῶν συνεωρᾶσθαι καὶ τετυχηκέναι παραμυθίας. θέασαι γὰρ οἷα περὶ τούτου φησὶ τῶν κωμικῶν τις πρὸς τὸν ἐπὶ τῷ ἀώρῳ λυπούμενον θανάτῳ·

εἶτ’ εἰ μὲν ᾔδησθ’ ὁτιὴ τοῦτον τὸν βίον,

ὃν οὐκ ἐβίωσε, ζῶν διηυτύχησεν ἄν,

ὁ θάνατος οὐκ εὔκαιρος· εἰ δ’ ἤνεγκεν αὖ

οὗτος ὁ βίος τι τῶν ἀνηκέστων, ἴσως

ὁ θάνατος αὐτὸς σοῦ γέγονεν εὐνούστερος.

[f]ἀδήλου οὖν ὄντος πότερον συμφερόντως ἀνεπαύσατο τὸν βίον ἐκλιπὼν καὶ μειζόνων ἀπολυθεὶς κακῶν ἢ οὔ, χρὴ μὴ φέρειν οὕτω βαρέως ὡς ἀπολωλεκότας πάνθ’ ὅσων ᾠήθημεν τεύξεσθαι παρ’ αὐτοῦ. οὐ φαύλως γὰρ ἂν δόξειεν ὁ παρὰ τῷ ποιητῇ Ἀμφιάραος παραμυθεῖσθαι τὴν Ἀρχεμόρου μητέρα δυσχεραίνουσαν ὅτι νήπιος ὢν ὁ παῖς καὶ ἄγαν ἄωρος ἐτελεύτησε. φησὶ γὰρ οὕτως·

ἔφυ μὲν οὐδεὶς ὅστις οὐ πονεῖ βροτῶν.

θάπτει τε τέκνα χἄτερ’ αὖ κτᾶται νέα,

αὐτός τε θνῄσκει· καὶ τάδ’ ἄχθονται βροτοὶ

εἰς γῆν φέροντες γῆν. ἀναγκαίως δ’ ἔχει

[111] [a] βίον θερίζειν ὥστε κάρπιμον στάχυν,

καὶ τὸν μὲν εἶναι τὸν δὲ μή. τί ταῦτα δεῖ

στένειν, ἅπερ δεῖ κατὰ φύσιν διεκπερᾶν;

δεινὸν γὰρ οὐδὲν τῶν ἀναγκαίων βροτοῖς.

Καθόλου γὰρ χρὴ διανοεῖσθαι πάντα τινὰ καὶ πρὸς αὑτὸν καὶ πρὸς ἄλλον διεξιόντα μετὰ σπουδῆς ὡς οὐχ ὁ μακρότατος βίος ἄριστος ἀλλ’ ὁ σπουδαιότατος. οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ πλεῖστα κιθαρῳδήσας [b] ἢ ῥητορεύσας ἢ κυβερνήσας ἀλλ’ ὁ καλῶς ἐπαινεῖται. τὸ γὰρ καλὸν οὐκ ἐν μήκει χρόνου θετέον, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἀρετῇ καὶ τῇ καιρίῳ συμμετρίᾳ· τοῦτο γὰρ εὔδαιμον καὶ θεοφιλὲς εἶναι νενόμισται. διὰ τοῦτο γοῦν τοὺς ὑπεροχωτάτους τῶν ἡρώων καὶ φύντας ἀπὸ θεῶν πρὸ γήρως ἐκλιπόντας τὸν βίον οἱ ποιηταὶ παρέδοσαν ἡμῖν, ὥσπερ κἀκεῖνον

ὃν περὶ κῆρι φίλει Ζεύς τ’ αἰγίοχος καὶ Ἀπόλλων

παντοίην φιλότητ’, οὐδ’ ἵκετο γήραος οὐδόν.

τὴν γὰρ εὐκαιρίαν μᾶλλον, οὐ τὴν εὐγηρίαν πανταχοῦ [c] θεωροῦμεν πρωτεύουσαν. καὶ γὰρ φυτῶν ἄριστα τὰ πλείστας καρπῶν ἐν βραχεῖ φορὰς ποιούμενα, καὶ ζῴων ἀφ’ ὧν ἐν οὐ πολλῷ χρόνῳ πολλὴν πρὸς τὸν βίον ὠφέλειαν ἔχομεν. τό τε πολὺ δήπουθεν ἢ μικρὸν οὐδὲν διαφέρειν δοκεῖ πρὸς τὸν ἄπειρον ἀφορῶσιν αἰῶνα. τὰ γὰρ χίλια καὶ τὰ μύρια κατὰ Σιμωνίδην ἔτη στιγμή τίς ἐστιν ἀόριστος, μᾶλλον δὲ μόριόν τι βραχύτατον στιγμῆς. ἐπεὶ καὶ τῶν ζῴων ἐκείνων, ἅπερ ἱστοροῦσι περὶ τὸν Πόντον γιγνόμενα τὴν ζωὴν ἔχειν ἡμερησίαν, ἕωθεν μὲν γεννώμενα, μέσης δ’ ἡμέρας ἀκμάζοντα, δείλης δὲ γηρῶντα καὶ τελειοῦντα τὸ ζῆν, οὐχὶ κἀκείνων ἦν ἂν τὸ καθ’ ἡμᾶς πάθος τοῦτο, εἴπερ ψυχή τις ἀνθρωπίνη καὶ λογισμὸς ἑκάστοις ἐνῆν, [d] καὶ ταὐτὰ δήπου γ’ ἂν συνέπιπτεν, ὥστε τὰ πρὸ μέσης τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκλείποντα θρήνους παρέχειν καὶ δάκρυα, τὰ δὲ διημερεύσαντα πάντως ἂν εὐδαιμονίζεσθαι; μέτρον γὰρ τοῦ βίου τὸ καλόν, οὐ τὸ τοῦ χρόνου μῆκος.

Ματαίους γὰρ καὶ πολλῆς εὐηθείας ἡγητέον εἶναι τὰς τοιαύτας ἐκφωνήσεις “ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔδει νέον ὄντα ἀναρπαγῆναι.” τίς γὰρ ἂν εἴποι ὡς ἔδει; πολλὰ δὲ καὶ ἄλλα ἐφ’ ὧν ἄν τις εἴποι ὡς “οὐκ ἔδει πραχθῆναι” πέπρακται καὶ πράττεται [e] καὶ πραχθήσεται πολλάκις. οὐ γὰρ νομοθετήσοντες πάρεσμεν εἰς τὸν βίον, ἀλλὰ πεισόμενοι τοῖς διατεταγμένοις ὑπὸ τῶν τὰ ὅλα πρυτανευόντων θεῶν καὶ τοῖς τῆς εἱμαρμένης καὶ προνοίας θεσμοῖς.

Τί δ’; οἱ πενθοῦντες τοὺς οὕτως ἀποθανόντας ἑαυτῶν ἕνεκα πενθοῦσιν ἢ τῶν κατοιχομένων; εἰ μὲν οὖν ἑαυτῶν, ὅτι τῆς ἀπὸ τῶν τεθνεώτων ἡδονῆς ἢ χρείας ἢ γηροβοσκίας ἐστερήθησαν, φίλαυτος ἡ τῆς λύπης πρόφασις· οὐ γὰρ ἐκείνους ποθοῦντες ἀλλὰ τὰς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ὠφελείας φανήσονται. εἰ δὲ τῶν τεθνεώτων ἕνεκα πενθοῦσιν, ἐπιστήσαντες ὅτι [f] ἐν οὐδενὶ κακῷ τυγχάνουσιν ὄντες, ἀπαλλαγήσονται τῆς λύπης, ἀρχαίῳ καὶ σοφῷ πεισθέντες λόγῳ τῷ παραινοῦντι τὰ μὲν ἀγαθὰ ποιεῖν ὡς μέγιστα, τὰ δὲ κακὰ συστέλλειν καὶ ταπεινοῦν. εἰ μὲν οὖν τὸ πένθος ἐστὶν ἀγαθόν, δεῖ ποιεῖν αὐτὸ ὡς πλεῖστον καὶ μέγιστον· εἰ δ’, ὥσπερ ἡ ἀλήθεια ἔχει, κακὸν αὐτὸ ὁμολογοῦμεν εἶναι, συστέλλειν καὶ ποιεῖν ὡς ἐλάχιστον καὶ ἐξαλείφειν εἰς τὸ δυνατόν.

Ὡς δὲ τοῦτο ῥᾴδιον, καταφανὲς ἐκ τῆς τοιαύτης παραμυθίας. φασὶ γάρ τινα τῶν ἀρχαίων φιλοσόφων εἰσιόντα πρὸς Ἀρσινόην τὴν βασίλισσαν [112] [a] πενθοῦσαν τὸν υἱὸν τοιούτῳ χρήσασθαι λόγῳ, φάμενον ὅτι καθ’ ὃν χρόνον ὁ Ζεὺς ἔνεμε τοῖς δαίμοσι τὰς τιμάς, οὐκ ἔτυχε παρὸν τὸ Πένθος, ἤδη δὲ νενεμημένων ἦλθεν ὕστερον. τὸν οὖν Δία, ὡς ἠξίου καὶ αὑτῷ τιμὴν δοθῆναι, ἀποροῦντα διὰ τὸ ἤδη κατηναλῶσθαι πάσας τοῖς ἄλλοις, ταύτην αὐτῷ δοῦναι τὴν ἐπὶ τοῖς τελευτήσασι γιγνομένην, οἷον δάκρυα καὶ λύπας. ὥσπερ οὖν τοὺς ἄλλους δαίμονας, ὑφ’ ὧν τιμῶνται, τούτους ἀγαπᾶν, τὸν [b] αὐτὸν τρόπον καὶ τὸ Πένθος. “ἐὰν μὲν οὖν αὐτὸ ἀτιμάσῃς, ὦ γύναι, οὐ προσελεύσεταί σοι· ἐὰν δὲ τιμᾶται ὑπὸ σοῦ ἐπιμελῶς ταῖς δοθείσαις αὐτῷ τιμαῖς, λύπαις καὶ θρήνοις, ἀγαπήσει σε καὶ ἀεί τί σοι παρέσται τοιοῦτον ἐφ’ ᾧ τιμηθήσεται συνεχῶς ὑπὸ σοῦ.” θαυμασίως δὴ φαίνεται τῷ λόγῳ πείσας οὗτος παρελέσθαι τῆς ἀνθρώπου τὸ πένθος καὶ τοὺς θρήνους.

Τὸ δ’ ὅλον εἴποι τις ἂν πρὸς τὸν πενθοῦντα “πότερα παύσῃ ποτὲ δυσφορῶν ἢ ἀεὶ δεῖν οἰήσῃ λυπεῖσθαι καὶ παρ’ ὅλον τὸν βίον; εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἀεὶ μενεῖς ἐπὶ τῇ δυσπαθείᾳ ταύτῃ, τελείαν ἀθλιότητα [c] σεαυτῷ παρέξεις καὶ πικροτάτην κακοδαιμονίαν διὰ ψυχῆς ἀγέννειαν καὶ μαλακίαν· εἰ δὲ μεταθήσῃ ποτέ, τί οὐκ ἤδη μετατίθεσαι καὶ σεαυτὸν ἀνέλκεις ἐκ τῆς ἀτυχίας; οἷς γὰρ λόγοις τοῦ χρόνου προϊόντος χρησάμενος ἀπολυθήσῃ, τούτοις νῦν προσσχὼν ἀπαλλάγηθι τῆς κακουχίας· καὶ γὰρ ἐπὶ τῶν σωματικῶν παθημάτων ἡ ταχίστη τῆς ἀπαλλαγῆς ὁδὸς ἀμείνων. ὃ οὖν μέλλεις τῷ χρόνῳ χαρίζεσθαι, τοῦτο τῷ λόγῳ χάρισαι καὶ τῇ παιδείᾳ, καὶ σεαυτὸν ἔκλυσαι τῶν κακῶν.”

“Ἀλλ’ οὐ γὰρ ἤλπιζον,” φησί, “ταῦτα [d] πείσεσθαι, οὐδὲ προσεδόκων.” ἀλλ’ ἐχρῆν σε προσδοκᾶν καὶ προκατακεκρικέναι τῶν ἀνθρωπείων τὴν ἀδηλότητα καὶ οὐδένειαν, καὶ οὐκ ἂν νῦν ἀπαράσκευος ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πολεμίων ἐξαίφνης ἐπελθόντων ἐλήφθης. καλῶς γὰρ ὁ παρὰ τῷ Εὐριπίδῃ Θησεὺς παρεσκευάσθαι φαίνεται πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα· ἐκεῖνος γάρ φησιν·

ἐγὼ δὲ ταῦτα παρὰ σοφοῦ τινος μαθὼν

εἰς φροντίδας νοῦν συμφοράς τ’ ἐβαλλόμην,

φυγάς τ’ ἐμαυτῷ προστιθεὶς πάτρας ἐμῆς

θανάτους τ’ ἀώρους καὶ κακῶν ἄλλας ὁδούς,

ἵν’ εἴ τι πάσχοιμ’ ὧν ἐδόξαζον φρενί,

[e] μή μοι νεῶρες προσπεσὸν μᾶλλον δάκοι.

οἱ δ’ ἀγεννέστεροι καὶ ἀνασκήτως διακείμενοι οὐδ’ ἀναστροφὴν ἐνίοτε λαμβάνουσι πρὸς τὸ βουλεύσασθαί τι τῶν εὐσχημόνων καὶ συμφερόντων, ἀλλ’ ἐκτρέπονται πρὸς τὰς ἐσχάτας ταλαιπωρίας, τὸ μηδὲν αἴτιον σῶμα τιμωρούμενοι καὶ τὰ μὴ νοσοῦντα κατὰ τὸν Ἀχαιὸν συναλγεῖν ἀναγκάζοντες.

Διὸ καὶ πάνυ καλῶς ὁ Πλάτων ἔοικε παραινεῖν ἐν “ταῖς” τοιαύταις “συμφοραῖς ἡσυχίαν ἔχειν, ὡς οὔτε δήλου ὄντος τοῦ κακοῦ καὶ τοῦ [f] ἀγαθοῦ, οὔτ’ εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν οὐδὲν προβαῖνον τῷ χαλεπῶς φέροντι· ἐμποδὼν γὰρ γίγνεσθαι τὸ λυπεῖσθαι τῷ βουλεύεσθαι περὶ τοῦ γεγονότος καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν πτώσει κύβων πρὸς τὰ πεπτωκότα τίθεσθαι τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράγματα, ὅπῃ ὁ λόγος αἱρεῖ βέλτιστ’ ἂν ἔχειν. οὐ δεῖν οὖν προσπταίσαντας καθάπερ παῖδας ἐχομένους τοῦ πληγέντος βοᾶν, ἀλλ’ ἐθίζειν τὴν ψυχὴν ὅτι τάχιστα γίγνεσθαι περὶ τὸ ἰᾶσθαί τε καὶ ἐπανορθοῦν τὸ πεσόν τε καὶ νοσῆσαν, ἰατρικῇ θρηνῳδίαν ἀφανίζοντας.”

Τὸν τῶν Λυκίων νομοθέτην φασὶ προστάξαι τοῖς αὑτοῦ πολίταις, ἐπὰν πενθῶσι, γυναικείαν ἀμφιεσαμένους ἐσθῆτα πενθεῖν, ἐμφαίνειν βουληθέντα ὅτι [113] [a] γυναικῶδες τὸ πάθος καὶ οὐχ ἁρμόττον ἀνδράσι κοσμίοις καὶ παιδείας ἐλευθερίου μεταπεποιημένοις. θῆλυ γὰρ ὄντως καὶ ἀσθενὲς καὶ ἀγεννὲς τὸ πενθεῖν· γυναῖκες γὰρ ἀνδρῶν εἰσι φιλοπενθέστεραι καὶ οἱ βάρβαροι τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ οἱ χείρους ἄνδρες τῶν ἀμεινόνων, καὶ αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν βαρβάρων οὐχ οἱ γενναιότατοι, Κελτοὶ καὶ Γαλάται καὶ πάντες οἱ φρονήματος ἀνδρειοτέρου πεφυκότες ἔμπλεῳ, μᾶλλον δ’, εἴπερ ἄρα, Αἰγύπτιοί τε καὶ Σύροι καὶ Λυδοὶ καὶ πάντες ὅσοι τούτοις παραπλήσιοι.

[b] τούτων γὰρ τοὺς μὲν εἰς βόθρους τινὰς καταδύντας ἱστοροῦσιν ἐπὶ πλείους ἡμέρας μένειν, μηδὲ τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου φῶς ὁρᾶν βουλομένους, ἐπειδὴ καὶ ὁ τετελευτηκὼς ἀπεστέρηται τούτου. Ἴων γοῦν ὁ τραγικὸς ποιητής, οὐκ ἀνήκοος ὢν τῆς τούτων εὐηθείας, πεποίηκέ τινα λέγουσαν·

ἐξῆλθον ὑμῶν ἱκέτις ἡβώντων τροφὸς

παίδων, βόθρους λιποῦσα πενθητηρίους.

τινὲς δὲ τῶν βαρβάρων καὶ μέρη τοῦ σώματος ἀποτέμνουσι, ῥῖνας καὶ ὦτα, καὶ τὸ ἄλλο σῶμα καταικίζοντες, δοκοῦντές τι χαρίζεσθαι τοῖς τετελευτηκόσιν ἀπαρτώμενοι τῆς κατὰ φύσιν ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις μετριοπαθείας.

[c] Ἀλλὰ νὴ Δία τινὲς ὑποτυγχάνοντες οὐκ ἐπὶ παντὶ θανάτῳ τὰ πένθη δεῖν οἴονται γίγνεσθαι, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀώροις, διὰ τὸ μηδενὸς τετυχηκέναι τῶν ἐν τῷ βίῳ νενομισμένων ἀγαθῶν, οἷον γάμου παιδείας τελειότητος πολιτείας ἀρχῶν (ταῦτα γὰρ εἶναι τὰ λυποῦντα μάλιστα τοὺς ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀώροις ἀτυχοῦντας, διὰ τὸ ἀφῃρῆσθαι πρὸ τοῦ δέοντος τῆς ἐλπίδος), ἀγνοοῦντες ὅτι ὁ ἄωρος θάνατος ὡς πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἀνθρώπων φύσιν οὐδὲν διαφέρει. καθάπερ γὰρ τῆς εἰς καινὴν πατρίδα πορείας προκειμένης πᾶσιν ἀναγκαίας καὶ ἀπαραιτήτου οἱ μὲν προπορεύονται οἱ δ’ ἐπακολουθοῦσι, πάντες δ’ ἐπὶ ταὐτὸν ἔρχονται, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον τῶν εἰς τὸ χρεὼν ὁδευόντων οὐδὲν πλέον ἔχοντες τυγχάνουσιν [d] οἱ βραδύτερον ἀφικνούμενοι τῶν θᾶττον παραγιγνομένων. εἴ γε μὴν ὁ ἄωρος θάνατος κακόν ἐστιν, ἀωρότατος ἂν εἴη ὁ τῶν νηπίων καὶ παίδων καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον ὁ τῶν ἄρτι γεγονότων. ἀλλὰ τοὺς τούτων θανάτους ῥᾳδίως φέρομεν καὶ εὐθύμως, τοὺς δὲ τῶν ἤδη προβεβηκότων δυσχερῶς καὶ πενθικῶς διὰ τὸν ἐκ ματαίων ἐλπίδων ἀναπλασμόν, ἤδη νομιζόντων ἡμῶν βεβαίαν ἔχειν τὴν τῶν τηλικούτων διαμονήν. εἰ δ’ ὁ τῆς ζωῆς τῶν ἀνθρώπων χρόνος εἰκοσαέτης ἦν, τὸν πεντεκαιδεκαέτη ἀπογενόμενον ἐνομίζομεν ἂν μηκέτ’ ἄωρον τελευτᾶν ἀλλ’ ἤδη μέτρον ἡλικίας ἔχοντα [e] ἱκανόν· τὸν δὲ τὴν τῶν εἴκοσιν ἐτῶν προθεσμίαν ἐκπληρώσαντα ἢ τὸν ἐγγὺς γενόμενον τοῦ τῶν εἴκοσιν ἐτῶν ἀριθμοῦ πάντως ἂν ἐμακαρίζομεν ὡς εὐδαιμονέστατον καὶ τελειότατον διαπεράσαντα βίον. εἰ δὲ διακοσίων ἐτῶν ἦν, τὸν ἑκατὸν ἐτῶν τελευτήσαντα πάντως ἂν ἄωρον νομίζοντες εἶναι πρὸς ὀδυρμοὺς καὶ θρήνους ἐτραπόμεθα.

Δῆλον οὖν ὅτι καὶ ὁ λεγόμενος ἄωρος θάνατος εὐπαραμύθητός ἐστι διά τε ταῦτα καὶ τὰ προειρημένα ἐν τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν. μεῖον γὰρ ὄντως [f] ἐδάκρυσε Τρωίλος ἢ Πρίαμος· οὐδ’ οὗτος, εἰ προετελεύτησεν ἔτ’ ἀκμαζούσης αὐτῷ τῆς βασιλείας καὶ τῆς τοσαύτης τύχης, ἂν ἐθρήνει οἷα γοῦν πρὸς τὸν ἑαυτοῦ διελέχθη υἱὸν Ἕκτορα, παραινῶν ἀναχωρεῖν ἀπὸ τῆς πρὸς τὸν Ἀχιλλέα μάχης, ἐν οἷς φησιν·

ἀλλ’ εἰσέρχεο τεῖχος, ἐμὸν τέκος, ὄφρα σαώσῃς

Τρῶας καὶ Τρῳάς, μηδὲ μέγα κῦδος ὀρέξῃς

Πηλείδῃ, αὐτὸς δὲ φίλης αἰῶνος ἀμερθῇς

[114] [a] πρὸς δ’ ἐμὲ τὸν δύστηνον ἔτι φρονέοντ’ ἐλέησον,

δύσμορον, ὅν ῥα πατὴρ Κρονίδης ἐπὶ γήραος οὐδῷ

αἴσῃ ἐν ἀργαλέῃ φθίσει, κακὰ πόλλ’ ἐπιδόντα,

υἷάς τ’ ὀλλυμένους, ἑλκηθείσας τε θύγατρας,

καὶ θαλάμους κεραϊζομένους, καὶ νήπια τέκνα

βαλλόμενα ποτὶ γαίῃ, ἐν αἰνῇ δηϊοτῆτι,

ἑλκομένας τε νυοὺς ὀλοῇς ὑπὸ χερσὶν Ἀχαιῶν.

αὐτὸν δ’ ἂν πύματόν με κύνες πρώτῃσι θύρῃσι

ὠμησταὶ ἐρύωσιν, ἐπεί κέ τις ὀξέι χαλκῷ

[b] τύψας ἠὲ βαλὼν ῥεθέων ἐκ θυμὸν ἕληται.

ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ πολιόν τε κάρη πολιόν τε γένειον

αἰδῶ τ’ αἰσχύνωσι κύνες κταμένοιο γέροντος,

τοῦτο δὴ οἴκτιστον πέλεται δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσιν.

ἦ ῥ’ ὁ γέρων· πολιὰς δ’ ἄρ’ ἀνὰ τρίχας ἕλκετο χερσί,

τίλλων ἐκ κεφαλῆς, οὐδ’ Ἕκτορι θυμὸν ἔπειθεν.

Ὄντων οὖν σοι παμπόλλων παραδειγμάτων περὶ

τούτων ἐννοήθητι τὸν θάνατον οὐκ ὀλίγους ἀπαλλάττειν μεγάλων καὶ χαλεπῶν κακῶν, ὧν, εἰ [c] ἐπεβίωσαν, πάντως ἂν ἐπειράθησαν. ἃ φειδόμενος τῆς τοῦ λόγου συμμετρίας παρέλιπον, ἀρκεσθεὶς τοῖς εἰρημένοις πρὸς τὸ μὴ δεῖν πέρα τοῦ φυσικοῦ καὶ μετρίου πρὸς ἄπρακτα πένθη καὶ θρήνους ἀγεννεῖς ἐκτρέπεσθαι.

Τὸ γὰρ μὴ δι’ αὑτὸν κακῶς πράττειν ὁ μὲν Κράντωρ φησὶν οὐ μικρὸν εἶναι κούφισμα πρὸς τὰς τύχας, ἐγὼ δ’ ἂν εἴποιμι φάρμακον ἀλυπίας εἶναι μέγιστον. τὸ δὲ φιλεῖν τὸν μεταλλάξαντα καὶ στέργειν οὐκ ἐν τῷ λυπεῖν ἑαυτούς ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐν τῷ τὸν ἀγαπώμενον ὠφελεῖν· ὠφέλεια δ’ ἐστὶ τοῖς [d] ἀφῃρημένοις ἡ διὰ τῆς ἀγαθῆς μνήμης τιμή. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἀγαθὸς ἄξιος θρήνων ἀλλ’ ὕμνων καὶ παιάνων, οὐδὲ πένθους ἀλλὰ μνήμης εὐκλεοῦς, οὐδὲ δακρύων ἐπωδύνων ἀλλὰ θυσιῶν ἀπαρχῶν, εἴ γ’ ὁ μετηλλαχὼς θειότερόν τινα βίον μετείληφεν, ἀπαλλαγεὶς τῆς τοῦ σώματος λατρείας καὶ τῶν ἀτρύτων τούτων φροντίδων τε καὶ συμφορῶν, ἃς ἀνάγκη τοὺς εἰληχότας τὸν θνητὸν βίον ὑπομένειν, ἕως ἂν ἐκπλήσωσι τὸν ἐπικλωσθέντα τῆς ζωῆς βίον, ὃν ἔδωκεν ἡμῖν ἡ φύσις οὐκ εἰς ἅπαντα τὸν χρόνον, ἀλλὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀπένειμε τὸν μερισθέντα κατὰ τοὺς τῆς εἱμαρμένης νόμους.

[e] Διὸ τοὺς εὖ φρονοῦντας ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀποθνῄσκουσιν οὐ χρὴ πέρα τοῦ φυσικοῦ καὶ μετρίου τῆς περὶ τὴν ψυχὴν λύπης εἰς ἄπρακτα καὶ βαρβαρικὰ πένθη παρεκτρέπεσθαι καὶ τοῦθ’ ὅπερ πολλοῖς ἤδη συνέβη περιμένειν, ὥστε πρὶν ἀπώσασθαι τὰ πένθη κακουχουμένους τελευτῆσαι τὸν βίον καὶ ἐν τοῖς πενθίμοις τῆς κακοδαίμονος ταφῆς μεταλαβεῖν, ἅμα τῶν τε ἀνιαρῶν καὶ τῶν ἐκ τῆς ἀλογιστίας κακῶν συγκηδευομένων αὐτοῖς, ὥστ’ ἐπιφθέγξασθαι τὸ Ὁμηρικόν

μυρομένοισι δὲ τοῖσι μέλας ἐπὶ ἕσπερος ἦλθε.

Διὸ καὶ πολλάκις αὑτοῖς προσδιαλέγεσθαι χρή, [f] “τί δέ; παυσόμεθά ποτε λυπούμενοι ἢ ἀκαταπαύστῳ συμφορᾷ συνεσόμεθα μέχρι παντὸς τοῦ βίου;” τὸ γὰρ δὴ ἀτελεύτητον νομίζειν τὸ πένθος ἀνοίας ἐστὶν ἐσχάτης, καίτοι γ’ ὁρῶντας ὡς καὶ οἱ βαρυλυπότατοι καὶ πολυπενθέστατοι πραότατοι γίγνονται πολλάκις ὑπὸ τοῦ χρόνου, καὶ ἐν οἷς ἐδυσχέραινον σφόδρα μνήμασιν ἀνοιμώζοντες καὶ στερνοτυπούμενοι λαμπρὰς εὐωχίας συνίστανται μετὰ μουσουργῶν καὶ τῆς ἄλλης διαχύσεως. μεμηνότος οὖν ἐστι τὸ οὕτως ὑπολαμβάνειν παράμονον [115] [a] ἕξειν τὸ πένθος. ἀλλ’ εἰ λογίζοινθ’ ὅτι παύσεταί τινος γενομένου, προσαναλογίσαιντ’ ἂν χρόνου δηλαδή τι ποιήσαντος· τὸ μὲν γὰρ γεγενημένον οὐδὲ θεῷ δυνατόν ἐστι ποιῆσαι ἀγένητον. οὐκοῦν τὸ νῦν παρ’ ἐλπίδα συμβεβηκὸς καὶ παρὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν δόξαν ἔδειξε τὸ εἰωθὸς περὶ πολλοὺς γίγνεσθαι δι’ αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων. τί οὖν; ἆρά γ’ ἡμεῖς τοῦτο διὰ τοῦ λόγου μαθεῖν οὐ δυνάμεθα οὐδ’ ἐπιλογίσασθαι ὅτι

πλείη μὲν γαῖα κακῶν πλείη δὲ θάλασσα

καὶ τά·

τοιάδε θνητοῖσι κακὰ κακῶν

ἀμφί τε κῆρες εἰλεῦνται, κενεὴ δ’ εἴσδυσις

[b] οὐδ’ αἰθέρι;

Πολλοῖς γὰρ καὶ σοφοῖς ἀνδράσιν, ὥς φησι Κράντωρ, οὐ νῦν ἀλλὰ πάλαι κέκλαυσται τἀνθρώπινα, τιμωρίαν ἡγουμένοις εἶναι τὸν βίον καὶ ἀρχὴν τὸ γενέσθαι ἄνθρωπον συμφορὰν τὴν μεγίστην· τοῦτο δέ φησιν Ἀριστοτέλης καὶ τὸν Σειληνὸν συλληφθέντα τῷ Μίδᾳ ἀποφήνασθαι. βέλτιον δ’ αὐτὰς τὰς τοῦ φιλοσόφου λέξεις παραθέσθαι. φησὶ δὴ ἐν τῷ Εὐδήμῳ ἐπιγραφομένῳ ἢ Περὶ ψυχῆς ταυτί. “διόπερ, ὦ κράτιστε πάντων καὶ μακαριστότατε, πρὸς τῷ μακαρίους καὶ εὐδαίμονας εἶναι τοὺς τετελευτηκότας [c] νομίζειν καὶ τὸ ψεύσασθαί τι κατ’ αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ βλασφημεῖν οὐχ ὅσιον ὡς κατὰ βελτιόνων ἡγούμεθα καὶ κρειττόνων ἤδη γεγονότων. καὶ ταῦθ’ οὕτως ἀρχαῖα καὶ παλαιὰ παρ’ ἡμῖν, ὥστε τὸ παράπαν οὐδεὶς οἶδεν οὔτε τοῦ χρόνου τὴν ἀρχὴν οὔτε τὸν θέντα πρῶτον, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἄπειρον αἰῶνα διατελεῖ νενομισμένα. πρὸς δὲ δὴ τούτοις τὸ διὰ στόματος ὂν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ὁρᾷς ὡς ἐκ πολλῶν ἐτῶν περιφέρεται θρυλούμενον.” “τί τοῦτ’;” ἔφη. κἀκεῖνος ὑπολαβών “ὡς ἄρα μὴ γενέσθαι μέν,” ἔφη, “ἄριστον πάντων, τὸ δὲ [d] τεθνάναι τοῦ ζῆν ἐστι κρεῖττον. καὶ πολλοῖς οὕτω παρὰ τοῦ δαιμονίου μεμαρτύρηται. τοῦτο μὲν ἐκείνῳ τῷ Μίδᾳ λέγουσι δήπου μετὰ τὴν θήραν ὡς ἔλαβε τὸν Σειληνὸν διερωτῶντι καὶ πυνθανομένῳ τί ποτ’ ἐστὶ τὸ βέλτιστον τοῖς ἀνθρώποις καὶ τί τὸ πάντων αἱρετώτατον, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον οὐδὲν ἐθέλειν εἰπεῖν ἀλλὰ σιωπᾶν ἀρρήτως· ἐπειδὴ δέ ποτε μόγις πᾶσαν μηχανὴν μηχανώμενος προσηγάγετο φθέγξασθαί τι πρὸς αὐτόν, οὕτως ἀναγκαζόμενον εἰπεῖν, ‘δαίμονος ἐπιπόνου καὶ τύχης χαλεπῆς ἐφήμερον σπέρμα, τί με βιάζεσθε λέγειν ἃ ὑμῖν ἄρειον μὴ γνῶναι; μετ’ ἀγνοίας γὰρ τῶν οἰκείων κακῶν ἀλυπότατος ὁ βίος. ἀνθρώποις δὲ πάμπαν οὐκ ἔστι γενέσθαι τὸ πάντων ἄριστον οὐδὲ μετασχεῖν τῆς τοῦ βελτίστου φύσεως (ἄριστον γὰρ πᾶσι καὶ πάσαις τὸ μὴ γενέσθαι)· τὸ μέντοι μετὰ τοῦτο καὶ πρῶτον τῶν ἀνθρώπῳ ἀνυστῶν, δεύτερον δέ, τὸ γενομένους ἀποθανεῖν ὡς τάχιστα.’ δῆλον οὖν ὡς οὔσης κρείττονος τῆς ἐν τῷ τεθνάναι διαγωγῆς ἢ τῆς ἐν τῷ ζῆν, οὕτως ἀπεφήνατο.” μυρία δ’ ἐπὶ μυρίοις ἄν τις ἔχοι τοιαῦτα παρατίθεσθαι πρὸς ταὐτὸ κεφάλαιον· ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον μακρηγορεῖν.

[e] Οὐ χρὴ οὖν τοὺς ἀποθνῄσκοντας νέους θρηνεῖν ὅτι τῶν ἐν τῷ μακρῷ βίῳ νομιζομένων ἀγαθῶν ἀπεστέρηνται· τοῦτο γὰρ ἄδηλον, ὡς πολλάκις εἴπομεν, εἴτ’ ἀγαθῶν ἀπεστερημένοι τυγχάνουσιν εἴτε κακῶν· πολλῷ γὰρ πλείονα τὰ κακά. καὶ τὰ μὲν μόγις καὶ διὰ πολλῶν φροντίδων κτώμεθα, τὰ δὲ κακὰ πάνυ ῥᾳδίως· στρογγύλα γὰρ εἶναί φασι ταῦτα καὶ συνεχῆ καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα φερόμενα κατὰ πολλὰς αἰτίας, τὰ δ’ ἀγαθὰ διεχῆ τε καὶ δυσκόλως συνερχόμενα πρὸς αὐτοῖς τοῦ βίου τοῖς τέρμασιν.

[116] [a] ἐπιλελησμένοις οὖν ἐοίκαμεν ὅτι οὐ μόνον, ὥς φησιν Εὐριπίδης,

“τὰ χρήματα” οὐκ “ἴδια κέκτηνται βροτοί,”

ἀλλ’ ἁπλῶς τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων οὐδέν. διὸ καὶ ἐπὶ πάντων λέγειν χρή·

τὰ τῶν θεῶν δ’ ἔχοντες ἐπιμελούμεθα.

ὅταν δὲ χρῄζωσ’, αὔτ’ ἀφαιροῦνται πάλιν.

οὐ δεῖ οὖν δυσφορεῖν, ἐὰν ἃ ἔχρησαν ἡμῖν πρὸς ὀλίγον, ταῦτ’ ἀπαιτῶσιν· οὐδὲ γὰρ οἱ τραπεζῖται, καθάπερ εἰώθαμεν λέγειν πολλάκις, ἀπαιτούμενοι τὰ θέματα δυσχεραίνουσιν ἐπὶ τῇ ἀποδόσει, ἐάνπερ εὐγνωμονῶσι. πρὸς γὰρ τοὺς οὐκ εὐμαρῶς ἀποδιδόντας [b] εἰκότως ἄν τις εἴποι “ἐπελάθου ὅτι ταῦτ’ ἔλαβες ἐπὶ τῷ ἀποδοῦναι;” τοῦτο δὴ τοῖς θνητοῖς ἅπασι συμβέβηκεν. ἔχομεν γὰρ τὸ ζῆν ὥσπερ παρακαταθεμένοις θεοῖς ἐξ ἀνάγκης, καὶ τούτου χρόνος οὐδείς ἐστιν ὡρισμένος τῆς ἀποδόσεως, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τοῖς τραπεζίταις τῆς τῶν θεμάτων, ἀλλ’ ἄδηλον πόθ’ ὁ δοὺς ἀπαιτήσει. ὁ οὖν ἢ αὐτὸς μέλλων ἀποθνῄσκειν ἢ τέκνων ἀποθανόντων ὑπεραγανακτῶν πῶς οὐ καταφανῶς ἐπιλέλησται ὅτι καὶ αὐτὸς ἄνθρωπός ἐστι καὶ τὰ τέκνα θνητὰ ἐγέννησεν; οὐ γάρ ἐστι φρένας ἔχοντος ἀνθρώπου ἀγνοεῖν ὅτι ὁ ἄνθρωπος ζῷόν ἐστι θνητόν, οὐδ’ ὅτι γέγονεν εἰς [c] τὸ ἀποθανεῖν. εἰ γοῦν ἡ Νιόβη κατὰ τοὺς μύθους πρόχειρον εἶχε τὴν ὑπόληψιν ταύτην ὅτι καὶ ἡ

θαλέθοντι βίῳ

βλάσταις τε τέκνων βριθομένα γλυκερὸν

φάος ὁρῶσα

τελευτήσει, οὐκ ἂν οὕτως ἐδυσχέραινεν ὡς καὶ τὸ ζῆν ἐθέλειν ἐκλιπεῖν διὰ τὸ μέγεθος τῆς συμφορᾶς, καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς ἐπικαλεῖσθαι ἀνάρπαστον αὐτὴν γενέσθαι πρὸς ἀπώλειαν τὴν χαλεπωτάτην.

Δύ’ ἐστὶ τῶν Δελφικῶν γραμμάτων τὰ μάλιστ’ ἀναγκαιότατα πρὸς τὸν βίον, τὸ “γνῶθι σαυτὸν”

[d] καὶ τὸ “μηδὲν ἄγαν”· ἐκ τούτων γὰρ ἤρτηται καὶ τἄλλα πάντα. ταῦτα γάρ ἐστιν ἀλλήλοις συνῳδὰ καὶ σύμφωνα, καὶ διὰ θατέρου θάτερον ἔοικε δηλοῦσθαι κατὰ δύναμιν. ἔν τε γὰρ τῷ γιγνώσκειν ἑαυτὸν περιέχεται τὸ μηδὲν ἄγαν, καὶ ἐν τούτῳ τὸ γιγνώσκειν ἑαυτόν. διὸ καὶ περὶ μὲν τούτου φησὶν ὁ Ἴων οὕτως·

τὸ “γνῶθι σαυτὸν” τοῦτ’ ἔπος μὲν οὐ μέγα,

ἔργον δ’ ὅσον Ζεὺς μόνος ἐπίσταται θεῶν,

ὁ δὲ Πίνδαρος·

“σοφοὶ δέ,” φησί, “καὶ τὸ ‘μηδὲν ἄγαν’ ἔπος

αἴνεσσαν περισσῶς.”

Ταῦτ’ οὖν ἐν διανοίᾳ τις ἔχων ὡς πυθόχρηστα [e] παραγγέλματα πρὸς πάντα τὰ τοῦ βίου πράγματα ῥᾳδίως ἐφαρμόζειν δυνήσεται καὶ φέρειν αὐτὰ δεξιῶς, εἴς τε τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ἀφορῶν καὶ εἰς τὸ μὴ πέρα τοῦ προσήκοντος ἐν τοῖς προσπίπτουσιν ἢ διαίρεσθαι πρὸς ἀλαζονείαν ἢ ταπεινοῦσθαι καὶ καταπίπτειν πρὸς οἴκτους καὶ ὀλοφυρμοὺς διὰ τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ἀσθένειαν καὶ τὸν ἐμφυόμενον ἡμῖν τοῦ θανάτου φόβον παρὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τῶν εἰωθότων ἐν τῷ βίῳ συμβαίνειν κατὰ τὴν τῆς ἀνάγκης ἢ πεπρωμένης μοῖραν. καλῶς δ’ οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι παρεκελεύσαντο λέγοντες·

ὅσσα δὲ δαιμονίῃσι τύχαις βροτοὶ ἄλγε’ ἔχουσιν,

[f] ἣν ἂν μοῖραν ἔχῃς, ταύτην ἔχε μηδ’ ἀγανάκτει,

καὶ ὁ τραγικὸς Αἰσχύλος·

ἀνδρῶν γάρ ἐστιν ἐνδίκων τε καὶ σοφῶν

κἀν τοῖσι δεινοῖς μὴ τεθυμῶσθαι θεοῖς,

καὶ ὁ Εὐριπίδης·

ὅστις δ’ ἀνάγκῃ συγκεχώρηκεν βροτῶν

σοφὸς παρ’ ἡμῖν καὶ τὰ θεῖ’ ἐπίσταται,

καὶ ἐν ἄλλοις·

τὰ προσπεσόντα δ’ ὅστις εὖ φέρει βροτῶν,

[117] [a] ἄριστος εἶναι σωφρονεῖν τέ μοι δοκεῖ.

Οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ πάντα καταμέμφονται καὶ πάντα τὰ παρὰ τὰς ἐλπίδας αὐτοῖς συμβεβηκότα ἐξ ἐπηρείας τύχης καὶ δαιμόνων γενέσθαι νομίζουσι. διὸ καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ὀδύρονται, στένοντες καὶ τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀτυχίαν αἰτιώμενοι. πρὸς οὓς ὑποτυχὼν ἄν τις εἴποι·

θεὸς δέ σοι πῆμ’ οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς σὺ σοί,

καὶ ἡ διὰ τὴν ἀπαιδευσίαν ἄνοια καὶ παραφροσύνη. διὰ ταύτην γοῦν τὴν διηπατημένην καὶ ψευδῆ δόξαν πάντα καταμέμφονται θάνατον. ἐὰν μὲν [b] γὰρ ἐν ἀποδημίᾳ τις ὢν ἀποθάνῃ, στένουσιν ἐπιλέγοντες·

δύσμορος, οὐδ’ ἄρα τῷ γε πατὴρ καὶ πότνια μήτηρ

ὄσσε καθαιρήσουσιν·

ἐὰν δ’ ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκείας πατρίδος παρόντων τῶν γονέων, ὀδύρονται ὡς ἐξαρπασθέντος ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν καὶ τὴν ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς ὀδύνην αὐτοῖς ἀφέντος. ἐὰν δ’ ἄφωνος μηδὲν προσειπὼν περὶ μηδενός, κλαίοντες λέγουσιν·

οὐδέ τί μοι εἶπας πυκινὸν ἔπος, οὗ τέ κεν αἰεί

[c] μεμνῄμην.

ἐὰν προσομιλήσας τι, τοῦτ’ ἀεὶ πρόχειρον ἔχουσιν ὥσπερ ὑπέκκαυμα τῆς λύπης. ἐὰν ταχέως, ὀδύρονται λέγοντες “ἀνηρπάσθη.” ἐὰν μακρῶς, μέμφονται ὅτι καταφθινήσας καὶ τιμωρηθεὶς ἀπέθανε. πᾶσα πρόφασις ἱκανὴ πρὸς τὸ τὰς λύπας καὶ τοὺς θρήνους συνεγείρειν. ταῦτα δ’ ἐκίνησαν οἱ ποιηταί, καὶ μάλιστα τούτων ὁ πρῶτος Ὅμηρος λέγων·

ὡς δὲ πατὴρ οὗ παιδὸς ὀδύρεται ὀστέα καίων,

νυμφίου, ὅς τε θανὼν δειλοὺς ἀκάχησε τοκῆας.

ἄρρητον δὲ τοκεῦσι γόον καὶ πένθος ἔθηκε,

[d] καὶ ταῦτα μὲν οὔπω δῆλον εἰ δικαίως ὀδύρεται, ἀλλ’ ὅρα τὸ ἑξῆς·

μοῦνος τηλύγετος πολλοῖσιν ἐπὶ κτεάτεσσι.

τίς γὰρ οἶδεν, εἰ ὁ θεὸς πατρικῶς κηδόμενος τοῦ ἀνθρωπείου γένους καὶ προορώμενος τὰ μέλλοντα συμβήσεσθαι προεξάγει τινὰς ἐκ τοῦ ζῆν ἀώρους; ὅθεν οὐδὲν φευκτὸν νομιστέον αὐτοὺς πάσχειν

(δεινὸν γὰρ οὐδὲν τῶν ἀναγκαίων βροτοῖς

οὔτε τῶν κατὰ προηγούμενον λόγον συμβαινόντων [e] οὔτε τῶν κατ’ ἐπακολούθησιν), καὶ ὅτι οἱ πλεῖστοι θάνατοι πρὸ ἄλλων δυσχερῶν μειζόνων γίγνονται, καὶ ὅτι τοῖς μὲν οὐδὲ γενέσθαι συνέφερε, τοῖς δ’ ἅμα τῷ γενέσθαι ἀποθανεῖν, τοῖς δὲ προελθοῦσιν ἐπὶ μικρὸν, τοῖς δ’ ἀκμάζουσι. πρὸς πάντας δὴ τούτους τοὺς θανάτους ἐλαφρῶς ἑκτέον, εἰδότας ὅτι τὴν μοῖραν οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκφυγεῖν (πεπαιδευμένων δ’ ἐστὶν ἀνθρώπων προσειληφέναι ὅτι βραχὺν χρόνον προειλήφασιν ἡμᾶς οἱ δοκοῦντες ἄωροι τοῦ ζῆν ἐστερῆσθαι· καὶ γὰρ ὁ μακρότατος βίος ὀλίγος ἐστὶ καὶ στιγμαῖος πρὸς τὸν ἄπειρον αἰῶνα) [f] καὶ ὅτι πολλοὶ τῶν ἐπὶ πλέον πενθησάντων μετ’ οὐ πολὺ τοῖς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν κατοδυρθεῖσιν ἐπηκολούθησαν, οὐδὲν ἐκ τοῦ πένθους ὄφελος περιποιησάμενοι, μάτην δ’ ἑαυτοὺς καταικισάμενοι ταῖς κακουχίαις.

Βραχυτάτου δὲ τοῦ τῆς ἐπιδημίας ὄντος ἐν τῷ βίῳ χρόνου, οὐκ ἐν ταῖς αὐχμηραῖς λύπαις οὐδ’ ἐν τῷ κακοδαιμονεστάτῳ πένθει διαφθείρειν ἑαυτοὺς δεῖ ταῖς ὀδύναις καὶ ταῖς τοῦ σώματος αἰκίαις παρατεινομένους, ἀλλὰ μεταβάλλειν ἐπὶ τὸ κρεῖττον καὶ ἀνθρωπικώτερον, πειρωμένους καὶ σπουδάζοντας ἐντυγχάνειν ἀνδράσι μὴ τοῖς συλλυπουμένοις καὶ διεγείρουσι τὰ πένθη διὰ [118] [a] κολακείαν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἀφαιρουμένοις τὰς λύπας διὰ τῆς γενναίας καὶ σεμνῆς παρηγορίας, ἐπακούοντας καὶ ἔχοντας ἐν νῷ τὸ Ὁμηρικὸν τοῦτ’ ἔπος, ὅπερ ὁ Ἕκτωρ πρὸς τὴν Ἀνδρομάχην ἀντιπαρηγορῶν αὐτὴν εἶπεν ὡδί·

δαιμονίη, μή μοί τι λίην ἀκαχίζεο θυμῷ·

οὐ γάρ τίς μ’ ὑπὲρ αἶσαν ἀνὴρ Ἄιδι προϊάψει,

μοῖραν δ’ οὔ τινά φημι πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν,

οὐ κακὸν οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλόν, ἐπὴν τὰ πρῶτα γένηται.

ταύτην δὲ τὴν μοῖραν ἐν ἄλλοις ὁ ποιητής φησι·

[b] γεινομένῳ ἐπένησε λίνῳ, ὅτε μιν τέκε μήτηρ.

Ταῦτα πρὸ διανοίας λαβόντες τῆς ἀπράκτου καὶ κενῆς ἀπαλλαγησόμεθα βαρυπενθείας, ὀλίγου δὴ παντάπασι τοῦ μεταξὺ χρόνου τῆς ζωῆς ὄντος. φειστέον οὖν, ὅπως εὔθυμόν τε καὶ ἀπαρενόχλητον τοῦτον ταῖς πενθικαῖς λύπαις διαγάγωμεν, τὰ τοῦ πένθους παράσημα μεθέμενοι καὶ τῆς τοῦ σώματος ἐπιμελείας φροντίσαντες καὶ τῆς τῶν συμβιούντων ἡμῖν σωτηρίας. καλὸν δὲ καὶ μεμνῆσθαι τῶν λόγων, οἷς κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἐχρησάμεθά ποτε πρὸς συγγενεῖς ἢ φίλους ἐν ταῖς παραπλησίοις γενομένους [c] συμφοραῖς, παραμυθούμενοι καὶ πείθοντες τὰ κοινὰ τοῦ βίου συμπτώματα κοινῶς φέρειν καὶ τὰ ἀνθρώπινα ἀνθρωπίνως, καὶ μὴ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἐπαρκεῖν πρὸς ἀλυπίαν δύνασθαι, ἑαυτοῖς δὲ μηδὲν ὄφελος εἶναι τὴν τούτων ὑπόμνησιν, δι’ ὧν δεῖ τὸ ἀλγοῦν τῆς ψυχῆς ἀποθεραπεύειν “παιωνίοις λόγου φαρμάκοις,” ὡς πάντων μᾶλλον ἢ ἀλυπίας ἀναβολὴν δεῖ ποιεῖσθαι. καίτοι γε τὸν ἐν ὁτῳοῦν “ἀμβολιεργὸν ἄταις,” φησί, “παλαίειν,” τὸ κυκλούμενον τοῦτο παρὰ πᾶσιν [d] ἔπος· πολὺ δ’ οἶμαι μᾶλλον τὸν ὑπερτιθέμενον τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀχθεινὰ πάθη καὶ δυσάντητα πρὸς τὸν ἐπιόντα χρόνον.

Ἀποβλέπειν δὲ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς εὐγενῶς καὶ μεγαλοφρόνως τοὺς ἐπὶ τοῖς υἱοῖς γενομένους θανάτους καὶ πράως ὑποστάντας, Ἀναξαγόραν τὸν Κλαζομένιον καὶ Δημοσθένην τὸν Ἀθηναῖον καὶ Δίωνα τὸν Συρακόσιον καὶ τὸν βασιλέα Ἀντίγονον, καὶ συχνοὺς ἄλλους τῶν τε παλαιῶν καὶ τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς.

Τούτων γὰρ Ἀναξαγόραν παρειλήφαμεν, ὥς φασι, φυσιολογοῦντα καὶ διαλεγόμενον τοῖς γνωρίμοις, ἀκούσαντα παρά τινος τῶν ἀναγγειλάντων αὐτῷ τὴν περὶ τὸν υἱὸν τελευτήν, μικρὸν ἐπισχόντα [e] πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας εἰπεῖν “ᾔδειν ὅτι θνητὸν ἐγέννησα υἱόν.”

Περικλέα δὲ τὸν Ὀλύμπιον προσαγορευθέντα διὰ τὴν περὶ τὸν λόγον καὶ τὴν σύνεσιν ὑπερβεβλημένην δύναμιν, πυθόμενον ἀμφοτέρους αὐτοῦ τοὺς υἱοὺς μετηλλαχέναι τὸν βίον, Πάραλόν τε καὶ Ξάνθιππον, ὥς φησι Πρωταγόρας, εἰπὼν οὕτως· “τῶν γὰρ υἱέων νεηνιέων ἐόντων καὶ καλῶν, ἐν ὀκτὼ δὲ τῇσι πάσῃσιν ἡμέρῃσι ἀποθανόντων νηπενθέως ἀνέτλη· εὐδίης γὰρ εἴχετο, ἐξ ἧς πολλὸν ὤνητο κατὰ πᾶσαν ἡμέρην εἰς εὐποτμίην καὶ ἀνωδυνίην καὶ τὴν ἐν τοῖσι πολλοῖσι δόξαν· [f] πᾶς γάρ τίς μιν ὁρέων τὰ ἑωυτοῦ πένθεα ἐρρωμένως φέροντα, μεγαλόφρονά τε καὶ ἀνδρήιον ἐδόκεε εἶναι καὶ ἑωυτοῦ κρέσσω, κάρτα εἰδὼς τὴν ἑωυτοῦ ἐν τοισίδε πρήγμασι ἀμηχανίην· τοῦτον γὰρ εὐθὺς μετὰ τὴν προσαγγελίαν ἀμφοτέρων τῶν υἱέων οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐστεφανωμένον κατὰ τὸ πάτριον ἔθος καὶ λευχειμονοῦντα δημηγορεῖν ‘βουλάς τ’ ἐξάρχοντ’ ἀγαθὰς’ πρός τε τὸν πόλεμον ἐπιπαρορμῶντα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους.”

Ξενοφῶντα δὲ τὸν Σωκρατικὸν θύοντά ποτε, παρὰ τῶν ἀγγέλων τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ πολέμου πυθόμενον ὅτι ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ Γρύλλος ἀγωνιζόμενος [119] [a] ἐτελεύτησε, περιελόμενον τὸν στέφανον ἐξετάζειν τίνα τρόπον ἐτελεύτησε. τῶν δὲ ἀπαγγειλάντων ὅτι γενναίως ἀριστεύων καὶ πολλοὺς τῶν πολεμίων κατακτείνας, μικρὸν παντελῶς διασιωπήσαντα χρόνον καὶ τῷ λογισμῷ τὸ πάθος παρακατασχόντα, ἐπιθέμενον πάλιν τὸν στέφανον ἐπιτελεῖν τὴν θυσίαν, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἀγγέλους εἰπεῖν ὅτι “θεοῖς ηὐξάμην οὐκ ἀθάνατον οὐδὲ πολυχρόνιον γενέσθαι μοι τὸν υἱόν (τὸ γὰρ τοιοῦτον ἄδηλον εἰ συμφέρει), ἀγαθὸν δὲ καὶ φιλόπατριν, ὃ δὴ καὶ γέγονεν.”

[b] Δίωνα δὲ τὸν Συρακόσιον συνεδρεύοντα μετὰ τῶν φίλων, κατὰ τὴν οἰκίαν θορύβου γενομένου καὶ μεγάλης κραυγῆς, πυθόμενον τὴν αἰτίαν καὶ τὸ συμβεβηκὸς ἀκούσαντα ὅτι ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ καταπεσὼν ἀπὸ τοῦ στέγους ἐτελεύτησεν, οὐδὲν ἐκπλαγέντα τὸ μὲν σωμάτιον κελεῦσαι τοῦ μεταλλάξαντος ταῖς γυναιξὶ παραδοῦναι πρὸς τὴν νόμιμον ταφήν, αὐτὸν δὲ περὶ ὧν διεσκέπτετο μὴ παραλιπεῖν.

Τοῦτον ζηλῶσαι λέγεται καὶ Δημοσθένην τὸν ῥήτορα, τὴν μόνην καὶ ἀγαπητὴν ἀπολέσαντα θυγατέρα, περὶ ἧς φησιν Αἰσχίνης, κατηγορεῖν αὐτοῦ δόξας, ταυτί· “ἑβδόμην δ’ ἡμέραν τῆς [c] θυγατρὸς αὐτῷ τετελευτηκυίας, πρὶν πενθῆσαι καὶ τὰ νομιζόμενα ποιῆσαι, στεφανωσάμενος καὶ λευκὴν ἐσθῆτα ἀναλαβὼν ἐβουθύτει καὶ παρενόμει, τὴν μόνην ὁ δείλαιος καὶ πρώτην αὐτὸν πατέρα προσειποῦσαν ἀπολέσας.” οὗτος μὲν οὖν ῥητορικῶς προθέμενος αὐτοῦ κατηγορῆσαι ταῦτα διεξῆλθεν, ἀγνοῶν ὅτι διὰ τούτων αὐτὸν ἐπαινεῖ τὸ πενθεῖν παρωσάμενον καὶ τὸ φιλόπατρι πρὸ τῆς τῶν ἀναγκαίων συμπαθείας ἐπιδειξάμενον.

Ἀντίγονον δὲ τὸν βασιλέα πυθόμενον τὴν Ἀλκυονέως τοῦ υἱοῦ τελευτὴν ἐν παρατάξει γενομένην μεγαλοφρόνως τε πρὸς τοὺς ἀπαγγείλαντας αὐτῷ τὴν συμφορὰν ἀπιδεῖν καὶ μικρὸν ἐπισχόντα καὶ κατηφιάσαντα προσειπεῖν “ὦ [d] Ἀλκυονεῦ, ὀψίτερον μετήλλαξας τὸν βίον, οὕτως ἀφειδῶς ἐξορμῶν πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ οὔτε τῆς σαυτοῦ σωτηρίας οὔτε τῶν ἐμῶν παραινέσεων φροντίζων.”

Τούτους δὴ τοὺς ἄνδρας θαυμάζουσι μὲν τῆς μεγαλοφροσύνης πάντες καὶ ἄγανται, μιμεῖσθαι δ’ ἐπὶ τῶν ἔργων οὐ δύνανται διὰ τὴν ἐκ τῆς ἀπαιδευσίας ἀσθένειαν τῆς ψυχῆς. πλὴν πολλῶν ὄντων παραδειγμάτων τῶν διὰ τῆς ἱστορίας ἡμῖν παραδιδομένων τῆς τε Ἑλληνικῆς καὶ τῆς Ῥωμαϊκῆς τῶν γενναίως καὶ καλῶς ἐν ταῖς τῶν ἀναγκαίων τελευταῖς διαγενομένων ἀποχρήσει τὰ εἰρημένα πρὸς τὴν ἀπόθεσιν τοῦ πάντων ἀνιαροτάτου [e] πένθους καὶ τῆς ἐν τούτῳ πρὸς οὐδὲν χρήσιμον ματαιοπονίας.

Ὅτι γὰρ οἱ ταῖς ἀρεταῖς διενεγκόντες ὡς θεοφιλεῖς νέοι μετέστησαν πρὸς τὸ χρεὼν καὶ πάλαι μὲν διὰ τῶν πρόσθεν ὑπέμνησα λόγων, καὶ νῦν δὲ πειράσομαι διὰ βραχυτάτων ἐπιδραμεῖν, προσμαρτυρήσας τῷ καλῶς ὑπὸ Μενάνδρου ῥηθέντι τούτῳ·

ὃν οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνῄσκει νέος.

ἀλλ’ ἴσως ὑποτυχὼν ἂν φαίης, Ἀπολλώνιε φίλτατε, σφόδρ’ ἦν ἐπιτεταγμένος ὁ νεανίσκος Ἀπόλλωνι [f] καὶ Μοίραις, καὶ σὲ ἔδει ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τελείου γενομένου κηδευθῆναι μεταλλάξαντα τὸν βίον· τοῦτο γὰρ εἶναι κατὰ φύσιν. τὴν ἡμετέραν δηλονότι καὶ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην, ἀλλ’ οὐ κατὰ τὴν τῶν ὅλων πρόνοιαν καὶ τὴν κοσμικὴν διάταξιν. ἐκείνῳ δὲ τῷ μακαρισθέντι οὐκ ἦν κατὰ φύσιν περαιτέρω τοῦ ἀπονεμηθέντος αὐτῷ χρόνου πρὸς τὸν ἐνθάδε βίον περιμένειν, ἀλλ’ εὐτάκτως τοῦτον ἐκπλήσαντι πρὸς τὴν εἱμαρμένην ἐπανάγειν πορείαν, καλούσης αὐτῆς, φησίν, ἤδη πρὸς ἑαυτήν. “ἀλλ’ ἄωρος ἐτελεύτησεν.” οὐκοῦν εὐποτμότερος διὰ τοῦτο καὶ κακῶν ἀπείρατός ἐστιν· ὁ

[120] [a] “βίος γάρ,” φησὶν Εὐριπίδης, “ὄνομ’ ἔχει μόνον

πόνος γεγώς.”

οὗτος δ’ ἐπὶ τῆς εὐανθεστάτης ἡλικίας προαπεφοίτησεν ὁλόκληρος ἠίθεος, ζηλωτὸς καὶ περίβλεπτος πᾶσι τοῖς συνήθεσιν αὐτῷ, φιλοπάτωρ γενόμενος καὶ φιλομήτωρ καὶ φιλοίκειος καὶ φιλόφιλος, τὸ δὲ σύμπαν εἰπεῖν φιλάνθρωπος, αἰδούμενος μὲν τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους τῶν φίλων ὥσπερ πατέρας, στέργων δὲ τοὺς ὁμήλικας καὶ συνήθεις, τιμητικὸς δὲ τῶν καθηγησαμένων, ξένοις δὲ καὶ ἀστοῖς [b] πραότατος, πᾶσι δὲ μείλιχος καὶ φίλος διά τε τὴν ἐξ ὄψεως χάριν καὶ τὴν εὐπροσήγορον φιλανθρωπίαν.

Ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος μὲν τῆς τε σῆς εὐσεβείας καὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ τὴν πρέπουσαν εὐφημίαν ἔχων πρὸς τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον προαπεφοίτησε τοῦ θνητοῦ βίου, καθάπερ ἔκ του συμποσίου, πρὶν εἴς τινα παροινίαν ἐκπεσεῖν τὴν τῷ μακρῷ γήρᾳ παρεπομένην. εἰ δ’ ὁ τῶν παλαιῶν ποιητῶν τε καὶ φιλοσόφων λόγος ἐστὶν ἀληθὴς ὥσπερ εἰκὸς ἔχειν, οὕτω καὶ τοῖς εὐσεβέσι τῶν μεταλλαξάντων ἔστι τις τιμὴ καὶ προεδρία καθάπερ λέγεται, καὶ χῶρός τις ἀποτεταγμένος [c] ἐν ᾧ διατρίβουσιν αἱ τούτων ψυχαί, καλὰς ἐλπίδας ἔχειν σε δεῖ περὶ τοῦ μακαρίτου υἱέος σου, ὅτι τούτοις συγκαταριθμηθεὶς συνέσται.

Λέγεται δ’ ὑπὸ μὲν τοῦ μελικοῦ Πινδάρου ταυτὶ περὶ τῶν εὐσεβῶν ἐν Ἅιδου·

τοῖσι λάμπει μὲν μένος ἀελίου τὰν ἐνθάδε νύκτα κάτω,

φοινικορόδοις τ’ ἐν λειμώνεσσι προάστιον αὐτῶν·

καὶ λιβάνῳ σκιαρὸν καὶ χρυσοκάρποισι βεβριθός.

καὶ τοὶ μὲν ἵπποις γυμνασίοις τε, τοὶ δὲ πεσσοῖς,

τοὶ δὲ φορμίγγεσι τέρπονται, παρὰ δέ σφισιν

εὐανθὴς ἅπας τέθαλεν ὄλβος,

ὀδμὰ δ’ ἐρατὸν κατὰ χῶρον κίδναται

αἰεὶ θύα μιγνύντων πυρὶ τηλεφανεῖ παντοῖα θεῶν

ἐπὶ βωμοῖς.

[d] καὶ μικρὸν προελθὼν ἐν ἄλλῳ θρήνῳ περὶ ψυχῆς λέγων φησίν·

ὀλβίᾳ δ’ ἅπαντες αἴσᾳ λυσίπονον τελευτάν.

καὶ σῶμα μὲν πάντων ἕπεται θανάτῳ περισθενεῖ,

ζωὸν δ’ ἔτι λείπεται αἰῶνος εἴδωλον· τὸ γάρ ἐστι μόνον

ἐκ θεῶν. εὕδει δὲ πρασσόντων μελέων, ἀτὰρ

εὑδόντεσσιν ἐν πολλοῖς ὀνείροις

δείκνυσι τερπνῶν ἐφέρποισαν χαλεπῶν τε κρίσιν.

Ὁ δὲ θεῖος Πλάτων πολλὰ μὲν ἐν τῷ Περὶ ψυχῆς περὶ τῆς ἀθανασίας αὐτῆς εἴρηκεν, οὐκ [e] ὀλίγα δ’ ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ καὶ τῷ Μένωνι καὶ τῷ Γοργίᾳ καὶ σποράδην ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις διαλόγοις. ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν ἐν τῷ Περὶ ψυχῆς διαλόγῳ ῥηθέντα κατ’ ἰδίαν ὑπομνηματισάμενός σοι παρέξομαι, ὡς ἐβουλήθης· τάδε δὲ πρὸς τὸ παρὸν καίρια καὶ χρήσιμα, τὰ λεχθέντα πρὸς Καλλικλέα τὸν Ἀθηναῖον, ἑταῖρον δὲ καὶ μαθητὴν Γοργίου τοῦ ῥήτορος. φησὶ γὰρ ὁ παρὰ τῷ Πλάτωνι Σωκράτης· “ἄκουε δή,” φασί, “μάλα καλοῦ λόγου, ὃν σὺ μὲν ἡγήσῃ, ὡς ἐγὼ οἶμαι, μῦθον, ἐγὼ δὲ λόγον· ὡς ἀληθῆ γὰρ ὄντα σοι λέξω ἃ μέλλω λέγειν. ὥσπερ γὰρ Ὅμηρος λέγει, διενείμαντο τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁ Ζεὺς καὶ ὁ Ποσειδῶν καὶ ὁ Πλούτων, ἐπειδὴ [f] παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς παρέλαβον· ἦν οὖν νόμος ὅδε περὶ ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἐπὶ Κρόνου, καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ νῦν ἔτ’ ἔστιν ἐν θεοῖς, τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸν μὲν δικαίως διελθόντα τὸν βίον καὶ ὁσίως, ἐπειδὰν τελευτήσῃ, εἰς μακάρων νήσους ἀπιόντα οἰκεῖν ἐν πάσῃ εὐδαιμονίᾳ ἐκτὸς κακῶν, τὸν δ’ ἀδίκως καὶ ἀθέως [121] [a] εἰς τὸ τῆς δίκης τε καὶ τίσεως δεσμωτήριον, ὃ δὴ Τάρταρον καλοῦσιν, ἰέναι. τούτων δ’ οἱ δικασταὶ ἐπὶ Κρόνου καὶ ἔτι νεωστὶ τοῦ Διὸς τὴν ἀρχὴν ἔχοντος ζῶντες ἦσαν ζώντων, ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ δικάζοντες ᾗ μέλλοιεν τελευτᾶν. ἔπειτα αἱ δίκαι πως οὐ καλῶς ἐκρίνοντο. ὅ τ’ οὖν Πλούτων καὶ οἱ ἐπιμεληταὶ οἱ ἐκ μακάρων νήσων ἰόντες ἔλεγον πρὸς τὸν Δία ὅτι φοιτῷέν σφισιν ἄνθρωποι ἑκατέρωσε ἀνάξιοι. εἶπεν οὖν ὁ Ζεύς, ‘ἀλλ’ ἐγώ,’ ἔφη, ‘παύσω τοῦτο γιγνόμενον. νῦν μὲν γὰρ [b] κακῶς αἱ δίκαι δικάζονται. ἀμπεχόμενοι γάρ,’ ἔφη, ‘οἱ κρινόμενοι κρίνονται· ζῶντες γὰρ κρίνονται. πολλοὶ οὖν ἴσως,’ ἦ δ’ ὅς, ‘πονηρὰς ψυχὰς ἔχοντες ἠμφιεσμένοι εἰσὶ σώματά τε καλὰ καὶ γένη καὶ πλούτους, καὶ ἐπειδὰν ἡ κρίσις ᾖ, ἔρχονται αὐτοῖς πολλοὶ μαρτυρήσοντες ὡς δικαίως βεβιώκασιν. οἱ οὖν δικασταὶ ὑπό τε τούτων ἐκπλήττονται, καὶ ἅμα καὶ αὐτοὶ ἀμπεχόμενοι δικάζουσι, πρὸ τῆς ψυχῆς τῆς ἑαυτῶν ὀφθαλμούς τε καὶ ὦτα καὶ ὅλον τὸ σῶμα προκεκαλυμμένοι. ταῦτα δὴ αὐτοῖς πάντ’ ἐπίπροσθεν γίγνεται, καὶ τὰ αὑτῶν ἀμφιέσματα καὶ τὰ τῶν κρινομένων.

[c] πρῶτον μὲν οὖν παυστέον ἐστὶ προειδότας αὐτοὺς τὸν θάνατον· νῦν γὰρ προΐσασι. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν καὶ δὴ εἴρηται τῷ Προμηθεῖ, ὅπως ἂν παύσῃ αὐτό. ἔπειτα γυμνοὺς κριτέον ἁπάντων τούτων· τεθνεῶτας γὰρ δεῖ κρίνεσθαι. καὶ τὸν κριτὴν δεῖ γυμνὸν εἶναι, τεθνεῶτα, αὐτῇ τῇ ψυχῇ αὐτὴν τὴν ψυχὴν θεωροῦντα ἐξαίφνης ἀποθανόντος ἑκάστου, ἔρημον ἁπάντων τῶν συγγενῶν, καὶ καταλιπόντα ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς πάντα ἐκεῖνον τὸν κόσμον, ἵνα δικαία ἡ κρίσις ᾖ. ἐγὼ οὖν ταῦτ’ ἐγνωκὼς πρότερος ἢ ὑμεῖς ἐποιησάμην δικαστὰς υἱεῖς ἐμαυτοῦ, δύο μὲν ἐκ τῆς Ἀσίας, Μίνω τε καὶ Ῥαδάμανθυν, ἕνα δ’ ἐκ [d] τῆς Εὐρώπης, Αἰακόν. οὗτοι οὖν ἐπειδὰν τελευτήσωσι, δικάσουσιν ἐν τῷ λειμῶνι, ἐν τῇ τριόδῳ ἐξ ἧς φέρετον τὼ ὁδώ, ἡ μὲν εἰς μακάρων νήσους, ἡ δ’ εἰς Τάρταρον. καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἐκ τῆς Ἀσίας Ῥαδάμανθυς κρινεῖ, τοὺς δ’ ἐκ τῆς Εὐρώπης Αἰακός· Μίνῳ δὲ πρεσβεῖα δώσω ἐπιδιακρίνειν ἐὰν ἀπορῆτόν τι τὼ ἑτέρω, ἵν’ ὡς δικαιοτάτη ἡ κρίσις ᾖ περὶ τῆς πορείας τοῖς ἀνθρώποις.’ ταῦτ’ ἐστίν, ὦ Καλλίκλεις, ἃ ἐγὼ ἀκηκοὼς πιστεύω ἀληθῆ εἶναι· καὶ ἐκ τούτων τῶν λόγων τοιόνδε τι λογίζομαι συμβαίνειν, ὅτι ὁ θάνατος τυγχάνει ὤν, ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ, οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ δυοῖν πραγμάτοιν διάλυσις, [e] τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τοῦ σώματος ἀπ’ ἀλλήλοιν.”

Ταῦτά σοι συναγαγών, Ἀπολλώνιε φίλτατε, καὶ συνθεὶς μετὰ πολλῆς ἐπιμελείας ἀπειργασάμην τὸν παραμυθητικόν σοι λόγον, ἀναγκαιότατον ὄντα σοι πρός τε τὴν τῆς παρούσης λύπης ἀπαλλαγὴν καὶ τοῦ πάντων ἀνιαροτάτου πένθους παῦλαν. περιέχει δὲ καὶ τὴν πρὸς τὸν θεοφιλέστατον υἱόν σου Ἀπολλώνιον πρέπουσαν τιμήν, ποθεινοτάτην οὖσαν τοῖς ἀφιερωθεῖσι, τὴν διὰ τῆς ἀγαθῆς μνήμης καὶ τῆς ἀδιαλείπτου πρὸς τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον εὐφημίας. καλῶς οὖν ποιήσεις καὶ τῷ λόγῳ πεισθεὶς καὶ τῷ μακαρίτῃ σου υἱῷ [f] χαρισάμενος καὶ μεταβαλὼν ἐκ τῆς ἀνωφελοῦς περὶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν κακώσεως καὶ καταφθορᾶς ἐπὶ τὴν συνήθη σοι καὶ κατὰ φύσιν διαγωγὴν ἐλθεῖν. ὡς γὰρ οὐδὲ συμβιῶν ἡμῖν ἡδέως ἑώρα κατηφεῖς ὄντας οὔτε σὲ οὔτε τὴν μητέρα, οὕτως οὐδὲ νῦν μετὰ θεῶν ὢν καὶ τούτοις συνεστιώμενος εὐαρεστήσειεν ἂν τῇ τοιαύτῃ ὑμῶν διαγωγῇ. ἀνδρὸς οὖν ἀγαθοῦ καὶ γενναίου καὶ [122] [a] φιλοτέκνου φρόνημα ἀναλαβὼν σεαυτόν τε καὶ τὴν μητέρα τοῦ νεανίσκου καὶ τοὺς συγγενεῖς καὶ φίλους ἔκλυσαι τῆς τοιαύτης κακοδαιμονίας, εἰς γαληνότερον μετελθὼν βίου σχῆμα καὶ προσφιλέστατον τῷ τε υἱῷ σου καὶ πᾶσιν ἡμῖν τοῖς κηδομένοις σου κατὰ τὸ προσῆκον.

De tuenda sanitate praecepta

ΥΓΙΕΙΝΑ ΠΑΡΑΓΓΕΛΜΑΤΑ

[122] ΜΟΣΧΙΩΝ. Σὺ δὴ Γλαῦκον χθές, ὦ Ζεύξιππε, τὸν ἰατρὸν ἀπετρίψω συμφιλοσοφεῖν ὑμῖν βουλόμενον.

ΖΕΥΞΙΠΠΟΣ. Οὔτ’ ἀπετριψάμην, ὦ φίλε Μοσχίων, οὔτ’ ἐβούλετο συμφιλοσοφεῖν ἐκεῖνος, ἀλλ’ [c] ἔφυγον καὶ ἐφοβήθην λαβὴν φιλομαχοῦντι παρασχεῖν. ἐν μὲν γὰρ ἰατρικῇ καθ’ Ὅμηρον ὁ ἀνὴρ

πολλῶν ἀντάξιος ἄλλων,

οὐκ εὐμενὴς δὲ πρὸς φιλοσοφίαν, ἀλλ’ ἀεί τι τραχὺ καὶ δύσκολον ἔχων ἐν τοῖς λόγοις. καὶ νῦν ἐναντίος ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς ἐχώρει, βοῶν ἔτι πρόσωθεν οὐ μικρὸν οὐδ’ ἐπιεικὲς ἔργον ἡμῖν σύγχυσιν ὅρων τετολμῆσθαι διαλεχθεῖσι περὶ διαίτης ὑγιεινῆς. “χωρίς” γὰρ ἔφη τὰ φιλοσόφων καὶ ἰατρῶν ὥσπερ τινῶν “Μυσῶν καὶ Φρυγῶν ὁρίσματα,” καί τινα τῶν οὐ μετὰ σπουδῆς, οὐ μὴν ἀχρήστως, [d] εἰρημένων παρ’ ἡμῶν διὰ στόματος ἔχων ἐσπάραττεν.

ΜΟΣΧΙΩΝ. Ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτων ἔγωγε καὶ τῶν ἄλλων, ὦ Ζεύξιππε, πρόθυμος ἀκροατὴς ἡδέως ἂν γενοίμην.

ΖΕΥΞΙΠΠΟΣ. Φιλόσοφος γὰρ εἶ τὴν φύσιν, ὦ Μοσχίων, καὶ τῷ μὴ φιλιατροῦντι χαλεπαίνεις φιλοσόφῳ, καὶ ἀγανακτεῖς εἰ μᾶλλον αὑτὸν οἴεται προσήκειν γεωμετρίας καὶ διαλεκτικῆς καὶ μουσικῆς ὁρᾶσθαι μεταποιούμενον ἢ ζητεῖν καὶ μανθάνειν βουλόμενον

ὅττι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόν τ’ ἀγαθόν τε τέτυκται

τῷ σώματι. καίτοι πλείους ἂν ἴδοις ἐκεῖ θεατάς, ὅπου θεωρικόν τι νέμεται τοῖς συνιοῦσιν, ὥσπερ [e] Ἀθήνησι· τῶν ἐλευθερίων δὲ τεχνῶν ἰατρικὴ τὸ μὲν γλαφυρὸν καὶ περιττὸν καὶ ἐπιτερπὲς οὐδεμιᾶς ἐνδεέστερον ἔχει, θεωρικὸν δὲ μέγα τοῖς φιλομαθοῦσι τὴν σωτηρίαν καὶ τὴν ὑγίειαν ἐπιδίδωσιν. ὥστ’ οὐ παράβασιν ὅρων ἐπικαλεῖν δεῖ τοῖς περὶ ὑγιεινῶν διαλεγομένοις φιλοσόφοις, ἀλλ’ εἰ μὴ παντάπασιν ἀνελόντες οἴονται δεῖν τοὺς ὅρους ὥσπερ ἐν μιᾷ χώρᾳ κοινῶς ἐμφιλοκαλεῖν, ἅμα τὸ ἡδὺ τῷ λόγῳ καὶ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον διώκοντες.

ΜΟΣΧΙΩΝ. Ἀλλὰ Γλαῦκον μὲν ἐῶμεν, ὦ Ζεύξιππε, ὑπὸ σεμνότητος αὐτοτελῆ βουλόμενον εἶναι καὶ ἀπροσδεῆ φιλοσοφίας, σὺ δὲ τοὺς λόγους [f] ἡμῖν δίελθε πάντας· εἰ δὲ βούλει, πρώτους ἐκείνους ὧν ἔφης οὐ πάνυ μετὰ σπουδῆς εἰρημένων ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι τὸν Γλαῦκον.

ΖΕΥΞΙΠΠΟΣ. Ἔφη τοίνυν ὁ ἑταῖρος ἡμῶν ἀκοῦσαί τινος λέγοντος ὡς τὸ τὰς χεῖρας ἀεὶ θερμὰς ἔχειν καὶ μὴ περιορᾶν ψυχομένας οὐ [123] [a] μικρὸν εἴη πρὸς ὑγίειαν, καὶ τοὐναντίον ἡ τῶν ἄκρων περίψυξις εἰς τὰ μέσα συνελαύνουσα τὸ θερμὸν ὥσπερ τινὰ συνήθειαν ἢ μελέτην ἐμποιεῖ πυρετοῦ· τὸ δ’ ἔξω στρέφοντα μετὰ τῆς θερμότητος ἕλκειν ἐπὶ πάντα καὶ διανέμειν τὴν ὕλην ὑγιεινόν. ἂν μὲν οὖν ἐνεργοῦντές τι ταῖς χερσὶ καὶ χρώμενοι τυγχάνωμεν, αὐτὴν τὴν κίνησιν ἐπάγειν ἐνταῦθα καὶ συνέχειν τὸ θερμόν· ἔργων δὲ τοιούτων σχολὴν ἄγοντας ἥκιστα δεῖν προσδέχεσθαι τοῖς ἄκροις τὸ ψυχρόν.

Ἓν μὲν οὖν τοῦτο τῶν γελασθέντων ἦν· δεύτερον δ’ οἶμαι τὸ περὶ τὰς τροφὰς ἃς προσφέρετε [b] τοῖς κάμνουσιν. ἅπτεσθαι γὰρ αὐτῶν διὰ χρόνου παρῄνει καὶ γεύεσθαι, συνεθίζοντας αὑτοὺς ἐν τῷ ὑγιαίνειν καὶ μὴ τρέμοντας ὥσπερ τὰ παιδάρια μηδὲ μισοῦντας ἐκείνην τὴν δίαιταν, ἀλλὰ ποιουμένους ἀτρέμα χειροήθη ταῖς ὀρέξεσι καὶ σύντροφον, ὅπως ἐν τῷ νοσεῖν μὴ δυσχεραίνωμεν ὡς φάρμακα τὰ σιτία μηδ’ ἀσχάλλωμεν ἁπλοῦν τι καὶ ἄνοψον καὶ ἄκνισον λαμβάνοντες. ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἀλούτους ποτὲ φευκτέον ἐλθεῖν ἐπὶ τροφὴν οὐδ’ ὕδωρ πιεῖν οἴνου παρόντος οὐδὲ θερμὸν ἐν θέρει, χιόνος παρακειμένης, τὰς μὲν ἐπιδεικτικὰς καὶ σοφιστικὰς χαίρειν ἐῶντας ἀποσχέσεις [c] τῶν τοιούτων καὶ μεγαλαυχίας ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀποσχέσεσιν, αὐτοὺς δὲ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς σιωπῇ τήν τε ὄρεξιν ἅμα τοῦ συμφέροντος ὑπήκοον ἐθίζοντας εἶναι μετ’ εὐκολίας, καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀφαιροῦντας πόρρωθεν ἔτι τὴν περὶ ταῦτα μικρολογίαν ἐν ταῖς νόσοις καὶ τὸ ἐπιθρηνεῖν, ἀνοδυρομένης ὡς ἐξ ἡδονῶν μεγάλων καὶ ἀγαπητῶν εἰς ἀγεννῆ καὶ ταπεινὴν ἀπελήλαται δίαιταν.

Εὖ γὰρ εἰρημένον τὸ “ἑλοῦ βίον τὸν ἄριστον, ἡδὺν δ’ αὐτὸν ἡ συνήθεια ποιήσει,” καὶ κατὰ μέρος ὡς ἕκαστα πειρωμένῳ χρήσιμόν ἐστι, μάλιστα δὲ τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα διαιτημάτων, ἐν τοῖς ὑγιεινοτάτοις ἐπάγοντα τὴν συνήθειαν, εὐμενῆ καὶ γνώριμα τῇ φύσει καὶ οἰκεῖα παρασκευάζειν, [d] μεμνημένον ἃ πάσχουσιν ἔνιοι καὶ ποιοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρρωστίαις, χαλεπαίνοντες καὶ δυσανασχετοῦντες ὕδατος θερμοῦ προσφερομένου καὶ ῥοφήματος ἢ ἄρτου, μιαρὰ μὲν ταῦτα καὶ ἀηδῆ μιαροὺς δὲ καὶ χαλεποὺς τοὺς ἀναγκάζοντας ἀποκαλοῦντες. πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ λουτρὸν ἀπώλεσεν, οὐδὲν ἐν ἀρχῇ μέγα κακὸν ἔχοντας ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι μηδ’ ὑπομένειν γεύσασθαι τροφῆς ἀλούτους· ὧν καὶ Τίτος ἦν ὁ αὐτοκράτωρ, ὥς φασιν οἱ νοσηλεύσαντες.

Ἔτι τοίνυν ἐλέχθη τοιοῦτον, ὡς ἀεὶ μὲν ὑγιεινότερα σώματι τὰ εὐτελέστερα, μάλιστα δὲ [e] φυλακτέον πλησμονὰς καὶ μέθας καὶ ἡδυπαθείας ἑορτήν τινα μέλλουσαν ἢ φίλων ὑποδοχὴν ἐν χερσὶν ἔχοντας ἢ προσδοκῶντας ἑστίασιν βασιλικὴν καὶ ἡγεμονικὴν καὶ συμπεριφορὰν ἀπαραίτητον, οἷον ἐπιόντος ἀνέμου καὶ κύματος εὐσταλὲς τὸ σῶμα καὶ κοῦφον ἐν εὐδίᾳ παρασκευάζοντας. ἔργον γάρ ἐστιν ἐν συνουσίαις καὶ φιλοφροσύναις αὑτὸν ἐπὶ τῶν μετρίων καὶ τῶν συνήθων φυλάξαι μὴ πᾶσι μετ’ ἀηδίας δεινῆς ἐπαχθῆ φανέντα καὶ φορτικόν. ἵν’ οὖν μὴ πῦρ ἐπὶ πυρί, ὥς φασι, πλησμονή τις ἐπὶ πλησμονῇ καὶ ἄκρατος ἐπ’ [f] ἀκράτῳ γένηται, τὸ παιχθὲν ἀστείως ὑπὸ Φιλίππου μετὰ σπουδῆς μιμητέον· ἦν δὲ τοιοῦτον. ἄνθρωπος αὐτὸν ἐπὶ χώρας ὡς σὺν ὀλίγοις ὄντα δειπνῆσαι παρεκάλεσεν, εἶθ’ ὁρῶν πολλοὺς ἄγοντα παρεσκευασμένων οὐ πολλῶν ἐταράττετο. συναισθόμενος οὖν ὁ Φίλιππος ὑπέπεμπε τῶν φίλων ἑκάστῳ [124] [a] κελεύων πλακοῦντι καταλιπεῖν χώραν, οἱ δὲ πειθόμενοι καὶ προσδοκῶντες ἐφείδοντο τῶν παρκειμένων. ἤρκεσεν οὖν ἅπασι τὸ δεῖπνον. οὕτω δὴ προπαρασκευαστέον αὑτοὺς τῶν ἀναγκαίων συμπεριφορῶν, καὶ ὄψῳ καὶ πέμματι καὶ νὴ Δία μέθῃ χώραν φυλάττοντας ἐν τῷ σώματι, καὶ πρόσφατον ἐπὶ ταῦτα καὶ βουλομένην τὴν ὄρεξιν ἄγοντας.

Ἂν δὲ τοιαῦταί τινες ἄφνω βαρεῖς ὄντας ἡμᾶς καὶ διακειμένους φαύλως ἀνάγκαι καταλάβωσιν ἡγεμόνων καλούντων ἢ ξένων ἐπιφανέντων ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς βαδίζειν εἰς ταὐτὸ τοῖς ἱκανῶς ἔχουσι καὶ [b] συμπίνειν, ἐνταῦθα μάλιστα δεῖ παρατετάχθαι πρὸς “τὴν μέγα σινομένην ἄνδρας αἰδῶ” καὶ δυσωπίαν, τὰ τοῦ τραγικοῦ Κρέοντος λέγοντος

κρεῖσσον δέ μοι νῦν πρός σ’ ἀπέχθεσθαι, ξένε,

ἢ μαλθακισθένθ’ ὕστερον μέγα στένειν.

τὸ γὰρ ἀγροικίας φοβηθέντα δόξαν εἰς πλευρῖτιν ἢ φρενῖτιν ἐμβάλλειν ἑαυτὸν ἀγροίκου τινὸς ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐστι καὶ νοῦν οὐκ ἔχοντος οὐδὲ λόγον ἄνευ κύλικος καὶ κνίσης ἀνθρώποις ἐπιστάμενον ὁμιλεῖν. ἥ τε γὰρ παραίτησις ἂν τὸ ἐπιδέξιον καὶ τὸ ἀστεῖον ἔχῃ, οὐχ ἧττον ἔσται κεχαρισμένη τῆς συμπεριφορᾶς· [c] ἄν τέ τις παρέχων ἑστίασιν ὥσπερ θυσίαν ἄγευστον αὐτὸς ἀπέχηται, παρά τε τῇ κύλικι καὶ τῇ τραπέζῃ μετὰ προθυμίας καὶ φιλοφροσύνης ἅμα τι παίζων καὶ λέγων εἰς ἑαυτόν, ἡδίων φανεῖται τοῦ συμμεθυσκομένου καὶ συνοψοφαγοῦντος. ἐμνήσθη δὲ τῶν μὲν παλαιῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου μετὰ πότον πολὺν αἰσχυνθέντος ἀντειπεῖν Μηδίῳ παρακαλοῦντι, καὶ καταβαλόντος αὖθις ἐξ ἀρχῆς αὑτὸν εἰς ἄκρατον ἀφ’ οὗ διεφθάρη, τῶν δὲ καθ’ ἡμᾶς Ῥήγλου τοῦ παγκρατιαστοῦ. καλοῦντος γὰρ ἐπὶ τὸ λουτρὸν ἅμ’ ἡμέρᾳ Τίτου Καίσαρος ἧκε καὶ [d] συνελούσατο, καὶ πιὼν ἅπαξ, ὥς φασιν, ἀποπληξίας καταλαβούσης εὐθὺς ἀπέθανε.

Ταῦθ’ ἡμῖν ὁ Γλαῦκος ἐν γέλωτι προύφερεν ὡς παιδαγωγικά· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων οὐ πάνυ πρόθυμος ἦν ἀκούειν, οὐδ’ ἡμεῖς ἐκείνῳ διηγεῖσθαι. σὺ δ’ ἐπισκόπει τῶν λεχθέντων ἕκαστον.

Πρῶτος μὲν ὁ Σωκράτης παρακελευόμενος φυλάττεσθαι τῶν βρωμάτων ὅσα μὴ πεινῶντας ἐσθίειν ἀναπείθει, καὶ τῶν πωμάτων ὅσα πίνειν μὴ διψῶντας, οὐχ ἁπλῶς τὸ χρῆσθαι τούτοις ἀπηγόρευσεν, [e] ἀλλὰ χρῆσθαι δεομένους ἐδίδασκε καὶ τὸ ἡδὺ κατατάττοντας αὐτῶν εἰς τὸ ἀναγκαῖον, ὥσπερ οἱ τὰ θεωρικὰ ποιοῦντες ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι στρατιωτικά. τὸ γὰρ ἡδὺ τῇ φύσει μέχρι ἂν ᾖ μέρος τοῦ τρέφοντος οἰκεῖόν ἐστι, καὶ δεῖ πεινῶντας ἔτι τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἀπολαύειν ἢ τῶν ἡδέων, ἰδίᾳ δὲ μὴ κινεῖν ἑτέρας ὀρέξεις τῶν κοινῶν ἀπηλλαγμένους. ὥσπερ γὰρ αὖ τῷ Σωκράτει γυμνάσιον ἦν οὐκ ἀηδὲς ἡ ὄρχησις, οὕτως ᾧτινι τὸ πέμμα καὶ τὸ τράγημα δεῖπνόν ἐστι καὶ σιτίον, ἧττον βλάπτεται· τὸ δ’ ἀπέχοντα τῇ φύσει τὸ μέτριον καὶ πεπληρωμένον ἐπιδράττεσθαι τῶν τοιούτων φυλακτέον ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα. φυλακτέον δὲ τῆς περὶ ταῦτα φιληδονίας καὶ γαστριμαργίας οὐδὲν ἧττον ἀπειροκαλίαν καὶ φιλοτιμίαν· καὶ γὰρ αὗται πολλάκις συναναπείθουσι μὴ πεινῶντας ἐσθίειν ἔνια καὶ πίνειν μὴ διψῶντας, ἀνελευθέρους κομιδῇ καὶ φορτικὰς ὑποβάλλουσαι φαντασίας, ὡς ἄτοπόν ἐστι πράγματος σπανίου καὶ πολυτελοῦς μὴ ἀπολαῦσαι παρόντος, οἷον οὔθατος ἢ μυκήτων Ἰταλικῶν ἢ Σαμίου πλακοῦντος ἢ χιόνος ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ. ταῦτα γὰρ δήπου προάγεται πολλάκις χρῆσθαι τοῖς περιβοήτοις καὶ σπανίοις, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ κνίσης [125] [a] τῆς κενῆς δόξης ἀγομένους καὶ τὸ σῶμα κοινωνεῖν μηδὲν δεόμενον ἀναγκάζοντας, ὅπως ἔχωσιν ἑτέροις διηγεῖσθαι, ζηλούμενοι τῆς ἀπολαύσεως τῶν οὕτω δυσπορίστων καὶ περιττῶν. ὅμοια δὲ καὶ πρὸς γυναῖκας ἐνδόξους πάσχουσιν. ἰδίαις μὲν γὰρ ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ καλαῖς καὶ ἀγαπώσαις συναναπαυόμενοι τὴν ἡσυχίαν ἄγουσι, Φρύνῃ δὲ τελέσαντες ἀργύριον ἢ Λαΐδι καὶ τὸ σῶμα φαύλως καὶ πρὸς συνουσίαν ἀργῶς ἔχοντες διακείμενον ἐγείρουσιν ἅμα καὶ παρακαλοῦσι τὸ ἀκόλαστον ἐπὶ τὴν ἡδονὴν ὑπὸ τῆς κενῆς δόξης. αὐτὴ γοῦν ἔλεγεν ἡ Φρύνη πρεσβυτέρα [b] γεγενημένη τὴν τρύγα πλείονος πωλεῖν διὰ τὴν δόξαν.

Ἔστι δὲ μέγα καὶ θαυμαστόν, ἂν ὅσον ἡ φύσις δεομένη δέχεται τῶν ἡδονῶν προσιέμενοι τῷ σώματι, μᾶλλον δ’ ἂν τὰ πολλὰ παρὰ τὰς ὀρέξεις αὐτῷ διαμαχόμενοι καὶ ἀναβαλλόμενοι καὶ μόλις πάνυ ταῖς ἀναγκαίαις χρηματίζοντες ἤ, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, καὶ δάκνοντος καὶ κατατείνοντος ἐνδιδόντες ἀβλαβεῖς ἀπαλλάττωμεν. τὰς δ’ ἀνάπαλιν ἐκ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐπὶ τὸ σῶμα κατιούσας ἐπιθυμίας καὶ καταβιαζομένας τοῖς ἐκείνης ὑπηρετεῖν καὶ [c] συνεξανίστασθαι πάθεσιν οὐδεμία μηχανὴ τὸ μὴ σφοδροτάτας βλάβας καὶ μεγίστας ἐφ’ ἡδοναῖς ἀσθενέσι καὶ ἀμαυραῖς ἐναπολιπεῖν. ἥκιστα δὲ ψυχῆς ἐπιθυμίᾳ σῶμα πρὸς ἡδονὰς κινητέον· ἡ γὰρ ἀρχὴ παρὰ φύσιν γίγνεται. καὶ καθάπερ αἱ τῶν μασχαλῶν ψηλαφήσεις οὐκ ἴδιον οὐδὲ πρᾶον οὐδ’ ἵλεων γέλωτα τῇ ψυχῇ παρέχουσιν ἀλλ’ ἐοικότα σπασμῷ καὶ χαλεπόν, οὕτω πάλιν ὅσας τὸ σῶμα νυττόμενον ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἡδονὰς ἴσχει καὶ ταραττόμενον, ἐκστατικαὶ καὶ ταρακτικαὶ αὗται καὶ ἀλλότριαι τῆς φύσεώς εἰσιν. ὅταν οὖν [d] τι τῶν σπανίων ἀπολαυσμάτων ἢ ἐνδόξων παραγένηται, φιλοτιμητέον ταῖς ἀποσχέσεσι μᾶλλον ἢ ταῖς ἀπολαύσεσι, μεμνημένους ὅτι καθάπερ ὁ Σιμωνίδης ἔλεγε μηδέποτ’ αὐτῷ μεταμελῆσαι σιγήσαντι, φθεγξαμένῳ δὲ πολλάκις, οὕτως ἡμῖν οὔτ’ ὄψον παρωσαμένοις μετεμέλησεν οὔθ’ ὕδωρ ἀντὶ Φαλερίνου πιοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον· οὐ μόνον οὐ προσβιαστέον ἐστὶ τὴν φύσιν, ἀλλὰ κἂν δεομένῃ προσφέρηταί τι τῶν τοιούτων, ἐπὶ τὰ λιτὰ καὶ συνήθη πολλάκις ἀποτρεπτέον ἔθους ἕνεκα καὶ μελέτης τὴν ὄρεξιν.

εἴπερ γὰρ ἀδικεῖν χρή,

[e] φησὶν ὁ Θηβαῖος οὐκ ὀρθῶς λέγων,

τυραννίδος πέρι

κάλλιστον ἀδικεῖν·

ἡμεῖς δὲ βέλτιον ὡς, εἴπερ φιλοδοξεῖν πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα, ἐγκρατείᾳ κάλλιστον ὑπὲρ ὑγιείας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ μικρολογία καὶ γλισχρότης ἐνίους ἀναγκάζει πιέζοντας οἴκοι τὰς ἐπιθυμίας καὶ κατισχναίνοντας ἐμπίπλασθαι παρ’ ἑτέροις τῶν πολυτελῶν καὶ ἀπολαύειν, καθάπερ ἐκ πολεμίας ἀφειδῶς ἐπισιτιζομένους· εἶτα κακῶς διατεθέντες ἀπίασιν, εἰς τὴν ὑστεραίαν ἐφόδιον τῆς ἀπληστίας τὴν ἀπεψίαν ἔχοντες.

[f] ὁ μὲν οὖν Κράτης διὰ τρυφὴν καὶ πολυτέλειαν οἰόμενος οὐχ ἥκιστα τὰς στάσεις καὶ τὰς τυραννίδας ἐμφύεσθαι ταῖς πόλεσι, μετὰ παιδιᾶς παρῄνει

μὴ πρὸ φακῆς λοπάδ’ αὔξων

αἰεὶ ἐς στάσιν ἄμμε βάλῃς·

αὐτὸς δέ τις ἑαυτῷ παρακελευέσθω “μὴ πρὸ φακῆς λοπάδ’ αὔξων αἰεὶ” μηδὲ πάντως ὑπερβαίνων τὴν καρδαμίδα καὶ τὴν ἐλαίαν ἐπὶ τὸ θρῖον καὶ τὸν ἰχθὺν εἰς στάσιν ἐκ πλησμονῆς τὸ σῶμα καὶ ταραχὰς ἐμβάλλειν καὶ διαρροίας. τὰ γὰρ εὐτελῆ κρατεῖ τὴν ὄρεξιν ἐπὶ τῶν φυσικῶν μέτρων, [126] [a] ὀψοποιῶν δὲ τέχναι καὶ δημιουργῶν καὶ

τὰ πανοῦργα ταῦτ’ ὀψάρια χὑποτρίμματα

κατὰ τὸν κωμικὸν ἀεὶ τοὺς ὅρους τῆς ἡδονῆς μετατίθησιν εἰς τοὔμπροσθεν καὶ παραλλάττει τὸ συμφέρον. οὐκ οἶδα δ’ ὅντινα τρόπον, ἡμῶν τὰς γυναῖκας ὅσαι φίλτρα μηχανῶνται καὶ γοητείας ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας βδελυττομένων καὶ δυσχεραινόντων, μισθωτοῖς τε καὶ δούλοις προϊέμεθα τὰ σιτία καὶ τὰ ὄψα μονονοὺ μαγγανεύειν καὶ φαρμάττειν. εἰ τοίνυν καὶ πικρότερον φανεῖται τὸ τοῦ Ἀρκεσιλάου πρὸς τοὺς μοιχικοὺς καὶ ἀκολάστους εἰρημένον, “μηδὲν διαφέρειν ὄπισθέν τινα ἢ ἔμπροσθεν εἶναι κίναιδον,”

[b] οὐκ ἀνάρμοστόν ἐστι τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις. τί γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς διαφέρει σατύρια προσάγοντα κινεῖν καὶ παροξύνειν τὸ ἀκόλαστον ἐπὶ τὰς ἡδονάς, ἢ τὴν γεῦσιν ὀσμαῖς καὶ καρυκείαις ἐρεθίζειν ὥσπερ τὰ ψωριῶντα κνησμῶν ἀεὶ δεῖσθαι καὶ γαργαλισμῶν;

Ἄλλοτε μὲν οὖν πρὸς τὰς ἡδονὰς λεκτέον ἴσως, τὸ καλὸν καὶ σεμνὸν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ τῆς ἐγκρατείας οἷόν ἐστι δεικνύοντας· ὁ δὲ νῦν λόγος ὑπὲρ πολλῶν ἡδονῶν καὶ μεγάλων ἐστίν. οὔτε γὰρ πράξεις οὔτ’ ἐλπίδας οὔτ’ ἀποδημίας οὔτε διαγωγὰς αἱ νόσοι τοσαύτας ὅσας ἡδονὰς ἡμῶν ἀφαιροῦνται καὶ [c] διαφθείρουσιν. ὅθεν ἥκιστα λυσιτελεῖ καταφρονεῖν τῆς ὑγιείας τοῖς μάλιστα τὴν ἡδονὴν διώκουσι. καὶ γὰρ φιλοσοφεῖν ἀρρωστίαι πολλοῖς παρέχουσι καὶ στρατηγεῖν νὴ Δία καὶ βασιλεύειν, ἡδοναὶ δὲ σωματικαὶ καὶ ἀπολαύσεις ἔνιαι μὲν οὐδ’ ὅλως γένεσιν ἐν νόσῳ λαμβάνουσιν, αἱ δὲ λαμβάνουσαι βραχὺ τὸ οἰκεῖον καὶ οὐ καθαρὸν ἀλλὰ συμπεφυρμένον πολλῷ τῷ ἀλλοτρίῳ καὶ μεμωλωπισμένον ὥσπερ ἐκ ζάλης καὶ χειμῶνος ἀναφέρουσιν. οὐ γὰρ

ἐν πλησμοναῖς Κύπρις,

ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἐν εὐδίᾳ σαρκὸς καὶ γαλήνῃ καὶ Κύπρις εἰς ἡδονὴν τελευτᾷ καὶ βρῶσις καὶ πόσις· [d] ἡ δ’ ὑγίεια ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ὥσπερ ἡ γαλήνη ταῖς ἀλκυόσιν ἀσφαλῆ καὶ καλὴν γένεσιν καὶ λοχείαν ἐνδίδωσι. κομψῶς γὰρ ἔοικεν ὁ Πρόδικος εἰπεῖν ὅτι τῶν ἡδυσμάτων ἄριστόν ἐστι τὸ πῦρ· ἀληθέστερον δ’ ἄν τις εἴποι τὴν ὑγίειαν ἥδυσμα θειότατον εἶναι καὶ προσηνέστατον· ἑφθὰ μὲν γὰρ καὶ ὀπτὰ καὶ πεπτὰ βρώματα νοσοῦσιν ἢ κραιπαλῶσιν ἢ ναυτιῶσιν οὐδεμίαν ἡδονὴν οὐδὲ χάριν ἀποδίδωσι, καθαρὰ δὲ καὶ ἀκραιφνὴς ὄρεξις ὑγιαίνοντι σώματι πᾶν ἡδὺ ποιεῖ καὶ “ἁρπαλέον,” ὡς Ὅμηρος ἔφη, καὶ πρόσφορον.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὥσπερ ὁ Δημάδης πολεμικοὺς ἀκαίρως [e] τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ὄντας ἔλεγε μηδέποτε χειροτονεῖν εἰρήνην ἄνευ μελάνων ἱματίων, οὕτω καὶ ἡμεῖς οὐδέποτε μεμνήμεθα λιτῆς διαίτης καὶ σώφρονος ἄνευ κλύσεων καὶ καταπλασμάτων· ἔν τε τούτοις γενόμενοι πιέζομεν σφόδρα τὰς ἁμαρτίας, ἐναπερειδόμενοι τῇ μνήμῃ καί, καθάπερ οἱ πολλοὶ νῦν μὲν ἀέρας νῦν δὲ χώρας ἐπιμεμφόμενοι νοσώδεις ἀποδημίας δεδιέναι λέγουσι, ἐξαιρούμενοι τῆς αἰτίας τὴν ἀκρασίαν καὶ φιληδονίαν· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὁ Λυσίμαχος ἐν Γέταις συσχεθεὶς δίψῃ καὶ παραδοὺς ἑαυτὸν μετὰ τοῦ στρατεύματος [f] αἰχμάλωτον εἶτα πιὼν ὕδωρ ψυχρόν, “ὦ θεοί,” εἶπεν, “ὡς βραχείας ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα μεγάλην εὐδαιμονίαν ἀπεβαλόμην,” οὕτως ἀνοιστέον ἐν ταῖς ἀρρωστίαις πρὸς αὑτοὺς ὡς διὰ ψυχροποσίαν ἢ λουτρὸν ἄκαιρον ἢ συμπεριφορὰν πολλὰς μὲν αὑτῶν διεφθείραμεν ἡδονάς, καλὰς δὲ πράξεις ἐπιτερπεῖς τε διαγωγὰς ἀπωλέσαμεν. ὁ γὰρ ἐκ τῶν τοιούτων ἀναλογισμῶν δηγμὸς αἱμάσσει τὴν μνήμην, ὥστε οἷον οὐλὴν παραμένουσαν ἐν τῷ ὑγιαίνειν εὐλαβεστέρους ποιεῖν περὶ τὴν δίαιταν.

[127] [a] οὐδὲ γὰρ ἄγαν τὸ ὑγιαῖνον σῶμα φύσει μεγάλας ἐπιθυμίας οὐδὲ δυσπειθεῖς οὐδ’ ἀσυνήθεις οὐδὲ δυσεκβιάστους, ἀλλὰ δεῖ θαρρεῖν πρὸς τὰς ὀρέξεις ἐκφερομένας καὶ ἐπιπηδώσας ταῖς ἀπολαύσεσιν, ὡς ἐλαφρὸν καὶ παιδικὸν ἐχούσας τὸ μεμψιμοιροῦν καὶ κλαυθμυριζόμενον, εἶτα παυομένας ἀρθείσης τῆς τραπέζης καὶ μηδὲν ἐγκαλούσας μηδ’ ἀδικουμένας, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον καθαρὰς καὶ ἱλαρὰς καὶ οὐ βαρείας οὐδὲ ναυτιώδεις περιμενούσας τὴν αὔριον. ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ Τιμόθεος εἶπε τῇ [b] προτεραίᾳ δεδειπνηκὼς ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ παρὰ Πλάτωνι μουσικὸν καὶ λιτὸν δεῖπνον, ὡς οἱ παρὰ Πλάτωνι δειπνήσαντες καὶ εἰς αὔριον ἡδέως γίγνονται. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος εἰπεῖν τοὺς τῆς Ἄδας ὀψοποιοὺς ἀποπεμψάμενος ὡς ἔχει βελτίονας ἄγειν ἀεὶ σὺν αὑτῷ, πρὸς μὲν τὸ ἄριστον τὴν νυκτοπορίαν, πρὸς δὲ τὸ δεῖπνον τὴν ὀλιγαριστίαν.

Οὐκ ἀγνοῶ δ’ ὅτι καὶ διὰ κόπους πυρέττουσιν ἄνθρωποι καὶ δι’ ἐγκαύσεις καὶ διὰ περιψύξεις. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ αἱ τῶν ἀνθέων ὀσμαὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὰς ἀσθενεῖς εἰσι, μιχθεῖσαι δὲ τῷ ἐλαίῳ ῥώμην ἴσχουσι καὶ τόνον, οὕτω ταῖς ἔξωθεν αἰτίαις καὶ [c] ἀρχαῖς οἷον οὐσίαν καὶ σῶμα παρέχει τὸ πλῆθος ὑποκείμενον. ἄνευ δὲ τούτου, τούτων χαλεπὸν οὐδέν, ἀλλ’ ἐξαμαυροῦνται καὶ διαχέονται ῥᾳδίως, αἵματος λεπτοῦ καὶ πνεύματος καθαροῦ δεχομένου τὴν κίνησιν· ἐν δὲ πλήθει καὶ περιττώματι οἷον ἰλὺς ἀναταραττομένη μιαρὰ ποιεῖ πάντα καὶ δυσχερῆ καὶ δυσαπάλλακτα. διὸ δεῖ μὴ καθάπερ οἱ ἀγαστοὶ ναύκληροι πολλὰ δι’ ἀπληστίαν ἐμβαλόμενοι, τοὐντεῦθεν ἤδη διατελοῦσιν ἀντλοῦντες καὶ ὑπεξερῶντες τὴν θάλατταν, οὕτως ἐμπλήσαντας τὸ σῶμα καὶ βαρύναντας ὑποκαθαίρειν [d] αὖθις καὶ ὑποκλύζειν, ἀλλὰ διατηρεῖν εὐσταλές, ὅπως, κἂν πιεσθῇ ποτε, φελλοῦ δίκην ὑπὸ κουφότητος ἀναφέρηται.

Μάλιστα δὲ προφυλακτέον ἐν ταῖς προπαθείαις καὶ προαισθήσεσιν. οὐ γὰρ ἅπασαι κατὰ τὸν Ἡσίοδον ἐπιφοιτῶσιν αἱ νόσοι

σιγῇ, ἐπεὶ φωνὴν ἐξείλετο μητίετα Ζεύς,

ἀλλ’ αἱ πλεῖσται καθάπερ προαγγέλους καὶ προδρόμους καὶ κήρυκας ἔχουσιν ἀπεψίας καὶ δυσκινησίας. “βαρύτητες καὶ κόποι,” φησὶν Ἱπποκράτης, “αὐτόματοι νοῦσον φράζουσι,” διὰ πλῆθος ὡς ἔοικεν ἐντὸς διάτασιν καὶ σφήνωσιν τοῦ περὶ [e] τὰ νεῦρα πνεύματος ἔχοντος. ἀλλ’ ὅμως αὐτοῦ μονονουχὶ τοῦ σώματος ἀντιτείνοντος καὶ κατασπῶντος ἐπὶ τὸ κλινίδιον καὶ τὴν ἡσυχίαν οἱ μὲν ὑπὸ λαιμαργίας καὶ φιληδονίας ἐμβάλλουσιν ἑαυτοὺς ἐπὶ τὰ βαλανεῖα καὶ σπεύδουσιν ἐπὶ τὰς προπόσεις, ὥσπερ εἰς πολιορκίαν ἐπισιτιζόμενοι καὶ δεδιότες μὴ φθάσῃ καταλαβὼν αὐτοὺς ὁ πυρετὸς ἀναρίστους, οἱ δὲ κομψότεροι ταύτῃ μὲν οὐχ ἁλίσκονται, πάνυ δ’ ἀβελτέρως αἰσχυνόμενοι κραιπάλην ἢ ἀπεψίαν ὁμολογεῖν καὶ διημερεύειν ἐν ἱματίοις, ἑτέρων εἰς τὸ γυμνάσιον βαδιζόντων καὶ παρακαλούντων, ἀναστάντες συναποδύονται [f] καὶ ταὐτὰ πράττουσι τοῖς ὑγιαίνουσι. τοὺς δὲ πλείους ἀκρασίᾳ καὶ μαλακίᾳ συνήγορον ἔχουσα παροιμίαν ἐλπὶς ἀναπείθει καὶ προάγεται βαδίζειν ἀναστάντας ἰταμῶς ἐπὶ τὴν συνήθειαν, ὡς οἴνῳ δὴ τὸν οἶνον κραιπάλῃ δὲ τὴν κραιπάλην ἐξελῶντας καὶ διαφορήσοντας. πρὸς μὲν οὖν ταύτην τὴν ἐλπίδα τὴν τοῦ Κάτωνος εὐλάβειαν ἀντιτακτέον [128] [a] ἥν φησιν ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἀνὴρ “τὰ μὲν μεγάλα μικρὰ ποιεῖν τὰ δὲ μικρὰ παντελῶς ἀναιρεῖν,” καὶ ὅτι κρεῖττον ἔνδειαν ὑπομεῖναι διὰ κενῆς καὶ ἡσυχίαν ἢ διακυβεῦσαι πρὸς λουτρὸν ὠσαμένους καὶ δεῖπνον. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἔστι τι, βλάψει τὸ μὴ φυλάξασθαι μηδ’ ἐπισχεῖν· εἰ δὲ μηδέν, οὐ βλάψει τὸ συσταλῆναι τῷ σώματι καὶ γενέσθαι καθαρώτερον. ὁ δὲ παιδαριώδης ἐκεῖνος καὶ τοῖς φίλοις δεδιὼς καὶ τοῖς οἰκέταις φανερὸς γενέσθαι διακείμενος ἐκ πλησμονῆς ἢ κραιπάλης ἀηδῶς, αἰσχυνόμενος ἀπεψίαν ὁμολογῆσαι τήμερον, αὔριον ὁμολογήσει κατάρροιαν ἢ πυρετὸν ἢ στρόφον·

αἰσχυνόμενος αἴσχιστα πενίαν ἂν φέροις,

[b] πολὺ δ’ αἴσχιον ἀπεψίαν καὶ βαρύτητα καὶ πλησμονὴν σώματος εἰς βαλανεῖον ἑλκομένου καθάπερ εἰς θάλατταν σαθροῦ πλοίου καὶ μὴ στέγοντος. ὥσπερ γὰρ ἀμέλει πλέοντες ἔνιοι χειμῶνος ὄντος αἰδοῦνται διατρίβειν ἐπ’ ἀκτῆς, εἶτ’ ἀναχθέντες αἴσχιστα διάκεινται βοῶντες καὶ ναυτιῶντες, οὕτως ἐν ὑποψίᾳ καὶ προπαθείᾳ σώματος ἀγεννὲς ἡγούμενοι μίαν ἡμέραν ἐν κλίνῃ διάγειν καὶ μὴ παραθέσθαι τράπεζαν, αἴσχιστα πολλὰς ἡμέρας κεῖνται καθαιρόμενοι καὶ καταπλαττόμενοι καὶ θωπεύοντες ἰατροὺς καὶ θεραπεύοντες, οἶνον αἰτοῦντες ἢ ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ, ἄτοπα [c] καὶ ἀγεννῆ πολλὰ ποιεῖν καὶ φθέγγεσθαι διὰ τὸν πόνον καὶ τὸν φόβον ὑπομένοντες.

Καὶ μὴν τούς γε διὰ τὰς ἡδονὰς μὴ κρατοῦντας ἑαυτῶν ἀλλ’ ἐγκλίνοντας ἢ φερομένους ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν καλῶς ἔχει διδάσκειν καὶ ἀναμιμνῄσκειν ὅτι πλεῖστον ἐκ τοῦ σώματος αἱ ἡδοναὶ λαμβάνουσι·

καὶ καθάπερ οἱ Λάκωνες ὄξος καὶ ἅλας

διδόντες τῷ μαγείρῳ τὰ λοιπὰ κελεύουσιν ἐν τῷ ἱερείῳ ζητεῖν, οὕτως ἐν τῷ σώματι τοῦ προσφερομένου τὰ κάλλιστα τῶν ἡδυσμάτων ἐστίν, ἄνπερ ὑγιαίνοντι καὶ καθαρῷ προσφέρηται. γλυκὺ μὲν γὰρ ἢ πολυτελὲς ἔξω καὶ καθ’ αὑτὸ τῶν τοιούτων ἕκαστόν ἐστιν, ἡδὺ δὲ πέφυκεν ἐν τῷ ἡδομένῳ καὶ μετὰ τοῦ ἡδομένου γίγνεσθαι κατὰ φύσιν [d] ἔχοντος· ἐν δὲ δυσαρέστοις καὶ κραιπαλῶσι καὶ φαύλως διακειμένοις πάντα τὴν αὑτῶν χάριν καὶ ὥραν ἀπόλλυσι. διὸ δεῖ μὴ σκοπεῖν τὸν ἰχθὺν εἰ πρόσφατος, μηδὲ τὸν ἄρτον εἰ καθαρός, μηδὲ τὸ βαλανεῖον εἰ θερμόν, μηδὲ τὴν ἑταίραν εἰ εὔμορφος, ἀλλ’ αὑτὸν εἰ μὴ ναυτιώδης μηδὲ θολερὸς μηδ’ ἕωλος μηδὲ τεταραγμένος. εἰ δὲ μή, καθάπερ εἰς οἰκίαν πενθοῦσαν ἐμβαλόντες ἐπίκωμοι μεθύοντες οὐ φιλοφροσύνην παρέσχον οὐδ’ ἡδονὴν ἀλλὰ κλαυθμοὺς καὶ ὀδυρμοὺς [e] ἐποίησαν, οὕτω καὶ ἀφροδίσια καὶ ὄψα καὶ βαλανεῖα καὶ οἶνος ἐν σώματι κακῶς καὶ παρὰ φύσιν ἔχοντι μιγνύμενα τοῖς μὴ καθεστῶσι καὶ διεφθορόσι φλέγμα καὶ χολὴν κινεῖ καὶ ταράττει καὶ προσεξίστησιν, ἡδὺ δ’ οὐδὲν ἀξιολόγως οὐδ’ ἀπολαυστικὸν οὐδὲν οἷον προσεδοκήσαμεν ἀποδίδωσιν.

Ἡ μὲν οὖν ἀκριβὴς σφόδρα καὶ δι’ ὄνυχος λεγομένη δίαιτα τό τε σῶμα κομιδῇ ψοφοδεὲς παρέχεται καὶ σφαλερόν, αὐτῆς τε τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ γαῦρον κολούει πάντα πράγματα καὶ πᾶσαν οὐχ ἧττον ἐν ἡδοναῖς καὶ πόνοις διατριβὴν καὶ πρᾶξιν ὑφορωμένης καὶ πρὸς μηδὲν ἰταμῶς καὶ θαρραλέως [f] βαδιζούσης. δεῖ δ’ ὥσπερ ἱστίον τὸ σῶμα μήτε συστέλλειν εὐδίας οὔσης καὶ πιέζειν σφόδρα, μήτ’ ἀνειμένως χρῆσθαί τε καὶ καταφρονεῖν ἐν ὑποψίᾳ γενόμενον. ἀλλ’ ἐνδιδόναι καὶ ποιεῖν ἐλαφρὸν ὥσπερ εἴρηται, καὶ μὴ περιμένειν ἀπεψίας καὶ διαρροίας μηδὲ θερμασίας μηδὲ νάρκας, ὑφ’ ὧν ἔνιοι μόλις ὥσπερ ὑπ’ ἀγγέλων ἢ κλητόρων, πυρετοῦ [129] [a] περὶ θύρας ὄντος ἤδη, θορυβούμενοι συστέλλουσιν ἑαυτούς, ἀλλὰ πόρρωθεν ἐξευλαβεῖσθαι

πρὸ χείματος, ὥστ’ ἀνὰ ποντίαν ἄκραν

βορέα πνέοντος.

Ἄτοπον γάρ ἐστι κοράκων μὲν λαρυγγισμοῖς καὶ κλωσμοῖς ἀλεκτορίδων καὶ “συσὶν ἐπὶ φορυτῷ μαργαινούσαις,” ὡς ἔφη Δημόκριτος, ἐπιμελῶς προσέχειν, σημεῖα ποιουμένους πνευμάτων καὶ ὄμβρων, τὰ δὲ τοῦ σώματος κινήματα καὶ σάλους καὶ προπαθείας μὴ προλαμβάνειν μηδὲ προφυλάττειν, μηδ’ ἔχειν σημεῖα χειμῶνος ἐν ἑαυτῷ γενησομένου καὶ μέλλοντος. ὅθεν οὐ περὶ τροφὴν μόνον οὐδὲ γυμνάσια δεῖ φυλάττειν τὸ σῶμα μὴ παρὰ τὸ [b] εἰωθὸς ἅπτεται τούτων ὀκνηρῶς καὶ ἀπροθύμως ἢ πάλιν διψῶδές ἐστι καὶ πειναλέον ὡς οὐ πέφυκεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ὕπνων τὸ μὴ συνεχὲς μηδὲ λεῖον ἀλλ’ ἀνωμαλίας ἔχον καὶ διασπασμοὺς εὐλαβεῖσθαι, καὶ τῶν ἐνυπνίων τὴν ἀτοπίαν, ἄνπερ ὦσι μὴ νόμιμοι μηδὲ συνήθεις αἱ φαντασίαι, πλῆθος ἢ πάχος ὑγρῶν ἢ πνεύματος ταραχὴν ἐντὸς κατηγοροῦσαν. ἤδη δὲ καὶ τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς κινήματα τὸ σῶμα μηνύει πρὸς νόσον ἐπισφαλῶς ἔχειν. ἄλογοι γὰρ ἴσχουσιν ἀθυμίαι καὶ φόβοι πολλάκις ἀπ’ [c] οὐδενὸς φανεροῦ, τὰς ἐλπίδας ἄφνω κατασβεννύουσαι· γίγνονται δὲ καὶ ταῖς ὀργαῖς ἐπίχολοι καὶ ὀξεῖς καὶ μικρόλυποι, καὶ δακρυρροοῦσι καὶ ἀδημονοῦσιν ὅταν ἀτμοὶ πονηροὶ καὶ ἀναθυμιάσεις πικραὶ συνιστάμεναι “ταῖς τῆς ψυχῆς,” ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, ἀνακραθῶσι “περιόδοις.” διὸ δεῖ σκοπεῖν οἷς ἂν ταῦτα συμπίπτῃ καὶ μνημονεύειν, ἂν μηδὲν ᾖ πνευματικόν, ὅτι σωματικόν ἐστιν αἴτιον ὑποστολῆς τινος ἢ κατακράσεως δεόμενον.

Χρήσιμον δὲ πάνυ καὶ τὸ τοὺς φίλους ἐπισκεπτόμενον [d] ἀσθενοῦντας ἐκπυνθάνεσθαι τὰς αἰτίας, μὴ σοφιστικῶς μηδὲ περιέργως ἐνστάσεις καὶ παρεμπτώσεις καὶ κοινότητας λαλοῦντα καὶ παρεπιδεικνύμενον ἰατρικῶν ὀνομάτων καὶ γραμμάτων ἐμπειρίαν, ἀλλὰ ταυτὶ τὰ φαῦλα καὶ κοινὰ μὴ παρέργως ἀκούοντα, πλῆθος ἡλίωσιν κόπον ἀγρυπνίαν, μάλιστα δὲ δίαιταν ᾗ χρώμενος ἐπύρεξεν. εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ὁ Πλάτων ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις ἁμαρτήμασιν εἰώθει λέγειν ἀπιών “μή που ἄρα καὶ ἐγὼ τοιοῦτος;” οὕτω τὰ περὶ αὑτὸν ἐν τοῖς πλησίον εὖ τίθεσθαι, καὶ φυλάττεσθαι καὶ μνημοννεύειν ὅπως [e] οὐ περιπεσεῖται τοῖς αὐτοῖς οὐδ’ αὐτὸς εἰς τὴν κλίνην καταπεσὼν ὑμνήσει ποθῶν τὴν πολυτίμητον ὑγίειαν, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρου πάσχοντος ἐνσημανεῖται πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ὡς ἄξιον πολλοῦ τὸ ὑγιαίνειν καὶ δεῖ τοῦτο διατηρεῖν αὑτῷ προσέχοντα καὶ φειδόμενον. οὐ χεῖρον δὲ καὶ τὴν ἑαυτῶν παρεπισκοπεῖν δίαιταν· ἂν γὰρ ἐν πόσεσι καὶ προσφοραῖς ἤ τισι πόνοις καὶ ἀταξίαις ἑτέραις τυγχάνωμεν γεγονότες, τὸ δὲ σῶμα μηδεμίαν ὑποψίαν παρέχῃ μηδὲ προαίσθησιν, ὅμως αὑτοὺς δεῖ φυλάττεσθαι καὶ προκαταλαμβάνειν ἐκ μὲν ἀφροδισίων καὶ κόπων ὄντας ἀναπαύσει καὶ ἡσυχίᾳ, μετὰ δ’ οἴνωσιν καὶ συμπεριφορὰν [f] ὑδροποσίᾳ, μάλιστα δὲ τροφαῖς κεχρημένους ἐμβριθέσι καὶ κρεώδεσιν ἢ ποικίλαις ὀλιγοσιτεῖν καὶ μηδὲν ὑπολείπειν περιττώματος πλῆθος ἐν τῷ σώματι. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὰ ταῦτα δι’ αὑτὰ πολλῶν αἴτια νόσων ἐστί, καὶ προστίθησι ταῖς ἄλλαις αἰτίαις ὕλην καὶ δύναμιν. ὅθεν ἄριστα λέλεκται “τροφῆς ἀκορίην καὶ πόνων ἀοκνίην καὶ σπέρματος [130] [a] οὐσίης συντήρησιν ὑγιεινότατα εἶναι.” καὶ γὰρ ἡ περὶ τὰς συνουσίας ἀκρασία τῷ μάλιστα τὴν δύναμιν ἐκλύειν ὑφ’ ἧς ἡ τροφὴ διαπονεῖται, πλέον περίττωμα ποιεῖ καὶ πλῆθος.

Αὖθις οὖν ἀναλαβόντες ἐξ ἀρχῆς περὶ ἑκάστου, πρῶτον δὲ περὶ γυμνασίων φιλολόγοις ἁρμοζόντων λέγωμεν ὅτι ὥσπερ ὁ φήσας μηδὲν γράφειν παραθαλαττίοις περὶ ὁλκάδων ἐδίδαξε τὴν χρείαν, οὕτω καὶ φιλολόγοις φαίη τις ἂν μὴ γράφειν περὶ γυμνασίων. ἡ γὰρ καθ’ ἡμέραν τοῦ λόγου χρεία διὰ φωνῆς περαινομένη θαυμαστὸν οἷόν ἐστι γυμνάσιον οὐ μόνον πρὸς ὑγίειαν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς ἰσχύν, [b] οὐ παλαιστικὴν οὐδὲ σαρκοῦσαν καὶ πυκνοῦσαν τὰ ἐκτὸς ὥσπερ οἰκοδομήματος, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ζωτικωτάτοις καὶ κυριωτάτοις μέρεσι ῥώμην ἐνδιάθετον καὶ τόνον ἀληθινὸν ἐμποιοῦσαν. ὅτι μὲν γὰρ ἰσχὺν ἐνδίδωσι τὸ πνεῦμα, δηλοῦσιν οἱ ἀλεῖπται, τοὺς ἀθλητὰς κελεύοντες ἀντερείδειν ταῖς τρίψεσι καὶ παρεγκόπτειν τείνοντας ἀεὶ τὰ πλαττόμενα μέρη καὶ ψηλαφώμενα τοῦ σώματος· ἡ δὲ φωνή, τοῦ πνεύματος οὖσα κίνησις, οὐκ ἐπιπολαίως ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν πηγαῖς περὶ τὰ σπλάγχνα ῥωννυμένη, τὸ θερμὸν αὔξει καὶ λεπτύνει τὸ αἷμα, καὶ πᾶσαν μὲν [c] ἐκκαθαίρει φλέβα, πᾶσαν δ’ ἀρτηρίαν ἀνοίγει, σύστασιν δὲ καὶ πῆξιν ὑγρότητος οὐκ ἐᾷ περιττωματικῆς ὥσπερ ὑποστάθμην ἐγγενέσθαι τοῖς τὴν τροφὴν παραλαμβάνουσι καὶ κατεργαζομένοις ἀγγείοις. διὸ δεῖ μάλιστα ποιεῖν ἑαυτοὺς τούτῳ τῷ γυμνασίῳ συνήθεις καὶ συντρόφους ἐνδελεχῶς λέγοντας, ἂν δ’ ᾖ τις ὑποψία τοῦ σώματος ἐνδεέστερον ἢ κοπωδέστερον ἔχοντος, ἀναγιγνώσκοντας ἢ ἀναφωνοῦντας. ὅπερ γὰρ αἰώρα πρὸς γυμνάσιόν ἐστι, τοῦτο πρὸς διάλεξιν ἀνάγνωσις, ὥσπερ ἐπ’ ὀχήματος ἀλλοτρίου λόγου κινοῦσα μαλακῶς καὶ διαφοροῦσα πράως τὴν φωνήν. ἡ δὲ διάλεξις ἀγῶνα καὶ σφοδρότητα προστίθησιν, ἅμα τῆς [d] ψυχῆς τῷ σώματι συνεπιτιθεμένης. κραυγὰς μέντοι περιπαθεῖς καὶ σπαραγμώδεις εὐλαβητέον· αἱ γὰρ ἀνώμαλοι προβολαὶ καὶ διατάσεις τοῦ πνεύματος ῥήγματα καὶ σπάσματα ποιοῦσιν.

Ἀναγνόντα δ’ ἢ διαλεχθέντα λιπαρᾷ καὶ ἀλεεινῇ τρίψει χρηστέον πρὸ τοῦ περιπάτου καὶ μαλάξει τῆς σαρκός, ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστι, τῶν σπλάγχνων ποιούμενον ἁφὴν καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα πράως διομαλύνοντα καὶ διαχέοντα μέχρι τῶν ἄκρων. μέτρον δὲ τοῦ πλήθους τῆς τρίψεως ἔστω τὸ προσφιλὲς τῇ [e] αἰσθήσει καὶ ἄλυπον. ὁ γὰρ οὕτω καταστήσας τὴν ἐν βάθει ταραχὴν καὶ διάτασιν τοῦ πνεύματος, ἀλύπῳ τε χρῆται τῷ περιττώματι, κἂν ἀκαιρία τις ἢ χρεία κωλύσῃ τὸν περίπατον, οὐδέν ἐστι πρᾶγμα· τὸ γὰρ οἰκεῖον ἡ φύσις ἀπείληφεν. ὅθεν οὔτε πλοῦν ποιητέον οὔτε καταγωγὴν ἐν πανδοκείῳ σιγῆς πρόφασιν, οὐδ’ ἂν πάντες καταγελῶσιν. ὅπου γὰρ οὐκ αἰσχρὸν τὸ φαγεῖν, οὐδὲ τὸ γυμνάζεσθαι δήπουθεν αἰσχρόν· ἀλλ’ αἴσχιον τὸ δεδοικέναι καὶ δυσωπεῖσθαι ναύτας καὶ ὀρεωκόμους καὶ πανδοκεῖς καταγελῶντας οὐ τοῦ σφαιρίζοντος [f] καὶ σκιαμαχοῦντος ἀλλὰ τοῦ λέγοντος, ἂν ἅμα διδάσκῃ τι καὶ ζητῇ καὶ μανθάνῃ καὶ ἀναμιμνῄσκηται γυμναζόμενος. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Σωκράτης ἔλεγεν ὅτι τῷ κινοῦντι δι’ ὀρχήσεως αὑτὸν ἑπτάκλινος οἶκος ἱκανός ἐστιν ἐγγυμνάζεσθαι, τῷ δὲ δι’ ᾠδῆς ἢ λόγου γυμναζομένῳ γυμνάσιον ἀποχρῶν καὶ ἑστῶτι καὶ κατακειμένῳ πᾶς τόπος παρέχει. μόνον ἐκεῖνο φυλακτέον, ὅπως μήτε πλησμονὴν μήτε λαγνείαν μήτε κόπον ἑαυτοῖς συνειδότες ἐντεινώμεθα τῇ [131] [a] φωνῇ τραχύτερον, ὃ πάσχουσι πολλοὶ τῶν ῥητόρων καὶ τῶν σοφιστῶν, οἱ μὲν ὑπὸ δόξης καὶ φιλοτιμίας, οἱ δὲ διὰ μισθοὺς ἢ πολιτικὰς ἁμίλλας ἐξαγόμενοι παρὰ τὸ συμφέρον ἀγωνίζεσθαι. Νίγρος δ’ ὁ ἡμέτερος ἐν Γαλατίᾳ σοφιστεύων ἄκανθαν ἐτύγχανεν ἰχθύος καταπεπωκώς. ἑτέρου δ’ ἐπιφανέντος ἔξωθεν σοφιστοῦ καὶ μελετῶντος, ὀρρωδῶν ὑφειμένου δόξαν παρασχεῖν, ἔτι τῆς ἀκάνθης ἐνισχομένης ἐμελέτησε· μεγάλης δὲ φλεγμονῆς καὶ σκληρᾶς γενομένης, τὸν πόνον οὐ φέρων ἀνεδέξατο [b] τομὴν ἔξωθεν βαθεῖαν. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἄκανθα διὰ τοῦ τραύματος ἐξῃρέθη, τὸ δὲ τραῦμα χαλεπὸν γενόμενον καὶ ῥευματικὸν ἀνεῖλεν αὐτόν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἄν τις ὕστερον εὐκαίρως ὑπομνήσειε.

Λουτρῷ δὲ χρῆσθαι γυμνασαμένους ψυχρῷ μὲν ἐπιδεικτικὸν καὶ νεανικὸν μᾶλλον ἢ ὑγιεινόν ἐστιν. ἣν γὰρ δοκεῖ ποιεῖν δυσπάθειαν πρὸς τὰ ἔξω καὶ σκληρότητα τοῦ σώματος, αὕτη μεῖζον ἀπεργάζεται περὶ τὰ ἐντὸς κακόν, ἐνισταμένη τοῖς πόροις καὶ τὰ ὑγρὰ συνάγουσα καὶ πηγνύουσα τὰς ἀναθυμιάσεις ἀεὶ χαλᾶσθαι καὶ διαφορεῖσθαι βουλομένας. ἔτι δ’ ἀνάγκη τοὺς ψυχρολουτοῦντας εἰς [c] ἐκείνην αὖθις μεταβαίνειν ἣν φεύγομεν ἀκριβῆ καὶ τεταγμένην ἀποτόμως δίαιταν, ἀεὶ προσέχοντας αὑτοῖς μὴ παραβαίνειν ταύτην, ὡς εὐθὺς ἐξελεγχομένου πικρῶς παντὸς ἁμαρτήματος. ἡ δὲ θερμολουσία δίδωσι πολλὴν συγγνώμην. οὐ γὰρ τοσοῦτον εὐτονίας ὑφαιρεῖ καὶ ῥώμης, ὅσον ὠφελεῖ πρὸς ὑγίειαν, ἐνδόσιμα τῇ πέψει καὶ μαλακὰ παρέχουσα, τοῖς δὲ τὴν πέψιν διαφεύγουσιν, ἄν γε δὴ μὴ παντάπασιν ὠμὰ καὶ μετέωρα μείνῃ, διαχύσεις ἀλύπους παρασκευάζουσα καὶ κόπους ἐκλεαίνουσα [d] λανθάνοντας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἡ φύσις παρέχῃ μετρίως διακειμένου καὶ ἱκανῶς τοῦ σώματος αἴσθησιν, ἐατέον τὸ βαλανεῖον. ἄλειμμα δὲ τὸ πρὸς πυρὶ βέλτιον, ἂν ἀλέας δέηται τὸ σῶμα, ταμιεύεται γὰρ αὑτῷ τῆς θερμότητος. ὁ δ’ ἥλιος οὔτε μᾶλλον οὔθ’ ἧττον ἀλλ’ ὡς κέκραται πρὸς τὸν ἀέρα κεχρῆσθαι δίδωσι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἱκανὰ περὶ γυμνασίων.

Ἐπὶ δὲ τροφὴν παραγενομένους, ἂν μὲν ᾖ τι τῶν πρόσθεν ὄφελος λόγων οἷς τὰς ὀρέξεις κηλοῦμεν καὶ καταπραΰνομεν, ἄλλο τι χρὴ παραινεῖν τῶν ἐφεξῆς· ἂν δ’ ὥσπερ ἐκ δεσμῶν λελυμένῃ [e] χαλεπὸν ᾖ χρῆσθαι καὶ φιλονεικεῖν πρὸς γαστέρα ὦτα μὴ ἔχουσαν, ὡς ἔλεγε Κάτων, διαμηχανητέον τῇ ποιότητι τῆς τροφῆς ἐλαφρότερον ποιεῖν τὸ πλῆθος. καὶ τὰ μὲν στερεὰ καὶ πολύτροφα τῶν σιτίων, οἷον τὰ κρεώδη καὶ τυρώδη καὶ σύκων τὰ ξηρὰ καὶ ᾠῶν τὰ ἑφθά, προσφέρεσθαι πεφυλαγμένως ἁπτόμενον (ἔργον γὰρ ἀεὶ παραιτεῖσθαι), τοῖς δὲ λεπτοῖς ἐμφύεσθαι καὶ κούφοις, οἷα τὰ πολλὰ τῶν λαχάνων καὶ τὰ πτηνὰ καὶ τῶν ἰχθύων οἱ μὴ πίονες. ἔστι γὰρ [f] τὰ τοιαῦτα προσφερόμενον καὶ χαρίζεσθαι ταῖς ὀρέξεσι καὶ τὸ σῶμα μὴ πιέζειν. μάλιστα δὲ τὰς ἀπὸ κρεῶν φοβητέον ἀπεψίας· καὶ γὰρ εὐθὺς σφόδρα καὶ βαρύνουσι, καὶ λείψανον εἰσαῦθις πονηρὸν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν παραμένει. καὶ κράτιστον μὲν ἐθίσαι τὸ σῶμα μηδεμιᾶς προσδεῖσθαι σαρκοφαγίας· πολλὰ γὰρ οὐ μόνον πρὸς διατροφὴν ἄφθονα ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς εὐπάθειαν καὶ ἀπόλαυσιν ἀναδίδωσιν ἡ γῆ, τοῖς μὲν αὐτόθεν ἀπραγμόνως χρῆσθαι παρέχουσα, τὰ δὲ μιγνύμενα παντοδαπῶς [132] [a] καὶ σκευαζόμενα συνηδύνειν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ ἔθος τρόπον τινὰ φύσις τοῦ παρὰ φύσιν γέγονεν, οὐ δεῖ χρῆσθαι κρεοφαγίᾳ πρὸς ἀποπλήρωσιν ὀρέξεως, ὥσπερ λύκους ἢ λέοντας, ἀλλ’ οἷον ὑπέρεισμα καὶ διάζωμα τῆς τροφῆς ἐμβαλλομένους ἑτέροις σιτίοις χρῆσθαι καὶ ὄψοις, ἃ καὶ τῷ σώματι μᾶλλόν ἐστι κατὰ φύσιν, καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς ἧττον ἀμβλύνει τὸ λογικόν, ὥσπερ ἐκ λιτῆς καὶ ἐλαφρᾶς ὕλης ἀναπτόμενον.

Τῶν δ’ ὑγρῶν γάλακτι μὲν οὐχ ὡς ποτῷ χρηστέον, ἀλλ’ ὡς σιτίῳ δύναμιν ἐμβριθῆ καὶ [b] πολύτροφον ἔχοντι. πρὸς δὲ τὸν οἶνον ἅπερ Εὐριπίδης πρὸς τὴν Ἀφροδίτην διαλεκτέον

εἴης μοι, μέτριος δέ πως

εἴης, μηδ’ ἀπολείποις.

καὶ γὰρ ποτῶν ὠφελιμώτατόν ἐστι καὶ φαρμάκων ἥδιστον καὶ ὄψων ἀσικχότατον, ἂν τύχῃ τῆς πρὸς τὸν καιρὸν εὐκρασίας μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς πρὸς τὸ ὕδωρ. ὕδωρ δ’ οὐ μόνον τὸ μιγνύμενον πρὸς οἶνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ καθ’ ἑαυτὸ τοῦ κεκραμένου μεταξὺ πινόμενον ἀβλαβέστερον ποιεῖ τὸ κεκραμένον. ἐθιστέον οὖν παρὰ τὴν καθ’ ἡμέραν δίαιταν ὕδατος προσφέρεσθαι καὶ δύο καὶ τρία ποτήρια, τήν τε δύναμιν [c] τοῦ οἴνου ποιοῦντα μαλακωτέραν καὶ τοῦ σώματος συνήθη τὴν ὑδροποσίαν, ὅπως, ὅταν ἐν χρείᾳ γένηται, μὴ ξενοπαθῇ μηδ’ ἀπαναίνηται. συμβαίνει γὰρ ἐνίους φέρεσθαι μάλιστα πρὸς τὸν οἶνον ὅταν μάλιστα χρείαν ὑδροποσίας ἔχωσι. καὶ γὰρ ἡλιωθέντες καὶ ῥιγώσαντες πάλιν καὶ σφοδρότερον εἰπόντες καὶ συντονώτερον φροντίσαντες καὶ ὅλως μετὰ τοὺς κόπους καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας οἴονται ποτέον εἶναι τὸν οἶνον, ὡς καὶ τῆς φύσεως ἀπαιτούσης εὐπάθειάν τινα τῷ σώματι [d] καὶ μεταβολὴν ἐκ τῶν πόνων. ἡ δὲ φύσις εὐπάθειαν μέν, εἴ τις εὐπάθειαν καλεῖ τὴν ἡδυπάθειαν, οὐκ ἀπαιτεῖ, μεταβολὴν δ’ ἀπαιτεῖ τὴν εἰς τὸ μέσον ἡδονῆς καὶ πόνου καθιστᾶσαν. διὸ καὶ τροφῆς ὑφαιρετέον ἐν τούτοις, καὶ τὸν οἶνον ἢ παντελῶς ἀφαιρετέον ἢ προσοιστέον πολλῇ κατακεραννύμενον διὰ μέσου καὶ κατακλυζόμενον ὑδροποσίᾳ. πλήκτης γὰρ ὢν καὶ ὀξὺς ἐπιτείνει τὰς τοῦ σώματος ταραχάς, καὶ τραχύτερα ποιεῖ καὶ παροξύνει τὰ πεπληγμένα, παρηγορίας δεόμενα καὶ λειότητος, ἃς μάλιστα τὸ ὕδωρ ἐνδίδωσι. καὶ γὰρ ἂν οὐ διψῶντες, ἄλλως δὲ θερμὸν ὕδωρ [e] πίωμεν μετὰ τοὺς κόπους καὶ τὰς διατάσεις καὶ τὰ καύματα, χαλάσματος καὶ μαλακότητος αἰσθανόμεθα περὶ τὰ ἐντός· ἤπιος γὰρ ἡ τοῦ ὕδατος ὑγρότης καὶ ἄσφυκτος, ἡ δὲ τοῦ οἴνου φορὰν ἔχει πολλὴν καὶ δύναμιν οὐκ εὐμενῆ τοῖς προσφάτοις πάθεσιν οὐδὲ φιλάνθρωπον. καὶ γὰρ ἃς λέγουσιν ἔνιοι τῷ σώματι τὴν ἀσιτίαν δριμύτητας ἐγγεννᾶν καὶ πικρότητας εἴ τις δέδιεν ἢ καθάπερ οἱ παῖδες δεινὸν ἡγεῖται πρὸ τοῦ πυρέττειν μὴ παρατίθεσθαι τράπεζαν ἐν ὑποψίᾳ γεγονώς, εὐάρμοστον ἡ ὑδροποσία μεθόριον. καὶ γὰρ αὐτῷ τῷ Διονύσῳ πολλάκις νηφάλια θύομεν, ἐθιζόμενοι καλῶς μὴ [f] ζητεῖν ἀεὶ τὸν ἄκρατον. ὁ δὲ Μίνως καὶ τὸν αὐλὸν ἀφεῖλε τῆς θυσίας καὶ τὸν στέφανον ὑπὸ λύπης. καίτοι λυπουμένην ψυχὴν ἴσμεν οὔθ’ ὑπὸ στεφάνων οὔθ’ ὑπ’ αὐλῶν παθοῦσαν· σῶμα δ’ οὐδὲν οὕτως ἰσχυρόν ἐστιν, ᾧ τεταραγμένῳ καὶ φλεγμαίνοντι προσπεσὼν οἶνος οὐκ ἠδίκησε.

Τοὺς μὲν οὖν Λυδοὺς ἐν τῷ λιμῷ λέγουσι διαγαγεῖν ἡμέραν παρ’ ἡμέραν τρεφομένους, εἶτα παίζοντας καὶ κυβεύοντας· φιλόλογον δ’ ἄνδρα καὶ φιλόμουσον ἐν καιρῷ δεομένῳ βραδυτέρου [133] [a] δείπνου διάγραμμα παρακείμενον ἤ τι βιβλίδιον ἢ λύριον οὐ προΐενται τῇ γαστρὶ λεηλατούμενον, ἀλλ’ ἀποστρέφων συνεχῶς καὶ μεταφέρων ἐπὶ ταῦτα τὴν διάνοιαν ἀπὸ τῆς τραπέζης ὥσπερ Ἁρπυίας τὰς ὀρέξεις διασοβήσει ταῖς Μούσαις. οὐ γὰρ ὁ μὲν Σκύθης, ὅταν πίνῃ, πολλάκις ἐφάπτεται τοῦ τόξου καὶ παραψάλλει τὴν νευράν, ἐκλυόμενον ὑπὸ τῆς μέθης ἀνακαλούμενος τὸν θυμόν, Ἕλλην δ’ ἀνὴρ φοβήσεται τοὺς καταγελῶντας αὐτοῦ, γράμμασι καὶ βιβλίοις ἀγνώμονα καὶ δυσπαραίτητον ἐπιθυμίαν ἀνιέντος ἀτρέμα καὶ χαλῶντος; τῶν [b] μὲν γὰρ παρὰ τῷ Μενάνδρῳ νεανίσκων ὑπὸ τοῦ πορνοβοσκοῦ παρὰ πότον ἐπιβουλευομένων καλὰς καὶ πολυτελεῖς εἰσάγοντος ἑταίρας ἕκαστος, ὥς φησι,

κύψας καθ’ αὑτὸν τῶν τραγημάτων ἔφλα,

φυλαττόμενος καὶ φοβούμενος ἐμβλέπειν· οἱ δὲ φιλόλογοι πολλὰς καὶ καλὰς καὶ ἡδείας ἀπόψεις καὶ ἀποστροφὰς ἔχουσιν, ἄνπερ ἄλλως μὴ δύνωνται τὸ κυνικὸν καὶ θηριῶδες τῶν ὀρέξεων κατέχειν παρακειμένης τραπέζης. ἀλειπτῶν δὲ φωνὰς καὶ παιδοτριβῶν λόγους ἑκάστοτε λεγόντων ὡς τὸ παρὰ δεῖπνον φιλολογεῖν τὴν τροφὴν διαφθείρει καὶ βαρύνει τὴν κεφαλὴν τότε φοβητέον, ὅταν [c] τὸν Ἰνδὸν ἀναλύειν ἢ διαλέγεσθαι περὶ τοῦ Κυριεύοντος ἐν δείπνῳ μέλλωμεν. τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἐγκέφαλον τοῦ φοίνικος, γλυκὺν ὄντα, σφόδρα κεφαλαλγῆ λέγουσιν εἶναι· διαλεκτικὴ δὲ “τρωγάλιον” ἐπὶ δείπνῳ “γλυκὺ” μὲν οὐδαμῶς κεφαλαλγὲς δὲ καὶ κοπῶδες ἰσχυρῶς ἐστιν. ἂν δ’ ἡμᾶς μὴ ἄλλο τι ζητεῖν ἢ φιλοσοφεῖν ἢ ἀναγιγνώσκειν παρὰ δεῖπνον ἐῶσι τῶν ἐν τῷ καλῷ καὶ ὠφελίμῳ τὸ ἐπαγωγὸν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς καὶ γλυκὺ μόριον ἐχόντων, κελεύσομεν αὐτοὺς [d] μὴ ἐνοχλεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἀπιόντας ἐν τῷ ξυστῷ ταῦτα καὶ ταῖς παλαίστραις διαλέγεσθαι τοῖς ἀθληταῖς, οὓς τῶν βιβλίων ἐξελόντες καὶ διημερεύειν ἐν σκώμμασι καὶ βωμολοχίαις ἐθίζοντες, ὡς ὁ κομψὸς Ἀρίστων ἔλεγε, τοῖς ἐν γυμνασίῳ κίοσιν ὁμοίως λιπαροὺς πεποιήκασι καὶ λιθίνους. αὐτοὶ δὲ πειθόμενοι τοῖς ἰατροῖς παραινοῦσιν ἀεὶ τοῦ δείπνου καὶ τοῦ ὕπνου λαμβάνειν μεθόριον καὶ μὴ συμφορήσαντας εἰς τὸ σῶμα τὰ σιτία καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα καταθλίψαντας εὐθὺς ὠμῇ καὶ ζεούσῃ τῇ τροφῇ βαρύνειν τὴν πέψιν ἀλλ’ ἀναπνοὴν καὶ χάλασμα παρέχειν, ὥσπερ οἱ τὰ σώματα κινεῖν [e] μετὰ δεῖπνον ἀξιοῦντες οὐ δρόμοις οὐδὲ παγκρατίοις τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν ἀλλὰ βληχροῖς περιπάτοις καὶ χορείαις ἐμμελέσιν, οὕτως ἡμεῖς οἰησόμεθα δεῖν τὰς ψυχὰς διαφέρειν μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον μήτε πράγμασι μήτε φροντίσι μήτε σοφιστικοῖς ἀγῶσι πρὸς ἅμιλλαν ἐπιδεικτικὴν ἢ κινητικὴν περαινομένοις. ἀλλὰ πολλὰ μέν ἐστι τῶν φυσικῶν προβλημάτων ἐλαφρὰ καὶ πιθανά, πολλαὶ δὲ διηγήσεις ἠθικὰς σκέψεις ἔχουσαι καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ “μενοεικές,” ὡς Ὅμηρος ἔφη, καὶ μὴ ἀντίτυπον. τὰς δ’ ἐν ἱστορικαῖς καὶ ποιητικαῖς ζητήσεσι διατριβὰς οὐκ ἀηδῶς ἔνιοι δευτέρας τραπέζας ἀνδράσι φιλολόγοις καὶ φιλομούσοις προσεῖπον. εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ διηγήσεις ἄλυποι καὶ [f] μυθολογίαι, καὶ τὸ περὶ αὐλοῦ τι καὶ λύρας ἀκοῦσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν ἐλαφρότερον ἢ λύρας αὐτῆς φθεγγομένης ἀκούειν καὶ αὐλοῦ. μέτρον δὲ τοῦ καιροῦ τὸ τῆς τροφῆς καθισταμένης ἀτρέμα καὶ συμπνεούσης τὴν πέψιν ἐγκρατῆ γενέσθαι καὶ ὑπερδέξιον.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀριστοτέλης οἴεται τῶν δεδειπνηκότων τὸν μὲν περίπατον ἀναρριπίζειν τὸ θερμόν, τὸν δ’ ὕπνον, ἂν εὐθὺς καθεύδωσι, κακαπνίγειν, ἕτεροι δὲ τὴν μὲν ἡσυχίαν οἴονται τὰς πέψεις βελτίονας ποιεῖν, τὴν δὲ κίνησιν ταράττειν τὰς [134] [a] ἀναδόσεις, καὶ τοῦτο τοὺς μὲν περιπατεῖν εὐθὺς ἀπὸ δείπνου τοὺς δ’ ἀτρεμεῖν πέπεικεν, ἀμφοτέρων ἂν οἰκείως ἐφάπτεσθαι δόξειεν ὁ τὸ μὲν σῶμα συνθάλπων καὶ συνέχων μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον, τὴν δὲ διάνοιαν μὴ καταφερόμενος μηδ’ ἀργῶν εὐθὺς ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ εἴρηται διαφορῶν ἐλαφρῶς τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ λεπτύνων τῷ λαλεῖν τι καὶ ἀκούειν τῶν προσηνῶν καὶ μὴ δακνόντων μηδὲ βαρυνόντων.

Ἐμέτους δὲ καὶ κοιλίας καθάρσεις ὑπὸ φαρμάκων, μιαρὰ “παραμύθια πλησμονῆς,” ἄνευ [b] μεγάλης ἀνάγκης οὐ κινητέον, ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ κενώσεως ἕνεκα πληροῦντες τὸ σῶμα καὶ πάλιν πληρώσεως κενοῦντες παρὰ φύσιν, ταῖς πλησμοναῖς οὐχ ἧττον ἢ ταῖς ἐνδείαις ἀνιώμενοι, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως τὴν μὲν πλήρωσιν ὡς κώλυσιν ἀπολαύσεως βαρυνόμενοι, τὴν δ’ ἔνδειαν ὡς χώραν ἀεὶ ταῖς ἡδοναῖς παρασκευάζοντες. τὸ γὰρ βλαβερὸν ἐν τούτοις προὖπτόν ἐστι· ταραχάς τε γὰρ ἀμφότερα τῷ σώματι παρέχεται καὶ σπαραγμούς. ἴδιον δὲ τῷ μὲν ἐμέτῳ κακὸν πρόσεστι τὸ τὴν ἀπληστίαν αὔξειν τε καὶ τρέφειν· γίγνονται γὰρ αἱ πεῖναι καθάπερ τὰ κοπτόμενα [c] ῥεῖθρα τραχεῖαι καὶ χαραδρώδεις, καὶ βίᾳ τὴν τροφὴν ἕλκουσιν ἀεὶ λυττῶσαι, οὐκ ὀρέξεσιν ἐοικυῖαι σιτίων δεομέναις ἀλλὰ φλεγμοναῖς φαρμάκων καὶ καταπλασμάτων. ὅθεν ἡδοναὶ μὲν ὀξεῖαι καὶ ἀτελεῖς καὶ πολὺν ἔχουσαι σφυγμὸν καὶ οἶστρον ἐν ταῖς ἀπολαύσεσι λαμβάνουσιν αὐτούς, διατάσεις δὲ καὶ πληγαὶ πόρων καὶ πνευμάτων ἐναπολήψεις διαδέχονται, μὴ περιμένουσαι τὰς κατὰ φύσιν ἐξαγωγάς, ἀλλ’ ἐπιπολάζουσαι τοῖς σώμασιν ὥσπερ ὑπεράντλοις σκάφεσι, φορτίων ἐκβολῆς οὐ περιττωμάτων δεομένοις. αἱ δὲ περὶ τὴν κάτω κοιλίαν ἐκταράξεις διὰ φαρμακείας φθείρουσαι καὶ τήκουσαι τὰ ὑποκείμενα πλείονα ποιοῦσι περίττωσιν ἢ ἐξάγουσιν.

[d] ὥσπερ οὖν, εἴ τις Ἑλλήνων ὄχλον ἐν πόλει βαρυνόμενος σύνοικον, Ἀράβων ἐμπλήσειε καὶ Σκυθῶν τὴν πόλιν ἐπηλύδων, οὕτως ἔνιοι τοῦ παντὸς διαμαρτάνουσιν ἐπ’ ἐκβολῇ περιττωμάτων συνήθων καὶ συντρόφων ἐμβάλλοντες ἔξωθεν εἰς τὸ σῶμα κόκκους τινὰς Κνιδίους καὶ σκαμωνίαν καὶ δυνάμεις ἄλλας ἀσυγκράτους καὶ ἀγρίας καὶ καθαρμοῦ δεομένας μᾶλλον ἢ καθῆραι τὴν φύσιν δυναμένας. ἄριστον μὲν οὖν τὸ μετρίᾳ διαίτῃ καὶ σώφρονι τὸ σῶμα ποιεῖν περί τε πληρώσεις καὶ κενώσεις αὐτοτελὲς ἀεὶ καὶ σύμμετρον.

Εἰ δ’ ἀνάγκη ποτὲ καταλάβοι, τοὺς μὲν ἐμέτους

ποιητέον ἄνευ φαρμακείας καὶ περιεργίας, μηδὲν [e] ἐκταράττοντας ἀλλ’ ὅσον ἀπεψίαν διαφυγεῖν αὐτόθεν ἀφιέντας ἀπραγμόνως τῷ πλεονάζοντι τὴν ἀπέρασιν. ὡς γὰρ τὰ ὀθόνια ῥύμμασι καὶ χαλαστραίοις πλυνόμενα μᾶλλον ἐκτρίβεται τῶν ὑδατοκλύστων, οὕτως οἱ μετὰ φαρμάκων ἔμετοι λυμαίνονται τῷ σώματι καὶ διαφθείρουσιν. ὑφισταμένης δὲ κοιλίας οὐδὲν φάρμακον οἷα τῶν σιτίων ἔνια μαλακὰς ἐνδιδόντα προθυμίας καὶ διαλύοντα πράως, ὧν ἥ τε πεῖρα πᾶσι συνήθης καὶ ἡ χρῆσις [f] ἄλυπος. ἂν δὲ τούτοις ἀπειθῇ, πλείονας ἡμέρας ὑδροποσίαν ἢ ἀσιτίαν ἢ κλυστῆρα προσδεκτέον μᾶλλον ἢ ταρακτικὰς καὶ φθαρτικὰς φαρμακείας, ἐφ’ ἃς οἱ πολλοὶ φέρονται προχείρως, καθάπερ ἀκόλαστοι γυναῖκες, ἐκβολίοις χρώμεναι καὶ φθορίοις ὑπὲρ τοῦ πάλιν πληροῦσθαι καὶ ἡδυπαθεῖν.

Ἀλλὰ τούτους μὲν ἐατέον· οἱ δ’ ἄγαν αὖ πάλιν ἀκριβεῖς καὶ τεταγμένας τινὰς ἐκ περιόδου [135] [a] κριτικῆς ἐμβάλλοντες ἀσιτίας οὐκ ὀρθῶς τὴν φύσιν μὴ δεομένην διδάσκουσι δεῖσθαι συστολῆς καὶ ποιεῖν ἀναγκαίαν τὴν οὐκ ἀναγκαίαν ὑφαίρεσιν ἐν καιρῷ ζητούμενον ἔθος ἀπαιτοῦντι. βέλτιον γὰρ ἐλευθέροις τοῖς τοιούτοις χρῆσθαι κολασμοῖς εἰς τὸ σῶμα, μηδεμιᾶς δὲ προαισθήσεως οὔσης μηδ’ ὑποψίας καὶ τὴν ἄλλην δίαιταν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, πρὸς τὸ συντυγχάνον ἀεὶ ταῖς μεταβολαῖς ὑπήκοον ἔχειν, μὴ καταδεδουλωμένην μηδ’ ἐνδεδεμένην ἑνὶ σχήματι βίου πρός τινας καιροὺς ἢ ἀριθμοὺς ἢ [b] περιόδους ἄγεσθαι μεμελετηκότος. οὐ γὰρ ἀσφαλὲς οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιον οὐδὲ πολιτικὸν οὐδ’ ἀνθρωπικὸν ἀλλ’ ὀστρέου τινὸς ζωῇ προσεοικὸς ἢ στελέχους τὸ ἀμετάστατον τοῦτο καὶ κατηναγκασμένον ἐν τροφαῖς καὶ ἀποχαῖς καὶ κινήσεσι καὶ ἡσυχίαις εἰς ἐπίσκιόν τινα βίον καὶ σχολαστὴν καὶ μονότροπόν τινα καὶ ἄφιλον καὶ ἄδοξον ἀπωτάτω πολιτείας καθίσασιν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ συστείλασιν· οὐ “κατά γε τὴν ἐμήν,” ἔφη, “γνώμην.” οὐ γὰρ ἀργίας ὤνιον ἡ ὑγίεια καὶ ἀπραξίας, ἅ γε δὴ μέγιστα κακῶν ταῖς νόσοις πρόσεστι, καὶ οὐδὲν διαφέρει [c] τοῦ τὰ ὄμματα τῷ μὴ διαβλέπειν καὶ τὴν φωνὴν τῷ μὴ φθέγγεσθαι φυλάττοντος ὁ τὴν ὑγίειαν ἀχρηστίᾳ καὶ ἡσυχίᾳ σῴζειν οἰόμενος· πρὸς οὐδὲν γὰρ ἑαυτῷ χρήσαιτ’ ἄν τις ὑγιαίνοντι κρεῖττον ἢ πρὸς πολλὰς καὶ φιλανθρώπους πράξεις. ἥκιστα δὴ τὴν ἀργίαν ὑγιεινὸν ὑποληπτέον, εἰ τὸ τῆς ὑγιείας τέλος ἀπόλλυσι, καὶ οὐδ’ ἀληθές ἐστι τὸ μᾶλλον ὑγιαίνειν τοὺς ἡσυχίαν ἄγοντας· οὔτε γὰρ Ξενοκράτης μᾶλλον διυγίαινε Φωκίωνος οὔτε Δημητρίου Θεόφραστος, Ἐπίκουρόν τε καὶ τοὺς περὶ Ἐπίκουρον οὐδὲν ὤνησε πρὸς τὴν ὑμνουμένην σαρκὸς εὐστάθειαν ἡ πάσης φιλοτιμίαν ἐχούσης [d] πράξεως ἀπόδρασις. ἀλλὰ καὶ ἑτέραις ἐπιμελείαις διασωστέον ἐστὶ τῷ σώματι τὴν κατὰ φύσιν ἕξιν, ὡς παντὸς βίου καὶ νόσον δεχομένου καὶ ὑγίειαν.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς πολιτικοῖς ἔφη παραινετέον εἶναι τοὐναντίον οὗ Πλάτων παρῄνει τοῖς νέοις. ἐκεῖνος μὲν γὰρ λέγειν ἐκ τῆς διατριβῆς ἀπαλλαττόμενος εἰώθει, “ἄγε, ὅπως εἰς καλόν τι καταθήσεσθε τὴν σχολήν, ὦ παῖδες”· ἡμεῖς δ’ ἂν τοῖς πολιτευομένοις παραινέσαιμεν εἰς τὰ καλὰ χρῆσθαι τοῖς πόνοις καὶ ἀναγκαῖα, μὴ μικρῶν ἕνεκα μηδὲ [e] φαύλων τὸ σῶμα παρατείνοντας, ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ κακοπαθοῦσιν ἐπὶ τοῖς τυχοῦσιν, ἀποκναίοντες ἑαυτοὺς ἀγρυπνίαις καὶ πλάναις καὶ περιδρομαῖς εἰς οὐδὲν χρηστὸν οὐδ’ ἀστεῖον, ἀλλ’ ἐπηρεάζοντες ἑτέροις ἢ φθονοῦντες ἢ φιλονεικοῦντες ἢ δόξας ἀκάρπους καὶ κενὰς διώκοντες. πρὸς τούτους γὰρ οἶμαι μάλιστα τὸν Δημόκριτον εἰπεῖν ὡς εἰ τὸ σῶμα δικάσαιτο τῇ ψυχῇ κακώσεως, οὐκ ἂν αὐτὴν ἀποφυγεῖν. ἴσως μὲν γάρ τι καὶ Θεόφραστος ἀληθὲς εἶπεν, εἰπὼν ἐν μεταφορᾷ πολὺ τῷ σώματι τελεῖν ἐνοίκιον τὴν ψυχήν. πλείονα μέντοι τὸ σῶμα τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπολαύει κακὰ μὴ κατὰ λόγον αὐτῷ χρωμένης μηδ’ ὡς προσήκει θεραπευόμενον· ὅταν γὰρ ἐν πάθεσιν ἰδίοις γένηται καὶ ἀγῶσι καὶ [f] σπουδαῖς, ἀφειδεῖ τοῦ σώματος. ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἰάσων οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅ τι παθών, “τὰ μικρὰ δεῖν ἀδικεῖν,” ἔλεγεν, “ἕνεκεν τοῦ τὰ μεγάλα δικαιοπραγεῖν.” ἡμεῖς δ’ ἂν εὐλόγως τῷ πολιτικῷ παραινέσαιμεν τὰ μικρὰ ῥᾳθυμεῖν καὶ σχολάζειν καὶ ἀναπαύειν αὑτὸν ἐν ἐκείνοις, εἰ βούλεται πρὸς τὰς καλὰς πράξεις καὶ μεγάλας μὴ διάπονον ἔχειν τὸ σῶμα [136] [a] μηδ’ ἀμβλὺ μηδ’ ἀπαγορεῦον ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν νεωλκίᾳ τῇ σχολῇ τεθεραπευμένον, ὅπως αὖθις ἐπὶ τὰς χρείας τῆς ψυχῆς ἀγούσης

ἄθηλος ἵππῳ πῶλος ὣς ἅμα τρέχῃ.

Διὸ τῶν πραγμάτων διδόντων ἀναληπτέον ἑαυτοὺς μήθ’ ὕπνου φθονοῦντας τῷ σώματι μήτ’ ἀρίστου μήτε ῥᾳστώνης τοῦ μέσου ἡδυπαθείας καὶ κακοπαθείας, μηδὲ φυλάττοντας ὅρον οἷον οἱ πολλοὶ φυλάττοντες ἐπιτρίβουσι τὸ σῶμα ταῖς μεταβολαῖς, ὥσπερ τὸν βαπτόμενον σίδηρον, ὅταν ἐνταθῇ καὶ πιεσθῇ σφόδρα τοῖς πόνοις, αὖθις ἐν [b] ἡδοναῖς τηκόμενον ἀμέτρως καὶ λειβόμενον, εἶτα πάλιν ἐξ ἀφροδισίων καὶ οἴνου διάλυτον καὶ μαλακὸν εἰς ἀγορὰν ἢ αὐλὴν ἤ τινα πραγματείαν διαπύρου καὶ συντόνου δεομένην σπουδῆς ἐλαυνόμενον. Ἡράκλειτος μὲν γὰρ ὑδρωπιάσας ἐκέλευσεν “αὐχμὸν ἐξ ἐπομβρίας” ποιῆσαι τὸν ἰατρόν· οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τοῦ παντὸς ἁμαρτάνουσιν, ὅταν ἐν κόποις καὶ πόνοις καὶ ἐνδείαις γένωνται, μάλιστα ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ἐξυγραίνειν καὶ ἀνατήκειν τὰ σώματα παραδιδόντες, αὖθις δὲ μετὰ τὰς ἡδονὰς οἷον ἐπιστρέφοντες καὶ κατατείνοντες. ἡ γὰρ φύσις οὐ ζητεῖ τοιαύτην ἀνταπόδοσιν τοῦ σώματος.

[c] ἀλλὰ τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ ἀκόλαστον καὶ ἀνελεύθερον ἐκ τῶν ἐπιπόνων ὥσπερ οἱ ναῦται πρὸς ἡδονὰς καὶ ἀπολαύσεις ὕβρει φερόμενον καὶ μετὰ τὰς ἡδονὰς πάλιν ἐπ’ ἐργασίας καὶ πορισμοὺς ὠθούμενον οὐκ ἐᾷ λαβεῖν τὴν φύσιν ἧς μάλιστα δεῖται καταστάσεως καὶ γαλήνης, ἀλλ’ ἐξίστησι καὶ ταράττει διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν. οἱ δὲ νοῦν ἔχοντες ἥκιστα μὲν ἡδονὰς πονοῦντι τῷ σώματι προσφέρουσιν· οὐ γὰρ δέονται τὸ παράπαν οὐδὲ μέμνηνται τῶν τοιούτων πρὸς τῷ [d] καλῷ τῆς πράξεως τὴν διάνοιαν ἔχοντες, καὶ τῷ χαίροντι τῆς ψυχῆς ἢ σπουδάζοντι τὰς ἄλλας ἐξαμαυροῦντες ἐπιθυμίας. ὅπερ γάρ φασιν εἰπεῖν τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν μετὰ παιδιᾶς, ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ περὶ τὰ Λευκτρικὰ νόσῳ τελευτήσαντος, “ὦ Ἡράκλεις, πῶς ἐσχόλασεν ἁνὴρ ἀποθανεῖν ἐν τοσούτοις πράγμασι,” τοῦτ’ ἀληθῶς ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ἐπ’ ἀνδρὸς ἢ πολιτικὴν πρᾶξιν ἢ φιλόσοφον φροντίδα διὰ χειρὸς ἔχοντος, “τίς δὲ σχολὴ τῷ ἀνδρὶ τούτῳ νῦν ἀπεπτεῖν ἢ μεθύειν ἢ λαγνεύειν;” γενόμενοι δὲ πάλιν ἀπὸ τῶν πράξεων ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ κατατίθενται τὸ σῶμα καὶ διαναπαύουσι, τῶν τε [e] πόνων τοὺς ἀχρήστους καὶ μᾶλλον ἔτι τῶν ἡδονῶν τὰς οὐκ ἀναγκαίας ὡς τῇ φύσει πολεμίας φυλαττόμενοι καὶ φεύγοντες.

Ἤκουσα Τιβέριόν ποτε Καίσαρα εἰπεῖν ὡς ἀνὴρ ὑπὲρ ἑξήκοντα γεγονὼς ἔτη καὶ προτείνων ἰατρῷ χεῖρα καταγέλαστός ἐστιν. ἐμοὶ δὲ τοῦτο μὲν εἰρῆσθαι δοκεῖ σοβαρώτερον, ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἀληθὲς εἶναι, τὸ δεῖν ἕκαστον αὑτοῦ μήτε σφυγμῶν ἰδιότητος εἶναι ἄπειρον (πολλαὶ γὰρ αἱ καθ’ ἕκαστον διαφοραί) μήτε κρᾶσιν ἀγνοεῖν ἣν ἔχει τὸ σῶμα θερμότητος καὶ ξηρότητος, μήθ’ οἷς ὠφελεῖσθαι χρώμενον ἢ βλάπτεσθαι πέφυκεν. αὑτοῦ γὰρ ἀναίσθητός ἐστιν καὶ τυφλὸς ἐνοικεῖ τῷ σώματι [f] καὶ κωφὸς ὁ ταῦτα μανθάνων παρ’ ἑτέρου καὶ πυνθανόμενος τοῦ ἰατροῦ πότερον μᾶλλον θέρους ἢ χειμῶνος ὑγιαίνει, καὶ πότερον τὰ ὑγρὰ ῥᾷον ἢ τὰ ξηρὰ προσδέχεται, καὶ πότερον φύσει πυκνὸν ἔχει τὸν σφυγμὸν ἢ μανόν· καὶ γὰρ ὠφέλιμον εἰδέναι τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ ῥᾴδιον, ἀεί γε δὴ πειρωμένους καὶ συνόντας.

Βρωμάτων δὲ καὶ πωμάτων τὰ χρήσιμα μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ ἡδέα γιγνώσκειν προσήκει, καὶ μᾶλλον ἔμπειρον εἶναι τῶν εὐστομάχων ἢ τῶν εὐστόμων, καὶ [137] [a] τῶν τὴν πέψιν μὴ ταραττόντων ἢ τῶν τὴν γεῦσιν σφόδρα γαργαλιζόντων. τὸ γὰρ παρ’ ἰατροῦ πυνθάνεσθαι τί δύσπεπτον ἢ εὔπεπτον αὐτῷ καὶ τί δυσκοίλιον ἢ εὐκοίλιον οὐχ ἧττον αἰσχρόν ἐστιν ἢ τὸ πυνθάνεσθαι τί γλυκὺ καὶ τί πικρὸν καὶ αὐστηρόν. νῦν δὲ τοὺς μὲν ὀψοποιοὺς ἐπανορθοῦσιν, ἐμπείρως διαισθανόμενοι ποῦ πλέον τὸ γλυκὺ τοῦ προσήκοντος ἢ τὸ ἁλμυρὸν ἢ τὸ αὐστηρὸν ἔνεστιν, αὐτοὶ δ’ ἀγνοοῦσι τί τῷ σώματι μιχθὲν ἐλαφρὸν καὶ ἄλυπον ἔσται καὶ χρήσιμον. ὅθεν ζωμοῦ μὲν ἄρτυσις οὐ πολλάκις ἁμαρτάνεται παρ’ αὐτοῖς, [b] αὑτοὺς δὲ φαύλως ὁμοῦ καὶ κακῶς ἀρτύοντες ὁσημέραι πολλὰ παρέχουσι πράγματα τοῖς ἰατροῖς. ζωμὸν μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἄριστον ἡγοῦνται τὸν γλυκύτατον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πικρὰ καὶ δριμέα συμμιγνύουσιν· εἰς δὲ τὸ σῶμα πολλὰς καὶ κατακόρους ἐμβάλλουσιν ἡδονάς, τὰ μὲν ἀγνοοῦντες τὰ δ’ οὐ μνημονεύοντες ὅτι τοῖς ὑγιεινοῖς καὶ ὠφελίμοις ἡ φύσις ἡδονὴν ἄλυπον καὶ ἀμεταμέλητον προστίθησιν. ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῦτα δεῖ μνημονεύειν, τὰ σύμφυλα καὶ πρόσφορα τῷ σώματι, καὶ τοὐναντίον ἐν ταῖς καθ’ ὥραν μεταβολαῖς καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις περιστάσεσιν εἰδότας οἰκείως προσαρμόττειν ἑκάστῃ τὴν δίαιταν.

[c] Ὅσα μὲν γὰρ μικρολογίας καὶ ἀνελευθερίας προσκρούματα λαμβάνουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ περί τε συγκομιδὰς καρπῶν καὶ τηρήσεις ἐπιπόνους, ἀγρυπνίαις καὶ περιδρομαῖς ἐξελέγχοντες τὰ σαθρὰ καὶ ὕπουλα τοῦ σώματος, οὐκ ἄξιόν ἐστι δεδιέναι μὴ πάθωσιν ἄνδρες φιλόλογοι καὶ πολιτικοί, πρὸς οὓς ἐνέστηκεν ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος· ἀλλ’ ἑτέραν τινὰ φυλακτέον ἐστὶ τούτοις δριμυτέραν ἐν γράμμασι καὶ μαθήμασι μικρολογίαν, ὑφ’ ἧς ἀφειδεῖν καὶ ἀμελεῖν τοῦ σώματος ἀναγκάζονται, πολλάκις ἀπαγορεύοντος οὐκ [d] ἐνδιδόντες ἀλλὰ προσβιαζόμενοι θνητὸν ἀθανάτῳ καὶ γηγενὲς Ὀλυμπίῳ συναμιλλᾶσθαι καὶ συνεξανύτειν. εἶθ’ ὡς ὁ βοῦς πρὸς τὴν ὁμόδουλον ἔλεγε κάμηλον, ἐπικουφίσαι τοῦ φορτίου μὴ βουλομένην, “ἀλλὰ κἀμὲ καὶ ταῦτα πάντα μετὰ μικρὸν οἴσεις,” ὃ καὶ συνέβη τελευτήσαντος αὐτοῦ, οὕτω συμβαίνει τῇ ψυχῇ· μικρὰ χαλάσαι καὶ παρεῖναι μὴ βουλομένη πονοῦντι καὶ δεομένῳ, μετ’ ὀλίγον πυρετοῦ τινος ἢ σκοτώματος ἐμπεσόντος ἀφεῖσα τὰ βιβλία καὶ τοὺς λόγους καὶ τὰς διατριβὰς ἀναγκάζεται [e] συννοσεῖν ἐκείνῳ καὶ συγκάμνειν. ὀρθῶς οὖν ὁ Πλάτων παρῄνεσε μήτε σῶμα κινεῖν ἄνευ ψυχῆς μήτε ψυχὴν ἄνευ σώματος, ἀλλ’ οἷόν τινα ξυνωρίδος ἰσορροπίαν διαφυλάττειν, ὅτε μάλιστα τῇ ψυχῇ συνεργεῖ τὸ σῶμα καὶ συγκάμνει, πλείστην ἐπιμέλειαν αὐτῷ καὶ θεραπείαν ἀποδιδόντας καὶ τὴν καλὴν καὶ ἐράσμιον ὑγίειαν ὧν δίδωσιν ἀγαθῶν κάλλιστον ἡγουμένους διδόναι τὸ πρὸς κτῆσιν ἀρετῆς καὶ χρῆσιν ἔν τε λόγοις καὶ πράξεσιν ἀκώλυτον αὐτῶν.

Conjugalia praecepta

ΓΑΜΙΚΑ ΠΑΡΑΓΓΕΛΜΑΤΑ

[138] ΠΛΟΥΤΑΡΧΟΣ ΠΟΛΛΙΑΝΩΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΥΡΥΔΙΚΗΙ ΕΥ ΠΡΑΤΤΕΙΝ

[b] Μετὰ τὸν πάτριον θεσμόν, ὃν ὑμῖν ἡ τῆς Δήμητρος ἱέρεια συνειργνυμένοις ἐφήρμοσεν, οἶμαι καὶ τὸν λόγον ὁμοῦ συνεφαπτόμενον ὑμῶν καὶ συνυμεναιοῦντα χρήσιμον ἄν τι ποιῆσαι καὶ τῷ νόμῳ προσῳδόν.

Ἐν μὲν γὰρ τοῖς μουσικοῖς ἕνα τῶν αὐλητικῶν νόμων ἱππόθορον ἐκάλουν, μέλος τι τοῖς ἵπποις ὁρμῆς ἐπεγερτικὸν ὡς ἔοικεν ἐνδιδόν τε περὶ τὰς ὀχείας· φιλοσοφίᾳ δὲ πολλῶν λόγων καὶ καλῶν [c] ἐνόντων, οὐδενὸς ἧττον ἄξιος σπουδῆς ὁ γαμήλιός ἐστιν οὗτος, ᾧ κατᾴδουσα τοὺς ἐπὶ βίου κοινωνίᾳ συνιόντας εἰς ταὐτὸ πράους τε παρέχει καὶ χειροήθεις ἀλλήλοις. ὧν οὖν ἀκηκόατε πολλάκις ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ παρατρεφόμενοι κεφάλαια συντάξας ἔν τισιν ὁμοιότησι βραχείαις, ὡς εὐμνημόνευτα μᾶλλον εἴη, κοινὸν ἀμφοτέροις πέμπω δῶρον, εὐχόμενος τῇ Ἀφροδίτῃ τὰς Μούσας παρεῖναι καὶ συνεργεῖν, ὡς μήτε λύραν τινὰ μήτε κιθάραν μᾶλλον αὐταῖς ἢ τὴν περὶ γάμον καὶ οἶκον ἐμμέλειαν ἡρμοσμένην παρέχειν διὰ λόγου καὶ ἁρμονίας καὶ φιλοσοφίας προσῆκον. καὶ γὰρ οἱ παλαιοὶ τῇ Ἀφροδίτῃ τὸν Ἑρμῆν συγκαθίδρυσαν, ὡς τῆς περὶ τὸν γάμον [d] ἡδονῆς μάλιστα λόγου δεομένης, τήν τε Πειθὼ καὶ τὰς Χάριτας, ἵνα πείθοντες διαπράττωνται παρ’ ἀλλήλων ἃ βούλονται, μὴ μαχόμενοι μηδὲ φιλονεικοῦντες.

Ὁ Σόλων ἐκέλευε τὴν νύμφην τῷ νυμφίῳ συγκατακλίνεσθαι μήλου κυδωνίου κατατραγοῦσαν, αἰνιττόμενος ὡς ἔοικεν ὅτι δεῖ τὴν ἀπὸ στόματος καὶ φωνῆς χάριν εὐάρμοστον εἶναι πρῶτον καὶ ἡδεῖαν.

Ἐν Βοιωτίᾳ τὴν νύμφην κατακαλύψαντες ἀσφαραγωνιᾷ στεφανοῦσιν· ἐκείνη τε γὰρ ἥδιστον ἐκ τραχυτάτης ἀκάνθης καρπὸν ἀναδίδωσιν, ἥ τε νύμφη τῷ μὴ φυγόντι μηδὲ δυσχεράναντι τὴν πρώτην χαλεπότητα καὶ ἀηδίαν αὐτῆς ἥμερον καὶ [e] γλυκεῖαν παρέξει συμβίωσιν. οἱ δὲ τὰς πρώτας τῶν παρθένων διαφορὰς μὴ ὑπομείναντες οὐδὲν ἀπολείπουσι τῶν διὰ τὸν ὄμφακα τὴν σταφυλὴν ἑτέροις προϊεμένων. πολλαὶ δὲ καὶ τῶν νεογάμων δυσχεράνασαι διὰ τὰ πρῶτα τοὺς νυμφίους ὅμοιον ἔπαθον πάθος τοῖς τὴν μὲν πληγὴν τῆς μελίττης ὑπομείνασι, τὸ δὲ κηρίον προεμένοις.

Ἐν ἀρχῇ μάλιστα δεῖ τὰς διαφορὰς καὶ τὰς προσκρούσεις φυλάττεσθαι τοὺς γεγαμηκότας, ὁρῶντας ὅτι καὶ τὰ συναρμοσθέντα τῶν σκευῶν κατ’ ἀρχὰς μὲν ὑπὸ τῆς τυχούσης ῥᾳδίως διασπᾶται προφάσεως, [f] χρόνῳ δὲ τῶν ἁρμῶν σύμπηξιν λαβόντων μόλις ὑπὸ πυρὸς καὶ σιδήρου διαλύεται.

Ὥσπερ τὸ πῦρ ἐξάπτεται μὲν εὐχερῶς ἐν ἀχύροις καὶ θρυαλλίδι καὶ θριξὶ λαγῴαις, σβέννυται δὲ τάχιον ἂν μή τινος ἑτέρου δυναμένου στέγειν ἅμα καὶ τρέφειν ἐπιλάβηται, οὕτω τὸν ἀπὸ σώματος καὶ ὥρας ὀξὺν ἔρωτα τῶν νεογάμων ἀναφλεγόμενον δεῖ μὴ διαρκῆ μηδὲ βέβαιον νομίζειν, ἂν μὴ περὶ τὸ ἦθος ἱδρυθεὶς καὶ τοῦ φρονοῦντος ἁψάμενος ἔμψυχον λάβῃ διάθεσιν.

[139] [a] Ἡ διὰ τῶν φαρμάκων θήρα ταχὺ μὲν αἱρεῖ καὶ λαμβάνει ῥᾳδίως τὸν ἰχθύν, ἄβρωτον δὲ ποιεῖ καὶ φαῦλον· οὕτως αἱ φίλτρα τινὰ καὶ γοητείας ἐπιτεχνώμεναι τοῖς ἀνδράσι καὶ χειρούμεναι δι’ ἡδονῆς αὐτοὺς ἐμπλήκτοις καὶ ἀνοήτοις καὶ διεφθαρμένοις συμβιοῦσιν. οὐδὲ γὰρ τὴν Κίρκην ὤνησαν οἱ καταφαρμακευθέντες, οὐδ’ ἐχρήσατο πρὸς οὐδὲν αὐτοῖς ὑσὶ καὶ ὄνοις γενομένοις, τὸν δ’ Ὀδυσσέα νοῦν ἔχοντα καὶ συνόντα φρονίμως ὑπερηγάπησεν.

Αἱ βουλόμεναι μᾶλλον ἀνοήτων κρατεῖν ἀνδρῶν ἢ φρονίμων ἀκούειν ἐοίκασι τοῖς ἐν ὁδῷ βουλομένοις μᾶλλον ὁδηγεῖν τυφλοὺς ἢ τοῖς γιγνώσκουσιν ἀκολουθεῖν καὶ βλέπουσι.

[b] Τὴν Πασιφάην ἀπιστοῦσι βοὸς ἐρασθῆναι βασιλεῖ συνοῦσαν, ἐνίας ὁρῶσαι τοὺς μὲν αὐστηροὺς καὶ σώφρονας βαρυνομένας, τοῖς δ’ ἐξ ἀκρασίας καὶ φιληδονίας κεκραμένοις ὥσπερ κυσὶν ἢ τράγοις ἥδιον συνούσας.

Οἱ τοῖς ἵπποις ἐφάλλεσθαι μὴ δυνάμενοι δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἢ μαλακίαν αὐτοὺς ἐκείνους ὀκλάζειν καὶ ὑποπίπτειν διδάσκουσιν· οὕτως ἔνιοι τῶν λαβόντων εὐγενεῖς ἢ πλουσίας γυναῖκας οὐχ ἑαυτοὺς ποιοῦσι βελτίους ἀλλ’ ἐκείνας περικολούουσιν, ὡς μᾶλλον ἄρξοντες ταπεινῶν γενομένων. δεῖ δ’ ὥσπερ ἵππου τὸ μέγεθος φυλάττοντα καὶ τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς γυναικὸς χρῆσθαι τῷ χαλινῷ.

[c] Τὴν σελήνην, ὅταν ἀποστῇ τοῦ ἡλίου, περιφανῆ καὶ λαμπρὰν ὁρῶμεν, ἀφανίζεται δὲ καὶ κρύπτεται πλησίον γενομένη· τὴν δὲ σώφρονα γυναῖκα δεῖ τοὐναντίον ὁρᾶσθαι μάλιστα μετὰ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς οὖσαν, οἰκουρεῖν δὲ καὶ κρύπτεσθαι μὴ παρόντος.

Οὐκ ὀρθῶς Ἡρόδοτος εἶπεν ὅτι ἡ γυνὴ ἅμα τῷ χιτῶνι ἐκδύεται καὶ τὴν αἰδῶ· τοὐναντίον γὰρ ἡ σώφρων ἀντενδύεται τὴν αἰδῶ, καὶ τοῦ μάλιστα φιλεῖν τῷ μάλιστα αἰδεῖσθαι συμβόλῳ χρῶνται πρὸς ἀλλήλους.

Ὥσπερ ἂν φθόγγοι δύο σύμφωνοι ληφθῶσι, [d] τοῦ βαρυτέρου γίγνεται τὸ μέλος, οὕτω πᾶσα πρᾶξις ἐν οἰκίᾳ σωφρονούσῃ πράττεται μὲν ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων ὁμονοούντων, ἐπιφαίνει δὲ τὴν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἡγεμονίαν καὶ προαίρεσιν.

Ὁ ἥλιος τὸν βορέαν ἐνίκησεν. ὁ γὰρ ἄνθρωπος τοῦ μὲν ἀνέμου βιαζομένου τὸ ἱμάτιον ἀφελέσθαι καὶ λαμπρὸν καταπνέοντος μᾶλλον ἔσφιγγε καὶ συνεῖχε τὴν περιβολήν· τοῦ δ’ ἡλίου μετὰ τὸ πνεῦμα θερμοῦ γενομένου θαλπόμενος εἶτα καυματιζόμενος καὶ τὸν χιτῶνα τῷ ἱματίῳ προσαπεδύσατο. τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν αἱ πλεῖσται γυναῖκες· ἀφαιρουμένοις [e] τοῖς ἀνδράσι βίᾳ τὴν τρυφὴν καὶ τὴν πολυτέλειαν διαμάχονται καὶ χαλεπαίνουσιν· ἂν δὲ πείθωνται μετὰ λόγου, πράως ἀποτίθενται καὶ μετριάζουσιν.

Ὁ Κάτων ἐξέβαλε τῆς βουλῆς τὸν φιλήσαντα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα τῆς θυγατρὸς παρούσης. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ἴσως σφοδρότερον· εἰ δ’ αἰσχρόν ἐστιν, ὥσπερ ἐστίν, ἑτέρων παρόντων ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ φιλεῖν καὶ περιβάλλειν ἀλλήλους, πῶς οὐκ αἴσχιον ἑτέρων παρόντων λοιδορεῖσθαι καὶ διαφέρεσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους, καὶ τὰς μὲν ἐντεύξεις καὶ φιλοφροσύνας ἀπορρήτους πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα [f] ποιεῖσθαι, νουθεσίᾳ δὲ καὶ μέμψει καὶ παρρησίᾳ χρῆσθαι φανερᾷ καὶ ἀναπεπταμένῃ;

Ὥσπερ ἐσόπτρου κατεσκευασμένου χρυσῷ καὶ λίθοις ὄφελος οὐδέν ἐστιν, εἰ μὴ δείκνυσι τὴν μορφὴν ὁμοίαν, οὕτως οὐδὲ πλουσίας γαμετῆς ὄνησις, εἰ μὴ παρέχει τὸν βίον ὅμοιον τῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ σύμφωνον τὸ ἦθος. εἰ χαίροντος μὲν εἰκόνα σκυθρωπὴν ἀποδίδωσι τὸ ἔσοπτρον, ἀχθομένου δὲ καὶ σκυθρωπάζοντας ἱλαρὰν καὶ σεσηρυῖαν, ἡμαρτημένον ἐστὶ καὶ φαῦλον. οὐκοῦν καὶ γυνὴ φαῦλος καὶ ἄκαιρος ἡ παίζειν μὲν ὡρμημένου καὶ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐσκυθρωπακυῖα, σπουδάζοντος δὲ παίζουσα καὶ γελῶσα· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀηδίας, [140] [a] τὸ δ’ ὀλιγωρίας. δεῖ δέ, ὥσπερ οἱ γεωμέτραι λέγουσι τὰς γραμμὰς καὶ τὰς ἐπιφανείας οὐ κινεῖσθαι καθ’ ἑαυτὰς ἀλλὰ συγκινεῖσθαι τοῖς σώμασιν, οὕτω τὴν γυναῖκα μηδὲν ἴδιον πάθος ἔχειν, ἀλλὰ κοινωνεῖν τῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ σπουδῆς καὶ παιδιᾶς καὶ συννοίας καὶ γέλωτος.

Οἱ τὰς γυναῖκας μὴ ἡδέως βλέποντες ἐσθιούσας μετ’ αὐτῶν διδάσκουσιν ἐμπίπλασθαι μόνας γενομένας. οὕτως οἱ μὴ συνόντες ἱλαρῶς ταῖς γυναιξὶ μηδὲ παιδιᾶς κοινωνοῦντες αὐταῖς καὶ γέλωτος ἰδίας ἡδονὰς χωρὶς αὐτῶν ζητεῖν διδάσκουσιν.

[b] Τοῖς τῶν Περσῶν βασιλεῦσιν αἱ γνήσιαι γυναῖκες παρακάθηνται δειπνοῦσι καὶ συνεστιῶνται· βουλόμενοι δὲ παίζειν καὶ μεθύσκεσθαι ταύτας μὲν ἀποπέμπουσι, τὰς δὲ μουσουργοὺς καὶ παλλακίδας καλοῦσιν, ὀρθῶς τοῦτό γ’ αὐτὸ ποιοῦντες, ὅτι τοῦ συνακολασταίνειν καὶ παροινεῖν οὐ μεταδιδόασι ταῖς γαμεταῖς. ἂν οὖν ἰδιώτης ἀνήρ, ἀκρατὴς δὲ περὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς καὶ ἀνάγωγος, ἐξαμάρτῃ τι πρὸς ἑταίραν ἢ θεραπαινίδα, δεῖ τὴν γαμετὴν μὴ ἀγανακτεῖν μηδὲ χαλεπαίνειν, λογιζομένην ὅτι παροινίας καὶ ἀκολασίας καὶ ὕβρεως αἰδούμενος αὐτὴν ἑτέρᾳ μεταδίδωσιν.

[c] Οἱ φιλόμουσοι τῶν βασιλέων πολλοὺς μουσικοὺς ποιοῦσιν, οἱ φιλόλογοι λογίους, οἱ φιλαθληταὶ γυμναστικούς. οὕτως ἀνὴρ φιλοσώματος καλλωπίστριαν γυναῖκα ποιεῖ, φιλήδονος ἑταιρικὴν καὶ ἀκόλαστον, φιλάγαθος καὶ φιλόκαλος σώφρονα καὶ κοσμίαν.

Λάκαινα παιδίσκη, πυνθανομένου τινὸς εἰ ἤδη τἀνδρὶ προσελήλυθεν, “οὐκ ἔγωγ’,” εἶπεν, “ἀλλ’ ἐμοὶ ἐκεῖνος.” οὗτος ὁ τρόπος, οἶμαι, τῆς οἰκοδεσποίνης, μήτε φεύγειν μήτε δυσχεραίνειν τὰ τοιαῦτα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀρχομένου μήτ’ αὐτὴν κατάρχεσθαι· [d] τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἑταιρικὸν καὶ ἰταμόν, τὸ δ’ ὑπερήφανον καὶ ἀφιλόστοργον.

Ἰδίους οὐ δεῖ φίλους κτᾶσθαι τὴν γυναῖκα, κοινοῖς δὲ χρῆσθαι τοῖς τοῦ ἀνδρός· οἱ δὲ θεοὶ φίλοι πρῶτοι καὶ μέγιστοι. διὸ καὶ θεοὺς οὓς ὁ ἀνὴρ νομίζει σέβεσθαι τῇ γαμετῇ καὶ γιγνώσκειν μόνους προσήκει, περιέργοις δὲ θρησκείαις καὶ ξέναις δεισιδαιμονίαις ἀποκεκλεῖσθαι τὴν αὔλειον. οὐδενὶ γὰρ θεῶν ἱερὰ κλεπτόμενα καὶ λανθάνοντα δρᾶται κεχαρισμένως ὑπὸ γυναικός.

Ὁ Πλάτων φησὶν εὐδαίμονα καὶ μακαρίαν εἶναι πόλιν, ἐν ᾗ “τὸ ἐμὸν καὶ τὸ οὐκ ἐμὸν”

[e] ἥκιστα φθεγγομένων ἀκούουσι διὰ τὸ κοινοῖς ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα χρῆσθαι τοῖς ἀξίοις σπουδῆς τοὺς πολίτας. πολὺ δὲ μᾶλλον ἐκ γάμου δεῖ τὴν τοιαύτην φωνὴν ἀνῃρῆσθαι. πλὴν ὥσπερ οἱ ἰατροὶ λέγουσι τὰς τῶν εὐωνύμων πληγὰς τὴν αἴσθησιν ἐν τοῖς δεξιοῖς ἀναφέρειν, οὕτω τὴν γυναῖκα τοῖς τοῦ ἀνδρὸς συμπαθεῖν καλὸν καὶ τὸν ἄνδρα τοῖς τῆς γυναικός, ἵν’ ὥσπερ οἱ δεσμοὶ κατὰ τὴν ἐπάλλαξιν ἰσχὺν δι’ ἀλλήλων λαμβάνουσιν, οὕτως ἑκατέρου τὴν εὔνοιαν ἀντίστροφον ἀποδιδόντος ἡ κοινωνία σῴζηται δι’ ἀμφοῖν. καὶ γὰρ ἡ φύσις [f] μίγνυσι διὰ τῶν σωμάτων ἡμᾶς, ἵν’ ἐξ ἑκατέρων μέρος λαβοῦσα καὶ συγχέασα κοινὸν ἀμφοτέροις ἀποδῷ τὸ γεννώμενον, ὥστε μηδέτερον διορίσαι μηδὲ διακρῖναι τὸ ἴδιον ἢ τὸ ἀλλότριον. αὕτη τοίνυν καὶ χρημάτων κοινωνία προσήκει μάλιστα τοῖς γαμοῦσιν, εἰς μίαν οὐσίαν πάντα καταχεαμένοις καὶ ἀναμείξασι μὴ τὸ μέρος ἴδιον καὶ τὸ μέρος ἀλλότριον ἀλλὰ πᾶν ἴδιον ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ μηδὲν ἀλλότριον. ὥσπερ τὸ κρᾶμα καίτοι ὕδατος μετέχον πλείονος οἶνον καλοῦμεν, οὕτω τὴν οὐσίαν δεῖ καὶ τὸν οἶκον τοῦ ἀνδρὸς λέγεσθαι, κἂν ἡ γυνὴ πλείονα συμβάλληται.

Φιλόπλουτος ἡ Ἑλένη, φιλήδονος ὁ Πάρις· φρόνιμος ὁ Ὀδυσσεύς, σώφρων ἡ Πηνελόπη. διὰ τοῦτο μακάριος γάμος ὁ τούτων καὶ ζηλωτός, ὁ [141] [a] δ’ ἐκείνων Ἰλιάδα κακῶν Ἕλλησι καὶ βαρβάροις ἐποίησεν.

Ὁ Ῥωμαῖος ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων νουθετούμενος ὅτι σώφρονα γυναῖκα καὶ πλουσίαν καὶ ὡραίαν ἀπεπέμψατο, τὸν κάλτιον αὐτοῖς προτείνας “καὶ γὰρ οὗτος,” ἔφη, “καλὸς ἰδεῖν καὶ καινός, ἀλλ’ οὐδεὶς οἶδεν ὅπου με θλίβει.” δεῖ τοίνυν μὴ προικὶ μηδὲ γένει μηδὲ κάλλει τὴν γυναῖκα πιστεύειν, ἀλλ’ ἐν οἷς ἅπτεται μάλιστα τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὁμιλίᾳ τε καὶ ἤθει καὶ συμπεριφορᾷ, ταῦτα μὴ σκληρὰ μηδ’ ἀνιῶντα [b] καθ’ ἡμέραν ἀλλ’ εὐάρμοστα καὶ ἄλυπα καὶ προσφιλῆ παρέχειν. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ ἰατροὶ τοὺς ἐξ αἰτιῶν ἀδήλων καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν συλλεγομένων γεννωμένους πυρετοὺς μᾶλλον δεδοίκασιν ἢ τοὺς ἐμφανεῖς καὶ μεγάλας προφάσεις ἔχοντας, οὕτω τὰ λανθάνοντα τοὺς πολλοὺς μικρὰ καὶ συνεχῆ καὶ καθημερινὰ προσκρούματα γυναικὸς καὶ ἀνδρὸς μᾶλλον διίστησι καὶ λυμαίνεται τὴν συμβίωσιν.

Ὁ βασιλεὺς Φίλιππος ἤρα Θεσσαλῆς γυναικὸς αἰτίαν ἐχούσης καταφαρμακεύειν αὐτόν. ἐσπούδασεν οὖν ἡ Ὀλυμπιὰς λαβεῖν τὴν ἄνθρωπον ὑποχείριον. ὡς δ’ εἰς ὄψιν ἐλθοῦσα τό τ’ εἶδος εὐπρεπὴς ἐφάνη καὶ διελέχθη πρὸς αὐτὴν οὐκ [c] ἀγεννῶς οὐδ’ ἀσυνέτως, “χαιρέτωσαν,” εἶπεν ἡ Ὀλυμπιάς, “αἱ διαβολαί. σὺ γὰρ ἐν σεαυτῇ τὰ φάρμακα ἔχεις.” ἄμαχον οὖν τι γίγνεται πρᾶγμα γαμετὴ γυνὴ καὶ νόμιμος, ἂν ἐν αὑτῇ πάντα θεμένη, καὶ προῖκα καὶ γένος καὶ φάρμακα καὶ τὸν κεστὸν αὐτόν, ἤθει καὶ ἀρετῇ κατεργάσηται τὴν εὔνοιαν.

Πάλιν ἡ Ὀλυμπιάς, αὐλικοῦ τινος νεανίσκου γήμαντος εὐπρεπῆ γυναῖκα κακῶς ἀκούουσαν, “οὗτος,” εἶπεν, “οὐκ ἔχει λογισμόν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἔγημε.” δεῖ δὲ μὴ τοῖς ὄμμασι γαμεῖν μηδὲ τοῖς δακτύλοις, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι ψηφίσαντες [d] πόσα φέρουσαν λαμβάνουσιν, οὐ κρίναντες πῶς συμβιωσομένην.

Ὁ Σωκράτης ἐκέλευε τῶν ἐσοπτριζομένων νεανίσκων τοὺς μὲν αἰσχροὺς ἐπανορθοῦσθαι τῇ ἀρετῇ, τοὺς δὲ καλοὺς μὴ καταισχύνειν τῇ κακίᾳ τὸ εἶδος. καλὸν οὖν καὶ τὴν οἰκοδέσποιναν, ὅταν ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν ἔχῃ τὸ ἔσοπτρον, αὐτὴν ἐν ἑαυτῇ διαλαλεῖν, τὴν μὲν αἰσχράν “τί οὖν, ἂν μὴ σώφρων γένωμαι;” τὴν δὲ καλήν “τί οὖν, ἂν καὶ σώφρων γένωμαι;” τῇ γὰρ αἰσχρᾷ σεμνὸν εἰ φιλεῖται διὰ τὸ ἦθος μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ κάλλος.

Ταῖς Λυσάνδρου θυγατράσιν ὁ τύραννος ὁ Σικελικὸς ἱμάτια καὶ πλόκια τῶν πολυτελῶν ἔπεμψεν· [e] ὁ δὲ Λύσανδρος οὐκ ἔλαβεν εἰπών, “ταῦτα τὰ κόσμια καταισχυνεῖ μου μᾶλλον ἢ κοσμήσει τὰς θυγατέρας.” πρότερος δὲ Λυσάνδρου Σοφοκλῆς τοῦτ’ εἶπεν,

οὐ κόσμος, οὔκ, ὦ τλῆμον, ἀλλ’ ἀκοσμία

φαίνοιτ’ ἂν εἶναι σῶν τε μαργότης φρενῶν.

“κόσμος γάρ ἐστιν,” ὡς ἔλεγε Κράτης, “τὸ κοσμοῦν.” κοσμεῖ δὲ τὸ κοσμιωτέραν τὴν γυναῖκα ποιοῦν. ποιεῖ δὲ τοιαύτην οὔτε χρυσὸς οὔτε σμάραγδος οὔτε κόκκος, ἀλλ’ ὅσα σεμνότητος εὐταξίας αἰδοῦς ἔμφασιν περιτίθησιν.

Οἱ τῇ γαμηλίᾳ θύοντες Ἥρᾳ τὴν χολὴν οὐ [f] συγκαθαγίζουσι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἱεροῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐξελόντες ἔρριψαν παρὰ τὸν βωμόν, αἰνιττομένου τοῦ νομοθέτου τὸ μηδέποτε δεῖν χολὴν μηδ’ ὀργὴν γάμῳ παρεῖναι. δεῖ γὰρ εἶναι τῆς οἰκοδεσποίνης ὥσπερ οἴνου τὸ αὐστηρὸν ὠφέλιμον καὶ ἡδύ, μὴ πικρὸν ὥσπερ ἀλόης μηδὲ φαρμακῶδες.

Ὁ Πλάτων τῷ Ξενοκράτει βαρυτέρῳ τὸ ἦθος ὄντι τἄλλα δὲ καλῷ κἀγαθῷ παρεκελεύετο θύειν ταῖς Χάρισιν. οἶμαι δὴ καὶ τῇ σώφρονι μάλιστα δεῖν πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα χαρίτων, ἵν’, ὡς ἔλεγε [142] [a] Μητρόδωρος, “ἡδέως συνοικῇ καὶ μὴ ὀργιζομένη ὅτι σωφρονεῖ.” δεῖ γὰρ μήτε τὴν εὐτελῆ καθαριότητος ἀμελεῖν μήτε τὴν φίλανδρον φιλοφροσύνης· ποιεῖ γὰρ ἡ χαλεπότης ἀηδῆ τὴν εὐταξίαν τῆς γυναικός, ὥσπερ ἡ ῥυπαρία τὴν ἀφέλειαν.

Ἡ φοβουμένη γελάσαι πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ παῖξαί τι, μὴ φανῇ θρασεῖα καὶ ἀκόλαστος, οὐδὲν διαφέρει τῆς ἵνα μὴ δοκῇ μυρίζεσθαι τὴν κεφαλὴν μηδ’ ἀλειφομένης, καὶ ἵνα μὴ φυκοῦσθαι τὸ πρόσωπον μηδὲ νιπτομένης. ὁρῶμεν δὲ καὶ ποιητὰς καὶ ῥήτορας, ὅσοι φεύγουσι τὸ περὶ τὴν λέξιν ὀχλικὸν [b] καὶ ἀνελεύθερον καὶ κακόζηλον, τοῖς πράγμασι καὶ ταῖς οἰκονομίαις καὶ τοῖς ἤθεσιν ἄγειν καὶ κινεῖν τὸν ἀκροατὴν φιλοτεχνοῦντας. διὸ δεῖ καὶ τὴν οἰκοδέσποιναν ὅτι πᾶν τὸ περιττὸν καὶ ἑταιρικὸν καὶ πανηγυρικόν, εὖ ποιοῦσα, φεύγει καὶ παραιτεῖται, μᾶλλον φιλοτεχνεῖν ἐν ταῖς ἠθικαῖς καὶ βιωτικαῖς χάρισι πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα, τῷ καλῷ μεθ’ ἡδονῆς συνεθίζουσαν αὐτόν. ἂν δ’ ἄρα φύσει τις αὐστηρὰ καὶ ἄκρατος γένηται καὶ ἀνήδυντος, εὐγνωμονεῖν δεῖ τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ καθάπερ ὁ Φωκίων, τοῦ Ἀντιπάτρου πρᾶξιν αὐτῷ προστάττοντος οὐ [c] καλὴν οὐδὲ πρέπουσαν, εἶπεν “οὐ δύνασαί μοι καὶ φίλῳ χρῆσθαι καὶ κόλακι,” οὕτω λογίζεσθαι περὶ τῆς σώφρονος καὶ αὐστηρᾶς γυναικός “οὐ δύναμαι τῇ αὐτῇ καὶ ὡς γαμετῇ καὶ ὡς ἑταίρᾳ συνεῖναι.”

Ταῖς Αἰγυπτίαις ὑποδήμασι χρῆσθαι πάτριον οὐκ ἦν, ὅπως ἐν οἴκῳ διημερεύωσι. τῶν δὲ πλείστων γυναικῶν ἂν ὑποδήματα διάχρυσα περιέλῃς καὶ ψέλλια καὶ περισκελίδας καὶ πορφύραν καὶ μαργαρίτας, ἔνδον μένουσιν.

Ἡ Θεανὼ παρέφηνε τὴν χεῖρα περιβαλλομένη τὸ ἱμάτιον. εἰπόντος δέ τινος “καλὸς ὁ πῆχυς,” “ἀλλ’ οὐ δημόσιος,” ἔφη. δεῖ δὲ μὴ μόνον [d] τὸν πῆχυν ἀλλὰ μηδὲ τὸν λόγον δημόσιον εἶναι τῆς σώφρονος, καὶ τὴν φωνὴν ὡς ἀπογύμνωσιν αἰδεῖσθαι καὶ φυλάττεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς ἐκτός· ἐνορᾶται γὰρ αὐτῇ καὶ πάθος καὶ ἦθος καὶ διάθεσις λαλούσης.

Τὴν Ἠλείων ὁ Φειδίας Ἀφροδίτην ἐποίησε χελώνην πατοῦσαν, οἰκουρίας σύμβολον ταῖς γυναιξὶ καὶ σιωπῆς. δεῖ γὰρ ἢ πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα λαλεῖν ἢ διὰ τοῦ ἀνδρός, μὴ δυσχεραίνουσαν εἰ δι’ ἀλλοτρίας γλώττης ὥσπερ αὐλητὴς φθέγγεται σεμνότερον.

Οἱ πλούσιοι καὶ οἱ βασιλεῖς τιμῶντες τοὺς φιλοσόφους αὑτούς τε κοσμοῦσι κἀκείνους, οἱ δὲ φιλόσοφοι τοὺς πλουσίους θεραπεύοντες οὐκ ἐκείνους [e] ποιοῦσιν ἐνδόξους ἀλλ’ αὑτοὺς ἀδοξοτέρους. τοῦτο συμβαίνει καὶ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας. ὑποτάττουσαι μὲν γὰρ ἑαυτὰς τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἐπαινοῦνται, κρατεῖν δὲ βουλόμεναι μᾶλλον τῶν κρατουμένων ἀσχημονοῦσι. κρατεῖν δὲ δεῖ τὸν ἄνδρα τῆς γυναικὸς οὐχ ὡς δεσπότην κτήματος ἀλλ’ ὡς ψυχὴν σώματος, συμπαθοῦντα καὶ συμπεφυκότα τῇ εὐνοίᾳ. ὥσπερ οὖν σώματος ἔστι κήδεσθαι μὴ δουλεύοντα ταῖς ἡδοναῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις, οὕτω γυναικὸς ἄρχειν εὐφραίνοντα καὶ χαριζόμενον. Τῶν σωμάτων οἱ φιλόσοφοι τὰ μὲν ἐκ διεστώτων λέγουσιν εἶναι καθάπερ στόλον καὶ [f] στρατόπεδον, τὰ δ’ ἐκ συναπτομένων ὡς οἰκίαν καὶ ναῦν, τὰ δ’ ἡνωμένα καὶ συμφυῆ καθάπερ ἐστὶ τῶν ζῴων ἕκαστον. σχεδὸν οὖν καὶ γάμος ὁ μὲν τῶν ἐρώντων ἡνωμένος καὶ συμφυής ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ τῶν διὰ προῖκας ἢ τέκνα γαμούντων ἐκ συναπτομένων, ὁ δὲ τῶν συγκαθευδόντων ἐκ διεστώτων, οὓς συνοικεῖν ἄν τις ἀλλήλοις οὐ συμβιοῦν νομίσειε. δεῖ δέ, ὥσπερ οἱ φυσικοὶ τῶν ὑγρῶν λέγουσι δι’ ὅλων γενέσθαι τὴν κρᾶσιν, [143] [a] οὕτω τῶν γαμούντων καὶ σώματα καὶ χρήματα καὶ φίλους καὶ οἰκείους ἀναμειχθῆναι δι’ ἀλλήλων. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Ῥωμαῖος νομοθέτης ἐκώλυσε δῶρα διδόναι καὶ λαμβάνειν παρ’ ἀλλήλων τοὺς γεγαμηκότας, οὐχ ἵνα μηδενὸς μεταλαμβάνωσιν, ἀλλ’ ἵνα πάντα κοινὰ νομίζωσιν.

Ἐν Λέπτει τῆς Λιβύης πόλει πάτριόν ἐστι τῇ μετὰ τὸν γάμον ἡμέρᾳ τὴν νύμφην πρὸς τὴν τοῦ νυμφίου μητέρα πέμψασαν αἰτεῖσθαι χύτραν· ἡ δ’ οὐ δίδωσιν οὐδέ φησιν ἔχειν, ὅπως ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἐπισταμένη τὸ τῆς ἑκυρᾶς μητρυιῶδες, ἂν ὕστερόν τι συμβαίνῃ τραχύτερον, μὴ ἀγανακτῇ μηδὲ δυσκολαίνῃ. τοῦτο δεῖ γιγνώσκουσαν τὴν γυναῖκα θεραπεύειν τὴν πρόφασιν· ἔστι δὲ ζηλοτυπία τῆς [b] μητρὸς ὑπὲρ εὐνοίας πρὸς αὐτήν. θεραπεία δὲ μία τοῦ πάθους ἰδίᾳ μὲν εὔνοιαν τῷ ἀνδρὶ ποιεῖν πρὸς ἑαυτήν, τὴν δὲ τῆς μητρὸς μὴ περισπᾶν μηδ’ ἐλαττοῦν.

Τοὺς υἱοὺς δοκοῦσι μᾶλλον ἀγαπᾶν αἱ μητέρες ὡς δυναμένους αὐταῖς βοηθεῖν, οἱ δὲ πατέρες τὰς θυγατέρας ὡς δεομένας αὐτῶν βοηθούντων· ἴσως δὲ καὶ τιμῇ τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὁ ἕτερος τὸ μᾶλλον οἰκεῖον τῷ ἑτέρῳ βούλεται μᾶλλον ἀσπαζόμενος καὶ ἀγαπῶν φανερὸς εἶναι. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἴσως διάφορόν ἐστιν, ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἀστεῖον, ἂν ἡ γυνὴ μᾶλλον ἀποκλίνασα τῇ τιμῇ πρὸς τοὺς γονεῖς τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἢ τοὺς ἑαυτῆς [c] βλέπηται, κἄν τι λυπῆται, πρὸς ἐκείνους ἀναφέρουσα, τοὺς δ’ ἑαυτῆς λανθάνουσα. ποιεῖ γὰρ τὸ πιστεύειν δοκεῖν πιστεύεσθαι, καὶ τὸ φιλεῖν φιλεῖσθαι.

Τοῖς περὶ τὸν Κῦρον Ἕλλησι παρήγγειλαν οἱ στρατηγοὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, ἂν μὲν βοῶντες ἐπίωσι, δέχεσθαι μετὰ σιωπῆς, ἂν δ’ ἐκεῖνοι σιωπῶσιν, αὐτοὺς μετὰ βοῆς ἀντεξελαύνειν. αἱ δὲ νοῦν ἔχουσαι γυναῖκες ἐν ταῖς ὀργαῖς τῶν ἀνδρῶν κεκραγότων μὲν ἡσυχάζουσι, σιωπῶντας δὲ προσλαλοῦσαι καὶ παραμυθούμεναι καταπραΰνουσιν.

[d] Ὀρθῶς ὁ Εὐριπίδης αἰτιᾶται τοὺς τῇ λύρᾳ χρωμένους παρ’ οἶνον· ἔδει γὰρ ἐπὶ τὰς ὀργὰς καὶ τὰ πένθη μᾶλλον τὴν μουσικὴν παρακαλεῖν ἢ προσελκύειν τοὺς ἐν ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ὄντας. νομίζετε οὖν ὑμεῖς ἁμαρτάνειν τοὺς ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα συγκαθεύδοντας ἀλλήλοις, ὅταν δ’ ἐν ὀργῇ τινι γένωνται καὶ διαφορᾷ, χωρὶς ἀναπαυομένους καὶ μὴ τότε μάλιστα τὴν Ἀφροδίτην παρακαλοῦντας, ἰατρὸν οὖσαν τῶν τοιούτων ἀρίστην. ὥς που καὶ ὁ ποιητὴς διδάσκει, τὴν Ἥραν ποιῶν λέγουσαν

καί σφ’ ἄκριτα νείκεα λύσω

[e] εἰς εὐνὴν ἀνέσασα ὁμωθῆναι φιλότητι.

Ἀεὶ μὲν δεῖ καὶ πανταχοῦ φεύγειν τὸ προσκρούειν τῷ ἀνδρὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τῇ γυναικὶ τὸν ἄνδρα, μάλιστα δὲ φυλάττεσθαι τοῦτο ποιεῖν ἐν τῷ συναναπαύεσθαι καὶ συγκαθεύδειν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ὠδίνουσα καὶ δυσφοροῦσα πρὸς τοὺς κατακλίνοντας αὐτὴν ἔλεγε, “πῶς δ’ ἂν ἡ κλίνη ταῦτα θεραπεύσειεν οἷς ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης περιέπεσον;” ἃς δ’ ἡ κλίνη γεννᾷ διαφορὰς καὶ λοιδορίας καὶ ὀργάς, οὐ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστιν ἐν ἄλλῳ τόπῳ καὶ χρόνῳ διαλυθῆναι.

Ἡ Ἑρμιόνη δοκεῖ τι λέγειν ἀληθὲς λέγουσα

[f] κακῶν γυναικῶν εἴσοδοί μ’ ἀπώλεσαν.

τοῦτο δ’ οὐχ ἁπλῶς γιγνόμενόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ὅταν αἱ πρὸς τοὺς ἄνδρας διαφοραὶ καὶ ζηλοτυπίαι ταῖς τοιαύταις γυναιξὶ μὴ τὰς θύρας μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ἀκοὰς ἀνοίγωσι. τότ’ οὖν δεῖ μάλιστα τὴν νοῦν ἔχουσαν ἀποκλείειν τὰ ὦτα καὶ φυλάττεσθαι τὸν ψιθυρισμόν, ἵνα μὴ πῦρ ἐπὶ πῦρ γένηται, καὶ πρόχειρον ἔχειν τὸ τοῦ Φιλίππου. λέγεται γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων παροξυνόμενος ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὡς εὖ πάσχοντας καὶ κακῶς αὐτὸν λέγοντας εἰπεῖν “τί οὖν, ἂν καὶ κακῶς ποιῶμεν αὐτούς;” ὅταν οὖν αἱ διαβάλλουσαι λέγωσιν ὅτι “λυπεῖ σε φιλοῦσαν ὁ ἀνὴρ καὶ [144] [a] σωφρονοῦσαν,” “τί οὖν, ἂν καὶ μισεῖν αὐτὸν ἄρξωμαι καὶ ἀδικεῖν;”

Ὁ τὸν δραπέτην ἰδὼν διὰ χρόνου καὶ διώκων, ὡς κατέφυγε φθάσας εἰς μυλῶνα, “ποῦ δ’ ἄν,” ἔφη, “σὲ μᾶλλον εὑρεῖν ἐβουλήθην ἢ ἐνταῦθα;” γυνὴ τοίνυν διὰ ζηλοτυπίαν ἀπόλειψιν γράφουσα καὶ χαλεπῶς ἔχουσα λεγέτω πρὸς ἑαυτήν “ποῦ δ’ ἂν ἡ ζηλοῦσά με μᾶλλον ἡσθείη θεασαμένη καὶ τί ποιοῦσαν ἢ λυπουμένην καὶ στασιάζουσαν πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τὸν οἶκον αὐτὸν καὶ τὸν θάλαμον προϊεμένην;”

Ἀθηναῖοι τρεῖς ἀρότους ἱεροὺς ἄγουσι, [b] πρῶτον ἐπὶ Σκίρῳ, τοῦ παλαιοτάτου τῶν σπόρων ὑπόμνημα, δεύτερον ἐν τῇ ραρίᾳ, τρίτον ὑπὸ πόλιν τὸν καλούμενον Βουζύγιον. τούτων δὲ πάντων ἱερώτατός ἐστιν ὁ γαμήλιος σπόρος καὶ ἄροτος ἐπὶ παίδων τεκνώσει. καλῶς τὴν Ἀφροδίτην ὁ Σοφοκλῆς “εὔκαρπον Κυθέρειαν” προσηγόρευσε. διὸ δεῖ μάλιστα τούτῳ χρῆσθαι μετ’ εὐλαβείας τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα, τῶν ἀνιέρων καὶ παρανόμων πρὸς ἑτέρους ἁγνεύοντας ὁμιλιῶν, καὶ μὴ σπείροντας ἐξ ὧν οὐδὲν αὐτοῖς φύεσθαι θέλουσιν ἀλλὰ κἂν γένηται καρπὸς αἰσχύνονται καὶ ἀποκρύπτουσι.

Γοργίου τοῦ ῥήτορος ἀναγνόντος ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ λόγον περὶ ὁμονοίας τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ὁ Μελάνθιος, [c] “οὗτος ἡμῖν,” ἔφη, “συμβουλεύει περὶ ὁμονοίας, ὃς αὑτὸν καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὴν θεράπαιναν ἰδίᾳ τρεῖς ὄντας ὁμονοεῖν οὐ πέπεικεν.” ἦν γὰρ ὡς ἔοικέ τις ἔρως τοῦ Γοργίου καὶ ζηλοτυπία τῆς γυναικὸς πρὸς τὸ θεραπαινίδιον. εὖ τοίνυν ἡρμοσμένον τὸν οἶκον εἶναι δεῖ τῷ μέλλοντι ἁρμόζεσθαι πόλιν καὶ ἀγορὰν καὶ φίλους· μᾶλλον γὰρ ἔοικε τὰ τῶν γυναικῶν ἢ τὰ πρὸς γυναῖκας ἁμαρτήματα λανθάνειν τοὺς πολλούς.

Εἰ καθάπερ τὸν αἴλουρον ὀσμῇ μύρων ἐκταράττεσθαι καὶ μαίνεσθαι λέγουσιν, οὕτω τὰς [d] γυναῖκας ἀγριαίνειν καὶ παραφρονεῖν ὑπὸ μύρων συνέβαινε, δεινὸν ἦν μὴ ἀπέχεσθαι μύρου τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἡδονὴν αὑτῶν βραχεῖαν οὕτω κακουμένας περιορᾶν. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ταῦτα πάσχουσιν οὐ μυριζομένων τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἀλλὰ συγγιγνομένων ἑτέραις, ἄδικόν ἐστιν ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα μικρᾶς ἐπὶ τοσοῦτο λυπεῖν καὶ συνταράττειν τὰς γυναῖκας καὶ μή, καθάπερ ταῖς μελίτταις (ὅτι δοκοῦσι δυσχεραίνειν καὶ μάχεσθαι τοῖς μετὰ γυναικῶν γενομένοις), ἁγνοὺς καὶ καθαρεύοντας ἑτέρων συνουσίας προσιέναι ταῖς γυναιξίν.

Οἱ προσιόντες ἐλέφασιν ἐσθῆτα λαμπρὰν [e] οὐ λαμβάνουσιν, οὐδὲ φοινικίδας οἱ ταύροις· διαγριαίνεται γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν χρωμάτων τούτων μάλιστα τὰ ζῷα· τὰς δὲ τίγρεις φασὶ περιτυμπανιζομένας ἐκμαίνεσθαι παντάπασι καὶ διασπᾶν ἑαυτάς. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν καὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν οἱ μὲν ἐσθῆτας κοκκίνας καὶ πορφυρᾶς ὁρῶντες δυσανασχετοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ κυμβάλοις καὶ τυμπάνοις ἄχθονται, τί δεινὸν ἀπέχεσθαι τούτων τὰς γυναῖκας καὶ μὴ ταράττειν μηδὲ παροξύνειν τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἀλλὰ συνεῖναι μετ’ εὐσταθείας καὶ πραότητος;

Γυνή τις πρὸς τὸν Φίλιππον ἄκουσαν ἐφελκόμενον αὐτήν, “ἄφες μ’,” εἶπε· “πᾶσα γυνὴ τοῦ [f] λύχνου ἀρθέντος ἡ αὐτή ἐστι.” τοῦτο πρὸς τοὺς μοιχικοὺς καὶ ἀκολάστους εἴρηται καλῶς, τὴν δὲ γαμετὴν δεῖ μάλιστα τοῦ φωτὸς ἀρθέντος εἶναι μὴ τὴν αὐτὴν ταῖς τυχούσαις γυναιξίν, ἀλλὰ φαίνεσθαι τοῦ σώματος μὴ βλεπομένου τὸ σῶφρον αὐτῆς καὶ ἴδιον τῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ τεταγμένον καὶ φιλόστοργον.

Ὁ Πλάτων τοῖς πρεσβύταις μᾶλλον παρῄνει “αἰσχύνεσθαι τοὺς νέους,” ἵνα κἀκεῖνοι πρὸς αὐτοὺς αἰδημόνως ἔχωσιν· “ὅπου” γὰρ “ἀναισχυντοῦσι γέροντες,” οὐδεμίαν αἰδῶ τοῖς νέοις οὐδ’ εὐλάβειαν ἐγγίγνεσθαι. τούτου δεῖ μεμνημένον τὸν ἄνδρα μηδένα μᾶλλον αἰδεῖσθαι τῆς [145] [a] γυναικός, ὡς τὸν θάλαμον αὐτῇ διδασκαλεῖον εὐταξίας ἢ ἀκολασίας γενησόμενον. ὁ δὲ τῶν αὐτῶν ἡδονῶν αὐτὸς μὲν ἀπολαύων ἐκείνην δ’ ἀποτρέπων οὐδὲν διαφέρει τοῦ κελεύοντος διαμάχεσθαι τὴν γυναῖκα πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, οἷς αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν παρέδωκε.

Περὶ δὲ φιλοκοσμίας σὺ μέν, ὦ Εὐρυδίκη, τὰ πρὸς Ἀρίστυλλαν ὑπὸ Τιμοξένας γεγραμμένα ἀναγνοῦσα πειρῶ διαμνημονεύειν· σὺ δέ, ὦ Πολλιανέ, μὴ νόμιζε περιεργίας ἀφέξεσθαι τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ πολυτελείας, ἂν ὁρᾷ σε μὴ καταφρονοῦντα [b] τούτων ἐν ἑτέροις, ἀλλὰ καὶ χαίροντα χρυσώσεσιν ἐκπωμάτων καὶ γραφαῖς οἰκηματίων καὶ χλίδωσιν ἡμιόνων καὶ ἵππων περιδεραίοις. οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἐξελάσαι τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος ἐν μέσῃ τῇ ἀνδρωνίτιδι τὴν πολυτέλειαν ἀναστρεφομένην.

Καὶ σὺ μὲν ὥραν ἔχων ἤδη φιλοσοφεῖν τοῖς μετ’ ἀποδείξεως καὶ κατασκευῆς λεγομένοις ἐπικόσμει τὸ ἦθος, ἐντυγχάνων καὶ πλησιάζων τοῖς ὠφελοῦσι· τῇ δὲ γυναικὶ πανταχόθεν τὸ χρήσιμον συνάγων ὥσπερ αἱ μέλιτται καὶ φέρων αὐτὸς ἐν σεαυτῷ μεταδίδου καὶ προσδιαλέγου, φίλους αὐτῇ ποιῶν καὶ συνήθεις τῶν λόγων τοὺς ἀρίστους.

[c] “πατὴρ” μὲν γάρ “ἐσσι” αὐτῇ “καὶ πότνια μήτηρ

ἠδὲ κασίγνητος”·

οὐχ ἧττον δὲ σεμνὸν ἀκοῦσαι γαμετῆς λεγούσης “ἄνερ.

ἀτὰρ σύ μοί ἐσσι

καθηγητὴς καὶ φιλόσοφος καὶ διδάσκαλος τῶν καλλίστων καὶ θειοτάτων.” τὰ δὲ τοιαῦτα μαθήματα πρῶτον ἀφίστησι τῶν ἀτόπων τὰς γυναῖκας· αἰσχυνθήσεται γὰρ ὀρχεῖσθαι γυνὴ γεωμετρεῖν μανθάνουσα, καὶ φαρμάκων ἐπῳδὰς οὐ προσδέξεται τοῖς Πλάτωνος ἐπᾳδομένη λόγοις καὶ τοῖς Ξενοφῶντος. ἂν δέ τις ἐπαγγέλληται καθαιρεῖν τὴν σελήνην, γελάσεται τὴν ἀμαθίαν καὶ τὴν ἀβελτερίαν τῶν ταῦτα πειθομένων γυναικῶν, ἀστρολογίας μὴ ἀνηκόως ἔχουσα καὶ περὶ Ἀγλαονίκης ἀκηκουῖα τῆς Ἡγήτορος τοῦ Θετταλοῦ θυγατρὸς [d] ὅτι τῶν ἐκλειπτικῶν ἔμπειρος οὖσα πανσελήνων καὶ προειδυῖα τὸν χρόνον, ἐν ᾧ συμβαίνει τὴν σελήνην ὑπὸ γῆς σκιᾶς ἁλίσκεσθαι, παρεκρούετο καὶ συνέπειθε τὰς γυναῖκας ὡς αὐτὴ καθαιροῦσα τὴν σελήνην.

Παιδίον μὲν γὰρ οὐδεμία ποτὲ γυνὴ λέγεται ποιῆσαι δίχα κοινωνίας ἀνδρός, τὰ δ’ ἄμορφα κυήματα καὶ σαρκοειδῆ καὶ σύστασιν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἐκ διαφθορᾶς λαμβάνοντα μύλας καλοῦσι. τοῦτο δὴ φυλακτέον ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς γίγνεσθαι τῶν γυναικῶν. ἂν γὰρ λόγων χρηστῶν σπέρματα μὴ δέχωνται [e] μηδὲ κοινωνῶσι παιδείας τοῖς ἀνδράσιν, αὐταὶ καθ’ αὑτὰς ἄτοπα πολλὰ καὶ φαῦλα βουλεύματα καὶ πάθη κυοῦσι.

Σὺ δ’ ὦ Εὐρυδίκη μάλιστα πειρῶ τοῖς τῶν σοφῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀποφθέγμασιν ὁμιλεῖν καὶ διὰ στόματος ἀεὶ τὰς φωνὰς ἔχειν ἐκείνας ὧν καὶ παρθένος οὖσα παρ’ ἡμῖν ἀνελάμβανες, ὅπως εὐφραίνῃς μὲν τὸν ἄνδρα, θαυμάζῃ δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων γυναικῶν, οὕτω κοσμουμένη περιττῶς καὶ σεμνῶς ἀπὸ μηδενός. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ τῆσδε τῆς πλουσίας μαργαρίτας καὶ τὰ τῆσδε τῆς ξένης σηρικὰ λαβεῖν οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲ περιθέσθαι μὴ πολλοῦ πριαμένην, τὰ δὲ Θεανοῦς κόσμια καὶ Κλεοβουλίνης καὶ Γοργοῦς [f] τῆς Λεωνίδου γυναικὸς καὶ Τιμοκλείας τῆς Θεαγένους ἀδελφῆς καὶ Κλαυδίας τῆς παλαιᾶς καὶ Κορνηλίας τῆς Σκιπίωνος καὶ ὅσαι ἐγένοντο θαυμασταὶ καὶ περιβόητοι, ταῦτα δ’ ἔξεστι περικειμένην προῖκα καὶ κοσμουμένην αὐτοῖς ἐνδόξως ἅμα βιοῦν καὶ μακαρίως.

Εἰ γὰρ ἡ Σαπφὼ διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς μέλεσι καλλιγραφίαν [146] [a] ἐφρόνει τηλικοῦτον ὥστε γράψαι πρός τινα πλουσίαν,

κατθάνοισα δὲ κείσεαι, οὐδέ τις μναμοσύνα σέθεν

ἔσεται· οὐ γὰρ πεδέχεις ῥόδων

τῶν ἐκ Πιερίας,

πῶς οὐχί σοι μᾶλλον ἐξέσται μέγα φρονεῖν ἐφ’ ἑαυτῇ καὶ λαμπρόν, ἂν μὴ τῶν ῥόδων ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν καρπῶν μετέχῃς, ὧν αἱ Μοῦσαι φέρουσι καὶ χαρίζονται τοῖς παιδείαν καὶ φιλοσοφίαν θαυμάζουσιν;

Septem sapientium convivium

ΤΩΝ ΕΠΤΑ ΣΟΦΩΝ ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΟΝ

[146] Ἦ που προϊὼν ὁ χρόνος, ὦ Νίκαρχε, πολὺ σκότος ἐπάξει τοῖς πράγμασι καὶ πᾶσαν ἀσάφειαν, εἰ νῦν ἐπὶ προσφάτοις οὕτω καὶ νεαροῖς λόγοι ψευδεῖς συντεθέντες ἔχουσι πίστιν. οὔτε γὰρ μόνων, [c] ὡς ὑμεῖς ἀκηκόατε, τῶν ἑπτὰ γέγονε τὸ συμπόσιον, ἀλλὰ πλειόνων ἢ δὶς τοσούτων (ἐν οἷς καὶ αὐτὸς ἤμην, συνήθης μὲν ὢν Περιάνδρῳ διὰ τὴν τέχνην, ξένος δὲ Θάλεω· παρ’ ἐμοὶ γὰρ κατέλυσεν ὁ ἀνὴρ Περιάνδρου κελεύσαντος), οὔτε τοὺς λόγους ὀρθῶς ἀπεμνημόνευσεν ὅστις ἦν ὑμῖν ὁ διηγούμενος· ἦν δ’ ὡς ἔοικεν οὐδεὶς τῶν παραγεγονότων. ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ σχολή τε πάρεστι πολλὴ καὶ τὸ γῆρας οὐκ ἀξιόπιστον ἐγγυήσασθαι τὴν ἀναβολὴν τοῦ λόγου, προθυμουμένοις ὑμῖν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἅπαντα διηγήσομαι.

[d] Παρεσκευάκει μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἐν τῇ πόλει τὴν ὑποδοχὴν ὁ Περίανδρος, ἀλλ’ ἐν τῷ περὶ τὸ Λέχαιον ἑστιατορίῳ παρὰ τὸ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἱερόν, ἧς ἦν καὶ ἡ θυσία. μετὰ γὰρ τὸν ἔρωτα τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ προεμένης τὸν βίον ἑκουσίως οὐ τεθυκὼς τῇ Ἀφροδίτῃ, τότε πρῶτον ἔκ τινων ἐνυπνίων τῆς Μελίσσης ὥρμησε τιμᾶν καὶ θεραπεύειν τὴν θεόν.

Τῶν δὲ κεκλημένων ἑκάστῳ συνωρὶς ἱκανῶς κεκοσμημένη προσήχθη· καὶ γὰρ ὥρα θέρους ἦν, καὶ τὴν ὁδὸν ἅπασαν ὑπὸ πλήθους ἁμαξῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων ἄχρι θαλάττης κονιορτὸς καὶ θόρυβος κατεῖχεν. ὁ μέντοι Θαλῆς τὸ ζεῦγος ἐπὶ ταῖς [e] θύραις ἰδὼν καὶ μειδιάσας ἀφῆκεν. ἐβαδίζομεν οὖν ἐκτραπόμενοι διὰ τῶν χωρίων, καθ’ ἡσυχίαν, καὶ μεθ’ ἡμῶν τρίτος ὁ Ναυκρατίτης Νειλόξενος, ἀνὴρ ἐπιεικὴς καὶ τοῖς περὶ Σόλωνα καὶ Θαλῆν γεγονὼς ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ συνήθης. ἐτύγχανε δὲ πρὸς Βίαντα πάλιν ἀπεσταλμένος· ὧν δὲ χάριν οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ᾔδει, πλὴν ὑπενόει πρόβλημα δεύτερον αὐτῷ κομίζειν ἐν βιβλίῳ κατασεσημασμένον· εἴρητο γάρ, εἰ Βίας ἀπαγορεύσειεν, ἐπιδεῖξαι τοῖς σοφωτάτοις Ἑλλήνων τὸ βιβλίον.

“Ἕρμαιον” ὁ Νειλόξενος ἔφη “μοι γέγονεν [f] ἐνταῦθα λαβεῖν ἅπαντας ὑμᾶς, καὶ κομίζω τὸ βιβλίον ὡς ὁρᾷς ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον.” ἅμα δ’ ἡμῖν ἐπεδείκνυε.

Καὶ ὁ Θαλῆς γελάσας “εἴ τι κακόν,” εἶπεν, “αὖθις εἰς Πριήνην· διαλύσει γὰρ ὁ Βίας, ὡς διέλυσεν αὐτὸς τὸ πρῶτον.”

“Τί δ’ ἦν,” ἔφην ἐγώ, “τὸ πρῶτον;”

“Ἱερεῖον,” εἶπεν, “ἔπεμψεν αὐτῷ, κελεύσας τὸ

πονηρότατον ἐξελόντα καὶ χρηστότατον ἀποπέμψαι κρέας. ὁ δ’ ἡμέτερος εὖ καὶ καλῶς τὴν γλῶτταν ἐξελὼν ἔπεμψεν· ὅθεν εὐδοκιμῶν δῆλός ἐστι καὶ θαυμαζόμενος.”

[147] [a] “Οὐ διὰ ταῦτ’” ἔφη “μόνον” ὁ Νειλόξενος, “ἀλλ’ οὐ φεύγει τὸ φίλος εἶναι καὶ λέγεσθαι βασιλέων καθάπερ ὑμεῖς, ἐπεὶ σοῦ γε καὶ τἄλλα θαυμάζει, καὶ τῆς πυραμίδος τὴν μέτρησιν ὑπερφυῶς ἠγάπησεν, ὅτι πάσης ἄνευ πραγματείας καὶ μηδενὸς ὀργάνου δεηθεὶς ἀλλὰ τὴν βακτηρίαν στήσας ἐπὶ τῷ πέρατι τῆς σκιᾶς ἣν ἡ πυραμὶς ἐποίει, γενομένων τῇ ἐπαφῇ τῆς ἀκτῖνος δυεῖν τριγώνων, ἔδειξας ὃν ἡ σκιὰ πρὸς τὴν σκιὰν λόγον εἶχε τὴν πυραμίδα πρὸς τὴν βακτηρίαν ἔχουσαν. ἀλλ’, ὅπερ ἔφην, διεβλήθης μισοβασιλεὺς εἶναι, [b] καί τινες ὑβριστικαί σου περὶ τυράννων ἀποφάσεις ἀνεφέροντο πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπὸ Μολπαγόρου τοῦ Ἴωνος τί παραδοξότατον εἴης ἑωρακώς, ἀποκρίναιο ‘τύραννον γέροντα,’ καὶ πάλιν ἔν τινι πότῳ, περὶ τῶν θηρίων λόγου γενομένου, φαίης κάκιστον εἶναι τῶν μὲν ἀγρίων θηρίων τὸν τύραννον, τῶν δ’ ἡμέρων τὸν κόλακα· ταῦτα γάρ, εἰ καὶ πάνυ προσποιοῦνται διαφέρειν οἱ βασιλεῖς τῶν τυράννων, οὐκ εὐμενῶς ἀκούουσιν.”

“Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μέν,” εἶπεν ὁ Θαλῆς, “Πιττακοῦ ἐστιν, εἰρημένον ἐν παιδιᾷ ποτε πρὸς Μυρσίλον· [c] ἐγὼ δὲ θαυμάσαιμ’ ἄν,” ἔφη, “οὐ τύραννον ἀλλὰ κυβερνήτην γέροντα θεασάμενος. πρὸς δὲ τὴν μετάθεσιν τὸ τοῦ νεανίσκου πέπονθα τοῦ βαλόντος μὲν ἐπὶ τὴν κύνα πατάξαντος δὲ τὴν μητρυιὰν καὶ εἰπόντος ‘οὐδ’ οὕτω κακῶς.’ διὸ καὶ Σόλωνα σοφώτατον ἡγησάμην οὐ δεξάμενον τυραννεῖν. καὶ Πιττακὸς οὗτος εἰ μοναρχίᾳ μὴ προσῆλθεν, οὐκ ἂν εἶπεν ὡς ‘χαλεπὸν ἐσθλὸν ἔμμεναι.’ Περίανδρος δ’ ἔοικεν ὥσπερ ἐν νοσήματι πατρῴῳ τῇ τυραννίδι κατειλημμένος οὐ φαύλως ἐξαναφέρειν, χρώμενος ὁμιλίαις ὑγιειναῖς ἄχρι γε νῦν καὶ συνουσίας ἀνδρῶν νοῦν ἐχόντων ἐπαγόμενος, [d] ἃς δὲ Θρασύβουλος αὐτῷ κολούσεις τῶν ἄκρων οὑμὸς πολίτης ὑφηγεῖται μὴ προσιέμενος. γεωργοῦ γὰρ αἴρας καὶ ὀνώνιδας ἀντὶ πυρῶν καὶ κριθῶν συγκομίζειν ἐθέλοντος οὐδὲν διαφέρει τύραννος ἀνδραπόδων μᾶλλον ἄρχειν ἢ ἀνδρῶν βουλόμενος· ἓν γὰρ ἀντὶ πολλῶν κακῶν ἀγαθὸν αἱ δυναστεῖαι τὴν τιμὴν ἔχουσι καὶ τὴν δόξαν, ἄνπερ ἀγαθῶν ὡς κρείττονες ἄρχωσι καὶ μεγάλων μείζονες εἶναι δοκῶσι· τὴν δ’ ἀσφάλειαν ἀγαπῶντας ἄνευ τοῦ καλοῦ προβάτων ἔδει πολλῶν καὶ ἵππων καὶ βοῶν ἄρχειν, μὴ ἀνθρώπων. ἀλλὰ γὰρ εἰς οὐδὲν προσήκοντας [e] ἐμβέβληκεν ἡμᾶς,” ἔφη, “ὁ ξένος οὑτοσὶ λόγους, ἀμελήσας λέγειν τε καὶ ζητεῖν ἃ ἁρμόττει ἐπὶ δεῖπνον βαδίζουσιν. ἦ γὰρ οὐκ οἴει, καθάπερ ἑστιάσοντος ἔστι τις παρασκευή, καὶ δειπνήσοντος εἶναι; Συβαρῖται μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε πρὸ ἐνιαυτοῦ τὰς κλήσεις ποιοῦνται τῶν γυναικῶν, ὅπως ἐκγένοιτο κατὰ σχολὴν παρασκευασαμέναις ἐσθῆτι καὶ χρυσῷ φοιτᾶν ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον· ἐγὼ δὲ πλείονος οἶμαι χρόνου δεῖσθαι τὴν ἀληθινὴν τοῦ δειπνήσοντος ὀρθῶς παρασκευήν, ὅσῳ χαλεπώτερόν ἐστιν ἤθει τὸν πρέποντα κόσμον ἢ σώματι τὸν περιττὸν [f] ἐξευρεῖν καὶ ἄχρηστον. οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἀγγεῖον ἥκει κομίζων ἑαυτὸν ἐμπλῆσαι πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον ὁ νοῦν ἔχων, ἀλλὰ καὶ σπουδάσαι τι καὶ παῖξαι καὶ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν ὡς ὁ καιρὸς παρακαλεῖ τοὺς συνόντας, εἰ μέλλουσι μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἡδέως ἔσεσθαι. καὶ γὰρ καὶ ὄψον πονηρὸν ἔστι παρώσασθαι, κἂν οἶνος ᾖ φαῦλος, ἐπὶ τὰς νύμφας καταφυγεῖν· σύνδειπνος δὲ κεφαλαλγὴς καὶ βαρὺς καὶ ἀνάγωγος παντὸς μὲν οἴνου καὶ ὄψου πάσης δὲ μουσουργοῦ χάριν ἀπόλλυσι καὶ λυμαίνεται, καὶ οὐδ’ ἀπεμέσαι [148] [a] τὴν τοιαύτην ἀηδίαν ἕτοιμόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐνίοις εἰς ἅπαντα τὸν βίον ἐμμένει τὸ πρὸς ἀλλήλους δυσάρεστον, ὥσπερ ἑωλοκρασία τις ὕβρεως ἢ ὀργῆς ἐν οἴνῳ γενομένης. ὅθεν ἄριστα Χίλων, καλούμενος ἐχθές, οὐ πρότερον ὡμολόγησεν ἢ πυθέσθαι τῶν κεκλημένων ἕκαστον. ἔφη γὰρ ὅτι σύμπλουν ἀγνώμονα δεῖ φέρειν καὶ σύσκηνον οἷς πλεῖν ἀνάγκη καὶ στρατεύεσθαι· τὸ δὲ συμπόταις ἑαυτὸν ὡς ἔτυχε καταμιγνύειν οὐ νοῦν ἔχοντος ἀνδρός ἐστιν. ὁ δ’ Αἰγύπτιος σκελετός, ὃν ἐπιεικῶς εἰσφέροντες εἰς τὰ συμπόσια προτίθενται καὶ παρακαλοῦσι [b] μεμνῆσθαι τάχα δὴ τοιούτους ἐσομένους, καίπερ ἄχαρις καὶ ἄωρος ἐπίκωμος ἥκων, ὅμως ἔχει τινὰ καιρόν, καὶ εἰ μὴ πρὸς τὸ πίνειν καὶ ἡδυπαθεῖν ἀλλὰ πρὸς φιλίαν καὶ ἀγάπησιν ἀλλήλων προτρέπεται, καὶ παρακαλεῖ τὸν βίον μὴ τῷ χρόνῳ βραχὺν ὄντα πράγμασι κακοῖς μακρὸν ποιεῖν.”

Ἐν τοιούτοις λόγοις γενόμενοι κατὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἀφικόμεθα πρὸς τὴν οἰκίαν, καὶ λούσασθαι μὲν ὁ Θαλῆς οὐκ ἠθέλησεν, ἀληλιμμένοι γὰρ ἦμεν· ἐπιὼν δὲ τούς τε δρόμους ἐθεᾶτο καὶ τὰς παλαίστρας καὶ τὸ ἄλσος τὸ παρὰ τὴν θάλατταν ἱκανῶς διακεκοσμημένον, ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἐκπληττόμενος τῶν τοιούτων, [c] ἀλλ’ ὅπως μὴ καταφρονεῖν δοκοίη μηδ’ ὑπερορᾶν τοῦ Περιάνδρου τῆς φιλοτιμίας. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων τὸν ἀλειψάμενον ἢ λουσάμενον οἱ θεράποντες εἰσῆγον εἰς τὸν ἀνδρῶνα διὰ τῆς στοᾶς.

Ὁ δ’ Ἀνάχαρσις ἐν τῇ στοᾷ καθῆστο, καὶ παιδίσκη προειστήκει τὴν κόμην ταῖς χερσὶ διακρίνουσα. ταύτην ὁ Θαλῆς ἐλευθεριώτατά πως αὐτῷ προσδραμοῦσαν ἐφίλησε καὶ γελάσας “οὕτως,” ἔφη, “ποίει καλὸν τὸν ξένον, ὅπως ἡμερώτατος ὢν μὴ φοβερὸς ᾖ τὴν ὄψιν ἡμῖν μηδ’ ἄγριος.”

Ἐμοῦ δ’ ἐρομένου περὶ τῆς παιδὸς ἥτις εἴη, [d] “τὴν σοφήν,” ἔφη, “καὶ περιβόητον ἀγνοεῖς Εὔμητιν; οὕτω γὰρ ταύτην ὁ πατὴρ αὐτός, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ πατρόθεν ὀνομάζουσι Κλεοβουλίνην.”

Καὶ ὁ Νειλόξενος εἶπεν “ἦ που τὴν περὶ τὰ αἰνίγματα δεινότητα καὶ σοφίαν,” ἔφη, “τῆς κόρης ἐπαινεῖς· καὶ γὰρ εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἔνια τῶν προβαλλομένων ὑπ’ αὐτῆς διῖκται.”

“Οὐκ ἔγωγ’,” εἶπεν ὁ Θαλῆς· “τούτοις γὰρ ὥσπερ ἀστραγάλοις, ὅταν τύχῃ, παίζουσα χρῆται καὶ διαβάλλεται πρὸς τοὺς ἐντυχόντας. ἀλλὰ καὶ φρόνημα θαυμαστὸν καὶ νοῦς ἔνεστι πολιτικὸς καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ἦθος, καὶ τὸν πατέρα τοῖς πολίταις [e] πραότερον ἄρχοντα παρέχει καὶ δημοτικώτερον.”

“Εἶεν,” ὁ Νειλόξενος ἔφη, “καὶ φαίνεται βλέποντι πρὸς τὴν λιτότητα καὶ ἀφέλειαν αὐτῆς· Ἀνάχαρσιν δὲ πόθεν οὕτω τημελεῖ φιλοστόργως;”

“Ὅτι,” ἔφη, “σώφρων ἀνήρ ἐστι καὶ πολυμαθής, καὶ τὴν δίαιταν αὐτῇ καὶ τὸν καθαρμόν, ᾧ χρῶνται Σκύθαι περὶ τοὺς κάμνοντας, ἀφθόνως καὶ προθύμως παραδέδωκε. καὶ νῦν οἶμαι περιέπειν αὐτὴν τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι, μανθάνουσάν τι καὶ προσδιαλεγομένην.”

Ἤδη δὲ πλησίον οὖσιν ἡμῖν τοῦ ἀνδρῶνος ἀπήντησεν Ἀλεξίδημος ὁ Μιλήσιος (ἦν δὲ Θρασυβούλου τοῦ τυράννου νόθος) καὶ ἐξῄει τεταραγμένος [f] καὶ σὺν ὀργῇ τινι πρὸς αὑτὸν οὐδὲν ἡμῖν γε σαφὲς διαλεγόμενος. ὡς δὲ τὸν Θαλῆν εἶδε, μικρὸν ἀνενεγκὼν καὶ καταστάς “οἵαν ὕβριν,” εἶπεν, “εἰς ἡμᾶς Περίανδρος ὕβρικεν, ἐκπλεῦσαι μὲν οὐκ ἐάσας ὡρμημένον ἀλλὰ προσμεῖναι δεηθεὶς τὸ δεῖπνον, ἐλθόντι δὲ νέμων κλισίαν ἄτιμον, Αἰολεῖς δὲ καὶ νησιώτας (καὶ τίνας γὰρ οὐχί;) Θρασυβούλου προτιμῶν· Θρασύβουλον γὰρ ἐν ἐμοὶ τὸν πέμψαντα προπηλακίσαι βουλόμενος καὶ καταβαλεῖν ὡς δὴ περιορῶν δῆλός ἐστιν.”

[149] [a] “Εἶτ’,” ἔφη, “σὺ δέδιας μὴ καθάπερ Αἰγύπτιοι τοὺς ἀστέρας ὑψώματα καὶ ταπεινώματα λαμβάνοντας ἐν τοῖς τόποις οὓς διεξίασι γίγνεσθαι βελτίονας ἢ χείρονας ἑαυτῶν λέγουσιν, οὕτως ἡ περὶ σὲ διὰ τὸν τόπον ἀμαύρωσις ἢ ταπείνωσις γένηται; καὶ τοῦ Λάκωνος ἔσῃ φαυλότερος, ὃς ἐν χορῷ τινι κατασταθεὶς εἰς τὴν ἐσχάτην χώραν ὑπὸ τοῦ ἄρχοντος ‘εὖ γ’,’ εἶπεν, ‘ἐξεῦρες, ὡς καὶ αὕτα ἔντιμος γένηται.’ οὐ καταλαβόντας,” ἔφη, “τόπον μετὰ τίνας κατακείμεθα δεῖ ζητεῖν, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅπως εὐάρμοστοι τοῖς συγκατακειμένοις ὦμεν, ἀρχὴν καὶ λαβὴν φιλίας εὐθὺς ἐν αὐτοῖς ζητοῦντες, [b] μᾶλλον δ’ ἔχοντες τὸ μὴ δυσκολαίνειν ἀλλ’ ἐπαινεῖν ὅτι τοιούτοις συγκατεκλίθημεν· ὡς ὅ γε τόπῳ κλισίας δυσχεραίνων δυσχεραίνει τῷ συγκλίτῃ μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ κεκληκότι, καὶ πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους ἀπεχθάνεται.”

“Λόγος,” ἔφη, “ταῦτ’ ἄλλως ἐστίν” ὁ Ἀλεξίδημος, “ἔργῳ δὲ καὶ τοὺς σοφοὺς ὑμᾶς ὁρῶ τὸ τιμᾶσθαι διώκοντας,” καὶ ἅμα παραμειψάμενος ἡμᾶς ἀπῆλθε.

Καὶ ὁ Θαλῆς πρὸς ἡμᾶς τὴν ἀτοπίαν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου θαυμάζοντας, “ἔμπληκτος,” ἔφη, “καὶ ἀλλόκοτος φύσει, ἐπεὶ καὶ μειράκιον ὢν ἔτι, μύρου σπουδαίου Θρασυβούλῳ κομισθέντος, εἰς ψυκτῆρα [c] κατεράσας μέγαν καὶ προσεγχέας ἄκρατον ἐξέπιεν, ἔχθραν ἀντὶ φιλίας Θρασυβούλῳ διαπεπραγμένος.”

Ἐκ τούτου περιελθὼν ὑπηρέτης “κελεύει σε Περίανδρος,” ἔφη, “καὶ Θαλῆν παραλαβόντα τοῦτον ἐπισκέψασθαι τὸ κεκομισμένον ἀρτίως αὐτῷ πότερον ἄλλως γέγονεν ἤ τι σημεῖόν ἐστι καὶ τέρας· αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ ἔοικε τεταράχθαι σφόδρα, μίασμα καὶ κηλῖδα τῆς θυσίας ἡγούμενος.” ἅμα δ’ ἀπῆγεν ἡμᾶς εἴς τι οἴκημα τῶν περὶ τὸν κῆπον. ἐνταῦθα νεανίσκος ὡς ἐφαίνετο νομευτικός, οὔπω γενειῶν ἄλλως τε τὸ εἶδος οὐκ ἀγεννής, ἀναπτύξας τινὰ διφθέραν ἔδειξεν ἡμῖν βρέφος ὡς ἔφη γεγονὸς ἐξ ἵππου, τὰ μὲν ἄνω μέχρι τοῦ τραχήλου καὶ τῶν [d] χειρῶν ἀνθρωπόμορφον, τὰ λοιπὰ δ’ ἔχον ἵππου, τῇ δὲ φωνῇ καθάπερ τὰ νεογνὰ παιδάρια κλαυθμυριζόμενον. ὁ μὲν οὖν Νειλόξενος, “Ἀλεξίκακε” εἰπών, ἀπεστράφη τὴν ὄψιν, ὁ δὲ Θαλῆς προσέβλεπε τῷ νεανίσκῳ πολὺν χρόνον, εἶτα μειδιάσας (εἰώθει δ’ ἀεὶ παίζειν πρὸς ἐμὲ περὶ τῆς τέχνης) “ἦ που τὸν καθαρμόν, ὦ Διόκλεις,” ἔφη, “κινεῖν διανοῇ καὶ παρέχειν πράγματα τοῖς ἀποτροπαίοις, ὥς τινος δεινοῦ καὶ μεγάλου συμβάντος;”

“Τί δ’,” εἶπον, “οὐ μέλλω; στάσεως γάρ, ὦ Θαλῆ, καὶ διαφορᾶς τὸ σημεῖόν ἐστι, καὶ δέδια μὴ μέχρι γάμου καὶ γενεᾶς ἐξίκηται, πρὶν ἢ τὸ πρῶτον ἐξιλάσασθαι μήνιμα, τῆς θεοῦ δεύτερον ὡς ὁρᾷς προφαινούσης.”

[e] Πρὸς τοῦτο μηδὲν ἀποκρινάμενος ὁ Θαλῆς ἀλλὰ γελῶν ἀπηλλάττετο. καὶ τοῦ Περιάνδρου πρὸς τὰς θύρας ἀπαντήσαντος ἡμῖν καὶ διαπυθομένου περὶ ὧν εἴδομεν, ἀφεὶς ὁ Θαλῆς με καὶ λαβόμενος τῆς ἐκείνου χειρὸς ἔφη, “ἃ μὲν Διοκλῆς κελεύει δράσεις καθ’ ἡσυχίαν· ἐγὼ δέ σοι παραινῶ νέοις οὕτω μὴ χρῆσθαι νομεῦσιν ἵππων, ἢ διδόναι γυναῖκας αὐτοῖς.”

Ἔδοξε μὲν οὖν μοι τῶν λόγων ἀκούσας ὁ Περίανδρος ἡσθῆναι σφόδρα· καὶ γὰρ ἐξεγέλασε καὶ τὸν Θαλῆν περιβαλὼν κατησπάσατο. κἀκεῖνος “οἶμαι δ’,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Διόκλεις, καὶ πέρας ἔσχε τὸ [f] σημεῖον· ὁρᾷς γὰρ ἡλίκον κακὸν γέγονεν ἡμῖν, Ἀλεξιδήμου συνδειπνεῖν μὴ θελήσαντος.”

Ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰσήλθομεν, ἤδη μεῖζον ὁ Θαλῆς φθεγξάμενος “ποῦ δ’” εἶπεν “ὁ ἀνὴρ κατακλινάμενος ἐδυσχέρανεν;” ἀποδειχθείσης δὲ τῆς χώρας περιελθὼν ἐκεῖ κατέκλινεν ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἡμᾶς “ἀλλὰ κἂν ἐπριάμην” εἰπών “Ἀρδάλῳ κοινωνεῖν μιᾶς τραπέζης.” ἦν δὲ Τροιζήνιος ὁ Ἄρδαλος, αὐλῳδὸς [150] [a] καὶ ἱερεὺς τῶν Ἀρδαλείων Μουσῶν, ἃς ὁ παλαιὸς Ἄρδαλος ἱδρύσατο ὁ Τροιζήνιος.

Ὁ δ’ Αἴσωπος (ἐτύγχανε γὰρ ὑπὸ Κροίσου νεωστὶ πρός τε Περίανδρον ἅμα καὶ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀπεσταλμένος, καὶ παρῆν ἐπὶ δίφρου τινὸς χαμαιζήλου παρὰ τὸν Σόλωνα καθήμενος ἄνω κατακείμενον) “ἡμίονος δ’,” ἔφη, “Λυδὸς ἐν ποταμῷ τῆς ὄψεως ἑαυτοῦ κατιδὼν εἰκόνα καὶ θαυμάσας τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ σώματος ὥρμησε θεῖν ὥσπερ ἵππος ἀναχαιτίσας. εἶτα μέντοι συμφρονήσας ὡς ὄνου υἱὸς εἴη, κατέπαυσε [b] ταχὺ τὸν δρόμον καὶ ἀφῆκε τὸ φρύαγμα καὶ τὸν θυμόν.”

Ὁ δὲ Χίλων λακωνίσας τῇ φωνῇ, “καὶ τύνη,” ἔφη, “βραδὺς καὶ τρέχεις τὸν ἡμίονον.”

Ἐκ τούτου παρῆλθε μὲν ἡ Μέλισσα καὶ κατεκλίθη παρὰ τὸν Περίανδρον, ἡ δ’ Εὔμητις ἐκάθισε παρὰ τὸ δεῖπνον. καὶ ὁ Θαλῆς ἐμὲ προσαγορεύσας ἐπάνω τοῦ Βίαντος κατακείμενον “τί οὐκ ἔφρασας,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Διόκλεις, Βίαντι τὸν Ναυκρατίτην ξένον ἥκοντα μετὰ προβλημάτων βασιλικῶν αὖθις ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ὅπως νήφων καὶ προσέχων ἑαυτῷ τὸν λόγον δέχηται;”

Καὶ ὁ Βίας “ἀλλ’ οὗτος μέν,” ἔφη, “πάλαι [c] δεδίττεται ταῦτα παρακελευόμενος, ἐγὼ δὲ τὸν Διόνυσον οἶδα τά τ’ ἄλλα δεινὸν ὄντα καὶ Λύσιον ἀπὸ σοφίας προσαγορευόμενον, ὥστ’ οὐ δέδια τοῦ θεοῦ μεστὸς γενόμενος μὴ ἀθαρσέστερον ἀγωνίσωμαι.”

Τοιαῦτα μὲν ἐκεῖνοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἅμα δειπνοῦντες ἔπαιζον· ἐμοὶ δὲ τὸ δεῖπνον εὐτελέστερον ὁρῶντι τοῦ συνήθους ἐννοεῖν ἐπῄει πρὸς ἐμαυτὸν ὡς σοφῶν κἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ὑποδοχὴ καὶ κλῆσις οὐδεμίαν προστίθησι δαπάνην ἀλλὰ συστέλλει μᾶλλον, ἀφαιροῦσα περιεργίας ὄψων καὶ μύρα ξενικὰ καὶ πέμματα καὶ πολυτελῶν οἴνων διαχύσεις, οἷς [d] καθ’ ἡμέραν χρώμενος ἐπιεικῶς ὁ Περίανδρος ἐν τυραννίδι καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ πράγμασι, τότε πρὸς τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐκαλλωπίζετο λιτότητι καὶ σωφροσύνῃ δαπάνης. οὐ γὰρ μόνον τῶν ἄλλων ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς γυναικὸς ἀφελὼν καὶ ἀποκρύψας τὸν συνήθη κόσμον ἐπεδείκνυε σὺν εὐτελείᾳ καὶ μετριότητι κεκοσμημένην.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐπήρθησαν αἱ τράπεζαι καὶ στεφάνων παρὰ τῆς Μελίσσης διαδοθέντων ἡμεῖς μὲν ἐσπείσαμεν ἡ δ’ αὐλητρὶς ἐπιφθεγξαμένη μικρὰ ταῖς σπονδαῖς ἐκ μέσου μετέστη, προσαγορεύσας τὸν Ἀνάχαρσιν ὁ Ἄρδαλος ἠρώτησεν εἰ παρὰ Σκύθαις αὐλητρίδες εἰσίν.

[e] Ὁ δ’ ἐκ τοῦ προστυχόντος “οὐδ’ ἄμπελοι” εἶπε.

Τοῦ δ’ Ἀρδάλου πάλιν εἰπόντος “ἀλλὰ θεοί γε Σκύθαις εἰσί,” “πάνυ μὲν οὖν,” ἔφη, “γλώσσης ἀνθρωπίνης συνιέντες, οὐχ ὥσπερ δ’ οἱ Ἕλληνες οἰόμενοι Σκυθῶν διαλέγεσθαι βέλτιον ὅμως τοὺς θεοὺς ὀστέων καὶ ξύλων ἥδιον ἀκροᾶσθαι νομίζουσιν.”

Ὁ δ’ Αἴσωπος, “εἴ γ’,” εἶπεν, “εἰδείης, ὦ

ξένε, τοὺς νῦν αὐλοποιοὺς ὡς προέμενοι τὰ νεβρεῖα, χρώμενοι τοῖς ὀνείοις, βέλτιον ἠχεῖν λέγουσιν. διὸ καὶ Κλεοβουλίνη πρὸς τὸν Φρύγιον αὐλὸν ᾐνίξατο.

[f] κνήμῃ νεκρὸς ὄνος με κερασφόρῳ οὖας ἔκρουσεν,

ὥστε θαυμάζειν τὸν ὄνον εἰ παχύτατος καὶ ἀμουσότατος ὢν τἄλλα λεπτότατον καὶ μουσικώτατον ὀστέον παρέχεται.”

Καὶ ὁ Νειλόξενος “ἀμέλει ταῦτ’,” ἔφη, “καὶ ἡμῖν τοῖς Ναυκρατίταις ἐγκαλοῦσι Βουσιρῖται· χρώμεθα γὰρ ἤδη τοῖς ὀνείοις εἰς τὸν αὐλόν. ἐκείνοις δὲ καὶ σάλπιγγος ἀκούειν ἀθέμιτον, ὡς ὄνῳ φθεγγομένης ὅμοιον. ὄνον δ’ ὑπ’ Αἰγυπτίων ἴστε δήπου διὰ Τυφῶνα προπηλακιζόμενον.”

Γενομένης δὲ σιωπῆς ὁ Περίανδρος ὁρῶν βουλόμενον μὲν ὀκνοῦντα δ’ ἄρξασθαι τοῦ λόγου [151] [a] τὸν Νειλόξενον, “ἐγώ τοι,” εἶπεν, “ὦ ἄνδρες ἐπαινῶ καὶ πόλεις καὶ ἄρχοντας, ὅσοι ξένοις πρῶτον εἶτα πολίταις χρηματίζουσι· καὶ νῦν δοκεῖ μοι τοὺς μὲν ἡμετέρους λόγους οἷον ἐπιχωρίους καὶ συνήθεις βραχὺν χρόνον ἐπισχεῖν, πρόσοδον δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ δοῦναι τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοις ἐκείνοις καὶ βασιλικοῖς, οὓς ὁ βέλτιστος ἥκει κομίζων Νειλόξενος Βίαντι, Βίας δὲ βούλεται κοινῇ σκέψασθαι μεθ’ ἡμῶν.”

Καὶ ὁ Βίας, “ποῦ γὰρ ἢ μετὰ τίνων,” ἔφη, “προθυμότερον ἄν τις ἀποκινδυνεύσειεν, εἰ δεῖ, πρὸς τοιαύτας ἀποκρίσεις, ἄλλως τε τοῦ βασιλέως [b] κελεύσαντος ἄρξασθαι μὲν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ, περιελθεῖν δ’ εἰς ἅπαντας ὑμᾶς τὸν λόγον;”

Οὕτω δὴ παρεδίδου μὲν αὐτῷ τὸ γραμματεῖον ὁ Νειλόξενος, ὁ δ’ αὐτὸν ἐκέλευσε λύσαντα παντάπασιν ἐς μέσον ἀναγνῶναι. διάνοιαν δὲ τοιαύτην εἶχε τὰ γεγραμμένα.

“Βασιλεὺς Αἰγυπτίων Ἄμασις λέγει Βίαντι σοφωτάτῳ Ἑλλήνων.

“Βασιλεὺς Αἰθιόπων ἔχει πρὸς ἐμὲ σοφίας ἅμιλλαν. ἡττώμενος δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐπὶ πᾶσι συντέθεικεν ἄτοπον ἐπίταγμα καὶ δεινόν, ἐκπιεῖν με κελεύων τὴν θάλατταν. ἔστι δὲ λύσαντι μὲν ἔχειν κώμας τε πολλὰς καὶ πόλεις τῶν ἐκείνου, [c] μὴ λύσαντι δ’ ἄστεων τῶν περὶ Ἐλεφαντίνην ἀποστῆναι. σκεψάμενος οὖν εὐθὺς ἀπόπεμπε Νειλόξενον. ἃ δὲ δεῖ φίλοις σοῖς ἢ πολίταις γενέσθαι παρ’ ἡμῶν οὐ τἀμὰ κωλύσει.”

Τούτων ἀναγνωσθέντων οὐ πολὺν χρόνον ἐπισχὼν ὁ Βίας, ἀλλὰ μικρὰ μὲν αὐτὸς πρὸς αὑτῷ γενόμενος μικρὰ δὲ τῷ Κλεοβούλῳ προσομιλήσας ἐγγὺς κατακειμένῳ “τί λέγεις,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Ναυκρατῖτα; βασιλεύων ἀνθρώπων τοσούτων Ἄμασις, κεκτημένος δὲ χώραν ἀρίστην τοσαύτην ἐθελήσει ἐπὶ κώμαις ἀδόξοις καὶ λυπραῖς ἐκπιεῖν θάλατταν;”

Καὶ ὁ Νειλόξενος γελάσας “ὡς θελήσαντος,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Βία, σκόπει τὸ δυνατόν.”

[d] “Φραζέτω τοίνυν,” ἔφη, “τῷ Αἰθίοπι τοὺς ἐμβάλλοντας εἰς τὰ πελάγη ποταμοὺς ἐπισχεῖν, ἕως αὐτὸς ἐκπίνει τὴν νῦν οὖσαν θάλατταν· περὶ ταύτης γὰρ τὸ ἐπίταγμα γέγονεν, οὐ τῆς ὕστερον ἐσομένης.”

Ὡς δὲ ταῦτ’ εἶπεν ὁ Βίας, ὁ μὲν Νειλόξενος ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ὥρμησε περιβαλεῖν τὸν Βίαντα καὶ φιλῆσαι· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἐπαινεσάντων καὶ ἀποδεξαμένων γελάσας ὁ Χίλων, “ὦ Ναυκρατῖτα,” ἔφη, “ξένε, πρὶν ἀπολέσθαι τὴν θάλατταν ἐκποθεῖσαν ἀπάγγελλε πλεύσας Ἀμάσιδι μὴ ζητεῖν ὅπως ἅλμην ἀναλώσει τοσαύτην, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὅπως πότιμον καὶ γλυκεῖαν τοῖς ὑπηκόοις τὴν [e] βασιλείαν παρέξει· περὶ ταῦτα γὰρ δεινότατος Βίας καὶ διδάσκαλος τούτων ἄριστος, ἃ μαθὼν Ἄμασις οὐδὲν ἔτι τοῦ χρυσοῦ δεήσεται ποδανιπτῆρος ἐπὶ τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους, ἀλλὰ θεραπεύσουσι πάντες αὐτὸν καὶ ἀγαπήσουσι χρηστὸν ὄντα, κἂν μυριάκις ἢ νῦν ἀναφανῇ δυσγενέστερος.”

“Καὶ μήν,” ἔφη ὁ Περίανδρος, “ἄξιόν γε τοιαύτας ἀπαρχὰς τῷ βασιλεῖ συνεισενεγκεῖν ἅπαντας ‘ἀνδρακάς,’ ὥσπερ ἔφησεν Ὅμηρος· ἐκείνῳ τε γὰρ ἂν γένοιτο πλείονος ἀξία τῆς ἐμπορίας ἡ παρενθήκη, καὶ ἡμῖν ἀντὶ πάντων ὠφέλιμος.”

Εἰπόντος οὖν τοῦ Χίλωνος ὡς Σόλων κατάρχεσθαι [f] τοῦ λόγου δίκαιός ἐστιν, οὐ μόνον ὅτι πάντων προήκει καθ’ ἡλικίαν καὶ τυγχάνει κατακείμενος πρῶτος, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τὴν μεγίστην καὶ τελειοτάτην ἀρχὴν ἄρχει νόμους Ἀθηναίοις θέμενος, ὁ οὖν Νειλόξενος ἡσυχῇ πρὸς ἐμέ “πολλά γ’,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Διόκλεις, πιστεύεται ψευδῶς, καὶ χαίρουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ λόγους ἀνεπιτηδείους περὶ σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν αὐτοί τε πλάττοντες καὶ δεχόμενοι παρ’ ἑτέρων ἑτοίμως, οἷα καὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἀπηγγέλη περὶ Χίλωνος, ὡς ἄρα διαλύσαιτο τὴν πρὸς Σόλωνα φιλίαν καὶ [152] [a] ξενίαν, ὅτι τοὺς νόμους ὁ Σόλων ἔφη μετακινητοὺς εἶναι.”

Καὶ ἐγώ “γελοῖος,” ἔφην, “ὁ λόγος· οὕτω γὰρ δεῖ πρῶτον ἀποποιεῖσθαι τὸν Λυκοῦργον αὐτοῖς νόμοις ὅλην μετακινήσαντα τὴν Λακεδαιμονίων πολιτείαν.”

Μικρὸν οὖν ἐπισχὼν ὁ Σόλων “ἐμοὶ μέν,” ἔφη, “δοκεῖ μάλιστ’ ἂν ἔνδοξος γενέσθαι καὶ βασιλεὺς καὶ τύραννος, εἰ δημοκρατίαν ἐκ μοναρχίας κατασκευάσειε τοῖς πολίταις.”

Δεύτερος δ’ ὁ Βίας εἶπεν, “εἰ πρῶτος χρῷτο τοῖς νόμοις τῆς πατρίδος.”

Ἐπὶ τούτῳ δ’ ὁ Θαλῆς ἔφησεν, εὐδαιμονίαν ἄρχοντος νομίζειν, εἰ τελευτήσειε γηράσας κατὰ φύσιν.

Τέταρτος Ἀνάχαρσις, “εἰ μόνον εἴη φρόνιμος.”

Πέμπτος δ’ ὁ Κλεόβουλος, “εἰ μηδενὶ πιστεύοι τῶν συνόντων.”

[b] Ἕκτος δ’ ὁ Πιττακός, “εἰ τοὺς ὑπηκόους ὁ ἄρχων παρασκευάσειε φοβεῖσθαι μὴ αὐτὸν ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ.”

Μετὰ τοῦτον ὁ Χίλων ἔφη τὸν ἄρχοντα χρῆναι μηδὲν φρονεῖν θνητόν, ἀλλὰ πάντ’ ἀθάνατα.

Ῥηθέντων δὲ τούτων ἠξιοῦμεν ἡμεῖς καὶ αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν τι τὸν Περίανδρον. ὁ δ’ οὐ μάλα φαιδρὸς ἀλλὰ συστήσας τὸ πρόσωπον “ἐγὼ τοίνυν,” ἔφη, “προσαποφαίνομαι τὰς εἰρημένας γνώμας ἁπάσας σχεδὸν ἀφιστάναι τοῦ ἄρχειν τὸν νοῦν ἔχοντα.”

Καὶ ὁ Αἴσωπος οἷον ἐλεγκτικῶς “ἔδει τοίνυν,” ἔφη, “τοῦτο καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς περαίνειν καὶ μή, [c] συμβούλους φάσκοντας εἶναι καὶ φίλους, κατηγόρους γίγνεσθαι τῶν ἀρχόντων.”

Ἁψάμενος οὖν αὐτοῦ τῆς κεφαλῆς ὁ Σόλων καὶ διαμειδιάσας εἶπεν, “οὐκ ἂν δοκεῖ σοι μετριώτερον ἄρχοντα ποιεῖν καὶ τύραννον ἐπιεικέστερον ὁ πείθων ὡς ἄμεινον εἴη τὸ μὴ ἄρχειν ἢ τὸ ἄρχειν;”

“Τίς δ’ ἂν,” ἔφη, “σοὶ τοῦτο πεισθείη μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ θεῷ φράσαντι κατὰ τὸν πρὸς σὲ χρησμόν,

εὔδαιμον πτολίεθρον ἑνὸς κήρυκος ἀκοῦον;”

Καὶ ὁ Σόλων “ἀλλὰ μήν,” ἔφη, “καὶ νῦν ἑνὸς [d] Ἀθηναῖοι κήρυκος ἀκροῶνται καὶ ἄρχοντος τοῦ νόμου, δημοκρατίαν ἔχοντες. σὺ δὲ δεινὸς εἶ κοράκων ἐπαΐειν καὶ κολοιῶν, τῆς δ’ ἴσου φωνῆς οὐκ ἀκριβῶς ἐξακούεις, ἀλλὰ πόλιν μὲν οἴει κατὰ τὸν θεὸν ἄριστα πράττειν τὴν ἑνὸς ἀκούουσαν, συμποσίου δ’ ἀρετὴν νομίζεις τὸ πάντας διαλέγεσθαι καὶ περὶ πάντων.”

“Σὺ γάρ,” ἔφη ὁ Αἴσωπος, “οὔπω γέγραφας ὅ τι ὅμοιον ἦν, οἰκέτας μὴ μεθύειν, ὡς ἔγραψας Ἀθήνησιν οἰκέτας μὴ ἐρᾶν μηδὲ ξηραλοιφεῖν.”

Γελάσαντος οὖν τοῦ Σόλωνος Κλεόδωρος ὁ ἰατρός “ἀλλ’ ὅμοιον,” ἔφη, “τὸ ξηραλοιφεῖν τῷ λαλεῖν ἐν οἴνῳ βρεχόμενον· ἥδιστον γάρ ἐστι.”

[e] Καὶ ὁ Χίλων ὑπολαβὼν ἔφη “διὰ τοῦτό τοι μᾶλλον ἀφεκτέον αὐτοῦ.”

Πάλιν δ’ ὁ Αἴσωπος, “καὶ μήν,” ἔφη, “Θαλῆς ἔδοξεν εἰπεῖν ὅτι τάχιστα γηράσαι.”

Γελάσας οὖν ὁ Περίανδρος, “ἔχομεν,” εἶπεν, “Αἴσωπε, τὴν δίκην προσηκόντως ἅτε, πρὶν ἢ τοὺς Ἀμάσιδος οὓς προειλόμεθα πάντας εἰσαγαγεῖν λόγους, εἰς ἑτέρους ἐμπεσόντες. ὅρα δή, Νειλόξενε, τὰ λοιπὰ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς, καὶ χρῶ παροῦσιν ἐν ταὐτῷ τοῖς ἀνδράσιν.”

“Ἀλλὰ μήν,” ὁ Νειλόξενος ἔφη, “τὴν μὲν τοῦ Αἰθίοπος ἐπίταξιν οὐδὲν ἄν τις ἄλλο πλὴν ‘ἀχνυμένην σκυτάλην’ προσείποι κατ’ Ἀρχίλοχον, [f] ὁ δὲ σὸς ξένος Ἄμασις ἡμερώτερος ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις προβλήμασι καὶ μουσικώτερος γέγονεν· ἐκέλευσε γὰρ αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν τὸ πρεσβύτατον καὶ τὸ κάλλιστον καὶ τὸ μέγιστον καὶ τὸ σοφώτατον καὶ τὸ κοινότατον, καὶ ναὶ μὰ Δία πρὸς τούτοις τὸ ὠφελιμώτατον, καὶ τὸ βλαβερώτατον καὶ τὸ ἰσχυρότατον καὶ τὸ ῥᾷστον εἰπεῖν.”

“Ἆρ’ οὖν ἀπεκρίνατο καὶ διέλυσε τούτων ἕκαστον;”

“Οὕτως,” ὁ Νειλόξενος ἔφη· “κρίνετε δ’ ὑμεῖς ἀκούσαντες. περὶ πολλοῦ γὰρ ὁ βασιλεὺς [153] [a] ποιεῖται μήτε συκοφαντῶν ἁλῶναι τὰς ἀποκρίσεις, εἴ τέ τι σφάλλεται κατὰ ταύτας ὁ ἀποκρινάμενος, τοῦτο μὴ διαφυγεῖν ἀνεξέλεγκτον. ἀναγνώσομαι δ’ ὑμῖν ὥσπερ ἀπεκρίνατο·

‘Τί πρεσβύτατον;’ ‘χρόνος.’

‘Τί μέγιστον;’ ‘κόσμος.’

‘Τί σοφώτατον;’ ‘ἀλήθεια.’

‘Τί κάλλιστον;’ ‘φῶς.’

‘Τί κοινότατον;’ ‘θάνατος.’

‘Τί ὠφελιμώτατον;’ ‘θεός.’

‘Τί βλαβερώτατον;’ ‘δαίμων.’

‘Τί ῥωμαλεώτατον;’ ‘τύχη.’

‘Τί ῥᾷστον;’ ‘ἡδύ.’”

Τούτων πάλιν ἀναγνωσθέντων, ὦ Νίκαρχε, γενομένης σιωπῆς Θαλῆς ἠρώτησε τὸν Νειλόξενον εἰ προσήκατο τὰς λύσεις ὁ Ἄμασις. ἐκείνου δ’ εἰπόντος ὅτι τὰς μὲν ἀπεδέξατο ταῖς δ’ ἐδυσκόλαινε, [b] “καὶ μὴν οὐδέν,” εἶπεν ὁ Θαλῆς, “ἀνεπίληπτόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἔχει πάντα διαμαρτίας μεγάλας καὶ ἀγνοίας. οἷον εὐθὺς ὁ χρόνος πῶς ἂν εἴη πρεσβύτατον, εἰ τὸ μὲν αὐτοῦ γεγονὸς τὸ δ’ ἐνεστώς ἐστι τὸ δὲ μέλλον; ὁ γὰρ μεθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐσόμενος χρόνος καὶ πραγμάτων τῶν νῦν καὶ ἀνθρώπων νεώτερος ἂν φανείη. τὸ δὲ τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἡγεῖσθαι σοφίαν οὐδὲν ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ διαφέρειν τοῦ τὸ φῶς ὀφθαλμὸν ἀποφαίνειν. εἰ δὲ τὸ φῶς καλόν, ὥσπερ ἐστὶν, ἐνόμιζε, πῶς τὸν ἥλιον αὐτὸν παρεῖδε; τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἡ μὲν περὶ θεῶν καὶ δαιμόνων ἀπόκρισις θράσος ἔχει καὶ κίνδυνον, [c] ἀλογίαν δὲ καὶ πολλὴν ἡ περὶ τῆς τύχης· οὐ γὰρ ἂν μετέπιπτε ῥᾳδίως οὕτως, ἰσχυρότατον οὖσα τῶν ὄντων καὶ ῥωμαλεώτατον. οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ὁ θάνατος κοινότατόν ἐστιν· οὐ γάρ ἐστι πρὸς τοὺς ζῶντας. ἀλλ’ ἵνα μὴ δοκῶμεν εὐθύνειν τὰς τῶν ἑτέρων ἀποφάσεις, ἰδίας ταῖς ἐκείνου παραβάλωμεν· ἐμαυτὸν δὲ παρέχω πρῶτον, εἰ βούλεται Νειλόξενος, ἐρωτᾶν καθ’ ἕκαστον. ὡς οὖν ἐγένοντο τότε, κἀγὼ νῦν διηγήσομαι τὰς ἐρωτήσεις καὶ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις·

‘Τί πρεσβύτατον;’ ‘θεός,’” ἔφη Θαλῆς· “‘ἀγέννητον γάρ ἐστι.’

‘Τί μέγιστον;’ ‘τόπος· τἄλλα μὲν γὰρ ὁ [d] κόσμος, τὸν δὲ κόσμον οὗτος περιέχει.’

‘Τί κάλλιστον;’ ‘κόσμος· πᾶν γὰρ τὸ κατὰ τάξιν τούτου μέρος ἐστί.’

‘Τί σοφώτατον;’ ‘χρόνος· τὰ μὲν γὰρ εὕρηκεν οὗτος ἤδη, τὰ δ’ εὑρήσει.’

‘Τί κοινότατον;’ ‘ἐλπίς· καὶ γὰρ οἷς ἄλλο μηδέν, αὕτη πάρεστι.’ ‘Τί ὠφελιμώτατον;’ ‘ἀρετή· καὶ γὰρ τἄλλα τῷ χρῆσθαι καλῶς ὠφέλιμα ποιεῖ.’

‘Τί βλαβερώτατον;’ ‘κακία· καὶ γὰρ τὰ πλεῖστα βλάπτει παραγενομένη.’

‘Τί ἰσχυρότατον;’ ‘ἀνάγκη· μόνον γὰρ ἀνίκητον.’

‘Τί ῥᾷστον;’ ‘τὸ κατὰ φύσιν, ἐπεὶ πρὸς ἡδονάς γε πολλάκις ἀπαγορεύουσιν.’”

[e] Ἀποδεξαμένων δὲ πάντων τὸν Θαλῆν, ὁ Κλεόδωρος εἶπε, “τοιαῦτ’ ἐρωτᾶν καὶ ἀποκρίνεσθαι βασιλεῦσιν, ὦ Νειλόξενε, προσῆκόν ἐστιν· ὁ δὲ προπίνων τὴν θάλατταν Ἀμάσιδι βάρβαρος ἐδεῖτο τῆς Πιττακοῦ βραχυλογίας, ᾗ πρὸς Ἀλυάττην ἐχρήσατο προστάττοντά τι καὶ γράφοντα Λεσβίοις ὑπερήφανον, ἀποκρινάμενος οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ μόνον κελεύσας κρόμμυα καὶ θερμὸν ἄρτον ἐσθίειν.”

Ὑπολαβὼν οὖν ὁ Περίανδρος “ἀλλὰ μήν,” ἔφη, “καὶ τοῖς παλαιοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἔθος ἦν, ὦ Κλεόδωρε, [f] τοιαύτας ἀλλήλοις ἀπορίας προβάλλειν. ἀκούομεν γὰρ ὅτι καὶ πρὸς τὰς Ἀμφιδάμαντος ταφὰς εἰς Χαλκίδα τῶν τότε σοφῶν οἱ δοκιμώτατοι ποιηταὶ συνῆλθον· ἦν δ’ ὁ Ἀμφιδάμας ἀνὴρ πολεμικός, καὶ πολλὰ πράγματα παρασχὼν Ἐρετριεῦσιν ἐν ταῖς περὶ Ληλάντου μάχαις ἔπεσεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰ παρεσκευασμένα τοῖς ποιηταῖς ἔπη χαλεπὴν καὶ δύσκολον ἐποίει τὴν κρίσιν διὰ τὸ ἐφάμιλλον, ἥ τε δόξα τῶν ἀγωνιστῶν, Ὁμήρου καὶ Ἡσιόδου, πολλὴν [154] [a] ἀπορίαν μετ’ αἰδοῦς τοῖς κρίνουσι παρεῖχεν, ἐτράποντο πρὸς τοιαύτας ἐρωτήσεις, καὶ προέβαλ’ ὁ μέν, ὥς φησι Λέσχης,

Μοῦσά μοι ἔννεπε κεῖνα, τὰ μήτ’ ἐγένοντο πάροιθε

μήτ’ ἔσται μετόπισθεν,

ἀπεκρίνατο δ’ Ἡσίοδος ἐκ τοῦ παρατυχόντος

ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἀμφὶ Διὸς τύμβῳ καναχήποδες ἵπποι

ἅρματα συντρίψωσιν ἐπειγόμενοι περὶ νίκης.

καὶ διὰ τοῦτο λέγεται μάλιστα θαυμασθεὶς τοῦ τρίποδος τυχεῖν.”

“Τί δὲ ταῦθ’,” ὁ Κλεόδωρος εἶπε, “διαφέρει [b] τῶν Εὐμήτιδος αἰνιγμάτων; ἃ ταύτην μὲν ἴσως οὐκ ἀπρεπές ἐστι παίζουσαν καὶ διαπλέκουσαν ὥσπερ ἕτεραι ζωνία καὶ κεκρυφάλους προβάλλειν ταῖς γυναιξίν, ἄνδρας δὲ νοῦν ἔχοντας ἔν τινι σπουδῇ τίθεσθαι γελοῖον.”

Ἡ μὲν οὖν Εὔμητις ἡδέως ἂν εἰποῦσά τι πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς ἐφαίνετο, κατέσχεν ἑαυτὴν ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς, καὶ ἀνεπλήσθη τὸ πρόσωπον ἐρυθήματος· ὁ δ’ Αἴσωπος οἷον ἀμυνόμενος ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς “οὐ γελοιότερον οὖν,” εἶπε, “τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι ταῦτα διαλύειν, οἷόν ἐστιν ὃ μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν ἡμῖν τοῦ δείπνου προέβαλεν,

ἄνδρ’ εἶδον πυρὶ χαλκὸν ἐπ’ ἀνέρι κολλήσαντα;

τί τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ἔχοις ἂν εἰπεῖν;”

[c] “Ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ μαθεῖν δέομαι,” ἔφη ὁ Κλεόδωρος.

“Καὶ μὴν οὐδείς,” ἔφη, “σοῦ τοῦτο μᾶλλον οἶδεν οὐδὲ ποιεῖ βέλτιον· εἰ δ’ ἀρνῇ, μάρτυρας ἔχω σικύας.”

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Κλεόδωρος ἐγέλασε· καὶ γὰρ ἐχρῆτο μάλιστα ταῖς σικύαις τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν ἰατρῶν, καὶ δόξαν οὐχ ἥκιστα τὸ βοήθημα τοῦτο δι’ ἐκεῖνον ἔσχηκε.

Μνησίφιλος δ’ ὁ Ἀθηναῖος, ἑταῖρος ὢν καὶ ζηλωτὴς Σόλωνος, “ἐγώ τοι,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Περίανδρε, τὸν λόγον ἀξιῶ καθάπερ τὸν οἶνον μὴ πλουτίνδην [d] μηδ’ ἀριστίνδην ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἴσου πᾶσιν ὥσπερ ἐν δημοκρατίᾳ νέμεσθαι καὶ κοινὸν εἶναι· τῶν δ’ ἄρτι περὶ ἀρχῆς καὶ βασιλείας εἰρημένων οὐδὲν ἡμῖν τοῖς δημοτικοῖς μέτεστιν. ὅθεν οἰόμεθα δεῖν πάλιν ἕκαστον ὑμῶν περὶ πολιτείας ἰσονόμου γνώμην τινὰ συμβαλέσθαι, ἀρξαμένους αὖθις ἀπὸ Σόλωνος.”

Ἐδόκει δὴ ταῦτα ποιεῖν. καὶ πρῶτος ὁ Σόλων “ἀλλ’ ἀκήκοας μέν,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Μνησίφιλε, μετὰ πάντων Ἀθηναίων ἣν ἔχω γνώμην περὶ πολιτείας· εἰ δὲ βούλει καὶ νῦν ἀκούειν, δοκεῖ μοι πόλις ἄριστα πράττειν καὶ μάλιστα σῴζειν δημοκρατίαν, [e] ἐν ᾗ τὸν ἀδικήσαντα τοῦ ἀδικηθέντος οὐδὲν ἧττον οἱ μὴ ἀδικηθέντες προβάλλονται καὶ κολάζουσι.”

Δεύτερος δ’ ὁ Βίας ἔφησε κρατίστην εἶναι δημοκρατίαν ἐν ᾗ πάντες ὡς τύραννον φοβοῦνται τὸν νόμον.

Ἐπὶ τούτῳ Θαλῆς τὴν μήτε πλουσίους ἄγαν μήτε πένητας ἔχουσαν πολίτας.

Μετὰ δὲ τοῦτον ὁ Ἀνάχαρσις ἐν ᾗ τῶν ἄλλων ἴσων νομιζομένων ἀρετῇ τὸ βέλτιον ὁρίζεται, καὶ κακίᾳ τὸ χεῖρον.

Πέμπτος δ’ ὁ Κλεόβουλος ἔφη μάλιστα σωφρονεῖν δῆμον ὅπου τὸν ψόγον μᾶλλον οἱ πολιτευόμενοι δεδοίκασιν ἢ τὸν νόμον.

Ἕκτος δ’ ὁ Πιττακός, ὅπου τοῖς πονηροῖς οὐκ ἔξεστιν ἄρχειν καὶ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς οὐκ ἔξεστι μὴ ἄρχειν.

[f] Μεταστραφεὶς δ’ ὁ Χίλων ἀπεφήνατο τὴν μάλιστα νόμων ἥκιστα δὲ ῥητόρων ἀκούουσαν πολιτείαν ἀρίστην εἶναι.

Τελευταῖος δὲ πάλιν ὁ Περίανδρος ἐπικρίνων ἔφη δοκεῖν αὐτῷ πάντας ἐπαινεῖν δημοκρατίαν τὴν ὁμοιοτάτην ἀριστοκρατίᾳ.

Τέλος δὲ καὶ τούτου τοῦ λόγου λαβόντος ἠξίουν ἐγὼ καὶ περὶ οἴκου ᾗ χρηστέον εἰπεῖν τοὺς ἄνδρας ἡμῖν· “βασιλείας μὲν γὰρ καὶ πόλεις ὀλίγοι κυβερνῶσιν, ἑστίας δὲ πᾶσιν ἡμῖν καὶ οἴκου μέτεστι.”

Γελάσας οὖν ὁ Αἴσωπος, “οὔκ, εἴγε τῶν πάντων,” [155] [a] ἔφη, “καὶ Ἀνάχαρσιν ἀριθμεῖς· τούτῳ γὰρ οἶκος οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ σεμνύνεται τῷ ἄοικος εἶναι, χρῆσθαι δ’ ἁμάξῃ, καθάπερ τὸν ἥλιον ἐν ἅρματι λέγουσι περιπολεῖν, ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλην ἐπινεμόμενον τοῦ οὐρανοῦ χώραν.”

Καὶ ὁ Ἀνάχαρσις, “διὰ τοῦτό τοι,” εἶπεν, “ἢ μόνος ἢ μάλιστα τῶν θεῶν ἐλεύθερός ἐστι καὶ αὐτόνομος, καὶ κρατεῖ πάντων, κρατεῖται δ’ ὑπ’ οὐδενός, ἀλλὰ βασιλεύει καὶ ἡνιοχεῖ. πλὴν σέ γε τὸ ἅρμα λέληθεν αὐτοῦ, ὡς ὑπερφυὲς κάλλει καὶ [b] μεγέθει θαυμάσιόν ἐστιν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν παίζων ἐπὶ γέλωτι παρέβαλες ἐκεῖνο τοῖς ἡμετέροις. οἶκον δέ μοι δοκεῖς, ὦ Αἴσωπε, ταυτὶ τὰ πήλινα καὶ ξύλινα καὶ κεραμεᾶ στεγάσματα νομίζειν, ὥσπερ εἰ κοχλίαν ἡγοῖο τὸ κέλυφος, ἀλλὰ μὴ τὸ ζῷον. εἰκότως οὖν σοι γέλωτα παρέσχεν ὁ Σόλων, ὅτι τοῦ Κροίσου τὴν οἰκίαν κεκοσμημένην πολυτελῶς θεασάμενος οὐκ εὐθὺς ἀπεφήνατο τὸν κεκτημένον εὐδαιμόνως οἰκεῖν καὶ μακαρίως, ἅτε δὴ τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ μᾶλλον ἀγαθῶν ἢ τῶν παρ’ αὐτῷ βουλόμενος γενέσθαι θεατής· σὺ δ’ ἔοικας οὐδὲ τῆς σεαυτοῦ μνημονεύειν ἀλώπεκος. ἐκείνη μὲν γὰρ εἰς ἀγῶνα ποικιλίας καταστᾶσα πρὸς τὴν πάρδαλιν ἠξίου τὰ ἐντὸς αὐτῆς καταμαθεῖν τὸν δικαστήν, [c] ποικιλωτέρα γὰρ ἐκεῖθεν φανεῖσθαι· σὺ δὲ τὰ τεκτόνων καὶ λιθοξόων ἔργα περινοστεῖς, οἶκον ἡγούμενος, οὐ τὰ ἐντὸς ἑκάστου καὶ οἰκεῖα, παῖδας καὶ γάμον καὶ φίλους καὶ θεράποντας, οἷς κἂν ἐν μυρμηκιᾷ τις ἢ νεοττιᾷ νοῦν ἔχουσι καὶ σωφρονοῦσι κοινωνῇ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων, χρηστὸν οἶκον οἰκεῖ καὶ μακάριον. ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν,” ἔφη, “ταῦτα καὶ πρὸς Αἴσωπον ἀποκρίνομαι καὶ Διοκλεῖ συμβάλλομαι· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἕκαστος ἀποφαίνεσθαι δίκαιός ἐστι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γνώμην.”

Τοῦτον οὖν ἄριστον ὁ Σόλων εἶπεν αὑτῷ δοκεῖν οἶκον, ὅπου τὰ χρήματα μήτε κτωμένοις ἀδικία [d] μήτε φυλάττουσιν ἀπιστία μήτε δαπανῶσι μετάνοια πρόσεστιν.

Ὁ δὲ Βίας ἐν ᾧ τοιοῦτός ἐστιν ὁ δεσπότης δι’ αὑτὸν οἷος ἔξω διὰ τὸν νόμον.

Ὁ δὲ Θαλῆς ἐν ᾧ πλείστην ἄγειν τῷ δεσπότῃ σχολὴν ἔξεστιν.

Ὁ δὲ Κλεόβουλος εἰ πλείονας ἔχοι τῶν φοβουμένων αὐτὸν τοὺς φιλοῦντας ὁ δεσπότης.

Ὁ δὲ Πιττακὸς εἶπεν ὡς ἄριστος οἶκός ἐστιν ὁ τῶν περιττῶν μηδενὸς δεόμενος καὶ τῶν ἀναγκαίων μηδενὸς ἐνδεόμενος.

Ὁ δὲ Χίλων ἔφη δεῖν μάλιστα βασιλευομένῃ πόλει προσεοικέναι τὸν οἶκον. εἶτα προσεπεῖπεν ὅτι καὶ Λυκοῦργος πρὸς τὸν κελεύοντα δημοκρατίαν [e] ἐν τῇ πόλει καταστῆσαι, “πρῶτος,” ἔφη, “ποίησον ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ σου δημοκρατίαν.”

Ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ οὗτος ἔσχεν ὁ λόγος τέλος, ἡ μὲν Εὔμητις ἐξῆλθε μετὰ τῆς Μελίσσης, τοῦ δὲ Περιάνδρου τῷ Χίλωνι προπιόντος εὐμεγέθη κύλικα, τῷ δὲ Βίαντι τοῦ Χίλωνος, Ἄρδαλος ἐπαναστὰς καὶ προσαγορεύσας τὸν Αἴσωπον, “σὺ δ’ οὐκ ἄν,” ἔφη, “διαπέμψαιο δεῦρο τὸ ποτήριον πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὁρῶν τούτους ὥσπερ τὴν Βαθυκλέους κύλικα διαπεμπομένους ἀλλήλοις, ἑτέρῳ δὲ μὴ μεταδιδόντας;”

[f] Καὶ ὁ Αἴσωπος, “ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τοῦτ’,” ἔφη, “τὸ ποτήριον δημοτικόν ἐστι· Σόλωνι γὰρ ἔκπαλαι παράκειται μόνῳ.”

Τὸν οὖν Μνησίφιλον προσαγορεύσας ὁ Πιττακὸς ἠρώτησε τί οὐ πίνει Σόλων ἀλλὰ καταμαρτυρεῖ τῶν ποιημάτων ἐν οἷς γέγραφεν,

ἔργα δὲ Κυπρογενοῦς νῦν μοι φίλα καὶ Διονύσου

καὶ Μουσέων, ἃ τίθησ’ ἀνδράσιν εὐφροσύνας.

Ὑποφθάσας δ’ Ἀνάχαρσις “σὲ γάρ, ὦ Πιττακέ, καὶ τὸν σὸν ἐκεῖνον τὸν χαλεπὸν φοβεῖται νόμον, ἐν ᾧ γέγραφας Ἐάν τις ὁτιοῦν μεθύων ἁμάρτῃ, διπλασίαν ἢ τῷ νήφοντι τὴν ζημίαν εἶναι.”

Καὶ ὁ Πιττακός, “σὺ δέ γ’,” εἶπεν, “οὕτως ἐξύβρισας εἰς τὸν νόμον, ὥστε πέρυσι παρ’ Ἀλκαίου ἀδελφῷ μεθυσθεὶς ἆθλον αἰτεῖν καὶ στέφανον.”

[156] [a] “Τί δ’ οὐκ ἔμελλον,” ἔφη ὁ Ἀνάχαρσις, “τῷ πλεῖστον πιόντι προκειμένων ἄθλων πρῶτος μεθυσθεὶς ἀπαιτεῖν τὸ νικητήριον; ἢ διδάξατέ μ’ ὑμεῖς, τί τέλος ἐστὶ τοῦ πολὺν πιεῖν ἄκρατον ἢ τὸ μεθυσθῆναι.”

Τοῦ δὲ Πιττακοῦ γελάσαντος ὁ Αἴσωπος λόγον εἶπε τοιοῦτον· “λύκος ἰδὼν ποιμένας ἐσθίοντας ἐν σκηνῇ πρόβατον ἐγγὺς προσελθών, ‘ἡλίκος ἂν ἦν,’ ἔφη, ‘θόρυβος ὑμῖν, εἰ ἐγὼ τοῦτ’ ἐποίουν.’”

Καὶ ὁ Χίλων “ὀρθῶς,” ἔφη, “Αἴσωπος ἠμύνατο, μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν ἐπιστομισθεὶς ὑφ’ ἡμῶν, εἶτα νῦν ὁρῶν ἑτέρους τὸν Μνησιφίλου λόγον ὑφηρπακότας· Μνησίφιλος γὰρ ᾐτήθη τὴν ὑπὲρ Σόλωνος ἀπόκρισιν.”

[b] “Καὶ λέγω,” ὁ Μνησίφιλος εἶπεν, “εἰδὼς ὅτι Σόλωνι δοκεῖ πάσης τέχνης καὶ δυνάμεως ἀνθρωπίνης τε καὶ θείας ἔργον εἶναι τὸ γιγνόμενον μᾶλλον ἢ δι’ οὗ γίγνεται, καὶ τὸ τέλος ἢ τὰ πρὸς τὸ τέλος. ὑφάντης τε γὰρ ἂν οἶμαι χλαμύδα ποιήσαιτο μᾶλλον ἔργον αὑτοῦ καὶ ἱμάτιον ἢ κανόνων διάθεσιν καὶ ἀνάρτησιν ἀγνύθων, χαλκεύς τε κόλλησιν σιδήρου καὶ στόμωσιν πελέκεως μᾶλλον ἤ τι τῶν ἕνεκα τούτου γιγνομένων ἀναγκαίων, οἷον ἀνθράκων ἐκζωπύρησιν ἢ λατύπης παρασκευήν. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἀρχιτέκτων μέμψαιτ’ ἂν ἡμᾶς ἔργον αὐτοῦ μὴ ναὸν μηδ’ οἰκίαν ἀποφαίνοντας, [c] ἀλλὰ τρυπῆσαι ξύλα καὶ φυρᾶσαι πηλόν· αἱ δὲ Μοῦσαι καὶ παντάπασιν, εἰ νομίζοιμεν αὐτῶν ἔργον εἶναι κιθάραν καὶ αὐλούς, ἀλλὰ μὴ τὸ παιδεύειν τὰ ἤθη καὶ παρηγορεῖν τὰ πάθη τῶν χρωμένων μέλεσι καὶ ἁρμονίαις. οὐκοῦν οὐδὲ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἔργον ἐστὶ συνουσία καὶ μεῖξις, οὐδὲ τοῦ Διονύσου μέθη καὶ οἶνος, ἀλλ’ ἣν ἐμποιοῦσι διὰ τούτων φιλοφροσύνην καὶ πόθον καὶ ὁμιλίαν ἡμῖν καὶ συνήθειαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους· ταῦτα γὰρ ἔργα θεῖα καλεῖ Σόλων, καὶ ταῦτά φησιν ἀγαπᾶν καὶ διώκειν μάλιστα πρεσβύτης γενόμενος. ἔστι δὲ τῆς μὲν πρὸς γυναῖκας ἀνδρῶν ὁμοφροσύνης [d] καὶ φιλίας δημιουργὸς ἡ Ἀφροδίτη, τοῖς σώμασιν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἅμα συμμιγνύουσα καὶ συντήκουσα τὰς ψυχάς· τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς καὶ μὴ πάνυ συνήθεσι μηδ’ ἄγαν γνωρίμοις ὁ Διόνυσος ὥσπερ ἐν πυρὶ τῷ οἴνῳ μαλάττων τὰ ἤθη καὶ ἀνυγραίνων ἀρχήν τινα συγκράσεως πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ φιλίας ἐνδίδωσιν. ὅταν δὲ τοιοῦτοι συνέλθωσιν ἄνδρες, οἵους ὁ Περίανδρος ὑμᾶς παρακέκληκεν, οὐδὲν ἔργον ἐστὶν οἶμαι κύλικος οὐδ’ οἰνοχόης, ἀλλ’ αἱ Μοῦσαι καθάπερ κρατῆρα νηφάλιον ἐν μέσῳ προθέμεναι τὸν λόγον, ᾧ πλεῖστον ἡδονῆς ἅμα καὶ παιδιᾶς καὶ σπουδῆς ἔνεστιν, ἐγείρουσι τούτῳ καὶ κατάρδουσι καὶ διαχέουσι τὴν φιλοφροσύνην, [e] ἐῶσαι τὰ πολλὰ τὴν ‘οἰνοχόην’ ἀτρέμα κεῖσθαι ‘κρητῆρος ὕπερθεν,’ ὅπερ ἀπηγόρευσεν Ἡσίοδος ἐν τοῖς πίνειν μᾶλλον ἢ διαλέγεσθαι δυναμένοις. ἐπεὶ τάς γε προπόσεις αὐτάς,” ἔφη, “πυνθάνομαι λείπειν τοῖς παλαιοῖς, ἓν ‘δαιτρόν,’ ὡς Ὅμηρος ἔφη, καὶ μετρητὸν ἑκάστου πίνοντος, εἶθ’ ὥσπερ Αἴας μερίδος μεταδιδόντος τῷ πλησίον.”

Εἰπόντος δὲ ταῦτα τοῦ Μνησιφίλου Χερσίας ὁ [f] ποιητής (ἀφεῖτο γὰρ ἤδη τῆς αἰτίας καὶ διήλλακτο τῷ Περιάνδρῳ νεωστί, Χίλωνος δεηθέντος) “ἆρ’ οὖν,” ἔφη, “καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς ὁ Ζεύς, ὥσπερ τοῖς ἀριστεῦσιν ὁ Ἀγαμέμνων, μετρητὸν ἐνέχει τὸ ποτόν, ὅτε προέπινον ἀλλήλοις ἑστιώμενοι παρ’ αὐτῷ;”

Καὶ ὁ Κλεόδωρος, “σὺ δ’, ὦ Χερσία,” εἶπεν, “εἰ τὴν ἀμβροσίαν τῷ Διὶ πελειάδες τινὲς κομίζουσιν, ὡς ὑμεῖς λέγετε, τὰς Πλαγκτὰς ὑπερπετόμεναι χαλεπῶς καὶ μόλις, οὐ νομίζεις καὶ τὸ νέκταρ αὐτῷ δυσπόριστον εἶναι καὶ σπάνιον, [157] [a] ὥστε φείδεσθαι καὶ παρέχειν ἑκάστῳ τεταμιευμένον;”

“Ἴσως,” εἶπεν ὁ Χερσίας· “ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ πάλιν οἰκονομίας λόγος γέγονε, τίς ἂν ὑμῶν φράσειεν ἡμῖν τὸ ἀπολειπόμενον; ἀπολείπεται δ’ οἶμαι κτήσεώς τι λαβεῖν μέτρον αὐτάρκους καὶ ἱκανῆς ἐσομένης.”

Καὶ ὁ Κλεόβουλος, “ἀλλὰ τοῖς μὲν σοφοῖς,” ἔφη, “μέτρον ὁ νόμος δέδωκε, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς φαύλους ἐρῶ λόγον τῆς ἐμῆς θυγατρὸς ὃν πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν εἶπεν. ἔφη γὰρ τὴν Σελήνην δεῖσθαι τῆς ἑαυτῆς μητρὸς ὅπως αὐτῇ χιτώνιον ὑφήνῃ [b] σύμμετρον· τὴν δ’ εἰπεῖν ‘καὶ πῶς σύμμετρον ὑφήνω; νῦν μὲν γὰρ ὁρῶ σε πανσέληνον, αὖθις δὲ μηνοειδῆ, τοτὲ δ’ ἀμφίκυρτον.’ οὕτω δή, ὦ φίλε Χερσία, καὶ πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἀνόητον καὶ φαῦλον οὐδέν ἐστι μέτρον οὐσίας· ἄλλοτε γὰρ ἄλλος ἐστὶ ταῖς χρείαις διὰ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας καὶ τὰς τύχας, ὥσπερ ὁ Αἰσώπου κύων, ὃν οὑτοσί φησιν ἐν τῷ χειμῶνι συστρεφόμενον καὶ συσπειρώμενον διὰ τὸ ῥιγοῦν οἰκίαν ποιεῖν διανοεῖσθαι, θέρους δ’ αὖ πάλιν ἐκτεταμένον καθεύδοντα φαίνεσθαι μέγαν ἑαυτῷ καὶ μήτ’ ἀναγκαῖον ἡγεῖσθαι μήτε μικρὸν ἔργον οἰκίαν περιβαλέσθαι τοσαύτην. ἦ γὰρ οὐχ ὁρᾷς,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Χερσία, καὶ τοὺς [c] μιαροὺς νῦν μὲν εἰς μικρὰ κομιδῇ συστέλλοντας ἑαυτοὺς ὡς στρογγύλως καὶ Λακωνικῶς βιωσομένους, νῦν δέ, εἰ μὴ τὰ πάντων ἔχουσιν ἰδιωτῶν ἅμα καὶ βασιλέων, ὑπ’ ἐνδείας ἀπολεῖσθαι νομίζοντας;”

Ὡς οὖν ὁ Χερσίας ἀπεσιώπησεν, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Κλεόδωρος, “ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς σοφούς,” εἶπεν, “ὑμᾶς ὁρῶμεν ἀνίσοις μέτροις τὰς κτήσεις νενεμημένας πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔχοντας.”

Καὶ ὁ Κλεόβουλος, “ὁ γάρ τοι νόμος,” εἶπεν, “ὦ βέλτιστε ἀνδρῶν, ὡς ὑφάντης ἑκάστῳ τὸ πρέπον ἡμῶν καὶ τὸ μέτριον καὶ τὸ ἁρμόττον [d] ἀποδίδωσι. καὶ σὺ καθάπερ τῷ νόμῳ τῷ λόγῳ τρέφων καὶ διαιτῶν καὶ φαρμακεύων τοὺς κάμνοντας οὐκ ἴσον ἑκάστῳ, τὸ δὲ προσῆκον ἀπονέμεις ἅπασιν.”

Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Ἄρδαλος, “ἆρ’ οὖν,” ἔφη, “καὶ τὸν ἑταῖρον ὑμῶν Σόλωνος δὲ ξένον Ἐπιμενίδην νόμος τις ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν ἄλλων σιτίων κελεύει, τῆς δ’ ἀλίμου δυνάμεως ἣν αὐτὸς συντίθησι μικρὸν εἰς τὸ στόμα λαμβάνοντα διημερεύειν ἀνάριστον καὶ ἄδειπνον;”

Ἐπιστήσαντος δὲ τοῦ λόγου τὸ συμπόσιον ὁ μὲν Θαλῆς ἐπισκώπτων εὖ φρονεῖν ἔφη τὸν Ἐπιμενίδην ὅτι μὴ βούλεται πράγματα ἔχειν ἀλῶν τὰ σιτία καὶ πέττων ἑαυτῷ, καθάπερ [e] Πιττακός. “ἐγὼ γάρ,” εἶπε, “τῆς ξένης ἤκουον ᾀδούσης πρὸς τὴν μύλην, ἐν Ἐρέσῳ γενόμενος,

ἄλει, μύλα, ἄλει·

καὶ γὰρ Πιττακὸς ἄλει

μεγάλας Μυτιλάνας βασιλεύων.”

Ὁ δὲ Σόλων ἔφη θαυμάζειν τὸν Ἄρδαλον εἰ τὸν νόμον οὐκ ἀνέγνωκε τῆς διαίτης τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐν τοῖς ἔπεσι τοῖς Ἡσιόδου γεγραμμένον· ἐκεῖνος γάρ ἐστιν ὁ πρῶτος Ἐπιμενίδῃ σπέρματα τῆς τροφῆς ταύτης παρασχὼν καὶ ζητεῖν ὁ διδάξας

[f] ὅσον ἐν μαλάχῃ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγ’ ὄνειαρ.

“Οἴει γάρ,” ὁ Περίανδρος εἶπε, “τὸν Ἡσίοδον ἐννοῆσαί τι τοιοῦτον; οὐκ ἐπαινέτην ὄντα φειδοῦς ἀεί, καὶ πρὸς τὰ λιτότατα τῶν ὄψων ὡς ἥδιστα παρακαλεῖν ἡμᾶς; ἀγαθὴ μὲν γὰρ ἡ μαλάχη βρωθῆναι, γλυκὺς δ’ ὁ ἀνθέρικος· τὰ δ’ ἄλιμα ταῦτα καὶ ἄδιψα φάρμακα μᾶλλον ἢ σιτία πυνθάνομαι καὶ μέλι καὶ τυρόν τινα βαρβαρικὸν δέχεσθαι καὶ σπέρματα πάμπολλα τῶν οὐκ εὐπορίστων. πῶς οὖν ἐῶμεν Ἡσιόδῳ τὸ

πηδάλιον μὲν ὑπὲρ καπνοῦ

κείμενον

ἔργα βοῶν δ’ ἀπόλοιτο καὶ ἡμιόνων ταλαεργῶν,

εἰ τοσαύτης δεήσει παρασκευῆς; θαυμάζω δέ [158] [a] σου τὸν ξένον, ὦ Σόλων, εἰ Δηλίοις ἔναγχος ποιησάμενος τὸν μέγαν καθαρμὸν οὐχ ἱστόρησε παρ’ αὐτοῖς εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν κομιζόμενα τῆς πρώτης ὑπομνήματα τροφῆς καὶ δείγματα μετ’ ἄλλων εὐτελῶν καὶ αὐτοφυῶν μαλάχην καὶ ἀνθέρικον, ὧν εἰκός ἐστι καὶ τὸν Ἡσίοδον προξενεῖν ἡμῖν τὴν λιτότητα καὶ τὴν ἀφέλειαν.”

“Οὐ ταῦτ’,” ἔφη, “μόνον,” ὁ Ἀνάχαρσις, “ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς ὑγίειαν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα τῶν λαχάνων ἑκάτερον ἐπαινεῖται.”

Καὶ ὁ Κλεόδωρος “ὀρθῶς,” ἔφη, “λέγεις. ἰατρικὸς γὰρ Ἡσίοδος, ὡς δῆλός ἐστιν οὐκ [b] ἀμελῶς οὐδ’ ἀπείρως περὶ διαίτης καὶ κράσεως οἴνου καὶ ἀρετῆς ὕδατος καὶ λουτροῦ καὶ γυναικῶν διαλεγόμενος καὶ συνουσίας καιροῦ καὶ βρεφῶν καθίσεως. ἀλλ’ Ἡσιόδου μὲν ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ δικαιότερον Αἴσωπος αὑτὸν ἀποφαίνειν μαθητὴν ἢ Ἐπιμενίδης· τούτῳ γὰρ ἀρχὴν τῆς καλῆς ταύτης καὶ ποικίλης καὶ πολυγλώσσου σοφίας ὁ πρὸς τὴν ἀηδόνα λόγος τοῦ ἱέρακος παρέσχηκεν. ἐγὼ δ’ ἂν ἡδέως ἀκούσαιμι Σόλωνος· εἰκὸς γὰρ αὐτὸν πεπύσθαι, πολὺν χρόνον Ἀθήνησιν Ἐπιμενίδῃ συγγενόμενον, ὅ τι δὴ παθὼν ἢ σοφιζόμενος ἐπὶ τοιαύτην ἦλθε δίαιταν.”

Καὶ ὁ Σόλων ἔφη “τί δὲ τοῦτ’ ἐκεῖνον [c] ἐρωτᾶν ἔδει; δῆλον γὰρ ἦν ὅτι τοῦ μεγίστου τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ κρατίστου δεύτερόν ἐστι τὸ δεῖσθαι τροφῆς βραχυτάτης. ἢ τὸ μέγιστον οὐ δοκεῖ τὸ μηδ’ ὅλως τροφῆς δεῖσθαι;”

“Οὐδαμῶς,” ὁ Κλεόδωρος, “ἔμοιγ’,” εἶπεν, “εἰ δεῖ τὸ φαινόμενον εἰπεῖν, καὶ μάλιστα παρακειμένης τραπέζης, ἣν ἀναιροῦσιν αἰρομένης τροφῆς φιλίων θεῶν βωμὸν οὖσαν καὶ ξενίων. ὡς δὲ Θαλῆς λέγει τῆς γῆς ἀναιρεθείσης σύγχυσιν τὸν ὅλον ἕξειν κόσμον, οὕτως οἴκου διάλυσις ἐστι· συναναιρεῖται γὰρ αὐτῇ πῦρ ἑστιοῦχον ἑστία κρατῆρες ὑποδοχαὶ ξενισμοί, φιλανθρωπότατα καὶ πρῶτα κοινωνήματα πρὸς ἀλλήλους, μᾶλλον δὲ [d] σύμπας ὁ βίος, εἴ γε διαγωγή τίς ἐστιν ἀνθρώπου πράξεων ἔχουσα διέξοδον, ὧν ἡ τῆς τροφῆς χρεία καὶ παρασκευὴ τὰς πλείστας παρακαλεῖ. δεινὸν μὲν οὖν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, καὶ τὸ γεωργίας αὐτῆς· διολλυμένη γὰρ αὖθις ἀπολείπει γῆν ἡμῖν ἄμορφον καὶ ἀκάθαρτον, ὕλης ἀκάρπου καὶ ῥευμάτων πλημμελῶς φερομένων ὑπ’ ἀργίας ἀνάπλεων. συναπόλλυσι δὲ καὶ τέχνας πάσας καὶ ἐργασίας, ὧν ἔξαρχός ἐστι καὶ παρέχει βάσιν πάσαις καὶ ὕλην, καὶ τὸ [e] μηδέν εἰσι, ταύτης ἐκποδὼν γενομένης. καταλύονται δὲ καὶ τιμαὶ θεῶν, Ἡλίῳ μὲν μικράν, ἔτι δ’ ἐλάττω Σελήνῃ χάριν αὐγῆς μόνον καὶ ἀλέας ἀνθρώπων ἐχόντων. ὀμβρίῳ δὲ Διὶ καὶ προηροσίᾳ Δήμητρι καὶ φυταλμίῳ Ποσειδῶνι ποῦ βωμός ἐστι, ποῦ δὲ θυσία; πῶς δὲ χαριδότης ὁ Διόνυσος, εἰ δεησόμεθα μηδενὸς ὧν δίδωσι; τί δὲ θύσομεν ἢ σπείσομεν; τίνος δ’ ἀπαρξόμεθα; πάντα γὰρ ταῦτα τῶν μεγίστων ἀνατροπὴν καὶ σύγχυσιν ἔχει πραγμάτων. ἡδονῆς δὲ πάσης μὲν περιέχεσθαι καὶ πάντως ἀλόγιστόν ἐστι, πᾶσαν δὲ φεύγειν καὶ πάντως ἀναίσθητον. τὴν μὲν οὖν ψυχὴν ἑτέραις [f] τισὶν ἡδοναῖς χρῆσθαι κρείττοσιν ὑπαρχέτω, τῷ δὲ σώματι λαβεῖν ἡδονὴν τῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ τρέφεσθαι δικαιοτέραν οὐκ ἔστιν εὑρεῖν, ὅπερ οὐδένα λέληθεν ἀνθρώπων· ταύτην γὰρ ἐν μέσῳ θέμενοι κοινωνοῦσιν ἀλλήλοις δείπνων καὶ τραπέζης, ἀφροδισίων δὲ νύκτα καὶ πολὺ προβάλλονται σκότος, ἡγούμενοι ταύτης τὸ κοινωνεῖν ἀναίσχυντον εἶναι καὶ θηριῶδες, ὡς τὸ μὴ κοινωνεῖν ἐκείνης.”

Ὑπολαβὼν οὖν ἐγὼ τοῦ Κλεοδώρου διαλιπόντος, “ἐκεῖνο δ’ οὐ λέγεις,” εἶπον, “ὅτι καὶ τὸν ὕπνον ἅμα τῇ τροφῇ συνεκβάλλομεν· ὕπνου δὲ μὴ ὄντος [159] [a] οὐδ’ ὄνειρός ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ οἴχεται τὸ πρεσβύτατον ἡμῖν μαντεῖον. ἔσται δὲ μονοειδὴς ὁ βίος καὶ τρόπον τινὰ μάτην τὸ σῶμα περικείσεται τῇ ψυχῇ· τὰ πλεῖστα γὰρ αὐτοῦ καὶ κυριώτατα τῶν μερῶν ἐπὶ τὴν τροφὴν ὄργανα παρεσκεύασται, γλῶττα καὶ ὀδόντες καὶ στόμαχος καὶ ἧπαρ. ἀργὸν γὰρ οὐδέν ἐστιν οὐδὲ πρὸς ἄλλην συντεταγμένον χρείαν· ὥσθ’ ὁ μὴ δεόμενος τροφῆς οὐδὲ σώματος δεῖται. τοῦτο δ’ ἦν αὖ τὸ αὑτοῦ μὴ δεῖσθαι· σὺν σώματι γὰρ ἡμῶν ἕκαστος. ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν,” ἔφην ἐγώ, “ταύτας τῇ γαστρὶ συμβολὰς εἰσφέρομεν· εἰ δὲ Σόλων ἤ τις ἄλλος τι κατηγορεῖ, ἀκουσόμεθα.”

[b] “Πάνυ μὲν οὖν,” ἔφη ὁ Σόλων, “μὴ καὶ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ἀκριτώτεροι φανῶμεν, οἳ τὸν νεκρὸν ἀνατέμνοντες ἔδειξαν τῷ ἡλίῳ, εἶτ’ αὖ τὰ μὲν εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν κατέβαλον, τοῦ δ’ ἄλλου σώματος ὡς ἤδη καθαροῦ γεγονότος ἐπιμέλονται. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι τοῦτ’ ἐστὶ τὸ μίασμα τῆς σαρκὸς ἡμῶν καὶ ὁ τάρταρος ὡς ἐν Ἅιδου, δεινῶν τινων ῥευμάτων καὶ πνεύματος ὁμοῦ καὶ πυρὸς συμπεφυρμένου καὶ νεκρῶν περίπλεως. ζῶν γὰρ οὐδεὶς ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς τρέφεται ζῶντος, ἀλλὰ θανατοῦντες τὰ ἔμψυχα, καὶ τὰ φυόμενα, τῷ τρέφεσθαι καὶ αὔξεσθαι μετέχοντα τοῦ ζῆν, ἀπολλύντες ἀδικοῦμεν.

[c] ἀπόλλυται γὰρ ἐξ οὗ πέφυκε τὸ μεταβάλλον εἰς ἄλλο, καὶ πᾶσαν φθείρεται φθοράν, ὅπως ἂν θατέρου τροφὴ γένοιτο. τὸ δ’ ἀπέχεσθαι σαρκῶν ἐδωδῆς, ὥσπερ Ὀρφέα τὸν παλαιὸν ἱστοροῦσι, σόφισμα μᾶλλον ἢ φυγὴ τῶν περὶ τὴν τροφὴν ἀδικημάτων ἐστί. φυγὴ δὲ μία καὶ καθαρμὸς εἰς δικαιοσύνην τέλειος αὐτάρκη καὶ ἀπροσδεᾶ γενέσθαι. ᾧ δ’ ἄνευ κακώσεως ἑτέρου τὴν αὑτοῦ σωτηρίαν ἀμήχανον ὁ θεὸς πεποίηκε, τούτῳ τὴν φύσιν ἀρχὴν ἀδικίας προστέθεικεν. ἆρ’ οὖν οὐκ ἄξιον, ὦ φίλε, συνεκτεμεῖν ἀδικίᾳ κοιλίαν καὶ στόμαχον καὶ ἧπαρ, ἃ καλοῦ μὲν οὐδενὸς αἴσθησιν [d] ἡμῖν οὐδ’ ὄρεξιν ἐνδίδωσι, σκεύεσι δὲ μαγειρικοῖς, οἷα κοπίδες καὶ λέβητες, τὰ δὲ μυλωθρικοῖς καὶ καμίνοις καὶ φυραμούχοις καὶ μακτηρίοις ἔοικεν; ἀτεχνῶς δὲ τῶν πολλῶν ἴδοι τις ἂν ὥσπερ ἐν μυλῶνι τῷ σώματι τὴν ψυχὴν ἐγκεκαλυμμένην ἀεὶ περὶ τὴν τῆς τροφῆς χρείαν κυκλοῦσαν, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ ἡμεῖς ἄρτι μὲν οὔθ’ ἑωρῶμεν ἀλλήλους οὔτ’ ἠκούομεν, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστος ἐγκεκυφὼς ἐδούλευε τῇ περὶ τὴν τροφὴν χρείᾳ. νυνὶ δ’ ἐπαρθεισῶν τῶν τραπεζῶν ἐλεύθεροι γεγονότες ὡς ὁρᾷς, ἐστεφανωμένοι περὶ λόγους διατρίβομεν καὶ ἀλλήλοις σύνεσμεν [e] καὶ σχολὴν ἄγομεν, εἰς τὸ μὴ δεῖσθαι τροφῆς ἐληλυθότες. ἆρ’ οὖν, ἄνπερ ἡ νῦν οὖσα περὶ ἡμᾶς ἕξις ἄπαυστος διαμένῃ παρὰ πάντα τὸν βίον, οὐκ ἀεὶ σχολὴν ἕξομεν ἀλλήλοις συνεῖναι, μὴ δεδιότες πενίαν μηδ’ εἰδότες πλοῦτον; ὁ γὰρ τῶν περιττῶν ζῆλος εὐθὺς ἀκολουθεῖ καὶ συνοικίζεται τῇ χρείᾳ τῶν ἀναγκαίων.

“Ἀλλ’ οἴεται δεῖν τροφὴν εἶναι Κλεόδωρος, ὅπως τράπεζαι καὶ κρατῆρες ὦσι καὶ Δήμητρι καὶ Κόρῃ θυσίαι. ἕτερος δέ τις ἀξιούτω μάχας εἶναι καὶ πόλεμον, ἵνα καὶ τείχη καὶ νεωσοίκους καὶ [f] ὁπλοθήκας ἔχωμεν καὶ θύωμεν ἑκατομφόνια, καθάπερ φασὶ νόμον εἶναι Μεσσηνίοις. ἄλλον δὲ πρὸς τὴν ὑγίειαν οἶμαι χαλεπαίνειν· δεινὸν γὰρ εἰ μηδενὸς νοσοῦντος οὐ στρωμνῆς ἔτι μαλακῆς ὄφελος οὐ κλίνης, οὐκ Ἀσκληπιῷ θύσομεν οὐκ ἀποτροπαίοις, ἰατρικὴ δὲ μετ’ ὀργάνων καὶ φαρμάκων ἀποκείσεται τοσούτων ἀκλεὴς καὶ ἀπόθεστος. ἢ τί ταῦτ’ ἐκείνων διαφέρει; καὶ γὰρ ἡ τροφὴ λιμοῦ φάρμακον προσάγεται, καὶ θεραπεύειν ἑαυτοὺς λέγονται [160] [a] πάντες οἱ τρεφόμενοι δίαιταν, οὐχ ὡς ἡδύ τι καὶ κεχαρισμένον ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀναγκαῖον τοῦτο τῇ φύσει πράττοντες. ἐπεὶ λύπας γε πλείονας ἔστιν ἀπὸ τῆς τροφῆς τῶν ἡδονῶν γιγνομένας καταριθμῆσαι, μᾶλλον δ’ ἡ μὲν ἡδονὴ καὶ τόπον ἔχει βραχὺν ἐν τῷ σώματι καὶ χρόνον οὐ πολύν· ἡ δὲ περὶ τὴν διοίκησιν αὐτῆς ἀσχολία καὶ δυσχέρεια τί δεῖ λέγειν ὅσων αἰσχρῶν καὶ ὀδυνηρῶν ἡμᾶς ἐμπίπλησιν; οἶμαι γὰρ εἰς τοσαῦτα βλέψαντα τὸν Ὅμηρον ἀποδείξει κεχρῆσθαι περὶ θεῶν τοῦ μὴ ἀποθνῄσκειν τῷ μὴ τρέφεσθαι

οὐ γὰρ σῖτον ἔδουσ’, οὐ πίνουσ’ αἴθοπα οἶνον·

τοὔνεκ’ ἀναίμονές εἰσι καὶ ἀθάνατοι καλέονται,

[b] ὡς μὴ μόνον τοῦ ζῆν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ ἀποθνῄσκειν τὴν τροφὴν ἐφόδιον οὖσαν. ἐκ ταύτης γὰρ αἱ νόσοι, συντρεφόμεναι τοῖς σώμασιν οὐκ ἔλαττον ἐνδείας κακὸν ἔχουσι τὴν πλήρωσιν· πολλάκις δὲ καὶ μεῖζόν ἐστιν ἔργον τοῦ πορίσαι τροφὴν καὶ συναγαγεῖν τὸ καταναλῶσαι καὶ διαφορῆσαι πάλιν εἰς τὸ σῶμα παραγενομένην. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἂν διαποροῖεν αἱ Δαναΐδες τίνα βίον βιώσονται καὶ τί πράξουσιν ἀπαλλαγεῖσαι τῆς περὶ τὸν πίθον λατρείας καὶ πληρώσεως, οὕτω διαποροῦμεν ἡμεῖς, [c] εἰ γένοιτο παύσασθαι φοροῦντας εἰς τὴν σάρκα τὴν ἄτρυτον ἐκ γῆς ἅμα καὶ θαλάττης τοσαῦτα, τί πράξομεν ἀπειρίᾳ τῶν καλῶν τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις στέργοντες βίον. ὥσπερ οὖν οἱ δουλεύσαντες, ὅταν ἐλευθερωθῶσιν, ἃ πάλαι τοῖς δεσπόταις ἔπραττον ὑπηρετοῦντες, ταῦτα πράττουσιν αὑτοῖς καὶ δι’ αὑτούς, οὕτως ἡ ψυχὴ νῦν μὲν τρέφει τὸ σῶμα πολλοῖς πόνοις καὶ ἀσχολίαις, εἰ δ’ ἀπαλλαγείη τῆς λατρείας, αὑτὴν δήπουθεν ἐλευθέραν γενομένην θρέψει καὶ βιώσεται, εἰς αὑτὴν ὁρῶσα καὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν, οὐδενὸς περισπῶντος οὐδ’ ἀπάγοντος.”

Τὰ μὲν οὖν ῥηθέντα περὶ τροφῆς, ὦ Νίκαρχε, ταῦτ’ ἦν.

Ἔτι δὲ τοῦ Σόλωνος λέγοντος εἰσῆλθε Γόργος ὁ Περιάνδρου ἀδελφός· ἐτύγχανε γὰρ εἰς [d] Ταίναρον ἀπεσταλμένος ἔκ τινων χρησμῶν, τῷ Ποσειδῶνι θυσίαν καὶ θεωρίαν ἀπάγων. ἀσπασαμένων δ’ αὐτὸν ἡμῶν καὶ τοῦ Περιάνδρου προσαγαγομένου καὶ φιλήσαντος καθίσας παρ’ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης ἀπήγγειλεν ἅττα δὴ πρὸς μόνον ἐκεῖνον, ὁ δ’ ἠκροᾶτο, πολλὰ πάσχοντι πρὸς τὸν λόγον ὅμοιος ὤν. τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἀχθόμενος τὰ δ’ ἀγανακτῶν ἐφαίνετο, πολλάκις δ’ ἀπιστῶν, εἶτα θαυμάζων· τέλος δὲ γελάσας πρὸς ἡμᾶς “βούλομαι μέν,” ἔφη, “πρὸς τὸ παρὸν φράσαι τὸ προσηγγελμένον· [e] ὀκνῶ δ’ ἀκούσας Θαλέω ποτ’ εἰπόντος ὅτι δεῖ τὰ μὲν εἰκότα λέγειν, τὰ δ’ ἀμήχανα σιωπᾶν.”

Ὑπολαβὼν οὖν ὁ Βίας “ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτ’,” ἔφη, “Θαλέω τὸ σοφόν ἐστιν, ὅτι δεῖ τοῖς μὲν ἐχθροῖς καὶ περὶ τῶν πιστῶν ἀπιστεῖν, τοῖς δὲ φίλοις καὶ τὰ ἄπιστα πιστεύειν, ἐχθροὺς μέν, ἔγωγ’ ἡγοῦμαι, τοὺς πονηροὺς καὶ ἀνοήτους, φίλους δὲ τοὺς χρηστοὺς καὶ φρονίμους αὐτοῦ καλοῦντος. οὐκοῦν,” ἔφη, “λεκτέον εἰς ἅπαντας, ὦ Γόργε, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀκτέον ἐπὶ τοὺς νέους τούτους διθυράμβους ὑπερφθεγγόμενον ὃν ἥκεις λόγον ἡμῖν κομίζων.”

Ἔφη τοίνυν Γόργος ὅτι, τῆς θυσίας ἐφ’ ἡμέρας τρεῖς συντελεσθείσης ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τῇ [f] τελευταίᾳ παννυχίδος οὔσης καὶ χορείας τινὸς καὶ παιδιᾶς παρὰ τὸν αἰγιαλόν, ἡ μὲν σελήνη κατέλαμπεν εἰς τὴν θάλατταν, οὐκ ὄντος δὲ πνεύματος ἀλλὰ νηνεμίας καὶ γαλήνης, πόρρωθεν ἀφεωρᾶτο φρίκη κατιοῦσα παρὰ τὴν ἄκραν, ἀφρόν τινα καὶ ψόφον ἄγουσα τῷ ῥοθίῳ περὶ αὐτὴν πολύν, ὥστε πάντας ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον οἷ προσώκελλε καταδραμεῖν θαυμάσαντας. πρὶν δ’ εἰκάσαι τὸ προσφερόμενον ὑπὸ τάχους, δελφῖνες ὤφθησαν, οἱ μὲν ἀθρόοι πέριξ κυκλοῦντες, οἱ δ’ ὑφηγούμενοι τοῦ αἰγιαλοῦ πρὸς τὸ λειότατον, ἄλλοι δ’ ἐξόπισθεν, οἷον περιέποντες. [161] [a] ἐν μέσῳ δ’ ἀνεῖχεν ὑπὲρ τῆς θαλάττης ὄγκος ἀσαφὴς καὶ ἄσημος ὀχουμένου σώματος, μέχρι οὗ συναγαγόντες εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ συνεποκείλαντες ἐξέθηκαν ἐπὶ γῆν ἄνθρωπον ἔμπνουν καὶ κινούμενον, αὐτοὶ δὲ πάλιν πρὸς τὴν ἄκραν ἀναφερόμενοι μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον ἐξήλλοντο, παίζοντες ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς τινος ὡς ἔοικε καὶ σκιρτῶντες. “ἡμῶν δ’,” ὁ Γόργος ἔφη, “πολλοὶ μὲν διαταραχθέντες ἔφυγον ἀπὸ τῆς θαλάττης, ὀλίγοι δὲ μετ’ ἐμοῦ θαρρήσαντες προσελθεῖν ἐγνώρισαν Ἀρίονα τὸν κιθαρῳδόν, [b] αὐτὸν τοὔνομα φθεγγόμενον ἑαυτοῦ, καὶ τῇ στολῇ καταφανῆ γενόμενον· τὸν γὰρ ἐναγώνιον ἐτύγχανεν ἀμπεχόμενος κόσμον, ᾧ κιθαρῳδῶν ἐχρήσατο.

“Κομίσαντες οὖν ἐπὶ σκηνὴν αὐτόν, ὡς οὐδὲν εἶχε κακὸν ἀλλ’ ἢ διὰ τάχος καὶ ῥοῖζον ἐφαίνετο τῆς φορᾶς ἐκλελυμένος καὶ κεκμηκώς, ἠκούσαμεν λόγον ἄπιστον ἅπασι πλὴν ἡμῶν τῶν θεασαμένων τὸ τέλος. ἔλεγε γὰρ Ἀρίων ὡς πάλαι μὲν ἐγνωκὼς ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἀπαίρειν, Περιάνδρου δὲ γράψαντος αὐτῷ προθυμότερος γενόμενος ὁλκάδος Κορινθίας παραφανείσης εὐθὺς ἐπιβὰς ἀναχθείη, μετρίῳ δὲ πνεύματι χρωμένων ἡμέρας τρεῖς αἴσθοιτο τοὺς [c] ναύτας ἐπιβουλεύοντας ἀνελεῖν αὐτόν, εἶτα καὶ παρὰ τοῦ κυβερνήτου πύθοιτο κρύφα μηνύσαντος ὡς τῇ νυκτὶ τοῦτο δρᾶν αὐτοῖς εἴη δεδογμένον. ἔρημος οὖν ὢν βοηθείας καὶ ἀπορῶν ὁρμῇ τινι χρήσαιτο δαιμονίῳ τὸ μὲν σῶμα κοσμῆσαι καὶ λαβεῖν ἐντάφιον αὑτῷ τὸν ἐναγώνιον ἔτι ζῶν κόσμον, ἐπᾷσαι δὲ τῷ βίῳ τελευτῶν καὶ μὴ γενέσθαι κατὰ τοῦτο τῶν κύκνων ἀγεννέστερος. ἐσκευασμένος οὖν καὶ προειπὼν ὅτι προθυμία τις αὐτὸν ἔχοι τῶν νόμων διελθεῖν τὸν Πυθικὸν ὑπὲρ σωτηρίας αὑτοῦ καὶ τῆς νεὼς καὶ τῶν ἐμπλεόντων, [d] καταστὰς παρὰ τὸν τοῖχον ἐν πρύμνῃ καί τινα θεῶν πελαγίων ἀνάκλησιν προανακρουσάμενος ᾄδοι τὸν νόμον. καὶ ὅσον οὔπω μεσοῦντος αὐτοῦ καταδύοιτο μὲν ὁ ἥλιος εἰς τὴν θάλατταν, ἀναφαίνοιτο δ’ ἡ Πελοπόννησος. οὐκέτ’ οὖν τῶν ναυτῶν τὴν νύκτα περιμενόντων ἀλλὰ χωρούντων ἐπὶ τὸν φόνον, ἰδὼν ξίφη γεγυμνωμένα καὶ παρακαλυπτόμενον ἤδη τὸν κυβερνήτην, ἀναδραμὼν ῥίψειεν ἑαυτὸν ὡς δυνατὸν ἦν μάλιστα πόρρω τῆς ὁλκάδος. πρὶν δ’ ὅλον καταδῦναι τὸ σῶμα δελφίνων ὑποδραμόντων ἀναφέροιτο, μεστὸς ὢν ἀπορίας καὶ ἀγνοίας καὶ ταραχῆς τὸ πρῶτον· ἐπεὶ δὲ ῥᾳστώνη τῆς ὀχήσεως ἦν, καὶ πολλοὺς ἑώρα ἀθροιζομένους [e] περὶ αὐτὸν εὐμενῶς καὶ διαδεχομένους ὡς ἀναγκαῖον ἐν μέρει λειτούργημα καὶ προσῆκον πᾶσιν, ἡ δ’ ὁλκὰς ἀπολειφθεῖσα πόρρω τοῦ τάχους αἴσθησιν παρεῖχε, μήτε τοσοῦτον ἔφη δέους πρὸς θάνατον αὐτῷ μήτ’ ἐπιθυμίας τοῦ ζῆν ὅσον φιλοτιμίας ἐγγενέσθαι πρὸς τὴν σωτηρίαν, ὡς θεοφιλὴς ἀνὴρ φανείη καὶ λάβοι περὶ θεῶν δόξαν βέβαιον. ἅμα δὲ καθορῶν τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀστέρων περίπλεων καὶ τὴν σελήνην ἀνίσχουσαν εὐφεγγῆ καὶ καθαράν, [f] ἑστώσης δὲ πάντῃ τῆς θαλάττης ἀκύμονος ὥσπερ τρίβον ἀνασχιζόμενον τῷ δρόμῳ, διανοεῖσθαι πρὸς αὑτὸν ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν εἷς ὁ τῆς Δίκης ὀφθαλμός, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι τούτοις ἐπισκοπεῖ κύκλῳ ὁ θεὸς τὰ πραττόμενα περὶ γῆν τε καὶ θάλατταν. τούτοις δὲ δὴ τοῖς λογισμοῖς ἔφη τὸ κάμνον αὐτῷ καὶ βαρυνόμενον ἤδη τοῦ σώματος ἀναφέρεσθαι, καὶ τέλος ἐπεὶ τῆς ἄκρας ἀπαντώσης ἀποτόμου καὶ ὑψηλῆς εὖ πως φυλαξάμενοι καὶ κάμψαντες ἐν χρῷ παρενήχοντο τῆς γῆς ὥσπερ εἰς λιμένα σκάφος ἀσφαλῶς [162] [a] κατάγοντες, παντάπασιν αἰσθέσθαι θεοῦ κυβερνήσει γεγονέναι τὴν κομιδήν.

“Ταῦθ’,” ὁ Γόργος ἔφη, “τοῦ Ἀρίονος εἰπόντος, ἠρόμην αὐτὸν ὅποι τὴν ναῦν οἴεται κατασχήσειν. ὁ δὲ πάντως μὲν εἰς Κόρινθον, πολὺ μέντοι καθυστερεῖν· αὐτὸν γὰρ ἑσπέρας ἐκπεσόντα πεντακοσίων οὐ μεῖον οἴεσθαι σταδίων δρόμον κομισθῆναι, καὶ γαλήνην εὐθὺς κατασχεῖν.” οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἑαυτὸν ὁ Γόργος ἔφη πυθόμενον τοῦ τε ναυκλήρου τοὔνομα καὶ τοῦ κυβερνήτου καὶ τῆς νεὼς τὸ παράσημον ἐκπέμψαι πλοῖα καὶ στρατιώτας ἐπὶ τὰς κατάρσεις [b] παραφυλάξοντας· τὸν δ’ Ἀρίονα μετ’ αὐτοῦ κομίζειν ἀποκεκρυμμένον, ὅπως μὴ προαισθόμενοι τὴν σωτηρίαν διαφύγοιεν· ὄντως οὖν ἐοικέναι θείᾳ τύχῃ τὸ πρᾶγμα· παρεῖναι γὰρ αὐτοὺς ἅμα δεῦρο καὶ πυνθάνεσθαι τῆς νεὼς κεκρατημένης ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν συνειλῆφθαι τοὺς ἐμπόρους καὶ ναύτας.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Περίανδρος ἐκέλευσεν εὐθὺς ἐξαναστάντα τὸν Γόργον εἰς φυλακὴν ἀποθέσθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας οὗ μηδεὶς αὐτοῖς πρόσεισι μηδὲ φράσει τὸν Ἀρίονα σεσωσμένον.

Ὁ δ’ Αἴσωπος “ἀλλ’ ὑμεῖς,” ἔφη, “τοὺς ἐμοὺς χλευάζετε κολοιοὺς καὶ κόρακας εἰ διαλέγονται· δελφῖνες δὲ τοιαῦτα νεανιεύονται;”

Κἀγὼ πρὸς αὐτόν, “ἄλλο τι λέγωμεν,” ἔφην, [c] “ὦ Αἴσωπε· τούτῳ δὲ τῷ λόγῳ πιστευομένῳ καὶ γραφομένῳ παρ’ ἡμῖν πλέον ἢ χίλι’ ἔτη διαγέγονεν καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν Ἰνοῦς καὶ Ἀθάμαντος χρόνων.”

Ὁ δὲ Σόλων ὑπολαβών “ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μέν, ὦ Διόκλεις, ἐγγὺς θεῶν ἔστω καὶ ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς· ἀνθρώπινον δὲ καὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς τὸ τοῦ Ἡσιόδου πάθος· ἀκήκοας γὰρ ἴσως τὸν λόγον.”

“Οὐκ ἔγωγ’,” εἶπον.

“Ἀλλὰ μὴν ἄξιον πυθέσθαι. Μιλησίου γάρ, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἀνδρός, ᾧ ξενίας ἐκοινώνει ὁ Ἡσίοδος [d] καὶ διαίτης ἐν Λοκροῖς, τῇ τοῦ ξένου θυγατρὶ κρύφα συγγενομένου καὶ φωραθέντος ὑποψίαν ἔσχεν ὡς γνοὺς ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς καὶ συνεπικρύψας τὸ ἀδίκημα, μηδενὸς ὢν αἴτιος, ὀργῆς δὲ καιρῷ καὶ διαβολῆς περιπεσὼν ἀδίκως. ἀπέκτειναν γὰρ αὐτὸν οἱ τῆς παιδίσκης ἀδελφοὶ περὶ τὸ Λοκρικὸν Νέμειον ἐνεδρεύσαντες, καὶ μετ’ αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀκόλουθον, ᾧ Τρωίλος ἦν ὄνομα. τῶν δὲ σωμάτων εἰς τὴν θάλατταν ὠσθέντων τὸ μὲν τοῦ Τρωίλου, εἰς τὸν Δάφνον ποταμὸν ἔξω φορούμενον, ἐπεσχέθη περικλύστῳ χοιράδι μικρὸν ὑπὲρ τὴν θάλατταν ἀνεχούσῃ· καὶ μέχρι νῦν Τρωίλος ἡ χοιρὰς καλεῖται· [e] τοῦ δ’ Ἡσιόδου τὸν νεκρὸν εὐθὺς ἀπὸ γῆς ὑπολαβοῦσα δελφίνων ἀγέλη πρὸς τὸ Ῥίον κατὰ τὴν Μολύκρειαν ἐκόμιζε. ἐτύγχανε δὲ Λοκροῖς ἡ τῶν Ῥίων καθεστῶσα θυσία καὶ πανήγυρις, ἣν ἄγουσιν ἔτι νῦν ἐπιφανῶς περὶ τὸν τόπον ἐκεῖνον. ὡς δ’ ὤφθη προσφερόμενον τὸ σῶμα, θαυμάσαντες ὡς εἰκὸς ἐπὶ τὴν ἀκτὴν κατέδραμον, καὶ γνωρίσαντες ἔτι πρόσφατον τὸν νεκρὸν ἅπαντα δεύτερα τοῦ ζητεῖν τὸν φόνον ἐποιοῦντο διὰ τὴν δόξαν τοῦ Ἡσιόδου. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ταχέως ἔπραξαν, εὑρόντες τοὺς φονεῖς· αὐτούς τε γὰρ κατεπόντισαν ζῶντας καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν κατέσκαψαν. ἐτάφη δ’ ὁ Ἡσίοδος πρὸς τῷ Νεμείῳ· τὸν δὲ τάφον οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν ξένων οὐκ ἴσασιν, ἀλλ’ ἀποκέκρυπται ζητούμενος ὑπ’ [f] Ὀρχομενίων, ὥς φασι, βουλομένων κατὰ χρησμὸν ἀνελέσθαι τὰ λείψανα καὶ θάψαι παρ’ αὑτοῖς. εἴπερ οὖν οὕτως ἔχουσιν οἰκείως καὶ φιλανθρώπως πρὸς τοὺς ἀποθανόντας, ἔτι μᾶλλον εἰκός ἐστι τοῖς ζῶσι βοηθεῖν, καὶ μάλιστα κηληθέντας αὐλοῖς ἤ τισι μέλεσι. τουτὶ γὰρ ἤδη πάντες ἴσμεν, ὅτι μουσικῇ τὰ ζῷα ταῦτα χαίρει καὶ διώκει, καὶ παρανήχεται τοῖς ἐλαυνομένοις πρὸς ᾠδὴν καὶ αὐλὸν ἐν εὐδίᾳ πορείαις τερπόμενα. χαίρει δὲ [163] [a] καὶ νήξεσι παίδων καὶ κολύμβοις ἁμιλλᾶται. διὸ καὶ νόμος ἀδείας ἄγραφός ἐστιν αὐτοῖς· θηρᾷ γὰρ οὐδεὶς οὔδε λυμαίνεται, πλὴν ὅταν ἐν δικτύοις γενόμενοι κακουργῶσι περὶ τὴν ἄγραν, πληγαῖς κολάζονται καθάπερ παῖδες ἁμαρτάνοντες. μέμνημαι δὲ καὶ παρὰ Λεσβίων ἀνδρῶν ἀκούσας σωτηρίαν τινὰ κόρης ὑπὸ δελφῖνος ἐκ θαλάττης γενέσθαι· ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ ἀκριβῶ τἄλλα, ὁ δὲ Πιττακὸς ἐπεὶ γιγνώσκει, δίκαιός ἐστι περὶ τούτων διελθεῖν.”

Ἔφη τοίνυν ὁ Πιττακὸς ἔνδοξον εἶναι καὶ μνημονευόμενον ὑπὸ πολλῶν τὸν λόγον. χρησμοῦ γὰρ γενομένου τοῖς οἰκίζουσι Λέσβον, ὅταν ἕρματι [b] πλέοντες προστύχωσιν ὃ καλεῖται Μεσόγειον, τότ’ ἐνταῦθα Ποσειδῶνι μὲν ταῦρον Ἀμφιτρίτῃ δὲ καὶ Νηρηίσι ζῶσαν καθεῖναι παρθένον· ὄντων οὖν ἀρχηγετῶν ἑπτὰ καὶ βασιλέων, ὀγδόου δὲ τοῦ Ἐχελάου πυθοχρήστου τῆς ἀποικίας ἡγεμόνος, οὗτος μὲν ἠίθεος ἦν ἔτι, τῶν δ’ ἑπτὰ κληρουμένων, ὅσοις ἄγαμοι παῖδες ἦσαν, καταλαμβάνει θυγατέρα Σμινθέως ὁ κλῆρος. ἣν ἐσθῆτι καὶ χρυσῷ κοσμήσαντες ὡς ἐγένοντο κατὰ τὸν τόπον, ἔμελλον εὐξάμενοι καθήσειν. ἔτυχε δέ τις ἐρῶν αὐτῆς τῶν συμπλεόντων, οὐκ ἀγεννὴς ὡς ἔοικε νεανίας, [c] οὗ καὶ τοὔνομα διαμνημονεύουσιν Ἔναλον. οὗτος ἀμήχανόν τινα τοῦ βοηθεῖν τῇ παρθένῳ προθυμίαν ἐν τῷ τότε πάθει λαβὼν παρὰ τὸν καιρὸν ὥρμησε καὶ περιπλακεὶς ὁμοῦ συγκαθῆκεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὴν θάλατταν. εὐθὺς μὲν οὖν φήμη τις οὐκ ἔχουσα τὸ βέβαιον, ἄλλως δὲ πείθουσα πολλοὺς ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ διηνέχθη περὶ σωτηρίας αὐτῶν καὶ κομιδῆς. ὑστέρῳ δὲ χρόνῳ τὸν Ἔναλόν φασιν ἐν Λέσβῳ φανῆναι καὶ λέγειν ὡς ὑπὸ δελφίνων φορητοὶ διὰ θαλάττης ἐκπέσοιεν ἀβλαβεῖς εἰς τὴν ἤπειρον, ἔτι δ’ ἄλλα θειότερα τούτων ἐκπλήττοντα καὶ κηλοῦντα τοὺς πολλοὺς διηγεῖσθαι, [d] πάντων δὲ πίστιν ἔργῳ παρασχεῖν. κύματος γὰρ ἠλιβάτου περὶ τὴν νῆσον αἰρομένου καὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων δεδιότων, ἀπαντῆσαι μόνον τῇ θαλάττῃ, καὶ ἕπεσθαι πολύποδας αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος· ὧν τοῦ μεγίστου λίθον κομίζοντος λαβεῖν τὸν Ἔναλον καὶ ἀναθεῖναι, καὶ τοῦτον Ἔναλον καλοῦμεν. “Καθόλου δ’,” εἶπεν, “εἴ τις εἰδείη διαφορὰν ἀδυνάτου καὶ ἀσυνήθους καὶ παραλόγου καὶ παραδόξου, μάλιστ’ ἄν, ὦ Χίλων, καὶ μήτε πιστεύων ὡς ἔτυχε μήτ’ ἀπιστῶν, τὸ ‘μηδὲν ἄγαν’ ὡς σὺ προσέταξας διαφυλάττοι.”

Μετὰ δὲ τοῦτον ὁ Ἀνάχαρσις εἶπεν ὅτι τοῦ Θαλέω καλῶς ὑπολαμβάνοντος ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι [e] τοῖς κυριωτάτοις μέρεσι τοῦ κόσμου καὶ μεγίστοις ψυχήν, οὐκ ἄξιόν ἐστι θαυμάζειν εἰ τὰ κάλλιστα περαίνεται θεοῦ γνώμῃ. “ψυχῆς γὰρ ὄργανον τὸ σῶμα, θεοῦ δ’ ἡ ψυχή· καὶ καθάπερ σῶμα πολλὰς μὲν ἐξ αὑτοῦ κινήσεις ἔχει, τὰς δὲ πλείστας καὶ καλλίστας ὑπὸ ψυχῆς, οὕτως αὖ πάλιν ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ μὲν ὑφ’ ἑαυτῆς κινουμένη πράττει, τὰ δὲ τῷ θεῷ παρέχει χρωμένῳ κατευθύνειν καὶ τρέπειν ἑαυτὴν ᾗ βούλοιτο, πάντων ὀργάνων εὐτρεπέστατον οὖσα. δεινὸν γάρ,” εἶπεν, “εἰ πῦρ μὲν ὄργανόν ἐστι θεοῦ καὶ πνεῦμα καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ νέφη καὶ [f] ὄμβροι, δι’ ὧν πολλὰ μὲν σῴζει τε καὶ τρέφει, πολλὰ δ’ ἀπόλλυσι καὶ ἀναιρεῖ, ζῴοις δὲ χρῆται πρὸς οὐδὲν ἁπλῶς οὐδέπω τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ γιγνομένων. ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον εἰκὸς ἐξηρτημένα τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ δυνάμεως ὑπουργεῖν, καὶ συμπαθεῖν ταῖς τοῦ θεοῦ κινήσεσιν ἢ Σκύθαις τόξα λύραι δ’ Ἕλλησι καὶ αὐλοὶ συμπαθοῦσιν.”

Ἐπὶ δὲ τούτοις ὁ ποιητὴς Χερσίας ἄλλων τε σωθέντων ἀνελπίστως ἐμέμνητο καὶ Κυψέλου τοῦ Περιάνδρου πατρός, ὃν οἱ πεμφθέντες ἀνελεῖν νεογνὸν ὄντα προσμειδιάσαντ’ αὐτοῖς ἀπετράποντο· καὶ πάλιν μετανοήσαντες ἐζήτουν καὶ οὐχ εὗρον [164] [a] εἰς κυψέλην ὑπὸ τῆς μητρὸς ἀποτεθέντα. διὸ καὶ τὸν οἶκον ἐν Δελφοῖς κατεσκεύασεν ὁ Κύψελος, ὥσπερ θεοῦ τότε τὸν κλαυθμυρισμὸν ἐπισχόντος, ὅπως διαλάθοι τοὺς ζητοῦντας.

Καὶ ὁ Πιττακὸς προσαγορεύσας τὸν Περίανδρον

“εὖ γ’,” ἔφη, “Περίανδρε, Χερσίας ἐποίησε μνησθεὶς τοῦ οἴκου· πολλάκις γὰρ ἐβουλόμην ἐρέσθαι σε τῶν βατράχων τὴν αἰτίαν ἐκείνων, τί βούλονται περὶ τὸν πυθμένα τοῦ φοίνικος ἐντετορευμένοι τοσοῦτοι, καὶ τίνα πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἢ τὸν ἀναθέντα λόγον ἔχουσι.”

Τοῦ δὲ Περιάνδρου τὸν Χερσίαν ἐρωτᾶν κελεύσαντος, εἰδέναι γὰρ ἐκεῖνον καὶ παρεῖναι τῷ Κυψέλῳ καθιεροῦντι τὸν οἶκον, ὁ Χερσίας μειδιάσας “ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἄν,” ἔφη, “φράσαιμι πρότερον ἢ πυθέσθαι παρὰ τούτων ὅ τι βούλεται τὸ ‘μηδὲν ἄγαν’ αὐτοῖς καὶ τὸ ‘γνῶθι σαυτόν,’ καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ πολλοὺς μὲν ἀγάμους πολλοὺς δ’ ἀπίστους ἐνίους δὲ καὶ ἀφώνους πεποιηκὸς ‘ἐγγύα πάρα δ’ ἄτα.’”

“Τί δ’,” εἶπεν ὁ Πιττακός, “ἡμῶν δέῃ ταῦτα φραζόντων; πάλαι γὰρ Αἰσώπου λόγον εἰς ἕκαστον ὡς ἔοικε τούτων συντεθεικότος ἐπαινεῖς.”

Καὶ ὁ Αἴσωπος, “ὅταν γε παίζῃ πρὸς ἐμὲ Χερσίας,” εἶπε· “σπουδάζων δὲ τούτων Ὅμηρον εὑρετὴν ἀποδείκνυσι καί φησι τὸν μὲν Ἕκτορα [b] γιγνώσκειν ἑαυτόν· τοῖς γὰρ ἄλλοις ἐπιτιθέμενος

Αἴαντος ἀλέεινε μάχην Τελαμωνιάδαο·

τὸν δ’ Ὀδυσσέα τοῦ ‘μηδὲν ἄγαν’ ἐπαινέτην τῷ Διομήδει παρακελεύεσθαι

Τυδείδη, μήτ’ ἄρ’ με μάλ’ αἴνεε μήτε τι νείκει.

τὴν δ’ ἐγγύην οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι λοιδορεῖν αὐτὸν ὡς πρᾶγμα δείλαιον καὶ μάταιον οἴονται λέγοντα

δειλαί τοι δειλῶν γε καὶ ἐγγύαι ἐγγυάασθαι,

Χερσίας δ’ οὑτοσί φησι τὴν Ἄτην ὑπὸ τοῦ Διὸς ῥιφῆναι τῇ ἐγγύῃ παραγιγνομένην ἣν ἐγγυησάμενος [c] ὁ Ζεὺς ἐσφάλη περὶ τῆς τοῦ Ἡρακλέους γενέσεως.”

Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Σόλων “οὐκοῦν,” ἔφη, “καὶ τῷ σοφωτάτῳ πιστευτέον Ὁμήρῳ

νὺξ δ’ ἤδη τελέθει· ἀγαθὸν καὶ νυκτὶ πιθέσθαι.

σπείσαντες οὖν Μούσαις καὶ Ποσειδῶνι καὶ Ἀμφιτρίτῃ διαλύωμεν εἰ δοκεῖ τὸ συμπόσιον.”

Τοῦτ’ ἔσχεν, ὦ Νίκαρχε, πέρας ἡ τότε συνουσία.

De superstitione

ΠΕΡΙ ΔΕΙΣΙΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΑΣ

[164] Τῆς περὶ θεῶν ἀμαθίας καὶ ἀγνοίας εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς δίχα ῥυείσης τὸ μὲν ὥσπερ ἐν χωρίοις σκληροῖς τοῖς ἀντιτύποις ἤθεσι τὴν ἀθεότητα, τὸ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν ὑγροῖς τοῖς ἁπαλοῖς τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν πεποίηκεν. ἅπασα μὲν οὖν κρίσις ψευδής, ἄλλως τε κἂν ᾖ περὶ ταῦτα, μοχθηρόν· ᾗ δὲ καὶ πάθος πρόσεστι, μοχθηρότατον. πᾶν γὰρ πάθος [f] ἔοικε ἀπάτη φλεγμαίνουσα εἶναι· καὶ καθάπερ αἱ μετὰ τραύματος ἐκβολαὶ τῶν ἄρθρων, οὕτως αἱ μετὰ πάθους διαστροφαὶ τῆς ψυχῆς χαλεπώτεραι.

Ἀτόμους τις οἴεται καὶ κενὸν ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὅλων· ψευδὴς ἡ ὑπόληψις, ἀλλ’ ἕλκος οὐ ποιεῖ οὐδὲ σφυγμὸν οὐδ’ ὀδύνην ταράττουσαν.

Ὑπολαμβάνει τις τὸν πλοῦτον ἀγαθὸν εἶναι [165] [a] μέγιστον· τοῦτο τὸ ψεῦδος ἰὸν ἔχει, νέμεται τὴν ψυχήν, ἐξίστησιν, οὐκ ἐᾷ καθεύδειν, οἴστρων ἐμπίπλησιν, ὠθεῖ κατὰ πετρῶν, ἄγχει, τὴν παρρησίαν ἀφαιρεῖται.

Πάλιν οἴονταί τινες εἶναι σῶμα τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν κακίαν· αἰσχρὸν ἴσως τὸ ἀγνόημα, θρήνων δὲ καὶ ὀδυρμῶν οὐκ ἄξιον· ἀλλ’ αἵτινές εἰσι τοιαῦται κρίσεις καὶ ὑπολήψεις

ὦ τλῆμον ἀρετή, λόγος ἄρ’ ἦσθ’· ἐγὼ δέ σε

ὡς ἔργον ἤσκουν

ἀφεὶς τὴν πλουτοποιὸν ἀδικίαν καὶ τὴν γόνιμον ἁπάσης ἡδονῆς ἀκολασίαν, ταύτας ἄξιόν ἐστιν [b] οἰκτίρειν ὁμοῦ καὶ δυσχεραίνειν, ὅτι πολλὰ νοσήματα καὶ πάθη καθάπερ εὐλὰς καὶ σκώληκας ἐντίκτουσι ταῖς ψυχαῖς παροῦσαι.

Οὐκοῦν καὶ περὶ ὧν ὁ λόγος, ἡ μὲν ἀθεότης κρίσις οὖσα φαύλη τοῦ μηδὲν εἶναι μακάριον καὶ ἄφθαρτον εἰς ἀπάθειάν τινα δοκεῖ τῇ ἀπιστίᾳ τοῦ θείου περιφέρειν, καὶ τέλος ἐστὶν αὐτῇ τοῦ μὴ νομίζειν θεοὺς τὸ μὴ φοβεῖσθαι· τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν δὲ μηνύει καὶ τοὔνομα δόξαν ἐμπαθῆ καὶ δέους ποιητικὴν ὑπόληψιν οὖσαν ἐκταπεινοῦντος καὶ συντρίβοντος τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οἰόμενον μὲν εἶναι θεούς, εἶναι δὲ λυπηροὺς καὶ βλαβερούς. ἔοικε [c] γὰρ ὁ μὲν ἄθεος ἀκίνητος εἶναι πρὸς τὸ θεῖον, ὁ δὲ δεισιδαίμων κινούμενος ὡς οὐ προσήκει διαστρέφεσθαι. ἡ γὰρ ἄγνοια τῷ μὲν ἀπιστίαν τοῦ ὠφελοῦντος ἐμπεποίηκε, τῷ δὲ καὶ δόξαν ὅτι βλάπτει προστέθεικεν. ὅθεν ἡ μὲν ἀθεότης λόγος ἐστὶ διεψευσμένος, ἡ δὲ δεισιδαιμονία πάθος ἐκ λόγου ψευδοῦς ἐγγεγενημένον.

Αἰσχρὰ μὲν δὴ πάντα τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς νοσήματα καὶ πάθη, τὸ δὲ γαῦρον ἐνίοις ὅμως καὶ ὑψηλὸν καὶ διηρμένον ἔνεστιν ὑπὸ κουφότητος, δραστηρίου δ’ ὁρμῆς οὐδὲν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἀπεστέρηται. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ κοινὸν ἔγκλημα παντὸς πάθους ἐστίν, ὅτι ταῖς πρακτικαῖς ὁρμαῖς ἐκβιαζόμενα [d] κατεπείγει καὶ συντείνει τὸν λογισμόν. μόνος δ’ ὁ φόβος, οὐχ ἧττον ὢν τόλμης ἐνδεὴς ἢ λογισμοῦ, ἄπρακτον ἔχει καὶ ἄπορον καὶ ἀμήχανον τὸ ἀλόγιστον. ᾗ καὶ δεῖμα καὶ τάρβος αὐτοῦ τὸ συνδέον ὁμοῦ τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ ταράττον ὠνόμασται.

Φόβων δὲ πάντων ἀπρακτότατος καὶ ἀπορώτατος ὁ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας. οὐ φοβεῖται θάλατταν ὁ μὴ πλέων οὐδὲ πόλεμον ὁ μὴ στρατευόμενος, οὐδὲ λῃστὰς ὁ οἰκουρῶν οὐδὲ συκοφάντην ὁ πένης οὐδὲ φθόνον ὁ ἰδιώτης, οὐδὲ σεισμὸν ὁ ἐν Γαλάταις οὐδὲ κεραυνὸν ὁ ἐν Αἰθίοψιν· ὁ δὲ θεοὺς δεδιὼς πάντα [e] δέδιε, γῆν θάλατταν ἀέρα οὐρανὸν σκότος φῶς κληδόνα σιωπὴν ὄνειρον. οἱ δοῦλοι τῶν δεσποτῶν ἐπιλανθάνονται καθεύδοντες, τοῖς πεδήταις ἐπελαφρύνει τὸν δεσμὸν ὁ ὕπνος, φλεγμοναὶ περὶ τραύματα καὶ νομαὶ σαρκὸς θηριώδεις καὶ περιωδυνίαι κοιμωμένων ἀφίστανται·

ὦ φίλον ὕπνου θέλγητρον ἐπίκουρον νόσου,

ὡς ἡδύ μοι προσῆλθες ἐν δέοντί γε.

τοῦτ’ οὐ δίδωσιν εἰπεῖν ἡ δεισιδαιμονία (μόνη γὰρ οὐ σπένδεται πρὸς τὸν ὕπνον, οὐδὲ τῇ ψυχῇ ποτε γοῦν δίδωσιν ἀναπνεῦσαι καὶ ἀναθαρρῆσαι τὰς πικρὰς [f] καὶ βαρείας περὶ τοῦ θεοῦ δόξας ἀπωσαμένῃ), ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν ἀσεβῶν χώρῳ τῷ ὕπνῳ τῶν δεισιδαιμόνων εἴδωλα φρικώδη καὶ τεράστια φάσματα καὶ ποινάς τινας ἐγείρουσα καὶ στροβοῦσα τὴν ἀθλίαν ψυχὴν ἐκδιώκει τοῖς ὀνείροις ἐκ τῶν ὕπνων, μαστιζομένην καὶ κολαζομένην αὐτὴν ὑφ’ αὑτῆς ὡς ὑφ’ ἑτέρου, καὶ δεινὰ προστάγματα καὶ ἀλλόκοτα λαμβάνουσαν. εἶτ’ ἐξαναστάντες οὐ κατεφρόνησαν οὐδὲ κατεγέλασαν, οὐδ’ ᾔσθοντο ὅτι τῶν ταραξάντων οὐδὲν ἦν ἀληθινόν, ἀλλὰ σκιὰν [166] [a] φεύγοντες ἀπάτης οὐδὲν κακὸν ἐχούσης ὕπαρ ἐξαπατῶσιν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ δαπανῶσι καὶ ταράττουσιν, εἰς ἀγύρτας καὶ γόητας ἐμπεσόντες λέγοντας

ἀλλ’ εἴτ’ ἔνυπνον φάντασμα φοβῇ,

χθονίας θ’ Ἑκάτης κῶμον ἐδέξω,

τὴν περιμάκτριαν κάλει γραῦν καὶ βάπτισον σεαυτὸν εἰς θάλατταν καὶ καθίσας ἐν τῇ γῇ διημέρευσον.

ὦ βάρβαρ’ ἐξευρόντες Ἕλληνες κακά

τῇ δεισιδαιμονίᾳ, πηλώσεις καταβορβορώσεις βαπτισμούς, ῥίψεις ἐπὶ πρόσωπον, αἰσχρὰς προκαθίσεις, ἀλλοκότους προσκυνήσεις. δικαίῳ τῷ στόματι τοὺς κιθαρῳδοὺς ἐκέλευον ᾄδειν οἱ τὴν [b] νόμιμον μουσικὴν σῴζειν δοκοῦντες· ἡμεῖς δὲ τοῖς θεοῖς ἀξιοῦμεν ὀρθῷ τῷ στόματι καὶ δικαίῳ προσεύχεσθαι, καὶ μὴ τὴν ἐπὶ τῶν σπλάγχνων μὲν γλῶτταν εἰ καθαρὰ καὶ ὀρθὴ σκοπεῖν, τὴν δ’ ἑαυτῶν διαστρέφοντας καὶ μολύνοντας ἀτόποις ὀνόμασι καὶ ῥήμασι βαρβαρικοῖς καταισχύνειν καὶ παρανομεῖν τὸ θεῖον καὶ πάτριον ἀξίωμα τῆς εὐσεβείας.

Ἀλλ’ ὅ γε κωμικὸς οὐκ ἀηδῶς εἴρηκέ που πρὸς τοὺς καταχρυσοῦντας τὰ κλινίδια καὶ καταργυροῦντας

ὅ τι μόνον ἡμῖν προῖκ’ ἔδωκαν οἱ θεοὶ

ὕπνον, τί τοῦτο πολυτελὲς σαυτῷ ποιεῖς;

[c]ἔστι δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὸν δεισιδαίμονα εἰπεῖν, “ὅ τι τὸν ὕπνον οἱ θεοὶ λήθην κακῶν ἔδοσαν ἡμῖν καὶ ἀνάπαυσιν, τί τοῦτο κολαστήριον σαυτῷ ποιεῖς ἐπίμονον καὶ ὀδυνηρόν, τῆς ἀθλίας ψυχῆς εἰς ἄλλον ὕπνον ἀποδρᾶναι μὴ δυναμένης;” ὁ Ἡράκλειτός φησι τοῖς ἐγρηγορόσιν ἕνα καὶ κοινὸν κόσμον εἶναι, τῶν δὲ κοιμωμένων ἕκαστον εἰς ἴδιον ἀναστρέφεσθαι. τῷ δὲ δεισιδαίμονι κοινὸς οὐδείς ἐστι κόσμος· οὔτε γὰρ ἐγρηγορὼς τῷ φρονοῦντι χρῆται οὔτε κοιμώμενος ἀπαλλάττεται τοῦ ταράττοντος, ἀλλ’ ὀνειρώττει μὲν ὁ λογισμός, ἐγρήγορε δ’ ὁ φόβος ἀεί, φυγὴ δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲ μετάστασις.

Ἦν φοβερὸς ἐν Σάμῳ Πολυκράτης τύραννος, ἦν ἐν Κορίνθῳ Περίανδρος, ἀλλ’ οὐδεὶς ἐφοβεῖτο [d] τούτους μεταστὰς εἰς πόλιν ἐλευθέραν καὶ δημοκρατουμένην. ὁ δὲ τὴν τῶν θεῶν ἀρχὴν ὡς τυραννίδα φοβούμενος σκυθρωπὴν καὶ ἀπαραίτητον ποῦ μεταστῇ ποῦ φύγῃ, ποίαν γῆν ἄθεον εὕρῃ, ποίαν θάλατταν; εἰς τί καταδὺς τοῦ κόσμου μέρος καὶ ἀποκρύψας σεαυτόν, ὦ ταλαίπωρε, πιστεύσεις ὅτι τὸν θεὸν ἀποπέφευγας; ἔστι καὶ δούλοις νόμος ἐλευθερίαν ἀπογνοῦσι πρᾶσιν αἰτεῖσθαι καὶ δεσπότην μεταβάλλειν ἐπιεικέστερον· ἡ δὲ δεισιδαιμονία θεῶν ἀλλαγὴν οὐ δίδωσιν, οὐδ’ ἔστιν εὑρεῖν ὃν οὐ φοβήσεται θεὸν ὁ φοβούμενος τοὺς πατρῴους καὶ γενεθλίους, ὁ φρίττων τοὺς σωτῆρας καὶ τοὺς [e] μειλιχίους τρέμων καὶ δεδοικώς, παρ’ ὧν αἰτούμεθα πλοῦτον εὐπορίαν εἰρήνην ὁμόνοιαν ὄρθωσιν λόγων καὶ ἔργων τῶν ἀρίστων.

Εἶθ’ οὗτοι τὸ δουλεύειν ἀτύχημα ἡγοῦνται καὶ λέγουσι

δεινή τις ἀνδρὶ καὶ γυναικὶ συμφορὰ

δούλους γενέσθαι δεσπότας τε δυσχερεῖς

λαβεῖν·

πόσῳ δὲ δεινότερον οἴεσθε πάσχειν αὖ τοὺς ἀνεκφεύκτους ἀναποδράστους ἀναποστάτους; ἔστι δούλῳ φεύξιμος βωμός, ἔστι καὶ λῃσταῖς ἀβέβηλα πολλὰ τῶν ἱερῶν, καὶ πολεμίους οἱ φεύγοντες, ἂν ἀγάλματος λάβωνται ἢ ναοῦ, θαρροῦσιν· ὁ δὲ δεισιδαίμων ταῦτα μάλιστα φρίττει καὶ φοβεῖται καὶ δέδοικεν, ἐν οἷς οἱ φοβούμενοι τὰ δεινότατα τὰς ἐλπίδας ἔχουσι. μὴ ἀπόσπα τὸν [f] δεισιδαίμονα τῶν ἱερῶν· ἐνταῦθα κολάζεται καὶ τιμωρεῖται.

Τί δεῖ μακρὰ λέγειν; “πέρας ἐστὶ τοῦ βίου πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ὁ θάνατος,” τῆς δὲ δεισιδαιμονίας οὐδ’ οὗτος, ἀλλ’ ὑπερβάλλει τοὺς ὅρους ἐπέκεινα τοῦ ζῆν, μακρότερον τοῦ βίου ποιοῦσα τὸν φόβον καὶ συνάπτουσα τῷ θανάτῳ κακῶν ἐπίνοιαν ἀθανάτων, καὶ ὅτε παύεται πραγμάτων, [167] [a] ἄρχεσθαι δοκοῦσα μὴ παυομένων. Ἅιδου τινὲς ἀνοίγονται πύλαι βαθεῖαι, καὶ ποταμοὶ πυρὸς ὁμοῦ καὶ Στυγὸς ἀπορρῶγες ἀνακεράννυνται, καὶ σκότος ἐμπίπλαται πολυφαντάστων εἰδώλων τινῶν χαλεπὰς μὲν ὄψεις οἰκτρὰς δὲ φωνὰς ἐπιφερόντων, δικασταὶ δὲ καὶ κολασταὶ καὶ χάσματα καὶ μυχοὶ μυρίων κακῶν γέμοντες. οὕτως ἡ κακοδαίμων δεισιδαιμονία τῇ περιττῇ πρὸς ἅπαν τὸ δοκοῦν δεινὸν εὐλαβείᾳ λανθάνει ἑαυτὴν ὑποβάλλουσα παντοίοις δεινοῖς.

Τούτων οὐδὲν τῇ ἀθεότητι πρόσεστιν, ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν ἄγνοια χαλεπὴ καὶ τὸ παρορᾶν καὶ τυφλώττειν [b] περὶ τηλικαῦτα συμφορὰ μεγάλη ψυχῆς, ὥσπερ ὀμμάτων πολλῶν τὸ φανότατον καὶ κυριώτατον ἀπεσβεσμένης τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ νόησιν. ταύτῃ δὲ τὸ ἐμπαθές, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, καὶ ἑλκῶδες καὶ ταρακτικὸν καὶ καταδεδουλωμένον εὐθὺς πρόσεστι τῇ δόξῃ. μουσικήν φησιν ὁ Πλάτων ἐμμελείας καὶ εὐρυθμίας δημιουργὸν ἀνθρώποις ὑπὸ θεῶν οὐ τρυφῆς ἕνεκα καὶ κνήσεως ὤτων δοθῆναι, ἀλλ’ ὥστε τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς περιόδων καὶ ἁρμονιῶν τὸ ταραχῶδες καὶ πεπλανημένον ἐν σώματι, μούσης τε καὶ χάριτος ἐνδείᾳ πολλαχῇ δι’ ἀκολασίαν καὶ πλημμέλειαν ἐξυβρίζον, [c] αὖθις εἰς τάξιν ἀνελίττουσαν οἰκείως καὶ περιάγουσαν καθιστάναι.

“ὅσσα δὲ μὴ πεφίληκε Ζεύς,” φησὶ Πίνδαρος,

“ἀτύζονται βοὰν

Πιερίδων ἀίοντα·”

καὶ γὰρ διαγριαίνεται καὶ ἀγανακτεῖ, καὶ τὰς τίγρεις δέ φασι περιτυμπανιζομένας ἐκμαίνεσθαι καὶ ταράττεσθαι καὶ τέλος αὑτὰς διασπᾶν. ἔλαττον οὖν κακὸν οἷς διὰ κωφότητα καὶ πήρωσιν ἀκοῆς ἀπάθεια πρὸς μουσικὴν καὶ ἀναισθησία συμβέβηκεν. ὁ Τειρεσίας ἐχρῆτο δυστυχίᾳ μὴ βλέπων τὰ τέκνα μηδὲ τοὺς συνήθεις, ὁ δ’ Ἀθάμας μείζονι καὶ ἡ Ἀγαύη, βλέποντες ὡς λέοντας καὶ [d] ἐλάφους· καὶ τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ δήπου μανέντι τοὺς υἱοὺς ἐλυσιτέλει μήτ’ ἰδεῖν μήτ’ αἰσθέσθαι παρόντας ἢ χρῆσθαι τοῖς φιλτάτοις ὡς πολεμίοις.

Τί οὖν; οὐ δοκεῖ σοι καὶ τὸ τῶν ἀθέων πρὸς τοὺς δεισιδαίμονας πάθος ἔχειν τοιαύτην διαφοράν; οἱ μὲν οὐχ ὁρῶσι τοὺς θεοὺς τὸ παράπαν, οἱ δὲ κακοὺς ὑπάρχειν νομίζουσιν· οἱ μὲν παρορῶσιν, οἱ δὲ δοξάζουσι φοβερὸν τὸ εὐμενὲς καὶ τυραννικὸν τὸ πατρικὸν καὶ βλαβερὸν τὸ κηδεμονικὸν καὶ τὸ ἀμήνιτον ἄγριον εἶναι καὶ θηριῶδες. εἶτα χαλκοτύποις μὲν πείθονται καὶ λιθοξόοις καὶ κηροπλάσταις ἀνθρωπόμορφα τῶν θεῶν τὰ εἴδη ποιοῦσι, [e] καὶ τοιαῦτα πλάττουσι καὶ κατασκευάζουσι καὶ προσκυνοῦσι· φιλοσόφων δὲ καὶ πολιτικῶν ἀνδρῶν καταφρονοῦσιν, ἀποδεικνύντων τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ σεμνότητα μετὰ χρηστότητος καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνης καὶ εὐμενείας καὶ κηδεμονίας. περίεστιν οὖν τοῖς μὲν ἀναισθησία καὶ ἀπιστία τῶν ὠφελούντων, τοῖς δὲ ταραχὴ καὶ φόβος πρὸς τὰ ὠφελοῦντα. καὶ ὅλως ἡ μὲν ἀθεότης ἀπάθεια πρὸς τὸ θεῖόν ἐστι μὴ νοοῦσα τὸ ἀγαθόν, ἡ δὲ δεισιδαιμονία πολυπάθεια κακὸν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ὑπονοοῦσα. φοβοῦνται τοὺς θεοὺς καὶ καταφεύγουσιν ἐπὶ τοὺς θεούς, κολακεύουσι καὶ λοιδοροῦσιν, εὔχονται καὶ καταμέμφονται.

[f] κοινὸν ἀνθρώπων τὸ μὴ πάντα διευτυχεῖν.

κεῖνοι γάρ τ’ ἄνοσοι καὶ ἀγήραοι

πόνων τ’ ἄπειροι, βαρυβόαν

πορθμὸν πεφευγότες Ἀχέροντος,

ὁ Πίνδαρος θεούς φησι, τὰ δ’ ἀνθρώπινα πάθη καὶ πράγματα μέμικται συντυχίαις ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλως ῥεούσαις.

Φέρε δὴ πρῶτον ἐν τοῖς ἀβουλήτοις σκόπει τὸν ἄθεον καὶ καταμάνθανε τὴν διάθεσιν, ἂν ᾖ τἄλλα μέτριος, χρωμένου σιωπῇ τοῖς παροῦσι καὶ πορίζοντος αὑτῷ βοηθείας καὶ παρηγορίας, ἂν δὲ δυσφορῇ καὶ περιπαθῇ, πάντας ἐπὶ τὴν τύχην καὶ [168] [a] τὸ αὐτόματον ἀπερειδομένου τοὺς ὀδυρμοὺς καὶ βοῶντος ὡς οὐδὲν κατὰ δίκην οὐδ’ ἐκ προνοίας ἀλλὰ πάντα συγκεχυμένως καὶ ἀκρίτως φέρεται καὶ ταράττεται τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων. τοῦ δὲ δεισιδαίμονος οὐχ οὗτος ὁ τρόπος, ἀλλ’ εἰ καὶ μικρότατον αὐτῷ κακόν τι συμπεπτωκός ἐστιν, ἄλλα κάθηται πάθη χαλεπὰ καὶ μεγάλα καὶ δυσαπάλλακτα τῇ λύπῃ προσοικοδομῶν, καὶ προσεμφορῶν αὑτῷ δείματα καὶ φόβους καὶ ὑποψίας καὶ ταραχάς, παντὶ θρήνῳ καὶ παντὶ στεναγμῷ καθαπτόμενος· οὔτε γὰρ ἄνθρωπον οὔτε τύχην οὔτε καιρὸν οὔθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀλλὰ πάντων τὸν θεὸν [b] αἰτιᾶται, κἀκεῖθεν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἥκειν καὶ φέρεσθαι ῥεῦμα δαιμόνιον ἄτης φησί, καὶ ὡς οὐ δυστυχὴς ὢν ἀλλὰ θεομισής τις ἄνθρωπος ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν κολάζεσθαι καὶ δίκην διδόναι καὶ πάντα πάσχειν προσηκόντως δι’ αὑτὸν οἴεται.

Νοσῶν θ’ ὁ ἄθεος ἐκλογίζεται καὶ ἀναμιμνῄσκεται πλησμονὰς αὑτοῦ καὶ οἰνώσεις καὶ ἀταξίας περὶ δίαιταν ἢ κόπους ὑπερβάλλοντας ἢ μεταβολὰς ἀέρων ἀήθεις καὶ τόπων, ἔπειτα προσκρούσας ἐν πολιτείαις καὶ περιπεσὼν ἀδοξίαις πρὸς ὄχλον ἢ διαβολαῖς πρὸς ἡγεμόνα τὴν αἰτίαν ἐξ αὑτοῦ καὶ τῶν περὶ αὑτὸν σκοπεῖ

πῆ παρέβην; τί δ’ ἔρεξα; τί μοι δέον οὐκ ἐτελέσθη;

τῷ δὲ δεισιδαίμονι καὶ σώματος ἀρρωστία πᾶσα [c] καὶ χρημάτων ἀποβολὴ καὶ τέκνων θάνατοι καὶ περὶ πολιτικὰς πράξεις δυσημερίαι καὶ ἀποτεύξεις πληγαὶ θεοῦ καὶ προσβολαὶ δαίμονος λέγονται. ὅθεν οὐδὲ τολμᾷ βοηθεῖν οὐδὲ διαλύειν τὸ συμβεβηκὸς οὐδὲ θεραπεύειν οὐδ’ ἀντιτάττεσθαι, μὴ δόξῃ θεομαχεῖν καὶ ἀντιτείνειν κολαζόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὠθεῖται μὲν ἔξω νοσοῦντος ὁ ἰατρός, ἀποκλείεται δὲ πενθοῦντος ὁ νουθετῶν καὶ παραμυθούμενος φιλόσοφος. “ἔα με,” φησίν, “ἄνθρωπε, διδόναι δίκην, τὸν ἀσεβῆ, τὸν ἐπάρατον, τὸν θεοῖς καὶ δαίμοσι μεμισημένον.”

[d] Ἔστιν ἀνθρώπου μὴ πεπεισμένου θεοὺς εἶναι λυπουμένου δ’ ἄλλως καὶ περιπαθοῦντος ἀπομάξαι δάκρυον, ἀποκεῖραι κόμην, ἀφελέσθαι τὸ ἱμάτιον· τὸν δὲ δεισιδαίμονα πῶς ἂν προσείποις ἢ πῇ βοηθήσεις; ἔξω κάθηται σακκίον ἔχων καὶ περιεζωσμένος ῥάκεσι ῥυπαροῖς, πολλάκις δὲ γυμνὸς ἐν πηλῷ κυλινδούμενος ἐξαγορεύει τινὰς ἁμαρτίας αὑτοῦ καὶ πλημμελείας, ὡς τόδε φαγόντος ἢ πιόντος ἢ βαδίσαντος ὁδὸν ἣν οὐκ εἴα τὸ δαιμόνιον. ἂν δ’ ἄριστα πράττῃ καὶ συνῇ πράως δεισιδαιμονίᾳ, περιθειούμενος οἴκοι κάθηται καὶ περιματτόμενος, αἱ δὲ γρᾶες “καθάπερ παττάλῳ,”

[e] φησὶν ὁ Βίων, “ὅ τι ἂν τύχωσιν αὐτῷ περιάπτουσι φέρουσαι καὶ περιαρτῶσι.”

Τὸν Τιρίβαζόν φασιν ὑπὸ τῶν Περσῶν συλλαμβανόμενον σπάσασθαί τε τὸν ἀκινάκην, εὔρωστον ὄντα, καὶ διαμάχεσθαι· μαρτυρομένων δὲ καὶ βοώντων ὅτι συλλαμβάνουσιν αὐτὸν βασιλέως κελεύσαντος, αὐτίκα τὸ ξίφος καταβαλεῖν καὶ τὼ χεῖρε συνδῆσαι παρασχεῖν. ἆρ’ οὖν οὐχ ὅμοιόν ἐστι τὸ γιγνόμενον; οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι διαμάχονται συμφοραῖς καὶ διωθοῦνται τὰ πράγματα, φυγὰς ἑαυτοῖς μηχανώμενοι καὶ παρατροπὰς τῶν ἀβουλήτων· ὁ [f] δὲ δεισιδαίμων οὐδενὸς ἀκούσας, αὐτὸς πρὸς αὑτὸν εἰπών “ταῦτα πάσχεις, ὦ κακόδαιμον, ἐκ προνοίας καὶ θεοῦ κελεύοντος” ἔρριψε πᾶσαν ἐλπίδα, προήκατο ἑαυτόν, ἔφυγε, διεκρούσατο τοὺς βοηθοῦντας.

Πολλὰ τῶν μετρίων κακῶν ὀλέθρια ποιοῦσιν αἱ δεισιδαιμονίαι. Μίδας ὁ παλαιός, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἔκ τινων ἐνυπνίων ἀθυμῶν καὶ ταραττόμενος οὕτω κακῶς ἔσχε τὴν ψυχήν, ὥσθ’ ἑκουσίως ἀποθανεῖν αἷμα ταύρου πιών. ὁ δὲ τῶν Μεσσηνίων βασιλεὺς Ἀριστόδημος ἐν τῷ πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους πολέμῳ, κυνῶν λύκοις ὠρυομένων ὅμοια καὶ περὶ τὴν ἑστίαν αὐτοῦ τὴν πατρῴαν ἀγρώστεως ἀναβλαστανούσης καὶ τῶν μάντεων τὰ σημεῖα φοβουμένων, ἐξαθυμήσας καὶ κατασβεσθεὶς [169] [a] ταῖς ἐλπίσιν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀπέσφαξεν. ἦν δ’ ἴσως καὶ Νικίᾳ τῷ Ἀθηναίων στρατηγῷ κράτιστον οὕτως ἀπαλλαγῆναι τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας ὡς Μίδας ἢ Ἀριστόδημος ἢ φοβηθέντι τὴν σκιὰν ἐκλιπούσης τῆς σελήνης καθῆσθαι περιτειχιζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, εἶθ’ ὁμοῦ τέτταρσι μυριάσιν ἀνθρώπων φονευθέντων τε καὶ ζώντων ἁλόντων ὑποχείριον γενέσθαι καὶ δυσκλεῶς ἀποθανεῖν. οὐ γὰρ γῆς ἀντίφραξις ἐν μέσῳ γενομένης φοβερόν, οὐδὲ δεινὸν ἐν καιρῷ περιόδων σκιᾶς πρὸς σελήνην ἀπάντησις, ἀλλὰ δεινὸν τὸ τῆς [b] δεισιδαιμονίας σκότος ἐμπεσὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου συγχέαι καὶ τυφλῶσαι λογισμὸν ἐν πράγμασι μάλιστα λογισμοῦ δεομένοις.

Γλαῦχ’, ὅρα, βαθὺς γὰρ ἤδη κύμασιν ταράσσεται

πόντος, ἀμφὶ δ’ ἄκρα Γυρέων ὀρθὸν ἵσταται νέφος,

σῆμα χειμῶνος.

τοῦτ’ ἰδὼν κυβερνήτης εὔχεται μὲν ὑπεκφυγεῖν καὶ θεοὺς ἐπικαλεῖται σωτῆρας, εὐχόμενος δὲ τὸν οἴακα προσάγει, τὴν κεραίαν ὑφίησι,

φεύγει μέγα λαῖφος ὑποστολίσας ἐρεβώδεος ἐκ

θαλάσσης.

ὁ Ἡσίοδος κελεύει πρὸ ἀρότου καὶ σπόρου τὸν γεωργὸν

εὔχεσθαί τ’ Διὶ χθονίῳ Δημήτερί θ’ ἁγνῇ

[c] τῆς ἐχέτλης ἐχόμενον, Ὅμηρος δὲ τὸν Αἴαντά φησι τῷ Ἕκτορι μέλλοντα μονομαχεῖν εὔχεσθαι κελεύειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ τοῖς θεοῖς, εἶτ’ εὐχομένων ἐκείνων ὁπλίζεσθαι. καὶ ὁ Ἀγαμέμνων ὅτε τοῖς μαχομένοις προσέταξεν

εὖ μέν τις δόρυ θηξάσθω, εὖ δ’ ἀσπίδα θέσθω,

τότε παρὰ τοῦ Διὸς αἰτεῖ

δός με κατὰ πρηνὲς βαλέειν Πριάμοιο μέλαθρον·

ἀρετῆς γὰρ ἐλπὶς ὁ θεός ἐστιν, οὐ δειλίας πρόφασις. ἀλλ’ Ἰουδαῖοι σαββάτων ὄντων ἐν ἀγνάμπτοις καθεζόμενοι, τῶν πολεμίων κλίμακας προστιθέντων καὶ τὰ τείχη καταλαμβανόντων, οὐκ ἀνέστησαν ἀλλ’ ἔμειναν ὥσπερ ἐν σαγήνῃ μιᾷ τῇ δεισιδαιμονίᾳ συνδεδεμένοι.

[d] Τοιαύτη μὲν ἐν τοῖς ἀβουλήτοις καὶ περιστατικοῖς λεγομένοις πράγμασι καὶ καιροῖς ἡ δεισιδαιμονία, βελτίων δ’ οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἐν τοῖς ἡδίοσι τῆς ἀθεότητος. ἥδιστα δὲ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἑορταὶ καὶ εἰλαπίναι πρὸς ἱεροῖς καὶ μυήσεις καὶ ὀργιασμοὶ καὶ κατευχαὶ θεῶν καὶ προσκυνήσεις. ἐνταῦθα τοίνυν σκόπει τὸν ἄθεον γελῶντα μὲν μανικὸν καὶ σαρδάνιον γέλωτα τοῖς ποιουμένοις καί που παραφθεγγόμενον ἠρέμα πρὸς τοὺς συνήθεις ὅτι τετύφωνται καὶ δαιμονῶσιν οἱ θεοῖς ταῦτα δρᾶσθαι νομίζοντες, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν ἔχοντα κακόν. ὁ δὲ δεισιδαίμων βούλεται μὲν οὐ δύναται δὲ χαίρειν οὐδ’ ἥδεσθαι·

πόλις δ’ ὁμοῦ μὲν θυμιαμάτων γέμει,

[e] ὁμοῦ δὲ παιάνων τε καὶ στεναγμάτων

ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ δεισιδαίμονος· ἐστεφανωμένος ὠχριᾷ, θύει καὶ φοβεῖται, εὔχεται φωνῇ παλλομένῃ καὶ χερσὶν ἐπιθυμιᾷ τρεμούσαις, καὶ ὅλως ἀποδείκνυσι τὸν Πυθαγόρου λόγον φλύαρον εἰπόντος ὅτι βέλτιστοι γιγνόμεθα πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς βαδίζοντες· τότε γὰρ ἀθλιώτατα καὶ κάκιστα πράττουσιν οἱ δεισιδαίμονες, ὥσπερ ἄρκτων φωλεοῖς ἢ χειαῖς δρακόντων ἢ μυχοῖς κητῶν τοῖς τῶν θεῶν μεγάροις ἢ ἀνακτόροις προσιόντες.

Ὅθεν ἔμοιγε καὶ θαυμάζειν ἔπεισι τοὺς τὴν [f] ἀθεότητα φάσκοντας ἀσέβειαν εἶναι, μὴ φάσκοντας δὲ τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν. καίτοι γ’ Ἀναξαγόρας δίκην ἔφυγεν ἀσεβείας ἐπὶ τῷ λίθον εἰπεῖν τὸν ἥλιον, Κιμμερίους δ’ οὐδεὶς εἶπεν ἀσεβεῖς ὅτι τὸν ἥλιον οὐδ’ εἶναι τὸ παράπαν νομίζουσι. τί σὺ λέγεις; ὁ μὴ νομίζων θεοὺς εἶναι ἀνόσιός ἐστιν; ὁ δὲ τοιούτους νομίζων οἵους οἱ δεισιδαίμονες, οὐ μακρῷ δόξαις ἀνοσιωτέραις σύνεστιν; ἐγὼ γοῦν ἂν ἐθέλοιμι μᾶλλον τοὺς ἀνθρώπους λέγειν περὶ ἐμοῦ μήτε γεγονέναι τὸ παράπαν μήτ’ εἶναι [170] [a] Πλούταρχον ἢ λέγειν ὅτι Πλούταρχός ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος ἀβέβαιος εὐμετάβολος, εὐχερὴς πρὸς ὀργήν, ἐπὶ τοῖς τυχοῦσι τιμωρητικός, μικρόλυπος· ἂν καλῶν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἑτέρους παραλίπῃς ἐκεῖνον, ἂν ἀσχολίας σοι γενομένης ἐπὶ θύρας μὴ ἔλθῃς ἢ μὴ προσείπῃς, διέδεταί σου τὸ σῶμα προσφὺς ἢ συλλαβὼν ἀποτυμπανιεῖ τὸ παιδίον, ἢ θηρίον ἔχων τοῖς καρποῖς ἐφήσει καὶ λυμανεῖται τὴν ὀπώραν.

Τοῦ Τιμοθέου τὴν Ἄρτεμιν ᾄδοντος ἐν Ἀθήναις καὶ λέγοντος

θυιάδα φοιβάδα μαινάδα λυσσάδα

Κινησίας ὁ μελοποιὸς ἐκ τῶν θεατῶν ἀναστάς, [b] “τοιαύτη σοι,” εἶπε, “θυγάτηρ γένοιτο.” καὶ μὴν ὅμοια τούτοις καὶ χείρω περὶ Ἀρτέμιδος οἱ δεισιδαίμονες ὑπολαμβάνουσιν,

αἴτε κα ἀπ’ ἀγχόνας ᾄξασα,

αἴτε κα λεχὼν κναίσασα,

αἴτε κἀκ νεκρῶ παροῦσα,

ἀμπεφυρμένα ἐσῆλθες,

αἴτε καὶ ἐκ τριόδων

καθαρμάτεσσιν ἐπισπωμένα

τῷ παλαμναίῳ συμπλεχθεῖσα.

Οὐδὲν δὲ τούτων ἐπιεικέστερα φρονοῦσι περὶ Ἀπόλλωνος περὶ Ἥρας περὶ Ἀφροδίτης· πάντας γὰρ τούτους τρέμουσι καὶ δεδοίκασι. καίτοι τί τοιοῦτον ἡ Νιόβη περὶ τῆς Λητοῦς ἐβλασφήμησεν, οἷον ἡ δεισιδαιμονία πέπεικε περὶ τῆς θεοῦ τοὺς [c] ἄφρονας, ὡς ἄρα λοιδορηθεῖσα κατετόξευσε τῆς ἀθλίας γυναικὸς

ἓξ μὲν θυγατέρας, ἓξ δ’ υἱέας ἡβώοντας;

οὕτως ἄπληστος ἀλλοτρίων κακῶν ἦν καὶ ἀνίλαστος. εἰ γὰρ ἀληθῶς ἡ θεὸς χολὴν εἶχε καὶ μισοπόνηρος ἦν καὶ ἤλγει κακῶς ἀκούουσα καὶ μὴ κατεγέλα τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ἀμαθίας καὶ ἀγνοίας ἀλλ’ ἠγανάκτει, τούτους ἔδει τοξεῦσαι τοὺς τοσαύτην ὠμότητα καὶ πικρίαν καταψευδομένους αὐτῆς καὶ τοιαῦτα λέγοντας καὶ γράφοντας. τῆς γοῦν Ἑκάβης προβαλλόμεθα τὴν πικρίαν ὡς βάρβαρον καὶ θηριώδη λεγούσης

[d] τοῦ ἐγὼ μέσον ἧπαρ ἔχοιμι

ἐσθέμεναι προσφῦσα,

τὴν δὲ Συρίαν θεὸν οἱ δεισιδαίμονες νομίζουσιν, ἂν μαινίδας τις ἢ ἀφύας φάγῃ, τὰ ἀντικνήμια διεσθίειν, ἕλκεσι τὸ σῶμα πιμπράναι, συντήκειν τὸ ἧπαρ.

Ἆρ’ οὖν τὸ μὲν λέγειν τὰ φαῦλα περὶ τῶν θεῶν ἀνόσιον, τὸ δὲ δοξάζειν οὐκ ἀνόσιον; ἢ καὶ τὴν φωνὴν ἄτοπον ἡ δόξα ποιεῖ τοῦ βλασφημοῦντος; καὶ γὰρ ἡμεῖς τὴν βλασφημίαν ὅτι δυσμενείας σημεῖόν ἐστι προβαλλόμεθα, καὶ τοὺς κακῶς ἡμᾶς λέγοντας ἐχθροὺς νομίζομεν ὡς καὶ κακῶς φρονοῦντας. ὁρᾷς δ’ οἷα περὶ τῶν θεῶν οἱ δεισιδαίμονες φρονοῦσιν, ἐμπλήκτους ἀπίστους εὐμεταβόλους τιμωρητικοὺς ὠμοὺς μικρολύπους ὑπολαμβάνοντες, ἐξ ὧν ἀνάγκη καὶ μισεῖν τὸν δεισιδαίμονα καὶ φοβεῖσθαι τοὺς θεούς. πῶς γὰρ οὐ μέλλει, τὰ μέγιστα τῶν κακῶν αὑτῷ δι’ ἐκείνους οἰόμενος γεγονέναι καὶ πάλιν γενήσεσθαι; μισῶν δὲ θεοὺς καὶ φοβούμενος ἐχθρός ἐστι. κἂν δεδοίκῃ, προσκυνεῖ γε καὶ θύει καὶ κάθηται πρὸς ἱεροῖς, καὶ οὐ θαυμαστόν ἐστι· καὶ γὰρ τοὺς τυράννους ἀσπάζονται περιέπουσι χρυσοῦς ἀνιστᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ μισοῦσι σιγῇ “κάρα σείοντες.” Ἀλέξανδρον Ἑρμόλαος ἐθεράπευε, Παυσανίας ἐδορυφόρει Φίλιππον, [e] Χαιρέας Γάιον, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστος τούτων ἔλεγε παρακολουθῶν

ἦ σ’ ἂν τισαίμην, εἴ μοι δύναμίς γε παρείη.

Οὐκ οἴεται θεοὺς εἶναι ὁ ἄθεος, ὁ δὲ δεισιδαίμων οὐ βούλεται, πιστεύει δ’ ἄκων· φοβεῖται γὰρ ἀπιστεῖν. καίτοι γ’ ὥσπερ ὁ Τάνταλος ὑπεκδῦναι τὸν λίθον ἐπαιωρούμενον οὕτω καὶ οὗτος τὸν φόβον ὡς οὐχ ἧττον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πιεζόμενος ἀγαπήσειεν ἄν, καὶ μακαρίσειε τὴν τοῦ ἀθέου διάθεσιν ὡς ἐλευθέριον. νυνὶ δὲ τῷ μὲν ἀθέῳ δεισιδαιμονίας οὐδὲν μέτεστιν, ὁ δὲ δεισιδαίμων τῇ προαιρέσει ἄθεος ὢν ἀσθενέστερός ἐστιν ἢ ὥστε δοξάζειν περὶ θεῶν ὃ βούλεται.

[171] [a] Καὶ μὴν ὁ ἄθεος δεισιδαιμονίας οὐδαμῆ συναίτιος, ἡ δὲ δεισιδαιμονία τῇ ἀθεότητι καὶ γενέσθαι παρέσχεν ἀρχὴν καὶ γενομένῃ δίδωσιν ἀπολογίαν, οὐκ ἀληθῆ μὲν οὐδὲ καλήν, προφάσεως δέ τινος οὐκ ἄμοιρον οὖσαν. οὐ γὰρ ἐν οὐρανῷ τι μεμπτὸν οὐδ’ ἐν ἄστροις οὐδ’ ἐν ὥραις ἢ περιόδοις σελήνης ἢ κινήσεσιν ἡλίου περὶ γῆν, “ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς δημιουργοῖς,” ἢ τροφαῖς ζῴων ἢ καρπῶν γενέσεσι πλημμελὲς καὶ ἄτακτον ἐνιδόντες οὕτως ἀθεότητα τοῦ παντὸς κατέγνωσαν, ἀλλὰ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας ἔργα καὶ πάθη καταγέλαστα, καὶ ῥήματα καὶ κινήματα [b] καὶ γοητεῖαι καὶ μαγεῖαι καὶ περιδρομαὶ καὶ τυμπανισμοὶ καὶ ἀκάθαρτοι μὲν καθαρμοὶ ῥυπαραὶ δ’ ἁγνεῖαι, βάρβαροι δὲ καὶ παράνομοι πρὸς ἱεροῖς κολασμοὶ καὶ προπηλακισμοί, ταῦτα δίδωσιν ἐνίοις λέγειν ὡς μὴ εἶναι θεοὺς ἄμεινον ἢ εἶναι, τοιαῦτα μὲν δεχομένους τοιούτοις δὲ χαίροντας, οὕτω δ’ ὑβριστάς, οὕτω δὲ μικρολόγους καὶ μικρολύπους.

Οὐκ ἄμεινον οὖν ἦν Γαλάταις ἐκείνοις καὶ Σκύθαις τὸ παράπαν μήτ’ ἔννοιαν ἔχειν θεῶν μήτε φαντασίαν μήθ’ ἱστορίαν ἢ θεοὺς εἶναι νομίζειν χαίροντας ἀνθρώπων σφαττομένων αἵματι καὶ [c] τελεωτάτην θυσίαν καὶ ἱερουργίαν ταύτην νομίζοντας; τί δέ; Καρχηδονίοις οὐκ ἐλυσιτέλει Κριτίαν λαβοῦσιν ἢ Διαγόραν νομοθέτην ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς μήτε τινὰ δαιμόνων μήτε θεῶν νομίζειν ἢ τοιαῦτα θύειν οἷα τῷ Κρόνῳ ἔθυον; οὐχ ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς φησι τῶν τὰ ζῷα θυόντων καθαπτόμενος

μορφὴν δ’ ἀλλάξαντα πατὴρ φίλον υἱὸν ἀείρας

σφάζει ἐπευχόμενος μέγα νήπιος,

ἀλλ’ εἰδότες καὶ γιγνώσκοντες αὐτοὶ τὰ αὑτῶν τέκνα καθιέρευον, οἱ δ’ ἄτεκνοι παρὰ τῶν πενήτων ὠνούμενοι παιδία κατέσφαζον καθάπερ ἄρνας ἢ [d] νεοσσούς, παρειστήκει δ’ ἡ μήτηρ ἄτεγκτος καὶ ἀστένακτος. εἰ δὲ στενάξειεν ἢ δακρύσειεν, ἔδει τῆς τιμῆς στέρεσθαι, τὸ δὲ παιδίον οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐθύετο· κρότου τε κατεπίμπλατο πάντα πρὸ τοῦ ἀγάλματος ἐπαυλούντων καὶ τυμπανιζόντων ἕνεκα τοῦ μὴ γενέσθαι τὴν βοὴν τῶν θρήνων ἐξάκουστον. εἰ δὲ Τυφῶνές τινες ἢ Γίγαντες ἦρχον ἡμῶν τοὺς θεοὺς ἐκβαλόντες, ποίαις ἂν ἥδοντο θυσίαις ἢ τίνας ἄλλας ἱερουργίας ἀπῄτουν; Ἄμηστρις δ’ ἡ Ξέρξου γυνὴ δώδεκα κατώρυξεν ἀνθρώπους ζῶντας ὑπὲρ αὑτῆς τῷ Ἅιδῃ, ὃν ὁ Πλάτων φησὶ φιλάνθρωπον [e] ὄντα καὶ σοφὸν καὶ πλούσιον, πειθοῖ καὶ λόγῳ κατέχοντα τὰς ψυχάς, Ἅιδην ὠνομάσθαι. Ξενοφάνης δ’ ὁ φυσικὸς τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους κοπτομένους ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς καὶ θρηνοῦντας ὁρῶν ὑπέμνησεν οἰκείως. “οὗτοι,” φησίν, “εἰ μὲν θεοί εἰσι, μὴ θρηνεῖτε αὐτούς· εἰ δ’ ἄνθρωποι, μὴ θύετε αὐτοῖς.”

Ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν οὕτω πολυπλανὲς καὶ πολυπαθὲς νόσημα καὶ μεμιγμένον ἐναντίαις δόξαις καὶ μαχομέναις μᾶλλον ὡς τὸ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας. φευκτέον οὖν αὐτὴν ἀσφαλῶς τε καὶ συμφερόντως, οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ λῃστῶν ἢ θηρίων ἔφοδον ἢ πῦρ ἀπερισκέπτως [f] καὶ ἀλογίστως περιφεύγοντες ἐμπίπτουσιν εἰς ἀνοδίας βάραθρα καὶ κρημνοὺς ἐχούσας. οὕτω γὰρ ἔνιοι φεύγοντες τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν ἐμπίπτουσιν εἰς ἀθεότητα τραχεῖαν καὶ ἀντίτυπον, ὑπερπηδήσαντες ἐν μέσῳ κειμένην τὴν εὐσέβειαν.

Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΝ ΑΠΟΦΘΕΓΜΑΤΑ ΚΑΙ ΣΤΡΑΤΗΓΩΝ

[172] Ἀρτοξέρξης ὁ Περσῶν βασιλεύς, ὦ μέγιστε αὐτόκρατορ Τραϊανὲ Καῖσαρ, οὐχ ἧττον οἰόμενος βασιλικὸν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον εἶναι τοῦ μεγάλα διδόναι τὸ μικρὰ λαμβάνειν εὐμενῶς καὶ προθύμως, ἐπεὶ παρελαύνοντος αὐτοῦ καθ’ ὁδὸν αὐτουργὸς ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἰδιώτης οὐδὲν ἔχων ἕτερον ἐκ τοῦ ποταμοῦ ταῖς χερσὶν ἀμφοτέραις ὕδωρ ὑπολαβὼν προσήνεγκεν, ἡδέως ἐδέξατο καὶ ἐμειδίασε, τῇ προθυμίᾳ τοῦ διδόντος οὐ τῇ χρείᾳ τοῦ διδομένου τὴν χάριν μετρήσας. ὁ δὲ Λυκοῦργος εὐτελεστάτας ἐποίησεν ἐν Σπάρτῃ [c] τὰς θυσίας, ἵνα ἀεὶ τοὺς θεοὺς τιμᾶν ἑτοίμως δύνωνται καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἀπὸ τῶν παρόντων. τοιαύτῃ δή τινι γνώμῃ κἀμοῦ λιτά σοι δῶρα καὶ ξένια καὶ κοινὰς ἀπαρχὰς προσφέροντος ἀπὸ φιλοσοφίας ἅμα τῇ προθυμίᾳ καὶ τὴν χρείαν ἀπόδεξαι τῶν ἀπομνημονευμάτων, εἰ πρόσφορον ἔχει τι πρὸς κατανόησιν ἠθῶν καὶ προαιρέσεων ἡγεμονικῶν, ἐμφαινομένων τοῖς λόγοις μᾶλλον ἢ ταῖς πράξεσιν αὐτῶν. καίτοι καὶ βίους ἔχει‹ς,› τὸ σύνταγμα τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων παρά τε Ῥωμαίοις καὶ παρ’ Ἕλλησιν ἡγεμόνων καὶ νομοθετῶν καὶ αὐτοκρατόρων· ἀλλὰ τῶν μὲν πράξεων αἱ πολλαὶ τύχην ἀναμεμιγμένην ἔχουσιν, αἱ [d] δὲ γινόμεναι παρὰ τὰ ἔργα καὶ τὰ πάθη καὶ τὰς τύχας ἀποφάσεις καὶ ἀναφωνήσεις ὥσπερ ἐν κατόπτροις καθαρῶς παρέχουσι τὴν ἑκάστου διάνοιαν ἀποθεωρεῖν. ᾗ καὶ Σειράμνης ὁ Πέρσης πρὸς τοὺς θαυμάζοντας, ὅτι τῶν λόγων αὐτοῦ νοῦν ἐχόντων αἱ πράξεις οὐ κατορθοῦνται, τῶν μὲν λόγων ἔφη κύριος αὐτὸς εἶναι, τῶν δὲ πράξεων τὴν τύχην μετὰ τοῦ βασιλέως. ἐκεῖ μὲν οὖν ἅμα αἱ ἀποφάσεις τῶν ἀνδρῶν τὰς πράξεις παρακειμένας ἔχουσαι σχολάζουσαν φιληκοΐαν περιμένουσιν· ἐνταῦθα δὲ [καὶ] τοὺς λόγους αὐτοὺς καθ’ αὑτοὺς ὥσπερ δείγματα τῶν βίων καὶ σπέρματα συνειλεγμένους οὐδὲν [e] οἴομαί σοι τὸν καιρὸν ἐνοχλήσειν, ἐν βραχέσι πολλῶν ἀναθεώρησιν ἀνδρῶν ἀξίων μνήμης γενομένων λαμβάνοντι.

ΚΥΡΟΣ

Πέρσαι τῶν γρυπῶν ἐρῶσι καὶ καλλίστους ὑπολαμβάνουσι διὰ τὸ Κῦρον ἀγαπηθέντα μάλιστα τῶν βασιλέων γεγονέναι γρυπὸν τὸ εἶδος.

Ἔλεγε δὲ Κῦρος ἑτέροις ‹δεῖν› ἀναγκάζεσθαι τἀγαθὰ πορίζειν τοὺς αὑτοῖς μὴ θέλοντας· ἄρχειν δὲ μηδενὶ προσήκειν, ὃς οὐ κρείττων ἐστὶ τῶν ἀρχομένων.

Βουλομένους δὲ τοὺς Πέρσας ἀντὶ τῆς ἑαυτῶν

οὔσης ὀρεινῆς καὶ τραχείας πεδιάδα καὶ μαλακὴν χώραν [f] λαβεῖν οὐκ εἴασεν, εἰπὼν ὅτι καὶ τῶν φυτῶν τὰ σπέρματα καὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων οἱ βίοι ταῖς χώραις συνεξομοιοῦνται.

ΔΑΡΕΙΟΣ

Δαρεῖος ὁ Ξέρξου πατὴρ ἑαυτὸν ἐγκωμιάζων ἔλεγεν ἐν ταῖς μάχαις καὶ παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ γίνεσθαι φρονιμώτερος.

Τοὺς δὲ φόρους τοῖς ὑπηκόοις τάξας μετεπέμψατο τοὺς πρώτους τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν καὶ περὶ τῶν φόρων ἠρώτησε, [173] [a] μὴ βαρεῖς εἰσι· φησάντων δὲ μετρίως ἔχειν ἐκέλευσε τοὺς ἡμίσεις τελεῖν ἕκαστον.

Ῥοιὰν δὲ μεγάλην ἀνοίξας, πυθομένου τινὸς τί ἂν ἔχειν ἐβούλετο τοσοῦτον ὅσον ἐστὶ τῶν κόκκων τὸ πλῆθος, εἶπε Ζωπύρους· ἦν δ’ ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς καὶ φίλος ὁ Ζώπυρος.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ αὐτὸς αἰκισάμενος ἑαυτὸν ὁ Ζώπυρος καὶ τὴν ῥῖνα καὶ τὰ ὦτα περικόψας ἐξηπάτησε Βαβυλωνίους καὶ πιστευθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν παρέδωκε Δαρείῳ τὴν πόλιν, πολλάκις ὁ Δαρεῖος εἶπεν οὐκ ἂν ἐθελῆσαι λαβεῖν ἑκατὸν Βαβυλῶνας ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ Ζώπυρον ἔχειν ὁλόκληρον.

ΣΕΜΙΡΑΜΙΣ

Σεμίραμις δὲ ἑαυτῇ κατασκευάσασα τάφον ἐπέγραψεν [b] ‘ὅστις ἂν χρημάτων δεηθῇ βασιλεύς, διελόντα τὸ μνημεῖον ὅσα βούλεται λαβεῖν.’ Δαρεῖος οὖν διελὼν χρήματα μὲν οὐχ εὗρε, γράμμασι δὲ ἑτέροις ἐνέτυχε τάδε φράζουσιν· ‘εἰ μὴ κακὸς ἦσθ’ ἀνὴρ καὶ χρημάτων ἄπληστος, οὐκ ἂν νεκρῶν θήκας ἐκίνεις.’

ΞΕΡΞΗΣ

Ξέρξῃ τῷ Δαρείου περὶ τῆς βασιλείας ἀμφισβητῶν ὁ ἀδελφὸς Ἀριαμένης κατέβαινεν ἐκ τῆς Βακτριανῆς· ἔπεμψεν οὖν αὐτῷ δῶρα, φράσαι κελεύσας τοὺς διδόντας ‘τούτοις σε τιμᾷ νῦν Ξέρξης ὁ ἀδελφός· ἐὰν δὲ βασιλεὺς ἀναγορευθῇ, πάντων ἔσῃ παρ’ αὐτῷ μέγιστος.’ ἀποδειχθέντος [c] δὲ τοῦ Ξέρξου βασιλέως ὁ μὲν Ἀριαμένης εὐθὺς προσεκύνησε καὶ τὸ διάδημα περιέθηκεν, ὁ δὲ Ξέρξης ἐκείνῳ τὴν δευτέραν μεθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἔδωκε τάξιν.

Ὀργισθεὶς δὲ Βαβυλωνίοις ἀποστᾶσι καὶ κρατήσας προσέταξεν ὅπλα μὴ φέρειν, ἀλλὰ ψάλλειν καὶ αὐλεῖν καὶ πορνοβοσκεῖν καὶ καπηλεύειν καὶ φορεῖν κολπωτοὺς χιτῶνας.

Ἀττικὰς δ’ ἰσχάδας οὐκ ἂν ἔφη φαγεῖν ὠνίους κομισθείσας, ἀλλ’ ὅταν τὴν φέρουσαν κτήσηται χώραν.

Ἕλληνας δὲ κατασκόπους ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ λαβὼν οὐδὲν ἠδίκησεν, ἀλλὰ τὴν στρατιὰν ἀδεῶς ἐπιδεῖν κελεύσας ἀφῆκεν.

ΑΡΤΟΞΕΡΞΗΣ

[d] Ἀρτοξέρξης ὁ Ξέρξου, ὁ μακρόχειρ προσαγορευθεὶς διὰ τὸ τὴν ἑτέραν χεῖρα μακροτέραν ἔχειν, ἔλεγεν ὅτι τὸ προσθεῖναι τοῦ ἀφελεῖν βασιλικώτερόν ἐστι.

Πρῶτος δὲ πρωτοβολεῖν ἐκέλευσε τῶν συγκυνηγετούντων τοὺς δυναμένους καὶ βουλομένους.

Πρῶτος δὲ τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν τιμωρίαν ἔταξεν, ἀντὶ τοῦ τὸ σῶμα μαστιγοῦσθαι καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποτίλλεσθαι μαστιγοῦσθαι μὲν ἀποδυσαμένων τὰ ἱμάτια, τίλλεσθαι δὲ τὴν τιάραν ἀποθεμένων.

Σατιβαρζάνην δὲ τὸν κατακοιμιστὴν αἰτούμενόν τι παρ’ αὐτοῦ τῶν μὴ δικαίων αἰσθόμενος ἐπὶ τρισμυρίοις [e] δαρεικοῖς τοῦτο ποιοῦντα, προσέταξε τῷ ταμίᾳ τρισμυρίους δαρεικοὺς κομίσαι· καὶ διδοὺς αὐτῷ ‘λάβε’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Σατιβαρζάνη· ταῦτα μὲν γὰρ δοὺς οὐκ ἔσομαι πενέστερος, ἐκεῖνα δὲ πράξας ἀδικώτερος.’

ΚΥΡΟΣ Ο ΝΕΩΤΕΡΟΣ

Κῦρος ὁ νεώτερος τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους συμμαχεῖν αὑτῷ παρακαλῶν ἔλεγε τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ καρδίαν ἔχειν βαρυτέραν καὶ πλείονα πίνειν ἄκρατον αὐτοῦ καὶ φέρειν βέλτιον· ἐκεῖνον δὲ μόλις ἐν ταῖς θήραις ἐπὶ τῶν ἵππων μένειν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς δεινοῖς μηδ’ ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου. παρεκάλει [f] δ’ ἀποστέλλειν ἄνδρας πρὸς αὑτόν, ἐπαγγελλόμενος τοῖς μὲν πεζοῖς ἵππους δώσειν, τοῖς δὲ ἵππους ἔχουσιν ἅρματα, τοῖς δὲ χωρία κεκτημένοις κώμας, τοὺς δὲ κώμας ἔχοντας πόλεων κυρίους ποιήσειν· ἀργυρίου δὲ καὶ χρυσίου οὐκ ἀριθμὸν ἀλλὰ σταθμὸν ἔσεσθαι.

ΑΡΤΟΞΕΡΞΗΣ Ο ΜΝΗΜΩΝ

Ἀρτοξέρξης ὁ τούτου μὲν ἀδελφὸς Μνήμων δὲ καλούμενος οὐ μόνον τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν ἑαυτὸν ἀνέδην παρεῖχεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα τὴν γνησίαν ἐκέλευσε τῆς ἁρμαμάξης τὰς αὐλαίας περιελεῖν, ὅπως οἱ δεόμενοι κατὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἐντυγχάνωσι.

[174] [a] Πένητος δ’ ἀνθρώπου μῆλον ὑπερφυὲς μεγέθει προσενέγκαντος αὐτῷ δεξάμενος ἡδέως ‘νὴ τὸν Μίθραν’ εἶπεν ‘οὗτός μοι δοκεῖ καὶ πόλιν ἂν ἐκ μικρᾶς μεγάλην πιστευθεὶς ἀπεργάσασθαι.’

Ἐν δὲ φυγῇ τινι τῆς ἀποσκευῆς αὐτοῦ διαρπαγείσης ξηρὰ σῦκα φαγὼν καὶ κρίθινον ἄρτον ‘οἵας’ εἶπεν ‘ἡδονῆς ἄπειρος ἤμην.’

ΠΑΡΥΣΑΤΙΣ

Παρύσατις ἡ Κύρου καὶ Ἀρτοξέρξου μήτηρ ἐκέλευε τὸν βασιλεῖ μέλλοντα μετὰ παρρησίας διαλέγεσθαι βυσσίνοις χρῆσθαι ῥήμασιν.

ΟΡΟΝΤΗΣ

[b] Ὀρόντης, ὁ βασιλέως Ἀρτοξέρξου γαμβρός, ἀτιμίᾳ περιπεσὼν δι’ ὀργὴν καὶ καταγνωσθεὶς ἔφη, καθάπερ οἱ τῶν ἀριθμητικῶν δάκτυλοι νῦν μὲν μυριάδας νῦν δὲ μονάδα [τιθέναι] δύνανται, τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ τοὺς τῶν βασιλέων φίλους, νῦν μὲν τὸ πᾶν δύνασθαι νῦν δὲ τοὐλάχιστον.

ΜΕΜΝΩΝ

Μέμνων, ὁ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ πολεμῶν ὑπὲρ Δαρείου τοῦ βασιλέως, μισθοφόρον τινὰ πολλὰ βλάσφημα καὶ ἀσελγῆ περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου λέγοντα τῇ λόγχῃ πατάξας ‘ἐγώ σε’ εἶπε ‘τρέφω μαχούμενον, ἀλλ’ οὐ λοιδορησόμενον Ἀλεξάνδρῳ.’

[c]

ΟΙ ΑΙΓΥΠΤΙΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΣ

Οἱ Αἰγυπτίων βασιλεῖς κατὰ νόμον ἑαυτῶν τοὺς δικαστὰς ἐξώρκιζον ὅτι, κἂν βασιλεύς τι προστάξῃ κρῖναι τῶν μὴ δικαίων, οὐ κρινοῦσι.

ΠΟΛΤΥΣ

Πόλτυς ὁ Θρᾳκῶν βασιλεὺς ἐν τῷ Τρωϊκῷ πολέμῳ πρεσβευσαμένων πρὸς αὐτὸν ἅμα τῶν Τρώων καὶ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐκέλευσε τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἀποδόντα τὴν Ἑλένην δύο παρ’ αὐτοῦ λαβεῖν καλὰς γυναῖκας.

ΤΗΡΗΣ

Τήρης ὁ Σιτάλκου πατὴρ ἔλεγεν, ὁπότε σχολάζοι καὶ [d] μὴ στρατεύοιτο, τῶν ἱπποκόμων οἴεσθαι μηδὲν διαφέρειν.

ΚΟΤΥΣ

Κότυς τῷ δωρησαμένῳ πάρδαλιν ἀντεδωρήσατο λέοντα.

Φύσει δ’ ὢν ὀξὺς εἰς ὀργὴν καὶ πικρὸς τῶν ἁμαρτανόντων ἐν ταῖς διακονίαις κολαστής, σκεύη ποτὲ κεραμεᾶ ξένου κομίσαντος εὔθραυστα καὶ λεπτά, πιθανῶς δὲ καὶ περιττῶς εἰργασμένα γλυφαῖς τισι καὶ τορείαις, τῷ μὲν ξένῳ ἔδωκε δῶρα, τὰ δὲ σκεύη πάντα συνέτριψεν, ‘ὅπως’ εἰπὼν ‘μὴ δι’ ὀργὴν πικρότερον κολάζω τοὺς συντρίβοντας.’

ΙΔΑΝΘΥΡΣΟΣ

[e] Ἰδάνθυρσος ὁ Σκυθῶν βασιλεύς, ἐφ’ ὃν διέβη Δαρεῖος, ἔπειθε τοὺς Ἰώνων τυράννους τὸ τοῦ Ἴστρου ζεῦγμα λύσαντας ἀπαλλάττεσθαι· μὴ βουληθέντας δὲ διὰ τὴν πρὸς Δαρεῖον πίστιν ἀνδράποδα χρηστὰ καὶ ἄδραστα ἐκάλει.

ΑΝΤΕΑΣ

Ἀντέας ἔγραφε πρὸς τὸν Φίλιππον ‘σὺ μὲν ἄρχεις Μακεδόνων ἀνθρώποις μεμαθηκότων πολεμεῖν· ἐγὼ δὲ Σκυθῶν, οἳ καὶ λιμῷ καὶ δίψει μάχεσθαι δύνανται.’

Τοὺς δὲ πρέσβεις τοῦ Φιλίππου ψήχων τὸν ἵππον ἠρώτησεν, εἰ τοῦτο ποιεῖ Φίλιππος· τῶν δ’ εἰπόντων ‘οὔ’ ‘καὶ πῶς δύναταί’ φησι ‘πόλεμον ἄρασθαι κατ’ ἐμοῦ;’

Ἰσμηνίαν δὲ τὸν ἄριστον αὐλητὴν λαβὼν αἰχμάλωτον [f] ἐκέλευσεν αὐλῆσαι· θαυμαζόντων δὲ τῶν ἄλλων αὐτὸς ὤμοσεν ἥδιον ἀκούειν τοῦ ἵππου χρεμετίζοντος.

ΣΚΙΛΟΥΡΟΣ

Σκιλοῦρος ‹ὁ› ὀγδοήκοντα παῖδας ἄρρενας ἀπολιπὼν ἐπεὶ τελευτᾶν ἔμελλε, δέσμην ἀκοντίων ἑκάστῳ προτείνων ἐκέλευσε καταθραῦσαι· πάντων δ’ ἀπαγορευσάντων, ‹ἓν› καθ’ ἓν αὐτὸς ἐξελὼν ἀκόντιον ἅπαντα ῥᾳδίως συνέκλασε, διδάσκων ἐκείνους ὅτι συνεστῶτες ἰσχυροὶ διαμενοῦσιν, ἀσθενεῖς δ’ ἔσονται διαλυθέντες καὶ στασιάσαντες.

ΓΕΛΩΝ

[175] [a] Γέλων ὁ τύραννος, ὅτε Καρχηδονίους πρὸς Ἱμέρᾳ κατεπολέμησεν, εἰρήνην ποιούμενος πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἠνάγκασεν ἐγγράψαι ταῖς ὁμολογίαις ὅτι καὶ τὰ τέκνα παύσονται τῷ Κρόνῳ καταθύοντες.

Ἐξῆγε δὲ πολλάκις τοὺς Συρακοσίους ὡς ἐπὶ στρατείαν κατὰ φυτείαν, ὅπως ἥ τε χώρα βελτίων γένηται γεωργουμένη καὶ μὴ χείρονες αὐτοὶ σχολάζοντες.

Αἰτῶν δὲ χρήματα τοὺς πολίτας, ἐπεὶ ἐθορύβησαν,

αἰτεῖν εἶπεν ὡς ἀποδώσων, καὶ ἀπέδωκε μετὰ τὸν πόλεμον.

Ἐν δὲ συμποσίῳ λύρας περιφερομένης, ἁρμοζομένων [b] τῶν ἄλλων ἐφεξῆς καὶ ᾀδόντων, αὐτὸς τὸν ἵππον εἰσαγαγεῖν κελεύσας ἐλαφρῶς καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἀνεπήδησεν ἐπ’ αὐτόν.

ΙΕΡΩΝ

Ἱέρων ὁ μετὰ Γέλωνα τύραννος ἔλεγε μηδένα τῶν παρρησιαζομένων πρὸς αὐτὸν ἄκαιρον εἶναι.

Τοὺς δ’ ἀπόρρητον λόγον ἐκφέροντας ἀδικεῖν ᾤετο καὶ πρὸς οὓς ἐκφέρουσι· μισοῦμεν γὰρ οὐ μόνον τοὺς ἐκφέροντας ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἀκούσαντας ἃ μὴ βουλόμεθα.

Λοιδορηθεὶς δὲ ὑπό τινος εἰς τὴν δυσωδίαν τοῦ στόματος ᾐτιᾶτο τὴν γυναῖκα μηδέποτε περὶ τούτου φράσασαν· ἡ δ’ εἶπεν ‘ᾤμην γὰρ τοιοῦτον ἅπαντας τοὺς ἄνδρας ὄζειν.’

[c] Πρὸς δὲ Ξενοφάνην τὸν Κολοφώνιον εἰπόντα μόλις οἰκέτας δύο τρέφειν ‘ἀλλ’ Ὅμηρος’ εἶπεν, ‘ὃν σὺ διασύρεις, πλείονας ἢ μυρίους τρέφει τεθνηκώς.’

Ἐπίχαρμον δὲ τὸν κωμῳδοποιόν, ὅτι τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ παρούσης εἶπέ τι τῶν ἀπορρήτων, ἐζημίωσε.

ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΟΣ Ο ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΕΡΟΣ

Διονύσιος ὁ πρεσβύτερος, κληρουμένων κατὰ γράμμα τῶν δημηγορούντων, ὡς ἔλαχε τὸ Μ, πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα ‘μωρολογήσεις, Διονύσιε’ ‘μοναρχήσω μὲν οὖν’ εἶπε, καὶ δημηγορήσας εὐθὺς ᾑρέθη στρατηγὸς ὑπὸ τῶν Συρακοσίων.

[d] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς τυραννίδος ἐπολιορκεῖτο συστάντων ἐπ’ αὐτὸν τῶν πολιτῶν, οἱ μὲν φίλοι συνεβούλευον ἀπαλλαγῆναι τῆς ἀρχῆς, εἰ μὴ βούλεται κρατηθεὶς ἀποθανεῖν· ὁ δὲ βοῦν ἰδὼν σφαττόμενον ὑπὸ μαγείρου καὶ πίπτοντα ταχέως ‘εἶτα οὐκ ἀεικές ἐστιν’ εἶπεν ‘οὕτω βραχὺν ὄντα τὸν θάνατον φοβηθέντας ἡμᾶς ἀρχὴν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν τηλικαύτην;’

Τὸν δὲ υἱὸν αἰσθόμενος, ᾧ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπολείπειν ἔμελλεν, ἀνδρὸς ἐλευθέρου διαφθείραντα γύναιον, ἠρώτησε μετ’ ὀργῆς, τί τοιοῦτον αὐτῷ σύνοιδεν. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ νεανίσκου ‘σὺ γὰρ οὐκ εἶχες πατέρα τύραννον’ [e] ‘οὐδὲ σύ’ εἶπεν ‘υἱὸν ἕξεις, ἐὰν μὴ παύσῃ ταῦτα ποιῶν.’

Πάλιν δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰσελθὼν καὶ θεασάμενος ἐκπωμάτων χρυσῶν καὶ ἀργυρῶν πλῆθος ἀνεβόησεν ‘οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν σοὶ τύραννος, ὃς ἀφ’ ὧν λαμβάνεις ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ ποτηρίων τοσούτων φίλον οὐδένα σεαυτῷ πεποίηκας.’

Χρήματα δ’ εἰσπράσσων τοὺς Συρακοσίους, εἶτα ὁρῶν ὀδυρομένους καὶ δεομένους καὶ λέγοντας ὡς οὐκ ἔχουσιν, ἐκέλευσεν ἕτερα πράττειν, καὶ δὶς ἢ τρὶς τοῦτο ἐποίησεν· ἐπεὶ δὲ προστάξας πλείονα γελᾶν ἤκουσεν αὐτοὺς καὶ σκώπτειν ἐν ἀγορᾷ περιιόντας, ἐκέλευσε παύσασθαι ‘νῦν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἔχουσιν’ εἶπεν, ‘ὅτε καταφρονοῦσιν [f] ἡμῶν.’

Τῆς δὲ μητρὸς αὐτοῦ παρήλικος μὲν οὔσης δοθῆναι δ’ ἀνδρὶ βουλομένης ἔφη τοὺς μὲν τῆς πόλεως βιάσασθαι νόμους δύνασθαι τοὺς δὲ τῆς φύσεως μὴ δύνασθαι.

Πικρῶς δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους κακούργους κολάζων ἐφείδετο τῶν λωποδυτῶν, ὅπως παύσωνται οἱ Συρακόσιοι τοῦ δειπνεῖν καὶ μεθύσκεσθαι μετ’ ἀλλήλων.

Ξένου δέ τινος ἰδίᾳ φράσειν φάσκοντος αὐτῷ καὶ διδάξειν, ὅπως προειδῇ τοὺς ἐπιβουλεύοντας, ἐκέλευσεν [176] [a] εἰπεῖν· ἐπεὶ δὲ προσελθών ‘δός’ εἶπε ‘μοι τάλαντον, ἵνα δόξῃς ἀκηκοέναι τὰ σημεῖα τῶν ἐπιβουλευόντων’, ἔδωκε προσποιούμενος ἀκηκοέναι καὶ ἐθαύμαζε τὴν μέθοδον τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν πυθόμενον, εἰ σχολάζοι, ‘μηδέποτε’ εἶπεν ‘ἐμοὶ τοῦτο συμβαίη.’

Δύο δ’ ἀκούσας νεανίσκους πολλὰ βλάσφημα περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς τυρρανίδος εἰρηκέναι παρὰ πότον, ἀμφοτέρους ἐκάλεσεν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον· ὁρῶν δὲ τὸν μὲν παροινοῦντα καὶ ληροῦντα πολλά, τὸν δὲ σπανίως καὶ μετ’ εὐλαβείας ταῖς πόσεσι χρώμενον, ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἀπέλυσεν ὡς φύσει παροινήσαντα καὶ διὰ μέθην κακολογήσαντα, [b] τοῦτον δ’ ἀνεῖλεν ὡς δύσνουν καὶ πολέμιον ἐκ προαιρέσεως.

Αἰτιωμένων δέ τινων ὅτι τιμᾷ καὶ προάγεται πονηρὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ δυσχεραινόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν ‘ἀλλὰ καὶ βούλομαι’ εἶπεν ‘εἶναι τὸν ἐμοῦ μᾶλλον μισούμενον.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Κορινθίων πρέσβεις δῶρα διδόντος αὐτοῦ παρῃτοῦντο διὰ τὸν νόμον, ὃς οὐκ εἴα δῶρα λαμβάνειν παρὰ δυνάστου πρεσβεύοντας, δεινόν ἔφη πρᾶγμα ποιεῖν αὐτούς, ὃ μόνον αἱ τυρρανίδες ἔχουσιν ἀγαθὸν ἀναιροῦντας καὶ διδάσκοντας, ὅτι καὶ τὸ εὖ παθεῖν ὑπὸ τυράννου φοβερόν ἐστιν.

Ἀκούσας δέ τινα τῶν πολιτῶν χρυσίον ἔχειν οἴκοι [c] κατορωρυγμένον ἐκέλευσεν ἀνενεγκεῖν πρὸς αὐτόν· ἐπεὶ δὲ παρακλέψας ὀλίγον ὁ ἄνθρωπος καὶ μεταστὰς εἰς ἑτέραν πόλιν ἐωνήσατο χωρίον, μεταπεμψάμενος αὐτὸν ἐκέλευσε πᾶν ἀπολαβεῖν, ἠργμένον χρῆσθαι τῷ πλούτῳ καὶ μηκέτι ποιοῦντα τὸ χρήσιμον ἄχρηστον.

ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΟΣ Ο ΝΕΩΤΕΡΟΣ

Ὁ δὲ νεώτερος Διονύσιος ἔλεγε πολλοὺς τρέφειν σοφιστάς, οὐ θαυμάζων ἐκείνους ἀλλὰ δι’ ἐκείνων θαυμάζεσθαι βουλόμενος.

Πολυξένου δὲ τοῦ διαλεκτικοῦ φήσαντος αὐτὸν ἐξελέγχειν ‘ἀμέλει τοῖς λόγοις’ εἶπεν ‘ἐγὼ δέ σε τοῖς [d] ἔργοις ἐλέγχω· τὰ γὰρ σεαυτοῦ καταλιπὼν ἐμὲ καὶ τὰ ἐμὰ θεραπεύεις.’

Ἐκπεσὼν δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς πρὸς μὲν τὸν εἰπόντα ‘τί σε Πλάτων καὶ φιλοσοφία ὠφέλησε;’ ‘τὸ τηλικαύτην’ ἔφη ‘τύχης μεταβολὴν ῥᾳδίως ὑπομένειν.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ πῶς ὁ μὲν πατὴρ αὐτοῦ πένης ὢν καὶ ἰδιώτης ἐκτήσατο τὴν Συρακοσίων ἀρχήν, αὐτὸς δὲ ἔχων καὶ τυράννου παῖς ὢν [πῶς] ἀπέβαλεν, ‘ὁ μὲν πατήρ’ ἔφη ‘μισουμένης δημοκρατίας ἐνέπεσε τοῖς πράγμασιν, ἐγὼ δὲ φθονουμένης τυραννίδος.’

Ὑπ’ ἄλλου δὲ τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο ἐρωτηθείς ‘ὁ πατήρ’ ἔφη [e] ‘μοι τὴν τυραννίδα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ κατέλιπεν, οὐ τὴν τύχην.’

ΑΓΑΘΟΚΛΗΣ

Ἀγαθοκλῆς υἱὸς ἦν κεραμέως· γενόμενος δὲ κύριος Σικελίας καὶ βασιλεὺς ἀναγορευθεὶς εἰώθει κεραμεᾶ ποτήρια τιθέναι παρὰ τὰ χρυσᾶ καὶ τοῖς νέοις ἐπιδεικνύμενος λέγειν ὅτι τοιαῦτα ποιῶν πρότερον νῦν ταῦτα ποιεῖ διὰ τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ τὴν ἀνδρείαν.

Πολιορκοῦντος δὲ πόλιν αὐτοῦ τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ τείχους τινὲς ἐλοιδοροῦντο λέγοντες ὅτι ‘ὦ κεραμεῦ, τὸν μισθὸν πόθεν ἀποδώσεις τοῖς στρατιώταις;’ ὁ δὲ πράως καὶ μειδιῶν εἶπεν ‘αἴκα ταύταν ἕλω.’ λαβὼν δὲ κατὰ κράτος ἐπίπρασκε τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους λέγων ‘ἐάν με πάλιν [f] λοιδορῆτε, πρὸς τοὺς κυρίους ὑμῶν ἔσται μοι ὁ λόγος.’

Ἐγκαλούντων δὲ τοῖς ναύταις αὐτοῦ τῶν Ἰθακησίων, ὅτι τῇ νήσῳ προσβαλόντες τῶν θρεμμάτων τινὰ ἀπέσπασαν, ‘ὁ δὲ ὑμέτερος’ ἔφη ‘βασιλεὺς ἐλθὼν πρὸς ἡμᾶς οὐ μόνον τὰ πρόβατα λαβὼν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ποιμένα προσεκτυφλώσας ἀπῆλθε.’

ΔΙΩΝ

Δίων ὁ Διονύσιον ἐκβαλὼν ἐκ τῆς τυραννίδος, ἀκούσας ἐπιβουλεύειν αὐτῷ Κάλλιππον, ᾧ μάλιστα τῶν φίλων καὶ ξένων ἐπίστευεν, οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν ἐλέγξαι, βέλτιον εἶναι [177] [a] φήσας ἀποθανεῖν ἢ ζῆν μὴ μόνον τοὺς πολεμίους ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς φίλους φυλαττόμενον.

ΑΡΧΕΛΑΟΣ

Ἀρχέλαος αἰτηθεὶς παρὰ πότον ποτήριον χρυσοῦν ὑπό τινος τῶν συνήθων οὐ μὴν ἐπιεικῶν ἐκέλευσεν Εὐριπίδῃ τὸν παῖδα δοῦναι· θαυμάσαντος δὲ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ‘σὺ μὲν γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘αἰτεῖν, οὗτος δὲ λαμβάνειν ἄξιός ἐστι καὶ μὴ αἰτῶν.’

Ἀδολέσχου δὲ κουρέως ἐρωτήσαντος αὐτὸν ‘πῶς σε κείρω;’ ‘σιωπῶν’ ἔφη.

Τοῦ δ’ Εὐριπίδου τὸν καλὸν Ἀγάθωνα περιλαμβάνοντος ἐν τῷ συμποσίῳ καὶ καταφιλοῦντος ἤδη γενειῶντα, [b] πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἶπε ‘μὴ θαυμάσητε· τῶν γὰρ καλῶν καὶ τὸ μετόπωρον καλόν ἐστιν.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Τιμόθεος ὁ κιθαρῳδὸς ἐλπίσας πλείονα λαβὼν δ’ ἐλάττονα δῆλος ἦν ἐγκαλῶν αὐτῷ καί ποτ’ ᾄδων τουτὶ τὸ κομμάτιον (Anth. lyr. II 152 D.) ‘σὺ δὲ τὸν γηγενέταν ἄργυρον αἰνεῖς’ ἀπεσήμαινεν εἰς ἐκεῖνον, ὑπέκρουσεν ὁ Ἀρχέλαος αὐτῷ ‘σὺ δέ γε αἰτεῖς.’

Ὕδωρ δέ τινος αὐτοῦ κατασκεδάσαντος ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων παροξυνόμενος ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ‘ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐμοῦ’ φησίν ‘ἀλλ’ ἐκείνου κατεσκέδασεν, ὃν ἔδοξεν ἐμὲ εἶναι.’

ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΣ Ο ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ ΠΑΤΗΡ

[c] Φίλιππον τὸν Ἀλεξάνδρου πατέρα Θεόφραστος ἱστόρηκεν οὐ μόνον †μεταξὺ τῶν βασιλέων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῇ τύχῃ καὶ τῷ τρόπῳ μείζονα γενέσθαι καὶ μετριώτερον.

Ἀθηναίους μὲν οὖν μακαρίζειν ἔλεγεν, εἰ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν αἱρεῖσθαι δέκα στρατηγοὺς εὑρίσκουσιν· αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐν πολλοῖς ἔτεσιν ἕνα μόνον στρατηγὸν εὑρηκέναι, Παρμενίωνα.

Πολλῶν δὲ κατορθωμάτων αὐτῷ καὶ καλῶν ἐν μιᾷ ἡμέρᾳ προσαγγελθέντων, ‘ὦ τύχη’ εἶπε, ‘μικρόν τι μοι κακὸν ἀντὶ τῶν τοσούτων καὶ τηλικούτων ἀγαθῶν ποίησον.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ νικήσαντι τοὺς Ἕλληνας αὐτῷ συνεβούλευον [d] ἔνιοι φρουραῖς τὰς πόλεις κατέχειν, ἔφη μᾶλλον πολὺν χρόνον ἐθέλειν χρηστὸς ἢ δεσπότης ὀλίγον καλεῖσθαι.

Τὸν δὲ λοίδορον ἐξελάσαι τῶν φίλων κελευόντων οὐκ ἔφη ποιήσειν, ἵνα μὴ περιιὼν ἐν πλείοσι κακῶς λέγοι.

Σμικύθου δὲ Νικάνορα διαβάλλοντος ὡς ἀεὶ κακῶς λέγοντα τὸν Φίλιππον καὶ τῶν ἑταίρων οἰομένων δεῖν μεταπέμπεσθαι καὶ κολάζειν, ‘ἀλλὰ μήν’ ἔφη ‘Νικάνωρ οὐ φαυλότατός ἐστι Μακεδόνων· ἐπισκεπτέον οὖν μή τι γίνεται παρ’ ἡμᾶς.’ ὡς οὖν ἔγνω τὸν Νικάνορα θλιβόμενον ἰσχυρῶς ὑπὸ πενίας ἠμελημένον δὲ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, [e] προσέταξε δωρεάν τινα αὐτῷ δοθῆναι. πάλιν οὖν τοῦ Σμικύθου λέγοντος ὅτι θαυμαστὰ περὶ αὐτοῦ πρὸς ἅπαντας ἐγκώμια λέγων ὁ Νικάνωρ διατελεῖ, ‘ὁρᾶτε οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι παρ’ ἡμᾶς αὐτούς ἐστι καὶ τὸ καλῶς καὶ τὸ κακῶς ἀκούειν.’

Τοῖς δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων δημαγωγοῖς ἔφη χάριν ἔχειν, ὅτι λοιδοροῦντες αὐτὸν βελτίονα ποιοῦσι καὶ τῷ λόγῳ καὶ τῷ ἤθει· ‘πειρῶμαι γὰρ αὐτοὺς ἅμα καὶ τοῖς λόγοις καὶ τοῖς ἔργοις ψευδομένους ἐλέγχειν.’

Τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων, ὅσοι περὶ Χαιρώνειαν ἑάλωσαν, ἀφεθέντων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ δίχα λύτρων, τὰ δὲ ἱμάτια καὶ [f] στρώματα προσαπαιτούντων καὶ τοῖς Μακεδόσιν ἐγκαλούντων, γελάσας ὁ Φίλιππος εἶπεν ‘οὐ δοκοῦσιν ὑμῖν Ἀθηναῖοι νομίζειν ἐν ἀστραγάλοις ὑφ’ ἡμῶν νενικῆσθαι;’

Τῆς δὲ κλειδὸς αὐτῷ κατεαγείσης ἐν πολέμῳ καὶ τοῦ θεραπεύοντος ἰατροῦ πάντως τι καθ’ ἡμέραν αἰτοῦντος, ‘λάμβανε’ ἔφη ‘ὅσα βούλει· τὴν γὰρ κλεῖν ἔχεις.’

Δυεῖν δ’ ἀδελφῶν, Ἀμφοτεροῦ καὶ Ἑκατεροῦ, τὸν μὲν Ἑκατερὸν ἔμφρονα καὶ πρακτικὸν ὁρῶν, τὸν δ’ Ἀμφοτερὸν εὐήθη καὶ ἀβέλτερον, ἔφη τὸν μὲν Ἑκατερὸν ἀμφότερον εἶναι, τὸν δ’ Ἀμφοτερὸν οὐδέτερον.

[178] [a] Τοὺς δὲ συμβουλεύοντας αὐτῷ πικρῶς χρῆσθαι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἀτόπους ἔλεγεν εἶναι, κελεύοντας ἄνθρωπον ὑπὲρ δόξης πάντα ποιοῦντα καὶ πάσχοντα ἀποβαλεῖν τὸ τῆς δόξης θέατρον.

Γενόμενος δὲ κριτὴς δυεῖν πονηρῶν ἐκέλευσε τὸν μὲν φεύγειν ἐκ Μακεδονίας τὸν δὲ ἕτερον διώκειν.

Μέλλων δὲ καταστρατοπεδεύειν ἐν χωρίῳ καλῷ καὶ πυθόμενος ὅτι χόρτος οὐκ ἔστι τοῖς ὑποζυγίοις, ‘οἷος’ εἶπεν ‘ἡμῶν ὁ βίος ἐστίν, εἰ καὶ πρὸς τὸν τῶν ὄνων καιρὸν ὀφείλομεν ζῆν;’

Φρούριον δέ τι βουλόμενος λαβεῖν ὀχυρόν, ὡς [b] ἀπήγγειλαν οἱ κατάσκοποι χαλεπὸν εἶναι παντάπασι καὶ ἀνάλωτον, ἠρώτησεν εἰ χαλεπὸν οὕτως ἐστίν, ὥστε μηδὲ ὄνον προσελθεῖν χρυσίον κομίζοντα.

Τῶν δὲ περὶ Λασθένην τὸν Ὀλύνθιον ἐγκαλούντων καὶ ἀγανακτούντων, ὅτι προδότας αὐτοὺς ἔνιοι τῶν περὶ τὸν Φίλιππον ἀποκαλοῦσι, σκαιούς ἔφη φύσει καὶ ἀγροίκους εἶναι Μακεδόνας τὴν σκάφην σκάφην λέγοντας.

Τῷ δὲ υἱῷ παρῄνει πρὸς χάριν ὁμιλεῖν τοῖς Μακεδόσι, κτώμενον ἑαυτῷ τὴν παρὰ τῶν πολλῶν δύναμιν, ἕως ἔξεστι βασιλεύοντος ἄλλου φιλάνθρωπον εἶναι.

Συνεβούλευε δὲ τῶν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι δυνατῶν καὶ [c] τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς φίλους κτᾶσθαι καὶ τοὺς πονηρούς, εἶτα οἷς μὲν χρῆσθαι οἷς δ’ ἀποχρῆσθαι.

Πρὸς δὲ Φίλωνα τὸν Θηβαῖον εὐεργέτην αὐτοῦ γενόμενον καὶ ξένον, ὁπηνίκα διῆγεν ἐν Θήβαις ὁμηρεύων, ὕστερον δὲ μηδεμίαν παρ’ αὐτοῦ δωρεὰν προσδεχόμενον ‘μή με’ εἶπεν ‘ἀφαιροῦ τὸ ἀνίκητον εὐεργεσίας καὶ χάριτος ἡττώμενον.’

Ληφθέντων δὲ πολλῶν αἰχμαλώτων ἐπίπρασκεν αὐτοὺς ἀνεσταλμένῳ τῷ χιτῶνι καθήμενος οὐκ εὐπρεπῶς· εἷς οὖν τῶν πωλουμένων ἀνεβόησε ‘φεῖσαί μου, Φίλιππε, πατρικὸς γάρ εἰμί σου φίλος.’ ἐρωτήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Φιλίππου ‘πόθεν, ὦ ἄνθρωπε, γενόμενος καὶ πῶς;’ [d] ‘ἐγγύς’ ἔφη ‘φράσαι σοι βούλομαι προσελθών.’ ὡς οὖν προσήχθη, ‘μικρόν’ ἔφη ‘κατωτέρω τὴν χλαμύδα ποίησον, ἀσχημονεῖς γὰρ οὕτω καθήμενος.’ καὶ ὁ Φίλιππος ‘ἄφετε αὐτόν’ εἶπεν, ‘ἀληθῶς γὰρ εὔνους ὢν καὶ φίλος ἐλάνθανεν.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ ὑπό τινος ξένου κληθεὶς ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἐν ὁδῷ πολλοὺς ἐπήγετο καὶ τὸν ξένον ἑώρα θορυβούμενον (ἦν γὰρ οὐχ ἱκανὰ τὰ παρεσκευασμένα), προσπέμπων τῶν φίλων ἑκάστῳ, πλακοῦντι χώραν ἐκέλευεν ἀπολιπεῖν· οἱ δὲ πειθόμενοι καὶ προσδοκῶντες οὐκ ἤσθιον πολλά, καὶ πᾶσιν οὕτως ἤρκεσεν.

[e] Ἱππάρχου δὲ τοῦ Εὐβοέως ἀποθανόντος δῆλος ἦν βαρέως φέρων· εἰπόντος δέ τινος ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν ὡραῖος ὢν ἐκεῖνος ἀποτέθνηκεν’, ‘ἑαυτῷ γε’ εἶπεν, ‘ἐμοὶ δὲ ταχέως· ἔφθη γὰρ τελευτῆσαι πρὶν ἢ παρ’ ἐμοῦ χάριν ἀξίαν τῆς φιλίας ἀπολαβεῖν.’

Πυθόμενος δ’ ἐγκαλεῖν αὐτῷ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ὅτι παῖδας ἐκ πλειόνων ποιεῖται γυναικῶν, ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘πολλοὺς ἔχων περὶ τῆς βασιλείας ἀνταγωνιστὰς γενοῦ καλὸς κἀγαθός, ἵνα μὴ δι’ ἐμὲ τῆς βασιλείας τύχῃς ἀλλὰ διὰ σεαυτόν.’

Ἐκέλευε δ’ αὐτὸν Ἀριστοτέλει προσέχειν καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘μὴ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα πράξῃς, ἐφ’ οἷς [f] ἐγὼ πεπραγμένοις μεταμέλομαι.’

Τῶν δ’ Ἀντιπάτρου φίλων τινὰ κατατάξας εἰς τοὺς δικαστάς, εἶτα τὸν πώγωνα βαπτόμενον αἰσθόμενος καὶ τὴν κεφαλήν, ἀνέστησεν εἰπὼν τὸν ἄπιστον ἐν θριξὶ μὴ νομίζειν ἀξιόπιστον ἐν πράγμασι.

Μαχαίτᾳ δέ τινι κρίνων δίκην καὶ ὑπονυστάζων οὐ πάνυ προσεῖχε τοῖς δικαίοις ἀλλὰ κατέκρινεν· ἐκείνου δ’ ἀναβοήσαντος ἐκκαλεῖσθαι τὴν κρίσιν διοργισθείς ‘ἐπὶ [179] [a] τίνα;’ εἶπε· καὶ ὁ Μαχαίτας ‘ἐπὶ σέ, βασιλεῦ, αὐτόν, ἂν ἐγρηγορὼς καὶ προσέχων ἀκούῃς.’ τότε μὲν οὖν ἀνέστη· γενόμενος δὲ μᾶλλον ἐφ’ ἑαυτῷ καὶ γνοὺς ἀδικούμενον τὸν Μαχαίταν τὴν μὲν κρίσιν οὐκ ἔλυσε, τὸ δὲ τίμημα τῆς δίκης αὐτὸς ἐξέτισεν.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Ἅρπαλος ὑπὲρ συγγενοῦς καὶ οἰκείου Κράτητος ἀδικημάτων δίκην ἔχοντος ἠξίου τὴν ζημίαν εἰσενεγκεῖν ἀφεθῆναι δὲ τῆς κρίσεως, ἵνα μὴ λοιδορηθῇ, ‘βέλτιόν ἐστιν’ εἶπε ‘τοῦτον αὐτὸν ἢ ἡμᾶς διὰ τοῦτον κακῶς ἀκούειν.’

Ἀγανακτούντων δὲ τῶν φίλων, ὅτι συρίττουσιν αὐτὸν ἐν Ὀλυμπίοις εὖ πεπονθότες οἱ Πελοποννήσιοι, ‘τί οὖν’ εἶπεν, ‘ἐὰν κακῶς πάθωσι;’

[b] Κοιμηθεὶς δὲ πλείονα χρόνον ἐπὶ στρατείας, εἶτα διαναστάς ‘ἀσφαλῶς’ εἶπεν ‘ἐκάθευδον· Ἀντίπατρος γὰρ ἐγρηγόρει.’

Πάλιν δὲ ἡμέρας καθεύδοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν ἠθροισμένων ἐπὶ θύραις Ἑλλήνων ἀγανακτούντων καὶ ἐγκαλούντων, ὁ Παρμενίων ‘μὴ θαυμάσητε’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ καθεύδει νῦν Φίλιππος· ὅτε γὰρ ἐκαθεύδεθ’ ὑμεῖς, οὗτος ἐγρηγόρει.’

Ψάλτην δέ τινα βουλομένου παρὰ δεῖπνον ἐπανορθοῦν αὐτοῦ καὶ λαλεῖν περὶ κρουμάτων ὁ ψάλτης ‘μὴ γένοιτό σοι’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ, κακῶς οὕτως, ἵνα ταῦτ’ ἐμοῦ βέλτιον εἰδῇς.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ διενεχθέντος αὐτοῦ πρὸς Ὀλυμπιάδα [c] τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἧκε Δημάρατος ὁ Κορίνθιος, ἐπυνθάνετο, πῶς πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔχουσιν ‹ὁμονοίας› οἱ Ἕλληνες· καὶ ὁ Δημάρατος ‘πάνυ γοῦν’ ἔφη ‘σοὶ περὶ τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὁμονοίας ὁ λόγος ἐστίν, οὕτω πρὸς σὲ τῶν οἰκειοτάτων ἐχόντων.’ ὁ δὲ συμφρονήσας ἐπαύσατο τῆς ὀργῆς καὶ διηλλάγη πρὸς αὐτούς.

Πρεσβύτιδος δὲ πενιχρᾶς ἀξιούσης ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ κριθῆναι καὶ πολλάκις ἐνοχλούσης ἔφη μὴ σχολάζειν. ἡ δὲ πρεσβῦτις ἐγκραγοῦσα ‘καὶ μὴ βασίλευε’ εἶπεν. ὁ δὲ θαυμάσας τὸ ῥηθὲν οὐ μόνον ἐκείνης ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων εὐθὺς διήκουσεν.

ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ

[d] Ἀλέξανδρος ἔτι παῖς ὤν, πολλὰ τοῦ Φιλίππου κατορθοῦντος, οὐκ ἔχαιρεν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τοὺς συντρεφομένους ἔλεγε παῖδας ‘ἐμοὶ δὲ ὁ πατὴρ οὐδὲν ἀπολείψει.’ τῶν δὲ παίδων λεγόντων ὅτι ‘ταῦτα σοὶ κτᾶται’, ‘τί δ’ ὄφελος’ εἶπεν ‘ἐὰν ἔχω μὲν πολλὰ πράξω δὲ μηδέν;’

Ἐλαφρὸς δ’ ὢν καὶ ποδώκης [καὶ] παρακαλούμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς Ὀλυμπία‹σιν› δραμεῖν στάδιον, ‘εἴγε’ ἔφη ‘βασιλεῖς ἕξειν ἔμελλον ἀνταγωνιστάς.’

Ἀχθείσης δὲ παιδίσκης πρὸς αὐτὸν ὡς συναναπαυσομένης περὶ ἑσπέραν βαθεῖαν ἠρώτησεν ‘ὅ τι τηνικαῦτα;’ [e] τῆς δὲ εἰπούσης ‘περιέμενον γὰρ τὸν ἄνδρα κατακλιν‹ῆν›αι,’ πικρῶς ἐπετίμησε τοῖς παισὶν ὡς μικροῦ δι’ αὐτοὺς μοιχὸς γενόμενος.

Ἐπιθυμιῶντι δὲ τοῖς θεοῖς ἀφειδῶς αὐτῷ καὶ πολλάκις ἐπιδραττομένῳ τοῦ λιβανωτοῦ παρὼν Λεωνίδης ὁ παιδαγωγός ‘οὕτως’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ παῖ, δαψιλῶς ἐπιθυμιάσεις, ὅταν τῆς λιβανωτοφόρου κρατήσῃς.’ ὡς οὖν ἐκράτησεν, ἔπεμψεν ἐπιστολὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν· ‘ἀπέσταλκά σοι τάλαντα λιβανωτοῦ καὶ κασίας, ἵνα μηκέτι μικρολογῇ πρὸς τοὺς θεούς, εἰδὼς ὅτι καὶ τῆς ἀρωματοφόρου κρατοῦμεν.’

Μέλλων δὲ τὴν ἐπὶ Γρανίκῳ μάχην μάχεσθαι παρεκάλει [f] τοὺς Μακεδόνας ἀφθόνως δειπνεῖν καὶ πάντα φέρειν εἰς μέσον, ὡς αὔριον δειπνήσοντας τὰ τῶν πολεμίων.

Περίλλου δέ τινος τῶν φίλων αἰτήσαντος προῖκα τοῖς θυγατρίοις ἐκέλευσε πεντήκοντα τάλαντα λαβεῖν· αὐτοῦ δὲ φήσαντος ἱκανὰ εἶναι δέκα, ‘σοί γε’ ἔφη ‘λαβεῖν, ἐμοὶ δ’ οὐχ ἱκανὰ δοῦναι.’

Ἀναξάρχῳ δὲ τῷ φιλοσόφῳ δοῦναι τὸν διοικητὴν ἐκέλευσεν ὅσον ἂν αἰτήσῃ· τοῦ δὲ διοικητοῦ φήσαντος ὡς ἑκατὸν αἰτεῖ τάλαντα, ‘καλῶς’ ἔφη ‘ποιεῖ γινώσκων [180] [a] ὅτι φίλον ἔχει καὶ δυνάμενον τηλικαῦτα δωρεῖσθαι καὶ βουλόμενον.’

Ἐν δὲ τῇ Μιλήτῳ πολλοὺς ἀνδριάντας ἀθλητῶν θεασάμενος Ὀλύμπια καὶ Πύθια νενικηκότων ‘καὶ ποῦ τὰ τηλικαῦτα’ ἔφη ‘ἦν σώματα, ὅτε οἱ βάρβαροι ὑμῶν τὴν πόλιν ἐπολιόρκουν;’

Τῆς δὲ τῶν Καρῶν βασιλίσσης Ἄδας ὄψα καὶ πέμματα παρεσκευασμένα περιττῶς διὰ δημιουργῶν καὶ μαγείρων φιλοτιμουμένης ἀεὶ πέμπειν πρὸς αὐτόν ἔφη κρείττονας ἔχειν αὐτὸς ὀψοποιούς, πρὸς μὲν ἄριστον τὴν νυκτοπορίαν πρὸς δὲ δεῖπνον τὴν ὀλιγαριστίαν.

[b] Ἐπεὶ δὲ παρεσκευασμένων πάντων πρὸς μάχην ἠρώτησαν οἱ στρατηγοί, μή τι πρὸς τούτοις ἕτερον, οὐδέν, εἶπεν, ἢ ξῦραι τὰ γένεια τῶν Μακεδόνων· θαυμάσαντος δὲ τοῦ Παρμενίωνος ‘οὐκ οἶδας’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι βελτίων οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν μάχῃ λαβὴ πώγωνος;’

Δαρείου δὲ διδόντος αὐτῷ μύρια τάλαντα καὶ τὸ τὴν Ἀσίαν νείμασθαι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐπίσης, καὶ Παρμενίωνος εἰπόντος ‘ἐγὼ μὲν ἔλαβον ἂν εἰ Ἀλέξανδρος ἤμην’, ‘κἀγὼ νὴ Δία’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ Παρμενίων’. ἀπεκρίνατο δὲ Δαρείῳ μήτε τὴν γῆν ἡλίους δύο μήτε τὴν Ἀσίαν δύο βασιλεῖς ὑπομένειν.

[c] Μέλλοντι δ’ αὐτῷ περὶ τῶν ὅλων ἐν Ἀρβήλοις κινδυνεύειν πρὸς ἑκατὸν μυριάδας ἀντιτεταγμένας, προσῄεσαν οἱ φίλοι τῶν στρατιωτῶν κατηγοροῦντες ὡς ἐν ταῖς σκηναῖς διαλαλούντων καὶ συντιθεμένων, ὅπως μηδὲν τῶν λαφύρων εἰς τὸ βασιλικὸν ἀνοίσουσιν, ἀλλ’ αὐτοὶ κερδανοῦσιν. ὁ δὲ μειδιάσας ‘ἀγαθά’ φησίν ‘ἀγγέλλετε· νικᾶν γὰρ ἀνδρῶν οὐ φεύγειν παρεσκευασμένων ἀκούω διαλογισμούς.’ καὶ προσιόντες αὐτῷ πολλοὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἔλεγον ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ, θάρρει καὶ μὴ φοβοῦ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν πολεμίων, αὐτὸν γὰρ ἡμῶν τὸν γράσον οὐχ ὑπομενοῦσι.’

Παρατασσομένου δὲ τοῦ στρατεύματος ἰδών τινα [d] τῶν στρατιωτῶν τὸ ἀκόντιον ἐναγκυλούμενον ἐξέωσε τῆς φάλαγγος ὡς ἄχρηστον, ὃς ‘παρασκευάζεται νῦν, ὅτε χρῆσθαι δεῖ τοῖς ὅπλοις.’

Ἐπιστολὴν δὲ παρὰ τῆς μητρὸς ἀναγινώσκων αἰτίας ἀπορρήτους κατ’ Ἀντιπάτρου καὶ διαβολὰς ἔχουσαν, ἅμα τοῦ Ἡφαιστίωνος ὥσπερ εἰώθει συναναγινώσκοντος, οὐκ ἐκώλυσεν· ὡς δ’ ἀνέγνω, τὸν δακτύλιον ἀφελόμενος τὸν ἑαυτοῦ τῷ στόματι τῷ ἐκείνου τὴν σφραγῖδα ἐπέθηκεν.

Ἐν δ’ Ἄμμωνος ὑπὸ τοῦ προφήτου παῖς Διὸς προσαγορευθείς ‘οὐδέν γε’ ἔφη ‘θαυμαστόν, πάντων μὲν γὰρ ὁ Ζεὺς φύσει πατήρ ἐστιν, ἑαυτοῦ δὲ ποιεῖται τοὺς ἀρίστους.’

[e] Τοξεύματι δὲ πληγεὶς εἰς τὸ σκέλος, ὡς πολλοὶ συνέδραμον τῶν πολλάκις αὐτὸν εἰωθότων θεὸν προσαγορεύειν, διαχυθεὶς τῷ προσώπῳ ‘τουτὶ μὲν αἷμα’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς ὁρᾶτε καὶ οὐκ (Ε 340)

ἰχώρ, οἷόσπέρ τε ῥέει μακάρεσσι θεοῖσιν.’

Ἐπαινούντων δ’ ἐνίων τοῦ Ἀντιπάτρου τὴν εὐτέλειαν ὡς ἀθρύπτως διαιτωμένου καὶ αὐστηρῶς ‘ἔξωθεν’ εἶπεν ‘Ἀντίπατρος λευκοπάρυφός ἐστι, τὰ δ’ ἔνδον ὁλοπόρφυρος.’

Ἐν δὲ χειμῶνι καὶ ψύχει τῶν φίλων τινὸς ἑστιῶντος αὐτὸν ἐσχάραν δὲ μικρὰν καὶ πῦρ ὀλίγον εἰσενέγκαντος, ἢ ξύλα ἢ λιβανωτὸν εἰσενεγκεῖν ἐκέλευσεν.

Ἀντιπατρίδου δὲ καλὴν ψάλτριαν ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον [f] ἀγαγόντος, κινηθεὶς τῇ ὄψει πρὸς αὐτὴν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ἠρώτησε τὸν Ἀντιπατρίδην, μή τι τυγχάνει τῆς γυναικὸς ἐρῶν· ἐκείνου δὲ ὁμολογήσαντος, ‘ὦ μιαρέ’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἀπάξεις εὐθὺς ἐκ τοῦ συμποσίου τὴν γυναῖκα;’

Πάλιν δὲ Πύθωνα τὸν Εὐίου τοῦ αὐλητοῦ ἐρώμενον Κάσανδρος ἐβιάζετο φιλῆσαι· τὸν οὖν Εὔιον ὁρῶν ἀχθόμενον ἀνεπήδησε μετ’ ὀργῆς ἐπὶ τὸν Κάσανδρον, κεκραγώς ‘ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἐρασθῆναί τινος ἔξεστι δι’ ὑμᾶς;’

Ἀποστέλλοντος δ’ αὐτοῦ τῶν Μακεδόνων τοὺς [181] [a] νοσώδεις καὶ ἀναπήρους ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ἐνεδείχθη τις εἰς τοὺς νοσοῦντας ἀπογεγραμμένος ἑαυτὸν οὐ νοσῶν. ἐπεὶ οὖν εἰς ὄψιν ἀχθεὶς καὶ ἀνακρινόμενος ὡμολόγησε προφασίζεσθαι δι’ ἔρωτα Τελεσίππας ἀπιούσης ἐπὶ θάλασσαν, ἠρώτησεν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ‘πρὸς τίνα δεῖ περὶ τῆς Τελεσίππας διαλέγεσθαι;’ πυθόμενος δ’ ἐλευθέραν οὖσαν ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘ὦ Ἀντιγένη, πείθωμεν τὴν Τελεσίππαν, ἵνα μείνῃ μεθ’ ἡμῶν· βιάζεσθαι γὰρ ἐλευθέραν οὖσαν οὐχ ἡμέτερον.’

Τῶν δὲ μισθοφορούντων Ἑλλήνων παρὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις ὑποχειρίων γενομένων τοὺς μὲν Ἀθηναίους ἐκέλευσεν ἐν πέδαις φυλάττειν ὅτι τροφὴν ἔχοντες ἐκ δημοσίου [b] μισθοφοροῦσι καὶ τοὺς Θεσσαλοὺς ὅτι γῆν ἀρίστην κεκτημένοι οὐ γεωργοῦσι· τοὺς δὲ Θηβαίους ἀφῆκεν εἰπὼν ὅτι ‘μόνοις τούτοις οὔτε πόλις οὔτε χώρα δι’ ἡμᾶς ἀπολέλειπται.’

Τῶν δ’ Ἰνδῶν τὸν ἄριστα τοξεύειν δοκοῦντα καὶ λεγόμενον διὰ δακτυλίου τὸν ὀιστὸν ἀφιέναι λαβὼν αἰχμάλωτον ἐκέλευσεν ἐπιδείξασθαι, καὶ μὴ βουλόμενον ὀργισθεὶς ἀνελεῖν προσέταξε· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀγόμενος ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἔλεγε πρὸς τοὺς ἄγοντας ὅτι πολλῶν ἡμερῶν οὐ μεμελέτηκε καὶ ἐφοβήθη διαπεσεῖν, ἀκούσας ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐθαύμασε καὶ ἀπέλυσε μετὰ δώρων αὐτόν, ὅτι μᾶλλον ἀποθανεῖν ὑπέμεινεν ἢ τῆς δόξης ἀνάξιος φανῆναι.

[c] Ἐπεὶ δὲ Ταξίλης, εἷς τῶν Ἰνδῶν βασιλεὺς ὤν, ἀπαντήσας προυκαλεῖτο μὴ μάχεσθαι μηδὲ πολεμεῖν Ἀλέξανδρον, ἀλλ’ εἰ μέν ἐστιν ἥττων, εὖ πάσχειν, εἰ δὲ βελτίων, εὖ ποιεῖν, ἀπεκρίνατο περὶ αὐτοῦ τούτου μαχητέον εἶναι, πότερος εὖ ποιῶν περιγένηται.

Περὶ δὲ τῆς λεγομένης Ἀόρνου πέτρας ἐν Ἰνδοῖς ἀκούσας, ὅτι τὸ μὲν χωρίον δυσάλωτόν ἐστιν ὁ δὲ ἔχων αὐτὸ δειλός ἐστι, ‘νῦν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ χωρίον εὐάλωτόν ἐστιν.’

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἄλλος ἔχων πέτραν ἄληπτον δοκοῦσαν εἶναι ἐνεχείρισεν ἑαυτὸν μετὰ τῆς πέτρας τῷ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, ἀφῆκε τῆς ἰδίας χώρας ἄρχειν καὶ προσέθηκε χώραν, εἰπὼν ὅτι ‘φρονεῖν μοι δοκεῖ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἀνδρὶ μᾶλλον [d] ἀγαθῷ πιστεύσας ἑαυτὸν ἢ ὀχυρῷ τόπῳ.’

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν τῆς πέτρας ἅλωσιν τῶν φίλων λεγόντων ὑπερβεβληκέναι τὸν Ἡρακλέα ταῖς πράξεσιν, ‘ἀλλ’ ἐγώ’ εἶπε ‘τὰς ἐμὰς πράξεις μετὰ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἑνὸς οὐ νομίζω ῥήματος ἀνταξίας εἶναι τοῦ Ἡρακλέους.’

Τῶν δὲ φίλων τινὰς αἰσθόμενος ἐν τῷ κυβεύειν οὐ παίζοντας ἐζημίωσε.

Τῶν δὲ πρώτων φίλων καὶ κρατίστων τιμᾶν μὲν ἐδόκει Κρατερὸν μάλιστα πάντων, φιλεῖν δὲ Ἡφαιστίωνα. ‘Κρατερὸς μὲν γάρ’ ἔφη ‘φιλοβασιλεύς ἐστιν, Ἡφαιστίων δὲ φιλαλέξανδρος.’

Ξενοκράτει δὲ τῷ φιλοσόφῳ πεντήκοντα τάλαντα [e] πέμψας, ὡς οὐκ ἐδέξατο μὴ δεῖσθαι φήσας, ἠρώτησεν, εἰ μηδὲ φίλον ἔχει Ξενοκράτης· ‘ἐμοὶ μὲν γάρ’ ἔφη ‘μόλις ὁ Δαρείου πλοῦτος εἰς τοὺς φίλους ἤρκεσεν.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Πῶρος ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ‘πῶς σοι χρήσωμαι;’ ‘βασιλικῶς’ εἶπε, καὶ προσερωτηθείς ‘μή τι ἄλλο;’ ‘πάντα’ εἶπεν ‘ἐν τῷ βασιλικῶς ἔνεστι,’ θαυμάσας καὶ τὴν σύνεσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἀνδραγαθίαν πλείονα χώραν ἧς πρῴην εἶχε προσέθηκε.

Πυθόμενος δὲ ὑπό τινος λοιδορεῖσθαι ‘βασιλικόν’ ἔφη ‘ἐστὶν εὖ ποιοῦντα κακῶς ἀκούειν.’

Ἀποθνῄσκων δὲ πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους ἀπιδὼν ἔφη ‘μέγαν ὁρῶ μοι τὸν ἐπιτάφιον ἐσόμενον.’

[f] Τελευτήσαντος δ’ αὐτοῦ Δημάδης ὁ ῥήτωρ ‘ὅμοιον’ ἔφη ‘διὰ τὴν ἀναρχίαν ὁρᾶσθαι τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν Μακεδόνων ἐκτετυφλωμένῳ τῷ Κύκλωπι.’

ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΟΣ Ο ΛΑΓΟΥ

Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Λάγου τὰ πολλὰ παρὰ τοῖς φίλοις ἐδείπνει καὶ ἐκάθευδεν· εἰ δέ ποτε δειπνίζοι, τοῖς ἐκείνων ἐχρῆτο μεταπεμπόμενος ἐκπώματα καὶ στρώματα καὶ τραπέζας· αὐτὸς δ’ οὐκ ἐκέκτητο πλείω τῶν ἀναγκαίων, ἀλλὰ τοῦ πλουτεῖν ἔλεγε τὸ πλουτίζειν εἶναι βασιλικώτερον.

ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΟΣ

[182] [a] Ἀντίγονος εἰσέπραττε χρήματα συντόνως· εἰπόντος δέ τινος ‘ἀλλ’ οὐκ Ἀλέξανδρος ἦν τοιοῦτος’ ‘εἰκότως’ εἶπεν, ‘ἐκεῖνος μὲν γὰρ ἐθέριζε τὴν Ἀσίαν, ἐγὼ δὲ καλαμῶμαι.’

Τῶν δὲ στρατιωτῶν ἰδών τινας ἐν τοῖς θώραξι καὶ τοῖς κράνεσι σφαιρίζοντας ἥσθη καὶ τοὺς ἡγεμόνας αὐτῶν μετεπέμπετο ἐπαινέσαι βουλόμενος· ὡς δ’ ἤκουσεν ὅτι πίνουσιν, τὰς ἐκείνων ἡγεμονίας τοῖς στρατιώταις ἔδωκε.

Θαυμαζόντων δὲ πάντων ὅτι γέρων γενόμενος ἠπίως ἐχρῆτο καὶ πράως τοῖς πράγμασι, ‘πρότερον μὲν γάρ’ εἶπε ‘δυνάμεως ἐδεόμην, νῦν δὲ δόξης καὶ εὐνοίας.’

[b] Πρὸς δὲ τὸν υἱὸν Φίλιππον πυθόμενον πλειόνων παρόντων ‘πότε μέλλομεν ἀναζευγνύναι;’ ‘τί δέδοικας;’ εἶπε ‘μὴ μόνος τῆς σάλπιγγος οὐκ ἀκούσῃς;’

Σπουδάσαντος δὲ τοῦ νεανίσκου λαβεῖν κατάλυσιν παρὰ γυναικὶ χήρᾳ τρεῖς ἐχούσῃ θυγατέρας εὐπρεπεῖς, καλέσας τὸν ἐπὶ τῶν ξενίων εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἐξάξεις μου τὸν υἱὸν ἐκ τῆς στενοχωρίας;’

Νοσήσας δὲ μακρὰν νόσον ὡς ἀνέσφηλεν, ‘οὐδέν’ ἔφη ‘χεῖρον· ὑπέμνησε γὰρ ἡμᾶς ἡ νόσος μὴ μέγα φρονεῖν ὡς ὄντας θνητούς.’

Ἑρμοδότου δ’ αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασιν (Bergk III 637) Ἡλίου παῖδα γράψαντος ‘οὐ ταῦτά μοι’ ἔφη ‘σύνοιδεν [c] ὁ λασανοφόρος.’

Εἰπόντος δέ τινος ὅτι ‘πάντα καλὰ καὶ δίκαια’

τοῖς βασιλεῦσι, ‘ναὶ μὰ Δία, τοῖς τῶν βαρβάρων’ εἶπεν ‘ἡμῖν δὲ μόνα καλὰ τὰ καλὰ καὶ δίκαια μόνα τὰ δίκαια.’

Μαρσύου τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ δίκην ἔχοντος, ἀξιοῦντος δὲ τὴν κρίσιν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι κατ’ οἰκίαν, ‘ἔσται μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ καὶ πάντων ἀκουόντων, εἰ μηδὲν ἀδικοῦμεν.’

Ἐπεὶ δέ ποτε χειμῶνος ἐν τόποις σπανίζουσι τῶν ἐπιτηδείων ἠναγκάσθη καταζεῦξαι καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν τινες ἐλοιδόρουν αὐτὸν ἀγνοοῦντες ὅτι πλησίον ἐστίν, τῇ [d] βακτηρίᾳ τὴν σκηνὴν διαστείλας ‘οἰμώξετε’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ μὴ μακρότερον ἀποστάντες λοιδορήσετε ἡμᾶς.’

Ἀριστοδήμου δὲ τῶν φίλων τινὸς ἐκ μαγείρου γεγονέναι δοκοῦντος, συμβουλεύοντος δ’ αὐτῷ τῶν ἀναλωμάτων καὶ τῶν δωρεῶν ἀφαιρεῖν, ‘οἱ λόγοι σου’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Ἀριστόδημε, περιζώματος ὄζουσιν.’

Ἀθηναίων δὲ δοῦλον αὐτοῦ τιμώμενον εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν ὡς ἐλεύθερον ἐγγραψάντων, ‘οὐκ ἂν’ εἶπεν ‘ἕνα μόνον βουλοίμην Ἀθηναῖον ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ μεμαστιγῶσθαι.’

Νεανίσκου δέ τινος τῶν Ἀναξιμένους τοῦ ῥήτορος μαθητῶν λόγον ἐσκεμμένον ἐκ παρασκευῆς εἰπόντος ἐπ’ [e] αὐτοῦ, βουλόμενός τι προσμαθεῖν ἠρώτησεν· ἀποσιωπήσαντος δὲ τοῦ νεανίσκου ‘τί λέγεις;’ εἶπεν ‘ἢ

‘ταῦτ’ ἐστὶ τἀν δέλτοισιν ἐγγεγραμμένα;’ (Eur. Iph. Taur. 787).

Ἑτέρου δὲ ῥήτορος ἀκούων λέγοντος ὅτι χιονοβόλος ἡ ὥρα γενομένη λιποβοτανεῖν ἐποίησε τὴν χώραν, ‘οὐ παύσῃ μοι’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς ὄχλῳ χρώμενος;’

Θρασύλλου δὲ τοῦ κυνικοῦ δραχμὴν αἰτήσαντος αὐτόν, ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ βασιλικόν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ δόμα·’ τοῦ δὲ εἰπόντος ‘οὐκοῦν τάλαντον δός μοι’, ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ κυνικόν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ λῆμμα.’

Πέμπων δὲ Δημήτριον τὸν υἱὸν μετὰ νεῶν πολλῶν καὶ δυνάμεων ἐλευθερώσοντα τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἔλεγε [f] τὴν δόξαν ὥσπερ ἀπὸ σκοπῆς τῆς Ἑλλάδος εἰς τὴν οἰκουμένην πυρσεύεσθαι.

Ἀνταγόρου δὲ τοῦ ποιητοῦ γόγγρον ἕψοντος καὶ αὐτοῦ τὴν λοπάδα σείοντος ἐπιστὰς ἐξόπισθεν ‘οἴει’ φησί ‘τὸν Ὅμηρον, ὦ Ἀνταγόρα, γόγγρον ἕψειν τὰς τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος γράφοντα πράξεις;’ καὶ ὁ Ἀνταγόρας ‘σὺ δέ’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ, τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα νομίζεις πράττοντα τὰς πράξεις ἐκείνας πολυπραγμονεῖν, εἴ τις ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ γόγγρον ἕψει;’

[183] [a] Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὄναρ ἰδὼν χρυσοῦν θέρος ἐξαμῶντα Μιθριδάτην ἐβουλεύσατο κτεῖναι καὶ Δημητρίῳ τῷ υἱῷ φράσας ὥρκωσε σιωπῆσαι, [ὁ δὲ] παραλαβὼν τὸν Μιθριδάτην ὁ Δημήτριος καὶ συμπεριπατῶν παρὰ θάλασσαν ἐν τῷ αἰγιαλῷ κατέγραψε τῷ σαυρωτῆρι τοῦ δόρατος ‘φεῦγε, Μιθριδᾶτα.’ ἐκεῖνος δὲ νοήσας ἔφυγεν εἰς Πόντον κἀκεῖ βασιλεύων διετέλεσε.

ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙΟΣ

Ῥοδίους δὲ πολιορκῶν ὁ Δημήτριος ἔλαβεν ἔν τινι προαστείῳ πίνακα Πρωτογένους τοῦ ζωγράφου τὸν [b] Ἰάλυσον γράφοντος· ἐπικηρυκευσαμένων δὲ τῶν Ῥοδίων καὶ φείσασθαι τοῦ πίνακος παρακαλούντων, ἔφη μᾶλλον τὰς τοῦ πατρὸς εἰκόνας ἢ τὴν γραφὴν ἐκείνην διαφθερεῖν.

Σπεισάμενος δὲ τοῖς Ῥοδίοις τὴν ἑλέπολιν ἀπέλιπε παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ὑπόδειγμα τῆς αὑτοῦ ‹μὲν› μεγαλουργίας ἐκείνων δ’ ἀνδρείας ἐσομένην.

Ἀποστάντων δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἑλὼν τὴν πόλιν ἤδη κακῶς ὑπὸ σιτοδείας ἔχουσαν, εὐθὺς ἐκκλησίας αὐτῷ συναχθείσης ἐπέδωκε δωρεὰν σῖτον αὐτοῖς· δημηγορῶν δὲ περὶ τούτων ἐβαρβάρισε· τῶν δὲ καθημένων τινὸς ὡς ἔδει τὸ ῥῆμα λεχθῆναι παραφωνήσαντος, ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ τῆς ἐπανορθώσεως ταύτης ἄλλους ὑμῖν [c] πεντακισχιλίους ἐπιδίδωμι μεδίμνους.’

ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΟΣ Ο ΔΕΥΤΕΡΟΣ

Ἀντίγονος ὁ δεύτερος, Δημητρίου τοῦ πατρὸς ἁλόντος καὶ πέμψαντός τινα τῶν φίλων κελεύοντα μὴ προσέχειν, ἄν τι γράφῃ βιασθεὶς ὑπὸ Σελεύκου, μηδὲ παραχωρεῖν τῶν πόλεων, αὐτὸς ἔγραψε πρὸς Σέλευκον ἐξιστάμενος αὐτῷ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἁπάσης καὶ παραδιδοὺς ὅμηρον ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ τῷ τὸν πατέρα Δημήτριον ἀπολυθῆναι.

Μέλλων δὲ ναυμαχεῖν πρὸς τοὺς Πτολεμαίου στρατηγούς, εἰπόντος τοῦ κυβερνήτου πολὺ πλείονας εἶναι τὰς τῶν πολεμίων ναῦς, ‘ἐμὲ δέ’ ἔφη ‘αὐτὸν παρόντα πρὸς [d] πόσας ἀντιτάττεις;’

Ὑποχωρῶν δέ ποτε τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐπερχομένοις οὐκ ἔφη φεύγειν, ἀλλὰ διώκειν τὸ συμφέρον ὀπίσω κείμενον. Ἐπεὶ δὲ νεανίσκος ἀνδρείου πατρός, αὐτὸς δὲ μὴ πάνυ δοκῶν ἀγαθὸς εἶναι στρατιώτης ἠξίου τὰς τοῦ πατρὸς λαμβάνειν ἀποφοράς, ‘ἀλλ’ ἐγώ’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ μειράκιον, ἀνδραγαθίας οὐ πατραγαθίας μισθοὺς καὶ δωρεὰς δίδωμι.’

Ζήνωνος δὲ τοῦ Κιτιέως ἀποθανόντος, ὃν μάλιστα τῶν φιλοσόφων ἐθαύμασεν, ἔλεγε τὸ θέατρον αὐτοῦ τῶν πράξεων ἀνῃρῆσθαι.

ΛΥΣΙΜΑΧΟΣ

Λυσίμαχος ἐν Θρᾴκῃ κρατηθεὶς ὑπὸ Δρομιχαίτου [e] καὶ διὰ δίψαν ἑαυτὸν καὶ τὸ στράτευμα παραδοὺς ὡς ἔπιεν αἰχμάλωτος γενόμενος, ‘ὦ θεοί’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς μικρᾶς ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα δοῦλον ἐμαυτὸν ἐκ βασιλέως πεποίηκα.’

Πρὸς δὲ Φιλιππίδην τὸν κωμῳδοποιὸν φίλον ὄντα καὶ συνήθη ‘τίνος σοι’ εἶπε ‘τῶν ἐμῶν μεταδῶ;’ κἀκεῖνος ‘οὗ βούλει πλὴν τῶν ἀπορρήτων.’

ΑΝΤΙΠΑΤΡΟΣ

Ἀντίπατρος ἀκούσας τὴν Παρμενίωνος ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου τελευτήν ‘εἰ μὲν ἐπεβούλευσεν’ εἶπε ‘Παρμενίων Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, τίνι πιστευτέον; εἰ δὲ μή, τί πρακτέον;’

Δημάδου δὲ τοῦ ῥήτορος ἤδη πρεσβύτου γεγονότος [f] ἔφη καθάπερ ἱερείου διαπεπραγμένου καταλείπεσθαι μόνην τὴν γαστέρα καὶ τὴν γλῶτταν.

ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΣ Ο ΤΡΙΤΟΣ

Ἀντίοχος ὁ τρίτος ἔγραψε ταῖς πόλεσιν, ἄν τι γράψῃ παρὰ τοὺς νόμους κελεύων γενέσθαι, μὴ προσέχειν ὡς ἠγνοηκότι.

Τὴν δὲ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος ἱέρειαν ἰδὼν ὑπερβολῇ καλὴν φανεῖσαν εὐθὺς ἀνέζευξεν ἐξ Ἐφέσου, φοβούμενος μὴ παρὰ γνώμην ἐκβιασθῇ πρᾶξαί τι τῶν οὐχ ὁσίων.

ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΣ Ο ΙΕΡΑΞ

[184] [a] Ἀντίοχος ὁ ἐπικληθεὶς Ἱέραξ ἐπολέμει περὶ τῆς βασιλείας πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν Σέλευκον· ἐπεὶ δὲ ὁ Σέλευκος ἡττηθεὶς ὑπὸ Γαλατῶν οὐδαμοῦ φανερὸς ἦν ἀλλ’ ἐδόκει κατακεκόφθαι, θεὶς τὴν πορφύραν ὁ Ἀντίοχος φαιὸν ἱμάτιον ἀντέλαβε. μετ’ ὀλίγον δὲ πυθόμενος τὸν ἀδελφὸν σῴζεσθαι, εὐαγγέλια τοῖς θεοῖς ἔθυσε καὶ τὰς πόλεις τὰς ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ στεφανηφορεῖν ἐποίησεν.

ΕΥΜΕΝΗΣ

Εὐμένης ἐπιβουλευθεὶς ὑπὸ Περσέως ἔδοξε τεθνάναι· τῆς δὲ φήμης εἰς Πέργαμον κομισθείσης Ἄτταλος ὁ [b] ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ περιθέμενος τὸ διάδημα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα γήμας ἐβασίλευσε· πυθόμενος δὲ προσιόντα ζῶντα τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀπήντησεν ὥσπερ εἰώθει μετὰ τῶν σωματοφυλάκων δοράτιον ἔχων· ὁ δ’ Εὐμένης φιλοφρόνως ἀσπασάμενος αὐτὸν καὶ πρὸς τὸ οὖς εἰπών (N² p. 275 Soph. 601)

‘μὴ σπεῦδε γῆμαι πρὶν τελευτήσαντ’ ἴδῃς’

οὐδὲν ἄλλο παρὰ πάντα τὸν βίον οὔτ’ εἶπεν ὕποπτον οὔτ’ ἐποίησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τελευτῶν ἐκείνῳ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν ἀπέλιπεν. ἀνθ’ ὧν ἐκεῖνος οὐδὲν ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ τέκνον †ἔθρεψε, πολλῶν γενομένων, ἀλλὰ τῷ Εὐμένους υἱῷ τὴν βασιλείαν ἔτι ζῶν ἐνηλίκῳ γενομένῳ παρέδωκε.

[c]

ΠΥΡΡΟΣ

Πύρρον οἱ υἱοὶ παῖδες ὄντες ἠρώτων, τίνι καταλείψει τὴν βασιλείαν· καὶ ὁ Πύρρος εἶπεν ‘ὃς ἂν ὑμῶν ὀξυτέραν ἔχῃ τὴν μάχαιραν.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ πότερον Πύθων ἢ Καφισίας αὐλητὴς ἀμείνων ‘Πολυπέρχων’ ἔφη ‘στρατηγός.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ συμβαλὼν Ῥωμαίοις δὶς ἐνίκησε πολλοὺς τῶν φίλων καὶ τῶν ἡγεμόνων ἀπολέσας, ‘ἂν ἔτι μίαν’ ἔφη ‘μάχην Ῥωμαίους νικήσωμεν, ἀπολώλαμεν.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Σικελίας ἀποτυχὼν ἐξέπλει, μεταστραφεὶς ὀπίσω πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ‘οἵαν’ ἔφη ‘Ῥωμαίοις καὶ Καρχηδονίοις ἀπολείπομεν παλαίστραν.’

Τῶν δὲ στρατιωτῶν Ἀετὸν αὐτὸν προσαγορευόντων [d] ‘τί γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘οὐ μέλλω, τοῖς ὑμετέροις ὅπλοις ὥσπερ ὠκυπτέροις αἰρόμενος;’

Ἀκούσας δὲ ὅτι νεανίσκοι πολλὰ βλάσφημα περὶ αὐτοῦ πίνοντες εἰρήκασιν, ἐκέλευσεν ἀχθῆναι μεθ’ ἡμέραν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἅπαντας· ἀχθέντων δὲ τὸν πρῶτον ἠρώτησεν, εἰ ταῦτ’ εἰρήκασι περὶ αὐτοῦ· καὶ ὁ νεανίσκος ‘ταῦτα’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ· πλείονα δ’ ἂν τούτων εἰρήκειμεν, εἰ πλείονα οἶνον εἴχομεν.’

ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΣ

Ἀντίοχος ὁ στρατεύσας δεύτερον ἐπὶ Πάρθους ἔν τινι κυνηγεσίῳ καὶ διωγμῷ τῶν φίλων καὶ θεραπόντων ἀποπλανηθεὶς εἰς ἔπαυλιν πενήτων ἀνθρώπων ἀγνοούμενος εἰσῆλθε καὶ παρὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ἐμβαλὼν λόγον περὶ τοῦ [e] βασιλέως ἤκουσεν, ὅτι τἆλλα χρηστός ἐστιν, φίλοις δὲ μοχθηροῖς ἐπιτρέπων τὰ πλεῖστα παρορᾷ καὶ πολλάκις ἀμελεῖ τῶν ἀναγκαίων διὰ τὸ λίαν φιλόθηρος εἶναι. τότε μὲν οὖν ἐσιώπησεν· ἅμα δὲ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν δορυφόρων παραγενομένων ἐπὶ τὴν ἔπαυλιν φανερὸς γενόμενος, προσφερομένης τῆς πορφύρας αὐτῷ καὶ τοῦ διαδήματος, ‘ἀλλ’ ἀφ’ ἧς ἡμέρας’ εἶπεν ‘ὑμᾶς ἀνείληφα, πρῶτον ἐχθὲς ἀληθινῶν λόγων ἤκουσα περὶ ἐμαυτοῦ.’

Τῶν δ’ Ἰουδαίων, πολιορκοῦντος αὐτοῦ τὰ Ἱεροσόλυμα, πρὸς τὴν μεγίστην ἑορτὴν αἰτησαμένων ἑπτὰ ἡμερῶν ἀνοχὰς οὐ μόνον ἔδωκε ταύτας, ἀλλὰ καὶ ταύρους χρυσόκερως παρασκευασάμενος καὶ θυμιαμάτων καὶ ἀρωμάτων [f] πλῆθος ἄχρι τῶν πυλῶν ἐπόμπευσε· καὶ παραδοὺς τοῖς ἐκείνων ἱερεῦσι τὴν θυσίαν αὐτὸς ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον. οἱ δ’ Ἰουδαῖοι θαυμάσαντες εὐθὺς ἑαυτοὺς μετὰ τὴν ἑορτὴν ἐνεχείρισαν.

ΘΕΜΙΣΤΟΚΛΗΣ

Θεμιστοκλῆς ἔτι μειράκιον ὢν ἐν πότοις ἐκυλινδεῖτο καὶ γυναιξίν· ἐπεὶ δὲ Μιλτιάδης στρατηγῶν ἐνίκησεν ἐν Μαραθῶνι τοὺς βαρβάρους, οὐκέτι ἦν ἐντυχεῖν [185] [a] ἀτακτοῦντι Θεμιστοκλεῖ· πρὸς δὲ τοὺς θαυμάζοντας τὴν μεταβολὴν ἔλεγεν ὡς ‘οὐκ ἐᾷ με καθεύδειν οὐδὲ ῥᾳθυμεῖν τὸ Μιλτιάδου τρόπαιον.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ πότερον Ἀχιλλεὺς ἐβούλετ’ ἂν ἢ Ὅμηρος εἶναι, ‘σὺ δ’ αὐτός’ ἔφη ‘πότερον ‹ἂν› ἤθελες ὁ νικῶν Ὀλυμπίασιν ἢ ὁ κηρύσσων τοὺς νικῶντας εἶναι;’

Ξέρξου δὲ καταβαίνοντος ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα τῷ μεγάλῳ στόλῳ, φοβηθεὶς Ἐπικύδην τὸν δημαγωγὸν αἰσχροκερδῆ καὶ δειλὸν ὄντα, μὴ στρατηγὸς γενόμενος ἀπολέσῃ τὴν πόλιν, ἔπεισεν ἀργυρίῳ τῆς στρατηγίας ἀποστῆναι.

Εὐρυβιάδου δὲ ναυμαχεῖν μὴ τολμῶντος, εἰπόντος δ’ ‹Ἀδειμάντου› πρὸς τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα τοὺς Ἕλληνας παρακαλοῦντα [b] καὶ προτρέποντα ‘ὦ Θεμιστόκλεις, τοὺς ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι προεξανισταμένους μαστιγοῦσιν [ἀεί]’, ‘ναί’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Ἀδείμαντε, τοὺς δὲ λειπομένους οὐ στεφανοῦσιν.’

Ἐπαραμένου δὲ τοῦ Εὐρυβιάδου τὴν βακτηρίαν ὡς πατάξοντος ‘πάταξον μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘ἄκουσον δέ.’

Μὴ πείθων δὲ τὸν Εὐρυβιάδην ἐν τοῖς στενοῖς ναυμαχῆσαι κρύφα πρὸς τὸν βάρβαρον ἔπεμψε παραινῶν μὴ διεῖναι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀποδιδράσκοντας· ἐπεὶ δὲ πεισθεὶς ἐκεῖνος ἡττήθη ναυμαχήσας ὅπου συνέφερε τοῖς Ἕλλησι, πάλιν ἔπεμψε πρὸς αὐτὸν κελεύων φεύγειν ἐπὶ τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον τὴν ταχίστην ὡς τῶν Ἑλλήνων διανοουμένων [c] λύειν τὴν γέφυραν, ἵνα σῴζων τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐκεῖνον δοκῇ σῴζειν.

Τοῦ δὲ Σεριφίου πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος, ὡς οὐ δι’ αὑτὸν ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν πόλιν ἔνδοξός ἐστιν, ‘ἀληθῆ λέγεις’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλ’ οὔτ’ ἂν ἐγὼ Σερίφιος ὢν ἐγενόμην ἔνδοξος οὔτε σὺ Ἀθηναῖος.’

Ἀντιφάτου δὲ τοῦ καλοῦ πρότερον μὲν ἐρῶντα τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα φεύγοντος καὶ καταφρονοῦντος, ἐπεὶ δὲ δόξαν ἔσχε μεγάλην καὶ δύναμιν, προσερχομένου καὶ κολακεύοντος, ‘ὦ μειράκιον’ εἶπεν ‘ὀψὲ μὲν ἀμφότεροι ἀλλ’ ἅμα νοῦν ἐσχήκαμεν.’

Πρὸς δὲ Σιμωνίδην ἐξαιτούμενόν τινα κρίσιν οὐ δικαίαν ἔφη μήτ’ ἂν ἐκεῖνον γενέσθαι ποιητὴν ἀγαθὸν [d] ᾄδοντα παρὰ μέλος, μήτ’ αὐτὸν ἄρχοντα χρηστὸν δικάζοντα παρὰ τὸν νόμον.

Τὸν δὲ υἱὸν ἐντρυφῶντα τῇ μητρὶ πλεῖστον Ἑλλήνων ἔλεγε δύνασθαι· τῶν γὰρ Ἑλλήνων ἄρχειν Ἀθηναίους, Ἀθηναίων δ’ ἑαυτόν, ἑαυτοῦ δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου μητέρα, τῆς δὲ μητρὸς ἐκεῖνον. Τῶν δὲ τὴν θυγατέρα μνωμένων αὐτοῦ τὸν ἐπιεικῆ τοῦ πλουσίου προτιμήσας ἄνδρα ἔφη ζητεῖν χρημάτων δεόμενον μᾶλλον ἢ χρήματα ἀνδρός.

Χωρίον δὲ πωλῶν ἐκέλευε κηρύττειν ὅτι καὶ γείτονα χρηστὸν ἔχει.

Τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων αὐτὸν προπηλακιζόντων ‘τί κοπιᾶτε’ [e] εἶπεν ‘ὑπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν πολλάκις εὐχρηστούμενοι;’ καὶ ταῖς πλατάνοις ἀπείκαζεν αὑτόν, αἷς ὑποτρέχουσι χειμαζόμενοι, γενομένης δ’ εὐδίας τίλλουσι παρερχόμενοι καὶ κολούουσι.

Τοὺς δ’ Ἐρετριεῖς ἐπισκώπτων ἔλεγεν ὥσπερ τευθίδας μάχαιραν μὲν ἔχειν καρδίαν δὲ μὴ ἔχειν.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐξέπεσε τῶν Ἀθηνῶν τὸ πρῶτον εἶτα καὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἀναβὰς πρὸς βασιλέα καὶ κελευόμενος λέγειν, ἔφη τὸν λόγον ἐοικέναι τοῖς ποικίλοις στρώμασιν· ὡς γὰρ ἐκεῖνα, καὶ τοῦτον ἐκτεινόμενον μὲν ἐπιδεικνύναι τὰ εἴδη συστελλόμενον δὲ κρύπτειν καὶ διαφθείρειν.

Ἠιτήσατο δὲ καὶ χρόνον, ὅπως τὴν Περσικὴν διάλεκτον [f] καταμαθὼν δι’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ μὴ δι’ ἑτέρου ποιήσαιτο τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔντευξιν.

Πολλῶν δὲ δωρεῶν ἀξιωθεὶς καὶ ταχὺ πλούσιος γενόμενος πρὸς τοὺς παῖδας εἶπεν ‘ὦ παῖδες, ἀπωλόμεθ’ ἄν, εἰ μὴ ἀπωλώλειμεν.’

ΜΥΡΩΝΙΔΗΣ

Μυρωνίδης παρήγγειλεν ἔξοδον Ἀθηναίοις ἐπὶ Βοιωτοὺς στρατεύων· ἐνστάσης δὲ τῆς ὥρας καὶ τῶν λοχαγῶν λεγόντων μηδέπω πάντας παρεῖναι, [186] [a] ‘πάρεισιν’ εἶπεν ‘οἱ μέλλοντες μάχεσθαι·’ καὶ χρησάμενος αὐτοῖς προθύμοις ἐνίκησε τοὺς πολεμίους.

ΑΡΙΣΤΕΙΔΗΣ

Ἀριστείδης δὲ ὁ δίκαιος ἀεὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐπολιτεύετο καὶ τὰς ἑταιρείας ἔφευγεν, ὡς τῆς ἀπὸ τῶν φίλων δυνάμεως ἀδικεῖν ἐπαιρούσης.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ὁρμωμένων ἐπὶ τὸν ἐξοστρακισμὸν ἄνθρωπος ἀγράμματος καὶ ἄγροικος ὄστρακον ἔχων προσῆλθεν αὐτῷ κελεύων ἐγγράψαι τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Ἀριστείδου, ‘γινώσκεις γάρ’ ἔφη ‘τὸν Ἀριστείδην;’ τοῦ δ’ ἀνθρώπου γινώσκειν μὲν οὐ φήσαντος, ἄχθεσθαι [b] δὲ τῇ τοῦ δικαίου προσηγορίᾳ, σιωπήσας ἐνέγραψε τὸ ὄνομα τῷ ὀστράκῳ καὶ ἀπέδωκεν.

Ἐχθρὸς δ’ ὢν τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους καὶ πρεσβευτὴς ἐκπεμφθεὶς σὺν αὐτῷ ‘βούλει’ φησίν ‘ἐπὶ τῶν ὅρων, ὦ Θεμιστόκλεις, τὴν ἔχθραν ἀπολίπωμεν; ἂν γὰρ δοκῇ, πάλιν αὐτὴν ἐπανιόντες ληψόμεθα.’

Τάξας δὲ τοὺς φόρους τοῖς Ἕλλησι τοσούτῳ πτωχότερος ἐπανῆλθεν, ὅσον εἰς τὴν ἀποδημίαν ἀνήλωσεν.

Αἰσχύλου δὲ ποιήσαντος εἰς Ἀμφιάραον (Sept. 592)

‘οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖν ἄριστος ἀλλ’ εἶναι θέλει,

βαθεῖαν ἄλοκα διὰ φρενὸς καρπούμενος,

ἐξ ἧς τὰ κεδνὰ βλαστάνει βουλεύματα’

[c] καὶ λεγομένων τούτων, πάντες εἰς Ἀριστείδην ἀπέβλεψαν.

ΠΕΡΙΚΛΗΣ

Περικλῆς, ὁπότε μέλλοι στρατηγεῖν, ἀναλαμβάνων τὴν χλαμύδα πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἔλεγε ‘πρόσεχε, Περίκλεις, ἐλευθέρων μέλλεις ἄρχειν καὶ Ἑλλήνων καὶ Ἀθηναίων.’

Ἐκέλευσε δὲ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους τὴν Αἴγιναν ὥσπερ λήμην ἀφαιρεῖν τοῦ Πειραιῶς.

Πρὸς δὲ φίλον τινὰ μαρτυρίας ψευδοῦς δεόμενον, ᾗ προσῆν καὶ ὅρκος, ἔφησε μέχρι τοῦ βωμοῦ φίλος εἶναι.

Μέλλων δ’ ἀποθνήσκειν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐμακάριζεν ὅτι μηδεὶς Ἀθηναίων μέλαν ἱμάτιον δι’ αὐτὸν ἐνεδύσατο.

ΑΛΚΙΒΙΑΔΗΣ

[d] Ἀλκιβιάδης ἔτι παῖς ὢν ἐλήφθη λαβὴν ἐν παλαίστρᾳ· καὶ μὴ δυνάμενος διαφυγεῖν ἔδακε τὴν χεῖρα τοῦ καταπαλαίοντος· εἰπόντος δ’ ἐκείνου ‘δάκνεις ὡς αἱ γυναῖκες’, ‘οὐ μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλ’ ὡς οἱ λέοντες.’

Ἔχων δὲ κύνα πάγκαλον ἐωνημένον ἑπτακισχιλίων

δραχμῶν ἀπέκοψεν αὐτοῦ τὴν οὐράν ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘τοῦτο λέγωσιν Ἀθηναῖοι περὶ ἐμοῦ καὶ μηδὲν ἄλλο πολυπραγμονῶσι.’

Προσελθὼν δὲ διδασκαλείῳ ῥαψῳδίαν Ἰλιάδος ᾔτει· τοῦ δὲ διδασκάλου μηδὲν ἔχειν Ὁμήρου φήσαντος ἐντρίψας αὐτῷ κόνδυλον παρῆλθεν.

[e] Ἐλθὼν δ’ ἐπὶ θύρας τοῦ Περικλέους καὶ πυθόμενος αὐτὸν μὴ σχολάζειν ἀλλὰ σκοπεῖν, ὅπως ἀποδώσει λόγους Ἀθηναίοις, ‘οὐ βέλτιον’ ἔφη ‘σκοπεῖν ἦν, ὅπως οὐκ ἀποδώσει;’

Καλούμενος δ’ ἐπὶ κρίσιν θανατικὴν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀπὸ Σικελίας ἔκρυψεν ἑαυτόν, εἰπὼν εὔηθες εἶναι τὸ δίκην ἔχοντα ζητεῖν ἀποφυγεῖν, ἐξὸν φυγεῖν.

Εἰπόντος δέ τινος ‘οὐ πιστεύεις τῇ πατρίδι τὴν περὶ σεαυτοῦ κρίσιν;’ ‘ἐγὼ μέν’ ἔφη ‘οὐδὲ τῇ μητρί, μή πως ἀγνοήσασα τὴν μέλαιναν βάλῃ ψῆφον ἀντὶ τῆς λευκῆς.’

Ἀκούσας δὲ ὅτι θάνατος αὐτοῦ κατέγνωσται καὶ τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ ‘δείξωμεν οὖν αὐτοῖς’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι ζῶμεν·’ [f] καὶ πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους τρεψάμενος τὸν Δεκελεικὸν ἤγειρεν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους πόλεμον.

ΛΑΜΑΧΟΣ

Λάμαχος ἐπετίμα τινὶ τῶν λοχαγῶν ἁμαρτόντι· τοῦ δὲ φήσαντος μηκέτι τοῦτο ποιήσειν ‘οὐκ ἔστιν’ εἶπεν ‘ἐν πολέμῳ δὶς ἁμαρτεῖν.’

ΙΦΙΚΡΑΤΗΣ

Ἰφικράτης δοκῶν υἱὸς εἶναι σκυτοτόμου κατεφρο[187]νεῖτο· [a] δόξαν δὲ τότε πρῶτον ἔσχε, ὅτε τραυματίσας πολέμιον ἄνδρα καὶ μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων ζῶντα συναρπάσας εἰς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ τριήρη μετήνεγκεν.

Ἐν δὲ φιλίᾳ καὶ συμμάχῳ χώρᾳ στρατοπεδεύων καὶ χάρακα βαλλόμενος καὶ τάφρον ὀρύττων ἐπιμελῶς πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα ‘τί γὰρ φοβούμεθα;’ χειρίστην ἔφησε στρατηγοῦ φωνὴν εἶναι τὴν ‘οὐκ ἂν προσεδόκησα’.

Παραταττόμενος δὲ τοῖς βαρβάροις ἔφη δεδιέναι, μὴ τὸν Ἰφικράτην οὐκ ἴσασιν, ᾧ καταπλήττεται τοὺς ἄλλους πολεμίους.

Κρινόμενος δὲ θανάτου πρὸς τὸν συκοφάντην ‘οἷα ποιεῖς, ὦ ἄνθρωπε’ εἶπε ‘πολέμου περιεστῶτος τὴν πόλιν [b] περὶ ἐμοῦ πείθων βουλεύεσθαι καὶ μὴ μετ’ ἐμοῦ;’

Πρὸς δὲ Ἁρμόδιον, τὸν τοῦ παλαιοῦ Ἁρμοδίου ἀπόγονον, εἰς δυσγένειαν αὐτῷ λοιδορούμενον ἔφη ‘τὸ μὲν ἐμὸν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ γένος ἄρχεται, τὸ δὲ σὸν ἐν σοὶ παύεται.’

Ῥήτορος δέ τινος ἐπερωτῶντος αὐτὸν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ ‘τίς ὢν μέγα φρονεῖς; πότερον ἱππεὺς ἢ ὁπλίτης ἢ τοξότης ἢ πελταστής;’ ‘οὐδείς’ ἔφη ‘τούτων, ἀλλ’ ὁ πᾶσι τούτοις ἐπιστάμενος ἐπιτάττειν.’

ΤΙΜΟΘΕΟΣ

Τιμόθεος εὐτυχὴς ἐνομίζετο στρατηγὸς εἶναι, καὶ φθονοῦντες αὐτῷ τινες ἐζωγράφουν τὰς πόλεις εἰς κύρτον αὐτομάτως ἐκείνου καθεύδοντος ἐνδυομένας· ἔλεγεν οὖν [c] ὁ Τιμόθεος ‘εἰ τηλικαύτας πόλεις λαμβάνω καθεύδων, τί με οἴεσθε ποιήσειν ἐγρηγορότα;’

Τῶν δὲ τολμηρῶν στρατηγῶν τινος τραῦμα τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις δεικνύοντος, ‘ἐγὼ δέ’ εἶπεν ‘ᾐσχύνθην ὅτι μου στρατηγοῦντος ὑμῶν ἐν Σάμῳ καταπελτικὸν βέλος ἐγγὺς ἔπεσε.’

Τῶν δὲ ῥητόρων τὸν Χάρητα προαγόντων καὶ τοιοῦτον ἀξιούντων εἶναι τὸν Ἀθηναίων στρατηγόν, ‘οὐ τὸν στρατηγόν’ εἶπεν ὁ Τιμόθεος ‘ἀλλὰ τὸν τῷ στρατηγῷ τὰ στρώματα κομίζοντα.’

ΧΑΒΡΙΑΣ

Χαβρίας ἔλεγε κάλλιστα στρατηγεῖν τοὺς μάλιστα γινώσκοντας τὰ τῶν πολεμίων.

[d] Δίκην δὲ φεύγων προδοσίας μετ’ Ἰφικράτους, ἐπιτιμῶντος αὐτῷ τοῦ Ἰφικράτους ὅτι κινδυνεύων εἰς τὸ γυμνάσιον βαδίζει καὶ τὴν εἰωθυῖαν ὥραν ἀριστᾷ, ‘τοιγαροῦν’ εἶπεν ‘ἂν ἄλλο τι γνῶσι περὶ ἡμῶν Ἀθηναῖοι, σὲ μὲν αὐχμῶντα καὶ ἄσιτον, ἐμὲ δ’ ἠριστηκότα καὶ ἀληλιμμένον ἀποκτενοῦσιν.’

Εἰώθει δὲ λέγειν ὅτι φοβερώτερόν ἐστιν ἐλάφων στρατόπεδον ἡγουμένου λέοντος ἢ λεόντων ἐλάφου.

ΗΓΗΣΙΠΠΟΣ

Ἡγησίππου τοῦ Κρωβύλου προσαγορευομένου παροξύνοντος τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐπὶ Φίλιππον, ὑπεφώνησέ τις ἐκ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ‘πόλεμον εἰσηγῇ;’ ‘ναὶ μὰ Δία’ εἶπε [e] ‘καὶ μέλανα ἱμάτια καὶ δημοσίας ἐκφορὰς καὶ λόγους ἐπιταφίους, εἰ μέλλομεν ἐλεύθεροι βιώσεσθαι καὶ μὴ ποιήσειν τὸ προσταττόμενον Μακεδόσι.’

ΠΥΘΕΑΣ

Πυθέας ἔτι μειράκιον ὢν παρῆλθεν ἀντερῶν τοῖς περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου γραφομένοις ψηφίσμασιν· εἰπόντος δέ τινος ‘σὺ νέος ὢν τολμᾷς λέγειν περὶ τηλικούτων;’ ‘καὶ μὴν Ἀλέξανδρος’ εἶπεν ‘ὃν ψηφίζεσθε θεόν, ἐμοῦ νεώτερός ἐστι.’

ΦΩΚΙΩΝ

Φωκίων ὁ Ἀθηναῖος ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς οὔτε γελῶν ὤφθη οὔτε δακρύων.

Ἐκκλησίας δὲ γενομένης πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα ‘σκεπτομένῳ, [f] ὦ Φωκίων, ἔοικας’, ‘ὀρθῶς’ ἔφη ‘τοπάζεις· σκέπτομαι γάρ, εἴ τι δύναμαι περιελεῖν ὧν μέλλω λέγειν πρὸς Ἀθηναίους.’

Μαντείας δὲ γενομένης Ἀθηναίοις, ὡς εἷς ἀνὴρ ἔστιν ἐν τῇ πόλει ταῖς πάντων ἐναντιούμενος γνώμαις, καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ζητεῖν κελευόντων ὅστις ἐστὶ καὶ βοώντων, Φωκίων ἑαυτὸν ἔφησε τοῦτον εἶναι· μόνῳ γὰρ ἑαυτῷ μηδὲν ἀρέσκειν ὧν οἱ πολλοὶ πράττουσι καὶ λέγουσιν.

[188] [a]

Ἐπεὶ δὲ λέγων ποτὲ γνώμην πρὸς τὸν δῆμον εὐδοκίμει καὶ πάντας ὁμαλῶς ἑώρα τὸν λόγον ἀποδεχομένους, ἐπιστραφεὶς πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἶπεν ‘οὐ δήπου κακόν τι λέγων ἐμαυτὸν λέληθα;’

Πρὸς δὲ θυσίαν τινὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων αἰτούντων ἐπιδόσεις καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιδιδόντων, κληθεὶς πολλάκις ‘αἰσχυνοίμην ἄν’ εἶπεν ‘ὑμῖν μὲν ἐπιδιδούς, τούτῳ δὲ μὴ ἀποδιδούς’, ἅμα δεικνύων τὸν δανειστήν.

Δημοσθένους δὲ τοῦ ῥήτορος εἰπόντος ‘ἀποκτενοῦσί σε Ἀθηναῖοι’ ‘ἐὰν μανῶσιν [, νὴ Δία]’, εἶπε, ‘σὲ δ’ ἐὰν σωφρονῶσιν.’

Ἀριστογείτονος δὲ τοῦ συκοφάντου μέλλοντος ἀποθνῄσκειν [b] ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ κατακρίτου γεγονότος καὶ δεομένου τὸν Φωκίωνα πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐλθεῖν, τῶν δὲ φίλων οὐκ ἐώντων πρὸς ἄνθρωπον πονηρὸν βαδίζειν, ‘καὶ ποῦ τις ἄν’ εἶπεν ‘ἥδιον Ἀριστογείτονι λαλήσειεν;’

Ὀργιζομένων δὲ τοῖς Βυζαντίοις τῶν Ἀθηναίων μὴ δεξαμένοις τῇ πόλει Χάρητα πεμφθέντα μετὰ δυνάμεως βοηθὸν αὐτοῖς πρὸς Φίλιππον, εἰπὼν ὁ Φωκίων ὅτι ‘δεῖ μὴ τοῖς ἀπιστοῦσι τῶν συμμάχων, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἀπιστουμένοις ὀργίζεσθαι τῶν στρατηγῶν’ αὐτὸς ᾑρέθη στρατηγός· καὶ πιστευθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν Βυζαντίων ἐποίησε τὸν Φίλιππον ἀπελθεῖν ἄπρακτον.

[c] Ἀλεξάνδρου δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως ἑκατὸν τάλαντα δωρεὰν πέμψαντος ἠρώτησε τοὺς κομίζοντας τί δήποτε πολλῶν ὄντων Ἀθηναίων αὐτῷ μόνῳ ταῦτα δίδωσιν Ἀλέξανδρος· εἰπόντων δ’ ἐκείνων ὡς μόνον αὐτὸν ἡγεῖται καλὸν κἀγαθὸν εἶναι, ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘ἐασάτω με καὶ δοκεῖν καὶ εἶναι τοιοῦτον.’

Αἰτοῦντος δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου τριήρεις καὶ τοῦ δήμου κελεύοντος ὀνομαστὶ παριέναι τὸν Φωκίωνα καὶ συμβουλεύειν, ἀναστὰς ἔφη ‘συμβουλεύω τοίνυν ὑμῖν ἢ κρατεῖν τοῖς ὅπλοις αὐτοὺς ἢ φίλους εἶναι τῶν κρατούντων.’

Λόγου δὲ περὶ τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου τελευτῆς ἐμπεσόντος [d] ἀδεσπότου καὶ τῶν ῥητόρων ἀναπηδώντων εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ μὴ μέλλειν ἀλλὰ πολεμεῖν ἤδη κελευόντων ὁ Φωκίων ἠξίου περιμεῖναι καὶ γνῶναι βεβαίως. ‘εἰ γὰρ τήμερον’ ἔφη ‘τέθνηκε, καὶ αὔριον ἔσται καὶ εἰς τρίτην τεθνηκώς.’

Τοῦ δὲ Λεωσθένους εἰς τὸν πόλεμον ἐμβαλόντος τὴν πόλιν ἐλπίσι λαμπραῖς πρὸς τὸ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ὄνομα καὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἐπαιρομένην τοὺς λόγους αὐτοῦ ταῖς κυπαρίττοις ἀπείκαζε· ‘καλοὶ γὰρ ὄντες’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ὑψηλοὶ καρπὸν οὐκ ἔχουσι.’ κατωρθωμένων δὲ τῶν πρώτων καὶ τῆς πόλεως εὐαγγέλια θυούσης, ἐρωτηθεὶς εἰ ταῦτ’ [e] ‹ἂν› ἤθελεν αὑτῷ πεπρᾶχθαι ‘πεπρᾶχθαι μὲν οὖν’ ἔφη ‘ταῦτα, βεβουλεῦσθαι δ’ ἐκεῖνα.’

Τῇ δ’ Ἀττικῇ τῶν Μακεδόνων προσβαλόντων καὶ πορθούντων τὴν παραλίαν ἐξήγαγε τοὺς ἐν ἡλικίᾳ· πολλῶν δὲ συντρεχόντων πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ παρεγκελευομένων ἐκεῖ[νον] τὸν λόφον καταλαβεῖν, ἐνταῦθα τάξαι τὴν δύναμιν, ‘ὦ Ἡράκλεις’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς πολλοὺς ὁρῶ στρατηγούς, στρατιώτας δ’ ὀλίγους.’ οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ συμβαλὼν ἐκράτησε καὶ διέφθειρε Νικίωνα τὸν ἄρχοντα τῶν Μακεδόνων.

Μετ’ ὀλίγον δὲ χρόνον οἱ μὲν Ἀθηναῖοι τῷ πολέμῳ κρατηθέντες ἐδέξαντο φρουρὰν ὑπ’ Ἀντιπάτρου· Μενύλλου [f] δὲ τοῦ τῆς φρουρᾶς ἄρχοντος χρήματα τῷ Φωκίωνι διδόντος ἀγανακτήσας εἶπε μήτ’ ἐκεῖνον Ἀλεξάνδρου βελτίονα εἶναι καὶ χείρονα τὴν αἰτίαν, ἐφ’ ᾗ λήψεται νῦν τότε μὴ δεξάμενος.

Ἀντίπατρος δ’ ἔφη ὡς δυεῖν αὐτῷ φίλων Ἀθήνησιν ὄντων οὔτε Φωκίωνα λαβεῖν πέπεικεν οὔτε Δημάδην διδοὺς ἐμπέπληκεν.

Ἀξιοῦντος δ’ Ἀντιπάτρου ποιῆσαί τι τῶν μὴ δικαίων αὐτόν ‘οὐ δύνασαι,’ εἶπεν, ‘Ἀντίπατρε, καὶ φίλῳ Φωκίωνι χρῆσθαι καὶ κόλακι.’

[189] [a] Μετὰ δὲ τὴν Ἀντιπάτρου τελευτὴν δημοκρατίας Ἀθηναίοις γενομένης κατεγνώσθη θάνατος τοῦ Φωκίωνος ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ καὶ τῶν φίλων· οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι κλαίοντες ἤγοντο, τῷ δὲ Φωκίωνι σιωπῇ βαδίζοντι τῶν ἐχθρῶν τις ἐνέπτυσεν ἀπαντήσας εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον. ὁ δὲ πρὸς τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἀποβλέψας ‘οὐ παύσει τις’ εἶπε ‘τοῦτον ἀσχημονοῦντα;’

Τῶν δὲ μελλόντων συναποθνῄσκειν ἑνὸς ὀδυρομένου καὶ ἀγανακτοῦντος ‘οὐκ ἀγαπᾷς,’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ Θούδιππε, μετὰ Φωκίωνος ἀποθανούμενος;’

Ἤδη δὲ τῆς κύλικος αὐτῷ προσφερομένης ἐρωτηθεὶς εἴ τι λέγει πρὸς τὸν υἱόν ‘ἔγωγε’ εἶπεν ‘ἐντέλλομαι [b] καὶ παρακαλῶ μηδὲν Ἀθηναίοις μνησικακεῖν.’

ΠΕΙΣΙΣΤΡΑΤΟΣ

Πεισίστρατος ὁ Ἀθηναίων τύραννος, ἐπεὶ τῶν φίλων τινὲς ἀποστάντες αὐτοῦ Φυλὴν κατέλαβον, ἦλθε πρὸς αὐτοὺς στρωματόδεσμον αὐτὸς κομίζων. πυνθανομένων δ’ ἐκείνων τί βούλεται, ‘πείσας ὑμᾶς’ εἶπεν ‘ἀπαγαγεῖν ἢ μὴ πείσας μένειν μεθ’ ὑμῶν, ‹καὶ› διὰ τοῦτο ἀφῖγμαι συνεσκευασμένος.’

Διαβληθείσης δὲ τῆς μητρὸς πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς ἐρᾷ τινος νεανίσκου καὶ κρύφα σύνεστι φοβουμένῳ καὶ παραιτουμένῳ τὰ πολλά, καλέσας ἐπὶ δεῖπνον τὸν νεανίσκον ἠρώτησε δειπνήσαντα, πῶς γέγονεν· ‘ἡδέως’ δὲ φήσαντος, [c] ‘ταῦτά σοι’ ἔφη ‘καθ’ ἡμέραν ἔσται, ἐὰν τῇ μητρί μου ἀρέσκῃς.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Θρασύβουλος ἐρῶν αὐτοῦ τῆς θυγατρὸς ἐφίλησεν ἀπαντήσας, παροξυνόμενος ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τῆς γυναικὸς ‘ἂν τοὺς φιλοῦντας’ εἶπε ‘μισῶμεν, τί ποιήσομεν τοὺς μισοῦντας;’ καὶ ἔδωκε γυναῖκα τῷ Θρασυβούλῳ τὴν παρθένον.

Κωμαστῶν δέ τινων περιτυχόντων αὐτοῦ τῇ γυναικὶ καὶ πολλὰ πραξάντων ἀσελγῆ καὶ εἰπόντων, μεθ’ ἡμέραν δὲ τοῦ Πεισιστράτου δεομένων καὶ δακρυόντων, ‘ὑμεῖς μέν’ ἔφη ‘πειρᾶσθε σωφρονεῖν τὸ λοιπόν· ἡ δ’ ἐμὴ γυνὴ τὸ παράπαν ἐχθὲς οὐδαμῇ προῆλθε.’

[d] Τῶν δὲ παίδων, αὐτοῦ γαμεῖν ἑτέραν γυναῖκα μέλλοντος, διαπυνθανομένων μή τι μεμφόμενος αὐτοῖς εἴη, ‘ἥκιστα’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλ’ ἐπαινῶν καὶ βουλόμενος καὶ ἑτέρους μοι παῖδας τοιούτους γενέσθαι.’

ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙΟΣ Ο ΦΑΛΗΡΕΥΣ

Δημήτριος ὁ Φαληρεὺς Πτολεμαίῳ τῷ βασιλεῖ παρῄνει τὰ περὶ βασιλείας καὶ ἡγεμονίας βιβλία κτᾶσθαι καὶ ἀναγινώσκειν· ‘ἃ γὰρ οἱ φίλοι τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν οὐ θαρροῦσι παραινεῖν, ταῦτα ἐν τοῖς βιβλίοις γέγραπται.’

ΛΥΚΟΥΡΓΟΣ

Λυκοῦργος ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος εἴθισε τοὺς πολίτας [e] κομᾶν λέγων ὅτι τοὺς μὲν καλοὺς ἡ κόμη εὐπρεπεστέρους ποιεῖ, τοὺς δὲ αἰσχροὺς φοβερωτέρους.

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν κελεύοντα ποιεῖν ἐν τῇ πόλει δημοκρατίαν ‘σὺ πρῶτος’ εἶπεν ‘ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ σου ποίησον δημοκρατίαν.’

Ἐκέλευε δὲ τὰς οἰκίας ποιεῖν ἀπὸ πρίονος καὶ πελέκεως μόνον· αἰσχυνεῖσθαι γὰρ εἰς οἰκίας λιτὰς ἐκπώματα καὶ στρώματα καὶ τραπέζας πολυτελεῖς εἰσφέροντας.

Πυγμὴν δὲ καὶ παγκράτιον ἀγωνίζεσθαι ἐκώλυσεν, ἵνα μηδὲ παίζοντες ἀπαυδᾶν ἐθίζωνται.

Στρατεύειν δὲ πολλάκις ἐπὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἐκώλυσεν, ὅπως μὴ ποιῶσι μαχιμωτέρους. ὕστερον γοῦν τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου τρωθέντος ὁ Ἀνταλκίδας εἶπε καλὰ διδασκάλια [f] παρὰ Θηβαίων ἀπολαμβάνειν αὐτὸν ἐθίσαντα καὶ διδάξαντα πολεμεῖν ἄκοντας.

ΧΑΡΙΛΛΟΣ

Χάριλλος ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐρωτηθείς, διὰ τί νόμους ὀλίγους οὕτω Λυκοῦργος ἔθηκεν, ἀπεκρίνατο τοὺς χρωμένους ὀλίγοις λόγοις μὴ δεῖσθαι νόμων πολλῶν.

Τῶν δὲ εἱλώτων τινὸς θρασύτερον αὐτῷ προσφερομένου, ‘ναὶ τὼ σιώ’ εἶπε ‘κατέκτανον κά τυ, αἰ μὴ ὠργιζόμαν.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν πυθόμενον διὰ τί κομῶσιν εἶπεν ὅτι τῶν κόσμων ἀδαπανώτατος οὗτός ἐστι.

ΤΗΛΕΚΛΟΣ

[190] [a] Τήλεκλος ὁ βασιλεὺς πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἐγκαλοῦντα τοῖς πολίταις ὡς ἀγνωμονέστερον αὐτῷ προσφερομένοις ἢ ἐκείνῳ, ‘σὺ γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ οἶδας ἀδικεῖσθαι.’

ΘΕΟΠΟΜΠΟΣ

Θεόπομπος ἔν τινι πόλει πρὸς τὸν ἐπιδεικνύμενον τὸ τεῖχος αὐτῷ καὶ πυνθανόμενον, εἰ δοκεῖ καλὸν καὶ ὑψηλὸν εἶναι, †’οὐδ’ εἰ γυναικῶν’ εἶπεν ‹’ἦν’›.

ΑΡΧΙΔΑΜΟΣ

Ἀρχίδαμος ἐν τῷ Πελοποννησιακῷ πολέμῳ τῶν συμμάχων ἀξιούντων ὁρίσαι τοὺς φόρους αὐτοῖς, εἶπεν ‘ὁ πόλεμος οὐ τεταγμένα σιτεῖται.’

[b]

ΒΡΑΣΙΔΑΣ

Βρασίδας ἐν ἰσχάσι συλλαβὼν μῦν καὶ δηχθεὶς ἀφῆκεν· εἶτα πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ‘οὐδὲν οὕτως’ ἔφη ‘μικρόν ἐστιν, ὃ μὴ σῴζεται τολμῶν ἀμύνεσθαι τοὺς ἐπιχειροῦντας.’

Ἐν δὲ μάχῃ διὰ τῆς ἀσπίδος ἀκοντισθεὶς καὶ τὸ δόρυ τοῦ τραύματος ἐξελκύσας αὐτῷ τούτῳ τὸν πολέμιον ἀπέκτεινεν· ἐπερωτηθεὶς δὲ πῶς ἐτρώθη, ‘προδούσης με τῆς ἀσπίδος’ εἶπεν.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ συνέβη πεσεῖν αὐτὸν ἐλευθεροῦντα τοὺς ἐπὶ Θρᾴκης Ἕλληνας, οἱ δὲ πεμφθέντες εἰς Λακεδαίμονα πρέσβεις τῇ μητρὶ προσῆλθον αὐτοῦ, πρῶτον μὲν ἠρώτησεν εἰ καλῶς ὁ Βρασίδας ἀπέθανεν· ἐγκωμιαζόντων δὲ τῶν Θρᾳκῶν αὐτὸν καὶ λεγόντων ὡς οὐδεὶς ἄλλος ἔσται [c] τοιοῦτος, ‘ἀγνοεῖτε’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ ξένοι· Βρασίδας μὲν γὰρ ἦν ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός, ἁ δὲ Λακεδαίμων πολλὼς ἔχει τήνω κάρρονας.’

ΑΓΙΣ

Ἆγις ὁ βασιλεὺς οὐκ ἔφη τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἐρωτᾶν πόσοι εἰσίν, ἀλλὰ ποῦ εἰσὶν οἱ πολέμιοι.

Ἐν δὲ Μαντινείᾳ κωλυόμενος διαμάχεσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις πλείοσιν οὖσιν, εἶπεν ‘ἀνάγκη πολλοῖς μάχεσθαι τὸν ἄρχειν πολλῶν βουλόμενον.’

Ἐπαινουμένων δὲ τῶν Ἠλείων ἐπὶ τῷ τὰ Ὀλύμπια καλῶς ἄγειν ‘τί δέ’ εἶπε ‘ποιοῦσι θαυμαστόν, εἰ δι’ ἐτῶν τεσσάρων μιᾷ ἡμέρᾳ χρῶνται τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ;’ ἐπιμενόντων δὲ τοῖς ἐπαίνοις, ἔφη ‘τί θαυμαστόν, εἰ πράγματι [d] καλῷ καλῶς χρῶνται, τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ;’

Πρὸς δ’ ἄνθρωπον πονηρὸν ἐρωτῶντα πολλάκις τίς ἄριστος εἴη Σπαρτιατῶν, εἶπεν ‘ὁ τὶν ἀνομοιότατος.’

Ἑτέρου δὲ πυνθανομένου πόσοι εἰσὶ Λακεδαιμόνιοι ‘ὅσοι’ εἶπεν ‘ἱκανοὶ τοὺς κακοὺς ἀπείργειν.’

Καὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ἑτέρου πυνθανομένου, ‘πολλοί σοι’ ἔφη ‘δόξουσιν εἶναι, ἐὰν αὐτοὺς ἴδῃς μαχομένους.’

ΛΥΣΑΝΔΡΟΣ

Λύσανδρος Διονυσίου τοῦ τυράννου πέμψαντος ἱμάτια ταῖς θυγατράσιν αὐτοῦ τῶν πολυτελῶν οὐκ ἔλαβεν εἰπὼν δεδιέναι, μὴ διὰ ταῦτα μᾶλλον αἰσχραὶ φανῶσιν.

Πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ψέγοντας αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῷ δι’ ἀπάτης τὰ [e] πολλὰ πράσσειν ὡς ἀνάξιον τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ἔλεγεν, ὅπου μὴ ἐφικνεῖται ἡ λεοντῆ, προσραπτέον εἶναι τὴν ἀλωπεκῆν.

Πρὸς δ’ Ἀργείους δικαιότερα τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων λέγειν περὶ τῆς ἀμφισβητουμένης χώρας δοκοῦντας σπασάμενος τὴν μάχαιραν ‘ὁ ταύτης’ ἔφη ‘κρατῶν βέλτιστα περὶ γῆς ὅρων διαλέγεται.’

Τοὺς δὲ Λακεδαιμονίους ὁρῶν ὀκνοῦντας προσμάχεσθαι τοῖς τείχεσι τῶν Κορινθίων, ὡς εἶδε λαγὼν ἐξαλλόμενον ἐκ τῆς τάφρου, ‘τοιούτους’ ἔφη ‘φοβεῖσθε πολεμίους, ὧν οἱ λαγοὶ δι’ ἀργίαν ἐν τοῖς τείχεσιν ἐγκαθεύδουσιν;’

Μεγαρέως δ’ ἀνδρὸς ἐν κοινῷ συλλόγῳ παρρησίᾳ [f] χρησαμένου πρὸς αὐτόν, ‘οἱ λόγοι σου’ εἶπε ‘πόλεως δέονται.’

ΑΓΗΣΙΛΑΟΣ

Ἀγησίλαος ἔλεγε τοὺς τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικοῦντας ἐλευθέρους μὲν κακοὺς εἶναι, δούλους δ’ ἀγαθούς.

Εἰθισμένων δ’ αὐτῶν τὸν Περσῶν βασιλέα μέγαν προσαγορεύειν, ‘τί δαὶ ἐκεῖνος’ εἶπεν ‘ἐμοῦ μείζων, εἰ μὴ δικαιότερος καὶ σωφρονέστερος;’

Περὶ δ’ ἀνδρείας καὶ δικαιοσύνης ἐρωτηθεὶς ποτέρα βελτίων ‘οὐδὲν ἀνδρείας’ ἔφη ‘χρῄζομεν, ἐὰν πάντες ὦμεν δίκαιοι.’

[191] [a] Νυκτὸς δὲ μέλλων κατὰ τάχος ἀναζευγνύειν ἐκ τῆς πολεμίας καὶ τὸν ἐρώμενον ὁρῶν ἀπολειπόμενον δι’ ἀσθένειαν καὶ δακρύοντα, ‘χαλεπόν’ εἶπεν ‘ἅμα ἐλεεῖν καὶ φρονεῖν.’

Μενεκράτους δὲ τοῦ ἰατροῦ ‹τοῦ› Διὸς προσαγορευομένου γράψαντος ἐπιστολὴν πρὸς αὐτόν ‘Μενεκράτης Ζεὺς βασιλεῖ Ἀγησιλάῳ χαίρειν’ ἀντέγραψεν ‘βασιλεὺς Ἀγησίλαος Μενεκράτει ὑγιαίνειν.’

Λακεδαιμονίων δὲ νικησάντων Ἀθηναίους καὶ τοὺς συμμάχους ἐν Κορίνθῳ πυθόμενος τὸ πλῆθος τῶν πολεμίων νεκρῶν ‘φεῦ τᾶς Ἑλλάδος’ εἶπεν ‘ἃ τοσούτους ὑφ’ [b] αὑτᾶς ἀπολώλεκεν, ὅσοις ἀρκεῖ τοὺς βαρβάρους νικῆν ἅπαντας.’

Χρησμὸν δὲ λαβὼν ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ παρὰ τοῦ Διὸς ὃν ἤθελεν, εἶτα τῶν ἐφόρων κελευόντων καὶ τὸν Πύθιον ἐρωτῆσαι περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν, εἰς Δελφοὺς παραγενόμενος ἠρώτησε τὸν θεόν, εἰ ἅπερ τῷ πατρὶ δοκεῖ καὶ αὐτῷ.

Παραιτούμενος δέ τινα τῶν φίλων παρὰ τοῦ Καρὸς Ἱδριέως ἔγραψε πρὸς αὐτόν ‘Νικίας εἰ μὲν οὐκ ἀδικεῖ, ἄφες· εἰ δ’ ἀδικεῖ, ἐμοὶ ἄφες· πάντως δ’ ἄφες.’

Τοῦ δὲ μιμουμένου τὴν τῆς ἀηδόνος φωνὴν ἀκοῦσαι παρακαλούμενος ‘αὐτᾶς’ εἶπεν ‘ἄκουκα πολλάκις.’

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐν Λεύκτροις μάχην, πάντας τοὺς τρέσαντας [c] ἀτίμους εἶναι τοῦ νόμου κελεύοντος, ὁρῶντες οἱ ἔφοροι τὴν πόλιν ἀνδρῶν ἔρημον οὖσαν ἐβούλοντο τὴν ἀτιμίαν λῦσαι καὶ νομοθέτην ἀπέδειξαν τὸν Ἀγησίλαον· ὁ δὲ προελθὼν εἰς τὸ μέσον ἐκέλευσε τοὺς νόμους ἀπὸ τῆς αὔριον κυρίους εἶναι.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ πεμφθεὶς τῷ βασιλεῖ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων

σύμμαχος ἐπολιορκεῖτο μετ’ αὐτοῦ πολλαπλασίων ὄντων τῶν πολεμίων καὶ περιταφρευόντων τὸ στρατόπεδον, κελεύσαντος ἐπεξιέναι καὶ διαμάχεσθαι τοῦ βασιλέως, οὐκ ἔφη διακωλύσειν τοὺς πολεμίους ἴσους αὐτοῖς γενέσθαι βουλομένους. ἔτι δὲ μικρὸν ἀπολειπούσης τῆς τάφρου [d] συνάψαι, κατὰ τοῦτο παρατάξας τὸ διαλεῖπον καὶ πρὸς ἴσους ἴσοις ἀγωνισάμενος ἐνίκησεν.

Ἀποθνῄσκων δὲ τοὺς φίλους ἐκέλευσε μηδεμίαν πλαστὰν μηδὲ μιμηλὰν ποιήσασθαι, τὰς εἰκόνας οὕτω προσαγορεύων· ‘εἰ γάρ τι καλὸν ἔργον πεποίηκα, τοῦτό μου μνημεῖον ἔσται· εἰ δὲ μηδέν, οὐδ’ οἱ πάντες ἀνδριάντες.’

ΑΡΧΙΔΑΜΟΣ Ο ΑΓΗΣΙΛΑΟΥ

Ἀρχίδαμος ὁ Ἀγησιλάου καταπελτικὸν ἰδὼν βέλος τότε πρῶτον ἐκ Σικελίας ἀχθὲν ἀνεβόησεν ‘ὦ Ἡράκλεις, ἀπόλωλεν ἀνδρὸς ἀρετά.’

ΑΓΙΣ Ο ΝΕΩΤΕΡΟΣ

[e] Ὁ δὲ νεώτερος Ἆγις, Δημάδου λέγοντος ὅτι τὰ Λακωνικὰ ξίφη διὰ μικρότητα καταπίνουσιν οἱ θαυματοποιοί, ‘καὶ μήν’ ἔφη ‘μάλιστα οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῶν πολεμίων τοῖς ξίφεσιν ἐφικνοῦνται.’

Τῷ δὲ προδότῃ παραδοῦναι στρατιώτας τῶν ἐφόρων κελευόντων οὐκ ἔφη πιστεύειν τοὺς ἀλλοτρίους τῷ προδόντι τοὺς ἰδίους.

ΚΛΕΟΜΕΝΗΣ

Κλεομένης πρὸς τὸν ὑπισχνούμενον αὐτῷ δώσειν ἀλεκτρυόνας ἀποθνῄσκοντας ἐν τῷ μάχεσθαι ‘μὴ σύ γε’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλὰ δός μοι τοὺς κατακτέννοντας ἐν τῷ μάχεσθαι.’

ΠΕΔΑΡΙΤΟΣ

[f] Πεδάριτος οὐκ ἐγκριθεὶς εἰς τοὺς τριακοσίους, ἥτις ἦν ἐν τῇ πόλει πρωτεύουσα τιμὴ τῇ τάξει, ἱλαρὸς καὶ μειδιῶν ἀπῄει, χαίρειν λέγων εἰ τριακοσίους ἡ πόλις ἔχει πολίτας ἑαυτοῦ βελτίονας.

ΔΑΜΩΝΙΔΑΣ

Δαμωνίδας δὲ ταχθεὶς εἰς τὴν τελευταίαν τοῦ χοροῦ τάξιν ὑπὸ τοῦ τὸν χορὸν ἱστάντος ‘εὖγε’ εἶπεν ‘ἐξεῦρες, πῶς καὶ αὕτη ἔντιμος γένηται.’

ΝΙΚΟΣΤΡΑΤΟΣ

[192] [a] Νικόστρατος ὁ τῶν Ἀργείων στρατηγὸς ὑπ’ Ἀρχιδάμου χωρίον τι προδοῦναι παρακαλούμενος ἐπὶ χρήμασι πολλοῖς καὶ γάμῳ Λακαίνης, ἣν βούλεται, δίχα τῶν βασιλικῶν, ἀπεκρίνατο μὴ εἶναι τὸν Ἀρχίδαμον ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους· τὸν μὲν γὰρ Ἡρακλέα περιιόντα τοὺς κακοὺς κολάζειν, Ἀρχίδαμον δὲ τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς κακοὺς ποιεῖν.

ΕΥΔΑΜΙΔΑΣ

Εὐδαμίδας ἰδὼν ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ Ξενοκράτην πρεσβύτερον ἤδη μετὰ τῶν μαθητῶν φιλοσοφοῦντα καὶ πυθόμενος ὅτι τὴν ἀρετὴν ζητεῖ, ‘πότ’ οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘αὐτῇ χρήσεται;’

[b]

Πάλιν ἀκούσας φιλοσόφου διαλεχθέντος ὅτι μόνος ἀγαθὸς στρατηγὸς ὁ σοφός ἐστιν, ‘ὁ μὲν λόγος’ ἔφη ‘θαυμαστός, ὁ δὲ λέγων οὐ περισεσάλπισται.’

ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΣ

Ἀντίοχος ἐφορεύων, ὡς ἤκουσεν ὅτι Μεσσηνίοις Φίλιππος τὴν χώραν ἔδωκεν, ἠρώτησεν εἰ καὶ τὸ κρατεῖν αὐτοῖς μαχομένοις περὶ τῆς χώρας ἔδωκεν.

ΑΝΤΑΛΚΙΔΑΣ

Ἀνταλκίδας πρὸς τὸν Ἀθηναῖον ἀμαθεῖς ἀποκαλοῦντα τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ‘μόνοι γοῦν’ εἶπεν ‘ἡμεῖς οὐδὲν μεμαθήκαμεν κακὸν παρ’ ὑμῶν.’

Ἑτέρου δ’ Ἀθηναίου πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν [c] ἡμεῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ Κηφισοῦ πολλάκις ὑμᾶς ἐδιώξαμεν’, ‘ἡμεῖς δ’ οὐδέποτε’ εἶπεν ‘ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ Εὐρώτα.’

Σοφιστοῦ δὲ μέλλοντος ἀναγινώσκειν ἐγκώμιον Ἡρακλέους, ἔφη ‘τίς γὰρ αὐτὸν ψέγει;’

ΕΠΑΜΕΙΝΩΝΔΑΣ

Ἐπαμεινώνδου τοῦ Θηβαίου στρατηγοῦντος οὐδέποτε πανικὸς θόρυβος ἐνέπεσεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον.

Ἔλεγε δὲ τὸν ἐν πολέμῳ θάνατον εἶναι ἱερόθυτον.

Τῶν δὲ ὁπλιτῶν δεῖν ἀπέφαινεν εἶναι τὸ σῶμα γεγυμνασμένον οὐκ ἀθλητικῶς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ στρατιωτικῶς· διὸ καὶ τοῖς πολυσάρκοις ἐπολέμει, καί τινα τοιοῦτον [d] ἀπήλασε τῆς στρατιᾶς εἰπὼν ὅτι μόλις αὐτοῦ σκέπουσι τὴν γαστέρα ἀσπίδες τρεῖς ἢ τέσσαρες, δι’ ἣν οὐχ ἑώρακεν αὑτοῦ τὸ αἰδοῖον.

Οὕτω δ’ ἦν εὐτελὴς περὶ τὴν δίαιταν, ὥστε κληθεὶς ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ὑπὸ γείτονος εὑρὼν πεμμάτων καὶ ὄψων καὶ μύρων παρασκευὴν ἀπῆλθεν εὐθύς, εἰπών ‘ἐγώ σε θύειν ᾠόμην οὐχ ὑβρίζειν.’

Τοῦ δὲ μαγείρου τοῖς συνάρχουσιν ἡμερῶν τινων δαπάνην ἀπολογιζομένου πρὸς μόνον ἠγανάκτησε τὸ πλῆθος τοῦ ἐλαίου· θαυμασάντων δὲ τῶν συναρχόντων, οὐ τὸ τῆς δαπάνης ἔφη λυπεῖν αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ εἰ τοσοῦτον ἔλαιον ἐντὸς παραδέδεκται τοῦ σώματος.

[e] Ἑορτὴν δὲ τῆς πόλεως ἀγούσης καὶ πάντων ἐν πότοις καὶ συνουσίαις ὄντων ἀπήντησέ τινι τῶν συνήθων αὐχμηρὸς καὶ σύννους βαδίζων· θαυμάζοντος δὲ καὶ πυνθανομένου τί δὴ μόνος οὕτως ἔχων περίεισιν, ‘ὅπως’ εἶπεν ‘ἐξῇ πᾶσιν ὑμῖν μεθύειν καὶ ῥᾳθυμεῖν.’

Ἄνθρωπον δὲ φαῦλον ἐξημαρτηκότα τι τῶν μετρίων τοῦ μὲν Πελοπίδου παρακαλοῦντος οὐκ ἀφῆκε, τῆς δ’ ἐρωμένης δεηθείσης ἀφῆκεν, εἰπὼν ὅτι τοιαῦτα πρέπει λαμβάνειν ἑταιριδίοις, ἀλλὰ μὴ στρατηγοῖς.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων ἐπιστρατευομένων ἀνεφέροντο χρησμοὶ τοῖς Θηβαίοις, οἱ μὲν ἧτταν οἱ δὲ νίκην [f] φράζοντες, ἐκέλευε τοὺς μὲν ἐπὶ δεξιὰ τοῦ βήματος θεῖναι, τοὺς δ’ ἐπ’ ἀριστερά. τεθέντων δὲ πάντων ἀναστὰς εἶπεν ‘ἐὰν μὲν ἐθελήσητε τοῖς ἄρχουσι πείθεσθαι καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις ὁμόσε χωρεῖν, οὗτοι ὑμῖν εἰσὶν οἱ χρησμοί’ δείξας τοὺς βελτίονας· ‘ἐὰν δ’ ἀποδειλιάσητε πρὸς τὸν κίνδυνον, ἐκεῖνοι’ πρὸς τοὺς χείρονας ἰδών.

Πάλιν δὲ προσάγων τοῖς πολεμίοις, βροντῆς γενομένης καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν πυνθανομένων τί σημαίνειν [193] [a] οἴεται τὸν θεόν, ἐμβεβροντῆσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους εἶπεν, ὅτι τοιούτων χωρίων ἐγγὺς ὄντων ἐν τοιούτοις στρατοπεδεύουσιν.

Ἥδιστον δὲ πάντων τῶν αὑτῷ γεγονότων καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν εἶναι ἔλεγε τὸ [τῶν γειναμένων αὐτὸν] τοῦ πατρὸς ἔτι ζῶντος καὶ τῆς μητρὸς ἐν Λεύκτροις νικῆσαι Λακεδαιμονίους.

Εἰωθὼς δὲ φαίνεσθαι τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον ἀληλιμμένος τὸ σῶμα καὶ φαιδρὸς τῷ προσώπῳ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἐκείνην τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ προῆλθεν αὐχμηρὸς καὶ ταπεινός· τῶν δὲ φίλων ἐρωτώντων μή τι λυπηρὸν αὐτῷ συμπέπτωκεν, ‘οὐδέν’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλ’ ἐχθὲς ᾐσθόμην ἐμαυτοῦ μεῖζον ἢ καλῶς ἔχει φρονήσαντος· διὸ σήμερον κολάζω τὴν [b] ἀμετρίαν τῆς χαρᾶς.’

Εἰδὼς δὲ τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας ἐπικρυπτομένους τὰ τοιαῦτα συμπτώματα καὶ βουλόμενος ἐξελέγξαι τὸ μέγεθος τῆς συμφορᾶς αὐτῶν, οὐχ ὁμοῦ πᾶσι νεκρῶν ἀναίρεσιν ἀλλ’ ἑκάστοις κατὰ πόλιν ἔδωκεν, ὥστε πλείονας ἢ χιλίους ὄντας ὀφθῆναι τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίων.

Ἰάσονος δὲ τοῦ Θεσσαλῶν μονάρχου συμμάχου μὲν εἰς Θήβας παραγενομένου, δισχιλίους δὲ χρυσοῦς τῷ Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ πέμψαντος ἰσχυρῶς πενομένῳ τὸ μὲν χρυσίον οὐκ ἔλαβε, τὸν δὲ Ἰάσονα θεασάμενος ‘ἀδίκων’ ἔφη ‘χειρῶν ἄρχεις·’ αὐτὸς δὲ πεντήκοντα δραχμὰς δανεισάμενος [c] παρά τινος τῶν πολιτῶν ἐφόδιον τῆς στρατείας ἐνέβαλεν εἰς Πελοπόννησον.

Αὖθις δὲ τοῦ Περσῶν βασιλέως τρισμυρίους δαρεικοὺς ἀποστείλαντος αὐτῷ, καθήψατο πικρῶς Διομέδοντος, εἰ τοσοῦτον πλοῦν πέπλευκε διαφθερῶν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν· πρὸς δὲ τὸν βασιλέα λέγειν ἐκέλευσεν, ὅτι τὰ συμφέροντα Θηβαίοις φρονῶν ἕξει προῖκα φίλον Ἐπαμεινώνδαν, τὰ δὲ μὴ συμφέροντα πολέμιον.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀργεῖοι μὲν ἐγένοντο σύμμαχοι Θηβαίων, Ἀθηναίων δὲ πρέσβεις εἰς Ἀρκαδίαν παραγενόμενοι κατηγόρουν ἀμφοτέρων καὶ Καλλίστρατος ὁ ῥήτωρ ὠνείδισε τὸν Ὀρέστην καὶ τὸν Οἰδίποδα ταῖς πόλεσιν, ἐπαναστὰς ὁ [d] Ἐπαμεινώνδας ‘ὁμολογοῦμεν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν πατροκτόνον γενέσθαι καὶ παρ’ Ἀργείοις μητροκτόνον· ἀλλὰ τοὺς ταῦτα δράσαντας ἡμεῖς μὲν ἐξεβάλομεν, Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ ὑπεδέξαντο.’

Πρὸς δὲ τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα τῶν

Θηβαίων κατηγοροῦντας ‘οὗτοι μέντοι’ εἶπεν ‘ὑμᾶς βραχυλογοῦντας ἔπαυσαν.’

Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρον τὸν Φεραίων τύραννον πολέμιον ὄντα Θηβαίων Ἀθηναῖοι φίλον ἐποιήσαντο καὶ σύμμαχον ὑποσχόμενον αὐτοῖς ἡμιωβολίου τὴν μνᾶν κρεῶν ὤνιον παρέξειν, ‘ἡμεῖς δέ’ ἔφη ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας ‘ξύλα [e] προῖκα παρέξομεν Ἀθηναίοις ἐπὶ τὰ κρέα ταῦτα· τὴν γὰρ χώραν αὐτῶν τεμοῦμεν, ἂν πολυπραγμονῶσι.’

Τοὺς δὲ Βοιωτοὺς ὑπὸ σχολῆς ἐκλυομένους ἀεὶ βουλόμενος ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις συνέχειν, ὁπότε βοιωτάρχης αἱρεθείη, παραινῶν ἔλεγεν ‘ἔτι βουλεύσασθε, ὦ ἄνδρες· ἐὰν γὰρ ἐγὼ στρατηγῶ, στρατευτέον ἐστὶν ὑμῖν·’ καὶ τὴν χώραν ὑπτίαν οὖσαν καὶ ἀναπεπταμένην ‘πολέμου ὀρχήστραν’ προσηγόρευεν, ὡς μὴ δυναμένους κρατεῖν αὐτῆς, ἂν μὴ τὴν χεῖρα διὰ πόρπακος ἔχωσι.

Τοῦ δὲ Χαβρίου περὶ Κόρινθον ὀλίγους τινὰς τῶν Θηβαίων ὑπὸ τὰ τείχη φιλομαχοῦντας καταβαλόντος καὶ [f] στήσαντος τρόπαιον, ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας καταγελῶν ἔφη ‘ἐνταῦθα δεῖ οὐ τρόπαιον ἀλλὰ Ἑκατήσιον ἑστάναι·’ τὴν γὰρ Ἑκάτην ἐπιεικῶς ἐν ταῖς πρὸ τῶν πυλῶν ἱδρύοντο τριόδοις.

Ἀπαγγείλαντος δέ τινος ὡς Ἀθηναῖοι στράτευμα καινοῖς κεκοσμημένον ὅπλοις εἰς Πελοπόννησον ἀπεστάλκασι, ‘τί οὖν;’ εἶπεν ‘Ἀντιγενίδας στένει καινοὺς Τελλῆνος αὐλοὺς ἔχοντος;’ ἦν δ’ αὐλητὴς ὁ μὲν Τελλὴν κάκιστος, ὁ δ’ Ἀντιγενίδας κάλλιστος.

[194] [a] Τὸν δὲ ὑπασπιστὴν αἰσθόμενος εἰληφότα χρήματα πολλὰ παρ’ ἀνδρὸς αἰχμαλώτου γεγονότος ‘ἐμοὶ μέν’ εἶπεν ‘ἀπόδος τὴν ἀσπίδα, σεαυτῷ δὲ πρίω καπηλεῖον, ἐν ᾧ καταζήσεις· οὐκέτι γὰρ ἐθελήσεις κινδυνεύειν ὁμοίως εἷς τῶν πλουσίων γεγονὼς καὶ μακαρίων.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ πότερον ἑαυτὸν ἡγεῖται βελτίονα στρατηγὸν ἢ Χαβρίαν ἢ Ἰφικράτην ‘δύσκριτον’ εἶπεν ‘ἕως ζῶμεν.’

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐκ τῆς Λακωνικῆς ὑποστρέψας ἔφευγε θανάτου δίκην μετὰ τῶν συστρατήγων ὡς ἐπιβαλὼν τῇ βοιωταρχίᾳ παρὰ τὸν νόμον τέσσαρας μῆνας, τοὺς μὲν συνάρχοντας ἐκέλευεν εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἀναφέρειν τὴν αἰτίαν [b] ὡς ἐκβιασθέντας, αὐτὸς δ’ οὐκ ἔφη βελτίονας ἔχειν τῶν ἔργων λόγους· εἰ δὲ δεῖ τι πάντως εἰπεῖν πρὸς τοὺς δικαστάς, ἀξιοῦν, ἂν ἀποκτείνωσιν αὐτόν, ἐπιγράψαι τῇ στήλῃ τὴν καταδίκην, ὅπως οἱ Ἕλληνες εἰδῶσιν ὅτι μὴ βουλομένους Θηβαίους Ἐπαμεινώνδας ἠνάγκασε τὴν Λακωνικὴν πυρπολῆσαι, πεντακοσίοις ἐνιαυτοῖς ἀδῄωτον οὖσαν· οἰκίσαι δὲ Μεσσήνην δι’ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα καὶ διακοσίων· συντάξαι δὲ καὶ συναγαγεῖν εἰς ταὐτὸν Ἀρκάδας· ἀποδοῦναι δὲ τοῖς Ἕλλησι τὴν αὐτονομίαν. ταῦτα γὰρ ἐπράχθη κατ’ ἐκείνην τὴν στρατείαν. ἐξῆλθον οὖν οἱ δικασταὶ σὺν πολλῷ γέλωτι μηδὲ τὰς ψήφους ἐπ’ αὐτὸν [c] ἀναλαβόντες.

Ἐν δὲ τῇ τελευταίᾳ μάχῃ τρωθεὶς καὶ κομισθεὶς ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν ἐκάλει Δαΐφαντον, εἶτα μετ’ ἐκεῖνον Ἰολαΐδαν· τεθνάναι δὲ τοὺς ἄνδρας πυθόμενος ἐκέλευε διαλύεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, ὡς οὐκ ὄντος αὐτοῖς στρατηγοῦ. καὶ τῷ λόγῳ τὸ ἔργον ἐμαρτύρησεν, ὡς εἰδότος ἄριστα τοὺς πολίτας.

ΠΕΛΟΠΙΔΑΣ

Πελοπίδας ὁ συστράτηγος Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ, τῶν φίλων αὐτὸν ἀμελεῖν λεγόντων πράγματος ἀναγκαίου, χρημάτων συναγωγῆς, ‘ἀναγκαῖα τὰ χρήματα νὴ Δία’ εἶπε ‘τούτῳ’ Νικομήδη δείξας, χωλὸν καὶ ἀνάπηρον ἄνθρωπον.

Τῆς δὲ γυναικός, ἐπὶ μάχην ἐξιόντος αὐτοῦ, δεομένης [d] σῴζειν ἑαυτόν, ἄλλοις ἔφη δεῖν τοῦτο παραινεῖν, ἄρχοντι δὲ καὶ στρατηγῷ σῴζειν τοὺς πολίτας.

Εἰπόντος δέ τινος τῶν στρατιωτῶν ‘ἐμπεπτώκαμεν εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους’, ‘τί μᾶλλον’ εἶπεν ‘ἢ εἰς ἡμᾶς ἐκεῖνοι;’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ παρασπονδηθεὶς ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Φεραίων τυράννου καὶ δεθεὶς κακῶς αὐτὸν ἔλεγεν, εἰπόντος ἐκείνου ‘σπεύδεις ἀποθανεῖν;’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘ἵνα μᾶλλον παροξυνθῶσι Θηβαῖοι καὶ σὺ δίκην δῷς τάχιον.’

Θήβης δὲ τῆς τοῦ τυράννου γυναικὸς ἐλθούσης πρὸς Πελοπίδαν καὶ λεγούσης θαυμάζειν ὅτι οὕτως ἱλαρός ἐστι δεδεμένος, αὐτὸς ἔφη μᾶλλον θαυμάζειν [e] ἐκείνην, ὅτι μὴ δεδεμένη ὑπομένει Ἀλέξανδρον.

Κομισαμένου δ’ αὐτὸν τοῦ Ἐπαμεινώνδου, χάριν εἶπεν ἔχειν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ· πεπειρᾶσθαι γὰρ ἑαυτοῦ νῦν μάλιστα οὐ πρὸς πόλεμον ‹μόνον›, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς θάνατον εὐθαρσῶς ἔχοντος.

ΡΩΜΑΙΚΑ

ΜΑΝΙΟΣ ΚΟΥΡΙΟΣ

Μάνιος Κούριος, ἐγκαλούντων αὐτῷ τινων ὅτι τῆς αἰχμαλώτου χώρας ὀλίγον ἑκάστῳ μέρος διένειμε τὴν δὲ πολλὴν ἐποίησε δημοσίαν, ἐπηύξατο μηδένα γενέσθαι Ῥωμαίων, ὃς ὀλίγην ἡγήσεται γῆν τὴν τρέφουσαν.

Σαυνιτῶν δὲ μετὰ τὴν ἧτταν ἀφικομένων πρὸς [f] αὐτὸν καὶ χρυσίον διδόντων ἔτυχεν ἐν χύτραις ἕψων γογγυλίδας· ἀπεκρίνατο δὴ τοῖς Σαυνίταις μηδὲν χρυσίου δεῖσθαι τοιοῦτον δεῖπνον δειπνῶν, αὑτῷ δὲ βέλτιον εἶναι τοῦ χρυσίον ἔχειν τὸ κρατεῖν τῶν ἐχόντων.

ΓΑΙΟΣ ΦΑΒΡΙΚΙΟΣ

Γάιος Φαβρίκιος τὴν ὑπὸ Πύρρου Ῥωμαίων ἧτταν πυθόμενος ‘Λαιβῖνον’ εἶπε ‘Πύρρος, οὐκ Ἠπειρῶται Ῥωμαίους νενικήκασιν.’

Ἐλθὼν δὲ πρὸς Πύρρον περὶ λύσεως αἰχμαλώτων [195] [a] χρυσίον μὲν πολὺ διδόντος οὐκ ἔλαβε· τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ τὸν μέγιστον ἐλέφαντα τοῦ Πύρρου παρασκευάσαντος ἐξόπισθεν ἀγνοοῦντι τῷ Φαβρικίῳ ῥήξαντα φωνὴν ἐπιφανῆναι καὶ τούτου γενομένου, ἐπιστραφεὶς ὁ Φαβρίκιος καὶ μειδιάσας ‘ἐμέ’ εἶπεν ‘οὔτε τὸ χρυσίον ἐχθὲς οὔτε σήμερον τὸ θηρίον ἐξέπληξε.’

Τοῦ δὲ Πύρρου παρακαλοῦντος αὐτὸν εἶναι σὺν αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν μετ’ αὐτὸν ἔχειν ἡγεμονίαν ‘οὐδὲ σοί’ ἔφη ‘τοῦτο λυσιτελές ἐστιν· Ἠπειρῶται γὰρ ἐὰν ἀμφοτέρους γνῶσιν ἡμᾶς, ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ βασιλεύεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ σοῦ ἐθελήσουσιν.’

Ὑπατεύοντι δὲ τῷ Φαβρικίῳ προσέπεμψεν ἐπιστολὴν [b] ὁ τοῦ Πύρρου ἰατρὸς ἐπαγγελλόμενος, ἐὰν κελεύῃ, φαρμάκοις τὸν Πύρρον ἀποκτενεῖν· ὁ δὲ Φαβρίκιος τὴν ἐπιστολὴν πρὸς τὸν Πύρρον ἔπεμψεν, αἰσθέσθαι κελεύσας ὅτι καὶ φίλων κάκιστός ἐστι κριτὴς καὶ πολεμίων.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ φωράσας τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν ὁ Πύρρος τὸν μὲν ἰατρὸν ἐκρέμασε, τῷ δὲ Φαβρικίῳ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους ἄνευ λύτρων ἀπέδωκεν, οὐκ ἐδέξατο δωρεὰν ἀλλ’ ἴσους ἀντέδωκε, μὴ δόξῃ λαμβάνειν μισθόν· οὐδὲ γὰρ χάριτι Πύρρου μεμηνυκέναι τὴν ἐπιβουλήν, ἀλλ’ ὅπως μὴ δοκῶσι Ῥωμαῖοι δόλῳ κτείνειν, ὡς φανερῶς νικᾶν οὐ δυνάμενοι.

ΦΑΒΙΟΣ ΜΑΞΙΜΟΣ

[c] Φάβιος Μάξιμος Ἀννίβᾳ μάχεσθαι μὴ βουλόμενος ἀλλὰ τρίβειν χρόνῳ τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ καὶ χρημάτων ἐνδεᾶ καὶ σιτίων οὖσαν ἐπηκολούθει διὰ τῶν τραχέων καὶ ὀρεινῶν ἀντιπαρεξιών· καταγελώντων δὲ τῶν πολλῶν καὶ παιδαγωγὸν Ἀννίβα καλούντων μικρὰ φροντίζων ἐχρῆτο τοῖς αὑτοῦ λογισμοῖς· καὶ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ἔλεγεν ὅτι τὸν σκώμματα φοβούμενον καὶ λοιδορίας δειλότερον ἡγεῖται τοῦ φεύγοντος τοὺς πολεμίους.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ συνάρχοντος Μινουκίου καταβαλόντος τινὰς τῶν πολεμίων πολὺς ἦν λόγος ὡς ἀνδρὸς ἀξίου τῆς Ῥώμης, μᾶλλον ἔφη τὴν εὐτυχίαν ἢ τὴν ἀτυχίαν [d] τοῦ Μινουκίου φοβεῖσθαι. καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ἐνέδρᾳ περιπεσόντος καὶ κινδυνεύοντος ἀπολέσθαι μετὰ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ δυνάμεως ἐπιβοηθήσας τῶν τε πολεμίων πολλοὺς διέφθειρε κἀκεῖνον ἔσωσεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀννίβας εἶπε πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ‘οὐ πολλάκις ἐγὼ προὔλεγον ὑμῖν τὴν ἐπὶ τῶν ὀρῶν νεφέλην ὅτι χειμάσει ποτὲ ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς;’

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐν Κάνναις ἀτυχίαν τῆς πόλεως ἄρχων

γεγονὼς μετὰ Κλαυδίου Μαρκέλλου, τόλμαν ἔχοντος ἀνδρὸς καὶ φιλομαχοῦντος ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸν Ἀννίβαν, αὐτὸς ἤλπιζεν, εἰ μηδεὶς μάχοιτο, ταχὺ τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ Ἀννίβα [e] παρατεινομένην ἀπαγορεύσειν· ἔλεγεν οὖν ὁ Ἀννίβας ὅτι μᾶλλον φοβεῖται Μαρκέλλου μαχομένου Φάβιον μὴ μαχόμενον.

Στρατιώτου δέ τινος Λευκανοῦ κατηγορηθέντος πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς νύκτωρ ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατοπέδου πλανῷτο πολλάκις ἐρῶν γυναικός, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα θαυμαστὸν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις πυνθανόμενος εἶναι τὸν ἄνδρα, συλλαβεῖν ἐκέλευσε τὴν ἐρωμένην αὐτοῦ κρύφα καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀγαγεῖν· ὡς δ’ ἤχθη, μεταπεμψάμενος τὸν ἄνθρωπον ‘οὐ λέληθας’ ἔφη ‘παρὰ τὸν νόμον ἀπονυκτερεύων· ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ χρηστὸς ὢν πρότερον ἐλελήθεις· τὰ μὲν οὖν ἡμαρτημένα [f] λελύσθω τοῖς ἠνδραγαθημένοις, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν ἔσῃ μεθ’ ἡμῶν· ἔχω γὰρ ἐγγυητήν’ καὶ προαγαγὼν συνέστησεν αὐτῷ τὸ γύναιον.

Ταραντίνους δὲ κατέχοντα φρουρᾷ τὸν Ἀννίβαν πλὴν τῆς ἀκροπόλεως ἀπαγαγὼν πορρωτάτω δι’ ἀπάτης καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἑλὼν καὶ διαρπάσας, τοῦ γραμματέως ἐπερωτήσαντος τί περὶ τῶν ἱερῶν ἔγνωκεν ἀγαλμάτων, ‘ἀπολίπωμεν’ ἔφη ‘Ταραντίνοις τοὺς θεοὺς κεχολωμένους.’

Μάρκου δὲ Λιβίου τοῦ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν φρουροῦντος δι’ ἑαυτὸν ἑαλωκέναι τὴν πόλιν λέγοντος, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι [196] [a] κατεγέλων, ὁ δὲ Φάβιος εἶπεν ‘ἀληθῆ λέγεις· εἰ μὴ γὰρ σὺ τὴν πόλιν ἀπέβαλες, οὐκ ἂν ἐγὼ ἀνέλαβον.’

Ἤδη δὲ πρεσβύτερος ὤν, ὑπατεύοντος τοῦ υἱοῦ καὶ χρηματίζοντος ἐν δημοσίῳ πολλῶν παρόντων, ἀναβὰς ἐφ’ ἵππον προσῄει· πέμψαντος δὲ τοῦ νεανίσκου ῥαβδοῦχον καὶ καταβῆναι κελεύσαντος, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι διετράπησαν, αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ Φάβιος ἀποπηδήσας τοῦ ἵππου προσέδραμε παρ’ ἡλικίαν καὶ περιβαλὼν τὸν υἱόν ‘εὖγε’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ παῖ, φρονεῖς, αἰσθόμενος τίνων ἄρχεις καὶ πηλίκης ἀρχῆς μέγεθος παρείληφας.’

ΣΚΙΠΙΩΝ Ο ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΕΡΟΣ

[b] Σκιπίων δὲ ὁ πρεσβύτερος τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν στρατειῶν καὶ τῆς πολιτείας σχολὴν ἐν γράμμασι διατριβὴν ποιούμενος ἔλεγεν, ὁπότε σχολάζοι, πλείονα πράττειν.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Καρχηδόνα κατὰ κράτος εἷλε καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν τινες αἰχμάλωτον λαβόντες εὐπρεπῆ παρθένον ἧκον κομίζοντες αὐτῷ τ’ ἐδίδοσαν, ‘ἡδέως ἄν’ ἔφη ‘ἔλαβον, εἴπερ ἦν ἰδιώτης καὶ μὴ ἄρχων.’

Πολιορκῶν δὲ πόλιν Βαθεῖαν, ἧς ὑπερεφαίνετο ναὸς Ἀφροδίτης, ἐκέλευσεν ἐκεῖ τὰς ἐγγύας ὁμολογεῖν, ὡς εἰς τρίτην ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἀκουσόμενος τῶν διαδικούντων· καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐποίησεν, ὡς προεῖπε, τῆς πόλεως ἁλούσης.

[c] Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος ἐν Σικελίᾳ, τίνι πεποιθὼς ἐπὶ Καρχηδόνα μέλλοι τὸν στόλον περαιοῦν, δείξας αὐτῷ ἐνόπλους ἄνδρας τριακοσίους γυμναζομένους καὶ πύργον ὑψηλὸν ὑπὲρ θαλάττης ‘οὐδείς’ ἔφη ‘τούτων ἐστίν, ὅστις ἐπὶ τὸν πύργον ἀναβὰς τοῦτον οὐκ ἂν ἑαυτὸν ῥίψειεν ἐπὶ κεφαλὴν ἐμοῦ κελεύσαντος.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ διάρας τῆς τε γῆς ἐκράτει καὶ τὰ στρατόπεδα τῶν πολεμίων κατέκαυσεν, οἱ δὲ Καρχηδόνιοι πέμψαντες ἐποιοῦντο συνθήκας, τά τε θηρία καὶ τὰς ναῦς καὶ τὰ χρήματα δώσειν ὁμολογήσαντες, Ἀννίβου δὲ καταπλεύσαντος ἐξ Ἰταλίας μετεμέλοντο ταῖς ὁμολογίαις [d] διὰ τὸ θαρρεῖν, πυθόμενος Σκιπίων ἔφη μηδὲ βουλομένοις αὐτοῖς ἔτι τὰς σπονδὰς φυλάξειν, ἂν μὴ τάλαντα πεντακισχίλια προεκτίσωσιν, ὅτι μετεπέμψαντο τὸν Ἀννίβαν.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ νικηθέντες οἱ Καρχηδόνιοι κατὰ κράτος περὶ σπονδῶν καὶ εἰρήνης πρέσβεις ἀπέστειλαν πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐκέλευσεν εὐθὺς ἀπιέναι τοὺς ἥκοντας, ὡς οὐκ ἀκουσόμενος πρότερον αὐτῶν ἢ Λεύκιον Τερέντιον ἀναγάγωσιν· ἦν δὲ Ῥωμαῖος ὁ Τερέντιος, ἐπιεικὴς ἀνήρ, γεγονὼς αἰχμάλωτος ὑπὸ Καρχηδονίων· ἐπεὶ δὲ ἧκον ἄγοντες τὸν ἄνδρα, καθίσας ἐν τῷ συμβουλίῳ παρ’ [e] αὑτὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος, οὕτως ἐχρημάτισε τοῖς Καρχηδονίοις καὶ κατέλυσε τὸν πόλεμον.

Ὁ δὲ Τερέντιος ἐπηκολούθησεν αὐτῷ θριαμβεύοντι

πιλίον ἔχων ὥσπερ ἀπελεύθερος· ἀποθανόντος δὲ τοῖς ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκφορὰν παραγενομένοις ἐνέχει πίνειν οἰνόμελι καὶ τὰ ἄλλα περὶ τὴν ταφὴν ἐφιλοτιμήθη. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὕστερον.

Ἀντιόχου δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως μετὰ τὸ διαβῆναι Ῥωμαίους ἐπ’ αὐτὸν εἰς Ἀσίαν πέμψαντος πρὸς τὸν Σκιπίωνα περὶ διαλύσεως, ‘ἔδει πρότερον’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλὰ μὴ νῦν, ὁπότε καὶ τὸν χαλινὸν καὶ τὸν ἀναβάτην προσδέδεξαι.’

Χρήματα δὲ τῆς συγκλήτου λαβεῖν αὐτὸν ἐκ τοῦ [f] ταμιείου ψηφισαμένης, τῶν δὲ ταμιῶν οὐ βουλομένων ἀνοῖξαι τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης, αὐτὸς ἀνοίξειν ἔφη· καὶ γὰρ κλείεσθαι δι’ αὐτὸν πλήσαντα χρημάτων τοσούτων τὸ ταμιεῖον.

†Πετιλλίου δὲ καὶ Κοΐντου πολλὰ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον αὐτοῦ κατηγορησάντων, εἰπὼν ὅτι τῇ σήμερον ἡμέρᾳ Καρχηδονίους καὶ Ἀννίβαν ἐνίκησεν, αὐτὸς μὲν ἔφη στεφανωσάμενος ἀναβαίνειν εἰς τὸ Καπετώλιον θύσων, τὸν δὲ βουλόμενον τὴν ψῆφον ἐκέλευσε φέρειν περὶ [197] [a] αὐτοῦ· καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἀνέβαινεν, ὁ δὲ δῆμος ἐπηκολούθησε τοὺς κατηγόρους ἀπολιπὼν λέγοντας.

ΤΙΤΟΣ ΚΟΙΝΤΙΟΣ

Τίτος Κοΐντιος οὕτως ἦν εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπιφανής, ὥστε πρὸ δημαρχίας καὶ στρατηγίας καὶ ἀγορανομίας ὕπατος αἱρεθῆναι. πεμφθεὶς δὲ στρατηγὸς ἐπὶ Φίλιππον εἰς λόγους ἐπείσθη συνελθεῖν αὐτῷ· τοῦ δὲ Φιλίππου λαβεῖν ὁμήρους ἀξιοῦντος, ἐκεῖνον μὲν γὰρ ‹παρ]εῖναι μετὰ πολλῶν [Ῥωμαίων], ἑαυτὸν δὲ μόνον [Μακεδόσι], ‘σὺ γὰρ μόνον’ ὁ Κοΐντιος ἔφη ‘ἑαυτὸν ἐποίησας ἀποκτείνας τοὺς φίλους καὶ συγγενεῖς.’

[b] Νικήσας δὲ μάχῃ τὸν Φίλιππον ἐκήρυξεν ἐν Ἰσθμίοις ὅτι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐλευθέρους καὶ αὐτονόμους ἀφίησιν· ὅσοι δὲ Ῥωμαίων αἰχμάλωτοι γενόμενοι ἐν τοῖς κατ’ Ἀννίβαν χρόνοις ἐδούλευον παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησι, τούτων ἕκαστον οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐξωνησάμενοι δραχμῶν πεντακοσίων δωρεὰν ἔδωκαν αὐτῷ, κἀκεῖνοι θριαμβεύοντι συνηκολούθησαν ἐν Ῥώμῃ πιλία περὶ ταῖς κεφαλαῖς ἔχοντες, ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστὶ τοῖς ἐλευθερωθεῖσι.

Τοὺς δ’ Ἀχαιοὺς ἐπὶ τὴν Ζακυνθίων νῆσον διανοουμένους στρατεύειν ἐκέλευε φυλάττεσθαι, μὴ καθάπερ αἱ χελῶναι τὴν κεφαλὴν προτείναντες ἔξω τῆς Πελοποννήσου κινδυνεύσωσιν.

[c] Ἀντιόχου δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως ἥκοντος εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ πάντων ἐκπεπληγμένων τὰ πλήθη καὶ τοὺς ὁπλισμούς, λόγον εἶπε τοιοῦτον πρὸς τοὺς Ἀχαιούς· ἔφη γὰρ ἐν Χαλκίδι παρὰ τῷ ξένῳ δειπνῶν θαυμάζειν τὸ τῶν κρεῶν πλῆθος· εἰπεῖν δὲ τὸν ξένον ὅτι ταῦτα πάντα χοίρειά ἐστιν ἡδύσμασι καὶ σκευασίαις διαφέροντα. ‘μὴ τοίνυν μηδὲ ὑμεῖς’ ἔφη ‘θαυμάζετε τὴν βασιλικὴν δύναμιν, λογχοφόρους καὶ καταφράκτους καὶ πεζεταίρους καὶ ἀφιπποτοξότας ἀκούοντες· πάντες γάρ εἰσιν οὗτοι Σύροι ὁπλαρίοις ἀλλήλων διαφέροντες.’

Φιλοποίμενι δὲ τῷ στρατηγῷ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἱππεῖς [d] μὲν πολλοὺς καὶ ὁπλίτας ἔχοντι χρημάτων δ’ οὐκ εὐποροῦντι προσπαίζων ἔλεγεν ὅτι ‘χεῖρας ἔχει Φιλοποίμην καὶ σκέλη, γαστέρα δ’ οὐκ ἔχει.’ καὶ γὰρ καὶ τῇ φύσει τοῦ σώματος ἦν ὁ Φιλοποίμην τοιοῦτος.

ΓΑΙΟΣ ΔΟΜΙΤΙΟΣ

Γάιος Δομίτιος, ὃν Σκιπίων ὁ μέγας ἀνθ’ ἑαυτοῦ τῷ ἀδελφῷ Λευκίῳ παρακατέστησεν ἐν τῷ πρὸς Ἀντίοχον πολέμῳ, κατασκεψάμενος τὴν τῶν πολεμίων φάλαγγα καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἡγεμονικῶν εὐθὺς ἐπιχειρεῖν κελευόντων ἔφη τὴν ὥραν οὐκ ἐπαρκεῖν, ἵνα τοσαύτας μυριάδας [e] κατακόψαντες καὶ διαρπάσαντες τὴν ἀποσκευὴν ἐπανελθόντες εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον ἑαυτῶν ἐπιμεληθῶσι, τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ ποιήσειν αὔριον καθ’ ὥραν. καὶ συμβαλὼν τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ πεντακισμυρίους τῶν πολεμίων ἀνεῖλεν.

ΠΟΠΛΙΟΣ ΛΙΚΙΝΙΟΣ

Πόπλιος Λικίνιος ὕπατος στρατηγὸς ἡττηθεὶς ὑπὸ Περσέως τοῦ Μακεδόνων βασιλέως ἱππομαχίᾳ δισχιλίους ὀκτακοσίους ἀπέβαλε, τοὺς μὲν πεσόντας τοὺς δὲ ἁλόντας· ἐπεὶ δὲ μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἔπεμψεν ὁ Περσεὺς πρέσβεις περὶ σπονδῶν καὶ εἰρήνης, ἐκέλευσεν ὁ νενικημένος [f] τὸν νενικηκότα Ῥωμαίοις ἐπιτρέπειν τὰ καθ’ αὑτόν.

ΠΑΥΛΟΣ ΑΙΜΙΛΙΟΣ

Παῦλος Αἰμίλιος δευτέραν ὑπατείαν μετελθὼν ἀπέτυχεν· ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ πρὸς Περσέα καὶ Μακεδόνας πολέμου μῆκος λαμβάνοντος ἀπειρίᾳ καὶ μαλακίᾳ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἐκεῖνον ὕπατον ἀπέδειξαν, οὐκ ἔφη χάριν ἔχειν αὐτοῖς· οὐ γὰρ ‹οὕτως› αὐτὸς ἀρχῆς δεόμενος, ὡς ἐκείνων ἄρχοντος, ᾑρῆσθαι στρατηγός.

Ἐλθὼν δ’ εἰς οἶκον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς καὶ τὴν Τερτίαν τὸ θυγάτριον εὑρὼν δεδακρυμένον ἐπυνθάνετο τὴν αἰτίαν· [198] [a] εἰπούσης δὲ ὅτι ‘Περσεὺς τέθνηκεν ἡμῖν’ (κυνίδιον δ’ ἦν οὕτως ὀνομαζόμενον), ‘ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ,’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ θύγατερ, καὶ δέχομαι τὸν οἰωνόν.’

Εὑρὼν δ’ ἐπὶ στρατοπέδου πολλὴν θρασύτητα καὶ λαλιὰν παραστρατηγούντων καὶ πολυπραγμονούντων ἐκέλευσεν ἡσυχίαν ἔχειν καὶ ποιεῖν ὀξείας τὰς μαχαίρας μόνον, αὑτῷ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων μελήσειν.

Τὰς δὲ νυκτερινὰς φυλακὰς ἐκέλευσεν φυλάσσειν ἄνευ λόγχης καὶ ξίφους, ὅπως ἀμύνασθαι τοὺς πολεμίους ἀπεγνωκότες μᾶλλον διαμαχοῦνται πρὸς τὸν ὕπνον.

Ἐμβαλὼν δὲ διὰ τῶν ἄκρων εἰς Μακεδονίαν καὶ συντεταγμένους ἰδὼν τοὺς πολεμίους τοῦ Νασικᾶ παρακαλοῦντος [b] αὐτὸν εὐθὺς ἐπιχειρεῖν ‘εἴγε τὴν σήν’ εἶπεν ‘ἡλικίαν εἶχον· αἱ δὲ πολλαί με πεῖραι κωλύουσιν ἐκ πορείας πρὸς φάλαγγα συντεταγμένην μάχεσθαι.’

Νικήσας δὲ τὸν Περσέα καὶ τὰς ἐπινικίους ποιούμενος ἑστιάσεις ἔλεγε τῆς αὐτῆς ἐμπειρίας εἶναι στράτευμα φοβερώτατον πολεμίοις καὶ συμπόσιον ἥδιστον φίλοις παρασχεῖν.

Τοῦ δὲ Περσέως αἰχμαλώτου γενομένου καὶ παραιτουμένου τὸν θρίαμβον ‘ἐπὶ σοί’ εἶπε ‘τοῦτ’ ἐστίν,’ ἐξουσίαν διδοὺς αὐτῷ ἑαυτὸν ἀνελεῖν.

Χρημάτων δ’ ἀπείρων εὑρεθέντων αὐτὸς μὲν οὐκ [c] ἔλαβε, τῷ δὲ γαμβρῷ Τουβέρωνι φιάλην ἀργυρᾶν ὁλκῆς πέντε λιτρῶν ἀριστεῖον ἔδωκε. καὶ τοῦτό φασι πρῶτον εἰς τὸν ‹τῶν› Αἰλίων οἶκον εἰσελθεῖν κειμήλιον ἀργυροῦν.

Τεσσάρων δὲ παίδων ἀρρένων αὐτῷ γεγονότων δύο μὲν πρότερον ἐτύγχανεν ἐκδεδωκὼς ἑτέροις θέσθαι· δυοῖν δ’ ὄντων ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας ὁ μὲν ἡμέραις πέντε πρὸ τοῦ θριάμβου, τεσσαρακαίδεκα γεγονὼς ἔτη, ἀπέθανεν, ὁ δὲ ὕστερον πέντε τοῦ θριάμβου, δωδεκαέτης. προελθὼν δέ, τοῦ δήμου συναλγοῦντος αὐτῷ καὶ συμπενθοῦντος, νῦν ἔφη περὶ τῆς πατρίδος ἀδεὴς γεγονέναι καὶ ἀκίνδυνος, ὁπότε τῶν εὐτυχημάτων τὴν νέμεσιν εἰς τὸν οἶκον ἀπερεισαμένης τῆς τύχης ὑπὲρ πάντων αὐτὸς ἀναδέδεκται.

[d]

ΚΑΤΩΝ Ο ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΕΡΟΣ

Κάτων ὁ πρεσβύτερος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ τῆς ἀσωτίας καὶ πολυτελείας καθαπτόμενος εἶπεν ‘ὡς χαλεπόν ἐστι λέγειν πρὸς γαστέρα ὦτα μὴ ἔχουσαν.’ Θαυμάζειν δὲ πῶς σῴζεται πόλις, ἐν ᾗ πωλεῖται πλείονος ἰχθὺς ἢ βοῦς.

Λοιδορῶν δέ ποτε τὴν ἐπιπολάζουσαν γυναικοκρατίαν ‘πάντες’ εἶπεν ‘ἄνθρωποι τῶν γυναικῶν ἄρχουσιν, ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντων ἀνθρώπων, ἡμῶν δὲ αἱ γυναῖκες.’

Ἔφη δὲ βούλεσθαι μᾶλλον εὐεργετήσας μὴ κομίσασθαι χάριν ἢ μὴ ὑποσχεῖν κόλασιν ἀδικήσας, καὶ [e] πᾶσιν ἀεὶ τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι χωρὶς ἑαυτοῦ διδόναι συγγνώμην.

Παρορμῶν δὲ τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἐπιτιμᾶν τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσιν ἔλεγε τοὺς δυναμένους κωλύειν τοὺς κακῶς ποιοῦντας, ἐὰν μὴ κωλύωσι, κελεύειν.

Τῶν δὲ νέων ἔφη χαίρειν τοῖς ἐρυθριῶσι μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ὠχριῶσι.

Στρατιώτην δὲ μισεῖν, ὃς ἐν τῷ περιπατεῖν τὰς χεῖρας, ἐν δὲ τῷ μάχεσθαι τοὺς πόδας κινεῖ, ῥέγχει δὲ μεῖζον ἢ ἀλαλάζει.

Κάκιστον δ’ ἔλεγεν ἄρχοντα εἶναι τὸν ἄρχειν ἑαυτοῦ μὴ δυνάμενον.

Μάλιστα δ’ ἐνόμιζε δεῖν ἕκαστον ἑαυτὸν αἰδεῖσθαι· μηδένα γὰρ ἑαυτοῦ μηδέποτε χωρὶς εἶναι.

Πολλῶν δ’ ὁρῶν ἀνισταμένους ἀνδριάντας ‘περὶ ἐμοῦ [f] δ’’ ἔφη ‘βούλομαι ἐρωτᾶν μᾶλλον τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, διὰ τί ἀνδριὰς οὐ κεῖται [Κάτωνος] ἢ διὰ τί κεῖται.’

Φείδεσθαι δὲ τῆς ἐξουσίας παρεκάλει τοὺς δυναμένους, ὅπως ἀεὶ παραμείνῃ τὸ ἐξεῖναι.

Τοὺς δὲ τῆς ἀρετῆς τὴν τιμὴν ἀφαιροῦντας ἔλεγε τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀφαιρεῖν τῆς νεότητος.

Τὸν δ’ ἄρχοντα ἢ κριτὴν ἔλεγε δεῖν μήτε ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίων λιπαρεῖσθαι μήτε ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀδίκων ἐκλιπαρεῖσθαι.

[199] [a] Τὴν δ’ ἀδικίαν ἔλεγε τοῖς ἀδικοῦσιν ἂν μὴ φέρῃ κίνδυνον, ἅπασι φέρειν.

Τῷ δὲ γήρᾳ πολλῶν αἰσχρῶν παρόντων ἠξίου μὴ προστιθέναι τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς κακίας αἰσχύνην.

Τὸν δ’ ὀργιζόμενον ἐνόμιζε τοῦ μαινομένου χρόνῳ διαφέρειν.

Ἥκιστα δὲ φθονεῖσθαι τοὺς τῇ τύχῃ χρωμένους ἐπιεικῶς καὶ μετρίως· ‘οὐ γὰρ ἡμῖν ἀλλὰ τοῖς περὶ ἡμᾶς φθονοῦσι.’

Τοὺς δὲ σπουδάζοντας ἐν τοῖς γελοίοις ἔλεγεν ἐν τοῖς σπουδαίοις ἔσεσθαι καταγελάστους.

Τὰς δὲ καλὰς πράξεις ἔλεγε δεῖν καταλαμβάνειν πράξεσι καλαῖς, ἵνα μὴ τῆς δόξης ἀπορρέωσιν.

Ἐπετίμα δὲ τοῖς πολίταις ἀεὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς αἱρουμένοις [b] ἄρχοντας· ‘δόξετε γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘ἢ μὴ πολλοῦ τὸ ἄρχειν ἄξιον ἢ μὴ πολλοὺς τοῦ ἄρχειν ἀξίους ἡγεῖσθαι.’

Τὸν δὲ τοὺς παραλίους ἀγροὺς πεπρακότα προσεποιεῖτο θαυμάζειν ὡς ἰσχυρότερον τῆς θαλάσσης· ‘ἃ γὰρ ἐκείνη μόλις ἐπικλύζει, οὗτος ῥᾳδίως καταπέπωκε.’

Τιμητείαν δὲ μετιὼν καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ὁρῶν δεομένους τῶν πολλῶν καὶ κολακεύοντας, αὐτὸς ἐβόα τὸν δῆμον ἀποτόμου χρείαν ἔχειν ἰατροῦ καὶ μεγάλου καθαρμοῦ· δεῖν οὖν μὴ τὸν ἥδιστον, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἀπαραίτητον αἱρεῖσθαι. καὶ ταῦτα λέγων ᾑρέθη πρὸ πάντων.

Διδάσκων δὲ τοὺς νέους εὐθαρσῶς μάχεσθαι πολλάκις [c] ἔλεγε τοῦ ξίφους τὸν λόγον μᾶλλον καὶ τὴν φωνὴν τῆς χειρὸς τρέπειν καὶ καταπλήττειν τοὺς πολεμίους.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ πολεμῶν τοῖς περὶ τὸν Βαῖτιν ποταμὸν οἰκοῦσιν εἰς κίνδυνον ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν πολεμίων κατέστη, τῶν μὲν Κελτιβήρων ἐπὶ διακοσίοις ταλάντοις βουλομένων βοηθεῖν τῶν δὲ Ῥωμαίων οὐκ ἐώντων ὁμολογεῖν μισθὸν ἀνθρώποις βαρβάροις, ἁμαρτάνειν ἔφησεν αὐτούς· νικῶντας μὲν γὰρ ἀποδώσειν οὐ παρ’ αὑτῶν ἀλλὰ παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων, ἡττωμένων δὲ μήτε τοὺς ἀπαιτουμένους μήτε τοὺς ἀπαιτοῦντας ἔσεσθαι.

Πλείονας δὲ πόλεις ἑλών, ὥς φησι, τῶν ἡμερῶν [d] ἃς διέτριψεν ἐν τοῖς πολεμίοις οὐδὲν αὐτὸς πλέον ἔλαβεν ὧν ἔπιε καὶ ἔφαγεν ἐκ τῆς πολεμίας.

Τῶν δὲ στρατιωτῶν ἑκάστῳ λίτραν ἀργυρίου διανείμας φησὶ βέλτιον εἶναι πολλοὺς ἔχοντας ἀργύριον ἢ ὀλίγους χρυσίον ἀπὸ τῆς στρατείας ἐπανελθεῖν· τῶν γὰρ ἀρχόντων οὐδὲν ἄλλο δεῖν ἐν ταῖς ἐπαρχίαις ἢ τὴν δόξαν αὐξάνεσθαι.

Πέντε δ’ οἰκέτας εἶχεν ἐπὶ τῆς στρατείας, ὧν εἷς αἰχμάλωτα τρία σώματα πριάμενος, ὡς οὐκ ἔλαθε τὸν Κάτωνα, πρὶν εἰς ὄψιν ἐλθεῖν, ἀπήγξατο.

Παρακληθεὶς δ’ ὑπὸ Σκιπίωνος Ἀφρικανοῦ τοῖς [e] Ἀχαιῶν συλλαβέσθαι φυγάσιν, ὅπως εἰς τὰς πατρίδας κατέλθωσιν, προσεποιεῖτο μηδὲν αὐτῷ μέλειν τοῦ πράγματος· ἐν δὲ τῇ συγκλήτῳ πολλῶν γινομένων λόγων ἀναστάς ‘ὥσπερ οὐκ ἔχοντες’ εἶπεν ‘ὃ πράττωμεν, καθήμεθα περὶ Γραικῶν γεροντίων ζητοῦντες πότερον ὑπὸ τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν ἢ ὑπὸ τῶν ἐκεῖ νεκροφόρων ἐξενεχθῶσι.’

Ποστουμίου δ’ Ἀλβίνου γράψαντος ἱστορίας Ἑλληνιστὶ καὶ συγγνώμην παρὰ τῶν ἀκροωμένων αἰτοῦντος, εἰρωνευόμενος ὁ Κάτων ἔφη δοτέον εἶναι συγγνώμην, εἰ τῶν Ἀμφικτυόνων ψηφισαμένων ἀναγκασθεὶς ἔγραψε.

ΣΚΙΠΙΩΝ Ο ΝΕΩΤΕΡΟΣ

[f] Σκιπίωνα τὸν νεώτερον λέγουσιν ἔτεσι πεντήκοντα καὶ τέτταρσιν, οἷς ἐβίωσε, μηδὲν πρίασθαι μηδὲν ἀποδόσθαι μηδὲν οἰκοδομῆσαι, λίτρας δὲ ἀργυρίου τρεῖς καὶ τριάκοντα μόνας [ἐν οὐσίᾳ μεγάλῃ] δύο δὲ χρυσίου καταλιπεῖν· καὶ ταῦτα Καρχηδόνος κύριον ὄντα καὶ μάλιστα τῶν στρατηγῶν πλουτίσαντα τοὺς στρατιώτας.

Τὸ δὲ Πολυβίου παράγγελμα διαφυλάττων ἐπειρᾶτο μὴ πρότερον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς ἀπελθεῖν ἢ ποιήσασθαί τινα συνήθη καὶ φίλον ἁμωσγέπως τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων.

[200] [a] Ἔτι δὲ νέος ὢν τοσαύτην εἶχε δόξαν ἀνδρείας καὶ συνέσεως, ὥστε Κάτωνα μὲν τὸν πρεσβύτερον εἰπεῖν ἐρωτηθέντα περὶ τῶν ἐν Καρχηδόνι στρατευομένων, ἐν οἷς καὶ Σκιπίων ἦν, (κ 495)

‘οἶος πέπνυται, τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀίσσουσιν.’

Εἰς δὲ τὴν Ῥώμην ἐλθόντος ἀπὸ στρατείας ‹εἰς ὑπατείαν› ἐκάλουν αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐκείνῳ χαριζόμενοι, ἀλλ’ ὡς Καρχηδόνα δι’ ἐκείνου ταχὺ καὶ ῥᾳδίως ληψόμενοι.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ παρελθὼν εἰς τὸ τεῖχος, τῶν Καρχηδονίων ἐκ τῆς ἄκρας ἀμυνομένων, †μὴ σὺ τὴν διὰ μέσου θάλασσαν οὐ πάνυ βαθεῖαν οὖσαν· τοῦ Πολυβίου συμβουλεύοντος αὐτῷ κατασπεῖραι τριβόλους σιδηροῦς ἢ [b] σανίδας ἐμβαλεῖν κεντρωτάς, ὅπως μὴ διαβαίνοντες οἱ πολέμιοι προσμάχωνται τοῖς χώμασιν, ἔφη γελοῖον εἶναι κατειληφότας τὰ τείχη καὶ τῆς πόλεως ἐντὸς ὄντας εἶτα πράττειν ὅπως οὐ μαχοῦνται τοῖς πολεμίοις.

Εὑρὼν δὲ τὴν πόλιν ἀνδριάντων Ἑλληνιῶν καὶ ἀναθημάτων ἀπὸ Σικελίας μεστὴν οὖσαν, ἐκήρυξε τοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν πόλεων παρόντας ἐπιγινώσκειν καὶ κομίζεσθαι. Τῶν δὲ χρημάτων οὔτε δοῦλον οὔτ’ ἀπελεύθερον εἴα λαβεῖν οὐδένα, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ πρίασθαι πάντων ἀγόντων καὶ φερόντων.

Γαΐῳ δὲ Λαιλίῳ τῷ φιλτάτῳ τῶν ἑταίρων ὑπατείαν [c] μετιόντι συμπράττων ἐπηρώτησε Πομπήιον εἰ καὶ αὐτὸς ὑπατείαν μέτεισιν· ἐδόκει δ’ ὁ Πομπήιος υἱὸς αὐλητοῦ γεγονέναι· τοῦ δὲ φήσαντος μὴ μετιέναι, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν Λαίλιον ἐπαγγελλομένου συμπεριάξειν καὶ συναρχαιρεσιάσειν, πιστεύσαντες καὶ περιμένοντες ἐκεῖνον ἐξηπατήθησαν· ἀπηγγέλλετο γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐν ἀγορᾷ περιιὼν καὶ δεξιούμενος τοὺς πολίτας. ἀγανακτούντων δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ὁ Σκιπίων γελάσας ‘ἀβελτερίᾳ γε’ εἶπεν ‘ἡμῶν, ‹οἳ› καθάπερ οὐκ ἀνθρώπους μέλλοντες ἀλλὰ θεοὺς παρακαλεῖν πάλαι διατρίβομεν αὐλητὴν ἀναμένοντες.’

Ἀππίου δὲ Κλαυδίου περὶ τῆς τιμητικῆς ἀρχῆς [d] ἁμιλλωμένου πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ λέγοντος ὅτι πάντας ὀνομαστὶ Ῥωμαίους αὐτὸς ἀσπάζεται Σκιπίωνος ὀλίγου δεῖν ἀγνοοῦντος ἅπαντας, ‘ἀληθῆ λέγεις’ εἶπεν· ‘ἐμοὶ γὰρ οὐκ εἰδέναι πολλοὺς ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ μηδενὸς ἀγνοεῖσθαι μεμέληκεν.’

Ἐκέλευε δὲ τοὺς πολίτας, ἐπειδὴ ἐτύγχανον πολεμοῦντες Κελτίβηρσιν, ἀμφοτέρους ἐπὶ τὴν στρατείαν ἐκπέμψαντας ἢ πρεσβευτὰς ἢ χιλιάρχους μάρτυρας λαμβάνειν καὶ κριτὰς τῆς ἑκάστου ἀρετῆς τοὺς πολεμοῦντας.

Ἀποδειχθεὶς δὲ τιμητὴς νεανίσκου μὲν ἀφείλετο τὸν ἵππον, ὅτι δειπνῶν πολυτελῶς, ἐν ᾧ χρόνῳ Καρχηδὼν ἐπολεμεῖτο, μελίπηκτον εἰς σχῆμα τῆς πόλεως διαπλάσας [e] καὶ τοῦτο Καρχηδόνα προσειπὼν προύθηκε διαρπάσαι τοῖς παροῦσι· καὶ πυνθανομένου τὴν αἰτίαν τοῦ νεανίσκου δι’ ἣν ἀφῄρηται τὸν ἵππον ‘ἐμοῦ γάρ’ ἔφη ‘πρότερος Καρχηδόνα διήρπασας.’

Γάιον δὲ Λικίνιον ἰδὼν παρερχόμενον ‘οἶδα’ ἔφη ‘τοῦτον ἐπιωρκηκότα τὸν ἄνδρα· μηδενὸς δὲ κατηγοροῦντος οὐ δύναμαι κατήγορος ‹ὁ› αὐτὸς εἶναι καὶ δικαστής.’

Ἐκπεμφθέντα δὲ τρίτον αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τῆς βουλῆς, ὥς φησι Κλειτόμαχος (ρ 487),

ἀνθρώπων ὕβριν τε καὶ εὐνομίην ἐφορῶντα,

πόλεων ἐθνῶν βασιλέων ἐπίσκοπον, ὡς εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν ἧκε καὶ τῆς νεὼς ἀποβὰς ἐβάδιζε κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς [f] ἔχων τὸ ἱμάτιον, ἠξίουν ἀποκαλύψασθαι παραθέοντες οἱ Ἀλεξανδρεῖς καὶ δεῖξαι ποθοῦσιν αὐτοῖς τὸ πρόσωπον· τοῦ δ’ ἀποκαλυψαμένου κραυγὴν καὶ κρότον ἐποίησαν. τοῦ δὲ βασιλέως μόλις ἁμιλλωμένου βαδίζουσιν αὐτοῖς δι’ ἀργίαν καὶ τρυφὴν τοῦ σώματος ὁ Σκιπίων ἀτρέμα πρὸς τὸν Παναίτιον ψιθυρίσας εἶπεν ‘ἤδη [201] [a] τι τῆς ἐπιδημίας ἡμῶν Ἀλεξανδρεῖς ἀπολελαύκασι· δι’ ἡμᾶς γὰρ ἑωράκασι τὸν βασιλέα περιπατοῦντα.’

Συναπεδήμει δ’ αὐτῷ φίλος μὲν εἷς φιλόσοφος Παναίτιος, οἰκέται δὲ πέντε· καὶ τοῦ ἑνὸς ἀποθανόντος ἐπὶ τῆς ξένης ἄλλον μὴ βουλόμενος πρίασθαι ἀπὸ Ῥώμης μετεπέμψατο.

Τῶν δὲ Νομαντίνων ἀμάχων εἶναι δοκούντων καὶ πολλοὺς νενικηκότων στρατηγοὺς ὕπατον ἀπέδειξε Σκιπίωνα τὸ δεύτερον ὁ δῆμος ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον· ὡρμημένων δὲ πολλῶν ἐπὶ τὴν στρατείαν καὶ τοῦτο διεκώλυσεν ἡ σύγκλητος, ὡς ἐρήμου τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐσομένης, καὶ χρήματα λαβεῖν τῶν ἑτοίμων οὐκ εἴασεν, ἀλλὰ τὰς τελωνικὰς [b] προσόδους ἀπέταξεν οὔπω χρόνον ἐχούσας. ὁ δὲ Σκιπίων χρημάτων μὲν οὐκ ἔφη δεῖσθαι, τὰ γὰρ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν φίλων ἐξαρκέσειν, περὶ δὲ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἐμέμψατο· χαλεπὸν γὰρ εἶναι τὸν πόλεμον, εἰ μὲν δι’ ἀνδρείαν τῶν πολεμίων ἥττηνται τοσαυτάκις, ὅτι πρὸς τοιούτους, εἰ δὲ δι’ ἀνανδρίαν τῶν πολιτῶν, ὅτι μετὰ τοιούτων.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐλθὼν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον πολλὴν ἀταξίαν καὶ ἀκολασίαν καὶ δεισιδαιμονίαν καὶ τρυφὴν κατέλαβε, μάντεις μὲν εὐθὺς ἐξήλασε καὶ θύτας καὶ πορνοβοσκούς, σκεύη δὲ προσέταξεν ἀποπέμπειν ἅπαντα πλὴν χύτρας, ὀβελίσκου καὶ ποτηρίου κεραμεοῦ· τῶν δ’ ἀργυρέων [c] ἔκπωμα οὐ μεῖζον δύο λιτρῶν συνεχώρησε τοῖς βουλομένοις ἔχειν· λούεσθαι δ’ ἀπεῖπε, τῶν δ’ ἀλειφομένων τρίβειν ἕκαστον ἑαυτόν· τὰ γὰρ ὑποζύγια χεῖρας μὴ ἔχοντα ἑτέρου τρίψοντος δεῖσθαι· προσέταξε δ’ ἀριστᾶν μὲν ἑστῶτας ἄπυρον ὄψον, δειπνεῖν δὲ κατακειμένους ἄρτον ἢ πόλτον ἁπλῶς καὶ κρέας ὀπτὸν ἢ ἑφθόν· αὐτὸς δὲ σάγον ἐμπεπορπημένος μέλανα περιῄει, πενθεῖν τὴν τοῦ στρατεύματος αἰσχύνην λέγων.

Μεμμίου δέ τινος χιλιάρχου λαβὼν ὑποζύγια ψυκτῆρας διαλίθους παρακομίζοντα καὶ Θηρικλείους ‘ἐμοὶ μέν’ εἶπεν ‘ἡμέρας τριάκοντα καὶ τῇ πατρίδι, [d] σαυτῷ δὲ τὸν βίον ἅπαντα τοιοῦτος ὢν ἄχρηστον πεποίηκας σεαυτόν.’

Ἑτέρου δὲ θυρεὸν ἐπιδείξαντος εὖ κεκοσμημένον ‘ὁ μὲν θυρεός,’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ νεανία, καλός, πρέπει δὲ Ῥωμαῖον ἄνδρα μᾶλλον ἐν τῇ δεξιᾷ τὰς ἐλπίδας ἔχειν ἢ τῇ ἀριστερᾷ.’

Τοῦ δὲ τὸν χάρακα ἄραντος σφόδρα πιέζεσθαι φάσκοντος ‘εἰκότως’ ἔφη· ‘τῷ γὰρ ξύλῳ τούτῳ μᾶλλον ἢ τῇ μαχαίρᾳ πιστεύεις.’

Ὁρῶν δὲ τὴν ἀπόνοιαν τῶν πολεμίων ἔλεγεν ὠνεῖσθαι τοῦ χρόνου τὴν ἀσφάλειαν· τὸν γὰρ ἀγαθὸν στρατηγὸν ὥσπερ ἰατρὸν ἐσχάτης δεῖσθαι τῆς διὰ τοῦ σιδήρου θεραπείας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐπιθέμενος ἐν καιρῷ τοὺς Νομαντίνους ἐτρέψατο.

[e] Τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων τοὺς ἡττημένους κακιζόντων, ‹ὅ›τι πεφεύγασιν οὓς τοσαυτάκις ἐδίωξαν, εἰπεῖν τινα λέγεται τῶν Νομαντίνων ὡς τὰ πρόβατα ταὐτὰ καὶ νῦν ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ ποιμὴν ἄλλος.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν Νομαντίαν ἑλὼν καὶ θριαμβεύσας τὸ δεύτερον ἐν τῇ πρὸς Γάιον Γράκχον ὑπέρ τε τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τῶν συμμάχων κατέστη διαφορᾷ καὶ λυπούμενος ὁ δῆμος ἐθορύβησεν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος, ‘ἐμέ’ εἶπεν ‘οὐδέποτε στρατοπέδων ἀλαλαγμὸς ἐθορύβησεν, οὔτι γε συγκλύδων ἀνθρώπων, ὧν οὐ μητέρα τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἀλλὰ μητρυιὰν οὖσαν ἐπίσταμαι.’

Τῶν δὲ περὶ τὸν Γάιον βοώντων κτεῖναι τὸν [f] τύραννον ‘εἰκότως’ εἶπεν ‘οἱ τῇ πατρίδι πολεμοῦντες ἐμὲ βούλονται προανελεῖν· οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε τὴν Ῥώμην πεσεῖν Σκιπίωνος ἑστῶτος οὐδὲ ζῆν Σκιπίωνα τῆς Ῥώμης πεσούσης.’

ΚΑΙΚΙΛΙΟΣ ΜΕΤΕΛΛΟΣ

Καικίλιος Μέτελλος ὀχυρῷ χωρίῳ βουλευόμενος προσαγαγεῖν, εἰπόντος ἑκατοντάρχου πρὸς αὐτὸν ὡς, ἐὰν δέκα [202] [a] μόνους ἀποβάλῃ, λήψεται τὸ χωρίον, ἠρώτησεν αὐτόν, εἰ βούλοιτο εἷς τῶν δέκα γενέσθαι.

Τῶν δὲ νεωτέρων τινὸς χιλιάρχου πυνθανομένου τί μέλλει ποιεῖν, ‘εἰ τοῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘συνειδέναι μοι τὸν χιτωνίσκον ἐνόμιζον, ἀποδυσάμενος ἂν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὸ πῦρ ἐπέθηκα.’

Σκιπίωνι δὲ ζῶντι πολεμῶν ἀποθανόντος ἠχθέσθη καὶ τοὺς μὲν υἱοὺς ἐκέλευσεν ὑποδύντας ἄρασθαι τὸ λέχος, τοῖς δὲ θεοῖς ἔφη χάριν ἔχειν ὑπὲρ τῆς Ῥώμης, ὅτι παρ’ ἄλλοις οὐκ ἐγένετο Σκιπίων.

ΓΑΙΟΣ ΜΑΡΙΟΣ

Γάιος Μάριος ἐκ γένους ἀδόξου προϊὼν εἰς πολιτείαν [b] διὰ τῶν στρατειῶν, ἀγορανομίαν τὴν μείζονα παρήγγειλεν· αἰσθόμενος δὲ ὅτι λείπεται τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρας ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλάττονα μετῆλθε· κἀκείνης ἀποτυχὼν ὅμως οὐκ ἀπέγνω τοῦ πρωτεύσειν Ῥωμαίων.

Ἰξίας δ’ ἔχων ἐν ἀμφοτέροις τοῖς σκέλεσι παρέσχεν ἄδετος ἐκτεμεῖν τῷ ἰατρῷ καὶ μὴ στενάξας μηδὲ τὰς ὀφρῦς συναγαγὼν ἐνεκαρτέρησε τῇ χειρουργίᾳ· τοῦ δ’ ἰατροῦ μεταβαίνοντος ἐπὶ θάτερον οὐκ ἠθέλησεν εἰπὼν οὐκ εἶναι τὸ θεράπευμα τῆς ἀλγηδόνος ἄξιον.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Λούσιος ὁ ἀδελφιδοῦς αὐτοῦ τὸ δεύτερον ὑπατεύοντος ἐβιάζετο τῶν ἐν ὥρᾳ στρατευομένων τινὰ ὀνόματι Τρεβώνιον, ὁ δ’ ἀπέκτεινεν αὐτὸν καὶ πολλῶν [c] κατηγορούντων οὐκ ἠρνήσατο κτεῖναι τὸν ἄρχοντα, τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν εἶπε καὶ ἀπέδειξε, κελεύσας ὁ Μάριος τὸν ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀριστείαις διδόμενον στέφανον κομισθῆναι τῷ Τρεβωνίῳ περιέθηκε. Τοῖς δὲ Τεύτοσι παραστρατοπεδεύσας ἐν χωρίῳ ὀλίγον ὕδωρ ἔχοντι, τῶν στρατιωτῶν διψῆν λεγόντων, δείξας αὐτοῖς ποταμὸν ἐγγὺς παραρρέοντα τῷ χάρακι τῶν πολεμίων ‘ἐκεῖθεν ὑμῖν ἔστιν’ εἶπε ‘ποτὸν ὤνιον αἵματος.’ οἱ δ’ ἄγειν παρεκάλουν, ἕως ὑγρὸν ἔχωσι τὸ αἷμα καὶ μήπω πᾶν ὑπὸ τοῦ διψῆν ἐκπεπηγός.

Ἐν δὲ τοῖς Κιμβρικοῖς πολέμοις Καμερίνων χιλίους ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς γενομένους ὁμοῦ Ῥωμαίους ἐποίησε, [d] κατ’ οὐδένα νόμον· πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἐγκαλοῦντας ἔλεγε τῶν νόμων οὐκ ἐξακοῦσαι διὰ τὸν τῶν ὅπλων ψόφον.

Ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐμφυλίῳ πολέμῳ περιταφρευόμενος καὶ πολιορκούμενος ἐκαρτέρει, τὸν οἰκεῖον ἀναμένων καιρόν. εἰπόντος δὲ Πομπαιδίου Σίλωνος πρὸς αὐτόν ‘εἰ μέγας εἶ στρατηγός, ὦ Μάριε, καταβὰς διαγώνισαι’, ‘σὺ μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ μέγας εἶ στρατηγός, ἀνάγκασόν με διαγωνίσασθαι καὶ μὴ βουλόμενον.’

ΚΑΤΛΟΣ ΛΟΥΤΑΤΙΟΣ

Κάτλος Λουτάτιος ἐν τῷ Κιμβρικῷ πολέμῳ παρὰ τὸν Νατισῶνα ποταμὸν στρατοπεδεύων, ἐπεὶ τοὺς βαρβάρους ὁρῶντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι διαβαίνειν ἐπιχειροῦντας [e] ἀνεχώρουν, μὴ δυνάμενος αὐτοὺς κατασχεῖν ὥρμησεν εἰς τοὺς πρώτους τῶν ἀποτρεχόντων, ὅπως δοκῶσι μὴ φεύγειν τοὺς πολεμίους, ἀλλὰ τῷ στρατηγῷ κατακολουθεῖν.

ΣΥΛΛΑΣ

Σύλλας ὁ εὐτυχὴς ἀναγορευθεὶς τῶν μεγίστων εὐτυχιῶν ἐποιεῖτο δύο, τὴν Πίου Μετέλλου φιλίαν καὶ τὸ μὴ κατασκάψαι τὰς Ἀθήνας ἀλλὰ φείσασθαι τῆς πόλεως.

ΓΑΙΟΣ ΠΟΠΙΛΛΙΟΣ

Γάιος Ποπίλλιος ἐπέμφθη πρὸς Ἀντίοχον ἐπιστολὴν παρὰ τῆς συγκλήτου κομίζων, κελεύουσαν ἀπάγειν ἐξ Αἰγύπτου τὸ στράτευμα καὶ μὴ σφετερίζεσθαι τῶν [f] Πτολεμαίου τέκνων ὀρφανῶν ὄντων τὴν βασιλείαν· προσιόντα δ’ αὐτὸν διὰ τοῦ στρατοπέδου πόρρωθεν ἀσπασαμένου τοῦ Ἀντιόχου φιλοφρόνως οὐκ ἀντασπασάμενος τὸ γραμματεῖον ἀπέδωκεν· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀναγνοὺς ἔφη βουλεύσεσθαι καὶ δώσειν τὴν ἀπόκρισιν, τῷ κλήματι γῦρον περὶ αὐτὸν ὁ Ποπίλλιος περιέγραψεν εἰπών ‘ἐνταῦθα τοίνυν ἑστὼς βούλευσαι καὶ ἀπόκριναι.’ πάντων δὲ τὸ φρόνημα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς καταπλαγέντων τοῦ τ’ Ἀντιόχου ποιήσειν [203] [a] ὁμολογοῦντος τὰ δοκοῦντα Ῥωμαίοις, οὕτως ἠσπάσατο καὶ περιέπτυξεν αὐτὸν ὁ Ποπίλλιος.

ΛΕΥΚΟΥΛΛΟΣ

Λεύκουλλος ἐν Ἀρμενίᾳ μετὰ μυρίων ὁπλιτῶν καὶ χιλίων ἱππέων ἐπὶ Τιγράνην ἐχώρει πεντεκαίδεκα μυριάδας στρατιᾶς ἔχοντα τῇ πρὸ μιᾶς νωνῶν ὀκτωβρίων, ἐν ᾗ πρότερον ὑπὸ Κίμβρων ἡ μετὰ Καιπίωνος διεφθάρη δύναμις. εἰπόντος δέ τινος ὅτι Ῥωμαῖοι τὴν ἡμέραν ἀφοσιοῦνται καὶ δεδοίκασιν, ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘σήμερον ἀγωνισώμεθα προθύμως, ἵνα καὶ ταύτην ἐξ ἀποφράδος καὶ σκυθρωπῆς ποιήσωμεν ἱλαρὰν καὶ προσφιλῆ Ῥωμαίοις.’

Τοὺς δὲ καταφράκτους μάλιστα φοβουμένων τῶν [b] στρατιωτῶν ἐκέλευε θαρρεῖν· πλεῖον γὰρ ἔργον εἶναι τοῦ νικῆσαι τὸ τούτους σκυλεῦσαι. προσβὰς δὲ τῷ λόφῳ πρῶτος καὶ τὸ κίνημα τῶν βαρβάρων θεασάμενος ἀνεβόησε ‘νενικήκαμεν, ὦ συστρατιῶται·’ καὶ μηδενὸς ὑποστάντος διώκων πέντε Ῥωμαίων ἀπέβαλε πεσόντας, τῶν δὲ πολεμίων ὑπὲρ δέκα μυριάδας ἀπέκτεινε.

ΓΝΑΙΟΣ ΠΟΜΠΗΙΟΣ

Γναῖος Πομπήιος ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων ἠγαπήθη τοσοῦτον ὅσον ὁ πατὴρ ἐμισήθη. νέος δ’ ὢν παντάπασι τῇ Σύλλα μερίδι προσέθηκεν αὑτόν· καὶ μήτ’ ἄρχων μήτε βουλεύων πολλοὺς ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ἐστρατολόγησε. καὶ [c] Σύλλα καλοῦντος οὐκ ἔφη δίχα λαφύρων οὐδ’ ἀναίμακτον ἐπιδείξειν τῷ αὐτοκράτορι τὴν δύναμιν· οὐδ’ ἦλθε πρότερον πρὶν ἢ πολλαῖς μάχαις νικῆσαι τοὺς στρατηγοὺς τῶν πολεμίων.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ πεμφθεὶς εἰς Σικελίαν ὑπὸ Σύλλα στρατηγὸς ἐπυνθάνετο τοὺς στρατιώτας ἐν ταῖς ὁδοιπορίαις ἐκτρεπομένους βιάζεσθαι καὶ ἁρπάζειν, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλως πλανωμένους καὶ περιθέοντας ἐκόλασε, τῶν δὲ πεμπομένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ σφραγῖδας ἐπέβαλε ταῖς μαχαίραις.

Μαμερτίνους δὲ τῆς ἐναντίας γενομένους μερίδος οἷός [τε] ἦν ἀποσφάττειν ἅπαντας· Σθενίου δὲ τοῦ δημαγωγοῦ [d] φήσαντος οὐ δίκαια ποιεῖν αὐτὸν ἀνθ’ ἑνὸς αἰτίου πολλοὺς ἀναιτίους κολάζοντα, τοῦτον δὲ αὑτὸν εἶναι τὸν τοὺς μὲν φίλους πείσαντα τοὺς δ’ ἐχθροὺς βιασάμενον ἑλέσθαι τὰ Μαρίου, θαυμάσας ὁ Πομπήιος ἔφη συγγνώμην ἔχειν Μαμερτίνοις ὑπὸ τοιούτου πεισθεῖσιν ἀνδρός, ὃς τὴν πατρίδα τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ψυχῆς προτιμᾷ. καὶ τήν τε πόλιν καὶ τὸν Σθένιον ἀπέλυσεν.

Εἰς δὲ Λιβύην διαβὰς ἐπὶ Δομίτιον καὶ μάχῃ μεγάλῃ κρατήσας ἀσπασαμένων αὐτὸν αὐτοκράτορα τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἔφη μὴ δέχεσθαι τὴν τιμήν, ἕως ὀρθὸς ἕστηκεν ὁ χάραξ τῶν πολεμίων. οἱ δέ, καίπερ ὄμβρου πολλοῦ [e] κατέχοντος, ὁρμήσαντες διεπόρθησαν τὸ στρατόπεδον.

Ἐπανελθόντα δ’ αὐτὸν ὁ Σύλλας ταῖς μὲν ἄλλαις τιμαῖς ἐδέξατο φιλοφρόνως καὶ Μάγνον προσηγόρευσε πρῶτος αὐτόν, θριαμβεῦσαι δὲ βουλόμενον οὐκ εἴα μηδέπω μετέχοντα βουλῆς. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ Πομπηίου πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ἀγνοεῖν τὸν Σύλλαν ὅτι καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἀνατέλλοντα πλείονες ἢ δύνοντα προσκυνοῦσιν, ὁ μὲν Σύλλας ἀνεβόησε ‘θριαμβευέτω.’

Σερουίλιος δ’ ἀνὴρ ἀριστοκρατικὸς ἠγανάκτει καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἐνίσταντο πολλοὶ τῷ θριάμβῳ δωρεάς τινας ἀπαιτοῦντες. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Πομπήιος ἔφη μᾶλλον [f] ἀφήσειν τὸν θρίαμβον ἢ κολακεύσειν ἐκείνους, νῦν ἔφη καὶ μέγαν ἀληθῶς ὁρᾶν καὶ ἄξιον τοῦ θριάμβου τὸν Πομπήιον.

Ἔθους δ’ ὄντος ἐν Ῥώμῃ τοῖς ἱππεῦσιν, ὅταν στρατεύσωνται τὸν νόμιμον χρόνον, ἄγειν τὸν ἵππον εἰς ἀγορὰν ἐπὶ τοὺς δύο ἄνδρας, οὓς τιμητὰς καλοῦσι, καὶ καταριθμησαμένους τὰς στρατείας καὶ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς ὑφ’ οἷς ἐστρατεύσαντο τυγχάνειν ἐπαίνων ἢ ψόγων τῶν [204] [a] προσηκόντων, ὑπατεύων ὁ Πομπήιος κατήγαγεν αὐτὸς τὸν ἵππον ἐπὶ τοὺς τιμητὰς Γέλλιον καὶ Λέντλον· ἐκείνων δὲ ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστὶ πυθομένων, εἰ πάσας ἐστράτευται τὰς στρατείας, ‘πάσας’ εἶπεν ‘ὑπ’ ἐμαυτῷ αὐτοκράτορι.’

Τῶν δὲ Σερτωρίου γραμμάτων κρατήσας ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ, ἐν οἷς ἦσαν ἐπιστολαὶ πολλῶν ἡγεμόνων ἐπὶ νεωτερισμῷ καὶ μεταβολῇ τῆς πολιτείας τὸν Σερτώριον εἰς Ῥώμην καλούντων, κατέκαυσε πάσας διδοὺς μετανοῆσαι καὶ βελτίονας γενέσθαι τοὺς πονηρούς.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Φραάτης ὁ Πάρθων βασιλεὺς ἔπεμψε πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀξιῶν ὅρῳ χρῆσθαι τῷ Εὐφράτῃ, μᾶλλον ἔφη χρήσεθαι Ῥωμαίους ὅρῳ πρὸς Πάρθους τῷ δικαίῳ.

[b] Λευκίου δὲ Λευκούλλου μετὰ τὰς στρατείας ἀφεικότος αὑτὸν εἰς ἡδονὰς καὶ πολυτελῶς ζῶντος, τὸν δὲ Πομπήιον ὡς παρ’ ἡλικίαν τοῦ πολλὰ πράσσειν ὀρεγόμενον ψέγοντος, μᾶλλον ἔφη γέροντι τὸ τρυφᾶν ἢ τὸ ἄρχειν εἶναι παρ’ ἡλικίαν.

Νοσοῦντι δ’ αὐτῷ κίχλην ὁ ἰατρὸς λαβεῖν προσέταξεν· οἱ δὲ ζητοῦντες οὐχ εὗρον (ἦν γὰρ παρ’ ὥραν), ἔφη δέ τις εὑρεθήσεσθαι παρὰ Λευκούλλῳ δι’ ἔτους τρεφομένας· ‘εἶτα’ ἔφη ‘εἰ μὴ Λεύκουλλος ἐτρύφα, Πομπήιος οὐκ ἂν ἔζησε;’ καὶ χαίρειν ἐάσας τὸν ἰατρὸν ἔλαβέ τι τῶν εὐπορίστων.

Ἰσχυρᾶς δὲ σιτοδείας ἐν Ῥώμῃ γενομένης ἀποδειχθεὶς [c] λόγῳ μὲν ἀγορᾶς ἐπιμελητής, ἔργῳ δὲ γῆς καὶ θαλάσσης κύριος, ἔπλευσεν εἰς Λιβύην καὶ Σαρδόνα καὶ Σικελίαν· καὶ πολὺν ἀθροίσας σῖτον ἔσπευδεν εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην. μεγάλου δὲ χειμῶνος γενομένου καὶ τῶν κυβερνητῶν ὀκνούντων, πρῶτος ἐμβὰς καὶ τὴν ἄγκυραν ἆραι κελεύσας ἀνεβόησε ‘πλεῖν ἀνάγκη, ζῆν οὐκ ἀνάγκη.’

Τῆς δὲ πρὸς τὸν Καίσαρα διαφορᾶς ἀποκαλυπτομένης καὶ Μαρκελλίνου τινὸς τῶν ὑπὸ Πομπηίου προῆχθαι δοκούντων μεταβεβλημένου δὲ πρὸς Καίσαρα πολλὰ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν συγκλήτῳ λέγοντος, ‘οὐκ αἰσχύνῃ, Μαρκελλῖνε,’ εἶπεν ‘ἐμοὶ λοιδορούμενος, δι’ ὃν ἐξ ἀφώνου λόγιος ἐκ δὲ πεινατικοῦ ἐμετικὸς γέγονας;’

[d] Πρὸς δὲ Κάτωνα πικρῶς καθαψάμενον, ὅτι πολλάκις αὐτοῦ προαγορεύοντος τὴν Καίσαρος δύναμιν καὶ αὔξησιν οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ τῆς δημοκρατίας γινομένην ἀντέπραττεν αὐτός, ἀπεκρίνατο ‘τὰ μὲν σὰ μαντικώτερα, τὰ δ’ ἐμὰ φιλικώτερα.’

Περὶ δὲ αὑτοῦ παρρησιαζόμενος εἶπεν, ὡς πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν καὶ ἔλαβε θᾶσσον ἢ προσεδόκησε καὶ κατέθετο θᾶσσον ἢ προσεδοκήθη.

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐν Φαρσάλῳ μάχην φεύγων εἰς Αἴγυπτον, ὡς ἔμελλε διαβαίνειν ἐκ τῆς τριήρους εἰς ἁλιευτικὸν πλοῖον ἀποστείλαντος τοῦ βασιλέως, ἐπιστραφεὶς πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὸν υἱὸν οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἢ τὸ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους εἶπεν (frg. 789 N.²)

[e] ‘ὅστις δὲ πρὸς τύραννον ἐμπορεύεται,

κείνου ‘στὶ δοῦλος, κἂν ἐλεύθερος μόλῃ.’

μεταβὰς δὲ καὶ πληγεὶς ξίφει καὶ στενάξας ἅπαξ, εἰπὼν δὲ μηδὲν ἀλλ’ ἐγκαλυψάμενος παρέδωκεν ἑαυτόν.

ΚΙΚΕΡΩΝ

Κικέρων ὁ ῥήτωρ εἰς τοὔνομα σκωπτόμενος καὶ τῶν φίλων μεταθέσθαι κελευόντων ἔφη τὸν Κικέρωνα ποιήσειν τῶν Κατώνων καὶ τῶν Κάτλων καὶ τῶν Σκαύρων ἐνδοξότερον.

Ἔκπωμα δ’ ἀργυροῦν τοῖς θεοῖς ἀνατιθεὶς τὰ μὲν πρῶτα τῶν ὀνομάτων γράμμασιν ἐσήμηνεν, ἀντὶ δὲ τοῦ Κικέρωνος ἐρέβινθον ἐτόρευσε.

Τῶν δὲ ῥητόρων τοὺς μέγα βοῶντας ἔλεγε δι’ [f] ἀσθένειαν ἐπὶ τὴν κραυγὴν ὡς χωλοὺς ἀναβαίνειν ἐφ’ ἵππον.

Οὐέρρου δὲ υἱὸν ἔχοντος οὐκ εὖ κεχρημένον ἐφ’ ὥρᾳ τῷ σώματι, τὸν δὲ Κικέρωνα λοιδοροῦντος εἰς μαλακίαν καὶ κίναιδον ἀποκαλοῦντος, ‘ἀγνοεῖς’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι προσήκει τοῖς τέκνοις ἐντὸς θυρῶν λοιδορεῖσθαι.’

Μετέλλου δὲ Νέπωτος εἰπόντος πρὸς αὐτὸν ὅτι ‘πλείονας μαρτυρῶν ἀπέκτονας ἢ συνηγορῶν σέσωκας’, [205] [a] ‘καὶ γὰρ ἔστιν’ ἔφη ‘πλεῖον ἐμοὶ πίστεως ἢ λογιότητος.’

Ἐρωτῶντος δὲ τοῦ Μετέλλου τίς αὐτοῦ πατήρ ἐστι, ‘ταύτην’ ἔφη ‘τὴν ἀπόκρισιν χαλεπωτέραν σοὶ ἡ μήτηρ πεποίηκεν.’ ἦν γὰρ ἡ τοῦ Μετέλλου ἀκόλαστος, ὁ δὲ Μέτελλος αὐτὸς ὑπόκουφος καὶ ἀβέβαιος καὶ φερόμενος ταῖς ὁρμαῖς. Διοδότῳ δὲ τῷ διδασκάλῳ τῶν ῥητορικῶν ἀποθανόντι κόρακα λίθινον ἐπιστήσαντος αὐτοῦ δικαίαν ἔφη τὴν ἀμοιβὴν γεγονέναι· ‘πέτεσθαι γὰρ τοῦτον οὐ λέγειν ἐδίδαξεν.’

Οὐατίνιον δ’ ἄνθρωπον ἑαυτῷ διάφορον καὶ μοχθηρὸν ἄλλως ἀκούσας ὅτι τέθνηκεν, εἶτα γνοὺς ὕστερον ὅτι [b] ζῇ, ‘κακός’ εἶπεν ‘ὄλοιτο κακῶς ὁ ψευσάμενος.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν δοκοῦντα Λίβυν ἀπὸ γένους εἶναι, φήσαντα δ’ αὐτοῦ μὴ ἀκούειν λέγοντος, ‘καὶ μὴν οὐκ ἀτρύπητον ἔχεις τὸ οὖς’ εἶπε.

†Κάστον δὲ Ποπίλλιον νομικὸν εἶναι βουλόμενον, ὄντα δ’ ἀμαθῆ καὶ ἀφυῆ, προσεκαλεῖτο μάρτυρα πρός τινα δίκην· εἰπόντος δ’ ἐκείνου μηδὲν γινώσκειν, ‘οἴει γὰρ ἴσως’ εἶπε ‘περὶ τῶν νομίμων ἐπερωτᾶσθαι.’

Ὁρτησίου δὲ τοῦ ῥήτορος λαβόντος μισθὸν ἀργυρᾶν σφίγγα παρὰ τοῦ Βέρρου καὶ πρὸς τὸν Κικέρωνα πλαγίως τι εἰπόντα φήσαντος αἰνιγμάτων λύσεως ἀπείρως ἔχειν, ‘καὶ μὴν ἡ σφίγξ’ ἔφη ‘παρὰ σοί ἐστιν.’

[c] Οὐοκωνίῳ δ’ ἀπαντήσας μετὰ τριῶν θυγατέρων ἀμορφοτάτων τὴν ὄψιν ἀτρέμα πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἶπεν (p. 911 N.²)

‘Φοίβου ποτ’ οὐκ ἐῶντος ἔσπειρεν τέκνα.’

Φαύστου δὲ τοῦ Σύλλα παιδὸς διὰ πλῆθος δανείων ἀπαρτίαν προγράψαντος ‘ταύτην’ ἔφη ‘μᾶλλον ἀσπάζομαι τὴν προγραφὴν ἢ τὴν πατρῴαν [αὐτοῦ].’

Πομπηίου δὲ καὶ Καίσαρος διαστάντων ἔφη ‘γινώσκω ὃν φύγω, μὴ γινώσκων πρὸς ὃν φύγω,’ καὶ Πομπήιον ἐμέμψατο τὴν πόλιν ἐκλιπόντα καὶ Θεμιστοκλέα μᾶλλον ἢ Περικλέα μιμησάμενον, οὐκ ἐκείνοις τῶν πραγμάτων ἀλλὰ τούτοις ὁμοίων ὄντων.

Γενόμενος δ’ οὖν παρὰ Πομπηίῳ καὶ πάλιν μετανοῶν, [d] ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπὸ Πομπηίου ποῦ Πείσωνα τὸν γαμβρὸν ἀπολέλοιπεν ἔφη ‘παρὰ τῷ σῷ πενθερῷ.’

Μεταβαλομένου δέ τινος ἀπὸ Καίσαρος πρὸς τὸν Πομπήιον καὶ λέγοντος ὑπὸ σπουδῆς καὶ προθυμίας ἀπολελοιπέναι τὸν ἵππον, βέλτιον ἔφη αὐτὸν περὶ τοῦ ἵππου βεβουλεῦσθαι.

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἀπαγγέλλοντα τοὺς Καίσαρος φίλους σκυθρωποὺς εἶναι ‘λέγεις’ ἔφη ‘δυσνοεῖν αὐτοὺς Καίσαρι.’

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐν Φαρσάλῳ μάχην Πομπηίου μὲν φυγόντος, Νωνίου δέ τινος ἔτι παρ’ αὑτοῖς ἀετοὺς ἑπτὰ φήσαντος εἶναι καὶ διὰ τοῦτο θαρρεῖν παρακαλοῦντος, [e] ‘καλῶς ἂν παρῄνεις’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ κολοιοῖς ἐπολεμοῦμεν.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Καῖσαρ κρατήσας τὰς Πομπηίου καταβεβλημένας εἰκόνας ἀνέστησε μετὰ τιμῆς, ἔφη περὶ αὐτοῦ [λέγων ὁ Κικέρων] ὅτι ‘τοὺς Πομπηίου Καῖσαρ ἱστὰς ἀνδριάντας τοὺς αὑτοῦ πήγνυσιν.’

Οὕτω δὲ πολλοῦ τὸ καλῶς λέγειν ἐτίμα τε καὶ περὶ τοῦτο μάλιστα ἠγωνία, ὥστε προκειμένης δίκης ἐπὶ τῶν ἑκατὸν ἀνδρῶν καὶ ἐπικειμένης τῆς ἡμέρας Ἔρωτα ἀπαγγείλαντα αὐτῷ τὸν οἰκέτην εἰς τὴν ἐπιοῦσαν ὑπερτεθῆναι τὴν δίκην ἠλευθέρωσε.

ΓΑΙΟΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡ

Γάιος Καῖσαρ, ὅτε Σύλλαν ἔφευγεν ἔτι μειράκιον [f] ὤν, περιέπεσε πειραταῖς· καὶ πρῶτον μὲν αἰτηθεὶς ἀργυρίου πλῆθος κατεγέλασε τῶν λῃστῶν ὡς ἀγνοούντων ὃν ἔχουσι καὶ διπλάσιον ὡμολόγησε δώσειν· ἔπειτα φρουρούμενος, ἕως συνῆγε τὰ χρήματα, προσέταττεν ἡσυχίαν αὐτῷ παρέχειν κοιμωμένῳ καὶ σιωπᾶν. λόγους δὲ καὶ ποιήματα γράφων ἀνεγίνωσκεν αὐτοῖς καὶ τοὺς μὴ λίαν ἐπαινοῦντας ἀναισθήτους καὶ βαρβάρους ἀπεκάλει καὶ μετὰ γέλωτος ἠπείλει κρεμᾶν αὐτούς· ὃ καὶ μετ’ [206] [a] ὀλίγον ἐποίησεν. τῶν γὰρ λύτρων κομισθέντων ἀπολυθεὶς καὶ συναγαγὼν ἄνδρας ἐξ Ἀσίας καὶ πλοῖα συνήρπασε τοὺς λῃστὰς καὶ προσήλωσεν.

Ἐν δὲ Ῥώμῃ πρὸς Κάτλον πρωτεύοντα Ῥωμαίων εἰς ἅμιλλαν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἀρχιερωσύνης καταστὰς καὶ προπεμπόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς μητρὸς ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας ‘σήμερον’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ μῆτερ, ‹ἢ› ἀρχιερέα τὸν υἱὸν ἢ φυγάδα ἕξεις.’

Πομπηίαν δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα κακῶς ἀκούσασαν ἐπὶ Κλωδίῳ παραιτησάμενος, εἶτα τοῦ Κλωδίου φεύγοντος ἐπὶ τούτῳ δίκην μάρτυς εἰσαχθεὶς οὐδὲν εἶπε φαῦλον περὶ τῆς γυναικός· ἐρομένου δὲ τοῦ κατηγόρου ‘διὰ τί [b] τοίνυν ἐξέβαλες αὐτήν’, ‘ὅτι τὴν Καίσαρος’ ἔφη ‘γυναῖκα καὶ διαβολῆς ἔδει καθαρὰν εἶναι.’

Τὰς δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου πράξεις ἀναγινώσκων ἐδάκρυσε

καὶ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἶπεν ὅτι ‘ταύτην τὴν ἡλικίαν ἔχων ἐνίκησε Δαρεῖον, ἐμοὶ δὲ μέχρι νῦν οὐδὲν πέπρακται.’

Πολίχνιον δ’ αὐτοῦ λυπρὸν ἐν ταῖς Ἄλπεσι παρερχομένου καὶ τῶν φίλων διαπορούντων εἰ καὶ ἐνταῦθά τινες στάσεις εἰσὶ καὶ ἅμιλλαι περὶ πρωτείων, ἐπιστὰς καὶ σύννους γενόμενος ‘μᾶλλον ἄν’ ἔφη ‘ἐβουλόμην πρῶτος ἐνταῦθα εἶναι ἢ δεύτερος ἐν Ῥώμῃ.’

Τῶν δὲ τολμημάτων τὰ παράβολα καὶ μεγάλα [c] πράττειν ἔφη δεῖν, ἀλλὰ μὴ βουλεύεσθαι. Καὶ διέβη τὸν Ῥουβίκωνα ποταμὸν ἐκ τῆς Γαλατικῆς ἐπαρχίας ἐπὶ Πομπήιον εἰπών ‘πᾶς ἀνερρίφθω κύβος.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Πομπηίου φυγόντος ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ἐκ τῆς Ῥώμης Μέτελλος ἔπαρχος ὢν τοῦ ταμιείου βουλόμενον αὐτὸν χρήματα λαβεῖν ἐκώλυε καὶ τὸ ταμιεῖον ἀπέκλεισεν, ἠπείλησεν ἀποκτενεῖν αὐτόν· καταπλαγέντος δὲ τοῦ Μετέλλου ‘τοῦτ’’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ νεανίσκε, φῆσαί μοι χαλεπώτερον ἦν ἢ ποιῆσαι.’

Τῶν δὲ στρατιωτῶν αὐτῷ βραδέως εἰς Δυρράχιον

ἐκ Βρεντεσίου κομιζομένων λαθὼν ἅπαντας εἰς πλοῖον ἐμβὰς μικρὸν ἐπεχείρησε διαπλεῖν τὸ πέλαγος· συγκλυζομένου [d] δὲ τοῦ πλοίου ποιήσας τῷ κυβερνήτῃ φανερὸν ἑαυτὸν ἀνεβόησε ‘πίστευε τῇ τύχῃ γνοὺς ὅτι Καίσαρα κομίζεις.’

Τότε μὲν οὖν ἐκωλύθη τοῦ χειμῶνος ἰσχυροῦ γενομένου καὶ τῶν στρατιωτῶν συνδραμόντων καὶ περιπαθούντων, εἰ περιμένει δύναμιν ἄλλην ὡς ἀπιστῶν αὐτοῖς· ἐπεὶ δὲ μάχης γενομένης νικῶν ὁ Πομπήιος οὐκ ἐπεξῆλθεν, ἀλλ’ ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, ‘τήμερον’ εἶπεν ‘ἦν ἡ νίκη παρὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις, ἀλλὰ τὸν εἰδότα νικᾶν οὐκ ἔχουσιν.’

Ἐν δὲ Φαρσάλῳ Πομπηίου παρατεταγμένην τὴν φάλαγγα κατὰ χώραν ἑστάναι καὶ προσδέχεσθαι τοὺς [e] πολεμίους παρεγγυήσαντος ἁμαρτεῖν αὐτὸν ἔλεγε τὸν ἐξ ἐπιδρομῆς μετ’ ἐνθουσιασμοῦ τόνον καὶ ῥοῖζον ἐκλύσαντα τῶν στρατιωτῶν.

Φαρνάκην δὲ νικήσας τὸν Ποντικὸν ἐξ ἐφόδου πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ἔγραψεν ‘ἦλθον εἶδον ἐνίκησα.’

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐν Λιβύῃ τῶν περὶ τὸν Σκιπίωνα φυγὴν καὶ ἧτταν Κάτωνος ἑαυτὸν ἀνελόντος ‘φθονῶ σοι, Κάτων,’ εἶπε ‘τοῦ θανάτου· καὶ γὰρ σὺ ἐμοὶ τῆς σῆς σωτηρίας ἐφθόνησας.’

Ἀντώνιον δὲ καὶ Δολοβέλλαν ὑφορωμένων ἐνίων καὶ φυλάττεσθαι κελευόντων, οὐ τούτους ἔφη δεδιέναι τοὺς βαναύσους καὶ λιπῶντας, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἰσχνοὺς καὶ ὠχροὺς ἐκείνους, δείξας Βροῦτον καὶ Κάσσιον.

[f] Λόγου δὲ παρὰ δεῖπνον ἐμπεσόντος περὶ θανάτου ποῖος ἄριστος ‘ὁ ἀπροσδόκητος’ εἶπε.

ΚΑΙΣΑΡ Ο ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ

Καῖσαρ ὁ πρῶτος ἐπικληθεὶς Σεβαστὸς ἔτι μειράκιον ὢν Ἀντώνιον ἀπῄτει ‹τὰς› δισχιλίας πεντακοσίας μυριάδας, ἃς τοῦ πρώτου Καίσαρος ἀναιρεθέντος ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας πρὸς αὑτὸν ὁ Ἀντώνιος μετήνεγκεν, ἀποδοῦναι Ῥωμαίοις βουλόμενος τὸ καταλειφθὲν ὑπὸ Καίσαρος, ἑκάστῳ δραχμὰς ἑβδομήκοντα πέντε· τοῦ δ’ Ἀντωνίου τὰ μὲν χρήματα κατέχοντος, ἐκεῖνον δὲ τῆς ἀπαιτήσεως [207] [a] ἀμελεῖν, εἰ σωφρονεῖ, κελεύοντος, ἐκήρυττε τὰ πατρῷα καὶ ἐπίπρασκε· καὶ τὴν δωρεὰν ἀποδοὺς εὔνοιαν μὲν αὑτῷ, μῖσος δ’ ἐκείνῳ παρὰ τῶν πολιτῶν περιεποίησεν.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Ῥοιμητάλκης ὁ τῶν Θρᾳκῶν βασιλεὺς ἀπ’ Ἀντωνίου μεταβαλόμενος πρὸς αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐμετρίαζε παρὰ τοὺς πότους, ἀλλ’ ἦν ἐπαχθὴς ὀνειδίζων τὴν συμμαχίαν, προπιών τινι τῶν ἄλλων βασιλέων ὁ Καῖσαρ εἶπεν ‘ἐγὼ προδοσίαν φιλῶ, προδότας δ’ οὐκ ἐπαινῶ.’

Τῶν δ’ Ἀλεξανδρέων μετὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν τὰ δεινότατα πείσεσθαι προσδοκώντων ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ [b] παραστησάμενος Ἄρειον τὸν Ἀλεξανδρέα φείδεσθαι τῆς πόλεως ἔφη πρῶτον μὲν διὰ τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ κάλλος, ἔπειτα διὰ τὸν κτίστην Ἀλέξανδρον, τρίτον δὲ δι’ Ἄρειον τὸν φίλον.

Ἀκούσας δὲ ὅτι Ἔρως ὁ τὰ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ διοικῶν ὄρτυγα τὸν κρατοῦντα πάντων ἐν τῷ μάχεσθαι καὶ ἀήττητον ὄντα πριάμενος ὀπτήσας κατέφαγε, μετεπέμψατο αὐτὸν καὶ ἀνέκρινεν· ὁμολογήσαντα δ’ ἐκέλευσεν ἱστῷ νηὸς προσηλωθῆναι.

Ἐν δὲ Σικελίᾳ Ἄρειον ἀντὶ Θεοδώρου κατέστησε διοικητήν· ἐπιδόντος δέ τινος αὐτῷ βιβλίον, ἐν ᾧ γεγραμμένον ἦν ‘φαλακρὸς †ἢ κλέπτης Θεόδωρος ὁ Ταρσεύς· τί σοι δοκεῖ;’ ἀναγνοὺς Καῖσαρ ὑπέγραψε ‘δοκεῖ.’

[c] Παρὰ δὲ Μαικήνα τοῦ συμβιωτοῦ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν ἐν τοῖς γενεθλίοις δῶρον ἐλάμβανε φιάλην.

Ἀθηνοδώρῳ δὲ τῷ φιλοσόφῳ διὰ γῆρας εἰς οἶκον ἀφεθῆναι δεηθέντι συνεχώρησεν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀσπασάμενος αὐτὸν ὁ Ἀθηνόδωρος εἶπεν ‘ὅταν ὀργισθῇς, Καῖσαρ, μηδὲν εἴπῃς μηδὲ ποιήσῃς πρότερον ἢ τὰ εἴκοσι καὶ τέτταρα γράμματα διελθεῖν πρὸς ἑαυτόν’, ἐπιλαβόμενος αὐτοῦ τῆς χειρός ‘ἔτι σοῦ παρόντος’ ἔφη ‘χρείαν ἔχω·’ καὶ κατέσχεν αὐτὸν ὅλον ἐνιαυτόν, εἰπὼν ὅτι ‘ἔστι καὶ σιγῆς ἀκίνδυνον γέρας.’ (Simonid. fr. 66 II p. 78 D.)

Ἀκούσας δὲ ὅτι Ἀλέξανδρος δύο καὶ τριάκοντα [d] γεγονὼς ἔτη κατεστραμμένος τὰ πλεῖστα διηπόρει τί ποιήσει τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον, ἐθαύμαζεν, εἰ μὴ μεῖζον Ἀλέξανδρος ἔργον ἡγεῖτο τοῦ κτήσασθαι μεγάλην ἡγεμονίαν τὸ διατάξαι τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν.

Γράψας δὲ τὸν περὶ τῶν μοιχῶν νόμον, ἐν ᾧ διώρισται πῶς δεῖ κρίνεσθαι τοὺς ἐν αἰτίαις γενομένους καὶ πῶς δεῖ κολάζεσθαι τοὺς ἁλόντας, εἶτα προπεσὼν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς τὸν ἐπ’ Ἰουλίᾳ τῇ θυγατρὶ διαβεβλημένον νεανίσκον ἔτυπτε ταῖς χερσίν, ἐκείνου δ’ ἀναβοῶντος ‘νόμον ἔθηκας, ὦ Καῖσαρ,’ οὕτω μετενόησεν, ὥστε τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην παραιτήσασθαι τὸ δεῖπνον.

Γάιον δὲ τὸν θυγατριδοῦν εἰς Ἀρμενίαν ἀποστέλλων [e] ᾐτεῖτο παρὰ τῶν θεῶν εὔνοιαν αὐτῷ τὴν Πομπηίου, τόλμαν δὲ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου, τύχην δὲ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ παρακολουθῆσαι.

Ῥωμαίοις δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἔλεγεν ἀπολείψειν διάδοχον, ὃς οὐδέποτε περὶ τοῦ αὐτοῦ πράγματος δὶς ἐβουλεύσατο, Τιβέριον λέγων.

Θορυβοῦντας δὲ τοὺς ἐν ἀξιώματι νέους καταστεῖλαι βουλόμενος, ὡς οὐ προσεῖχον ἀλλ’ ἐθορύβουν, ‘ἀκούσατε’ εἶπε ‘νέοι γέροντος, οὗ νέου γέροντες ἤκουον.’

Τοῦ δ’ Ἀθηναίων δήμου ἐξημαρτηκέναι τι δόξαντος ἔγραψεν ἀπ’ Αἰγίνης βούλεσθαι μὴ λανθάνειν αὐτοὺς ὀργιζόμενος, οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἐν Αἰγίνῃ διαχειμάσειεν. ἄλλο δ’ [f] οὐδὲν οὔτ’ εἶπεν αὐτοὺς οὔτ’ ἐποίησε.

Τῶν δ’ Εὐρυκλέους κατηγόρων ἑνὸς ἀφειδῶς καὶ κατακόρως παρρησιαζομένου καὶ προαχθέντος εἰπεῖν τι τοιοῦτον ‘εἰ ταῦτά σοι, Καῖσαρ, οὐ φαίνεται μεγάλα, κέλευσον αὐτὸν ἀποδοῦναί μοι Θουκυδίδου τὴν ἑβδόμην,’ ὀργισθεὶς ἀπάγειν ἐκέλευσε· πυθόμενος δὲ ὅτι τῶν ἀπὸ Βρασίδου γεγονότων ὑπόλοιπος οὗτός ἐστι μετεπέμψατο καὶ μέτρια νουθετήσας ἀπέλυσε.

[208] [a] Πείσωνος δὲ τὴν οἰκίαν ἐκ θεμελίων ἄχρι τῆς στέγης ἐπιμελῶς οἰκοδομοῦντος, ‘εὔθυμον’ ἔφη ‘με ποιεῖς οὕτως οἰκοδομῶν, ὡς ἀιδίου τῆς Ῥώμης ἐσομένης.’

Apophthegmata Laconica

ΑΠΟΦΘΕΓΜΑΤΑ ΛΑΚΩΝΙΚΑ

[208] ΑΓΑΣΙΚΛΗΣ

Ἀγασικλῆς ὁ Λακεδαιμονίων βασιλεύς, θαυμάζοντός [c] τινος ὅτι φιλήκοος ὢν οὐ προσδέχεται Φιλοφάνη τὸν σοφιστήν, ἔφη ‘τούτων χρῄζω μαθητὴς εἶναι, ὧν εἴην καὶ υἱός.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν εἰπόντα, πῶς ἄν τις ἀδορυφόρητος ὢν ‹τῶν πολιτῶν› ἄρχειν ἀσφαλῶς δύναιτο, ‘ἐὰν οὕτως’ ἔφη ‘αὐτῶν ἄρχῃ, ὥσπερ οἱ πατέρες τῶν υἱῶν.’

ΑΓΗΣΙΛΑΟΣ

Ἀγησίλαος ὁ μέγας παρὰ πότον ποτὲ λαχὼν συμποσίαρχος, ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ οἰνοχόου πόσον ἑκάστῳ προσφέροι, ‘εἰ μὲν πολὺς οἶνός ἐστιν’ ἔφη ‘παρεσκευασμένος, [d] ὅσον ἕκαστος αἰτεῖ· εἰ δ’ ὀλίγος, ἐξ ἴσου δίδου πᾶσι.’

Κακούργου δέ τινος ἐμμόνως ὑπομείναντος βασάνους, ‘ὡς σφόδρα πονηρός’ εἶπεν ‘ἅνθρωπος, εἰς μοχθηρὰ καὶ αἰσχρὰ πράγματα τὴν ὑπομονὴν καὶ καρτερίαν κατατιθέμενος.’

Ἐπαινοῦντος δέ τινος ῥήτορα ἐπὶ τῷ δυνατῶς αὔξειν τὰ μικρὰ πράγματα, ‘οὐδὲ σκυτοτόμον’ ἔφησεν ‘ἡγοῦμαι σπουδαῖον, ὃς μικρῷ ποδὶ ὑποδήματα μεγάλα περιτίθησι.’

Φαμένου δέ τινός ποτε πρὸς αὐτόν ‘ὡμολόγηκας’, καὶ πολλάκις τὸ αὐτὸ λέγοντος, ‘ναὶ μὰ Δία, εἴ γ’ ἐστὶ δίκαιον’ ἔφη· ‘εἰ δὲ μή, ἔλεξα μέν, ὡμολόγησα δ’ οὔ.’ [e] ἐπειπόντος δέ ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν δεῖ τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἐπιτελεῖν ὅττι κεν κεφαλῇ κατανεύσωσιν’ ‘οὐ μᾶλλον’ ἔφη ‘ἢ τοὺς προσιόντας τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν αἰτεῖσθαι δεῖ τὰ δίκαια καὶ λέγειν, στοχαζομένους τε τοῦ καιροῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁρμόζοντος τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν.’

Ὁπότε δὲ ψεγόντων ἢ ἐπαινούντων τινῶν ἀκούοι, οὐχ ἧττον ᾤετο δεῖν καταμανθάνειν τοὺς τῶν λεγόντων τρόπους ἢ περὶ ὧν λέγοιεν.

Ἔτι δὲ παῖδα αὐτὸν ὄντα, γυμνοπαιδίας ἀγομένης, ὁ χοροποιὸς ἔστησεν εἰς ἄσημον τόπον· ὁ δ’ ἐπείσθη καίπερ ἤδη βασιλεὺς ἀποδεδειγμένος καὶ εἶπεν ‘εὖγε· δείξω γὰρ ὅτι οὐχ οἱ τόποι τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐντίμους, ἀλλ’ οἱ ἄνδρες [f] τοὺς τόπους ἐπιδεικνύουσι.’

Προστάττοντος δέ τινος αὐτῷ ἰατροῦ περιεργοτέραν θεραπείαν καὶ οὐχ ἁπλῆν, ‘νὴ τὼ θεώ’ φησίν, ‘οὐ πάντως μοι πρόκειται ζῆν οὐδὲ πάντ’ ἀναδεχόμενον.’

Ἐφεστὼς δέ ποτε τῷ βωμῷ τῆς Χαλκιοίκου βουθυτῶν, ἐπειδὴ φθεὶρ αὐτὸν ἔδακεν, οὐ διετράπη· λαβὼν δὲ περιφανῶς ἐναντίον πάντων ἀπέκτεινε καὶ προσεῖπε ‘νὴ τοὺς θεοὺς, ἡδέως τὸν ἐπίβουλον καὶ ἐπὶ τῷ βωμῷ.’

Ἄλλοτ’ ἰδὼν μῦν ἑλκόμενον ἐκ θυρίδος ὑπὸ παιδαρίου, ἐπεὶ ὁ μῦς ἐπιστραφεὶς ἔδακε τὴν χεῖρα τοῦ κρατοῦντος καὶ ἔφυγεν, ἐπιδείξας τοῖς παροῦσιν εἶπεν ‘ὅταν τὸ ἐλάχιστον ζῷον οὕτως ἀμύνηται τοὺς ἀδικοῦντας, τί τοὺς ἄνδρας προσήκει ποιεῖν λογίζεσθε;’

Βουλόμενος δὲ τὸν πρὸς τὸν Πέρσην συστήσασθαι πόλεμον ἕνεκα τοῦ ἐλευθερῶσαι τοὺς τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικοῦντας Ἕλληνας, τῷ κατὰ Δωδώνην Διὸς ἐχρήσατο μαντείῳ· κελεύσαντος δέ, εἴπερ ἐστίν, ᾧ δοκεῖ, στρατεύεσθαι, [209] [a] τὸ χρησθὲν ἀνήγγειλε τοῖς ἐφόροις· οἱ δ’ ἐκέλευσαν αὐτὸν καὶ εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀφικόμενον περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν πυνθάνεσθαι. πορευθεὶς οὖν εἰς τὸ μαντεῖον ἐπηρώτησεν οὕτως ‘Ἄπολλον, ἦ δοκεῖ σοι ὃ καὶ τῷ πατρί;’ συναινέσαντος δὲ αἱρεθεὶς οὕτως ἐστρατεύσατο.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Τισσαφέρνης ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν φοβηθεὶς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἐποιήσατο σπονδὰς τὰς πόλεις αὐτῷ τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς ἀφήσειν αὐτονόμους, μεταπεμψάμενος δὲ παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως πολὺ στράτευμα πόλεμον κατήγγειλεν αὐτῷ, εἰ μὴ ἀπίοι τῆς Ἀσίας, ἄσμενος τὴν παράβασιν δεξάμενος ὥρμησε μὲν ὡς ἐπὶ Καρίαν προάξων· [b] ἐκεῖ δὲ τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ Τισσαφέρνους ἀθροίσαντος ἄρας εἰς Φρυγίαν ἐνέβαλε· καὶ λαβὼν πόλεις πλείστας καὶ χρημάτων πλῆθος εἶπε τοῖς φίλοις ὅτι σπεισάμενον μὲν ἀδικεῖν ἀσεβές, τοὺς δὲ πολεμίους παραλογίζεσθαι οὐ μόνον δίκαιον καὶ ἐπίδοξον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡδὺ καὶ κερδαλέον.

Τοῖς δ’ ἱππεῦσιν ἐλαττωθεὶς ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς Ἔφεσον, καὶ τοῖς εὐπόροις προεῖπε παρέχειν ἵππον ‹ἕκαστον› ἀνθ’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἄνδρα ἀπολυομένους τῆς στρατείας, ὥστε ταχὺ συνήχθησαν καὶ ἵπποι καὶ ἄνδρες ἐπιτήδειοι ἀντὶ δειλῶν καὶ πλουσίων. καὶ τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα ἔφη ζηλοῦν· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνον θήλειαν ἵππον ἀγαθὴν λαβόντα [c] κακὸν ἄνδρα καὶ πλούσιον τῆς στρατείας ἀπολῦσαι.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ κελεύσαντος αὐτοῦ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους γυμνοὺς [πωλεῖν] ἐπίπρασκον οἱ λαφυροπῶλαι καὶ τῆς μὲν ἐσθῆτος ἦσαν ὠνηταὶ πολλοί, τῶν δὲ σωμάτων λευκῶν καὶ ἁπαλῶν παντάπασι διὰ τὰς σκιατροφίας κατεγέλων ὡς ἀχρήστων καὶ μηδενὸς ἀξίων, ἐπιστὰς ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ‘ταῦτα μέν’ εἶπεν ‘ὑπὲρ ὧν μαχεῖσθε, οὗτοι δὲ οἷς μαχεῖσθε.’

Τρεψάμενος δὲ περὶ Λυδίαν Τισσαφέρνην καὶ πλείστους ἀνελών, κατέτρεχε τῆς βασιλέως χώρας. τούτου δὲ χρήματα αὐτῷ προσπέμψαντος καὶ ἀξιοῦντος διαλύσασθαι τὸν πόλεμον, ὁ Ἀγησίλαος τῆς μὲν εἰρήνης ἔφη [d] τὴν πόλιν εἶναι κυρίαν, τοὺς δὲ στρατιώτας πλουτίζων ἥδεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ αὐτὸς πλουτῶν· καλὸν δὲ νομίζειν Ἕλληνας οὐ δῶρα λαμβάνειν ἀπὸ τῶν πολεμίων, ἀλλὰ λάφυρα κτᾶσθαι.

Μεγαβάτου δὲ τοῦ Σπιθριδάτου παιδός, ὃς ἦν κάλλιστος τὴν μορφήν, προσελθόντος αὐτῷ ὡς ἀσπασομένου καὶ φιλήσοντος διὰ τὸ σφόδρα δοκεῖν ἀγαπᾶσθαι, ἐξέκλινεν· ὡς δ’ ἐπαύσατο ἐκεῖνος προσιών, ἐπεζήτησεν αὐτὸν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος. τῶν δὲ φίλων φαμένων ὡς αὐτὸς εἴη αἴτιος, τρέσας τὸ τοῦ καλοῦ φίλημα, εἰ δ’ ἐθέλει καὶ μὴ ἀποδειλιάσει, ἥξειν ἐκεῖνον, χρόνον [οὐκ] ὀλίγον πρὸς αὑτῷ [e] γενόμενος ὁ Ἀγησίλαος καὶ διασιωπήσας ‘οὐδέν’ ἔφη ‘δεῖ πείθειν ἐκεῖνον ὑμᾶς· ἐγὼ γάρ μοι δοκῶ τῶν τοιούτων βούλεσθαι ἐπάνω εἶναι ἢ τὴν εὐανδροτάτην τῶν ἀντιτεταγμένων πόλιν κατὰ κράτος ἑλεῖν· ἄμεινον γὰρ ἑαυτῷ φυλάττειν τὴν ἐλευθερίαν τοῦ ἑτέρων ἀφαιρεῖσθαι.’

Τὰ δ’ ἄλλ’ ἀκριβὴς ὢν καὶ νόμιμος, ἐν τοῖς φιλικοῖς πράγμασιν ἐνόμιζε πρόφασιν εἶναι τὸ λίαν δίκαιον [πρὸς αὐτούς]. φέρεται γοῦν ἐπιστόλιον αὐτοῦ παραιτουμένου τινὰ τῶν φίλων πρὸς Ἱδριέα τὸν Κᾶρα, οὕτω· ‘Νικίας εἰ μὲν οὐκ ἀδικεῖ, ἄφες· εἰ δ’ ἀδικεῖ, ἐμοὶ ἄφες· πάντως δ’ ἄφες.’

Ἐν μὲν οὖν τοῖς πλείστοις τοιοῦτος ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων [f] ὁ Ἀγησίλαος· ἔστι δὲ ὅπου πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον ἐχρῆτο τῷ καιρῷ μᾶλλον. ἀναζυγῆς γοῦν ποτε γενομένης θορυβωδεστέρας ἀσθενοῦντα καταλιπὼν τὸν ἐρώμενον, ἐκείνου δεομένου καὶ ἀνακαλοῦντος μετὰ δακρύων αὐτόν, ἀποστραφεὶς εἶπεν ‘ὡς χαλεπόν ἐστιν ἐλεεῖν ἅμα καὶ φρονεῖν.’

Δίαιταν δὲ τὴν περὶ τὸ σῶμα οὐδὲν ἀμείνονα τῶν συνόντων εἶχε, κόρου μὲν καὶ μέθης τὸ παράπαν ἀπεχόμενος, ὕπνῳ δ’ οὐ δεσπότῃ ἀλλ’ ἀρχομένῳ ὑπὸ τῶν πράξεων χρώμενος· [210] [a] πρὸς δὲ θάλπος οὕτω καὶ ψῦχος εἶχεν, ὥστε μόνος ἀεὶ χρῆσθαι ταῖς ὥραις. ἐν μέσοις δὲ τοῖς στρατιώταις σκηνῶν οὐδενὸς ἀμείνονα κοίτην εἶχε.

Διετέλει δὲ λέγων τὸν ἄρχοντα προσήκειν οὐ μαλακίᾳ καὶ τρυφῇ, καρτερίᾳ δὲ καὶ ἀνδρείᾳ [δεῖν] τῶν ἰδιωτῶν περιεῖναι.

Πυθομένου γοῦν τινος τί περιεποίησαν οἱ Λυκούργου νόμοι τῇ Σπάρτῃ, ‘καταφρονεῖν’ ἔφη ‘τῶν ἡδονῶν.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἐπιθαυμάζοντα τὴν μετριότητα τῆς ἐσθῆτος καὶ τῆς τροφῆς αὐτοῦ τε καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Λακεδαιμονίων ‘ἀντὶ ταύτης’ ἔφη ‘τῆς διαίτης, ὦ ξένε, τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀμώμεθα.’

[b] Ἄλλου δὲ προτρεπομένου ἀνίεσθαι καὶ λέγοντος διὰ τὸ τῆς τύχης ἄδηλον μὴ ‹περιμεῖναι›, πότε καιρὸς τούτου γενή‹σε›ται, ‘ἀλλ’ ἐγώ’ εἶπεν ‘ἐμαυτὸν ἐθίζω [λέγων] ὥστ’ ἐν μηδεμιᾷ μεταβολῇ μεταβολὴν ζητεῖν.’

Καὶ πρεσβύτης δὲ γενόμενος τῇ αὐτῇ ἀγωγῇ ἐχρῆτο· πρὸς οὖν τὸν πυθόμενον διὰ τί σφοδροῦ χειμῶνος ὄντος ἀχίτων περιέρχεται εἰς τοῦτο ἡλικίας ἥκων, ‘ἵνα’ φησίν ‘οἱ νέοι μιμῶνται, παράδειγμα ἔχοντες τοὺς πρεσβυτάτους καὶ ἄρχοντας.’

†Θάσιοι δὲ τὴν χώραν αὐτῶν διαπορευομένῳ μετὰ τοῦ στρατεύματος ἄλφιτα καὶ χῆνας καὶ τραγήματα καὶ [c] μελίπηκτα καὶ ἄλλα παντοδαπὰ βρώματά τε καὶ πόματα πολυτελῆ ἔπεμψαν· μόνα δὲ τὰ ἄλφιτα δεξάμενος τὰ λοιπὰ ἀπάγειν ἐκέλευσεν ὀπίσω τοὺς κομίζοντας, ὡς οὐδὲν αὐτοῖς ὄντα χρήσιμα. λιπαρούντων δὲ καὶ δεομένων πάντως λαβεῖν, ἐκέλευσεν αὐτὰ τοῖς εἵλωσι διαδοῦναι. πυθομένων δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν, ἔφη ‘τοὺς ἀνδραγαθίαν ἀσκοῦντας τὰς τοιαύτας λιχνείας οὐχ ἁρμόζει προσίεσθαι· τὰ γὰρ δελεάζοντα τοὺς ἀνδραποδώδεις τῶν ἐλευθέρων ἀλλότρια.’

Πάλιν δὲ τῶν †Θασίων διὰ τὸ δοκεῖν μεγάλως ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ εὐεργετεῖσθαι ναοῖς αὐτὸν καὶ ἀποθεώσεσι τιμησάντων [d] καὶ πρεσβείαν περὶ τούτου ἀποστειλάντων, ἀναγνοὺς τὰς τιμάς, ἃς αὐτῷ προσήνεγκαν οἱ πρέσβεις, ἠρώτησεν εἰ ἡ πατρὶς αὐτῶν ἀποθεοῦν ἀνθρώπους ἔχει δύναμιν· φαμένων δέ, ‘ἄγετ’’ ἔφη ‘ποιήσατε πρώτους ἑαυτοὺς ‹θεούς›· καὶ τοῦτ’ ἂν πράξητε, τότε πιστεύσω ὑμῖν ὅτι κἀμὲ δυνήσεσθε θεὸν ποιῆσαι.’

Τῶν δ’ ἐπὶ τῆς Ἀσίας Ἑλληνικῶν ἐθνῶν ψηφισαμένων ἐν ταῖς ἐπιφανεστάταις πόλεσιν εἰκόνας ἀνιστᾶν αὐτοῦ, προέγραψεν ‘ἐμοῦ μηδεμία εἰκὼν ἔστω μήτε γραπτὴ μήτε πλαστὴ μήτε κατασκευαστή.’

Θεασάμενος δ’ ἐπὶ τῆς Ἀσίας οἰκίαν τετραγώνοις ὠροφωμένην δοκοῖς ἠρώτησε τὸν κεκτημένον εἰ τετράγωνα [e] παρ’ αὐτοῖς φύεται ‹τὰ› ξύλα· φαμένου δὲ οὔ, ἀλλὰ στρογγύλα, ‘τί οὖν;’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ τετράγωνα ἦν, στρογγύλ’ ‹ἂν› ἐτελεῖτε;’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δέ ποτε ἄχρι τίνος εἰσὶν οἱ τῆς Λακωνικῆς ὅροι, κραδάνας τὸ δόρυ εἶπεν ‘ἄχρις οὗ τοῦτο φθάνει.’

Ἄλλου δ’ ἐπιζητοῦντος διὰ τί ἀτείχιστος ἡ Σπάρτη, ἐπιδείξας τοὺς πολίτας ἐξωπλισμένους ‘ταῦτ’ ἐστιν’ εἶπε ‘τὰ Λακεδαιμονίων τείχη.’

Ἄλλου δὲ τὸ αὐτὸ ἐπιζητοῦντος, ‘οὐ λίθοις δεῖ καὶ ξύλοις τετειχίσθαι, [τὰς πόλεις’ ἔφη ‘]ταῖς δὲ τῶν ἐνοικούντων ἀρεταῖς.’

Τοῖς δὲ φίλοις παρήγγειλε μὴ χρήμασιν, ἀνδρείᾳ δὲ καὶ ἀρετῇ σπουδάζειν πλουτεῖν.

[f] Ὁπότε δὲ βούλοιτο ἔργον τι ταχέως ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν γενέσθαι, αὐτὸς πρῶτος ἐφήπτετο ἐν ὄψει ἁπάντων.

Ἐμεγαλύνετο δ’ ἐπὶ τῷ μηδενὸς ἧττον πονεῖν καὶ ἐπὶ τῷ ἄρχειν ἑαυτοῦ μᾶλλον ἢ ἐπὶ τῷ βασιλεύειν.

Θεωρήσας δέ τινα Λάκωνα χωλὸν ἐπὶ πόλεμον ἐξιόντα καὶ ἵππον ζητοῦντα, ‘οὐκ αἰσθάνῃ’ ἔφη ‘ὅτι οὐ φευγόντων ἀλλὰ μενόντων ὁ πόλεμος χρείαν ἔχει;’

Ἐρωτώμενος δὲ πῶς μεγάλην δόξαν περιεποιήσατο, ‘θανάτου καταφρονήσας’ ἔφη.

Ἐπιζητοῦντος δέ τινος διὰ τί Σπαρτιᾶται μετ’ αὐλῶν ἀγωνίζονται, [211] [a] ἔφη ‘ἵν’, ὅταν πρὸς ῥυθμὸν βαίνωσιν, οἵ τε δειλοὶ καὶ οἱ ἀνδρεῖοι φανεροὶ ὦσι.’

Μακαρίζοντος δέ τινος τὸν Περσῶν βασιλέα νέον ὄντα κομιδῇ, εἶπεν ‘ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ Πρίαμος ταύτην ἔχων τὴν ἡλικίαν ἠτύχησε.’

Πολλὴν δὲ τῆς Ἀσίας ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ ποιησάμενος διέγνω χωρεῖν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν βασιλέα, ὅπως παύσῃ σχολὴν ἄγοντα καὶ διαφθείροντα τοὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων δημαγωγούς.

Μεταπεμφθεὶς δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ἐφόρων ἕνεκα [τῆς] τοῦ περιεστηκότος τὴν Σπάρτην Ἑλληνικοῦ πολέμου [αἰτίας] διὰ τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ Πέρσου διαπεμφθέντα χρήματα, εἰπὼν [b] τὸν ἀγαθὸν ἄρχοντα δεῖν ὑπὸ τῶν νόμων ἄρχεσθαι ἀπέπλευσε τῆς Ἀσίας πολὺν ἑαυτοῦ πόθον τοῖς ἐνταῦθα Ἕλλησι καταλιπών.

Τοῦ δὲ Περσικοῦ νομίσματος χάραγμα τοξότην ἔχοντος, ἀναζευγνύων ἔφη τρισμυρίοις τοξόταις ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐξελαύνεσθαι τῆς Ἀσίας· τοσούτων γὰρ εἰς Ἀθήνας καὶ Θήβας κομισθέντων διὰ Τιμοκράτους χρυσῶν δαρεικῶν καὶ διαδοθέντων τοῖς δημαγωγοῖς, ἐξεπολεμώθησαν οἱ δῆμοι πρὸς τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας.

Καὶ ἀντέγραψε τοῖς ἐφόροις ἐπιστολὴν τήνδε· ‘Ἀγησίλαος τοῖς ἐφόροις χαίρειν· τὰν πολλὰν τᾶς Ἀσίας κατεστρεψάμεθα καὶ τὼς βαρβάρως ἐλάσαμες καὶ ἐν [c] τᾷ Ἰωνίᾳ ὅπλα ἐποιήσαμες πολλά· ἐπεὶ δὲ κέλεσθέ με κατὰ τὰν προθεσμίαν παραγίνεσθαι, ἕπομαι τᾷ ἐπιστολᾷ, σχεδὸν δ’ αὐτὰν καὶ φθάσω· ἄρχω γὰρ οὐκ ἐμαυτῷ ἀρχάν, ἀλλὰ τᾷ πόλει καὶ τοῖς συμμάχοις· καὶ τότε ἄρχων ἄρχει ἀλαθέως κατὰ δίκαν, ὅταν καὶ ἄρχηται ὑπό τε νόμων καὶ ἐφόρων ἢ οἷοι ἂν ἄλλοι ἐν πόλει ἄρχοντες ὦσιν.’

Ὡς δὲ διαβὰς τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ἐβάδιζε διὰ τῆς Θρᾴκης, ἐδεήθη μὲν οὐδενὸς τῶν βαρβάρων, πέμπων δὲ πρὸς ἑκάστους ἐπυνθάνετο πότερον ὡς φιλίαν ἢ ὡς πολεμίαν διαπορεύηται τὴν χώραν. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι φιλικῶς ἐδέχοντο καὶ παρέπεμπον· οἱ δὲ καλούμενοι Τρωχαλεῖς, οἷς καὶ Ξέρξης ὡς λέγεται ἔδωκε δῶρα, τῆς διόδου μισθὸν ᾔτουν τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἑκατὸν ἀργυρίου τάλαντα καὶ τοσαύτας γυναῖκας· ὁ δὲ κατειρωνευσάμενος αὐτοὺς καὶ [d] φήσας, ‘τί οὖν οὐκ εὐθὺς ἦλθον ληψόμενοι;’ προῆγε καὶ συμβαλὼν αὐτοῖς παρατεταγμένοις τρεψάμενος καὶ διαφθείρας πολλοὺς διῆλθε.

Τῷ δὲ τῶν Μακεδόνων βασιλεῖ τὸ αὐτὸ ἐρώτημα προσέπεμψε· φήσαντος δ’ ἐκείνου βουλεύ‹ς›εσθαι, ‘βουλευέσθω τοίνυν’ εἶπεν, ‘ἡμεῖς δ’ ἤδη πορευσόμεθα.’ θαυμάσας οὖν τὴν τόλμαν καὶ δείσας ἐκέλευσεν ὡς φίλον προάγειν.

Τῶν δὲ Θετταλῶν τοῖς πολεμίοις συμμαχούντων [e] ἐπόρθει τὴν χώραν· εἰς δὲ Λάρισσαν ἔπεμψε Ξενοκλέα καὶ Σκύθην περὶ φιλίας. συλληφθέντων δὲ τούτων καὶ παραφυλαττομένων, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι βαρέως φέροντες ᾤοντο δεῖν τὸν Ἀγησίλαον περιστρατοπεδεύσαντα πολιορκεῖν τὴν Λάρισσαν· ὁ δὲ φήσας οὐκ ἂν ἐθελῆσαι Θεσσαλίαν ὅλην λαβεῖν ἀπολέσας τῶν ἀνδρῶν τὸν ἕτερον, ὑποσπόνδους αὐτοὺς ἀπέλαβε.

Πυθόμενος δὲ μάχην γεγονέναι περὶ Κόρινθον καὶ Σπαρτιατῶν μὲν παντάπασιν ὀλίγους τεθνάναι, Κορινθίων δὲ καὶ Ἀθηναίων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων συμμάχων αὐτοῖς παμπόλλους, οὐκ ὤφθη περιχαρὴς οὐδ’ ἐπηρμένος τῇ [f] νίκῃ, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ βαρὺ στενάξας ‘φεῦ τᾶς Ἑλλάδος’ ἔφη ‘ἣ τοσούτους ὑφ’ αὑτᾶς ἀπολώλεκεν, ὅσοις ἀρκεῖ τοὺς βαρβάρους νικᾶν ἅπαντας.’

Φαρσαλίων δὲ προσκειμένων καὶ κακουργούντων αὐτοῦ τὸ στράτευμα, πεντακοσίοις ἱππεῦσι τρεψάμενος αὐτοὺς τρόπαιον ἔστησεν ὑπὸ τῷ Ναρθακίῳ· καὶ τὴν νίκην ἐκείνην πάντων ὑπερηγάπησεν, ὅτι συστησάμενος τὸ ἱππικὸν αὐτὸς δι’ ἑαυτοῦ τούτῳ μόνῳ τοὺς μέγιστον ἐφ’ ἱππικῇ φρονοῦντας ἐκράτησε.

[212] [a] Διφρίδα δ’ οἴκοθεν ἀπαγγείλαντος αὐτῷ εὐθὺς ἐκ παρόδου ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν Βοιωτίαν, καίτοι ἐκ μείζονος παρασκευῆς ὕστερον τοῦτο ποιῆσαι διανοούμενος, οὐκ ἀπειθήσας τοῖς ἄρχουσι, μεταπεμψάμενος δύο μόρας τῶν περὶ Κόρινθον στρατευομένων ἐπέβη τῆς Βοιωτίας. καὶ συμβαλὼν ἐν Κορωνείᾳ Θηβαίοις Ἀθηναίοις Ἀργείοις Κορινθίοις Λοκροῖς ἀμφοτέροις ἐνίκησε, καίτοι ὑπὸ πολλῶν τραυμάτων κακῶς τὸ σῶμα διακείμενος, τὴν μεγίστην μάχην ὥς φησι Ξενοφῶν (Hell. IV 3, 16 Ages. II 9) τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτὸν γενομένων.

Οὐδὲν δὲ τῶν περὶ τὸν βίον καὶ τὴν δίαιταν διὰ τὰς τοσαύτας εὐτυχίας καὶ νίκας ἤλλαξεν οἴκαδ’ ἐπανελθών.

Ὁρῶν δ’ ἐνίους τῶν πολιτῶν ἀφ’ ἱπποτροφίας [b] δοκοῦντας εἶναί τινας καὶ μεγαλοφρονοῦντας, ἔπεισε τὴν ἀδελφὴν Κυνίσκαν ἅρμα καθεῖσαν Ὀλυμπίασιν ἀγωνίσασθαι, βουλόμενος ἐνδείξασθαι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ὡς οὐδεμιᾶς ἐστιν ἀρετῆς πλούτου δὲ καὶ δαπάνης τὰ τοιαῦτα.

Ξενοφῶντα δὲ τὸν σοφὸν ἔχων μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ σπουδαζόμενον, ἐκέλευε τοὺς παῖδας ἐν Λακεδαίμονι τρέφειν μεταπεμψάμενον, ‹ὡς› τὸ κάλλιστον τῶν μαθημάτων παιδευθησομένους, ἄρχειν τε καὶ ἄρχεσθαι.

Ἄλλοτε δ’ ἐρωτώμενος διὰ τί μάλιστα παρὰ τοὺς [c] ἄλλους εὐδαιμονοῦσιν οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται, ‘διότι’ εἶπε ‘παρὰ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀσκοῦσιν ἄρχειν τε καὶ ἄρχεσθαι.’

Λυσάνδρου δὲ τελευτήσαντος εὑρὼν ἑταιρείαν πολλὴν συνεστῶσαν, ἣν ἐκεῖνος εὐθὺς ἐπανελθὼν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀσίας συνέστησεν ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀγησίλαον, ὥρμησεν αὐτὸν ἐξελέγχειν οἷος ἦν ζῶν πολίτης. καὶ λόγον ἀναγνοὺς ἐν βιβλίῳ ἀπολελειμμένον, ὃν ἔγραψε μὲν Κλέων ὁ Ἁλικαρνασσεύς, ἔμελλε δὲ λέγειν ἀναλαβὼν ὁ Λύσανδρος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ περὶ πραγμάτων καινῶν καὶ μεταστάσεως τοῦ πολιτεύματος, ἠθέλησεν εἰς μέσον ἐξενεγκεῖν· ἐπεὶ δέ τις τῶν γερόντων τὸν λόγον ἐπελθὼν καὶ φοβηθεὶς τὴν δεινότητα [d] συνεβούλευσε μὴ τὸν Λύσανδρον ἀνορύττειν‹, ἀλλὰ τὸν λόγον μᾶλλον αὐτῷ συγκατορύττειν›, ἐπείσθη καὶ ἡσύχασε.

Τοὺς δὲ ὑπεναντιουμένους αὐτῷ φανερῶς μὲν οὐκ ἐτάραττε· διαπραττόμενος δὲ πέμπεσθαί τινας ἀεὶ στρατηγοὺς καὶ ἄρχοντας ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐπεδείκνυε γινομένους ἐν ταῖς ἐξουσίαις πονηροὺς καὶ πλεονέκτας· εἶτα κρινομένοις πάλιν αὖ βοηθῶν καὶ συναγωνιζόμενος οἰκείους ἐποιεῖτο καὶ μεθίστη πρὸς ἑαυτόν, ὥστε μηδένα ἀντίπαλον εἶναι.

Ἐδεήθη τις αὐτοῦ γράψαι πρὸς τοὺς ἐπ’ Ἀσίας ξένους, ὅπως τύχῃ τοῦ δικαίου· ‘ἀλλ’ οἱ ἐμοὶ ξένοι’ εἶπε ‘τὰ δίκαια δι’ ἑαυτῶν, κἂν ἐγὼ μὴ γράψω, ποιοῦσιν.’

[e] Ἐπεδείκνυέ τις αὐτῷ τῆς πόλεως τὸ τεῖχος ὀχυρὸν καὶ καρτερῶς ἄγαν ἐξῳκοδομημένον καὶ ἠρώτα εἰ καλὸν αὐτῷ φαίνεται· ‘νὴ Δί’’ ἔφη ‘καλὸν, οὐχ ὡς ἀνδράσι δὲ ἀλλ’ ὡς γυναιξὶν ἐνοικεῖν.’

Μεγαρέως δέ τινος περὶ τῆς πόλεως πρὸς αὐτὸν μεγαλαυχουμένου, ‘μειράκιον’ ἔφη, ‘οἱ λόγοι σου πολλῆς δυνάμεως δέονται.’

Ἃ δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἑώρα θαυμάζοντας ἐδόκει μηδὲ γινώσκειν. καί ποτε Καλλιππίδας ὁ τῶν τραγῳδιῶν ὑποκριτής, ὄνομα καὶ δόξαν ἔχων ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησι καὶ σπουδαζόμενος ὑπὸ πάντων, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπήντησεν αὐτῷ καὶ [f] προσεῖπεν, ἔπειτα σοβαρῶς εἰς τοὺς συμπεριπατοῦντας ἐμβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν ἐπεδείκνυτο, νομίζων ἐκεῖνον ἄρξειν τινὸς φιλοφρονήσεως· τέλος δ’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἐπιγινώσκεις με, ὦ βασιλεῦ, οὐδ’ ἤκουσας ὅστις εἰμί;’ ὁ δ’ Ἀγησίλαος ἀποβλέψας εἰς αὐτὸν· ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ τύ ἐσσι Καλλιππίδας ὁ δεικηλίκτας;’ οὕτω δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τοὺς μίμους καλοῦσι.

Τοῦ δὲ μιμουμένου τὴν τῆς ἀηδόνος φωνὴν ἀκοῦσαι παρακαλούμενος παρῃτήσατο φήσας ‘αὐτᾶς ἄκουκα πολλάκις.’

[213] [a] Μενεκράτους δὲ τοῦ ἰατροῦ, ἐπεὶ κατατυχὼν ἔν τισιν ἀπεγνωσμέναις θεραπείαις Ζεὺς ἐπεκλήθη, φορτικῶς ταύτῃ χρωμένου τῇ προσωνυμίᾳ, καὶ δὴ πρὸς τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ἐπιστεῖλαι τολμήσαντος οὕτως ‘Μενεκράτης Ζεὺς Ἀγησιλάῳ βασιλεῖ χαίρειν’, οὐκ ἀναγνοὺς τὰ λοιπὰ ἀντέγραψε ‘βασιλεὺς Ἀγησίλαος Μενεκράτει ὑγιαίνειν.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Κόνων καὶ Φαρνάβαζος τῷ βασιλέως ναυτικῷ θαλαττοκρατοῦντες ἐπολιόρκουν τὰ παράλια τῆς Λακωνικῆς, ἐτειχίσθη δὲ τὸ ἄστυ τῶν Ἀθηναίων Φαρναβάζου χρήματα δόντος, εἰρήνην ἐποιήσαντο Λακεδαιμόνιοι [b] πρὸς βασιλέα· καὶ πέμπουσι πολίτην Ἀνταλκίδαν πρὸς Τιρίβαζον, τοὺς ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ Ἕλληνας, ὑπὲρ ὧν ἐπολέμησεν Ἀγησίλαος, βασιλεῖ παραδιδόντες. ὅθεν δὴ ἥκιστα συνέβη τῆς κακοδοξίας ταύτης Ἀγησιλάῳ μετασχεῖν· ὁ γὰρ Ἀνταλκίδας ἐχθρὸς ἦν αὐτῷ, καὶ τὴν εἰρήνην ἐξ ἅπαντος ἔπραττεν, ὡς τοῦ πολέμου τὸν Ἀγησίλαον αὔξοντος καὶ ποιοῦντος ἐνδοξότατον καὶ μέγιστον.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα μηδίζειν τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἀπεκρίθη μᾶλλον τοὺς Μήδους λακωνίζειν.

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δέ ποτε ὁποτέρα βελτίων τῶν ἀρετῶν, ἀνδρεία ἢ δικαιοσύνη, οὐδὲν ὄφελος ἀνδρείας ἔφασκεν [c] εἶναι μὴ παρούσης δικαιοσύνης· εἰ δὲ δίκαιοι πάντες γένοιντο, μηδέν’ ἀνδρείας δεηθήσεσθαι.

Εἰθισμένων δὲ τῶν τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικούντων τὸν Περσῶν βασιλέα μέγαν προσαγορεύειν, ‘τί δαὶ ἐκεῖνος ἐμοῦ μείζων’ ἔφη, ‘εἰ μὴ καὶ δικαιότερος καὶ σωφρονέστερος;’

Ἔλεγε δὲ τοὺς τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικοῦντας ἐλευθέρους μὲν κακούς, δούλους δ’ ἀγαθοὺς εἶναι.

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ πῶς ἄν τις μάλιστα εὐδοκιμοίη παρ’ ἀνθρώποις ‘εἰ λέγοι’ εἶπε ‘τὰ ἄριστα, πράττοι δὲ τὰ κάλλιστα.’

Τὸν δὲ στρατηγὸν δεῖν ἔφασκε πρὸς μὲν τοὺς ἐναντίους τόλμαν, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ὑποτεταγμένους εὔνοιαν ἔχειν, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς καιροὺς λογισμόν.

Ἐπιζητοῦντος δέ τινος τίνα δεῖ μανθάνειν τοὺς [d] παῖδας, ‘ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν ‘οἷς καὶ ἄνδρες γενόμενοι χρήσονται.’

Δικάζοντος δέ [τινος] δίκην αὐτοῦ καὶ τοῦ μὲν κατηγόρου εὖ εἰρηκότος τοῦ δ’ ἀπολογουμένου φαύλως, λέγοντος δὲ πρὸς ἕκαστα ‘Ἀγησίλαε, δεῖ τὸν βασιλέα τοῖς νόμοις βοηθεῖν,’ ‘καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν’ ἔφη ‘εἴ τίς σοι διέσκαπτε καὶ τὸ ἱμάτιον εἰ ἀφῃρεῖτο, προσεδέχου ἂν τὸν οἰκοδόμον ἢ τὸν τὸ ἱμάτιον ὑφάναντα ἐπικουρήσειν σοι;’

Ἐπιστολῆς δ’ αὐτῷ παρὰ τοῦ Περσῶν βασιλέως κομισθείσης - τῆς εἰρήνης γενομένης - , ἣν ὁ μετὰ Καλλίου τοῦ Λακεδαιμονίου Πέρσης ἤνεγκε, περὶ ξενίας καὶ φιλίας, οὐκ ἔλαβεν εἰπὼν ἀπαγγεῖλαι βασιλεῖ ὡς [e] ἰδίᾳ μὲν πρὸς αὐτὸν οὐδὲν δέοι ἐπιστολὰς πέμπειν· ἢν δὲ φίλος τῇ Λακεδαίμονι καὶ τῇ Ἑλλάδι εὔνους ὢν φαίνηται, ὅτι καὶ αὐτὸς φίλος αὐτῷ κατὰ κράτος ἔσοιτο· ‘ἐὰν μέντοι ἐπιβουλεύων ἁλίσκηται, μηδ’ ἂν πάνυ πολλὰς δέχωμαι ἐπιστολάς, πιστευέτω ἕξειν με φίλον.’

Φιλοτεκνότατος δ’ ὢν διαφερόντως λέγεται ὅτι μικροῖς τοῖς παιδίοις κάλαμον περιβεβηκὼς ὥσπερ ἵππον οἴκοι συνέπαιζεν· ὀφθεὶς δὲ ὑπό τινος τῶν φίλων παρεκάλει μηδενὶ φράζειν, πρὶν καὶ αὐτὸς πατὴρ παίδων γένηται.

Συνεχῶς δ’ αὐτοῦ τοῖς Θηβαίοις πολεμοῦντος καὶ τρωθέντος ἐν τῇ μάχῃ, φασὶ τὸν Ἀνταλκίδαν εἰπεῖν [f] ‘καλὰ τὰ διδασκάλια παρὰ Θηβαίων ἀπολαμβάνεις, μὴ βουλομένους αὐτοὺς μηδ’ ἐπισταμένους μάχεσθαι διδάξας.’ τῷ γὰρ ὄντι Θηβαίους αὐτοὺς ἑαυτῶν πολεμικωτάτους τότε φασὶ γενέσθαι ταῖς πολλαῖς στρατείαις τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἐπ’ αὐτούς. διὸ καὶ Λυκοῦργος ὁ παλαιὸς ἐν ταῖς καλουμέναις Ῥήτραις ἀπεῖπε πολλάκις ἐπὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς στρατεύειν, ὅπως πολεμεῖν μὴ μανθάνωσιν.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἤκουσέ ποτε δυσχερᾶναι τοὺς συμμάχους [214] [a] διὰ τὰς συνεχεῖς στρατείας, ὀλίγοις οὖσι τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις πολλοὺς ἀκολουθοῦντας, ἐλέγξαι βουλόμενος αὐτῶν τὸ πλῆθος ἐκέλευσεν ἅπαντας τοὺς συμμάχους καθίσαι μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἀναμεμιγμένους, ἰδίᾳ δὲ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν· εἶτα ἐκήρυττε τοὺς κεραμεῖς ἀνίστασθαι πρώτους, ὡς δ’ ἀνέστησαν οὗτοι, δευτέρους ἐκήρυττε τοὺς χαλκεῖς, εἶτα τέκτονας ἐφεξῆς καὶ οἰκοδόμους, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τεχνῶν ἑκάστην. πάντες οὖν ὀλίγου δεῖν ἀνέστησαν οἱ σύμμαχοι, τῶν δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων οὐδείς· ἀπείρητο γὰρ αὐτοῖς τέχνην ἐργάζεσθαι ἢ μανθάνειν βάναυσον. οὕτω δὴ γελάσας ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ‘ὁρᾶτε’ [b] εἶπεν ‘ὦ ἄνδρες, ὅσῳ πλείονας ὑμῶν στρατιώτας ἐκπέμπομεν ἡμεῖς;’

Ἐν δὲ τῇ περὶ Λεῦκτρα μάχῃ πολλῶν Λακεδαιμονίων φυγόντων καὶ τούτων ταῖς ἐκ τοῦ νόμου ἀτιμίαις ὑπευθύνων ὄντων, οἱ ἔφοροι ἔρημον ἀνδρῶν τὴν πόλιν ὁρῶντες δεομένην στρατιωτῶν ἐβούλοντο τὴν ἀτιμίαν λῦσαι καὶ τοὺς νόμους τηρεῖν. αἱροῦνται οὖν νομοθέτην τὸν Ἀγησίλαον· ὁ δὲ προελθὼν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον ‘νομοθέτης μὲν οὐκ ἂν γενοίμην ἑτέρων νόμων’ εἶπε, ‘τοῖς γὰρ οὖσιν οὔτ’ ἂν προσθείην τι οὔτ’ ἂν ἀφέλοιμι οὔτε μεταποιήσαιμι· τοὺς δ’ ὄντας ἡμῖν νόμους κυρίους εἶναι καλῶς ἔχον ἐστὶν ἀπὸ τῆς αὔριον.’

[c] Τὸν δ’ Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ἐπελθόντα μετὰ τοσούτου ῥεύματος καὶ κλύδωνος, τῶν Θηβαίων καὶ συμμάχων μεγαλαυχουμένων ἐπὶ τῇ νίκῃ, ὅμως εἶρξε τῆς πόλεως καὶ ἀναστρέψαι ἐποίησεν, ὀλίγων ὄντων τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει.

Ἐν δὲ τῇ περὶ Μαντίνειαν μάχῃ παρεκελεύσατο τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις τοὺς ἄλλους ἐάσαντας πάντας Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ μάχεσθαι, μόνους λέγων τοὺς ἔμφρονας ἀνδρείους εἶναι καὶ μόνους νίκης αἰτίους ὑπάρχειν· εἰ οὖν τοῦτον ἀνέλοιεν, ῥᾷστα τοὺς ἄλλους ὑποχειρίους ποιήσειν· ἄφρονας γὰρ εἶναι καὶ οὐδενὸς ἀξίους. ὃ καὶ συνέβη· τῆς γὰρ νίκης σὺν Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ οὔσης καὶ φυγῆς γενομένης, [d] ἐπιστραφέντ’ αὐτὸν καὶ ἀνακαλούμενον τοὺς ἰδίους τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων τις καιρίως ἐπάταξε, καὶ πεσόντος ἀναστρέψαντες ἀπὸ τῆς φυγῆς οἱ σὺν Ἀγησιλάῳ ἐφάμιλλον τὴν νίκην ἐποίησαν, παρὰ πολὺ μὲν τῶν Θηβαίων χειρόνων παρὰ πολὺ δὲ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἀμεινόνων φανέντων.

Χρημάτων δὲ δεομένης τῆς Σπάρτης πρὸς πόλεμον καὶ ξενοτροφούσης ἐπορεύθη ὁ Ἀγησίλαος εἰς Αἴγυπτον μεταπεμφθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως Αἰγυπτίων ἐπὶ μισθῷ, διὰ δὲ τὸ λιτὸν τῆς ἐσθῆτος εἰς καταφρόνησιν ἦλθε τοῖς ἐγχωρίοις· προσεδόκων γὰρ τὸν Σπάρτης βασιλέα [e] καθάπερ τὸν Περσῶν κεκοσμημένον ὄψεσθαι διαπρεπῶς τὸ σῶμα, φαύλην ἔχοντες περὶ βασιλέων δόξαν. ἔδειξε γοῦν αὐτοῖς μεταξύ, ὡς τὸ μεγαλεῖον καὶ ἀξιόλογον νοήσει καὶ ἀνδρείᾳ κτᾶσθαι προσήκει.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοὺς παρ’ αὐτῷ παραστήσεσθαι μέλλοντας ἑώρα δεδιότας τὸν ἐπιόντα κίνδυνον διὰ τὸ τῶν πολεμίων πλῆθος (εἴκοσι γὰρ ἦσαν μυριάδες) καὶ τὴν τῶν περὶ αὑτὸν ὀλιγότητα, πρὸ τῆς παρατάξεως ἔγνω προθύσασθαι· καὶ ἀσυνειδήτως τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐπὶ τὴν ἀριστερὰν ὑπεστραμμένην τῇ χειρὶ ‘νίκην’ προσέγραψε, λαβὼν [f] δὲ παρὰ τοῦ μάντεως τὸ ἧπαρ ἐπέθηκε μὲν ἐπὶ τὴν ὑπογεγραμμένην χεῖρα, κρατῶν δ’ ἐφ’ ἱκανὸν χρόνον ὑπέφαινε δισταγμὸν καὶ προσποίησιν εἶχεν ἀποροῦντος, μέχρι τῷ ἥπατι συναναλειφθέντες ἐτυπώθησαν οἱ τῶν γραμμάτων χαρακτῆρες. καὶ τότε τοῖς συναγωνίζεσθαι μέλλουσιν ἐπεδείκνυε, φάμενος τοὺς θεοὺς διὰ τῶν γεγραμμένων ἐκφῆναι νίκην. ἀσφαλὲς οὖν τεκμήριον δόξαντες ἔχειν τοῦ κρατῆσαι ἐθάρρησαν πρὸς τὴν μάχην.

Περιταφρευόντων δὲ τῶν πολεμίων τὸ στρατόπεδον αὐτοῦ διὰ τὸ πλῆθος, καὶ Νεκτανάβιος, ᾧ συνεμάχει, ἀξιοῦντος ἐπεξιέναι καὶ διαμάχεσθαι, οὐκ ἔφη διακωλύ‹ς›ειν τοὺς πολεμίους ἴσους αὐτοῖς γενέσθαι βουλομένους. [215] [a] ἔτι δὲ μικρὸν ἀπολειπούσης τῆς τάφρου συνάψαι, κατὰ τοῦτο παρατάξας τὸ διαλεῖπον καὶ πρὸς ἴσους ἴσοις ἀγωνισάμενος τροπὴν ἐποιήσατο καὶ πολὺν φόνον τῶν πολεμίων ὀλίγοις τοῖς περὶ αὑτὸν στρατιώταις καὶ χρήματα πολλὰ τῇ πόλει διεπέμψατο.

Κατὰ δὲ τὸν ‹ἀπ’› Αἰγύπτου ἀπόπλουν ἀποθνῄσκων ἐνετείλατο τοῖς περὶ αὑτὸν μήτε πλαστὰν μήτε γραπτὰν [μήτε] μιμηλὰν τοῦ σώματος [εἰκόνα] ποιήσασθαι, ‘εἰ γάρ τι καλὸν ἔργον πεποίηκα, τοῦτό μου μνημεῖον ἔσται· εἰ δὲ μή, οὐδ’ οἱ πάντες ἀνδριάντες, βαναύσων καὶ οὐδενὸς ἀξίων ἔργα ὄντες.’

[b]

ΑΓΗΣΙΠΟΛΙΣ Ο ΚΛΕΟΜΒΡΟΤΟΥ

Ἀγησίπολις ὁ Κλεομβρότου, εἰπόντος τινὸς ὅτι Φίλιππος ἐν ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις Ὄλυνθον κατέσκαψε, ‘μὰ τοὺς θεούς’ ἔφη ‘ἄλλην τοιαύτην ἐν πολλαπλασίονι χρόνῳ οὐκ οἰκοδομήσει.’

Ἄλλου δ’ εἰπόντος ὅτι μετὰ τῶν ἀκμαζόντων βασιλεύων ὡμήρευσε καὶ οὐχ οἱ παῖδες οὐδ’ αἱ γυναῖκες αὐτῶν, ‘δικαίως’ εἶπεν· ‘αὐτοὺς γὰρ ἡμᾶς καλῶς ἔχον ἐστὶ τὰς αὑτῶν ἁμαρτίας φέρειν.’

Βουλομένου δ’ αὐτοῦ σκύλακας οἴκοθεν μεταπέμψασθαι, ὥς τις εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἔστιν ἐξαγωγὴ παρ’ ‹ἡμῶν› αὐτῶν’, ‘οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀνδρῶν’ ἔφη ‘πρόσθεν, ἀλλὰ νῦν ἐγένετο.’

[c]

ΑΓΗΣΙΠΟΛΙΣ Ο ΠΑΥΣΑΝΙΟΥ

Ἀγησίπολις ὁ Παυσανίου, Ἀθηναίων πρὸς αὐτὸν περὶ ὧν εἶχον πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐγκλημάτων τὴν τῶν Μεγαρέων πόλιν ἔκκλητον λαμβανόντων, ‘αἰσχρόν’ ἔφη ‘ὦ Ἀθηναῖοι, τοὺς ἀφηγησαμένους τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἧσσον εἰδέναι Μεγαρέων τὸ δίκαιον.’

ΑΓΙΣ Ο ΑΡΧΙΔΑΜΟΥ

Ἆγις ὁ Ἀρχιδάμου, τῶν ἐφόρων ποτ’ εἰπόντων ‘βάδιζε τοὺς ἡβῶντας ἔχων ἐπὶ τὴν τούτου πατρίδα· ἡγήσεται δέ σοι αὐτὸς οὗτος ἐπὶ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν’, ‘καὶ πῶς’ εἶπε ‘καλῶς ἔχον ἐστίν, ὦ ἔφοροι, τοσούτους νέους πιστεύειν τῷ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ πατρίδα προδιδόντι;’

[d] Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ τί μάλιστα μάθημα ἐν Σπάρτῃ ἀσκεῖται ‘τὸ γινώσκειν’ εἶπεν ‘ἄρχειν τε καὶ ἄρχεσθαι.’

Οὐκ ἔφη δὲ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἐρωτᾶν πόσοι εἰσὶν οἱ πολέμιοι, ἀλλὰ ποῦ εἰσίν.

Ἐν δὲ Μαντινείᾳ κωλυόμενος διαμάχεσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις πλείοσιν οὖσιν, εἶπεν ‘ἀνάγκη πολλοῖς μάχεσθαι τὸν ἄρχειν πολλῶν βουλόμενον.’

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος πόσοι εἰσὶν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι, ‘ὅσοι ἱκανοί’ εἶπε ‘τοὺς κακοὺς ἀπερύκειν.’

Διερχόμενος δὲ τὰ τῶν Κορινθίων τείχη καὶ θεασάμενος ὑψηλά τε καὶ ὀχυρὰ ἐπὶ πολύ τε παρατείνοντα, ‘τίνες’ εἶπεν ‘αἱ τὸν τόπον κατοικοῦσαι γυναῖκες;’

[e] Σοφιστοῦ δέ τινος εἰπόντος ‘πάντων λόγος ἐστὶ κράτιστον’, ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘σὺ ἐὰν σιωπᾷς οὐδενὸς ἄξιος εἶ.’

Ὡς δ’ Ἀργεῖοι μετὰ τὴν ἧτταν ἀπήντων αὐτῷ πάλιν θρασύτερον, ταρασσομένους ὁρῶν τοὺς συμμάχους ‘θαρρεῖτε’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ ἄνδρες· ὅπου γὰρ ἡμεῖς οἱ νικῶντες ὀρρωδοῦμεν, τί δοκεῖτε ποιεῖν τοὺς ὑφ’ ἡμῶν νενικημένους;’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἐκ τῶν Ἀβδήρων πρεσβευτήν, ὅτε κατεπαύσατο πολλ’ εἰπών, ἐρωτῶντα τί τοῖς πολίταις ἀπαγγείλῃ, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘ὅσον σὺ χρόνον λέγειν ἔχρῃζες, τοσοῦτον ἐγὼ σιωπῶν ἤκουον.’

Ἐπαινούντων δέ τινων Ἠλείους, ὅτι δικαιότατοί [f] εἰσι περὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα τῶν Ὀλυμπίων, ‘καὶ τί μέγα’ εἶπεν ‘ἢ θαυμαστὸν ποιοῦσιν, εἰ ἐν ἔτεσι πέντε μιᾷ μόνον ἡμέρᾳ δικαιοσύνῃ χρῶνται;’

Πρὸς δὲ τοὺς φάσκοντας ὅτι φθονοῦσί τινες αὐτῷ τῶν ἐκ τῆς ἑτέρας οἰκίας, ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘τὰ ἴδι’ αὐτοὺς κακὰ λυπήσει, καὶ πρὸς τούτοις τά τ’ ἐμὰ καὶ τὰ τῶν ἐμῶν φίλων ἀγαθά.’

Συμβουλεύοντος δέ τινος ὅτι δεῖ τοῖς φεύγουσι τῶν πολεμίων διδόναι δίοδον, ‘καὶ πῶς’ ἔφη ‘τοῖς διὰ δειλίαν φεύγουσι μὴ μαχόμενοι τοῖς δι’ ἀνδρείαν μένουσι μαχησόμεθα;’

[216] [a] Προφερομένου δέ τινος περὶ τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐλευθερίας οὐκ ἀγεννῆ μὲν δυσχερῆ δ’ ἐπιτελεσθῆναι, ‘προσδέονταί σου, ὦ ξένε,’ ἔφη ‘οἱ λόγοι δυνάμεως καὶ χρημάτων.’

Λέγοντος δέ τινος ὅτι Φίλιππος αὐτοῖς ἀνεπίβατον τὴν Ἑλλάδα ποιήσει, ‘ἱκανὴ ἡμῖν’ ἔφη, ‘ὦ ξένε, ἡ ἐν τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἀναστροφή.’

Πρεσβευτὴς ἐκ Περίνθου παραγενόμενος εἰς Λακεδαίμον’ ἐμακρολόγει· ὡς δ’ ἐπαύσατο λέγων καὶ ἠρώτα τὸν Ἆγιν τί δεῖ τοῖς Περινθίοις ἀπαγγεῖλαι, ‘τί δ’ ἄλλ’’ ἔφη ‘ἢ ὅτι σὺ μὲν μόγις ἐπαύσω λέγων, ἐγὼ δὲ σιωπῶν;’

Πρεσβεύων δὲ μόνος ἧκε πρὸς Φίλιππον· εἰπόντος [b] δ’ ἐκείνου ‘τί τοῦτο; μόνος ἥκεις;’ ἔφη ‘καὶ γὰρ πρὸς ἕνα.’

Φήσαντος δέ τινος τῶν πρεσβυτέρων πρὸς αὐτὸν γηραιὸν ὄντα, ἐπειδὴ τὰ ἀρχαῖα νόμιμα ἐκλυόμενα ἑώρα ἄλλα δὲ παρεισδυόμενα μοχθηρά, διὰ τί τὰ ἄνω κάτω [ἤδη] γίνεται ἐν τῇ Σπάρτῃ, παίζων εἶπε ‘κατὰ λόγον οὕτω προβαίνει τὰ πράγματα, εἰ τοῦτο γίνεται· καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ παῖς ὢν ἤκουον παρὰ τοῦ πατρός, ὅτι τὰ ἄνω κάτω γέγονε παρ’ αὐτοῖς· ἔφη δὲ καὶ τὸν πατέρ’ αὐτῷ παιδὶ ὄντι τοῦτ’ εἰρηκέναι· ὥστ’ οὐ χρὴ θαυμάζειν, εἰ χείρω τὰ μετὰ ταῦτα τῶν προτέρων, ἀλλ’ εἴ που βελτίω καὶ παραπλήσια γένοιτο.’

[c] Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ πῶς ἄν τις ἐλεύθερος διαμένοι, ‘θανάτου καταφρονῶν’ ἔφη.

ΑΓΙΣ Ο ΝΕΩΤΕΡΟΣ

Ἆγις ὁ νεώτερος, Δημάδου λέγοντος ὅτι τὰ Λακωνικὰ ξίφη διὰ μικρότητα καταπίνουσιν οἱ θαυματοποιοί, ‘καὶ μήν’ ἔφη ‘οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῶν πολεμίων τοῖς ξίφεσιν ἐφικνοῦνται.’

Πρὸς δ’ ἄνθρωπον πονηρὸν ἐρωτῶντα πολλάκις τίς ἄριστος εἴη Σπαρτιάτης ‘ὁ σοὶ ἀνομοιότατος.’

ΑΓΙΣ Ο ΤΕΛΕΥΤΑΙΟΣ

Ἆγις ὁ τελευταῖος τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων βασιλεὺς ἐξ ἐνέδρας συλληφθεὶς καὶ καταδικασθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν ἐφόρων [d] χωρὶς δίκης, ἀπαγόμενος ἐπὶ τὸν βρόχον ἰδών τινα τῶν ὑπηρετῶν κλαίοντα, ‘παῦσαι’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ ἄνθρωπε, ἐπ’ ἐμοὶ κλαίων· καὶ γὰρ οὕτω παρανόμως καὶ ἀδίκως ἀπολλύμενος κρείσσων εἰμὶ τῶν ἀναιρούντων.’ καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν παρέδωκε τῷ βρόχῳ τὸν τράχηλον ἑκουσίως.

ΑΚΡΟΤΑΤΟΣ

Ἀκρότατος, ἐπεὶ οἱ γονεῖς αὐτὸν ἄδικόν τι συμπρᾶξαι αὐτοῖς ἠξίουν, μέχρι τινὸς ἀντέλεγεν· ὡς δ’ ἐνέκειντο, εἶπεν ‘ἕως μὲν παρ’ ὑμῖν ἦν, οὐκ ἠπιστάμην δικαιοσύνης οὐδεμίαν ἔννοιαν· ἐπεὶ δέ με τῇ πατρίδι παρέδοτε καὶ τοῖς ταύτης νομίμοις, ἔτι τε δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ καλοκαγαθίᾳ ἐπαιδεύσατε ὡς ἠδύνασθε, τούτοις πειράσομαι ‹οὐχ [e] ἧττον› ἢ ὑμῖν ἕπεσθαι· καὶ ἐπεί ‹με› θέλετε ‹τὰ› ἄριστα πράττειν, ἄριστα δὲ τὰ δίκαιά ἐστι καὶ ἰδιώτῃ καὶ πολὺ μᾶλλον ἄρχοντι, πράξω ἃ θέλετε· ἃ δὲ λέγετε παραιτήσομαι.’

ΑΛΚΑΜΕΝΗΣ Ο ΤΗΛΕΚΛΟΥ

Ἀλκαμένης ὁ Τηλέκλου, πυθομένου τινὸς πῶς ἄν τις ἄριστα βασιλείαν διατηροίη, ‘εἰ περὶ πλείονος’ ἔφη ‘τὸ κέρδος μὴ ποιοῖτο.’

Ἑτέρου δ’ ἐπιζητοῦντος διὰ τί παρὰ Μεσσηνίων δῶρα οὐκ ἐδέξατο, ‘ὅτι λαβόντος μου’ ἔφη ‘πρὸς τοὺς νόμους εἰρήνην ἄγειν ἀδύνατον.’

Λέγοντος δέ τινος ὅτι συνεσταλμένως ζῇ ἱκανὴν οὐσίαν κεκτημένος, ‘καλὸν γάρ’ ἔφη ‘πολλὰ κεκτημένον ζῆν κατὰ λογισμὸν καὶ μὴ κατὰ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν.’

ΑΝΑΞΑΝΔΡΙΔΑΣ

Ἀναξανδρίδας ὁ Λέοντος πρὸς τὸν δυσφοροῦντα διὰ τὴν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως αὐτῷ γενομένην φυγήν ‘ὦ λῷστε’ ἔφη, ‘μὴ τὴν πόλιν φεύγων ὀρρώδει, ἀλλὰ τὴν δικαιοσύνην.’

Τῷ δὲ τοῖς ἐφόροις τὰ δέοντα μὲν λέγοντι πλείω δὲ τῶν ἱκανῶν ‘ὦ ξένε’ ἔφη, ‘οὐκ ἐν δέοντι τῷ δέοντι χρῇ.’

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος διὰ τί τοῖς εἵλωσι τοὺς [217] [a] ἀγροὺς ἐγχειρίζουσι καὶ οὐκ αὐτοὶ ἐπιμελοῦνται, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘οὐ τούτων ἐπιμελούμενοι ἀλλ’ αὑτῶν αὐτοὺς ἐκτησάμεθα.’

Ἑτέρου δέ τινος λέγοντος, ὅτι βλάπτουσιν αἱ δόξαι καὶ ὅτι τούτων ὁ ἀπαλλαγεὶς εὐδαιμονήσει, ‘οὐκοῦν οἱ τὰ ἄδικα ποιοῦντες’ ἔφη ‘κατὰ τὸν σὸν λόγον εὐδαίμονες ἂν εἶεν· πῶς γὰρ ἄν τις ἱεροσυλῶν ἢ ἀδικῶν δόξης ἐπιμελοῖτο;’

Ἄλλου δ’ ἐρωτῶντος διὰ τί ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις Σπαρτιᾶται θαρραλέως κινδυνεύουσιν, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘αἰδεῖσθαι περὶ βίου μελετῶμεν, οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ ἄλλοι φοβεῖσθαι.’

Ἐρωτῶντος δέ τινος αὐτὸν διὰ τί τὰς περὶ θανάτου δίκας πλείοσιν ἡμέραις οἱ γέροντες κρίνουσι, κἂν ἀποφύγῃ [b] τις, οὐδὲν ἧσσόν ἐστιν ὑπόδικος, ‘πολλαῖς μὲν ἡμέραις’ ἔφη ‘κρίνουσιν, ὅτι περὶ θανάτου τοῖς διαμαρτάνουσιν οὐκ ἔστι μεταβουλεύσασθαι· νόμῳ δ’ ὑπόδικον δεήσει εἶναι, διότι κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν νόμον ἂν εἴη καὶ τὸ κρείττονα βουλεύσασθαι.’

ΑΝΑΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ Ο ΕΥΡΥΚΡΑΤΕΟΣ

Ἀνάξανδρος ὁ Εὐρυκράτεος, πυνθανομένου τινὸς διὰ τί χρήματα οὐ συνάγουσιν εἰς τὸ δημόσιον, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘μὴ οἱ φύλακες αὐτῶν γινόμενοι διαφθείρωνται.’

ΑΝΑΞΙΛΑΣ

Ἀναξίλας πρὸς τὸν θαυμάζοντα διὰ τί οἱ ἔφοροι τοῖς [c] βασιλεῦσιν οὐχ ὑπεξανίστανται, καὶ ταῦτα ὑπὸ τῶν βασιλέων καθισταμένοι, ‘διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν’ ἔφη ‘δι’ ἣν καὶ ἐφορεύουσιν.’

ΑΝΔΡΟΚΛΕΙΔΑΣ

Ἀνδροκλείδας ὁ Λάκων πηρωθεὶς τὸ σκέλος κατέταξεν αὑτὸν εἰς τοὺς πολεμιστάς· ὡς δ’ ἐνίσταντό τινες διακωλύοντες ὅτι ἐπεπήρωτο, ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ φεύγοντα’ εἶπε ‘μένοντα δὲ δεῖ τοῖς ἀντιτεταγμένοις μάχεσθαι.’

ΑΝΤΑΛΚΙΔΑΣ

Ἀνταλκίδας ἐν Σαμοθρᾴκῃ μυούμενος, ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ ἱερέως τί δεινότερον δέδρακεν ἐν τῷ βίῳ, ‘εἴ τί μοι πέπρακται τοιοῦτον, εἴσονται’ εἶπεν ‘αὐτοὶ οἱ θεοί.’

[d] Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἀμαθεῖς καλοῦντα τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους Ἀθηναῖον ‘μόνοι γοῦν’ εἶπεν ‘ἡμεῖς οὐδὲν μεμαθήκαμεν παρ’ ὑμῶν κακόν.’

Ἑτέρου δ’ Ἀθηναίου πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν ἡμεῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ Κηφισοῦ πολλάκις ὑμᾶς ἐδιώξαμεν’, ‘ἡμεῖς δέ’ ἔφη ‘οὐδέποτε ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ Εὐρώτα.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ πῶς ἄν τις μάλιστα ἀρέσκοι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ‘εἰ ἥδιστα μέν’ ἔφη ‘αὐτοῖς διαλέγοιτο, ὠφελιμώτατα δὲ προσφέροιτο.’

Σοφιστοῦ δέ τινος μέλλοντος ἀναγινώσκειν ἐγκώμιον Ἡρακλέους, ‘τίς γὰρ αὐτόν’ ἔφη ‘ψέγει;’

Πρὸς δ’ Ἀγησίλαον πληγέντα ἐν μάχῃ ὑπὸ Θηβαίων ‘ἀπέχεις’ εἶπε ‘τὰ διδασκάλια, μὴ βουλομένους [e] αὐτοὺς μηδ’ ἐπισταμένους μάχεσθαι διδάξας.’ ἐδόκουν γὰρ ταῖς συνεχέσιν ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου στρατείαις μάχιμοι γεγονέναι.

Τείχη δ’ ἔλεγεν εἶναι τῆς Σπάρτης τοὺς νέους, ὅρια δὲ τὰς ἐπιδορατίδας.

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἐπιζητοῦντα διὰ τί ἐγχειριδίοις βραχέσι κατὰ πόλεμον χρῶνται Λακεδαιμόνιοι, ‘διότι’ εἶπε ‘πλησίον τοῖς πολεμίοις μαχόμεθα.’

ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΣ

Ἀντίοχος ἐφορεύων ὡς ἤκουσεν ὅτι Μεσσηνίοις Φίλιππος τὴν χώραν ἔδωκεν, ἠρώτησεν, εἰ καὶ δύναμιν αὐτοῖς παρέσχετο ὥστε μαχομένους περὶ τῆς χώρας κρατεῖν.

ΑΡΕΥΣ

[f] Ἄρευς, ἐπαινούντων τινῶν οὐκ ἰδίας ἀλλά τινας τῶν ἀλλοτρίων γυναικῶν, ‘μὰ τοὺς θεούς’ εἶπε ‘περὶ τῶν καλῶν κἀγαθῶν γυναικῶν οὐδένα δεῖ λόγον [εἰκῆ] λέγεσθαι, ἀγνοεῖσθαι δ’ αὐτὰς τὸ παράπαν, ὁποῖαι τυγχάνουσι, πλὴν μόνοις τοῖς συμβιοῦσι.’

Διὰ Σελινοῦντος δέ ποτε τῆς Σικελίας πορευόμενος ἰδὼν ἐπὶ μνήματος ἐλεγεῖον ἐπιγεγραμμένον (41 Preger)

‘σβεννύντας ποτὲ τούσδε τυραννίδα χάλκεος Ἄρης

εἷλε· Σελινοῦντος δ’ ἀμφὶ πύλας ἔθανον’,

‘δικαίως’ ἔφη ‘ἀπεθάνετε τυραννίδα καιομένην ἀποσβεννύναι ἐπιχειρήσαντες· τοὐναντίον γὰρ ἔδει ὅλην αὐτὴν ἀφεῖναι κατακαῆναι.’

ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝ

[218] [a] Ἀρίστων, ἐπαινοῦντός τινος τὴν τοῦ Κλεομένους χρείαν, ὅτι ἐρωτηθεὶς τί δεῖ τὸν ἀγαθὸν βασιλέα ποιεῖν εἶπε τοὺς μὲν φίλους εὐεργετεῖν τοὺς δ’ ἐχθροὺς κακῶς ποιεῖν· ‘καὶ πόσῳ κρεῖσσον’ ἔφη, ‘ὦ λῷστε, τοὺς μὲν φίλους εὐεργετεῖν τοὺς δ’ ἐχθροὺς φίλους ποιεῖν;’ (αὕτη Σωκράτους ὁμολογουμένη πρὸς πάντων χρεία οὖσα καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἀναφέρεται.)

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος πόσοι Σπαρτιᾶται τὸ πλῆθος, ‘ὅσοι ἱκανοί’ εἶπε ‘τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ἀπερύκειν.’

Τῶν Ἀθηναίων δέ τινος ἔπαινον ἐπιτάφιον ἀναγινώσκοντος [b] τῶν πεσόντων ὑπὸ Λακεδαιμονίων, ‘ποδαποὺς οὖν’ ἔφη ‘τοὺς ἡμετέρους νομίζεις εἶναι νικήσαντας τούτους;’

ΑΡΧΙΔΑΜΙΔΑΣ

Ἀρχιδαμίδας πρὸς τὸν ἐπαινοῦντα Χαρίλαν, ὅτι πρὸς ἅπαντας ὁμοίως πρᾶος ἦν, ‘καὶ πῶς τις’ ἔφη ‘δικαίως ἂν ἐπαινοῖτο, εἰ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς πονηροὺς πρᾶος εἴη;’

Μεμφομένου δέ τινος Ἑκαταῖον τὸν σοφιστήν, ὅτι παραληφθεὶς εἰς τὸ συσσίτιον αὐτῶν οὐδὲν ἔλεγεν, ‘ἀγνοεῖν μοι δοκεῖς, ὅτι ὁ εἰδὼς λόγον’ εἶπε ‘καὶ τὸν τοῦ λέγειν καιρὸν οἶδεν.’

ΑΡΧΙΔΑΜΟΣ Ο ΖΕΥΞΙΔΑΜΟΥ

[c] Ἀρχίδαμος ὁ Ζευξιδάμου, πυθομένου τινὸς αὐτοῦ τίνες προεστήκασι τῆς Σπάρτης, ‘οἱ νόμοι καὶ τὰ ἀρχεῖα’ ἔφη ‘κατὰ τοὺς νόμους’.

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἐπαινοῦντα κιθαρῳδὸν καὶ θαυμάζοντα τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ ‘ὦ λῷστε’ ἔφη ‘ποῖον γέρας παρὰ σοῦ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἔσται, ὅταν κιθαρῳδὸν οὕτως ἐπαινῇς;’

Ἐπεὶ δέ τις αὐτῷ συνιστὰς ψάλτην εἶπεν ‘οὗτος ἀγαθὸς ψάλτης ἐστίν’, ‘παρ’ ἡμῖν δέ γε οὗτος’ ἔφη ‘ἀγαθὸς ζωμοποιός’, ὡς οὐδὲν διαφέρον ‹τὸ› δι’ ὀργάνων φωνῆς ἡδονὴν ἐμποιεῖν τῆς δι’ ὄψων καὶ ζωμοῦ σκευασίας.

[Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ διὰ τί μικροῖς τοῖς ἐγχειριδίοις χρῶνται ‘ὅτι τῶν ἄλλων’ ἔφη ‘τοῖς πολεμίοις ἔγγιον προσπελάζομεν.’] [Πονηροῦ δέ τινος αὐτὸν ἐρωτήσαντος, τίς ἐστι Σπαρτιατῶν ἐπιεικέστατος, ‘ὁ σοί’ ἔφη ‘μηδὲν παρόμοιος.’]

Ὑπισχνουμένου δέ τινος αὐτῷ τὸν οἶνον ἡδὺν ποιήσειν, ‘πρὸς τί;’ ἔφη ‘καὶ γὰρ δαπανηθήσεται πλείων καὶ ποιήσει τὰ ἀνδρεῖα ἀχρηστότερα.’

[d] Ἐπιὼν δὲ τὴν Κορινθίων πόλιν μετὰ στρατεύματος εἶδεν ἔκ του περὶ τὸ τεῖχος τόπου λαγωοὺς ἀναστάντας· εἶπεν οὖν πρὸς τοὺς συστρατιώτας· ‘εὐάλωτοι ἡμῖν οἱ πολέμιοί εἰσι.’

Δύο δέ τινων διαιτητὴν αὐτὸν λαβόντων, ἀγαγὼν εἰς τὸ τῆς Χαλκιοίκου τέμενος ἐξώρκισεν ἐμμεῖναι τοῖς κριθεῖσιν αὐτούς· ὀμοσάντων δ’ ἐκείνων ‘κρίνω τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘μὴ πρότερον ἀπελθεῖν ὑμᾶς ἐκ τοῦ τεμένους, πρὶν ἂν τὰ πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαλύσησθε.’

Ταῖς δὲ θυγατράσιν αὐτοῦ ἱματισμὸν πολυτελῆ Διονυσίου [e] τοῦ Σικελίας τυράννου πέμψαντος, οὐκ ἐδέξατο εἰπών ‘φοβοῦμαι μὴ περιθέμεναι αἱ κόραι φανῶσί μοι αἰσχραί.’

Θεασάμενος δὲ τὸν υἱὸν προπετῶς μαχόμενον Ἀθηναίοις ‘ἢ τῇ δυνάμει πρόσθες’ ἔφη ‘ἢ τοῦ φρονήματος ὕφες.’

ΑΡΧΙΔΑΜΟΣ Ο ΑΓΗΣΙΛΑΟΥ

Ἀρχίδαμος ὁ Ἀγησιλάου, Φιλίππου μετὰ τὴν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ μάχην σκληροτέραν αὐτῷ ἐπιστολὴν γράψαντος, ἀντέγραψεν ‘εἰ μετρήσαις τὴν σαυτοῦ σκιάν, οὐκ ἂν εὕροις αὐτὴν μείζονα γεγενημένην ἢ πρὶν νικᾶν.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ πόσης χώρας κρατοῦσιν ‹οἱ› Σπαρτιᾶται [f] ‘ὅσης ἄν’ ἔφη ‘τῷ δόρατι ἐφικνῶνται.’

Περιάνδρου δὲ τοῦ ἰατροῦ ἀξιολόγου κατὰ τέχνην ὄντος καὶ ἐπαινουμένου ἐς τὰ μάλιστα, φαῦλα δὲ ποιήματα γράφοντος, ‘τί δήποτε, ὦ Περίανδρε’ εἶπεν, ‘ἀντὶ χαρίεντος ἰατροῦ κακὸς ποιητὴς καλεῖσθαι ἐπιθυμεῖς;’

Ἐν δὲ τῷ πρὸς Φίλιππον πολέμῳ συμβουλευόντων τινῶν ὅτι πόρρω τῆς οἰκείας τὴν μάχην συνάπτειν δεῖ, ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ τοῦτο’ ἔφη ‘ὁρᾶν δεῖ, ἀλλ’ εἰ μαχόμενοι κρείσσονες τῶν πολεμίων ἐσόμεθα.’

Πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἐπαινοῦντας αὐτόν, ὅτε τὴν πρὸς τοὺς Ἀρκάδας μάχην ἐνίκησε, ‘βέλτιον ἂν ἦν, εἰ τῇ φρονήσει’ ἔφη ‘αὐτοὺς ἐνικῶμεν μᾶλλον ἢ τῇ ἰσχύι.’

[219] [a] Ὅτε δ’ εἰς Ἀρκαδίαν ἐνέβαλε, πυθόμενος βοηθεῖν αὐτοῖς Ἠλείους ἐπέστειλεν αὐτοῖς ‘Ἀρχίδαμος Ἠλείοις· καλὸν ἡσυχία.’

Τῶν δὲ συμμάχων ἐν τῷ Πελοποννησιακῷ πολέμῳ ἐπιζητούντων, πόσα χρήματα ἀρκέσει, καὶ ἀξιούντων ὁρίσαι τοὺς φόρους, ‘ὁ πόλεμος’ ἔφη ‘οὐ τεταγμένα ζητεῖ.’

Καταπελτικὸν δ’ ἰδὼν βέλος τότε πρῶτον ἐκ Σικελίας κομισθὲν ἀνεβόησεν ‘Ἡράκλεις, ἀπόλωλεν ἀνδρὸς ἁρετά.’

Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐκ ἐβούλοντο οἱ Ἕλληνες πείθεσθαι αὐτῷ καὶ λῦσαι τὰς πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον καὶ Κρατερὸν τοὺς Μακεδόνας ὁμολογίας καὶ ἐλεύθεροι εἶναι, ὡς χαλεπωτέρων [b] ἐσομένων Λακεδαιμονίων ἢ Μακεδόνων, εἶπε ‘πρόβατον μὲν ἀεὶ τὴν αὐτὴν φθέγγεται φωνήν, ἄνθρωπος δὲ πολλὰς καὶ ποικίλας, ἕως ἂν τὸ δόξαν ἐπιτελέσῃ.’

ΑΣΤΥΚΡΑΤΙΔΑΣ

Ἀστυκρατίδας, εἰπόντος τινὸς αὐτῷ μετὰ τὸ ἡττηθῆναι Ἆγιν τὸν βασιλέα ἐν τῇ πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον μάχῃ περὶ Μεγάλην πόλιν ‘τί ποιήσετε, ὦ Λακεδαιμόνιοι; ἦ δουλεύσετε Μακεδόσιν;’ εἶπε ‘τί δέ; κωλῦσαι ἂν δύναιτο Ἀντίπατρος μαχομένους ἡμᾶς ἀποθανεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς Σπάρτης;’

‹ΑΝΑΞΙ›ΒΙΟΣ

[c] ‹Ἀναξί›βιος ἐνεδρευθεὶς ὑπὸ Ἰφικράτους τοῦ Ἀθηναίων στρατηγοῦ καὶ ἐρωτώμενος ὑπὸ τῶν στρατιωτῶν τί δεῖ ποεῖν, ‘τί γὰρ ἄλλο’ ἔφη ‘ἢ ὑμᾶς μὲν σῴζεσθαι, ἐμὲ δὲ μαχόμενον ἀποθανεῖν;’

ΒΡΑΣΙΔΑΣ

Βρασίδας ἐν ἰσχάσι συλλαβὼν μῦν καὶ δηχθεὶς ἀφῆκεν· εἶτα πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ‘οὐδὲν οὕτως’ ἔφη ‘μικρόν ἐστιν, ὃ οὐ σῴζεται τολμῶν ἀμύνεσθαι τοὺς ἐπιχειροῦντας.’

Ἐν δέ τινι μάχῃ διὰ τῆς ἀσπίδος ἀκοντισθεὶς καὶ τὸ δόρυ τοῦ τραύματος ἐξελκύσας αὐτῷ τούτῳ τὸν πολέμιον ἀπέκτεινε καὶ πῶς ἐτρώθη ἐρωτηθείς ‘προδούσης με’ ἔφη ‘τῆς ἀσπίδος.’

[Παρακαλούμενος δὲ ὑπό τινος ἀκοῦσαι σοφιστοῦ τὸν παρακαλοῦντα ἤρετο, τί ἐπιδείκνυσθαι μέλλει. κἀκεῖνος εἶπεν ‘Ἡρακλέους ἐγκώμιον.’ καὶ ὅς· ‘τίς γὰρ ψέγει τὸν θεὸν τοῦτον;’]

[d] Ἐξελθὼν δ’ ἐπὶ πόλεμον ἔγραψε τοῖς ἐφόροις ‘ἅσσα δήλομαι πράξω κατὰ πόλεμον ἢ τεθναξοῦμαι.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ συνέβη πεσεῖν αὐτὸν ἐλευθεροῦντα τοὺς ἐπὶ Θρᾴκης Ἕλληνας, οἱ δὲ πεμφθέντες εἰς Λακεδαίμονα πρέσβεις τῇ μητρὶ αὐτοῦ Ἀρχιλεωνίδι προσῆλθον, πρῶτον μὲν ἠρώτησεν εἰ καλῶς ὁ Βρασίδας ἐτελεύτησεν, ἐγκωμιαζόντων δὲ τῶν Θρᾳκῶν καὶ λεγόντων ὡς οὐδεὶς ἄλλος ἐστὶ τοιοῦτος, ‘ἀγνοεῖτε’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ ξένοι· Βρασίδας γὰρ ἦν μὲν ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός, πολλοὺς δ’ ἐκείνου κρείσσονας ἔχει ἡ Σπάρτη.’

ΔΑΜΩΝΙΔΑΣ

[e] Δαμωνίδας ταχθεὶς ἔσχατος τοῦ χοροῦ ὑπὸ τοῦ τὸν χορὸν ἱστάντος ‘εὖγε’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ χοραγέ, ἐξεῦρες πῶς καὶ αὕτη ἡ χώρα ἄτιμος οὖσα ἔντιμος γένηται.’

ΔΑΜΙΣ

Δᾶμις πρὸς τὰ ἐπισταλέντα περὶ τοῦ Ἀλέξανδρον θεὸν εἶναι ψηφίσασθαι, ‘συγχωρῶμεν’ ἔφη ‘Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, ἐὰν θέλῃ, θεὸς καλεῖσθαι.’

ΔΑΜΙΝΔΑΣ

Δαμίνδας, Φιλίππου ἐμβαλόντος εἰς Πελοπόννησον καὶ εἰπόντος τινός ‘κινδυνεύουσι δεινὰ παθεῖν Λακεδαιμόνιοι, εἰ μὴ τὰς πρὸς αὐτὸν διαλλαγὰς ποιήσονται,’ ‘ἀνδρόγυνε’ εἶπε, ‘τί δ’ ἂν πάθοιμεν δεινὸν θανάτου καταφρονήσαντες;’

[f]

ΔΕΡΚΥΛΛΙΔΑΣ

Δερκυλλίδας, Πύρρου τὴν στρατιὰν ἐπὶ τῆς Σπαρτιάτιδος ἔχοντος, πεμφθεὶς πρὸς αὐτὸν πρεσβευτής, τοῦ Πύρρου προστάττοντος καταδέχεσθαι τὸν βασιλέα αὐτῶν Κλεώνυμον ἢ γνώσεσθαι ὡς οὐδενὸς τῶν ἄλλων ἀνδρειότεροι τυγχάνουσιν, ὑποτυχὼν εἶπεν ‘εἰ μὲν θεός ἐστιν, οὐ φοβούμεθα· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἀδικοῦμεν· εἰ δ’ ἄνθρωπος, οὐχ ἡμῶν γε κρείσσων.’

ΔΗΜΑΡΑΤΟΣ

Δημάρατος, Ὀρόντου πρὸς αὐτὸν σκληρότερον ὁμιλήσαντος [220] [a] καὶ εἰπόντος τινός ‘σκληρῶς σοι κέχρηται Ὀρόντης, ὦ Δημάρατε’, ‘οὐδὲν ἥμαρτεν εἰς ἐμέ’ εἶπεν· ‘οἱ γὰρ πρὸς χάριν ὁμιλοῦντες βλάπτουσιν, οὐχ οἱ μετ’ ἀπεχθείας.’

Ἐρωτήσαντος δέ τινος διὰ τί τοὺς μὲν τὰς ἀσπίδας παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἀποβαλόντας ἀτιμοῦσι, τοὺς δὲ τὰ κράνη καὶ τοὺς θώρακας οὐκέτι, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘ταῦτα μὲν ἑαυτῶν χάριν περιτίθενται· τὴν δ’ ἀσπίδα τῆς κοινῆς τάξεως ἕνεκα.’

Ψάλτου δ’ ἀκροώμενος ‘οὐ κακῶς’ εἶπε ‘φαίνεταί μοι φλυαρεῖν.’

Ἐν δέ τινι συνεδρίῳ ἐρωτώμενος πότερον διὰ μωρίαν ἢ δι’ ἀπορίαν λόγων σιωπᾷ, ‘ἀλλ’ ὅ γε μωρὸς οὐκ ἂν δύναιτο σιγᾶν’ ἔφη.

[b] Πυθομένου δέ τινος διὰ τί φεύγει τὴν Σπάρτην βασιλεὺς ὤν, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘κρείσσονες αὐτῆς οἱ νόμοι εἰσί.’

Τῶν δὲ Περσῶν τινος διὰ τὸ συνεχὲς τῆς δωροδοκίας τὸν ἐρώμενον αὐτοῦ ἀπαγαγόντος καὶ λέγοντος ‘ὦ Λάκων, τεθήρευκά σου τὸν ἐρώμενον’, ‘μὰ τοὺς θεούς’ ἔφη ‘οὐχὶ σύ γε, ἀλλ’ ἠγόρακας.’

Ἀποστάντος δέ τινος τῶν Περσῶν τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ μεταπεισθέντος ὑπὸ Δημαράτου ἐπανελθεῖν καὶ μέλλοντος τοῦ βασιλέως τὸν Πέρσην διαχειρίζεσθαι, ‘αἰσχρόν’ ἔφη, ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ, ὅτε μὲν ἐχθρὸς ἦν σοι, μὴ δύνασθαι δίκην τῆς ἀποστάσεως παρ’ αὐτοῦ λαβεῖν, ὅτε δὲ φίλος γέγονεν, ἀποκτείνειν.’

[c] Πρὸς δὲ τὸν παρασιτοῦντα τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ περὶ τῆς φυγῆς πολλάκις ἐπισκώπτοντα αὐτόν ‘οὐ μαχοῦμαί σοι’ ἔφη, ‘ὦ ξένε· κατανάλωκα γὰρ τὴν τοῦ βίου τάξιν.’

ΕΚΠΡΕΠΗΣ

Ἐκπρέπης ἔφορος Φρύνιδος τοῦ μουσικοῦ σκεπάρνῳ τὰς δύο τῶν ἐννέα ‹χορδῶν› ἐξέτεμεν, εἰπών ‘μὴ κακούργει τὴν μουσικήν.’

ΕΠΑΙΝΕΤΟΣ

Ἐπαίνετος πάντων ἔφη τοὺς ψεύστας τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων καὶ τῶν ἀδικημάτων αἰτίους εἶναι.

ΕΥΒΟΙΔΑΣ

Εὐβοίδας ἀκούων τινῶν ἐπαινούντων γυναῖκα ἀλλοτρίαν [d] οὐκ ἀπεδέχετο, φήσας ὅλως περὶ γυναικείας φύσεως παρὰ τοῖς ἔξω λόγον εἶναι οὐδένα δεῖ‹ν›.

ΕΥΔΑΜΙΔΑΣ Ο ΑΡΧΙΔΑΜΟΥ

Εὐδαμίδας ὁ Ἀρχιδάμου, ἀδελφὸς δ’ Ἄγιδος, ἰδὼν ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ Ξενοκράτην πρεσβύτερον ἤδη μετὰ τῶν γνωρίμων φιλοσοφοῦντα, ἐπύθετο τίς ὁ πρεσβύτης· φαμένου δέ τινος ὅτι σοφὸς ἀνὴρ καὶ τῶν ζητούντων τὴν ἀρετήν, ‘καὶ πότε’ ἔφη ‘χρήσεται αὐτῇ, ἐὰν ἔτι ζητῇ;’

Ἀκούσας δὲ φιλοσόφου διαλεχθέντος ὅτι μόνος ἀγαθὸς στρατηγὸς ὁ σοφός ἐστιν, ‘ὁ μὲν λόγος’ ἔφη ‘θαυμαστός· [e] ὁ δὲ λέγων ἄπιστος· οὐ γὰρ περισεσάλπιγκται.’

Τὴν θέσιν δὲ Ξενοκράτους εἰρηκότος καὶ καταπαυομένου, παρῆν ὁ Εὐδαμίδας· ὡς δ’ εἶπέ τις τῶν μετ’ αὐτοῦ ‘ὅτε πάρεσμεν ἡμεῖς, τότε πέπαυται·’ ‘καλῶς γε’ ἔφη ‘εἴπερ ἤδη ἔλεξε ταῦτα ἃ ἔχρῃζε·’ τοῦ δ’ εἰπόντος ‘καλὸν ἦν ἀκοῦσαι’ ‘ἦ καὶ πρὸς δεδειπνηκότα μολόντες’ εἶπεν ‘ἠξιοῦμεν ‹ἂν› πάλιν αὐτὸν δειπνεῖν;’

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος διὰ τί, τῶν πολιτῶν αἱρουμένων τὸν πρὸς Μακεδόνας πόλεμον, αὐτὸς ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν δοκιμάζει, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘οὐ χρῄζω ψευδομένους αὐτοὺς ἐλέγξαι.’

Ἑτέρου δὲ προφερομένου τὰ κατὰ Περσῶν ἀριστεῖα [f] καὶ προτρέποντος ἐπὶ τὸν πόλεμον, ‘ἀγνοεῖν’ ἔφη ‘μοι δοκεῖς γε, ὅτι ταὐτόν ἐστι ‹τῷ› χιλίων προβάτων κρατήσαντα πεντήκοντα λύκοις μάχεσθαι.’

Ψάλτου δέ τινος εὐημερήσαντος, ἠρώτησαν αὐτὸν ποδαπός τις αὐτῷ δοκεῖ εἶναι, ‘μέγας’ ἔφη ‘‹δει›κηλίκτας ἐν μικρῷ πράγματι.’

Ἐπαινοῦντος δέ τινος τὰς Ἀθήνας, ἔφη ‘καὶ τίς ἂν ταύτην τὴν πόλιν δεόντως ἐπαινοίη, ἣν οὐδεὶς ἔστερξε γενόμενος βελτίων;’

Ἀργείου δέ τινος λέγοντος, ὡς φαυλότεροι γίνονται κατὰ τὰς ἀποδημίας οἱ Λάκωνες ἐξιστάμενοι τῶν πατρίων νομίμων, [221] [a] ‘ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὑμεῖς γε’ ἔφη ‘εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην ἐλθόντες χείρονες ἀλλὰ βελτίονες γίνεσθε.’

Ἀλεξάνδρου δὲ κηρύξαντος ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ κατιέναι τοὺς φυγάδας ἅπαντας εἰς τὴν ἰδίαν πλὴν Θηβαίων, ‘ἀτυχὲς μέν’ ἔφη, ‘ὦ Θηβαῖοι, τὸ κήρυγμα ἀλλ’ ἔνδοξον· μόνους γὰρ ὑμᾶς φοβεῖται Ἀλέξανδρος.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ τίνος ἕνεκα πρὸ τῶν κινδύνων ταῖς Μούσαις σφαγιάζουσιν, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘αἱ πράξεις λόγων ἀγαθῶν τυγχάνωσιν.’

ΕΥΡΥΚΡΑΤΙΔΑΣ Ο ΑΝΑΞΑΝΔΡΙΔΟΥ

Εὐρυκρατίδας ὁ Ἀναξανδρίδου, πυνθανομένου τινὸς διὰ [b] τί τὰ περὶ τῶν συμβολαίων δίκαια ἑκάστης ἡμέρας κρίνουσιν οἱ ἔφοροι, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ἐν τοῖς πολεμίοις πιστεύωμεν ἀλλήλοις.’

ΖΕΥΞΙΔΑΜΟΣ

Ζευξίδαμος, πυνθανομένου τινὸς διὰ τί τοὺς περὶ τῆς ἀνδρείας νόμους ἀγράφους τηροῦσι καὶ τοῖς νέοις ἀπογραψάμενοι οὐ διδόασιν ἀναγινώσκειν, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘συνεθίζεσθαι [δεῖ] ταῖς ἀνδραγαθίαις κρεῖττον ἢ ταῖς γραφαῖς προσέχειν.’

Αἰτωλοῦ δέ τινος λέγοντος ὅτι τοῖς ἀνδραγαθεῖν βουλομένοις κρείσσων τῆς εἰρήνης ὁ πόλεμος, ‘οὐ μὰ [c] τοὺς θεούς’ ἔφη ‘ἀλλὰ τούτοις κρείσσων ὁ θάνατος τῆς ζωῆς.’

ΗΡΩΝΔΑΣ

Ἡρώνδας Ἀθήνησιν ἁλόντος τινὸς γραφὴν ἀργίας παρὼν καὶ πυθόμενος ἐκέλευσεν ἐπιδεῖξαι αὑτῷ τὸν τὴν ἐλευθερίας δίκην ἡττηθέντα.

ΘΕΑΡΙΔΑΣ

Θεαρίδας ξίφος ἀκονῶν καὶ ἐρωτώμενος, εἰ ὀξύ ἐστιν, εἶπεν ‘ὀξύτερον διαβολῆς.’

ΘΕΜΙΣΤΕΑΣ

Θεμιστέας προεῖπε μὲν Λεωνίδᾳ τῷ βασιλεῖ τὴν ἐσομένην ἀπώλειαν περὶ Θερμοπύλας αὐτοῦ τε καὶ τῶν συστρατευομένων αὐτῷ, μάντις ὤν· ἀποπεμπόμενος δὲ [d] ὑπὸ τοῦ Λεωνίδα εἰς τὴν Λακεδαίμονα, προφάσει τοῦ ἀπαγγεῖλαι τὰ συμβησόμενα ταῖς δ’ ἀληθείαις ἵνα μὴ παραπόληται, οὐκ ἠνέσχετο ἀλλ’ εἶπε ‘μαχητὴς ἐπέμφθην οὐκ ἀγγελιαφόρος.’

ΘΕΟΠΟΜΠΟΣ

Θεόπομπος πρὸς τὸν ἐρωτήσαντα πῶς ἄν τις ἀσφαλέστατα τηροίη τὴν βασιλείαν, ‘εἰ τοῖς μὲν φίλοις’ ἔφη ‘μεταδιδοίη παρρησίας δικαίας, τοὺς δ’ ἀρχομένους κατὰ δύναμιν μὴ περιορῴη ἀδικουμένους.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ξένον τὸν λέγοντα ὅτι παρὰ τοῖς αὑτοῦ πολίταις καλεῖται φιλολάκων, ‘κρεῖσσον’ ἔφη ‘ἦν σε φιλοπολίτην ἢ φιλολάκωνα καλεῖσθαι.’

[e] Τοῦ δ’ ἐκ τῆς Ἤλιδος πρεσβευτοῦ εἰπόντος ὅτι διὰ τοῦτ’ αὐτὸν ἐξαπέστειλαν οἱ πολῖται, ὅτι μόνος τὸν Λακωνικὸν ἐζήλωσε βίον, ‘καὶ πότερον,’ ἔφη, ‘ὦ Ἠλεῖε, ὁ σὸς ἢ ὁ τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν βίος βελτίων ἐστί;’ τοῦ δ’ εἰπόντος τὸν αὑτοῦ, ‘πῶς οὖν ἄν’ ἔφη ‘αὕτη ἡ πόλις σῴζοιτο, ἐν ᾗ πολλῶν ὄντων εἷς μόνος ἀγαθός ἐστι;’

Λέγοντος δέ τινος ὅτι ἡ Σπάρτη σῴζεται διὰ τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἀρχικοὺς ὄντας, ‘οὔκ’ ἔφη ‘ἀλλὰ διὰ τοὺς πολίτας πειθαρχικοὺς ὄντας.’

Πυλίων δ’ αὐτῷ μείζονας τιμὰς ψηφισαμένων, ἀντέγραψεν ὅτι ‘τὰς μὲν μετρίας ὁ χρόνος αὔξει, τὰς δ’ ὑπεραιρούσας ἀφανίζει.’

Ἐπιδεικνυμένου δέ τινος αὐτῷ τεῖχος καὶ πυνθανομένου εἰ καρτερὸν καὶ ὑψηλόν, ‘οὐδ’ εἰ γυναικῶν’ εἶπεν ‘ἦν.’

[f]

ΘΗΡΥΚΙΩΝ

Θηρυκίων ἐκ Δελφῶν παραγενόμενος, ἰδὼν τὸ Φιλίππου στρατόπεδον ἐν Ἰσθμῷ τὰ στενὰ κατειληφότος, ‘κακούς’ ἔφη ‘πυλωροὺς ὑμᾶς, ὦ Κορίνθιοι, ἡ Πελοπόννησος ἔχει.’

ΘΗΚΤΑΜΕΝΗΣ

Θηκταμένης, καταγνόντων αὐτοῦ θάνατον τῶν ἐφόρων, ἀπῄει μειδιῶν· καί τινος τῶν παρόντων ἐρωτήσαντος εἰ [καὶ] καταφρονεῖ τῶν τῆς Σπάρτης νομίμων, ‘οὐχί’ εἶπεν, ‘ἀλλὰ γέγηθα, ὅτι δεῖ με τὴν ζημίαν ἐκτῖσαι ταύτην, παρ’ οὐδενὸς οὔτε τι αἰτήσαντα οὔτε δανεισάμενον.’

[222] [a]

ΙΠΠΟΔΑΜΟΣ

Ἱππόδαμος, ὅτε Ἆγις Ἀρχιδάμῳ παρετάσσετο, [συμ]πεμφθεὶς τῷ Ἄγιδι εἰς Σπάρτην ἐκεῖ τὰς χρείας παρέχεσθαι, ‘ἀλλ’ οὗτος’ ἔφη ‘οὔτοι κάλλιον [θάνατον] ἀποθανοῦμαι ὑπὲρ Σπάρτας ἀνδραγαθῶν;’ ἦν δὲ βεβιωκὼς ὑπὲρ τὰ ὀγδοήκοντα ἔτη· καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα λαβὼν τὰ ὅπλα καὶ στὰς ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ βασιλέως, μαχόμενος ἀποθνῄσκει.

ΙΠΠΟΚΡΑΤΙΔΑΣ

Ἱπποκρατίδας πρὸς τὸν τῆς Καρίας σατράπην ἐπιστείλαντα διότι Λακεδαιμόνιος ἀνὴρ ἐπιβουλευόντων τινῶν [b] συνειδὼς τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν κατεσιώπησε, καὶ προσθέντος πῶς χρήσεται αὐτῷ, ἀντέγραψεν ‘εἰ μὲν μέγα τι ἀγαθὸν αὐτὸν πεποίηκας, κατάκτανε· εἰ δὲ μή, ἐκ τῆς χώρας ἔκβαλε δειλὸν πρὸς ἀρετὴν ὄντα.’

Ἀπαντήσαντος δέ ποτε αὐτῷ μειρακίου, ᾧ ἠκολούθει ἐραστής τις, καὶ διατραπέντος, ‘μετὰ τοιούτων’ ἔφη ‘βαδίζειν δεῖ, μεθ’ ὧν ὀφθεὶς τὴν αὐτὴν χρόαν τηρήσεις.’

ΚΑΛΛΙΚΡΑΤΙΔΑΣ

Καλλικρατίδας ναύαρχος, τῶν Λυσάνδρου φίλων ἀξιούντων ἐπιτρέψαι αὐτοῖς ἕνα τινὰ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἀνελεῖν [c] καὶ λαβεῖν πεντήκοντα τάλαντα, καίτοι σφόδρα δεόμενος χρημάτων εἰς ὀψώνια τοῖς ναύταις, οὐ συνεχώρησε. Κλέανδρος δὲ σύμβουλος ὤν ‘ἀλλ’ ἔγωγ’ ἂν ἔλαβον’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ σὺ ἤμην·’ ‘καὶ γὰρ αὐτός’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ σὺ ἦν.’

Παραγενόμενος δὲ πρὸς Κῦρον τὸν νεώτερον εἰς Σάρδεις, σύμμαχον ὄντα Λακεδαιμονίοις, ἐπὶ χρήματα τῷ ναυτικῷ, τῇ μὲν πρώτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκέλευσεν εἰσαγγεῖλαι ὅτι βούλεται Κύρῳ ἐντυχεῖν· ὡς δ’ ἤκουσε πίνειν, ‘προσμενῶ’ εἶπεν ‘ἕως ἂν πίῃ.’ καὶ τότε μὲν ἀπηλλάγη, ὡς ἔγνω οὐχ οἷόν τε εἶναι συμβαλεῖν αὐτῷ ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ, [d] δόξας ἀγροικότερος εἶναι. τῇ δ’ ἐχομένῃ, ὡς πάλιν αὐτὸν πίνοντ’ ἤκουσε καὶ οὐ προϊόντα, φήσας ‘οὐχ οὕτω σπουδαστέον χρήματα λαβεῖν ὡς μηδὲν ἀνάξιον τῆς Σπάρτης ποιεῖν;’ ἀπηλλάγη εἰς Ἔφεσον, πολλὰ μὲν ἐπαρώμενος κακὰ τοῖς πρώτοις ἐντρυφηθεῖσιν ὑπὸ βαρβάρων καὶ διδάξασιν αὐτοὺς ὑβρίζειν διὰ πλοῦτον· ὤμνυε δὲ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ὡς, ὅταν πρῶτον εἰς Σπάρτην παραγένηται, πάντα ποιήσει ὑπὲρ τοῦ διαλλάξαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὡς φοβερώτεροι τοῖς βαρβάροις εἶεν καὶ παύσαιντο τῆς ἐκείνων ἐπ’ ἀλλήλους δεόμενοι δυνάμεως.

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ ὁποῖοι ἄνδρες εἰσὶν οἱ Ἴωνες, ‘δοῦλοι [e] μὲν ἀγαθοί’ εἶπεν ‘ἐλεύθεροι δὲ κακοί.’

Τοῦ δὲ Κύρου τὸν μισθὸν προπέμψαντος τοῖς στρατιώταις καὶ ξένια αὐτῷ, μόνον ἔλαβε τὸν μισθὸν τὰ δὲ ξένια ἀνέπεμψε, φήσας μὴ δεῖν φιλίαν αὐτῷ ἰδίαν πρὸς αὐτὸν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ τὴν κοινὴν πρὸς ἅπαντας Λακεδαιμονίους γεγονυῖαν καὶ αὐτῷ ὑπάρχειν.

Μέλλων δὲ περὶ τὰς Ἀργινούσας ναυμαχεῖν, Ἕρμωνος τοῦ κυβερνήτου εἰπόντος ὅτι καλῶς ἔχει ἀποπλεῦσαι, αἱ γὰρ τριήρεις τῶν Ἀθηναίων πολλῷ πλείους εἰσίν, εἶπε ‘καὶ τί τοῦτο; ἀλλὰ φεύγειν αἰσχρὸν καὶ βλαβερὸν τῇ Σπάρτῃ· μένοντα δὲ ἢ ἀποθανεῖν ἢ νικᾶν ἄριστον.’

[f] Προθυσάμενος δέ, ὡς ἤκουσε τοῦ μάντεως σημαίνεσθαι διὰ τῶν ἐμπύρων τῷ μὲν στρατῷ νίκην τῷ δὲ στρατηγοῦντι θάνατον, οὐδὲν καταπλαγεὶς εἶπεν ‘οὐ παρ’ ἕνα τὰ Σπάρτας· ἀποθανόντος μὲν γάρ μου οὐδὲν ἡ πατρὶς ἐλαττωθήσεται, εἴξαντος δὲ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐλαττωθήσεται.’ ἀποδείξας οὖν ἀνθ’ ἑαυτοῦ Κλέανδρον ἡγεμόνα ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ τὴν ναυμαχίαν, καὶ μαχόμενος ἐτελεύτα.

[223] [a]

ΚΛΕΟΜΒΡΟΤΟΣ Ο ΠΑΥΣΑΝΙΟΥ

Κλεόμβροτος ὁ Παυσανίου, ξένου τινὸς διαφερομένου πρὸς τὸν πατέρα περὶ ἀρετῆς, ‘μέχρι τούτου’ εἶπεν ‘κρείσσων σού ἐστιν ὁ πατήρ, μέχρις ἂν καὶ σὺ γεννήσῃς.’

ΚΛΕΟΜΕΝΗΣ Ο ΑΝΑΞΑΝΔΡΙΔΕΩ

Κλεομένης ὁ Ἀναξανδρίδεω τὸν μὲν Ὅμηρον Λακεδαιμονίων εἶναι ποιητὴν ἔφη, τὸν δὲ Ἡσίοδον τῶν εἱλώτων· τὸν μὲν γὰρ ὡς χρὴ πολεμεῖν, τὸν δὲ ὡς χρὴ γεωργεῖν παρηγγελκέναι.

Ἀνοχὰς δὲ ἑφθημέρους πρὸς Ἀργείους ποιησάμενος, φυλάξας αὐτὰς ‹δύο ἡμέρας›, τῇ τρίτῃ νυκτὶ κοιμωμένοις [b] διὰ τὸ πεποιθέναι ταῖς σπονδαῖς ἐπέθετο· καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἀπέκτεινε τοὺς δ’ αἰχμαλώτους ἔλαβεν. ὀνειδιζόμενος δ’ ἐπὶ τῇ παραβάσει τῶν ὅρκων, οὐκ ἔφη προσομωμοκέναι ταῖς ἡμέραις τὰς νύκτας· ἄλλως τε [καὶ], ὅτι ἂν κακόν τις ποιῇ τοὺς πολεμίους, τοῦτο καὶ παρὰ θεοῖς καὶ παρ’ ἀνθρώποις δίκης ὑπέρτερον νομίζεσθαι.

Συνέβη δ’ αὐτῷ τοῦ μὲν Ἄργους, δι’ ὃ παρεσπόνδησεν, ἀποπεσεῖν διὰ τὸ τὰς γυναῖκας τὰ ἀπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν καθελούσας ὅπλα τούτοις αὐτὸν ἀμύνεσθαι· καὶ ὕστερον δὲ τῶν φρενῶν ἔξω γενόμενον δράξασθαί τινος μαχαιρίου [c] καὶ αὑτὸν ἀνατεμεῖν ἀπὸ τῶν σφυρῶν ἕως ἐπὶ τοὺς καιρίους τόπους, καὶ οὕτως ἐκλιπεῖν τὸν βίον γελῶντα καὶ σεσηρότα.

Τοῦ δὲ μάντεως ἀποτρέποντος μὴ ἄγειν ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀργείων πόλιν τὸ στράτευμα (τὴν γὰρ ἐπάνοδον αἰσχρὰν γενήσεσθαι) προσελθὼν τῇ πόλει ὡς τὰς μὲν πύλας κεκλεισμένας εἶδε, τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας ἐπὶ τῶν τειχῶν, ‘αὕτη σοι’ ἔφη ‘ἡ ἐπάνοδος αἰσχρὰ φαίνεται εἶναι, ἐν ᾗ τῶν ἀνδρῶν τεθνηκότων αἱ γυναῖκες τὰς πύλας κεκλείκασι;’

Πρὸς δὲ τοὺς λοιδοροῦντας αὐτὸν τῶν Ἀργείων ὡς ἐπίορκον καὶ ἀσεβῆ ‘τοῦ μὲν κακῶς λέγειν’ ἔφη ‘ὑμεῖς κύριοι, τοῦ δὲ κακῶς ὑμᾶς ποιεῖν ἐγώ.’

[d] Τοῖς δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς Σάμου πρέσβεσι παρακαλοῦσιν αὐτὸν Πολυκράτει τῷ τυράννῳ πολεμεῖν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μακρολογοῦσιν, ‘ὧν εἰρήκατε’ ἔφη ‘τὰ μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς οὐ μέμνημαι, διὰ τοῦτο δὲ καὶ τὰ μέσα οὐ συνίημι· τὰ δ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν οὐ δοκιμάζω.’

Πειρατοῦ δὲ καταδραμόντος τὴν χώραν καί, ὡς ἑάλω, λέγοντος ὅτι ‘τροφὴν οὐκ εἶχον τοῖς στρατιώταις παρέχειν, πρὸς τοὺς ἔχοντας οὖν ἑκοντὶ δ’ οὐκ ἂν διδόντας βίᾳ ληψόμενος ἦλθον’ ‘νὴ τοὺς θεούς’ ἔφη ‘σύντομος ἡ πονηρία.’

Φαύλου δέ τινος αὐτὸν κακῶς λέγοντος ‘ἆρα διὰ τοῦτο’ ἔφη ‘πάντας σὺ κακῶς λέγεις, ἵνα ἀπολογούμενοι [e] μὴ εὐκαιρῶμεν περὶ τῆς σῆς κακίας λέγειν;’

Τῶν δὲ πολιτῶν τινος λέγοντος, ὅτι τὸν ἀγαθὸν βασιλέα πάντῃ πάντως πρᾶον εἶναι δεῖ, ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘ἄχρι τοῦ μὴ εὐκαταφρόνητον εἶναι.’

Ἑλκυσθεὶς δὲ νόσῳ μακρᾷ, ἐπεὶ καθαρταῖς καὶ μάντεσι προσεῖχε τὸ πρὶν οὐ προσέχων, θαυμάζοντός τινος, ‘τί θαυμάζεις;’ ἔφη ‘οὐ γάρ εἰμι ὁ αὐτὸς νῦν καὶ τότε· οὐκ ὢν δὲ ὁ αὐτὸς οὐδὲ τὰ αὐτὰ δοκιμάζω.’

Σοφιστοῦ δέ τινος περὶ ἀνδρείας λέγοντος πλείω, ἐγέλασε· τοῦ δ’ εἰπόντος ‘τί γελᾷς, Κλεόμενες, περὶ ἀνδρείας λέγοντος ἀκούων, καὶ ταῦτα βασιλεὺς ὤν;’ [f] ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη, ‘ὦ ξένε, καὶ ἡ χελιδὼν εἰ περὶ αὐτῆς ἔλεγε, τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτ’ ἂν ἐποίουν· εἰ δ’ ἀετός, πολλὴν ἂν εἶχον ἠρεμίαν.’

Τῶν δ’ Ἀργείων τὴν προτέραν ἧτταν φασκόντων ἀναμαχεῖσθαι, ‘θαυμάζω’ ἔφη ‘εἰ δύο συλλαβῶν προσθήκῃ νῦν κρείσσονες ἐγένεσθε ἢ πρόσθεν ἦτε.’

Λοιδοροῦντος δέ τινος αὐτὸν καὶ φήσαντος ‘θρυπτικὸς εἶ, ὦ Κλεόμενες,’ ‘ἀλλὰ κρεῖσσον’ ἔφη ‘ἢ ἄδικον εἶναι· σὺ δὲ φιλοχρήματος καίπερ ἱκανὰ κεκτημένος.’

[Ψάλτην δέ τις αὐτῷ βουλόμενος συστῆσαι τά τ’ [224] [a] ἄλλα τὸν ἄνδρα ἐπῄνει καὶ ψάλτην αὐτὸν ἔφη κράτιστον εἶναι τῶν Ἑλλήνων· ὁ δὲ δείξας τινὰ τῶν πλησίον ‘νὴ τοὺς θεούς’ ἔφη ‘‹ὡς› οὗτος παρ’ ἐμοὶ ζωμοποιός.’]

Μαιανδρ‹ί›ου δὲ τοῦ τῆς Σάμου τυράννου διὰ τὴν Περσῶν ἔφοδον εἰς Σπάρτην φυγόντος καὶ ἐπιδείξαντος ὅσα κεκομίκει χρύσεά τε καὶ ἀργύρεα ἐκπώματα χαριζομένου τε ὅσα βούλεται, ἔλαβε μὲν οὐδέν, εὐλαβούμενος δὲ μὴ ἑτέροις τισὶ τῶν ἀστῶν διαδῷ, πορευθεὶς ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐφόρους ἄμεινον εἶναι ἔφη τῇ Σπάρτῃ τὸν ξένον ἑαυτοῦ ‹τὸν› Σάμιον ἀπαλλάττεσθαι τῆς Πελοποννήσου, ἵνα μὴ πείσῃ τινὰ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν κακὸν γενέσθαι. οἱ δὲ ὑπακούσαντες [b] ἐξεκήρυξαν τὸν Μαιάνδρ‹ι›ον αὐτῆς ἡμέρας.

Εἰπόντος δέ τινος ‘διὰ τί πολεμοῦντας ὑμῖν Ἀργείους πολλάκις κρατήσαντες οὐκ ἀνῃρήκατε;’ ‘οὐδ’ ἂν ἀνέλοιμεν’ ἔφη, ‘ὡς ἂν γυμναστὰς τοῖς νέοισιν ἔχωμεν.’

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος αὐτοῦ διὰ τί Σπαρτιᾶται τοῖς θεοῖς οὐκ ἀνατιθέασι τὰ ἀπὸ τῶν πολεμίων σκῦλα, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘ἀπὸ δειλῶν ἐστι.’

ΚΛΕΟΜΕΝΗΣ Ο ΚΛΕΟΜΒΡΟΤΟΥ

Κλεομένης ὁ Κλεομβρότου, διδόντος αὐτῷ τινος μαχίμους [c] ἀλεκτρυόνας καὶ λέγοντος ὅτι μαχόμενοι ἀποθνῄσκουσι περὶ νίκης, ‘τῶν κατακτεινόντων τοίνυν αὐτούς’ ἔφη ‘τινὰς δός μοι, ἐκεῖνοι γὰρ τούτων ἀμείνους.’

ΛΑΒΩΤΑΣ

Λαβώτας, μακρολογοῦντός τινος, εἶπε ‘τί μοι μικρῶν πέρι μεγάλα φροιμιάζῃ; †ὅσον γὰρ εἴη πρᾶγμα, τοσοῦτος καὶ ὁ λόγος, ᾧ χρῆσαι.’

ΛΕΩΤΥΧΙΔΑΣ

Λεωτυχίδας ὁ πρῶτος, λέγοντός τινος ὡς ἔστιν εὐμετάβολος, ‘διὰ τοὺς καιρούς’ ἔφη, ‘οὐχ ὡς ὑμεῖς διὰ τὴν αὑτῶν κακίαν.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἐρωτῶντα πῶς ἄν τις μάλιστα διαφυλάσσοι [d] τὰ παρόντα τῶν ἀγαθῶν, εἶπεν ‘εἰ μὴ πάντα τῇ τύχῃ πιστεύοι.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ τί δεῖ μάλιστα μανθάνειν τοὺς ἐλευθέρους παῖδας, ‘ταῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘ὅσαπερ ἂν αὐτοὺς ὠφελήσειεν ἄνδρας γενομένους.’

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος διὰ τίνα αἰτίαν ὀλιγοποτοῦσιν οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται, ἔφη ‘ἵνα μὴ ἄλλοι ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν βουλεύωνται, ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς ὑπὲρ ἄλλων.’

ΛΕΩΤΥΧΙΔΑΣ Ο ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝΟΣ

Λεωτυχίδας ὁ Ἀρίστωνος πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα ὅτι κακῶς αὐτὸν οἱ τοῦ Δημαράτου λέγουσι ‘μὰ τοὺς θεούς’ ἔφη ‘οὐ θαυμάζω, καλῶς γὰρ λέγειν οὐδεὶς ἂν αὐτῶν δυνηθείη.’

[e] Τῇ δ’ ἐνδοτέρω πύλῃ δράκοντος περὶ τὴν κλεῖν ἑλιχθέντος καὶ τῶν μάντεων τέρας ἀποφαινομένων εἶναι, ‘οὔτι ἔμοιγ’’ ἔφη ‘δοκεῖ, ἀλλ’ εἰ ἡ κλεὶς τῷ δράκοντι περιειλίχθη, τέρας ἂν ἦν.’

Πρὸς δὲ Φίλιππον τὸν ὀρφεοτελεστὴν παντελῶς πτωχὸν ὄντα, λέγοντα δ’ ὅτι οἱ παρ’ αὐτῷ μυηθέντες μετὰ τὴν τοῦ βίου τελευτὴν εὐδαιμονοῦσι, ‘τί οὖν, ὦ ἀνόητε’ εἶπεν, ‘οὐ τὴν ταχίστην ἀποθνῄσκεις, ἵν’ ἅμα παύσῃ κακοδαιμονίαν καὶ πενίαν κλαίων;’

Πυθομένου δέ τινος διὰ τί τὰ ἀπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ὅπλα τοῖς θεοῖς οὐκ ἀνατιθέασιν, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘τὰ διὰ τὴν δειλίαν τῶν κεκτημένων θηραθέντα οὔτε τοὺς νέους ὁρᾶν καλὸν οὔτε τοῖς θεοῖς ἀνατιθέναι.’

ΛΕΩΝ Ο ΕΥΡΥΚΡΑΤΙΔΑ

Λέων ὁ Εὐρυκρατίδα ἐρωτηθείς, ποίαν τις ἂν πόλιν [f] οἰκήσας ἀσφαλῶς οἰκοίη, ‘ὅπου’ ἔφη ‘μήτε πλείω μήτε ἐλάσσονα κεκτήσονται οἱ ἐνοικοῦντες· καὶ ὅπου τὸ μὲν δίκαιον ἰσχύσει, τὸ δ’ ἄδικον ἀσθενὲς ἔσται.’

Ὁρῶν δὲ τοὺς ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ δρομεῖς σπουδάζοντας περὶ τὴν ἄφεσιν ἵνα πλεονεκτήσωσιν, ‘ὅσῳ μᾶλλον’ ἔφη ‘οἱ δρομεῖς σπουδάζουσι περὶ τῆς ταχυτῆτος ἢ περὶ τῆς δικαιοσύνης.’

Ἀκαίρως δέ τινος περὶ πραγμάτων οὐκ ἀχρήστων διαλεχθέντος, ‘ὦ ξένε’ εἶπεν, ‘οὐκ ἐν δέοντι χρῇ τῷ δέοντι.’

ΛΕΩΝΙΔΑΣ Ο ΑΝΑΞΑΝΔΡΙΔΑ

Λεωνίδας ὁ Ἀναξανδρίδα, ἀδελφὸς δὲ Κλεομένους, [225] [a] πρός τινα εἰπόντα ‘πλὴν τοῦ βασιλεύειν οὐδὲν ἡμῶν διαφέρεις’ ‘ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἄν’ ἔφη, ‘εἰ μὴ βελτίων ὑμῶν ἤμην, ἐβασίλευον.’

Τῆς δὲ γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ Γοργοῦς πυνθανομένης, ὅτε εἰς Θερμοπύλας ἐξῄει τῷ Πέρσῃ μαχούμενος, εἴ τι αὐτῇ ἐντέλλεται, ἔφη ‘ἀγαθοῖς γαμεῖσθαι καὶ ἀγαθὰ τίκτειν.’

Λεγόντων δὲ τῶν ἐφόρων ὀλίγους ἄγειν αὐτὸν εἰς Θερμοπύλας, †’οὐκ ἄλλας’ ἔφη ‘πρὸς ἣν βαδίζομεν πρᾶξιν.’

Πάλιν δ’ αὐτῶν εἰπόντων ‘μή τι ἕτερον διέγνωκας ποιεῖν ἢ τὰς παρόδους τῶν βαρβάρων κωλύειν;’ ‘τῷ λόγῳ’ ἔφη ‘τῷ δ’ ἔργῳ ἀποθανούμενος ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἑλλήνων.’

[b] Γενόμενος δ’ ἐν Θερμοπύλαις πρὸς τοὺς συστρατιώτας εἶπε ‘λέγοντι τὸν βάρβαρον ἐγγύθι γενόμενον , ἄμμε δὲ χρονοτριβέειν· ἤδη γὰρ ἢ κτάμεν τὼς βαρβάρως ἢ αὐτοὶ τεθνάμεν θέλομες.’

Λέγοντος δέ τινος ‘ἀπὸ τῶν ὀιστευμάτων τῶν βαρβάρων οὐδὲ τὸν ἥλιον ἰδεῖν ἔστιν,’ ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘χάριεν, εἰ ὑπὸ σκιὰν αὐτοῖς μαχεσόμεθα.’

Ἄλλου δ’ εἰπόντος ‘πάρεισιν ἐγγὺς ἡμῶν,’ ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ἡμεῖς αὐτῶν [ἐγγύς].’

Εἰπόντος δέ τινος ‘ὦ Λεωνίδα, πρὸς πολλοὺς μετ’ ὀλίγων διακινδυνεύσων οὕτως πάρει;’ ‘εἰ μὲν οἴεσθέ με’ ἔφη ‘τῷ πλήθει ‹δεῖν πιστεύειν›, οὐδ’ ἡ πᾶσα Ἑλλὰς ἀρκεῖ· [c] βραχεῖα γὰρ μοῖρα τοῦ ἐκείνων πλήθους ἐστίν· εἰ δὲ ταῖς ἀφεταῖς, καὶ οὗτος ὁ ἀριθμὸς ἱκανός.’

Ἄλλου δὲ τὰ αὐτὰ λέγοντος, ‘καὶ μήν’ εἶπεν ‘πολλοὺς ἐπάγομαι ὡς ἀποθανουμένους.’

Ξέρξου δὲ γράψαντος αὐτῷ ‘ἔξεστί σοι μὴ θεομαχοῦντι, μετ’ ἐμοῦ δὲ τασσομένῳ τῆς Ἑλλάδος μοναρχεῖν’ ἀντέγραψεν ‘εἰ τὰ καλὰ τοῦ βίου γινώσκοις, ἀπέστης ἂν τῆς τῶν ἀλλοτρίων ἐπιθυμίας· ἐμοὶ δὲ κρείσσων ὁ ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος θάνατος τοῦ μοναρχεῖν τῶν ὁμοφύλων.’

Πάλιν δὲ τοῦ Ξέρξου γράψαντος ‘πέμψον τὰ ὅπλα’, ἀντέγραψε ‘μολὼν λαβέ.’

[d] Βουλομένου δ’ αὐτοῦ ἤδη τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐπιτίθεσθαι, ‹ἐπεὶ› οἱ πολέμαρχοι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔφασαν ὅτι δεῖ προσμένειν αὐτὸν τοὺς ἄλλους συμμάχους, ‘οὐ γάρ’ ἔφη ‘πάρεισιν οἱ μέλλοντες μάχεσθαι; ἢ οὐκ ἴστε, ὅτι μόνοι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους μάχονται οἱ τοὺς βασιλέας αἰδούμενοι καὶ φοβούμενοι;’

Τοῖς δὲ στρατιώταις παρήγγειλεν ἀριστοποιεῖσθαι ὡς ἐν Ἅιδου δειπνοποιησομένους.

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ διὰ τί οἱ ἄριστοι τὸν ἔνδοξον θάνατον τῆς ἀδόξου προκρίνουσι ζωῆς, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘τὸ μὲν τῆς φύσεως ἴδιον, τὸ δὲ αὑτῶν εἶναι νομίζουσιν.’

Τοὺς δ’ ἠιθέους βουλόμενος σῷσαι καὶ ἐπιστάμενος ἄντικρυς οὐκ ἀνεξομένους, σκυτάλας δοὺς καθ’ [e] ἕνα αὐτῶν πρὸς τοὺς ἐφόρους ἔπεμψε. καὶ τῶν τελείων δὲ τρεῖς ἐβουλήθη διασῷσαι· οἱ δὲ συννοήσαντες οὐκ ἠνέσχοντο λαβεῖν τὰς σκυτάλας· ὧν ὁ μὲν εἶπεν ‘οὐ κῆρυξ ἀλλὰ μαχητὰς ἀκολούθησα’· ὁ δὲ δεύτερος ‘αὐτοῦ μένων κρέσσων ἂν εἴην’· ὁ δὲ τρίτος ‘οὐχ ὕστερος τούτων, πρῶτος δὲ μαχήσομαι.’

ΛΟΧΑΓΟΣ

Λόχαγος ὁ Πολυαινίδου καὶ Σείρωνος πατήρ, ἀπαγγείλαντός τινος αὐτῷ ὅτι τῶν υἱῶν τεθνήκοι ὁ ἕτερος, ‘πάλαι ᾔδειν’ ἔφη ‘ὅτι ἀποθανεῖν αὐτὸν ἔδει.’

ΛΥΚΟΥΡΓΟΣ

Λυκοῦργος ὁ νομοθέτης βουλόμενος ἐκ τῆς προϋπαρχούσης [f] διαίτης τοὺς πολίτας εἰς σωφρονεστέραν βίου τάξιν μετάγειν καὶ καλοκαγαθικοὺς ἀπεργάζεσθαι (ἁβροδίαιτοι γὰρ ἦσαν) δύο σκύλακας ἀνέθρεψε ταὐτοῦ πατρὸς καὶ μητρὸς γενομένους· καὶ τὸν μὲν εἴθισε περὶ λιχνείας οἴκοι ἐάσας· τὸν δ’ ἀπαγόμενος ἤσκησε περὶ κυνηγέσια. ἔπειτα ἀγαγὼν εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἔθηκε †ἀκάνθας καὶ λιχνείας τινάς, ἀφῆκε δὲ καὶ λαγώ· ἑκατέρου δ’ ἐπὶ τὰ συνήθη ὁρμήσαντος καὶ θατέρου τὸν λαγὼ χειρωσαμένου, εἶπεν ‘ὁρᾶτε, ὦ πολῖται, ὅτι ταὐτοῦ γένους ὑπάρχοντες ἐν τῇ τοῦ βίου ἀγωγῇ παρὰ πολὺ ἀλλήλων διάφοροι ἀπέβησαν, [226] [a] καὶ ποιητικωτέρα τῆς φύσεως ἡ ἄσκησις πρὸς τὰ καλὰ τυγχάνει;’ τινὲς δέ φασιν, ‹ὡς› οὐ παρῆγε σκύλακας, οἳ ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γεγονότες ἐτύγχανον, ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ἐξ οἰκουρῶν, ἅτερος δ’ ἐκ κυνηγετικῶν· κἄπειτα τὸν μὲν ἐκ τοῦ χείρονος γένους πρὸς τὰ κυνηγέσια ἤσκησε, τὸν δ’ ἐκ τοῦ ἀμείνονος περὶ λιχνείας μόνον εἴθισεν· εἶθ’ ἑκατέρου ἐφ’ ἃ εἴθιστο ὁρμήσαντος, φανερὸν ποιήσας ὅσον ἡ ἀγωγὴ πρὸς τὸ ἄμεινον καὶ χεῖρον συλλαμβάνει, εἶπεν ‘οὐκοῦν καὶ ἡμᾶς, ὦ πολῖται, οὐδὲν ἡ παρὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς θαυμαζομένη εὐγένεια καὶ τὸ ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους εἶναι ὀνίνησιν, εἰ μὴ πράττοιμεν δι’ ἃ [b] ἐκεῖνος ἁπάντων ἀνθρώπων ἐπιδοξότερος καὶ εὐγενέστερος ἐφάνη, ἀσκούμενοι καὶ μανθάνοντες καλὰ δι’ ὅλου τοῦ βίου.’

Ἀναδασμὸν δὲ τῆς γῆς ποιήσας καὶ ἅπασιν ἴσον κλῆρον τοῖς πολίταις νείμας, λέγεται ὕστερόν ποτε χρόνῳ τὴν χώραν διερχόμενος ἐξ ἀποδημίας ἄρτι τεθερισμένην, ἰδὼν δὲ τοὺς σωροὺς κειμένους παραλλήλους καὶ ὁμαλοὺς ἡσθῆναι, καὶ μειδιάσας εἰπεῖν πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ὡς ἡ Λακωνικὴ φαίνεται πᾶσα πολλῶν ἀδελφῶν εἶναι νεωστὶ νενεμημένων.

Καὶ τῶν χρεῶν δ’ ἀποκοπὰς εἰσηγησάμενος ἐπεχείρησε καὶ τὰ κατ’ οἶκον ὄντα πάντα ἐξ ἴσου διαιρεῖν, [c] ὅπως παντάπασιν ἐξέλοι τὸ ἄνισον καὶ ἀνώμαλον. ἐπεὶ δὲ χαλεπῶς ἑώρα προσδεξομένους τὴν ἄντικρυς ἀφαίρεσιν, τό τε χρυσοῦν καὶ ἀργυροῦν νόμισμα ἠκύρωσε, μόνῳ δὲ τῷ σιδηρῷ προσέταξε χρῆσθαι· καὶ μέχρις οὗ δεῖ ἔχειν τὴν ὅλην ὕπαρξιν πρὸς ἀμοιβὴν τούτου, περιώρισε. τούτου δὲ γενομένου ἐξέπεσε τῆς Λακεδαίμονος ἀδικία πᾶσα· οὔτε γὰρ κλέπτειν οὔτε δωροδοκεῖν οὔτε ἀποστερεῖν ἢ ἁρπάζειν ἔτι ἐδύνατό τις, ὃ μήτε κατακρύψαι δυνατὸν ἦν μήτε κτήσασθαι ζηλωτὸν μήτε χρήσασθαι ἀκίνδυνον μήτε ἐξάγειν ἢ ἐπάγειν ἀσφαλές. πρὸς δὲ [d] τούτοις καὶ ἁπάντων τῶν περισσῶν ξενηλασίαν ἐποιήσατο· διὸ οὔτ’ ἔμπορος οὔτε σοφιστὴς οὔτε μάντις ἢ ἀγύρτης οὔτε τῶν κατασκευασμάτων δημιουργὸς εἰσῄει εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην. οὐδὲ γὰρ νόμισμα παρ’ αὐτοῖς εὔχρηστον εἴασε, μόνον δὲ τὸ σιδηροῦν εἰσηγήσατο, ὅ ἐστι μνᾶ ὁλκῇ Αἰγιναία, δυνάμει δὲ χαλκοῖ τέσσαρες.

Ἐπιθέσθαι δὲ τῇ τρυφῇ καὶ τὸν ζῆλον ἀφελέσθαι τοῦ πλούτου διανοηθεὶς τὰ συσσίτια εἰσηγήσατο. πρὸς γοῦν τοὺς ἐπιζητοῦντας, διὰ τί ταῦτα συνεστήσατο καὶ μεθ’ ὅπλων κατ’ ὀλίγους τοὺς πολίτας διῄρηκεν, ‘ὅπως’ [e] εἶπεν ‘ἐξ ἑτοίμου τὰ παραγγελλόμενα δέχωνται, καὶ ἐάν τι νεωτερίζωσιν, ἐν ὀλίγοις ᾖ τὸ ἀμπλάκημα, ἰσομοιρία τε τῆς τροφῆς καὶ πόσεως ᾖ, καὶ μήτε πόσει τινὶ ἢ βρώσει ἀλλὰ μηδὲ στρωμνῇ ἢ σκεύεσιν ἢ ἄλλῳ τινὶ τὸ σύνολον πλέον ἔχῃ ὁ πλούσιος τοῦ πένητος.’

Ἄζηλον δὲ ποιήσας τὸν πλοῦτον, οὐδενὸς οὔτε χρῆσθαι οὔτ’ ἐπιδεῖξαι δυναμένου, ἔλεγε πρὸς τοὺς συνήθεις ‘ὡς καλόν ἐστιν, ὦ ἑταῖροι, διὰ τῶν ἔργων ἐπιδεῖξαι τὸν πλοῦτον ὁποῖός ἐστι τῇ ἀληθείᾳ, ὅτι τυφλός.’

Παρεφύλαξε δὲ ὥστε μηδὲ οἴκοι προδειπνήσαντας ἐξεῖναι βαδίζειν ἐπὶ τὰ συσσίτια, πεπληρωμένους ἑτέρων [f] ἐδεσμάτων ἢ πομάτων· ἐκάκιζον δὲ οἱ λοιποὶ τὸν μὴ πιόντα ἢ φαγόντα μετ’ αὐτῶν, ὡς ἀκρατῆ καὶ πρὸς τὴν κοινὴν ἀπομαλακιζόμενον δίαιταν· ἐζημιοῦτο δὲ καὶ ὁ φανερὸς γενόμενος. Ἄγιδος γοῦν μετὰ πολὺν χρόνον τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπανελθόντος ἀπὸ στρατείας (καταπεπολεμήκει δ’ Ἀθηναίους), βουλομένου παρὰ τῇ γυναικὶ μιᾷ [227] ἡμέρᾳ δειπνῆσαι καὶ μεταπεμπομένου τὰς μερίδας, οὐκ ἔπεμψαν οἱ πολέμαρχοι· μεθ’ ἡμέραν δὲ φανεροῦ γενομένου τοῖς ἐφόροις, ἐζημιώθη ὑπ’ αὐτῶν.

Πρὸς οὖν τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν νομοθετημάτων χαλεπήναντες οἱ εὔποροι ἐπισυνέστησαν καὶ ἐβλασφήμουν αὐτὸν καὶ ἔβαλλον, καταλεῦσαι βουλόμενοι· διωκόμενος δὲ διέπεσε διὰ τῆς ἀγορᾶς· καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἔφθασεν εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν τῆς χαλκιοίκου Ἀθηνᾶς καταφυγών· Ἄλκανδρος δ’ ἐπιστραφέντος αὐτοῦ διώκων τῇ βακτηρίᾳ τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν ἐξέκοψεν [αὐτοῦ]. τοῦτον δὲ κοινῷ δόγματι παραλαβὼν ἐπὶ τιμωρίᾳ οὔτε κακῶς διέθηκεν οὔτε ἐμέμψατο, [7] συνδιαιτώμενον δ’ ἔχων ἀπέδειξεν ἐπαινέτην αὑτοῦ τε καὶ τῆς διαίτης ἣν εἶχε [σὺν αὐτῷ] καὶ καθόλου τῆς ἀγωγῆς ἐραστήν. τοῦ δὲ πάθους ὑπόμνημα ἱδρύσατο ἐν τῷ τῆς Χαλκιοίκου τεμένει ἱερὸν Ἀθηνᾶς, Ὀπτιλλέτιν προσαγορεύσας· τοὺς γὰρ ὀφθαλμοὺς ὀπτίλλους οἱ τῇδε Δωριεῖς λέγουσιν.

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ διὰ τί οὐκ ἐχρήσατο νόμοις ἐγγράφοις, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘οἱ πεπαιδευμένοι καὶ ἀχθέντες τῇ προσηκούσῃ ἀγωγῇ τὸ τοῦ καιροῦ χρήσιμον δοκιμάζουσι.’

Πάλιν δ’ ἐπιζητούντων τινῶν, διὰ τί ὀροφὴν ἀπὸ πελέκεως ταῖς οἰκίαις ἐπιτιθέναι προσέταξε, θύραν δ’ ἀπὸ πρίονος μόνου καὶ μηδενὸς τῶν ἄλλων ἐργαλείων, [8] ‘ὅπως ἄν’ ἔφη ‘μετριάζωσιν οἱ πολῖται περὶ πάντα, ὅσα εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν εἰσάγουσι, καὶ μηδὲν τῶν παρ’ ἄλλοις ζηλουμένων ἔχωσιν.’

Ἐκ δὲ ταύτης τῆς συνηθείας φασὶ καὶ Λεωτυχίδην τὸν πρῶτον βασιλέα δειπνοῦντα παρά τινι καὶ θεασάμενον τῆς στέγης τοῦ οἴκου τὴν παρασκευὴν πολυτελῆ καὶ φατνωματικὴν ἐρωτῆσαι τὸν ξένον, εἰ τετράγωνα παρ’ αὐτοῖς ξύλα φύεται.

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ διὰ τί ἐκώλυσεν ἐπὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς πολεμίους πολλάκις στρατεύεσθαι, ἔφη ‘ἵνα μὴ πολλάκις ἀμύνεσθαι συνεθιζόμενοι ἔμπειροι πολέμου γένωνται.’ διὸ [9] καὶ Ἀγησιλάου ἔγκλημα οὐ βραχὺ ἔδοξεν εἶναι, ταῖς εἰς τὴν Βοιωτίαν συνεχέσιν εἰσβολαῖς καὶ στρατείαις τοὺς Θηβαίους ἀντιπάλους ‹τοῖς› Λακεδαιμονίοις κατασκευάσαντος. τετρωμένον γοῦν ἰδὼν αὐτὸν Ἀνταλκίδας ‘καλά’ εἶπε ‘τροφεῖα ἀπέχεις, μὴ βουλομένους αὐτοὺς μήτ’ εἰδότας μάχεσθαι διδάξας.’

Ἄλλου δ’ ἐπιζητοῦντος, διὰ τί τὰ σώματα τῶν παρθένων δρόμοις καὶ πάλαις καὶ βολαῖς δίσκων καὶ ἀκοντίων διεπόνησεν, ‘ἵν’’ ἔφη ‘ἡ τῶν γεννωμένων ῥίζωσις ἰσχυρὰν ἐν ἰσχυροῖς σώμασιν ἀρχὴν λαβοῦσα καλῶς βλαστάνῃ, αὐταί τε μετὰ ῥώμης τοὺς τόκους ὑπομένουσαι ῥᾳδίως τε ἅμα καὶ καλῶς ἀγωνίζωνται πρὸς τὰς ὠδῖνας, καὶ εἴ τις ἀνάγκη γένοιτο, δύνωνται ὑπὲρ αὑτῶν καὶ τέκνων καὶ τῆς πατρίδος μάχεσθαι.’

[10] Μεμφομένων δέ τινων τὴν γύμνωσιν τῶν παρθένων ἐν ταῖς πομπαῖς καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ζητούντων, ‘ἵν’’ ἔφη ‘τὰ αὐτὰ τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἐπιτηδεύουσαι μηδὲν μεῖον ἔχωσι μήτε κατὰ σώματος ἰσχὺν καὶ ὑγίειαν μήτε κατὰ ψυχῆς φιλοτιμίαν καὶ ἀρετήν, δόξης δὲ τῆς παρὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς ὑπερφρονῶσιν.’ ὅθεν καὶ περὶ Γοργοῦς ἱστορεῖται τῆς Λεωνίδου γυναικὸς τοιοῦτον· εἰπούσης γάρ τινος, ὡς ἔοικε, ξένης πρὸς αὐτὴν ὡς ‘μόναι τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἄρχετε ὑμεῖς αἱ Λάκαιναι’ ἀπεκρίνατο ‘μόναι γὰρ ἡμεῖς ἄνδρας τίκτομεν.’

Εἴρξας δὲ τοὺς ἀγάμους τῆς ἐν ταῖς γυμνοπαιδίαις θέας καὶ ἀτιμίαν προσθεὶς πολλὴν πρόνοιαν [11] ἐποιήσατο τῆς παιδοποιίας· τιμῆς δὲ καὶ θεραπείας, ἣν νέοι πρεσβυτέροις παρεῖχον, ἐστέρησε. καὶ τὸ πρὸς Δερκυλλίδαν ῥηθὲν οὐδεὶς ἐμέμψατο, καίπερ εὐδόκιμον ὄντα στρατηγόν· ἐπιόντι γὰρ αὐτῷ τῶν νεωτέρων τις ἕδρας οὐχ ὑπεῖξεν εἰπών ‘οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐμοὶ σὺ τὸν ὑπείξοντα ἐγέννησας.’

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος, διὰ τί τὰς κόρας ἐνομοθέτησεν ἀπροίκους ἐκδίδοσθαι, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘μήτε δι’ ἔνδειαν ἄγαμοί τινες ἐαθῶσι μήτε διὰ περιουσίαν σπουδάζωνται, ἕκαστος δ’ εἰς τὸν τρόπον τῆς παιδὸς ἀφορῶν [228] [a] ἀρετῇ τὴν αἵρεσιν ποιῶνται.’ διὰ τοῦτο δὲ καὶ τὸν καλλωπισμὸν τῆς πόλεως ἀπήλασεν.

Ὁρίσαντος δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν χρόνον τῶν τε γαμουμένων καὶ τῶν γαμούντων, πρὸς τὸν ζητοῦντα ‹τὴν αἰτίαν› ‘ἵν’’ ἔφη ‘τὰ γεννώμενα ἰσχυρὰ ᾖ ἐκ τελείων γεννώμενα.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν θαυμάζοντα, διότι τὸν γεγαμηκότα ἀπεῖρξε μὴ συγκοιμᾶσθαι τῇ γεγαμημένῃ, προσέταξε δὲ τὸ πλεῖστον τῆς ἡμέρας συνεῖναι τοῖς ἡλικιώταις καὶ τὰς νύκτας ὅλας συναναπαύεσθαι, τῇ δὲ νύμφῃ κρύφα καὶ μετ’ εὐλαβείας συνεῖναι, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘καὶ τοῖς σώμασιν ἰσχυροὶ ὦσι διακορεῖς μὴ γινόμενοι, καὶ τῷ φιλεῖν ἀεὶ [b] καινοὶ ὑπάρχωσι καὶ τὰ ἔγγονα ἐρρωμενέστερα παρέχωσι.’

Καὶ τὸ μὲν μύρον ἐξήλασεν ὡς τοῦ ἐλαίου φθορὰν καὶ ὄλεθρον, τὴν δὲ βαφικὴν ὡς κολακείαν αἰσθήσεως.

Πᾶσι δὲ τοῖς περὶ τὸν τοῦ σώματος καλλωπισμὸν δημιουργοῖς ἀνεπίβατον ἐποίησε τὴν Σπάρτην, ὡς διὰ τῆς κακοτεχνίας τὰς τέχνας λυμαινομένοις.

Τοσαύτη δ’ ἦν κατ’ ἐκείνους τοὺς χρόνους σωφροσύνη τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ τοσοῦτον ἀπεῖχε τῆς ὕστερον περὶ αὐτὰς εὐχερείας, ὡς πρότερον ἄπιστον εἶναι τὸ τῆς μοιχείας παρ’ αὐταῖς. καὶ λόγος ἀπομνημονεύεται Γεραδάτα τινὸς Σπαρτιάτου τῶν σφόδρα παλαιῶν, ὃς ἐρωτηθεὶς [c] ὑπὸ ξένου, τί πάσχουσιν οἱ μοιχοὶ παρ’ αὐτοῖς (οὐδὲν γὰρ ὁρᾶν περὶ τούτου νενομοθετημένον ὑπὸ Λυκούργου), εἶπεν ‘οὐδείς, ὦ ξένε, γίνεται μοιχὸς παρ’ ἡμῖν.’ ἐκείνου δὲ ὑπολαβόντος ‘ἂν οὖν γένηται;’ ‘ταῦρον’ ἔφη ὁ Γεραδάτας ‹’ἐκτίνει μέγαν, ὃς ὑπερκύψας τὸ Ταΰγετον ἀπὸ τοῦ Εὐρώτα πίεται.’ θαυμάσαντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ φήσαντος ‘πῶς δ’ ἂν γένοιτο βοῦς τηλικοῦτος;’ γελάσας ὁ Γεραδάτας› ‘πῶς γὰρ ἄν’ ἔφη ‘μοιχὸς ἐν Σπάρτῃ γένοιτο, ἐν ᾗ πλοῦτος μὲν καὶ τρυφὴ καὶ καλλωπισμὸς ἀτιμάζονται, αἰδὼς δὲ καὶ εὐκοσμία καὶ τῶν ἡγουμένων πειθὼ πρεσβεύονται;’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἀξιοῦντα δημοκρατίαν ἐν τῇ πόλει καταστήσασθαι ὁ Λυκοῦργος ‘σὺ πρῶτος’ ἔφη ‘ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ σου ποίησον δημοκρατίαν.’

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος διὰ τί μικρὰς οὕτω καὶ [d] εὐτελεῖς ἔταξε τῶν θεῶν τὰς θυσίας, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘μηδέποτε τιμῶντες τὸ θεῖον διαλείπωμεν.’

Μόνα δὲ ταῦτα τῶν ἀθλημάτων ἐφέντος αὐτοῦ τοὺς πολίτας ἀγωνίζεσθαι, ὅπου ἡ χεὶρ οὐκ ἀνατείνεται, ἐπύθετό τις τὴν αἰτίαν· ὁ δέ ‘ὅπως’ εἶπε ‘μηδεὶς αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ πονεῖν ἀπαυδᾶν ἐθίζηται.’

Ἐρωτῶντος δέ τινος, διὰ τί πυκνὰ μεταστρατοπεδεύειν κελεύει, ‘ὅπως’ εἶπε ‘πλείω τοὺς ἐχθροὺς βλάπτωμεν.’

Ἄλλου δ’ ἐπιζητοῦντος διὰ τί πυργομαχεῖν ἀπεῖπε, ‘ἵν’’ ἔφη ‘μὴ ὑπὸ γυναικὸς ἢ παιδὸς ἤ τινος παραπλησίου ἀνθρώπου οἱ ἀμείνονες ἀποθνῄσκωσιν.’

Τοῖς δὲ συμβουλευομένοις τῶν Θηβαίων περὶ τῆς [e] ἱερουργίας καὶ τοῦ πένθους, ἣν ποιοῦνται τῇ Λευκοθέᾳ, συνεβούλευσεν ‘εἰ μὲν θεὸν ἡγοῦνται, μὴ θρηνεῖν· εἰ δ’ ἄνθρωπον, μὴ ἱερουργεῖν ὡς θεῷ.’

Πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἐπιζητοῦντας τῶν πολιτῶν ‘πῶς ἂν πολεμίων ἔφοδον ἀλεξοίμεθα;’ ‘ἐὰν πτωχοί’ ἔφη ‘ἦτε καὶ μὴ μείζων ἅτερος θατέρου ἐρᾷ εἶναι.’

Καὶ πάλιν ἐπιζητούντων περὶ τειχῶν, ‘οὐκ’ ἔφη ‘πόλιν εἶναι ἀτείχιστον, ἥτις ἀνδράσι καὶ οὐ πλίνθοις ἐστεφάνωται.’

Ἐπεμέλοντο δὲ οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται καὶ τῆς κόμης, ἀπομνημονεύοντές τινα Λυκούργου λόγον περὶ τούτου, ὅτι τοὺς μὲν καλοὺς ἡ κόμη εὐπρεπεστέρους ποιεῖ, τοὺς δ’ αἰσχροὺς φοβερωτέρους.

[f] Παρήγγειλε δ’ ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις τρεψαμένους καὶ νικήσαντας μέχρι τοῦ βεβαιώσασθαι τὸ νίκημα ἐπιδιώκειν, εἶτ’ εὐθὺς ἀναχωρεῖν· ‹οὔτε γενναῖον› οὔτε Ἑλληνικὸν φονεύειν τοὺς παρακεχωρηκότας φάσκων. ‹εἶναι δ’ οὐ μόνον καλὸν τοῦτο καὶ μεγαλόψυχον› ἀλλὰ καὶ χρήσιμον· εἰδότας γὰρ τοὺς μαχομένους πρὸς αὑτοὺς ὅτι φείδονται μὲν τῶν ἐνδιδόντων, ἀναιροῦσι δὲ τοὺς ὑφισταμένους, τοῦ μένειν τὸ φεύγειν ὠφελιμώτερον ἡγήσεσθαι.

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος, διὰ τί τοὺς τῶν πολεμίων νεκροὺς ἀπηγόρευσε σκυλεύειν, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘μὴ κυπτάζοντες περὶ [229] [a] τὰ σκῦλα τῆς μάχης ἀμελῶσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν πενίαν ἅμα τῇ τάξει διασῴζωσι.’

ΛΥΣΑΝΔΡΟΣ

Λύσανδρος, Διονυσίου τοῦ τῆς Σικελίας τυράννου πέμψαντος αὐτοῦ ταῖς θυγατράσιν ἱμάτια πολυτελῆ, οὐκ ἔλαβεν εἰπὼν δεδιέναι, μὴ διὰ ταῦτα μᾶλλον αἰσχραὶ φανῶσιν. ἀλλ’ ὀλίγον ὕστερον πρὸς τὸν αὐτὸν τύραννον ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς πόλεως ἀποσταλεὶς πρεσβευτής, προσπέμψαντος αὐτῷ τοῦ Διονυσίου δύο στολὰς καὶ κελεύσαντος ἣν βούλεται ταύτην ἑλόμενον τῇ θυγατρὶ κομίζειν, αὐτὴν ἐκείνην ἔφη βέλτιον αἱρήσεσθαι· καὶ λαβὼν ἀμφοτέρας ἀπῆλθεν.

Σοφιστὴς δὲ δεινὸς γενόμενος ὁ Λύσανδρος καὶ ἀπάταις τὰ πολλὰ ποικίλλων, τὸ δίκαιον ἐν μόνῳ τῷ λυσιτελεῖ τιθέμενος καὶ τὸ καλὸν ἐν τῷ συμφέροντι, τὸ ἀληθὲς ἔλεγε τοῦ ψεύδους κρεῖττον εἶναι, ἑκατέρου δὲ [b] τῇ χρείᾳ τὴν ἀξίαν καὶ τὴν τιμὴν ὁρίζεσθαι.

Πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ψέγοντας αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῷ δι’ ἀπάτης τὰ πλεῖστα πράττειν ὡς ἀνάξιον τοῦ Ἡρακλέους καὶ δόλῳ, οὐκ ἄντικρυς κατορθοῦντα, γελῶν ἔλεγεν, ὅπου μὴ ἐφικνεῖται ἡ λεοντῆ, προσραπτέον εἶναι τὴν ἀλωπεκῆν.

Ἐπιμεμφομένων δ’ ἑτέρων αὐτὸν ἐπὶ ταῖς παραβάσεσι τῶν ὅρκων, οὓς ἐν Μιλήτῳ ἐποιήσατο, ἔλεγε ‘τοὺς μὲν παῖδας τοῖς ἀστραγάλοις δεῖ ἐξαπατᾶν, τοὺς δὲ ἄνδρας τοῖς ὅρκοις.’

Νικήσας δὲ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐξ ἐνέδρας περὶ Αἰγὸς ποταμοὺς καὶ λιμῷ πιέσας αὐτοὺς παρεστήσατο τὴν πόλιν καὶ ἔγραψε τοῖς ἐφόροις ‘ἑαλώκασιν αἱ Ἀθῆναι.’

[c] Πρὸς Ἀργείους δὲ περὶ γῆς ὅρων ἀμφισβητοῦντας πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ δικαιότερα λέγειν αὐτῶν φάσκοντας σπασάμενος τὴν μάχαιραν ‘ὁ ταύτης’ ἔφη ‘κρατῶν βέλτιστα περὶ γῆς ὅρων διαλέγεται.’

Τοὺς δὲ Βοιωτοὺς ἐπαμφοτερίζοντας, ὅτε διῄει τὴν χώραν, ὁρῶν προσέπεμψε πυνθανόμενος πότερον ὀρθοῖς τοῖς δόρασιν ἢ κεκλιμένοις διαπορεύηται τὴν χώραν αὐτῶν.

Μεγαρέως δ’ ἀνδρὸς ἔν τῳ κοινῷ συλλόγῳ παρρησίᾳ χρησαμένου πρὸς αὐτόν, ‘οἱ λόγοι σου’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ ξένε, πόλεως δέονται.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Κορινθίων ἀφεστώτων διερχόμενος παρὰ [d] τὰ τείχη τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἑώρα προσβάλλειν ὀκνοῦντας, καὶ λαγώς τις ὤφθη διαπηδῶν τὴν τάφρον, ‘οὐκ αἰσχύνεσθε’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ Σπαρτιᾶται, τοιούτους φοβούμενοι πολεμίους, ὧν δι’ ἀργίαν οἱ λαγωοὶ τοῖς τείχεσιν ἐγκαθεύδουσιν;’

Ἐν δὲ Σαμοθρᾴκῃ χρηστηριαζομένῳ αὐτῷ ὁ ἱερεὺς ἐκέλευσεν εἰπεῖν, ὅ τι ἀνομώτατον ἔργον αὐτῷ ἐν τῷ βίῳ πέπρακται. ἐπηρώτησεν οὖν ‘πότερον σοῦ κελεύοντος ἢ τῶν θεῶν τοῦτο δεῖ ποιεῖν;’ φαμένου δέ ‘τῶν θεῶν,’ ‘σὺ τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘ἐκποδών μοι μετάστηθι, κἀκείνοις ἐρῶ, ἐὰν πυνθάνωνται.’

Πέρσου δ’ ἐρωτήσαντος ποίαν μάλιστα ἐπαινεῖ [e] πολιτείαν, ‘ἥτις’ ἔφη ‘τοῖς ἀνδρείοις καὶ ‹τοῖς› δειλοῖς τὰ προσήκοντα ἀποδίδωσι.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν εἰπόντα, ὅτι ἐπαινοίη αὐτὸν καὶ ὑπερασπάζοιτο, ‘δύο βοῦς’ ἔφη ‘ἔχω ἐν ἀγρῷ· σιγώντων δ’ ἀμφοτέρων, ἀκριβῶς ἐπίσταμαι τόν τ’ ἀργὸν καὶ τὸν ἐργαζόμενον.’

Λοιδορουμένου δέ τινος αὐτῷ, εἶπε ‘λέγε πυκνῶς, ὦ ξενύλλιον, λέγε μηδὲν ἐλλείπων, ἄν σου δύνῃ τὰν ψυχὰν κενῶσαι κακῶν, ὧν ἔοικας πλήρης εἶναι.’

Χρόνῳ δ’ ὕστερον μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ἀντιλογίας συμμαχικῆς γενομένης, Ἀγησίλαος ἦλθεν ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ Λυσάνδρου οἰκίαν, ὅπως τὰ περὶ αὐτῆς γράμματα διασκέψηται· [f] ταῦτα γὰρ παρ’ αὑτῷ κατέσχεν ὁ Λύσανδρος. εὗρε δὲ καὶ βιβλίον γεγραμμένον τῷ Λυσάνδρῳ περὶ τῆς πολιτείας, ὡς χρὴ τῶν Εὐρυπωντιδῶν καὶ Ἀγιαδῶν τὴν βασιλείαν ἀφελομένους εἰς μέσον θεῖναι καὶ ποιεῖσθαι τὴν αἵρεσιν ἐκ τῶν ἀρίστων, ἵνα μὴ τῶν ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους, ἀλλὰ ‹τῶν› οἷος Ἡρακλῆς τῇ ἀρετῇ κρινομένων τὸ γέρας ᾖ, ᾗ κἀκεῖνος εἰς θεῶν τιμὰς ἀνήχθη. καὶ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ὥρμησε μὲν εἰς τοὺς πολίτας ἐξενεγκεῖν καὶ παραδεικνύναι τὸν Λύσανδρον οἷος ὢν πολίτης διαλανθάνοι καὶ ἐπὶ διαβολῇ τῶν Λυσάνδρου φίλων. ‹Λα›κρατίδην δέ φασι τότε προεστῶτα τῶν ἐφόρων, εὐλαβηθέντα μὴ πείσῃ ‹τιν’› ἀναγνωσθεὶς ὁ λόγος, ἐπιλαβέσθαι τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου καὶ εἰπεῖν ὡς οὐ δεῖ ἀνορύττειν τὸν Λύσανδρον, [230] [a] ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν λόγον αὐτῷ συγκατορύττειν, πανούργως καὶ πιθανῶς συντεταγμένον.

Τοὺς δὲ μνηστεύσαντας αὐτοῦ τὰς θυγατέρας, εἶτα μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν πένητος εὑρεθέντος ἀπειπαμένους ἐζημίωσαν οἱ ἔφοροι, ὅτι πλούσιον μὲν νομίζοντες ἐθεράπευον, δίκαιον δὲ καὶ χρηστὸν ἐκ τῆς πενίας ἐπιγνόντες ὑπερεῖδον.

ΝΑΜΕΡΤΗΣ

Ναμέρτης πρεσβευτὴς ἀποσταλείς, μακαρίζοντός τινος αὐτὸν τῶν ἐκεῖθι διότι πολύφιλος εἴη, ἠρώτησεν εἰ δοκίμιον ἔχει τίνι τρόπῳ πειράζεται ὁ πολύφιλος· ἐπιζητοῦντος [b] δὲ θατέρου μαθεῖν, ‘ἀτυχίᾳ’ εἶπεν.

ΝΙΚΑΝΔΡΟΣ

Νίκανδρος, εἰπόντος τινὸς ὅτι κακῶς αὐτὸν λέγουσιν Ἀργεῖοι, ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘δίκην τίνουσι τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς κακῶς λέγοντες.’

Πυθομένου δέ τινος διὰ τί κομῶσι καὶ πωγωνοτροφοῦσιν, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘πάντων κάλλιστος καὶ ἀδαπανώτατος ἀνδρὶ ὁ ἴδιος κόσμος.’

Τῶν Ἀθηναίων δ’ εἰπόντος τινός ‘λίαν ἀντέχεσθε, ὦ Νίκανδρε, τοῦ σχολάζειν’, ‘ἀληθίζῃ’ ἔφη, ‘ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὥσπερ ὑμεῖς ὅπως ‹ὅτι ἂν› τύχῃ σπουδάζωμεν.’

ΠΑΝΘΟΙΔΑΣ

[c] Πανθοίδας πρεσβεύων εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν, ἐπιδεικνύντων αὐτῷ τινων τεῖχος μέγα καὶ ὑψηλόν, εἶπε ‘νὴ τοὺς θεούς, ὦ ξένοι, καλὴ γυναικωνῖτις.’

Ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ δὲ τῶν φιλοσόφων διαλεγομένων πολλὰ καὶ σπουδαῖα, ἐπερωτώντων δὲ τὸν Πανθοίδαν μετὰ ταῦτα τί δοκοῦσιν αὐτῷ οἱ λόγοι εἶναι, ‘τί δ’ ἄλλο’ ἔφη ‘ἢ σπουδαῖοι; ὄφελος δ’ οὐδέν, μὴ χρωμένων ὑμῶν αὐτοῖς.’

ΠΑΥΣΑΝΙΑΣ Ο ΚΛΕΟΜΒΡΟΤΟΥ

Παυσανίας ὁ Κλεομβρότου, Δηλίων δικαιολογουμένων περὶ τῆς νήσου πρὸς Ἀθηναίους καὶ λεγόντων, ὅτι κατὰ τὸν νόμον τὸν παρ’ αὐτοῖς οὔθ’ αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν τῇ [d] νήσῳ τίκτουσιν οὔθ’ οἱ τελευτήσαντες θάπτονται, ‘πῶς ‹ἂν› οὖν’ ἔφη ‘αὕτη πατρὶς ὑμῶν εἴη, ἐν ᾗ οὔτε γέγονέ τις ὑμῶν οὔτ’ ἔσται;’

Τῶν δὲ φυγάδων αὐτὸν προτρεπομένων ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἄγειν τὴν στρατιὰν λεγόντων τε ὅτι τοῖς Ὀλυμπίοις ἀνακηρυττομένου αὐτοῦ ἐσύριττον αὐτὸν μόνοι, ‘τί οὖν οἴεσθε’ ἔφη ‘τοὺς ὅτε εὖ ἔπασχον συρίττοντας κακῶς παθόντας ποιήσειν;’

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος διὰ τί Τυρταῖον τὸν ποιητὴν ἐποιήσαντο πολίτην, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘μηδέποτε ξένος φαίνηται ἡμῶν ἡγεμών.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἀσθενῆ μὲν τῷ σώματι, συμβουλεύοντα δὲ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν [e] διακινδυνεύειν, ‘θέλεις οὖν’ ἔφη ‘δεῖξαι σεαυτὸν ἐκδύς, οἷος ὢν ἡμῖν μάχεσθαι συμβουλεύεις;’

Θαυμαζόντων δέ τινων ἐν τοῖς λαφύροις τῶν βαρβάρων τὴν πολυτέλειαν τῆς ἐσθῆτος, ‘κρεῖσσον’ ἔφη ‘αὐτοὺς εἶναι πολλοῦ ἀξίους ἢ κεκτῆσθαι πολλοῦ ἄξια.’

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐν Πλαταιαῖς κατὰ Μήδων γενομένην νίκην τοῖς ἀμφ’ αὑτὸν ἐκέλευσε τὸ προητοιμασμένον Περσικὸν δεῖπνον παραθεῖναι· τούτου δὲ θαυμαστὴν πολυτέλειαν ἔχοντος, ‘νὴ τοὺς θεούς’ ἔφη, ‘λίχνος ἦν ὁ Πέρσης, ὅτι τοσαῦτα ἔχων ἐπὶ τὴν ἡμετέραν ἦλθε μᾶζαν.’

ΠΑΥΣΑΝΙΑΣ Ο ΠΛΕΙΣΤΩΝΑΚΤΟΣ

[f] Παυσανίας ὁ Πλειστώνακτος πρὸς τὸν ἐρωτήσαντα, διὰ τί τῶν ἀρχαίων νόμων οὐδένα κινεῖν ἔξεστι παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ‘ὅτι τοὺς νόμους’ ἔφη ‘τῶν ἀνδρῶν, οὐ τοὺς ἄνδρας τῶν νόμων κυρίους εἶναι δεῖ.’

Ἐπαινοῦντος δ’ αὐτοῦ ἐν Τεγέᾳ μετὰ τὴν φυγὴν τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, εἶπέ τις ‘διὰ τί οὖν οὐκ ἔμενες ἐν Σπάρτῃ ἀλλ’ ἔφυγες;’ ‘ὅτι οὐδ’ οἱ ἰατροί’ ἔφη ‘παρὰ τοῖς ὑγιαίνουσιν, ὅπου δὲ οἱ νοσοῦντες, διατρίβειν εἰώθασιν.’

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος αὐτοῦ, πῶς ἂν δυνηθεῖεν τοὺς Θρᾷκας νικῆσαι, ‘εἰ τὸν ‹μὲν› ἰατρόν’ εἶπε ‘στρατηγόν, ‹ἰατρὸν δὲ τὸν στρατηγὸν› καταστήσαιμεν.’

[231] [a] Ἰατροῦ δ’ ἐπισκεπτομένου αὐτὸν καὶ εἰπόντος ‘οὐδὲν κακὸν ἔχεις’, ‘οὐ γὰρ σοὶ’ ἔφη ‘ἰατρῷ χρῶμαι;’

Μεμφομένου δέ τινος αὐτὸν τῶν φίλων, διότι ἰατρόν τινα κακῶς λέγει, πεῖραν οὐκ ἔχων αὐτοῦ οὐδ’ ἀδικηθείς τι, ‘ὅτι’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ ἔλαβον αὐτοῦ πεῖραν, οὐκ ἂν ἔζων.’

Ἄλλου δ’ ἰατροῦ εἰπόντος αὐτῷ ‘γέρων γέγονας’, ‘διότι’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἐχρησάμην σοὶ ἰατρῷ.’

Κράτιστον δ’ ἔλεγε τοῦτον ἰατρὸν εἶναι τὸν μὴ κατασήποντα τοὺς ἀρρωστοῦντας ἀλλὰ τάχιστα θάπτοντα.

ΠΕΔΑΡΙΤΟΣ

Πεδάριτος, λέγοντός τινος ὅτι πολλοὶ εἴησαν οἱ [b] πολέμιοι, ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘ἡμεῖς εὐκλεέστεροι ἐσόμεθα· πλείους γὰρ ἀποκτενοῦμεν.’

Ἰδὼν δέ τινα τῇ μὲν φύσει μαλακὸν δι’ ἐπιείκειαν δ’ ἐπαινούμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν, ἔφη ‘οὔτ’ ἄνδρας γυναιξὶν ὁμοίους ὄντας ἐπαινεῖν δεῖ οὔτε γυναῖκας ἀνδράσιν, ἐὰν μὴ [τὴν γυναῖκα] χρεία τις καταλάβῃ.’

Οὐκ ἐγκριθεὶς δ’ εἰς τοὺς τριακοσίους, ἥτις ἐν τῇ πόλει πρωτεύουσα τιμὴ τῇ τάξει ἦν, ἱλαρὸς καὶ μειδιῶν ἀπῄει· ἀνακαλεσαμένων δ’ αὐτὸν τῶν ἐφόρων καὶ πυνθανομένων διότι γελᾷ, εἶπε ‘διότι συγχαίρω τῇ πόλει τριακοσίους κρείττονάς μου πολίτας ἐχούσῃ.’

[c]

ΠΛΕΙΣΤΑΡΧΟΣ

Πλείσταρχος ‹ὁ› Λεωνίδου πρὸς τὸν ἐπερωτήσαντα, διὰ τίν’ αἰτίαν οὐκ ἀπὸ τῶν πρώτων βασιλέων προσαγορεύονται, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘ἐκεῖνοι μὲν ἄγαν βασιλεύειν ἔχρῃζον, οἱ δ’ ἐκείνων ὕστεροι οὐδαμῶς.’

Συνηγόρου δέ τινος γελοῖα λέγοντος, ‘οὐ φυλάξῃ, ὦ ξένε’, ἔφη, ‘συνεχῶς γελοιάζων, ὅπως μὴ γελοῖος γένῃ, ὥσπερ καὶ οἱ συνεχῶς παλαίοντες παλαισταί;’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἀηδόνα μιμούμενον ‘ἥδιον’ ἔφη, ‘ὦ ξένε, αὐτῆς ἄκουσα τῆς ἀηδόνος.’

Λέγοντος δέ τινος, ὅτι κακολόγος τις αὐτὸν ἐπῄνει ‘θαυμάζω’ ἔφη ‘εἰ μή τις αὐτῷ εἶπεν ὅτι ἀπέθανον· ζῶντα γὰρ ἐκεῖνος οὐδένα καλῶς λέξαι δύναται.’

[d]

ΠΛΕΙΣΤΩΝΑΞ

Πλειστῶναξ ὁ Παυσανίου, Ἀττικοῦ τινος ῥήτορος τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἀμαθεῖς ἀποκαλοῦντος, ‘ὀρθῶς’ ἔφη ‘λέγεις· μόνοι γὰρ Ἑλλήνων ἡμεῖς οὐδὲν κακὸν μεμαθήκαμεν παρ’ ὑμῶν.’

ΠΟΛΥΔΩΡΟΣ

Πολύδωρος ὁ Ἀλκαμένους, ἀπειλοῦντός τινος τοῖς ἐχθροῖς συχνά, ‘οὐ συνίης’ ἔφη ‘τῆς τιμωρίας τὸ πλεῖστον καταναλίσκων μέρος;’

Ἐξάγοντος δ’ αὐτοῦ τὸ στράτευμα ἐπὶ Μεσσήνην, ἤρετό τις εἰ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς μάχεσθαι μέλλει, ‘οὐκ’ ἔφη, ‘ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τὴν ἀκλήρωτον τῆς χώρας βαδίζειν.’

[e] Ἀργείων δὲ πάλιν μετὰ τὴν τῶν τριακοσίων μάχην ἐκ παρατάξεως πανδημεὶ κρατηθέντων, τὸν Πολύδωρον οἱ σύμμαχοι παρεκελεύοντο μὴ παριέναι τὸν καιρόν, ἀλλ’ ἐπελθόντα τῷ τείχει τῶν πολεμίων τὴν πόλιν αἱρεῖν· ῥᾷστον γὰρ ἔσεσθαι, τῶν μὲν ἀνδρῶν ἀπολωλότων, τῶν γυναικῶν δ’ ἀπολελειμμένων· ἔφη οὖν πρὸς αὐτούς ‘τὸ μὲν ἐκ τοῦ ἴσου μαχόμενον νικᾶν τοὺς ἐναντιουμένους ἐστί μοι καλόν, τὸ δ’ ὑπὲρ τῶν ὅρων τῆς χώρας μεμαχημένον τὴν πόλιν ἐπιθυμεῖν λαβεῖν οὐ δίκαιον τίθεμαι. εἶναι· ἦλθον γὰρ χώραν ἀπολαβεῖν οὐ καταλαβέσθαι πόλιν.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ διὰ τί Σπαρτιᾶται κατὰ πόλεμον κινδυνεύουσιν [f] ἀνδρείως, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘αἰδεῖσθαι τοὺς ἡγεμόνας ἔμαθον, οὐ φοβεῖσθαι.’

ΠΟΛΥΚΡΑΤΙΔΑΣ

Πολυκρατίδας πρεσβεύων πρὸς τοὺς βασιλέως στρατηγοὺς μεθ’ ἑτέρων, ἐρομένων αὐτὸν πότερον ἰδίᾳ πάρεισιν ἢ δημοσίᾳ ἐπέμφθησαν, ‘αἴκα τύχωμεν, δημοσίᾳ’ εἶπεν, ‘εἰ δὲ μή, ἰδίᾳ.’

ΦΟΙΒΙΔΑΣ

†Φοιβίδας, πρὸ τοῦ κινδύνου τοῦ Λευκτρικοῦ λεγόντων τινῶν δείξειν τὴν ἡμέραν ταύτην τὸν ἀγαθόν, πολλοῦ τὴν ἡμέραν ἔφησεν ἀξίαν εἶναι, δυναμένην τὸν ἀγαθὸν δεῖξαι.

ΣΟΟΣ

[232] [a] Σόον λέγεται ἐν χωρίῳ χαλεπῷ καὶ ἀνύδρῳ πολιορκούμενον ὑπὸ Κλειτορίων ὁμολογῆσαι τὴν δορίκτητον αὐτοῖς ‹ἂν› ἀφεῖναι γῆν, εἰ πίοιεν ‹οἱ› μετ’ αὐτοῦ πάντες ἀπὸ τῆς πλησίον πηγῆς· ἐφρούρουν δ’ αὐτὴν οἱ πολέμιοι. γενομένων δὲ τῶν ὅρκων, συναγαγόντα τοὺς μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ διδόναι τῷ μὴ πιόντι τὴν βασιλείαν· οὐδενὸς δὲ καρτερήσαντος ἀλλὰ πάντων πιόντων, αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσι καταβάντα καὶ περιρρανάμενον, ἔτι τῶν πολεμίων παρόντων, ἀπελθεῖν καὶ τὴν χώραν κατασχεῖν ὡς μὴ πιόντα.

ΤΗΛΕΚΛΟΣ

Τήλεκλος πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα, ὅτι ὁ πατὴρ λέγει [b] κακῶς αὐτόν, ‘εἰ μὴ αὐτῷ’ ἔφη ‘λεκτὸν ἦν, οὐκ ἂν ἔλεγεν.’

Εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ, ὅτι οὐχ ὁμοίως αὐτῷ προσφέρονται οἱ πολῖται ὡς ἐκείνῳ ὄντι ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν, ἀγνωμονέστερον δέ, εἶπε ‘σὺ γὰρ οὐκ οἶδας ἀδικεῖσθαι, ἐγὼ δέ.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ διὰ τί ἔθος παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἐστι τοὺς νεωτέρους τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις ἐξανίστασθαι, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘περὶ τοὺς μὴ προσήκοντας οὕτως ἔχοντες τιμῆς μᾶλλον τιμῶσι τοὺς γονέας.’

Πυθομένου δέ τινος πόσην κέκτηται οὐσίαν, ἔφη ‘οὐ πλείω τῆς ἱκανῆς.’

ΧΑΡΙΛΛΟΣ

Χάριλλος ἐρωτηθεὶς διὰ τί τοὺς νόμους ὁ Λυκοῦργος οὕτως ὀλίγους ἔθηκεν, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘τοῖς ὀλίγα λέγουσιν ὀλίγων καὶ νόμων ἐστὶ χρεία.’

[c] Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος διὰ τί τὰς μὲν κόρας ἀκαλύπτους, τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας ἐγκεκαλυμμένας εἰς τοὐμφανὲς ἄγουσιν, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘τὰς μὲν κόρας ἄνδρας εὑρεῖν δεῖ, τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας σῴζειν τοὺς ἔχοντας.’

Τῶν δὲ εἱλώτων τινὸς θρασύτερον αὐτῷ προσφερομένου, ‘εἰ μὴ ὠργιζόμην’ εἶπε, ‘κατέκτανον ἄν σε.’

Ἐρωτήσαντος δέ τινος αὐτὸν τίνα νομίζει πολιτείαν ἀρίστην, ἔφη ‘ἐν ᾗ ἂν περὶ ἀρετῆς πλεῖστοι πολιτευόμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἄνευ στάσεως ἀγωνίζεσθαι θέλωσι.’

Πυνθανομένου δέ τινος διὰ τί πάντα τὰ τῶν θεῶν

ξόανα μεθ’ ὅπλων ἵδρυται παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘μήτε τὰ κατὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὀνείδη λεγόμενα διὰ τὴν δειλίαν ἐπὶ τοὺς θεοὺς ἀναφέρωμεν, μήτε οἱ νέοι τοῖς θεοῖς ἀνόπλοι‹ς› εὔχωνται.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν πυθόμενον διὰ τί κομῶσιν εἶπεν ὅτι ‘τῶν κόσμων ὁ φυσικὸς καὶ ἀδάπανος οὗτός ἐστι.’

- - -

[d] Σαμίων πρεσβευταῖς μακρολογοῦσιν ἔφασαν οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται ‘τὰ μὲν πρῶτα ἐπιλελάθαμες, τὰ δὲ ὕστερα οὐ συνήκαμες διὰ τὸ τὰ πρῶτα ἐπιλελᾶσθαι.’

Ῥήτορος μακρὸν κατατείναντος λόγον καὶ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις αἰτοῦντος, ἵνα τοῖς πολίταις ἀπαγγείλῃ, ‘ἀπάγγελλε τοίνυν’ ἔφασαν ‘ὅτι μόλις μὲν σὺ ἐπαύσω λέγων, μόλις δὲ ἡμεῖς ἀκούοντες.’

Πρὸς Θηβαίους περί τινων ἀντιλέγοντας ‘ἢ φρονεῖν’ εἶπον ‘δεῖ ἔλασσον ἢ δύνασθαι μεῖζον.’

[e] Λάκων ἐρωτηθεὶς, δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν τὰς τοῦ πώγωνος τρίχας ἐπὶ πολὺ κομᾷ, εἶπεν ‘ἵνα βλέπων τὰς πολιὰς μηδὲν ἀνάξιον αὐτῶν πράττω.’

Ἄλλος πυθομένου τινός ‘διὰ τί ἐγχειριδίοις βραχέσι χρῆσθε;’ ‘ἵνα πλησίον’ εἶπε ‘τοῖς πολεμίοις εἰς χεῖρας ἵκωμες.’ Ἐπαινοῦντός τινος τοὺς ‹Ἀργείους ὡς› ἀρίστους μαχητάς, Λάκων εἶπεν ‘ἐν Τροίᾳ.’

Ἕτερος ἀκούσας δειπνήσαντάς τινας βιάζεσθαι πίνειν ‘μὴ καὶ ἐσθίειν’ εἶπε ‘βιάζονται;’

Πινδάρου δὲ γράψαντος (dith. 4 fr. 76 Schr.)

Ἑλλάδος ἔρεισμα Ἀθῆναι

Λάκων ἔφη καταπεσεῖν ἂν τὴν Ἑλλάδα ὀχουμένην ἐρείσματι τοιούτῳ.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἰδών τις ἐν πίνακι γραπτῷ Λάκωνας ὑπ’ Ἀθηναίων σφαττομένους ἔλεγεν ‘ἀνδρεῖοί γ’ Ἀθηναῖοι’, Λάκων ὑποτυχών ‘ἐν τῷ πίνακι’ εἶπε.

[f] Πρὸς δέ τινα προσιέμενον τὰς ἐκ διαβολῆς βλασφημίας Λάκων εἶπε ‘παῦσαι κατ’ ἐμοῦ τὰ ὦτα χορηγῶν.’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν κολαζόμενον καὶ λέγοντα ‘ἄκων ἥμαρτον’ εἶπέ τις ‘ἄκων τοίνυν καὶ κολάζου.’

Ἰδών τις ἐν ἀποχωρήσει θακεύοντας ἐπὶ δίφρων ἀνθρώπους ‘μὴ γένοιτο’ εἶπεν ‘ἐνταῦθα καθίσαι, ὅθεν οὐκ ἔστιν ‹ὑπ›εξαναστῆναι πρεσβυτέρῳ.’

Χίων ποτὲ κατ’ ἐπιδημίαν ἀπὸ δείπνου ἐμεσάντων ἐν τῷ ἐφορείῳ καὶ χεσάντων ἐπὶ τῶν δίφρων, ἔνθα [233] [a] οἱ ἔφοροι ἐκάθηντο, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἰσχυρῶς ἀνεζήτουν τοὺς ποιήσαντας μὴ πολῖται τυγχάνουσιν· ὡς δ’ ᾔσθοντο ὅτι Χῖοι ἦσαν, ἐκήρυξαν ‹ὅτι› τοῖς Χίοις ἐφιᾶσιν ἀσελγαίνειν.

Ἐπεὶ δέ τις τῶν ἀμυγδαλῶν τὰς σκληρὰς ἑώρα διπλασίου πωλουμένας, ‘μὴ σπάνιοι’ ἔφη ‘οἱ λίθοι;’

Τίλας τις ἀηδόνα καὶ βραχεῖαν πάνυ σάρκα εὑρὼν εἶπε ‘φωνὰ τύ τίς ἐσσι καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο.’

Ἰδών τις τῶν Λακώνων Διογένη τὸν κύνα περιλαμβάνοντα ἀνδριάντα χάλκεον, ψύχους ὄντος σφοδροῦ, ἐπύθετο εἰ ῥιγοῖ· ἀρνησαμένου δέ, ‘τί οὖν’ ἔφη ‘μέγα ποιεῖς;’

Ὀνειδισθείς τις τῶν Μεταποντίων εἰς δειλίαν ὑπὸ [b] Λάκωνος, ‘ἀλλὰ μήν’ ἔφη ‘οὐκ ὀλίγα τῆς ἀλλοτρίας ἔχομεν·’ ὁ δέ ‘οὐ μόνον ἄρα’ ἔφη ‘δειλοὶ ἀλλὰ καὶ ἄδικοί ἐστε.’

Κατ’ ἐπιδημίαν τις ἐν Σπάρτῃ κρηπιδούμενος ὀρθὸς ἐπὶ θατέρου σκέλους εἶπε πρὸς Λάκωνα ‘οὐκ ἂν οἶμαί σε, ὦ Λάκων, τοσοῦτον χρόνον ἐπὶ τοῦ ποδὸς ὅσον ἐγὼ στῆναι.’ καὶ ὃς ὑπολαβών ‘οὐ γάρ’ ἔφη· ‘τῶν μέντοι χηνῶν οὐκ ἔστιν ὅστις οὔ.’

Μεγαλυνομένου τινὸς ἐπὶ τῇ ῥητορικῇ τέχνῃ, εἶπέ

τις Λάκων ‘ἀλλὰ νὴ τὼ σιὼ τέχνη ἄνευ τοῦ ἀληθείας ἧφθαι οὔτε ἐστὶν οὔτε μήποτε γένηται.’

Ἀργείου ποτὲ εἰπόντος ‘πολλοὶ τάφοι παρ’ ἡμῖν εἰσὶ Σπαρτιατῶν’, Λάκων εἶπεν ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν παρ’ ἡμῖν [c] Ἀργείων οὐδὲ εἷς’, ὡς αὐτῶν μὲν πολλάκις Ἄργους ἐπιβεβηκότων Ἀργείων δὲ τῆς Σπάρτης οὐδέποτε.

Λάκων αἰχμαλωτισθεὶς καὶ πιπρασκόμενος, τοῦ κήρυκος λέγοντος ‘Λάκωνα πωλῶ’, ἐπεστόμισεν εἰπών ‘αἰχμάλωτον κήρυσσε.’

Τῶν παρὰ Λυσιμάχῳ στρατευομένων ἐρωτηθείς τις ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, μήτι τῶν εἱλώτων ἐστί, ‘σὺ δ’ οἴει’ ἔφη ‘ἐπὶ τὸ παρὰ σοῦ τετρώβολον Λάκωνα ἥξειν;’

Ὅτε Θηβαῖοι νικήσαντες τοὺς Λάκωνας ἐν Λεύκτροις πρὸς αὐτὸν παρῆσαν τὸν Εὐρώταν, καί τις μεγαλαυχῶν εἶπε ‘ποῦ νῦν εἰσὶν οἱ Λάκωνες;’ Σπαρτιάτης [d] ληφθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ‘οὐ πάρεισιν’ ἔφη· ‘οὐ γὰρ ἂν ὑμεῖς δεῦρο ἤλθετε.’

Ἀθηναίων ἀξιούντων, ὅτε παρέδωκαν τὸ ἄστυ, Σάμον αὐτοῖς μόνην ἐᾶσαι, εἶπον ‘ὅταν αὑτῶν ἦτε, τότε καὶ ἄλλους ἔχειν ζητεῖτε·’ ἀφ’ οὗ καὶ ἡ παροιμία (Par. gr. II 571)

‘ὃς αὐτὸς αὑτὸν οὐκ ἔχει, Σάμον θέλει.’

Πόλιν τινὰ κατὰ κράτος ἑλόντων Λακεδαιμονίων, οἱ ἔφοροι εἶπον ‘οἴχεται τὸ πάλαισμα τῶν νέων· [οὐκέτι ἕξουσιν ἀνταγωνιστὰς οἱ νέοι].’

Ἄλλην πόλιν ὑπισχνουμένου τοῦ βασιλέως αὐτῶν

τέλεον ἀφανιεῖν ἣν συμβεβήκει πράγματα πολλάκις παρεσχῆσθαι τοῖς Λάκωσιν, οὐκ ἐπέτρεψαν, φάμενοι ‘μηδαμῶς ἀφανίσῃς μηδ’ ἀνέλῃς τὴν ἀκόνην τῶν νέων.’

[e] Τοῖς παλαίουσι παιδοτρίβας οὐκ ἐφίστανον, ἵνα μὴ τέχνης ἀλλ’ ἀρετῆς ἡ φιλοτιμία γένηται. διὸ καὶ Λύσανδρος ἐρωτώμενος, ὅπως ὁ Χάρων ἐνίκησεν αὐτόν, ‘τᾷ πολυμηχανίᾳ’ εἶπε.

Φιλίππου γράφοντος, ὅτε εἰς τὴν χώραν αὐτῶν παρεγένετο, πότερον βούλονται φίλιον ἐλθεῖν ἢ πολέμιον αὐτόν, ἀντεφώνησαν ‘οὐδέτερον.’

Πρεσβευτήν τινα διαπεμψάμενοι πρὸς Ἀντίγονον τὸν Δημητρίου, πυθόμενοι ὅτι ἐκάλεσεν αὐτὸν βασιλέα, ἐζημίωσαν, καίτοι μέδιμνον πυρῶν ἑκάστῳ παρ’ αὐτοῦ σιτοδείας οὔσης κομίζοντα.

Δημητρίου ἐγκαλοῦντος ὅτι ἕνα πρεσβευτὴν ἔπεμψαν πρὸς αὐτόν, ‘οὐχ ἱκανὸς οὖν’ εἶπον, ‘εἰ πρὸς ἕνα εἷς;’

[f] Ἐνέγκαντός τινος ἀρίστην γνώμην μοχθηροῦ, ταύτην μὲν ἀπεδέξαντο, περιελόμενοι δὲ τούτου περιέθηκαν ἑτέρῳ καλῶς βεβιωκότι.

Ἀδελφῶν πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαφερομένων τὸν πατέρα ἐζημίωσαν, ὅτι τοὺς υἱεῖς στασιάζοντας περιορᾷ.

Ψάλτην ἐπιδημήσαντα ἐζημίωσαν, ὅτι δακτύλοις κιθαρίζει.

Δύο παῖδες ἐμάχοντο, ἅτερος δ’ αὐτῶν τὸν ἕτερον ἔτρωσε δρεπάνῳ πληγῇ θανασίμῳ· τῶν δὲ συνήθων παίδων, ἐπεὶ διαλύεσθαι ἔμελλεν, ἐπαγγελλομένων ἀμυνεῖσθαι καὶ ἀναιρήσειν τὸν πλήξαντα, ‘μηδαμῶς’ εἶπε [234] [a] ‘πρὸς θεῶν, οὐ γὰρ δίκαιον· καὶ γὰρ ἂν ἐγὼ ἐποίησα τοῦτο, εἰ ἔφθασα καὶ ἀγαθὸς ἐγενόμην.’

Ἕτερον παιδάριον, ἐπεὶ παρῆν ὁ καιρός, ἐν ᾧ κλέπτειν νενόμιστο τοὺς ἐλευθέρους παῖδας ὅ τι τις δύναιτο καὶ μὴ λαθεῖν αἰσχρὸν ἦν, ὡς οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ παῖδες ζῶν ἔκλεψαν ἀλωπέκιον καὶ ἔδοσαν αὐτῷ φυλάττειν, παραγενομένων τῶν ἀπολωλεκότων ἐπὶ ζήτησιν, ἔτυχε μὲν ὑποβαλὼν τὸ ἀλωπέκιον ὑπὸ τὸ αὑτοῦ ἱμάτιον, ἀγριαίνοντος δὲ τοῦ θηρίου καὶ τὴν αὐτοῦ πλευρὰν κατεσθίοντος μέχρι τῶν σπλάγχνων ἠρέμει, ἵνα μὴ γένηται καταφανής.

[b] ὡς δ’ ὕστερον ἐκείνων ἀπελθόντων ἐθεάσαντο τὸ γεγονὸς οἱ παῖδες καὶ ἐμέμφοντο, λέγοντες ἄμεινον εἶναι φανερὸν ποιῆσαι τὸ ἀλωπέκιον ἢ μέχρι θανάτου κρύπτειν, ‘οὐ μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν, ‘ἀλλὰ κρεῖττον ταῖς ἀλγηδόσι μὴ ἐνδόντα τελευτᾶν ἢ περίφωρον γενόμενον διὰ μαλακίαν τὸ ζῆν αἰσχρῶς περιποιήσασθαι.’

Περιτυχόντες τινὲς Λάκωσι καθ’ ὁδὸν εἶπον ‘εὐτυχήκατε, ἀρτίως ἐντεῦθεν λῃστῶν ἀπιόντων.’ οἱ δέ ‘οὐ μὰ τὸν Ἐνυάλιον, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνοι μὴ περιτυχόντες ἡμῖν.’

Λάκων ἐρωτηθεὶς τί ἐπίσταται, εἶπεν ‘ἐλεύθερος εἶναι.’

Παῖς Σπαρτιάτης αἰχμαλωτισθεὶς ὑπ’ Ἀντιγόνου τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ πραθεὶς τὰ μὲν ἄλλα πάντα ὑπήκοος [c] ἦν τῷ πριαμένῳ, ὅσα ᾤετο προσήκειν ἐλευθέρῳ ποιεῖν· ὡς δὲ προσέταξεν ἀμίδα κομίζειν, οὐκ ἠνέσχετο εἰπών ‘οὐ δουλεύσω.’ ἐνισταμένου δ’ ἐκείνου, ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸν κέραμον καὶ εἰπών ‘ †εἴσῃ τῆς ὠνῆς’ ἔβαλεν ἑαυτὸν κάτω καὶ ἐτελεύτα.

Ἕτερος πωλούμενος, εἰπόντος τινός ‘ἐὰν ἀγοράσω σε, χρήσιμος ἔσῃ;’ ‘κἂν μὴ ἀγοράσῃς’ εἶπεν.

Ἄλλος αἰχμάλωτος πιπρασκόμενος, τοῦ κήρυκος ἐπιλέγοντος ἀνδράποδον πωλεῖν, ‘κατάρατε’ εἶπεν, ‘οὐκ ἐρεῖς αἰχμάλωτον;’

Λάκων ἐπὶ τῆς ἀσπίδος μυῖαν ἔχων ἐπίσημον καὶ ταύτην οὐ μείζω τῆς ἀληθινῆς, ὡς καταγελῶντές τινες [d] ἔλεγον ‹ὅτι› ὑπὲρ τοῦ λανθάνειν τοῦτο πεποιήκει, ‘ἵνα μὲν οὖν’ εἶπε ‘φανερὸς ὦ· οὕτω γὰρ τοῖς πολεμίοις πλησίον προσέρχομαι, ὥστε τὸ ἐπίσημον ἡλίκον ἐστὶν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ὁρᾶσθαι.’

Ἕτερος, ἐν συμποσίῳ προσενεχθείσης λύρας, ‘οὐ Λακωνικόν’ εἶπε ‘τὸ φλυαρεῖν.’

Σπαρτιάτης ἐρωτηθεὶς εἰ ἀσφαλὴς ἡ εἰς Σπάρτην ὁδὸς εἶπεν ‘ὁποῖος †καθίσῃς· οἱ μὲν γὰρ λέοντες βαδίζοντι ὅπα κα λέωντι, τὼς δὲ λαγὼς ἐπὶ τᾷ σκηνᾷ θηρεύομες.’

Ἐν χειραψίᾳ περικρούοντος τοῦ προστραχηλίζοντος κενοσπούδως καὶ κατασπῶντος ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν, ἐπειδὴ τῷ σώματι ἐλείπετο ὁ προσπεσών, ἔδακε τὸν βραχίονα· καὶ ὁ ἕτερος εἶπε ‘δάκνεις, ὦ Λάκων, ὥσπερ αἱ γυναῖκες·’ ‘οὐ μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν ἅτερος, ‘ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ λέοντες.’

Χωλὸς ἐπὶ πόλεμον ἐξιών, ἐπακολουθούντων αὐτῷ τινων καὶ διαγελώντων, ἐπιστραφεὶς εἶπε ‘κακαὶ κεφαλαί, οὐ φεύγοντα δεῖ τοῖς πολεμίοις μάχεσθαι, ἀλλὰ μένοντα καὶ τὴν τάξιν φυλάττοντα.’

Ἕτερος τοξευθεὶς καὶ ἐκλείπων τὸν βίον οὐχὶ τοῦτο ἔφησεν αὐτῷ μέλειν, ὅτι ἀποθανεῖται, ἀλλ’ ὅτι ὑπὸ γύννιδος τοξότου καὶ μηδὲν πράξας.

Εἰς πανδοκεῖόν τις καταλύσας καὶ δοὺς ὄψον τῷ

πανδοκεῖ κατασκευάσαι, ὡς ἅτερος τυρὸν ᾔτει καὶ ἔλαιον, ‘εἶτ’’ ἔφη ‘εἰ τυρὸν εἶχον, ἔτι ἂν ἐδεόμην ὄψου;’

Πρὸς δὲ τὸν μακαρίζοντα Λάμπιν τὸν Αἰγινήτην, [e] διότι ἐδόκει πλουσιώτατος εἶναι ναυκλήρια πολλὰ ἔχων, Λάκων εἶπεν ‘οὐ προσέχω εὐδαιμονίᾳ ἐκ σχοινίων ἀπηρτημένῃ.’

Εἰπόντος δέ τινος Λάκωνι ὅτι ψεύδεται, ἀπεκρίνατο ‘ἐλεύθεροι γάρ εἰμες· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι, αἴκα μὴ τἀληθῆ λέγωντι, οἰμώξονται.’

Προθέμενός τις νεκρὸν στῆσαι ὀρθόν, ὡς πάντα ποιῶν οὐκ ἐδύνατο, ‘νὴ τὼ σιώ’ εἶπεν, ‘ἔνδον τι εἶναι δεῖ.’

Τύννιχος, Θρασυβούλου τοῦ παιδὸς ἀποθανόντος, εὐρώστως ἤνεγκε· καὶ ἐπίγραμμα εἰς τοῦτον ἐγένετο· (Dioscorides Anth. Pal. VII 229)

[235] [a] τὰν Πιτάναν Θρασύβουλος ἐπ’ ἀσπίδος ἤλυθεν ἄπνους

ἑπτὰ πρὸς Ἀργείων τραύματα δεξάμενος,

δεικνὺς ἀντία πάντα· τὸν αἱματόεντα δ’ ὁ πρέσβυς

θεὶς ἐπὶ πυρκαϊὴν Τύννιχος εἶπε τάδε·

‘Δειλοὶ κλαιέσθωσαν· ἐγὼ δέ σε τέκνον ἄδακρυς

θάψω, τὸν καὶ ἐμὸν καὶ Λακεδαιμόνιον.’

Ἀλκιβιάδῃ τῷ Ἀθηναίῳ βαλανέως ἐπὶ πλεῖστον παραχέοντος ὕδωρ, Λάκων εἶπε ‘τί τοῦτο ὡς οὐ καθαρῷ, σφόδρα δὲ ῥυπαρῷ; πλεῖον παράχει.’

Φιλίππου τοῦ Μακεδόνος προστάσσοντός τινα δι’ ἐπιστολῆς, ἀντέγραψαν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι ‘Φιλίππῳ· περὶ ὧν ἄμμιν ἔγραψας, οὔ’. ὅτε δ’ ἐνέβαλεν εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν ὁ Φίλιππος καὶ ἐδόκουν ἅπαντες ἀπολεῖσθαι, [b] εἶπε πρός τινα τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ‘τί νῦν ποιήσετε, ὦ Λάκωνες;’ ‘τί γάρ’ ἔφη ‘ἄλλο ἢ ἀνδρείως ἀποθανούμεθα; μόνοι γὰρ ἡμεῖς Ἑλλήνων ἐλεύθεροι εἶναι καὶ μὴ ὑπακούειν ἄλλοις ἐμάθομεν.’

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν Ἄγιδος ἧτταν, ὁμήρους αἰτοῦντος Ἀντιπάτρου πεντήκοντα παῖδας, Ἐτεοκλῆς ἐφορεύων εἶπε παῖδας μὲν οὐ δώσειν, ἵνα μὴ ἀπαίδευτοι γένωνται, τῆς πατρίου ἀγωγῆς ἀτευκτήσαντες· οὐδὲ πολῖται γὰρ ἂν εἴησαν· πρεσβύτας δ’ ἢ γυναῖκας, εἰ βούλοιτο, διπλασίους δώσειν. ἀπειλοῦντος δ’ αὐτοῦ δεινά, εἰ μὴ λάβοι, ἀπεκρίναντο κοινῇ ‘ἐὰν χαλεπώτερα θανάτου ἐπιτάττῃς, εὐκολώτερον ἀποθανούμεθα.’

[c] Πρεσβύτης ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ συντελουμένου τοῦ ἀγῶνος προθυμούμενος θεάσασθαι, καθέδρας ἠπόρει· πολλοὺς δ’ ἐπιπορευόμενος τόπους ὑβρίζετο καὶ ἐσκώπτετο, μηδενὸς αὐτὸν παραδεχομένου· ὡς δὲ κατὰ τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἧκεν, ἀνέστησαν πάντες οἱ παῖδες καὶ πολλοὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν τοῦ τόπου ἐκχωροῦντες· τῶν δὲ Πανελλήνων ἐπισημειωσαμένων κρότῳ τὸ ἔθος καὶ ὑπερεπαινούντων, ὁ πρεσβύτης κινήσας ‘πολιόν τε κάρη πολιόν τε γένειον’ (Χ 74 Ω 516) καὶ δακρύσας ‘οἴμοι τῶν κακῶν’ φησίν, ‘ὡς ἅπαντες μὲν οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐπίστανται τὰ καλά, χρῶνται δ’ αὐτοῖς μόνοι Λακεδαιμόνιοι.’

[d] φασὶ δέ τινες, ὅτι καὶ Ἀθήνησι τὸ αὐτὸ ἐγένετο· Παναθηναίων γὰρ ὄντων οἱ Ἀττικοὶ γέροντα προεπηλάκιζον, προσκαλούμενοι μὲν ὡς παραδεξόμενοι, εἰ δὲ παραγένοιτο, οὐ προσδεχόμενοι· ὡς δὲ διεξιὼν σχεδὸν ἅπαντας ἐγένετο κατὰ τοὺς τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων θεωρούς, ἅπαντες τῶν βάθρων ἀναστάντες τοῦ τόπου παρεχώρουν· ἀγασθεὶς δὲ ὁ ὄχλος ἐπὶ τῷ γεγονότι ἐκρότησε μετὰ πολλῆς ἐπισημασίας, καί τις εἶπε τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν ‘νὴ τὼ σιώ, ἴσασι μὲν οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι τὰ καλά, οὐ πράσσουσι δέ.’

Ἐπαίτης ᾔτησε Λάκωνα· ‘ἀλλ’ εἰ δοίην σοι’ ἔφη ‘μᾶλλον πτωχεύσεις, τῆς δ’ ἀσχημοσύνης σου ταύτης ὁ [e] πρῶτος μεταδοὺς αἴτιος, ἀργόν σε ποιήσας.’

Λάκων ἰδὼν ἀγείροντά τινα θεοῖς ‘οὐδέν’ εἶπε ‘φροντίζειν θεῶν πτωχοτέρων ἑαυτοῦ.’

Λαβών τις μοιχὸν ἐπ’ αἰσχρᾷ γυναικί ‘ἄθλιε’ εἶπε ‘τίς τοι ἀνάγκα;’

Ἄλλος ἀκούων ῥήτορος μεγάλας στρέφοντος περιόδους, ‘ἀλλὰ νὴ τὼ σιώ’ εἶπεν ‘ἀνδρεῖός γε ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ‹ὃς› πρὸς οὐδὲν ὑποκείμενον εὖ στροβιλοῖ τὰν γλῶσσαν.’

Εἰς Λακεδαίμονα παραγενόμενός τις καὶ τὴν πρὸς τοὺς πρεσβύτας τῶν νέων τιμὴν θεασάμενος, ‘ἐν Σπάρτῃ μόνῃ’ εἶπε ‘λυσιτελεῖ γηράσκειν.’

Ἐρωτηθεὶς Λάκων ὁποῖός ἐστι Τυρταῖος ὁ ποιητής, [f] ‘ἀγαθός’ εἶπε ‘κακκονῆν νέων ψυχάς.’

Ἕτερος ἀλγῶν τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἐξῄει ἐπὶ πόλεμον· λεγόντων δ’ αὐτῷ τινων ‘ποῖ ἄπει οὕτως ἔχων ἢ τί ποιήσων;’ ‘κἂν μηδὲν ἕτερον πράξω’ ἔφη ‘πολεμίου γε μάχαιραν ἀμβλυνῶ.’

Βοῦλις καὶ Σπέρχις Λακεδαιμόνιοι πορευθέντες ἐθελονταὶ πρὸς Ξέρξην τὸν Περσῶν βασιλέα ἐπὶ τιμωρίᾳ, ἣν ὦφλεν ἡ Λακεδαίμων κατὰ χρησμόν, διότι κήρυκας [236] [a] πεμφθέντας ὑπὸ τοῦ Πέρσου ὡς αὐτοὺς ἀπέκτειναν, ἐλθόντες πρὸς τὸν Ξέρξην ἐκέλευον ᾧ βούλεται τρόπῳ διαχρήσασθαι αὐτοὺς ὑπὲρ Λακεδαιμονίων. ὡς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἀγασθεὶς ἀπέλυσε τοὺς ἄνδρας καὶ ἠξίου μένειν παρ’ αὐτῷ, ‘καὶ πῶς ἄν’ ἔφασαν ‘δυναίμεθα ζῆν ἐνταῦθα, πατρίδα καταλιπόντες καὶ νόμους καὶ τούτους τοὺς ἄνδρας, ὑπὲρ ὧν τοσαύτην ἤλθομεν ὁδὸν ἀποθανούμενοι;’ Ἰνδάρνου δὲ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ ἐπὶ πλέον δεομένου καὶ λέγοντος τεύξεσθαι αὐτοὺς τῆς ἴσης τιμῆς τοῖς μάλιστα ἐν προαγωγῇ φίλοις τοῦ βασιλέως, ἔφασαν ‘ἀγνοεῖν ἡμῖν δοκεῖς, ἡλίκον ἐστὶ τὸ τῆς ἐλευθερίας, ἧς οὐκ ἂν ἀλλάξαιτό τις νοῦν ἔχων τὴν Περσῶν βασιλείαν.’

[b] Λάκων, ἐπεὶ τῇ μὲν προτέρᾳ ἡμέρᾳ ὁ ξένος αὐτὸν ἐξέκλινε, τῇ δ’ ἑξῆς στρώματα χρησάμενος δαψιλῶς ὑπεδέχετο, ἐπιβὰς τοῖς στρώμασι κατεπάτει, ἐπιλέγων διὰ ταῦτα ἐχθὲς οὐδ’ ἐπὶ ψιάθου ὑπνωκέναι.

Ἕτερος ἐλθὼν εἰς Ἀθήνας καὶ ὁρῶν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους τὸ τάριχος ἀποκηρύττοντας καὶ τὸ ὄψον καὶ τελωνοῦντας καὶ πορνοβοσκοῦντας καὶ ἕτερα ἔργα ἀσχήμονα πράττοντας καὶ μηδὲν αἰσχρὸν ἡγουμένους, ὅτε ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς τὴν πατρίδα, τῶν πολιτῶν πυνθανομένων αὐτοῦ ποῖά [c] τινά ἐστι τὰ ἐν Ἀθήναις, ‘πάντα’ εἶπε ‘καλά,’ εἰρωνευόμενος καὶ παριστὰς ὅτι πάντα παρὰ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις καλὰ νομίζεται, αἰσχρὸν δ’ οὐδέν.

Ἄλλος ἐρωτώμενος περί τινος ἀπεκρίνατο ‘οὔ·’ ὡς δ’ ὁ ἐρωτήσας ἀπεκρίνατο ὅτι ‘ψεύδῃ’, ‘ὁρᾷς οὖν’ ἔφη ‘ὅτι μάταιος εἶ περὶ ὧν ἐπίστασαι ἐρωτῶν.’

Ἧκόν ποτε κατὰ πρεσβείαν Λάκωνες πρὸς Λύγδαμιν τὸν τύραννον· ὡς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ὑπερτιθέμενος πολλάκις συντυχεῖν ἀνεβάλλετο, τὸ δ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσι μαλακῶς ἔχειν αὐτὸν ἔφη τις, οἱ πρέσβεις ‘λέγε αὐτῷ’ εἶπον ‘ὅτι μὰ τοὺς θεοὺς οὐ παλαισόμενοι πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐληλύθαμεν, ἀλλὰ διαλεχθησόμενοι.’

[d] Λάκωνά τινά τις μυσταγωγῶν ἠρώτα τί πράξας ἑαυτῷ σύνοιδεν ἀσεβέστατον, ὁ δέ ‘γινώσκουσιν οἱ θεοί’ ἔφη· ἐπικειμένου δὲ μᾶλλον καὶ λέγοντος ‘πάντως σε δεῖ εἰπεῖν’, ὁ Λάκων ἀντηρώτησε ‘τίνι με δεῖ εἰπεῖν, σοὶ ἢ τῷ θεῷ;’ τοῦ δ’ εἰπόντος ‘τῷ θεῷ’, ‘σὺ τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘ἀποχώρησον.’

Ἕτερος νυκτὸς μνῆμα παριὼν καὶ φαντασιωθεὶς δαιμόνιόν τι ἐπέδραμε τῇ λόγχῃ διαράμενος, καὶ ἐναπερείδων εἶπε ‘πῆ με φεύγεις, δὶς ἀποθανουμένη ψυχή;’

Ἄλλος εὐξάμενος ἀπὸ τοῦ Λευκάτα ῥίπτειν ἑαυτὸν

ἀνέβη καὶ ὑπέστρεψεν ἰδὼν τὸ ὕψος· ὀνειδιζόμενος δ’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ᾤμαν τὰν εὐχὰν ἄλλας μείζονος εὐχᾶς δεῖσθαι.’

[e] Ἄλλος ἐπὶ παρατάξεως τῷ πολεμίῳ τὸ ξίφος καταφέρειν μέλλων, ἐπεὶ τὸ ἀνακλητικὸν ἐσήμηνεν, οὐκέτι κατήνεγκε· πυθομένου δέ τινος, διὰ τί τὸν ἐχθρὸν ἔχων ὑποχείριον οὐκ ἀπέκτεινεν, ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘βέλτιόν ἐστι τοῦ φονεύειν τὸ πείθεσθαι τῷ ἄρχοντι.’

Λάκωνί τινι ἡττωμένῳ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ πάλην εἶπέ τις ‘ὁ ἀνταγωνιστής, ὦ Λάκων, ἐγένετό σου κρείσσων·’ ‘οὐ μὲν οὖν’ ἔφη ‘ἀλλὰ καββαλικώτερος.’

[f] Τῶν εἰσιόντων εἰς τὰ συσσίτια ἑκάστῳ δεικνύων ὁ πρεσβύτατος τὰς θύρας, ‘διὰ τούτων’ φησίν ‘οὐδεὶς ἐξέρχεται λόγος.’

Δοκιμαζομένου μάλιστα παρ’ αὐτοῖς τοῦ μέλανος λεγομένου ζωμοῦ, ὥστε μὴ κρεαδίου δεῖσθαι τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους, παραχωρεῖν δὲ τοῖς νεανίσκοις, λέγεται Διονύσιος ὁ τῆς Σικελίας τύραννος τούτου χάριν Λακωνικὸν μάγειρον πρίασθαι καὶ προστάξαι σκευάσαι αὐτῷ μηδενὸς φειδόμενον ἀναλώματος· ἔπειτα γευσάμενον καὶ δυσχεράναντα [237] [a] ἀποπτύσαι, καὶ τὸν μάγειρον εἰπεῖν ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ, τοῦτον δεῖ τὸν ζωμὸν γυμνασάμενον Λακωνικῶς ‹ἐν› τῷ Εὐρώτᾳ λελουμένον ἐποψᾶσθαι.’

Πιόντες οἱ Λάκωνες ἐν τοῖς συσσιτίοις μετρίως

ἀπίασι δίχα λαμπάδος· οὐ γὰρ ἔξεστι πρὸς φῶς βαδίζειν οὔτε ταύτην οὔτ’ ἄλλην ὁδόν, ὅπως ἐθίζωνται σκότους καὶ νυκτὸς εὐθαρσῶς καὶ ἀδεῶς ὁδεύειν.

Γράμματα ἕνεκα τῆς χρείας ἐμάνθανον· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων παιδευμάτων ξενηλασίαν ἐποιοῦντο, οὐ μᾶλλον ἀνθρώπων ἢ λόγων. ἡ δὲ παιδεία ἦν αὐτοῖς πρὸς τὸ ἄρχεσθαι καλῶς καὶ καρτερεῖν πονοῦντα καὶ μαχόμενον νικᾶν ἢ ἀποθνήσκειν.

[b] Διετέλουν δὲ καὶ ἄνευ χιτῶνος, ἓν ἱμάτιον εἰς τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν λαμβάνοντες, αὐχμηροὶ τὰ σώματα καὶ λουτρῶν καὶ ἀλειμμάτων κατὰ τὸ πλεῖστον ἀπεχόμενοι.

Ἐκάθευδον δὲ οἱ νέοι ὁμοῦ κατ’ ἴλην καὶ κατ’ ἀγέλην ἐπὶ στιβάδων, ἃς αὐτοὶ συνεφόρουν, τοῦ παρὰ τῷ Εὐρώτᾳ πεφυκότος καλάμου τὰ ἄκρα ταῖς χερσὶν ἄνευ σιδήρου κατακλάσαντες· ἐν δὲ τῷ χειμῶνι τοὺς λεγομένους λυκοφάνους ὑπεβάλλοντο καὶ κατεμίγνυσαν ταῖς στιβάσι, θερμαντικὸν ἔχειν τι τῆς ὕλης δοκούσης.

Ἐρᾶν τῶν τὴν ψυχὴν σπουδαίων παίδων ἐφεῖτο· τὸ δὲ πλησιάζειν αἰσχρὸν νενόμιστο, ὡς τοῦ σώματος ἐρῶντας [c] ἀλλ’ οὐ τῆς ψυχῆς· ὁ δ’ ἐγκληθεὶς ὡς ἐπ’ αἰσχύνῃ πλησιάζων ἄτιμος διὰ βίου ἦν.

Ἔθος ἦν καὶ τοὺς νεωτέρους ὑπὸ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἐρωτᾶσθαι, ποῖ πορεύονται καὶ ἐπὶ τί, καὶ τὸν μὴ ἀποκρινόμενον ἢ προφάσεις πλέκοντα ἐπιπλήττειν· ὁ δὲ μὴ ἐπιπλήττων παρόντος αὐτοῦ ἁμαρτάνοντα ἔνοχος ἦν τῷ ἴσῳ ἐπιτιμίῳ ᾧπερ καὶ ὁ ἁμαρτών· καὶ ὁ δυσχεραίνων δέ, εἰ ἐπιτιμῷτο, ἐν μεγάλῳ ὀνείδει ἦν.

Εἴ τις φωραθείη ἁμαρτάνων, ἔδει τοῦτον βωμόν τινα τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει κύκλῳ περιιέναι, ψόγον ᾄδοντα πεποιημένον εἰς ἑαυτόν· ὅπερ ἦν οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἢ ἐπιπλήττειν αὐτὸν αὑτῷ.

Καὶ τοὺς νέους δ’ οὐ μόνον τοὺς ἰδίους αἰδεῖσθαι [d] πατέρας καὶ ὑπηκόους τούτοις εἶναι, ἀλλὰ πάντας τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους ἐντρέπεσθαι, καὶ ὁδῶν ὑποχωροῦντας καὶ καθέδρας ὑπεξανισταμένους καὶ παρόντων ἡσυχάζοντας. διὸ καὶ ἦρχεν ἕκαστος οὐχ ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις πόλεσι τῶν αὑτοῦ καὶ τῶν τοῦ πλησίον, ὅπως ὅτι μάλιστα κοιτῶν αὑτοῦ καὶ τῶν τοῦ πλησίον, ὅπως ὅτι μάλιστα κοινωνῶσι καὶ φροντίζωσιν ὡς οἰκείων.

Παῖς δὲ ὑπό τινος κολασθείς, εἰ τῷ πατρὶ ἐξήγγειλεν, αἰσχρὸν ἦν τῷ πατρὶ μὴ προσεντεῖναι ἀκούσαντα πάλιν ἑτέρας· ἐπίστευον γὰρ ἑαυτοῖς ἐκ τῆς πατρίου ἀγωγῆς μηδὲν αἰσχρὸν προστάξαι τοῖς τέκνοις.

Κλέπτουσι δὲ οἱ νέοι καὶ τῶν σιτίων ὅ τι ἂν δύνωνται, [e] μανθάνοντες εὐφυῶς ἐπιτίθεσθαι τοῖς καθεύδουσιν ἢ ῥᾳθύμως φυλάσσουσι· τῷ δὲ ἁλόντι ζημία πληγαὶ καὶ τὸ πεινῆν. γλίσχρον γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἐστι δεῖπνον, ὅπως δι’ αὑτῶν ἀμυνόμενοι τὴν ἔνδειαν ἀναγκάζωνται τολμᾶν καὶ πανουργεῖν.

Τὸ δ’ ἔργον τῆς συσσιτίας διά τε ταῦτα γλίσχρον ἦν καὶ ἵν’ ἐθίζωνται μηδέποτε γίνεσθαι πλήρεις, δύνασθαι δὲ πεινῆν· οὕτω γὰρ ᾤοντο καὶ εἰς τὸν πόλεμον χρησιμωτέρους ἔσεσθαι, εἰ δύναιντο καὶ ἀσιτήσαντες ἐπιπονῆσαι, καὶ ἐγκρατεστέρους δὲ καὶ εὐτελεστέρους, εἰ πλείω χρόνον διάγοιεν ἀπὸ μικρᾶς δαπάνης· τὸ δ’ [f] ἀνοψίαν ὑποφέρειν καὶ βρῶμα τὸ τυχὸν προσφέρεσθαι ᾤοντο ὑγιεινότερα τὰ σώματα καὶ εὐαυξῆ ἀπὸ τῆς ἐλλειπούσης ποιεῖν τροφῆς, νομίζοντες εἰς βάθος τε καὶ πλάτος μὴ πιεζόμενον ἐπαίρειν εἰς ὕψος τὰ σώματα· καὶ καλὰ δὲ ποιεῖν· τὰς γὰρ ἰσχνὰς καὶ διακένους ἕξεις ὑπακούειν πρὸς τὴν διάρθρωσιν, τὰς δὲ πολυτρόφους διὰ βάρος ἀντιβαίνειν.

Ἐσπούδαζον δὲ καὶ περὶ τὰ μέλη καὶ τὰς ᾠδὰς [238] [a] οὐδενὸς ἧττον· κέντρον δ’ εἶχε ταῦτα ἐγερτικὸν θυμοῦ καὶ φρονήματος καὶ παραστατικὸν ὁρμῆς ἐνθουσιώδους καὶ πρακτικῆς. καὶ ἡ λέξις ἦν ἀφελὴς καὶ ἄθρυπτος· οὐδὲν δ’ ἕτερον εἶχεν ἢ ἐπαίνους τῶν γεννικῶς ζησάντων καὶ ὑπὲρ τῆς Σπάρτης ἀποθανόντων καὶ εὐδαιμονιζομένων καὶ ψόγους τῶν τρεσάντων ὡς ἀλγεινὸν καὶ κακοδαίμονα βιούντων βίον· ἐπαγγελία τε καὶ μεγαλαυχία πρὸς ἀρετὴν πρέπουσα ταῖς ἡλικίαις.

Τριῶν οὖν χορῶν ὄντων κατὰ τὰς τρεῖς ἡλικίας καὶ συνισταμένων ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς, ὁ μὲν τῶν γερόντων ἀρχόμενος ᾖδεν (PLGr III 4`4 661 6 II 197 Diehl)

‘ἁμές ποτ’ ἦμες ἄλκιμοι νεανίαι·’

[b] εἶτα ὁ τῶν ἀκμαζόντων ἀνδρῶν ἀμειβόμενος [ἔλεγεν]

‘ἁμὲς δέ γ’ εἰμές· αἰ δὲ λῇς, αὐγάσδεο·’

ὁ δὲ τρίτος ὁ τῶν παίδων

‘ἁμὲς δέ γ’ ἐσσόμεσθα πολλῷ κάρρονες.’

Καὶ οἱ ἐμβατήριοι δὲ ῥυθμοὶ παρορμητικοὶ ἦσαν πρὸς ἀνδρείαν καὶ θαρραλεότητα καὶ ὑπερφρόνησιν θανάτου, οἷς ἐχρῶντο ἔν τε χοροῖς καὶ πρὸς αὐλὸν ἐπάγοντες τοῖς πολεμίοις. ὁ γὰρ Λυκοῦργος παρέζευξε τῇ κατὰ πόλεμον ἀσκήσει τὴν φιλομουσίαν, ὅπως τὸ ἄγαν πολεμικὸν τῷ ἐμμελεῖ κερασθὲν συμφωνίαν καὶ ἁρμονίαν ἔχῃ· διὸ καὶ ἐν ταῖς μάχαις προεθύετο ταῖς Μούσαις ὁ βασιλεύς, ἵνα λόγου ἀξίας παρέχωσι τὰς πράξεις οἱ [c] μαχόμενοι καὶ μνήμης εὐκλεοῦς.

Εἰ δέ τις παραβαίνοι τι τῆς ἀρχαίας μουσικῆς, οὐκ ἐπέτρεπον· ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν Τέρπανδρον ἀρχαϊκώτατον ὄντα καὶ ἄριστον τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτὸν κιθαρῳδῶν καὶ τῶν ἡρωικῶν πράξεων ἐπαινέτην ὅμως οἱ ἔφοροι ἐζημίωσαν καὶ τὴν κιθάραν αὐτοῦ προσεπαττάλευσαν φέροντες, ὅτι μίαν μόνην χορδὴν ἐνέτεινε περισσοτέραν τοῦ ποικίλου τῆς φωνῆς χάριν· μόνα γὰρ τὰ ἁπλούστερα τῶν μελῶν ἐδοκίμαζον. Τιμοθέου δ’ ἀγωνιζομένου τὰ Κάρνεια, εἷς τῶν ἐφόρων μάχαιραν λαβὼν ἠρώτησεν αὐτόν, ἐκ ποτέρου τῶν μερῶν ἀποτέμῃ τὰς πλείους τῶν ἑπτὰ χορδῶν.

[d] Τῶν δὲ ταφῶν ἀνεῖλε τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν ἅπασαν ὁ Λυκοῦργος, ἐν τῇ πόλει θάπτειν τοὺς νεκροὺς καὶ πλησίον ἔχειν τὰ μνημεῖα τῶν ἱερῶν συγχωρήσας. περιεῖλε δὲ καὶ τοὺς μιασμούς, συνθάπτειν δ’ οὐδὲν ἐπέτρεψεν, ἀλλ’ ἐν φοινικίδι καὶ φύλλοις ἐλαίας θέντας τὸ σῶμα περιστέλλειν κατ’ ἴσον ἅπαντας.

ἀνεῖλε καὶ τὰς ἐπιγραφὰς τὰς ἐπὶ τῶν μνημείων, πλὴν τῶν ἐν πολέμῳ τελευτησάντων, καὶ τὰ πένθη καὶ τοὺς ὀδυρμούς.

Ἀποδημεῖν δ’ οὐκ ἐξῆν αὐτοῖς, ἵνα μὴ ξενικῶν ἐθῶν καὶ βίων ἀπαιδεύτων μετάσχωσι.

Καὶ ξενηλασίας δ’ εἰσηγήσατο, ὅπως οἱ παρεισρέοντες [e] μὴ διδάσκαλοι κακοῦ τινος τοῖς πολίταις ὑπάρχωσι.

Τῶν πολιτῶν ὃς ἂν μὴ ὑπομείνῃ τὴν τῶν παίδων ἀγωγὴν οὐ μετεῖχε τῶν τῆς πόλεως δικαίων.

Ἔνιοι δ’ ἔφασαν, ὅτι καὶ τῶν ξένων ὃς ἂν ὑπομείνῃ ταύτην τὴν ἄσκησιν τῆς πολιτείας κατὰ τὸ βούλημα τοῦ Λυκούργου μετεῖχε τῆς ἀρχῆθεν διατεταγμένης μοίρας· πωλεῖν δ’ οὐκ ἐξῆν.

Τοῖς τῶν πλησίον οἰκέταις ὡς ἰδίοις χρῆσθαι ἔθος ἦν, εἴ που δέοιντο, καὶ κυσὶ καὶ ἵπποις, εἰ μὴ οἱ δεσπόται χρῄζοιεν· καὶ ἐν ἀγρῷ δ’ εἴ τίς τινος ἐλλιπὴς γενόμενος δεηθείη, ἀνοίξας καὶ βαστάσας τὰ ἐπιτήδεια τοῦ ἔχοντος, τὰ ταμιεῖα σημηνάμενος κατέλειπεν.

[f] Ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις φοινικίσιν ἐχρῶντο· ἅμα μὲν γὰρ ἡ χρόα ἐδόκει αὐτοῖς ἀνδρικὴ εἶναι, ἅμα δὲ τὸ αἱματῶδες τοῦ χρώματος πλείονα τοῖς ἀπείροις φόβον παρέχειν· καὶ τὸ μὴ εὐπερίφωρον δὲ τοῖς πολεμίοις εἶναι, ἐάν τις αὐτῶν πληγῇ, ἀλλὰ διαλανθάνειν διὰ τὸ ὁμόχρουν χρήσιμον.

Ὅταν στρατηγήματι τοὺς πολεμίους νικήσωσι, βοῦν τῷ Ἄρει θύουσιν· ὅταν δ’ ἐκ τοῦ φανεροῦ, ἀλεκτρυόνα· ἐθίζοντες τοὺς ἡγουμένους οὐ μόνον πολεμικοὺς ἀλλὰ καὶ στρατηγικοὺς εἶναι.

[239] [a] Ταῖς εὐχαῖς προστιθέασι τὸ ἀδικεῖσθαι δύνασθαι.

Εὐχὴ δ’ αὐτῶν διδόναι τὰ καλὰ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς, καὶ πλέον οὐδέν.

Ἀφροδίτην σέβουσι τὴν ἐνόπλιον· καὶ πάντας δὲ τοὺς θεοὺς θήλεις καὶ ἄρρενας λόγχας ἔχοντας ποιοῦνται, ὡς ἁπάντων τὴν πολεμικὴν ἀρετὴν ἐχόντων.

Ἐπιλέγουσι δὲ καὶ [οἱ] παροιμιαζόμενοι (Apost. XV 92 Paroem. Gr. II 653)

‘τὰν χεῖρα ποτιφέροντα τὰν τύχαν καλεῖν,’

ὡς δέον ἐπικαλεῖσθαι τοὺς θεοὺς μετὰ τοῦ ἐγχειρεῖν τι καὶ πράττειν, ἄλλως δὲ μή.

Τοῖς παισὶν ἐπεδείκνυον τοὺς εἵλωτας μεθύσαντες εἰς ἀποτροπὴν πολυοινίας.

Ἔθος ἦν αὐτοῖς μηδὲ κόπτειν τὰς αὐλείους ἀλλ’ ἔξωθεν βοᾶν.

[b] Στλεγγίσιν οὐ σιδηραῖς ἀλλὰ καλαμίναις ἐχρῶντο.

Κωμῳδίας καὶ τραγῳδίας οὐκ ἠκροῶντο, ὅπως μήτ’ ἐν σπουδῇ μήτ’ ἐν παιδιᾷ ἀκούωσι τῶν ἀντιλεγόντων τοῖς νόμοις.

Ἀρχίλοχον τὸν ποιητὴν ἐν Λακεδαίμονι γενόμενον αὐτῆς ὥρας ἐδίωξαν, διότι ἐπέγνωσαν αὐτὸν πεποιηκότα ὡς κρεῖττόν ἐστιν ἀποβαλεῖν τὰ ὅπλα ἢ ἀποθανεῖν· (I 213 D.)

‘ἀσπίδι μὲν Σαΐων τις ἀγάλλεται, ἣν περὶ θάμνῳ

ἔντος ἀμώμητον κάλλιπον οὐκ ἐθέλων·

‹αὐτὸς δ’ ἐξέφυγον θανάτου τέλος·› ἀσπὶς ἐκείνη

ἐρρέτω· ἐξαῦθις κτήσομαι οὐ κακίω.’

[c] Κόραις καὶ κόροις κοινὰ τὰ ἱερά.

Σκιραφίδαν ἐζημίωσαν οἱ ἔφοροι, ὅτι ὑπὸ πολεμίων ἠδικεῖτο.

Σακκοφόρον ἀνεῖλον, διότι παρυφὴν εἰς τὸν σάκκον ἐνέβαλε.

Τὸν ἐκ τοῦ γυμνασίου νεανίσκον ἐπετίμων, ὅτι τὴν εἰς Πυλαίαν ὁδὸν ἠπίστατο.

Κηφισοφῶντα, εἰπόντα περὶ τοῦ τυχόντος δύνασθαι ὅλην τὴν ἡμέραν λέγειν, ἐξέβαλον, φάμενοι τὸν ἀγαθὸν μυθικτὰν δεῖν τοῖς πράγμασιν ἴσον τὸν λόγον ἔχειν.

Οἱ παῖδες παρ’ αὐτοῖς ξαινόμενοι μάστιξι δι’ ὅλης τῆς ἡμέρας ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τῆς Ὀρθίας Ἀρτέμιδος μέχρι θανάτου πολλάκις διακαρτεροῦσιν ἱλαροὶ καὶ γαῦροι, [d] ἁμιλλώμενοι περὶ νίκης πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ὅστις αὐτῶν ἐπὶ πλέον τε καὶ μᾶλλον καρτερήσει τυπτόμενος· καὶ ὁ περιγενόμενος ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα ἐπίδοξός ἐστι. καλεῖται δὲ ἡ ἅμιλλα διαμαστίγωσις· γίνεται δὲ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἔτος.

Ἓν δέ τι τῶν καλῶν καὶ μακαρίων ἐδόκει παρεσκευακέναι τοῖς πολίταις ὁ Λυκοῦργος ἀφθονίαν σχολῆς· τέχνης μὲν γὰρ ἅψασθαι βαναύσου τὸ παράπαν οὐκ ἐξῆν· χρηματισμοῦ δὲ συναγωγὴν ἔχοντος ἐργώδη καὶ πραγματείας οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν ἔδει διὰ τὸ κομιδῇ τὸν πλοῦτον ἄζηλον πεποιηκέναι καὶ ἄτιμον. οἱ δὲ εἵλωτες αὐτοῖς εἰργάζοντο [e] τὴν γῆν ἀποφορὰν τὴν ἄνωθεν ἱσταμένην ‹τελοῦντες›. ἐπάρατον δ’ ἦν πλείονός τινα μισθῶσαι, ἵν’ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν κερδαίνοντες ἡδέως ὑπηρετῶσιν, αὐτοὶ δὲ μὴ πλέον ἐπιζητῶσιν.

Ἀπείρητο δ’ αὐτοῖς ναύταις εἶναι καὶ ναυμαχεῖν· ὕστερον μέντοι ἐναυμάχησαν, καὶ τῆς θαλάσσης κρατήσαντες πάλιν ἀπέστησαν, διαφθειρόμενα τὰ ἤθη τῶν πολιτῶν θεωροῦντες. ἀλλὰ πάλιν μετεβάλοντο καθάπερ ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις πᾶσι· καὶ γὰρ χρημάτων συναχθέντων τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις οἱ συναγαγόντες θανάτῳ κατεδικάσθησαν. Ἀλκαμένει γὰρ καὶ Θεοπόμπῳ τοῖς βασιλεῦσι χρησμὸς ἐδόθη (Paroem. Gr. I 39. 201. 327 II 150)

‘ἁ φιλοχρηματία Σπάρταν ὀλεῖ·’

[f] ἀλλ’ ὅμως Λύσανδρος ἑλὼν Ἀθηναίους πολὺν χρυσὸν καὶ ἄργυρον εἰσήγαγε, καὶ παρεδέξαντο καὶ ἐτίμησαν τὸν ἄνδρα.

τοῖς μὲν οὖν Λυκούργου χρωμένη νόμοις ἡ πόλις καὶ τοῖς ὅρκοις ἐμμείνασα ἐπρώτευε τῆς Ἑλλάδος εὐνομίᾳ καὶ δόξῃ χρόνον ἐτῶν πεντακοσίων· κατ’ ὀλίγον δὲ παραβαινομένων καὶ πλεονεξίας καὶ φιλοπλουτίας παρεισδυομένης [240] [a] καὶ τὰ τῆς δυνάμεως ἠλαττοῦτο· καὶ οἱ σύμμαχοι διὰ ταῦτα δυσμενῶς εἶχον πρὸς αὐτούς. ἀλλ’ ὅμως οὕτως ἔχοντες μετὰ τὴν Φιλίππου τοῦ Μακεδόνος ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ νίκην, πάντων αὐτὸν τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἡγεμόνα κατά τε γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλασσαν ἀναγορευσάντων, καὶ μεταξὺ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρον τὸν υἱὸν μετὰ τὴν Θηβαίων καταστροφήν, μόνοι Λακεδαιμόνιοι, καίπερ ἀτείχιστον πόλιν ἔχοντες καὶ ὀλίγοι πάνυ ὄντες διὰ τοὺς συνεχεῖς πολέμους καὶ πολὺ ἀσθενέστεροι καὶ εὐχείρωτοι γενόμενοι, πάνυ βραχέα τινὰ ζώπυρα διασῴζοντες τῆς Λυκούργου νομοθεσίας, [b] οὔτε συνεστράτευσαν οὔτε τούτοις οὔτε τοῖς μεταξὺ Μακεδονικοῖς βασιλεῦσιν, οὔτ’ εἰς συνέδριον κοινὸν εἰσῆλθον οὔτε φόρον ἤνεγκαν· ἕως οὗ παντάπασιν ὑπεριδόντες τὴν Λυκούργου νομοθεσίαν ὑπὸ τῶν ἰδίων πολιτῶν ἐτυραννεύθησαν μηδὲν ἔτι σῴζοντες τῆς πατρίου ἀγωγῆς, καὶ παραπλήσιοι τοῖς ἄλλοις γενόμενοι τὴν πρόσθεν εὔκλειαν καὶ παρρησίαν ἀπέθεντο καὶ εἰς δουλείαν μετέστησαν, καὶ νῦν ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίοις καθάπερ οἱ ἄλλοι Ἕλληνες ἐγένοντο.

[c]

ΑΡΧΙΛΕΩΝΙΣ

Ἀρχιλεωνὶς ἡ Βρασίδου μήτηρ, τελευτήσαντος αὐτῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ, ὡς παραγενόμενοί τινες τῶν Ἀμφιπολιτῶν εἰς Σπάρτην ἧκον πρὸς αὐτήν, ἠρώτησεν εἰ καλῶς καὶ ἀξίως τῆς Σπάρτης ὁ υἱὸς ἐτελεύτα· μεγαλυνόντων δ’ ἐκείνων καὶ λεγόντων ἄριστον ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις ἁπάντων Λακεδαιμονίων εἶναι, εἶπεν· ‘ὦ ξένοι, καλὸς μὲν ἦν κἀγαθὸς ὁ παῖς μου, πολλοὺς δ’ ἄνδρας Λακεδαίμων ἔχει τήνου κάρρονας.’

ΓΟΡΓΩ

[d] Γοργώ, βασιλέως Κλεομένους θυγάτηρ, Ἀρισταγόρου τοῦ Μιλησίου παρακαλοῦντος αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὸν πρὸς βασιλέα πόλεμον ὑπὲρ Ἰώνων καὶ ὑπισχνουμένου χρημάτων πλῆθος καὶ ὅσῳ ἀντέλεγε πλείονα προστιθέντος, ‘καταφθερεῖ σε’ ἔφη, ‘ὦ πάτερ, τὸ ξενύλλιον, ἐὰν μὴ τάχιον αὐτὸν τῆς οἰκίας ἐκβάλῃς.’

Προστάξαντος δέ ποτ’ αὐτῇ τοῦ πατρὸς δοῦναί τινι σῖτον εἰς μισθοῦ λόγον καὶ προστιθέντος ‘ἐδίδαξε γάρ με τὸν οἶνον χρηστὸν ποιεῖν’, ‘οὐκοῦν, ὦ πάτερ’ ἔφη, ‘ὅ τ’ οἶνος πλείων ἐκποθήσεται καὶ οἱ πίνοντες θρυπτικώτεροι καὶ χείρονες ἔσονται.’

Τὸν δ’ Ἀρισταγόραν ὑπό τινος τῶν οἰκετῶν ὑποδούμενον [e] θεασαμένη ‘πάτερ’ ἔφη, ‘ὁ ξένος χεῖρας οὐκ ἔχει.’

Ξένου δέ τινος μάλα ‹κε›κοσ‹μημένῃ› στολῇ προσάγοντος, παρωσαμένη αὐτόν ‘οὐκ ἄπει ἐντεῦθεν’ εἶπεν ‘οὐδὲ τὰ τῆς γυναικὸς δυνάμενος;’

Ἐρωτηθεῖσα δὲ ὑπό τινος Ἀττικῆς ‘διὰ τί ὑμεῖς ἄρχετε μόναι τῶν ἀνδρῶν αἱ Λάκαιναι;’ ‘ὅτι’ ἔφη ‘καὶ τίκτομεν μόναι ἄνδρας.’

Προτρεπομένη δὲ τὸν ἄνδρα Λεωνίδαν ἐξιόντα εἰς Θερμοπύλας ἄξιον τῆς Σπάρτης φανῆναι, ἠρώτα τί χρὴ πράττειν· ὁ δ’ ἔφη ‘ἀγαθὸν γαμεῖν καὶ ἀγαθὰ τίκτειν.’

ΓΥΡΤΙΑΣ

Γυρτιάς, Ἀκροτάτου ποτὲ τοῦ θυγατριδοῦ αὐτῆς ἔκ τινος τῶν παίδων μάχης πολλὰς πληγὰς λαβόντος καὶ ἀπενεχθέντος οἴκαδε ὡς τεθνηκότος, κλαιόντων τῶν οἰκείων τε καὶ γνωρίμων, ‘οὐ σιωπήσετε;’ ἔφη· ‘ἔδειξε γὰρ οἵου αἵματος ἦν,’ καὶ οὐκ ἔφη δεῖν τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς βοᾶσθαι ἀλλ’ ἰατρεύεσθαι.

[f] Ὅτε δ’ ἄγγελος ἦλθεν ἐκ Κρήτης τὸν Ἀκροτάτου θάνατον ἀπαγγέλλων, ‘οὐκ ἔμελλεν’ ἔφη ‘πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ἥκων ἢ αὐτὸς ὑπ’ ἐκείνων ἀποθανεῖσθαι ἢ κατακανεῖν ἐκείνους; ἥδιον δ’ ἀκούειν ὅτι ἀπέθανε καὶ ἑαυτῆς καὶ τῆς πόλεως ἀξίως καὶ τῶν προγόνων, ἢ εἰ ἔζη τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον κακὸς ὤν.’

ΔΑΜΑΤΡΙΑ

Δαματρία τὸν υἱὸν δειλὸν καὶ ἀνάξιον ἑαυτῆς ἀκούσασα, παραγενόμενον ἀνεῖλε· τὸ δ’ ἐπίγραμμα ἐπ’ αὐτῆς τόδε· (Anth. Pal. VII 433)

‘τὸν παραβάντα νόμους Δαμάτριον ἔκτανε μάτηρ,

ἁ Λακεδαιμονία τὸν Λακεδαιμόνιον.’

[241] [a] Ἑτέρα Λάκαινα τὸν υἱὸν λιποτακτήσαντα ὡς ἀνάξιον τῆς πατρίδος ἀνεῖλεν, εἰποῦσα ‘οὐκ ἐμὸν τὸ φίτυμα.’ ἐφ’ ἧς τὸ ἐπίγραμμα τόδε· (Anth. Pal. VII 433)

‘ἔρρε κακὸν φίτυμα διὰ σκότος, οὗ διὰ μῖσος

Εὐρώτας δειλαῖς μηδ’ ἐλάφοισι ῥέοι.

ἀχρεῖον σκυλάκευμα, κακὰ μερίς, ἔρρε ποθ’ Ἅιδαν,

ἔρρε· τὸ μὴ Σπάρτας ἄξιον οὐδ’ ἔτεκον.’

Ἄλλη τὸν υἱὸν ἐν παρατάξει μαθοῦσα πεσόντα ἔφη· (Anth. Pal. 229)

‘δειλοὶ κλαιέσθωσαν· ἐγὼ δέ σε, τέκνον, ἄδακρυς

θάπτω τὸν καὶ ἐμὸν καὶ Λακεδαιμόνιον.’

Ἀκούσασά τις τὸν υἱὸν σεσῳσμένον καὶ πεφευγότα ἐκ τῶν πολεμίων, γράφει αὐτῷ ‘κακὰ φάμα τευ κακκέχυται· ἢ ταύταν νῦν ἔκνιψαι ἢ μὴ ἔσο.’

[b] Ἄλλη, τῶν υἱῶν φυγόντων ἐκ μάχης καὶ παραγενομένων ὡς αὐτήν, ‘ποῖ’ φησίν ‘ἥκετε δραπετεύσαντες, κακὰ ἀνδράποδα; ἢ δεῦρο ὅθεν ἐξέδυτε καταδυσόμενοι;’ ἀνασυραμένη καὶ ἐπιδείξασα αὐτοῖς τὴν κοιλίαν.

Προσάγοντά τις τὸν υἱὸν θεασαμένη ἐπύθετο τί πράσσει ἡ πατρίς· εἰπόντος δέ ‘πάντες ἀπολώλασι’, κεραμίδα ἄρασα ἐπαφῆκεν αὐτῷ καὶ ἀνεῖλεν, εἰποῦσα ‘σὲ οὖν κακάγγελον ἔπεμψαν ἡμῖν;’

Διηγουμένου τινὸς τῇ μητρὶ γενναῖον θάνατον τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ, ‘εἶτ’ οὐκ αἰσχρόν’ εἶπε ‘τῆς τοιαύτης συνοδίας ἀτυχῆσαι;’

Ἐκπέμψασά τις τοὺς υἱοὺς αὑτῆς πέντε ὄντας ἐπὶ [c] πόλεμον, ἐν τοῖς προαστείοις εἱστήκει καραδοκοῦσα τί ἐκ τῆς μάχης ἀποβήσοιτο· ὡς δὲ παραγενόμενός τις πυθομένῃ αὐτῇ ἀπήγγειλε τοὺς παῖδας ἅπαντας τετελευτηκέναι, ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ τοῦτ’ ἐπυθόμην’ εἶπε, ‘κακὸν ἀνδράποδον, ἀλλὰ τί πράσσει ἡ πατρίς.’ φήσαντος δὲ ὅτι νικᾷ, ‘ἀσμένη τοίνυν’ εἶπε ‘δέχομαι καὶ τὸν τῶν παίδων θάνατον.’

Θάπτουσά τις τὸν υἱόν, ὡς γραΐδιον εὐτελὲς προσελθὸν αὐτῇ ‘ὦ γύναι, τᾶς τύχας’ εἶπε, ‘νὴ τὼ σιώ, ἀλλὰ τᾶς καλᾶς γ’’ ἔφη· ‘οὗ γὰρ αὐτὸν ἕνεκεν ἔτεκον, ἵν’ ὑπὲρ τᾶς Σπάρτας ἀποθάνῃ, τοῦτό μοι συνέβη.’

Σεμνυνομένης γυναικός τινος Ἰωνικῆς ἐπί τινι τῶν [d] ἑαυτῆς ὑφασμάτων ὄντι πολυτελεῖ, Λάκαινα ἐπιδείξασα τοὺς τέσσαρας υἱοὺς ὄντας κοσμιωτάτους, τοιαῦτα ἔφη δεῖν εἶναι τὰ τῆς καλῆς καὶ ἀγαθῆς γυναικὸς ἔργα καὶ μεγαλαυχεῖν ἐπὶ τούτοις καὶ ἐπαίρεσθαι.

Ἄλλη ἀκούσασα περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ, ὡς κακῶς ἐπὶ τῆς ξένης ἀναστρέφοιτο, ἔγραψε ‘κακά τευ φάμα κακκέχυται· ἢ ταύταν ἀπόθευ ἢ μὴ ἔσο.’

Παραπλησίως δὲ καὶ Χίων φυγάδες ἐλθόντες εἰς

Σπάρτην πολλὰ Πεδαρίτου κατηγόρουν· μεταπεμψαμένη δ’ αὐτοὺς ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ Τελευτία καὶ ἀκούσασα ὧν ἐνεκάλουν, ἐπεὶ ἐδόκει αὐτῇ ἁμαρτάνειν ὁ υἱός, ἐπέστειλεν [e] αὐτῷ ‘ἁ μάτηρ Πεδαρίτῳ. ἢ βελτίονα πρᾶσσε ἢ αὖθι μένε, ἀπογνοὺς τὰν ἐς Σπάρταν σωτηρίαν.’

Ἑτέρα ἐπ’ ἀδικήματι τῷ παιδὶ κρινομένῳ ‘τέκνον’ εἶπεν, ‘ἢ τᾶς αἰτίας σεαυτὸν ἢ τοῦ ζῆν ἀπόλυσον.’

Ἄλλη χωλὸν υἱὸν ἐπὶ παράταξιν προπέμπουσα, ‘τέκνον’ εἶπε, ‘κατὰ βῆμα τῆς ἀρετῆς μέμνησο.’

Ἄλλη, τοῦ παιδὸς αὐτῇ ἀφικομένου ἀπὸ παρατάξεως τετρωμένου τὸν πόδα καὶ σφόδρα ἀλγοῦντος, ‘ἐὰν τῆς ἀρετῆς’ εἶπε ‘μέμνῃ, ὦ τέκνον, καὶ ἄπονος ἔσῃ καὶ θαρρήσεις.’

Λάκων τρωθεὶς ἐν πολέμῳ καὶ βαδίζειν μὴ δυνάμενος, τετραποδιστὶ ὥδευεν. αἰσχυνομένῳ δ’ αὐτῷ ἐπὶ [f] τῷ γελοίῳ ἡ μήτηρ ‘καὶ πόσῳ βέλτιον, ὦ τέκνον’ εἶπε, ‘μᾶλλον ἐπὶ τῇ ἀνδρείᾳ γεγηθέναι ἢ αἰσχύνεσθαι ἐπὶ γέλωτι ἀνοήτων;’

Ἄλλη προσαναδιδοῦσα τῷ παιδὶ τὴν ἀσπίδα

καὶ παρακελευομένη ‘τέκνον’ ἔφη, ‘ἢ ταύταν ἢ ἐπὶ ταύτας.’

Ἄλλη προϊόντι τῷ υἱῷ ἐπὶ πόλεμον ἀναδιδοῦσα τὴν ἀσπίδα ‘ταύτην’ ἔφη ‘ὁ πατήρ σοι ἀεὶ ἔσῳζε· καὶ σὺ οὖν ἢ ταύτην σῷζε ἢ μὴ ἔσο.’

Ἄλλη πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν λέγοντα μικρὸν ἔχειν τὸ ξίφος εἶπε ‘[καὶ] βῆμα πρόσθες.’

[242] [a] Ἄλλη ἀκούσασα, ὅτι ὁ υἱὸς αὐτῆς ἐν παρατάξει ἀνδραγαθήσας ἀπέθανεν, ‘ἐμὸς γὰρ ἦς’ εἶπε. περὶ δὲ τοῦ ἑτέρου πυθομένη ὅτι ἀποδειλιάσας σῴζεται, ‘οὐ γὰρ ἦς ἐμός’ ἔφη.

Ἑτέρα ἀκούσασα τεθνηκέναι τὸν υἱὸν ἐν μάχῃ καθάπερ ἐτέτακτο ‘κάτθετ’ αὐτόν’ ἔφη, ‘ἀναπληρωσάτω δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου τάξιν ὁ ἀδελφός.’

Ἄλλη πομπὴν τελοῦσα πάνδημον ἤκουσεν ἐπὶ τῆς παρατάξεως νικᾶν τὸν υἱόν, ἐκ δὲ τῶν τραυμάτων πολλῶν γενομένων θνήσκειν. οὐ περιελομένη οὖν τὸν στέφανον, ἀλλὰ σεμνυνθεῖσα πρὸς τὰς πλησίον εἶπεν ‘ὡς πολλῷ [b] κάλλιον, ὦ φίλαι, ἐστὶν ἐν παρατάξει νικῶντα τελευτᾶν ἢ τὰ Ὀλύμπια περιγενόμενον ζῆν.’

Διηγουμένου τινὸς τῇ ἀδελφῇ γενναῖον θάνατον

τοῦ παιδὸς αὐτῆς, ἐκείνη εἶπεν ὅτι ‘ὅσον ἐπ’ ἐκείνῳ γέγηθα, τοσοῦτον ἐπὶ σοὶ ἄχθομαι, ἐναρέτου συνοδίας ἀπολειφθέντι.’

Λακαίνῃ τις προσέπεμψεν, εἰ φθορᾷ συνεπινεύει. ἡ δ’ ἔφη ‘παῖς μὲν οὖσα ἔμαθον τῷ πατρὶ πείθεσθαι, καὶ τοῦτο ἔπραξα· γυνὴ δὲ γενομένη τῷ ἀνδρί· εἰ οὖν δίκαιά με παρακαλεῖ, τούτῳ φανερὸν ποιησάτω πρῶτον.’

Παρθένος πενιχρὰ ἐρωτηθεῖσα τίνα δίδωσι τῷ γαμοῦντι προῖκα, ‘τὴν πάτριον’ εἶπε ‘σωφροσύνην.’

[c] Λάκαινα ἐρωτηθεῖσα εἰ ἀνδρὶ προσελήλυθεν ‘οὐκ ἐγώ’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλ’ ὁ ἀνὴρ ἐμοί.’

Κρύφα τις διαπαρθενευθεῖσα καὶ διαφθείρασα τὸ βρέφος οὕτως ἐνεκαρτέρησε μηδεμίαν προενεγκαμένη φωνήν, ὥστε καὶ τὸν πατέρα καὶ ἄλλους πολλοὺς πλησίον ὄντας λαθεῖν ἀποκυήσασα· τὸ γὰρ μέγεθος τῶν ἀλγηδόνων τῇ ἀσχημοσύνῃ τὸ εὔσχημον προσπεσὸν ἐνίκησε.

Λάκαινα πιπρασκομένη καὶ ἐρωτωμένη τί ἐπίσταται ἔφη ‘πιστὰ ἦμεν.’

Ἄλλη αἰχμαλωτισθεῖσα καὶ ἐρωτωμένη παραπλησίως ‘εὖ οἰκεῖν οἶκον’ ἔφη.

Ἐρωτηθεῖσά τις ὑπό τινος, εἰ ἔσται ἀγαθή, ἂν αὐτὴν ἀγοράσῃ, εἶπε ‘κἂν μὴ ἀγοράσῃς.’

[d] Ἄλλη πιπρασκομένη, τοῦ κήρυκος πυνθανομένου τί ἐπίσταται, ‘ἐλευθέρα’ εἶπεν ‘ἦμεν.’ ὡς δὲ ὁ ὠνησάμενος προσέτασσέ τινα αὐτῇ οὐχ ἁρμόζοντα ἐλευθέρᾳ, εἰποῦσα ‘οἰμώξῃ φθονήσας σεαυτῷ τοιούτου κτήματος’ ἐξήγαγεν ἑαυτήν.

Mulierum virtutes

ΓΥΝΑΙΚΩΝ ΑΡΕΤΑΙ

[242] Περὶ ἀρετῆς, ὦ Κλέα, γυναικῶν οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν τῷ Θουκυδίδῃ γνώμην ἔχομεν. ὁ μὲν γάρ, ἧς ἂν ἐλάχιστος ᾖ παρὰ τοῖς ἐκτὸς ψόγου πέρι ἢ ἐπαίνου λόγος, ἀρίστην ἀποφαίνεται, καθάπερ τὸ σῶμα καὶ τοὔνομα τῆς ἀγαθῆς γυναικὸς οἰόμενος δεῖν κατάκλειστον εἶναι καὶ ἀνέξοδον. ἡμῖν δὲ κομψότερος μὲν ὁ Γοργίας φαίνεται, κελεύων μὴ τὸ εἶδος ἀλλὰ τὴν δόξαν εἶναι πολλοῖς γνώριμον τῆς γυναικός· ἄριστα δ’ ὁ Ῥωμαίων δοκεῖ νόμος ἔχειν, [f] ὥσπερ ἀνδράσι καὶ γυναιξὶ δημοσίᾳ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν τοὺς προσήκοντας ἀποδιδοὺς ἐπαίνους. διὸ καὶ Λεοντίδος τῆς ἀρίστης ἀποθανούσης, εὐθύς τε μετὰ σοῦ τότε πολὺν λόγον εἴχομεν οὐκ ἀμοιροῦντα παραμυθίας φιλοσόφου καὶ νῦν, ὡς ἠβουλήθης, τὰ ὑπόλοιπα τῶν λεγομένων εἰς τὸ μίαν εἶναι καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀνδρός τε καὶ γυναικὸς ἀρετὴν [243] [a] προσανέγραψά σοι, τὸ ἱστορικὸν ἀποδεικτικὸν ἔχοντα καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὴν μὲν ἀκοῆς οὐ συντεταγμένον, εἰ δὲ τῷ πείθοντι καὶ τὸ τέρπον ἔνεστι φύσει τοῦ παραδείγματος, οὐ φεύγει χάριν ἀποδείξεως συνεργὸν ὁ λόγος οὐδ’ αἰσχύνεται ‘ταῖς Μούσαις τὰς Χάριτας συγκαταμιγνὺς καλλίστην συζυγίαν’ ὡς Εὐριπίδης φησίν (Herc. 673), ἐκ τοῦ φιλοκάλου μάλιστα τῆς ψυχῆς ἀναδούμενος τὴν πίστιν.

Φέρε γάρ, εἰ λέγοντες τὴν αὐτὴν εἶναι ζωγραφίαν ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν παρειχόμεθα τοιαύτας γραφὰς γυναικῶν, οἵας Ἀπελλῆς ἀπολέλοιπεν ἢ Ζεῦξις ἢ Νικόμαχος, [b] ἆρ’ ἄν τις ἐπετίμησεν ἡμῖν, ὡς τοῦ χαρίζεσθαι καὶ ψυχαγωγεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ πείθειν στοχαζομένοις; ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ οἶμαι. τί δέ; ἐὰν ποιητικὴν πάλιν ἢ μαντικὴν ἀποφαίνοντες οὐχ ἑτέραν μὲν ἀνδρῶν ἑτέραν δὲ γυναικῶν οὖσαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν αὐτήν, τὰ Σαπφοῦς μέλη τοῖς Ἀνακρέοντος ἢ τὰ Σιβύλλης λόγια τοῖς Βάκιδος ἀντιπαραβάλλωμεν, ἕξει τις αἰτιάσασθαι δικαίως τὴν ἀπόδειξιν, ὅτι χαίροντα καὶ τερπόμενον ἐπάγει τῇ πίστει τὸν ἀκροατήν; οὐδὲ τοῦτ’ ἂν εἴποις. καὶ μὴν οὐκ ἔστιν ἀρετῆς γυναικείας καὶ ἀνδρείας ὁμοιότητα καὶ διαφορὰν ἄλλοθεν καταμαθεῖν μᾶλλον, ἢ βίους βίοις καὶ πράξεσι [c] πράξεις ὥσπερ ἔργα μεγάλης τέχνης παρατιθέντας ἅμα καὶ σκοποῦντας, εἰ τὸν αὐτὸν ἔχει χαρακτῆρα καὶ τύπον ἡ Σεμιράμεως μεγαλοπραγμοσύνη τῇ Σεσώστριος ἢ ἡ Τανακυλλίδος σύνεσις τῇ Σερουίου τοῦ βασιλέως ἢ τὸ Πορκίας φρόνημα τῷ Βρούτου καὶ τῷ Πελοπίδου τὸ Τιμοκλείας, κατὰ τὴν κυριωτάτην κοινότητα καὶ δύναμιν· ἐπειδὴ διαφοράς γέ τινας ἑτέρας ὥσπερ χροιὰς ἰδίας αἱ ἀρεταὶ διὰ τὰς φύσεις λαμβάνουσι καὶ συνεξομοιοῦνται τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις ἔθεσι καὶ κράσεσι σωμάτων καὶ τροφαῖς καὶ διαίταις· ἄλλως γὰρ ἀνδρεῖος ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἄλλως ὁ Αἴας· καὶ φρόνησις Ὀδυσσέως οὐχ ὁμοία [d] τῇ Νέστορος, οὐδὲ δίκαιος ὡσαύτως Κάτων καὶ Ἀγησίλαος, οὐδ’ Εἰρήνη φίλανδρος ὡς Ἄλκηστις οὐδὲ Κορνηλία μεγαλόφρων ὡς Ὀλυμπιάς. ἀλλὰ μὴ παρὰ τοῦτο πολλὰς καὶ διαφόρους ποιῶμεν ἀνδρείας καὶ φρονήσεις καὶ δικαιοσύνας, ἂν μόνον τοῦ λόγου τοῦ οἰκείου μηδεμίαν αἱ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀνομοιότητες ἐκβιβάζωσι. τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄγαν περιβόητα καὶ ὅσων οἶμαί σε βεβαίαν ‹ἄλλοις› βιβλίοις ἐντυχοῦσαν ἱστορίαν ἔχειν καὶ γνῶσιν ἤδη, παρήσω· πλὴν εἰ μή τινα τοὺς τὰ κοινὰ καὶ δεδημευμένα πρὸ ἡμῶν ἱστορήσαντας ἀκοῆς ἄξια διαπέφευγεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλὰ καὶ κοινῇ καὶ ἰδίᾳ γυναιξὶν ἄξια λόγου πέπρακται, [e] βραχέα τῶν κοινῶν οὐ χεῖρόν ἐστι προϊστορῆσαι.

ΤΡΩΙΑΔΕΣ

Τῶν ἀπ’ Ἰλίου περὶ τὴν ἅλωσιν ἐκφυγόντων οἱ πλεῖστοι χειμῶνι χρησάμενοι καὶ δι’ ἀπειρίαν τοῦ πλοῦ καὶ ἄγνοιαν τῆς θαλάττης ἀπενεχθέντες εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν καὶ περὶ τὸν Θύμβριν ποταμὸν ὅρμοις καὶ ναυλόχοις ἀναγκαίοις μόλις ὑποδραμόντες, αὐτοὶ μὲν ἐπλανῶντο περὶ τὴν χώραν φραστήρων δεόμενοι, ταῖς δὲ γυναιξὶν ἐμπίπτει λογισμός, ὡς ἡτισοῦν ἵδρυσις ἐν γῇ πάσης πλάνης καὶ ναυτιλίας †εὖ τε καὶ καλῶς πράττουσιν ἀνθρώποις ἀμείνων ἐστί, καὶ πατρίδα δεῖ ποιεῖν αὑτοῖς ‹τοὺς› ἀπολαβεῖν [f] ἣν ἀπολωλέκασι μὴ δυναμένους. ἐκ δὲ τούτου συμφρονήσασαι κατέφλεξαν τὰ πλοῖα, μιᾶς καταρξαμένης ὥς φασι Ῥώμης. πράξασαι δὲ ταῦτα τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἀπήντων βοηθοῦσι πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν, καὶ φοβούμεναι τὴν ὀργὴν αἱ μὲν ἀνδρῶν αἱ δ’ οἰκείων ἀντιλαμβανόμεναι [244] [a] καὶ καταφιλοῦσαι λιπαρῶς, ἐξεπράυναν τῷ τρόπῳ τῆς φιλοφροσύνης. διὸ καὶ γέγονε καὶ παραμένει ταῖς Ῥωμαίων γυναιξὶν ἔτι νῦν ἔθος ἀσπάζεσθαι μετὰ τοῦ καταφιλεῖν τοὺς κατὰ γένος προσήκοντας αὐταῖς. συνιδόντες γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε τὴν ἀνάγκην οἱ Τρῶες καὶ ἅμα πειρώμενοι τῶν ἐγχωρίων, εὐμενῶς καὶ φιλανθρώπως προσδεχομένων, ἠγάπησαν τὸ πραχθὲν ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ συγκατῴκησαν αὐτόθι τοῖς Λατίνοις.

ΦΩΚΙΔΕΣ

Τὸ δὲ τῶν Φωκίδων ἐνδόξου μὲν οὐ τετύχηκε συγγραφέως, οὐδενὸς δὲ τῶν γυναικείων ἔλαττον εἰς ἀρετήν ἐστι, μαρτυρούμενον ἱεροῖς τε μεγάλοις, ἃ δρῶσι Φωκεῖς [b] ἔτι νῦν περὶ Ὑάμπολιν, καὶ δόγμασι παλαιοῖς, ὧν τὸ μὲν καθ’ ἕκαστον τῆς πράξεως ἐν τῷ Δαϊφάντου βίῳ γέγραπται, τὸ δὲ τῶν γυναικῶν τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν. ἄσπονδος ἦν Θετταλοῖς πρὸς Φωκέας πόλεμος· οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἄρχοντας αὐτῶν καὶ τυράννους ἐν ταῖς Φωκικαῖς πόλεσιν ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ πάντας ἀπέκτειναν, οἱ δὲ πεντήκοντα καὶ διακοσίους ἐκείνων ὁμήρους κατηλόησαν· εἶτα πανστρατιᾷ διὰ Λοκρῶν ἐνέβαλον, δόγμα θέμενοι μηδενὸς φείδεσθαι τῶν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ, παῖδας δὲ καὶ γυναῖκας ἀνδραποδίσασθαι. Δαΐφαντος οὖν ὁ Βαθυλλίου, τρίτος αὐτὸς ἄρχων, ἔπεισε [c] τοὺς Φωκεῖς αὐτοὺς μὲν ἀπαντήσαντας τοῖς Θετταλοῖς μάχεσθαι, τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας ἅμα τοῖς τέκνοις εἰς ἕνα που τόπον συναγαγόντας ἐξ ἁπάσης τῆς Φωκίδος, ὕλην τε περινῆσαι ξύλων καὶ φυλακὰς καταλιπεῖν, πρόσταγμα δόντας, ἂν αἴσθωνται νικωμένους αὐτούς, κατὰ τάχος τὴν ὕλην ἀνάψαι καὶ καταπρῆσαι τὰ σώματα. ψηφισαμένων δὲ ταῦτα τῶν ἄλλων, εἷς ἐξαναστὰς ἔφη δίκαιον εἶναι ταῦτα συνδοκεῖν καὶ ταῖς γυναιξίν· εἰ δὲ μή, χαίρειν ἐᾶν καὶ μὴ προσβιάζεσθαι. τούτου τοῦ λόγου διελθόντος εἰς τὰς γυναῖκας, αὐταὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὰς συνελθοῦσαι ταὐτὰ ἐψηφίσαντο [d] καὶ τὸν Δαΐφαντον ἀνέδησαν, ὡς τὰ ἄριστα τῇ Φωκίδι βεβουλευμένον· τὰ δ’ αὐτὰ καὶ τοὺς παῖδας ἰδίᾳ φασὶν ἐκκλησιάσαντας ἐπιψηφίσασθαι. πραχθέντων δὲ τούτων, συμβαλόντες οἱ Φωκεῖς περὶ Κλεωνὰς τῆς Ὑαμπόλιδος ἐνίκησαν. τὸ μὲν οὖν ψήφισμα Φωκέων Ἀπόνοιαν οἱ Ἕλληνες ὠνόμασαν· ἑορτὴν δ’ ἐκ πασῶν μεγίστην τὰ Ἐλαφηβόλια μέχρι νῦν τῇ Ἀρτέμιδι τῆς νίκης ἐκείνης ἐν Ὑαμπόλιδι τελοῦσιν.

ΧΙΑΙ

Χῖοι Λευκωνίαν ἐπῴκησαν ἐκ τοιαύτης αἰτίας. ἐγάμει τις ἐν Χίῳ τῶν δοκούντων γνωρίμων εἶναι· ἀγομένης [e] δὲ τῆς νύμφης ἐπὶ ζεύγους ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἵπποκλος, ἐπιτήδειος ὢν τῷ γαμοῦντι καὶ παρὼν ὥσπερ οἱ λοιποί, μέθης οὔσης καὶ γέλωτος, ἀνεπήδησεν ἐπὶ τὸ ζεῦγος, οὐδὲν ὑβριστικὸν πράξων, ἀλλ’ ἔθει κοινῷ καὶ παιδιᾷ χρώμενος· οἱ δὲ φίλοι τοῦ γαμοῦντος ἀπέκτειναν αὐτόν. μηνιμάτων δὲ τοῖς Χίοις προφαινομένων καὶ τοῦ θεοῦ κελεύσαντος τοὺς Ἵπποκλον ἀνελόντας ἀνελεῖν, ἅπαντες ἔφασαν Ἵπποκλον ἀνῃρηκέναι. πάντας οὖν αὖθις ὁ θεὸς ἐκέλευσε τὴν πόλιν ἐκλιπεῖν, εἰ πᾶσι τοῦ ἄγους μέτεστιν. οὕτω δὴ τοὺς αἰτίους καὶ μετασχόντας τοῦ φόνου καὶ [f] συνεπαινέσαντας ἁμωσγέπως, οὐκ ὀλίγους γενομένους οὐδ’ ἀδυνάτους ὄντας, ἀπῴκισαν εἰς Λευκωνίαν, ἣν Κορωνεῖς ἀφελόμενοι πρότερον ἐκτήσαντο μετ’ Ἐρυθραίων. ὕστερον δὲ πολέμου πρὸς τοὺς Ἐρυθραίους αὐτοῖς γενομένου, μέγιστον Ἰώνων δυναμένους τότε, κἀκείνων ἐπὶ τὴν Λευκωνίαν στρατευσάντων ἀντέχειν μὴ δυνάμενοι [245] [a] συνεχώρησαν ἐξελθεῖν ὑπόσπονδοι, χλαῖναν μίαν ἑκάστου καὶ ἱμάτιον ἄλλο δὲ μηδὲν ἔχοντος. αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες ἐκάκιζον αὐτούς, εἰ προέμενοι τὰ ὅπλα γυμνοὶ διὰ τῶν πολεμίων ἐξίασιν· ὀμωμοκέναι δὲ φασκόντων, ἐκέλευον αὐτοὺς τὰ μὲν ὅπλα μὴ καταλιπεῖν, λέγειν δὲ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ὅτι χλαῖνα μέν ἐστι τὸ ξυστόν, χιτὼν δ’ ἡ ἀσπὶς ἀνδρὶ θυμὸν ἔχοντι. πεισθέντων δὲ ταῦτα τῶν Χίων καὶ πρὸς τοὺς Ἐρυθραίους παρρησιαζομένων καὶ τὰ ὅπλα δεικνυόντων, ἐφοβήθησαν οἱ Ἐρυθραῖοι τὴν τόλμαν αὐτῶν καὶ οὐδεὶς προσῆλθεν οὐδ’ ἐκώλυσεν, ἀλλ’ ἠγάπησαν ἀπαλλαγέντων. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν θαρρεῖν διδαχθέντες [b] ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν οὕτως ἐσώθησαν.

Τούτου δ’ οὐδέν τι λειπόμενον ἔργον ἀρετῇ καὶ χρόνοις ὕστερον πολλοῖς ἐπράχθη ταῖς Χίων γυναιξίν, ὁπηνίκα Φίλιππος ὁ Δημητρίου πολιορκῶν τὴν πόλιν ἐκήρυξε κήρυγμα βάρβαρον καὶ ὑπερήφανον, ἀφίστασθαι τοὺς οἰκέτας πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐπ’ ἐλευθερίᾳ καὶ γάμῳ τῆς κεκτημένης, ὡς συνοικιῶν αὐτοὺς ταῖς τῶν δεσποτῶν γυναιξί. δεινὸν δ’ αἱ γυναῖκες καὶ ἄγριον θυμὸν λαβοῦσαι, μετὰ τῶν οἰκετῶν καὶ αὐτῶν συναγανακτούντων καὶ συμπαρόντων ὥρμησαν ἀναβαίνειν ἐπὶ τὰ τείχη, καὶ λίθους καὶ βέλη προσφέρουσαι καὶ παρακελευόμεναι καὶ προσλιπαροῦσαι [c] τοῖς μαχομένοις, τέλος δ’ ἀμυνόμεναι καὶ βάλλουσαι τοὺς πολεμίους, ἀπώσαντο τὸν Φίλιππον, οὐδενὸς δούλου τὸ παράπαν ἀποστάντος πρὸς αὐτόν.

ΑΡΓΕΙΑΙ

Οὐδενὸς δ’ ἧττον ἔνδοξόν ἐστι τῶν κοινῇ διαπεπραγμένων γυναιξὶν ἔργων ὁ πρὸς Κλεομένη περὶ Ἄργους ἀγών, ὃν ἠγωνίσαντο Τελεσίλλης τῆς ποιητρίας προτρεψαμένης. ταύτην δέ φασιν οἰκίας οὖσαν ἐνδόξου τῷ δὲ σώματι νοσηματικὴν εἰς θεοῦ πέμψαι περὶ ὑγιείας· καὶ χρησθὲν αὐτῇ Μούσας θεραπεύειν, πειθομένην τῷ θεῷ καὶ ἐπιθεμένην ᾠδῇ καὶ ἁρμονίᾳ τοῦ τε πάθους ἀπαλλαγῆναι ταχὺ καὶ θαυμάζεσθαι διὰ ποιητικὴν ὑπὸ τῶν [d] γυναικῶν. ἐπεὶ δὲ Κλεομένης ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν πολλοὺς ἀποκτείνας (οὐ μήν, ὡς ἔνιοι μυθολογοῦσιν, ἑπτὰ καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ ἑπτακοσίους πρὸς ἑπτακισχιλίοις) ἐβάδιζε πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, ὁρμὴ καὶ τόλμα δαιμόνιος παρέστη ταῖς ἀκμαζούσαις τῶν γυναικῶν ἀμύνεσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος. ἡγουμένης δὲ τῆς Τελεσίλλης ὅπλα λαμβάνουσαι καὶ παρ’ ἔπαλξιν ἱστάμεναι κύκλῳ τὰ τείχη περιέστεψαν, ὥστε θαυμάζειν τοὺς πολεμίους. τὸν μὲν οὖν Κλεομένη πολλῶν πεσόντων ἀπεκρούσαντο· [e] τὸν δ’ ἕτερον βασιλέα Δημάρατον, ὡς Σωκράτης φησίν (FHG IV p. 497), ἐντὸς γενόμενον καὶ κατασχόντα τὸ Παμφυλιακὸν ἐξέωσαν. οὕτω δὲ τῆς πόλεως περιγενομένης, τὰς μὲν πεσούσας ἐν τῇ μάχῃ τῶν γυναικῶν ἐπὶ τῆς ὁδοῦ τῆς Ἀργείας ἔθαψαν, ταῖς δὲ σωθείσαις ὑπόμνημα τῆς ἀριστείας ἔδοσαν ἱδρύσασθαι τὸν Ἐνυάλιον. τὴν δὲ μάχην οἱ μὲν ἑβδόμῃ λέγουσιν ἱσταμένου μηνός, οἱ δὲ νουμηνίᾳ γενέσθαι τοῦ νῦν μὲν τετάρτου, πάλαι δ’ Ἑρμαίου παρ’ Ἀργείοις, καθ’ ἣν μέχρι νῦν τὰ Ὑβριστικὰ τελοῦσι, γυναῖκας μὲν ἀνδρείοις χιτῶσι καὶ χλαμύσιν, [f] ἄνδρας δὲ πέπλοις γυναικῶν καὶ καλύπτραις ἀμφιεννύντες. ἐπανορθούμενοι δὲ τὴν ὀλιγανδρίαν οὐχ, ὡς Ἡρόδοτος ἱστορεῖ (VI 83), τοῖς δούλοις, ἀλλὰ τῶν περιοίκων ποιησάμενοι πολίτας τοὺς ἀρίστους, συνῴκισαν τὰς γυναῖκας· ἐδόκουν δὲ καὶ τούτους ἀτιμάζειν καὶ περιορᾶν ἐν τῷ συγκαθεύδειν ὡς χείρονας. ὅθεν ἔθεντο νόμον τὸν κελεύοντα πώγωνα δεῖν ἐχούσας συναναπαύεσθαι τοῖς ἀνδράσι τὰς γεγαμημένας.

ΠΕΡΣΙΔΕΣ

[246] [a] Πέρσας Ἀστυάγου βασιλέως καὶ Μήδων ἀποστήσας Κῦρος ἡττήθη μάχῃ· φεύγουσι δὲ τοῖς Πέρσαις εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ὀλίγον ἀπεχόντων συνεισπεσεῖν τῶν πολεμίων, ἀπήντησαν αἱ γυναῖκες πρὸ τῆς πόλεως καὶ τοὺς πέπλους ἐκ τῶν κάτω μερῶν ἐπάρασαι ‘ποῖ φέρεσθε’ εἶπον, ‘ὦ κάκιστοι πάντων ἀνθρώπων; οὐ γὰρ ἐνταῦθά γε δύνασθε καταδῦναι φεύγοντες, ὅθεν ἐξεγένεσθε.’ ταύτην τὴν ὄψιν ἅμα καὶ τὴν φωνὴν αἰδεσθέντες οἱ Πέρσαι καὶ κακίσαντες ἑαυτοὺς ἀνεστρέψαντο καὶ συμβαλόντες ἐξ ἀρχῆς [b] ἐτρέψαντο τοὺς πολεμίους. ἐκ τούτου κατέστη νόμος, εἰσελάσαντος βασιλέως εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἑκάστην γυναῖκα χρυσοῦν λαμβάνειν, Κύρου νομοθετήσαντος. Ὦχον δέ φασι, τά τ’ ἄλλα μοχθηρὸν καὶ φιλοκερδέστατον βασιλέων ὄντα, περικάμψαι τὴν πόλιν ἀεὶ καὶ μὴ παρελθεῖν ἀλλ’ ἀποστερῆσαι τῆς δωρεᾶς τὰς γυναῖκας. Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ καὶ δὶς εἰσῆλθε καὶ ταῖς κυούσαις διπλοῦν ἔδωκε.

ΚΕΛΤΑΙ

Κελτοῖς, πρὶν ὑπερβαλεῖν Ἄλπεις καὶ κατοικῆσαι τῆς Ἰταλίας ἣν νῦν νέμονται χώραν, στάσις ἐμπεσοῦσα δεινὴ [c] καὶ δυσκατάπαυστος εἰς πόλεμον ἐμφύλιον προῆλθεν. αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες ἐν μέσῳ τῶν ὅπλων γενόμεναι καὶ παραλαβοῦσαι τὰ νείκη διῄτησαν οὕτως ἀμέμπτως καὶ διέκριναν, ὥστε φιλίαν πᾶσι θαυμαστὴν καὶ κατὰ πόλεις καὶ κατ’ οἴκους γενέσθαι πρὸς πάντας. ἐκ τούτου διετέλουν περί τε πολέμου καὶ εἰρήνης βουλευόμενοι μετὰ τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ τὰ πρὸς τοὺς συμμάχους ἀμφίβολα δι’ ἐκείνων βραβεύοντες. ἐν γοῦν ταῖς πρὸς Ἀννίβαν συνθήκαις ἐγράψαντο, Κελτῶν μὲν ἐγκαλούντων Καρχηδονίοις τοὺς ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ Καρχηδονίων ἐπάρχους καὶ στρατηγοὺς εἶναι δικαστάς· ἂν δὲ Καρχηδόνιοι Κελτοῖς ἐγκαλῶσι, [d] τὰς Κελτῶν γυναῖκας.

ΜΗΛΙΑΙ

Μήλιοι γῆς χρῄζοντες ἀμφιλαφοῦς Νυμφαῖον ἡγεμόνα τῆς ἀποικίας ἐποιήσαντο, νέον ἄνδρα καὶ κάλλει διαφέροντα· τοῦ ‹δὲ› θεοῦ πλεῖν κελεύσαντος αὐτούς, ὅπου δ’ ἂν ἀποβάλωσι τοὺς κομιστῆρας, ἐκεῖ κατοικεῖν, συνέπεσε τῇ Καρίᾳ προσβαλοῦσιν αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀποβᾶσι τὰς ναῦς ὑπὸ χειμῶνος διαφθαρῆναι. τῶν δὲ Καρῶν οἱ Κρύασσαν οἰκοῦντες, εἴτε τὴν ἀπορίαν οἰκτείραντες εἴτε δείσαντες αὐτῶν τὴν τόλμαν, ἐκέλευον οἰκεῖν παρ’ αὐτοῖς καὶ τῆς χώρας μετέδωκαν· εἶτα πολλὴν ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ [e] λαμβάνοντας αὔξησιν ὁρῶντες, ἐπεβούλευον ἀνελεῖν εὐωχίαν τινὰ καὶ θοίνην παρασκευάσαντες. ἔτυχε δὲ Καρίνη παρθένος ἐρῶσα τοῦ Νυμφαίου [καὶ] λανθάνουσα τοὺς ἄλλους· ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ Καφένη· πραττομένων δὲ τούτων οὐ δυναμένη τὸν Νυμφαῖον περιορᾶν ἀπολλύμενον ἐξήγγειλε τὴν διάνοιαν αὐτῷ τῶν πολιτῶν. ὡς οὖν ἧκον οἱ Κρυασσεῖς καλοῦντες αὐτούς, οὐκ ἔφη νόμον ὁ Νυμφαῖος Ἕλλησιν εἶναι βαδίζειν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἄνευ γυναικῶν· ἀκούσαντες δ’ οἱ Κᾶρες ἐκέλευον ἄγειν καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας. οὕτω δὴ φράσας τὰ πεπραγμένα Μηλίοις ἐκέλευσεν [f] αὐτοὺς μὲν ἀνόπλους ἐν ἱματίοις βαδίζειν, τῶν δὲ γυναικῶν ἑκάστην ξίφος ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ κομίζειν καὶ καθέζεσθαι παρὰ τὸν αὑτῆς. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ δείπνου μεσοῦντος ἐδόθη τὸ σύνθημα τοῖς Καρσὶ καὶ συνῄσθοντο τὸν καιρὸν οἱ Ἕλληνες, αἱ μὲν γυναῖκες ἅμα πᾶσαι τοὺς κόλπους διέσχον, οἱ δὲ τὰ ξίφη λαβόντες ἐπέθεντο τοῖς βαρβάροις καὶ διέφθειραν αὐτοὺς ἅμα πάντας· κτησάμενοι δὲ τὴν χώραν καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐκείνην καταβαλόντες ᾤκισαν ἑτέραν, [247] [a] ἣν Νέαν Κρύασσαν ὠνόμασαν. ἡ δὲ Καφένη τῷ Νυμφαίῳ γαμηθεῖσα τιμὴν καὶ χάριν ἔσχε ταῖς εὐεργεσίαις πρέπουσαν. ἄξιον οὖν ἄγασθαι τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ τὴν σιωπὴν καὶ τὸ θάρσος καὶ τὸ μηδεμίαν ἐν πολλαῖς μηδ’ ἄκουσαν ὑπὸ δειλίας κακὴν γενέσθαι.

ΤΥΡΡΗΝΙΔΕΣ

Τυρρηνῶν τοίνυν τῶν Λῆμνον καὶ Ἴμβρον κατασχόντων, ἁρπασάντων δὲ Βραυρωνόθεν τὰς Ἀθηναίων γυναῖκας, ἐγένοντο παῖδες, οὓς ἐξήλασαν Ἀθηναῖοι μιξοβαρβάρους ὄντας ἐκ τῶν νήσων. οἱ δ’ εἰς Ταίναρον κατάραντες ἐγένοντο χρήσιμοι Σπαρτιάταις περὶ τὸν εἱλωτικὸν [b] πόλεμον, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πολιτείας καὶ γάμων τυχόντες, οὐκ ἀξιούμενοι δ’ ἀρχείων καὶ βουλῆς, ὑπόνοιαν ἔσχον ὡς ἐπὶ νεωτερισμῷ συνερχόμενοι καὶ διανοούμενοι τὰ καθεστῶτα κινεῖν. συλλαβόντες οὖν αὐτοὺς οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ καθείρξαντες ἐφύλαττον ἰσχυρῶς, ζητοῦντες ἑλεῖν σαφέσι καὶ βεβαίοις ἐλέγχοις· αἱ δὲ τῶν καθειργμένων γυναῖκες ἐπὶ τὴν εἱρκτὴν παραγενόμεναι, πολλαῖς ἱκεσίαις καὶ δεήσεσι παρείθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν φυλάκων ὅσον ἀσπάσασθαι καὶ προσειπεῖν τοὺς ἄνδρας. ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰσῆλθον, ἐκέλευον αὐτοὺς μεταμφιέννυσθαι ταχὺ τὰ ἱμάτια καὶ τὰ μὲν αὑτῶν ἐκείναις ἀπολιπεῖν, τὰ δ’ [c] ἐκείνων ἐνδύντας αὐτοὺς ἀπιέναι περικαλυψαμένους. γενομένων δὲ τούτων, αἱ μὲν ὑπέμειναν αὐτοῦ παραταξάμεναι πρὸς πάντα τὰ δεινά, τοὺς δ’ ἄνδρας ἐξαπατηθέντες οἱ φύλακες παρῆκαν ὡς δὴ γυναῖκας. ἐκ δὴ τούτου καταλαβομένων αὐτῶν τὰ Ταΰγετα καὶ τὸ εἱλωτικὸν ἀφιστάντων καὶ προσδεχομένων, οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται εἰς πολὺν φόβον καταστάντες ἐπεκηρυκεύσαντο καὶ διηλλάγησαν ἐπὶ τῷ κομίσασθαι μὲν αὐτοὺς τὰς γυναῖκας, χρήματα δὲ καὶ ναῦς λαβόντας ἐκπλεῦσαι καὶ γῆς τυχόντας ἀλλαχόθι καὶ πόλεως ἀποίκους Λακεδαιμονίων καὶ συγγενεῖς νομίζεσθαι.

[d] ταῦτ’ ἔπραττον οἱ Πελασγοὶ Πόλλιν ἡγεμόνα καὶ Δελφὸν καὶ Κραταΐδαν Λακεδαιμονίους λαβόντες· καὶ μέρος μὲν αὐτῶν ἐν Μήλῳ κατῴκησαν· τοὺς δὲ πλείστους οἱ περὶ Πόλλιν ἔχοντες εἰς Κρήτην ἔπλευσαν, ἀποπειρώμενοι τῶν λογίων. ἐχρήσθη γὰρ αὐτοῖς, ὅταν τὴν θεὸν καὶ τὴν ἄγκυραν ἀπολέσωσι, παύσασθαι πλάνης καὶ πόλιν ἐκεῖ συνοικίζειν. ὁρμισθεῖσιν οὖν πρὸς τῇ λεγομένῃ Χερρονήσῳ θόρυβοι πανικοὶ προσέπεσον νύκτωρ, ὑφ’ ὧν διαπτοηθέντες ἐνεπήδησαν εἰς τὰς ναῦς ἀκόσμως, ἀπολιπόντες ἐν τῇ γῇ ξόανον τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος, [e] ὃ πατρῷον ἦν αὐτοῖς εἰς Λῆμνον ἐκ Βραύρωνος κομισθέν, ἐκ δὲ Λήμνου πανταχοῦ συμπεριαγόμενον. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ θορύβου λήξαντος ἐπόθησαν αὐτὸ κατὰ πλοῦν, ἅμα δ’ ὁ Πόλλις κατέμαθε τῇ ἀγκύρᾳ τὸν ὄνυχα μὴ προσόντα (βίᾳ γὰρ ἑλκομένης ὡς ἔοικεν ἐν τόποις ὑποπέτροις ἀποσπασθεὶς ἔλαθε), περαίνεσθαι τὰ πυθόχρηστα φήσας ἐσήμαινεν ἀναστρέφειν· καὶ κατέσχε τὴν χώραν, καὶ μάχαις πολλαῖς τῶν ἀντιταξαμένων ἐπικρατήσας Λύκτον ᾤκησε καὶ πόλεις ἄλλας ἔλαβεν ὑποχειρίους. διὸ καὶ νομίζουσιν αὑτοὺς Ἀθηναίοις τε διὰ τὰς μητέρας κατὰ γένος προσήκειν καὶ Σπαρτιατῶν ἀποίκους εἶναι.

[f]

ΛΥΚΙΑΙ

Τὸ δ’ ἐν Λυκίᾳ γενέσθαι λεγόμενον μυθῶδες μέν ἐστιν, ἔχει δέ τινα φήμην ὁμοῦ μαρτυροῦσαν. Ἀμισώδαρος γάρ, ὥς φασιν, ὃν Ἰσάραν Λύκιοι καλοῦσιν, ἧκεν ἐκ τῆς περὶ Ζέλειαν ἀποικίας Λυκίων, λῃστρίδας ἄγων ναῦς, ὧν Χίμαρρος ἡγεῖτο, πολεμιστὴς μὲν ἀνὴρ ὠμὸς δὲ καὶ θηριώδης. ἔπλει δὲ πλοίῳ λέοντα μὲν ἔχοντι πρῴραθεν [248] [a] ἐπίσημον, ἐκ δὲ πρύμνης δράκοντα, καὶ πολλὰ κακὰ τοὺς Λυκίους ἐποίει, καὶ πλεῦσαι τὴν θάλατταν οὐκ ἦν οὐδὲ τὰς ἐγγὺς θαλάττης πόλεις οἰκεῖν. τοῦτον οὖν ἀποκτείνας ὁ Βελλεροφόντης φεύγοντα τῷ Πηγάσῳ διώξας, ἐκβαλὼν δὲ καὶ τὰς Ἀμαζόνας, οὐδενὸς ἐτύγχανε τῶν δικαίων, ἀλλ’ ἦν ἀδικώτατος περὶ αὐτὸν Ἰοβάτης· ὅθεν εἰς τὴν θάλατταν ἐμβὰς ηὔξατο κατ’ αὐτοῦ τῷ Ποσειδῶνι τὴν χώραν ἄκαρπον γενέσθαι καὶ ἀνόνητον. εἶθ’ ὁ μὲν ἀπῄει κατευξάμενος, κῦμα δὲ διαρθὲν ἐπέκλυζε τὴν γῆν, καὶ θέαμα δεινὸν ἦν ἑπομένης μετεώρου τῆς θαλάττης καὶ ἀποκρυπτούσης τὸ πεδίον. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν [b] ἀνδρῶν δεομένων τὸν Βελλεροφόντην ἐπισχεῖν οὐδὲν ἔπειθον, αἱ γυναῖκες ἀνασυράμεναι τοὺς χιτωνίσκους ἀπήντησαν αὐτῷ· πάλιν οὖν ὑπ’ αἰσχύνης ἀναχωροῦντος ὀπίσω καὶ τὸ κῦμα λέγεται συνυποχωρῆσαι. τινὲς δὲ τοῦ λόγου τούτου παραμυθούμενοι τὸ μυθῶδες οὔ φασι κατάραις ὑπαγαγέσθαι τὴν θάλασσαν αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ πεδίου τὸ πιότατον ὑποκεῖσθαι τῇ θαλάσσῃ ταπεινότερον· ὀφρὺν δὲ παρατείνουσαν ἀκτῆς, ἣ διεῖργε τὴν θάλασσαν, ἐκρῆξαι τὸν Βελλεροφόντην, καὶ βίᾳ τοῦ πελάγους ἐπιφερομένου καὶ κατακλύζοντος τὸ πεδίον τοὺς μὲν ἄνδρας οὐδὲν [c] περαίνειν δεομένους αὐτοῦ, τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας ἀθρόας περιχυθείσας αἰδοῦς τυχεῖν καὶ ἀποπαῦσαι τὴν ὀργήν. οἱ δ’ ὅλως τὴν λεγομένην Χίμαιραν ὄρος ἀντήλιον γεγονέναι φασὶ καὶ ποιεῖν ἀνακλάσεις [καὶ ἀνακαύσεις] ἐν τῷ θέρει χαλεπὰς καὶ πυρώδεις, ὑφ’ ὧν ἀνὰ τὸ πεδίον σκεδαννυμένων μαραίνεσθαι τοὺς καρπούς. τὸν δὲ Βελλεροφόντην συμφρονήσαντα διακόψαι τοῦ κρημνοῦ τὸ λειότατον καὶ μάλιστα τὰς ἀνακλάσεις ἀνταποστέλλον· ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐκ ἐτύγχανε χάριτος, ὀργῇ πρὸς ἄμυναν τραπέσθαι τῶν Λυκίων, πεισθῆναι δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν. ἣν [d] δὲ Νύμφις ἐν τῷ τετάρτῳ περὶ Ἡρακλείας (FHG III p. 14) αἰτίαν εἴρηκεν, ἥκιστα μυθώδης ἐστί· λέγει γάρ, ὅτι σῦν ἄγριον ἐν τῇ Ξανθίων χώρᾳ καὶ ζῷα καὶ καρποὺς λυμαινόμενον ἀνελὼν ὁ Βελλεροφόντης οὐδεμιᾶς ἐτύγχανεν ἀμοιβῆς· καταρασαμένου δὲ τῶν Ξανθίων αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὸν Ποσειδῶνα πᾶν τὸ πεδίον ἐξήνθησεν ἁλμυρίδα καὶ διέφθαρτο παντάπασι, τῆς γῆς πικρᾶς γενομένης· μέχρι οὗ τὰς γυναῖκας αἰδεσθεὶς δεομένας εὔξατο τῷ Ποσειδῶνι τὴν ὀργὴν ἀφεῖναι. διὸ καὶ νόμος ἦν τοῖς Ξανθίοις μὴ πατρόθεν ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ μητέρων χρηματίζειν.

ΣΑΛΜΑΤΙΔΕΣ

[e] Ἀννίβα δὲ τοῦ Βάρκα, πρὶν ἐπὶ Ῥωμαίους στρατεύειν, ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ πόλει μεγάλῃ Σαλματικῇ προσμαχομένου, πρῶτον μὲν ἔδεισαν οἱ πολιορκούμενοι καὶ συνέθεντο ποιήσειν τὸ προσταττόμενον Ἀννίβᾳ τριακόσια δόντες ἀργυρίου τάλαντα καὶ τριακοσίους ὁμήρους. ἀνέντος δὲ τὴν πολιορκίαν ἐκείνου μεταγνόντες οὐδὲν ἔπραττον ὧν ὡμολόγησαν. αὖθις οὖν ἐπιστρέψαντος αὐτοῦ καὶ τοὺς στρατιώτας ἐπὶ διαρπαγῇ χρημάτων κελεύσαντος ἐπιχειρεῖν τῇ πόλει, παντάπασι καταπλαγέντες οἱ βάρβαροι συνεχώρησαν ἐξελθεῖν ἐν ἱματίῳ τοὺς ἐλευθέρους, [f] ὅπλα καὶ χρήματα καὶ ἀνδράποδα καὶ τὴν πόλιν καταλιπόντας. αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες οἰόμεναι τῶν μὲν ἀνδρῶν φωράσειν ἕκαστον ἐξιόντα τοὺς πολεμίους, αὐτῶν δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἅψασθαι, ξίφη λαβοῦσαι καὶ ἀποκρύψασαι συνεξέπιπτον τοῖς ἀνδράσιν. ἐξελθόντων δὲ πάντων ὁ Ἀννίβας φρουρὰν Μασαισυλίων ἐπιστήσας ἐν τῷ προαστείῳ συνεῖχεν αὐτούς, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι τὴν πόλιν ἀτάκτως ἐμπεσόντες διήρπαζον. πολλῶν δ’ ἀγομένων οἱ Μασαισύλιοι καρτερεῖν οὐκ ἠδύναντο βλέποντες [249] [a] οὐδὲ τῇ φυλακῇ τὸν νοῦν προσεῖχον, ἀλλ’ ἠγανάκτουν καὶ ἀπεχώρουν ὡς μεθέξοντες τῆς ὠφελείας. ἐν τούτῳ δ’ αἱ γυναῖκες ἐμβοήσασαι τοῖς ἀνδράσι τὰ ξίφη παρέδοσαν, ἔνιαι δὲ καὶ δι’ ἑαυτῶν ἐπετίθεντο τοῖς φρουροῦσι· μία δὲ καὶ λόγχην ἐξαρπάσασα Βάνωνος τοῦ ἑρμηνέως αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον ἔπαισεν· ἔτυχε δὲ τεθωρακισμένος· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων τοὺς μὲν καταβαλόντες, τοὺς δὲ τρεψάμενοι διεξέπεσον ἀθρόοι μετὰ τῶν γυναικῶν. πυθόμενος δ’ ὁ Ἀννίβας καὶ διώξας τοὺς μὲν καταληφθέντας ἀνεῖλεν· οἱ δὲ τῶν ὀρῶν ἐπιλαβόμενοι παραχρῆμα μὲν διέφυγον, ὕστερον δὲ πέμψαντες ἱκετηρίαν εἰς [b] τὴν πόλιν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ κατήχθησαν, ἀδείας καὶ φιλανθρωπίας τυχόντες.

ΜΙΛΗΣΙΑΙ

Τὰς Μιλησίων ποτὲ παρθένους δεινὸν πάθος καὶ ἀλλόκοτον κατέσχεν ἐκ δή τινος αἰτίας ἀδήλου· μάλιστα δ’ εἰκάζετο κρᾶσιν ἐκστατικὴν καὶ φαρμακώδη λαβὼν ὁ ἀὴρ τροπὴν αὐταῖς καὶ παραφορὰν τῆς διανοίας ἐνεργάσασθαι. πάσαις μὲν γὰρ ἐξαίφνης ἐπιθυμία θανάτου καὶ πρὸς ἀγχόνην ὁρμὴ περιμανὴς ἐνέπιπτε, πολλαὶ δ’ ἀπήγχοντο λανθάνουσαι· λόγοι δὲ καὶ δάκρυα γονέων καὶ παρηγορίαι φίλων οὐδὲν ἐπέραινον, ἀλλὰ περιῆσαν [c] ἐπινοίας καὶ πανουργίας ἁπάσης τῶν φυλαττόντων ἑαυτὰς διαχρώμεναι. καὶ τὸ κακὸν ἐδόκει δαιμόνιον εἶναι καὶ κρεῖττον ἀνθρωπίνης βοηθείας, ἄχρις οὗ γνώμῃ νοῦν ἔχοντος ἀνδρὸς ἐγράφη προβούλευμα, τὰς ἀπαγχομένας γυμνὰς ἐκκομίζεσθαι διὰ τῆς ἀγορᾶς· καὶ τοῦτο κυρωθὲν οὐ μόνον ἐπέσχεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ παντελῶς ἔπαυσε θανατώσας τὰς παρθένους. μέγα δὴ τεκμήριον εὐφυΐας καὶ ἀρετῆς ἡ τῆς ἀδοξίας εὐλάβεια καὶ τὸ πρὸς τὰ δεινότατα τῶν ὄντων, θάνατον καὶ πόνον, ἀδεῶς ἐχούσας αἰσχροῦ φαντασίαν μὴ ὑπομεῖναι μηδ’ ἐνεγκεῖν αἰσχύνην μετὰ θάνατον ἐσομένην.

[d]

ΚΙΑΙ

Ταῖς Κίων παρθένοις ἔθος ἦν εἰς ἱερὰ δημόσια συμπορεύεσθαι καὶ διημερεύειν μετ’ ἀλλήλων, οἱ δὲ μνηστῆρες ἐθεῶντο παιζούσας καὶ χορευούσας· ἑσπέρας δὲ πρὸς ἑκάστην ἀνὰ μέρος βαδίζουσαι διηκονοῦντο τοῖς ἀλλήλων γονεῦσι καὶ ἀδελφοῖς ἄχρι τοῦ καὶ τοὺς πόδας ἀπονίζειν. ‹τῶν δὲ μνηστήρων› ἤρων πολλάκις μιᾶς πλείονες οὕτω κόσμιον ἔρωτα καὶ νόμιμον, ὥστε τῆς κόρης ἐγγυηθείσης ἑνὶ τοὺς ἄλλους εὐθὺς πεπαῦσθαι. κεφάλαιον δὲ τῆς εὐταξίας τῶν γυναικῶν τὸ μήτε μοιχείαν μήτε φθορὰν ἀνέγγυον ἐτῶν ἑπτακοσίων μνημονεύεσθαι παρ’ αὐτοῖς γενομένην.

[e]

ΦΩΚΙΔΕΣ

Τῶν ἐν Φωκεῦσι τυράννων κατειληφότων Δελφοὺς καὶ τὸν ἱερὸν κληθέντα πόλεμον Θηβαίων πολεμούντων πρὸς αὐτούς, αἱ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον γυναῖκες, ἃς Θυιάδας ὀνομάζουσιν, ἐκμανεῖσαι καὶ περιπλανηθεῖσαι νυκτὸς ἔλαθον ἐν Ἀμφίσσῃ γενόμεναι· κατάκοποι δ’ οὖσαι καὶ μηδέπω τοῦ φρονεῖν παρόντος αὐταῖς ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ προέμεναι τὰ σώματα σποράδην ἔκειντο καθεύδουσαι. τῶν δ’ Ἀμφισσέων αἱ γυναῖκες, φοβηθεῖσαι μὴ διὰ τὸ σύμμαχον τὴν πόλιν Φωκέων γεγονέναι καὶ συχνοὺς στρατιώτας παρεῖναι τῶν τυράννων ἀγνωμονηθῶσιν αἱ Θυιάδες, ἐξέδραμον [f] εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἅπασαι καὶ κύκλῳ περιστᾶσαι σιωπῇ κοιμωμέναις μὲν οὐ προσῄεσαν, ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐξανέστησαν, ἄλλαι περὶ ἄλλας ἐγίνοντο θεραπεύουσαι καὶ τροφὴν προσφέρουσαι· τέλος δὲ πείσασαι τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπηκολούθησαν αὐταῖς ἄχρι τῶν ὅρων ἀσφαλῶς προπεμπομέναις.

[250] [a]

ΟΥΑΛΕΡΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΚΛΟΙΛΙΑ

Ταρκύνιον Σούπερβον, ἕβδομον ἀπὸ Ῥωμύλου βασιλεύοντα Ῥωμαίων, ἐξήλασεν ὕβρις καὶ ἀρετὴ Λουκρητίας, γυναικὸς ἀνδρὶ γεγαμημένης λαμπρῷ καὶ κατὰ γένος προσήκοντι τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν. ἐβιάσθη μὲν γὰρ ὑφ’ ἑνὸς τῶν Ταρκυνίου παίδων ἐπιξενωθέντος αὐτῇ· φράσασα δὲ τοῖς φίλοις καὶ οἰκείοις τὸ πάθος εὐθὺς ἀπέσφαξεν ἑαυτήν. ἐκπεσὼν δὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς ὁ Ταρκύνιος ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς ἐπολέμησε πολέμους, πειρώμενος ἀναλαβεῖν τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, καὶ τέλος ἄρχοντα Τυρρηνῶν Πορσίναν ἔπεισεν ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην στρατεῦσαι μετὰ [b] πολλῆς δυνάμεως. ἅμα δὲ τῷ πολέμῳ καὶ λιμοῦ συνεπιτιθεμένου τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις, πυνθανόμενοι τὸν Πορσίναν οὐ πολεμικὸν εἶναι μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ δίκαιον ἄνδρα καὶ χρηστόν, ἐβούλοντο χρῆσθαι ‹τούτῳ› δικαστῇ πρὸς τὸν Ταρκύνιον. ἀπαυθαδισαμένου δὲ τοῦ Ταρκυνίου καὶ τὸν Πορσίναν, εἰ μὴ μενεῖ σύμμαχος βέβαιος, οὐδὲ κριτὴν δίκαιον ἔσεσθαι φάσκοντος, ἀφεὶς ἐκεῖνον ὁ Πορσίνας ἔπραττεν, ὅπως φίλος ἄπεισι Ῥωμαίων, τῆς τε χώρας ὅσην ἀπετέτμηντο Τυρρηνῶν καὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους κομισάμενος. ἐπὶ τούτοις ὁμήρων αὐτῷ δοθέντων δέκα [c] μὲν ἀρρένων παίδων δέκα δὲ θηλειῶν (ἐν αἷς ἦν ἡ Ποπλικόλα τοῦ ὑπάτου θυγάτηρ Οὐαλερία), πᾶσαν εὐθὺς ἀνῆκε τὴν πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον παρασκευήν, καίπερ οὔπω τέλος ἐχούσης τῆς ὁμολογίας. αἱ δὲ παρθένοι κατέβησαν μὲν ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμὸν ὡς λουσόμεναι μικρὸν ἀπωτέρω τοῦ στρατοπέδου· μιᾶς δ’ αὐτῶν ὄνομα Κλοιλίας προτρεψαμένης ἀναδησάμεναι περὶ τὰς κεφαλὰς τοὺς χιτωνίσκους παρεβάλοντο πρὸς ῥεῦμα πολὺ καὶ δίνας βαθείας νέουσαι ‹καὶ› διεπέρασαν ἀλλήλων ἐχόμεναι πολυπόνως καὶ μόλις. εἰσὶ δ’ οἱ λέγοντες ἵππου τὴν Κλοιλίαν εὐπορήσασαν αὐτὴν μὲν ἐπιβῆναι καὶ διεξελαύνειν [d] ἠρέμα, ταῖς δ’ ἄλλαις ὑφηγεῖσθαι παραθαρσύνουσαν νηχομένας καὶ παραβοηθοῦσαν. ᾧ δὲ τεκμηρίῳ χρῶνται, μετ’ ὀλίγον ἐροῦμεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ σωθείσας εἶδον οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι, τὴν μὲν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν τόλμαν ἐθαύμασαν, τὴν δὲ κομιδὴν οὐκ ἠγάπησαν οὐδ’ ὑπέμειναν ἐν πίστει χείρονες ἀνδρὸς ἑνὸς γενέσθαι. πάλιν οὖν τὰς κόρας ἐκέλευσαν ἀπιέναι καὶ συνέπεμψαν αὐταῖς ἀγωγούς, οἷς διαβᾶσι τὸν ποταμὸν ἐνέδραν ὑφεὶς ὁ Ταρκύνιος ὀλίγον ἐδέησεν ἐγκρατὴς γενέσθαι τῶν παρθένων. ἡ μὲν οὖν τοῦ ὑπάτου Ποπλικόλα θυγάτηρ Οὐαλερία μετὰ τριῶν προεξέφυγεν [e] οἰκετῶν εἰς τὸ τοῦ Πορσίνα στρατόπεδον, τὰς δ’ ἄλλας ὁ τοῦ Πορσίνα υἱὸς Ἄρρους ταχὺ προσβοηθήσας ἐξείλετο τῶν πολεμίων. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἤχθησαν, ἰδὼν αὐτὰς ὁ Πορσίνας ἐκέλευσεν εἰπεῖν, ἥτις ἐστὶν ἡ προτρεψαμένη καὶ κατάρξασα τοῦ βουλεύματος. αἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλαι φοβηθεῖσαι περὶ τῆς Κλοιλίας ἐσιώπησαν· αὐτῆς δὲ τῆς Κλοιλίας εἰπούσης ἑαυτήν, ἀγασθεὶς ὁ Πορσίνας ἐκέλευσεν ἵππον ἀχθῆναι κεκοσμημένον εὐπρεπῶς, καὶ τῇ Κλοιλίᾳ δωρησάμενος ἀπέπεμψεν εὐμενῶς καὶ φιλανθρώπως πάσας. τοῦτο ποιοῦνται σημεῖον οἱ πολλοὶ τοῦ τὴν Κλοιλίαν ἵππῳ διεξελάσαι τὸν ποταμόν· οἱ δ’ οὔ [f] φασιν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ῥώμην θαυμάσαντα καὶ τὴν τόλμαν αὐτῆς ὡς κρείττονα γυναικὸς ἀξιῶσαι δωρεᾶς ἀνδρὶ πολεμιστῇ πρεπούσης. ἀνέκειτο γοῦν ἔφιππος εἰκὼν γυναικὸς ἐπὶ τῆς ὁδοῦ τῆς ἱερᾶς λεγομένης, ἣν οἱ μὲν τῆς Κλοιλίας οἱ δὲ τῆς Οὐαλερίας λέγουσιν εἶναι.

ΜΙΚΚΑ ΚΑΙ ΜΕΓΙΣΤΩ

Ἀριστότιμος Ἠλείοις ἐπαναστὰς τύραννος ἴσχυε μὲν δι’ Ἀντιγόνου τοῦ βασιλέως, ἐχρῆτο δὲ τῇ δυνάμει πρὸς οὐδὲν ἐπιεικὲς οὐδὲ μέτριον· καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἦν φύσει [251] [a] θηριώδης, καὶ τοῖς φυλάττουσι τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ τὸ σῶμα βαρβάροις μιγάσι δουλεύων ὑπὸ φόβου, πολλὰ μὲν ὑβριστικὰ πολλὰ δ’ ὠμὰ τοὺς πολίτας ὑπ’ αὐτῶν περιεώρα πάσχοντας· οἷον ἦν καὶ τὸ Φιλοδήμου πάθος. ἔχοντος γὰρ αὐτοῦ θυγατέρα καλὴν ὄνομα Μίκκαν ἐπεχείρησέ τις τῶν περὶ τὸν τύραννον ξεναγῶν ὄνομα Λεύκιος ὕβρει μᾶλλον ἢ ἔρωτι συγγενέσθαι· καὶ πέμψας ἐκάλει τὴν παρθένον. οἱ μὲν οὖν γονεῖς τὴν ἀνάγκην ὁρῶντες ἐκέλευον βαδίζειν· ἡ δὲ παῖς οὖσα γενναία καὶ μεγαλόφρων ἐδεῖτο τοῦ πατρὸς περιπλεκομένη καὶ καθικετεύουσα [b] μᾶλλον αὐτὴν περιιδεῖν ἀποθανοῦσαν ἢ τὴν παρθενίαν αἰσχρῶς καὶ παρανόμως ἀφαιρεθεῖσαν. καὶ διατριβῆς γενομένης σπαργῶν καὶ μεθύων ὁ Λεύκιος αὐτὸς ἐξανέστη μεταξὺ πίνων πρὸς ὀργήν· καὶ τὴν Μίκκαν εὑρὼν ἐν τοῖς γόνασι τοῦ πατρὸς τὴν κεφαλὴν ἔχουσαν ἐκέλευεν αὐτῷ συνακολουθεῖν· οὐ βουλομένης δὲ τὸ χιτώνιον περιρρήξας ἐμαστίγου γυμνήν, αὐτὴν μὲν ἐγκαρτεροῦσαν σιωπῇ ταῖς ἀλγηδόσιν· ὁ δὲ πατὴρ καὶ ἡ μήτηρ, ὡς οὐδὲν ἀντιβολοῦντες καὶ δακρύοντες ἐπέραινον, ἐτράποντο πρὸς θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων ἀνάκλησιν ὡς δεινὰ καὶ παράνομα πάσχοντες. ὁ δὲ βάρβαρος ἐκμανεὶς παντάπασιν [c] ὑπὸ τοῦ θυμοῦ καὶ μέθης ἀποσφάττει τὴν παρθένον, ὡς ἔτυχεν ἐν τοῖς κόλποις τοῦ πατρὸς ἔχουσα τὸ πρόσωπον.

Ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τούτοις ὁ τύραννος ἐκάμπτετο, πολλοὺς δ’ ἀνῄρει καὶ πλείονας ἐφυγάδευεν· ὀκτακόσιοι γοῦν λέγονται καταφυγεῖν ἐπ’ Αἰτωλοὺς δεόμενοι τὰς γυναῖκας αὑτοῖς καὶ τὰ νήπια τῶν τέκνων κομίσασθαι παρὰ τοῦ τυράννου. ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον αὐτὸς ἐκήρυξε τὰς βουλομένας γυναῖκας ἀπιέναι πρὸς τοὺς ἄνδρας, ὅσα βούλονται τῶν γυναικείων χρημάτων ἐπιφερομένας. ἐπεὶ δὲ πάσας ᾔσθετο μεθ’ ἡδονῆς τὸ κήρυγμα δεδεγμένας (ἐγένοντο [d] γὰρ ὑπερεξακόσιαι τὸ πλῆθος), ἐκέλευσεν ἀθρόας ἡμέρᾳ ῥητῇ βαδίζειν, ὡς τὴν ἀσφάλειαν αὐτὸς παρέξων. ἐνστάσης δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας αἱ μὲν ἐπὶ τὰς πύλας ἠθροίζοντο τὰ χρήματα συσκευασάμεναι, καὶ τῶν τέκνων τὰ μὲν ἐν ταῖς ἀγκάλαις φέρουσαι τὰ δ’ ἐπὶ τῶν ἁμαξῶν ἔχουσαι, καὶ περιέμενον ἀλλήλας· ἄφνω δὲ πολλοὶ τῶν τοῦ τυράννου ἐπεφέροντο, μένειν βοῶντες ἔτι πόρρωθεν. ὡς δ’ ἐγγὺς ἐγένοντο, τὰς μὲν γυναῖκας ἐκέλευον ἀναχωρεῖν ὀπίσω, τὰ δὲ ζεύγη καὶ τὰς ἁμάξας ὑποστρέψαντες ἔωσαν εἰς αὐτὰς καὶ διὰ μέσων ἀφειδῶς διήλαυνον, οὔτ’ ἀκολουθεῖν οὔτε μένειν ἐῶντες οὔτε τοῖς νηπίοις βοηθεῖν [e] ἀπολλυμένοις (τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἐκπίπτοντα τῶν ἁμαξῶν τὰ δ’ ὑποπίπτοντα διεφθείροντο), βοῇ καὶ μάστιξιν ὥσπερ πρόβατα τῶν μισθοφόρων ἐπειγόντων ἀνατρεπομένας ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων, ἕως εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον ἐνέβαλον ἁπάσας, τὰ δὲ χρήματα πρὸς τὸν Ἀριστότιμον ἀπεκομίσθη. χαλεπῶς δὲ τῶν Ἠλείων ἐπὶ τούτοις ἐχόντων αἱ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ἱεραὶ γυναῖκες, ἃς ‹τὰς› ἑκκαίδεκα καλοῦσιν, ἱκετηρίας καὶ στέμματα τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ λαβοῦσαι περὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν ἀπήντησαν τῷ Ἀριστοτίμῳ, καὶ τῶν δορυφόρων ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς διαστάντων, ἔστησαν τὸ πρῶτον σιωπῇ [f] ‹καὶ› ὁσίως προϊσχόμεναι τὰς ἱκετηρίας. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐγένοντο φανεραὶ δεόμεναι καὶ παραιτούμεναι τὴν ὀργὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν γυναικῶν, παροξυνθεὶς πρὸς τοὺς δορυφόρους καὶ κεκραγὼς ὅτι προσελθεῖν εἴασαν αὐτὰς ἐποίησε τὰς μὲν ὠθοῦντας τὰς δὲ τύπτοντας ἐξελάσαι [ἐκ] τῆς ἀγορᾶς, ἑκάστην δὲ δυσὶ ταλάντοις ἐζημίωσε.

Γενομένων δὲ τούτων, ἐν μὲν τῇ πόλει συνέστησε πρᾶξιν ἐπὶ τὸν τύραννον Ἑλλάνικος, ἀνὴρ διὰ γῆρας ἤδη καὶ δύο τέκνων θάνατον ὡς οὐδὲν ἂν πράξας ὑπὸ τοῦ [252] [a] τυράννου περιορώμενος. ἐκ δ’ Αἰτωλίας διαπεράσαντες οἱ φυγάδες καταλαμβάνουσι τῆς χώρας ἐπιτήδειον ἐμπολεμεῖν ἔρυμα τὴν Ἀμυμώνην, καὶ συχνοὺς προσεδέχοντο τῶν πολιτῶν ἐκ τῆς Ἤλιδος ἀποδιδράσκοντας. ταῦτα δὲ δείσας ὁ Ἀριστότιμος εἰσῆλθε πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας, καὶ νομίζων φόβῳ μᾶλλον ἢ χάριτι διαπράξεσθαι προσέταττε πέμπειν καὶ γράφειν αὐτὰς τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ὅπως ἀπίωσιν ἐκ τῆς χώρας· εἰ δὲ μή, κατασφάξειν ἠπείλει πάσας αἰκισάμενος καὶ προανελὼν τοὺς παῖδας. αἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλαι, πολὺν χρόνον ἐφεστῶτος καὶ κελεύοντος εἰπεῖν [b] εἴ τι πράξουσι τούτων, οὐδὲν ἀπεκρίναντο πρὸς ἐκεῖνον, ἀλλὰ προσέβλεψαν ἀλλήλαις σιωπῇ καὶ διένευσαν, ἀνθομολογούμεναι τὸ μὴ δεδιέναι μηδ’ ἐκπεπλῆχθαι τὴν ἀπειλήν. Μεγιστὼ δ’ ἡ Τιμολέοντος γυνὴ καὶ διὰ τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἡγεμονικὴν ἔχουσα τάξιν, διαναστῆναι μὲν οὐκ ἠξίωσεν οὐδ’ εἴασε τὰς ἄλλας· καθεζομένη δ’ ἀπεκρίνατο πρὸς αὐτόν ‘εἰ μὲν ἦς ἀνὴρ φρόνιμος, οὐκ ἂν διελέγου γυναιξὶ περὶ ἀνδρῶν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἐκείνους ἂν ὡς κυρίους ἡμῶν ἔπεμπες, ἀμείνονας λόγους εὑρὼν ἢ δι’ ὧν ἡμᾶς ἐξηπάτησας· εἰ δ’ αὐτὸς ἐκείνους πεῖσαι [c] ἀπεγνωκὼς δι’ ἡμῶν ἐπιχειρεῖς παραλογίζεσθαι, μήθ’ ἡμᾶς ἔλπιζε πάλιν ἐξαπατήσειν μήτ’ ἐκεῖνοι κακῶς οὕτω φρονήσειαν, ὥστε φειδόμενοι παιδαρίων καὶ γυναικῶν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν τὴν τῆς πατρίδος ἐλευθερίαν· οὐ γὰρ τοσοῦτο κακὸν αὐτοῖς ἡμᾶς ἀπολέσαι μηδὲ νῦν ἔχοντας, ὅσον ἀγαθὸν ἐξελέσθαι τῆς σῆς ὠμότητος καὶ ὕβρεως τοὺς πολίτας.’ ταῦτα τῆς Μεγιστοῦς λεγούσης, οὐκ ἀνασχόμενος ὁ Ἀριστότιμος ἐκέλευσε τὸ παιδίον αὐτῆς ὡς ἀποκτενῶν ἐν ὄψει κομισθῆναι. ζητούντων δὲ τῶν ὑπηρετῶν ἀναμεμιγμένον ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις παίζουσι καὶ διαπαλαίουσιν, ἡ μήτηρ ὀνομαστὶ προσκαλεσαμένη ‘δεῦρο’ [d] ἔφη ‘τέκνον, πρὶν αἰσθέσθαι καὶ φρονεῖν ἀπαλλάγηθι τῆς πικρᾶς τυραννίδος· ὡς ἐμοὶ βαρύτερόν ἐστι δουλεύοντά σε παρ’ ἀξίαν ἐφορᾶν ἢ ἀποθνήσκοντα.’ τοῦ δ’ Ἀριστοτίμου σπασαμένου τὴν μάχαιραν ἐπ’ αὐτὴν ἐκείνην καὶ μετ’ ὀργῆς ἐπιφερομένου, τῶν συνήθων τις αὐτῷ Κύλ‹λ›ων ὄνομα πιστὸς δοκῶν εἶναι, μισῶν δὲ καὶ μετέχων τῆς συνωμοσίας τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἑλλάνικον, ἀντέστη καὶ ἀπέστρεψε δεόμενος καὶ λέγων ἀγεννὲς εἶναι καὶ γυναικῶδες, οὐκ ἀνδρὸς ἡγεμονικοῦ καὶ πράγμασι χρῆσθαι μεμαθηκότος τὸ ἔργον· ὥστε μόλις ἔννουν γενόμενον τὸν Ἀριστότιμον ἀπελθεῖν. γίγνεται δὲ σημεῖον [e] αὐτῷ μέγα· μεσημβρία μὲν γὰρ ἦν καὶ μετὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ἀνεπαύετο· παρασκευαζομένων δὲ τῶν περὶ τὸ δεῖπνον, ἀετὸς μετέωρος ὤφθη δινούμενος ὑπὲρ τῆς οἰκίας, εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἐκ προνοίας καὶ στοχασμοῦ λίθον ἀφῆκεν εὐμεγέθη κατ’ ἐκεῖνο τῆς στέγης τὸ μέρος, οὗ τὸ δωμάτιον ἦν, ἐν ᾧ κατακείμενος ἐτύγχανεν ὁ Ἀριστότιμος. ἅμα δ’ ἄνωθεν ψόφου μεγάλου καὶ κραυγῆς ἔξωθεν ὑπὸ τῶν ἰδόντων τὸν ὄρνιν γενομένης, ἐκπλαγεὶς καὶ πυθόμενος τὸ γεγονὸς μετεπέμψατο μάντιν, ᾧ χρώμενος διετέλει κατ’ ἀγοράν, καὶ διηρώτα περὶ τοῦ σημείου συντεταραγμένος.

[f] ὁ δ’ ἐκεῖνον μὲν παρεκάλει ὡς τοῦ Διὸς αὐτὸν ἐξεγείροντος καὶ βοηθοῦντος, οἷς δ’ ἐπίστευε τῶν πολιτῶν ἔφρασεν ὅσον οὔπω τὴν δίκην αἰωρουμένην ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς ἐμπεσεῖσθαι τῷ τυράννῳ. διὸ καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἑλλάνικον ἔδοξε μὴ μέλλειν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιτίθεσθαι τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ. τῆς δὲ νυκτὸς Ἑλλάνικος ἐδόκει κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους τῶν τεθνηκότων υἱῶν τὸν ἕτερον λέγειν αὐτῷ παραστάντα ‘τί πέπονθας, ὦ πάτερ, καθεύδων; αὔριον δέ σε [253] [a] δεῖ τῆς πόλεως στρατηγεῖν.’ οὗτός τε δὴ διὰ τὴν ὄψιν εὐθαρσὴς γεγενημένος παρεκάλει τοὺς ἑταίρους, ὅ τ’ Ἀριστότιμος πυθόμενος Κρατερὸν αὐτῷ βοηθοῦντα μετὰ πολλῆς δυνάμεως ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ καταστρατοπεδεύειν, οὕτως ἐξεθάρσησεν, ὥστ’ ἄνευ δορυφόρων εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν προελθεῖν μετὰ τοῦ Κύλ‹λ›ωνος. ὡς οὖν συνεῖδε τὸν καιρὸν Ἑλλάνικος, ὃ μὲν ἦν σημεῖον αὐτῷ πρὸς τοὺς μέλλοντας ἐπιχειρεῖν συγκείμενον οὐκ ἔδωκε, λαμπρᾷ δὲ τῇ φωνῇ καὶ ἅμα τὰς χεῖρας προτείνων ἀμφοτέρας ‘τί μέλλετ’,’ ‹ἀνεβόησεν,› ‘ἄνδρες ἀγαθοί; καλὸν τὸ θέατρον ἐν μέσῳ τῆς πατρίδος ἐναγωνίσασθαι.’ πρῶτος οὖν [b] ὁ Κύλ‹λ›ων σπασάμενος τὸ ξίφος παίει τινὰ τῶν ἑπομένων τῷ Ἀριστοτίμῳ· Θρασυβούλου δὲ καὶ Λάμπιδος ἐξ ἐναντίας ἐπιφερομένων, ἔφθη μὲν ὁ Ἀριστότιμος εἰς τὸ τοῦ Διὸς ἱερὸν καταφυγών· ἐκεῖ δ’ ἀποκτείναντες αὐτὸν καὶ τὸ σῶμα προβαλόντες εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἐκάλουν τοὺς πολίτας ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν. οὐ μὴν ἔφθησάν γε πολλῷ τὰς γυναῖκας· εὐθὺς γὰρ ἐξέδραμον μετὰ χαρᾶς καὶ ὀλολυγμοῦ, καὶ περιστᾶσαι τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀνέδουν καὶ κατέστεφον. εἶτα τοῦ πλήθους ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ τυράννου ῥυέντος, ἡ μὲν γυνὴ συγκλείσασα τὸν θάλαμον αὑτὴν [c] ἀνήρτησε. δύο δ’ ἦσαν αὐτῷ θυγατέρες, παρθένοι μὲν ἔτι, κάλλισται δὲ τὴν ὄψιν, ἤδη γάμων ὥραν ἔχουσαι· ταύτας συλλαβόντες εἷλκον ἔξω πάντως μὲν ἀνελεῖν, αἰκίσασθαι δὲ καὶ καθυβρίσαι πρότερον ἐγνωκότες. ἀπαντήσασα δ’ ἡ Μεγιστὼ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἐβόα δεινὰ ποιεῖν αὐτούς, εἰ δῆμος ἀξιοῦντες εἶναι ταῦτα τολμῶσι καὶ ἀσελγαίνουσι τοῖς τυράννοις ὅμοια. ἐντρεπομένων δὲ πολλῶν τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς γυναικὸς παρρησιαζομένης καὶ δακρυούσης, ἔδοξεν ἀφελεῖν τὴν ὕβριν, αὐτὰς δ’ ἐᾶσαι δι’ αὑτῶν ἀποθανεῖν. ὡς δ’ οὖν ἀναστρέψαντες ἔνδον ἐκέλευον εὐθὺς ἀποθνήσκειν τὰς παρθένους, ἡ πρεσβυτέρα Μυρὼ [d] λύσασα τὴν ζώνην καὶ βρόχον ἅψασα τὴν ἀδελφὴν κατησπάζετο καὶ παρεκάλει προσέχειν καὶ ποιεῖν ἅπερ ἂν αὐτὴν θεάσηται ποιοῦσαν, ‘ὅπως ἄν’ ἔφη ‘μὴ ταπεινῶς μηδ’ ἀναξίως ἑαυτῶν καταστρέψωμεν.’ τῆς δὲ νεωτέρας δεομένης αὐτῇ παρεῖναι πρότερον ἀποθανεῖν καὶ τῆς ζώνης ἀντιλαμβανομένης ‘οὐδ’ ἄλλο πώποτ’’ εἶπεν ‘οὐδὲν ἤρνημαί σοι δεομένῃ, καὶ ταύτην οὖν λαβὲ τὴν χάριν, ἐγὼ δ’ ὑπομενῶ καὶ τλήσομαι τοῦ θανάτου βαρύτερον τὸ σέ, φιλτάτη, προτέραν ἰδεῖν ἀποθνήσκουσαν.’ ἐκ τούτου τὴν μὲν ἀδελφὴν αὐτὴν διδάξασα τῷ τραχήλῳ [e] περιβαλέσθαι τὸν βρόχον, ὡς ᾔσθετο τεθνηκυῖαν, καθεῖλε καὶ κατεκάλυψεν· αὑτῆς δὲ τὴν Μεγιστὼ παρεκάλεσεν ἐπιμεληθῆναι, καὶ μὴ περιιδεῖν αἰσχρῶς, ἐπειδὰν ἀποθάνῃ, ‹ἐκ›τεθεῖσαν· ὥστε μηδένα πικρὸν μηδὲ μισοτύραννον οὕτω γενέσθαι τῶν παρόντων, ὃς οὐκ ἔκλαυσεν οὐδὲ κατηλέησε τὴν τῶν παρθένων εὐγένειαν.

Τῶν μὲν οὖν κοινῇ πεπραγμένων γυναιξὶ μυρίων ὄντων ἱκανὰ ταῦτα παραδείγματα· τὰς δὲ καθ’ ἑκάστην ἀρετάς, ὅπως ἂν ἐπίῃ, σποράδην ἀναγράψομεν, οὐδὲν οἰόμενοι τῆς κατὰ χρόνον τάξεως δεῖσθαι τὴν ὑποκειμένην ἱστορίαν.

[f]

ΠΙΕΡΙΑ

Τῶν εἰς Μίλητον ἀφικομένων Ἰώνων στασιάσαντες ἔνιοι πρὸς τοὺς Νείλεω παῖδας ἀπεχώρησαν εἰς Μυοῦντα κἀκεῖ κατῴκουν, πολλὰ κακὰ πάσχοντες ὑπὸ τῶν Μιλησίων· ἐπολέμουν γὰρ αὐτοῖς διὰ τὴν ἀποστασίαν. οὐ μὴν ἀκήρυκτος ἦν οὐδ’ ἀνεπίμικτος ὁ πόλεμος, ἀλλ’ ἔν τισιν ἑορταῖς ἐφοίτων εἰς Μίλητον ἐκ τοῦ Μυοῦντος αἱ γυναῖκες. ἦν δὲ Πύθης ἀνὴρ ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐμφανής, γυναῖκα μὲν ἔχων Ἰαπυγίαν, θυγατέρα δὲ Πιερίαν. οὔσης οὖν ἑορτῆς Ἀρτέμιδι [254][a] καὶ θυσίας παρὰ Μιλησίοις, ἣν Νηληίδα προσαγορεύουσιν, ἔπεμψε τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὴν θυγατέρα, δεηθείσας ὅπως τῆς ἑορτῆς μετάσχωσι· τῶν δὲ Νείλεω παίδων ὁ δυνατώτατος ὄνομα Φρύγιος τῆς Πιερίας ἐρασθεὶς ἐνενόει, τί ἂν αὐτῇ μάλιστα γένοιτο παρ’ αὐτοῦ κεχαρισμένον. εἰπούσης δ’ ἐκείνης ‘εἰ διαπράξαιό μοι τὸ πολλάκις ἐνταῦθα καὶ μετὰ πολλῶν βαδίζειν’, συνεὶς [οὖν] ὁ Φρύγιος δεομένην φιλίας καὶ εἰρήνης τοῖς πολίταις κατέπαυσε τὸν πόλεμον. ἦν οὖν ἐν ἀμφοτέραις ταῖς πόλεσι δόξα καὶ τιμὴ τῆς Πιερίας, ὥστε καὶ τὰς Μιλησίων εὔχεσθαι γυναῖκας ἄχρι νῦν οὕτως ἐρᾶν ‹τοὺς [b] ἄνδρας› αὐτῶν, ὡς Φρύγιος ἠράσθη Πιερίας.

ΠΟΛΥΚΡΙΤΗ

Ναξίοις καὶ Μιλησίοις συνέστη πόλεμος διὰ τὴν Ὑψικρέοντος τοῦ Μιλησίου γυναῖκα Νέαιραν. αὕτη γὰρ ἠράσθη Προμέδοντος Ναξίου καὶ συνεπένευσεν· ὃς ἦν μὲν ξένος τοῦ Ὑψικρέοντος, ἐρασθείσῃ δὲ τῇ Νεαίρᾳ συνῆλθε, καὶ τὸν ἄνδρα φοβουμένην ἀπαγαγὼν εἰς Νάξον ἱκέτιν τῆς Ἑστίας ἐκάθισεν. τῶν δὲ Ναξίων οὐκ ἐκδιδόντων χάριν τοῦ Προμέδοντος, ἄλλως δὲ ποιουμένων πρόφασιν τὴν ἱκετείαν ὁ πόλεμος συνέστη. τοῖς δὲ Μιλησίοις ἄλλοι τε πολλοὶ καὶ προθυμότατα τῶν Ἰώνων [c] Ἐρυθραῖοι συνεμάχουν, καὶ μῆκος ἔσχε καὶ συμφορὰς ἤνεγκε μεγάλας ὁ πόλεμος· εἶτ’ ἐπαύσατο δι’ ἀρετὴν γυναικός, ὡς συνέστη διὰ μοχθηρίαν. Διόγνητος γὰρ ὁ τῶν Ἐρυθραίων στρατηγὸς [ἔχων καὶ] πεπιστευμένος ἔρυμα κατὰ τῆς Ναξίων πόλεως εὖ πεφυκὸς καὶ κατεσκευασμένον, ἠλάσατο λείαν τῶν Ναξίων πολλὴν καὶ γυναῖκας ἐλευθέρας καὶ παρθένους ἔλαβεν. ὧν μιᾶς Πολυκρίτης ἐρασθεὶς εἶχεν αὐτὴν οὐχ ὡς αἰχμάλωτον ἀλλ’ ἐν τάξει γαμετῆς γυναικός. ἑορτῆς δὲ τοῖς Μιλησίοις καθηκούσης ἐν τῇ στρατιᾷ καὶ πρὸς πόσιν ἁπάντων καὶ συνουσίας τραπομένων, ἠρώτησε τὸν Διόγνητον [d] ἡ Πολυκρίτη, μή τι κωλύοι πεμμάτων μερίδας ἀποπέμψαι τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς αὑτῆς. ἐπιτρέψαντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ κελεύσαντος, ἐνέβαλε μολίβδινον γραμματίδιον εἰς πλακοῦντα, κελεύσασα φράσαι τὸν κομίζοντα τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς, ὅπως αὐτοὶ μόνοι καταναλώσωσιν ἃ ἔπεμψε. οἱ δ’ ἐντυχόντες τῷ μολίβδῳ καὶ τὰ γράμματα τῆς Πολυκρίτης ἀναγνόντες, κελευούσης νυκτὸς ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς πολεμίοις, ὡς ὑπὸ μέθης διὰ τὴν ἑορτὴν ἐξημελημένων πάντων, προσήγγειλαν τοῖς στρατηγοῖς καὶ παρώρμησαν ἐξελθεῖν μετ’ αὐτῶν. ἁλόντος δὲ τοῦ χωρίου καὶ πολλῶν διαφθαρέντων, [e] ἐξῃτήσατο τὸν Διόγνητον ἡ Πολυκρίτη παρὰ τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ διέσῳσεν. αὐτὴ δὲ πρὸς ταῖς πύλαις γενομένη ‹καὶ θεασαμένη› τοὺς πολίτας ἀπαντῶντας αὐτῇ, μετὰ χαρᾶς καὶ στεφάνων ὑποδεχομένους καὶ θαυμάζοντας, οὐκ ἤνεγκε τὸ μέγεθος τῆς χαρᾶς, ἀλλ’ ἀπέθανεν αὐτοῦ πεσοῦσα παρὰ τὴν πύλην, ὅπου τέθαπται, καὶ καλεῖται βασκάνου τάφος, ὡς βασκάνῳ τινὶ τύχῃ τὴν Πολυκρίτην φθονηθεῖσαν ‹οὐκ› ἀπολαῦσαι τῶν τιμῶν.

Οὕτω μὲν οἱ Ναξίων συγγραφεῖς ἱστοροῦσιν· ὁ δ’ Ἀριστοτέλης φησὶν (fr. 511) οὐχ ἁλούσης τῆς Πολυκρίτης, ἄλλως δέ πως ἰδόντα τὸν Διόγνητον ἐρασθῆναι [f] καὶ πάντα διδόναι καὶ ποιεῖν ἕτοιμον εἶναι· τὴν δ’ ὁμολογεῖν ἀφίξεσθαι πρὸς αὐτόν, ἑνὸς μόνου τυχοῦσαν, περὶ οὗ τὸν Διόγνητον, ὥς φησιν ὁ φιλόσοφος, ὅρκον ᾔτησεν· ἐπεὶ δ’ ὤμοσεν, ἠξίου τὸ Δήλιον αὐτῇ δοθῆναι (Δήλιον γὰρ ἐκαλεῖτο τὸ χωρίον), ἄλλως δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἔφη συνελθεῖν. ὁ δὲ καὶ διὰ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν καὶ διὰ τὸν ὅρκον ἐξέστη καὶ παρέδωκε τῇ Πολυκρίτῃ τὸν τόπον, ἐκείνη δὲ τοῖς πολίταις. ἐκ δὲ τούτου πάλιν εἰς ἴσον καταστάντες, ἐφ’ οἷς ἠβούλοντο πρὸς τοὺς Μιλησίους διελύθησαν.

[255] [a]

ΛΑΜΨΑΚΗ

Ἐκ Φωκαίας τοῦ Κοδριδῶν γένους ἦσαν ἀδελφοὶ δίδυμοι Φόξος καὶ Βλέψος· ὧν ὁ Φόξος ἀπὸ τῶν Λευκάδων πετρῶν πρῶτος ἀφῆκεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς θάλασσαν, ὡς Χάρων ὁ Λαμψακηνὸς (fr. 7 M.) ἱστόρηκεν. ἔχων δὲ δύναμιν καὶ βασιλικὸν ἀξίωμα παρέπλευσεν εἰς Πάριον ἰδίων ἕνεκα πραγμάτων· καὶ γενόμενος φίλος καὶ ξένος Μάνδρωνι, βασιλεύοντι Βεβρύκων τῶν Πιτυοεσσηνῶν προσαγορευομένων, ἐβοήθησε καὶ συνεπολέμησεν αὐτοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν προσοίκων ἐνοχλουμένοις. ὁ δὲ Μάνδρων ἄλλην τε πολλὴν ἐνεδείξατο τῷ Φόξῳ φιλοφροσύνην ἀποπλέοντι [b] καὶ μέρος τῆς τε χώρας καὶ τῆς πόλεως ὑπισχνεῖτο δώσειν, εἰ βούλοιτο Φωκαεῖς ἔχων ἐποίκους εἰς τὴν Πιτυόεσσαν ἀφικέσθαι. πείσας οὖν τοὺς πολίτας ὁ Φόξος ἐξέπεμψε τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἄγοντα τοὺς ἐποίκους. καὶ τὰ μὲν παρὰ τοῦ Μάνδρωνος ὑπῆρχεν αὐτοῖς, ὥσπερ προσεδόκησαν· ὠφελείας δὲ μεγάλας καὶ λάφυρα [καὶ λείας] ἀπὸ τῶν προσοίκων βαρβάρων λαμβάνοντες, ἐπίφθονοι τὸ πρῶτον εἶτα καὶ φοβεροὶ τοῖς Βέβρυξιν ἦσαν. ἐπιθυμοῦντες οὖν αὐτῶν ἀπαλλαγῆναι, τὸν μὲν Μάνδρωνα, χρηστὸν ὄντα καὶ δίκαιον ἄνδρα περὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας, οὐκ [c] ἔπεισαν, ἀποδημήσαντος δ’ ἐκείνου παρεσκευάζοντο τοὺς Φωκαεῖς δόλῳ διαφθεῖραι. τοῦ δὲ Μάνδρωνος ἡ θυγάτηρ Λαμψάκη παρθένος οὖσα τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν προέγνω, καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐπεχείρει τοὺς φίλους καὶ οἰκείους ἀποτρέπειν καὶ διδάσκειν, ὡς ἔργον δεινὸν καὶ ἀσεβὲς ἐγχειροῦσι πράττειν, εὐεργέτας καὶ συμμάχους ἄνδρας νῦν δὲ καὶ πολίτας ἀποκτιννύντες. ὡς δ’ οὐκ ἔπειθε, τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἔφρασε κρύφα τὰ πραττόμενα καὶ παρεκελεύσατο φυλάττεσθαι. οἱ δὲ θυσίαν τινὰ παρασκευασάμενοι καὶ θοίνην ἐξεκαλέσαντο τοὺς Πιτυοεσσηνοὺς εἰς τὸ προάστειον· αὑτοὺς δὲ διελόντες δίχα, τοῖς μὲν τὰ τείχη [d] κατελάβοντο τοῖς δὲ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἀνεῖλον. οὕτω δὴ τὴν πόλιν κατασχόντες τόν τε Μάνδρωνα μετεπέμποντο, συμβασιλεύειν τοῖς παρ’ αὐτῶν κελεύοντες· καὶ τὴν Λαμψάκην ἐξ ἀρρωστίας ἀποθανοῦσαν ἔθαψαν ἐν τῇ πόλει μεγαλοπρεπῶς καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀπ’ αὐτῆς Λάμψακον προσηγόρευσαν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Μάνδρων προδοσίας ὑποψίαν φεύγων τὸ μὲν οἰκεῖν μετ’ αὐτῶν παρῃτήσατο, παῖδας δὲ τῶν τεθνηκότων καὶ γυναῖκας ἠξίωσε κομίσασθαι, καὶ ταῦτα προθύμως οὐδὲν ἀδικήσαντες ἐξέπεμψαν καὶ τῇ Λαμψάκῃ πρότερον ἡρωικὰς τιμὰς ἀποδιδόντες, ὕστερον [e] ὡς θεῷ θύειν ἐψηφίσαντο καὶ διατελοῦσιν οὕτω θύοντες.

ΑΡΕΤΑΦΙΛΑ

Ἀρεταφίλα δ’ ἡ Κυρηναία παλαιὰ μὲν οὐ γέγονεν ἀλλ’ ἐν τοῖς Μιθριδατικοῖς καιροῖς, ἀρετὴν δὲ καὶ πρᾶξιν ἐνάμιλλον τῇ [βουλῇ] τῶν ἡρωίδων παρέσχεν. ἦν δὲ θυγάτηρ μὲν Αἰγλάνορος Φαιδίμου δὲ γυνή, γνωρίμων ἀνδρῶν· καλὴ δὲ τὴν ὄψιν οὖσα καὶ τὸ φρονεῖν ἐδόκει περιττή τις εἶναι καὶ πολιτικῆς δεινότητος οὐκ ἄμοιρος· ἐπιφανῆ δ’ αὐτὴν αἱ κοιναὶ τύχαι τῆς πατρίδος ἐποίησαν. Νικοκράτης γὰρ ἐπαναστὰς Κυρηναίοις τύραννος ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς ἐφόνευε τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ τὸν ἱερέα τοῦ [f] Ἀπόλλωνος αὐτόχειρ ἀνελὼν Μελάνιππον εἶχε τὴν ἱερωσύνην· ἀνεῖλε δὲ καὶ Φαίδιμον τὸν τῆς Ἀρεταφίλας ἄνδρα καὶ τὴν Ἀρεταφίλαν ἔγημεν ἄκουσαν. πρὸς δὲ μυρίοις ἄλλοις παρανομήμασι φύλακας ἐπὶ τῶν πυλῶν κατέστησεν, οἳ τοὺς ἐκφερομένους νεκροὺς ἐλυμαίνοντο νύττοντες ξιφιδίοις καὶ καυτήρια προσβάλλοντες ὑπὲρ τοῦ μηδένα τῶν πολιτῶν ὡς νεκρὸν λαθεῖν ἐκκομιζόμενον. δύσφορα μὲν οὖν ἦν τῇ Ἀρεταφίλᾳ τὰ οἰκεῖα κακά, καίπερ ἐνδιδόντος αὐτῇ δι’ ἔρωτα τοῦ τυράννου [256] [a] πλεῖστον ἀπολαύειν τῆς δυνάμεως (ἥττητο γὰρ ἐκείνης καὶ μόνῃ χειροήθη παρεῖχεν αὑτὸν ἄτεγκτος ὢν τἄλλα καὶ θηριώδης)· ἠνία δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτὴν ἡ πατρὶς οἰκτρὰ πάσχουσα παρ’ ἀξίαν. ἄλλος γὰρ ἐπ’ ἄλλῳ τῶν πολιτῶν ἐσφάττετο, τιμωρία δ’ ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ἠλπίζετο· καὶ γὰρ οἱ φυγάδες, ἀσθενεῖς παντάπασιν ὄντες καὶ περίφοβοι, διεσπάρησαν. αὑτὴν οὖν ἡ Ἀρεταφίλα ὑποθεῖσα μόνην τοῖς κοινοῖς ἐλπίδα καὶ τὰ Θήβης ζηλώσασα τῆς Φεραίας καλὰ καὶ περιβόητα τολμήματα, συμμάχων δὲ πιστῶν καὶ οἰκείων, οἵους ἐκείνῃ τὰ πράγματα παρέσχεν, ἔρημος οὖσα, φαρμάκοις ἐπεχείρησε διεργάσασθαι τὸν ἄνδρα.

[b] παρασκευαζομένη δὲ καὶ πορίζουσα καὶ διαπειρωμένη πολλῶν δυνάμεων οὐκ ἔλαθεν ἀλλ’ ἐμηνύθη· καὶ γινομένων ἐλέγχων, Καλβία μὲν ἡ τοῦ Νικοκράτους μήτηρ, φύσει φονικὴ γυνὴ καὶ ἀπαραίτητος, εὐθὺς ᾤετο δεῖν ἀναιρεῖν αἰκισαμένην τὴν Ἀρεταφίλαν· τοῦ δὲ Νικοκράτους μέλλησιν ἐνεποίει τῇ ὀργῇ καὶ ἀσθένειαν ὁ ἔρως, καὶ τὸ τὴν Ἀρεταφίλαν ἐρρωμένως ὁμόσε χωρεῖν ταῖς κατηγορίαις ἀμύνουσαν ἑαυτῇ πρόφασίν τινα τῷ πάθει παρεῖχεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ κατελαμβάνετο τοῖς ἐλέγχοις καὶ τὴν παρασκευὴν τῆς φαρμακείας ἑώρα μὴ δεχομένην ἄρνησιν, ὡμολόγει, παρασκευάσασθαι δ’ οὐκ ὀλέθριον φαρμακείαν, [c] ‘ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ μεγάλων’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ ἄνερ, ἀγωνίζομαι, τῆς σῆς εὐνοίας πρὸς ἐμὲ καὶ δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως, ἣν διὰ σὲ καρποῦμαι πολλαῖς ἐπίφθονος οὖσα κακαῖς γυναιξίν· ὧν φάρμακα δεδοικυῖα καὶ μηχανὰς ἐπείσθην ἀντιμηχανήσασθαι, μωρὰ μὲν ἴσως καὶ γυναικεῖα, θανάτου δ’ οὐκ ἄξια· πλὴν εἰ κριτῇ σοι δόξειε φίλτρων ἕνεκα καὶ γοητείας κτεῖναι γυναῖκα, πλεῖον ἢ σὺ βούλει φιλεῖσθαι δεομένην.’ τοιαῦτα τὴν Ἀρεταφίλαν ἀπολογουμένην ἔδοξε τῷ Νικοκράτει βασανίσαι· καὶ τῆς Καλβίας ἐφεστώσης ἀτέγκτου καὶ [d] ἀπαραιτήτου, ταῖς βασάνοις ἀνέκρινε· καὶ διεφύλαττεν αὑτὴν ἀήττητον ἐν ταῖς ἀνάγκαις ἄχρι καὶ τὴν Καλβίαν ἀποκαμεῖν ἄκουσαν. ὁ δὲ Νικοκράτης ἀφῆκε πεισθεὶς καὶ μετενόει βασανίσας· καὶ χρόνον οὐ πολὺν διαλιπὼν αὖθις ἧκεν ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους εἰς αὐτὴν φερόμενος, καὶ συνῆν αὖθις ἀναλαμβάνων τιμαῖς καὶ φιλοφροσύναις τὴν εὔνοιαν. ἡ δ’ οὐκ ἔμελλε χάριτος ἡττᾶσθαι κρατήσασα βασάνων καὶ πόνων, ἀλλὰ τῷ φιλοκάλῳ φιλονεικίας προσγενομένης ἑτέρας ἥπτετο μηχανῆς. ἦν γὰρ αὐτῇ θυγάτηρ ἀνδρὸς ὥραν ἔχουσα καὶ τὴν [e] ὄψιν ἱκανή· ταύτην ὑφῆκε τἀδελφῷ τοῦ τυράννου δέλεαρ, ὄντι μειρακίῳ πρὸς ἡδονὰς εὐαλώτῳ. πολὺς δὲ λόγος ἐστὶ χρησαμένην γοητείᾳ καὶ φαρμάκοις ἐπὶ τῇ κόρῃ τὴν Ἀρεταφίλαν χειρώσασθαι καὶ διαφθεῖραι τοῦ νεανίσκου τὸν λογισμόν· ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ Λάανδρος. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡλώκει καὶ λιπαρήσας τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἔτυχε τοῦ γάμου, τὰ μὲν ἡ κόρη παρῆγεν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τῆς μητρὸς διδασκομένη καὶ ἀνέπειθεν ἐλευθεροῦν τὴν πόλιν, ὡς μηδ’ αὐτὸν ἐλεύθερον ἐν τυραννίδι ζῶντα μηδὲ τοῦ λαβεῖν γάμον ἢ φυλάξαι κύριον ὄντα, τὰ δ’ οἱ φίλοι τῇ Ἀρεταφίλᾳ χαριζόμενοι [f] διαβολάς τινας ἀεὶ καὶ ὑπονοίας κατεσκεύαζον αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφόν. ὡς δ’ ᾔσθετο καὶ τὴν Ἀρεταφίλαν τὰ αὐτὰ βουλευομένην καὶ σπουδάζουσαν, ἐπεχείρει τὸ ἔργον, καὶ Δάφνιν οἰκέτην παρορμήσας ἀπέκτεινε δι’ ἐκείνου τὸν Νικοκράτην. τὰ λοιπὰ δ’ οὐκέτι τῇ Ἀρεταφίλᾳ προσεῖχεν, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἔδειξε τοῖς ἔργοις ἀδελφοκτόνος οὐ τυραννοκτόνος γεγονώς· ἦρχε γὰρ ἐμπλήκτως [257] [a] καὶ ἀνοήτως. τιμὴ δέ τις ὅμως ἦν τῆς Ἀρεταφίλας παρ’ αὐτῷ καὶ δύναμις, οὐκ ἀπεχθανομένης οὐδὲ πολεμούσης ἄντικρυς ἀλλ’ ἀδήλως διαταττούσης τὰ πράγματα. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ αὐτῷ Λιβυκὸν ὑπεκίνησε πόλεμον, Ἀνάβουν τινὰ πείσασα δυνάστην τὴν χώραν ἐπιδραμεῖν καὶ τῇ πόλει προσαγαγεῖν, ἔπειτα διέβαλε τοὺς φίλους καὶ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς πρὸς τὸν Λάανδρον, ὡς πολεμεῖν οὐκ ὄντας προθύμους, εἰρήνης δὲ μᾶλλον δεομένους καὶ ἡσυχίας, ἣν καὶ τὰ πράγματα ποθεῖν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν τυραννίδα, βουλομένου βεβαίως κρατεῖν τῶν πολιτῶν· αὐτὴ δὲ πράξειν ἔφη τὰς διαλύσεις καὶ τὸν [b] Ἀνάβουν εἰς λόγους αὐτῷ συνάξειν, ἐὰν κελεύῃ, πρὶν ἀνήκεστόν τι τὸν πόλεμον ἐξεργάσασθαι. κελεύσαντος δὲ τοῦ Λαάνδρου, πρότερον αὐτὴ τῷ Λίβυι διελέχθη, συλλαβεῖν δεομένη τὸν τύραννον ἐπὶ δωρεαῖς μεγάλαις καὶ χρήμασιν, ὅταν εἰς λόγους αὐτῷ παραγένηται. πεισθέντος δὲ τοῦ Λίβυος, ὤκνει μὲν ὁ Λάανδρος, αἰδεσθεὶς δὲ τὴν Ἀρεταφίλαν αὐτὴν παρέσεσθαι φάσκουσαν, ἐξῆλθεν ἄνοπλος καὶ ἀφύλακτος. ὡς δ’ ἐγγὺς ἦλθε καὶ τὸν Ἀνάβουν εἶδεν, αὖθις ἐδυσχέραινε καὶ περιμένειν ἐβούλετο τοὺς δορυφόρους· ἡ δ’ Ἀρεταφίλα παροῦσα τὰ μὲν ἐθάρρυνεν αὐτὸν τὰ δ’ ἐκάκιζε· τέλος δὲ γενομένης [c] διατριβῆς, ἐφελκυσαμένη τῆς χειρὸς ἰταμῶς πάνυ καὶ τεθαρρηκότως προσήγαγε τῷ βαρβάρῳ καὶ παρέδωκεν. εὐθὺς οὖν ἀνήρπαστο καὶ συνείληπτο καὶ δεθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν Λιβύων ἐτηρεῖτο, ἄχρι οὗ τὰ χρήματα τῇ Ἀρεταφίλᾳ κομίζοντες οἱ φίλοι παρεγένοντο μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων πολιτῶν. πυθόμενοι γὰρ οἱ πλεῖστοι ἐξέδραμον ἐπὶ τὴν παράκλησιν· ὡς δ’ εἶδον τὴν Ἀρεταφίλαν, ὀλίγου ἐδέησαν ἐκλαθέσθαι τῆς πρὸς τὸν τύραννον ὀργῆς, καὶ πάρεργον τὴν ἐκείνου τιμωρίαν ἐνόμιζον· ἔργον δὲ πρῶτον ἦν αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀπόλαυσμα τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἐκείνην ἀσπάσασθαι μετὰ χαρᾶς καὶ δακρύων, ὥσπερ ἀγάλματι θεοῦ [d] προσπίπτοντας. ἄλλων δ’ ἐπ’ ἄλλοις ἐπιρρεόντων, μόλις ἑσπέρας τὸν Λάανδρον παραλαβόντες ἐπανῆλθον εἰς τὴν πόλιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν τιμῶν τῆς Ἀρεταφίλας καὶ τῶν ἐπαίνων ἐνεπλήσθησαν, οὕτω τραπόμενοι πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους τὴν μὲν Καλβίαν ζῶσαν κατέκαυσαν, τὸν δὲ Λάανδρον ἐνράψαντες εἰς βύρσαν κατεπόντισαν. ἠξίουν δὲ τὴν Ἀρεταφίλαν συνάρχειν καὶ συνδιοικεῖν τοῖς ἀρίστοις ἀνδράσι τὴν πολιτείαν. ἡ δ’ ὡς ποικίλον τι δρᾶμα καὶ πολυμερὲς ἀγωνισαμένη μέχρι στεφάνου διαδόσεως, ὡς ἐπεῖδε τὴν πόλιν ἐλευθέραν, εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν [e] ἐνεδύετο, καὶ τοῦ πολυπραγμονεῖν ὁτιοῦν προβαλλομένη τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον ἐν ἱστοῖς ἡσυχίαν ἄγουσα μετὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ οἰκείων διετέλεσεν.

ΚΑΜΜΑ

Ἦσαν ἐν Γαλατίᾳ δυνατώτατοι τῶν τετραρχῶν καί τι καὶ κατὰ γένος προσήκοντες ἀλλήλοις Σινάτος τε καὶ Σινόριξ. ὧν ὁ Σινάτος γυναῖκα παρθένον ἔσχε Κάμμαν ὄνομα, περίβλεπτον μὲν ἰδέᾳ σώματος καὶ ὥρᾳ, θαυμαζομένην δὲ μᾶλλον δι’ ἀρετήν· οὐ γὰρ μόνον σώφρων καὶ φίλανδρος, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνετὴ καὶ μεγαλόφρων καὶ ποθεινὴ τοῖς ὑπηκόοις ἦν διαφερόντως ὑπ’ εὐμενείας καὶ χρηστότητος· ἐπιφανεστέραν δ’ αὐτὴν ἐποίει καὶ τὸ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος [f] ἱέρειαν εἶναι, ἣν μάλιστα Γαλάται σέβουσι, περί τε πομπὰς ἀεὶ καὶ θυσίας κεκοσμημένην ὁρᾶσθαι μεγαλοπρεπῶς. ἐρασθεὶς οὖν αὐτῆς ὁ Σινόριξ, καὶ μήτε πεῖσαι μήτε βιάσασθαι ζῶντος τοῦ ἀνδρὸς δυνατὸς ὤν, ἔργον εἰργάσατο δεινόν· ἀπέκτεινε γὰρ δόλῳ τὸν Σινάτον, καὶ χρόνον οὐ πολὺν διαλιπὼν ἐμνᾶτο τὴν Κάμμαν ἐν τῷ [258] [a] ἱερῷ ποιουμένην τὰς διατριβὰς καὶ φέρουσαν οὐκ οἰκτρῶς καὶ ταπεινῶς ἀλλὰ θυμῷ νοῦν ἔχοντι καὶ καιρὸν περιμένοντι τὴν τοῦ Σινόριγος παρανομίαν. ὁ δὲ λιπαρὴς ἦν περὶ τὰς δεήσεις, καὶ λόγων ἐδόκει μὴ παντάπασιν ἀπορεῖν εὐπρέπειαν ἐχόντων, ὡς τὰ μὲν ἄλλα Σινάτου βελτίονα παρεσχηκὼς ἑαυτὸν ἀνελὼν δ’ ἐκεῖνον ἔρωτι τῆς Κάμμας, μὴ δι’ ἑτέραν τινὰ πονηρίαν. ἦσαν οὖν τὸ πρῶτον ἀρνήσεις οὐκ ἄγαν ἀπηνεῖς τῆς γυναικός, εἶτα κατὰ μικρὸν ἐδόκει μαλάσσεσθαι· καὶ γὰρ οἰκεῖοι καὶ φίλοι προσέκειντο θεραπείᾳ καὶ χάριτι τοῦ Σινόριγος μέγιστον δυναμένου, πείθοντες αὐτὴν καὶ καταβιαζόμενοι· [b] τέλος δὲ συνεχώρει καὶ μετεπέμπετο πρὸς ἑαυτὴν ἐκεῖνον, ὡς παρὰ τῇ θεῷ τῆς συναινέσεως καὶ καταπιστώσεως γενησομένης. ἐλθόντα δὲ δεξαμένη φιλοφρόνως καὶ προσαγαγοῦσα τῷ βωμῷ κατέσπεισεν ἐκ φιάλης, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐξέπιεν αὐτὴ τὸ δ’ ἐκεῖνον ἐκέλευσεν· ἦν δὲ πεφαρμαγμένον μελίκρατον. ὡς δ’ εἶδε πεπωκότα, λαμπρὸν ἀνωλόλυξε καὶ τὴν θεὸν προσκυνήσασα ‘μαρτύρομαί σε’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ πολυτίμητε δαῖμον, ὅτι ταύτης ἕνεκα τῆς ἡμέρας ἐπέζησα τῷ Σινάτου φόνῳ, χρόνον τοσοῦτον οὐδὲν ἀπολαύουσα τοῦ βίου χρηστὸν ἀλλ’ ἢ τὴν ἐλπίδα τῆς δίκης, ἣν ἔχουσα καταβαίνω πρὸς τὸν [c] ἐμὸν ἄνδρα. σοὶ δ’, ὦ πάντων ἀνοσιώτατε ἀνθρώπων, τάφον ἀντὶ θαλάμου καὶ γάμου παρασκευαζέτωσαν οἱ προσήκοντες.’ ταῦτα δ’ ἀκούσας ὁ Γαλάτης καὶ τοῦ φαρμάκου δρῶντος ἤδη καὶ διακινοῦντος τὸ σῶμα συναισθόμενος ἐπέβη μὲν ὀχήματος ὡς σάλῳ καὶ τιναγμῷ χρησόμενος, ἐξέστη δὲ παραχρῆμα καὶ μεταβὰς εἰς φορεῖον ἑσπέρας ἀπέθανεν. ἡ δὲ Κάμμα διενεγκοῦσα τὴν νύκτα καὶ πυθομένη τέλος ἔχειν ἐκεῖνον, εὐθύμως καὶ ἱλαρῶς κατέστρεψεν.

ΣΤΡΑΤΟΝΙΚΗ

[d] Παρέσχε δ’ ἡ Γαλατία καὶ Στρατονίκην τὴν Δηιοτάρου καὶ Χιομάραν τὴν Ὀρτιάγοντος ἀξίας μνήμης γυναῖκας· ἡ μὲν οὖν Στρατονίκη δεόμενον γνησίων παίδων ἐπὶ διαδοχῇ τῆς βασιλείας ἐπισταμένη τὸν ἄνδρα, μὴ τίκτουσα δ’ αὐτὴ συνέπεισεν ἐξ ἑτέρας γυναικὸς παιδοποιησάμενον αὐτῇ τὸ παιδίον περιιδεῖν ὑποβαλλόμενον. τοῦ δὲ Δηιοτάρου τήν τε γνώμην θαυμάσαντος καὶ πᾶν ἐπ’ αὐτῇ ποιησαμένου, παρθένον εὐπρεπῆ παρασκευάσασα τῶν αἰχμαλώτων ὄνομα Ἠλέκτραν συνεῖρξε τῷ Δηιοτάρῳ καὶ τοὺς γενομένους παῖδας ὥσπερ γνησίους αὐτῆς ἔθρεψε φιλοστόργως καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς.

[e]

ΧΙΟΜΑΡΑ

Χιομάραν δὲ συνέβη τὴν Ὀρτιάγοντος αἰχμάλωτον γενέσθαι μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων γυναικῶν, ὅτε Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ Γναῖος ἐνίκησαν μάχῃ τοὺς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ Γαλάτας. ὁ δὲ λαβὼν αὐτὴν ταξίαρχος ἐχρήσατο τῇ τύχῃ στρατιωτικῶς καὶ κατῄσχυνεν. ἦν δ’ ἄρα καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὴν καὶ ἀργύριον ἐμπαθὴς καὶ ἀκρατὴς ἄνθρωπος, ἡττήθη δ’ ὅμως ὑπὸ τῆς φιλαργυρίας, καὶ χρυσίου συχνοῦ διομολογηθέντος ὑπὲρ τῆς γυναικὸς ἦγεν αὐτὴν ἀπολυτρώσων, ποταμοῦ τινος ἐν μέσῳ διείργοντος. ὡς δὲ διαβάντες οἱ Γαλάται τὸ χρυσίον ἔδωκαν αὐτῷ καὶ παρελάμβανον τὴν Χιομάραν, [f] ἡ μὲν ἀπὸ νεύματος προσέταξεν ἑνὶ παῖσαι τὸν Ῥωμαῖον ἀσπαζόμενον αὐτὴν καὶ φιλοφρονούμενον· ἐκείνου δὲ πεισθέντος καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποκόψαντος, ἀραμένη καὶ περιστείλασα τοῖς κόλποις ἀπήλαυνεν. ὡς δ’ ἦλθε πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτῷ προύβαλεν, ἐκείνου θαυμάσαντος καὶ εἰπόντος ‘ὦ γύναι, καλὸν ἡ πίστις’, ‘ναί’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλὰ κάλλιον ἕνα μόνον ζῆν ἐμοὶ συγγεγενημένον.’ ταύτῃ μὲν ὁ Πολύβιός φησι διὰ λόγων ἐν Σάρδεσι γενόμενος θαυμάσαι τό τε φρόνημα καὶ τὴν σύνεσιν.

[259] [a]

‹ΓΥΝΑΙΟΝ ΠΕΡΓΑΜΗΝΟΝ›

Ἐπεὶ δὲ Μιθριδάτης ἑξήκοντα Γαλατῶν τοὺς ἀρίστους μεταπεμψάμενος εἰς Πέργαμον ὡς φίλους ὑβριστικῶς ἐδόκει καὶ δεσποτικῶς προσφέρεσθαι καὶ πάντες ἠγανάκτουν, ‹Ἐ›πορηδόριξ, ἀνὴρ τό τε σῶμα ῥωμαλέος καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν διαφέρων (ἦν δὲ †Τοσιωπῶν τετράρχης), ἀνεδέξατο τὸν Μιθριδάτην, ὅταν ἐν τῷ βήματι ‹τοῦ› γυμνασίου χρηματίζῃ, συναρπάσας ὤσειν ἅμα σὺν αὐτῷ κατὰ τῆς φάραγγος. τύχῃ δέ τινι τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης οὐκ ἀναβάντος εἰς τὸ γυμνάσιον αὐτοῦ, μεταπεμπομένου δὲ τοὺς Γαλάτας οἴκαδε, θαρρεῖν παρεκάλει, καὶ ὅταν ἐν [b] ταὐτῷ γένωνται, διασπάσαι τὸ σῶμα καὶ διαφθεῖραι πανταχόθεν προσπεσόντας. τοῦτ’ οὐκ ἔλαθε τὸν Μιθριδάτην, ἀλλὰ μηνύσεως γενομένης, καθ’ ἕνα τῶν Γαλατῶν παρεδίδου σφαγησόμενον· εἶτά πως ἀναμνησθεὶς νεανίσκου πολὺ προέχοντος ὥρᾳ καὶ κάλλει τῶν καθ’ αὑτὸν ᾤκτειρε καὶ μετενόει, καὶ δῆλος ἦν ἀχθόμενος ὡς ἐν πρώτοις ἀπολωλότος, ὅμως δ’ ἔπεμψεν, εἰ ζῶν εὑρεθείη, μεθεῖναι κελεύων· ἦν δ’ ὄνομα τῷ νεανίσκῳ Βηπολιτανός. καί τις αὐτῷ τύχη θαυμαστὴ συνέπεσε· καλὴν γὰρ ἐσθῆτα καὶ πολυτελῆ συνελήφθη φορῶν· ἣν ὁ δήμιος ἀναίμακτον αὑτῷ καὶ καθαρὰν διαφυλάξαι [c] βουλόμενος, καὶ ἀποδύων ἀτρέμα τὸν νεανίσκον, εἶδε τοὺς παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως προσθέοντας ἅμα καὶ τοὔνομα τοῦ μειρακίου βοῶντας. τὸν μὲν οὖν Βηπολιτανὸν ἡ πολλοὺς ἀπολέσασα φιλαργυρία διέσωσεν ἀπροσδοκήτως. ὁ δ’ ‹Ἐ›πορηδόριξ κατακοπεὶς ἄταφος ἐξεβέβλητο, καὶ τῶν φίλων οὐδεὶς ἐτόλμησε προσελθεῖν· γύναιον δὲ Περγαμηνὸν ἐγνωσμένον ἀφ’ ὥρας ζῶν [τι] τῷ Γαλάτῃ παρεκινδύνευσε θάψαι καὶ περιστεῖλαι τὸν νεκρόν· ᾔσθοντο δ’ οἱ φύλακες καὶ συλλαβόντες ἀνήγαγον πρὸς τὸν βασιλέα. λέγεται μὲν οὖν τι καὶ πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν αὐτῆς παθεῖν ὁ Μιθριδάτης, νέας παντάπασι καὶ ἀκάκου τῆς παιδίσκης [d] φανείσης· ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ὡς ἔοικε τὴν αἰτίαν γνοὺς ἐρωτικὴν οὖσαν ἐπεκλάσθη καὶ συνεχώρησεν ἀνελέσθαι καὶ θάψαι τὸν νεκρὸν ἐσθῆτα καὶ κόσμον ἐκ τῶν ἐκείνου λαβοῦσαν.

ΤΙΜΟΚΛΕΙΑ

Θεαγένης ὁ Θηβαῖος, Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ καὶ Πελοπίδᾳ καὶ τοῖς ἀρίστοις ἀνδράσι τὴν αὐτὴν ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως λαβὼν διάνοιαν, ἔπταισε περὶ τὴν κοινὴν τύχην τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ, κρατῶν ἤδη καὶ διώκων τοὺς κατ’ αὐτὸν ἀντιτεταγμένους. ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ἦν ὁ πρὸς τὸν ἐμβοήσαντα ‘μέχρι ποῦ διώκεις;’ ἀποκρινάμενος ‘μέχρι Μακεδονίας.’ [e] ἀποθανόντι δ’ αὐτῷ περιῆν ἀδελφὴ μαρτυροῦσα κἀκεῖνον ἀρετῇ γένους καὶ φύσει μέγαν ἄνδρα καὶ λαμπρὸν γενέσθαι· πλὴν ταύτῃ γε καὶ χρηστὸν ἀπολαῦσαί τι τῆς ἀρετῆς ὑπῆρξεν, ὥστε κουφότερον, ὅσον τῶν κοινῶν ἀτυχημάτων εἰς αὐτὴν ἦλθεν, ἐνεγκεῖν. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐκράτησε Θηβαίων Ἀλέξανδρος, ἄλλοι δ’ ἄλλα τῆς πόλεως ἐπόρθουν ἐπιόντες, ἔτυχε τῆς Τιμοκλείας τὴν οἰκίαν καταλαβὼν ἄνθρωπος οὐκ ἐπιεικὴς οὐδ’ ἥμερος ἀλλ’ ὑβριστὴς καὶ ἀνόητος· ἦρχε δὲ Θρᾳκίου τινὸς ἴλης καὶ ὁμώνυμος ἦν τοῦ βασιλέως οὐδὲν δ’ ὅμοιος. οὔτε γὰρ τὸ γένος οὔτε τὸν βίον αἰδεσθεὶς τῆς γυναικός, ὡς ἐνέπλησεν [f] ἑαυτὸν οἴνου, μετὰ δεῖπνον ἐκάλει συναναπαυσομένην. καὶ τοῦτο πέρας οὐκ ἦν· ἀλλὰ καὶ χρυσὸν ἐζήτει καὶ ἄργυρον, εἴ τις εἴη κεκρυμμένος ὑπ’ αὐτῆς, τὰ μὲν [ὡς] ἀπειλῶν τὰ δ’ ὡς ἕξων διὰ παντὸς ἐν τάξει γυναικός. ἡ δὲ δεξαμένη λαβὴν αὐτοῦ διδόντος ‘ὤφελον μέν’ εἶπε ‘τεθνάναι πρὸ ταύτης ἐγὼ τῆς νυκτὸς ἢ ζῆν, ‹ὥστε› τὸ γοῦν σῶμα πάντων ἀπολλυμένων ἀπείρατον ὕβρεως διαφυλάξαι· [260] [a] πεπραγμένων δ’ οὕτως, εἴ σε κηδεμόνα καὶ δεσπότην καὶ ἄνδρα δεῖ νομίζειν, τοῦ δαίμονος διδόντος, οὐκ ἀποστερήσω σε τῶν σῶν· ἐμαυτὴν γάρ, ὅ τι βούλῃ σύ, ὁρῶ γεγενημένην. ἐμοὶ περὶ σῶμα κόσμος ἦν καὶ ἄργυρος ἐν ἐκπώμασιν, ἦν τι καὶ χρυσοῦ καὶ νομίσματος. ὡς δ’ ἡ πόλις ἡλίσκετο, πάντα συλλαβεῖν κελεύσασα τὰς θεραπαινίδας ἔρριψα, μᾶλλον δὲ κατεθέμην εἰς φρέαρ ὕδωρ οὐκ ἔχον· οὐδ’ ἴσασιν αὐτὸ πολλοί· πῶμα γὰρ ἔπεστι καὶ κύκλῳ περιπέφυκεν ὕλη σύσκιος. ταῦτα σὺ μὲν εὐτυχοίης λαβών, ἐμοὶ δ’ ἔσται πρός σε μαρτύρια [b] καὶ γνωρίσματα τῆς περὶ τὸν οἶκον εὐτυχίας καὶ λαμπρότητος.’ ἀκούσας οὖν ὁ Μακεδὼν οὐ περιέμεινε τὴν ἡμέραν, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἐβάδιζεν ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον, ἡγουμένης τῆς Τιμοκλείας· καὶ τὸν κῆπον ἀποκλεῖσαι κελεύσας, ὅπως αἴσθοιτο μηδείς, κατέβαινεν ἐν τῷ χιτῶνι. στυγερὰ δ’ ἡγεῖτο Κλωθὼ τιμωρὸς ὑπὲρ τῆς Τιμοκλείας ἐφεστώσης ἄνωθεν. ὡς δ’ ᾔσθετο τῇ φωνῇ κάτω γεγονότος, πολλοὺς μὲν αὐτὴ τῶν λίθων ἐπέφερε πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ μεγάλους αἱ θεραπαινίδες ἐπεκυλίνδουν, ἄχρι οὗ κατέκοψαν αὐτὸν καὶ κατέχωσαν. ὡς δ’ ἔγνωσαν οἱ Μακεδόνες καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν ἀνείλοντο κηρύγματος ἤδη γεγονότος [c] μηδένα κτείνειν Θηβαίων, ἦγον αὐτὴν συλλαβόντες ἐπὶ τὸν βασιλέα καὶ προσήγγειλαν τὸ τετολμημένον. ὁ δὲ καὶ τῇ καταστάσει τοῦ προσώπου καὶ τῷ σχολαίῳ τοῦ βαδίσματος ἀξιωματικόν τι καὶ γενναῖον ἐνιδὼν πρῶτον ἀνέκρινεν αὐτὴν τίς εἴη γυναικῶν. ἡ δ’ ἀνεκπλήκτως πάνυ καὶ τεθαρρηκότως εἶπεν ‘ἐμοὶ Θεαγένης ἦν ἀδελφός, ὃς ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ στρατηγῶν καὶ μαχόμενος πρὸς ὑμᾶς ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐλευθερίας ἔπεσεν, ὅπως ἡμεῖς μηδὲν τοιοῦτον πάθωμεν· ἐπεὶ δὲ πεπόνθαμεν ἀνάξια τοῦ γένους, ἀποθανεῖν οὐ φεύγομεν· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἄμεινον ἴσως ζῶσαν ἑτέρας πειρᾶσθαι νυκτός, εἰ σὺ [d] τοῦτο μὴ κωλύσεις.’ οἱ μὲν οὖν ἐπιεικέστατοι τῶν παρόντων ἐδάκρυσαν, Ἀλεξάνδρῳ δ’ οἰκτείρειν μὲν οὐκ ἐπῄει τὴν ἄνθρωπον ὡς μείζονα συγγνώμης πράξασαν, θαυμάσας δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὸν λόγον εὖ μάλα καθαψάμενον αὐτοῦ, τοῖς μὲν ἡγεμόσι παρήγγειλε προσέχειν καὶ φυλάττειν, μὴ πάλιν ὕβρισμα τοιοῦτον εἰς οἰκίαν ἔνδοξον γένηται, τὴν δὲ Τιμόκλειαν ἀφῆκεν αὐτήν τε καὶ πάντας, ὅσοι κατὰ γένος αὐτῇ προσήκοντες εὑρέθησαν.

ΕΡΥΞΩ

Βάττου τοῦ ἐπικληθέντος Εὐδαίμονος υἱὸς Ἀρκεσίλαος ἦν οὐδὲν ὅμοιος τῷ πατρὶ τοὺς τρόπους· καὶ γὰρ ζῶντος [e] ἔτι περὶ τὴν οἰκίαν περιθεὶς ἐπάλξεις ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς ἐζημιώθη ταλάντῳ· καὶ τελευτήσαντος ἐκείνου, τοῦτο μὲν φύσει χαλεπὸς ὤν (ὅπερ καὶ ἐπεκλήθη), τοῦτο δὲ φίλῳ πονηρῷ, Λαάρχῳ, χρώμενος ἀντὶ βασιλέως ἐγεγόνει τύραννος. ὁ δὲ Λάαρχος ἐπιβουλεύων τῇ τυραννίδι καὶ τοὺς ἀρίστους τῶν Κυρηναίων ἐξελαύνων ἢ φονεύων ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀρκεσίλαον τὰς αἰτίας ἔτρεπε· καὶ τέλος ἐκεῖνον μὲν εἰς νόσον ἐμβαλὼν φθινάδα καὶ χαλεπὴν λαγὼν πιόντα θαλάσσιον διέφθειρεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν εἶχεν ὡς τῷ παιδὶ τῷ ἐκείνου Βάττῳ διαφυλάττων. ὁ μὲν οὖν παῖς καὶ διὰ τὴν χωλότητα καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν [f] κατεφρονεῖτο, τῇ δὲ μητρὶ πολλοὶ προσεῖχον αὐτοῦ· σώφρων τε γὰρ ἦν καὶ φιλάνθρωπος οἰκείους τε πολλοὺς καὶ δυνατοὺς εἶχε. διὸ καὶ θεραπεύων αὐτὴν ὁ Λάαρχος ἐμνηστεύετο καὶ τὸν Βάττον ἠξίου παῖδα θέσθαι γήμας ἐκείνην καὶ κοινωνὸν ἀποδεῖξαι τῆς ἀρχῆς· ἡ δ’ Ἐρυξὼ (τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν ὄνομα τῇ γυναικὶ) βουλευσαμένη μετὰ τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἐκέλευε τὸν Λάαρχον ἐντυγχάνειν ἐκείνοις, ὡς [261] [a] αὐτῆς προσιεμένης τὸν γάμον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ Λάαρχος ἐνετύγχανε τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς, ἐκεῖνοι δ’ ἐπίτηδες παρῆγον καὶ ἀνεβάλλοντο, πέμπει πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ Ἐρυξὼ θεραπαινίδα παρ’ αὑτῆς παραγγέλλουσαν, ὅτι νῦν μὲν ἀντιλέγουσιν οἱ ἀδελφοί, γενομένης δὲ τῆς συνόδου παύσονται διαφερόμενοι καὶ συγχωρήσουσι· δεῖν οὖν αὐτόν, εἰ βούλεται, νύκτωρ ἀφικέσθαι πρὸς αὐτήν· καλῶς γὰρ ἕξειν καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ τῆς ἀρχῆς γενομένης. ἦν οὖν ταῦτα πρὸς ἡδονὴν τῷ Λαάρχῳ, καὶ παντάπασιν ἀναπτοηθεὶς πρὸς τὴν φιλοφροσύνην τῆς γυναικὸς ὡμολόγησεν ἥξειν, ὅταν ἐκείνη κελεύσῃ· ταῦτα δ’ ἔπραττεν ἡ Ἐρυξὼ μετὰ Πολυάρχου [b] τοῦ πρεσβυτάτου τῶν ἀδελφῶν. ὁρισθέντος δὲ καιροῦ πρὸς τὴν σύνοδον, ὁ Πολύαρχος εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον τῆς ἀδελφῆς παρεισήχθη κρύφα, νεανίσκους ἔχων δύο σὺν αὑτῷ ξιφήρεις, φόνῳ πατρὸς ἐπεξιόντας, ὃν ὁ Λάαρχος ἐτύγχανεν ἀπεκτονὼς νεωστί. μεταπεμψαμένης δὲ τῆς Ἐρυξοῦς αὐτὸν ἄνευ δορυφόρων εἰσῆλθε, καὶ τῶν νεανίσκων αὐτῷ προσπεσόντων τυπτόμενος τοῖς ξίφεσιν ἀπέθανε. τὸν μὲν οὖν νεκρὸν ἔρριψαν ὑπὲρ τὸ τεῖχος, τὸν δὲ Βάττον προαγαγόντες ἀνέδειξαν ἐπὶ τοῖς πατρίοις βασιλέα, καὶ τὴν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πολιτείαν ὁ Πολύαρχος ἀπέδωκε τοῖς Κυρηναίοις. ἐτύγχανον δ’ Ἀμάσιδος τοῦ [c] Αἰγυπτίων βασιλέως στρατιῶται συχνοὶ παρόντες, οἷς ὁ Λάαρχος ἐχρῆτο πιστοῖς, καὶ φοβερὸς ἦν οὐχ ἥκιστα δι’ ἐκείνων τοῖς πολίταις. οὗτοι πρὸς Ἄμασιν ἔπεμψαν τοὺς κατηγορήσοντας τοῦ τε Πολυάρχου καὶ τῆς Ἐρυξοῦς. χαλεπαίνοντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ διανοουμένου πολεμεῖν τοῖς Κυρηναίοις συνέβη τὴν μητέρα τελευτῆσαι, καὶ ταφὰς αὐτῆς ἐπιτελοῦντος ‹τοὺς› ἀπαγγέλλοντας ἐλθεῖν παρὰ τοῦ Ἀμάσιδος. ἔδοξεν οὖν τῷ Πολυάρχῳ βαδίζειν ἀπολογησομένῳ· τῆς δ’ Ἐρυξοῦς μὴ ἀπολειπομένης, ἀλλ’ ἕπεσθαι καὶ συγκινδυνεύειν βουλομένης οὐδ’ ἡ μήτηρ Κριτόλα, καίπερ οὖσα πρεσβῦτις, ἀπελείπετο. μέγιστον [d] δ’ αὐτῆς ἦν ἀξίωμα, Βάττου γεγενημένης ἀδελφῆς τοῦ Εὐδαίμονος. ὡς οὖν ἦλθον εἰς Αἴγυπτον, οἵ τ’ ἄλλοι θαυμαστῶς ἀπεδέξαντο τὴν πρᾶξιν αὐτῶν, καὶ ὁ Ἄμασις οὐ μετρίως ἀπεδέξατο τήν τε σωφροσύνην καὶ τὴν ἀνδρείαν τῆς Ἐρυξοῦς· δώροις δὲ τιμήσας καὶ θεραπείᾳ βασιλικῇ τόν τε Πολύαρχον καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας εἰς Κυρήνην ἀπέστειλεν.

ΞΕΝΟΚΡΙΤΗ

Οὐχ ἧττον δ’ ἄν τις ἀγάσαιτο τὴν Κυμαίαν Ξενοκρίτην ἐπὶ τοῖς πραχθεῖσι περὶ Ἀριστόδημον τὸν τύραννον, ᾧ τινες Μαλακὸν ἐπίκλησιν οἴονται γεγονέναι, τὸ [e] ἀληθὲς ἀγνοοῦντες. ἐπεκλήθη γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων Μαλακός, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἀντίπαις, ὅτι μειράκιον ὢν παντάπασι μετὰ τῶν ἡλίκων ἔτι κομώντων (οὓς κορωνιστὰς ὡς ἔοικεν ἀπὸ τῆς κόμης ὠνόμαζον) ἐν τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους πολέμοις ἐπιφανὴς ἦν καὶ λαμπρὸς οὐ τόλμῃ μόνον οὐδὲ χειρὸς ἔργοις, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνέσει καὶ προνοίᾳ φανεὶς περιττός. ὅθεν εἰς τὰς μεγίστας προῆλθεν ἀρχὰς θαυμαζόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν, καὶ Ῥωμαίοις ἐπικουρίαν ἄγων ἐπέμφθη πολεμουμένοις ὑπὸ τῶν Τυρρηνῶν, Ταρκύνιον Σούπερβον ἐπὶ τὴν βασιλείαν καταγόντων. ἐν ταύτῃ δὲ τῇ στρατείᾳ μακρᾷ γενομένῃ πάντα [f] πρὸς χάριν ἐνδιδοὺς τοῖς στρατευομένοις τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ δημαγωγῶν μᾶλλον ἢ στρατηγῶν ἔπεισεν αὐτοὺς συνεπιθέσθαι τῇ βουλῇ καὶ συνεκβαλεῖν τοὺς ἀρίστους καὶ δυνατωτάτους. ἐκ δὲ τούτου γενόμενος τύραννος ἦν μὲν ἐν ταῖς περὶ γυναῖκας καὶ παῖδας ἐλευθέρους ἀδικίαις αὐτὸς ἑαυτοῦ μοχθηρότατος. ἱστόρηται γάρ, ὅτι τοὺς μὲν ἄρρενας παῖδας ἤσκει κομᾶν καὶ χρυσοφορεῖν, τὰς δὲ θηλείας ἠνάγκαζε περιτρόχαλα κείρεσθαι καὶ φορεῖν ἐφηβικὰς χλαμύδας κατὰ τῶν ἀνακώλων χιτωνίσκων. [262] [a] οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐξαιρέτως ἐρασθεὶς τῆς Ξενοκρίτης εἶχεν αὐτὴν φυγάδος οὖσαν πατρός, οὐ καταγαγὼν οὐδὲ πείσας ἐκεῖνον, ἀλλ’ ὁπωσοῦν ἡγούμενος ἀγαπᾶν συνοῦσαν αὐτῷ τὴν κόρην, ἅτε δὴ ζηλουμένην καὶ μακαριζομένην ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν. τὴν δὲ ταῦτα μὲν οὐκ ἐξέπληττεν· ἀχθομένη δ’ ἐπὶ τῷ συνοικεῖν ἀνέκδοτος καὶ ἀνέγγυος οὐδεν‹ὸς› ἧττον ἐπόθει τῶν μισουμένων ὑπὸ τοῦ τυράννου τὴν τῆς πατρίδος ἐλευθερίαν. ἔτυχε δὲ κατ’ ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ τάφρον ἄγων κύκλῳ περὶ τὴν χώραν ὁ Ἀριστόδημος, οὔτ’ ἀναγκαῖον ἔργον οὔτε χρήσιμον, ἄλλως δὲ τρίβειν καὶ ἀποκναίειν πόνοις καὶ ἀσχολίαις [b] τοὺς πολίτας βουλόμενος· ἦν γὰρ προστεταγμένον ἑκάστῳ μέτρων τινῶν ἀριθμὸν ἐκφέρειν τῆς γῆς. ὡς εἶδεν ἐπιόντα τὸν Ἀριστόδημον, ἐξέκλινε καὶ παρεκαλύψατο τῷ χιτωνίσκῳ τὸ πρόσωπον. ἀπελθόντος οὖν τοῦ Ἀριστοδήμου, σκώπτοντες οἱ νεανίσκοι καὶ παίζοντες ἠρώτων, ὅ τι δὴ μόνον ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς φύγοι τὸν Ἀριστόδημον, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους οὐδὲν πάθοι τοιοῦτον· ἡ δὲ καὶ μάλα μετὰ σπουδῆς ἀπεκρίνατο ‘μόνος γάρ’ ἔφη ‘Κυμαίων Ἀριστόδημος ἀνήρ ἐστι.’ τοῦτο γὰρ λεχθὲν τὸ ῥῆμα πάντων μὲν ἥψατο, τοὺς δὲ γενναίους καὶ παρώξυνεν αἰσχύνῃ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἀντέχεσθαι. λέγεται [c] δὲ καὶ Ξενοκρίτην ἀκούσασαν εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἐβούλετ’ ἂν καὶ αὐτὴ γῆν ὑπὲρ τοῦ πατρὸς φέρειν παρόντος ἢ τρυφῆς συμμετέχειν Ἀριστοδήμῳ καὶ δυνάμεως τοσαύτης. ἐπέρρωσεν οὖν ταῦτα τοὺς συνισταμένους ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀριστόδημον, ὧν ἡγεῖτο Θυμοτέλης· καὶ τῆς Ξενοκρίτης εἰσόδου παρεχούσης αὐτοῖς ἄδειαν καὶ τὸν Ἀριστόδημον ἄοπλον καὶ ἀφύλακτον, οὐ χαλεπῶς παρεισπεσόντες διαφθείρουσιν αὐτόν. οὕτω μὲν ἡ Κυμαίων πόλις ἠλευθερώθη δυεῖν ἀρετῇ γυναικῶν, τῆς μὲν ἐπίνοιαν αὐτοῖς καὶ ὁρμὴν ἐμβαλούσης τοῦ ἔργου, τῆς δὲ πρὸς τὸ τέλος συλλαβομένης. τιμῶν δὲ καὶ δωρεῶν μεγάλων τῇ Ξενοκρίτῃ προτεινομένων ἐάσασα πάσας ἓν ᾐτήσατο, θάψαι [d] τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Ἀριστοδήμου· καὶ τοῦτ’ οὖν ἔδοσαν αὐτῇ καὶ Δήμητρος ἱέρειαν αὐτὴν εἵλοντο, οὐχ ἧττον οἰόμενοι τῇ θεῷ κεχαρισμένην ἢ πρέπουσαν ἐκείνῃ τιμὴν ἔσεσθαι.

ΠΥΘΕΩ ΓΥΝΗ

Λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὴν Πύθεω τοῦ κατὰ Ξέρξην γυναῖκα σοφὴν γενέσθαι καὶ χρηστήν. αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ ὁ Πύθης ὡς ἔοικε χρυσείοις ἐντυχὼν μετάλλοις καὶ ἀγαπήσας τὸν ἐξ αὐτῶν πλοῦτον οὐ μετρίως ἀλλ’ ἀπλήστως καὶ περιττῶς, αὐτός τε περὶ ταῦτα διέτριβε καὶ τοὺς πολίτας καταβιβάζων ἅπαντας ὁμαλῶς ὀρύττειν ἢ φορεῖν ἢ καθαίρειν ἠνάγκαζε τὸ χρυσίον, ἄλλο μηδὲν [e] ἐργαζομένους τὸ παράπαν μηδὲ πράττοντας. ἀπολλυμένων δὲ πολλῶν πάντων δ’ ἀπαγορευόντων αἱ γυναῖκες ἱκετηρίαν ἔθεσαν ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας ἐλθοῦσαι τῆς τοῦ Πύθεω γυναικός. ἡ δ’ ἐκείνας μὲν ἀπιέναι καὶ θαρρεῖν ἐκέλευσεν, αὐτὴ δὲ τῶν περὶ τὸ χρυσίον τεχνιτῶν οἷς ἐπίστευε μάλιστα καλέσασα καὶ καθείρξασα, ποιεῖν ἐκέλευεν ἄρτους τε χρυσοῦς καὶ πέμματα παντοδαπὰ καὶ ὀπώρας, καὶ ὅσοις δὴ μάλιστα τὸν Πύθην ἐγίνωσκεν ἡδόμενον ὄψοις καὶ βρώμασι. ποιηθέντων δὲ πάντων ὁ μὲν Πύθης ἧκεν ἀπὸ τῆς ξένης· ἐτύγχανε γὰρ ἀποδημῶν· ἡ δὲ γυνὴ δεῖπνον αἰτοῦντι παρέθηκε χρυσῆν τράπεζαν [f] οὐδὲν ἐδώδιμον ἔχουσαν ἀλλὰ πάντα χρυσᾶ. τὸ μὲν οὖν πρῶτον ἔχαιρε Πύθης τοῖς μιμήμασιν, ἐμπλησθεὶς δὲ τῆς ὄψεως ᾔτει φαγεῖν· ἡ δὲ χρυσοῦν ὅ τι τύχοι ποθήσας προσέφερε. δυσχεραίνοντος δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ πεινῆν βοῶντος, ‘ἀλλὰ σύ γε τούτων’ εἶπεν ‘ἄλλου δ’ οὐδενὸς [263] [a] εὐπορίαν πεποίηκας ἡμῖν· καὶ γὰρ ἐμπειρία καὶ τέχνη πᾶσα φροῦδος, γεωργεῖ δ’ οὐδείς, ἀλλὰ τὰ σπειρόμενα καὶ φυτευόμενα καὶ τρέφοντα τῆς γῆς ὀπίσω καταλιπόντες ὀρύσσομεν ἄχρηστα καὶ ζητοῦμεν, ἀποκναίοντες αὑτοὺς καὶ τοὺς πολίτας.’ ἐκίνησε ταῦτα τὸν Πύθην, καὶ πᾶσαν μὲν οὐ κατέλυσε τὴν περὶ τὰ μέταλλα πραγματείαν, ἀνὰ μέρος δὲ τὸ πέμπτον ἐργάζεσθαι κελεύσας τῶν πολιτῶν τοὺς λοιποὺς ἐπὶ γεωργίαν καὶ τὰς τέχνας ἔτρεψε.

Ξέρξου δὲ καταβαίνοντος ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα λαμπρότατος ἐν ταῖς ὑποδοχαῖς καὶ ταῖς δωρεαῖς γενόμενος χάριν ᾐτήσατο παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως, πλειόνων αὐτῷ [b] παίδων ὄντων, ἕνα παρεῖναι τῆς στρατείας καὶ καταλιπεῖν αὐτῷ γηροβοσκόν. ὁ δὲ Ξέρξης ὑπ’ ὀργῆς τοῦτον μὲν, ὃν ἐξῃτήσατο, σφάξας καὶ διατεμὼν ἐκέλευσε τὸν στρατὸν διελθεῖν, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἀπηγάγετο, καὶ πάντες ἀπώλοντο κατὰ τὰς μάχας. ἐφ’ οἷς ὁ Πύθης ἀθυμήσας ἔπαθεν ὅμοια πολλοῖς τῶν κακῶν καὶ ἀνοήτων· τὸν μὲν γὰρ θάνατον ἐφοβεῖτο, τῷ βίῳ δ’ ἤχθετο. βουλόμενος δὲ μὴ ζῆν, προέσθαι δὲ τὸ ζῆν μὴ δυνάμενος, χώματος ὄντος ἐν τῇ πόλει μεγάλου καὶ ποταμοῦ διαρρέοντος, ὃν Πυθοπολίτην ὠνόμαζον, ἐν μὲν τῷ χώματι κατεσκεύασε μνημεῖον, ἐκτρέψας δὲ τὸ ῥεῖθρον, [c] ὥστε διὰ τοῦ χώματος φέρεσθαι ψαύοντα τοῦ τάφου τὸν ποταμόν, ἐπὶ τούτοις συντελεσθεῖσιν αὐτὸς μὲν εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον κατῆλθε, τῇ δὲ γυναικὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀναθεὶς ἅπασαν ἐκέλευσε μὴ προσιέναι, πέμπειν δὲ τὸ δεῖπνον αὐτῷ καθ’ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν εἰς βᾶριν ἐντιθεῖσαν, ἄχρις οὗ τὸν τάφον ἡ βᾶρις παρέλθῃ τὸ δεῖπνον ἀκέραιον ἔχουσα, τότε δὲ παύσασθαι πέμπουσαν, ὡς αὐτοῦ τεθνηκότος. ἐκεῖνος μὲν οὕτω τὸν λοιπὸν βίον διῆγεν, ἡ δὲ γυνὴ τῆς ἀρχῆς καλῶς ἐπεμελήθη καὶ μεταβολὴν κακῶν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις παρέσχεν.

Aetia Romana et Graeca

ΑΙΤΙΑ ΡΩΜΑΙΚΑ

‘Διὰ τί τὴν γαμουμένην ἅπτεσθαι πυρὸς καὶ [e] ὕδατος κελεύουσι;’ πότερον τούτων ὡς ἐν στοιχείοις καὶ ἀρχαῖς τὸ μὲν ἄρρεν ἐστὶ τὸ δὲ θῆλυ, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἀρχὰς κινήσεως ἐνίησι τὸ δ’ ὑποκειμένου καὶ ὕλης δύναμιν· ἢ διότι τὸ πῦρ καθαίρει καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ ἁγνίζει, δεῖ δὲ καθαρὰν καὶ ἁγνὴν διαμένειν τὴν γαμηθεῖσαν; ἢ ὅτι, καθάπερ τὸ πῦρ χωρὶς ὑγρότητος ἄτροφόν ἐστι καὶ ξηρὸν τὸ δὲ ὕδωρ ἄνευ θερμότητος ἄγονον καὶ ἀργόν, οὕτω καὶ τὸ ἄρρεν ἀδρανὲς καὶ τὸ θῆλυ χωρὶς ἀλλήλων, ἡ δὲ σύνοδος ἀμφοῖν ἐπιτελεῖ τοῖς γήμασι τὴν συμβίωσιν, ἣν οὐκ ἀπολειπτέον καὶ κοινωνητέον ἁπάσης τύχης, [f] κἂν ἄλλου μηδενὸς ἢ πυρὸς καὶ ὕδατος μέλλωσι κοινωνεῖν ἀλλήλοις;

‘Διὰ τί οὐ πλείονας οὐδ’ ἐλάττονας ἀλλὰ πέντε λαμπάδας ἅπτουσιν ἐν τοῖς γάμοις, ἃς κηρίωνας ὀνομάζουσιν;’ πότερον, ὡς Βάρρων ἔλεγεν, ὅτι τῶν στρατηγῶν τρισὶ χρωμένων, †σὺν τοῖς ἀγορανόμοις πλείονας, παρὰ δὲ τῶν ἀγορανόμων ἅπτουσι τὸ πῦρ οἱ γαμοῦντες; [264] [a] ἢ διότι πλείοσι χρωμένων ἀριθμοῖς πρός τε τὰ ἄλλα βελτίων καὶ τελειότερος ὁ περιττὸς ἐνομίζετο καὶ πρὸς γάμον ἁρμοδιώτερος; ὁ γὰρ ἄρτιος διάστασίν τε δέχεται καὶ τὸ ἴσον αὐτοῦ μάχιμόν ἐστι καὶ ἀντίπαλον, ὁ δὲ περιττὸς οὐ δύναται διασχισθῆναι παντάπασιν, ἀλλ’ ὑπολείπει τι κοινὸν ἀεὶ μεριζόμενος. τοῦ δὲ περιττοῦ μάλιστα γαμήλιος ἡ πεντάς ἐστι· τὰ γὰρ τρία πρῶτος περιττὸς καὶ τὰ δύο πρῶτος ἄρτιος· ἐκ δὲ τούτων ὥσπερ ἄρρενος καὶ θήλεος ἡ πεντὰς μέμικται. ἢ μᾶλλον, ἐπεὶ τὸ φῶς [b] γενέσεώς ἐστι σημεῖον, γυνὴ δ’ ἄχρι πέντε τίκτειν ὁμοῦ τὰ πλεῖστα πέφυκε, τοσαύταις χρῶνται λαμπάσιν; ἢ ὅτι πέντε δεῖσθαι θεῶν τοὺς γαμοῦντας οἴονται, Διὸς τελείου καὶ Ἥρας τελείας καὶ Ἀφροδίτης καὶ Πειθοῦς, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δ’ Ἀρτέμιδος, ἣν ταῖς λοχείαις καὶ ταῖς ὠδῖσιν αἱ γυναῖκες ἐπικαλοῦνται;

[c] ‘Διὰ τί, πολλῶν ὄντων ἐν Ῥώμῃ ναῶν Ἀρτέμιδος, εἰς μόνον τὸν ἐν τῷ καλουμένῳ Πατρικίῳ στενωπῷ ἄνδρες οὐκ εἰσίασιν;’ ἦ διὰ τὸν λεγόμενον μῦθον; γυναῖκα γὰρ αὐτόθι τὴν θεὸν σεβομένην βιαζόμενός τις ὑπὸ τῶν κυνῶν διεσπάσθη, καὶ ἀπὸ τούτου δεισιδαιμονίας γενομένης ἄνδρες οὐκ εἰσίασι.

‘Διὰ τί τοῖς ἄλλοις Ἀρτεμισίοις ἐπιεικῶς ἐλάφων κέρατα προσπατταλεύουσι, τῷ δ’ ἐν Ἀβεντίνῳ βοῶν;’ ἦ τοῦ παλαιοῦ συμπτώματος ἀπομνημονεύοντες; λέγεται γὰρ ἐν Σαβίνοις Ἄντρωνι Κορατίῳ βοῦς ἐκπρεπὴς ὄψει καὶ μεγέθει διαφέρουσα τῶν ἄλλων γενέσθαι· μάντεως δέ τινος αὐτῷ φράσαντος, ὅτι τοῦ καθιερεύσαντος Ἀρτέμιδι τὴν βοῦν ἐκείνην ἐν Ἀβεντίνῳ πέπρωται μεγίστην γενέσθαι καὶ βασιλεῦσαι τῆς Ἰταλίας ἁπάσης τὴν πόλιν, [d] ἐλθεῖν μὲν εἰς Ῥώμην τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὡς θύσοντα τὴν βοῦν· οἰκέτου δὲ κρύφα τῷ βασιλεῖ Σερουίῳ τὸ μάντευμα φράσαντος ἐκείνου δὲ Κορνηλίῳ τῷ ἱερεῖ, προστάξαι τὸν Κορνήλιον τῷ Ἄντρωνι λούσασθαι πρὸ τῆς θυσίας ἀπὸ τοῦ Θύμβρεως· νενομίσθαι γὰρ οὕτω τοὺς καλλιεροῦντας. ἐκεῖνον μὲν οὖν ἀπελθόντα λούεσθαι, τὸν δὲ Σερούιον φθάσαντα θῦσαι τῇ θεῷ τὴν βοῦν καὶ τῷ ἱερῷ τὰ κέρατα προσπατταλεῦσαι. ταῦτα καὶ Ἰόβας (FHG III p. 470) ἱστόρηκε καὶ Βάρρων (Antiqu. 6 Merkel), πλὴν ὅτι τοὔνομα τοῦ Ἄντρωνος Βάρρων οὐ γέγραφεν, οὐδ’ ὑπὸ Κορνηλίου φησὶ τοῦ ἱερέως ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ νεωκόρου παρακρουσθῆναι τὸν Σαβῖνον.

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς τεθνάναι φημισθέντας ἐπὶ ξένης [e] ψευδῶς, κἂν ἐπανέλθωσιν, οὐ δέχονται κατὰ θύρας, ἀλλὰ τῷ κεράμῳ προσβαίνοντες εἴσω καθιμῶσιν αὐτούς;’ ὁ μὲν γὰρ Βάρρων αἰτίαν μυθικὴν ὅλως ἀποδίδωσι. φησὶ γὰρ ἐν τῷ περὶ Σικελίαν πολέμῳ ναυμαχίας μεγάλης γενομένης καὶ κατὰ πολλῶν φήμης οὐκ ἀληθοῦς ὡς ἀπολωλότων ῥυείσης ἐπανελθόντας αὐτοὺς ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ πάντας τελευτῆσαι, ἑνὶ δ’ εἰσιόντι τὰς θύρας ἀπαντῆσαι κλειομένας ἀπ’ αὐτομάτου καὶ μὴ χαλᾶν ἐπιχειρούντων ἀνοίγειν. τὸν δ’ ἄνθρωπον αὐτοῦ [f] καταδαρθόντα πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν ἰδεῖν κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ὄψιν ὑφηγουμένην αὐτῷ τὴν ὑπὲρ τὸ τέγος εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν καθίμησιν· ποιήσαντα δ’ οὕτως εὐτυχῆ γενέσθαι καὶ γηραιόν· ἐκ δὲ τούτου τὸ ἔθος καταστῆναι τοῖς ὕστερον. ὅρα δὲ μὴ καὶ ταῦτα τρόπον τινὰ τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς ἔοικεν· οὐ γὰρ ἐνόμιζον ἁγνοὺς οὐδὲ κατεμίγνυσαν· ἑαυτοῖς οὐδ’ εἴων ἱεροῖς πλησιάζειν, οἷς ἐκφορὰ γεγόνοι καὶ τάφος ὡς τεθνηκόσι. λέγεται δέ τινα τῶν ἐνόχων ταύτῃ τῇ δεισιδαιμονίᾳ γεγονότων Ἀριστῖνον εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀποστείλαντα δεῖσθαι τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ παραιτεῖσθαι τὰς παρούσας αὐτῷ διὰ τὸν νόμον ἀπορίας· τὴν δὲ Πυθίαν ἀνειπεῖν

[265] [a] ‘ὅσσαπερ ἐν λεχέεσσι γυνὴ τίκτουσα τελεῖται,

ταῦτα πάλιν τελέσαντα θύειν μακάρεσσι θεοῖσι.’

τὸν οὖν Ἀριστῖνον συμφρονήσαντα παρασχεῖν ἑαυτὸν ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς τικτόμενον ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἀπολοῦσαι καὶ σπαργανῶσαι καὶ θηλὴν ἐπισχεῖν, οὕτω τε δρᾶν καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας, ὑστεροπότμους προσαγορευομένους. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ πρὸ τοῦ Ἀριστίνου ταῦτα γενέσθαι περὶ τοὺς ὑστεροπότμους καὶ τὸ ἔθος εἶναι παλαιόν. οὐδὲν οὖν θαυμαστόν, εἰ καὶ Ῥωμαῖοι τοῖς δοκοῦσιν ἅπαξ τεθάφθαι καὶ γεγονέναι τῆς τῶν φθιτῶν μερίδος οὐκ ᾤοντο δεῖν παριέναι τὴν αὔλειον, ᾗ θύσοντες ἐξίασι καὶ θύσαντες [b] εἰσίασιν, ἀλλ’ ἄνωθεν ἐκέλευον εἰς τὰ ὕπαιθρα καταβαίνειν ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος· καὶ γὰρ τοὺς καθαρμοὺς ἐπιεικῶς πάντας ἐν ὑπαίθρῳ τελοῦσι.

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς συγγενεῖς τῷ στόματι φιλοῦσιν αἱ γυναῖκες;’ πότερον, ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι νομίζουσιν, ἀπειρημένον ἦν πίνειν οἶνον ταῖς γυναιξίν· ὅπως οὖν αἱ πιοῦσαι μὴ λανθάνωσιν ἀλλ’ ἐλέγχωνται περιτυγχάνουσαι τοῖς οἰκείοις, ἐνομίσθη καταφιλεῖν; ἢ δι’ ἣν Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 609) ὁ φιλόσοφος αἰτίαν ἱστόρηκε; τὸ γὰρ πολυθρύλλητον [c] ἐκεῖνο καὶ πολλαχοῦ γενέσθαι λεγόμενον ὡς ἔοικεν ἐτολμήθη καὶ ταῖς Τρῳάσι περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν. τῶν γὰρ ἀνδρῶν, ὡς προσέπλευσαν, ἀποβάντων ἐνέπρησαν τὰ πλοῖα, πάντως ἀπαλλαγῆναι τῆς πλάνης δεόμεναι καὶ τῆς θαλάττης· φοβηθεῖσαι δὲ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἠσπάζοντο τῶν συγγενῶν καὶ οἰκείων μετὰ τοῦ καταφιλεῖν καὶ περιπλέκεσθαι τοὺς προστυγχάνοντας. παυσαμένων δὲ τῆς ὀργῆς καὶ διαλλαγέντων ἐχρῶντο καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν [d] ταύτῃ τῇ φιλοφροσύνῃ πρὸς αὐτούς. ἢ μᾶλλον ἐδόθη τοῦτο ταῖς γυναιξὶν ὡς τιμὴν ἅμα καὶ δύναμιν αὐταῖς φέρον, εἰ φαίνοιντο πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἔχουσαι συγγενεῖς καὶ οἰκείους; ἤ, μὴ νενομισμένου συγγενίδας γαμεῖν, ἄχρι φιλήματος ἡ φιλοφροσύνη προῆλθεν καὶ τοῦτο μόνον ἀπελείφθη σύμβολον καὶ κοινώνημα τῆς συγγενείας; πρότερον γὰρ οὐκ ἐγάμουν τὰς ἀφ’ αἵματος, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ νῦν τιτθίδας οὐδ’ ἀδελφὰς γαμοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ὀψὲ συνεχώρησαν ἀνεψιαῖς συνοικεῖν ἐκ τοιαύτης αἰτίας· ἀνὴρ χρημάτων ἐνδεὴς τὰ δ’ ἄλλα χρηστὸς καὶ παρ’ ὁντινοῦν τῷ δήμῳ τῶν πολιτευομένων ἀρέσκων ἐπίκληρον [e] ἀνεψιὰν ἔχειν ἔδοξε καὶ πλουτεῖν ἀπ’ αὐτῆς· ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ γενομένης αὐτοῦ κατηγορίας ὁ δῆμος ἀφεὶς τὴν αἰτίαν ἐλέγχειν ἔλυσε τὸ ἔγκλημα, ψηφισάμενος πᾶσιν ἐξεῖναι γαμεῖν ἄχρις ἀνεψιῶν, τὰ δ’ ἀνωτέρω κεκωλῦσθαι.

‘Διὰ τί δὲ δῶρον λαβεῖν ἀνδρὶ παρὰ γυναικὸς καὶ γυναικὶ παρ’ ἀνδρὸς ἀπείρηται;’ πότερον, ὡς Σόλων γράψας τὰς δόσεις κυρίας εἶναι τῶν τελευτώντων, πλὴν εἰ μή τις ἀνάγκῃ συνεχόμενος ἢ γυναικὶ πειθόμενος τὴν [f] μὲν ἀνάγκην ὡς βιαζομένην ὑπεξείλετο, τὴν δ’ ἡδονὴν ὡς παραλογιζομένην, οὕτως ὑπενοήθησαν αἱ γυναικῶν καὶ ἀνδρῶν δόσεις; ἢ φαυλότατον ἡγούμενοι σημεῖον εὐνοίας τὸ διδόναι (διδόασι γὰρ καὶ ἀλλότριοι καὶ μὴ φιλοῦντες) ἐκ τοῦ γάμου τὴν τοιαύτην ἀρέσκειαν ἀνεῖλον, ὅπως ἄμισθον ᾖ καὶ προῖκα καὶ δι’ αὑτὸ μὴ δι’ ἄλλο τὸ φιλεῖσθαι καὶ φιλεῖν; ἤ, ὅτι τῷ λαμβάνειν διαφθειρόμεναι μάλιστα προσίενται τοὺς ἀλλοτρίους, σεμνὸν ἐφάνη τὸ μὴ διδόντας ἀγαπᾶν τοὺς ἰδίους; ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι δεῖ κοινὰ καὶ γυναιξὶν εἶναι τὰ ἀνδρῶν καὶ ἀνδράσι [266] [a] τὰ γυναικῶν; μανθάνει γὰρ ὁ λαβὼν τὸ δοθὲν ἀλλότριον ἡγεῖσθαι τὸ μὴ δοθέν, ὥστ’ ὀλίγον διδόντες ἀλλήλοις τὸ πᾶν ἀφαιροῦνται.

‘Διὰ τί δὲ παρὰ γαμβροῦ καὶ παρὰ πενθεροῦ λαβεῖν ἐκείνοις κεκώλυται δῶρον;’ ἦ παρὰ γαμβροῦ μέν, ἵνα μὴ δόξῃ διὰ τοῦ πατρὸς εἰς τὴν γυναῖκα περιχωρεῖν τὸ δῶρον· παρὰ πενθεροῦ δέ, ὅτι τὸν μὴ διδόντα δίκαιον ἐφάνη μηδὲ λαμβάνειν;

[b] ‘Διὰ τί, κἂν ἐξ ἀγροῦ κἂν ἀπὸ ξένης ἐπανίωσιν, ἔχοντες οἴκοι γυναῖκας προπέμπουσι δηλοῦντες αὐταῖς ὅτι παραγίνονται;’ πότερον ὅτι τοῦτο πιστεύοντός ἐστι τὴν γυναῖκα μηδὲν ῥᾳδιουργεῖν, τὸ δ’ ἐξαίφνης καὶ ἀπροσδοκήτως οἷον ἐνέδρα καὶ παρατήρησις; ἢ σπεύδουσιν ὡς ποθούσαις καὶ προσδεχομέναις εὐαγγελίζεσθαι περὶ αὑτῶν; ἢ μᾶλλον αὐτοὶ περὶ ἐκείνων πυθέσθαι ποθοῦσιν, εἰ σῳζομένας καὶ ποθούσας ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας καταλαμβάνουσιν; ἢ πλείονες ταῖς γυναιξὶν οἰκονομίαι καὶ ἀσχολίαι τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἀπόντων τυγχάνουσι καὶ διαφοραὶ καὶ ὁρμαὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἔνδον· ἵν’ οὖν ἀπαλλαγεῖσα τούτων ἀθόρυβον τῷ ἀνδρὶ παρέχῃ τὴν ὑποδοχὴν καὶ ἡδεῖαν, ἡ προδήλωσις γίνεται;

[c] ‘Διὰ τί τοὺς θεοὺς προσκυνοῦντες ἐπικαλύπτονται τὴν κεφαλήν, τῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων τοῖς ἀξίοις τιμῆς ἀπαντῶντες, κἂν τύχωσιν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἔχοντες τὸ ἱμάτιον, ἀποκαλύπτονται;’ τοῦτο γὰρ ἔοικε κἀκείνην ἐπιτείνειν τὴν ἀπορίαν. εἰ μὲν οὖν ὁ περὶ Αἰνείου λεγόμενος λόγος ἀληθής ἐστι καὶ τοῦ Διομήδους παρεξιόντος ἐπικαλυψάμενος τὴν θυσίαν ἐπετέλεσε, λόγον ἔχει καὶ ἀκολουθεῖ τῷ συγκαλύπτεσθαι πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους τὸ τοῖς φίλοις καὶ ἀγαθοῖς ἐντυγχάνοντας ἀποκαλύπτεσθαι· τὸ γὰρ πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς οὐκ ἴδιόν ἐστιν ἀλλὰ κατὰ συμβεβηκός, καὶ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου μεμένηκε τηρούμενον. εἰ δ’ ἄλλο τι λέγειν χρή, σκόπει μὴ μόνον ἐκεῖνο δεῖ ζητεῖν, δι’ ὃ τοὺς θεοὺς προσκυνοῦντες ἐπικαλύπτονται, θάτερον δ’ ἀκόλουθόν ἐστι· τῶν γὰρ ἀνθρώπων ἀποκαλύπτονται [d] τοῖς δυνατωτέροις οὐ τιμὴν αὐτοῖς προστιθέντες, ἀλλὰ τὸν φθόνον αὐτῶν μᾶλλον ἀφαιροῦντες, ἵνα μὴ δόξωσι τὰς αὐτὰς τοῖς θεοῖς τιμὰς ἀπαιτεῖν μηδ’ ὑπομένειν μηδὲ χαίρειν θεραπευόμενοι παραπλησίως ἐκείνοις. τοὺς δὲ θεοὺς οὕτω προσεκύνουν ἢ ταπεινοῦντες ἑαυτοὺς τῇ ἐπικρύψει τῆς κεφαλῆς, ἢ μᾶλλον εὐλαβούμενοί τινα φωνὴν προσπεσεῖν αὐτοῖς ἔξωθεν εὐχομένοις ἀπαίσιον καὶ δύσφημον ἄχρι τῶν ὤτων ἀνελάμβανον τὸ ἱμάτιον· ὅτι γὰρ ἰσχυρῶς ἐφυλάττοντο ταῦτα, δῆλόν ἐστι τῷ προσιόντας ἐπὶ μαντείαν χαλκωμάτων πατάγῳ περιψοφεῖσθαι.

[e] ἢ ὡς Κάστωρ (Fr. Gr. Hist. 250 F 15) λέγει τὰ Ῥωμαϊκὰ τοῖς Πυθαγορικοῖς συνοικειῶν, τὸν ἐν ἡμῖν δαίμονα δεῖσθαι τῶν ἐκτὸς θεῶν καὶ ἱκετεύειν τῇ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἐπικαλύψει τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς αἰνιττόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ σώματος ἐγκάλυψιν καὶ ἀπόκρισιν.

‘Διὰ τί δὲ τῷ Κρόνῳ θύουσιν ἀπαρακαλύπτῳ τῇ κεφαλῇ;’ πότερον ὅτι τὴν ἐγκάλυψιν Αἰνείας παρέδωκεν, ἡ δὲ τοῦ Κρόνου θυσία παμπάλαιός ἐστιν· ἢ ὅτι τοῖς οὐρανίοις ἐπικαλύπτονται, τὸν δὲ Κρόνον ἡγοῦνται θεὸν ὑπουδαῖον καὶ χθόνιον; ἢ ὅτι τῆς ἀληθείας οὐδὲν ἐπίκρυφον ἢ ἐπίσκιον, ἀληθείας δὲ νομίζουσι Ῥωμαῖοι πατέρα τὸν Κρόνον εἶναι;

‘Διὰ τί δὲ τὸν Κρόνον πατέρα τῆς ἀληθείας νομίζουσι;’ πότερον, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι τῶν φιλοσόφων, χρόνον [f] οἴονται τὸν Κρόνον εἶναι, τὸ δ’ ἀληθὲς εὑρίσκει χρόνος; ἢ τὸν μυθολογούμενον ἐπὶ Κρόνου βίον, εἰ δικαιότατος ἦν, εἰκός ἐστι μάλιστα μετέχειν ἀληθείας;

‘Διὰ τί καὶ τῷ λεγομένῳ Ὁνώρει θύουσιν ἀκαλύπτῳ τῇ κεφαλῇ (τὸν δὲ Ὁνῶρεμ δόξαν ἄν τις ἢ τιμὴν μεθερμηνεύσειε);’ πότερον [δὲ] ὅτι λαμπρὸν ἡ δόξα καὶ περιφανὲς καὶ ἀναπεπταμένον· δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς [267] [a] καὶ τιμωμένοις ἀνδράσιν ἀποκαλύπτονται, διὰ ταύτην καὶ τὸν ἐπώνυμον τῆς τιμῆς θεὸν οὕτω προσκυνοῦσι;

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς γονεῖς ἐκκομίζουσιν οἱ μὲν υἱοὶ συγκεκαλυμμέναις, αἱ δὲ θυγατέρες γυμναῖς ταῖς κεφαλαῖς καὶ ταῖς κόμαις λελυμέναις;’ πότερον, ὅτι τιμᾶσθαι μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρρένων δεῖ τοὺς πατέρας ὡς θεοὺς πενθεῖσθαι δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν θυγατέρων ὡς τεθνηκότας, ἑκατέρῳ τὸ οἰκεῖον ὁ νόμος ἀποδοὺς ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων ἐποίησε τὸ ἁρμόττον; ἢ πένθους μὲν οἰκεῖον τὸ μὴ σύνηθες, συνηθέστερον δὲ ταῖς μὲν γυναιξὶν ἐγκεκαλυμμέναις, τοῖς δ’ [b] ἀνδράσιν ἀκαλύπτοις εἰς τὸ δημόσιον προϊέναι; καὶ γὰρ παρ’ Ἕλλησιν ὅταν δυστυχία τις γένηται, κείρονται μὲν αἱ γυναῖκες κομῶσι δ’ οἱ ἄνδρες, ὅτι τοῖς μὲν τὸ κείρεσθαι ταῖς δὲ τὸ κομᾶν σύνηθές ἐστιν. ἢ τοὺς μὲν υἱοὺς ἐπικαλύπτεσθαι δι’ ἣν εἰρήκαμεν αἰτίαν ἐνομίσθη (καὶ γὰρ ἐπὶ τῶν τάφων ὥς φησι Βάρρων περιστρέφονται, καθάπερ θεῶν ἱερὰ τιμῶντες τὰ τῶν πατέρων μνήματα, καὶ καύσαντες τοὺς γονεῖς, ὅταν ὀστέῳ πρῶτον ἐντύχωσι, θεὸν γεγονέναι τὸν τεθνηκότα λέγουσι)· ταῖς δὲ γυναιξὶν οὐδ’ ὅλως ἐξῆν ἐπικαλύπτεσθαι τὴν κεφαλήν; ἱστορεῖται [c] γοῦν ὅτι πρῶτος μὲν ἐξέβαλε γυναῖκα Σπόριος Καρβίλιος ἐπ’ ἀτεκνίᾳ, δεύτερος δὲ Σουλπίκιος Γάλλος ἐφελκυσαμένην ἰδὼν κατὰ κεφαλῆς τὸ ἱμάτιον, τρίτος δὲ Πόπλιος Σεμπρώνιος ἀγῶνα θεωρήσασαν ἐπιτάφιον.

‘Διὰ τί τὸν Τέρμινον, ᾧ τὰ Τερμινάλια ποιοῦσι, θεὸν νομίζοντες οὐδὲν ἔθυον αὐτῷ ζῷον;’ ἦ Ῥωμύλος μὲν ὅρους οὐκ ἔθηκε τῆς χώρας, ὅπως ἐξῇ προϊέναι καὶ ἀποτέμνεσθαι καὶ νομίζειν πᾶσαν ἰδίαν, ὥσπερ ὁ Λάκων εἶπεν, ἧς ἂν τὸ δόρυ ἐφικνῆται· Νομᾶς δὲ Πομπίλιος, ἀνὴρ δίκαιος καὶ πολιτικὸς ὢν καὶ φιλόσοφος γενόμενος, τήν τε χώραν ὡρίσατο πρὸς τοὺς γειτνιῶντας καὶ τοῖς ὅροις ἐπιφημίσας τὸν Τέρμινον ὡς ἐπίσκοπον καὶ φύλακα φιλίας καὶ εἰρήνης ᾤετο δεῖν αἵματος καὶ φόνου καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμίαντον διαφυλάττειν;

[d] ‘Διὰ τί δούλαις τὸ τῆς Λευκοθέας ἱερὸν ἄβατόν ἐστι, μίαν δὲ μόνην αἱ γυναῖκες εἰσάγουσαι παίουσιν ἐπὶ κόρρης καὶ ῥαπίζουσιν;’ ἦ τὸ μὲν ταύτην ῥαπίζεσθαι σύμβολόν ἐστι τοῦ μὴ ἐξεῖναι, κωλύουσι δὲ τὰς ἄλλας διὰ τὸν μῦθον; ἡ γὰρ Ἰνὼ ζηλοτυπήσασα δούλην ἐπὶ τῷ ἀνδρὶ λέγεται περὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἐκμανῆναι· τὴν δὲ δούλην Ἕλληνες Αἰτωλίδα γένει φασὶν εἶναι, καλεῖσθαι δ’ Ἀντιφέραν. διὸ καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ πρὸ τοῦ σηκοῦ τῆς Λευκοθέας ὁ νεωκόρος λαβὼν μάστιγα κηρύσσει ‘μὴ δοῦλον εἰσιέναι μὴ δούλαν, μὴ Αἰτωλὸν μὴ Αἰτωλάν.’

[e] ‘Διὰ τί παρὰ τῇ θεῷ ταύτῃ τοῖς μὲν ἰδίοις τέκνοις οὐκ εὔχονται τἀγαθὰ τοῖς δὲ τῶν ἀδελφῶν;’ πότερον ὅτι φιλάδελφος μέν τις ἡ Ἰνὼ καὶ τὸν ἐκ τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἐτιθηνήσατο, αὐτὴ δὲ περὶ τοὺς ἑαυτῆς παῖδας ἐδυστύχησεν; ἢ καὶ ἄλλως ἠθικὸν καὶ καλὸν τὸ ἔθος καὶ πολλὴν παρασκευάζον εὔνοιαν ταῖς οἰκειότησι;

‘Διὰ τί τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ πολλοὶ τῶν πλουσίων ἐδεκάτευον τὰς οὐσίας;’ πότερον ὅτι κἀκεῖνος ἐν Ῥώμῃ [f] τῶν Γηρυόνου βοῶν ἀπέθυσε τὴν δεκάτην; ἢ ὅτι Ῥωμαίους ὑπὸ Τυρρηνῶν δεκατευομένους ἀπήλλαξεν; ἢ ταῦτα μὲν οὐκ ἔχει τὴν ἱστορίαν ἀξιόπιστον, ὡς δ’ ἀδηφάγῳ τινὶ τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ καὶ εὐθοίνῳ δαψιλῶς καὶ ἀφθόνως ἀπέθυον; ἢ μᾶλλον ὡς ἐπαχθῆ τοῖς πολίταις τὸν ὑπερβάλλοντα πλοῦτον κολούοντες καὶ καθάπερ εὐεξίας ἐπ’ ἄκρον εὐσωματούσης ἀφαιροῦντες ᾤοντο μάλιστα τιμᾶσθαι τὸν Ἡρακλέα καὶ χαίρειν ταῖς τοιαύταις ἀποχρήσεσι καὶ συστολαῖς τῶν περιττῶν, εὐτελῆ καὶ αὐτάρκη καὶ ἀπέριττον τῷ βίῳ γενόμενον;

‘Διὰ τί τὸν Ἰανουάριον μῆνα νέου ἔτους ἀρχὴν [268] [a] λαμβάνουσι;’ τὸ γὰρ παλαιὸν ὁ Μάρτιος ἠριθμεῖτο πρότερος, ὡς ἄλλοις τε πολλοῖς δῆλόν ἐστι τεκμηρίοις καὶ μάλιστα τῷ τὸν πέμπτον ἀπὸ τοῦ Μαρτίου Πέμπτον καὶ τὸν ἕκτον Ἕκτον ὀνομάζεσθαι, καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐφεξῆς ἄχρι τοῦ τελευταίου, ὃν Δεκέμβριον καλοῦσιν ἀπὸ τοῦ Μαρτίου δέκατον ἀριθμούμενον. ἐξ οὗ δὴ καὶ παρέστη τισὶν οἴεσθαι καὶ λέγειν, ὡς οὐ δώδεκα μησὶν ἀλλὰ δέκα συνεπλήρουν οἱ τότε Ῥωμαῖοι τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν ἐνίοις τῶν μηνῶν ἡμέρας πλείονας τῶν τριάκοντα προστιθέντες.

[b] ἄλλοι δ’ ἱστοροῦσι τὸν μὲν Δεκέμβριον ἀπὸ τοῦ Μαρτίου δέκατον εἶναι, τὸν δ’ Ἰανουάριον ἑνδέκατον, τὸν δὲ Φεβρουάριον δωδέκατον, ἐν ᾧ καθαρμοῖς τε χρῶνται καὶ τοῖς φθιμένοις ἐναγίζουσι τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ τελευτῶντος. μετατεθῆναι δὲ τούτους καὶ γενέσθαι τὸν Ἰανουάριον πρῶτον, ὅτι τῇ νουμηνίᾳ τούτου τοῦ μηνός, ἣν ἡμέραν καλάνδας Ἰανουαρίας καλοῦσιν, οἱ πρῶτοι κατεστάθησαν ὕπατοι τῶν βασιλέων ἐκπεσόντων. πιθανώτεροι δ’ εἰσὶν οἱ λέγοντες, ὅτι τὸν μὲν Μάρτιον ὁ Ῥωμύλος πολεμικὸς καὶ ἀρειμάνιος ὢν καὶ δοκῶν ἐξ Ἄρεος γεγονέναι προέταξε τῶν μηνῶν ἐπώνυμον ὄντα τοῦ Ἄρεος, Νομᾶς δ’ αὖθις εἰρηνικὸς γενόμενος καὶ [c] πρὸς ἔργα τῆς γῆς φιλοτιμούμενος τρέψαι τὴν πόλιν ἀποστῆσαι δὲ τῶν πολεμικῶν, τῷ Ἰανουαρίῳ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἔδωκε καὶ τὸν Ἰανὸν εἰς τιμὰς προήγαγε μεγάλας, ὡς πολιτικὸν καὶ γεωργικὸν μᾶλλον ἢ πολεμικὸν γενόμενον. ὅρα δὲ μὴ μᾶλλον ὁ Νομᾶς τῇ φύσει προσήκουσαν ἀρχὴν ἔλαβε τοῦ ἔτους ὡς πρὸς ἡμᾶς. καθόλου μὲν γὰρ οὐδέν ἐστι φύσει τῶν ἐν κύκλῳ περιφερομένων οὔτ’ ἔσχατον οὔτε πρῶτον, νόμῳ δ’ ἄλλην ἄλλοι τοῦ [d] χρόνου λαμβάνουσιν ἀρχήν· ἄριστα δ’ οἱ τὴν μετὰ τροπὰς χειμερίας λαμβάνοντες, ὁπηνίκα τοῦ πρόσω βαδίζειν πεπαυμένος ὁ ἥλιος ἐπιστρέφει καὶ ἀνακάμπτει πάλιν πρὸς ἡμᾶς· γίνεται γὰρ αὐτοῖς τρόπον τινὰ καὶ φύσει, τὸν μὲν τοῦ φωτὸς αὔξουσα χρόνον ἡμῖν, μειοῦσα δὲ τὸν τοῦ σκότους, ἐγγυτέρω δὲ ποιοῦσα τὸν κύριον καὶ ἡγεμόνα τῆς ῥευστῆς οὐσίας ἁπάσης.

‘Διὰ τί τῇ γυναικείᾳ θεῷ, ἣν Ἀγαθὴν καλοῦσιν, κοσμοῦσαι σηκὸν αἱ γυναῖκες οἴκοι μυρσίνας οὐκ εἰσφέρουσι, καίτοι πᾶσι φιλοτιμούμεναι χρῆσθαι τοῖς βλαστάνουσι καὶ ἀνθοῦσι;’ πότερον ὡς οἱ μυθολογοῦντες ἱστοροῦσι, Φαύνου μὲν ἦν γυνὴ τοῦ μάντεως, οἴνῳ δὲ χρησαμένη [e] κρύφα καὶ μὴ λαθοῦσα ῥάβδοις ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐκολάσθη μυρσίνης (ὅθεν μυρσίνην μὲν οὐκ εἰσφέρουσιν, οἶνον δ’ αὐτῇ σπένδουσι, γάλα προσαγορεύουσαι); ἢ πολλῶν μὲν ἁγναὶ μάλιστα δ’ ἀφροδισίων τὴν ἱερουργίαν ἐκείνην ἐπιτελοῦσιν; οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐξοικίζουσι τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἀλλὰ καὶ πᾶν ἄρρεν ἐξελαύνουσι τῆς οἰκίας, ὅταν τὰ νενομισμένα τῇ θεῷ ποιῶσι. τὴν οὖν μυρσίνην ὡς ἱερὰν Ἀφροδίτης ἀφοσιοῦνται· καὶ γὰρ ἣν νῦν Μουρκίαν Ἀφροδίτην καλοῦσι, Μυρτίαν τὸ παλαιὸν ὡς ἔοικεν ὠνόμαζον.

‘Διὰ τί τὸν δρυοκολάπτην οἱ Λατῖνοι σέβονται, [f] καὶ ἀπέχονται πάντες ἰσχυρῶς τοῦ ὄρνιθος;’ πότερον ὅτι τὸν Πῖκον λέγουσιν ὑπὸ φαρμάκων τῆς γυναικὸς μεταβαλεῖν τὴν φύσιν καὶ γενόμενον δρυοκολάπτην ἀποφθέγγεσθαι λόγια καὶ χρησμῳδεῖν τοῖς ἐρωτῶσιν; ἢ τοῦτο μὲν ἄπιστόν ἐστιν ὅλως καὶ τερατῶδες, ἅτερος δὲ τῶν μύθων πιθανώτερος, ὡς ἄρα τοῖς περὶ Ῥωμύλον καὶ Ῥῶμον ἐκτεθεῖσιν οὐ μόνον ἡ λύκαινα θηλὴν ἐπεῖχεν, ἀλλὰ δρυοκολάπτης τις ἐπιφοιτῶν ἐψώμιζεν; ἐπιεικῶς γὰρ ἔτι καὶ νῦν ‹ἐν› τοῖς ὑπωρείοις καὶ δρυμώδεσι τόποις ὅπου φαίνεται δρυοκολάπτης, ἐκεῖ καὶ λύκος, ὡς Νιγίδιος (fr. 119. p. 132 Swoboda) ἱστορεῖ. ἢ μᾶλλον, ὡς ἄλλον ἄλλου θεοῦ, καὶ τοῦτον Ἄρεος ἱερὸν νομίζουσι [269] [a] τὸν ὄρνιν; καὶ γὰρ εὐθαρσὴς καὶ γαῦρός ἐστι καὶ τὸ ῥύγχος οὕτως ἔχει κραταιόν, ὥστε δρῦς ἀνατρέπειν, ὅταν κόπτων πρὸς τὴν ἐντεριώνην ἐξίκηται.

‘Διὰ τί τὸν Ἰανὸν διπρόσωπον οἴονται γεγονέναι καὶ γράφουσιν οὕτω καὶ πλάττουσιν;’ πότερον ὅτι τῷ μὲν γένει Ἕλλην ἐκ Περραιβίας ἦν, ὡς ἱστοροῦσι, διαβὰς δ’ εἰς Ἰταλίαν καὶ συνοικήσας τοῖς αὐτόθι βαρβάροις μετέβαλε καὶ γλῶτταν καὶ δίαιταν; ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι τοὺς περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν αὐτὸς ἀγρίοις καὶ ἀνόμοις χρωμένους ἔθεσιν εἰς ἕτερον βίου σχῆμα, πείσας γεωργεῖν καὶ πολιτεύεσθαι, μετέβαλε καὶ μετεκόσμησε;

‘Διὰ τί τὰ πρὸς τὰς ταφὰς πιπράσκουσιν ἐν τῷ [b] τεμένει τῷ Λιβιτίνης, νομίζοντες Ἀφροδίτην εἶναι τὴν Λιβιτίνην;’ πότερον καὶ τοῦτο τῶν Νομᾶ τοῦ βασιλέως φιλοσοφημάτων ἕν ἐστιν, ὅπως μανθάνωσι μὴ δυσχεραίνειν τὰ τοιαῦτα μηδὲ φεύγειν ὡς μιασμόν; ἢ μᾶλλον ὑπόμνησίς ἐστι τοῦ φθαρτὸν εἶναι τὸ γεννητόν, ὡς μιᾶς θεοῦ τὰς γενέσεις καὶ τὰς τελευτὰς ἐπισκοπούσης; καὶ γὰρ ἐν Δελφοῖς Ἀφροδίτης ἐπιτυμβίας ἀγαλμάτιόν ἐστι πρὸς ὃ τοὺς κατοιχομένους ἐπὶ τὰς χοὰς ἀνακαλοῦνται.

‘Διὰ τί τρεῖς τοῦ μηνὸς ἀρχὰς καὶ προθεσμίας ἔχουσιν, οὐ ταὐτὸ διάστημα τῶν ἡμερῶν μεταξὺ λαμβάνοντες;’ πότερον ὡς οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἰόβαν (FHG III p. 470) [c] ἱστοροῦσιν ὅτι ταῖς καλάνδαις ἐκάλουν τὸν δῆμον οἱ ἄρχοντες καὶ κατήγγελλον εἰς πέμπτην τὰς νόννας, εἰδοὺς δ’ ἡμέραν ἱερὰν ἐνόμιζον· ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι ταῖς τῆς σελήνης διαφοραῖς ὁρίζοντες τὸν χρόνον, ἑώρων ἐν τρισὶ γινομένην διαφοραῖς τὴν σελήνην κατὰ μῆνα ταῖς μεγίσταις, πρώτῃ μὲν ὅτε κρύπτεται σύνοδον ποιησαμένη πρὸς ἥλιον, δευτέρᾳ δ’ ὅταν ἐκφυγοῦσα τὰς αὐγὰς τοῦ ἡλίου καταφανὴς πρῶτον ἀπὸ δυσμῶν γένηται, τρίτῃ δὲ τῇ περὶ τὴν πλήρωσιν αὐτῆς πανσελήνου γενομένης; ὀνομάζουσι [d] δὲ τὸν μὲν ἀφανισμὸν αὐτῆς καὶ τὴν κρύψιν ‘καλάνδας’, ὅτι πᾶν τὸ κρύφα καὶ λάθρα ‘κλάμ’ καὶ ‘κηλάρι’ τὸ λανθάνειν· τὴν δὲ πρώτην φάσιν ‘νόννας’ τῷ δικαιοτάτῳ τῶν ὀνομάτων, νουμηνίαν οὖσαν· καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ τὸ νέον καὶ καινὸν ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς προσαγορεύουσι· τὰς δ’ ‘εἰδούς’ ἢ διὰ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὸ εἶδος ὁλοκλήρου καθισταμένης τῆς σελήνης ἢ τῷ Διὶ τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν ἀποδιδόντες. οὐ δεῖ δὲ τῶν ἡμερῶν τὸν ἀκριβέστατον ἀριθμὸν διώκειν οὐδὲ τὸ παρ’ ὀλίγον συκοφαντεῖν, ὅπου καὶ νῦν ἐπίδοσιν τοσαύτην ἀστρολογίας ἐχούσης περιγίνεται τῆς ἐμπειρίας τῶν μαθηματικῶν ἡ τῆς κινήσεως ἀνωμαλία διαφεύγουσα τὸν λόγον.

[e] ‘Διὰ τί τὴν μετὰ καλάνδας ἡμέραν καὶ νόννας καὶ εἰδοὺς ἀνέξοδον καὶ ἀνεκδήμητον τίθενται;’ πότερον, ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι νομίζουσι καὶ Λίβιος (VI 1, 2) ἱστορεῖ, μετὰ τὰς Κυιντιλίας εἰδούς, ἃς νῦν Ἰουλίας καλοῦσιν, ἐξάγοντες οἱ χιλίαρχοι τὸ στράτευμα περὶ τὸν Ἀλλίαν ποταμὸν ἐκρατήθησαν ὑπὸ Κελτῶν μάχῃ καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀπώλεσαν, νομισθείσης δὲ τῆς μετὰ τὰς εἰδοὺς ἀποφράδος προήγαγεν ὥσπερ φιλεῖ πορρωτέρω τὸ ἔθος ἡ δεισιδαιμονία καὶ κατέστησεν εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν εὐλάβειαν τήν τε μετὰ νόννας καὶ τὴν μετὰ καλάνδας; ἢ τοῦτο [f] μὲν ἔχει πολλὰς ἀλογίας; ἄλλῃ τε γὰρ ἡμέρᾳ τὴν μάχην ἡττήθησαν, ἣν Ἀλλιάδα διὰ τὸν ποταμὸν καλοῦντες ἀφοσιοῦνται, καὶ πολλῶν ἀποφράδων οὐσῶν οὐκ ἐν παντὶ μηνὶ τὰς ὁμωνύμους παραφυλάττουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἑκάστην ἐν ᾧ συνέτυχε, τό τε ταῖς μετὰ νόννας καὶ καλάνδας ἁπλῶς ἁπάσαις προστρίψασθαι τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν ἀπιθανώτατον. ὅρα δὴ μή, καθάπερ τῶν μηνῶν τὸν μὲν πρῶτον ὀλυμπίοις θεοῖς ἱέρωσαν, τὸν δὲ δεύτερον χθονίοις ἐν ᾧ καὶ καθαρμούς τινας τελοῦσι καὶ τοῖς κατοιχομένοις [270] [a] ἐναγίζουσιν, οὕτω τῶν ἡμερῶν τὰς μὲν οἷον ἀρχὰς καὶ κυρίας ὥσπερ εἴρηται τρεῖς οὔσας ἑορτασίμους καὶ ἱερὰς ἔθεντο, τὰς δ’ ἐφεξῆς δαίμοσι καὶ φθιτοῖς ἐπιφημίσαντες ἀποφράδας καὶ ἀπράκτους ἐνόμισαν. καὶ γὰρ Ἕλληνες ἐν τῇ νουμηνίᾳ τοὺς θεοὺς σεβόμενοι τὴν δευτέραν ἥρωσι καὶ δαίμοσιν ἀποδεδώκασι καὶ τῶν κρατήρων ὁ δεύτερος ἥρωσιν ἐπικίρναται καὶ ἡρωίσι. καὶ ὅλως ἀριθμός τις ὁ χρόνος, ἀριθμοῦ δὲ θεῖον ἡ ἀρχή· μονὰς γάρ ἐστιν· ἡ δὲ μετ’ αὐτὴν δυὰς ἀντίπαλος τῇ ἀρχῇ καὶ ἀρτίων πρώτη.

[b] τὸ δ’ ἄρτιον ἐνδεὲς καὶ ἀτελὲς καὶ ἀόριστον, ὥσπερ αὖ τὸ περιττὸν ὥρισται καὶ περαίνει καὶ τέλειόν ἐστι. διὸ καὶ νόνναι μὲν ἐπιβάλλουσι διὰ πέμπτης καλάνδαις, νόνναις δ’ εἰδοὶ δι’ ἐνάτης. ὁρίζουσι γὰρ οἱ περισσοὶ τὰς ἀρχάς· οἱ δὲ μετὰ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἄρτιοι ὄντες οὐκ ἔχουσι τάξιν οὐδὲ δύναμιν, ὅθεν οὐκ ἄρχονται πράξεως οὐδ’ ἀποδημίας ἐν ταύταις. ἢ καὶ τὸ τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους ἔχει λόγον, ἐρίσαι ποτὲ τὴν ὑστεραίαν πρὸς τὴν ἑορτήν, ἐκείνης μὲν ἀσχολίαν καὶ κόπον ἐχούσης πολύν, αὐτὴ δὲ παρέχουσα μετὰ σχολῆς καὶ ἡσυχίας ἀπολαῦσαι τῶν παρεσκευασμένων πρὸς τὴν ἑορτήν· ἀποκρίνασθαι δὲ [c] πρὸς ταῦτα τὴν ἑορτήν ‘ἀληθῆ λέγεις, ἀλλ’ ἐμοῦ μὴ γενομένης οὐδ’ ἂν σὺ ἦς;’ ταῦτα δ’ ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς πρὸς τοὺς αὖθις ἔλεγε στρατηγοὺς τῶν Ἀθηναίων ὡς οὐκ ἂν οὐδαμοῦ φανέντας, εἰ μὴ τὴν πόλιν αὐτὸς ἔσῳσεν. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν πᾶσα μὲν ἀξία σπουδῆς ἀποδημία καὶ πρᾶξις οἰκονομίας δεῖται καὶ παρασκευῆς, Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ τὸ παλαιὸν ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς οὐδὲν ᾠκονόμουν οὐδ’ ἐφρόντιζον ἀλλ’ ἢ περὶ τοὺς θεοὺς ἠσχολοῦντο καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔπραττον, ὥσπερ ἔτι νῦν προκηρύττουσιν οἱ ἱερεῖς ἐπὶ τὰς θυσίας βαδίζοντες, εἰκότως εὐθὺς οὐκ ἐξεδήμουν μετὰ τὰς ἑορτὰς οὐδ’ ἔπραττον (ἀπαράσκευοι γὰρ ἦσαν), ἀλλ’ ἐκφροντίζοντες [d] οἴκοι καὶ παρασκευαζόμενοι τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην διετέλουν. ἢ καθάπερ ἔτι νῦν προσευξάμενοι καὶ προσκυνήσαντες ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς ἐπιμένειν καὶ καθίζειν εἰώθασιν, οὕτως οὐκ εὐθὺς ἐπέβαλλον ταῖς ἱεραῖς ἡμέραις τὰς ἐνεργούς, ἀλλ’ ἐποίουν τι διάλειμμα καὶ διάστημα, πολλὰ τῶν πραγμάτων δυσχερῆ καὶ ἀβούλητα φερόντων;

‘Διὰ τί λευκὰ φοροῦσιν ἐν τοῖς πένθεσιν αἱ γυναῖκες ἱμάτια καὶ λευκοὺς κεκρυφάλους;’ πότερον ὡς τοὺς μάγους φασὶν πρὸς τὸν Ἅιδην καὶ τὸ σκότος ἀντιταττομένους τῷ δὲ φωτεινῷ καὶ λαμπρῷ συνεξομοιοῦντας ἑαυτοὺς τοῦτο ποιεῖν; ἤ, καθάπερ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ τεθνηκότος [e] ἀμφιεννύουσι λευκοῖς, καὶ τοὺς προσήκοντας ἀξιοῦσι; τὸ δὲ σῶμα κοσμοῦσιν οὕτως, ἐπεὶ μὴ δύνανται τὴν ψυχήν· βούλονται δ’ ἐκείνην λαμπρὰν καὶ καθαρὰν προπέμπειν, ὡς ἀφειμένην ἤδη καὶ διηγωνισμένην μέγαν ἀγῶνα καὶ ποικίλον. ἢ τὸ μὲν λιτὸν ἐν τούτοις μάλιστα καὶ τὸ ἁπλοῦν πρέπει; τῶν δὲ βαπτῶν τὰ μὲν καὶ πολυτέλειαν ἐμφαίνει τὰ δὲ περιεργίαν· οὐ γὰρ ἧττον ἔστι πρὸς τὸ μέλαν ἢ τὸ ἁλουργὸν εἰπεῖν ‘δολερὰ μὲν τὰ εἵματα, [f] δολερὰ δὲ τὰ χρώματα.’ τὸ δ’ αὐτόχρουν μέλαν οὐχ ὑπὸ τέχνης ἀλλὰ φύσει βαπτόν ἐστι, καὶ μεμιγμένον τῷ σκιώδει κεκράτηται. μόνον οὖν τὸ λευκὸν εἰλικρινὲς καὶ ἀμιγὲς καὶ ἀμίαντόν ἐστι βαφῇ καὶ ἀμίμητον· οἰκειότατον οὖν τοῖς θαπτομένοις. καὶ γὰρ ὁ τεθνηκὼς ἁπλοῦν τι γέγονε καὶ ἀμιγὲς καὶ καθαρὸν ἀτεχνῶς οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ φαρμάκου δευσοποιοῦ τοῦ σώματος ἀπηλλαγμένος. ἐν δ’ Ἄργει λευκὰ φοροῦσιν ἐν τοῖς πένθεσιν, ὡς Σωκράτης (FHG IV p. 498) φησίν, ὑδατόκλυστα.

‘Διὰ τί πᾶν τεῖχος ἀβέβηλον καὶ ἱερὸν νομίζουσι, [271] [a] τὰς δὲ πύλας οὐ νομίζουσιν;’ ἦ καθάπερ ἔγραψε Βάρρων, τὸ μὲν τεῖχος ἱερὸν δεῖ νομίζειν, ὅπως ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ μάχωνται προθύμως καὶ ἀποθνήσκωσιν; οὕτω γὰρ δοκεῖ καὶ Ῥωμύλος ἀποκτεῖναι τὸν ἀδελφὸν ὡς ἄβατον καὶ ἱερὸν τόπον ἐπιχειροῦντα διαπηδᾶν καὶ ποιεῖν ὑπερβατὸν καὶ βέβηλον. τὰς δὲ πύλας οὐχ οἷόν τ’ ἦν ἀφιερῶσαι, δι’ ὧν ἄλλα τε πολλὰ τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ τοὺς νεκροὺς ἐκκομίζουσιν. ὅθεν οἱ πόλιν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς κτίζοντες ὅσον ἂν μέλλωσι τόπον ἀνοικοδομεῖν, ἐπίασιν ἀρότρῳ, βοῦν ἄρρενα καὶ θήλειαν ὑποζεύξαντες· ὅταν δὲ τὰ τείχη περιορίζωσι, τὰς τῶν πυλῶν χώρας διαμετροῦντες τὴν [b] ὕννιν ὑφαιροῦσι, καὶ μεταφέρουσιν οὕτω τὸ ἄροτρον, ὡς τὴν ἀρουμένην πᾶσαν ἱερὰν καὶ ἄσυλον ἐσομένην.

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς παῖδας, ὅταν ὀμνύωσι τὸν Ἡρακλέα,

κωλύουσιν ὑπὸ στέγῃ τοῦτο ποιεῖν καὶ κελεύουσιν εἰς ὕπαιθρον προϊέναι;’ πότερον ὡς ἔνιοι λέγουσιν οὐκ οἰκουρίᾳ τὸν Ἡρακλέα χαίρειν ἀλλ’ ὑπαίθρῳ βίῳ καὶ θυραυλίαις νομίζοντες; ἢ μᾶλλον, ὅτι τῶν θεῶν οὐκ ἐπιχώριος οὗτος ἀλλὰ πόρρωθεν καὶ ξένος; οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸν Διόνυσον ὀμνύουσιν ὑπὸ στέγῃ, ξένον ὄντα καὶ αὐτόν, εἴπερ †ἐστὶ Διόνυσος. ἢ ταῦτα μὲν λέγεται καὶ παίζεται [c] πρὸς τοὺς παῖδας, ἄλλως δ’ ἐπίσχεσίς ἐστι τῆς πρὸς τὸν ὅρκον εὐχερείας καὶ ταχύτητος τὸ γινόμενον, ὡς Φαβωρῖνος ἔλεγε; τὸ γὰρ ὥσπερ ἐκ παρασκευῆς μέλλησιν ἐμποιεῖ καὶ βουλεύσασθαι δίδωσι. συμβάλοιτο δ’ ἄν τις τῷ Φαβωρίνῳ πρὸς τὸ μὴ κοινὸν ἀλλ’ ἴδιον εἶναι τοῦ θεοῦ τούτου τὸ γινόμενον ἐκ τῶν περὶ Ἡρακλέους λεγομένων. ἱστορεῖται γὰρ οὕτως εὐλαβὴς γεγονέναι πρὸς ὅρκον, ὥσθ’ ἅπαξ ὀμόσαι καὶ μόνῳ Φυλεῖ τῷ Αὐγέου· διὸ καὶ τὴν Πυθίαν προφέρειν τὰ ὅρκια ταῦτα Λακεδαιμονίοις ὡς ‘ἐμπεδοῦσι λῷον εἴη καὶ ἄμεινον.’

[d] ‘Διὰ τί τὴν γαμουμένην οὐκ ἐῶσιν αὐτὴν ὑπερβῆναι τὸν οὐδὸν τῆς οἰκίας, ἀλλ’ ὑπεραίρουσιν οἱ προπέμποντες;’ πότερον ὅτι καὶ τὰς πρώτας γυναῖκας ἁρπάσαντες οὕτως εἰσήνεγκαν, αὐταὶ δ’ οὐκ εἰσῆλθον; ἢ βούλονται δοκεῖν εἰσιέναι βιαζομένας οὐχ ἑκούσας, ὅπου μέλλουσι διαλύειν τὴν παρθενίαν; ἢ σύμβολόν ἐστι τοῦ μηδ’ ἐξιέναι δι’ αὐτῆς μηδὲ καταλιπεῖν τὴν οἰκίαν, εἰ μὴ βιασθείη, καθάπερ καὶ εἰσῆλθε βιασθεῖσα; καὶ γὰρ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν Βοιωτίᾳ καίουσι πρὸ τῆς θύρας τὸν ἄξονα τῆς ἁμάξης, ἐμφαίνοντες δεῖν τὴν νύμφην ἐμμένειν ὡς ἀνῃρημένου τοῦ ἀπάξοντος.

‘Διὰ τί τὴν νύμφην εἰσάγοντες λέγειν κελεύουσιν [e] ‘ὅπου σὺ Γάιος, ἐγὼ Γαΐα’;’ πότερον ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς εὐθὺς εἴσεισι τῷ κοινωνεῖν ἁπάντων καὶ συνάρχειν (καὶ τὸ μὲν δηλούμενόν ἐστιν ‘ὅπου σὺ κύριος καὶ οἰκοδεσπότης, καὶ ἐγὼ κυρία καὶ οἰκοδέσποινα·’ τοῖς δ’ ὀνόμασι τούτοις ἄλλως κέχρηνται κοινοῖς οὖσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ νομικοὶ Γάιον Σήιον καὶ Λούκιον Τίτιον, καὶ οἱ φιλόσοφοι Δίωνα καὶ Θέωνα παραλαμβάνουσιν); ἢ διὰ Γαΐαν Καικιλίαν καλὴν καὶ ἀγαθὴν γυναῖκα, τῶν Ταρκυνίου παίδων ἑνὶ συνοικήσασαν, ἧς ἐν τῷ τοῦ Σάγκτου ἱερῷ χαλκοῦς ἀνδριὰς ἕστηκεν; ἔκειτο δὲ πάλαι καὶ σανδάλια καὶ ἄτρακτος, τὸ μὲν οἰκουρίας αὐτῆς, τὸ δ’ ἐνεργείας σύμβολον.

[f] ‘Διὰ τί ὁ πολυθρύλλητος ᾄδεται Ταλάσιος ἐν τοῖς γάμοις;’ πότερον ἀπὸ τῆς ταλασίας (καὶ γὰρ τὸν τάλαρον τάλασον ὀνομάζουσι· καὶ τὴν νύμφην εἰσάγοντες νάκος ὑποστρωννύουσιν, αὐτὴ δ’ εἰσφέρει μὲν ἠλακάτην καὶ τὴν ἄτρακτον, ἐρίῳ δὲ τὴν θύραν περιστέφει τοῦ ἀνδρός); ἢ τὸ λεγόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἱστορικῶν ἀληθές, ὅτι νεανίας ἦν τις λαμπρὸς ἐν τοῖς πολεμικοῖς καὶ τἄλλα χρηστὸς ὄνομα Ταλάσιος· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἥρπαζον οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι τὰς τῶν [272] [a] Σαβίνων θυγατέρας ἐλθούσας ἐπὶ θέαν, ἐκομίζετο τῷ Ταλασίῳ παρθένος ἐκπρεπὴς τὴν ὄψιν ὑπὸ δημοτικῶν τινων καὶ πελατῶν τοῦ Ταλασίου, βοώντων ὑπὲρ ἀσφαλείας καὶ τοῦ μηδένα πελάζειν μηδ’ ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι τῆς παιδός, ὡς Ταλασίῳ γυνὴ φέροιτο. τιμῶντες οὖν οἱ λοιποὶ τὸν Ταλάσιον καὶ συνευχόμενοι καὶ συνευφημοῦντες εἵποντο καὶ παρέπεμπον· ὅθεν, εὐτυχοῦς γάμου [b] γενομένου, καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις εἰθίσθησαν ἐπιφωνεῖν τὸν Ταλάσιον, ὥσπερ Ἕλληνες τὸν Ὑμέναιον;

‘Διὰ τί τοῦ Μαΐου μηνὸς περὶ τὴν πανσέληνον ἀπὸ τῆς ξυλίνης γεφύρας εἴδωλα ῥιπτοῦντες ἀνθρώπων εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν Ἀργείους τὰ ῥιπτούμενα καλοῦσιν;’ ἦ τὸ παλαιὸν οἱ περὶ τὸν τόπον οἰκοῦντες βάρβαροι τοὺς ἁλισκομένους Ἕλληνας οὕτως ἀπώλλυσαν, Ἡρακλῆς δὲ θαυμασθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἔπαυσε μὲν τὴν ξενοκτονίαν, ἐδίδαξε δὲ τὸ ἔθος καὶ τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν ἀπομιμουμένους εἴδωλα ῥιπτεῖν; Ἀργείους δὲ τοὺς Ἕλληνας οἱ παλαιοὶ πάντας ὁμαλῶς προσηγόρευον. εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία τῶν Ἀρκάδων πολεμίους καὶ τοὺς Ἀργείους διὰ τὴν γειτνίασιν ἡγουμένων [c] οἱ περὶ Εὔανδρον ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος φυγόντες καὶ κατοικήσαντες αὐτόθι τὴν μνησικακίαν καὶ τὴν ἔχθραν διεφύλαττον.

‘Διὰ τί τὸ παλαιὸν οὐκ ἐδείπνουν ἔξω χωρὶς τῶν υἱῶν ἔτι τὴν παιδικὴν ἡλικίαν ἐχόντων;’ ἦ τοῦτο μὲν καὶ Λυκοῦργος εἴθισε, τοὺς παῖδας ἐπεισάγων τοῖς φιδιτίοις, ὅπως ἐθίζωνται μὴ θηριωδῶς μηδ’ ἀτάκτως ἀλλὰ μετ’ εὐλαβείας ταῖς ἡδοναῖς προσφέρεσθαι, τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους οἷον ἐπισκόπους καὶ θεατὰς ἔχοντες; οὐκ ἔλαττον δὲ τούτου καὶ τὸ τοὺς πατέρας αὐτοὺς μᾶλλον αἰδεῖσθαι καὶ σωφρονεῖν τῶν υἱῶν παρόντων· ὅπου γὰρ ἀναισχυντοῦσι γέροντες, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Legg. 729c), ἐνταῦθ’ ἀνάγκη καὶ νέους ἀναισχυντοτάτους εἶναι.

‘Διὰ τί τῶν ἄλλων Ῥωμαίων ἐν τῷ Φεβρουαρίῳ [d] μηνὶ ποιουμένων χοὰς καὶ ἐναγισμοὺς τοῖς τεθνηκόσι Δέκιμος Βροῦτος, ὡς Κικέρων (Legg. II 21) ἱστόρηκεν, ἐν τῷ Δεκεμβρίῳ τοῦτ’ ἔπραττεν (ἦν δ’ οὗτος ὁ Λυσιτάνειαν ἐπελθὼν καὶ πρῶτος ἐπέκεινα στρατῷ διαβὰς τὸν τῆς Λήθης ποταμόν);’ πότερον, ὥσπερ ἡμέρας ληγούσης καὶ μηνὸς φθίνοντος εἰώθασιν ἐναγίζειν οἱ πολλοί, λόγον ἔχει καὶ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ καταστρέφοντος ἐν τῷ τελευταίῳ μηνὶ τιμᾶν τοὺς τεθνηκότας (ἔστι δὲ τῶν μηνῶν τελευταῖος ὁ Δεκέμβριος); ἢ χθονίων μὲν αἱ τιμαὶ θεῶν, τιμᾶν δὲ τοὺς χθονίους ὡραῖόν [e] ἐστι τῶν καρπῶν ἁπάντων εἰληφότων συντέλειαν; ἢ ὅτε κινοῦσι τὴν γῆν ἀρχόμενοι σπόρου, μεμνῆσθαι μάλιστα τῶν κάτω προσήκει; ἢ Κρόνῳ μὲν οὗτος ὁ μὴν ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων καθιέρωται, Κρόνον δὲ τῶν κάτω θεῶν οὐ τῶν ἄνω νομίζουσιν; ἢ μεγίστης αὐτοῖς ἑορτῆς τῶν Κρονίων καθεστώσης καὶ συνουσίας τε πλείστας καὶ ἀπολαύσεις ἔχειν δοκούσης ἔδοξε καὶ ταύτης ἀπονέμειν τινὰς ἀπαρχὰς τοῖς τεθνηκόσιν; ἢ τοῦτο, μόνον Βροῦτον ἐναγίζειν ἐν τῷ μηνὶ τούτῳ, καθόλου ψεῦδός ἐστι; καὶ γὰρ τῇ Λαρεντίᾳ ποιοῦσι τὸν ἐναγισμὸν καὶ χοὰς ἐπιφέρουσιν ἐπὶ τὸν τάφον τοῦ Δεκεμβρίου μηνός.

‘Διὰ τί δὲ τὴν Λαρεντίαν, ἑταίραν γεγενημένην, [f] οὕτω τιμῶσιν;’ ἄλλην γὰρ εἶναι Λαρεντίαν Ἄκκαν ἱστοροῦσι τὴν Ῥωμύλου τροφόν, ἣν τῷ Ἀπριλλίῳ μηνὶ τιμῶσι. τῇ δ’ ἑταίρᾳ Λαρεντίᾳ Φαβόλαν ἐπίκλησιν εἶναι λέγουσιν, ἐγνωρίσθη δὲ διὰ τοιαύτην αἰτίαν. ζάκορός τις Ἡρακλέους ὡς ἔοικεν ἀπολαύων σχολῆς ἔθος εἶχεν ἐν πεττοῖς καὶ κύβοις τὰ πολλὰ διημερεύειν· καί ποτε, τῶν εἰωθότων παίζειν σὺν αὐτῷ καὶ μετέχειν τῆς τοιαύτης διατριβῆς κατὰ τύχην μηδενὸς παρόντος, ἀδημονῶν τὸν θεὸν προυκαλεῖτο διαβαλέσθαι τοῖς κύβοις πρὸς αὐτὸν ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς, νικήσας μὲν εὑρέσθαι τι παρὰ τοῦ [273] [a] θεοῦ χρηστόν, ἂν δὲ λειφθῇ, δεῖπνον αὐτὸς τῷ θεῷ παρασχεῖν καὶ μείρακα καλὴν συναναπαυσομένην. ἐκ τούτου δὲ τοὺς κύβους προθέμενος τὸν μὲν ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ, τὸν δ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ θεοῦ βαλὼν ἐλείφθη. ταῖς οὖν προκλήσεσιν ἐμμένων τράπεζάν τε λαμπροτέραν παρεσκεύασε τῷ θεῷ, καὶ τὴν Λαρεντίαν παραλαβὼν ἐμφανῶς ἑταιροῦσαν εἱστίασε καὶ κατέκλινεν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ καὶ τὰς θύρας ἀπιὼν ἔκλεισε. λέγεται δὲ νύκτωρ ἐντυχεῖν αὐτῇ τὸν θεὸν οὐκ ἀνθρωπίνως καὶ κελεῦσαι βαδίζειν ἕωθεν εἰς [b] ἀγοράν, ᾧ δ’ ἂν ἐντύχῃ πρώτῳ, προσέχειν μάλιστα καὶ ποιεῖσθαι φίλον. ἀναστᾶσαν οὖν τὴν Λαρεντίαν βαδίζειν, καὶ συντυχεῖν τινι τῶν πλουσίων, ἀγάμων δὲ καὶ παρηκμακότων, ὄνομα Ταρρουτίῳ· γνωρισθεῖσαν δὲ τούτῳ καὶ ζῶντος ἄρχειν τοῦ οἴκου καὶ κληρονομῆσαι τελευτήσαντος· ὕστερον δὲ χρόνοις αὐτὴν τελευτῶσαν τῇ πόλει τὴν οὐσίαν ἀπολιπεῖν· διὸ τὰς τιμὰς ἔχειν ταύτας.

‘Διὰ τί πύλην μίαν θυρίδα καλοῦσι (τὴν γὰρ ‘φαινέστραν’ τοῦτο σημαίνει), καὶ παρ’ αὐτὴν ὁ καλούμενος Τύχης θάλαμός ἐστι;’ πότερον ὅτι Σέρβιος ὁ βασιλεὺς εὐτυχέστατος γενόμενος δόξαν ἔσχε τῇ Τύχῃ [c] συνεῖναι φοιτώσῃ διὰ θυρίδος πρὸς αὐτόν; ἢ τοῦτο μὲν μῦθός ἐστιν, ἐπεὶ δὲ Ταρκυνίου Πρίσκου τοῦ βασιλέως ἀποθανόντος ἡ γυνὴ Τανακυλλὶς ἔμφρων οὖσα καὶ βασιλικὴ διὰ θυρίδος προκύψασα τοῖς πολίταις ἐνέτυχε καὶ συνέπεισεν ἀποδεῖξαι βασιλέα τὸν Σέρβιον, ἔσχε ταύτην ὁ τόπος τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν;

‘Διὰ τί τῶν τοῖς θεοῖς ἀνατιθεμένων μόνα τὰ σκῦλα νενόμισται περιορᾶν ἀφανιζόμενα τῷ χρόνῳ, καὶ μήτε προσκυνεῖν μήτ’ ἐπισκευάζειν;’ πότερον ἵνα τὴν δόξαν οἰόμενοι τοῖς πρώτοις συνεκλιπεῖν ἀεί τι πρόσφατον [d] ὑπόμνημα τῆς ἀρετῆς ζητῶσι κομίζειν; ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι τοῦ χρόνου τὰ σημεῖα τῆς πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους διαφορᾶς ἀμαυροῦντος, αὐτοὺς ἀναλαμβάνειν καὶ καινοποιεῖν ἐπίφθονόν ἐστι καὶ φιλαπέχθημον; οὐδὲ γὰρ παρ’ Ἕλλησιν οἱ πρῶτοι λίθινον καὶ χαλκοῦν στήσαντες τρόπαιον εὐδοκιμοῦσι.

‘Διὰ τί Κόιντος Μέτελλος ἀρχιερεὺς γενόμενος καὶ τἄλλα δοκῶν φρόνιμος εἶναι καὶ πολιτικὸς ἀνὴρ ἐκώλυεν οἰωνίζεσθαι μετὰ τὸν Σεξτίλιον μῆνα τὸν νῦν Αὔγουστον προσαγορευόμενον;’ πότερον ὅτι καθάπερ ἡμέρας ἀκμαζούσης ἢ ἀρχομένης πράττομεν τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ μηνὸς ἱσταμένου καὶ αὐξομένου, τὰς δ’ ἀποκλίτους [e] ὡς ἀχρηματίστους φυλαττόμεθα, παραπλησίως τὸν μετὰ μῆνας ὀκτὼ χρόνον ὥσπερ ἑσπέραν τινὰ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ καὶ δείλην ἀποκλίνοντος ἤδη καὶ φθίνοντος ‹δεῖ› νομίζειν; ἢ καὶ τοῖς ὄρνισι χρηστέον ἀκμαίοις καὶ τελείοις; εἰσὶ δὲ πρὸ τοῦ θέρους τοιοῦτοι· περὶ δὲ τὸ φθινόπωρον οἱ μὲν ἀσθενεῖς καὶ νοσώδεις, οἱ δὲ νεοσσοὶ καὶ ἀτελεῖς, οἱ δὲ παντάπασι φροῦδοι διὰ τὴν ὥραν ἐκτοπίζοντες.

‘Διὰ τί τοῖς μὴ στρατευομένοις μὲν ἐν στρατοπέδῳ δ’ ἄλλως ἀναστρεφομένοις οὐκ ἐξῆν ἄνδρα βαλεῖν πολέμιον οὐδὲ τρῶσαι;’ καὶ τοῦτο Κάτων (Ep. fr. 4 Jordan) ὁ πρεσβύτης ἐν ἐπιστολῇ τινι δεδήλωκε, γράφων πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν καὶ κελεύων, εἰ παρεθείη τῆς στρατείας [f] ἀποπληρώσας τὸν χρόνον, ὑποστρέφειν, ἢ προσμένοντα λαβεῖν παρὰ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τὸ ἐξεῖναι τρῶσαι καὶ ἀνελεῖν πολέμιον. πότερον ὅτι τὴν ἀνάγκην μόνην ἐξουσίαν εἶναι δεῖ τοῦ ἀνελεῖν ἄνθρωπον, ὁ δ’ ἄνευ νόμου καὶ προστάγματος τοῦτο ποιῶν ἀνδροφόνος ἐστί (διὸ καὶ Χρυσάνταν ἐπῄνεσεν ὁ Κῦρος, ὅτι μέλλων ἀναιρεῖν πολέμιον καὶ τὴν κοπίδα διηρμένος ἀκούσας τὸ ἀνακλητικὸν ἀφῆκε τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ οὐκ ἔπαισεν ὡς κεκωλυμένος); ἢ δεῖ τὸν συνιστάμενον πολεμίοις καὶ μαχόμενον, [274] [a] ἂν ἀποδειλιάσῃ, μὴ ἀνυπεύθυνον εἶναι μηδ’ ἀθῷον; οὐ γὰρ οὕτω βαλών τινα καὶ τρώσας ὠφέλησεν, ὡς φυγὼν καὶ ἀναχωρήσας ἔβλαψεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν ἀφειμένος στρατείας ἀπήλλακται τῶν στρατιωτικῶν νόμων, ὁ δ’ αἰτησάμενος τὸ πράττειν τὰ τῶν στρατευομένων πάλιν ἑαυτὸν ὑπεύθυνον τῷ νόμῳ καὶ τῷ στρατηγῷ δέδωκεν.

‘Διὰ τί τῷ ἱερεῖ τοῦ Διὸς οὐκ ἔξεστιν ἐν ὑπαίθρῳ ἀλείφεσθαι;’ πότερον ὅτι καὶ παῖδας γυμνοῦσθαι πατρὸς ὁρῶντος καὶ πενθεροῦ γαμβρὸν οὐχ ὅσιον ἦν οὐδὲ καλόν, [b] οὐδὲ συνελούοντο τὸ παλαιὸν ἀλλήλοις; πατὴρ δ’ ὁ Ζεὺς καὶ τὸ ἐν ὑπαίθρῳ μάλιστά πως εἶναι δοκεῖ τοῦ Διὸς ἐνώπιον· ἤ, καθάπερ ἐν ναῷ καὶ ἱερῷ γυμνοῦν ἑαυτὸν ἀθέμιτόν ἐστιν, οὕτω τὸν ὕπαιθρον ἀέρα καὶ τὸν ὑπουράνιον, ὄντα καὶ θεῶν καὶ δαιμόνων μεστόν, ἐξευλαβοῦντο; διὸ καὶ τὰ πολλὰ τῶν ἀναγκαίων ὑπὸ στέγῃ δρῶμεν ἐπικρυπτόμενοι καὶ ἐπικαλυπτόμενοι ταῖς οἰκίαις πρὸς τὸ θεῖον. ἢ τὰ μὲν μόνῳ τῷ ἱερεῖ, τὰ δὲ πᾶσιν ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου προστέτακται διὰ τοῦ ἱερέως; διὸ καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν τὸ μὲν στεφανηφορεῖν καὶ κομᾶν καὶ ‹μὴ› σιδηροφορεῖν μηδὲ τοῖς Φωκέων ὅροις ἐμβαίνειν ἴδια λειτουργήματα [c] τοῦ ἄρχοντός ἐστι, τὸ δ’ ὀπώρας μὴ γεύεσθαι πρὸ ἰσημερίας μετοπωρινῆς μηδ’ ἄμπελον τέμνειν πρὸ ἰσημερίας ἐαρινῆς ὁμοῦ τι πᾶσι δηλοῦται διὰ τοῦ ἄρχοντος· ἑκατέρου γὰρ ὁ καιρὸς ἐκεῖνός ἐστι. τὸν αὐτὸν οὖν τρόπον ὡς ἔοικε καὶ τοῦ παρὰ Ῥωμαίοις ἱερέως ἴδιόν ἐστι τὸ μήθ’ ἵππῳ χρῆσθαι μήτε πλείονας νύκτας ἀποδημεῖν τριῶν μήτ’ ἀποτίθεσθαι τὸν πῖλον, ἀφ’ οὗ καί ‘φλᾶμεν’ κέκληται, πολλὰ δ’ ἄλλα δηλοῦται πᾶσι [d] διὰ τοῦ ἱερέως· ὧν ἕν ἐστι καὶ τὸ ἐν ὑπαίθρῳ μὴ ἀλείφεσθαι. τὸ γὰρ ξηραλοιφεῖν ὑφεωρῶντο Ῥωμαῖοι σφόδρα, καὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν οἴονται μηδὲν οὕτως αἴτιον δουλείας γεγονέναι καὶ μαλακίας, ὡς τὰ γυμνάσια καὶ τὰς παλαίστρας, πολὺν ἄλυν καὶ σχολὴν ἐντεκούσας ταῖς πόλεσι καὶ κακοσχολίαν καὶ τὸ παιδεραστεῖν καὶ τὸ διαφθείρειν τὰ σώματα τῶν νέων ὕπνοις καὶ περιπάτοις καὶ κινήσεσιν εὐρύθμοις καὶ διαίταις ἀκριβέσιν, ὑφ’ ὧν ἔλαθον ἐκρυέντες τῶν ὅπλων καὶ ἀγαπήσαντες ἀνθ’ ὁπλιτῶν καὶ ἱππέων ἀγαθῶν εὐτράπελοι καὶ παλαιστρῖται καὶ καλοὶ [e] λέγεσθαι. ταῦτα γοῦν ἔργον ἐστὶν ἀποφυγεῖν εἰς ὕπαιθρον ἀποδυομένους· οἱ δὲ κατ’ οἰκίαν ἀλειφόμενοι καὶ θεραπεύοντες ἑαυτοὺς οὐδὲν ἁμαρτάνουσι.

‘Διὰ τί τὸ παλαιὸν νόμισμα πῆ μὲν εἶχεν Ἰανοῦ διπρόσωπον εἰκόνα, πῆ δὲ πλοίου πρύμναν ἢ πρῷραν ἐγκεχαραγμένην;’ πότερον ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ λέγουσιν ἐπὶ τιμῇ τοῦ Κρόνου πλοίῳ διαπεράσαντος εἰς Ἰταλίαν, ἢ τοῦτο μὲν ἔστιν ἐπὶ πολλῶν λέγειν (καὶ γὰρ Ἰανὸς καὶ Εὔανδρος καὶ Αἰνείας ἐκ θαλάττης προσεκομίσθησαν), ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἄν τις μᾶλλον εἰκάσειεν, ὅτι τὰ μὲν καλὰ ταῖς πόλεσίν ἐστι τὰ δ’ ἀναγκαῖα, καὶ μέγιστον τῶν μὲν [f] καλῶν ἡ εὐνομία τῶν δ’ ἀναγκαίων ἡ εὐπορία; ἐπεὶ τοίνυν εὐνομίαν μὲν Ἰανὸς κατέστησεν αὐτοῖς ἐξημερώσας τὸν βίον, ἀφθονίαν δὲ παρέχει τῶν ἀναγκαίων ὁ ποταμὸς πλώιμος ὢν καὶ τὰ μὲν ἐκ θαλάττης τὰ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς χώρας κατακομίζων, σύμβολον ἔσχε τὸ νόμισμα τοῦ μὲν νομοθέτου τὸ δίμορφον ὡς εἴρηται διὰ τὴν μεταβολήν, τοῦ δὲ ποταμοῦ τὸ πορθμεῖον. ἑτέρῳ δ’ ἐχρήσαντο νομίσματι βοῦν ἔχοντι καὶ πρόβατον καὶ ὗν παράσημον, εὐποροῦντες ἀπὸ τῶν θρεμμάτων μάλιστα καὶ τὴν περιουσίαν ἀπὸ τούτων ἔχοντες· διὸ καὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων πολλὰ [275] [a] τοῖς παλαιοῖς Συίλλιοι καὶ Βουβολκοὶ καὶ Πόρκιοι ἦσαν, ὡς Φενεστέλλας (Annal. fr. 5 Peter) εἴρηκεν.

‘Διὰ τί τῷ τοῦ Κρόνου ναῷ χρῶνται ταμείῳ τῶν δημοσίων χρημάτων, ἅμα δὲ καὶ φυλακτηρίῳ τῶν συμβολαίων;’ πότερον ὅτι δόξα κατεῖχε καὶ λόγος οὐκ εἶναι πλεονεξίαν ἐν ἀνθρώποις οὐδ’ ἀδικίαν Κρόνου βασιλεύοντος, ἀλλὰ πίστιν καὶ δικαιοσύνην; ἢ ὅτι καρπῶν εὑρετὴς καὶ γεωργίας ἡγεμὼν ὁ θεός; ἡ γὰρ ἅρπη τοῦτο σημαίνει καὶ οὐχ ὡς γέγραφεν Ἀντίμαχος (fr. 35 Kinkel) Ἡσιόδῳ (Th. 178) πειθόμενος

‘λέχρις δὲ δρεπάνῳ τέμνων ἀπὸ μήδεα πατρὸς

Οὐρανοῦ Ἀκμονίδεω λάσιος Κρόνος ἀντιτέτυκτο·’

καρπῶν δ’ ἀφθονία καὶ διάθεσις γένεσίς ἐστι νομίσματος· [b] διὸ τὸν αἴτιον καὶ φύλακα ποιοῦνται τῆς εὐδαιμονίας. μαρτυρεῖ δὲ τούτῳ τὸ τὰς ἀγομένας δι’ ἐννέα ἡμερῶν ἐπ’ ἀγορὰν συνόδους, νουνδίνας δὲ καλουμένας, ἱερὰς τοῦ Κρόνου νομίζεσθαι· πράσεως γὰρ καὶ ὠνῆς περιουσία καρπῶν ἀρχὴν παρέσχεν. ἢ ταῦτα μέν ἐστι παλαιά, πρῶτος δὲ ταμεῖον ἀπέδειξε τὸ Κρόνιον τῶν βασιλέων καταλυθέντων Οὐαλέριος Ποπλικόλας πειθόμενος εὐερκῆ καὶ καταφανῆ καὶ δυσεπιβούλευτον εἶναι τὸν τόπον;

‘Διὰ τί δ’ οἱ πρεσβεύοντες εἰς Ῥώμην ὁποθενοῦν ἐπὶ τὸν τοῦ Κρόνου ναὸν βαδίζοντες ἀπογράφονται πρὸς [c] τοὺς ἐπάρχους τοῦ ταμείου;’ πότερον ὡς ξένου τοῦ Κρόνου γενομένου καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τοῖς ξένοις χαίροντος; ἢ καὶ τοῦτο λύεται τῇ ἱστορίᾳ; τὸ γὰρ παλαιὸν ὡς ἔοικεν οἱ ταμίαι ξένια τοῖς πρεσβεύουσιν ἔπεμπον (ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ ‘λαύτια’ τὰ πεμπόμενα) καὶ νοσούντων ἐπεμέλοντο καὶ τελευτήσαντας ἔθαπτον ἐκ δημοσίου, νῦν δ’ ὑπὸ πλήθους τῶν ἀφικνουμένων πρέσβεων ἐκλέλειπται τὸ τῆς δαπάνης μένει δ’ ἔτι τὸ τοῖς ἐπάρχοις τοῦ ταμείου προεντυγχάνειν διὰ τῆς ἀπογραφῆς.

‘Διὰ τί τῷ ἱερεῖ τοῦ Διὸς οὐκ ἔξεστιν ὀμόσαι;’ πότερον ὅτι βάσανός τις ἐλευθέρων ὁ ὅρκος ἐστί, δεῖ δ’ ἀβασάνιστον εἶναι καὶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ [d] ἱερέως; ἢ ὅτι περὶ μικρῶν ἀπιστεῖσθαι τὸν τὰ θεῖα καὶ μέγιστα πεπιστευμένον οὐκ εἰκός ἐστιν; ἢ ὅτι πᾶς ὅρκος εἰς κατάραν τελευτᾷ τῆς ἐπιορκίας, κατάρα δὲ δύσφημον καὶ σκυθρωπόν; ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἄλλοις ἐπαρᾶσθαι νομίζεται τοὺς ἱερεῖς. ἐπῃνέθη γοῦν Ἀθήνησιν ἡ ἱέρεια μὴ θελήσασα καταράσασθαι τῷ Ἀλκιβιάδῃ τοῦ δήμου κελεύοντος· ἔφη γὰρ εὐχῆς οὐ κατάρας ἱέρεια γεγονέναι. ἢ κοινὸς ὁ τῆς ἐπιορκίας κίνδυνος, ἂν ἀνὴρ ἀσεβὴς καὶ ἐπίορκος εὐχῶν κατάρχηται καὶ ἱερῶν ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως;

[e] ‘Διὰ τί τῶν Οὐενεραλίων τῇ ἑορτῇ πολὺν οἶνον ἐκχέουσιν ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης;’ πότερον, ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι λέγουσι, Μεζέντιος ὁ Τυρρηνῶν στρατηγὸς ἔπεμψε πρὸς Αἰνείαν σπενδόμενος ἐπὶ τῷ λαβεῖν τὸν ἐπέτειον οἶνον· ἀρνησαμένου δ’ ἐκείνου τοῖς Τυρρηνοῖς ὑπέσχετο κρατήσας μάχῃ δώσειν τὸν οἶνον· Αἰνείας δὲ τὴν ὑπόσχεσιν αὐτοῦ πυθόμενος τοῖς θεοῖς τὸν οἶνον καθιέρωσε, καὶ μετὰ τὸ νικῆσαι συναγαγὼν τὸ καρπευθὲν ἐξέχεε πρὸ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης· ἢ καὶ τοῦτο σύμβολόν ἐστι τοῦ χρῆναι νήφοντας ἑορτάζειν ἀλλὰ μὴ μεθύοντας, ὡς τῶν θεῶν μᾶλλον τοῖς ἐκχέουσι χαιρόντων τὸν πολὺν ἄκρατον ἢ τοῖς πίνουσι;

[f] ‘Διὰ τί τὸν τῆς Ὅρτας ναὸν ἀνεῳγμένον εἶχον οἱ παλαιοὶ διὰ παντός;’ πότερον, ὡς Ἀντίστιος Λαβεὼν (Huschke 4`6 p. 58 fr. 20) ἱστόρηκε, τοῦ παρορμᾶν ‘ὁρτάρι’ λεγομένου, τὴν οἷον ἐγκελευομένην πρὸς τὰ καλὰ καὶ παρορμῶσαν θεὸν Ὅρταν λεγομένην ᾤοντο δεῖν ὡς ἐνεργὸν ἀεὶ μηδέποτε μέλλειν μηδ’ ἀποκεκλεῖσθαι μηδ’ ἐλιννύειν· ἢ μᾶλλον ὡς νῦν ὀνομάζουσιν αὐτὴν Ὥραν μηκυνομένης τῆς προτέρας συλλαβῆς, ἐπιστρεφῆ τινα καὶ πολυωρητικὴν θεόν, [276] [a] ἣν διαφυλακτικὴν καὶ φροντιστικὴν οὖσαν οὐδέποτε ῥάθυμον οὐδ’ ὀλίγωρον εἶναι τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ἐνόμιζον; ἤ, καθάπερ ἄλλα πολλά, καὶ τοῦτο τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ὀνομάτων ἐστὶ καὶ δηλοῖ θεὸν ἐπισκοποῦσαν καὶ ἐφορῶσαν; ὅθεν ὡς ἀκοιμήτου καὶ ἀύπνου διὰ παντὸς ἀνεῳγμένον ἦν τὸ ἱερὸν αὐτῆς. εἰ μέντοι τὴν ὥραν ὀρθῶς ὁ Λαβεὼν ἀπὸ τοῦ παρορμᾶν ὠνομάσθαι δέδεκται, σκόπει μὴ τὸν ‘ὠράτορα’ προτρεπτικόν τινα καὶ παρορμητικὸν ὄντα σύμβουλον ἢ δημαγωγὸν οὕτως ὠνομάσθαι φατέον, οὐκ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρᾶς καὶ εὐχῆς ὡς ἔνιοι λέγουσι.

[b] ‘Διὰ τί τὸ τοῦ Ἡφαίστου ἱερὸν ἔξω πόλεως ὁ Ῥωμύλος ἱδρύσατο;’ πότερον διὰ τὴν μυθολογουμένην πρὸς Ἄρη ζηλοτυπίαν τοῦ Ἡφαίστου δι’ Ἀφροδίτην υἱὸς εἶναι δοκῶν Ἄρεος οὐκ ἐποιήσατο σύνοικον οὐδ’ ὁμόπολιν αὐτόν; ἢ τοῦτο μὲν ἀβέλτερον, ᾠκοδομήθη δ’ ὁ ναὸς ἐξ ἀρχῆς συνέδριον καὶ βουλευτήριον ἀπόρρητον αὐτῷ μετὰ Τατίου τοῦ συμβασιλεύσαντος, ὅπως συνιόντες ἐνταῦθα μετὰ τῶν γερόντων ἄνευ τοῦ παρενοχλεῖσθαι καθ’ ἡσυχίαν βουλεύοιντο περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων; ἢ πρὸς ἐμπρησμὸν ἄνωθεν ἐπισφαλῶς τῆς Ῥώμης ἐχούσης ἔδοξε τιμᾶν μὲν ἐξοικίσαι δὲ τῆς πόλεως τὸν θεόν;

[c] ‘Διὰ τί τῇ τῶν Κωνσυαλίων ἑορτῇ καὶ τοὺς ἵππους καὶ τοὺς ὄνους στεφανοῦσι καὶ σχολάζειν ἐῶσι;’ πότερον ὅτι Ποσειδῶνι μὲν ἄγουσιν Ἱππείῳ τὴν ἑορτὴν ὁ δ’ ὄνος τῷ ἵππῳ συναπολαύει καὶ συμμετέχει τῆς ἀδείας; ἢ ὅτι ναυτιλίας φανείσης καὶ κομιδῆς κατὰ θάλατταν ὑπῆρξέ τις ἀμωσγέπως ῥᾳστώνη καὶ ἀνάπαυσις τοῖς ὑποζυγίοις;

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς παραγγέλλοντας ἀρχὴν ἔθος ἦν ἐν ἱματίῳ τοῦτο ποιεῖν ἀχίτωνας, ὡς Κάτων (Orig. VII 11 J.) ἱστόρηκε;’ πότερον ἵνα μὴ δεκάζωσιν ἀργύριον ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ [d] κομίζοντες; ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι τοὺς ἀξίους ἄρχειν οὐ γένεσιν οὐδὲ χρήμασιν οὐδὲ δόξαις ἀλλὰ τραύμασι καὶ ὠτειλαῖς ἔκρινον; ὅπως οὖν ταῦτα καθορῷτο τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν, ἀχίτωνες ἐπὶ τὰς παραγγελίας κατῄεσαν; ἢ καθάπερ τῷ δεξιοῦσθαι καὶ παρακαλεῖν καὶ ὑποπίπτειν, οὕτω τῇ γυμνότητι ταπεινοῦντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐδημαγώγουν;

‘Διὰ τί ὁ ἱερεὺς τοῦ Διὸς ἀποθανούσης αὐτῷ τῆς γυναικὸς ἀπετίθετο τὴν ἀρχήν, ὡς Ἀτήιος (Huschke 4`6 p. 66 fr. 12) ἱστόρηκε;’ πότερον ὅτι τοῦ μὴ λαβόντος ὁ λαβὼν εἶτ’ ἀποβαλὼν γυναῖκα γαμετὴν ἀτυχέστερος; ὁ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γεγαμηκότος οἶκος τέλειος, ὁ δὲ τοῦ γήμαντος εἶτ’ ἀποβαλόντος οὐκ ἀτελὴς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ πεπηρωμένος· ἢ συνιερᾶται μὲν ἡ γυνὴ τῷ ἀνδρί (ὡς [e] καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἱερῶν οὐκ ἔστι δρᾶσαι μὴ γαμετῆς συμπαρούσης), τὸ δὲ γαμεῖν εὐθὺς ἑτέραν ἀποβαλόντα τὴν προτέραν οὔτ’ ἴσως δυνατὸν οὔτ’ ἄλλως ἐπιεικές; ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἀποπέμψασθαι πρότερον ἐξῆν, οὐδὲ νῦν ὡς ἔοικεν ἔξεστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐφ’ ἡμῶν ἐπέτρεψεν ἐντευχθεὶς Δομετιανός· οἱ δ’ ἱερεῖς παρεγένοντο τῇ τοῦ γάμου διαλύσει, πολλὰ φρικώδη καὶ ἀλλόκοτα καὶ σκυθρωπὰ δρῶντες. ἧττον δ’ ἄν τις τοῦτο θαυμάσειε προσιστορήσας, ὅτι καὶ τῶν τιμητῶν θατέρου τελευτήσαντος ἔδει [f] καὶ τὸν ἕτερον πεπαῦσθαι τῆς ἀρχῆς· ἀποθανόντος δὲ τιμητοῦ Λιβίου Δρούσου, Σκαῦρος Αἰμίλιος συνάρχων οὐκ ἐβούλετο τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπείπασθαι, μέχρι οὗ τῶν δημάρχων τινὲς αὐτὸν ἐκέλευον εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον ἀπάγεσθαι.
 ‘Διὰ τί τῶν Λαρητῶν, οὓς ἰδίως ‘πραιστίτεις’ καλοῦσι, τούτοις κύων παρέστηκεν, αὐτοὶ δὲ κυνῶν διφθέραις ἀμπέχονται;’ ἦ πραιστίτεις μὲν οἱ προεστῶτές εἰσι, τοὺς δὲ προεστῶτας οἴκου φυλακτικοὺς εἶναι προσήκει, καὶ φοβεροὺς μὲν τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις, ὥσπερ ὁ κύων ἐστίν, ἠπίους δὲ καὶ πράους τοῖς συνοικοῦσιν; ἢ μᾶλλον, ὃ λέγουσιν ἔνιοι Ῥωμαίων, ἀληθές ἐστι καί, καθάπερ οἱ περὶ Χρύσιππον (deest in St. V. Fr.) οἴονται φιλόσοφοι [277] [a] φαῦλα δαιμόνια περινοστεῖν, οἷς οἱ θεοὶ δημίοις χρῶνται ‹καὶ› κολασταῖς ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀνοσίους καὶ ἀδίκους ἀνθρώπους, οὕτως οἱ Λάρητες ἐριννυώδεις τινές εἰσι καὶ ποίνιμοι δαίμονες, ἐπίσκοποι βίων καὶ οἴκων· διὸ καὶ κυνῶν δέρμασιν ἀμπέχονται, καὶ κύων πάρεδρός ἐστιν, ὡς δεινοῖς οὖσιν ἐξιχνεῦσαι καὶ μετελθεῖν τοὺς πονηρούς;

‘Διὰ τί τῇ καλουμένῃ Γενείτῃ Μάνῃ κύνα θύουσι καὶ κατεύχονται μηδένα χρηστὸν ἀποβῆναι τῶν οἰκογενῶν;’ ἦ ὅτι δαίμων ἐστὶν ἡ Γενείτα περὶ τὰς γενέσεις καὶ τὰς λοχείας τῶν φθαρτῶν; ῥύσιν γάρ τινα σημαίνει τοὔνομα καὶ γένεσιν ἢ ῥέουσαν γένεσιν. ὥσπερ οὖν οἱ [b] Ἕλληνες τῇ Ἑκάτῃ, καὶ τῇ Γενείτῃ κύνα Ῥωμαῖοι θύουσιν ὑπὲρ τῶν οἰκογενῶν. Ἀργείους δὲ Σωκράτης (FHG IV p. 498) φησὶ τῇ Εἰλιονείᾳ κύνα θύειν διὰ τὴν ῥᾳστώνην τῆς λοχείας. τὸ δὲ τῆς εὐχῆς πότερον οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπων ἐστὶν οἰκογενῶν, μηδένα χρηστὸν γενέσθαι [ἀλλὰ κυνῶν]· χαλεποὺς γὰρ εἶναι δεῖ καὶ φοβεροὺς τοὺς κύνας· ἢ διὰ τὸ χρηστοὺς κομψῶς λέγεσθαι τοὺς τελευτῶντας αἰνιττόμενοι διὰ τῆς εὐχῆς αἰτοῦνται μηδένα τῶν συνοίκων ἀποθανεῖν; οὐ δεῖ δὲ τοῦτο θαυμάζειν· καὶ γὰρ Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 592) ἐν ταῖς Ἀρκάδων πρὸς [c] Λακεδαιμονίους συνθήκαις γεγράφθαι φησὶ μηδένα χρηστὸν ποιεῖν βοηθείας χάριν τοῖς λακωνίζουσι τῶν Τεγεατῶν, ὅπερ εἶναι μηδένα ἀποκτιννύναι.

‘Διὰ τί τοῖς Καπιτωλίοις θέας ἄγοντες ἔτι νῦν κηρύττουσι Σαρδιανοὺς ὠνίους, καὶ γέρων τις ἐπὶ χλευασμῷ προάγεται παιδικὸν ἐναψάμενος περιδέραιον, ὃ καλοῦσι βοῦλλαν;’ ἦ ὅτι Ῥωμύλῳ πολὺν χρόνον ἐπολέμησαν οἱ λεγόμενοι Οὐήιοι Τυρρηνῶν, καὶ ταύτην τὴν πόλιν ἐσχάτην εἷλε, καὶ πολλοὺς αἰχμαλώτους ἀπεκήρυξε μετὰ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπισκώπτων αὐτοῦ τὴν ἠλιθιότητα [d] καὶ τὴν ἀβελτερίαν; ἐπεὶ δὲ Λυδοὶ μὲν ἦσαν οἱ Τυρρηνοὶ ἐξ ἀρχῆς Λυδῶν δὲ μητρόπολις αἱ Σάρδεις, οὕτω τοὺς Οὐηίους ἀπεκήρυττον· καὶ μέχρι νῦν ἐν παιδιᾷ τὸ ἔθος διαφυλάττουσι.

‘Διὰ τί τὰ κρεωπώλια ‘μάκελλα’ καί ‘μακέλλους’ καλοῦσι;’ πότερον ἀπὸ τῶν μαγείρων τοὔνομα διαφθαρέν, ὥσπερ ἄλλα πολλά, τῇ συνηθείᾳ κεκράτηκε (καὶ γὰρ τὸ κάππα πρὸς τὸ γάμμα συγγένειαν ἔχει παρ’ αὐτοῖς· ὀψὲ γὰρ ἐχρήσαντο τῷ γάμμα Καρβιλίου Σπορίου (Gramm. Rom. Fr. p. IX 2) προσεξευρόντος· καὶ τὸ λάμβδα πάλιν τοῖς ἀπολισθαίνουσι τοῦ ρ δι’ ἀμβλύτητα τῆς γλώττης ὑπόκειται τραυλιζόμενον)· ἢ καὶ τοῦτο [e] λυτέον τῇ ἱστορίᾳ; λέγεται γὰρ ἐν Ῥώμῃ βίαιον ἄνδρα καὶ λῃστρικὸν γενόμενον καὶ περικόψαντα πολλοὺς μόγις ἁλῶναι καὶ κολασθῆναι, τοὔνομα Μάκελλον· ἐκ δὲ τῶν χρημάτων αὐτοῦ δημόσιον οἰκοδομηθῆναι κρεωπώλιον ἀπ’ ἐκείνου κτησάμενον τὴν προσηγορίαν.

‘Διὰ τί ταῖς Ἰανουαρίαις εἰδοῖς περιιέναι δέδοται τοῖς αὐληταῖς τὴν πόλιν ἐσθῆτας γυναικείας φοροῦντας;’ ἦ διὰ τὴν λεγομένην αἰτίαν; μεγάλας γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε τιμὰς [f] ἐκαρποῦντο τοῦ βασιλέως Νομᾶ δόντος αὐτοῖς διὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ὁσιότητα· ταύτας δ’ ὕστερον ἀφαιρεθέντες ὑπὸ τῆς ἀνθυπατικῆς δεκαδαρχίας ἀπεχώρησαν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως. ἦν οὖν ἐπιζήτησις αὐτῶν καί τις ἥπτετο δεισιδαιμονία τῶν ἱερέων ἄναυλα θυόντων. ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐκ ἐπείθοντο μεταπεμπομένοις ἀλλ’ ἐν Τιβοῦρι διέτριβον, ἀνὴρ ἀπελεύθερος κρύφα τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ἐπηγγείλατο κατάξειν αὐτούς. καὶ παρασκευάσας θοίνην ἄφθονον ὡς τεθυκὼς θεοῖς ἐκάλεσε τοὺς αὐλητάς· καὶ γύναια παρῆν ἅμα τῷ πότῳ καὶ παννυχὶς συνεκροτεῖτο παιζόντων καὶ χορευόντων. εἶτ’ ἐξαίφνης ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐμβαλὼν λόγον ὡς τοῦ [278] [a] πάτρωνος ἐπιόντος αὐτῷ καὶ ταραττόμενος συνέπεισε τοὺς αὐλητὰς ἀναβάντας ἐφ’ ἁμάξας δέρρεσι κύκλῳ περικαλυπτομένας εἰς τὸ Τιβοὺρ κομίζεσθαι. τοῦτο δ’ ἦν ἀπάτη· περιαγαγὼν γὰρ τὰς ἁμάξας οὐ συνορῶντας αὐτοὺς διὰ τὸν οἶνον καὶ τὸ σκότος ἔλαθεν εἰς Ῥώμην καταγαγὼν ἅπαντας ἕωθεν· ἐτύγχανον δ’ οἱ πολλοὶ διὰ τὴν παννυχίδα καὶ τὸν πότον ἐν ἐσθῆσιν ἀνθιναῖς καὶ γυναικείαις ὄντες. ὡς οὖν ἐπείσθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχόντων [b] καὶ διηλλάγησαν, ἐνομίσθη τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην οὕτως ἀμπεχομένους σοβεῖν διὰ τῆς πόλεως.

‘Διὰ τί τὸ τῆς Καρμέντης ἱερὸν ἐξ ἀρχῆς δοκοῦσιν αἱ μητέρες ἱδρύσασθαι καὶ νῦν μάλιστα σέβονται;’ λέγεται γάρ τις λόγος, ὡς ἐκωλύθησαν ὑπὸ τῆς βουλῆς αἱ γυναῖκες ὀχήμασι χρῆσθαι ζευκτοῖς· συνέθεντο οὖν ἀλλήλαις μὴ κυΐσκεσθαι μηδὲ τίκτειν ἀμυνόμεναι τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἄχρις οὗ μετέγνωσαν καὶ συνεχώρησαν αὐταῖς· γενομένων δὲ παίδων εὐτεκνοῦσαι καὶ πολυτεκνοῦσαι τὸ τῆς Καρμέντης ἱερὸν ἱδρύσαντο. τὴν δὲ Καρμένταν οἱ μὲν Εὐάνδρου μητέρα λέγουσιν οὖσαν ἐλθεῖν εἰς Ἰταλίαν [c] ὀνομαζομένην Θέμιν, ὡς δ’ ἔνιοι, Νικοστράτην· ἐμμέτρους δὲ χρησμοὺς ᾄδουσαν ὑπὸ τῶν Λατίνων Καρμένταν ὀνομάζεσθαι· τὰ γὰρ ἔπη ‘κάρμινα’ καλοῦσιν. οἱ δὲ Μοῖραν ἡγοῦνται τὴν Καρμένταν εἶναι καὶ διὰ τοῦτο θύειν αὐτῇ τὰς μητέρας. ἔστι δὲ τοῦ ὀνόματος τὸ ἔτυμον ‘ὑστερημένη νοῦ’ διὰ τὰς θεοφορήσεις. ὅθεν οὐ τὰ κάρμινα τῇ Καρμέντῃ τοὔνομα παρέσχεν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀπ’ ἐκείνης ἐκλήθη διὰ τὸ τοὺς χρησμοὺς ἐν ἔπεσι καὶ μέτροις ἐνθουσιῶσαν ᾄδειν.

‘Διὰ τί τῇ Ῥουμίνᾳ θύουσαι γάλα κατασπένδουσι τῶν ἱερῶν, οἶνον δ’ οὐ προσφέρουσιν;’ ἦ ῥοῦμαν Λατῖνοι τὴν θηλὴν καλοῦσι, καὶ Ῥουμινᾶλιν ὀνομασθῆναι λέγουσιν, παρ’ ὅσον ἡ λύκαινα τῷ Ῥωμύλῳ τὴν θηλὴν παρέσχεν· [d] ὥσπερ οὖν ἡμεῖς τὰς τρεφούσας τὰ παιδία γάλακτι θηλονὰς ἀπὸ τῆς θηλῆς καλοῦμεν, οὕτως ἡ Ῥουμῖνα θηλώ τις οὖσα καὶ τιθήνη καὶ κουροτρόφος οὐ προσίεται τὸν ἄκρατον ὡς βλαβερὸν ὄντα τοῖς νηπίοις;

‘Διὰ τί τῶν συγκλητικῶν τοὺς μὲν πατέρας συγγεγραμμένους, τοὺς δ’ ἁπλῶς πατέρας προσηγόρευον;’ ἦ τοὺς μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς κατανεμηθέντας ὑπὸ τοῦ Ῥωμύλου πατέρας ἐκάλουν καὶ πατρικίους, οἷον εὐπατρίδας ὄντας, πατέρας αὑτῶν ἔχοντας ἀποδεῖξαι· τοὺς δ’ ὕστερον ἐπεγγραφέντας ἐκ τῶν δημοτικῶν συγγεγραμμένους πατέρας ὠνόμασαν;

‘Διὰ τί κοινὸς ἦν βωμὸς Ἡρακλέους καὶ Μουσῶν;’ [e] ἦ ὅτι γράμματα τοὺς περὶ Εὔανδρον ἐδίδαξεν Ἡρακλῆς, ὡς Ἰόβας (FHG III p. 470) ἱστόρηκε; καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα σεμνὸν ἐνομίζετο, φίλους καὶ συγγενεῖς διδασκόντων· ὀψὲ δ’ ἤρξαντο μισθοῦ διδάσκειν, καὶ πρῶτος ἀνέῳξε γραμματοδιδασκαλεῖον Σπόριος Καρβίλιος, ἀπελεύθερος Καρβιλίου τοῦ πρώτου γαμετὴν ἐκβαλόντος.

‘Διὰ τί, δυεῖν βωμῶν Ἡρακλέους ὄντων, οὐ μεταλαμβάνουσι γυναῖκες οὐδὲ γεύονται τῶν ἐπὶ τοῦ μείζονος θυομένων;’ πότερον ὅτι τῶν ἱερῶν αἱ περὶ τὴν Καρμένταν ὑστέρησαν, ὑστέρησε δὲ καὶ τὸ Πιναρίων [f] γένος; ὅθεν εἰργόμενοι τῆς θοίνης ἑστιωμένων τῶν ἄλλων Πινάριοι προσηγορεύθησαν· ἢ διὰ τὰ μυθολογούμενα περὶ τοῦ χιτῶνος καὶ τῆς Δηιανείρας;

‘Διὰ τί τὸν θεὸν ἐκεῖνον, ᾧ μάλιστα τὴν Ῥώμην σῴζειν προσήκει καὶ φυλάττειν, εἴτ’ ἐστὶν ἄρρην εἴτε θήλεια, καὶ λέγειν ἀπείρηται καὶ ζητεῖν καὶ ὀνομάζειν· ταύτην δὲ τὴν ἀπόρρησιν ἐξάπτουσι δεισιδαιμονίας, ἱστοροῦντες Οὐαλέριον Σωρανὸν ἀπολέσθαι κακῶς διὰ τὸ ἐξειπεῖν;’ πότερον, ὡς τῶν Ῥωμαϊκῶν τινες ἱστορήκασιν, ἐκκλήσεις εἰσὶ καὶ γοητεῖαι θεῶν, αἷς νομίζοντες καὶ αὐτοὶ θεούς τινας ἐκκεκλῆσθαι παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων [279] [a] καὶ μετῳκηκέναι πρὸς αὑτοὺς ἐφοβοῦντο τὸ αὐτὸ παθεῖν ὑφ’ ἑτέρων; ὥσπερ οὖν Τύριοι δεσμοὺς ἀγάλμασι λέγονται περιβαλεῖν, ἕτεροι δ’ αἰτεῖν ἐγγυητὰς ἐπὶ λουτρὸν ἢ καθαρμόν τινα προπέμποντες, οὕτως ᾤοντο Ῥωμαῖοι τὸ ἄρρητον καὶ τὸ ἄγνωστον ἀσφαλεστάτην εἶναι θεοῦ καὶ βεβαιοτάτην φρουράν· ἢ καθάπερ Ὁμήρῳ (Ο 193) πεποίηται τὸ ‘γαῖα δ’ ἐστὶ ξυνὴ πάντων’, ὅπως οἱ ἄνθρωποι τοὺς θεοὺς πάντας σέβωνται καὶ τιμῶσι τὴν γῆν κοινῶς ἔχοντας, οὕτως ἀπεκρύψαντο τὸν κύριον τῆς σωτηρίας οἱ παλαιοὶ Ῥωμαῖοι, βουλόμενοι μὴ μόνον τοῦτον ἀλλὰ πάντας ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν τοὺς θεοὺς τιμᾶσθαι;

[b] ‘Διὰ τί τῶν λεγομένων Φιτιαλέων, Ἑλληνιστὶ δ’ οἷον εἰρηνοποιῶν ‹καὶ› σπονδοφόρων, ὁ καλούμενος ‘πάτερ πατρᾶτος’ ἐνομίζετο μέγιστος (ἔστι δ’ οὗτος, ᾧ πατὴρ ζῇ καὶ παῖδες εἰσίν· ἔχει δὲ καὶ νῦν προνομίαν τινὰ καὶ πίστιν· οἱ γὰρ στρατηγοὶ τὰ δι’ εὐμορφίαν καὶ ὥραν ἐπιμελοῦς δεόμενα καὶ σώφρονος φυλακῆς σώματα τούτοις παρακατατίθενται)’; πότερον ὅτι τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι τοὺς παῖδας αὐτοῖς καὶ τὸ φοβεῖσθαι τοὺς πατέρας πρόσεστιν; ἢ τοὔνομα τὴν αἰτίαν ὑπαγορεύει; βούλεται γὰρ εἶναι τὸ ‘πατρᾶτον’ οἱονεὶ συμπεπερασμένον καὶ πεπερατωμένον, ὡς τελειοτέρου τῶν ἄλλων ὄντος ᾧ [c] συμβέβηκε πατέρα κεκτημένῳ πατρὶ γενέσθαι. ἢ δεῖ τὸν ὅρκων καὶ εἰρήνης προιστάμενον ‘ἅμα πρόσω καὶ ὀπίσω’ καθ’ Ὅμηρον (Α 343 ω 452) ὁρᾶν; εἴη δ’ ἂν μάλιστα τοιοῦτος, ᾧ παῖς ἔστιν ὑπὲρ οὗ βουλεύεται, καὶ πατὴρ μεθ’ οὗ βουλεύεται.

‘Διὰ τί τῷ καλουμένῳ ‘ῥῆγι σακρώρουμ’ (οὗτος δ’ ἐστὶ βασιλεὺς ἱερῶν) ἀπείρηται καὶ ἄρχειν καὶ δημηγορεῖν;’ ἦ τὸ παλαιὸν οἱ βασιλεῖς τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν ἱερῶν ἔδρων καὶ τὰς θυσίας ἔθυον αὐτοὶ μετὰ τῶν ἱερέων, ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐκ ἐμετρίαζον ἀλλ’ ἦσαν [d] ὑπερήφανοι καὶ βαρεῖς, τῶν μὲν Ἑλλήνων οἱ πλεῖστοι τὴν ἐξουσίαν αὐτῶν περιελόμενοι μόνον τὸ θύειν τοῖς θεοῖς ἀπέλιπον, Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ παντάπασι τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἐκβαλόντες ἄλλον ἐπὶ τὰς θυσίας ἔταξαν, οὔτ’ ἄρχειν ἐάσαντες οὔτε δημαγωγεῖν, ὅπως μόνον ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς βασιλεύεσθαι δοκῶσι καὶ βασιλείαν διὰ τοὺς θεοὺς ὑπομένειν; ἔστι γοῦν τις ἐν ἀγορᾷ θυσία πρὸς τῷ λεγομένῳ Κομιτίῳ πάτριος, ἣν θύσας ὁ βασιλεὺς κατὰ τάχος ἄπεισι φεύγων ἐξ ἀγορᾶς.

‘Διὰ τί τὴν τράπεζαν οὐκ εἴων ἀναιρεῖσθαι κενήν, ἀλλὰ πάντως τινὸς ἐπόντος;’ πότερον αἰνιττόμενοι τὸ [e] δεῖν ἀεί τι τοῦ παρόντος εἰς τὸ μέλλον ὑπολιπεῖν καὶ τῆς αὔριον ἐν τῇ σήμερον μνημονεύειν, ἢ νομίζοντες ἀστεῖον εἶναι τὸ συστέλλειν καὶ ἀνέχειν τὴν ὄρεξιν ἔτι παρούσης τῆς ἀπολαύσεως; ἧττον γὰρ ἐπιθυμοῦσι τῶν ἀπόντων ἐθισθέντες ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν παρόντων. ἢ καὶ πρὸς οἰκέτας φιλάνθρωπον τὸ ἔθος; οὐ γὰρ οὕτω λαμβάνοντες ὡς μεταλαμβάνοντες ἀγαπῶσι, κοινωνεῖν τρόπον τινὰ τραπέζης ἡγούμενοι τοῖς δεσπόταις. ἢ τῶν ἱερῶν οὐδέποτε δεῖν κενὸν οὐθὲν περιορᾶν, ἱερὸν δ’ ἡ τράπεζα;

‘Διὰ τί τῇ νύμφῃ τὸ πρῶτον οὐκ ἐντυγχάνει μετὰ [f] φωτὸς ὁ ἀνὴρ ἀλλὰ διὰ σκότους;’ πότερον ὅτι αἰδεῖται πρὶν ἢ συνελθεῖν ἀλλοτρίαν νομίζων, ἢ καὶ πρὸς ἰδίαν προσιέναι μετ’ αἰδοῦς ἐθιζόμενος; ἤ, καθάπερ ὁ Σόλων ἔγραψε μήλου κυδωνίου τὴν νύμφην ἐντραγοῦσαν εἰς τὸν θάλαμον βαδίζειν, ὅπως τὸ πρῶτον ἄσπασμα μὴ δυσχερὲς γένηται μηδ’ ἀχάριστον, οὕτως ὁ Ῥωμαῖος νομοθέτης, εἰ δή τι προσῆν ἄτοπον τῷ σώματι καὶ δυσχερές, ἔκρυψεν; ἢ διαβολή τίς ἐστιν ἀφροδισίων παρανόμων τὸ γινόμενον, ὡς καὶ τοῖς νομίμοις αἰσχύνης τινὸς προσούσης;

‘Διὰ τί τῶν ἱπποδρόμων εἷς Φλαμίνιος καλεῖται;’ [280] [a] ἦ ὅτι Φλαμινίου τινὸς τῶν παλαιῶν τῇ πόλει χώραν ἐπιδόντος ἐχρῶντο ταῖς προσόδοις εἰς τοὺς ἱππικοὺς ἀγῶνας, ἔτι δὲ περιόντων χρημάτων κατεσκεύασαν ὁδόν, ἣν καὶ αὐτὴν Φλαμινίαν προσηγόρευσαν;

‘Διὰ τί ‘λικτώρεις’ τοὺς ῥαβδούχους ὀνομάζουσι;’ πότερον ὅτι καὶ συνέδεον τοὺς ἀκολασταίνοντας οὗτοι καὶ τῷ Ῥωμύλῳ παρηκολούθουν ἱμάντας ἐν τοῖς κόλποις κομίζοντες (τὸ δὲ δεσμεύειν ‘ἀλλιγᾶρε’ λέγουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ Ῥωμαίων, οἱ δὲ καθαρεύοντες ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι ‘λιγᾶρε’); ἢ νῦν μὲν παρέγκειται τὸ κ, πρότερον δέ ‘λιτώρεις’ ἐκαλοῦντο, λειτουργοί τινες ὄντες περὶ τὸ δημόσιον; ὅτι γὰρ λῇτον ἄχρι νῦν τὸ δημόσιον ἐν πολλοῖς [b] τῶν Ἑλλήνων νόμων γέγραπται, οὐδένα ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν λέληθε.

‘Διὰ τί κύνα θύουσιν οἱ Λούπερκοι (Λούπερκοι δ’ εἰσὶν οἱ τοῖς Λουπερκαλίοις γυμνοὶ διαθέοντες ἐν περιζώμασι καὶ καθικνούμενοι σκύτει τῶν ἀπαντώντων);’ πότερον ὅτι καθαρμός ἐστι τῆς πόλεως τὰ δρώμενα; καὶ γὰρ τὸν μῆνα ‘Φεβρουάριον’ καλοῦσι καὶ νὴ Δία τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ‘φεβράτην’, καὶ †’φεβράριν’ τὸ †τῶν σκυτῶν ἤθει καθικνεῖσθαι, τοῦ ῥήματος τὸ καθαίρειν σημαίνοντος· τῷ δὲ κυνὶ πάντες ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν Ἕλληνες ἐχρῶντο καὶ χρῶνταί γε μέχρι νῦν ἔνιοι σφαγίῳ πρὸς [c] τοὺς καθαρμούς· καὶ τῇ Ἑκάτῃ σκυλάκια μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων καθαρσίων ἐκφέρουσι καὶ περιμάττουσι σκυλακίοις τοὺς ἁγνισμοῦ δεομένους, περισκυλακισμὸν τὸ τοιοῦτο γένος τοῦ καθαρμοῦ καλοῦντες· ἢ λύκος μὲν ὁ λοῦπός ἐστι καὶ Λύκαια τὰ Λουπερκάλια, λύκῳ δὲ κύων πολέμιος καὶ διὰ τοῦτο θύεται τοῖς Λυκαίοις; ἢ ὅτι τοὺς Λουπέρκους ὑλακτοῦσι καὶ παραλυποῦσιν οἱ κύνες ἐν τῇ πόλει διαθέοντας; ἢ Πανὶ μὲν ἡ θυσία γίνεται, Πανὶ δὲ κύων προσφιλὲς διὰ τὰ αἰπόλια;

‘Διὰ τί τῷ καλουμένῳ Σεπτομουντίῳ παρεφύλαττον ὀχήμασι ζευκτοῖς μὴ χρῆσθαι, καὶ μέχρι νῦν οἱ τῶν [d] παλαιῶν μὴ καταφρονοῦντες παραφυλάττουσι (τὸ δὲ σεπτομούντιον ἄγουσιν ἐπὶ τῷ τὸν ἕβδομον λόφον τῇ πόλει προσκατανεμηθῆναι καὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ἑπτάλοφον γενέσθαι);’ πότερον, ὡς ἔνιοι τῶν Ῥωμαϊκῶν ἐπινοοῦσι, διὰ τὸ μήπω συνεζεῦχθαι τοῖς μέρεσι παντελῶς τὴν πόλιν; ἢ τοῦτο μὲν ἄλλως ‘οὐ πρὸς Διόνυσόν’ ἐστιν, ἔργου δὲ μεγάλου τοῦ πρὸς τὸν συνοικισμὸν ἐκτελεσθέντος, οἰόμενοι τὴν πόλιν ἤδη πεπαῦσθαι προϊοῦσαν εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν, ἔπαυσαν μὲν αὑτοὺς ἀνέπαυσαν δὲ τῶν ὑποζυγίων τὰ συμπονήσαντα καὶ παρέσχον ἀπολαῦσαι τῇ σχολῇ τῆς κοινῆς ἑορτῆς; ἢ πᾶσαν μὲν ἐβούλοντο κοσμεῖν [e] ἀεὶ καὶ τιμᾶν ἑορτὴν τοὺς πολίτας παρόντας, μάλιστα δὲ τὴν ἐπὶ τῷ συνοικισμῷ τῆς πόλεως ἀγομένην· ἵν’ οὖν τὴν πόλιν, ἧς ἐστιν ἡ ἑορτή, μὴ ἀπολείπωσιν, οὐκ ἐφεῖτο χρῆσθαι ζεύγεσιν ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν;

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς ἀπεγνωσμένους ἐπὶ κλοπαῖς ἢ δουλικοῖς τισιν ἄλλοις ἁμαρτήμασι ‘φουρκίφερας’ καλοῦσιν;’ ἦ καὶ τοῦτο τῆς τῶν παλαιῶν ἐπιμελείας τεκμήριόν ἐστιν; ὁ γὰρ οἰκότριβος ἰδίου καταγνούς τινα μοχθηρίαν ἐκέλευε διπλοῦν ξύλον, ὃ ταῖς ἁμάξαις ὑφιστᾶσιν, ἀράμενον διὰ τῆς συνοικίας ἢ τῆς γειτνιάσεως διεξελθεῖν [f] ὑπὸ πάντων ὁρώμενον, ὅπως ἀπιστοῖεν αὐτῷ καὶ φυλάττοιντο πρὸς τὸ λοιπόν· τὸ δὲ ξύλον ἡμεῖς μὲν στήριγμα, Ῥωμαῖοι δέ ‘φοῦρκαν’ ὀνομάζουσι· διὸ καί ‘φουρκίφερ’ ὁ τοῦτο περιενεγκὼν καλεῖται.

‘Διὰ τί τῶν κυριττόντων βοῶν ὑπὲρ τοῦ φυλάττεσθαι τὸν ἐντυγχάνοντα χόρτον τῷ κέρατι προσδέουσιν;’ ἦ διὰ κόρον καὶ πλησμονὴν ἐξυβρίζουσι καὶ βόες καὶ ἵπποι καὶ ὄνοι καὶ ἄνθρωποι; ὥς που καὶ Σοφοκλῆς (fr. 764) πεποίηκε

‘σὺ δὲ σφαδᾴζεις πῶλος ὣς εὐφορβίᾳ,

γαστήρ τε γάρ σου καὶ γνάθος πλήρης.’

διὸ καὶ Μᾶρκον Κράσσον οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι χόρτον ἔχειν ἔφασαν· ἐφυλάττοντο γὰρ αὐτὸν οἱ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ [281] [a] σπαράττοντες ὡς ἀμυντικὸν καὶ δυσεπιχείρητον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὕστερον ἐλέχθη πάλιν, ὅτι Κράσσου Καῖσαρ ἀφῃρήκει τὸν χόρτον· ἀντέστη γὰρ αὐτῷ πρῶτος ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ κατεφρόνησε.

‘Διὰ τί τῶν ἐπ’ οἰωνοῖς ἱερέων, οὓς Αὔσπικας πρότερον Αὔγουρας δὲ νῦν καλοῦσιν, ᾤοντο δεῖν ἀεὶ τοὺς λαμπτῆρας ἀνεῳγμένους εἶναι καὶ τὸ πῶμα μὴ ἐπικεῖσθαι;’ ἦ καθάπερ οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ μικρὰ μεγάλων ἐποιοῦντο σύμβολα κωλύοντες ‘ἐπὶ χοίνικος καθῆσθαι’ καί ‘πῦρ μαχαίρᾳ σκαλεύειν’, οὕτως οἱ παλαιοὶ πολλοῖς [b] αἰνίγμασιν ἐχρῶντο καὶ μάλιστα πρὸς τοὺς ἱερεῖς, οἷόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ τοῦ λαμπτῆρος; ἔοικε γὰρ ὁ λαμπτὴρ τῷ περιέχοντι τὴν ψυχὴν σώματι. φῶς γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ἐντὸς ψυχὴ καὶ δεῖ τὸ συνετὸν καὶ φρόνιμον ἀεὶ ἀναπεπταμένον αὐτῆς εἶναι καὶ δεδορκὸς καὶ μηδέποτε συγκεκλεῖσθαι μηδ’ ἀπο πνεόμενον πνευμάτων δ’ ὄντων οὐκ εὐσταθοῦσιν οἱ ὄρνιθες οὐδὲ βέβαια σημεῖα παρέχουσι διὰ τὴν πλάνην καὶ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν. διδάσκουσιν οὖν τῷ ἔθει μὴ πνευμάτων ὄντων ἀλλὰ νηνεμίας καὶ καταστάσεως ἐπὶ ταῦτα προϊέναι τοὺς οἰωνοπόλους, ὅτε δύνανται τοῖς λαμπτῆρσιν ἀνεῳγμένοις χρῆσθαι.

[c] ‘Διὰ τί δ’ ἀπείρητο τοῖς ἕλκος ἔχουσιν ἱερεῦσιν ἐπ’ οἰωνῶν καθέζεσθαι;’ πότερον καὶ τοῦτο σύμβολόν ἐστι τοῦ μηδὲν δακνομένους μηδ’ οἷον ἕλκος ἴδιον καὶ πάθος ἔχοντας ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τὰ θεῖα χρηματίζειν, ἀλλ’ ἀλύπους καὶ ἀκεραίους καὶ ἀπερισπάστους ὄντας; ἢ κατὰ λόγον ἐστίν, εἰ μήθ’ ἱερείῳ χρήσαιτ’ ἄν τις ἕλκος ἔχοντι πρὸς θυσίαν μήτ’ ὄρνισι πρὸς οἰωνισμόν, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν φυλάττεσθαι τὰ τοιαῦτα, καὶ καθαροὺς γενομένους καὶ ἀσινεῖς καὶ ὁλοκλήρους ἐπὶ τὰ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν σημαινόμενα βαδίζειν; τὸ γὰρ ἕλκος ἔοικε πήρωσίς τις [d] εἶναι καὶ μιασμὸς τοῦ σώματος.

‘Διὰ τί μικρᾶς Τύχης ἱερὸν ἱδρύσατο Σερούιος Τούλλιος ὁ βασιλεὺς ἣν ‘βρέβεμ’ καλοῦσι;’ πότερον ὅτι μικρὸς ὢν ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ ταπεινὰ πράττων καὶ γεγονὼς ἐκ μητρὸς αἰχμαλώτου διὰ τὴν τύχην ἐβασίλευσε τῆς Ῥώμης· ἢ αὕτη μὲν ἡ μεταβολὴ μέγεθος ἐμφαίνει τύχης μᾶλλον ἢ μικρότητα, πάντων δὲ μάλιστα Σερούιος ἔοικε τὴν τῆς τύχης ἐκθειάσας δύναμιν ἐπιφημίσαι πράξεσιν [e] ἁπάσαις; οὐ γὰρ μόνον Τύχης εὐέλπιδος καὶ ἀποτροπαίου καὶ μειλιχίας καὶ πρωτογενείας καὶ ἄρρενος ἱερὰ κατεσκεύασεν, ἀλλ’ ἔστιν ἰδίας Τύχης ἱερόν, ἕτερον δ’ ἐπιστρεφομένης, ἄλλο [δὲ εὐέλπιδος ἄλλο] παρθένου· καὶ τί ἄν τις ἐπεξίοι τὰς ἄλλας ἐπωνυμίας, ὅπου Τύχης ἰξευτηρίας ἱερόν ἐστιν, ἣν βισκᾶταν ὀνομάζουσιν, ὡς πόρρωθεν ἡμῶν ἁλισκομένων ὑπ’ αὐτῆς καὶ προσισχομένων τοῖς πράγμασιν; ὅρα δὴ μὴ καταμαθὼν τὸ παρὰ [f] μικρὸν ἀεὶ τῆς τύχης μέγα δυνάμενον, καὶ ὅτι τῷ γενέσθαι τι μικρὸν ἢ μὴ γενέσθαι τι πολλάκις ὑπῆρξεν ἐνίοις τυχεῖν ἢ διαμαρτεῖν τῶν μεγίστων, μικρᾶς Τύχης ἱερὸν ἱδρύσατο, προσέχειν διδάσκων τοῖς πράγμασι καὶ μὴ καταφρονεῖν διὰ μικρότητα τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων.

‘Διὰ τί λύχνον οὐκ ἐσβέννυσαν, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ περιεώρων μαραινόμενον;’ πότερον ὡς συγγενὲς καὶ ἀδελφικὸν σεβόμενοι τοῦ ἀσβέστου καὶ ἀθανάτου πυρός, ἢ καὶ τοῦτο συμβόλαιόν ἐστι τοῦ μὴ δεῖν τὸ ἔμψυχον, ἂν μὴ βλάπτῃ, διαφθείρειν μηδ’ ἀναιρεῖν, ὡς ζῴῳ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐοικότος; καὶ γὰρ τροφῆς δεῖται καὶ αὐτοκίνητόν ἐστιν καὶ σβεννύμενον φωνὴν ἀφίησιν ὥσπερ φονευόμενον. ἢ διδάσκει τὸ ἔθος ἡμᾶς, ὅτι δεῖ μήτε πῦρ μήθ’ ὕδωρ μήτ’ ἄλλο τι τῶν ἀναγκαίων αὐτοὺς ἄδην ἔχοντας διαφθείρειν, ἀλλ’ ἐᾶν χρῆσθαι τοὺς δεομένους καὶ ἀπολείπειν ἑτέροις, ὅταν αὐτοὶ μηκέτι χρείαν ἔχωμεν;

[282] [a] ‘Διὰ τί τὰς ἐν τοῖς ὑποδήμασι σεληνίδας οἱ διαφέρειν δοκοῦντες εὐγενείᾳ φοροῦσιν;’ πότερον, ὡς Κάστωρ (Fr. Gr. Hist. 250 F. 16) φησί, σύμβολόν ἐστι τοῦτο τῆς λεγομένης οἰκήσεως ἐπὶ τῆς σελήνης καὶ ὅτι μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν αὖθις αἱ ψυχαὶ τὴν σελήνην ὑπὸ πόδας ἕξουσιν, ἢ τοῖς παλαιοτάτοις τοῦθ’ ὑπῆρχεν ἐξαίρετον; οὗτοι δ’ ἦσαν Ἀρκάδες τῶν ἀπ’ Εὐάνδρου Προσελήνων λεγομένων. ἤ, καθάπερ ἄλλα πολλά, καὶ τοῦτο τοὺς ἐπαιρομένους καὶ μέγα φρονοῦντας ὑπομιμνήσκει τῆς ἐπ’ ἀμφότερον τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων μεταβολῆς παράδειγμα ποιουμένους τὴν σελήνην, ὡς

[b] ‘ἐξ ἀδήλου πρῶτον ἔρχεται νέα

πρόσωπα καλλύνουσα καὶ πληρουμένη,

χὤταν περ αὑτῆς εὐγενεστάτη φανῇ,

πάλιν διαρρεῖ κἀπὶ μηδὲν ἔρχεται;’ (Soph. fr. 787)

ἢ πειθαρχίας ἦν μάθημα βασιλευομένους μὴ δυσχεραίνειν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἡ σελήνη προσέχειν ἐθέλει τῷ κρείττονι καὶ δευτερεύειν

‘ἀεὶ παπταίνουσα πρὸς αὐγὰς ἠελίοιο’

κατὰ τὸν Παρμενίδην (Vorsokr.4`4 18 B 15) οὕτω τὴν δευτέραν τάξιν ἀγαπᾶν χρωμένους τῷ ἡγεμόνι καὶ τῆς ἀπ’ ἐκείνου δυνάμεως καὶ τιμῆς ἀπολαύοντας;

‘Διὰ τί τὸν μὲν ἐνιαυτὸν τοῦ Διὸς νομίζουσι, τοὺς δὲ μῆνας τῆς Ἥρας;’ ἦ ὅτι τῶν μὲν ἀοράτων [c] θεῶν καὶ νοητῶν βασιλεύουσι Ζεὺς καὶ Ἥρα, τῶν δ’ ὁρατῶν ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη; ποιεῖ δ’ ὁ μὲν ἥλιος τὸν ἐνιαυτόν, ἡ δὲ σελήνη τοὺς μῆνας. δεῖ δὲ μὴ νομίζειν ἁπλῶς εἰκόνας ἐκείνων τούτους, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἐν ὕλῃ Δία τὸν ἥλιον, καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν Ἥραν ἐν ὕλῃ τὴν σελήνην. διὸ καὶ Ἰουνῶνεμ ὀνομάζουσι τὴν Ἥραν, τὸ νέον ἢ τὸ νεώτερον ἐμφαίνοντος τοῦ ὀνόματος, ἀπὸ τῆς σελήνης· καὶ Λουκῖναν Ἥραν καλοῦσιν οἷον φαεινὴν ἢ φωτίζουσαν· καὶ νομίζουσιν ἐν ταῖς λοχείαις καὶ ὠδῖσι βοηθεῖν, ὥσπερ καὶ τὴν σελήνην, ‘διὰ κυάνεον πόλον ἄστρων διά [d] τ’ ὠκυτόκοιο σελάνας·’ εὐτοκεῖν γὰρ ἐν ταῖς πανσελήνοις μάλιστα δοκοῦσι.

‘Διὰ τί τῶν οἰωνῶν ὁ καλούμενος ἀριστερὸς αἴσιος;’ πότερον οὐκ ἔστι τοῦτ’ ἀληθές, ἀλλὰ παρακρούεται πολλοὺς ἡ διάλεκτος (τὸ γὰρ ἀριστερόν ‘σίνιστρον’ ὀνομάζουσι, τὸ δ’ ἀφεῖναι ‘σίνερε’ καὶ ‘σίνε’ λέγουσιν, ὅταν ἀφεῖναι παρακαλῶσι. τὸν οὖν ἀφιέντα τὴν πρᾶξιν οἰωνὸν σινιστέριον ὄντα σίνιστρον οὐκ ὀρθῶς ὑπολαμβάνουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ ὀνομάζουσιν)· ἢ καθάπερ Διονύσιός (Ant. Rom. II 5. 5) φησιν, Ἀσκανίῳ τῷ Αἰνείου παραταττομένῳ πρὸς Μεζέντιον ἀστραπῆς ἐν [e] ἀριστερᾷ νικηφόρου γενομένης οἰωνισαμένῳ καὶ πρὸς τὸ λοιπὸν οὕτω παραφυλάττουσιν; ἤ, ὡς ἄλλοι τινές, Αἰνείᾳ τούτου συμπεσόντος; καὶ γὰρ Θηβαῖοι τῷ ἀριστερῷ κέρατι τρεψάμενοι τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ κρατήσαντες ἐν Λεύκτροις διετέλεσαν ἐν πάσαις ταῖς μάχαις τῷ ἀριστερῷ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἀποδιδόντες. ἢ μᾶλλον, ὡς Ἰόβας (FHG III p. 470) φησί, τοῖς πρὸς τὰς ἀνατολὰς ἀποβλέπουσιν ἐν ἀριστερᾷ γίνεται τὸ βόρειον, ὃ δὴ τοῦ κόσμου δεξιὸν ἔνιοι τίθενται καὶ καθυπέρτερον; ὅρα δὲ μὴ φύσει τοῖς εὐωνύμοις ἀσθενεστέροις οὖσιν οἱ παριστάμενοι οἰωνῶν οἷον ἀναρρωννύουσι καὶ ὑπερείδουσι τὸ ἐλλιπὲς [f] τῆς δυνάμεως ἐπανισοῦντες. ἢ τὰ ἐπίγεια καὶ θνητὰ τοῖς οὐρανίοις καὶ θείοις ἀντικεῖσθαι νομίζοντες ᾤοντο τὰ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἀριστερὰ τοὺς θεοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν δεξιῶν προπέμπειν;

‘Διὰ τί τοῦ θριαμβεύσαντος εἶτ’ ἀποθανόντος καὶ καέντος ἐξῆν ὀστέον λαβόντας εἰς τὴν πόλιν εἰσφέρειν καὶ κατατίθεσθαι, ὡς Πύρρων ὁ Λιπαραῖος (FHG IV p. 479) ἱστόρηκεν;’ ἦ τιμῆς ἕνεκα τοῦ τεθνηκότος; καὶ γὰρ ἄλλοις ἀριστεῦσι καὶ στρατηγοῖς ἔδωκαν οὐκ αὐτοὺς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἐνθάπτεσθαι τῇ ἀγορᾷ, καθάπερ Οὐαλερίῳ καὶ Φαβρικίῳ· καί φασι τούτων [283] [a] ἀπογόνοις ἀποθανοῦσι καὶ κομισθεῖσιν εἰς ἀγορὰν ὑφίεσθαι δᾷδα καιομένην, εἶτ’ εὐθὺς αἴρεσθαι, χρωμένων ἀνεπιφθόνως τῇ τιμῇ καὶ τὸ ἐξεῖναι μόνον ἐκβεβαιουμένων.

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς θριαμβεύσαντας ἑστιῶντες ἐν δημοσίῳ παρῃτοῦντο τοὺς ὑπάτους καὶ πέμποντες παρεκάλουν μὴ ἐλθεῖν ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον;’ ἦ καὶ τόπον ἔδει τῷ θριαμβεύσαντι κλισίας τὸν ἐντιμότατον ἀποδίδοσθαι καὶ προπομπὴν μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον· ταῦτα δ’ οὐκ ἔξεστιν ἑτέρῳ γίνεσθαι τῶν ὑπάτων παρόντων, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνοις;

‘Διὰ τί περιπόρφυρον ὁ δήμαρχος οὐ φορεῖ τῶν [b] ἄλλων ἀρχόντων φορούντων;’ ἦ τὸ παράπαν οὐδ’ ἐστὶν ἄρχων; οὐδὲ γὰρ ῥαβδούχους ἔχουσι οὐδ’ ἐπὶ δίφρου καθήμενοι χρηματίζουσιν, οὐδ’ ἔτους ἀρχῇ καθάπερ οἱ λοιποὶ πάντες ἄρχοντες εἰσίασιν, οὐδὲ παύονται δικτάτωρος αἱρεθέντος ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν ἐκείνου μετατιθέντος εἰς ἑαυτὸν αὐτοὶ μόνοι διαμένουσιν, ὥσπερ οὐκ ὄντες ἄρχοντες ἀλλ’ ἑτέραν τινὰ τάξιν ἔχοντες. ὡς δὲ τῶν ῥητόρων ἔνιοι τὴν παραγραφὴν οὐ βούλονται δίκην εἶναι, τοὐναντίον τῇ δίκῃ δρῶσαν, (ἡ μὲν γὰρ εἰσάγει καὶ ποιεῖ κρίσιν, ἡ δ’ ἀναιρεῖ καὶ λύει), τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον οἴονται τὴν δημαρχίαν κώλυσιν ἀρχῆς μᾶλλον εἶναι [c] καὶ πρὸς ἀρχὴν ἀντίταξιν ἢ ἀρχήν. τὸ γὰρ ἐνστῆναι πρὸς δύναμιν ἄρχοντος καὶ τὴν ἄγαν ἐξουσίαν ἀφελεῖν ἐξουσία καὶ δύναμίς ἐστιν αὐτῆς. ἢ ταῦτα μὲν ἄν τις εἴποι καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα χρώμενος εὑρεσιλογίᾳ; τῆς δὲ δημαρχίας τὴν γένεσιν ἐκ τοῦ δήμου λαμβανούσης τὸ δημοτικὸν ἰσχυρόν ἐστι, καὶ μέγα τὸ μὴ μεῖζον φρονεῖν τῶν λοιπῶν ἀλλ’ ὁμοιοῦσθαι καὶ σχήματι καὶ στολῇ καὶ διαίτῃ τοῖς ἐπιτυγχάνουσι τῶν πολιτῶν. ὁ γὰρ ὄγκος ὑπάτῳ προσήκει καὶ στρατηγῷ, τὸν δὲ δήμαρχον, ὡς Γάιος Κουρίων ἔλεγε, καταπατεῖσθαι δεῖ καὶ μὴ σεμνὸν [d] εἶναι τῇ ὄψει μηδὲ δυσπρόσοδον μηδὲ τοῖς πολλοῖς χαλεπόν, ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τῶν ἄλλων ... τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς εὐμεταχείριστον. ὅθεν οὐδ’ οἰκίας αὐτοῦ κλείεσθαι νενόμισται θύραν, ἀλλὰ καὶ νύκτωρ ἀνέῳγε καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ὥσπερ λιμὴν καὶ καταφυγὴ τοῖς δεομένοις. ὅσῳ δὲ μᾶλλον ἐκταπεινοῦται τῷ σώματι, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον αὔξεται τῇ δυνάμει. κοινὸν γὰρ αὐτὸν ἀξιοῦσι τῇ χρείᾳ καὶ πᾶσιν ἐφικτὸν ὥσπερ βωμὸν εἶναι. τῇ δὲ τιμῇ ποιοῦσιν ἱερὸν καὶ ἅγιον καὶ ἄσυλον· ὅπου κἂν βαδίζων ἐν δημοσίῳ ... πᾶσι νόμος ἐστὶ καθαίρεσθαι καὶ ἁγνίζεσθαι τὸ σῶμα καθάπερ μεμιασμένον.

[e] ‘Διὰ τί τῶν στρατηγῶν αἱ ῥάβδοι συνδεδεμέναι προσηρτημένων τῶν πελέκεων φέρονται;’ πότερον ὅτι σύμβολόν ἐστι τοῦ μὴ δεῖν πρόχειρον εἶναι καὶ λελυμένην τὴν ὀργὴν τοῦ ἄρχοντος; ἢ διατριβὴν καὶ μέλλησιν ἐμποιοῦν τῇ ὀργῇ τὸ λύειν ἀτρέμα τὰς ῥάβδους πολλάκις ἐποίησε μεταγνῶναι περὶ τῆς κολάσεως; ἐπεὶ δὲ τῆς κακίας τὸ μὲν ἰάσιμόν ἐστι τὸ δ’ ἀνήκεστον, αἱ μὲν [f] ῥάβδοι νουθετοῦσι τὸ μεταθέσθαι δυνάμενον, οἱ δὲ πελέκεις ἀποκόπτουσι τὸ ἀνουθέτητον.

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς καλουμένους Βλετωνησίους βαρβάρους ὄντας ἄνθρωπον τεθυκέναι θεοῖς πυθόμενοι μετεπέμψαντο τοὺς ἄρχοντας αὐτῶν ὡς κολάσοντες, ἐπεὶ δὲ νόμῳ τινὶ τοῦτ’ ἐφαίνοντο πεποιηκότες, ἐκείνους μὲν ἀπέλυσαν, ἐκώλυσαν δὲ πρὸς τὸ λοιπόν· αὐτοὶ δ’ οὐ πολλοῖς ἔτεσιν ἔμπροσθεν δύο μὲν ἄνδρας δύο δὲ γυναῖκας ἐν τῇ βοῶν ἀγορᾷ λεγομένῃ, τοὺς μὲν Ἕλληνας, τοὺς δὲ Γαλάτας, ζῶντας κατώρυξαν; φαίνεται γὰρ ἄτοπον ταῦτα μὲν ποιεῖν αὐτούς, ἐπιτιμᾶν δὲ βαρβάροις ὡς οὐχ ὅσια ποιοῦσι.’ πότερον τὸ μὲν θεοῖς θύειν [284] [a] ἀνθρώπους ἀνόσιον ἡγοῦντο, τὸ δὲ δαίμοσιν ἀναγκαῖον; ἢ τοὺς μὲν ἔθει καὶ νόμῳ τοῦτο πράττοντας ἁμαρτάνειν ἐνόμιζον, αὐτοὶ δὲ προσταχθέντες ἐκ τῶν Σιβυλλείων ἔπραξαν; λέγεται γὰρ Ἐλβίαν τινὰ παρθένον ὀχουμένην ἐφ’ ἵππου βληθῆναι κεραυνῷ, καὶ γυμνὸν μὲν εὑρεθῆναι κείμενον τὸν ἵππον, γυμνὴν δ’ αὐτὴν ὡς ἐπίτηδες ἀνηγμένου τοῦ χιτῶνος ἀπὸ τῶν ἀπορρήτων, ὑποδημάτων δὲ καὶ δακτυλίων καὶ κεκρυφάλου διερριμμένων χωρὶς ἄλλων ἀλλαχόθι, τοῦ δὲ στόματος ἔξω προβεβληκότος τὴν [b] γλῶσσαν. ἀποφηναμένων δὲ τῶν μάντεων δεινὴν μὲν αἰσχύνην ταῖς ἱεραῖς παρθένοις εἶναι καὶ γενήσεσθαι περιβόητον, ἅψεσθαι δέ τινα καὶ ἱππέων ὕβριν, ἐμήνυσε Βάρρου τινὸς ἱππικοῦ θεράπων τρεῖς παρθένους τῶν ἑστιάδων, Αἰμιλίαν καὶ Λικινίαν καὶ Μαρκίαν, ὑπὸ ταὐτὸ διεφθαρμένας καὶ συνούσας πολὺν χρόνον ἀνδράσιν, ὧν εἷς ἦν Βετούτιος Βάρρος τοῦ μηνυτοῦ δεσπότης. ἐκεῖναι μὲν οὖν ἐκολάσθησαν ἐξελεγχθεῖσαι, τῆς δὲ πράξεως δεινῆς φανείσης ἔδοξεν ἀνερέσθαι τὰ Σιβύλλεια τοὺς ἱερεῖς. εὑρεθῆναι δέ φασι χρησμοὺς ταῦτά τε προδηλοῦντας [c] ὡς ἐπὶ κακῷ γενησόμενα καὶ προστάττοντας ἀλλοκότοις τισὶ δαίμοσι καὶ ξένοις ἀποτροπῆς ἕνεκα τοῦ ἐπιόντος προέσθαι δύο μὲν Ἕλληνας, δύο δὲ Γαλάτας ζῶντας αὐτόθι κατορυγέντας.

‘Διὰ τί τὴν τῆς ἡμέρας ἀρχὴν ἐκ μέσης νυκτὸς λαμβάνουσι;’ πότερον ὅτι ἡ πολιτεία στρατιωτικὴν ἐν ἀρχῇ σύνταξιν εἶχε, τὰ δὲ πολλὰ νύκτωρ ἐν ταῖς στρατείαις προλαμβάνεται τῶν χρησίμων; ἢ πράξεως μὲν ἀρχὴν ἐποιοῦντο τὴν ἀνατολήν, παρασκευῆς δὲ τὴν νύκτα; δεῖ γὰρ παρασκευασαμένους πράττειν, ἀλλὰ μὴ παρασκευάζεσθαι πράττοντας, ὡς Μύσων πρὸς Χίλωνα τὸν σοφὸν εἶπεν ἐν χειμῶνι θρίνακα τεκταινόμενος.

[d] ἢ καθάπερ ἡ μεσημβρία πέρας ἐστὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς τοῦ τὰ δημόσια καὶ σπουδαῖα πράττειν, οὕτως ἀρχὴν ἔδοξε ποιεῖσθαι τὸ μεσονύκτιον; τεκμήριον δὲ τούτου μέγα τὸ μὴ ποιεῖσθαι Ῥωμαῖον ἄρχοντα συνθήκας μηδ’ ὁμολογίας μετὰ μέσον ἡμέρας. ἢ δύσει μὲν καὶ ἀνατολῇ λαμβάνειν ἀρχὴν ἡμέρας καὶ τελευτὴν ‹οὐ› δυνατόν ἐστιν; ὡς μὲν γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ τῇ αἰσθήσει διορίζουσιν ἡμέρας μὲν ἀρχὴν τὴν πρώτην ἀνάσχεσιν τοῦ ἡλίου, νυκτὸς δὲ ‹τὴν› τελευταίαν ἀπόκρυψιν λαμβάνοντες, οὐχ ἕξομεν [e] ἰσημερίαν, ἀλλ’ ἣν μάλιστα τῇ ἡμέρᾳ νύκτα παρισοῦσθαι δοκοῦμεν, αὕτη τῆς ἡμέρας ἐλάττων φανεῖται τῷ τοῦ ἡλίου μεγέθει. ὃ δ’ αὖ πάλιν οἱ μαθηματικοὶ ταύτην ἰώμενοι τὴν ἀτοπίαν τίθενται, τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου κέντρον, ὅταν ἅψηται τοῦ ὁρίζοντος, ἡμέρας διορισμὸν εἶναι καὶ νυκτός, ἀναίρεσίς ἐστι τῆς ἐναργείας. συμβήσεται γὰρ ἔτι πολλοῦ φωτὸς ὑπὲρ γῆν ὄντος καὶ τοῦ ἡλίου καταλάμποντος ἡμᾶς μηδέπω ἡμέραν ὁμολογεῖν ἀλλ’ ἔτι νύκτα εἶναι. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ἐν ταῖς ἀνατολαῖς καὶ δύσεσι τοῦ ἡλίου δύσληπτός ἐστιν ἡ ἀρχὴ διὰ τὰς εἰρημένας ἀλογίας, ἀπολείπεται τὸ μεσουρανοῦν ἢ τὸ ἀντιμεσουρανοῦν αὐτοῦ λαμβάνειν ἀρχήν. βέλτιον δὲ τὸ [f] δεύτερον· φέρεται γὰρ ἐκ μεσημβρίας ἐπὶ τὰς δύσεις ἀφ’ ἡμῶν, ἐκ δὲ μεσονυκτίου πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ τὰς ἀνατολάς.

‘Διὰ τί τὰς γυναῖκας οὔτ’ ἀλεῖν εἴων οὔτ’ ὀψοποιεῖν τὸ παλαιόν;’ ἦ τὰς συνθήκας διαμνημονεύοντες, ἃς ἐποιήσαντο πρὸς τοὺς Σαβίνους; ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἥρπασαν τὰς θυγατέρας αὐτῶν εἶτα πολεμήσαντες διηλλάγησαν, ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις ὁμολογίαις καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐγράφη, μήτ’ ἀλεῖν ἀνδρὶ Ῥωμαίῳ γυναῖκα μήτε μαγειρεύειν.

‘Διὰ τί τοῦ Μαΐου μηνὸς οὐκ ἄγονται γυναῖκας;’ πότερον ὅτι μέσος ἐστὶ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου καὶ τοῦ Ἰουνίου [285] [a] μηνός, ὧν τὸν μὲν Ἀφροδίτης τὸν δ’ Ἥρας, γαμηλίων θεῶν, ἱερὸν νομίζοντες προλαμβάνουσι μικρὸν ἢ περιμένουσιν; ἢ ὅτι τῷ μηνὶ τούτῳ τὸν μέγιστον ποιοῦνται τῶν καθαρμῶν, νῦν μὲν εἴδωλα ῥιπτοῦντες ἀπὸ τῆς γεφύρας εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν πάλαι δ’ ἀνθρώπους; διὸ καὶ τὴν Φλαμινίκαν, ἱερὰν τῆς Ἥρας εἶναι δοκοῦσαν, νενόμισται σκυθρωπάζειν, μήτε λουομένην τηνικαῦτα μήτε κοσμουμένην. ἢ ὅτι πολλοὶ Λατίνων ἐν τῷ μηνὶ τούτῳ [b] τοῖς κατοιχομένοις ἐναγίζουσι; καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ ἴσως Ἑρμῆν ἐν αὐτῷ σέβονται καὶ Μαίας ἐπώνυμός ἐστιν. ἤ, καθάπερ ἔνιοι λέγουσιν, ὁ μὲν Μάιος ἀπὸ τῆς πρεσβυτέρας, ὁ δ’ Ἰούνιος ἀπὸ τῆς νεωτέρας ἡλικίας ὠνόμασται; γάμῳ δ’ ἁρμοδιώτερον τὸ νέον, ὡς καὶ Εὐριπίδης (fr. 23) φησίν

‘ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸ γῆρας τὴν Κύπριν χαίρειν ἐᾷ,

ἥ τ’ Ἀφροδίτη τοῖς γέρουσιν ἄχθεται.’

οὐ γαμοῦσιν οὖν ἐν τῷ Μαΐῳ, περιμένοντες τὸν Ἰούνιον, ὃς εὐθύς ἐστι μετὰ τὸν Μάιον.

‘Διὰ τί τῶν γαμουμένων αἰχμῇ δορατίου τὴν κόμην διακρίνουσιν;’ ἆρα σύμβολόν ἐστι τοῦτο τοῦ βίᾳ [c] καὶ μετὰ πολέμου γαμηθῆναι τὰς πρώτας; ἢ μανθάνουσιν ἀνδράσι συνοικοῦσαι μαχίμοις καὶ πολεμικοῖς ἄθρυπτον καὶ ἄθηλυν καὶ ἀφελῆ προσίεσθαι καλλωπισμόν; ὥσπερ ὁ Λυκοῦργος ἀπὸ πρίονος καὶ πελέκεως κελεύσας τὰ θυρώματα ταῖς οἰκίαις ποιεῖν καὶ τὰς ὀροφάς, ἄλλῳ δὲ μὴ χρῆσθαι τὸ παράπαν ἐργαλείῳ, πᾶσαν ἐξέβαλε περιεργίαν καὶ πολυτέλειαν. ἢ τὴν διάστασιν αἰνίττεται τὸ γινόμενον, ὡς μόνῳ σιδήρῳ τοῦ γάμου διακριθησομένου; ἢ τὰ μὲν πλεῖστα τῶν γαμικῶν εἰς τὴν Ἥραν ἀνῆπτο, Ἥρας δ’ ἱερὸν τὸ δόρυ νενόμισται, καὶ τῶν ἀγαλμάτων αὐτῆς δόρατι στηρίζεται τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ Κυρῖτις ἡ θεὸς ἐπωνόμασται; τὸ γὰρ δόρυ ‘κύριν’ ἐκάλουν [d] οἱ παλαιοί· διὸ καί φασι Κυρῖνον ὀνομασθῆναι τὸν Ἐνυάλιον.

‘Διὰ τί τὸ τελούμενον εἰς θέας Λοῦκαρ καλοῦσιν;’ ἦ ὅτι πολλὰ ἔστιν ἄλση περὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀνειμένα θεοῖς, ἃ καλοῦσι ‘λούκους’, καὶ τὴν ἀπὸ τούτων πρόσοδον εἰς τὰς θέας ἀνήλισκον;

‘Διὰ τί τὰ Κυρινάλια μωρῶν ἑορτὴν ὀνομάζουσιν;’ ἦ ὅτι τὴν ἡμέραν ταύτην ἀποδεδώκεσαν, ὡς Ἰόβας (FHG III p. 470) φησί, τοῖς τὰς αὑτῶν φατρίας ἀγνοοῦσιν; ἢ τοῖς μὴ θύσασιν, ὥσπερ οἱ λοιποί, κατὰ φυλὰς ἐν τοῖς Φουρνικαλίοις δι’ ἀσχολίαν ἢ ἀποδημίαν ἢ ἄγνοιαν ἐδόθη τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ταύτῃ τὴν ἑορτὴν ἐκείνην ἀπολαβεῖν;

[e] ‘Διὰ τί τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ γινομένης θυσίας ἄλλον οὐδένα θεῶν ὀνομάζουσιν οὐδὲ φαίνεται κύων ἐντὸς τῶν περιβόλων, ὡς Βάρρων (13, 1 Merkel) ἱστόρηκεν;’ ἦ θεὸν μὲν ἄλλον οὐκ ὀνομάζουσι διὰ τὸ τοῦτον ἡμίθεον νομίζειν, ὡς δέ φασιν ἔνιοι, καὶ μετὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὄντος ἔτι βωμὸν ἱδρύσασθαι τὸν Εὔανδρον αὐτοῦ καὶ θυσίαν προσαγαγεῖν; κυνὶ δὲ πάντων μάλιστα τῶν ζῴων ἐπολέμησε· καὶ γὰρ ὁ Ὄρθος αὐτῷ [ἀεὶ] πολλὰ πράγματα [f] παρέσχε καὶ ὁ Κέρβερος· καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσι, τοῦ Λικυμνίου παιδὸς Οἰωνοῦ διὰ κύνα φονευθέντος ὑπὸ τῶν Ἱπποκοωντιδῶν, ἀναγκασθεὶς μάχην συνάψαι τῶν τ’ ἄλλων φίλων πολλοὺς ἀπέβαλε καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰφικλέα.

‘Διὰ τί τοῖς πατρικίοις οὐκ ἐξῆν περὶ τὸ Καπετώλιον κατοικεῖν;’ πότερον ὅτι Μᾶρκος Μάλλιος αὐτόθι κατοικῶν ἐπεχείρησε τυραννίδι, ‹δι’› ὃν ἀπώμοτόν φασιν εἶναι τῷ οἴκῳ μηδενὶ Μαλλίων ὄνομα Μᾶρκον γενέσθαι; ἢ παλαιὸς ἦν φόβος οὗτος; Ποπλικόλαν γοῦν ἄνδρα δημοτικώτατον οὐκ ἐπαύσαντο διαβάλλοντες μὲν οἱ δυνατοὶ δεδιότες δ’ οἱ πολλοί, μέχρι οὗ τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτὸς κατέσκαψεν ἐπικεῖσθαι τῇ ἀγορᾷ δοκοῦσαν.

‘Διὰ τί τῷ σώσαντι πολίτην ἐν πολέμῳ δρύινον [286] [a] διδόασι στέφανον;’ πότερον ὅτι πανταχοῦ καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἔστιν εὐπορῆσαι δρυὸς ἐπὶ στρατείας; ἢ ὅτι Διὸς καὶ Ἥρας ἱερὸς ὁ στέφανός ἐστιν, οὓς πολιούχους νομίζουσιν; ἢ παλαιὸν ἀπ’ Ἀρκάδων τὸ ἔθος, οἷς ἔστι τις συγγένεια πρὸς τὴν δρῦν; πρῶτοι γὰρ ἀνθρώπων γεγονέναι δοκοῦσιν ἐκ γῆς, ὥσπερ ἡ δρῦς τῶν φυτῶν.

‘Διὰ τί γυψὶ χρῶνται μάλιστα πρὸς τοὺς οἰωνισμούς;’ πότερον ὅτι καὶ Ῥωμύλῳ δώδεκα γῦπες ἐφάνησαν ἐπὶ τῇ κτίσει τῆς Ῥώμης; ἢ ὅτι τῶν ὀρνίθων ἥκιστα συνεχὴς καὶ συνήθης οὗτος; οὐδὲ γὰρ νεοττιᾷ γυπὸς ἐντυχεῖν ῥᾳδίως ἔστιν, ἀλλὰ πόρρωθέν ποθεν ἐξαπίνης [b] καταίρουσι· διὸ καὶ σημειώδης ἡ ὄψις αὐτῶν ἐστιν. ἢ καὶ τοῦτο παρ’ Ἡρακλέους ἔμαθον; εἰ λέγει ἀληθῶς Ἡρόδωρος (Fr. Gr. Hist. 31 F. 22), ὅτι πάντων μάλιστα γυψὶν ἐπὶ πράξεως ἀρχῇ φανεῖσιν ἔχαιρεν Ἡρακλῆς, ἡγούμενος δικαιότατον εἶναι τὸν γῦπα τῶν σαρκοφάγων πάντων· πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ οὐδενὸς ἅπτεται ζῶντος οὐδ’ ἀποκτίννυσιν ἔμψυχον οὐδὲν ὡς ἀετοὶ καὶ ἱέρακες καὶ τὰ νυκτίνομα, χρῆται δὲ τοῖς ἄλλως ἀποθανοῦσιν· ἔπειτα καὶ τούτων τὰ ὁμόφυλα παρίησι· πετεινοῦ γὰρ οὐδεὶς ἑώρακε γῦπα γευόμενον, ὡς ἀετοὶ καὶ ἱέρακες [c] μάλιστα τὰ συγγενῆ διώκουσι καὶ κόπτουσι. καίτοι κατ’ Αἰσχύλον (Suppl. 226)

‘ὄρνιθος ὄρνις πῶς ἂν ἁγνεύοι φαγών;’

ἀνθρώποις τε πάντων ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἀβλαβέστατός ἐστιν, οὔτε καρπὸν ἀφανίζων οὔτε φυτὸν οὔτε ζῷον ἥμερον κακουργῶν. εἰ δ’ ὡς Αἰγύπτιοι μυθολογοῦσι, θῆλυ πᾶν τὸ γένος ἐστὶ καὶ κυΐσκονται δεχόμενοι καταπνέοντα τὸν ἀπηλιώτην ὥσπερ τὰ δένδρα τὸν ζέφυρον, καὶ παντάπασιν ἀπλανῆ τὰ σημεῖα καὶ βέβαια γίνεσθαι πιθανόν ἐστιν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις αἱ περὶ τὰς ὀχείας σοβήσεις ἔτι δ’ ἁρπαγαὶ καὶ φυγαὶ καὶ διώξεις πολὺ τὸ θορυβῶδες καὶ ἀκατάστατον ἔχουσι.

[d] ‘Διὰ τί τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ τὸ ἱερὸν ἔξω πόλεώς ἐστι;’ πότερον ὅτι τὰς ἔξω διατριβὰς ὑγιεινοτέρας ἐνόμιζον εἶναι τῶν ἐν ἄστει; καὶ γὰρ Ἕλληνες ἐν τόποις καθαροῖς καὶ ὑψηλοῖς ἐπιεικῶς ἱδρυμένα τὰ Ἀσκληπιεῖα ἔχουσιν· ἢ ὅτι τὸν θεὸν ἐξ Ἐπιδαύρου μετάπεμπτον ἥκειν νομίζουσιν; Ἐπιδαυρίοις δ’ οὐ κατὰ πόλιν ἀλλὰ πόρρω τὸ Ἀσκληπιεῖόν ἐστιν. ἢ ὅτι τοῦ δράκοντος ἐκ τῆς τριήρους κατὰ τὴν νῆσον ἀποβάντος καὶ ἀφανισθέντος αὐτὸν ᾤοντο τὴν ἵδρυσιν ὑφηγεῖσθαι τὸν θεόν;

‘Διὰ τί νενόμισται τοὺς ἁγνεύοντας ὀσπρίων ἀπέχεσθαι;’ πότερον, ὡς οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ τοὺς μὲν κυάμους ἀφωσιοῦντο διὰ τὰς λεγομένας αἰτίας, τὸν δὲ λάθυρον [e] καὶ τὸν ἐρέβινθον ὡς παρωνύμους τοῦ ἐρέβους καὶ τῆς λήθης; ἢ ὅτι πρὸς τὰ περίδειπνα καὶ τὰς προκλήσεις τῶν νεκρῶν μάλιστα χρῶνται τοῖς ὀσπρίοις; ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι δεῖ πρὸς τὰς ἁγνείας καὶ ἁγιστείας καθαρὰ καὶ λιτὰ τὰ σώματα ἔχειν; ἔστι δὲ τὰ ὄσπρια πνευματώδη καὶ περίσσευμα ποιεῖ πολλῆς καθάρσεως δεόμενον. ἢ ὅτι καὶ πρὸς συνουσίαν παρορμᾷ διὰ τὸ φυσῶδες καὶ πνευματικόν;

‘Διὰ τί τῶν παναγῶν παρθένων τὰς διαφθαρείσας [f] ἄλλως οὐ κολάζουσιν, ἀλλὰ ζώσας κατορύττουσι;’ πότερον ὅτι καίουσι τοὺς ἀποθανόντας, θάπτειν δὲ πυρὶ τὴν τὸ πῦρ τὸ θεῖον ὁσίως μὴ φυλάξασαν οὐκ ἦν δίκαιον; ἢ σῶμα ταῖς μεγίσταις καθωσιωμένον ἁγιστείαις ἀναιρεῖν καὶ προσφέρειν ἱερᾷ γυναικὶ χεῖρας οὐ θεμιτὸν ἐνόμιζον; αὐτὴν οὖν ἀποθανεῖν μηχανώμενοι δι’ αὑτῆς κατεβίβαζον ὑπὸ γῆν εἰς οἴκημα πεποιημένον, ὅπου καὶ λύχνος ἔκειτο καιόμενος καὶ ἄρτος καὶ γάλακτός τι [287] [a] καὶ ὕδατος, εἶτα γῇ τὸ οἴκημα κατέκρυπτον ἄνωθεν. καὶ οὐδὲ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ἀφοσιωσάμενοι τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν ἐκπεφεύγασιν, ἀλλὰ μέχρι νῦν ἐναγίζουσιν οἱ ἱερεῖς ἐκεῖ βαδίζοντες ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον.

‘Διὰ τί ταῖς Δεκεμβρίαις εἰδοῖς ἱπποδρομίας γενομένης ὁ νικήσας δεξιόσειρος Ἄρει θύεται, καὶ τὴν μὲν οὐρὰν ἀποκόψας τις ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥηγίαν καλουμένην κομίζει καὶ τὸν βωμὸν αἱμάσσει, περὶ δὲ τῆς κεφαλῆς οἱ μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς ἱερᾶς ὁδοῦ λεγομένης οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς Συβούρης καταβάντες διαμάχονται;’ πότερον, ὡς ἔνιοι λέγουσιν, ἵππῳ τὴν Τροίαν ἡλωκέναι νομίζοντες ἵππον κολάζουσιν, ἅτε δὴ καὶ γεγονότες

[b] ‘Τρώων ἀγλαὰ τέκνα μεμιγμένα παισὶ Λατίνων’;

ἢ ὅτι θυμοειδὲς καὶ πολεμικὸν καὶ ἀρήιον ὁ ἵππος ἐστὶ τὰ δὲ προσφιλῆ μάλιστα καὶ πρόσφορα θύουσι τοῖς θεοῖς, ὁ δὲ νικήσας θύεται διὰ τὸ νίκης καὶ κράτους οἰκεῖον εἶναι τὸν θεόν; ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι τοῦ θεοῦ στάσιμον τὸ ἔργον ἐστὶ καὶ νικῶσιν οἱ μένοντες ἐν τάξει τοὺς μὴ μένοντας ἀλλὰ φεύγοντας, καὶ κολάζεται τὸ τάχος ὡς δειλίας ἐφόδιον, καὶ μανθάνουσι συμβολικῶς ὅτι σωτήριον οὐκ ἔστι τοῖς φεύγουσι;

‘Διὰ τί οἱ τιμηταὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν παραλαβόντες οὐδὲν ἄλλο πράττουσι πρότερον ἢ τὴν τροφὴν ἀπομισθοῦσι [c] τῶν ἱερῶν χηνῶν καὶ τὴν γάνωσιν τοῦ ἀγάλματος;’ πότερον ἀπὸ τῶν εὐτελεστάτων ἀρχόμενοι καὶ μὴ πολλῆς δεομένων δαπάνης μηδὲ πραγματείας; ἢ παλαιά τις αὕτη χάρις ἀπομνημονεύεται τοῖς ζῴοις ἀπὸ τῶν Κελτικῶν, ὅτι τοὺς βαρβάρους ὑπερβαίνοντας ἤδη τὸ περιτείχισμα τοῦ Καπετωλίου νύκτωρ οἱ χῆνες ᾔσθοντο τῶν κυνῶν καθευδόντων καὶ βοῇ τοὺς φύλακας ἐπήγειραν; ἢ φύλακες ὄντες οἱ τιμηταὶ τῶν μεγίστων, καὶ προσῆκον ἐπισκοπεῖν καὶ πολυπραγμονεῖν αὐτοῖς ἱερὰ καὶ δημόσια καὶ βίους καὶ ἤθη καὶ διαίτας, τὸ φυλακτικώτατον ζῷον εὐθὺς ἐν λόγῳ τίθενται, καὶ ἅμα τῇ τούτων ἐπιμελείᾳ προτρέπονται τοὺς πολίτας μὴ ἀμελεῖν μηδὲ [d] ῥᾳθυμεῖν τῶν ἱερῶν; ἡ δὲ γάνωσις τοῦ ἀγάλματος ἀναγκαία· ταχὺ γὰρ ἐξανθεῖ τὸ μίλτινον, ᾧ τὰ παλαιὰ τῶν ἀγαλμάτων ἔχρωζον.

‘Διὰ τί τῶν ἄλλων ἱερέων τὸν καταδικασθέντα καὶ φυγόντα παύοντες ἕτερον αἱροῦνται, τοῦ δ’ ‘αὔγουρος’, ἕως ζῇ, κἂν ἐπὶ τοῖς μεγίστοις ἀδικήμασι καταγνῶσιν, οὐκ ἀφαιροῦνται τὴν ἱερωσύνην (‘αὔγουρας’ δὲ τοὺς ἐπὶ τῶν οἰωνῶν καλοῦσι);’ πότερον, ὡς ἔνιοι λέγουσι, βούλονται μηδένα τὰ τῶν ἱερῶν ἀπόρρητα γινώσκειν, ὃς οὐκ ἔστιν ἱερεύς; ἢ κατειλημμένον ὅρκοις τὸν αὔγουρα μηδενὶ φράσειν τὰ τῶν ἱερέων ἀπολῦσαι τῶν [e] ὅρκων οὐ θέλουσιν ἰδιώτην γενόμενον; ἢ τιμῆς οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδ’ ἀρχῆς ἀλλ’ ἐπιστήμης ὄνομα καὶ τέχνης ὁ αὔγουρ; ὅμοιον οὖν τῷ τὸν μουσικὸν ἀποψηφίσασθαι μουσικὸν μὴ εἶναι καὶ τὸν ἰατρὸν ἰατρὸν τὸ κωλύειν μάντιν εἶναι τὸν μάντιν, ἀφελέσθαι μὴ δυναμένους τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ, κἂν ἀφέλωνται τὴν προσηγορίαν. ἄλλον δ’ οὐ καθιστᾶσιν, εἰκότως τὸν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἀριθμὸν τῶν αὐγούρων φυλάττοντες.

‘Διὰ τί ταῖς Αὐγούσταις εἰδοῖς, Σεκστιλίαις δὲ πρότερον λεγομέναις, ἑορτάζουσιν αἵ τε δοῦλαι καὶ οἱ [f] δοῦλοι πάντες, αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες μάλιστα ῥύπτεσθαι τὰς κεφαλὰς καὶ καθαίρειν ἐπιτηδεύουσιν;’ ἦ διὰ τὸ Σερούιον τὸν βασιλέα κατὰ ταύτην τὴν ἡμέραν ἐξ αἰχμαλώτου γενέσθαι θεραπαινίδος ἄδειαν ἔργων ἔχουσιν οἱ θεράποντες, τὸ δὲ πλύνειν τὰς κεφαλὰς ἀρξάμενον ἀπὸ τῶν θεραπαινίδων διὰ τὴν ἑορτὴν ἄχρι τῶν ἐλευθέρων προῆλθεν;

‘Διὰ τί κοσμοῦσι τοὺς παῖδας τοῖς περιδεραίοις, ἃ βούλλας καλοῦσι;’ πότερον ἐπὶ τιμῇ τῶν ἡρπασμένων γυναικῶν ὥσπερ ἄλλα πολλὰ καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐψηφίσαντο τοῖς ἐξ αὐτῶν γεννωμένοις ὑπάρχειν; ἢ τὴν Ταρκυνίου τιμῶντες ἀνδραγαθίαν; λέγεται γὰρ ἔτι παῖς ὢν ἐν τῇ [288] [a] μάχῃ τῇ πρὸς Λατίνους ἅμα καὶ Τυρρηνοὺς ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους, ἀπορρυεὶς δὲ τοῦ ἵππου καὶ τοὺς ἐπιφερομένους ἰταμῶς ὑποστὰς ἐπιρρῶσαι τοὺς Ῥωμαίους, γενομένης δὲ λαμπρᾶς τροπῆς τῶν πολεμίων καὶ μυρίων ἑξακισχιλίων ἀναιρεθέντων τοῦτο λαβεῖν ἀριστεῖον παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ βασιλέως. ἢ τοῖς παλαιοῖς οἰκετῶν μὲν ἐρᾶν ὥραν ἐχόντων οὐκ ἦν ἄδοξον οὐδ’ αἰσχρόν, ὡς ἔτι νῦν αἱ κωμῳδίαι μαρτυροῦσιν· ἐλευθέρων δὲ παίδων ἰσχυρῶς ἀπείχοντο, καὶ ὅπως μηδὲ γυμνοῖς ἐντυχόντες [b] ἀμφιγνοήσειαν, ἐφόρουν οἱ παῖδες τὸ παράσημον; ἢ καὶ πρὸς ἀταξίαν ἐστὶ φυλακτήριον τοῦτο, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τοῦ ἀκολάστου χαλινός, αἰσχυνομένων ἀνδροῦσθαι πρὶν ἢ τὸ παιδικὸν ἀποθέσθαι παράσημον; ὃ μὲν γὰρ οἱ περὶ Βάρρωνα λέγουσιν οὐ πιθανόν ἐστι, τῆς βούλλης ὑπ’ Αἰολέων βόλλας προσαγορευομένης, τοῦτο σύμβολον εὐβουλίας περιτίθεσθαι τοὺς παῖδας. ἀλλ’ ὅρα μὴ καὶ τοῦτο διὰ τὴν σελήνην φοροῦσι. τὸ γὰρ φαινόμενον σχῆμα τῆς σελήνης, ὅταν ἦ διχόμηνος, οὐ σφαιροειδὲς ἀλλὰ φακοειδές ἐστι καὶ δισκοειδές, ὡς δ’ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (Vorsokr.4`4 21 A 60) οἴεται, καὶ τὸ ὑποκείμενον.

‘Διὰ τί τῶν παίδων τοῖς μὲν ἄρρεσιν ἐναταίοις, [c] τοῖς δὲ θήλεσιν ὀγδοαίοις τὰ ὀνόματα τίθενται;’ ἦ τὸ μὲν προτέροις τοῖς θήλεσιν αἰτίαν ἔχει τὴν φύσιν; καὶ γὰρ αὔξεται τὸ θῆλυ καὶ ἀκμάζει καὶ τελειοῦται πρότερον τοῦ ἄρρενος. τῶν δ’ ἡμερῶν τὰς μετὰ τὴν ἑβδόμην λαμβάνουσιν· ἡ γὰρ ἑβδόμη σφαλερὰ τοῖς νεογνοῖς πρός τε τὰ ἄλλα καὶ τὸν ὀμφαλόν· ἑβδομαῖος γὰρ ἀπολύεται τοῖς πλείστοις· ἕως δ’ ἀπολυθῇ, φυτῷ μᾶλλον ἢ ζῴῳ προσέοικε τὸ νήπιον. ἢ καθάπερ οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τὸν μὲν ἄρτιον θῆλυν ἄρρενα δὲ τὸν περιττὸν [d] ἐνόμιζον; γόνιμος γάρ ἐστι καὶ κρατεῖ τοῦ ἀρτίου συντιθέμενος. καὶ διαιρουμένων εἰς τὰς μονάδας ὁ μὲν ἄρτιος καθάπερ τὸ θῆλυ χώραν μεταξὺ κενὴν ἐνδίδωσι, τοῦ δὲ περιττοῦ μόριον ἀεί τι πλῆρες ὑπολείπεται· διὸ τὸν μὲν ἄρρενι τὸν δὲ θήλει πρόσφορον νομίζουσιν. ἦ ὅτι τῶν ἀριθμῶν ἁπάντων τὰ μὲν ἐννέα πρῶτός ἐστι τετράγωνος ἀπὸ περιττοῦ καὶ τελείου τῆς τριάδος, τὰ δ’ ὀκτὼ πρῶτος κύβος ἀπὸ ἀρτίου τῆς δυάδος; δεῖ δὲ τὸν μὲν ἄνδρα τετράγωνον εἶναι καὶ περιττὸν καὶ τέλειον, τὴν δὲ γυναῖκα καθάπερ τὸν κύβον ἑδραῖον καὶ οἰκουρὸν καὶ δυσμετακίνητον. τούτῳ δὲ προσληπτέον, ὅτι τὰ μὲν [e] ὀκτὼ κύβος ἐστὶν ἀπὸ δυάδος, τὰ δ’ ἐννέα τετράγωνος ἀπὸ τριάδος· χρῶνται δὲ δυσὶ μὲν ὀνόμασιν αἱ θήλειαι τρισὶ δ’ οἱ ἄρρενες.

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς ἀπάτορας ‘σπορίους’ υἱοὺς καλοῦσιν;’ οὐ γάρ, ὡς Ἕλληνες νομίζουσι καὶ λέγουσιν οἱ ῥήτορες ἐν ταῖς δίκαις, συμφορητοῦ τινος καὶ κοινοῦ σπέρματος γεγόνασιν, ἀλλ’ ἔστιν ὁ Σπόριος τῶν πρώτων ὀνομάτων, ὡς ὁ Σέξτος καὶ ὁ Δέκιμος καὶ ὁ Γάιος. τὰ δὲ πρῶτα τῶν ὀνομάτων οὐχ ὁλογραφοῦσιν ἀλλ’ ἢ δι’ ἑνὸς γράμματος, ὡς τὸν Τίτον καὶ τὸν Λούκιον καὶ τὸν Μᾶρκον, ἢ διὰ δυεῖν, ὡς τὸν Τιβέριον καὶ τὸν Γναῖον, ἢ διὰ τριῶν, ὡς τὸν Σέξτον καὶ τὸν Σερούιον. ἔστιν οὖν καὶ ὁ Σπόριος τῶν διὰ δυεῖν γραφομένων, τοῦ σ [f] καὶ τοῦ π. γράφουσι δὲ διὰ τούτων καὶ τοὺς ἀπάτορας ‘σίνε πάτρις’ οἷον ἄνευ πατρός, τῷ μὲν σ τό ‘σίνε’ τῷ δὲ π τό ‘πάτρις’ σημαίνοντες. τοῦτ’ οὖν τὴν πλάνην ἐποίησε, τὸ διὰ τῶν αὐτῶν γραμμάτων τό ‘σίνε πάτρις’ καὶ τὸν Σπόριον γράφεσθαι. λεκτέον δὲ καὶ τὸν ἕτερον λόγον, ἔστι δ’ ἀτοπώτερος· τοὺς γὰρ Σαβίνους φασὶ τὸ τῆς γυναικὸς αἰδοῖον ὀνομάζειν σπόριον, εἶθ’ οἷον ἐφυβρίζοντας οὕτω προσαγορεύειν τὸν ἐκ γυναικὸς ἀγάμου καὶ ἀνεγγύου γεγενημένον.

‘Διὰ τί τὸν Διόνυσον ‘Λίβερουμ πάτρεμ’ καλοῦσι;’ πότερον ὡς ἐλευθερίας πατέρα τοῖς πιοῦσι γενόμενον; [289] [a] γίνονται γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ θρασεῖς καὶ παρρησίας ὑποπιμπλῶνται περὶ τὰς μέθας. ἢ ὅτι τὴν λοιβὴν παρέσχεν; ἤ, ὡς Ἀλέξανδρός (FHG III p. 244) φησιν, ἀπὸ τοῦ παρ’ Ἐλευθερὰς τῆς Βοιωτίας Ἐλευθερέως Διονύσου προσαγορευομένου;

‘Διὰ τίνα αἰτίαν ἐν ταῖς δημοσίαις ἑορταῖς ἔθος οὐκ ἔστι γαμεῖσθαι παρθένους, αἱ δὲ χῆραι γαμοῦνται;’ πότερον, ὡς ὁ Βάρρων (8, 3 Merkel) εἴρηκεν, ὅτι λυπούμεναι μὲν αἱ παρθένοι γαμοῦνται, χαίρουσι δ’ αἱ γυναῖκες, ἑορτῇ δὲ ‹δεῖ› μηθὲν λυπουμένους ποιεῖν μηδὲ πρὸς ἀνάγκην; ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι ταῖς μὲν παρθένοις καλὸν [b] μὴ ὀλίγων, ταῖς δὲ χήραις αἰσχρὸν πολλῶν ‹παρ›όντων γαμεῖσθαι; ζηλωτὸς γὰρ ὁ πρῶτος γάμος ὁ δὲ δεύτερος ἀπευκταῖος· αἰσχύνονται γάρ, ἂν ζώντων τῶν προτέρων ἑτέρους λαμβάνωσιν, ὀδύρονται δέ, ἂν ἀποθανόντων. ὅθεν ἡσυχίᾳ χαίρουσι μᾶλλον ἢ θορύβοις καὶ προπομπαῖς. αἱ δ’ ἑορταὶ περισπῶσι τοὺς πολλούς, ὥστε τοῖς τοιούτοις μὴ σχολάζειν. ἢ ὅτι καὶ τὰς Σαβίνων θυγατέρας ἁρπάσαντες ἐν ἑορτῇ παρθένους οὔσας εἰς πόλεμον κατέστησαν, ἐξοιωνίσαντο τὸ γαμεῖν παρθένους ἐν ἱεραῖς ἡμέραις;

‘Διὰ τί Ῥωμαῖοι Τύχην σέβονται Πριμιγένειαν, ἣν ἄν τις εἴποι πρωτογένειαν;’ ἆρ’ ὅτι Σερουίῳ κατὰ [c] τύχην, ὥς φασιν, ἐκ θεραπαινίδος γενομένῳ βασιλεῦσαι τῆς Ῥώμης ἐπιφανῶς ὑπῆρξεν (οὕτω γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ Ῥωμαίων ὑπειλήφασιν); ἢ μᾶλλον, ὅτι τῆς Ῥώμης ἡ τύχη παρέσχε τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ τὴν γένεσιν; ἢ φυσικώτερον ἔχει λόγον τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον, ὡς τὴν τύχην πάντων οὖσαν ἀρχὴν καὶ τὴν φύσιν ἐκ τοῦ κατὰ τύχην συνισταμένην, ὅταν τισὶν ὡς ἔτυχεν ὑποκειμένοις τάξις ἐγγένηται;

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνίτας ‘ἱστρίωνας’ Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν;’ ἦ δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν Κλούβιος Ῥοῦφος (fr. 4 Peter) ἱστόρηκε; φησὶ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς [d] πάνυ παλαιοῖς χρόνοις Γαΐου τε Σουλπικίου καὶ Λικινίου Στόλωνος ὑπατευόντων λοιμώδη νόσον ἐν Ῥώμῃ γενομένην πάντας ὁμαλῶς διαφθεῖραι τοὺς ἐπὶ σκηνὴν προερχομένους· δεηθεῖσιν οὖν αὐτοῖς ἐκ Τυρρηνίας ἐλθεῖν πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς τεχνίτας, ὧν τὸν πρωτεύοντα δόξῃ καὶ χρόνον πλεῖστον ἐνευημεροῦντα τοῖς θεάτροις Ἵστρον ὀνομάζεσθαι· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πάντας ‘ἱστρίωνας’ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου προσαγορεύεσθαι.

‘Διὰ τί δὲ τὰς ἐγγὺς γένους οὐ γαμοῦσι;’ πότερον αὔξειν τοῖς γάμοις βουλόμενοι τὰς οἰκειότητας καὶ συγγενεῖς πολλοὺς ἐπικτᾶσθαι, διδόντες ἑτέροις καὶ [e] λαμβάνοντες παρ’ ἑτέρων γυναῖκας; ἢ φοβούμενοι τὰς ἐν τοῖς γάμοις τῶν συγγενῶν διαφορὰς ὡς καὶ τὰ φύσει δίκαια προσαπολλυούσας; ἢ πολλῶν βοηθῶν τὰς γυναῖκας ὁρῶντες δι’ ἀσθένειαν δεομένας οὐκ ἐβούλοντο τὰς ἐγγὺς γένους συνοικίζειν, ὅπως, ἂν οἱ ἄνδρες ἀδικῶσιν αὐτάς, οἱ συγγενεῖς βοηθῶσιν;

‘Διὰ τί τῷ ἱερεῖ τοῦ Διός, ὃν Φλάμινα Διᾶλιν καλοῦσιν, οὐκ ἐξῆν ἀλεύρου θιγεῖν οὐδὲ ζύμης;’ ἦ τὸ μὲν ἄλευρον ἀτελὴς τροφὴ καὶ ἄπεπτός ἐστιν; οὔτε γὰρ ὃ ἦν μεμένηκεν ὁ πυρὸς οὔθ’ ὃ δεῖ γενέσθαι γέγονεν, ὁ ἄρτος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν σπέρματος δύναμιν ἀπολώλεκεν [f] ἅμα καὶ τὴν σιτίου χρείαν οὐκ ἔσχηκε· διὸ καὶ ‘μυλήφατον’ ὁ ποιητής ‘ἄλφιτον’ ἐκ μεταφορᾶς ὠνόμακεν (β 355) ὥσπερ φονευόμενον ἐν τῷ ἀλέτῳ καὶ φθειρόμενον. ἡ δὲ ζύμη καὶ γέγονεν ἐκ φθορᾶς αὐτὴ καὶ φθείρει τὸ φύραμα μιγνυμένη· γίνεται γὰρ ἄτονον καὶ ἀδρανὲς καὶ ὅλως ἔοικε σῆψις ἡ ζύμωσις εἶναι· πλεονάσασα γοῦν ἀποξύνει παντάπασι καὶ φθείρει τὸ ἄλευρον.

‘Διὰ τί καὶ σαρκὸς ὠμῆς ἀπείρηται τῷ ἱερεῖ ψαύειν;’ πότερον ὠμοφαγίας πάνυ πόρρωθεν ἀποτρέπει τὸ ἔθος; ἢ δι’ ἣν τὸ ἄλευρον αἰτίαν ἀφοσιοῦνται καὶ τὸ [290] [a] κρέας; οὔτε γάρ ἐστι ζῷον οὔτ’ ὄψον ἤδη γέγονεν. ἡ γὰρ ἕψησις καὶ ὄπτησις ἀλλοίωσις οὖσα καὶ μετακόσμησις ἐξίστησι τὴν μορφήν, τὸ δὲ πρόσφατον καὶ ὠμὸν οὐδὲ τὴν ὄψιν ἔχει καθαρὰν καὶ ἀμίαντον, ἀλλ’ εἰδεχθῆ καὶ ἑλκώδη.

‘Διὰ τί δὲ καὶ κυνὸς καὶ αἰγὸς ἐκέλευον ἀπέχεσθαι τὸν ἱερέα, μήθ’ ἁπτόμενον μήτ’ ὀνομάζοντα;’ πότερον τῆς μὲν αἰγὸς βδελυττόμενοι τὸ ἀκόλαστον καὶ δυσῶδες; ἢ φοβούμενοι τὸ νοσηματικόν; δοκεῖ γὰρ ἐπιληψίᾳ καταλαμβάνεσθαι μάλιστα τῶν ζῴων καὶ προσαναχρώννυσθαι τοῖς φαγοῦσιν ἢ θιγοῦσιν ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους ἐχομένης. αἰτίαν δὲ λέγουσι τὴν στενότητα τῶν [b] πνευματικῶν πόρων πολλάκις ἐπιλαμβανομένην, τεκμαιρόμενοι τῇ λεπτότητι τῆς φωνῆς· καὶ γὰρ ἀνθρώπων ὅσοις ἐπιληπτίζουσι συμβαίνει φθέγγεσθαι μηκασμῷ παραπλησίαν φωνὴν ἀφιᾶσι. τῷ δὲ κυνὶ τοῦ μὲν ἀκολάστου καὶ δυσώδους ἧττον ἴσως μέτεστι· καίτοι φασὶν ἔνιοι μήτε τῆς Ἀθηναίων ἀκροπόλεως ἐπιβαίνειν κύνα μήτε τῆς Δηλίων νήσου διὰ τὴν ἐμφανῆ μῖξιν, ὥσπερ βοῶν καὶ συῶν καὶ ἵππων ἐν θαλάμοις ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐμφανῶς καὶ ἀνέδην ὀχευόντων. τὴν γὰρ ἀληθινὴν αἰτίαν ἀγνοοῦσιν, ὅτι μάχιμον ὄντα τὸν κύνα τῶν ἀσύλων καὶ [c] ἁγίων ἐξείργουσιν ἱερῶν, ἀσφαλῆ καταφυγὴν τοῖς ἱκέταις διδόντες. εἰκὸς μὲν οὖν ἐστι καὶ τὸν ἱερέα τοῦ Διὸς ὥσπερ ἔμψυχον καὶ ἱερὸν ἄγαλμα καὶ καταφύξιμον ἀνεῖσθαι τοῖς δεομένοις καὶ ἱκετεύουσι, μηδενὸς ἀπείργοντος μηδ’ ἐκφοβοῦντος. διὸ κλινίδιον μὲν ἦν αὐτοῦ κείμενον ἐν τῷ θυρῶνι τῆς οἰκίας· ὁ δὲ προσπεσὼν τοῖς γόνασι τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἄδειαν εἶχε πληγῶν καὶ κολάσεως· εἰ δὲ δεσμώτης φθαίη προσελθών, ἐλύετο· τοὺς δὲ δεσμοὺς ἐκτὸς οὐ κατὰ θύρας ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ στέγους ἀπερρίπτουν. οὐδὲν οὖν ὄφελος ἦν οὕτως αὑτὸν ἥμερον παρέχειν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον, εἰ κύων προειστήκει δεδιττόμενος καὶ ἀπερύκων τοὺς προσφυγεῖν δεομένους.

[d] οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ καθαρεύειν ᾤοντο παντάπασιν οἱ παλαιοὶ τὸ ζῷον· ὀλυμπίων μὲν γὰρ οὐδενὶ θεῶν καθιέρωται, χθονίᾳ δὲ δεῖπνον Ἑκάτῃ πεμπόμενος εἰς τριόδους ἀποτροπαίων καὶ καθαρσίων ἐπέχει μοῖραν. ἐν δὲ Λακεδαίμονι τῷ φονικωτάτῳ θεῶν Ἐνυαλίῳ σκύλακας ἐντέμνουσι· Βοιωτοῖς δὲ δημοσίᾳ καθαρμός ἐστι κυνὸς διχοτομηθέντος ‹διὰ› τῶν μερῶν διεξελθεῖν· αὐτοὶ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι τοῖς Λυκαίοις, ἃ Λουπερκάλια καλοῦσιν, ἐν τῷ καθαρσίῳ μηνὶ κύνα θύουσιν. ὅθεν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου τοῖς τὸν ὑπέρτατον καὶ καθαρώτατον εἰληφόσι θεραπεύειν θεὸν ἀπειρῆσθαι κύνα ποιεῖσθαι συνήθη καὶ σύνοικον.

[e] ‘Διὰ τίνα δ’ αἰτίαν οὐδὲ κιττοῦ θιγεῖν ἐφίετο τῷ ἱερεῖ τοῦ Διός, οὐδ’ ὁδὸν διελθεῖν ἀναδενδράδος ἄνωθεν διατεταμένης;’ ἦ τοῦτο μὲν ὅμοιόν ἐστι τῷ ‘μὴ ἐσθίειν ἀπὸ δίφρου’ ‘μηδ’ ἐπὶ χοίνικος καθῆσθαι’ ‘μηδὲ σάρον ὑπερβαίνειν’, οὐ ταῦτα τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν δεδιότων καὶ φυλαττομένων, ἀλλ’ ἕτερα τούτοις ἀπαγορευόντων; καὶ γὰρ τὸ ὑπ’ ἄμπελον ὑποπορεύεσθαι τὴν ἀναφορὰν ἐπὶ τὸν οἶνον εἶχεν, ὡς οὐ θεμιτὸν τῷ ἱερεῖ μεθύσκεσθαι. τῶν γὰρ μεθυσκομένων ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς ὁ οἶνός ἐστι καὶ πιεζοῦνται καὶ ταπεινοῦνται, δέον ὑπερτέρους [f] εἶναι καὶ κρατεῖν ἀεὶ τῆς ἡδονῆς ταύτης ἀλλὰ μὴ κρατεῖσθαι. τὸν δὲ κιττὸν πότερον ὡς ἄκαρπον καὶ ἄχρηστον ἀνθρώποις, ἀδρανῆ δὲ καὶ δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἑτέρων ὀχούντων δεόμενον, σκιᾷ δὲ καὶ χλωρότητος ὄψει γοητεύοντα τοὺς πολλοὺς οὐκ ᾤοντο δεῖν ἀσύμβολον ἐν ταῖς οἰκίαις μάτην ἐντρέφεσθαι καὶ περιπλέκεσθαι βλαβερὸν ὄντα τοῖς προσδεχομένοις φυτοῖς; ‹ἢ ὡς› τῆς γῆς ἐχόμενον; [291] [a] διὸ τῶν μὲν ὀλυμπίων ἱερῶν εἴργεται, καὶ οὔτ’ ἐν Ἥρας Ἀθήνησιν οὔτε Θήβησιν ἐν Ἀφροδίτης ἴδοι τις ἂν κιττόν· Ἀγριωνίοις δὲ καὶ Νυκτελίοις, ὧν τὰ πολλὰ διὰ σκότους δρᾶται, πάρεστιν. ἢ καὶ τοῦτο συμβολικὴ θιάσων καὶ βακχευμάτων ἀπαγόρευσις ἦν; αἱ γὰρ ἔνοχοι τοῖς βακχικοῖς πάθεσι γυναῖκες εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸν κιττὸν φέρονται, καὶ σπαράττουσι δραττόμεναι ταῖς χερσὶ καὶ διεσθίουσαι τοῖς στόμασιν· ὥστε μὴ παντελῶς ἀπιθάνους εἶναι τοὺς λέγοντας, ὅτι καὶ πνεῦμα μανίας ἔχων ἐγερτικὸν καὶ παρακινητικὸν ἐξίστησι καὶ σπαράττει, καὶ [b] ὅλως ἄοινον ἐπάγει μέθην καὶ χάριν τοῖς ἐπισφαλῶς πρὸς ἐνθουσιασμὸν ἔχουσι.

‘Διὰ τί τοῖς ἱερεῦσι τούτοις ἀρχὴν οὐκ ἐφεῖτο λαβεῖν οὐδὲ μετελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ ῥαβδούχῳ τε χρῶνται καὶ δίφρον ἡγεμονικὸν ἐπὶ τιμῇ καὶ παραμυθίᾳ τοῦ μὴ ἄρχειν ἔχουσι;’ πότερον, ὡς ἐνιαχοῦ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀντίρροπον ἦν τὸ τῆς ἱερωσύνης ἀξίωμα πρὸς τὸ τῆς βασιλείας, ‹τοὺς› μὴ τυχόντας ἱερεῖς ἀπεδείκνυσαν; ἢ μᾶλλον ὅτι, τῶν μὲν ἱερέων ὡρισμένας πράξεις ἐχόντων τῶν δ’ [c] ἀρχόντων ἀτάκτους καὶ ἀορίστους, οὐκ ἦν δυνατὸν εἰς ἓν ἅμα τῶν καιρῶν συμπεσόντων ἑκατέρῳ παρεῖναι τὸν αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἔδει θάτερα πολλάκις ἀμφοτέρων ἐπειγόντων ἀπολείποντα νῦν μὲν ἀσεβεῖν τοὺς θεούς, νῦν δὲ βλάπτειν τοὺς πολίτας; ἢ ταῖς ἀνθρωπίναις ἐνορῶντες ἀρχαῖς οὐκ ἐλάττονα τῆς ἐξουσίας τὴν ἀνάγκην προσοῦσαν καὶ τὸν ἄρχοντα δήμου, καθάπερ Ἱπποκράτης (π. φυσ. 1 p. 91 H.) ἔφη τὸν ἰατρόν, δεινὰ μὲν ὁρῶντα δεινῶν δ’ ἁπτόμενον, ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις δὲ κακοῖς ἰδίας λύπας καρπούμενον, οὐχ ὅσιον ἡγοῦντο θύειν θεοῖς καὶ ἱερῶν κατάρχεσθαι γενόμενον ἐν καταδίκαις καὶ θανατώσεσι πολιτῶν, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ συγγενῶν καὶ οἰκείων, οἷα καὶ Βρούτῳ συνέτυχε;

[d]

ΑΙΤΙΑ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ

‘Τίνες οἱ ἐν Ἐπιδαύρῳ κονίποδες καὶ ἄρτυνοι;’ οἱ [e] μὲν τὸ πολίτευμα ... ὀγδοήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν ἄνδρες ἦσαν· ἐκ δὲ τούτων ᾑροῦντο βουλευτάς, οὓς ‘ἀρτύνους’ ἐκάλουν. τοῦ δὲ δήμου τὸ πλεῖστον ἐν ἀγρῷ διέτριβεν· ἐκαλοῦντο δέ ‘κονίποδες’, ὡς συμβαλεῖν ἔστιν ἀπὸ τῶν ποδῶν γνωριζόμενοι κεκονιμένων, ὁπότε κατέλθοιεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν.

‘Τίς ἡ παρὰ Κυμαίοις ὀνοβάτις;’ τῶν γυναικῶν [f] τὴν ἐπὶ μοιχείᾳ ληφθεῖσαν ἀγαγόντες εἰς ἀγορὰν ἐπὶ λίθου τινὸς ἐμφανῆ πᾶσι καθίστασαν· εἶθ’ οὕτως ἀνεβίβαζον ἐπ’ ὄνον, καὶ τὴν πόλιν κύκλῳ περιαχθεῖσαν ἔδει πάλιν ἐπὶ τὸν αὐτὸν λίθον κατασταθῆναι καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν ἄτιμον διατελεῖν, ‘ὀνοβάτιν’ προσαγορευομένην. τὸν δὲ λίθον ἀπὸ τούτου καθαρὸν οὐ νομίζοντες ἀφωσιοῦντο. ἦν δὲ καὶ φυλάκτου τις ἀρχὴ παρ’ αὐτοῖς· ὁ δὲ ταύτην ἔχων τὸν μὲν ἄλλον χρόνον ἐτήρει τὸ δεσμωτήριον, εἰς [292] [a] δὲ τὴν βουλὴν ἐν τῷ νυκτερινῷ συλλόγῳ παριὼν ἐξῆγε τοὺς βασιλεῖς τῆς χειρὸς καὶ κατεῖχε, μέχρι περὶ αὐτῶν ἡ βουλὴ διαγνοίη, πότερον ἀδικοῦσιν ἢ οὔ, κρύβδην φέρουσα τὴν ψῆφον.

‘Τίς ἡ παρὰ Σόλοις ὑπεκκαύστρια;’ τὴν τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ἱέρειαν οὕτω καλοῦσιν, ὅτι ποιεῖταί τινας θυσίας καὶ ἱερουργίας ἀποτροπαίους.

‘Τίνες ἐν Κνίδῳ οἱ ἀμνήμονες καὶ τίς ὁ ἀφεστήρ;’ ἑξήκοντα προκρίτοις ἀνδράσιν ἐκ τῶν ἀρίστων οἷον ἐπισκόποις ἐχρῶντο διὰ βίου καὶ προβούλοις τῶν μεγίστων· ἐκαλοῦντο δ’ ‘ἀμνήμονες’ ὡς ἄν τις εἰκάσειε διὰ τὸ [b] ἀνυπεύθυνον, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία πολυμνήμονές τινες ὄντες. ὁ δὲ τὰς γνώμας ἐρωτῶν ‘ἀφεστήρ’.

‘Τίνες οἱ παρ’ Ἀρκάσι καὶ Λακεδαιμονίοις χρηστοί;’ Λακεδαιμόνιοι Τεγεάταις διαλλαγέντες ἐποιήσαντο συνθήκας καὶ στήλην ἐπ’ Ἀλφειῷ κοινὴν ἀνέστησαν, ἐν ᾗ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων γέγραπται ‘Μεσσηνίους ἐκβαλεῖν ἐκ τῆς χώρας καὶ μὴ ἐξεῖναι ‘χρηστούς’ ποιεῖν.’ ἐξηγούμενος οὖν ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 592) τοῦτό φησι δύνασθαι τὸ μὴ ἀποκτιννύναι βοηθείας χάριν τοῖς λακωνίζουσι τῶν Τεγεατῶν.

‘Τίς ὁ παρ’ Ὀπουντίοις κριθολόγος;’ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν Ἑλλήνων πρὸς τὰς πάνυ παλαιὰς θυσίας ἐχρῶντο [c] ταῖς κριθαῖς, ἀπαρχομένων τῶν πολιτῶν. τὸν μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τῶν θυσιῶν ἄρχοντα καὶ ταύτας κομιζόμενον τὰς ἀπαρχάς ‘κριθολόγον’ ὠνόμαζον. δύο δ’ ἦσαν ἱερεῖς παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ὁ μὲν περὶ τὰ θεῖα τεταγμένος, ὁ δὲ περὶ τὰ δαιμόνια.

‘Τίνες αἱ πλωιάδες νεφέλαι;’ τὰς ὑπόμβρους μάλιστα καὶ περιφερομένας ἐκάλουν ‘πλωιάδας’, ὡς Θεόφραστος ἐν τετάρτῃ περὶ μεταρσίων εἴρηκε κατὰ λέξιν ‘ἐπεὶ καὶ αἱ πλωιάδες αὗται νεφέλαι καὶ αἱ συνεστῶσαι, ἀκίνητοι δὲ καὶ τοῖς χρώμασιν ἔκλευκοι, δηλοῦσι διαφοράν [d] τινα τῆς ὕλης, ὡς οὔτ’ ἐξυδατουμένης οὔτ’ ἐκπνευματουμένης.’

‘Τίς ὁ παρὰ Βοιωτοῖς πλατυχαίτας;’ τοὺς οἰκίᾳ γειτνιῶντας ἢ χωρίοις ὁμοροῦντας αἰολίζοντες οὕτω καλοῦσιν ὡς τὸ πλησίον ἔχοντας. παραθήσομαι δὲ λέξιν μίαν ἐκ τοῦ θεσμοφυλακίου νόμου, πλειόνων οὐσῶν

‘Τίς ὁ παρὰ Δελφοῖς ὁσιωτὴρ καὶ διὰ τί βύσιον ἕνα τῶν μηνῶν καλοῦσιν;’ ‘ὁσιωτῆρα’ μὲν καλοῦσι τὸν θυόμενον ἱερεῖον, ὅταν ‘ὅσιος’ ἀποδειχθῇ. πέντε δ’ εἰσὶν ὅσιοι διὰ βίου, καὶ τὰ πολλὰ μετὰ τῶν προφητῶν δρῶσιν οὗτοι καὶ συνιερουργοῦσιν, ἅτε γεγονέναι δοκοῦντες ἀπὸ [e] Δευκαλίωνος. ὁ δέ ‘βύσιος’ μήν, ὡς μὲν οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσι, φύσιός ἐστιν· ἔαρος γὰρ ἄρχει καὶ τὰ πολλὰ φύεται τηνικαῦτα καὶ διαβλαστάνει. τὸ δ’ ἀληθὲς οὐκ ἔχει οὕτως· οὐ γὰρ ἀντὶ τοῦ φ τῷ β χρῶνται Δελφοί, καθάπερ Μακεδόνες ‘Βίλιππον’ καί ‘βαλακρόν’ καί ‘Βερονίκην’ λέγοντες, ἀλλ’ ἀντὶ τοῦ π· καὶ γὰρ τὸ πατεῖν ‘βατεῖν’ καὶ τὸ πικρόν ‘βικρόν’ ἐπιεικῶς καλοῦσιν. ἔστιν οὖν πύσιος ὁ ‘βύσιος’, ἐν ᾧ πυστιῶνται καὶ πυνθάνονται τοῦ θεοῦ· †τὸ γὰρ ἐννοεῖν καὶ πάτριον. ἐν τῷ μηνὶ γὰρ τούτῳ χρηστήριον ἐγίγνετο καὶ ἑβδόμην ταύτην νομίζουσι τοῦ [f] θεοῦ γενέσθλιον, καὶ πολύφθοον ὀνομάζουσιν οὐ διὰ τὸ πέττεσθαι φθόις, ἀλλὰ πολυπευθῆ καὶ πολυμάντευτον οὖσαν. ὀψὲ γὰρ ἀνείθησαν αἱ κατὰ μῆνα μαντεῖαι τοῖς δεομένοις, πρότερον δ’ ἅπαξ ἐθεμίστευσεν ἡ Πυθία τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ κατὰ ταύτην τὴν ἡμέραν, ὡς Καλλισθένης [293] [a] (Fr. Gr. Hist. 124 F. 49) καὶ Ἀναξανδρίδης ἱστορήκασι.

‘Τί τὸ φυξίμηλον;’ τῶν μικρῶν ἐστι καὶ χαμαιζήλων φυτῶν, ὧν ἐπιόντα τοὺς βλαστοὺς τὰ βοσκήματα κολούει καὶ ἀδικεῖ καὶ λυμαίνεται τὴν αὔξησιν· ὅταν οὖν ἀναδραμόντα μέγεθος λάβῃ καὶ διαφύγῃ τὸ βλάπτεσθαι ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπινεμομένων, ‘φυξίμηλα’ καλεῖται. τὸ δὲ μαρτύριον Αἰσχύλος (fr. 447).

‘Τίνες οἱ ἀποσφενδόνητοι;’ Κέρκυραν τὴν νῆσον Ἐρετριεῖς κατῴκουν· Χαρικράτους δὲ πλεύσαντος ἐκ Κορίνθου μετὰ δυνάμεως καὶ τῷ πολέμῳ κρατοῦντος ἐμβάντες εἰς τὰς ναῦς οἱ Ἐρετριεῖς ἀπέπλευσαν οἴκαδε.

[b] προαισθόμενοι δ’ οἱ πολῖται τῆς χώρας εἶργον αὐτοὺς καὶ ἀποβαίνειν ἐκώλυον σφενδονῶντες. μὴ δυνάμενοι δὲ μήτε πεῖσαι μήτε βιάσασθαι πολλοὺς καὶ ἀπαραιτήτους ὄντας ἐπὶ Θρᾴκης ἔπλευσαν καὶ κατασχόντες χωρίον, ἐν ᾧ πρότερον οἰκῆσαι Μέθωνα τὸν Ὀρφέως πρόγονον ἱστοροῦσι, τὴν μὲν πόλιν ὠνόμασαν Μεθώνην, ὑπὸ δὲ τῶν προσοίκων ‘ἀποσφενδόνητοι’ προσωνομάσθησαν.

‘Τίς ἡ παρὰ Δελφοῖς Χάριλα;’ τρεῖς ἄγουσι Δελφοὶ ἐνναετηρίδας κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς, ὧν τὴν μὲν Σεπτήριον [c] καλοῦσι, τὴν δ’ Ἡρωίδα, τὴν δὲ Χάριλαν. τὸ μὲν οὖν Σεπτήριον ἔοικε μίμημα τῆς πρὸς τὸν Πύθωνα τοῦ θεοῦ μάχης εἶναι καὶ τῆς μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἐπὶ τὰ Τέμπη φυγῆς καὶ ἐκδιώξεως. οἱ μὲν γὰρ φυγεῖν ἐπὶ τῷ φόνῳ φασὶ χρῄζοντα καθαρσίων, οἱ δὲ τῷ Πύθωνι τετρωμένῳ καὶ φεύγοντι κατὰ τὴν ὁδόν, ἣν νῦν ἱερὰν καλοῦμεν, ἐπακολουθεῖν καὶ μικρὸν ἀπολειφθῆναι τῆς τελευτῆς· κατέλαβε γὰρ αὐτὸν ἐκ τοῦ τραύματος ἄρτι τεθνηκότα καὶ κεκηδευμένον ὑπὸ τοῦ παιδός, ᾧ ὄνομα ἦν Αἴξ, ὡς λέγουσι. τὸ μὲν οὖν Σεπτήριον τούτων ἢ τοιούτων τινῶν ἀπομίμησίς ἐστιν ἑτέρων. τῆς δ’ Ἡρωίδος τὰ πλεῖστα μυστικὸν ἔχει λόγον, ὃν ἴσασιν αἱ Θυιάδες, ἐκ δὲ τῶν [d] δρωμένων φανερῶς Σεμέλης ἄν τις ἀναγωγὴν εἰκάσειε. περὶ δὲ τῆς Χαρίλας τοιαῦτά τινα μυθολογοῦσι. λιμὸς ἐξ αὐχμοῦ τοὺς Δελφοὺς κατέσχε, καὶ πρὸς τὰς θύρας τοῦ βασιλέως ἐλθόντες μετὰ τέκνων καὶ γυναικῶν ἱκέτευον. ὁ δὲ τῶν ἀλφίτων καὶ τῶν χεδρόπων μετεδίδου τοῖς γνωριμωτέροις αὐτῶν· οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἱκανὰ πᾶσιν. ἐλθούσης δὲ παιδὸς ἔτι μικρᾶς ὀρφανῆς γονέων καὶ προσλιπαρούσης ἐρράπισεν αὐτὴν ὑποδήματι καὶ τῷ προσώπῳ τὸ ὑπόδημα προσέρριψεν· ἡ δέ, πενιχρά τις οὖσα καὶ ἔρημος οὐκ ἀγεννὴς δὲ τὸ ἦθος, ἐκποδὼν γενομένη [e] καὶ λύσασα τὴν ζώνην ἀνήρτησεν ἑαυτήν. ἐπιτείνοντος δὲ τοῦ λιμοῦ καὶ νοσημάτων προσγενομένων ἀνεῖλεν ἡ Πυθία τῷ βασιλεῖ Χάριλαν ἱλάσκεσθαι παρθένον αὐτοθάνατον. μόλις οὖν ἀνευρόντες, ὅτι τοὔνομα τοῦτ’ ἦν τῇ ῥαπισθείσῃ παιδί, μεμιγμένην τινὰ καθαρμῷ θυσίαν ἀπετέλεσαν, ἣν ἐπιτελοῦσιν ἔτι καὶ νῦν δι’ ἐννέα ἐτῶν. προκάθηται μὲν γὰρ ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν ἀλφίτων καὶ τῶν χεδρόπων ἐπιδιδοὺς πᾶσι καὶ ξένοις καὶ πολίταις, κομίζεται [f] δὲ τῆς Χαρίλας παιδικὸν εἴδωλον· ὅταν οὖν πάντες λάβωσιν, ὁ μὲν βασιλεὺς ῥαπίζει τῷ ὑποδήματι τὸ εἴδωλον, ἡ δὲ τῶν Θυιάδων ἀρχηγὸς ἀραμένη κομίζει πρός τινα τόπον φαραγγώδη, κἀκεῖ σχοινίον περιάψαντες τῷ τραχήλῳ τοῦ εἰδώλου κατορύττουσιν, ὅπου τὴν Χάριλαν ἀπαγξαμένην ἔθαψαν.

‘Τί τὸ πτωχικὸν κρέας παρ’ Αἰνιᾶσι;’ πλείονες γεγόνασιν Αἰνιάνων μεταναστάσεις. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ οἰκοῦντες περὶ τὸ Δώτιον πεδίον ἐξέπεσον ὑπὸ Λαπιθῶν εἰς Αἴθικας. ἐκεῖθεν τῆς Μολοσσίας τὴν περὶ τὸν Ἀραούαν χώραν κατέσχον, ὅθεν ὠνομάσθησαν Παραοῦαι.

[294] [a] μετὰ ταῦτα Κίρραν κατέσχον· ἐν δὲ Κίρρῃ καταλεύσαντες Οἴνοκλον τὸν βασιλέα τοῦ θεοῦ προστάξαντος, εἰς τὴν περὶ τὸν Ἴναχον χώραν κατέβησαν οἰκουμένην ὑπ’ Ἰναχιέων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν. γενομένου δὲ χρησμοῦ τοῖς μὲν ἂν μεταδῶσι τῆς χώρας ἀποβαλεῖν ἅπασαν, τοῖς δ’ ἂν λάβωσι παρ’ ἑκόντων καθέξειν, Τέμων, ἀνὴρ ἐλλόγιμος τῶν Αἰνιάνων, ἀναλαβὼν ῥάκια καὶ πήραν ὡς προσαίτης ὢν ἀφίκετο πρὸς τοὺς Ἰναχιεῖς· ὕβρει δὲ καὶ πρὸς γέλωτα [b] τοῦ βασιλέως βῶλον ἐπιδόντος αὐτῷ, δεξάμενος εἰς τὴν πήραν ἐνέβαλε καὶ ἀφανὴς ἦν ἠγαπηκὼς τὸ δῶρον· ἀπεχώρησε γὰρ εὐθὺς οὐδὲν προσαιτήσας. οἱ δὲ πρεσβύτεροι θαυμάσαντες ἀνεμιμνήσκοντο τοῦ χρησμοῦ, καὶ τῷ βασιλεῖ προσιόντες ἔλεγον μὴ καταφρονῆσαι μηδὲ προέσθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον. αἰσθόμενος οὖν ὁ Τέμων τὴν διάνοιαν αὐτῶν ὥρμησε φεύγειν, καὶ διέφυγεν εὐξάμενος τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι καθ’ ἑκατόμβης. ἐκ δὲ τούτου μονομαχοῦσιν οἱ βασιλεῖς, καὶ τὸν τῶν Ἰναχιέων Ὑπέροχον ὁ τῶν Αἰνιάνων [c] Φήμιος ὁρῶν μετὰ κυνὸς αὐτῷ προσφερόμενον οὐκ ἔφη δίκαια ποιεῖν, δεύτερον ἐπάγοντα μαχόμενον, ἀπελαύνοντος δὲ τοῦ Ὑπερόχου τὸν κύνα καὶ μεταστρεφομένου, λίθῳ βαλὼν ὁ Φήμιος ἀναιρεῖ. κτησάμενοι δὲ τὴν χώραν, τοὺς Ἰναχιεῖς μετὰ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἐκβαλόντες, τὸν μὲν λίθον ἐκεῖνον ὡς ἱερὸν σέβονται καὶ θύουσιν αὐτῷ καὶ τοῦ ἱερείου τῷ δημῷ περικαλύπτουσιν. ὅταν δὲ τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι τὴν ἑκατόμβην ἀποδιδῶσι, τῷ Διὶ βοῦν καθιερεύσαντες, μερίδα τοῖς Τέμωνος ἀπογόνοις ἐξαίρετον νέμουσι καί ‘πτωχικὸν κρέας’ ἐπονομάζουσι.

‘Τίνες οἱ παρ’ Ἰθακησίοις Κολιάδαι καὶ τίς ὁ φάγιλος;’ τῷ Ὀδυσσεῖ μετὰ τὴν μνηστηροφονίαν οἱ ἐπιτήδειοι τῶν τεθνηκότων ἐπανέστησαν, μεταπεμφθεὶς δ’ ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων διαιτητὴς Νεοπτόλεμος ἐδικαίωσε τὸν [d] μὲν Ὀδυσσέα μεταναστῆναι καὶ φεύγειν ἐκ τῆς Κεφαλληνίας καὶ Ζακύνθου καὶ Ἰθάκης ἐφ’ αἵματι, τοὺς δὲ τῶν μνηστήρων ἑταίρους καὶ οἰκείους ἀποφέρειν ποινὴν Ὀδυσσεῖ τῶν εἰς τὸν οἶκον ἀδικημάτων καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν εἰς Ἰταλίαν μετέστη· τὴν δὲ ποινὴν τῷ υἱεῖ καθιερώσας ἀποφέρειν ἐκέλευσε τοὺς Ἰθακησίους. ἦν δ’ ἄλφιτα οἶνος κηρία ἔλαιον ἅλες ἱερεῖα πρεσβύτερα ‘φαγίλων’· ‘φάγιλον’ δέ φησιν Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 507) τὸν ἀμνὸν εἶναι. τοὺς δὲ περὶ Εὔμαιον ἐλευθερώσας ὁ Τηλέμαχος κατέμιξεν εἰς τοὺς πολίτας, καὶ τὸ γένος ἐστὶ Κολιαδῶν ἀπ’ Εὐμαίου καὶ Βουκολιδῶν ἀπὸ Φιλοιτίου.

‘Τίς ἡ ξυλίνη κύων παρὰ Λοκροῖς;’ Φυσκίου τοῦ [e] Ἀμφικτύονος υἱὸς ἦν Λοκρός· ἐκ δὲ τούτου καὶ Καβύης Ὀποῦς. πρὸς ὃν ὁ πατὴρ διενεχθεὶς καὶ συχνοὺς τῶν πολιτῶν ἀναλαβὼν περὶ ἀποικίας ἐμαντεύετο. τοῦ δὲ θεοῦ φήσαντος κτίζειν πόλιν ὅπουπερ ἂν τύχῃ δηχθεὶς ὑπὸ κυνὸς ξυλίνης, ὑπερβαίνων εἰς τὴν ἑτέραν θάλασσαν ἐπάτησε κυνόσβατον. ἐνοχληθεὶς δὲ τῇ πληγῇ διέτριψεν ἡμέρας αὐτόθι πλείονας, ἐν αἷς καταμαθὼν τὸ χωρίον ἔκτισε πόλεις Φυσκεῖς καὶ Ὑάντειαν καὶ τὰς ἄλλας, ὅσας [f] οἱ κληθέντες Ὀζόλαι Λοκροὶ κατῴκησαν. Ὀζόλας δὲ Λοκροὺς οἱ μὲν διὰ Νέσσον, οἱ δὲ ‹διὰ› τὸν Πύθωνα δράκοντα κληθῆναι λέγουσιν, ἐκβρασθέντας ὑπὸ τῆς θαλάττης καὶ σαπέντας ἐν τῇ τῶν Λοκρῶν χώρᾳ· τινὲς δὲ κώδια καὶ τραγέας τοὺς ἀνθρώπους φοροῦντας καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα συνόντας αἰπολίοις γενέσθαι δυσώδεις. ἔνιοι δὲ τοὐναντίον πολυάνθεμον τὴν χώραν οὖσαν ὑπ’ εὐωδίας τοὔνομα λαβεῖν· ὧν ἐστι καὶ Ἀρχύτας ὁ Ἀμφισσεύς· γέγραφε γὰρ οὕτω·

[295] [a] ‘τὴν βοτρυοστέφανον μυρίπνουν Μάκυναν ἐραννήν.’

‘Τί τὸ καλούμενον ὑπὸ Μεγαρέων ἀφάβρωμα;’ Νῖσος, ἀφ’ οὗ προσηγορεύθη Νίσαια, βασιλεύων ἐκ Βοιωτίας ἔγημεν Ἀβρώτην, Ὀγχήστου θυγατέρα Μεγαρέως δ’ ἀδελφήν, γυναῖκα καὶ τῷ φρονεῖν ὡς ἔοικε περιττὴν καὶ σώφρονα διαφερόντως. ἀποθανούσης δ’ αὐτῆς οἵ τε Μεγαρεῖς ἐπένθησαν ἑκουσίως καὶ ὁ Νῖσος ἀιδίαν τινὰ μνήμην καὶ δόξαν αὐτῆς καταστῆσαι βουλόμενος ἐκέλευε [b] τὰς ἀστὰς φορεῖν ἣν ἐκείνη στολὴν ἐφόρει, καὶ τὴν στολὴν ‘ἀφάβρωμα’ δι’ ἐκείνην ὠνόμασε. δοκεῖ δὲ τῇ δόξῃ τῆς γυναικὸς καὶ ὁ θεὸς βοηθῆσαι· πολλάκις γὰρ τὰς ἐσθῆτας ἀλλάξαι βουλομένας τὰς Μεγαρίδας χρησμῷ διεκώλυσε.

‘Τίς ὁ δορύξενος;’ τὸ παλαιὸν ἡ Μεγαρὶς ᾠκεῖτο κατὰ κώμας, εἰς πέντε μέρη νενεμημένων τῶν πολιτῶν. ἐκαλοῦντο δ’ Ἡραεῖς καὶ Πιραεῖς καὶ Μεγαρεῖς καὶ Κυνοσουρεῖς καὶ Τριποδίσκιοι. τῶν δὲ Κορινθίων πόλεμον αὐτοῖς ἐξεργασαμένων πρὸς ἀλλήλους (ἀεὶ γὰρ ἐπεβούλευον ὑφ’ αὑτοῖς ποιήσασθαι τὴν Μεγαρικήν), ὅμως δι’ [c] ἐπιείκειαν ἡμέρως ἐπολέμουν καὶ συγγενικῶς. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ γεωργοῦντας οὐδεὶς ἠδίκει τὸ παράπων, τοὺς δ’ ἁλισκομένους λύτρον τι τεταγμένον ἔδει καταβαλεῖν, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐλάμβανον ἀφέντες. πρότερον δ’ οὐκ εἰσέπραττον, ἀλλ’ ὁ λαβὼν αἰχμάλωτον ἀπῆγεν οἴκαδε, καὶ μεταδοὺς ἁλῶν καὶ τραπέζης ἀπέπεμπεν οἴκαδε. ὁ μὲν οὖν τὰ λύτρα κομίσας ἐπῃνεῖτο καὶ φίλος ἀεὶ διετέλει τοῦ λαβόντος ἐκ δορυαλώτου ‘δορύξενος’ προσαγορευόμενος· ὁ δ’ ἀποστερήσας οὐ μόνον παρὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἀλλὰ καὶ παρὰ τοῖς πολίταις ὡς ἄδικος καὶ ἄπιστος ἠδόξει.

‘Τίς ἡ παλιντοκία;’ Μεγαρεῖς Θεαγένη τὸν τύραννον ἐκβαλόντες ὀλίγον χρόνον ἐσωφρόνησαν κατὰ τὴν [d] πολιτείαν· εἶτα πολλὴν κατὰ Πλάτωνα (Rep. 562d) καὶ ἄκρατον αὐτοῖς ἐλευθερίαν τῶν δημαγωγῶν οἰνοχοούντων διαφθαρέντες παντάπασι τά τ’ ἄλλα τοῖς πλουσίοις ἀσελγῶς προσεφέροντο, καὶ παριόντες εἰς τὰς οἰκίας αὐτῶν οἱ πένητες ἠξίουν ἑστιᾶσθαι καὶ δειπνεῖν πολυτελῶς· εἰ δὲ μὴ τυγχάνοιεν, πρὸς βίαν καὶ μεθ’ ὕβρεως ἐχρῶντο πᾶσι. τέλος δὲ δόγμα θέμενοι τοὺς τόκους ἀνεπράττοντο παρὰ τῶν δανειστῶν οὓς δεδωκότες ἐτύγχανον, ‘παλιντοκίαν’ τὸ γινόμενον προσαγορεύσαντες.

‘Τίς ἡ Ἀνθηδών, περὶ ἧς ἡ Πυθιὰς εἶπε

[e] ‘πῖν’ οἶνον τρυγίαν, ἐπεὶ οὐκ Ἀνθηδόνα ναίεις’

(ἡ γὰρ ἐν Βοιωτοῖς οὐκ ἔστι πολύοινος);’ τὴν Καλαύρειαν Εἰρήνην τὸ παλαιὸν ὠνόμαζον ἀπὸ γυναικὸς Εἰρήνης, ἣν ἐκ Ποσειδῶνος καὶ Μελανθείας τῆς Ἀλφειοῦ γενέσθαι μυθολογοῦσιν. ὕστερον δὲ τῶν περὶ Ἄνθην καὶ Ὑπέρην αὐτόθι κατοικούντων Ἀνθηδονίαν καὶ Ὑπέρειαν ἐκάλουν τὴν νῆσον. εἶχε δ’ ὁ χρησμὸς οὕτως, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησί,

‘πῖν’ οἶνον τρυγίαν, ἐπεὶ οὐκ Ἀνθηδόνα ναίεις

οὐδ’ ἱερὰν Ὑπέραν, ὅθι κ’ ἄτρυγον οἶνον ἔπινες.’

[f] ταῦτα μὲν ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 597). ὁ δὲ Μνασιγείτων (FHG III p. 158) φησὶν Ὑπέρητος ἀδελφὸν ὄντα τὸν Ἄνθον ἔτι νήπιον ἀπολέσθαι, καὶ τὸν Ὑπέρην κατὰ ζήτησιν αὐτοῦ πλανώμενον εἰς Φερὰς πρὸς Ἄκαστον [ἢ Ἄδραστον] ἐλθεῖν, ὅπου κατὰ τύχην ὁ Ἄνθος ἐδούλευεν οἰνοχοεῖν τεταγμένος. ὡς οὖν εἱστιῶντο, τὸν παῖδα προσφέροντα τῷ ἀδελφῷ τὸ ποτήριον ἐπιγνῶναι καὶ εἰπεῖν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡσυχῆ

‘πῖν’ οἶνον τρυγίαν, ἐπεὶ οὐκ Ἀνθηδόνα ναίεις.’

‘Τίς ὁ λεγόμενος ἐν Πριήνῃ παρὰ δρυῒ σκότος;’ [296] [a] Σάμιοι καὶ Πριηνεῖς πολεμοῦντες ἀλλήλοις τὰ μὲν ἄλλα μετρίως ἐβλάπτοντο καὶ ἔβλαπτον, μάχης δὲ μεγάλης γενομένης χιλίους Σαμίων οἱ Πριηνεῖς ἀπέκτειναν· ἑβδόμῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἔτει Μιλησίοις συμβαλόντες παρὰ τὴν καλουμένην δρῦν τοὺς ἀρίστους ὁμοῦ τι καὶ πρώτους ἀπέβαλον τῶν πολιτῶν· ὅτε καὶ Βίας ὁ σοφὸς εἰς Σάμον ἐκ Πριήνης πρεσβεύσας εὐδοκίμησε. ταῖς δὲ Πριηνέων γυναιξὶν ὠμοῦ τοῦ πάθους τούτου καὶ τῆς συμφορᾶς ἐλεεινῆς γενομένης, ἀρὰ κατέστη καὶ ὅρκος περὶ τῶν μεγίστων [b] ‘ὁ παρὰ δρυῒ σκότος’ διὰ τὸ παῖδας αὐτῶν καὶ πατέρας καὶ ἄνδρας ἐκεῖ φονευθῆναι.

‘Τίνες οἱ παρὰ Κρησὶ λεγόμενοι κατακαῦται;’ Τυρρηνούς φασι τοὺς τὰς Ἀθηναίων θυγατέρας καὶ γυναῖκας ἐκ Βραύρωνος ἁρπάσαντας, ὁπηνίκα Λῆμνον καὶ Ἴμβρον κατῴκουν, εἶτ’ ἐκπεσόντας εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἀφικέσθαι καὶ γενέσθαι ἐπιμιξίαν αὐτοῖς μέχρι παίδων γενέσεως πρὸς τὰς ἐγχωρίους γυναῖκας· ἐκ δ’ ὑποψίας καὶ διαβολῆς πάλιν ἀναγκασθέντας ἐκλιπεῖν τὴν Λακωνικὴν μετὰ παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν εἰς Κρήτην κατᾶραι, [c] Πόλλιν ἡγεμόνα καὶ Δελφὸν ἔχοντας. ἐκεῖ δὲ πολεμοῦντας τοῖς κατέχουσι τὴν Κρήτην πολλοὺς περιορᾶν τῶν ἐν ταῖς μάχαις ἀποθνησκόντων ἀτάφους, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἀσχόλους διὰ τὸν πόλεμον ὄντας καὶ τὸν κίνδυνον, ὕστερον δὲ φεύγοντας ἅπτεσθαι νεκρῶν ἐφθαρμένων ὑπὸ χρόνου καὶ διερρυηκότων. τὸν οὖν Πόλλιν ἐξευρόντα τιμάς τινας καὶ προνομίας καὶ ἀτελείας ἀποδοῦναι τὰς μὲν τοῖς ἱερεῦσι τῶν θεῶν, τὰς δὲ τοῖς ταφεῦσι τῶν τετελευτηκότων, ἐπιφημίσαντα καὶ ταύτας δαίμοσι χθονίοις, ὅπως ἀναφαίρετοι διαμένοιεν· ὀνομασθῆναι δὲ τοὺς μὲν ἱερεῖς, τοὺς δέ ‘κατακαύτας’. εἶτα κλήρῳ διαλαχεῖν πρὸς τὸν Δελφὸν καὶ πολιτεύεσθαι μὲν αὐτοὺς καθ’ αὑτούς, [d] ἔχειν δὲ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων φιλανθρώπων καὶ ἄδειαν ἀδικημάτων, οἷς οἱ ἄλλοι Κρῆτες εἰώθασι χρῆσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἄγοντες λαθραίως καὶ ἀποφέροντες· ἐκείνους γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀδικεῖν οὐδὲ κλέπτειν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἀφαιρεῖσθαι.

‘Τίς ὁ παίδων τάφος παρὰ Χαλκιδεῦσι;’ Κόθος καὶ Αἶκλος οἱ Ξούθου παῖδες εἰς Εὔβοιαν ἧκον οἰκήσοντες, Αἰολέων τότε τὰ πλεῖστα τῆς νήσου κατεχόντων. ἦν δὲ τῷ Κόθῳ λόγιον εὖ πράξειν καὶ περιέσεσθαι τῶν πολεμίων, ἐὰν πρίηται τὴν χώραν. ἀποβὰς οὖν μετ’ ὀλίγον ἐνέτυχε παίζουσι παιδαρίοις παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν· συμπαίζων [e] οὖν αὐτοῖς καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος ἔδειξε παίγνια πολλὰ τῶν ξενικῶν. ὡς δ’ ἑώρα τοὺς παῖδας ἐπιθυμοῦντας λαβεῖν, οὐκ ἔφησεν αὐτοῖς δώσειν ἄλλως, εἰ μὴ τῆς γῆς λάβοι παρ’ αὐτῶν· οἱ δὲ παῖδες οὕτως ἀναιρούμενοι χαμαῖθεν ἰδίδοσαν καὶ τὸ παίγνια λαβόντες ἀπηλλάγησαν. οἱ δ’ Αἰολεῖς αἰσθόμενοι τὸ γεγονός, καὶ τῶν πολεμίων αὐτοῖς ἐπιπλεόντων, ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ λύπης διεχρήσαντο τοὺς παῖδας. ἐτάφησαν δὲ παρὰ τὴν ὁδόν, ᾗ βαδίζουσιν ἐκ πόλεως ἐπὶ τὸν Εὔριπον, καὶ ὁ τόπος ‘τάφος παίδων’ καλεῖται.

‘Τίς ὁ μιξαρχαγέτας ἐν Ἄργει καὶ τίνες οἱ ἐλάσιοι;’ [f] ‘μιξαρχαγέταν’ τὸν Κάστορα καλοῦσι καὶ νομίζουσι παρ’ αὐτοῖς τεθάφθαι· τὸν δὲ Πολυδεύκην ὡς ἕνα τῶν Ὀλυμπίων σέβονται. τοὺς δὲ τὰς ἐπιληψίας ἀποτρέπειν δοκοῦντας ‘ἐλασίους’ μὲν ὀνομάζουσι, δοκοῦσι δὲ τῶν Ἀλεξίδας τῆς Ἀμφιαράου θυγατρὸς ἀπογόνων εἶναι.

‘Τί τὸ παρ’ Ἀργείοις λεγόμενον ἔγκνισμα;’ τοῖς ἀποβαλοῦσί τινα συγγενῶν ἢ συνήθων ἔθος ἐστὶ μετὰ τὸ πένθος εὐθὺς τῷ †Ἀπόλλωνι †θύειν, ἡμέραις δ’ ὕστερον τριάκοντα τῷ Ἑρμῇ. νομίζουσι γάρ, ὥσπερ τὰ σώματα τῶν ἀποθανόντων δέχεσθαι τὴν γῆν, οὕτω τὰς [297] [a] ψυχὰς τὸν Ἑρμῆν· τοῦ δ’ Ἀπόλλωνος τῷ ἀμφιπόλῳ κριθὰς διδόντες λαμβάνουσι κρέας τοῦ ἱερείου, καὶ τὸ πῦρ ἀποσβέσαντες ὡς μεμιασμένον παρ’ ἑτέρων δ’ ἐναυσάμενοι, τοῦτο τὸ κρέας ὀπτῶσιν ‘ἔγκνισμα’ προσαγορεύοντες.

‘Τίς ἀλάστωρ ἀλιτήριος παλαμναῖος;’ οὐ γὰρ πειστέον τοῖς λέγουσιν ‘ἀλιτηρίους’ κεκλῆσθαι τοὺς ἐπιτηροῦντας ἐν τῷ λιμῷ τὸν ἀλοῦντα καὶ διαρπάζοντας· ἀλλ’ ‘ἀλάστωρ’ μὲν κέκληται ὁ ἄληστα καὶ πολὺν χρόνον μνημονευθησόμενα δεδρακώς, ‘ἀλιτήριος’ δ’ ὃν ἀλεύασθαι καὶ φυλάξασθαι διὰ μοχθηρίαν καλῶς εἶχε. ταῦτα, φησὶν ὁ Σωκράτης (FHG IV p. 498), ἐν διφθέραις χαλκαῖς γεγράφασι.

[b] ‘Τίνος ἔχεται διανοίας τὸ τοὺς ἀπάγοντας εἰς Κασσιοπαίαν τὸν βοῦν ἐξ Αἴνου τὰς παρθένους προπεμπούσας ἐπᾴδειν ἄχρι τῶν ὅρων

‘μήποτε νοστήσαιτε φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν’;’

Αἰνιᾶνες ὑπὸ Λαπιθῶν ἐξαναστάντες τὸ πρῶτον ᾤκησαν περὶ τὴν Αἰθακίαν, εἶτα περὶ τὴν Μολοσσίδα καὶ Κασσιοπαίαν· οὐδὲν δὲ χρηστὸν ἀπὸ τῆς χώρας ἔχοντες, ἀλλὰ [c] καὶ χαλεποῖς χρώμενοι προσοίκοις εἰς τὸ Κιρραῖον πεδίον ἧκον, Οἰνόκλου τοῦ βασιλέως ἄγοντος αὐτούς. ἐκεῖ δὲ μεγάλων αὐχμῶν γενομένων, κατὰ χρησμὸν ὡς λέγεται τὸν Οἴνοκλον καταλεύσαντες καὶ πάλιν πλανηθέντες εἰς ταύτην ἀφίκοντο τὴν χώραν, ἣν νῦν ἔχουσιν, ἀγαθὴν καὶ πάμφορον οὖσαν. ὅθεν εἰκότως εὔχονται τοῖς θεοῖς εἰς τὴν παλαιὰν πατρίδα μὴ ἐπανελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ αὐτοῦ καταμένειν εὐδαιμονοῦντας.

‘Τί δήποτε παρὰ Ῥοδίοις εἰς τὸ τοῦ Ὀκριδίωνος ἡρῷον οὐκ εἰσέρχεται κῆρυξ’; ἦ ὅτι Ὄχιμος τὴν θυγατέρα Κυδίππην ἐνεγύησεν Ὀκριδίωνι; Κέρκαφος δ’ ἀδελφὸς ὢν Ὀχίμου τῆς δὲ παιδὸς ἐρῶν, ἔπεισε τὸν κήρυκα (διὰ κηρύκων γὰρ ἔθος ἦν τὸ μετέρχεσθαι τὰς [d] νύμφας), ὅταν παραλάβῃ τὴν Κυδίππην, πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀγαγεῖν. τούτου δὲ πραχθέντος, ὁ μὲν Κέρκαφος ἔχων τὴν κόρην ἔφυγεν, ὕστερον δὲ τοῦ Ὀχίμου γηράσαντος ἐπανῆλθε. τοῖς δὲ Ῥοδίοις ἔθος κατέστη κήρυκα μὴ προσιέναι τῷ τοῦ Ὀκριδίωνος ἡρῴῳ διὰ τὴν γενομένην ἀδικίαν.

‘Τί δήποτε παρὰ Τενεδίοις εἰς τὸ τοῦ Τένου ἱερὸν οὐκ ἔξεστιν αὐλητὴν εἰσελθεῖν οὐδ’ Ἀχιλλέως ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ μνησθῆναι;’ ἦ ὅτι τῆς μητρυιᾶς τὸν Τένην διαβαλλούσης ὡς βουλόμενον αὐτῇ συγγενέσθαι Μόλπος ὁ αὐλητὴς τὰ ψευδῆ κατεμαρτύρησεν αὐτοῦ, διὰ τοῦτο τῷ [e] Τένῃ συνέπεσε φεύγειν εἰς Τένεδον μετὰ τῆς ἀδελφῆς; Ἀχιλλεῖ δὲ λέγεται τὴν μητέρα Θέτιν ἰσχυρῶς ἀπαγορεῦσαι μὴ ἀνελεῖν τὸν Τένην ὡς τιμώμενον ὑπ’ Ἀπόλλωνος, καὶ παρεγγυῆσαι ἑνὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν, ὅπως προσέχῃ καὶ ἀναμιμνήσκῃ, μὴ λάθῃ κτείνας ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς τὸν Τένην. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν Τένεδον κατατρέχων ἐδίωκε τὴν ἀδελφὴν τοῦ Τένου [f] καλὴν οὖσαν, ἀπαντήσας θ’ ὁ Τένης ἠμύνετο πρὸ τῆς ἀδελφῆς, καὶ ἡ μὲν ἐξέφυγεν ὁ δὲ Τένης ἀνῃρέθη· ὁ δ’ Ἀχιλλεὺς πεσόντα γνωρίσας τὸν μὲν οἰκέτην ἀπέκτεινεν, ὅτι παρὼν οὐκ ἀνέμνησε· τὸν δὲ Τένην ἔθαψεν, οὗ νῦν τὸ ἱερόν ἐστι, καὶ οὔτ’ αὐλητὴς εἴσεισιν οὔτ’ Ἀχιλλεὺς ὀνομάζεται.

‘Τίς ὁ παρ’ Ἐπιδαμνίοις πωλήτης;’ Ἐπιδάμνιοι γειτνιῶντες Ἰλλυριοῖς ᾐσθάνοντο τοὺς ἐπιμιγνυμένους αὐτοῖς πολίτας γιγνομένους πονηροὺς καὶ φοβούμενοι νεωτερισμὸν ᾑροῦντο πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα συμβόλαια καὶ τὰς ἀμείψεις καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν ἕνα τῶν δεδοκιμασμένων παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ὃς ἐπιφοιτῶν τοῖς βαρβάροις παρεῖχεν [298] [a] ἀγορὰν καὶ διάθεσιν πᾶσι τοῖς πολίταις ‘πωλήτης’ προσαγορευόμενος.

‘Τίς ἡ περὶ Θρᾴκην †Ἀραοῦ ἀκτή;’ Ἄνδριοι καὶ Χαλκιδεῖς πλεύσαντες εἰς Θρᾴκην οἰκήσεως ἕνεκα Σάνην μὲν πόλιν ἐκ προδοσίας κοινῇ παρέλαβον, τὴν δ’ Ἄκανθον ἐκλελοιπέναι τοὺς βαρβάρους πυνθανόμενοι δύο κατασκόπους ἔπεμψαν. ὡς δὲ τῇ πόλει προσιόντες παντάπασι πεφευγότας ᾐσθάνοντο τοὺς πολεμίους, ὁ μὲν Χαλκιδικὸς προεξέδραμεν ὡς καταληψόμενος τοῖς Χαλκιδεῦσι τὴν πόλιν, ὁ δ’ Ἄνδριος οὐ συνεξανύτων ἠκόντισε τὸ δόρυ, καὶ ταῖς πύλαις ἐμπαρέντος †μετὰ βολῆς Ἀνδρίων [b] ἔφη παισὶν αἰχμῇ προκατειλῆφθαι τὴν πόλιν. ἐκ τούτου διαφορᾶς γενομένης, ἄνευ πολέμου συνέβησαν Ἐρυθραίοις καὶ Σαμίοις καὶ Παρίοις χρήσασθαι περὶ πάντων δικασταῖς. ἐπεὶ δ’ οἱ μὲν Ἐρυθραῖοι καὶ οἱ Σάμιοι τὴν ψῆφον Ἀνδρίοις ἤνεγκαν, οἱ δὲ Πάριοι Χαλκιδεῦσιν, ἀρὰς ἔθεντο περὶ τὸν τόπον τοῦτον οἱ Ἄνδριοι κατ’ αὐτῶν μήτε δοῦναι γυναῖκα Παρίοις μήτε λαβεῖν παρ’ αὐτῶν· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο προσηγόρευσαν ‘ἀκτὴν †Ἀραίνου’, πρότερον ὀνομαζομένην Δράκοντος.

‘Διὰ τί τοῖς θεσμοφορίοις αἱ τῶν Ἐρετριέων γυναῖκες οὐ πρὸς πῦρ ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἥλιον ὀπτῶσι τὰ κρέα, καὶ Καλλιγένειαν οὐ καλοῦσιν;’ ἦ ὅτι ταῖς αἰχμαλώτοις, [c] ἃς ἦγεν ἐκ Τροίας Ἀγαμέμνων, ἐνταῦθα συνέβη θεσμοφόρια θύειν, πλοῦ δὲ φανέντος ἐξαίφνης, ἀνήχθησαν ἀτελῆ τὴν θυσίαν καταλιποῦσαι;

‘Τίνες οἱ ἀειναῦται παρὰ Μιλησίοις;’ τῶν περὶ Θόαντα καὶ Δαμασήνορα τυράννους καταλυθέντων ἑταιρεῖαι δύο τὴν πόλιν κατέσχον, ὧν ἡ μὲν ἐκαλεῖτο Πλουτὶς ἡ δὲ Χειρομάχα. κρατήσαντες οὖν οἱ δυνατοὶ καὶ τὰ πράγματα περιστήσαντες εἰς τὴν ἑταιρείαν, ἐβουλεύοντο περὶ τῶν μεγίστων ἐμβαίνοντες εἰς τὰ πλοῖα καὶ πόρρω τῆς [d] γῆς ἐπανάγοντες· κυρώσαντες δὲ τὴν γνώμην κατέπλεον, καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ ‘ἀειναῦται’ προσηγορεύθησαν.

‘Τί δήποτε Χαλκιδεῖς τὸν περὶ τὸ Πυρσόφιον τόπον ‘ἀκμαίων λέσχην’ καλοῦσι;’ τὸν Ναύπλιόν φασιν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν διωκόμενον Χαλκιδεῖς ἱκετεῦσαι, καὶ τὰ μὲν περὶ τῆς αἰτίας ἀπολογεῖσθαι, τὰ δ’ αὐτὸν ἀντεγκαλεῖν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς. ἐκδιδόναι μὲν αὐτὸν οἱ Χαλκιδεῖς οὐκ ἐμέλλησαν· δεδιότες δὲ μὴ δόλῳ φονευθῇ, φυλακὴν ἔδοσαν αὐτῷ τοὺς ἀκμάζοντας νεανίσκους καὶ κατέστησαν εἰς τὸν τόπον τοῦτον, ὅπου συνῆσαν ἀλλήλοις ἅμα καὶ τὸν Ναύπλιον παρεφύλαττον.

[e] ‘Τίς ὁ βοῦν εὐεργέτῃ θύσας;’ πλοῖον ὥρμει περὶ τὴν Ἰθακησίαν λῃστρικόν, ἐν ᾧ πρεσβύτης ἐτύγχανε μετὰ κεραμίων ἐχόντων πίτταν. τούτῳ οὖν κατὰ τύχην προσέσχε πορθμεὺς Ἰθακήσιος ὀνόματι Πυρρίας, καὶ τὸν πρεσβύτην ἐρρύσατο μηθὲν δεόμενος, ἀλλὰ πεισθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ οἰκτείρας· προσέλαβε δὲ καὶ τῶν κεραμίων τοῦ πρεσβύτου κελεύσαντος. ἀπαλλαγέντων δὲ τῶν λῃστῶν καὶ γενομένης ἀδείας, ὁ πρεσβύτης τοῖς κεραμίοις τὸν Πυρρίαν προσαγαγὼν χρυσίον ἐδείκνυεν ἐν αὐτοῖς πολὺ [f] καὶ ἀργύριον τῇ πίττῃ καταμεμιγμένον. ἐξαίφνης οὖν ὁ Πυρρίας πλούσιος γενόμενος τά τ’ ἄλλ’ εὖ περιεῖπε τὸν γέροντα καὶ βοῦν ἔθυσεν αὐτῷ. ὃ καὶ παροιμιαζόμενοι λέγουσιν ‘οὐδεὶς εὐεργέτῃ βοῦν ἔθυσεν ἀλλ’ ἢ Πυρρίας.’

‘Τί δήποτε ταῖς κόραις τῶν Βοττιαίων ἔθος ἦν λέγειν χορευούσαις ‘ἴωμεν εἰς Ἀθήνας’;’ Κρῆτάς φασιν εὐξαμένους ἀνθρώπων ἀπαρχὴν εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀποστεῖλαι, τοὺς δὲ πεμφθέντας, ὡς ἑώρων οὐδεμίαν οὖσαν εὐπορίαν, [299] [a] αὐτόθεν εἰς ἀποικίαν ὁρμῆσαι· καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐν Ἰαπυγίᾳ κατοικεῖν, ἔπειτα τῆς Θρᾴκης τοῦτον τὸν τόπον κατασχεῖν, ἀναμεμιγμένων αὐτοῖς Ἀθηναίων. ἔοικε γὰρ μὴ διαφθείρειν ὁ Μίνως οὓς ἔπεμπον Ἀθηναῖοι κατὰ τὸν δασμὸν ἠιθέους, ἀλλὰ κατέχειν παρ’ ἑαυτῷ λατρεύοντας. ἐξ ἐκείνων οὖν τινες γεγονότες καὶ νομιζόμενοι Κρῆτες εἰς Δελφοὺς συναπεστάλησαν. ὅθεν αἱ θυγατέρες τῶν Βοττιαίων ἀπομνημονεύουσαι τοῦ γένους ᾖδον ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς ‘ἴωμεν εἰς Ἀθήνας’.

‘Διὰ τί τὸν Διόνυσον αἱ τῶν Ἠλείων γυναῖκες ὑμνοῦσαι παρακαλοῦσι βοέῳ ποδὶ παραγίνεσθαι πρὸς [b] αὐτάς;’ ἔχει δ’ οὕτως ὁ ὕμνος (Anth. Lyr. Diehl II p. 206)

‘Ἐλθεῖν, ἦρ’, ὦ Διόνυσε,

ἅλιον ἐς ναὸν

ἁγνὸν σὺν Χαρίτεσσιν

ἐς ναὸν τῷ βοέῳ

ποδὶ δύων.’

εἶτα δὶς ἐπᾴδουσιν ‘ἄξιε ταῦρε’. πότερον ὅτι καὶ βουγενῆ προσαγορεύουσι καὶ ταῦρον ἔνιοι τὸν θεόν; ἢ τῷ μεγάλῳ ποδί ‘βοέῳ’ λέγουσιν, ὡς ‘βοῶπιν’ ὁ ποιητὴς (Α 551 et passim) τὴν μεγαλόφθαλμον καὶ ‘βουγάιον’ (Ν 824, σ 79) τὸν μεγάλαυχον; ἢ μᾶλλον, ὅτι τοῦ βοὸς ὁ ποὺς ἀβλαβής ἐστι τὸ δὲ κέρας φο‹βε›ρόν [ἐπιβλαβές], οὕτω τὸν θεὸν παρακαλοῦσι πρᾶον ἐλθεῖν καὶ ἄλυπον; ἢ ὅτι καὶ ἀρότου καὶ σπόρου πολλοὶ τὸν θεὸν ἀρχηγὸν γεγονέναι νομίζουσι;

[c] ‘Διὰ τί Ταναγραίοις πρὸ τῆς πόλεως ἔστιν Ἀχίλλειον, τόπος οὕτω προσαγορευόμενος; ἔχθρα γὰρ αὐτῷ μᾶλλον ἢ φιλία λέγεται γεγονέναι πρὸς τὴν πόλιν, ἁρπάσαντι μὲν τὴν μητέρα τοῦ Ποιμάνδρου Στρατονίκην, ἀποκτείναντι δ’ υἱὸν [Ἐφίππου] Ἀκέστορα.’ Ποίμανδρος τοίνυν ὁ Ἐφίππου πατήρ, ἔτι τῆς Ταναγρικῆς κατὰ κώμας οἰκουμένης, ἐν τῷ καλουμένῳ Στέφοντι πολιορκούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν διὰ τὸ μὴ βούλεσθαι συστρατεύειν, ἐξέλιπε τὸ χωρίον ἐκεῖνο νύκτωρ καὶ τὴν Ποιμανδρίαν ἐτείχισε. παρὼν δὲ Πολύκριθος ὁ ἀρχιτέκτων διαφαυλίζων τὰ ἔργα καὶ καταγελῶν ὑπερήλατο τὴν τάφρον.

[d] ὀργισθεὶς δ’ ὁ Ποίμανδρος ὥρμησε λίθον ἐμβαλεῖν αὐτῷ μέγαν, ὃς ἦν αὐτόθι κεκρυμμένος ἐκ παλαιοῦ, νυκτελίοις ἱεροῖς ἐπικείμενος· τοῦτον ἀνασπάσας ὑπ’ ἀγνοίας ὁ Ποίμανδρος ἔβαλε, καὶ τοῦ μὲν Πολυκρίθου διήμαρτε, Λεύκιππον δὲ τὸν υἱὸν ἀπέκτεινεν. ἔδει μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὸν νόμον ἐκ τῆς Βοιωτίας μεταστῆναι, ἐφέστιον καὶ ἱκέτην ξένον γενόμενον· οὐκ ἦν δὲ ῥᾴδιον, ἐμβεβληκότων εἰς τὴν Ταναγρικὴν τῶν Ἀχαιῶν. ἔπεμψεν οὖν Ἔφιππον τὸν υἱὸν Ἀχιλλέως δεησόμενον. ὁ δὲ καὶ τοῦτον εἰσάγει πείσας καὶ Τληπόλεμον τὸν Ἡρακλέους καὶ Πηνέλεων τὸν Ἱππάλκμου, συγγενεῖς ἅπαντας αὑτῶν ὄντας. ὑφ’ ὧν ὁ [e] Ποίμανδρος εἰς Χαλκίδα συνεκπεμφθεὶς καὶ καθαρθεὶς παρ’ Ἐλεφήνορι τὸν φόνον ἐτίμησε τοὺς ἄνδρας καὶ τεμένη πᾶσιν ἐξεῖλεν, ὧν τὸ Ἀχιλλέως καὶ τοὔνομα διατετήρηκεν.

‘Τίνες οἱ παρὰ Βοιωτοῖς Ψολόεις καὶ τίνες αἱ Ὀλεῖαι;’ τὰς Μινύου θυγατέρας φασὶ Λευκίππην καὶ Ἀρσινόην καὶ Ἀλκαθόην μανείσας ἀνθρωπίνων ἐπιθυμῆσαι κρεῶν καὶ διαλαχεῖν περὶ τῶν τέκνων· Λευκίππης λαχούσης παρασχεῖν Ἵππασον τὸν υἱὸν διασπάσασθαι· [f] κληθῆναι τοὺς μὲν ἄνδρας αὐτῶν δυσειματοῦντας ὑπὸ λύπης καὶ πένθους ‘Ψολόεις’, αὐτὰς δ’ ‘Ὀλείας’ οἷον ὀλοάς. καὶ μέχρι νῦν Ὀρχομένιοι τὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ γένους οὕτω καλοῦσι. καὶ γίνεται παρ’ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐν τοῖς Ἀγριωνίοις φυγὴ καὶ δίωξις αὐτῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ Διονύσου ξίφος ἔχοντος. ἔξεστι δὲ τὴν καταληφθεῖσαν ἀνελεῖν, καὶ ἀνεῖλεν ἐφ’ ἡμῶν Ζωίλος ὁ ἱερεύς. ἀπέβη δ’ εἰς οὐδὲν χρηστὸν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλ’ ὅ τε Ζωίλος ἐκ τοῦ τυχόντος ἑλκυδρίου [300] [a] νοσήσας καὶ διασαπεὶς πολὺν χρόνον ἐτελεύτησεν, οἵ τ’ Ὀρχομένιοι δημοσίαις βλάβαις καὶ καταδίκαις περιπεσόντες ἐκ τοῦ γένους τὴν ἱερωσύνην μετέστησαν, ἐκ πάντων αἱρούμενοι τὸν ἄριστον.

‘Διὰ τί τοὺς εἰς τὸ Λύκαιον εἰσελθόντας ἑκουσίως καταλεύουσιν οἱ Ἀρκάδες· ἂν δ’ ὑπ’ ἀγνοίας, εἰς Ἐλευθερὰς ἀποστέλλουσι;’ πότερον ὡς ἐλευθερουμένων αὐτῶν διὰ τὴν ἀπόλυσιν ἔσχεν ὁ λόγος πίστιν, καὶ τοιοῦτόν [b] ἐστι τό ‘εἰς Ἐλευθεράς’, οἷον τό ‘εἰς Ἀμελοῦς χώραν’ καὶ τό ‘ἥξεις εἰς Ἀρέσαντος ἕδος’; ἢ κατὰ τὸν μῦθον ἐπεὶ μόνοι τῶν Λυκάονος παίδων Ἐλευθὴρ καὶ Λεβεάδος οὐ μετέσχον τοῦ περὶ τὸν Δία μιάσματος ἀλλ’ εἰς Βοιωτίαν ἔφυγον, καὶ Λεβαδεῦσιν ἔστιν ἰσοπολιτεία πρὸς Ἀρκάδας; εἰς Ἐλευθερὰς οὖν ἀποπέμπουσι τοὺς ἐν τῷ ἀβάτῳ τοῦ Διὸς ἀκουσίως γενομένους. ἢ ὡς Ἀρχίτιμος ἐν τοῖς Ἀρκαδικοῖς (FHG IV p. 317), ἐμβάντας τινὰς κατ’ ἄγνοιαν ὑπ’ Ἀρκάδων παραδοθῆναι Φλιασίοις, ὑπὸ δὲ Φλιασίων Μεγαρεῦσιν, ἐκ δὲ Μεγαρέων εἰς Θήβας κομιζομένους περὶ τὰς Ἐλευθερὰς ὕδατι καὶ βρονταῖς καὶ διοσημίαις ἄλλαις κατασχεθῆναι· ἀφ’ οὗ δὴ καὶ τὸν τόπον Ἐλευθερὰς ἔνιοί φασι προσαγορεύεσθαι. τὸ [c] μέντοι σκιὰν μὴ πίπτειν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐμβάντος εἰς τὸ Λύκαιον λέγεται μὲν οὐκ ἀληθῶς, ἔσχηκε δὲ πίστιν ἰσχυράν. πότερον τοῦ ἀέρος εἰς νέφη τρεπομένου καὶ σκυθρωπάζοντος ἐπὶ τοῖς εἰσιοῦσιν; ἢ ὅτι θανατοῦται μὲν ὁ ἐμβάς, τῶν δ’ ἀποθανόντων οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ λέγουσι τὰς ψυχὰς μὴ ποιεῖν σκιὰν μηδὲ σκαρδαμύττειν; ἢ σκιὰν μὲν ὁ ἥλιος ποιεῖ, τὸν δ’ ἥλιον ἀφαιρεῖται τοῦ ἐμβάντος ὁ νόμος, καὶ τοῦτ’ αἰνιττόμενοι λέγουσι; καὶ γὰρ ἔλαφος ὁ ἐμβὰς καλεῖται. διὸ καὶ Κανθαρίωνα τὸν Ἀρκάδα πρὸς Ἠλείους αὐτομολήσαντα πολεμοῦντας Ἀρκάσι καὶ διαβάντα μετὰ λείας τὸ ἄβατον, καταλυθέντος [d] δὲ τοῦ πολέμου καὶ φυγόντα εἰς Σπάρτην, ἐξέδοσαν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τοῖς Ἀρκάσι, τοῦ θεοῦ κελεύσαντος ἀποδιδόναι τὸν ἔλαφον.

‘Τίς Εὔνοστος ἥρως ἐν Τανάγρᾳ καὶ διὰ τίνα αἰτίαν τὸ ἄλσος αὐτοῦ γυναιξὶν ἀνέμβατόν ἐστιν;’ Ἐλιέως τοῦ Κηφισοῦ καὶ Σκιάδος Εὔνοστος ἦν υἱός, ᾧ φασιν ὑπὸ νύμφης Εὐνόστας ἐκτραφέντι τοῦτο γενέσθαι τοὔνομα. καλὸς δ’ ὢν καὶ δίκαιος οὐχ ἧττον ἦν σώφρων καὶ αὐστηρός· ἐρασθῆναι δ’ αὐτοῦ λέγουσιν Ὄχναν, μίαν [e] τῶν Κολωνοῦ θυγατέρων, ἀνεψιὰν οὖσαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ πειρῶσαν ὁ Εὔνοστος ἀπετρέψατο καὶ λοιδορήσας ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς κατηγορήσων, ἔφθασεν ἡ παρθένος τοῦτο πράξασα κατ’ ἐκείνου καὶ παρώξυνε τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς Ἔχεμον καὶ Λέοντα καὶ Βουκόλον ἀποκτεῖναι τὸν Εὔνοστον, ὡς πρὸς βίαν αὐτῇ συγγεγενημένον. ἐκεῖνοι μὲν οὖν ἐνεδρεύσαντες ἀπέκτειναν τὸν νεανίσκον. ὁ δ’ Ἐλιεὺς [f] ἐκείνους ἔδησεν· ἡ δ’ Ὄχνη μεταμελομένη καὶ γέμουσα ταραχῆς, ἅμα μὲν αὑτὴν ἀπαλλάξαι θέλουσα τῆς διὰ τὸν ἔρωτα λύπης, ἅμα δ’ οἰκτείρουσα τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ἐξήγγειλε πρὸς τὸν Ἐλιέα πᾶσαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ἐκεῖνος δὲ Κολωνῷ. Κολωνοῦ δὲ δικάσαντος οἱ μὲν ἀδελφοὶ τῆς Ὄχνης ἔφυγον, αὐτὴ δὲ κατεκρήμνισεν ἑαυτήν, ὡς Μυρτὶς (PLG III p. 542) ἡ Ἀνθηδονία ποιήτρια μελῶν ἱστόρηκε. τοῦ δ’ Εὐνόστου τὸ ἡρῷον καὶ τὸ ἄλσος οὕτως ἀνέμβατον ἐτηρεῖτο καὶ ἀπροσπέλαστον γυναιξίν, ὥστε πολλάκις σεισμῶν ἢ αὐχμῶν ἢ διοσημιῶν ἄλλων γενομένων ἀναζητεῖν καὶ πολυπραγμονεῖν ἐπιμελῶς τοὺς [301] [a] Ταναγραίους, μὴ λέληθε γυνὴ τῷ τόπῳ πλησιάσασα, καὶ λέγειν ἐνίους, ὧν ὁ Κλείδαμος ἦν, ἀνὴρ ἐπιφανής, ἀπηντηκέναι αὐτοῖς τὸν Εὔνοστον ἐπὶ θάλατταν βαδίζοντα λουσόμενον, ὡς γυναικὸς ἐμβεβηκυίας εἰς τὸ τέμενος. ἀναφέρει δὲ καὶ Διοκλῆς (FHG III p. 78) ἐν τῷ περὶ ἡρῴων συντάγματι δόγμα Ταναγραίων, περὶ ὧν ὁ Κλείδαμος ἀπήγγειλεν.

‘Πόθεν ἐν τῇ Βοιωτίᾳ περὶ τὸν Ἐλέωνα ποταμὸς Σκάμανδρος ὠνομάσθη;’ Δηίμαχος ὁ Ἐλέωνος υἱός, ἑταῖρος ὢν Ἡρακλέους, μετέσχε τῆς ἐπὶ Τροίαν στρατείας· τοῦ δὲ πολέμου μῆκος ὡς ἔοικε λαμβάνοντος, ἐρασθεῖσαν αὐτοῦ Γλαυκίαν τὴν Σκαμάνδρου θυγατέρα προσδεξάμενος ἔγκυον ἐποίησεν, εἶτ’ αὐτὸς μὲν ἔπεσε μαχόμενος [b] τοῖς Τρωσίν, ἡ δὲ Γλαυκία φοβουμένη κατάφωρος γενέσθαι τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ κατέφυγε, καὶ κατεῖπεν αὑτῆς τὸν ἔρωτα καὶ τὴν γενομένην πρὸς τὸν Δηίμαχον ὁμιλίαν. ὁ δ’ ἅμα μὲν οἴκτῳ τῆς γυναικὸς ἅμα δὲ χαίρων τῷ ὑπολείπεσθαι γένος ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ καὶ συνήθους ἀνέλαβε τὴν Γλαυκίαν εἰς τὰς ναῦς, καὶ τεκοῦσαν υἱὸν ἀγαγὼν ἐν τῇ Βοιωτίᾳ ἀπέδωκε τῷ Ἐλέωνι καὶ τὸ παιδίον καὶ αὐτήν. ὠνομάσθη δ’ ὁ παῖς Σκάμανδρος καὶ τῆς χώρας ἐβασίλευσε. καὶ τὸν μὲν Ἴναχον ποταμὸν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ Σκάμανδρον, τὸ δὲ πλησίον ῥεῦμα Γλαυκίαν ἀπὸ τῆς μητρὸς ὠνόμασεν· Ἀκίδουσαν δὲ τὴν κρήνην ἀπὸ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ [c] γυναικός, ἐξ ἧς ἔσχε τρεῖς θυγατέρας, ἃς τιμῶσιν ἄχρι νῦν ‘παρθένους’ προσαγορεύοντες.

‘Ἀπὸ τίνος ἐρρήθη τὸ παροιμιῶδες Αὕτα κυρία;’ Δίνων ὁ Ταραντῖνος στρατηγῶν, ἀνὴρ δ’ ὢν ἀγαθὸς ἐν τοῖς πολεμικοῖς, ἀποχειροτονησάντων αὐτοῦ τινα γνώμην τῶν πολιτῶν, ὡς ὁ κῆρυξ ἀνεῖπε τὴν νικῶσαν, αὐτὸς ἀνατείνας τὴν δεξιάν ‘ἅδε’ εἶπε ‘κρείσσων’· οὕτω γὰρ ὁ Θεόφραστος (fr. 133 Wimmer) ἱστόρηκε. προσιστόρηκε δὲ καὶ ὁ Ἀπολλόδωρος (FHG IV p. 650) †ἐν Ῥυτίνῳ , τοῦ κήρυκος ‘αὗται πλείους’ εἰπόντος, ‘ἀλλ’ αὗται’ φάναι ‘βελτίους’ καὶ ἐπικυρῶσαι τὴν τῶν ἐλαττόνων χειροτονίαν.

[d] ‘Πόθεν ἡ τῶν Ἰθακησίων πόλις Ἀλαλκομεναὶ προσηγορεύθη;’ διὰ τὸ τὴν Ἀντίκλειαν ὑπὸ Σισύφου βιασθεῖσαν ἐν τῇ παρθενίᾳ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα συλλαβεῖν· ὑπὸ πλειόνων δ’ ἐστὶν εἰρημένον. Ἴστρος δ’ ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεὺς (FHG I p. 425) ἐν ὑπομνήμασι προσιστόρηκεν, ὅτι τῷ Λαέρτῃ δοθεῖσα πρὸς γάμον καὶ ἀναγομένη περὶ τὸ Ἀλαλκομένειον ἐν τῇ Βοιωτίᾳ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα τέκοι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ ἐκεῖνος ὥσπερ μητροπόλεως ἀναφέρων τοὔνομα τὴν ἐν Ἰθάκῃ πόλιν οὕτω φησὶ προσαγορεύεσθαι.

‘Τίνες ἐν Αἰγίνῃ οἱ μονοφάγοι;’ τῶν ἐπὶ τὴν [e] Τροίαν στρατευσάντων Αἰγινητῶν πολλοὶ μὲν ἐν ταῖς μάχαις ἀπώλοντο, πλείονες δὲ κατὰ πλοῦν ὑπὸ τοῦ χειμῶνος. ὀλίγους οὖν τοὺς περιλειπομένους οἱ προσήκοντες ὑποδεξάμενοι, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους πολίτας ὁρῶντες ἐν πένθεσι καὶ λύπαις ὄντας, οὔτε χαίρειν ᾤοντο δεῖν φανερῶς οὔτε θύειν τοῖς θεοῖς, ἀλλὰ κρύφα καὶ κατ’ οἰκίαν ἕκαστοι τοὺς σεσωσμένους ἀνελάμβανον ἑστιάσεσι καὶ φιλοφροσύναις, αὐτοὶ διακονούμενοι πατράσι καὶ συγγενέσι καὶ ἀδελφοῖς καὶ οἰκείοις, ἀλλοτρίου μηδενὸς παρεισιόντος. ταῦτ’ οὖν ἀπομιμούμενοι τῷ Ποσειδῶνι θυσίαν ἄγουσι [f] τοὺς καλουμένους ‘θιάσους’, ἐν ᾗ καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἐφ’ ἡμέρας ἑκκαίδεκα μετὰ σιωπῆς ἑστιῶνται, δοῦλος δ’ οὐ πάρεστιν· εἶτα ποιήσαντες Ἀφροδίσια διαλύουσι τὴν ἑορτήν· ἐκ δὲ τούτου ‘μονοφάγοι’ καλοῦνται.

‘Διὰ τί τοῦ Λαβρανδέως Διὸς ἐν Καρίᾳ τὸ ἄγαλμα πέλεκυν ἠρμένον οὐχὶ δὲ σκῆπτρον ἢ κεραυνὸν πεποίηται;’ ὅτι Ἡρακλῆς Ἱππολύτην ἀποκτείνας καὶ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ὅπλων αὐτῆς λαβὼν τὸν πέλεκυν Ὀμφάλῃ δῶρον δέδωκεν. οἱ δὲ μετ’ Ὀμφάλην Λυδῶν βασιλεῖς ἐφόρουν αὐτὸν ὥς [302] [a] τι τῶν ἄλλων ἱερῶν ἐκ διαδοχῆς παραλαμβάνοντες, ἄχρι Κανδαύλης ἀπαξιώσας ἑνὶ τῶν ἑταίρων φορεῖν ἔδωκεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ Γύγης ἀποστὰς ἐπολέμει πρὸς αὐτόν, ἦλθεν Ἄρσηλις ἐκ Μυλασέων ἐπίκουρος τῷ Γύγῃ μετὰ δυνάμεως, καὶ τόν τε Κανδαύλην καὶ τὸν ἑταῖρον αὐτοῦ διαφθείρει, καὶ τὸν πέλεκυν εἰς Καρίαν ἐκόμισε μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων λαφύρων. καὶ Διὸς ἄγαλμα κατασκευάσας τὸν πέλεκυν ἐνεχείρισε, καὶ Λαβρανδέα τὸν θεὸν προσηγόρευσε· Λυδοὶ γάρ ‘λάβρυν’ τὸν πέλεκυν ὀνομάζουσι.

‘Διὰ τί Τραλλιανοὶ καθαρτῆρα καλοῦσι τὸν ὄροβον [b] καὶ χρῶνται μάλιστα πρὸς τὰς ἀφοσιώσεις καὶ τοὺς καθαρμούς;’ ἦ ὅτι Λέλεγες καὶ Μινύαι τὸ παλαιὸν ἐξελάσαντες αὐτοὺς τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὴν χώραν κατεῖχον, ὕστερον δ’ οἱ Τραλλιανοὶ κατελθόντες καὶ κρατήσαντες, ὅσοι τῶν Λελέγων οὐ διεφθάρησαν οὐδ’ ἔφυγον ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀμηχανίαν βίου καὶ ἀσθένειαν ὑπελείφθησαν αὐτόθι, τούτων οὐδένα λόγον ἔχοντες οὔτε ζώντων οὔτ’ ἀπολλυμένων, νόμον ἔθεντο τὸν κτείναντα Μινύην ἢ Λέλεγα Τραλλιανῶν καθαρὸν εἶναι, μέδιμνον ὀρόβων ἀπομετρήσαντα τοῖς οἰκείοις τοῦ φονευθέντος;

‘Διὰ τί παρὰ τοῖς Ἠλείοις παροιμιῶδές ἐστι τό [c] ‘δεινότερα Σαμβίκου παθεῖν’;’ λέγεταί τινα Σάμβικον Ἠλεῖον ἔχοντα πολλοὺς ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ συνεργοὺς πολλὰ περικόψαι τῶν ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ χαλκῶν ἀναθημάτων καὶ ἀποδόσθαι, τέλος δὲ συλῆσαι τὸ τῆς ἐπισκόπου Ἀρτέμιδος ἱερόν· τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ μὲν ἐν Ἤλιδι, καλεῖται δ’ Ἀριστάρχειον. εὐθὺς οὖν μετὰ ταύτην τὴν ἱεροσυλίαν ἁλόντα βασανίζεσθαι δι’ ἐνιαυτοῦ περὶ ἑκάστου τῶν κεκοινωνηκότων ἀνακρινόμενον, καὶ οὕτως ἀποθανεῖν καὶ τὴν παροιμίαν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἐκείνου πάθεσι γενέσθαι.

‘Διὰ τί ἐν Λακεδαίμονι παρὰ τὸ τῶν Λευκιππίδων ἱερὸν ἵδρυται τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως ἡρῷον;’ Ἐργίαιος, εἷς τῶν Διομήδους ἀπογόνων, ὑπὸ Τημένου πεισθεὶς ἐξέκλεψε [d] τὸ παλλάδιον ἐξ Ἄργους, συνειδότος Λεάγρου καὶ συνεκκλέπτοντος· ἦν δ’ οὗτος εἷς τῶν Τημένου συνήθων. ὕστερον δὲ τῷ Τημένῳ γενόμενος δι’ ὀργῆς ὁ Λέαγρος εἰς Λακεδαίμονα μετέστη τὸ παλλάδιον κομίζων. οἱ δὲ βασιλεῖς δεξάμενοι προθύμως ἱδρύσαντο πλησίον τοῦ τῶν Λευκιππίδων ἱεροῦ, καὶ πέμψαντες εἰς Δελφοὺς διεμαντεύοντο περὶ σωτηρίας αὐτοῦ καὶ φυλακῆς. ἀνελόντος δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ ἕνα τῶν ὑφελομένων τὸ παλλάδιον φύλακα ποιεῖσθαι κατεσκεύασαν αὐτόθι τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως τὸ ἡρῷον, ἄλλως τε καὶ προσήκειν τῇ πόλει τὸν ἥρωα διὰ τὸν τῆς Πηνελόπης γάμον ὑπολαβόντες.

[e] ‘Διὰ τί ταῖς Χαλκηδονίαις ἔθος ἐστίν, ὅταν ἀνδράσιν ἀλλοτρίοις ἐντύχωσι, μάλιστα δ’ ἄρχουσι, τὴν ἑτέραν παρακαλύπτεσθαι παρειάν;’ πόλεμος ἦν αὐτοῖς πρὸς Βιθυνοὺς ἐκ πάσης παροξυνομένοις προφάσεως· Ζειποίτου δὲ βασιλεύοντος αὐτῶν, πανστρατιᾷ καὶ Θρᾳκῶν ἐπικουρίας προσγενομένης ἐπυρπόλουν καὶ κατέτρεχον τὴν χώραν. ἐπιθεμένου δὲ τοῦ Ζειποίτου περὶ τὸ καλούμενον Φάλιον αὐτοῖς, κακῶς ἀγωνισάμενοι διὰ θράσος καὶ ἀταξίαν ὑπὲρ ὀκτακισχιλίους ἀπέβαλον στρατιώτας· [f] καὶ παντελῶς μὲν οὐκ ἀνῃρέθησαν τότε, Ζειποίτου Βυζαντίοις χαρισαμένου τὰς διαλύσεις· πολλῆς δὲ τὴν πόλιν ἐρημίας ἀνδρῶν κατεχούσης, αἱ μὲν πλεῖσται γυναῖκες ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ἀπελευθέροις καὶ μετοίκοις συνῴκησαν· αἱ δ’ ἀνανδρίαν ἀντὶ τοιούτων ἑλόμεναι γάμων, αὐταὶ δι’ αὑτῶν ἔπραττον ὅτου δεηθεῖεν παρὰ δικασταῖς καὶ ἄρχουσιν, ἀπάγουσαι θάτερον μέρος τοῦ προσώπου τῆς [303] [a] καλύπτρας. αἱ δὲ γεγαμημέναι δι’ αἰσχύνην ἀναμιμούμεναι ταύτας ὡς ἑαυτῶν βελτίονας εἰς ἔθος ὅμοιον κατέστησαν.

‘Διὰ τί πρὸς τὸ τοῦ Ἀγήνορος τέμενος τὰς ὄις προσελαύνοντες οἱ Ἀργεῖοι βιβάζουσιν;’ ἦ ὅτι κάλλιστα προβάτων ὁ Ἀγήνωρ ἐπεμελήθη καὶ πλεῖστα ποίμνια τῶν βασιλέων ἐκτήσατο;

‘Διὰ τί Βαλλαχράδας ἑαυτοὺς Ἀργείων παῖδες ἐν ἑορτῇ τινι παίζοντες ἀποκαλοῦσιν;’ ἦ ὅτι τοὺς πρώτους ὑπ’ Ἰνάχου καταχθέντας ἐκ τῶν ἄκρων εἰς τὰ πεδία ἀχράσι διατραφῆναι λέγουσιν; ἀχράδας δὲ πρῶτον ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ φανῆναι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἔτι τῆς χώρας [b] ἐκείνης Ἀπίας προσαγορευομένης· ὅθεν ἄπιοι αἱ ἀχράδες μετωνομάσθησαν.

‘Τίς ἡ αἰτία, δι’ ἣν Ἠλεῖοι τὰς †ἐνόδας †ἵππους ἐκτὸς ὅρων ἀπάγοντες βιβάζουσιν;’ ἦ ὅτι πάντων τῶν βασιλέων φιλιππότατος ὁ Οἰνόμαος καὶ μάλιστα τὸ ζῷον ἀγαπήσας τοῦτ’ ἐπηράσατο πολλὰ καὶ δεινὰ κατὰ τῶν ἵππον ὀχευόντων ἐν Ἤλιδι, καὶ φοβούμενοι τὴν κατάραν ἐκείνην ἀφοσιοῦνται;

‘Διὰ τί παρὰ Κνωσσίοις ἔθος ἦν ἁρπάζειν τοῖς δανειζομένοις τὸ ἀργύριον;’ ἦ ὅπως ἀποστεροῦντες ἔνοχοι τοῖς βιαίοις ὦσι καὶ μᾶλλον κολάζωνται;

[c] ‘Τίς ἡ αἰτία, δι’ ἣν ἐν Σάμῳ τὴν Δεξικρέοντος Ἀφροδίτην καλοῦσι;’ πότερον ὅτι τὰς γυναῖκας αὐτῶν ὑπὸ τρυφῆς καὶ ὕβρεως ἀκόλαστα ποιούσας Δεξικρέων ἀνὴρ ἀγύρτης καθαρμῷ χρησάμενος ἀπήλλαξεν· ἢ ὅτι ναύκληρος ὢν ὁ Δεξικρέων ἔπλευσεν εἰς Κύπρον ἐπ’ ἐμπορίαν καὶ μέλλοντα γεμίζειν τὴν Ἀφροδίτην κελεύειν ὕδωρ ἐμβαλόμενον καὶ μηδὲν ἄλλο πλεῖν τὴν ταχίστην· πεισθεὶς δὲ καὶ πολὺ ὕδωρ ἐνθέμενος ἐξέπλευσεν, εἶτα νηνεμίας καὶ γαλήνης ἐν τῷ πελάγει κατασχούσης, διψῶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐμπόροις καὶ ναυκλήροις ὕδωρ πιπράσκων ἀργύριον πολὺ συνήθροισεν, ἐκ δὲ τούτου [d] κατασκευάσας τὴν θεὸν ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ προσηγόρευσεν; εἰ δὴ τοῦτ’ ἀληθές ἐστι, φαίνεται οὐχ ἕνα πλουτίσαι, πολλοὺς δὲ σῶσαι δι’ ἑνὸς ἡ θεὸς θελήσασα.

‘Διὰ τί τοῖς Σαμίοις, ὅταν τῷ Ἑρμῇ τῷ χαριδότῃ θύωσι, κλέπτειν ἐφεῖται τῷ βουλομένῳ καὶ λωποδυτεῖν;’ ὅτι κατὰ χρησμὸν ἐκ τῆς νήσου μεταστάντες εἰς Μυκάλην ἀπὸ λῃστείας δέκα ἔτη διεγένοντο, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα πλεύσαντες αὖθις εἰς τὴν νῆσον ἐκράτησαν τῶν πολεμίων οἱ Σάμιοι.

‘Ἀπὸ τίνος Πάναιμα τόπος ἐν τῇ Σαμίων νήσῳ καλεῖται;’ ἦ ὅτι φεύγουσαι Διόνυσον αἱ Ἀμαζόνες ἐκ [e] τῆς Ἐφεσίων χώρας εἰς Σάμον διέπεσον· ὁ δὲ ποιησάμενος πλοῖα καὶ διαβὰς μάχην συνῆψε καὶ πολλὰς αὐτῶν ἀπέκτεινε περὶ τὸν τόπον τοῦτον, ὃν διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τοῦ ῥυέντος αἵματος οἱ θεώμενοι Πάναιμα θαυμάζοντες ἐκάλουν; τῶν δ’ ἐλεφάντων ἀποθανεῖν τινες λέγονται περὶ τὸ Φλοιὸν καὶ τὰ ὀστᾶ δείκνυται αὐτῶν· τινὲς δὲ λέγουσι καὶ τὸ Φλοιὸν ὑπ’ ἐκείνων ῥαγῆναι, φθεγγομένων μέγα τι καὶ διάτορον.

‘Ἀπὸ ποίας αἰτίας ὁ ἀνδρὼν ἐν Σάμῳ πεδήτης καλεῖται;’ τῶν γεωμόρων ἐχόντων τὴν πολιτείαν μετὰ τὴν Δημοτέλους σφαγὴν καὶ τὴν κατάλυσιν τῆς ἐκείνου μοναρχίας οἱ Μεγαρεῖς Περινθίοις ἐπεστράτευσαν ἀποίκοις [f] οὖσι Σαμίων, πέδας κομίζοντες ὡς λέγεται ἐπὶ τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους. ταῦτα δ’ οἱ γεωμόροι πυνθανόμενοι βοήθειαν ἔπεμπον κατὰ τάχος, στρατηγοὺς μὲν ἀποδείξαντες ἐννέα, ναῦς δὲ πληρώσαντες τριάκοντα. τούτων [304] [a] ἐκπλέουσαι δύο πρὸ τοῦ λιμένος ὑπὸ κεραυνοῦ διεφθάρησαν· οἱ δὲ στρατηγοὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις πλεύσαντες ἐνίκων τοὺς Μεγαρέας καὶ ζῶντας αὐτῶν ἔλαβον ἑξακοσίους. ἐπαρθέντες δὲ τῇ νίκῃ διενοοῦντο καταλύειν τὴν οἴκοι γεωμόρων ὀλιγαρχίαν. ἀφορμὴν δὲ παρέσχον οἱ προεστῶτες τῆς πολιτείας, γράψαντες αὐτοῖς ὅπως τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους τῶν Μεγαρέων κομίσωσι ταῖς αὐτῶν ἐκείνων πέδαις δεδεμένους. λαβόντες οὖν τὰ γράμματα ταῦτα καὶ δείξαντες [b] κρύφα τισὶ τῶν Μεγαρέων ἔπεισαν αὐτοὺς συστῆναι μεθ’ αὑτῶν καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐλευθερῶσαι· βουλευομένοις δὲ κοινῇ περὶ τῆς πράξεως ἔδοξε τῶν πεδῶν τοὺς κρίκους διακροτῆσαι, καὶ περιθέντας οὕτω τοῖς σκέλεσι τῶν Μεγαρέων ἀναλαβεῖν πρὸς τὰς ζώνας ἱμᾶσιν, ὅπως μὴ περιρρέωσι μηδ’ ἐκβαίνωσιν αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ βαδίζειν χαλαρῶν γενομένων. οὕτω δὲ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐνσκευάσαντες καὶ ξίφος ἑκάστῳ δόντες, ἐπεὶ κατέπλευσαν εἰς Σάμον καὶ ἀπέβησαν, ἦγον αὐτοὺς δι’ ἀγορᾶς εἰς τὸ βουλευτήριον, ὁμοῦ τι πάντων τῶν γεωμόρων συγκαθεζομένων. εἶτα σημείου δοθέντος οἱ Μεγαρεῖς προσπεσόντες ἔκτεινον τοὺς ἄνδρας. οὕτω δὲ τῆς πόλεως ἐλευθερωθείσης [c] τούς τε βουλομένους τῶν Μεγαρέων πολίτας ἐποιήσαντο καὶ κατασκευάσαντες οἶκον εὐμεγέθη τὰς πέδας ἀνέθηκαν, καὶ ἀπὸ τούτου ‘πεδήτης’ ὁ οἶκος ὠνομάσθη.

‘Διὰ τί παρὰ Κῴοις ὁ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ἱερεὺς ἐν Ἀντιμαχείᾳ γυναικείαν ἐνδεδυμένος ἐσθῆτα καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀναδούμενος μίτρᾳ κατάρχεται τῆς θυσίας;’ Ἡρακλῆς ταῖς ἓξ ναυσὶν ἀπὸ Τροίας ἀναχθεὶς ἐχειμάσθη, καὶ τῶν νεῶν διαφθαρεισῶν μιᾷ μόνῃ πρὸς τὴν Κῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ πνεύματος ἐλαυνόμενος ἐξέπεσε κατὰ τὸν Λακητῆρα καλούμενον, οὐδὲν ἄλλο περισώσας ἢ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τοὺς [d] ἄνδρας. ἐντυχὼν δὲ προβάτοις ᾔτει κριὸν ἕνα παρὰ τοῦ νέμοντος· ὁ δ’ ἄνθρωπος ἐκαλεῖτο μὲν Ἀνταγόρας, ἀκμάζων δὲ τῇ ῥώμῃ τοῦ σώματος ἐκέλευσεν αὑτῷ διαπαλαῖσαι τὸν Ἡερακλέα, κἂν καταβάλῃ, τὸν κριὸν φέρεσθαι. καὶ συμπεσόντος αὐτῷ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ἐς χεῖρας οἱ Μέροπες τῷ Ἀνταγόρᾳ παραβοηθοῦντες, οἱ δ’ Ἕλληνες τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ μάχην καρτερὰν συνῆψαν. ἐν ᾗ λέγεται τῷ πλήθει καταπονούμεος ὁ Ἡρακλῆς καταφυγεῖν πρὸς γυναῖκα Θρᾷτταν καὶ διαλαθεῖν ἐσθῆτι γυναικείᾳ κατακρύψας ἑαυτόν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν Μερόπων αὖθις κρατήσας [e] καὶ καθαρθεὶς ἐγάμει τὴν Χαλκιοπήν, ἀνέλαβε στολὴν ἀνθίνην. διὸ θύει μὲν ὁ ἱερεὺς ὅπου τὴν μάχην συνέβη γενέσθαι, τὰς δὲ νύμφας οἱ γαμοῦντες δεξιοῦνται γυναικείαν στολὴν περιθέμενοι.

‘Πόθεν ἐν Μεγάροις γένος ἁμαξοκυλιστῶν;’ ἐπὶ τῆς ἀκολάστου δημοκρατίας, ἣ καὶ τὴν παλιντοκίαν ἐποίησε καὶ τὴν ἱεροσυλίαν, ἐπορεύετο θεωρία Πελοποννησίων εἰς Δελφοὺς διὰ τῆς Μεγαρικῆς καὶ κατηυλίσθησαν [f] ἐν Αἰγείροις παρὰ τὴν λίμνην μετὰ παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν ὡς ἔτυχεν ἐν ταῖς ἁμάξαις. τῶν δὲ Μεγαρέων οἱ θρασύτατοι μεθυσθέντες, ὕβρει καὶ ὠμότητι τὰς ἁμάξας ἀνακυλίσαντες εἰς τὴν λίμνην ἐνεώσαντο, ὥστε πολλοὺς ἀποπνιγῆναι τῶν θεωρῶν. οἱ μὲν οὖν Μεγαρεῖς δι’ ἀταξίαν τῆς πολιτείας ἠμέλησαν τοῦ ἀδικήματος, οἱ δ’ Ἀμφικτύονες, ἱερᾶς τῆς θεωρίας οὔσης, ἐπιστραφέντες τοὺς μὲν φυγῇ τοὺς δὲ θανάτῳ τῶν ἐναγῶν ἐζημίωσαν. οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ γένους ‘ἁμαξοκυλισταί’ προσηγορεύθησαν.

Parallela minora

ΣΥΝΑΓΩΓΗ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΩΝ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΗΛΩΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΡΩΜΑΙΚΩΝ

[305] Τὰς ἀρχαίας ἱστορίας διὰ τὰ παράδοξα τῆς πράξεως οἱ πλεῖστοι νομίζουσι πλάσματα καὶ μύθους τυγχάνειν· [b] εὑρὼν δ’ ἐγὼ καὶ ἐν τοῖς νῦν χρόνοις γεγονότα ὅμοια τὰ ἐν τοῖς Ῥωμαϊκοῖς καιροῖς συμβεβηκότα ἐξελεξάμην καὶ ἑκάστῳ πράγματι ἀρχαίῳ νεωτέραν ὁμοίαν διήγησιν ὑπέταξα, ἀναγράψας καὶ τοὺς ἱστορήσαντας ἄνδρας.

ΔΑΤΙΣ ὁ Περσῶν σατράπης μετὰ τριάκοντα μυριάδων εἰς Μαραθῶνα παραγενόμενος, πεδίον τῆς Ἀττικῆς, καὶ στρατοπεδευσάμενος πόλεμον τοῖς ἐγχωρίοις κατήγγειλεν· Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ τοῦ βαρβαρικοῦ πλήθους καταφρονήσαντες ἐνακισχιλίους ἔπεμψαν, στρατηγοὺς ποιήσαντες [c] Κυνέγειρον Πολύζηλον Καλλίμαχον Μιλτιάδην. συμβληθείσης δὲ τῆς παρατάξεως Πολύζηλος μὲν ὑπεράνθρωπον φαντασίαν θεασάμενος τὴν ὅρασιν ἀπέβαλε καὶ τυφλὸς ἐγένετο· Καλλίμαχος δὲ πολλοῖς περιπεπαρμένος δόρασι καὶ νεκρὸς ἐστάθη· Κυνέγειρος δὲ Περσικὴν ἀναγομένην ναῦν κατασχὼν ἐχειροκοπήθη.

ΑΣΔΡΟΥΒΑΣ βασιλεὺς Σικελίαν καταλαβόμενος πόλεμον Ῥωμαίοις κατήγγειλε· Μέτελλος δ’ ὑπὸ τῆς συγκλήτου στρατηγὸς χειροτονηθεὶς ἐγκρατὴς ἐγένετο τῆς νίκης ταύτης, ἐν ᾗ Λεύκιος Γλαύκων εὐγενὴς ἀνὴρ τὴν Ἀσδρούβα κατέχων ναῦν ἀμφοτέρας ἀπέβαλε τὰς [d] χεῖρας· καθάπερ ἱστορεῖ Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος ἐν πρώτῃ Σικελικῶν (FHGr. IV 324), παρ’ οὗ τὴν ὑπόθεσιν ἔμαθε Διονύσιος ὁ Σικελιώτης.

ΞΕΡΞΗΣ μετὰ πεντακοσίων μυριάδων Ἀρτεμισίῳ προσορμίσας πόλεμον τοῖς ἐγχωρίοις κατήγγειλεν· Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ συγκεχυμένοι κατάσκοπον ἔπεμψαν Ἀγησίλαον, τὸν Θεμιστοκλέους ἀδελφόν, καίπερ Νεοκλέους τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ κατ’ ὄναρ ἑωρακότος ἀμφοτέρας ἀποβεβληκότα τὰς χεῖρας. παραγενόμενος δ’ εἰς τοὺς βαρβάρους ἐν σχήματι Περσικῷ Μαρδόνιον, ἕνα τῶν σωματοφυλάκων, ἀνεῖλεν ὑπολαμβάνων Ξέρξην εἶναι. συλληφθεὶς δὲ [e] πρὸς τῶν πέριξ δέσμιος ἤχθη πρὸς τὸν βασιλέα. βουθυτεῖν δὲ τοῦ προειρημένου μέλλοντος ἐπὶ τῷ τοῦ Ἡλίου βωμῷ τὴν δεξιὰν ἐπέθηκε χεῖρα, καὶ ἀστένακτος ὑπομείνας τὴν ἀνάγκην τῶν βασάνων ἠλευθερώθη τῶν δεσμῶν εἰπών ‘πάντες ἐσμὲν τοιοῦτοι Ἀθηναῖοι· εἰ δ’ ἀπιστεῖς, καὶ τὴν ἀριστερὰν ἐπιθήσω.’ φοβηθεὶς δ’ ὁ Ξέρξης φρουρεῖσθαι αὐτὸν προσέταξε· καθάπερ ἱστορεῖ Ἀγαθαρχίδης Σάμιος ἐν δευτέρᾳ τῶν Περσικῶν (FHGr. III 197).

ΠΟΡΣΙΝΑΣ Τούσκων βασιλεὺς πέραν ποταμοῦ Θύμβρεως στρατεύσας ἐπολέμησε Ῥωμαίοις καὶ τὴν ἀπὸ σιτίων φερομένην εὐθηνίαν Ῥωμαίοις μέσην λαβὼν [f] λιμῷ τοὺς προειρημένους ἔτρυχε. τῆς δὲ συγκλήτου συγκεχυμένης Μούκιος τῶν ἐπισήμων ἀνὴρ λαβὼν τετρακοσίους ἀπὸ τῶν ὑπάτων ὁμήλικας ἐν ἰδιωτικῷ σχήματι τὸν ποταμὸν διῆλθεν. ἰδὼν δὲ τὸν σωματοφύλακα τοῦ τυράννου τὰ ἐπιτήδεια διαδιδόντα τοῖς στρατηγοῖς, ὑπολαβὼν αὐτὸν τὸν Πορσίναν εἶναι ἀνεῖλεν. ἀχθεὶς δ’ ἐπὶ τὸν βασιλέα τοῖς ἐμπύροις ἐπέθηκε τὴν δεξιὰν χεῖρα καὶ [306] [a] στέξας τὰς ἀλγηδόνας εὐψύχως ἐμειδίασεν εἰπών ‘βάρβαρε, λέλυμαι, κἂν μὴ θέλῃς· καὶ ἴσθι ἡμᾶς κατὰ σοῦ τετρακοσίους ὄντας ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ, οἵ σε ἀνελεῖν ζητοῦμεν.’ ὁ δὲ φοβηθεὶς σπονδὰς πρὸς Ῥωμαίους ἐποιήσατο· καθάπερ ἱστορεῖ Ἀριστείδης ὁ Μιλήσιος ἐν τρίτῃ ἱστοριῶν (FHGr. IV 320).

ΑΡΓΕΙΩΝ καὶ Λακεδαιμονίων ὑπὲρ Θυρεάτιδος χώρας πολεμούντων οἱ Ἀμφικτύονες ἔκριναν πολεμῆσαι ἑκατέρ‹ων τριακοσί›ους καὶ τῶν νικησάντων εἶναι τὴν χώραν. Λακεδαιμόνιοι μὲν οὖν Ὀθρυάδην ἐποίησαν στρατηγὸν Ἀργεῖοι δὲ Θέρσανδρον. πολεμούντων δὲ δύο [b] ἐκ τῶν Ἀργείων περιελείφθησαν, Ἀγήνωρ καὶ Χρόμιος, οἵτινες εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἤγγειλαν τὴν νίκην. ἠρεμίας δ’ ὑπαρχούσης ὁ Ὀθρυάδης ἐπιζήσας καὶ ἡμικλάστοις δόρασιν ἐπερειδόμενος τὰς τῶν νεκρῶν ἁπάντων ἀσπίδας περιείλετο· καὶ τρόπαιον στήσας ἐκ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος ἐπέγραψε ‘Διὶ τροπαιούχῳ.’ καὶ τῶν δήμων στάσιν ἐχόντων οἱ Ἀμφικτύονες αὐτόπται γενόμενοι Λακεδαιμονίους προκρίνουσι· καθάπερ Χρύσερμος ἐν τρίτῳ Πελοποννησιακῶν (FHGr. IV 361).

ΡΩΜΑΙΟΙ πρὸς Σαμνίτας πόλεμον ἔχοντες στρατηγὸν ἐχειροτόνησαν Μινούκιον Αὐγουρῖνον. οὗτος κατὰ τὰς καλουμένας φορκούλας Καυδίνας (ἔστι δὲ τόπος [c] στενώτατος) ἐνεδρευθεὶς τρεῖς ἀπέβαλε λεγεῶνας καὶ αὐτὸς καιρίως τρωθεὶς ἔπεσε. βαθείας δὲ νυκτὸς ὀλίγον ἐπιζήσας περιείλετο τῶν ἀνῃρημένων πολεμίων τὰς ἀσπίδας καὶ εἰς τὸ αἷμα τὴν χεῖρα βαπτίσας ἔστησε τρόπαιον ἐπιγράψας ‘Ῥωμαῖοι κατὰ Σαμνιτῶν Διὶ τροπαιούχῳ.’ Μάξιμος δὲ ὁ ἐπικληθεὶς Λαίμαργος, στρατηγὸς πεμφθεὶς καὶ παραγενόμενος ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον, ἰδὼν τὸ τρόπαιον τὸν οἰωνὸν ἀσμένως ἐδέξατο· καὶ συμβαλὼν ἐνίκησε καὶ αἰχμάλωτον λαβὼν τὸν βασιλέα εἰς Ῥώμην ἔπεμψεν· ὡς Ἀριστείδης ὁ Μιλήσιος ἐν τρίτῃ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 321).

ΠΕΡΣΩΝ μετὰ πεντακοσίων μυριάδων ἐπὶ [d] τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐρχομένων Λεωνίδας ἅμα τριακοσίοις ἐπέμφθη εἰς Θερμοπύλας ὑπὸ Λακεδαιμονίων. εὐωχουμένων δ’ ἐκεῖ ἐπέκειτο τὸ τῶν βαρβάρων πλῆθος· καὶ ὁ Λεωνίδας εἶπεν ἰδὼν τοὺς βαρβάρους ‘οὕτως ἀριστᾶτε ὡς ἐν Ἅιδου δειπνήσοντες.’ καὶ ὁρμήσας κατὰ τῶν βαρβάρων καὶ πολλοῖς περιπαρεὶς δόρασιν ἀνέβη ἐπὶ τὸν Ξέρξην καὶ τὸ διάδημα ἀφείλετο. οὗ ἀποθανόντος ὁ βάρβαρος τέμνει τὴν καρδίαν καὶ εὗρε δασεῖαν· ὡς Ἀριστείδης ἐν πρώτῃ Περσικῶν (FHGr. IV 324).

ΡΩΜΑΙΟΙ πρὸς Ποινοὺς πόλεμον ἔχοντες ἔπεμψαν τριακοσίους καὶ στρατηγὸν Φάβιον Μάξιμον.

[e] συμβαλὼν δ’ ἀπέβαλε πάντας, αὐτὸς δὲ καιρίως τρωθεὶς μεθ’ ὁρμῆς ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀννίβαν ἠνέχθη, καὶ καθελὼν τὸ διάδημα συναπέθανεν αὐτῷ, καθάπερ ἱστορεῖ Ἀριστείδης ὁ Μιλήσιος (FHGr. IV 322).

ΚΑΤΑ Κελαινὰς πόλιν τῆς Φρυγίας χάσμα μεθ’ ὕδατος γενόμενον πολλὰς οἰκίας αὐτάνδρους εἰς τὸν βυθὸν εἵλκυσε. Μίδας δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς χρησμὸν ἔλαβεν, ἐὰν τὸ τιμιώτατον ἐμβάλῃ, συνελεύσεσθαι· ὁ δὲ χρυσὸν καὶ ἄργυρον ἐμβαλὼν οὐδὲν ἐβοήθησεν. Ἄγχουρος δ’ υἱὸς τοῦ Μίδα λογισάμενος μηδὲν εἶναι τιμιώτερον ἐν βίῳ ψυχῆς ἀνθρωπίνης, δοὺς περιπλοκὰς τῷ γεννήσαντι καὶ τῇ [f] γυναικὶ Τιμοθέᾳ ἔφιππος εἰς τὸν τόπον τοῦ χάσματος ἠνέχθη. συνελθούσης δὲ τῆς γῆς χρύσεον βωμὸν ἐποίησεν Ἰδαίου Διὸς ἁψάμενος τῇ χειρί. οὗτος ὁ βωμὸς περὶ ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρόν, ἐν ᾧ τὸ χάσμα συνέβη γενέσθαι, λίθος γίνεται· τῆς δὲ ὡρισμένης προθεσμίας παρελθούσης, χρύσεος ὁρᾶται· ὡς Καλλισθένης ἐν δευτέρῳ Μεταμορφώσεων (Scr. rer. Alex. M. ed. M. fr. 45).

ΔΙΑ μέσης τῆς ἀγορᾶς ῥέων ὁ Τίβερις διὰ μῆνιν Ταρπ‹η›ίου Διὸς μέγιστον ἀπέρρηξε χάσμα καὶ πολλὰς οἰκίας ἐβύθισε· χρησμὸς δ’ ἐδόθη λήξεσθαι, ἐὰν τὸ τίμι‹ώτατ›ον ἐμβάλωσι. τῶν δὲ χρυσὸν καὶ ἄργυρον ἐμβαλόντων, [307] [a] Κούρτιος τῶν ἐπισήμων νέος τὸν χρησμὸν νοήσας καὶ λογισάμενος τὴν ψυχὴν τιμιωτέραν, ἔφιππον ἑαυτὸν ἔρριψεν εἰς τὸ χάσμα καὶ τοὺς οἰκείους ἐξέσῳσε τῶν κακῶν· ὡς Ἀριστείδης ἐν τεσσαρακοστῷ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 321).

ΤΩΝ ἅμα Πολυνείκει εὐωχουμένων λοχαγῶν ἀετὸς καταπτὰς τὸ Ἀμφιάρεω ἐβάστασε δόρυ εἰς ὕψος καὶ εἴασε· τὸ δὲ παγὲν ἐν γῇ δάφνη ἐγένετο. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ πολεμούντων κατ’ ἐκεῖνο κατεπόθη ὁ Ἀμφιάρεως ‹αὐτῷ› τῷ ἅρματι, ἔνθα νῦν πόλις Ἅρμα καλεῖται· ὡς Τεισίμαχος ἐν τρίτῳ Κτίσεων (FHGr. IV 471).

ΡΩΜΑΙΩΝ πρὸς Πύρρον Ἠπειρώτην πολεμούντων, [b] Αἰμίλιος Παῦλος χρησμὸν ἔλαβε νικῆσαι, βωμὸν ἐὰν ποιήσῃ, ἔνθα ἂν ἴδῃ χάσματι κρυπτόμενον ἄνδρα τῶν ἐπισήμων μετὰ ἅρματος. μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας Οὐαλέριος ‹Τορ›κουᾶτος κατ’ ὄναρ ἰδὼν ἀναλαβεῖν ἱερέως κόσμον (καὶ γὰρ ἦν μαντικῆς ἔμπειρος), στρατηγήσας καὶ πολλοὺς φονεύσας ὑπὸ γῆς κατεπόθη. ὁ Αἰμίλιος δὲ βωμὸν ἱδρύσας ἐνίκησε καὶ ἑκατὸν ἑξήκοντα πυργοφόρους ἐλέφαντας εἰς Ῥώμην κατέπεμψεν. ὁ δὲ βωμὸς μαντεύεται κατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρόν, καθ’ ὃν ἐνικήθη Πύρρος· ὡς ἱστορεῖ Κριτόλας ἐν τρίτῃ Ἠπειρωτικῶν (FHGr. IV 372).

ΠΥΡΑΙΧΜΗΣ βασιλεὺς Εὐβοέων ἐπολέμει [c] Βοιωτοῖς. ὃν Ἡρακλῆς ἔτι νέος ὢν ἐνίκησε· πώλοις δὲ προσδήσας καὶ εἰς δύο μέρη διελὼν τὸν Πυραίχμην ἄταφον ἔρριψεν. ὁ δὲ τόπος προσαγορεύεται ‘πῶλοι Πυραίχμου’, κεῖται δὲ παρὰ ποταμὸν Ἡράκλειον, χρεμετισμὸν δ’ ἀναδίδωσι πινόντων ἵππων· ὡς ... ἐν τρίτῳ περὶ Ποταμῶν.

ΤΟΥΛΛΟΣ Ὁστίλιος βασιλεὺς Ῥωμαίων ἐπολέμησεν Ἀλβανοῖς, βασιλέως ὄντος Μετίου Φουφετίου, καὶ τὴν μάχην πολλάκις ὑπερέθετο. οἱ δ’ ‹ὡς› ἡττωμένου εἰς εὐωχίαν ἐτράπησαν· οἰνωμένοις δ’ ἐπέθετο καὶ τὸν βασιλέα δύο πώλοις συζεύξας διεσπάραξεν· ὡς Ἀλέξαρχος ἐν τετάρτῃ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 298).

[d] ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΣ Μεθώνην καὶ Ὄλυνθον βουλόμενος πορθῆσαι καὶ βιαζόμενος ἐπὶ τῷ Σανδάνῳ ποταμῷ διαβῆναι πέραν ὑπό τινος τῶν Ὀλυνθίων Ἀστέρος ὀνόματι ἐτοξεύθη τὸν ὀφθαλμόν, εἰπόντος

‘Ἀστὴρ Φιλίππῳ θανάσιμον πέμπει βέλος·’

ὁ δ’ ὀπίσω διανηξάμενος πρὸς τοὺς οἰκείους σῴζεται ἀπολέσας τὸν ὀφθαλμόν· ὡς Καλλισθένης ἐν τρίτῳ Μακεδονικῶν (Scr. rer. Alex. M. ed. M. fr. 42).

ΠΟΡΣΙΝΑΣ Τούσκων βασιλεὺς πέραν Θύμβρεος ποταμοῦ στρατεύσας ἐπολέμησε Ῥωμαίοις καὶ τὴν ἀπὸ σιτίων φερομένην εὐθηνίαν μέσην λαβὼν λιμῷ τοὺς προειρημένους ἔτρυχεν. Ὁράτιος δὲ Κάτλος στρατηγὸς [e] χειροτονηθεὶς τὴν ξυλίνην κατελάβετο γέφυραν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν βαρβάρων διαβῆναι βουλόμενον ἐπεῖχε. πλεονεκτούμενος δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων προσέταξε τοῖς ὑποτεταγμένοις κόπτειν τὴν γέφυραν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν βαρβάρων διαβῆναι βουλόμενον ἐκώλυσε. βέλει δὲ τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν πληγείς, ῥίψας ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν διενήξατο εἰς τοὺς οἰκείους· ὡς Θεότιμος ἐν δευτέρῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 517).

Ὁ περὶ τοῦ ἸΚΑΡΙΟΥ μῦθος, ᾧ Διόνυσος ἐπεξενώθη· ὡς Ἐρατοσθένης ἐν τῇ Ἠριγόνῃ.

ΚΡΟΝΟΣ ἐπιξενωθεὶς γεωργῷ, ᾧ ἦν θυγάτηρ καλὴ Κλειτορία, ταύτην ἐβιάσατο καὶ ἐτέκνωσεν υἱοὺς Ἰανὸν Ὕμνον Φαῦστον Φήλικα. διδάξας οὖν τὸν τρόπον [f] τῆς τοῦ οἴνου πόσεως καὶ τῆς ἀμπέλου ἠξίωσε καὶ τοῖς γείτοσι μεταδοῦναι. ποιήσαντος δ’ αὐτὸ οἱ πιόντες παρὰ τὸ σύνηθες εἰς ὕπνον κατηνέχθησαν βαρύτερον τοῦ δέοντος· οἱ δὲ πεφαρμακῶσθαι δόξαντες, λίθοις βάλλοντες τὸν †Ἰκάριον ἀπέκτειναν· οἱ δὲ θυγατριδοῖ ἀθυμήσαντες [308] [a] βρόχῳ τὸν βίον κατέστρεψαν. λοιμοῦ δὲ κατασχόντος Ῥωμαίους ἔχρησεν ὁ Πύθιος λωφήσειν, ἐὰν ἐξιλάσωνται τοῦ Κρόνου τὴν μῆνιν καὶ τοὺς δαίμονας τῶν ἀνόμως ἀπολομένων. Λουτάτιος δὲ Κάτλος, ἀνὴρ τῶν ἐπισήμων, κατεσκεύασε τῷ θεῷ τέμενος τὸ κείμενον σύνεγγυς τοῦ Ταρπηίου ὄρους καὶ τὸν ἄνω βωμὸν ἱδρύσατο τετραπρόσωπον ἢ διὰ τοὺς θυγατριδοῦς ἢ ὅτι τετραμερὴς ὁ ἐνιαυτός ἐστι, καὶ μῆνα κατέδειξεν Ἰανουάριον. ὁ δὲ Κρόνος πάντας κατηστέρισεν. καὶ οἱ μὲν καλοῦνται προτρυγητῆρες, ὁ δ’ Ἰανὸς προανατέλλων· δείκνυται ὁ ἀστὴρ πρὸ τῶν ποδῶν τῆς παρθένου· ὡς Κριτόλαος ἐν τετάρτῃ Φαινομένων (FHGr. IV 372).

[b] ΠΕΡΣΩΝ τὴν Ἑλλάδα λεηλατούντων Παυσανίας ὁ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων στρατηγὸς πεντακόσια χρυσοῦ τάλαντα παρὰ Ξέρξου λαβὼν ἔμελλε προδιδόναι τὴν Σπάρτην. φωραθέντος δὲ τούτου Ἀγησίλαος ὁ πατὴρ μέχρι τοῦ ναοῦ τῆς Χαλκιοίκου συνεδίωξεν Ἀθηνᾶς καὶ τὰς θύρας τοῦ τεμένους πλίνθῳ φράξας λιμῷ ἀπέκτεινεν· ἡ δὲ μήτηρ καὶ ἄταφον ἔρριψεν· ὡς Χρύσερμος ἐν δευτέρῳ Ἱστορικῶν (FHGr. IV 361).

ΡΩΜΑΙΟΙ πρὸς Λατίνους πολεμοῦντες ἐχειροτόνησαν στρατηγὸν Πόπλιον Δέκιον· νεανίσκος δέ τις τῶν ἐπισήμων πένης τοὔνομα Κάσσιος Βροῦτος ἐπὶ [c] ῥητῷ μισθῷ νυκτὸς τὰς πύλας ἀνοῖξαι ἐβουλήθη. φωραθεὶς δ’ εἰς ναὸν ἔφυγεν Ἀθηνᾶς Αὐξιλιαρίας. Κάσσιος δὲ Σίγνιφερ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ κατέκλεισε καὶ λιμῷ διέφθειρε καὶ ἄταφον ἔρριψεν· ὡς Κλειτώνυμος ἐν Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 366).

ΔΑΡΕΙΟΣ ὁ Πέρσης ἐπὶ Γρανικῷ πολεμήσας Ἀλεξάνδρῳ καὶ ἑπτὰ σατράπας ἀποβαλὼν καὶ ἅρματα δρεπανηφόρα δύο καὶ πεντακόσια συμβαλεῖν ἔμελλε τῇ ἑξῆς. Ἀριοβαρζάνης δ’ ὁ υἱὸς συμπαθῶς διακείμενος πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ὑπισχνεῖτο τὸν πατέρα προδώσειν. ἀγανακτήσας δ’ ὁ πατὴρ ἐτραχηλοκόπησεν· ὡς Ἀρητάδης Κνίδιος ἐν τρίτῳ Μακεδονικῶν (FHGr. IV 316).

[d] ΒΡΟΥΤΟΣ ὑπὸ πάντων ὕπατος χειροτονηθεὶς ἐφυγάδευσε τὸν Ὑπερήφανον Ταρκύνιον τυραννικῶς ἀναστρεφόμενον. ὁ δ’ ἐλθὼν εἰς Τούσκους ἐπολέμει Ῥωμαίοις. οἱ δὲ ‹Βρού›του υἱοὶ τὸν πατέρα προδοῦναι ἠβουλήθησαν. ἐμπεσόντων δὲ τραχηλοκοπῆσαι· ὡς Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος ἐν τοῖς Ἰταλικοῖς (FHGr. IV 323).

(ΦΠ) ΕΠΑΜΕΙΝΩΝΔΑΣ ὁ τῶν Θηβαίων στρατηγὸς ἔχων πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους πόλεμον καὶ ἀρχαιρεσιῶν ἀγομένων ἧκεν ἐς πατρίδα, παραγγείλας τῷ παιδὶ Στησιμβρότῳ μὴ συμβάλλειν. Λακεδαιμόνιοι μαθόντες τὴν ἀπουσίαν ἐβλασφήμουν τὸν νεανίαν ὡς ἄνανδρον· ὁ δ’ [e] ἀγανακτήσας καὶ ἐπιλαθόμενος τοῦ πατρὸς συνέβαλε καὶ ἐνίκησεν· ὁ δὲ πατὴρ βαρέως ἐνέγκας στεφανώσας ἐτραχηλοκόπησεν, ὡς Κτησιφῶν ἱστορεῖ ἐν τρίτῳ Βοιωτιακῶν (FHGr. IV 375).

(ΦΠ) ΡΩΜΑΙΟΙ πρὸς Σαμνίτας πόλεμον ἔχοντες ἐχειροτόνησαν Μάλλιον τὸν Ἐπιτάκτην ἐπικληθέντα. οὗτος διὰ χειροτονίαν ὑπατικὴν εἰς Ῥώμην πορευόμενος τῷ υἱῷ προσέταξε μὴ συμβαλεῖν. οἱ δὲ Σαμνῖται μαθόντες βλασφημίαις ἐξουδένιζον τὸν νεανίαν· ὁ δὲ ταραχθεὶς ἐνίκησεν· Μάλλιος δ’ ἐτραχηλοκόπησεν· καθάπερ ἱστορεῖ Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος (FHGr. IV 323).

ΗΡΑΚΛΗΣ τοῦ Ἰόλης γάμου ἀποτυχὼν τὴν [f] Οἰχαλίαν ἐπόρθησεν. ἡ δ’ Ἰόλη ἀπὸ τοῦ τείχους ἔρριψεν ἑαυτήν. συνέβη δὲ κολπωθείσης ὑπ’ ἀνέμου τῆς ἐσθῆτος μηδὲν αὐτὴν παθεῖν· καθάπερ ἱστορεῖ Νικίας Μαλλώτης (FHGr. M IV 463 6 Iac. I 60 F 1 K. p. 534).

ΡΩΜΑΙΟΙ πολεμοῦντες πρὸς Τοῦσκον ἐχειροτόνησαν Οὐαλέριον Τορκουᾶτον. οὗτος θεασάμενος τοῦ βασιλέως τὴν θυγατέρα τοὔνομα Κλουσίαν ᾐτεῖτο παρὰ τοῦ Τούσκου τὴν θυγατέρα, μὴ τυχὼν δ’ ἐπόρθει τὴν [309] [a] πόλιν. ἡ δὲ Κλουσία ἀπὸ τῶν πύργων ἔρριψεν ἑαυτήν· προνοίᾳ δ’ Ἀφροδίτης κολπωθείσης τῆς ἐσθῆτος διεσώθη ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν· ἣν ὁ στρατηγὸς ἔφθειρε, καὶ τούτων πάντων ἕνεκα ἐξωρίσθη κοινῷ δόγματι ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων εἰς Κόρσικαν νῆσον πρὸ τῆς Ἰταλίας· ὡς Θεόφιλος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 515).

ΠΟΙΝΩΝ καὶ Σικελιωτῶν τὴν κατὰ Ῥωμαίων συμμαχίαν ἑτοιμαζόντων Μέτελλος στρατηγὸς μόνῃ τῇ Ἑστίᾳ οὐκ ἔθυσεν· ἡ δὲ πνεῦμα ἀντέπνευσε ταῖς ναυσί. Γάιος δ’ Ἰούλιος μάντις εἶπε λωφῆσαι, ἐὰν προθύσῃ τὴν θυγατέρα. ὁ δ’ ἀναγκασθεὶς Μετέλλαν τὴν θυγατέρα [b] προσῆγεν· ἡ δ’ Ἑστία ἐλεήσασα δάμαλιν ὑπέβαλε καὶ αὐτὴν ἐκόμισεν εἰς Λανούιον καὶ ἱέρειαν τοῦ σεβομένου παρ’ αὐτοῖς δράκοντος ἀπέδειξεν· ὡς Πυθοκλῆς ἐν τρίτῃ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 488).

ΕΝ ΑΥΛΙΔΙ τῆς Βοιωτίας - τὰ περὶ Ἰφιγένειαν ὁμοίως ἱστορεῖ Μένυλλος ἐν πρώτῳ Βοιωτιακῶν (FHGr. IV 452).

ΒΡΕΝΝΟΣ Γαλατῶν βασιλεὺς λεηλατῶν τὴν Ἀσίαν ἐπὶ Ἔφεσον ἦλθε καὶ ἠράσθη παρθένου Δημονίκης· ἡ δὲ συνελθεῖν ὑπέσχετο, ἐὰν τὰ ψέλλια καὶ τὸν κόσμον τῶν Γαλατῶν δῷ αὐτῇ, καὶ τὴν Ἔφεσον προδοῦναι· ὁ δ’ ἠξίωσε τοὺς στρατιώτας ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὸν κόλπον ὃν εἶχον [c] χρυσὸν τῆς φιλαργύρου. ποιησάντων δ’ ὑπὸ τῆς δαψιλείας τοῦ χρυσοῦ ζῶσα κατεχώσθη· καθάπερ ἱστορεῖ Κλειτοφῶν ἐν πρώτῳ Γαλατικῶν (FHGr. IV 367).

ΤΑΡΠΗΙΑ, τῶν εὐσχημόνων παρθένων τοῦ Καπιτωλίου φύλαξ, Ῥωμαίων πρὸς Σαβίνους πολεμούντων, ὑπέσχετο τῷ Τατίῳ δώσειν εἴσοδον εἰς τὸ Ταρπήιον ὄρος, ἐὰν μισθὸν λάβῃ τοὺς ὅρμους, οὓς ἐφόρουν κόσμου χάριν. Σαβῖνοι δὲ ποιήσαντες ζῶσαν κατέχωσαν· ὡς Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος ἐν Ἰταλικοῖς (FHGr. IV 323).

ΤΕΓΕΑΤΑΙΣ καὶ Φενεάταις χρονίου πολέμου γενομένου ἔδοξε τριδύμους ἀδελφοὺς πέμψαι τοὺς μαχησομένους [d] περὶ τῆς νίκης. Τεγεᾶται μὲν οὖν τοὺς Ῥηξιμάχου παῖδας, Φενεᾶται δὲ τοὺς Δημοστράτου προυβάλοντο. συμβληθείσης δὲ τῆς μάχης ἐφονεύθησαν τῶν Ῥηξιμάχου δύο· ὁ δὲ τρίτος τοὔνομα Κριτόλαος στρατηγήματι περιεγένετο τῶν Δημοστράτου· προσποιητὴν γὰρ φυγὴν σκηψάμενος καθ’ ἕνα τῶν διωκόντων ἀνεῖλε. καὶ ἐλθόντος οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι συνεχάρησαν, μόνη δ’ οὐκ ἐχάρη ἡ ἀδελφὴ Δημοδίκη· πεφονεύκει γὰρ αὐτῆς τὸν κατηγγυημένον ἄνδρα Δημόδικον. ἀναξιοπαθήσας δ’ ὁ Κριτόλαος ἀνεῖλεν αὐτήν. φόνου δ’ ἀγόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς μητρὸς ἀπελύθη τῶν [e] ἐγκλημάτων· ὡς Δημάρατος ἐν δευτέρῳ Ἀρκαδικῶν (FHGr. IV 379 6 FGrHist. Iac. I 42 F 5).

ΡΩΜΑΙΟΙ καὶ Ἀλβανοὶ πολεμοῦντες τριδύμους προμάχους εἵλοντο, καὶ Ἀλβανοὶ μὲν Κουρ‹ι›ατίους, Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ Ὡρατίους. συμβληθείσης δὲ τῆς μάχης οἱ Κουρ‹ι›άτιοι δύο τῶν ἐναντίων ἀνεῖλον· ὁ δὲ περίλοιπος φυγῇ προσποιητῇ συμμάχῳ χρώμενος ἐφόνευσε καθ’ ἕνα τῶν ἐπιδιωκόντων. χαρέντων δὲ πάντων μόνη ἡ ἀδελφὴ οὐ συνεχάρη Ὡρατία ‹τῷ› τὸν κατηγγυημένον ἄνδρα Κουρ‹ι›άτιον ἀνῃρηκότι· ὁ δ’ ἐφόνευσε τὴν ἀδελφήν· ὥς φησιν Ἀριστείδης ὁ Μιλήσιος ἐν Ἰταλικοῖς (FHGr. IV 323).

ΕΝ ΙΛΙΩΙ τοῦ ναοῦ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ἐμπρησθέντος [f] προσδραμὼν Ἶλος τὸ διοπετὲς ἥρπασε παλλάδιον καὶ ἐτυφλώθη· οὐ γὰρ ἐξῆν ὑπ’ ἀνδρὸς βλέπεσθαι· ὕστερον δ’ ἐξιλασάμενος ἀνέβλεψεν· ὡς Δέρκυλλος ἐν πρώτῳ Κτίσεων (FHGr. IV 587).

ΜΕΤΕΛΛΟΣ ἀνὴρ τῶν ἐπισήμων πορευόμενος εἰς τὸ προάστειον ὑπὸ κοράκων ἐπεσχέθη παιόντων ταῖς πτέρυξι. φοβηθεὶς δὲ τὸν οἰωνὸν εἰς Ῥώμην ὑπέστρεψεν.

[310] [a] ἰδὼν δὲ τὸ τέμενος τῆς Ἑστίας καιόμενον καὶ τὸ παλλάδιον ἁρπάσας ἐτυφλώθη· ὕστερον δ’ ἀνέβλεψεν ἐξιλασάμενος· ὡς Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος ἐν Ἰταλικοῖς (FHGr. IV 323).

ΘΡΑΙΚΕΣ Ἀθηναίοις πολεμοῦντες χρησμὸν ἔλαβον, ἐὰν Κόδρου φείσωνται, νικῆσαι· ὁ δὲ δρέπανον λαβὼν ἧκεν εἰς τοὺς ἐναντίους ἐν εὐτελοῦς σχήματι καὶ ἕνα φονεύσας ὑπὸ θατέρου ἀνῃρέθη, οὕτω τ’ ἐνίκησαν οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι· ὡς Σωκράτης ἐν δευτέρῳ Θρᾳκικῶν (FHGr. IV 504).

ΠΟΠΛΙΟΣ Δέκιος Ῥωμαῖος πρὸς Ἀλβανοὺς πολεμῶν ὄναρ εἶδεν, ἐὰν ἀποθάνῃ, ῥώμην προσποιήσειν [b] Ῥωμαίοις. ἐλθὼν οὖν εἰς μέσους καὶ πολλοὺς φονεύσας ἀνῃρέθη. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ Δέκιος ἐν τῷ πρὸς Γάλλους πολέμῳ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους διέσῳσεν· ὡς Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος (FHGr. IV 323).

ΚΥΑΝΙΠΠΟΣ γένει Συρακούσιος μόνῳ Διονύσῳ οὐκ ἔθυεν· ὁ δὲ θεὸς ὀργισθεὶς μέθην ἐνέσκηψε, καὶ ἐν τόπῳ σκοτεινῷ τὴν θυγατέρα ἐβιάσατο Κυάνην· ἡ δὲ τὸν δακτύλιον περιελομένη ἔδωκε τῇ τροφῷ, ἐσόμενον ἀναγνώρισμα. λοιμωξάντων δὲ καὶ τοῦ Πυθίου εἰπόντος μὲν δεῖν τὸν ἀσεβῆ ‹ἀπο›τροπαίοις θεοῖς σφαγιάσαι, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἀγνοούντων τὸν χρησμόν, γνοῦσα ἡ Κυάνη καὶ [c] ἐπιλαβομένη τῶν τριχῶν εἷλκε καὶ αὐτὴ κατασφάξασα τὸν πατέρα ἑαυτὴν ἐπέσφαξε· καθάπερ Δοσίθεος ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ Σικελικῶν (FHGr. IV 401).

ΤΩΝ Διονυσίων ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ ἀγομένων Ἀρούντιος ἐκ γενετῆς ὑδροπότης ἐξουδένιζε τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ δύναμιν· ὁ δὲ μέθην ἐνέβαλε καὶ ἐβιάσατο τὴν θυγατέρα Μεδουλλίναν νυκτὶ λαθραίᾳ. ἡ δὲ ἐκ δακτυλίου γνοῦσα τὸ γεγονὸς καὶ πρεσβύτερα τῆς ἡλικίας φρονήσασα, μεθύσασα τὸν πατέρα καὶ στεφανώσασα ἤγαγεν ἐπὶ τὸν βωμὸν τῆς Ἀστραπῆς καὶ δακρύσασα ἀνεῖλε τὸν ἐπίβουλον τῆς παρθενίας· ὡς Ἀριστείδης ἐν τρίτῃ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 321).

[d] ΕΡΕΧΘΕΥΣ πρὸς Εὔμολπον πολεμῶν ἔμαθε νικῆσαι, ἐὰν τὴν θυγατέρα προθύσῃ, καὶ συγκοινωνήσας τῇ γυναικὶ Πραξιθέᾳ προέθυσε τὴν παῖδα. μέμνηται Εὐριπίδης ἐν Ἐρεχθεῖ (Nauck² p. 464 sqq.).

ΜΑΡΙΟΣ πρὸς Κίμβρους πόλεμον ἔχων καὶ ἡττώμενος ὄναρ εἶδεν, ὅτι νικήσει, ἐὰν τὴν θυγατέρα προθύσῃ· ἦν δ’ αὐτῷ Καλπουρνία· προκρίνας δὲ τῆς φύσεως τοὺς πολίτας ἔδρασε καὶ ἐνίκησε. καὶ ἔτι καὶ νῦν βωμοὶ εἰσὶ δύο ἐν Γερμανίᾳ, οἳ κατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρὸν ἦχον σαλπίγγων ἀποπέμπουσιν· ὡς Δωρόθεος ἐν τετάρτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (Script. rer. Alex. ed. M. 156, 3).

[e] ΚΥΑΝΙΠΠΟΣ τῷ γένει Θετταλὸς ἐπὶ θήραν συνεχῶς ἐξῄει· ἡ δὲ νεόνυμφος αὐτοῦ ὑπολαβοῦσα διὰ τὸ πολλάκις ἐν ὕλαις μένειν συνήθειαν ἔχειν μεθ’ ἑτέρας κατ’ ἴχνος ἠκολούθησε τῷ Κυανίππῳ· καὶ ἔν τινι κατακρυβεῖσα συνδένδρῳ τὸ μέλλον ἀπεκαραδόκει. τῶν δὲ κλάδων σεισθέντων οἱ κύνες θηρίον εἶναι δόξαντες ὥρμησαν καὶ τὴν φίλανδρον ἀλόγου δίκην ζῴου διεσπάραξαν. ὁ δὲ Κυάνιππος ‹τῆς› ἀνελπίστου πράξεως αὐτόπτης γενόμενος ἑαυτὸν ἀπέσφαξεν· ὡς Παρθένιος ὁ ποιητής.

ΕΝ Συβάρει πόλει τῆς Ἰταλίας νέος περίβλεπτος [f] τὸ κάλλος Αἰμίλιος φιλοκύνηγος ἦν· ἡ δὲ νεόνυμφος δόξασα ἑτέρᾳ συνεῖναι εἰσῄει εἰς τὴν νάπην. τῶν δὲ δένδρων σεισθέντων οἱ κύνες ἐπιδραμόντες διέσπασαν· ὁ δ’ ἐπέσφαξεν ἑαυτόν· ὡς Κλειτώνυμος ἐν δευτέρῳ Συβαριτικῶν (FHGr. IV 366).

ΣΜΥΡΝΑ Κινύρου θυγάτηρ διὰ μῆνιν Ἀφροδίτης ἠράσθη τοῦ γεννήσαντος καὶ τῇ τροφῷ τὴν [311] [a] ἀνάγκην τοῦ ἔρωτος ἐδήλωσεν· ἡ δὲ δόλῳ ὑπῆγε τὸν δεσπότην· ἔφη γὰρ γείτονα παρθένον ἐρᾶν αὐτοῦ καὶ αἰσχύνεσθαι ἐν φανερῷ προσιέναι. ὁ δὲ συνῄει. ποτὲ δὲ θελήσας τὴν ἐρῶσαν μαθεῖν φῶς ᾔτησεν, ἰδὼν δὲ ξιφήρης τὴν ἀσελγεστάτην ἐδίωκεν. ἡ δὲ κατὰ πρόνοιαν Ἀφροδίτης εἰς ὁμώνυμον δένδρον μετεμορφώθη· καθὰ Θεόδωρος ἐν ταῖς Μεταμορφώσεσιν (FHGr. IV 513).

ΟΥΑΛΕΡΙΑ Τουσκλαναρία κατὰ μῆνιν Ἀφροδίτης ἐρασθεῖσα Οὐαλερίου τοῦ πατρὸς τῇ τροφῷ ἀνεκοίνωσεν· ἡ δὲ τὸν δεσπότην δόλῳ ὑπῆλθεν, εἰποῦσα ὡς αἰδεῖται κατ’ ὄψιν μίσγεσθαι, τῶν τε γειτόνων εἶναι [b] παρθένον. καὶ οἰνωθεὶς ὁ πατὴρ ᾔτει φῶς, ἡ δὲ τροφὸς φθάσασα διήγειρεν, †ἥτις ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀγροικίαις ἦν ἐγκύμων τυγχάνουσα· ποτὲ δὲ κατὰ κρημνῶν ἐνεχθείσης τὸ βρέφος ἔζη· κατιοῦσα δ’ ἐγκύμων κατέστη καὶ εἰς τὸν ὡρισμένον χρόνον ἐγέννησεν Αἰγίπανα, κατὰ τὴν Ῥωμαίων φωνὴν Σιλουᾶνον. ὁ δὲ Οὐαλέριος ἀθυμήσας κατὰ τῶν αὐτῶν ἔρριψε κρημνῶν· ὡς Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 321).

ΜΕΤΑ τὴν Ἰλίου πόρθησιν ἐξεβράσθη Διομήδης εἰς Λιβύην, ἔνθα Λύκος ἦν βασιλεὺς ἔθος ἔχων τοὺς ξένους Ἄρει τῷ πατρὶ θύειν. Καλλιρρόη δ’ ἡ θυγάτηρ [c] ἐρασθεῖσα Διομήδους τὸν πατέρα προύδωκε καὶ τὸν Διομήδην ἔσῳσε λύσασα τῶν δεσμῶν· ὁ δ’ ἀμελήσας τῆς εὐεργέτιδος ἀπέπλευσεν· ἡ δὲ βρόχῳ ἐτελεύτησεν· ὡς Ἰόβας ἐν τρίτῃ Λιβυκῶν (FHGr. III 472).

ΚΑΛΠΟΥΡΝΙΟΣ Κράσσος ἀνὴρ τῶν ἐπισήμων, Ῥηγούλῳ συστρατευόμενος, ἐπέμφθη εἰς Μασσύλους πορθήσων φρούριόν τι δυσάλωτον τοὔνομα Γαραίτιον. αἰχμάλωτος δὲ ληφθεὶς ἔμελλε θύεσθαι τῷ Κρόνῳ. Βισαλτία δέ, τοῦ βασιλέως θυγάτηρ, ἐρασθεῖσα προύδωκε τὸν πατέρα καὶ νικηφόρον ἐκεῖνον ἐποίησεν. ἀναστρέψαντος δ’ αὐτοῦ ἡ κόρη κατέσφαξεν ἑαυτήν· ὡς Ἡ‹γη›σιάναξ [d] ἐν τρίτῳ Λιβυκῶν (FHGr. III 70).

ΠΡΙΑΜΟΣ Πολύδωρον ἐξέθετο εἰς Θρᾴκην μετὰ χρυσίου πρὸς Πολυμήστορα τὸν γαμβρόν, ὡς [δ’] ἐγγὺς ἦν τοῦ πορθεῖσθαι ἡ πόλις· ‹ὁ δὲ› μετὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν ἀπέκτεινε τὸν παῖδα, ὡς ἂν κερδήσῃ τὸν χρυσόν. Ἑκάβη δ’ ἐπὶ τοὺς τόπους παραγενομένη καὶ σοφισαμένη ὡς χρυσὸν δώσουσα ἅμα ταῖς αἰχμαλωτίσι ταῖς χερσὶν ἐξετύφλωσεν· ὡς Εὐριπίδης ὁ τραγῳδοποιός.

ΑΝΝΙΒΑ Καμπανοὺς λεηλατοῦντος Λούκιος Οὔμβριος τὸν υἱὸν Ῥούστι‹κ›ον μετὰ χρημάτων ἐξέθετο πρὸς Οὐαλέριον Γέστιον ὄντα γαμβρόν. ὁ δὲ νενίκηκεν.

[e] ἀκούσας δ’ ὁ Καμπανὸς φιλαργυρίᾳ παρέβη τὰ δίκαια τῆς φύσεως τὸν παῖδα φονεύσας. ὁ δὲ Οὔμβριος διὰ τῆς ἀγροικίας πορευόμενος καὶ τῷ σώματι τοῦ παιδὸς ἐντυχὼν ἔπεμψεν ἐπὶ τὸν γαμβρὸν ὡς δείξων θησαυρούς· ἐλθόντα δ’ ἐτύφλωσε καὶ ἐσταύρωσεν· ὡς Ἀριστείδης ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 321).

ΦΩΚΟΥ ὄντος ἐκ Ψαμάθης Αἰακῷ καὶ στεργομένου Τελαμὼν ἦγεν ἐπὶ θήραν· καὶ συὸς ἐπιφανέντος κατὰ τοῦ μισουμένου ἐπαφῆκε τὸ δόρυ καὶ ἐφόνευσεν. ὁ δὲ πατὴρ ἐφυγάδευσεν· ὡς Δωρόθεος ἐν πρώτῳ Μεταμορφώσεων (Script. rer. Alex. ed. M. 156, 4).

ΓΑΙΟΣ Μάξιμος ἔχων υἱοὺς Σίμιλιν καὶ

[f]Ῥῆσον (τοῦτον ἐγέννησεν ἐξ Ἀμερίας) ‹› κόνων ὁ Ῥῆσος οὗτος ἐν κυνηγεσίῳ ἀπέκτεινε τὸν ἀδελφὸν καὶ ὑποστρέψας τὸ σύμπτωμα τύχης εἶπεν οὐ κρίσεως γεγονέναι. ὁ δὲ γνοὺς τἀληθὲς ἐφυγάδευσεν· ὡς Ἀριστοκλῆς ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 329).

[312] [a] ΑΡΗΣ Ἀλθαίᾳ συνῆλθε καὶ Μελέαγρον ποιήσας ὡς Εὐριπίδης ἐν Μελεάγρῳ (fr. 515537).

ΣΕΠΤΙΜΙΟΣ Μάρκελλος γήμας Σιλουίαν τὰ πολλὰ κυνηγίῳ προσέκειτο· τὴν δὲ νεόνυμφον ἐν σχήματι ποιμένος Ἄρης βιασάμενος ἐγκύμονα ἐποίησε καὶ ὡμολόγησεν ὅστις ἦν καὶ δόρυ ἔδωκε, τὴν γένεσιν τοῦ μέλλοντος τίκτεσθαι φάσκων ἐν αὐτῷ ἀποκεῖσθαι. ἀπεκύησεν οὖν Σεπτίμιον Τουσκῖνον. Μάμερκος δ’ ὑπὲρ εὐκαρπίας θύων θεοῖς μόνης ἠμέλησε Δήμητρος. ἡ δὲ κάπρον ἔπεμψε. συναθροίσας δὲ πολλοὺς ‹ὁ Του›σκῖνος κυνηγέτας ἀνεῖλε [b] καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ τὸ δέρος τῇ κατηγγυημένῃ γυναικὶ κατεχώρησε. Σκυμβράτης δὲ καὶ Μουθίας οἱ μητράδελφοι περιείλοντο τῆς κόρης. ἀγανακτήσας δ’ ἀνεῖλε τοὺς συγγενεῖς· ἡ δὲ μήτηρ τὸ δόρυ κατέκαυσεν· ὡς Μένυλλος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 452).

ΤΕΛΑΜΩΝ ὁ Αἰακοῦ καὶ Ἐνδηίδος ἐλθὼν εἰς Εὔβοιαν καὶ νυκτὸς ἔφυγεν. ὁ δὲ πατὴρ αἰσθόμενος καὶ τῶν πολιτῶν τινα ὑποπτεύσας ἔδωκε τὴν κόρην καταποντωθῆναί τινι τῶν δορυφόρων. ὁ δ’ ἐλεήσας ἀπημπόλησε· προσσχούσης δὲ τῆς νεὼς Σαλαμῖνι Τελαμὼν ὠνήσατο· ἡ δ’ ἔτεκεν Αἴαντα· ὡς Ἀρητάδης Κνίδιος ἐν δευτέρῳ Νησιωτικῶν (FHGr. IV 316).

[c] ΛΟΥΚΙΟΣ Τρώσκιος θυγατέρα εἶχε Φλωρεντίαν ἀπὸ τῆς Πατρίδος· ταύτην ἔφθειρε Καλπούρνιος Ῥωμαῖος. ὁ δὲ παρέδωκε τὴν κόρην καταποντίσαι· ἐλεηθεῖσα δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ δορυφόρου πιπράσκεται· κατὰ τύχην τῆς νεὼς προσσχούσης εἰς Ἰταλίαν, Καλπούρνιος ὠνήσατο καὶ ἐποιήσατο ἐξ αὐτῆς ‹Μάρ›κον Τροῦσκον· ὡς

ΑΙΟΛΟΣ τῶν κατὰ Τυρρηνίαν βασιλεὺς ἔσχεν ἐξ Ἀμφιθέας θυγατέρας ἓξ καὶ ἴσους ἄρρενας· Μακαρεὺς δ’ ὁ νεώτατος ἔρωτι ἔφθειρε μίαν, ἡ δὲ παιδίον ἐκύησεν. †ἐμπεσοῦσα δὲ καὶ ξίφους πεμφθέντος ὑπὸ τοῦ [d] πατρός, ἄνομον κρίνασα ἑαυτὴν διεχρήσατο· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ὁ Μακαρεύς· ὡς Σώστρατος ἐν δευτέρᾳ Τυρρηνικῶν (FHGr. IV 504).

ΠΑΠΙΡΙΟΣ Οὐόλουκερ γήμας Ἰουλίαν Ποῦλχραν ἔσχεν ἓξ θυγατέρας καὶ ἴσους ἄρρενας. τούτων ὁ πρεσβύτατος Παπίριος Ῥωμᾶνος τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἐρασθεὶς Κανουλ‹η›ίας ἔγκυον ἐποίησε. μαθὼν δ’ ὁ πατὴρ τῇ θυγατρὶ ξίφος ἔπεμψεν· ἡ δ’ ἑαυτὴν ἀνεῖλε· τὸ αὐτὸ δὲ καὶ ὁ Ῥωμᾶνος ἔπραξεν· ὡς Χρύσιππος ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 362).

ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝΥΜΟΣ Ἐφέσιος υἱὸς Δημοστράτου ἐμίσει γυναῖκας, ὄνῳ δ’ ἐμίσγετο· ἡ δὲ κατὰ [e] χρόνον ἔτεκε κόρην εὐειδεστάτην Ὀνόσκελιν τοὔνομα· ὡς Ἀριστοκλῆς ἐν δευτέρᾳ Παραδόξων (FHGr. IV 330).

ΦΟΥΛΟΥΙΟΣ Στέλλος μισῶν γυναῖκας ἵππῳ συνεμίσγετο· ἡ δὲ κατὰ χρόνον ἔτεκε κόρην εὔμορφον καὶ ὠνόμασεν Ἔποναν· ἔστι δὲ θεὸς πρόνοιαν ποιουμένη ἵππων· ὡς Ἀγησίλαος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 292).

ΣΑΡΔΙΑΝΟΙ πρὸς Σμυρναίους πόλεμον ἔχοντες περὶ τὰ τείχη ἐστρατοπεδεύσαντο καὶ διὰ πρέσβεων ἔπεμψαν μὴ πρότερον ἀναχωρῆσαι, ἐὰν μὴ τὰς γυναῖκας συνελθεῖν αὐτοῖς συγχωρήσωσι. τῶν δὲ Σμυρναίων διὰ τὴν ἀνάγκην μελλόντων πάσχειν κακῶς, θεραπαινὶς ἦν [f] μία τῶν εὐσχημόνων, ἣ προσδραμοῦσα ἔφη τῷ δεσπότῃ Φιλάρχῳ δεῖν τὰς θεραπαίνας κοσμήσαντας ἀντ’ ἐλευθέρων πέμπειν. ὃ δὴ καὶ ἔδρασαν. οἱ δὲ κοπωθέντες ὑπὸ τῶν θεραπαινῶν ἑάλωσαν. ὅθεν καὶ νῦν παρὰ Σμυρναίοις ἑορτὴ [313] [a] λέγεται Ἐλευθέρια, ἐν ᾗ αἱ δοῦλαι τὸν κόσμον τῶν ἐλευθέρων φοροῦσιν· ὡς Δοσίθεος ἐν τρίτῳ Λυδιακῶν (FHGr. IV 401).

ΑΤΕΠΟΜΑΡΟΣ Γάλλων βασιλεὺς Ῥωμαίοις πολεμῶν ἔφη μὴ πρότερον ἀναχωρῆσαι, ἐὰν μὴ τὰς γυναῖκας εἰς συνουσίαν ἐκδῶσι. τῶν δὲ διὰ συμβουλὴν θεραπαινίδων πεμψάντων τὰς δούλας κοπωθέντες οἱ βάρβαροι τῇ ἀλήκτῳ συνουσίᾳ ὑπνώθησαν. ἡ δὲ Ῥητᾶνα (αὕτη γὰρ ἦν ἡ τοῦτο συμβουλεύσασα) ἀγρίας ἐπιλαβομένη συκῆς ἀναβαίνει εἰς τὸ τεῖχος καὶ μηνύει τοῖς ὑπάτοις· οἱ δ’ ἐπελθόντες ἐνίκησαν. ἀφ’ οὗ καὶ ἑορτὴ θεραπαινῶν καλεῖται· ὡς Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος ἐν πρώτῃ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 320).

[b] ΑΘΗΝΑΙΩΝ πόλεμον ἐχόντων πρὸς Εὔμολπον καὶ τῆς εὐθηνίας μὴ ἐπαρκούσης Πύρανδρος ταμίας τῶν δημοσίων ὑπεσπάσατο τὸ μέτρον, φειδωλῶς χρώμενος· οἱ δ’ ἐγχώριοι ὡς προδότην ὑποπτεύσαντες λιθόλευστον ἐποίησαν· ὡς Καλλισθένης ἐν τρίτῳ Θρᾳκικῶν (Script. rer. Alex. ed. M. 30, 44).

ῬΩΜΑΙΩΝ πρὸς Γάλλους πολεμούντων καὶ τῆς εὐθηνίας μὴ ἀρκούσης Κίννας τοῦ δήμου τὸ σιτόμετρον ὑπέσπασε· Ῥωμαῖοι δ’ ὡς ἀντιποιούμενον αὐτὸν τῆς βασιλείας λιθόλευστον ἐποίησαν· ὡς Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 322).

ΕΝ τῷ Πελοποννησιακῷ πολέμῳ Πεισίστρατος [c] Ὀρχομένιος τοὺς μὲν εὐγενεῖς ἐμίσει, τοὺς δ’ εὐτελεῖς ἐφίλει. ἐβουλεύσαντο δ’ οἱ ἐν τῇ βουλῇ φονεῦσαι καὶ διακόψαντες αὐτὸν εἰς τοὺς κόλπους ἔβαλον καὶ τὴν γῆν ἔξυσαν. ὁ δὲ δημότης ὄχλος ὑπόνοιαν λαβὼν ἔδραμεν εἰς τὴν βουλήν. ὁ δὲ νεώτερος υἱὸς τοῦ βασιλέως Τλησίμαχος εἰδὼς τὴν συνωμοσίαν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἀπέσπασε τὸν ὄχλον, εἰπὼν ἑωρακέναι τὸν πατέρα μεθ’ ὁρμῆς εἰς τὸ Πισαῖον ὄρος φέρεσθαι, μείζονα μορφὴν ἀνθρώπου κεκτημένον. καὶ οὕτως ἠπατήθη ὁ ὄχλος· ὡς Θεόφιλος ἐν δευτέρῳ Πελοποννησιακῶν (FHGr. IV 515).

ΔΙΑ τοὺς ἀστυγείτονας πολέμους ἡ σύγκλητος [d] τῶν Ῥωμαίων τοῦ δήμου τὸ σιτόμετρον ἦρε· Ῥωμύλος δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς βαρέως ἐνεγκὼν τῷ δήμῳ ἀπέδωκε· πολλοὺς δὲ τῶν μειζόνων ἐκόλαζεν. οἱ δὲ φονεύσαντες αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ συγκλήτῳ βουλῇ καὶ διακόψαντες εἰς τοὺς κόλπους ἔβαλον. Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ μετὰ πυρὸς εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον ἔδραμον. Αἴλιος δὲ Πρᾶος τῶν ἐπισήμων ἀνὴρ εἶπε τὸν Ῥωμύλον ἐν ὄρει ἑωρακέναι μείζονα παντὸς ἀνθρώπου θεὸν γεγενῆσθαι. Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ πιστεύσαντες ἀνεχώρησαν· ὡς Ἀριστόβουλος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 329. Jac. I 54 F 1 C p. 533).

ΠΕΛΟΨ Ταντάλου καὶ Εὐρυανάσσης γήμας Ἱπποδάμειαν ἔσχεν Ἀτρέα καὶ Θυέστην· ἐκ δὲ Δαναΐδος [e] νύμφης Χρύσιππον, ὃν πλέον τῶν γνησίων ἔστερξε. Λάιος δ’ ὁ Θηβαῖος ἐπιθυμήσας ἥρπασεν αὐτόν. καὶ συλληφθεὶς ὑπὸ Θυέστου καὶ Ἀτρέως ἐλέους ἔτυχε παρὰ Πέλοπος διὰ τὸν ἔρωτα. Ἱπποδάμεια δ’ ἀνέπειθεν Ἀτρέα καὶ Θυέστην ἀναιρεῖν αὐτόν, εἰδυῖα ἔσεσθαι ἔφεδρον βασιλείας. τῶν δ’ ἀρνησαμένων αὐτὴ τῷ μύσει τὰς χεῖρας ἔχρισε. νυκτὸς γὰρ βαθείας κοιμωμένου Λαΐου τὸ ξίφος ἑλκύσασα καὶ τρώσασα τὸν Χρύσιππον ἐγκαταπήγνυσι τὸ ξίφος. ὑπονοηθεὶς δ’ ὁ Λάιος διὰ τὸ ξίφος ῥύεται ὑπὸ ἡμιθνῆτος τοῦ Χρυσίππου τὴν ἀλήθειαν ὁμολογήσαντος· ὁ δὲ θάψας τὴν Ἱπποδάμειαν ἐξώρισεν· ὡς Δοσίθεος ἐν Πελοπίδαις (FHGr. IV 402). [f] ΟΥΙΒΙΟΣ Πολίαξ γήμας Νουκερίαν ἔσχε δύο παῖδας ἐκ ταύτης. ἔσχε δὲ καὶ ἐξ ἀπελευθέρας κάλλει περίβλεπτον Φίρμον, ὃν τῶν γνησίων μᾶλλον ἔστεργε. ἡ δὲ Νουκερία πρὸς τὸν πρόγονον μισοπονήρως διακειμένη τοὺς παῖδας ἀνέπειθεν φονεύειν. τῶν δ’ εὐσεβῶς ἀνανευσάντων αὐτὴ τὸν φόνον ἐνήργησε νυκτὸς τοῦ σωματοφύλακος [314] [a] τὸ ξίφος ἑλκύσασα ‹καὶ› καιρίως ἔτρωσε τὸν κοιμώμενον, ἐγκαταλιποῦσα τὸ ξίφος. τοῦ δὲ σωματοφύλακος ὑποπτευθέντος ὁ παῖς τὴν ἀλήθειαν λέγει. ὁ δὲ τοῦτον θάψας τὴν γυναῖκα ἐφυγάδευσεν· ὡς Δοσίθεος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 401).

ΘΗΣΕΥΣ ταῖς ‹δ’› ἀληθείαις παῖς Ποσειδῶνος, ἔχων δ’ ἐξ Ἱππολύτης Ἀμαζόνος Ἱππόλυτον, ἐπέγημε μητρυιὰν Φαίδραν τὴν Μίνωος, ἥτις τοῦ προγόνου εἰς ἐπιθυμίαν ἐμπεσοῦσα τὴν τροφὸν ἔπεμψεν. ὁ δὲ καταλείψας Ἀθήνας καὶ εἰς Τροιζῆνα παραγενόμενος κυνηγεσίαις προσανέκειτο. τῆς δὲ προαιρέσεως ἡ ἀσελγὴς [b] ἀποτυχοῦσα ψευδεῖς κατὰ τοῦ σώφρονος ἐπιστολὰς ἐχάραξε καὶ βρόχῳ τὸ ζῆν ἀνήρτησε. Θησεὺς δὲ πιστεύσας ᾐτήσατο παρὰ Ποσειδῶνος ἀπολέσθαι τὸν Ἱππόλυτον, ἐκ τῶν τριῶν εὐχῶν ἃς εἶχε παρ’ αὐτοῦ. ὁ δὲ παρ’ αἰγιαλὸν ἐπὶ ἅρματος τυχόντι ταῦρον ἔπεμψε καὶ ἐπτόησε τοὺς ἵππους, οἳ συνέτριψαν τὸν Ἱππόλυτον.

ΚΟΜΜΙΝΙΟΣ Σουπέρ‹στης› Λαυρεντῖνος ἔχων υἱὸν ἐξ Ἐγερίας νύμφης Κομμίνιον ἐπήγαγε μητρυιὰν †Γινδίκαν· ἥτις ἐρασθεῖσα τοῦ προγόνου καὶ ἀποτυχοῦσα βρόχῳ κατέστρεψε τὸν βίον, ἐπιστολὰς καταλείψασα ψευδεῖς. ὁ δὲ Κομμίνιος ἀναγνοὺς τὰ ἐκγλήματα καὶ τῷ [c] ζήλῳ πιστεύσας ἐπεκαλέσατο τὸν Ποσειδῶνα. ὁ δὲ τῷ παιδὶ ἐπὶ ἅρματος ὀχουμένῳ ταῦρον ἔδειξε, καὶ οἱ ἵπποι τὸν νέον σύραντες ἀπώλεσαν· ὡς Δοσίθεος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 400).

ΛΟΙΜΟΥ κατασχόντος Λακεδαίμονα ἔχρησεν ὁ θεὸς παύσασθαι, ἐὰν παρθένον εὐγενῆ κατ’ ἔτος θύωσιν. Ἑλένης δέ ποτε κληρωθείσης καὶ προαχθείσης κεκοσμημένης ἀετὸς καταπτὰς ἥρπασε τὸ ξίφος καὶ ἐς τὰ βουκόλια κομίσας ἐπὶ δάμαλιν κατέθηκεν· ὅθεν ἀπέσχοντο τῆς παρθενοκτονίας· ὡς Ἀριστόδημος ἐν τρίτῃ μυθικῇ συναγωγῇ (FHGr. M. III 311. FGH Jac. I 22 F 1a K. 498).

[d] ΛΟΙΜΟΥ κατασχόντος Φαλερίους καὶ φθορᾶς γενομένης χρησμὸς ἐδόθη λωφῆσαι τὸ δεινόν, ἐὰν παρθένον τῇ Ἥρᾳ θύωσιν κατ’ ἐνιαυτόν. ἀεὶ δὲ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας μενούσης κατὰ κλῆρον καλουμένη Οὐαλερία Λουπέρκα †σπασαμένη δὲ τὸ ξίφος ἀετὸς καταπτὰς ἥρπασε καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἐμπύρων ἔθηκε ῥάβδον μικρὰν ἔχουσαν σφῦραν, τὸ δὲ ξίφος ἐπέβαλε δαμάλει τινὶ παρὰ τὸν ναὸν βοσκομένῃ. νοήσασα δ’ ἡ παρθένος καὶ τὴν βοῦν θύσασα καὶ τὴν σφῦραν ἄρασα κατ’ οἰκίαν περιῆλθε καὶ τοὺς ἀσθενοῦντας ἠρέμα πλήττουσα διήγειρεν, ἐρρῶσθαι ἑνὶ ἑκάστῳ λέγουσα. ὅθεν καὶ νῦν τὸ μυστήριον τελεῖται· [e] ὡς Ἀριστείδης ἐν ἐννεακαιδεκάτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 322).

ΦΥΛΟΝΟΜΗ Νυκτίμου καὶ Ἀρκαδίας θυγάτηρ ἐκυνήγει σὺν τῇ Ἀρτέμιδι· Ἄρης δ’ ἐν σχήματι ποιμένος ἔγκυον ἐποίησεν. ἡ δὲ τεκοῦσα διδύμους παῖδας καὶ φοβουμένη τὸν πατέρα ἔρριψεν εἰς τὸν Ἐρύμανθον. οἱ δὲ κατὰ πρόνοιαν ἀκινδύνως περιφερόμενοι προσηνέχθησαν ἐν κοίλῃ δρυΐ· λύκαινα δ’ ἐμφωλεύουσα τοὺς μὲν ἰδίους σκύμνους εἰς τὸν ῥοῦν ἔρριψε, τοῖς δὲ βρέφεσι θηλὴν παρέσχε. Τύλιφος δὲ ποιμὴν αὐτόπτης γενόμενος καὶ ἀναλαβὼν τοὺς παῖδας ὡς ἰδίους ἔθρεψε, τὸν μὲν καλέσας Λύκαστον τὸν δὲ Παρράσιον, τοὺς διαδεξαμένους τὴν [f] βασιλείαν τῶν Ἀρκάδων· ὡς Ζώπυρος Βυζάντιος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἱστορικῶν (FHGr. M. IV 531).

ΑΜΟΥΛΙΟΣ πρὸς Νομίτορα τὸν ἀδελφὸν τυραννικῶς διακείμενος τὸν μὲν υἱὸν Αἴνιτον ἐπὶ κυνηγίᾳ ἀνεῖλε, τὴν δὲ θυγατέρα Σιλουίαν ἢ Ἰλίαν τῆς Ἥρας ἱέρειαν ἐποιήσατο. ταύτην Ἄρης ἐγκύμονα ποιεῖ· ἡ δ’ ἔτεκε διδύμους ὡμολόγησέ τε τῷ τυράννῳ τὴν ἀλήθειαν. ὁ δὲ φοβηθεὶς ἀμφοτέρους κατεπόντισε, βαλὼν παρὰ τὰς ὄχθας [315] [a] τοῦ Θύμβρεως. οἱ δὲ προσηνέχθησαν ἐν τόπῳ, ἔνθα λύκαινα ἦν φωλεύουσα νεοτόκος· καὶ τοὺς μὲν σκύμνους ἔρριψε, τὰ δὲ βρέφη ἔτρεφε. Φαῦστος δὲ ποιμὴν αὐτόπτης γενόμενος τοὺς παῖδας ἀνέθρεψε καὶ τὸν μὲν Ῥῶμον τὸν δὲ Ῥωμύλον προσηγόρευσε, τοὺς κτίστας Ῥώμης· ὡς Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος ἐν τοῖς Ἰταλικοῖς (FHGr. M. IV 323).

ΜΕΤΑ τὴν Ἰλίου ἅλωσιν Ἀγαμέμνων μετὰ Κασάνδρας ἀνῃρέθη. Ὀρέστης δὲ παρὰ Στροφίῳ ἀνατραφεὶς τοὺς φονεῖς τοῦ πατρὸς ἐτιμωρήσατο· ὡς Πύρανδρος ἐν τετάρτῳ Πελοποννησιακῶν (FHGr. M. IV 486).

ΦΑΒΙΟΣ ΦΑΒΡΙΚΙΑΝΟΣ τοῦ μεγάλου συγγενὴς Φαβίου, πορθήσας Τούξιον μητρόπολιν Σαυνιτῶν, [b] τὴν παρ’ αὐτοῖς τιμωμένην νικηφόρον Ἀφροδίτην ἔπεμψεν εἰς Ῥώμην. τούτου γυνὴ Πετρωνία μοιχευθεῖσα ὑπό τινος εὐπρεποῦς νεανίου τοὔνομα [Πετρωνίου] Οὐαλεντίνου, τὸν ἄνδρα ἐδολοφόνησε. Φαβία δὲ τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἔτι νήπιον Φαβρικιανὸν τῶν κινδύνων ἐρρύσατο καὶ ἔπεμψε κρύφα τραφησόμενον. ἀκμάσας δ’ ὁ νεανίας τήν τε μητέρα καὶ τὸν μοιχὸν ἀπέκτεινε καὶ ἀπελύθη ὑπὸ τῆς συγκλήτου· ὡς ἱστορεῖ Δοσίθεος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 401).

ΒΟΥΣΙΡΙΣ, παῖς Ποσειδῶνος καὶ Ἀνίππης τῆς Νείλου, τοὺς παριόντας ὑπούλῳ φιλοξενίᾳ κατέθυε· μετῆλθε δ’ αὐτὸν ἡ τῶν τετελευτηκότων νέμεσις· [c] Ἡρακλῆς γὰρ ἐπιτεθεὶς τῷ ῥοπάλῳ διεχρήσατο· ὡς Ἀγάθων Σάμιος (FHGr. IV 291).

ΗΡΑΚΛΗΣ τὰς Γηρυόνου βοῦς ἐλαύνων δι’ Ἰταλίας ἐπεξενώθη Φαύνῳ βασιλεῖ, ὃς ἦν Ἑρμοῦ παῖς καὶ τοὺς ξένους τῷ γεννήσαντι ἔθυεν· ἐπιχειρήσας δὲ τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ ἀνῃρέθη· ὡς Δέρκυλλος ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 387).

ΦΑΛΑΡΙΣ Ἀκραγαντίνων τύραννος ἀποτόμως τοὺς παριόντας ξένους ἐστρέβλου καὶ ἐκόλαζε. Πέριλλος δὲ τῇ τέχνῃ χαλκουργὸς δάμαλιν κατασκευάσας χαλκῆν ἔδωκε τῷ βασιλεῖ, ὡς ἂν τοὺς ξένους κατακαίῃ ζῶντας ἐν αὐτῇ· ὁ δὲ τότε μόνον γενόμενος δίκαιος αὐτὸν ἐνέβαλεν. ἐδόκει δὲ μυκηθμὸν ἀναδιδόναι ἡ δάμαλις· ὡς ἐν [d] δευτέρῳ Αἰτίων.

ΕΝ ΑΙΓΕΣΤΗΙ [τῇ] πόλει τῆς Σικελίας ἐγένετό τις ὠμὸς τύραννος Αἰμίλιος Κενσωρῖνος. οὗτος τοὺς καινότερα βασανιστήρια κατασκευάσαντας ἐδωροδόκει. εἷς δέ τις Ἀρ‹ρ›ούντιος Πατέρκουλος δημιουργήσας ἵππον χαλκοῦν τῷ προειρημένῳ δῶρον ἔδωκεν, ἵνα βάλλῃ αὐτούς. ὁ δὲ τότε πρῶτον νομίμως ἀναστραφεὶς τὸν χαρισάμενον πρότερον ἔβαλεν, ὡς ἄν, ἣν ἐπενόησε βάσανον ἄλλοις, αὐτὸς πάθῃ πρῶτος. [τοῦτον συλλαβὼν ἀπὸ τοῦ Ταρπ‹η›ίου ὄρους ἔρριψε.] καὶ δοκοῦσιν οἱ ἀποτόμως βασιλεύσαντες ἀπ’ ἐκείνου Αἰμίλιοι προσαγορεύεσθαι· ὡς [e] Ἀριστείδης ἐν τετάρτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 322).

ΕΥΗΝΟΣ Ἄρεος καὶ Στερόπης τὴν Οἰνομάου γήμας Ἀλκίππην ἐγέννησε θυγατέρα Μάρπησσαν, ἣν παρθένον ἐφρούρει. ‹ἰδὼν δ’› Ἴδας ὁ Ἀφαρήϊος καὶ ἁρπάσας ἐκ χοροῦ ἔφυγεν. ὁ δὲ πατὴρ διώξας καὶ μὴ συλλαβὼν εἰς τὸν Λυκόρμαν ἔρριψεν ἑαυτὸν ποταμὸν καὶ ἀθάνατος ἐγένετο· ὡς Δοσίθεος ἐν πρώτῳ Αἰτωλικῶν (FHGr. IV 401).

ΑΝΙΟΣ δὲ Τούσκων βασιλεὺς ἔχων θυγατέρα εὔμορφον τοὔνομα Σαλίαν παρθένον ἐτήρει. Κάθητος δ’ ἐκ τῶν ἐπισήμων ἰδὼν τὴν παρθένον παίζουσαν ἠράσθη, καὶ μὴ στέγων τὸν ἔρωτα ἥρπασε καὶ ἦγεν εἰς Ῥώμην.

[f] ὁ δὲ πατὴρ ἐπιδιώξας καὶ μὴ συλλαβὼν ἥλατο εἰς τὸν Περεούσιον ποταμόν, ὃς Ἀνίων μετωνομάσθη· τῇ δὲ Σαλίᾳ συγγενόμενος Κάθητος ἐποιήσατο Λατῖνον καὶ Σάλιον, ἀφ’ ὧν οἱ εὐγενέστατοι κατῆγον τὸ γένος· ὡς Ἀριστείδης Μιλήσιος καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Πολυΐστωρ ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. III 230).

ΗΓΗΣΙΣΤΡΑΤΟΣ ἀνὴρ Ἐφέσιος ἐμφύλιον φόνον δράσας ἔφυγεν εἰς Δελφοὺς καὶ ἠρώτα τὸν θεὸν ποῦ οἰκήσειεν. ὁ δ’ Ἀπόλλων ἀνεῖλεν, ἔνθα ἂν ἴδῃ χορεύοντας [316] [a] ἀγροίκους θαλλοῖς ἐλαίας ἐστεφανωμένους. γενόμενος δὲ κατά τινα τόπον τῆς Ἀσίας καὶ θεασάμενος γεωργοὺς φύλλοις ἐλαίας ἐστεφανωμένους καὶ χορεύοντας, ἔκτισεν αὐτοῦ πόλιν καὶ ἐκάλεσεν Ἐλαιοῦντα· ὡς Πυθοκλῆς Σάμιος ἐν τρίτῳ Γεωργικῶν (FHGr. IV 488).

ΤΗΛΕΓΟΝΟΣ Ὀδυσσέως καὶ Κίρκης ἐπ’ ἀναζήτησιν τοῦ πατρὸς πεμφθεὶς ἔμαθε πόλιν κτίσαι, ἔνθα ἂν ἴδῃ γεωργοὺς ἐστεφανωμένους καὶ χορεύοντας. γενόμενος δὲ κατά τινα τόπον τῆς Ἰταλίας καὶ θεασάμενος ἀγροίκους πρινίνοις κλάδοις ἐστεφανωμένους καὶ ὀρχήσει προσευκαιροῦντας, ἔκτισε πόλιν, ἀπὸ τοῦ συγκυρήματος [b] Πρίνιστον ὀνομάσας, ἣν Ῥωμαῖοι παραγώγως Πραίνεστον καλοῦσιν· ὡς ἱστορεῖ Ἀριστοκλῆς ἐν τρίτῳ Ἰταλικῶν (FHGr. IV 330).

De fortuna Romanorum

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΡΩΜΑΙΩΝ ΤΥΧΗΣ

[316] Αἱ πολλοὺς πολλάκις ἠγωνισμέναι καὶ μεγάλους ἀγῶνας Ἀρετὴ καὶ Τύχη πρὸς ἀλλήλας μέγιστον ἀγωνίζονται τὸν παρόντα, περὶ τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίας διαδικαζόμεναι ποτέρας γέγονεν ἔργον καὶ ποτέρα τὴν τηλικαύτην δύναμιν γεγέννηκεν. οὐ γὰρ μικρὸν ἔσται τῇ περιγενομένῃ τοῦτο μαρτύριον, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀπολόγημα πρὸς κατηγορίαν. κατηγορεῖται δ’ Ἀρετὴ μὲν ὡς καλὸν μὲν ἀνωφελὲς δέ, Τύχη δ’ ὡς ἀβέβαιον μὲν ἀγαθὸν δέ· καὶ τὴν μὲν ἄκαρπα πονεῖν λέγουσι, τὴν δ’ ἄπιστα δωρεῖσθαι. τίς οὖν οὐχὶ λέξει, τῇ ἑτέρᾳ τῆς Ῥώμης προστεθείσης, ἢ λυσιτελέστατον [d] Ἀρετήν, εἰ τηλικαῦτα τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς δέδρακεν ἀγαθά, ἢ βεβαιότατον Εὐτυχίαν, χρόνον ἤδη τοσοῦτον ἃ δέδωκε τηροῦσαν; Ἴων μὲν οὖν ὁ ποιητὴς ἐν τοῖς δίχα μέτρου καὶ καταλογάδην αὐτῷ γεγραμμένοις φησὶν ἀνομοιότατον πρᾶγμα τῇ σοφίᾳ τὴν τύχην οὖσαν ὁμοιοτάτων πραγμάτων γίνεσθαι δημιουργόν· αὔξουσιν ἀμφότεραι πόλεις, κοσμοῦσιν ἄνδρας, εἰς δόξαν ἀνάγουσιν εἰς δύναμιν εἰς ἡγεμονίαν. τί δεῖ τὰ πολλὰ μηκύνειν ἐξαριθμούμενον; αὐτὴν τὴν τὰ πάντα γεννῶσαν ἡμῖν καὶ φέρουσαν φύσιν οἱ μὲν τύχην εἶναι νομίζουσιν, οἱ δὲ σοφίαν. διὸ καλόν τι τῇ Ῥώμῃ καὶ ζηλωτὸν ὁ [e] ἐνεστὼς λόγος ἀξίωμα περιτίθησιν, εἰ διαποροῦμεν περὶ αὐτῆς, ὡς ὑπὲρ γῆς καὶ θαλάσσης καὶ οὐρανοῦ καὶ ἄστρων, πότερον κατὰ τύχην συνέστηκεν ἢ κατὰ πρόνοιαν.

Ἐγὼ δέ, ὅτι μέν, εἰ καὶ πάνυ πρὸς ἀλλήλας ἀεὶ πολεμοῦσι καὶ διαφέρονται Τύχη καὶ Ἀρετή, πρός γε τηλικαύτην σύμπηξιν ἀρχῆς καὶ δυνάμεως εἰκός ἐστιν αὐτὰς σπεισαμένας συνελθεῖν καὶ συνελθούσας ἐπιτελειῶσαι καὶ συναπεργάσασθαι τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ἔργων τὸ κάλλιστον, ὀρθῶς ὑπονοεῖν οἴομαι. καὶ νομίζω, καθάπερ Πλάτων (Tim. p. 28b 32b) φησὶν ἐκ πυρὸς καὶ γῆς ὡς ἀναγκαίων τε καὶ πρώτων γεγονέναι τὸν σύμπαντα κόσμον, ἵν’ ὁρατός τε γένηται καὶ [f] ἁπτός, γῆς μὲν τὸ ἐμβριθὲς καὶ στάσιμον αὐτῷ συμβαλλομένης, πυρὸς δὲ χρῶμα καὶ μορφὴν καὶ κίνησιν, αἱ δ’ ἐν μέσῳ φύσεις, ὕδωρ καὶ ἀήρ, μαλάξασαι καὶ σβέσασαι τὴν ἑκατέρου τῶν ἄκρων ἀνομοιότητα συνήγαγον καὶ ἀνεμίξαντο τὴν ὕλην δι’ αὐτῶν, οὕτως ἄρα καὶ ὁ τὴν Ῥώμην ὑποβαλόμενος χρόνος μετὰ θεοῦ [317] [a] τύχην καὶ ἀρετὴν ἐκέρασε καὶ συνέζευξεν, ἵν’ ἑκατέρας λαβὼν τὸ οἰκεῖον ἀπεργάσηται πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἑστίαν ἱερὰν ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ ἀνησιδώραν καὶ ‘πεῖσμα’ μόνιμον καὶ στοιχεῖον ἀίδιον, ὑποφερομένοις τοῖς πράγμασιν ‘ἀγκυρηβόλιον· σάλου καὶ πλάνης’ ὥς φησι Δημόκριτος (B 148). ὡς γὰρ οἱ φυσικοὶ τὸν κόσμον λέγουσιν οὐκ εἶναι κόσμον οὐδ’ ἐθέλειν τὰ σώματα συνελθόντα καὶ συμμιγέντα κοινὸν ἐκ πάντων εἶδος τῇ φύσει παρασχεῖν, ἀλλὰ τῶν μὲν ἔτι μικρῶν καὶ σποράδην φερομένων [καὶ] διολισθανόντων καὶ ὑποφευγόντων τὰς ἐναπολήψεις καὶ περιπλοκάς, τῶν δ’ ἀδροτέρων καὶ συνεστηκότων ἤδη δεινοὺς ἀγῶνας πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ διατραχηλισμοὺς λαμβανόντων κλύδωνα καὶ βρασμὸν εἶναι καὶ φθόρου καὶ πλάνης καὶ ναυαγίων μεστὰ πάντα, πρίν γε τὴν γῆν μέγεθος λαβοῦσαν ἐκ τῶν συνισταμένων καὶ φερομένων ἱδρυθῆναί πως αὐτὴν καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἵδρυσιν ἐν αὑτῇ καὶ περὶ αὑτὴν παρασχεῖν, οὕτω τῶν μεγίστων ἐν ἀνθρώποις δυνάμεων καὶ ἡγεμονιῶν κατὰ τύχας ἐλαυνομένων καὶ συμφερομένων ὑπὸ τοῦ μηδένα κρατεῖν βούλεσθαι δὲ πάντας, ἀμήχανος ‹ἦν› ἡ φθορὰ καὶ πλάνη καὶ μεταβολὴ πᾶσα πάντων, μέχρις οὗ τῆς Ῥώμης ἰσχὺν καὶ αὔξησιν λαβούσης καὶ ἀναδησαμένης [b] τοῦτο μὲν ἔθνη καὶ δήμους ἐν αὑτῇ τοῦτο δ’ ἀλλοφύλους καὶ διαποντίους βασιλέων ἡγεμονίας ἕδραν ἔσχε τὰ μέγιστα καὶ ἀσφάλειαν, εἰς κόσμον εἰρήνης καὶ ἕνα κύκλον τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἄπταιστον περιφερομένης, πάσης μὲν ἀρετῆς ἐγγενομένης τοῖς ταῦτα μηχανησαμένοις, πολλῆς δὲ καὶ τύχης συνελθούσης, ὡς ἐνέσται τοῦ λόγου προϊόντος ἐνδείξασθαι.

Νυνὶ δέ μοι δοκῶ τοῦ προβλήματος ‹ἀρχόμενος› ὥσπερ ἀπὸ σκοπῆς καθορᾶν ἐπὶ τὴν σύγκρισιν καὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα τήν τε Τύχην καὶ τὴν Ἀρετὴν βαδιζούσας. ἀλλὰ τῆς μὲν Ἀρετῆς πρᾶόν τε τὸ βάδισμα καὶ τὸ βλέμμα καθεστηκός, ἐπιτρέχει δέ τι καὶ τῷ προσώπῳ πρὸς τὴν [c] ἅμιλλαν ἐρύθημα τῆς φιλοτιμίας· καὶ πολὺ μὲν ὑστερεῖ σπευδούσης τῆς Τύχης, ἄγουσι δ’ αὐτὴν καὶ δορυφοροῦσι κατὰ πλῆθος (Od. λ 41)

‘ἄνδρες ἀρηίφατοι βεβροτωμένα τεύχε’ ἔχοντες,’

ἐναντίων τραυμάτων ἀνάπλεῳ, αἷμα συμμεμιγμένον ἱδρῶτι σταλάζοντες, ἡμικλάστοις ἐπιβεβηκότες λαφύροις. βούλεσθε δὲ πυθώμεθα, τίνες ποτ’ εἰσὶν οὗτοι; Φαβρίκιοί φασιν εἶναι καὶ Κάμιλλοι καὶ Λούκιοι [καὶ] Κικιννᾶτοι καὶ Μάξιμοι Φάβιοι καὶ Κλαύδιοι Μάρκελλοι καὶ Σκιπίωνες. ὁρῶ δὲ καὶ Γάιον Μάριον ὀργιζόμενον τῇ Τύχῃ, καὶ Μούκιος ἐκεῖ Σκαιόλας τὴν φλεγομένην [d] χεῖρα δείκνυσι βοῶν ‘μὴ καὶ ταύτην τῇ Τύχῃ χαρίζῃ;’ καὶ Κόκλιος Μάρκος ἀριστεὺς παραποτάμιος Τυρρηνικοῖς βέλεσι βαρυνόμενος καὶ σκάζοντα μηρὸν παρέχων, ἐκ βαθείας ὑποφθέγγεται δίνης ‘οὐκοῦν κἀγὼ κατὰ τύχην πεπήρωμαι;’ τοιοῦτος ὁ τῆς Ἀρετῆς χορὸς πρόσεισιν ἐπὶ τὴν σύγκρισιν,

‘βριθὺς ὁπλιτοπάλας δάιος ἀντιπάλοις.’ (I 66 D.)

Τῆς δὲ Τύχης ὀξὺ μὲν τὸ κίνημα καὶ θρασὺ τὸ φρόνημα καὶ μεγάλαυχον ἡ ἐλπίς, φθάνουσα δὲ τὴν Ἀρετὴν ἐγγύς ἐστιν, οὐ ‘πτεροῖς ἐλαφρίζουσα κούφοις ἑαυτὴν’ οὐδ’ ‘ἀκρώνυχον ὑπὲρ σφαίρας’ τινὸς ‘ἴχνος καθεῖσα’ περισφαλὴς καὶ ἀμφίβολος πρόσεισιν, εἶτ’ [e] ἄπεισιν ἀειδής· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται τὴν Ἀφροδίτην λέγουσι διαβαίνουσαν τὸν Εὐρώταν τὰ μὲν ἔσοπτρα καὶ τοὺς χλιδῶνας καὶ τὸν κεστὸν ἀποθέσθαι, δόρυ δὲ καὶ ἀσπίδα λαβεῖν κοσμουμένην τῷ Λυκούργῳ· οὕτως ἡ Τύχη καταλιποῦσα Πέρσας καὶ Ἀσσυρίους Μακεδονίαν μὲν ἐλαφρὰ διέπτη καὶ ἀπεσείσατο ταχέως Ἀλέξανδρον, καὶ δι’ Αἰγύπτου καὶ Συρίας περιφέρουσα βασιλείας διώδευσε, καὶ Καρχηδονίους στρεφομένη πολλάκις [318] [a] ἐβάστασε· τῷ δὲ Παλατίῳ προσερχομένη καὶ διαβαίνουσα τὸν Θύμβριν ὡς ἔοικεν ‹ἀπ›έθηκε τὰς πτέρυγας, ἐξέβη τῶν πεδίλων, ἀπέλιπε τὴν ἄπιστον καὶ παλίμβολον σφαῖραν. οὕτως εἰσῆλθεν εἰς Ῥώμην ὡς μενοῦσα καὶ τοιαύτη πάρεστιν [ὡς] ἐπὶ τὴν δίκην. οὐ μὲν γὰρ ‘ἀπειθὴς’ κατὰ Πίνδαρον (fr. 40 `15]) οὐδὲ ‘δίδυμον στρέφουσα πηδάλιον’, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ‘Εὐνομίας καὶ Πειθοῦς ἀδελφὰ καὶ Προμαθείας θυγάτηρ’ ὡς γενεαλογεῖ Ἀλκμάν (III 58 B. II 24 D.). τὸ δ’ ὑμνούμενον ἐκεῖνο τοῦ πλούτου κέρας ἔχει διὰ χειρός, οὐκ ὀπώρας ἀεὶ θαλλούσης μεστόν, ἀλλ’ ὅσα φέρει πᾶσα γῆ πᾶσα δὲ θάλασσα καὶ ποταμοὶ καὶ μέταλλα [b] καὶ λιμένες, ἄφθονα καὶ ῥύδην ἐπιχεαμένη. λαμπροὶ δὲ καὶ διαπρεπεῖς ἄνδρες οὐκ ὀλίγοι μετ’ αὐτῆς ὁρῶνται, Πομπίλιος Νομᾶς ἐκ Σαβίνων καὶ Πρῖσκος ἐκ Ταρκυνίων, οὓς ἐπήλυδας βασιλεῖς καὶ ξένους ἐνιδρύσατο τοῖς Ῥωμύλου θρόνοις· καὶ Παῦλος Αἰμίλιος ἀπὸ Περσέως καὶ Μακεδόνων ἄτρωτον στρατὸν ἄγων καὶ νίκην ἄδακρυν θριαμβεύων μεγαλύνει τὴν Τύχην· μεγαλύνει δὲ καὶ Κεκίλιος Μέτελλος ὁ Μακεδονικός, γέρων ὑπὸ τεσσάρων παίδων ὑπατικῶν ἐκκομιζόμενος, Κοΐντου Βαλεαρικοῦ καὶ Λευκίου Διαδημάτα καὶ Μάρκου Μετέλλου [c] καὶ Γαΐου Καπραρίου, καὶ δυεῖν γαμβρῶν ὑπατικῶν καὶ θυγατριδῶν κοσμουμένων ἐπιφανέσιν ἀριστείαις καὶ πολιτείαις. Αἰμίλιος δὲ Σκαῦρος ἐκ ταπεινοῦ βίου καὶ ταπεινοτέρου γένους καινὸς ἄνθρωπος ἀρθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτῆς προγράφεται τοῦ μεγάλου συνεδρίου. Κορνήλιον δὲ Σύλλαν ἐκ τῶν Νικοπόλεως τῆς ἑταίρας ἀναλαβοῦσα καὶ βαστάσασα κόλπων ὑψηλότερον τῶν Κιμβρικῶν Μαρίου θριάμβων καὶ τῶν ἑπτὰ ὑπατειῶν ἐπιτίθησι μοναρχίαις καὶ δικτατωρίαις. ἄντικρυς οὗτος τῇ Τύχῃ μετὰ τῶν πράξεων ἑαυτὸν εἰσεποίει, βοῶν κατὰ τὸν Οἰδίποδα τὸν Σοφοκλέους (OR 1090)

[d] ‘ἐγὼ δ’ ἐμαυτὸν παῖδα τῆς Τύχης νέμω.’

καὶ Ῥωμαϊστὶ μὲν Φήλιξ ὠνομάζετο, τοῖς δ’ Ἕλλησιν οὕτως ἔγραφε ‘Λούκιος Κορνήλιος Σύλλας Ἐπαφρόδιτος.’ καὶ τὰ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ τρόπαια κατὰ τῶν Μιθριδατικῶν οὕτως ἐπιγέγραπται, καὶ εἰκότως· ‘πλεῖστον γὰρ Ἀφροδίτης’ οὐ ‘νύξ’ κατὰ Μένανδρον (fr. 739 K.), ἀλλὰ τύχη μετέσχηκεν.

Ἆρ’ οὖν ταύτην τις ἀρχὴν ποιησάμενος οἰκείαν ὑπὲρ τῆς Τύχης ἐπάγοιτ’ ἂν μάρτυρας αὐτοὺς Ῥωμαίους, ὡς τῇ Τύχῃ πλέον ἢ τῇ Ἀρετῇ νέμοντας; Ἀρετῆς μέν γε παρ’ αὐτοῖς ὀψὲ καὶ μετὰ πολλοὺς χρόνους ἱερὸν ἱδρύσατο Σκιπίων ὁ Νομαντῖνος, εἶτα Μάριος τὸ Οὐιρτοῦτίς [e] τε καὶ Ὀνῶρις προσαγορευόμενον· καὶ τὸ τῆς Μέντις καλουμένης (Γνώμης ἂν νομίζοιτο) Σκαῦρος Αἰμίλιος, περὶ τὰ Κιμβρικὰ τοῖς χρόνοις γεγονώς· ἤδη τότε λόγων καὶ σοφισ‹μά›των καὶ στωμυλίας παρεισρυείσης εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἤρχοντο σεμνύνειν τὰ τοιαῦτα. Σοφίας δὲ μέχρι καὶ νῦν ἱερὸν οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲ Σωφροσύνης ἢ Μεγαλοψυχίας ἢ Καρτερίας ἢ Ἐγκρατείας· ἀλλὰ τά γε τῆς Τύχης ἱερὰ λαμπρὰ καὶ παλαιὰ καὶ ὁμοῦ τι τοῖς πρώτοις καταμεμιγμένα τῆς πόλεως θεμελίοις γέγονε. πρῶτος μὲν γὰρ ἱδρύσατο Τύχης ἱερὸν Μάρκ‹ι›ος Ἄγκος, ὁ Νομᾶ θυγατριδοῦς καὶ τέταρτος ἀπὸ Ῥωμύλου [f] βασιλεὺς γενόμενος· καὶ τάχα που τῇ τύχῃ τὴν Ἀνδρείαν παρωνόμασεν, ᾗ πλεῖστον εἰς τὸ νικᾶν τύχης μέτεστι. τὸ δὲ τῆς Γυναικείας Τύχης κατεσκευάσαντο πρὸ Καμίλλου, ὅτε Μάρκιον Κοριόλανον ἐπάγοντα τῇ πόλει Οὐολούσκους ἀπεστρέψαντο διὰ τῶν γυναικῶν. πρεσβευσάμεναι γὰρ αὗται πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα μετὰ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς γυναικὸς ἐξελιπάρησαν καὶ κατειργάσαντο φείσασθαι τῆς πόλεως καὶ τὴν στρατιὰν τῶν [319] [a] βαρβάρων ἀπαγαγεῖν. τότε λέγεται τὸ ἄγαλμα τῆς Τύχης ἅμα τῷ καθιερωθῆναι φωνὴν ἀφεῖναι καὶ εἰπεῖν ‘ὁσίως με πόλεως νόμῳ, γυναῖκες ἀσταί, καθιδρύσασθε’. καὶ μὴν καὶ Φούριος Κάμιλλος, ὅτε τὸ Κελτικὸν ἔσβεσε πῦρ καὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ἀντίρροπον χρυσῷ κεκλιμένην ἀπὸ τοῦ ζυγοῦ καὶ τῆς πλάστιγγος καθεῖλεν, οὔτ’ Εὐβουλίας οὔτ’ Ἀνδρείας, ἀλλὰ Φήμης ἱδρύσατο καὶ Κληδόνος ἕδη παρὰ τὴν Καινὴν ὁδόν, ὅπου φασὶ πρὸ τοῦ πολέμου Μάρκῳ Καιδικίῳ βαδίζοντι νύκτωρ φωνὴν γενέσθαι κελεύουσαν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ Γαλατικὸν πόλεμον προσδέχεσθαι. τὴν δὲ πρὸς τῷ ποταμῷ Τύχην ‘φόρτιν’ [b] καλοῦσιν (ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἰσχυρὰν ἢ ἀριστευτικὴν ἢ ἀνδρείαν), ὡς τὸ νικητικὸν ἁπάντων κράτος ἔχουσαν. καὶ τόν γε ναὸν αὐτῆς ἐν τοῖς ὑπὸ Καίσαρος τῷ δήμῳ καταλειφθεῖσι κήποις ᾠκοδόμησαν, ἡγούμενοι κἀκεῖνον εὐτυχίᾳ γενέσθαι μέγιστον, ὡς αὐτὸς ἐμαρτύρησε.

Περὶ δὲ Γαΐου Καίσαρος ᾐδέσθην ἂν εἰπεῖν, ὡς ὑπ’ εὐτυχίας ἤρθη μέγιστος, εἰ μὴ τοῦτ’ αὐτὸς ἐμαρτύρησεν. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἀπὸ Βρεντεσίου Πομπήιον διώκων ἀνήχθη πρὸ μιᾶς ἡμέρας νωνῶν Ἰανουαρίων, χειμῶνος ἐν τροπαῖς ὄντος, τὸ μὲν πέλαγος ἀσφαλῶς διεπέρασε, τῆς Τύχης τὸν καιρὸν ὑπερθεμένης· εὑρὼν δὲ τὸν [c] Πομπήιον ἄθρουν καὶ πολὺν μὲν ἐν γῇ πολὺν δ’ ἐν θαλάσσῃ μετὰ πασῶν ἅμα τῶν δυνάμεων καθεζόμενον αὐτὸς ὀλιγοστὸς ὢν τῆς μετ’ Ἀντωνίου καὶ Σαβίνου στρατιᾶς αὐτῷ βραδυνούσης, ἐτόλμησεν εἰς ἀκάτιον μικρὸν ἐμβὰς καὶ λαθὼν τόν τε ναύκληρον καὶ τὸν κυβερνήτην ὥς τινος θεράπων ἀναχθῆναι. σκληρᾶς δὲ πρὸς τὸ ῥεῦμα τοῦ ποταμοῦ γενομένης ἀντιβάσεως καὶ κλύδωνος ἰσχυροῦ, μεταβαλλόμενον ὁρῶν τὸν κυβερνήτην ἀφεῖλεν ἀπὸ τῆς κεφαλῆς τὸ ἱμάτιον καὶ ἀναδείξας ἑαυτόν ‘ἴθι’ ἔφη ‘γενναῖε, τόλμα καὶ δέδιθι μηδέν, [d] ἀλλ’ ἐπιδίδου τῇ Τύχῃ τὰ ἱστία καὶ δέχου τὸ πνεῦμα, πιστεύων ὅτι Καίσαρα φέρεις καὶ τὴν Καίσαρος Τύχην.’ οὕτως ἐπέπειστο τὴν Τύχην αὐτῷ συμπλεῖν, συναποδημεῖν, συστρατεύεσθαι, συστρατηγεῖν· ἧς ἔργον ἦν γαλήνην μὲν ἐπιτάξαι θαλάσσῃ, θέρος δὲ χειμῶνι, τάχος δὲ τοῖς βραδυτάτοις, ἀλκὴν δὲ τοῖς ἀθυμοτάτοις· τὸ δὲ τούτων ἀπιστότερον, φυγὴν Πομπηίῳ καὶ Πτολεμαίῳ ξενοκτονίαν, ἵνα καὶ Πομπήιος πέσῃ καὶ Καῖσαρ μὴ μιανθῇ.

Τί δέ; ὁ τούτου μὲν υἱός, πρῶτος δ’ ἀναγορευθεὶς Σεβαστός, ἄρξας δὲ τέσσαρα καὶ πεντήκοντα ἔτη, οὐκ [e] αὐτὸς ἐκπέμπων τὸν θυγατριδοῦν ἐπὶ στρατείαν ηὔξατο τοῖς θεοῖς ἀνδρείαν μὲν αὐτῷ δοῦναι τὴν Σκιπίωνος, εὔνοιαν δὲ τὴν Πομπηίου, Τύχην δὲ τὴν αὑτοῦ; καθάπερ ἔργῳ μεγάλῳ δημιουργὸν ἐπιγράψας ἑαυτῷ τὴν Τύχην, ἥτις αὐτὸν ἐπιθεῖσα Κικέρωνι καὶ Λεπίδῳ καὶ Πάσσᾳ καὶ Ἱρτίῳ καὶ Μάρκῳ Ἀντωνίῳ, ταῖς ἐκείνων ἀριστείαις καὶ χερσὶ καὶ νίκαις καὶ στόλοις καὶ πολέμοις καὶ στρατοπέδοις γενόμενον πρῶτον εἰς ὕψος ἄρασα καὶ καταβαλοῦσα τούτους, δι’ ὧν ἀνέβη, μόνον κατέλιπεν. ἐκείνῳ γὰρ ἐπολιτεύετο Κικέρων καὶ Λέπιδος ἐστρατήγει καὶ Πάσσας ἐνίκα καὶ Ἵρτιος ἔπιπτε καὶ Ἀντώνιος [f] ὕβριζεν. ἐγὼ γὰρ καὶ Κλεοπάτραν τὴν τύχην Καίσαρος τίθημι, περὶ ἣν ὡς ἕρμα κατέδυ καὶ συνετρίβη τηλικοῦτος αὐτοκράτωρ, ἵν’ ᾖ μόνος Καῖσαρ. λέγεται δέ, πολλῆς οἰκειότητος αὐτοῖς καὶ συνηθείας ὑπαρχούσης, πολλάκις σχολαζόντων εἰς παιδιὰν σφαίρας ἢ κύβων ἢ νὴ Δία θρεμμάτων ἁμίλλης, οἷον ὀρτύγων, ἀλεκτρυόνων, ἀεὶ νικώμενον Ἀντώνιον ἀπαλλάττεσθαι· καί τινα τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ μαντείᾳ σεμνυνόμενον [320] [a] πολλάκις παρρησιάζεσθαι καὶ νουθετεῖν, ‘ὦ ἄνθρωπε, τί σοι πρᾶγμα πρὸς τοῦτον ἔστι τὸν νεανίσκον; φεῦγ’ αὐτόν· ἐνδοξότερος εἶ, πρεσβύτερος εἶ, ἄρχεις πλειόνων, ἐνήθληκας πολέμοις, ἐμπειρίᾳ διαφέρεις· ἀλλ’ ὁ σὸς δαίμων τὸν τούτου φοβεῖται· καὶ ἡ τύχη σου καθ’ ἑαυτήν ἐστι μεγάλη, κολακεύει δὲ τὴν τούτου· ἐὰν μὴ μακρὰν ᾖς, οἰχήσεται μεταβᾶσα πρὸς αὐτόν.’

Ἀλλὰ γὰρ αἱ μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν μαρτύρων πίστεις τοσαῦται τῇ Τύχῃ πάρεισι. δεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰς ἀπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῶν εἰσάγειν, ἀρχὴν τοῦ λόγου τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς πόλεως λαβόντας. εὐθὺς γοῦν τίς οὐκ ἂν εἴποι πρὸς τὴν Ῥωμύλου γένεσιν καὶ σωτηρίαν καὶ τροφὴν καὶ [b] αὔξησιν τὴν μὲν Τύχην ὑποβολὰς κατατεθεῖσθαι τὴν δ’ Ἀρετὴν ἐξῳκοδομηκέναι; πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τὸ περὶ τὴν γένεσιν καὶ τὴν τέκνωσιν αὐτῶν τῶν ἱδρυσαμένων καὶ κτισάντων τὴν πόλιν εὐτυχίας ἔοικε θαυμαστῆς γενέσθαι. θεῷ γὰρ ἡ τεκοῦσα μιχθῆναι λέγεται, καὶ καθάπερ τὸν Ἡρακλέα σπαρῆναί φασιν ἐν μακρᾷ νυκτὶ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐπισχεθείσης παρὰ φύσιν καὶ τοῦ ἡλίου βραδύναντος, οὕτω περὶ τὴν Ῥωμύλου σπορὰν καὶ καταβολὴν τὸν ἥλιον ἐκλιπεῖν ἱστοροῦσι, ποιησάμενον ἀτρεκῆ σύνοδον πρὸς σελήνην, ‹ἕ›ωσπερ ὁ Ἄρης θεὸς [c] ὢν τῇ Σιλβίᾳ θνητῇ συνῆλθε. ταὐτὸ δὲ συντυχεῖν τῷ Ῥωμύλῳ καὶ περὶ τὴν μετάστασιν αὐτὴν τοῦ βίου· λέγουσι γὰρ ἐκλείποντος τοῦ ἡλίου ἠφανίσθαι, νώναις καπρατίναις, ἣν ἄχρι νῦν ἡμέραν ἐπιφανῶς ἑορτάζουσιν. ἔπειτα γεννηθέντας αὐτούς, τοῦ τυράννου ζητοῦντος ἀνελεῖν, παρέλαβε κατὰ τύχην οὐ βάρβαρος οὐδ’ ἄγριος ὑπηρέτης, ἐλεήμων δέ τις καὶ φιλάνθρωπος, ὥστε μὴ κτεῖναι· ἀλλὰ τοῦ ποταμοῦ τις ἦν †ὄχθη χλοερῷ λειμῶνι προσκλύζουσα καὶ περισκιαζομένη χθαμαλοῖς δένδρεσιν· ἐνταῦθα κατέθηκε τὰ βρέφη πλησίον ἐρινεοῦ τινος, ὃν ῥουμινᾶλιν ὠνόμαζον. εἶτα λύκαινα μὲν νεοτόκος [d] σπαργῶσα καὶ πλημμυροῦσα τοὺς μαστοὺς γάλακτι, τῶν σκύμνων ἀπολωλότων αὐτὴ χρῄζουσα κουφισμοῦ, περιέπτυξε τὰ βρέφη καὶ θηλὴν ἐπέσχεν, ὥσπερ ὠδῖνα δευτέραν ἀποτιθεμένη τὴν τοῦ γάλακτος. ἱερὸς δ’ ὄρνις Ἄρεως, ὃν δρυοκολάπτην καλοῦσιν, ἐπιφοιτῶν καὶ προσκαθίζων ἀκρώνυχος, ἐν μέρει τῶν νηπίων ἑκατέρου στόμα τῇ χηλῇ διοίγων, ἐνετίθει ψώμισμα, τῆς αὑτοῦ τροφῆς ἀπομερίζων. τὸν μὲν οὖν ἐρινεὸν ῥουμινᾶλιν ὠνόμασαν ἀπὸ τῆς θηλῆς, ἣν ἡ λύκαινα παρ’ αὐτὸν ὀκλάσασα τοῖς βρέφεσι παρέσχε· μέχρι δὲ πολλοῦ διεφύλαττον οἱ περὶ τὸν τόπον ἐκεῖνον κατοικοῦντες [e] μηδὲν ἐκτιθέναι τῶν γεννωμένων, ἀλλ’ ἀναιρεῖσθαι πάντα καὶ τρέφειν, τὸ Ῥωμύλου πάθος καὶ τὴν ὁμοιότητα τιμῶντες. καὶ μὴν τό τε λαθεῖν αὐτοὺς τρεφομένους καὶ παιδευομένους ἐν Γαβίοις ‹καὶ› ἀγνοηθῆναι Σιλβίας ὄντας υἱοὺς καὶ θυγατριδοῦς Νομίτορος τοῦ βασιλέως παντάπασι Τύχης κλέμμα καὶ σόφισμα φαίνεται γεγενημένον, ὅπως μὴ ἀπόλωνται πρὸ τῶν ἔργων διὰ τὸ γένος, ἀλλ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς φανῶσι τοῖς κατορθώμασι, γνώρισμα τῆς εὐγενείας τὴν ἀρετὴν παρέχοντες. ἐνταῦθά μοι μεγάλου καὶ φρονίμου στρατηγοῦ λόγος ἔπεισι Θεμιστοκλέους, ῥηθεὶς πρός τινας τῶν ὕστερον εὐημερούντων [f] Ἀθήνησι στρατηγῶν καὶ προτιμᾶσθαι τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους ἀξιούντων. ἔφη γὰρ τὴν ὑστεραίαν ἐρίσαι πρὸς τὴν ἑορτὴν λέγουσαν ὡς ἐκείνη μέν ἐστι κοπώδης καὶ ἄσχολος, ἐν αὐτῇ δὲ τῶν παρεσκευασμένων ἀπολαύουσι μεθ’ ἡσυχίας. τὴν οὖν ἑορτὴν εἰπεῖν ‘ἀληθῆ λέγεις, ἀλλ’ ἐμοῦ μὴ γενομένης, ποῦ ἂν σὺ ἦσθα;’ ‘κἀμοῦ τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘μὴ γενομένου περὶ τὰ Μηδικά, τίς ἂν ὑμῶν ἦν νῦν ὄνησις;’ τοῦτό μοι δοκεῖ πρὸς τὴν Ῥωμύλου Ἀρετὴν ἡ Τύχη λέγειν ‘λαμπρὰ μὲν τὰ σὰ ἔργα καὶ μεγάλα καὶ θεῖον ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐξέφηνας αἷμα [321] [a] καὶ γένος οὖσαν σεαυτήν· ἀλλ’ ὁρᾷς πόσον ὑστερεῖς μου; εἰ γὰρ ἐγὼ τότε μὴ παρηκολούθησα χρηστὴ καὶ φιλάνθρωπος, ἀλλ’ ἀπέλιπον καὶ προηκάμην τὰ νήπια, σὺ πῶς ἂν ἐγένου καὶ πόθεν ἐξέλαμψας; εἰ τότε μὴ θῆλυ θηρίον ἐπῆλθε φλεγμαῖνον ὑπὸ πλήθους καὶ φορᾶς γάλακτος καὶ τραφησομένου δεόμενον μᾶλλον ἢ θρέψοντος, ἀλλ’ ἀνήμερόν τι τελέως καὶ λιμῶττον, οὐκ ἂν ἔτι νῦν τὰ καλὰ ταῦτα βασίλεια καὶ ναοὶ καὶ θέατρα καὶ περίπατοι καὶ ἀγοραὶ καὶ ἀρχεῖα βοτηρικαὶ καλύβαι καὶ σταθμοὶ νομέων ἦσαν, Ἀλβανὸν ἢ Τυρρηνὸν ἢ Λατῖνον ἄνδρα δεσπότην προσκυνούντων;’ ἀρχὴ μὲν δὴ [b] τὸ μέγιστον ἐν παντί, μάλιστα δ’ ἐν ἱδρύσει καὶ κτίσει πόλεως· ταύτην δ’ ἡ Τύχη παρέσχε, σῴσασα καὶ φυλάξασα τὸν κτίστην. ἡ μὲν γὰρ Ἀρετὴ μέγαν ἐποίησε Ῥωμύλον, ἡ Τύχη δ’ ἄχρι τοῦ γενέσθαι μέγαν ἐτήρησε.

Καὶ μὴν τήν γε Νομᾶ βασιλείαν πολυχρονιωτάτην γενομένην ὁμολογουμένως εὐτυχία διεκυβέρνησε θαυμαστή. τὸ μὲν γὰρ Ἐγερίαν τινά, νυμφῶν μίαν δρυάδων, δαίμονα σοφὴν ἔρωτι τἀνδρὸς ἐν συνουσίᾳ γενομένην, παραπαιδαγωγεῖν καὶ συσχηματίζειν τὴν πολιτείαν ἴσως μυθωδέστερόν ἐστι. καὶ γὰρ ἄλλοι λεχθέντες [c] ἅψασθαι γάμων θείων καὶ θεοῖς ἐράσμιοι γενέσθαι, Πηλεῖς καὶ Ἀγχῖσαι καὶ Ὠρίωνες καὶ Ἠμαθίωνες, οὐ πάντως ἀγαπητῶς οὐδ’ ἀλύπως διεβίωσαν. ἀλλὰ Νομᾶς ἔοικε τὴν ἀγαθὴν Τύχην ἔχειν ὡς ἀληθῶς σύνοικον καὶ σύνεδρον καὶ συνάρχουσαν· ἣ καθάπερ ἐν κλύδωνι θολερῷ καὶ τεταραγμένῳ πελάγει τῇ τῶν προσοίκων καὶ γειτόνων ἔχθρᾳ καὶ χαλεπότητι τὴν πόλιν φερομένην καὶ φλεγμαίνουσαν ὑπὸ μυρίων πόνων καὶ διχοστασιῶν παραλαβοῦσα τοὺς μὲν ἀντιτεταγμένους θυμοὺς καὶ φθόνους ὥσπερ πνεύματα κατέσβεσεν· οἷα δέ [d] φασι τὰς ἀλκυόνων λοχείας παραδεξαμένην τὴν θάλασσαν ἐν χειμῶνι σῴζειν καὶ συνεκτιθηνεῖσθαι, τοιαύτην ἀναχεαμένη καὶ περιστήσασα γαλήνην πραγμάτων ἀπόλεμον καὶ ἄνοσον καὶ ἀκίνδυνον καὶ ἄφοβον, νεοσταθεῖ δήμῳ καὶ κραδαινομένῳ παρέσχε ῥιζῶσαι καὶ καταστῆσαι τὴν πόλιν, αὐξανομένην ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ βεβαίως καὶ ἀνεμποδίστως. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁλκὰς ἢ τριήρης ναυπηγεῖται μὲν ὑπὸ πληγῶν καὶ βίας πολλῆς, σφύραις καὶ ἥλοις ἀρασσομένη καὶ γομφώμασι καὶ πρίοσι καὶ πελέκεσι, γενομένην δὲ στῆναι δεῖ καὶ παγῆναι σύμμετρον χρόνον, ἕως οἵ τε δεσμοὶ κάτοχοι γένωνται καὶ συνάφειαν οἱ [e] γόμφοι λάβωσιν, ἐὰν δὲ ὑγροῖς ἔτι καὶ περιολισθάνουσι τοῖς ἁρμοῖς κατασπασθῇ, πάντα χαλάσει διατιναχθέντα καὶ δέξεται τὴν θάλασσαν, οὕτω τὴν Ῥώμην ὁ μὲν πρῶτος ἄρχων καὶ δημιουργὸς ἐξ ἀγρίων καὶ βοτήρων ὥσπερ ἐκ δρυόχων κραταιῶν συνιστάμενος οὐκ ὀλίγους πόνους ἔσχεν οὐδὲ μικροῖς ἀντήρεισε πολέμοις καὶ κινδύνοις, ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀμυνόμενος τοὺς ἀνθισταμένους πρὸς τὴν γένεσιν καὶ ἵδρυσιν αὐτῆς· ὁ δὲ δεύτερος παραλαβὼν χρόνον παρέσχε πῆξαι καὶ βεβαιῶσαι τὴν αὔξησιν τῇ εὐτυχίᾳ ἐπιλαβόμενος πολλῆς μὲν εἰρήνης πολλῆς [f] δ’ ἡσυχίας. εἰ δὲ τότε Πορσίνας τις ἐπέβρισε Τυρρηνικὸν χάρακα καὶ στρατόπεδον παραστήσας τείχεσιν ὑγροῖς ἔτι καὶ κραδαινομένοις ἤ τις ἐκ Μαρσῶν ἀποστὰς ἀρειμάνιος δυνάστης ἢ Λευκανὸς ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ φιλονεικίας, ἀνὴρ δύσερις καὶ πολεμοποιός, οἷος ὕστερον Μου‹τ›ίλος ἢ Σίλων ὁ θρασὺς ἢ τὸ ἔσχατον Σύλλα πάλαισμα Τελεσῖνος, ὡς ἀφ’ ἑνὸς συνθήματος ὅλην ἐξοπλίζων τὴν Ἰταλίαν, τὸν φιλόσοφον Νομᾶν περιεσάλπιγξε θύοντα καὶ προσευχόμενον, οὐκ ἂν ἀντέσχον αἱ πρῶται τῆς πόλεως ἀρχαὶ πρὸς σάλον καὶ κλύδωνα [322] [a] τοσοῦτον οὐδ’ εἰς εὐανδρίαν καὶ πλῆθος ἐπέδωκαν· νῦν δ’ ἔοικε τῆς πρὸς τοὺς ὕστερον πολέμους παρασκευῆς ἐφόδιον Ῥωμαίοις ἡ τότ’ εἰρήνη γενέσθαι, καὶ καθάπερ ἀθλητὴς ὁ δῆμος ἐκ τῶν κατὰ Ῥωμύλον ἀγώνων ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ χρόνον ἐτῶν τριῶν καὶ τεσσαράκοντα σωμασκήσας τὴν δύναμιν ἀξιόμαχον καταστῆσαι τοῖς ὕστερον ἀντιταττομένοις. οὐδὲ γὰρ λιμὸν οὐδὲ λοιμὸν οὐδ’ ἀφορίαν γῆς οὐδ’ ἀωρίαν τινὸς θέρους ἢ χειμῶνος ἐν τῷ τότε χρόνῳ παραλυπῆσαι τὴν Ῥώμην λέγουσιν, ὡς οὐκ ἀνθρωπίνης εὐβουλίας ἀλλὰ θείας Τύχης ἐπιτροπευούσης τῶν καιρῶν ἐκείνων. ἐκλείσθη δ’ οὖν τότε καὶ τὸ τοῦ [b] Ἰανοῦ δίπυλον, ὃ πολέμου πύλην καλοῦσιν· ἀνέῳγε μὲν γάρ, ὅταν ᾖ πόλεμος, κλείεται δ’ εἰρήνης γενομένης. Νομᾶ δ’ ἀποθανόντος ἀνεῴχθη, τοῦ πρὸς Ἀλβανοὺς πολέμου συρραγέντος. εἶτα μυρίων ἄλλων συνεχῶς ὑπολαμβανόντων, πάλιν δι’ ἐτῶν ὀγδοήκοντα καὶ τετρακοσίων ἐκλείσθη μετὰ τὸν πρὸς Καρχηδονίους πόλεμον εἰρήνης γενομένης, Γαΐου Ἀτιλίου καὶ Τίτου ‹Μαλλίου› ὑπατ‹ευόντ›ων. μετὰ δὲ τοῦτον τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν αὖθις ἀνεῴχθη καὶ διέμειναν οἱ πόλεμοι μέχρι τῆς ἐν Ἀκτίῳ νίκης Καίσαρος· τότε δ’ ἤργησε τὰ Ῥωμαίων ὅπλα χρόνον οὐ πολύν· αἱ γὰρ ἀπὸ Καντάβρων ταραχαὶ [c] καὶ Γαλατίαι συρραγεῖσαι Γερμανοῖς, συνετάραξαν τὴν εἰρήνην. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν εὐτυχίας τῆς Νομᾶ προσιστόρηται μαρτύρια.

Τὴν δὲ Τύχην καὶ οἱ μετ’ ἐκεῖνον ἐθαύμασαν βασιλεῖς ὡς πρωτόπολιν καὶ τιθηνὸν καί ‘φερέπολιν’ τῆς Ῥώμης ἀληθῶς κατὰ Πίνδαρον (fr. 39 `14]).

Ἔξεστι δ’ οὕτω θεωρεῖν. ἱερόν ἐστιν Ἀρετῆς ἐν Ῥώμῃ τιμώμενον, ὃ Οὐιρτοῦτις αὐτοὶ καλοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ὀψὲ καὶ μετὰ πολλοὺς χρόνους ἱδρυθὲν ὑπὸ Μαρκέλλου τοῦ Συρακούσας ἑλόντος. ἔστι δὲ καὶ Γνώμης, ἢ νὴ Δία Εὐβουλίας νεώς, ἣν Μέντεμ καλοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο Σκαῦρος Αἰμίλιος περὶ τὰ Κιμβρικὰ τοῖς [d] χρόνοις γεγονὼς καθιέρωσεν, ἤδη τότε λόγων καὶ σοφισμάτων καὶ στωμυλίας Ἑλληνικῆς εἰς τὴν πόλιν παρεισρυείσης. Σοφίας δ’ ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἱερὸν οὐκ ἔχουσιν οὐδὲ Σωφροσύνης οὐδὲ Καρτερίας οὐδὲ Μεγαλοψυχίας· ἀλλὰ τά γε τῆς Τύχης ἱερὰ πάμπολλα καὶ παλαιὰ καὶ λαμπρὰ τιμαῖς πᾶσιν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἐνίδρυται καὶ καταμέμικται τοῖς ἐπιφανεστάτοις μέρεσι καὶ τόποις τῆς πόλεως. καὶ τὸ μὲν τῆς Ἀνδρείας Τύχης ἱερὸν ὑπὸ Μαρκίου Ἄγκου τοῦ τετάρτου βασιλέως ἱδρυθὲν καὶ ὀνομασθὲν οὕτως, ὅτι πλεῖστον ἡ ἀνδρεία τύχης εἰς τὸ νικᾶν μετέσχηκε, τὸ δὲ τῆς Γυναικείας αὖθις ὑπὸ τῶν γυναικῶν, [e] αἳ Μάρκιον Κοριόλανον ἀπέστρεψαν ἐπάγοντα τῇ Ῥώμη πολεμίους, καθοσιωθὲν οὐδεὶς ἀγνοεῖ.

Σέρβιος δὲ Τύλλιος, ἀνὴρ τῶν βασιλέων μάλιστα καὶ τὴν δύναμιν αὐξήσας τοῦ δήμου καὶ τὸ πολίτευμα κοσμήσας καὶ τάξιν μὲν ἐπιθεὶς ταῖς ψηφοφορίαις τάξιν δὲ ταῖς στρατείαις, τιμητὴς δὲ πρῶτος καὶ βίων ἐπίσκοπος καὶ σωφρονιστὴς γενόμενος καὶ δοκῶν ἀνδρειότατος εἶναι καὶ φρονιμώτατος, αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὴν Τύχην ἀνῆπτε καὶ ἀνεδεῖτο τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἐξ ἐκείνης· ὥστε καὶ συνεῖναι δοκεῖν αὐτῷ τὴν Τύχην διά τινος θυρίδος καταβαίνουσαν εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον, ὃ νῦν Φενέστελλαν [f] πύλην καλοῦσιν. ἱδρύσατο δ’ οὖν Τύχης ἱερὸν ἐν μὲν Καπετωλίῳ τὸ τῆς Πριμιγενείας λεγομένης, ὃ πρωτογόνου τις ἂν ἑρμηνεύσειε· καὶ τὸ τῆς Ὀψεκουέντις, ἣν οἱ μὲν πειθήνιον οἱ δὲ μειλίχιον εἶναι νομίζουσι. μᾶλλον δὲ τὰς Ῥωμαϊκὰς ἐάσας ὀνομασίας Ἑλληνιστὶ τὰς δυνάμεις τῶν ἱδρυμάτων πειράσομαι καταριθμήσασθαι. καὶ γὰρ Ἰδίας Τύχης ἱερόν ἐστιν ἐν Παλατίῳ, καὶ τὸ τῆς Ἰξευτρίας, εἰ καὶ γελοῖον, ἀλλ’ ἔχον ἐκ μεταφορᾶς ἀναθεώρησιν, οἷον ἑλκούσης τὰ πόρρω καὶ κρατούσης συμπροσισχόμενα. παρὰ δὲ τὴν Μουσκῶσαν [323] [a] καλουμένην κρήνην ἔτι Παρθένου Τύχης ἱερόν ἐστιν, ἐν ‹δ’› Αἰσκυλίαις Ἐπιστρεφομένης· ἐν δὲ τῷ μακρῷ στενωπῷ Τύχης βωμὸς Εὐέλπιδος· ἔστι δὲ καὶ παρὰ τὸν τῆς Ἀφροδίτης Ἐπιταλαρίου βωμὸν Ἄρρενος Τύχης ἕδος. ἄλλαι τε μυρίαι Τύχης τιμαὶ καὶ ἐπικλήσεις, ὧν τὰς πλείστας Σερούιος κατέστησεν, εἰδὼς ὅτι ‘μεγάλη ῥοπὴ, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλον ἡ Τύχη παρὰ πάντ’ ἐστὶ τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων πράγματα’, καὶ μάλιστά γ’ αὐτοῦ δι’ εὐτυχίαν ἐξ αἰχμαλώτου καὶ πολεμίου γένους εἰς βασιλείαν προαχθέντος. τοῦ γὰρ Κορνικλάνων ἄστεος ἁλόντος ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων Ὀκρησία παρθένος αἰχμάλωτος, ἧς οὔτε τὴν [b] ὄψιν οὔτε τὸν τρόπον ἠμαύρωσεν ἡ τύχη, δοθεῖσα Τανακυλλίδι τῇ Ταρκυνίου γυναικὶ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐδούλευσε· καὶ πελάτης τις εἶχεν αὐτήν, οὓς κλιέντης Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν· ἐκ τούτων ἐγεγόνει Σερούιος. οἱ δ’ οὔ φασιν, ἀλλὰ παρθένον τὴν Ὀκρησίαν ἀπάργματα καὶ λοιβὴν ἑκάστοτε λαμβάνουσαν ἀπὸ τῆς βασιλικῆς τραπέζης ἐπὶ τὴν ἑστίαν κομίζειν· καί ποτε τυχεῖν μὲν αὐτήν, ὥσπερ εἰώθει, τῷ πυρὶ τὰς ἀπαρχὰς ἐπιβάλλουσαν, αἰφνίδιον δὲ τῆς φλογὸς μαρανθείσης μόριον ἀνδρὸς ἀνατεῖλαι γόνιμον ἐκ τῆς ἑστίας, καὶ τοῦτο τὴν κόρην τῇ Τανακυλλίδι φράσαι μόνῃ περίφοβον γενομένην. τὴν δὲ συνετὴν οὖσαν καὶ φρενήρη κοσμῆσαί τε τὴν κόρην ὅσα νύμφαις πρέπει καὶ συγκαθεῖρξαι τῷ φάσματι, θεῖον ἡγουμένην. οἱ μὲν ἥρωος οἰκουροῦ λέγουσιν, οἱ δ’ Ἡφαίστου τὸν ἔρωτα τοῦτον γενέσθαι. τίκτεται δ’ οὖν Σερούιος, καὶ βρέφους ὄντος ἡ κεφαλὴ σέλας ἀστραπῇ παραπλήσιον ἀπήστραψεν. οἱ δὲ περὶ Ἀντίαν οὐχ οὕτω λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ τυχεῖν μὲν τῷ Σερουίῳ τὴν γυναῖκα Γεγανίαν θνήσκουσαν, αὐτὸν δὲ τῆς μητρὸς παρούσης εἰς ὕπνον ἐκ δυσθυμίας καὶ λύπης ἀποκλιθῆναι· καὶ καθεύδοντος αὐτοῦ ταῖς γυναιξὶν ὀφθῆναι τὸ πρόσωπον αὐγῇ πυρώδει [c] περιλαμπόμενον· ὅπερ ἦν μαρτύριον αὐτῷ τῆς ἐκ πυρὸς γενέσεως, σημεῖον δὲ χρηστὸν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀπροσδόκητον ἡγεμονίαν, ἧς ἔτυχε μετὰ τὴν Ταρκυνίου τελευτήν, Τανακυλλίδος σπουδασάσης. ἐπεὶ πάντων γε τῶν βασιλέων πρὸς μοναρχίαν οὗτος ἀφυέστατος δοκεῖ γενέσθαι καὶ ἀπροθυμότατος, ὅς γε τὴν βασιλείαν ἀποθέσθαι διανοηθεὶς ἐκωλύθη· τελευτῶσα γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἐξώρκωσε τοῦτον ἐμμεῖναι τῇ ἀρχῇ καὶ μὴ προέσθαι τὴν πάτριον Ῥωμαίων πολιτείαν. οὕτως ἡ Σερουίου βασιλεία παντάπασι τῆς Τύχης, ἣν ἔλαβέ τε μὴ προσδοκήσας καὶ μὴ βουλόμενος διεφύλαξεν.

[d] Ἀλλ’ ἵνα μὴ δοκῶμεν ὥσπερ εἰς τόπον ἀμαυρὸν τὸν παλαιὸν χρόνον ἐκ τῶν λαμπρῶν καὶ ἐναργῶν τεκμηρίων φεύγειν καὶ ὑποχωρεῖν, φέρε τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἐάσαντες ἐπὶ τὰς γνωριμωτάτας πράξεις καὶ τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους πολέμους τὸν λόγον μεταγάγωμεν. οἷς πολλὴν τόλμαν καὶ ἀνδρείαν ‘αἰδῶ τε συνεργὸν ἀρετᾶς δοριμάχου’, ὥς φησι Τιμόθεος (III 622 B. II 137 D.), τίς οὐκ ἂν ὁμολογήσειεν; ἡ δ’ εὔροια τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ τὸ ῥόθιον τῆς εἰς τοσαύτην δύναμιν καὶ αὔξησιν ὁρμῆς οὐ χερσὶν ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ βουλαῖς προχωροῦσαν ἡγεμονίαν, θείᾳ δὲ πομπῇ καὶ πνεύματι Τύχης ἐπιταχυνομένην [e] ἐπιδείκνυται τοῖς ὀρθῶς λογιζομένοις. τρόπαια τροπαίοις ἐπανίσταται καὶ θριάμβοι θριάμβοις ἀπαντῶσι καὶ τὸ πρῶτον αἷμα τῶν ὅπλων ἔτι θερμὸν ἀποκλύζεται τῷ δευτέρῳ καταλαμβανόμενον. τὰς δὲ νίκας ἀριθμοῦσιν οὐ νεκρῶν πλήθει καὶ λαφύρων, ἀλλὰ βασιλείαις αἰχμαλώτοις καὶ δεδουλωμένοις ἔθνεσι καὶ νήσοις καὶ ἠπείροις προσοριζομέναις τῷ μεγέθει τῆς ἡγεμονίας. μιᾷ μάχῃ Φίλιππος ἀπέβαλε Μακεδονίαν, μιᾷ πληγῇ παρεχώρησεν Ἀντίοχος Ἀσίας, ἅπαξ Καρχηδόνιοι [324] [a] σφαλέντες ἀπώλεσαν Λιβύην. εἷς ἀνὴρ μιᾶς ὁρμῇ στρατιᾶς Ἀρμενίαν προσεκτήσατο Πόντον Εὔξεινον Συρίαν Ἀραβίαν Ἀλβανοὺς Ἴβηρας τὰ μέχρι Καυκάσου καὶ Ὑρκανῶν· καὶ τρὶς αὐτὸν ὁ περιρρέων τὴν οἰκουμένην Ὠκεανὸς εἶδε νικῶντα. Νομάδας μὲν ἐν Λιβύῃ μέχρι τῶν μεσημβρινῶν ἀνέκοψεν ἠιόνων, Ἰβηρίαν δὲ Σερτωρίῳ συννοσήσασαν ἄχρι τῆς Ἀτλαντικῆς κατεστρέψατο θαλάσσης· τοὺς δ’ Ἀλβανῶν βασιλεῖς διωκομένους περὶ τὸ Κάσπιον πέλαγος ἔστησε. ταῦτα πάντα κατώρθωσε δημοσίᾳ τύχῃ χρώμενος, εἶθ’ ὑπὸ τῆς ἰδίας ἀνετράπη [b] μοίρας. ὁ δὲ Ῥωμαίων μέγας δαίμων οὐκ ἐφήμερος πνεύσας οὐδὲ καιρὸν ἀκμάσας βραχὺν ὡς ὁ Μακεδ‹όν›ων, οὐδὲ χερσαῖος μόνον ὡς ὁ Λακώνων οὐδ’ ἐνάλιος ὡς ὁ Ἀθηναίων οὐδ’ ὀψὲ κινηθεὶς ὡς ὁ Περσῶν οὐδὲ ταχὺ παυσάμενος ὡς ὁ †Κολοφωνίων, ἀλλ’ ἄνωθεν ἐκ πρώτων γενέσεων τῇ πόλει συνηβήσας καὶ συναυξηθεὶς καὶ συμπολιτευσάμενος καὶ παραμείνας βέβαιος ἐν γῇ καὶ θαλάσσῃ καὶ πολέμοις καὶ εἰρήνῃ καὶ πρὸς βαρβάρους καὶ πρὸς Ἕλληνας. οὗτος Ἀννίβαν τὸν Καρχηδόνιον, φθόνῳ καὶ ταῖς πολιτικαῖς ἔχθραις μηδενὸς οἴκοθεν [c] ἐπιρρέοντος ὥσπερ χείμαρρον ἐξέχεε καὶ κατανάλωσε περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν. οὗτος τὸ Κίμβρων καὶ τὸ Τευτόνων στράτευμα μεγάλοις διαστήμασι τόπων καὶ χρόνων ἐχώρισε καὶ διέσπασεν, ἵν’ ἀρκέσῃ Μάριος ἑκατέροις ἀνὰ μέρος μαχόμενος, καὶ μὴ συμπεσοῦσαι τριάκοντα μυριάδες ἀνδρῶν ἀηττήτων καὶ ἀμάχων ὅπλων ὁμοῦ κατακλύσωσι τὴν Ἰταλίαν. διὰ τοῦτον Ἀντίοχος μὲν ἠσχολεῖτο, πολεμουμένου Φιλίππου, Φίλιππος δέ, κινδυνεύοντος Ἀντιόχου, προηττημένος ἔπτηττε· Μιθριδάτην δέ, τοῦ Μαρσικοῦ πολέμου τὴν Ῥώμην ἐπιφλέγοντος, οἱ Σαρματικοὶ καὶ Βασταρνικοὶ πόλεμοι κατεῖχον· [d] Τιγράνην δὲ Μιθριδάτου λαμπροῦ μὲν ὄντος ὑπόνοια καὶ φθόνος ἐχώριζεν, ἡττωμένῳ δ’ ἀνέμιξεν ἑαυτὸν συναπολέσθαι.

Τί δέ; οὐχὶ καὶ περὶ τὰς μεγίστας συμφορὰς ὤρθου τὴν πόλιν ἡ Τύχη; Κελτῶν μὲν περὶ τὸ Καπετώλιον στρατοπεδευόντων καὶ πολιορκούντων τὴν ἀκρόπολιν,

‘νοῦσον ἀνὰ στρατὸν ὦρσε κακήν, ὀλέκοντο δὲ λαοί·’ (Hom. Α 10)

τὴν δὲ νυκτερινὴν ἔφοδον αὐτῶν, λεληθότων πάντας ἀνθρώπους, ἡ Τύχη καὶ ταὐτόματον ἔκπυστον ἐποίησε γενέσθαι. περὶ ἧς κἀν βραχεῖ πλείω διελθεῖν ἴσως οὐκ ἄκαιρόν ἐστι. μετὰ τὴν ἐπ’ Ἀλλίᾳ ποταμῷ Ῥωμαίων [e] μεγάλην ἧτταν οἱ μὲν εἰς Ῥώμην κατάραντες ἀπὸ τῆς φυγῆς ταραχῆς συναναπλήσαντες τὸν δῆμον ἐξεπτόησαν καὶ διεσκέδασαν, ὀλίγων εἰς τὸ Καπετώλιον ἀνασκευασαμένων καὶ διακαρτερούντων. οἱ δ’ εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῆς τροπῆς εἰς Βηίους συναθροισθέντες ᾑροῦντο δικτάτωρα Φούριον Κάμιλλον, ὃν εὐτυχῶν μὲν καὶ ὑψαυχενῶν ὁ δῆμος ἀπεσείσατο καὶ κατέβαλε, δίκῃ περιπεσόντα δημοσίων κλοπῶν, πτήξας δὲ καὶ ταπεινωθεὶς ἀνεκαλεῖτο μετὰ τὴν ἧτταν, ἐγχειρίζων καὶ παραδιδοὺς ἀνυπεύθυνον ἡγεμονίαν. ἵν’ οὖν μὴ καιρῷ δοκῇ νόμῳ δὲ λαμβάνειν ὁ ἀνήρ, μηδ’, ὡς ἀπεγνωκὼς τὴν πόλιν, ὅπλοις ἀρχαιρεσιάζηται [f] στρατοῦ σποράδος καὶ πλάνητος, ἔδει τοὺς ἐν Καπετωλίῳ βουλευτὰς ἐπιψηφίσασθαι τὴν τῶν στρατιωτῶν γνώμην μαθόντας. ἦν οὖν Γάιος Πόντιος ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός, ‹ὃς› [καὶ] τῶν δεδογμένων αὐτάγγελος ὑποστὰς ἔσεσθαι τοῖς ἐν Καπετωλίῳ μέγαν ἀνεδέξατο κίνδυνον· ἡ γὰρ ὁδὸς ἦν διὰ τῶν πολεμίων κύκλῳ φυλακαῖς καὶ χάραξι τὴν ἄκραν περιεχόντων. ὡς οὖν ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμὸν ἦλθε νύκτωρ, φελλοὺς πλατεῖς ὑποστερνισάμενος [325] [a] καὶ τὸ σῶμα τῇ κουφότητι τοῦ ὀχήματος παραθέμενος ἀφῆκε τῷ ῥόῳ· τυχὼν δὲ πράου καὶ σχολαίως ὑποφέροντος ἥψατο τῆς ἀντιπέρας ὄχθης ἀσφαλῶς, καὶ ἀποβὰς ἐχώρει πρὸς τὸ τῶν φώτων διάκενον, τῷ τε σκότει καὶ τῇ σιωπῇ τὴν ἐρημίαν τεκμαιρόμενος· ἐμφὺς δὲ τῷ κρημνῷ, καὶ ταῖς δεχομέναις τὴν ἐπίβασιν καὶ παρεχούσαις ἀντίληψιν ἐγκλίσεσι καὶ περιαγωγαῖς καὶ τραχύτησι τῆς πέτρας παραδοὺς ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἐπερεισάμενος ἐξίκετο πρὸς τὸ [ἀντι]πέρας καὶ ἀναληφθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν προφυλάκων ἐδήλωσε τοῖς ἔσω τὰ δεδογμένα· [b] καὶ λαβὼν τὸ ψήφισμα πάλιν ᾤχετο πρὸς τὸν Κάμιλλον. ἡμέρας δὲ τῶν βαρβάρων τις ἄλλως τὸν τόπον περιιὼν ὡς εἶδε τοῦτο μὲν ἴχνη ποδῶν ἀκρώνυχα καὶ περιολισθήσεις, τοῦτο δ’ ἀποτριβὰς καὶ περικλάσεις τῆς ἐπιβλαστανούσης τοῖς γεώδεσι πόας ὁλκούς τε σώματος πλαγίους καὶ ἐπερείσεις, ἔφραζε τοῖς ἄλλοις. οἱ δὲ δείκνυσθαι τὴν ὁδὸν αὑτοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων νομίζοντες ἐπεχείρουν ἁμιλλᾶσθαι, καὶ τῆς νυκτὸς τὸ ἠρεμώτατον διαφυλάξαντες ἀνέβησαν λαθόντες οὐ μόνον τοὺς φύλακας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς συνεργοὺς καὶ [τοὺς] προκοίτους τῆς φρουρᾶς κύνας ὕπνῳ κρατηθέντας. οὐ μὴν ἠπόρησεν ἡ [c] τῆς Ῥώμης Τύχη φωνῆς κακὸν τοσοῦτο μηνῦσαι καὶ φράσαι δυναμένης. χῆνες ἱεροὶ περὶ τὸν νεὼν τῆς Ἥρας ἐτρέφοντο θεραπεύοντες τὴν θεόν. φύσει μὲν οὖν τὸ ζῷον εὐθορύβητόν ἐστι καὶ ψοφοδεές· τότε δέ, συντόνου περὶ τοὺς ἔνδον οὔσης ἀπορίας ἀμελουμένων αὐτῶν, λεπτὸς ἦν καὶ λιμώδης ὁ ὕπνος, ὡστ’ εὐθὺς ᾔσθοντο τῶν πολεμίων ὑπερφανέντων τῆς στεφάνης καὶ καταβοῶντες ἰταμῶς προσεφέροντο, καὶ τῇ τῶν ὅπλων ὄψει μᾶλλον ἐκταραττόμενοι κλαγγῆς διατόρου καὶ τραχείας ἐνεπεπλήκεσαν τὸν τόπον· ὑφ’ ἧς ἀναστάντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι [d] καὶ συμφρονήσαντες τὸ γενόμενον ἐώσαντο καὶ κατεκρήμνισαν τοὺς πολεμίους. πομπεύει δὲ μέχρι νῦν ἐπὶ μνήμῃ τῶν τότε συμπτωμάτων κύων μὲν ἀνεσταυρωμένος, χὴν δὲ μάλα σεμνῶς ἐπὶ στρωμνῆς πολυτελοῦς καὶ φορείου καθήμενος. ἡ δ’ ὄψις ἐπιδείκνυται Τύχης ἰσχὺν καὶ πρὸς ἅπαν εὐπορίαν ἐκ τῶν παραλόγων, ὅταν τι πραγματεύηται καὶ στρατηγῇ, νοῦν μὲν ἀλόγοις καὶ ἄφροσιν ἀλκὴν δὲ καὶ θράσος δειλοῖς ἐντιθείσης. τίς γὰρ οὐκ ἂν ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐκπλαγείη καὶ θαυμάσειεν, θεατὴς γενόμενος καὶ λογισμῷ τινι τὴν τότε κατήφειαν καὶ τὴν νῦν ὑπάρχουσαν εὐδαιμονίαν τῆς πόλεως περιλαβὼν [e] καὶ ἀποβλέψας ναῶν λαμπρότητα καὶ πλοῦτον ἀναθημάτων καὶ τεχνῶν ἁμίλλας καὶ φιλοτιμίας πόλεων καὶ στεφάνους βασιλέων, καὶ ὅσα γῆ φέρει καὶ θάλασσα καὶ νῆσοι καὶ ἤπειροι καὶ ποταμοὶ καὶ δένδρα καὶ ζῷα καὶ πεδία καὶ ὄρη καὶ μέταλλα, πάντων ἀπαρχὰς ἐριζούσας εἰς κάλλος ὄψει καὶ χάριτι κοσμούσῃ τὸν τόπον, ὡς ταῦτα παρὰ μικρὸν ἦλθε μὴ γενέσθαι μηδ’ εἶναι, πυρὶ δὲ καὶ σκότει φοβερῷ καὶ ὄρφνῃ καὶ ξίφεσι βαρβάροις καὶ μιαιφόνοις θυμοῖς κρατουμένων πάντων, εὐτελῆ καὶ ἄλογα καὶ ἄτολμα θρέμματα σωτηρίας [f] ἀρχὴν παρέσχε, καὶ τοὺς μεγάλους ἐκείνους ἀριστεῖς καὶ ἡγεμόνας Μαλλίους καὶ Σερου‹ιλ›ίους καὶ Ποστουμίους καὶ Παπιρίους τῶν αὖθις οἴκων γενάρχας, παρ’ οὐδὲν ἥκοντας ἀπολέσθαι, χῆνες ἀνέστησαν ὑπὲρ τοῦ πατρίου θεοῦ καὶ τῆς πατρίδος ἀμύνεσθαι; εἰ δέ, ὅπερ Πολύβιος ἐν τῇ δευτέρᾳ βίβλῳ (II 18, 22) περὶ τῶν τότε τὴν Ῥωμαίων πόλιν καταλαβόντων ἱστόρηκε Κελτῶν, ἀληθές ἐστιν ὅτι προσπεσούσης αὐτοῖς ἀγγελίας φθείρεσθαι τὰ οἴκοι, τῶν προσοίκων βαρβάρων ἐμβεβληκότων εἰς τὴν χώραν καὶ κρατούντων, ἀνεχώρησαν εἰρήνην θέμενοι [326] [a] πρὸς τὸν Κάμιλλον, οὐδ’ ἀμφισβήτησις ἔστι πρὸς τὴν Τύχην, ὡς οὐχὶ τῆς σωτηρίας αἰτία κατέστη περισπάσασα τοὺς πολεμίους, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀποσπάσασα τῆς Ῥώμης ἀπροσδοκήτως.

Ἀλλὰ τί δεῖ περὶ ταῦτα διατρίβειν, ἃ σαφὲς οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ὡρισμένον ἔχει τῷ καὶ τὰ γράμματα διαφθαρῆναι τῶν Ῥωμαίων καὶ συγχυθῆναι τοὺς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ὑπομνηματισμούς, ὡς Λίβιος (VI 1) ἱστόρηκε; τὰ γὰρ ὕστερον μᾶλλον ὄντα δῆλα καὶ καταφανῆ δεικνύει τὴν τῆς Τύχης εὐμένειαν. ἐγὼ δὲ ‹ταύτης› τίθεμαι καὶ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου τελευτήν, ἀνδρὸς εὐτυχήμασι μεγάλοις καὶ κατορθώμασι λαμπροῖς ὑπὸ θάρσους ἀμάχου καὶ [b] φρονήματος ὥσπερ ἄστρου φερομένου [καὶ] διᾴττοντος ἐπὶ δυσμὰς ἐξ ἀνατολῶν καὶ βάλλοντος ἤδη τὰς τῶν ὅπλων αὐγὰς εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν· ὡς πρόφασις μὲν ἦν αὐτῷ τῆς στρατείας ὁ Μολοττὸς Ἀλέξανδρος ὑπὸ Βρεττίων καὶ Λευκανῶν περὶ Πανδοσίαν κατακεκομμένος, ὁ δ’ ἄγων αὐτὸν ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐπὶ πάντας ἀνθρώπους δόξης ἔρως καὶ ἡγεμονίας ζῆλον ἔσχε καὶ ἅμιλλαν ὑπερβαλέσθαι τὰ Διονύσου καὶ Ἡρακλέους πέρατα τῇ στρατηλασίᾳ, τῆς δ’ Ἰταλίας ἐπυνθάνετο τὴν ἐν Ῥώμῃ δύναμιν καὶ ἀλκὴν ὥσπερ στόμωμα προτεταγμένην, [c] ὄνομα γὰρ καὶ δόξα τούτων ἐπιφανεστάτη διεπέμπετο πρὸς αὐτὸν ὥσπερ ἀθλητῶν μυρίοις ἐγγεγυμνασμένων πολέμοις,

‘οὐ γὰρ ἀναιμωτί γε διακρινθήμεναι οἴω,’ (Od. σ 149)

συμπεσόντων ὅπλοις ἀνικήτοις φρονημάτων ἀδουλώτων. πλῆθος μὲν γὰρ ἦσαν οὗτοι τρισκαίδεκα μυριάδων οὐκ ἐλάττους, πολεμικοὶ δὲ καὶ ἀνδρώδεις ἅπαντες,

‘ἐπιστάμενοι μὲν ἀφ’ ἵππων

ἀνδράσι μάρνασθαι καὶ ὅθι χρὴ πεζὸν ἐόντα.’ (Od. ι 49)

De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ ΤΥΧΗΣ Η ΑΡΕΤΗΣ

ΛΟΓΟΣ Α΄

Οὗτος ὁ τῆς Τύχης λόγος ἐστίν, ἴδιον καὶ μόνης αὑτῆς ἔργον ἀποφαινομένης Ἀλέξανδρον. δεῖ δ’ ἀντειπεῖν ὑπὲρ φιλοσοφίας, μᾶλλον δ’ ὑπὲρ Ἀλεξάνδρου δυσχεραίνοντος καὶ ἀγανακτοῦντος, εἰ προῖκα δόξει καὶ παρὰ τῆς Τύχης λαβεῖν τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, ἣν ὤνιον αἵματος πολλοῦ καὶ τραυμάτων ἐπαλλήλων κτώμενος (Hom. Ι 325)

[e] ‘πολλὰς μὲν ἀύπνους νύκτας ἴαυεν,

ἤματα δ’ αἱματόεντα διέπρησσεν πολεμίζων’

πρὸς ἀμάχους δυνάμεις καὶ ἄπειρα φῦλα καὶ ποταμοὺς ἀπεράτους καὶ πέτρας ἀτοξεύτους, εὐβουλίᾳ καὶ ἀνδρείᾳ καὶ καρτερίᾳ καὶ σωφροσύνῃ παραπεμπόμενος.

Οἶμαι δ’ ἂν αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὴν Τύχην τοῖς κατορθώμασιν αὑτὴν ἐπιγράφουσαν ‘μή μου διάβαλλε τὴν ἀρετὴν μηδ’ ἀφαιροῦ περισπῶσα τὴν δόξαν. Δαρεῖος ἦν σὸν ἔργον, ὃν ἐκ δούλου καὶ ἀστάνδου βασιλέως κύριον Περσῶν ἐποίησας· καὶ Σαρδανάπαλος, ᾧ τὸ διάδημα [f] τῆς βασιλείας πορφύραν ξαίνοντι περιέθηκας. ἐγὼ δ’ εἰς Σοῦσα νικῶν δι’ Ἀρβήλων ἀναβέβηκα, καὶ Κιλικία μοι πλατεῖαν ἀνέῳξεν Αἴγυπτον, Κιλικίαν δὲ Γράνικος, ὃν Μιθριδάτῃ καὶ Σπιθριδάτῃ νεκροῖς ἐπιβὰς διεπέρασα. κόσμει σεαυτὴν καὶ σεμνύνου βασιλεῦσιν ἀτρώτοις καὶ ἀναιμάκτοις· ἐκεῖνοι γὰρ εὐτυχεῖς ἦσαν, [327] [a] Ὦχοι καὶ Ἀρτοξέρξαι, οὓς εὐθὺς ἐκ γενετῆς τῷ Κύρου θρόνῳ ἐνίδρυσας. τοὐμὸν δὲ σῶμα πολλὰ σύμβολα φέρει Τύχης ἀνταγωνιζομένης οὐ συμμαχούσης. πρῶτον ἐν Ἰλλυριοῖς λίθῳ τὴν κεφαλὴν ὑπέρῳ δὲ τὸν τράχηλον ἠλοήθην· ἔπειτα περὶ Γράνικον τὴν κεφαλὴν βαρβαρικῇ μαχαίρᾳ διεκόπην, ἐν δ’ Ἰσσῷ ξίφει τὸν μηρόν· πρὸς δὲ Γάζῃ τὸ μὲν σφυρὸν ἐτοξεύθην, τὸν δ’ ὦμον ἐμπεσὼν βῶλος ἐξ ἕδρας περιεδίνησε· πρὸς δὲ Μαρακανδάνοις τοξεύμασι τὸ τῆς κνήμης ὀστέον διεσχίσθην· τὰ λοιπὰ δ’ Ἰνδῶν πληγαὶ καὶ βίαι θυμῶν· ἐν Ἀσπασίοις [b] ἐτοξεύθην τὸν ὦμον, ἐν δὲ Γανδρίδαις τὸ σκέλος· ἐν Μαλλοῖς βέλει μὲν ἀπὸ τόξου τὸ στέρνον ἐνερεισθέντι καὶ καταδύσαντι τὸν σίδηρον, ὑπέρου δὲ πληγῇ παρὰ τὸν τράχηλον, ὅτε προστεθεῖσαι τοῖς τείχεσιν αἱ κλίμακες ἐκλάσθησαν, ἐμὲ δ’ ἡ Τύχη μόνον συνεῖρξεν οὐδὲ λαμπροῖς ἀνταγωνισταῖς, ἀλλὰ βαρβάροις ἀσήμοις χαριζομένη τηλικοῦτον ἔργον· εἰ δὲ μὴ Πτολεμαῖος ὑπερέσχε τὴν πέλτην, Λιμναῖος δὲ πρὸ ἐμοῦ τοῖς μυρίοις ἀπαντήσας βέλεσιν ἔπεσεν, ἤρειψαν δὲ θυμῷ καὶ βίᾳ Μακεδόνες τὸ τεῖχος, ἔδει τάφον Ἀλεξάνδρου τὴν βάρβαρον ἐκείνην καὶ ἀνώνυμον κώμην γενέσθαι.’

[c] Καὶ μὴν τὰ μὲν αὐτῆς τῆς στρατείας χειμῶνες, αὐχμοί, βάθη ποταμῶν, ἄορνα ὕψη, θηρίων ὑπερφυεῖς ὄψεις, ἄγριοι δίαιται, μεταβολαὶ δυναστῶν, παλιμπροδοσίαι· τὰ δὲ πρὸ τῆς στρατείας, ἐπεὶ τοῖς Φιλιππικοῖς πολέμοις ἐπέσπαιρεν ἡ Ἑλλάς, ἀπεσείοντο δ’ αἱ Θῆβαι τῶν ὅπλων τὴν Χαιρωνικὴν κόνιν ἐκ τοῦ πτώματος ἀνιστάμεναι, καὶ συνῆπτον αἱ Ἀθῆναι τὰς χεῖρας ὀρέγουσαι, πᾶσα δ’ ὕπουλος ‹ἦν› ἡ Μακεδονία πρὸς Ἀμύνταν ἀποβλέπουσα καὶ τοὺς Ἀερόπου παῖδας, ἀνερρήγνυντο δ’ Ἰλλυριοί, καὶ τὰ Σκυθῶν ἐπῃωρεῖτο τοῖς προσοίκοις νεωτερίζουσι, τὸ δὲ Περσικὸν χρυσίον διὰ τῶν ἑκασταχοῦ [d] δημαγωγῶν ῥέον ἐκίνει τὴν Πελοπόννησον, κενοὶ δ’ οἱ Φιλίππου θησαυροὶ χρημάτων, καὶ προσῆν ἔτι δάνειον, ὡς Ὀνησίκριτος ἱστορεῖ, διακοσίων ταλάντων. ἐν τοσαύτῃ πενίᾳ καὶ πράγμασι ταραχὰς ἔχουσι μειράκιον ἄρτι τὴν παιδικὴν παραλλάττον ἡλικίαν ἐθάρρησεν ἐλπίσαι Βαβυλῶνα καὶ Σοῦσα, μᾶλλον δὲ τὴν πάντων ἀνθρώπων ἀρχὴν εἰς νοῦν ἐμβαλέσθαι, τοῖς τρισμυρίοις, οἶμαι, πεζοῖς καὶ τετρακισχιλίοις ἱππεῦσι πιστεύσας· τοσοῦτοι γὰρ ἦσαν, ὡς Ἀριστόβουλός φησιν (fr. 1c)· ὡς δὲ Πτολεμαῖος (fr. 4) ὁ βασιλεύς, τρισμύριοι πεζοὶ πεντακισχίλιοι δ’ ἱππεῖς· ὡς δ’ Ἀναξιμένης (fr. 15), τετρακισμύριοι πεζοὶ καὶ τρισχίλιοι, πεντακισχίλιοι δὲ καὶ πεντακόσιοι ἱππεῖς. τὸ δὲ λαμπρὸν αὐτῷ καὶ μέγα παρασκευασθὲν ὑπὸ τῆς Τύχης ἐφόδιον ἑβδομήκοντα τάλαντ’ ἦν, ὥς φησιν Ἀριστόβουλος· ὡς δὲ Δοῦρις (FHGr II 472), τριάκοντα μόνον ἡμερῶν ἐπισιτισμός.

Ἄβουλος οὖν καὶ προπετὴς Ἀλέξανδρος ἐξ εὐτελῶν οὕτως ἐπὶ τηλικαύτην δύναμιν ὁρμώμενος; οὐ μὲν οὖν. τίς γὰρ ἀπὸ μειζόνων ἢ καλλιόνων ἀφορμῶν ἀνήγετο μεγαλοψυχίας, συνέσεως, σωφροσύνης, ἀνδραγαθίας, αἷς αὐτὸν ἐφωδίαζε φιλοσοφία πρὸς τὴν στρατείαν; καὶ πλείονας παρ’ Ἀριστοτέλους τοῦ καθηγητοῦ ἢ παρὰ [e] Φιλίππου τοῦ πατρὸς ἀφορμὰς ἔχων διέβαινεν ἐπὶ Πέρσας. ἀλλὰ τοῖς μὲν γράφουσιν, ὡς Ἀλέξανδρος ἔφη ποτὲ τὴν Ἰλιάδα καὶ τὴν Ὀδύσσειαν ἀκολουθεῖν αὐτῷ τῆς στρατείας ἐφόδιον, πιστεύομεν, Ὅμηρον σεμνύνοντες· ἂν δέ τις φῇ τὴν Ἰλιάδα καὶ τὴν Ὀδύσσειαν παραμύθια [328] [a] πόνου καὶ διατριβὴν ἕπεσθαι σχολῆς γλυκείας, ἐφόδιον δ’ ἀληθῶς γεγονέναι τὸν ἐκ φιλοσοφίας λόγον καὶ τοὺς περὶ ἀφοβίας καὶ ἀνδρείας ἔτι δὲ σωφροσύνης καὶ μεγαλοψυχίας ὑπομνηματισμούς, καταφρονοῦμεν· ὅτι δηλαδὴ περὶ συλλογισμῶν οὐδὲν οὐδὲ περὶ ἀξιωμάτων ἔγραψεν, οὐδ’ ἐν Λυκείῳ περίπατον συνέσχεν οὐδ’ ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ θέσεις εἶπεν· τούτοις γὰρ ὁρίζουσι φιλοσοφίαν οἱ λόγον αὐτὴν οὐκ ἔργον νομίζοντες. καίτοι γ’ οὐδὲ Πυθαγόρας ἔγραψεν οὐδὲν οὐδὲ Σωκράτης οὐδ’ Ἀρκεσίλαος οὐδὲ Καρνεάδης, οἱ δοκιμώτατοι τῶν φιλοσόφων· καὶ οὐκ ἠσχολοῦντο περὶ πολέμους ἐκεῖνοι τηλικούτους, οὐδὲ [b] βασιλεῖς βαρβάρους ἡμεροῦντες οὐδὲ πόλεις Ἑλληνίδας ἐγκτίζοντες ἀγρίοις ἔθνεσιν οὐδ’ ἄθεσμα καὶ ἀνήκοα φῦλα νόμους διδάσκοντες καὶ εἰρήνην ‹τὴν γῆν› ἐπῄεσαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ σχολάζοντες τὸ γράφειν παρίεσαν τοῖς σοφισταῖς. πόθεν οὖν ἐπιστεύθησαν ἐκεῖνοι φιλοσοφεῖν; ἀφ’ ὧν εἶπον ἢ ἀφ’ ὧν ἐβίωσαν ἢ ἀφ’ ὧν ἐδίδαξαν. ἀπὸ τούτων κρινέσθω καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος· ὀφθήσεται γὰρ οἷς εἶπεν οἷς ἔπραξεν οἷς ἐπαίδευσε φιλόσοφος.

Καὶ πρῶτον τὸ παραδοξότατον, εἰ βούλει, σκόπει, τοὺς Ἀλεξάνδρου μαθητὰς τοῖς Πλάτωνος, τοῖς Σωκράτους ἀντιπαραβάλλων. εὐφυεῖς οὗτοι καὶ ὁμογλώσσους [c] ἐπαίδευον, εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο, φωνῆς Ἑλληνίδος συνιέντας· καὶ πολλοὺς οὐκ ἔπεισαν, ἀλλὰ Κριτίαι καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδαι καὶ Κλειτοφῶντες, ὥσπερ χαλινὸν τὸν λόγον ἐκπτύσαντες, ἄλλῃ πη παρετράπησαν. τὴν δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου παιδείαν ἂν ἐπιβλέπῃς, Ὑρκανοὺς γαμεῖν ἐπαίδευσε καὶ γεωργεῖν ἐδίδαξεν Ἀραχωσίους, καὶ Σογδιανοὺς ἔπεισε πατέρας τρέφειν καὶ μὴ φονεύειν, καὶ Πέρσας σέβεσθαι μητέρας ἀλλὰ μὴ γαμεῖν. ὢ θαυμαστῆς φιλοσοφίας, δι’ ἣν Ἰνδοὶ θεοὺς Ἑλληνικοὺς προσκυνοῦσι, Σκύθαι θάπτουσι τοὺς ἀποθανόντας οὐ κατεσθίουσι. θαυμάζομεν τὴν Καρνεάδου [d] δύναμιν, εἰ Κλειτόμαχον, Ἀσδρούβαν καλούμενον πρότερον καὶ Καρχηδόνιον τὸ γένος, ἑλληνίζειν ἐποίησε, θαυμάζομεν τὴν διάθεσιν Ζήνωνος, εἰ Διογένη τὸν Βαβυλώνιον ἔπεισε φιλοσοφεῖν· ἀλλ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου τὴν Ἀσίαν ἐξημεροῦντος Ὅμηρος ἦν ἀνάγνωσμα, Περσῶν καὶ Σουσιανῶν καὶ Γεδρωσίων παῖδες τὰς Εὐριπίδου καὶ Σοφοκλέους τραγῳδίας ᾖδον. καὶ Σωκράτης μὲν ξένα παρεισάγων δαιμόνια δίκην τοῖς Ἀθήνησιν ὠφλίσκανε συκοφάνταις· διὰ δ’ Ἀλέξανδρον τοὺς Ἑλλήνων θεοὺς Βάκτρα καὶ Καύκασος προσεκύνησε. Πλάτων μὲν γὰρ μίαν γράψας [e] πολιτείαν οὐδένα πέπεικεν αὐτῇ χρῆσθαι διὰ τὸ αὐστηρόν, Ἀλέξανδρος δ’ ὑπὲρ ἑβδομήκοντα πόλεις βαρβάροις ἔθνεσιν ἐγκτίσας καὶ κατασπείρας τὴν Ἀσίαν Ἑλληνικοῖς †τέλεσι τῆς ἀνημέρου καὶ θηριώδους ἐκράτησε διαίτης. καὶ τοὺς μὲν Πλάτωνος ὀλίγοι νόμους ἀναγιγνώσκομεν, τοῖς δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου μυριάδες ἀνθρώπων ἐχρήσαντο καὶ χρῶνται, μακαριώτεροι τῶν διαφυγόντων Ἀλέξανδρον οἱ κρατηθέντες γενόμενοι· τοὺς μὲν γὰρ οὐδεὶς ἔπαυσεν ἀθλίως ζῶντας, τοὺς δ’ ἠνάγκασεν εὐδαιμονεῖν ὁ νικήσας. ὥσθ’ ὅπερ εἶπε Θεμιστοκλῆς, ὁπηνίκα φυγὼν ἔτυχε δωρεῶν μεγάλων παρὰ βασιλέως καὶ τρεῖς πόλεις ὑποφόρους [f] ἔλαβε, τὴν μὲν εἰς σῖτον τὴν δ’ εἰς οἶνον τὴν δ’ εἰς ὄψον, ‘ὦ παῖδες, ἀπωλόμεθ’ ἄν, εἰ μὴ ἀπωλόμεθα,’ τοῦτο περὶ τῶν ἁλόντων ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου δικαιότερόν ἐστιν εἰπεῖν· ‘οὐκ ἂν ἡμερώθησαν, εἰ μὴ ἐκρατήθησαν.’ οὐκ ἂν εἶχεν Ἀλεξάνδρειαν Αἴγυπτος οὐδὲ Μεσοποταμία Σελεύκειαν οὐδὲ Προφθασίαν Σογδιανὴ οὐδ’ Ἰνδία Βουκεφαλίαν οὐδὲ πόλιν Ἑλλάδα Καύκασος παροικοῦσαν, [329] [a] αἷς ἐμπολισθείσαις ἐσβέσθη τὸ ἄγριον καὶ μετέβαλε τὸ χεῖρον ὑπὸ τοῦ κρείττονος ἐθιζόμενον. εἰ τοίνυν μέγιστον μὲν οἱ φιλόσοφοι φρονοῦσιν ἐπὶ τῷ τὰ σκληρὰ καὶ ἀπαίδευτα τῶν ἠθῶν ἐξημεροῦν καὶ μεθαρμόζειν, μυρία δὲ φαίνεται γένη καὶ φύσεις θηριώδεις μεταβαλὼν Ἀλέξανδρος, εἰκότως ἂν φιλοσοφώτατος νομίζοιτο.

Καὶ μὴν ἡ πολὺ θαυμαζομένη πολιτεία τοῦ τὴν Στωικῶν αἵρεσιν καταβαλομένου Ζήνωνος (fr. 262) εἰς ἓν τοῦτο συντείνει κεφάλαιον, ἵνα μὴ κατὰ πόλεις μηδὲ δήμους οἰκῶμεν ἰδίοις ἕκαστοι διωρισμένοι δικαίοις, ἀλλὰ [b] πάντας ἀνθρώπους ἡγώμεθα δημότας καὶ πολίτας, εἷς δὲ βίος ᾖ καὶ κόσμος, ὥσπερ ἀγέλης συννόμου νόμῳ κοινῷ συντρεφομένης. τοῦτο Ζήνων μὲν ἔγραψεν ὥσπερ ὄναρ ἢ εἴδωλον εὐνομίας φιλοσόφου καὶ πολιτείας ἀνατυπωσάμενος, Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ τῷ λόγῳ τὸ ἔργον παρέσχεν. οὐ γάρ, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 658) συνεβούλευεν αὐτῷ, τοῖς μὲν Ἕλλησιν ἡγεμονικῶς τοῖς δὲ βαρβάροις δεσποτικῶς χρώμενος, καὶ τῶν μὲν ὡς φίλων καὶ οἰκείων ἐπιμελόμενος τοῖς δ’ ὡς ζῴοις ἢ φυτοῖς προσφερόμενος, πολέμων πολλῶν ‹καὶ› φυγῶν ἐνέπλησε καὶ στάσεων ὑπούλων τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, ἀλλὰ κοινὸς ἥκειν θεόθεν ἁρμοστὴς [c] καὶ διαλλακτὴς τῶν ὅλων νομίζων, οὓς τῷ λόγῳ μὴ συνῆγε τοῖς ὅπλοις βιαζόμενος ‹καὶ› εἰς ταὐτὸ συνενεγκὼν τὰ πανταχόθεν, ὥσπερ ἐν κρατῆρι φιλοτησίῳ μίξας τοὺς βίους καὶ τὰ ἤθη καὶ τοὺς γάμους καὶ ‹τὰς› διαίτας, πατρίδα μὲν τὴν οἰκουμένην προσέταξεν ἡγεῖσθαι πάντας, ἀκρόπολιν δὲ καὶ φρουρὰν τὸ στρατόπεδον, συγγενεῖς δὲ τοὺς ἀγαθούς, ἀλλοφύλους δὲ τοὺς πονηρούς· τὸ δ’ Ἑλληνικὸν καὶ βαρβαρικὸν μὴ χλαμύδι μηδὲ πέλτῃ μηδ’ ἀκινάκῃ μηδὲ κάνδυι διορίζειν, ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν Ἑλληνικὸν ἀρετῇ τὸ δὲ βαρβαρικὸν κακίᾳ τεκμαίρεσθαι, κοινὰς δ’ [d] ἐσθῆτας ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ τραπέζας καὶ γάμους καὶ διαίτας, δι’ αἵματος καὶ τέκνων ἀνακεραννυμένους.

Δημάρατος μὲν οὖν ὁ Κορίνθιος εἷς ὢν τῶν Φιλίππου ξένων καὶ φίλων, ὅτ’ Ἀλέξανδρον εἶδεν ἐν Σούσοις, περιχαρὴς γενόμενος καὶ δακρύσας μεγάλης ἔφη χαρᾶς ἐστερῆσθαι τοὺς ἔμπροσθεν τεθνηκότας Ἕλληνας, ὅτι Ἀλέξανδρον οὐκ εἶδον ἐν τῷ Δαρείου θρόνῳ καθεζόμενον· ἐγὼ δ’ οὐδὲ τούτου μὰ Δία τοῦ θεάματος ζηλῶ τοὺς ἰδόντας, ὃ καὶ τύχης ἦν καὶ κοινὸν ἑτέρων βασιλέων· ἀλλ’ ἐκείνης ἡδέως ἄν μοι δοκῶ γενέσθαι τῆς καλῆς καὶ ἱερᾶς νυμφαγωγίας θεατής, ὅτε μιᾷ σκηνῇ χρυσωρόφῳ περιλαβών, [e] ἐφ’ ἑστίας κοινῆς καὶ τραπέζης, ἑκατὸν Περσίδας νύμφας ‹καὶ› ἑκατὸν νυμφίους Μακεδόνας καὶ Ἕλληνας, αὐτὸς ἐστεφανωμένος πρῶτος ἀναμέλπων τὸν ὑμέναιον, ὥσπερ φιλοτήσιον ἐπᾴδων μέλος εἰς κοινωνίαν συνιοῦσι τοῖς μεγίστοις καὶ δυνατωτάτοις γένεσι, μιᾶς νυμφίος, πασῶν δὲ νυμφαγωγὸς ἅμα καὶ πατὴρ καὶ ἁρμοστὴς κατὰ ζυγὰ συνῆπτεν. ἡδέως γὰρ ἂν εἶπον ‘ὦ βάρβαρε Ξέρξη καὶ ἀνόητε καὶ μάτην πολλὰ περὶ τὴν Ἑλλησποντίαν πονηθεὶς γέφυραν, οὕτως ἔμφρονες βασιλεῖς Ἀσίαν Εὐρώπῃ συνάπτουσιν, οὐ ξύλοις οὐδὲ σχεδίαις οὐδ’ ἀψύχοις καὶ [f] ἀσυμπαθέσι δεσμοῖς, ἀλλ’ ἔρωτι νομίμῳ καὶ γάμοις σώφροσι καὶ κοινωνίαις παίδων τὰ γένη συνάπτοντες.’

Πρὸς τοῦτον ἀποβλέπων τὸν κόσμον Ἀλέξανδρος οὐ τὴν ἐσθῆτα προσήκατο τὴν Μηδικήν, ἀλλὰ τὴν Περσικὴν πολλῷ τῆς Μηδικῆς εὐτελεστέραν οὖσαν. τὰ γὰρ ἔξαλλα καὶ τραγικὰ τοῦ βαρβαρικοῦ κόσμου παραιτησάμενος, [330] [a] οἷον τιάραν καὶ κάνδυν καὶ ἀναξυρίδας, ἐκ τοῦ Περσικοῦ καὶ Μακεδονικοῦ τρόπου μεμιγμένην τινὰ στολὴν ἐφόρει, καθάπερ Ἐρατοσθένης ἱστόρηκεν, ὡς μὲν φιλόσοφος τοῖς ἀδιαφόροις χρώμενος, ὡς δ’ ἡγεμὼν κοινὸς καὶ βασιλεὺς φιλάνθρωπος τῇ περὶ τὴν ἐσθῆτα τιμῇ τὴν τῶν κεκρατημένων ἀνακτώμενος εὔνοιαν, ἵνα βεβαίως παραμένωσιν ἀγαπῶντες ὡς ἄρχοντας Μακεδόνας, μὴ μισοῦντες ὡς πολεμίους. τοὐναντίον γὰρ ἦν ἀσόφου καὶ τετυφωμένης ψυχῆς τὴν μὲν αὐτόχρουν χλαμύδα θαυμάζειν τὸν δὲ παραπόρφυρον χιτῶνα δυσχεραίνειν, [b] ἢ πάλιν ἐκεῖνα μὲν ἀτιμάζειν τούτοις δ’ ἐκπεπλῆχθαι, δίκην νηπίου παιδὸς φυλάττοντα τὴν περιβολήν, ἣν ἡ πάτριος αὐτῷ συνήθεια καθάπερ τίτθη περιέθηκε. ζῷα θηρεύοντες ἄνθρωποι δορὰς ἐλάφων περιτίθενται καὶ πτερωτοῖς ἀμπέχονται χιτωνίσκοις ἄγραις ἐπιχειροῦντες ὀρνίθων καὶ φυλάττονται ταύροις ὀφθῆναι φοινικίδας ἔχοντες, ἐλέφασι δὲ λευκοὺς χιτῶνας· ἐρεθίζεται γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν χρωμάτων τὰ ζῷα τούτων καὶ διαθηριοῦται. εἰ δὲ βασιλεὺς μέγας ἔθνη δυσκάθεκτα καὶ μαχόμενα καθάπερ ζῷα τιθασεύων καὶ μειλισσόμενος ἐσθῆσιν οἰκείαις καὶ συνήθεσιν ἐξεπράυνε διαίταις καὶ [c] κατέστελλεν, οἰκειούμενος αὐτῶν τὸ δύσθυμον καὶ παρηγορῶν τὸ σκυθρωπόν, ἐγκαλοῦσιν, οὐχὶ θαυμάζουσι τὴν σοφίαν, ὅτι τῷ τυχόντι μετασχηματισμῷ τὴν Ἀσίαν ἐδημαγώγησε, τοῖς μὲν ὅπλοις τῶν σωμάτων ἐπικρατήσας, τῇ δ’ ἐσθῆτι τὰς ψυχὰς προσαγαγόμενος; καίτοι γ’ Ἀρίστιππον θαυμάζουσι τὸν Σωκρατικόν, ὅτι καὶ τρίβωνι λιτῷ καὶ Μιλησίᾳ χλανίδι χρώμενος δι’ ἀμφοτέρων ἐτήρει τὸ εὔσχημον· Ἀλεξάνδρῳ δ’ ἐγκαλοῦσιν, ὅτι τὴν πάτριον ἐσθῆτα κοσμῶν οὐδὲ τὴν δορίκτητον ὑπερεῖδε, μεγάλων πραγμάτων καταβαλλόμενος ἀρχάς. οὐ γὰρ λῃστρικῶς [d] τὴν Ἀσίαν καταδραμὼν οὐδ’ ὥσπερ ἅρπαγμα καὶ λάφυρον εὐτυχίας ἀνελπίστου σπαράξαι καὶ ἀνασύρασθαι διανοηθείς, καθάπερ ὕστερον μὲν Ἀννίβας Ἰταλίαν, πρότερον δὲ Τρῆρες Ἰωνίαν καὶ Σκύθαι Μηδίαν ἐπῆλθον· ἀλλ’ ἑνὸς ὑπήκοα λόγου τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς καὶ μιᾶς πολιτείας, ἕνα δῆμον ἀνθρώπους ἅπαντας ἀποφῆναι βουλόμενος, οὕτως ἑαυτὸν ἐσχημάτιζεν· εἰ δὲ μὴ ταχέως ὁ δεῦρο καταπέμψας τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου ψυχὴν ἀνεκαλέσατο δαίμων, εἷς ἂν νόμος ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους διῳκεῖτο καὶ πρὸς ἓν δίκαιον ὡς πρὸς κοινὸν ἐπέβλεπον φῶς. νῦν δὲ τῆς γῆς [e] ἀνήλιον μέρος ἔμεινεν, ὅσον Ἀλέξανδρον οὐκ εἶδεν.

Οὐκοῦν πρώτη μὲν ἡ τῆς στρατείας ὑπόθεσις φιλόσοφον τὸν ἄνδρα συνίστησιν, οὐχ ἑαυτῷ τρυφὴν καὶ πολυτέλειαν ἀλλὰ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ὁμόνοιαν καὶ εἰρήνην καὶ κοινωνίαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους παρασκευάσαι διανοηθέντα. δεύτερον δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰς φωνὰς ἴδωμεν, ἐπεὶ καὶ τὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἤθη βασιλέων καὶ δυναστῶν μάλιστα ταῖς φωναῖς αἱ ψυχαὶ προβάλλουσιν. Ἀντίγονος ὁ γέρων, σοφιστοῦ τινος αὐτῷ σύγγραμμα προσδόντος περὶ δικαιοσύνης, ‘ἀβέλτερος εἶ’ εἶπεν ‘ὃς ὁρῶν με τὰς ἀλλοτρίας πόλεις τύπτοντα λέγεις περὶ δικαιοσύνης.’ Διονύσιος [f] δ’ ὁ τύραννος ἐκέλευε τοὺς μὲν παῖδας ἀστραγάλοις τοὺς δ’ ἄνδρας ὅρκοις ἐξαπατᾶν. τοῖς δὲ Σαρδαναπάλου μνημείοις ἐπιγέγραπται (Anth. Pal. VII 325)

‘ταῦτ’ ἔχω ὅσσ’ ἔφαγον καὶ ἐφύβρισα.’

τίς οὐκ ἂν εἴποι τῶν ἀποφθεγμάτων τούτων τῷ μὲν ἐμφαίνεσθαι φιληδονίαν, τῷ δ’ ἀθεότητα, τῷ δ’ ἀδικίαν καὶ πλεονεξίαν; τῶν δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου φωνῶν ἂν ἀφέλῃς τὸ [331] [a] διάδημα καὶ τὸν Ἄμμωνα καὶ τὴν εὐγένειαν, Σωκράτους ἢ Πλάτωνος ἢ Πυθαγόρου σοι φανοῦνται. μὴ γὰρ ἃς οἱ ποιηταὶ ταῖς εἰκόσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ τοῖς ἀνδριᾶσι μεγαληγορίας ἐπεχάραττον, οὐ τῆς μετριότητος ἀλλὰ τῆς δυνάμεως τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου στοχαζόμενοι, σκοπῶμεν· (Anth. Pal. XVI 120 Preger Insc. gr. metr. 279)

‘αὐδασοῦντι δ’ ἔοικεν ὁ χάλκεος εἰς Δία λεύσσων·

Γᾶν ὑπ’ ἐμοὶ τίθεμαι· Ζεῦ, σὺ δ’ Ὄλυμπον ἔχε.’

καὶ ‘Ἀλέξανδρος ἐγὼ Διὸς μὲν υἱός’. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν. ὡς ἔφην, οἱ ποιηταὶ κολακεύοντες αὐτοῦ τὴν τύχην προσεῖπον· τῶν δ’ ἀληθινῶν ἀποφθεγμάτων Ἀλεξάνδρου [b] πρῶτον ἄν τις τὰ παιδικὰ διέλθοι. ποδωκέστατος γὰρ τῶν ἐφ’ ἡλικίας νέων γενόμενος καὶ τῶν ἑταίρων αὐτὸν ἐπ’ Ὀλύμπια παρορμώντων, ἠρώτησεν εἰ βασιλεῖς ἀγωνίζονται· τῶν δ’ ‘οὔ’ φαμένων ἄδικον εἶπεν εἶναι τὴν ἅμιλλαν, ἐν ᾗ νικήσει μὲν ἰδιώτας νικηθήσεται δὲ βασιλεύς. τοῦ δὲ πατρὸς Φιλίππου λόγχῃ τὸν μηρὸν ἐν Τριβαλλοῖς διαπαρέντος καὶ τὸν μὲν κίνδυνον διαφυγόντος ἀχθομένου δὲ τῇ χωλότητι, ‘θάρρει πάτερ’ ἔφη ‘καὶ πρόιθι φαιδρῶς, ἵνα τῆς ἀρετῆς κατὰ βῆμα μνημονεύῃς.’ ταῦτ’ οὐκ ἔστι διανοίας φιλοσόφου καὶ διὰ τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς [c] καλοῖς ἐνθουσιασμὸν ἤδη τῶν τοῦ σώματος ἐλαττωμάτων κατεξανισταμένης; πῶς γὰρ αὐτὸν οἴει τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀγάλλεσθαι τραύμασι, καθ’ ἕκαστον μέρος ἔθνους μνημονεύοντα καὶ νίκης καὶ πόλεων ἁλισκομένων καὶ βασιλέων παραδιδόντων, οὐκ ἐγκαλυπτόμενον οὐδὲ κατακρύπτοντα τὰς οὐλάς, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ εἰκόνας ἐγκεχαραγμένας ἀρετῆς καὶ ἀνδραγαθίας περιφέροντα;

Καὶ μὴν εἴ ποτε γένοιτο τῶν Ὁμήρου σύγκρισις ἐπῶν ἐν ταῖς διατριβαῖς ἢ παρὰ τὰ συμπόσια, ἄλλον ἄλλου στίχον προκρίνοντος, αὐτὸς ὡς διαφέροντα πάντων ἐνέκρινε τοῦτον (Γ 179),

‘ἀμφότερον βασιλεύς τ’ ἀγαθὸς κρατερός τ’ αἰχμητής·’

[d] ὃν ἄλλος ἔπαινον τῷ χρόνῳ προέλαβε, τοῦτον αὑτῷ νόμον κεῖσθαι λογιζόμενος, ὥστ’ εἰπεῖν Ὅμηρον ὅτι τῷ αὐτῷ μέτρῳ τὴν μὲν Ἀγαμέμνονος ἀνδραγαθίαν κεκόσμηκε, τὴν δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου μεμάντευται. διαβὰς τοίνυν τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ἐθεᾶτο τὴν Τροίαν ἀνατυπούμενος τὰς ἡρωικὰς πράξεις· καί τινος αὐτῷ τῶν ἐγχωρίων ὑποσχομένου τὴν Πάριδος λύραν εἰ βούλοιτο δώσειν ‘οὐδέν’ ἔφη ‘τῆς ἐκείνου δέομαι· τὴν γὰρ Ἀχιλλέως κέκτημαι, πρὸς ἣν ἐκεῖνος ἀνεπαύετο ‘ἄειδε δ’ ἄρα κλέα ἀνδρῶν’ (Ι 189)· ἡ δὲ Πάριδος πάντως μαλακήν τινα [e] καὶ θήλειαν ἁρμονίαν ἐρωτικοῖς ἔψαλλε μέλεσι.’ Φιλοσόφου τοίνυν ἐστὶ ψυχῆς σοφίας ἐρᾶν καὶ σοφοὺς ἄνδρας θαυμάζειν μάλιστα· τοῦτο δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ προσῆν ὡς οὐδενὶ τῶν βασιλέων. καὶ πῶς μὲν εἶχε πρὸς Ἀριστοτέλην εἴρηται καὶ ὅτι τὸν μὲν ἁρμονικὸν Ἀνάξαρχον ἐντιμότατον τῶν φίλων ἐνόμιζε· Πύρρωνι δὲ τῷ Ἠλείῳ πρῶτον ἐντυχόντι μυρίους χρυσοῦς ἔδωκε, Ξενοκράτει δὲ τῷ Πλάτωνος συνήθει πεντήκοντα τάλαντα δωρεὰν ἔπεμψεν· Ὀνησίκριτον δὲ τὸν Διογένους τοῦ Κυνὸς μαθητὴν ὅτι ἄρχοντα τῶν κυβερνητῶν κατέστησεν, ὑπὸ πλειόνων ἱστόρηται. Διογένει δ’ αὐτῷ περὶ Κόρινθον εἰς λόγους ἐλθὼν οὕτως [f] ἔφριξε καὶ κατεπλάγη τὸν βίον καὶ τὸ ἀξίωμα τοῦ ἀνδρός, ὥστε πολλάκις αὐτοῦ μνημονεύων λέγειν ‘εἰ μὴ Ἀλέξανδρος ἤμην, Διογένης ἂν ἤμην,’ τουτέστιν ‘ἠσχολούμην ἂν περὶ λόγους, εἰ μὴ δι’ ἔργων ἐφιλοσόφουν.’ οὐκ εἶπεν ‘εἰ μὴ βασιλεὺς ἤμην, Διογένης ἂν ἤμην,’ οὐδ’ ‘εἰ μὴ πλούσιος καὶ [332] [a] Ἀργεάδης’ (οὐ γὰρ προέκρινε τὴν τύχην τῆς σοφίας οὐδὲ τὴν πορφύραν καὶ τὸ διάδημα τῆς πήρας καὶ τοῦ τρίβωνος)· ἀλλ’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ μὴ Ἀλέξανδρος ἤμην, Διογένης ἂν ἤμην’, τουτέστιν ‘εἰ μὴ τὰ βαρβαρικὰ τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς κεράσαι διενοούμην καὶ πᾶσαν ἤπειρον ἐπιὼν ἐξημερῶσαι, καὶ πέρατα γῆς ἀνερευνῶν καὶ θαλάττης ὠκεανῷ προσερεῖσαι Μακεδονίαν, καὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα σπεῖραι καὶ καταχέασθαι γένους παντὸς εὐδικίαν καὶ εἰρήνην, οὐκ ἂν ἐν ἀπράκτῳ τρυφῶν ἐξουσίᾳ καθήμην, ἀλλ’ ἐζήλουν ἂν τὴν Διογένους εὐτέλειαν. νῦν δὲ σύγγνωθι, Διόγενες, Ἡρακλέα μιμοῦμαι καὶ Περσέα ζηλῶ, καὶ τὰ Διονύσου μετιὼν ἴχνη, θεοῦ [b] γενάρχου καὶ προπάτορος, βούλομαι πάλιν ἐν Ἰνδίᾳ νικῶντας Ἕλληνας ἐγχορεῦσαι καὶ τοὺς ὑπὲρ Καύκασον ὀρείους καὶ ἀγρίους τῶν βακχικῶν κώμων ἀναμνῆσαι. κἀκεῖ τινες εἶναι λέγονται στερρᾶς καὶ γυμνήτιδος σοφίας ἐθάδες ἄνδρες ἱεροὶ καὶ αὐτόνομοι, θεῷ σχολάζοντες, εὐτελέστεροι Διογένους, οὐδὲν πήρας δεόμενοι· τροφὴν γὰρ οὐκ ἀποτίθενται, πρόσφατον ἀεὶ καὶ νέαν ἀπὸ γῆς ἔχοντες· ποτὸν δὲ ποταμοὶ ῥέουσι· φύλλα δ’ αὐτοῖς δένδρων ἀποχυθέντα καὶ πόα γῆς ἐγκατακλιθῆναι. δι’ ἐμὲ κἀκεῖνοι Διογένη γνώσονται καὶ Διογένης ἐκείνους. [c] δεῖ κἀμὲ νόμισμα παρακόψαι καὶ παραχαράξαι τὸ βαρβαρικὸν Ἑλληνικῇ πολιτείᾳ.’

Εἶεν· αἱ δὲ δὴ πράξεις αὐτοῦ πότερον αὐτοματισμὸν ἐπιφαίνουσι τύχης καὶ βίαν πολεμικὴν καὶ χειροκρατίαν ἢ πολλὴν μὲν ἀνδρείαν καὶ δικαιοσύνην πολλὴν δὲ σωφροσύνην καὶ πραότητα μετὰ κόσμου καὶ συνέσεως, νήφοντι καὶ πεπνυμένῳ τῷ λογισμῷ πάντα πράττοντος; οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν διακρίναντά με μὰ τοὺς θεούς, ὅτι τοῦτο μὲν ἀνδρείας, τοῦτο δὲ φιλανθρωπίας, τοῦτο δ’ ἐγκρατείας· ἀλλὰ πᾶν ἔργον ἐκ πασῶν ἔοικε τῶν ἀρετῶν μεμῖχθαι, βεβαιοῦντος αὐτοῦ τὸν Στωικὸν [d] ἐκεῖνον λόγον, ὅτι πᾶν, ὃ ἂν δρᾷ ὁ σοφός, κατὰ πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν ἐνεργεῖ, καὶ μία μέν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἀρετὴ πρωταγωνιστεῖ πράξεως ἑκάστης, παρακαλεῖ δὲ τὰς ἄλλας καὶ συνεντείνει πρὸς τὸ τέλος. ἰδεῖν γοῦν ἔστιν ἐν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τὸ μὲν πολεμικὸν φιλάνθρωπον, τὸ δὲ πρᾶον ἀνδρῶδες, τὸ δὲ χαριστικὸν οἰκονομικόν, τὸ δὲ θυμικὸν εὐδιάλλακτον, τὸ δ’ ἐρωτικὸν σῶφρον, τὸ δ’ ἀνειμένον οὐκ ἀργόν, τὸ δ’ ἐπίπονον οὐκ ἀπαραμύθητον. τίς ἔμιξε πολέμοις ἑορτάς; τίς δὲ κώμοις στρατείας; τίς δὲ πολιορκίαις καὶ παρατάξεσι βακχείας καὶ γάμους καὶ ὑμεναίους; τίς ἀδικοῦσιν ἐχθρότερος ἢ δυστυχοῦσιν ἡμερώτερος; τίς [e] μαχομένοις βαρύτερος ἢ δεομένοις εὐγνωμονέστερος; ἔπεισί μοι τὸ τοῦ Πώρου δεῦρο μετενεγκεῖν. ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ὡς ἤχθη πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον αἰχμάλωτος, πυθομένου πῶς αὐτῷ χρήσηται, ‘βασιλικῶς’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Ἀλέξανδρε.’ πάλιν δ’ ἐπερομένου ‘μή τι ἄλλο;’ ‘οὐδέν’ εἶπε ‘πάντα γὰρ ἔ‹νε›στιν ἐν τῷ βασιλικῶς.’ κἀμοὶ δὴ ταῖς Ἀλεξάνδρου πράξεσιν ἔπεισιν ἐπιφωνεῖν ἀεί ‘φιλοσόφως·’ ἐν τούτῳ γὰρ πάντ’ ἔνεστι. Ῥωξάνης ἐρασθεὶς τῆς Ὀξυάρτου θυγατρὸς ἐν ταῖς αἰχμαλωτίσι χορευούσης οὐχ ὕβρισεν ἀλλ’ ἔγημε· φιλοσόφως. Δαρεῖον ἰδὼν κατηκοντισμένον [f] οὐκ ἔθυσεν οὐδ’ ἐπαιάνισεν ὡς τοῦ μακροῦ πολέμου τέλος ἔχοντος, ἀλλὰ τὴν χλαμύδα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ περιελὼν ἐπέρριψε τῷ νεκρῷ καθάπερ τινὰ τύχης βασιλικῆς νέμεσιν συγκαλύπτων· φιλοσόφως. ἐπιστολὴν δέ ποτε τῆς μητρὸς ἀπόρρητον διερχόμενος, Ἡφαιστίωνος ὡς ἔτυχε παρακαθημένου [333] [a] καὶ ἁπλῶς συναναγινώσκοντος, οὐκ ἐκώλυσεν, ἀλλὰ τὸν δακτύλιον ἑαυτοῦ τῷ στόματι προσέθηκεν αὐτοῦ, κατασφραγισάμενος φιλικῇ πίστει τὴν σιωπήν· φιλοσόφως. εἰ γὰρ ταῦτ’ οὐκ ἔστι φιλοσόφως, τίν’ ἐστὶν ἄλλα;

Παραθῶμεν τὰ τῶν ὁμολογουμένων φιλοσόφων. Σωκράτης ἠνέσχετο συγκοιμηθέντος Ἀλκιβιάδου· Ἀλέξανδρος δέ, Φιλοξένου τοῦ τῆς παραλίας ὑπάρχου γράψαντος, ὅτι παῖς ἐν Ἰωνίᾳ γέγονεν οἷος οὐκ ἄλλος ὥραν καὶ εἶδος, καὶ πυνθανομένου διὰ τῶν γραμμάτων εἰ ἀναπέμψῃ, πικρῶς ἀντέγραψεν ‘ὦ κάκιστ’ ἀνθρώπων, τί μοι πώποτε τοιοῦτον συνέγνως, ἵνα τοιαύταις με κολακεύσῃς ἡδοναῖς;’ [b] Ξενοκράτην, πεντήκοντα τάλαντα δωρεὰν Ἀλεξάνδρου πέμψαντος, ὅτι οὐκ ἔλαβε θαυμάζομεν· τὸ δὲ δοῦναι, οὔ; ἢ οὐχ ὁμοίως καταφρονεῖν χρημάτων δοκοῦμεν τὸν μὴ προσιέμενον καὶ τὸν χαριζόμενον; οὐκ ἐδεῖτο πλούτου Ξενοκράτης διὰ φιλοσοφίαν, Ἀλέξανδρος δ’ ἐδεῖτο διὰ φιλοσοφίαν, ἵνα τοιούτοις χαρίζηται. τοῦτο ποσάκις Ἀλέξανδρος εἶπε βαλλόμενος, ἐκβιαζόμενος; καίτοι κρίσεις μὲν ὀρθὰς πᾶσιν ἐνυπάρχειν ἀνθρώποις νομίζομεν (ἡ γὰρ φύσις ἀγωγός ἐστιν ἀφ’ ἑαυτῆς πρὸς τὸ καλόν), οἱ δὲ φιλόσοφοι τῶν πολλῶν διαφέρουσι τῷ τὰς κρίσεις ἔχειν [c] ἐρρωμένας παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ καὶ πεπηγυίας· ἐπεὶ οὐ μετὰ τῶν τοιούτων προλήψεων ‘εἷς οἰωνὸς ἄριστος (Μ 243)’ καί ‘πέρας μέν ἐστιν ἅπασιν ἀνθρώποις ὁ θάνατος (Demosth. XVIII 97).’ ἀλλὰ θραύουσιν οἱ καιροὶ παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ τοὺς λογισμούς, καὶ τὰς κρίσεις ἐκκρούουσιν αἱ φαντασίαι τῶν κινδύνων ἐγγὺς γενομένων. ‘φόβος γάρ’ οὐ μόνον ‘μνήμην ἐκπλήττει’ κατὰ τὸν Θουκυδίδην (II 87), ἀλλὰ καὶ προαίρεσιν πᾶσαν καὶ φιλοτιμίαν καὶ ὁρμήν, ‹εἰ μὴ› μηρίνθους φιλοσοφία περιτέθεικεν

[d]

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ ΤΥΧΗΣ Η ΑΡΕΤΗΣ

ΛΟΓΟΣ Β΄

Διέφυγεν ἡμᾶς, ὡς ἔοικε, χθὲς εἰπεῖν, ὅτι καὶ τέχνας πολλὰς καὶ φύσεις μεγάλας ὁ κατ’ Ἀλέξανδρον χρόνος ἐνεγκεῖν εὐτύχησεν· ἢ τοῦτο μὲν οὐ τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου [e] τύχης γέγονεν ἀλλὰ τῆς ἐκείνων, μάρτυρα λαβεῖν καὶ θεατὴν τὸν ἄριστα κρῖναι τὸ κατορθούμενον καὶ μάλιστ’ ἀμείψασθαι δυνάμενον; λέγεται γοῦν, ὅτι χρόνοις ὕστερον, Ἀρχεστράτου γενομένου ποιητοῦ χαρίεντος ἐν δὲ πενίᾳ καὶ ἀδοξίᾳ διάγοντος, εἶπέ τις πρὸς αὐτόν ‘ἀλλ’ εἰ κατ’ Ἀλέξανδρον ἐγένου, κατὰ στίχον ἄν σοι Κύπρον ἢ Φοινίκην ἔδωκεν.’ οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τῶν τότε τεχνιτῶν οὐ κατ’ Ἀλέξανδρον ἀλλὰ δι’ Ἀλέξανδρον τοὺς πρώτους γενέσθαι. καρπῶν μὲν γὰρ εὐφορίαν εὐκρασία ποιεῖ καὶ λεπτότης τοῦ περιέχοντος ἀέρος, τεχνῶν δὲ καὶ φύσεων ἀγαθῶν αὔξησιν εὐμένεια καὶ τιμὴ καὶ φιλανθρωπία βασιλέως ἐκκαλεῖται· καὶ [f] τοὐναντίον ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ σμικρολογίας ἢ φιλονεικίας τῶν κρατούντων σβέννυται καὶ φθίνει πᾶν τὸ τοιοῦτον. Διονύσιος γοῦν ὁ τύραννος, ὥς φασι, κιθαρῳδοῦ τινος ἀκούων εὐδοκιμοῦντος ἐπηγγείλατο δωρεὰν αὐτῷ τάλαντον· τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὴν ὑπόσχεσιν ἀπαιτοῦντος [334] [a] ‘χθές’ εἶπεν ‘εὐφραινόμενος ὑπὸ σοῦ παρ’ ὃν ᾖδες χρόνον εὔφρανα κἀγώ σε ταῖς ἐλπίσιν· ὥστ’ ἀπέχεις τὸν μισθὸν ὧν ἔτερπες ἀντιτερπόμενος.’ Ἀλέξανδρος δ’ ὁ Φεραίων τύραννος (ἔδει δὲ τοῦτο μόνον αὐτὸν καλεῖσθαι καὶ μὴ καταισχύνειν τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν) θεώμενος τραγῳδὸν ἐμπαθέστερον ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς διετέθη πρὸς τὸν οἶκτον. ἀναπηδήσας οὖν ἐκ τοῦ θεάτρου θᾶττον ἢ βάδην ἀπῄει, δεινὸν εἶναι λέγων, εἰ τοσούτους ἀποσφάττων πολίτας ὀφθήσεται τοῖς Ἑκάβης καὶ Πολυξένης πάθεσιν ἐπιδακρύων. οὗτος μὲν οὖν μικροῦ καὶ δίκην ἐπράξατο τὸν [b] τραγῳδόν, ὅτι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ καθάπερ σίδηρον ἐμάλαξεν. Ἀρχελάῳ δὲ δοκοῦντι γλισχροτέρῳ περὶ τὰς δωρεὰς εἶναι Τιμόθεος ᾄδων ἐνεσήμαινε πολλάκις τουτὶ τὸ κομμάτιον (II 152 D.)

‘σὺ δὲ τὸν γηγενέταν ἄργυρον αἰνεῖς.’

ὁ δ’ Ἀρχέλαος οὐκ ἀμούσως ἀντεφώνησε ‘σὺ δέ γ’ αἰτεῖς.’ ὁ δὲ τῶν Σκυθῶν βασιλεὺς Ἀντέας Ἰσμηνίαν τὸν αὐλητὴν λαβὼν αἰχμάλωτον ἐκέλευσεν αὐλῆσαι παρὰ πότον. θαυμαζόντων δὲ τῶν ἄλλων καὶ κροτούντων, αὐτὸς ὤμοσεν ἀκροᾶσθαι τοῦ ἵππου χρεμετίζοντος ἥδιον. οὕτω μακρὰν ἀπεσκηνώκει τὰ ὦτα τῶν Μουσῶν, καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἐν ταῖς φάτναις εἶχεν, οὐχ ἵππων ἀλλ’ ὄνων ἐπιτηδειοτέραν [c] ἀκούειν. τίς ἂν οὖν παρὰ τοιούτοις βασιλεῦσιν αὔξησις ἢ τιμὴ τέχνης γένοιτο καὶ Μούσης τοιαύτης; ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς κακοτέχνοις ἐθέλουσιν εἶναι καὶ διὰ τοῦτο βασκανίᾳ καὶ δυσμενείᾳ τοὺς ἀληθῶς τεχνίτας καθαιροῦσιν. οἷος ἦν πάλιν αὖ Διονύσιος ὁ τὸν ποιητὴν Φιλόξενον εἰς τὰς λατομίας ἐμβαλών, ὅτι τραγῳδίαν αὐτοῦ διορθῶσαι κελευσθεὶς εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς ὅλην μέχρι τῆς κορωνίδος περιέγραψεν. ἦν δὲ καὶ Φίλιππος ἐν τούτοις ὑπ’ ὀψιμαθίας ἑαυτοῦ μικρότερος καὶ νεοπρεπέστερος· ὅθεν καί φασι πρός τινα ψάλτην περὶ κρουμάτων αὐτοῦ [d] διαφερομένου καὶ δοκοῦντος ἐξελέγχειν, ἀτρέμα μειδιάσαντα τὸν ἄνθρωπον εἰπεῖν ‘μὴ γένοιτό σοι, βασιλεῦ, ἀθλίως οὕτως, ἵνα ταῦτ’ ἐμοῦ βέλτιον εἰδῇς.’ Ἀλλ’ Ἀλέξανδρος εἰδὼς τίνων δεῖ θεατὴν εἶναι καὶ ἀκροατὴν καὶ τίνων ἀγωνιστὴν καὶ αὐτουργόν, ἤσκει μὲν ἀεὶ διὰ τῶν ὅπλων δεινὸς εἶναι καὶ κατὰ τὸν Αἰσχύλον (Bgk. II p. 242)

‘βριθὺς ὁπλιτοπάλας, δάιος ἀντιπάλοις.’

ταύτην τέχνην ἔχων προγονικὴν ἀπ’ Αἰακιδῶν, ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους, ταῖς δ’ ἄλλαις τέχναις τὸ τιμᾶν ἄνευ τοῦ ζηλοῦν ἀπεδίδου κατὰ τὸ ἔνδοξον αὐτῶν καὶ χαρίεν, τῷ τέρπειν δ’ οὐκ ἦν εὐάλωτος εἰς τὸ μιμεῖσθαι. γεγόνασι [e] δὲ κατ’ αὐτὸν τραγῳδοὶ μὲν οἱ περὶ Θετταλὸν καὶ Ἀθηνόδωρον, ὧν ἀνταγωνιζομένων ἀλλήλοις, ἐχορήγουν μὲν οἱ Κύπριοι βασιλεῖς ἔκρινον δ’ οἱ δοκιμώτατοι τῶν στρατηγῶν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐνίκησεν Ἀθηνόδωρος, ‘ἐβουλόμην ἄν’ ἔφη ‘μᾶλλον ἀπολωλεκέναι μέρος τῆς βασιλείας ἢ Θετταλὸν ἐπιδεῖν ἡττημένον.’ ἀλλ’ οὔτ’ ἐνέτυχε τοῖς κριταῖς οὔτε τὴν κρίσιν ἐμέμψατο, πάντων οἰόμενος δεῖν περιεῖναι, τοῦ δικαίου δ’ ἡττᾶσθαι. κωμῳδοὶ δ’ ἦσαν οἱ περὶ Λύκωνα τὸν Σκαρφέα· τούτῳ δ’ εἴς τινα κωμῳδίαν ἐμβαλόντι στίχον αἰτητικὸν γελάσας ἔδωκε δέκα τάλαντα. κιθαρῳδοὶ δ’ ἄλλοι τε καὶ Ἀριστόνικος, ὃς ἐν μάχῃ τινὶ προσβοηθήσας [f] ἔπεσε λαμπρῶς ἀγωνισάμενος. ἐκέλευσεν οὖν αὐτοῦ γενέσθαι χαλκοῦν ἀνδριάντα καὶ σταθῆναι Πυθοῖ, κιθάραν ἔχοντα καὶ δόρυ προβεβλημένον, οὐ τὸν ἄνδρα τιμῶν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ μουσικὴν κοσμῶν ὡς ἀνδροποιὸν καὶ μάλιστα δὴ πληροῦσαν ἐνθουσιασμοῦ καὶ ὁρμῆς τοὺς [335] [a] γνησίως ἐντρεφομένους. καὶ γὰρ αὐτός, Ἀντιγενίδου ποτὲ τὸν ἁρμάτειον αὐλοῦντος νόμον, οὕτω παρεξέστη καὶ διεφλέγη τὸν θυμὸν ὑπὸ τῶν μελῶν, ὥστε τοῖς ὅπλοις ᾄξας ἐπιβαλεῖν τὰς χεῖρας ἐγγὺς παρακειμένοις καὶ μαρτυρῆσαι τοῖς Σπαρτιάταις ᾄδουσιν (Bgk. III p. 51 Alcman. fr. 100 D)

‘ἕρπει γὰρ ἄντα τῶ σιδάρω τὸ καλῶς κιθαρίδδειν.’

ἦν δὲ καὶ Ἀπελλῆς ὁ ζωγράφος καὶ Λύσιππος ὁ πλάστης κατ’ Ἀλέξανδρον· ὧν ὁ μὲν ἔγραψε τὸν κεραυνοφόρον οὕτως ἐναργῶς καὶ κεκραμένως, ὥστε λέγειν, ὅτι δυεῖν Ἀλεξάνδρων ὁ μὲν Φιλίππου γέγονεν ἀνίκητος, ὁ δ’ Ἀπελλοῦ ἀμίμητος. Λυσίππου δὲ τὸ πρῶτον Ἀλέξανδρον [b] πλάσαντος ἄνω βλέποντα τῷ προσώπῳ πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν (ὥσπερ αὐτὸς εἰώθει βλέπειν Ἀλέξανδρος ἡσυχῆ παρεγκλίνων τὸν τράχηλον) ἐπέγραψέ τις οὐκ ἀπιθάνως (Anth. Pal. XVI 120)

‘αὐδασοῦντι δ’ ἔοικεν ὁ χάλκεος εἰς Δία λεύσσων·

Γᾶν ὑπ’ ἐμοὶ τίθεμαι· Ζεῦ, σὺ δ’ Ὄλυμπον ἔχε.’

διὸ καὶ μόνον Ἀλέξανδρος ἐκέλευε Λύσιππον εἰκόνας αὐτοῦ δημιουργεῖν. μόνος γὰρ οὗτος, ὡς ἔοικε, κατεμήνυε τῷ χαλκῷ τὸ ἦθος αὐτοῦ καὶ συνεξέφαινε τῇ μορφῇ τὴν ἀρετήν· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι τὴν ἀποστροφὴν τοῦ τραχήλου καὶ τῶν ὀμμάτων τὴν διάχυσιν καὶ ὑγρότητα μιμεῖσθαι [c] θέλοντες οὐ διεφύλαττον αὐτοῦ τὸ ἀρρενωπὸν καὶ λεοντῶδες. ἐν δ’ οὖν τοῖς ἄλλοις τεχνίταις καὶ Στασικράτης ἦν ἀρχιτέκτων, οὐδὲν ἀνθηρὸν οὐδ’ ἡδὺ καὶ πιθανὸν τῇ ὄψει διώκων, ἀλλὰ καὶ χειρὶ μεγαλουργῷ καὶ διαθέσει χορηγίας βασιλικῆς οὐκ ἀποδεούσῃ χρώμενος. οὗτος ἀναβὰς πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ἐμέμφετο τὰς γραφομένας εἰκόνας αὐτοῦ καὶ πλαττομένας καὶ γλυφομένας, ὡς ἔργα δειλῶν καὶ ἀγεννῶν τεχνιτῶν· ‘ἐγὼ δ’’ εἶπεν ‘εἰς ἄφθαρτον, ὦ βασιλεῦ, καὶ ζῶσαν ὕλην καὶ ῥίζας ἔχουσαν ἀιδίους καὶ βάρος ἀκίνητον καὶ ἀσάλευτον ἔγνωκά σου τὴν [d] ὁμοιότητα καταθέσθαι τοῦ σώματος. ὁ γὰρ Θρᾴκιος Ἄθως, ᾗ μέγιστος ‹αὐτὸς› αὑτοῦ καὶ περιφανέστατος ἐξανέστηκεν, ἔχων ἑαυτῷ σύμμετρα πλάτη καὶ ὕψη καὶ μέλη καὶ ἄρθρα καὶ διαστήματα μορφοειδῆ, δύναται κατεργασθεὶς καὶ σχηματισθεὶς εἰκὼν Ἀλεξάνδρου καλεῖσθαι καὶ εἶναι, ταῖς μὲν βάσεσιν ἁπτομένου τῆς θαλάσσης, τῶν δὲ χειρῶν τῇ μὲν ἐναγκαλιζομένου καὶ φέροντος πόλιν ἐνοικουμένην μυρίανδρον, τῇ δὲ δεξιᾷ ποταμὸν ἀέναον ἐκ φιάλης σπένδοντος εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ἐκχεόμενον. χρυσὸν δὲ καὶ χαλκὸν καὶ ἐλέφαντα καὶ ξύλα καὶ [e] βαφάς, ἐκμαγεῖα μικρὰ καὶ ὠνητὰ καὶ κλεπτόμενα καὶ συγχεόμενα, καταβάλωμεν.’ ταῦτ’ ἀκούσας Ἀλέξανδρος τὸ μὲν φρόνημα τοῦ τεχνίτου καὶ τὸ θάρσος ἀγασθεὶς ἐπῄνεσεν, ‘ἔα δὲ κατὰ χώραν’ ἔφη ‘τὸν Ἄθω μένειν· ἀρκεῖ γὰρ ἑνὸς βασιλέως ἐνυβρίσαντος εἶναι μνημεῖον· ἐμὲ δ’ ὁ Καύκασος δείξει καὶ τὰ Ἠμωδὰ καὶ Τάναϊς καὶ τὸ Κάσπιον πέλαγος· αὗται τῶν ἐμῶν ἔργων εἰκόνες.’

Ἀλλὰ φέρε πρὸς θεῶν ἐκτελεσθῆναι καὶ φανῆναι τοιοῦτον ἔργον· ἔσθ’ ὅστις ἂν ἰδὼν ὑπέλαβε κατὰ τύχην γεγονέναι καὶ αὐτομάτως τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὴν διάθεσιν καὶ [f] τὸ εἶδος; οὐδεὶς ἂν οἶμαι. τί δέ; τὸν κεραυνοφόρον; τί δέ; τὸν ἐπὶ τῆς αἰχμῆς προσαγορευόμενον; εἶτ’ ἀνδριάντος μὲν μέγεθος οὐκ ἂν ἄνευ τέχνης ὑπὸ τύχης γένοιτο χρυσὸν καὶ χαλκὸν καὶ ἐλέφαντα καὶ πολλὴν καὶ πλουσίαν ὕλην καταχεαμένης καὶ παραβαλούσης, ἄνδρα δὲ μέγαν, μᾶλλον δὲ τῶν γεγονότων ἁπάντων μέγιστον, ἐνδέχεται χωρὶς ἀρετῆς ἀποτελεσθῆναι διὰ τύχην, ὅπλα [336] [a] καὶ χρήματα καὶ στόλους καὶ ἵππους παρασκευάσασαν; ἃ τῷ μὴ μαθόντι χρῆσθαι κίνδυνός ἐστιν οὐ δύναμις, οὐδὲ κόσμος ἀλλ’ ἔλεγχος τῆς ἀσθενείας καὶ μικρότητος. ὀρθῶς γὰρ Ἀντισθένης ἔλεγεν ὅτι ‘πάντα δεῖ τοῖς πολεμίοις εὔχεσθαι τἀγαθὰ πλὴν ἀνδρείας· γίνεται γὰρ οὕτως οὐ τῶν ἐχόντων, ἀλλὰ τῶν κρατούντων.’ διὰ τοῦτό φασι καὶ τὴν φύσιν ἀγεννεστάτῳ ζῴῳ τῷ ἐλάφῳ κέρατα θαυμαστὰ τῷ μεγέθει καὶ τραχύτητι πρὸς ἄμυναν ἐμφῦσαι, διδάσκουσαν ἡμᾶς ὡς οὐδὲν ὠφελεῖ τὸ ἰσχύειν καὶ ὡπλίσθαι τοὺς μένειν καὶ θαρρεῖν μὴ δυναμένους. οὕτως [b] καὶ ἡ τύχη πολλάκις ἀτόλμοις καὶ ἀνοήτοις προσάπτουσα δυνάμεις καὶ ἀρχάς, αἷς ἐνασχημονοῦσι, κοσμεῖ καὶ συνίστησι τὴν ἀρετὴν ὡς μόνην μέγεθος ἀνδρὸς καὶ κάλλος οὖσαν. εἰ μὲν γάρ, ὥς φησιν Ἐπίχαρμος (fr. 249), ‘νοῦς ὁρῇ καὶ νοῦς ἀκούει, τἄλλα δὲ τυφλὰ καὶ κωφά’, λόγου τυγχάνει δεόμενα. αἱ γὰρ αἰσθήσεις ἰδίας ἔχειν ἀφορμὰς δοκοῦσιν, ὅτι δὲ νοῦς ὠφελεῖ καὶ νοῦς κοσμεῖ καὶ νοῦς τὸ νικῶν καὶ κρατοῦν καὶ βασιλεῦον, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα τυφλὰ καὶ κωφὰ καὶ ἄψυχα παρέλκει καὶ βαρύνει καὶ καταισχύνει χωρὶς ἀρετῆς τοὺς ἔχοντας, ἀπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων λαβεῖν ἔστι. τῆς γὰρ αὐτῆς δυνάμεως ὑποκειμένης [c] καὶ ἡγεμονίας Σεμίραμις μὲν οὖσα γυνὴ στόλους ἐπλήρου καὶ φάλαγγας ὥπλιζε καὶ Βαβυλῶνας ἔκτιζε, καὶ περιέπλει τὴν Ἐρυθρὰν θάλασσαν Αἰθίοπας καταστρεφομένη καὶ Ἄραβας, Σαρδανάπαλος δ’ ἀνὴρ πεφυκὼς ἔξαινεν οἴκοι πορφύραν, ἀναβάδην ἐν ταῖς παλλακαῖς καθήμενος· ἀποθανόντος δ’ αὐτοῦ, λιθίνην εἰκόνα κατασκευάσαντες ἐπορχουμένην ἑαυτῇ βαρβαριστὶ καὶ τοῖς δακτύλοις ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς οἷον ὑποψοφοῦσαν, ἐπέγραψαν ‘ἔσθιε, πῖνε, ἀφροδισίαζε· τἄλλα δ’ οὐδέν’ (Aristobul. fr. 6). ὁ μὲν οὖν Κράτης ἰδὼν χρυσῆν εἰκόνα Φρύνης τῆς [d] ἑταίρας ἑστῶσαν ἐν Δελφοῖς ἀνέκραγεν, ὅτι τοῦτο τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀκρασίας τρόπαιον ἕστηκε· τὸν δὲ Σαρδαναπάλου βίον ἄν τις ἢ τάφον (οὐδὲν γάρ, οἶμαι, διαφέρει) θεασάμενος εἴποι τοῦτο τῶν τῆς Τύχης ἀγαθῶν τρόπαιον εἶναι. τί οὖν; ἐάσωμεν τὴν Τύχην Ἀλεξάνδρου μετὰ Σαρδανάπαλον ἅψασθαι καὶ τοῦ μεγέθους ἐκείνου καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως ἀντιποιεῖσθαι; τί γὰρ αὐτῷ πλέον ἔδωκεν ὧν οἱ λοιποὶ βασιλεῖς ἔλαβον παρ’ αὐτῆς; ὅπλων, ἵππων, βελῶν, χρημάτων, δορυφόρων; ποιησάτω τούτοις ἡ Τύχη μέγαν Ἀριδαῖον, εἰ δύναται· ποιησάτω τούτοις μέγαν [Ἄμασιν ἢ] Ὦχον ἢ Ὀάρσην ἢ Τιγράνην τὸν Ἀρμένιον ἢ [e] τὸν Βιθυνὸν Νικομήδην· ὧν ὁ μὲν τὸ διάδημα τοῖς Πομπηίου ποσὶν ὑπορρίψας αἰσχρῶς τὴν βασιλείαν ἀνέλαβε, λάφυρον γενομένην· Νικομήδης δὲ τὴν κεφαλὴν ξυράμενος καὶ πιλίον ἐπιθέμενος ἀπελεύθερον ἑαυτὸν Ῥωμαίων ἀνηγόρευσεν.

Εἴπωμεν οὖν, ὅτι μικροὺς ἡ Τύχη ποιεῖ καὶ περιδεεῖς καὶ ταπεινόφρονας - ἀλλ’ οὐ δίκαιον οὔτε κακίαν εἰς ἀτυχίαν οὔτ’ ἀνδρείαν καὶ φρόνησιν εἰς εὐτυχίαν τινὰ τίθεσθαι - , μέγα‹ν› δὲ τῷ ἄρχειν Ἀλέξανδρον; ἡ Τύχη; καὶ γὰρ ἔνδοξος ἐν ἐκείνῳ καὶ ἀήττητος καὶ μεγαλόφρων καὶ ἀνύβριστος καὶ φιλάνθρωπος· εἶτ’ [f] ἐκλιπόντος εὐθὺς ὁ Λεωσθένης ἔλεγε τὴν δύναμιν ἐμπλανωμένην ἑαυτῇ καὶ περιπίπτουσαν ἐοικέναι τῷ Κύκλωπι μετὰ τὴν τύφλωσιν ἐκτείνοντι πανταχοῖ τὰς χεῖρας ἐπ’ οὐδένα σκοπὸν φερομένας· οὕτως ἐρρέμβετο κενεμβατοῦν καὶ σφαλλόμενον ὑπ’ ἀναρχίας τὸ μέγεθος αὐτῆς. μᾶλλον δ’ ὥσπερ τὰ νεκρὰ σώματα, τῆς ψυχῆς ἐκλιπούσης, οὐκέτι συνέστηκεν οὐδὲ συμπέφυκεν, ἀλλ’ ἐξίσταται καὶ διαλύεται [ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων] καὶ ἄπεισι καὶ φεύγει, οὕτως ἀφεῖσα τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἡ δύναμις ἤσπαιρεν, ἐπάλλετο, [337] [a] ἐφλέγμαινε Περδίκκαις καὶ Μελεάγροις καὶ Σελεύκοις καὶ Ἀντιγόνοις ὥσπερ πνεύμασι θερμοῖς ἔτι καὶ σφυγμοῖς διᾴττουσι καὶ διαφερομένοις· τέλος δ’ ἀπομαραινομένη καὶ φθίνουσα περὶ αὑτὴν οἷον εὐλάς τινας ἀνέζεσεν ἀγεννῶν βασιλέων καὶ ἡγεμόνων ψυχορραγούντων. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ταῦθ’ ὡς ἔοικεν Ἡφαιστίωνι διενεχθέντι πρὸς Κρατερὸν ἐπιτιμῶν ‘τίς δ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἡ σὴ δύναμις ἢ πρᾶξις, ἄν σού τις ἀφέλῃ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον;’ ἐγὼ δὲ τοῦτ’ εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὴν τότε Τύχην οὐκ ὀκνήσω ‘τί σου τὸ μέγεθος, τίς δ’ ἡ δόξα, ποῦ δ’ ἡ δύναμις, ποῦ δὲ τὸ ἀνίκητον, ἄν [b] σού τις ἀφέλῃ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον;’ τουτέστιν ‘ἄν σού τις ἀφέλῃ τῶν ὅπλων τὴν ἐμπειρίαν, τοῦ πλούτου τὴν φιλοτιμίαν, τῆς πολυτελείας τὴν ἐγκράτειαν, ὧν ἀγωνίζῃ τὸ θάρσος, ἐν οἷς κρατεῖς τὴν πραότητα; ποίησον ἄλλον εἰ δύνασαι μέγαν, τοῖς χρήμασι μὴ χαριζόμενον, τοῖς στρατεύμασι μὴ προκινδυνεύοντα, τοὺς φίλους μὴ τιμῶντα, τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους μὴ ἐλεοῦντα, ταῖς ἡδοναῖς μὴ σωφρονοῦντα, τοῖς καιροῖς μὴ ἀγρυπνοῦντα, ταῖς νίκαις μὴ εὐδιάλλακτον, τοῖς κατορθώμασι μὴ φιλάνθρωπον. τίς μέγας ἐν ἐξουσίαις μετ’ ἀβελτερίας καὶ μοχθηρίας; ἄφελε [c] τὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ εὐτυχοῦντος, καὶ πανταχοῦ μικρός ἐστιν, ἐν χάρισι διὰ σμικρολογίαν, ἐν πόνοις διὰ μαλακίαν, παρὰ θεοῖς διὰ δεισιδαιμονίαν, πρὸς ἀγαθοὺς διὰ φθόνον, ἐν ἀνδράσι διὰ φόβον, ἐν γυναιξὶ διὰ φιληδονίαν.’ ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ φαῦλοι τεχνῖται βάσεις μεγάλας μικροῖς ὑφιστάντες ἀναθήμασιν ἐλέγχουσιν αὐτῶν [καὶ] τὰς μικρότητας, οὕτως ἡ Τύχη ὅταν μικρὸν ἦθος ἐξάρῃ πράγμασιν ἔχουσιν ὄγκον τινὰ καὶ περιφάνειαν, ἐπιδείκνυσι μᾶλλον καὶ καταισχύνει σφαλλόμενον καὶ σαλευόμενον ὑπὸ κουφότητος.

Ὅθεν οὐκ ἐν τῇ κτήσει τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀλλ’ ἐν τῇ [d] χρήσει τὸ μέγ’ ἐστίν, ἐπεὶ καὶ νήπια βρέφη κληρονομεῖ βασιλείας πατρῴας καὶ ἀρχάς, ὡς Χάριλλος, ὃν Λυκοῦργος ἅμα τῷ σπαργάνῳ κομίσας εἰς τὸ φιδίτιον ἀνθ’ ἑαυτοῦ βασιλέα τῆς Σπάρτης ἀνηγόρευσε· καὶ οὐκ ἦν μέγας ὁ νήπιος, ἀλλ’ ὁ τῷ νηπίῳ τὸ πατρῷον ἀποδοὺς γέρας καὶ μὴ σφετερισάμενος μηδ’ ἀποστερήσας. Ἀριδαῖον δὲ τίς ἂν ἐποίησε μέγαν, ὃν οὐδὲν νηπίου διαφέροντα μονονοὺ σπαργανώσας τῇ πορφύρᾳ Μελέαγρος εἰς τὸν Ἀλεξάνδρου θρόνον ἔθηκεν, εὖ γε ποιῶν, ἵν’ ὀφθῇ παρ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας, πῶς ἀρετῇ βασιλεύουσιν ἄνθρωποι καὶ πῶς τύχῃ. ἀγωνιστῇ γὰρ ἡγεμονίας ὑποκριτὴν ἐπεισήγαγε, μᾶλλον [e] δ’ ὡς ἐπὶ σκηνῆς δορυφόρημα κωφὸν διεξῆλθε τῆς οἰκουμένης.

‘καί κε γυνὴ φέροι ἄχθος, ἐπεί κεν ἀνὴρ ἀναθείη·’

(Aristoph. Equ. 1056) τοὐναντίον μὲν οὖν εἴποι τις ἄν, ὅτι λαβεῖν καὶ ἀναθέσθαι δύναμιν καὶ πλοῦτον καὶ ἀρχὴν καὶ γυναικός ἐστι καὶ παιδός· (Ὀάρσῃ καὶ Δαρείῳ Βαγώας ὁ εὐνοῦχος ἀράμενος ἐπέθηκε τὴν Περσῶν βασιλείαν·) τὸ δὲ λαβόντα μεγάλην ἐξουσίαν ἐνεγκεῖν καὶ μεταχειρίσασθαι καὶ μὴ συντριβῆναι μηδὲ διαστραφῆναι τῷ βάρει καὶ μεγέθει τῶν πραγμάτων, ἀνδρός ἐστιν ἀρετὴν καὶ φρόνημα καὶ νοῦν ἔχοντος· ἣν Ἀλέξανδρος ἔσχεν, ᾧ [f] μέθην τινὲς ἐγκαλοῦσι καὶ οἴνωσιν. ὁ δ’ ἦν μέγας, ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι νήφων καὶ μὴ μεθυσθεὶς μηδὲ βακχευθεὶς ὑπ’ ἐξουσίας καὶ δυνάμεως, ἧς μικρὸν ἕτεροι μεταλαβόντες καὶ ἀπογευσάμενοι κρατεῖν ἑαυτῶν οὐ δύνανται (Eur. Erechth. fr. 362, 29)·

‘κακοὶ γὰρ ἐμπλησθέντες ἢ νομίσματος,

ἢ πόλεος ἐμπεσόντες εἰς τιμάς τινας,

σκιρτῶσιν ἀδόκητ’ εὐτυχησάντων δόμων.’

[338] [a] Κλεῖτος ἐν Ἀμοργῷ τρεῖς ἢ τέτταρας Ἑλληνικὰς ἀνατρέψας τριήρεις Ποσειδῶν ἀνηγορεύθη καὶ τρίαιναν ἐφόρει. Δημήτριος δέ, ᾧ τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου δυνάμεως ἡ Τύχη σμικρὸν ἀποσπάσασα προσέθηκε, Καταιβάτης καλούμενος ἐπήκουε, καὶ πρέσβεις πρὸς αὐτὸν οὐκ ἔπεμπον ἀλλὰ θεωροὺς αἱ πόλεις, καὶ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις χρησμοὺς προσηγόρευον. Λυσίμαχος τὰ περὶ Θρᾴκην ὥσπερ ἐσχατιάς τινας τῆς βασιλείας κατασχὼν εἰς τοσοῦτον ὑπεροψίας ἔφθασε καὶ θρασύτητος, ὥστ’ εἰπεῖν ‘νῦν Βυζάντιοι πρὸς ἐμὲ ἥκουσιν, ὅτε τῇ λόγχῃ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἅπτομαι.’ [b] παρὼν δὲ Πασιάδης ὁ Βυζάντιος ‘ὑπάγωμεν’ ἔφη ‘μὴ τῇ ἐπιδορατίδι τὸν οὐρανὸν τρυπήσῃ.’ καὶ τί ἂν περὶ τούτων λέγοι τις, οἷς ἐξῆν δι’ Ἀλέξανδρον μέγα φρονεῖν, ὅπου Κλέαρχος Ἡρακλείας τύραννος γενόμενος σκηπτὸν ἐφόρει καὶ τῶν υἱῶν ἕνα Κεραυνὸν ὠνόμασε; Διονύσιος δ’ Ἀπόλλωνος υἱὸν ἑαυτὸν ὠνόμασεν, ἐπιγράψας

‘Δωρίδος ἐκ μητρὸς Φοίβου κοινώμασι βλαστών.’

(PLGr Bgk. II p. 324)

ὁ δὲ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ τῶν μὲν πολιτῶν μυρίους ἢ καὶ πλείους ἀνελών, προδοὺς δὲ τὸν ἀδελφὸν ὑπὸ φθόνου τοῖς πολεμίοις, οὐκ ἀναμείνας δὲ τὴν μητέρα γραῦν οὖσαν ὀλίγαις [c] ἡμέραις ἀποθανεῖν ὕστερον ἀλλ’ ἀποπνίξας, ἐν δὲ τραγῳδίᾳ γράψας αὐτός (Dionys. fr. 4 N² p. 794)

‘ἡ γὰρ τυραννὶς ἀδικίας μήτηρ ἔφυ,’

ὅμως τῶν θυγατέρων τὴν μὲν Ἀρετὴν τὴν δὲ Σωφροσύνην ὠνόμασε τὴν δὲ Δικαιοσύνην. οἱ δ’ Εὐεργέτας οἱ δὲ Καλλινίκους οἱ δὲ Σωτῆρας οἱ δὲ Μεγάλους ἀνηγόρευσαν ἑαυτούς. γάμους δ’ αὐτῶν ἐπαλλήλους ὥσπερ ἵππων ἐν ἀγέλαις γυναικῶν ἀνέδην διημερευόντων καὶ φθορὰς παίδων καὶ τυμπανισμοὺς ἐν ἀνδρογύνοις καὶ κυβείας μεθημερινὰς καὶ αὐλήσεις ἐν θεάτροις καὶ νύκτα μὲν ἐν δείπνοις ἡμέραν δ’ ἐν ἀρίστοις ἐπιλείπουσαν οὐδεὶς ἂν ἐφίκοιτο τῷ λόγῳ διελθεῖν.

[d] Ἀλλ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ἠρίστα μὲν ὄρθρου καθεζόμενος, ἐδείπνει δὲ πρὸς ἑσπέραν βαθεῖαν, ἔπινε δὲ θύσας τοῖς θεοῖς, ἐκύβευε δὲ πρὸς Μήδιον πυρέττων, ἔπαιζε δ’ ὁδοιπορῶν ἅμα καὶ μανθάνων τοξεύειν καὶ ἀποβαίνειν ἅρματος. ἔγημε δὲ Ῥωξάνην ἑαυτῷ μόνην ἐρασθείς, τὴν δὲ Δαρείου Στάτειραν τῇ βασιλείᾳ καὶ τοῖς πράγμασι (συνέφερε γὰρ ἡ τῶν γενῶν ἀνάμιξις), τῶν δ’ ἄλλων Περσίδων ἐκράτησε τοσοῦτον σωφροσύνῃ, ὅσον ἀνδρείᾳ Περσῶν· ἄκουσαν μὲν γὰρ οὐδεμίαν εἶδεν, ἃς δ’ εἶδε μᾶλλον ἢ ἃς οὐκ εἶδε παρῆλθε. καὶ πᾶσιν ὢν τοῖς ἄλλοις φιλάνθρωπος, μόνοις ὑπερηφάνως τοῖς καλοῖς ἐχρῆτο.

[e] περὶ δὲ τῆς Δαρείου γυναικός, εὐπρεπεστάτης γενομένης, οὐδὲ φωνὴν ἐπαινοῦσαν τὸ κάλλος ἤκουσεν· ἀποθανοῦσαν δ’ οὕτω βασιλικῶς ἐκόσμησε καὶ συμπαθῶς ἐδάκρυσεν, ὥστ’ ἄπιστον αὐτοῦ τὸ σῶφρον ἐν τῷ φιλανθρώπῳ γενέσθαι καὶ λαβεῖν ἀδικίας ἔγκλημα τὴν χρηστότητα. Δαρεῖος γὰρ οὕτως ἐκινήθη πρὸς τὴν ἐξουσίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἡλικίαν (εἷς γὰρ ἦν καὶ αὐτὸς ἔτι τῶν νομιζόντων διὰ Τύχην κρατεῖν Ἀλέξανδρον)· ἐπεὶ δὲ τἀληθὲς ἔγνω βασανίσας πανταχόθεν, ‘οὐ πάντως’ εἶπεν ‘ἄρα φαύλως ἔχει τὰ Περσῶν, οὐδέ τις ἐρεῖ παντάπασι κακοὺς ἡμᾶς [f] οὐδ’ ἀνάνδρους ὑπὸ τοιούτου κρατηθέντας. ἐγὼ δ’ εὐτυχίαν μὲν εὔχομαι καὶ κράτος πολέμου παρὰ θεῶν, ἵν’ εὖ ποιῶν Ἀλέξανδρον ὑπερβάλωμαι· καί μέ τις ἔχει φιλοτιμία καὶ ζῆλος ἡμερώτερον αὐτοῦ φανῆναι· εἰ δ’ οἴχεται τὰ ἐμά, Ζεῦ πατρῷε Περσῶν καὶ βασίλειοι θεοί, μηδεὶς εἰς τὸν Κύρου θρόνον ἄλλος ἢ Ἀλέξανδρος καθίσειε.’ τοῦτ’ εἰσποίησις ἦν Ἀλεξάνδρου διὰ θεῶν [339] [a] μαρτύρων. οὕτω νικῶσιν ἀρετῇ.

Πρόσγραψον, εἰ βούλει, τῇ Τύχῃ τὰ Ἄρβηλα καὶ τὴν Κιλικίαν, καὶ τἄλλα, ἃ γέγονε βίας ἔργα καὶ πολέμου· Τύχη τὴν Τύρον ἔσεισεν αὐτῷ, καὶ Τύχη τὴν Αἴγυπτον ἀνέῳξε· διὰ Τύχην Ἁλικαρνασσὸς ἔπεσε καὶ Μίλητος ἑάλω καὶ Μαζαῖος Εὐφράτην ἔρημον ἀπέλιπε καὶ νεκρῶν τὸ Βαβυλώνιον ἐπλήσθη πεδίον· ἀλλ’ οὔτι γε σώφρων ἀπὸ Τύχης οὔτ’ ἐγκρατὴς διὰ Τύχην, οὔτ’ ἀνάλωτον ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἡ Τύχη καὶ ἄτρωτον ἐπιθυμίαις κατακλείσασα τὴν ψυχὴν ἐφρούρει. καὶ μὴν ταῦτ’ ἦν, οἷς αὐτὸν ἐτρέψατο Δαρεῖον· τἄλλα δ’ ὅπλων ἦσαν ἧτται καὶ ἵππων καὶ [b] μάχαι καὶ φόνοι καὶ φυγαὶ ἀνδρῶν. τὴν δὲ μεγάλην καὶ ἀναντίρρητον ἧτταν ἡττήθη Δαρεῖος καὶ ἐνέκλινεν ἀρετῇ καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνῃ καὶ ἀνδρείᾳ καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ, θαυμάσας τὸ ἐν ἡδονῇ καὶ πόνοις καὶ χάρισιν ἀνίκητον. ἐπεί γ’ ἐν πέλταις καὶ σαρίσσαις καὶ ἀλαλαγμοῖς καὶ συρράξεσιν ὅπλων ἀνίκητος ἦν καὶ ‹Ἀ›ταρρίας ὁ Δεινομένους καὶ Ἀντιγένης ὁ Πελληναῖος καὶ Φιλώτας ὁ Παρμενίωνος, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἡδονὰς καὶ γύναια καὶ χρυσίον καὶ ἀργύριον οὐθέν τι βελτίους τῶν αἰχμαλώτων· ἀλλ’ Ἀταρρίας μὲν ὅτε τῶν χρεῶν ἠλευθέρου Μακεδόνας Ἀλέξανδρος καὶ διελύετο τοῖς δανείσασιν ὑπὲρ πάντων, [c] ψευσάμενος ὀφείλειν καὶ δανειστήν τινα φάσκοντα εἶναι τῇ τραπέζῃ προσαγαγών, εἶτα φωραθεὶς ὀλίγου διέφθειρεν αὐτὸς ἑαυτόν· εἰ μὴ γνοὺς Ἀλέξανδρος ἀφῆκε τῆς αἰτίας αὐτὸν καὶ συνεχώρησεν ἔχειν τἀργύριον, ἀναμνησθεὶς ὅτι Φιλίππου προσμαχομένου Περίνθῳ βέλει πληγεὶς εἰς τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν οὐ παρέσχεν οὐδ’ ὑπέμεινεν ἐξαιρεθῆναι τὸ βέλος αὑτοῦ πρὶν ἢ τρέψασθαι τοὺς πολεμίους. Ἀντιγένης δὲ τοῖς ἀποπεμφθεῖσιν εἰς Μακεδονίαν διὰ νόσον καὶ πήρωσιν ἀναμίξας ἑαυτὸν καὶ ἀπογραψάμενος, ὡς ἐλήφθη μηδὲν κακὸν ἔχων, ἀλλὰ προσποιούμενος [d] ἀρρωστίαν τινά, ἀνὴρ πολεμικὸς καὶ τραυμάτων τὸ σῶμα μεστὸς ὀφθεὶς ἠνίασε τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον· πυνθανομένου δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν ὡμολόγησε Τελεσίππας ἐρᾶν καὶ συνακολουθεῖν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν ἀπιούσῃ μὴ δυνάμενος ἀπολειφθῆναι. ‘καὶ τίνος’ ἔφη ‘τὸ γύναιόν ἐστιν’ ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος ‘καὶ πρὸς τίνα δεῖ διαλέγεσθαι;’ τοῦ δ’ Ἀντιγένους εἰπόντος ὡς ἐλευθέρα ἐστίν, ‘οὐκοῦν’ εἶπε ‘πείθωμεν αὐτὴν καταμένειν, ἐπαγγελλόμενοι καὶ διδόντες.’ οὕτω παντὶ μᾶλλον ἐρῶντι συγγνώμην εἶχεν ἢ αὑτῷ. καὶ μὴν καὶ Φιλώτας ὁ Παρμενίωνος τροφόν τινα τῶν κακῶν ἔσχε τὴν ἀκρασίαν.

[e] Ἀντιγόνα γὰρ ἦν Πελλαῖον γύναιον ἐν τοῖς περὶ Δαμασκὸν αἰχμαλώτοις, ἡλώκει δ’ ὑπ’ Αὐτοφραδάτου πρότερον εἰς Σαμοθρᾴκην διαπλεύσασα, τὴν δ’ ὄψιν ἦν ἱκανή, καὶ τὸν Φιλώταν ἁψάμενον αὐτῆς εἶχε μάλα. καὶ δὴ ὁ σιδάρεος †ἔκ τινος πεπαινόμενος οὐκ ἐκράτει τῶν λογισμῶν ἐν ταῖς ἡδοναῖς, ἀλλ’ ἀνοιγόμενος ἐξέφερε πολλὰ τῶν ἀπορρήτων πρὸς αὐτήν. ‘τί γὰρ ἦν ἐκεῖνος ὁ Φίλιππος, εἰ μὴ Παρμενίων; τί δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος οὗτος, εἰ μὴ Φιλώτας; ποῦ δ’ ὁ Ἄμμων, ποῦ δ’ οἱ δράκοντες, ἂν ἡμεῖς μὴ θέλωμεν;’ τούτους τοὺς λόγους ἡ Ἀντιγόνα πρός τινα τῶν συνήθων [f] ἐξήνεγκε γυναικῶν, ἐκείνη δὲ πρὸς Κρατερόν· Κρατερὸς δὲ πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον αὐτὴν εἰσήγαγε τὴν Ἀντιγόναν κρύφα, καὶ τοῦ μὲν σώματος οὐκ ἔθιγεν ἀλλ’ ἀπέσχετο· τὸν δὲ Φιλώταν ὑποικουρῶν δι’ αὐτῆς ὅλον ἐφώρασε, καὶ πλέον ἢ ἑπτὰ ἐτῶν διαγενομένων, οὐκ ἐν οἴνῳ ποτὲ τὴν ὑπόνοιαν ταύτην ἐξέφηνεν ὁ μεθύων, οὐ δι’ ὀργὴν ὁ θυμοειδής, οὐ πρὸς φίλον ὁ πάντα πιστεύων Ἡφαιστίωνι καὶ πάντων [340] [a] μεταδιδούς. λέγεται γὰρ ὅτι καὶ τῆς μητρὸς ἀπόρρητον ἐπιστολὴν λύσαντος αὐτοῦ καὶ σιωπῇ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀναγινώσκοντος, Ἡφαιστίων ἀτρέμα παραβάλλων τὴν κεφαλὴν συνανεγίνωσκεν· ὁ δὲ κωλῦσαι μὲν οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν, ἐξελὼν δὲ τὸν δακτύλιον προσέθηκε τὴν σφραγῖδα τῷ στόματι τοῦ Ἡφαιστίωνος.

Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἄν τις ἀπείποι λέγων, οἷς ἀποδείκνυται κάλλιστα καὶ βασιλικώτατα τὴν ἐξουσίαν διατιθέμενος. καὶ γὰρ εἰ διὰ Τύχην μέγας γέγονε, μείζων ἐστίν, ὅτι τῇ Τύχῃ καλῶς κέχρηται· καὶ ὅσῳ τις ἂν μᾶλλον αὐτοῦ τὴν Τύχην ἐπαινῇ, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον αὔξει τὴν [b] ἀρετήν, δι’ ἣν ἄξιος τῆς Τύχης ἐγένετο. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἤδη πρὸς τὰ πρῶτα τῆς αὐξήσεως αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς τῆς δυνάμεως βαδίζω, καὶ σκοπῶ τί τὸ τῆς Τύχης ἔργον ἐν ἐκείνοις γέγονε, δι’ ὅ φασιν Ἀλέξανδρον ὑπὸ τῆς Τύχης μέγαν γεγονέναι. πῶς γὰρ οὐχί; τὸν ἄτρωτον, ὦ Ζεῦ, τὸν ἀναίμακτον, τὸν ἀστράτευτον, ὃν χρεμετίσας ἵππος εἰς τὸν Κύρου θρόνον ἐκάθισεν, ὡς Δαρεῖον τὸν Ὑστάσπου πρότερον, ἢ κολακευθεὶς ἀνὴρ ὑπὸ τῆς γυναικός, ὡς Ξέρξην Δαρεῖος ὑπ’ Ἀτόσσης; ἐπὶ θύρας αὐτῷ τὸ διάδημα τῆς Ἀσίας ἦλθεν, ὥσπερ Ὀάρσῃ διὰ Βαγώαν, [c] καὶ στολὴν ἐκδυσάμενος ἀστάνδου περιέθετο τὴν βασιλικὴν καὶ ὀρθοπαγῆ κίταριν; ἐξαίφνης καὶ ἀπροσδοκήτως κλήρῳ λαχὼν τῆς οἰκουμένης ἐβασίλευσεν, ὡς Ἀθήνησι κλήρῳ θεσμοθετοῦσι καὶ ἄρχουσι; βούλει μαθεῖν, πῶς βασιλεύουσιν ἄνθρωποι διὰ Τύχην; ἐξέλιπέ ποτ’ Ἀργείοις τὸ Ἡρακλειδῶν γένος, ἐξ οὗ βασιλεύεσθαι πάτριον ἦν αὐτοῖς· ζητοῦσι δὲ καὶ διαπυνθανομένοις ὁ θεὸς ἔχρησεν ἀετὸν δείξειν· καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας ἀετὸς ὑπερφανεὶς καὶ κατάρας ἐπὶ τὴν Αἴγωνος οἰκίαν ἐκάθισε, καὶ βασιλεὺς ᾑρέθη Αἴγων. πάλιν ἐν Πάφῳ, τοῦ βασιλεύοντος ἀδίκου καὶ πονηροῦ φανέντος, ἐκβαλὼν τοῦτον Ἀλέξανδρος [d] ἕτερον ἐζήτει, τοῦ Κινυραδῶν γένους ἤδη φθίνειν καὶ ἀπολείπειν δοκοῦντος. ἕνα δ’ οὖν ἔφασαν περιεῖναι πένητα καὶ ἄδοξον ἄνθρωπον ἐν κήπῳ τινὶ παρημελημένως διατρεφόμενον. ἐπὶ τοῦτον οἱ πεμφθέντες ἧκον, εὑρέθη δὲ πρασιαῖς ὕδωρ ἐπαντλῶν· καὶ διεταράχθη τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἐπιλαμβανομένων αὐτοῦ καὶ βαδίζειν κελευόντων. ἀχθεὶς δὲ πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ἐν εὐτελεῖ σινδονίσκῃ βασιλεὺς ἀνηγορεύθη καὶ πορφύραν ἔλαβε καὶ εἷς ἦν τῶν ἑταίρων προσαγορευομένων· ἐκαλεῖτο δ’ Ἀβδαλώνυμος. οὕτως αἱ τύχαι ποιοῦσι βασιλεῖς, μεταμφιάζουσι, μεταγράφουσι ταχύ, ῥᾳδίως, μὴ προσδεχομένους μηδ’ ἐλπίζοντας.

Ἀλεξάνδρῳ δὲ τί παρ’ ἀξίαν, τί ἀνιδρωτί, τί ἀναιμωτί, τί προῖκα, τί μὴ πονήσαντι τῶν μεγάλων; αἵματι κεκραμένους ποταμοὺς ἔπιε καὶ νεκροῖς γεγεφυρωμένους διέβη, καὶ πόαν ἔφαγε διὰ λιμὸν ἣν πρώτην εἶδε, καὶ βάθεσι χιόνων κατακεχωσμένα ἔθνη καὶ πόλεις ὑπὸ γῆν δεδυκυίας ἐξώρυξε, καὶ θάλατταν μαχομένην ἔπλευσε, καὶ θῖνας ἀνύδρους τὰς Γεδρωσίων καὶ Ἀραχωσίων ὁδεύων ἐν θαλάσσῃ πρότερον ἢ ἐν γῇ φυτὸν εἶδεν. εἰ γὰρ ἦν ὡς πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἀγαγεῖν Παρρησίαν ὑπὲρ Ἀλεξάνδρου πρὸς τὴν Τύχην, οὐκ ἂν εἶπε ‘ποῦ σὺ καὶ πότε ταῖς Ἀλεξάνδρου [e] πράξεσιν ὁδὸν ἔδωκας; ποίαν πέτραν ἀναιμωτὶ διὰ σὲ εἷλε; ποίαν πόλιν ἀφρούρητον αὐτῷ παρέδωκας ἢ ποίαν ἄνοπλον φάλαγγα; τίς εὑρέθη βασιλεὺς ῥᾴθυμος ἢ στρατηγὸς ἀμελὴς ἢ κοιμώμενος πυλωρός; ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ εὔβατος [341] [a] ποταμὸς οὐδὲ χειμὼν μέτριος οὐδὲ θέρος ἄλυπον. ἄπιθι πρὸς Ἀντίοχον τὸν Σελεύκου, πρὸς Ἀρτοξέρξην τὸν Κύρου ἀδελφόν· ἄπελθε πρὸς Πτολεμαῖον τὸν Φιλάδελφον. ἐκείνους ζῶντες οἱ πατέρες βασιλεῖς ἀνηγόρευσαν, ἐκεῖνοι μάχας ἀδακρύτους ἐνίκων, ἐκεῖνοι πανηγυρίζοντες ἐν πομπαῖς καὶ θεάτροις διετέλεσαν, ἐκείνων ἕκαστος δι’ εὐτυχίαν βασιλεύων ἐγήρασεν. Ἀλεξάνδρου δ’ εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο, τὸ σῶμ’ ἰδοῦ κατατετρωμένον· ἐξ ἄκρας κεφαλῆς ἄχρι ποδῶν διακέκοπται καὶ περιτέθλασται τυπτόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων (Hom. Λ 265. 541) ‘ἔγχεΐ τ’ ἄορί τε μεγάλοισί τε χερμαδίοισιν·’ ἐπὶ Γρανίκου ξίφει διακοπεὶς τὸ κράνος [b] ἄχρι τῶν τριχῶν, ἐν Γάζῃ βέλει πληγεὶς τὸν ὦμον, ἐν Μαρακάνδοις τοξεύματι τὴν κνήμην ὥστε τῆς κερκίδος τὸ ὀστέον ἀποκλασθὲν ὑπὸ τῆς πληγῆς ἐξαλέγθαι· περὶ τὴν Ὑρκανίαν λίθῳ τὸν τράχηλον, ἐξ οὗ καὶ τὰς ὄψεις ἀμαυρωθεὶς ἐφ’ ἡμέρας πολλὰς ἐν φόβῳ πηρώσεως ἐγένετο· πρὸς Ἀσσακάνοις Ἰνδικῷ βέλει τὸ σφυρόν, ὅτε καὶ πρὸς τοὺς κόλακας εἶπεν ἐπιμειδιάσας ‘τουτὶ μὲν αἷμα, οὐκ (Hom. Ε 340) ‘ἰχώρ, οἷός πέρ τε ῥέει μακάρεσσι θεοῖσιν’·’ ἐν Ἰσσῷ ξίφει τὸν μηρόν, ὡς Χάρης (fr. 1) φησίν, ὑπὸ Δαρείου τοῦ βασιλέως εἰς χεῖρας αὐτῷ συνδραμόντος· [c] αὐτὸς δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ἁπλῶς γράφων καὶ μετὰ πάσης ἀληθείας πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον ‘συνέβη δέ μοι’ φησί ‘καὶ αὐτῷ ἐγχειριδίῳ πληγῆναι εἰς τὸν μηρόν· ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἄτοπον οὔτε παραχρῆμα οὔθ’ ὕστερον ἐκ τῆς πληγῆς ἀπήντησεν.’ ἐν Μαλλοῖς τοξεύματι διπήχει διὰ τοῦ θώρακος εἰς τὸ στῆθος· ὑ πελάσας ἔλαβε κατὰ τοῦ αὐχένος, ὡς Ἀριστόβουλος (fr. 28a b) ἱστόρηκε. διαβὰς δὲ τὸν Τάναϊν ἐπὶ τοὺς Σκύθας καὶ τρεψάμενος, ἐδίωξεν ἵππῳ πεντήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν σταδίους, ὑπὸ διαρροίας ἐνοχλούμενος.

Εὖγ’, ὦ Τύχη, τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον αὔξεις καὶ μέγαν ποιεῖς, διορύττουσα πανταχόθεν, ὑπερείπουσα, πᾶν μέρος [d] ἀνοίγουσα τοῦ σώματος· οὐχ ὥσπερ ἡ Ἀθηνᾶ πρὸ τοῦ Μενελάου (Hom. Δ 129) τὸ βέλος εἰς τὰ καρτερώτατα τῶν ὅπλων ὑπάγουσα θώρακι καὶ μίτρᾳ καὶ ζωστῆρι τῆς πληγῆς τὸν τόνον ἀφεῖλε θιγούσης τοῦ σώματος, ὅσον αἵματι πρόφασιν ῥυῆναι, ἀλλὰ γυμνὰ παρέχουσα τοῖς βέλεσι τὰ καίρια, καὶ δι’ ὀστέων ἐλαύνουσα τὰς πληγάς, καὶ περιτρέχουσα κύκλῳ τὸ σῶμα, καὶ πολιορκοῦσα τὰς ὄψεις, τὰς βάσεις, ἐμποδίζουσα τὰς διώξεις, περισπῶσα τὰς νίκας, ἀνατρέπουσα τὰς ἐλπίδας.’ ἐμοὶ μὲν οὐδεὶς βαρυτέρᾳ δοκεῖ κεχρῆσθαι Τύχῃ τῶν βασιλέων, καίτοι πολλοῖς ἐνέπεσε σκληρὰ καὶ βάσκανος· ἀλλ’ ὡς σκηπτὸς [e] ἀπέκοψε τοὺς ἄλλους καὶ διέφθειρε, πρὸς δ’ Ἀλέξανδρον αὐτῆς τὸ δυσμενὲς γέγονε φιλόνεικον καὶ δύσερι καὶ δυσεκβίαστον, ὥσπερ πρὸς τὸν Ἡρακλέα. ποίους γὰρ Τυφῶνας ἢ πελωρίους γίγαντας οὐκ ἀνέστησεν ἀνταγωνιστὰς ἐπ’ αὐτόν; ἢ τίνας οὐκ ὠχύρωσε τῶν πολεμίων πλήθεσιν ὅπλων ἢ βάθεσι ποταμῶν ἢ τραχύτησι κρημνῶν ἢ θηρίων ἀλκαῖς ἀλλοφύλων; εἰ δὲ μὴ μέγ’ ἦν τὸ Ἀλεξάνδρου φρόνημα μηδ’ ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς ὁρμώμενον μεγάλης ἐξανέφερε καὶ διηρείδετο πρὸς τὴν Τύχην, οὐκ ἂν ἔκαμε καὶ ἀπηγόρευσε παραταττόμενος ἐξοπλιζόμενος πολιορκῶν διώκων Βάκτρα Μαράκανδα Σογδιανούς, [f] μετακαλούμενος ἀποστάσεσι μυρίαις, ἀποτροπαῖς σκιρτήσεσιν ἐθνῶν, βασιλέων ἀφηνιασμοῖς, ἐν ἔθνεσιν ἀπίστοις καὶ ἐπιβούλοις ὕδραν τέμνων ἀεί τισι πολέμοις ἐπιβλαστάνουσαν;

Ἄτοπόν τι δόξω λέγειν, ἐρῶ δ’ ἀληθές· μικροῦ διὰ τὴν Τύχην Ἀλέξανδρος ἀπώλεσε τὸ δοκεῖν Ἄμμωνος εἶναι. τίς γὰρ ἐκ θεῶν γεγονὼς ἐπισφαλεῖς οὕτω καὶ πολυπόνους καὶ τλήμονας ἐξεμόχθησεν ἄθλους πλὴν ὁ [342] [a] Διὸς Ἡρακλῆς; ἀλλ’ ἐκείνῳ μὲν εἷς ἀνὴρ ὑβριστὴς ἐπέταττε λέοντας αἱρεῖν καὶ κάπρους διώκειν καὶ σοβεῖν ὄρνιθας, ἵνα μὴ σχολάζῃ τοῖς μείζοσι περιιών, Ἀνταίους κολάζειν καὶ Βουσίριδας παύειν μιαιφονοῦντας· Ἀλεξάνδρῳ δ’ ἐπέταττε μὲν ἡ Ἀρετὴ τὸν βασιλικὸν καὶ θεῖον ἆθλον, οὗ τέλος ἦν οὐ χρυσὸς ὑπὸ μυρίων καμήλων παρακομιζόμενος οὐδὲ τρυφαὶ Μηδικαὶ καὶ τράπεζαι καὶ γυναῖκες οὐδὲ Χαλυβώνιος οἶνος οὐδ’ Ὑρκανικοὶ ἰχθύες, ἀλλ’ ἑνὶ κόσμῳ κοσμήσαντα πάντας ἀνθρώπους μιᾶς ὑπηκόους ἡγεμονίας καὶ μιᾶς ἐθάδας διαίτης καταστῆσαι.

[b] τοῦτον ἐκ παιδὸς ἔμφυτον ἔχων ἔρωτα συντρεφόμενον καὶ συναυξανόμενον, ὡς ἀφίκοντο πρέσβεις παρὰ τοῦ Περσῶν βασιλέως πρὸς Φίλιππον, ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἔνδημος ἦν, φιλοφρονούμενος καὶ ξενίζων αὐτοὺς Ἀλέξανδρος οὐδὲν ἠρώτα παιδικόν, οἷον οἱ ἄλλοι, περὶ τῆς χρυσῆς ἀναδενδράδος ἢ τῶν κρεμαστῶν κήπων ἢ πῶς ὁ βασιλεὺς κεκόσμηται, ἀλλ’ ὅλος ἐν τοῖς κυριωτάτοις ἦν τῆς ἡγεμονίας, διαπυνθανόμενος πόση δύναμις ἡ Περσῶν, ποῦ τεταγμένος βασιλεὺς ἐν ταῖς μάχαις διαγωνίζεται (καθάπερ Ὀδυσσεὺς ἐκεῖνος (Hom. Κ 407) ‘ποῦ δέ οἱ ἔντεα κεῖται ἀρήια, ποῦ δέ οἱ ἵπποι;’), τίνες ὁδοὶ βραχύταται τοῖς ἄνω [c] πορευομένοις ἀπὸ θαλάττης· ὥστε τοὺς ξένους ἐκπεπλῆχθαι καὶ λέγειν ὡς ‘ὁ παῖς οὗτος βασιλεὺς μέγας, ὁ δ’ ἡμέτερος πλούσιος.’ ἐπεὶ δὲ Φιλίππου τελευτήσαντος ὥρμητο διαβαλεῖν καὶ ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἤδη καὶ ταῖς παρασκευαῖς ἐμπεφυκὼς ἔσπευδεν ἅψασθαι τῆς Ἀσίας, ἐνίστατο δὴ ἡ Τύχη καὶ ἀπέστρεφε καὶ ἀνθεῖλκεν ὀπίσω καὶ μυρίας περιέβαλλεν ἀσχολίας καὶ διατριβὰς ἐπιλαμβανομένη· ‹ἣ› πρῶτον αὐτῷ τὰ βαρβαρικὰ τῶν προσοίκων διετάραξεν, Ἰλλυρικοὺς καὶ Τριβαλλικοὺς μηχανωμένη πολέμους· οἷς μέχρι Σκυθίας τῆς παρ’ Ἴστρον ἀποσπασθεὶς [d] ἀπὸ τῶν ἄνω πράξεων καὶ περιδραμὼν καὶ κατεργασάμενος πάντα κινδύνοις καὶ ἀγῶσι μεγάλοις, αὖθις ὥρμητο καὶ ἔσπευδε πρὸς τὴν διάβασιν [πάλιν]· ἡ δὲ πάλιν αὐτῷ τὰς Θήβας ἐνέσεισε καὶ πόλεμον Ἑλληνικὸν ἐμποδὼν κατέβαλε, καὶ δεινὴν πρὸς ἄνδρας ὁμοφύλους καὶ συγγενεῖς διὰ φόνου καὶ σιδήρου καὶ πυρὸς ἀνάγκην ἀμύνης, ἀτερπέστατον τέλος ἔχουσαν. ἐκ τούτου διέβαινεν, ὡς μὲν Φύλαρχός φησιν, ἡμερῶν τριάκοντ’ ἔχων ἐφόδιον, ὡς δ’ Ἀριστόβουλος, ἑβδομήκοντα τάλαντα· τῶν δ’ οἴκοι κτημάτων καὶ προσόδων βασιλικῶν διένειμε τὰς πλείστας τοῖς ἑταίροις, μόνος δὲ Περδίκκας οὐδὲν [e] ἔλαβε διδόντος, ἀλλ’ ἠρώτησε ‘σαυτῷ δὲ τί καταλείπεις, Ἀλέξανδρε;’ τοῦ δ’ εἰπόντος ὅτι ‘τὰς ἐλπίδας’, ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ἡμεῖς τούτων μεθέξομεν· οὐ γὰρ δίκαιον τὰ σὰ λαμβάνειν ἀλλὰ τὰ Δαρείου περιμένειν.’

Τίνες οὖν ἦσαν ‹αἱ› ἐλπίδες, ἐφ’ αἷς διέβαινεν εἰς Ἀσίαν Ἀλέξανδρος; οὐ τείχεσι πόλεων μυριάνδρων ἐκμετρουμένη δύναμις οὐδὲ στόλοι δι’ ὀρῶν πλέοντες, οὐδὲ μάστιγες οὐδὲ πέδαι, μανικὰ καὶ βάρβαρα κολαστήρια θαλάσσης, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν ἐκτὸς ἐν ὀλίγοις ὅπλοις φιλοτιμία πολλὴ καὶ ζῆλος ἡλικίας παραλλήλου καὶ ἅμιλλα περὶ δόξης καὶ ἀρετῆς ἑταίρων· αὐτὸς δ’ εἶχεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ [f] τὰς μεγάλας ἐλπίδας, εὐσέβειαν περὶ θεοὺς πίστιν πρὸς φίλους, εὐτέλειαν ἐγκράτειαν εὐποιίαν, ἀφοβίαν πρὸς θάνατον εὐψυχίαν, φιλανθρωπίαν ὁμιλίαν εὐάρμοστον, ἀψευδὲς ἦθος εὐστάθειαν ἐν βουλαῖς τάχος ἐν πράξεσιν, ἔρωτα δόξης προαίρεσιν ἐν τῷ καλῷ τελεσιουργόν. Ὅμηρος μὲν γὰρ οὐ πρεπόντως οὐδὲ πιθανῶς τὸ Ἀγαμέμνονος κάλλος ἐκ τριῶν συνήρμοσεν εἰκόνων ὁμοιώσας, (Hom. Β 478)

[343] [a] ‘ὄμματα καὶ κεφαλὴν ἴκελος Διὶ τερπικεραύνῳ,

Ἄρεϊ δὲ ζώνην, στέρνον δὲ Ποσειδάωνι.’

τὴν δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου φύσιν, εἴπερ ἐκ πολλῶν συνήρμοσε καὶ συνέθηκεν ἀρετῶν ὁ γεννήσας θεός, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν εἴποιμεν ἔχειν φρόνημα μὲν τὸ Κύρου, σωφροσύνην δὲ τὴν Ἀγησιλάου, σύνεσιν δὲ τὴν Θεμιστοκλέους, ἐμπειρίαν δὲ τὴν Φιλίππου, τόλμαν δὲ τὴν Βρασίδου, δεινότητα δὲ καὶ πολιτείαν τὴν Περικλέους; τῶν δ’ ἔτι παλαιοτέρων σωφρονέστερος μὲν Ἀγαμέμνονος· ὁ μὲν γὰρ προύκρινε τῆς γαμετῆς τὴν αἰχμάλωτον, ὁ δὲ καὶ πρὶν ἢ γῆμαι τῶν [b] ἁλισκομένων ἀπείχετο. μεγαλοψυχότερος δ’ Ἀχιλλέως· ὁ μὲν γὰρ χρημάτων ὀλίγων τὸν Ἕκτορος νεκρὸν ἀπελύτρωσεν, ὁ δὲ πολλοῖς χρήμασι Δαρεῖον ἔθαψε· καὶ ὁ μὲν παρὰ τῶν φίλων δῶρα καὶ μισθὸν ἀντὶ τῆς ὀργῆς διαλλαγεὶς ἔλαβεν, ὁ δὲ τοὺς πολεμίους κρατῶν ἐπλούτιζεν. εὐσεβέστερος δὲ Διομήδους· ὁ μὲν γὰρ μάχεσθαι θεοῖς ἦν ἕτοιμος, ὁ δὲ πάντα τοὺς θεοὺς ἐνόμιζε κατορθοῦν. ποθεινότερος δὲ τοῖς προσήκουσιν Ὀδυσσέως· ἐκείνου μὲν γὰρ ἡ τεκοῦσα διὰ λύπην ἀπέθανε, τούτῳ δ’ ἡ τοῦ πολεμίου μήτηρ ὑπ’ εὐνοίας συναπέθανε.

Τὸ δ’ ὅλον, εἰ μὲν καὶ Σόλων διὰ Τύχην ἐπολιτεύσατο [c] καὶ Μιλτιάδης διὰ Τύχην ἐστρατήγησε καὶ Ἀριστείδης ἀπὸ Τύχης ἦν δίκαιος, οὐδὲν ἄρα τῆς Ἀρετῆς ἔργον ἐστίν, ἀλλ’ ὄνομα τοῦτο καὶ λόγος ἔχων δόξαν ἄλλως διέξεισι τοῦ βίου, πλαττόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν σοφιστῶν καὶ τῶν νομοθετῶν. εἰ δὲ τούτων καὶ τῶν ὁμοίων ἀνδρῶν ἕκαστος πένης μὲν ἢ πλούσιος ἢ ἀσθενὴς ἢ ἰσχυρὸς ἢ ἄμορφος ἢ καλὸς ἢ εὔγηρως ἢ ὠκύμορος διὰ τύχην γέγονε, μέγαν δὲ στρατηγὸν καὶ μέγαν νομοθέτην καὶ μέγαν ἐν ἀρχαῖς καὶ πολιτείαις ἕκαστος ἑαυτὸν ἀρετῇ καὶ λόγῳ παρέσχηκε, φέρε θεῶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἅπασι παραβάλλων. Σόλων χρεῶν ἀποκοπὴν ἐν Ἀθήναις ἐποίησε, [d] σεισάχθειαν προσαγορεύσας· Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ τὰ χρέα τοῖς δανείσασιν ὑπὲρ τῶν ὀφειλόντων αὐτὸς ἐξέτισε. Περικλῆς φορολογήσας τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐκ τῶν χρημάτων ἐκόσμησεν ἱεροῖς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν· Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ τὰ τῶν Βαρβάρων χρήματα λαβὼν ἔπεμψεν εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα, ναοὺς τοῖς θεοῖς ἀπὸ μυρίων ταλάντων οἰκοδομῆσαι κελεύσας. Βρασίδαν ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι περιβόητον ἐποίησε τὸ πρὸς Μεθώνῃ διαδραμεῖν τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν πολεμίων βαλλόμενον παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν· Ἀλεξάνδρου δ’ ἐν Ὀξυδράκαις τὸ δεινὸν ἐκεῖνο πήδημα καὶ ἄπιστον ἀκούουσι καὶ θεωμένοις φοβερόν, ἐκ τειχῶν ἀφέντος ἑαυτὸν εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους [e] δόρασι καὶ βέλεσι καὶ ξίφεσι γυμνοῖς ἐκδεχομένους, τίνι ἄν τις εἰκάσειεν ἢ πυρὶ κεραυνίῳ ῥαγέντι καὶ φερομένῳ μετὰ πνεύματος, οἷον ἐπὶ γῆν κατέσκηψε ‘φάσμα Φοίβου φλογοειδέσιν ὅπλοις’ περιλαμπόμενον; οἱ δὲ τὸ πρῶτον ἐκπλαγέντες ἅμα φρίκῃ διέτρεσαν καὶ ἀνεχώρησαν, εἶθ’ ὡς ἑώρων ἄνθρωπον ἕνα πολλοῖς ἐπιφερόμενον, ἀντέστησαν. ἐνταῦθ’ ἄρ’ ἡ Τύχη μεγάλα καὶ λαμπρὰ διέφηνεν ἔργα τῆς πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον εὐμενείας, ὅτ’ αὐτὸν μὲν εἰς χωρίον ἄσημον καὶ βάρβαρον ἐμβαλοῦσα κατέκλεισε καὶ περιετείχισε, τοὺς δ’ ὑπὸ σπουδῆς ἐπιβοηθοῦντας [f] ἔξωθεν καὶ τῶν τειχῶν ἐφιεμένους, κλάσασα καὶ συντρίψασα τὰς κλίμακας, ὑπεσκέλισε καὶ κατεκρήμνισε. τριῶν δ’ οἵπερ ἔφθησαν μόνοι τοῦ τείχους λαβέσθαι καὶ καθέντες ἑαυτοὺς παραστῆναι τῷ βασιλεῖ, τὸν μὲν εὐθὺς ἀνήρπασε καὶ προανεῖλεν, ὁ δὲ τοξεύμασι πολλοῖς διαπεπαρμένος, ὅσον ὁρᾶν καὶ συναισθάνεσθαι μόνον ἀπεῖχε [344] [a] τοῦ τεθνάναι· κεναὶ δ’ ἔξωθεν προσδρομαὶ καὶ ἀλαλαγμοὶ Μακεδόνων, οὐ μηχανῆς τινος οὐκ ὀργάνων παρόντων, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ σπουδῆς ξίφεσι τυπτόντων τὰ τείχη καὶ χερσὶ γυμναῖς περιρρῆξαι καὶ μονονοὺ διαφαγεῖν βιαζομένων. ὁ δ’ εὐτυχὴς βασιλεὺς καὶ ὑπὸ τῆς Τύχης φυλαττόμενος ἀεὶ καὶ δορυφορούμενος, ὥσπερ θηρίον ἄρκυσιν ἐνσχεθείς, ἔρημος καὶ ἀβοήθητος, οὐχ ὑπὲρ Σούσων οὐδὲ Βαβυλῶνος οὐδὲ ‹τοῦ› Βάκτρα λαβεῖν οὐδὲ τοῦ μεγάλου Πώρου κρατῆσαι (τοῖς γὰρ ἐνδόξοις καὶ μεγάλοις ἀγῶσι, κἂν δυστυχῶνται, τὸ γοῦν αἰσχρὸν οὐ πρόσεστιν)· ἀλλ’ οὕτω δύσερις ἦν καὶ βάσκανος ἡ Τύχη καὶ φιλοβάρβαρος [b] καὶ μισαλέξανδρος, ὥστε μὴ τὸ σῶμα μόνον αὐτοῦ μηδὲ τὸν βίον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἀνελεῖν ὅσον ἐφ’ ἑαυτῇ καὶ διαφθεῖραι τὴν εὔκλειαν. οὐ γὰρ παρ’ Εὐφράτην Ἀλέξανδρον ἢ Ὑδάσπην πεσόντα κεῖσθαι δεινὸν ἦν, οὐδ’ ἀγεννὲς ἐν χερσὶ Δαρείου γενόμενον καὶ ἵπποις καὶ ξίφεσι καὶ κοπίσι Περσῶν ἀμυνομένων ὑπὲρ τοῦ βασιλέως ἀποθανεῖν· οὐδὲ τῶν Βαβυλῶνος ἐπιβαίνοντα τειχῶν σφαλῆναι καὶ πεσεῖν ἀπ’ ἐλπίδος μεγάλης. οὕτω Πελοπίδας καὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδας· ἀρετῆς ὁ τούτων θάνατος ἦν, οὐ δυστυχίας ἐπὶ τηλικούτοις. τῆς δὲ νῦν ἐξεταζομένης Τύχης [c] οἷον τὸ ἔργον, ‹ἐν› ἐσχατιᾷ βαρβάρου παραποταμίας καὶ τείχεσιν ἀδόξου πολίχνης περιβαλούσης καὶ ἀποκρυψάσης τὸν τῆς οἰκουμένης βασιλέα καὶ κύριον ὅπλοις ἀτίμοις καὶ σκεύεσι τοῖς παρατυχοῦσι τυπτόμενον καὶ βαλλόμενον ἀπολέσθαι. καὶ γὰρ κοπίδι τὴν κεφαλὴν διὰ τοῦ κράνους ἐπλήγη, καὶ βέλει τις ἀπὸ τόξου τὸν θώρακα διέκοψεν, οὗ τοῖς περὶ τὸν μαστὸν ἐνερεισθέντος ὀστέοις καὶ καταπαγέντος ὁ μὲν καυλὸς ἐξεῖχε βαρύνων, τῆς δ’ ἀκίδος ὁ σίδηρος τεσσάρων δακτύλων εὖρος ἔσχε καὶ πέντε μῆκος. ἔσχατον δὲ τῶν δεινῶν, ὁ μὲν ἠμύνετο τοὺς κατὰ στόμα καὶ τὸν βαλόντα καὶ πελάσαι τολμήσαντα μετὰ ξίφους [d] αὐτὸς τῷ ἐγχειριδίῳ φθάσας κατέβαλε καὶ ἀπέκτεινεν· ἐν τούτῳ δέ τις δραμὼν ἐκ μυλῶνος ὑπέρῳ κατὰ τοῦ αὐχένος ὄπισθεν πληγὴν κατήνεγκεν, ἣ συνέχεε τὴν αἴσθησιν αὐτοῦ σκοτωθέντος· ἡ δ’ Ἀρετὴ παρῆν, θάρσος μὲν αὐτῷ ῥώμην δὲ καὶ σπουδὴν τοῖς περὶ αὐτὸν ἐμποιοῦσα. Λιμναῖοι γὰρ καὶ Πτολεμαῖοι καὶ Λεοννάτοι, καὶ ὅσοι τὸ τεῖχος ὑπερκαταβάντες ἢ ῥήξαντες ἔστησαν πρὸ αὐτοῦ, τεῖχος ἀρετῆς ἦσαν, εὐνοίᾳ καὶ φιλίᾳ τοῦ βασιλέως τὰ σώματα καὶ τὰ πρόσωπα καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς προβαλλόμενοι. οὐ γὰρ διὰ Τύχην ἀγαθῶν βασιλέων ἑταῖροι προαποθνήσκουσιν ἑκουσίως καὶ προκινδυνεύουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἔρωτι τῆς [e] Ἀρετῆς ὥσπερ ὑπὸ φίλτρων μέλιτται τῷ ἄρχοντι προσέχονται καὶ προσπεφύκασι. τίς οὖν οὐκ ἂν εἴποι τότε παρὼν ἀκίνδυνος θεατής, ὅτι Τύχης μέγαν ἀγῶνα κατ’ Ἀρετῆς θεᾶται, καὶ τὸ μὲν βάρβαρον παρ’ ἀξίαν ἐπικρατεῖ διὰ Τύχην, τὸ δ’ Ἑλληνικὸν ἀντέχει παρὰ δύναμιν δι’ Ἀρετήν, κἂν μὲν ἐκεῖνοι περιγένωνται, Τύχης καὶ δαίμονος φθονεροῦ καὶ νεμέσεως ἔσται τὸ ἔργον· ἂν δ’ οὗτοι κρατήσωσιν, Ἀρετὴ καὶ τόλμα καὶ φιλία καὶ πίστις ἐξοίσεται τὸ νικητήριον; ταῦτα γὰρ μόνα παρῆν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, τῆς δ’ ἄλλης δυνάμεως καὶ παρασκευῆς στόλων καὶ [f] ἵππων καὶ στρατοπέδων μέσον ἔθηκεν ἡ Τύχη τὸ τεῖχος. ἐτρέψαντο μὲν οὖν τοὺς βαρβάρους οἱ Μακεδόνες, καὶ πεσοῦσιν αὐτοῖς ἐπικατέσκαψαν τὴν πόλιν. Ἀλεξάνδρῳ δ’ οὐδὲν ἦν ὄφελος· ‹ἀν›ήρπαστο γὰρ μετὰ τοῦ βέλους, καὶ τὸν κάλαμον ἐν τοῖς σπλάγχνοις εἶχε, καὶ δεσμὸς ἦν αὐτῷ καὶ ἧλος τὸ τόξευμα τοῦ θώρακος πρὸς τὸ σῶμα. καὶ [345] [a] σπάσαι μὲν ὥσπερ ἐκ ῥίζης τοῦ τραύματος βιαζομένοις οὐχ ὑπήκουεν ὁ σίδηρος, ἕδραν ἔχων τὰ πρὸ τῆς καρδίας στερεὰ τοῦ στήθους· ἐκπρῖσαι δὲ τοῦ δόνακος οὐκ ἐθάρρουν τὸ προῦχον, ἀλλ’ ἐφοβοῦντο, μήπως σπαραγμῷ σχιζόμενον τὸ ὀστέον ὑπερβολὰς ἀλγηδόνων παράσχῃ καὶ ῥῆξις αἵματος ἐκ βάθους γένηται. πολλὴν δ’ ἀπορίαν καὶ διατριβὴν ὁρῶν αὐτὸς ἐπεχείρησεν ἐν χρῷ τοῦ σώματος ἀποτέμνειν τῷ ξιφιδίῳ τὸν οἰστόν· ἠτόνει δ’ ἡ χεὶρ καὶ βάρος εἶχε ναρκῶδες ὑπὸ φλεγμονῆς τοῦ τραύματος. ἐκέλευεν οὖν ἅπτεσθαι καὶ μὴ δεδιέναι θαρρύνων τοὺς [b] ἀτρώτους· καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἐλοιδορεῖτο κλαίουσι καὶ περιπαθοῦσι, τοὺς δὲ λιποτάκτας ἀπεκάλει, μὴ τολμῶντας αὐτῷ βοηθεῖν· ἐβόα δὲ πρὸς τοὺς ἑταίρους ‘μηδεὶς ἔστω μηδ’ ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ δειλός· ἀπιστοῦμαι μὴ φοβεῖσθαι θάνατον, εἰ τὸν ἐμὸν φοβεῖσθ’ ὑμεῖς.’

De gloria Atheniensium

ΠΟΤΕΡΟΝ ΑΘΗΝΑΙΟΙ ΚΑΤΑ ΠΟΛΕΜΟΝ Η ΚΑΤΑ ΣΟΦΙΑΝ ΕΝΔΟΞΟΤΕΡΟΙ

[345] Ταῦτ’ ὀρθῶς μὲν ἐκεῖνος εἶπε πρὸς τοὺς μεθ’ ἑαυτὸν στρατηγούς, οἷς πάροδον ἐπὶ τὰς ὕστερον πράξεις ἔδωκεν ἐξελάσας τὸν βάρβαρον καὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδ’ ἐλευθερώσας· ὀρθῶς δ’ εἰρήσεται καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἐπὶ τοῖς λόγοις μέγα φρονοῦντας· ἂν γὰρ ἀνέλῃς τοὺς πράττοντας, οὐχ ἕξεις τοὺς γράφοντας. ἄνελε τὴν Περικλέους πολιτείαν [d] καὶ τὰ ναύμαχα πρὸς Ῥίῳ Φορμίωνος τρόπαια καὶ τὰς περὶ Κύθηρα καὶ Μέγαρα καὶ Κόρινθον ἀνδραγαθίας Νικίου καὶ τὴν Δημοσθένους Πύλον καὶ τοὺς Κλέωνος τετρακοσίους αἰχμαλώτους καὶ Τολμίδαν Πελοπόννησον περιπλέοντα καὶ Μυρωνίδην νικῶντα Βοιωτοὺς ἐν Οἰνοφύτοις, καὶ Θουκυδίδης σοι διαγέγραπται. ἄνελε τὰ περὶ Ἑλλήσποντον Ἀλκιβιάδου νεανιεύματα καὶ τὰ πρὸς Λέσβον Θρασύλλου καὶ τὴν ὑπὸ Θηραμένους τῆς ὀλιγαρχίας κατάλυσιν καὶ Θρασύβουλον καὶ Ἀρχῖνον καὶ τοὺς ἀπὸ Φυλῆς ἑβδομήκοντα κατὰ τῆς Σπαρτιατῶν ἡγεμονίας ἀνισταμένους καὶ Κόνωνα πάλιν ἐμβιβάζοντα τὰς Ἀθήνας εἰς [e] τὴν θάλατταν, καὶ Κράτιππος ἀνῄρηται. Ξενοφῶν μὲν γὰρ αὐτὸς ἑαυτοῦ γέγονεν ἱστορία, γράψας, ἃ ἐστρατήγησε καὶ κατώρθωσε, [καὶ] Θεμιστογένει περὶ τούτων συντετάχθαι τῷ Συρακοσίῳ, ἵνα πιστότερος ᾖ διηγούμενος ἑαυτὸν ὡς ἄλλον, ἑτέρῳ τὴν τῶν λόγων δόξαν χαριζόμενος· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι πάντες ἱστορικοί, Κλει[νό]δημοι Δίυλ‹λ›οι Φιλόχορος Φύλαρχος, ἀλλοτρίων γεγόνασιν ἔργων ὥσπερ δραμάτων ὑποκριταί, τὰς τῶν στρατηγῶν καὶ βασιλέων πράξεις διατιθέμενοι καὶ ταῖς ἐκείνων ὑποδυόμενοι μνήμαις, ἵν’ ὡς αὐγῆς τινος καὶ φωτὸς μετάσχωσιν.

[f] ἀνακλᾶται γὰρ ἀπὸ τῶν πραττόντων ἐπὶ τοὺς γράφοντας καὶ ἀναλάμπει δόξης εἴδωλον ἀλλοτρίας, ἐμφαινομένης διὰ τῶν λόγων τῆς πράξεως ὡς ἐν ἐσόπτρῳ.

Πολλῶν μὲν δὴ καὶ ἄλλων ἡ πόλις ἥδε μήτηρ καὶ τροφὸς εὐμενὴς τεχνῶν γέγονε, τὰς μὲν εὑραμένη καὶ ἀναφήνασα πρώτη, ταῖς δὲ δύναμιν προσθεῖσα καὶ τιμὴν καὶ αὔξησιν· οὐχ ἥκιστα δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῆς ζωγραφία προῆκται [346] [a] καὶ κεκόσμηται. καὶ γὰρ Ἀπολλόδωρος ὁ ζωγράφος, ἀνθρώπων πρῶτος ἐξευρὼν φθορὰν καὶ ἀπόχρωσιν σκιᾶς, Ἀθηναῖος ἦν· οὗ τοῖς ἔργοις ἐπιγέγραπται ‘μωμήσεταί τις μᾶλλον ἢ μιμήσεται.’ καὶ Εὐφράνωρ καὶ Νικίας καὶ Ἀσκληπιόδωρος καὶ Πλεισταίνετος ὁ Φειδίου ἀδελφός, οἱ μὲν στρατηγοὺς ἔγραψαν νικῶντας, οἱ δὲ μάχας, οἱ δ’ ἥρωας· ὥσπερ Εὐφράνωρ τὸν Θησέα τὸν ἑαυτοῦ τῷ Παρρασίου παρέβαλε, λέγων τὸν μὲν ἐκείνου ῥόδα βεβρωκέναι, τὸν δ’ ἑαυτοῦ κρέα βόεια. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι γλαφυρῶς ὁ Παρρασίου γέγραπται καὶ πεποίηται καί τι προσέοικε.’ τὸν δ’ Εὐφράνορος ἰδών τις εἶπεν οὐκ ἀφυῶς

[b] ‘δῆμον Ἐρεχθῆος μεγαλήτορος, ὅν ποτ’ Ἀθήνη

θρέψε Διὸς θυγάτηρ.’ (Hom. Β 547)

γέγραφε δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐν Μαντινείᾳ πρὸς Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ἱππομαχίαν οὐκ ἀνενθουσιάστως Εὐφράνωρ. τὸ δ’ ἔργον ἔσχεν οὕτως· Ἐπαμεινώνδας Θηβαῖος ἀπὸ τῆς ἐν Λεύκτροις μάχης ἀρθεὶς μέγας ἐπεμβῆναι τῇ Σπάρτῃ πεσούσῃ καὶ πατῆσαι τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς πόλεως ἠθέλησε. καὶ πρῶτα μὲν ἐμβαλὼν ἑπτὰ μυριάσι στρατοῦ διεπόρθησε τὴν χώραν καὶ τοὺς περιοίκους ἀπέστησεν αὐτῶν· ἔπειτα περὶ Μαντίνειαν ἀντιτεταγμένους εἰς μάχην [c] προυκαλεῖτο. μὴ βουλομένων δὲ μηδὲ τολμώντων, ἀλλὰ τὴν Ἀθήνηθεν ἐπικουρίαν ἐκδεχομένων, νυκτὸς ἄρας καὶ λαθὼν ἅπαντας εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν κατέβη, καὶ μικρὸν ἔφθη τὴν πόλιν ἔρημον ἐξ ἐφόδου λαβεῖν καὶ κατασχεῖν. αἰσθομένων δὲ τῶν συμμάχων καὶ βοηθείας ‹κατὰ› τάχος πρὸς τὴν πόλιν γενομένης, ὕπειξε μὲν ὡς αὖθις ἐπὶ λεηλασίαν καὶ φθορὰν τῆς χώρας τρεψόμενος, ἐξαπατήσας δὲ καὶ κατακοιμίσας οὕτω τοὺς πολεμίους ἀνέζευξε νυκτὸς ἐκ τῆς Λακωνικῆς· καὶ διαδραμὼν [εἰς] τὴν μεταξὺ χώραν ἐπεφαίνετο τοῖς Μαντινεῦσιν ἀπροσδόκητος διαβουλευομένοις [αὐτοῖς] ἀκμὴν τοῦ πέμπειν τὴν εἰς [d] Λακεδαίμονα βοήθειαν καὶ εὐθέως ὁπλίζεσθαι προσέταξε τοῖς Θηβαίοις. οἱ μὲν οὖν Θηβαῖοι μέγα φρονοῦντες ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ἐπεφέροντο καὶ περιελάμβανον κύκλῳ τὰ τείχη· τῶν δὲ Μαντινέων ἔκπληξις ἦν καὶ ἀλαλαγμὸς καὶ διαδρομή, ὡς ῥεῦμα τὴν δύναμιν ἀθρόαν ἐμπίπτουσαν ‹ἀπ›ώσασθαι μὴ δυναμένων μηδ’ ἐπινοούντων βοήθειαν. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ καιροῦ καὶ τύχης Ἀθηναῖοι κατέβαινον ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων εἰς τὴν Μαντινικήν, οὐκ εἰδότες τὴν ῥοπὴν οὐδὲ τὴν ὀξύτητα τοῦ ἀγῶνος, ἀλλ’ ὁδῷ πορευόμενοι καθ’ ἡσυχίαν· ὡς δέ τις αὐτῶν ἐκδραμὼν ἀπήγγειλε τὸν [e] κίνδυνον, ὀλίγοι μὲν ὄντες ὡς πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος τῶν πολεμίων, ἐξ ὁδοῦ δὲ κεκμηκότες, οὐδενὸς δὲ τῶν ἄλλων συμμάχων παρόντος, ὅμως εὐθὺς εἰς τάξιν καθίσταντο τοῖς πλείστοις. οἱ δ’ ἱππεῖς διασκευασάμενοι καὶ προεξελάσαντες ὑπὸ τὰς πύλας αὐτὰς καὶ τὸ τεῖχος ἔθεντο καρτερὰν ἱππομαχίαν· καὶ κρατήσαντες ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν τοῦ Ἐπαμεινώνδα ἀφείλοντο τὴν Μαντίνειαν. τοῦτο τὸ ἔργον Εὐφράνωρ ἔγραψε, καὶ πάρεστιν ὁρᾶν ἐν εἰκόνι τῆς μάχης τὸ σύρρηγμα καὶ τὴν ἀντέρεισιν ἀλκῆς καὶ θυμοῦ καὶ πνεύματος γέμουσαν. ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἂν οἶμαι τῷ ζωγράφῳ [f] κρίσιν προθείητε πρὸς τὸν στρατηγὸν οὐδ’ ἀνάσχοισθε τῶν προτιμώντων τὸν πίνακα τοῦ τροπαίου καὶ τὸ μίμημα τῆς ἀληθείας.

Πλὴν ὁ Σιμωνίδης τὴν μὲν ζωγραφίαν ποίησιν σιωπῶσαν προσαγορεύει, τὴν δὲ ποίησιν ζωγραφίαν λαλοῦσαν. ἃς γὰρ οἱ ζωγράφοι πράξεις ὡς γινομένας δεικνύουσι, ταύτας οἱ λόγοι γεγενημένας διηγοῦνται καὶ [347] [a] συγγράφουσιν. εἰ δ’ οἱ μὲν χρώμασι καὶ σχήμασιν οἱ δ’ ὀνόμασι καὶ λέξεσι ταὐτὰ δηλοῦσιν, ὕλῃ καὶ τρόποις μιμήσεως διαφέρουσι, τέλος δ’ ἀμφοτέροις ἓν ὑπόκειται, καὶ τῶν ἱστορικῶν κράτιστος ὁ τὴν διήγησιν ὥσπερ γραφὴν πάθεσι καὶ προσώποις εἰδωλοποιήσας. ὁ γοῦν Θουκυδίδης ἀεὶ τῷ λόγῳ πρὸς ταύτην ἁμιλλᾶται τὴν ἐνάργειαν, οἷον θεατὴν ποιῆσαι τὸν ἀκροατὴν καὶ τὰ γινόμενα περὶ τοὺς ὁρῶντας ἐκπληκτικὰ καὶ ταρακτικὰ πάθη τοῖς ἀναγινώσκουσιν ἐνεργάσασθαι λιχνευόμενος. ὁ γὰρ παρὰ τὴν ῥαχίαν αὐτὴν τῆς Πύλου παρατάττων τοὺς [b] Ἀθηναίους Δημοσθένης, καὶ ὁ τὸν κυβερνήτην ἐπισπέρχων Βρασίδας ἐξοκέλλειν καὶ χωρῶν ἐπὶ τὴν ‹ἀπο›βάθραν καὶ τραυματιζόμενος καὶ λιποψυχῶν καὶ ἀποκλίνων εἰς τὴν παρεξειρεσίαν, καὶ οἱ πεζομαχοῦντες μὲν ἐκ θαλάττης Λακεδαιμόνιοι ναυμαχοῦντες δ’ ἀπὸ γῆς Ἀθηναῖοι· καὶ πάλιν ‘ὁ’ ἐν τοῖς Σικελικοῖς ‘ἐκ τῆς γῆς πεζὸς ἀμφοτέρων, ἰσορρόπου τῆς ναυμαχίας καθεστηκυίας, †ἄλαστον ἀγῶνα καὶ ξύντασιν τῆς γνώμης ἔχων’ διὰ τὰς συντάξεις ως συνεχὲς τῆς ἁμίλλης καὶ τοῖς σώμασιν αὐτοῖς ἴσα [c] τῇ δόξῃ περιδεῶς συναπονεύων’ τῇ διαθέσει καὶ τῇ διατυπώσει τῶν γινομένων γραφικῆς ἐναργείας ως εἰ τοὺς ζωγραφοῦντας οὐκ ἄξιον παραβάλλειν τοῖς στρατηγοῖς, μηδὲ τοὺς ἱστοροῦντας παραβάλλωμεν. τὴν τοίνυν ἐν Μαραθῶνι μάχην ἀπήγγειλεν, ὡς μὲν Ἡρακλείδης ὁ Ποντικὸς (fr. 81) ἱστορεῖ, Θέρσιππος ὁ Ἐρχιεύς· οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι λέγουσιν Εὐκλέα δραμόντα σὺν τοῖς ὅπλοις θερμὸν ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης καὶ ταῖς θύραις ἐμπεσόντα τῶν πρώτων τοσοῦτον μόνον εἰπεῖν ‘χαίρετε’ καὶ ‘χαίρομεν,’ εἶτ’ εὐθὺς ἐκπνεῦσαι. πλὴν οὗτος μὲν αὐτάγγελος ἧκε τῆς μάχης ἀγωνιστὴς γενόμενος. φέρε δ’ εἴ τις ὑπὲρ λόφου [d] τινὸς ἢ σκοπῆς αἰπόλων ἢ βοτήρων τοῦ ἀγῶνος ἄπωθεν γενόμενος θεατὴς καὶ κατιδὼν τὸ μέγα καὶ παντὸς λόγου μεῖζον ἐκεῖνο ἔργον ἧκεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἄτρωτος ἄγγελος καὶ ἀναίμακτος, εἶτ’ ἠξίου τιμὰς ἔχειν ἃς Κυνέγειρος ἔσχεν, ἃς Καλλίμαχος, ἃς Πολύζηλος, ὅτι τὰς τούτων ἀριστείας καὶ τραύματα καὶ θανάτους ἀπήγγειλεν, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐδόκει πᾶσαν ὑπερβάλλειν ἀναίδειαν, ὅπου γε Λακεδαιμονίους φασὶ τῷ τὴν ἐν Μαντινείᾳ φράσαντι νίκην, ἣν Θουκυδίδης ἱστόρηκεν (V 6474), εὐαγγέλιον ἐκ φιδιτίου κρέας ἀποστεῖλαι; καὶ μὴν οἱ συγγράφοντες ἐξάγγελοί τινές εἰσι τῶν πράξεων εὔφωνοι καὶ τῷ λόγῳ διὰ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἐξικνούμενοι, οἷς εὐαγγέλιον ὀφείλουσιν οἱ [e] πρώτως ἐντυγχάνοντες καὶ ἱστοροῦντες. ἀμέλει δὲ καὶ ἐγκωμιάζονται μνημονευόμενοι καὶ ἀναγινωσκόμενοι διὰ τοὺς κατορθώσαντας· οὐ γὰρ οἱ λόγοι ποιοῦσι τὰς πράξεις, ‹ἀλλ’ αὐτοὶ γίνονται διὰ τὰς πράξεις› καὶ ἀκοῆς ἀξιοῦνται.

Καὶ γὰρ ἡ ποιητικὴ χάριν ἔσχε καὶ τιμὴν ‹τῷ› τοῖς πεπραγμένοις ἐοικότα λέγειν, ὡς Ὅμηρος ἔφη (Od. τ 203)

‘ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα.’

λέγεται δὲ καὶ Μενάνδρῳ τῶν συνήθων τις εἰπεῖν ‘ἐγγὺς οὖν Μένανδρε τὰ Διονύσια, καὶ σὺ τὴν κωμῳδίαν οὐ πεποίηκας;’ τὸν δ’ ἀποκρίνασθαι ‘νὴ τοὺς θεοὺς ἔγωγε πεποίηκα τὴν κωμῳδίαν· ᾠκονόμηται γὰρ ἡ διάθεσις· [f] δεῖ δ’ αὐτῇ τὰ στιχίδια ἐπᾷσαι’, ὅτι καὶ αὐτοὶ τὰ πράγματα τῶν λόγων ἀναγκαιότερα καὶ κυριώτερα νομίζουσιν. ἡ δὲ Κόριννα τὸν Πίνδαρον, ὄντα νέον ἔτι καὶ τῇ λογιότητι σοβαρῶς χρώμενον, ἐνουθέτησεν ὡς ἄμουσον ὄντα [καὶ] μὴ ποιοῦντα μύθους, ὃ τῆς ποιητικῆς ἔργον εἶναι συμβέβηκε, γλώσσας δὲ καὶ καταχρήσεις καὶ μεταφορὰς καὶ μέλη καὶ ῥυθμοὺς ἡδύσματα τοῖς πράγμασιν [348] [a] ὑποτιθέντα. σφόδρ’ οὖν ὁ Πίνδαρος ἐπιστήσας τοῖς λεγομένοις ἐποίησεν ἐκεῖνο τὸ μέλος (fr. 29 Schr.)

‘Ἰσμηνὸν ἢ χρυσαλάκατον Μελίαν,

ἢ Κάδμον ἢ Σπαρτῶν ἱερὸν γένος ἀνδρῶν,

ἢ τὸ πάνυ σθένος Ἡρακλέους

ἢ τὰν ‹Διωνύσου πολυγαθέα τιμάν.’›

δειξαμένου δὲ τῇ Κορίννῃ, γελάσασα ἐκείνη τῇ χειρὶ δεῖν ἔφη σπείρειν, ἀλλὰ μὴ ὅλῳ τῷ θυλάκῳ. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι συγκεράσας καὶ συμφορήσας πανσπερμίαν τινὰ μύθων ὁ Πίνδαρος εἰς τὸ μέλος ἐξέχεεν. ἀλλ’ ὅτι μὲν ἡ ποιητικὴ περὶ μυθοποιίαν ἐστί, καὶ Πλάτων εἴρηκεν (Phaedo 61b). ὁ δὲ μῦθος εἶναι βούλεται λόγος ψευδὴς ἐοικὼς ἀληθινῷ· διὸ καὶ πολὺ τῶν ἔργων ἀφέστηκεν, εἰ λόγος μὲν ἔργου, [b] [καὶ] λόγου δὲ μῦθος εἰκὼν καὶ εἴδωλόν ἐστι. καὶ τοσοῦτον τῶν ἱστορούντων οἱ πλάττοντες τὰς πράξεις ὑστεροῦσιν, ὅσον ἀπολείπονται τῶν πραττόντων οἱ λέγοντες.

‹Ἐπι›κῆς μὲν οὖν ποιήσεως ἡ πόλις οὐκ ἔσχηκεν ἔνδοξον δημιουργὸν οὐδὲ μελικῆς· ὁ γὰρ Κινησίας ἀργαλέος ἔοικε ποιητὴς γεγονέναι διθυράμβων· καὶ αὐτὸς μὲν ἄγονος καὶ ἀκλεὴς γέγονε, σκωπτόμενος δὲ καὶ χλευαζόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν κωμῳδιοποιῶν οὐκ εὐτυχοῦς δόξης μετέσχηκε. τῶν δὲ δραματοποιῶν τὴν μὲν κωμῳδιοποιίαν οὕτως ἄσεμνον ἡγοῦντο καὶ φορτικόν, ὥστε νόμος ἦν μηδένα ποιεῖν κωμῳδίας Ἀρεοπαγίτην. ἤνθησε δ’ ἡ [c] τραγῳδία καὶ διεβοήθη, θαυμαστὸν ἀκρόαμα καὶ θέαμα τῶν τότ’ ἀνθρώπων γενομένη καὶ παρασχοῦσα τοῖς μύθοις καὶ τοῖς πάθεσιν ἀπάτην, ὡς Γοργίας φησίν (Vorsokr. 76 B 23), ἣν ὅ τ’ ἀπατήσας δικαιότερος τοῦ μὴ ἀπατήσαντος, καὶ ὁ ἀπατηθεὶς σοφώτερος τοῦ μὴ ἀπατηθέντος. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἀπατήσας δικαιότερος, ὅτι τοῦθ’ ὑποσχόμενος πεποίηκεν· ὁ δ’ ἀπατηθεὶς σοφώτερος· εὐάλωτον γὰρ ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς λόγων τὸ μὴ ἀναίσθητον. τίν’ οὖν αἱ καλαὶ τραγῳδίαι ταῖς Ἀθήναις ὄνησιν ἤνεγκαν; ὡς ἡ Θεμιστοκλέους δεινότης ἐτείχισε τὴν πόλιν, ὡς ἡ Περικλέους ἐπιμέλεια τὴν ἄκραν ἐκόσμησεν, ὡς Μιλτιάδης [d] ἠλευθέρωσεν, ὡς Κίμων προῆγεν εἰς τὴν ἡγεμονίαν. εἰ οὕτως ἡ Εὐριπίδου σοφία καὶ ἡ Σοφοκλέους λογιότης καὶ τὸ Αἰσχύλου στόμα τι τῶν δυσχερῶν ἀπήλλαξεν ἤ τι τῶν λαμπρῶν περιεποίησεν, ἄξιόν γε τὰ δράματα τοῖς τροπαίοις ἀντιπαραθεῖναι καὶ τῷ στρατηγίῳ τὸ θέατρον ἀνταναστῆσαι καὶ ταῖς ἀριστείαις τὰς διδασκαλίας ἀντιπαραβαλεῖν.

Βούλεσθε τοὺς ἄνδρας εἰσάγωμεν αὐτοὺς τὰ σύμβολα καὶ τὰ παράσημα τῶν ἔργων κομίζοντας, ἰδίαν ἑκατέρῳ πάροδον ἀποδόντες; ἔνθεν μὲν δὴ προσίτωσαν ὑπ’ αὐλοῖς καὶ λύραις ποιηταὶ λέγοντες καὶ ᾄδοντες (Arist. Ran. 353)

‘εὐφημεῖν χρὴ κἀξίστασθαι τοῖς ἡμετέροισι ‹χοροῖσιν›

[e] ὅστις ἄπειρος τοιῶνδε λόγων ἢ γνώμῃ μὴ καθαρεύει,

ἢ γενναίων ὄργια Μουσῶν μήτ’ ᾖσεν μήτ’ ἐχόρευσε,

μηδὲ Κρατίνου τοῦ ταυροφάγου γλώσσης βακχεῖ’ ἐτελέσθη·’

καὶ σκευὰς καὶ προσωπεῖα καὶ βωμοὺς καὶ μηχανὰς ἀπὸ σκηνῆς περιάκτους καὶ τρίποδας ἐπινικίους κομίζοντες· τραγικοὶ δ’ αὐτοῖς ὑποκριταὶ [καὶ] Νικόστρατοι καὶ Καλλιππίδαι καὶ Μηνίσκοι καὶ Θεόδωροι καὶ Πῶλοι συνίτωσαν, ὥσπερ γυναικὸς πολυτελοῦς τῆς τραγῳδίας κομμωταὶ καὶ διφροφόροι, μᾶλλον δ’ ὡς ἀγαλμάτων ἐγκαυσταὶ καὶ χρυσωταὶ καὶ βαφεῖς παρακολουθοῦντες· [f] σκευῶν δὲ καὶ προσώπων καὶ ξυστίδων ἁλουργῶν καὶ μηχανῶν ἀπὸ σκηνῆς καὶ χοροποιῶν καὶ δορυφόρων δυσπραγμάτευτος λαὸς καὶ χορηγία πολυτελὴς παρασκευαζέσθω. πρὸς ἃ Λάκων ἀνὴρ ἀποβλέψας οὐ κακῶς εἶπεν, ὡς ἁμαρτάνουσιν Ἀθηναῖοι μεγάλα τὴν σπουδὴν εἰς τὴν παιδιὰν καταναλίσκοντες, τουτέστι μεγάλων ἀποστόλων δαπάνας καὶ στρατευμάτων ἐφόδια καταχορηγοῦντες [349] [a] εἰς τὸ θέατρον. ἂν γὰρ ἐκλογισθῇ τῶν δραμάτων ἕκαστον ὅσου κατέστη, πλέον ἀνηλωκὼς φανεῖται ὁ δῆμος εἰς Βάκχας καὶ Φοινίσσας καὶ Οἰδίποδας καὶ Ἀντιγόνην καὶ τὰ Μηδείας κακὰ καὶ Ἠλέκτρας, ὧν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἡγεμονίας καὶ τῆς ἐλευθερίας πολεμῶν τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀνάλωσεν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ στρατηγοὶ πολλάκις παραγγείλαντες ἄπυρα σιτία κομίζειν ἐξῆγον ἐπὶ τὰς μάχας τοὺς ἄνδρας· καὶ νὴ Δί’ οἱ τριήραρχοι τοῖς ἐλαύνουσιν ἄλφιτα παρασκευάσαντες, ὄψον δὲ κρόμμυα ‹καὶ› τυρόν, ἐνεβίβαζον εἰς τὰς τριήρεις· οἱ δὲ χορηγοὶ τοῖς χορευταῖς ἐγχέλεια καὶ θριδάκια καὶ σκελίδας καὶ μυελὸν παρατιθέντες, εὐώχουν ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον φωνασκουμένους καὶ τρυφῶντας.

[b] καὶ τούτων τοῖς μὲν ἡττηθεῖσι περιῆν προσυβρίσθαι καὶ γεγονέναι καταγελάστους· τοῖς δὲ νικήσασιν ὁ τρίπους ὑπῆρχεν, οὐκ ἀνάθημα τῆς νίκης, ὡς Δημήτριός φησιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπίσπεισμα τῶν ἐκκεχυμένων βίων καὶ τῶν ἐκλελοιπότων κενοτάφιον οἴκων. τοιαῦτα γὰρ τὰ ποιητικῆς τέλη καὶ λαμπρότερον οὐδὲν ἐξ αὐτῶν.

Τοὺς δὲ στρατηγοὺς αὖ πάλιν ἐνθένδε παριόντας σκοπῶμεν, ὧν παρερχομένων ὡς ἀληθῶς ‘εὐφημεῖν χρὴ κἀξίστασθαι’ τοὺς ἀπράκτους καὶ ἀπολιτεύτους καὶ ἀστρατεύτους, ‘ὅστις ἄτολμος πρὸς ἔργα τοιαῦτα καὶ γνώμῃ μὴ καθαρεύει, μηδὲ Μιλτιάδου τοῦ μηδοφόνου [c] μηδὲ τοῦ περσοκτόνου Θεμιστοκλέους χειρὸς βακχεῖ’ ἐτελέσθη.’ Ἀρήιος ὁ κῶμος οὗτος ἐκ γῆς ἅμα φάλαγξι καὶ στόλοις ἐκ θαλάττης καὶ μεμιγμένοις σκύλοις καὶ τροπαίοις βεβριθώς. ‘κλῦθ’ Ἀλαλά, Πολέμου θύγατερ, ἐγχέων προοίμιον, ᾇ θύεται ἄνδρες’ (Pind. fr. 78 Schr.) τὸν ‘ἱρόθυτον θάνατον,’ ὡς ὁ Θηβαῖος Ἐπαμεινώνδας εἶπεν, ὑπὲρ πατρίδος καὶ τάφων καὶ ἱερῶν ἐπιδιδόντες ἑαυτοὺς τοῖς καλλίστοις καὶ λαμπροτάτοις ἀγῶσιν. ὧν τὰς Νίκας ὁρᾶν μοι δοκῶ προσερχομένας, οὐ βοῦν ἔπαθλον ἑλκούσας ἢ τράγον, οὐδ’ ἀνεστεμμένας κιττῷ καὶ Διονυσιακῆς τρυγὸς ὀδωδυίας· ἀλλ’ ὅλαι μὲν πόλεις αὐτῶν εἰσι καὶ νῆσοι καὶ ἤπειροι, καὶ ναοὶ χιλιοτάλαντοι [d] καὶ δήμων ἀποικισμοὶ μυρίανδροι, τροπαίοις δὲ παντοδαποῖς ἀναστέφονται καὶ λαφύροις· ὧν ἀγάλματα καὶ σύμβολα παρθενῶνες ἑκατόμπεδοι, νότια τείχη, νεώσοικοι, προπύλαια, Χερρόνησος, Ἀμφίπολις. Μαραθὼν τὴν Μιλτιάδου Νίκην προπέμπει, καὶ Σαλαμὶς τὴν Θεμιστοκλέους, χιλίων σκαφῶν ναυαγίοις ἐπιβεβηκυῖαν. φέρει δ’ ἡ μὲν Κίμωνος τριήρεις ἑκατὸν Φοινίσσας ἀπ’ Εὐρυμέδοντος, ἡ δὲ Δημοσθένους καὶ Κλέωνος ἀπὸ Σφακτηρίας τὴν Βρασίδου ἀσπίδ’ αἰχμάλωτον καὶ δεδεμένους Σπαρτιάτας. τειχίζει δὲ τὴν πόλιν ἡ Κόνωνος, ἡ δὲ Θρασυβούλου κατάγει τὸν δῆμον ἀπὸ Φυλῆς ἐλεύθερον, αἱ δ’ Ἀλκιβιάδου [e] περὶ Σικελίαν ὀλισθοῦσαν τὴν πόλιν ἐγείρουσιν· ἐκ δὲ τῶν Νείλεω καὶ Ἀνδρόκλου περὶ Λυδίαν καὶ Καρίαν ἀγώνων Ἰωνίαν ἀνισταμένην ἐπεῖδεν ἡ Ἑλλάς. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἑκάστης ἂν πύθῃ τί τῇ πόλει γέγονεν ἐξ αὐτῆς ἀγαθόν, ἡ μὲν ἐρεῖ Λέσβον, ἡ δὲ Σάμον, ἡ δὲ Κύπρον, ἡ δὲ Πόντον Εὔξεινον, ἡ δὲ πεντακοσίας τριήρεις, ἡ δὲ μυρία τάλαντα, προῖκα τῆς δόξης καὶ τῶν τροπαίων. ταῦθ’ ἡ πόλις ἑορτάζει καὶ ὑπὲρ τούτων θύει τοῖς θεοῖς, οὐκ ἐπὶ ταῖς Αἰσχύλου νίκαις ἢ Σοφοκλέους· οὐδ’ ὅτε Καρκίνος Ἀερόπῃ (Nauck² p. 797) †συνῆν ἢ Ἕκτορι Ἀστυδάμας (Nauck² p. 778), ἀλλ’ ἕκτῃ μὲν ἱσταμένου Βοηδρομιῶνος ἐσέτι νῦν τὴν ἐν Μαραθῶνι νίκην ἡ πόλις ἑορτάζει· ἕκτῃ δ’ ‹ἐπὶ δέκα τοῦ αὐτοῦ› μηνὸς οἰνοχοεῖται τῆς [f] Χαβρίου περὶ Νάξον ἐπινίκια ναυμαχίας· τῇ δὲ δωδεκάτῃ χαριστήρια ἔθυον ἐλευθερίας· ἐν ἐκείνῃ γὰρ οἱ ἀπὸ Φυλῆς κατῆλθον· τρίτῃ δ’ ἱσταμένου τὴν ἐν Πλαταιαῖς μάχην ἐνίκων. τὴν δ’ ἕκτην ἐπὶ δέκα τοῦ Μουνιχιῶνος Ἀρτέμιδι καθιέρωσαν, ἐν ᾗ τοῖς Ἕλλησι περὶ Σαλαμῖνα [350] [a] νικῶσιν ἐπέλαμψεν ἡ θεὸς πανσέληνος. τὴν σὲ δωδεκάτην τοῦ Σκιρροφοριῶνος ἱερωτέραν ἐποίησεν ὁ Μαντινειακὸς ἀγών, ἐν ᾧ τῶν ἄλλων συμμάχων ἐκβιασθέντων καὶ τραπέντων μόνοι τὸ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς νικήσαντες ἔστησαν τρόπαιον ἀπὸ τῶν νικώντων πολεμίων. ταῦτα τὴν πόλιν ᾖρεν εἰς δόξαν, ταῦτ’ εἰς μέγεθος· ἐπὶ τούτοις Πίνδαρος (fr. 76. 77 Schr. p. 414) ‘ἔρεισμα τῆς Ἑλλάδος’ προσεῖπε τὰς Ἀθήνας, οὐχ ὅτι ταῖς Φρυνίχου τραγῳδίαις καὶ Θέσπιδος ὤρθουν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ἀλλ’ ὅτι πρῶτον, ὥς φησιν αὐτός, ἐπ’ Ἀρτεμισίῳ ‘παῖδες Ἀθαναίων ἐβάλοντο φαεννὰν κρηπῖδ’ ἐλευθερίας·’ ἐπί τε Σαλαμῖνι [b] καὶ Μυκάλῃ καὶ Πλαταιαῖς ὥσπερ ἀδαμαντίνοι‹ς κίοσι› στηρίξαντες τὴν ἐλευθερίαν τῆς Ἑλλάδος παρέδοσαν τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀνθρώποις.

Ἀλλὰ νὴ Δία παιδιὰ τὰ τῶν ποιητῶν· οἱ δὲ ῥήτορες ἔχουσί τι παραβαλλόμενοι πρὸς τοὺς στρατηγοὺς εἰκός, ὡς ‹δῆλον› ἐξ ὧν Αἰσχίνης (Ctes. 146) σκώπτων τὸν Δημοσθένην λέγειν φησίν, ὅτι γράψεται τῷ βήματι διαδικασίαν πρὸς τὸ στρατήγιον. ἆρ’ οὖν ἄξιον προκρῖναι τὸν Ὑπερείδου Πλαταϊκὸν τῆς Ἀριστείδου †παραγγελίας νίκης; ἢ τὸν Λυσίου κατὰ τῶν τριάκοντα τῆς Θρασυβούλου καὶ Ἀρχί‹ν›ου τυραννοκτονίας; ἢ τὸν Αἰσχίνου κατὰ Τιμάρχου ἑταιρήσεως τῆς Φωκίωνος εἰς Βυζάντιον [c] βοηθείας, δι’ ἧς ἐκώλυσε τοὺς τῶν συμμάχων υἱοὺς ἐνύβρισμά τε καὶ παροίνημα γενέσθαι Μακεδόνων; ἢ τοῖς Κόνωνος στεφάνοις, οὓς τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐλευθερώσας ἔλαβε, τὸν Δημοσθένους περὶ τοῦ στεφάνου παραβάλλωμεν, ἐν ᾧ τοῦτο λαμπρότατον καὶ λογιώτατον ὁ ῥήτωρ πεποίηκεν, ὀμόσας τοὺς ἐν Μαραθῶνι προκινδυνεύσαντας τῶν προγόνων, οὐ τοὺς ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς τὰ μειράκια προδιδάσκοντας· ἐφ’ οἷς ‹οὐ› τοὺς Ἰσοκράτεις καὶ Ἀντιφῶντας καὶ Ἰσαίους, ἀλλὰ τούτους ἡ πόλις δημοσίαις ταφαῖς ἔθαψεν, ὑποδεξαμένη τὰ λείψανα τῶν σωμάτων, καὶ τούτους [d] ἀπεθέωσε τοῖς ὅρκοις ὁ ῥήτωρ ὀμνύων οὓς οὐκ ἐμιμεῖτο. Ἰσοκράτης δὲ τοὺς ἐν Μαραθῶνι προκινδυνεύσαντας ὥσπερ ἀλλοτρίαις ψυχαῖς φήσας ἐναγωνίσασθαι καὶ καθυμνήσας τὴν τόλμαν αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν ὑπεροψίαν τοῦ ζῆν αὐτός, ὥς φασιν, ἤδη γέρων γεγονὼς πρὸς τὸν πυθόμενον πῶς διάγει, ‘οὕτως’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς ἄνθρωπος ὑπὲρ ἐνενήκοντα ἔτη γεγονὼς καὶ μέγιστον ἡγούμενος τῶν κακῶν τὸν θάνατον.’ οὐ γὰρ ἀκονῶν ξίφος οὐδὲ λόγχην χαράττων οὐδὲ λαμπρύνων κράνος οὐδὲ στρατευόμενος οὐδ’ ἐρέσσων, ἀλλ’ ἀντίθετα καὶ πάρισα καὶ ὁμοιόπτωτα κολλῶν καὶ συντιθεὶς, μονονοὺ κολαπτῆρσι καὶ ξυστῆρσι [e] τὰς περιόδους ἀπολεαίνων καὶ ῥυθμίζων ἐγήρασε. πῶς οὖν οὐκ ἔμελλεν ἄνθρωπος ψόφον ὅπλων φοβεῖσθαι καὶ σύρρηγμα φάλαγγος ὁ φοβούμενος φωνῆεν φωνήεντι συγκροῦσαι καὶ συλλαβῇ τὸ ἰσόκωλον ἐνδεὲς ἐξενεγκεῖν; Μιλτιάδης μὲν γὰρ ἄρας ἐς Μαραθῶνα τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ τὴν μάχην συνάψας ἧκεν εἰς ἄστυ μετὰ τῆς στρατιᾶς νενικηκώς, καὶ Περικλῆς ἐννέα μησὶ Σαμίους καταστρεψάμενος ἐφρόνει τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος μεῖζον ἔτει δεκάτῳ τὴν Τροίαν ἑλόντος· Ἰσοκράτης δὲ μικροῦ τρεῖς ὀλυμπιάδας ἀνήλωσεν, ἵνα γράψῃ τὸν πανηγυρικὸν λόγον, οὐ στρατευσάμενος ἐν τούτοις τοῖς χρόνοις οὐδὲ πρεσβεύσας οὐδὲ [f] πόλιν κτίσας οὐδὲ ναύαρχος ἐκπεμφθείς, καίτοι μυρίους τοῦ τότε χρόνου πολέμους ἐνέγκαντος· ἀλλ’ ἐν ᾧ Τιμόθεος Εὔβοιαν ἠλευθέρου καὶ Χαβρίας περὶ Νάξον ἐναυμάχει καὶ περὶ Λέχαιον Ἰφικράτης κατέκοπτε τὴν Λακεδαιμονίων μόραν, καὶ πᾶσαν ἐλευθερώσας πόλιν ὁ [351] [a] δῆμος ἰσόψηφον αὐτοῖς τὴν Ἑλλάδα κατέστησεν, οἴκοι καθῆστο βιβλίον ἀναπλάττων τοῖς ὀνόμασιν, ὅσῳ χρόνῳ τὰ προπύλαια Περικλῆς ἀνέστησε καὶ τοὺς ἑκατομπέδους. καίτοι καὶ τοῦτον ὡς βραδέως ἀνύοντα τοῖς ἔργοις ἐπισκώπτων Κρατῖνος (fr. 300 K.) οὕτω πως λέγει περὶ τοῦ διὰ μέσου τείχους, ‘λόγοισι γὰρ αὐτὸ προάγει Περικλέης, ἔργοισι δ’ οὐδὲ κινεῖ.’ σκόπει δὲ σοφιστικὴν μικροφροσύνην, τὸ ἔνατον μέρος τοῦ βίου εἰς ἕνα λόγον καταναλίσκουσαν. ἀλλὰ νὴ Δία τοὺς Δημοσθένους τοῦ ῥήτορος λόγους ἄξιόν ἐστι τοῖς ‹τοῦ› στρατη‹γοῦ ἔρ›γοις παραβάλλειν; τὸν κατὰ Κόνωνος αἰκίας (or. LIV) τοῖς περὶ [b] Πύλον τροπαίοις ἐκείνου; ‹τὸν› πρὸς Ἀρεθούσιον (or. LIII) περὶ ἀνδραπόδων τοῖς ἐξανδραποδισθεῖσιν ὑπ’ ἐκείνου Σπαρτιάταις; ἢ ‹οὐχ,› ὅτε τοὺς ἐπιτροπικοὺς ἔγραψε, ταύτην ‹τὴν ἡλικίαν› Ἀλκιβιάδης ἔχων Μαντινεῖς καὶ Ἠλείους ἐπὶ τὴν Λακεδαίμονα συνέστησε; καὶ μὴν οἵ γε δημόσιοι λόγοι τοῦτ’ ἔχουσι θαυμαστόν, ὅτι τοῖς Φιλιππικοῖς ἐπὶ πράξεις προτρέπεται καὶ τὴν Λεπτίνου πρᾶξιν ἐπαινεῖ * * *

De Iside et Osiride

ΠΕΡΙ ΙΣΙΔΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΟΣΙΡΙΔΟΣ

[351] Πάντα μέν, ὦ Κλέα, δεῖ τἀγαθὰ τοὺς νοῦν ἔχοντας αἰτεῖσθαι παρὰ τῶν θεῶν, μάλιστα δὲ τῆς περὶ αὐτῶν ἐπιστήμης ὅσον ἐφικτόν ἐστιν ἀνθρώποις μετιόντες εὐχόμεθα τυγχάνειν παρ’ αὐτῶν ἐκείνων· ὡς οὐθὲν [d] ἀνθρώπῳ λαβεῖν μεῖζον, οὐ χαρίσασθαι θεῷ σεμνότερον ἀληθείας. τἄλλα μὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώποις ὁ θεὸς ὧν δέονται δίδωσιν, ‹νοῦ δὲ καὶ φρονήσεως μεταδίδωσιν,› οἰκεῖα κεκτημένος ταῦτα καὶ χρώμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἀργύρῳ καὶ χρυσῷ μακάριον τὸ θεῖον οὐδὲ βρονταῖς καὶ κεραυνοῖς ἰσχυρόν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιστήμῃ καὶ φρονήσει, καὶ τοῦτο κάλλιστα πάντων Ὅμηρος ὧν εἴρηκε περὶ θεῶν ἀναφθεγξάμενος (Ν 354)

‘ἦ μὰν ἀμφοτέροισιν ὁμὸν γένος ἠδ’ ἴα πάτρη,

ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς πρότερος γεγόνει καὶ πλείονα ᾔδει’

σεμνοτέραν ἀπέφηνε τὴν τοῦ Διὸς ἡγεμονίαν ἐπιστήμῃ [e] καὶ σοφίᾳ πρεσβυτέραν οὖσαν. οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τῆς αἰωνίου ζωῆς, ἣν ὁ θεὸς εἴληχεν, εὔδαιμον εἶναι τὸ τῇ γνώσει μὴ προαπολείπειν τὰ γινόμενα· τοῦ δὲ γινώσκειν τὰ ὄντα καὶ φρονεῖν ἀφαιρεθέντος οὐ βίον ἀλλὰ χρόνον εἶναι τὴν ἀθανασίαν. διὸ θειότητος ὄρεξίς ἐστιν ἡ τῆς ἀληθείας μάλιστα δὲ τῆς περὶ θεῶν ἔφεσις, ὥσπερ ἀνάληψιν ἱερῶν τὴν μάθησιν ἔχουσα καὶ τὴν ζήτησιν, ἁγνείας τε πάσης καὶ νεωκορίας ἔργον ὁσιώτερον, οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ τῇ θεῷ ταύτῃ κεχαρισμένον, ἣν σὺ θεραπεύεις ἐξαιρέτως σοφὴν καὶ φιλόσοφον οὖσαν, ὡς τοὔνομά γε φράζειν ἔοικε παντὸς μᾶλλον αὐτῇ τὸ εἰδέναι καὶ τὴν ἐπιστήμην [f] προσήκουσαν. Ἑλληνικὸν γὰρ ἡ Ἶσίς ἐστι καὶ ὁ Τυφὼν πολέμιος ‹ὢν› τῇ θεῷ καὶ δι’ ἄγνοιαν καὶ ἀπάτην τετυφωμένος καὶ διασπῶν καὶ ἀφανίζων τὸν ἱερὸν λόγον, ὃν ἡ θεὸς συνάγει καὶ συντίθησι καὶ παραδίδωσι τοῖς τελουμένοις ‹διὰ› θειώσεως σώφρονι μὲν ἐνδελεχῶς διαίτῃ καὶ βρωμάτων πολλῶν καὶ ἀφροδισίων ἀποχαῖς κολουούσης [352] [a] τὸ ἀκόλαστον καὶ φιλήδονον, ἀθρύπτους δὲ καὶ στερρὰς ἐν ἱεροῖς λατρείας ἐθιζούσης ὑπομένειν, ὧν τέλος ἐστὶν ἡ τοῦ πρώτου καὶ κυρίου καὶ νοητοῦ γνῶσισ[, ὃν ἡ θεὸς παρακαλεῖ ζητεῖν παρ’ αὐτῇ καὶ μετ’ αὐτῆς ὄντα καὶ συνόντα]. τοῦ δ’ ἱεροῦ τοὔνομα καὶ σαφῶς ἐπαγγέλλεται καὶ γνῶσιν καὶ εἴδησιν τοῦ ὄντος· ὀνομάζεται γὰρ Ἰσεῖον ὡς εἰσομένων τὸ ὄν, ἂν μετὰ λόγου καὶ ὁσίως εἰς τὰ ἱερὰ τῆς θεοῦ παρέλθωμεν.

Ἔτι πολλοὶ μὲν Ἑρμοῦ, πολλοὶ δὲ Προμηθέως ἱστορήκασιν αὐτὴν θυγατέρα, [ὧν] τὸν μὲν ἕτερον σοφίας καὶ προνοίας, Ἑρμῆν δὲ γραμματικῆς καὶ μουσικῆς εὑρετὴν νομίζοντες. διὸ καὶ τῶν ‹ἐν› Ἑρμοῦ πόλει [b] Μουσῶν τὴν προτέραν Ἶσιν ἅμα καὶ Δικαιοσύνην καλοῦσι, σοφὴν οὖσαν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται (351e), καὶ δεικνύουσαν τὰ θεῖα τοῖς ἀληθῶς καὶ δικαίως ἱεραφόροις καὶ ἱεροστόλοις προσαγορευομένοις· οὗτοι δ’ εἰσὶν οἱ τὸν ἱερὸν λόγον περὶ θεῶν πάσης καθαρεύοντα δεισιδαιμονίας καὶ περιεργίας ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ φέροντες ὥσπερ ἐν κίστῃ καὶ περιστέλλοντες, τὰ μὲν μέλανα καὶ σκιώδη τὰ δὲ φανερὰ καὶ λαμπρὰ τῆς περὶ θεῶν ὑποδηλοῦντες οἰήσεως, οἷα καὶ περὶ τὴν ἐσθῆτα τὴν ἱερὰν ἀποφαίνεται. διὸ καὶ τὸ κοσμεῖσθαι τούτοις τοὺς ἀποθανόντας Ἰσιακοὺς σύμβολόν ἐστι τοῦτον τὸν λόγον εἶναι μετ’ αὐτῶν, καὶ τοῦτον [c] ἔχοντας ἄλλο δὲ μηδὲν ἐκεῖ βαδίζειν. οὔτε γὰρ φιλοσόφους πωγωνοτροφίαι, ὦ Κλέα, καὶ τριβωνοφορίαι ποιοῦσιν οὔτ’ Ἰσιακοὺς αἱ λινοστολίαι καὶ ξυρήσεις· ἀλλ’ Ἰσιακός ἐστιν ὡς ἀληθῶς ὁ τὰ δεικνύμενα καὶ δρώμενα περὶ τοὺς θεοὺς τούτους, ὅταν νόμῳ παραλάβῃ, λόγῳ ζητῶν καὶ φιλοσοφῶν περὶ τῆς ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀληθείας. ἐπεὶ τούς γε πολλοὺς καὶ τὸ κοινότατον τοῦτο καὶ σμικρότατον λέληθεν, ἐφ’ ὅτῳ τὰς τρίχας οἱ ἱερεῖς ἀποτίθενται καὶ λινᾶς ἐσθῆτας φοροῦσιν· οἱ μὲν οὐδ’ ὅλως φροντίζουσιν εἰδέναι περὶ τούτων, οἱ δὲ τῶν μὲν ἐρίων ὥσπερ τῶν κρεῶν σεβομένους τὸ πρόβατον ἀπέχεσθαι λέγουσι, [d] ξύρεσθαι δὲ τὰς κεφαλὰς διὰ τὸ πένθος, φορεῖν δὲ τὰ λινᾶ διὰ τὴν χρόαν, ἣν τὸ λίνον ἀνθοῦν ἀνίησι τῇ περιεχούσῃ τὸν κόσμον αἰθερίῳ χαροπότητι προσεοικυῖαν. ἡ δ’ ἀληθὴς αἰτία μία πάντων ἐστί· ‘καθαροῦ γάρ’ ᾗ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Phaedo 67b) ‘οὐ θεμιτὸν ἅπτεσθαι μὴ καθαρῷ·’ περίσσωμα δὲ τροφῆς καὶ σκύβαλον οὐδὲν ἁγνὸν οὐδὲ καθαρόν ἐστιν· ἐκ δὲ περιττωμάτων ἔρια καὶ λάχναι καὶ τρίχες καὶ ὄνυχες ἀναφύονται καὶ βλαστάνουσι. γελοῖον οὖν ἦν τὰς μὲν αὑτῶν τρίχας ἐν ταῖς ἁγνείαις ἀποτίθεσθαι ξυρωμένους καὶ λειαινομένους πᾶν ὁμαλῶς τὸ σῶμα, τὰς δὲ τῶν [e] θρεμμάτων ἀμπέχεσθαι καὶ φορεῖν· καὶ γὰρ τὸν Ἡσίοδον οἴεσθαι δεῖ λέγοντα (OD 742)

‘μηδ’ ἀπὸ πεντόζοιο θεῶν ἐν δαιτὶ θαλείῃ

αὖον ἀπὸ χλωροῦ τάμνειν αἴθωνι σιδήρῳ’

διδάσκειν ὅτι δεῖ καθαροὺς τῶν τοιούτων γενομένους ἑορτάζειν, οὐκ ἐν αὐταῖς ταῖς ἱερουργίαις χρῆσθαι καθάρσει καὶ ἀφαιρέσει τῶν περιττωμάτων. τὸ δὲ λίνον φύεται μὲν ἐξ ἀθανάτου τῆς γῆς καὶ καρπὸν ἐδώδιμον ἀναδίδωσι, λιτὴν δὲ παρέχει καὶ καθαρὰν ἐσθῆτα καὶ τῷ σκέποντι μὴ βαρύνουσαν, εὐάρμοστον δὲ πρὸς πᾶσαν ὥραν, ἥκιστα δὲ φθειροποιόν, ὡς λέγουσι· περὶ ὧν ἕτερος [f] λόγος. οἱ δ’ ἱερεῖς οὕτω δυσχεραίνουσι τὴν τῶν περιττωμάτων φύσιν, ὥστε μὴ μόνον παραιτεῖσθαι τῶν ὀσπρίων τὰ πολλὰ καὶ τῶν κρεῶν τὰ μήλεια καὶ ὕεια πολλὴν ποιοῦντα περίττωσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἅλας τῶν σιτίων ἐν ταῖς ἁγνείαις ἀφαιρεῖν, ἄλλας τε πλείονας αἰτίας ἔχοντας καὶ ‹τὸ› ποτικωτέρους καὶ βρωτικωτέρους ποιεῖν ἐπιθήγοντας τὴν ὄρεξιν. τὸ γάρ, ὡς Ἀρισταγόρας (FHG II 99) ἔλεγε, διὰ τὸ πηγνυμένοις πολλὰ τῶν μικρῶν ζῴων ἐναποθνήσκειν ἁλισκόμενα μὴ καθαροὺς λογίζεσθαι τοὺς [353] [a] ἅλας εὔηθές ἐστι. λέγονται δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἆπιν ἐκ φρέατος ἰδίου ποτίζειν, τοῦ δὲ Νείλου παντάπασιν ἀπείργειν, οὐ μιαρὸν ἡγούμενοι τὸ ὕδωρ διὰ τὸν κροκόδειλον, ὡς ἔνιοι νομίζουσιν (οὐδὲν γὰρ οὕτως τίμιον Αἰγυπτίοις ὡς ὁ Νεῖλος)· ἀλλὰ πιαίνειν δοκεῖ καὶ μάλιστα πολυσαρκίαν ποιεῖν τὸ Νειλῷον ὕδωρ πινόμενον· οὐ βούλονται δὲ τὸν Ἆπιν οὕτως ἔχειν οὐδ’ ἑαυτούς, ἀλλ’ εὐσταλῆ καὶ κοῦφα ταῖς ψυχαῖς περικεῖσθαι τὰ σώματα καὶ μὴ πιέζειν μηδὲ καταθλίβειν ἰσχύοντι τῷ θνητῷ καὶ βαρύνοντι τὸ θεῖον.

Οἶνον δ’ οἱ μὲν ἐν Ἡλίου πόλει θεραπεύοντες τὸν θεὸν οὐκ εἰσφέρουσι τὸ παράπαν εἰς τὸ ἱερόν, ὡς οὐ [b] προσῆκον ὑπηρέτας πίνειν τοῦ κυρίου καὶ βασιλέως ἐφορῶντος· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι χρῶνται μὲν ὀλίγῳ δέ. πολλὰς δ’ ἀοίνους ἁγνείας ἔχουσιν, ἐν αἷς φιλοσοφοῦντες καὶ μανθάνοντες καὶ διδάσκοντες τὰ θεῖα διατελοῦσιν. οἱ δὲ βασιλεῖς καὶ μετρητὸν ἔπινον ἐκ τῶν ἱερῶν γραμμάτων, ὡς Ἑκαταῖος (Vors. 60 B 11) ἱστόρηκεν, ἱερεῖς ὄντες· ἤρξαντο δὲ πίνειν ἀπὸ Ψαμμητίχου, πρότερον δ’ οὐκ ἔπινον οἶνον οὐδ’ ἔσπενδον ὡς φίλιον θεοῖς ἀλλ’ ὡς αἷμα τῶν πολεμησάντων ποτὲ τοῖς θεοῖς, ἐξ ὧν οἴονται πεσόντων καὶ τῇ γῇ συμμιγέντων ἀμπέλους γενέσθαι· διὸ καὶ τὸ μεθύειν [c] ἔκφρονας ποιεῖν καὶ παραπλῆγας, ἅτε δὴ τῶν προγόνων τοῦ αἵματος ἐμπιπλαμένους. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν Εὔδοξος ἐν τῇ δευτέρᾳ τῆς περιόδου (fr. 17 Br.) λέγεσθαί φησιν οὕτως ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερέων.

Ἰχθύων δὲ θαλαττίων πάντες μὲν οὐ πάντων ἀλλ’ ἐνίων ἀπέχονται, καθάπερ Ὀξυρυγχῖται τῶν ἀπ’ ἀγκίστρου· σεβόμενοι γὰρ τὸν ὀξύρυγχον ἰχθὺν δεδίασι μή ποτε τὸ ἄγκιστρον οὐ καθαρόν ἐστιν ὀξυρύγχου περιπεσόντος αὐτῷ· Συηνῖται δὲ φάγρου· δοκεῖ γὰρ ἐπιόντι τῷ Νείλῳ συνεπιφαίνεσθαι καὶ τὴν αὔξησιν ἀσμένοις φράζειν αὐτάγγελος ὁρώμενος. οἱ δ’ ἱερεῖς ἀπέχονται [d] πάντων· πρώτου δὲ μηνὸς ἐνάτῃ τῶν ἄλλων Αἰγυπτίων ἑκάστου πρὸ τῆς αὐλείου θύρας ὀπτὸν ἰχθὺν κατεσθίοντος οἱ ἱερεῖς οὐ γεύονται μὲν κατακαίουσι δὲ πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν τοὺς ἰχθῦς δύο λόγους ἔχοντες, ὧν τὸν μὲν ἱερὸν καὶ περιττὸν αὖθις (363d sqq.) ἀναλήψομαι συνᾴδοντα τοῖς περὶ Ὀσίριδος καὶ Τυφῶνος ὁσίως φιλοσοφουμένοις, ὁ δ’ ἐμφανὴς καὶ πρόχειρος οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον οὐδ’ ἀπερίεργον ὄψον ἀποφαίνων τὸν ἰχθὺν Ὁμήρῳ μαρτυρεῖ μήτε Φαίακας τοὺς ἁβροβίους μήτε τοὺς Ἰθακησίους ἀνθρώπους νησιώτας ἰχθύσι χρωμένους ποιοῦντι μήτε τοὺς Ὀδυσσέως ἑταίρους ἐν πλῷ τοσούτῳ καὶ ἐν θαλάττῃ πρὶν εἰς ἐσχάτην [e] ἐλθεῖν ἀπορίαν (μ 329 sqq.). ὅλως δὲ καὶ τὴν θάλατταν ἔκφυλον ἡγοῦνται καὶ παρωρισμένην οὐδὲ μέρος οὐδὲ στοιχεῖον ἀλλ’ οἷον περίττωμα διεφθορὸς καὶ νοσῶδες.

Οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄλογον οὐδὲ μυθῶδες οὐδ’ ὑπὸ δεισιδαιμονίας, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι νομίζουσιν, ἐγκατεστοιχειοῦτο ‹ταῖς› ἱερουργίαις, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν ἠθικὰς ἔχοντα καὶ χρειώδεις αἰτίας, τὰ δ’ οὐκ ἄμοιρα κομψότητος ἱστορικῆς ἢ φυσικῆς ἐστιν, οἷον τὸ περὶ κρομμύου. τὸ γὰρ ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν καὶ ἀπολέσθαι τὸν τῆς Ἴσιδος τρόφιμον Δίκτυν ου κρομμύων ἐπιδρασσόμενον ἐσχάτως ἀπίθανον· οἱ δ’ ἱερεῖς ἀφοσιοῦνται καὶ δυσχεραίνουσι καὶ τὸ κρόμμυον [f] παραφυλάττοντες, ὅτι τῆς σελήνης φθινούσης μόνον εὐτροφεῖν τοῦτο καὶ τεθηλέναι πέφυκεν. ἔστι δὲ πρόσφορον οὔθ’ ἁγνεύουσιν οὔθ’ ἑορτάζουσι, τοῖς μὲν ὅτι διψῆν τοῖς δ’ ὅτι δακρύειν ποιεῖ τοὺς προσφερομένους. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὴν ὗν ἀνίερον ζῷον ἡγοῦνται· ὡς μάλιστα γὰρ ὀχεύεσθαι δοκεῖ τῆς σελήνης φθινούσης, καὶ τῶν τὸ γάλα πινόντων ἐξανθεῖ τὰ σώματα λέπραν καὶ ψωρικὰς [354] [a] τραχύτητας. τὸν δὲ λόγον, ὃν θύοντες ἅπαξ ὗν ἐν πανσελήνῳ καὶ [κατ]ἐσθίοντες ἐπιλέγουσιν, ὡς ὁ Τυφὼν ὗν διώκων πρὸς τὴν πανσέληνον εὗρε τὴν ξυλίνην σορόν, ἐν ᾗ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Ὀσίριδος ἔκειτο, καὶ διέρριψεν, οὐ πάντες ἀποδέχονται, παράκουσμα τῶν ‹νεωτέρων› ὥσπερ ἄλλα πολλὰ νομίζοντες.

Ἀλλὰ τρυφήν γε καὶ πολυτέλειαν καὶ ἡδυπάθειαν οὕτω

προβάλλεσθαι τοὺς παλαιοὺς λέγουσιν, ὥστε καὶ στήλην ἔστησαν ἐν Θήβαις ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ [κεῖσθαι] κατάρας ἐγγεγραμμένας ἔχουσαν κατὰ Μείνιος τοῦ βασιλέως, ὃς πρῶτος Αἰγυπτίους τῆς ἀπλούτου καὶ ἀχρημάτου καὶ λιτῆς ἀπήλλαξε [b] διαίτης. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Τέχνακτις ὁ Βοκχόρεως πατὴρ στρατεύων ἐπ’ Ἄραβας τῆς ἀποσκευῆς βραδυνούσης ἡδέως τῷ προστυχόντι σιτίῳ χρησάμενος εἶτα κοιμηθεὶς βαθὺν ὕπνον ἐπὶ στιβάδος ἀσπάσασθαι τὴν εὐτέλειαν, ἐκ δὲ τούτου καταράσασθαι τῷ Μείνι καὶ τῶν ἱερέων ἐπαινεσάντων στηλιτεῦσαι τὴν κατάραν.

Οἱ δὲ βασιλεῖς ἀπεδείκνυντο μὲν ἐκ τῶν ἱερέων ἢ τῶν μαχίμων, τοῦ μὲν δι’ ἀνδρείαν τοῦ δὲ διὰ σοφίαν γένους ἀξίωμα καὶ τιμὴν ἔχοντος. ὁ δ’ ἐκ μαχίμων ἀποδεδειγμένος εὐθὺς ἐγίνετο τῶν ἱερέων καὶ μετεῖχε τῆς φιλοσοφίας ἐπικεκρυμμένης τὰ πολλὰ μύθοις καὶ λόγοις [c] ἀμυδρὰς ἐμφάσεις τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ διαφάσεις ἔχουσιν, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ παραδηλοῦσιν αὐτοὶ πρὸ τῶν ἱερῶν τὰς σφίγγας ἐπιεικῶς ἱστάντες, ὡς αἰνιγματώδη σοφίαν τῆς θεολογίας αὐτῶν ἐχούσης. τὸ δ’ ἐν Σάι τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς, [ὃ] ἣν καὶ Ἶσιν νομίζουσιν, ἕδος ἐπιγραφὴν εἶχε τοιαύτην ‘ἐγώ εἰμι πᾶν τὸ γεγονὸς καὶ ὂν καὶ ἐσόμενον καὶ τὸν ἐμὸν πέπλον οὐδείς πω θνητὸς ἀπεκάλυψεν.’ ἔτι δὲ τῶν πολλῶν νομιζόντων ἴδιον παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις ὄνομα τοῦ Διὸς εἶναι τὸν Ἀμοῦν (ὃ παράγοντες ἡμεῖς Ἄμμωνα λέγομεν) Μανεθὼς μὲν ὁ Σεβεννύτης (fr. 75 M.) τὸ κεκρυμμένον [d] οἴεται καὶ τὴν κρύψιν ὑπὸ ταύτης δηλοῦσθαι τῆς φωνῆς, Ἑκαταῖος δ’ ὁ Ἀβδηρίτης φησὶ (Vors. 60 B 8) τούτῳ καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους τῷ ῥήματι χρῆσθαι τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους, ὅταν τινὰ προσκαλῶνται· προσκλητικὴν γὰρ εἶναι τὴν φωνήν. διὸ τὸν πρῶτον θεόν, ‹ὃν› τῷ παντὶ τὸν αὐτὸν νομίζουσιν, ὡς ἀφανῆ καὶ κεκρυμμένον ὄντα προσκαλούμενοι καὶ παρακαλοῦντες ἐμφανῆ γενέσθαι καὶ δῆλον αὐτοῖς Ἀμοῦν λέγουσιν.

Ἡ μὲν οὖν εὐλάβεια τῆς περὶ τὰ θεῖα σοφίας Αἰγυπτίων τοσαύτη [ἦν], μαρτυροῦσι δὲ καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων οἱ σοφώτατοι, [e] Σόλων Θαλῆς Πλάτων Εὔδοξος Πυθαγόρας, ὡς δ’ ἔνιοί φασι, καὶ Λυκοῦργος εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἀφικόμενοι καὶ συγγενόμενοι τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν. Εὔδοξον μὲν οὖν Χονούφεώς φασι Μεμφίτου διακοῦσαι, Σόλωνα δὲ Σόγχιτος Σαΐτου, Πυθαγόραν δ’ Οἰνούφεως Ἡλιοπολίτου. μάλιστα δ’ οὗτος, ὡς ἔοικε, θαυμασθεὶς καὶ θαυμάσας τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀπεμιμήσατο τὸ συμβολικὸν αὐτῶν καὶ μυστηριῶδες ἀναμίξας αἰνίγμασι τὰ δόγματα· τῶν γὰρ καλουμένων ἱερογλυφικῶν γραμμάτων οὐθὲν ἀπολείπει τὰ πολλὰ τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν παραγγελμάτων, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ μὴ ‘ἐσθίειν ἐπὶ δίφρου’ μηδ’ ‘ἐπὶ χοίνικος καθῆσθαι’ μηδὲ ‘φοίνικα [f] φυτεύειν’ μηδὲ ‘πῦρ μαχαίρᾳ σκαλεύειν ἐν οἰκίᾳ.’ δοκῶ δ’ ἔγωγε καὶ τὸ τὴν μονάδα τοὺς ἄνδρας ὀνομάζειν Ἀπόλλωνα καὶ τὴν δυάδα Ἄρτεμιν, Ἀθηνᾶν δὲ τὴν ἑβδομάδα, Ποσειδῶνα δὲ τὸν πρῶτον κύβον ἐοικέναι τοῖς ἐπὶ τῶν ἱερῶν ἱδρυμένοις καὶ δρωμένοις νὴ Δία καὶ γραφομένοις. τὸν γὰρ βασιλέα καὶ κύριον Ὄσιριν ὀφθαλμῷ [355] [a] καὶ σκήπτρῳ γράφουσιν· ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τοὔνομα διερμηνεύουσι πολυόφθαλμον, ὡς τοῦ μὲν ος τὸ πολύ, τοῦ δ’ ιρι τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν Αἰγυπτίᾳ γλώττῃ φράζοντος· τὸν δ’ οὐρανὸν ὡς ἀγήρω δι’ ἀιδιότητα καρδίᾳ †θυμὸν ἐσχάρας ὑποκειμένης. ἐν δὲ Θήβαις εἰκόνες ἦσαν ἀνακείμεναι δικαστῶν ἄχειρες, ἡ δὲ τοῦ ἀρχιδικαστοῦ καταμύουσα τοῖς ὄμμασιν, ὡς ἄδωρον ἅμα τὴν δικαιοσύνην καὶ ἀνέντευκτον οὖσαν. τοῖς δὲ μαχίμοις κάνθαρος ἦν γλυφὴ σφραγῖδος· οὐ γὰρ ἔστι κάνθαρος θῆλυς, ἀλλὰ πάντες ἄρσενες. τίκτουσι δὲ τὸν γόνον ‹ἀφιέντες› εἰς ὄνθον, ὃν σφαιροποιοῦσιν, οὐ τροφῆς μᾶλλον ὕλην ἢ γενέσεως χώραν παρασκευάζοντες.

[b] Ὅταν οὖν ἃ μυθολογοῦσιν Αἰγύπτιοι περὶ τῶν θεῶν ἀκούσῃς, πλάνας καὶ διαμελισμοὺς καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα παθήματα, δεῖ τῶν προειρημένων μνημονεύειν καὶ μηδὲν οἴεσθαι τούτων λέγεσθαι γεγονὸς οὕτω καὶ πεπραγμένον· οὐ γὰρ τὸν κύνα κυρίως Ἑρμῆν λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ ζῴου τὸ φυλακτικὸν καὶ τὸ ἄγρυπνον καὶ τὸ φιλόσοφον, γνώσει καὶ ἀγνοίᾳ τὸ φίλον καὶ τὸ ἐχθρὸν ὁρίζοντος, ᾗ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Rep. 375e sqq.), τῷ λογιωτάτῳ τῶν θεῶν συνοικειοῦσιν· οὐδὲ τὸν Ἥλιον ἐκ λωτοῦ νομίζουσι βρέφος ἀνίσχειν νεογιλόν, ἀλλ’ οὕτως ἀνατολὴν ἡλίου γράφουσι, τὴν ἐξ ὑγρῶν ἡλίου γινομένην ἄναψιν αἰνιττόμενοι. καὶ γὰρ τὸν ὠμότατον Περσῶν βασιλέα καὶ φοβερώτατον [c] Ὦχον ἀποκτείναντα πολλούς, τέλος δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἆπιν ἀποσφάξαντα καὶ καταδειπνήσαντα μετὰ τῶν φίλων ἐκάλεσαν ‘μάχαιραν’ καὶ καλοῦσι μέχρι νῦν οὕτως ἐν τῷ καταλόγῳ τῶν βασιλέων, οὐ κυρίως δήπου τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ σημαίνοντες, ἀλλὰ τοῦ τρόπου τὴν σκληρότητα καὶ κακίαν ὀργάνῳ φονικῷ παρεικάζοντες. οὕτω δὴ τὰ περὶ θεῶν ἀκούσασα καὶ δεχομένη παρὰ τῶν ἐξηγουμένων τὸν μῦθον ὁσίως καὶ φιλοσόφως καὶ δρῶσα μὲν ἀεὶ καὶ διαφυλάττουσα τῶν ἱερῶν τὰ νενομισμένα, τοῦ δ’ ἀληθῆ δόξαν ἔχειν περὶ θεῶν μηδὲν οἰομένη μᾶλλον αὐτοῖς μήτε [d] θύσειν μήτε ποιήσειν [αὐτοῖς] κεχαρισμένον, οὐδὲν ἔλαττον ἀποφεύξῃ κακὸν ἀθεότητος δεισιδαιμονίαν.

Λεγέσθω δ’ ὁ μῦθος οὗτος ἐν βραχυτάτοις ὡς ἔνεστι μάλιστα τῶν ἀχρήστων σφόδρα καὶ περιττῶν ἀφαιρεθέντων. τῆς Ῥέας φασὶ κρύφα τῷ Κρόνῳ συγγενομένης αἰσθόμενον ἐπαράσασθαι τὸν Ἥλιον αὐτῇ μήτε μηνὶ μήτ’ ἐνιαυτῷ τεκεῖν· ἐρῶντα δὲ τῆς θεοῦ τὸν Ἑρμῆν συνελθεῖν, εἶτα παίξαντα πέττια πρὸς τὴν Σελήνην καὶ ἀφελόντα τῶν φώτων ἑκάστου τὸ ἑβδομηκοστὸν ἐκ πάντων ἡμέρας πέντε συνελεῖν καὶ ταῖς ἑξήκοντα καὶ τριακοσίαις ἐπαγαγεῖν, ἃς νῦν ἐπαγομένας Αἰγύπτιοι [e] καλοῦσι καὶ τῶν θεῶν γενεθλίους ἄγουσι. τῇ μὲν πρώτῃ τὸν Ὄσιριν γενέσθαι καὶ φωνὴν αὐτῷ τεχθέντι συνεκπεσεῖν, ὡς ὁ πάντων κύριος εἰς φῶς πρόεισιν. ἔνιοι δὲ Παμύλην τινὰ λέγουσιν ἐν Θήβαις ὑδρευόμενον ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τοῦ Διὸς φωνὴν ἀκοῦσαι διακελευομένην ἀνειπεῖν μετὰ βοῆς, ὅτι μέγας βασιλεὺς εὐεργέτης Ὄσιρις γέγονε, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο θρέψαι τὸν Ὄσιριν ἐγχειρίσαντος αὐτῷ τοῦ Κρόνου καὶ τὴν τῶν Παμυλίων ἑορτὴν αὐτῷ τελεῖσθαι Φαλληφορίοις ἐοικυῖαν. τῇ δὲ δευτέρᾳ τὸν Ἀρούηριν, [ὃν Ἀπόλλωνα,] ὃν καὶ πρεσβύτερον Ὧρον ἔνιοι καλοῦσι, τῇ τρίτῃ [f] δὲ Τυφῶνα μὴ καιρῷ μηδὲ κατὰ χώραν, ἀλλ’ ἀναρρήξαντα πληγῇ διὰ τῆς πλευρᾶς ἐξαλέσθαι. τετάρτῃ δὲ τὴν Ἶσιν ἐν πανύγροις γενέσθαι, τῇ δὲ πέμπτῃ Νέφθυν, ἣν καὶ Τελευτὴν καὶ Ἀφροδίτην, ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ Νίκην ὀνομάζουσιν. εἶναι δὲ τὸν μὲν Ὄσιριν ἐξ Ἡλίου καὶ τὸν Ἀρούηριν, ἐκ δ’ Ἑρμοῦ τὴν Ἶσιν, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ Κρόνου τὸν Τυφῶνα καὶ [356] [a] τὴν Νέφθυν. διὸ καὶ τὴν τρίτην τῶν ἐπαγομένων ἀποφράδα νομίζοντες οἱ βασιλεῖς οὐκ ἐχρημάτιζον οὐδ’ ἐθεράπευον αὑτοὺς μέχρι νυκτός. γήμασθαι δὲ τῷ Τυφῶνι τὴν Νέφθυν, Ἶσιν δὲ καὶ Ὄσιριν ἐρῶντας ἀλλήλων καὶ πρὶν ἢ γενέσθαι κατὰ γαστρὸς ὑπὸ σκότῳ συνεῖναι. ἔνιοι δέ φασι καὶ τὸν Ἀρούηριν οὕτω γεγονέναι καὶ καλεῖσθαι πρεσβύτερον Ὧρον ὑπ’ Αἰγυπτίων, Ἀπόλλωνα δ’ ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων.

Βασιλεύοντα δ’ Ὄσιριν Αἰγυπτίους μὲν εὐθὺς ἀπόρου βίου καὶ θηριώδους ἀπαλλάξαι καρπούς τε δείξαντα καὶ νόμους θέμενον αὐτοῖς καὶ θεοὺς διδάξαντα τιμᾶν· ὕστερον [b] δὲ γῆν πᾶσαν ἡμερούμενον ἐπελθεῖν ἐλάχιστα μὲν ὅπλων δεηθέντα, πειθοῖ δὲ τοὺς πλείστους καὶ λόγῳ μετ’ ᾠδῆς πάσης καὶ μουσικῆς θελγομένους προσαγόμενον· ὅθεν Ἕλλησι δόξαι Διονύσῳ τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι. Τυφῶνα δ’ ἀπόντος μὲν οὐθὲν νεωτερίζειν διὰ τὸ τὴν Ἶσιν εὖ μάλα φυλάττεσθαι καὶ προσέχειν ἐγκρατῶς ἔχουσαν, ἐπανελθόντι δὲ δόλον μηχανᾶσθαι συνωμότας ἄνδρας ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ δύο πεποιημένον καὶ συνεργὸν ἔχοντα βασίλισσαν ἐξ Αἰθιοπίας παροῦσαν, ἣν ὀνομάζουσιν Ἀσώ· τοῦ δ’ Ὀσίριδος ἐκμετρησάμενον λάθρα τὸ σῶμα καὶ κατασκευάσαντα πρὸς τὸ μέγεθος λάρνακα καλὴν καὶ κεκοσμημένην [c] περιττῶς εἰσενεγκεῖν εἰς τὸ συμπόσιον. ἡσθέντων δὲ τῇ ὄψει καὶ θαυμασάντων ὑποσχέσθαι τὸν Τυφῶνα μετὰ παιδιᾶς, ὃς ἂν ἐγκατακλιθεὶς ἐξισωθῇ, διδόναι δῶρον αὐτῷ τὴν λάρνακα. πειρωμένων δὲ πάντων καθ’ ἕκαστον, ὡς οὐδεὶς ἐνήρμοττεν, ἐμβάντα τὸν Ὄσιριν κατακλιθῆναι· τοὺς δὲ συνωμότας ἐπιδραμόντας ἐπιρράξαι τὸ πῶμα καὶ τὰ μὲν γόμφοις καταλαβόντας ἔξωθεν, τῶν δὲ θερμὸν μόλιβδον καταχεαμένους ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμὸν ἐξενεγκεῖν καὶ μεθεῖναι διὰ τοῦ Τανιτικοῦ στόματος εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, ὃ διὰ τοῦτο μισητὸν ἔτι νῦν καὶ κατάπτυστον νομίζειν Αἰγυπτίους. ταῦτα δὲ πραχθῆναι λέγουσιν ἑβδόμῃ ἐπὶ [d] δέκα μηνὸς Ἀθύρ, ἐν ᾧ τὸν σκορπίον ὁ ἥλιος διέξεισιν, ὄγδοον ἔτος καὶ εἰκοστὸν ἐκεῖνο βασιλεύοντος Ὀσίριδος. ἔνιοι δὲ βεβιωκέναι φασὶν αὐτόν, οὐ βεβασιλευκέναι χρόνον τοσοῦτον.

Πρώτων δὲ τῶν τὸν περὶ Χέμμιν οἰκούντων τόπον Πανῶν καὶ Σατύρων τὸ πάθος αἰσθομένων καὶ λόγον ἐμβαλόντων περὶ τοῦ γεγονότος τὰς μὲν αἰφνιδίους τῶν ὄχλων ταραχὰς καὶ πτοήσεις ἔτι νῦν διὰ τοῦτο πανικὰς προσαγορεύεσθαι· τὴν δ’ Ἶσιν αἰσθομένην κείρασθαι μὲν ἐνταῦθα τῶν πλοκάμων ἕνα καὶ πένθιμον στολὴν ἀναλαβεῖν, ὅπου τῇ πόλει μέχρι νῦν ὄνομα Κοπτώ. ἕτεροι δὲ τοὔνομα σημαίνειν οἴονται στέρησιν· τὸ γὰρ ἀποστερεῖν [e] ‘κόπτειν’ λέγουσι. πλανωμένην δὲ πάντῃ καὶ ἀποροῦσαν οὐδένα παρελθεῖν ἀπροσαύδητον, ἀλλὰ καὶ παιδαρίοις συντυχοῦσαν ἐρωτᾶν περὶ τῆς λάρνακος· τὰ δὲ τυχεῖν ἑωρακότα καὶ φράσαι τὸ στόμα, δι’ οὗ τὸ ἀγγεῖον οἱ φίλοι τοῦ Τυφῶνος εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ἔωσαν. ἐκ τούτου τὰ παιδάρια μαντικὴν δύναμιν ἔχειν οἴεσθαι τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους καὶ μάλιστα ταῖς τούτων ὀττεύεσθαι κληδόσι παιζόντων ἐν ἱεροῖς καὶ φθεγγομένων ὅ τι ἂν τύχωσιν. αἰσθομένην δὲ τῇ ἀδελφῇ [ἐρῶντα] συγγεγονέναι δι’ ἄγνοιαν ὡς ἑαυτῇ τὸν Ὄσιριν καὶ τεκμήριον ἰδοῦσαν τὸν μελιλώτινον στέφανον, ὃν ἐκεῖνος παρὰ τῇ Νέφθυι κατέλιπε, [f] τὸ παιδίον ζητεῖν (ἐκθεῖναι γὰρ εὐθὺς τεκοῦσαν διὰ φόβον τοῦ Τυφῶνος)· εὑρεθὲν ‹δὲ› χαλεπῶς καὶ μόγις κυνῶν ἐπαγόντων τὴν Ἶσιν ἐκτραφῆναι καὶ γενέσθαι φύλακα καὶ ὀπαδὸν αὐτῆς Ἄνουβιν προσαγορευθέντα καὶ λεγόμενον τοὺς θεοὺς φρουρεῖν, ὥσπερ οἱ κύνες τοὺς ἀνθρώπους.

[357] [a] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου πυθέσθαι περὶ τῆς λάρνακος, ὡς πρὸς τὴν Βύβλου χώραν ὑπὸ τῆς θαλάσσης ἐκκυμανθεῖσαν αὐτὴν ἐρείκῃ τινὶ μαλθακῶς ὁ κλύδων προσέμιξεν· ἡ δ’ ἐρείκη κάλλιστον ἔρνος ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ καὶ μέγιστον ἀναδραμοῦσα περιέπτυξε καὶ περιέφυ καὶ ἀπέκρυψεν ἐντὸς ἑαυτῆς. θαυμάσας δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς τοῦ φυτοῦ τὸ μέγεθος καὶ περιτεμὼν τὸν περιέχοντα τὴν σορὸν οὐχ ὁρωμένην κορμὸν ἔρεισμα τῇ στέγῃ ὑπέστησε. ταῦτά τε πνεύματί φασι δαιμονίῳ φήμης πυθομένην τὴν Ἶσιν εἰς Βύβλον ἀφικέσθαι καὶ καθίσασαν ἐπὶ κρήνης ταπεινὴν καὶ δεδακρυμένην ἄλλῳ μὲν μηδενὶ προσδιαλέγεσθαι, τῆς δὲ βασιλίδος τὰς θεραπαινίδας ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι τήν τε κόμην παραπλέκουσαν αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ χρωτὶ θαυμαστὴν εὐωδίαν [b] ἐπιπνέουσαν ἀφ’ ἑαυτῆς. ἰδούσης δὲ τῆς βασιλίδος τὰς θεραπαινίδας ἵμερον ἐμπεσεῖν τῆς ξένης τῶν τε τριχῶν τοῦ τε χρωτὸς ἀμβροσίαν πνέοντος· οὕτω δὲ μεταπεμφθεῖσαν καὶ γενομένην συνήθη ποιήσασθαι τοῦ παιδίου [τὴν] τίτθην. ὄνομα δὲ τῷ μὲν βασιλεῖ Μάλκανδρον εἶναί φασιν· αὐτῇ δ’ οἱ μὲν Ἀστάρτην οἱ δὲ Σάωσιν οἱ δὲ Νεμανοῦν, ὅπερ ἂν Ἕλληνες Ἀθηναΐδα προσείποιεν. τρέφειν δὲ τὴν [c] Ἶσιν ἀντὶ μαστοῦ τὸν δάκτυλον εἰς τὸ στόμα τοῦ παιδίου διδοῦσαν, νύκτωρ δὲ περικαίειν τὰ θνητὰ τοῦ σώματος· αὐτὴν δὲ γενομένην χελιδόνα τῇ κίονι περιπέτεσθαι καὶ θρηνεῖν, ἄχρι οὗ τὴν βασίλισσαν παραφυλάξασαν καὶ ἐγκραγοῦσαν, ὡς εἶδε περικαιόμενον τὸ βρέφος, ἀφελέσθαι τὴν ἀθανασίαν αὐτοῦ. τὴν δὲ θεὰν φανερὰν γενομένην αἰτήσασθαι τὴν κίονα τῆς στέγης· ὑφελοῦσαν δὲ ῥᾷστα περικόψαι τὴν ἐρείκην, εἶτα ταύτην μὲν ὀθόνῃ περικαλύψασαν καὶ μύρον καταχεαμένην ἐγχειρίσαι τοῖς βασιλεῦσι καὶ νῦν ἔτι σέβεσθαι Βυβλίους τὸ ξύλον ἐν ἱερῷ κείμενον Ἴσιδος. τῇ δὲ σορῷ περιπεσεῖν καὶ κωκῦσαι τηλικοῦτον, ὥστε [d] τῶν παίδων τοῦ βασιλέως τὸν νεώτερον ἐκθανεῖν· τὸν δὲ πρεσβύτερον μεθ’ ἑαυτῆς ἔχουσαν καὶ τὴν σορὸν εἰς πλοῖον ἐνθεμένην ἀναχθῆναι. τοῦ δὲ Φαίδρου ποταμοῦ πνεῦμα τραχύτερον ἐκθρέψαντος ὑπὸ τὴν ἕω θυμωθεῖσαν ἀναξηρᾶναι τὸ ῥεῖθρον.

Ὅπου δὲ πρῶτον ἐρημίας ἔτυχεν, αὐτὴν καθ’ ἑαυτὴν γενομένην ἀνοῖξαι τὴν λάρνακα καὶ τῷ προσώπῳ τὸ πρόσωπον ἐπιθεῖσαν ἀσπάσασθαι καὶ δακρύειν. τοῦ δὲ παιδίου σιωπῇ προσελθόντος ἐκ τῶν ὄπισθεν καὶ καταμανθάνοντος αἰσθομένην μεταστραφῆναι καὶ δεινὸν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἐμβλέψαι· τὸ δὲ παιδίον οὐκ ἀνασχέσθαι [e] τὸ τάρβος, ἀλλ’ ἀποθανεῖν. οἱ δέ φασιν οὐχ οὕτως, ἀλλ’ ὡς εἴρηται τρόπον ἐκπεσεῖν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, ἔχειν δὲ τιμὰς διὰ τὴν θεόν· ὃν γὰρ ᾄδουσιν Αἰγύπτιοι παρὰ τὰ συμπόσια Μανερῶτα, τοῦτον εἶναι. τινὲς δὲ τὸν μὲν παῖδα καλεῖσθαι Παλαιστινὸν ἢ Πηλούσιον καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἐπώνυμον ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ γενέσθαι κτισθεῖσαν ὑπὸ τῆς θεοῦ· τὸν δ’ ᾀδόμενον Μανερῶτα πρῶτον εὑρεῖν μουσικὴν ἱστοροῦσιν. ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ὄνομα μὲν οὐδενὸς εἶναι, διάλεκτον δὲ πίνουσιν ἀνθρώποις καὶ θαλειάζουσι πρέπουσαν ‘αἴσιμα τὰ τοιαῦτα παρείη·’ τοῦτο γὰρ τῷ Μανερῶτι φραζόμενον ἀναφωνεῖν ἑκάστοτε [f] τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους. ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ τὸ δεικνύμενον αὐτοῖς εἴδωλον ἀνθρώπου τεθνηκότος ἐν κιβωτίῳ περιφερόμενον οὐκ ἔστιν ὑπόμνημα τοῦ περὶ Ὀσίριδος πάθους, ᾗ τινες ὑπολαμβάνουσιν, ἀλλ’ οἰνωμένους παρακαλοῦντες αὑτοὺς χρῆσθαι τοῖς παροῦσι καὶ ἀπολαύειν, ὡς πάντας αὐτίκα μάλα τοιούτους ἐσομένους, ἄχαριν ἐπίκωμον ἐπεισάγουσι.

Τῆς δ’ Ἴσιδος πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν Ὧρον ἐν Βούτῳ τρεφόμενον πορευθείσης τὸ δ’ ἀγγεῖον ἐκποδὼν ἀποθεμένης Τυφῶνα κυνηγετοῦντα νύκτωρ πρὸς τὴν σελήνην ἐντυχεῖν [358] [a] αὐτῷ καὶ τὸ σῶμα γνωρίσαντα διελεῖν εἰς τεσσαρεσκαίδεκα μέρη καὶ διαρρῖψαι, τὴν δ’ Ἶσιν πυθομένην ἀναζητεῖν ἐν βάριδι παπυρίνῃ τὰ [δ’] ἕλη διεκπλέουσαν· ὅθεν οὐκ ἀδικεῖσθαι τοὺς ἐν παπυρίνοις σκάφεσι πλέοντας ὑπὸ τῶν κροκοδείλων ἢ φοβουμένων ἢ σεβομένων διὰ τὴν θεόν. ἐκ τούτου δὲ καὶ πολλοὺς τάφους Ὀσίριδος ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ λέγεσθαι διὰ τὸ προστυγχάνουσαν ἑκάστῳ μέρει ταφὰς ποιεῖν. οἱ δ’ οὔ φασιν, ἀλλ’ εἴδωλα ποιουμένην διδόναι καθ’ ἑκάστην πόλιν ὡς τὸ σῶμα διδοῦσαν ὅπως παρὰ πλείοσιν ἔχῃ τιμὰς καί, ἂν ὁ Τυφὼν ἐπικρατήσῃ [b] τοῦ Ὥρου, τὸν ἀληθινὸν τάφον ζητῶν πολλῶν λεγομένων καὶ δεικνυμένων ἀπαγορεύσῃ. μόνον δὲ τῶν μερῶν τοῦ Ὀσίριδος τὴν Ἶσιν οὐχ εὑρεῖν τὸ αἰδοῖον· εὐθὺς γὰρ εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν ῥιφῆναι καὶ γεύσασθαι τόν τε λεπιδωτὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν φάγρον καὶ τὸν ὀξύρυγχον, [ὡς] οὓς μάλιστα τῶν ἰχθύων ἀφοσιοῦσθαι· τὴν δ’ Ἶσιν ἀντ’ ἐκείνου μίμημα ποιησαμένην καθιερῶσαι τὸν φαλλόν, ᾧ καὶ νῦν ἑορτάζειν τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους.

Ἔπειτα τῷ Ὥρῳ τὸν Ὄσιριν ἐξ Ἅιδου παραγενόμενον διαπονεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην καὶ ἀσκεῖν, εἶτα διερωτῆσαι, τί κάλλιστον ἡγεῖται· τοῦ δὲ φήσαντος ‘τὸ πατρὶ καὶ μητρὶ τιμωρεῖν κακῶς παθοῦσι’ δεύτερον ἐρέσθαι, τί χρησιμώτατον οἴεται ζῷον εἰς μάχην ἐξιοῦσι· τοῦ δ’ [c] Ὥρου ‘ἵππον’ εἰπόντος ἐπιθαυμάσαι καὶ διαπορῆσαι, πῶς οὐ λέοντα μᾶλλον ἀλλ’ ἵππον· εἰπεῖν οὖν τὸν Ὧρον, ὡς λέων μὲν ὠφέλιμον ἐπιδεομένῳ βοηθείας, ἵππος δὲ φεύγοντα διασπάσαι καὶ καταναλῶσαι τὸν πολέμιον. ἀκούσαντ’ οὖν ἡσθῆναι τὸν Ὄσιριν, ὡς ἱκανῶς παρασκευασαμένου τοῦ Ὥρου. λέγεται δ’ ὅτι πολλῶν μετατιθεμένων ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸν Ὧρον καὶ ἡ παλλακὴ τοῦ Τυφῶνος ἀφίκετο Θούηρις· ὄφις δέ τις ἐπιδιώκων αὐτὴν ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ τὸν Ὧρον κατεκόπη, καὶ νῦν διὰ τοῦτο σχοινίον τι προβάλλοντες [d] εἰς μέσον κατακόπτουσι. τὴν μὲν οὖν μάχην ἐπὶ πολλὰς ἡμέρας γενέσθαι καὶ κρατῆσαι τὸν Ὧρον· τὸν Τυφῶνα δὲ τὴν Ἶσιν δεδεμένον παραλαβοῦσαν οὐκ ἀνελεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ λῦσαι καὶ μεθεῖναι· τὸν δ’ Ὧρον οὐ μετρίως ἐνεγκεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιβαλόντα τῇ μητρὶ τὰς χεῖρας ἀποσπάσαι τῆς κεφαλῆς τὸ βασίλειον· Ἑρμῆν δὲ περιθεῖναι βούκρανον αὐτῇ κράνος. τοῦ δὲ Τυφῶνος δίκην τῷ Ὥρῳ νοθείας λαχόντος βοηθήσαντος [δὲ] τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ [καὶ] τὸν Ὧρον ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν γνήσιον κριθῆναι· τὸν δὲ Τυφῶνα δυσὶν ἄλλαις μάχαις καταπολεμηθῆναι. τὴν δ’ Ἶσιν ἐξ Ὀσίριδος μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν συγγενομένου τεκεῖν ἠλιτόμηνον καὶ ἀσθενῆ [e] τοῖς κάτωθεν γυίοις τὸν Ἁρποκράτην.

Ταῦτα σχεδόν ἐστι τοῦ μύθου τὰ κεφάλαια τῶν δυσφημοτάτων ἐξαιρεθέντων, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ περὶ τὸν Ὥρου διαμελισμὸν καὶ τὸν Ἴσιδος ἀποκεφαλισμόν. ὅτι μὲν οὖν, εἰ ταῦτα περὶ τῆς μακαρίας καὶ ἀφθάρτου φύσεως, καθ’ ἣν μάλιστα νοεῖται τὸ θεῖον, ὡς ἀληθῶς πραχθέντα καὶ συμπεσόντα δοξάζουσι καὶ λέγουσιν, ‘ἀποπτύσαι δεῖ καὶ καθήρασθαι’ τὸ ‘στόμα’ κατ’ Αἰσχύλον (fr. 354), οὐδὲν δεῖ λέγειν πρὸς σέ· καὶ γὰρ αὐτὴ δυσκολαίνεις τοῖς οὕτω παρανόμους καὶ βαρβάρους δόξας περὶ θεῶν ἔχουσιν· ὅτι δ’ οὐκ ἔοικε ταῦτα κομιδῇ μυθεύμασιν ἀραιοῖς καὶ [f] διακένοις πλάσμασιν, οἷα ποιηταὶ καὶ λογογράφοι καθάπερ οἱ ἀράχναι γεννῶντες ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν [ἀπ]ἀρχὰς ἀνυποθέτους ὑφαίνουσι καὶ ἀποτείνουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἔχει τινὰς ἀπορίας καὶ παθῶν διηγήσεις, ‹γινώσκεις› αὐτή. καὶ καθάπερ οἱ μαθηματικοὶ τὴν ἶριν ἔμφασιν εἶναι τοῦ ἡλίου λέγουσι ποικιλλομένην τῇ πρὸς τὸ νέφος ἀναχωρήσει τῆς ὄψεως, [359] [a] οὕτως ὁ μῦθος ἐνταῦθα λόγου τινὸς ἔμφασίς ἐστιν ἀνακλῶντος ἐπ’ ἄλλα τὴν διάνοιαν, ὡς ὑποδηλοῦσιν αἵ τε θυσίαι τὸ πένθιμον ἔχουσαι καὶ σκυθρωπὸν ἐμφαινόμενον αἵ τε τῶν ναῶν διαθέσεις πῆ μὲν ἀνειμένων εἰς πτερὰ καὶ δρόμους ὑπαιθρίους καὶ καθαρούς, πῆ δὲ κρυπτὰ καὶ σκότια κατὰ γῆς ἐχόντων στολιστήρια θηκαίοις ἐοικότα καὶ σηκοῖς, οὐχ ἥκιστα δ’ ἡ τῶν Ὀσιρείων δόξα, πολλαχοῦ κεῖσθαι λεγομένου τοῦ σώματος· τήν τε γὰρ Διοχίτην ὀνομάζεσθαι πολίχνην λέγουσιν, ὡς μόνην τὸν ἀληθινὸν ἔχουσαν, ἔν τ’ Ἀβύδῳ τοὺς εὐδαίμονας τῶν Αἰγυπτίων καὶ [b] δυνατοὺς μάλιστα θάπτεσθαι φιλοτιμουμένους ὁμοτάφους εἶναι τοῦ σώματος Ὀσίριδος. ἐν δὲ Μέμφει τρέφεσθαι τὸν Ἆπιν εἴδωλον ὄντα τῆς ἐκείνου ψυχῆς, ὅπου καὶ τὸ σῶμα κεῖσθαι· καὶ τὴν μὲν πόλιν οἱ μὲν ὅρμον ἀγαθῶν ἑρμηνεύουσιν, οἱ δ’ ἰδίως τάφον Ὀσίριδος. τὴν δὲ πρὸς Φιλαῖς †νιστιτάνην ἄλλως μὲν ἄβατον ἅπασι καὶ ἀπροσπέλαστον εἶναι καὶ μηδ’ ὄρνιθας ἐπ’ αὐτὴν καταίρειν μηδ’ ἰχθῦς προσπελάζειν, ἑνὶ δὲ καιρῷ τοὺς ἱερεῖς διαβαίνοντας ἐναγίζειν καὶ καταστέφειν τὸ σῆμα μηδίθης φυτῷ περισκιαζόμενον ὑπεραίροντι πάσης ἐλαίας μέγεθος. Εὔδοξος δὲ (fr. 60) πολλῶν τάφων ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ λεγομένων ἐν Βουσίριδι τὸ [c] σῶμα κεῖσθαι· καὶ γὰρ πατρίδα ταύτην γεγονέναι τοῦ Ὀσίριδος· οὐκέτι μέντοι λόγου δεῖσθαι τὴν Ταφόσιριν· αὐτὸ γὰρ φράζειν τοὔνομα ταφὴν Ὀσίριδος. ἐῶ δὲ τομὴν ξύλου καὶ σχίσιν λίνου καὶ χοὰς χεομένας διὰ τὸ πολλὰ τῶν μυστικῶν ἀναμεμῖχθαι τούτοις. οὐ μόνον δὲ τούτων οἱ ἱερεῖς λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων θεῶν, ὅσοι μὴ ἀγέννητοι μηδ’ ἄφθαρτοι, τὰ μὲν σώματα παρ’ αὐτοῖς κεῖσθαι καμόντα καὶ θεραπεύεσθαι, τὰς δὲ ψυχὰς ἐν οὐρανῷ λάμπειν ἄστρα καὶ καλεῖσθαι κύνα μὲν τὴν Ἴσιδος ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων, ὑπ’ Αἰγυπτίων δὲ Σῶθιν, Ὠρίωνα δὲ τὴν [d] Ὥρου, τὴν δὲ Τυφῶνος ἄρκτον. εἰς δὲ τὰς ταφὰς τῶν τιμωμένων ζῴων τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους συντεταγμένα τελεῖν, μόνους δὲ μὴ διδόναι τοὺς Θηβαΐδα κατοικοῦντας, ὡς θνητὸν θεὸν οὐδένα νομίζοντας, ἀλλ’ ὃν καλοῦσιν αὐτοὶ Κνήφ, ἀγέννητον ὄντα καὶ ἀθάνατον.

Πολλῶν δὲ τοιούτων λεγομένων καὶ δεικνυμένων οἱ μὲν οἰόμενοι βασιλέων ταῦτα καὶ τυράννων δι’ ἀρετὴν ὑπερφέρουσαν ἢ δύναμιν ἢ ἀξίωμα δόξαν θεότητος ἐπιγραψαμένων εἶτα χρησαμένων τύχαις ἔργα καὶ πάθη δεινὰ καὶ μεγάλα διαμνημονεύεσθαι ῥᾴστῃ μὲν ἀποδράσει τοῦ λόγου χρῶνται καὶ τὸ δύσφημον οὐ φαύλως ἀπὸ τῶν θεῶν [e] ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους μεταφέρουσι καὶ ταύτας ἔχουσιν ἀπὸ τῶν ἱστορουμένων βοηθείας. ἱστοροῦσι γὰρ Αἰγύπτιοι τὸν μὲν Ἑρμῆν τῷ σώματι γενέσθαι γαλιάγκωνα, τὸν δὲ Τυφῶνα τῇ χρόᾳ πυρρόν, λευκὸν δὲ τὸν Ὧρον καὶ μελάγχρουν τὸν Ὄσιριν, ὡς τῇ φύσει γεγονότας ἀνθρώπους. ἔτι δὲ καὶ στρατηγὸν ὀνομάζουσιν Ὄσιριν καὶ κυβερνήτην Κάνωβον, οὗ φασιν ἐπώνυμον γεγονέναι τὸν ἀστέρα, καὶ τὸ πλοῖον, ὃ καλοῦσιν Ἕλληνες Ἀργώ, τῆς Ὀσίριδος νεὼς εἴδωλον ἐπὶ τιμῇ κατηστερισμένον οὐ μακρὰν φέρεσθαι τοῦ Ὠρίωνος καὶ τοῦ Κυνός, ὧν τὸν μὲν Ὥρου τὸν δ’ Ἴσιδος ἱερὸν [Αἰγύπτιοι] νομίζουσιν. ὀκνῶ δέ, μὴ τοῦτ’ ᾖ τὰ [f] ἀκίνητα κινεῖν καὶ ‘πολεμεῖν οὐ τῷ πολλῷ χρόνῳ’ (κατὰ Σιμωνίδην [fr. 193]) μόνον, ‘πολλοῖς δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἔθνεσι’ καὶ γένεσι κατόχοις ὑπὸ τῆς πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς τούτους ὁσιότητος, οὐδὲν ἀπολείποντας ἐξ οὐρανοῦ μεταφέρειν ἐπὶ γῆν ὀνόματα τηλικαῦτα καὶ τιμὴν καὶ πίστιν ὀλίγου δεῖν ἅπασιν ἐκ πρώτης γενέσεως ἐνδεδυκυῖαν ἐξιστάναι καὶ ἀναλύειν, [360] [a] μεγάλας μὲν τῷ ἀθέῳ Λέοντι κλισιάδας ἀνοίγοντας [καὶ] ἐξανθρωπίζοντι τὰ θεῖα, λαμπρὰν δὲ τοῖς Εὐημέρου τοῦ Μεσσηνίου (FGrHist. 63 T 4e) φενακισμοῖς παρρησίαν διδόντας, ὃς αὐτὸς ἀντίγραφα συνθεὶς ἀπίστου καὶ ἀνυπάρκτου μυθολογίας πᾶσαν ἀθεότητα κατασκεδάννυσι τῆς οἰκουμένης, τοὺς νομιζομένους θεοὺς πάντας ὁμαλῶς διαγράφων εἰς ὀνόματα στρατηγῶν καὶ ναυάρχων καὶ βασιλέων ὡς δὴ πάλαι γεγονότων ἐν δὲ Πάγχοντι γράμμασι χρυσοῖς ἀναγεγραμμένων, οἷς οὔτε βάρβαρος οὐδεὶς οὔθ’ Ἕλλην, ἀλλὰ μόνος Εὐήμερος, ὡς ἔοικε, πλεύσας εἰς τοὺς μηδαμόθι [b] γῆς γεγονότας μηδ’ ὄντας Παγχώους καὶ Τριφύλλους ἐντετύχηκε. καίτοι μεγάλαι μὲν ὑμνοῦνται πράξεις ἐν Ἀσσυρίοις Σεμιράμιος, μεγάλαι δὲ Σεσώστριος ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ· Φρύγες δὲ μέχρι νῦν τὰ λαμπρὰ καὶ θαυμαστὰ τῶν ἔργων Μανικὰ καλοῦσι διὰ τὸ Μάνην τινὰ τῶν πάλαι βασιλέων ἀγαθὸν ἄνδρα καὶ δυνατὸν γενέσθαι παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ὃν ἔνιοι Μάσνην καλοῦσι· Κῦρος δὲ Πέρσας Μακεδόνας δ’ Ἀλέξανδρος ὀλίγου δεῖν ἐπὶ πέρας τῆς γῆς κρατοῦντας προήγαγον· ἀλλ’ ὄνομα καὶ μνήμην βασιλέων ἀγαθῶν [c] ἔχουσιν. ‘εἰ δέ τινες ἐξαρθέντες ὑπὸ μεγαλαυχίας’ ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Legg. 716a) ‘ἅμα νεότητι καὶ ἀνοίᾳ φλεγόμενοι τὴν ψυχὴν μεθ’ ὕβρεως’ ἐδέξαντο θεῶν ἐπωνυμίας καὶ ναῶν ἱδρύσεις, βραχὺν ἤνθησεν ἡ δόξα χρόνον, εἶτα κενότητα καὶ ἀλαζονείαν μετ’ ἀσεβείας καὶ παρανομίας προσοφλόντες (Emped. B 2, 4)

‘ὠκύμοροι καπνοῖο δίκην ἀρθέντες ἀπέπταν’

καὶ νῦν ὥσπερ ἀγώγιμοι δραπέται τῶν ἱερῶν καὶ τῶν βωμῶν ἀποσπασθέντες οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ τὰ μνήματα καὶ τοὺς τάφους ἔχουσιν. ὅθεν Ἀντίγονος ὁ γέρων Ἑρμοδότου τινὸς ἐν ποιήμασιν αὐτὸν (PLG III 637) Ἡλίου παῖδα καὶ θεὸν ἀναγορεύοντος ‘οὐ τοιαῦτά μοι’ εἶπεν ‘ὁ λασανοφόρος [d] σύνοιδεν’. εὖ δὲ καὶ Λύσιππος ὁ πλάστης Ἀπελλῆν ἐμέμψατο τὸν ζωγράφον, ὅτι τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου γράφων εἰκόνα κεραυνὸν ἐνεχείρισεν· αὐτὸς δὲ λόγχην, ἧς τὴν δόξαν οὐδὲ εἷς ἀφαιρήσεται χρόνος ἀληθινὴν καὶ ἰδίαν οὖσαν.

Βέλτιον οὖν οἱ τὰ περὶ τὸν Τυφῶνα καὶ Ὄσιριν καὶ Ἶσιν ἱστορούμενα μήτε θεῶν παθήματα μήτ’ ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλὰ δαιμόνων μεγάλων εἶναι νομίζοντες, οὓς καὶ Πλάτων καὶ Πυθαγόρας καὶ Ξενοκράτης (fr. 24) καὶ Χρύσιππος (StVFr. II 1103) ἑπόμενοι τοῖς πάλαι θεολόγοις ἐρρωμενεστέρους μὲν ἀνθρώπων γεγονέναι λέγουσι καὶ πολὺ τῇ δυνάμει [e] τὴν φύσιν ὑπερφέροντας ἡμῶν, τὸ δὲ θεῖον οὐκ ἀμιγὲς οὐδ’ ἄκρατον ἔχοντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ ψυχῆς φύσει καὶ σώματος αἰσθήσει [ἐν] συνειληχὸς ἡδονὴν δεχομένῃ καὶ πόνον καὶ ὅσα ταύταις ἐπιγενόμενα ταῖς μεταβολαῖς πάθη τοὺς μὲν μᾶλλον τοὺς δ’ ἧττον ἐπιταράττει· γίνονται γὰρ ὡς ἐν ἀνθρώποις καὶ δαίμοσιν ἀρετῆς διαφοραὶ καὶ κακίας. τὰ γὰρ Γιγαντικὰ καὶ Τιτανικὰ παρ’ Ἕλλησιν ᾀδόμενα καὶ Κρόνου τινὲς ἄθεσμοι πράξεις καὶ Πύθωνος ἀντιτάξεις πρὸς Ἀπόλλωνα φυγαί τε Διονύσου καὶ πλάναι Δήμητρος οὐδὲν ἀπολείπουσι τῶν Ὀσιριακῶν καὶ Τυφωνικῶν ἄλλων [f] θ’ ὧν πᾶσιν ἔξεστιν ἀνέδην μυθολογουμένων ἀκούειν· ὅσα τε μυστικοῖς ἱεροῖς περικαλυπτόμενα καὶ τελεταῖς ἄρρητα διασῴζεται καὶ ἀθέατα πρὸς τοὺς πολλούς, ὅμοιον ἔχει λόγον. ἀκούομεν δὲ καὶ Ὁμήρου τοὺς μὲν ἀγαθοὺς διαφόρως ‘θεοειδέας’ ἑκάστοτε ‹καλοῦντος› καὶ ‘ἀντιθέους’ καί ‘θεῶν ἄπο μήδε’ ἔχοντας’, τῷ δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν δαιμόνων [361] [a] προσρήματι χρωμένου κοινῶς ἐπί τε χρηστῶν καὶ φαύλων (Ν 810)

‘δαιμόνιε, σχεδὸν ἐλθέ· τίη δειδίσσεαι οὕτως

Ἀργείους;’

καὶ πάλιν (Ε 438, Π 705, Υ 447)

‘ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ τὸ τέταρτον ἐπέσσυτο δαίμονι ἶσος,’

καί (Δ 31)

‘δαιμονίη, τί νύ σε Πρίαμος Πριάμοιό τε παῖδες

τόσσα κακὰ ῥέζουσιν, ὅ τ’ ἀσπερχὲς μενεαίνεις

Ἰλίου ἐξαλαπάξαι ἐυκτίμενον πτολίεθρον;’

ὡς τῶν δαιμόνων μικτὴν καὶ ἀνώμαλον φύσιν ἐχόντων καὶ προαίρεσιν. ὅθεν ὁ μὲν Πλάτων (Legg. 717a b) Ὀλυμπίοις θεοῖς τὰ δεξιὰ καὶ περιττά, τὰ δ’ ἀντίφωνα τούτων δαίμοσιν [b] ἀποδίδωσιν· ὁ δὲ Ξενοκράτης (fr. 25) καὶ τῶν ἡμερῶν τὰς ἀποφράδας καὶ τῶν ἑορτῶν, ὅσαι πληγάς τινας ἢ κοπετοὺς ἢ νηστείας ἢ δυσφημίας ἢ αἰσχρολογίαν ἔχουσιν, οὔτε θεῶν τιμαῖς οὔτε δαιμόνων οἴεται προσήκειν χρηστῶν, ἀλλ’ εἶναι φύσεις ἐν τῷ περιέχοντι μεγάλας μὲν καὶ ἰσχυράς, δυστρόπους δὲ καὶ σκυθρωπάς, αἳ χαίρουσι τοῖς τοιούτοις καὶ τυγχάνουσαι πρὸς οὐθὲν ἄλλο χεῖρον τρέπονται. τοὺς δὲ χρηστοὺς πάλιν καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ὅ θ’ Ἡσίοδος (OD 123 sqq.) ‘ἁγνοὺς δαίμονας’ καὶ ‘φύλακας ἀνθρώπων’ προσαγορεύει, ‘πλουτοδότας καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιλήιον ἔχοντας’· ὅ τε Πλάτων (Conv. 202e) ἑρμηνευτικὸν τὸ τοιοῦτον ὀνομάζει γένος καὶ [c] διακονικὸν ἐν μέσῳ θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων, εὐχὰς μὲν ἐκεῖ καὶ δεήσεις ἀνθρώπων ἀναπέμποντας, ἐκεῖθεν δὲ μαντεῖα δεῦρο καὶ δόσεις ἀγαθῶν φέροντας. Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ καὶ δίκας φησὶ διδόναι τοὺς δαίμονας ὧν ‹ἂν› ἐξαμάρτωσι καὶ πλημμελήσωσιν (B 115, 9 sqq.)

‘αἰθέριον ‹μὲν› γάρ σφε μένος πόντονδε διώκει,

πόντος δ’ ἐς χθονὸς οὖδας ἀπέπτυσε, γαῖα δ’ ἐς αὐγὰς

ἠελίου ἀκάμαντος, ὁ δ’ αἰθέρος ἔμβαλε δίναις·

ἄλλος δ’ ἐξ ἄλλου δέχεται, στυγέουσι δὲ πάντες’,

ἄχρι οὗ κολασθέντες οὕτω καὶ καθαρθέντες αὖθις τὴν [d] κατὰ φύσιν χώραν καὶ τάξιν ἀπολάβωσι. τούτων δὲ καὶ τῶν τοιούτων ἀδελφὰ λέγεσθαί φασι περὶ Τυφῶνος, ὡς δεινὰ μὲν ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ δυσμενείας εἰργάσατο καὶ πάντα πράγματα ταράξας ἐνέπλησε κακῶν γῆν ὁμοῦ τι πᾶσαν καὶ θάλασσαν, εἶτα δίκην ἔδωκεν· ἡ δὲ τιμωρὸς Ὀσίριδος ἀδελφὴ καὶ γυνὴ τὴν Τυφῶνος σβέσασα καὶ καταπαύσασα μανίαν καὶ λύσσαν οὐ περιεῖδε τοὺς ἄθλους καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας, οὓς ἀνέτλη, καὶ πλάνας αὑτῆς καὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἔργα σοφίας πολλὰ δ’ ἀνδρείας ἀμνηστίαν ὑπολαβοῦσαν καὶ σιωπήν, ἀλλὰ ταῖς ἁγιωτάταις [e] ἀναμίξασα τελεταῖς εἰκόνας καὶ ὑπονοίας καὶ μιμήματα τῶν τότε παθημάτων εὐσεβείας ὁμοῦ δίδαγμα καὶ παραμύθιον ἀνδράσι καὶ γυναιξὶν ὑπὸ συμφορῶν ἐχομένοις ὁμοίων καθωσίωσεν. αὐτὴ δὲ καὶ Ὄσιρις ἐκ δαιμόνων ἀγαθῶν δι’ ἀρετὴν εἰς θεοὺς μεταβαλόντες, ὡς ὕστερον Ἡρακλῆς καὶ Διόνυσος, ἅμα καὶ θεῶν καὶ δαιμόνων οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου μεμιγμένας τιμὰς ἔχουσι, πανταχοῦ μὲν , ἐν δὲ τοῖς [ὑπὲρ γῆν καὶ] ὑπὸ γῆν δυνάμενοι μέγιστον. οὐ γὰρ ἄλλον εἶναι Σάραπιν ἢ τὸν Πλούτωνά φασι καὶ Ἶσιν τὴν Περσέφασσαν, ὡς Ἀρχέμαχος εἴρηκεν ὁ Εὐβοεὺς (fr. 7 M.) καὶ ὁ Ποντικὸς Ἡρακλείδης (fr. 103 V.) τὸ χρηστήριον ἐν Κανώβῳ [f] Πλούτωνος ἡγούμενος εἶναι.

Πτολεμαῖος δ’ ὁ Σωτὴρ ὄναρ εἶδε τὸν ἐν Σινώπῃ τοῦ Πλούτωνος κολοσσόν, οὐκ ἐπιστάμενος οὐδ’ ἑωρακὼς πρότερον οἷος ‹ἦν› τὴν μορφήν, κελεύοντα κομίσαι τὴν ταχίστην αὐτὸν εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν. ἀγνοοῦντι δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ ἀποροῦντι, ποῦ καθίδρυται, καὶ διηγουμένῳ τοῖς φίλοις τὴν ὄψιν εὑρέθη πολυπλανὴς ἄνθρωπος ὄνομα Σωσίβιος, ἐν Σινώπῃ φάμενος ἑωρακέναι τοιοῦτον κολοσσόν, οἷον ὁ βασιλεὺς ἰδεῖν ἔδοξεν. ἔπεμψεν οὖν Σωτέλη καὶ Διονύσιον, οἳ χρόνῳ πολλῷ καὶ μόλις, οὐκ ἄνευ [362] [a] μέντοι θείας προνοίας, ἤγαγον ἐκκλέψαντες. ἐπεὶ δὲ κομισθεὶς ὤφθη, συμβαλόντες οἱ περὶ Τιμόθεον τὸν ἐξηγητὴν καὶ Μανέθωνα τὸν Σεβεννύτην (fr. 78 M.) Πλούτωνος ὂν ἄγαλμα τῷ Κερβέρῳ τεκμαιρόμενοι καὶ τῷ δράκοντι πείθουσι τὸν Πτολεμαῖον, ὡς ἑτέρου θεῶν οὐδενὸς ἀλλὰ Σαράπιδός ἐστιν· οὐ γὰρ ἐκεῖθεν οὕτως ὀνομαζόμενος ἧκεν, ἀλλ’ εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν κομισθεὶς τὸ παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις ὄνομα τοῦ Πλούτωνος ἐκτήσατο τὸν Σάραπιν. καὶ μέντοι ‹τὰ› Ἡρακλείτου τοῦ φυσικοῦ λέγοντος (B 15) ‘Ἅιδης καὶ Διόνυσος ωὑτὸς ὅτεῳ μαίνονται καὶ ληναΐζουσιν’ εἰς ταύτην ὑπάγουσι τὴν δόξαν. οἱ γὰρ ἀξιοῦντες Ἅιδην λέγεσθαι τὸ σῶμα τῆς ψυχῆς οἷον [b] παραφρονούσης καὶ μεθυούσης ἐν αὐτῷ, γλίσχρως ἀλληγοροῦσι. βέλτιον δὲ τὸν Ὄσιριν εἰς ταὐτὸ συνάγειν τῷ Διονύσῳ τῷ τ’ Ὀσίριδι τὸν Σάραπιν, ὅτε τὴν φύσιν μετέβαλε, ταύτης τυχόντι τῆς προσηγορίας. διὸ πᾶσι κοινὸς ὁ Σάραπίς ἐστιν, ὡς δὴ τὸν Ὄσιριν οἱ τῶν ἱερῶν μεταλαβόντες ἴσασιν.

Οὐ γὰρ ἄξιον προσέχειν τοῖς Φρυγίοις γράμμασιν, ἐν οἷς λέγεται †χαροπῶς τοὺς μὲν τοῦ Ἡρακλέους γενέσθαι θυγάτηρ, †ἰσαιακοῦ δὲ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ὁ Τυφών, οὐδὲ Φυλάρχου μὴ καταφρονεῖν γράφοντος (FGrHist. 81 fr. 78), ὅτι πρῶτος εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἐξ Ἰνδῶν Διόνυσος ἤγαγε δύο βοῦς, ὧν ἦν τῷ μὲν Ἆπις ὄνομα τῷ δ’ Ὄσιρις· Σάραπις [c] δ’ ὄνομα τοῦ τὸ πᾶν κοσμοῦντός ἐστι παρὰ τὸ σαίρειν, ὃ καλλύνειν τινὲς καὶ κοσμεῖν λέγουσιν. ἄτοπα γὰρ ταῦτα τοῦ Φυλάρχου, πολλῷ δ’ ἀτοπώτερα ‹τὰ› τῶν λεγόντων οὐκ εἶναι θεὸν τὸν Σάραπιν, ἀλλὰ τὴν Ἄπιδος σορὸν οὕτως ὀνομάζεσθαι, καὶ χαλκᾶς τινας ἐν Μέμφει πύλας λήθης καὶ κωκυτοῦ προσαγορευομένας, ὅταν θάπτωσι τὸν Ἆπιν, ἀνοίγεσθαι βαρὺ καὶ σκληρὸν ψοφούσας· διὸ παντὸς ἠχοῦντος ἡμᾶς χαλκώματος ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι. μετριώτερον δ’ ‹οἱ› παρὰ τὸ σεύεσθαι καὶ τὸ σοῦσθαι τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἅμα κίνησιν εἰρῆσθαι φάσκοντες. οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι τῶν ἱερέων εἰς ταὐτό φασι τὸν Ὄσιριν συμπεπλέχθαι καὶ τὸν Ἆπιν, ἐξηγούμενοι καὶ διδάσκοντες [d] ἡμᾶς, ὡς ἔμμορφον εἰκόνα χρὴ νομίζειν τῆς Ὀσίριδος ψυχῆς τὸν Ἆπιν. ἐγὼ δ’, εἰ μὲν Αἰγύπτιόν ἐστι τοὔνομα τοῦ Σαράπιδος, εὐφροσύνην αὐτὸ δηλοῦν οἴομαι καὶ χαρμοσύνην, τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι τὴν ἑορτὴν Αἰγύπτιοι τὰ Χαρμόσυνα ‘Σαίρει’ καλοῦσιν. καὶ γὰρ Πλάτων (Cratyl. 403a sqq.) τὸν Ἅιδην ὡς †Αἰδοῦς υἱὸν τοῖς παρ’ αὐτῷ γενομένοις καὶ προσηνῆ θεὸν ὠνομάσθαι φησί· καὶ παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις ἄλλα τε πολλὰ τῶν ὀνομάτων λόγον ἔχει καὶ τὸν ὑποχθόνιον τόπον, εἰς ὃν οἴονται τὰς ψυχὰς ἀπέρχεσθαι μετὰ τὴν τελευτήν, Ἀμένθην καλοῦσι σημαίνοντος τοῦ ὀνόματος τὸν λαμβάνοντα καὶ διδόντα. εἰ δὲ [e] καὶ τοῦτο τῶν ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀπελθόντων πάλαι καὶ μετακομισθέντων ὀνομάτων ἕν ἐστιν, ὕστερον ἐπισκεψόμεθα· νῦν δὲ τὰ λοιπὰ τῆς ἐν χερσὶ δόξης προσδιέλθωμεν.

Ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ὄσιρις καὶ ἡ Ἶσις ἐκ δαιμόνων ἀγαθῶν εἰς θεοὺς μετήλλαξαν· τὴν δὲ τοῦ Τυφῶνος ἠμαυρωμένην καὶ συντετρυμμένην δύναμιν, ἔτι δὲ καὶ ψυχορραγοῦσαν καὶ σφαδᾴζουσαν, ἔστιν αἷς παρηγοροῦσι θυσίαις καὶ πραΰνουσιν, ἔστι δ’ ὅτε πάλιν ἐκταπεινοῦσι καὶ καθυβρίζουσιν ἔν τισιν ἑορταῖς, τῶν μὲν ἀνθρώπων τοὺς πυρροὺς [καὶ] προπηλακίζοντες, ὄνον δὲ κατακρημνίζοντες, ὡς Κοπτῖται, διὰ τὸ πυρρὸν γεγονέναι τὸν Τυφῶνα [f] καὶ ὀνώδη τὴν χρόαν. Βουσιρῖται δὲ καὶ Λυκοπολῖται σάλπιγξιν οὐ χρῶνται τὸ παράπαν ὡς ὄνῳ φθεγγομέναις ἐμφερές. καὶ ὅλως τὸν ὄνον οὐ καθαρὸν ἀλλὰ δαιμονικὸν ἡγοῦνται ζῷον εἶναι διὰ τὴν πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ὁμοιότητα καὶ πόπανα ποιοῦντες ἐν θυσίαις τοῦ τε Παϋνὶ καὶ τοῦ Φαωφὶ μηνὸς ἐπιπλάττουσι παράσημον [363] [a] ὄνον δεδεμένον. ἐν δὲ τῇ τοῦ Ἡλίου θυσίᾳ τοῖς σεβομένοις τὸν θεὸν παρεγγυῶσι μὴ φορεῖν ἐπὶ τῷ σώματι χρυσία μηδ’ ὄνῳ τροφὴν διδόναι. φαίνονται δὲ καὶ οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ τὸν Τυφῶνα δαιμονικὴν ἡγούμενοι δύναμιν· λέγουσι γὰρ ἐν ἀρτίῳ μέτρῳ †ἕκτῳ καὶ πεντηκοστῷ γεγονέναι Τυφῶνα· καὶ πάλιν τὴν μὲν τοῦ τριγώνου ‹φύσιν› Ἅιδου καὶ Διονύσου καὶ Ἄρεος εἶναι· τὴν δὲ τοῦ τετραγώνου Ῥέας καὶ Ἀφροδίτης καὶ Δήμητρος καὶ Ἑστίας καὶ Ἥρας· τὴν δὲ τοῦ δωδεκαγώνου Διός· τὴν δὲ ‹τοῦ› ἑκκαιπεντηκονταγωνίου Τυφῶνος, ὡς Εὔδοξος ἱστόρηκεν. Αἰγύπτιοι δὲ πυρρόχρουν γεγονέναι τὸν Τυφῶνα νομίζοντες καὶ τῶν βοῶν τοὺς πυρροὺς [b] καθιερεύουσιν, οὕτως ἀκριβῆ ποιούμενοι τὴν παρατήρησιν, ὥστε, κἂν μίαν ἔχῃ τρίχα μέλαιναν ἢ λευκήν, ἄθυτον ἡγεῖσθαι· θύσιμον γὰρ οὐ φίλον εἶναι θεοῖς, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον, ὅσα ψυχαῖς ἀνοσίων ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἀδίκων εἰς ἕτερα μεταμορφουμένων σώματα συνείληχε. διὸ τῇ μὲν κεφαλῇ τοῦ ἱερείου καταρασάμενοι καὶ ἀποκόψαντες εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν ἐρρίπτουν πάλαι, νῦν δὲ τοῖς ξένοις ἀποδίδονται· τὸν δὲ μέλλοντα θύεσθαι βοῦν οἱ σφραγισταὶ λεγόμενοι τῶν ἱερέων κατεσημαίνοντο, τῆς σφραγῖδος, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Κάστωρ (FGrHist. 250 fr. 17), γλυφὴν μὲν ἐχούσης ἄνθρωπον εἰς γόνυ καθεικότα [c] ταῖς χερσὶν ὀπίσω περιηγμέναις, ἔχοντα κατὰ τῆς σφαγῆς ξίφος ἐγκείμενον. ἀπολαύειν δὲ καὶ τὸν ὄνον, ὥσπερ εἴρηται (362f), τῆς ὁμοιότητος διὰ τὴν ἀμαθίαν καὶ τὴν ὕβριν οὐχ ἧττον ἢ διὰ τὴν χρόαν οἴονται· διὸ καὶ τῶν Περσικῶν βασιλέων ἐχθραίνοντες μάλιστα τὸν Ὦχον ὡς ἐναγῆ καὶ μιαρόν, ὄνον ἐπωνόμασαν. κἀκεῖνος εἰπών ‘ὁ μέντοι ὄνος οὗτος ὑμῶν κατευωχήσεται τὸν βοῦν’ ἔθυσε τὸν Ἆπιν, ὡς Δείνων (fr. 30 M.) ἱστόρηκεν. οἱ δὲ λέγοντες ἐκ τῆς μάχης ἐπ’ ὄνου τῷ Τυφῶνι τὴν φυγὴν ἑπτὰ ἡμέρας γενέσθαι καὶ σωθέντα γεννῆσαι [d] παῖδας Ἱεροσόλυμον καὶ Ἰουδαῖον, αὐτόθεν εἰσὶ κατάδηλοι τὰ Ἰουδαϊκὰ παρέλκοντες εἰς τὸν μῦθον.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τοιαύτας ὑπονοίας δίδωσιν· ἀπ’ ἄλλης δ’ ἀρχῆς τῶν φιλοσοφώτερόν τι λέγειν δοκούντων τοὺς ἁπλουστάτους σκεψώμεθα πρῶτον. οὗτοι δ’ εἰσὶν οἱ λέγοντες, ὥσπερ Ἕλληνες Κρόνον ἀλληγοροῦσι τὸν χρόνον, Ἥραν δὲ τὸν ἀέρα, γένεσιν δὲ Ἡφαίστου τὴν εἰς πῦρ ἀέρος μεταβολήν, οὕτω παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις Νεῖλον εἶναι τὸν Ὄσιριν Ἴσιδι συνόντα τῇ γῇ, Τυφῶνα δὲ τὴν θάλασσαν, εἰς ἣν ὁ Νεῖλος ἐμπίπτων ἀφανίζεται καὶ διασπᾶται, πλὴν ὅσον ἡ γῆ μέρος ἀναλαμβάνουσα καὶ δεχομένη γίγνεται γόνιμος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ. καὶ θρῆνός ἐστιν [e] ἱερὸς ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ [Κρόνου] γενόμενος, θρηνεῖ δὲ τὸν ἐν τοῖς ἀριστεροῖς γινόμενον μέρεσιν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς δεξιοῖς φθειρόμενον. Αἰγύπτιοι γὰρ οἴονται τὰ μὲν ἑῷα τοῦ κόσμου πρόσωπον εἶναι, τὰ δὲ πρὸς βορρᾶν δεξιά, τὰ δὲ πρὸς νότον ἀριστερά· φερόμενος οὖν ἐκ τῶν νοτίων ὁ Νεῖλος, ἐν δὲ τοῖς βορείοις ὑπὸ τῆς θαλάσσης καταναλισκόμενος εἰκότως λέγεται τὴν μὲν γένεσιν ἐν τοῖς ἀριστεροῖς ἔχειν, τὴν δὲ φθορὰν ἐν τοῖς δεξιοῖς. διὸ τήν τε θάλασσαν οἱ ἱερεῖς ἀφοσιοῦνται καὶ τὸν ἅλα Τυφῶνος ἀφρὸν καλοῦσι, καὶ τῶν ἀπαγορευομένων ἕν ἐστιν αὐτοῖς ἐπὶ τραπέζης ἅλα μὴ προτίθεσθαι· καὶ κυβερνήτας οὐ [f] προσαγορεύουσιν, ὅτι χρῶνται θαλάττῃ καὶ τὸν βίον ἀπὸ τῆς θαλάττης ἔχουσιν· οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ καὶ τὸν ἰχθὺν ἀπὸ ταύτης προβάλλονται τῆς αἰτίας καὶ τὸ μισεῖν ἰχθύι γράφουσιν. ἐν Σάι γοῦν ἐν τῷ προπύλῳ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ἦν γεγλυμμένον βρέφος, γέρων καὶ μετὰ τοῦτον ἱέραξ, ἐφεξῆς δ’ ἰχθύς, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δ’ ἵππος ποτάμιος. ἐδήλου δὲ συμβολικῶς ‘ὦ γινόμενοι καὶ ἀπογινόμενοι, ‹θεὸς ἀναίδειαν μισεῖ’. τὸ μὲν γὰρ βρέφος γενέσεως σύμβολον, φθορᾶς› δ’ ὁ γέρων· ἱέρακι δὲ τὸν θεὸν φράζουσιν, ἰχθύι δὲ μῖσος, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, [364] [a] διὰ τὴν θάλατταν, ἵππῳ ποταμίῳ δ’ ἀναίδειαν· λέγεται γὰρ ἀποκτείνας τὸν πατέρα τῇ μητρὶ βίᾳ μίγνυσθαι. δόξειε δ’ ἂν καὶ τὸ ὑπὸ τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν λεγόμενον, ὡς ἡ θάλαττα Κρόνου δάκρυόν ἐστιν, αἰνίττεσθαι τὸ μὴ καθαρὸν μηδὲ σύμφυλον αὐτῆς.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔξωθεν εἰρήσθω κοινὴν ἔχοντα τὴν ἱστορίαν· οἱ δὲ σοφώτεροι τῶν ἱερέων οὐ μόνον τὸν Νεῖλον Ὄσιριν καλοῦσιν οὐδὲ Τυφῶνα τὴν θάλασσαν, ἀλλ’ Ὄσιριν μὲν ἁπλῆς ἅπασαν τὴν ὑγροποιὸν ἀρχὴν καὶ δύναμιν, αἰτίαν γενέσεως καὶ σπέρματος οὐσίαν νομίζοντες, Τυφῶνα δὲ πᾶν τὸ αὐχμηρὸν καὶ πυρῶδες καὶ ξηραντικὸν ὅλως καὶ πολέμιον τῇ ὑγρότητι· [b] διὸ καὶ πυρρόχρουν γεγονέναι τῷ σώματι καὶ πάρωχρον νομίζοντες οὐ πάνυ προθύμως ἐντυγχάνουσιν οὐδ’ ἡδέως ὁμιλοῦσι τοῖς τοιούτοις τὴν ὄψιν ἀνθρώποις. τὸν δ’ Ὄσιριν αὖ πάλιν μελάγχρουν γεγονέναι μυθολογοῦσιν, ὅτι πᾶν ὕδωρ καὶ γῆν καὶ ἱμάτια καὶ νέφη μελαίνει μιγνύμενον, καὶ τῶν νέων ὑγρότης ἐνοῦσα παρέχει τὰς τρίχας μελαίνας, ἡ δὲ πολίωσις οἷον ὠχρίασις ὑπὸ ξηρότητος ἐπιγίνεται τοῖς παρακμάζουσι. καὶ τὸ μὲν ἔαρ θαλερὸν καὶ γόνιμον καὶ προσηνές, τὸ δὲ φθινόπωρον ὑγρότητος ἐνδείᾳ καὶ φυτοῖς πολέμιον καὶ ζῴοις νοσῶδες. ὁ δ’ ἐν Ἡλίου πόλει τρεφόμενος βοῦς, ὃν [c] Μνεῦιν καλοῦσιν (Ὀσίριδος δ’ ἱερόν, ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἄπιδος πατέρα νομίζουσι), μέλας ἐστὶ καὶ δευτέρας ἔχει τιμὰς μετὰ τὸν Ἆπιν. ἔτι τὴν Αἴγυπτον ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα μελάγγειον οὖσαν, ὥσπερ τὸ μέλαν τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ, Χημίαν καλοῦσι καὶ καρδίᾳ παρεικάζουσι· θερμὴ γάρ ἐστι καὶ ὑγρὰ καὶ τοῖς νοτίοις μέρεσι τῆς οἰκουμένης, ὥσπερ ἡ καρδία τοῖς εὐωνύμοις τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, μάλιστα ἐγκέκλεισται καὶ προσκεχώρηκεν. Ἥλιον δὲ καὶ Σελήνην οὐχ ἅρμασιν ἀλλὰ πλοίοις ὀχήμασι χρωμένους περιπολεῖν φασιν αἰνιττόμενοι τὴν ἀφ’ ὑγροῦ τροφὴν αὐτῶν καὶ γένεσιν. οἴονται δὲ καὶ Ὅμηρον ὥσπερ Θαλῆν [d] μαθόντα παρ’ Αἰγυπτίων ὕδωρ ἀρχὴν ἁπάντων καὶ γένεσιν τίθεσθαι (Ξ 201)· τὸν γὰρ Ὠκεανὸν Ὄσιριν εἶναι, τὴν δὲ Τηθὺν Ἶσιν ὡς τιθηνουμένην πάντα καὶ συνεκτρέφουσαν. καὶ γὰρ Ἕλληνες τὴν τοῦ σπέρματος πρόεσιν ἀπουσίαν καλοῦσι καὶ συνουσίαν τὴν μῖξιν, καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ τοῦ ὗσαι, καὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ‘ὕην’ ὡς κύριον τῆς ὑγρᾶς φύσεως οὐχ ἕτερον ὄντα τοῦ Ὀσίριδος· καὶ γὰρ τὸν Ὄσιριν Ἑλλάνικος (FGrHist. 3 fr. 176) Ὕσιριν ἔοικεν ἀκηκοέναι ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερέων λεγόμενον· οὕτω γὰρ ὀνομάζων διατελεῖ τὸν θεόν, εἰκότως ἀπὸ τῆς φύσεως καὶ τῆς εὑρέσεως.

Ὅτι μὲν οὖν ὁ αὐτός ἐστι Διονύσῳ, τίνα μᾶλλον [e] ἢ σὲ γινώσκειν, ὦ Κλέα, δὴ προσῆκόν ἐστιν, ἀρχηίδα μὲν οὖσαν ἐν Δελφοῖς τῶν Θυιάδων, τοῖς δ’ Ὀσιριακοῖς καθωσιωμένην ἱεροῖς ἀπὸ πατρὸς καὶ μητρός; εἰ δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἕνεκα δεῖ μαρτύρια παραθέσθαι, τὰ μὲν ἀπόρρητα κατὰ χώραν ἐῶμεν, ἃ δ’ ἐμφανῶς δρῶσι θάπτοντες τὸν Ἆπιν οἱ ἱερεῖς, ὅταν παρακομίζωσιν ἐπὶ σχεδίας τὸ σῶμα, βακχείας οὐδὲν ἀποδεῖ· καὶ γὰρ νεβρίδας περικαθάπτονται καὶ θύρσους φοροῦσι καὶ βοαῖς χρῶνται καὶ κινήσεσιν ὥσπερ οἱ κάτοχοι τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμοῖς. διὸ καὶ ταυρόμορφα Διονύσου ποιοῦσιν ἀγάλματα πολλοὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων· αἱ δ’ Ἠλείων γυναῖκες καὶ παρακαλοῦσιν [f] εὐχόμεναι ‘ποδὶ βοείῳ τὸν θεὸν ἐλθεῖν’ πρὸς αὐτάς. Ἀργείοις δὲ βουγενὴς Διόνυσος ἐπίκλην ἐστίν· ἀνακαλοῦνται δ’ αὐτὸν ὑπὸ σαλπίγγων ἐξ ὕδατος ἐμβάλλοντες εἰς τὴν ἄβυσσον ἄρνα τῷ Πυλαόχῳ· τὰς δὲ σάλπιγγας ἐν θύρσοις ἀποκρύπτουσιν, ὡς Σωκράτης ἐν τοῖς περὶ ὁσίων (fr. 5 M.) εἴρηκεν. ὁμολογεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰ Τιτανικὰ καὶ Νυκτέλια τοῖς λεγομένοις Ὀσίριδος διασπασμοῖς καὶ ταῖς ἀναβιώσεσι καὶ παλιγγενεσίαις· ὁμοίως [365] [a] δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ταφάς. Αἰγύπτιοί τε γὰρ Ὀσίριδος πολλαχοῦ θήκας, ὥσπερ εἴρηται (358a 359a), δεικνύουσι, καὶ Δελφοὶ τὰ τοῦ Διονύσου λείψανα παρ’ αὐτοῖς παρὰ τὸ χρηστήριον ἀποκεῖσθαι νομίζουσι, καὶ θύουσιν οἱ ὅσιοι θυσίαν ἀπόρρητον ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος, ὅταν αἱ Θυιάδες ἐγείρωσι τὸν Λικνίτην. ὅτι δ’ οὐ μόνον τοῦ οἴνου Διόνυσον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάσης ὑγρᾶς φύσεως Ἕλληνες ἡγοῦνται κύριον καὶ ἀρχηγόν, ἀρκεῖ Πίνδαρος μάρτυς εἶναι λέγων (fr. 153) ‘δενδρέων δὲ νομὸν Διόνυσος πολυγαθὴς αὐξάνοι, ἁγνὸν φέγγος ὀπώρας·’ διὸ καὶ τοῖς τὸν Ὄσιριν σεβομένοις ἀπαγορεύεται δένδρον ἥμερον ἀπολλύναι καὶ πηγὴν ὕδατος ἐμφράττειν.

[b] Οὐ μόνον δὲ τὸν Νεῖλον, ἀλλὰ πᾶν ὑγρὸν ἁπλῶς Ὀσίριδος ἀπορροὴν καλοῦσι, καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν ἀεὶ προπομπεύει τὸ ὑδρεῖον ἐπὶ τιμῇ τοῦ θεοῦ. καὶ θρύῳ βασιλέα καὶ τὸ νότιον κλίμα τοῦ κόσμου γράφουσι, καὶ μεθερμηνεύεται τὸ θρύον ποτισμὸς καὶ κύησις πάντων καὶ δοκεῖ γεννητικῷ μορίῳ τὴν φύσιν ἐοικέναι. τὴν δὲ τῶν Παμυλίων ἑορτὴν ἄγοντες, ὥσπερ εἴρηται (355e), φαλλικὴν οὖσαν ἄγαλμα προτίθενται καὶ περιφέρουσιν, οὗ τὸ αἰδοῖον τριπλάσιόν ἐστιν· ἀρχὴ γὰρ ὁ θεός, ἀρχὴ δὲ πᾶσα τῷ γονίμῳ πολλαπλασιάζει τὸ ἐξ αὑτῆς. τὸ δὲ πολλάκις εἰώθαμεν καὶ τρὶς λέγειν, ὡς τό ‘τρισμάκαρες’ [c] καὶ (θ 340) ‘δεσμοὶ μὲν τρὶς τόσσοι ἀπείρονες’, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία κυρίως ἐμφαίνεται τὸ τριπλάσιον ὑπὸ τῶν παλαιῶν· ἡ γὰρ ὑγρὰ φύσις ἀρχὴ καὶ γένεσις οὖσα πάντων ἐξ αὑτῆς τὰ πρῶτα τρία σώματα, γῆν ἀέρα καὶ πῦρ, ἐποίησε. καὶ γὰρ ὁ προστιθέμενος τῷ μύθῳ λόγος, ὡς τοῦ Ὀσίριδος ὁ Τυφὼν τὸ αἰδοῖον ἔρριψεν εἰς τὸν ποταμόν, ἡ δ’ Ἶσις οὐχ εὗρεν, ἀλλ’ ἐμφερὲς ἄγαλμα θεμένη καὶ κατασκευάσασα τιμᾶν καὶ φαλληφορεῖν ἔταξεν, ἐνταῦθα δὴ περιχωρεῖ διδάσκων, ὅτι τὸ γόνιμον καὶ τὸ σπερματικὸν τοῦ θεοῦ πρώτην ἔσχεν ὕλην τὴν ὑγρότητα καὶ δι’ ὑγρότητος [d] ἐνεκράθη τοῖς πεφυκόσι μετέχειν γενέσεως. ἄλλος δὲ λόγος ἐστὶν Αἰγυπτίων, ὡς Ἄποπις Ἡλίου ὢν ἀδελφὸς ἐπολέμει τῷ Διί, τὸν δ’ Ὄσιριν ὁ Ζεὺς συμμαχήσαντα καὶ συγκαταστρεψάμενον αὐτῷ τὸν πολέμιον παῖδα θέμενος Διόνυσον προσηγόρευσε. καὶ τούτου δὲ τοῦ λόγου τὸ μυθῶδες ἔστιν ἀποδεῖξαι τῆς περὶ φύσιν ἀληθείας ἁπτόμενον. Δία μὲν γὰρ Αἰγύπτιοι τὸ πνεῦμα καλοῦσιν, ᾧ πολέμιον τὸ αὐχμηρὸν καὶ πυρῶδες· τοῦτο δ’ ἥλιος μὲν οὐκ ἔστι, πρὸς δ’ ἥλιον ἔχει τινὰ συγγένειαν· ἡ δ’ ὑγρότης σβεννύουσα τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τῆς ξηρότητος αὔξει καὶ ῥώννυσι τὰς ἀναθυμιάσεις, ὑφ’ ὧν τὸ πνεῦμα τρέφεται [e] καὶ τέθηλεν.

Ἔτι τε τὸν κιττὸν [ὃν] Ἕλληνές τε καθιεροῦσι Διονύσῳ καὶ παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις λέγεται ‘χενόσιρις’ ὀνομάζεσθαι σημαίνοντος τοῦ ὀνόματος, ὥς φασι, φυτὸν Ὀσίριδος. Ἀρίστων τοίνυν ὁ γεγραφὼς Ἀθηναίων ἀποικίας (FHG III 324) ἐπιστολῇ τινι Ἀλεξάρχου περιέπεσεν, ἐν ᾗ Διὸς ἱστορεῖται [δὲ] καὶ Ἴσιδος υἱὸς ὢν ὁ Διόνυσος ὑπ’ Αἰγυπτίων οὐκ Ὄσιρις ἀλλ’ Ἀρσαφὴς [ἐν τῷ ἄλφα γράμματι] λέγεσθαι δηλοῦντος τὸ ἀνδρεῖον τοῦ ὀνόματος. ἐμφαίνει δὲ τοῦτο καὶ ὁ Ἑρμαῖος (FHG IV 427) ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ περὶ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ‹ἑορτῶν›· ὄβριμον γάρ φησι μεθερμηνευόμενον εἶναι τὸν Ὄσιριν. ἐῶ δὲ [f] Μνασέαν (FHG III 155) τῷ Ἐπάφῳ προστιθέντα τὸν Διόνυσον καὶ τὸν Ὄσιριν καὶ τὸν Σάραπιν, ἐῶ καὶ Ἀντικλείδην (FGrHist. 140 fr. 13) λέγοντα τὴν Ἶσιν Προμηθέως οὖσαν θυγατέρα Διονύσῳ συνοικεῖν· αἱ γὰρ εἰρημέναι περὶ τὰς ἑορτὰς καὶ τὰς θυσίας οἰκειότητες ἐναργεστέραν τῶν μαρτύρων τὴν πίστιν ἔχουσι.

Τῶν τ’ ἄστρων τὸν σείριον Ὀσίριδος νομίζουσιν [366] [a] ὑδραγωγὸν ὄντα καὶ τὸν λέοντα τιμῶσι καὶ χάσμασι λεοντείοις τὰ τῶν ἱερῶν θυρώματα κοσμοῦσιν, ὅτι πλημμυρεῖ Νεῖλος (Ar. Phaen. 151)

‘ἠελίου τὰ πρῶτα συνερχομένοιο λέοντι.’

ὡς δὲ Νεῖλον Ὀσίριδος ἀπορροήν, οὕτως Ἴσιδος σῶμα γῆν λέγουσι καὶ νομίζουσιν οὐ πᾶσαν, ἀλλ’ ἧς ὁ Νεῖλος ἐπιβαίνει σπερμαίνων καὶ μιγνύμενος· ἐκ δὲ τῆς συνουσίας ταύτης γεννῶσι τὸν Ὧρον. ἔστι δ’ Ὧρος ἡ πάντα σῴζουσα καὶ τρέφουσα τοῦ περιέχοντος ὥρα καὶ κρᾶσις ἀέρος, ὃν ἐν τοῖς ἕλεσι τοῖς περὶ Βοῦτον ὑπὸ Λητοῦς τραφῆναι λέγουσιν· ἡ γὰρ ὑδατώδης καὶ διάβροχος γῆ μάλιστα τὰς σβεννυούσας καὶ χαλώσας τὴν ξηρότητα [b] καὶ τὸν αὐχμὸν ἀναθυμιάσεις τιθηνεῖται. Νέφθυν δὲ καλοῦσι τῆς γῆς τὰ ἔσχατα καὶ παρόρια καὶ ψαύοντα τῆς θαλάττης· διὸ καὶ Τελευτὴν ἐπονομάζουσι τὴν Νέφθυν καὶ Τυφῶνι δὲ συνοικεῖν λέγουσιν. ὅταν δ’ ὑπερβαλὼν καὶ πλεονάσας ὁ Νεῖλος ἐπέκεινα πλησιάσῃ τοῖς ἐσχατεύουσι, τοῦτο μῖξιν Ὀσίριδος πρὸς Νέφθυν καλοῦσιν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀναβλαστανόντων φυτῶν ἐλεγχομένην· ὧν καὶ τὸ μελίλωτόν ἐστιν, οὗ φησι μῦθος ἀπορρυέντος καὶ ὑπολειφθέντος αἴσθησιν γενέσθαι Τυφῶνι τῆς περὶ τὸν γάμον ἀδικίας. ὅθεν ἡ μὲν Ἶσις ἔτεκε γνησίως τὸν [c] Ὧρον, ἡ δὲ Νέφθυς σκότιον τὸν Ἄνουβιν. ἐν μέντοι ταῖς διαδοχαῖς τῶν βασιλέων ἀναγράφουσι τὴν Νέφθυν Τυφῶνι γημαμένην πρώτην γενέσθαι στεῖραν· εἰ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ περὶ γυναικὸς ἀλλὰ περὶ τῆς θεοῦ λέγουσιν, αἰνίττονται τὸ παντελῶς τῆς γῆς ἄγονον καὶ ἄκαρπον ὑπὸ στερρότητος.

Ἡ δὲ Τυφῶνος ἐπιβουλὴ καὶ τυραννὶς αὐχμοῦ δύναμις ἦν ἐπικρατήσαντος καὶ διαφορήσαντος τήν τε γεννῶσαν ὑγρότητα τὸν Νεῖλον καὶ αὔξουσαν, ἡ δὲ συνεργὸς αὐτοῦ βασιλὶς Αἰθιόπων αἰνίττεται πνοὰς νοτίους ἐξ Αἰθιοπίας· ὅταν γὰρ αὗται τῶν ἐτησίων ἐπικρατήσωσι τὰ νέφη πρὸς τὴν Αἰθιοπίαν ἐλαυνόντων καὶ [d] κωλύσωσι τοὺς τὸν Νεῖλον αὔξοντας ὄμβρους καταρραγῆναι, κατέχων ὁ Τυφὼν ἐπιφλέγει, καὶ τότε κρατήσας παντάπασι τὸν Νεῖλον εἰς ἑαυτὸν ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας συσταλέντα καὶ ῥυέντα κοῖλον καὶ ταπεινὸν ἐξέωσεν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν. ἡ γὰρ λεγομένη κάθειρξις εἰς τὴν σορὸν Ὀσίριδος οὐδὲν ἔοικεν ἀλλ’ ἢ κρύψιν ὕδατος καὶ ἀφανισμὸν αἰνίττεσθαι· διὸ μηνὸς Ἀθὺρ ἀφανισθῆναι τὸν Ὄσιριν λέγουσιν, ὅτε τῶν ἐτησίων ἀπολειπόντων παντάπασιν ὁ μὲν Νεῖλος ὑπονοστεῖ, γυμνοῦται δ’ ἡ χώρα, μηκυνομένης δὲ τῆς νυκτὸς αὔξεται τὸ σκότος, ἡ δὲ τοῦ φωτὸς μαραίνεται καὶ κρατεῖται δύναμις, οἱ ‹δ’› ἱερεῖς [e] ἄλλα τε δρῶσι σκυθρωπὰ καὶ βοῦν διάχρυσον ἱματίῳ μέλανι βυσσίνῳ περιβάλλοντες ἐπὶ πένθει τῆς θεοῦ δεικνύουσι (βοῦν γὰρ Ἴσιδος εἰκόνα καὶ γῆς νομίζουσιν) ἐπὶ τέσσαρας ἡμέρας ἀπὸ τῆς ἑβδόμης ἐπὶ δέκα ἑξῆς· καὶ γὰρ τὰ πενθούμενα τέσσαρα, πρῶτον μὲν ὁ Νεῖλος ἀπολείπων καὶ ὑπονοστῶν, δεύτερον δὲ τὰ βόρεια πνεύματα κατασβεννύμενα κομιδῇ τῶν νοτίων ἐπικρατούντων, τρίτον δὲ τὸ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐλάττονα γίνεσθαι τῆς νυκτός, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δ’ ἡ τῆς γῆς ἀπογύμνωσις ἅμα τῇ τῶν φυτῶν ψιλότητι τηνικαῦτα φυλλορροούντων. τῇ δ’ ἐνάτῃ ἐπὶ [f] δέκα νυκτὸς ἐπὶ θάλασσαν κατίασι, καὶ τὴν ἱερὰν κίστην οἱ στολισταὶ καὶ οἱ ἱερεῖς ἐκφέρουσι χρυσοῦν ἐντὸς ἔχουσαν κιβώτιον, εἰς ὃ ποτίμου λαβόντες ὕδατος ἐγχέουσι, καὶ γίνεται κραυγὴ τῶν παρόντων ὡς εὑρημένου τοῦ Ὀσίριδος· εἶτα γῆν κάρπιμον φυρῶσι τῷ ὕδατι καὶ συμμίξαντες ἀρώματα καὶ θυμιάματα τῶν πολυτελῶν ἀναπλάττουσι μηνοειδὲς ἀγαλμάτιον καὶ τοῦτο στολίζουσι καὶ κοσμοῦσιν ἐμφαίνοντες ὅτι γῆς οὐσίαν καὶ ὕδατος τοὺς θεοὺς τούτους νομίζουσι.

Τῆς δ’ Ἴσιδος πάλιν ἀναλαμβανούσης τὸν Ὄσιριν [367] [a] καὶ αὐξανούσης τὸν Ὧρον ἀναθυμιάσεσι καὶ ὁμίχλαις καὶ νέφεσι ῥωννύμενον ἐκρατήθη μέν, οὐκ ἀνῃρέθη δ’ ὁ Τυφών· οὐ γὰρ εἴασεν ἡ κυρία τῆς γῆς θεὸς ἀναιρεθῆναι παντάπασι τὴν ἀντικειμένην τῇ ὑγρότητι φύσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐχάλασε καὶ ἀνῆκε βουλομένη διαμένειν τὴν κρᾶσιν· οὐ γὰρ ἦν κόσμον εἶναι τέλειον ἐκλιπόντος καὶ ἀφανισθέντος τοῦ πυρώδους. εἰ δὲ ταῦτα μὴ λέγεται παρὰ τὸ εἰκός, οὐδ’ ἐκεῖνον ἄν τις ἀπορρίψειε τὸν λόγον, ὡς Τυφὼν μὲν ἐκράτει πάλαι τῆς Ὀσίριδος μοίρας· θάλασσα γὰρ ἦν ἡ Αἴγυπτος. διὸ πολλὰ μὲν ἐν τοῖς μετάλλοις καὶ τοῖς ὄρεσιν εὑρίσκεται μέχρι νῦν κογχύλια [ἔχειν]· πᾶσαι δὲ πηγαὶ καὶ φρέατα πάντα πολλῶν ὑπαρχόντων [b] ἁλμυρὸν ὕδωρ καὶ πικρὸν ἔχουσιν, ὡς ἂν ὑπόλειμμα τῆς πάλαι θαλάσσης ἕωλον ἐνταυθοῖ συνερρυηκός. ὁ δ’ Ὧρος χρόνῳ τοῦ Τυφῶνος ἐπεκράτησε, τουτέστιν εὐκαιρίας ὀμβρίων γενομένης ὁ Νεῖλος ἐξώσας τὴν θάλασσαν ἀνέφηνε τὸ πεδίον καὶ ἀνεπλήρωσε ταῖς προσχώσεσιν. ὃ δὴ μαρτυροῦσαν ἔχει τὴν αἴσθησιν· ὁρῶμεν γὰρ ἔτι νῦν ἐπιφέροντι τῷ ποταμῷ νέαν ἰλὺν καὶ προάγοντι τὴν γῆν κατὰ μικρὸν ὑποχωροῦν ὀπίσω τὸ πέλαγος καὶ τὴν θάλασσαν [τὸ] ὕψος τῶν ἐν βάθει λαμβανόντων διὰ τὰς προσχώσεις ἀπορρέουσαν· τὴν δὲ Φάρον, ἣν Ὅμηρος (δ 354 sqq.) ᾔδει δρόμον ἡμέρας ἀπέχουσαν Αἰγύπτου, [c] νῦν μέρος οὖσαν αὐτῆς, οὐκ αὐτὴν ἀναδραμοῦσαν οὐδὲ προσαναβᾶσαν, ἀλλὰ τῆς μεταξὺ θαλάττης ἀναπλάττοντι τῷ ποταμῷ καὶ τρέφοντι τὴν ἤπειρον ἀνασταλείσης.

Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὅμοια τοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν Στωικῶν (StVFr. II 1093) θεολογουμένοις ἐστί· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι τὸ μὲν γόνιμον πνεῦμα καὶ τρόφιμον Διόνυσον εἶναι λέγουσι, τὸ πληκτικὸν δὲ καὶ διαιρετικὸν Ἡρακλέα, τὸ δὲ δεκτικὸν Ἄμμωνα, Δήμητρα δὲ καὶ Κόρην τὸ διὰ τῆς γῆς καὶ τῶν καρπῶν διῆκον, Ποσειδῶνα δὲ τὸ διὰ τῆς θαλάττης. οἱ δὲ τοῖσδε τοῖς φυσικοῖς καὶ τῶν ἀπ’ ἀστρολογίας μαθηματικῶν ἔνια μιγνύντες Τυφῶνα μὲν οἴονται [d] τὸν ἡλιακὸν κόσμον, Ὄσιριν δὲ τὸν σεληνιακὸν λέγεσθαι· τὴν μὲν γὰρ σελήνην γόνιμον τὸ φῶς καὶ ὑγροποιὸν ἔχουσαν εὐμενῆ καὶ γοναῖς ζῴων καὶ φυτῶν εἶναι βλαστήσεσι· τὸν δ’ ἥλιον ἀκράτῳ πυρὶ καὶ σκληρῷ καταθάλπειν [τε] καὶ καταυαίνειν τὰ φυόμενα καὶ τεθηλότα καὶ τὸ πολὺ μέρος τῆς γῆς παντάπασιν ὑπὸ φλογμοῦ ποιεῖν ἀοίκητον καὶ κατακρατεῖν πολλαχοῦ καὶ τῆς σελήνης. διὸ τὸν Τυφῶνα Σὴθ [ἀεὶ] Αἰγύπτιοι καλοῦσιν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ καταδυναστεῦον ἢ καταβιαζόμενον, καὶ τῷ μὲν ἡλίῳ τὸν Ἡρακλέα μυθολογοῦσιν ἐνιδρυμένον συμπεριπολεῖν, τῇ δὲ σελήνῃ τὸν Ἑρμῆν· λόγου γὰρ ἔργοις ἔοικε καὶ [e] [περὶ] σοφίας τὰ τῆς σελήνης, τὰ δ’ ἡλίου πληγαῖς ὑπὸ βίας καὶ ῥώμης περαινομέναις. οἱ δὲ Στωικοὶ (StVFr. II 663) τὸν μὲν ἥλιον ἐκ θαλάττης ἀνάπτεσθαι καὶ τρέφεσθαί φασι, τῇ δὲ σελήνῃ τὰ κρηναῖα καὶ λιμναῖα νάματα γλυκεῖαν ἀναπέμπειν καὶ μαλακὴν ἀναθυμίασιν.

Ἑβδόμῃ ἐπὶ δέκα τὴν Ὀσίριδος γενέσθαι τελευτὴν Αἰγύπτιοι μυθολογοῦσιν, ἐν ᾗ μάλιστα γίνεται μειουμένη κατάδηλος ἡ πανσέληνος. διὸ καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ταύτην ἀντίφραξιν οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι καλοῦσι, καὶ ὅλως τὸν ἀριθμὸν τοῦτον ἀφοσιοῦνται· τοῦ γὰρ ἑξκαίδεκα τετραγώνου καὶ τοῦ ὀκτωκαίδεκα ἑτερομήκους, οἷς μόνοις [f] ἀριθμῶν ἐπιπέδων συμβέβηκε τὰς περιμέτρους ἴσας ἔχειν τοῖς περιεχομένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν χωρίοις, μέσος ὁ τῶν ἑπτακαίδεκα παρεμπίπτων ἀντιφράττει καὶ διαζεύγνυσιν ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων καὶ διαιρεῖ, ‹κατὰ› τὸν ἐπόγδοον λόγον εἰς ἄνισα διαστήματα τεμνόμενος. ἐτῶν δ’ ἀριθμὸν οἱ μὲν βιῶσαι τὸν Ὄσιριν οἱ δὲ βασιλεῦσαι λέγουσιν ὀκτὼ καὶ [368] [a] εἴκοσι· τοσαῦτα γὰρ ἔστι φῶτα τῆς σελήνης καὶ τοσαύταις ἡμέραις τὸν αὑτῆς κύκλον ἐξελίσσει. τὸ δὲ ξύλον ἐν ταῖς λεγομέναις Ὀσίριδος ταφαῖς τέμνοντες κατασκευάζουσι λάρνακα μηνοειδῆ διὰ τὸ τὴν σελήνην, ὅταν τῷ ἡλίῳ πλησιάζῃ, μηνοειδῆ γινομένην ἀποκρύπτεσθαι. τὸν δ’ εἰς δεκατέσσαρα μέρη τοῦ Ὀσίριδος διασπασμὸν αἰνίττονται πρὸς τὰς ἡμέρας, ἐν αἷς φθίνει μετὰ πανσέληνον ἄχρι νουμηνίας τὸ ἄστρον. ἡμέραν δέ, ἐν ᾗ φαίνεται πρῶτον ἐκφυγοῦσα τὰς αὐγὰς καὶ παρελθοῦσα τὸν ἥλιον, ‘ἀτελὲς ἀγαθόν’ προσαγορεύουσιν· ὁ γὰρ Ὄσιρις ἀγαθοποιός, [b] καὶ τοὔνομα πολλὰ φράζειν, οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ κράτος ἐνεργοῦν καὶ ἀγαθοποιὸν [ὃ] λέγουσι. τὸ δ’ ἕτερον ὄνομα τοῦ θεοῦ τὸν Ὄμφιν εὐεργέτην ὁ Ἑρμαῖός (FHG IV 427) φησι δηλοῦν ἑρμηνευόμενον.

Οἴονται δὲ πρὸς τὰ φῶτα τῆς σελήνης ἔχειν τινὰ λόγον τοῦ Νείλου τὰς ἀναβάσεις. ἡ μὲν γὰρ μεγίστη περὶ τὴν Ἐλεφαντίνην ὀκτὼ γίνεται καὶ εἴκοσι πήχεων, ὅσα φῶτα καὶ μέτρα τῶν ἐμμήνων περιόδων ἑκάστης ἔστιν· ἡ δὲ περὶ Μένδητα καὶ Ξόιν βραχυτάτη πήχεων ἓξ πρὸς τὴν διχότομον· ἡ δὲ μέση περὶ Μέμφιν, ὅταν ᾖ δικαία, δεκατεσσάρων πήχεων πρὸς τὴν πανσέληνον. τὸν [c] δ’ Ἆπιν εἰκόνα μὲν Ὀσίριδος ἔμψυχον εἶναι, γίνεσθαι δέ, ὅταν φῶς ἐρείσῃ γόνιμον ἀπὸ τῆς σελήνης καὶ καθάψηται βοὸς ὀργώσης. διὸ καὶ τοῖς τῆς σελήνης σχήμασιν ἔοικε πολλὰ τοῦ Ἄπιδος περιμελαινομένου τὰ λαμπρὰ τοῖς σκιεροῖς. ἔτι ‹δὲ› τῇ νουμηνίᾳ τοῦ Φαμενὼθ μηνὸς ἑορτὴν ἄγουσιν ἔμβασιν Ὀσίριδος εἰς τὴν σελήνην ὀνομάζοντες, ἔαρος ἀρχὴν οὖσαν. οὕτω τὴν Ὀσίριδος δύναμιν ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ τιθέντες τὴν Ἶσιν αὐτῷ γένεσιν οὖσαν συνεῖναι λέγουσι. διὸ καὶ μητέρα τὴν σελήνην τοῦ κόσμου καλοῦσι καὶ φύσιν ἔχειν ἀρσενόθηλυν οἴονται πληρουμένην [d] ὑφ’ ἡλίου καὶ κυισκομένην, αὐτὴν δὲ πάλιν εἰς τὸν ἀέρα προϊεμένην γεννητικὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ κατασπείρουσαν· οὐ γὰρ ἀεὶ τὴν φθορὰν ἐπικρατεῖν τὴν Τυφώνειον, πολλάκις δὲ κρατουμένην ὑπὸ τῆς γενέσεως καὶ συνδεομένην αὖθις ἀναλύεσθαι καὶ διαμάχεσθαι πρὸς τὸν Ὧρον. ἔστι δ’ οὗτος ὁ περίγειος κόσμος οὔτε φθορᾶς ἀπαλλαττόμενος παντάπασιν οὔτε γενέσεως.

Ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐκλειπτικῶν αἴνιγμα ποιοῦνται τὸν μῦθον· ἐκλείπει μὲν γὰρ ἡ σελήνη πανσέληνος ἐναντίαν τοῦ ἡλίου στάσιν ἔχοντος πρὸς αὐτὴν εἰς τὴν σκιὰν ἐμπίπτουσα τῆς γῆς, ὥσπερ φασὶ τὸν Ὄσιριν εἰς τὴν σορόν. αὐτὴ δὲ πάλιν ἀποκρύπτει καὶ ἀφανίζει ταῖς [e] τριακάσιν, οὐ μὴν ἀναιρεῖ[ται] παντάπασι τὸν ἥλιον, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τὸν Τυφῶνα ἡ Ἶσις.

γεννώσης τῆς Νέφθυος τὸν Ἄνουβιν Ἶσις ὑποβάλλεται· Νέφθυς γάρ ἐστι τὸ ὑπὸ γῆν καὶ ἀφανές, Ἶσις δὲ τὸ ὑπὲρ τὴν γῆν καὶ φανερόν, ὁ δὲ τούτων ὑποψαύων καὶ καλούμενος ὁρίζων κύκλος ἐπίκοινος ὢν ἀμφοῖν Ἄνουβις κέκληται καὶ κυνὶ τὸ εἶδος ἀπεικάζεται· καὶ γὰρ ὁ κύων χρῆται τῇ ὄψει νυκτός τε καὶ ἡμέρας ὁμοίως. καὶ τοιαύτην ἔχειν δοκεῖ παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις τὴν δύναμιν ὁ Ἄνουβις, οἵαν ἡ Ἑκάτη παρ’ Ἕλλησι, χθόνιος ὢν ὁμοῦ καὶ Ὀλύμπιος. ἐνίοις δὲ δοκεῖ Κρόνος ὁ Ἄνουβις εἶναι· διὸ [f] πάντα τίκτων ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ κύων ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν τοῦ κυνὸς ἐπίκλησιν ἔσχεν. ἔστι δ’ οὖν τοῖς σεβομένοις τὸν Ἄνουβιν ἀπόρρητόν τι, καὶ πάλαι μὲν τὰς μεγίστας ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ τιμὰς ὁ κύων ἔσχεν· ἐπεὶ δὲ Καμβύσου τὸν Ἆπιν ἀνελόντος καὶ ῥίψαντος οὐδὲν προσῆλθεν οὐδ’ ἐγεύσατο τοῦ σώματος ἀλλ’ ἢ μόνος ὁ κύων, ἀπώλεσε τὸ πρῶτος εἶναι καὶ μάλιστα τιμᾶσθαι τῶν ἑτέρων ζῴων.

Εἰσὶ δέ τινες οἱ τὸ σκίασμα τῆς γῆς, εἰς ὃ τὴν σελήνην ὀλισθάνουσαν ἐκλείπειν νομίζουσι, Τυφῶνα καλοῦντες· [369] [a] ὅθεν οὐκ ἀπέοικεν εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἰδίᾳ μὲν οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἕκαστος, ὁμοῦ δὲ πάντες ὀρθῶς λέγουσιν· οὐ γὰρ αὐχμὸν ‹μόνον› οὐδ’ ἄνεμον οὐδὲ θάλατταν οὐδὲ σκότος, ἀλλὰ πᾶν ὅσον ἡ φύσις βλαβερὸν καὶ φθαρτικὸν ἔχει, μόριον τοῦ Τυφῶνος ἔστιν ‹εἰπεῖν›. οὔτε γὰρ ἐν ἀψύχοις σώμασι τὰς τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὰς θετέον, ὡς Δημόκριτος καὶ Ἐπίκουρος, οὔτ’ ἀποίου δημιουργὸν ὕλης ἕνα λόγον καὶ μίαν πρόνοιαν, ὡς οἱ Στωικοί (StVFr. II 1108), περιγινομένην ἁπάντων καὶ κρατοῦσαν· ἀδύνατον γὰρ ἢ φλαῦρον ὁτιοῦν, ὅπου πάντων, ἢ χρηστόν, ὅπου μηδενὸς ὁ θεὸς αἴτιος, [b] ἐγγενέσθαι. ‘παλίντονος’ γάρ ‘ἁρμονίη κόσμου, ὅκωσπερ λύρης καὶ τόξου’ καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (B 51)· καὶ κατ’ Εὐριπίδην (fr. 21)

‘οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο χωρὶς ἐσθλὰ καὶ κακά,

ἀλλ’ ἔστι τις σύγκρασις ὥστ’ ἔχειν καλῶς.’

διὸ καὶ παμπάλαιος αὕτη κάτεισιν ἐκ θεολόγων καὶ νομοθετῶν εἴς τε ποιητὰς καὶ φιλοσόφους δόξα, τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀδέσποτον ἔχουσα, τὴν δὲ πίστιν ἰσχυρὰν καὶ δυσεξάλειπτον, οὐκ ἐν λόγοις μόνον οὐδ’ ἐν φήμαις, ἀλλ’ ἔν τε τελεταῖς ἔν τε θυσίαις καὶ βαρβάροις καὶ Ἕλλησι πολλαχοῦ περιφερομένη, ὡς οὔτ’ ἄνουν καὶ ἄλογον καὶ [c] ἀκυβέρνητον αἰωρεῖται τῷ αὐτομάτῳ τὸ πᾶν, οὔθ’ εἷς ἐστιν ὁ κρατῶν καὶ κατευθύνων ὥσπερ οἴαξιν ἤ τισι πειθηνίοις χαλινοῖς λόγος, ἀλλὰ πολλὰ καὶ μεμιγμένα κακοῖς καὶ ἀγαθοῖς μᾶλλον δὲ μηδὲν ὡς ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν ἄκρατον ἐνταῦθα τῆς φύσεως φερούσης οὐ δυεῖν πίθων εἷς ταμίας ὥσπερ νάματα τὰ πράγματα καπηλικῶς διανέμων ἀνακεράννυσιν ἡμῖν, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ δυεῖν ἐναντίων ἀρχῶν καὶ δυεῖν ἀντιπάλων δυνάμεων, τῆς μὲν ἐπὶ τὰ δεξιὰ καὶ κατ’ εὐθεῖαν ὑφηγουμένης, τῆς δ’ ἔμπαλιν ἀναστρεφούσης καὶ ἀνακλώσης ὅ τε βίος μικτὸς ὅ τε κόσμος, εἰ καὶ μὴ πᾶς, ἀλλ’ ὁ περίγειος οὗτος καὶ [d] μετὰ σελήνην ἀνώμαλος καὶ ποικίλος γέγονε καὶ μεταβολὰς πάσας δεχόμενος. εἰ γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀναιτίως πέφυκε γίνεσθαι, αἰτίαν δὲ κακοῦ τἀγαθὸν οὐκ ἂν παράσχοι, δεῖ γένεσιν ἰδίαν καὶ ἀρχὴν ὥσπερ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ κακοῦ τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν.

Καὶ δοκεῖ τοῦτο τοῖς πλείστοις καὶ σοφωτάτοις· νομίζουσι γὰρ οἱ μὲν θεοὺς εἶναι δύο καθάπερ ἀντιτέχνους, τὸν μὲν ἀγαθῶν, τὸν δὲ φαύλων δημιουργόν· οἱ δὲ τὸν μὲν [γὰρ] ἀμείνονα θεόν, τὸν δ’ ἕτερον δαίμονα καλοῦσιν, ὥσπερ Ζωροάστρης ὁ μάγος, ὃν πεντακισχιλίοις ἔτεσι τῶν Τρωικῶν γεγονέναι πρεσβύτερον ἱστοροῦσιν.

[e] οὗτος οὖν ἐκάλει τὸν μὲν Ὡρομάζην, τὸν δ’ Ἀρειμάνιον· καὶ προσαπεφαίνετο τὸν μὲν ἐοικέναι φωτὶ μάλιστα τῶν αἰσθητῶν, τὸν δ’ ἔμπαλιν σκότῳ καὶ ἀγνοίᾳ, μέσον δ’ ἀμφοῖν τὸν Μίθρην εἶναι· διὸ καὶ Μίθρην Πέρσαι τὸν μεσίτην ὀνομάζουσιν· ἐδίδαξε ‹δὲ› τῷ μὲν εὐκταῖα θύειν καὶ χαριστήρια, τῷ δ’ ἀποτρόπαια καὶ σκυθρωπά. πόαν γάρ τινα κόπτοντες ὄμωμι καλουμένην ἐν ὅλμῳ τὸν Ἅιδην ἀνακαλοῦνται καὶ τὸν σκότον, εἶτα μίξαντες αἵματι λύκου σφαγέντος εἰς τόπον ἀνήλιον ἐκφέρουσι καὶ ῥίπτουσι. καὶ γὰρ τῶν φυτῶν νομίζουσι τὰ μὲν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ θεοῦ, τὰ δὲ τοῦ κακοῦ δαίμονος εἶναι, καὶ τῶν [f] ζῴων ὥσπερ κύνας καὶ ὄρνιθας καὶ χερσαίους ἐχίνους τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, τοῦ [δὲ] φαύλου μῦς ἐνύδρους εἶναι· διὸ καὶ τὸν κτείναντα πλείστους εὐδαιμονίζουσιν. οὐ μὴν ‹ἀλλὰ› κἀκεῖνοι πολλὰ μυθώδη περὶ τῶν θεῶν λέγουσιν, οἷα καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐστίν. ὁ μὲν Ὡρομάζης ἐκ τοῦ καθαρωτάτου φάους ὁ δ’ Ἀρειμάνιος ἐκ τοῦ ζόφου γεγονὼς πολεμοῦσιν [370] [a] ἀλλήλοις· καὶ ὁ μὲν ἓξ θεοὺς ἐποίησε, τὸν μὲν πρῶτον εὐνοίας, τὸν δὲ δεύτερον ἀληθείας, τὸν δὲ τρίτον εὐνομίας, τῶν δὲ λοιπῶν τὸν μὲν σοφίας, τὸν δὲ πλούτου, τὸν δὲ τῶν ἐπὶ τοῖς καλοῖς ἡδέων δημιουργόν· ὁ δὲ τούτοις ὥσπερ ἀντιτέχνους ἴσους τὸν ἀριθμόν. εἶθ’ ὁ μὲν Ὡρομάζης τρὶς ἑαυτὸν αὐξήσας ἀπέστη τοῦ ἡλίου τοσοῦτον, ὅσον ὁ ἥλιος τῆς γῆς ἀφέστηκε, καὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἄστροις ἐκόσμησεν· ἕνα δ’ ἀστέρα πρὸ πάντων οἷον φύλακα καὶ προόπτην ἐγκατέστησε τὸν σείριον. ἄλλους δὲ ποιήσας τέσσαρας καὶ εἴκοσι θεοὺς εἰς ᾠὸν ἔθηκεν. οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀρειμανίου γενόμενοι καὶ αὐτοὶ τοσοῦτοι [b] διατρήσαντες τὸ ᾠὸν γαν, ὅθεν ἀναμέμικται τὰ κακὰ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς. ἔπεισι δὲ χρόνος εἱμαρμένος, ἐν ᾧ τὸν Ἀρειμάνιον λοιμὸν ἐπάγοντα καὶ λιμὸν ὑπὸ τούτων ἀνάγκη φθαρῆναι παντάπασι καὶ ἀφανισθῆναι, τῆς δὲ γῆς ἐπιπέδου καὶ ὁμαλῆς γενομένης ἕνα βίον καὶ μίαν πολιτείαν ἀνθρώπων μακαρίων καὶ ὁμογλώσσων ἁπάντων γενέσθαι. Θεόπομπος δέ φησι (fr. 65 FGrHist.) κατὰ τοὺς μάγους ἀνὰ μέρος τρισχίλια ἔτη τὸν μὲν κρατεῖν τὸν δὲ κρατεῖσθαι τῶν θεῶν, ἄλλα δὲ τρισχίλια μάχεσθαι καὶ πολεμεῖν καὶ ἀναλύειν τὰ τοῦ ἑτέρου τὸν ἕτερον, τέλος δ’ ἀπολείπεσθαι τὸν Ἅιδην· καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἀνθρώπους [c] εὐδαίμονας ἔσεσθαι μήτε τροφῆς δεομένους μήτε σκιὰν ποιοῦντας, τὸν δὲ ταῦτα μηχανησάμενον θεὸν ἠρεμεῖν καὶ ἀναπαύεσθαι χρόνον [καλῶς] μὲν οὐ πολύν [τῷ θεῷ], ὥσπερ ἀνθρώπῳ κοιμωμένῳ μέτριον.

Ἡ μὲν οὖν μάγων μυθολογία τοιοῦτον ἔχει τρόπον· Χαλδαῖοι δὲ τῶν πλανήτων, οὓς θεοὺς γενεθλίους καλοῦσι, δύο μὲν ἀγαθουργούς, δύο δὲ κακοποιούς, μέσους δὲ τοὺς τρεῖς ἀποφαίνουσι καὶ κοινούς. τὰ δ’ Ἑλλήνων πᾶσί που δῆλα, τὴν μὲν ἀγαθὴν Διὸς Ὀλυμπίου μερίδα, τὴν δ’ ἀποτρόπαιον Ἅιδου ποιουμένων, ἐκ δ’ Ἀφροδίτης καὶ Ἄρεος Ἁρμονίαν γεγονέναι μυθολογούντων, [d] ὧν ὁ μὲν ἀπηνὴς καὶ φιλόνεικος, ἡ δὲ μειλίχιος καὶ γενέθλιος. σκόπει δὲ τοὺς φιλοσόφους τούτοις συμφερομένους. Ἡράκλειτος μὲν γὰρ ἄντικρυς (B 53) ‘πόλεμον’ ὀνομάζει ‘πατέρα καὶ βασιλέα καὶ κύριον πάντων’, καὶ τὸν μὲν Ὅμηρον εὐχόμενον (Σ 107) ‘ἔκ τε θεῶν ἔριν ἔκ τ’ ἀνθρώπων ἀπολέσθαι’ ‘λανθάνειν’ φησί (B 94) ‘τῇ πάντων γενέσει καταρώμενον ἐκ μάχης καὶ ἀντιπαθείας τὴν γένεσιν ἐχόντων, ἥλιον δὲ μὴ ὑπερβήσεσθαι τοὺς προσήκοντας ὅρους· εἰ δὲ μή, Κλῶθάς μιν Δίκης ἐπικούρους ἐξευρήσειν’. Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ (B 18) τὴν μὲν ἀγαθουργὸν ἀρχήν ‘Φιλότητα’ καὶ ‘Φιλίαν’ πολλάκις, ‹ἔτι› δ’ ‘Ἁρμονίαν’ καλεῖ ‘θεμερῶπιν’, τὴν δὲ χείρονα (B 17 [e] v. 19) ‘Νεῖκος οὐλόμενον’ καὶ (B 122 v. 2) ‘Δῆριν αἱματόεσσαν’. ‹καὶ› οἱ μὲν Πυθαγορικοὶ διὰ πλειόνων ὀνομάτων κατηγοροῦσι τοῦ μὲν ἀγαθοῦ τὸ ἓν τὸ πεπερασμένον τὸ μένον τὸ εὐθὺ τὸ περισσὸν τὸ τετράγωνον ‹τὸ ἴσον› τὸ δεξιὸν τὸ λαμπρόν, τοῦ δὲ κακοῦ τὴν δυάδα τὸ ἄπειρον τὸ φερόμενον τὸ καμπύλον τὸ ἄρτιον τὸ ἑτερόμηκες τὸ ἄνισον τὸ ἀριστερὸν τὸ σκοτεινόν, ὡς ταύτας ἀρχὰς γενέσεως ὑποκειμένας· Ἀναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καὶ ἄπειρον, Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ τὸ μὲν εἶδος τὸ δὲ στέρησιν, Πλάτων δὲ πολλαχοῦ μὲν οἷον ἐπηλυγαζόμενος καὶ παρακαλυπτόμενος τῶν ἐναντίων ἀρχῶν τὴν μὲν ταὐτὸν ὀνομάζει, τὴν δὲ θάτερον (Tim. 35a)· ἐν δὲ [f] τοῖς Νόμοις (896d sqq.) ἤδη πρεσβύτερος ὢν οὐ δι’ αἰνιγμῶν οὐδὲ συμβολικῶς, ἀλλὰ κυρίοις ὀνόμασιν οὐ μιᾷ ψυχῇ φησι κινεῖσθαι τὸν κόσμον, ἀλλὰ πλείοσιν ἴσως δυεῖν δὲ πάντως οὐκ ἐλάττοσιν· ὧν τὴν μὲν ἀγαθουργὸν εἶναι, τὴν δ’ ἐναντίαν ταύτῃ καὶ τῶν ἐναντίων δημιουργόν· ἀπολείπει δὲ καὶ τρίτην τινὰ μεταξὺ φύσιν οὐκ ἄψυχον οὐδ’ ἄλογον οὐδ’ ἀκίνητον ἐξ αὑτῆς, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι νομίζουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀνακειμένην ἀμφοῖν ἐκείναις, [371] [a] ἐφιεμένην δὲ τῆς ἀμείνονος ἀεὶ καὶ ποθοῦσαν καὶ διώκουσαν, ὡς τὰ ἐπιόντα δηλώσει τοῦ λόγου τὴν Αἰγυπτίων θεολογίαν μάλιστα ταύτῃ τῇ φιλοσοφίᾳ συνοικειοῦντος.

Μεμιγμένη γὰρ ἡ τοῦδε τοῦ κόσμου γένεσις καὶ σύστασις ἐξ ἐναντίων, οὐ μὴν ἰσοσθενῶν, δυνάμεων, ἀλλὰ τῆς βελτίονος τὸ κράτος ἐστίν· ἀπολέσθαι δὲ τὴν φαύλην παντάπασιν ἀδύνατον, πολλὴν μὲν ἐμπεφυκυῖαν τῷ σώματι, πολλὴν δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ τοῦ παντὸς καὶ πρὸς τὴν βελτίονα ἀεὶ δυσμαχοῦσαν. ἐν μὲν οὖν τῇ ψυχῇ νοῦς καὶ λόγος ὁ τῶν ἀρίστων πάντων ἡγεμὼν καὶ κύριος Ὄσιρίς ἐστιν, ἐν δὲ γῇ καὶ πνεύμασι καὶ ὕδασι καὶ [b] οὐρανῷ καὶ ἄστροις τὸ τεταγμένον καὶ καθεστηκὸς καὶ ὑγιαῖνον ὥραις καὶ κράσεσι καὶ περιόδοις Ὀσίριδος ἀπορροὴ καὶ εἰκὼν ἐμφαινομένη· Τυφὼν δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ παθητικὸν καὶ τιτανικὸν καὶ ἄλογον καὶ ἔμπληκτον, τοῦ δὲ σωματικοῦ τὸ ἐπίκηρον καὶ νοσῶδες καὶ ταρακτικὸν ἀωρίαις καὶ δυσκρασίαις καὶ κρύψεσιν ἡλίου καὶ ἀφανισμοῖς σελήνης οἷον ἐκδρομαὶ καὶ ἀφηνιασμοὶ [καὶ] Τυφῶνος· καὶ τοὔνομα κατηγορεῖ τὸ Σήθ, ᾧ τὸν Τυφῶνα καλοῦσι· φράζει μὲν τὸ ‹κατα›δυναστεῦον καὶ καταβιαζόμενον, φράζει δὲ τὴν πολλάκις ἀναστροφὴν καὶ πάλιν ὑπεκπήδησιν. Βέβωνα δὲ τινὲς μὲν ἕνα τῶν τοῦ Τυφῶνος [c] ἑταίρων γεγονέναι λέγουσιν, Μανεθὼς ‹δ’› αὐτὸν τὸν Τυφῶνα καὶ Βέβωνα καλεῖσθαι (fr. 76 M.)· σημαίνει δὲ τοὔνομα κάθεξιν ἢ κώλυσιν, ὡς τοῖς πράγμασιν ὁδῷ βαδίζουσι καὶ πρὸς ὃ χρὴ φερομένοις ἐνισταμένης τῆς τοῦ Τυφῶνος δυνάμεως. διὸ καὶ τῶν μὲν ἡμέρων ζῴων ἀπονέμουσιν αὐτῷ τὸ ἀμαθέστατον, ὄνον· τῶν δ’ ἀγρίων τὰ θηριωδέστατα, κροκόδειλον καὶ τὸν ποτάμιον ἵππον· περὶ μὲν ‹οὖν› τοῦ ὄνου προδεδηλώκαμεν (362f)· ἐν Ἑρμοῦ πόλει δὲ Τυφῶνος ἄγαλμα δεικνύουσιν ἵππον ποτάμιον, ἐφ’ οὗ βέβηκεν ἱέραξ ὄφει μαχόμενος, τῷ μὲν ἵππῳ τὸν Τυφῶνα δεικνύντες, τῷ δ’ ἱέρακι δύναμιν καὶ [d] ἀρχήν, ἣν βίᾳ κτώμενος ὁ Τυφὼν πολλάκις οὐκ ἀνίεται ταραττόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς κακίας καὶ ταράττων. διὸ καὶ θύοντες ἑβδόμῃ τοῦ Τυβὶ μηνός, ἣν καλοῦσιν ἄφιξιν Ἴσιδος ἐκ Φοινίκης, ἐπιπλάττουσι τοῖς ποπάνοις ἵππον ποτάμιον δεδεμένον. ἐν δ’ Ἀπόλλωνος πόλει νενομισμένον ἐστὶ κροκοδείλου φαγεῖν πάντως ἕκαστον· ἡμέρᾳ δὲ μιᾷ θηρεύσαντες ὅσους ἂν δύνωνται καὶ κτείναντες ἀπαντικρὺ τοῦ ἱεροῦ προβάλλουσι καὶ λέγουσιν ὡς ὁ Τυφὼν τὸν Ὧρον ἀπέδρα κροκόδειλος γενόμενος, πάντα καὶ ζῷα καὶ φυτὰ καὶ πάθη τὰ φαῦλα καὶ βλαβερὰ Τυφῶνος [e] ἔργα καὶ μέρη ‹καὶ› κινήματα ποιούμενοι.

Τὸν δ’ Ὄσιριν αὖ πάλιν ὀφθαλμῷ καὶ σκήπτρῳ γράφουσιν, ὧν τὸ μὲν τὴν πρόνοιαν ἐμφαίνειν, τὸ δὲ τὴν δύναμιν, ὡς Ὅμηρος (Θ 22) τὸν ἄρχοντα καὶ βασιλεύοντα πάντων ‘Ζῆν’ ὕπατον καὶ μήστωρα’ καλῶν [καὶ] ἔοικε τῷ μὲν ὑπάτῳ τὸ κράτος αὐτοῦ, τῷ δὲ μήστωρι τὴν εὐβουλίαν καὶ τὴν φρόνησιν σημαίνειν. γράφουσι ‹δὲ› καὶ ἱέρακι τὸν θεὸν τοῦτον πολλάκις· εὐτονίᾳ γὰρ ὄψεως ὑπερβάλλει καὶ πτήσεως ὀξύτητι καὶ διοικεῖν αὑτὸν ἐλαχίστῃ τροφῇ πέφυκε. λέγεται δὲ καὶ νεκρῶν ἀτάφων ὄμμασι γῆν ὑπερπετόμενος ἐπιβάλλειν· [f] ὅταν δὲ πιόμενος ἐπὶ τὸν ποταμὸν καταίρῃ, τὸ πτερὸν ἵστησιν ὀρθόν· πιὼν δὲ κλίνει τοῦτο πάλιν· ᾧ δῆλός ἐστι σεσωσμένος καὶ διαπεφευγὼς τὸν κροκόδειλον· ἂν γὰρ ἁρπασθῇ, μένει τὸ πτερὸν ὥσπερ ἔστη πεπηγός. πανταχοῦ δὲ καὶ ἀνθρωπόμορφον Ὀσίριδος ἄγαλμα δεικνύουσιν ἐξορθιάζον τῷ αἰδοίῳ διὰ τὸ γόνιμον καὶ τὸ τρόφιμον. ἀμπεχόνῃ δὲ φλογοειδεῖ στέλλουσιν αὐτοῦ τὰς [372] [a] εἰκόνας, ἥλιον σῶμα τῆς τἀγαθοῦ δυνάμεως [ὡς] ὁρατὸν οὐσίας νοητῆς ἡγούμενοι. διὸ καὶ καταφρονεῖν ἄξιόν ἐστι τῶν τὴν ἡλίου σφαῖραν Τυφῶνι προσνεμόντων, ᾧ λαμπρὸν οὐδὲν οὐδὲ σωτήριον οὐδὲ τάξις οὐδὲ γένεσις οὐδὲ κίνησις μέτρον ἔχουσα καὶ λόγον, ἀλλὰ τἀναντία προσήκει· καὶ ‹ξηρότητα καὶ› αὐχμόν, οἷς φθείρει πολλὰ τῶν ζῴων καὶ βλαστανόντων, οὐχ ἡλίου θετέον ἔργον, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἐν γῇ καὶ ἀέρι μὴ καθ’ ὥραν κεραννυμένων πνευμάτων καὶ ὑδάτων, ὅταν ἡ τῆς ἀτάκτου καὶ ἀορίστου δυνάμεως ἀρχὴ πλημμελήσασα κατασβέσῃ τὰς ἀναθυμιάσεις.

[b] Ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἱεροῖς ὕμνοις τοῦ Ὀσίριδος ἀνακαλοῦνται τὸν ἐν ταῖς ἀγκάλαις κρυπτόμενον τοῦ Ἡλίου καὶ τῇ τριακάδι τοῦ Ἐπιφὶ μηνὸς ἑορτάζουσιν ὀφθαλμῶν Ὥρου γενέθλιον, ὅτε σελήνη καὶ ἥλιος ἐπὶ μιᾶς εὐθείας γεγόνασιν, ὡς οὐ μόνον τὴν σελήνην ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ὄμμα τοῦ Ὥρου καὶ φῶς ἡγούμενοι. τῇ δὲ ὀγδόῃ φθίνοντος τοῦ Φαωφὶ βακτηρίας ἡλίου γενέθλιον ἄγουσι μετὰ φθινοπωρινὴν ἰσημερίαν, ἐμφαίνοντες οἷον ὑπερείσματος δεῖσθαι καὶ ῥώσεως τῷ τε θερμῷ γιγνόμενον ἐνδεᾶ καὶ τῷ φωτί [ἐνδεᾶ], κλινόμενον καὶ πλάγιον ἀφ’ ἡμῶν φερόμενον. ἔτι δὲ τὴν βοῦν ὑπὸ τροπὰς χειμερινὰς [c] ἑπτάκις περὶ τὸν ναὸν τοῦ Ἡλίου περιφέρουσι, καὶ καλεῖται ζήτησις Ὀσίριδος ἡ περιδρομή, τὸ ὕδωρ χειμῶνος τῆς θεοῦ ποθούσης· τοσαυτάκις δὲ περιίασιν, ὅτι τὴν ἀπὸ τροπῶν χειμερινῶν ἐπὶ τροπὰς θερινὰς πάροδον ἑβδόμῳ μηνὶ συμπεραίνει. λέγεται δὲ καὶ θῦσαι τῷ ἡλίῳ τετράδι μηνὸς ἱσταμένου πάντων πρῶτος Ὧρος ὁ Ἴσιδος, ὡς ἐν τοῖς ἐπιγραφομένοις Γενεθλίοις Ὥρου γέγραπται. καὶ μὴν ἡμέρας ἑκάστης τριχῶς ἐπιθυμιῶσι τῷ ἡλίῳ, ῥητίνην μὲν ὑπὸ τὰς ἀνατολάς, σμύρναν δὲ μεσουρανοῦντι, τὸ δὲ καλούμενον κῦφι περὶ δυσμάς· ὧν ἕκαστον ὃν ἔχει λόγον, ὕστερον (383a sqq.) ἀφηγήσομαι.

[d] τὸν δ’ ἥλιον πᾶσι τούτοις προστρέπεσθαι καὶ θεραπεύειν οἴονται. καὶ τί δεῖ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα συνάγειν; εἰσὶ γὰρ οἱ τὸν Ὄσιριν ἄντικρυς ἥλιον εἶναι καὶ ὀνομάζεσθαι Σείριον ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων λέγοντες, εἰ καὶ παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις ἡ πρόθεσις τοῦ ἄρθρου τοὔνομα πεποίηκεν ἀμφιγνοεῖσθαι, τὴν δ’ Ἶσιν οὐχ ἑτέραν τῆς σελήνης ἀποφαίνοντες· ὅθεν καὶ τῶν ἀγαλμάτων αὐτῆς τὰ μὲν κερασφόρα τοῦ μηνοειδοῦς γεγονέναι μιμήματα, τοῖς δὲ μελανοστόλοις ἐμφαίνεσθαι τὰς κρύψεις καὶ τοὺς περισκιασμοὺς ἐν οἷς διώκει ποθοῦσα τὸν ἥλιον. διὸ καὶ πρὸς τὰ ἐρωτικὰ τὴν σελήνην ἐπικαλοῦνται, καὶ τὴν Ἶσιν Εὔδοξός φησι (fr. 61) [e] βραβεύειν τὰ ἐρωτικά. καὶ τούτοις μὲν ἁμωσγέπως τοῦ πιθανοῦ μέτεστι, τῶν δὲ Τυφῶνα ποιούντων τὸν ἥλιον οὐδ’ ἀκούειν ἄξιον. ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς αὖθις τὸν οἰκεῖον λόγον ἀναλάβωμεν.

Ἡ γὰρ Ἶσίς ἐστι μὲν τὸ τῆς φύσεως θῆλυ καὶ δεκτικὸν ἁπάσης γενέσεως, καθὸ τιθήνη καὶ πανδεχὴς ὑπὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος (Tim. 49a 51a), ὑπὸ δὲ τῶν πολλῶν μυριώνυμος κέκληται διὰ τὸ πάσας ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου τρεπομένη μορφὰς δέχεσθαι καὶ ἰδέας. ἔχει δὲ σύμφυτον ἔρωτα τοῦ πρώτου καὶ κυριωτάτου πάντων, ὃ τἀγαθῷ ταὐτόν ἐστι, κἀκεῖνο ποθεῖ καὶ διώκει· τὴν δ’ ἐκ τοῦ κακοῦ φεύγει καὶ διωθεῖται μοῖραν, ἀμφοῖν μὲν [f] οὖσα χώρα καὶ ὕλη, ῥέπουσα δ’ ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον καὶ παρέχουσα γεννᾶν ἐξ ἑαυτῆς ἐκείνῳ καὶ κατασπείρειν εἰς ἑαυτὴν ἀπορροὰς καὶ ὁμοιότητας, αἷς χαίρει καὶ γέγηθε κυισκομένη καὶ ὑποπιμπλαμένη τῶν γενέσεων. εἰκὼν γάρ ἐστιν οὐσίας ‹ἡ› ἐν ὕλῃ γένεσις καὶ μίμημα [373] [a] τοῦ ὄντος τὸ γινόμενον. ὅθεν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου μυθολογοῦσι τὴν Ὀσίριδος ψυχὴν ἀίδιον εἶναι καὶ ἄφθαρτον, τὸ δὲ σῶμα πολλάκις διασπᾶν καὶ ἀφανίζειν τὸν Τυφῶνα, τὴν δ’ Ἶσιν πλανωμένην καὶ ζητεῖν καὶ συναρμόττειν πάλιν. τὸ γὰρ ὂν καὶ νοητὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν φθορᾶς καὶ μεταβολῆς κρεῖττόν ἐστιν· ἃς δ’ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τὸ αἰσθητὸν καὶ σωματικὸν εἰκόνας ἐκμάττεται καὶ λόγους καὶ εἴδη καὶ ὁμοιότητας ἀναλαμβάνει, καθάπερ ἐν κηρῷ σφραγῖδες οὐκ ἀεὶ διαμένουσιν ἀλλὰ καταλαμβάνει τὸ ἄτακτον αὐτὰς καὶ ταραχῶδες ἐνταῦθα τῆς ἄνω χώρας ἀπεληλαμένον καὶ μαχόμενον πρὸς τὸν Ὧρον, ὃν ἡ Ἶσις [b] εἰκόνα τοῦ νοητοῦ κόσμον αἰσθητὸν ὄντα γεννᾷ· διὸ καὶ δίκην φεύγειν λέγεται νοθείας ὑπὸ Τυφῶνος, ὡς οὐκ ὢν καθαρὸς οὐδ’ εἰλικρινὴς οἷος ὁ πατήρ, λόγος αὐτὸς καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀμιγὴς καὶ ἀπαθής, ἀλλὰ νενοθευμένος τῇ ὕλῃ διὰ τὸ σωματικόν. περιγίνεται δὲ καὶ νικᾷ τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ, τουτέστι τοῦ λόγου, μαρτυροῦντος καὶ δεικνύοντος, ὅτι πρὸς τὸ νοητὸν ἡ φύσις μετασχηματιζομένη τὸν κόσμον ἀποδίδωσιν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἔτι τῶν θεῶν ἐν γαστρὶ τῆς Ῥέας ὄντων ἐξ Ἴσιδος καὶ Ὀσίριδος λεγομένη γένεσις Ἀπόλλωνος αἰνίττεται τὸ πρὶν ἐκφανῆ γενέσθαι τόνδε τὸν κόσμον καὶ συντελεσθῆναι τῷ λόγῳ τὴν ὕλην [c] †φύσει ἐλεγχομένην ἐπ’ αὐτὴν ἀτελῆ τὴν πρώτην γένεσιν ἐξενεγκεῖν· διὸ καί φασι τὸν θεὸν ἐκεῖνον ἀνάπηρον ὑπὸ σκότῳ γενέσθαι καὶ πρεσβύτερον Ὧρον καλοῦσιν· οὐ γὰρ ἦν κόσμος, ἀλλ’ εἴδωλόν τι καὶ κόσμου φάντασμα μέλλοντος· ὁ δ’ Ὧρος οὗτος αὐτός ἐστιν ὡρισμένος καὶ τέλειος, οὐκ ἀνῃρηκὼς τὸν Τυφῶνα παντάπασιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ δραστήριον καὶ ἰσχυρὸν αὐτοῦ παρῃρημένος. ὅθεν ἐν Κοπτῷ τὸ ἄγαλμα τοῦ Ὥρου λέγουσιν ἐν τῇ ἑτέρᾳ χειρὶ Τυφῶνος αἰδοῖα κατέχειν καὶ τὸν Ἑρμῆν μυθολογοῦσιν ἐξελόντα τοῦ Τυφῶνος τὰ νεῦρα χορδαῖς χρήσασθαι, διδάσκοντες ὡς τὸ πᾶν ὁ λόγος διαρμοσάμενος [d] σύμφωνον ἐξ ἀσυμφώνων μερῶν ἐποίησε καὶ τὴν φθαρτικὴν οὐκ ἀπώλεσεν ἀλλ’ ἀνεπήρωσε δύναμιν. ὅθεν ἐκείνη μὲν ἀσθενὴς καὶ ἀδρανὴς ἐνταῦθα, φυρομένη καὶ προσπλεκομένη τοῖς παθητικοῖς καὶ μεταβολικοῖς μέρεσι, σεισμῶν μὲν ἐν γῇ καὶ τρόμων, αὐχμῶν δ’ ἐν ἀέρι καὶ πνευμάτων ἀτόπων, αὖθις δὲ πρηστήρων καὶ κεραυνῶν δημιουργός ἐστι· φαρμάττει δὲ καὶ λοιμοῖς ὕδατα καὶ πνεύματα καὶ μέχρι σελήνης ἀνατρέχει καὶ ἀναχαιτίζει συγχέουσα καὶ μελαίνουσα πολλάκις τὸ λαμπρόν, ὡς Αἰγύπτιοι νομίζουσι καὶ λέγουσιν, ὅτι τοῦ Ὥρου νῦν μὲν [e] ἐπάταξε νῦν δ’ ἐξελὼν κατέπιεν ὁ Τυφὼν τὸν ὀφθαλμόν, εἶτα τῷ Ἡλίῳ πάλιν ἀπέδωκε· πληγὴν μὲν αἰνιττόμενοι τὴν κατὰ μῆνα μείωσιν τῆς σελήνης, πήρωσιν δὲ τὴν ἔκλειψιν, ἣν ὁ ἥλιος ἰᾶται διαφυγούσῃ τὴν σκιὰν τῆς γῆς εὐθὺς ἀντιλάμπων. ἡ δὲ κρείττων καὶ θειοτέρα φύσις ἐκ τριῶν ἐστι, τοῦ νοητοῦ καὶ τῆς ὕλης καὶ τοῦ ἐκ τούτων, ὃν κόσμον Ἕλληνες ὀνομάζουσιν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Πλάτων (Tim. 50c d) τὸ μὲν νοητὸν καὶ ἰδέαν καὶ παράδειγμα καὶ πατέρα, τὴν δ’ ὕλην καὶ μητέρα καὶ τιθήνην ἕδραν τε καὶ χώραν γενέσεως, τὸ δ’ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν ἔγγονον καὶ γένεσιν ὀνομάζειν [f] εἴωθεν. Αἰγυπτίους δ’ ἄν τις εἰκάσειε τῶν τριγώνων τὸ κάλλιστον ‹τιμᾶν› μάλιστα τούτῳ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς φύσιν ὁμοιοῦντας, ὡς καὶ Πλάτων ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ (546b) δοκεῖ τούτῳ προσκεχρῆσθαι τὸ γαμήλιον διάγραμμα συντάττων. ἔχει δ’ ἐκεῖνο τὸ τρίγωνον τριῶν τὴν πρὸς ὀρθίαν καὶ τεττάρων τὴν βάσιν καὶ πέντε τὴν ὑποτείνουσαν ἴσον [374] [a] ταῖς περιεχούσαις δυναμένην. εἰκαστέον οὖν τὴν μὲν πρὸς ὀρθίαν ἄρρενι, τὴν δὲ βάσιν θηλείᾳ, τὴν δ’ ὑποτείνουσαν ἀμφοῖν ἐγγόνῳ· καὶ τὸν μὲν Ὄσιριν ὡς ἀρχήν, τὴν δ’ Ἶσιν ὡς ὑποδοχήν, τὸν δ’ Ὧρον ὡς ἀποτέλεσμα. τὰ μὲν γὰρ τρία πρῶτος περισσός ἐστι καὶ τέλειος· τὰ δὲ τέτταρα τετράγωνος ἀπὸ πλευρᾶς ἀρτίου τῆς δυάδος· τὰ δὲ πέντε πῆ μὲν τῷ πατρὶ πῆ δὲ τῇ μητρὶ προσέοικεν ἐκ τριάδος συγκείμενα καὶ δυάδος. καὶ τὰ πάντα τῶν πέντε γέγονε παρώνυμα, καὶ τὸ ἀριθμήσασθαι πεμπάσασθαι λέγουσι. ποιεῖ δὲ τετράγωνον ἡ πεντὰς ἀφ’ ἑαυτῆς, ὅσον τῶν γραμμάτων παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις τὸ [b] πλῆθός ἐστι, καὶ ὅσων ἐνιαυτῶν ἔζη χρόνον ὁ Ἆπις. τὸν μὲν οὖν Ὧρον εἰώθασι καὶ Μὶν προσαγορεύειν, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ὁρώμενον· αἰσθητὸν γὰρ καὶ ὁρατὸν ὁ κόσμος. ἡ δ’ Ἶσις ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ Μοὺθ καὶ πάλιν Ἄθυρι καὶ Μεθύερ προσαγορεύεται· σημαίνουσι δὲ τῷ μὲν πρώτῳ τῶν ὀνομάτων μητέρα, τῷ δὲ δευτέρῳ οἶκον Ὥρου κόσμιον, ὡς καὶ Πλάτων (Tim. 52d53a) χώραν γενέσεως καὶ δεξαμενήν, τὸ δὲ τρίτον σύνθετόν ἐστιν ἔκ τε τοῦ πλήρους καὶ τοῦ αἰτίου· πλήρης γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ὕλη τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τῷ ἀγαθῷ καὶ καθαρῷ καὶ κεκοσμημένῳ σύνεστιν.

Δόξειε δ’ ἂν ἴσως καὶ ὁ Ἡσίοδος (Th. 116 sqq.) [c] τὰ πρῶτα πάντων Χάος καὶ Γῆν καὶ Τάρταρον καὶ Ἔρωτα ποιῶν οὐχ ἑτέρας λαμβάνειν ἀρχάς, ἀλλὰ ταύτας· ‹εἴ› γε δὴ τῶν ὀνομάτων τῇ μὲν Ἴσιδι τὸ τῆς Γῆς, τῷ δ’ Ὀσίριδι τὸ τοῦ Ἔρωτος, τῷ δὲ Τυφῶνι τὸ τοῦ Ταρτάρου μεταλαμβάνοντές πως ἀποδίδομεν· τὸ γὰρ Χάος δοκεῖ χώραν τινὰ καὶ τόπον τοῦ παντὸς ὑποτίθεσθαι. προσκαλεῖται δὲ καὶ τὸν Πλάτωνος ἁμωσγέπως τὰ πράγματα μῦθον, ὃν Σωκράτης ἐν Συμποσίῳ (203b sqq.) περὶ τῆς τοῦ Ἔρωτος γενέσεως διῆλθε, τὴν Πενίαν λέγων τέκνων δεομένην τῷ Πόρῳ καθεύδοντι παρακλιθῆναι καὶ κυήσασαν ἐξ αὐτοῦ τεκεῖν τὸν Ἔρωτα φύσει μικτὸν ὄντα καὶ παντοδαπόν, ἅτε δὴ πατρὸς μὲν ἀγαθοῦ [d] καὶ σοφοῦ καὶ πᾶσιν αὐτάρκους, μητρὸς δ’ ἀμηχάνου καὶ ἀπόρου καὶ δι’ ἔνδειαν ἀεὶ γλιχομένης ἑτέρου καὶ περὶ ἕτερον λιπαρούσης γεγενημένον. ὁ γὰρ Πόρος οὐχ ἕτερός ἐστι τοῦ πρώτως ἐρατοῦ καὶ ἐφετοῦ καὶ τελείου καὶ αὐτάρκους· Πενίαν δὲ τὴν ὕλην προσεῖπεν ἐνδεᾶ μὲν οὖσαν αὐτὴν καθ’ ἑαυτὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, πληρουμένην δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ποθοῦσαν ἀεὶ καὶ μεταλαμβάνουσαν. ὁ δὲ γενόμενος ἐκ τούτων κόσμος καὶ Ὧρος οὐκ ἀίδιος οὐδ’ ἀπαθὴς οὐδ’ ἄφθαρτος, ἀλλ’ ἀειγενὴς ὢν μηχανᾶται ταῖς τῶν παθῶν μεταβολαῖς καὶ περιόδοις ἀεὶ νέος καὶ μηδέποτε [e] φθαρησόμενος διαμένειν.

Χρηστέον δὲ τοῖς μύθοις οὐχ ὡς λόγοις πάμπαν οὖσιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ πρόσφορον ἑκάστου [τὸ] κατὰ τὴν ὁμοιότητα λαμβάνοντας. ὅταν οὖν ὕλην λέγωμεν, οὐ δεῖ πρὸς ἐνίων φιλοσόφων δόξας ἀποφερομένους ἄψυχόν τι σῶμα καὶ ἄποιον ἀργόν τε καὶ ἄπρακτον ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ διανοεῖσθαι· καὶ γὰρ ἔλαιον ὕλην μύρου καλοῦμεν καὶ χρυσὸν ἀγάλματος, οὐκ ὄντα πάσης ἔρημα ποιότητος· αὐτήν τε τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ὡς ὕλην ἐπιστήμης καὶ ἀρετῆς τῷ λόγῳ κοσμεῖν καὶ ῥυθμίζειν παρέχομεν, τόν τε νοῦν ἔνιοι τόπον εἰδῶν ἀπεφήναντο [f] καὶ τῶν νοητῶν οἷον ἐκμαγεῖον. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τὸ σπέρμα τῆς γυναικὸς οὐ δύναμιν οὐδ’ ἀρχήν, ὕλην δὲ καὶ τροφὴν γενέσεως εἶναι δοξάζουσιν· ὧν ἐχομένους χρὴ καὶ τὴν θεὸν ταύτην οὕτω διανοεῖσθαι τοῦ πρώτου θεοῦ μεταλαγχάνουσαν ἀεὶ καὶ συνοῦσαν ἔρωτι τῶν περὶ ἐκεῖνον [375] [a] ἀγαθῶν καὶ καλῶν οὐχ ὑπεναντίαν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἄνδρα νόμιμον καὶ δίκαιον ἐρᾶν, ἂν δικαίως συνῇ, καὶ γυναῖκα χρηστὴν ἔχουσαν ἄνδρα καὶ συνοῦσαν ὅμως ποθεῖν λέγομεν, οὕτως ἀεὶ γλιχομένην ἐκείνου καὶ περὶ ἐκεῖνον λιπαροῦσαν καὶ ἀναπιμπλαμένην τοῖς κυριωτάτοις μέρεσι καὶ καθαρωτάτοις· ὅπου δ’ ὁ Τυφὼν παρεμπίπτει τῶν ἐσχάτων ἁπτόμενος, ἐνταῦθα δοκοῦσαν ἐπισκυθρωπάζειν καὶ πενθεῖν λεγομένην καὶ λείψαν’ ἄττα καὶ σπαράγματα τοῦ Ὀσίριδος ἀναζητεῖν καὶ στολίζειν ὑποδεχομένην τὰ φθειρόμενα καὶ ἀποκρύπτουσαν, οἷσπερ ἀναφαίνει πάλιν τὰ γινόμενα καὶ ἀνίησιν ἐξ ἑαυτῆς. οἱ [b] μὲν γὰρ ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἄστροις λόγοι καὶ εἴδη καὶ ἀπορροαὶ τοῦ θεοῦ μένουσι, τὰ δ’ ἐν τοῖς παθητικοῖς διεσπαρμένα, γῇ καὶ θαλάττῃ καὶ φυτοῖς καὶ ζῴοις, διαλυόμενα καὶ φθειρόμενα καὶ θαπτόμενα [καὶ] πολλάκις αὖθις ἐκλάμπει καὶ ἀναφαίνεται ταῖς γενέσεσι. διὸ τὸν Τυφῶνα τῇ Νέφθυι συνοικεῖν φησιν ὁ μῦθος, τὸν δ’ Ὄσιριν κρύφα συγγενέσθαι· τὰ γὰρ ἔσχατα μέρη τῆς ὕλης, ἃ Νέφθυν καὶ Τελευτὴν καλοῦσιν, ἡ φθαρτικὴ μάλιστα κατέχει δύναμις· ἡ δὲ γόνιμος καὶ σωτήριος ἀσθενὲς σπέρμα καὶ ἀμαυρὸν εἰς ταῦτα διαδίδωσιν ἀπολλύμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ Τυφῶνος, πλὴν ὅσον ἡ [c] Ἶσις ὑπολαμβάνουσα σῴζει καὶ τρέφει καὶ συνίστησι· καθόλου δ’ ἀμείνων οὗτός ἐστιν, ὥσπερ καὶ Πλάτων ὑπονοεῖ καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης. κινεῖται δὲ τῆς φύσεως τὸ μὲν γόνιμον καὶ σωτήριον ἐπ’ αὐτὸν καὶ πρὸς τὸ εἶναι, τὸ δ’ ἀναιρετικὸν καὶ φθαρτικὸν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ πρὸς τὸ μὴ εἶναι. διὸ τὸ μὲν Ἶσιν καλοῦσι παρὰ τὸ ἵεσθαι μετ’ ἐπιστήμης καὶ φέρεσθαι, κίνησιν οὖσαν ἔμψυχον καὶ φρόνιμον· οὐ γάρ ἐστι τοὔνομα βαρβαρικόν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τοῖς θεοῖς πᾶσιν ἀπὸ δυεῖν ῥημάτων τοῦ θεατοῦ καὶ τοῦ θέοντος ἔστιν ὄνομα κοινόν, οὕτω τὴν θεὸν ταύτην ἀπὸ τῆς ἐπιστήμης ἅμα καὶ τῆς κινήσεως [d] Ἶσιν μὲν ἡμεῖς, Ἶσιν δ’ Αἰγύπτιοι καλοῦσιν. οὕτω δὲ καὶ Πλάτων (Cratyl. 401c) φησὶ τὴν οὐσίαν δηλοῦν[τος] τοὺς παλαιούς ‘ἰσίαν’ καλοῦντας· οὕτω καὶ τὴν νόησιν καὶ τὴν φρόνησιν, ὡς νοῦ φορὰν καὶ κίνησιν οὖσαν ἱεμένου καὶ φερομένου, καὶ τὸ συνιέναι καὶ τἀγαθὸν ὅλως καὶ ἀρετὴν ἐπὶ τοῖς εὐροοῦσι καὶ θέουσι θέσθαι· καθάπερ αὖ πάλιν τοῖς ἀντιφωνοῦσιν ὀνόμασι λοιδορεῖσθαι τὸ κακόν, τὸ τὴν φύσιν ἐμποδίζον καὶ συνδέον καὶ ἴσχον καὶ κωλῦον ἵεσθαι καὶ ἰέναι κακίαν ἀπορίαν δειλίαν ἀνίαν προσαγορεύοντας. ὁ δ’ Ὄσιρις ἐκ τοῦ ὁσίου ‹καὶ› ἱεροῦ τοὔνομα μεμιγμένον ἔσχηκε· κοινὸς γάρ ἐστι τῶν ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου λόγους, ὧν τὰ [e] μὲν ἱερὰ τὰ δ’ ὅσια τοῖς παλαιοῖς ‹ἔθος› ἦν προσαγορεύειν. ὁ δ’ ἀναφαίνων τὰ οὐράνια καὶ τῶν ἄνω φερομένων λόγος Ἄνουβις ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ Ἑρμάνουβις ὀνομάζεται, τὸ μὲν ὡς τοῖς ἄνω τὸ δ’ ὡς τοῖς κάτω προσήκων. διὸ καὶ θύουσιν αὐτῷ τὸ μὲν λευκὸν ἀλεκτρυόνα, τὸ δὲ κροκίαν, τὰ μὲν εἰλικρινῆ καὶ φανά, τὰ δὲ μικτὰ καὶ ποικίλα νομίζοντες. οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν τῶν ὀνομάτων τὴν εἰς τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν ἀνάπλασιν· καὶ γὰρ ἄλλα μυρία τοῖς μεθισταμένοις ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος συνεκπεσόντα μέχρι νῦν παραμένει καὶ ξενιτεύει παρ’ ἑτέροις, ὧν ἔνια [f] τὴν ποιητικὴν ἀνακαλουμένην διαβάλλουσιν ὡς βαρβαρίζουσαν οἱ γλώττας τὰ τοιαῦτα προσαγορεύοντες. ἐν δὲ ταῖς Ἑρμοῦ λεγομέναις βίβλοις ἱστοροῦσι γεγράφθαι περὶ τῶν ἱερῶν ὀνομάτων, ὅτι τὴν μὲν ἐπὶ τῆς τοῦ ἡλίου περιφορᾶς τεταγμένην δύναμιν Ὧρον, Ἕλληνες δ’ Ἀπόλλωνα καλοῦσι· τὴν δ’ ἐπὶ τοῦ πνεύματος οἱ μὲν Ὄσιριν, οἱ δὲ Σάραπιν, οἱ δὲ Σῶθιν Αἰγυπτιστί· [376] [a] σημαίνει ‹δὲ› κύησιν ἢ τὸ κύειν. διὸ καὶ παρατροπῆς γενομένης τοῦ ὀνόματος Ἑλληνιστὶ κύων κέκληται τὸ ἄστρον, ὅπερ ἴδιον τῆς Ἴσιδος νομίζουσιν. ἥκιστα μὲν οὖν δεῖ φιλοτιμεῖσθαι περὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὑφείμην ἂν τοῦ Σαράπιδος Αἰγυπτίοις ἢ τοῦ Ὀσίριδος, ἐκεῖνο μὲν [οὖν] ξενικόν, τοῦτο δ’ Ἑλληνικόν, ἄμφω δ’ ἑνὸς θεοῦ καὶ μιᾶς δυνάμεως ἡγούμενος.

Ἔοικε δὲ τούτοις καὶ τὰ Αἰγύπτια. τὴν μὲν γὰρ Ἶσιν πολλάκις τῷ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ὀνόματι καλοῦσι φράζοντι τοιοῦτον λόγον ‘ἦλθον ἀπ’ ἐμαυτῆς,’ ὅπερ ἐστὶν αὐτοκινήτου φορᾶς δηλωτικόν· ὁ δὲ Τυφών, ὥσπερ εἴρηται [b] (367d 371b c), Σὴθ καὶ Βέβων καὶ Σμὺ ὀνομάζεται, βίαιόν τινα καὶ κωλυτικὴν ἐπίσχεσιν ‹ἤ τιν’› ὑπεναντίωσιν ἢ ἀναστροφὴν ἐμφαίνειν βουλομένων τῶν ὀνομάτων. ἔτι τὴν σιδηρῖτιν λίθον ὀστέον Ὥρου, Τυφῶνος δὲ τὸν σίδηρον, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Μανεθώς (fr. 77 M.), καλοῦσιν· ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ σίδηρος πολλάκις μὲν ἑλκομένῳ καὶ ἑπομένῳ πρὸς τὴν λίθον ὅμοιός ἐστι, πολλάκις δ’ ἀποστρέφεται καὶ ἀποκρούεται πρὸς τοὐναντίον, οὕτως ἡ σωτήριος καὶ ἀγαθὴ καὶ λόγον ἔχουσα τοῦ κόσμου κίνησις ἐπιστρέφει †τότε καὶ προσάγεται καὶ μαλακωτέραν ποιεῖ πείθουσα τὴν σκληρὰν ἐκείνην καὶ τυφώνειον, εἶτ’ αὖθις ἀνασχεθεῖσα εἰς ἑαυτὴν ἀνέστρεψε καὶ κατέδυσεν εἰς [c] τὴν ἀπορίαν. ἔτι φησὶ περὶ τοῦ Διὸς ὁ Εὔδοξος (fr. 62) μυθολογεῖν Αἰγυπτίους, ὡς τῶν σκελῶν συμπεφυκότων αὐτῷ μὴ δυνάμενος βαδίζειν ὑπ’ αἰσχύνης ‹ἐν› ἐρημίᾳ διέτριβεν· ἡ δ’ Ἶσις διατεμοῦσα καὶ διαστήσασα τὰ μέρη ταῦτα τοῦ σώματος ἀρτίποδα τὴν πορείαν παρέσχεν. αἰνίττεται δὲ καὶ διὰ τούτων ὁ μῦθος, ὅτι καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ νοῦς καὶ λόγος ἐν τῷ ἀοράτῳ καὶ ἀφανεῖ βεβηκὼς εἰς γένεσιν ὑπὸ κινήσεως προῆλθεν.

Ἐμφαίνει καὶ τὸ σεῖστρον, ὅτι σείεσθαι δεῖ τὰ ὄντα καὶ μηδέποτε παύεσθαι φορᾶς, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐξεγείρεσθαι καὶ κλονεῖσθαι καταδαρθάνοντα καὶ μαραινόμενα.

[d] τὸν γὰρ Τυφῶνά φασι τοῖς σείστροις ἀποτρέπειν καὶ ἀποκρούεσθαι δηλοῦντες, ὅτι τῆς φθορᾶς συνδεούσης καὶ ἱστάσης αὖθις ἀναλύει τὴν φύσιν καὶ ἀνίστησι διὰ τῆς κινήσεως ἡ γένεσις. τοῦ δὲ σείστρου περιφεροῦς ἄνωθεν ὄντος ἡ ἁψὶς περιέχει τὰ σειόμενα τέτταρα. καὶ γὰρ ἡ γεννωμένη καὶ φθειρομένη μοῖρα τοῦ κόσμου περιέχεται μὲν ὑπὸ τῆς σεληνιακῆς σφαίρας, κινεῖται δ’ ἐν αὐτῇ πάντα καὶ μεταβάλλεται διὰ τῶν τεττάρων στοιχείων, πυρὸς καὶ γῆς καὶ ὕδατος καὶ ἀέρος. τῇ δ’ ἁψῖδι τοῦ σείστρου κατὰ κορυφὴν ἐντορεύουσιν αἴλουρον ἀνθρώπου πρόσωπον ἔχοντα, κάτω δ’ ὑπὸ τὰ σειόμενα πῆ [e] μὲν Ἴσιδος πῆ δὲ Νέφθυος πρόσωπον, αἰνιττόμενοι τοῖς μὲν προσώποις γένεσιν καὶ τελευτήν (αὗται γάρ εἰσι τῶν στοιχείων μεταβολαὶ καὶ κινήσεις), τῷ δ’ αἰλούρῳ τὴν σελήνην διὰ τὸ ποικίλον καὶ νυκτουργὸν καὶ γόνιμον τοῦ θηρίου. λέγεται γὰρ ἓν τίκτειν, εἶτα δύο καὶ τρία καὶ τέσσαρα καὶ πέντε, καὶ καθ’ ἓν οὕτως ἄχρι τῶν ἑπτὰ προστίθησιν, ὥστ’ ὀκτὼ καὶ εἴκοσι τὰ πάντα τίκτειν, ὅσα καὶ τῆς σελήνης φῶτ’ ἔστιν. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ἴσως μυθωδέστερον· αἱ δ’ ἐν τοῖς ὄμμασιν αὐτοῦ κόραι πληροῦσθαι μὲν καὶ πλατύνεσθαι δοκοῦσιν ἐν πανσελήνῳ, [f] λεπτύνεσθαι δὲ καὶ μαραυγεῖν ἐν ταῖς μειώσεσι τοῦ ἄστρου. τῷ δ’ ἀνθρωπομόρφῳ τοῦ αἰλούρου τὸ νοερὸν καὶ λογικὸν ἐμφαίνεται τῶν περὶ τὴν σελήνην μεταβολῶν.

Συνελόντι δ’ εἰπεῖν οὔθ’ ὕδωρ οὔθ’ ἥλιον οὔτε γῆν οὔτ’ οὐρανὸν Ὄσιριν ἢ Ἶσιν ὀρθῶς ἔχει νομίζειν οὐδὲ πῦρ Τυφῶνα πάλιν οὐδ’ αὐχμὸν οὐδὲ θάλατταν, ἀλλ’ ἁπλῶς ὅσον ἐστὶν ἐν τούτοις ἄμετρον καὶ ἄτακτον [377] [a] ὑπερβολαῖς ἢ ἐνδείαις Τυφῶνι προσνέμοντες, τὸ δὲ κεκοσμημένον καὶ ἀγαθὸν καὶ ὠφέλιμον ὡς Ἴσιδος μὲν ἔργον εἰκόνα δὲ καὶ μίμημα καὶ λόγον Ὀσίριδος σεβόμενοι καὶ τιμῶντες οὐκ ἂν ἁμαρτάνοιμεν. ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν Εὔδοξον ἀπιστοῦντα παύσομεν καὶ διαποροῦντα (fr. 63), πῶς οὔτε Δήμητρι τῆς τῶν ἐρωτικῶν ἐπιμελείας μέτεστιν ἀλλ’ Ἴσιδι τόν τε Διόνυσον ‹Ὀσίριδι προσομοιοῦσι τὸν› οὐ τὸν Νεῖλον αὔξειν οὔτε τῶν τεθνηκότων ἄρχειν δυνάμενον. ἑνὶ γὰρ λόγῳ κοινῷ τοὺς θεοὺς τούτους περὶ πᾶσαν ἀγαθοῦ μοῖραν ἡγούμεθα τετάχθαι καὶ πᾶν ὅσον ἔνεστι τῇ φύσει καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν διὰ τούτους ὑπάρχειν, τὸν μὲν [b] διδόντα τὰς ἀρχάς, τὴν δ’ ὑποδεχομένην καὶ διανέμουσαν.

Οὕτω δὲ καὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς καὶ φορτικοῖς ἐπιχειρήσομεν, εἴτε ταῖς καθ’ ὥραν μεταβολαῖς τοῦ περιέχοντος εἴτε ταῖς καρπῶν γενέσεσι καὶ σποραῖς καὶ ἀρότοις χαίρουσι τὰ περὶ τοὺς θεοὺς τούτοις συνοικειοῦντες καὶ λέγοντες θάπτεσθαι μὲν τὸν Ὄσιριν, ὅτε κρύπτεται τῇ γῇ σπειρόμενος ὁ καρπός, αὖθις δ’ ἀναβιοῦσθαι καὶ ἀναφαίνεσθαι, ὅτε βλαστήσεως ἀρχή· διὸ καὶ λέγεσθαι τὴν Ἶσιν αἰσθομένην ὅτι κύει περιάψασθαι φυλακτήριον ἕκτῃ μηνὸς ἱσταμένου Φαωφί, τίκτεσθαι δὲ τὸν Ἁρποκράτην περὶ τροπὰς χειμερινὰς ἀτελῆ καὶ νεαρὸν ἐν τοῖς [c] προανθοῦσι καὶ προβλαστάνουσι (διὸ καὶ φακῶν αὐτῷ φυομένων ἀπαρχὰς ἐπιφέρουσι), τὰς δὲ λοχείους ἡμέρας ἑορτάζειν μετὰ τὴν ἐαρινὴν ἰσημερίαν. ταῦτα γὰρ ἀκούοντες ἀγαπῶσι καὶ πιστεύουσιν, αὐτόθεν ἐκ τῶν προχείρων καὶ συνήθων τὸ πιθανὸν ἕλκοντες.

Καὶ δεινὸν οὐδέν, ἂν πρῶτον μὲν ἡμῖν τοὺς θεοὺς φυλάττωσι κοινοὺς καὶ μὴ ποιῶσιν Αἰγυπτίων ἰδίους μηδὲ Νεῖλον ἥν τε Νεῖλος ἄρδει μόνην χώραν τοῖς ὀνόμασι τούτοις καταλαμβάνοντες μηδ’ ἕλη μηδὲ λωτοὺς †μὴ θεοποιίαν λέγοντες ἀποστερῶσι μεγάλων θεῶν τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους, οἷς Νεῖλος μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲ Βοῦτος [d] οὐδὲ Μέμφις, Ἶσιν δὲ καὶ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὴν θεοὺς ἔχουσι καὶ γιγνώσκουσιν ἅπαντες, ἐνίους μὲν οὐ πάλαι τοῖς παρ’ Αἰγυπτίων ὀνόμασι καλεῖν μεμαθηκότες, ἑκάστου δὲ τὴν δύναμιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπιστάμενοι καὶ τιμῶντες· δεύτερον, ὃ μεῖζόν ἐστιν, ὅπως σφόδρα προσέξουσι καὶ φοβήσονται, μὴ λάθωσιν εἰς πνεύματα καὶ ῥεύματα καὶ σπόρους καὶ ἀρότους καὶ πάθη γῆς καὶ μεταβολὰς ὡρῶν διαγράφοντες τὰ θεῖα καὶ διαλύοντες, ὥσπερ οἱ Διόνυσον τὸν οἶνον, Ἥφαιστον δὲ τὴν φλόγα· Φερσεφόνην δέ φησί που Κλεάνθης (fr. 547) τὸ διὰ τῶν καρπῶν φερόμενον καὶ φονευόμενον πνεῦμα, ποιητὴς δέ τις ἐπὶ τῶν θεριζόντων (EGF p. 73)

[e] ‘τῆμος ὅτ’ αἰζηοὶ Δημήτερα κωλοτομεῦσιν·’ οὐδὲν γὰρ οὗτοι διαφέρουσι τῶν ἱστία καὶ κάλους καὶ ἄγκυραν ἡγουμένων κυβερνήτην καὶ νήματα καὶ κρόκας ὑφάντην καὶ σπονδεῖον ἢ μελίκρατον ἢ πτισάνην ἰατρόν· ἀλλὰ δεινὰς καὶ ἀθέους ἐμποιοῦσι δόξας, ἀναισθήτοις καὶ ἀψύχοις καὶ φθειρομέναις ἀναγκαίως ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων δεομένων καὶ χρωμένων φύσεσι καὶ πράγμασιν ὀνόματα θεῶν ἐπιφέροντες. ταῦτα μὲν γὰρ αὐτὰ νοῆσαι θεοὺς οὐκ ἔστιν, οὐ γὰρ ἄνουν οὐδ’ ἄψυχον ‹οὐδ’› ἀνθρώποις ὁ θεὸς ὑποχείριον· ἀπὸ τούτων δὲ τοὺς χρωμένους αὐτοῖς καὶ δωρουμένους ἡμῖν καὶ παρέχοντας ἀέναα καὶ [f] διαρκῆ θεοὺς ἐνομίσαμεν, οὐχ ἑτέρους παρ’ ἑτέροις οὐδὲ βαρβάρους καὶ Ἕλληνας οὐδὲ νοτίους καὶ βορείους· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη καὶ οὐρανὸς καὶ γῆ καὶ θάλασσα κοινὰ πᾶσιν, ὀνομάζεται δ’ ἄλλως ὑπ’ ἄλλων, οὕτως ἑνὸς λόγου τοῦ ταῦτα κοσμοῦντος καὶ μιᾶς προνοίας [378] [a] ἐπιτροπευούσης καὶ δυνάμεων ὑπουργῶν ἐπὶ πάντα τεταγμένων ἕτεραι παρ’ ἑτέροις κατὰ νόμους γεγόνασι τιμαὶ καὶ προσηγορίαι, καὶ συμβόλοις χρῶνται καθιερωμένοις οἱ μὲν ἀμυδροῖς οἱ δὲ τρανοτέροις, ἐπὶ τὰ θεῖα τὴν νόησιν ὁδηγοῦντες οὐκ ἀκινδύνως· ἔνιοι γὰρ ἀποσφαλέντες παντάπασιν εἰς δεισιδαιμονίαν ὤλισθον, οἱ δὲ φεύγοντες ὥσπερ ἕλος τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν ἔλαθον αὖθις ὥσπερ εἰς κρημνὸν ἐμπεσόντες τὴν ἀθεότητα.

Διὸ δεῖ μάλιστα πρὸς ταῦτα λόγον ἐκ φιλοσοφίας μυσταγωγὸν ἀναλαβόντας ὁσίως διανοεῖσθαι τῶν λεγομένων καὶ δρωμένων ἕκαστον, ἵνα μή, καθάπερ Θεόδωρος [b] εἶπε τοὺς λόγους αὐτοῦ τῇ δεξιᾷ προτείνοντος ἐνίους τῇ ἀριστερᾷ δέχεσθαι τῶν ἀκροωμένων, οὕτως ἡμεῖς ἃ καλῶς οἱ νόμοι περὶ τὰς θυσίας καὶ τὰς ἑορτὰς ἔταξαν ἑτέρως ὑπολαμβάνοντες ἐξαμάρτωμεν. ὅτι γὰρ ἐπὶ τὸν λόγον ἀνοιστέον ἅπαντα, καὶ παρ’ αὐτῶν ἐκείνων ἔστι λαβεῖν. τῇ μὲν γὰρ ἐνάτῃ ἐπὶ δέκα τοῦ πρώτου μηνὸς ἑορτάζοντες τῷ Ἑρμῇ μέλι καὶ σῦκον ἐσθίουσιν ἐπιλέγοντες ‘γλυκὺ ἡ ἀλήθεια’· τὸ δὲ τῆς Ἴσιδος φυλακτήριον, ὃ περιάπτεσθαι μυθολογοῦσιν αὐτήν, ἐξερμηνεύεται ‘φωνὴ ἀληθής.’ τὸν δ’ Ἁρποκράτην οὔτε θεὸν ἀτελῆ καὶ νήπιον [c] οὔτε χεδρόπων τινὰ νομιστέον, ἀλλὰ τοῦ περὶ θεῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις λόγου νεαροῦ καὶ ἀτελοῦς καὶ ἀδιαρθρώτου προστάτην καὶ σωφρονιστήν· διὸ τῷ στόματι τὸν δάκτυλον ἔχει προσκείμενον ἐχεμυθίας καὶ σιωπῆς σύμβολον, ἐν δὲ τῷ Μεσορὴ μηνὶ τῶν χεδρόπων ἐπιφέροντες λέγουσιν ‘γλῶσσα τύχη, γλῶσσα δαίμων.’ τῶν δ’ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ φυτῶν μάλιστα τῇ θεῷ καθιερῶσθαι λέγουσι τὴν περσέαν, ὅτι καρδίᾳ μὲν ὁ καρπὸς αὐτῆς, γλώττῃ δὲ τὸ φύλλον ἔοικεν. οὐδὲν γὰρ ὧν ἄνθρωπος ἔχειν πέφυκε θειότερον λόγου καὶ μάλιστα τοῦ περὶ θεῶν οὐδὲ μείζονα ῥοπὴν ἔχει πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν. διὸ τῷ μὲν εἰς τὸ χρηστήριον [d] ἐνταῦθα κατιόντι παρεγγυῶμεν ὅσια φρονεῖν, εὔφημα λέγειν· οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ γελοῖα δρῶσιν ἐν ταῖς πομπαῖς καὶ ταῖς ἑορταῖς εὐφημίαν προκηρύττοντες, εἶτα περὶ τῶν θεῶν αὐτῶν τὰ δυσφημότατα καὶ λέγοντες καὶ διανοούμενοι.

Πῶς οὖν χρηστέον ἐστὶ ταῖς σκυθρωπαῖς καὶ ἀγελάστοις καὶ πενθίμοις θυσίαις, εἰ μήτε παραλείπειν τὰ νενομισμένα καλῶς ἔχει μήτε φύρειν τὰς περὶ θεῶν δόξας καὶ συνταράττειν ὑποψίαις ἀτόποις; καὶ παρ’ Ἕλλησιν ὅμοια πολλὰ γίνεται περὶ τὸν αὐτὸν ὁμοῦ τι χρόνον, οἷς Αἰγύπτιοι δρῶσιν ἐν τοῖς Ἰσείοις. καὶ γὰρ Ἀθήνησι νηστεύουσιν αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν Θεσμοφορίοις χαμαὶ [e] καθήμεναι, καὶ Βοιωτοὶ τὰ τῆς Ἀχαίας μέγαρα κινοῦσιν ἐπαχθῆ τὴν ἑορτὴν ἐκείνην ὀνομάζοντες, ὡς διὰ τὴν τῆς Κόρης κάθοδον ἐν ἄχει τῆς Δήμητρος οὔσης. ἔστι δ’ ὁ μὴν οὗτος περὶ Πλειάδας σπόριμος, ὃν Ἀθὺρ Αἰγύπτιοι, Πυανεψιῶνα δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι, Βοιωτοὶ δὲ Δαμάτριον καλοῦσι. τοὺς δὲ πρὸς ἑσπέραν οἰκοῦντας ἱστορεῖ Θεόπομπος (fr. 335 FGrHist.) ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ καλεῖν τὸν μὲν χειμῶνα Κρόνον, τὸ δὲ θέρος Ἀφροδίτην, τὸ δ’ ἔαρ Περσεφόνην· ἐκ δὲ Κρόνου καὶ Ἀφροδίτης γεννᾶσθαι πάντα. Φρύγες δὲ τὸν θεὸν οἰόμενοι χειμῶνος καθεύδειν θέρους δ’ ἐγρηγορέναι τοτὲ μὲν κατευνασμούς, τοτὲ δ’ ἀνεγέρσεις [f] βακχεύοντες αὐτῷ τελοῦσι· Παφλαγόνες δὲ καταδεῖσθαι καὶ καθείργνυσθαι χειμῶνος, ἦρος δὲ κινεῖσθαι καὶ ἀναλύεσθαι φάσκουσι· καὶ δίδωσιν ὁ καιρὸς ὑπόνοιαν ἐπὶ τῶν καρπῶν τῇ ἀποκρύψει γενέσθαι τὸν σκυθρωπασμόν, οὓς οἱ παλαιοὶ θεοὺς μὲν οὐκ ἐνόμιζον, ἀλλὰ δῶρα θεῶν ἀναγκαῖα καὶ μεγάλα πρὸς τὸ μὴ ζῆν ἀγρίως [379] [a] καὶ θηριωδῶς· καθ’ ἣν δ’ ὥραν τοὺς μὲν ἀπὸ δένδρων ἑώρων ἀφανιζομένους παντάπασιν καὶ ἀπολείποντας, τοὺς δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ κατέσπειρον ἔτι γλίσχρως καὶ ἀπόρως, διαμώμενοι ταῖς χερσὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ περιστέλλοντες αὖθις, ἐπ’ ἀδήλῳ τῷ πάλιν ἐκφανεῖσθαι καὶ συντέλειαν ἕξειν ἀποθέμενοι πολλὰ θάπτουσιν ὅμοια καὶ πενθοῦσιν ἔπραττον. εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς τὸν ὠνούμενον βιβλία Πλάτωνος ὠνεῖσθαί φαμεν Πλάτωνα καὶ Μένανδρον ὑποκρίνεσθαι τὸν τὰ Μενάνδρου ποιήμαθ’ διατιθέμενον, οὕτως ἐκεῖνοι τοῖς τῶν θεῶν ὀνόμασι τὰ τῶν θεῶν δῶρα [b] καὶ ποιήματα καλεῖν οὐκ ἐφείδοντο, τιμῶντες ὑπὸ χρείας καὶ σεμνύνοντες. οἱ δ’ ὕστερον ἀπαιδεύτως δεχόμενοι καὶ ἀμαθῶς ἀναστρέφοντες ἐπὶ τοὺς θεοὺς τὰ πάθη τῶν καρπῶν καὶ τὰς παρουσίας τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ ἀποκρύψεις θεῶν γενέσεις καὶ φθορὰς οὐ προσαγορεύοντες μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ νομίζοντες ἀτόπων καὶ παρανόμων καὶ τεταραγμένων δοξῶν αὑτοὺς ἐνέπλησαν, καίτοι τοῦ παραλόγου τὴν ἀτοπίαν ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς ἔχοντες. ὁ μὲν οὖν Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος (A 13) ἠξίωσε τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους, εἰ θεοὺς νομίζουσι, μὴ θρηνεῖν, εἰ δὲ θρηνοῦσι, θεοὺς μὴ νομίζειν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι γελοῖον ἅμα θρηνοῦντας εὔχεσθαι τοὺς καρποὺς πάλιν ἀναφαίνειν καὶ τελειοῦν ἑαυτοῖς, [c] ὅπως πάλιν ἀναλίσκωνται καὶ θρηνῶνται· τὸ δ’ οὐκ ἔστι τοιοῦτον, ἀλλὰ θρηνοῦσι μὲν τοὺς καρπούς, εὔχονται δὲ τοῖς αἰτίοις καὶ δοτῆρσι θεοῖς ἑτέρους πάλιν νέους ποιεῖν καὶ ἀναφύειν ἀντὶ τῶν ἀπολλυμένων. ὅθεν ἄριστα λέγεται παρὰ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις τὸ τοὺς μὴ μανθάνοντας ὀρθῶς ἀκούειν ὀνομάτων κακῶς χρῆσθαι καὶ τοῖς πράγμασιν· ὥσπερ Ἑλλήνων οἱ τὰ χαλκᾶ καὶ τὰ γραπτὰ καὶ λίθινα μὴ μαθόντες μηδ’ ἐθισθέντες ἀγάλματα καὶ τιμὰς θεῶν ἀλλὰ θεοὺς καλεῖν, εἶτα τολμῶντες λέγειν, ὅτι τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν Λαχάρης ἐξέδυσε, τὸν δ’ Ἀπόλλωνα χρυσοῦς βοστρύχους ἔχοντα Διονύσιος ἀπέκειρεν, ὁ δὲ Ζεὺς ὁ [d] Καπετώλιος περὶ τὸν ἐμφύλιον πόλεμον ἐνεπρήσθη καὶ διεφθάρη, λανθάνουσι συνεφελκόμενοι καὶ παραδεχόμενοι δόξας πονηρὰς ἑπομένας τοῖς ὀνόμασιν.

Τοῦτο δ’ οὐχ ἥκιστα πεπόνθασιν Αἰγύπτιοι περὶ τὰ τιμώμενα τῶν ζῴων. Ἕλληνες μὲν γὰρ ἔν γε τούτοις λέγουσιν ὀρθῶς καὶ νομίζουσιν ἱερὸν Ἀφροδίτης ζῷον εἶναι τὴν περιστερὰν καὶ τὸν δράκοντα τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς καὶ τὸν κόρακα τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ τὸν κύνα τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος, ὡς Εὐριπίδης (fr. 968)·

‘Ἑκάτης ἄγαλμα φωσφόρου κύων ἔσῃ’·

Αἰγυπτίων δ’ οἱ πολλοὶ θεραπεύοντες αὐτὰ τὰ ζῷα καὶ περιέποντες ὡς θεοὺς οὐ γέλωτος μόνον οὐδὲ χλευασμοῦ [e] καταπεπλήκασι τὰς ἱερουργίας, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο τῆς ἀβελτερίας ἐλάχιστόν ἐστι κακόν· δόξα δ’ ἐμφύεται δεινὴ τοὺς μὲν ἀσθενεῖς καὶ ἀκάκους εἰς ἄκρατον ὑπερείπουσα τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν, τοῖς δὲ δριμυτέροις καὶ θρασυτέροις εἰς ἀθέους ἐμπίπτουσα καὶ θηριώδεις λογισμούς. ᾗ καὶ περὶ τούτων τὰ εἰκότα διελθεῖν οὐκ ἀνάρμοστόν ἐστι· τὸ μὲν γὰρ εἰς ταῦτα τὰ ζῷα τοὺς θεοὺς τὸν Τυφῶνα δείσαντας μεταβαλεῖν, οἷον ἀποκρύπτοντας ἑαυτοὺς σώμασιν ἴβεων καὶ κυνῶν καὶ ἱεράκων, πᾶσαν ὑπερπέπαικε τερατείαν καὶ μυθολογίαν, καὶ τὸ ταῖς ψυχαῖς [f] τῶν θανόντων ὅσαι διαμένουσιν εἰς ταῦτα μόνα γίνεσθαι τὴν παλιγγενεσίαν ὁμοίως ἄπιστον. τῶν δὲ βουλομένων πολιτικήν τινα λέγειν αἰτίαν οἱ μὲν Ὄσιριν ἐν τῇ μεγάλῃ στρατιᾷ φασιν εἰς μέρη πολλὰ διανείμαντα τὴν δύναμιν (λόχους καὶ τάξεις Ἑλληνικῶς καλοῦσιν), ἐπίσημα δοῦναι [καὶ] ζῳόμορφα πᾶσιν, ὧν ἕκαστον τῷ γένει τῶν [380] [a] συννεμηθέντων ἱερὸν γενέσθαι καὶ τίμιον· οἱ δὲ τοὺς ὕστερον βασιλεῖς ἐκπλήξεως ἕνεκα τῶν πολεμίων ἐν ταῖς μάχαις ἐπιφαίνεσθαι θηρίων χρυσᾶς προτομὰς καὶ ἀργυρᾶς περιτιθεμένους· ἄλλοι δὲ [τῶνδε] τῶν δεινῶν τινα καὶ πανούργων βασιλέων ἱστοροῦσι τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους καταμαθόντα τῇ μὲν φύσει κούφους καὶ πρὸς μεταβολὴν καὶ νεωτερισμὸν ὀξυρρόπους ὄντας, ἄμαχον δὲ καὶ δυσκάθεκτον ὑπὸ πλήθους δύναμιν ἐν τῷ συμφρονεῖν καὶ κοινοπραγεῖν ἔχοντας, ἀίδιον αὐτοῖς ἐγκατασπεῖραι δείξαντα δεισιδαιμονίαν διαφορᾶς ἀπαύστου πρόφασιν. τῶν γὰρ θηρίων, ἃ προσέταξεν ἄλλοις ἄλλα τιμᾶν καὶ σέβεσθαι, [b] δυσμενῶς καὶ πολεμικῶς ἀλλήλοις προσφερομένων καὶ τροφὴν ἑτέρων ἕτερα προσίεσθαι πεφυκότων ἀμύνοντες ἀεὶ τοῖς οἰκείοις ἕκαστοι καὶ χαλεπῶς ἀδικουμένων φέροντες ἐλάνθανον ταῖς τῶν θηρίων ἔχθραις συνεφελκόμενοι καὶ συνεκπολεμούμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους. μόνοι γὰρ ἔτι νῦν Αἰγυπτίων Λυκοπολῖται πρόβατον ἐσθίουσιν, ἐπεὶ καὶ λύκος, ὃν θεὸν νομίζουσιν· οἱ δ’ Ὀξυρυγχῖται καθ’ ἡμᾶς τῶν Κυνοπολιτῶν τὸν ὀξύρυγχον ἰχθὺν ἐσθιόντων κύνα συλλαβόντες καὶ θύσαντες ὡς ἱερεῖον κατέφαγον, ἐκ δὲ τούτου καταστάντες εἰς πόλεμον ἀλλήλους τε [c] διέθηκαν κακῶς καὶ ὕστερον ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων κολαζόμενοι διετέθησαν. πολλῶν δὲ λεγόντων εἰς ταῦτα τὰ ζῷα τὴν Τυφῶνος αὐτοῦ διῃρῆσθαι ψυχὴν αἰνίττεσθαι δόξειεν ἂν ὁ μῦθος, ὅτι πᾶσα φύσις ἄλογος καὶ θηριώδης τῆς τοῦ κακοῦ δαίμονος γέγονε μοίρας, κἀκεῖνον ἐκμειλισσόμενοι καὶ παρηγοροῦντες περιέπουσι ταῦτα καὶ θεραπεύουσιν· ἂν δὲ πολὺς ἐμπίπτῃ καὶ χαλεπὸς αὐχμὸς ἐπάγων ὑπερβαλλόντως ἢ νόσους ὀλεθρίους ἢ συμφορὰς ἄλλας παραλόγους καὶ ἀλλοκότους, ἔνια τῶν τιμωμένων οἱ ἱερεῖς ἀπάγοντες ὑπὸ σκότῳ μετὰ σιωπῆς καὶ ἡσυχίας ἀπειλοῦσι καὶ δεδίττονται τὸ πρῶτον, ἂν δ’ ἐπιμένῃ, καθιερεύουσι καὶ σφάττουσιν, ὡς δή τινα κολασμὸν ὄντα τοῦ δαίμονος τοῦτον ἢ καθαρμὸν ἄλλως μέγαν ἐπὶ μεγίστοις· καὶ γὰρ ἐν Εἰλειθυίας πόλει ζῶντας ἀνθρώπους κατεπίμπρασαν, ὡς Μανεθὼς ἱστόρηκε, Τυφωνείους καλοῦντες καὶ τὴν τέφραν αὐτῶν λικμῶντες ἠφάνιζον καὶ διέσπειρον. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ἐδρᾶτο φανερῶς καὶ καθ’ ἕνα καιρὸν ἐν ταῖς κυνάσιν ἡμέραις· αἱ δὲ τῶν τιμωμένων ζῴων καθιερεύσεις ἀπόρρητοι καὶ χρόνοις ἀτάκτοις πρὸς τὰ συμπίπτοντα γινόμεναι τοὺς πολλοὺς λανθάνουσι, πλὴν ὅταν ‹Ἄπιδος› ταφὰς ἔχωσι καὶ τῶν [d] ἄλλων ἀναδεικνύντες ἔνια πάντων παρόντων συνεμβάλλωσιν οἰόμενοι τοῦ Τυφῶνος ἀντιλυπεῖν καὶ κολούειν τὸ ἡδόμενον. ὁ γὰρ Ἆπις δοκεῖ μετ’ ὀλίγων ἄλλων ἱερὸς εἶναι τοῦ Ὀσίριδος· ἐκείνῳ δὲ τὰ πλεῖστα προσνέμουσι. κἂν ἀληθὴς ὁ λόγος οὗτος, σημαίνειν ἡγοῦμαι τὸ ζητούμενον ἐπὶ τῶν ὁμολογουμένων καὶ κοινὰς ἐχόντων τὰς τιμάς, οἷόν ἐστιν ἶβις καὶ ἱέραξ καὶ κυνοκέφαλος, αὐτὸς ὁ Ἆπις · οὕτω δὴ γὰρ τὸν ἐν Μένδητι τράγον καλοῦσι.

Λείπεται δὲ δὴ τὸ χρειῶδες καὶ τὸ συμβολικόν, ὧν ἔνια θατέρου, πολλὰ δ’ ἀμφοῖν μετέσχηκε. βοῦν μὲν οὖν καὶ πρόβατον καὶ ἰχνεύμονα δῆλον ὅτι χρείας ἕνεκα καὶ [e] ὠφελείας ἐτίμησαν, ὡς Λήμνιοι κορύδους τὰ τῶν ἀτταλάβων εὑρίσκοντας ᾠὰ καὶ κόπτοντας, Θεσσαλοὶ δὲ πελαργούς, ὅτι πολλοὺς ὄφεις τῆς γῆς ἀναδιδούσης ἐπιφανέντες ἐξώλεσαν ἅπαντας (διὸ καὶ νόμον ἔθεντο φεύγειν ὅστις ἂν ἀποκτείνῃ πελαργόν)· ἀσπίδα δὲ καὶ γαλῆν καὶ κάνθαρον, εἰκόνας τινὰς ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀμαυρὰς [381] [a] ὥσπερ ἐν σταγόσιν ἡλίου τῆς τῶν θεῶν δυνάμεως κατιδόντες. τὴν μὲν γὰρ γαλῆν ἔτι πολλοὶ νομίζουσι καὶ λέγουσι κατὰ τὸ οὖς ὀχευομένην τῷ δὲ στόματι τίκτουσαν εἴκασμα τῆς τοῦ λόγου γενέσεως εἶναι· τὸ δὲ κανθάρων γένος οὐκ ἔχειν θήλειαν, ἄρρενας δὲ πάντας ἀφιέναι τὸν γόνον εἰς τὴν σφαιροποιουμένην ὕλην, ἣν κυλινδοῦσιν ἀντιβάδην ὠθοῦντες, ὥσπερ δοκεῖ τὸν οὐρανὸν ὁ ἥλιος ἐς τοὐναντίον περιστρέφειν αὐτὸς ἀπὸ δυσμῶν ἐπὶ τὰς ἀνατολὰς φερόμενος· ἀσπίδα δ’ ὡς ἀγήρω καὶ χρωμένην κινήσεσιν ἀνοργάνοις μετ’ εὐπετείας καὶ ὑγρότητος [b] ἀστραπῇ προσείκασαν. οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ὁ κροκόδειλος αἰτίας πιθανῆς ἀμοιροῦσαν ἔσχηκε τιμήν, ἀλλὰ μίμημα θεοῦ λέγεται γεγονέναι μόνος μὲν ἄγλωσσος ὤν· φωνῆς γὰρ ὁ θεῖος λόγος ἀπροσδεής ἐστι καί ‘δι’ ἀψόφου βαίνων κελεύθου κατὰ δίκην τὰ θνήτ’ ἄγει’ (Eur. Tro. 8873`8)· μόνου δέ φασιν ἐν ὑγρῷ διαιτωμένου τὰς ὄψεις ὑμένα λεῖον καὶ διαφανῆ παρακαλύπτειν ἐκ τοῦ μετώπου κατερχόμενον, ὥστε βλέπειν μὴ βλεπόμενον, ὃ τῷ πρώτῳ θεῷ συμβέβηκεν. ὅπου δ’ ἂν ἡ θήλεια τῆς χώρας ἀποτέκῃ, τοῦτο Νείλου πέρας ἐπίσταται τῆς αὐξήσεως γινόμενον. ἐν ὑγρῷ γὰρ οὐ δυνάμεναι, πόρρω δὲ φοβούμεναι τίκτειν, οὕτως ἀκριβῶς προαισθάνονται [c] τὸ μέλλον, ὥστε τῷ ποταμῷ προσελθόντι χρῆσθαι λοχευόμεναι, [καὶ] θάλπουσαι δὲ τὰ ᾠὰ ξηρὰ καὶ ἄβρεκτα φυλάσσειν. ἑξήκοντα δὲ τίκτουσι καὶ τοσαύταις ἡμέραις ἐκλέπουσι καὶ τοσούτους ζῶσιν ἐνιαυτοὺς οἱ μακρότατον ζῶντες, ὃ τῶν μέτρων πρῶτόν ἐστι τοῖς περὶ τὰ οὐράνια πραγματευομένοις. ἀλλὰ μὴν τῶν δι’ ἀμφότερα τιμωμένων περὶ μὲν τοῦ κυνὸς εἴρηται πρόσθεν (355b 368f)· ἡ δ’ ἶβις ἀποκτείνουσα μὲν τὰ θανατηφόρα τῶν ἑρπετῶν ἐδίδαξε πρώτη κενώματος ἰατρικοῦ χρείαν κατιδόντας αὐτὴν κλυζομένην καὶ καθαιρομένην ὑφ’ ἑαυτῆς, οἱ δὲ [d] νομιμώτατοι τῶν ἱερέων καθάρσιον ὕδωρ ἁγνιζόμενοι λαμβάνουσιν ὅθεν ἶβις πέπωκεν· οὐ πίνει γὰρ ἢ νοσῶδες ἢ πεφαρμαγμένον οὐδὲ πρόσεισι. τῇ δὲ τῶν ποδῶν διαστάσει πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ τὸ ῥύγχος ἰσόπλευρον ποιεῖ τρίγωνον, ἔτι δ’ ἡ τῶν μελάνων πτερῶν πρὸς τὰ λευκὰ ποικιλία καὶ μῖξις ἐμφαίνει σελήνην ἀμφίκυρτον. οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν, εἰ γλίσχρας ὁμοιότητας οὕτως ἠγάπησαν Αἰγύπτιοι. καὶ ‹γὰρ καὶ› Ἕλληνες ἔν τε γραπτοῖς ἔν τε πλαστοῖς εἰκάσμασι θεῶν ἐχρήσαντο πολλοῖς τοιούτοις, οἷον ἐν Κρήτῃ Διὸς ἦν ἄγαλμα μὴ ἔχον ὦτα· τῷ γὰρ ἄρχοντι καὶ κυρίῳ πάντων οὐδενὸς [e] ἀκούειν προσήκει. τῷ δὲ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς τὸν δράκοντα Φειδίας παρέθηκε, τῷ δὲ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἐν Ἤλιδι τὴν χελώνην, ὡς τὰς μὲν παρθένους φυλακῆς δεομένας, ταῖς δὲ γαμεταῖς οἰκουρίαν καὶ σιωπὴν πρέπουσαν. ἡ δὲ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος τρίαινα σύμβολόν ἐστι τῆς τρίτης χώρας, ἣν θάλαττα κατέχει μετὰ τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὸν ἀέρα τεταγμένη· διὸ καὶ τὴν Ἀμφιτρίτην καὶ τοὺς Τρίτωνας οὕτως ὠνόμασαν.

Οἱ δὲ Πυθαγόρειοι καὶ ἀριθμοὺς καὶ σχήματα θεῶν ἐκόσμησαν προσηγορίαις. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἰσόπλευρον τρίγωνον ἐκάλουν Ἀθηνᾶν κορυφαγενῆ καὶ τριτογένειαν, ὅτι τρισὶ [f] καθέτοις ἀπὸ τῶν τριῶν γωνιῶν ἀγομέναις διαιρεῖται· τὸ δ’ ἓν Ἀπόλλωνα πλήθους ἀποφάσει καὶ δι’ ἁπλότητα τῆς μονάδος· ἔριν δὲ τὴν δυάδα καὶ †τόλμαν, δίκην δὲ τὴν τριάδα· τοῦ γὰρ ἀδικεῖν καὶ ἀδικεῖσθαι κατ’ ἔλλειψιν καὶ ὑπερβολὴν ὄντος ‹τὸ› ἰσότητι δίκαιον ἐν μέσῳ γέγονεν· ἡ δὲ καλουμένη τετρακτύς, τὰ ἓξ καὶ τριάκοντα, [382] [a] μέγιστος ἦν ὅρκος, ὡς τεθρύληται, καὶ κόσμος ὠνόμασται, τεσσάρων μὲν ἀρτίων τῶν πρώτων, τεσσάρων δὲ τῶν περισσῶν εἰς ταὐτὸ συντιθεμένων ἀποτελούμενος. εἴπερ οὖν οἱ δοκιμώτατοι τῶν φιλοσόφων οὐδ’ ἐν ἀψύχοις καὶ ἀσωμάτοις πράγμασιν αἴνιγμα τοῦ θείου κατιδόντες ἠξίουν ἀμελεῖν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἀτιμάζειν, ἔτι μᾶλλον, οἶμαι, τὰς ἐν αἰσθανομέναις καὶ ψυχὴν ἐχούσαις καὶ πάθος καὶ ἦθος φύσεσιν ἰδιότητας [κατὰ τὸ ἦθος] ἀγαπητέον [οὖν] οὐ ταῦτα τιμῶντας, ἀλλὰ διὰ τούτων τὸ θεῖον ὡς ἐναργεστέρων ἐσόπτρων καὶ φύσει γεγονότων. ‹ἀληθὲς δὲ καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔστιν,› ὡς ὄργανον τὴν ψυχὴν δεῖ τοῦ πάντα [b] κοσμοῦντος θεοῦ νομίζειν καὶ ὅλως ἀξιοῦν γε μηδὲν ἄψυχον ἐμψύχου μηδ’ ἀναίσθητον αἰσθανομένου κρεῖττον εἶναι μηδ’ ἂν τὸν σύμπαντά τις χρυσὸν ὁμοῦ καὶ σμάραγδον εἰς ταὐτὸ συμφορήσῃ. οὐκ ἐν χρόαις γὰρ οὐδ’ ἐν σχήμασιν οὐδ’ ἐν λειότησιν ἐγγίνεται τὸ θεῖον, ἀλλ’ ἀτιμοτέραν ἔχει νεκρῶν μοῖραν, ὅσα μὴ μετέσχε μηδὲ μετέχειν τοῦ ζῆν πέφυκεν. ἡ δὲ ζῶσα καὶ βλέπουσα καὶ κινήσεως ἀρχὴν ἐξ αὑτῆς ἔχουσα καὶ γνῶσιν οἰκείων καὶ ἀλλοτρίων φύσις κάλλους τ’ ἔσπακεν ἀπορροὴν καὶ μοῖραν ἐκ τοῦ φρονοῦντος, ‘ὅτῳ κυβερνᾶται τὸ [τε] σύμπαν’ καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (B 41). ὅθεν οὐ χεῖρον ἐν τούτοις εἰκάζεται τὸ θεῖον ἢ χαλκοῖς καὶ λιθίνοις [c] δημιουργήμασιν, ἃ φθορὰς μὲν ὁμοίως δέχεται καὶ ἐπιχρώσεις, αἰσθήσεως δὲ πάσης φύσει καὶ συνέσεως ἐστέρηται.

Περὶ μὲν οὖν τῶν τιμωμένων ζῴων ταῦτα δοκιμάζω μάλιστα τῶν λεγομένων· στολαὶ δ’ αἱ μὲν Ἴσιδος ποικίλαι ταῖς βαφαῖς (περὶ γὰρ ὕλην ἡ δύναμις αὐτῆς πάντα γινομένην καὶ δεχομένην, φῶς σκότος, ἡμέραν νύκτα, πῦρ ὕδωρ, ζωὴν θάνατον, ἀρχὴν τελευτήν)· ἡ δ’ Ὀσίριδος οὐκ ἔχει σκιὰν οὐδὲ ποικιλμόν, ἀλλ’ ἓν ἁπλοῦν τὸ φωτοειδές· ἄκρατον γὰρ ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ ἀμιγὲς τὸ πρῶτον καὶ νοητόν. ὅθεν ἅπαξ ταύτην ἀναλαβόντες ἀποτίθενται [d] καὶ φυλάττουσιν ἀόρατον καὶ ἄψαυστον, ταῖς δ’ Ἰσιακαῖς χρῶνται πολλάκις. ἐν χρήσει γὰρ τὰ αἰσθητὰ καὶ πρόχειρα ὄντα πολλὰς ἀναπτύξεις καὶ θέας αὑτῶν ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλως ἀμειβομένων δίδωσιν· ἡ δὲ τοῦ νοητοῦ καὶ εἰλικρινοῦς καὶ ἁπλοῦ νόησις ὥσπερ ἀστραπὴ διαλάμψασα τῆς ψυχῆς ἅπαξ ποτὲ θιγεῖν καὶ προσιδεῖν παρέσχε. διὸ καὶ Πλάτων (Conv. 210a) καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης ἐποπτικὸν τοῦτο τὸ μέρος τῆς φιλοσοφίας καλοῦσιν, καθ’ ὅσον οἱ τὰ δοξαστὰ καὶ μικτὰ καὶ παντοδαπὰ ταῦτα παραμειψάμενοι τῷ λόγῳ πρὸς τὸ πρῶτον ἐκεῖνο καὶ ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἄυλον ἐξάλλονται καὶ θιγόντες ἀληθῶς [e] τῆς περὶ αὐτὸ καθαρᾶς ἀληθείας οἷον ἐν τελετῇ τέλος ἔχειν φιλοσοφίας νομίζουσι.

Καὶ τοῦθ’ ὅπερ οἱ νῦν ἱερεῖς ἀφοσιούμενοι καὶ παρακαλυπτόμενοι μετ’ εὐλαβείας ὑποδηλοῦσιν, ὡς ὁ θεὸς οὗτος ἄρχει καὶ βασιλεύει τῶν τεθνηκότων οὐχ ἕτερος ὢν τοῦ καλουμένου παρ’ Ἕλλησιν Ἅιδου καὶ Πλούτωνος, ἀγνοούμενον ὅπως ἀληθές ἐστι, διαταράττει τοὺς πολλοὺς ὑπονοοῦντας ἐν γῇ καὶ ὑπὸ γῆν τὸν ἱερὸν καὶ ὅσιον ὡς ἀληθῶς Ὄσιριν οἰκεῖν, ὅπου τὰ σώματα κρύπτεται τῶν τέλος ἔχειν δοκούντων. ὁ δ’ ἔστι μὲν αὐτὸς ἀπωτάτω τῆς γῆς ἄχραντος καὶ ἀμίαντος [f] καὶ καθαρὸς οὐσίας ἁπάσης φθορὰν δεχομένης καὶ θάνατον, ἀνθρώπων δὲ ψυχαῖς ἐνταυθοῖ μὲν ὑπὸ σωμάτων καὶ παθῶν περιεχομέναις οὐκ ἔστι μετουσία τοῦ θεοῦ πλὴν ὅσον ὀνείρατος ἀμαυροῦ θιγεῖν νοήσει διὰ φιλοσοφίας· ὅταν δ’ ἀπολυθεῖσαι μεταστῶσιν εἰς τὸ [383] [a] ἀειδὲς καὶ ἀόρατον καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἁγνόν, οὗτος αὐταῖς ἡγεμών ἐστι καὶ βασιλεὺς ὁ θεὸς ἐξηρτημέναις ὡς ἂν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ θεωμέναις ἀπλήστως καὶ ποθούσαις τὸ μὴ φατὸν μηδὲ ῥητὸν ἀνθρώποις κάλλος· οὗ τὴν Ἶσιν ὁ παλαιὸς ἀποφαίνει λόγος ἐρῶσαν ἀεὶ καὶ διώκουσαν καὶ συνοῦσαν ἀναπιμπλάναι τὰ ἐνταῦθα πάντων καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν, ὅσα γενέσεως μετέσχηκε.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οὕτως ἔχει τὸν μάλιστα θεοῖς πρέποντα λόγον· εἰ δὲ δεῖ καὶ περὶ τῶν θυμιωμένων ἡμέρας ἑκάστης εἰπεῖν, ὥσπερ ὑπεσχόμην (372c), ἐκεῖνο διανοηθείη τις ‹ἂν› πρότερον, ὡς ἀεὶ μὲν οἱ ἄνδρες ἐν σπουδῇ μεγίστῃ τίθενται τὰ πρὸς ὑγίειαν ἐπιτηδεύματα, [b] μάλιστα δὲ ταῖς ἱερουργίαις καὶ ταῖς ἁγνείαις καὶ διαίταις οὐχ ἧττον ἔνεστι [τουτὶ] τοῦ ὁσίου τὸ ὑγιεινόν. οὐ γὰρ ᾤοντο καλῶς ἔχειν οὔτε σώμασιν οὔτε ψυχαῖς ὑπούλοις καὶ νοσώδεσι θεραπεύειν τὸ καθαρὸν καὶ ἀβλαβὲς πάντῃ καὶ ἀμίαντον. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ὁ ἀήρ, ᾧ πλεῖστα χρώμεθα καὶ σύνεσμεν, οὐκ ἀεὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχει διάθεσιν καὶ κρᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ νύκτωρ πυκνοῦται καὶ πιέζει τὸ σῶμα καὶ συνάγει τὴν ψυχὴν εἰς τὸ δύσθυμον καὶ πεφροντικὸς οἷον ἀχλυώδη γινομένην καὶ βαρεῖαν, ἀναστάντες εὐθὺς ἐπιθυμιῶσι ῥητίνην θεραπεύοντες καὶ καθαίροντες τὸν ἀέρα τῇ διακρίσει καὶ τὸ σύμφυτον τῷ [c] σώματι πνεῦμα μεμαρασμένον ἀναρριπίζοντες ἐχούσης τι τῆς ὀσμῆς σφοδρὸν καὶ καταπληκτικόν. αὖθις δὲ μεσημβρίας αἰσθανόμενοι σφόδρα πολλὴν καὶ βαρεῖαν ἀναθυμίασιν ἀπὸ γῆς ἕλκοντα βίᾳ τὸν ἥλιον καὶ καταμιγνύοντα τῷ ἀέρι τὴν σμύρναν ἐπιθυμιῶσι· διαλύει γὰρ ἡ θερμότης καὶ σκίδνησι τὸ συνιστάμενον ἐν τῷ περιέχοντι θολερὸν καὶ ἰλυῶδες. καὶ γὰρ οἱ ἰατροὶ πρὸς τὰ λοιμικὰ πάθη βοηθεῖν δοκοῦσι φλόγα πολλὴν ποιοῦντες ὡς λεπτύνουσαν τὸν ἀέρα· λεπτύνει δὲ βέλτιον, ἐὰν εὐώδη ξύλα καίωσιν, οἷα κυπαρίττου καὶ ἀρκεύθου καὶ πεύκης.

[d] Ἄκρωνα γοῦν τὸν ἰατρὸν ἐν Ἀθήναις ὑπὸ τὸν μέγαν λοιμὸν εὐδοκιμῆσαι λέγουσι πῦρ κελεύοντα παρακαίειν τοῖς νοσοῦσιν· ὤνησε γὰρ οὐκ ὀλίγους. Ἀριστοτέλης δέ φησι καὶ μύρων καὶ ἀνθέων καὶ λειμώνων εὐώδεις ἀποπνοίας οὐκ ἔλαττον ἔχειν τοῦ πρὸς ἡδονὴν τὸ πρὸς ὑγίειαν, ψυχρὸν ὄντα φύσει καὶ παγετώδη τὸν ἐγκέφαλον ἠρέμα τῇ θερμότητι καὶ λειότητι διαχεούσας. εἰ δὲ καὶ τὴν σμύρναν παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις σὰλ καλοῦσιν, ἐξερμηνευθὲν δὲ τοῦτο μάλιστα φράζει τῆς ληρήσεως ἐκσκορπισμόν, ἔστιν ἣν καὶ τοῦτο μαρτυρίαν τῷ λόγῳ τῆς αἰτίας [e] δίδωσιν. τὸ δὲ κῦφι μῖγμα μὲν ἑκκαίδεκα μερῶν συντιθεμένων ἐστί, μέλιτος καὶ οἴνου καὶ σταφίδος καὶ κυπέρου ῥητίνης τε καὶ σμύρνης καὶ ἀσπαλάθου καὶ σεσέλεως, ἔτι δὲ σχίνου τε καὶ ἀσφάλτου καὶ θρύου καὶ λαπάθου, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἀρκευθίδων ἀμφοῖν (ὧν τὴν μὲν μείζονα τὴν δ’ ἐλάττονα καλοῦσι) καὶ καρδαμώμου καὶ καλάμου. συντίθενται δ’ οὐχ ὅπως ἔτυχεν, ἀλλὰ γραμμάτων ἱερῶν τοῖς μυρεψοῖς, ὅταν ταῦτα μιγνύωσιν, ἀναγιγνωσκομένων. τὸν δ’ ἀριθμόν, εἰ καὶ πάνυ δοκεῖ τετράγωνος ἀπὸ τετραγώνου καὶ μόνος ἔχων τῶν ἴσων ἰσάκις ἀριθμῶν τῷ χωρίῳ τὴν περίμετρον ἴσην ἀγαπᾶσθαι [f] προσηκόντως, ἐλάχιστα ῥητέον εἴς γε τοῦτο συνεργεῖν, ἀλλὰ ‹τὰ› πλεῖστα τῶν συλλαμβανομένων ἀρωματικὰς ἔχοντα δυνάμεις γλυκὺ πνεῦμα καὶ χρηστὴν μεθίησιν ἀναθυμίασιν, ὑφ’ ἧς ὅ τ’ ἀὴρ τρεπόμενος καὶ τὸ σῶμα διὰ τῆς πνοῆς κινούμενον λείως καὶ προσηνῶς ὕπνου τε κρᾶσιν ἐπαγωγὸν ἴσχει καὶ τὰ λυπηρὰ καὶ σύντονα τῶν μεθημερινῶν φροντίδων ἄνευ μέθης οἷον ἅμματα χαλᾷ καὶ διαλύει· καὶ τὸ φανταστικὸν καὶ δεκτικὸν ὀνείρων [384] [a] μόριον ὥσπερ κάτοπτρον ἀπολεαίνει καὶ ποιεῖ καθαρώτερον οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ τὰ κρούματα τῆς λύρας, οἷς ἐχρῶντο πρὸ τῶν ὕπνων οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι, τὸ ἐμπαθὲς καὶ ἄλογον τῆς ψυχῆς ἐξεπᾴδοντες οὕτω καὶ θεραπεύοντες. τὰ γὰρ ὀσφραντὰ πολλάκις μὲν τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀπολείπουσαν ἀνακαλεῖται, πολλάκις δὲ πάλιν ἀμβλύνει καὶ κατηρεμίζει διαχεομένων ἐν τῷ σώματι τῶν ἀναλωμάτων ὑπὸ λειότητος· ὥσπερ ἔνιοι τῶν ἰατρῶν τὸν ὕπνον ἐγγίνεσθαι λέγουσιν, ὅταν ἡ τῆς τροφῆς ἀναθυμίασις οἷον ἕρπουσα λείως περὶ τὰ σπλάγχνα καὶ ψηλαφῶσα ποιῇ τινα γαργαλισμόν. τῷ δὲ κῦφι χρῶνται καὶ [b] πόματι καὶ χρίματι· πινόμενον γὰρ δοκεῖ τὰ ἐντὸς καθαίρειν, .... χρῖμα μαλακτικόν. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων ῥητίνη μέν ἐστιν ἔργον ἡλίου καὶ σμύρνα πρὸς τὴν εἵλην τῶν φυτῶν ἐκδακρυόντων, τῶν δὲ τὸ κῦφι συντιθέντων ἔστιν ἃ νυκτὶ χαίρει μᾶλλον, ὥσπερ ὅσα πνεύμασι ψυχροῖς καὶ σκιαῖς καὶ δρόσοις καὶ ὑγρότησι τρέφεσθαι πέφυκεν· ἐπεὶ τὸ τῆς ἡμέρας φῶς ἓν μέν ἐστι καὶ ἁπλοῦν καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ὁ Πίνδαρος ὁρᾶσθαί φησιν (Ol. I 6) ‘ἐρήμης δι’ αἰθέρος’, ὁ δὲ νυκτερινὸς ἀὴρ κρᾶμα καὶ σύμμιγμα πολλῶν γέγονε φώτων καὶ δυνάμεων οἷον σπερμάτων εἰς ἓν ἀπὸ παντὸς ἄστρου καταρρεόντων. εἰκότως οὖν ἐκεῖνα [c] μὲν ὡς ἁπλᾶ καὶ ἀφ’ ἡλίου τὴν γένεσιν ἔχοντα δι’ ἡμέρας, ταῦτα δ’ ὡς μικτὰ καὶ παντοδαπὰ ταῖς ποιότησιν ἀρχομένης νυκτὸς ἐπιθυμιῶσι.

De E apud Delphos

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΕΙ ΤΟΥ ΕΝ ΔΕΛΦΟΙΣ

[384] Στιχιδίοις τισὶν οὐ φαύλως ἔχουσιν, ὦ φίλε Σαραπίων, ἐνέτυχον πρῴην, ἃ Δικαίαρχος (fr. 40 M.) Εὐριπίδην οἴεται πρὸς Ἀρχέλαον εἰπεῖν (fr. 969)·

‘οὐ βούλομαι πλουτοῦντι δωρεῖσθαι πένης,

μή μ’ ἄφρονα κρίνῃς ἢ διδοὺς αἰτεῖν δοκῶ.’

χαρίζεται μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ὁ διδοὺς ἀπ’ ὀλίγων μικρὰ τοῖς πολλὰ κεκτημένοις, ἀπιστούμενος δ’ ἀντὶ μηδενὸς διδόναι κακοηθείας καὶ ἀνελευθερίας προσλαμβάνει δόξαν. ὅρα δ’ [e] ὅσον ἐλευθεριότητι καὶ κάλλει τὰ χρηματικὰ δῶρα λείπεται τῶν ἀπὸ λόγου καὶ σοφίας, ‹ἃ› καὶ διδόναι καλόν ἐστι καὶ διδόντας ἀνταιτεῖν ὅμοια παρὰ τῶν λαμβανόντων. ἐγὼ γοῦν πρὸς σὲ καὶ διὰ σοῦ τοῖς αὐτόθι φίλοις τῶν Πυθικῶν λόγων ἐνίους ὥσπερ ἀπαρχὰς ἀποστέλλων ὁμολογῶ προσδοκᾶν ἑτέρους καὶ πλείονας καὶ βελτίονας παρ’ ὑμῶν, ἅτε δὴ καὶ πόλει χρωμένων μεγάλῃ καὶ σχολῆς μᾶλλον ἐν βιβλίοις πολλοῖς καὶ παντοδαπαῖς διατριβαῖς εὐπορούντων. ὁ δ’ οὖν φίλος Ἀπόλλων ἔοικε τὰς μὲν περὶ τὸν βίον ἀπορίας ἰᾶσθαι καὶ διαλύειν θεμιστεύων τοῖς χρωμένοις, [f] τὰς δὲ περὶ τὸν λόγον αὐτὸς ἐνιέναι καὶ προβάλλειν τῷ φύσει φιλοσόφῳ τῆς ψυχῆς ὄρεξιν ἐμποιῶν ἀγωγὸν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ὡς ἄλλοις τε πολλοῖς δῆλόν ἐστι καὶ τῇ [περὶ] τοῦ εἶ καθιερώσει. τοῦτο γὰρ εἰκὸς οὐ κατὰ τύχην οὐδ’ οἷον ἀπὸ κλήρου τῶν γραμμάτων μόνον ἐν προεδρίᾳ [385] [a] παρὰ τῷ θεῷ γενέσθαι καὶ λαβεῖν ἀναθήματος τάξιν ἱεροῦ καὶ θεάματος, ἀλλ’ ἢ δύναμιν αὐτοῦ κατιδόντας ἰδίαν καὶ περιττὴν ἢ συμβόλῳ χρωμένους πρὸς ἕτερόν τι τῶν ἀξίων σπουδῆς τοὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ περὶ τὸν θεὸν φιλοσοφήσαντας οὕτω προσέσθαι. πολλάκις οὖν ἄλλοτε τὸν λόγον ἐν τῇ σχολῇ προβαλλόμενον ἐκκλίνας ἀτρέμα καὶ παρελθὼν ἔναγχος ὑπὸ τῶν υἱῶν ἐλήφθην ξένοις τισὶ συμφιλοτιμουμένων, οὓς εὐθὺς ἐκ Δελφῶν ἀπαίρειν μέλλοντας οὐκ ἦν εὐπρεπὲς παράγειν οὐδὲ παραιτεῖσθαι πάντως ἀκοῦσαί τι προθυμουμένους. ὡς δὲ καθίσας παρὰ τὸν νεὼν τὰ μὲν αὐτὸς [b] ἠρξάμην ζητεῖν τὰ δ’ ἐκείνους ἐρωτᾶν, ὑπὸ τοῦ τόπου καὶ τῶν λόγων αὐτῶν ‹ἀνεμνήσθην› ἃ πάλαι ποτὲ καθ’ ὃν καιρὸν ἐπεδήμει Νέρων ἠκούσαμεν Ἀμμωνίου καί τινων ἄλλων διεξιόντων ἐνταῦθα τῆς αὐτῆς ἀπορίας ὁμοίως ἐμπεσούσης.

Ὅτι μὲν γὰρ οὐχ ἧττον ὁ θεὸς φιλόσοφος ἢ μάντις, ἐδόκει πᾶσιν ὀρθῶς πρὸς τοῦτο τῶν ὀνομάτων ἕκαστον Ἀμμώνιος τίθεσθαι καὶ διδάσκειν, ὡς Πύθιος μέν ἐστι τοῖς ἀρχομένοις μανθάνειν καὶ διαπυνθάνεσθαι, Δήλιος δὲ καὶ Φαναῖος οἷς ἤδη τι δηλοῦται καὶ ὑποφαίνεται τῆς ἀληθείας, Ἰσμήνιος δὲ τοῖς ἔχουσι τὴν ἐπιστήμην, καὶ [c] Λεσχηνόριος ὅταν ἐνεργῶσι καὶ ἀπολαύωσι χρώμενοι τῷ διαλέγεσθαι καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν πρὸς ἀλλήλους. ‘ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ ζητεῖν ‹ἀρχή, τοῦ δὲ ζητεῖν› τὸ θαυμάζειν καὶ ἀπορεῖν, εἰκότως τὰ πολλὰ τῶν περὶ τὸν θεὸν ἔοικεν αἰνίγμασι κατακεκρύφθαι [καὶ] λόγον τινὰ ποθοῦντα διὰ τί καὶ διδασκαλίαν τῆς αἰτίας· οἷον ἐπὶ τοῦ πυρὸς τοῦ ἀθανάτου τὸ καίεσθαι μόνον αὐτόθι τῶν ξύλων ἐλάτην καὶ δάφνην ἐπιθυμιᾶσθαι, καὶ τὸ δύο Μοίρας ἱδρῦσθαι πανταχοῦ τριῶν νομιζομένων, καὶ τὸ μηδεμιᾷ γυναικὶ πρὸς τὸ χρηστήριον εἶναι προσελθεῖν, καὶ τὸ τοῦ τρίποδος, καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα, τοῖς μὴ παντάπασιν ἀλόγοις [d] καὶ ἀψύχοις ὑφειμένα δελεάζει καὶ παρακαλεῖ πρὸς τὸ σκοπεῖν τι καὶ ἀκούειν καὶ διαλέγεσθαι περὶ αὐτῶν. ὅρα δὲ καὶ ταυτὶ τὰ προγράμματα, τὸ ‘γνῶθι σαυτόν’ καὶ τό ‘μηδὲν ἄγαν’, ὅσας ζητήσεις κεκίνηκε φιλοσόφοις καὶ ὅσον λόγων πλῆθος ἀφ’ ἑκάστου καθάπερ ἀπὸ σπέρματος ἀναπέφυκεν· ὧν οὐδενὸς ἧττον οἶμαι γόνιμον λόγων εἶναι τὸ νῦν ζητούμενον.’

Εἰπόντος δὲ ταῦτα τοῦ Ἀμμωνίου Λαμπρίας ὁ ἀδελφὸς εἶπε ‘καὶ μὴν ὃν ἡμεῖς ἀκηκόαμεν λόγον ἁπλοῦς τίς ἐστι καὶ κομιδῇ βραχύς. λέγουσι γὰρ ἐκείνους τοὺς σοφοὺς ὑπ’ ἐνίων δὲ σοφιστὰς προσαγορευθέντας αὐτοὺς μὲν [e] εἶναι πέντε, Χίλωνα καὶ Θαλῆν καὶ Σόλωνα καὶ Βίαντα καὶ Πιττακόν· ἐπεὶ δὲ Κλεόβουλος ὁ Λινδίων τύραννος, εἶτα Περίανδρος ὁ Κορίνθιος, οὐδὲν αὐτοῖς ἀρετῆς μετὸν οὐδὲ σοφίας, ἀλλὰ δυνάμει καὶ φίλοις καὶ χάρισι καταβιαζόμενοι τὴν δόξαν ἐνέβαλλον εἰς τοὔνομα τῶν σοφῶν καί τινας γνώμας καὶ λόγους ἐξέπεμπον καὶ διέσπειρον εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα τοῖς ὑπ’ ἐκείνων λεγομένοις ὁμοίους· δυσχεράναντας ἄρα τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐξελέγχειν μὲν οὐκ ἐθέλειν τὴν ἀλαζονείαν οὐδὲ φανερῶς ὑπὲρ δόξης ἀπεχθάνεσθαι καὶ διαμάχεσθαι πρὸς ἀνθρώπους μέγα δυναμένους, ἐνταῦθα [f] δὲ συνελθόντας αὐτοὺς καθ’ αὑτοὺς καὶ διαλεχθέντας ἀλλήλοις ἀναθεῖναι τῶν γραμμάτων ὃ τῇ τε τάξει πέμπτον ἐστὶ καὶ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τὰ πέντε δηλοῖ, μαρτυρομένους μὲν ὑπὲρ αὑτῶν πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ὅτι πέντ’ εἰσί, τὸν δ’ ἕβδομον καὶ τὸν ἕκτον ἀποποιουμένους καὶ ἀποβάλλοντας ὡς οὐ προσήκοντας αὑτοῖς. ὅτι δ’ οὐκ ἀπὸ σκοποῦ ταῦτα λέγεται, γνοίη τις ἂν ἀκούσας τῶν κατὰ τὸ ἱερὸν τὸ μὲν χρυσοῦν εἶ Λιβίας τῆς Καίσαρος γυναικὸς ὀνομαζόντων, τὸ δὲ [386] [a] χαλκοῦν Ἀθηναίων· τὸ δὲ πρῶτον καὶ παλαιότατον τῇ δ’ οὐσίᾳ ξύλινον ἔτι νῦν τῶν σοφῶν καλοῦσιν, ὡς οὐχ ἑνὸς ἀλλὰ κοινὸν ἀνάθημα πάντων γενόμενον.’

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀμμώνιος ἡσυχῆ διεμειδίασεν, ὑπονοήσας ἰδίᾳ τὸν Λαμπρίαν δόξῃ κεχρῆσθαι, πλάττεσθαι δ’ ἱστορίαν καὶ ἀκοὴν ἑτέρων πρὸς τὸ ἀνυπεύθυνον· ἕτερος δέ τις ἔφη τῶν παρόντων, ὡς ὅμοια ταῦτ’ ἐστὶν οἷς πρῴην ὁ Χαλδαῖος ἐφλυάρει ξένος, ἑπτὰ μὲν εἶναι τὰ φωνὴν ἰδίαν ἀφιέντα τῶν γραμμάτων, ἑπτὰ δὲ τοὺς κίνησιν αὐτοτελῆ καὶ ἀσύνδετον ἐν οὐρανῷ κινουμένους ἀστέρας· εἶναι δὲ τῇ [b] τάξει δεύτερον τό τ’ εἶ τῶν φωνηέντων ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἀπὸ σελήνης τῶν πλανήτων· ἡλίῳ δ’ Ἀπόλλωνα τὸν αὐτὸν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν πάντας Ἕλληνας νομίζειν. ‘ἀλλὰ ταυτὶ μέν’ ἔφη ‘παντάπασιν ἐκ πίνακος καὶ πυλαίας.’

Ὁ δὲ Λαμπρίας ἔλαθεν, ὡς ἔοικε, τοὺς ἀφ’ ἱεροῦ κινήσας ἐπὶ τὸν αὑτοῦ λόγον. ἃ μὲν γὰρ ἐκεῖνος εἶπεν, οὐδεὶς ἐγίγνωσκε Δελφῶν· τὴν δὲ κοινὴν καὶ περιηγητικὴν δόξαν εἰς τὸ μέσον προῆγον, οὔτε τὴν ὄψιν ἀξιοῦντες οὔτε τὸν φθόγγον ἀλλὰ τοὔνομα μόνον τοῦ γράμματος ἔχειν τι σύμβολον. ‘ἔστι γάρ’ ὡς ὑπολαμβάνουσι Δελφοὶ καὶ τότε προηγορῶν ἔλεγε Νίκανδρος ὁ ἱερεύς ‘σχῆμα καὶ μορφὴ τῆς πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἐντεύξεως καὶ τάξιν ἡγεμονικὴν [c] ἐν τοῖς ἐρωτήμασιν ἔχει τῶν χρωμένων ἑκάστοτε διαπυνθανομένων, εἰ νικήσουσιν, εἰ γαμήσουσιν, εἰ συμφέρει πλεῖν, εἰ γεωργεῖν, εἰ ἀποδημεῖν. τοῖς δὲ διαλεκτικοῖς χαίρειν ἔλεγε σοφὸς ὢν ὁ θεὸς οὐδὲν οἰομένοις ἐκ τοῦ ‘εἰ’ μορίου καὶ τοῦ μετ’ αὐτοῦ ‹ταχθέντος› ἀξιώματος πρᾶγμα γίγνεσθαι, πάσας τὰς ἐρωτήσεις ὑποτεταγμένας τούτῳ καὶ νοῶν ὡς πράγματα καὶ προσιέμενος. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἴδιον τὸ ἐρωτᾶν ὡς μάντιν ἐστὶν ἡμῖν καὶ τὸ εὔχεσθαι κοινὸν ὡς πρὸς θεὸν, οὐχ ἧττον οἴονται τῆς [d] πευστικῆς τὴν εὐκτικὴν τὸ γράμμα περιέχειν δύναμιν· ‘εἰ γάρ’ [ὤφελον] φησὶν ἕκαστος τῶν εὐχομένων. καὶ Ἀρχίλοχος (fr. 71)

‘εἰ γὰρ ὣς ἐμοὶ γένοιτο χεῖρα Νεοβούλης θιγεῖν.’

καὶ τοῦ ‘εἴθε’ τὴν δευτέραν συλλαβὴν παρέλκεσθαί φασιν, οἷον τὸ Σώφρονος (fr. 36 Kaibel)

‘ἄλλα τέκνων θην δευμένα·’

καὶ τὸ Ὁμηρικόν (Ρ 29)

‘ὥς θην καὶ σὸν ἐγὼ λύσω μένος·’

ἐν δὲ τῷ ‘εἰ’ τὸ εὐκτικὸν [καὶ] ἀποχρώντως δηλοῦσθαι.’

Ταῦτα τοῦ Νικάνδρου διελθόντος, οἶσθα γὰρ δὴ Θέωνα τὸν ἑταῖρον, ἤρετο τὸν Ἀμμώνιον, εἰ διαλεκτικῇ παρρησίας μέτεστιν οὕτω περιυβρισμένῃ ‹καὶ κακῶς› ἀκηκουίᾳ· τοῦ δ’ Ἀμμωνίου λέγειν παρακελευομένου καὶ [e] βοηθεῖν ‘ἀλλ’ ὅτι μέν’ ἔφη ‘διαλεκτικώτατος ὁ θεός ἐστιν, οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν χρησμῶν δηλοῦσιν· τοῦ γὰρ αὐτοῦ δήπουθέν ἐστι καὶ λύειν καὶ ποιεῖν ἀμφιβολίας. ἔτι δ’, ὥσπερ Πλάτων ἔλεγε χρησμοῦ δοθέντος ὅπως τὸν ἐν Δήλῳ βωμὸν διπλασιάσωσιν, ὃ τῆς ἄκρας ἕξεως περὶ γεωμετρίαν ἔργον ἐστίν, οὐ τοῦτο προστάττειν τὸν θεὸν ἀλλὰ γεωμετρεῖν διακελεύεσθαι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, οὕτως ἄρα χρησμοὺς ἀμφιβόλους ἐκφέρων ὁ θεὸς αὔξει καὶ συνίστησι διαλεκτικὴν ὡς ἀναγκαίαν τοῖς μέλλουσιν ὀρθῶς αὐτοῦ συνήσειν. ἐν δὲ διαλεκτικῇ δήπου μεγίστην ἔχει δύναμιν ὁ [f] συναπτικὸς οὑτοσὶ σύνδεσμος, ἅτε δὴ τὸ λογικώτατον σχηματίζων ἀξίωμα· πῶς γὰρ οὐ τοιοῦτο τὸ συνημμένον, εἴ γε τῆς μὲν ὑπάρξεως τῶν πραγμάτων ἔχει καὶ τὰ θηρία γνῶσιν, ἀκολούθου δὲ θεωρίαν καὶ κρίσιν ἀνθρώπῳ μόνῳ παραδέδωκεν ἡ φύσις; ὅτι μὲν γάρ ‘ἡμέρα’ καὶ ‘φῶς’ ἔστιν, αἰσθάνονται δήπου καὶ λύκοι καὶ κύνες καὶ ὄρνιθες· [387] [a] ὅτι δ’ ‘εἰ ἡμέρα, φῶς ἔστιν’, οὐδὲν ἄλλο συνίησι πλὴν ἄνθρωπος, ἡγουμένου καὶ λήγοντος ἐμφάσεώς τε καὶ συναρτήσεως τούτων πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ σχέσεως καὶ διαφορᾶς μόνος ἔχων ἔννοιαν, ἐξ ὧν αἱ ἀποδείξεις τὴν κυριωτάτην ἀρχὴν λαμβάνουσιν. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν φιλοσοφία μὲν περὶ ἀλήθειάν ἐστιν ἀληθείας δὲ φῶς ἀπόδειξις ἀποδείξεως δ’ ἀρχὴ τὸ συνημμένον, εἰκότως ἡ τοῦτο συνέχουσα καὶ ποιοῦσα δύναμις ὑπὸ σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν τῷ μάλιστα τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἠγαπηκότι θεῷ καθιερώθη. καὶ μάντις μὲν [b] ὁ θεὸς μαντικὴ δὲ τέχνη περὶ τὸ μέλλον ἐκ τῶν παρόντων ἢ παρῳχημένων· οὐδενὸς γὰρ οὔτ’ ἀναίτιος ἡ γένεσις οὔτ’ ἄλογος ἡ πρόγνωσις· ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ πάντα τοῖς ‹τε› γεγονόσι τὰ γιγνόμενα τά τε γενησόμενα τοῖς γιγνομένοις ἕπεται καὶ συνήρτηται κατὰ διέξοδον ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς εἰς τέλος περαίνουσαν, ὁ τὰς αἰτίας εἰς ταὐτὸ συνδεῖν τε πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ συμπλέκειν φυσικῶς ἐπιστάμενος οἶδε καὶ προλέγει

‘τά τ’ ἐόντα τά τ’ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ’ ἐόντα.’

καὶ καλῶς Ὅμηρος (Α 70) πρῶτον ἔταξε τὰ παρόντα εἶτα τὸ μέλλον καὶ τὸ παρῳχημένον· ἀπὸ γὰρ τοῦ ὄντος ὁ συλλογισμὸς κατὰ τὴν τοῦ συνημμένου δύναμιν, ὡς ‘εἰ τόδ’ ἐστί, τόδε προηγεῖται’ καὶ πάλιν ‘εἰ τόδ’ ἐστί, τόδε [c] γενήσεται.’ τὸ γὰρ τεχνικὸν καὶ λογικὸν ὥσπερ εἴρηται γνῶσις ἀκολουθίας, τὴν δὲ πρόσληψιν ἡ αἴσθησις τῷ λόγῳ δίδωσιν. ὅθεν, εἰ καὶ γλίσχρον εἰπεῖν, οὐκ ἀποστρέψομαι τοῦτον εἶναι τὸν τῆς ἀληθείας τρίποδα τὸν λόγον, ὃς τὴν τοῦ λήγοντος πρὸς τὸ ἡγούμενον ἀκολουθίαν θέμενος εἶτα προσλαβὼν τὴν ὕπαρξιν ἐπάγει τὸ συμπέρασμα τῆς ἀποδείξεως. τὸν οὖν Πύθιον, εἰ δὴ μουσικῇ τε‹ρπόμενος› ἥδεται καὶ κύκνων φωναῖς καὶ κιθάρας ψόφοις, τί θαυμαστόν ἐστι διαλεκτικῆς φιλίᾳ τοῦτ’ ἀσπάζεσθαι τοῦ λόγου τὸ μέρος καὶ ἀγαπᾶν, ᾧ μάλιστα καὶ πλείστῳ [d] προσχρωμένους ὁρᾷ τοὺς φιλοσόφους; ὁ δ’ Ἡρακλῆς οὔπω τὸν Προμηθέα λελυκὼς οὐδὲ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Χείρωνα καὶ Ἄτλαντα σοφισταῖς διειλεγμένος ἀλλὰ νέος ὢν καὶ κομιδῇ Βοιώτιος ἀναιρῶν τὴν διαλεκτικὴν καὶ καταγελῶν τοῦ ‘εἰ τὸ πρῶτον, τὸ δεύτερον’ ὑποσπᾶν ἔδοξε βίᾳ τὸν τρίποδα καὶ διαμάχεσθαι πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς τέχνης· ἐπεὶ προϊών γε τῷ χρόνῳ καὶ οὗτος ἔοικε μαντικώτατος ὁμοῦ γενέσθαι καὶ διαλεκτικώτατος.’

Παυσαμένου δὲ τοῦ Θέωνος Εὔστροφον Ἀθηναῖον οἶμαι τὸν εἰπόντα εἶναι πρὸς ἡμᾶς ‘ὁρᾷς, ὡς ἀμύνει τῇ διαλεκτικῇ Θέων προθύμως, μονονοὺ τὴν λεοντῆν ἐπενδυσάμενος; [e] οὕτως οὐδ’ ἡμᾶς τοὺς πάντα συλλήβδην πράγματα καὶ φύσεις καὶ ἀρχὰς θείων ὁμοῦ καὶ ἀνθρωπείων ἐν ἀριθμῷ τιθεμένους καὶ πολὺ μάλιστα τῶν καλῶν καὶ τιμίων τοῦτον ἡγεμόνα ποιουμένους καὶ κύριον εἰκὸς ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, ἀλλ’ ἀπάρξασθαι τῷ θεῷ τῆς φίλης μαθηματικῆς, αὐτὸ μὲν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ μήτε δυνάμει μήτε μορφῇ μήτε τῷ ῥήματι τὸ Ε τῶν ἄλλων στοιχείων διαφέρειν ἡγουμένους, ὡς δὲ μεγάλου πρὸς τὰ ὅλα καὶ κυρίου σημεῖον ἀριθμοῦ προτετιμῆσθαι τῆς πεμπάδος, ἀφ’ οὗ τὸ ἀριθμεῖν οἱ σοφοὶ πεμπάζειν ὠνόμαζον.’ ταῦτα δὲ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἔλεγεν οὐ [f] παίζων ὁ Εὔστροφος, ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ τηνικαῦτα προσεκείμην τοῖς μαθήμασιν ἐμπαθῶς, τάχα δὴ μέλλων εἰς πάντα τιμήσειν τό ‘μηδὲν ἄγαν’ ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ γενόμενος.

Εἶπον οὖν κάλλιστα τὸν Εὔστροφον τῷ ἀριθμῷ λύειν τὴν ἀπορίαν. ‘ἐπεὶ γάρ’ ἔφην ‘εἰς τὸ ἄρτιον νενεμημένου [388] [a] παντὸς ἀριθμοῦ καὶ τὸ περιττὸν ἡ μὲν μονὰς ἀμφοτέρων ἐπίκοινός ἐστι τῇ δυνάμει (διὸ καὶ προστιθεμένη τὸν μὲν περιττὸν ἀριθμὸν ἄρτιον ποιεῖ τὸν δ’ ἄρτιον περιττόν), ἀρχὴν δὲ τοῦ μὲν ἀρτίου τὰ δύο τοῦ δὲ περιττοῦ τὰ τρία ποιοῦνται, τὰ δὲ πέντε γεννᾶται τούτων πρὸς ἀλλήλους μιγνυμένων, εἰκότως ἔσχηκε τιμὴν ‹ὁ› πρῶτος ἐκ πρώτων ἀποτελούμενος καὶ γάμος ἐπωνόμασται τῇ τοῦ ἀρτίου πρὸς τὸ θῆλυ περιττοῦ δ’ αὖ πρὸς τὸ ἄρρεν ὁμοιότητι· ταῖς γὰρ εἰς ἴσα τομαῖς τῶν ἀριθμῶν ὁ μὲν ἄρτιος πάντῃ διιστάμενος ὑπολείπει τινὰ δεκτικὴν ἀρχὴν οἷον ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ χώραν, ἐν δὲ τῷ περιττῷ τὸ αὐτὸ [b] παθόντι μέσον ἀεὶ περίεστι τῆς νεμήσεως μόριον· ᾗ καὶ γονιμώτερός ἐστι τοῦ ἑτέρου καὶ μιγνύμενος ἀεὶ κρατεῖ κρατεῖται δ’ οὐδέποτε· γίγνεται γὰρ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν κατ’ οὐδεμίαν μῖξιν ἄρτιος ἀλλὰ κατὰ πάσας περιττός. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτὸς ἐπιβάλλων αὑτῷ. καὶ συντιθέμενος δείκνυσι τὴν διαφορὰν ἑκάτερος· ἄρτιος μὲν γὰρ οὐδεὶς ἀρτίῳ συνελθὼν περισσὸν παρέσχεν οὐδ’ ἐξέβη τὸ οἰκεῖον ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας ἄγονος ὢν ἑτέρου καὶ ἀτελής· περισσοὶ δὲ μιγνύμενοι περισσοῖς ἀρτίους πολλοὺς διὰ τὸ πάντῃ γόνιμον ἀποτελοῦσι. τὰς δ’ ἄλλας οὐκ ἄν τις ἐν καιρῷ νῦν [c] ἐπεξίοι δυνάμεις καὶ διαφορὰς τῶν ἀριθμῶν. ὡς οὖν ἄρρενός τε τοῦ πρώτου καὶ θήλεος ὁμιλίᾳ τὰ πέντε γιγνόμενα γάμον οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι προσεῖπον. ἔστι δ’ ᾗ καὶ φύσις λέλεκται τῷ περὶ αὑτὸν πολλαπλασιασμῷ πάλιν εἰς ἑαυτὸν περαίνων. ὡς γὰρ ἡ φύσις λαβοῦσα πυρὸν ἐν σπέρματι †καὶ χθαμένη πολλὰ μὲν ἐν μέσῳ φύει σχήματα καὶ εἴδη, δι’ ὧν ἐπὶ τέλος ἐξάγει τὸ ἔργον, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ πυρὸν ἀνέδειξεν ἀποδοῦσα τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐν τῷ τέλει τοῦ παντός, οὕτω τῶν λοιπῶν ἀριθμῶν, ὅταν αὑτοὺς πολλαπλασιάσωσιν, εἰς ἑτέρους τελευτώντων τῇ αὐξήσει μόνος [d] ὁ τῶν πέντε καὶ ἓξ γενόμενος τοσαυτάκις αὑτοὺς ἀναφέρουσι καὶ ἀνασῴζουσιν. ἑξάκις γὰρ τὰ ἓξ τριακονταέξ, καὶ πεντάκις τὰ πέντε εἰκοσιπέντε γίγνεται. καὶ πάλιν ὁ μὲν τῶν ἓξ ἅπαξ τοῦτο ποιεῖ καὶ μοναχῶς αὐτὸς ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ τετράγωνος γιγνόμενος· τῇ δὲ πεμπάδι καὶ τοῦτο μὲν συμβέβηκε κατὰ πολλαπλασιασμόν, ἰδίως δὲ τὸ κατὰ σύνθεσιν ἢ ἑαυτὴν ἢ ‹τὴν› δεκάδα ποιεῖν παρὰ μέρος ἐπιβάλλουσαν αὑτῇ, καὶ τοῦτο γίγνεσθαι μέχρι παντός, ἀπομιμουμένου τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τὴν τὰ ὅλα διακοσμοῦσαν ἀρχήν. ὡς γὰρ ἐκείνην ὑπαλλάττουσαν ἐκ μὲν ἑαυτῆς τὸν κόσμον ἐκ δὲ τοῦ κόσμου πάλιν ἑαυτὴν ἀποτελεῖν ‘πυρός τε ἀνταμοιβὴν τὰ πάντα’ φησὶν ὁ Ἡράκλειτος [e] (fr. 90) ‘καὶ πῦρ ἁπάντων, ὅκωσπερ χρυσοῦ χρήματα καὶ χρημάτων χρυσός,’ οὕτως ἡ τῆς πεμπάδος πρὸς ἑαυτὴν σύνοδος οὐδὲν οὔτ’ ἀτελὲς οὔτ’ ἀλλότριον γεννᾶν πέφυκεν, ἀλλ’ ὡρισμένας ἔχει μεταβολάς· ἢ γὰρ αὑτὴν ἢ τὴν δεκάδα γεννᾷ, τουτέστιν ἢ τὸ οἰκεῖον ἢ τὸ τέλειον. ἐὰν οὖν ἔρηταί τις, τί ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα, φήσομεν οὐχὶ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον, ᾧ τῶν Δελφῶν οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι μέτεστιν. ἀκούομεν οὖν τῶν θεολόγων τὰ μὲν ἐν ποιήμασι τὰ δ’ ἄνευ μέτρου λεγόντων [f] καὶ ὑμνούντων, ὡς ἄφθαρτος ὁ θεὸς καὶ ἀίδιος πεφυκώς, ὑπὸ δή τινος εἱμαρμένης γνώμης καὶ λόγου μεταβολαῖς ἑαυτοῦ χρώμενος ἄλλοτε μὲν εἰς πῦρ ἀνῆψε τὴν φύσιν πάντα ὁμοιώσας πᾶσιν, ἄλλοτε δὲ παντοδαπὸς ἔν τε μορφαῖς καὶ ἐν πάθεσι καὶ δυνάμεσι διαφόροις γιγνόμενος, ὡς γίγνεται νῦν, κόσμος ὀνομάζεται [δὲ] τῷ γνωριμωτάτῳ τῶν ὀνομάτων. κρυπτόμενοι δὲ τοὺς πολλοὺς οἱ σοφώτεροι τὴν μὲν εἰς πῦρ μεταβολὴν Ἀπόλλωνά τε τῇ μονώσει Φοῖβόν τε τῷ καθαρῷ καὶ ἀμιάντῳ [389] [a] καλοῦσι, τῆς δ’ εἰς πνεύματα καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ γῆν καὶ ἄστρα καὶ φυτῶν ζῴων τε γενέσεις τροπῆς αὐτοῦ καὶ διακοσμήσεως τὸ μὲν πάθημα καὶ τὴν μεταβολὴν διασπασμόν τινα καὶ διαμελισμὸν αἰνίττονται, Διόνυσον δὲ καὶ Ζαγρέα καὶ Νυκτέλιον καὶ Ἰσοδαίτην αὐτὸν ὀνομάζουσι καὶ φθοράς τινας καὶ ἀφανισμοὺς εἶτα δ’ ἀναβιώσεις καὶ παλιγγενεσίας οἰκεῖα ταῖς εἰρημέναις μεταβολαῖς αἰνίγματα καὶ μυθεύματα περαίνουσι· καὶ ᾄδουσι τῷ μὲν διθυραμβικὰ μέλη παθῶν μεστὰ καὶ μεταβολῆς πλάνην τινὰ καὶ διαφόρησιν ἐχούσης· ‘μιξοβόαν’ γὰρ Αἰσχύλος (fr. 355) φησί ‘πρέπει διθύραμβον ὁμαρτεῖν σύγκωμον Διονύσῳ’, τῷ δὲ παιᾶνα, τεταγμένην καὶ σώφρονα μοῦσαν, ἀγήρων τε τοῦτον ἀεὶ καὶ νέον ἐκεῖνον δὲ πολυειδῆ καὶ πολύμορφον ἐν γραφαῖς καὶ πλάσμασι δημιουργοῦσι· καὶ ὅλως τῷ μὲν ὁμοιότητα καὶ τάξιν καὶ σπουδὴν ἄκρατον, τῷ δὲ μεμιγμένην τινὰ παιδιᾷ καὶ ὕβρει [καὶ σπουδῇ] καὶ μανίᾳ προσφέροντες ἀνωμαλίαν ‘εὔιον ὀρσιγύναικα μαινομέναις Διόνυσον ἀνθέοντα τιμαῖς’ (Lyr. adesp. 131) ἀνακαλοῦσιν, οὐ φαύλως ἑκατέρας μεταβολῆς τὸ οἰκεῖον λαμβάνοντες. ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐκ ἴσος ὁ τῶν περιόδων ἐν ταῖς [b] μεταβολαῖς χρόνος, ἀλλὰ μείζων ὁ τῆς ἑτέρας ἣν ‘κόρον’ καλοῦσιν, ὁ δὲ τῆς ‘χρησμοσύνης’ ἐλάττων, τὸ κατὰ λόγον τηροῦντες ἐνταῦθα τὸν μὲν ἄλλον ἐνιαυτὸν παιᾶνι χρῶνται περὶ τὰς θυσίας, ἀρχομένου δὲ χειμῶνος ἐπεγείραντες τὸν διθύραμβον τὸν δὲ παιᾶνα καταπαύσαντες τρεῖς μῆνας ἀντ’ ἐκείνου τοῦτον κατακαλοῦνται τὸν θεόν· ὅπερ τρία πρὸς ἐννέα, τοῦτο τὴν διακόσμησιν οἰόμενοι χρόνῳ πρὸς τὴν ἐκπύρωσιν εἶναι.’

‘Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἱκανοῦ καιροῦ μᾶλλον ἀπομεμήκυνται· δῆλον δ’ ὅτι συνοικειοῦσιν αὐτῷ τὴν πεμπάδα νῦν μὲν αὐτὴν ἑαυτὴν ὡς τὸ πῦρ αὖθις δὲ τὴν δεκάδα ποιοῦσαν [c] ἐξ ἑαυτῆς ὡς τὸν κόσμον. τῆς δὲ δὴ μάλιστα κεχαρισμένης τῷ θεῷ μουσικῆς οὐκ οἰόμεθα τούτῳ τῷ ἀριθμῷ μετεῖναι; τὸ γὰρ πλεῖστον ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἔργον ἁρμονικῆς περὶ τὰς συμφωνίας ἐστίν, αὗται δ’ ὅτι πέντε καὶ οὐ πλείους, ὁ λόγος ἐξελέγχει τὸν ἐν χορδαῖς καὶ τρυπήμασι ταῦτα θηρᾶν ἀλόγως τῇ αἰσθήσει βουλόμενον. πᾶσαι γὰρ ἐν λόγοις τὴν γένεσιν ἀριθμῶν λαμβάνουσιν· καὶ λόγος ἐστὶ τῆς μὲν διὰ τεσσάρων ἐπίτριτος, τῆς δὲ διὰ πέντε ἡμιόλιος, διπλάσιος δὲ τῆς διὰ πασῶν, τῆς δὲ διὰ πασῶν καὶ διὰ πέντε τριπλάσιος, καὶ τετραπλάσιος τῆς δὶς διὰ πασῶν. ἣν δὲ ταύταις [d] ἐπεισάγουσιν οἱ ἁρμονικοὶ διὰ πασῶν καὶ διὰ τεσσάρων ὀνομάζοντες ἔξω μέτρου βαίνουσαν, οὐκ ἄξιόν ἐστι δέχεσθαι τῆς ἀκοῆς τῷ ἀλόγῳ παρὰ τὸν λόγον ὥσπερ νόμῳ χαριζομένους. ἵνα τοίνυν ἀφῶ πέντε ‹τὰς› τετραχόρδων θέσεις καὶ πέντε τοὺς πρώτους εἴτε τόνους ἢ τρόπους εἴθ’ ἁρμονίας χρὴ καλεῖν, ὧν ἐπιτάσει καὶ ὑφέσει τρεπομένων κατὰ τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον αἱ λοιπαὶ βαρύτητές εἰσι καὶ ὀξύτητες, ἆρ’ οὐχὶ πολλῶν μᾶλλον δ’ ἀπείρων διαστημάτων ὄντων τὰ μελῳδούμενα μόνα πέντ’ ἐστί, δίεσις καὶ ἡμιτόνιον καὶ τόνος καὶ τριημιτόνιον καὶ δίτονον, ἄλλο [e] δ’ οὐδὲν οὔτε μικρότερον οὔτε μεῖζον ἐν φωναῖς χωρίον ὀξύτητι καὶ βαρύτητι περατούμενον μελῳδητόν ἐστι;’

‘Πολλὰ δ’ ἄλλα τοιαῦτ’’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘παρελθὼν τὸν Πλάτωνα προσάξομαι λέγοντα (Tim. 31a) κόσμον ἕνα, ὡς εἴπερ εἰσὶ παρὰ τοῦτον ἕτεροι καὶ μὴ μόνος οὗτος εἷς, πέντε τοὺς πάντας ὄντας καὶ μὴ πλείονας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ κἂν εἷς οὗτος ᾖ μονογενής, ὡς οἴεται καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης (de caelo 276 ss.), τρόπον τινὰ καὶ τοῦτον ἐκ πέντε [390] [a] συγκείμενον κόσμων καὶ συνηρμοσμένον εἶναι· ὧν ὁ μέν ἐστι γῆς ὁ δ’ ὕδατος, τρίτος δὲ καὶ τέταρτος ἀέρος καὶ πυρός· τὸν δὲ πέμπτον οὐρανὸν οἱ δὲ φῶς οἱ δ’ αἰθέρα καλοῦσιν, οἱ δ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτο πέμπτην οὐσίαν, ᾗ τὸ κύκλῳ περιφέρεσθαι μόνῃ τῶν σωμάτων κατὰ φύσιν ἐστίν, οὐκ ἐξ ἀνάγκης οὐδ’ ἄλλως συμβεβηκός. διὸ δὴ καὶ τὰ πέντε κάλλιστα καὶ τελεώτατα σχήματα τῶν ἐν τῇ φύσει κατανοήσας, πυραμίδα καὶ κύβον καὶ ὀκτάεδρον καὶ εἰκοσάεδρον καὶ δωδεκάεδρον, ἕκαστον οἰκείως ἑκάστῳ προσένειμεν. εἰσὶ δ’ οἳ καὶ τὰς τῶν αἰσθήσεων δυνάμεις ἰσαρίθμους οὔσας τοῖς πρώτοις ἐκείνοις συνοικειοῦσι, τὴν μὲν [b] ἁφὴν ὁρῶντες ἀντίτυπον οὖσαν καὶ γεώδη, τὴν δὲ γεῦσιν ὑγρότητι τῶν γευστῶν τὰς ποιότητας προσιεμένην. ἀὴρ δὲ πληγεὶς ἐν ἀκοῇ γίγνεται φωνὴ καὶ ψόφος. δυεῖν δὲ τῶν λοιπῶν ὀσμὴ μέν, ἣν ὄσφρησις εἴληχεν, ἀναθυμίασις οὖσα καὶ γεννωμένη θερμότητι πυρῶδές ἐστιν, αἰθέρι δὲ καὶ φωτὶ διὰ συγγένειαν διαλαμπούσης τῆς ὄψεως γίγνεται κρᾶσις ἐξ ἀμφοῖν ὁμοιοπαθὴς καὶ σύμπηξις. ἄλλην δ’ οὔτε τὸ ζῷον αἴσθησιν οὔθ’ ὁ κόσμος ἔχει φύσιν ἁπλῆν καὶ ἄμικτον· ἀλλὰ θαυμαστή τις, ὡς ἔοικε, διανομὴ γέγονε τῶν πέντε πρὸς τὰ πέντε καὶ σύλληξις.’

[c] Ἅμα δέ πως ἐπιστήσας καὶ διαλιπών ‘οἷον’ εἶπον ‘ὦ Εὔστροφε, πεπόνθαμεν, ὀλίγου παρελθόντες τὸν Ὅμηρον (Ο 187) ὡς οὐχὶ πρῶτον εἰς πέντε νείμαντα μερίδας τὸν κόσμον, ὃς τὰς μὲν ἐν μέσῳ τρεῖς ἀποδέδωκε τοῖς τρισὶ θεοῖς, δύο δὲ τὰς ἄκρας ὄλυμπον καὶ γῆν, ὧν ἡ μέν ἐστι τῶν κάτω πέρας ὁ δὲ τῶν ἄνω, κοινὰς καὶ ἀνεμήτους ἀφῆκεν. ‘ἀλλ’ ἀνοιστέος’ ὁ ‘λόγος’ ὡς Εὐριπίδης (fr. 970) φησίν. οἱ γὰρ τὴν τετράδα σεμνύναντες οὐ φαύλως διδάσκουσιν, ὅτι τῷ ταύτης λόγῳ πᾶν σῶμα γένεσιν ἔσχηκεν. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐν μήκει καὶ πλάτει βάθος λαβόντι πᾶν τὸ [d] στερεόν ἐστι, καὶ μήκους μὲν προϋφίσταται στιγμὴ κατὰ μονάδα ταττομένη, μῆκος δ’ ἀπλατὲς [ἡ] γραμμὴ καλεῖται καὶ δυάς ἐστιν, ἡ δ’ ἐπὶ πλάτος γραμμῆς κίνησις ἐπιφανείας γένεσιν ἐν τριάδι παρέσχε, βάθους δὲ τούτοις προσγενομένου διὰ τεττάρων εἰς στερεὸν ἡ αὔξησις προβαίνει, παντὶ δῆλον, ὅτι δεῦρο τὴν φύσιν ἡ τετρὰς προαγαγοῦσα, μέχρι τοῦ σῶμα τελειῶσαι καὶ παρασχεῖν ἁπτὸν ὄγκον καὶ ἀντίτυπον, εἶτ’ ἀπολέλοιπεν ἐνδεᾶ τοῦ μεγίστου. τὸ γὰρ ἄψυχον ὡς ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν ὀρφανὸν καὶ ἀτελὲς καὶ πρὸς οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν μὴ χρωμένης ψυχῆς ἐπιτήδειον· ἡ δὲ τὴν [e] ψυχὴν ἐμποιοῦσα κίνησις ἢ διάθεσις μεταβολῇ διὰ πέντε γιγνομένη τῇ φύσει τὸ τέλειον ἀποδίδωσι καὶ τοσούτῳ κυριώτερον ἔχει τῆς τετράδος λόγον, ὅσῳ τιμῇ διαφέρει τοῦ ἀψύχου τὸ ζῷον. ἔτι δ’ ἰσχύσασα μᾶλλον ἡ τῶν πέντε συμμετρία καὶ δύναμις οὐκ εἴασεν εἰς ἄπειρα γένη προελθεῖν τὸ ἔμψυχον, ἀλλὰ πέντε τῶν ζώντων ἁπάντων ἰδέας παρέσχεν. εἰσὶ γὰρ θεοὶ δήπου καὶ δαίμονες καὶ ἥρωες, εἶτα μετὰ τούτους τὸ τέταρτον ἄνθρωποι γένος, ἔσχατον δὲ καὶ πέμπτον τὸ ἄλογον καὶ θηριῶδες. ἔτι δ’ εἰ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτὴν κατὰ φύσιν διαιροῖς, πρῶτον αὐτῆς καὶ [f] ἀμαυρότατόν ἐστι τὸ θρεπτικὸν δεύτερον δὲ τὸ αἰσθητικὸν εἶτα τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν εἶτ’ ἐπὶ τούτῳ τὸ θυμοειδές· εἰς δὲ τὴν τοῦ λογιστικοῦ δύναμιν ἐξικομένη καὶ τελεώσασα τὴν φύσιν ὥσπερ ἐν ἄκρῳ τῷ πέμπτῳ καταπέπαυται.’

‘Τοσαύτας δὲ καὶ τηλικαύτας ἔχοντος τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ δυνάμεις καλὴ καὶ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστιν, οὐχ ἣν ἤδη διήλθομεν ἐκ δυάδος οὖσαν καὶ τριάδος, ἀλλ’ ἣν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῷ πρώτῳ [391] [a] συνελθοῦσα τετραγώνῳ παρέσχεν. ἀρχὴ μὲν γὰρ ἀριθμοῦ παντὸς ἡ μονάς, τετράγωνος δὲ πρῶτος ἡ τετράς· ἐκ δὲ τούτων ὥσπερ ἰδέας καὶ ὕλης πέρας ἐχούσης ἡ πεμπάς. εἰ δὲ δὴ καὶ τὴν μονάδα τετράγωνον ὀρθῶς ἔνιοι τίθενται δύναμιν οὖσαν ἑαυτῆς καὶ περαίνουσαν εἰς ἑαυτήν, ἐκ δυεῖν πεφυκυῖα τῶν πρώτων τετραγώνων ἡ πεμπὰς οὐκ ἀπολέλοιπεν ὑπερβολὴν εὐγενείας.’

‘Τὸ δὲ μέγιστον’ ἔφην ‘δέδια μὴ ῥηθὲν πιέζῃ τὸν Πλάτωνα ἡμῶν, ὡς ἐκεῖνος ἔλεγε πιέζεσθαι τῷ τῆς σελήνης ὀνόματι τὸν Ἀναξαγόραν, παμπάλαιον οὖσαν [τινα] [b] τὴν περὶ τῶν φωτισμῶν δόξαν ἰδίαν αὑτοῦ ποιούμενον. ἦ γὰρ οὐ ταῦτ’ εἴρηκεν ἐν Κρατύλῳ (409a);’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ ὁ Εὔστροφος ἔφη, ‘τί δ’ ὅμοιον πέφυκεν οὐ συνορῶ.’ ‘καὶ μὴν οἶσθα δήπουθεν, ὅτι πέντε μὲν ἐν Σοφιστῇ (256c) τὰς κυριωτάτας ἀποδείκνυσιν ἀρχάς, τὸ ὂν τὸ ταὐτὸν τὸ ἕτερον, τέταρτον δὲ καὶ πέμπτον ἐπὶ τούτοις κίνησιν καὶ στάσιν. ἄλλῳ δ’ αὖ τρόπῳ διαιρέσεως ἐν Φιλήβῳ (23c) χρώμενος ἓν μὲν εἶναί φησι τὸ ἄπειρον ἕτερον δὲ τὸ πέρας, τούτων δὲ μιγνυμένων πᾶσαν συνίστασθαι γένεσιν· αἰτίαν δ’, ὑφ’ ἧς μίγνυται, τέταρτον γένος τίθεται· καὶ πέμπτον ἡμῖν ὑπονοεῖν ἀπολέλοιπεν, ᾧ τὰ μιχθέντα πάλιν ἴσχει διάκρισιν καὶ διάστασιν. τεκμαίρομαι [c] δὲ ταῦτ’ ἐκείνων ὥσπερ εἰκόνας λέγεσθαι, τοῦ μὲν ὄντος τὸ γιγνόμενον, κινήσεως δὲ τὸ ἄπειρον, τὸ δὲ πέρας τῆς στάσεως, ταὐτοῦ δὲ τὴν μιγνύουσαν ἀρχήν, θατέρου δὲ τὴν διακρίνουσαν. εἰ δ’ ἕτερα ταῦτ’ ἐστί, κἀκείνως ἂν εἴη καὶ οὕτως ἐν πέντε γένεσι καὶ διαφοραῖς τιθέμενος· †φησὶ δή τις ταῦτα πρότερος συνιδὼν Πλάτωνος δύο Ε καθιερώσας τῷ θεῷ, δήλωμα καὶ σύμβολον τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τῶν πάντων. ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ τἀγαθὸν ἐν πέντε γένεσι φανταζόμενον κατανοήσας, ὧν πρῶτόν ἐστι τὸ [d] μέτριον δεύτερον δὲ τὸ σύμμετρον, καὶ τρίτον ὁ νοῦς καὶ τέταρτον αἱ περὶ ψυχὴν ἐπιστῆμαι καὶ τέχναι καὶ δόξαι ἀληθεῖς, πέμπτον ‹δ’› εἴ τις ἡδονὴ καθαρὰ καὶ πρὸς τὸ λυποῦν ἄκρατος, ἐνταῦθα λήγει τὸ Ὀρφικὸν (fr. 14) ὑπειπών

‘ἕκτῃ δ’ ἐν γενεῇ καταπαύσατε οἶμον ἀοιδῆς.’’

‘Ἐπὶ τούτοις’ ἔφην ‘εἰρημένοις πρὸς ὑμᾶς ‘ἓν βραχύ’ τοῖς περὶ Νίκανδρον ‘ἀείσω ξυνετοῖσι’ (Orph. fr. 334). τῇ γὰρ ἕκτῃ τοῦ †νέου μηνὸς ὅταν κατάγῃς τὴν Πυθίαν εἰς τὸ πρυτανεῖον, ὁ πρῶτος ὑμῖν γίγνεται τῶν τριῶν κλήρων εἰς τὰ πέντε †πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐκείνης τὰ τρία οὐδὲ τὰ δύο βάλλοντες. ἦ γὰρ οὐχ οὕτως ἔχει;’ καὶ ὁ Νίκανδρος ‘οὕτως’ εἶπεν· ‘ἡ δ’ αἰτία πρὸς ἑτέρους ἄρρητός [e] ἐστιν.’ ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφην ἐγὼ μειδιάσας ‘ἄχρι οὗ τἀληθὲς ἡμῖν ὁ θεὸς ἱεροῖς γενομένοις γνῶναι παράσχῃ, προσκείσεται καὶ τοῦτο τοῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς πεμπάδος λεγομένοις.’ τοιοῦτο μὲν καὶ ὁ τῶν ἀριθμητικῶν καὶ ὁ τῶν μαθηματικῶν ἐγκωμίων τοῦ εἶ λόγος, ὡς ἐγὼ μέμνημαι, πέρας ἔσχεν.

Ὁ δ’ Ἀμμώνιος, ἅτε δὴ καὶ αὐτὸς οὐ τὸ φαυλότατον ἐν μαθηματικῇ φιλοσοφίας τιθέμενος, ἥσθη τε τοῖς λεγομένοις καὶ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἄξιον πρὸς ταῦτα λίαν ἀκριβῶς ἀντιλέγειν τοῖς νέοις, πλὴν ὅτι τῶν ἀριθμῶν ἕκαστος οὐκ ὀλίγα βουλομένοις ἐπαινεῖν καὶ ὑμνεῖν παρέξει. καὶ τί δεῖ περὶ [f] τῶν ἄλλων λέγειν; ἡ γὰρ ἱερὰ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἑβδομὰς ἀναλώσει τὴν ἡμέραν πρότερον ἢ λόγῳ τὰς δυνάμεις αὐτῆς ἁπάσας ἐπεξελθεῖν. εἶτα τῷ κοινῷ νόμῳ ‘πολεμοῦντας’ ἅμα καὶ ‘τῷ πολλῷ χρόνῳ’ τοὺς σοφοὺς ἀποφανοῦμεν ἄνδρας, εἰ τὴν ἑβδομάδα τῆς προεδρίας παρώσαντες τῷ θεῷ τὴν πεμπάδα καθιερώσουσιν ὡς μᾶλλόν τι προσήκουσαν; οὔτ’ οὖν ἀριθμὸν οὔτε τάξιν οὔτε σύνδεσμον οὔτ’ ἄλλο τῶν [392] [a] ἐλλιπῶν μορίων οὐδὲν οἶμαι τὸ γράμμα σημαίνειν· ἀλλ’ ἔστιν αὐτοτελὴς τοῦ θεοῦ προσαγόρευσις καὶ προσφώνησις ἅμα τῷ ῥήματι τὸν φθεγγόμενον εἰς ἔννοιαν καθιστᾶσα τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ δυνάμεως. ὁ μὲν γὰρ θεὸς ἕκαστον [ἡμῶν] τῶν ἐνταῦθα προσιόντων οἷον ἀσπαζόμενος προσαγορεύει τό ‘γνῶθι σαυτόν,’ ὃ τοῦ χαῖρε δήπουθεν οὐδὲν μεῖόν ἐστιν· ἡμεῖς δὲ πάλιν ἀμειβόμενοι τὸν θεόν ‘εἶ’ φαμέν, ὡς ἀληθῆ καὶ ἀψευδῆ καὶ μόνην μόνῳ προσήκουσαν τὴν τοῦ εἶναι προσαγόρευσιν ἀποδιδόντες.’

‘Ἡμῖν μὲν γὰρ ὄντως τοῦ εἶναι μέτεστιν οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσα θνητὴ φύσις ἐν μέσῳ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς γενομένη φάσμα παρέχει καὶ δόκησιν ἀμυδρὰν καὶ ἀβέβαιον [b] αὑτῆς· ἂν δὲ τὴν διάνοιαν ἐπερείσῃς λαβέσθαι βουλόμενος, ὥσπερ ἡ σφοδρὰ περίδραξις ὕδατος τῷ πιέζειν καὶ εἰς ταὐτὸ συνάγειν διαρρέον ἀπόλλυσι τὸ περιλαμβανόμενον, οὕτω τῶν παθητῶν καὶ μεταβλητῶν ἑκάστου τὴν ἄγαν ἐνάργειαν ὁ λόγος διώκων ἀποσφάλλεται τῇ μὲν εἰς τὸ γιγνόμενον αὐτοῦ τῇ δ’ εἰς τὸ φθειρόμενον, οὐδενὸς λαβέσθαι μένοντος οὐδ’ ὄντως ὄντος δυνάμενος. ‘ποταμῷ γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐμβῆναι δὶς τῷ αὐτῷ’ καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (fr. 91) οὐδὲ θνητῆς οὐσίας δὶς ἅψασθαι κατὰ ἕξιν· ἀλλ’ ὀξύτητι καὶ τάχει μεταβολῆς ‘σκίδνησι καὶ πάλιν συνάγει’, μᾶλλον δ’ οὐδὲ πάλιν οὐδ’ ὕστερον ἀλλ’ ἅμα συνίσταται [c] καὶ ἀπολείπει καὶ ‘πρόσεισι καὶ ἄπεισιν’. ὅθεν οὐδ’ εἰς τὸ εἶναι περαίνει τὸ γιγνόμενον αὐτῆς τῷ μηδέποτε λήγειν μηδ’ ἵστασθαι τὴν γένεσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ σπέρματος ἀεὶ μεταβάλλουσαν ἔμβρυον ποιεῖν εἶτα βρέφος εἶτα παῖδα, μειράκιον ἐφεξῆς, νεανίσκον, εἶτ’ ἄνδρα, πρεσβύτην, γέροντα, τὰς πρώτας φθείρουσαν γενέσεις καὶ ἡλικίας ταῖς ἐπιγιγνομέναις. ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς ἕνα φοβούμεθα γελοίως θάνατον, ἤδη τοσούτους τεθνηκότες καὶ θνήσκοντες. οὐ γὰρ μόνον, ὡς Ἡράκλειτος (fr. 76) ἔλεγε, ‘πυρὸς θάνατος ἀέρι γένεσις, καὶ ἀέρος θάνατος ὕδατι γένεσις,’ ἀλλ’ ἔτι σαφέστερον ἐπ’ αὐτῶν ἡμῶν φθείρεται μὲν ὁ ἀκμάζων [d] γινομένου γέροντος, ἐφθάρη δ’ ὁ νέος εἰς τὸν ἀκμάζοντα, καὶ ὁ παῖς εἰς τὸν νέον, εἰς δὲ τὸν παῖδα τὸ νήπιον· ὅ τ’ ἐχθὲς εἰς τὸν σήμερον τέθνηκεν, ὁ δὲ σήμερον εἰς τὸν αὔριον ἀποθνήσκει· μένει δ’ οὐδεὶς οὐδ’ ἔστιν εἷς, ἀλλὰ γιγνόμεθα πολλοί, περὶ ἕν τι φάντασμα καὶ κοινὸν ἐκμαγεῖον ὕλης περιελαυνομένης καὶ ὀλισθανούσης. ἐπεὶ πῶς οἱ αὐτοὶ μένοντες ἑτέροις χαίρομεν νῦν, ἑτέροις πρότερον, τἀναντία φιλοῦμεν καὶ μισοῦμεν καὶ θαυμάζομεν καὶ ψέγομεν, ἄλλοις χρώμεθα λόγοις ἄλλοις πάθεσιν, οὐκ εἶδος οὐ [e] μορφὴν οὐ διάνοιαν ἔτι τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχοντες; οὔτε γὰρ ἄνευ μεταβολῆς ἕτερα πάσχειν εἰκός, οὔτε μεταβάλλων ‹οὐδεὶς› ὁ αὐτός ἐστιν· εἰ δ’ ὁ αὐτὸς οὐκ ἔστιν, οὐδ’ ἔστιν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτ’ αὐτὸ μεταβάλλει γιγνόμενος ἕτερος ἐξ ἑτέρου. ψεύδεται δ’ ἡ αἴσθησις ἀγνοίᾳ τοῦ ὄντος εἶναι τὸ φαινόμενον.’

‘Τί οὖν ὄντως ὄν ἐστι; τὸ ἀίδιον καὶ ἀγένητον καὶ ἄφθαρτον, ᾧ χρόνος μεταβολὴν οὐδὲ εἷς ἐπάγει. κινητὸν γάρ τι καὶ κινουμένῃ συμφανταζόμενον ὕλῃ καὶ ῥέον ἀεὶ καὶ μὴ στέγον, ὥσπερ ἀγγεῖον φθορᾶς καὶ γενέσεως, ὁ χρόνος· ὅπου γε δὴ τὸ μέν ‘ἔπειτα’ καὶ τό ‘πρότερον’ καὶ τό ‘ἔσται’ λεγόμενον καὶ τό ‘γέγονεν’ αὐτόθεν ἐξομολόγησίς ἐστι τοῦ μὴ ὄντος· τὸ γὰρ ἐν τῷ εἶναι μηδέπω [f] γεγονὸς ἢ πεπαυμένον ἤδη τοῦ εἶναι λέγειν ὡς ἔστιν, εὔηθες καὶ ἄτοπον. ᾧ δὲ μάλιστα τὴν νόησιν ἐπερείδοντες τοῦ χρόνου τό ‘ἐνέστηκε’ καὶ τό ‘πάρεστι’ καὶ τό ‘νῦν’ φθεγγόμεθα, τοῦτ’ αὖ πάλιν ἄγαν ἐνδυόμενος ὁ λόγος ἀπόλλυσιν. ἐκθλίβεται γὰρ εἰς τὸ μέλλον καὶ τὸ παρῳχημένον ὥσπερ αὐτὴ βουλομένοις ἰδεῖν ἐξ ἀνάγκης [393] [a] διιστάμενον. εἰ δὲ ταὐτὰ τῷ μετροῦντι πέπονθεν ἡ μετρουμένη φύσις, οὐδὲν αὐτῆς μένον οὐδ’ ὄν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ γιγνόμενα πάντα καὶ φθειρόμενα κατὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸν χρόνον συννέμησιν. ὅθεν οὐδ’ ὅσιόν ἐστιν ἐπὶ τοῦ ὄντος λέγειν, ὡς ἦν ἢ ἔσται· ταῦτα γὰρ ἐγκλίσεις τινές εἰσι καὶ παραλλάξεις τοῦ μένειν ἐν τῷ εἶναι μὴ πεφυκότος.’

‘Ἀλλ’ ἔστιν ὁ θεός, ‘εἶ’ χρὴ φάναι, καὶ ἔστι κατ’ οὐδένα χρόνον ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸν αἰῶνα τὸν ἀκίνητον καὶ ἄχρονον καὶ ἀνέγκλιτον καὶ οὗ πρότερον οὐδέν ἐστιν οὐδ’ ὕστερον οὐδὲ μέλλον οὐδὲ παρῳχημένον οὐδὲ πρεσβύτερον οὐδὲ νεώτερον· ἀλλ’ εἷς ὢν ἑνὶ τῷ νῦν τὸ ἀεὶ πεπλήρωκε, [b] καὶ μόνον ἐστὶ τὸ κατὰ τοῦτ’ ὄντως ὄν, οὐ γεγονὸς οὐδ’ ἐσόμενον οὐδ’ ἀρξάμενον οὐδὲ παυσόμενον. οὕτως οὖν αὐτὸ δεῖ σεβομένους ἀσπάζεσθαι [καὶ] προσεθίζειν, ‘εἶ’, καὶ νὴ Δία, ὡς ἔνιοι τῶν παλαιῶν, ‘εἶ ἕν’. οὐ γὰρ πολλὰ τὸ θεῖόν ἐστιν, ὡς ἡμῶν ἕκαστος ἐκ μυρίων διαφορῶν ἐν πάθεσι γινομένων ἄθροισμα παντοδαπὸν καὶ πανηγυρικῶς μεμιγμένον· ἀλλ’ ἓν εἶναι δεῖ τὸ ὄν, ὥσπερ ὂν τὸ ἕν. ἡ δ’ ἑτερότης διαφορᾷ τοῦ ὄντος εἰς γένεσιν ἐξίσταται τοῦ μὴ ὄντος. ὅθεν εὖ καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἔχει τῷ θεῷ τῶν ὀνομάτων καὶ τὸ δεύτερον καὶ τὸ τρίτον. Ἀπόλλων μὲν γὰρ οἷον ἀρνούμενος τὰ πολλὰ καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ἀποφάσκων [c] ἐστίν, Ἰήιος δ’ ὡς εἷς καὶ μόνος· Φοῖβον δὲ δήπου τὸ καθαρὸν καὶ ἁγνὸν οἱ παλαιοὶ πᾶν ὠνόμαζον, ὡς ἔτι Θεσσαλοὶ τοὺς ἱερέας ἐν ταῖς ἀποφράσιν ἡμέραις αὐτοὺς ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν ἔξω διατρίβοντας, οἶμαι, ‘φοιβονομεῖσθαι’ λέγουσι. τὸ δ’ ἓν εἰλικρινὲς καὶ καθαρόν· ἑτέρου γὰρ μίξει πρὸς ἕτερον ὁ μιασμός, ὥς που καὶ Ὅμηρος (Δ 141) ‘ἐλέφαντα’ [τινὰ] φοινισσόμενον βαφῇ ‘μιαίνεσθαι’ φησί· καὶ τὰ μιγνύμενα τῶν χρωμάτων οἱ βαφεῖς ‘φθείρεσθαι’ καί ‘φθοράν’ τὴν μῖξιν ὀνομάζουσιν. οὐκοῦν ἕν τ’ εἶναι καὶ ἄκρατον ἀεὶ τῷ ἀφθάρτῳ καὶ καθαρῷ προσήκει.’

‘Τοὺς δ’ Ἀπόλλωνα καὶ ἥλιον ἡγουμένους τὸν [d] αὐτὸν ἀσπάζεσθαι μὲν ἄξιόν ἐστι καὶ φιλεῖν δι’ εὐφυΐαν, ὃ μάλιστα τιμῶσιν ὧν ἴσασι καὶ ποθοῦσιν, εἰς τοῦτο τιθέντας τοῦ θεοῦ τὴν ἐπίνοιαν· ὡς δὲ νῦν ἐν τῷ καλλίστῳ τῶν ἐνυπνίων τὸν θεὸν ὀνειροπολοῦντας ἐγείρωμεν καὶ παρακαλῶμεν ἀνωτέρω προάγειν καὶ θεάσασθαι τὸ ὕπαρ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν, τιμᾶν δὲ καὶ τὴν εἰκόνα τήνδε καὶ σέβεσθαι τὸ περὶ αὐτὴν γόνιμον ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστιν αἰσθητῷ νοητοῦ καὶ φερομένῳ μένοντος ἐμφάσεις τινὰς καὶ εἴδωλα διαλάμπουσαν ἁμωσγέπως τῆς περὶ ἐκεῖνον εὐμενείας καὶ μακαριότητος. ἐκστάσεις δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ μεταβολὰς ‹εἰς› [e] πῦρ ἀνιέντος ἑαυτὸν ἅμα τοῖς πᾶσιν, ὡς λέγουσιν, αὖθις δὲ καταθλίβοντος ἐνταῦθα ‹καὶ› κατατείνοντος εἰς γῆν καὶ θάλασσαν καὶ ἀνέμους καὶ ζῷα καὶ τὰ δεινὰ παθήματα [καὶ] ζῴων καὶ φυτῶν οὐδ’ ἀκούειν ὅσιον· ἢ τοῦ ποιητικοῦ παιδὸς (Hom. Ο 362) ἔσται φαυλότερος, ἣν ἐκεῖνος ἔν τινι ψαμάθῳ συντιθεμένῃ καὶ διαχεομένῃ πάλιν ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ παίζει παιδιάν, ταύτῃ περὶ τὰ ὅλα χρώμενος ἀεὶ καὶ τὸν κόσμον οὐκ ὄντα πλάττων εἶτ’ ἀπολλύων γενόμενον. τοὐναντίον γὰρ ὃ θεῖον ἁμωσγέπως ἐγγέγονε τῷ κόσμῳ, τοῦτο συνδεῖ τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ κρατεῖ τῆς περὶ τὸ [f] σωματικὸν ἀσθενείας ἐπὶ φθορὰν φερομένης. καί μοι δοκεῖ μάλιστα πρὸς τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ἀντιταττόμενον τὸ ῥῆμα καὶ μαρτυρόμενον ‘εἶ’ φάναι πρὸς τὸν θεόν, ὡς οὐδέποτε [394] [a] γινομένης περὶ αὐτὸν ἐκστάσεως καὶ μεταβολῆς, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρῳ τινὶ θεῷ μᾶλλον δὲ δαίμονι τεταγμένῳ περὶ τὴν ἐν φθορᾷ καὶ γενέσει φύσιν τοῦτο ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν προσῆκον· ὡς δῆλόν ἐστιν ἀπὸ τῶν ὀνομάτων εὐθὺς οἷον ἐναντίων ὄντων καὶ ἀντιφώνων. λέγεται γὰρ ὁ μὲν Ἀπόλλων ὁ δὲ Πλούτων, καὶ ὁ μὲν Δήλιος ὁ δ’ Ἀιδωνεύς, καὶ ὁ μὲν Φοῖβος ὁ δὲ Σκότιος· καὶ παρ’ ᾧ μὲν αἱ Μοῦσαι καὶ ἡ Μνημοσύνη, παρ’ ᾧ δ’ ἡ Λήθη καὶ ἡ Σιωπή· καὶ ὁ μὲν Θεώριος καὶ Φαναῖος, ὁ δέ

‘Νυκτός ‹τ’› ἀιδνᾶς ἀεργηλοῖό θ’ Ὕπνου κοίρανος·’ (Lyr. adesp. 92)

καὶ ὁ μέν

‘βροτοῖσι θεῶν ἔχθιστος ἁπάντων,’ (Ι 158)

πρὸς ὃν δὲ Πίνδαρος εἴρηκεν οὐκ ἀηδῶς (fr. 149)

[b] ‘κατεκρίθη δὲ θνατοῖς ἀγανώτατος ἔμμεν.’ εἰκότως οὖν ὁ Εὐριπίδης εἶπε (Suppl. 974b)

‘λοιβαὶ νεκύων φθιμένων

ἀοιδαί θ’, ἃς χρυσοκόμας

Ἀπόλλων οὐκ ἐνδέχεται·’

καὶ πρότερος ἔτι τούτου [ὁ] Στησίχορος (fr. 50)

‘‹χορεύ›ματά τοι μάλιστα

παιγμοσύνας ‹τε› φιλεῖ μολπάς τ’ Ἀπόλλων,

κάδεα δὲ στοναχάς τ’ Ἀίδας ἔλαχε.’

Σοφοκλῆς δὲ καὶ τῶν ὀργάνων ἑκατέρῳ προσνέμων ἑκάτερον δῆλός ἐστι διὰ τούτων (fr. 765)

‘οὐ νάβλα κωκυτοῖσιν οὐ λύρα φίλα’.

καὶ γὰρ ὁ αὐλὸς ὀψὲ καὶ πρῴην ἐτόλμησε φωνήν †’ἐφινερθίσιν’ ἀφιέναι· τὸν δὲ πρῶτον χρόνον εἵλκετο πρὸς τὰ πένθη, καὶ τὴν περὶ ταῦτα λειτουργίαν οὐ μάλ’ ἔντιμον [c] οὐδὲ φαιδρὰν εἶχεν, εἶτ’ ἐμίχθη πάντα πᾶσι. μάλιστα δὲ τὰ θεῖα πρὸς τὰ δαιμόνια συγχέοντες εἰς ταραχὴν αὑτοὺς κατέστησαν. ἀλλά γε τῷ εἶ τό ‘γνῶθι σαυτόν’ ἔοικέ πως ἀντικεῖσθαι καὶ τρόπον τινὰ πάλιν συνᾴδειν· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἐκπλήξει καὶ σεβασμῷ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ὡς ὄντα διὰ παντὸς ἀναπεφώνηται, τὸ δ’ ὑπόμνησίς ἐστι τῷ θνητῷ τῆς περὶ αὐτὸ φύσεως καὶ ἀσθενείας.’

De Pythiae oraculis

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΜΗ ΧΡΑΝ ΕΜΜΕΤΡΑ ΝΥΝ ΤΗΝ ΠΥΘΙΑΝ

[394] Β. Ἑσπέραν ἐποιήσατε βαθεῖαν, ὦ Φιλῖνε, διὰ τῶν [e] ἀναθημάτων παραπέμποντες τὸν ξένον· ἐγὼ γὰρ ὑμᾶς ἀναμένων ἀπηγόρευσα.

Φ. Βραδέως γὰρ ὡδεύομεν, ὦ Βασιλόκλεις, σπείροντες λόγους καὶ θερίζοντες εὐθὺς μετὰ μάχης ὑπούλους καὶ πολεμικούς, ὥσπερ οἱ Σπαρτοί, βλαστάνοντας ἡμῖν καὶ ὑποφυομένους κατὰ τὴν ὁδόν.

Β. Ἕτερον οὖν τινα δεήσει παρακαλεῖν τῶν παραγεγονότων, ἢ σὺ βούλει χαριζόμενος ἡμῖν διελθεῖν, τίνες ἦσαν οἱ λόγοι καὶ τίνες οἱ λέγοντες;

Φ. Ἐμόν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ὦ Βασιλόκλεις, τὸ ἔργον. τῶν γὰρ ἄλλων οὐδενὶ ῥᾳδίως ἂν ἐντύχοις κατὰ πόλιν· τοὺς γὰρ [f] πλείστους ἑώρων αὖθις εἰς τὸ Κωρύκιον τῷ ξένῳ καὶ τὴν Λυκώρειαν συναναβαίνοντας.

Β. Ἦ φιλοθεάμων τις ἡμῖν καὶ περιττῶς φιλήκοός ἐστιν ὁ ξένος.

Φ. Φιλόλογος δὲ καὶ φιλομαθὴς ἔτι μᾶλλον. οὐ μὴν ταῦτα μάλιστα θαυμάζειν ἄξια, ἀλλὰ πραότης τε πολλὴν [395] [a] χάριν ἔχουσα, καὶ τὸ μάχιμον καὶ διαπορητικὸν ὑπὸ συνέσεως, οὔτε δύσκολον οὔτ’ ἀντίτυπον πρὸς τὰς ἀποκρίσεις· ὥστε καὶ βραχὺ συγγενόμενον εὐθὺς εἰπεῖν †’τέκος ‹ἀγαθὸν› ἀγαθοῦ πατρός.’ οἶσθα γὰρ Διογενιανὸν ἀνδρῶν ἄριστον.

Β. Αὐτὸς μὲν οὐκ εἶδον, ὦ Φιλῖνε, πολλοῖς δ’ ἐντετύχηκα καὶ τὸν λόγον καὶ τὸ ἦθος τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἰσχυρῶς ἀποδεχομένοις, ὅμοια δὲ τούτοις ἕτερα περὶ τοῦ νεανίσκου λέγουσιν. ἀλλὰ τίνα, ὦ ἑταῖρε, ἀρχὴν ἔσχον οἱ λόγοι καὶ πρόφασιν;

Φ. Ἐπέραινον οἱ περιηγηταὶ τὰ συντεταγμένα μηδὲν ἡμῶν φροντίσαντες δεηθέντων ἐπιτεμεῖν τὰς ῥήσεις καὶ τὰ πολλὰ τῶν ἐπιγραμμάτων. τὸν δὲ ξένον ἡ μὲν ἰδέα καὶ τὸ τεχνικὸν τῶν ἀνδριάντων μετρίως προσήγετο πολλῶν καὶ [b] καλῶν ἔργων ὡς ἔοικε θεατὴν γεγενημένον· ἐθαύμαζε δὲ τοῦ χαλκοῦ τὸ ἀνθηρὸν ὡς οὐ πίνῳ προσεοικὸς οὐδ’ ἰῷ, βαφῇ δὲ κυάνου στίλβοντος, ὥστε καὶ παῖξαί τι πρὸς τοὺς ναυάρχους (ἀπ’ ἐκείνων γὰρ ἦρκτο τῆς θέας) οἷον ἀτεχνῶς θαλαττίους τῇ χρόᾳ καὶ βυθίους ἑστῶτας. ‘ἆρ’ οὖν’ ἔφη ‘κρᾶσίς τις ἦν καὶ φάρμαξις τῶν πάλαι τεχνιτῶν περὶ τὸν χαλκὸν ὥσπερ ἡ λεγομένη τῶν ξιφῶν στόμωσις, ἧς ἐκλαμπούσης ἐκεχειρίαν ἔσχεν ἔργων πολεμικῶν ὁ χαλκός; τὸν μὲν γὰρ Κορίνθιον οὐ τέχνῃ ‹φασὶν› ἀλλὰ συντυχίᾳ τῆς χρόας λαβεῖν τὸ κάλλος, ἐπινειμαμένου πυρὸς οἰκίαν ἔχουσάν τι χρυσοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου, πλεῖστον δὲ χαλκὸν ἀποκείμενον· [c] ὧν συγχυθέντων καὶ συντακέντων ὄνομα τοῦ χαλκοῦ τῷ μείγματι τὸ πλῆθος παρέσχεν’. ὁ δὲ Θέων ὑπολαβών ‘ἄλλον’ ἔφη ‘λόγον ἡμεῖς ἀκηκόαμεν πανουργέστερον, ὡς ἀνὴρ ἐν Κορίνθῳ χαλκοτύπος ἐπιτυχὼν θήκῃ χρυσίον ἐχούσῃ πολὺ καὶ δεδοικὼς φανερὸς γενέσθαι κατὰ μικρὸν ἀποκόπτων καὶ ὑπομιγνὺς ἀτρέμα τῷ χαλκῷ θαυμαστὴν λαμβάνοντι κρᾶσιν ἐπίπρασκε πολλοῦ διὰ τὴν χρόαν καὶ τὸ κάλλος ἀγαπώμενον. ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῦτα κἀκεῖνα μῦθός ἐστιν· ἦν δέ τις ὡς ἔοικε μῖξις καὶ ἄρτυσις, ὥς που καὶ νῦν ἀνακεραννύντες ἀργύρῳ χρυσὸν ἰδίαν τινὰ καὶ περιττὴν ἐμοὶ δὲ φαινομένην νοσώδη χλωρότητα καὶ [d] φθορὰν ἀκαλλῆ παρέχουσι.’ ‘Τίν’ οὖν αἰτίαν’ ἔφη ὁ Διογενιανός ‘οἴει τῆς ἐνταῦθα τοῦ χαλκοῦ χρόας γεγονέναι;’ καὶ ὁ Θέων ‘ὅταν’ ἔφη ‘τῶν πρώτων καὶ φυσικωτάτων καὶ λεγομένων καὶ ὄντων, πυρὸς καὶ γῆς καὶ ἀέρος καὶ ὕδατος, [καὶ] μηδὲν ἄλλο τῷ χαλκῷ πλησιάζῃ μηδ’ ὁμιλῇ πλὴν μόνος ὁ ἀήρ, δῆλός ἐστιν ὑπὸ τούτου πεπονθὼς καὶ διὰ τοῦτον ἐσχηκὼς ἣν ἔχει διαφορὰν ἀεὶ συνόντα καὶ προσκείμενον· ἢ

‘τουτὶ μὲν ‹ᾖδον› πρὶν Θέογνιν γεγονέναι’

(Com. adesp. 461)

κατὰ τὸν κωμικόν, ἣν δ’ ἔχων φύσιν ὁ ἀὴρ ᾗ τε χρώμενος δυνάμει κατὰ τὰς ἐπιψαύσεις ἐπικέχρωκε τὸν χαλκὸν ἐπιθυμεῖς [e] μαθεῖν;’ φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Διογενιανοῦ ‘καὶ γὰρ ἐγώ’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ παῖ· ζητῶμεν οὖν κοινῇ καὶ πρότερον, εἰ βούλει, δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν μάλιστα τῶν ὑγρῶν ἀναπίμπλησιν ἰοῦ τοὔλαιον· οὐ γὰρ αὐτό γε δήπου τῷ χαλκῷ προστρίβεται τὸν ἰόν, ἅτε δὴ καθαρὸν αὐτῷ καὶ ἀμίαντον πλησιάζον.’ ‘οὐδαμῶς’ εἶπεν ὁ νεανίας, ‘ἄλλο δ’ αὐτῷ μοι δοκεῖ τούτου τὸ αἴτιον ὑπάρχειν· λεπτῷ γὰρ ὄντι καὶ καθαρῷ καὶ διαυγεῖ προσπίπτων ὁ ἰὸς ἐκφανέστατός ἐστιν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὑγροῖς ἀφανίζεται.’ καὶ ὁ Θέων ‘εὖγε’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ παῖ, καὶ ‹φυσικῶς›· σκόπει δ’ εἰ βούλει καὶ τὴν [f] ὑπ’ Ἀριστοτέλους αἰτίαν λεγομένην.’ ‘ἀλλὰ βούλομαι’ εἶπε. ‘φησὶ τοίνυν τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ὑγρῶν ‹τὴν λε›πτότητα διαχεῖν ἀδήλως καὶ διασπείρεσθαι τὸν ἰόν, ἀνωμάλων τῶν ‹μορίων› καὶ μανῶν ὄντων· τοῦ δ’ ἐλαίου τῇ πυκνότητι στέγεσθαι καὶ διαμένειν ἀθροιζόμενον. ἂν οὖν καὶ αὐτοί τι τοιοῦτον ὑποθέσθαι δυνηθῶμεν, οὐ παντάπασιν ἀπορήσομεν ἐπῳδῆς καὶ παραμυθίας πρὸς τὴν ἀπορίαν.’

[396] [a] Ὡς οὖν ἐκελεύομεν καὶ συνεχωροῦμεν, ἔφη τὸν ἀέρα τὸν ἐν Δελφοῖς πυκνὸν ὄντα καὶ συνεχῆ καὶ τόνον ἔχοντα διὰ τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν ὀρῶν ἀνάκλασιν καὶ ἀντέρεισιν ἔτι καὶ λεπτὸν εἶναι καὶ δηκτικόν, ὥς που μαρτυρεῖ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς πέψεις τῆς τροφῆς· ἐνδυόμενον οὖν ὑπὸ λεπτότητος καὶ τέμνοντα τὸν χαλκὸν ἀναχαράσσειν πολὺν ἰὸν ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ γεώδη, στέγειν δὲ τοῦτον αὖ πάλιν καὶ πιέζειν τῆς πυκνότητος ‹διάχυσιν› μὴ διδούσης, τὸν δ’ ὑφιστάμενον αὐτῷ διὰ πλῆθος ἐξανθεῖν καὶ λαμβάνειν αὐγὴν καὶ γάνωμα περὶ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν. ἀποδεξαμένων δ’ ἡμῶν ὁ ξένος ἔφη τὴν ἑτέραν ἀρκεῖν ὑπόθεσιν πρὸς τὸν λόγον.

[b] ‘ἡ δὲ λεπτότης’ ἔφη ‘δόξει μὲν ὑπεναντιοῦσθαι καὶ πρὸς τὴν λεγομένην πυκνότητα τοῦ ἀέρος, λαμβάνεται δ’ οὐκ ἀναγκαίως· αὐτὸς γὰρ ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ παλαιούμενος ὁ χαλκὸς ἀποπνεῖ καὶ μεθίησι τὸν ἰόν, ὃν ἡ πυκνότης συνέχουσα καὶ παχνοῦσα ποιεῖ ἐκφανῆ διὰ τὸ πλῆθος.’ ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Θέων ‘τί γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ ξένε, κωλύει ταὐτὸν εἶναι καὶ λεπτὸν καὶ πυκνόν, ὥσπερ τὰ σηρικὰ καὶ τὰ βύσσινα τῶν ὑφασμάτων, ἐφ’ ὧν καὶ Ὅμηρος (η 107) εἶπε

‘και‹ροσέ›ων δ’ ὀθονῶν ἀπολείβεται ὑγρὸν ἔλαιον’,

[c] ἐνδεικνύμενος τὴν ἀκρίβειαν καὶ λεπτότητα τοῦ ὕφους τῷ μὴ προσμένειν τὸ ἔλαιον ἀλλ’ ἀπορρεῖν καὶ ἀπολισθάνειν τῆς πυκνότητος οὐ διιείσης; καὶ μὴν οὐ μόνον πρὸς τὴν ἀναχάραξιν τοῦ ἰοῦ χρήσαιτ’ ἄν ‹τις› τῇ λεπτότητι τοῦ ἀέρος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν χρόαν αὐτὴν ποιεῖν ἔοικεν ἡδίονα καὶ γλαυκοτέραν ἀναμιγνύουσα τῷ κυάνῳ φῶς καὶ αὐγήν.’

Ἐκ τούτου γενομένης σιωπῆς πάλιν οἱ περιηγηταὶ προεχειρίζοντο τὰς ῥήσεις. χρησμοῦ δέ τινος ἐμμέτρου λεχθέντος, οἶμαι, περὶ τῆς Αἴγωνος τοῦ Ἀργείου βασιλείας πολλάκις ἔφη θαυμάσαι τῶν ἐπῶν ὁ Διογενιανός, ἐν οἷς οἱ χρησμοὶ λέγονται, τὴν φαυλότητα καὶ τὴν εὐτέλειαν. ‘καίτοι μουσηγέτης ὁ θεὸς καὶ τῆς λεγομένης λογιότητος [d] οὐχ ἧττον αὐτῷ [τὸ] καλὸν ἢ τῆς περὶ μέλη καὶ ᾠδὰς [καὶ] εὐφωνίας μετεῖναι καὶ πολὺ τὸν Ἡσίοδον εὐεπείᾳ καὶ τὸν Ὅμηρον ὑπερφθέγγεσθαι· τοὺς δὲ πολλοὺς τῶν χρησμῶν ὁρῶμεν καὶ τοῖς μέτροις καὶ τοῖς ὀνόμασι πλημμελείας καὶ φαυλότητος ἀναπεπλησμένους.’ παρὼν οὖν Ἀθήνηθεν ὁ ποιητὴς Σαραπίων ‘εἶτ’’ ἔφη ‘ταῦτα τὰ ἔπη τοῦ θεοῦ πιστεύοντες εἶναι τολμῶμεν αὖ πάλιν, ὡς λείπεται κάλλει τῶν Ὁμήρου καὶ Ἡσιόδου, λέγειν; οὐ χρησόμεθα τούτοις ὡς ἄριστα καὶ κάλλιστα πεποιημένοις, ἐπανορθούμενοι τὴν αὑτῶν κρίσιν προκατειλημμένην ὑπὸ φαύλης συνηθείας;’

[e] Ὑπολαβὼν οὖν Βόηθος ὁ γεωμέτρης (οἶσθα γὰρ τὸν ἄνδρα μεταταττόμενον ἤδη πρὸς τὸν Ἐπίκουρον), ‘ἆρ’ οὖν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ τοῦ ζωγράφου Παύσωνος ἀκήκοας;’ ‘οὐκ ἔγωγε’ εἶπεν ὁ Σαραπίων. ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν ἄξιον. ἐκλαβὼν γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἵππον ἀλινδούμενον γράψαι τρέχοντα ἔγραψεν· ἀγανακτοῦντος δὲ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου γελάσας ὁ Παύσων κατέστρεψε τὸν πίνακα, καὶ γενομένων ἄνω τῶν κάτω πάλιν ὁ ἵππος οὐ τρέχων ἀλλ’ ἀλινδούμενος ἐφαίνετο. τοῦτό φησιν ὁ Βίων ἐνίους τῶν λόγων πάσχειν, ὅταν ἀναστραφῶσι. διὸ καὶ τοὺς χρησμοὺς ἔνιοι φήσουσιν οὐ καλῶς ἔχειν, ὅτι τοῦ θεοῦ εἰσιν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ θεοῦ μὴ εἶναι, ὅτι φαύλως ἔχουσιν.

[f] ἐκεῖνο μὲν γὰρ ἐν ἀδήλῳ· τὸ δ’ ‹οὐκ εὖ τὰ ἔπη› πεποιῆσθαι τὰ περὶ τοὺς χρησμοὺς καὶ σοὶ κριτῇ δήπουθεν, ὦ φίλε Σαραπίων’, εἶπεν, ‘ἐναργές ἐστι. ποιήματα [μὲν] γὰρ γράφεις τοῖς μὲν πράγμασι φιλοσόφως καὶ αὐστηρῶς, δυνάμει δὲ καὶ χάριτι καὶ κατασκευῇ ‹τῇ› περὶ λέξιν ἐοικότα τοῖς Ὁμήρου καὶ Ἡσιόδου μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ὑπὸ τῆς Πυθίας ἐκφερομένοις.’

Καὶ ὁ Σαραπίων ‘νοσοῦμεν γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Βόηθε, καὶ τὰ ὦτα καὶ τὰ ὄμματα, συνειθισμένοι διὰ τρυφὴν καὶ [397] [a] μαλακίαν τὰ ἡδίω καλὰ νομίζειν καὶ ἀποφαίνεσθαι. τάχα δὴ μεμψόμεθα τὴν Πυθίαν, ὅτι Γλαύκης οὐ φθέγγεται τῆς κιθαρῳδοῦ λιγυρώτερον οὐδὲ χριομένη μύροις οὐδ’ ἁλουργίδας ἀμπεχομένη κάτεισιν εἰς τὸ ‹χρηστήριον› οὐδ’ ἐπιθυμιᾷ κασσίαν ἢ λήδανον ἢ λιβανωτὸν ἀλλὰ δάφνην καὶ κρίθινον ἄλευρον. οὐχ ὁρᾷς’, εἶπεν, ‘ὅσην χάριν ἔχει τὰ Σαπφικὰ μέλη κηλοῦντα καὶ καταθέλγοντα τοὺς ἀκροωμένους; ‘Σίβυλλα δὲ μαινομένῳ στόματι’ καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (fr. 92) ‘ἀγέλαστα καὶ ἀκαλλώπιστα καὶ ἀμύριστα φθεγγομένη χιλίων ἐτῶν ἐξικνεῖται τῇ φωνῇ διὰ τὸν θεόν.’ ὁ δὲ Πίνδαρος (fr. 32) ‘ἀκοῦσαι’ φησὶ ‘τοῦ θεοῦ τὸν Κάδμον [οὐ] μουσικὰν ὀρθάν’, οὐχ ἡδεῖαν οὐδὲ [b] τρυφερὰν οὐδ’ ἐπικεκλασμένην τοῖς μέλεσιν. Ἡδονὴν γὰρ οὐ προσίεται τὸ ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἁγνόν, ἀλλ’ ἐνταῦθα μετὰ τῆς Ἄτης ἐρρίφη καὶ τὸ πλεῖστον αὐτῆς [καὶ] ὡς ἔοικεν εἰς τὰ ὦτα τῶν ἀνθρώπων συνερρύηκεν.’

Εἰπόντος δὲ ταῦτα τοῦ Σαραπίωνος ὁ Θέων μειδιάσας ‘ὁ Σαραπίων μέν’ εἶπε ‘τὸ εἰωθὸς ἀποδέδωκε τῷ τρόπῳ, λόγου περὶ Ἄτης καὶ Ἡδονῆς παραπεσόντος ἀπολαύσας· ἡμεῖς δ’, ὦ Βόηθε, κἂν ᾖ ‹μὴ› φαυλότερα τῶν Ὁμήρου ταῦτα τὰ ἔπη, μὴ νομίσωμεν αὐτὰ πεποιηκέναι τὸν θεόν, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνου τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς κινήσεως ἐνδιδόντος ὡς ἑκάστη [c] πέφυκε κινεῖσθαι τῶν προφητίδων. καὶ γὰρ εἰ γράφειν ἔδει μὴ λέγειν τοὺς χρησμούς, οὐκ ἂν οἶμαι τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ γράμματα νομίζοντες ἐψέγομεν, ὅτι λείπεται καλλιγραφίᾳ τῶν βασιλικῶν. οὐ γὰρ ἔστι θεοῦ ‹γ’› ἡ γῆρυς οὐδ’ ὁ φθόγγος οὐδ’ ἡ λέξις οὐδὲ τὸ μέτρον ἀλλὰ τῆς γυναικός· ἐκεῖνος δὲ μόνας τὰς φαντασίας παρίστησι καὶ φῶς ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ ποιεῖ πρὸς τὸ μέλλον· ὁ γὰρ ἐνθουσιασμὸς τοιοῦτόν ἐστι. καθόλου δ’ εἰπεῖν ὑμᾶς τοὺς τοῦ Ἐπικούρου (fr. 395) προφήτας (δῆλος γὰρ εἶ καὶ αὐτὸς ὑποφερόμενος) οὐκ ἔστι διαφυγεῖν, ἀλλὰ κἀκείνας αἰτιᾶσθε τὰς πάλαι προφήτιδας [d] ὡς φαύλοις ποιήμασι χρωμένας καὶ τὰς νῦν καταλογάδην καὶ διὰ τῶν ἐπιτυχόντων ὀνομάτων τοὺς χρησμοὺς λεγούσας, ὅπως ὑμῖν ἀκεφάλων καὶ λαγαρῶν μέτρων καὶ μειούρων εὐθύνας μὴ ὑπέχωσι.’ καὶ ὁ Διογενιανός ‘μὴ παῖζ’’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ πρὸς θεῶν, ἀλλὰ διάλυσον ἡμῖν ταύτην τὴν ἀπορίαν κοινὴν οὖσαν. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἔστιν ἡμῶν ὃς οὐκ αἰτίαν ἐπιζητεῖ καὶ λόγον, πῶς πέπαυται τὸ μαντεῖον ἔπεσι καὶ ἐλεγείοις χρώμενον.’ ὑπολαβὼν οὖν ὁ Θέων ‘ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν’, εἶπεν, ‘ὦ παῖ, δοκοῦμεν ἐπηρείᾳ τινὶ τοὺς περιηγητὰς ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τὸ οἰκεῖον ἔργον. ἔασον οὖν [e] γενέσθαι τὸ τούτων πρότερον, εἶτα περὶ ὧν βούλει καθ’ ἡσυχίαν διαπορήσεις.’

Ἤδη δὲ προϊόντες ἦμεν κατὰ τὸν Ἱέρωνος ἀνδριάντα τοῦ τυράννου· καὶ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ὁ ξένος εἰδὼς ἅπαντα παρεῖχεν ὅμως ὑπ’ εὐκολίας ἀκροατὴν αὑτόν· ἀκούσας δ’ ὅτι κίων τις ἑστὼς ἄνω χαλκοῦς Ἱέρωνος ἔπεσεν αὐτομάτως τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης, ᾗ τὸν Ἱέρωνα συνέβαινεν ἐν Συρακούσαις τελευτᾶν, ἐθαύμασε. κἀγὼ τῶν ὁμοίων ἅμα συνανεμίμνησκον, οἷα δὴ τοῦ Ἕρμωνος μὲν τοῦ Σπαρτιάτου, ὅτι πρὸ τῆς ἐν Λεύκτροις αὐτῷ γενομένης τελευτῆς ἐξέπεσον οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ τοῦ ἀνδριάντος, οἱ δ’ ἀστέρες ἠφανίσθησαν [f] οὓς Λύσανδρος ἀνέθηκεν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐν Αἰγὸς ποταμοῖς ναυμαχίας, ὁ δ’ αὐτοῦ ‹τοῦ› Λυσάνδρου λίθινος ἀνδριὰς ἐξήνθησεν ἀγρίαν λόχμην καὶ πόαν τοσαύτην τὸ πλῆθος, ὥστε κατακρύψαι τὸ πρόσωπον, ἐν δὲ τοῖς Σικελικοῖς τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἀτυχήμασιν αἵ τε χρυσαῖ τοῦ φοίνικος ἀπέρρεον βάλανοι, καὶ τὴν ἀσπίδα τοῦ Παλλαδίου κόρακες περιέκοπτον, ὁ δὲ Κνιδίων στέφανος, ὃν Φαρσαλίᾳ τῇ ὀρχηστρίδι Φιλόμηλος ὁ Φωκέων τύραννος ἐδωρήσατο, μεταστᾶσαν αὐτὴν ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἀπώλεσεν ἐν Μεταποντίῳ παίζουσαν περὶ τὸν νεὼν τοῦ [398] [a] Ἀπόλλωνος· ὁρμήσαντες γὰρ ἐπὶ τὸν στέφανον οἱ νεανίσκοι καὶ μαχόμενοι περὶ τοῦ χρυσίου πρὸς ἀλλήλους διέσπασαν τὴν ἄνθρωπον. Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 130) μὲν οὖν μόνον Ὅμηρον ἔλεγε κινούμενα ποιεῖν ὀνόματα διὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν, ἐγὼ δὲ φαίην ἂν καὶ τῶν ἀναθημάτων τὰ ἐνταυθοῖ μάλιστα συγκινεῖσθαι καὶ συνεπισημαίνειν τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ προνοίᾳ, καὶ τούτων μέρος μηδὲν εἶναι κενὸν μηδ’ ἀναίσθητον, ἀλλὰ πεπλῆσθαι πάντα θειότητος. καὶ ὁ Βόηθος ‘ναί’ εἶπεν· ‘οὐ γὰρ ἀρκεῖ τὸν θεὸν εἰς σῶμα καθειργνύναι θνητὸν ἅπαξ ἑκάστου μηνός, ἀλλὰ καὶ λίθῳ παντὶ καὶ χαλκῷ συμφυράσομεν αὐτόν, ὥσπερ οὐκ ἔχοντες [b] ἀξιόχρεων τῶν τοιούτων συμπτωμάτων τὴν τύχην δημιουργὸν καὶ ταὐτόματον.’ ‘εἶτ’’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘τύχῃ σοι δοκεῖ καὶ αὐτομάτῳ τῶν τοιούτων ἕκαστον ἐοικέναι, καὶ πιθανόν ἐστι τὰς ἀτόμους ἐξολισθεῖν καὶ διαχυθῆναι καὶ παρεγκλῖναι μήτε πρότερον μήθ’ ὕστερον, ἀλλὰ κατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον, ἐν ᾧ τῶν ἀναθέντων ἕκαστος ἢ χεῖρον ἔμελλε πράξειν ἢ βέλτιον; καὶ σὲ μὲν Ἐπίκουρος (fr. 383) ὠφελεῖ νῦν ὡς ἔοικεν ἀφ’ ὧν εἶπεν ἢ ἔγραψε πρὸ ἐτῶν τριακοσίων· ὁ θεὸς δ’, εἰ μὴ συνείρξειε φέρων ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἅπαντα μηδ’ ἀνακερασθείη πᾶσιν, οὐκ ἄν σοι δοκεῖ κινήσεως [c] ἀρχὴν καὶ πάθους αἰτίαν παρασχεῖν οὐδενὶ τῶν ὄντων;’

Τοιαῦτα μὲν ἐγὼ πρὸς τὸν Βόηθον ἀπεκρινάμην, ὅμοια δὲ περὶ τῶν Σιβυλλείων. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἔστημεν κατὰ τὴν πέτραν γενόμενοι τὴν κατὰ τὸ βουλευτήριον, ἐφ’ ἧς λέγεται καθίζεσθαι τὴν πρώτην Σίβυλλαν ἐκ τοῦ Ἑλικῶνος παραγενομένην ὑπὸ τῶν Μουσῶν τραφεῖσαν (ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ἐκ Μαλιέων ἀφικέσθαι Λαμίας οὖσαν θυγατέρα τῆς Ποσειδῶνος), ὁ μὲν Σαραπίων ἐμνήσθη τῶν ἐπῶν, ἐν οἷς ὕμνησεν ἑαυτήν, ὡς οὐδ’ ἀποθανοῦσα λήξει μαντικῆς, ἀλλ’ αὐτὴ μὲν ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ περίεισι τὸ [καλούμενον] φαινόμενον γενομένη πρόσωπον, τῷ δ’ ἀέρι [d] τὸ πνεῦμα συγκραθὲν ἐν φήμαις ἀεὶ φορήσεται καὶ κληδόσιν· ἐκ δὲ τοῦ σώματος μεταβαλόντος ἐν τῇ γῇ πόας καὶ ὕλης ἀναφυομένης βοσκήσεται ταύτην ἱερὰ θρέμματα χρόας τε παντοδαπὰς ἴσχοντα καὶ μορφὰς καὶ ποιότητας ἐπὶ τῶν σπλάγχνων ἀφ’ ὧν αἱ προδηλώσεις ἀνθρώποις τοῦ μέλλοντος. ὁ δὲ Βόηθος ἔτι μᾶλλον ἦν φανερὸς καταγελῶν· τοῦ δὲ ξένου * * * εἰπόντος, ὡς, εἰ καὶ ταῦτα μύθοις ἔοικεν, ἀλλὰ ταῖς γε μαντείαις ἐπιμαρτυροῦσι πολλαὶ μὲν ἀναστάσεις καὶ μετοικισμοὶ πόλεων Ἑλληνίδων, πολλαὶ δὲ βαρβαρικῶν στρατιῶν ἐπιφάνειαι καὶ ἀναιρέσεις ἡγεμονιῶν· [e] ‘ταυτὶ δὲ τὰ πρόσφατα καὶ νέα πάθη περί τε Κύμην καὶ Δικαιάρχειαν οὐχ ὑμνούμενα πάλαι καὶ ᾀδόμενα διὰ τῶν Σιβυλλείων ὁ χρόνος ὥσπερ ὀφείλων ἀποδέδωκεν, ἐκρήξεις πυρὸς ὀρείου καὶ ζέσεις θαλασσίας καὶ πετρῶν καὶ φλογμῶν ὑπὸ πνεύματος ἀναρρίψεις καὶ φθορὰς πόλεων ἅμα τοσούτων καὶ τηλικούτων, ὡς μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπελθοῦσιν ἄγνοιαν εἶναι καὶ ἀσάφειαν ὅπου κατῴκηντο τῆς χώρας συγκεχυμένης; ταῦτα γὰρ εἰ γέγονε πιστεῦσαι χαλεπόν ἐστι, μή τί γε προειπεῖν ἄνευ θειότητος.’

Καὶ ὁ Βόηθος ‘ποῖον γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ δαιμόνιε, τῇ [f] φύσει πάθος ὁ χρόνος οὐκ ὀφείλει; τί δ’ ἔστι τῶν ἀτόπων καὶ ἀπροσδοκήτων περὶ γῆν ἢ θάλατταν ἢ πόλεις ἢ ἄνδρας, ὅ τις ἂν προειπὼν οὐ τύχοι γενομένου; καίτοι τοῦτό γε σχεδὸν οὐδὲ προειπεῖν ἔστιν ἀλλ’ εἰπεῖν, μᾶλλον δὲ ῥῖψαι καὶ διασπεῖραι λόγους οὐκ ἔχοντας ἀρχὴν εἰς τὸ ἄπειρον· οἷς πλανωμένοις ἀπήντησε πολλάκις ἡ τύχη καὶ συνέπεσεν αὐτομάτως. διαφέρει γὰρ οἶμαι γενέσθαι τὸ ῥηθὲν ἢ ῥηθῆναι τὸ γενησόμενον. ὁ γὰρ εἰπὼν τὰ μὴ ὑπάρχοντα λόγος ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὸ ἡμαρτημένον ἔχων οὐ [399] [a] δικαίως ἀναμένει τὴν ἐκ τοῦ αὐτομάτου πίστιν οὐδ’ ἀληθεῖ τεκμηρίῳ χρῆται τοῦ προειπεῖν ἐπιστάμενος ‹τῷ› μετὰ τὸ εἰπεῖν γενομένῳ, πάντα τῆς ἀπειρίας φερούσης· μᾶλλον δ’ ὁ μὲν ‘εἰκάζων καλῶς’, ὃν ‘ἄριστον μάντιν’ ἀνηγόρευκεν ἡ παροιμία (Eur. fr. 973), ἰχνοσκοποῦντι καὶ στιβεύοντι διὰ τῶν εὐλόγων τὸ μέλλον ὅμοιός ἐστι, Σίβυλλαι δ’ αὗται καὶ Βάκιδες ὥσπερ εἰς πόντον ἀτεκμάρτως τὸν χρόνον κατέβαλον καὶ διέσπειραν ὡς ἔτυχε παντοδαπῶν ὀνόματα καὶ ῥήματα παθῶν καὶ συμπτωμάτων· ‹ἐν› οἷς γιγνομένων ἐνίων ἀπὸ τύχης ὁμοίως ψεῦδός ἐστι τὸ νῦν λεγόμενον, κἂν ὕστερον ἀληθές, εἰ τύχοι, γένηται.’

Τοιαῦτα τοῦ Βοήθου διελθόντος ὁ Σαραπίων ‘δίκαιον’ [b] ἔφη ‘τὸ ἀξίωμα περὶ τῶν οὕτως, ‹ὡς› λέγει Βόηθος, ἀορίστως καὶ ἀνυποθέτως λεγομένων, ‹οἷον› εἰ νίκη στρατηγῷ προείρηται ‹καὶ› νενίκηκεν, εἰ πόλεως ἀναίρεσις ‹καὶ› ἀπόλωλεν· ὅπου δ’ οὐ μόνον λέγεται τὸ γενησόμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πῶς καὶ πότε καὶ μετὰ τί καὶ μετὰ τίνος, οὐκ ἔστιν εἰκασμὸς τῶν τάχα γενησομένων ἀλλὰ τῶν πάντως ἐσομένων προδήλωσις ‹οἷα› καὶ ταῦτ’ ἔστιν εἰς τὴν Ἀγησιλάου χωλότητα·

‘φράζεο δή, Σπάρτη, καίπερ μεγάλαυχος ἐοῦσα,

μὴ σέθεν ἀρτίποδος βλάστῃ χωλὴ βασιλεία.

δηρὸν γὰρ μόχθοι σε κατασχήσουσιν ἄελπτοι,

[c] φθισίβροτόν τ’ ἐπὶ κῦμα κυλινδομένου πολέμοιο.’

καὶ τὰ περὶ τῆς νήσου πάλιν, ἣν ἀνῆκεν ἡ πρὸ Θήρας καὶ Θηρασίας θάλασσα [καὶ] περὶ τὸν Φιλίππου καὶ Ῥωμαίων πόλεμον·

‘ἀλλ’ ὁπότε Τρώων γενεὰ καθύπερθε γένηται

Φοινίκων ἐν ἀγῶνι, τότ’ ἔσσεται ἔργα ἄπιστα·

πόντος μὲν λάμψει πῦρ ἄσπετον, ἐκ δὲ κεραυνῶν

πρηστῆρες μὲν ἄνω διὰ κύματος ἀίξουσιν

ἄμμιγα σὺν πέτραις, ἡ δὲ στηρίξεται αὐτοῦ

οὐ φατὸς ἀνθρώποις νῆσος· καὶ χείρονες ἄνδρες

χερσὶ βιησάμενοι τὸν κρείσσονα νικήσουσι.’

[d] τὸ γὰρ ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ Ῥωμαίους τε Καρχηδονίων περιγενέσθαι καταπολεμήσαντας Ἀννίβαν καὶ Φίλιππον Αἰτωλοῖς συμβαλόντα καὶ Ῥωμαίοις μάχῃ κρατηθῆναι καὶ τέλος ἐκ βυθοῦ νῆσον ἀναδῦναι μετὰ πυρὸς πολλοῦ καὶ κλύδωνος ἐπιζέσαντος οὐκ ἂν εἴποι τις ὡς ἀπήντησεν ἅμα πάντα καὶ συνέπεσε κατὰ τύχην ‹καὶ› αὐτομάτως, ἀλλ’ ἡ τάξις ἐμφαίνει τὴν πρόγνωσιν. καὶ τὸ Ῥωμαίοις πρὸ ἐτῶν ὁμοῦ τι πεντακοσίων προειπεῖν τὸν χρόνον, ἐν ᾧ πρὸς ἅπαντα τὰ ἔθνη πολεμήσοιεν ἅμα· τοῦτο δ’ ἦν τὸ πολεμῆσαι τοῖς οἰκέταις ἀποστᾶσιν. ἐν τούτοις γὰρ οὐθὲν ἀτέκμαρτον οὐδὲ τυφλὸν †ἀμφί τε τύχην ζητεῖν ἐν ἀπειρίᾳ [e] ὁ λόγος· ἀλλὰ πολλὰ τῆς πείρας ἐνέχυρα δίδωσι καὶ δείκνυσι τὴν ὁδόν, ᾗ βαδίζει τὸ πεπρωμένον. οὐ γὰρ οἶμαί τιν’ ἐρεῖν, ὅτι †μετὰ τούτων ὡς προερρήθη συνέπεσε κατὰ τύχην· ἐπεὶ τί κωλύει λέγειν ἕτερον, ὡς οὐκ ἔγραψε τὰς Κυρίας ὑμῖν Ἐπίκουρος, ὦ Βόηθε, δόξας, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ τύχης καὶ αὐτομάτως οὕτως πρὸς ἄλληλα τῶν γραμμάτων συνεμπεσόντων ἀπετελέσθη τὸ βιβλίον;’

Ἅμα δὲ τούτων λεγομένων προῄειμεν. ἐν δὲ τῷ Κορινθίων οἴκῳ τὸν φοίνικα θεωμένοις τὸν χαλκοῦν, ὅσπερ ἔτι λοιπός ἐστι τῶν ἀναθημάτων, οἱ περὶ τὴν ῥίζαν ἐντετορευμένοι βάτραχοι καὶ ὕδροι θαῦμα τῷ Διογενιανῷ [f] παρεῖχον, ἀμέλει δὲ καὶ ἡμῖν. οὔτε γὰρ φοίνιξ, ὡς ἕτερα δένδρα, λιμναῖόν ἐστι καὶ φίλυδρον φυτὸν οὔτε Κορινθίοις τι βάτραχοι προσήκουσιν, ὥστε σύμβολον ἢ παράσημον εἶναι τῆς πόλεως· ὥσπερ ἀμέλει Σελινούντιοί ποτε χρυσοῦν σέλινον ἀναθεῖναι λέγονται, καὶ Τενέδιοι τὸν πέλεκυν ἀπὸ τῶν καρκίνων τῶν γιγνομένων περὶ τὸ [400] [a] καλούμενον Ἀστέριον παρ’ αὐτοῖς· μόνοι γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἐν τῷ χελωνίῳ τύπον πελέκεως ἔχουσι. καὶ μὴν αὐτῷ γε τῷ θεῷ κόρακας καὶ κύκνους καὶ λύκους καὶ ἱέρακας καὶ πάντα μᾶλλον ἢ ταῦτ’ εἶναι προσφιλῆ τὰ θηρία νομίζομεν. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ Σαραπίωνος, ὅτι τὴν ἐξ ὑγρῶν ᾐνίξατο τροφὴν τοῦ ἡλίου καὶ γένεσιν καὶ ἀναθυμίασιν ὁ δημιουργός, εἴθ’ Ὁμήρου λέγοντος ἀκηκοώς (γ 1)

‘ἠέλιος δ’ ἀπόρουσε λιπὼν περικαλλέα λίμνην’

εἴτ’ Αἰγυπτίους ἑωρακὼς ἀρχῆς ‹σύμβολον καὶ› ἀνατολῆς παιδίον νεογιλὸν γράφοντας ἐπὶ λωτῷ καθεζόμενον, γελάσας ἐγώ ‘ποῦ σὺ πάλιν’, εἶπον ‘ὦ χρηστέ, τὴν Στοὰν δευρὶ [b] παρωθεῖς καὶ ὑποβάλλεις ἀτρέμα τῷ λόγῳ τὰς ἀνάψεις καὶ ἀναθυμιάσεις, [οὐχ] ὥσπερ αἱ Θετταλαὶ κατάγων τὴν σελήνην καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ὡς ἐντεῦθεν ἀπὸ γῆς καὶ ὑδάτων βλαστάνοντας καὶ ἀρδομένους; ὁ μὲν γὰρ Πλάτων (Tim. 90a) καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον οὐράνιον ὠνόμασε φυτόν, ὥσπερ ἐκ ῥίζης ἄνω τῆς κεφαλῆς ὀρθούμενον· ὑμεῖς δὲ τοῦ μὲν Ἐμπεδοκλέους καταγελᾶτε φάσκοντος (fr. 44) τὸν ἥλιον περὶ γῆν ἀνακλάσει φωτὸς οὐρανίου γενόμενον αὖθις

‘ἀνταυγεῖν πρὸς ὄλυμπον ἀταρβήτοισι προσώποις’,

αὐτοὶ δὲ γηγενὲς ζῷον ἢ φυτὸν ἕλειον ἀποφαίνετε τὸν ἥλιον εἰς βατράχων πατρίδα ἢ ὕδρων ἐγγράφοντες. ἀλλὰ [c] ταῦτα μὲν εἰς τὴν Στωικὴν ἀναθώμεθα τραγῳδίαν, τὰ δὲ τῶν χειροτεχνῶν πάρεργα παρέργως ἐξετάσωμεν· ἐν πολλοῖς γάρ εἰσι κομψοί, τὸ δὲ ψυχρὸν οὐ πανταχοῦ καὶ περίεργον ἐκπεφεύγασιν. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ τὸν ἀλεκτρυόνα ποιήσας ἐπὶ τῆς χειρὸς τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἑωθινὴν ὑπεδήλωσεν ὥραν καὶ καιρὸν ἐπιούσης ἀνατολῆς, οὕτως ἐνταῦθα τοὺς βατράχους ἐαρινῆς ὥρας φαίη τις ἂν γεγονέναι σύμβολον ἐν ᾗ κρατεῖν ἄρχεται τοῦ ἀέρος ὁ ἥλιος καὶ τὸν χειμῶνα διαλύειν, εἴ γε δεῖ καθ’ ὑμᾶς τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα καὶ τὸν ἥλιον μὴ [d] δύο θεοὺς ἀλλ’ ἕνα νομίζειν.’ καὶ ὁ Σαραπίων ‘σὺ γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘οὐχ οὕτω νομίζεις ἀλλ’ οἴει τὸν ἥλιον διαφέρειν τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος;’ ‘ἔγωγ’’ εἶπον ‘ὡς τοῦ ἡλίου τὴν σελήνην· ἀλλ’ αὕτη μὲν οὐ πολλάκις οὐδὲ πᾶσιν ἀποκρύπτει τὸν ἥλιον, ὁ δ’ ἥλιος ὁμοῦ τι πάντας ἀγνοεῖν τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα πεποίηκεν ἀποστρέφων τῇ αἰσθήσει τὴν διάνοιαν ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄντος ἐπὶ τὸ φαινόμενον.’

Ἐκ τούτου τοὺς περιηγητὰς ὁ Σαραπίων ἤρετο τί δὴ τὸν οἶκον οὐ Κυψέλου τοῦ ἀναθέντος ἀλλὰ Κορινθίων ὀνομάζουσιν. ἀπορίᾳ δ’ αἰτίας ἐμοὶ γοῦν δοκεῖ σιωπώντων ἐκείνων ἐπιγελάσας ἐγώ ‘τί δ’’ εἶπον ‘ἔτι τούτους οἰόμεθα [e] γιγνώσκειν ἢ μνημονεύειν ἐκπεπληγμένους παντάπασιν ἡμῶν μετεωρολεσχούντων; ἐπεὶ πρότερόν γ’ αὐτῶν ἠκούομεν λεγόντων, ὅτι τῆς τυραννίδος καταλυθείσης ἐβούλοντο Κορίνθιοι καὶ τὸν ἐν Πίσῃ χρυσοῦν ἀνδριάντα καὶ τὸν ἐνταῦθα τουτονὶ θησαυρὸν ἐπιγράψαι τῆς πόλεως. Δελφοὶ μὲν οὖν ἔδοσαν ὡς δίκαιον καὶ συνεχώρησαν, Ἠλείους δὲ φθονήσαντας ἐψηφίσαντο μὴ μετέχειν Ἰσθμίων· ὅθεν οὐδεὶς ἐξ ἐκείνου γέγονεν Ἰσθμίων ἀγωνιστὴς Ἠλεῖος. ὁ δὲ Μολιονιδῶν φόνος ὑφ’ Ἡρακλέους περὶ Κλεωνὰς οὐδέν ἐστι μεταίτιος, ὡς ἔνιοι νομίζουσιν, Ἠλείοις τοῦ εἴργεσθαι· τοὐναντίον γὰρ ἦν αὐτοῖς προσῆκον [f] εἴργειν, εἰ διὰ τοῦτο Κορινθίοις προσεκεκρούκεσαν.’ ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν ταῦτ’ εἶπον.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸν Ἀκανθίων καὶ Βρασίδου παρελθοῦσιν οἶκον ‹ἔρημον› ἡμῖν ἔδειξεν ὁ περιηγητὴς χωρίον, ἐν ᾧ Ῥοδώπιδος ἔκειντό ποτε τῆς ἑταίρας ὀβελίσκοι σιδηροῖ, δυσχεράνας ὁ Διογενιανός ‘ἦν ἄρα τῆς αὐτῆς’ ἔφη ‘πόλεως Ῥοδώπιδι μὲν χώραν παρασχεῖν, ὅπου τὰς δεκάτας φέρουσα [401] [a] καταθήσεται τῶν μισθῶν, Αἴσωπον δ’ ἀπολέσαι τὸν ὁμόδουλον αὐτῆς.’ καὶ ὁ Σαραπίων ‘τί δὲ ταῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘μακάριε, δυσχεραίνεις; ἐκεῖ βλέψον ἄνω καὶ τὴν χρυσῆν ἐν τοῖς στρατηγοῖς καὶ βασιλεῦσι θέασαι Μνησαρέτην, ἣν Κράτης εἶπε τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀκρασίας ἀνακεῖσθαι τρόπαιον.’ ἰδὼν οὖν ὁ νεανίας ‘εἶτ’ οὐ περὶ Φρύνης’ ἔφη ‘τοῦτ’ ἦν εἰρημένον τῷ Κράτητι;’ ‘ναί’ εἶπεν ὁ Σαραπίων· ‘Μνησαρέτη γὰρ ἐκαλεῖτο, τὴν δὲ Φρύνην ἐπίκλησιν ἔσχε διὰ τὴν ὠχρότητα. πολλὰ δ’ ὡς ἔοικε τῶν ὀνομάτων ἀποκρύπτουσιν αἱ παρωνυμίαι. τὴν γοῦν Ἀλεξάνδρου μητέρα [b] Πολυξένην εἶτα Μυρτάλην Ὀλυμπιάδα τε καὶ Στρατονίκην κληθῆναι λέγουσι, τὴν δὲ Ῥοδίαν Εὔμητιν ἄχρι νῦν Κλεοβουλίνην πατρόθεν οἱ πλεῖστοι καλοῦσιν, Ἡροφίλην δὲ τὴν Ἐρυθραίαν μαντικὴν γενομένην Σίβυλλαν προσηγόρευσαν. τῶν δὲ γραμματικῶν ἀκούσῃ καὶ τὴν Λήδαν Μνησινόην καὶ τὸν Ὀρέστην Ἀχαιὸν .... ὠνομάσθαι φασκόντων. ἀλλὰ πῶς’ ἔφη ‘διανοῇ σὺ (βλέψας πρὸς τὸν Θέωνα) τουτὶ διαλῦσαι τὸ περὶ Φρύνης αἰτίαμα;’ κἀκεῖνος ἡσυχῆ διαμειδιάσας ‘οὕτως’ εἶπεν ‘ὥστε καὶ σοὶ προσεγκαλεῖν τὰ μικρότατα τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν πλημμελημάτων ἐλέγχοντι.

[c] καθάπερ γὰρ ὁ Σωκράτης (Xen. Conv. II, 3) ἑστιώμενος ἐν Καλλίου τῷ μύρῳ πολεμεῖ μόνον, ὀρχήσεις δὲ παίδων καὶ κυβιστήσεις καὶ φιλήματα καὶ γελωτοποιοὺς ὁρῶν ἀνέχεται, καὶ σύ μοι δοκεῖς ὁμοίως γύναιον εἴργειν τοῦ ἱεροῦ χρησάμενον ὥρᾳ σώματος οὐκ ἐλευθερίως, φόνων δὲ καὶ πολέμων καὶ λεηλασιῶν ἀπαρχαῖς καὶ δεκάταις κύκλῳ περιεχόμενον τὸν θεὸν ὁρῶν καὶ τὸν νεὼν σκύλων Ἑλληνικῶν ἀνάπλεων καὶ λαφύρων οὐ δυσχεραίνεις οὐδ’ οἰκτίρεις τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐπὶ τῶν καλῶν ἀναθημάτων αἰσχίστας ἀναγιγνώσκων ἐπιγραφάς ‘Βρασίδας καὶ Ἀκάνθιοι ἀπ’ [d] Ἀθηναίων’ καὶ ‘Ἀθηναῖοι ἀπὸ Κορινθίων’ καὶ ‘Φωκεῖς ἀπὸ Θεσσαλῶν’, ‘Ὀρνεᾶται δ’ ἀπὸ Σικυωνίων’, ‘Ἀμφικτύονες δ’ ἀπὸ Φωκέων.’ ἀλλὰ Πραξιτέλης ὡς ἔοικε μόνος ἠνίασε Κράτητα τῇ ἐρωμένῃ τυχὼν αὐτόθι χώρας, ὃν ἐπαινεῖν ὤφειλε Κράτης, ὅτι τοῖς χρυσοῖς βασιλεῦσι τούτοις παρέστησε χρυσῆν ἑταίραν, ἐξονειδίζων τὸν πλοῦτον ὡς οὐδὲν ἔχοντα θαυμάσιον οὐδὲ σεμνόν. δικαιοσύνης γὰρ ἀναθήματα καὶ σωφροσύνης καὶ μεγαλονοίας καλῶς ἔχει τίθεσθαι παρὰ τῷ θεῷ τοὺς βασιλεῖς καὶ τοὺς ἄρχοντας, οὐ χρυσῆς καὶ τρυφώσης εὐπορίας ἧς μέτεστι καὶ τοῖς αἴσχιστα βεβιωκόσιν.’

[e] ‘Ἐκεῖνο δ’ οὐ λέγεις’ εἶπεν ἅτερος τῶν περιηγητῶν, ‘ὅτι Κροῖσος ἐνταῦθα καὶ τῆς ἀρτοποιοῦ χρυσῆν εἰκόνα ποιησάμενος ἀνέθηκε.’ ‹καὶ ὁ Θέων ‘ναί’ ἔφη› ‘πλὴν οὐκ ἐντρυφῶν τῷ ἱερῷ, καλὴν δὲ λαβὼν αἰτίαν καὶ δικαίαν. λέγεται γὰρ Ἀλυάττην τὸν πατέρα τοῦ Κροίσου δευτέραν ἀγαγέσθαι γυναῖκα καὶ παῖδας ἑτέρους τρέφειν· ἐπιβουλεύουσαν οὖν τῷ Κροίσῳ τὴν ἄνθρωπον φάρμακον δοῦναι τῇ ἀρτοποιῷ καὶ κελεῦσαι διαπλάσασαν ἄρτον ἐξ αὐτοῦ τῷ Κροίσῳ παραδοῦναι· τὴν δ’ ἀρτοποιὸν κρύφα τῷ Κροίσῳ φράσαι, παραθεῖναι δὲ τοῖς ἐκείνης παισὶ τὸν [f] ἄρτον. ἀνθ’ ὧν βασιλεύσαντα τὸν Κροῖσον οἷον ἐπὶ μάρτυρι τῷ θεῷ τὴν χάριν ἀμείψασθαι τῆς γυναικὸς εὖ γε ποιοῦντ’ ἐκεῖνον. ὅθεν’ εἶπεν ‘ἄξιον δὴ καὶ τῶν πόλεων εἴ τι τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν ἀνάθημα τιμᾶν καὶ ἀγαπᾶν, οἷον τὸ Ὀπουντίων. ἐπεὶ γὰρ οἱ Φωκέων τύραννοι πολλὰ τῶν χρυσῶν καὶ ἀργυρῶν ἀναθημάτων συγχέαντες ἔκοψαν νόμισμα καὶ διέσπειραν εἰς τὰς πόλεις, Ὀπούντιοι συναγαγόντες ὅσον ‹ἔσχον› ἀργυρίου ‹Φωκικοῦ καὶ ποιήσαντες› ὑδρίαν ἀνέπεμψαν ἐνθάδε τῷ θεῷ καὶ καθιέρωσαν. ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ Μυριναίους ἐπαινῶ καὶ Ἀπολλωνιάτας [402] [a] θέρη χρυσᾶ δεῦρο πέμψαντας, ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον Ἐρετριεῖς καὶ Μάγνητας ἀνθρώπων ἀπαρχαῖς δωρησαμένους τὸν θεὸν ὡς καρπῶν δοτῆρα καὶ πατρῷον καὶ γενέσιον καὶ φιλάνθρωπον· αἰτιῶμαι δὲ Μεγαρεῖς, ὅτι μόνοι σχεδὸν ἐνταῦθα λόγχην ἔχοντα τὸν θεὸν ἔστησαν ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης, ἣν Ἀθηναίους μετὰ τὰ Περσικὰ τὴν πόλιν ἔχοντας αὐτῶν νικήσαντες ἐξέβαλον. ὕστερον μέντοι πλῆκτρον ἀνέθηκαν τῷ θεῷ χρυσοῦν ἐπιστήσαντες ὡς ἔοικε Σκυθίνῳ λέγοντι (fr. 1) περὶ τῆς λύρας

‘ἣν ἁρμόζεται

Ζηνὸς εὐειδὴς Ἀπόλλων πᾶσαν, ἀρχὴν καὶ τέλος

[b] συλλαβών, ἔχει δὲ λαμπρὸν πλῆκτρον ἡλίου φάος.’’

Ἐπιβάλλοντος δὲ τοῦ Σαραπίωνος εἰπεῖν τι περὶ τούτων ὁ ξένος ‘ἡδὺ μέν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ τοιούτων ἀκροᾶσθαι λόγων, ἐμοὶ δ’ ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι τὴν πρώτην ὑπόσχεσιν ἀπαιτῆσαι περὶ τῆς αἰτίας, ἣ πέπαυκε τὴν Πυθίαν ἐν ἔπεσι καὶ μέτροις ἄλλοις θεσπίζουσαν· ὥστ’, εἰ δοκεῖ, τὰ λειπόμενα τῆς θέας ὑπερθέμενοι περὶ τούτων ἀκούσωμεν ἐνταῦθα καθίσαντες. οὗτος γάρ ἐστιν ὁ μάλιστα πρὸς τὴν τοῦ χρηστηρίου πίστιν ἀντιβαίνων λόγος, ὡς δυεῖν θάτερον, ἢ τῆς Πυθίας τῷ χωρίῳ μὴ πελαζούσης ἐν ᾧ τὸ θεῖόν ἐστιν, ἢ τοῦ πνεύματος παντάπασιν ἀπεσβεσμένου καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως ἐκλελοιπυίας.’

[c] Περιελθόντες οὖν ἐπὶ τῶν μεσημβρινῶν καθεζόμεθα κρηπίδων ‹τοῦ› νεὼ πρὸς τὸ τῆς Γῆς ἱερὸν τό θ’ ὕδωρ ... ἀποβλέποντες· ὥστ’ εὐθὺς εἰπεῖν τὸν Βόηθον, ὅτι ‘καὶ ὁ τόπος τῆς ἀπορίας συνεπιλαμβάνεται τῷ ξένῳ. Μουσῶν γὰρ ἦν ἱερὸν ἐνταῦθα περὶ τὴν ἀναπνοὴν τοῦ νάματος, ὅθεν ἐχρῶντο πρός τε τὰς λοιβὰς ‹καὶ τὰς χέρνιβας› τῷ ὕδατι τούτῳ, ὥς φησι Σιμωνίδης (fr. 44),

‘ἔνθα χερνίβεσσιν ἀρύεται [τε]

Μουσᾶν καλλικόμων ὑπένερθεν ἁγνὸν ὕδωρ.’

μικρῷ δὲ περιεργότερον αὖθις ὁ Σιμωνίδης τὴν Κλειὼ προσειπών (fr. 45) ‘ἁγνᾶν ἐπίσκοπον χερνίβων’ φησί [d] ‘πολύλιστον ἀρυόντεσσιν ἀχρυσόπεπλον .... εὐῶδες ἀμβροσίων ἐκ μυχῶν ἐρανὸν ὕδωρ λαβόν.’ οὐκ ὀρθῶς οὖν Εὔδοξος ἐπίστευσε τοῖς Στυγὸς ὕδωρ τοῦτο καλεῖσθαι πεφήνασι. τὰς δὲ Μούσας ἱδρύσαντο παρέδρους τῆς μαντικῆς καὶ φύλακας αὐτοῦ παρὰ τὸ νᾶμα καὶ τὸ τῆς Γῆς ἱερόν, ἧς λέγεται τὸ μαντεῖον γενέσθαι, ‹διὰ› τὴν ἐν μέτροις καὶ μέλεσι χρησμῳδίαν. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ πρῶτον ἐνταῦθά φασιν ἡρῷον μέτρον ἀκουσθῆναι,

‘συμφέρετε πτερά ‹τ’›, οἰωνοί, κηρόν τε, μέλισσαι·’

ὅτε τῷ θεῷ ἐπιδεᾶ γενομένην ἀποβαλεῖν τὸ σεμνόν.’

[e] Ὁ Σαραπίων ‘ἐπιεικέστερα ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Βόηθε, καὶ μουσικώτερα· δεῖ γὰρ μὴ μάχεσθαι πρὸς τὸν θεὸν μηδ’ ἀναιρεῖν μετὰ τῆς μαντικῆς ἅμα τὴν πρόνοιαν καὶ τὸ θεῖον, ἀλλὰ τῶν ὑπεναντιοῦσθαι δοκούντων λύσεις ἐπιζητεῖν τὴν δ’ εὐσεβῆ καὶ πάτριον μὴ προΐεσθαι πίστιν.’ ‘ὀρθῶς’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘λέγεις, ἄριστε Σαραπίων· οὐδὲ γὰρ φιλοσοφίαν ἀπογιγνώσκομεν ὡς ἀνῃρημένην παντάπασι καὶ διεφθορυῖαν, ὅτι πρότερον μὲν ἐν ποιήμασιν ἐξέφερον οἱ φιλόσοφοι τὰ δόγματα καὶ τοὺς λόγους, ὥσπερ Ὀρφεὺς καὶ Ἡσίοδος καὶ Παρμενίδης καὶ Ξενοφάνης καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς [καὶ Θαλῆς], ὕστερον δ’ ἐπαύσαντο καὶ πέπαυνται [f] χρώμενοι μέτροις πλὴν σοῦ· διὰ σοῦ δ’ αὖθις εἰς φιλοσοφίαν ποιητικὴ κάτεισιν ὄρθιον καὶ γενναῖον ἐγκελευομένη τοῖς νέοις. οὐδ’ ἀστρολογίαν ἀδοξοτέραν ἐποίησαν οἱ περὶ Ἀρίσταρχον καὶ Τιμόχαριν καὶ Ἀρίστυλλον καὶ Ἵππαρχον καταλογάδην γράφοντες, ἐν μέτροις πρότερον Εὐδόξου [403] [a] καὶ Ἡσιόδου καὶ Θαλοῦ γραφόντων, εἴ γε Θαλῆς ἐποίησεν ὡς ἀληθῶς εἰπεῖν ‹τὴν› εἰς αὐτὸν ἀναφερομένην Ἀστρολογίαν. Πίνδαρος δὲ καὶ περὶ τρόπου μελῳδίας ἀμελουμένου καθ’ αὑτὸν ἀπορεῖν ὁμολογεῖ, καὶ θαυμάζειν ὅτι .... οὐδὲν γάρ ἐστι δεινὸν οὐδ’ ἄτοπον αἰτίας ζητεῖν τῶν τοιούτων μεταβολῶν· ἀναιρεῖν δὲ τὰς τέχνας καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις, ἄν τι κινηθῇ καὶ παραλλάξῃ τῶν κατὰ ταύτας, οὐ δίκαιον.’

Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Θέων ‘ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μέν’ εἶπε ‘μεγάλας ἔσχηκε τῷ ὄντι παραλλαγὰς καὶ καινοτομίας· τῶν δ’ ἐνταῦθα ‹χρησμῶν οἶσθα› πολλοὺς καὶ τότε καταλογάδην ἐκφερομένους καὶ περὶ πραγμάτων οὐ τῶν τυχόντων· [b] Λακεδαιμονίοις τε γάρ, ὡς Θουκυδίδης ἱστόρηκε, περὶ τοῦ πρὸς Ἀθηναίους πολέμου χρωμένοις ἀνεῖλε νίκην καὶ κράτος, καὶ βοηθήσειν αὐτὸς καὶ παρακαλούμενος καὶ ἀπαράκλητος· καὶ Παυσανίαν εἰ μὴ καταγάγοιεν ‘ἀργυρέᾳ ‹εὐλάκᾳ› εὐλάξειν’. Ἀθηναίοις δὲ περὶ τῆς ἐν Σικελίᾳ μαντευομένοις στρατιᾶς προσέταξε τὴν ἐξ Ἐρυθρῶν ἱέρειαν ἄγειν τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς· ἐκαλεῖτο δ’ Ἡσυχία τὸ γύναιον. Δεινομένους δὲ τοῦ Σικελιώτου μαντευομένου περὶ τῶν υἱέων ἀνεῖλεν ὡς οἱ τρεῖς τυραννήσοιεν· ὑποτυχόντος δὲ τοῦ [c] Δεινομένους ‘οἰμωξόμενοί γ’ ὦ δέσποτ’ Ἄπολλον’, καὶ τοῦτο [σοι] ἔφη διδόναι καὶ προσαναιρεῖν. ἴστε τοίνυν, ὅτι Γέλων μὲν ὑδρωπιῶν Ἱέρων δὲ λιθιῶν ἐτυράννησεν· ὁ δὲ τρίτος Θρασύβουλος ἐν στάσεσι καὶ πολέμοις γενόμενος χρόνον οὐ πολὺν ἐξέπεσε τῆς ἀρχῆς. Προκλῆς τοίνυν ὁ Ἐπιδαύρου τύραννος ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς ὠμῶς καὶ παρανόμως ἀνεῖλε καὶ Τίμαρχον ἀπ’ Ἀθηνῶν παραγενόμενον μετὰ χρημάτων πρὸς αὐτὸν ὑποδεξάμενος καὶ φιλοφρονηθεὶς ἀπέκτεινε καὶ τὸ σῶμα κατεπόντισεν ἐμβαλὼν εἰς φορμόν· ἔπραξε δὲ ταῦτα διὰ Κλεάνδρου τοῦ Αἰγινήτου τῶν ἄλλων [d] ἀγνοούντων. ὕστερον δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῷ ταραττομένων ἔπεμψεν ἐνταῦθα Κλεότιμον τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἐν ἀπορρήτῳ μαντευσόμενον περὶ φυγῆς αὐτοῦ καὶ μεταστάσεως. ἀνεῖλεν οὖν ὁ θεὸς διδόναι Προκλεῖ φυγὴν καὶ μετάστασιν, ὅπου τὸν φορμὸν ἐκέλευσε καταθέσθαι τὸν Αἰγινήτην ξένον ἢ ὅπου τὸ κέρας ἀποβάλλει ὁ ἔλαφος. συνεὶς οὖν ὁ τύραννος, ὅτι κελεύει καταποντίζειν αὑτὸν ἢ κατορύττειν ὁ θεός (οἱ γὰρ ἔλαφοι κατορύττουσι καὶ ἀφανίζουσι κατὰ τῆς γῆς ὅταν ἐκπέσῃ τὸ κέρας), ἐπέσχεν ὀλίγον χρόνον, εἶτα τῶν πραγμάτων παντάπασι μοχθηρῶν γενομένων ἐξέπεσε· λαβόντες δ’ αὐτὸν οἱ τοῦ Τιμάρχου φίλοι καὶ [e] διαφθείραντες ἐξέβαλον τὸν νεκρὸν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν. ὃ δ’ ἐστὶ μέγιστον, αἱ ῥῆτραι, δι’ ὧν ἐκόσμησε τὴν Λακεδαιμονίων πολιτείαν Λυκοῦργος, ἐδόθησαν αὐτῷ καταλογάδην. μυρίους τοίνυν καὶ Ἡροδότου καὶ Φιλοχόρου καὶ Ἴστρου, τῶν μάλιστα τὰς ἐμμέτρους μαντείας φιλοτιμηθέντων συναγαγεῖν, ἄνευ μέτρου χρησμοὺς ‹ἀνα›γεγραφότων Θεόπομπος οὐδενὸς ἧττον ἀνθρώπων ἐσπουδακὼς περὶ τὸ χρηστήριον ἰσχυρῶς ἐπιτετίμηκε τοῖς μὴ νομίζουσι κατὰ τὸν τότε χρόνον ἔμμετρα τὴν Πυθίαν θεσπίζειν· εἶτα τοῦτο βουλόμενος ἀποδεῖξαι παντάπασιν ὀλίγων χρησμῶν [f] ηὐπόρηκεν, ὡς τῶν πολλῶν καὶ τότ’ ἤδη καταλογάδην ἐκφερομένων.’

‘Ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ νῦν μετὰ μέτρων ἐκτρέχουσιν, ὧν ἕν[εκ]α καὶ ‹τὸ› πρᾶγμα περιβόητον πεποίηκε. μισογύνου γὰρ Ἡρακλέους ἱερόν ἐστιν ἐν τῇ Φωκίδι, καὶ νομίζεται τὸν ἱερώμενον ἐν τῷ ἐνιαυτῷ γυναικὶ μὴ ὁμιλεῖν· διὸ καὶ πρεσβύτας ἐπιεικῶς ἱερεῖς ἀποδεικνύουσι. πλὴν ἔμπροσθεν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ νεανίας οὐ πονηρὸς ἀλλὰ [404] [a] φιλότιμος, ἐρῶν παιδίσκης, ἔλαβε τὴν ἱερωσύνην. καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἦν ἐγκρατὴς ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἔφευγε τὴν ἄνθρωπον· ἀναπαυομένῳ δ’ αὐτῷ ποτε μετὰ πότον καὶ χορείαν προσπεσοῦσα διεπράξατο. φοβούμενος οὖν καὶ ταραττόμενος ἐπὶ τὸ μαντεῖον κατέφυγε καὶ περὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας ἠρώτα τὸν θεὸν εἴ τις εἴη παραίτησις ἢ λύσις· ἔλαβε δὲ τόνδε τὸν χρησμόν

‘ἅπαντα τἀναγκαῖα συγχωρεῖ θεός.’

οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ δοὺς ἄν τις, ὡς οὐδὲν ἄνευ μέτρου θεσπίζεται καθ’ ἡμᾶς, μᾶλλον διαπορήσειε περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν ποτὲ μὲν ‹ἐν› μέτροις ποτὲ δ’ ἄνευ μέτρων διδόντων τὰς ἀποκρίσεις.

[b] ἔστι δ’ οὐδέτερον, ὦ παῖ, παράλογον, μόνον [ἂν] ὀρθὰς καὶ καθαρὰς περὶ τοῦ θεοῦ δόξας ἔχωμεν καὶ μὴ νομίζωμεν αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον εἶναι τὸν τὰ ἔπη συντιθέντα πρότερον καὶ νῦν ὑποβάλλοντα τῇ Πυθίᾳ τοὺς χρησμούς, ὥσπερ ἐκ προσωπείων φθεγγόμενον.’

‘Ἀλλ’ αὖθις ἄξιον μέν ἐστι διὰ μακροτέρων εἰπεῖν τι καὶ πυθέσθαι περὶ τούτων, τὰ δὲ νῦν ἐν βραχεῖ μαθόντες διαμνημονεύωμεν, ὡς σῶμα μὲν ὀργάνοις χρῆται πολλοῖς αὐτῷ δὲ σώματι ψυχὴ καὶ μέρεσι τοῖς σώματος· ψυχὴ δ’ ὄργανον θεοῦ γέγονεν, ὀργάνου δ’ ἀρετὴ μάλιστα μιμεῖσθαι τὸ χρώμενον ᾗ πέφυκε δυνάμει καὶ παρέχειν τὸ [c] ἔργον αὐτοῦ τοῦ νοήματος ἐν αὐτῷ διαφαινομένου, δεικνύναι δ’ οὐχ οἷον ἦν ἐν τῷ δημιουργῷ καθαρὸν καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἀναμάρτητον, ἀλλὰ μεμιγμένον ‹πολλῷ τῷ ἀλλοτρίῳ›· καθ’ ἑαυτὸ γὰρ ἄδηλον ἡμῖν, ἐν ἑτέρῳ δὲ καὶ δι’ ἑτέρου φαινόμενον ἀναπίμπλαται τῆς ἐκείνου φύσεως. καὶ κηρὸν μὲν ἐῶ καὶ χρυσὸν ἄργυρόν τε καὶ χαλκὸν ὅσα τ’ ἄλλα πλαττομένης οὐσίας εἴδη δέχεται μὲν ἰδέαν μίαν ἐκτυπουμένης ὁμοιότητος, ἄλλο δ’ ἄλλην ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ τῷ μιμήματι διαφορὰν προστίθησι· καὶ τὰς ἐν κατόπτροις ἐπιπέδοις τε καὶ κοίλοις καὶ περιαγέσι φασμάτων καὶ εἰδώλων [d] ἀφ’ ἑνὸς εἴδους μυρίας παρατυπώσεις. καὶ γάρ εἰσι ‹.... ἡλίῳ δ’› οὐδὲν οὔτε μᾶλλον ‹τὴν› ἰδέαν ἔοικεν οὔθ’ ὡς ὀργάνῳ χρῆσθαι φύσει γέγονεν εὐπειθέστερον σελήνης· λαμβάνουσα δὲ παρ’ ἡλίου τὸ λαμπρὸν καὶ πυρωπὸν οὐχ ὅμοιον ἀποπέμπει πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἀλλὰ μιχθὲν αὐτῇ καὶ χρόαν μετέβαλε καὶ δύναμιν ἔσχεν ἑτέραν· ἡ δὲ θερμότης καὶ παντάπασιν ἐξοίχεται καὶ προλέλοιπε τὸ φῶς ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας. οἶμαι δὲ ‹καὶ σὲ› γιγνώσκειν τὸ παρ’ Ἡρακλείτῳ (fr. 93) λεγόμενον ὡς ‘ὁ ἄναξ, οὗ τὸ μαντεῖόν ἐστι τὸ ἐν Δελφοῖς, οὔτε λέγει οὔτε κρύπτει ἀλλὰ σημαίνει.’ πρόσλαβε [e] δὲ τούτοις εὖ λεγομένοις καὶ νόησον τὸν ἐνταῦθα θεὸν χρώμενον τῇ Πυθίᾳ πρὸς ἀκοήν, καθὼς ἥλιος χρῆται σελήνῃ πρὸς ὄψιν· δείκνυσι μὲν γὰρ καὶ ἀναφαίνει τὰς αὑτοῦ νοήσεις, μεμιγμένας δὲ δείκνυσι διὰ σώματος θνητοῦ καὶ ψυχῆς ‹ἀνθρωπίνης› ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν μὴ δυναμένης μηδὲ τῷ κινοῦντι παρέχειν ἑαυτὴν ἀκίνητον ἐξ αὑτῆς καὶ καθεστῶσαν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν σάλῳ †ψαύουσαν [αὐτὴν] καὶ συμπλεκομένην τοῖς ἐν αὑτῇ κινήμασι καὶ πάθεσιν ἐπιταράττουσιν αὐτήν. ὡς γὰρ οἱ δῖνοι τῶν ἅμα κύκλῳ καταφερομένων σωμάτων οὐκ ἐπικρατοῦσι βεβαίως, ἀλλὰ κύκλῳ μὲν [f] ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης φερομένων κάτω δὲ φύσει ῥεπόντων γίγνεταί τις ἐξ ἀμφοῖν ταραχώδης καὶ παράφορος ἑλιγμός, οὕτως ὁ καλούμενος ἐνθουσιασμὸς ἔοικε μῖξις εἶναι κινήσεων δυοῖν, τὴν μὲν ὡς πέπονθε τῆς ψυχῆς ἅμα δὲ τὴν ὡς πέφυκε κινουμένης. ὅπου γὰρ ἀψύχοις σώμασι καὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ μονίμοις οὐκ ἔστι χρήσασθαι παρ’ ὃ πέφυκε βιαζόμενον οὐδὲ κινῆσαι σφαιρικῶς κύλινδρον ἢ ‹κῶνον› κυβικῶς ἢ λύραν αὐλητικῶς ἢ σάλπιγγα κιθαριστικῶς, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἕτερον ἦν ὡς ἔοικε τὸ τεχνικῶς ἑκάστῳ χρῆσθαι καὶ ὡς πέφυκεν, ἦπου τὸ ἔμψυχον καὶ αὐτοκίνητον ὁρμῆς τε καὶ λόγου μετέχον ἄλλως ἄν τις ἢ κατὰ τὴν ἐν αὐτῷ προϋπάρχουσαν ἕξιν ἢ δύναμιν ἢ φύσιν μεταχειρίσαιτο, [405] [a] μουσικῶς κινῶν νοῦν ἄμουσον ἢ γραμματικῶς τὸν ἀγράμματον ἢ λογίως τὸν ἐν λόγοις ἀθεώρητον καὶ ἀνάσκητον; οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν.’

‘Μαρτυρεῖ δέ μοι καὶ Ὅμηρος, αἰτίᾳ μὲν ‘ἄνευ

θεοῦ’ (β 372, ο 531) οὐδὲν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ὑποτιθέμενος περαινόμενον, οὐ μὴν πᾶσι πρὸς πάντα χρώμενον ποιῶν τὸν θεόν, ἀλλ’ ἑκάστῳ καθ’ ἣν ἔχει τέχνην ἢ δύναμιν. ἢ γὰρ οὐχ ὁρᾷς’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ φίλε Διογενιανέ, τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν, ὅτε πεῖσαι βούλεται τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, τὸν Ὀδυσσέα παρακαλοῦσαν, ὅτε συγχέαι τὰ ὅρκια, τὸν Πάνδαρον ζητοῦσαν, ὅτε τρέψασθαι τοὺς Τρῶας, ἐπὶ τὸν Διομήδην βαδίζουσαν; [b] ὁ μὲν γὰρ εὔρωστος καὶ μάχιμος ὁ δὲ τοξικὸς καὶ ἀνόητος ὁ δὲ δεινὸς εἰπεῖν καὶ φρόνιμος. οὐ γὰρ εἶχεν Ὅμηρος τὴν αὐτὴν †Πανδάρῳ διάνοιαν, εἴ γε Πάνδαρος ἦν ὁ ποιήσας

‘θεοῦ θέλοντος κἂν ἐπὶ ῥιπὸς πλέοις (Eur. fr. 397)·’

ἀλλ’ ἐγίνωσκεν ἄλλας πρὸς ἄλλα δυνάμεις καὶ φύσεις γεγενημένας, ὧν ἑκάστη κινεῖται διαφόρως, κἂν ἓν ᾖ τὸ κινοῦν ἁπάσας. ὥσπερ οὖν τὸ κινοῦν τὸ πεζὸν οὐ δύναται πτητικῶς οὐδὲ τορῶς τὸ τραυλὸν οὐδ’ εὐφώνως τὸ ἰσχνόφωνον (ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν Βάττον, οἶμαι, διὰ τοῦτ’ ἐπὶ τὴν φωνὴν παραγενόμενον εἰς Λιβύην ἔπεμψεν [c] οἰκιστήν, ὅτι τραυλὸς μὲν ἦν καὶ ἰσχνόφωνος βασιλικὸς δὲ καὶ πολιτικὸς καὶ φρόνιμος), οὕτως ἀδύνατον διαλέγεσθαι ποιητικῶς τὸν ἀγράμματον καὶ ἀνήκοον ἐπῶν. ὥσπερ ἡ νῦν τῷ θεῷ λατρεύουσα γέγονε μὲν εἴ τις ἄλλος ἐνταῦθα νομίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ βεβίωκεν εὐτάκτως, τραφεῖσα δ’ ἐν οἰκίᾳ γεωργῶν πενήτων οὔτ’ ἀπὸ τέχνης οὐδὲν οὔτ’ ἀπ’ ἄλλης τινὸς ἐμπειρίας καὶ δυνάμεως ἐπιφερομένη κάτεισιν εἰς τὸ χρηστήριον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὁ Ξενοφῶν (Oec. 7, 5) οἴεται δεῖν ἐλάχιστα τὴν νύμφην ἰδοῦσαν ἐλάχιστα δ’ ἀκούσασαν εἰς ἀνδρὸς βαδίζειν, οὕτως ἄπειρος καὶ ἀδαὴς ὀλίγου δεῖν ἁπάντων καὶ παρθένος ὡς ἀληθῶς τὴν ψυχὴν [d] τῷ θεῷ σύνεστιν. ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς ἐρωδιοῖς οἰόμεθα καὶ τροχίλοις καὶ κόραξι χρῆσθαι φθεγγομένοις σημαίνοντα τὸν θεὸν καὶ οὐκ ἀξιοῦμεν, ᾗ θεῶν ἄγγελοι καὶ κήρυκές εἰσι, λογικῶς ἕκαστα καὶ σαφῶς φράζειν, τὴν δὲ τῆς Πυθίας φωνὴν καὶ διάλεκτον ὥσπερ ‹τραγικὴν› ἐκ θυμέλης, οὐκ ἀνήδυντον οὐδὲ λιτὴν ἀλλ’ ἐν μέτρῳ καὶ ὄγκῳ καὶ πλάσματι καὶ μεταφοραῖς ὀνομάτων καὶ μετ’ αὐλοῦ φθεγγομένην παρέχειν ἀξιοῦμεν.’

‘τί οὖν φήσομεν περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν; οὐχ ἓν ἀλλὰ πλείονα, οἶμαι. πρῶτον μὲν γάρ, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, τὰ πλεῖστα κἀκεῖναι καταλογάδην ἀπεφθέγγοντο, δεύτερον δὲ καὶ σωμάτων ἤνεγκε κράσεις καὶ φύσεις ὁ χρόνος ἐκεῖνος [e] εὔρουν τι καὶ φορὸν ἐχούσας πρὸς ποίησιν, αἷς εὐθὺς ἐπεγίγνοντο προθυμίαι καὶ ὁρμαὶ καὶ παρασκευαὶ ψυχῆς ἑτοιμότητα ποιοῦσαι μικρᾶς ἔξωθεν ἀρχῆς καὶ παρατροπῆς τοῦ φανταστικοῦ δεομένην, ὡς εὐθὺς ἕλκεσθαι πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον οὐ μόνον, ὡς λέγει Φιλῖνος, ἀστρολόγους καὶ φιλοσόφους, ἀλλ’ ἐν οἴνῳ τε πολλῷ καὶ πάθει γιγνομένων οἴκτου ‹τέ› τινος ὑπορρυέντος ἢ χαρᾶς προσπεσούσης ὠλίσθανεν εἰς ‘ἐνῳδὸν .... γῆρυν’ ἐρωτικῶν τε κατεπίμπλαντο μέτρων καὶ ᾀσμάτων τὰ συμπόσια καὶ τὰ βιβλία γραμμάτων. ὁ δ’ Εὐριπίδης εἰπὼν (fr. 663) ὡς ‘Ἔρως ποιητὴν [f] διδάσκει, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν’ ἐνενόησεν, ὅτι ποιητικὴν καὶ μουσικὴν Ἔρως δύναμιν οὐκ ἐντίθησιν, ἐνυπάρχουσαν δὲ κινεῖ καὶ ἀναθερμαίνει λανθάνουσαν καὶ ἀργοῦσαν. ἢ μηδένα νῦν ἐρᾶν, ὦ ξένε, λέγωμεν, ἀλλὰ φροῦδον οἴχεσθαι τὸν ἔρωτα, ὅτι μέτροις οὐδεὶς οὐδ’ ᾠδαῖς ‘ῥίμφα παιδείους’ ὡς Πίνδαρος ἔφη (Isth. II 3) ‘τοξεύει μελιγήρεας ὕμνους;’ [406] [a] ἀλλ’ ἄτοπον· ἔρωτες γὰρ ἔτι πολλοὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐπιστρέφονται, ψυχαῖς ‹δ’› ὁμιλοῦντες οὐκ εὐφυῶς οὐδ’ ἑτοίμως πρὸς μουσικὴν ἐχούσαις ἄναυλοι μὲν καὶ ἄλυροι λάλοι δ’ οὐδὲν ἧττόν εἰσι καὶ διάπυροι τῶν παλαιῶν· ἔτι ‹δ’› οὐδ’ ὅσιον εἰπεῖν ἢ καλὸν ὡς ἀνέραστος ἦν ἡ Ἀκαδήμεια καὶ ὁ Σωκράτους καὶ Πλάτωνος χορός, ὧν λόγοις μὲν ἐρωτικοῖς ἐντυχεῖν ἔστι, ποιήματα δ’ οὐκ ἀπολελοίπασι. τί δ’ ἀπολείπει τοῦ λέγοντος ἐρωτικὴν μόνην γεγονέναι Σαπφὼ γυναικῶν ‹ὁ› μαντικὴν ‹φάσκων μόνην› γεγονέναι Σίβυλλαν καὶ Ἀριστονίκαν καὶ ὅσαι διὰ [b] μέτρων ἐθεμίστευσαν; ‘ὁ μὲν γὰρ οἶνος’ ὡς ἔλεγε Χαιρήμων (fr. 16) ‘τοῖς τρόποις κεράννυται τῶν πινόντων’· ὁ δὲ μαντικὸς ἐνθουσιασμός, ὥσπερ ὁ ἐρωτικός, χρῆται τῇ ὑποκειμένῃ δυνάμει καὶ κινεῖ τῶν δεξαμένων ἕκαστον καθ’ ὃ πέφυκεν.’

‘Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τῆς προνοίας σκοποῦντες ὀψόμεθα πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον γεγενημένην τὴν μεταβολήν. ἀμοιβῇ γὰρ ἔοικε νομίσματος ἡ τοῦ λόγου χρεία, καὶ δόκιμον καὶ αὐτοῦ τὸ σύνηθές ἐστι καὶ γνώριμον, ἄλλην ἐν ἄλλοις χρόνοις ἰσχὺν λαμβάνοντος. ἦν οὖν ὅτε λόγου νομίσμασιν ἐχρῶντο μέτροις καὶ μέλεσι καὶ ᾠδαῖς, πᾶσαν μὲν ἱστορίαν καὶ φιλοσοφίαν πᾶν δὲ πάθος [c] ὡς ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν καὶ πρᾶγμα σεμνοτέρας φωνῆς δεόμενον εἰς ποιητικὴν καὶ μουσικὴν ἄγοντες. οὐ γὰρ μόνον νῦν ‹μὲν› ὀλίγοι μόλις ἐπαΐουσι, τότε δὲ πάντες ἠκροῶντο καὶ ἔχαιρον ᾀδομένοις ‹’μηλοβόται τ’› ἀρόται τ’ ὀρνιχολόχοι τε’ κατὰ Πίνδαρον (Isth. I 48), ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τῆς πρὸς ποιητικὴν ἐπιτηδειότητος οἱ πλεῖστοι διὰ λύρας καὶ ᾠδῆς ἐνουθέτουν ἐπαρρησιάζοντο παρεκελεύοντο μύθους καὶ παροιμίας ἐπέραινον, ἔτι δ’ ὕμνους θεῶν ‹κατ›ευχὰς παιᾶνας ἐν μέτροις ἐποιοῦντο καὶ μέλεσιν οἱ μὲν δι’ εὐφυΐαν οἱ δὲ διὰ συνήθειαν. οὐκοῦν οὐδὲ μαντικῇ κόσμου καὶ χάριτος ἐφθόνει [d] ὁ θεὸς οὐδ’ ἀπήλαυνεν ἐνθένδε ‹τὴν› τιμωμένην μοῦσαν τοῦ τρίποδος, ἀλλ’ ἐπήγετο μᾶλλον ἐγείρων τὰς ποιητικὰς ‹καὶ› ἀσπαζόμενος φύσεις, αὐτός τε φαντασίας ἐνεδίδου καὶ συνεξώρμα τὸ σοβαρὸν καὶ λόγιον ὡς ἁρμόττον καὶ θαυμαζόμενον. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ βίου μεταβολὴν ἅμα ταῖς τύχαις καὶ ταῖς φύσεσι λαμβάνοντος ἐξωθοῦσα τὸ περιττὸν ἡ χρεία κρωβύλους τε χρυσοῦς ἀφῄρει καὶ ξυστίδας μαλακὰς ἀπημφίαζε καί που καὶ κόμην σοβαρωτέραν ἀπέκειρε καὶ ὑπέλυσε κόθορνον οὐ φαύλως ἐθιζομένων ἀντικαλλωπίζεσθαι πρὸς τὴν πολυτέλειαν εὐτελείᾳ καὶ τὸ [e] ἀφελὲς καὶ λιτὸν ἐν κόσμῳ τίθεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ σοβαρὸν καὶ περίεργον, οὕτω τοῦ λόγου συμμεταβάλλοντος ἅμα καὶ συναπολυομένου κατέβη μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν μέτρων ὥσπερ ὀχημάτων ἡ ἱστορία καὶ τῷ πεζῷ μάλιστα τοῦ μυθώδους ἀπεκρίθη τὸ ἀληθές, φιλοσοφία δὲ τὸ σαφὲς καὶ διδασκαλικὸν ἀσπασαμένη μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ ἐκπλῆττον διὰ λόγων ἐποιεῖτο τὴν ζήτησιν, ἀπέπαυσε δὲ τὴν Πυθίαν ὁ θεός ‘πυρικάους’ μὲν ὀνομάζουσαν τοὺς αὑτῆς πολίτας, ‘ὀφιοβόρους’ δὲ τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας, ‘ὀρεᾶνας’ δὲ τοὺς ἄνδρας, ‘ὀρεμπότας’ δὲ τοὺς ποταμούς· ἀφελὼν δὲ τῶν χρησμῶν [f] ἔπη καὶ γλώσσας καὶ περιφράσεις καὶ ἀσάφειαν οὕτω διαλέγεσθαι παρεσκεύασε τοῖς χρωμένοις ὡς νόμοι τε πόλεσι διαλέγονται καὶ βασιλεῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι δήμοις καὶ μαθηταὶ διδασκάλων ἀκροῶνται, πρὸς τὸ συνετὸν καὶ πιθανὸν ἁρμοζόμενος.’

‘Εὖ γὰρ εἰδέναι χρὴ τὸν θεόν, ὥς φησι Σοφοκλῆς (fr. 704),

‘σοφοῖς μὲν αἰνικτῆρα θεσφάτων ἀεί,

σκαιοῖς δὲ φαῦλον κἀν βραχεῖ διδάσκαλον·’

[407] [a] μετὰ δὲ τῆς σαφηνείας καὶ ἡ πίστις οὕτως ἐστρέφετο συμμεταβάλλουσα τοῖς ἄλλοις πράγμασιν, ὥστε πάλαι μὲν τὸ μὴ σύνηθες μηδὲ κοινὸν ἀλλὰ λοξὸν ἀτεχνῶς καὶ περιπεφρασμένον εἰς ὑπόνοιαν θειότητος ἀνάγοντας ἐκπλήττεσθαι καὶ σέβεσθαι τοὺς πολλούς· ὕστερον δὲ τὸ σαφῶς καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἕκαστα καὶ μὴ σὺν ὄγκῳ μηδὲ πλάσματι μανθάνειν ἀγαπῶντες οὐ μόνον ᾐτιῶντο τὴν περικειμένην τοῖς χρησμοῖς ποίησιν ὡς ἀντιπράττουσαν τῇ νοήσει πρὸς τὸ ἀληθὲς ἀσάφειάν τε καὶ σκιὰν τῷ φραζομένῳ μιγνύουσαν, ἀλλ’ ἤδη καὶ τὰς μεταφορὰς καὶ τὰ αἰνίγματα καὶ [b] τὰς ἀμφιβολίας ὥσπερ μυχοὺς καὶ καταφυγὰς ἐνδύεσθαι καὶ ἀναχωρεῖν τῷ πταίοντι πεποιημένας τῆς μαντικῆς ὑφεωρῶντο. πολλῶν δ’ ἦν ἀκούειν ὅτι ποιητικοί τινες ἄνδρες ἐκδεχόμενοι τὰς φωνὰς καὶ ὑπολαμβάνοντες ἐπικάθηνται περὶ τὸ χρηστήριον, ἔπη καὶ μέτρα καὶ ῥυθμοὺς οἷον ἀγγεῖα τοῖς χρησμοῖς ἐκ τοῦ προστυχόντος περιπλέκοντες. Ὀνομάκριτοι δ’ ἐκεῖνοι καὶ Πρόδικοι καὶ Κιναίθωνες ὅσην αἰτίαν ἠνέγκαντο ‹ἐπὶ› τῶν χρησμῶν, ὡς τραγῳδίαν αὐτοῖς καὶ ὄγκον οὐδὲν δεομένοις προσθέντες, ἐῶ λέγειν οὐδὲ †προσεῖναι τὰς μεταβολάς. πλείστης [c] μέντοι ποιητικὴν ἐνέπλησεν ἀδοξίας τὸ ἀγυρτικὸν καὶ ἀγοραῖον καὶ περὶ τὰ μητρῷα καὶ Σεραπεῖα βωμολοχοῦν καὶ πλανώμενον γένος, οἱ μὲν αὐτόθεν οἱ δὲ κατὰ κλῆρον ἔκ τινων γραμματείων χρησμοὺς περαίνοντες οἰκέταις καὶ γυναίοις ὑπὸ τῶν μέτρων ἀγομένοις μάλιστα καὶ τοῦ ποιητικοῦ τῶν ὀνομάτων· ὅθεν οὐχ ἥκιστα ποιητικὴ δοκοῦσα κοινὴν ἐμπαρέχειν ἑαυτὴν ἀπατεῶσι καὶ γόησιν ἀνθρώποις καὶ ψευδομάντεσιν ἐξέπεσε τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ τοῦ τρίποδος.’

‘Οὐ τοίνυν θαυμάσαιμ’ ἄν, εἰ διπλόης τινὸς ἔδει καὶ περιαγωγῆς καὶ ἀσαφείας ἔστιν ὅτε τοῖς παλαιοῖς. οὐ γὰρ [d] ὁ δεῖνα μὰ Δία κατέβαινε περὶ ὠνῆς ἀνδραπόδου χρησόμενος οὐδ’ ὁ δεῖνα περὶ ἐργασίας, ἀλλὰ πόλεις μέγα δυνάμεναι καὶ βασιλεῖς καὶ τύραννοι μέτριον οὐδὲν φρονοῦντες ἐνετύγχανον τῷ θεῷ περὶ πραγμάτων οὓς ἀνιᾶν καὶ παροξύνειν ἀπεχθείᾳ πολλὰ τῶν ἀβουλήτων ἀκούοντας οὐκ ἐλυσιτέλει τοῖς περὶ τὸ χρηστήριον. οὐ πείθεται γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ὥσπερ νομοθετοῦντι τῷ Εὐριπίδῃ καὶ λέγοντι (Phoen. 958)

‘Φοῖβον ἀνθρώποις μόνον

χρῆν θεσπιῳδεῖν·’

χρώμενος δὲ θνητοῖς ὑπηρέταις καὶ προφήταις, ὧν κήδεσθαι προσήκει καὶ φυλάττειν, ὅπως ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐκ [e] ἀπολοῦνται πονηρῶν θεῷ λατρεύοντες, ἀφανίζειν μὲν οὐ θέλων τὸ ἀληθές, παρατρέπων δὲ τὴν δήλωσιν αὐτοῦ καθάπερ αὐγὴν ἐν τῇ ποιητικῇ πολλὰς ἀνακλάσεις λαμβάνουσαν καὶ πολλαχοῦ περισχιζομένην, ἀφῄρει τὸ ἀντίτυπον αὐτοῦ καὶ σκληρόν. ἦν δ’ ἄρ’ ἃ καὶ ‹συνέφερε› τυράννους ἀγνοῆσαι καὶ πολεμίους μὴ προαισθέσθαι. τούτοις οὖν περιέβαλεν ὑπονοίας καὶ ἀμφιλογίας, αἳ πρὸς ἑτέρους ἀποκρύπτουσαι τὸ φραζόμενον οὐ διέφευγον αὐτοὺς οὐδὲ παρεκρούοντο τοὺς δεομένους καὶ προσέχοντας. ὅθεν εὐηθέστατός ἐστιν ὁ τῶν πραγμάτων ἑτέρων γεγονότων, εἰ μηκέτι τὸν αὐτὸν ἡμῖν τρόπον ἀλλ’ ἕτερον οἴεται δεῖν βοηθεῖν ὁ θεός, ἐγκαλῶν καὶ συκοφαντῶν.’

‘Ἔτι τοίνυν οὐδὲν ἀπὸ ποιητικῆς λόγῳ χρησιμώτερον ὑπάρχει τοῦ δεθέντα μέτροις τὰ φραζόμενα καὶ συμπλακέντα μᾶλλον μνημονεύεσθαι καὶ κρατεῖσθαι. τοῖς μὲν οὖν τότε πολλὴν ἔδει μνήμην παρεῖναι· πολλὰ γὰρ ἐφράζετο καὶ τόπων σημεῖα καὶ πράξεων καιροὶ καὶ θεῶν ἱερὰ διαποντίων καὶ ἡρώων ἀπόρρητοι θῆκαι ‹καὶ› δυσεξεύρετοι μακρὰν ἀπαίρουσι τῆς Ἑλλάδος. ἴστε γὰρ †τὸ [408] [a] χῖον καὶ Κρητίνην καὶ Γνησίοχον καὶ Φάλανθον ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς ἡγεμόνας στόλων ὅσοις ἔδει τεκμηρίοις ἀνευρεῖν τὴν δεδομένην ἑκάστῳ καὶ προσήκουσαν ἵδρυσιν· ὧν ἔνιοι καὶ διημάρτανον ὥσπερ Βάττος. ἔδοξε γὰρ ἐκπεσεῖν οὐ καταλαβὼν ἐφ’ ὃν ἐπέμφθη τόπον· εἶτα ἧκε δεύτερον ποτνιώμενος. ὑπειπὼν οὖν ὁ θεός

‘αἰ τὺ ἐμεῦ Λιβύαν μαλοτρόφον οἶσθας ἄρειον,

μὴ ἐλθὼν ἐλθόντος, ἄγαν ἄγαμαι σοφίην σευ,’

οὕτω πάλιν αὐτὸν ἐξέπεμψε. Λύσανδρος δὲ καὶ παντάπασιν ἀγνοήσας τὸν Ὀρχαλίδην λόφον καὶ Ἀλώπεκον προσαγορευόμενον καὶ τὸν Ὁπλίτην ποταμόν

‘γῆς τε δράκονθ’ υἱὸν δόλιον κατόπισθεν ἰόντα’

[b] μάχῃ κρατηθεὶς ἔπεσεν ἐν τοῖς τόποις ἐκείνοις ὑπὸ Νεοχώρου Ἁλιαρτίου ἀνδρὸς ἀσπίδα φοροῦντος ἐπίσημον ὄφιν ἔχουσαν. ἄλλα δὲ τοιαῦτα πολλὰ δυσκάθεκτα καὶ δυσμνημόνευτα τῶν παλαιῶν διεξιέναι πρὸς ὑμᾶς εἰδότας οὐκ ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι.’

‘Τὰ δὲ νῦν πράγματα καθεστῶτα, περὶ ὧν ἐρωτῶσι τὸν θεόν, ἀγαπῶ μὲν ἔγωγε καὶ ἀσπάζομαι· πολλὴ γὰρ εἰρήνη καὶ ἡσυχία, πέπαυται δὲ πόλεμος, καὶ πλάναι καὶ στάσεις οὐκ εἰσὶν οὐδὲ τυραννίδες, οὐδ’ ἄλλα νοσήματα καὶ κακὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὥσπερ πολυφαρμάκων δυνάμεων [c] χρῄζοντα καὶ περιττῶν. ὅπου δὲ ποικίλον οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἀπόρρητον οὐδὲ δεινόν, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ πράγμασι μικροῖς καὶ δημοτικοῖς ἐρωτήσεις οἷον ἐν σχολῇ προτάσεις ‘εἰ γαμητέον’ ‘εἰ πλευστέον’ ‘εἰ δανειστέον,’ τὰ δὲ μέγιστα πόλεων μαντεύματα φορᾶς καρπῶν πέρι καὶ βοτῶν ἐπιγονῆς καὶ σωμάτων ὑγείας, ἐνταῦθα περιβάλλειν μέτρα καὶ πλάττειν περιφράσεις καὶ γλώσσας ἐπάγειν πύσμασιν ἁπλῆς καὶ συντόμου δεομένοις ἀποκρίσεως, ἔργον ἐστὶ φιλοτίμου σοφιστοῦ καλλωπίζοντος ἐπὶ δόξῃ χρηστήριον· ἡ δὲ Πυθία καὶ καθ’ αὑτὴν μέν ἐστι γενναία τὸ ἦθος, ὅταν δ’ ἐκεῖ κατέλθῃ καὶ γένηται παρὰ τῷ θεῷ, πλέον ... ἢ †ἐκείνῃ μέλει δόξης καὶ ἀνθρώπων ἐπαινούντων ἢ [d] ψεγόντων.’

‘Ἔδει δ’ ἴσως καὶ ἡμᾶς ἔχειν οὕτως· νῦν δ’ ὥσπερ ἀγωνιῶντες καὶ δεδιότες, μὴ τρισχιλίων ἐτῶν ἀποβάλῃ δόξαν ὁ τόπος καὶ τοῦ χρηστηρίου καθάπερ σοφιστοῦ διατριβῆς ἀποφοιτήσωσιν ἔνιοι καταφρονήσαντες, ἀπολογούμεθα καὶ πλάσσομεν αἰτίας καὶ λόγους ὑπὲρ ὧν οὔτ’ ἴσμεν οὔτ’ εἰδέναι προσῆκον ἡμῖν ἐστι, παραμυθούμενοι τὸν ἐγκαλοῦντα καὶ πείθοντες, οὐ χαίρειν ἐῶντες· ‘αὐτῷ’ γάρ ‘οἱ πρῶτον ἀνιηρότερον ἔσται’ (β 190) τοιαύτην ἔχοντι περὶ τοῦ θεοῦ δόξαν, ὥστε ταυτὶ μὲν τὰ [e] προγεγραμμένα τῶν σοφῶν τό ‘γνῶθι σαυτόν’ καὶ τό ‘μηδὲν ἄγαν’ ἀποδέχεσθαι καὶ θαυμάζειν οὐχ ἥκιστα διὰ τὴν βραχυλογίαν ὡς πυκνὸν καὶ σφυρήλατον νοῦν ἐν ὀλίγῳ περιέχουσαν ὄγκῳ, τοὺς δὲ χρησμοὺς ὅτι συντόμως καὶ ἁπλῶς καὶ δι’ εὐθείας τὰ πλεῖστα φράζουσιν αἰτιᾶσθαι. καί‹τοι› τὰ τοιαῦτα μὲν ἀποφθέγματα τῶν σοφῶν ταὐτὸν τοῖς εἰς στενὸν συνθλιβεῖσι πέπονθε ῥεύμασιν· οὐ γὰρ ἔχει τοῦ νοῦ δίοψιν οὐδὲ ‹διαύγειαν›, ἀλλ’ ἐὰν σκοπῇς τί γέγραπται καὶ λέλεκται περὶ αὐτῶν τοῖς ὅπως ἕκαστον ἔχει βουλομένοις καταμαθεῖν, οὐ ῥᾳδίως τούτων λόγους [f] ἑτέρους εὑρήσεις μακροτέρους. ἡ δὲ τῆς Πυθίας διάλεκτος, ὥσπερ οἱ μαθηματικοὶ γραμμὴν εὐθεῖαν καλοῦσι τὴν ἐλαχίστην τῶν τὰ αὐτὰ πέρατ’ ἐχουσῶν, οὕτως οὐ ποιοῦσα καμπὴν οὐδὲ κύκλον οὐδὲ διπλόην οὐδ’ ἀμφιβολίαν ἀλλ’ εὐθεῖα πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν οὖσα πρὸς δὲ πίστιν ἐπισφαλὴς καὶ ὑπεύθυνος οὐδένα καθ’ αὑτῆς ἔλεγχον ἄχρι νῦν παραδέδωκεν, ἀναθημάτων δὲ καὶ δώρων ἐμπέπληκε βαρβαρικῶν [409] [a] καὶ Ἑλληνικῶν τὸ χρηστήριον, οἰκοδομημάτων δὲ ‹κατακεκόσμηκε› κάλλεσι καὶ κατασκευαῖς Ἀμφικτυονικαῖς. ὁρᾶτε δήπουθεν αὐτοὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἐπεκτισμένα τῶν πρότερον οὐκ ὄντων, πολλὰ δ’ ἀνειλημμένα τῶν συγκεχυμένων καὶ διεφθαρμένων. ὡς δὲ τοῖς εὐθαλέσι τῶν δένδρων ἕτερα παραβλαστάνει, καὶ τοῖς Δελφοῖς ἡ Πυλαία συνηβᾷ καὶ συναναβόσκεται διὰ τὰς ἐντεῦθεν εὐπορίας σχῆμα λαμβάνουσα καὶ μορφὴν καὶ κόσμον ἱερῶν καὶ συνεδρίων καὶ ὑδάτων οἷον ἐν χιλίοις ἔτεσι τοῖς πρότερον οὐκ ἔλαβεν. οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ τὸ Γαλάξιον τῆς Βοιωτίας κατοικοῦντες ᾔσθοντο τοῦ θεοῦ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν ἀφθονίᾳ [b] καὶ περιουσίᾳ γάλακτος· (Lyr. adesp. 90; Pind. fr. 1013`2 Schroeder²)

‘προβάτων γὰρ ἐκ πάντων κελάρυξεν,

ὡς ἀπὸ κρηνᾶν φέρτατον ὕδωρ,

θηλᾶν γάλα· τοὶ δ’ ἐπίμπλεν ἐσσύμενοι πίθους·

ἀσκὸς δ’ οὐδέ τις ἀμφορεὺς ἐλίνυεν δόμοις,

πέλλαι γὰρ ξύλιναι πίθοι ‹τε› πλῆσθεν ἅπαντες·’

ἡμῖν δὲ λαμπρότερα καὶ κρείττονα καὶ σαφέστερα σημεῖα τούτων ἀναδίδωσιν, ὥσπερ ἐξ αὐχμοῦ τῆς πρόσθεν ἐρημίας καὶ πενίας εὐπορίαν καὶ λαμπρότητα καὶ τιμὴν πεποιηκώς. καίτοι φιλῶ μὲν ἐμαυτὸν ἐφ’ οἷς ἐγενόμην εἰς τὰ πράγματα ταῦτα πρόθυμος καὶ χρήσιμος μετὰ Πολυκράτους καὶ Πετραίου, φιλῶ δὲ τὸν καθηγεμόνα ταύτης τῆς [c] πολιτείας γενόμενον ἡμῖν καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τούτων ἐκφροντίζοντα καὶ παρασκευάζοντα .... ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστιν [ἄλλως ὅτι] τηλικαύτην καὶ τοσαύτην μεταβολὴν ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ γενέσθαι δι’ ἀνθρωπίνης ἐπιμελείας, μὴ θεοῦ παρόντος ἐνταῦθα καὶ συνεπιθειάζοντος τὸ χρηστήριον.’

‘Ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς τότε χρόνοις ἦσαν οἱ τὴν λοξότητα τῶν χρησμῶν καὶ ἀσάφειαν αἰτιώμενοι, καὶ νῦν εἰσὶν οἱ τὸ λίαν ἁπλοῦν συκοφαντοῦντες. ὧν παιδικόν ἐστι κομιδῇ καὶ ἀβέλτερον τὸ πάθος· καὶ γὰρ οἱ παῖδες ἴριδας μᾶλλον καὶ ἅλως καὶ κομήτας ἢ σελήνην καὶ ἥλιον [d] ὁρῶντες γεγήθασι καὶ ἀγαπῶσι, καὶ οὗτοι τὰ αἰνίγματα καὶ τὰς ἀλληγορίας ‹καὶ› τὰς μεταφορὰς τῆς μαντικῆς ἀνακλάσεις οὔσας πρὸς τὸ θνητὸν καὶ φανταστικὸν ἐπιποθοῦσι· κἂν τὴν αἰτίαν μὴ ἱκανῶς πύθωνται τῆς μεταβολῆς, ἀπίασι τοῦ θεοῦ καταγνόντες, οὐχ ἡμῶν οὐδ’ αὑτῶν ὡς ἀδυνάτων ὄντων ἐξικνεῖσθαι τῷ λογισμῷ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ διάνοιαν.’

De defectu oraculorum

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΕΚΛΕΛΟΙΠΟΤΩΝ ΧΡΗΣΤΗΡΙΩΝ

[409] Ἀετούς τινας ἢ κύκνους, ὦ Τερέντιε Πρῖσκε, μυθολογοῦσιν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων τῆς γῆς ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον φερομένους εἰς ταὐτὸ συμπεσεῖν Πυθοῖ περὶ τὸν καλούμενον ὀμφαλόν· ὕστερον δὲ χρόνῳ τὸν Φαίστιον Ἐπιμενίδην [f] ἐλέγχοντα τὸν μῦθον ἐπὶ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ λαβόντα χρησμὸν ἀσαφῆ καὶ ἀμφίβολον εἰπεῖν (fr. 11)

‘οὐκ ἄρ’ ἔην γαίης μέσος ὀμφαλὸς οὐδὲ θαλάσσης·

εἰ δέ τις ἔστι, θεοῖς δῆλος θνητοῖσι δ’ ἄφαντος.’

ἐκεῖνον μὲν οὖν εἰκότως ὁ θεὸς ἠμύνατο μύθου παλαιοῦ [410] [a] καθάπερ ζωγραφήματος ἁφῇ διαπειρώμενον· ὀλίγον δὲ πρὸ Πυθίων τῶν ἐπὶ Καλλιστράτου ‹τοῦ› καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τῶν ἐναντίων τῆς οἰκουμένης περάτων ἔτυχον ἄνδρες ἱεροὶ δύο συνδραμόντες εἰς Δελφούς, Δημήτριος μὲν ὁ γραμματικὸς ἐκ Βρεττανίας εἰς Ταρσὸν ἀνακομιζόμενος οἴκαδε, Κλεόμβροτος δ’ ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος, πολλὰ μὲν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ καὶ περὶ τὴν Τρωγλοδυτικὴν πεπλανημένος, πόρρω δὲ τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς θαλάσσης ἀναπεπλευκὼς οὐ κατ’ ἐμπορίαν, ἀλλ’ ἀνὴρ φιλοθεάμων καὶ φιλομαθὴς οὐσίαν δ’ ἔχων [b] ἱκανὴν καὶ τὸ πλείονα τῶν ἱκανῶν ἔχειν οὐκ ἄξιον πολλοῦ ποιούμενος ἐχρῆτο τῇ σχολῇ πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ συνῆγεν ἱστορίαν οἷον ὕλην φιλοσοφίας θεολογίαν ὥσπερ αὐτὸς ἐκάλει τέλος ἐχούσης. νεωστὶ δὲ γεγονὼς παρ’ Ἄμμωνα τὰ μὲν ἄλλα τῶν ἐκεῖ δῆλος ἦν μὴ πάνυ τεθαυμακώς, περὶ δὲ τοῦ λύχνου τοῦ ἀσβέστου διηγεῖτο λόγον ἄξιον σπουδῆς λεγόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερέων. ἀεὶ γὰρ ἔλαττον ἀναλίσκειν ἔλαιον ἔτους ἑκάστου, καὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖσθαι τεκμήριον ἐκείνους τῆς τῶν ἐνιαυτῶν ἀνωμαλίας τὸν ὕστερον τοῦ προάγοντος ἀεὶ τῷ χρόνῳ βραχύτερον ποιούσης· εἰκὸς γὰρ ἐν ἐλάττονι χρόνῳ τὸ δαπανώμενον ἔλαττον εἶναι.

Θαυμασάντων δὲ τῶν παρόντων, τοῦ δὲ Δημητρίου [c] καὶ γελοῖον φήσαντος εἶναι ἀπὸ μικρῶν πραγμάτων οὕτω μεγάλα θηρᾶν, οὐ κατ’ Ἀλκαῖον (fr. 113) ‘ἐξ ὄνυχος τὸν λέοντα’ γράφοντας, ἀλλὰ θρυαλλίδι καὶ λύχνῳ τὸν οὐρανὸν ὁμοῦ καὶ τὰ σύμπαντα μεθιστάντας καὶ τὴν μαθηματικὴν ἄρδην ἀναιροῦντας, ὁ Κλεόμβροτος ‘οὐδέτερον’ ἔφη ‘τούτων διαταράξει τοὺς ἄνδρας· ἀλλὰ τοῖς μαθηματικοῖς οὐχ ὑφήσονται τῆς ἀκριβείας, ὡς μᾶλλον ἂν ἐκείνους διαφυγόντα τὸν χρόνον ἐν κινήσεσι καὶ περιόδοις οὕτω μακρὰν ἀφεστώσαις, ἢ τὸ μέτρον αὐτοὺς τοῦ ἐλαίου προσέχοντας ἀεὶ διὰ τὴν ἀτοπίαν τῷ παραλόγῳ καὶ παραφυλάττοντας.

[d] τὸ δὲ μικρὰ μὴ διδόναι σημεῖα γίγνεσθαι μεγάλων, ὦ Δημήτριε, πολλαῖς ἔσται τέχναις ἐμποδών, ἐπεὶ [καὶ] πολλῶν μὲν ἀποδείξεις παραιρεῖσθαι συμβήσεται πολλῶν δὲ προαγορεύσεις. καίτοι καὶ ἡμῖν οὐ μικρὸν ἀποδείκνυτε πρᾶγμα, λεαίνεσθαι ξυρῷ τὰ σώματα τοὺς ἥρωας, ἐντυχόντες [γὰρ] Ὁμήρῳ (Κ 173) ξυρὸν ὀνομάσαντι, καὶ δανείζειν ἐπὶ τόκοις, ὅτι που (γ 367) ‘χρέος ὀφέλλεσθαι’ φησίν ‘οὔτι νέον οὐδ’ ὀλίγον,’ ὡς τοῦ ὀφέλλεσθαι τὸ αὔξεσθαι δηλοῦντος. αὖθις δὲ τὴν νύκτα ‘θοήν’ εἰπόντος ἀγαπητῶς ἐμφύεσθε τῷ ῥήματι καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐκεῖνό φατε, φράζεσθαι τὴν σκιὰν τῆς γῆς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ κωνικήν, [e] οὖσαν ἀπὸ σφαιροειδοῦς. ἰατρικὴν δὲ λοιμῶδες θέρος ἀραχνίων πλήθει προδηλοῦν καὶ θρίοις ἐαρινοῖς ὅταν κορώνης ποσὶν εἴκελα γένηται τίς ἐάσει τῶν ἀξιούντων μικρὰ σημεῖα μὴ γίγνεσθαι τῶν μεγάλων; τίς δ’ ἀνέξεται πρὸς χοῦν καὶ κοτύλην ὕδατος τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου μέγεθος μετρούμενον, ἢ τῆς ἐνταῦθα πλινθίδος ἣν ποιεῖ γωνίαν ὀξεῖαν κεκλιμένη πρὸς τὸ ἐπίπεδον, μέτρον εἶναι λεγομένην τοῦ ἐξάρματος, ὃ ἐξῆρται τῶν πόλων ὁ ἀεὶ φανερὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ ὁρίζοντος; ταῦτα γὰρ ἦν ἀκούειν τῶν ἐκεῖ προφητῶν. ὥστ’ ἄλλο τι λεγόντων πρὸς αὐτοὺς οἱ βουλόμενοι τῷ ἡλίῳ κατὰ τὰ πάτρια τὴν νενομισμένην τάξιν [f] ἀπαράβατον ποιῆσαι.’

Παρὼν οὖν ἀνεφώνησεν Ἀμμώνιος ὁ φιλόσοφος ‘οὐ τῷ ἡλίῳ μόνον, εἰπέ, ἀλλὰ τῷ οὐρανῷ παντί. συστέλλεσθαι γὰρ ἀνάγκη τὴν ἀπὸ τροπῶν ἐπὶ τροπὰς πάροδον αὐτοῦ [411] [a] καὶ μὴ διαμένειν τηλικοῦτο μέρος οὖσαν τοῦ ὁρίζοντος ἡλίκον οἱ μαθηματικοὶ λέγουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐλάττονα γίγνεσθαι, ἀεὶ πρὸς τὰ βόρεια τῶν νοτίων συναγωγὴν λαμβανόντων, καὶ τὸ θέρος ἡμῖν βραχύτερον καὶ ψυχρότερον εἶναι τὴν κρᾶσιν, ἐνδοτέρω κάμπτοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ μειζόνων παραλλήλων ἐφαπτομένου τοῖς τροπικοῖς σημείοις· ἔτι δὲ τοὺς μὲν ἐν Συήνῃ γνώμονας ἀσκίους μηκέτι φαίνεσθαι περὶ τροπὰς θερινὰς πολλοὺς δὲ ὑποδεδραμηκέναι τῶν ἀπλανῶν ἀστέρων ἐνίους δὲ ψαύειν καὶ συγκεχύσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους τοῦ διαστήματος ἐκλελοιπότος. εἰ δ’ αὖ [b] φήσουσι τῶν ἄλλων ὁμοίως ἐχόντων ἀτακτεῖν ταῖς κινήσεσι τὸν ἥλιον, οὔτε τὴν μόνον τοῦτον ἐκ τοσούτων ἐπιταχύνουσαν αἰτίαν εἰπεῖν ἕξουσι καὶ τὰ πολλὰ τῶν φαινομένων συνταράξουσι, τὰ δὲ πρὸς σελήνην καὶ παντάπασιν, ὥστε μὴ δεῖσθαι μέτρων ἐλαίου τὴν διαφορὰν ἐλεγχόντων. αἱ γὰρ ἐκλείψεις ἐλέγξουσιν αὐτοῦ τε τῇ σελήνῃ πλεονάκις ἐπιβάλλοντος καὶ τῆς σελήνης τῇ ‹τῆς γῆς› σκιᾷ, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα δῆλα καὶ οὐδὲν δεῖ περαιτέρω τὴν ἀλαζονείαν τοῦ λόγου διελίττειν.’ ‘ἀλλὰ μήν’ ὁ Κλεόμβροτος ἔφη ‘καὶ τὸ μέτρον αὐτὸς εἶδον· πολλὰ γὰρ ἐδείκνυσαν· τὸ δ’ ἐπέτειον ἀπέδει τῶν παλαιοτάτων οὐκ ὀλίγον.’ [c] ὑπολαβὼν δ’ αὖθις ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ‘εἶτα τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους’ εἶπεν ‘ἔλαθε παρ’ οἷς ἄσβεστα θεραπεύεται πυρὰ καὶ σῴζεται χρόνον ἐτῶν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἄπειρον; εἰ δ’ οὖν ὑπόθοιτό τις ἀληθὲς εἶναι τὸ λεγόμενον, οὐ βέλτιόν ἐστι ψυχρότητας αἰτιᾶσθαί τινας καὶ ὑγρότητας ἀέρων, ὑφ’ ὧν τὸ πῦρ μαραινόμενον εἰκός ἐστι μὴ κρατεῖν πολλῆς μηδὲ δεῖσθαι τροφῆς, ἢ τοὐναντίον ξηρότητας καὶ θερμότητας; ἤδη γὰρ ἀκήκοα λεγόντων τινῶν περὶ τοῦ πυρός, ὡς ἐν χειμῶνι καίεται βέλτιον ὑπὸ ῥώμης εἰς αὑτὸ συστελλόμενον τῇ ψυχρότητι καὶ πυκνούμενον, ἐν δὲ τοῖς αὐχμοῖς ἐξασθενεῖ καὶ γίγνεται μανὸν καὶ ἄτονον, κἂν ἐν ἡλίῳ [d] καίηται, χεῖρον ἐργάζεται καὶ τῆς ὕλης ἅπτεται μαλακῶς καὶ καταναλίσκει βράδιον. μάλιστα δ’ ἄν τις εἰς αὐτὸ τὴν αἰτίαν ἐπανάγοι τοὔλαιον· οὐ γὰρ ἀπεικός ἐστι πάλαι μὲν ἄτροφον καὶ ὑδατῶδες εἶναι γεννώμενον ἐκ φυτάδος νέας, ὕστερον δὲ πεττόμενον ἐν τελείοις καὶ συνιστάμενον ἀπὸ πλήθους ἴσου μᾶλλον ἰσχύειν καὶ τρέφειν βέλτιον, εἰ δεῖ τοῖς Ἀμμωνίοις ἀνασῴζειν καίπερ ἄτοπον καὶ ἀλλόκοτον οὖσαν τὴν ὑπόθεσιν.’

Παυσαμένου δὲ τοῦ Ἀμμωνίου ‘μᾶλλον’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘περὶ τοῦ μαντείου δίελθ’ ἡμῖν, ὦ Κλεόμβροτε· μεγάλη γὰρ ἡ παλαιὰ δόξα τῆς ἐκεῖ θειότητος, τὰ δὲ νῦν ἔοικεν [e] ὑπομαραίνεσθαι.’ τοῦ δὲ Κλεομβρότου σιωπῶντος καὶ κάτω βλέποντος ὁ Δημήτριος ‘οὐδέν’ ἔφη ‘δεῖ περὶ τῶν ἐκεῖ πυνθάνεσθαι καὶ διαπορεῖν τὴν ἐνταῦθα τῶν χρηστηρίων ἀμαύρωσιν μᾶλλον δὲ πλὴν ἑνὸς ἢ δυεῖν ἁπάντων ἔκλειψιν ὁρῶντας, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο σκοπεῖν, δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν οὕτως ἐξησθένηκε. τὰ γὰρ ἄλλα τί δεῖ λέγειν, ὅπου γε τὴν Βοιωτίαν ἕνεκα χρηστηρίων πολύφωνον οὖσαν ἐν τοῖς πρότερον χρόνοις νῦν ἐπιλέλοιπε κομιδῇ καθάπερ νάματα, καὶ πολὺς ἐπέσχηκε μαντικῆς αὐχμὸς τὴν χώραν; οὐδαμοῦ γὰρ [f] ἀλλαχόθι νῦν ἢ περὶ Λεβάδειαν ἡ Βοιωτία παρέχει τοῖς χρῄζουσιν ἀρύσασθαι μαντικῆς, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων τὰ μὲν σιγὴ τὰ δὲ παντελὴς ἐρημία κατέσχηκε. καίτοι γε περὶ τὰ Μηδικὰ .... μὲν εὐδοκίμησεν, ‹τὸ δὲ Πτῷον› οὐχ ἧττον [412] [a] ἢ τὸ τοῦ Ἀμφιάρεω ‹καὶ› ἀπεπειράθη μὲν ὡς ἔοικεν ἀμφοτέρων ὡς . ὁ μὲν οὖν τοῦ μαντείου προφήτης φωνῇ Αἰολίδι χρώμενος .... τὸ πρὸ τοῦ ‹τότε τῇ› τῶν βαρβάρων χρησμὸν ἐξήνεγκεν, ὥστε μηδένα ξυνεῖναι [ἁγίων] τῶν παρόντων .... ὃν ἐκεῖνον, ὡς .... τοῦ ἐνθουσιασμοῦ .... τι τοῖς βαρβάροις οὐκ ἔστιν οὐ‹δὲ› δέδοται φωνὴν Ἑλληνίδα λαβεῖν τὸ προσταττόμενον ὑπηρετοῦσαν. ὁ δὲ πεμφθεὶς εἰς Ἀμφιάρεω Λυδὸς ἔδοξε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ὑπηρέτην τοῦ θεοῦ φανέντα πρῶτον μὲν ἀπὸ φωνῆς ἐκβάλλειν αὐτόν, ὡς τοῦ θεοῦ μὴ παρόντος, ἔπειτα ταῖς χερσὶν ὠθεῖν, ἐπιμένοντος δὲ λίθον εὐμεγέθη λαβόντα τὴν κεφαλὴν [b] πατάξαι. ταῦτα δ’ ἦν ὥσπερ ἀντίφωνα τῶν γενησομένων· ἡττήθη γὰρ ὁ Μαρδόνιος, οὐ βασιλέως ἀλλ’ ἐπιτρόπου καὶ διακόνου βασιλέως ἡγουμένου τῶν Ἑλλήνων, καὶ λίθῳ πληγεὶς ἔπεσεν, ὥσπερ ὁ Λυδὸς ἔδοξε πληγῆναι κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους. ἤκμαζε δὲ τότε καὶ τὸ περὶ τὰς Τεγύρας χρηστήριον, ὅπου καὶ γενέσθαι τὸν θεὸν ἱστοροῦσι, καὶ ναμάτων δυεῖν παραρρεόντων τὸ μὲν Φοίνικα θάτερον δ’ Ἐλαίαν ἄχρι νῦν Ὀρχομένιοι λέγουσιν. ἐν μὲν οὖν τοῖς Μηδικοῖς Ἐχεκράτους προφητεύοντος ἀνεῖλε νίκην καὶ κράτος πολέμου τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ὁ θεός· ἐν δὲ τῷ [c] Πελοποννησιακῷ πολέμῳ Δηλίοις ἐκπεσοῦσι τῆς νήσου φασὶ χρησμὸν ἐκ Δελφῶν κομισθῆναι προστάττοντα τὸν τόπον ἀνευρεῖν, ἐν ᾧ γέγονεν ὁ Ἀπόλλων, καὶ θυσίας τινὰς ἐκεῖ τελέσαι. θαυμαζόντων δὲ καὶ διαπορούντων, εἰ μὴ παρ’ αὐτοῖς ὁ θεὸς ἀλλ’ ἑτέρωθι γεγόνοι, τὴν Πυθίαν προσανελεῖν, ὅτι κορώνη φράσει τὸ χωρίον αὐτοῖς. ἀπιόντας οὖν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ γενέσθαι καὶ τῆς πανδοκευτρίας ἀκοῦσαι πρός τινας ξένους βαδίζοντας εἰς Τεγύρας περὶ τοῦ χρηστηρίου διαλεγομένης· τῶν δὲ ξένων, ὡς ἀπῄεσαν, ἀσπαζομένων καὶ προσαγορευόντων τὴν ἄνθρωπον, ὅπερ ὠνομάζετο, Κορώνην, συνεῖναι τὸ λόγιον καὶ θύσαντας [d] ἐν ταῖς Τεγύραις τυχεῖν καθόδου μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον. γεγόνασι δὲ καὶ νεώτεραι τούτων ἐπιφάνειαι περὶ τὰ μαντεῖα ταῦτα, νῦν δ’ ἐκλέλοιπεν· ὥστε τὴν αἰτίαν ἄξιον εἶναι παρὰ τῷ Πυθίῳ διαπορῆσαι τῆς μεταβολῆς.’

Ἤδη δέ πως ἀπὸ τοῦ νεὼ προϊόντες ἐπὶ ταῖς θύραις τῆς Κνιδίων λέσχης ἐγεγόνειμεν· παρελθόντες οὖν εἴσω τοὺς φίλους πρὸς οὓς ἐβαδίζομεν ἑωρῶμεν καθημένους καὶ περιμένοντας ἡμᾶς· ἦν δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἡσυχία διὰ τὴν ὥραν ἀλειφομένων ἢ θεωμένων τοὺς ἀθλητάς. καὶ ὁ Δημήτριος διαμειδιάσας ‘‘ψεύσομαι’ εἶπεν ‘ἢ ἔτυμον ἐρέω’ (Hom. δ 140); δοκεῖτέ μοι μηδὲν ἄξιον σκέμμα διὰ [e] χειρῶν ἔχειν· ὁρῶ γὰρ ὑμᾶς ἀνειμένως σφόδρα καθημένους καὶ διακεχυμένους τοῖς προσώποις.’ ὑπολαβὼν οὖν ὁ Μεγαρεὺς Ἡρακλέων ‘οὐ γὰρ ζητοῦμεν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ βάλλω ῥῆμα πότερον τῶν δύο [τὸ ἓν] λάμβδα κατὰ τὸν μέλλοντα χρόνον ἀπόλλυσιν, οὐδ’ ἀπὸ τίνων ἁπλῶν ὀνομάτων τὸ χεῖρον καὶ τὸ βέλτιον καὶ τὸ χείριστον καὶ τὸ βέλτιστον ἐσχημάτισται. ταῦτα γὰρ ἴσως καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα συντείνει καὶ συνίστησι τὸ πρόσωπον· τὰ δ’ ἄλλ’ ἔξεστι τὰς ὀφρῦς κατὰ χώραν ἔχοντας φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ ζητεῖν ἀτρέμα μὴ δεινὸν βλέποντας μηδὲ χαλεπαίνοντας τοῖς παροῦσιν.’ ‘δέξασθ’ οὖν’ ὁ Δημήτριος ‘ἡμᾶς’ ἔφη ‘καὶ [f] μεθ’ ἡμῶν λόγον, ὃς δὴ προσπέπτωκεν ἡμῖν οἰκεῖος ὢν τοῦ τόπου καὶ διὰ τὸν θεὸν ἅπασι προσήκων· καὶ ὅπως οὐ συνάξετε τὰς ὀφρῦς ἐπιχειροῦντες.’

Ὡς οὖν ἀνεμίχθημεν διακαθεζόμενοι καὶ προύβαλεν [413] [a] εἰς μέσον ὁ Δημήτριος τὸν λόγον, εὐθὺς ἀναπηδήσας ὁ κυνικὸς Δίδυμος, ἐπίκλησιν Πλανητιάδης, καὶ τῇ βακτηρίᾳ δὶς ἢ τρὶς πατάξας ἀνεβόησεν ‘ἰοὺ ἰού, δύσκριτον πρᾶγμα καὶ ζητήσεως δεόμενον πολλῆς ἥκετε κομίζοντες ἡμῖν. θαυμαστὸν γάρ ἐστιν, εἰ τοσαύτης κακίας ὑποκεχυμένης μὴ μόνον, ὡς προεῖπεν Ἡσίοδος (OD 197 ss.), Αἰδὼς καὶ Νέμεσις τὸν ἀνθρώπινον βίον ἀπολελοίπασιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρόνοια θεῶν συσκευασαμένη τὰ χρηστήρια πανταχόθεν οἴχεται; τοὐναντίον ὑμῖν ἐγὼ προβάλλω διαπορῆσαι, πῶς οὐχὶ καὶ τόδ’ ἀπείρηκεν οὐδ’ Ἡρακλῆς αὖθις ἤ τις ἄλλος θεῶν ὑπέσπακε τὸν τρίποδα καταπιμπλάμενον [b] αἰσχρῶν καὶ ἀθέων ἐρωτημάτων, ἃ τῷ θεῷ προβάλλουσιν οἱ μὲν ὡς σοφιστοῦ διάπειραν λαμβάνοντες οἱ δὲ περὶ θησαυρῶν ἢ κληρονομιῶν ἢ γάμων παρανόμων διερωτῶντες· ὥστε κατὰ κράτος ἐξελέγχεσθαι τὸν Πυθαγόραν εἰπόντα βελτίστους ἑαυτῶν γίγνεσθαι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ὅταν πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς βαδίζωσιν· οὕτως ἄρ’ ἃ καλῶς εἶχεν ἀνθρώπου πρεσβυτέρου παρόντος ἀρνεῖσθαι καὶ ἀποκρύπτειν νοσήματα τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ πάθη, ταῦτα γυμνὰ καὶ περιφανῆ κομίζουσιν ἐπὶ τὸν θεόν.’ ἔτι δ’ αὐτοῦ βουλομένου λέγειν ὅ θ’ Ἡρακλέων ἐπελάβετο τοῦ τρίβωνος, κἀγὼ σχεδὸν ἁπάντων αὐτῷ συνηθέστατος ὤν ‘παῦ’’ [c] ἔφην ‘ὦ φίλε Πλανητιάδη, παροξύνων τὸν θεόν· εὐόργητος γάρ ἐστι καὶ πρᾶος

‘κατεκρίθη δὲ θνατοῖς ἀγανώτατος ἔμμεν’

ὥς φησιν ὁ Πίνδαρος (fr. 149). καὶ εἴθ’ ἥλιός ἐστιν εἴτε κύριος ἡλίου καὶ πατὴρ καὶ ἐπέκεινα τοῦ ὁρατοῦ παντός, οὐκ εἰκὸς ἀπαξιοῦν φωνῆς τοὺς νῦν ἀνθρώπους, οἷς αἴτιός ἐστι γενέσεως καὶ τροφῆς καὶ τοῦ εἶναι καὶ φρονεῖν· οὐδ’ ἅμα τὴν πρόνοιαν ὥσπερ εὐγνώμονα μητέρα καὶ χρηστὴν πάντα ποιοῦσαν ἡμῖν καὶ φυλάττουσαν ἐν μόνῃ μνησίκακον εἶναι τῇ μαντικῇ καὶ ταύτην ἀφαιρεῖσθαι δοῦσαν ἐξ ἀρχῆς· ὥσπερ οὐχὶ καὶ τότε πλειόνων ὄντων ἐν πλείοσιν ἀνθρώπων πονηρῶν, ὅτε πολλαχόθεν [d] τῆς οἰκουμένης χρηστήρια καθειστήκει. δεῦρο δὴ πάλιν καθίσας καὶ πρὸς τὴν κακίαν, ἣν εἴωθας ἀεὶ τῷ λόγῳ κολάζειν, Πυθικὰς ἐκεχειρίας σπεισάμενος ἑτέραν τινὰ μεθ’ ἡμῶν αἰτίαν ζήτει τῆς λεγομένης ἐκλείψεως τῶν χρηστηρίων, τὸν δὲ θεὸν εὐμενῆ φύλαττε καὶ ἀμήνιτον.’ ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν τοσοῦτο διεπραξάμην, ὅσον ἀπελθεῖν διὰ θυρῶν σιωπῇ τὸν Πλανητιάδην.

Ἡσυχίας δὲ γενομένης ἐπ’ ὀλίγον ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ἐμὲ προσαγορεύσας ‘ὅρα τί ποιοῦμεν’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Λαμπρία, καὶ πρόσεχε τῷ λόγῳ τὴν διάνοιαν, ὅπως μὴ τὸν θεὸν ἀναίτιον ποιῶμεν. ὁ γὰρ ἄλλῳ τινὶ καὶ μὴ θεοῦ γνώμῃ τὰ [e] παυσάμενα τῶν χρηστηρίων ἐκλιπεῖν ἡγούμενος ὑπόνοιαν δίδωσι τοῦ μὴ γίνεσθαι μηδ’ εἶναι διὰ τὸν θεὸν ἀλλ’ ἑτέρῳ τινὶ τρόπῳ νομίζειν. οὐ γὰρ ἄλλη γέ τις ἔστι μείζων οὐδὲ κρείττων δύναμις, ὥστ’ ἀναιρεῖν καὶ ἀφανίζειν ἔργον θεοῦ τὴν μαντικὴν οὖσαν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Πλανητιάδου λόγος οὐκ ἀρεστὸς ἐμοὶ διά τε τἄλλα καὶ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν, ἣν περὶ τὸν θεὸν ποιεῖ, πῆ μὲν ἀποστρεφόμενον καὶ ἀπαξιοῦντα τὴν κακίαν πῆ δὲ πάλιν αὖ προσιέμενον· ὥσπερ εἰ βασιλεύς τις ἢ τύραννος ἑτέραις ἀποκλείων θύραις τοὺς πονηροὺς καθ’ ἑτέρας εἰσδέχοιτο καὶ χρηματίζοι. τοῦ δὲ μετρίου καὶ ἱκανοῦ καὶ μηδαμῆ περιττοῦ [f] πανταχῆ δ’ αὐτάρκους μάλιστα τοῖς θείοις πρέποντος ἔργοις, εἰ ταύτην λαβὼν ἀρχὴν φαίη τις, ὅτι τῆς κοινῆς ὀλιγανδρίας, ἣν αἱ πρότεραι στάσεις καὶ οἱ πόλεμοι περὶ [414] [a] πᾶσαν ὁμοῦ τι τὴν οἰκουμένην ἀπειργάσαντο, πλεῖστον μέρος ἡ Ἑλλὰς μετέσχηκε, καὶ μόλις ἂν νῦν ὅλη παράσχοι τρισχιλίους ὁπλίτας, ὅσους ἡ Μεγαρέων μία πόλις ἐξέπεμψεν εἰς Πλαταιάς (οὐδὲν οὖν ἕτερον ἦν τὸ πολλὰ καταλιπεῖν χρηστήρια τὸν θεὸν ἢ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐλέγχειν τὴν ἐρημίαν), †ἀκριβῶς ἂν αὐτῷ παράσχοιμι τῆς εὑρησιλογίας. τίνος γὰρ ἦν ἀγαθὸν ἐν Τεγύραις ὡς πρότερον εἶναι μαντεῖον ἢ περὶ τὸ Πτῷον ὅπου μέρος ἡμέρας ἐντυχεῖν ἔστιν ἀνθρώπῳ νέμοντι; καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο δὴ τοὐνταῦθα πρεσβύτατον ὂν χρόνῳ [τε] δόξῃ τε κλεινότατον ὑπὸ θηρίου χαλεποῦ δρακαίνης πολὺν χρόνον ἔρημον γενέσθαι [b] καὶ ἀπροσπέλαστον ἱστοροῦσιν, οὐκ ὀρθῶς τὴν αἰτίαν ἀλλ’ ἀνάπαλιν λαμβάνοντες· ἡ γὰρ ἐρημία τὸ θηρίον ἐπηγάγετο μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ θηρίον ἐποίησε τὴν ἐρημίαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῷ θεῷ δόξαν οὕτως ἥ θ’ Ἑλλὰς ἐρρώσθη πόλεσι καὶ τὸ χωρίον ἀνθρώποις ἐπλήθυνε, δυσὶν ἐχρῶντο προφήτισιν ἐν μέρει καθιεμέναις, καὶ τρίτη δ’ ἔφεδρος ἦν ἀποδεδειγμένη. νῦν δ’ ἔστι μία προφῆτις, καὶ οὐκ ἐγκαλοῦμεν· ἐξαρκεῖ γὰρ αὕτη τοῖς δεομένοις. οὐ τοίνυν αἰτιατέον οὐδὲν τὸν θεόν· ἡ γὰρ οὖσα μαντικὴ καὶ διαμένουσα πᾶσίν ἐστιν ἱκανὴ καὶ πάντας ἀποπέμπει τυγχάνοντας [c] ὧν χρῄζουσιν. ὥσπερ οὖν ἐννέα κήρυξιν ὁ Ἀγαμέμνων ἐχρῆτο (Hom. Β 96) καὶ μόλις κατεῖχε τὴν ἐκκλησίαν διὰ πλῆθος, ἐνταῦθα δ’ ὄψεσθε μεθ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ μίαν φωνὴν ἐξικνουμένην εἰς πάντας, οὕτω τότε πλείοσιν ἐχρῆτο φωναῖς πρὸς πλείονας ἡ μαντική, νῦν δὲ τοὐναντίον ἔδει θαυμάζειν τὸν θεόν, εἰ περιεώρα τὴν μαντικὴν ἀχρήστως δίκην ὕδατος ἀπορρέουσαν ἢ καθάπερ αἱ πέτραι ποιμένων ἐν ἐρημίᾳ καὶ βοσκημάτων φωναῖς ἀντηχοῦσαν.’

Εἰπόντος δὲ ταῦτα τοῦ Ἀμμωνίου κἀμοῦ σιωπῶντος ὁ Κλεόμβροτος ἐμὲ προσαγορεύσας ‘ἤδη σὺ τοῦτο δέδωκας’ ἔφη ‘τὸ καὶ ποιεῖν ταυτὶ τὰ μαντεῖα καὶ ἀναιρεῖν τὸν [d] θεόν;’ ‘οὐκ ἔγωγ’’ εἶπον· ‘ἀναιρεῖσθαι μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν αἰτίᾳ θεοῦ φημι μαντεῖον οὐδὲ χρηστήριον· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἄλλα πολλὰ ποιοῦντος ἡμῖν ἐκείνου καὶ παρασκευάζοντος ἐπάγει φθορὰν ἐνίοις καὶ στέρησιν ἡ φύσις, μᾶλλον δ’ ἡ ὕλη στέρησις οὖσα διαφθείρει πολλάκις καὶ ἀναλύει τὸ γιγνόμενον ὑπὸ τῆς κρείττονος αἰτίας, οὕτω μαντικῶν οἶμαι δυνάμεων σκοτώσεις ἑτέρας καὶ ἀναιρέσεις εἶναι, πολλὰ καλὰ τοῦ θεοῦ διδόντος ἀνθρώποις ἀθάνατον δὲ μηδέν· ὥστε θνήσκειν καὶ τὰ θεῶν θεοὺς δ’ οὒ κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα (fr. 766). τὴν δ’ οὐσίαν αὐτῶν καὶ δύναμιν ἐν τῇ φύσει καὶ τῇ ὕλῃ φασὶ δεῖν οἱ θεοφιλεῖς ζητεῖν, τῷ θεῷ [e] τῆς ἀρχῆς ὥσπερ ἐστὶ δίκαιον φυλαττομένης. εὔηθες γάρ ἐστι καὶ παιδικὸν κομιδῇ τὸ οἴεσθαι τὸν θεὸν αὐτὸν ὥσπερ τοὺς ἐγγαστριμύθους Εὐρυκλέας πάλαι νυνὶ δὲ Πύθωνας προσαγορευομένους ἐνδυόμενον εἰς τὰ σώματα τῶν προφητῶν ὑποφθέγγεσθαι τοῖς ἐκείνων στόμασι καὶ φωναῖς χρώμενον ὀργάνοις. .... καταμιγνὺς ἀνθρωπίναις χρείαις οὐ φείδεται τῆς σεμνότητος οὐδὲ τηρεῖ τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ τὸ μέγεθος αὐτῷ τῆς ἀρετῆς.’

Καὶ ὁ Κλεόμβροτος ‘ὀρθῶς λέγεις· ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ τὸ λαβεῖν καὶ διορίσαι, πῶς χρηστέον καὶ μέχρι τίνων τῇ [f] προνοίᾳ, χαλεπόν, οἱ μὲν οὐδενὸς ἁπλῶς τὸν θεὸν οἱ δ’ ὁμοῦ τι πάντων αἴτιον ποιοῦντες ἀστοχοῦσι τοῦ μετρίου καὶ πρέποντος. εὖ μὲν οὖν λέγουσι καὶ οἱ λέγοντες, ὅτι Πλάτων τὸ ταῖς γεννωμέναις ποιότησιν ὑποκείμενον στοιχεῖον ἐξευρών, ὃ νῦν ὕλην καὶ φύσιν καλοῦσιν, πολλῶν [415] [a] ἀπήλλαξε καὶ μεγάλων ἀποριῶν τοὺς φιλοσόφους· ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκοῦσι πλείονας λῦσαι καὶ μείζονας ἀπορίας οἱ τὸ τῶν δαιμόνων γένος ἐν μέσῳ θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων τρόπον τινὰ τὴν κοινωνίαν ἡμῶν συνάγον εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ συνάπτον ἐξευρόντες· εἴτε μάγων τῶν περὶ Ζωροάστρην ὁ λόγος οὗτός ἐστιν εἴτε Θρᾴκιος ἀπ’ Ὀρφέως εἴτ’ Αἰγύπτιος ἢ Φρύγιος, ὡς τεκμαιρόμεθα ταῖς ἑκατέρωθι τελεταῖς ἀναμεμιγμένα πολλὰ θνητὰ καὶ πένθιμα τῶν ὀργιαζομένων καὶ δρωμένων ἱερῶν ὁρῶντες. Ἑλλήνων δ’ Ὅμηρος μὲν ἔτι φαίνεται κοινῶς ἀμφοτέροις χρώμενος τοῖς ὀνόμασι καὶ [b] τοὺς θεοὺς ἔστιν ὅτε δαίμονας προσαγορεύων· Ἡσίοδος δὲ καθαρῶς καὶ διωρισμένως πρῶτος ἐξέθηκε τῶν λογικῶν τέσσαρα γένη, θεοὺς εἶτα δαίμονας εἶθ’ ἥρωας τὸ δ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώπους, ἐξ ὧν ἔοικε ποιεῖν τὴν μεταβολὴν τοῦ μὲν χρυσοῦ γένους εἰς δαίμονας πολλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς τῶν δ’ ἡμιθέων εἰς ἥρωας ἀποκριθέντων. ἕτεροι δὲ μεταβολὴν τοῖς τε σώμασιν ὁμοίως ποιοῦσι καὶ ταῖς ψυχαῖς· ὥσπερ ‹γὰρ› ἐκ γῆς ὕδωρ ἐκ δ’ ὕδατος ἀὴρ ἐκ δ’ ἀέρος πῦρ γεννώμενον ὁρᾶται τῆς οὐσίας ἄνω φερομένης, οὕτως ἐκ μὲν ἀνθρώπων εἰς ἥρωας ἐκ δ’ ἡρώων εἰς δαίμονας αἱ βελτίονες ψυχαὶ τὴν μεταβολὴν λαμβάνουσιν, ἐκ δὲ δαιμόνων ὀλίγαι μὲν ἐν χρόνῳ πολλῷ δι’ ἀρετὴν καθαρθεῖσαι [c] παντάπασι θειότητος μετέσχον. ἐνίαις δὲ συμβαίνει μὴ κρατεῖν ἑαυτῶν, ἀλλ’ ὑφιεμέναις καὶ ἐνδυομέναις πάλιν σώμασι θνητοῖς ἀλαμπῆ καὶ ἀμυδρὰν ζωὴν ὥσπερ ἀναθυμίασιν ἴσχειν.’

‘Ὁ δ’ Ἡσίοδος (fr. 183) οἴεται καὶ περιόδοις τισὶ χρόνων γίγνεσθαι τοῖς δαίμοσι τὰς τελευτάς· λέγει γὰρ ἐν τῷ τῆς Ναΐδος προσώπῳ καὶ τὸν χρόνον αἰνιττόμενος

‘ἐννέα τοι ζώει γενεὰς λακέρυζα κορώνη,

ἀνδρῶν ἡβώντων· ἔλαφος δέ τε τετρακόρωνος·

τρεῖς δ’ ἐλάφους ὁ κόραξ γηράσκεται· αὐτὰρ ὁ φοίνιξ

ἐννέα τοὺς κόρακας· δέκα δ’ ἡμεῖς τοὺς φοίνικας

[d] νύμφαι ἐυπλόκαμοι, κοῦραι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο.’ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον εἰς πολὺ πλῆθος ἀριθμοῦ συνάγουσιν οἱ μὴ καλῶς δεχόμενοι τὴν γενεάν. ἔστι γὰρ ἐνιαυτός· ὥστε γίγνεσθαι τὸ σύμπαν ἐννακισχίλια ἔτη καὶ ἑπτακόσια καὶ εἴκοσι τῆς τῶν δαιμόνων ζωῆς, ἔλαττον μὲν οὗ νομίζουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν μαθηματικῶν, πλέον δ’ οὗ Πίνδαρος εἴρηκεν εἰπὼν (fr. 165) τὰς νύμφας ζῆν ‘ἰσοδένδρου τέκμωρ αἰῶνος λαχούσας,’ διὸ καὶ καλεῖν αὑτὰς ἁμαδρυάδας.’ ἔτι δ’ αὐτοῦ λέγοντος Δημήτριος ὑπολαβών ‘πῶς’ ἔφη ‘λέγεις, ὦ Κλεόμβροτε, γενεὰν ἀνδρὸς εἰρῆσθαι τὸν ἐνιαυτόν; οὔτε γάρ ‘ἡβῶντος’ οὔτε ‘γηρῶντος’, ὡς [e] ἀναγιγνώσκουσιν ἔνιοι, χρόνος ἀνθρωπίνου βίου τοσοῦτός ἐστιν. ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν ‘ἡβώντων’ ἀναγιγνώσκοντες ἔτη τριάκοντα ποιοῦσι τὴν γενεὰν καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (A 19), ἐν ᾧ χρόνῳ γεννῶντα παρέχει τὸν ἐξ αὑτοῦ γεγεννημένον ὁ γεννήσας, οἱ δέ ‘γηρώντων’ πάλιν, οὐχ ‘ἡβώντων’ γράφοντες ὀκτὼ καὶ ἑκατὸν ἔτη νέμουσι τῇ γενεᾷ· τὰ γὰρ πεντήκοντα καὶ τέσσαρα μεσούσης ὅρον ἀνθρωπίνης ζωῆς εἶναι, συγκείμενον ἔκ τε τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ τῶν πρώτων δυεῖν ἐπιπέδων καὶ δυεῖν τετραγώνων καὶ δυεῖν κύβων, οὓς καὶ Πλάτων (Tim. 34c ss.) ἀριθμοὺς ἔλαβεν ἐν τῇ ψυχογονίᾳ. καὶ [f] ὁ λόγος ὅλος ᾐνίχθαι δοκεῖ τῷ Ἡσιόδῳ πρὸς τὴν ἐκπύρωσιν, ὁπηνίκα συνεκλείπειν τοῖς ὑγροῖς εἰκός ἐστι τὰς Νύμφας,

‘αἵ τ’ ἄλσεα καλὰ νέμονται

καὶ πηγὰς ποταμῶν καὶ πίσεα ποιήεντα (Υ 8).’’

Καὶ ὁ Κλεόμβροτος ‘ἀκούω ταῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘πολλῶν καὶ ὁρῶ τὴν Στωικὴν ἐκπύρωσιν ὥσπερ τὰ Ἡρακλείτου καὶ τὰ Ὀρφέως ἐπινεμομένην ἔπη οὕτω καὶ τὰ Ἡσιόδου καὶ [416] [a] συνεξάπτουσαν· ἀλλ’ οὔτε τοῦ κόσμου τὴν φθορὰν ἀνέχομαι λεγομένην, τά τ’ ἀμήχανα †καὶ ὧν ὑπόμνησις τῶν φωνῶν μάλιστα περὶ τὴν κορώνην καὶ τὴν ἔλαφον ἐκδύεσθαι ἐπὶ τοὺς ὑπερβάλλοντας. οὐκ ἐνιαυτὸς ἀρχὴν ἐν αὑτῷ καὶ τελευτὴν ὁμοῦ τι ‘πάντων ὧν φέρουσιν ὧραι γῆ δὲ φύει’ περιεσχηκὼς οὐδ’ ἀνθρώπων ἀπὸ τρόπου γενεὰ κέκληται; καὶ γὰρ ὑμεῖς ὁμολογεῖτε δήπου τὸν Ἡσίοδον ἀνθρωπίνην ζωὴν τὴν γενεὰν λέγειν. ἦ γὰρ οὐχ οὕτως;’ συνέφησεν ὁ Δημήτριος. ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν κἀκεῖνο δῆλον’ ὁ Κλεόμβροτος εἶπε ‘τὸ πολλάκις τὸ μετροῦν καὶ τὰ μετρούμενα τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασι προσαγορεύεσθαι, [b] κοτύλην καὶ χοίνικα καὶ ἀμφορέα καὶ μέδιμνον. ὃν τρόπον οὖν τοῦ παντὸς ἀριθμοῦ τὴν μονάδα μέτρον οὖσαν ἐλάχιστον καὶ ἀρχὴν ἀριθμὸν καλοῦμεν, οὕτω τὸν ἐνιαυτόν, ᾧ πρώτῳ μετροῦμεν ἀνθρώπου βίον, ὁμωνύμως τῷ μετρουμένῳ γενεὰν ὠνόμασε. καὶ γὰρ οὓς μὲν ἐκεῖνοι ποιοῦσιν ἀριθμοὺς οὐδὲν ἔχουσι τῶν νενομισμένων ἐπιφανῶν καὶ λαμπρῶν ὡς ἐν ἀριθμοῖς· ὁ δὲ τῶν ἐννακισχιλίων ἑπτακοσίων εἴκοσι τὴν γένεσιν ἔσχηκε συνθέσει μὲν ἐκ τῶν ἀπὸ μονάδος τεσσάρων ἐφεξῆς τετράκις γενομένων τεσσάρων· τεσσαράκοντα γὰρ ἑκατέρως γίγνεται. ταῦτα δὲ πεντάκις τριγωνισθέντα τὸν ἐκκείμενον ἀριθμὸν παρέσχεν.

[c] ἀλλὰ περὶ μὲν τούτων οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον ἡμᾶς Δημητρίῳ διαφέρεσθαι. καὶ γὰρ κἂν πλείων ὁ χρόνος ᾖ κἂν ἐλάττων κἂν τεταγμένος κἂν ἄτακτος, ἐν ᾧ μεταλλάττει δαίμονος ψυχὴ καὶ ἥρωος ‹τὸν› βίον, οὐδὲν ἧττον ὃ βούλεται δεδείξεται μετὰ μαρτύρων σαφῶν καὶ παλαιῶν, ὅτι φύσεις τινές εἰσιν ὥσπερ ἐν μεθορίῳ θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων δεχόμεναι πάθη θνητὰ καὶ μεταβολὰς ἀναγκαίας, οὓς δαίμονας ὀρθῶς ἔχει κατὰ νόμον πατέρων ἡγουμένους καὶ ὀνομάζοντας σέβεσθαι.’

‘Παράδειγμα δὲ τῷ λόγῳ Ξενοκράτης (p. 79 Heinze) μὲν ὁ Πλάτωνος ἑταῖρος ἐποιήσατο τὸ τῶν τριγώνων, [d] θείῳ μὲν ἀπεικάσας τὸ ἰσόπλευρον θνητῷ δὲ τὸ σκαληνὸν τὸ δ’ ἰσοσκελὲς δαιμονίῳ· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἴσον πάντῃ τὸ δ’ ἄνισον πάντῃ, τὸ δὲ πῆ μὲν ἴσον πῆ δ’ ἄνισον, ὥσπερ ἡ δαιμόνων φύσις ἔχουσα καὶ πάθος θνητοῦ καὶ θεοῦ δύναμιν. ἡ δὲ φύσις αἰσθητὰς εἰκόνας ἐξέθηκε καὶ ὁμοιότητας ὁρωμένας, θεῶν μὲν ἥλιον καὶ ἄστρα θνητῶν δὲ σέλα καὶ κομήτας καὶ διᾴττοντας, ὡς Εὐριπίδης εἴκασεν ἐν οἷς εἶπεν (fr. 971)

‘ὁ δ’ ἄρτι θάλλων σάρκα διοπετὴς ὅπως

ἀστὴρ ἀπέσβη, πνεῦμ’ ἀφεὶς ἐς αἰθέρα·’

[e] μικτὸν δὲ σῶμα καὶ μίμημα δαιμόνιον ὄντως τὴν σελήνην, ‹ἣν› τῷ τῇ τούτου τοῦ γένους συνᾴδειν περιφορᾷ φθίσεις φαινομένας δεχομένην καὶ αὐξήσεις καὶ μεταβολὰς ὁρῶντες οἱ μὲν ἄστρον γεῶδες οἱ δ’ ὀλυμπίαν γῆν οἱ δὲ χθονίας ὁμοῦ καὶ οὐρανίας κλῆρον Ἑκάτης προσεῖπον. ὥσπερ οὖν εἰ τὸν ἀέρα τις ἀνέλοι καὶ ὑποσπάσειε τὸν μεταξὺ γῆς καὶ σελήνης, τὴν ἑνότητα διαλύσει καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τοῦ παντὸς ἐν μέσῳ κενῆς καὶ ἀσυνδέτου χώρας γενομένης, οὕτως οἱ δαιμόνων γένος μὴ ἀπολείποντες ἀνεπίμικτα τὰ τῶν θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων ποιοῦσι καὶ ἀσυνάλλακτα, τὴν [f] ἑρμηνευτικήν, ὡς Πλάτων (Pol. 260d) ἔλεγεν, καὶ διακονικὴν ἀναιροῦντες φύσιν, ἢ πάντα φύρειν ἅμα καὶ ταράττειν ἀναγκάζουσιν ἡμᾶς τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις πάθεσι καὶ πράγμασι τὸν θεὸν ἐμβιβάζοντας καὶ κατασπῶντας ἐπὶ τὰς χρείας, ὥσπερ αἱ Θετταλαὶ λέγονται τὴν σελήνην. [417] [a] ἀλλ’ ἐκείνων μὲν ἐν γυναιξὶ τὸ πανοῦργον ἔσχε πίστιν, Ἀγλαονίκης τῆς Ἡγήτορος, ὥς φασιν, ἀστρολογικῆς γυναικός, ἐν ἐκλείψει σελήνης ἀεὶ προσποιουμένης γοητεύειν καὶ καθαιρεῖν αὐτήν· ἡμεῖς δὲ μήτε μαντείας τινὰς ἀθειάστους εἶναι λέγοντας ἢ τελετὰς καὶ ὀργιασμοὺς ἀμελουμένους ὑπὸ θεῶν ἀκούωμεν μήτ’ αὖ πάλιν τὸν θεὸν ἐν τούτοις ἀναστρέφεσθαι καὶ παρεῖναι καὶ συμπραγματεύεσθαι δοξάζωμεν, ἀλλ’ οἷς δίκαιόν ἐστι ταῦτα λειτουργοῖς θεῶν ἀνατιθέντες ὥσπερ ὑπηρέταις καὶ γραμματεῦσι δαίμονας νομίζωμεν ἐπισκόπους [θεῶν] ἱερῶν καὶ μυστηρίων ὀργιαστάς, ἄλλους δὲ τῶν ὑπερηφάνων καὶ μεγάλων τιμωροὺς [b] ἀδικιῶν περιπολεῖν. τοὺς δὲ πάνυ σεμνῶς ὁ Ἡσίοδος (OD 123. 126) ‘ἁγνούς’ προσεῖπε ‘πλουτοδότας, καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιλήιον ἔχοντας’, ὡς βασιλικοῦ τοῦ εὖ ποιεῖν ὄντος. εἰσὶ γάρ, ὡς ἐν ἀνθρώποις, καὶ δαίμοσιν ἀρετῆς διαφοραὶ καὶ τοῦ παθητικοῦ καὶ ἀλόγου τοῖς μὲν ἀσθενὲς καὶ ἀμαυρὸν ἔτι λείψανον ὥσπερ περίττωμα τοῖς δὲ πολὺ καὶ δυσκατάσβεστον ἔνεστιν, ὧν ἴχνη καὶ σύμβολα πολλαχοῦ θυσίαι καὶ τελεταὶ καὶ μυθολογίαι σῴζουσι καὶ διαφυλάττουσιν ἐνδιεσπαρμένα.’

‘Περὶ μὲν οὖν τῶν μυστικῶν, ἐν οἷς τὰς μεγίστας [c] ἐμφάσεις καὶ διαφάσεις λαβεῖν ἔστι τῆς περὶ δαιμόνων ἀληθείας, ‘εὔστομά μοι κείσθω’ καθ’ Ἡρόδοτον (II 171)· ἑορτὰς δὲ καὶ θυσίας, ὥσπερ ἡμέρας ἀποφράδας καὶ σκυθρωπάς, ἐν αἷς ὠμοφαγίαι καὶ διασπασμοὶ νηστεῖαί τε καὶ κοπετοὶ πολλαχοῦ δὲ πάλιν αἰσχρολογίαι πρὸς ἱεροῖς (Pind. fr. 208)

‘μανίαι τ’ ἀλαλαί τ’ ὀρινομένων ῥιψαύχενι σὺν κλόνῳ’,

θεῶν μὲν οὐδενὶ δαιμόνων δὲ φαύλων ἀποτροπῆς ἕνεκα φήσαιμ’ ἂν τελεῖσθαι μειλίχια καὶ παραμύθια. καὶ τὰς πάλαι ποιουμένας ἀνθρωποθυσίας οὔτε θεοὺς ἀπαιτεῖν ἢ προσδέχεσθαι πιθανόν ἐστιν, οὔτε μάτην ἂν ἠνέσχοντο [d] βασιλεῖς καὶ στρατηγοὶ παῖδας αὑτῶν ἐπιδιδόντες καὶ καταρχόμενοι καὶ σφάττοντες, ἀλλὰ χαλεπῶν καὶ δυστρόπων ὀργὰς καὶ βαρυθυμίας ἀφοσιούμενοι καὶ ἀποπιμπλάντες ἀλαστόρων, ἐνίων δὲ μανικοὺς καὶ τυραννικοὺς ἔρωτας οὐ δυναμένων οὐδὲ βουλομένων σώμασι καὶ διὰ σωμάτων ὁμιλεῖν. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ Ἡρακλῆς Οἰχαλίαν ἐπολιόρκει διὰ παρθένον, οὕτω πολλάκις ἰσχυροὶ καὶ βίαιοι δαίμονες ἐξαιτούμενοι ψυχὴν ἀνθρωπίνην περιεχομένην σώματι λοιμούς τε πόλεσι καὶ γῆς ἀφορίας ἐπάγουσι καὶ πολέμους καὶ στάσεις ταράττουσιν, ἄχρι οὗ λάβωσι καὶ [e] τύχωσιν ὧν ἐρῶσιν. ἔνιοι δὲ τοὐναντίον, ὥσπερ ἐν Κρήτῃ χρόνον συχνὸν διάγων ἔγνων ἄτοπόν τινα τελουμένην ἑορτήν, ἐν ᾗ καὶ εἴδωλον ἀνδρὸς ἀκέφαλον ἀναδεικνύουσι καὶ λέγουσιν ὡς οὗτος ἦν Μόλος ὁ Μηριόνου πατήρ, νύμφῃ δὲ πρὸς βίαν συγγενόμενος ἀκέφαλος εὑρεθείη.’

‘Καὶ μὴν ὅσας ἔν τε μύθοις καὶ ὕμνοις λέγουσι καὶ ᾄδουσι τοῦτο μὲν ἁρπαγὰς τοῦτο δὲ πλάνας θεῶν κρύψεις τε καὶ φυγὰς καὶ λατρείας, οὐ θεῶν εἰσιν ἀλλὰ δαιμόνων παθήματα καὶ τύχαι μνημονευόμεναι δι’ ἀρετὴν καὶ δύναμιν αὐτῶν, καὶ οὔτ’ Αἰσχύλος εἶπεν ‹ὀρθῶς› (Suppl. 214)

‘ἁγνόν τ’ Ἀπόλλω φυγάδ’ ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ θεόν’,

[f] οὔθ’ ὁ Σοφοκλέους Ἄδμητος (fr. 767)

‘οὑμὸς δ’ ἀλέκτωρ αὐτὸν ἦγε πρὸς μύλην·’

πλεῖστον δὲ τῆς ἀληθείας διαμαρτάνουσιν οἱ Δελφῶν θεολόγοι νομίζοντες ἐνταῦθά ποτε πρὸς ὄφιν τῷ θεῷ περὶ τοῦ χρηστηρίου μάχην γενέσθαι καὶ ταῦτα ποιητὰς καὶ λογογράφους ἐν θεάτροις ἀγωνιζομένους λέγειν ἐῶντες, [418] [a] ὥσπερ ἐπίτηδες ἀντιμαρτυροῦντας ὧν δρῶσιν ἱεροῖς τοῖς ἁγιωτάτοις’. θαυμάσαντος δὲ τοῦ Φιλίππου (παρῆν ‹γὰρ› ὁ συγγραφεύς) καὶ πυθομένου, τίσιν ἀντιμαρτυρεῖν †θεοῖς οἴεται τοὺς ἀ[ντα]γωνιζομένους· ‘τούτοις’ ἔφη ‘τοῖς περὶ τὸ χρηστήριον, οἷς ἄρτι τοὺς ἔξω Πυλῶν πάντας Ἕλληνας ἡ πόλις κατοργιάζουσα μέχρι Τεμπῶν ἐλήλακεν. ἥ τε γὰρ ἱσταμένη καλιὰς ἐνταῦθα περὶ τὴν ἅλω δι’ ἐννέα ἐτῶν οὐ φωλεοῦ δὴ τοῦ δράκοντος [χειά], ἀλλὰ μίμημα τυραννικῆς ἢ βασιλικῆς ἐστιν οἰκήσεως· ἥ τε μετὰ σιγῆς ἐπ’ αὐτὴν διὰ τῆς ὀνομαζομένης Δολωνίας ἔφοδος, ᾗ Λαβυάδαι τὸν ἀμφιθαλῆ κόρον ἡμμέναις δᾳσὶν [b] ἄγουσι καὶ προσβαλόντες τὸ πῦρ τῇ καλιάδι καὶ τὴν τράπεζαν ἀνατρέψαντες ἀνεπιστρεπτὶ φεύγουσι διὲκ θυρῶν τοῦ ἱεροῦ· καὶ τελευταῖον αἵ τε πλάναι καὶ ἡ λατρεία τοῦ παιδὸς οἵ τε γιγνόμενοι περὶ τὰ Τέμπη καθαρμοὶ μεγάλου τινὸς ἄγους καὶ τολμήματος ὑποψίαν ἔχουσι. παγγέλοιον γάρ ἐστιν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, τὸν Ἀπόλλω κτείναντα θηρίον φεύγειν ἐπὶ πέρατα τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἁγνισμοῦ δεόμενον, εἶτ’ ἐκεῖ χοάς τινας χεῖσθαι καὶ δρᾶν ἃ δρῶσιν ἄνθρωποι μηνίματα δαιμόνων ἀφοσιούμενοι καὶ πραΰνοντες, οὓς ἀλάστορας καὶ παλαμναίους ὀνομάζουσιν, ὡς [c] ἀλήστων τινῶν καὶ παλαιῶν μιασμάτων μνήμαις ἐπεξιόντας. ὃν δ’ ἤκουσα λόγον ἤδη περὶ τῆς φυγῆς ταύτης καὶ τῆς μεταστάσεως, ἄτοπος μέν ἐστι δεινῶς καὶ παράδοξος· εἰ δ’ ἀληθείας τι μετέχει, μὴ μικρὸν οἰώμεθα μηδὲ κοινὸν εἶναι τὸ πραχθὲν ἐν τοῖς τότε χρόνοις περὶ τὸ χρηστήριον. ἀλλ’ ἵνα μὴ τὸ Ἐμπεδόκλειον (fr. 24) ποιεῖν δόξω

‘κορυφὰς ἑτέρας ἑτέρῃσι προσάπτων

μύθων μὴ τελέειν ἀτραπὸν μίαν’,

ἐάσατέ με τοῖς πρώτοις τὸ προσῆκον ἐπιθεῖναι τέλος· ἤδη γὰρ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ γεγόναμεν· καὶ τετολμήσθω μετὰ πολλοὺς εἰρῆσθαι καὶ ἡμῖν, ὅτι τοῖς περὶ τὰ μαντεῖα καὶ χρηστήρια τεταγμένοις δαιμονίοις ἐκλείπουσί τε κομιδῇ συνεκλείπει [d] τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ φυγόντων ἢ μεταστάντων ἀποβάλλει τὴν δύναμιν, εἶτα παρόντων αὖθις διὰ χρόνου πολλοῦ καθάπερ ὄργανα φθέγγεται τῶν χρωμένων ἐπιστάντων καὶ παρόντων.’

Ταῦτα τοῦ Κλεομβρότου διελθόντος ὁ Ἡρακλέων ‘οὐδεὶς μέν’ ἔφη ‘τῶν βεβήλων καὶ ἀμυήτων καὶ περὶ θεῶν δόξας ἀσυγκράτους ἡμῖν ἐχόντων πάρεστιν· αὐτοὶ δὲ παραφυλάττωμεν αὑτούς, ὦ Φίλιππε, μὴ λάθωμεν ἀτόπους ὑποθέσεις καὶ μεγάλας τῷ λόγῳ διδόντες’. ‘εὖ λέγεις’ ὁ Φίλιππος εἶπεν· ‘ἀλλὰ τί μάλιστά σε δυσωπεῖ [e] τῶν ὑπὸ Κλεομβρότου τιθεμένων;’ καὶ ὁ Ἡρακλέων ‘τὸ μὲν ἐφεστάναι τοῖς χρηστηρίοις’ εἶπε ‘μὴ θεοὺς οἷς ἀπηλλάχθαι τῶν περὶ γῆν προσῆκόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ δαίμονας ὑπηρέτας θεῶν, οὐ δοκεῖ μοι κακῶς ἀξιοῦσθαι· τὸ δὲ τοῖς δαίμοσι τούτοις μονονουχὶ δράγδην λαμβάνοντας ἐκ τῶν ἐπῶν τῶν Ἐμπεδοκλέους ἁμαρτίας καὶ ἄτας καὶ πλάνας θεηλάτους ἐπιφέρειν, τελευτῶντας δὲ καὶ θανάτους ὥσπερ ἀνθρώπων ὑποτίθεσθαι, θρασύτερον ἡγοῦμαι καὶ βαρβαρικώτερον.’ ἠρώτησεν οὖν ὁ Κλεόμβροτος τὸν Φίλιππον, ὅστις εἴη καὶ ὁπόθεν ὁ νεανίας· πυθόμενος δὲ τοὔνομα καὶ τὴν πόλιν ‘οὐδ’ ἡμᾶς αὐτούς’ ἔφη ‘λανθάνομεν, ὦ Ἡρακλέων, [f] ἐν λόγοις ἀτόποις γεγονότες· ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστι περὶ πραγμάτων μεγάλων μὴ μεγάλαις προσχρησάμενον ἀρχαῖς ἐπὶ τὸ εἰκὸς τῇ δόξῃ προελθεῖν. σὺ δὲ σεαυτὸν λέληθας ὃ δίδως ἀφαιρούμενος· ὁμολογεῖς γὰρ εἶναι δαίμονας, τῷ δὲ μὴ φαύλους ἀξιοῦν εἶναι μηδὲ θνητοὺς οὐκέτι δαίμονας [419] [a] φυλάττεις· τίνι γὰρ τῶν θεῶν διαφέρουσιν, εἰ καὶ κατ’ οὐσίαν τὸ ἄφθαρτον καὶ κατ’ ἀρετὴν τὸ ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἀναμάρτητον ἔχουσι;’

Πρὸς ταῦτα τοῦ Ἡρακλέωνος σιωπῇ διανοουμένου τι πρὸς αὑτὸν ὁ Φίλιππος ‘ἀλλὰ φαύλους μέν’ ἔφη ‘δαίμονας οὐκ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς μόνον, ὦ Ἡρακλέων, ἀπέλιπεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Πλάτων καὶ Ξενοκράτης καὶ Χρύσιππος (fr. 1104)· ἔτι δὲ Δημόκριτος (fr. 166) εὐχόμενος ‘εὐλόγχων εἰδώλων’ τυγχάνειν, ᾗ δῆλος ἦν ἕτερα δυστράπελα καὶ μοχθηρὰς γιγνώσκων ἔχοντα προαιρέσεις τινὰς καὶ ὁρμάς. περὶ δὲ θανάτου τῶν τοιούτων ἀκήκοα λόγον ἀνδρὸς οὐκ [b] ἄφρονος οὐδ’ ἀλαζόνος. Αἰμιλιανοῦ γὰρ τοῦ ῥήτορος, οὗ καὶ ὑμῶν ἔνιοι διακηκόασιν, Ἐπιθέρσης ἦν πατήρ, ἐμὸς πολίτης καὶ διδάσκαλος γραμματικῶν. οὗτος ἔφη ποτὲ πλέων εἰς Ἰταλίαν ἐπιβῆναι νεὼς ἐμπορικὰ χρήματα καὶ συχνοὺς ἐπιβάτας ἀγούσης· ἑσπέρας δ’ ἤδη περὶ τὰς Ἐχινάδας νήσους ἀποσβῆναι τὸ πνεῦμα, καὶ τὴν ναῦν διαφερομένην πλησίον γενέσθαι Παξῶν· ἐγρηγορέναι δὲ τοὺς πλείστους, πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ πίνειν ἔτι δεδειπνηκότας· ἐξαίφνης δὲ φωνὴν ἀπὸ τῆς νήσου τῶν Παξῶν ἀκουσθῆναι, Θαμοῦν τινος βοῇ καλοῦντος, ὥστε θαυμάζειν. ὁ δὲ Θαμοῦς Αἰγύπτιος ἦν κυβερνήτης οὐδὲ τῶν ἐμπλεόντων [c] γνώριμος πολλοῖς ἀπ’ ὀνόματος. δὶς μὲν οὖν κληθέντα σιωπῆσαι, τὸ δὲ τρίτον ὑπακοῦσαι τῷ καλοῦντι· κἀκεῖνον ἐπιτείνοντα τὴν φωνὴν εἰπεῖν ‘ὁπόταν γένῃ κατὰ τὸ Παλῶδες, ἀπάγγειλον ὅτι Πὰν ὁ μέγας τέθνηκε.’ τοῦτ’ ἀκούσαντας ὁ Ἐπιθέρσης ἔφη πάντας ἐκπλαγῆναι καὶ διδόντων ἑαυτοῖς λόγον εἴτε ποιῆσαι βέλτιον εἴη τὸ προστεταγμένον εἴτε μὴ πολυπραγμονεῖν ἀλλ’ ἐᾶν, οὕτως γνῶναι τὸν Θαμοῦν, εἰ μὲν εἴη πνεῦμα, παραπλεῖν ἡσυχίαν ἔχοντα, νηνεμίας δὲ καὶ γαλήνης περὶ τὸν τόπον γενομένης ἀνειπεῖν ὃ ἤκουσεν. ὡς οὖν ἐγένετο κατὰ τὸ Παλῶδες, οὔτε [d] πνεύματος ὄντος οὔτε κλύδωνος, ἐκ πρύμνης βλέποντα τὸν Θαμοῦν πρὸς τὴν γῆν εἰπεῖν, ὥσπερ ἤκουσεν, ὅτι ‘ὁ μέγας Πὰν τέθνηκεν’. οὐ φθῆναι δὲ παυσάμενον αὐτὸν καὶ γενέσθαι μέγαν οὐχ ἑνὸς ἀλλὰ πολλῶν στεναγμὸν ἅμα θαυμασμῷ μεμιγμένον. οἷα δὲ πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων παρόντων ταχὺ τὸν λόγον ἐν Ῥώμῃ σκεδασθῆναι, καὶ τὸν Θαμοῦν γενέσθαι μετάπεμπτον ὑπὸ Τιβερίου Καίσαρος. οὕτω δὲ πιστεῦσαι τῷ λόγῳ τὸν Τιβέριον, ὥστε διαπυνθάνεσθαι καὶ ζητεῖν περὶ τοῦ Πανός· εἰκάζειν δὲ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν φιλολόγους συχνοὺς ὄντας τὸν ἐξ Ἑρμοῦ καὶ [e] Πηνελόπης γεγενημένον.’ ὁ μὲν οὖν Φίλιππος εἶχε καὶ τῶν παρόντων ἐνίους μάρτυρας Αἰμιλιανοῦ τοῦ γέροντος ἀκηκοότας.

Ὁ δὲ Δημήτριος ἔφη τῶν περὶ τὴν Βρεττανίαν νήσων εἶναι πολλὰς ἐρήμους σποράδας, ὧν ἐνίας δαιμόνων καὶ ἡρώων ὀνομάζεσθαι· πλεῦσαι δὲ αὐτὸς ἱστορίας καὶ θέας ἕνεκα πομπῇ τοῦ βασιλέως εἰς τὴν ἔγγιστα κειμένην τῶν ἐρήμων ἔχουσαν οὐ πολλοὺς ‹τοὺς› ἐποικοῦντας ἱεροὺς δὲ καὶ ἀσύλους πάντας ὑπὸ τῶν Βρεττανῶν ὄντας. ἀφικομένου δ’ αὐτοῦ νεωστὶ σύγχυσιν μεγάλην περὶ τὸν ἀέρα καὶ διοσημίας πολλὰς γενέσθαι καὶ πνεύματα καταρραγῆναι καὶ πεσεῖν πρηστῆρας· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐλώφησε, λέγειν τοὺς νησιώτας [f] ὅτι τῶν κρεισσόνων τινὸς ἔκλειψις γέγονεν. ‘ὡς γὰρ λύχνος ἀναπτόμενος’ φάναι ‘δεινὸν οὐδὲν ἔχει σβεννύμενος δὲ πολλοῖς λυπηρός ἐστιν, οὕτως αἱ μεγάλαι ψυχαὶ τὰς μὲν ἀναλάμψεις εὐμενεῖς καὶ ἀλύπους ἔχουσιν, αἱ δὲ σβέσεις αὐτῶν καὶ φθοραὶ πολλάκις μέν, ὡς νυνί, πνεύματα καὶ ζάλας τρέφουσι, πολλάκις δὲ λοιμικοῖς πάθεσι τὸν ἀέρα [420] [a] φαρμάττουσιν.’ ἐκεῖ μέντοι μίαν εἶναι νῆσον, ἐν ᾗ τὸν Κρόνον καθεῖρχθαι φρουρούμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ Βριάρεω καθεύδοντα· δεσμὸν γὰρ αὐτῷ τὸν ὕπνον μεμηχανῆσθαι, πολλοὺς δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν εἶναι δαίμονας ὀπαδοὺς καὶ θεράποντας.

Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Κλεόμβροτος ‘ἔχω μέν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ἐγὼ τοιαῦτα διελθεῖν, ἀρκεῖ δὲ πρὸς τὴν ὑπόθεσιν τὸ μηδὲν ἐναντιοῦσθαι μηδὲ κωλύειν ἔχειν οὕτω ταῦτα. καίτοι τοὺς Στωικούς (St. V. Fr. II 1049)’ ἔφη ‘γιγνώσκομεν οὐ μόνον κατὰ δαιμόνων ἣν λέγω δόξαν ἔχοντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ θεῶν ὄντων τοσούτων τὸ πλῆθος ἑνὶ χρωμένους ἀιδίῳ καὶ ἀφθάρτῳ· τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους καὶ γεγονέναι καὶ [b] φθαρήσεσθαι νομίζοντας. Ἐπικουρείων (fr. 394) δὲ χλευασμοὺς καὶ γέλωτας οὔτι φοβητέον οἷς τολμῶσι χρῆσθαι καὶ κατὰ τῆς προνοίας μῦθον αὐτὴν ἀποκαλοῦντες. ἡμεῖς δὲ τὴν ἀπειρίαν μῦθον εἶναί φαμεν ἐν κόσμοις τοσούτοις μηδένα λόγῳ θείῳ κυβερνώμενον ἔχουσαν, ἀλλὰ πάντας ἐκ ταὐτομάτου καὶ γεγονότας καὶ συνισταμένους. εἰ δὲ χρὴ γελᾶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ, τὰ εἴδωλα γελαστέον τὰ κωφὰ καὶ τυφλὰ καὶ ἄψυχα, ‹ἃ› ποιμαίνουσιν ἀπλέτους ἐτῶν περιόδους ἐπιφαινόμενα καὶ περινοστοῦντα πάντῃ, τὰ μὲν ἔτι ζώντων τὰ δὲ πάλαι κατακαέντων ἢ κατασαπέντων [c] ἀπορρυέντα, φλεδόνας καὶ σκιὰς ἕλκοντες εἰς φυσιολογίαν, ἂν δὲ φῇ τις εἶναι δαίμονας οὐ φύσει μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ λόγοις καὶ †ἀεὶ τὸ σῴζεσθαι καὶ διαμένειν πολὺν χρόνον ἔχοντας, δυσκολαίνοντες.’

Ῥηθέντων δὲ τούτων ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ‘ὀρθῶς’ ἔφη ‘μοι δοκεῖ Θεόφραστος ἀποφήνασθαι ‘τί γὰρ κωλύει φωνὴν δέξασθαι σεμνὴν καὶ φιλοσοφωτάτην; καὶ γὰρ ἀθετουμένη πολλὰ τῶν ἐνδεχομένων ἀποδειχθῆναι δὲ μὴ δυναμένων ἀναιρεῖ, καὶ τιθεμένη πολλὰ συνεφέλκεται τῶν ἀδυνάτων καὶ ἀνυπάρκτων .’ ὃ μέντοι μόνον ἀκήκοα [d] τῶν Ἐπικουρείων λεγόντων πρὸς τοὺς εἰσαγομένους ὑπ’ Ἐμπεδοκλέους (fr. 115. 122) δαίμονας, ὡς οὐ δυνατὸν εἶναι φαύλους καὶ ἁμαρτητικοὺς ὄντας μακαρίους καὶ μακραίωνας, πολλὴν τυφλότητα τῆς κακίας ἐχούσης καὶ τὸ περιπτωτικὸν τοῖς ἀναιρετικοῖς, εὔηθές ἐστιν. οὕτω γὰρ Ἐπίκουρός τε χείρων Γοργίου φανεῖται τοῦ σοφιστοῦ καὶ Μητρόδωρος Ἀλέξιδος τοῦ κωμῳδοποιοῦ· διπλάσιον γὰρ οὗτος ἔζησε Μητροδώρου, Ἐπικούρου δ’ ἐκεῖνος πλέον ἢ ἐπίτριτον. ἄλλως γὰρ ἰσχυρὸν ἀρετὴν καὶ κακίαν ἀσθενὲς λέγομεν, οὐ πρὸς διαμονὴν καὶ διάλυσιν σώματος· ἐπεὶ καὶ τῶν θηρίων πολλὰ ‹μὲν› δυσκίνητα καὶ νωθρὰ [e] ταῖς ψυχαῖς ὄντα πολλὰ δ’ ἀκόλαστα καὶ ἄτακτα τῶν συνετῶν καὶ πανούργων χρόνους ζῇ μακροτέρους. ὅθεν οὐκ εὖ τῷ θεῷ τὴν ἀιδιότητα ποιοῦσιν ἐκ φυλακῆς καὶ διακρούσεως τῶν ἀναιρετικῶν. ἔδει γὰρ ἐν τῇ φύσει τοῦ μακαρίου τὸ ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἄφθαρτον εἶναι μηδεμιᾶς πραγματείας δεόμενον. ἀλλ’ ἴσως τὸ λέγειν πρὸς μὴ παρόντας οὐκ εὔγνωμον φαίνεται. πάλιν οὖν ὁ Κλεόμβροτος ἡμῖν ὃν ἄρτι περὶ τῆς μεταστάσεως καὶ φυγῆς τῶν δαιμονίων ἀφῆκε λόγον ἀναλαβεῖν δίκαιός ἐστι.’

Καὶ ὁ Κλεόμβροτος ‘ἀλλὰ θαυμάσαιμ’ ἄν’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ μὴ πολὺ φαίνεται τῶν εἰρημένων ὑμῖν ἀτοπώτερος.

[f] καίτοι δοκεῖ φυσιολογίας ἔχεσθαι, καὶ Πλάτων αὐτῷ παρέσχε τὸ ἐνδόσιμον οὐχ ἁπλῶς ἀποφηνάμενος ἐκ δόξης ‹δ’› ἀμαυρᾶς [καὶ] ὑπόνοιαν ἐμβαλὼν αἰνιγματώδη μετ’ εὐλαβείας· ἀλλ’ ὅμως πολλὴ γέγονε κἀκείνου καταβόησις [421] ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων φιλοσόφων. ἐπεὶ δὲ μύθων καὶ λόγων ἀναμεμιγμένων κρατὴρ ἐν μέσῳ πρόκειται (καὶ ποῦ τις ἂν εὐμενεστέροις ἀκροαταῖς ἐπιτυχὼν ὥσπερ νομίσματα ξενικὰ τούτους δοκιμάσειε τοὺς λόγους;), οὐκ ὀκνῶ χαρίζεσθαι βαρβάρου διήγησιν ἀνδρός, ὃν πλάναις πολλαῖς καὶ μήνυτρα τελέσας μεγάλα περὶ τὴν Ἐρυθρὰν θάλασσαν ἀνθρώποις ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος ἅπαξ ἐντυγχάνοντα τἄλλα δὲ συνόντα νύμφαις νομάσι καὶ δαίμοσιν, ὡς ἔφασκε, μόλις ἐξανευρὼν ἔτυχον λόγου καὶ φιλοφροσύνης. κάλλιστος μὲν ἦν ὧν εἶδον ἀνθρώπων ὀφθῆναι νόσου τε πάσης ἀπαθὴς [7] διετέλει, καρπόν τινα πόας φαρμακώδη καὶ πικρὸν ἑκάστου μηνὸς ἅπαξ προσφερόμενος· γλώσσαις δὲ πολλαῖς ἤσκητο χρῆσθαι, πρὸς δ’ ἐμὲ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐδώριζεν οὐ πόρρω μελῶν. φθεγγομένου δὲ τὸν τόπον εὐωδία κατεῖχε τοῦ στόματος ἥδιστον ἀποπνέοντος. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἄλλη μάθησις καὶ ἱστορία συνῆν αὐτῷ τὸν πάντα χρόνον· εἰς δὲ μαντικὴν ἐνεπνεῖτο μίαν ἡμέραν ἔτους ἑκάστου καὶ προεθέσπιζε κατιὼν ἐπὶ θάλατταν, ἐπεφοίτων δὲ καὶ δυνάσται καὶ γραμματεῖς βασιλέων εἶτ’ ἀπῄεσαν. ἐκεῖνος οὖν τὴν μαντικὴν ἀνῆγεν εἰς δαίμονας· πλεῖστον δὲ Δελφῶν λόγον εἶχε καὶ τῶν λεγομένων περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ἐνταῦθα καὶ [8] δρωμένων ἱερῶν οὐδενὸς ἀνήκοος ἦν, ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖνα δαιμόνων ἔφασκεν εἶναι πάθη μεγάλα καὶ ταῦτα δὴ τὰ περὶ ‹τὸν› Πύθωνα. τῷ δ’ ἀποκτείναντι μήτ’ ἐννέα ἐτῶν μήτ’ εἰς τὰ Τέμπη γενέσθαι μετὰ τοῦτο τὴν φυγήν, ἀλλ’ ἐκπεσόντ’ ἐλθεῖν εἰς ἕτερον κόσμον, ὕστερον δ’ ἐκεῖθεν ἐνιαυτῶν μεγάλων ἐννέα περιόδοις ἁγνὸν γενόμενον καὶ Φοῖβον ἀληθῶς κατελθόντα τὸ χρηστήριον παραλαβεῖν τέως ὑπὸ Θέμιδος φυλαττόμενον. οὕτως δ’ ἔχειν καὶ τὰ Τυφωνικὰ καὶ τὰ Τιτανικά· δαιμόνων μάχας γεγονέναι πρὸς δαίμονας εἶτα φυγὰς τῶν κρατηθέντων ἢ δίκας ὑπὸ θεοῦ τῶν ἐξαμαρτόντων, οἷα Τυφὼν λέγεται περὶ Ὄσιριν ἐξαμαρτεῖν [9] καὶ Κρόνος περὶ Οὐρανόν, ὧν ἀμαυρότεραι γεγόνασιν αἱ τιμαὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἢ καὶ παντάπασιν ἐκλελοίπασι μεταστάντων εἰς ἕτερον κόσμον. ἐπεὶ καὶ Σολύμους πυνθάνομαι τοὺς Λυκίων προσοίκους ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα τιμᾶν τὸν Κρόνον· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀποκτείνας τοὺς ἄρχοντας αὐτῶν, Ἄρσαλον καὶ Δρύον καὶ Τρωσοβιόν, ἔφυγε καὶ μετεχώρησεν ὁποιδήποτε (τοῦτο γὰρ οὐκ ἔχουσιν εἰπεῖν), ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἀμεληθῆναι, τοὺς δὲ περὶ τὸν Ἄρσαλον σκιρροὺς θεοὺς προσαγορεύεσθαι, καὶ τὰς κατάρας ἐπὶ τούτων ποιεῖσθαι δημοσίᾳ καὶ ἰδίᾳ Λυκίους. τούτοις μὲν οὖν ὅμοια πολλὰ λαβεῖν [10] ἔστιν ἐκ τῶν μυθολογουμένων. ‘εἰ δὲ τοῖς νενομισμένοις τῶν θεῶν ὀνόμασι δαίμονάς τινας καλοῦμεν, οὐ θαυμαστέον’ εἶπεν ὁ ξένος· ‘ᾧ γὰρ ἕκαστος θεῷ συντέτακται καὶ οὗ τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ τιμῆς μετείληχεν, ἀπὸ τούτου φιλεῖ καλεῖσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ἡμῶν ὁ μέν τίς ἐστι Δῖος ὁ δ’ Ἀθήναιος ὁ δ’ Ἀπολλώνιος ἢ Διονύσιος ἢ Ἑρμαῖος· ἀλλ’ ἔνιοι μὲν ὀρθῶς κατὰ τύχην ἐκλήθησαν, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ μηδὲν προσηκούσας ἀλλ’ ἐνηλλαγμένας ἐκτήσαντο θεῶν παρωνυμίας.’’

Σιωπήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Κλεομβρότου πᾶσι μὲν ὁ λόγος ἐφάνη θαυμαστός, τοῦ δ’ Ἡρακλέωνος πυθομένου πῆ [11] ταῦτα προσήκει Πλάτωνι καὶ πῶς ἐκεῖνος τὸ ἐνδόσιμον τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ παρέσχεν, ὁ Κλεόμβροτος ‘εὖ μνημονεύεις’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι τὴν μὲν ἀπειρίαν αὐτόθεν ἀπέγνω τῶν κόσμων, [422] [a] περὶ δὲ πλήθους ὡρισμένου διηπόρησε, καὶ μέχρι τῶν πέντε τοῖς ὑποτιθεμένοις κατὰ στοιχεῖον ἕνα κόσμον ἐπιχωρήσας τὸ εἰκὸς αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐφ’ ἑνὸς ἐτήρησεν. καὶ δοκεῖ τοῦτο Πλάτωνος ἴδιον εἶναι, τῶν ἄλλων σφόδρα φοβηθέντων τὸ πλῆθος, ὡς τοὺς ἑνὶ τὴν ὕλην μὴ ὁρίσαντας ἀλλ’ ἐκβάντας εὐθὺς ἀορίστου καὶ χαλεπῆς ἀπειρίας ὑπολαμβανούσης’. ‘ὁ δὲ ξένος’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘περὶ πλήθους κόσμων ὥριζεν ᾗ Πλάτων ἤ, ὅτε συνεγένου τῷ ἀνδρὶ τούτῳ, οὐδὲ διεπειράθης;’ ‘ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔμελλον’ εἶπεν ὁ Κλεόμβροτος ‘εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο, τῶν περὶ ταῦτα λιπαρὴς εἶναι καὶ [b] πρόθυμος ἀκροατὴς ἐνδιδόντος ἑαυτὸν ἵλεων καὶ παρέχοντος; ἔλεγε δὲ μήτ’ ἀπείρους μήθ’ ἕνα μήτε πέντε κόσμους, ἀλλὰ τρεῖς καὶ ὀγδοήκοντα καὶ ἑκατὸν εἶναι συντεταγμένους κατὰ σχῆμα τριγωνοειδές, οὗ πλευρὰν ἑκάστην ἑξήκοντα κόσμους ἔχειν· τριῶν δὲ τῶν λοιπῶν ἕκαστον ἱδρῦσθαι κατὰ γωνίαν, ἅπτεσθαι δὲ τοὺς ἐφεξῆς ἀλλήλων ἀτρέμα περιιόντας ὥσπερ ἐν χορείᾳ· τὸ δ’ ἐντὸς ἐπίπεδον τοῦ τριγώνου κοινὴν ἑστίαν εἶναι πάντων, καλεῖσθαι δὲ πεδίον ἀληθείας, ἐν ᾧ τοὺς λόγους καὶ τὰ εἴδη καὶ τὰ παραδείγματα τῶν γεγονότων καὶ τῶν γενησομένων ἀκίνητα κεῖσθαι, καὶ περὶ αὐτὰ τοῦ αἰῶνος ὄντος οἷον [c] ἀπορροὴν ἐπὶ τοὺς κόσμους φέρεσθαι τὸν χρόνον. ὄψιν δὲ τούτων καὶ θέαν ψυχαῖς ἀνθρωπίναις ἅπαξ ἐν ἔτεσι μυρίοις ὑπάρχειν, ἄν γ’ εὖ βιώσωσι· καὶ τῶν ἐνταῦθα τελετῶν τὰς ἀρίστας ἐκείνης ὄνειρον εἶναι τῆς ἐποπτείας καὶ τελετῆς· καὶ τοὺς λόγους ἀναμνήσεως ἕνεκα τῶν ἐκεῖ φιλοσοφεῖσθαι καλῶν ἢ μάτην περαίνεσθαι. ταῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘περὶ τούτων μυθολογοῦντος ἤκουον ἀτεχνῶς καθάπερ ἐν τελετῇ καὶ μυήσει, μηδεμίαν ἀπόδειξιν τοῦ λόγου μηδὲ πίστιν ἐπιφέροντος.’

Κἀγὼ τὸν Δημήτριον προσαγορεύσας ‘πῶς ἔχει’ ἔφην ‘τὰ τῶν μνηστήρων ἔπη τὸν Ὀδυσσέα θαυμασάντων [d] τὸ τόξον μεταχειριζόμενον;’ ὑπομνησθέντος δὲ τοῦ Δημητρίου ‘ταῦτ’’ ἔφην ‘ἐπέρχεται κἀμοὶ περὶ τοῦ ξένου εἰπεῖν (φ 397)

‘ἦ τις θηητὴρ καὶ ἐπίκλοπος ἔπλετο’

δογμάτων δὲ καὶ λόγων παντοδαπῶν, καὶ πολυπλανὴς ἐν γράμμασι καὶ οὐ βάρβαρος ἀλλ’ Ἕλλην γένος ἦν, πολλῆς Ἑλληνίδος μούσης ἀνάπλεως. ἐλέγχει δ’ αὐτὸν ὁ τῶν κόσμων ἀριθμὸς οὐκ ὢν Αἰγύπτιος οὐδ’ Ἰνδὸς ἀλλὰ Δωριεὺς ἀπὸ Σικελίας, ἀνδρὸς Ἱμεραίου τοὔνομα Πέτρωνος. αὐτοῦ μὲν ἐκείνου βιβλίδιον οὐκ ἀνέγνων οὐδ’ οἶδα διασῳζόμενον, Ἵππυς δ’ ὁ Ῥηγῖνος (fr. 6 M.), οὗ μέμνηται Φανίας ὁ Ἐρέσιος (fr. 22 M.), ἱστορεῖ δόξαν εἶναι ταύτην [e] Πέτρωνος καὶ λόγον, ὡς ἑκατὸν καὶ ὀγδοήκοντα καὶ τρεῖς κόσμους ὄντας ἁπτομένους δ’ ἀλλήλων κατὰ στοιχεῖον· ὅ τι δὲ τοῦτ’ ἐστί, τὸ κατὰ στοιχεῖον ἅπτεσθαι, μὴ προσδιασαφῶν μηδ’ ἄλλην τινὰ πιθανότητα προσάπτων.’ ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Δημήτριος ‘τίς δ’ ἄν’ εἶπεν ‘ἐν τοιούτοις πράγμασιν εἴη πιθανότης, ὅπου καὶ Πλάτων οὐδὲν εἰπὼν εὔλογον οὐδ’ εἰκὸς οὕτω κατέβαλε τὸν λόγον;’ καὶ ὁ Ἡρακλέων ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν ὑμῶν’ ἔφη ‘τῶν γραμματικῶν ἀκούομεν εἰς Ὅμηρον (Ο 187) ‹ἀν›αγόντων τὴν δόξαν, ὡς ἐκείνου τὸ πᾶν εἰς πέντε κόσμους διανέμοντος, οὐρανὸν [f] ὕδωρ ἀέρα γῆν ὄλυμπον. ὧν τὰ μὲν δύο κοινὰ καταλείπει, γῆν μὲν τοῦ κάτω παντὸς οὖσαν ὄλυμπον δὲ τοῦ ἄνω παντός· οἱ δ’ ἐν μέσῳ τρεῖς τοῖς τρισὶ θεοῖς ἀπεδόθησαν. οὕτω δὲ καὶ Πλάτων (Tim. 31a) ἔοικε τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ πρῶτα σωμάτων εἴδη καὶ σχήματα συννέμων ταῖς τοῦ [423] [a] ὅλου διαφοραῖς πέντε κόσμους καλεῖν, τὸν γῆς τὸν ὕδατος τὸν ἀέρος τὸν πυρός, ἔσχατον δὲ τὸν περιέχοντα τούτους, ᾧ τὸ τοῦ δωδεκαέδρου πολύχυτον καὶ πολύτρεπτον ὡς μάλιστα δὴ ταῖς ψυχικαῖς περιόδοις καὶ κινήσεσι πρέπον σχῆμα καὶ συναρμόττον ἀπέδωκε.’ καὶ ὁ Δημήτριος ‘Ὅμηρον’ ἔφη ‘τί κινοῦμεν ἐν τῷ παρόντι; μύθων γὰρ ἅλις. Πλάτων δὲ πολλοῦ δεῖ τὰς πέντε τοῦ κόσμου διαφορὰς πέντε κόσμους προσαγορεύειν, ἐν οἷς τε μάχεται τοῖς ἀπείρους κόσμους ὑποτιθεμένοις, αὐτὸς ἤδη φησὶ δοκεῖν ἕνα τοῦτον εἶναι μονογενῆ τῷ θεῷ καὶ ἀγαπητόν, ἐκ τοῦ [b] σωματοειδοῦς παντὸς ὅλον καὶ τέλειον καὶ αὐτάρκη γεγενημένον. ὅθεν ἄν τις καὶ θαυμάσειεν, ὅτι τἀληθὲς εἰπὼν αὐτὸς ἑτέροις ἀπιθάνου καὶ λόγον οὐκ ἐχούσης ἀρχὴν παρέσχε διανομῆς. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἕνα μὴ φυλάξαι κόσμον εἶχεν ἁμωσγέπως ὑπόθεσιν τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀπειρίαν, τὸ δ’ ἀφωρισμένως ποιῆσαι τοσούτους καὶ μήτε πλείους τῶν πέντε μήτ’ ἐλάττους κομιδῇ παράλογον καὶ πάσης πιθανότητος ἀπηρτημένον, εἰ μή τι σὺ λέγεις’ ἔφη πρὸς ἐμὲ βλέψας. κἀγώ ‘δοκεῖ γὰρ οὕτως’ ἔφην ‘ἀφέντας ἤδη τὸν περὶ χρηστηρίων λόγον ὡς τέλος ἔχοντα μεταλαμβάνειν [c] ἕτερον τοσοῦτον;’ ‘οὐκ ἀφέντας’ εἶπεν ὁ Δημήτριος ‘ἐκεῖνον, ἀλλὰ μὴ παρελθόντας τοῦτον ἀντιλαμβανόμενον ἡμῶν. οὐ γὰρ ἐνδιατρίψομεν, ἀλλ’ ὅσον ἱστορῆσαι τὴν πιθανότητα θιγόντες αὐτοῦ μέτιμεν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὑπόθεσιν.’

‘Πρῶτον τοίνυν’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘τὰ κωλύοντα ποιεῖν κόσμους ἀπείρους οὐκ ἀπείργει πλείονας ἑνὸς ποιεῖν. καὶ γὰρ θεὸν ἔστιν εἶναι καὶ μαντικὴν καὶ πρόνοιαν ἐν πλείοσι κόσμοις καὶ τὸ μικροτάτην ‹μὲν› τύχην παρεμπίπτειν, τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα καὶ μέγιστα τάξει λαμβάνειν γένεσιν καὶ μεταβολήν, ὧν οὐδὲν ἡ ἀπειρία δέχεσθαι πέφυκεν. ἔπειτα τῷ λόγῳ μᾶλλον ἕπεται τὸ τῷ θεῷ μὴ μονογενῆ [d] μηδ’ ἔρημον εἶναι τὸν κόσμον. ἀγαθὸς γὰρ ὢν τελέως οὐδεμιᾶς ἀρετῆς ἐνδεής ἐστιν, ἥκιστα δὲ τῶν περὶ δικαιοσύνην καὶ φιλίαν· κάλλισται γὰρ αὗται καὶ θεοῖς πρέπουσαι. μάτην δ’ οὐδὲν ἔχειν οὐδ’ ἄχρηστον θεὸς πέφυκεν. εἰσὶν οὖν ἐκτὸς ἕτεροι θεοὶ καὶ κόσμοι, πρὸς οὓς χρῆται ταῖς κοινωνικαῖς ἀρεταῖς· οὐ γὰρ πρὸς αὑτὸν οὐδὲ μέρος αὑτοῦ χρῆσίς ἐστι δικαιοσύνης ἢ χάριτος ἢ χρηστότητος ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἄλλους. ὥστ’ οὐκ εἰκὸς ἄφιλον οὐδ’ ἀγείτονα τόνδ’ οὐδ’ ἄμικτον ἐν ἀπείρῳ κενῷ τὸν κόσμον σαλεύειν. ἐπεὶ καὶ τὴν φύσιν ὁρῶμεν ‹τὰ› καθ’ ἕκαστα γένεσιν καὶ εἴδεσιν οἷον ἀγγείοις ἢ περικαρπίοις σπέρματα περιέχουσαν· [e] οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐν ἀριθμῷ τῶν ὄντων ἔστιν, οὗ γε μὴ λόγος ὑπάρχει κοινός, οὐδὲ τυγχάνει τῆς τοιᾶσδε προσηγορίας ὃ μὴ κοινῶς ποιὸν ‹ἢ› ἰδίως ἐστίν. ὁ δὲ κόσμος οὐ λέγεται κοινῶς εἶναι ποιός· ἰδίως τοίνυν ποιός ἐστιν ἐκ διαφορᾶς τῆς πρὸς ἄλλα συγγενῆ καὶ ὁμοειδῆ γεγονὼς τοιοῦτος. εἰ γὰρ οὔτ’ ἄνθρωπος εἷς οὔθ’ ἵππος ἐν τῇ φύσει γέγονεν οὔτ’ ἄστρον οὔτε θεὸς οὔτε δαίμων, τί κωλύει μηδὲ κόσμον ἕνα τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν ἀλλ’ ἢ πλείονας; ὁ γὰρ λέγων, ὅτι καὶ γῆν μίαν ἔχει καὶ θάλατταν, ἐμφανές τι παρορᾷ τὸ τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν· τήν τε γὰρ γῆν εἰς ὁμώνυμα [f] μέρη καὶ τὴν θάλατταν ὡσαύτως διαιροῦμεν, τοῦ δὲ κόσμου μέρος οὐκέτι κόσμος ἀλλ’ ἐκ διαφόρων φύσεων [424] [a] συνέστηκε. καὶ μὴν ὅ γε μάλιστα φοβηθέντες ἔνιοι καταναλίσκουσιν τὴν ὕλην εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἅπασαν, ὡς μηδὲν ὑπολειπόμενον ἐκτὸς ἐνστάσεσιν ἢ πληγαῖς διαταράττοι τὴν τοῦδε σύστασιν, οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἔδεισαν. πλειόνων γὰρ ὄντων κόσμων ἰδίᾳ δ’ ἑκάστου συνειληχότος οὐσίᾳ καὶ ὕλῃ μέτρον ὡρισμένον ἐχούσῃ καὶ πέρας, οὐδὲν ἄτακτον οὐδ’ ἀκατακόσμητον οἷον περίττωμα λειφθήσεται προσπῖπτον ἔξωθεν. ὁ γὰρ περὶ ἕκαστον λόγος ἐγκρατὴς ὢν τῆς συννενεμημένης ὕλης οὐδὲν ἔκφορον ἐάσει καὶ πλανώμενον ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς ἄλλον οὐδ’ εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐξ ἄλλου διὰ τὸ μήτε πλῆθος ἀόριστον καὶ ἄπειρον τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν [b] μήτε κίνησιν ἄλογον καὶ ἄτακτον. εἰ δὲ καί τις ἀπορροὴ φέρεται πρὸς ἑτέρους ἀφ’ ἑτέρων, ὁμόφυλον ‹εἰκὸς› εἶναι καὶ προσηνῆ καὶ πᾶσιν ἠπίως ἐπιμιγνυμένην ὥσπερ αἱ τῶν ἀστέρων αὐγαὶ καὶ συγκράσεις, αὐτούς τε τέρπεσθαι καθορῶντας ἀλλήλους εὐμενῶς, θεοῖς τε πολλοῖς καὶ ἀγαθοῖς καθ’ ἕκαστον οὖσι παρέχειν ἐπιμιξίας καὶ φιλοφροσύνας. ἀδύνατον γὰρ οὐδέν ἐστι τούτων οὔτε μυθῶδες οὔτε παράλογον, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία τὰ τοῦ Ἀριστοτέλους (de caelo 276a 18 ss.) ὑπόψονταί τινες ὡς φυσικὰς αἰτίας ἔχοντα. τῶν γὰρ σωμάτων ἑκάστου τόπον οἰκεῖον ἔχοντος, ὥς φησιν, ἀνάγκη τὴν γῆν πανταχόθεν ἐπὶ τὸ [c] μέσον φέρεσθαι καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ ἐπ’ αὐτῆς διὰ βάρος ὑφιστάμενον τοῖς κουφοτέροις. ἂν οὖν πλείονες ὦσι κόσμοι, συμβήσεται τὴν γῆν πολλαχοῦ μὲν ἐπάνω τοῦ πυρὸς καὶ τοῦ ἀέρος κεῖσθαι πολλαχοῦ δ’ ὑποκάτω· καὶ τὸν ἀέρα καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ ὁμοίως πῆ μὲν ἐν ταῖς κατὰ φύσιν χώραις ὑπάρχειν, πῆ δ’ ἐν ταῖς παρὰ φύσιν· ὧν ἀδυνάτων ὄντων, ὡς οἴεται, μήτε δύο μήτε πλείονας εἶναι κόσμους, ἀλλ’ ἕνα τοῦτον ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας ἁπάσης συγκείμενον, ἱδρυμένον κατὰ φύσιν, ὡς προσήκει ταῖς τῶν σωμάτων διαφοραῖς. ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῦτα πιθανῶς μᾶλλον ἢ ἀληθῶς εἴρηται· σκόπει δ’ οὕτως’ ἔφην ‘ὦ φίλε Δημήτριε. τῶν γὰρ σωμάτων [d] τὰ μὲν ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον καὶ κάτω κινεῖσθαι λέγων τὰ δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ μέσου καὶ ἄνω τὰ δὲ περὶ τὸ μέσον καὶ κύκλῳ, πρὸς τί λαμβάνει τὸ μέσον; οὐ δήπου πρὸς τὸ κενόν· οὐ γὰρ ἔστι κατ’ αὐτόν. καθ’ οὓς δ’ ἔστιν, οὐκ ἔχει μέσον, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ πρῶτον οὐδ’ ἔσχατον· πέρατα γὰρ ταῦτα, τὸ δ’ ἄπειρον καὶ ἀπεράτωτον. εἰ δὲ καὶ βιάσαιτό τις αὑτὸν λόγου βίᾳ κενοῦ μέσον ἀπείρου τι ὁμολογῆσαι, τίς ἡ πρὸς τοῦτο γιγνομένη τῶν κινήσεων διαφορὰ τοῖς σώμασι; οὔτε γὰρ ἐν τῷ κενῷ δύναμίς ἐστι ‹κρατοῦσα› τῶν σωμάτων οὔτε τὰ σώματα προαίρεσιν ἔχει καὶ ὁρμήν, ᾗ τοῦ μέσου γλίχεται καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο συντείνει [e] πανταχόθεν. ἀλλ’ ὁμοίως ἄπορόν ἐστιν ἀψύχων σωμάτων πρὸς ἀσώματον χώραν καὶ ἀδιάφορον ἢ φορὰν ἐξ αὑτῶν ἢ ὁλκὴν ὑπ’ ἐκείνης γιγνομένην νοῆσαι. λείπεται τοίνυν τὸ μέσον οὐ τοπικῶς ἀλλὰ σωματικῶς λέγεσθαι. τοῦδε γὰρ τοῦ κόσμου μίαν ἐκ πλειόνων σωμάτων καὶ ἀνομοίων ἑνότητα καὶ σύνταξιν ἔχοντος αἱ διαφοραὶ τὰς κινήσεις ἄλλοις πρὸς ἄλλα ποιοῦσιν ἐξ ἀνάγκης. δῆλον δὲ τῷ μετακοσμούμενα ταῖς οὐσίαις ἕκαστα καὶ τὰς χώρας ἅμα συμμεταβάλλειν· αἱ μὲν γὰρ διακρίσεις ἀπὸ τοῦ μέσου τὴν ὕλην αἰρομένην ἄνω κύκλῳ διανέμουσιν· αἱ δὲ συγκρίσεις [f] καὶ πυκνώσεις πιέζουσι κάτω πρὸς τὸ μέσον καὶ συνελαύνουσι. περὶ ὧν οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον ἐνταῦθα πλείοσι λόγοις χρῆσθαι. ἣν γὰρ ἄν τις ὑπόθηται τῶν παθῶν τούτων καὶ μεταβολῶν αἰτίαν εἶναι δημιουργόν, αὕτη συνέξει τῶν κόσμων ἕκαστον ἐν ἑαυτῷ. καὶ γὰρ γῆν καὶ [425] [a] θάλατταν ἕκαστος ἔχει κόσμος· ἔχει γὰρ καὶ μέσον ἕκαστος ἴδιον καὶ πάθη σωμάτων καὶ μεταβολὰς καὶ φύσιν καὶ δύναμιν, ‹ἣ› σῴζει καὶ φυλάττει κατὰ χώραν ἕκαστον. τοῦ μὲν γὰρ ἐκτός, εἴτ’ οὐδέν ἐστιν εἴτε κενὸν ἄπειρον, οὐχ ὑπάρχει μέσον, ὡς εἴρηται· πλειόνων δὲ κόσμων ὄντων καθ’ ἕκαστόν ἐστιν ἴδιον μέσον· ὥστε κίνησις ἰδία τοῖς μὲν ἐπὶ τοῦτο τοῖς δ’ ἀπὸ τούτου τοῖς δὲ περὶ τοῦτο, καθάπερ αὐτοὶ διαιροῦσιν. ὁ δ’ ἀξιῶν πολλῶν μέσων ὄντων ἐφ’ ἓν μόνον ὠθεῖσθαι τὰ βάρη πανταχόθεν οὐδὲν διαφέρει τοῦ πολλῶν ὄντων ἀνθρώπων ἀξιοῦντος εἰς μίαν φλέβα τὸ πανταχόθεν αἷμα συρρεῖν καὶ μιᾷ μήνιγγι τοὺς πάντων ἐγκεφάλους περιέχεσθαι, δεινὸν [b] ἡγούμενος, εἰ τῶν φυσικῶν σωμάτων οὐ μίαν ἅπαντα τὰ στερρὰ καὶ μίαν τὰ μανὰ χώραν ἐφέξει. καὶ γὰρ οὗτος ἄτοπος ἔσται κἀκεῖνος ἀγανακτῶν, εἰ τὰ ὅλα τοῖς αὑτῶν μέρεσι χρῆται τὴν κατὰ φύσιν θέσιν ἔχουσιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ καὶ τάξιν. ἐκεῖνο γὰρ ἦν ἄτοπον, εἴ τις ἔλεγε κόσμον εἶναι τὸν ἐν αὑτῷ ‹μέσην τὴν› σελήνην ἔχοντα καθάπερ ἄνθρωπον ἐν ταῖς πτέρναις τὸν ἐγκέφαλον φοροῦντα καὶ τὴν καρδίαν ἐν τοῖς κροτάφοις. τὸ δὲ πλείονας ποιοῦντας χωρὶς ἀλλήλων κόσμους ἅμα τοῖς ὅλοις τὰ μέρη συναφορίζειν καὶ συνδιαιρεῖν οὐκ ἄτοπον· ἡ γὰρ ἐν ἑκάστῳ γῆ καὶ θάλασσα καὶ οὐρανὸς κείσεται κατὰ φύσιν ὡς προσήκει, τό τ’ ἄνω καὶ κάτω καὶ κύκλῳ καὶ μέσον οὐ πρὸς ἄλλον οὐδ’ ἐκτὸς ἀλλ’ ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἔχει τῶν κόσμων ἕκαστος. ὃν μὲν γὰρ ἔξω τοῦ κόσμου λίθον ὑποτίθενταί τινες οὔτε μονῆς εὐπόρως παρέχει νόησιν οὔτε κινήσεως. πῶς γὰρ ἢ μενεῖ βάρος ἔχων ἢ κινήσεται πρὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥσπερ τὰ λοιπὰ βάρη, μήτε μέρος ὢν αὐτοῦ μήτε συντεταγμένος εἰς τὴν οὐσίαν; γῆν δ’ ἐν ἑτέρῳ κόσμῳ περιεχομένην καὶ συνδεδεμένην οὐκ ἔδει διαπορεῖν ὅπως οὐκ ἐνταῦθα μεταχωρεῖ διὰ βάρος ἀπορραγεῖσα τοῦ [c] ὅλου, τὴν φύσιν ὁρῶντας καὶ τὸν τόνον ὑφ’ οὗ συνέχεται τῶν μερῶν ἕκαστον. ἐπεὶ μὴ πρὸς τὸν κόσμον ἀλλ’ ἐκτὸς αὐτοῦ τὸ κάτω καὶ ἄνω λαμβάνοντες ἐν ταῖς αὐταῖς ἀπορίαις Ἐπικούρῳ (fr. 299) γενησόμεθα κινοῦντι τὰς ἀτόμους ἁπάσας εἰς τοὺς ὑπὸ πόδας τόπους, ὥσπερ ἢ τοῦ κενοῦ πόδας ἔχοντος ἢ τῆς ἀπειρίας ἐν αὑτῇ κάτω τε καὶ ἄνω διανοῆσαι διδούσης. διὸ καὶ Χρύσιππον (fr. 551) ἔστι θαυμάζειν, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως διαπορεῖν, ὅ τι δὴ παθὼν τὸν κόσμον ἐν μέσῳ φησὶν ἱδρῦσθαι καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ τὸν μέσον τόπον ἀιδίως κατειληφυῖαν οὐχ ἥκιστα τούτῳ [d] συνεργεῖν πρὸς τὴν διαμονὴν καὶ οἱονεὶ ἀφθαρσίαν. ταυτὶ γὰρ ἐν τῷ τετάρτῳ περὶ Δυνατῶν λέγει, μέσον τε τοῦ ἀπείρου τόπον οὐκ ὀρθῶς ὀνειρώττων ἀτοπώτερόν τε τῆς διαμονῆς τοῦ κόσμου τῷ ἀνυπάρκτῳ μέσῳ τὴν αἰτίαν ὑποτιθείς· καὶ ταῦτα πολλάκις εἰρηκὼς ἐν ἑτέροις, ὅτι ταῖς εἰς τὸ αὑτῆς μέσον ἡ οὐσία καὶ ταῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ αὑτῆς μέσου διοικεῖται καὶ συνέχεται κινήσεσι.’

‘Καὶ μὴν τά γ’ ἄλλα τῶν Στωικῶν (St. V. Fr. II 632) τίς ἂν φοβηθείη πυνθανομένων πῶς εἱμαρμένη μία μενεῖ καὶ πρόνοια καὶ οὐ πολλοὶ Δίες καὶ Ζῆνες ἔσονται πλειόνων ὄντων κόσμων; πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ εἰ τὸ πολλοὺς εἶναι Δίας καὶ Ζῆνας ἄτοπόν ἐστι, πολλῷ δήπουθεν ἔσται τὰ ἐκείνων ἀτοπώτερα· καὶ γὰρ ἡλίους καὶ σελήνας καὶ [e] Ἀπόλλωνας καὶ Ἀρτέμιδας καὶ Ποσειδῶνας ἐν ἀπείροις κόσμων περιόδοις ἀπείρους ποιοῦσιν. ἔπειτα τίς ἀνάγκη πολλοὺς εἶναι Δίας, ἂν πλείονες ὦσι κόσμοι, καὶ μὴ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἄρχοντα πρῶτον καὶ ἡγεμόνα τοῦ ὅλου θεὸν [426] [a] ἔχοντα καὶ νοῦν καὶ λόγον, οἷος ὁ παρ’ ἡμῖν κύριος ἁπάντων καὶ πατὴρ ἐπονομαζόμενος; ἢ τί κωλύσει τῆς τοῦ Διὸς εἱμαρμένης καὶ προνοίας ὑπηκόους πάντας εἶναι, καὶ τοῦτον ἐφορᾶν ἐν μέρει καὶ κατευθύνειν ἐνδιδόντα πᾶσιν ἀρχὰς καὶ σπέρματα καὶ λόγους τῶν περαινομένων; οὐ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα μὲν ἓν συνίσταται σῶμα πολλάκις ἐκ διεστώτων σωμάτων, οἷον ἐκκλησία καὶ στράτευμα καὶ χορός, ὧν ἑκάστῳ καὶ ζῆν καὶ φρονεῖν καὶ μανθάνειν συμβέβηκεν, ὡς οἴεται Χρύσιππος (fr. 367), ἐν δὲ τῷ παντὶ δέκα κόσμους ἢ πεντήκοντα ἢ ἑκατὸν ὄντας ἑνὶ χρῆσθαι λόγῳ καὶ πρὸς ἀρχὴν συντετάχθαι μίαν ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν. ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ [b] πρέπει θεοῖς ἡ τοιαύτη διάταξις· οὐ γὰρ ὡς σμήνους ἡγεμόνας δεῖ ποιεῖν ἀνεξόδους οὐδὲ φρουρεῖν συγκλείσαντας τῇ ὕλῃ μᾶλλον δὲ συμφράξαντας, ὥσπερ οὗτοι (St. V. Fr. II 1055) τοὺς θεοὺς ἀέρων ἕξεις ποιοῦντες καὶ ὑδάτων καὶ πυρὸς δυνάμεις ἐγκεκραμένας ἡγούμενοι συγγεννῶσι τῷ κόσμῳ καὶ πάλιν συγκατακάουσιν, οὐκ ἀπολύτους οὐδ’ ἐλευθέρους οἷον ἡνιόχους ἢ κυβερνήτας ὄντας, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀγάλματα προσηλοῦται καὶ συντήκεται βάσεσιν, οὕτως ἐγκεκλεισμένους εἰς τὸ σωματικὸν καὶ συγκαταγεγομφωμένους, κοινωνοῦντας αὐτῷ μέχρι φθορᾶς καὶ διαλύσεως ἁπάσης καὶ μεταβολῆς.’

[c] ‘Ἐκεῖνος δ’ οἶμαι σεμνότερος ὁ λόγος καὶ μεγαλοπρεπέστερος, ἀδεσπότους καὶ αὐτοκρατεῖς τοὺς θεοὺς ὄντας, ὥσπερ οἱ Τυνδαρίδαι τοῖς χειμαζομένοις βοηθοῦσιν (Lyr. adesp. 133)

‘ἐπερχόμενόν τε μαλάσσοντες βιατάν

πόντον ὠκείας τ’ ἀνέμων ῥιπάς’

οὐκ ἐμπλέοντες αὐτοὶ καὶ συγκινδυνεύοντες ἀλλ’ ἄνωθεν ἐπιφαινόμενοι καὶ σῴζοντες, οὕτως ἐπιέναι τῶν κόσμων ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλον ἡδονῇ τε τῆς θέας ἀγομένους καὶ τῇ φύσει συναπευθύνοντας ἕκαστον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ὁμηρικὸς Ζεὺς (Ν 3) οὐ πάνυ πρόσω μετέθηκε τὴν ὄψιν ἀπὸ Τροίας ἐπὶ τὰ Θρᾴκια καὶ τοὺς περὶ τὸν Ἴστρον νομάδας, ὁ δ’ [d] ἀληθινὸς ἔχει καλὰς καὶ πρεπούσας ἐν πλείοσι κόσμοις μεταβολάς, οὐκ ἐπὶ κενὸν ἄπειρον ἔξω βλέπων οὐδ’ ἑαυτὸν ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν (ὡς ᾠήθησαν ἔνιοι) νοῶν, ἀλλ’ ἔργα τε θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων πολλὰ κινήσεις τε καὶ φορὰς ἄστρων ἐν περιόδοις καταθεώμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἀπεχθάνεται μεταβολαῖς ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ χαίρει τὸ θεῖον, εἰ δεῖ τῶν φαινομένων τεκμαίρεσθαι ταῖς κατ’ οὐρανὸν ἐξαμείψεσι καὶ περιόδοις. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἀπειρία παντάπασιν ἀγνώμων καὶ ἄλογος καὶ μηδαμῇ προσιεμένη θεόν, ἀλλὰ χρωμένη πρὸς πάντα τῷ κατὰ τύχην καὶ αὐτομάτως· ἡ δ’ ἐν ὡρισμένῳ [e] πλήθει καὶ ἀριθμῷ κόσμων ἐπιμέλεια καὶ πρόνοια τῆς εἰς ἓν δεδυκυίας σῶμα καὶ προσηρτημένης ἑνὶ καὶ τοῦτο μετασχηματιζούσης καὶ ἀναπλαττούσης ἀπειράκις ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ μηδὲν ἔχειν ἀσεμνότερον μηδ’ ἐπιπονώτερον.’

Ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν τοσαῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἐπέσχον. ὁ δὲ Φίλιππος οὐ πολὺν χρόνον διαλιπών ‘τὸ μὲν ἀληθές’ ἔφη ‘περὶ τούτων οὕτως ἔχειν ἢ ἑτέρως οὐκ ἂν ἔγωγε διισχυρισαίμην· εἰ δὲ τὸν θεὸν ἐκβιβάζομεν ἑνὸς κόσμου, διὰ τί πέντε μόνων ποιοῦμεν οὐ πλειόνων δημιουργόν, καὶ τίς ἔστι τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τούτου πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος λόγος, ἥδιον ἄν μοι δοκῶ μαθεῖν ἢ τῆς ἐνταῦθα τοῦ Ε καθιερώσεως τὴν διάνοιαν.

[f] οὔτε γὰρ τρίγωνος ἢ τετράγωνος οὔτε τέλειος ἢ κυβικὸς οὔτ’ ἄλλην τινὰ φαίνεται κομψότητα παρέχων τοῖς ἀγαπῶσι τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ θαυμάζουσιν. ἡ δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν στοιχείων ἔφοδος, ἣν αὐτὸς ὑπῃνίξατο, πάντῃ δύσληπτός ἐστι καὶ μηδὲν ὑποφαίνουσα τῆς ἐκεῖνον ἐπεσπασμένης [427] [a] πιθανότητος εἰπεῖν, ὡς εἰκός ἐστι πέντε σωμάτων ἰσογωνίων καὶ ἰσοπλεύρων καὶ περιεχομένων ἴσοις ἐπιπέδοις ἐγγενομένων τῇ ὕλῃ τοσούτους εὐθὺς ἐξ αὐτῶν ἀποτελεσθῆναι κόσμους.’

‘Καὶ μήν’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘δοκεῖ Θεόδωρος ὁ Σολεὺς οὐ φαύλως μετιέναι τὸν λόγον, ἐξηγούμενος τὰ μαθηματικὰ τοῦ Πλάτωνος. μέτεισι δ’ οὕτως. πυραμὶς καὶ ὀκτάεδρον καὶ εἰκοσάεδρον καὶ δωδεκάεδρον, ἃ πρῶτα τίθεται Πλάτων, καλὰ μέν ἐστι πάντα συμμετρίαις λόγων καὶ ἰσότησι, καὶ κρεῖσσον οὐδὲν αὐτῶν οὐδ’ ὅμοιον ἄλλο συνθεῖναι τῇ φύσει καὶ συναρμόσαι λέλειπται. μιᾶς γε [b] μὴν πάντα συστάσεως οὐκ εἴληχεν οὐδ’ ὁμοίαν ἔχει τὴν γένεσιν, ἀλλὰ λεπτότατον μέν ἐστι καὶ μικρότατον ἡ πυραμίς, μέγιστον δὲ καὶ πολυμερέστατον τὸ δωδεκάεδρον· τῶν δὲ λειπομένων δυεῖν τοῦ ὀκταέδρου μεῖζον ἢ διπλάσιον πλήθει τριγώνων τὸ εἰκοσάεδρον. διὸ τὴν γένεσιν ἅμα πάντα λαμβάνειν ἐκ μιᾶς ὕλης ἀδύνατόν ἐστι. τὰ γὰρ λεπτὰ καὶ μικρὰ καὶ ταῖς κατασκευαῖς ἁπλούστερα πρῶτα τῷ κινοῦντι καὶ διαπλάττοντι τὴν ὕλην ὑπακούειν ἀνάγκη καὶ συντελεῖσθαι καὶ προϋφίστασθαι τῶν ἁδρομερῶν καὶ πολυσωμάτων καὶ τὴν σύστασιν ἐργωδεστέραν ἐχόντων, ἐξ ὧν τὸ δωδεκάεδρον. ἕπεται δὲ τούτῳ τὸ [c] μόνον εἶναι σῶμα πρῶτον τὴν πυραμίδα, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων μηδέν, ἀπολειπομένων τῇ φύσει τῆς γενέσεως. ἔστιν οὖν ἴαμα καὶ ταύτης τῆς ἀτοπίας ἡ τῆς ὕλης εἰς πέντε κόσμους διαίρεσις καὶ διάστασις. ὅπου μὲν γὰρ πυραμὶς ὑποστήσεται πρῶτον, ὅπου δ’ ὀκτάεδρον, ὅπου δ’ εἰκοσάεδρον. ἐκ δὲ τοῦ προϋποστάντος ἐν ἑκάστῳ τὰ λοιπὰ τὴν γένεσιν ἕξει, κατὰ σύγκρισιν ‹καὶ διάκρισιν› μερῶν εἰς πάντα γιγνομένης πᾶσι μεταβολῆς, ὡς αὐτὸς ὁ Πλάτων ὑποδείκνυσι διὰ πάντων σχεδὸν ἐπεξιών· ἡμῖν δὲ βραχέως ἀρκέσει μαθεῖν. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἀὴρ μὲν σβεννυμένου πυρὸς ὑφίσταται καὶ λεπτυνόμενος αὖθις ἐξ αὑτοῦ πῦρ ἀναδίδωσιν, [d] ἐν τοῖς ἑκατέροις σπέρμασι τὰ πάθη δεῖ θεᾶσθαι καὶ τὰς μεταβολάς. σπέρματα δὲ πυρὸς μὲν ἡ πυραμὶς ἐξ εἴκοσι καὶ τεσσάρων πρώτων τριγώνων, τὸ δ’ ὀκτάεδρον ἀέρος ἐκ τεσσαράκοντα καὶ ὀκτὼ τῶν αὐτῶν [γίγνεται]. γίγνεται τοίνυν ἀέρος μὲν ἓν στοιχεῖον ἐκ δυεῖν πυρὸς ‹σωμάτων› συγκραθέντων καὶ συστάντων, τὸ δ’ ἀέρος αὖ κερματιζόμενον εἰς δύο πυρὸς διακρίνεται σώματα, συνθλιβόμενον δ’ αὖθις αὑτῷ καὶ συμπῖπτον εἰς ὕδατος ἰδέαν ἄπεισιν. ὥστε πανταχοῦ τὸ προϋφιστάμενον ἀεὶ πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις εὐπόρως παρέχειν τὴν γένεσιν ἐκ [e] τῆς μεταβολῆς· καὶ μὴ μόνον ἓν εἶναι πρῶτον, ἑτέρου δ’ ἐν ἑτέρῳ συστήματι κίνησιν ἀρχηγὸν καὶ προληπτικὴν ἐς γένεσιν ἔχοντος πᾶσι τηρεῖσθαι τὴν ὁμωνυμίαν.’

Καὶ ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ‘ἀνδρικῶς μέν’ ἔφη ‘ταῦτα τῷ Θεοδώρῳ καὶ φιλοτίμως διαπεπόνηται· θαυμάσαιμι δ’ ἄν, εἰ μὴ δόξειε χρῆσθαι λήμμασιν ἀναιρετικοῖς ἀλλήλων. ἀξιοῖ γὰρ ἅμα πᾶσι τοῖς πέντε μὴ γίγνεσθαι τὴν σύστασιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ λεπτότατον ἀεὶ καὶ δι’ ἐλάττονος πραγματείας συνιστάμενον προεκπίπτειν εἰς γένεσιν· εἶτα ὥσπερ ἀκόλουθον οὐ μαχόμενον τούτῳ τίθησι τὸ μὴ πᾶσαν ὕλην πρῶτον εἰσφέρειν τὸ λεπτότατον καὶ ἁπλούστατον, ἀλλ’ ἐνιαχῆ τὰ ἐμβριθῆ καὶ πολυμερῆ φθάνειν προανίσχοντα [f] ταῖς γενέσεσιν ἐκ τῆς ὕλης. ἄνευ δὲ τούτου πέντε σωμάτων πρώτων ὑποκειμένων καὶ διὰ τοῦτο κόσμων λεγομένων εἶναι τοσούτων πρὸς μόνα τὰ τέσσαρα τῇ πιθανότητι χρῆται, τὸν δὲ κύβον ὥσπερ ἐν παιδιᾷ ψήφων ὑφῄρηται μήτ’ αὐτὸν εἰς ἐκεῖνα μεταβάλλειν πεφυκότα μήτ’ [428] [a] ἐκείνοις παρέχειν μεταβολὴν εἰς ἑαυτόν, ἅτε δὴ τῶν τριγώνων οὐχ ὁμογενῶν ὄντων. ἐκείνοις μὲν γὰρ ὑπόκειται κοινὸν ἐν πᾶσι τὸ ἡμιτρίγωνον, ἐν τούτῳ δ’ ἴδιον μόνῳ τὸ ἰσοσκελὲς οὐ ποιοῦν πρὸς ἐκεῖνο σύννευσιν οὐδὲ σύγκρασιν ἑνωτικήν. εἴπερ οὖν πέντε σωμάτων ὄντων καὶ πέντε κόσμων ‹ἓν› ἐν ἑκάστῳ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ἔχει τῆς γενέσεως, ὅπου γέγονεν ὁ κύβος πρῶτος, οὐδὲν ἔσται τῶν ἄλλων· εἰς οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐκείνων μεταβάλλειν πέφυκεν. ἐῶ γάρ, ὅτι καὶ τοῦ καλουμένου δωδεκαέδρου στοιχεῖον ἄλλο ποιοῦσιν, οὐκ ἐκεῖνο τὸ σκαληνόν, ἐξ οὗ τὴν πυραμίδα καὶ τὸ ὀκτάεδρον καὶ τὸ εἰκοσάεδρον ὁ Πλάτων συνίστησιν.

[b] ὥσθ’’ ἅμα γελῶν ὁ Ἀμμώνιος εἶπεν ‘ἢ ταῦτά σοι διαλυτέον ἢ ἴδιόν τι λεκτέον περὶ τῆς κοινῆς ἀπορίας.’

Κἀγώ ‘πιθανώτερον οὐδὲν ἔχω λέγειν ἔν γε τῷ παρόντι· βέλτιον δ’ ἴσως ἐστὶν ἰδίας εὐθύνας ὑπέχειν δόξης ἢ ἀλλοτρίας. λέγω τοίνυν αὖθις ἐξ ἀρχῆς, ὅτι δυεῖν ὑποκειμένων φύσεων, τῆς μὲν αἰσθητῆς ἐν γενέσει καὶ φθορᾷ μεταβόλου καὶ φορητῆς ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλως, ἑτέρας δ’ ἐν οὐσίᾳ νοητῆς ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ὡσαύτως ἐχούσης, δεινόν ἐστιν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, τὴν μὲν νοητὴν διωρίσθαι καὶ διαφορὰν ἔχειν ἐν ἑαυτῇ, τὴν δὲ σωματικὴν καὶ παθητικὴν εἰ μὴ μίαν τις ἀπολείπει συμπεφυκυῖαν αὑτῇ καὶ συμπνέουσαν [c] ἀλλὰ χωρίζει καὶ διίστησιν, ἀγανακτεῖν καὶ δυσχεραίνειν. τὰ γὰρ μόνιμα καὶ θεῖα δήπου μᾶλλον αὑτῶν ἔχεσθαι προσήκει καὶ φεύγειν ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστι τομὴν ἅπασαν καὶ διάστασιν· ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτων ἡ τοῦ ἑτέρου δύναμις ἁπτομένη μείζονας ἐνείργασται τῶν κατὰ τόπον διαστάσεων τοῖς νοητοῖς τὰς κατὰ λόγον καὶ ἰδέαν ἀνομοιότητας. ὅθεν ἐνιστάμενος τοῖς ἓν τὸ πᾶν ἀποφαίνουσιν ὁ Πλάτων (Soph. 256c) τό τ’ ὂν εἶναί φησι καὶ τὸ ταὐτὸν καὶ τὸ ἕτερον, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ κίνησιν καὶ στάσιν. ὄντων οὖν πέντε τούτων οὐ θαυμαστὸν ἦν, εἰ τῶν πέντε σωματικῶν στοιχείων ἐκείνων ἕκαστον ἑκάστου μίμημα τῇ φύσει καὶ [d] εἴδωλόν ἐστι γεγενημένον οὐκ ἄμικτον οὐδ’ εἰλικρινές, ἀλλὰ τῷ μάλιστα μετέχειν ἕκαστον ἑκάστης δυνάμεως. ὁ μέν γε κύβος ἐμφανῶς στάσεως οἰκεῖόν ἐστι σῶμα διὰ τὴν τῶν ἐπιπέδων ἀσφάλειαν καὶ βεβαιότητα· τῆς δὲ πυραμίδος πᾶς ἄν τις τὸ πυροειδὲς καὶ κινητικὸν ἐν τῇ λεπτότητι τῶν πλευρῶν καὶ τῇ τῶν γωνιῶν ὀξύτητι κατανοήσειεν· ἡ δὲ τοῦ δωδεκαέδρου φύσις περιληπτικὴ τῶν ἄλλων σχημάτων οὖσα τοῦ ὄντος εἰκὼν πρὸς πᾶν ‹ἂν› τὸ σωματικὸν γεγονέναι δόξειε· τῶν δὲ λοιπῶν δυεῖν τὸ μὲν εἰκοσάεδρον τῆς τοῦ ἑτέρου τὸ δ’ ὀκτάεδρον μάλιστα τῆς ταὐτοῦ μετείληχεν ἰδέας. διὸ τοῦτο μὲν ἀέρα σχετικὸν [e] οὐσίας πάσης ἐν μιᾷ μορφῇ, θάτερον δ’ ὕδωρ ἐπὶ πλεῖστα τῷ κεράννυσθαι γένη ποιοτήτων τρεπόμενον παρεῖχεν. εἴπερ οὖν ἡ φύσις ἀπαιτεῖ τὴν ἰσονομίαν ἐν πᾶσι, καὶ κόσμους εἰκός ἐστι μήτε πλείους γεγονέναι μήτ’ ἐλάττους τῶν παραδειγμάτων, ὅπως ἕκαστον ἐν ἑκάστῳ τάξιν ἡγεμονικὴν ἔχῃ καὶ δύναμιν, ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς συστάσεσι τῶν σωμάτων ἔσχηκεν.’

‘Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ἔστω παραμυθία τοῦ θαυμάζοντος, εἰ τὴν ἐν γενέσει καὶ μεταβολῇ φύσιν εἰς γένη τοσαῦτα διαιροῦμεν. ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἤδη σκοπεῖτε κοινῇ προσέχοντες, ὅτι τῶν ἀνωτάτων ἀρχῶν, λέγω δὲ τοῦ ἑνὸς [f] καὶ τῆς ἀορίστου δυάδος, ἡ μὲν ἀμορφίας πάσης στοιχεῖον οὖσα καὶ ἀταξίας ἀπειρία κέκληται· ἡ δὲ τοῦ ἑνὸς φύσις ὁρίζουσα καὶ καταλαμβάνουσα τῆς ἀπειρίας τὸ κενὸν καὶ ἄλογον καὶ ἀόριστον ἔμμορφον παρέχεται καὶ τὴν ἑπομένην ‹τῇ› περὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ δόξῃ καταγόρευσιν ἁμωσγέπως [429] [a] ὑπομένον καὶ δεχόμενον. αὗται δὲ πρῶτον αἱ ἀρχαὶ περὶ τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἐπιφαίνονται, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἀριθμὸς οὐκ ἔστι τὸ πλῆθος, ἂν μὴ καθάπερ εἶδος ὕλης τὸ ἓν γενόμενον ἐκ τῆς ἀπειρίας τοῦ ἀορίστου πῆ μὲν πλεῖον πῆ δ’ ἔλαττον ἀποτέμνηται. τότε γὰρ ἀριθμὸς γίγνεται τῶν πληθῶν ἕκαστον ὑπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς ὁριζόμενον· ἐὰν δ’ ἀναιρεθῇ τὸ ἕν, πάλιν ἡ ἀόριστος δυὰς συγχέασα πᾶν ἄρρυθμον καὶ ἄπειρον καὶ ἄμετρον ἐποίησεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ εἶδος οὐκ ἀναίρεσίς ἐστι τῆς ὕλης ἀλλὰ μορφὴ καὶ τάξις ὑποκειμένης, ἀνάγκη καὶ τῷ ἀριθμῷ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐνυπάρχειν ἀμφοτέρας, ὅθεν ἡ πρώτη καὶ μεγίστη διαφορὰ καὶ [b] ἀνομοιότης γέγονεν. ἔστι γὰρ ἡ μὲν ἀόριστος ἀρχὴ τοῦ ἀρτίου δημιουργὸς ἡ δὲ βελτίων τοῦ περιττοῦ· πρῶτος δὲ τῶν ἀρτίων τὰ δύο καὶ τὰ τρία τῶν περιττῶν, ἐξ ὧν τὰ πέντε τῇ μὲν συνθέσει κοινὸς ὢν ἀμφοῖν ἀριθμὸς τῇ δὲ δυνάμει γεγονὼς περιττός. ἔδει γάρ, εἰς πλείονα μέρη τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ καὶ σωματικοῦ μεριζομένου διὰ τὴν σύμφυτον ἀνάγκην τῆς ἑτερότητος, μήτε τὸν πρῶτον ἄρτιον γενέσθαι μήτε τὸν πρῶτον περιττόν, ἀλλὰ τὸν τρίτον ἐκ τούτων ἀποτελούμενον, ὅπως ἀπ’ ἀμφοτέρων τῶν ἀρχῶν γένηται, καὶ τῆς τὸ ἄρτιον δημιουργούσης καὶ τῆς τὸ περιττόν· οὐ γὰρ ἦν οἷόν τε τῆς ἑτέρας ἀπαλλαγῆναι τὴν [c] ἑτέραν· ἑκατέρα γὰρ ἀρχῆς φύσιν ἔχει καὶ δύναμιν. ἀμφοτέρων οὖν συνδυαζομένων ἡ βελτίων κρατήσασα τῆς ἀοριστίας διαιρούσης τὸ σωματικὸν ἐνέστη, καὶ τῆς ὕλης ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα διισταμένης μέσην τὴν μονάδα θεμένη δίχα νεμηθῆναι τὸ πᾶν οὐκ εἴασεν, ἀλλὰ πλῆθος μὲν γέγονε κόσμων ὑπὸ τῆς ἑτερότητος τοῦ ἀορίστου καὶ διαφορᾶς, περιττὸν δὲ πλῆθος ἡ ταὐτοῦ καὶ ὡρισμένου δύναμις ἀπείργασται, περιττὸν δὲ τοιοῦτον, ὅτι πορρωτέρω τὴν φύσιν ἢ βέλτιον ἔχει προελθεῖν οὐκ εἴασεν. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἀμιγὲς καὶ καθαρὸν ἦν τὸ ἕν, οὐδ’ ἂν ὅλως εἶχεν ἡ ὕλη διάστασιν· [d] ἐπεὶ δὲ τῷ διαιρετικῷ τῆς δυάδος μέμικται, τομὴν μὲν ἐδέξατο καὶ διαίρεσιν, ἐνταῦθα δ’ ἔστη τῷ περιττῷ τοῦ ἀρτίου κρατηθέντος. διὸ καὶ πεμπάσασθαι τὸ ἀριθμῆσαι τοῖς παλαιοῖς ἔθος ἦν καλεῖν. οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τὰ πάντα τῶν πέντε παρώνυμα γεγονέναι κατὰ λόγον, ἅτε δὴ τῆς πεντάδος ἐκ τῶν πρώτων ἀριθμῶν συνεστώσης. καὶ γὰρ οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι πολλαπλασιαζόμενοι πρὸς ἄλλους εἰς ἕτερον αὑτῶν ἀριθμὸν ἐκβαίνουσιν· ἡ δὲ πεντάς, ἂν μὲν ἀρτιάκις λαμβάνηται, τὸν δέκα ποιεῖ τέλειον· ἐὰν δὲ περισσάκις, ἑαυτὴν πάλιν ἀποδίδωσιν. ἐῶ δ’ ὅτι πρώτη μὲν ἐκ [e] πρώτων δυεῖν τετραγώνων συνέστηκε τῆς τε μονάδος καὶ τῆς τετράδος ἡ πεντάς, πρώτη δ’ ἴσον δυναμένη τοῖς πρὸ αὑτῆς δυσὶ τὸ κάλλιστον τῶν ὀρθογωνίων τριγώνων συνίστησι, πρώτη δὲ ποιεῖ τὸν ἡμιόλιον λόγον. οὐ γὰρ ἴσως οἰκεῖα ταῦτα τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις πράγμασιν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο μᾶλλον τὸ φύσει διαιρετικὸν τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ καὶ τὸ πλεῖστα τούτῳ τὴν φύσιν διανέμειν. ἔνειμε γὰρ ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς αἰσθήσεις πέντε καὶ μέρη ψυχῆς, φυτικὸν αἰσθητικὸν ἐπιθυμητικὸν θυμοειδὲς λογιστικόν, καὶ δακτύλους ἑκατέρας χειρὸς τοσούτους, καὶ τὸ γονιμώτατον σπέρμα πενταχῆ [f] σχιζόμενον. οὐ γὰρ ἱστόρηται γυνὴ πλείονα τεκοῦσα ‹ἢ› πέντε [συχνὰ] ταῖς αὐταῖς ὠδῖσι. καὶ τὴν Ῥέαν Αἰγύπτιοι μυθολογοῦσι πέντε θεοὺς τεκεῖν, αἰνιττόμενοι τὴν ἐκ μιᾶς ὕλης τῶν πέντε κόσμων γένεσιν. ἐν δὲ τῷ παντὶ πέντε μὲν ζώναις ὁ περὶ γῆν τόπος, πέντε δὲ κύκλοις ὁ οὐρανὸς διώρισται, δυσὶν ἀρκτικοῖς καὶ δυσὶ τροπικοῖς καὶ [430] [a] μέσῳ τῷ ἰσημερινῷ· πέντε δ’ αἱ τῶν πλανωμένων ἄστρων περίοδοι γεγόνασιν, Ἡλίου καὶ Φωσφόρου καὶ Στίλβωνος ὁμοδρομούντων. ἐναρμόνιος δὲ καὶ ἡ τοῦ κόσμου σύνταξις, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ τὸ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἡρμοσμένον ἐν πέντε τετραχόρδων θέσεσιν ὁρᾶται, τῶν ὑπάτων καὶ μέσων καὶ συνημμένων καὶ διεζευγμένων καὶ ὑπερβολαίων· καὶ τὰ μελῳδούμενα διαστήματα πέντε, δίεσις καὶ ἡμιτόνιον καὶ τόνος καὶ τριημιτόνιον καὶ δίτονον. οὕτως ἡ φύσις ἔοικε τῷ πέντε ποιεῖν ἅπαντα χαίρειν μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ σφαιροειδῆ, καθάπερ Ἀριστοτέλης (286b 10) ἔλεγε. τί δῆτα, [b] φήσαι τις ἄν, ὁ Πλάτων (Tim. 55c) ἐπὶ τὰ πέντε σχήματα τὸν τῶν πέντε κόσμων ἀριθμὸν ἀνήνεγκεν, εἰπὼν ὅτι τῇ πέμπτῃ συστάσει ‘ὁ θεὸς ἐπὶ τὸ πᾶν κατεχρήσατο ἐκεῖνο διαζωγραφῶν,’ εἶτα τὴν περὶ τοῦ πλήθους τῶν κόσμων ὑποθεὶς ἀπορίαν, πότερον ἕν’ ἢ πέντ’ αὐτοὺς ἀληθείᾳ πεφυκότας λέγειν προσήκει, δῆλός ἐστιν ἐντεῦθεν οἰόμενος ὡρμῆσθαι τὴν ὑπόνοιαν; εἴπερ οὖν δεῖ πρὸς τὴν ἐκείνου διάνοιαν ἐπάγειν τὸ εἰκός, σκοπῶμεν ὅτι ταῖς τῶν σωμάτων καὶ σχημάτων ἐκείνων διαφοραῖς ἀνάγκη καὶ κινήσεων εὐθὺς ἕπεσθαι διαφοράς, ὥσπερ αὐτὸς διδάσκει, τὸ διακρινόμενον ἢ συγκρινόμενον ἅμα τῆς οὐσίας τῇ ἑτεροιώσει καὶ τὸν τόπον μεταλλάττειν ἀποφαινόμενος.

[c] ἂν γὰρ ἐξ ἀέρος πῦρ γένηται, λυθέντος τοῦ ὀκταέδρου καὶ κερματισθέντος εἰς πυραμίδας, ἢ πάλιν ἀὴρ ἐκ πυρός, συνωσθέντος καὶ συνθλιβέντος εἰς ὀκτάεδρον, οὐ δυνατὸν μένειν ὅπου πρότερον ἦν, ἀλλὰ φεύγει καὶ φέρεται πρὸς ἑτέραν χώραν ἐκβιαζόμενον καὶ μαχόμενον τοῖς ἐνισταμένοις καὶ κατεπείγουσιν. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον εἰκόνι τὸ συμβαῖνον ἐνδείκνυται (Tim. 52e), ‘τοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν πλοκάνων καὶ ὀργάνων ‹τῶν› περὶ τὴν τοῦ σίτου κάθαρσιν σειομένοις ‹καὶ› ἀναλικμωμένοις’ ὁμοίως λέγων τὰ στοιχεῖα σείοντα τὴν ὕλην ὑπ’ ἐκείνης τε σειόμενα προσχωρεῖν ἀεὶ τὰ ὅμοια [d] τοῖς ὁμοίοις, ἄλλην τε χώραν ἄλλα ἴσχειν πρὶν ἐξ αὐτῶν γενέσθαι τὸ πᾶν διακοσμηθέν· οὕτως οὖν τότε τῆς ὕλης ἐχούσης ὡς ἔχειν τὸ πᾶν εἰκός, οὗ θεὸς ἄπεστιν, εὐθὺς αἱ πρῶται πέντε ποιότητες ἰδίας ἔχουσαι ῥοπὰς ἐφέροντο χωρίς, οὐ παντάπασιν οὐδ’ εἰλικρινῶς ἀποκρινόμεναι, διὰ τὸ πάντων ἀναμεμιγμένων ἀεὶ τὰ κρατούμενα τοῖς ἐπικρατοῦσι παρὰ φύσιν ἕπεσθαι. διὸ δὴ τοῖς τῶν σωμάτων γένεσιν ἄλλων ἀλλαχῆ φερομένων ἰσαρίθμους μερίδας καὶ διαστάσεις ἐποίησαν, τὴν μὲν οὐ καθαροῦ πυρὸς ἀλλὰ πυροειδῆ, τὴν δ’ οὐκ ἀμιγοῦς αἰθέρος ἀλλ’ αἰθεροειδῆ, τὴν δ’ οὐ γῆς αὐτῆς καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ἀλλὰ γεοειδῆ, [e] μάλιστα δὲ †καὶ τὴν ἀέρος κοίνωσιν τὴν ὕδατος διὰ τὸ πολλῶν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται (428d), τῶν ἀλλοφύλων ἀναπεπλησμένων ἀπελθεῖν. οὐ γὰρ ὁ θεὸς διέστησεν οὐδὲ διῴκισε τὴν οὐσίαν, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῆς διεστῶσαν αὐτὴν καὶ φερομένην χωρὶς ἐν ἀκοσμίαις τοσαύταις παραλαβὼν ἔταξε καὶ συνήρμοσε δι’ ἀναλογίας καὶ μεσότητος· εἶθ’ ἑκάστῃ λόγον ἐγκαταστήσας ὥσπερ ἁρμοστὴν καὶ φύλακα κόσμους ἐποίησε τοσούτους, ὅσα γένη τῶν πρώτων σωμάτων ὑπῆρχε. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τῇ Πλάτωνος ἀνακείσθω χάριτι δι’ Ἀμμώνιον· ἐγὼ δὲ περὶ μὲν ἀριθμοῦ κόσμων [f] οὐκ ἄν ποτε διισχυρισαίμην ὅτι τοσοῦτοι, τὴν δὲ πλείονας μὲν ἑνὸς οὐ μὴν ἀπείρους ἀλλ’ ὡρισμένους πλήθει τιθεμένην δόξαν οὐδετέρας ἐκείνων ἀλογωτέραν ἡγοῦμαι, τὸ φύσει τῆς ὕλης σκεδαστὸν καὶ μεριστὸν ὁρῶν οὔτ’ ἐφ’ ἑνὸς μένον οὔτ’ εἰς ἄπειρον ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου βαδίζειν [431] [a] ἐώμενον. εἰ δ’ ἀλλαχόθι που κἀνταῦθα τῆς Ἀκαδημείας ὑπομιμνήσκοντες ἑαυτοὺς τὸ ἄγαν τῆς πίστεως ἀφαιρῶμεν καὶ τὴν ἀσφάλειαν ὥσπερ ἐν χωρίῳ σφαλερῷ τῷ περὶ τῆς ἀπειρίας λόγῳ μόνον διασῴζωμεν.’

Ἐμοῦ δὲ ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος ὁ Δημήτριος ‘ὀρθῶς’ ἔφη ‘Λαμπρίας παραινεῖ. ‘πολλαῖς γὰρ οἱ θεοὶ μορφαῖς’ οὐ ‘σοφισμάτων’ ὡς Εὐριπίδης (fr. 972) φησίν, ἀλλὰ πραγμάτων ‘σφάλλουσιν ἡμᾶς’, ὅταν ὡς ἐπιστάμενοι τολμῶμεν ἀποφαίνεσθαι περὶ τηλικούτων. ‘ἀλλ’ ἀνοιστέος ὁ λόγος’, ὡς αὑτὸς ἀνήρ (fr. 970) φησιν, ἐπὶ τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὑπόθεσιν. τὸ γὰρ ἀφισταμένων καὶ ἀπολειπόντων τὰ [b] χρηστήρια τῶν δαιμόνων ὥσπερ ὄργανα τεχνιτῶν ἀργὰ καὶ ἄναυδα κεῖσθαι λεχθὲν ἕτερον λόγον ἐγείρει μείζονα τὸν περὶ τῆς αἰτίας καὶ δυνάμεως, αἷς χρώμενοι ποιοῦσι κατόχους τοῖς ἐνθουσιασμοῖς καὶ φαντασιαστικοὺς τοὺς προφήτας καὶ τὰς προφήτιδας. οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε τὴν ἔκλειψιν αἰτιᾶσθαι τοῦ ἀπαυδᾶν τὰ μαντεῖα μὴ πεισθέντας ὃν τρόπον ἐφεστῶτες αὐτοῖς καὶ παρόντες ἐνεργὰ καὶ λόγια ποιοῦσιν οἱ δαίμονες.’ ὑπολαβὼν δ’ Ἀμμώνιος ‘οἴει γὰρ ἕτερόν τι τοὺς δαίμονας’ εἶπεν ‘ἢ ψυχὰς ὄντας περιπολεῖν καθ’ Ἡσίοδον (OD 125) ‘ἠέρα ἑσσαμένους;’ ἐμοὶ μὲν γάρ, [c] ἣν ἄνθρωπος ἔχει διαφορὰν πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ὑποκρινόμενον τραγῳδίαν ἢ κωμῳδίαν, ταύτην ἔχειν δοκεῖ ‹ψυχὴ πρὸς› ψυχὴν ἐνεσκευασμένην σῶμα ‹τῷ› παρόντι βίῳ πρόσφορον. οὐδὲν οὖν ἄλογον οὐδὲ θαυμαστόν, εἰ ψυχαὶ ψυχαῖς ἐντυγχάνουσαι φαντασίας ἐμποιοῦσι τοῦ μέλλοντος, ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς ἀλλήλοις οὐ πάντα διὰ φωνῆς ἀλλὰ καὶ γράμμασι καὶ θιγόντες μόνον καὶ προσβλέψαντες πολλὰ καὶ μηνύομεν τῶν γεγονότων καὶ τῶν ἐσομένων προσημαίνομεν. εἰ μή τι σὺ λέγεις ἕτερον, ὦ Λαμπρία· καὶ γὰρ ἔναγχος ἧκέ τις φωνὴ πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὡς σοῦ πολλὰ περὶ τούτων ἐν Λεβαδείᾳ ξένοις διαλεχθέντος, ὧν οὐδὲν ὁ [d] διηγούμενος ἀκριβῶς διεμνημόνευε.’ ‘μὴ θαυμάσῃς’ ἔφην ἐγώ, ‘πολλαὶ γὰρ ἅμα πράξεις διὰ μέσου καὶ ἀσχολίαι συντυγχάνουσαι διὰ τὸ μαντεῖον εἶναι καὶ θυσίαν τοὺς λόγους διεσπαρμένους ἡμῖν καὶ σποράδας ἐποίησαν.’ ‘ἀλλὰ νῦν’ ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ἔφη ‘καὶ σχολὴν ἄγοντας ἀκροατὰς ἔχεις καὶ προθύμους τὰ μὲν ζητεῖν τὰ δὲ μανθάνειν ἔριδος ἐκποδὼν οὔσης καὶ φιλονεικίας ἁπάσης συγγνώμης δὲ παντὶ λόγῳ καὶ παρρησίας ὡς ὁρᾷς δεδομένης.’

Ταῦτα δὴ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων συμπαρακαλούντων μικρὸν ἐγὼ σιωπήσας ‘καὶ μὴν ἀπὸ τύχης τινός, ὦ Ἀμμώνιε, τοῖς τότε λόγοις αὐτὸς ἀρχήν τινα καὶ πάροδον [e] ἐνδέδωκας. εἰ γὰρ αἱ διακριθεῖσαι σώματος ἢ μὴ μετασχοῦσαι τὸ παράπαν ψυχαὶ δαίμονές εἰσι κατὰ σὲ καὶ τὸν θεῖον Ἡσίοδον (OD 123)

‘ἁγνοὶ ἐπιχθόνιοι φύλακες θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων’,

διὰ τί τὰς ἐν τοῖς σώμασι ψυχὰς ἐκείνης τῆς δυνάμεως ἀποστεροῦμεν, ᾗ τὰ μέλλοντα καὶ προγιγνώσκειν πεφύκασι καὶ προδηλοῦν οἱ δαίμονες; οὔτε γὰρ δύναμιν οὔτε μέρος οὐδὲν ἐπιγίγνεσθαι ταῖς ψυχαῖς, ὅταν ἀπολίπωσι τὸ σῶμα, μὴ κεκτημέναις πρότερον εἰκός ἐστιν· ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ μὲν ἔχειν ἔχειν δὲ φαυλότερα τῷ σώματι μεμιγμένας, καὶ τὰ μὲν ὅλως ἄδηλα καὶ κεκρυμμένα τὰ δ’ ἀσθενῆ καὶ [f] ἀμαυρὰ καὶ τοῖς δι’ ὁμίχλης ὁρῶσιν ἢ κινουμένοις ἐν ὑγρῷ παραπλησίως δύσεργα καὶ βραδέα καὶ πολλὴν ποθοῦντα θεραπείαν τοῦ οἰκείου καὶ ἀνάληψιν ἀφαίρεσιν δὲ καὶ κάθαρσιν τοῦ καλύπτοντος. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ ἥλιος οὐχ ὅταν διαφύγῃ τὰ νέφη γίγνεται λαμπρός, ἀλλ’ ἔστι μὲν ἀεὶ φαίνεται δ’ ἡμῖν ἐν ὁμίχλῃ δυσφαὴς καὶ ἀμαυρός, [432] [a] οὕτως ἡ ψυχὴ τὴν μαντικὴν οὐκ ἐπικτᾶται δύναμιν ἐκβᾶσα τοῦ σώματος ὥσπερ νέφους, ἀλλ’ ἔχουσα καὶ νῦν τυφλοῦται διὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸ θνητὸν ἀνάμιξιν αὐτῆς καὶ σύγχυσιν. οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν οὐδ’ ἀπιστεῖν ὁρῶντας, εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο, τῆς ψυχῆς τὴν ἀντίστροφον τῇ μαντικῇ δύναμιν, ἣν μνήμην καλοῦμεν, ἡλίκον ἔργον ἀποδείκνυται τὸ σῴζειν τὰ παρῳχημένα καὶ φυλάττειν, μᾶλλον δὲ ‹τὰ μηκέτ’› ὄντα· τῶν γὰρ γεγονότων οὐδὲν ἔστιν οὐδ’ ὑφέστηκεν, ἀλλ’ ἅμα γίγνεται πάντα καὶ φθείρεται, καὶ πράξεις καὶ λόγοι καὶ παθήματα, τοῦ χρόνου καθάπερ ῥεύματος ἕκαστα [b] παραφέροντος· αὕτη δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς ἡ δύναμις οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅντινα τρόπον ἀντιλαμβανομένη τοῖς μὴ παροῦσι φαντασίαν καὶ οὐσίαν περιτίθησιν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Θεσσαλοῖς περὶ Ἄρνης δοθεὶς χρησμὸς ἐκέλευε φράζειν

‘κωφοῦ τ’ ἀκοὴν τυφλοῖό τε δέρξιν,’

ἡ δὲ μνήμη καὶ κωφῶν πραγμάτων ἀκοὴ καὶ τυφλῶν ὄψις ἡμῖν ἐστιν. ὅθεν, ὡς ἔφην, οὐκ ἔστι θαυμαστόν, εἰ κρατοῦσα τῶν μηκέτ’ ὄντων προλαμβάνει πολλὰ τῶν μηδέπω γεγονότων· ταῦτα γὰρ αὐτῇ μᾶλλον προσήκει καὶ τούτοις συμπαθής ἐστι· καὶ γὰρ ἐπιβάλλεται καὶ προτίθεται πρὸς τὰ μέλλοντα καὶ ‹τῶν› παρῳχημένων καὶ τέλος ἐχόντων ἀπήλλακται πλὴν τοῦ μνημονεύειν. ταύτην οὖν ἔχουσαι τὴν δύναμιν αἱ ψυχαὶ σύμφυτον [c] μὲν ἀμυδρὰν δὲ καὶ δυσφάνταστον ὅμως ἐξανθοῦσι πολλάκις καὶ ἀναλάμπουσιν ἔν τε τοῖς ἐνυπνίοις καὶ περὶ τὰς τελευτὰς ἔνιαι καθαροῦ γιγνομένου τοῦ σώματος ἤ τινα κρᾶσιν οἰκείαν πρὸς τοῦτο λαμβάνοντος, ὥστε τὸ λογιστικὸν καὶ φροντιστικὸν ἀνίεσθαι καὶ ἀπολύεσθαι τῶν παρόντων, ‹τῷ› ἀλόγῳ καὶ φαντασιαστικῷ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἐπιστρεφόμεναι. οὐ γάρ, ὡς ὁ Εὐριπίδης φησί (fr. 973), ‘μάντις ἄριστος ὅστις εἰκάζει καλῶς,’ ἀλλ’ οὗτος ἔμφρων μὲν ἀνὴρ καὶ τῷ νοῦν ἔχοντι τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ μετ’ εἰκότος ἡγουμένῳ καθ’ ὁδὸν ἑπόμενος, τὸ δὲ μαντικὸν ὥσπερ γραμματεῖον ἄγραφον καὶ ἄλογον [d] καὶ ἀόριστον ἐξ αὑτοῦ, δεκτικὸν δὲ φαντασιῶν πάθεσι καὶ προαισθήσεων, ἀσυλλογίστως ἅπτεται τοῦ μέλλοντος, ὅταν ἐκστῇ μάλιστα τοῦ παρόντος. ἐξίσταται δὲ κράσει καὶ διαθέσει τοῦ σώματος ἐν μεταβολῇ γιγνόμενον, ὃν ἐνθουσιασμὸν καλοῦμεν. αὐτὸ μὲν οὖν ἐξ αὑτοῦ τὸ σῶμα τοιαύτην οὐ πολλάκις ἴσχει διάθεσιν· ἡ δὲ γῆ πολλῶν μὲν ἄλλων δυνάμεων πηγὰς ἀνίησιν ἀνθρώποις τὰς μὲν ἐκστατικὰς καὶ νοσώδεις καὶ θανατηφόρους τὰς δὲ χρηστὰς καὶ προσηνεῖς καὶ ὠφελίμους, ὡς δῆλαι γίγνονται πείρᾳ προστυγχάνουσι, τὸ δὲ μαντικὸν ῥεῦμα καὶ πνεῦμα θειότατόν ἐστι καὶ ὁσιώτατον, ἄν τε καθ’ ἑαυτὸ δι’ ἀέρος ἄν τε μεθ’ [e] ὑγροῦ νάματος ἀναφέρηται. καταμιγνύμενον γὰρ εἰς τὸ σῶμα κρᾶσιν ἐμποιεῖ ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἀήθη καὶ ἄτοπον, ἧς τὴν ἰδιότητα χαλεπὸν εἰπεῖν σαφῶς, εἰκάσαι δὲ πολλαχῶς ὁ λόγος δίδωσι. θερμότητι γὰρ καὶ διαχύσει πόρους τινὰς ἀνοίγειν φανταστικοὺς τοῦ μέλλοντος εἰκός ἐστιν, ὡς οἶνος ἀναθυμιαθεὶς ἕτερα πολλὰ κινήματα καὶ λόγους ἀποκειμένους καὶ λανθάνοντας ἀποκαλύπτει (Eur. Bacch. 298)·

‘τὸ γὰρ βακχεύσιμον

καὶ τὸ μανιῶδες μαντικὴν πολλὴν ἔχει’

κατ’ Εὐριπίδην, ὅταν ἔνθερμος ἡ ψυχὴ γενομένη καὶ πυρώδης ἀπώσηται τὴν εὐλάβειαν, ἣν ἡ θνητὴ φρόνησις [f] ἐπάγουσα πολλάκις ἀποστρέφει καὶ κατασβέννυσι τὸν ἐνθουσιασμόν.’

‘Ἅμα δ’ ἄν τις οὐκ ἀλόγως καὶ ξηρότητα φαίη μετὰ τῆς θερμότητος ἐγγιγνομένην λεπτύνειν τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ ποιεῖν αἰθερῶδες καὶ καθαρόν· ‘αὐγή’ γάρ ‘ξηρὴ ψυχὴ ‹ἀρίστη›’ καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (fr. 118). ὑγρότης δ’ οὐ μόνον [433] [a] ὄψιν ἀμβλύνει καὶ ἀκοήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατόπτρων θιγοῦσα καὶ μιχθεῖσα πρὸς ἀέρας ἀφαιρεῖ τὴν λαμπρότητα καὶ τὸ φέγγος. τοὐναντίον τε πάλιν αὖ περιψύξει τινὶ καὶ πυκνώσει τοῦ πνεύματος οἷον βαφῇ σίδηρον τὸ προγνωστικὸν μόριον ἐντείνεσθαι καὶ στομοῦσθαι τῆς ψυχῆς οὐκ ἀδύνατόν ἐστι. καὶ μὴν ὡς κασσίτερος μανὸν ὄντα καὶ πολύπορον τὸν χαλκὸν ἐντακεὶς ἅμα μὲν ἔσφιγξε καὶ κατεπύκνωσεν ἅμα δὲ λαμπρότερον ἀπέδειξε καὶ καθαρώτερον, οὕτως οὐδὲν ἀπέχει τὴν μαντικὴν ἀναθυμίασιν οἰκεῖόν τι ταῖς ψυχαῖς καὶ συγγενὲς ἔχουσαν ἀναπληροῦν τὰ μανὰ καὶ συνέχειν ἐναρμόττουσαν. ἄλλα γὰρ ἄλλοις οἰκεῖα καὶ [b] πρόσφορα, καθάπερ τῆς μὲν πορφύρας ὁ κύαμος τῆς δὲ κόκκου τὸ νίτρον δοκεῖ τὴν βαφὴν ἄγειν μεμιγμένον·

‘βύσσῳ δὲ γλαυκῆς κόκκος καταμίσγεται ἀκτῆς’

ὡς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (fr. 93) εἴρηκε. περὶ δὲ τοῦ Κύδνου καὶ τῆς ἱερᾶς τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἐν Ταρσῷ μαχαίρας, ὦ φίλε Δημήτριε, σοῦ λέγοντος ἠκούομεν, ὡς ‹οὔτε› ὁ Κύδνος ἄλλον ἐκκαθαίρει σίδηρον ‹ἢ› ἐκεῖνον οὔθ’ ὕδωρ ἄλλο τὴν μάχαιραν ἢ ἐκεῖνο· καθάπερ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ τὴν τέφραν προσπλάττουσι τῷ βωμῷ καὶ περιπηγνύουσιν ἐκ τοῦ Ἀλφειοῦ παραχέοντες ὕδωρ, ἑτέρων δὲ πειρώμενοι ποταμῶν [c] οὐδενὶ δύνανται συναγαγεῖν οὐδὲ κολλῆσαι τὴν τέφραν.’

‘Οὐ θαυμαστέον οὖν, εἰ πολλὰ τῆς γῆς ἄνω ῥεύματα μεθιείσης ταῦτα μόνα τὰς ψυχὰς ἐνθουσιαστικῶς διατίθησι καὶ φαντασιαστικῶς τοῦ μέλλοντος. ἀμέλει δὲ καὶ τὰ τῆς φήμης συνᾴδει τῷ λόγῳ· καὶ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα τὴν περὶ τὸν τόπον δύναμιν ἐμφανῆ γενέσθαι πρῶτον ἱστοροῦσιν νομέως τινὸς ἐμπεσόντος κατὰ τύχην, εἶτα φωνὰς ἀναφέροντος ἐνθουσιώδεις, ὧν τὸ μὲν πρῶτον οἱ παραγενόμενοι κατεφρόνουν, ὕστερον δὲ γενομένων ὧν προεῖπεν ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐθαύμασαν. οἱ δὲ λογιώτατοι Δελφῶν καὶ τοὔνομα τοῦ [d] ἀνθρώπου διαμνημονεύοντες Κορήταν λέγουσιν. ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκεῖ μάλιστα τοιαύτην πρὸς τὸ μαντικὸν πνεῦμα λαμβάνειν σύγκρασιν ψυχὴ καὶ σύμπηξιν, οἵαν πρὸς τὸ φῶς ἡ ὄψις ὁμοιοπαθὲς γιγνόμενον· ὀφθαλμοῦ τε γὰρ ἔχοντος τὴν ὁρατικὴν δύναμιν οὐδὲν ἄνευ φωτὸς ἔργον ἐστίν, ψυχῆς τε τὸ μαντικὸν ὥσπερ ὄμμα δεῖται τοῦ συνεξάπτοντος οἰκείου καὶ συνεπιθήγοντος. ὅθεν οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ τῶν προγενεστέρων ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν ἡγοῦντο θεὸν Ἀπόλλωνα καὶ ἥλιον· οἱ δὲ τὴν καλὴν καὶ σοφὴν ἐπιστάμενοι καὶ τιμῶντες ἀναλογίαν, ὅπερ σῶμα πρὸς ψυχὴν ὄψις δὲ πρὸς νοῦν φῶς δὲ πρὸς ἀλήθειάν ἐστι, τοῦτο τὴν ἡλίου [e] δύναμιν εἴκαζον εἶναι πρὸς τὴν Ἀπόλλωνος φύσιν, ἔκγονον ἐκείνου καὶ τόκον ὄντος ἀεὶ γιγνόμενον ἀεὶ τοῦτον ἀποφαίνοντες. ἐξάπτει γὰρ καὶ προάγεται καὶ συνεξορμᾷ τῆς αἰσθήσεως τὴν ὁρατικὴν δύναμιν οὗτος ὡς τῆς ψυχῆς τὴν μαντικὴν ἐκεῖνος. οἱ μέντοι δοξάζοντες ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν θεὸν εἶναι, εἰκότως Ἀπόλλωνι καὶ Γῇ κοινῶς ἀνέθεσαν τὸ χρηστήριον, οἰόμενοι τὴν διάθεσιν καὶ κρᾶσιν ἐμποιεῖν τῇ γῇ τὸν ἥλιον, ἀφ’ ἧς ἐκφέρεσθαι τὰς μαντικὰς ἀναθυμιάσεις. αὐτὴν μὲν οὖν τὴν γῆν ὥσπερ Ἡσίοδος (Theog. 117) ἐνίων φιλοσόφων βέλτιον διανοηθείς ‘πάντων ἕδος ἀσφαλές’ προσεῖπεν, οὕτω καὶ ἡμεῖς [f] καὶ ἀίδιον καὶ ἄφθαρτον νομίζομεν· τῶν δὲ περὶ αὐτὴν δυνάμεων πῆ μὲν ἐκλείψεις πῆ δὲ γενέσεις ἀλλαχοῦ δὲ μεταστάσεις καὶ μεταρροίας ἀλλαχόθεν εἰκός ἐστι συμβαίνειν, καὶ κυκλεῖν ἐν αὐτῇ τὰς τοιαύτας ἐν τῷ χρόνῳ παντὶ πολλάκις περιόδους, ὡς ἔστι τεκμαίρεσθαι τοῖς φαινομένοις. λιμνῶν τε γὰρ γεγόνασι καὶ ποταμῶν ἔτι δὲ πλείονες ναμάτων θερμῶν ὅπου μὲν ἐκλείψεις καὶ φθοραὶ παντάπασιν ὅπου δ’ οἷον ἀποδράσεις καὶ καταδύσεις, [434] [a] εἶτα πάλιν ἥκει διὰ χρόνων ἐπιφαινόμενα τοῖς αὐτοῖς ‹τόποις› ἢ πλησίον ὑπορρέοντα· καὶ μετάλλων ἴσμεν ἐξαμαυρώσεις γεγονέναι καὶ νάς, ὡς τῶν περὶ τὴν Ἀττικὴν ἀργυρείων καὶ τῆς ἐν Εὐβοίᾳ χαλκίτιδος ἐξ ἧς ἐδημιουργεῖτο τὰ ψυχρήλατα τῶν ξιφῶν, ὡς Αἰσχύλος εἴρηκε (fr. 356)

‘λαβὼν γὰρ αὐτόθηκτον Εὐβοικὸν ξίφος·’

ἡ δ’ ἐν Καρύστῳ πέτρα χρόνος οὐ πολὺς ἀφ’ οὗ πέπαυται μηρύματα λίθων μαλακὰ ‹καὶ› νηματώδη συνεκφέρουσα. καὶ γὰρ ὑμῶν ἑωρακέναι τινὰς οἴομαι χειρόμακτρα καὶ δίκτυα καὶ κεκρυφάλους ἐκεῖθεν ‹οὔτε ὕδατι λυομένους› οὔτε πυρὶ καιομένους· ἀλλ’ ὅσ’ ἂν [b] ῥυπανθῇ χρωμένων, ἐμβαλόντες εἰς φλόγα λαμπρὰ καὶ διαφανῆ κομίζονται· νῦν δ’ ἠφάνισται καὶ μόλις οἷον ἶνες ἢ τρίχες ἀραιαὶ διατρέχουσιν ἐν τοῖς μετάλλοις. καίτοι πάντων τούτων οἱ περὶ Ἀριστοτέλην δημιουργὸν ἐν τῇ γῇ τὴν ἀναθυμίασιν ἀποφαίνουσιν, ᾗ καὶ συνεκλείπειν καὶ συμμεθίστασθαι καὶ συνεξανθεῖν πάλιν τὰς τοιαύτας φύσεις ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι. ταὐτὰ δὴ περὶ μαντικῶν πνευμάτων διανοητέον, ὡς οὐκ ἐχόντων ἀίδιον οὐδ’ ἀγήρω τὴν δύναμιν ἀλλ’ ὑποκειμένην μεταβολαῖς. καὶ γὰρ ὄμβρους ὑπερβάλλοντας εἰκός ἐστι κατασβεννύναι καὶ κεραυνῶν ἐμπεσόντων διαφορεῖσθαι, μάλιστα [c] δὲ τῆς γῆς ὑποσάλου γιγνομένης καὶ λαμβανούσης ἱζήματα καὶ σύγχωσιν ἐν βάθει μεθίστασθαι τὰς ἀναθυμιάσεις ἢ τυφλοῦσθαι τὸ παράπαν, ὥσπερ ἐνταῦθά φασι †παραμένειν τὰ περὶ τὸν μέγαν σεισμόν, ὃς καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀνέτρεψεν. ἐν δ’ Ὀρχομενῷ λέγουσι λοιμοῦ γενομένου πολλοὺς μὲν ἀνθρώπους διαφθαρῆναι, τὸ δὲ τοῦ Τειρεσίου χρηστήριον ἐκλιπεῖν παντάπασι καὶ μέχρι τοῦ νῦν ἀργὸν διαμένειν καὶ ἄναυδον. εἰ δὲ καὶ τοῖς περὶ Κιλικίαν ὅμοια παθεῖν συμβέβηκε, ὡς ἀκούομεν, οὐδεὶς ἂν ἡμῖν, ὦ Δημήτριε, σοῦ φράσειε σαφέστερον.’

Καὶ ὁ Δημήτριος ‘οὐκ οἶδ’ ἔγωγε τά γε νῦν· [d] ἀποδημῶ γάρ, ὡς ἴστε, πάμπολυν ἤδη χρόνον· ἔτι δ’ ἤκμαζεν ἐμοῦ παρόντος καὶ τὸ Μόψου καὶ τὸ Ἀμφιλόχου μαντεῖον. ἔχω δ’ εἰπεῖν τῷ Μόψου παραγενόμενος πρᾶγμα θαυμασιώτατον. ὁ γὰρ ἡγεμὼν τῆς Κιλικίας αὐτὸς μὲν ἀμφίδοξος ὢν ἔτι πρὸς τὰ θεῖα δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀπιστίας οἶμαι (τἄλλα γὰρ ἦν ὑβριστὴς καὶ φαῦλος), ἔχων δὲ περὶ αὑτὸν Ἐπικουρείους τινὰς †τὴν καλὴν δὴ καὶ φυσιολόγον ἐνυβρίζοντας, ὡς αὐτοὶ λέγουσι (fr. 395), τοῖς τοιούτοις εἰσέπεμψεν ἀπελεύθερον οἷον εἰς πολεμίων κατάσκοπον ἐνσκευάσας, ἔχοντα κατεσφραγισμένην δέλτον, ἐν ᾗ τὸ [e] ἐρώτημα ἦν ἐγγεγραμμένον οὐδενὸς εἰδότος. ἐννυχεύσας οὖν ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὥσπερ ἔθος ἐστὶ τῷ σηκῷ καὶ κατακοιμηθεὶς ἀπήγγειλε μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐνύπνιον τοιοῦτον. ἄνθρωπον ἔδοξεν αὑτῷ καλὸν ἐπιστάντα φθέγξασθαι τοσοῦτον ‘μέλανα’ καὶ πλέον οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς οἴχεσθαι. τοῦθ’ ἡμῖν μὲν ἄτοπον ἐφάνη καὶ πολλὴν ἀπορίαν παρέσχεν, ὁ δ’ ἡγεμὼν ἐκεῖνος ἐξεπλάγη καὶ προσεκύνησεν καὶ τὴν δέλτον ἀνοίξας ἐπεδείκνυεν ἐρώτημα τοιοῦτον γεγραμμένον ‘πότερόν σοι λευκὸν ἢ μέλανα θύσω ταῦρον;’ ὥστε καὶ τοὺς Ἐπικουρείους διατραπῆναι, κἀκεῖνον αὐτὸν τήν [f] τε θυσίαν ἐπιτελεῖν καὶ σέβεσθαι διὰ τέλους Μόψον.’

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Δημήτριος ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἐσιώπησεν· ἐγὼ δὲ βουλόμενος ὥσπερ τι κεφάλαιον ἐπιθεῖναι τῷ λόγῳ πρὸς τὸν Φίλιππον αὖθις ἀπέβλεψα καὶ τὸν Ἀμμώνιον ὁμοῦ καθημένους. ἔδοξαν οὖν μοι βούλεσθαί τι διαλεχθῆναι, καὶ πάλιν ἐπέσχον. ὁ δ’ Ἀμμώνιος ‘ἔχει μέν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ Φίλιππος, ὦ Λαμπρία, περὶ τῶν εἰρημένων εἰπεῖν· οἴεται γὰρ ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ αὐτὸς οὐχ ἕτερον εἶναι [435] [a] τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα θεὸν ἀλλὰ τῷ ἡλίῳ τὸν αὐτόν. ἡ δ’ ἐμὴ μείζων ἀπορία καὶ περὶ μειζόνων· ἄρτι γὰρ οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως τῷ λόγῳ παρεχωρήσαμεν ἐκ τῶν θεῶν τὴν μαντικὴν ἐς δαίμονάς τινας ἀτεχνῶς ἀποδιοπομπουμένῳ. νυνὶ δέ μοι δοκοῦμεν αὐτοὺς πάλιν ἐκείνους ἐξωθεῖν καὶ ἀπελαύνειν ἐνθένδε τοῦ χρηστηρίου καὶ τοῦ τρίποδος εἰς πνεύματα καὶ ἀτμοὺς καὶ ἀναθυμιάσεις τὴν τῆς μαντικῆς ἀρχὴν μᾶλλον δὲ τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτὴν καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἀναλύοντες. αἱ γὰρ εἰρημέναι κράσεις καὶ θερμότητες αὗται καὶ στομώσεις ὅσῳ μᾶλλον ‹φυσικαῖς αἰτίαις ἐνδέδενται, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον› ἀπάγουσι τὴν δόξαν ἀπὸ τῶν θεῶν καί τινα τοιοῦτον ὑποβάλλουσι τῆς αἰτίας ἐπιλογισμόν, οἵῳ ποιεῖ τὸν Κύκλωπα [b] χρώμενον Εὐριπίδης (Cycl. 331),

‘ἡ γῆ δ’ ἀνάγκῃ, κἂν θέλῃ κἂν μὴ θέλῃ,

τίκτουσα ποίαν τἀμὰ πιαίνει βοτά.’

πλὴν ἐκεῖνος μὲν οὔ φησι θύειν τοῖς θεοῖς ἀλλ’ ἑαυτῷ καὶ ‘τῇ μεγίστῃ γαστρὶ δαιμόνων,’ ἡμεῖς δὲ καὶ θύομεν καὶ προσευχόμεθα τί παθόντες ἐπὶ τοῖς χρηστηρίοις, εἰ δύναμιν μὲν ἐν ἑαυταῖς μαντικὴν αἱ ψυχαὶ κομίζουσιν, ἡ δὲ κινοῦσα ταύτην ἀέρος τίς ἐστι κρᾶσις ἢ πνεύματος; αἱ δὲ τῶν ἱερείων κατασπείσεις τί βούλονται, καὶ τὸ μὴ θεμιστεύειν, ἐὰν μὴ τὸ ἱερεῖον ὅλον ἐξ ἄκρων σφυρῶν ὑπότρομον [c] γένηται καὶ κραδανθῇ κατασπενδόμενον; οὐ γὰρ ἀρκεῖ τὸ διασεῖσαι τὴν κεφαλὴν ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις θυσίαις, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι δεῖ τοῖς μέρεσι τὸν σάλον ὁμοῦ καὶ τὸν παλμὸν ἐγγενέσθαι μετὰ ψόφου τρομώδους· ἐὰν γὰρ μὴ τοῦτο γένηται, τὸ μαντεῖον οὔ φασι χρηματίζειν οὐδ’ εἰσάγουσι τὴν Πυθίαν. καίτοι θεοῦ μὲν ἢ δαίμονος ‹ἐνεργείαις› αἰτίαν τὴν πλείστην ἀνατιθέντας εἰκός ἐστι ταῦτα ποιεῖν καὶ νομίζειν· ὡς δὲ σὺ λέγεις, οὐκ εἰκός· ἡ γὰρ ἀναθυμίασις, ἄν τε πτοῆται τὸ ἱερεῖον ἄν τε μή, παροῦσα ποιήσει τὸν ἐνθουσιασμὸν καὶ διαθήσει τὴν ψυχὴν ὁμοίως οὐ τῆς Πυθίας μόνον, ἀλλὰ κἂν τοῦ τυχόντος ἅψηται σώματος. ὅθεν εὔηθές ἐστι τὸ μιᾷ γυναικὶ [d] πρὸς τὰ μαντεῖα χρῆσθαι καὶ ταύτῃ παρέχειν πράγματα φυλάττοντας ἁγνὴν διὰ βίου καὶ καθαρεύουσαν. ὁ γὰρ Κορήτας ἐκεῖνος, ὃν Δελφοὶ λέγουσι πρῶτον ἐμπεσόντα τῆς περὶ τὸν τόπον δυνάμεως αἴσθησιν παρασχεῖν, οὐδὲν οἶμαι διέφερε τῶν ἄλλων αἰπόλων καὶ ποιμένων· εἴ γε δὴ τοῦτο μὴ μῦθός ἐστι μηδὲ πλάσμα κενόν, ὡς ἔγωγ’ ἡγοῦμαι. καὶ λογιζόμενος πηλίκων ἀγαθῶν τουτὶ τὸ μαντεῖον αἴτιον γέγονε τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἔν τε πολέμοις καὶ κτίσεσι πόλεων ἔν τε λοιμοῖς καὶ καρπῶν ἀφορίαις, δεινὸν ἡγοῦμαι μὴ θεῷ καὶ προνοίᾳ τὴν εὕρεσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ [e] ἀρχὴν ἀλλὰ τῷ κατὰ τύχην καὶ αὐτομάτως ἀνατίθεσθαι. πρὸς δὴ ταῦτ’’ εἶπε ‘τὸν Λαμπρίαν βούλομαι διαλεχθῆναι· περιμενεῖς δέ;’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ ὁ Φίλιππος ἔφη ‘καὶ πάντες οὗτοι· πάντας γὰρ ἡμᾶς ὁ λόγος κεκίνηκε.’

Κἀγὼ πρὸς αὐτόν ‘ἐμὲ δ’’ εἶπον ‘οὐ κεκίνηκεν, ὦ Φίλιππε, μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ συγκέχυκεν, εἰ ἐν τοσούτοις καὶ τηλικούτοις οὖσιν ὑμῖν δοκῶ παρ’ ἡλικίαν τῷ πιθανῷ τοῦ λόγου καλλωπιζόμενος ἀναιρεῖν τι καὶ κινεῖν τῶν ἀληθῶς καὶ ὁσίως περὶ τοῦ θείου νενομισμένων. ἀπολογήσομαι δὲ μάρτυρα καὶ σύνδικον ὁμοῦ Πλάτωνα (Phaedo 97b) παριστάμενος. ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ὁ ἀνὴρ Ἀναξαγόραν μὲν ἐμέμψατο [f] τὸν παλαιόν, ὅτι ταῖς φυσικαῖς ἄγαν ἐνδεδεμένος αἰτίαις καὶ τὸ κατ’ ἀνάγκην τοῖς τῶν σωμάτων ἀποτελούμενον πάθεσι μετιὼν ἀεὶ καὶ διώκων, τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα καὶ ὑφ’ οὗ, βελτίονας αἰτίας οὔσας καὶ ἀρχάς, ἀφῆκεν· αὐτὸς δὲ πρῶτος ἢ μάλιστα τῶν φιλοσόφων ἀμφοτέρας ἐπεξῆλθε, τῷ μὲν θεῷ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀποδιδοὺς τῶν κατὰ λόγον ἐχόντων, [436] [a] οὐκ ἀποστερῶν δὲ τὴν ὕλην τῶν ἀναγκαίων πρὸς τὸ γιγνόμενον αἰτιῶν, ἀλλὰ συνορῶν, ὅτι τῇδέ πη καὶ τὸ πᾶν αἰσθητὸν διακεκοσμημένον οὐ καθαρὸν οὐδ’ ἀμιγές ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τῆς ὕλης συμπλεκομένης τῷ λόγῳ λαμβάνει τὴν γένεσιν. ὅρα δὲ πρῶτον ἐπὶ τῶν τεχνιτῶν· οἷον εὐθὺς ἡ περιβόητος ἐνταῦθα τοῦ κρατῆρος ἕδρα καὶ βάσις, ἣν Ἡρόδοτος (I 25) ὑποκρητηρίδιον ὠνόμασεν, αἰτίας μὲν ἔσχε τὰς ὑλικάς, πῦρ καὶ σίδηρον καὶ μάλαξιν διὰ πυρὸς καὶ ‹δι’› ὕδατος βαφήν, ὧν ἄνευ γενέσθαι τὸ ἔργον οὐδεμία μηχανή· τὴν δὲ κυριωτέραν ἀρχὴν καὶ ταῦτα κινοῦσαν καὶ διὰ τούτων ἐνεργοῦσαν ἡ τέχνη καὶ ὁ λόγος [b] τῷ ἔργῳ παρέσχε. καὶ μὴν τῶν γε μιμημάτων τούτων καὶ εἰδώλων ὁ ποιητὴς καὶ δημιουργὸς ἐπιγέγραπται (Simonid. fr. 160)

‘γράψε Πολύγνωτος, Θάσιος γένος, Ἀγλαοφῶντος

υἱὸς περθομέναν Ἰλίου ἀκρόπολιν’

ὡς ὁρᾶται γράψας· ἄνευ δὲ φαρμάκων συντριβέντων καὶ συμφθαρέντων ἀλλήλοις οὐδὲν ἦν οἷόν τε τοιαύτην διάθεσιν λαβεῖν καὶ ὄψιν. ἆρ’ οὖν ὁ βουλόμενος ἅπτεσθαι τῆς ὑλικῆς ἀρχῆς, ζητῶν δὲ καὶ διδάσκων τὰ παθήματα καὶ τὰς μεταβολάς, ἃς ὤχρᾳ μιχθεῖσα σινωπὶς ἴσχει καὶ [c] μέλανι μηλιάς, ἀφαιρεῖται τὴν τοῦ τεχνίτου δόξαν· ὁ δὲ τοῦ σιδήρου τὴν στόμωσιν ἐπεξιὼν καὶ τὴν μάλαξιν, ὅτι τῷ μὲν πυρὶ χαλασθεὶς ἐνδίδωσι καὶ ὑπείκει τοῖς ἐλαύνουσι καὶ πλάττουσιν, ἐμπεσὼν δὲ πάλιν εἰς ὕδωρ ἀκραιφνὲς καὶ τῇ ψυχρότητι διὰ τὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐγγενομένην ἁπαλότητα καὶ μανότητα πιληθεὶς καὶ καταπυκνωθεὶς εὐτονίαν ἴσχει καὶ πῆξιν, ἣν Ὅμηρος (ι 393) ‘σιδήρου κράτος’ εἶπεν, ἧττόν τι τῷ τεχνίτῃ τηρεῖ τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς τοῦ ἔργου γενέσεως; ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ οἴομαι· καὶ γὰρ τῶν ἰατρικῶν δυνάμεων ἔνιοι τὰς ποιότητας ἐλέγχουσι, τὴν δ’ ἰατρικὴν οὐκ ἀναιροῦσιν. ὥσπερ ἀμέλει ‹καὶ› Πλάτων [d] (Rep. 507d) ὁρᾶν μὲν ἡμᾶς τῇ παρὰ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν αὐγῇ συγκεραννυμένῃ πρὸς τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου φῶς, ἀκούειν δὲ τῇ πληγῇ τοῦ ἀέρος ἀποφαινόμενος οὐκ ἀνῄρει τὸ κατὰ λόγον καὶ πρόνοιαν ὁρατικοὺς καὶ ἀκουστικοὺς γεγονέναι.’

‘Καθόλου γάρ, ὥς φημι, δύο πάσης γενέσεως αἰτίας ἐχούσης οἱ μὲν σφόδρα παλαιοὶ θεολόγοι καὶ ποιηταὶ τῇ κρείττονι μόνῃ τὸν νοῦν προσεῖχον τοῦτο δὴ τὸ κοινὸν (Orph. fr. 21a v. 2) ἐπιφθεγγόμενοι πᾶσι πράγμασι

‘Ζεὺς ἀρχὴ Ζεὺς μέσσα, Διὸς δ’ ἐκ πάντα πέλονται·’

ταῖς δ’ ἀναγκαίαις καὶ φυσικαῖς οὐκέτι προσῄεσαν αἰτίαις. οἱ δὲ νεώτεροι τούτων καὶ φυσικοὶ προσαγορευόμενοι [e] τοὐναντίον ἐκείνοις τῆς καλῆς καὶ θείας ἀποπλανηθέντες ἀρχῆς ἐν σώμασι καὶ πάθεσι σωμάτων πληγαῖς τε καὶ μεταβολαῖς καὶ κράσεσι τίθενται τὸ σύμπαν. ὅθεν ἀμφοτέροις ὁ λόγος ἐνδεὴς τοῦ προσήκοντός ἐστι, τοῖς μὲν τὸ δι’ οὗ καὶ ὑφ’ οὗ τοῖς δὲ τὸ ἐξ ὧν καὶ δι’ ὧν ἀγνοοῦσιν ἢ παραλείπουσιν. ὁ δὲ πρῶτος ἐκφανῶς ἁψάμενος ἀμφοῖν καὶ τῷ κατὰ λόγον ποιοῦντι καὶ κινοῦντι προσλαβὼν τὸ ἀναγκαίως ὑποκείμενον καὶ πάσχον ἀπολύεται καὶ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν πᾶσαν ὑποψίαν καὶ διαβολήν. οὐ γὰρ ἄθεον ποιοῦμεν οὐδ’ ἄλογον τὴν μαντικήν, ὕλην μὲν αὐτῇ τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὸ δ’ ἐνθουσιαστικὸν πνεῦμα καὶ τὴν [f] ἀναθυμίασιν οἷον ὀργάνῳ [ἢ] πλῆκτρον ἀποδιδόντες· πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἡ γεννήσασα γῆ τὰς ἀναθυμιάσεις ὅ τε πᾶσαν ἐνδιδοὺς κράσεως τῇ γῇ καὶ μεταβολῆς δύναμιν ἥλιος νόμῳ πατέρων θεός ἐστιν ἡμῖν· ἔπειτα δαίμονας ἐπιστάτας καὶ περιπόλους καὶ φύλακας οἷον ἁρμονίας τῆς [437] [a] κράσεως ταύτης τὰ μὲν ἀνιέντας ἐν καιρῷ τὰ δ’ ἐπιτείνοντας καὶ τὸ ἄγαν ἐκστατικὸν αὐτῆς καὶ ταρακτικὸν ἀφαιροῦντας τὸ δὲ κινητικὸν ἀλύπως καὶ ἀβλαβῶς τοῖς χρωμένοις καταμιγνύντας ἀπολείποντες οὐδὲν ἄλογον ποιεῖν οὐδ’ ἀδύνατον δόξομεν. οὐδέ γε προθυόμενοι καὶ καταστέφοντες ἱερεῖα καὶ κατασπένδοντες ἐναντία τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ πράττομεν. οἱ γὰρ ἱερεῖς καὶ ὅσιοι θύειν φασὶ τὸ ἱερεῖον καὶ κατασπένδειν καὶ τὴν κίνησιν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν τρόμον ἀποθεωρεῖν ἑτέρου τίνος τοῦτο σημεῖον ἢ τοῦ θεμιστεύειν τὸν θεὸν λαμβάνοντες; δεῖ γὰρ τὸ θύσιμον τῷ τε σώματι καὶ τῇ ψυχῇ καθαρὸν εἶναι καὶ [b] ἀσινὲς καὶ ἀδιάφθορον. μήνυτρα μὲν οὖν ‹τῶν› περὶ τὸ σῶμα κατιδεῖν οὐ πάνυ χαλεπόν ἐστι, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν δοκιμάζουσι τοῖς μὲν ταύροις ἄλφιτα τοῖς δὲ κάπροις ἐρεβίνθους παρατιθέντες· τὸ γὰρ μὴ γευσάμενον ὑγιαίνειν οὐκ οἴονται. τὴν δ’ αἶγα διελέγχειν τὸ ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ· οὐ γὰρ εἶναι ψυχῆς κατὰ φύσιν ἐχούσης τὸ πρὸς τὴν κατάσπεισιν ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἀκίνητον. ἐγὼ δέ, κἂν ᾖ βέβαιον ὅτι σημεῖόν ἐστι τοῦ θεμιστεύειν τὸ σείσασθαι καὶ τοῦ μὴ θεμιστεύειν τοὐναντίον, οὐχ ὁρῶ τί συμβαίνει δυσχερὲς ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῖς εἰρημένοις. πᾶσα γὰρ δύναμις ὃ πέφυκε σὺν καιρῷ βέλτιον ἢ χεῖρον ἀποδίδωσι· τοῦ δὲ καιροῦ διαφεύγοντος [c] ἡμᾶς σημεῖα διδόναι τὸν θεὸν εἰκός ἐστιν.’

‘Οἴομαι μὲν οὖν μηδὲ τὴν ἀναθυμίασιν ὡσαύτως ἔχειν ἀεὶ διὰ παντός, ἀνέσεις δέ τινας ἴσχειν καὶ πάλιν σφοδρότητας· ᾧ δὲ τεκμηρίῳ χρῶμαι, μάρτυρας ἔχει καὶ ξένους πολλοὺς καὶ τοὺς θεραπεύοντας τὸ ἱερὸν ἅπαντας. ὁ γὰρ οἶκος, ἐν ᾧ τοὺς χρωμένους τῷ θεῷ καθίζουσιν, οὔτε πολλάκις οὔτε τεταγμένως ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔτυχε διὰ χρόνων εὐωδίας ἀναπίμπλαται καὶ πνεύματος, οἵας ἂν τὰ ἥδιστα καὶ πολυτελέστατα τῶν μύρων ἀποφορὰς ὥσπερ ἐκ πηγῆς τοῦ ἀδύτου προσβάλλοντος· ἐξανθεῖν γὰρ εἰκὸς ὑπὸ θερμότητος ἤ τινος ἄλλης ἐγγιγνομένης δυνάμεως. εἰ δὲ τοῦτο [d] μὴ δοκεῖ πιθανόν, ἀλλά γε τὴν Πυθίαν αὐτὴν ἐν πάθεσι καὶ διαφοραῖς ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλαις ἐκεῖνο τὸ μέρος τῆς ψυχῆς ἴσχειν, ᾧ πλησιάζει τὸ πνεῦμα, καὶ μὴ μίαν ἀεὶ κρᾶσιν ὥσπερ ἁρμονίαν ἀμετάβολον ἐν παντὶ καιρῷ διαφυλάττειν ὁμολογήσετε. πολλαὶ μὲν γὰρ αἰσθομένης πλείονες δ’ ἄδηλοι τό τε σῶμα καταλαμβάνουσι καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπορρέουσι δυσχέρειαι καὶ κινήσεις· ὧν ἀναπιμπλαμένην οὐκ ἄμεινον ἐκεῖ βαδίζειν οὐδὲ παρέχειν ἑαυτὴν τῷ θεῷ μὴ παντάπασι καθαρὰν οὖσαν ὥσπερ ὄργανον ἐξηρτυμένον καὶ εὐηχές, ἀλλ’ ἐμπαθῆ καὶ ἀκατάστατον. οὔτε γὰρ ὁ οἶνος [e] ὡσαύτως ἀεὶ τὸν μεθυστικὸν οὔθ’ ὁ αὐλὸς τὸν ἐνθουσιαστικὸν ὁμοίως διατίθησιν, ἀλλὰ νῦν μὲν ἧττον οἱ αὐτοὶ νῦν δὲ μᾶλλον ἐκβακχεύονται καὶ παρακινοῦσι τῆς κράσεως ἐν αὐτοῖς ἑτέρας γενομένης. μάλιστα δὲ τὸ φανταστικὸν ἔοικε τῆς ψυχῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ σώματος ἀλλοιουμένου κρατεῖσθαι καὶ συμμεταβάλλειν, ὡς δῆλόν ἐστιν ἀπὸ τῶν ὀνείρων· ποτὲ μὲν γὰρ ἐν πολλαῖς γιγνόμεθα καὶ παντοδαπαῖς ἐνυπνίων ὄψεσι, ποτὲ δ’ αὖ πάλιν πᾶσα γίγνεται γαλήνη καὶ ἡσυχία τῶν τοιούτων. καὶ Κλέωνα μὲν ἴσμεν [f] αὐτοὶ τὸν ἐκ Δαυλίας τοῦτον ἐν πολλοῖς ἔτεσιν οἷς βεβίωκε φάσκοντα μηδὲν ἰδεῖν πώποτε, τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων ταὐτὸ τοῦτο λέγεται περὶ Θρασυμήδους τοῦ Ἡραιέως. αἰτία δ’ ἡ κρᾶσις τοῦ σώματος, ὥσπερ αὖ πάλιν ἡ τῶν μελαγχολικῶν πολυόνειρος καὶ πολυφάνταστος, ᾗ καὶ δοκεῖ τὸ εὐθυόνειρον αὐτοῖς ὑπάρχειν· ἐπ’ ἄλλα γὰρ ἄλλοτε τῷ [438] φανταστικῷ τρεπόμενοι, καθάπερ οἱ πολλὰ βάλλοντες, ἐπιτυγχάνουσι πολλάκις. ὅταν οὖν εὐαρμόστως ἔχῃ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ πνεύματος ὥσπερ φαρμάκου κρᾶσιν ἡ φαντασιαστικὴ καὶ μαντικὴ δύναμις, ἐν τοῖς προφητεύουσιν ἀνάγκη γίγνεσθαι τὸν ἐνθουσιασμόν· ὅταν δὲ μὴ οὕτως, μὴ γίγνεσθαι, ἢ γίγνεσθαι παράφορον καὶ οὐκ ἀκέραιον καὶ ταρακτικόν, ὥσπερ ἴσμεν ἐπὶ τῆς ἔναγχος ἀποθανούσης Πυθίας. θεοπρόπων γὰρ ἀπὸ ξένης παραγενομένων λέγεται τὰς πρώτας κατασπείσεις ἀκίνητον ὑπομεῖναι καὶ ἀπαθὲς τὸ ἱερεῖον, ὑπερβαλλομένων δὲ φιλοτιμίᾳ τῶν ἱερέων καὶ προσλιπαρούντων μόλις ὕπομβρον γενόμενον καὶ [7] κατακλυσθὲν ἐνδοῦναι. τί οὖν συνέβη περὶ τὴν Πυθίαν; κατέβη μὲν εἰς τὸ μαντεῖον ὥς φασιν ἄκουσα καὶ ἀπρόθυμος, εὐθὺς δὲ περὶ τὰς πρώτας ἀποκρίσεις ἦν καταφανὴς τῇ τραχύτητι τῆς φωνῆς οὐκ ἀναφέρουσα δίκην νεὼς ἐπειγομένης ἀλάλου καὶ κακοῦ πνεύματος οὖσα πλήρης· τέλος δὲ παντάπασιν ἐκταραχθεῖσα καὶ μετὰ κραυγῆς ἀσήμου καὶ φοβερᾶς φερομένη πρὸς τὴν ἔξοδον ἔρριψεν ἑαυτήν, ὥστε φυγεῖν μὴ μόνον τοὺς θεοπρόπους ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν προφήτην Νίκανδρον καὶ τοὺς παρόντας τῶν ὁσίων. ἀνείλοντο μέντοι μετὰ μικρὸν αὐτὴν εἰσελθόντες ἔμφρονα καὶ διεβίωσεν ὀλίγας ἡμέρας. τούτων ἕνεκα καὶ [8] συνουσίας ἁγνὸν τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὸν βίον ὅλως ἀνεπίμικτον ἀλλοδαπαῖς καὶ ἄθικτον ὁμιλίαις φυλάττουσι τῆς Πυθίας καὶ πρὸ τοῦ χρηστηρίου τὰ σημεῖα λαμβάνουσιν, οἰόμενοι τῷ θεῷ κατάδηλον εἶναι, πότε τὴν πρόσφορον ἔχουσα κρᾶσιν καὶ διάθεσιν ἀβλαβῶς ὑπομενεῖ τὸν ἐνθουσιασμόν. οὔτε γὰρ πάντας οὔτε τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἀεὶ διατίθησιν ὡσαύτως ἡ τοῦ πνεύματος δύναμις, ἀλλ’ ὑπέκκαυμα παρέχει καὶ ἀρχὴν ὥσπερ εἴρηται (437e) τοῖς πρὸς τὸ παθεῖν καὶ μεταβαλεῖν οἰκείως ἔχουσιν. ἔστι δὲ θεία μὲν ὄντως καὶ δαιμόνιος, οὐ μὴν ἀνέκλειπτος οὐδ’ ἄφθαρτος οὐδ’ ἀγήρως [9] καὶ διαρκὴς εἰς τὸν ἄπειρον χρόνον ὑφ’ οὗ πάντα κάμνει τὰ μεταξὺ γῆς καὶ σελήνης κατὰ τὸν ἡμέτερον λόγον. εἰσὶ δ’ οἱ καὶ τὰ ἐπάνω φάσκοντες οὐχ ὑπομένειν, ἀλλ’ ἀπαυδῶντα πρὸς τὸ ἀίδιον καὶ ἄπειρον †ὀξέσι χρῆσθαι ‹καὶ› μεταβολαῖς καὶ παλιγγενεσίαις.’

‘Ταῦτ’’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘πολλάκις ἀνασκέπτεσθαι καὶ ὑμᾶς παρακαλῶ καὶ ἐμαυτόν, ὡς ἔχοντα πολλὰς ἀντιλήψεις καὶ ὑπονοίας πρὸς τοὐναντίον, ἃς ὁ καιρὸς οὐ παρέχει πάσας ἐπεξελθεῖν· ὥστε καὶ ταῦθ’ ὑπερκείσθω καὶ ἃ Φίλιππος διαπορεῖ περὶ ἡλίου καὶ Ἀπόλλωνος.’

An virtus doceri possit

ΕΙ ΔΙΔΑΚΤΟΝ Η ΑΡΕΤΗ

[439] Περὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς βουλευόμεθα καὶ διαποροῦμεν, εἰ διδακτόν ἐστι τὸ φρονεῖν τὸ δικαιοπραγεῖν τὸ εὖ ζῆν· εἶτα θαυμάζομεν, εἰ ῥητόρων μὲν ἔργα καὶ κυβερνητῶν καὶ ἁρμονικῶν καὶ οἰκοδόμων καὶ γεωργῶν μυρί’ ἐστίν, [b] ἀγαθοὶ δ’ ἄνδρες ὀνομάζονται καὶ λέγονται μόνον, ὡς ἱπποκένταυροι καὶ γίγαντες καὶ κύκλωπες, ἔργον δ’ ἀμεμφὲς εἰς ἀρετὴν [καὶ ἀκέραιον] οὐκ ἔστιν εὑρεῖν οὐδὲ πάθους ἀκέραιον ἦθος οὐδ’ ἄθικτον αἰσχροῦ βίον, ἀλλ’ εἰ καί τι καλὸν ἡ φύσις αὐτομάτως ἐκφέρει, τοῦτο πολλῷ τῷ ἀλλοτρίῳ, καθάπερ ὕλῃ καρπὸς ἀγρίᾳ καὶ ἀκαθάρτῳ μιγνύμενος, ἐξαμαυροῦται; ψάλλειν μανθάνουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καὶ ὀρχεῖσθαι καὶ ἀναγινώσκειν γράμματα καὶ γεωργεῖν καὶ ἱππεύειν· καὶ τί δεινόν; ὑποδεῖσθαι μανθάνουσι περιβάλλεσθαι, οἰνοχοεῖν διδάσκουσιν ὀψοποιεῖν· ταῦτ’ [c] ἄνευ τοῦ μαθεῖν οὐκ ἔστι χρησίμως ποιεῖν, δι’ ὃ δὲ ταῦτα πάντα, τὸ εὖ βιοῦν, ἀδίδακτον καὶ ἄλογον καὶ ἄτεχνον καὶ αὐτόματον;

Ὦ ἄνθρωποι, τί τὴν ἀρετὴν λέγοντες ἀδίδακτον εἶναι ποιοῦμεν ἀνύπαρκτον; εἰ γὰρ ἡ μάθησις γένεσίς ἐστιν, ἡ τοῦ μαθεῖν κώλυσις ἀναίρεσις. καίτοι γ’, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Clit. 407c), διὰ τὴν τοῦ ποδὸς πρὸς τὴν λύραν ἀμετρίαν καὶ ἀναρμοστίαν οὔτ’ ἀδελφὸς ἀδελφῷ πολεμεῖ οὔτε φίλος φίλῳ διαφέρεται οὔτε πόλεις πόλεσι δι’ ἀπεχθείας γινόμεναι τὰ ἔσχατα [κακὰ] δρῶσί τε καὶ [d] πάσχουσιν ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων, οὐδὲ περὶ προσῳδίας ἔχει τις εἰπεῖν στάσιν ἐν πόλει γενομένην, ποτέρως Τελχινας ἀναγνωστέον, οὐδ’ ἐν οἰκίᾳ διαφορὰν ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς ὑπὲρ κρόκης ἢ στήμονος· ἀλλ’ ὅμως οὔτ’ ἂν ἱστὸν οὔτε βιβλίον ἢ λύραν ὁ μὴ μαθὼν μεταχειρίσαιτο, καίπερ εἰς οὐδὲν μέγα βλαβησόμενος, ἀλλ’ αἰδεῖται γενέσθαι καταγέλαστος (‘ἀμαθίην’ γὰρ Ἡράκλειτός (B 95) φησι ‘κρύπτειν ἄμεινον’), οἶκον δὲ καὶ γάμον καὶ πολιτείαν καὶ ἀρχὴν οἴεται καλῶς μεταχειρίσασθαι ‹μὴ παισὶ μαθὼν ὀρθῶς συμφέρεσθαι› μὴ γυναικὶ μὴ θεράποντι μὴ πολίτῃ μὴ ἀρχομένῳ μὴ ἄρχοντι; παιδὸς ὀψοφαγοῦντος ὁ Διογένης τῷ παιδαγωγῷ κόνδυλον ἔδωκεν, ὀρθῶς οὐ τοῦ μὴ μαθόντος [e] ἀλλὰ τοῦ μὴ διδάξαντος τὸ ἁμάρτημα ποιήσας. εἶτα παροψίδος μὲν ἢ κύλικος οὐκ ἔστι κοινωνεῖν ἐπιδεξίως, ἂν μὴ μάθῃ τις εὐθὺς ἐκ παίδων ἀρξάμενος, ὡς Ἀριστοφάνης (Nub. 979), ‘μὴ κιχλίζειν μηδ’ ὀψοφαγεῖν μηδ’ ἴσχειν τὼ πόδ’ ἐπαλλάξ’, οἴκου δὲ καὶ πόλεως καὶ γάμου καὶ βίου καὶ ἀρχῆς κοινωνίαν ἀνέγκλητον ἐνδέχεται γενέσθαι μὴ μαθόντων ὅντινα χρὴ τρόπον ἀλλήλοις συμφέρεσθαι;

Ὁ Ἀρίστιππος ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπό τινος ‘πανταχοῦ σὺ ἄρ’ εἶ’ γελάσας ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘παραπόλλυμι τὸ ναῦλον, εἴ γε πανταχοῦ εἰμι’. τί οὖν; οὐκ ἂν εἴποις καὶ αὐτός ‘εἰ μὴ [f] γίνονται μαθήσει βελτίονες ἄνθρωποι, παραπόλλυται ὁ μισθὸς τῶν παιδαγωγῶν’; πρῶτοι γὰρ οὗτοι παραλαμβάνοντες ἐκ γάλακτος, ὥσπερ αἱ τίτθαι ταῖς χερσὶ τὸ σῶμα πλάττουσιν, οὕτω τὸ ἦθος ῥυθμίζουσι τοῖς ἔθεσιν εἰς ἴχνος τι πρῶτον ἀρετῆς καθιστάντες. καὶ ὁ Λάκων ἐρωτηθεὶς τί παρέχει παιδαγωγῶν, ‘τὰ καλά’ ἔφη ‘τοῖς παισὶν ἡδέα ποιῶ.’ καίτοι τί διδάσκουσιν οἱ παιδαγωγοί; κεκυφότας ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς περιπατεῖν, ἑνὶ δακτύλῳ [440] [a] τοῦ ταρίχους ἅψασθαι, δυσὶ †τὸν ἰχθῦν σῖτον κρέας, οὕτω καθῆσθαι, τὸ ἱμάτιον οὕτως ἀναλαβεῖν. τί οὖν; ὁ λέγων λειχῆνος ἰατρικὴν εἶναι καὶ παρωνυχίας, πλευρίτιδος δὲ καὶ πυρετοῦ καὶ φρενίτιδος μὴ εἶναι, τί διαφέρει τοῦ λέγοντος ὅτι τῶν μικρῶν καὶ παιδικῶν καθηκόντων εἰσὶ διδασκαλεῖα καὶ λόγοι καὶ ὑποθῆκαι, τῶν δὲ μεγάλων καὶ τελείων ἄλογος τριβὴ καὶ περίπτωσίς ἐστιν; ὡς γὰρ ὁ λέγων ὅτι δεῖ κώπην ἐλαύνειν μαθόντα ‹κυβερνᾶν δὲ καὶ μὴ μαθόντα› γελοῖός ἐστιν, οὕτως ὁ μὲν τῶν ἄλλων ἀπολείπων τεχνῶν μάθησιν ἀρετῆς δ’ ἀναιρῶν τοὐναντίον ἔοικε τοῖς Σκύθαις ποιεῖν. ἐκεῖνοι μὲν γάρ, ὥς φησιν Ἡρόδοτος (IV 2), τοὺς οἰκέτας ἐκτυφλοῦσιν ὅπως †παραδῶσιν αὐτοῖς, οὗτος δὲ ταῖς δούλαις καὶ ὑπηρέτισι τέχναις [b] ὥσπερ ὄμμα τὸν λόγον ἐντιθεὶς τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀφαιρεῖ. καίτοι γ’ ὁ στρατηγὸς Ἰφικράτης πρὸς τὸν Χαβρίου Καλλίαν ἐρωτῶντα καὶ λέγοντα ‘τίς εἶ; τοξότης; πελταστής; ἱππεύς; ὁπλίτης;’ ‘οὐδείς’ ἔφη ‘τούτων ἀλλὰ τούτοις πᾶσιν ὁ ἐπιτάττων.’ γελοῖος οὖν ὁ λέγων, ὅτι τοξικὴ καὶ ὁπλιτικὴ καὶ τὸ σφενδονᾶν καὶ τὸ ἱππεύειν διδακτόν ἐστι, στρατηγικὴ δὲ καὶ τὸ στρατηγεῖν ὡς ἔτυχε παραγίνεται καὶ οἷς ἔτυχε μὴ μαθοῦσιν. οὐκοῦν ἔτι γελοιότερος ὁ μόνην τὴν φρόνησιν μὴ διδακτὴν ἀποφαίνων, ἧς ἄνευ τῶν ἄλλων τεχνῶν ὄφελος οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ὄνησίς ἐστιν. εἰ δ’ ἡγεμὼν αὕτη καὶ κόσμος οὖσα πασῶν καὶ τάξις εἰς τὸ χρήσιμον ἕκαστον [c] καθίστησιν, αὐτίκα τίς δείπνου χάρις, ἠσκημένων καὶ μεμαθηκότων παίδων ‘δαιτρεῦσαι καὶ ὀπτῆσαι καὶ οἰνοχοῆσαι (ο 323),’ εἰ μὴ διάθεσις μηδὲ τάξις εἴη περὶ τοὺς διακονοῦντας;

De virtute morali

ΠΕΡΙ ΗΘΙΚΗΣ ΑΡΕΤΗΣ

[440] Περὶ τῆς ἠθικῆς λεγομένης ἀρετῆς καὶ δοκούσης, ᾧ δὴ μάλιστα τῆς θεωρητικῆς διαφέρει, τῷ τὸ μὲν πάθος ὕλην ἔχειν τὸν δὲ λόγον εἶδος, εἰπεῖν πρόκειται τίνα τ’ οὐσίαν ἔχει καὶ πῶς ὑφίστασθαι πέφυκε· καὶ πότερον οἰκείῳ λόγῳ κεκόσμηται τὸ δεδεγμένον μόριον αὐτὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ἢ μετέσχηκεν ἀλλοτρίου· καὶ εἰ μετέσχηκε, πότερον ὡς τὰ μεμιγμένα πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον ἢ μᾶλλον ὡς ἐπιστασίᾳ τινὶ χρώμενον καὶ ἀρχῇ μετέχειν λέγεται τῆς τοῦ ἄρχοντος δυνάμεως. ὅτι μὲν γὰρ δύναται καὶ ἀρετὴ γεγονέναι [e] καὶ μένειν παντάπασιν ἄυλος καὶ ἄκρατος, οἶμαι δῆλον εἶναι.

Βέλτιον δὲ βραχέως ἐπιδραμεῖν καὶ τὰ τῶν ἑτέρων, οὐχ ἱστορίας ἕνεκα μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ σαφέστερα γενέσθαι τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ βεβαιότερα προεκτεθέντων ἐκείνων.

Μενέδημος μὲν ὁ ἐξ Ἐρετρίας ἀνῄρει τῶν ἀρετῶν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος καὶ τὰς διαφοράς, ὡς μιᾶς οὔσης καὶ χρωμένης πολλοῖς ὀνόμασι· τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ σωφροσύνην καὶ ἀνδρείαν καὶ δικαιοσύνην λέγεσθαι, καθάπερ βροτὸν καὶ ἄνθρωπον. Ἀρίστων δ’ ὁ Χῖος (fr. 375) τῇ μὲν οὐσίᾳ μίαν [f] καὶ αὐτὸς ἀρετὴν ἐποίει καὶ ὑγίειαν ὠνόμαζε· τῷ δὲ πρός τί πως διαφόρους καὶ πλείονας, ὡς εἴ τις ἐθέλοι τὴν ὅρασιν ἡμῶν λευκῶν μὲν ἀντιλαμβανομένην λευκοθέαν καλεῖν, μελάνων δὲ μελανοθέαν ἤ τι τοιοῦτον ἕτερον. καὶ γὰρ ἡ ἀρετὴ ποιητέα μὲν ἐπισκοποῦσα καὶ μὴ ποιητέα [441] [a] κέκληται φρόνησις, ἐπιθυμίαν δὲ κοσμοῦσα καὶ τὸ μέτριον καὶ τὸ εὔκαιρον ἐν ἡδοναῖς ὁρίζουσα σωφροσύνη, κοινωνήμασι δὲ καὶ συμβολαίοις ὁμιλοῦσα τοῖς πρὸς ἑτέρους δικαιοσύνη· καθάπερ τὸ μαχαίριον ἓν μέν ἐστιν ἄλλοτε δ’ ἄλλο διαιρεῖ, καὶ τὸ πῦρ ἐνεργεῖ περὶ ὕλας διαφόρους μιᾷ φύσει χρώμενον. ἔοικε δὲ καὶ Ζήνων εἰς τοῦτό πως ὑποφέρεσθαι ὁ Κιτιεύς (fr. 201), ὁριζόμενος τὴν φρόνησιν ἐν μὲν ἀπονεμητέοις δικαιοσύνην ἐν δ’ αἱρετέοις σωφροσύνην ἐν δ’ ὑπομενετέοις ἀνδρείαν· ἀπολογούμενοι δ’ ἀξιοῦσιν ἐν τούτοις τὴν ἐπιστήμην φρόνησιν ὑπὸ τοῦ Ζήνωνος ὠνομάσθαι. Χρύσιππος δὲ (fr. eth. 255) κατὰ [b] τὸν ποιὸν ἀρετὴν ἰδίᾳ ποιότητι συνίστασθαι νομίζων ἔλαθεν αὑτὸν κατὰ τὸν Πλάτωνα (Men. 72a) ‘σμῆνος ἀρετῶν’ οὐ σύνηθες οὐδὲ γνώριμον ἐγείρας· ὡς γὰρ παρὰ τὸν ἀνδρεῖον ἀνδρείαν καὶ παρὰ τὸν πρᾶον πραότητα καὶ δικαιοσύνην παρὰ τὸν δίκαιον, οὕτω παρὰ τὸν χαρίεντα χαριεντότητας καὶ παρὰ τὸν ἐσθλὸν ἐσθλότητας καὶ παρὰ τὸν μέγαν μεγαλότητας καὶ παρὰ τὸν καλὸν καλότητας ἑτέρας τε τοιαύτας ἐπιδεξιότητας εὐαπαντησίας εὐτραπελίας ἀρετὰς τιθέμενος πολλῶν καὶ ἀτόπων ὀνομάτων οὐδὲν δεομένην ἐμπέπληκε ‹τὴν› φιλοσοφίαν.

[c] Κοινῶς δ’ ἅπαντες οὗτοι τὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς διάθεσίν τινα καὶ δύναμιν γεγενημένην ὑπὸ λόγου, μᾶλλον δὲ λόγον οὖσαν αὐτὴν ὁμολογούμενον καὶ βέβαιον καὶ ἀμετάπτωτον ὑποτίθενται· καὶ νομίζουσιν οὐκ εἶναι τὸ παθητικὸν καὶ ἄλογον διαφορᾷ τινι καὶ φύσει [ψυχῆς] τοῦ λογικοῦ διακεκριμένον, ἀλλὰ τὸ αὐτὸ τῆς ψυχῆς μέρος, ὃ δὴ καλοῦσι διάνοιαν καὶ ἡγεμονικόν, δι’ ὅλου τρεπόμενον καὶ μεταβάλλον ἔν τε τοῖς πάθεσι καὶ ταῖς καθ’ ἕξιν ἢ διάθεσιν μεταβολαῖς κακίαν τε γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀρετήν, καὶ μηδὲν ἔχειν ἄλογον ἐν ἑαυτῷ, λέγεσθαι δ’ ἄλογον, ὅταν τῷ πλεονάζοντι τῆς ὁρμῆς ἰσχυρῷ γενομένῳ καὶ κρατήσαντι πρός τι τῶν ἀτόπων παρὰ τὸν [d] αἱροῦντα λόγον ἐκφέρηται· καὶ γὰρ τὸ πάθος εἶναι λόγον πονηρὸν καὶ ἀκόλαστον ἐκ φαύλης καὶ διημαρτημένης κρίσεως σφοδρότητα καὶ ῥώμην προσλαβούσης. ἔοικε δὲ λαθεῖν τούτους ἅπαντας, ᾗ διττὸς ἡμῶν ὡς ἀληθῶς ἕκαστός ἐστι καὶ σύνθετος· τὴν γὰρ ἑτέραν διπλόην οὐ κατεῖδον, ἀλλὰ τὴν ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος μῖξιν ἐμφανεστέραν οὖσαν. ὅτι δ’ αὐτῆς ἔστι τῆς ψυχῆς ἐν ἑαυτῇ σύνθετόν τι καὶ διφυὲς καὶ ἀνόμοιον, ὥσπερ ἑτέρου σώματος τοῦ ἀλόγου πρὸς τὸν λόγον ἀνάγκῃ τινὶ καὶ [e] φύσει συμμιγέντος καὶ συναρμοσθέντος, εἰκὸς μέν ἐστι μηδὲ Πυθαγόραν ἀγνοῆσαι, τεκμαιρομένοις τῇ περὶ μουσικὴν σπουδῇ τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἣν ἐπηγάγετο τῇ ψυχῇ κηλήσεως ἕνεκα καὶ παραμυθίας, ὡς οὐ πᾶν ἐχούσῃ διδασκαλίᾳ καὶ μαθήμασιν ὑπήκοον οὐδὲ λόγῳ μεταβλητὸν ἐκ κακίας, ἀλλά τινος ἑτέρας πειθοῦς συνεργοῦ καὶ πλάσεως καὶ τιθασεύσεως δεόμενον, εἰ μὴ παντάπασι μέλλοι φιλοσοφίᾳ δυσμεταχείριστον εἶναι καὶ ἀπειθές· ἐμφανῶς μέντοι καὶ βεβαίως καὶ ἀναμφιδόξως Πλάτων (Tim. 35) συνεῖδεν, ὅτι τούτου τε τοῦ κόσμου τὸ ἔμψυχον οὐχ [f] ἁπλοῦν οὐδ’ ἀσύνθετον οὐδὲ μονοειδές ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῆς ταὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς τοῦ ἑτέρου μεμιγμένον δυνάμεως πῆ μὲν ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ κοσμεῖται καὶ περιπολεῖ μιᾷ τάξει κράτος ἐχούσῃ χρώμενον, πῆ δ’ εἴς τε κινήσεις καὶ κύκλους σχιζόμενον ὑπεναντίους καὶ πλανητοὺς ἀρχὴν διαφορᾶς καὶ μεταβολῆς καὶ ἀνομοιότητος ἐνδίδωσι ταῖς περὶ γῆν φθοραῖς καὶ γενέσεσιν, ἥ τ’ ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴ (Tim. 69c) μέρος ἢ μίμημα τῆς τοῦ παντὸς οὖσα καὶ συνηρμοσμένη κατὰ λόγους καὶ ἀριθμοὺς ἐοικότας ἐκείνοις [442] [a] οὐχ ἁπλῆ τίς ἐστιν οὐδ’ ὁμοιοπαθής, ἀλλ’ ἕτερον μὲν ἔχει τὸ νοερὸν καὶ λογιστικόν, ᾧ κρατεῖν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου κατὰ φύσιν καὶ ἄρχειν προσῆκόν ἐστιν, ἕτερον δὲ τὸ παθητικὸν καὶ ἄλογον καὶ πολυπλανὲς καὶ ἄτακτον ἐξεταστοῦ δεόμενον. οὗ πάλιν διχῆ μεριζομένου τὸ μὲν ἀεὶ σώματι βούλεσθαι συνεῖναι καὶ σῶμα θεραπεύειν πεφυκὸς ἐπιθυμητικὸν κέκληται, τὸ δ’ ἔστι μὲν ᾗ τούτῳ προστιθέμενον, ἔστι δ’ ᾗ τῷ λογισμῷ παρέχον ἰσχὺν ἐπὶ τοῦτο καὶ δύναμιν θυμοειδές. ἀποδείκνυσι δὲ (Rep. 434d sqq.) τὴν διαφορὰν μάλιστα τῇ τοῦ λογιζομένου καὶ φρονοῦντος ἀντιβάσει πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμοῦν καὶ ‹τὸ› θυμούμενον, [b] ὡς τῷ ἕτερ’ εἶναι πολλάκις ἀπειθοῦντα καὶ δυσμαχοῦντα πρὸς τὸ βέλτιστον. ταύταις ἐχρήσατο ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ἐπὶ πλέον Ἀριστοτέλης, ὡς δῆλόν ἐστιν ἐξ ὧν ἔγραψεν· ὕστερον δὲ τὸ μὲν θυμοειδὲς τῷ ἐπιθυμητικῷ προσένειμεν, ὡς ἐπιθυμίαν τινὰ τὸν θυμὸν ὄντα καὶ ὄρεξιν ἀντιλυπήσεως (de an. 403a 30), τῷ μέντοι παθητικῷ καὶ ἀλόγῳ μέχρι παντὸς ὡς διαφέροντι τοῦ λογιστικοῦ χρώμενος διετέλεσεν, οὐχ ὅτι παντελῶς ἄλογόν ἐστιν ὥσπερ τὸ αἰσθητικὸν ἢ τὸ θρεπτικὸν καὶ φυτικὸν τῆς ψυχῆς μέρος· ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὅλως ἀνήκοα λόγου καὶ κωφὰ τρόπον τινὰ τῆς σαρκὸς ἐκβεβλάστηκε καὶ περὶ τὸ σῶμα παντελῶς [c] καταπέφυκε, τὸ δὲ παθητικὸν οἰκείου λόγου στέρεται καὶ ἄμοιρόν ἐστιν, ἄλλως δὲ τοῦ λογιζομένου καὶ φρονοῦντος εἰσακούειν καὶ τρέπεσθαι πρὸς ἐκεῖνο καὶ ὑπείκειν καὶ κατασχηματίζεσθαι πέφυκεν, ἐὰν μὴ τέλεον ᾖ διεφθαρμένον ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἀμαθοῦς καὶ ἀκολάστου διαίτης.

Οἱ δὲ θαυμάζοντες ὅπως ἄλογον μέν ἐστι λόγου δ’ ὑπήκοον οὔ μοι δοκοῦσι τοῦ λόγου περινοεῖν τὴν δύναμιν ‘ὅση πέφυκε καὶ ἐφ’ ὅσον διέρχεται’ (Eur. fr. 898, 3) τῷ κρατεῖν καὶ ἄγειν οὐ σκληραῖς οὐδ’ ἀντιτύποις ἀγωγαῖς ἀλλὰ τυπικαῖς καὶ τὸ ἐνδόσιμον καὶ πειθήνιον ἁπάσης ἀνάγκης καὶ βίας ἐχούσαις ἀνυσιμώτερον. ἐπεὶ καὶ πνεῦμα [d] δήπου καὶ νεῦρα καὶ ὀστᾶ καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ μέρη τοῦ σώματος ἄλογ’ ἐστίν, ἀλλ’ ὅταν ὁρμὴ γένηται, σείσαντος ὥσπερ ἡνίας τοῦ λογισμοῦ πάντα τέταται καὶ συνῆκται καὶ ὑπακούει· καὶ πόδες τε θεῖν διανοηθέντος εὔτονοι καὶ χεῖρες εἰς ἔργον καθίστανται βαλεῖν ἢ λαβεῖν ὁρμήσαντος. ἄριστα δ’ ὁ ποιητὴς τὸ συμπαθοῦν καὶ συγκατασχηματιζόμενον τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ ἀλόγου παρίστησι διὰ τούτων (τ 208 sqq.)·

‘ὣς τῆς τήκετο καλὰ παρήια δακρυχεούσης,

κλαιούσης ἑὸν ἄνδρα παρήμενον· αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς

θυμῷ μὲν γοόωσαν ἑὴν ἐλέαιρε γυναῖκα,

[e] ὀφθαλμοὶ δ’ ὡς εἰ κέρα ἕστασαν ἠὲ σίδηρος

ἀτρέμας ἐν βλεφάροισι, δόλῳ δ’ ὅ γε δάκρυα κεῦθεν·’

οὕτως κατήκοον εἶχε τῆς κρίσεως καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ αἷμα καὶ τὸ δάκρυον. δηλοῦσι δὲ καὶ παρὰ καλαῖς καὶ καλοῖς, ὧν οὐκ ἐᾷ λόγος οὐδὲ νόμος θιγεῖν, αἰδοίων φυγαὶ καὶ ἀναχωρήσεις ἡσυχίαν ἀγόντων καὶ ἀτρεμούντων. ὃ μάλιστα συμβαίνει τοῖς ἐρῶσιν εἶτ’ ἀκούσασιν ὡς ἀδελφῆς ἐρῶντες ἢ θυγατρὸς ἠγνοήκασιν· ἅμα γὰρ ἔπτηξε τὸ ἐπιθυμοῦν ἁψαμένου τοῦ λόγου καὶ τὸ σῶμα τὰ μέρη συνευσχημονοῦντα τῇ κρίσει παρέσχε. σιτίοις γε μὴν πολλάκις [f] καὶ ὄψοις μάλ’ ἡδέως προσενεχθέντες ἂν αἴσθωνται καὶ μάθωσιν αὑτοὺς τῶν μὴ καθαρῶν τι μηδὲ νομίμων ἐδηδοκότας, οὐ τῇ κρίσει μόνον ἐπιτίθεται τὸ λυποῦν καὶ δάκνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ σῶμα τῇ δόξῃ συνδιατρεπόμενον καὶ ἀναπιμπλάμενον ἔμετοι καὶ διατροπαὶ ναυτιώδεις ἴσχουσι. δέδοικα δὲ μὴ δόξαιμι παντάπασιν ἐπαγωγὰ καὶ νεαρὰ [443] [a] τῷ λόγῳ περαίνειν, ψαλτήρια διεξιὼν καὶ λύρας καὶ πηκτίδας καὶ αὐλοὺς καὶ ὅσα μουσικῆς προσῳδὰ καὶ προσήγορα μηχανησαμένης ἀνθρωπίνοις πάθεσιν ἄψυχα συνήδεται καὶ συνεπιθρηνεῖ καὶ συνᾴδει καὶ συνακολασταίνει, τὰς κρίσεις ἀναφέροντα καὶ τὰ πάθη καὶ τὰ ἤθη τῶν χρωμένων. καίτοι καὶ Ζήνωνά φασιν (fr. 299) εἰς θέατρον ἀνιόντα κιθαρῳδοῦντος Ἀμοιβέως πρὸς τοὺς μαθητάς ‘ἴωμεν’ εἰπεῖν ‘ὅπως καταμάθωμεν οἵαν ἔντερα καὶ νεῦρα καὶ ξύλα καὶ ὀστᾶ λόγου καὶ ῥυθμοῦ μετασχόντα καὶ τάξεως ἐμμέλειαν καὶ φωνὴν ἀφίησιν.’ ἀλλὰ [b] ταῦτ’ ἐάσας ἡδέως ἂν αὐτῶν πυθοίμην, εἰ κύνας καὶ ἵππους καὶ ὄρνιθας οἰκουροὺς ὁρῶντες ἔθει καὶ τροφῇ καὶ διδασκαλίᾳ φωνάς τε συνετὰς καὶ πρὸς λόγον ὑπηκόους κινήσεις καὶ σχέσεις ἀποδιδόντας καὶ πράξεις τὸ μέτριον καὶ τὸ χρήσιμον ἡμῖν ἐχούσας Ὁμήρου τ’ ἀκούοντες τὸν Ἀχιλλέα λέγοντος ‘ὀτρύνειν ἵππους τε καὶ ἀνέρας’ (Π 167) ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην ἔτι θαυμάζουσι καὶ διαποροῦσιν εἰ τὸ θυμούμενον ἐν ἡμῖν καὶ ἐπιθυμοῦν καὶ λυπούμενον καὶ ἡδόμενον ὑπακούειν τε τῷ φρονοῦντι καὶ πάσχειν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ συνδιατίθεσθαι πέφυκεν, οὐκ ἀποικοῦν οὐδ’ [c] ἀπεσχισμένον οὐδὲ πλασσόμενον ἔξωθεν οὐδὲ τυπούμενον ἀνάγκαις τισὶν ἢ πληγαῖς, ἀλλὰ φύσει μὲν ἐξηρτημένον ἀεὶ δ’ ὁμιλοῦν καὶ συντρεφόμενον καὶ ἀναπιμπλάμενον ὑπὸ συνηθείας.

Διὸ καὶ καλῶς ὠνόμασται τὸ ἦθος. ἔστι μὲν γάρ, ὡς τύπῳ εἰπεῖν, ποιότης τοῦ ἀλόγου τὸ ἦθος, ὠνόμασται δ’ ὅτι τὴν ποιότητα ταύτην καὶ τὴν διαφορὰν ἔθει λαμβάνει τὸ ἄλογον ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου πλαττόμενον, οὐ βουλομένου τὸ πάθος ἐξαιρεῖν παντάπασιν (οὔτε γὰρ δυνατὸν οὔτ’ ἄμεινον), ἀλλ’ ὅρον τινὰ καὶ τάξιν ἐπιτιθέντος αὐτῷ καὶ τὰς ἠθικὰς ἀρετάς, οὐκ ἀπαθείας οὔσας ἀλλὰ συμμετρίας [d] παθῶν καὶ μεσότητας, ἐμποιοῦντος· ἐμποιεῖ δὲ τῇ φρονήσει τὴν τοῦ παθητικοῦ δύναμιν εἰς ἕξιν ἀστείαν καθιστάς. τρία γὰρ δὴ ταῦτά φασι περὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπάρχειν, δύναμιν πάθος ἕξιν. ἡ μὲν οὖν δύναμις ἀρχὴ καὶ ὕλη τοῦ πάθους, οἷον ὀργιλότης αἰσχυντηλία θαρραλεότης· τὸ δὲ πάθος κίνησίς τις ἤδη τῆς δυνάμεως, οἷον ὀργὴ θάρσος αἰδώς [θράσος]· ἡ δ’ ἕξις ἰσχὺς καὶ κατασκευὴ τῆς περὶ τὸ ἄλογον δυνάμεως ἐξ ἔθους ἐγγενομένη, κακία μέν, ἂν φαύλως, ἀρετὴ δ’, ἂν καλῶς ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου παιδαγωγηθῇ τὸ πάθος.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐ πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν μεσότητα ποιοῦσιν οὐδ’ [e] ἠθικὴν καλοῦσι, λεκτέον ἂν εἴη περὶ τῆς διαφορᾶς ἀρξαμένοις ἄνωθεν. ἔστι τοίνυν τῶν πραγμάτων τὰ μὲν ἁπλῶς ἔχοντα τὰ δὲ πῶς ἔχοντα πρὸς ἡμᾶς· ἁπλῶς μὲν οὖν ἔχοντα γῆ οὐρανὸς ἄστρα θάλασσα, πῶς δ’ ἔχοντα πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἀγαθὸν κακόν, αἱρετὸν φευκτόν, ἡδὺ ἀλγεινόν. ἀμφοῖν δὲ τοῦ λόγου θεωρητικοῦ ὄντος τὸ μὲν περὶ τὰ ἁπλῶς ἔχοντα μόνον ἐπιστημονικὸν καὶ θεωρητικόν ἐστι, τὸ δ’ ἐν τοῖς πῶς ἔχουσι πρὸς ἡμᾶς βουλευτικὸν καὶ πρακτικόν· ἀρετὴ δὲ τούτου μὲν ἡ φρόνησις ἐκείνου δ’ ἡ σοφία. διαφέρει δὲ σοφίας φρόνησις, ᾗ τοῦ θεωρητικοῦ πρὸς τὸ [f] πρακτικὸν καὶ παθητικὸν ἐπιστροφῆς καὶ σχέσεώς τινος γενομένης ὑφίσταται κατὰ λόγον ἡ φρόνησις. διὸ φρόνησις μὲν τύχης δεῖται σοφία δ’ οὐ δεῖται πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον τέλος οὐδὲ βουλῆς· ἔστι γὰρ περὶ τὰ ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως ἔχοντα. καὶ καθάπερ ὁ γεωμέτρης οὐ βουλεύεται περὶ [444] [a] τοῦ τριγώνου, εἰ δυεῖν ὀρθαῖς ἴσας ἔχει τὰς ἐντὸς γωνίας ἀλλ’ οἶδεν (αἱ γὰρ βουλαὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλως ἐχόντων, οὐ περὶ τῶν βεβαίων καὶ ἀμεταπτώτων), οὕτως ὁ θεωρητικὸς νοῦς περὶ τὰ πρῶτα καὶ μόνιμα καὶ μίαν ἀεὶ φύσιν ἔχοντα μὴ δεχομένην μεταβολὰς ἐνεργῶν ἀπήλλακται τοῦ βουλεύεσθαι· τὴν δὲ φρόνησιν εἰς πράγματα πλάνης μεστὰ καὶ ταραχῆς καθιεῖσαν ἐπιμίγνυσθαι τοῖς τυχηροῖς πολλάκις ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι καὶ τῷ βουλευτικῷ χρῆσθαι περὶ τῶν ἀδηλοτέρων, τῷ δὲ πρακτικῷ τὸ βουλευτικὸν ἐκδεχομένην ἐνεργεῖν ἤδη καὶ τοῦ ἀλόγου συμπαρόντος καὶ συνεφελκομένου [b] ταῖς κρίσεσιν. ὁρμῆς γὰρ δέονται· τὴν δ’ ὁρμὴν τῷ πάθει ποιεῖ τὸ ἦθος, λόγου δεομένην ὁρίζοντος, ὅπως μετρία παρῇ καὶ μήθ’ ὑπερβάλλῃ μήτ’ ἐγκαταλείπῃ τὸν καιρόν. τὸ γὰρ δὴ παθητικὸν καὶ ἄλογον κινήσεσι χρῆται ταῖς μὲν ἄγαν σφοδραῖς καὶ ὀξείαις ταῖς δὲ μαλακωτέραις ἢ προσήκει καὶ ἀργοτέραις. ὅθεν ἕκαστον ὧν πράττομεν ἀεὶ μοναχῶς μὲν κατορθοῦται πλεοναχῶς δ’ ἁμαρτάνεται· τὸ γὰρ βαλεῖν τὸν σκοπὸν ἕν ἐστι καὶ ἁπλοῦν, ἀστοχοῦσι δ’ ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλως, ὑπερβάλλοντες τὸ μέτριον ἢ προαπολείποντες. τοῦτ’ οὖν τοῦ πρακτικοῦ λόγου κατὰ [c] φύσιν ἔργον ἐστί, τὸ ἐξαιρεῖν τὰς ἀμετρίας τῶν παθῶν καὶ πλημμελείας. ὅπου μὲν γὰρ ὑπ’ ἀρρωστίας καὶ μαλακίας ἢ δέους καὶ ὄκνου προενδίδωσιν ἡ ὁρμὴ καὶ προαπολείπει τὸ καλόν, ἐνταῦθα πάρεστιν ἐξεγείρων καὶ ἀναρριπίζων, ὅπου δὲ πάλιν ἐκφέρεται ῥυεῖσα πολλὴ καὶ ἄτακτος, ἐκεῖ τὸ σφοδρὸν ἀφαιρεῖ καὶ ἵστησιν. οὕτως δ’ ὁρίζων τὴν παθητικὴν κίνησιν ἐμποιεῖ τὰς ἠθικὰς ἀρετὰς περὶ τὸ ἄλογον, ἐλλείψεως καὶ ὑπερβολῆς μεσότητας οὔσας. οὐ γὰρ ἅπασαν ἀρετὴν μεσότητι γίνεσθαι ῥητέον· ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν ἀπροσδεὴς τοῦ ἀλόγου καὶ περὶ τὸν εἰλικρινῆ [d] καὶ ἀπαθῆ νοῦν συνισταμένη σοφία καὶ φρόνησις αὐτοτελής τίς ἐστιν ἀκρότης τοῦ λόγου καὶ δύναμις, ᾗ τὸ θειότατον ἐγγίνεται τῆς ἐπιστήμης καὶ μακαριώτατον, ἡ δ’ ἀναγκαία διὰ τὸ σῶμα καὶ δεομένη τῆς παθητικῆς ὥσπερ ὀργανικῆς ὑπηρεσίας ἐπὶ τὸ πρακτικόν, οὐκ οὖσα φθορὰ τοῦ ἀλόγου τῆς ψυχῆς οὐδ’ ἀναίρεσις ἀλλὰ τάξις καὶ διακόσμησις, ἀκρότης μέν ἐστι τῇ δυνάμει καὶ τῇ ποιότητι, τῷ ποσῷ δὲ μεσότης γίνεται τὸ ὑπερβάλλον ἐξαιροῦσα καὶ τὸ ἐλλεῖπον.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλαχῶς τὸ μέσον (καὶ γὰρ τὸ κεκραμένον τῶν ἀκράτων μέσον, ὡς λευκοῦ καὶ μέλανος τὸ [e] φαιόν· καὶ τὸ περιέχον καὶ περιεχόμενον τοῦ περιεχομένου καὶ περιέχοντος, ὡς τῶν δώδεκα καὶ τεττάρων τὰ ὀκτώ· καὶ τὸ μηδετέρου τῶν ἄκρων μετέχον, ὡς ἀγαθοῦ καὶ κακοῦ τὸ ἀδιάφορον), τούτων μὲν οὐδενὶ τῶν τρόπων ἡ ἀρετὴ προσρητέα μεσότης. οὔτε γὰρ μῖγμα τῶν κακιῶν ἐστιν, οὔτ’ ἐμπεριέχουσα τοὔλαττον ἐμπεριέχεται τῷ πλεονάζοντι τοῦ προσήκοντος, οὔτ’ ἀπήλλακται παντάπασι τῶν παθητικῶν ὁρμῶν, ἐν αἷς τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ τὸ ἧττόν ἐστι. γίνεται δὲ μεσότης καὶ λέγεται μάλιστα τῇ περὶ φθόγγους καὶ ἁρμονίας ὁμοίως· ἐκείνη τε γὰρ ἐμμελὴς οὖσα φωνὴ καθάπερ ἡ νήτη καὶ ὑπάτη τῆς μὲν τὴν ὀξύτητα τῆς δὲ τὴν βαρύτητα τὴν ἄγαν διαπέφευγεν· αὕτη τε κίνησις οὖσα καὶ δύναμις περὶ τὸ ἄλογον, τὰς ἐκλύσεις καὶ τὰς ἐπιτάσεις καὶ ὅλως τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ τὸ [445] [a] ἧττον ἐξαιρεῖ τῆς ὁρμῆς, εἰς τὸ μέτριον καὶ ἀναμάρτητον καθιστᾶσα τῶν παθῶν ἕκαστον. αὐτίκα τὴν μὲν ἀνδρείαν μεσότητά φασιν εἶναι δειλίας καὶ θρασύτητος, ὧν ἡ μὲν ἔλλειψις ἡ δ’ ὑπερβολὴ τοῦ θυμοειδοῦς ἐστι· τὴν δ’ ἐλευθεριότητα μικρολογίας καὶ ἀσωτίας, πραότητα δ’ ἀναλγησίας καὶ ὠμότητος· αὐτήν τε σωφροσύνην καὶ δικαιοσύνην, τὴν μὲν περὶ τὰ συμβόλαια μήτε πλέον νέμουσαν αὑτῇ τοῦ προσήκοντος μήτ’ ἔλαττον, τὴν δ’ εἰς τὸ μέσον [ἀπαθείας] ἀναισθησίας καὶ ἀκολασίας ἀεὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας καθιστᾶσαν.

Ἐν ᾧ δὴ καὶ μάλιστα δοκεῖ τὸ ἄλογον τῆς πρὸς τὸ [b] λογικὸν διαφορᾶς αὐτοῦ παρέχειν κατανόησιν, καὶ δεικνύειν τὸ πάθος ὡς ἕτερόν τι κομιδῇ τοῦ λόγου ἐστίν. οὐ γὰρ ἂν διέφερε σωφροσύνης ἐγκράτεια, καὶ ἀκολασίας ἀκρασία περὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς καὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας, εἰ ταὐτὸν ἦν τῆς ψυχῆς ᾧ ἐπιθυμεῖν ᾧ τε κρίνειν πέφυκε. νῦν δὲ σωφροσύνη μέν ἐστιν, οὗ τὸ παθητικὸν ὥσπερ εὐήνιον θρέμμα καὶ πρᾶον ὁ λογισμὸς ἡνιοχεῖ καὶ μεταχειρίζεται, περὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας χρώμενος ὑπείκοντι καὶ δεχομένῳ τὸ μέτριον καὶ τὸ εὔσχημον ἑκουσίως, ὁ δ’ ἐγκρατὴς ἄγει μὲν ἐρρωμένῳ τῷ λογισμῷ καὶ κρατοῦντι τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν, ἄγει δ’ οὐκ ἀλύπως οὐδὲ πειθομένην ἀλλὰ [c] πλαγίαν καὶ ἀντιτείνουσαν, οἷον ὑπὸ πληγῆς καὶ χαλινοῦ καταβιαζόμενος καὶ ἀνακρούων, ἀγῶνος ὢν ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ θορύβου μεστός· οἷον ὁ Πλάτων (Phaedr. 254 sqq.) ἐξεικονίζει περὶ τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ὑποζύγια, τοῦ χείρονος πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον ζυγομαχοῦντος ἅμα καὶ τὸν ἡνίοχον διαταράττοντος ἀντέχειν ὀπίσω καὶ κατατείνειν ὑπὸ σπουδῆς ἀναγκαζόμενον ἀεί, ‘μὴ βάλῃ φοίνικας ἐκ χειρῶν ἱμάντας’ κατὰ Σιμωνίδην (fr. 17). ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἀρετὴν ἀξιοῦσιν αὐτοτελῆ τὴν ἐγκράτειαν ἀλλ’ ἔλαττον ἀρετῆς εἶναι· μεσότης γὰρ οὐ γέγονεν ἐκ συμφωνίας τοῦ χείρονος πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον οὐδ’ ἀνῄρηται τοῦ πάθους τὸ ὑπερβάλλον, [d] οὐδὲ πειθόμενον οὐδ’ ὁμολογοῦν τῷ φρονοῦντι τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ ἐπιθυμοῦν ἀλλὰ λυποῦν καὶ λυπούμενον καὶ καθειργόμενον ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ὥσπερ ἐν στάσει δυσμενὲς καὶ πολέμιον συνοικεῖ·

‘πόλις δ’ ὁμοῦ μὲν θυμιαμάτων γέμει

ὁμοῦ δὲ παιάνων τε καὶ στεναγμάτων’ (Soph. O. R. 3),

ἡ τοῦ ἐγκρατοῦς ψυχὴ διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν καὶ τὴν διαφοράν. κατὰ ταὐτὰ δ’ οἴονται καὶ τὴν ἀκρασίαν ἔλαττόν τι κακίας εἶναι παντελῆ δὲ κακίαν τὴν ἀκολασίαν. αὕτη μὲν γὰρ ἔχουσα καὶ πάθος φαῦλον καὶ λόγον ὑφ’ οὗ μὲν ἐξάγεται τῷ ἐπιθυμεῖν πρὸς τὸ αἰσχρόν, ὑφ’ οὗ δὲ τῷ κακῶς κρίνειν προστιθεμένου ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ τὴν [e] αἴσθησιν ἀποβάλλει τῶν ἁμαρτανομένων· ἡ δ’ ἀκρασία τῷ μὲν λόγῳ σῴζει τὴν κρίσιν ὀρθὴν οὖσαν, τῷ δὲ πάθει φέρεται παρὰ τὴν κρίσιν ἰσχύοντι τοῦ λόγου μᾶλλον. ὅθεν διαφέρει τῆς ἀκολασίας· ὅπου μὲν γὰρ ἡττᾶται τοῦ πάθους ὁ λογισμὸς ὅπου δ’ οὐδὲ μάχεται, καὶ ὅπου μὲν ἀντιλέγων ἕπεται ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις ὅπου δ’ ὑφηγεῖται συναγορεύων, καὶ ὅπου μὲν ἡδομένῳ κοινωνεῖν ὑπάρχει τῶν ἁμαρτανομένων ὅπου δ’ ἀχθομένῳ, καὶ ὅπου μὲν ἑκὼν φέρεται πρὸς τὸ αἰσχρὸν ὅπου δὲ προδίδωσιν ἄκων τὸ καλόν· ὡς τοῖς πραττομένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν οὐχ ἧττον δὲ καὶ τοῖς λεγομένοις ἔνεστιν ἡ διαφορὰ κατάδηλος. ἀκολάστων [f] μὲν γὰρ αἵδε φωναί·

‘τίς δὲ χάρις, τί δὲ τερπνὸν ἄνευ χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης;

τεθναίην, ὅτε μοι μηκέτι ταῦτα μέλοι’ (Mimn. fr. 1)·

καὶ ἕτερος (Alexis fr. 271, 4. 5)

‘τὸ πιεῖν τὸ φαγεῖν τὸ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης τυγχάνειν,

τὰ δ’ ἄλλα προσθήκας ἅπαντ’ ἐγὼ καλῶ’

[446] [a] φησίν, ὥσπερ ἐξ ὅλης τῆς συνεπινεύων ταῖς ἡδοναῖς καὶ ὑπερειπόμενος. οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τούτων ὁ εἰπών (Com. adesp. 217)

‘ἔα μ’ ἀπολέσθαι· τοῦτο γάρ μοι συμφέρει’

τὴν κρίσιν ἔχει τῷ πάθει συννοσοῦσαν. αἱ δὲ τῆς ἀκρασίας ἕτεραι καὶ διαφέρουσαι

‘γνώμην ἔχοντά μ’ ἡ φύσις βιάζεται’ (Eur. fr. 840)

καί

‘αἰαῖ, τόδ’ ἤδη θεῖον ἀνθρώποις κακόν,

ὅταν τις εἰδῇ τἀγαθὸν χρῆται δὲ μή’ (Eur. fr. 841)

καί

‘εἴκει γὰρ ἤδη θυμὸς οὐδ’ ἔτ’ ἀντέχει,

θινῶδες ὡς ἄγκιστρον ἀγκύρας σάλῳ’ (Tr. ad. 379),

θινῶδες ἄγκιστρον οὐ φαύλως λέγων τὸ μὴ κάτοχον τοῦ λογισμοῦ μηδ’ ἀραρός, ἀλλὰ μανότητι τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ μαλακίᾳ προϊέμενον τὴν κρίσιν. οὐ πόρρω δὲ τῆς εἰκόνος [b] ταύτης κἀκεῖνα εἴρηται

‘ναῦς ὥς τις ἐκ μὲν γῆς ἀνήρτημαι βρόχοις,

πνεῖ δ’ οὖρος, ἡμῖν δ’ οὐ κρατεῖ τὰ πείσματα·’

(Trag. ad. 380)

πείσματα γὰρ λέγει τὰς ἀντεχούσας κρίσεις πρὸς τὸ αἰσχρόν, εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πνεύματος πολλοῦ ῥηγνυμένας τοῦ πάθους. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι πλησίστιος μὲν ἐπὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς ὁ ἀκόλαστος ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν φέρεται καὶ δίδωσιν ἑαυτὸν καὶ συγκατευθύνει· πλάγιος δ’ ὁ ἀκρατής, οἷον ἐξαναφέρειν γλιχόμενος καὶ διωθεῖσθαι τὸ πάθος, ὑποσύρεται καὶ περιπίπτει περὶ τὸ αἰσχρόν· ὡς Ἀνάξαρχον ἐσίλλαινε Τίμων (fr. 58 D)

‘ἐν δὲ τὸ θαρσαλέον τε καὶ ἐμμενὲς ὅππη ὀρούσαι

φαίνετ’ Ἀναξάρχου κύνεον μένος· ὅς ῥα καὶ εἰδώς,

[c] ὡς φάσαν, ἄθλιος ἔσκε, φύσις δέ μιν ἔμπαλιν ἦγεν

ἡδονοπλήξ, ἣν πλεῖστοι ὑποτρείουσι σοφιστῶν.’

οὔτε γὰρ ὁ σοφὸς ἐγκρατὴς ἀλλὰ σώφρων, οὔθ’ ὁ ἀμαθὴς ἀκρατὴς ἀλλ’ ἀκόλαστος· ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἥδεται τοῖς καλοῖς ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἄχθεται τοῖς αἰσχροῖς. σοφιστικῆς οὖν ψυχῆς ἡ ἀκρασία λόγον ἐχούσης οἷς ἔγνωκεν ὀρθῶς ἐμμένειν μὴ δυνάμενον.

Ἡ μὲν οὖν ἀκρασία τοιαύτας ἔχει διαφορὰς πρὸς τὴν ἀκολασίαν, ἡ δ’ ἐγκράτεια πρὸς τὴν σωφροσύνην αὖθις αὖ τὰς ἀντιστρόφους ἀναλόγως. τὸ γὰρ δάκνον καὶ τὸ λυποῦν καὶ τὸ ἀγανακτοῦν οὔπω τὴν ἐγκράτειαν ἀπολέλοιπε· [d] τῆς δὲ σώφρονος ψυχῆς τὸ πανταχόθεν ὁμαλὲς καὶ ἄσφυκτον καὶ ὑγιαῖνον, ᾧ συνήρμοσται καὶ συγκέκραται τὸ ἄλογον πρὸς τὸν λογισμὸν εὐπειθείᾳ καὶ πραότητι θαυμαστῇ κεκοσμημένον, εἴποις ἂν ἐπιβλέψας

‘δὴ τότ’ ἔπειτ’ ἄνεμος μὲν ἐπαύσατο, ἡ δὲ γαλήνη

ἔπλετο νηνεμίη, κοίμησε δὲ κύματα δαίμων’ (μ 168),

τὰ σφοδρὰ καὶ περιμανῆ καὶ οἰστρώδη κινήματα τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν τοῦ λόγου κατασβέσαντος, ὧν δ’ ἡ φύσις ἀναγκαίως δεῖται, ταῦθ’ ὁμοπαθῆ καὶ ὑπήκοα καὶ φίλα καὶ συνεργὰ πεποιημένου ταῖς πρακτικαῖς προαιρέσεσιν, ὥστε μὴ προεκθεῖν τοῦ λογισμοῦ μηδ’ ὑπενδιδόναι μηδ’ ἀτακτεῖν [e] μηδ’ ἀπειθεῖν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν ὁρμὴν εὐάγωγον οὖσαν ‘ἄθηλον ἵππῳ πῶλον ὣς ἅμα τρέχειν’ (Semon. fr. 5), ἐπιβεβαιοῦσαν τὸν Ξενοκράτους (fr. 3) λόγον, ὃν ἐκεῖνος εἶπε περὶ τῶν ἀληθῶς φιλοσοφούντων, ὅτι μόνοι ποιοῦσιν ἑκουσίως ἃ ποιοῦσιν ἄκοντες οἱ λοιποὶ διὰ τὸν νόμον, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πληγῆς κύνες ἢ γαλαῖ ψόφῳ τῶν ἡδονῶν ἀποτρεπόμενοι καὶ πρὸς τὸ δεινὸν ὑποβλέποντες.

Ὅτι μὲν οὖν γίνεταί τις ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τοιαύτης ἑτερότητος αἴσθησις καὶ διαφορᾶς περὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας, ὥς τινος μαχομένου καὶ τἀναντία λέγοντος αὐταῖς, οὐκ ἄδηλόν [f] ἐστιν. ἔνιοι δέ φασιν (St. V. Fr. III 459) οὐχ ἕτερον εἶναι τοῦ λόγου τὸ πάθος οὐδὲ δυεῖν διαφορὰν καὶ στάσιν, ἀλλ’ ἑνὸς λόγου τροπὴν ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα, λανθάνουσαν ἡμᾶς [447] [a] ὀξύτητι καὶ τάχει μεταβολῆς, οὐ συνορῶντας ὅτι ταὐτόν ἐστι τῆς ψυχῆς ᾧ πέφυκεν ἐπιθυμεῖν καὶ μετανοεῖν, ὀργίζεσθαι καὶ δεδιέναι, φέρεσθαι πρὸς τὸ αἰσχρὸν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς καὶ φερομένης πάλιν αὑτῆς ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι· καὶ γὰρ ἐπιθυμίαν καὶ ὀργὴν καὶ φόβον καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πάντα δόξας εἶναι καὶ κρίσεις πονηράς, οὐ περὶ ἕν τι γινομένας τῆς ψυχῆς μέρος, ἀλλ’ ὅλου τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ ῥοπὰς καὶ εἴξεις καὶ συγκαταθέσεις καὶ ὁρμὰς καὶ ὅλως ἐνεργείας τινὰς οὔσας ἐν ὀλίγῳ μεταπτωτάς, ὥσπερ αἱ τῶν παίδων ἐπιδρομαὶ τὸ ῥαγδαῖον καὶ τὸ σφοδρὸν ἐπισφαλὲς ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας καὶ ἀβέβαιον ἔχουσι.

Ταῦτα δὲ πρῶτον μὲν παρὰ τὴν ἐνάργειάν ἐστι καὶ τὴν [b] αἴσθησιν. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοῦ ἐπιθυμοῦντος αἰσθάνεται μεταβολὴν εἰς τὸ κρῖνον οὐδὲ τοῦ κρίνοντος αὖ πάλιν εἰς τὸ ἐπιθυμοῦν, οὐδὲ παύεται μὲν ἐρῶν, ὅτε λογίζεται καθεκτέον εἶναι τὸν ἔρωτα καὶ διαμαχετέον πρὸς αὐτόν, ἐξίσταται δὲ πάλιν τοῦ λογίζεσθαι καὶ κρίνειν, ὅταν ἐνδιδῷ μαλασσόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς ἐπιθυμίας· ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ πρὸς τὸ πάθος ἀντιβαίνων ἐν τῷ πάθει ἐστὶν ἔτι καὶ πάλιν κρατούμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους διορᾷ τῷ λογισμῷ τὸ ἁμαρτανόμενον, καὶ οὔτε τῷ πάθει τὸν λόγον ἀνῄρηκεν οὔτε τῷ λογίζεσθαι τοῦ πάθους ἀπήλλακται, φερόμενος δ’ ἑκατέρωσε μέσος ἀμφοῖν καὶ κοινός ἐστιν.

[c] οἱ δὲ νῦν μὲν ἐπιθυμίαν γίνεσθαι τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν νῦν δὲ τὸν ἀντιταττόμενον τῇ ἐπιθυμίᾳ λογισμὸν ὑπολαμβάνοντες οὐδὲν ἀπέχουσι τῶν μὴ δύο τὸν κυνηγὸν εἶναι καὶ τὸ θηρίον ὑπολαμβανόντων, ἀλλὰ ταὐτὸ σῶμα χρώμενον μεταβολῇ νῦν μὲν εἶναι θηρίον νῦν δὲ γίνεσθαι κυνηγόν· ἐκεῖνοί τε γὰρ ἐμφανές τι παρορῶσιν οὗτοί τε πρὸς τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀντιμαρτυροῦσιν, οὐχ ἑνός τινος μεταβολῆς ἀλλὰ δυεῖν ἅμα μάχης καὶ διαφορᾶς ἐν αὐτοῖς αἰσθανομένην.

‘Τί οὖν;’ φασίν, ‘οὐχὶ καὶ τὸ βουλευόμενον τοῦ ἀνθρώπου πολλάκις διχοφορεῖ καὶ πρὸς ἐναντίας ἀνθέλκεται [d] δόξας περὶ τοῦ συμφέροντος ἀλλ’ ἕν ἐστι’; ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ φήσομεν, ‘ἀλλὰ τὸ συμβαῖνον οὐχ ὅμοιον.’ οὐ γὰρ μάχεται πρὸς ἑαυτὸ τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ φρονοῦν, ἀλλὰ μιᾷ χρώμενον δυνάμει διαφόρων ἐφάπτεται λογισμῶν· μᾶλλον δ’ εἷς λογισμὸς ἔστιν ἐν πράγμασι γινόμενος ἑτέροις ὥσπερ ὕλαις διαφερούσαις. ὅθεν οὔτε λύπη τοῖς ἄνευ πάθους λογισμοῖς ἔνεστιν, οὔθ’ ὥσπερ ἐκβιαζόμενοι παρὰ γνώμην αἱροῦνται θάτερον, ἂν μὴ νὴ Δία λανθάνῃ πάθος τι προσηρτημένον ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ζυγοῦ. καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο συμβαίνει πολλάκις, οὐ λογισμοῦ τινος πρὸς λογισμὸν ἀλλὰ φιλοτιμίας ἢ φιλονεικίας ἢ χάριτος ἢ ζηλοτυπίας ἢ δέους [e] ἀντιβαίνοντος οἴεσθαι λόγων εἶναι δυεῖν διαφοράν· ὥσπερ ἐν τούτοις (Η 93)·

‘αἴδεσθεν μὲν ἀνήνασθαι, δεῖσαν δ’ ὑποδέχθαι·’

καί (Eur. fr. 854)

‘τὸ μὲν σφαγῆναι δεινὸν εὔκλειαν δ’ ἔχει,

τὸ μὴ θανεῖν δὲ δειλὸν ἡδονὴ δ’ ἔνι’·

καὶ περὶ τὰς κρίσεις τῶν συμβολαίων ὑποτρέχοντα τὰ πάθη τὴν πλείστην ἐμποιεῖ διατριβήν· καὶ περὶ τὰ συμβούλια τῶν βασιλέων οἱ πρὸς χάριν λέγοντες οὐ δυεῖν κρίσεων τῇ ἑτέρᾳ συναγορεύουσιν, ἀλλὰ πάθει τινὶ προστίθενται παρὰ τὸν τοῦ συμφέροντος λογισμόν. διὸ τοὺς ῥήτορας ἐν ταῖς ἀριστοκρατίαις οἱ ἄρχοντες οὐκ ἐῶσι [f] παθαίνεσθαι· ῥέπει γὰρ εὐθεῖαν ῥοπὴν ὁ ἀπαθὴς λογισμὸς ἐπὶ τὸ δίκαιον, ἂν δὲ πάθος ἐγγένηται, μάχην ποιεῖ καὶ διαφορὰν τὸ ἡδόμενον καὶ τὸ ἀλγοῦν πρὸς τὸ κρῖνον καὶ τὸ βουλευόμενον. ἐπεὶ διὰ τί τοῖς ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ σκέμμασιν οὐ πρόσεστι τὸ μετὰ λύπης ὑπὸ τῶν ἑτέρων ἄγεσθαι καὶ [448] [a] μετατίθεσθαι πολλάκις, ἀλλ’ αὐτός τ’ Ἀριστοτέλης Δημόκριτός τε καὶ Χρύσιππος ἔνια τῶν πρόσθεν αὐτοῖς ἀρεσκόντων ἀθορύβως καὶ ἀδήκτως καὶ μεθ’ ἡδονῆς ἀφεῖσαν; ὅτι τῷ θεωρητικῷ καὶ μαθηματικῷ τῆς ψυχῆς πάθος οὐδὲν ἀνθέστηκεν ἀλλ’ ἀτρεμεῖ καὶ οὐ πολυπραγμονεῖ τὸ ἄλογον ἐν τούτοις· διὸ πρὸς τὸ ἀληθὲς ὁ λογισμός, ὅταν φανῇ, προέμενος τὸ ψεῦδος ἀσμένως ἀπέκλινεν· ἐν αὐτῷ γὰρ ἔστιν οὐκ ἐν ἑτέρῳ τὸ πειθόμενον καὶ μεταπειθόμενον. αἱ δὲ πραγματικαὶ βουλαὶ καὶ κρίσεις καὶ δίαιται τῶν πολλῶν ἐμπαθεῖς οὖσαι δυσοδίαν τῷ λόγῳ παρέχουσι καὶ δυσκολίαν, ἐνισχομένῳ καὶ ταραττομένῳ [b] περὶ τὸ ἄλογον, ἀνταῖρον αὐτῷ μεθ’ ἡδονῆς τινος ἢ δέους ἢ λύπης ἢ ἐπιθυμίας. καὶ τούτων κριτήριον ἡ αἴσθησίς ἐστιν ἀμφοτέρων ἐφαπτομένη· καὶ γὰρ ἂν περιγένηται θάτερον, οὐκ ἀνῄρηκε θάτερον, ἀλλ’ ἐφέλκεται καταβιαζόμενον καὶ ἀντιτεῖνον. ὁ γὰρ νουθετῶν αὑτὸν ἐρῶντα χρῆται τῷ λογισμῷ πρὸς τὸ πάθος, ὡς ἀμφοτέρων ἐνόντων ἅμα τῇ ψυχῇ, καθάπερ χειρὶ φλεγμαῖνον ἕτερον μέρος πιέζων καὶ δυεῖν ὄντων καὶ διαφερόντων ἐπαισθανόμενος. ἐν μέντοι ταῖς ἀπαθέσι βουλαῖς καὶ σκέψεσιν, οἵας ἔχει μάλιστα τὸ θεωρητικόν, ἂν μὲν [c] ἴσαι μένωσιν, οὐ γέγονε κρίσις ἀλλ’ ἀπορία, στάσις οὖσα καὶ μονὴ διανοίας ὑπ’ ἐναντίων πιθανῶν· ἂν δὲ ῥοπὴ γένηται πρὸς θάτερον, ἡ κρατήσασα τὴν ἑτέραν λέλυκεν, ὥστε μὴ λυπεῖν μηδ’ ὑπεναντιοῦσθαι πρὸς τὴν δόξαν. ὅλως δὲ λογισμοῦ μὲν ἀντικεῖσθαι λογισμῷ δοκοῦντος οὐ γίνεται δυεῖν καὶ ἑτέρων αἴσθησις ἀλλ’ ἑνός τινος ἐν διαφόροις γινομένου φαντασίαις· ὅταν δὲ τὸ ἄλογον μάχηται τῷ λογισμῷ, μήτε κρατεῖν ἀλύπως μήτε κρατεῖσθαι πεφυκὸς εὐθὺς εἰς δύο διίστησι τῇ μάχῃ τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ ποιεῖ τὴν διαφορὰν πρόδηλον.

[d] Οὐ μόνον τοίνυν ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἧττον ἀπὸ τῆς ἀκολουθίας κατίδοι τις ἂν τὴν παθητικὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς λογιστικῆς ἑτέραν οὖσαν. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἔστι μὲν ἐρᾶν εὐφυοῦς πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ γενναίου παιδὸς ἔστι δὲ φαύλου καὶ ἀκολάστου, συμβαίνει δὲ θυμῷ χρῆσθαι μὲν ἀλόγως πρὸς παῖδας αὑτοῦ καὶ γονεῖς χρῆσθαι δ’ ὑπὲρ γονέων καὶ παίδων δικαίως πρὸς πολεμίους καὶ τυράννους, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖ μάχης καὶ διαφορᾶς τοῦ πάθους πρὸς τὸν λογισμὸν αἴσθησις ἔστιν, οὕτως ἐνταῦθα πειθοῦς καὶ ἀκολουθίας, οἷον ἐπιρρέποντος καὶ συνεπιδιδόντος. ἔτι τοίνυν καὶ [e] γυναῖκα γήμας κατὰ νόμους ἀνὴρ ἐπιεικὴς διανοεῖται περιέπειν καὶ συνεῖναι δικαίως καὶ σωφρόνως, χρόνῳ δὲ τῆς συνηθείας ἐντεκούσης πάθος αἰσθάνεται τῷ λογισμῷ τὸ φιλεῖν καὶ τὸ ἀγαπᾶν ἐπιτεινόμενον. ὥσπερ αὖ καὶ νέοι διδασκάλοις ἐπιτυχόντες ἀστείοις ὑπὸ χρείας τὸ πρῶτον ἕπονται καὶ ζηλοῦσιν, ὕστερον δὲ καὶ φιλοῦσιν, ἀντὶ γνωρίμων καὶ μαθητῶν ἐρασταὶ καλούμενοι καὶ ὄντες. τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ συμβαίνει καὶ πρὸς ἄρχοντας ἐν πόλεσι χρηστοὺς καὶ γείτονας καὶ κηδεστάς· ἀρξάμενοι γὰρ ὑπὸ χρείας τινὸς καθηκόντως ἀλλήλοις ὁμιλεῖν, ἔπειτα λανθάνουσιν [f] εἰς τὸ φιλεῖν ὑποφερόμενοι συνεπισπασαμένου τοῦ λογισμοῦ καὶ συναναπείσαντος τὸ παθητικόν. ὁ δ’ εἰπών

‘αἰδώς τε· δισσαὶ δ’ εἰσίν, ἡ μὲν οὐ κακὴ

ἡ δ’ ἄχθος οἴκων’ (Eur. Hipp. 385).

ἆρ’ οὐ δῆλός ἐστι συνῃσθημένος ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοῦτο τὸ πάθος πολλάκις μὲν ἀκολουθοῦν τῷ λόγῳ καὶ συγκατακοσμούμενον, πολλάκις δὲ παρὰ τὸν λόγον ὄκνοις καὶ μελλήσεσι [449] [a] καιροὺς καὶ πράγματα λυμαινόμενον;

Οἷς καὶ αὐτοὶ τρόπον τινὰ διὰ τὴν ἐνάργειαν ὑπείκοντες αἰδεῖσθαι τὸ αἰσχύνεσθαι καλοῦσι (St. V. Fr. III 439) καὶ τὸ ἥδεσθαι χαίρειν καὶ τοὺς φόβους εὐλαβείας, ταύτην μὲν οὐδενὸς ἂν αἰτιασαμένου τὴν εὐφημίαν, εἰ τὰ αὐτὰ πάθη προστιθέμενα μὲν τῷ λογισμῷ τούτοις καλοῦσι τοῖς ὀνόμασι, μαχόμενα δὲ καὶ βιαζόμενα τὸν λογισμὸν ἐκείνοις· ὅταν δὲ δακρύοις ἐλεγχόμενοι καὶ τρόμοις καὶ χρόας μεταβολαῖς ἀντὶ λύπης καὶ φόβου δηγμούς τινας καὶ συνθροήσεις λέγωσι καὶ προθυμίας τὰς ἐπιθυμίας ὑποκορίζωνται, σοφιστικὰς δοκοῦσιν οὐ [b] φιλοσόφους διακρούσεις καὶ ἀποδράσεις ἐκ τῶν πραγμάτων μηχανᾶσθαι διὰ τῶν ὀνομάτων. καίτοι πάλιν αὐτοὶ τάς τε χαρὰς ἐκείνας καὶ τὰς βουλήσεις καὶ τὰς εὐλαβείας εὐπαθείας καλοῦσιν οὐκ ἀπαθείας, ὀρθῶς ἐνταῦθα χρώμενοι τοῖς ὀνόμασι· γίνεται γὰρ εὐπάθεια τοῦ λογισμοῦ τὸ πάθος οὐκ ἀναιροῦντος ἀλλὰ κοσμοῦντος καὶ τάττοντος ἐν τοῖς σωφρονοῦσιν. οἱ δὲ φαῦλοι καὶ ἀκρατεῖς τί πάσχουσιν, ὅταν τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὴν μητέρα κρίναντες φιλεῖν ἀντὶ τοῦ ἐρωμένου καὶ τῆς ἐρωμένης μὴ δύνωνται, τὴν δ’ ἑταίραν καὶ τὸν κόλακα κρίναντες εὐθὺς καὶ φιλῶσιν; εἰ γὰρ τὸ πάθος ἦν κρίσις, ἔδει τῇ τοῦ φιλεῖν χρῆναι καὶ [c] μισεῖν κρίσει τὸ φιλεῖν ἕπεσθαι καὶ τὸ μισεῖν· νυνὶ δὲ συμβαίνει τἀναντία, ταῖς μὲν προστιθεμένου τοῦ πάθους κρίσεσι ταῖς δ’ ἀπειθοῦντος. ᾗ καί φασιν αὐτοί (St. V. Fr. III 384), τῶν πραγμάτων ἐκβιαζομένων, οὐ πᾶσαν εἶναι κρίσιν πάθος ἀλλὰ τὴν κινητικὴν ὁρμῆς βιαίου καὶ πλεοναζούσης, ὁμολογοῦντες ἕτερον εἶναι τὸ κρῖνον καὶ τὸ πάσχον ἐν ἡμῖν ὥσπερ τὸ κινοῦν καὶ τὸ κινούμενον. αὐτός τε Χρύσιππος ἐν πολλοῖς ὁριζόμενος τὴν καρτερίαν καὶ τὴν ἐγκράτειαν ἕξεις ἀκολουθητικὰς τῷ αἱροῦντι λόγῳ, δῆλός ἐστιν ὑπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων ὁμολογεῖν ἀναγκαζόμενος, ὡς ἕτερόν ἐστι τὸ ἀκολουθοῦν ἐν ἡμῖν τοῦ [d] ᾧ ἀκολουθεῖ πειθόμενον ἢ πάλιν μάχεται μὴ πειθόμενον.

Ἴσα τοίνυν τὰ ἁμαρτήματα πάντα καὶ πάσας τιθέμενοι τὰς ἁμαρτίας (St. V. Fr. III 468), εἰ μὲν ἄλλῃ πη παρορῶσι τὸ ἀληθές, οὐκ ἔστι καιρὸς ἐν τῷ παρόντι διελέγχειν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς πάθεσι φαίνονται κομιδῇ παρὰ τὴν ἐνάργειαν ἐνιστάμενοι τῷ λόγῳ. πᾶν μὲν γὰρ πάθος ἁμαρτία κατ’ αὐτούς ἐστι, καὶ πᾶς ὁ λυπούμενος ἢ φοβούμενος ἢ ἐπιθυμῶν ἁμαρτάνει· μεγάλαι δὲ τῶν παθῶν διαφοραὶ κατὰ τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ τὸ ἧττον ὁρῶνται. τίς γὰρ ἂν φαίη τὸν Δόλωνος φόβον ἴσον εἶναι τῷ Αἴαντος ‘ἐντροπαλιζομένου’ καὶ βάδην ἀπιόντος ἐκ τῶν πολεμίων ‘ὀλίγον γόνυ γουνὸς ἀμείβοντος’ (Λ 547); ἢ τῇ [e] Πλάτωνος ἐπὶ Σωκράτει τελευτήσαντι λύπῃ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου διὰ Κλεῖτον αὑτὸν ἀνελεῖν ὁρμήσαντος; ἐπιτείνονται γὰρ οὐ μετρίως καὶ τῷ παρὰ λόγον αἱ λῦπαι, καὶ τὸ παρ’ ἐλπίδα σύμπτωμα τοῦ κατὰ λόγον ὀδυνηρότερον· εἰ προσδοκῶν εὐημεροῦντα καὶ θαυμαζόμενον ὄψεσθαι πύθοιτο κατεστρεβλωμένον, ὡς Φιλώταν Παρμενίων. θυμῷ δὲ τίς ἂν εἴποι πρὸς Ἀνάξαρχον ἴσῳ κεχρῆσθαι Νικοκρέοντα καὶ πρὸς Φιλήμονα Μάγαν, ἀμφοτέρους λοιδορηθέντας ὑπ’ αὐτῶν; ὁ μὲν γὰρ ὑπέροις σιδηροῖς κατέπτισε καὶ κατέκοψεν ἐκεῖνον· ὁ δὲ τῷ Φιλήμονι τὸν [f] δήμιον ἐκέλευσεν ἐπὶ τὸν τράχηλον ἐπιθεῖναι γυμνὴν τὴν μάχαιραν εἶτ’ ἀφεῖναι. διὸ καὶ νεῦρα τῆς ψυχῆς τὸν θυμὸν ὁ Πλάτων προσεῖπεν (Rep. 411b) ὡς ἐπιτεινόμενόν τε πικρίᾳ καὶ πραότητι χαλώμενον.

Ταῦτα τοίνυν καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα διακρουόμενοι τὰς ἐπιτάσεις τῶν παθῶν καὶ τὰς σφοδρότητας οὔ φασι γίνεσθαι (St. V. Fr.

[450] [a] III 468) κατὰ τὴν κρίσιν ἐν ᾗ τὸ ἁμαρτητικόν, ἀλλὰ τὰς δήξεις καὶ τὰς συστολὰς καὶ τὰς διαχύσεις εἶναι τὰς τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ τὸ ἧττον τῷ ἀλόγῳ δεχομένας. καίτοι καὶ περὶ τὰς κρίσεις φαίνονται γινόμεναι διαφοραί. τήν τε γὰρ πενίαν οἱ μὲν οὐ κακὸν οἱ δὲ καὶ μέγα κρίνουσι κακόν, οἱ δέ γε καὶ μέγιστον, ὥστε καὶ κατὰ τῶν πετρῶν καὶ κατὰ τῆς θαλάττης ὠθεῖν ἑαυτούς· τόν τε θάνατον οἱ μὲν ἀγαθῶν στερήσει μόνον οἱ δὲ καὶ τιμωρίαις αἰωνίοις ὑπὸ γῆν καὶ κολασμοῖς φρικώδεσι κακὸν εἶναι νομίζουσιν· ἥ τε τοῦ σώματος ὑγίεια τοῖς μὲν ὡς κατὰ φύσιν καὶ χρήσιμον ἀγαπᾶται, τοῖς δὲ τῶν ὄντων δοκεῖ μέγιστον ἀγαθόν· [b] οὔτε γάρ ‘πλούτου χάρις ἢ τεκέων’ οὔτε ‘τᾶς ἰσοδαίμονος ἀνθρώποις βασιληίδος ἀρχᾶς’ (Ariphronis paean PLG. III p. 597 v. 4), τελευτῶντες δὲ καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀνωφελῆ καὶ ἀνόνητον ἡγοῦνται τοῦ ὑγιαίνειν μὴ παρόντος· ὥστε φαίνεσθαι καὶ περὶ τὰς κρίσεις αὐτὰς τοὺς μὲν μᾶλλον τοὺς δ’ ἧττον ἁμαρτάνοντας. ἀλλ’ οὐ τοῦτο νῦν διελεγκτέον, ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἐκ τούτου ληπτέον, ὅτι συγχωροῦσι καὶ αὐτοὶ τῆς κρίσεως ἕτερον εἶναι τὸ ἄλογον, καθ’ ὅ φασι γίνεσθαι τὸ πάθος σφοδρότερον καὶ μεῖζον, ἐρίζοντες πρὸς τοὔνομα καὶ τὸ ῥῆμα, τὰ δὲ πράγματα διδόντες τοῖς διαφέρειν τὸ παθητικὸν καὶ ἄλογον τοῦ λογιζομένου καὶ [c] κρίνοντος ἀποφαινομένοις. ἐν δὲ τοῖς περὶ Ἀνομολογίας ὁ Χρύσιππος εἰπών (fr. eth. 390), ὅτι ‘τυφλόν ἐστιν ἡ ὀργὴ καὶ πολλάκις μὲν οὐκ ἐᾷ ὁρᾶν τὰ ἐκφανῆ πολλάκις δὲ τοῖς καταλαμβανομένοις ἐπιπροσθεῖ,’ μικρὸν προελθών ‘τὰ γὰρ ἐπιγινόμενα’ φησί ‘πάθη ἐκκρούει τοὺς λογισμοὺς καὶ τὰ ὡς ἑτέρως φαινόμενα, βιαίως προωθοῦντα ἐπὶ τὰς ἐναντίας πράξεις’· εἶτα χρῆται μάρτυρι τῷ Μενάνδρῳ λέγοντι (fr. 567)

‘οἴμοι τάλας ἔγωγε, ποῦ ποθ’ αἱ φρένες

ἡμῶν ἐκεῖνον ἦσαν ἐν τῷ σώματι

τὸν χρόνον, ‹ὃν› οὐ ταῦτ’ ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖν’ ᾑρούμεθα;’

[d] καὶ πάλιν ὁ Χρύσιππος προελθὼν τοῦ λογικοῦ φησι ζῴου φύσιν ἔχοντος προσχρῆσθαι εἰς ἕκαστα τῷ λόγῳ καὶ ὑπὸ τούτου κυβερνᾶσθαι πολλάκις ἀποστρέφεσθαι αὐτὸν ἡμᾶς ἄλλῃ βιαιοτέρᾳ φορᾷ χρωμένους, ὁμολογῶν τὸ συμβαῖνον ἐκ τῆς πρὸς τὸν λόγον τοῦ πάθους διαφορᾶς.

Ἐπεὶ καὶ γελοῖόν ἐστιν, ᾗ Πλάτων φησίν (Resp. 430e), αὐτόν τινα λέγειν αὑτοῦ κρείττονα καὶ πάλιν χείρονα, καὶ τὸν μὲν κρατοῦνθ’ ἑαυτοῦ τὸν δὲ μὴ κρατοῦντα.

πῶς γὰρ οἷόν τε τὸν αὐτὸν αὑτοῦ κρείττον’ εἶναι καὶ χείρονα ἢ κρατεῖν ἅμα καὶ κρατεῖσθαι, μὴ τρόπον τινὰ διττοῦ πεφυκότος ἑκάστου καὶ τὸ μὲν χεῖρον [e] ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὸ δὲ βέλτιον ἔχοντος; οὕτως γὰρ ὁ μὲν τοῦ βελτίονος ὑπηκόῳ τῷ χείρονι χρώμενος ἐγκρατὴς ἑαυτοῦ καὶ κρείττων ἐστίν, ὁ δὲ τῷ ἀκολάστῳ καὶ ἀλόγῳ τῆς ψυχῆς ἑπόμενον περιορῶν καὶ ὑπηρετοῦν τὸ κρεῖττον ἥττων ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἀκρατὴς λέγεται καὶ παρὰ φύσιν διακείμενος.

Φύσει γὰρ προσήκει θεῖον ὄντα τὸν λογισμὸν ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ ἄρχειν τοῦ ἀλόγου [καὶ] τὴν γένεσιν αὐτόθεν ἔχοντος ἐκ τοῦ σώματος, ᾧ καὶ συνεξομοιοῦσθαι καὶ κοινωνεῖν παθῶν καὶ ἀναπίμπλασθαι πέφυκεν, ἐνδεδυκὸς αὐτῷ καὶ καταμεμιγμένον, ὡς δηλοῦσιν αἱ ὁρμαὶ πρὸς τὰ σωματικὰ κινούμεναι καὶ ἱστάμεναι καὶ σφοδρότητας ἐν ταῖς [f] τοῦ σώματος μεταβολαῖς καὶ ἀνέσεις λαμβάνουσαι. δι’ ὃ νέοι μὲν [καὶ] ὀξεῖς καὶ ἰταμοὶ περί τε τὰς ὀρέξεις διάπυροι καὶ οἰστρώδεις αἵματος πλήθει καὶ θερμότητι, τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτῶν ἡ περὶ τὸ ἧπαρ ἀρχὴ τοῦ ἐπιθυμητικοῦ κατασβέννυται καὶ γίνεται μικρὰ καὶ ἀσθενής, ἰσχύει δὲ μᾶλλον ὁ λόγος τοῦ παθητικοῦ τῷ σώματι συναπομαραινομένου. τοῦτο δ’ ἀμέλει καὶ τὰς τῶν θηρίων ἠθοποιεῖ [451] [a] πρὸς τὰ πάθη φύσεις. οὐ γὰρ ὀρθότητι δοξῶν οὐδὲ φαυλότητι δήπου τοῖς μὲν ἀλκαὶ καὶ ὁρμαὶ πρὸς τὰ φαινόμενα δεινὰ παρίστανται, τοῖς δ’ ἀμήχανοι πτοῖαι καὶ φυγαὶ τῆς ψυχῆς· ἀλλ’ αἱ περὶ τὸ αἷμα καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ σῶμα δυνάμεις τὰς τῶν παθῶν διαφορὰς ποιοῦσιν, ὥσπερ ἐκ ῥίζης τοῦ παθητικοῦ τῆς σαρκὸς ἀναβλαστάνοντος καὶ συναναφέροντος τὴν ποιότητα καὶ τὴν κρᾶσιν. τοῦ δ’ ἀνθρώπου ταῖς μὲν παθητικαῖς ὁρμαῖς τὸ σῶμα συμπαθοῦν καὶ συγκινούμενον ἐλέγχουσιν ὠχρότητες ἐρυθήματα τρόμοι πηδήσεις καρδίας, διαχύσεις αὖ πάλιν ἐν [b] ἐλπίσιν ἡδονῶν καὶ προσδοκίαις· ὅταν δὲ μὴ μετὰ πάθους ἀλλ’ αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτὸ κινῆται τὸ διανοητικόν, ἡσυχίαν ἄγει τὸ σῶμα καὶ καθέστηκεν οὔτε κοινωνοῦν οὔτε μετέχον αὐτὸ τῆς ἐνεργείας τοῦ φρονοῦντος, εἰ τοῦ παθητικοῦ μὴ συνεφάπτοιτο μηδὲ συμπαραλαμβάνοι τὸ ἄλογον· ὥστε καὶ τούτῳ δύ’ ὄντα δηλοῦσθαι καὶ διαφέροντα ταῖς δυνάμεσιν ἀλλήλων.

Καθόλου δὲ τῶν ὄντων αὐτοί τέ φασι (St. V. Fr. II 460) καὶ δῆλόν ἐστιν ὅτι τὰ μὲν ἕξει διοικεῖται τὰ δὲ φύσει τὰ δ’ ἀλόγῳ ψυχῇ τὰ δὲ καὶ λόγον ἐχούσῃ καὶ διάνοιαν, ὧν ὁμοῦ τι πάντων ὁ ἄνθρωπος μετέσχηκε καὶ γέγονεν ἐν πάσαις ταῖς εἰρημέναις διαφοραῖς· καὶ γὰρ [c] ἕξει συνέχεται καὶ φύσει τρέφεται καὶ λόγῳ χρῆται καὶ διανοίᾳ. μέτεστιν οὖν αὐτῷ καὶ τοῦ ἀλόγου, καὶ σύμφυτον ἔχει τὴν τοῦ πάθους ἀρχήν, οὐκ ἐπεισόδιον ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαίαν οὖσαν, οὐδ’ ἀναιρετέαν παντάπασιν ἀλλὰ θεραπείας καὶ παιδαγωγίας δεομένην. ὅθεν οὐ Θρᾴκιον οὐδὲ Λυκούργειον τοῦ λόγου τὸ ἔργον ἐστί, συνεκκόπτειν καὶ συνδιαφθείρειν τὰ ὠφέλιμα τοῖς βλαβεροῖς τοῦ πάθους, ἀλλ’ ᾗπερ ὁ φυτάλμιος θεὸς καὶ ἡμερίδης, τὸ ἄγριον κολοῦσαι καὶ ἀφελεῖν τὴν ἀμετρίαν, εἶτα τιθασεύειν καὶ παριστάναι τὸ χρήσιμον. οὔτε γὰρ οἶνον οἱ φοβούμενοι τὸ μεθύειν [d] ἐκχέουσιν οὔτε πάθος οἱ δεδιότες τὸ ταρακτικὸν ἀναιροῦσιν ἀλλὰ κεραννύουσι. καὶ γὰρ βοῶν καὶ ἵππων τὰ πηδήματα καὶ τοὺς ἀφηνιασμοὺς οὐ τὰς κινήσεις οὐδὲ τὰς ἐνεργείας ἀφαιροῦσι, καὶ τοῖς πάθεσι δεδαμασμένοις χρῆται καὶ χειροήθεσιν ὁ λογισμός, οὐκ ἐκνευρίσας οὐδ’ ἐκτεμὼν παντάπασι τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ ὑπηρετικόν. ‘ὑφ’ ἅρμασι’ γὰρ ‘ἵππος’ ὥς φησι Πίνδαρος (fr. 234) ‘ἐν δ’ ἀρότρῳ βοῦς·

κάπρῳ δὲ βουλεύοντα φόνον κύνα χρὴ τλάθυμον ἐξευρεῖν’·

ὧν πολὺ χρησιμώτερα τὰ τῶν παθῶν θρέμματα τῷ λογισμῷ συμπαρόντα καὶ συνεντείνοντα ταῖς ἀρεταῖς, ὁ θυμὸς [e] τῇ ἀνδρείᾳ, μέτριος ὤν, ἡ μισοπονηρία τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ ἡ νέμεσις ἐπὶ τοὺς παρ’ ἀξίαν εὐτυχοῦντας, ὅταν ἅμ’ ἀνοίᾳ καὶ ὕβρει φλεγόμενοι τὴν ψυχὴν ἐπισχέσεως δέωνται. φιλίας δὲ φιλοστοργίαν ἢ φιλανθρωπίας ἔλεον ἢ τὸ συγχαίρειν καὶ συναλγεῖν εὐνοίας ἀληθινῆς οὐδὲ βουλόμενος ἄν τις ἀποσπάσειεν οὐδ’ ἀποτήξειεν. εἰ δ’ οἱ τὸν ἔρωτα τῇ ἐρωτομανίᾳ συνεκβάλλοντες ἁμαρτάνουσιν, οὐδ’ οἱ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν διὰ τὴν φιλαργυρίαν ψέγοντες κατορθοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ὅμοιόν τι πράττουσι τοῖς τὸ τρέχειν διὰ τὸ προσπταίειν καὶ τὸ βάλλειν διὰ τὸ ὑπερβάλλειν ἀναιροῦσι [f] καὶ πρὸς τὸ ᾄδειν τὸ παράπαν διὰ τὸ ἀπᾴδειν ἀπεχθῶς ἔχουσιν. οἷον γὰρ ἐν φθόγγοις μουσικὴ τὸ ἐμμελὲς οὐκ ἀναιρέσει βαρύτητος καὶ ὀξύτητος, ἐν δὲ σώμασιν ἰατρικὴ τὸ ὑγιεινὸν οὐ φθορᾷ θερμότητος καὶ ψυχρότητος, ἀλλὰ συμμετρίαις καὶ ποσότησι κραθεισῶν ἀπεργάζεται, τοιοῦτον ἐν ψυχῇ τὸ ἠθικὸν ἐγγενομένης ὑπὸ λόγου ταῖς παθητικαῖς δυνάμεσι καὶ κινήσεσιν ἐπιεικείας καὶ μετριότητος. [452] [a] οἰδοῦντι γὰρ ἔοικε καὶ φλεγμαίνοντι σώματι τὸ περιαλγοῦν καὶ περιχαρὲς καὶ περίφοβον τῆς ψυχῆς, οὐ τὸ χαῖρον οὐδὲ τὸ λυπούμενον οὐδὲ τὸ φοβούμενον· καὶ καλῶς Ὅμηρος εἰπών (Ν 284)

‘τοῦ δ’ ἀγαθοῦ οὔτ’ ἂρ τρέπεται χρὼς οὔτε τι λίην

ταρβεῖ’

τὸν φόβον οὐκ ἀφεῖλεν ἀλλὰ τὸν ἄγαν φόβον, ὅπως ἀνδρεία μὴ ἀπόνοια καὶ θαρραλεότης μὴ θρασύτης γένηται. διὸ καὶ περὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς τὴν ἄγαν ἀφαιρετέον ἐπιθυμίαν καὶ περὶ τὰς ἀμύνας τὴν ἄγαν μισοπονηρίαν. οὕτω γὰρ ὁ μὲν οὐκ ἀνάλγητος ἀλλὰ σώφρων, ὁ δὲ δίκαιος, οὐκ ὠμὸς [b] οὐδὲ πικρὸς ἔσται· τῶν δὲ παθῶν παντάπασιν ἀναιρεθέντων, εἰ καὶ δυνατόν ἐστιν, ἐν πολλοῖς ἀργότερος ὁ λόγος καὶ ἀμβλύτερος, ὥσπερ κυβερνήτης πνεύματος ἐπιλείποντος. ταῦτα δ’ ἀμέλει καὶ οἱ νομοθέται συνιδόντες ἐμβάλλουσιν εἰς τὰς πολιτείας [καὶ] φιλοτιμίαν καὶ ζῆλον πρὸς ἀλλήλους, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ σάλπιγξι καὶ αὐλοῖς ἐπεγείρουσι καὶ αὔξουσι τὸ θυμοειδὲς καὶ μάχιμον. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐν ποιήμασιν, ᾗ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Phaedr. 245a), τὸν τεχνίτην καὶ διηκριβωμένον ὁ μουσόληπτος καὶ κατάσχετος ἀποδείκνυσι γελοῖον, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τὰς μάχας τὸ παθητικὸν καὶ τὸ ἐνθουσιῶδες ἀνυπόστατόν [c] ἐστι καὶ ἀήττητον· ὃ καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς Ὅμηρος ἐμποιεῖν φησι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις (Ο 262)

‘ὣς εἰπὼν ἔμπνευσε μένος μέγα ποιμένι λαῶν·’

καί (Ε 185)

‘οὐχ ὅ γ’ ἄνευθε θεοῦ τάδε μαίνεται’,

καθάπερ ὅρμημα τῷ λογισμῷ καὶ ὄχημα τὸ πάθος προστιθέντας. αὐτούς γε μὴν τούτους ὁρᾶν ἔστι πολλάκις μὲν ἐπαίνοις τοὺς νέους παρορμῶντας πολλάκις δὲ νουθεσίαις κολάζοντας, ὧν τῷ μὲν ἕπεται τὸ ἥδεσθαι τῷ δὲ τὸ λυπεῖσθαι (καὶ γὰρ ἡ νουθεσία καὶ ὁ ψόγος ἐμποιεῖ μετάνοιαν καὶ αἰσχύνην, ὧν τὸ μὲν λύπη τῷ γένει τὸ δὲ φόβος ἐστί), καὶ τούτοις μάλιστα χρῶνται πρὸς τὰς ἐπανορθώσεις.

[d] ᾗ καὶ Διογένης ἐπαινουμένου Πλάτωνος ‘τί δ’ ἐκεῖνος’ εἶπεν ‘ἔχει σεμνόν, ὃς τοσοῦτον χρόνον φιλοσοφῶν οὐδένα λελύπηκεν;’ οὐ γὰρ οὕτως τὰ μαθήματα φαίη τις ἄν, ὡς ἔλεγε Ξενοκράτης (fr. 2), λαβὰς εἶναι φιλοσοφίας, ὡς τὰ πάθη τῶν νέων, αἰσχύνην ἐπιθυμίαν μετάνοιαν ἡδονὴν λύπην φιλοτιμίαν· ὧν ἐμμελῆ καὶ σωτήριον ἁφὴν ἁπτόμενος ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ νόμος εἰς τὴν προσήκουσαν ὁδὸν ἀνυσίμως καθίστησι τὸν νέον. ὥστε μὴ κακῶς εἰπεῖν τὸν Λάκωνα παιδαγωγόν, ὅτι ποιήσει τὸν παῖδα τοῖς καλοῖς ἥδεσθαι καὶ ἄχθεσθαι τοῖς αἰσχροῖς, οὗ μεῖζον οὐδέν ἐστιν οὐδὲ κάλλιον ἀποφῆναι τέλος ἐλευθέρῳ προσηκούσης παιδείας.

De cohibenda ira

ΠΕΡΙ ΑΟΡΓΗΣΙΑΣ

[452] ΣΥΛ. Καλῶς μοι δοκοῦσιν, ὦ Φουνδάνε, ποιεῖν οἱ ζωγράφοι διὰ χρόνου τὰ ἔργα πρὶν ἢ συντελεῖν ἐπισκοποῦντες· ὅτι τὴν ὄψιν αὐτῶν ἀφιστάντες τῇ πολλάκις κρίσει ποιοῦσι καινὴν καὶ μᾶλλον ἁπτομένην τῆς παρὰ μικρὸν διαφορᾶς, ἣν ἀποκρύπτει τὸ συνεχὲς καὶ τὸ [453] [a] σύνηθες. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτὸν αὑτῷ διὰ χρόνου προσελθεῖν χωρὶς γενόμενον καὶ διαστήσαντα τῆς συνεχείας τὴν αἴσθησιν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶ τὸ μάλιστα ποιοῦν ἕκαστον αὑτοῦ φαυλότερον κριτὴν ἢ ἑτέρων, δεύτερον ἂν εἴη τὸ τοὺς φίλους ἐφορᾶν διὰ χρόνου καὶ παρέχειν ὁμοίως ἐκείνοις ἑαυτόν, οὐκ εἰ γέρων γέγονε ταχὺ καὶ τὸ σῶμα βέλτιον ἢ χεῖρον ἔσχηκεν, ἀλλὰ τὸν τρόπον καὶ τὸ ἦθος ἐπισκοπεῖν, εἴ τι χρηστὸν ὁ χρόνος προστέθεικεν ἢ τῶν φαύλων ἀφῄρηκεν. ἐγὼ γοῦν ἐνιαυτῷ μὲν ἀφιγμένος εἰς Ῥώμην δευτέρῳ, συνὼν δέ σοι μῆνα τουτονὶ πέμπτον τὸ μὲν ἐξ ὑπαρχόντων δι’ εὐφυΐαν ἀγαθῶν ἐπίδοσιν γεγονέναι [b] τοσαύτην καὶ αὔξησιν οὐ πάνυ θαυμαστὸν ἡγοῦμαι, τὸ δὲ σφοδρὸν ἐκεῖνο καὶ διάπυρον πρὸς ὀργὴν ὁρῶντί μοι πρᾶον οὕτως καὶ χειρόηθες τῷ λογισμῷ γεγενημένον ἐπέρχεται πρὸς τὸν θυμὸν εἰπεῖν (Χ 373)

‘ὢ πόποι, ἦ μάλα δὴ μαλακώτερος.’

αὕτη δ’ ἡ μαλακότης οὐκ ἀργίαν οὐδ’ ἔκλυσιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἡ κατειργασμένη γῆ λειότητα καὶ βάθος ἐνεργὸν ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις ἔσχηκεν ἀντὶ τῆς φορᾶς ἐκείνης καὶ τῆς ὀξύτητος. διὸ καὶ δῆλόν ἐστιν οὐ παρακμῇ τινι δι’ ἡλικίαν τὸ θυμοειδὲς οὐδ’ αὐτομάτως ἀπομαραινόμενον, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ λόγων τινῶν χρηστῶν θεραπευόμενον. καίτοι (τὸ γὰρ ἀληθὲς εἰρήσεται πρὸς σέ) ταῦθ’ ἡμῖν Ἔρως ὁ ἑταῖρος [c] ἀπαγγέλλων ὕποπτος ἦν τὰ μὴ προσόντα πρέποντα δὲ προσεῖναι τοῖς καλοῖς κἀγαθοῖς δι’ εὔνοιαν ἐπιμαρτυρεῖν, καίπερ, ὡς οἶσθα, οὐδαμῇ πιθανὸς ὢν τῷ πρὸς χάριν ὑφίεσθαι τοῦ δοκοῦντος. ἀλλὰ νῦν ἐκεῖνός τε τῶν ψευδομαρτυριῶν ἀφεῖται, καὶ σύ, τῆς ὁδοιπορίας σχολὴν διδούσης, ὥσπερ ἰατρείαν τινὰ σεαυτοῦ δίελθ’ ἡμῖν, ᾗ χρησάμενος οὕτως εὐήνιον καὶ ἁπαλὸν καὶ τῷ λόγῳ πρᾶον καὶ ὑπήκοον ἐποιήσω τὸν θυμόν.

ΦΟΥΝΔ. Εἶτ’ οὐ σκοπεῖς, ὦ προθυμότατε Σύλλα, μὴ καὶ αὐτὸς εὐνοίᾳ καὶ φιλίᾳ τῇ πρὸς ἡμᾶς παρορᾷς τι τῶν ἡμετέρων; Ἔρωτι μὲν γὰρ οὐδ’ αὐτῷ πολλάκις ἔχοντι [d] κατὰ χώραν ἐν τῇ Ὁμηρικῇ πείσῃ (υ 23) μένοντα τὸν θυμόν, ἀλλὰ τραχύτερον ὑπὸ μισοπονηρίας εἰκός ἐστι πραοτέρους ἡμᾶς φανῆναι, καθάπερ ἐν διαγραμμάτων μεταβολαῖς νῆταί τινες πρὸς ἑτέρας νήτας τάξιν ὑπάτων λαμβάνουσιν.

ΣΥΛ. Οὐδέτερα τούτων ἔστιν, ὦ Φουνδάνε· ποίει δ’ ὡς λέγω, χαριζόμενος ἡμῖν.

ΦΟΥΝΔ. Καὶ μὴν ὧν γε μεμνήμεθα Μουσωνίου (fr. 36) καλῶν ἕν ἐστιν, ὦ Σύλλα, τὸ δεῖν ἀεὶ θεραπευομένους βιοῦν τοὺς σῴζεσθαι μέλλοντας. οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἐλλέβορον, οἶμαι, δεῖ θεραπεύσαντα συνεκφέρεσθαι τῷ νοσήματι τὸν λόγον, ἀλλ’ ἐμμένοντα τῇ ψυχῇ συνέχειν τὰς κρίσεις καὶ [e] φυλάσσειν. φαρμάκοις γὰρ οὐκ ἔοικεν ἀλλὰ σιτίοις ὑγιεινοῖς ἡ δύναμις αὐτοῦ, μετ’ εὐτονίας ἕξιν ἐμποιοῦσα χρηστὴν οἷς ἂν γένηται συνήθης· αἱ δὲ πρὸς ἀκμάζοντα τὰ πάθη καὶ οἰδοῦντα παραινέσεις καὶ νουθεσίαι σχολῇ μὲν ἀνύτουσι καὶ μόλις, οὐδενὶ δὲ τῶν ὀσφραντῶν διαφέρουσιν, ἃ τοὺς ἐπιληπτικοὺς ἐγείροντα πίπτοντας οὐκ ἀπαλλάττει τοῦ νοσήματος. ὅμως δὲ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα καὶ παρ’ ὃν ἀκμάζει καιρὸν ἁμωσγέπως ὑπείκει καὶ παρίησι βοηθοῦντα λόγον ἔξωθεν εἰς τὴν ψυχήν, ὁ δὲ θυμὸς οὐχ ᾗ φησιν ὁ Μελάνθιος (Tr. fr. p. 760)

‘τὰ δεινὰ πράσσει τὰς φρένας μετοικίσας,’

ἀλλ’ ἐξοικίσας τελείως καὶ ἀποκλείσας, ὥσπερ οἱ συνεμπιπράντες [f] ἑαυτοὺς ταῖς οἰκίαις, πάντα ταραχῆς καὶ καπνοῦ καὶ ψόφου μεστὰ ποιεῖ τὰ ἐντός, ὥστε μήτ’ ἰδεῖν μήτ’ ἀκοῦσαι τῶν ὠφελούντων. διὸ μᾶλλον ἐν πελάγει καὶ χειμῶνι ναῦς ἔρημος ἀναλήψεται κυβερνήτην ἔξωθεν [454] [a] ἢ προσδέξεται λόγον ἀλλότριον ἄνθρωπος ἐν θυμῷ καὶ ὀργῇ σαλεύων, ἂν μὴ παρεσκευασμένον ἔχῃ τὸν οἰκεῖον λογισμόν. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ πολιορκίαν προσδεχόμενοι συνάγουσι καὶ παρατίθενται τὰ χρήσιμα τὰς ἔξωθεν ἐλπίδας ἀπεγνωκότες, οὕτω μάλιστα δεῖ τὰ πρὸς τὸν θυμὸν βοηθήματα πόρρωθεν λαμβάνοντας ἐκ φιλοσοφίας κατακομίζειν εἰς τὴν ψυχήν, ὡς, ὅταν ὁ τῆς χρείας ἀφίκηται καιρός, μὴ ῥᾳδίως παρεισάγειν δυνησομένους. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀκούει τῶν ἐκτὸς ἡ ψυχὴ διὰ τὸν θόρυβον, ἐὰν μὴ καθάπερ κελευστὴν ἔνδοθεν ἔχῃ τὸν αὑτῆς λόγον ὀξέως δεχόμενον [b] καὶ συνιέντα τῶν παραγγελλομένων ἕκαστον· ἀκούσασα δὲ τῶν μὲν ἠρέμα καὶ πράως λεγομένων καταφρονεῖ, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἐνισταμένους τραχύτερον ἐρεθίζεται. καὶ γὰρ ὑπερήφανος καὶ αὐθάδης καὶ ὅλως ὑφ’ ἑτέρου δυσκίνητος ὁ θυμὸς ὢν ὥσπερ ὀχυρὰ τυραννὶς ἐξ ἑαυτῆς ἔχειν ὀφείλει σύνοικον καὶ συγγενὲς τὸ καταλῦον.

Ἡ μὲν οὖν συνέχεια τῆς ὀργῆς καὶ τὸ προσκρούειν πολλάκις ἕξιν ἐμποιεῖ πονηρὰν τῇ ψυχῇ, ἣν ὀργιλότητα καλοῦσιν, εἰς ἀκραχολίαν καὶ πικρίαν καὶ δυσκολίαν τελευτῶσαν, ὅταν ἑλκώδης καὶ μικρόλυπος ὁ θυμὸς γένηται [c] καὶ φιλαίτιος ὑπὸ τῶν τυχόντων ὡς σίδηρος ἀσθενὴς καὶ λεπτὸς ἀναχαρασσόμενος, ἡ δὲ παραχρῆμα ταῖς ὀργαῖς ἐνισταμένη καὶ πιέζουσα κρίσις οὐ τὸ παρὸν ἰᾶται μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὸ λοιπὸν εὔτονον ποιεῖ καὶ δυσπαθῆ τὴν ψυχήν. ἐμοὶ γοῦν συνέβη δὶς ἢ τρὶς ἐνστάντι πρὸς ὀργὴν τὸ τῶν Θηβαίων παθεῖν, οἳ τὸ πρῶτον ὠσάμενοι Λακεδαιμονίους ἀηττήτους εἶναι δοκοῦντας οὐδεμίαν ὕστερον ἡττήθησαν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν μάχην· φρόνημα γὰρ ἔσχον ὡς κρατεῖν ἔστι τῷ λογισμῷ. ἑώρων δ’ οὐ μόνον ψυχροῦ κατασκεδαννυμένου λήγουσαν ὀργὴν ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης ἱστόρησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ φόβου προσαχθέντος ἀποσβεννυμένην· [d] καὶ νὴ Δία χαρᾶς ἐπιγενομένης ἄφνω καθ’ Ὅμηρον ‘ἰάνθη’ (Ψ 598. 600 al.) καὶ διεχύθη πολλοῖς ὁ θυμός. ὥστε μοι παρίστατο μὴ παντελῶς ἀβοήθητον εἶναι τοῖς γε βουλομένοις τὸ πάθος.

Οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀρχὰς ἔχει μεγάλας ἀεὶ καὶ ἰσχυράς, ἀλλὰ καὶ σκῶμμα καὶ παιδιὰ καὶ τὸ γελάσαι τινὰ καὶ τὸ διανεῦσαι καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα πολλοὺς εἰς ὀργὴν καθίστησιν, ὥσπερ ἡ Ἑλένη τὴν ἀδελφιδῆν προσαγορεύσασα (Eurip. Or. 72)

‘παρθένε μακρὸν δὴ μῆκος Ἠλέκτρα χρόνου’

παρώξυνεν εἰπεῖν (ib. 99)

‘ὀψέ γε φρονεῖς εὖ, τότε λιποῦσ’ αἰσχρῶς δόμους·’

καὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ὁ Καλλισθένης εἰπὼν τῆς μεγάλης [e] κύλικος περιφερομένης ‘οὐ βούλομαι πιὼν Ἀλεξάνδρου Ἀσκληπιοῦ δεῖσθαι.’ καθάπερ οὖν τὴν φλόγα θριξὶ λαγῴαις ἀναπτομένην καὶ θρυαλλίσι καὶ συρφετῷ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστιν ἐπισχεῖν, ἐὰν δ’ ἐπιλάβηται τῶν στερεῶν καὶ βάθος ἐχόντων, ταχὺ διέφθειρε καὶ συνεῖλεν ‘ὑψηλὸν ἡβήσασα τεκτόνων πόνον’ ὥς φησιν Αἰσχύλος (fr. 357), οὕτως ὁ τῷ θυμῷ προσέχων ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ἔκ τινος λαλιᾶς καὶ βωμολοχίας συρφετώδους ὁρῶν καπνιῶντα καὶ διακαιόμενον οὐ μεγάλης δεῖται πραγματείας, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις αὐτῷ τῷ σιωπῆσαι καὶ καταμελῆσαι κατέπαυσε.

[f] καὶ γὰρ τὸ πῦρ ὁ μὴ παρασχὼν ὕλην ἔσβεσε, καὶ ὀργὴν ὁ μὴ θρέψας ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ μὴ φυσήσας ἑαυτὸν ἐφυλάξατο καὶ καθεῖλεν. οὐκ ἤρεσκεν οὖν μοι, καίπερ ἄλλα χρήσιμα λέγων καὶ παραινῶν, ὁ Ἱερώνυμος (Sat. Saupp. p. 103), ἐν οἷς οὔ φησι γινομένης ἀλλὰ γεγενημένης καὶ οὔσης αἴσθησιν ὀργῆς εἶναι διὰ τὸ τάχος. οὐθὲν γὰρ οὕτω τῶν παθῶν συλλεγόμενον καὶ διακινούμενον ἔχει τὴν γένεσιν [455] [a] ἐμφανῆ καὶ τὴν αὔξησιν. ὡς δὴ καὶ Ὅμηρος ἐμπείρως διδάσκει, λυπηθέντα μὲν εὐθὺς ἐξαίφνης ποιῶν τὸν Ἀχιλλέα τοῦ λόγου προσπεσόντος, ἐν οἷς λέγει (Σ 22)

‘ὣς φάτο· τὸν δ’ ἄχεος νεφέλη ἐκάλυψε μέλαινα,’

θυμούμενον δὲ βραδέως τῷ Ἀγαμέμνονι καὶ διὰ λόγων πολλῶν ἐκκαιόμενον (Α 101 sqq.)· οὓς εἴ τις ὑφεῖλεν αὐτῶν ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ διεκώλυσεν, οὐκ ἂν ἔσχεν αὔξησιν ἡ διαφορὰ τηλικαύτην καὶ μέγεθος. ὅθεν ὁ Σωκράτης ὁσάκις αἴσθοιτο κινουμένου τραχύτερον αὑτοῦ πρός τινα τῶν φίλων (PLG. III 721), ‘πρὸ χείματος ὥστ’ ἀνὰ ποντίαν ἄκραν’ στελλόμενος, ἐνεδίδου τε τῇ φωνῇ καὶ [b] διεμειδία τῷ προσώπῳ καὶ τὸ βλέμμα πραότερον παρεῖχε, τῷ ῥέπειν ἐπὶ θάτερα καὶ πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἀντικινεῖσθαι τῷ πάθει διαφυλάττων ἑαυτὸν ἀπτῶτα καὶ ἀήττητον.

Ἔστι γάρ τις, ὦ ἑταῖρε, πρώτη καθάπερ τυράννου κατάλυσις τοῦ θυμοῦ, μὴ πείθεσθαι μηδ’ ὑπακούειν προστάττοντος αὐτοῦ μέγα βοᾶν καὶ δεινὸν βλέπειν καὶ κόπτειν ἑαυτόν, ἀλλ’ ἡσυχάζειν καὶ μὴ συνεπιτείνειν ὥσπερ νόσημα ῥιπτασμῷ καὶ διαβοήσει τὸ πάθος. αἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐρωτικαὶ πράξεις, οἷον ἐπικωμάσαι καὶ ᾆσαι καὶ στεφανῶσαι θύραν, ἔχουσιν ἁμωσγέπως κουφισμὸν οὐκ ἄχαριν οὐδ’ ἄμουσον·

‘ἐλθὼν δ’ οὐκ ἐβόησα τίς ἢ τίνος, ἀλλ’ ἐφίλησα

[c] τὴν φλιήν. εἰ τοῦτ’ ἔστ’ ἀδίκημ’, ἀδικῶ’

(Callim. ep. 42, 5. 6),

αἵ τε τοῖς πενθοῦσιν ἐφέσεις τοῦ ἀποκλαῦσαι καὶ ἀποδύρασθαι πολύ τι τῆς λύπης ἅμα τῷ δακρύῳ συνεξάγουσιν· ὁ δὲ θυμὸς ἐκριπίζεται μᾶλλον οἷς πράττουσι καὶ λέγουσιν οἱ ἐν αὐτῷ καθεστῶτες. ἀτρεμεῖν οὖν κράτιστον ἢ φεύγειν καὶ ἀποκρύπτειν καὶ καθορμίζειν ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἡσυχίαν, ὥσπερ ἐπιληψίας ἀρχομένης συναισθανομένους, ἵνα μὴ πέσωμεν μᾶλλον δ’ ἐπιπέσωμεν· ἐπιπίπτομεν δὲ τοῖς φίλοις μάλιστά γε καὶ πλειστάκις, οὐ γὰρ πάντων ἐρῶμεν οὐδὲ πᾶσι φθονοῦμεν οὐδὲ πάντας φοβούμεθα, θυμῷ δ’ ἄθικτον οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἀνεπιχείρητον, ἀλλ’ ὀργιζόμεθα καὶ [d] πολεμίοις καὶ φίλοις καὶ τέκνοις καὶ γονεῦσι καὶ θεοῖς νὴ Δία καὶ θηρίοις καὶ ἀψύχοις σκεύεσιν, ὡς ὁ Θαμύρας (Soph. fr. 223)

‘ῥηγνὺς χρυσόδετον κέρας,

ῥηγνὺς ἁρμονίαν χορδοτόνου λύρας,’

καὶ ὁ Πάνδαρος αὑτῷ καταρώμενος, εἰ μὴ τὰ τόξα καταπρήσειε ‘χερσὶ διακλάσσας’ (Ε 215). ὁ δὲ Ξέρξης καὶ τῇ θαλάττῃ στίγματα καὶ πληγὰς ἐνέβαλλε καὶ πρὸς τὸ ὄρος ἐξέπεμπεν ἐπιστολάς ‘Ἄθω δαιμόνιε οὐρανόμηκες, μὴ ποιεῖν ἐν ἐμοῖς ἔργοις λίθους μεγάλους καὶ δυσκατεργάστους· εἰ δὲ μή, τεμὼν ῥίψω σ’ αὐτὸν εἰς θάλασσαν.’ πολλὰ γάρ ἐστι τοῦ θυμοῦ φοβερά, πολλὰ δὲ καὶ γελοῖα· [e] διὸ καὶ μισεῖται καὶ καταφρονεῖται μάλιστα τῶν παθῶν. ἀμφότερα δ’ ἐσκέφθαι χρήσιμον.

Ἐγὼ γοῦν, εἰ μὲν ὀρθῶς, οὐκ οἶδα, ταύτην δὲ τῆς ἰατρείας ἀρχὴν ποιησάμενος, ὥσπερ οἱ Λάκωνες ἐν τοῖς εἵλωσι τὸ μεθύειν οἷόν ἐστι, κατεμάνθανον τὴν ὀργὴν ἐν ἑτέροις. καὶ πρῶτον μέν, ᾗ φησιν Ἱπποκράτης (Progn. 2) χαλεπωτάτην εἶναι νόσον ἐν ᾗ τοῦ νοσοῦντος ἀνομοιότατον αὑτῷ γίνεται τὸ πρόσωπον, οὕτως ὁρῶν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἐξισταμένους μάλιστα καὶ μεταβάλλοντας ὄψιν χρόαν βάδισμα φωνὴν οἷον εἰκόνα τοῦ πάθους ἀπεματτόμην ἐμαυτῷ, πάνυ δυσχεραίνων εἰ φοβερὸς οὕτως καὶ παρακεκινηκὼς [f] ὁρῶμαί ποτε τοῖς φίλοις καὶ τῇ γυναικὶ καὶ τοῖς θυγατρίοις, οὐ μόνον ἰδεῖν ἄγριος καὶ ἀσυνήθης ἀλλὰ καὶ φωνὴν ἀπηνῆ καὶ τραχεῖαν ἀφιείς· ὥσπερ ἑτέροις τῶν συνήθων ἐνετύγχανον οὐκ ἦθος οὐ μορφὴν οὐ λόγου χάριν οὐ τὸ πιθανὸν καὶ προσηνὲς ἐν ὁμιλίᾳ δυναμένοις ὑπ’ [456] [a] ὀργῆς διαφυλάττειν. Γαΐῳ μὲν οὖν Γράκχῳ τῷ ῥήτορι καὶ τὸν τρόπον ὄντι χαλεπῷ καὶ περιπαθέστερον λέγοντι διηρμοσμένον ἦν συρίγγιον, ᾧ τὴν φωνὴν οἱ ἁρμονικοὶ σχέδην ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα διὰ τῶν τόνων ἄγουσι, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔχων οἰκέτης αὐτοῦ λέγοντος ὄπισθεν ἑστὼς ἐνεδίδου τόνον ἐπιεικῆ καὶ πρᾶον, ᾧ τὴν κραυγὴν ἀνεκαλεῖτο καὶ τὸ τραχὺ καὶ τὸ θυμικὸν ἀφῄρει τῆς φωνῆς, ὥσπερ ὁ τῶν βουκόλων (Aisch. Prom. 575)

‘κηρόπλαστος ὀτοβεῖ δόναξ

ἀχέτας ὑπνοδόταν νόμον,’

ἐπιθέλγων καὶ καθιστὰς τὴν ὀργὴν τοῦ ῥήτορος· ἐμοὶ δ’ εἴ τις ἐμμελὴς καὶ κομψὸς ἀκόλουθος ἦν, οὐκ ἂν ἠχθόμην [b] αὐτοῦ προσφέροντος ἐπὶ ταῖς ὀργαῖς ἔσοπτρον, ὥσπερ ἐνίοις προσφέρουσι λουσαμένοις ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ χρησίμῳ. τὸ γὰρ αὑτὸν ἰδεῖν παρὰ φύσιν ἔχοντα καὶ συντεταραγμένον οὐ μικρόν ἐστιν εἰς διαβολὴν τοῦ πάθους. καὶ γὰρ τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν λέγουσιν οἱ παίζοντες αὐλοῦσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ σατύρου νουθετεῖσθαι καὶ μὴ προσέχειν (Tr. ad. 381)·

‘οὔ τοι πρέπει τὸ σχῆμα· τοὺς αὐλοὺς μέθες

καὶ θὦπλα λάζευ καὶ γνάθους εὐθημόνει,’

θεασαμένην δὲ τοῦ προσώπου τὴν ὄψιν ἐν ποταμῷ τινι δυσχερᾶναι καὶ προέσθαι τοὺς αὐλούς· καίτοι παραμυθίαν ἡ τέχνη τῆς ἀμορφίας ἔχει τὴν ἐμμέλειαν. καὶ ὁ Μαρσύας, ὡς ἔοικε, φορβειᾷ τινι καὶ περιστομίοις [βίᾳ] τοῦ [c] πνεύματος τὸ ῥαγδαῖον ἐγκαθεῖρξε καὶ τοῦ προσώπου κατεκόσμησε καὶ ἀπέκρυψε τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν,

‘χρυσῷ δ’ αἰγλήεντι συνήρμοσεν ἀμφιδασείας

κόρσας καὶ στόμα λάβρον ὀπισθοδέτοισιν ἱμᾶσιν·’

ἡ δ’ ὀργὴ φυσῶσα καὶ διατείνουσα τὸ πρόσωπον ἀπρεπῶς ἔτι μᾶλλον αἰσχρὰν ἀφίησι καὶ ἀτερπῆ φωνὴν (Tr. ad. 361)

‘κινοῦσα χορδὰς τὰς ἀκινήτους φρενῶν.’

τὴν μὲν γὰρ θάλασσαν, ὅταν ἐκταραχθεῖσα τοῖς πνεύμασι τὰ βρύα καὶ τὸ φῦκος ἀναβάλλῃ, καθαίρεσθαι λέγουσιν· ἃ δ’ ὁ θυμὸς ἐκβράσσει τῆς ψυχῆς περιτρεπομένης ἀκόλαστα καὶ πικρὰ καὶ σπερμολόγα ῥήματα, τοὺς λέγοντας πρώτους καταρρυπαίνει καὶ καταπίμπλησιν ἀδοξίας, [d] ὡς ἀεὶ μὲν ἔχοντας ἐν αὑτοῖς ταῦτα καὶ πλήρεις ὄντας ὑπὸ δὲ τῆς ὀργῆς ἀνακαλυπτομένους. διὸ ‘κουφοτάτου πράγματος’ ὥς φησι Πλάτων ‘λόγου βαρυτάτην ζημίαν’ τίνουσιν, ἐχθροὶ καὶ κακολόγοι καὶ κακοήθεις δοκοῦντες εἶναι. ταῦτ’ οὖν ὁρῶντί μοι καὶ παραφυλάττοντι συμβαίνει τίθεσθαι καὶ διαμνημονεύειν ἐπιεικῶς πρὸς ἐμαυτόν, ὡς ἀγαθὸν μέν ἐστιν ἐν πυρετῷ κρεῖττον δ’ ἐν ὀργῇ τὴν γλῶτταν ἁπαλὴν ἔχειν καὶ λείαν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ τῶν πυρεττόντων ἐὰν μὴ κατὰ φύσιν σχῇ, σημεῖόν ἐστι πονηρὸν οὐκ αἴτιον, ἡ δὲ τῶν θυμουμένων τραχεῖα καὶ ῥυπαρὰ γενομένη καὶ [e] ῥυεῖσα πρὸς λόγους ἀτόπους ἔχθρας ἀνηκέστου δημιουργὸν ὕβριν ἐκφέρει καὶ δυσμενείας ὑπούλου κατήγορον. οὐδὲν γὰρ ὁ ἄκρατος ἀκόλαστον οὕτω καὶ δυσχερὲς ὡς ὁ θυμὸς ἀναδίδωσι, κἀκεῖνα μὲν γέλωτι καὶ παιδιᾷ μέλει, ταῦτα δὲ χολῇ κέκραται· καὶ παρὰ πότον μὲν ὁ σιωπῶν ἐπαχθὴς τοῖς συνοῦσι καὶ φορτικός, ἐν ὀργῇ δὲ σεμνότερον οὐδὲν ἡσυχίας, ὡς ἡ Σαπφὼ παραινεῖ (PLG. III fr. 27) ‘σκιδναμένης ἐν στήθεσιν ὀργῆς πεφυλάχθαι γλῶσσαν μαψυλάκαν.’

Οὐ ταῦτα δὲ μόνον ἐπιλογίζεσθαι δίδωσι τὸ προσέχειν ἀεὶ τοῖς ἁλισκομένοις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην [f] τοῦ θυμοῦ κατανοεῖν φύσιν, ὡς οὐκ εὐγενὴς οὐδ’ ἀνδρώδης οὐδ’ ἔχουσα φρόνημα καὶ μέγεθός ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ δοκεῖ τοῖς πολλοῖς τὸ ταρακτικὸν αὐτοῦ πρακτικὸν καὶ τὸ ἀπειλητικὸν εὐθαρσὲς εἶναι καὶ τὸ ἀπειθὲς ἰσχυρόν. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τὴν ὠμότητα μεγαλουργίαν καὶ τὸ δυσπαραίτητον εὐτονίαν καὶ μισοπονηρίαν τὸ δύσκολον οὐκ ὀρθῶς τίθενται· τὰ γὰρ ἔργα καὶ τὰ κινήματα καὶ τὰ σχήματα μικρότητα [457] [a] πολλὴν καὶ ἀσθένειαν κατηγορεῖ, οὐ μόνον ἐν οἷς παιδάρια σπαράττουσι καὶ πρὸς γύναια διαπικραίνονται καὶ κύνας καὶ ἵππους καὶ ἡμιόνους οἴονται δεῖν κολάζειν, ὡς Κτησιφῶν ὁ παγκρατιαστὴς ἀντιλακτίσαι τὴν ἡμίονον ἀξιῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τὰς τυραννικὰς μιαιφονίας τῷ πικρῷ τὸ μικρόψυχον αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ δρῶντι τὸ πεπονθὸς ἐνορώμενον ἔοικε τοῖς δήγμασι τῶν ἑρπετῶν, ὅταν διακαῇ καὶ περιώδυνα γένηται, τὴν φλεγμονὴν ἀπερειδομένων σφοδρὰν τοῖς λελυπηκόσιν. ὡς γὰρ οἴδημα μεγάλης ἐστὶν ἐν σαρκὶ πληγῆς πάθος, οὕτως ἐν ταῖς μαλακωτάταις [b] ψυχαῖς ἡ πρὸς τὸ λυπῆσαι ἔνδοσις ἐκφέρει μείζονα θυμὸν ἀπὸ μείζονος ἀσθενείας. διὸ καὶ γυναῖκες ἀνδρῶν ὀργιλώτεραι καὶ νοσοῦντες ὑγιαινόντων καὶ γέροντες ἀκμαζόντων καὶ κακῶς πράττοντες εὐτυχούντων. ὀργιλώτατος γὰρ ὁ φιλάργυρος πρὸς τὸν οἰκονόμον, ὁ γαστρίμαργος πρὸς τὸν ὀψοποιόν, ὁ ζηλότυπος πρὸς τὸ γύναιον, ὁ κενόδοξος κακῶς ἀκούσας· χαλεπώτατοι δ’ ‘ἄγαν φιλοτιμίαν μνώμενοι ἐν πόλεσιν ἄνδρες· ἱστᾶσιν ἄλγος ἐμφανές’ κατὰ Πίνδαρον (fr. 210). οὕτως ἐκ τοῦ λυπουμένου μάλιστα τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ πάσχοντος ἀνίσταται μάλιστα δι’ ἀσθένειαν ὁ θυμός, οὐχὶ νεύροις, ὥς τις εἶπε (Plato [c] Rep. 411b), τῆς ψυχῆς ἐοικώς, ἀλλ’ ἐπιτάμασι καὶ σπάσμασιν ἐν ταῖς ἀμυντικαῖς ὁρμαῖς σφοδρότερον ἐξανισταμένης.

Τὰ μὲν οὖν φαῦλα παραδείγματα τὴν θέαν οὐκ εὔχαριν ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαίαν μόνον εἶχε· τοὺς δ’ ἠπίως καὶ λείως ὁμιλοῦντας ὀργαῖς κάλλιστα μὲν ἀκούσματα κάλλιστα δὲ θεάματα ποιούμενος ἄρχομαι καταφρονεῖν τῶν λεγόντων (Tr. ad. 382)·

‘ἄνδρ’ ἠδίκησας· ἄνδρ’ ἀνεκτέον τόδε;’

καί (PLG. III p. 694)

‘βαῖνε λάξ, ἐπὶ τραχήλου βαῖνε, καὶ πέλα χθονί,’

καὶ τἄλλα παροξυντικά, δι’ ὧν ἔνιοι τὸν θυμὸν ἐκ τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος εἰς τὴν ἀνδρωνῖτιν οὐκ εὖ μετοικίζουσιν.

[d] ἡ γὰρ ἀνδρεία κατὰ τἄλλα τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ συμφερομένη περὶ μόνης μοι δοκεῖ διαμάχεσθαι τῆς πραότητος ὡς αὐτῇ μᾶλλον προσηκούσης. ἀνθρώπων μὲν γὰρ κρατῆσαι καὶ χείροσι βελτιόνων ὑπῆρξε, τὸ δ’ ἐν ψυχῇ στῆσαι κατὰ θυμοῦ τρόπαιον (ᾧ χαλεπὸν εἶναι μάχεσθαι φησὶν Ἡράκλειτος (fr. 85)· ‘ὅ τι γὰρ ἂν θέλῃ, ψυχῆς ὠνεῖται’) μεγάλης ἐστὶ καὶ νικητικῆς ἰσχύος, ὥσπερ νεῦρα καὶ τόνους ἀληθῶς ἐπὶ τὰ πάθη τὰς κρίσεις ἐχούσης. διὸ καὶ συνάγειν ἀεὶ πειρῶμαι καὶ ἀναγινώσκειν οὐ ταῦτα δὴ νοῦν μόνα τὰ τῶν φιλοσόφων, οὕς φασι χολὴν οὐκ ἔχειν οἱ ‹οὐκ› ἔχοντες, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τὰ τῶν βασιλέων καὶ τυράννων· [e] οἷον Ἀντιγόνου τὸ πρὸς τοὺς στρατιώτας τοὺς παρὰ τὴν σκηνὴν λοιδοροῦντας αὐτὸν ὡς οὐκ ἀκούοντα· τὴν γὰρ βακτηρίαν ὑποβαλὼν ἔξω ‘παπαί’ εἶπεν ‘οὐ πορρωτέρω ποι τραπόμενοι κακῶς ἐρεῖθ’ ἡμᾶς;’ Ἀρκαδίωνος δὲ τοῦ Ἀχαιοῦ τὸν Φίλιππον ἀεὶ κακῶς λέγοντος καὶ φεύγειν παραινοῦντος,

‘εἰσόκε τοὺς ἀφίκηται οἳ οὐκ ἴσασι Φίλιππον’,

εἶτά πως ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ φανέντος ᾤοντο δεῖν οἱ φίλοι κολάσαι καὶ μὴ περιιδεῖν· ὁ δὲ Φιλίππος ἐντυχὼν αὐτῷ φιλανθρώπως καὶ ξένια καὶ δῶρα πέμψας ἐκέλευσεν ὕστερον πυνθάνεσθαι, τίνας λόγους ἀπαγγέλλοι πρὸς τοὺς [f] Ἕλληνας· ὡς δὲ πάντες ἐμαρτύρουν ἐπαινέτην αὐτοῦ γεγονέναι τὸν ἄνδρα θαυμάσιον, ‘ἐγὼ τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘βελτίων ἰατρὸς ὑμῶν.’ ἐν Ὀλυμπίοις δὲ βλασφημίας περὶ αὐτοῦ γενομένης καί τινων λεγόντων, ὡς οἰμῶξαι προσήκει τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὅτι εὖ πάσχοντες ὑπὸ τοῦ Φιλίππου κακῶς αὐτὸν λέγουσι· ‘τί οὖν’ ἔφη ‘ποιήσουσιν, ἂν κακῶς πάσχωσι;’ καλὰ δὲ καὶ Πεισιστράτου τὰ πρὸς Θρασύβουλον καὶ [458] [a] Πορσίννα τὰ πρὸς Μούκιον καὶ Μάγα τὰ πρὸς Φιλήμονα· δημοσίᾳ γὰρ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ κωμῳδηθεὶς ἐν θεάτρῳ (fr. 144)·

‘παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως γράμμαθ’ ἥκει σοι, Μάγα -

Μάγα κακόδαιμον, γράμματ’ οὐκ ἐπίστασαι;’

λαβὼν ὑπὸ χειμῶνος εἰς Παραιτόνιον ἐξενεχθέντα στρατιώτην μὲν ἐκέλευσε γυμνῇ μαχαίρᾳ θιγεῖν τοῦ τραχήλου μόνον εἶτα κοσμίως ἀπελθεῖν, ἀστραγάλους δὲ καὶ σφαῖραν ὡς παιδαρίῳ νοῦν οὐκ ἔχοντι προσπέμψας ἀφῆκε. Πτολεμαῖος δὲ γραμματικὸν εἰς ἀμαθίαν ἐπισκώπτων ἠρώτησε τίς ὁ τοῦ Πηλέως πατὴρ ἦν· κἀκεῖνος ‘ἂν σὺ [b] πρότερον εἴπῃς’ ἔφη ‘τίς ὁ τοῦ Λάγου·’ τὸ δὲ σκῶμμα τῆς δυσγενείας ἥπτετο τοῦ βασιλέως, καὶ πάντες ἠγανάκτησαν ὡς οὐκ ἐπιτήδειον ὂν καὶ ἄκαιρον· ὁ δὲ Πτολεμαῖος ‘εἰ μὴ τὸ φέρειν’ ἔφη ‘σκωπτόμενον, οὐδὲ τὸ σκώπτειν βασιλικόν ἐστιν.’ Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ πικρότερος αὑτοῦ γέγονεν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Καλλισθένη καὶ Κλεῖτον. ᾗ καὶ Πῶρος ἁλοὺς παρεκάλει χρήσασθαι βασιλικῶς αὐτῷ· καὶ πυθομένου ‘μή τι πλέον;’ ‘ἐν τῷ βασιλικῶς’ ἔφη ‘πάντ’ ἔνεστι.’ διὸ καὶ τῶν θεῶν τὸν βασιλέα ‘Μειλίχιον’ Ἀθηναῖοι δέ ‘Μαιμάκτην’ οἶμαι καλοῦσι· τὸ δὲ κολαστικὸν ἐρινυῶδες καὶ [c] δαιμονικόν, οὐ θεῖον οὐδ’ ὀλύμπιον.

Ὥσπερ οὖν ἐπὶ τοῦ Φιλίππου τις εἶπε κατασκάψαντος Ὄλυνθον ‘ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἂν ἀνοικίσαι γε πόλιν ἐκεῖνος δύναιτο τηλικαύτην,’ οὕτως ἔστιν εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὸν θυμόν ‘ἀνατρέψαι μὲν δύνασαι καὶ διαφθεῖραι καὶ καταβαλεῖν, ἀναστῆσαι δὲ καὶ σῶσαι καὶ φείσασθαι καὶ καρτερῆσαι πραότητός ἐστι καὶ συγγνώμης καὶ μετριοπαθείας, καὶ Καμίλλου καὶ Μετέλλου καὶ Ἀριστείδου καὶ Σωκράτους· τὸ δ’ ἐμφῦναι καὶ δακεῖν μυρμηκῶδες καὶ μυῶδες’. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς ἄμυναν ἅμα σκοπῶν τὸν δι’ ὀργῆς τρόπον ἄπρακτον [d] εὑρίσκω τὰ πολλά, δήγμασι χειλῶν καὶ πρίσεσιν ὀδόντων καὶ κεναῖς ἐπιδρομαῖς καὶ βλασφημίαις ἀπειλὰς ἀνοήτους ἐχούσαις καταναλισκόμενον, εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς δρόμοις τὰ παιδία τῷ μὴ κρατεῖν ἑαυτῶν προκαταπίπτοντα τοῦ τέλους ἐφ’ ὃ σπεύδει γελοίως. ὅθεν οὐ φαύλως ὁ Ῥόδιος πρὸς ὑπηρέτην τοῦ Ῥωμαίων στρατηγοῦ βοῶντα καὶ θρασυνόμενον ‘οὐ μέλει μοι τί σὺ λέγεις ἀλλὰ τί τῆνος σιγῇ.’ καὶ τὸν Νεοπτόλεμον ὁ Σοφοκλῆς καὶ τὸν Εὐρύπυλον ὁπλίσας (Soph. Euryp. fr. 5, 9) ‘ἄκομπ’ ἀλοιδόρητα’ φησίν ‘ἐρρηξάτην ἐς κύκλα χαλκέων ὅπλων.’ τὸν μὲν γὰρ σίδηρον ἔνιοι τῶν βαρβάρων φαρμάσσουσιν, ἡ δ’ ἀνδρεία [e] χολῆς οὐ δεῖται· βέβαπται γὰρ ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου· τὸ δὲ θυμικὸν καὶ μανικὸν εὐπερίθραυστόν ἐστι καὶ σαθρόν. ἀφαιροῦσι γοῦν αὐλοῖς τὸν θυμὸν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῶν μαχομένων, καὶ Μούσαις πρὸ πολέμου θύουσιν ὅπως ὁ λόγος ἐμμένῃ· καὶ τρεψάμενοι τοὺς πολεμίους οὐ διώκουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀνακαλοῦνται τὸν θυμόν, ὥσπερ τὰ σύμμετρα τῶν ἐγχειριδίων εὐανακόμιστον ὄντα καὶ ῥᾴδιον. ὀργὴ δὲ μυρίους προανεῖλε τῆς ἀμύνης, ὡς Κῦρον καὶ Πελοπίδαν τὸν Θηβαῖον. Ἀγαθοκλῆς δὲ πράως ἔφερε λοιδορούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πολιορκουμένων, καί τινος εἰπόντος ‘κεραμεῦ, πόθεν [f] ἀποδώσεις τοῖς ξένοις τὸν μισθόν;’ ἐπιγελάσας ‘αἴκα ταύταν ἐξέλω.’ καὶ τὸν Ἀντίγονον ἀπὸ τοῦ τείχους τινὲς εἰς ἀμορφίαν ἔσκωπτον· ὁ δὲ πρὸς αὐτούς ‘καὶ μὴν ἐδόκουν εὐπρόσωπος εἶναι’· λαβὼν δὲ τὴν πόλιν ἐπίπρασκε τοὺς σκώπτοντας, μαρτυράμενος ὅτι πρὸς τοὺς δεσπότας ἕξει τὸν λόγον, ἂν πάλιν αὐτὸν λοιδορῶσιν. ὁρῶ δὲ καὶ κυνηγοὺς σφαλλομένους ὑπ’ ὀργῆς μεγάλα καὶ ῥήτορας. Ἀριστοτέλης δ’ ἱστορεῖ (875a 34) Σατύρου τοῦ Σαμίου [459] [a] τοὺς φίλους ἐμφράξαι τὰ ὦτα κηρῷ δίκην ἔχοντος, ὅπως μὴ συγχέῃ τὸ πρᾶγμα διὰ θυμὸν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν λοιδορούμενος. αὐτοὺς δ’ ἡμᾶς οὐ πολλάκις ἐκφεύγει τὸ κολάσαι πλημμελήσαντα δοῦλον; ἀποδιδράσκουσι γὰρ τὰς ἀπειλὰς καὶ τοὺς λόγους δείσαντες. ὅπερ οὖν αἱ τίτθαι πρὸς τὰ παιδία λέγουσι ‘μὴ κλαῖε, καὶ λήψῃ,’ τοῦτο πρὸς τὸν θυμὸν οὐκ ἀχρήστως λεκτέον ‘μὴ σπεῦδε μηδὲ βόα μηδ’ ἐπείγου, καὶ μᾶλλον ἃ θέλεις γενήσεται καὶ βέλτιον.’ καὶ γὰρ παῖδα πατὴρ ἰδὼν ἐπιχειροῦντά τι σιδηρίῳ διελεῖν ἢ περιτεμεῖν αὐτὸς λαβὼν τὸ σιδήριον ἐποίησε, καὶ τοῦ θυμοῦ τὴν τιμωρίαν παρελόμενος ὁ λογισμὸς αὐτὸς [b] ἀσφαλῶς καὶ ἀβλαβῶς καὶ ὠφελίμως ἐκόλασε τὸν ἄξιον οὐχ ἑαυτὸν ὥσπερ ὁ θυμὸς ἀντ’ ἐκείνου πολλάκις.

Πάντων δὲ τῶν παθῶν ἐθισμοῦ δεομένων οἷον δαμάζοντος καὶ καταθλοῦντος ἀσκήσει τὸ ἄλογον καὶ δυσπειθὲς οὐ πρὸς ἄλλο μᾶλλον ἔστιν ἐγγυμνάσασθαι τοῖς οἰκέταις ἢ πρὸς τὸν θυμόν. οὔτε γὰρ φθόνος οὔτε φόβος οὔτε φιλοτιμία τις ἐγγίνεται πρὸς αὐτούς, ὀργαὶ δὲ συνεχεῖς πολλὰ ποιοῦσαι προσκρούματα καὶ σφάλματα, διὰ τὴν ἐξουσίαν ὥσπερ ἐν ὀλισθηρῷ χωρίῳ μηδενὸς ἐνισταμένου μηδὲ κωλύοντος ὑποφέρουσαι. οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἀναμάρτητον ἐν πάθει τὸ ἀνυπεύθυνον κατασχεῖν μὴ πολλῇ τὴν ἐξουσίαν [c] ἐμπεριλαβόντα πραότητι μηδὲ πολλὰς ὑπομείναντα φωνὰς γυναικὸς καὶ φίλων ἐγκαλούντων ἀτονίαν καὶ ῥᾳθυμίαν. οἷς μάλιστα παρωξυνόμην καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τοὺς οἰκέτας ὡς τῷ μὴ κολάζεσθαι διαφθειρομένους. ὀψὲ μέντοι συνεῖδον, ὅτι πρῶτον μὲν ἐκείνους ἀνεξικακίᾳ χείρονας ποιεῖν βέλτιόν ἐστιν ἢ πικρίᾳ καὶ θυμῷ διαστρέφειν ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἑτέρων ἐπανόρθωσιν· ἔπειτα πολλοὺς ὁρῶν αὐτῷ τῷ μὴ κολάζεσθαι πολλάκις αἰδουμένους κακοὺς εἶναι καὶ μεταβολῆς ἀρχὴν τὴν συγγνώμην μᾶλλον ἢ τὴν τιμωρίαν λαμβάνοντας, καὶ νὴ Δία δουλεύοντας ἑτέροις ἀπὸ νεύματος σιωπῇ καὶ προθυμότερον ἢ μετὰ [d] πληγῶν καὶ στιγμάτων ἑτέροις, ἐπειθόμην ἡγεμονικώτερον εἶναι τοῦ θυμοῦ τὸν λογισμόν. οὐ γάρ, ὡς ὁ ποιητὴς εἶπεν (Cypr. fr. 23 All.) ‘ἵνα γὰρ δέος, ἔνθα καὶ αἰδώς’, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον αἰδουμένοις ὁ σωφρονίζων ἐγγίνεται φόβος· ἡ δὲ συνεχὴς πληγὴ καὶ ἀπαραίτητος οὐ μετάνοιαν ἐμποιεῖ τοῦ κακουργεῖν ἀλλὰ τοῦ λανθάνειν πρόνοιαν μᾶλλον. τρίτον ἀεὶ μνημονεύων καὶ διανοούμενος πρὸς ἐμαυτόν, ὡς οὔθ’ ὁ τοξεύειν ἡμᾶς διδάξας ἐκώλυσε βάλλειν ἀλλὰ μὴ διαμαρτάνειν οὔτε τῷ κολάζειν ἐμποδὼν ἔσται τὸ διδάσκειν εὐκαίρως τοῦτο ποιεῖν καὶ μετρίως καὶ ὠφελίμως καὶ πρεπόντως, πειρῶμαι τὴν ὀργὴν ἀφαιρεῖν μάλιστα τῷ [e] μὴ παραιρεῖσθαι τῶν κολαζομένων τὴν δικαιολογίαν ἀλλ’ ἀκούειν. ὅ τε γὰρ χρόνος ἐμποιεῖ τῷ πάθει διατριβὴν καὶ μέλλησιν ἐκλύουσαν ἥ τε κρίσις εὑρίσκει καὶ τρόπον πρέποντα καὶ μέγεθος ἁρμόττον κολάσεως· ἔτι δ’ οὐχ ὑπολείπεται πρόφασις τῷ διδόντι δίκην ἀντιτείνειν πρὸς τὴν ἐπανόρθωσιν, ἂν μὴ κατ’ ὀργὴν ἀλλ’ ἐξελεγχθεὶς κολάζηται· τό τ’ αἴσχιστον οὐ πρόσεστι, φαίνεσθαι δικαιότερα τοῦ δεσπότου λέγοντα τὸν οἰκέτην. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ Φωκίων μετὰ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου τελευτὴν οὐκ ἐῶν προεξανίστασθαι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους οὐδὲ ταχὺ πιστεύειν, ‘εἰ σήμερον’ [f] εἶπεν, ‘ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τέθνηκε, καὶ αὔριον ἔσται καὶ εἰς τρίτην τεθνηκώς,’ οὕτως οἶμαι δεῖν ὑποβάλλειν ἑαυτῷ τὸν σπεύδοντα δι’ ὀργὴν ἐπὶ τὴν τιμωρίαν, ‘εἰ σήμερον οὗτος ἠδίκηκε, καὶ αὔριον ἔσται καὶ εἰς τρίτην ἠδικηκώς· καὶ δεινὸν οὐδέν, εἰ δώσει δίκην βράδιον, ἀλλ’ εἰ ταχὺ παθὼν ἀεὶ φανεῖται μὴ ἀδικῶν’· ὅπερ ἤδη συμβέβηκε πολλάκις. τίς γὰρ ἡμῶν οὕτω δεινός ἐστιν, ὥστε μαστιγοῦν καὶ κολάζειν δοῦλον, ὅτι πέμπτην ἢ δεκάτην ἡμέραν [460] [a] προσέκαυσε τοὖψον ἢ κατέβαλε τὴν τράπεζαν ἢ βράδιον ὑπήκουσε; καὶ μὴν ταῦτ’ ἐστὶν ἐφ’ οἷς εὐθὺς γενομένοις καὶ προσφάτοις οὖσι ταραττόμεθα καὶ πικρῶς καὶ ἀπαραιτήτως ἔχομεν. ὡς γὰρ δι’ ὁμίχλης τὰ σώματα, καὶ δι’ ὀργῆς τὰ πράγματα μείζονα φαίνεται. διὸ δεῖ ταχὺ συμμνημονεύειν τῶν ὁμοίων καὶ τοῦ πάθους ἔξωθεν ὄντας ἀνυπόπτως, ἂν καθαρῷ τῷ λογισμῷ καὶ καθεστῶτι φαίνηται μοχθηρόν, ἐπιστραφῆναι καὶ μὴ προέσθαι τότε μηδ’ ἀφεῖναι τὴν κόλασιν ὥσπερ σιτίων ἀνορέκτους γεγονότας. οὐδὲν γὰρ οὕτως αἴτιόν ἐστι τοῦ παρούσης ὀργῆς [b] κολάζειν, ὡς τὸ παυσαμένης μὴ κολάζειν ἀλλ’ ἐκλελύσθαι καὶ ταὐτὸν πεπονθέναι τοῖς ἀργοῖς κωπηλάταις, οἳ γαλήνης ὁρμοῦσιν εἶτα κινδυνεύουσιν ἀνέμῳ πλέοντες. καὶ γὰρ ἡμεῖς τοῦ λογισμοῦ κατεγνωκότες ἀτονίαν καὶ μαλακίαν ἐν τῷ κολάζειν σπεύδομεν παρόντι τῷ θυμῷ καθάπερ πνεύματι παραβόλως. τροφῇ μὲν γὰρ ὁ πεινῶν κατὰ φύσιν χρῆται τιμωρίᾳ δ’ ὁ μὴ πεινῶν μηδὲ διψῶν αὐτῆς μηδ’ ὥσπερ ὄψου πρὸς τὸ κολάσαι τοῦ θυμοῦ δεόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὅταν πορρωτάτω τοῦ ὀρέγεσθαι γένηται προσάγων τὸν λογισμὸν ἀναγκαίως. οὐ γάρ, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης [c] ἱστορεῖ (fr. 608) κατ’ αὐτὸν ἐν Τυρρηνίᾳ μαστιγοῦσθαι τοὺς οἰκέτας πρὸς αὐλόν, οὕτω πρὸς ἡδονὴν δεῖ καθάπερ ἀπολαύσματος ὀρέξει τῆς τιμωρίας ἐμφορεῖσθαι καὶ χαίρειν κολάζοντας ‹κολάσαντας δὲ› μετανοεῖν ὧν τὸ μὲν θηριῶδες τὸ δὲ γυναικῶδες· ἀλλὰ καὶ λύπης καὶ ἡδονῆς χωρὶς ἐν τῷ τοῦ λογισμοῦ χρόνῳ τὴν δίκην κομίζεσθαι μὴ ὑπολείποντας τῷ θυμῷ πρόφασιν.

Αὕτη μὲν οὖν ἴσως οὐκ ὀργῆς ἰατρεία φανεῖται, διάκρουσις δὲ καὶ φυλακὴ τῶν ἐν ὀργῇ τινος ἁμαρτημάτων. καίτοι καὶ σπληνὸς οἴδημα σύμπτωμα μέν ἐστι πυρετοῦ πραϋνόμενον δὲ κουφίζει τὸν πυρετόν, ὥς φησιν Ἱερώνυμος [d] (Sat. Saupp. p. 103). ἀλλ’ αὐτῆς γε τῆς ὀργῆς ἀναθεωρῶν τὴν γένεσιν ἄλλους ὑπ’ ἄλλων αἰτιῶν ἐμπίπτοντας εἰς αὐτὴν ἑώρων, οἷς ἐπιεικῶς ἅπασι δόξα τοῦ καταφρονεῖσθαι καὶ ἀμελεῖσθαι παραγίνεται. διὸ καὶ τοῖς παραιτουμένοις ὀργὴν δεῖ βοηθεῖν πορρωτάτω τὴν πρᾶξιν ὀλιγωρίας ἀπάγοντας καὶ θρασύτητος, εἰς ἄγνοιαν ἢ ἀνάγκην ἢ πάθος ἢ δυστυχίαν τιθεμένους· ὡς Σοφοκλῆς (Ant. 563)

‘ἀλλ’ οὐ γάρ, ὦναξ, οὐδ’ ὃς ἂν βλάστῃ μένει

νοῦς τοῖς κακῶς πράξασιν, ἀλλ’ ἐξίσταται.’

καὶ τῆς Βρισηΐδος τὴν ἀφαίρεσιν εἰς τὴν Ἄτην ἀναφέρων [e] ὁ Ἀγαμέμνων ὅμως (Τ 138) ‘ἂψ ἐθέλει ἀρέσαι, δόμεναί τ’ ἀπερείσι’ ἄποινα·’ καὶ γὰρ τὸ δεῖσθαι τοῦ μὴ καταφρονοῦντός ἐστι, καὶ ταπεινὸς φανεὶς ὁ ἀδικήσας ἔλυσε τὴν τῆς ὀλιγωρίας δόξαν. οὐ δεῖ δὲ ταῦτα περιμένειν τὸν ὀργιζόμενον, ἀλλὰ τὸ τοῦ Διογένους ‘οὗτοί σου καταγελῶσιν ὦ Διόγενες·’ ‘ἐγὼ δ’ οὐ καταγελῶμαι’ λαμβάνειν ἑαυτῷ, καὶ καταφρονεῖσθαι μὴ νομίζειν ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἐκείνου καταφρονεῖν ὡς δι’ ἀσθένειαν [ἢ πλημμέλειαν] ἢ προπέτειαν ἢ ῥᾳθυμίαν ἢ ἀνελευθερίαν ἢ γῆρας ἢ νεότητα πλημμελοῦντος. οἰκέταις δὲ καὶ φίλοις ἀφετέον τὸ τοιοῦτο παντάπασιν· οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἀδυνάτων οὐδ’ [f] ὡς ἀπράκτων, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἐπιείκειαν ἢ δι’ εὔνοιαν οἱ μὲν ὡς χρηστῶν οἱ δ’ ὡς φιλούντων καταφρονοῦσι. νυνὶ δ’ οὐ μόνον πρὸς γυναῖκα καὶ δούλους καὶ φίλους ὡς καταφρονούμενοι τραχέως ἔχομεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πανδοκεῦσι καὶ ναύταις καὶ ὀρεωκόμοις μεθύουσι πολλάκις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς συμπίπτομεν οἰόμενοι καταφρονεῖσθαι, καὶ κυσὶν ὑλακτοῦσι [461] [a] καὶ ὄνοις ἐμβάλλουσι χαλεπαίνομεν· ὡς ἐκεῖνος ὁ βουλόμενος τύπτειν τὸν ὀνηλάτην, εἶτ’ ἀνακραγόντος ὅτι ‘Ἀθηναῖός εἰμι,’ ‘σὺ μὲν ‹οὖν› οὐκ εἶ Ἀθηναῖος’ τὸν ὄνον λέγων ἔτυπτε καὶ πολλὰς ἐνεφόρει πληγάς.

Καὶ μὴν τάς γε συνεχεῖς καὶ πυκνὰς καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ συλλεγομένας ὀργὰς μάλιστα φιλαυτία καὶ δυσκολία μετὰ τρυφῆς καὶ μαλακίας οἷον σμῆνος ἢ σφηκιὰν ἡμῖν ἐντίκτουσι. διὸ μεῖζον οὐδὲν εὐκολίας καὶ ἀφελείας ἐφόδιον εἰς πραότητα πρὸς οἰκέτας καὶ γυναῖκα καὶ φίλους τῷ δυναμένῳ συμφέρεσθαι τοῖς παροῦσι καὶ μὴ δεομένῳ πολλῶν καὶ περιττῶν.

[b] ‘ὁ δ’ οὔτ’ ἄγαν ὀπτοῖσιν οὔθ’ ἑφθοῖς ἄγαν

οὔθ’ ἧττον οὔτε μᾶλλον οὔτε διὰ μέσου

ἠρτυμένοισι χαίρων ὥστ’ ἐπαινέσαι’ (Com. ad. 343),

χιόνος δὲ μὴ παρούσης οὐκ ἂν πιὼν οὐδ’ ἄρτον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς φαγὼν οὐδ’ ὄψου γευσάμενος ἐν λιτοῖς ἢ κεραμεοῖς σκεύεσιν οὐδὲ κοιμηθεὶς ἐπὶ στρωμνῆς μὴ οἰδούσης ὥσπερ θαλάττης διὰ βάθους κεκινημένης, ῥάβδοις δὲ καὶ πληγαῖς τοὺς περὶ τράπεζαν ὑπηρέτας ἐπιταχύνων μετὰ δρόμου καὶ βοῆς καὶ ἱδρῶτος ὥσπερ φλεγμαίνοντι καταπλάσματα κομίζοντας, ἀσθενεῖ καὶ φιλαιτίῳ καὶ μεμψιμοίρῳ δουλεύων διαίτῃ καθάπερ ὑπὸ βηχὸς ἐνδελεχοῦς [c] [ἢ] προσκρουμάτων πολλῶν ἔλαθεν ἑλκώδη καὶ καταρροϊκὴν διάθεσιν περὶ τὸ θυμοειδὲς ἀπεργασάμενος. ἐθιστέον οὖν τὸ σῶμα δι’ εὐτελείας πρὸς εὐκολίαν αὔταρκες ἑαυτῷ γινόμενον· οἱ γὰρ ὀλίγων δεόμενοι πολλῶν οὐκ ἀποτυγχάνουσι.

Καὶ δεινὸν οὐδὲν ἀρξαμένους ἀπὸ τῆς τροφῆς σιωπῇ χρήσασθαι τοῖς παρατυγχάνουσι, καὶ μὴ πολλὰ χολουμένους καὶ δυσκολαίνοντας ἀτερπέστατον ὄψον ἐμβαλεῖν ἑαυτοῖς καὶ φίλοις τὴν ὀργήν·

‘δόρπου δ’ οὐκ ἄν πως ἀχαρίστερον ἄλλο γένοιτο’ (υ 392),

διὰ πρόσκαυσιν ἢ καπνὸν ἢ ἁλῶν ἔνδειαν ἢ ψυχρότερον ἄρτον οἰκετῶν τυπτομένων καὶ λοιδορουμένης γυναικός.

[d] Ἀρκεσιλάου δὲ μετὰ ξένων τινῶν ἑστιῶντος τοὺς φίλους παρετέθη τὸ δεῖπνον, ἄρτοι δ’ οὐκ ἦσαν ἀμελησάντων πρίασθαι τῶν παίδων· ἐφ’ ᾧ τίς οὐκ ἂν ἡμῶν διέστησε τοὺς τοίχους κεκραγώς; ὁ δὲ μειδιάσας ‘οἷόν ἐστιν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ συμποτικὸν εἶναι τὸν σοφόν.’ τοῦ δὲ Σωκράτους ἐκ παλαίστρας παραλαβόντος τὸν Εὐθύδημον ἡ Ξανθίππη μετ’ ὀργῆς ἐπιστᾶσα καὶ λοιδορηθεῖσα τέλος ἀνέτρεψε τὴν τράπεζαν, ὁ δ’ Εὐθύδημος ἐξαναστὰς ἀπῄει περίλυπος γενόμενος· καὶ ὁ Σωκράτης ‘παρὰ σοὶ δ’’ εἶπεν ‘οὐ πρῴην ὄρνις τις εἰσπτᾶσα ταὐτὸ τοῦτ’ ἐποίησεν, ἡμεῖς δ’ οὐκ ἠγανακτήσαμεν’; δεῖ γὰρ σὺν εὐκολίᾳ καὶ γέλωτι καὶ [e] φιλοφροσύνῃ τοὺς φίλους δέχεσθαι, μὴ τὰς ὀφρῦς συνάγοντας μηδὲ φρίκην καὶ τρόμον ἐμβάλλοντας τοῖς ὑπηρετοῦσιν. ἐθιστέον δὲ καὶ σκεύεσιν εὐκόλως ὁμιλεῖν ἅπασι καὶ μὴ τῷδε μᾶλλον ἢ τῷδε χρῆσθαι· καθάπερ ἔνιοι πολλῶν παρόντων ἓν ἐξελόμενοι κανθάριον, ὡς Μάριον ἱστοροῦσιν, ἢ ῥυτὸν οὐκ ἂν ἑτέρῳ πίοιεν. οὕτω δὲ καὶ πρὸς ληκύθους ἔχουσι καὶ πρὸς στλεγγίδας, ἀγαπῶντες ἐκ πασῶν μίαν, εἶθ’ ὅταν συντριβῇ τι τούτων ἢ ἀπόληται, βαρέως φέρουσι καὶ κολάζουσιν. ἀφεκτέον οὖν τῷ πρὸς ὀργὴν φαύλως ἔχοντι καὶ τῶν σπανίων καὶ περιττῶν, οἷον ἐκπωμάτων καὶ σφραγίδων καὶ λίθων πολυτελῶν· [f] ἐξίστησι γὰρ ἀπολλύμενα μᾶλλον τῶν εὐπορίστων καὶ συνήθων. διὸ καὶ τοῦ Νέρωνος ὀκτάγωνόν τινα σκηνὴν ὑπερφυὲς κάλλει καὶ πολυτελείᾳ θέαμα κατασκευάσαντος, ‘ἤλεγξας’ ἔφη ὁ Σενέκας ‘πένητα σεαυτόν· ἐὰν γὰρ ταύτην ἀπολέσῃς, ἑτέραν οὐ κτήσῃ τοιαύτην.’ [462] [a] καὶ μέντοι καὶ συνέπεσε τοῦ πλοίου καταδύντος ἀπολέσθαι τὴν σκηνήν· ὁ δὲ Νέρων ἀναμνησθεὶς τοῦ Σενέκα μετριώτερον ἤνεγκεν. ἡ δὲ πρὸς τὰ πράγματ’ εὐκολία καὶ πρὸς οἰκέτας εὔκολον ποιεῖ καὶ πρᾶον, εἰ δὲ πρὸς οἰκέτας, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ πρὸς φίλους καὶ πρὸς ἀρχομένους. ὁρῶμεν δὲ καὶ δούλους νεωνήτους περὶ τοῦ πριαμένου πυνθανομένους, οὐκ εἰ δεισιδαίμων οὐδ’ εἰ φθονερὸς ἀλλ’ εἰ θυμώδης, καὶ ὅλως σὺν ὀργῇ μηδὲ σωφροσύνην ἄνδρας γυναικῶν μηδ’ ἔρωτα γυναῖκας ἀνδρῶν ὑπομένειν δυναμένας μηδὲ συνήθειαν ἀλλήλων φίλους· οὕτως οὔτε γάμος [b] οὔτε φιλία μετ’ ὀργῆς ἀνεκτόν. ἀλλὰ χωρὶς ὀργῆς καὶ μέθη κοῦφόν ἐστιν· ὁ γὰρ τοῦ θεοῦ νάρθηξ ἱκανὸς κολαστὴς τοῦ μεθύοντος, ἂν μὴ προσγενόμενος ὁ θυμὸς ὠμηστὴν καὶ μαινόλην ἀντὶ λυαίου καὶ χορείου ποιήσῃ τὸν ἄκρατον. καὶ τὴν μανίαν αὐτὴν καθ’ αὑτὴν ἡ Ἀντίκυρα θεραπεύει, μιχθεῖσα δ’ ὀργῇ τραγῳδίας ποιεῖ καὶ μύθους.

Δεῖ δὲ μήτε παίζοντας αὐτῇ διδόναι τόπον (ἔχθραν γὰρ ἐπάγει τῇ φιλοφροσύνῃ) μήτε κοινολογουμένους (φιλονεικίαν γὰρ ἐκ φιλολογίας ἀπεργάζεται) μήτε δικάζοντας (ὕβριν γὰρ τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ προστίθησι) μήτε παιδεύοντας (ἀθυμίαν γὰρ ἐμποιεῖ καὶ μισολογίαν) μήτ’ εὐτυχοῦντας [c] (αὔξει γὰρ τὸν φθόνον) μήτε δυστυχοῦντας· ἀφαιρεῖ γὰρ τὸν ἔλεον, ὅταν δυσκολαίνωσι καὶ μάχωνται τοῖς συναχθομένοις· ὡς Πρίαμος (Ω 239)

‘ἔρρετε, λωβητῆρες, ἐλεγχέες· οὔ νυ καὶ ὑμῖν

οἴκοι ἔστι γόος, ὅτι μ’ ἤλθετε κηδήσοντες;’

ἡ δ’ εὐκολία τοῖς μὲν βοηθεῖ τὰ δ’ ἐπικοσμεῖ τὰ δὲ συνηδύνει, περιγίνεται δὲ τῇ πραότητι καὶ θυμοῦ καὶ δυσκολίας ἁπάσης. ὥσπερ Εὐκλείδης τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐκ διαφορᾶς εἰπόντος ‘ἀπολοίμην, εἰ μή σε τιμωρησαίμην’ ‘ἐγὼ δέ’ φήσας ‘ἀπολοίμην, εἰ μή σε πείσαιμι’ διέτρεψε [d] παραχρῆμα καὶ μετέθηκε. Πολέμων δὲ λοιδοροῦντος αὐτὸν ἀνθρώπου φιλολίθου καὶ περὶ σφραγίδια πολυτελῆ νοσοῦντος ἀπεκρίνατο μὲν οὐδὲν τῶν σφραγιδίων δ’ ἑνὶ προσεῖχε τὸν νοῦν καὶ κατεμάνθανεν· ἡσθεὶς οὖν ὁ ἄνθρωπος ‘μὴ οὕτως’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Πολέμων, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ αὐγὰς θεῶ, καὶ πολύ σοι βέλτιον φανεῖται.’ ὁ δ’ Ἀρίστιππος ὀργῆς αὐτῷ πρὸς Αἰσχίνην γενομένης καί τινος εἰπόντος ‘ὦ Ἀρίστιππε, ποῦ ὑμῶν ἡ φιλία;’ ‘καθεύδει’ φησίν ‘ἐγὼ δ’ αὐτὴν ἐγερῶ,’ καὶ τῷ Αἰσχίνῃ προσελθὼν εἶπεν ‘οὕτω σοι δοκῶ παντάπασιν ἀτυχής τις εἶναι καὶ ἀνήκεστος, ὥστε [e] μὴ νουθεσίας τυχεῖν;’ ὁ δ’ Αἰσχίνης ‘οὐδέν’ ἔφη ‘θαυμαστόν, εἰ πρὸς πάντα μου τῇ φύσει διαφέρων κἀνταῦθα τὸ δέον πρότερος συνεῖδες.’

‘καὶ γὰρ κάπρον φριξαύχεν’ οὐ μόνον γυνή,

παῖς δ’ ἂν νεογνὸς χειρὶ προσκνήθων νέᾳ

κλίνοι παλαιστοῦ παντὸς εὐμαρέστερον’ (Tr. ad. 383)·

ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς ἀγριαίνοντα τιθασεύομεν ζῷα καὶ πραΰνομεν, λυκιδεῖς καὶ σκύμνους λεόντων ἐν ταῖς ἀγκάλαις περιφέροντες, εἶτα τέκνα καὶ φίλους καὶ συνήθεις ἐκβάλλομεν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς, οἰκέταις δὲ καὶ πολίταις τὸν θυμὸν ὥσπερ θηρίον ἐφίεμεν, οὐ καλῶς ὑποκοριζόμενοι μισοπονηρίαν, [f] ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ, οἶμαι, τῶν ἄλλων παθῶν τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ νοσημάτων τὸ μὲν πρόνοιαν τὸ δ’ ἐλευθεριότητα τὸ δ’ εὐσέβειαν καλοῦντες οὐδενὸς ἀπαλλαγῆναι δυνάμεθα.

Καίτοι, καθάπερ ὁ Ζήνων (fr. 128) ἔλεγε τὸ σπέρμα σύμμιγμα καὶ κέρασμα τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεων ὑπάρχειν ἀπεσπασμένον, οὕτως ἔοικε τῶν παθῶν πανσπερμία [463] [a] τις ὁ θυμὸς εἶναι. καὶ γὰρ λύπης ἀπέσπασται καὶ ἡδονῆς καὶ ὕβρεως, καὶ φθόνου μὲν ἔχει τὴν ἐπιχαιρεκακίαν, φόβου δὲ καὶ χείρων ἐστίν· ἀγωνίζεται γὰρ οὐχὶ μὴ παθεῖν αὐτὸς ἀλλὰ παθεῖν κακῶς ἐπιτρίψας ἕτερον· ἐπιθυμίας δ’ αὐτῷ τὸ ἀτερπέστατον ἐμπέφυκεν, εἴ γε δὴ τοῦ λυπεῖν ἕτερον ὄρεξίς ἐστι. διὸ τῶν μὲν ἀσώτων ταῖς οἰκίαις προσιόντες αὐλητρίδος ἀκούομεν ἑωθινῆς, καί ‘πηλόν’, ὥς τις εἶπεν, οἴνου καὶ σπαράγματα στεφάνων καὶ κραιπαλῶντας ὁρῶμεν ἐπὶ θύραις ἀκολούθους· τὰ δὲ τῶν πικρῶν ἐκκλύσματα καὶ δυσκόλων ἐν τοῖς προσώποις [b] τῶν οἰκετῶν ὄψει καὶ τοῖς στίγμασι καὶ ταῖς πέδαις· ‘ἀεὶ δ’ ἀοιδῶν μοῦνος ἐν στέγαις’ ὀργίλου ἀνδρός ‘κωκυτὸς ἐμπέπτωκε’ (Tr. ad. 387), μαστιγουμένων ἔνδον οἰκονόμων καὶ στρεβλουμένων θεραπαινίδων, ὥστε τοῦ θυμοῦ τὰς λύπας ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ ταῖς ἡδοναῖς οἰκτείρειν ὁρῶντας.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὅσοις γε συμβαίνει διὰ μισοπονηρίαν ἀληθῶς ἁλίσκεσθαι πολλάκις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς, τὸ ἄγαν ἀφαιρετέον αὐτῆς καὶ τὸ ἄκρατον ἅμα τῇ σφοδρᾷ πίστει περὶ τῶν συνόντων. αὕτη γὰρ αὔξει μάλιστα τῶν αἰτιῶν τὸν θυμόν, ὅταν ἢ χρηστὸς ὑποληφθεὶς ἀναφανῇ μοχθηρὸς ἢ [c] φιλεῖν δόξας ἐν διαφορᾷ τινι καὶ μέμψει γένηται. τὸ δ’ ἐμὸν ἦθος οἶσθα δήπουθεν ἡλίκαις ῥοπαῖς φέρεται πρὸς εὔνοιαν ἀνθρώπων καὶ πίστιν. ὥσπερ οὖν οἱ κατὰ κενοῦ βαίνοντες, ὅσῳ μᾶλλον ἐπερείδω τῷ φιλεῖν ἐμαυτόν, ἁμαρτάνω μᾶλλον καὶ σφαλλόμενος ἀνιῶμαι· καὶ τοῦ μὲν φιλεῖν ἀπαρύσαι τὸ ἐμπαθὲς ἄγαν καὶ πρόθυμον οὐκ ἂν ἔτι δυνηθείην, τοῦ δὲ πιστεύειν σφόδρα χρησαίμην ἂν ἴσως χαλινῷ τῇ Πλάτωνος εὐλαβείᾳ· καὶ γὰρ Ἑλίκωνα τὸν μαθηματικὸν οὕτως ἐπαινεῖν φησιν, ὡς φύσει εὐμετάβολον ζῷον (ep. XIII 360d), καὶ τοὺς τεθραμμένους ἐν τῇ πόλει καλῶς δεδιέναι, μὴ ἄνθρωποι καὶ σπέρματα [d] ἀνθρώπων ὄντες ἐκφήνωσί που τῆς φύσεως τὴν ἀσθένειαν (Legg. 853c). ὁ δὲ Σοφοκλῆς λέγων ὅτι (fr. 769)

‘τὰ πλεῖστα φωρῶν αἰσχρὰ φωράσεις βροτῶν’

ἄγαν ἔοικεν ἡμῖν ἐπεμβαίνειν καὶ κολούειν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τὸ δύσκολον τοῦτο τῆς κρίσεως καὶ φιλαίτιον εὐκολωτέρους ποιεῖ ταῖς ὀργαῖς· ἐκστατικὸν γάρ ἐστι τὸ ἄφνω καὶ τὸ ἀπροσδόκητον· δεῖ δ’, ὥς που καὶ Παναίτιος ἔφη, χρῆσθαι τῷ Ἀναξαγόρου (A 33), καὶ καθάπερ ἐκεῖνος ἐπὶ τῇ τελευτῇ τοῦ παιδὸς εἶπεν ‘ᾔδειν ὅτι θνητὸν ἐγέννησα,’ τοῦτο τοῖς παροξύνουσιν ἑκάστοτ’ ἐπιφωνεῖν ἁμαρτήμασιν ‘ᾔδειν ὅτι σοφὸν οὐκ ἐπριάμην δοῦλον’ ‘ᾔδειν ὅτι †καὶ τὸν ἄφιλον οὐκ [e] ἐκτησάμην’ ‘ᾔδειν ὅτι τὴν γυναῖκα γυναῖκ’ εἶχον.’ ἂν δὲ κἀκεῖνό τις ἐπιφθεγγόμενος ἀεὶ τὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος ‘ἦ που ἄρ’ ἐγὼ τοιοῦτος;’ ἔξωθεν εἴσω τὸν λογισμὸν ἀναστρέφῃ καὶ παρεμβάλλῃ ταῖς μέμψεσι τὴν εὐλάβειαν, οὐ πολλῇ χρήσεται μισοπονηρίᾳ πρὸς ἑτέρους πολλῆς ὁρῶν ἑαυτὸν συγγνώμης δεόμενον. νῦν δ’ ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ὀργιζόμενος καὶ κολάζων Ἀριστείδου φωνὰς ἐπιφέρει καὶ Κάτωνος ‘μὴ κλέπτε’ ‘μὴ ψεύδου,’ ‘διὰ τί ῥᾳθυμεῖς;’ καὶ ὃ δὴ πάντων αἴσχιστόν ἐστιν, ὀργιζομένοις ἐπιτιμῶμεν μετ’ ὀργῆς καὶ τὰ διὰ θυμὸν ἡμαρτημένα θυμῷ κολάζομεν, [f] οὐχ ὥσπερ ἰατροί ‘πικρῷ πικρὰν κλύζουσι φαρμάκῳ χολήν’ (Soph. fr. 770), ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἐπιτείνοντες καὶ προσεκταράττοντες. ὅταν οὖν ἐν τούτοις γένωμαι τοῖς ἐπιλογισμοῖς, ἅμα τι πειρῶμαι καὶ τοῦ πολυπράγμονος [464] [a] ἀφαιρεῖν. τὸ γὰρ ἐξακριβοῦν ἅπαντα καὶ φωρᾶν καὶ πᾶσαν ἕλκειν εἰς μέσον ἀσχολίαν οἰκέτου καὶ πρᾶξιν φίλου καὶ διατριβὴν υἱοῦ καὶ ψιθυρισμὸν γυναικὸς ὀργὰς φέρει πολλὰς καὶ συνεχεῖς καὶ καθημερινάς, ὧν δυσκολία τρόπου καὶ χαλεπότης τὸ κεφάλαιόν ἐστιν. ὁ μὲν οὖν θεός, ὡς Εὐριπίδης φησί (fr. 974), ‘τῶν ἄγαν ἅπτεται, τὰ μικρὰ δ’ εἰς τύχην ἀφεὶς ἐᾷ·’ ἐγὼ δὲ τῇ τύχῃ μὲν οὐδὲν οἶμαι δεῖν ἐπιτρέπειν οὐδὲ παρορᾶν τὸν νοῦν ἔχοντα, πιστεύειν δὲ καὶ χρῆσθαι τὰ μὲν γυναικὶ τὰ δ’ οἰκέταις τὰ δὲ φίλοις οἷον ἄρχοντ’ ἐπιτρόποις τισὶ καὶ λογισταῖς καὶ διοικηταῖς, αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῶν κυριωτάτων ὄντα τῷ λογισμῷ [b] καὶ μεγίστων. ὡς γὰρ τὰ λεπτὰ γράμματα τὴν ὄψιν, οὕτω τὰ μικρὰ πράγματα μᾶλλον ἐντείνοντα νύττει καὶ ταράττει τὴν ὀργήν, ἔθος πονηρὸν ἐπὶ τὰ μείζονα λαμβάνουσαν.

Ἐπὶ πᾶσι τοίνυν τὸ μὲν τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους μέγα καὶ θεῖον ἡγούμην, τὸ ‘νηστεῦσαι κακότητος’ (B 144), ἐπῄνουν δὲ κἀκείνας ὡς οὐκ ἀχαρίστους οὐδ’ ἀφιλοσόφους ἐν εὐχαῖς ὁμολογίας, ἀφροδισίων ἐνιαυτὸν ἁγνεῦσαι καὶ οἴνου, τιμῶντας ἐγκρατείᾳ τὸν θεόν, ἢ ψευδολογίας πάλιν ἀπέχεσθαι χρόνον ὡρισμένον, αὑτοῖς προσέχοντας πῶς ἀληθεύσομεν [c] ἔν τε παιδιᾷ καὶ μετὰ σπουδῆς ἁπάσης· εἶτα ταύταις τὴν ἐμαυτοῦ παρέβαλλον εὐχὴν ὡς οὐχ ἧττον θεοφιλῆ καὶ ἱεράν, ἡμέρας πρῶτον ὀλίγας ἀοργήτους οἷον ἀμεθύστους καὶ ἀοίνους διαγαγεῖν, ὥσπερ νηφάλια καὶ μελίσπονδα θύοντα, εἶτα μῆν’ ἕνα καὶ δύο, καὶ πειρώμενος ἐμαυτοῦ κατὰ μικρὸν οὕτως τῷ χρόνῳ προύβαινον εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν τῆς ἀνεξικακίας, ἐγκρατῶς προσέχων καὶ διαφυλάττων μετ’ εὐφημίας ἵλεω καὶ ἀμήνιτον ἐμαυτόν, ἁγνεύοντα καὶ λόγων πονηρῶν καὶ πράξεων ἀτόπων καὶ πάθους ἐφ’ ἡδονῇ μικρᾷ καὶ ἀχαρίστῳ ταραχάς τε μεγάλας καὶ μεταμέλειαν αἰσχίστην φέροντος. ὅθεν, οἶμαι, καὶ θεοῦ [d] τι συλλαμβάνοντος, ἐσαφήνιζεν ἡ πεῖρα τὴν κρίσιν ἐκείνην, ὅτι τὸ ἵλεων τοῦτο καὶ πρᾶον καὶ φιλάνθρωπον οὐδενὶ τῶν συνόντων εὐμενές ἐστιν οὕτω καὶ φίλον καὶ ἄλυπον ὡς αὐτοῖς τοῖς ἔχουσιν.

De tranquillitate animi

ΠΕΡΙ ΕΥΘΥΜΙΑΣ

[464] Πλούταρχος Πακκίῳ εὖ πράττειν.

Ὀψέ σου τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἐκομισάμην, ἐν ᾗ παρεκάλεις περὶ εὐθυμίας σοί τι γραφῆναι καὶ περὶ τῶν ἐν Τιμαίῳ δεομένων ἐπιμελεστέρας ἐξηγήσεως. ἅμα δέ πως τὸν ἑταῖρον ἡμῶν Ἔρωτα κατελάμβανεν αἰτία τοῦ πλεῖν εὐθὺς εἰς Ῥώμην, παρὰ Φουνδάνου τοῦ κρατίστου γράμματα δεδεγμένον, οἷος ἐκεῖνος, ἐπιταχύνοντα. μήτε δὲ [f] χρόνον ἔχων, ὡς προῃρούμην, γενέσθαι πρὸς οἷς ἐβούλου μήθ’ ὑπομένων κεναῖς παντάπασι τὸν ἄνδρα χερσὶν ὀφθῆναί σοι παρ’ ἡμῶν ἀφιγμένον, ἀνελεξάμην περὶ εὐθυμίας ἐκ τῶν ὑπομνημάτων ὧν ἐμαυτῷ πεποιημένος ἐτύγχανον, ἡγούμενος καὶ σὲ τὸν λόγον τοῦτον οὐκ ἀκροάσεως ἕνεκα [465] [a] θηρωμένης καλλιγραφίαν ἀλλὰ χρείας βοηθητικῆς ἐπιζητεῖν καὶ συνηδόμενος, ὅτι καὶ φιλίας ἔχων ἡγεμονικὰς καὶ δόξαν οὐδενὸς ἐλάττονα τῶν ἐν ἀγορᾷ λεγόντων τὸ τοῦ τραγικοῦ Μέροπος οὐ πέπονθας, οὐδ’ ὡς ἐκεῖνον (Eurip. fr. 778) ‘εὐδαιμονίζων σ’ ὄχλος ἐξέπληξε’ τῶν φυσικῶν παθῶν, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις ἀκηκοὼς μνημονεύεις ὡς οὔτε ποδάγρας ἀπαλλάττει κάλτιος οὔτε δακτύλιος πολυτελὴς παρωνυχίας οὐδὲ διάδημα κεφαλαλγίας. πόθεν γε δὴ πρὸς ἀλυπίαν ψυχῆς καὶ βίον ἀκύμονα χρημάτων ὄφελος ἢ δόξης ἢ δυνάμεως ἐν αὐλαῖς, ἂν μὴ τὸ χρώμενον [b] εὐχάριστον ᾖ τοῖς ἔχουσι καὶ τὸ τῶν ἀπόντων μὴ δεόμενον ἀεὶ παρακολουθῇ; τί δὲ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ἄλλο ἢ λόγος εἰθισμένος καὶ μεμελετηκὼς τοῦ παθητικοῦ καὶ ἀλόγου τῆς ψυχῆς ἐξισταμένου πολλάκις ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι ταχὺ καὶ μὴ περιορᾶν ἀπορρέον καὶ καταφερόμενον ἀπὸ τῶν παρόντων; ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ Ξενοφῶν (Cyr. I 6, 3) παρῄνει τῶν θεῶν εὐτυχοῦντας μάλιστα μεμνῆσθαι καὶ τιμᾶν, ὅπως, ὅταν ἐν χρείᾳ γενώμεθα, θαρροῦντες αὐτοὺς παρακαλῶμεν ὡς εὐμενεῖς ὄντας ἤδη καὶ φίλους, οὕτω καὶ τῶν λόγων, ὅσοι πρὸς τὰ πάθη βοηθοῦσι, δεῖ πρὸ τῶν παθῶν ἐπιμελεῖσθαι τοὺς νοῦν ἔχοντας, ἵν’ ἐκ πολλοῦ παρεσκευασμένοι [c] μᾶλλον ὠφελῶσιν. ὡς γὰρ οἱ χαλεποὶ κύνες πρὸς πᾶσαν ἐκταραττόμενοι βοὴν ὑπὸ μόνης καταπραΰνονται τῆς συνήθους, οὕτω καὶ τὰ πάθη τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς διαγριαινόμενα καταπαῦσαι ῥᾳδίως οὐκ ἔστιν, ἂν μὴ λόγοι παρόντες οἰκεῖοι καὶ συνήθεις ἐπιλαμβάνωνται τῶν ταραττομένων.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν εἰπὼν (Democrit. B 3) ὅτι ‘δεῖ τὸν εὐθυμεῖσθαι μέλλοντα μὴ πολλὰ πρήσσειν μήτε ἰδίῃ μήτε ξυνῇ,’ πρῶτον μὲν ἡμῖν πολυτελῆ τὴν εὐθυμίαν καθίστησι, γινομένην ὤνιον ἀπραξίας· οἷον ἀρρώστῳ παραινῶν ἑκάστῳ (Eurip. Or. 258)

‘μέν’, ὦ ταλαίπωρ’, ἀτρέμα σοῖς ἐν δεμνίοις.’

καίτοι κακὸν μὲν ἀναισθησία σώματι φάρμακον ἀπονίας, [d] οὐδὲν δὲ βελτίων ψυχῆς ἰατρὸς ὁ ῥᾳθυμίᾳ καὶ μαλακίᾳ καὶ προδοσίᾳ φίλων καὶ οἰκείων καὶ πατρίδος ἐξαιρῶν τὸ ταραχῶδες αὐτῆς καὶ λυπηρόν. ἔπειτα καὶ ψεῦδός ἐστι τὸ εὐθυμεῖν τοὺς μὴ πολλὰ πράσσοντας. ἔδει γὰρ εὐθυμοτέρας εἶναι γυναῖκας ἀνδρῶν οἰκουρίᾳ τὰ πολλὰ συνούσας· νυνὶ δ’ ὁ μὲν βορέας

‘διὰ παρθενικῆς ἁπαλόχροος οὐ διάησιν’

ὥς φησιν Ἡσίοδος (OD 519), λῦπαι δὲ καὶ ταραχαὶ καὶ κακοθυμίαι διὰ ζηλοτυπίας καὶ δεισιδαιμονίας καὶ φιλοτιμίας καὶ κενῶν δοξῶν, ὅσας οὐκ ἂν εἴποι τις, εἰς τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν ὑπορρέουσιν· ὁ δὲ Λαέρτης εἴκοσιν ἔτη καθ’ [e] αὑτὸν ἐν ἀγρῷ διαιτώμενος ‘γρηὶ σὺν ἀμφιπόλῳ, ἥ οἱ βρῶσίν τε πόσιν τε παρτίθει’ (α 191), τὴν μὲν πατρίδα καὶ τὸν οἶκον καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν ἔφυγε, τὴν δὲ λύπην μετ’ ἀπραξίας καὶ κατηφείας ἀεὶ συνοικοῦσαν εἶχεν. ἐνίους δὲ καὶ τὸ μὴ πράσσειν αὐτὸ πολλάκις εἰς ἀθυμίαν καθίστησιν, ὡς τοῦτον (Α 488)·

‘αὐτὰρ ὁ μήνιε νηυσὶ παρήμενος ὠκυπόροισι

διογενὴς Πηλέως υἱός, πόδας ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς·

οὔτε ποτ’ εἰς ἀγορὴν πωλέσκετο κυδιάνειραν,

οὔτε ποτ’ ἐς πόλεμον, ἀλλὰ φθινύθεσκε φίλον κῆρ

αὖθι μένων, ποθέεσκε δ’ ἀυτήν τε πτόλεμόν τε·’

[f] καὶ λέγει περιπαθῶν ἐπὶ τούτῳ καὶ ἀσχάλλων αὐτός (Σ 104)

‘ἀλλ’ ἧμαι παρὰ νηυσὶν ἐτώσιον ἄχθος ἀρούρης.’

ὅθεν οὐδ’ Ἐπίκουρος (fr. 555) οἴεται δεῖν ἡσυχάζειν, ἀλλὰ τῇ φύσει χρῆσθαι πολιτευομένους καὶ πράσσοντας τὰ κοινὰ τοὺς φιλοτίμους καὶ φιλοδόξους, ὡς μᾶλλον ὑπ’ [466] [a] ἀπραγμοσύνης ταράττεσθαι καὶ κακοῦσθαι πεφυκότας, ἂν ὧν ὀρέγονται μὴ τυγχάνωσιν. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος μὲν ἄτοπος οὐ τοὺς δυναμένους τὰ κοινὰ πράσσειν προτρεπόμενος ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν μὴ δυναμένους· δεῖ δὲ μὴ πλήθει μηδ’ ὀλιγότητι πραγμάτων, ἀλλὰ τῷ καλῷ καὶ τῷ αἰσχρῷ τὸ εὔθυμον ὁρίζειν καὶ τὸ δύσθυμον· τῶν γὰρ καλῶν ἡ παράλειψις οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τῶν φαύλων ἡ πρᾶξις ἀνιαρόν ἐστι καὶ ταραχῶδες, ὡς εἴρηται.

Τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἀφωρισμένως ἕνα βίον ἄλυπον νομίζοντας, ὡς ἔνιοι τὸν τῶν γεωργῶν ἢ τὸν τῶν ἠιθέων ἢ τὸν τῶν βασιλέων, ἱκανῶς ὁ Μένανδρος ὑπομιμνήσκει λέγων (fr. 281)

[b] ‘ᾤμην ἐγὼ τοὺς πλουσίους, ὦ Φανία,

οἷς μὴ τὸ δανείζεσθαι πρόσεστιν, οὐ στένειν

τὰς νύκτας οὐδὲ στρεφομένους ἄνω κάτω

‘οἴμοι’ λέγειν, ἡδὺν δὲ καὶ πρᾶόν τινα

ὕπνον καθεύδειν·’

εἶτα προσδιελθὼν ὡς καὶ τοὺς πλουσίους ὁρᾷ ταὐτὰ πάσχοντας τοῖς πένησιν

‘ἆρ’ ἐστί’ φησί ‘συγγενές τι λύπη καὶ βίος;

τρυφερῷ βίῳ σύνεστιν, ἐνδόξῳ βίῳ

πάρεστιν, ἀπόρῳ συγκαταγηράσκει βίῳ.’

ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ δειλοὶ καὶ ναυτιῶντες ἐν τῷ πλεῖν, εἶτα ῥᾷον οἰόμενοι διάξειν, ἐὰν εἰς γαῦλον ἐξ ἀκάτου καὶ πάλιν [c] ἐὰν εἰς τριήρη μεταβῶσιν, οὐδὲν περαίνουσι τὴν χολὴν καὶ τὴν δειλίαν συμμεταφέροντες αὑτοῖς, οὕτως αἱ τῶν βίων ἀντιμεταλήψεις οὐκ ἐξαιροῦσι τῆς ψυχῆς τὰ λυποῦντα καὶ ταράττοντα· ταῦτα δ’ ἐστὶν ἀπειρία πραγμάτων, ἀλογιστία, τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι μηδ’ ἐπίστασθαι χρῆσθαι τοῖς παροῦσιν ὀρθῶς. ταῦτα καὶ πλουσίους χειμάζει καὶ πένητας, ταῦτα καὶ γεγαμηκότας ἀνιᾷ καὶ ἀγάμους· διὰ ταῦτα φεύγουσι τὴν ἀγορὰν εἶτα τὴν ἡσυχίαν οὐ φέρουσι, διὰ ταῦτα προαγωγὰς ἐν αὐλαῖς διώκουσι καὶ παρελθόντες εὐθὺς βαρύνονται.

‘δυσάρεστον οἱ νοσοῦντες ἀπορίας ὕπο’ (Eur. Or. 232)·

καὶ γὰρ ἡ γυνὴ λυπεῖ καὶ τὸν ἰατρὸν αἰτιῶνται καὶ δυσχεραίνουσι τὸ κλινίδιον,

[d] ‘φίλων δ’ ὅ τ’ ἐλθὼν λυπρὸς ὅ τ’ ἀπιὼν βαρύς’

ὡς ὁ Ἴων φησίν (fr. 56 N.). εἶτα τῆς νόσου διαλυθείσης καὶ κράσεως ἑτέρας ἐγγενομένης ἦλθεν ἡ ὑγίεια φίλα πάντα ποιοῦσα καὶ προσηνῆ. ὁ γὰρ ἐχθὲς ᾠὰ καὶ ἀμύλια καὶ σητάνειον ἄρτον διαπτύων τήμερον αὐτόπυρον ἐπ’ ἐλαίαις ἢ καρδαμίδι σιτεῖται προσφιλῶς καὶ προθύμως.

Τοιαύτην ὁ λογισμὸς εὐκολίαν καὶ μεταβολὴν ἐγγενόμενος ποιεῖ πρὸς ἕκαστον βίον. Ἀλέξανδρος Ἀναξάρχου (Vors. 59 A 11) περὶ κόσμων ἀπειρίας ἀκούων ἐδάκρυε, καὶ τῶν φίλων ἐρωτώντων ὅ τι πέπονθεν, ‘οὐκ ἄξιον’ ἔφη ‘δακρύειν, εἰ κόσμων ὄντων ἀπείρων ἑνὸς οὐδέπω [e] κύριοι γεγόναμεν;’ Κράτης δὲ πήραν ἔχων καὶ τριβώνιον παίζων καὶ γελῶν ὥσπερ ἐν ἑορτῇ τῷ βίῳ διετέλεσε. καὶ μὴν καὶ τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα τὸ πολλῶν βασιλεύειν ἐλύπει (Κ 88)

‘γνώσεαι Ἀτρείδην Ἀγαμέμνονα, τὸν περὶ πάντων Ζεὺς

ἐνέηκε πόνοισι διαμπερές·’

Διογένης δὲ πωλούμενος ἔσκωπτε τὸν κήρυκα κατακείμενος· ἀναστῆναι δ’ οὐκ ἐβούλετο κελεύοντος, ἀλλὰ παίζων καὶ καταγελῶν ἔλεγεν ‘εἰ δ’ ἰχθῦν ἐπίπρασκες, - ;’ καὶ Σωκράτης μὲν ἐν δεσμωτηρίῳ φιλοσοφῶν διελέγετο τοῖς ἑταίροις, ὁ δὲ Φαέθων ἀναβὰς εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἔκλαιεν, εἰ [f] μηδεὶς αὐτῷ τοὺς τοῦ πατρὸς ἵππους καὶ τὰ ἅρματα παραδίδωσιν. ὥσπερ οὖν τὸ ὑπόδημα τῷ ποδὶ συνδιαστρέφεται καὶ οὐ τοὐναντίον, οὕτω τοὺς βίους αἱ διαθέσεις συνεξομοιοῦσιν αὑταῖς. οὐ γὰρ ἡ συνήθεια ποιεῖ τοῖς ἑλομένοις τὸν ἄριστον βίον ἡδὺν ὥς τις εἶπεν, ἀλλὰ τὸ φρονεῖν ἅμα [467] [a] τὸν αὐτὸν βίον ποιεῖ καὶ ἄριστον καὶ ἥδιστον. διὸ τὴν πηγὴν τῆς εὐθυμίας ἐν αὐτοῖς οὖσαν ἡμῖν ἐκκαθαίρωμεν, ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἐκτὸς ὡς οἰκεῖα καὶ φίλια μὴ χαλεπῶς χρωμένοις συμφέρηται·

‘τοῖς πράγμασιν γὰρ οὐχὶ θυμοῦσθαι χρεών·

μέλει γὰρ αὐτοῖς οὐδέν· ἀλλ’ οὑντυγχάνων

τὰ πράγματ’ ὀρθῶς ἂν τιθῇ, πράξει καλῶς’

(Eurip. Bell. fr. 287).

Κυβείᾳ γὰρ ὁ Πλάτων (Resp. 604c) τὸν βίον ἀπείκασεν, ἐν ᾧ καὶ βάλλειν δεῖ τὰ πρόσφορα, καὶ βαλόντα χρῆσθαι καλῶς τοῖς πεσοῦσι. τούτων δὲ τὸ μὲν βάλλειν οὐκ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν, τὸ δὲ προσηκόντως δέχεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα [b] παρὰ τῆς τύχης καὶ νέμειν ἑκάστῳ τόπον, ἐν ᾧ καὶ τὸ οἰκεῖον ὠφελήσει μάλιστα καὶ τὸ ἀβούλητον ἥκιστα λυπήσει τοὺς ἐπιτυγχάνοντας, ἡμέτερον ἔργον ἐστίν, ἂν εὖ φρονῶμεν. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἀτέχνους καὶ ἀνοήτους περὶ τὸν βίον, ὥσπερ τοὺς νοσώδεις τοῖς σώμασι μήτε καῦμα φέρειν μήτε κρύος δυναμένους, ἐξίστησι μὲν εὐτυχία συστέλλει δὲ δυστυχία, ταράττονται δ’ ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων, μᾶλλον δ’ ὑφ’ αὑτῶν ἐν ἀμφοτέροις καὶ οὐχ ἧττον ἐν τοῖς λεγομένοις ἀγαθοῖς. Θεόδωρος μὲν γὰρ ὁ κληθεὶς ἄθεος ἔλεγε τῇ δεξιᾷ τοὺς λόγους ὀρέγοντος αὐτοῦ τῇ ἀριστερᾷ δέχεσθαι τοὺς ἀκροωμένους, οἱ δ’ ἀπαίδευτοι πολλάκις τὴν τύχην [c] δεξιὰν παρισταμένην ἐπαριστέρως μεταλαμβάνοντες ἀσχημονοῦσιν. οἱ δὲ φρόνιμοι, καθάπερ ταῖς μελίτταις μέλι φέρει τὸ δριμύτατον καὶ ξηρότατον ὁ θύμος, οὕτως ἀπὸ τῶν δυσχερεστάτων πολλάκις πραγμάτων οἰκεῖόν τι καὶ χρήσιμον αὑτοῖς λαμβάνουσι.

Τοῦτ’ οὖν δεῖ πρῶτον ἀσκεῖν καὶ μελετᾶν, ὥσπερ ὁ τῆς κυνὸς ἁμαρτὼν τῷ λίθῳ καὶ τὴν μητρυιὰν πατάξας ‘οὐδ’ οὕτως’ ἔφη ‘κακῶς·’ ἔξεστι γὰρ μεθιστάναι τὴν τύχην ἐκ τῶν ἀβουλήτων. ἐφυγαδεύθη Διογένης· ‘οὐδ’ οὕτως κακῶς’· ἤρξατο γὰρ φιλοσοφεῖν μετὰ τὴν φυγήν.

[d] Ζήνωνι τῷ Κιτιεῖ μία ναῦς περιῆν φορτηγός· πυθόμενος δὲ ταύτην αὐτόφορτον ἀπολωλέναι συγκλυσθεῖσαν ‘εὖγ’’ εἶπεν (fr. 277) ‘ὦ τύχη ποιεῖς, εἰς τὸν τρίβωνα καὶ τὴν στοὰν συνελαύνουσ’ ἡμᾶς.’ τί οὖν κωλύει μιμεῖσθαι τούτους; ἀρχὴν παραγγέλλων διήμαρτες; ἐν ἀγρῷ διάξεις ἐπιμελόμενος τῶν ἰδίων. ἀλλὰ φιλίαν μνώμενος ἡγεμόνος ἀπώσθης; ἀκινδύνως καὶ ἀπραγμόνως βιώσῃ. πάλιν ἐν πράγμασιν ἀσχολίας ἔχουσι καὶ φροντίδας γέγονας;

‘οὐδὲ θερμὸν ὕδωρ τόσον γε τεύξει μαλθακὰ γυῖα’

κατὰ Πίνδαρον (Nem. 4, 4), ὡς δόξα ποιεῖ καὶ τὸ τιμᾶσθαι μετά τινος δυνάμεως ‘πόνον ἡδὺν κάματόν τ’ εὐκάματον’ [e] (Eur. Bacch. 66). ἀλλά τις ἀπήντηκεν ἐκ διαβολῆς ἢ φθόνου δυσημερία καὶ σκορακισμός; ἐπὶ τὰς Μούσας οὔριον τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὴν Ἀκαδήμειαν, ὥσπερ Πλάτωνι χειμασθέντι περὶ τὴν Διονυσίου φιλίαν.

Διὸ καὶ τοῦτο πρὸς εὐθυμίαν μέγα, τὸ τοὺς ἐνδόξους ἀποθεωρεῖν, εἰ μηδὲν ὑπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν πεπόνθασιν. οἷον ἀπαιδία τὸ λυποῦν ἐστι; τοὺς Ῥωμαίων ὅρα βασιλεῖς, ὧν οὐδεὶς υἱῷ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπέλιπε. πενίᾳ δυσφορεῖς παρούσῃ; καὶ τίς ἂν ἐβούλου μᾶλλον εἶναι Βοιωτῶν ἢ Ἐπαμεινώνδας; τίς δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἢ Φαβρίκιος; ‘ἀλλὰ διέφθαρταί μου τὸ γύναιον.’ οὐκ ἀνέγνωκας οὖν τὸ ἐπίγραμμα τὸ ἐν Δελφοῖς

[f] ‘ὑγρᾶς καὶ τραφερᾶς βασιλεὺς Ἆγίς μ’ ἀνέθηκεν,’

οὐδ’ ἀκήκοας, ὅτι τούτου τὴν γυναῖκα Τιμαίαν Ἀλκιβιάδης διέφθειρε, καὶ τὸ γεννηθὲν Ἀλκιβιάδην ἐκάλει ψιθυρίζουσα πρὸς τὰς θεραπαινίδας; ἀλλὰ τοῦτ’ Ἆγιν οὐκ ἐκώλυσεν ἐνδοξότατον Ἑλλήνων εἶναι καὶ μέγιστον· ὥσπερ [468] [a] οὐδὲ Στίλπωνα τῶν κατ’ αὐτὸν φιλοσόφων ἱλαρώτατα ζῆν ἀκόλαστος οὖσ’ ἡ θυγάτηρ· ἀλλὰ καὶ Μητροκλέους ὀνειδίσαντος ‘ἐμὸν οὖν’ ἔφη ‘ἁμάρτημα τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ἢ ἐκείνης;’ εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ Μητροκλέους ‘ἐκείνης μὲν ἁμάρτημα σὸν δ’ ἀτύχημα’ ‘πῶς λέγεις;’ εἶπεν ‘οὐχὶ τὰ ἁμαρτήματα καὶ διαπτώματ’ ἐστί;’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ ἔφη. ‘τὰ δὲ διαπτώματ’ οὐχ ὧν διαπτώματα, καὶ ἀποτεύγματα;’ συνωμολόγησεν ὁ Μητροκλῆς. ‘τὰ δ’ ἀποτεύγματ’ οὐχ ὧν ἀποτεύγματ’, ἀτυχήματα;’ πράῳ λόγῳ καὶ φιλοσόφῳ κενὸν ἀποδείξας ὕλαγμα τὴν τοῦ κυνικοῦ βλασφημίαν.

[b] Τοὺς δὲ πολλοὺς οὐ μόνον τὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ οἰκείων ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ἀνιᾷ καὶ παροξύνει κακά. βλασφημίαι γὰρ καὶ ὀργαὶ καὶ φθόνοι καὶ κακοήθειαι καὶ ζηλοτυπίαι μετὰ δυσμενείας αὐτῶν μέν εἰσι τῶν ἐχόντων κῆρες, ἐνοχλοῦσι δὲ καὶ παροξύνουσι τοὺς ἀνοήτους· ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ γειτόνων ἀκραχολίαι καὶ συνήθων δυσκολίαι καὶ τῶν περὶ τὰς πράξεις ὑπουργῶν μοχθηρίαι τινές. ὑφ’ ὧν οὐχ ἥκιστά μοι δοκεῖς καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπιταραττόμενος, ὥσπερ οἱ Σοφοκλέους ἰατροί (fr. 770) ‘πικρὰν χολὴν κλύζουσι φαρμάκῳ πικρῷ,’ οὕτως ἀντιχαλεπαίνειν καὶ συνεκπικραίνεσθαι τοῖς ἐκείνων πάθεσι καὶ [c] νοσήμασιν, οὐκ εὐλόγως. ἃ γὰρ πράττεις πράγματα πεπιστευμένος, οὐχ ἁπλοῖς ἤθεσιν οὐδὲ χρηστοῖς ὥσπερ εὐφυέσιν ὀργάνοις ἀλλὰ καρχάροις τὰ πολλὰ καὶ σκολιοῖς διακονεῖται. τὸ μὲν οὖν ἀπευθύνειν ταῦτα μὴ νόμιζε σὸν ἔργον εἶναι μηδ’ ἄλλως ῥᾴδιον· ἂν δ’ ὡς τοιούτοις αὐτοῖς πεφυκόσι χρώμενος, ὥσπερ ἰατρὸς ὀδοντάγραις καὶ ἀγκτῆρσιν, ἤπιος φαίνῃ καὶ μέτριος ἐκ τῶν ἐνδεχομένων, εὐφρανεῖ τῇ σῇ διαθέσει μᾶλλον ἢ λυπήσει ταῖς ἑτέρων ἀηδίαις καὶ μοχθηρίαις, ὥσπερ κύνας ἂν ὑλακτῶσι, τὸ προσῆκον αὐτοῖς ἐκείνους οἰόμενος περαίνειν †ἐπὶ λήσεις πολλὰ λυπηρὰ συνάγων ὥσπερ εἰς χωρίον κοῖλον καὶ [d] ταπεινὸν ἐπιρρέοντα τὴν μικροψυχίαν ταύτην καὶ τὴν ἀσθένειαν, ἀλλοτρίων ἀναπιμπλάμενος κακῶν. ὅπου γὰρ ἔνιοι τῶν φιλοσόφων καὶ τὸν ἔλεον ψέγουσι πρὸς ἀτυχοῦντας ἀνθρώπους γιγνόμενον, ὡς καλοῦ τοῦ βοηθεῖν οὐ τοῦ συναλγεῖν καὶ συνενδιδόναι τοῖς πλησίον ὄντος, ὃ δὲ μεῖζόν ἐστιν, οὐδ’ αὑτῶν ἁμαρτανόντων καὶ διακειμένων φαύλως τὸ ἦθος αἰσθανομένους ἀθυμεῖν καὶ δυσφορεῖν ἐῶσιν ἀλλὰ θεραπεύειν ἄνευ λύπης τὴν κακίαν ᾗ δεῖ, σκόπει πῶς οὐκ ἄλογόν ἐστι περιορᾶν αὑτούς, ὅτι μὴ πάντες εἰσὶν οἱ χρώμενοι καὶ προσιόντες ἡμῖν ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ [e] χαρίεντες, ἀχθομένους καὶ δυσκολαίνοντας. ἀλλ’ ὅρα, φίλε Πάκκιε, μὴ λανθάνομεν ἑαυτοὺς οὐ τὸ καθόλου τῆς μοχθηρίας τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων ἀλλὰ τὸ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ὑπὸ φιλαυτίας τινὸς οὐ μισοπονηρίας προβαλλόμενοι καὶ δεδοικότες. αἱ γὰρ σφοδραὶ περὶ τὰ πράγματα πτοῖαι καὶ παρ’ ἀξίαν ἐφέσεις καὶ διώξεις ἢ πάλιν ἀποστροφαὶ καὶ διαβολαὶ τὰς πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ἐγγεννῶσιν ὑποψίας καὶ δυσκολίας, ὑφ’ ὧν τὰ μὲν ἀποστερεῖσθαι τοῖς δὲ περιπίπτειν δοκοῦμεν· ὁ δὲ τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐθισθεὶς ἐλαφρῶς συμπεριφέρεσθαι καὶ μετρίως εὐκολώτατος ἀνθρώποις ὁμιλεῖν [f] γίγνεται καὶ πραότατος.

Ὅθεν ἐκεῖνον αὖθις τὸν περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων λόγον ἀναλάβωμεν. ὡς γὰρ ἐν τῷ πυρέττειν πικρὰ πάντα καὶ ἀηδῆ φαίνεται γευομένοις, ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἴδωμεν ἑτέρους τὰ αὐτὰ προσφερομένους καὶ μὴ δυσχεραίνοντας, οὐκέτι τὸ σιτίον οὐδὲ τὸ ποτὸν ἀλλ’ αὑτοὺς αἰτιώμεθα καὶ τὴν [469] [a] νόσον, οὕτως καὶ τοῖς πράγμασι παυσόμεθα μεμφόμενοι καὶ δυσχεραίνοντες, ἂν ἑτέρους τὰ αὐτὰ προσδεχομένους ἀλύπως καὶ ἱλαρῶς ὁρῶμεν. ἀγαθὸν τοίνυν ἐν τοῖς ἀβουλήτοις συμπτώμασι πρὸς εὐθυμίαν καὶ τὸ μὴ παρορᾶν ὅσα προσφιλῆ καὶ ἀστεῖα πάρεστιν ἡμῖν, ἀλλὰ μιγνύντας ἐξαμαυροῦν τὰ χείρονα τοῖς βελτίοσι. νῦν δὲ τὰς μὲν ὄψεις ὑπὸ τῶν ἄγαν λαμπρῶν τιτρωσκομένας ἀποστρέφοντες ταῖς ἀνθηραῖς καὶ ποώδεσι χροιαῖς παρηγοροῦμεν, τὴν δὲ διάνοιαν ἐντείνομεν εἰς τὰ λυπηρὰ καὶ προσβιαζόμεθα τοῖς τῶν ἀνιαρῶν ἐνδιατρίβειν ἀναλογισμοῖς, [b] μονονοὺ βίᾳ τῶν βελτιόνων ἀποσπάσαντες. καίτοι τό γε πρὸς τὸν πολυπράγμονα λελεγμένον οὐκ ἀηδῶς δεῦρ’ ἔστι μετενεγκεῖν (Com. ad. 359)

‘τί τἀλλότριον, ἄνθρωπε βασκανώτατε,

κακὸν ὀξυδορκεῖς, τὸ δ’ ἴδιον παραβλέπεις;’

τί τὸ σεαυτοῦ κακόν, ὦ μακάριε, λίαν καταβλέπεις καὶ ποιεῖς ἐναργὲς ἀεὶ καὶ πρόσφατον ἀγαθοῖς δὲ παροῦσιν οὐ προσάγεις τὴν διάνοιαν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ αἱ σικύαι τὸ χείριστον ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς ἕλκουσιν, οὕτω τὰ κάκιστα τῶν ἰδίων συνάγεις ἐπὶ σαυτόν, οὐδέν τι τοῦ Χίου βελτίων γινόμενος ὃς πολὺν καὶ χρηστὸν οἶνον ἑτέροις πιπράσκων ἑαυτῷ [c] πρὸς τὸ ἄριστον ὀξίνην ἐζήτει διαγευόμενος, οἰκέτης δέ τις ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑφ’ ἑτέρου τί ποιοῦντα τὸν δεσπότην καταλέλοιπεν ‘ἀγαθῶν’ ἔφη ‘παρόντων κακὸν ζητοῦντα;’ καὶ γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ τὰ χρηστὰ καὶ πότιμα τῶν ἰδίων ὑπερβαίνοντες ἐπὶ τὰ δυσχερῆ καὶ μοχθηρὰ τρέχουσιν. ὁ δ’ Ἀρίστιππος οὐ τοιοῦτος, ἀλλ’ ἀγαθὸς ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ζυγοῦ πρὸς τὰ βελτίονα τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἐξαναφέρειν καὶ ἀνακουφίζειν αὑτόν· χωρίον γοῦν ἀπολέσας καλὸν ἠρώτησεν ἕνα τῶν πάνυ προσποιουμένων συνάχθεσθαι καὶ συναγανακτεῖν ‘οὐχὶ σοὶ μὲν χωρίδιον ἓν ἔστιν, ἐμοὶ δὲ τρεῖς ἀγροὶ καταλείπονται;’ συνομολογήσαντος δ’ ἐκείνου, ‘τί [d] οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘οὐ σοὶ μᾶλλον ἡμεῖς συναχθόμεθα;’ μανικὸν γάρ ἐστι τοῖς ἀπολλυμένοις ἀνιᾶσθαι μὴ χαίρειν δὲ τοῖς σῳζομένοις, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τὰ μικρὰ παιδάρια, ἀπὸ πολλῶν παιγνίων ἂν ἕν τις ἀφέληταί τι, καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ πάντα προσρίψαντα κλαίει καὶ βοᾷ, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον ἡμᾶς περὶ ἓν ὀχληθέντας ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης καὶ τἄλλα πάντα ποιεῖν ἀνόνητα ἑαυτοῖς ὀδυρομένους καὶ δυσφοροῦντας.

‘Καὶ τί’ φήσαι τις ἂν ‘ἔχομεν, τί δ’ οὐκ ἔχομεν’; ὁ μὲν δόξαν ὁ δ’ οἶκον ὁ δὲ γάμον, τῷ δὲ φίλος ἀγαθός ἐστιν. Ἀντίπατρος δ’ ὁ Ταρσεὺς (St. V. Fr. III fr. 15) πρὸς τῷ τελευτᾶν ἀναλογιζόμενος ὧν ἔτυχεν ἀγαθῶν, οὐδὲ τὴν εὔπλοιαν παρέλιπε τὴν ἐκ Κιλικίας αὐτῷ γενομένην [e] εἰς Ἀθήνας. δεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰ κοινὰ μὴ παρορᾶν ἀλλ’ ἔν τινι λόγῳ τίθεσθαι καὶ χάριν ἔχειν, ὅτι ζῶμεν ὑγιαίνομεν τὸν ἥλιον ὁρῶμεν· οὐ πόλεμος οὐ στάσις ἐστίν· ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡ γῆ παρέχει γεωργεῖν καὶ θάλασσα πλεῖν ἀδεῶς τοῖς βουλομένοις· καὶ λέγειν ἔξεστι καὶ πράττειν καὶ σιωπᾶν καὶ σχολάζειν. εὐθυμήσομεν δὲ τούτοις μᾶλλον παροῦσιν, ἂν μὴ παρόντων αὐτῶν φαντασίαν λαμβάνωμεν, ἀναμιμνήσκοντες αὑτοὺς πολλάκις, ὡς ποθεινόν ἐστιν ὑγεία νοσοῦσι καὶ πολεμουμένοις εἰρήνη καὶ κτήσασθαι δόξαν [f] ἐν πόλει τηλικαύτῃ καὶ φίλους ἀγνῶτι καὶ ξένῳ, καὶ τὸ στέρεσθαι γενομένων ὡς ἀνιαρόν. οὐ γὰρ τότε γίνεται μέγα καὶ τίμιον ἕκαστον ἡμῖν, ὅταν ἀπόληται, σῳζόμενον δὲ τὸ μηθέν ἐστιν (οὐδενὶ γὰρ ἀξίαν τὸ μὴ εἶναι προστίθησιν), οὐδὲ δεῖ κτᾶσθαι μὲν ὡς μεγάλα καὶ τρέμειν ἀεὶ δεδιότας ὡς ὑπὲρ μεγάλων μὴ στερηθῶμεν, ἔχοντας δὲ [470] [a] παρορᾶν καὶ καταφρονεῖν ὡς μηδενὸς ἀξίων, ἀλλὰ χρῆσθαι μάλιστα ἐπὶ τῷ χαίρειν καὶ ἀπολαύειν αὐτῶν, ἵνα καὶ τὰς ἀποβολάς, ἂν συντυγχάνωσι, πραότερον φέρωμεν. οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ ποιήματα μέν, ὡς ἔλεγεν Ἀρκεσίλαος, ἀλλότρια καὶ γραφὰς καὶ ἀνδριάντας οἴονται δεῖν ἀκριβῶς καὶ κατὰ μέρος ἕκαστον ἐπιπορευόμενοι τῇ διανοίᾳ καὶ τῇ ὄψει θεωρεῖν, τὸν δ’ ἑαυτῶν βίον ἔχοντα πολλὰς οὐκ ἀτερπεῖς ἀναθεωρήσεις ἐῶσιν, ἔξω βλέποντες ἀεὶ καὶ θαυμάζοντες ἀλλοτρίας δόξας καὶ τύχας ὥσπερ μοιχοὶ τὰς ἑτέρων γυναῖκας, αὑτῶν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἰδίων καταφρονοῦντες.

Καίτοι καὶ τοῦτο μέγα πρὸς εὐθυμίαν ἐστί, τὸ [b] μάλιστα μὲν αὑτὸν ἐπισκοπεῖν καὶ τὰ καθ’ αὑτόν, εἰ δὲ μὴ, τοὺς ὑποδεεστέρους ἀποθεωρεῖν καὶ μή, καθάπερ οἱ πολλοὶ πρὸς τοὺς ὑπερέχοντας ἀντιπαρεξάγουσιν. οἷον εὐθὺς οἱ δεδεμένοι εὐδαιμονίζουσι τοὺς λελυμένους, ἐκεῖνοι δὲ τοὺς ἐλευθέρους οἱ δ’ ἐλεύθεροι τοὺς πολίτας, οὗτοι δὲ πάλιν αὖ τοὺς πλουσίους, οἱ δὲ πλούσιοι τοὺς σατράπας οἱ δὲ σατράπαι τοὺς βασιλεῖς, οἱ δὲ βασιλεῖς τοὺς θεούς, μονονουχὶ βροντᾶν καὶ ἀστράπτειν ἐθέλοντες. εἶθ’ οὕτως ἀεὶ τῶν ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοὺς ἐνδεεῖς ὄντες οὐδέποτε τοῖς καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς χάριν ἔχουσιν.

‘οὔ μοι τὰ Γύγεω τοῦ πολυχρύσου μέλει

[c] οὐδ’ εἷλέ πώ με ζῆλος οὐδ’ ἀγαίομαι

θεῶν ἔργα, μεγάλης δ’ οὐκ ἐρῶ τυραννίδος·

ἀπόπροθεν γάρ ἐστιν ὀφθαλμῶν ἐμῶν’

(Archil. fr. 25).

‘Θάσιος γὰρ ἦν ἐκεῖνος’· ἄλλος δέ τις Χῖος, ἄλλος δὲ Γαλάτης ἢ Βιθυνὸς οὐκ ἀγαπῶν, εἴ τινος μερίδος ἢ δόξαν ἢ δύναμιν ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πολίταις εἴληχεν, ἀλλὰ κλαίων ὅτι μὴ φορεῖ πατρικίους· ἐὰν δὲ καὶ φορῇ, ὅτι μηδέπω στρατηγεῖ Ῥωμαίων· ἐὰν δὲ καὶ στρατηγῇ, ὅτι μὴ ὑπατεύει· καὶ ὑπατεύων, ὅτι μὴ πρῶτος ἀλλ’ ὕστερος ἀνηγορεύθη. τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ τί ἄλλο ἢ συλλέγοντα προφάσεις ἀχαριστίας [d] ἐπὶ τὴν τύχην αὐτὸν ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ κολάζεσθαι καὶ διδόναι δίκην; ἀλλ’ ὅ γε νοῦν ἔχων σωτήρια φρονοῦντα τοῦ ἡλίου μυριάδας ἀνθρώπων ἐφορῶντος (Simon. fr. 5, 17)

‘εὐρυεδοῦς ὅσοι καρπὸν αἰνύμεθα χθονός,’

οὐκ εἴ τινων ἧττον ἔνδοξός ἐστι καὶ πλούσιος, ὀδυρόμενος κάθηται καὶ ταπεινούμενος, ἀλλ’ ὅτι μυρίων μυριάκις ἐν τοσούτοις εὐσχημονέστερον ζῇ καὶ βέλτιον, ὑμνῶν τὸν ἑαυτοῦ δαίμονα καὶ τὸν βίον [ἐν] ὁδῷ πρόεισιν. ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι νικᾶν ἐκλεγόμενον ἀντιπάλους, ἐν δὲ τῷ βίῳ τὰ πράγματα δίδωσι περιόντα πολλῶν φρονεῖν καὶ ζηλωτὸν εἶναι μᾶλλον ἢ ζηλοῦν ἑτέρους, ἄν γε [e] δὴ μὴ τοῦ Βριάρεω μηδὲ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ποιήσῃς σεαυτὸν ἀνταγωνιστήν. ὅταν οὖν πάνυ θαυμάσῃς ὡς κρείττονα τὸν ἐν τῷ φορείῳ κομιζόμενον, ὑποκύψας θέασαι καὶ τοὺς βαστάζοντας· καὶ ὅταν διαβαίνοντα τὴν σχεδίαν μακαρίσῃς τὸν Ξέρξην ἐκεῖνον ὡς ὁ Ἑλλησπόντιος (Herod. VII 56), ἴδε καὶ τοὺς ὑπὸ μάστιξι διορύττοντας τὸν Ἄθω καὶ τοὺς περικοπτομένους ὦτα καὶ ῥῖνας ἐπὶ τῷ διαλυθῆναι τὴν γέφυραν ὑπὸ τοῦ κλύδωνος, ἅμα καὶ τὴν ἐκείνων ἀποθεωρῶν διάνοιαν ὅτι τὸν σὸν βίον καὶ τὰ σὰ πράγματα μακαρίζουσιν. ὁ Σωκράτης ἀκούσας τινὸς τῶν [f] φίλων λέγοντος ὡς πολυτελὴς ἡ πόλις ‘μνᾶς ὁ Χῖος οἶνος, ἡ πορφύρα τριῶν μνῶν, τοῦ μέλιτος ἡ κοτύλη πέντε δραχμῶν’ λαβὼν αὐτὸν προσήγαγε τοῖς ἀλφίτοις ‘ὀβολοῦ τὸ ἡμίεκτον, εὐτελὴς ἡ πόλις·’ εἶτα ταῖς ἐλαίαις ‘δύο χαλκῶν ἡ χοῖνιξ’, εἶτα ταῖς ἐξωμίσι ‘δέκα δραχμῶν, εὐτελὴς ἡ πόλις.’ οὐκοῦν καὶ ἡμεῖς, ὅταν ἀκούσωμεν ἑτέρου λέγοντος, ὡς μικρὰ τὰ καθ’ ἡμᾶς πράγματα καὶ λυπρὰ δεινῶς, μὴ ὑπατευόντων μηδ’ ἐπιτροπευόντων, [471] [a] ἔξεστιν εἰπεῖν ‘λαμπρὰ τὰ καθ’ ἡμᾶς πράγματα καὶ ζηλωτὸς ἡμῶν ὁ βίος· οὐ προσαιτοῦμεν οὐκ ἀχθοφοροῦμεν οὐ κολακεύομεν.’

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ πρὸς ἑτέρους μᾶλλον ἢ πρὸς αὑτοὺς ὑπ’ ἀβελτερίας εἰθίσμεθα ζῆν, καὶ πολὺ τὸ δύσζηλον ἡ φύσις ἔχουσα καὶ τὸ βάσκανον οὐ χαίρει τοσοῦτον τοῖς ἰδίοις, ὅσον ἀνιᾶται τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις ἀγαθοῖς, μὴ μόνον ὅρα τὰ λαμπρὰ καὶ τὰ περιβόητα τῶν ζηλουμένων ὑπὸ σοῦ καὶ θαυμαζομένων, ἀλλ’ ἀνακαλύψας καὶ διαστείλας ὥσπερ ἀνθηρὸν παραπέτασμα τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν ἐντὸς γενοῦ, καὶ κατόψει πολλὰ δυσχερῆ [b] καὶ πολλὰς ἀηδίας ἐνούσας αὐτοῖς. ὁ γοῦν Πιττακὸς ἐκεῖνος, οὗ μέγα μὲν ἀνδρείας μέγα δὲ σοφίας καὶ δικαιοσύνης κλέος, εἱστία ξένους· ἐπελθοῦσα δ’ ἡ γυνὴ μετ’ ὀργῆς ἀνέτρεψε τὴν τράπεζαν· τῶν δὲ ξένων διατραπέντων ‘ἑκάστῳ τι’ ἔφη ‘ἡμῶν κακὸν ἔστιν· ᾧ δὲ τοὐμόν, ἄριστα πράττει.’

‘οὗτος μακάριος ἐν ἀγορᾷ νομίζεται,

ὅταν δ’ ἀνοίξῃ τὴν θύραν, τρισάθλιος·

γυνὴ κρατεῖ πάντων, ἐπιτάσσει, μάχετ’ ἀεί.

ἀπὸ πλειόνων ὀδυνᾶτ’, ἐγὼ δ’ ἀπ’ οὐδενός’

(Menand. fr. 302).

τοιαῦτα πολλὰ καὶ πλούτῳ καὶ δόξῃ καὶ βασιλείᾳ πρόσεστιν ἄδηλα τοῖς πολλοῖς· ἐπιπροσθεῖ γὰρ ὁ τῦφος.

[c] ‘ὦ μάκαρ Ἀτρείδη, μοιρηγενές, ὀλβιόδαιμον’ (Γ 182) -

ἔξωθεν οὗτος ὁ μακαρισμός, ὅπλων καὶ ἵππων καὶ στρατιᾶς περικεχυμένης· αἱ δὲ τῶν παθῶν φωναὶ πρὸς τὴν κενὴν δόξαν ἔνδοθεν ἀντιμαρτυροῦσι

‘Ζεύς με μέγα Κρονίδης ἄτῃ ἐνέδησε βαρείῃ’ (Ι 18)

καί

‘ζηλῶ σε, γέρον,

ζηλῶ δ’ ἀνδρῶν ὃς ἀκίνδυνον

βίον ἐξεπέρασ’ ἀγνὼς ἀκλεής’

(Eur. Iph. Aul. 16).

ἔξεστιν οὖν καὶ τούτοις τοῖς ἐπιλογισμοῖς ἀπαρύτειν τοῦ πρὸς τὴν τύχην μεμψιμοίρου καὶ διὰ τὸ θαυμάζειν τὰ τῶν πλησίον ἐκταπεινοῦντος τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ καταβάλλοντος.

[d] Οὐχ ἥκιστα τοίνυν εὐθυμίαν κολούει τὸ μὴ συμμέτροις χρῆσθαι πρὸς τὴν ὑποκειμένην δύναμιν ὁρμαῖς ὥσπερ ἱστίοις, ἀλλὰ μειζόνων ἐφιεμένους ταῖς ἐλπίσιν εἶτ’ ἀποτυγχάνοντας αἰτιᾶσθαι δαίμονα καὶ τύχην ἀλλὰ μὴ τὴν αὑτῶν ἀβελτερίαν. οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ τοξεύειν τῷ ἀρότρῳ βουλόμενος καὶ τῷ βοῒ τὸν λαγῶ κυνηγετεῖν δυστυχής ἐστιν οὐδὲ τῷ γρίφοις καὶ σαγήναις ἐλάφους μὴ λαμβάνοντι μηδὲ ὗς δαίμων ἐναντιοῦται μοχθηρός, ἀλλ’ ἀβελτερίᾳ καὶ μωρίᾳ τοῖς ἀδυνάτοις ἐπιχειροῦσιν. αἴτιον δ’ ἡ φιλαυτία μάλιστα, φιλοπρώτους ποιοῦσα καὶ φιλονίκους ἐν πᾶσι καὶ πάντων ἐπιδραττομένους ἀπλήστως.

[e] οὐ γὰρ πλούσιοι μόνον ὁμοῦ καὶ λόγιοι καὶ ἰσχυροὶ καὶ συμποτικοὶ καὶ ἡδεῖς εἶναι καὶ φίλοι βασιλέων καὶ πόλεων ἄρχοντες ἀξιοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ εἰ μὴ καὶ κύνας ἕξουσι πρωτεύοντας ἀρετῇ καὶ ἵππους καὶ ὄρτυγας καὶ ἀλεκτρυόνας ἀθυμοῦσι. Διονύσιος ὁ πρεσβύτερος οὐκ ἠγάπα μέγιστος ὢν τῶν τότε τυράννων, ἀλλ’ ὅτι Φιλοξένου τοῦ ποιητοῦ μὴ βέλτιον ᾖδε μηδὲ περιῆν ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι Πλάτωνος, ὀργισθεὶς καὶ παροξυνθεὶς τὸν μὲν εἰς τὰς λατομίας ἐνέβαλε τὸν δ’ ἀπέδοτο πέμψας εἰς Αἴγιναν. οὐ τοιοῦτος ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος, ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ Κρίσων ὁ σταδιοδρόμος ἁμιλλώμενος αὐτῷ περὶ τάχους ἔδοξεν ἑκὼν παρεῖναι, [f] σφόδρα διηγανάκτησεν. εὖ δὲ καὶ ὁ ποιητικὸς Ἀχιλλεὺς ὑπειπὼν ‘τοῖος ἐὼν οἷος οὔ τις Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων’ ἐπήνεγκεν ‘ἐν πολέμῳ· ἀγορῇ δέ τ’ ἀμείνονές εἰσι καὶ ἄλλοι’ (Σ 105. 6). Μεγάβυζον δὲ τὸν Πέρσην εἰς τὸ [472] [a] ζωγραφεῖον ἀναβάντα τὸ Ἀπελλοῦ καὶ λαλεῖν ἐπιχειρήσαντα περὶ τῆς τέχνης ἐπεστόμισεν ὁ Ἀπελλῆς εἰπών ‘ἕως μὲν ἡσυχίαν ἦγες, ἐδόκεις τις εἶναι διὰ τὰ χρυσία καὶ τὴν πορφύραν, νυνὶ δὲ καὶ ταυτὶ τὰ τρίβοντα τὴν ὤχραν παιδάρια καταγελᾷ σου φλυαροῦντος.’ ἀλλ’ ἔνιοι τοὺς μὲν Στωικοὺς οἴονται παίζειν, ὅταν ἀκούσωσι τὸν σοφὸν παρ’ αὐτοῖς μὴ μόνον φρόνιμον καὶ δίκαιον καὶ ἀνδρεῖον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ῥήτορα καὶ ποιητὴν καὶ στρατηγὸν καὶ πλούσιον καὶ βασιλέα προσαγορευόμενον (St. V. Fr. III 655), αὑτοὺς δὲ πάντων ἀξιοῦσι τούτων, κἂν μὴ τυγχάνωσιν, ἀνιῶνται. καίτοι καὶ τῶν θεῶν ἄλλος ἄλλην ἔχων δύναμιν ὁ μὲν [b] ἐνυάλιος ὁ δὲ μαντεῖος ὁ δὲ κερδῷος ἐπονομάζεται· καὶ τὴν Ἀφροδίτην ὁ Ζεύς, ὡς οὐ μετὸν αὐτῇ πολεμικῶν ἔργων, ἐπὶ γάμους ἀποστέλλει καὶ θαλάμους (Ε 428).

Τινὰ γὰρ οὐδὲ συνυπάρχειν ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὑπεναντιοῦσθαι πέφυκεν ἀλλήλοις τῶν σπουδαζομένων. οἷον ἄσκησις λόγων καὶ μαθημάτων ἀνάληψις ἀπραγμοσύνης δεῖται καὶ σχολῆς, δυνάμεις δὲ πολιτικαὶ καὶ φιλίαι βασιλέων οὐκ ἄνευ πραγμάτων οὐδ’ ἀσχολιῶν περιγίγνονται. καὶ μήν ‘οἶνός τε καὶ σαρκῶν ἐμφορήσεις σῶμα μὲν ἰσχυρὸν ποιοῦσι καὶ ῥωμαλέον, ψυχὴν δ’ ἀσθενῆ·’ καὶ χρημάτων ἐπιμέλεια μὲν συνεχὴς καὶ τήρησις αὔξει πλοῦτον, [c] ὑπεροψία δὲ καὶ περιφρόνησις μέγα πρὸς φιλοσοφίαν ἐφόδιον. ὅθεν οὐ πάντα πάντων ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ δεῖ τῷ Πυθικῷ γράμματι πειθόμενον αὑτὸν καταμαθεῖν, εἶτα χρῆσθαι πρὸς ἓν ὃ πέφυκε, καὶ μὴ πρὸς ἄλλον ἄλλοτε βίου ζῆλον ἕλκειν καὶ παραβιάζεσθαι τὴν φύσιν·

‘ἐν ἅρμασιν ἵππος,

ἐν δ’ ἀρότρῳ βοῦς, παρὰ ναῦν δ’ ἰθύει τάχιστα δελφίς,

κάπρῳ δὲ βουλεύοντα φόνον κύνα χρὴ τλάθυμον ἐξευρεῖν’

(Pind. fr. 234).

ὁ δ’ ἀσχάλλων καὶ λυπούμενος, ὅτι μὴ καὶ λέων ἐστίν ‘ὀρεσίτροφος ἀλκὶ πεποιθώς’ (ζ 130) ἅμα καὶ κυνίδιον Μελιταῖον ἐν κόλπῳ χήρας γυναικὸς τιθηνούμενον, ἀπόπληκτός [d] ἐστι. τούτου δ’ οὐδέν τι βελτίων ὁ βουλόμενος ἅμα μὲν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἢ Πλάτων ἢ Δημόκριτος εἶναι περὶ κόσμου γράφων καὶ τῆς τῶν ὄντων ἀληθείας, ἅμα δὲ πλουσίᾳ γραῒ συγκαθεύδειν ὡς Εὐφορίων, ἢ τῶν ἐπικώμων ‹ὢν› Ἀλεξάνδρῳ συμπίνειν ὡς Μήδειος, ἀγανακτῶν δὲ καὶ λυπούμενος, εἰ μὴ θαυμάζεται διὰ πλοῦτον ὡς Ἰσμηνίας καὶ δι’ ἀρετὴν ὡς Ἐπαμεινώνδας. οὐδὲ γὰρ οἱ δρομεῖς, ὅτι μὴ τοὺς τῶν παλαιστῶν φέρονται στεφάνους, ἀθυμοῦσιν ἀλλὰ τοῖς αὑτῶν ἀγάλλονται καὶ χαίρουσι. ‘Σπάρταν ἔλαχες, ταύταν κόσμει.’ καὶ γὰρ ὁ Σόλων (fr. 15)

‘ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς αὐτοῖς οὐ διαμειψόμεθα
 τῆς ἀρετῆς τὸν πλοῦτον· ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν ἔμπεδόν ἐστιν,

χρήματα δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἄλλοτε ἄλλος ἔχει.’

καὶ Στράτων ὁ φυσικός, ἀκούσας ὅτι πολλαπλασίους ἔχει Μενέδημος μαθητάς, ‘τί οὖν’ ἔφη ‘θαυμαστόν, εἰ πλείονές εἰσιν οἱ λούεσθαι τῶν ἀλείφεσθαι βουλομένων;’ Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον γράφων (fr. 664) ‘οὐκ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ μόνον’ ἔφη ‘προσήκει μέγα φρονεῖν, ὅτι κρατεῖ πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἧττον οἷς ὑπάρχει περὶ θεῶν ἃ δεῖ δοξάζειν.’ τοὺς γὰρ οὕτω τὰ οἰκεῖα σεμνύνοντας οὐκ ἐνοχλήσει τὰ τῶν πλησίον. νῦν δὲ τὴν μὲν ἄμπελον σῦκα [e] φέρειν οὐκ ἀξιοῦμεν οὐδὲ τὴν ἐλαίαν βότρυς, αὐτοὶ δ’ ἑαυτούς, ἐὰν μὴ καὶ τὰ τῶν πλουσίων ἅμα καὶ τὰ τῶν λογίων καὶ τὰ τῶν στρατευομένων καὶ τὰ τῶν φιλοσοφούντων καὶ τὰ τῶν κολακευόντων καὶ τὰ τῶν παρρησιαζομένων καὶ τὰ τῶν φειδομένων καὶ τὰ τῶν δαπανώντων ἔχωμεν προτερήματα, συκοφαντοῦμεν καὶ ἀχαριστοῦμεν αὑτοῖς καὶ καταφρονοῦμεν ὡς ἐνδεῶς καὶ εὐτελῶς βιούντων. [473] [a] πρὸς δὲ τούτοις καὶ τὴν φύσιν ὁρῶμεν ὑπομιμνήσκουσαν ἡμᾶς. ὡς γὰρ τῶν θηρίων ἑτέροις ἀφ’ ἑτέρων παρεσκεύασε τὴν τροφὴν εἶναι καὶ οὐ πάντα σαρκοφαγεῖν ἢ σπερμολογεῖν ἢ ῥιζωρυχεῖν ἐποίησεν, οὕτω τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ποικίλας πρὸς τὸν βίον ἀφορμὰς ἔδωκε,

‘μηλοβότᾳ τ’ ἀρότᾳ τ’ ὀρνιθολόχῳ τε καὶ ὃν πόντος

τρέφει’ (Pind. I. 1, 48).

δεῖ δὴ τὸ πρόσφορον ἑαυτοῖς ἑλομένους καὶ διαπονοῦντας ἐᾶν τὰ τῶν ἄλλων, καὶ μὴ τὸν Ἡσίοδον ἐλέγχειν ἐνδεέστερον εἰπόντα (OD 25)

‘καὶ κεραμεὺς κεραμεῖ κοτέει καὶ τέκτονι τέκτων.’

οὐ γὰρ μόνον τοὺς ὁμοτέχνους καὶ τοὺς ὁμοτρόπους [b] ζηλοτυποῦντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ λογίους πλούσιοι καὶ πλουσίους ἔνδοξοι καὶ δικολόγοι σοφιστάς, καὶ ναὶ μὰ Δία κωμῳδοὺς εὐημεροῦντας ἐν θεάτροις καὶ ὀρχηστὰς καὶ θεράποντας ἐν αὐλαῖς βασιλέων ἐλεύθεροι καὶ εὐπατρίδαι κατατεθαμβημένοι καὶ μακαρίζοντες οὐ μετρίως λυποῦσιν αὑτοὺς καὶ ταράττουσιν.

Ὅτι δ’ ἕκαστος ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὰ τῆς εὐθυμίας καὶ δυσθυμίας ἔχει ταμιεῖα, καὶ τοὺς τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν πίθους οὐκ ‘ἐν Διὸς οὔδει κατακειμένους’ (Ω 527) ἀλλ’ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ κειμένους αἱ διαφοραὶ τῶν παθῶν δηλοῦσιν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἀνόητοι καὶ παρόντα τὰ χρηστὰ παρορῶσι καὶ [c] ἀμελοῦσιν ὑπὸ τοῦ συντετάσθαι πρὸς τὸ μέλλον ἀεὶ ταῖς φροντίσιν, οἱ δὲ φρόνιμοι καὶ τὰ μηκέτ’ ὄντα τῷ μνημονεύειν ἐναργῶς ὄντα ποιοῦσιν ἑαυτοῖς. τὸ γὰρ παρὸν τῷ ἐλαχίστῳ τοῦ χρόνου μορίῳ θιγεῖν παρασχὸν εἶτα τὴν αἴσθησιν ἐκφυγὸν οὐκέτι δοκεῖ πρὸς ἡμᾶς οὐδ’ ἡμέτερον εἶναι τοῖς ἀνοήτοις· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὁ ζωγραφούμενος ἐν Ἅιδου σχοινοστρόφος ὄνῳ τινὶ παρίησιν ἐπιβοσκομένῳ καταναλίσκειν τὸ πλεκόμενον, οὕτω τῶν πολλῶν ἀναίσθητος καὶ ἀχάριστος ὑπολαμβάνουσα λήθη καὶ κατανεμομένη πρᾶξίν τε πᾶσαν ἀφανίζουσα καὶ κατόρθωμα καὶ [d] σχολὴν ἐπίχαριν καὶ συμπεριφορὰν καὶ ἀπόλαυσιν οὐκ ἐᾷ τὸν βίον ἕνα γενέσθαι συμπλεκομένων τοῖς παροῦσι τῶν παρῳχημένων, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἕτερον τὸν ἐχθὲς ὄντα τοῦ σήμερον καὶ τὸν αὔριον ὁμοίως οὐ τὸν αὐτὸν τῷ σήμερον διαιροῦσα πᾶν τὸ γιγνόμενον εὐθὺς εἰς τὸ ἀγένητον τῷ ἀμνημονεύτῳ καθίστησιν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς τὰς αὐξήσεις ἀναιροῦντες, ὡς τῆς οὐσίας ἐνδελεχῶς ῥεούσης, λόγῳ ποιοῦσιν ἡμῶν ἕκαστον ἄλλον ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἄλλον, οἱ δὲ τῇ μνήμῃ τὰ πρότερον μὴ στέγοντες μηδ’ ἀναλαμβάνοντες ἀλλ’ ὑπεκρεῖν ἐῶντες ἔργῳ ποιοῦσιν ἑαυτοὺς καθ’ ἡμέραν ἀποδεεῖς καὶ κενοὺς καὶ τῆς αὔριον ἐκκρεμαμένους, [e] ὡς τῶν πέρυσι καὶ πρῴην καὶ χθὲς οὐ πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὄντων οὐδ’ ὅλως αὐτοῖς γενομένων.

Καὶ τοῦτ’ οὖν τὴν εὐθυμίαν ἐπιταράσσει κἀκεῖνο μᾶλλον, ὅταν, ὥσπερ αἱ μυῖαι τῶν λείων τόπων ἐν τοῖς κατόπτροις ἀπολισθάνουσι ταῖς δὲ τραχύτησι προσέχονται καὶ ταῖς ἀμυχαῖς, οὕτως ἄνθρωποι τῶν ἱλαρῶν καὶ προσηνῶν ἀπορρέοντες ἐμπλέκωνται ταῖς τῶν ἀηδῶν ἀναμνήσεσι, μᾶλλον δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν Ὀλύνθῳ τοὺς κανθάρους λέγουσιν εἴς τι χωρίον ἐμβαλόντας ὃ καλεῖται ‘κανθαρώλεθρον’, ἐκβῆναι μὴ δυναμένους ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖ στρεφομένους καὶ κυκλοῦντας [f] ἐναποθνῄσκειν, οὕτως εἰς τὴν τῶν κακῶν μνήμην ὑπορρυέντες ἀνενεγκεῖν μὴ θέλωσι μηδ’ ἀναπνεῦσαι. δεῖ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν πινακίῳ χρωμάτων ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τῶν πραγμάτων τὰ λαμπρὰ καὶ φαιδρὰ προβάλλοντας ἀποκρύπτειν τὰ σκυθρωπὰ καὶ πιέζειν. ἐξαλεῖψαι γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι παντάπασιν οὐδ’ ἀπαλλαγῆναι· ‘παλίντροπος γὰρ ἁρμονίη κόσμου, [474] [a] ὅκωσπερ λύρης καὶ τόξου’ (Heracl. B 51), καὶ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων καθαρὸν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἀμιγές. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν μουσικῇ βαρεῖς φθόγγοι καὶ ὀξεῖς ἐν δὲ γραμματικῇ φωνήεντα καὶ ἄφωνα γράμματα, μουσικὸς δὲ καὶ γραμματικὸς οὐχ ὁ θάτερα δυσχεραίνων καὶ ὑποφεύγων ἀλλ’ ὁ πᾶσι χρῆσθαι καὶ μειγνύναι πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἐπιστάμενος, οὕτω καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ἀντιστοιχίας ἐχόντων (ἐπεὶ κατὰ τὸν Εὐριπίδην (fr. 21)

‘οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο χωρὶς ἐσθλὰ καὶ κακά,

ἀλλ’ ἔστι τις σύγκρασις, ὥστ’ ἔχειν καλῶς’),

οὐ δεῖ τοῖς ἑτέροις ἐξαθυμεῖν οὐδ’ ἀπαγορεύειν, ἀλλ’ [b] ὥσπερ ἁρμονικοὺς ἀμβλύνοντας ἀεὶ τοῖς κρείττοσι τὰ χείρονα καὶ τὰ φαῦλα τοῖς χρηστοῖς ἐμπεριλαμβάνοντας ἐμμελὲς τὸ τοῦ βίου μῖγμα ποιεῖν καὶ οἰκεῖον αὑτοῖς.

Οὐ γάρ, ὡς ὁ Μένανδρός φησιν (fr. 551),

‘ἅπαντι δαίμων ἀνδρὶ συμπαρίσταται

εὐθὺς γενομένῳ, μυσταγωγὸς τοῦ βίου

ἀγαθός,’

ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον, ὡς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (B 122), διτταί τινες ἕκαστον ἡμῶν γινόμενον παραλαμβάνουσι καὶ κατάρχονται μοῖραι καὶ δαίμονες·

‘ἔνθ’ ἦσαν Χθονίη τε καὶ Ἡλιόπη ταναῶπις,

Δῆρίς θ’ αἱματόεσσα καὶ Ἁρμονίη θεμερῶπις,

Καλλιστώ τ’ Αἴσχρη τε Θόωσά τε Δηναίη τε,

[c] Νημερτής τ’ ἐρόεσσα μελάγκαρπός τ’ Ἀσάφεια.’

ὥστε τούτων ἑκάστου σπέρματα τῶν παθῶν ἀνακεκραμένα δεδεγμένης ἡμῶν τῆς γενέσεως καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πολλὴν ἀνωμαλίαν ἐχούσης, εὔχεται μὲν ὁ νοῦν ἔχων τὰ βελτίονα προσδοκᾷ δὲ καὶ θάτερα, χρῆται δ’ ἀμφοτέροις τὸ ἄγαν ἀφαιρῶν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ‘ὁ τῆς αὔριον ἥκιστα δεόμενος’ ὥς φησιν Ἐπίκουρος (fr. 490) ‘ἥδιστα πρόσεισι πρὸς τὴν αὔριον,’ ἀλλὰ καὶ πλοῦτος εὐφραίνει καὶ δόξα καὶ δύναμις καὶ ἀρχὴ [καὶ] μάλιστα τοὺς ἥκιστα τἀναντία ταρβοῦντας. ἡ γὰρ σφοδρὰ περὶ ἕκαστον ἐπιθυμία σφοδρότατον [d] φόβον ἐμποιοῦσα τοῦ μὴ παραμένειν ἀσθενῆ τὴν χάριν ποιεῖ καὶ ἀβέβαιον ὥσπερ φλόγα καταπνεομένην· ᾧ δὲ δίδωσι πρὸς τὴν τύχην ἀδεῶς καὶ ἀτρόμως εἰπεῖν ὁ λογισμός

‘ἡδὺ μὲν ἄν τι φέρῃς, ὀλίγον δ’ ἄχος ἂν ἀπολείπῃς,’

τοῦτον ἥδιστα ποιεῖ χρῆσθαι τοῖς παροῦσι τὸ θαρραλέον καὶ μὴ δεδιὸς αὐτῶν τὴν ἀποβολὴν ὡς ἀφόρητον. ἔξεστι γὰρ τὴν Ἀναξαγόρου διάθεσιν, ἀφ’ ἧς ἐπὶ τῇ τελευτῇ τοῦ παιδὸς ἀνεφώνησεν ‘ᾔδειν θνητὸν γεννήσας’ (A 33), μὴ θαυμάζοντας μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ μιμουμένους ἐπιλέγειν ἑκάστῳ τῶν τυχηρῶν ‘οἶδα τὸν πλοῦτον ἐφήμερον ἔχων καὶ [e] οὐ βέβαιον·’ ‘οἶδα τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀφελέσθαι δυναμένους τοὺς δεδωκότας·’ ‘οἶδα τὴν γυναῖκα χρηστὴν γυναῖκα δ’ οὖσαν· καὶ τὸν φίλον ἄνθρωπον ὄντα’, ‘ζῷον φύσει εὐμετάβολον’ ὡς ὁ Πλάτων εἶπεν (ep. XIII 360d). αἱ γὰρ τοιαῦται παρασκευαὶ καὶ διαθέσεις, ἐάν τι συμβῇ τῶν ἀβουλήτων μὲν οὐκ ἀπροσδοκήτων δέ, μὴ δεχόμεναι τὸ ‘οὐκ ἂν ᾤμην’ καὶ τὸ ‘ἄλλ’ ἤλπιζον’ καὶ τὸ ‘ταῦτ’ οὐ προσεδόκων,’ οἷον πηδήματα καρδίας καὶ σφυγμοὺς ἀφαιροῦσι καὶ ταχὺ πάλιν τὸ μανιῶδες καὶ ταραττόμενον ἱδρύουσιν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Καρνεάδης ἐπὶ πραγμάτων μεγάλων ὑπεμίμνησκεν, ὅτι [f] πᾶν καὶ ὅλον ἐστὶν εἰς λύπην καὶ ἀθυμίαν τὸ ἀπροσδόκητον. ἡ γὰρ Μακεδόνων βασιλεία τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίας πολλοστημόριον ἦν· ἀλλὰ Περσεὺς μὲν ἀποβαλὼν Μακεδονίαν αὐτός τε κατεθρήνει τὸν ἑαυτοῦ δαίμονα καὶ πᾶσιν ἐδόκει δυστυχέστατος ἀνθρώπων γεγονέναι καὶ βαρυποτμότατος, [475] [a] ὁ δὲ τούτου κρατήσας Αἰμίλιος ἑτέρῳ παραδιδοὺς τὴν ὁμοῦ τι γῆς καὶ θαλάττης ἄρχουσαν δύναμιν ἐστεφανοῦτο καὶ ἔθυεν εὐδαιμονιζόμενος, εἰκότως. οὗτος μὲν γὰρ ᾔδει λαμβάνων ἀρχὴν ἀποδοθησομένην, ἐκεῖνος δ’ ἀπέβαλε μὴ προσδοκήσας. εὖ δὲ καὶ ὁ ποιητὴς οἷόν ἐστι τὸ παρὰ προσδοκίαν ἐδίδαξεν· ὁ γὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς τοῦ μὲν κυνὸς σαίνοντος ἐξεδάκρυσε (ρ 302. 304), τῇ δὲ γυναικὶ κλαιούσῃ παρακαθήμενος οὐδὲν ἔπαθε τοιοῦτον (τ 211)· ἐνταῦθα μὲν γὰρ ἀφῖκτο τῷ λογισμῷ τὸ πάθος ὑποχείριον ἔχων καὶ προκατειλημμένον, εἰς δ’ ἐκεῖνον μὴ προσδοκήσας ἀλλ’ ἐξαίφνης διὰ τὸ παράδοξον ἐνέπεσε.

[b] Καθόλου δ’ ἐπεὶ τῶν ἀβουλήτων τὰ μὲν φύσει τὸ λυποῦν καὶ βαρῦνον ἐπιφέρει, τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα δόξῃ δυσχεραίνειν ἐθιζόμεθα καὶ μανθάνομεν, [καὶ] οὐκ ἄχρηστόν ἐστι πρὸς ταῦτα μὲν ἔχειν ἀεὶ τὸ τοῦ Μενάνδρου πρόχειρον (Epitr. fr. 179)

‘οὐδὲν πέπονθας δεινὸν ἂν μὴ προσποιῇ’

(τί γὰρ πρὸς σέ ἐστι, φησίν, ἂν μήτε σαρκὸς ἅπτηται μήτε ψυχῆς, οἷόν ἐστι δυσγένεια πατρὸς ἢ μοιχεία γυναικὸς ἢ στεφάνου τινὸς ἢ προεδρίας ἀφαίρεσις, ὧν οὐ κωλύεται παρόντων ἄνθρωπος καὶ τὸ σῶμα βέλτιστα διακείμενον ἔχειν καὶ τὴν ψυχήν;), πρὸς δὲ τὰ φύσει δοκοῦντα λυπεῖν, οἷα νόσοι καὶ πόνοι καὶ θάνατοι φίλων καὶ τέκνων, [c] ἐκεῖνο τὸ Εὐριπίδειον (Beller. fr. 300)

‘οἴμοι· - τί δ’ οἴμοι; θνητά τοι πεπόνθαμεν.’

οὐδεὶς γὰρ οὕτω τοῦ παθητικοῦ καταφερομένου καὶ ὀλισθάνοντος ἀντιλαμβάνεται λόγος ὡς ὁ τῆς κοινῆς καὶ φυσικῆς ἀνάμνησιν ποιῶν ἀνάγκης, ᾗ διὰ τὸ σῶμα μεμειγμένος ὁ ἄνθρωπος μόνην ταύτην τῇ τύχῃ λαβὴν δίδωσιν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς κυριωτάτοις καὶ μεγίστοις ἀσφαλὴς ἕστηκεν. ὁ Δημήτριος τὴν Μεγαρέων πόλιν καταλαβὼν ἠρώτησε τὸν Στίλπωνα, μή τι τῶν ἐκείνου διήρπασται· καὶ ὁ Στίλπων ἔφη μηδέν’ ἰδεῖν ‘τἀμά’ φέροντα. καὶ τοίνυν τῆς τύχης πάντα τἄλλα λεηλατούσης καὶ περιαιρουμένης, ἔχομέν τι [d] τοιοῦτον ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ( Ε 484)

‘οἷόν κ’ οὔτε φέροιεν Ἀχαιοὶ οὔτ’ ἂν ἄγοιεν.’

ὅθεν οὐ δεῖ παντάπασιν ἐκταπεινοῦν οὐδὲ καταβάλλειν τὴν φύσιν ὡς μηδὲν ἰσχυρὸν μηδὲ μόνιμον μηδ’ ὑπὲρ τὴν τύχην ἔχουσαν, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον εἰδότας, ὅτι μικρόν ἐστι μέρος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὸ σαθρὸν καὶ τὸ ἐπίκηρον, ᾧ δέχεται τὴν τύχην, τῆς δὲ βελτίονος μερίδος αὐτοὶ κρατοῦμεν, ἐν ᾗ τὰ μέγιστα τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἱδρυθέντα, δόξαι τε χρησταὶ καὶ μαθήματα καὶ λόγοι τελευτῶντες εἰς ἀρετήν, ἀναφαίρετον ἔχουσι τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ ἀδιάφθορον, ἀνεκπλήκτους πρὸς τὸ μέλλον εἶναι καὶ θαρραλέους, πρὸς τὴν τύχην [e] λέγοντας, ἃ Σωκράτης δοκῶν πρὸς τοὺς κατηγόρους [Ἄνυτον καὶ Μέλητον] λέγειν πρὸς τοὺς δικαστὰς ἔλεγεν, ὡς ἀποκτεῖναι μὲν Ἄνυτος καὶ Μέλητος δύνανται, βλάψαι δ’ οὐ δύνανται (Plato Apol. 30c). καὶ γὰρ ἡ τύχη δύναται νόσῳ περιβαλεῖν, ἀφελέσθαι χρήματα, διαβαλεῖν πρὸς δῆμον ἢ τύραννον· κακὸν δὲ καὶ δειλὸν καὶ ταπεινόφρονα καὶ ἀγεννῆ καὶ φθονερὸν οὐ δύναται ποιῆσαι τὸν ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἀνδρώδη καὶ μεγαλόψυχον οὐδὲ παρελέσθαι τὴν διάθεσιν, ἧς ἀεὶ παρούσης πλέον ἢ κυβερνήτου πρὸς θάλατταν ὄφελός ἐστι πρὸς τὸν βίον. κυβερνήτῃ γὰρ οὔτε [f] κῦμα πραῧναι τραχὺ καὶ πνεῦμα δυνατόν ἐστιν, οὔθ’ ὅποι βούλεται δεομένῳ λιμένος τυχεῖν οὔτε θαρραλέως καὶ ἀτρόμως ὑπομεῖναι τὸ συμβαῖνον· ἀλλ’ ἕως οὐκ ἀπέγνωκε τῇ τέχνῃ χρώμενος,

‘φεύγει μέγα λαῖφος ὑποστολίσας ἐς ἐνέρτερον ἰστὸν

ἐρεβώδεος ἐκ θαλάσσης’ (PL. III p. 730),

‹ἐπειδὰν δὲ τὸ πέλαγος› ὑπέρσχῃ, τρέμων κάθηται καὶ [476] [a] παλλόμενος. ἡ δὲ τοῦ φρονίμου διάθεσις τοῖς τε σωματικοῖς παρέχει γαλήνην ἐπὶ πλεῖστον, ἐκλύουσα τὰς τῶν νόσων κατασκευὰς ἐγκρατείᾳ καὶ διαίτῃ σώφρονι καὶ μετρίοις πόνοις, κἄν τις ἔξωθεν ἀρχὴ πάθους ὥσπερ διαδρομὴ γένηται σπιλάδος, ‘εὐσταλεῖ καὶ κούφῃ κεραίᾳ παρήνεγκεν’ ὥς φησιν Ἀσκληπιάδης· παραλόγου δέ τινος καὶ μεγάλου καταλαβόντος καὶ κρατήσαντος, ἐγγὺς ὁ λιμὴν καὶ πάρεστιν ἀπονήξασθαι τοῦ σώματος ὥσπερ ἐφολκίου μὴ στέγοντος.

Τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἀνόητον ὁ τοῦ θανάτου φόβος οὐχ ὁ τοῦ ζῆν πόθος ἐκκρέμασθαι τοῦ σώματος ποιεῖ, περιπεπλεγμένον [b] ὥσπερ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα τῷ ἐρινεῷ (μ 432), δεδοικότα τὴν Χάρυβδιν ὑποκειμένην,

‘ἔνθ’ οὔτε μίμνειν ἄνεμος οὔτε πλεῖν ἐᾷ’ (Aisch. fr. 250),

καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα δυσαρέστως καὶ πρὸς ἐκεῖνα περιδεῶς ἔχοντα. ὁ δὲ τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς φύσιν ἁμωσγέπως ὑπονοῶν καὶ τὴν εἰς τὸ βέλτιον αὐτῆς ἢ μηθὲν κάκιον ἐν τῇ τελευτῇ μεταβολὴν ἐπιλογιζόμενος οὐ μικρὸν ἔχει τῆς πρὸς τὸν βίον εὐθυμίας ἐφόδιον τὴν πρὸς τὸν θάνατον ἀφοβίαν. ᾧ γὰρ ἔξεστι τῆς μὲν ἀρεστῆς καὶ οἰκείας μερίδος ἐπικρατούσης ἡδέως ζῆν, τῶν δ’ ἀλλοτρίων καὶ παρὰ φύσιν ὑπερβαλλόντων ἀδεῶς ἀπελθεῖν εἰπόντα (Eur. Bacch. 498)

‘λύσει μ’ ὁ δαίμων αὐτός, ὅταν ἐγὼ θέλω,’

[c] τί ἂν τούτῳ χαλεπὸν ἢ δύσκολον ἢ ταραχῶδες ἐμπίπτον ἐπινοήσαιμεν; ὁ γὰρ εἰπών ‘προκατείλημμαί σ’, ὦ τύχη, καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν σὴν ἀφῄρημαι παρείσδυσιν’ (Metrodorus Ep. fr. 49) οὐ μοχλοῖς οὐδὲ κλεισὶν οὐδὲ τείχεσιν ἐθάρρυνεν ἑαυτόν, ἀλλὰ δόγμασι καὶ λόγοις ὧν πᾶσι μέτεστι τοῖς βουλομένοις. καὶ δεῖ μηδὲν ἀπογινώσκειν μηδ’ ἀπιστεῖν τῶν οὕτω λεγομένων, ἀλλὰ θαυμάζοντα καὶ ζηλοῦντα καὶ συνενθουσιῶντα πεῖραν ἅμα λαμβάνειν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ κατανόησιν ἐν τοῖς ἐλάττοσι πρὸς τὰ μείζονα, μὴ φεύγοντα μηδ’ ἀπωθοῦντα τῆς ψυχῆς τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν αὐτῶν μηδὲ διαδιδράσκοντ’ [d] ‹εἰς τὸ› ‘τάχα δ’ οὐδὲν ἔσται δυσχερέστερον.’ ἀτονίαν γὰρ ἐμποιεῖ καὶ μαλακίαν ἀγύμναστον ἡ περὶ τὸ ῥᾷστον ἀεὶ διατρίβουσα καὶ πρὸς τὸ ἥδιστον ἐκ τῶν ἀβουλήτων ἀναχωροῦσα γλυκυθυμία τῆς ψυχῆς· ἡ δὲ καὶ νόσου καὶ πόνου καὶ φυγῆς μελετῶσα φαντασίαν ὑφίστασθαι καὶ προσβιαζομένη τῷ λογισμῷ πρὸς ἕκαστον εὑρήσει πολὺ τὸ κατεψευσμένον καὶ διάκενον καὶ σαθρὸν ἐν τοῖς δοκοῦσι χαλεποῖς καὶ φοβεροῖς, ὡς ὁ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀποδείκνυσι λόγος.

Καίτοι πολλοὶ καὶ τὸ τοῦ Μενάνδρου πεφρίκασιν (fr. 355, 4)

‘οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ζῶντα Τοῦτ’ οὐ πείσομαι,’

ἀγνοοῦντες ὅσον ἐστὶ πρὸς ἀλυπίαν ἀγαθὸν τὸ μελετᾶν [e] καὶ δύνασθαι πρὸς τὴν τύχην ἀνεῳγόσι τοῖς ὄμμασιν ἀντιβλέπειν καὶ μὴ ποιεῖν ἐν αὑτῷ τὰς φαντασίας ἀτρίπτους καὶ ἁπαλὰς ὥσπερ ἐνσκιατραφούμενον πολλαῖς ἐλπίσιν ὑπεικούσαις ἀεὶ καὶ πρὸς μηθὲν ἀντιτεινούσαις. ἐκεῖνο μέντοι καὶ πρὸς τὸν Μένανδρον ἔχομεν εἰπεῖν· ‘οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ζῶντα ‘τοῦτ’ οὐ πείσομαι,’’ ἀλλ’ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ζῶντα ‘τοῦτ’ οὐ ποιήσω. οὐ ψεύσομαι, οὐ ῥᾳδιουργήσω, οὐκ ἀποστερήσω, οὐκ ἐπιβουλεύσω.’ τοῦτο γὰρ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν κείμενον οὐ μικρὸν ἀλλὰ μέγα πρὸς εὐθυμίαν πάρεστιν. ὥσπερ αὖ τοὐναντίον

‘ἡ σύνεσις, ὅτι σύνοιδα δείν’ εἰργασμένος’

(Eur. Or. 396),

[f] οἷον ἕλκος ἐν σαρκὶ τῇ ψυχῇ τὴν μεταμέλειαν αἱμάσσουσαν ἀεὶ καὶ νύσσουσαν ἐναπολείπει. τὰς μὲν γὰρ ἄλλας ἀναιρεῖ λύπας ὁ λόγος, τὴν δὲ μετάνοιαν αὐτὸς ἐνεργάζεται δακνομένην σὺν αἰσχύνῃ καὶ κολαζομένην ὑφ’ αὑτῆς. ὡς γὰρ οἱ [477] [a] ῥιγοῦντες ἠπιάλοις καὶ πυρετοῖς διακαόμενοι τῶν ταῦτα πασχόντων ἔξωθεν ὑπὸ καύματος ἢ κρύους μᾶλλον ἐνοχλοῦνται καὶ κάκιον ἔχουσιν, οὕτως ἐλαφροτέρας ἔχει τὰ τυχηρὰ τὰς λύπας ὥσπερ ἔξωθεν ἐπιφερομένας, τὸ δέ

‘οὔ τις ἐμοὶ τῶνδ’ ἄλλος ἐπαίτιος, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ αὐτός’

ἐπιθρηνούμενον τοῖς ἁμαρτανομένοις ἔνδοθεν ἐξ αὐτοῦ βαρύτερον ποιεῖ τῷ αἰσχρῷ τὸ ἀλγεινόν. ὅθεν οὔτ’ οἰκία πολυτελὴς οὔτε χρυσίου πλῆθος οὔτ’ ἀξίωμα γένους οὔτε μέγεθος ἀρχῆς, οὐ λόγου χάρις ἢ δεινότης εὐδίαν παρέχει βίῳ καὶ γαλήνην τοσαύτην, ὅσην ψυχὴ καθαρεύουσα πραγμάτων καὶ βουλευμάτων πονηρῶν καὶ τὴν τοῦ βίου [b] πηγὴν τὸ ἦθος ἀτάραχον ἔχουσα καὶ ἀμίαντον· ἀφ’ ἧς αἱ καλαὶ πράξεις ῥέουσαι καὶ τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἐνθουσιώδη καὶ ἱλαρὰν μετὰ τοῦ μέγα φρονεῖν ἔχουσι καὶ τὴν μνήμην ἡδίονα καὶ βεβαιοτέραν τῆς Πινδαρικῆς (fr. 214) γηροτρόφου ἐλπίδος. οὐ γάρ ‘αἱ μὲν λιβανωτρίδες’ ὡς ἔλεγε Καρνεάδης ‘κἂν ἀποκενωθῶσι, τὴν εὐωδίαν ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἀναφέρουσιν,’ ἐν δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ τοῦ νοῦν ἔχοντος αἱ καλαὶ πράξεις οὐκ ἀεὶ κεχαρισμένην καὶ πρόσφατον ἐναπολείπουσι τὴν ἐπίνοιαν, ὑφ’ ἧς τὸ χαῖρον ἄρδεται καὶ τέθηλε καὶ καταφρονεῖ τῶν ὀδυρομένων καὶ λοιδορούντων τὸν [c] βίον, ὥς τινα κακῶν χώραν ἢ φυγαδικὸν τόπον ἐνταῦθα ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἀποδεδειγμένον.

Ἄγαμαι δὲ τοῦ Διογένους, ὃς τὸν ἐν Λακεδαίμονι ξένον ὁρῶν παρασκευαζόμενον εἰς ἑορτήν τινα καὶ φιλοτιμούμενον ‘ἀνὴρ δ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἀγαθὸς οὐ πᾶσαν ἡμέραν ἑορτὴν ἡγεῖται;’ καὶ πάνυ γε λαμπράν, εἰ σωφρονοῦμεν. ἱερὸν μὲν γὰρ ἁγιώτατον ὁ κόσμος ἐστὶ καὶ θεοπρεπέστατον· εἰς δὲ τοῦτον ὁ ἄνθρωπος εἰσάγεται διὰ τῆς γενέσεως οὐ χειροκμήτων οὐδ’ ἀκινήτων ἀγαλμάτων θεστής, ἀλλ’ οἷα νοῦς θεῖος αἰσθητὰ μιμήματα νοητῶν, φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων, ἔμφυτον ἀρχὴν ζωῆς ἔχοντα καὶ κινήσεως ἔφηνεν, [d] ἥλιον καὶ σελήνην καὶ ἄστρα καὶ ποταμοὺς νέον ὕδωρ ἐξιέντας ἀεὶ καὶ γῆν φυτοῖς τε καὶ ζῴοις τροφὰς ἀναπέμπουσαν. ὧν τὸν βίον μύησιν ὄντα καὶ τελετὴν τελειοτάτην εὐθυμίας δεῖ μεστὸν εἶναι καὶ γήθους· οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ Κρόνια καὶ Διάσια καὶ Παναθήναια καὶ τοιαύτας ἄλλας ἡμέρας περιμένουσιν, ἵν’ ἡσθῶσι καὶ ἀναπνεύσωσιν, ὠνητὸν ‹γελῶντες› γέλωτα μίμοις καὶ ὀρχησταῖς μισθοὺς τελέσαντες. εἶτ’ ἐκεῖ μὲν εὔφημοι καθήμεθα κοσμίως (οὐδεὶς γὰρ ὀδύρεται μυούμενος οὐδὲ θρηνεῖ Πύθια θεώμενος ἢ πίνων ἐν Κρονίοις), ἃς δ’ ὁ θεὸς ἡμῖν ἑορτὰς [e] χορηγεῖ καὶ μυσταγωγεῖ καταισχύνουσιν, ἐν ὀδυρμοῖς τὰ πολλὰ καὶ βαρυθυμίαις καὶ μερίμναις ἐπιπόνοις διατρίβοντες. καὶ τῶν μὲν ὀργάνων χαίρουσι τοῖς ἐπιτερπὲς ἠχοῦσι καὶ τῶν ὀρνέων τοῖς ᾄδουσι, καὶ τὰ παίζοντα καὶ σκιρτῶντα τῶν ζῴων ἡδέως ὁρῶσι, καὶ τοὐναντίον ὠρυομένοις καὶ βρυχωμένοις καὶ σκυθρωπάζουσιν ἀνιῶνται, τὸν δ’ ἑαυτῶν βίον ἀμειδῆ καὶ κατηφῆ καὶ τοῖς ἀτερπεστάτοις πάθεσι καὶ πράγμασι καὶ φροντίσι μηδὲν πέρας ἐχούσαις πιεζόμενον ἀεὶ καὶ συνθλιβόμενον ὁρῶντες αὐτοὶ [f] μὲν αὑτοῖς ἀναπνοήν τινα καὶ ῥᾳστώνην πορίζειν ποθὲν ‹οὐκ ἐθέλουσιν›, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἑτέρων παρακαλούντων προσδέχονται λόγον, ᾧ χρώμενοι καὶ τοῖς παροῦσιν ἀμέμπτως συνοίσονται καὶ τῶν γεγονότων εὐχαρίστως μνημονεύσουσι καὶ πρὸς τὸ λοιπὸν ἵλεω τὴν ἐλπίδα καὶ φαιδρὰν ἔχοντες ἀδεῶς καὶ ἀνυπόπτως προσάξουσιν.

De fraterno amore

ΠΕΡΙ ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΙΑΣ

[478] Τὰ παλαιὰ τῶν Διοσκόρων ἀφιδρύματα Σπαρτιᾶται ‘δόκανα’ καλοῦσιν· ἔστι δὲ δύο ξύλα παράλληλα δυσὶ πλαγίοις [b] ἐπεζευγμένα, καὶ δοκεῖ τῷ φιλαδέλφῳ τῶν θεῶν οἰκεῖον εἶναι τοῦ ἀναθήματος τὸ κοινὸν καὶ ἀδιαίρετον. οὕτω δὴ καὶ αὐτὸς ὑμῖν, ὦ Νιγρῖνε καὶ Κυῆτε, τὸ σύγγραμμα τοῦτο περὶ φιλαδελφίας ἀνατίθημι, κοινὸν ἀξίοις οὖσι δῶρον. ἐφ’ ἃ γὰρ προτρέπεται, ταῦτα πράττοντες ἤδη μαρτυρεῖσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ παρακαλεῖσθαι δόξετε· καὶ τὸ χαῖρον ὑμῶν ἐφ’ οἷς κατορθοῦτε ποιήσει τῇ κρίσει τὴν ἐπιμονὴν βεβαιοτέραν, ὥσπερ ἐν χρηστοῖς καὶ φιλοκάλοις θεαταῖς εὐημερούντων. Ἀρίσταρχος μὲν οὖν ὁ Θεοδέκτου πατὴρ ἐπισκώπτων τὸ πλῆθος τῶν σοφιστῶν ἔλεγε [c] πάλαι μὲν ἑπτὰ σοφιστὰς μόλις γενέσθαι, τότε δὲ μὴ ῥᾳδίως ἂν ἰδιώτας τοσούτους εὑρεθῆναι· ἐγὼ δ’ ὁρῶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς τὴν φιλαδελφίαν οὕτω σπάνιον οὖσαν ὡς τὴν μισαδελφίαν ἐπὶ τῶν παλαιῶν· ἧς γε τὰ φανέντα παραδείγματα τραγῳδίαις καὶ θεάτροις ὁ βίος ἐξέδωκε διὰ τὸ παράδοξον· οἱ δὲ νῦν ἄνθρωποι πάντες, ὅταν ἐντυγχάνωσι χρηστοῖς ἀδελφοῖς, θαυμάζουσιν οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ τοὺς Μολιονίδας ἐκείνους, συμφυεῖς τοῖς σώμασι γεγονέναι δοκοῦντας, καὶ τὸ χρῆσθαι κοινῶς τοῖς πατρῴοις χρήμασι καὶ φίλοις καὶ δούλοις οὕτως ἄπιστον ἡγοῦνται καὶ τερατῶδες ὡς [d] τὸ χρῆσθαι μίαν ψυχὴν δυεῖν σωμάτων χερσὶ καὶ ποσὶ καὶ ὀφθαλμοῖς.

Καίτοι τὸ παράδειγμα τῆς χρήσεως τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἡ φύσις οὐ μακρὰν ἔθηκεν, ἀλλ’ ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ σώματι τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἀναγκαίων διττὰ καὶ ἀδελφὰ καὶ δίδυμα μηχανησαμένη, χεῖρας πόδας ὄμματ’ ὦτα ῥῖνας, ἐδίδαξεν ὅτι ταῦτα σωτηρίας ἕνεκα καὶ συμπράξεως κοινῆς οὐ διαφορᾶς καὶ μάχης οὕτως διέστησεν· αὐτάς τε τὰς χεῖρας εἰς πολλοὺς καὶ ἀνίσους δακτύλους σχίσασα πάντων ὀργάνων ἐμμελέστατα καὶ τεχνικώτατα παρέσχεν, ὥστ’ Ἀναξαγόραν [e] (A 102) τὸν παλαιὸν ἐν ταῖς χερσὶ τὴν αἰτίαν τίθεσθαι τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης σοφίας καὶ συνέσεως. ἀλλὰ τούτου μὲν ἔοικεν ἀληθὲς εἶναι τοὐναντίον· οὐ γὰρ ὅτι χεῖρας ἔσχεν ἄνθρωπος, σοφώτατον, ἀλλ’ ὅτι φύσει λογικὸν ἦν καὶ τεχνικόν, ὀργάνων φύσει τοιούτων ἔτυχεν. ἐκεῖνο δὲ παντὶ δῆλον, ὡς ἀπὸ σπέρματος ἑνὸς καὶ μιᾶς ἀρχῆς ἡ φύσις ἀδελφοὺς δύο καὶ τρεῖς καὶ πλείονας ἐποίησεν οὐ πρὸς διαφορὰν καὶ ἀντίταξιν, ἀλλ’ ὅπως χωρὶς ὄντες ἀλλήλοις μᾶλλον συνεργῶσιν. οἱ γὰρ δὴ τρισώματοι καὶ ἑκατόγχειρες, εἴπερ ἐγένοντο, συμφυεῖς ὄντες πᾶσι τοῖς μέρεσιν, [f] οὐθὲν ἐκτὸς αὐτῶν οὐδὲ χωρὶς ἐδύναντο ποιεῖν· ὃ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς ὑπάρχει, καὶ μένειν καὶ ἀποδημεῖν ἅμα καὶ πολιτεύεσθαι καὶ γεωργεῖν δυναμένοις δι’ ἀλλήλων, ἄνπερ ἣν ἡ φύσις ἔδωκεν εὐνοίας καὶ συμφωνίας ἀρχὴν φυλάττωσιν· εἰ δὲ μή, ποδῶν οὐθέν, οἶμαι, διοίσουσιν ἀλλήλους ὑποσκελιζόντων καὶ δακτύλων ἐμπλεκομένων καὶ διαστρεφομένων παρὰ φύσιν ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων. μᾶλλον δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν ταὐτῷ σώματι μιᾶς κοινωνοῦντα φύσεως καὶ τροφῆς τὰ ὑγρὰ καὶ [479] [a] ξηρὰ καὶ ψυχρὰ καὶ θερμὰ τῇ ὁμονοίᾳ καὶ συμφωνίᾳ τὴν ἀρίστην καὶ ἡδίστην κρᾶσιν ἐμποιεῖ καὶ ἁρμονίαν, ἧς χωρὶς οὔτε ‘πλούτου’ φασὶν οὔτε ‘τᾶς ἰσοδαίμονος ἀνθρώποις βασιληίδος ἀρχᾶς’ (Ariphronis paean PL. III 597, 4) εἶναί τινα χάριν καὶ ὄνησιν, ἂν δὲ πλεονεξία καὶ στάσις αὐτοῖς ἐγγένηται, διέφθειρεν αἴσχιστα καὶ συνέχεε τὸ ζῷον, οὕτως ἀδελφῶν ὁμοφροσύνῃ καὶ γένος καὶ οἶκος ὑγιαίνει καὶ τέθηλε, καὶ φίλοι καὶ συνήθεις ὥσπερ ἐμμελὴς χορὸς οὐθὲν οὔτε πράσσουσιν ἐναντίον οὔτε λέγουσιν ἢ φρονοῦσιν·

‘ἐν δὲ διχοστασίῃ καὶ ὁ πάγκακος ἔμμορε τιμῆς’

(PL. III p. 690),

οἰκέτης διάβολος ἢ κόλαξ παρενδὺς θυραῖος ἢ πολίτης [b] βάσκανος. ὡς γὰρ αἱ νόσοι τοῖς σώμασι μὴ προσιεμένοις τὸ οἰκεῖον πολλῶν ἐμποιοῦσιν ἀτόπων καὶ βλαβερῶν ὀρέξεις, οὕτως ἡ πρὸς τὸ συγγενὲς διαβολὴ καὶ ὑφόρασις ὁμιλίας ἐπάγεται φαύλας καὶ πονηρὰς εἰς τὸ ἐκλιπὲς ἔξωθεν ἐπιρρεούσας. ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀρκαδικὸς μάντις ἀναγκαίως πόδα ξύλινον προσεποιήσατο καθ’ Ἡρόδοτον (IX 37) τοῦ οἰκείου στερηθείς· ἀδελφὸς δὲ πολεμῶν ἀδελφῷ καὶ κτώμενος ὀθνεῖον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς ἢ παλαίστρας ἑταῖρον οὐθὲν ἔοικεν ἄλλο ποιεῖν ἢ σάρκινον καὶ συμφυὲς ἑκουσίως ἀποκόψας μέλος ἀλλότριον προστίθεσθαι καὶ προσαρμόττειν.

[c] αὐτὴ γὰρ ἡ προσδεχομένη καὶ ζητοῦσα φιλίαν καὶ ὁμιλίαν χρεία διδάσκει τὸ συγγενὲς τιμᾶν καὶ περιέπειν καὶ διαφυλάττειν, ὡς ἀφίλους καὶ ἀμίκτους καὶ μονοτρόπους ζῆν μὴ δυναμένους μηδὲ πεφυκότας. ὅθεν ὁ Μένανδρος ὀρθῶς (fr. 554)

‘οὐκ ἐκ πότων καὶ τῆς καθ’ ἡμέραν τρυφῆς

ζητοῦμεν ᾧ πιστεύσομεν τὰ τοῦ βίου’ φησί,

‘πάτερ. οὐ περιττὸν οἴετ’ ἐξευρηκέναι

ἀγαθὸν ἕκαστος, ἂν ἔχῃ φίλου σκιάν;’

σκιαὶ γάρ εἰσιν ὄντως αἱ πολλαὶ φιλίαι καὶ μιμήματα καὶ [d] εἴδωλα τῆς πρώτης ἐκείνης, ἣν παισί τε πρὸς γονεῖς ἡ φύσις ἀδελφοῖς τε πρὸς ἀδελφοὺς ἐμπεποίηκε, κἀκείνην ὁ μὴ σεβόμενος μηδὲ τιμῶν ὅρα τίνα πίστιν εὐνοίας τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις δίδωσιν, ἢ ποῖός τίς ἐστι, τὸν ἑταῖρον ἐν φιλοφροσύναις καὶ γράμμασιν ἀδελφὸν προσαγορεύων, τῷ δ’ ἀδελφῷ μηδὲ τὴν αὐτὴν ὁδὸν οἰόμενος δεῖν βαδίζειν. ὡς γὰρ εἰκόνα κοσμεῖν ἀδελφοῦ τὸ δὲ σῶμα τύπτειν καὶ ἀκρωτηριάζειν μανικόν, οὕτως τοὔνομα σέβεσθαι καὶ τιμᾶν ἐν ἑτέροις αὐτὸν δὲ μισεῖν καὶ φεύγειν οὐχ ὑγιαίνοντός ἐστιν οὐδ’ ἐν νῷ πώποτε τὴν φύσιν ὡς ἁγιώτατον καὶ μέγιστον ἱερῶν λαβόντος.

[e] Οἶδα γοῦν ἐμαυτὸν ἐν Ῥώμῃ δυεῖν ἀδελφῶν ἀναδεξάμενον δίαιταν, ὧν ἅτερος ἐδόκει φιλοσοφεῖν· ἦν δ’ ὡς ἔοικεν οὐ μόνον ἀδελφὸς ἀλλὰ καὶ φιλόσοφος ψευδεπίγραφος καὶ ψευδώνυμος. ἐμοῦ γὰρ ἀξιοῦντος αὐτὸν ὡς ‹ἀδελφὸν› ἀδελφῷ καὶ ἰδιώτῃ φιλόσοφον προσφέρεσθαι, ‘ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς πρὸς ἰδιώτην ἀληθῶς, ἐγὼ δ’ οὐ σεμνὸν οὐδὲ μέγα ποιοῦμαι τὸ ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν μορίων γεγονέναι.’ ‘σὺ μέν’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘δῆλος εἶ μηδὲ τὸ ἐκ μορίων γεγονέναι μέγα καὶ σεμνὸν ἡγούμενος.’ ἀλλ’ οἵ γε ἄλλοι πάντες, εἰ καὶ μὴ [f] φρονοῦσιν οὕτως, λέγουσι γοῦν καὶ ᾄδουσιν, ὡς γονεῦσι τιμὴν μετὰ θεοὺς πρώτην καὶ μεγίστην ἥ τε φύσις ὅ τε τὴν φύσιν σῴζων νόμος ἀπέδωκε· καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅ τι μᾶλλον ἄνθρωποι κεχαρισμένον θεοῖς δρῶσιν ἢ τοκεῦσιν αὑτῶν καὶ τροφεῦσι ‘παλαιὰς ἐπὶ νέοις δανεισθείσας’ χάριτας εὐμενῶς καὶ προθύμως ἐκτίνοντες. οὐδ’ αὖ πάλιν μείζων ἐπίδειξις ἀθέου γέγονε τῆς περὶ γονεῖς ὀλιγωρίας καὶ πλημμελείας· διὸ τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους κακῶς ποιεῖν ἀπείρηται, [480] [a] μητρὶ δ’ αὑτοῦ καὶ πατρὶ τὸ μὴ παρέχειν δρῶντας ἀεὶ καὶ λέγοντας ἀφ’ ὧν εὐφρανοῦνται, κἂν μὴ προσῇ τὸ λυποῦν, ἀνόσιον ἡγοῦνται καὶ ἄθεσμον. τίς οὖν ἐστι παρὰ παίδων γονεῦσιν ἢ πρᾶξις ἢ χάρις ἢ διάθεσις μᾶλλον εὐφραίνειν δυναμένη τῆς πρὸς ἀδελφὸν εὐνοίας βεβαίου καὶ φιλίας; καὶ τοῦτό γε ῥᾴδιόν ἐστιν ἀπὸ τῶν ἐναντίων καταμαθεῖν. ὅπου γὰρ οἰκότριβα τιμώμενον ὑπὸ μητρὸς ἢ πατρὸς υἱοὶ προπηλακίζοντες καὶ φυτῶν καὶ χωρίων οἷς ἔχαιρον ἀμελοῦντες ἀνιῶσιν αὐτοὺς καὶ κύων τις οἰκογενὴς παρορώμενος καὶ ἵππος ἅπτεται φιλοστόργων [b] καὶ φιλοτίμων γερόντων, ἄχθονται δὲ τοῖς παισὶν ἀκροάματα καὶ θεάματα καὶ ἀθλητάς, οὓς ἐθαύμαζον αὐτοί, διασύρουσι καὶ καταφρονοῦσιν, ἦπου μετρίως ἔχουσιν υἱοῖς διαφερομένοις καὶ μισοῦσιν ἀλλήλους καὶ κακῶς λέγουσι καὶ πρὸς ἔργα καὶ πράξεις ἀντιταττομένοις ἀεὶ καὶ καταλυομένοις ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων; οὐκ ἂν εἴποι τις. οὐκοῦν τοὐναντίον ἐρῶντες ἀλλήλων καὶ φιλοῦντες ἀδελφοὶ καὶ ὅσον ἡ φύσις τοῖς σώμασι διέστησεν, ἐπὶ ταὐτὸ τοῖς πάθεσι καὶ τοῖς πράγμασιν ἀποδιδόντες καὶ λόγους κοινοὺς καὶ διατριβὰς ἅμα καὶ παιδιὰς μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἔχοντες [c] ἡδεῖαν καὶ μακαρίαν παρεσκευάκασι γηροτρόφον τοῖς γονεῦσι τὴν φιλαδελφίαν. οὔτε γὰρ φιλόλογος πατὴρ οὕτως οὔτε φιλότιμος οὔτε φιλοχρήματος γέγονεν ὡς φιλότεκνος· διὸ τοὺς υἱοὺς οὔτε λέγοντας οὔτε πλουτοῦντας οὔτ’ ἄρχοντας ἡδέως οὕτως ὡς φιλοῦντας ἀλλήλους ὁρῶσιν. Ἀπολλωνίδα γοῦν τὴν Κυζικηνήν, Εὐμένους δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως μητέρα καὶ τριῶν ἄλλων, Ἀττάλου καὶ Φιλεταίρου καὶ Ἀθηναίου, λέγουσι μακαρίζειν ἑαυτὴν ἀεὶ καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς χάριν ἔχειν οὐ διὰ τὸν πλοῦτον οὐδὲ διὰ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τοὺς τρεῖς υἱοὺς ἑώρα τὸν πρεσβύτατον δορυφοροῦντας κἀκεῖνον ἐν μέσοις αὐτοῖς δόρατα καὶ ξίφη [d] φοροῦσιν ἀδεῶς διαιτώμενον. ὥσπερ αὖ τοὐναντίον Ξέρξης αἰσθόμενος Ὦχον τὸν υἱὸν ἐπιβεβουλευκότα τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς ἀθυμήσας ἀπέθανε. ‘χαλεποὶ πόλεμοι γὰρ ἀδελφῶν’, ὡς Εὐριπίδης εἴρηκεν (fr. 675), ὄντες χαλεπώτατοι τοῖς γονεῦσιν αὐτοῖς εἰσιν· ὁ γὰρ μισῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὑτοῦ καὶ βαρυνόμενος οὐ δύναται μὴ τὸν γεννήσαντα μέμφεσθαι καὶ τὴν τεκοῦσαν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Πεισίστρατος ἐπιγαμῶν ἐνηλίκοις οὖσι τοῖς υἱοῖς ἔφη καλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἐκείνους ἡγούμενος ἔτι πλειόνων ἐθέλειν τοιούτων πατὴρ γενέσθαι· χρηστοὶ δὲ καὶ δίκαιοι παῖδες οὐ μόνον διὰ τοὺς γονεῖς [e] ἀγαπήσουσι μᾶλλον ἀλλήλους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς γονεῖς δι’ ἀλλήλους, οὕτως ἀεὶ καὶ φρονοῦντες καὶ λέγοντες, ὅτι τοῖς γονεῦσιν ἀντὶ πολλῶν χάριν ὀφείλοντες μάλιστα διὰ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς ὀφείλουσιν, ὡς τοῦτο δὴ κτημάτων. ἁπάντων τιμιώτατον καὶ ἥδιστον ἔχοντες παρ’ αὐτῶν. εὖ γέ τοι καὶ Ὅμηρος πεποίηκε Τηλέμαχον ἐν συμφορᾷ τἀνάδελφον τιθέμενον (π 117)·

‘ὧδε γὰρ ἡμετέρην γενεὴν μούνωσε Κρονίων·’

ὁ δ’ Ἡσίοδος οὐκ εὖ παραινεῖ ‘μουνογενῆ παῖδα’ τῶν πατρῴων ἐπίκληρον εἶναι (OD 376), καὶ ταῦτα τῶν Μουσῶν γεγονὼς μαθητής, ἃς ὁμοῦ δι’ εὔνοιαν ἀεὶ καὶ [f] φιλαδελφίαν οὔσας οὕτως ὠνόμαζον, μούσας.

Πρὸς μὲν οὖν γονεῖς ἡ φιλαδελφία τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν, ὥστε τὸ φιλεῖν ἀδελφὸν εὐθὺς ἀπόδειξιν εἶναι τοῦ καὶ τὴν μητέρα φιλεῖν καὶ τὸν πατέρα, πρὸς δὲ παῖδας αὖ δίδαγμα καὶ παράδειγμα φιλαδελφίας οἷον οὐθὲν ἄλλο, καὶ τοὐναντίον αὖ πονηρὸν ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀντιγράφου πατρῴου τὴν μισαδελφίαν ἀναλαμβάνουσιν. [481] [a] ὁ γὰρ ἐν δίκαις καὶ στάσεσι καὶ ἀγῶσι πρὸς ἀδελφοὺς ἐγγεγηρακὼς εἶτα τοὺς υἱοὺς ὁμονοεῖν παρακαλῶν, ‘ἄλλων ἰατρὸς αὐτὸς ἕλκεσιν βρύων (Eur. fr. 1086),’ ἀσθενῆ ποιεῖ τοῖς ἔργοις τὸν λόγον. εἰ γοῦν ὁ Θηβαῖος Ἐτεοκλῆς πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν εἰρηκώς (Phoen. 504)

‘ἄστρων ἂν ἔλθοιμ’ ἡλίου πρὸς ἀνατολὰς

καὶ γῆς ἔνερθε δυνατὸς ὢν δρᾶσαι τάδε,

τὴν θεῶν μεγίστην ὥστ’ ἔχειν τυραννίδα’

τοῖς αὑτοῦ πάλιν παρεκελεύετο τέκνοις (Phoen. 536)

‘ἰσότητα τιμᾶν, ἣ φίλους ἀεὶ φίλοις

πόλεις τε πόλεσι συμμάχους τε συμμάχοις

συνδεῖ· τὸ γὰρ ἴσον μόνιμον ἀνθρώποις ἔφυ,’

[b] τίς οὐκ ἂν αὐτοῦ κατεφρόνησε; ποῖος δ’ ἂν ἦν ὁ Ἀτρεύς, εἰ τοιαῦτα δειπνίσας τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἐγνωμολόγει πρὸς τοὺς παῖδας (Tr. ad. 384)

‘φίλων γε μέντοι χρῆσις ἡ πρὸς αἵματος

μόνη κακοῦ ῥέοντος ὠφελεῖν φιλεῖ;’

Διὸ καὶ γονέων κακὴν γηροτρόφον οὖσαν καὶ κακίονα παιδοτρόφον τέκνων ἐκκαθαίρειν προσήκει τὴν μισαδελφίαν. ἔστι δὲ καὶ πρὸς πολίτας διάβολος καὶ κατήγορος· οἴονται γὰρ οὐκ ἂν ἐκ τοσῆσδε συντροφίας καὶ συνηθείας καὶ οἰκειότητος ἐχθροὺς καὶ πολεμίους γενέσθαι μὴ πολλὰ καὶ πονηρὰ συνειδότας ἀλλήλοις· μεγάλαι [c] γὰρ αἰτίαι μεγάλην διαλύουσιν εὔνοιαν καὶ φιλίαν. ὅθεν οὐδὲ ῥᾳδίως αὖθις ἐνδέχονται διαλύσεις. ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰ συμπαγέντα, κἂν χαλάσῃ τὸ ἐχέκολλον, ἐνδέχεται πάλιν δεθῆναι καὶ συνελθεῖν, συμφυοῦς δὲ σώματος ῥαγέντος ἢ σχισθέντος ἔργον ἐστὶ κόλλησιν εὑρεῖν καὶ σύμφυσιν, οὕτως αἱ μὲν ὑπὸ χρείας συνημμέναι φιλίαι κἂν διαστῶσιν οὐ χαλεπῶς αὖθις ἀναλαμβάνουσιν, ἀδελφοὶ δὲ τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν ἐκπεσόντες οὔτε ῥᾳδίως συνέρχονται, κἂν συνέλθωσι, ῥυπαρὰν καὶ ὕποπτον οὐλὴν αἱ διαλύσεις ἐφέλκονται. πᾶσα μὲν οὖν ἔχθρα πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἀνθρώπῳ μετὰ [d] τῶν μάλιστα λυπούντων ἐνδυομένη παθῶν, φιλονεικίας ὀργῆς φθόνου μνησικακίας, ὀδυνηρόν ἐστι καὶ ταραχῶδες· ἡ δὲ πρὸς ἀδελφόν, ᾧ θυσιῶν τε κοινωνεῖν ἀνάγκη καὶ ἱερῶν πατρῴων ὁμόταφόν τε γενέσθαι καί που σύνοικον ἢ γείτονα χωρίων, ἐν ὄμμασιν ἔχει τὸ λυπηρόν, ὑπομιμνήσκουσα καθ’ ἡμέραν τῆς ἀνοίας καὶ παραφροσύνης, δι’ ἣν τὸ ἥδιστον καὶ συγγενέστατον πρόσωπον ἰδεῖν σκυθρωπότατον ἥ τε προσφιλὴς ἐκ νέων φωνὴ καὶ συνήθης ἀκοῦσαι φοβερωτάτη γέγονε, πολλοὺς δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἀδελφῶν ὁρῶντες οἰκίᾳ μιᾷ τε χρωμένους καὶ τραπέζῃ καὶ [e] χωρίοις ἀνεμήτοις καὶ ἀνδραπόδοις αὐτοὶ καὶ φίλους διῄρηνται καὶ ξένους, ἐχθρὰ πάντα τὰ προσφιλῆ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς νέμοντες· καὶ ταῦτα πᾶσιν ἐν μέσῳ λογίζεσθαι παρόντος, ὅτι ‘ληιστοί’ (Ι 406. 7) μέν τε φίλοι καὶ συμπόται ‘κτητοί’ δὲ κηδεσταὶ καὶ συνήθεις τῶν πρώτων ὥσπερ ὅπλων ἢ ὀργάνων διαφθαρέντων, ἀδελφοῦ δ’ ἀντίκτησις οὐκ ἔστιν, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ χειρὸς ἀφαιρεθείσης οὐδ’ ὄψεως ἐκκοπείσης, ἀλλ’ ὀρθῶς ἡ Περσὶς εἶπεν, ἀντὶ τῶν τέκνων ἑλομένη σῶσαι τὸν ἀδελφόν, ὅτι παῖδας μὲν ἑτέρους κτήσασθαι δύναιτ’ ἄν, ἀδελφὸς δ’ ἄλλος αὐτῇ γονέων μὴ ὄντων οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο (Herod. III 119).

Τί δῆτα χρὴ ποιεῖν, φαίη τις ἄν, ὅτῳ φαῦλος ἀδελφὸς [f] γένοιτο; πρῶτον ἐκεῖνο μνημονεύειν, ὅτι παντὸς ἅπτεται γένους φιλίας ἡ φαυλότης καὶ κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα (fr. 769) ‘τὰ πλεῖστα φωρῶν αἰσχρὰ φωράσεις βροτῶν.’ οὔτε γὰρ τὸ συγγενικὸν οὔτε τὸ ἑταιρικὸν οὔτε τὸ ἐρωτικὸν εἱλικρινὲς καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ καθαρὸν ἔστιν εὑρεῖν κακίας. ὁ μὲν [482] [a] οὖν Λάκων μικρὰν γυναῖκα γήμας ἔφη τὰ ἐλάχιστα δεῖν αἱρεῖσθαι τῶν κακῶν, ἀδελφοῖς δὲ σωφρόνως παραινέσειεν ἄν τις τὰ οἰκειότατα τῶν κακῶν ὑπομένειν μᾶλλον ἢ πειρᾶσθαι τῶν ἀλλοτρίων· τοῦτο γὰρ ἀνέγκλητον ὡς ἀναγκαῖον, ἐκεῖνο δὲ ψεκτὸν ὡς αὐθαίρετον. οὐ γὰρ ὁ συμπότης οὐδ’ ὁ συνέφηβος οὐδ’ ὁ ξένος ‘αἰδοῦς ἀχαλκεύτοισιν ἔζευκται πέδαις’ (Eur. fr. 595), ἀλλ’ ὁ σύναιμος καὶ σύντροφος καὶ ὁμοπάτωρ καὶ ὁμομήτωρ. ᾧ καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν εἰκός ἐστιν ἐπιχωρεῖν ἔνια καὶ παρείκειν λέγοντι πρὸς ἀδελφὸν ἐξαμαρτάνοντα (ν 331)

‘τοὔνεκά σ’ οὐ δύναμαι προλιπεῖν δύστηνον ἐόντα’

καὶ φαῦλον καὶ ἀνόητον, μὴ καὶ λάθω τι πατρῷον ἢ μητρῷον [b] ἐνεσταγμένον ἀπὸ σπέρματος νόσημα χαλεπῶς καὶ πικρῶς τῷ μισεῖν ἐν σοὶ κολάζων’. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἀλλοτρίους, ὡς ἔλεγε Θεόφραστος (fr. 74), οὐ φιλοῦντα δεῖ κρίνειν ἀλλὰ κρίναντα φιλεῖν· ὅπου δ’ ἡ φύσις ἡγεμονίαν τῇ κρίσει πρὸς εὔνοιαν οὐ δίδωσιν οὐδ’ ἀναμένει τὸν θρυλούμενον τῶν ἁλῶν μέδιμνον ἀλλὰ συγγεγέννηκε τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς φιλίας, ἐνταῦθα δεῖ μὴ πικροὺς εἶναι μηδ’ ἀκριβεῖς τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἐξεταστάς. νυνὶ δὲ τί ἂν λέγοις, εἰ ξένων ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἀλλοτρίων ἐκ πότου τινὸς ἢ παιδιᾶς ἢ παλαίστρας προσφθαρέντων ἁμαρτήματα [c] ῥᾳδίως ἔνιοι φέροντες καὶ ἡδόμενοι δύσκολοι καὶ ἀπαραίτητοι πρὸς τοὺς ἀδελφούς εἰσιν; ὅπου καὶ κύνας χαλεποὺς καὶ ἵππους, πολλοὶ δὲ λύγκας αἰλούρους πιθήκους λέοντας τρέφοντες καὶ ἀγαπῶντες ἀδελφῶν οὐχ ὑπομένουσιν ὀργὰς ἢ ἀγνοίας ἢ φιλοτιμίας, ἕτεροι δὲ παλλακίσι καὶ πόρναις οἰκίας καὶ ἀγροὺς καταγράφοντες ὑπὲρ οἰκοπέδου καὶ γωνίας πρὸς ἀδελφοὺς διαμονομαχοῦσιν, εἶτα τῷ μισαδέλφῳ μισοπονηρίαν ὄνομα θέμενοι περινοστοῦσιν ἐν τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς τὴν κακίαν προβαλλόμενοι καὶ λοιδοροῦντες, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις μὴ δυσχεραίνοντες ἀλλὰ χρώμενοι πολλῇ καὶ συνόντες.

[d] Ταυτὶ μὲν οὖν ἔστω προοίμια τοῦ λόγου παντός. ἀρχὴν δὲ τῆς διδασκαλίας μὴ τὴν νέμησιν τῶν πατρῴων, ὥσπερ ἕτεροι, λάβωμεν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἔτι ζώντων ἁμαρτανομένην τῶν γονέων ἅμιλλαν καὶ ζηλοτυπίαν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἔφοροι, τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου τῶν ἀποδεικνυμένων ἀεὶ γερόντων ἑκάστῳ βοῦν ἀριστεῖον πέμποντος, ἐζημίωσαν αὐτὸν αἰτίαν ὑπειπόντες ὅτι τοὺς κοινοὺς ἰδίους κτᾶται δημαγωγῶν καὶ χαριζόμενος· υἱῷ δ’ ἄν τις παραινέσειε θεραπεύειν γονεῖς μὴ κτώμενον ἑαυτῷ μόνῳ μηδ’ εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἀποστρέφοντα τὴν εὔνοιαν. ᾧ τρόπῳ πολλοὶ καταδημαγωγοῦσι τοὺς ἀδελφούς, εὐπρεπῆ πρόφασιν οὐ δικαίαν δὲ τῆς [e] πλεονεξίας ταύτης ἔχοντες. τὸ γὰρ μέγιστον τῶν πατρῴων καὶ κάλλιστον ἀποστεροῦσιν αὐτούς, τὴν εὔνοιαν, ἀνελευθέρως καὶ πανούργως ὑποτρέχοντες, ἐν καιρῷ ταῖς ἐκείνων ἀσχολίαις καὶ ἀγνοίαις ἐπιτιθέμενοι καὶ μάλιστα παρέχοντες εὐτάκτους καὶ κατηκόους αὑτοὺς καὶ σώφρονας, ἐν οἷς ἐκείνους ἁμαρτάνοντας ἢ δοκοῦντας ὁρῶσι. δεῖ δὲ τοὐναντίον, ὅπου μὲν ὀργή, συνεκδέχεσθαι καὶ συνυποδύεσθαι καθάπερ τῷ συνεργεῖν ποιοῦντα κουφοτέραν, ὑπουργίαις δὲ καὶ χάρισι συνεισποιεῖν ἁμωσγέπως τὸν ἀδελφόν· ἐλλείποντος δέ που, καιρὸν ἢ πρᾶξιν ἑτέραν ‹ἢ› [f] τὴν φύσιν αἰτιᾶσθαι, πρὸς ἄλλα χρησιμωτέραν καὶ σεμνοτέραν οὖσαν· εὖ δ’ ἔχει καὶ τὸ τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος, ὡς (Κ 122)

‘οὔτ’ ὄκνῳ εἴκων οὔτ’ ἀφραδίῃσι νόοιο,

ἀλλ’ ἐμέ τ’ εἰσορόων’

[483] [a] κἀμοὶ τοῦτο παραδοὺς τὸ καθῆκον. ἡδέως δὲ καὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων τὰς μεταθέσεις οἱ πατέρες προσδέχονται καὶ πιστεύουσι τοῖς υἱοῖς ἁπλότητα μὲν τὴν ῥᾳθυμίαν τῶν ἀδελφῶν ὀνομάζουσιν ὀρθότητα δὲ τὴν σκαιότητα, τὸ δὲ φιλόνεικον ἀκαταφρόνητον· ὥστε τῷ διαλλάσσοντι περίεστι τὴν πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν ὀργὴν ἐλαττοῦν ἅμα καὶ τὴν πρὸς ἑαυτὸν εὔνοιαν αὔξειν τοῦ πατρός. οὕτω δ’ ἀπολογησάμενον ἤδη πρὸς ἐκεῖνον δεῖ τρέπεσθαι καὶ καθάπτεσθαι σφοδρότερον, τὸ ἁμάρτημα καὶ τὸ ἔλλειμμα μετὰ παρρησίας ἐνδεικνύμενον. οὔτε γὰρ ἐφιέναι δεῖ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς οὔτ’ αὖ πάλιν ἐπεμβαίνειν ἁμαρτάνουσιν αὐτοῖς [b] (τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἐπιχαίροντός ἐστιν ἐκεῖνο δὲ συνεξαμαρτάνοντος), ἀλλὰ κηδομένῳ καὶ συναχθομένῳ χρῆσθαι τῷ νουθετοῦντι. γίνεται δὲ κατήγορος ἀδελφοῦ σφοδρότατος πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ προθυμότατος ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ συνήγορος πρὸς τοὺς γονεῖς γενόμενος. ἂν δὲ μηδὲν ἁμαρτάνων ἀδελφὸς ἐν αἰτίᾳ γένηται, τἄλλα μὲν ὑπουργεῖν γονεῦσι καὶ φέρειν ὀργήν τε πᾶσαν αὐτῶν καὶ δυσχέρειαν ἐπιεικές, αἱ δ’ ὑπὲρ ἀδελφοῦ παρ’ ἀξίαν κακῶς ἀκούοντος ἢ πάσχοντος ἀντιδικίαι καὶ δικαιολογίαι πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἄμεμπτοι καὶ καλαί· καὶ οὐ φοβητέον ἀκοῦσαι τὸ Σοφόκλειον (Antig. 742)

‘ὦ παῖ κάκιστε, διὰ δίκης ἰὼν πατρί;’

[c] παρρησιαζόμενον ὑπὲρ ἀδελφοῦ δοκοῦντος ἀγνωμονεῖσθαι· καὶ γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἡ τοιαύτη δίκη τοῖς ἐλεγχομένοις ποιεῖ τὴν ἧτταν ἡδίω τῆς νίκης.

Ἀποθανόντος γε μὴν πατρὸς ἐμφύεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ πρότερον ὀρθῶς ἔχει τῇ εὐνοίᾳ τὸν ἀδελφόν, εὐθὺς μὲν ἐν τῷ συνδακρύειν καὶ συνάχθεσθαι κοινούμενον τὸ φιλόστοργον, ὑπονοίας δὲ θεραπόντων καὶ διαβολὰς ἑταίρων ἑτέρωσ’ αὑτοὺς προσνεμόντων ἀπωθούμενον καὶ πιστεύοντα τοῖς τ’ ἄλλοις ἃ μυθολογοῦσι περὶ τῶν Διοσκόρων τῆς φιλαδελφίας καὶ ὅτι ὁ Πολυδεύκης τὸν καταψιθυρίζοντα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ πρὸς αὐτὸν κονδύλῳ παίσας ἀπέκτεινεν. ἐπὶ [d] δὲ τὴν νέμησιν τῶν πατρῴων μὴ καταγγείλαντας ἀλλήλοις πόλεμον ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοί ‘κλῦθ’ Ἀλαλά, Πολέμου θύγατερ’ (Pind. fr. 78) ἐκ παρασκευῆς ἀπαντᾶν, ἀλλὰ μάλιστα δὴ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην φυλαττομένους, ὡς τοῖς μὲν ἔχθρας ἀνηκέστου καὶ διαφορᾶς τοῖς δὲ φιλίας καὶ ὁμονοίας οὖσαν ἀρχήν, μάλιστα μὲν αὐτοὺς καθ’ ἑαυτούς, εἰ δὲ μή, φίλου κοινοῦ παρόντος ἀμφοτέροις μάρτυρος εὐγνωμονοῦντος ‘δίκης κλήροις’, ᾗ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Critias 109b), τὰ φίλα καὶ προσήκοντα λαμβάνοντας καὶ διδόντας οἴεσθαι τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν νέμεσθαι καὶ τὴν οἰκονομίαν, χρῆσιν δὲ καὶ κτῆσιν ἐν μέσῳ κεῖσθαι κοινὴν καὶ ἀνέμητον [e] ἁπάντων. οἱ δὲ καὶ τίτθας ἀποσπῶντες ἀλλήλων καὶ συντρόφους καὶ συνήθεις παῖδας ὑπερβαλλόμενοι τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς ἀπίασιν ἀνδραπόδου τιμῇ πλέον ἔχοντες, τὸ δὲ μέγιστον καὶ τιμιώτατον τῶν πατρῴων, φιλίαν ἀδελφοῦ καὶ πίστιν, ἀπολωλεκότες. ἐνίους δὲ καὶ ἀκερδῶς φιλονεικίας ἕνεκα χρησαμένους τοῖς πατρῴοις οὐθὲν ἐπιεικέστερον ἢ λαφύροις ἴσμεν. ὧν καὶ Χαρικλῆς καὶ Ἀντίοχος ἦσαν οἱ Ὀπούντιοι· καὶ γὰρ ἔκπωμα διακόψαντες ἀργυροῦν καὶ ἱμάτιον διατεμόντες ἀπῄεσαν, ὥσπερ ἐκ τραγικῆς τινος κατάρας ‘θηκτῷ σιδήρῳ δῶμα διαλαχόντες’ (Eur. Phoen. 68). οἱ δὲ καὶ διηγοῦνται πρὸς ἑτέρους γαυριῶντες, [f] ὅτι τῶν ἀδελφῶν πανουργίᾳ καὶ δριμύτητι καὶ παραλογισμῷ πλέον ἔσχον ἐν τῷ νέμεσθαι, δέον ἀγάλλεσθαι καὶ μέγα φρονεῖν ἐπιεικείᾳ καὶ χάριτι καὶ ὑπείξει [484] [a] περιγενομένους. ὅθεν ἄξιόν ἐστιν Ἀθηνοδώρου μεμνῆσθαι, καὶ μέμνηνταί γε πάντες παρ’ ἡμῖν. ἦν γὰρ ἀδελφὸς αὐτῷ πρεσβύτερος ὄνομα Ξένων, καὶ πολλὰ τῆς οὐσίας ἐπιτροπεύσας διεφόρησε· τέλος δ’ ἁρπάσας γυναῖκα καὶ καταδικασθεὶς ἀπώλεσε τὴν οὐσίαν εἰς τὸ Καίσαρος ταμιεῖον ἀναληφθεῖσαν. ὁ δ’ Ἀθηνόδωρος ἦν μὲν ἔτι μειράκιον οὐδέπω γενειῶν, ἀποδοθέντος δὲ τοῦ μέρους αὐτῷ τῶν χρημάτων οὐ περιεῖδε τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀλλ’ εἰς μέσον ἅπαντα καταθεὶς ἐνείματο, καὶ πολλὰ περὶ τὴν νέμησιν ἀγνωμονούμενος οὐκ ἠγανάκτησεν οὐδὲ μετενόησεν, ἀλλὰ [b] πράως καὶ ἱλαρῶς ἤνεγκε τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ τὴν ἄνοιαν περιβόητον ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι γενομένην.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Σόλων ἀποφηνάμενος περὶ πολιτείας, ὡς ἰσότης στάσιν οὐ ποιεῖ, λίαν ἔδοξεν ὀχλικῶς ἀριθμητικὴν καὶ δημοκρατικὴν ἐπεισάγειν ἀναλογίαν ἀντὶ τῆς καλῆς γεωμετρικῆς· ὁ δ’ ἐν οἰκίᾳ παραινῶν ἀδελφοῖς μάλιστα μὲν ὡς ὁ Πλάτων (Resp. 462c) παρῄνει τοῖς πολίταις ‘τὸ ἐμόν’ ἐξαιρεῖν ‘καὶ τὸ οὐκ ἐμόν,’ εἰ δὲ μή, τὴν ἴσην ἀγαπᾶν καὶ τῆς ἴσης περιέχεσθαι, καλὴν κρηπῖδα καὶ μόνιμον ὁμονοίας καὶ εἰρήνης καταβαλλόμενος †ἀεί. χρήσθω δὲ καὶ παραδείγμασιν ἐνδόξοις οἷόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ τοῦ Πιττακοῦ [c] πρὸς τὸν βασιλέα Λυδῶν πυνθανόμενον εἰ χρήματ’ ἔστιν αὐτῷ, ‘διπλάσι’’ εἶπεν ‘ἢ ἐβουλόμην, τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ τεθνηκότος.’ ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐ μόνον ἐν χρημάτων κτήσει καὶ μειώσει τῷ πλέονι πολέμιον καθίσταται τοὔλασσον (Eur. Phoen. 539), ἀλλ’ ἁπλῶς, ᾗ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Resp. 547a) ἐν μὲν ἀνωμαλίᾳ κίνησιν ἐν δ’ ὁμαλότητι στάσιν ἐγγίνεσθαι καὶ μονήν, οὕτως πᾶσα μὲν ἀνισότης ἐπισφαλής ἐστι πρὸς διαφορὰν ἀδελφῶν, ἐν πᾶσι δ’ ἴσους γενέσθαι καὶ ὁμαλοὺς ἀδύνατον (τὰ μὲν γὰρ αἱ φύσεις εὐθὺς ἀνίσως νέμουσι, τὰ δ’ ὕστερον αἱ τύχαι φθόνους ἐμποιοῦσαι καὶ ζηλοτυπίας, αἴσχιστα νοσήματα καὶ κῆρας οὐκ οἰκίαις μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ [d] πόλεσιν ὀλεθρίους), δεῖ καὶ ταῦτα φυλάττεσθαι καὶ θεραπεύειν, ἂν ἐγγένηται. τῷ μὲν οὖν ὑπερέχοντι παραινέσειεν ἄν τις, πρῶτον μὲν ἐν οἷς δοκεῖ διαφέρειν, ταῦτα κοινὰ ποιεῖν τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς, συνεπικοσμοῦντα τῇ δόξῃ καὶ συνεισποιοῦντα ταῖς φιλίαις, κἂν λέγειν δεινότερος ᾖ, χρῆσθαι παρέχοντα τὴν δύναμιν ὡς ἐκείνων μηθὲν ἧττον οὖσαν· ἔπειτα μήτ’ ὄγκον ἐμφαίνειν τινὰ μήθ’ ὑπεροψίαν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἐνδιδόντα καὶ συγκαθιέντα τῷ ἤθει τὴν ὑπεροχὴν ἀνεπίφθονον ποιεῖν καὶ τὴν τῆς τύχης ἀνωμαλίαν ἐπανισοῦν, ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστι, τῇ μετριότητι τοῦ φρονήματος. ὁ μὲν οὖν Λεύκολλος οὐκ ἠξίωσε τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ πρότερος [e] τὴν ἀρχὴν λαβεῖν πρεσβύτερος ὤν, ἀλλὰ τὸν αὑτοῦ παρεὶς καιρὸν τὸν ἐκείνου περιέμεινεν, ὁ δὲ Πολυδεύκης οὐδὲ θεὸς ἠθέλησε μόνος ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἡμίθεος σὺν τῷ ἀδελφῷ γενέσθαι καὶ τῆς θνητῆς μερίδος μετασχεῖν ἐπὶ τῷ μεταδοῦναι τῆς ἀθανασίας ἐκείνῳ· ‘σοὶ δέ’, φαίη τις ἄν, ‘ὦ μακάριε, μηθὲν ἐλαττοῦντι τῶν προσόντων ἀγαθῶν ὑπάρχει συνεξομοιοῦν καὶ συνεπικοσμεῖν ὥσπερ αὐγῆς ἀπολαύοντα τῆς περὶ σὲ δόξης ἢ ἀρετῆς ἢ εὐτυχίας’. ὥσπερ Πλάτων τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς εἰς τὰ κάλλιστα τῶν αὑτοῦ συγγραμμάτων θέμενος ὀνομαστοὺς ἐποίησε, Γλαύκωνα μὲν [f] καὶ Ἀδείμαντον εἰς τὴν Πολιτείαν, Ἀντιφῶντα δὲ τὸν νεώτατον εἰς τὸν Παρμενίδην. ἔτι τοίνυν ὥσπερ ἐγγίνονται ταῖς φύσεσι καὶ ταῖς τύχαις τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἀνισότητες, οὕτως ἐν πᾶσι καὶ πάντως ὑπερέχειν τὸν ἕτερον ἀδύνατόν ἐστι. τὰ μὲν γὰρ στοιχεῖά φασιν ἐκ μιᾶς ὕλης [485] [a] γεγονέναι τὰς ἐναντιωτάτας ἔχοντα δυνάμεις· δυεῖν δ’ ἀδελφῶν ἐκ μιᾶς μητρὸς καὶ πατρὸς ταὐτοῦ γεγονότων οὐθεὶς ἑώρακε τὸν μὲν, ‹ὡς τὸν› ἐκ τῆς Στοᾶς σοφόν, ὁμοῦ καλὸν εὔχαριν ἐλευθέριον ἔντιμον πλούσιον δεινὸν εἰπεῖν πολυμαθῆ φιλάνθρωπον, τὸν δ’ ἕτερον αἰσχρὸν ἄχαριν ἀνελεύθερον ἄτιμον ἄπορον ἀσθενῆ περὶ λόγον ἀμαθῆ μισάνθρωπον· ἀλλ’ ἔνεστιν ἁμωσγέπως καὶ τοῖς ἀδοξοτέροις καὶ ταπεινοτέροις μοῖρά τις χάριτος ἢ δυνάμεως ἢ πρός τι καλὸν εὐφυΐας,

‘ὡς ἀν’ ἐχινόποδας καὶ ἀνὰ τρηχεῖαν ὄνωνιν

φύονται μαλακῶν ἄνθεα λευκοΐων’ (PL. III 689).

ταῦτα τοίνυν ὁ δοκῶν πλέον ἔχειν ἐν ἄλλοις ἂν μὴ κολούῃ [b] μηδ’ ἐπικρύπτῃ μηδὲ πάντων ὥσπερ ἐν ἀγῶνι τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἐξωθῇ τῶν πρωτείων, ἀλλ’ ἀνθυπείκῃ καὶ ἀποφαίνῃ πρὸς πολλὰ βελτίω καὶ χρησιμώτερον ἐκεῖνον, ὑφαιρῶν ἀεὶ τοῦ φθόνου τὴν πρόφασιν ὥσπερ ὕλην τοῦ πυρὸς ἀποσβέσει μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως οὐκ ἐάσει λαβεῖν γένεσιν οὐδὲ σύστασιν. ὁ δὲ καὶ συνεργόν, ἐν οἷς δοκεῖ κρείττων αὐτὸς εἶναι, ποιούμενος τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀεὶ καὶ σύμβουλον, οἷον ἐν δίκαις ῥητορικὸς ὤν, ἐν ἀρχαῖς πολιτευόμενος, ἐν πράξεσι †φιλικαῖς, συνελόντι δ’ εἰπεῖν, μηδενὸς ἀξιολόγου καὶ τιμὴν φέροντος ἔργου περιορῶν ἀπολειπόμενον, ἀλλὰ [c] τῶν καλῶν πάντων κοινωνὸν ἀποφαίνων καὶ χρώμενος παρόντι καὶ περιμένων ἀπόντα, καὶ ὅλως συνεμφαίνων ὅτι πρακτικὸς μὲν οὐχ ἧττον αὐτοῦ παραχωρητικὸς δὲ μᾶλλόν ἐστι δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως, οὐθὲν ἑαυτοῦ παραιρούμενος ἐκείνῳ μεγάλα προστίθησι.

Τῷ μὲν οὖν ὑπερέχοντι τοιαῦτά τις ἂν παραινέσειε· τῷ δὲ λειπομένῳ πάλιν ἐνθυμητέον, ὡς οὐχ εἷς οὐδὲ μόνος αὐτοῦ πλουσιώτερος ἢ λογιώτερος ἢ λαμπρότερος εἰς δόξαν ὁ ἀδελφός ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις πολλῶν ἀπολείπεται καὶ μυριάκις μυρίων (Simon. fr. 5, 17),

‘εὐρυεδοῦς ὅσοι καρπὸν αἰνύμεθα χθονός·’

εἴτε δὴ πᾶσι περινοστεῖ φθονῶν εἴτε μόνος αὐτὸν ἐν [d] τοσούτοις εὐτυχοῦσιν ὁ φίλτατος ἀνιᾷ καὶ συγγενέστατος, ὑπερβολὴν ἑτέρῳ κακοδαιμονίας οὐ λέλοιπεν. ὥσπερ οὖν Μέτελλος ᾤετο δεῖν Ῥωμαίους τοῖς θεοῖς χάριν ἔχειν, ὅτι Σκιπίων ἐν ἑτέρᾳ πόλει τοιοῦτος ὢν οὐκ ἐγεννήθη, οὕτως ἕκαστος εὐχέσθω μάλιστα μὲν αὐτὸς εὐπραξίᾳ διαφέρειν, εἰ δὲ μή, τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ τὴν ζηλουμένην ἔχειν ὑπεροχὴν καὶ δύναμιν. οἱ δ’ οὕτω πεφύκασιν ἀτυχῶς πρὸς τὸ καλόν, ὥστε φίλοις μὲν ἐνδόξοις ἀγάλλεσθαι καὶ μέγα φρονεῖν, ἂν ξένους ἡγεμονικοὺς καὶ πλουσίους ἔχωσι, τὰς δὲ τῶν ἀδελφῶν λαμπρότητας αὑτῶν ἀμαυρώσεις νομίζειν, [e] καὶ πατέρων μὲν εὐτυχίαις ἐπαίρεσθαι καὶ στρατηγίαις προπάππων λεγομέναις, ὧν οὐδὲν ἀπέλαυσαν οὐδὲ μετέσχον, ἀδελφῶν δὲ κληρονομίαις καὶ ἀρχαῖς καὶ γάμοις ἐνδόξοις ἀθυμεῖν καὶ ταπεινοῦσθαι. καίτοι μάλιστα μὲν ἔδει μηδ’ ἄλλῳ φθονεῖν, εἰ δὲ μή, τρέπειν ἔξω καὶ πρὸς ἑτέρους ἀποχετεύειν τὸ βάσκανον, ὥσπερ οἱ τὰς στάσεις θύραζε τοῖς πολέμοις περισπῶντες· ‘πολλοὶ μὲν γὰρ ἐμοὶ Τρῶες κλειτοί τ’ ἐπίκουροι, πολλοὶ δ’ αὖ σοὶ Ἀχαιοί’ (Ζ 227. 9) φθονεῖν πεφύκασι καὶ ζηλοτυπεῖν· ἀδελφῷ δὲ χρὴ μὴ καθάπερ πλάστιγγα ῥέπειν ἐπὶ τοὐναντίον, ὑψουμένου ταπεινούμενον αὐτόν, ἀλλ’, ὥσπερ τῶν ἀριθμῶν [f] οἱ ἐλάττονες τοὺς μείζονας πολλαπλασιάζοντες καὶ πολλαπλασιαζόμενοι, συναύξειν ἅμα καὶ συναύξεσθαι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς. οὐδὲ γὰρ τῶν δακτύλων ἔλαττον ἔχει τοῦ γράφοντος ἢ ψάλλοντος ὁ μὴ δυνάμενος τοῦτο ποιεῖν μηδὲ πεφυκώς, ἀλλὰ συγκινοῦνται καὶ συνεργοῦσιν ἅπαντες [486] [a] ἁμωσγέπως ἀλλήλοις, ὥσπερ ἐπίτηδες ἄνισοι γεγονότες καὶ τὸ συλληπτικὸν ἐξ ἀντιθέσεως πρὸς τὸν μέγιστον καὶ ῥωμαλεώτατον ἔχοντες. οὕτω καὶ Κρατερὸς Ἀντιγόνου βασιλεύοντος ἀδελφὸς ὢν καὶ Κασάνδρου Περίλαος ἐπὶ τὸ στρατηγεῖν καὶ οἰκουρεῖν ἔταττον αὑτούς· Ἀντίοχοι δὲ καὶ Σέλευκοι καὶ πάλιν Γρυποὶ καὶ Κυζικηνοὶ τὰ δεύτερα λέγειν οὐ μαθόντες ἀδελφοῖς ἀλλὰ πορφύρας καὶ διαδήματος ὀρεγόμενοι πολλῶν μὲν αὑτοὺς κακῶν καὶ ἀλλήλους πολλῶν δὲ τὴν Ἀσίαν ἐνέπλησαν.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῖς φιλοτίμοις μάλιστα τῶν ἠθῶν ἐμφύονται [b] φθόνοι καὶ ζηλοτυπίαι πρὸς τοὺς πλέον ἔχοντας ἐν δόξῃ καὶ τιμῇ, χρησιμώτατόν ἐστι πρὸς τοῦτο τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς τὸ μὴ κτᾶσθαι μήτε τὰς τιμὰς μήτε τὰς δυνάμεις ἀπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν, ἀλλ’ ἕτερον ἀφ’ ἑτέρου. καὶ γὰρ τῶν θηρίων πόλεμός ἐστι πρὸς ἄλληλα τοῖς ἀπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν τρεφομένοις, καὶ τῶν ἀθλητῶν οἱ πρὸς ἓν ἄθλημα κάμνοντες ἀνταγωνισταί, πύκται δὲ παγκρατιασταῖς φίλιοι καὶ δολιχοδρόμοι παλαισταῖς εὐμενεῖς εἰσι καὶ συναγωνιῶσι καὶ σπουδάζουσιν ὑπὲρ ἀλλήλων. διὸ καὶ τῶν Τυνδαριδῶν πὺξ μὲν ὁ Πολυδεύκης ἐνίκα δρόμον δ’ ὁ Κάστωρ· εὖ δὲ καὶ τὸν Τεῦκρον Ὅμηρος πεποίηκεν ἀπὸ [c] τοξικῆς εὐδοκιμοῦντα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ πρωτεύοντος ἐν τοῖς ὁπλίταις· ‘ὁ δέ μιν σάκεϊ κρύπτασκε φαεινῷ’ (Θ 272). καὶ τῶν πολιτευομένων οἱ στρατηγοῦντες τοῖς δημαγωγοῦσιν οὐ πάνυ φθονοῦσιν, οὐδέ γε τῶν ῥητόρων οἱ δικολόγοι τοῖς σοφιστεύουσιν οὐδὲ τῶν ἰατρῶν οἱ περὶ δίαιταν τοῖς χειρουργοῖς ἀλλὰ καὶ συμπαραλαμβάνουσι καὶ συνεπιμαρτυροῦσι. τὸ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς τέχνης ἢ δυνάμεως ζητεῖν ἔνδοξον εἶναι καὶ περίβλεπτον οὐδὲν ἐν φαύλοις διαφέρει τοῦ μιᾶς ἐρῶντας ἀμφοτέρους βούλεσθαι πλέον ἔχειν καὶ μᾶλλον εὐδοκιμεῖν τοῦ ἑτέρου τὸν ἕτερον. οἱ μὲν οὖν καθ’ ἑτέρας ὁδοὺς βαδίζοντες οὐθὲν ἀλλήλους [d] ὠφελοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ βίοις χρώμενοι διαφόροις τόν τε φθόνον ἐκτρέπονται καὶ συνεργοῦσιν ἀλλήλοις μᾶλλον, ὡς Δημοσθένης καὶ Χάρης, καὶ πάλιν Αἰσχίνης καὶ Εὔβουλος, καὶ Ὑπερείδης καὶ Λεωσθένης, οἱ μὲν λέγοντες ἐν τῷ δήμῳ καὶ γράφοντες οἱ δὲ στρατηγοῦντες καὶ πράττοντες. ὅθεν ἀπωτάτω δεῖ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τρέπεσθαι καὶ ταῖς φιλοτιμίαις τῶν ἀδελφῶν τοὺς ἀφθόνως δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως κοινωνεῖν μὴ πεφυκότας, ὅπως εὐφραίνωσιν εὐημεροῦντες ἀλλήλους ἀλλὰ μὴ λυπῶσι.

Παρὰ πάντα δὲ ταῦτα φυλακτέον ἐστὶ κηδεστῶν καὶ [e] οἰκείων καὶ γυναικὸς ἔστιν ὅτε τῇ φιλοδοξίᾳ συνεπιτιθεμένης λόγους πονηρούς ‘ὁ ἀδελφὸς ἄγει καὶ φέρει πάντα καὶ θαυμάζεται καὶ θεραπεύεται, σοὶ δ’ οὐδεὶς πρόσεισιν οὐδ’ ἔχεις σεμνὸν οὐδέν.’ ‘ἔχω μὲν οὖν’ φαίη τις ἂν εὖ φρονῶν ‘ἀδελφὸν εὐδοκιμοῦντα καὶ μέτεστί μοι τῆς ἐκείνου δυνάμεως τὸ πλεῖστον.’ ὁ μὲν γὰρ Σωκράτης ἔλεγε βούλεσθαι Δαρεῖον ἔχειν μᾶλλον φίλον ἢ [τὸ] δαρεικόν, ἀδελφῷ δὲ νοῦν ἔχοντι καὶ πλούτου καὶ ἀρχῆς καὶ λογιότητος οὐκ ἔλαττον ἀγαθόν ἐστιν ἄρχων ἀδελφὸς ἢ πλουτῶν ἢ λόγου δυνάμει προήκων εἰς δόξαν.

Ἀλλὰ ταύτας μὲν οὕτω μάλιστα τὰς ἀνωμαλίας παρηγορητέον· [f] ἕτεραι δ’ εὐθὺς ἐγγίνονται διαφοραὶ περὶ τὰς ἡλικίας ἀπαιδεύτοις ἀδελφοῖς. ἐπιεικῶς γὰρ οἵ τε πρεσβύτεροι τῶν νεωτέρων ἄρχειν ἀξιοῦντες ἀεὶ καὶ προΐστασθαι καὶ πλέον ἔχειν ἐν παντὶ δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως βαρεῖς εἰσι καὶ ἀηδεῖς, οἵ τε νεώτεροι πάλιν ἀφηνιάζοντες καὶ θρασυνόμενοι καταφρονεῖν καὶ ὀλιγωρεῖν ἀσκοῦσιν. ἐκ δὲ τούτων οἱ μὲν ὡς φθονούμενοι καὶ κολουόμενοι φεύγουσι καὶ δυσχεραίνουσι τὰς [487] [a] νουθεσίας, οἱ δ’ ἀεὶ τῆς ὑπεροχῆς γλιχόμενοι φοβοῦνται τὴν ἐκείνων αὔξησιν ὡς αὑτῶν κατάλυσιν. ὥσπερ οὖν ἐπὶ τῆς χάριτος ἀξιοῦσι μείζονα τοὺς λαμβάνοντας ἡγεῖσθαι μικροτέραν δὲ τοὺς διδόντας, οὕτως ἄν τις τὸν χρόνον παραινῶν τῷ μὲν πρεσβυτέρῳ μὴ μέγαν νομίζειν τῷ δὲ νεωτέρῳ μὴ μικρὸν ὑπεροψίας καὶ ἀμελείας καὶ τοῦ καταφρονεῖσθαι καὶ καταφρονεῖν ἀμφοτέρους ἀπαλλάξειεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῷ μὲν πρεσβυτέρῳ τὸ κήδεσθαι καὶ καθηγεῖσθαι καὶ νουθετεῖν προσῆκόν ἐστι τῷ δὲ νεωτέρῳ τὸ τιμᾶν καὶ ζηλοῦν καὶ ἀκολουθεῖν, ἡ μὲν ἐκείνου κηδεμονία τὸ ἑταιρικὸν [b] μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ πατρικὸν ἐχέτω καὶ τὸ πεῖθον ἢ τὸ ἐπιτάττον καὶ τὸ χαῖρον ἐπὶ τοῖς κατορθώμασι καὶ κατευφημοῦν τοῦ ψέγοντος ἂν ἁμάρτῃ καὶ κολούοντος μὴ μόνον προθυμότερον ἀλλὰ καὶ φιλανθρωπότερον, τῷ δὲ τοῦ νεωτέρου ζήλῳ τὸ μιμούμενον ἐνέστω μὴ τὸ ἁμιλλώμενον· θαυμάζοντος γὰρ ἡ μίμησις ἡ δ’ ἅμιλλα φθονοῦντός ἐστι. διὸ τοὺς μὲν ἐξομοιοῦσθαι βουλομένους ἀγαπῶσι τοὺς δ’ ἐξισοῦσθαι πιέζουσι καὶ χαλέπτουσιν. ἐν πολλαῖς δὲ τιμαῖς, ἃς πρέπει παρὰ τῶν νέων ἀποδίδοσθαι τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις, τὸ πειθαρχεῖν εὐδοκιμεῖ μάλιστα καὶ κατεργάζεται [c] μετ’ αἰδοῦς εὔνοιαν ἰσχυρὰν καὶ χάριν ἀνθυπείκουσαν. ᾗ καὶ Κάτων τὸν Καιπίωνα πρεσβύτερον ὄντα θεραπεύων εὐθὺς ἐκ παίδων εὐπειθείᾳ καὶ πραότητι καὶ σιωπῇ τέλος οὕτως ἐπ’ ἀνδράσιν ἐχειρώσατο καὶ τοσαύτης ἐνέπλησεν αἰδοῦς πρὸς ἑαυτόν, ὡς μήτε πρᾶξαί τι μήτ’ εἰπεῖν ἀγνοοῦντος ἐκείνου. μνημονεύεται γοῦν, ὅτι μαρτυρίας ποτὲ γραμματεῖον ἐπισφραγισαμένου τοῦ Καιπίωνος ὁ Κάτων ὕστερος ἐπελθὼν οὐκ ἠθέλησεν ἐπισφραγίσασθαι, καὶ ὁ Καιπίων ἀπαιτήσας τὸ γραμματεῖον ἀφεῖλε τὴν αὑτοῦ σφραγῖδα πρὶν ἢ πυθέσθαι τί παθὼν ὁ ἀδελφὸς οὐκ ἐπίστευσεν [d] ἀλλ’ ὑπείδετο τὴν μαρτυρίαν. φαίνεται δὲ πολλὴ καὶ πρὸς Ἐπίκουρον αἰδὼς τῶν ἀδελφῶν δι’ εὔνοιαν αὐτοῦ καὶ κηδεμονίαν εἴς τε τἄλλα καὶ φιλοσοφίαν τὴν ἐκείνου συνενθουσιώντων· καὶ γὰρ εἰ διημάρτανον δόξης εὐθὺς ἐκ παίδων πεπεισμένοι καὶ λέγοντες ὡς οὐδεὶς γέγονεν Ἐπικούρου σοφώτερος, ἄξιόν ἐστι θαυμάζειν καὶ τοῦ διαθέντος οὕτως καὶ τῶν διατεθέντων. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν νεωτέρων φιλοσόφων Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ περιπατητικὸς ἤλεγξε τὸν εἰπόντα δόξαν ἀκοινώνητον εἶναι, Σωτίωνα νεώτερον ἀδελφὸν αὑτοῦ ποιήσας ἐνδοξότερον. ἐμοὶ μὲν γὰρ ὅτι πολλῶν ἀξίων χάριτος παρὰ τῆς τύχης γεγονότων [e] ἡ Τίμωνος εὔνοια τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ πρὸς ἅπαντα τἄλλα γέγονε καὶ ἔστιν, οὐδεὶς ἀγνοεῖ τῶν ὁπωσοῦν ἐντετυχηκότων ἡμῖν, ἥκιστα δ’ ὑμεῖς οἱ συνήθεις.

Ἕτερα τοίνυν ταῖς παραλλήλοις καὶ σύνεγγυς ἡλικίαις ἀδελφῶν φυλακτέον ἐστὶ πάθη, μικρὰ μὲν συνεχῆ δὲ καὶ πολλὰ καὶ πονηρὰν ποιοῦντα τοῦ λυπεῖν καὶ παροξύνειν ἑαυτοὺς ἐπὶ πᾶσι μελέτην, τελευτῶσαν εἰς ἀνήκεστα μίση καὶ κακοθυμίας. ἀρξάμενοι γὰρ ἐπὶ παιδιαῖς διαφέρεσθαι, περὶ τροφὰς ζῴων καὶ ἀγῶνας, οἷον ὀρτύγων ἢ ἀλεκτρυόνων, εἶτα παίδων ἐν παλαίστραις καὶ κυνῶν ἐν [f] θήραις καὶ ἵππων ἐν ἁμίλλαις, οὐκέτι κρατεῖν ἐν τοῖς μείζοσιν οὐδὲ καταπαύειν τὸ φιλόνικον δύνανται καὶ φιλότιμον. ὥσπερ Ἑλλήνων οἱ καθ’ ἡμᾶς δυνατώτατοι περὶ σπουδὰς ὀρχηστῶν εἶτα κιθαρῳδῶν διαστάντες, ἐκ τούτου τὰς ἐν Αἰδηψῷ κολυμβήθρας καὶ παστάδας καὶ ἀνδρῶνας ἀντιπαραβάλλοντες ἀεὶ καὶ τοπομαχοῦντες καὶ ἀποκόπτοντες ὀχετοὺς καὶ ἀποστρέφοντες οὕτως ἐξηγριώθησαν [488] [a] καὶ διεφθάρησαν, ὥστε πάντων ἀφαιρεθέντες ὑπὸ τοῦ τυράννου καὶ φυγάδες καὶ πένητες καὶ ὀλίγου δέω λέγειν ἕτεροι τῶν πρότερον γενόμενοι μόνῳ διέμειναν οἱ αὐτοὶ τῷ μισεῖν ἀλλήλους. ὅθεν οὐχ ἥκιστα δεῖ περὶ τὰ μικρὰ καὶ πρῶτα παραδυομένῃ τῇ πρὸς τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς φιλονικίᾳ καὶ ζηλοτυπίᾳ διαμάχεσθαι, μελετῶντας ἀνθυπείκειν καὶ ἡττᾶσθαι καὶ χαίρειν τῷ χαρίζεσθαι μᾶλλον αὐτοῖς ἢ τῷ νικᾶν. οὐ γὰρ ἑτέραν οἱ παλαιοὶ Καδμείαν νίκην ἀλλὰ τὴν περὶ Θήβας τῶν ἀδελφῶν ὡς αἰσχίστην καὶ κακίστην προσηγόρευσαν.

Τί οὖν; οὐχὶ πολλὰς τὰ πράγματα καὶ τοῖς ἐπιεικῶς [b] ἔχειν δοκοῦσι καὶ πράως φέρει προφάσεις ἀντιλογιῶν καὶ διαφορῶν; καὶ μάλα· ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖ φυλακτέον, ὅπως τὰ πράγματα μάχηται καθ’ αὑτὰ, μηδὲν ἐκ φιλονικίας μηδ’ ὀργῆς πάθος οἷον ἄγκιστρον προσθέντας ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ζυγοῦ τοῦ δικαίου τὴν ῥοπὴν κοινῶς ἀποθεωροῦντας καὶ τάχιστα ταῖς κρίσεσι καὶ ταῖς διαίταις τὴν ἀμφιλογίαν παραδιδόντας ἀποκαθῆραι, πρὶν ἐνδῦσαν ὥσπερ βαφὴν ἢ κηλῖδα δευσοποιὸν γενέσθαι καὶ δυσέκπλυτον· εἶτα μιμεῖσθαι τοὺς Πυθαγορικούς, οἳ γένει μηθὲν προσήκοντες ἀλλὰ [c] κοινοῦ λόγου μετέχοντες, εἴ ποτε προαχθεῖεν εἰς λοιδορίαν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς, πρὶν ἢ τὸν ἥλιον δῦναι τὰς δεξιὰς ἐμβαλόντες ἀλλήλοις καὶ ἀσπασάμενοι διελύοντο. καθάπερ γὰρ ἐπὶ βουβῶνι πυρετοῦ γενομένου δεινὸν οὐθέν ἐστιν, ἂν δὲ παυσαμένου παραμένῃ, νόσος εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ βαθυτέραν ἔχειν ἀρχήν, οὕτως ἀδελφῶν ἡ μετὰ τὸ πρᾶγμα παυομένη διαφορὰ τοῦ πράγματός ἐστι, τῆς δ’ ἐπιμενούσης πρόφασις ἦν τὸ πρᾶγμα μοχθηράν τινα καὶ ὕπουλον αἰτίαν ἔχον.

Ἄξιον δὲ πυθέσθαι βαρβάρων ἀδελφῶν διαδικασίαν, οὐ περὶ γῃδίου μερίδος οὐδ’ ἐπ’ ἀνδραπόδοις ἢ προβατίοις [d] γενομένην ἀλλὰ περὶ τῆς Περσῶν ἡγεμονίας. Δαρείου γὰρ ἀποθανόντος οἱ μὲν ἠξίουν Ἀριαμένην βασιλεύειν, πρεσβύτατον ὄντα τῆς γενεᾶς, οἱ δὲ Ξέρξην, Ἀτόσσης τε μητρὸς ὄντα τῆς Κύρου θυγατρὸς ἔκ τε Δαρείου βασιλεύοντος ἤδη γεγενημένον. Ἀριαμένης μὲν οὖν κατέβαινεν ἐκ Μήδων οὐ πολεμικῶς ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ δίκην ἡσυχαῖος, Ξέρξης δὲ παρὼν ἔπραττεν ἅπερ ἦν βασιλεῖ προσήκοντα. ἐλθόντος δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ θεὶς τὸ διάδημα καὶ καταβαλὼν τὴν τιάραν, ἣν φοροῦσιν ὀρθὴν οἱ βασιλεύοντες, ἀπήντησεν αὐτῷ καὶ ἠσπάσατο, καὶ δῶρα πέμπων [e] ἐκέλευσεν εἰπεῖν τοὺς κομίζοντας ‘τούτοις σε νῦν τιμᾷ Ξέρξης ὁ ἀδελφός· ἂν δὲ βασιλεὺς κρίσει καὶ ψήφῳ Περσῶν ἀναγορευθῇ, δίδωσί σοι δευτέρῳ μεθ’ ἑαυτὸν εἶναι.’ καὶ ὁ Ἀριαμένης ‘ἐγὼ δ’’ ἔφη ‘τὰ μὲν δῶρα δέχομαι, βασιλείαν δὲ τὴν Περσῶν ἐμαυτῷ νομίζω προσήκειν· τιμὴν δὲ τὴν μετ’ ἐμὲ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς φυλάξω, Ξέρξῃ δὲ πρώτῳ τῶν ἀδελφῶν.’ ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡ κρίσις ἐνέστη, Πέρσαι μὲν Ἀρτάβανον, ἀδελφὸν ὄντα Δαρείου, δικαστὴν ἀπέφηναν †δόξαν αὐτοῖς, Ξέρξης δ’ ἔφευγεν ἐπ’ ἐκείνου κριθῆναι τῷ πλήθει πεποιθώς. Ἄτοσσα δ’ ἡ μήτηρ ἐπέπληξεν [f] αὐτῷ ‘τί φεύγεις Ἀρτάβανον, ὦ παῖ, θεῖον ὄντα καὶ Περσῶν ἄριστον; τί δ’ οὕτως τὸν ἀγῶνα δέδοικας, ἐν ᾧ καλὰ καὶ τὰ δευτερεῖα, Περσῶν βασιλέως ἀδελφὸν κριθῆναι;’ πεισθέντος οὖν Ξέρξου καὶ γενομένων λόγων Ἀρτάβανος μὲν ἀπεφήνατο Ξέρξῃ τὴν βασιλείαν προσήκειν, Ἀριαμένης δ’ εὐθὺς ἀναπηδήσας προσεκύνησε τὸν ἀδελφὸν καὶ λαβόμενος τῆς δεξιᾶς εἰς τὸν θρόνον ἐκάθισε τὸν βασίλειον. ἐκ τούτου μέγιστος ἦν παρ’ αὐτῷ καὶ παρεῖχεν εὔνουν ἑαυτόν, ὥστ’ ἀριστεύων ἐν τῇ περὶ Σαλαμῖνα ναυμαχίᾳ [489] [a] πεσεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐκείνου δόξης. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ὥσπερ ἀρχέτυπον ἐκκείσθω καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμώμητον εὐμενείας καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνης· Ἀντιόχου δὲ τὴν μὲν φιλαρχίαν ψέξειεν ἄν τις, ὅτι δ’ οὐ παντάπασιν αὐτῇ τὸ φιλάδελφον ἐνηφανίσθη, θαυμάσειεν. ἐπολέμει γὰρ ὑπὲρ τῆς βασιλείας Σελεύκῳ νεώτερος ὢν ἀδελφὸς καὶ τὴν μητέρα συλλαμβάνουσαν εἶχεν· ἀκμάζοντος δὲ τοῦ πολέμου μάχην ὁ Σέλευκος Γαλάταις συνάψας καὶ ἡττηθεὶς οὐδαμοῦ φανερὸς ἦν ἀλλ’ ἔδοξε τεθνάναι, πάσης ὁμοῦ τι τῆς στρατιᾶς ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων κατακοπείσης. πυθόμενος οὖν ὁ Ἀντίοχος τὴν πορφύραν ἔθηκε καὶ φαιὸν ἱμάτιον ἔλαβε, καὶ [b] τὰ βασίλεια κλείσας ἐπένθει τὸν ἀδελφόν· ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἀκούσας, ὅτι σῴζεται καὶ δύναμιν αὖθις ἑτέραν ἀθροίζει, τοῖς τε θεοῖς ἔθυσε προελθὼν καὶ ταῖς πόλεσιν ὧν ἦρχε θύειν καὶ στεφανηφορεῖν ἐπήγγειλεν. Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ τὸν περὶ τῆς ἔριδος τῶν θεῶν μῦθον ἀτόπως πλάσαντες ἐπανόρθωμα τῆς ἀτοπίας οὐ φαῦλον ἐνέμιξαν αὐτῷ· τὴν γὰρ δευτέραν ἐξαιροῦσιν ἀεὶ τοῦ Βοηδρομιῶνος, ὡς ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῷ Ποσειδῶνι πρὸς τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν γενομένης τῆς διαφορᾶς. τί οὖν κωλύει καὶ ἡμᾶς ἐν διαφορᾷ ποτε πρὸς οἰκείους καὶ συγγενεῖς γενομένους ἐν ἀμνηστίᾳ τὴν ἡμέραν [c] ἐκείνην τίθεσθαι καὶ μίαν τῶν ἀποφράδων νομίζειν, ἀλλὰ μὴ πολλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἐν αἷς συνετράφημεν καὶ συνεβιώσαμεν ἡμερῶν διὰ μίαν ἐπιλανθάνεσθαι; ἢ γὰρ μάτην καὶ πρὸς οὐθὲν ἡ φύσις ἡμῖν ἔδωκε πραότητα καὶ μετριοπαθείας ἔκγονον ἀνεξικακίαν, ἢ μάλιστα χρηστέον τούτοις πρὸς συγγενεῖς καὶ οἰκείους. οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τοῦ διδόναι συγγνώμην ἁμαρτοῦσι τὸ αἰτεῖσθαι καὶ λαμβάνειν αὐτοὺς ἁμαρτόντας εὔνοιαν ἐμφαίνει καὶ φιλοστοργίαν. ὅθεν ὀργιζομένων τε δεῖ μὴ ἀμελεῖν καὶ παραιτουμένοις μὴ ἀντιτείνειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ φθάνειν πολλάκις ἁμαρτόντας αὐτοὺς τῇ παραιτήσει [d] τὴν ὀργὴν ἀδικηθέντας τε πάλιν αὖ τῇ συγγνώμῃ τὴν παραίτησιν.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Σωκρατικὸς Εὐκλείδης ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς περιβόητός ἐστιν, ὅτι φωνὴν ἀκούσας ἀγνώμονα καὶ θηριώδη τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος ‘ἀπολοίμην, εἰ μή σε τιμωρησαίμην’ ‘ἐγὼ δ’,’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ μή σε πείσαιμι παύσασθαι τῆς ὀργῆς καὶ φιλεῖν ἡμᾶς ὡς πρότερον ἐφίλεις.’ τὸ δ’ Εὐμένους τοῦ βασιλέως ἔργον οὐ λόγος ὑπερβολὴν οὐδενὶ πραότητος ἀπολέλοιπεν. Περσεὺς γὰρ ὁ τῶν Μακεδόνων βασιλεὺς ἐχθρὸς ὢν αὐτῷ παρεσκεύασε τοὺς ἀποκτενοῦντας· οἱ δὲ περὶ Δελφοὺς ἐνήδρευον [e] αἰσθόμενοι βαδίζοντα πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἀπὸ θαλάσσης. γενόμενοι δ’ ὄπισθεν αὐτοῦ λίθους μεγάλους ἐμβάλλουσιν εἴς τε τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ τὸν τράχηλον, ὑφ’ ὧν σκοτωθεὶς καὶ πεσὼν ἔδοξε τεθνάναι· καὶ περιῆλθε φήμη πανταχόσε, καὶ φίλοι τινὲς ἀφίκοντο καὶ θεράποντες εἰς Πέργαμον αὐτάγγελοι τοῦ πάθους ἥκειν δοκοῦντες. Ἄτταλος οὖν ὁ πρεσβύτατος αὐτοῦ τῶν ἀδελφῶν, ἀνὴρ ἐπιεικὴς καὶ περὶ τὸν Εὐμένη πάντων ἄριστος, οὐ μόνον βασιλεὺς ἀνηγορεύθη διαδησάμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ Στρατονίκην ἔγημε καὶ συνῆλθεν· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀπηγγέλη ζῶν ὁ [f] Εὐμένης καὶ προσῄει, θεὶς τὸ διάδημα καὶ λαβὼν ὥσπερ εἰώθει τὰ δοράτια μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἀπήντησεν αὐτῷ δορυφόρων. ὁ δὲ κἀκεῖνον εὐμενῶς ἐδεξιώσατο καὶ τὴν βασίλισσαν ἠσπάσατο μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ φιλοφροσύνης, καὶ χρόνον οὐκ ὀλίγον ἐπιβιώσας ἀμέμπτως καὶ ἀνυπόπτως ἀπέθανε, τῷ Ἀττάλῳ τήν τε βασιλείαν καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα παρεγγυήσας. τί οὖν ἐκεῖνος; ἀποθανόντος αὐτοῦ παιδίον οὐδὲ ἓν ἠθέλησεν ἐκ τῆς γυναικὸς ἀνελέσθαι τεκούσης [490] [a] πολλάκις, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἐκείνου παῖδα θρέψας καὶ ἀνδρώσας ἔτι ζῶν ἐπέθηκε τὸ διάδημα καὶ βασιλέα προσηγόρευσεν. ἀλλὰ Καμβύσης ἐξ ἐνυπνίου φοβηθεὶς ὡς βασιλεύσοντα τῆς Ἀσίας τὸν ἀδελφόν, οὐδεμίαν ἀπόδειξιν οὐδ’ ἔλεγχον ἀναμείνας ἀπέκτεινεν. ὅθεν ἐξέπεσε τῆς Κύρου διαδοχῆς ἡ ἀρχὴ τελευτήσαντος αὐτοῦ, καὶ τὸ Δαρείου γένος ἐβασίλευσεν, ἀνδρὸς οὐ μόνον ἀδελφοῖς ἀλλὰ καὶ φίλοις ἐπισταμένου κοινωνεῖν πραγμάτων καὶ δυνάμεως.

Ἔτι τοίνυν ἐκεῖνο δεῖ μνημονεύειν ἐν ταῖς πρὸς τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς διαφοραῖς καὶ φυλάττειν, τὸ τοῖς φίλοις αὐτῶν [b] ὁμιλεῖν καὶ πλησιάζειν τότε μάλιστα, φεύγειν δὲ τοὺς

Ἔτι τοίνυν ἐκεῖνο δεῖ μνημονεύειν ἐν ταῖς πρὸς τοὺς τοῦτο τὸ Κρητῶν, οἳ πολλάκις στασιάζοντες ἀλλήλοις καὶ πολεμοῦντες ἔξωθεν ἐπιόντων πολεμίων διελύοντο καὶ συνίσταντο· καὶ τοῦτ’ ἦν ὁ καλούμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ‘συγκρητισμός’. ἔνιοι γὰρ ὥσπερ ὕδωρ τοῖς χαλῶσι καὶ διισταμένοις ὑπορρέοντες ἀνατρέπουσιν οἰκειότητας καὶ φιλίας, μισοῦντες μὲν ἀμφοτέρους ἐπιτιθέμενοι δὲ τῷ μᾶλλον ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας ἐνδιδόντι. τῷ μὲν γὰρ ἐρῶντι συνερῶσιν οἱ νεαροὶ καὶ ἄκακοι τῶν φίλων, τῷ δ’ ὀργιζομένῳ καὶ διαφερομένῳ [c] πρὸς ἀδελφὸν οἱ κακοηθέστατοι τῶν ἐχθρῶν συναγανακτεῖν καὶ συνοργίζεσθαι δοκοῦσι. καθάπερ οὖν ἡ Αἰσώπειος ἀλεκτορὶς (fab. 16) πρὸς τὴν αἴλουρον, ὡς δὴ κατ’ εὔνοιαν αὐτῆς νοσούσης ὅπως ἔχει πυνθανομένην, ‘καλῶς’ εἶπεν ‘ἂν σὺ ἀποστῇς’, οὕτω πρὸς τοιοῦτον ἄνθρωπον ἐμβάλλοντα λόγον ὑπὲρ τῆς διαφορᾶς καὶ πυνθανόμενον καὶ ὑπορύττοντα τῶν ἀπορρήτων ἔνια χρὴ λέγειν ‘ἀλλ’ ἔμοιγε πρᾶγμα πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν οὐθέν ἐστιν, ἂν μήτ’ ἐγὼ τοῖς διαβάλλουσι προσέχω μήτ’ ἐκεῖνος.’ νυνὶ δ’ οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως ὀφθαλμιῶντες μὲν οἰόμεθα δεῖν ἀποστρέφειν ἐπὶ τὰ μὴ ποιοῦντα πληγὴν μηδ’ ἀντιτυπίαν χρώματα [d] καὶ σώματα τὴν ὄψιν, ἐν δὲ μέμψεσι καὶ ὀργαῖς καὶ ὑπονοίαις πρὸς ἀδελφοὺς γενόμενοι χαίρομεν καὶ προσαναχρωννύμεθα τοῖς ἐκταράττουσιν, ὅτε καλῶς εἶχε τοὺς μὲν ἐχθροὺς καὶ δυσμενεῖς ἀποδιδράσκειν καὶ λανθάνειν, συνεῖναι δὲ καὶ συνδιημερεύειν μάλιστα κηδεσταῖς ἐκείνων καὶ οἰκείοις καὶ φίλοις καὶ πρὸς γυναῖκας αὐτῶν εἰσιόντας αἰτιᾶσθαι καὶ παρρησιάζεσθαι. καίτοι λίθον οὔ φασι χρῆναι μέσον ἀδελφοὺς λαμβάνειν ὁδὸν βαδίζοντας, ἄχθονται δὲ καὶ κυνὸς διεκδραμόντος, καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα δεδίασιν ὧν οὐδὲν ὁμόνοιαν ἀδελφῶν διέστησεν, ἀνθρώπους [e] δὲ κυνικοὺς καὶ διαβόλους ἐν μέσῳ λαμβάνοντες αὑτῶν καὶ περιπταίοντες οὐ συνορῶσι.

Διὸ τοῦ λόγου τὸ συνεχὲς ὑπαγορεύοντος, εὖ μὲν εἶπε Θεόφραστος (fr. 75) ὡς ‘εἰ κοινὰ τὰ φίλων ἐστί, μάλιστα δεῖ κοινοὺς τῶν φίλων εἶναι τοὺς φίλους·’ οὐχ ἥκιστα δ’ ἄν τις ἀδελφοῖς τοῦτο παραινέσειεν. αἱ γὰρ ἰδίᾳ καὶ χωρὶς ὁμιλίαι καὶ συνήθειαι πρὸς ἄλλους ἀποστρέφουσι καὶ ἀπάγουσιν ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων· τῷ γὰρ φιλεῖν ἑτέρους εὐθὺς ἕπεται τὸ χαίρειν ἑτέροις καὶ ζηλοῦν ἑτέρους καὶ ἄγεσθαι ὑφ’ ἑτέρων. ἠθοποιοῦσι γὰρ αἱ φιλίαι, καὶ μεῖζον οὐθέν ἐστιν ἠθῶν διαφορᾶς σημεῖον ἢ φίλων αἱρέσεις διαφερόντων.

[f] ὅθεν οὔτε τὸ συνεσθίειν ἀδελφῷ καὶ συμπίνειν οὔτε τὸ συμπαίζειν καὶ συνδιημερεύειν οὕτω συνεκτικόν ἐστιν ὁμονοίας ὡς τὸ συμφιλεῖν καὶ συνεχθραίνειν ἥδεσθαι τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς συνόντα καὶ πάλιν βδελύττεσθαι καὶ φεύγειν. οὐδὲ γὰρ διαβολὰς αἱ κοιναὶ φιλίαι φέρουσιν οὐδὲ συγκρούσεις· ἀλλὰ κἂν γένηταί τις ὀργὴ καὶ μέμψις, ἐκλύεται διὰ μέσου τῶν φίλων ἐκδεχομένων καὶ διασκεδαννύντων, ἄνπερ ἀμφοτέροις οἰκείως ἔχωσι καὶ πρὸς ἀμφοτέρους [491] [a] ὁμοῦ τῇ εὐνοίᾳ συννεύωσιν. ὡς γὰρ ὁ κασσίτερος ῥαγέντα τὸν χαλκὸν συναρμόττει καὶ συγκεράννυσι τῷ ψαύειν ἑκατέρου πέρατος οἰκείως ὁμοπαθὴς γινόμενος, οὕτως δεῖ τὸν φίλον εὐάρμοστον ὄντα καὶ κοινὸν ἀμφοτέροις τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς προσκαταπυκνοῦν τὴν εὔνοιαν· οἱ δ’ ἄνισοι καὶ ἄμικτοι καθάπερ ἐν διαγράμματι μουσικῷ φθόγγοι διάζευξιν οὐ συναφὴν ποιοῦσιν. ἔστιν οὖν διαπορῆσαι πότερον ὀρθῶς ἢ τοὐναντίον ὁ Ἡσίοδος εἶπε (OD 707)

‘μηδὲ κασιγνήτῳ ἶσον ποιεῖσθαι ἑταῖρον.’

ὁ μὲν γὰρ εὐγνώμων καὶ κοινός, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, μᾶλλον ἐγκραθεὶς δι’ ἀμφοτέρων σύνδεσμος ἔσται τῆς φιλαδελφίας· [b] ὁ δ’ Ἡσίοδος ὡς ἔοικεν ἐφοβήθη τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ φαύλους διὰ τὸ δύσζηλον καὶ φίλαυτον. ὃ δὴ καλῶς ἔχει φυλαττομένους, κἂν εὔνοιαν ἴσην φίλῳ νέμῃ τις, ἀεὶ τὰ πρωτεῖα τῷ ἀδελφῷ φυλάττειν ἐν ἀρχαῖς καὶ πολιτείαις ἔν τε κλήσεσι καὶ γνωρίσεσιν ἡγεμόνων καὶ ὅσα τοῖς πολλοῖς ἐπιφανῆ καὶ πρὸς δόξαν ἐστί, τὸ προσῆκον ἀξίωμα τῇ φύσει καὶ γέρας ἀποδιδόντας. οὐ γὰρ οὕτως τῷ φίλῳ τὸ πλέον ἐν τούτοις σεμνόν, ὡς ἀδελφῷ τοὔλαττον αἰσχρὸν γίνεται καὶ ἄδοξον.

Ἀλλὰ περὶ ταύτης μὲν ἑτέρωθι τῆς γνώμης γέγραπται [c] τὰ δοκοῦντα διὰ πλειόνων· τὸ δὲ Μενάνδρειον ὀρθῶς ἔχον, ὡς ‘οὐδεὶς ἀγαπῶν αὐτὸς ἀμελεῖθ’ ἡδέως’ (fr. 757), ὑπομιμνήσκει καὶ διδάσκει τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἐπιμελεῖσθαι καὶ μὴ τῇ φύσει πιστεύοντας ὀλιγωρεῖν. καὶ γὰρ ἵππος τῇ φύσει φιλάνθρωπον καὶ κύων φιλοδέσποτον, ἀλλὰ μὴ τυγχάνοντα θεραπείας μηδ’ ἐπιμελείας ἀπόστοργα γίνεται καὶ ἀλλότρια· καὶ τὸ σῶμα τῆς ψυχῆς συγγενέστατόν ἐστιν, ἀμελούμενον δὲ καὶ παρορώμενον ὑπ’ αὐτῆς οὐκ ἐθέλει συνεργεῖν ἀλλὰ λυμαίνεται καὶ προλείπει τὰς πράξεις. ἐπιμέλεια δὲ καλὴ μὲν αὐτῶν [d] τῶν ἀδελφῶν, ἔτι δὲ καλλίων πενθεροῖς καὶ γαμβροῖς τοῖς ἐκείνων εὔνουν ἀεὶ παρέχειν εἰς ἅπαντα καὶ πρόθυμον ἑαυτόν, οἰκέτας τε φιλοδεσπότους ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι, καὶ χάριν ἔχειν ἰατροῖς θεραπεύσασιν αὐτοὺς καὶ φίλοις πιστοῖς καὶ προθύμως συνδιενεγκοῦσιν ἀποδημίαν ἢ στρατείαν· γυναῖκα δ’ ἀδελφοῦ γαμετὴν ὡς ἁπάντων ἱερῶν ἁγιώτατον προσορῶντα καὶ σεβόμενον, τιμᾶν τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ εὐφημεῖν, ἀμελουμένῃ δὲ συναγανακτεῖν χαλεπαίνουσαν δὲ πραΰνειν, ἂν δ’ ἁμάρτῃ τι τῶν μετρίων, συνδιαλλάττειν καὶ συμπαρακαλεῖν τὸν ἄνδρα, κἂν αὐτῷ τις ἰδίᾳ γένηται διαφορὰ πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφόν, αἰτιᾶσθαι παρ’ [e] ἐκείνῃ καὶ διαλύεσθαι τὴν μέμψιν. ἀγαμίαν δ’ ἀδελφοῦ καὶ ἀπαιδίαν μάλιστα δυσχεραίνειν καὶ παρακαλοῦντα καὶ λοιδοροῦντα συνελαύνειν πανταχόθεν εἰς γάμον καὶ συνειργνύναι νομίμοις κηδεύμασι· κτησαμένου δὲ παῖδας ἐμφανέστερον χρῆσθαι τῇ τε πρὸς αὐτὸν εὐνοίᾳ καὶ τῇ πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα τιμῇ· τοῖς δὲ παισὶν εὔνουν μὲν ὥσπερ ἰδίοις ἤπιον δὲ μᾶλλον εἶναι καὶ μείλιχον, ὅπως ἁμαρτάνοντες οἷα νέοι μὴ δραπετεύωσι μηδὲ καταδύωνται διὰ φόβον πατρὸς ἢ μητρὸς εἰς ὁμιλίας φαύλας καὶ ὀλιγώρους, ἀλλ’ ἀποστροφὴν καὶ καταφυγὴν ἅμα νουθετοῦσαν εὐνοίᾳ καὶ [f] παραιτουμένην ἔχωσιν. οὕτω καὶ Πλάτων ἀδελφιδοῦν ὄντα Σπεύσιππον ἐκ πολλῆς ἀνέσεως καὶ ἀκολασίας ἐπέστρεψεν, οὐδὲν οὔτ’ εἰπὼν ἀνιαρὸν οὔτε ποιήσας πρὸς αὐτόν, ἀλλὰ φεύγοντι τοὺς γονεῖς ἐλέγχοντας ἀεὶ καὶ λοιδοροῦντας [492] [a] ἐνδιδοὺς ἑαυτὸν εὐμενῆ καὶ ἀμήνιτον αἰδῶ τε πολλὴν ἐνειργάσατο καὶ ζῆλον ἑαυτοῦ καὶ φιλοσοφίας. καίτοι πολλοὶ τῶν φίλων ἐνεκάλουν ὡς μὴ νουθετοῦντι τὸ μειράκιον· ὁ δὲ καὶ πάνυ νουθετεῖν ἔλεγε, τῷ βίῳ καὶ τῇ διαίτῃ τῆς πρὸς τὰ αἰσχρὰ τῶν καλῶν διαφορᾶς παρέχων κατανόησιν. Ἀλεύαν δὲ τὸν Θεσσαλὸν ὁ μὲν πατὴρ ἀγέρωχον ὄντα καὶ ὑβριστὴν ἐκόλουε καὶ χαλεπὸς ἦν, ὁ δὲ θεῖος ἀνελάμβανε καὶ προσήγετο· πεμπόντων δὲ τῶν Θεσσαλῶν φρυκτοὺς περὶ βασιλέως πρὸς τὸν θεὸν εἰς Δελφοὺς ἐνέβαλε [b] κρύφα τοῦ πατρὸς ὁ θεῖος ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ἀλεύα· καὶ τῆς Πυθίας τοῦτον ἀνελούσης ὅ τε πατὴρ ἀπέφησεν ἐμβεβληκέναι τὸν φρυκτὸν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ, καὶ πᾶσιν ἐδόκει πλάνη τις ἐν ταῖς καταγραφαῖς τῶν ὀνομάτων γεγονέναι. διὸ καὶ πέμψαντες αὖθις ἐπανήροντο τὸν θεόν· ἡ δὲ Πυθία καθάπερ ἐκβεβαιουμένη τὴν προτέραν ἀναγόρευσιν εἶπε

‘τὸν πυρρόν τοί φημι, τὸν Ἀρχεδίκη τέκε παῖδα.’

καὶ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ὁ Ἀλεύας ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ βασιλεὺς διὰ τὸν τοῦ πατρὸς ἀδελφὸν ἀποδειχθεὶς αὐτός τε πολὺ πάντων ἐπρώτευσε τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ ἔθνος εἰς δόξαν προήγαγε μεγάλην καὶ δύναμιν. ἀλλὰ μὴν εὐπραξίαις τε [c] καὶ τιμαῖς καὶ ἀρχαῖς παίδων ἀδελφοῦ χαίροντα καὶ σεμνυνόμενον αὔξειν προσήκει καὶ συνεξορμᾶν πρὸς τὰ καλὰ καὶ κατορθοῦντας ἀφειδῶς ἐπαινεῖν· αὑτοῦ γὰρ υἱὸν ἐπαχθὲς ἴσως ἐγκωμιάζειν, ἀδελφοῦ δὲ σεμνὸν καὶ οὐ φίλαυτον ἀλλὰ φιλόκαλον καὶ θεῖον ὡς ἀληθῶς· δοκεῖ γάρ μοι καὶ τοὔνομα καλῶς ὑφηγεῖσθαι πρὸς εὔνοιαν ἀδελφιδῶν καὶ ἀγάπησιν. δεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰ τῶν κρειττόνων ζηλοῦν. Ἡρακλῆς τε γὰρ δυεῖν δέοντας ἑβδομήκοντα γεννήσας παῖδας οὐδενὸς ἧττον αὐτῶν τὸν ἀδελφιδοῦν ἠγάπησεν· ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν πολλαχοῦ σύμβωμός ἐστιν Ἰόλαος αὐτῷ, καὶ συγκατεύχονται παραστάτην Ἡρακλέους ὀνομάζοντες· [d] Ἰφικλέους δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ πεσόντος ἐν τῇ περὶ Λακεδαίμονα μάχῃ περίλυπος γενόμενος πᾶσαν ἐξέλιπε Πελοπόννησον. ἥ τε Λευκοθέα τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἀποθανούσης ἔθρεψε τὸ βρέφος καὶ συνεξεθείασεν· ὅθεν αἱ Ῥωμαίων γυναῖκες ἐν ταῖς τῆς Λευκοθέας ἑορταῖς, ἣν Ματοῦταν ὀνομάζουσιν, οὐ τοὺς ἑαυτῶν παῖδας ἀλλὰ τοὺς τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἐναγκαλίζονται καὶ τιμῶσιν.

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[493] Ἔκκλητοι κρίσεις καὶ ξενικῶν δικαστηρίων ἀγωγαὶ τοῖς Ἕλλησι τὸ πρῶτον ἀπιστίᾳ τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐπενοήθησαν, [b] ἀλλοτρίας δικαιοσύνης ὥσπερ ἑτέρου τινὸς τῶν ἀναγκαίων μὴ φυομένου παρ’ αὐτοῖς δεηθεῖσιν. ἆρ’ οὖν καὶ οἱ φιλόσοφοι τῶν προβλημάτων ἔνια διὰ τὰς πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαφορὰς ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν ἀλόγων φύσιν ζῴων ὥσπερ ἀλλοδαπὴν πόλιν ἐκκαλοῦνται καὶ τοῖς ἐκείνων πάθεσι καὶ ἤθεσιν ὡς ἀνεντεύκτοις καὶ ἀδεκάστοις ἐφιᾶσι τὴν κρίσιν; ἢ καὶ τοῦτο τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης κακίας ἔγκλημα κοινόν ἐστι, τὸ περὶ τῶν ἀναγκαιοτάτων καὶ μεγίστων ἀμφιδοξοῦντας ἡμᾶς ζητεῖν ἐν ἵπποις καὶ κυσὶ καὶ ὄρνισι, [c] πῶς γαμοῦμεν αὐτοὶ καὶ γεννῶμεν καὶ τεκνοτροφοῦμεν, ὡς μηδὲν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς δήλωμα τῆς φύσεως ὄν, τὰ ‹δὲ› τῶν θηρίων ἤθη καὶ πάθη προαγορεῦσαι καὶ καταμαρτυρῆσαι τοῦ βίου ἡμῶν πολλὴν τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν ἐκδιαίτησιν καὶ παράβασιν, εὐθὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ περὶ τὰ πρῶτα συγχεομένων καὶ ταραττομένων; ἄκρατον γὰρ ἐν ἐκείνοις ἡ φύσις καὶ ἀμιγὲς καὶ ἁπλοῦν φυλάττει τὸ ἴδιον, ἐν δ’ ἀνθρώποις ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς συνηθείας, ὃ τοὔλαιον ὑπὸ τῶν μυρεψῶν πέπονθε, πρὸς πολλὰ μιγνυμένη δόγματα καὶ κρίσεις ἐπιθέτους ποικίλη γέγονε καὶ ἡδεῖα, τὸ δ’ οἰκεῖον οὐ τετήρηκε. καὶ μὴ θαυμάζωμεν, εἰ τὰ [d] ἄλογα ζῷα τῶν λογικῶν μᾶλλον ἕπεται τῇ φύσει· καὶ γὰρ τὰ φυτὰ τῶν ζῴων· οἷς οὔτε φαντασίαν οὔθ’ ὁρμὴν ἔδωκε ‹δι’› ἑτέρων ὄρεξιν τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν ἀποσαλεύουσαν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν δεσμῷ συνειργμένα μένει καὶ κεκράτηται, μίαν ἀεὶ πορείαν ἣν ἡ φύσις ἄγει πορευόμενα. τοῖς δὲ θηρίοις τὸ μὲν πολύτροπον τοῦ λόγου καὶ περιττὸν καὶ φιλελεύθερον ἄγαν οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλόγους δ’ ὁρμὰς καὶ ὀρέξεις ἔχοντα καὶ χρώμενα πλάναις καὶ περιδρομαῖς πολλάκις ἀλλ’ οὐ μακρὰν ὡς ἐπ’ ἀγκύρας τῆς φύσεως σαλεύει, †καθάπερ οὖν ὁδὸν ὑφ’ ἡνίᾳ καὶ χαλινῷ βαδίζοντα δείκνυσιν εὐθεῖαν ὁ δεσπότης. ‹ὁ δ’ ἀδέσποτος› ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ [e] αὐτοκρατὴς λόγος ἄλλας ἄλλοτε παρεκβάσεις καὶ καινοτομίας ἀνευρίσκων οὐδὲν ἴχνος ἐμφανὲς οὐδ’ ἐναργὲς ἀπολέλοιπε τῆς φύσεως.

Ὅρα περὶ τοὺς γάμους ὅσον ἐστὶν ἐν τοῖς ζῴοις τὸ κατὰ φύσιν. πρῶτον οὐκ ἀναμένει νόμους ἀγαμίου καὶ ὀψιγαμίου, καθάπερ οἱ Λυκούργου πολῖται καὶ Σόλωνος, οὐδ’ ἀτιμίας ἀτέκνων δέδοικεν, οὐδὲ τιμὰς διώκει τριπαιδίας, ὡς Ῥωμαίων πολλοὶ γαμοῦσι καὶ γεννῶσιν, οὐχ ἵνα κληρονόμους ἔχωσιν ἀλλ’ ἵνα κληρονομεῖν δύνωνται. ἔπειτα μίγνυται τῷ θήλει τὸ ἄρρεν οὐχ ἅπαντα χρόνον· ἡδονὴν γὰρ οὐκ ἔχει τέλος ἀλλὰ γέννησιν καὶ τέκνωσιν· [f] διὰ τοῦτ’ ἔτους ὥρᾳ, ἣ πνοάς τε γονίμους ἔχει καὶ πρόσφορον ὀχευομένοις κρᾶσιν, ἦλθεν εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ τῷ ἄρρενι τὸ θῆλυ χειρόηθες καὶ ποθεινόν, ἡδείᾳ μὲν ὀσμῇ χρωτὸς ἰδίῳ δὲ κόσμῳ σώματος ἀγαλλόμενον, δρόσου καὶ βοτάνης ἀνάπλεων καθαρᾶς· αἰσθόμενον δ’ ὅτι κύει καὶ πεπλήρωται, [494] [a] κοσμίως ἄπεισι καὶ προνοεῖ περὶ τὴν κύησιν καὶ σωτηρίαν τοῦ ἀποτεχθέντος. ἀξίως δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν τὰ δρώμενα, πλὴν †ὅτι γίνεται ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ φιλοστόργῳ ταῖς προνοίαις ταῖς καρτερίαις ταῖς ἐγκρατείαις. ἀλλὰ τὴν ‹μὲν› μέλιτταν ἡμεῖς σοφὴν καλοῦμεν καὶ νομίζομεν ‘ξανθὸν μέλι μηδομέναν’ (Simon. fr. 47 B) κολακεύοντες τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ γαργαλίζον ἡμᾶς τῆς γλυκύτητος, τὴν δὲ τῶν ἄλλων περὶ τὰς λοχείας καὶ τὰς ἀνατροφὰς σοφίαν καὶ τέχνην παρορῶμεν. οἷον εὐθύς, ἡ ἁλκυὼν κύουσα τὴν νεοττιὰν συντίθησι συλλαμβάνουσα τὰς ἀκάνθας τῆς θαλαττίας βελόνης καὶ ταύτας δι’ ἀλλήλων ἐγκαταπλέκουσα [b] καὶ συνείρουσα τὸ μὲν σχῆμα περιαγὲς ὡς ἁλιευτικοῦ κύρτου καὶ πρόμηκες ἀπεργάζεται, τῇ δ’ ἁρμονίᾳ καὶ πυκνότητι συμφράξασα τὰς ἀκάνθας ἀκριβῶς ὑπέθηκε τῷ κλύσματι τοῦ κύματος, ὡς τυπτόμενον ἡσυχῆ καὶ πηγνύμενον τὸ πίλημα τῆς ἐπιφανείας στεγανὸν γένηται· γίγνεται δὲ σιδήρῳ καὶ λίθῳ δυσδιαίρετον. ὃ δ’ ἐστὶ θαυμασιώτερον, οὕτω τὸ στόμα τῆς νεοττιᾶς συμμέτρως πεπλάσθαι πρὸς τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ μέτρον τῆς ἁλκυόνος, ὥστε μήτε μεῖζον ἄλλο μήτε μικρότερον ἐνδύεσθαι ζῷον, ὡς δέ φασι, μηδὲ θαλάττης παραδέχεσθαι μηδὲ τὰ ἐλάχιστα.

[c] μάλιστα δ’ οἱ γαλεοὶ ζῳογονοῦσι μὲν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς, ἐκβαίνειν δὲ παρέχουσιν ἐκτὸς καὶ νέμεσθαι τοῖς σκυμνίοις, εἶτα πάλιν ἀναλαμβάνουσι καὶ περιπτύσσουσιν ἐγκοιμώμενα τοῖς σπλάγχνοις. ἡ δ’ ἄρκτος, ἀγριώτατον καὶ σκυθρωπότατον θηρίον, ἄμορφα καὶ ἄναρθρα τίκτει, τῇ δὲ γλώττῃ καθάπερ ἐργαλείῳ διατυποῦσα τοὺς ὑμένας οὐ δοκεῖ γεννᾶν μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ δημιουργεῖν τὸ τέκνον. ὁ δ’ Ὁμηρικὸς λέων (Ρ 134),

‘ᾧ ῥά τε νήπι’ ἄγοντι συναντήσωνται ἐν ὕλῃ

ἄνδρες ἐπακτῆρες, ὁ δέ τε σθένεϊ βλεμεαίνει,

πᾶν δέ τ’ ἐπισκύνιον κάτω ἕλκεται ὄσσε καλύπτων,’

[d] ἆρ’ [οὐχ] ὅμοιός ἐστι διανοουμένῳ πρὸς τοὺς κυνηγοὺς σπένδεσθαι περὶ τῶν τέκνων; καθόλου γὰρ ἡ πρὸς τὰ ἔγγονα φιλοστοργία καὶ τὰ δειλὰ τολμηρὰ ποιεῖ καὶ φιλόπονα τὰ ῥᾴθυμα καὶ φειδωλὰ τὰ γαστρίμαργα· [καὶ] ὥσπερ ἡ Ὁμηρικὴ ὄρνις προσφέρουσα τοῖς νεοττοῖς (Ι 324)

‘μάστακ’, ἐπεί κε λάβῃσι, κακῶς δέ τέ οἱ πέλει αὐτῇ·’

τῷ γὰρ αὑτῆς τρέφει λιμῷ τὰ ἔγγονα, καὶ τὴν τροφὴν τῆς γαστρὸς ἁπτομένην ἀποκρατεῖ καὶ πιέζει τῷ στόματι, μὴ λάθῃ καταπιοῦσα·

‘ὡς δὲ κύων ἀμαλῇσι περὶ σκυλάκεσσι βεβῶσα

ἄνδρ’ ἀγνοιήσασ’ ὑλάει μέμονέν τε μάχεσθαι’ (υ 14),

[e] τὸν περὶ τῶν τέκνων φόβον ὡς δεύτερον προσλαβοῦσα θυμόν. αἱ δὲ πέρδικες ὅταν διώκωνται μετὰ τῶν τέκνων, ἐκεῖνα μὲν ἐῶσι προπέτεσθαι καὶ φεύγειν, αὑταῖς δὲ μηχανώμεναι προσέχειν τοὺς θηρεύοντας ἐγγὺς κυλινδούμεναι καὶ καταλαμβανόμεναι μικρὸν ὑπεκθέουσιν, εἶτα πάλιν ἵστανται καὶ παρέχουσιν ἐν ἐφικτῷ τῆς ἐλπίδος ἑαυτάς, ἄχρι ἂν οὕτω προκινδυνεύουσαι τῶν νεοττῶν τῆς ἀσφαλείας προαγάγωνται πόρρω τοὺς διώκοντας. τὰς δ’ ἀλεκτορίδας ἐν τοῖς ὄμμασι καθ’ ἡμέραν ἔχομεν ὃν τρόπον τὰ νεόττια περιέπουσι, τοῖς μὲν ἐνδῦναι χαλῶσαι τὰς [f] πτέρυγας, τὰ δ’ ἐπιβαίνοντα τῶν νώτων καὶ προστρέχοντα πανταχόθεν ἀναδεχόμεναι μετὰ τοῦ γεγηθός τι καὶ προσφιλὲς ἐπιφθέγγεσθαι· κύνας δὲ καὶ δράκοντας, ἂν περὶ αὑτῶν φοβηθῶσι, φεύγουσιν, ἂν δὲ περὶ τῶν τέκνων, ἀμύνονται καὶ διαμάχονται παρὰ δύναμιν. εἶτα ταῦτ’ οἰόμεθα ‹τὰ› πάθη τούτοις ἐνειργάσθαι τὴν φύσιν ἀλεκτορίδων ἐπιγονῆς καὶ κυνῶν καὶ ἄρκτων προνοοῦσαν, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἡμᾶς δυσωποῦσαν καὶ τιτρώσκουσαν ἐπιλογιζομένους [495] [a] ὅτι ταῦτα παραδείγματα τοῖς ἑπομένοις, τοῖς δ’ ἀναλγήτοις ὀνείδη περίεστι τῆς ἀπαθείας, δι’ ὧν κατηγοροῦσι τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης φύσεως μόνης μὴ προῖκα τὸ στέργειν ἐχούσης μηδ’ ἐπισταμένης φιλεῖν ἄνευ χρείας; θαυμάζεται γὰρ ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις ὁ εἰπών

‘μισθοῦ γὰρ ἄνθρωπον τίς ἀνθρώπων φιλεῖ;’

(Com. adesp. 218),

‹καίτοι› κατ’ Ἐπίκουρον (fr. 527) ὁ πατὴρ τὸν υἱόν, ‹ἡ› μήτηρ τὸ τέκνον, οἱ παῖδες τοὺς τεκόντας· ἀλλ’ εἰ λόγου γένοιτο τοῖς θηρίοις σύνεσις καὶ τοῦτό τις εἰς κοινὸν θέατρον συναγαγὼν ἵππους καὶ βόας καὶ κύνας καὶ ὄρνιθας ἀναφθέγξαιτο μεταγράψας, ὡς ‘οὔτε κύνες ἐπὶ μισθῷ σκύλακας φιλοῦσιν οὔθ’ ἵπποι πώλους οὔτ’ ὄρνιθες νεοττοὺς [b] ἀλλὰ προῖκα καὶ φυσικῶς,’ ἐπιγνωσθήσεται τοῖς ἁπάντων πάθεσιν ὡς εὖ καὶ ἀληθῶς λεγόμενον. αἰσχρὸν γάρ, ὦ Ζεῦ, τὰς θηρίων γενέσεις καὶ λοχείας καὶ ὠδῖνας καὶ τεκνοτροφίας φύσιν εἶναι καὶ χάριν, τὰς δ’ ἀνθρώπων δάνεια καὶ μισθοὺς καὶ ἀρραβῶνας ἐπὶ χρείαις διδομένους.

Ἀλλ’ οὔτ’ ἀληθὴς ὁ λόγος οὔτ’ ἄξιος ἀκούειν. ἡ γὰρ φύσις ὥσπερ ἐν φυτοῖς ἀγρίοις οἷον οἰνάνθαις ἐρινεοῖς κοτίνοις ἀρχὰς ἀπέπτους καὶ ἀτελεῖς ἡμέρων καρπῶν ἐνέφυσεν, οὕτω τοῖς μὲν ἀλόγοις τὸ πρὸς τὰ ἔγγονα φιλόστοργον ἀτελὲς καὶ οὐ διαρκὲς πρὸς δικαιοσύνην οὐδὲ τῆς [c] χρείας πορρωτέρω προερχόμενον ἔδωκεν, ἄνθρωπον δέ, λογικὸν καὶ πολιτικὸν ζῷον, ἐπὶ δίκην καὶ νόμον εἰσάγουσα καὶ θεῶν τιμὰς καὶ πόλεων ἱδρύσεις καὶ φιλοφροσύνην, γενναῖα καὶ καλὰ καὶ φερέκαρπα τούτων σπέρματα παρέσχε τὴν πρὸς τὰ ἔγγονα χάριν καὶ ἀγάπησιν, ἀκολουθοῦσαν ταῖς πρώταις ἀρχαῖς· αὗται δ’ ἦσαν ἐν ταῖς τῶν σωμάτων κατασκευαῖς. πανταχοῦ μὲν γὰρ ἡ φύσις ἀκριβὴς καὶ φιλότεχνος καὶ ἀνελλιπὴς καὶ ἀπέριττος, ‘οὐδέν’ ὡς ἔφησεν Ἐρασίστρατος ‘ἔχουσα ῥωπικόν’, τὰ δὲ περὶ τὴν γένεσιν ἀξίως οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν οὐδ’ εὐπρεπὲς ἴσως [d] λίαν ἀκριβῶς τῶν ἀπορρήτων ἐμφύεσθαι τοῖς ὀνόμασι καὶ τοῖς ῥήμασιν, ἀλλ’ ἀποκειμένων καὶ κεκρυμμένων ἐπινοεῖν τὴν πρὸς τὸ γεννᾶν καὶ λοχεύεσθαι τῶν μορίων ἐκείνων εὐφυΐαν. ἀρκεῖ δ’ ἡ τοῦ γάλακτος ἐργασία καὶ οἰκονομία τὴν πρόνοιαν αὐτῆς ἐμφῆναι καὶ ἐπιμέλειαν. τοῦ γὰρ αἵματος ὅσον περίττωμα τῆς χρείας ἐν ταῖς γυναιξὶ δι’ ἀμβλύτητα καὶ μικρότητα τοῦ πνεύματος ἐπιπολάζον ἐμπλανᾶται καὶ βαρύνει, τὸν μὲν ἄλλον χρόνον εἴθισται καὶ μεμελέτηκεν ἐμμήνοις ἡμερῶν περιόδοις ὀχετοὺς καὶ πόρους αὐτῷ τῆς φύσεως ἀναστομούσης ἀποχεόμενον τὸ μὲν ἄλλο [e] σῶμα κουφίζειν καὶ καθαίρειν, τὴν δ’ ὑστέραν οἷον ἀρότῳ καὶ σπόρῳ γῆν [ἐν φυτοῖς] ὀργῶσαν ἐν καιρῷ παρέχειν. ὅταν δὲ τὴν γονὴν ἀναλάβῃ προσπεσοῦσαν ἡ ὑστέρα καὶ περιστείλῃ ῥιζώσεως γενομένης (‘ὁ γὰρ ὀμφαλὸς πρῶτον ἐν μήτρῃσιν’ ὥς φησι Δημόκριτος (B 148) ‘ἀγκυρηβόλιον σάλου καὶ πλάνης ἐμφύεται, πεῖσμα καὶ κλῆμα’ τῷ γεννωμένῳ καρπῷ καὶ μέλλοντι), τοὺς μὲν ἐμμήνους καὶ καθαρσίους ἔκλεισεν ὀχετοὺς ἡ φύσις, τοῦ δ’ αἵματος ἀντιλαμβανομένη φερομένου τροφῇ χρῆται καὶ κατάρδει τὸ βρέφος ἤδη συνιστάμενον καὶ διαπλαττόμενον, ἄχρι οὗ τοὺς προσήκοντας ἀριθμοὺς τῇ ἐντὸς αὐξήσει κυηθὲν ἑτέρας [f] ἀνατροφῆς καὶ χώρας δέηται. τότ’ οὖν τὸ αἷμα παντὸς ἐμμελέστερον φυτουργοῦ καὶ ὀχετηγοῦ πρὸς ἑτέραν ἀφ’ ἑτέρας ἐκτρέπουσα καὶ μεταλαμβάνουσα χρείαν ἔχει παρεσκευασμένας οἷον †ἐννέας ἤ τινας κρήνας νάματος ἐπιρρέοντος, [496] [a] οὐκ ἀργῶς οὐδ’ ἀπαθῶς ὑποδεχομένας ἀλλὰ καὶ πνεύματος ἠπίῳ θερμότητι καὶ μαλακῇ θηλύτητι ἐκπέψαι καὶ λεᾶναι καὶ μεταβαλεῖν δυναμένας· τοιαύτην γὰρ ὁ μαστὸς ἔχει ἐντὸς διάθεσιν καὶ κρᾶσιν. ἐκροαὶ δὲ τοῦ γάλακτος οὐκ εἰσὶν οὐδὲ κρουνοὶ μεθιέντες ἀθρόως, εἰς δὲ σάρκα πιδακώδη καὶ πόροις ἀτρέμα λεπτοῖς διηθοῦσαν ἀπολήγων εὐμενὲς τῷ τοῦ νηπίου στόματι καὶ προσφιλὲς ψαῦσαι καὶ περιλαβεῖν ἐνδίδωσι ταμεῖον. ἀλλὰ τούτων γε τῶν τοσούτων ἐπὶ τὴν γένεσιν ἐργαλείων καὶ τοιούτων οἰκονομιῶν καὶ φιλοτιμίας καὶ προνοίας οὐδὲν ἦν ὄφελος, εἰ μὴ τὸ φιλόστοργον ἡ φύσις καὶ κηδεμονικὸν ἐνειργάσατο ταῖς τεκούσαις.

[b] ‘οὐ μὲν γάρ τί πού ἐστιν ὀιζυρώτερον ἀνδρός,

πάντων ὅσσα τε γαῖαν ἔπι πνείει τε καὶ ἕρπει (Ρ 446)’ -

τοῦτ’ οὐ ψεύδεται λέγων ἐπὶ νηπίου καὶ ἀρτιγενοῦς. οὐδὲν γάρ ἐστιν οὕτως ἀτελὲς οὐδ’ ἄπορον οὐδὲ γυμνὸν οὐδ’ ἄμορφον οὐδὲ μιαρὸν ὡς ἄνθρωπος ἐν γοναῖς ὁρώμενος· ᾧ μόνῳ σχεδὸν οὐδὲ καθαρὰν ἔδωκεν εἰς φῶς ὁδὸν ἡ φύσις, ἀλλ’ αἵματι πεφυρμένος καὶ λύθρου περίπλεως καὶ φονευομένῳ μᾶλλον ἢ γεννωμένῳ ἐοικὼς οὐδενός ἐστιν ἅψασθαι καὶ ἀνελέσθαι καὶ ἀσπάσασθαι καὶ περιλαβεῖν ἢ τοῦ φύσει φιλοῦντος. διὸ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ζῴων [c] ὑπὸ τὴν γαστέρα τὰ οὔθατα χαλᾷ [τοὺς μαστοὺς], ταῖς δὲ γυναιξὶν ἄνω γεγόνασιν περὶ τὸ στέρνον ἐν ἐφικτῷ τοῦ φιλῆσαι καὶ περιπτύξαι καὶ κατασπάσασθαι τὸ νήπιον, ὡς τοῦ τεκεῖν καὶ θρέψαι τέλος οὐ χρείαν ἀλλὰ φιλίαν ἔχοντος.

Ἐπὶ τοὺς παλαιοὺς ἀνάγαγε τὸν λόγον, ὧν ταῖς μὲν τεκεῖν πρώταις, τοῖς δ’ ἰδεῖν συνέβη τικτόμενον βρέφος· οὔτε νόμος ἦν ἐκείνοις τεκνοτροφεῖν προστάττων οὔτε προσδοκία χάριτος ἢ τροφείων ‘ἐπὶ νέοις δανειζομένων’ (Plato Legg. 717c). χαλεπὰς δὲ μᾶλλον εἴποιμ’ ἂν εἶναι καὶ μνησικάκους τὰς τεκούσας τοῖς βρέφεσι, κινδύνων τε μεγάλων καὶ πόνων αὐταῖς γινομένων·

[d] ‘ὡς δ’ ὅταν ὠδίνουσαν ἔχῃ βέλος ὀξὺ γυναῖκα

δριμύ, τό τε προϊᾶσι μογοστόκοι Εἰλείθυιαι,

Ἥρης θυγατέρες, πικρὰς ὠδῖνας ἔχουσαι’ (Λ 269) -

ταῦτ’ οὐχ Ὅμηρον αἱ γυναῖκες ἀλλ’ Ὁμηρίδα γράψαι λέγουσι τεκοῦσαν ἢ τίκτουσαν ἔτι καὶ τὸ νύγμα τῆς ἀλγηδόνος ὁμοῦ πικρὸν καὶ ὀξὺ γινόμενον ἐν τοῖς σπλάγχνοις ἔχουσαν. ἀλλὰ τὸ φύσει φιλόστοργον ἔκαμπτε καὶ ἦγεν· ἔτι θερμὴ καὶ διαλγὴς καὶ κραδαινομένη τοῖς πόνοις οὐχ ὑπερέβη τὸ νήπιον οὐδ’ ἔφυγεν, ἀλλ’ ἐπεστράφη καὶ προσεμειδίασε καὶ ἀνείλετο καὶ ἠσπάσατο, μηδὲν ἡδὺ καρπουμένη [e] μηδὲ χρήσιμον ἀλλ’ ἐπιπόνως καὶ ταλαιπώρως ἀναδεχομένη, τῶν σπαργάνων ‘ἐρειπίοις

θάλπουσα καὶ ψήχουσα, καὶ πόνῳ πόνον

ἐκ νυκτὸς ἀλλάσσουσα τὸν μεθ’ ἡμέραν’ (Tr. adesp. 7).
τίνων ταῦτα μισθῶν ἢ χρειῶν ἐκείνοις; ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τοῖς νῦν· αἱ γὰρ ἐλπίδες ἄδηλοι καὶ μακραί. ἀμπελῶν’ ἰσημερίας ἐαρινῆς σκάψας μετοπωρινῆς ἐτρύγησε, πυρὸν ἔσπειρε δυομένης Πλειάδος εἶτ’ ἀνατελλούσης θερίζει, βόες καὶ ἵπποι καὶ ὄρνιθες ἕτοιμα τίκτουσιν ἐπὶ τὰς χρείας· ἀνθρώπου δ’ ἡ μὲν ἐκτροφὴ πολύπονος ἡ δ’ αὔξησις βραδεῖα, τῆς δ’ ἀρετῆς μακρὰν οὔσης προαποθνῄσκουσιν οἱ πλεῖστοι [f] πατέρες. οὐκ ἐπεῖδε τὴν Σαλαμῖνα Νεοκλῆς τὴν Θεμιστοκλέους οὐδὲ τὸν Εὐρυμέδοντα Μιλτιάδης τὸν Κίμωνος, οὐδ’ ἤκουσε Περικλέους Ξάνθιππος δημηγοροῦντος οὐδ’ Ἀρίστων Πλάτωνος φιλοσοφοῦντος, οὐδ’ Εὐριπίδου καὶ Σοφοκλέους νίκας οἱ πατέρες ἔγνωσαν· ψελλιζόντων καὶ συλλαβιζόντων ἠκροῶντο καὶ κώμους καὶ πότους καὶ ἔρωτας [497] [a] αὐτῶν οἷα νέοι πλημμελούντων ἐπεῖδον· ὥστ’ ἐπαινεῖσθαι καὶ μνημονεύεσθαι τοῦ Εὐήνου τοῦτο μόνον, ὡς ἐπέγραψεν

‘ἢ δέος ἢ λύπη παῖς πατρὶ πάντα χρόνον·’

(PL. II 270).

ἀλλ’ ὅμως οὐ παύονται παῖδας τρέφοντες μάλιστα δ’ οἱ παίδων ἥκιστα δεόμενοι. γελοῖον γάρ, εἴ τις οἴεται τοὺς πλουσίους θύειν καὶ χαίρειν γενομένων αὐτοῖς τέκνων, ὅτι τοὺς θρέψοντας ἕξουσι καὶ τοὺς θάψοντας· εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία κληρονόμων ἀπορίᾳ παῖδας τρέφουσιν· οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν εὑρεῖν οὐδ’ ἐπιτυχεῖν τοῦ τἀλλότρια βουλομένου λαμβάνειν.

‘‹οὐ› ψάμμος ἢ κόνις ἢ πτερὰ ποικιλοθρόων οἰωνῶν

τόσσον ἂν χεύαιτ’ ἀριθμόν’ (Lyr. adesp. II p. 162 D),

ὅσος ἐστὶν ὁ τῶν κληρονομούντων.

‘Δαναὸς ὁ πεντήκοντα θυγατέρων πατήρ’

(Eur. fr. 228),

[b] εἰ δ’ ἄτεκνος ἦν, πλείονας ἂν εἶχε κληρονομοῦντας, καὶ οὐχ ὁμοίους. οἱ μὲν γὰρ παῖδες χάριν οὐδεμίαν ἔχουσιν οὐδ’ ἕνεκα τούτου θεραπεύουσιν οὐδὲ τιμῶσιν, ὡς ὀφείλημα τὸν κλῆρον ἐκδεχόμενοι· τῶν δ’ ἀλλοτρίων περὶ τὸν ἄτεκνον φωνὰς ἀκούεις ταῖς κωμικαῖς ἐκείναις ὁμοίας,

‘ὦ Δῆμε, λοῦσαι πρῶτον ἐκδικάσας μίαν,

ἔνθου ῥόφησον ἔντραγ’ ἔχε τριώβολον’ (Arist. Eq. 50)

τὸ δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Εὐριπίδου λεγόμενον (Phoen. 439 sq.), ‘τὰ χρήματ’ ἀνθρώποισιν εὑρίσκειν φίλους δύναμίν τε πλείστην τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἔχειν,’ οὐχ ἁπλῶς ἀληθές, ἀλλ’ [c] ἐπὶ τῶν ἀτέκνων· τούτους οἱ πλούσιοι δειπνίζουσιν, οἱ ἡγεμόνες θεραπεύουσιν, οἱ ῥήτορες μόνοις τούτοις προῖκα συνηγοροῦσιν. ‘ἰσχυρόν ἐστι πλούσιος ἀγνοούμενον ἔχων κληρονόμον’ (Com. adesp. 404). πολλοὺς γοῦν πολυφίλους καὶ πολυτιμήτους ὄντας ἓν παιδίον γενόμενον ἀφίλους καὶ ἀδυνάτους ἐποίησεν. ὅθεν οὐδὲ πρὸς δύναμιν οὐδέν ἐστιν ὠφέλιμον ἀπὸ τῶν τέκνων, ἀλλὰ τῆς φύσεως τὸ πᾶν κράτος οὐχ ἧττον ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἢ θηρίοις.

Ἐξαμαυροῦται γὰρ καὶ ταῦτα καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἄλλων ὑπὸ τῆς κακίας, ὥσπερ λόχμης ἡμέροις σπέρμασι παραβλαστανούσης· ἢ μηδ’ ἑαυτὸν φύσει στέργειν τὸν ἄνθρωπον [d] λέγωμεν, ὅτι πολλοὶ σφάττουσιν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ κατακρημνίζουσιν. ὁ δ’ Οἰδίπους

‘ἤρασσ’ ἐπαίρων βλέφαρα· φοίνιαι δ’ ὁμοῦ

γλῆναι γένει’ ἔτεγγον’ (Soph. O. R. 1276),

Ἡγησίας ‹δὲ› διαλεγόμενος πολλοὺς ἔπεισεν ἀποκαρτερῆσαι τῶν ἀκροωμένων. ‘πολλαὶ μορφαὶ τῶν δαιμονίων’ (Eur. in fine Alc. al.)· ταῦτα δ’ ἐστὶν ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνα νοσήματα καὶ πάθη ψυχῆς τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν ἐξιστάντα τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ὡς αὐτοὶ καταμαρτυροῦσιν ἑαυτῶν. ἂν γὰρ ὗς τεκοῦσα δελφάκιον ἢ κύων διασπαράξῃ σκυλάκιον, ἀθυμοῦσι καὶ ταράττονται καὶ θεοῖς ἀποτρόπαια θύουσι καὶ τέρας νομίζουσιν, ὡς πᾶσι καὶ παρὰ φύσιν στέργειν τὰ τικτόμενα καὶ τρέφειν οὐκ ἀναιρεῖν προσῆκον.

[e] οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς μετάλλοις πολλῇ συμπεφυρμένον γῇ καὶ κατακεχωσμένον ὅμως διαστίλβει τὸ χρυσίον, οὕτως ἡ φύσις ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς ἡμαρτημένοις ἤθεσι καὶ πάθεσιν ἐκφαίνει τὸ πρὸς τὰ ἔγγονα φιλόστοργον. οἱ μὲν γὰρ πένητες οὐ τρέφουσι τέκνα, φοβούμενοι μὴ χεῖρον ἢ προσήκει τραφέντα δουλοπρεπῆ καὶ ἀπαίδευτα καὶ τῶν καλῶν πάντων ἐνδεᾶ γένηται· τὴν γὰρ πενίαν ἔσχατον ἡγούμενοι κακὸν οὐχ ὑπομένουσι μεταδοῦναι τέκνοις ὥσπερ τινὸς χαλεποῦ καὶ μεγάλου νοσήματος * *

An vitiositas ad infelicitatem sufficiat

ΕΙ ΑΥΤΑΡΚΗΣ Η ΚΑΚΙΑ ΠΡΟΣ ΚΑΚΟΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΑΝ

[498] * * * ὑπομένει

‘πεπραμένον τὸ σῶμα τῆς φερνῆς ἔχων’

ὡς Εὐριπίδης φησίν (Phaeth. 775), βραχέα δεδήλωται [b] καὶ ἀβέβαια· τῷ δ’ οὐ πολλῆς διὰ τέφρας ἀλλὰ πυρκαϊᾶς τινος βασιλικῆς πορευομένῳ καὶ περιφλεγομένῳ, ἄσθματος καὶ φόβου μεστῷ καὶ ἱδρῶτος διαπόνου πλοῦτόν τινα προσθεῖσα Ταντάλειον, ἀπολαῦσαι δι’ ἀσχολίαν οὐ δυναμένῳ. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Σικυώνιος ἐκεῖνος ἱπποτρόφος εὖ φρονῶν ἔδωκε τῷ βασιλεῖ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν θήλειαν ἵππον δρομάδα δῶρον, ‘ἵνα μή οἱ ἕποιθ’ ὑπὸ Ἴλιον ἠνεμόεσσαν ἀλλὰ τέρποιτο μένων’ (Ψ 297), εἰς βαθεῖαν εὐπορίαν καὶ σχολὴν ἄλυπον ἀνακλίνας ἑαυτόν· οἱ δὲ νῦν αὐλικοί, πρακτικοὶ [c] δοκοῦντες εἶναι, μηδενὸς καλοῦντος ὠθοῦνται δι’ αὑτῶν ἐπὶ τράχηλον εἰς αὐλὰς καὶ προπομπὰς καὶ θυραυλίας ἐπιπόνους, ἵν’ ἵππου τινὸς ἢ πόρπης ἢ τοιαύτης τινὸς εὐημερίας τύχωσι.

‘τοῦ δὲ καὶ ἀμφιδρυφὴς ἄλοχος Φυλάκῃ ἐλέλειπτο,

καὶ δόμος ἡμιτελής’ (Β 700),

σύρεται δὲ καὶ πλανᾶται τριβόμενος ἔν τισιν ἐλπίσιν καὶ προπηλακιζόμενος, ἂν δὲ καὶ τύχῃ τινὸς ὧν ποθεῖ, περιενεχθεὶς καὶ σκοτοδινιάσας πρὸς τὸν τῆς τύχης πεταυρισμὸν ἀπόβασιν ζητεῖ καὶ μακαρίζει τοὺς ἀδόξως καὶ ἀσφαλῶς ζῶντας· οἱ δ’ ἐκεῖνον πάλιν ἄνω βλέποντες ὑπὲρ αὑτοὺς φερόμενον.

Πάντως ‹ἀθλίως› ἡ κακία διατίθησι πάντας ἀνθρώπους, [d] αὐτοτελής τις οὖσα τῆς κακοδαιμονίας δημιουργός· οὔτε γὰρ ὀργάνων οὔθ’ ὑπηρετῶν ἔχει χρείαν. ἄλλοι δὲ τύραννοι σπουδάζοντες οὓς ἂν κολάζωσιν ἀθλίους ποιεῖν δημίους τρέφουσι καὶ βασανιστὰς ἢ καυτήρια καὶ σφῆνας ἐπιμηχανῶνται [ἀλόγου ψυχῆς], ἡ δὲ κακία δίχα πάσης παρασκευῆς τῇ ψυχῇ συνελθοῦσα συνέτριψε καὶ κατέβαλε, λύπης ἐνέπλησε θρήνων βαρυθυμίας μεταμελείας τὸν ἄνθρωπον. τεκμήριον δέ· τεμνόμενοι πολλοὶ σιωπῶσι καὶ μαστιγούμενοι καρτεροῦσι καὶ σφηνούμενοι ὑπὸ δεσποτῶν ἢ τυράννων φωνὴν οὐκ ἀφῆκαν, ὅταν ἡ ψυχὴ μύσασα [e] τῷ λόγῳ τὸν πόνον ὥσπερ χειρὶ πιέσῃ καὶ κατάσχῃ· θυμῷ δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐπιτάξειας ἡσυχίαν οὐδὲ πένθει σιωπήν, οὔτε φοβούμενον στῆναι πείσειας, οὔτε δυσφοροῦντα μετανοίᾳ μὴ βοῆσαι μηδὲ τῶν τριχῶν λαβέσθαι ἢ τὸν μηρὸν ἀλοῆσαι· οὕτω καὶ πυρός ἐστιν ἡ κακία καὶ σιδήρου βιαιοτέρα.

Αἱ πόλεις δήπουθεν, ὅταν ἔκδοσιν ναῶν ἢ κολοσσῶν προγράφωσιν, ἀκροῶνται τῶν τεχνιτῶν ἁμιλλωμένων περὶ τῆς ἐργολαβίας καὶ λόγους καὶ παραδείγματα κομιζόντων, εἶθ’ αἱροῦνται τὸν ἀπ’ ἐλάττονος δαπάνης τὸ αὐτὸ ποιοῦντα καὶ βέλτιον καὶ τάχιον. φέρε δὴ καὶ ἡμᾶς ἔκδοσίν τινα βίου [καὶ ἀνθρώπου] κακοδαίμονος προκηρύσσειν, [f] εἶτα προσιέναι τῇ ἐργολαβίᾳ τὴν Τύχην καὶ τὴν Κακίαν διαφερομένας, τὴν μὲν ὀργάνων τε παντοδαπῶν κατάπλεω καὶ παρασκευῆς πολυτελοῦς εἰς ἀπεργασίαν κακοδαίμονος ζωῆς καὶ οἰκτρᾶς, λῃστήρια δεινὰ καὶ πολέμους καὶ τυράννων μιαιφονίας καὶ χειμῶνας ἐκ θαλάττης καὶ κεραυνὸν ἐξ ἀέρος ἐφελκομένην καὶ κώνεια τρίβουσαν [499] [a] καὶ ξίφη φέρουσαν καὶ συκοφάντας ξενολογοῦσαν καὶ πυρὰς ἐξάπτουσαν καὶ πέδας περικρούουσαν καὶ περιοικοδομοῦσαν εἱρκτάς· καίτοι τούτων τὰ πλεῖστα τῆς Κακίας μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς Τύχης ἐστίν· ἀλλὰ πάντ’ ἔστω τῆς Τύχης. ἡ δὲ Κακία παρεστῶσα γυμνὴ καὶ μηδενὸς δεομένη τῶν ἔξωθεν [ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον] ἐρωτάτω [καὶ] τὴν Τύχην, πῶς ποιήσει κακοδαίμονα καὶ ἄθυμον τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ‘Τύχη, πενίαν ἀπειλεῖς; καταγελᾷ σου Μητροκλῆς, ὃς χειμῶνος ἐν τοῖς προβάτοις καθεύδων καὶ θέρους ἐν τοῖς προπυλαίοις τῶν ἱερῶν τὸν ἐν Βαβυλῶνι χειμάζοντα [b] καὶ περὶ Μηδίαν θερίζοντα Περσῶν βασιλέα περὶ εὐδαιμονίας εἰς ἀγῶνα προυκαλεῖτο. δουλείαν καὶ δεσμὰ καὶ πρᾶσιν ἐπάγεις; καταφρονεῖ σου Διογένης, ὃς ὑπὸ τῶν λῃστῶν πωλούμενος ἐκήρυττε ‘τίς ὠνήσασθαι βούλεται ‹δεσπότην›;’ κύλικα φαρμάκου ταράττεις; οὐχὶ καὶ Σωκράτει ταύτην προέπιες; ὁ δ’ ἵλεως καὶ πρᾶος, οὐ τρέσας οὐδὲ διαφθείρας οὔτε χρώματος οὐδὲν οὔτε σχήματος μάλ’ εὐκόλως ἐξέπιεν, ἀποθνῄσκοντα δ’ αὐτὸν ἐμακάριζον οἱ ζῶντες, ὡς οὐδ’ ἐν Ἅιδου θείας ἄνευ μοίρας ἐσόμενον. καὶ μὴν τὸ πῦρ σου Δέκιος ὁ Ῥωμαίων στρατηγὸς προέλαβεν, [c] ὅτε τῶν στρατοπέδων ἐν μέσῳ πυρὰν νήσας τῷ Κρόνῳ κατ’ εὐχὴν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐκαλλιέρησεν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἡγεμονίας. Ἰνδῶν δὲ φίλανδροι καὶ σώφρονες γυναῖκες ὑπὲρ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐρίζουσι καὶ μάχονται πρὸς ἀλλήλας, τὴν δὲ νικήσασαν τεθνηκότι τῷ ἀνδρὶ συγκαταφλεγῆναι μακαρίαν ᾄδουσιν αἱ λοιπαί· τῶν δ’ ἐκεῖ σοφῶν οὐδεὶς ζηλωτὸς οὐδὲ μακαριστός ἐστιν, ἂν μὴ ζῶν ἔτι καὶ φρονῶν καὶ ὑγιαίνων τοῦ σώματος τὴν ψυχὴν πυρὶ διαστήσῃ καὶ καθαρὸς ἐκβῇ τῆς σαρκὸς ἐκνιψάμενος τὸ θνητόν. ἀλλ’ ἐξ οὐσίας λαμπρᾶς καὶ οἴκου καὶ τραπέζης καὶ πολυτελείας εἰς τρίβωνα καὶ πήραν καὶ προσαίτησιν ἐφημέρου [d] τροφῆς κατάξεις; ταῦτ’ εὐδαιμονίας ἀρχαὶ Διογένει, ταῦτ’ ἐλευθερίας Κράτητι καὶ δόξης. ἀλλ’ εἰς σταυρὸν καθηλώσεις ἢ σκόλοπι πήξεις; καὶ τί Θεοδώρῳ μέλει, πότερον ὑπὲρ γῆς ἢ ὑπὸ γῆς σήπεται; Σκυθῶν εὐδαίμονες αὗται ταφαί· Ὑρκανῶν δὲ κύνες Βακτριανῶν δ’ ὄρνιθες νεκροὺς ἐσθίουσι κατὰ νόμους, ὅταν μακαρίου τέλους τυγχάνωσιν.’

Τίνας οὖν ταῦτα κακοδαίμονας ποιεῖ; τοὺς ἀνάνδρους καὶ ἀλογίστους, τοὺς ἀτρίπτους καὶ ἀγυμνάστους, τοὺς ἐκ νηπίων ἃς ἔχουσι δόξας φυλάττοντας. οὐκοῦν οὐκ ἔστιν ἡ Τύχη κακοδαιμονίας τελεσιουργός, ἂν μὴ κακίαν ἔχῃ [e] συνεργοῦσαν. ὡς γὰρ ἡ κρόκη τὸ ὀστέον πρίει τέφρᾳ καὶ ὄξει διάβροχον γενόμενον, καὶ τὸν ἐλέφαντα τῷ ζύθει μαλακὸν γενόμενον καὶ χαλῶντα κάμπτουσι καὶ διασχηματίζουσιν, ἄλλως δ’ οὐ δύνανται, οὕτως ἡ τύχη τὸ πεπονθὸς ἐξ αὑτοῦ καὶ μαλακὸν ‹ἐκ› κακίας προσπεσοῦσα κοιλαίνει καὶ τιτρώσκει. καὶ καθάπερ ὁ παρθικὸς ‹ἰὸς› τῶν ἄλλων οὐδενὶ βλαβερὸς ὢν οὐδὲ λυπῶν ἁπτομένους καὶ περιφέροντας, ἐὰν τετρωμένοις ἐπεισενεχθῇ μόνον, εὐθὺς ἀπόλλυσι τῷ προπεπονθότι [καὶ] τὴν ἀπορροὴν δεχομένους, οὕτω τὸν ὑπὸ τῆς τύχης συντριβήσεσθαι μέλλοντα τὴν [f] ψυχὴν ἴδιον ἕλκος ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ κακὸν ἔχειν δεῖ [ἐντὸς σαρκός], ὅπως τὰ προσπίπτοντα ἔξωθεν οἰκτρὰ καὶ ὀδυρτὰ ποιήσῃ.

Ἆρ’ οὖν ἡ κακία τοιοῦτον ὥστε τῆς τύχης δεῖσθαι πρὸς κακοδαιμονίας ἀπεργασίαν; πόθεν; οὐ τραχὺ καὶ δυσχείμερον ἐπαίρει πέλαγος, οὐ λῃστῶν ἐνοδίοις διαζώννυσιν ἐνέδραις ἐρήμους ὑπωρείας, οὐ νέφη χαλαζοβόλα πεδίοις περιρρήγνυσι καρποφόροις, οὐ Μέλητον οὐδ’ Ἄνυτον οὐδὲ Καλλίξενον ἐπάγει συκοφάντην, οὐκ ἀφαιρεῖται πλοῦτον, [500] [a] οὐκ ἀπείργει στρατηγίας, ἵνα ποιήσῃ κακοδαίμονας· ἀλλὰ πτοεῖ πλουτοῦντας εὐροοῦντας κληρονομοῦντας, ἐν γῇ διὰ θαλάττης ἐνδέδυκε προσπέφυκεν, ἐκτήκουσα ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις, διακαίουσα τοῖς θυμοῖς, συντρίβουσα ταῖς δεισιδαιμονίαις, διασύρουσα τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς * * *

Animine an corporis affectiones sint peiores

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΠΟΤΕΡΟΝ ΤΑ ΨΥΧΗΣ Η ΤΑ ΣΩΜΑΤΟΣ ΠΑΘΗ ΧΕΙΡΟΝΑ

[500] Ὅμηρος μὲν ἐπιβλέψας τὰ θνητὰ τῶν ζῴων γένη καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα συγκρίνας κατὰ τοὺς βίους καὶ τὰς διαιτήσεις ἐξεφώνησεν ὡς οὐδέν ἐστιν

‘ὀιζυρώτερον ἀνδρός,

πάντων ὅσσα τε γαῖαν ἔπι πνείει τε καὶ ἕρπει’ (Ρ 446),

πρωτεῖον οὐκ εὐτυχὲς εἰς κακῶν ὑπεροχὴν ἀποδιδοὺς τῷ [c] ἀνθρώπῳ· ἡμεῖς δ’ ὥσπερ ἤδη νικῶντα κακοδαιμονίᾳ τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀθλιώτατον ζῴων ἀνηγορευμένον αὐτὸν αὑτῷ συγκρίνωμεν, εἰς ἰδίων κακῶν ἀγῶνα σῶμα καὶ ψυχὴν διαιροῦντες, οὐκ ἀχρήστως ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ δεόντως, ἵνα μάθωμεν πότερον διὰ τὴν τύχην ἢ δι’ ἑαυτοὺς ἀθλιώτερον ζῶμεν. νόσος μὲν γὰρ ἐν σώματι φύεται διὰ τύχην, κακία δὲ καὶ μοχθηρία περὶ ψυχὴν ἔργον ἐστὶ πρῶτον εἶτα πάθος αὐτῆς. οὐ μικρὸν δὲ πρὸς εὐθυμίαν ὄφελος, ἂν ἰάσιμον ᾖ τὸ χεῖρον καὶ κουφότερον καὶ ἄσφυκτον.

Ἡ μὲν οὖν Αἰσώπειος ἀλώπηξ (fab. 42) περὶ ποικιλίας δικαζομένη πρὸς τὴν πάρδαλιν, ὡς ἐκείνη τὸ [d] σῶμα καὶ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν εὐανθῆ καὶ κατάστικτον ἐπεδείξατο, τῆς δ’ ἦν τὸ ξανθὸν αὐχμηρὸν καὶ οὐχ ἡδὺ προσιδεῖν, ‘ἀλλ’ ἐμοῦ τοι τὸ ἐντός’ ἔφη ‘σκοπῶν, ὦ δικαστά, ποικιλωτέραν με τῆσδ’ ὄψει’, δηλοῦσα τὴν περὶ τὸ ἦθος εὐτροπίαν ἐπὶ πολλὰ ταῖς χρείαις ἀμειβομένην· †λέγομεν οὖν ἐν ἡμῖν, ὅτι πολλὰ μέν, ὦ ἄνθρωπε, σοῦ καὶ τὸ σῶμα νοσήματα καὶ πάθη φύσει τ’ ἀνίησιν ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ προσπίπτοντα δέχεται θύραθεν· ἂν δὲ σαυτὸν ἀνοίξῃς ἔνδοθεν, ποικίλον τι καὶ πολυπαθὲς κακῶν ταμιεῖον εὑρήσεις καὶ θησαύρισμα, ὥς φησι Δημόκριτος (B 149), οὐκ ἔξωθεν [e] ἐπιρρεόντων, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐγγείους καὶ αὐτόχθονας πηγὰς ἐχόντων, ἃς ἀνίησιν ἡ κακία πολύχυτος καὶ δαψιλὴς οὖσα τοῖς πάθεσιν. εἰ δὲ τὰ μὲν ἐν σαρκὶ νοσήματα σφυγμοῖς καὶ ὤχραις [ἐρυθαινόμενα] φωρᾶται καὶ θερμότητες αὐτὰ καὶ πόνοι προπετεῖς ἐλέγχουσι, τὰ δ’ ἐν ψυχῇ λανθάνει τοὺς πολλοὺς κακὰ ὄντα, διὰ τοῦτ’ ἐστι κακίω, προσαφαιρούμενα τὴν τοῦ πάσχοντος αἴσθησιν. τῶν μὲν γὰρ περὶ τὸ σῶμα νοσημάτων ἐρρωμένος ὁ λογισμὸς αἰσθάνεται, τοῖς δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς συννοσῶν αὐτὸς οὐκ ἔχει κρίσιν ἐν οἷς πάσχει, πάσχει γὰρ ᾧ κρίνει· καὶ δεῖ τῶν ψυχικῶν πρῶτον καὶ μέγιστον ἀριθμεῖν τὴν ἄνοιαν, δι’ [f] ἧς ἀνήκεστος ἡ κακία τοῖς πολλοῖς συνοικεῖ καὶ συγκαταβιοῖ καὶ συναποθνῄσκει. ἀρχὴ γὰρ ἀπαλλαγῆς νόσου μὲν αἴσθησις εἰς χρείαν ἄγουσα τοῦ βοηθοῦντος τὸ πάσχον· ὁ δ’ ἀπιστίᾳ τοῦ νοσεῖν οὐκ εἰδὼς ὧν δεῖται, κἂν παρῇ τὸ θεραπεῦον, ἀρνεῖται. καὶ γὰρ τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα νοσημάτων [501] [a] τὰ μετ’ ἀναισθησίας χείρονα, λήθαργοι κεφαλαλγίαι ἐπιληψίαι [πυρετοί] αὐτοί τε πυρετοί, ‹οἳ› συντείναντες εἰς παρακοπὴν τὸ φλεγμαῖνον καὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν ὥσπερ ἐν ὀργάνῳ διαταράξαντες

‘κινοῦσι χορδὰς τὰς ἀκινήτους φρενῶν’ (Tr. ad. 361).

διὸ παῖδες ἰατρῶν βούλονται μὲν μὴ νοσεῖν τὸν ἄνθρωπον, νοσοῦντα δὲ μὴ ἀγνοεῖν ὅτι νοσεῖ· ὃ τοῖς ψυχικοῖς πάθεσι πᾶσι συμβέβηκεν. οὔτε γὰρ ἀφραίνοντες οὔτ’ ἀσελγαίνοντες οὔτ’ ἀδικοπραγοῦντες ἁμαρτάνειν δοκοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ἔνιοι καὶ κατορθοῦν. πυρετὸν μὲν γὰρ οὐδεὶς ὑγίειαν ὠνόμασεν οὐδὲ φθίσιν εὐεξίαν οὐδὲ ποδάγραν [b] ποδώκειαν οὐδ’ ὠχρίασιν ἐρύθημα, θυμὸν δὲ πολλοὶ καλοῦσιν ἀνδρείαν καὶ ἔρωτα φιλίαν καὶ φθόνον ἅμιλλαν καὶ δειλίαν ἀσφάλειαν. εἶθ’ οἱ μὲν καλοῦσι τοὺς ἰατροὺς (αἰσθάνονται γὰρ ὧν δέονται πρὸς ἃ νοσοῦσιν), οἱ δὲ φεύγουσι τοὺς φιλοσόφους, οἴονται γὰρ ἐπιτυγχάνειν ἐν οἷς διαμαρτάνουσιν. ἐπεὶ τούτῳ γε τῷ λόγῳ χρώμενοι λέγομεν, ὅτι κουφότερόν ἐστιν ὀφθαλμία μανίας καὶ ποδάγρα φρενίτιδος· ὁ μὲν αἰσθάνεται καὶ καλεῖ τὸν ἰατρὸν κεκραγώς, καὶ παρόντι τὴν ὄψιν ἀλεῖψαι τὴν φλέβα τεμεῖν [τὴν κεφαλὴν] παραδίδωσιν, τῆς δὲ μαινομένης Ἀγαύης [c] ἀκούεις ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους τὰ φίλτατ’ ἠγνοηκυίας (Eur. Bacch. 1169)·

‘ἄγομεν ἐξ ὄρεος

ἕλικα νεότομον ἐπὶ μέλαθρα,

μακάριον θήραμα.’

Καὶ γὰρ ὁ μὲν τῷ σώματι νοσῶν εὐθὺς ἐνδοὺς καὶ καθεὶς ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὸ κλινίδιον ἡσυχίαν ἄγει θεραπευόμενος, ἂν δέ που μικρὸν ἐξᾴξῃ καὶ διασκιρτήσῃ τὸ σῶμα φλεγμονῆς προσπεσούσης, εἰπών τις τῶν παρακαθημένων πράως (Eur. Or. 258)

‘μέν’, ὦ ταλαίπωρ’, ἀτρέμα σοῖς ἐν δεμνίοις’

ἐπέστησε καὶ κατέσχεν· οἱ δ’ ἐν τοῖς ψυχικοῖς πάθεσιν ὄντες τότε μάλιστα πράττουσι, τόθ’ ἥκισθ’ ἡσυχάζουσιν. αἱ γὰρ ὁρμαὶ τῶν πράξεων ἀρχαί, τὰ δὲ πάθη σφοδρότητες [d] ὁρμῶν· διὸ τὴν ψυχὴν ἠρεμεῖν οὐκ ἐῶσιν, ἀλλ’ ὅτε μάλιστα δεῖται μονῆς καὶ σιωπῆς καὶ ὑποστολῆς ὁ ἄνθρωπος, τότ’ αὐτὸν εἰς ὕπαιθρον ἕλκουσι, τότ’ ἀποκαλύπτουσιν οἱ θυμοὶ αἱ φιλονεικίαι οἱ ἔρωτες αἱ λῦπαι, πολλὰ καὶ δρᾶν ἄνομα καὶ λαλεῖν ἀνάρμοστα τοῖς καιροῖς ἀναγκαζόμενον. ὥσπερ οὖν ἐπισφαλέστερος χειμὼν τοῦ πλεῖν οὐκ ἐῶντος ὁ κωλύων καθορμίσασθαι, οὕτως οἱ κατὰ ψυχὴν χειμῶνες βαρύτεροι στείλασθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον οὐκ ἐῶντες οὐδ’ ἐπιστῆσαι τεταραγμένον τὸν λογισμόν· ἀλλ’ ἀκυβέρνητος καὶ ἀνερμάτιστος ἐν ταραχῇ καὶ πλάνῃ δρόμοις λεχρίοις καὶ παραφόροις διατραχηλιζόμενος εἴς τι [e] ναυάγιον φοβερὸν ἐξέπεσε καὶ συνέτριψε τὸν ἑαυτοῦ βίον. ὥστε καὶ ταύτῃ χεῖρον νοσεῖν ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἢ τοῖς σώμασιν· τοῖς μὲν γὰρ πάσχειν μόνον τοῖς δὲ καὶ πάσχειν καὶ ποιεῖν κακῶς συμβέβηκε.

Καὶ τί δεῖ τὰ πολλὰ λέγειν τῶν παθῶν; αὐτὸς ὁ καιρὸς ὑπόμνησίς ἐστιν· ὁρᾶτε τὸν πολὺν τοῦτον καὶ παμμιγῆ, τὸν ἐνταῦθα συνηραγμένον καὶ κυκώμενον ὄχλον περὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὴν ἀγοράν; οὐ θύσοντες οὗτοι συνεληλύθασι πατρίοις θεοῖς οὐδ’ ὁμογνίων μεθέξοντες ἱερῶν ἀλλήλοις, οὐκ Ἀσκραίῳ Διὶ Λυδίων καρπῶν ἀπαρχὰς [f] φέροντες οὐδὲ Διονύσῳ βεβακχευμένον θύσθλον ἱεραῖς νυξὶ καὶ κοινοῖς ὀργιάσοντες κώμοις· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐτησίοις περιόδοις ἀκμὴ νοσήματος ἐκτραχύνουσα τὴν Ἀσίαν ἐπὶ δίκας καὶ ἀγῶνας ἐμπροθέσμους ἥκουσαν [502] [a] ἐνταῦθα συμβάλλει καὶ πλῆθος ὥσπερ ῥευμάτων ἀθρόον εἰς μίαν ἐμπέπτωκεν ἀγορὰν καὶ φλεγμαίνει καὶ συνέρρωγεν ‘ὀλλύντων τε καὶ ὀλλυμένων’ (Δ 451). ποίων ταῦτα πυρετῶν ἔργα, ποίων ἠπιάλων; τίνες ἐνστάσεις ἢ παρεμπτώσεις ἢ δυσκρασία θερμῶν ἢ ὑπέρχυσις ὑγρῶν; ἂν ἑκάστην δίκην ὥσπερ ἄνθρωπον ἀνακρίνῃς πόθεν πέφυκε πόθεν ἥκει, τὴν μὲν θυμὸς αὐθάδης γεγέννηκε τὴν δὲ μανιώδης φιλονεικία τὴν δ’ ἄδικος ἐπιθυμία * * *

De garrulitate

ΠΕΡΙ ΑΔΟΛΕΣΧΙΑΣ

[502] Δύσκολον μὲν ἀναλαμβάνει θεράπευμα καὶ χαλεπὸν ἡ φιλοσοφία τὴν ἀδολεσχίαν. τὸ γὰρ φάρμακον αὐτῆς, ὁ λόγος, ἀκουόντων ἐστίν, οἱ δ’ ἀδόλεσχοι οὐδενὸς ἀκούουσιν· [c] ἀεὶ γὰρ λαλοῦσι. καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔχει πρῶτον κακὸν ἡ ἀσιγησία, τὴν ἀνηκοΐαν. κωφότης γὰρ αὐθαίρετός ἐστιν, ἀνθρώπων οἶμαι μεμφομένων τὴν φύσιν, ὅτι μίαν μὲν γλῶτταν δύο δ’ ὦτ’ ἔχουσιν. εἴπερ οὖν ὁ Εὐριπίδης καλῶς εἶπε πρὸς τὸν ἀσύνετον ἀκροατήν (fr. 899)

‘οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην μὴ στέγοντα πιμπλάναι,

σοφοὺς ἐπαντλῶν ἀνδρὶ μὴ σοφῷ λόγους,’

δικαιότερον ἄν τις εἴποι πρὸς τὸν ἀδόλεσχον [μᾶλλον δὲ περὶ τοῦ ἀδολέσχου] ‘οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην μὴ δεχόμενον πιμπλάναι, σοφοὺς ἐπαντλῶν’ μᾶλλον δὲ περιαντλῶν λόγους [d] ἀνθρώπῳ λαλοῦντι μὲν πρὸς τοὺς οὐκ ἀκούοντας, μὴ ἀκούοντι δὲ τῶν λαλούντων. καὶ γὰρ ἂν ἀκούσῃ τι βραχύ, τῆς ἀδολεσχίας ὥσπερ ἄμπωτιν λαβούσης, τοῦτο παραχρῆμα πολλαπλάσιον ἀνταποδίδωσι. τὴν μὲν γὰρ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ στοὰν ἀπὸ μιᾶς φωνῆς πολλὰς ἀντανακλάσεις ποιοῦσαν ἑπτάφωνον καλοῦσι· τῆς δ’ ἀδολεσχίας ἂν ἐλάχιστος ἅψηται λόγος, εὐθὺς ἀντιπεριηχεῖ

‘κινοῦσα χορδὰς τὰς ἀκινήτους φρενῶν’ (Tr. adesp. 361).

μήποτε γὰρ αὐτοῖς οὐκ εἰς τὴν ψυχὴν ἀλλ’ εἰς τὴν γλῶτταν ἡ ἀκοὴ συντέτρηται· διὸ τοῖς μὲν ἄλλοις ἐμμένουσιν οἱ λόγοι, τῶν δ’ ἀδολέσχων διαρρέουσιν· εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἀγγεῖα [e] κενοὶ φρενῶν ἤχου δὲ μεστοὶ περιίασιν. εἰ δ’ οὖν δοκεῖ πείρας μηδὲν ἐλλελεῖφθαι, εἴπωμεν πρὸς τὸν ἀδόλεσχον ‘ὦ παῖ, σιώπα· πόλλ’ ἔχει σιγὴ καλά’ (Soph. fr. 78), δύο δὲ τὰ πρῶτα καὶ μέγιστα, τὸ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκουσθῆναι· ὧν οὐδετέρου τυχεῖν ἐγγίνεται τοῖς ἀδολέσχοις, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ αὐτὴν τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἀποδυσπετοῦσι. τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοις νοσήμασι τῆς ψυχῆς, οἷον φιλαργυρίᾳ φιλοδοξίᾳ φιληδονίᾳ, τὸ γοῦν τυγχάνειν ὧν ἐφίενται περίεστι, τοῖς δ’ ἀδολέσχοις τοῦτο συμβαίνει χαλεπώτατον· ἐπιθυμοῦντες γὰρ ἀκροατῶν οὐ τυγχάνουσιν, ἀλλὰ πᾶς φεύγει προτροπάδην· [f] κἂν ἐν ἡμικυκλίῳ τινὶ καθεζόμενοι κἂν περιπατοῦντες ἐν ξυστῷ θεάσωνται προσφοιτῶντα, ταχέως ἀνάζευξιν αὑτοῖς παρεγγυῶσι. καὶ καθάπερ ὅταν ἐν συλλόγῳ τινὶ σιωπὴ γένηται, τὸν Ἑρμῆν ἐπεισεληλυθέναι λέγουσιν, οὕτως ὅταν εἰς συμπόσιον ἢ συνέδριον γνωρίμων [503] [a] λάλος εἰσέλθῃ, πάντες ἀποσιωπῶσι μὴ βουλόμενοι λαβὴν παρασχεῖν· ἂν δ’ αὐτὸς ἄρξηται διαίρειν τὸ στόμα, ‘πρὸ χείματος ὥστ’ ἀνὰ ποντίαν ἄκραν βορρᾶ ζαέντος’ (Lyr. adesp. 100 II p. 163 D) ὑφορώμενοι σάλον καὶ ναυτίαν ἐξανέστησαν. ὅθεν αὐτοῖς συμβαίνει μήτε παρὰ δεῖπνον συγκλιτῶν μήτε συσκήνων τυγχάνειν προθύμων, ὅταν ὁδοιπορῶσιν ἢ πλέωσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαστῶν· πρόσκειται γὰρ ἁπανταχοῦ, τῶν ἱματίων ἀντιλαμβανόμενος, ‹ἁπτόμενος› τοῦ γενείου, τὴν πλευρὰν θυροκοπῶν τῇ χειρί.

‘πόδες δὴ κεῖθι τιμιώτατοι’

κατὰ τὸν Ἀρχίλοχον (fr. 132), καὶ νὴ Δία κατὰ τὸν σοφὸν Ἀριστοτέλην. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐνοχλούμενος ὑπ’ ἀδολέσχου [b] καὶ κοπτόμενος ἀτόποις τισὶ διηγήμασι, πολλάκις αὐτοῦ λέγοντος ‘οὐ θαυμαστόν, Ἀριστότελες;’ ‘οὐ τοῦτο’ φησί ‘θαυμαστόν, ἀλλ’ εἴ τις πόδας ἔχων σὲ ὑπομένει.’ ἑτέρῳ δέ τινι τοιούτῳ μετὰ πολλοὺς λόγους εἰπόντι ‘κατηδολέσχηκά σου, φιλόσοφε·’ ‘μὰ Δί’’ εἶπεν· ‘οὐ γὰρ προσεῖχον.’ καὶ γὰρ ἂν βιάσωνται λαλεῖν οἱ ἀδόλεσχοι, παρέδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ ὦτα περιαντλεῖν ἔξωθεν, αὐτὴ δ’ ἐντὸς ἑτέρας τινὰς ἀναπτύσσει καὶ διέξεισι πρὸς αὑτὴν φροντίδας. ὅθεν οὔτε προσεχόντων οὔτε πιστευόντων ἀκροατῶν εὐποροῦσι· τῶν μὲν γὰρ πρὸς τὰς συνουσίας εὐκαταφόρων ἄγονον εἶναι τὸ σπέρμα λέγουσι, τῶν δ’ ἀδολέσχων [c] ὁ λόγος ἀτελὴς καὶ ἄκαρπός ἐστι.

Καίτοι γ’ οὐδὲν οὕτως ἡ φύσις εὐερκῶς κεχαράκωκε τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν ὡς τὴν γλῶτταν, βαλομένη φρουρὰν πρὸ αὐτῆς τοὺς ὀδόντας, ἵν’, ἐὰν ἐντὸς κατατείνοντος ‘ἡνία σιγαλόεντα’ (Ε 226 al.) τοῦ λογισμοῦ μὴ ὑπακούῃ μηδ’ ἀνειλῆται, δήγμασιν αὐτῆς κατέχωμεν τὴν ἀκρασίαν αἱμάττοντες. ‘ἀχαλίνων’ γὰρ οὐ ταμιείων οὐδ’ οἰκημάτων ἀλλὰ ‘στομάτων τὸ τέλος δυστυχίαν’ ὁ Εὐριπίδης φησίν (Bacch. 386)· οἱ δ’ οἰκημάτων μὲν ἀθύρων καὶ βαλλαντίων ἀδέσμων μηδὲν ὄφελος οἰόμενοι τοῖς κεκτημένοις εἶναι, στόμασι δ’ ἀκλείστοις καὶ ἀθύροις ὥσπερ τὸ τοῦ [d] Πόντου διὰ παντὸς ἔξω ῥέουσι χρώμενοι πάντων ἀτιμότατον ἡγεῖσθαι τὸν λόγον ἐοίκασιν.

Ὅθεν οὐδὲ πίστιν ἔχουσιν ἧς πᾶς λόγος ἐφίεται· τὸ γὰρ οἰκεῖον αὐτοῦ τέλος τοῦτ’ ἐστί, πίστιν ἐνεργάσασθαι τοῖς ἀκούουσιν· ἀπιστοῦνται δ’ οἱ λάλοι, κἂν ἀληθεύωσιν. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ πυρὸς εἰς ἀγγεῖον κατακλεισθεὶς τῷ μὲν μέτρῳ πλείων εὑρίσκεται τῇ δὲ χρείᾳ μοχθηρότερος, οὕτω λόγος εἰς ἀδόλεσχον ἐμπεσὼν ἄνθρωπον πολὺ ποιεῖ τοῦ ψεύδους ἐπίμετρον, ᾧ διαφθείρει τὴν πίστιν.

Ἔτι τοίνυν τὸ μεθύειν πᾶς ἄνθρωπος αἰδήμων καὶ κόσμιος οἶμαι φυλάξαιτ’ ἄν. μανίᾳ γὰρ ὁμότοιχος μὲν ἡ [e] ὀργὴ κατ’ ἐνίους ἡ δὲ μέθη σύνοικος, μᾶλλον δὲ μανία τῷ μὲν χρόνῳ ἥττων τῇ δ’ αἰτίᾳ μείζων, ὅτι τὸ αὐθαίρετον αὐτῇ πρόσεστι. τῆς δὲ μέθης οὐθὲν οὕτω κατηγοροῦσιν ὡς τὸ περὶ τοὺς λόγους ἀκρατὲς καὶ ἀόριστον· ‘οἶνος γάρ’ φησιν (ξ 4635)

‘ἐφέηκε πολύφρονά περ μάλ’ ἀεῖσαι,
 καί θ’ ἁπαλὸν γελάσαι καί τ’ ὀρχήσασθαι ἀνῆκε.’

καὶ τί τὸ δεινότατον; ᾠδὴ καὶ γέλως καὶ ὄρχησις; οὐδὲν ἄχρι τούτων·

‘καί τι ἔπος προέηκεν, ὅπερ τ’ ἄρρητον ἄμεινον’ -

τοῦτ’ ἤδη δεινὸν καὶ ἐπικίνδυνον. καὶ μή ποτε τὸ ζητούμενον παρὰ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις λύων ὁ ποιητὴς οἰνώσεως καὶ [f] μέθης διαφορὰν εἴρηκεν, οἰνώσεως μὲν ἄνεσιν μέθης δὲ φλυαρίαν. τὸ γὰρ ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ τοῦ νήφοντος ἐπὶ τῆς γλώττης ἐστὶ τοῦ μεθύοντος, ὡς οἱ παροιμιαζόμενοι λέγουσιν. ὅθεν ὁ μὲν Βίας ἔν τινι πότῳ σιωπῶν καὶ σκωπτόμενος εἰς ἀβελτερίαν ὑπό τινος ἀδολέσχου ‘καὶ τίς ἄν’ [504] [a] ἔφη ‘δύναιτο μωρὸς ἐν οἴνῳ σιωπᾶν;’ Ἀθήνησι δέ τις ἑστιῶν πρέσβεις βασιλικοὺς ἐφιλοτιμήθη σπουδάζουσιν αὐτοῖς συναγαγεῖν εἰς ταὐτὸ τοὺς φιλοσόφους· χρωμένων δὲ τῶν ἄλλων κοινολογίᾳ καὶ τὰς συμβολὰς ἀποδιδόντων τοῦ δὲ Ζήνωνος ἡσυχίαν ἄγοντος, φιλοφρονησάμενοι καὶ προπιόντες οἱ ξένοι ‘περὶ σοῦ δὲ τί χρὴ λέγειν’ ἔφασαν ‘ὦ Ζήνων τῷ βασιλεῖ;’ κἀκεῖνος ‘ἄλλο μηθέν’ εἶπεν ‘ἢ ὅτι πρεσβύτης ἐστὶν ἐν Ἀθήναις παρὰ πότον σιωπᾶν δυνάμενος.’ οὕτω τι βαθὺ καὶ μυστηριῶδες ἡ σιγὴ καὶ νηφάλιον, ἡ δὲ μέθη λάλον· ἄνουν γὰρ καὶ ὀλιγόφρον, διὰ τοῦτο [b] καὶ πολύφωνον. οἱ δὲ φιλόσοφοι καὶ ὁριζόμενοι τὴν μέθην λέγουσιν εἶναι λήρησιν πάροινον· οὕτως οὐ ψέγεται τὸ πίνειν, εἰ προσείη τῷ πίνειν τὸ σιωπᾶν, ἀλλ’ ἡ μωρολογία μέθην ποιεῖ τὴν οἴνωσιν. ὁ μὲν οὖν μεθύων ληρεῖ παρ’ οἶνον, ὁ δ’ ἀδόλεσχος πανταχοῦ ληρεῖ, ἐν ἀγορᾷ ἐν θεάτρῳ ἐν περιπάτῳ μεθ’ ἡμέραν νύκτωρ· ἔστι δὲ θεραπεύων τῆς νόσου βαρύτερος, συμπλέων τῆς ναυτίας ἀηδέστερος, ἐπαινῶν τοῦ ψέγοντος ἐπαχθέστερος. ἥδιόν γέ τοι πονηροῖς ὁμιλοῦμεν ἐπιδεξίοις ἢ χρηστοῖς ἀδολέσχαις. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Σοφοκλέους Νέστωρ τὸν Αἴαντα τραχυνόμενον τῷ λόγῳ πραΰνων ἠθικῶς τοῦτ’ εἴρηκεν (Soph. fr. 771)

[c] ‘οὐ μέμφομαί σε· δρῶν γὰρ εὖ κακῶς λέγεις,’

πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἀδολέσχην οὐχ οὕτως ἔχομεν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν ἔργου χάριν ἡ τῶν λόγων ἀκαιρία διαφθείρει καὶ ἀπόλλυσι.

Λυσίας τινὶ δίκην ἔχοντι λόγον συγγράψας ἔδωκεν· ὁ δὲ πολλάκις ἀναγνοὺς ἧκε πρὸς τὸν Λυσίαν ἀθυμῶν καὶ λέγων τὸ μὲν πρῶτον αὐτῷ διεξιόντι θαυμαστὸν φανῆναι τὸν λόγον, αὖθις δὲ καὶ τρίτον ἀναλαμβάνοντι παντελῶς ἀμβλὺν καὶ ἄπρακτον· ὁ δὲ Λυσίας γελάσας ‘τί οὖν;’ εἶπεν ‘οὐχ ἅπαξ μέλλεις λέγειν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῶν δικαστῶν;’ καὶ σκόπει τὴν Λυσίου πειθὼ καὶ χάριν· ‘κεῖνον’ γὰρ ‘ἐγὼ’ (Lyr. adesp. 53 II p. 162 D)

‘φαμὶ ἰοπλοκάμων Μοισᾶν εὖ λαχεῖν’.

[d] τῶν δὲ περὶ τοῦ ποιητοῦ λεγομένων ἀληθέστατόν ἐστιν, ὅτι μόνος Ὅμηρος τῆς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἁψικορίας περιγέγονεν, ἀεὶ καινὸς ὢν καὶ πρὸς χάριν ἀκμάζων· ἀλλ’ ὅμως εἰπὼν καὶ ἀναφωνήσας ἐκεῖνο περὶ αὑτοῦ τὸ (μ 452)

‘ἐχθρὸν δέ μοί ἐστιν

αὖθις ἀριζήλως εἰρημένα μυθολογεύειν’

φεύγει καὶ φοβεῖται τὸν ἐφεδρεύοντα παντὶ λόγῳ κόρον, εἰς ἄλλα ἐξ ἄλλων διηγήματα τὴν ἀκοὴν ἄγων καὶ τῇ καινότητι τὴν πλησμονὴν αὐτῆς παραμυθούμενος. οἱ δ’ ἀποκναίουσι δήπου τὰ ὦτα ταῖς ταυτολογίαις ὥσπερ παλίψηστα διαμολύνοντες.

Τοῦτο τοίνυν πρῶτον ὑπομιμνήσκωμεν αὐτούς, ὅτι, [e] καθάπερ τὸν οἶνον ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα καὶ φιλοφροσύνης εὑρημένον οἱ προσβιαζόμενοι πολὺν πίνειν καὶ ἄκρατον ἐνίους εἰς ἀηδίαν καὶ παροινίαν τρέπουσιν, οὕτω τὸν λόγον ἥδιστον ὄντα καὶ φιλανθρωπότατον συμβόλαιον οἱ χρώμενοι κακῶς καὶ προχείρως ἀπάνθρωπον ποιοῦσι καὶ ἄμικτον, οἷς οἴονται χαρίζεσθαι λυποῦντες καὶ ἀφ’ ὧν θαυμάζεσθαι καταγελώμενοι καὶ δι’ ὧν φιλεῖσθαι δυσχεραινόμενοι. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ τῷ κεστῷ τοὺς ὁμιλοῦντας ἀποστρέφων καὶ ἀπελαύνων ἀναφρόδιτος, οὕτως ὁ τῷ λόγῳ λυπῶν καὶ ἀπεχθανόμενος ἄμουσός τις καὶ ἄτεχνός ἐστι.

Τῶν δ’ ἄλλων παθῶν καὶ νοσημάτων τὰ μέν ἐστιν [f] ἐπικίνδυνα τὰ δὲ μισητὰ τὰ δὲ καταγέλαστα, τῇ δ’ ἀδολεσχίᾳ πάντα συμβέβηκε· χλευάζονται μὲν γὰρ ἐν ταῖς κοιναῖς διηγήσεσι, μισοῦνται δὲ διὰ τὰς τῶν κακῶν προσαγγελίας, κινδυνεύουσι δὲ τῶν ἀπορρήτων μὴ κρατοῦντες. [505] [a] ὅθεν Ἀνάχαρσις ἑστιαθεὶς παρὰ Σόλωνι καὶ κοιμώμενος ὤφθη τὴν μὲν ἀριστερὰν χεῖρα τοῖς μορίοις τὴν δὲ δεξιὰν τῷ στόματι προσκειμένην ἔχων· ἐγκρατεστέρου γὰρ ᾤετο χαλινοῦ δεῖσθαι τὴν γλῶτταν, ὀρθῶς οἰόμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἄν τις ἐξαριθμήσαιτο ῥᾳδίως ἄνδρας τοσούτους ἀφροδισίων ἀκρασίᾳ πεπτωκότας, ὅσας πόλεις καὶ ἡγεμονίας λόγος ἐξενεχθεὶς ἀπόρρητος ἀναστάτους ἐποίησε. Σύλλας ἐπολιόρκει τὰς Ἀθήνας, οὐκ ἔχων σχολὴν ἐνδιατρῖψαι χρόνον πολύν, ‘ἐπεὶ πόνος ἄλλος ἔπειγεν’ (λ 54), ἡρπακότος μὲν Ἀσίαν Μιθριδάτου τῶν δὲ περὶ Μάριον αὖθις ἐν Ῥώμῃ κρατούντων· ἀλλὰ πρεσβυτῶν τινων ἐπὶ κουρείου [b] διαλεγομένων ὡς οὐ φυλάττεται τὸ Ἑπτάχαλκον καὶ κινδυνεύει τὸ ἄστυ κατ’ ἐκεῖνο ληφθῆναι τὸ μέρος ἀκούσαντες οἱ κατάσκοποι πρὸς τὸν Σύλλαν ἐξήγγειλαν. ὁ δ’ εὐθὺς τὴν δύναμιν προσαγαγὼν περὶ μέσας νύκτας εἰσήγαγε τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ μικροῦ μὲν κατέσκαψεν ἐνέπλησε δὲ φόνου καὶ νεκρῶν, ὥστε τὸν Κεραμεικὸν αἵματι ῥυῆναι. χαλεπῶς δὲ πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἔσχε διὰ τοὺς λόγους μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ τὰ ἔργα· κακῶς γὰρ αὐτὸν ἔλεγον καὶ τὴν Μετέλλαν, ἀναπηδῶντες ἐπὶ τὰ τείχη καὶ σκώπτοντες

‘συκάμινον ἔσθ’ ὁ Σύλλας ἀλφίτῳ πεπασμένον,’

[c] καὶ τοιαῦτα πολλὰ φλυαροῦντες ἐπεσπάσαντο ‘κουφοτάτου πράγματος, λόγων,’ ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων ‘βαρυτάτην ζημίαν.’ τὴν δὲ Ῥωμαίων πόλιν ἐκώλυσεν ἐλευθέραν γενέσθαι Νέρωνος ἀπαλλαγεῖσαν ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς ἀδολεσχία. μία γὰρ ἦν νύξ, μεθ’ ἣν ἔδει τὸν τύραννον ἀπολωλέναι, παρεσκευασμένων ἀπάντων· ὁ δὲ μέλλων αὐτὸν ἀποκτιννύναι πορευόμενος εἰς τὸ θέατρον ἰδών τινα τῶν δεδεμένων ἐπὶ θύραις μέλλοντα προσάγεσθαι τῷ Νέρωνι καὶ τὴν αὑτοῦ τύχην ἀποδυρόμενον ἐγγὺς προσῆλθεν αὐτῷ καὶ προσψιθυρίσας ‘εὔχου’ φησίν ‘ὦ ἄνθρωπε, τὴν σήμερον ἡμέραν [d] παρελθεῖν μόνον, αὔριον δέ μοι εὐχαριστήσεις.’ ἁρπάσας οὖν τὸ αἰνιχθὲν ἐκεῖνος καὶ νοήσας, οἶμαι, ὅτι (Hes. fr. 219)

‘νήπιος, ὃς τὰ ἕτοιμα λιπὼν ἀνέτοιμα διώκει,’

τὴν βεβαιοτέραν εἵλετο σωτηρίαν πρὸ τῆς δικαιοτέρας. ἐμήνυσε γὰρ τῷ Νέρωνι τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου· κἀκεῖνος εὐθὺς ἀνήρπαστο, καὶ βάσανοι καὶ πῦρ καὶ μάστιγες ἐπ’ αὐτόν, ἀρνούμενον πρὸς τὴν ἀνάγκην ἃ χωρὶς ἀνάγκης ἐμήνυσε. Ζήνων δ’ ὁ φιλόσοφος, ἵνα μηδ’ ἄκοντος αὐτοῦ πρόηταί τι τῶν ἀπορρήτων ἐκβιαζόμενον τὸ σῶμα ταῖς ἀνάγκαις, διαφαγὼν τὴν γλῶτταν προσέπτυσε τῷ τυράννῳ. καλὸν δὲ καὶ Λέαινα τῆς ἐγκρατείας [e] ἔχει γέρας. ἑταίρα τῶν περὶ Ἁρμόδιον ἦν καὶ Ἀριστογείτονα καὶ τῆς ἐπὶ τοὺς τυράννους συνωμοσίας ἐκοινώνει ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ὡς γυνή· καὶ γὰρ αὕτη περὶ τὸν καλὸν ἐκεῖνον ἐβάκχευσε κρατῆρα τοῦ ἔρωτος καὶ κατωργίαστο [διὰ] τοῦ θεοῦ τοῖς ἀπορρήτοις. ὡς οὖν ἐκεῖνοι πταίσαντες ἀνῃρέθησαν, ἀνακρινομένη καὶ κελευομένη φράσαι τοὺς ἔτι λανθάνοντας οὐκ ἔφρασεν, ἀλλ’ ἐνεκαρτέρησεν, ἐπιδείξασα τοὺς ἄνδρας οὐδὲν ἀνάξιον ἑαυτῶν παθόντας, εἰ τοιαύτην ἠγάπησαν. Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ χαλκῆν ποιησάμενοι λέαιναν ἄγλωσσον ἐν πύλαις τῆς ἀκροπόλεως ἀνέθηκαν, τῷ μὲν θυμοειδεῖ τοῦ ζῴου τὸ ἀήττητον αὐτῆς τῷ δ’ [f] ἀγλώσσῳ τὸ σιωπηρὸν καὶ μυστηριῶδες ἐμφαίνοντες.

οὐδεὶς γὰρ οὕτω λόγος ὠφέλησε ῥηθεὶς ὡς πολλοὶ σιωπηθέντες· ἔστι γὰρ εἰπεῖν ποτε τὸ σιγηθέν, οὐ μὴν σιωπῆσαί γε τὸ λεχθέν, ἀλλ’ ἐκκέχυται καὶ διαπεφοίτηκεν. ὅθεν οἶμαι τοῦ μὲν λέγειν ἀνθρώπους τοῦ δὲ σιωπᾶν θεοὺς διδασκάλους ἔχομεν, ἐν τελεταῖς καὶ μυστηρίοις σιωπὴν [506] [a] παραλαμβάνοντες. ὁ δὲ ποιητὴς τὸν λογιώτατον Ὀδυσσέα σιωπηλότατον πεποίηκε καὶ τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὴν τροφόν· ἀκούεις γὰρ λεγούσης (τ 494)

‘ἕξω δ’ ἠύτε περ κρατερὴ δρῦς ἠὲ σίδηρος.’

αὐτὸς δὲ τῇ Πηνελόπῃ παρακαθήμενος (τ 2102)

‘θυμῷ μὲν γοόωσαν ἑὴν ἐλέαιρε γυναῖκα,

ὀφθαλμοὶ δ’ ὡς εἰ κέρα ἕστασαν ἠὲ σίδηρος,

ἀτρέμας ἐν βλεφάροισιν·’

οὕτω τὸ σῶμα μεστὸν ἦν αὐτῷ πανταχόθεν ἐγκρατείας, καὶ πάντ’ ἔχων ὁ λόγος εὐπειθῆ καὶ ὑποχείρια προσέταττε [b] τοῖς ὄμμασι μὴ δακρύειν, τῇ γλώττῃ μὴ φθέγγεσθαι, τῇ καρδίᾳ μὴ τρέμειν μηδ’ ὑλακτεῖν (υ 13).

‘τῷ δ’ αὖτ’ ἐν πείσῃ κραδίη μένε τετληυῖα’ (υ 23),

μέχρι τῶν ἀλόγων κινημάτων διήκοντος τοῦ λογισμοῦ καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ αἷμα πεποιημένου κατήκοον ἑαυτῷ καὶ χειρόηθες. τοιοῦτοι δὲ καὶ οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν ἑταίρων· τὸ γὰρ ἑλκομένους καὶ προσουδιζομένους (ι 289) ὑπὸ τοῦ Κύκλωπος μὴ κατειπεῖν τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως μηδὲ δεῖξαι τὸ πεπυρακτωμένον ἐκεῖνο καὶ παρεσκευασμένον ὄργανον ἐπὶ τὸν ὀφθαλμόν, ἀλλ’ ὠμοὺς ἐσθίεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ φράσαι τι τῶν ἀπορρήτων ὑπερβολὴν ἐγκρατείας καὶ πίστεως οὐ λέλοιπεν.

[c] ὅθεν ὁ Πιττακὸς οὐ κακῶς τοῦ Αἰγυπτίων βασιλέως πέμψαντος ἱερεῖον αὐτῷ καὶ κελεύσαντος τὸ κάλλιστον καὶ χείριστον ἐξελεῖν κρέας ἔπεμψεν ἐξελὼν τὴν γλῶτταν ὡς ὄργανον μὲν ἀγαθῶν ὄργανον δὲ κακῶν τῶν μεγίστων οὖσαν. ἡ δ’ Εὐριπίδειος Ἰνὼ παρρησίαν ἄγουσα περὶ αὑτῆς εἰδέναι φησί (fr. 413, 2)

‘σιγᾶν θ’ ὅπου δεῖ καὶ λέγειν ἵν’ ἀσφαλές.’

οἱ γὰρ εὐγενοῦς καὶ βασιλικῆς τῷ ὄντι παιδείας τυχόντες πρῶτον σιγᾶν εἶτα λαλεῖν μανθάνουσιν. Ἀντίγονος γοῦν ὁ βασιλεὺς [ἐκεῖνος] ἐρωτήσαντος αὐτὸν τοῦ υἱοῦ πηνίκα μέλλουσιν ἀναζευγνύειν ‘τί δέδοικας;’ εἶπε ‘μὴ μόνος οὐκ [d] ἀκούσῃς τῆς σάλπιγγος;’ οὐκ ἄρα φωνὴν ἐπίστευεν ἀπόρρητον ᾧ τὴν βασιλείαν ἀπολείπειν ἔμελλεν; ἐδίδασκε μὲν οὖν αὐτὸν ἐγκρατῶς ἔχειν πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ πεφυλαγμένως. Μέτελλος δ’ ὁ γέρων ἕτερόν τι τοιοῦτον ἐπερωτώμενος ἐπὶ στρατείας ‘εἰ’ φησίν ‘ᾤμην τὸν χιτῶνά μοι συνειδέναι τοῦτο [τὸ ἀπόρρητον], ἀποδυσάμενος ἂν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πῦρ ἔθηκα.’ Εὐμένης δ’ ἀκούσας ἐπέρχεσθαι Κρατερὸν οὐδενὶ τῶν φίλων ἔφρασεν, ἀλλ’ ἐψεύσατο Νεοπτόλεμον εἶναι· τούτου γὰρ οἱ στρατιῶται κατεφρόνουν, ἐκείνου δὲ καὶ τὴν δόξαν ἐθαύμαζον καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἠγάπων. ἔγνω δ’ οὐδεὶς ἄλλος, ἀλλὰ συμβαλόντες [e] ἐκράτησαν καὶ ἀπέκτειναν αὐτὸν ἀγνοοῦντες καὶ νεκρὸν ἐπέγνωσαν. οὕτως ἐστρατήγησεν ἡ σιωπὴ τὸν ἀγῶνα καὶ τηλικοῦτον ἀνταγωνιστὴν ἀπέκρυψεν· ὥστ’ αὐτὸν τοὺς φίλους μὴ προειπόντα θαυμάζειν μᾶλλον ἢ μέμφεσθαι. κἂν μέμφηται δέ τις, ἐγκαλεῖσθαι βέλτιόν ἐστι σωθέντας δι’ ἀπιστίαν ἢ κατηγορεῖν ἀπολλυμένους διὰ τὸ πιστεῦσαι.

Τίς δ’ ὅλως ἑαυτῷ παρρησίαν ἀπολέλοιπε κατὰ τοῦ μὴ σιωπήσαντος; εἰ γὰρ ἀγνοεῖσθαι τὸν λόγον ἔδει, κακῶς ἐλέχθη πρὸς ἄλλον· εἰ δ’ ἀφεὶς ἐκ σεαυτοῦ κατέχεις ἐν ἑτέρῳ τὸ ἀπόρρητον, εἰς ἀλλοτρίαν πίστιν καταπέφευγας [f] τὴν σεαυτοῦ προέμενος· κἂν μὲν ἐκεῖνος ὅμοιός σοι γένηται, δικαίως ἀπόλωλας, ἂν δὲ βελτίων, σῴζῃ παραλόγως ἕτερον εὑρὼν ὑπὲρ σεαυτοῦ πιστότερον. ‘ἀλλὰ φίλος οὗτος ἐμοί.’ τούτῳ δ’ ἕτερός τις, ᾧ πιστεύσει καὶ οὗτος ὡς ἐγὼ τούτῳ· κἀκεῖνος ἄλλῳ πάλιν· εἶθ’ οὕτως ἐπιγονὴν λαμβάνει καὶ πολλαπλασιασμόν, εἰρομένης τῆς ἀκρασίας ὁ [507] [a] λόγος. ὡς γὰρ ἡ μονὰς οὐκ ἐκβαίνει τὸν ἑαυτῆς ὅρον ἀλλ’ ἅπαξ τὸ ἓν μένει (διὸ κέκληται μονάς), ἡ δὲ δυὰς ἀρχὴ διαφορᾶς ἀόριστος (εὐθὺς γὰρ ἑαυτὴν ἐξίστησι τῷ διπλασιασμῷ εἰς τὸ πλῆθος τρεπομένη), οὕτω λόγος ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ καταμένων ἀπόρρητος ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐστιν· ἂν δ’ εἰς ἕτερον ἐκβῇ, φήμης ἔσχε τάξιν. ‘ἔπεα’ γὰρ ‘πτερόεντα’ φησὶν ὁ ποιητής (Hom. passim)· οὔτε γὰρ πτηνὸν ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν ἀφέντα ῥᾴδιόν ἐστιν αὖθις κατασχεῖν, οὔτε λόγον ἐκ τοῦ στόματος προέμενον συλλαβεῖν καὶ κρατῆσαι δυνατόν, ἀλλὰ φέρεται ‘λαιψηρὰ κυκλώσας πτερά’, δι’ ἄλλων ἐπ’ ἄλλους σκιδνάμενος. νεὼς μὲν γὰρ ἁρπαγείσης [b] ὑπὸ πνεύματος ἐπιλαμβάνονται σπείραις καὶ ἀγκύραις τὸ τάχος ἀμβλύνοντες· λόγου δ’ ὥσπερ ἐκ λιμένων ἐκδραμόντος οὐκ ἔστιν ὅρμος οὐδ’ ἀγκυροβόλιον, ἀλλὰ ψόφῳ πολλῷ καὶ ἤχῳ φερόμενος προσέρρηξε καὶ κατέδυσεν εἰς μέγαν τινὰ καὶ δεινὸν τὸν φθεγξάμενον κίνδυνον.

‘μικροῦ γὰρ ἐκ λαμπτῆρος Ἰδαῖον λέπας

πρήσειεν ἄν τις· καὶ πρὸς ἄνδρ’ εἰπὼν ἕνα,

πύθοιντ’ ἂν ἀστοὶ πάντες.’ (Eur. Ino 411).

ἡ Ῥωμαίων σύγκλητος ἀπόρρητόν τινα βουλὴν ἐβουλεύετο καθ’ αὑτὴν ἐπὶ πολλὰς ἡμέρας· ἀσάφειαν δὲ πολλὴν καὶ ὑπόνοιαν ἔχοντος τοῦ πράγματος γυνὴ τἄλλα σώφρων, γυνὴ δὲ προσέκειτο τῷ ἑαυτῆς ἀνδρί, λιπαρῶς [c] δεομένη πυθέσθαι τὸ ἀπόρρητον· ὅρκοι δὲ καὶ κατάραι περὶ σιωπῆς ἐγίγνοντο καὶ δάκρυα ποτνιωμένης αὐτῆς ὡς πίστιν οὐκ ἐχούσης. ὁ δὲ Ῥωμαῖος ἐξελέγξαι βουλόμενος αὐτῆς τὴν ἀβελτερίαν ‘νικᾷς, ὦ γύναι’ εἶπεν, ‘ἀλλ’ ἄκουε φοβερὸν πρᾶγμα καὶ τεράστιον. προσήγγελται γὰρ ἡμῖν ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερέων κόρυδον ὦφθαι πετόμενον κράνος ἔχοντα χρυσοῦν καὶ δόρυ· σκεπτόμεθα δὴ τὸ τέρας εἴτε χρηστὸν εἴτε φαῦλόν ἐστι, καὶ συνδιαποροῦμεν τοῖς μάντεσιν. ἀλλὰ σιώπα.’ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ᾤχετ’ εἰς τὴν ἀγοράν· ἡ δὲ τῶν θεραπαινίδων εὐθὺς ἐφελκυσαμένη τὴν πρώτην εἰσελθοῦσαν [d] ἔπαιε τὸ στῆθος αὑτῆς καὶ τὰς τρίχας ἐσπάραττεν ‘οἴμοι’ λέγουσα ‘τοῦ ἀνδρὸς καὶ τῆς πατρίδος· τί πεισόμεθα;’ βουλομένη καὶ διδάσκουσα τὴν θεράπαιναν εἰπεῖν ‘τί γὰρ γέγονεν;’ ὡς δ’ οὖν πυθομένης διηγήσατο καὶ προσέθηκε τὸν κοινὸν ἁπάσης ἀδολεσχίας ἐπῳδόν, τὸ ‘ταῦτα μηδενὶ φράσῃς ἀλλὰ σιώπα’, οὐ φθάνει τὸ θεραπαινίδιον ἀποχωρῆσαν αὐτῆς, καὶ τῶν ὁμοδούλων εὐθὺς ἣν μάλιστ’ εἶδε σχολάζουσαν ἐμβάλλει τὸν λόγον· ἐκείνη δὲ τῷ ἐραστῇ παραγενομένῳ πρὸς αὐτὴν ἔφρασεν. οὕτω δ’ εἰς ἀγορὰν τοῦ διηγήματος ἐκκυλισθέντος ὥστε προδραμεῖν [e] τὸν πλασάμενον τὴν φήμην, ἀπαντήσας τις αὐτῷ τῶν γνωρίμων ‘ἀρτίως’ εἶπεν ‘οἴκοθεν εἰς ἀγορὰν καταβαίνεις;’ ‘ἀρτίως’ εἶπεν ἐκεῖνος. ‘οὐκοῦν οὐδὲν ἀκήκοας;’ ‘γέγονε γάρ τι καινὸν ἄλλο’; ‘κόρυδος ὦπται πετόμενος κράνος ἔχων χρυσοῦν καὶ δόρυ, καὶ μέλλουσι περὶ τούτου σύγκλητον ἔχειν οἱ ἄρχοντες.’ κἀκεῖνος γελάσας ‘εὖ τοῦ τάχους’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ γύναι, τὸ καὶ φθάσαι με τὸν λόγον εἰς ἀγορὰν προελθόντα.’ τοὺς μὲν οὖν ἄρχοντας ἐντυχὼν ἀπήλλαξε τῆς ταραχῆς, τὴν δὲ γυναῖκα τιμωρούμενος, ὡς οἴκαδ’ εἰσῆλθεν, ‘ἀπώλεσάς μ’’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ γύναι· τὸ γὰρ ἀπόρρητον ἐκ τῆς ἐμῆς οἰκίας πεφώραται δεδημοσιωμένον· [f] ὥστε μοι φευκτέον ἐστὶ τὴν πατρίδα διὰ τὴν σὴν ἀκρασίαν.’ τρεπομένης δὲ πρὸς ἄρνησιν αὐτῆς καὶ λεγούσης ‘οὐ γὰρ ταῦτα μετὰ τριακοσίων ἤκουσας;’ ‘ποίων’ ἔφη ‘τριακοσίων; σοῦ βιαζομένης ἐπλασάμην ἀποπειρώμενος.’ οὗτος μὲν οὖν ἀσφαλῶς πάνυ καὶ μετ’ εὐλαβείας, ὥσπερ εἰς ἀγγεῖον σαθρὸν οὐκ οἶνον οὐκ ἔλαιον ἀλλ’ ὕδωρ ἐγχέας, [508] [a] ἐπείρασε τὴν γυναῖκα· Φούλβιος δ’ ὁ Καίσαρος ἑταῖρος τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ γέροντος ἤδη γεγονότος ἀκούσας ὀδυρομένου τὴν περὶ τὸν οἶκον ἐρημίαν, καὶ ὅτι τῶν μὲν δυεῖν αὐτῷ θυγατριδῶν ἀπολωλότων Ποστουμίου δ’ ὃς ἔτι λοιπός ἐστιν ἐκ διαβολῆς τινος ἐν φυγῇ ὄντος ἀναγκάζεται τὸν τῆς γυναικὸς υἱὸν ἐπεισάγειν τῇ διαδοχῇ τῆς ἡγεμονίας, καίπερ οἰκτείρων καὶ βουλευόμενος ἐκ τῆς ὑπερορίας ἀνακαλεῖσθαι τὸν θυγατριδοῦν· ταῦθ’ ὁ Φούλβιος ἀκούσας ἐξήνεγκε πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα, πρὸς δὲ Λιβίαν ἐκείνη, Λιβία δὲ καθήψατο πικρῶς Καίσαρος, εἰ πάλαι ταῦτ’ [b] ἐγνωκὼς οὐ μεταπέμπεται τὸν θυγατριδοῦν, ἀλλ’ εἰς ἔχθραν καὶ πόλεμον αὐτὴν τῷ διαδόχῳ τῆς ἀρχῆς καθίστησιν. ἐλθόντος οὖν ἕωθεν, ὡς εἰώθει, τοῦ Φουλβίου πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ εἰπόντος ‘χαῖρε, Καῖσαρ’ ‘ὑγίαιν’’ εἶπε ‘Φούλβιε.’ κἀκεῖνος νοήσας ᾤχετ’ εὐθὺς ἀπιὼν οἴκαδε καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα μεταπεμψάμενος ‘ἔγνωκεν’ ἔφη ‘Καῖσαρ, ὅτι τὸ ἀπόρρητον οὐκ ἐσιώπησα· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μέλλω ἀναιρεῖν ἐμαυτόν·’ ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ‘δικαίως’ εἶπεν, ‘ὅτι μοι τοσοῦτον συνοικῶν χρόνον οὐκ ἔγνως οὐδ’ ἐφυλάξω τὴν ἀκρασίαν· ἀλλ’ ἔασον ἐμὲ προτέραν.’ καὶ λαβοῦσα τὸ ξίφος ἑαυτὴν προανεῖλε τοῦ ἀνδρός.

[c] Ὀρθῶς οὖν Φιλιππίδης ὁ κωμῳδιοποιὸς φιλοφρονουμένου τοῦ βασιλέως αὐτὸν Λυσιμάχου καὶ λέγοντος ‘τίνος σοι μεταδῶ τῶν ἐμῶν;’ ‘οὗ βούλει’ φησί, ‘βασιλεῦ, πλὴν τῶν ἀπορρήτων.’ τῇ δ’ ἀδολεσχίᾳ καὶ ἡ περιεργία κακὸν οὐκ ἔλαττον πρόσεστι· πολλὰ γὰρ ἀκούειν θέλουσιν, ἵνα πολλὰ λέγειν ἔχωσι. καὶ μάλιστα τοὺς ἀπορρήτους καὶ κεκρυμμένους τῶν λόγων περιιόντες ἐξιχνεύουσι καὶ ἀνερευνῶσιν, ὥσπερ [ὕλην] πυλαίαν τινὰ φορτίων τῇ φλυαρίᾳ παρατιθέμενοι, εἶθ’ ὥσπερ οἱ παῖδες τὸν κρύσταλλον οὔτε κατέχειν οὔτ’ ἀφεῖναι θέλουσι· μᾶλλον δ’ ὥσπερ ἑρπετὰ τοὺς ἀπορρήτους λόγους ἐγκολπισάμενοι [d] καὶ συλλαβόντες οὐ κρατοῦσιν ἀλλὰ διαβιβρώσκονται ὑπ’ αὐτῶν· τὰς μὲν γὰρ βελόνας φασὶ ῥήγνυσθαι τικτούσας καὶ τὰς ἐχίδνας, οἱ δ’ ἀπόρρητοι λόγοι τοὺς μὴ στέγοντας ἐκπίπτοντες ἀπολλύουσι καὶ διαφθείρουσιν. Σέλευκος ὁ Καλλίνικος ἐν τῇ πρὸς Γαλάτας μάχῃ πᾶν ἀποβαλὼν τὸ στράτευμα καὶ τὴν δύναμιν, αὐτὸς δὲ περισπάσας τὸ διάδημα καὶ φυγὼν ἵππῳ μετὰ τριῶν ἢ τεττάρων ἀνοδίαις καὶ πλάναις πολὺν δρόμον ἤδη, δι’ ἔνδειαν ἀπαγορεύων ἐπαυλίῳ τινὶ προσῆλθε, καὶ τὸν δεσπότην αὐτὸν εὑρὼν κατὰ τύχην ἄρτον καὶ ὕδωρ ᾔτησεν. ὁ δὲ καὶ ταῦτα καὶ [e] τῶν ἄλλων ὅσα παρῆν ἐν ἀγρῷ δαψιλῶς ἐπιδιδοὺς καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος ἐγνώρισε τὸ πρόσωπον τοῦ βασιλέως, καὶ περιχαρὴς γενόμενος τῇ συντυχίᾳ τῆς χρείας οὐ κατέσχεν οὐδὲ συνεψεύσατο βουλομένῳ λανθάνειν, ἀλλ’ ἄχρι τῆς ὁδοῦ προπέμψας καὶ ἀπολυόμενος ‘ὑγίαιν’’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ Σέλευκε.’ κἀκεῖνος ἐκτείνας τὴν δεξιὰν αὐτῷ καὶ προσελκόμενος ὡς φιλήσων, ἔνευσεν ἑνὶ τῶν μετ’ αὐτοῦ ξίφει τὸν τράχηλον ἀποκόψαι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου·

 ’φθεγγομένου δ’ ἄρα τοῦ γε κάρη κονίῃσιν ἐμίχθη’ (Κ 457).

εἰ δ’ ἐσίγησε τότε καρτερήσας ὀλίγον χρόνον, εὐτυχήσαντος [f] ὕστερον τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ μεγάλου γενομένου μείζονας οἶμαι χάριτας ἐκομίσατ’ ἂν τῆς σιωπῆς ἢ τῆς φιλοξενίας.

Οὗτος μὲν οὖν ἁμωσγέπως ἔσχε πρόφασιν τῆς ἀκρασίας τὴν ἐλπίδα καὶ τὴν φιλοφροσύνην, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι τῶν ἀδολέσχων οὐδ’ αἰτίαν ἔχοντες ἀπολλύουσιν αὑτούς. οἷον ἐν κουρείῳ τινὶ γινομένων λόγων περὶ τῆς Διονυσίου τυραννίδος ὡς ἀδαμαντίνη καὶ ἄρρηκτός ἐστι, γελάσας ὁ κουρεύς ‘ταῦθ’ ὑμᾶς’ ἔφη ‘περὶ Διονυσίου λέγειν, οὗ ἐγὼ [509] [a] παρ’ ἡμέρας ὀλίγας ἐπὶ τοῦ τραχήλου τὸ ξυρὸν ἔχω.’ ταῦτ’ ἀκούσας ὁ Διονύσιος ἀνεσταύρωσεν αὐτόν. ἐπιεικῶς δὲ λάλον ἐστὶ τὸ τῶν κουρέων γένος· οἱ γὰρ ἀδολεσχότατοι προσρέουσι καὶ προσκαθίζουσιν, ὥστ’ αὐτοὺς ἀναπίμπλασθαι τῆς συνηθείας. χαριέντως γοῦν ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἀρχέλαος ἀδολέσχου κουρέως περιβαλόντος αὐτῷ τὸ ὠμόλινον καὶ πυθομένου ‘πῶς σε κείρω, βασιλεῦ;’ ‘σιωπῶν’ ἔφη. κουρεὺς δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐν Σικελίᾳ τῶν Ἀθηναίων μεγάλην κακοπραγίαν ἀπήγγειλε πρῶτος, ἐν Πειραιεῖ πυθόμενος οἰκέτου τινὸς τῶν ἀποδεδρακότων ἐκεῖθεν· εἶτ’ ἀφεὶς τὸ ἐργαστήριον εἰς ἄστυ συνέτεινε δρόμῳ ‘μή τις κῦδος ἄροιτο’ [b] τὸν λόγον εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἐμβαλών, ‘ὁ δὲ δεύτερος ἔλθοι’ (Χ 207). γενομένης δὲ ταραχῆς οἷον εἰκὸς εἰς ἐκκλησίαν ἀθροισθεὶς ὁ δῆμος ἐπὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐβάδιζε τῆς φήμης. ἤγετ’ οὖν ὁ κουρεὺς καὶ ἀνεκρίνετο, μηδὲ τοὔνομα τοῦ φράσαντος εἰδὼς ἀλλ’ εἰς ἀνώνυμον καὶ ἄγνωστον ἀναφέρων τὴν ἀρχὴν πρόσωπον. ὀργὴ δὴ καὶ βοὴ τοῦ θεάτρου· ‘βασάνιζε καὶ στρέβλου τὸν ἀλάστορα· πέπλασται ταῦτα καὶ συντέθεικε· τίς δ’ ἄλλος ἤκουσε; τίς δ’ ἐπίστευσεν;’ ἐκομίσθη τροχός, κατετάθη ὁ ἄνθρωπος. ἐν τούτῳ παρῆσαν οἱ τὴν συμφορὰν ἀπαγγέλλοντες, ἐξ [c] αὐτοῦ τοῦ ἔργου διαπεφευγότες. ἐσκεδάσθησαν οὖν πάντες ἐπὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα πένθη, καταλιπόντες ἐν τῷ τροχῷ τὸν ἄθλιον ἐνδεδεμένον. ὀψὲ δὲ λυθεὶς ἤδη πρὸς ἑσπέραν ἠρώτα τὸν δήμιον, εἰ καὶ περὶ Νικίου τοῦ στρατηγοῦ, ὃν τρόπον ἀπόλωλεν, ἀκηκόασιν. οὕτως ἄμαχόν τι κακὸν καὶ ἀνουθέτητον ἡ συνήθεια ποιεῖ τὴν ἀδολεσχίαν.

Καίτοι γ’ ὥσπερ οἱ τὰ πικρὰ καὶ τὰ δυσώδη φάρμακα πιόντες δυσχεραίνουσι καὶ τὰς κύλικας, οὕτως οἱ τὰ κακὰ προσαγγέλλοντες ὑπὸ τῶν ἀκουόντων δυσχεραίνονται καὶ μισοῦνται. ὅθεν χαριέντως ὁ Σοφοκλῆς διηπόρηκεν (Ant. 317)·

‘ἐν τοῖσιν ὠσὶν ἢ ‘πὶ τῇ ψυχῇ δάκνῃ;’

[d] ‘τί δὲ ῥυθμίζεις τὴν ἐμὴν λύπην ὅπου;’

‘ὁ δρῶν σ’ ἀνιᾷ τὰς φρένας, τὰ δ’ ὦτ’ ἐγώ.’

λυποῦσι δ’ οὖν ὥσπερ οἱ δρῶντες καὶ οἱ λέγοντες, ἀλλ’ ὅμως οὐκ ἔστι γλώσσης ῥεούσης ἐπίσχεσις οὐδὲ κολασμός. ἐν Λακεδαίμονι τῆς Χαλκιοίκου τὸ ἱερὸν ὤφθη σεσυλημένον, καὶ κειμένη ἔνδον κενὴ λάγυνος. ἦν οὖν ἀπορία πολλῶν συνδεδραμηκότων, καί τις τῶν παρόντων ‘εἰ βούλεσθ’, ἐγὼ φράσω ὑμῖν ὅ μοι παρίσταται περὶ τῆς λαγύνου· νομίζω γάρ’ ἔφη ‘τοὺς ἱεροσύλους ἐπὶ τηλικοῦτον ἐλθεῖν κίνδυνον κώνειον ἐμπιόντας καὶ κομίζοντας οἶνον, ἵν’, εἰ [e] μὲν αὐτοῖς λαθεῖν ἐγγένοιτο, τῷ ἀκράτῳ ποθέντι σβέσαντες καὶ διαλύσαντες τὸ φάρμακον ἀπέλθοιεν ἀσφαλῶς· εἰ δ’ ἁλίσκοιντο, πρὸ τῶν βασάνων ὑπὸ τοῦ φαρμάκου ῥᾳδίως καὶ ἀνωδύνως ἀποθάνοιεν.’ ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος αὐτοῦ τὸ πρᾶγμα πλοκὴν ἔχον καὶ περινόησιν τοσαύτην οὐχ ὑπονοοῦντος ἀλλ’ εἰδότος ἐφαίνετο· καὶ περιστάντες αὐτὸν ἀνέκριναν ἀλλαχόθεν ἄλλος ‘τίς εἶ;’ καί ‘τίς σ’ οἶδε;’ καί ‘πόθεν ἐπίστασαι ταῦτα;’ καὶ τὸ πέρας ἐλεγχόμενος οὕτως ὡμολόγησεν εἷς εἶναι τῶν ἱεροσύλων. οἱ δ’ Ἴβυκον ἀποκτείναντες οὐχ οὕτως ἑάλωσαν, ἐν θεάτρῳ καθεζόμενοι καὶ [f] γεράνων παραφανεισῶν πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἅμα γέλωτι ψιθυρίζοντες, ὡς αἱ Ἰβύκου ἔκδικοι πάρεισιν; ἀκούσαντες γὰρ οἱ καθεζόμενοι πλησίον, ἤδη τοῦ Ἰβύκου πολὺν χρόνον ὄντος ἀφανοῦς καὶ ζητουμένου, ἐπελάβοντο τῆς φωνῆς καὶ προσήγγειλαν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν. ἐλεγχθέντες δ’ οὕτως ἀπήχθησαν, οὐχ ὑπὸ τῶν γεράνων κολασθέντες ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τῆς [510] [a] αὑτῶν γλωσσαλγίας ὥσπερ Ἐρινύος ἢ Ποινῆς βιασθέντες ἐξαγορεῦσαι τὸν φόνον. ὡς γὰρ ἐν τῷ σώματι πρὸς τὰ πεπονθότα μέρη καὶ ἀλγοῦντα γίνεται φορὰ καὶ ὁλκὴ τῶν πλησίον, οὕτως ἡ γλῶττα τῶν ἀδολέσχων ἀεὶ φλεγμονὴν ἔχουσα καὶ σφυγμὸν ἕλκει τι καὶ συνάγει τῶν ἀπορρήτων καὶ κεκρυμμένων ἐφ’ ἑαυτήν. διὸ δεῖ πεφράχθαι, καὶ τὸν λογισμὸν ὡς πρόβολον ἐμποδὼν ἀεὶ τῇ γλώττῃ κείμενον ἐπισχεῖν τὸ ῥεῦμα καὶ τὸν ὄλισθον αὐτῆς, ἵνα μὴ τῶν χηνῶν ἀφρονέστεροι εἶναι δοκῶμεν, οὕς φασιν, ὅταν ὑπερβάλλωσιν ἐκ Κιλικίας τὸν Ταῦρον ἀετῶν ὄντα μεστόν, εἰς [b] τὸ στόμα λαμβάνειν εὐμεγέθη λίθον ὥσπερ κλεῖθρον ἢ χαλινὸν ἐμβάλλοντας τῇ φωνῇ καὶ νυκτὸς οὕτως ὑπερφέρεσθαι λανθάνοντας.

Εἰ τοίνυν ἔροιτό τις (Com. adesp. 774)

‘τὸν κάκιστον ὅστις ἐστὶ καὶ τὸν ἐξωλέστατον’,

οὐδεὶς ἂν ἄλλον εἴποι τὸν προδότην παρελθών. Εὐθυκράτης μὲν οὖν ‘ἤρεψε τὴν οἰκίαν τοῖς ἐκ Μακεδονίας ξύλοις’ ὥς φησι Δημοσθένης (19, 265), Φιλοκράτης δὲ χρυσίον πολὺ λαβὼν ‘πόρνας καὶ ἰχθῦς ἠγόραζεν’ (ib. 229), Εὐφόρβῳ δὲ καὶ Φιλάγρῳ τοῖς Ἐρέτριαν προδοῦσι χώραν ὁ βασιλεὺς ἔδωκεν· ὁ δ’ ἀδόλεσχος ἄμισθός ἐστι προδότης καὶ αὐτεπάγγελτος, οὐχ ἵππους οὐδὲ τείχη προδιδούς, [c] ἀλλὰ λόγους ἐκφέρων ἀπορρήτους ἐν δίκαις ἐν στάσεσιν ἐν διαπολιτείαις, μηδενὸς αὐτῷ χάριν ἔχοντος, ἀλλ’ αὐτός, ἂν ἀκούηται, προσοφείλων χάριν. ὥστε τὸ λελεγμένον πρὸς τὸν εἰκῆ καὶ ἀκρίτως ἐκχέοντα τὰ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ καταχαριζόμενον

‘οὐ φιλάνθρωπος σύ γ’ ἐσσ’· ἔχεις νόσον, χαίρεις διδούς’

(Epich. 274)

ἐναρμόττει καὶ πρὸς τὸν φλύαρον· ‘οὐ φίλος εἶ σὺ ταῦτα μηνύων οὐδ’ εὔνους· ἔχεις νόσον, χαίρεις λαλῶν καὶ φλυαρῶν.’

Ταῦτα δ’ οὐ κατηγορίαν ἡγητέον ἀλλ’ ἰατρείαν τῆς ἀδολεσχίας· τῶν γὰρ παθῶν κρίσει καὶ ἀσκήσει περιγινόμεθα, προτέρα δ’ ἡ κρίσις ἐστίν. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἐθίζεται [d] φεύγειν καὶ ἀποτρίβεσθαι τῆς ψυχῆς ὃ μὴ δυσχεραίνει· δυσχεραίνομεν δὲ τὰ πάθη, ὅταν τὰς βλάβας καὶ τὰς αἰσχύνας τὰς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν τῷ λόγῳ κατανοήσωμεν. ὥσπερ νῦν κατανοοῦμεν ἐπὶ τῶν ἀδολέσχων, ὅτι φιλεῖσθαι βουλόμενοι μισοῦνται, χαρίζεσθαι θέλοντες ἐνοχλοῦσι, θαυμάζεσθαι δοκοῦντες καταγελῶνται, κερδαίνοντες οὐδὲν ἀναλίσκουσιν, ἀδικοῦσι τοὺς φίλους, ὠφελοῦσι τοὺς ἐχθρούς, ἑαυτοὺς ἀπολλύουσιν. ὥστε τοῦτο πρῶτον ἴαμα καὶ φάρμακόν ἐστι τοῦ πάθους, ὁ τῶν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ γινομένων αἰσχρῶν καὶ ὀδυνηρῶν ἐπιλογισμός.

Δευτέρῳ δὲ χρηστέον ἐπιλογισμῷ τῷ τῶν ἐναντίων, [e] ἀκούοντας ἀεὶ καὶ μεμνημένους καὶ πρόχειρ’ ἔχοντας τὰ τῆς ἐχεμυθίας ἐγκώμια καὶ τὸ σεμνὸν καὶ τὸ ἅγιον καὶ τὸ μυστηριῶδες τῆς σιωπῆς, καὶ ὅτι θαυμάζονται μᾶλλον καὶ ἀγαπῶνται καὶ σοφώτεροι δοκοῦσι τῶν ἐξηνίων τούτων καὶ ἐκφερομένων οἱ στρογγύλοι καὶ βραχυλόγοι, καὶ ὧν πολὺς νοῦς ἐν ὀλίγῃ λέξει συνέσταλται. καὶ γὰρ Πλάτων τοὺς τοιούτους ἐπαινεῖ, δεινοῖς ἀκοντισταῖς ἐοικέναι λέγων, οὖλα καὶ πυκνὰ καὶ συνεστραμμένα φθεγγομένους (Prot. 342e). καὶ ὁ Λυκοῦργος εἰς ταύτην τὴν δεινότητα τοὺς πολίτας εὐθὺς ἐκ παίδων τῇ σιωπῇ πιέζων συνῆγε καὶ [f] κατεπύκνου. καθάπερ γὰρ οἱ Κελτίβηρες ἐπὶ τοῦ σιδήρου τὸ στόμωμα ποιοῦσιν, ὅταν κατορύξαντες εἰς τὴν γῆν τὸ πολὺ καὶ γεῶδες ἀποκαθάρωσιν, οὕτως ὁ Λακωνικὸς λόγος οὐκ ἔχει φλοιόν, ἀλλ’ εἰς αὐτὸ τὸ δραστήριον ἀφαιρέσει τοῦ περιττοῦ διακονώμενος στομοῦται· τὸ γὰρ ἀποφθεγματικὸν αὐτοῖς τοῦτο καὶ μετ’ εὐστροφίας ὀξὺ πρὸς [511] [a] τὰς ἀπαντήσεις ἐκ τῆς πολλῆς περιγίγνεται σιωπῆς. καὶ δεῖ τὰ τοιαῦτα μάλιστα τοῖς ἀδολέσχοις προβάλλειν ὅσην χάριν ἔχει καὶ δύναμιν, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ ‘Λακεδαιμόνιοι Φιλίππῳ· Διονύσιος ἐν Κορίνθῳ’. καὶ πάλιν γράψαντος αὐτοῖς τοῦ Φιλίππου ‘ἂν ἐμβάλω εἰς τὴν Λακωνικήν, ἀναστάτους ὑμᾶς ποιήσω’, ἀντέγραψαν ‘αἴκα.’ Δημητρίου δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως ἀγανακτοῦντος καὶ βοῶντος ‘ἕνα πρὸς ἐμὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι πρεσβευτὴν ἔπεμψαν,’ οὐ καταπλαγεὶς ὁ πρεσβευτής ‘ἕν’’ εἶπε ‘ποτὶ ἕνα.’ θαυμάζονται δὲ καὶ τῶν παλαιῶν οἱ βραχυλόγοι, καὶ τῷ ἱερῷ τοῦ Πυθίου Ἀπόλλωνος [b] οὐ τὴν Ἰλιάδα καὶ τὴν Ὀδύσσειαν οὐδὲ τοὺς Πινδάρου παιᾶνας ἐπέγραψαν οἱ Ἀμφικτύονες, ἀλλὰ τὸ ‘γνῶθι σαυτόν’ καὶ τὸ ‘μηδὲν ἄγαν’ καὶ τὸ ‘ἐγγύα πάρα δ’ ἄτα,’ θαυμάσαντες τῆς λέξεως τὸ εὔογκον καὶ τὸ λιτόν, ἐν βραχεῖ σφυρήλατον νοῦν περιεχούσης. αὐτὸς δ’ ὁ θεὸς οὐ φιλοσύντομός ἐστι καὶ βραχυλόγος ἐν τοῖς χρησμοῖς, καὶ Λοξίας καλεῖται διὰ τὸ φεύγειν τὴν ἀδολεσχίαν μᾶλλον ἢ τὴν ἀσάφειαν; οἱ δὲ συμβολικῶς ἄνευ φωνῆς ἃ δεῖ φράζοντες οὐκ ἐπαινοῦνται καὶ θαυμάζονται διαφερόντως; ὡς Ἡράκλειτος (A 3b), ἀξιούντων αὐτὸν τῶν πολιτῶν γνώμην [c] τιν’ εἰπεῖν περὶ ὁμονοίας, ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ λαβὼν ψυχροῦ κύλικα καὶ τῶν ἀλφίτων ἐπιπάσας καὶ τῷ γλήχωνι κινήσας ἐκπιὼν ἀπῆλθεν, ἐνδειξάμενος αὐτοῖς ὅτι τὸ τοῖς τυχοῦσιν ἀρκεῖσθαι καὶ μὴ δεῖσθαι τῶν πολυτελῶν ἐν εἰρήνῃ καὶ ὁμονοίᾳ διατηρεῖ τὰς πόλεις. Σκιλοῦρος δὲ καταλιπὼν ὀγδοήκοντα παῖδας, ὁ Σκυθῶν βασιλεύς, ᾔτησε δέσμην δορατίων, ὅτ’ ἀπέθνῃσκε, καὶ λαβόντας ἐκέλευσε καταθραῦσαι καὶ κατᾶξαι συνδεδεμένην καὶ ἀθρόαν, ὡς δ’ ἀπεῖπον, αὐτὸς ἕλκων ἓν καθ’ ἓν ἅπαντα ῥᾳδίως διέκλασε, τὴν συμφωνίαν αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν ὁμόνοιαν ἰσχυρὸν ἀποφαίνων καὶ δυσκαθαίρετον, ἀσθενὲς [d] δὲ τὴν διάλυσιν καὶ οὐ μόνιμον. εἰ δὴ ταῦτα καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα συνεχῶς τις ἐπίοι καὶ ἀναλαμβάνοι, παύσαιτ’ ἂν ἴσως ἡδόμενος τῷ φλυαρεῖν. ἐμὲ δὲ κἀκεῖνος ὁ οἰκέτης εὖ μάλα δυσωπεῖ, τὸ προσέχειν τῷ λόγῳ καὶ κρατεῖν προαιρέσεως ἡλίκον ἐστὶν ἐνθυμούμενον. Πούπιος Πείσων ὁ ῥήτωρ μὴ βουλόμενος ἐνοχλεῖσθαι προσέταξε τοῖς οἰκέταις πρὸς τὰ ἐρωτώμενα λαλεῖν καὶ μηδὲν πλέον. εἶτα Κλώδιον ἄρχοντα δεξιώσασθαι βουλόμενος ἐκέλευσε κληθῆναι καὶ παρεσκευάσατο λαμπρὰν ὡς εἰκὸς ἑστίασιν. ἐνστάσης δὲ τῆς ὥρας οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι παρῆσαν ὁ δὲ Κλώδιος [e] προσεδοκᾶτο· καὶ πολλάκις ἔπεμπε τὸν εἰωθότα καλεῖν οἰκέτην ἐποψόμενον εἰ πρόσεισιν. ὡς δ’ ἦν ἑσπέρα καὶ ἀπέγνωστο ‘τί δ’;’ ἔφη πρὸς τὸν οἰκέτην ‘ἐκάλεσας αὐτόν;’ ‘ἔγωγ’’ εἶπε. ‘διὰ τί οὖν οὐκ ἀφῖκται;’ κἀκεῖνος ‘ὅτι ἠρνήσατο.’ ‘πῶς οὖν οὐκ εὐθὺς ἔφρασας;’ ‘ὅτι τοῦτό μ’ οὐκ ἠρώτησας.’ οὕτως μὲν Ῥωμαϊκὸς οἰκέτης, ὁ δ’ Ἀττικὸς ἐρεῖ τῷ δεσπότῃ σκάπτων (Com. ad. 347) ‘ἐφ’ οἷς γεγόνασιν αἱ διαλύσεις.’ οὕτως μέγα πρὸς πάνθ’ ὁ ἐθισμός ἐστι, καὶ περὶ τούτου γ’ ἤδη λέγωμεν.

Οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ὡς χαλινῶν ἐφαψαμένους ἐπισχεῖν τὸν ἀδολέσχην, ἀλλ’ ἔθει δεῖ κρατῆσαι τοῦ νοσήματος. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἐν ταῖς τῶν πέλας ἐρωτήσεσιν ἑαυτὸν [f] ἐθιζέτω σιωπᾶν, μέχρις οὗ πάντες ἀπείπωνται τὴν ἀπόκρισιν·

‘οὐ γάρ τι βουλῆς ταὐτὸ καὶ δρόμου τέλος’

ὥς φησιν ὁ Σοφοκλῆς (fr. 772), οὐδέ γε φωνῆς καὶ ἀποκρίσεως· ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖ μὲν ἡ νίκη τοῦ φθάσαντός ἐστιν, ἐνταῦθα δέ, ἐὰν μὲν ἱκανῶς ἕτερος ἀποκρίνηται, καλῶς ἔχει συνεπαινέσαντα καὶ συνεπιφήσαντα δόξαν εὐμενοῦς ἀνθρώπου [512] [a] λαβεῖν· ἐὰν δὲ μή, τότε καὶ διδάξαι τὸ ἠγνοημένον καὶ ἀναπληρῶσαι τὸ ἐλλεῖπον ἀνεπίφθονον καὶ οὐκ ἄκαιρόν ἐστι. μάλιστα δὲ φυλάττωμεν ἑαυτούς, ὅπως μὴ ἑτέρου τινὸς ἐρωτηθέντος αὐτοὶ προλαμβάνωμεν ὑποφθάνοντες τὴν ἀπόκρισιν. ἴσως μὲν γὰρ οὐδ’ ἄλλοτε καλῶς ἔχον ἐστὶν αἰτηθέντος ἑτέρου παρωσαμένους ἐκεῖνον αὐτοὺς ἐπαγγέλλεσθαι (δόξομεν γὰρ ἅμα καὶ τοῦτον ὡς παρασχεῖν ὃ αἰτεῖται μὴ δυνάμενον, κἀκεῖνον ὡς αἰτεῖν παρ’ ὧν δύναται λαβεῖν οὐκ ἐπιστάμενον ὀνειδίζειν)· μάλιστα δ’ ὕβριν φέρει περὶ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις ἡ τοιαύτη προπέτεια καὶ θρασύτης. συνεμφαίνει γὰρ ὁ φθάνων ἐν τῷ [b] ἀποκρίνασθαι τὸν ἐρωτώμενον τὸ ‘τί τούτου δέῃ;’ καί ‘τί οὗτος οἶδεν;’ καὶ ‘ἐμοῦ παρόντος περὶ τούτων οὐδένα δεῖ ἄλλον ἐρωτᾶν.’ καίτοι πολλάκις τινὰς ἐρωτῶμεν οὐ τοῦ λόγου δεόμενοι, φωνὴν δέ τινα καὶ φιλοφροσύνην ἐκκαλούμενοι παρ’ αὐτῶν καὶ προαγαγεῖν εἰς ὁμιλίαν ἐθέλοντες, ὡς Σωκράτης Θεαίτητον καὶ Χαρμίδην. ὅμοιον οὖν τῷ τὸν ὑφ’ ἑτέρου βουλόμενον φιληθῆναι προσδραμόντα φιλεῖν αὐτὸν ἢ τὸν ἑτέρῳ προσβλέποντα μεταστρέφειν εἰς ἑαυτὸν τὸ προλαμβάνειν τὰς ἀποκρίσεις καὶ τὰ ὦτα μετάγειν καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ἕλκειν καὶ ἀποστρέφειν πρὸς ἑαυτόν· [c] ὅπου, κἂν ἀπείπηται τὸν λόγον ὁ αἰτηθείς, ἐπισχόντα καλῶς ἔχει καὶ πρὸς τὸ βουλόμενον τοῦ ἐρωτῶντος ἁρμοσάμενον ὡς ἐπὶ κλῆσιν ἀλλοτρίαν [τὴν ἀπόκρισιν] αἰδημόνως καὶ κοσμίως ἀπαντᾶν. καὶ γὰρ οἱ μὲν ἐρωτηθέντες, ἂν σφαλῶσιν ἐν τῷ ἀποκρίνασθαι, συγγνώμης δικαίας τυγχάνουσιν, ὁ δ’ αὐθαιρέτως ὑφιστάμενος καὶ προλαμβάνων τὸν λόγον ἀηδὴς μέν ἐστι καὶ κατορθῶν, διαμαρτάνων δὲ παντάπασιν ἐπίχαρτος γίνεται καὶ καταγέλαστος.

Δεύτερον τοίνυν ἄσκημα πρὸς τὰς ἰδίας ἀποκρίσεις ἐστίν, αἷς οὐχ ἥκιστα δεῖ προσέχειν τὸν ἀδόλεσχον. πρῶτον [d] μέν, ἵνα μὴ λάθῃ τοῖς ἐπὶ γέλωτι καὶ ὕβρει προκαλουμένοις εἰς λόγους αὐτὸν ἀποκρινόμενος μετὰ σπουδῆς. ἔνιοι γὰρ οὐδὲν δεόμενοι, διατριβῆς δὲ καὶ παιδιᾶς ἕνεκα συνθέντες τινὰς ἐρωτήσεις προβάλλουσι τοῖς τοιούτοις καὶ ἀνακινοῦσιν αὐτῶν τὸν λῆρον· ὃ δεῖ φυλάττεσθαι καὶ μὴ ταχὺ τῷ λόγῳ μηδ’ ὥσπερ χάριν ἔχοντας ἐπιπηδᾶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν τρόπον τοῦ πυνθανομένου σκοπεῖν καὶ τὴν χρείαν. ὅταν δὲ φαίνηται τῷ ὄντι βουλόμενος μαθεῖν, ἐθιστέον ἐφιστάναι καὶ ποιεῖν τι διάλειμμα μεταξὺ τῆς ἐρωτήσεως καὶ τῆς ἀποκρίσεως, ἐν ᾧ προσθεῖναι μὲν ὁ ἐρωτῶν, εἴ τι βούλεται, δύναται, σκέψασθαι δ’ αὐτὸς περὶ ὧν ἀποκρινεῖται, [e] καὶ μὴ κατατρέχειν μηδὲ καταχωννύναι τὴν ἐρώτησιν, ἔτι πυνθανομένοις πολλάκις ὑπὸ σπουδῆς ἄλλας ἀντ’ ἄλλων ἀποκρίσεις διδόντα. ἡ μὲν γὰρ Πυθία καὶ πρὸ ἐρωτήσεως αὐθωρὶ χρησμοὺς εἴωθέ τινας ἐκφέρειν· ὁ γὰρ θεός, ᾧ λατρεύει,

‘καὶ κωφοῦ ξυνίησι καὶ οὐ λαλέοντος ἀκούει,’

τὸν δὲ βουλόμενον ἐμμελῶς ἀποκρίνασθαι δεῖ τὴν διάνοιαν ἀναμεῖναι καὶ τὴν προαίρεσιν ἀκριβῶς καταμαθεῖν τοῦ πυνθανομένου, μὴ γένηται τὸ κατὰ τὴν παροιμίαν ‘ἄμας ἀπῄτουν ...’. ἄλλως δὲ τὸ λάβρον τοῦτο καὶ πρὸς [f] τοὺς λόγους ὀξύπεινον ἀνακρουστέον, ἵνα μὴ δοκῇ καθάπερ ῥεῦμα τῇ γλώττῃ πάλαι προσιστάμενον ἀσμένως ὑπὸ τῆς ἐρωτήσεως ἐξερᾶσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Σωκράτης οὕτως ἐκόλουε τὴν δίψαν, οὐκ ἐφιεὶς ἑαυτῷ πιεῖν μετὰ γυμνάσιον, εἰ μὴ τὸν πρῶτον ἐκχέαι κάδον ἀνιμήσας, ὅπως ἐθίζηται τὸν τοῦ λόγου καιρὸν ἀναμένειν τὸ ἄλογον.

[513] [a] Ἔστι τοίνυν τρία γένη τῶν πρὸς τὰς ἐρωτήσεις ἀποκρίσεων, τὸ μὲν ἀναγκαῖον τὸ δὲ φιλάνθρωπον τὸ δὲ περισσόν. οἷον πυθομένου τινὸς εἰ Σωκράτης ἔνδον, ὁ μὲν ὥσπερ ἄκων καὶ ἀπροθύμως ἀποκρίνεται τὸ ‘οὐκ ἔνδον’, ἐὰν δὲ βούληται λακωνίζειν, καὶ τὸ ‘ἔνδον’ ἀφελὼν αὐτὴν μόνην φθέγξεται τὴν ἀπόφασιν· ὡς ἐκεῖνοι, Φιλίππου γράψαντος εἰ δέχονται τῇ πόλει αὐτόν, εἰς χάρτην ‘οὐ’ μέγα γράψαντες ἀπέστειλαν. ὁ δὲ φιλανθρωπότερον ἀποκρίνεται ‘οὐκ ἔνδον ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ ταῖς τραπέζαις’, κἂν βούληται προσεπιμετρῆσαι, ‘ξένους τινὰς ἐκεῖ περιμένων.’ ὁ δὲ [b] περιττὸς καὶ ἀδολέσχης, ἄν γε δὴ τύχῃ καὶ τὸν Κολοφώνιον ἀνεγνωκὼς Ἀντίμαχον, ‘οὐκ ἔνδον’ φησίν ‘ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ ταῖς τραπέζαις, ξένους ἀναμένων Ἴωνας, ὑπὲρ ὧν αὐτῷ γέγραφεν Ἀλκιβιάδης περὶ Μίλητον ὢν καὶ παρὰ Τισσαφέρνῃ διατρίβων, τῷ τοῦ μεγάλου σατράπῃ βασιλέως, ὃς πάλαι μὲν ἐβοήθει Λακεδαιμονίοις, νῦν δὲ προστίθεται δι’ Ἀλκιβιάδην Ἀθηναίοις· ὁ γὰρ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐπιθυμῶν κατελθεῖν εἰς τὴν πατρίδα τὸν Τισσαφέρνην μετατίθησι’, καὶ ὅλως τὴν ὀγδόην Θουκυδίδου κατατεινάμενος ἐρεῖ καὶ κατακλύσει τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἕως φθάσει καὶ Μίλητος [c] ἐκπολεμωθεῖσα καὶ φυγαδευθεὶς τὸ δεύτερον Ἀλκιβιάδης. μάλιστα δὴ περὶ τοῦτο δεῖ τὴν ἀδολεσχίαν συνέχειν ὥσπερ εἰς ἴχνος ἐμβιβάζοντα τὴν ἐρώτησιν καὶ κέντρῳ καὶ διαστήματι τῇ χρείᾳ τοῦ πυνθανομένου περιγράψαντα τὴν ἀπόκρισιν. Καρνεάδην μὲν γὰρ οὔπω μεγάλην ἔχοντα δόξαν ἐν τῷ γυμνασίῳ διαλεγόμενον πέμψας ὁ γυμνασίαρχος ἐκέλευσεν ὑφεῖναι τὸ μέγεθος τῆς φωνῆς (ἦν γὰρ μεγαλοφωνότατος)· εἰπόντος δ’ ἐκείνου ‘δός μοι μέτρον φωνῆς’ οὐ φαύλως ὑπέτυχε ‘δίδωμι τὸν προσδιαλεγόμενον.’ τῷ δ’ ἀποκρινομένῳ μέτρον [ἔστω] ἡ τοῦ ἐρωτῶντος βούλησις.

Καὶ μὴν ὥσπερ ὁ Σωκράτης (Xen. Mem. I 3, 6) [d] ἐκέλευε φυλάττεσθαι τῶν σιτίων ὅσα μὴ πεινῶντας ἐσθίειν ἀναπείθει καὶ τῶν πομάτων ὅσα πίνειν μὴ διψῶντας, οὕτω χρὴ καὶ τῶν λόγων τὸν ἀδολέσχην, οἷς ἥδεται μάλιστα καὶ κέχρηται κατακόρως, τούτους φοβεῖσθαι καὶ πρὸς τούτους ἐπιρρέοντας ἀντιβαίνειν. οἷον οἱ στρατιωτικοὶ πολέμων εἰσὶ διηγητικοί, καὶ τὸν Νέστορα τοιοῦτον ὁ ποιητὴς εἰσάγει, τὰς αὑτοῦ πολλάκις ἀριστείας καὶ πράξεις διηγούμενον. ἐπιεικῶς δὲ καὶ τοῖς περὶ δίκας εὐστοχήσασιν ἢ παρ’ ἡγεμόσι καὶ βασιλεῦσιν ἀπροσδοκήτως εὐημερήσασιν ὥσπερ νόσημά τι προσπίπτει καὶ [e] παρακολουθεῖ τὸ μεμνῆσθαι καὶ διηγεῖσθαι πολλάκις, ὃν τρόπον εἰσῆλθον προσήχθησαν ἠγωνίσαντο διελέχθησαν, ἐξήλεγξαν ἀντιδίκους τινὰς ἢ κατηγόρους, ἐπῃνέθησαν. πολλῷ γάρ ἐστιν ἡ χαρὰ τῆς κωμικῆς ἐκείνης ἀγρυπνίας λαλίστερον (Men. fr. 164), ἀναρριπίζουσα πολλάκις ἑαυτὴν καὶ πρόσφατον ποιοῦσα τοῖς διηγήμασιν. ὅθεν ὀλισθηροὶ πρὸς τοὺς τοιούτους τῶν λόγων εἰσὶν ἐκ πάσης προφάσεως· οὐ γὰρ μόνον ‘ὅπου τις ἀλγεῖ, κεῖθι καὶ τὴν χεῖρ’ ἔχει,’ ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ἡδόμενον ἕλκει τὴν φωνὴν ἐφ’ ἑαυτὸ καὶ περιάγει τὴν γλῶτταν ἐπερείδειν ἀεὶ τῇ μνήμῃ βουλόμενον. οὕτω καὶ τοῖς ἐρωτικοῖς ἡ πλείστη διατριβὴ περὶ [f] λόγους μνήμην τινὰ τῶν ἐρωμένων ἀναδιδόντας· οἵ γε κἂν μὴ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους, πρὸς ἄψυχα περὶ αὐτῶν διαλέγονται·

‘ὦ φιλτάτη κλίνη’

καὶ

‘Βακχὶς θεόν σ’ ἐνόμισεν, εὔδαιμον λύχνε·

καὶ τῶν θεῶν μέγιστος, εἰ ταύτῃ δοκεῖς’

(Com. adesp. 151. 2).

ἔστι μὲν οὖν ἀτεχνῶς ἡ λευκὴ στάθμη πρὸς τοὺς λόγους [514] [a] ὁ ἀδόλεσχος, οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ‹ὁ› μᾶλλον ἑτέρων ἑτέροις προσπεπονθὼς ὀφείλει τούτους φυλάττεσθαι καὶ ἀνέχειν ἑαυτὸν ἀπὸ τούτων καὶ ἀνακρούειν ὡς πορρωτάτω, προαγαγεῖν καὶ ἀπομηκῦναι δι’ ἡδονὴν ἀεὶ δυναμένων. τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτο καὶ πρὸς τοὺς λόγους ἐκείνους πεπόνθασιν, ἐν οἷς κατ’ ἐμπειρίαν ἢ ἕξιν τινὰ τῶν ἄλλων διαφέρειν νομίζουσι. φίλαυτος γὰρ ὢν καὶ φιλόδοξος ὁ τοιοῦτος (Eur. fr. 183)

‘νέμει τὸ πλεῖστον ἡμέρας τούτῳ μέρος,

ἵν’ αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ τυγχάνει κράτιστος ὤν,’

ἐν ἱστορίαις ὁ ἀναγνωστικός, ἐν τεχνολογίαις ὁ γραμματικός, [b] ἐν διηγήμασι ξενικοῖς ὁ πολλὴν χώραν ἐπεληλυθὼς καὶ πεπλανημένος. ὥστε καὶ ταῦτα δεῖ φυλάττεσθαι· δελεαζομένη γὰρ ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἡ ἀδολεσχία καθάπερ ζῷον ἐπὶ νομὰς συνήθεις πρόεισι. θαυμαστὸς δ’ ὁ Κῦρος (Xen. Cyr. I 4, 4), ὅτι καὶ τὰς ἁμίλλας ἐποιεῖτο πρὸς τοὺς ἥλικας, οὐκ ἐν οἷς κρείττων ἀλλ’ ἐν οἷς ἀπειρότερος ἦν ἐκείνων, εἰς ταῦτα προκαλούμενος, ἵνα μήτε λυπῇ παρευδοκιμῶν καὶ μανθάνων ὠφελῆται. ὁ δ’ ἀδολέσχης τοὐναντίον, ἂν μέν τις ἐμπέσῃ λόγος, ἐξ οὗ μαθεῖν τι δύναται καὶ πυθέσθαι τῶν ἀγνοουμένων, τοῦτον ἐξωθεῖ καὶ ἐκκρούει, μισθὸν οὕτω βραχὺν δοῦναι τὸ σιωπῆσαι μὴ [c] δυνάμενος· εἰς δὲ τὰς ἑώλους καὶ πολυπατήτους κύκλῳ περιιὼν εἰσελαύνει ῥαψῳδίας τὸν λόγον. ὡς τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν τις κατὰ τύχην ἀνεγνωκὼς δύο τῶν Ἐφόρου βιβλίων ἢ τρία πάντας ἀνθρώπους κατέτριβε καὶ πᾶν ἀνάστατον ἐποίει συμπόσιον, ἀεὶ τὴν ἐν Λεύκτροις μάχην καὶ τὰ συνεχῆ διηγούμενος· ὅθεν Ἐπαμεινώνδας παρωνύμιον ἔσχεν.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῦτό γε τῶν κακῶν ἐλάχιστόν ἐστι, καὶ δεῖ παρατρέπειν εἰς ταῦτα τὴν ἀδολεσχίαν· ἧττον γὰρ ἀηδὲς ἔσται τὸ λάλον ἐν τῷ φιλολόγῳ πλεονάζον. ἐθιστέον δὲ καὶ γράφειν τι τοὺς τοιούτους καὶ διαλέγεσθαι κατ’ ἰδίαν.

[d] ὁ μὲν γὰρ Στωικὸς Ἀντίπατρος (fr. 5), ὡς ἔοικε, μὴ δυνάμενος μηδὲ βουλόμενος ὁμόσε χωρεῖν τῷ Καρνεάδῃ μετὰ πολλοῦ ῥεύματος εἰς τὴν Στοὰν φερομένῳ, γράφων δὲ καὶ πληρῶν τὰ βιβλία τῶν πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀντιλογιῶν ‘καλαμοβόας’ ἐπεκλήθη· τὸν δ’ ἀδολέσχην ἴσως ἂν ἡ πρὸς τὸ γραφεῖον σκιαμαχία καὶ βοὴ τοῦ πλήθους ἀπερύκουσα καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐλαφρότερον παρασκευάσειε τοῖς συνοῦσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ κύνες εἰς λίθους καὶ ξύλα τὸν θυμὸν ἀφέντες ἧττόν εἰσι χαλεποὶ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. ἁρμόσει δ’ αὐτοῖς σφόδρα καὶ τὸ μετὰ κρειττόνων ἀεὶ καὶ πρεσβυτέρων [e] ὁμιλεῖν· αἰσχυνόμενοι γὰρ αὐτῶν τὴν δόξαν ἐν ἔθει γενήσονται τοῦ σιωπᾶν.

Τούτοις δ’ ἀεὶ δεῖ καταμεμῖχθαι καὶ συμπεπλέχθαι τοῖς ἐθισμοῖς τὴν προσοχὴν ἐκείνην καὶ τὸν ἐπιλογισμόν, ὅταν τι μέλλωμεν λαλεῖν καὶ τὰ ῥήματα τῷ στόματι προστρέχῃ, ‘τίς οὗτος ὁ λόγος ὁ ἐφεστὼς καὶ καταβιαζόμενος; ἐπὶ τί δ’ ἡ γλῶσσ’ ἀσπαίρει; τί δ’ εἰπόντι περιγίγνεται καλὸν ἢ τί σιωπήσαντι δυσχερές;’ οὐ γὰρ ὡς βάρος τι δεῖ πιέζον ἀποθέσθαι τὸν λόγον (ἐπεὶ παραμένει γε καὶ ῥηθεὶς ὁμοίως), ἀλλ’ ἢ δι’ αὑτοὺς ἅνθρωποι δεόμενοί τινος λαλοῦσιν ἢ τοὺς ἀκούοντας ὠφελοῦντες ἢ χάριν τινὰ παρασκευάζοντες ἀλλήλοις ὥσπερ ἁλσὶ τοῖς [f] λόγοις ἐφηδύνουσι τὴν διατριβὴν καὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν, ἐν ᾗ τυγχάνουσιν ὄντες. εἰ δὲ μήτε τῷ λέγοντι χρήσιμον μήτ’ ἀναγκαῖον τοῖς ἀκούουσι τὸ λεγόμενον ἡδονὴ δὲ καὶ χάρις οὐ πρόσεστι, διὰ τί λέγεται; τὸ γὰρ μάτην καὶ διακενῆς οὐχ ἧττον ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἢ τοῖς ἔργοις ἐστίν. ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ καὶ παρὰ ταῦτα πάντα δεῖ πρόχειρον ἔχειν καὶ μνημονεύειν [515] [a] τὸ Σιμωνίδειον, ὅτι λαλήσας μὲν πολλάκις μετενόησε σιωπήσας δ’ οὐδέποτε, καὶ τὴν ἄσκησιν, ὅτι πάντων ἐπικρατεῖ καὶ ἰσχυρότερόν ἐστιν· ὅπου καὶ λυγμὸν καὶ βῆχ’ ἄνθρωποι τῷ προσέχειν ἀποβιαζόμενοι μετὰ πόνου καὶ ἀλγηδόνος ἐξεκρούσαντο. σιγὴ δ’ οὐ μόνον ἄδιψον, ὥς φησιν Ἱπποκράτης (ubi?), ἀλλὰ καὶ ἄλυπον καὶ ἀνώδυνον.

De curiositate

ΠΕΡΙ ΠΟΛΥΠΡΑΓΜΟΣΥΝΗΣ

[515] Ἄπνουν ἢ σκοτεινὴν ἢ δυσχείμερον οἰκίαν ἢ νοσώδη φυγεῖν μὲν ἴσως ἄριστον· ἂν δὲ φιλοχωρῇ τις ὑπὸ συνηθείας, ἔστι καὶ φῶτα μεταθέντα καὶ κλίμακα μεταβαλόντα καὶ θύρας τινὰς ἀνοίξαντα τὰς δὲ κλείσαντα λαμπροτέραν εὐπνουστέραν ὑγιεινοτέραν μηχανήσασθαι. καὶ πόλεις τινὲς [c] οὕτω μεταθέντες ὠφέλησαν· ὥσπερ τὴν ἐμὴν πατρίδα πρὸς ζέφυρον ἄνεμον κεκλιμένην καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἐρείδοντα δείλης ἀπὸ τοῦ Παρνασσοῦ δεχομένην ἐπὶ τὰς ἀνατολὰς τραπῆναι λέγουσιν ὑπὸ τοῦ Χαίρωνος. ὁ δὲ φυσικὸς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (A 14) ὄρους τινὰ διασφάγα βαρὺν καὶ νοσώδη κατὰ τῶν πεδίων τὸν νότον ἐμπνέουσαν ἐμφράξας λοιμὸν ἔδοξεν ἐκκλεῖσαι τῆς χώρας. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ἔστι τινὰ πάθη νοσώδη καὶ βλαβερὰ καὶ χειμῶνα παρέχοντα τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ σκότος, ἄριστον μὲν ἐξωθεῖν ταῦτα καὶ καταλύειν εἰς ἔδαφος, αἰθρίαν καὶ φῶς καὶ πνεῦμα καθαρὸν [d] διδόντας ἑαυτοῖς· εἰ δὲ μή, μεταλαμβάνειν γε καὶ μεθαρμόττειν ἁμωσγέπως περιάγοντας ἢ στρέφοντας.

Οἷον εὐθὺς ἡ πολυπραγμοσύνη φιλομάθειά τίς ἐστιν ἀλλοτρίων κακῶν, οὔτε φθόνου δοκοῦσα καθαρεύειν νόσος οὔτε κακοηθείας·

‘τί τἀλλότριον, ἄνθρωπε βασκανώτατε,

κακὸν ὀξυδορκεῖς τὸ δ’ ἴδιον παραβλέπεις;’

(Com. adesp. 359)

μετάθες ἔξωθεν καὶ μετάστρεψον εἴσω τὴν πολυπραγμοσύνην· εἰ χαίρεις κακῶν μεταχειριζόμενος ἱστορίαν, ἔχεις οἴκοι πολλὴν διατριβήν· ‘ὅσσον ὕδωρ †κατ’ Ἀλιζόνος ἢ δρυὸς ἀμφὶ πέτηλα,’ τοσοῦτον πλῆθος εὑρήσεις ἁμαρτημάτων [e] ἐν τῷ βίῳ καὶ παθῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ παροραμάτων ἐν τοῖς καθήκουσιν. ὡς γὰρ ὁ Ξενοφῶν (Oecon. 8, 19) λέγει τοῖς οἰκονομικοῖς ἴδιον εἶναι τῶν ἀμφὶ θυσίαν σκευῶν, ἴδιον τῶν ἀμφὶ δεῖπνα τόπον, ἀλλαχοῦ κεῖσθαι τὰ γεωργικά, χωρὶς τὰ πρὸς πόλεμον, οὕτω σοὶ τὰ μέν ἐστιν ἀπὸ φθόνου κακὰ κείμενα τὰ δ’ ἀπὸ ζηλοτυπίας τὰ δ’ ἀπὸ δειλίας τὰ δ’ ἀπὸ μικρολογίας· ταῦτ’ ἔπελθε, ταῦτ’ ἀναθεώρησον· τὰς εἰς γειτόνων θυρίδας καὶ [τὰς] παρόδους τῆς πολυπραγμοσύνης ἔμφραξον, ἑτέρας δ’ ἄνοιξον εἰς τὴν ἀνδρωνῖτιν τὴν σεαυτοῦ φερούσας, εἰς τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν, εἰς τὰς τῶν θεραπόντων διαίτας· ἐνταῦθ’ ἔχει διατριβὰς [f] οὐκ ἀχρήστους οὐδὲ κακοήθεις ἀλλ’ ὠφελίμους καὶ σωτηρίους τὸ φιλοπευθὲς τοῦτο καὶ φιλόπραγμον, ἑκάστου πρὸς ἑαυτὸν λέγοντος (Carm. aur. 42)

‘πῆ τραπόμην; τί δ’ ἔρεξα; τί μοι δέον οὐκ ἐτελέσθη;’

νῦν δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ μύθῳ τὴν Λάμιαν λέγουσιν οἴκοι μὲν εὕδειν τυφλήν, ἐν ἀγγείῳ τινὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἔχουσαν [516] [a] ἀποκειμένους, ἔξω δὲ προϊοῦσαν ἐντίθεσθαι καὶ βλέπειν, οὕτως ἡμῶν ἕκαστος ἔξω καὶ πρὸς ἑτέρους τῇ κακονοίᾳ τὴν περιεργίαν ὥσπερ ὀφθαλμὸν ἐντίθησι, τοῖς δ’ ἑαυτῶν ἁμαρτήμασι καὶ κακοῖς πολλάκις περιπταίομεν ὑπ’ ἀγνοίας, ὄψιν ἐπ’ αὐτὰ καὶ φῶς οὐ ποριζόμενοι. διὸ καὶ τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ὠφελιμώτερός ἐστιν ὁ πολυπραγμονῶν· τὰ γὰρ ἐκείνων ἐλέγχει καὶ προφέρεται καὶ δείκνυσιν αὐτοῖς ἃ δεῖ φυλάξασθαι καὶ διορθῶσαι, τῶν δ’ οἴκοι τὰ πλεῖστα παρορᾷ διὰ τὴν περὶ τὰ ἔξω πτόησιν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς (λ 84 sqq.) οὐδὲ τῇ μητρὶ διαλεχθῆναι πρότερον ὑπέμεινεν ἢ πυθέσθαι παρὰ τοῦ μάντεως, ὧν ἕνεκ’ [b] ἦλθεν εἰς Ἅιδου, πυθόμενος δὲ οὕτω πρός τε ταύτην ἔτρεψεν αὑτόν, καὶ τὰς ἄλλας γυναῖκας ἀνέκρινε, τίς ἡ Τυρὼ καὶ τίς ἡ καλὴ Χλωρὶς καὶ διὰ τί ἡ Ἐπικάστη ἀπέθανεν (λ 278) ‘ἁψαμένη βρόχον αἰπὺν ἀφ’ ὑψηλοῖο μελάθρου’· ἡμεῖς δὲ τὰ καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἐν πολλῇ ῥᾳθυμίᾳ καὶ ἀγνοίᾳ θέμενοι καὶ ἀμελήσαντες ἑτέρους γενεαλογοῦμεν, ὅτι τοῦ γείτονος ὁ πάππος ἦν Σύρος, Θρᾷττα δ’ ἡ τήθη, ὁ δεῖνα δ’ ὀφείλει τάλαντα τρία καὶ τοὺς τόκους οὐκ ἀποδέδωκεν· ἐξετάζομεν δὲ καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα, πόθεν ἡ γυνὴ τοῦ δεῖνος ἐπανήρχετο, τί δ’ ὁ δεῖνα καὶ ὁ δεῖνα καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς [c] ἐν τῇ γωνίᾳ διελέγοντο. Σωκράτης δὲ περιῄει διαπορῶν, τί Πυθαγόρας λέγων ἔπειθε· καὶ Ἀρίστιππος Ὀλυμπίασιν Ἰσχομάχῳ συμβαλὼν ἠρώτα τί Σωκράτης διαλεγόμενος οὕτω τοὺς νέους διατίθησι, καὶ μίκρ’ ἄττα τῶν λόγων αὐτοῦ σπέρματα καὶ δείγματα λαβὼν οὕτως ἐμπαθῶς ἔσχεν, ὥστε τῷ σώματι συμπεσεῖν καὶ γενέσθαι παντάπασιν ὠχρὸς καὶ ἰσχνός· ἄχρις οὗ πλεύσας Ἀθήναζε διψῶν καὶ διακεκαυμένος ἠρύσατο τῆς πηγῆς καὶ τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τοὺς λόγους αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ἱστόρησεν, ἧς ἦν τέλος ἐπιγνῶναι τὰ ἑαυτοῦ κακὰ καὶ ἀπαλλαγῆναι.

Ἀλλ’ ἔνιοι τὸν ἴδιον βίον ὡς ἀτερπέστατον θέαμα [d] προσιδεῖν οὐχ ὑπομένουσιν οὐδ’ ἀνακλάσαι τὸν λογισμὸν ὡς φῶς ἐφ’ ἑαυτοὺς καὶ περιαγαγεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἡ ψυχὴ γέμουσα κακῶν παντοδαπῶν καὶ φρίττουσα καὶ φοβουμένη τὰ ἔνδον ἐκπηδᾷ θύραζε καὶ πλανᾶται περὶ τἀλλότρια, βόσκουσα καὶ πιαίνουσα τὸ κακόηθες. ὡς γὰρ ὄρνις ἐν οἰκίᾳ πολλάκις τροφῆς παρακειμένης εἰς γωνίαν καταδῦσα σκαλεύει,

‘ἔνθα γέ που διαφαίνεθ’ ἅτ’ ἐν κοπρίῃ μία κριθή,’

παραπλησίως οἱ πολυπράγμονες, ὑπερβάντες τοὺς ἐν μέσῳ λόγους καὶ ἱστορίας καὶ ἃ μηδεὶς κωλύει πυνθάνεσθαι μηδ’ ἄχθεται πυνθανομένοις, τὰ κρυπτόμενα καὶ λανθάνοντα [e] κακὰ πάσης οἰκίας ἐκλέγουσι. καίτοι τό γε τοῦ Αἰγυπτίου χάριεν πρὸς τὸν ἐρωτῶντα τί φέρει συγκεκαλυμμένον, ‘διὰ τοῦτο συγκεκάλυπται’· καὶ σὺ δὴ τί πολυπραγμονεῖς τὸ ἀποκρυπτόμενον; εἰ μή τι κακὸν ἦν, οὐκ ἂν ἀπεκρύπτετο. καίτοι μὴ κόψαντά γε θύραν εἰς οἰκίαν ἀλλοτρίαν οὐ νομίζεται παρελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ νῦν μὲν εἰσὶ θυρωροί, πάλαι δὲ ῥόπτρα κρουόμενα πρὸς ταῖς θύραις αἴσθησιν παρεῖχεν, ἵνα μὴ τὴν οἰκοδέσποιναν ἐν μέσῳ καταλάβῃ ὁ ἀλλότριος ἢ τὴν παρθένον ἢ κολαζόμενον οἰκέτην ἢ κεκραγυίας τὰς θεραπαινίδας· ὁ δὲ πολυπράγμων ἐπ’ αὐτὰ ταῦτα παραδύεται, [f] σώφρονος μὲν οἰκίας καὶ καθεστώσης οὐδ’ ἂν παρακαλῇ τις ἡδέως γινόμενος θεατής, ὧν δ’ ἕνεκα κλεὶς καὶ μοχλὸς καὶ αὔλειος, ταῦτ’ ἀνακαλύπτων καὶ φέρων εἰς τὸ μέσον ἑτέροις. καίτοι καὶ ‘τῶν ἀνέμων μάλιστα δυσχεραίνομεν’ ὡς Ἀρίστων φησίν (St. V. Fr. I 401), ‘ὅσοι τὰς περιβολὰς ἀναστέλλουσιν ἡμῶν·’ ὁ δὲ πολυπράγμων οὐ τὰ ἱμάτια τῶν πέλας οὐδὲ τοὺς χιτῶνας, ἀλλὰ τοὺς τοίχους ἀπαμφιέννυσι, τὰς θύρας ἀναπετάννυσι, καὶ ‘διὰ παρθενικῆς ἁπαλόχροος’ (Hes. OD 519) ὡς πνεῦμα διαδύεται καὶ διέρπει, [517] [a] βακχεῖα καὶ χοροὺς καὶ παννυχίδας ἐξετάζων καὶ συκοφαντῶν. καὶ καθάπερ τοῦ κωμῳδουμένου Κλέωνος (Arist. Eq. 79)

‘τὼ χεῖρ’ ἐν Αἰτωλοῖς, ὁ νοῦς ἐν Κλωπιδῶν,’

οὕτω τοῦ πολυπράγμονος ὁ νοῦς ἅμ’ ἐν πλουσίων οἴκοις ἐστὶν ἐν δωματίοις πενήτων ἐν αὐλαῖς βασιλέων ἐν θαλάμοις νεογάμων· πάντα πράγματα ζητεῖ, τὰ ξένων τὰ ἡγεμόνων, οὐδ’ ἀκινδύνως ταῦτα ζητῶν, ἀλλ’ οἷον, εἴ τις ἀκονίτου γεύοιτο πολυπραγμονῶν τὴν ποιότητα, φθάσει τῆς αἰσθήσεως προανελὼν τὸ αἰσθανόμενον, οὕτως οἱ τὰ τῶν μειζόνων κακὰ ζητοῦντες προαναλίσκουσι τῆς γνώσεως [b] ἑαυτούς. καὶ γὰρ οἱ τοῦ ἡλίου τὴν ἄφθονόν γε ταύτην καὶ κατακεχυμένην ἅπασιν ἀκτῖνα παρορῶντες, αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν κύκλον ἀναιδῶς καταβλέπειν καὶ διαστέλλειν τὸ φῶς εἴσω βιαζόμενοι καὶ τολμῶντες ἀποτυφλοῦνται. διὸ καλῶς Φιλιππίδης ὁ κωμῳδιοποιὸς εἰπόντος αὐτῷ ποτε Λυσιμάχου τοῦ βασιλέως ‘τίνος σοι τῶν ἐμῶν μεταδῶ;’ ‘μόνον’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ, μὴ τῶν ἀπορρήτων.’ τὰ γὰρ ἥδιστα καὶ κάλλιστα τῶν βασιλέων ἔξω πρόκειται, τὰ δεῖπνα οἱ πλοῦτοι αἱ πανηγύρεις αἱ χάριτες· εἰ δέ τι ἀπόρρητόν ἐστι, μὴ προσέλθῃς μηδὲ κινήσῃς. οὐ κρύπτεται χαρὰ βασιλέως [c] εὐτυχοῦντος οὐδὲ γέλως παίζοντος οὐδὲ φιλανθρωπίας παρασκευὴ καὶ χάριτος· φοβερόν ἐστι τὸ κρυπτόμενον, σκυθρωπὸν ἀγέλαστον δυσπρόσιτον, ὀργῆς τινος ὑπούλου θησαυρὸς ἢ τιμωρίας βαρυθύμου σκέψις ἢ ζηλοτυπία γυναικὸς ἢ πρὸς υἱὸν ὑποψία τις ἢ πρὸς φίλον ἀπιστία. φεῦγε τὸ μελαῖνον τοῦτο καὶ συνιστάμενον νέφος· οὐ λήσεταί σε βροντῆσαν οὐδ’ ἀστράψαν, ὅταν ἐκραγῇ τὸ νῦν κρυπτόμενον.

Τίς οὖν ἡ φυγή; περισπασμός, ὡς εἴρηται (p. 515d), καὶ μεθολκὴ τῆς πολυπραγμοσύνης μάλιστα μὲν ἐπὶ τὰ βελτίω καὶ τὰ ἡδίω τρέψαντι τὴν ψυχήν. τὰ ἐν οὐρανῷ πολυπραγμόνει, τὰ ἐν γῇ τὰ ἐν ἀέρι τὰ ἐν θαλάττῃ. μικρῶν [d] πέφυκας ἢ μεγάλων φιλοθεάμων; εἰ μεγάλων, ἥλιον πολυπραγμόνει ποῦ κάτεισι καὶ πόθεν ἄνεισι· ζήτει τὰς ἐν σελήνῃ καθάπερ ἀνθρώπῳ μεταβολάς, ποῦ τοσοῦτον κατανήλωσε φῶς πόθεν αὖθις ἐκτήσατο, πῶς (Soph. fr. 787)

‘ἐξ ἀδήλου πρῶτον ἔρχεται νέα

πρόσωπα καλλύνουσα καὶ πληρουμένη,

χὤταν περ αὑτῆς εὐγενεστάτη φανῇ,

πάλιν διαρρεῖ κἀπὶ μηδὲν ἔρχεται.’

καὶ ταῦτ’ ἀπόρρητ’ ἐστὶ φύσεως, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἄχθεται τοῖς ἐλέγχουσιν. ἀλλὰ τῶν μεγάλων ἀπέγνωκας; πολυπραγμόνει τὰ μικρότερα, πῶς τῶν φυτῶν τὰ μὲν ἀεὶ τέθηλε καὶ χλοάζει καὶ ἀγάλλεται παντὶ καιρῷ τὸν ἑαυτῶν ἐπιδεικνύμενα [e] πλοῦτον, τὰ δὲ νῦν μέν ἐστιν ὅμοια τούτοις νῦν δ’ ὥσπερ ἀνοικονόμητος ἄνθρωπος ἀθρόως ἐκχέαντα τὴν περιουσίαν γυμνὰ καὶ πτωχὰ καταλείπεται, διὰ τί δὲ τὰ μὲν προμήκεις τὰ δὲ γωνιώδεις τὰ δὲ στρογγύλους καὶ περιφερεῖς ἐκδίδωσι καρπούς. ἴσως δὲ ταῦτ’ οὐ πολυπραγμονήσεις, ὅτι τούτοις οὐθὲν κακὸν ἔνεστιν. ἀλλ’ εἰ δεῖ πάντως τὸ περίεργον ἐν φαύλοις τισὶν ὥσπερ ἑρπετὸν ἐν θανασίμοις ὕλαις ἀεὶ νέμεσθαι καὶ διατρίβειν, ἐπὶ τὰς ἱστορίας ἀγάγωμεν αὐτὸ καὶ παραβάλωμεν ἀφθονίαν κακῶν καὶ περιουσίαν. ἐνταῦθα γὰρ ἔνεισι

‘πεσήματ’ ἀνδρῶν καὶ ἀπολακτισμοὶ βίων’

(Aesch. Suppl. 937),

[f] φθοραὶ γυναικῶν, ἐπιθέσεις οἰκετῶν, διαβολαὶ φίλων, παρασκευαὶ φαρμάκων, φθόνοι, ζηλοτυπίαι, ναυάγι’ οἴκων, ἐκπτώσεις ἡγεμονιῶν· ἐμπίπλασο καὶ τέρπε σαυτὸν ἐνοχλῶν μηδενὶ τῶν συνόντων μηδὲ λυπῶν.

Ἀλλ’ ἔοικεν ἡ πολυπραγμοσύνη μὴ χαίρειν ἑώλοις κακοῖς ἀλλὰ θερμοῖς καὶ προσφάτοις καὶ καινὰς τραγῳδίας ἡδέως θεᾶσθαι, [518] [a] τοῖς δὲ κωμικοῖς καὶ ἱλαρωτέροις πράγμασιν οὐ μάλα προθύμως ὁμιλεῖν. διὸ γάμον μέν τινος ἢ θυσίαν ἢ προπομπὴν διεξιόντος ἀμελὴς ὁ πολυπράγμων καὶ ῥᾴθυμος ἀκροατής ἐστι, καὶ προακηκοέναι τὰ πλεῖστά φησι καὶ κελεύει ταῦτα συντέμνειν καὶ παρέρχεσθαι τὸν διηγούμενον· ἂν δ’ ἢ φθοράν τις παρθένου παρακαθήμενος ἢ μοιχείαν γυναικὸς ἢ δίκης παρασκευὴν ἢ στάσιν ἀδελφῶν διηγῆται, οὔτε νυστάζει οὔτ’ ἀσχολεῖται, ‘ἄλλα τε δίζηται ἐπέων παρά τ’ οὔατα βάλλει.’ καὶ τὸ (Tr. adesp. 386)

‘οἴμοι, τὸ κακὸν τῆς εὐτυχίας

ὡς μᾶλλον ἐς οὖς φέρεται θνητῶν’

[b] ἐπὶ τῶν πολυπραγμόνων ἐστὶν εἰρημένον ἀληθῶς. ὡς γὰρ αἱ σικύαι τὸ χείριστον ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς ἕλκουσιν, οὕτως τὰ τῶν πολυπραγμόνων ὦτα τοὺς φαυλοτάτους λόγους ἐπισπᾶται. μᾶλλον δ’, ὥσπερ αἱ πόλεις ἔχουσί τινας πύλας ἀποφράδας καὶ σκυθρωπάς, δι’ ὧν ἐξάγουσι τοὺς θανατουμένους καὶ τὰ λύματα καὶ τοὺς καθαρμοὺς ἐκβάλλουσιν, εὐαγὲς δ’ οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἱερὸν εἴσεισι οὐδ’ ἔξεισι δι’ αὐτῶν, οὕτω καὶ τὰ τῶν πολυπραγμόνων ὦτα χρηστὸν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἀστεῖον ἀλλ’ οἱ φονικοὶ λόγοι διέρχονται καὶ τρίβουσιν, ἐκθύσιμα καὶ μιαρὰ διηγήματα παρακομίζοντες.

‘ἀεὶ δ’ ἀοιδῶν μοῦνος ἐν στέγαις ἐμαῖς

κωκυτὸς ἐμπέπτωκεν’ (Tr. adesp. 387)·

[c] αὕτη τοῖς πολυπράγμοσι ‘μοῦσα καὶ σειρὴν μία’, τοῦθ’ ἥδιστον ἀκουσμάτων αὐτοῖς.

Ἔστι γὰρ ἡ πολυπραγμοσύνη φιλοπευστία τῶν ἐν ἀποκρύψει καὶ λανθανόντων· οὐδεὶς δ’ ἀγαθὸν ἀποκρύπτει κεκτημένος, ὅπου καὶ τὰ μὴ ὄντα προσποιοῦνται. κακῶν οὖν ἱστορίας ὁ πολυπράγμων ὀρεγόμενος ἐπιχαιρεκακίας συνέχεται πάθει, φθόνου καὶ βασκανίας ἀδελφῷ. φθόνος μὲν γάρ ἐστι λύπη ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις ἀγαθοῖς, ἐπιχαιρεκακία δ’ ἡδονὴ ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις κακοῖς· ἀμφότερα δ’ ἐκ πάθους ἀνημέρου καὶ θηριώδους γεγένηται τῆς κακοηθείας.

οὕτω δ’ ἑκάστῳ λυπηρόν ἐστιν ἡ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν

[d]κακῶν ἀνακάλυψις, ὥστε πολλοὺς ἀποθανεῖν πρότερον ἢ δεῖξαί τι τῶν ἀπορρήτων νοσημάτων ἰατροῖς. φέρε γὰρ Ἡρόφιλον ἢ Ἐρασίστρατον ἢ τὸν Ἀσκληπιὸν αὐτόν, ὅτ’ ἦν ἄνθρωπος, ἔχοντα τὰ φάρμακα καὶ τὰ ὄργανα κατ’ οἰκίαν προσιστάμενον ἀνακρίνειν, μή τις ἔχει σύριγγα παρὰ δακτύλιον ἢ γυνὴ καρκίνον ἐν ὑστέρᾳ· καίτοι σωτήριόν ἐστι τῆς τέχνης ταύτης τὸ πολύπραγμον· ἀλλὰ πᾶς ἄν τις, οἶμαι, τὸν τοιοῦτον ἀπήλασεν, ὅτι τὴν χρείαν οὐ περιμένων ἄκλητος ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίων κακῶν ἔρχεται κατανόησιν. οἱ δὲ πολυπράγμονες αὐτὰ ταῦτα καὶ τὰ τούτων ἔτι χείρονα ζητοῦσιν, οὐ θεραπεύοντες ἀλλὰ μόνον ἀνακαλύπτοντες. ὅθεν μισοῦνται δικαίως. καὶ γὰρ τοὺς τελώνας βαρυνόμεθα καὶ δυσχεραίνομεν, οὐχ ὅταν τὰ ἐμφανῆ τῶν εἰσαγομένων ἐκλέγωσιν, ἀλλ’ ὅταν τὰ κεκρυμμένα ζητοῦντες ἐν ἀλλοτρίοις σκεύεσι καὶ φορτίοις ἀναστρέφωνται. καίτοι τοῦτο ποιεῖν ὁ νόμος δίδωσιν αὐτοῖς, καὶ βλάπτονται μὴ ποιοῦντες· οἱ δὲ πολυπράγμονες ἀπολλύουσι καὶ προΐενται τὰ αὑτῶν ἀσχολούμενοι περὶ τὰ ἀλλότρια, καὶ σπανίως μὲν εἰς ἀγρὸν βαδίζουσι τὸ ἥσυχον καὶ σιωπηρὸν τῆς ἐρημίας οὐ φέροντες, ἐὰν δὲ καὶ παραβάλωσι διὰ [e] χρόνου, ταῖς τῶν γειτόνων ἀμπέλοις μᾶλλον ἐμβλέπουσιν ἢ ταῖς ἰδίαις καὶ πυνθάνονται πόσοι βόες τοῦ γείτονος ἀποτεθνήκασιν ἢ πόσος οἶνος ὀξίνης γέγονε· ταχὺ δὲ τούτων ἐμπλησθέντες ἀποτρέχουσιν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἀληθινὸς ἐκεῖνος γεωργὸς οὐδὲ τὸν αὐτομάτως ἐρχόμενον ἐκ πόλεως λόγον ἡδέως προσδέχεται, λέγων (Com. adesp. 347)

[519] [a] ‘εἶτά μοι σκάπτων ἐρεῖ,

ἐφ’ οἷς γεγόνασιν αἱ διαλύσεις· ταῦτα γὰρ

πολυπραγμονῶν νῦν ὁ κατάρατος περιπατεῖ,’

οἱ δὲ πολυπράγμονες ὡς ἕωλόν τι πρᾶγμα καὶ ψυχρὸν καὶ ἀτράγῳδον φεύγοντες τὴν ἀγροικίαν εἰς τὸ δεῖγμα καὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν καὶ τοὺς λιμένας ὠθοῦνται· ‘μή τι καινόν;’ - ‘οὐ γὰρ ἦς πρωῒ κατ’ ἀγοράν;’ - ‘τί οὖν; ἐν ὥραις τρισὶν οἴει τὴν πόλιν μετακεκοσμῆσθαι;’ οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἂν μέν τις ἔχῃ τι τοιοῦτον εἰπεῖν, καταβὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ ἵππου δεξιωσάμενος καταφιλήσας ἕστηκεν ἀκροώμενος· ἐὰν δ’ ἀπαντήσας εἴπῃ τις ὅτι οὐθὲν καινόν, ὥσπερ ἀχθόμενος ‘τί [b] λέγεις;’ φησίν ‘οὐ γέγονας κατ’ ἀγοράν; οὐ παρελήλυθας τὸ στρατήγιον; οὐδὲ τοῖς ἐξ Ἰταλίας ἥκουσιν ἐντετύχηκας;’ διὸ καλῶς οἱ τῶν Λοκρῶν ἄρχοντες· ἐπεὶ γάρ τις ἐξ ἀποδημίας προσιὼν ἠρώτησε ‘μή τι καινόν;’ ἐζημίωσαν αὐτόν. ὡς γὰρ οἱ μάγειροι φορὰν εὔχονται βοσκημάτων οἱ δ’ ἁλιεῖς ἰχθύων, οὕτως οἱ πολυπράγμονες εὔχονται φορὰν κακῶν καὶ πλῆθος πραγμάτων καὶ καινότητας καὶ μεταβολάς, ἵν’ ἀεί τι θηρεύειν καὶ κατακόπτειν ἔχωσιν. εὖ δὲ καὶ ὁ τῶν Θουρίων νομοθέτης· κωμῳδεῖσθαι γὰρ ἐκώλυσε τοὺς πολίτας πλὴν μοιχοὺς καὶ πολυπράγμονας. ἔοικε γὰρ ἥ τε μοιχεία πολυπραγμοσύνη τις ἀλλοτρίας [c] ἡδονῆς εἶναι καὶ ζήτησις καὶ ἔρευνα τῶν φυλαττομένων καὶ λανθανόντων τοὺς πολλούς, ἥ τε πολυπραγμοσύνη παράδυσίς ἐστι καὶ φθορὰ καὶ ἀπογύμνωσις τῶν ἀπορρήτων.

Τῇ μὲν οὖν πολυμαθείᾳ τὴν πολυλογίαν ἕπεσθαι συμβαίνει (διὸ καὶ Πυθαγόρας ἔταξε τοῖς νέοις πενταετῆ σιωπήν, ἐχεμυθίαν προσαγορεύσας), τῇ δὲ περιεργίᾳ τὴν κακολογίαν ἀνάγκη συνακολουθεῖν· ἃ γὰρ ἡδέως ἀκούουσιν ἡδέως λαλοῦσι, καὶ ἃ παρ’ ἄλλων σπουδῇ συλλέγουσι πρὸς ἑτέρους μετὰ χαρᾶς ἐκφέρουσιν. ὅθεν αὐτοῖς μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων κακῶν τὸ νόσημα καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν [d] ἐμποδών ἐστι. πάντες γὰρ αὐτοὺς φυλάττονται καὶ ἀποκρύπτονται, καὶ οὔτε πρᾶξαί τι πολυπράγμονος ὁρῶντος οὔτ’ εἰπεῖν ἀκούοντος ἡδέως ἔχουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ βουλὰς ἀνατίθενται καὶ σκέψεις πραγμάτων ὑπερβάλλονται, μέχρις ἂν ἐκποδὼν ὁ τοιοῦτος γένηται· κἂν ἢ λόγου τινὸς ἀπορρήτου παρόντος ἢ πράξεως σπουδαίας περαινομένης ἀνὴρ πολυπράγμων ἐπιφανῇ, καθάπερ ὄψον γαλῆς παραδραμούσης αἴρουσιν ἐκ μέσου καὶ ἀποκρύπτουσιν· ὥστε πολλάκις τὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις ῥητὰ καὶ θεατὰ τούτοις μόνοις ἄρρητα καὶ ἀθέατα γίνεσθαι.

Διὸ καὶ πίστεως πάσης ἔρημος ὁ πολυπράγμων ἐστίν· [e] οἰκέταις γοῦν καὶ ξένοις πιστεύομεν μᾶλλον ἐπιστολὰς καὶ γράμματα καὶ σφραγῖδας ἢ φίλοις καὶ οἰκείοις πολυπράγμοσιν. ὁ δὲ Βελλεροφόντης ἐκεῖνος (Ζ 155 sqq.) οὐδὲ καθ’ ἑαυτοῦ γράμματα κομίζων ἔλυσεν, ἀλλ’ ἀπέσχετο τῆς ἐπιστολῆς τοῦ βασιλέως ὡς τῆς γυναικὸς διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν ἐγκράτειαν. ἀκρασίας γὰρ τὸ πολυπραγμονεῖν ὡς καὶ τὸ μοιχεύειν, καὶ πρὸς τῇ ἀκρασίᾳ δεινῆς ἀνοίας καὶ ἀφροσύνης· τὸ γὰρ τοσαύτας παρελθόντα κοινὰς καὶ δεδημοσιωμένας γυναῖκας ἐπὶ τὴν κατάκλειστον ὠθεῖσθαι καὶ πολυτελῆ, πολλάκις ἂν οὕτω τύχῃ καὶ ἄμορφον οὖσαν, ὑπερβολὴ μανίας καὶ παραφροσύνης.

[f] ταὐτὸν δ’ οἱ πολυπράγμονες ποιοῦσι· πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ θεάματα καὶ ἀκούσματα καὶ σχολὰς καὶ διατριβὰς παρελθόντες ἐπιστόλια διορύττουσιν ἀλλότρια καὶ παραβάλλουσι γειτόνων τοίχοις τὰ ὦτα καὶ συμψιθυρίζουσιν οἰκέταις καὶ γυναίοις, πολλάκις μὲν οὐδ’ ἀκινδύνως ἀεὶ δ’ ἀδόξως.

Διὸ καὶ χρήσιμον ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα πρὸς τὴν ἀποτροπὴν τοῖς πολυπράγμοσιν ἡ τῶν προεγνωσμένων ἀνάμνησις. [520] [a] ἂν γάρ, ὥσπερ ὁ Σιμωνίδης ἔλεγε τὰς κιβωτοὺς ἀνοίγων διὰ χρόνου τὴν μὲν τῶν μισθῶν ἀεὶ μεστὴν τὴν δὲ τῶν χαρίτων εὑρίσκειν κενήν, οὕτως τῆς πολυπραγμοσύνης τὴν ἀποθήκην ἀνοίγῃ διὰ χρόνου καὶ κατασκέπτηται πολλῶν ἀχρήστων καὶ ματαίων καὶ ἀτερπῶν γέμουσαν, ἴσως ἂν αὐτῷ τὸ πρᾶγμα προσταίη, φανὲν ἀηδὲς παντάπασι καὶ φλυαρῶδες. φέρε γάρ, εἴ τις ἐπιὼν τὰ συγγράμματα τῶν παλαιῶν ἐκλαμβάνοι τὰ κάκιστα τῶν ἐν αὐτοῖς καὶ βιβλίον ἔχοι συντεταγμένον οἷον Ὁμηρικῶν στίχων ἀκεφάλων καὶ τραγικῶν σολοικισμῶν καὶ τῶν ὑπ’ Ἀρχιλόχου [b] πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας ἀπρεπῶς καὶ ἀκολάστως εἰρημένων, ἑαυτὸν παραδειγματίζοντος, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἔστι τῆς τραγικῆς κατάρας ἄξιος (Tr. adesp. 388)

‘ὄλοιο θνητῶν ἐκλέγων τὰς συμφοράς’;

καὶ ἄνευ δὲ τῆς κατάρας ἀπρεπὴς καὶ ἀνωφελὴς ὁ θησαυρισμὸς αὐτοῦ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων ἁμαρτημάτων· ὥσπερ ἡ πόλις, ἣν ἐκ τῶν κακίστων καὶ ἀναγωγοτάτων κτίσας ὁ Φίλιππος Πονηρόπολιν προσηγόρευσεν. οἱ τοίνυν πολυπράγμονες οὐ στίχων οὐδὲ ποιημάτων, ἀλλὰ βίων ἀστοχήματα καὶ πλημμελήματα καὶ σολοικισμοὺς ἀναλεγόμενοι καὶ συνάγοντες ἀμουσότατον καὶ ἀτερπέστατον κακῶν γραμματοφυλακεῖον τὴν ἑαυτῶν μνήμην περιφέρουσιν. ὥσπερ [c] οὖν ἐν Ῥώμῃ τινὲς τὰς γραφὰς καὶ τοὺς ἀνδριάντας καὶ νὴ Δία τὰ κάλλη τῶν ὠνίων παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν ἐν μηδενὶ λόγῳ τιθέμενοι περὶ τὴν τῶν τεράτων ἀγορὰν ἀναστρέφονται, τοὺς ἀκνήμους καὶ τοὺς γαλεάγκωνας καὶ τοὺς τριοφθάλμους καὶ τοὺς στρουθοκεφάλους καταμανθάνοντες καὶ ζητοῦντες εἴ τι γεγένηται ‘σύμμικτον εἶδος καὶ ἀποφώλιον τέρας’ (Eur. fr. 996), ἀλλ’ ἐὰν συνεχῶς τις ἐπαγάγῃ τοῖς τοιούτοις αὐτοὺς θεάμασι, ταχὺ πλησμονὴν καὶ ναυτίαν παρέξει, οὕτως οἱ τὰ περὶ τὸν βίον ἀστοχήματα καὶ γενῶν αἴσχη καὶ διαστροφάς τινας ἐν οἴκοις ἀλλοτρίοις καὶ πλημμελείας πολυπραγμονοῦντες τῶν πρώτων [d] ἀναμιμνησκέτωσαν ἑαυτοὺς ὅτι χάριν καὶ ὄνησιν οὐδεμίαν ἤνεγκε.

Μέγιστον μέντοι πρὸς τὴν τοῦ πάθους ἀποτροπὴν ὁ ἐθισμός, ἐὰν πόρρωθεν ἀρξάμενοι γυμνάζωμεν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ διδάσκωμεν ἐπὶ ταύτην τὴν ἐγκράτειαν· καὶ γὰρ ἡ αὔξησις ἔθει γέγονε τοῦ νοσήματος κατὰ μικρὸν εἰς τὸ πρόσω χωροῦντος. ὃν δὲ τρόπον, εἰσόμεθα περὶ τῆς ἀσκήσεως ὁμοῦ διαλεγόμενοι. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἀπὸ τῶν βραχυτάτων καὶ φαυλοτάτων ἀρξώμεθα. τί γὰρ χαλεπόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς τὰς ἐπὶ τῶν τάφων ἐπιγραφὰς μὴ ἀναγινώσκειν, ἢ τί δυσχερὲς ἐν τοῖς περιπάτοις τὰ κατὰ τῶν τοίχων [e] γράμματα τῇ ὄψει παρατρέχειν, ὑποβάλλοντας αὑτοῖς ὅτι χρήσιμον οὐθὲν οὐδ’ ἐπιτερπὲς ἐν τούτοις γέγραπται, ἀλλ’ ‘ἐμνήσθη’ ὁ δεῖνα τοῦ δεῖνος ‘ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ’ καὶ ‘φίλων ἄριστος’ ὅδε τις, καὶ πολλὰ τοιαύτης γέμοντα φλυαρίας; ἃ δοκεῖ μὲν οὐ βλάπτειν ἀναγινωσκόμενα, βλάπτει δὲ λεληθότως τῷ μελέτην παρεμποιεῖν τοῦ ζητεῖν τὰ μὴ προσήκοντα. καὶ καθάπερ οἱ κυνηγοὶ τοὺς σκύλακας οὐκ ἐῶσιν ἐκτρέπεσθαι καὶ διώκειν πᾶσαν ὀδμήν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ῥυτῆρσιν ἕλκουσι καὶ ἀνακρούουσι καθαρὸν αὐτῶν καὶ ἄκρατον φυλάττοντες τὸ αἰσθητήριον ἐπὶ τὸ οἰκεῖον ἔργον, ἵν’ εὐτονώτερον ἐμφύηται τοῖς ἴχνεσι

[f] ‘πέλματα θηρείων μελέων μυκτῆρσιν ἐρευνῶν,’

οὕτω δεῖ τὰς ἐπὶ πᾶν θέαμα καὶ πᾶν ἄκουσμα τοῦ πολυπράγμονος ἐκδρομὰς καὶ περιπλανήσεις ἀφαιρεῖν καὶ ἀντισπᾶν ἐπὶ τὰ χρήσιμα φυλάττοντας. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ †ἀετοὶ καὶ οἱ λέοντες ἐν τῷ περιπατεῖν συστρέφουσιν εἴσω τοὺς ὄνυχας, ἵνα μὴ τὴν ἀκμὴν αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν ὀξύτητα [521] [a] κατατρίβωσιν, οὕτω τὸ πολύπραγμον τοῦ φιλομαθοῦς ἀκμήν τινα καὶ στόμωμα νομίζοντες ἔχειν μὴ καταναλίσκωμεν μηδ’ ἀπαμβλύνωμεν ἐν τοῖς ἀχρήστοις.

Δεύτερον τοίνυν ἐθιζώμεθα θύραν παριόντες ἀλλοτρίαν μὴ βλέπειν εἴσω μηδὲ τῶν ἐντὸς ἐπιδράττεσθαι [τῇ ὄψει] καθάπερ χειρὶ τῇ περιεργίᾳ, ἀλλὰ τὸ τοῦ Ξενοκράτους ἔχωμεν πρόχειρον, ὃς ἔφη μηδὲν διαφέρειν, ἢ τοὺς πόδας ἢ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς εἰς ἀλλοτρίαν οἰκίαν τιθέναι· οὔτε γὰρ δίκαιον οὔτε καλόν, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἡδὺ τὸ θέαμα·

‘δύσμορφα μέντοι τἄνδον εἰσιδεῖν, ξένε·’ (Eur. fr. 790)

τὰ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν ἐν ταῖς οἰκίαις, σκευάρια κείμενα [b] καὶ θεραπαινίδια καθεζόμενα, καὶ σπουδαῖον οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἐπιτερπές. ἡ δὲ συνδιαστρέφουσα τὴν ψυχὴν παράβλεψις αὕτη καὶ παρατόξευσις αἰσχρὰ καὶ τὸ ἔθος μοχθηρόν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Διογένης θεασάμενος εἰσελαύνοντα τὸν ὀλυμπιονίκην Διώξιππον ἐφ’ ἅρματος καὶ γυναικὸς εὐμόρφου θεωμένης τὴν πομπὴν ἀποσπάσαι τὰς ὄψεις μὴ δυνάμενον ἀλλ’ ὑποβλέποντα καὶ παρεπιστρεφόμενον ‘ὁρᾶτ’’ εἶπε ‘τὸν ἀθλητὴν ὑπὸ παιδισκαρίου τραχηλιζόμενον;’ τοὺς δὲ πολυπράγμονας ἴδοις ἂν ὑπὸ παντὸς ὁμοίως θεάματος τραχηλιζομένους καὶ περιαγομένους, ὅταν ἔθος καὶ μελέτη [c] γένηται τῆς ὄψεως αὐτοῖς πανταχοῦ διαφορουμένης. δεῖ δ’, ὡς οἶμαι, μὴ καθάπερ θεράπαιναν ἀνάγωγον ἔξω ῥέμβεσθαι τὴν αἴσθησιν, ἀλλ’ ἀποπεμπομένην ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐπὶ τὰ πράγματα συντυγχάνειν αὐτοῖς ταχὺ καὶ διαγγέλλειν, εἶτα πάλιν κοσμίως ἐντὸς εἶναι τοῦ λογισμοῦ καὶ προσέχειν αὐτῷ. νῦν δὲ συμβαίνει τὸ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους (El. 724)

‘ἔπειτα δ’ Αἰνιᾶνος ἀνδρὸς ἄστομοι

πῶλοι βίᾳ φοροῦσιν·’

αἱ μὴ τυχοῦσαι παιδαγωγίας ὥσπερ λέγομεν ὀρθῆς μηδ’ ἀσκήσεως αἰσθήσεις προεκτρέχουσαι καὶ συνεφελκόμεναι πολλάκις εἰς ἃ μὴ δεῖ καταβάλλουσι τὴν διάνοιαν. ὅθεν ἐκεῖνο μὲν ψεῦδός ἐστι, τὸ Δημόκριτον (A 27) ἑκουσίως [d] σβέσαι τὰς ὄψεις ἀπερεισάμενον εἰς ἔσοπτρα πυρωθέντα καὶ τὴν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἀνάκλασιν δεξάμενον, ὅπως μὴ παρέχωσι θόρυβον τὴν διάνοιαν ἔξω καλοῦσαι πολλάκις, ἀλλ’ ἐῶσιν ἔνδον οἰκουρεῖν καὶ διατρίβειν πρὸς τοῖς νοητοῖς, ὥσπερ παρόδιοι θυρίδες ἐμφραγεῖσαι· τοῦτο μέντοι παντὸς μᾶλλον ἀληθές ἐστιν, ὅτι τὴν αἴσθησιν ὀλίγα κινοῦσιν οἱ πλεῖστα τῇ διανοίᾳ χρώμενοι. καὶ γὰρ τὰ μουσεῖα πορρωτάτω τῶν πόλεων ἱδρύσαντο, καὶ τὴν νύκτα προσεῖπον ‘εὐφρόνην’, μέγα πρὸς εὕρεσιν τῶν ζητουμένων καὶ σκέψιν ἡγούμενοι τὴν ἡσυχίαν καὶ τὸ ἀπερίσπαστον.

[e] Ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδ’ ἐκεῖνο χαλεπὸν καὶ δύσκολον, ἀνθρώπων λοιδορουμένων ἐν ἀγορᾷ καὶ κακῶς λεγόντων ἀλλήλους μὴ προσελθεῖν ἢ συνδρομῆς ἐπί τι πλειόνων γενομένης μεῖναι καθήμενον, ἐὰν δ’ ἀκρατῶς ἔχῃς, ἀπελθεῖν ἀναστάντα. χρηστοῦ μὲν γὰρ οὐδενὸς τοῖς πολυπραγμονοῦσιν ἀναμίξας σεαυτὸν ἀπολαύσεις, μεγάλα δ’ ὠφεληθήσῃ τὸ πολύπραγμον ἀποστρέψας βίᾳ καὶ κολούσας, ὑπακούειν τῷ λογισμῷ συνεθιζόμενον. ἐκ δὲ τούτου μᾶλλον ἐπιτείνοντα τὴν ἄσκησιν ὀρθῶς ἔχει καὶ θέατρον ἀκροάματος εὐημεροῦντος παρελθεῖν, καὶ φίλους ἐπ’ ὀρχηστοῦ τινος ἢ κωμῳδοῦ θέαν παραλαμβάνοντας διώσασθαι [f] καὶ βοῆς ἐν σταδίῳ γινομένης ἢ ἱπποδρόμῳ μὴ ἐπιστραφῆναι. καθάπερ γὰρ ὁ Σωκράτης (Xen. Mem. I 3, 6) παρῄνει φυλάττεσθαι τῶν βρωμάτων ὅσα μὴ πεινῶντας ἐσθίειν ἀναπείθει καὶ τῶν πομάτων ὅσα πίνειν μὴ διψῶντας, οὕτω χρὴ καὶ ἡμᾶς τῶν θεαμάτων καὶ ἀκουσμάτων φυλάττεσθαι καὶ φεύγειν ὅσα κρατεῖ καὶ προσάγεται τοὺς μηδὲν δεομένους. ὁ γοῦν Κῦρος (Xen. Cyrup. V 1, 8) οὐκ ἐβούλετο τὴν Πάνθειαν ἰδεῖν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ Ἀράσπου λέγοντος ὡς ἄξιον θέας εἴη τὸ τῆς γυναικὸς εἶδος [522] [a] ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘διὰ τοῦτο μᾶλλον αὐτῆς ἀφεκτέον· εἰ γὰρ ὑπὸ σοῦ πεισθεὶς ἀφικοίμην πρὸς αὐτήν, ἴσως ἄν με πάλιν ἀναπείσειεν αὐτὴ καὶ μὴ σχολάζοντα φοιτᾶν καὶ θεᾶσθαι καὶ παρακαθῆσθαι προέμενον πολλὰ τῶν σπουδῆς ἀξίων.’ ὁμοίως οὐδ’ ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος εἰς ὄψιν ἦλθε τῆς Δαρείου γυναικὸς ἐκπρεπεστάτης εἶναι λεγομένης, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὴν μητέρα φοιτῶν αὐτῆς πρεσβῦτιν οὖσαν οὐχ ὑπέμεινε τὴν νέαν καὶ καλὴν ἰδεῖν. ἡμεῖς δὲ τοῖς φορείοις τῶν γυναικῶν ὑποβάλλοντες τὰ ὄμματα καὶ τῶν θυρίδων ἐκκρεμαννύντες οὐδὲν ἁμαρτάνειν δοκοῦμεν οὕτως ὀλισθηρὰν [b] καὶ ῥευστὴν εἰς ἅπαντα τὴν πολυπραγμοσύνην ποιοῦντες.

Ἔστι τοίνυν ‹οὐκ ἄχρηστον› καὶ πρὸς δικαιοσύνης ἄσκησιν ὑπερβῆναί ποτε λῆμμα δίκαιον, ἵνα πόρρω τῶν ἀδίκων ἐθίσῃς σεαυτὸν εἶναι, καὶ πρὸς σωφροσύνης ὁμοίως ἀποσχέσθαι ποτὲ γυναικὸς ἰδίας, ἵνα μηδέποτε κινηθῇς ὑπ’ ἀλλοτρίας. τοῦτο δὴ τὸ ἔθος ἐπάγων τῇ πολυπραγμοσύνῃ πειρῶ καὶ τῶν ἰδίων ἔνια παρακοῦσαί ποτε καὶ παριδεῖν καὶ βουλομένου τινὸς ἀγγεῖλαί τι τῶν ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας ὑπερβαλέσθαι καὶ λόγους περὶ σοῦ λελέχθαι δοκοῦντας ἀπώσασθαι. καὶ γὰρ τὸν Οἰδίποδα τοῖς μεγίστοις κακοῖς ἡ περιεργία περιέβαλε. ζητῶν γὰρ ἑαυτὸν [c] ὡς οὐκ ὄντα Κορίνθιον ἀλλὰ ξένον ἀπήντησε τῷ Λαΐῳ, καὶ τοῦτον ἀνελὼν καὶ τὴν μητέρα λαβὼν ἐπὶ τῇ βασιλείᾳ γυναῖκα καὶ δοκῶν εἶναι μακάριος πάλιν ἑαυτὸν ἐζήτει· καὶ τῆς γυναικὸς οὐκ ἐώσης ἔτι μᾶλλον ἤλεγχε τὸν συνειδότα γέροντα, πᾶσαν προσφέρων ἀνάγκην· τέλος δὲ τοῦ πράγματος ἤδη περιφέροντος αὐτὸν τῇ ὑπονοίᾳ καὶ τοῦ γέροντος ἀναβοήσαντος

‘οἴμοι, πρὸς αὐτῷ γ’ εἰμὶ τῷ δεινῷ λέγειν’

(Soph. O. R. 1169)

ὅμως ἐξημμένος ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους καὶ σφαδᾴζων ἀποκρίνεται

‘κἄγωγ’ ἀκούειν· ἀλλ’ ὅμως ἀκουστέον·’ (ib. 1170).

οὕτω τίς ἐστι γλυκύπικρος καὶ ἀκατάσχετος ὁ τῆς πολυπραγμοσύνης γαργαλισμός, ὥσπερ ἕλκος αἱμάσσων ἑαυτόν, [d] ὅταν ἀμύσσηται. ὁ δ’ ἀπηλλαγμένος τῆς νόσου ταύτης καὶ φύσει πρᾶος ἀγνοήσας τι τῶν δυσχερῶν εἴποι ἄν (Eur. Or. 213) ‘ὦ πότνια λήθη τῶν κακῶν, ὡς εἶ σοφή.’

διὸ καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα συνεθιστέον αὑτούς, ἐπιστολὴν κομισθεῖσαν μὴ ταχὺ μηδὲ κατεσπευσμένως λῦσαι, καθάπερ οἱ πολλοὶ ποιοῦσιν, ἂν αἱ χεῖρες βραδύνωσι, τοῖς ὀδοῦσι τοὺς δεσμοὺς διαβιβρώσκοντες, ἀγγέλου ποθὲν ἥκοντος μὴ προσδραμεῖν μηδ’ ἐξαναστῆναι, φίλου τινὸς εἰπόντος ‘ἔχω σοί τι καινὸν εἰπεῖν πρᾶγμα’ ‘μᾶλλον, εἴ τι χρήσιμον ἔχεις ἢ ὠφέλιμον.’ ἐμοῦ ποτ’ ἐν Ῥώμῃ διαλεγομένου Ῥουστικὸς ἐκεῖνος, ὃν ὕστερον ἀπέκτεινε Δομετιανὸς [e] τῇ δόξῃ φθονήσας, ἠκροᾶτο, καὶ διὰ μέσου στρατιώτης παρελθὼν ἐπιστολὴν αὐτῷ Καίσαρος ἀπέδωκε· γενομένης δὲ σιωπῆς κἀμοῦ διαλιπόντος, ὅπως ἀναγνῷ τὴν ἐπιστολήν, οὐκ ἠθέλησεν οὐδ’ ἔλυσε πρότερον ἢ διεξελθεῖν ἐμὲ τὸν λόγον καὶ διαλυθῆναι τὸ ἀκροατήριον· ἐφ’ ᾧ πάντες ἐθαύμασαν τὸ βάρος τοῦ ἀνδρός. ὅταν δέ τις οἷς ἔξεστι τρέφων τὸ πολύπραγμον ἰσχυρὸν ἀπεργάσηται καὶ βίαιον, οὐκέτι ῥᾳδίως πρὸς ἃ κεκώλυται φερομένου διὰ συνήθειαν κρατεῖν δυνατός ἐστιν· ἀλλ’ ἐπιστόλια παραλύουσιν οὗτοι φίλων, συνεδρίοις ἀπορρήτοις ἑαυτοὺς παρεμβάλλουσιν, ἱερῶν ἃ μὴ θέμις ὁρᾶν γίνονται θεαταί, τόπους ἀβάτους πατοῦσι, πράγματα καὶ λόγους βασιλικοὺς ἀνερευνῶσι.

Καίτοι τούς γε τυράννους, οἷς ἀνάγκη πάντα γινώσκειν, ἐπαχθεστάτους ποιεῖ τὸ τῶν λεγομένων ὤτων καὶ προσαγωγέων γένος. ὠτακουστὰς μὲν οὖν πρῶτος ἔσχεν ὁ νόθος Δαρεῖος ἀπιστῶν ἑαυτῷ καὶ πάντας ὑφορώμενος [523] [a] καὶ δεδοικώς, τοὺς δὲ προσαγωγίδας οἱ Διονύσιοι τοῖς Συρακοσίοις κατέμιξαν· ὅθεν ἐν τῇ μεταβολῇ τῶν πραγμάτων τούτους πρώτους οἱ Συρακόσιοι συλλαμβάνοντες ἀπετυμπάνιζον. καὶ γὰρ τὸ τῶν συκοφαντῶν γένος ἐκ τῆς τῶν πολυπραγμόνων φατρίας καὶ ἑστίας ἐστίν· ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν συκοφάνται ζητοῦσιν, εἴ τις ἢ βεβούλευται κακὸν ἢ πεποίηκεν, οἱ δὲ πολυπράγμονες καὶ τὰς ἀβουλήτους ἀτυχίας τῶν πέλας ἐλέγχοντες εἰς μέσον ἐκφέρουσι. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸν ἀλιτήριον ἐκ φιλοπραγμοσύνης κατονομασθῆναι τὸ πρῶτον. λιμοῦ γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν Ἀθηναίοις ἰσχυροῦ γενομένου [b] καὶ τῶν ἐχόντων πυρὸν εἰς μέσον οὐ φερόντων ἀλλὰ κρύφα καὶ νύκτωρ ἐν ταῖς οἰκίαις ἀλούντων, περιιόντες ἐτήρουν τῶν μύλων τὸν ψόφον, εἶτ’ ‘ἀλιτήριοι’ προσηγορεύθησαν. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τῷ συκοφάντῃ τοὔνομα γενέσθαι· κεκωλυμένου γὰρ ἐκφέρειν τὰ σῦκα μηνύοντες καὶ φαίνοντες τοὺς ἐξάγοντας ἐκλήθησαν ‘συκοφάνται.’ καὶ τοῦτ’ οὖν οὐκ ἄχρηστόν ἐστιν ἐννοεῖν τοὺς πολυπράγμονας, ὅπως αἰσχύνωνται τὴν πρὸς τοὺς μισουμένους μάλιστα καὶ δυσχεραινομένους ὁμοιότητα καὶ συγγένειαν τοῦ ἐπιτηδεύματος.

De cupiditate divitiarum

ΠΕΡΙ ΦΙΛΟΠΛΟΥΤΙΑΣ

[523] Ἱππόμαχος ὁ ἀλείπτης ἐπαινούντων τινῶν ἄνθρωπον εὐμήκη καὶ μακρὰς ἔχοντα χεῖρας ὡς πυκτικὸν ‘εἴπερ’ [d] ἔφη ‘καθελεῖν ἔδει τὸν στέφανον ᾐωρημένον.’ τοῦτ’ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν πρὸς τοὺς τὰ καλὰ χωρία καὶ τὰς μεγάλας οἰκίας καὶ τὸ πολὺ ἀργύριον ὑπερεκπεπληγμένους καὶ μακαρίζοντας· ‘εἴ γ’ ἔδει πωλουμένην πρίασθαι τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν’ (καίτοι πολλοὺς ἂν εἴποι τις ὅτι μᾶλλον ἐθέλουσι πλουτεῖν [καὶ] κακοδαιμονοῦντες ἢ μακάριοι γενέσθαι δόντες ἀργύριον). ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστι γε χρημάτων ὤνιον ἀλυπία μεγαλοφροσύνη εὐστάθεια θαρραλεότης αὐτάρκεια.

Τῷ πλουτεῖν οὐκ ἔνεστι τὸ πλούτου καταφρονεῖν οὐδὲ τῷ τὰ περιττὰ κεκτῆσθαι τὸ μὴ δεῖσθαι τῶν περιττῶν.

[e] τίνος οὖν ἀπαλλάττει τῶν ἄλλων κακῶν ὁ πλοῦτος, εἰ μηδὲ φιλοπλουτίας; ἀλλὰ ποτὸν μὲν ἔσβεσε τὴν ποτοῦ ὄρεξιν καὶ τροφὴ τὴν τροφῆς ἐπιθυμίαν ἠκέσατο· κἀκεῖνος ὁ λέγων

 ’δὸς χλαῖναν Ἱππώνακτι, κάρτα γὰρ ῥιγῶ’ (Hippon. fr. 17)

πλειόνων ἐπιφερομένων δυσανασχετεῖ καὶ διωθεῖται· φιλαργυρίαν δ’ οὐ σβέννυσιν ἀργύριον οὐδὲ χρυσίον, οὐδὲ πλεονεξία παύεται κτωμένη τὸ πλέον. ἀλλ’ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὸν πλοῦτον ὡς πρὸς ἰατρὸν ἀλαζόνα

 ’τὸ φάρμακόν σου τὴν νόσον μείζω ποιεῖ’ (Com. ad. 455)·

ἄρτου δεομένους καὶ οἴκου καὶ σκέπης μετρίας καὶ τοῦ [f] τυχόντος ὄψου παραλαβὼν ἐμπέπληκεν ἐπιθυμίας χρυσοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ ἐλέφαντος καὶ σμαράγδων καὶ κυνῶν καὶ ἵππων, εἰς χαλεπὰ καὶ σπάνια καὶ δυσπόριστα καὶ ἄχρηστα μεταθεὶς ἐκ τῶν ἀναγκαίων τὴν ὄρεξιν. ἐπεὶ τῶν γ’ ἀρκούντων οὐδεὶς πένης ἐστίν, οὐδὲ δεδάνεισται πώποτ’ ἄνθρωπος ἀργύριον, ἵν’ ἄλφιτα πρίηται ἢ τυρὸν ἢ ἄρτον ἢ ἐλαίας, ἀλλὰ τὸν μὲν οἰκία πολυτελὴς χρεωφειλέτην πεποίηκε, [524] [a] τὸν δ’ ὁμοροῦν ἐλαιόφυτον, τὸν δὲ σιτῶνες ἀμπελῶνες, ἄλλον ἡμίονοι Γαλατικαί, ἄλλον ἵπποι ζυγοφόροι ‘κείν’ ὄχεα κροτέοντες’ (Ο 453) ἐνσεσείκασιν εἰς βάραθρα συμβολαίων καὶ τόκων καὶ ὑποθηκῶν· εἶθ’ ὥσπερ οἱ πίνοντες μετὰ τὸ μὴ διψῆν ἢ ἐσθίοντες μετὰ τὸ μὴ πεινῆν καὶ ὅσα διψῶντες ἢ πεινῶντες ἔλαβον προσεξεμοῦσιν, οὕτως οἱ τῶν ἀχρήστων ἐφιέμενοι καὶ περιττῶν οὐδὲ τῶν ἀναγκαίων κρατοῦσιν. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν τοιοῦτοι. τοὺς δὲ μηδὲν ἀποβάλλοντας ἔχοντας δὲ πολλὰ πλειόνων δ’ ἀεὶ δεομένους ἔτι μᾶλλον θαυμάσειεν ἄν τις τοῦ Ἀριστίππου μεμνημένος.

[b] ἐκεῖνος γὰρ εἰώθει λέγειν, ὅτι ‘πολλὰ μέν τις ἐσθίων πολλὰ δὲ πίνων πληρούμενος δὲ μηδέποτε πρὸς τοὺς ἰατροὺς βαδίζει καὶ πυνθάνεται τί τὸ πάθος καὶ τίς ἡ διάθεσις καὶ πῶς ἂν ἀπαλλαγείη· εἰ δέ τις ἔχων πέντε κλίνας δέκα ζητεῖ, καὶ κεκτημένος δέκα τραπέζας ἑτέρας συνωνεῖται τοσαύτας, καὶ χωρίων πολλῶν παρόντων καὶ ἀργυρίου οὐ γίνεται μεστὸς ἀλλ’ ἐπ’ ἄλλα συντέταται καὶ ἀγρυπνεῖ καὶ ἀπλήρωτός ἐστι πάντων, οὗτος οὐκ οἴεται δεῖσθαι τοῦ θεραπεύσοντος καὶ δείξοντος ἀφ’ ἧς αἰτίας τοῦτο πέπονθε’; καίτοι τῶν διψώντων τὸν μὲν οὐ πεπωκότα προσδοκήσειεν ἄν τις ἀπαλλαγήσεσθαι πιόντα τοῦ διψῆν, τὸν [c] δὲ πίνοντα συνεχῶς καὶ μὴ παυόμενον οὐ πληρώσεως ἀλλὰ καθάρσεως οἰόμεθα δεῖσθαι, καὶ κελεύομεν ἐμεῖν ὡς οὐχ ὑπ’ ἐνδείας ὀχλούμενον ἀλλά τινος δριμύτητος ἢ θερμότητος αὐτῷ παρὰ φύσιν ἐνούσης· οὐκοῦν καὶ τῶν ποριζομένων ὁ μὲν ἐνδεὴς καὶ ἄπορος παύσαιτ’ ἂν ἴσως ἐργασίαν κτησάμενος ἢ θησαυρὸν εὑρὼν ἢ φίλου βοηθήσαντος ἐκτίσας καὶ ἀπαλλαγεὶς τοῦ δανειστοῦ, τὸν δὲ πλείω τῶν ἱκανῶν ἔχοντα καὶ πλειόνων ὀρεγόμενον οὐ χρυσίον ἐστὶν οὐδ’ ἀργύριον τὸ θεραπεῦσον οὐδ’ ἵπποι καὶ πρόβατα καὶ βόες, ἀλλ’ ἐκβολῆς δεῖται καὶ καθαρμοῦ. πενία γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν ἀλλ’ ἀπληστία τὸ πάθος αὐτοῦ καὶ φιλοπλουτία διὰ [d] κρίσιν φαύλην καὶ ἀλόγιστον ἐνοῦσα· ἣν ἂν μή τις ἐξέληται τῆς ψυχῆς ὥσπερ ἕλμιγγα πλατεῖαν, οὐ παύσονται δεόμενοι τῶν περιττῶν, τουτέστιν ἐπιθυμοῦντες ὧν οὐ δέονται.

Ὅταν ἰατρὸς εἰσελθὼν πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἐρριμμένον ἐν τῷ κλινιδίῳ καὶ στένοντα καὶ μὴ βουλόμενον τροφὴν λαβεῖν ἅψηται καὶ ἀνακρίνῃ καὶ εὕρῃ μὴ πυρέττοντα, ‘ψυχικὴ νόσος’ ἔφη καὶ ἀπῆλθεν· οὐκοῦν καὶ ἡμεῖς ὅταν ἴδωμεν ἄνδρα τῷ πορισμῷ προστετηκότα καὶ τοῖς ἀναλώμασιν ἐπιστένοντα καὶ μηδενὸς εἰς χρηματισμὸν συντελοῦντος αἰσχροῦ μηδ’ ἀνιαροῦ φειδόμενον, οἰκίας δ’ ἔχοντα [e] καὶ χώρας καὶ ἀγέλας καὶ ἀνδράποδα σὺν ἱματίοις, τί φήσομεν εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὸ πάθος ἢ πενίαν ψυχικήν; ἐπεὶ τήν γε χρηματικήν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Μένανδρος (fr. 282), εἷς ἂν φίλος ἀπαλλάξειεν εὐεργετήσας, τὴν δὲ ψυχικὴν ἐκείνην οὐκ ἂν ἐμπλήσειαν ἅπαντες οὔτε ζῶντες οὔτ’ ἀποθανόντες. ὅθεν εὖ πρὸς τούτους λέλεκται ὑπὸ τοῦ Σόλωνος (13, 71)

‘πλούτου δ’ οὐδὲν τέρμα πεφασμένον ἀνθρώποισιν.’

ἐπεὶ τοῖς γε νοῦν ἔχουσιν ὁ τῆς φύσεως πλοῦτος ὥρισται καὶ τὸ τέρμα πάρεστι, τῇ χρείᾳ καθάπερ κέντρῳ καὶ διαστήματι περιγραφόμενον. ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο τῆς φιλαργυρίας [f] ἴδιον· ἐπιθυμία γάρ ἐστι μαχομένη πρὸς τὴν αὑτῆς πλήρωσιν· αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι καὶ συνεργοῦσιν· οὐδεὶς γοῦν ἀπέχεται χρήσεως ὄψου διὰ φιλοψίαν οὐδ’ οἴνου δι’ οἰνοφλυγίαν, ὡς χρημάτων ἀπέχονται διὰ φιλοχρηματίαν. καίτοι πῶς οὐ μανικὸν οὐδ’ οἰκτρὸν τὸ πάθος, εἴ τις ἱματίῳ μὴ χρῆται διὰ τὸ ῥιγοῦν μηδ’ ἄρτῳ διὰ τὸ πεινῆν μηδὲ πλούτῳ διὰ τὸ φιλοπλουτεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐν τοῖς Θρασωνίδου κακοῖς ἐστιν (Men. fr. 336)

[525] [a] ‘παρ’ ἐμοὶ γάρ ἐστιν ἔνδον, ἔνδον ἐστί μοι,

καὶ βούλομαι τοῦθ’ ὡς ἂν ἐμμανέστατα

ἐρῶν τις, οὐ ποιῶ δέ·’

‘κατακλείσας δὲ πάντα καὶ κατασφραγισάμενος καὶ παραριθμήσας τοκισταῖς καὶ πραγματευταῖς ἄλλα συνάγω καὶ διώκω, καὶ ζυγομαχῶ πρὸς τοὺς οἰκέτας πρὸς τοὺς γεωργοὺς πρὸς τοὺς χρεώστας·

‘Ἄπολλον, ἀνθρώπων τιν’ ἀθλιώτερον

ἑόρακας; ἆρ’ ἐρῶντα δυσποτμώτερον;’ (Men. fr. 337)’

Ὁ Σοφοκλῆς ἐρωτηθείς, εἰ δύναται γυναικὶ πλησιάζειν, ‘εὐφήμει, ἄνθρωπε’ εἶπεν ‘ἐλεύθερος γέγονα λυττῶντας καὶ ἀγρίους δεσπότας διὰ τὸ γῆρας ἀποφυγών.’ χάριεν γὰρ ἅμα ταῖς ἡδοναῖς συνεκλείπειν τὰς ἐπιθυμίας, ἃς [b] μήτε †ηὗρεν μὲν φησὶν Ἀλκαῖος (fr. 108) μήτε γυναῖκα. τοῦτο δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπὶ τῆς φιλοπλουτίας· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ βαρεῖα καὶ πικρὰ δέσποινα κτάσθαι μὲν ἀναγκάζει χρῆσθαι δὲ κωλύει, καὶ τὴν μὲν ἐπιθυμίαν ἐγείρει τὴν δ’ ἡδονὴν ἀφαιρεῖται. τοὺς μὲν οὖν Ῥοδίους ὁ Στρατόνικος ἐπέσκωπτεν εἰς πολυτέλειαν, οἰκοδομεῖν μὲν ὡς ἀθανάτους λέγων ὀψωνεῖν δ’ ὡς ὀλιγοχρονίους· οἱ δὲ φιλάργυροι κτῶνται μὲν ὡς πολυτελεῖς χρῶνται δ’ ὡς ἀνελεύθεροι, καὶ τοὺς μὲν πόνους ὑπομένουσι τὰς δ’ ἡδονὰς οὐκ ἔχουσιν. ὁ γοῦν Δημάδης ἐπιστὰς ἀριστῶντί ποτε Φωκίωνι καὶ θεασάμενος [c] αὐτοῦ τὴν τράπεζαν αὐστηρὰν καὶ λιτὴν ‘θαυμάζω σ’ ὦ Φωκίων’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι οὕτως ἀριστᾶν δυνάμενος πολιτεύῃ’ (αὐτὸς γὰρ εἰς τὴν γαστέρα ἐδημαγώγει, καὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας μικρὸν ἡγούμενος τῆς ἀσωτίας ἐφόδιον ἐκ τῆς Μακεδονίας ἐπεσιτίζετο· καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ Ἀντίπατρος εἶπε θεασάμενος αὐτὸν γέροντα ‘καθάπερ ἱερείου διαπεπραγμένου μηδὲν ἔτι λοιπὸν ἢ τὴν γλῶσσαν εἶναι καὶ τὴν κοιλίαν’)· σὲ δ’ οὐκ ἄν τις, ὦ κακόδαιμον, θαυμάσειεν, εἰ δυνάμενος οὕτω ζῆν ἀνελευθέρως καὶ ἀπανθρώπως καὶ ἀμεταδότως καὶ πρὸς φίλους ἀπηνῶς καὶ πρὸς πόλιν ἀφιλοτίμως κακοπαθεῖς [d] καὶ ἀγρυπνεῖς καὶ ἐργολαβεῖς καὶ κληρονομεῖς καὶ ὑποπίπτεις τηλικοῦτον ἔχων τῆς ἀπραγμοσύνης ἐφόδιον, τὴν ἀνελευθερίαν; Βυζάντιόν τινα λέγουσιν ἐπὶ δυσμόρφῳ γυναικὶ μοιχὸν εὑρόντ’ εἰπεῖν, ‘ὦ ταλαίπωρε, τίς ἀνάγκα; σαπρὰ γὰρ ἁ τρύξ’. †ἄγε σὺ κυκᾷς ὑφάπτεις, ὦ πόνηρε, τοὺς βασιλεῖς ‹ἔα› πορίζεσθαι τοὺς ἐπιτρόπους τῶν βασιλέων τοὺς ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι πρωτεύειν καὶ ἄρχειν ἐθέλοντας, ἐκείνοις ἀνάγκη διὰ τὴν φιλοτιμίαν καὶ τὴν ἀλαζονείαν καὶ τὴν κενὴν δόξαν ἑστιῶσιν χαριζομένοις δορυφοροῦσιν δῶρα πέμπουσι στρατεύματα τρέφουσι μονομάχους ὠνουμένοις· [e] σὺ δὲ τοσαῦτα πράγματα συγχεῖς καὶ ταράττεις καὶ ‘στροβεῖς σεαυτόν’, κοχλίου βίον ζῶν διὰ τὴν μικρολογίαν, καὶ τὰ δυσχερῆ πάνθ’ ὑπομένεις οὐδὲν εὖ πάσχων, ὥσπερ ὄνος βαλανέως ξύλα καὶ φρύγανα κατακομίζων, ἀεὶ καπνοῦ καὶ τέφρας ἀναπιμπλάμενος λουτροῦ δὲ μὴ μετέχων μηδ’ ἀλέας μηδὲ καθαρειότητος.

Καὶ ταῦτα ‹μὲν› πρὸς τὴν ὀνώδη καὶ μυρμηκώδη λέγεται φιλοπλουτίαν· ἑτέρα δ’ ἐστὶν ἡ θηριώδης, συκοφαντοῦσα καὶ κληρονομοῦσα καὶ παραλογιζομένη καὶ πολυπραγμονοῦσα καὶ φροντίζουσα καὶ ἀριθμοῦσα τῶν φίλων ἔτι πόσοι ζῶσιν, εἶτα πρὸς μηδὲν ἀπολαύουσα τῶν [f] πανταχόθεν προσποριζομένων. ὥσπερ οὖν ἐχίδνας καὶ κανθαρίδας καὶ φαλάγγια μᾶλλον προβαλλόμεθα καὶ δυσχεραίνομεν ἄρκτων καὶ λεόντων, ὅτι κτείνει καὶ ἀπόλλυσιν ἀνθρώπους μηδὲν χρώμενα τοῖς ἀπολλυμένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, οὕτω δεῖ μᾶλλον δυσχεραίνειν τῶν δι’ ἀσωτίαν τοὺς διὰ μικρολογίαν καὶ ἀνελευθερίαν πονηρούς· ἀφαιροῦνται [526] [a] γὰρ ἄλλων, οἷς αὐτοὶ χρῆσθαι μὴ δύνανται μηδὲ πεφύκασιν. ὅθεν ἐκεῖνοι μὲν ἐκεχειρίαν ἄγουσιν ἐν ἀφθόνοις γενόμενοι καὶ χορηγίαν ἔχοντες (ὥσπερ ὁ Δημοσθένης ἔλεγε πρὸς τοὺς νομίζοντας τῆς πονηρίας τὸν Δημάδην πεπαῦσθαι, ‘νῦν γὰρ’ ἔφη ‘μεστὸν ὁρᾶτε, καθάπερ τοὺς λέοντας’)· τοῖς δ’ εἰς μηδὲν ἡδὺ μηδὲ χρήσιμον πονηρευομένοις οὐκ ἔστιν ἀνακωχὴ τοῦ πλεονεκτεῖν οὐδ’ ἀσχολία κενοῖς οὖσιν ἀεὶ καὶ προσδεομένοις ἁπάντων.

‘Ἀλλὰ νὴ Δία’ φήσει τις [ὅτι] ‘παισὶν οὗτοι καὶ κληρονόμοις φυλάττουσι καὶ θησαυρίζουσι.’ πῶς; οἷς ζῶντες οὐδὲν μεταδιδόασιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τῶν μυῶν τῶν ἐν τοῖς [b] μετάλλοις τὴν χρυσῖτιν ἐσθιόντων οὐκ ἔσται τοῦ χρυσίου μεταλαβεῖν εἰ μὴ νεκρῶν γενομένων καὶ ἀνατμηθέντων. παισὶ δὲ καὶ κληρονόμοις διὰ τί βούλονται πολλὰ χρήματα καὶ μεγάλην οὐσίαν ἀπολιπεῖν; ἵνα δηλονότι καὶ οὗτοι φυλάττωσιν ἑτέροις, κἀκεῖνοι πάλιν, ὥσπερ οἱ κεραμεοῖ σωλῆνες οὐδὲν ἀναλαμβάνοντες εἰς ἑαυτοὺς ἀλλ’ ἕκαστος εἰς ἕτερον ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ μεθιείς, ἄχρι ἄν τις ἔξωθεν ἢ συκοφάντης ἢ τύραννος ἐκκόψας τὸν φυλάττοντα καὶ κατάξας ἀλλαχόσε παρατρέψῃ καὶ παροχετεύσῃ τὸν πλοῦτον, ἤ, καθάπερ λέγουσιν, εἷς ὁ πονηρότατος ἐν τῷ γένει γενόμενος, [c] καταφάγῃ τὰ πάντων· οὐ γὰρ μόνον κατὰ τὸν Εὐριπίδην (fr. 976)

‘ἀκόλασθ’ ὁμιλεῖν γίνεται δούλων τέκνα’

‹ἀλλὰ› καὶ μικρολόγων· ὥς που καὶ Διογένης ἐπέσκωψεν εἰπὼν ‘Μεγαρέως ἀνδρὸς βέλτιον εἶναι κριὸν ἢ υἱὸν γενέσθαι.’ καὶ γὰρ οἷς δοκοῦσι παιδεύειν, ἀπολλύουσι καὶ προσδιαστρέφουσιν ἐμφυτεύοντες τὴν αὑτῶν φιλαργυρίαν καὶ μικρολογίαν, ὥσπερ [οὖν] τι φρούριον τῆς κληρονομίας ἐνοικοδομοῦντες τοῖς κληρονόμοις. ταῦτα γάρ ἐστιν ἃ παραινοῦσι καὶ διδάσκουσι ‘κέρδαινε καὶ φείδου, καὶ τοσούτου νόμιζε σεαυτὸν ἄξιον ὅσον ἂν ἔχῃς’ (cf. Trag. adesp. 461). τοῦτο δ’ οὐκ ἔστι παιδεύειν, ἀλλὰ συστέλλειν [d] καὶ ἀπορράπτειν ὥσπερ βαλλάντιον, ἵνα στέγειν καὶ φυλάττειν τὸ εἰσβληθὲν δύνηται. καίτοι τὸ μὲν βαλλάντιον ἐμβληθέντος τοῦ ἀργυρίου γίνεται ῥυπαρὸν καὶ δυσῶδες, οἱ δὲ τῶν φιλαργύρων παῖδες πρὶν ἢ παραλαμβάνειν τὸν πλοῦτον ἀναπίμπλανται τῆς φιλοπλουτίας ἀπ’ αὐτῶν τῶν πατέρων. καὶ μέντοι τῆς διδασκαλίας καὶ μισθοὺς ἀξίους ἀποτίνουσιν αὐτοῖς, οὐ φιλοῦντες ὅτι πολλὰ λήψονται, ἀλλὰ μισοῦντες ὅτι μήπω λαμβάνουσι. μηδὲν γὰρ ἄλλο θαυμάζειν ἢ τὸν πλοῦτον μαθόντες μηδ’ ἐπ’ ἄλλῳ τινὶ ζῆν ἢ τῷ πολλὰ κεκτῆσθαι κώλυσιν τοῦ ἰδίου βίου τὸν [e] ἐκείνων ποιοῦνται, καὶ νομίζουσιν αὑτῶν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τὸν χρόνον, ὅσον ἐκείνοις προστίθησι. διὸ καὶ ζώντων μὲν ἔτι τῶν πατέρων λανθάνοντες ἁμωσγέπως παρακλέπτουσι τῆς ἡδονῆς καὶ ἀπολαύουσιν ὥσπερ ἀλλοτρίων, μεταδιδόντες φίλοις ἀναλίσκοντες εἰς ἐπιθυμίας ἔτι ἀκούοντες ἔτι μανθάνοντες. ὅταν δ’ ἀποθανόντων τὰς κλεῖς παραλάβωσι καὶ τὰς σφραγῖδας, ἕτερον βίου σχῆμ’ αὐτοῖς ἐστι καὶ πρόσωπον ἀγέλαστον αὐστηρὸν ἀνέντευκτον· οὐ κολοφὼν οὐ σφαῖρα οὐ τραχηλισμὸς οὐκ Ἀκαδήμεια οὐ Λύκειον, ἀλλ’ οἰκετῶν ἀνάκρισις καὶ γραμματείων ἐπίσκεψις καὶ πρὸς οἰκονόμους ἢ χρεώστας διαλογισμὸς καὶ ἀσχολία καὶ [f] φροντὶς ἀφαιρουμένη τὸ ἄριστον καὶ συνελαύνουσα νυκτὸς εἰς τὸ βαλανεῖον,

‘γυμνάσια δ’ οἷσιν ἐνετράφη Δίρκης θ’ ὕδωρ’

(Eur. Phoen. 368)

παρώδευται· κἂν εἴπῃ τις ‘οὐκ ἀκούσῃ τοῦ φιλοσόφου;’ ‘πόθεν ἐμοί;’ φησίν ‘οὐ σχολάζω τοῦ πατρὸς τεθνηκότος.’ ὦ ταλαίπωρε, τί σοι τοιοῦτο καταλέλοιπεν οἷον ἀφῄρηται, τὴν σχολὴν καὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν; μᾶλλον δ’ οὐκ ἐκεῖνος ἀλλ’ ὁ πλοῦτος περιχυθεὶς καὶ κρατήσας, ὥσπερ ἡ παρ’ Ἡσιόδῳ γυνή (OD 705) [527] [a] ‘εὔει ἄτερ δαλοῖο καὶ ὠμῷ γήραϊ δῶκεν,’ ὥσπερ ῥυτίδας ἀώρους ἢ πολιὰς ἐπαγαγὼν τῇ ψυχῇ τὰς φροντίδας ἐκ τῆς φιλαργυρίας καὶ τὰς ἀσχολίας, ὑφ’ ὧν μαραίνεται τὸ γαῦρον καὶ τὸ φιλότιμον καὶ τὸ φιλάνθρωπον.

‘Τί οὖν;’ φήσει τις, ‘οὐχ ὁρᾷς καὶ χρωμένους ἐνίους δαψιλῶς τοῖς χρήμασι;’ σὺ δ’ οὐκ ἀκούεις, φήσομεν, Ἀριστοτέλους λέγοντος ὅτι οἱ μὲν οὐ χρῶνται οἱ δὲ παραχρῶνται, καθάπερ οὐδετέρου προσήκοντος; ἀλλ’ ἐκείνους μὲν οὐκ ὠφελεῖ τὸ οἰκεῖον οὐδὲ κοσμεῖ, τούτους δὲ καὶ βλάπτει καὶ καταισχύνει. φέρε δὴ σκεψώμεθα τὸ πρῶτον, [b] ἡ χρῆσις αὕτη, δι’ ἣν θαυμάζεται ὁ πλοῦτος, πότερον τῶν ἀρκούντων; οὐδὲν οὖν πλέον ἔχουσιν οἱ πλούσιοι τῶν μέτρια κεκτημένων, ἀλλ’ ‘ἄπλουτος ὁ πλοῦτός ἐστιν’ ὥς φησι Θεόφραστος (fr. 78), καὶ ἄζηλος ἀληθῶς, εἰ Καλλίας ὁ πλουσιώτατος Ἀθηναίων καὶ Ἰσμηνίας ὁ Θηβαίων εὐπορώτατος ἐχρῶντο τούτοις, οἷς Σωκράτης καὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδας. ὡς γὰρ Ἀγάθων τὸν αὐλὸν ἀπέπεμψεν ἐκ τοῦ συμποσίου πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας οἰόμενος ἀρκεῖν τοὺς λόγους τῶν παρόντων, οὕτως ἀποπέμψειας ἂν καὶ στρωμνὰς ἁλουργεῖς καὶ τραπέζας πολυτελεῖς καὶ τὰ περιττὰ πάντα, τοὺς πλουσίους ὁρῶν χρωμένους οἷς οἱ πένητες· καὶ ‘αἶψά κε πηδάλιον μὲν ὑπὲρ καπνοῦ καταθεῖο, ἔργα’ [c] δ’ οὐ ‘βοῶν ἀπόλοιτο καὶ ἡμιόνων ταλαεργῶν,’ ἀλλὰ χρυσοχόων καὶ τορευτῶν καὶ μυρεψῶν καὶ μεγείρων, καλῆς καὶ σώφρονος γενομένης ξενηλασίας τῶν ἀχρήστων. εἰ δὲ τὰ μὲν ἀρκοῦντα κοινὰ καὶ τῶν μὴ πλουσίων ἐστί, σεμνύνεται δ’ ὁ πλοῦτος ἐπὶ τοῖς περιττοῖς καὶ τὸν Σκόπαν τὸν Θεσσαλὸν ἐπαινεῖς, ὃς αἰτηθείς τι τῶν κατὰ τὴν οἰκίαν ὡς περιττὸν αὐτῷ καὶ ἄχρηστον ‘ἀλλὰ μήν’ ἔφη ‘τούτοις ἐσμὲν ἡμεῖς εὐδαίμονες καὶ μακάριοι τοῖς περιττοῖς, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐκείνοις τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις’, ὅρα μὴ πομπὴν ἐπαινοῦντι καὶ πανήγυριν μᾶλλον ἢ βίον ἔοικας.

[d] Ἡ πάτριος τῶν Διονυσίων ἑορτὴ τὸ παλαιὸν ἐπέμπετο δημοτικῶς καὶ ἱλαρῶς· ἀμφορεὺς οἴνου καὶ κληματίς, εἶτα τράγον τις εἷλκεν, ἄλλος ἰσχάδων ἄρριχον ἠκολούθει κομίζων, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δ’ ὁ φαλλός. ἀλλὰ νῦν ταῦτα παρεώραται καὶ ἠφάνισται χρυσωμάτων παραφερομένων καὶ ἱματίων πολυτελῶν καὶ ζευγῶν ἐλαυνομένων καὶ προσωπείων· οὕτω τὰ ἀναγκαῖα τοῦ πλούτου καὶ χρήσιμα τοῖς ἀχρήστοις κατακέχωσται καὶ τοῖς περιττοῖς. οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τὸ τοῦ Τηλεμάχου πάσχομεν· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ὑπ’ ἀπειρίας μᾶλλον δ’ ἀπειροκαλίας τὴν μὲν Νέστορος ἰδὼν οἰκίαν κλίνας [e] ἔχουσαν τραπέζας ἱμάτια στρώματα οἶνον ἡδὺν οὐκ ἐμακάριζε τὸν εὐποροῦντα τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἢ καὶ χρησίμων, παρὰ δὲ τῷ Μενελάῳ θεασάμενος ἐλέφαντα καὶ χρυσὸν καὶ ἤλεκτρον ἐξεπλάγη καὶ εἶπε (δ 74)

‘Ζηνός που τοιήδε γ’ Ὀλυμπίου ἔνδοθεν αὐλή·

ὅσσα τάδ’ ἄσπετα πολλά· σέβας μ’ ἔχει εἰσορόωντα.’

Σωκράτης δ’ ἂν εἶπεν ἢ καὶ Διογένης ‘ὅσσα τάδ’ ἄθλια πολλὰ’ καὶ ἄχρηστα καὶ μάταια· ‘γέλως μ’ ἔχει εἰσορόωντα.’ ‘τί λέγεις, ἀβέλτερε; τῆς γυναικὸς ὀφείλων παρελεῖν [f] τὴν πορφύραν καὶ τὸν κόσμον, ἵνα παύσηται τρυφῶσα καὶ ξενομανοῦσα, τὴν οἰκίαν πάλιν καλλωπίζεις ὡς θέατρον ἢ θυμέλην τοῖς εἰσιοῦσι;’

Τοιαύτην ὁ πλοῦτος εὐδαιμονίαν ἔχει, θεατῶν ‹δίχα› καὶ μαρτύρων [ἢ] τὸ μηδὲν οὖσαν. ὅμοιόν γε τὸ σωφρονεῖν τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν τὸ γινώσκειν ἃ δεῖ περὶ θεῶν, ‹ἅ›, κἂν [528] [a] λανθάνῃ πάντας ἀνθρώπους, ἴδιον σέλας ἔχει καὶ φέγγος ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ μέγα καὶ χαρὰν ποιεῖ σύνοικον αὐτῇ δι’ ἑαυτῆς ἀντιλαμβανομένῃ τἀγαθοῦ, ἄν τ’ ἴδῃ τις ἄν τε λανθάνῃ καὶ θεοὺς καὶ ἀνθρώπους ἅπαντας. τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν ἀρετὴ ἀλήθεια μαθημάτων κάλλος [τε] γεωμετρικῶν ἀστρολογικῶν· ὧν τίνι τὰ τοῦ πλούτου φάλαρα ταῦτα καὶ περιδέραια καὶ ἀνθίσματα κορασιώδη παραβαλεῖν ἄξιον; μηδενὸς ὁρῶντος μηδὲ προσβλέποντος ὄντως τυφλὸς γίνεται καὶ ἀφεγγὴς ὁ πλοῦτος. μόνος γὰρ ὁ πλούσιος δειπνῶν μετὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ἢ τῶν συνήθων οὔτε ταῖς θυίναις παρέχει πράγματα τραπέζαις οὔτε τοῖς χρυσοῖς [b] ἐκπώμασιν ἀλλὰ χρῆται τοῖς προστυχοῦσι, καὶ ἡ γυνὴ ἄχρυσος καὶ ἀπόρφυρος καὶ ἀφελὴς πάρεστιν· ὅταν δὲ σύνδειπνον, τουτέστι πομπὴ καὶ θέατρον, συγκροτῆται καὶ δρᾶμα πλουσιακὸν εἰσάγηται, ‘νηῶν δ’ ἔκφερε λέβητάς τε τρίποδάς τε’ (Ψ 259), τῶν τε λύχνων αἱ θῆκαι περισμῶνται, τὰς κύλικας ἀλλάσσουσι, τοὺς οἰνοχόους μεταμφιεννύουσι, πάντα κινοῦσι, χρυσὸν ἄργυρον λιθοκόλλητα, ἄλλοις πλουτεῖν ὁμολογοῦντες. ἀλλὰ σωφροσύνης γε, κἂν μόνος δειπνῇ, δεῖται, κἂν εὐωχίας.

De vitioso pudore

ΠΕΡΙ ΔΥΣΩΠΙΑΣ

[528] Ἔνια τῶν ἐκ τῆς γῆς φυομένων αὐτὰ μέν ἐστιν ἄγρια τῇ φύσει καὶ ἄκαρπα καὶ βλαβερὰν τοῖς ἡμέροις [c] σπέρμασι καὶ φυτοῖς τὴν αὔξησιν ἔχοντα, σημεῖα δ’ αὐτὰ ποιοῦνται χώρας οἱ γεωργοῦντες οὐ πονηρᾶς ἀλλὰ γενναίας καὶ πίονος· οὕτω δὴ καὶ πάθη ψυχῆς ἐστιν οὐ χρηστά, χρηστῆς δὲ φύσεως οἷον ἐξανθήματα καὶ λόγῳ παρασχεῖν ἐργάσιμον ἑαυτὴν ἐπιεικῶς δυναμένης. ἐν τούτοις τίθεμαι καὶ τὴν λεγομένην δυσωπίαν, σημεῖον μὲν οὐ φαῦλον αἰτίαν δὲ μοχθηρίας οὖσαν. τὰ γὰρ αὐτὰ τοῖς ἀναισχύντοις οἱ αἰσχυνόμενοι πολλάκις ἁμαρτάνουσι, πλὴν ὅτι τὸ λυπεῖσθαι καὶ ἀλγεῖν ἐφ’ οἷς διαμαρτάνουσι τούτοις πρόσεστιν οὐχ ὡς ἐκείνοις τὸ ἥδεσθαι. ἀναλγὴς μὲν γὰρ [d] ὁ ἀναιδὴς πρὸς τὸ αἰσχρόν, εὐπαθὴς δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὸ φαινόμενον αἰσχρὸν ὁ εὐδυσώπητος. ὑπερβολὴ γὰρ τοῦ αἰσχύνεσθαι τὸ δυσωπεῖσθαι. διὸ καὶ οὕτως κέκληται, τρόπον τινὰ τοῦ προσώπου τῇ ψυχῇ συνδιατρεπομένου καὶ συνεξατονοῦντος. ὡς γὰρ τὴν κατήφειαν ὁρίζονται λύπην κάτω βλέπειν ποιοῦσαν, οὕτω τὴν αἰσχυντηλίαν μέχρι τοῦ μηδ’ ἀντιβλέπειν τοῖς δεομένοις ὑπείκουσαν δυσωπίαν ὠνόμασαν. ὅθεν ὁ μὲν ῥήτωρ τὸν ἀναίσχυντον οὐκ ἔφη κόρας ἐν τοῖς ὄμμασιν ἔχειν ἀλλὰ πόρνας· ὁ δ’ εὐδυσώπητος αὖ πάλιν ἄγαν τὸ θῆλυ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τρυφερὸν ἐμφαίνει διὰ τῆς ὄψεως, τὴν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀναισχύντων ἧτταν αἰσχύνην [e] ὑποκοριζόμενος. ὁ μὲν οὖν Κάτων ἔλεγε τῶν νέων μᾶλλον ἀγαπᾶν τοὺς ἐρυθριῶντας ἢ τοὺς ὠχριῶντας, ὀρθῶς ἐθίζων καὶ διδάσκων τὸν ψόγον μᾶλλον ἢ τὸν πόνον δεδιέναι καὶ τὴν ὑποψίαν μᾶλλον ἢ τὸν κίνδυνον· οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ πρὸς τὸν ψόγον ὑπόπτου καὶ ψοφοδεοῦς τὸ ἄγαν [529] [a] ἀφαιρετέον, ὡς οὐχ ἧττον ἔνιοι πολλάκις ἀκοῦσαι κακῶς ἢ παθεῖν δείσαντες ἀπεδειλίασαν καὶ προήκαντο τὸ καλὸν οὐ δυνηθέντες ὑπομεῖναι τὸ ἄδοξον. οὔτε δὴ τούτους περιοπτέον οὕτως ἀσθενῶς ἔχοντας οὔτ’ αὖ πάλιν ἐκείνην ἐπαινετέον τὴν ἄτρεπτον καὶ ἀτενῆ διάθεσιν

‘ἐν δὲ τὸ θαρσαλέον τε καὶ ἐμμενὲς ὅππη ὀρούσαι

φαίνετ’ Ἀναξάρχου κύνεον μένος’ (Timon fr. 58 D),

ἀλλ’ ἐμμελῆ τινα μηχανητέον σύγκρασιν ἀμφοῖν, τοῦ μὲν ἀτενοῦς ἄγαν τὴν ἀναίδειαν τοῦ δ’ ἐπιεικοῦς σφόδρα τὴν ἀσθένειαν ἀφαιροῦσαν. ᾗ καὶ τὸ θεράπευμα δυσχερὲς καὶ οὐκ ἀκίνδυνος ἡ τῶν τοιούτων πλεονασμῶν κόλουσις. ὡς [b] γὰρ ὁ γεωργὸς ἄγριον μὲν ἐκκόπτων βλάστημα καὶ ἀγεννὲς αὐτόθεν ἀφειδῶς ἐμβαλὼν τὸ σκαφεῖον ἀνέτρεψε τὴν ῥίζαν ἢ πῦρ προσαγαγὼν ἐπέκαυσεν, ἀμπέλῳ δὲ προσιὼν τομῆς δεομένῃ καὶ μηλέας ἤ τινος ἐλαίας ἁπτόμενος εὐλαβῶς ἐπιφέρει τὴν χεῖρα, δεδιὼς μή τι τοῦ ὑγιαίνοντος ἀποτυφλώσῃ, οὕτως ὁ φιλόσοφος φθόνον μὲν ἐξαιρῶν νέου ψυχῆς, ἀγεννὲς βλάστημα καὶ δυστιθάσευτον, ἢ φιλαργυρίαν ἄωρον ἢ φιληδονίαν ἐπικόπτων ἀκόλαστον αἱμάσσει καὶ πιέζει καὶ τομὴν ποιεῖ καὶ οὐλὴν βαθεῖαν· ὅταν δὲ τρυφερῷ μέρει ψυχῆς καὶ ἁπαλῷ κολούοντα προσαγάγῃ [c] λόγον, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ δυσωπούμενον καὶ διατρεπόμενον, εὐλαβεῖται μὴ λάθῃ τούτοις συναποκόψας τὸ αἰδούμενον. καὶ γὰρ αἱ τίτθαι τῶν βρεφῶν ἐκτρίβουσαι πολλάκις τὸν ῥύπον ἑλκοῦσιν ἐνίοτε τὴν σάρκα καὶ βασανίζουσιν. ὅθεν οὐ δεῖ τῶν νέων παντάπασιν ἐν χρῷ τὴν δυσωπίαν ἐκτρίβοντας ὀλιγώρους ποιεῖν καὶ λίαν ἀτρέπτους· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ καταλύοντες οἰκίας ἱεροῖς γειτνιώσας τά γε συνεχῆ καὶ πλησίον ἐῶσι καὶ διερείδουσιν, οὕτω δεῖ τὴν δυσωπίαν κινεῖν δεδιότας συνεφελκύσασθαι τὰ ὁμοροῦντα τῆς αἰδοῦς καὶ τῆς ἐπιεικείας καὶ τῆς ἡμερότητος, οἷς ὑποδέδυκε καὶ [d] προσπέπλεκται κολακεύουσα τὸν εὐδυσώπητον ὡς φιλάνθρωπον καὶ πολιτικὸν καὶ κοινὸν ἔχοντα νοῦν καὶ οὐκ ἄτεγκτον οὐδ’ αὐθέκαστον. ὅθεν εὐθὺς οἱ Στωικοὶ καὶ τῷ ῥήματι τὸ αἰσχύνεσθαι καὶ δυσωπεῖσθαι τοῦ αἰδεῖσθαι διέστησαν, ἵνα μηδὲ τὴν ὁμωνυμίαν τῷ πάθει πρόφασιν τοῦ βλάπτειν ἀπολίπωσιν. ἀλλ’ ἡμῖν χρῆσθαι τοῖς ὀνόμασιν ἀσυκοφαντήτως δότωσαν, μᾶλλον δ’ Ὁμηρικῶς· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος εἶπεν (Ω 445) ‘αἰδώς, ἥτ’ ἄνδρας μέγα σίνεται ἠδ’ ὀνίνησι·’ καὶ οὐ κακῶς τὸ βλάπτον αὐτῆς πρότερον εἶπε. γίγνεται γὰρ ὠφέλιμος ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου τὸ [e] πλεονάζον ἀφελόντος καὶ τὸ μέτριον ἀπολιπόντος.

Πρῶτον οὖν τοῦτο δεῖ πείθεσθαι τὸν ὑπὸ πολλῆς δυσωπίας βιαζόμενον, ὅτι πάθει βλαβερῷ συνέχεται, καλὸν δὲ τῶν βλαβερῶν οὐδέν, οὐδὲ δεῖ τοῖς ἐπαίνοις κηλούμενον ἥδεσθαι κομψὸν καὶ ἱλαρὸν ἀντὶ σεμνοῦ καὶ μεγάλου καὶ δικαίου προσαγορευόμενον μηδ’, ὥσπερ ὁ Εὐριπίδου Πήγασος (fr. 309) ‘ἔπτησσ’ ὑπείκων μᾶλλον, ᾗ μᾶλλον θέλοι,’ τῷ Βελλεροφόντῃ, τοῖς δεομένοις ἑαυτὸν ἐκδιδόναι καὶ συνεκταπεινοῦν, φοβούμενον ἀκοῦσαι τὸ ‘σκληρός γε καὶ ἀπηνής.’ τῷ μὲν γὰρ Αἰγυπτίῳ Βοκχόριδι φύσει χαλεπῷ γενομένῳ τὴν ἀσπίδα λέγουσιν ὑπὸ τῆς Ἴσιδος [f] ἐπιπεμφθεῖσαν καὶ τῇ κεφαλῇ περιελιχθεῖσαν ἄνωθεν ἐπισκιάζειν, ἵνα κρίνῃ δικαίως, ἡ δέ τοι δυσωπία τοῖς ἀτόνοις καὶ ἀνάνδροις ἐπικειμένη καὶ πρὸς μηδὲν ἀνανεῦσαι μηδ’ ἀντειπεῖν ἰσχύουσα καὶ δικάζοντας ἀποτρέπει τοῦ δικαίου καὶ συμβουλεύοντας ἐπιστομίζει καὶ λέγειν [530] [a] πολλὰ καὶ πράττειν ἀναγκάζει τῶν ἀβουλήτων· ὁ δ’ ἀγνωμονέστατος ἀεὶ τοῦ τοιούτου δεσπότης ἐστὶ καὶ κρατεῖ τῷ μὴ αἰδεῖσθαι τὸ αἰδούμενον ἐκβιαζόμενος. ὅθεν ὥσπερ χωρίον ὕπτιον καὶ μαλακὸν ἡ δυσωπία μηδεμίαν ἔντευξιν ἐξῶσαι μηδ’ ἀποστρέψαι δυναμένη τοῖς αἰσχίστοις βάσιμός ἐστι πάθεσι καὶ πράγμασι· κακὴ μὲν γὰρ αὕτη παιδικῆς φρουρὸς ἡλικίας, ὡς ἔλεγε Βροῦτος οὐ δοκεῖν αὐτῷ καλῶς τὴν ὥραν διατεθεῖσθαι τὸν πρὸς μηδὲν ἀρνούμενον· κακὴ δὲ θαλάμου καὶ γυναικωνίτιδος ἐπίτροπος, ὥς φησιν ἡ παρὰ τῷ Σοφοκλεῖ μετανοοῦσα πρὸς τὸν μοιχὸν (fr. 773) ‘ἔπεισας, ἐξέθωψας.’ ὥσθ’ ἡ δυσωπία προδιαφθείρασα ‹τὴν ψυχὴν οὐκ ἀναμένει διεγείρεσθαι› [b] τὸ ἀκόλαστον· αὐτὴ γὰρ ἀνώχυρα πάντα καὶ ἄκλειστα καὶ κατάντη προδίδωσι τοῖς ἐπιτιθεμένοις. καὶ διδόντες μὲν αἱροῦσι τὰς βδελυρωτάτας, τῷ δὲ πείθειν καὶ δυσωπεῖν πολλάκις κατεργάζονται καὶ τὰς ἐπιεικεῖς. ἐῶ δὲ τὰς εἰς τὰ χρήματα βλάβας ὑπὸ τοῦ δυσωπεῖσθαι, δανειζόντων οἷς ἀπιστοῦσιν ἐγγυωμένων οὓς οὐ θέλουσιν ἐπαινούντων μὲν τὸ ‘ἐγγύα πάρα δ’ ἄτα’ χρῆσθαι δ’ αὐτῷ περὶ τὰ πράγματα μὴ δυναμένων.

Ὅσους δ’ ἀνῄρηκε τοῦτο τὸ πάθος, οὐκ ἄν τις ἐξαριθμήσαιτο ῥᾳδίως. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Κρέων πρὸς τὴν Μήδειαν εἰπὼν (Eur. Med. 290)·

‘κρεῖσσον δέ μοι νῦν πρός σ’ ἀπέχθεσθαι, γύναι,

[c] ἢ μαλθακισθένθ’ ὕστερον στένειν’

ἄλλοις ἐγνωμολόγησεν, αὐτὸς δὲ τῆς δυσωπίας ἥττων γενόμενος καὶ μίαν ἡμέραν αἰτουμένῃ δοὺς ἀπώλεσε τὸν οἶκον. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ σφαγὰς ὑφορώμενοι καὶ φαρμακείας διετράπησαν. οὕτω παραπώλετο Δίων, οὐκ ἀγνοήσας ἐπιβουλεύοντα Κάλλιππον ἀλλ’ αἰσχυνθεὶς φυλάττεσθαι φίλον ὄντα καὶ ξένον· οὕτως Ἀντίπατρος ὁ Κασάνδρου Δημήτριον καλέσας ἐπὶ δεῖπνον εἶτα κληθεὶς τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ πρὸς αὐτὸν ᾐδέσθη πεπιστευμένος ἀπιστεῖν, καὶ πορευθεὶς ἐσφάγη μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον. Ἡρακλέα δὲ τὸν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ γενόμενον ἐκ Βαρσίνης ὡμολόγησε μὲν Κασάνδρῳ Πολυπέρχων [d] ἀναιρήσειν ἐπὶ ταλάντοις ἑκατὸν εἶτ’ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἐκάλει· τοῦ δὲ μειρακίου τὴν κλῆσιν ὑφορωμένου καὶ δεδοικότος ἄλλως δὲ προφασιζομένου μαλακώτερον ἔχειν ἐλθὼν ὁ Πολυπέρχων ‘πρῶτον’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ παῖ, μιμοῦ τοῦ πατρὸς τὸ εὔκολον καὶ φιλέταιρον, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία δέδοικας ἡμᾶς ὡς ἐπιβουλεύοντας.’ αἰδεσθεὶς ἠκολούθησεν ὁ νεανίσκος, οἱ δὲ δειπνίσαντες αὐτὸν ἐστραγγάλισαν. οὐ γελοῖον οὖν, ὥς φασί τινες, οὐδ’ ἀβέλτερον ἀλλὰ σοφὸν τὸ τοῦ Ἡσιόδου (OD 342) ‘τὸν φιλέοντ’ ἐπὶ δαῖτα καλεῖν τὸν δ’ ἐχθρὸν ἐᾶσαι.’ μὴ δυσωποῦ τὸν μισοῦντα μηδ’ ὑπαίκαλλε [e] πιστεύειν δοκοῦντα· κληθήσῃ γὰρ καλέσας καὶ δειπνήσεις, ἂν δειπνίσῃς, ὥσπερ βαφὴν τὴν φυλάττουσαν ἀπιστίαν μαλαχθεῖσαν αἰσχύνῃ προέμενος.

Ὡς οὖν πολλῶν κακῶν αἴτιον τὸ νόσημα τοῦτ’ ὂν πειρατέον ἀποβιάζεσθαι τῇ ἀσκήσει, πρῶτον ἀρξαμένους, ὥσπερ οἱ τἄλλα μελετῶντες, ἀπὸ τῶν μικρῶν καὶ μὴ σφόδρα δυσαντιβλέπτων. οἷον ἐν δείπνῳ προπίνει τις ἅδην ἔχοντι· μὴ δυσωπηθῇς μηδὲ προσβιάσῃ σαυτόν, ἀλλὰ κατάθου τὸ ποτήριον. αὖθις ἕτερος παρακαλεῖ κυβεύειν παρὰ πότον· μὴ δυσωπηθῇς μηδὲ δείσῃς σκωπτόμενος· ἀλλ’ [f] ὥσπερ Ξενοφάνης (A 16) Λάσου τοῦ Ἑρμιονέως μὴ βουλόμενον αὐτῷ συγκυβεύειν δειλὸν ἀποκαλοῦντος ὁμολόγει καὶ πάνυ δειλὸς εἶναι πρὸς τὰ αἰσχρὰ καὶ ἄτολμος. πάλιν ἀδολέσχῃ συνήντηκας ἐπιλαμβανομένῳ καὶ περιπλεκομένῳ· μὴ δυσωπηθῇς ἀλλὰ διακόψας ἐπείγου καὶ πέραινε τὸ [531] [a] προκείμενον. αἱ γὰρ τοιαῦται φυγαὶ καὶ διακρούσεις, ἐν ἐλαφραῖς μέμψεσι τὴν μελέτην ἔχουσαι τοῦ ἀδυσωπήτου, προεθίζουσιν ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ τὰ μείζονα. καὶ τὸ τοῦ Δημοσθένους ἐνταῦθα καλῶς ἔχει διαμνημονεύειν· τῶν γὰρ Ἀθηναίων ὡρμημένων Ἁρπάλῳ βοηθεῖν καὶ κορυσσομένων ἐπὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐξαίφνης ἐπεφάνη Φιλόξενος ὁ τῶν ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ πραγμάτων Ἀλεξάνδρου στρατηγός. ἐκπλαγέντος δὲ τοῦ δήμου καὶ σιωπῶντος διὰ τὸν φόβον ὁ Δημοσθένης ‘τί ποιήσουσιν’ ἔφη ‘τὸν ἥλιον ἰδόντες οἱ μὴ δυνάμενοι πρὸς τὸν λύχνον ἀντιβλέπειν;’ τί γὰρ ποιήσεις ἐν πράγμασι μεγάλοις, βασιλέως ἐντυγχάνοντος ἢ δήμου δυσωποῦντος, [b] εἰ ποτήριον ἀπώσασθαι μὴ δύνασαι προπίνοντος συνήθους μηδ’ ἀδολέσχου λαβὴν διαφυγεῖν, ἀλλὰ παρέχεις ἐμπεριπατεῖν φλυάρῳ σαυτόν, οὐκ εὐτονῶν εἰπεῖν ‘ὄψομαί σ’ αὖθις, νῦν δ’ οὐ σχολάζω’;

Καὶ μὴν οὐδ’ ἡ πρὸς τοὺς ἐπαίνους τοῦ ἀδυσωπήτου μελέτη καὶ ἄσκησις ἐν μικροῖς καὶ ἐλαφροῖς ἄχρηστός ἐστιν. οἷον ἐν συμποσίῳ φίλου κιθαρῳδὸς ᾄδει κακῶς ἢ πολλοῦ κωμῳδὸς ἐωνημένος ἐπιτρίβει Μένανδρον, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ κροτοῦσι καὶ θαυμάζουσιν· οὐδὲν οἶμαι χαλεπὸν οὐδὲ δύσκολον ἀκούειν σιωπῇ καὶ μὴ παρὰ τὸ φαινόμενον ἀνελευθέρως ἐπαινεῖν. ἐὰν γὰρ ἐν τούτοις μὴ κρατῇς [c] σαυτοῦ, τί ποιήσεις φίλου ποίημα φαῦλον ἀναγινώσκοντος ἢ λόγον ἐπιδεικνυμένου γεγραμμένον ἀβελτέρως καὶ γελοίως; ἐπαινέσεις δηλονότι καὶ συνεπιθορυβήσεις τοῖς κολακεύουσι. πῶς οὖν ἐν πράγμασιν ἁμαρτάνοντος ἐπιλήψῃ; πῶς δὲ περὶ ἀρχὴν ἢ γάμον ἢ πολιτείαν ἀγνωμονοῦντα νουθετήσεις; ἐγὼ μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲ τὸ τοῦ Περικλέους ἀποδέχομαι πρὸς τὸν ἀξιοῦντα μαρτυρίαν ψευδῆ μαρτυρῆσαι φίλον, ᾗ προσῆν καὶ ὅρκος, εἰπόντος ‘μέχρι τοῦ βωμοῦ φίλος εἰμί’. λίαν γὰρ ἐγγὺς ἦλθεν. ὁ δὲ πόρρωθεν ἑαυτὸν ἐθίσας μήτε λέγοντος ἐπαινεῖν παρὰ γνώμην μήτ’ ᾄδοντος [d] κροτεῖν μήτε σκώπτοντος ἀφυῶς ἐπιγελᾶν οὐκ ἐάσει μέχρι τούτου προελθεῖν οὐδ’ εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὸν ἐν ἐκείνοις ἀδυσώπητον ‘ὄμοσον ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ καὶ τὰ ψευδῆ μαρτύρησον καὶ ἀπόφηναι παρὰ τὸ δίκαιον.’

Οὕτω δὲ δεῖ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς αἰτοῦντας ἀργύριον ἀνταίρειν, προεθιζόμενον ἐν τοῖς μήτε μεγάλοις μήτε δυσπαραιτήτοις. Ἀρχέλαος μὲν γὰρ ὁ τῶν Μακεδόνων βασιλεὺς παρὰ δεῖπνον αἰτηθεὶς ἔκπωμα χρυσοῦν ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπου μηδὲν ἡγουμένου καλὸν ἢ τὸ λαμβάνειν ἐκέλευσεν Εὐριπίδῃ τὸν παῖδα δοῦναι, καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐκεῖνον ἀποβλέψας ‘σὺ μὲν γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘αἰτεῖν ἐπιτήδειος εἶ καὶ μὴ λαμβάνειν, οὗτος δὲ λαμβάνειν καὶ μὴ αἰτῶν,’ ἄριστα τοῦ διδόναι καὶ χαρίζεσθαι κύριον ποιῶν τὸ κρῖνον ἀλλὰ μὴ τὸ δυσωπούμενον· ἡμεῖς δὲ πολλάκις ἀνθρώπους ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ οἰκείους καὶ δεομένους περιορῶντες ἑτέροις αἰτοῦσιν ἐνδελεχῶς καὶ ἰταμῶς ἐδώκαμεν, οὐ δοῦναι θελήσαντες ἀλλ’ ἀρνήσασθαι μὴ δυνηθέντες. ὥσπερ Ἀντίγονος ὁ γέρων ὑπὸ Βίαντος ἐνοχληθεὶς πολλάκις ‘δότ’’ εἶπεν ‘Βίαντι τάλαντον καὶ ἀνάγκῃ’. καίτοι μάλιστα τῶν βασιλέων ἐμμελὴς ἦν καὶ πιθανὸς ἀποτρίβεσθαι τὰ τοιαῦτα. κυνικοῦ γάρ ποτε δραχμὴν αἰτήσαντος αὐτόν ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ βασιλικόν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ δόμα·’ τοῦ δ’ ὑποτυχόντος [e] ‘δὸς οὖν μοι τάλαντον’ ἀπήντησεν ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ κυνικὸν τὸ λῆμμα’. Διογένης μὲν οὖν τοὺς ἀνδριάντας ᾔτει περιιὼν ἐν Κεραμεικῷ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς θαυμάζοντας ἔλεγεν ἀποτυγχάνειν μελετᾶν· ἡμῖν δὲ πρῶτον ἐμμελετητέον ἐστὶ τοῖς φαύλοις καὶ γυμναστέον περὶ τὰ μικρὰ πρὸς τὸ [532] [a] ἀρνεῖσθαι τοῖς αἰτοῦσιν οὐ προσηκόντως, ‹ἵνα τοῖς προσηκόντως› ληψομένοις ἐπικουρεῖν ἔχωμεν. οὐδεὶς γάρ, ὡς ὁ Δημοσθένης φησίν (3, 19), ‘εἰς ἃ μὴ δεῖ καταναλώσας τὰ παρόντα τῶν μὴ παρόντων εὐπορήσει πρὸς ἃ δεῖ’· γίνεται δ’ ἡμῖν πολλαπλάσιον τὸ αἰσχρόν, ὅταν ἐλλίπωμεν εἰς τὰ καλὰ πλεονάσαντες τοῖς περιττοῖς.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐ χρημάτων μόνον ἡ δυσωπία κακὴ καὶ ἀγνώμων οἰκονόμος ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τὰ μείζονα παραιρεῖται τὸ συμφέρον τοῦ λογισμοῦ (καὶ γὰρ ἰατρὸν νοσοῦντες οὐ παρακαλοῦμεν τὸν ἔμπειρον αἰσχυνόμενοι τὸν συνήθη, καὶ παισὶ διδασκάλους ἀντὶ τῶν χρηστῶν [b] τοὺς παρακαλοῦντας αἱρούμεθα, καὶ δίκην ἔχοντες πολλάκις οὐκ ἐῶμεν εἰπεῖν τὸν ὠφέλιμον καὶ ἀγοραῖον, ἀλλ’ οἰκείου τινὸς ἢ συγγενοῦς υἱῷ χαριζόμενοι παρεδώκαμεν ἐμπανηγυρίσαι· τέλος δὲ πολλοὺς ἔστιν ἰδεῖν καὶ τῶν φιλοσοφεῖν λεγομένων Ἐπικουρείους καὶ Στωικοὺς ὄντας, οὐχ ἑλομένους οὐδὲ κρίναντας ἀλλὰ προσθεμένους δυσωποῦσιν οἰκείοις καὶ φίλοις)· φέρε δὴ καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα πόρρωθεν ἐν τοῖς ἐπιτυχοῦσι καὶ μικροῖς γυμνάζωμεν ἑαυτούς, ἐθίζοντες μήτε κουρεῖ μήτε γναφεῖ κατὰ δυσωπίαν χρῆσθαι μηδὲ καταλύειν ἐν φαύλῳ πανδοκείῳ βελτίονος παρόντος, ὅτι πολλάκις ὁ πανδοκεὺς ἠσπάσαθ’ ἡμᾶς, ἀλλ’ ἔθους ἕνεκα, κἂν ᾖ παρὰ μικρόν, αἱρεῖσθαι τὸ βέλτιον· [c] ὥσπερ οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ παρεφύλαττον ἀεὶ μηδέποτε τῷ δεξιῷ μηρῷ τὸν εὐώνυμον ἐπιτιθέναι μηδὲ τὸν ἄρτιον ἀντὶ τοῦ περιττοῦ λαβεῖν τῶν ἄλλων ἐπ’ ἴσης ἐχόντων. ἐθιστέον δὲ καὶ θυσίαν ποιούμενον ἢ γάμον ἤ τιν’ ἄλλην τοιαύτην ὑποδοχὴν μὴ τὸν ἀσπασάμενον καλεῖν ἢ προσδραμόντα μᾶλλον ἢ τὸν εὔνουν καὶ χρηστόν· ὁ γὰρ οὕτως ἐθισθεὶς καὶ ἀσκήσας δυσάλωτος ἔσται, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἀνεπιχείρητος ἐν τοῖς μείζοσι.

Περὶ μὲν οὖν ἀσκήσεως ἱκανὰ καὶ ταῦτα· τῶν δὲ χρησίμων ἐπιλογισμῶν πρῶτός ἐστιν ὁ διδάσκων καὶ ὑπομιμνήσκων, ὅτι πᾶσι μὲν τοῖς πάθεσιν ἀκολουθεῖ καὶ [d] τοῖς νοσήμασιν ἃ φεύγειν δι’ αὐτῶν δοκοῦμεν, ἀδοξίαι φιλοδοξίαις καὶ λῦπαι φιληδονίαις καὶ πόνοι μαλακίαις καὶ φιλονικίαις ἧτται καὶ καταδίκαι, τῇ δὲ δυσωπίᾳ συμβέβηκεν ἀτεχνῶς φευγούσῃ καπνὸν ἀδοξίας εἰς πῦρ ἐμβάλλειν ἑαυτήν. αἰσχυνόμενοι γὰρ ἀντιλέγειν τοῖς ἀγνωμόνως δυσωποῦσιν ὕστερον δυσωποῦνται τοὺς δικαίως ἐγκαλοῦντας, καὶ δεδιότες μέμψιν ἐλαφρὰν πολλάκις αἰσχύνην ὁμολογουμένην ὑπομένουσι· καὶ γὰρ αἰτοῦντος ἀργύριον φίλου δυσωπηθέντες ἀντειπεῖν οὐκ ἔχοντες ἀσχημονοῦσι μετ’ ὀλίγον ἐξελεγχόμενοι, καὶ βοηθήσειν ὁμολογήσαντες [e] ἐνίοις δίκην ἔχουσιν, εἶτα τοὺς ἑτέρους διατραπέντες ἀποκρύπτονται καὶ δραπετεύουσι. πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ περὶ γάμου θυγατρὸς ἢ ἀδελφῆς εἰς ὁμολογίαν ἀλυσιτελῆ κατακλείσασα δυσωπία ψεύδεσθαι πάλιν ἀναγκάζει μετατιθεμένους.

Ὁ μὲν γὰρ εἰπών, ὅτι πάντες οἱ τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικοῦντες ἑνὶ δουλεύουσιν ἀνθρώπῳ διὰ τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι μίαν εἰπεῖν τὴν ‘οὐ’ συλλαβήν, οὐκ ἐσπούδασεν ἀλλ’ ἔσκωψεν· τοῖς δὲ δυσωπουμένοις, κἂν μηδὲν εἴπωσιν, ἔξεστιν ὀφρῦν ἐπάρασι μόνον ἢ κάτω κύψασι πολλὰς ἀβουλήτους καὶ ἀτόπους ὑπουργίας διαφεύγειν. ‘τὴν γὰρ [f] σιωπὴν’ ὁ μὲν Εὐριπίδης (fr. 977) φησὶ ‘τοῖς σοφοῖς ἀπόκρισιν’ εἶναι, κινδυνεύομεν δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτῆς δεῖσθαι πρὸς τοὺς ἀγνώμονας, ἐπεὶ τοὺς χαρίεντας ἔστι καὶ παρηγορῆσαι· καὶ πρόχειρά γε δεῖ καὶ συχνὰ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν ἔχειν ἀποφθέγματα καὶ μνημονεύειν πρὸς τοὺς δυσωποῦντας· οἷον τὸ Φωκίωνος πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον [533] [a] ‘οὐ δύνασαί μοι καὶ φίλῳ χρῆσθαι καὶ κόλακι.’ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐπιδοῦναι κελεύοντας αὐτὸν ἐν ἑορτῇ καὶ κροτοῦντας ‘αἰσχύνομαι’ εἶπεν ‘ὑμῖν μὲν ἐπιδιδοὺς τούτῳ δὲ μὴ ἀποδιδούς’ Καλλικλέα δείξας τὸν δανειστήν. ‘πενίαν γὰρ οὐχ ὁμολογεῖν αἰσχρόν’ ὡς Θουκυδίδης φησίν (II 40, 1) ‘ἀλλ’ ἔργῳ μὴ διαφεύγειν αἴσχιον.’ ὁ δ’ ἀβελτερίᾳ καὶ μαλακίᾳ πρὸς τὸν αἰτοῦντα δυσωπούμενος εἰπεῖν (Tr. adesp. 389)

‘οὐκ ἔστ’ ἐν ἄντροις λευκός, ὦ ξέν’, ἄργυρος,’

εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἐνέχυρον προέμενος τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν (Eur. vel potius Critiae Pirith. fr. 595) ‘αἰδοῦς ἀχαλκεύτοισιν ἔζευκται πέδαις.’ ὁ δὲ Περσαῖος ἀργύριόν τινι τῶν γνωρίμων [b] δανείζων δι’ ἀγορᾶς καὶ τραπέζης ἐποιεῖτο τὸ συμβόλαιον μεμνημένος δηλονότι τοῦ Ἡσιόδου λέγοντος (OD 371)

‘καί τε κασιγνήτῳ γελάσας ἐπὶ μάρτυρα θέσθαι’·

θαυμάσαντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ εἰπόντος ‘οὕτως, ὦ Περσαῖε, νομικῶς;’ ‘ναί’ εἶπεν ‘ἵνα φιλικῶς ἀπολάβω καὶ μὴ νομικῶς ἀπαιτήσω’. πολλοὶ γὰρ ἐν ἀρχῇ διὰ δυσωπίαν προέμενοι τὸ πιστὸν ὕστερον ἐχρήσαντο τοῖς νομίμοις μετ’ ἔχθρας. πάλιν ὁ Πλάτων (ep. XIII 360c) Ἑλίκωνι τῷ Κυζικηνῷ διδοὺς πρὸς Διονύσιον ἐπιστολὴν ἐπῄνεσεν αὐτὸν ὡς ἐπιεικῆ καὶ μέτριον, εἶτα προσέγραψε τῇ ἐπιστολῇ [c] τελευτώσῃ ‘γράφω δέ σοι ταῦτα περὶ ἀνθρώπου, ζῴου φύσει εὐμεταβόλου’· Ξενοκράτης δὲ καίπερ αὐστηρὸς ὢν τὸν τρόπον ὅμως ὑπὸ δυσωπίας ἐκάμφθη καὶ συνέστησε Πολυπέρχοντι δι’ ἐπιστολῆς ἄνθρωπον οὐ χρηστόν, ὡς τὸ ἔργον ἔδειξε· δεξιωσαμένου δ’ αὐτὸν τοῦ Μακεδόνος καὶ πυθομένου μή τινος ἔχοι χρείαν, ᾔτησε τάλαντον· ὁ δ’ ἐκείνῳ μὲν ἔδωκε Ξενοκράτει δ’ ἔγραψε παραινῶν ἐπιμελέστερον τὸ λοιπὸν ἐξετάζειν οὓς συνίστησιν.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Ξενοκράτης ἠγνόησεν, ἡμεῖς δὲ καὶ πάνυ πολλάκις ἐπιστάμενοι τοὺς πονηροὺς καὶ γράμματα προϊέμεθα καὶ χρήματα, βλάπτοντες ἑαυτούς, οὐ μεθ’ ἡδονῆς [d] ὥσπερ οἱ ταῖς ἑταίραις χαριζόμενοι καὶ τοῖς κόλαξιν, ἀλλὰ δυσχεραίνοντες καὶ βαρυνόμενοι τὴν ἀναίδειαν ἀνατρέπουσαν ἡμῶν καὶ καταβιαζομένην τὸν λογισμόν. εἰ γὰρ πρὸς ἄλλο τι, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς δυσωποῦντας ἔξεστιν εἰπεῖν τὸ (Eur. Med. 1078) ‘μανθάνω μὲν οἷα δρᾶν μέλλω κακά’ τὰ ψευδῆ μαρτυρῶν ἢ τὰ μὴ δίκαια κρίνων ἢ τὰ μὴ συμφέροντα χειροτονῶν ἢ δανειζόμενος ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ ἀποδώσοντος. διὸ τῶν παθῶν μάλιστα τῷ δυσωπεῖσθαι τὸ μετανοεῖν οὐχ ὕστερον, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἐν οἷς πράττει πάρεστι· καὶ γὰρ διδόντες ἀχθόμεθα καὶ μαρτυροῦντες αἰσχυνόμεθα [e] καὶ συνεργοῦντες ἀδοξοῦμεν καὶ μὴ παρέχοντες ἐλεγχόμεθα. πολλὰ γὰρ ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας τοῦ ἀντιλέγειν καὶ τῶν ἀδυνάτων ἡμῖν ὑπισχνούμεθα τοῖς λιπαροῦσιν, ὡς συστάσεις ἐν αὐλαῖς καὶ πρὸς ἡγεμόνας ἐντεύξεις, μὴ βουλόμενοι μηδ’ εὐτονοῦντες εἰπεῖν ‘οὐκ οἶδεν ἡμᾶς ὁ βασιλεύς, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρους ὅρα μᾶλλον’, ὡς Λύσανδρος Ἀγησιλάῳ προσκεκρουκὼς ἀξιούμενος δὲ μέγιστον δύνασθαι παρ’ αὐτῷ διὰ τὴν δόξαν οὐκ ᾐσχύνετο παραιτεῖσθαι τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας, ἀπιέναι πρὸς ἑτέρους κελεύων καὶ πειρᾶσθαι τῶν μᾶλλον αὐτοῦ παρὰ τῷ βασιλεῖ δυναμένων. οὐ γὰρ αἰσχρὸν τὸ μὴ πάντα δύνασθαι· τὸ δὲ μὴ δυναμένους ἢ μὴ πεφυκότας [f] ἀναδέχεσθαι τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ παραβιάζεσθαι πρὸς τῷ αἰσχρῷ καὶ λυπηρότατόν ἐστιν.

Ἀπ’ ἄλλης δ’ ἀρχῆς· τὰ μὲν μέτρια καὶ πρέποντα [534] [a] δεῖ προθύμως ὑπουργεῖν τοῖς ἀξιοῦσι μὴ δυσωπουμένους ἀλλ’ ἑκόντας, ἐν δὲ τοῖς βλαβεροῖς καὶ ἀτόποις τὸ τοῦ Ζήνωνος (St. V. Fr. I 313) ἀεὶ πρόχειρον ἔχειν, ὃς ἀπαντήσας νεανίσκῳ τινὶ τῶν συνήθων παρὰ τὸ τεῖχος ἡσυχῆ βαδίζοντι καὶ πυθόμενος ὅτι φεύγει φίλον ἀξιοῦντα μαρτυρεῖν αὐτῷ τὰ ψευδῆ ‘τί λέγεις’ φησίν ‘ἀβέλτερε; σὲ μὲν ἐκεῖνος ἀγνωμονῶν καὶ ἀδικῶν οὐ δέδιεν οὐδ’ αἰσχύνεται, σὺ δ’ ἐκεῖνον ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίων οὐ θαρρεῖς ὑποστῆναι;’ ὁ μὲν γὰρ εἰπὼν (Epich. 275) ‘ποτὶ πονηρὸν οὐκ ἄχρηστον ὅπλον ἁ πονηρία’ κακῶς ἐθίζει μιμούμενον ἀμύνεσθαι τὴν κακίαν, τὸ δὲ τοὺς ἀναιδῶς καὶ ἀδυσωπήτως [b] ἐνοχλοῦντας ἀποτρίβεσθαι τῷ ἀδυσωπήτῳ καὶ μὴ χαρίζεσθαι τὰ αἰσχρὰ τοῖς ἀναισχύντοις αἰσχυνόμενον ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως γινόμενόν ἐστιν ὑπὸ τῶν νοῦν ἐχόντων.

Ἔτι τοίνυν τῶν δυσωπούντων τοῖς μὲν ἀδόξοις καὶ ταπεινοῖς καὶ μηδενὸς ἀξίοις οὐ μέγ’ ἔργον ἀντισχεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ μετὰ γέλωτος ἔνιοι καὶ σκώμματος ἐκκλίνουσι τοὺς τοιούτους· ὡς Θεόκριτος, δυεῖν [αὐτὸν] ἐν βαλανείῳ στλεγγίδα κιχραμένων, τοῦ μὲν ξένου τοῦ δὲ γνωρίμου κλέπτου, μετὰ παιδιᾶς ἀμφοτέρους διεκρούσατ’ εἴπας ‘σὲ μὲν οὐκ οἶδα σὲ δ’ οἶδα.’ Λυσιμάχη δ’ Ἀθήνησιν, ἡ τῆς Πολιάδος ἱέρεια τῶν τὰ ἱερὰ προσαγαγόντων ὀρεωκόμων [c] ἐγχέαι κελευόντων ‘ἀλλ’ ὀκνῶ’ εἶπε ‘μὴ καὶ τοῦτο πάτριον γένηται.’ καὶ Ἀντίγονος πρός τινα νεανίσκον, γεγονότα μὲν ἐκ λοχαγοῦ χαρίεντος αὐτὸν δ’ ἄτολμον ὄντα καὶ μαλακὸν ἀξιοῦντα δὲ προαχθῆναι, ‘παρ’ ἐμοί’ φησίν ‘ὦ μειράκιον, ἀνδραγαθίας εἰσὶν οὐ πατραγαθίας τιμαί.’

Καὶ μὴν ἐάνπερ ὁ δυσωπῶν ἔνδοξος ᾖ καὶ δυνατός (οἳ δὴ μάλιστα καὶ δυσπαραίτητοι καὶ δυσαπότριπτοι περὶ τὰς κρίσεις καὶ τὰς χειροτονίας ἐντυγχάνοντές εἰσιν), ὃ μὲν ἔπραξεν ὁ Κάτων νέος ὢν ἔτι πρὸς Κάτλον, οὐκ ἄν τινι φανείη ῥᾴδιον ἴσως οὐδ’ ἀναγκαῖον. ὁ γὰρ Κάτλος ἦν [d] μὲν ἐν ἀξιώματι τῶν Ῥωμαίων μεγίστῳ καὶ τότε τὴν τιμητικὴν ἀρχὴν εἶχεν· ἀνέβη δὲ πρὸς τὸν Κάτωνα τεταγμένον ἐπὶ τοῦ δημοσίου ταμιείου παραιτησόμενός τινα τῶν ἐζημιωμένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ λιπαρὴς ἐγίνετο ταῖς δεήσεσι προσβιαζόμενος· ἄχρι οὗ δυσανασχετήσας ἐκεῖνος ‘αἰσχρόν ἐστιν’ ἔφη ‘Κάτλε, σὲ τὸν τιμητὴν ἀπαλλαγῆναι μὴ βουλόμενον ἐντεῦθεν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμῶν ὑπηρετῶν ἕλκεσθαι,’ καὶ ὁ Κάτλος αἰσχυνθεὶς πρὸς ὀργὴν ἀπῆλθε. σκόπει δὲ μὴ τὸ τοῦ Ἀγησιλάου καὶ τὸ τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους ἐπιεικέστερόν ἐστι καὶ μετριώτερον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ἀγησίλαος ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς κελευόμενος κρῖναί τινα δίκην παρὰ τὸν [e] νόμον ‘ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ σοῦ’, ἔφη ‘πάτερ, πείθεσθαι τοῖς νόμοις ἐδιδασκόμην ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς· διὸ καὶ νῦν σοι πείθομαι μηδὲν ποιεῖν παράνομον.’ ὁ δὲ Θεμιστοκλῆς πρὸς τὸν Σιμωνίδην ἀξιοῦντά τι τῶν μὴ δικαίων ‘οὔτ’ ἂν σὺ ποιητὴς ἀγαθὸς εἴης’ ἔφη ‘παρὰ μέλος ᾄδων, οὔτ’ ἂν ἐγὼ χρηστὸς ἄρχων παρὰ νόμον κρίνων.’ καίτοι οὐ διὰ τὴν τοῦ ποδὸς πρὸς τὴν λύραν ἀμετρίαν, ὡς Πλάτων ἔλεγε (Clitoph. 407c), καὶ πόλεις πόλεσι καὶ φίλοι φίλοις διαφερόμενοι τὰ αἴσχιστα δρῶσί τε καὶ πάσχουσιν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν περὶ τὰ νόμιμα καὶ δίκαια πλημμέλειαν. ἀλλ’ ὅμως ἔνιοι τὴν ἐν μέλεσι καὶ γράμμασι καὶ μέτροις ἀκρίβειαν αὐτοὶ φυλάττοντες [f] ἑτέρους ἐν ἀρχαῖς καὶ κρίσεσι καὶ πράξεσιν ἀξιοῦσιν ὀλιγωρεῖν τοῦ καλῶς ἔχοντος. διὸ καὶ τούτῳ μάλιστα χρηστέον πρὸς αὐτούς. ἐντυγχάνει σοι δικάζοντι ῥήτωρ ἢ βουλεύοντι δημαγωγός· ὁμολόγησον, ἐὰν ἐκεῖνος σολοικίσῃ προοιμιαζόμενος ἢ βαρβαρίσῃ διηγούμενος· οὐ γὰρ ἐθελήσει διὰ τὸ φαινόμενον αἰσχρόν· ἐνίους γοῦν ὁρῶμεν οὐδὲ φωνήεντι συγκροῦσαι φωνῆεν ἐν τῷ λέγειν ὑπομένοντας. [535] [a] ἕτερον πάλιν δυσωποῦντα τῶν ἐπιφανῶν καὶ ἐνδόξων κέλευσον ὀρχούμενον δι’ ἀγορᾶς διεξελθεῖν ἢ διαστρέψαντα τὸ πρόσωπον· ἐὰν δ’ ἀρνῆται, σός ἐστιν ὁ καιρὸς εἰπεῖν καὶ πυθέσθαι, τί αἰσχρόν ἐστι, τὸ σολοικίσαι καὶ διαστρέψαι τὸ πρόσωπον ἢ τὸ λῦσαι τὸν νόμον καὶ παραβῆναι τὸν ὅρκον καὶ πλέον νεῖμαι τῷ πονηρῷ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ παρὰ τὸ δίκαιον. ἔτι τοίνυν, ὥσπερ Νικόστρατος ὁ Ἀργεῖος Ἀρχιδάμου παρακαλοῦντος αὐτὸν ἐπὶ χρήμασι πολλοῖς καὶ γάμῳ γυναικὸς ᾧ βούλεται Λακαίνης προδοῦναι Κρῶμνον οὐκ ἔφη γεγονέναι τὸν Ἀρχίδαμον ἀφ’ [b] Ἡρακλέους· ἐκεῖνον μὲν γὰρ ἀποκτιννύναι περιιόντα τοὺς πονηρούς, τοῦτον δὲ τοὺς χρηστοὺς ποιεῖν πονηρούς· οὕτω καὶ ἡμῖν πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἀξιοῦντα καλὸν κἀγαθὸν λέγεσθαι ῥητέον, ἂν βιάζηται καὶ δυσωπῇ, μὴ πρέποντα ποιεῖν μηδ’ ἄξια τῆς περὶ αὐτὸν εὐγενείας καὶ ἀρετῆς.

Ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν φαύλων ὁρᾶν χρὴ καὶ διανοεῖσθαι, τὸν φιλάργυρον εἰ δυσωπήσεις ἄνευ συμβολαίου δανεῖσαι τάλαντον ἢ τὸν φιλότιμον ἐκστῆναι τῆς προεδρίας ἢ τὸν φίλαρχον τῆς παραγγελίας ἐπίδοξον ὄντα κρατήσειν. δεινὸν γὰρ ἂν ἀληθῶς φανείη τούτους μὲν ἐν νοσήμασι καὶ παθήμασιν ἀκάμπτους διαμένειν καὶ ἐχυροὺς καὶ δυσμεταθέτους, [c] ἡμᾶς δὲ βουλομένους καὶ φάσκοντας εἶναι φιλοκάλους καὶ φιλοδικαίους μὴ κρατεῖν ἑαυτῶν ἀλλ’ ἀνατρέπεσθαι καὶ προΐεσθαι τὴν ἀρετήν. καὶ γάρ, εἰ μὲν οἱ δυσωποῦντες ἐπὶ δόξῃ καὶ δυναστείᾳ τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν, ἄτοπόν ἐστι κοσμοῦντας ἑτέρους καὶ αὔξοντας ἀσχημονεῖν αὐτοὺς καὶ κακῶς ἀκούειν (ὥσπερ οἱ παραβραβεύοντες ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι καὶ περὶ τὰς χειροτονίας ἐξ οὐ προσηκόντων ἀρχεῖα καὶ στεφάνους ἄλλοις χαριζόμενοι καὶ δόξαν ἀφαιροῦνται τὸ ἔνδοξον αὑτῶν καὶ τὸ καλόν)· εἰ δὲ χρημάτων ἕνεκα προσκείμενον ὁρῶμεν τὸν δυσωποῦντα, πῶς [d] οὐ παρίσταται δεινὸν εἶναι τὸ τῆς ἰδίας δόξης καὶ ἀρετῆς ἀφειδεῖν, ἵνα τὸ τοῦ δεῖνος βαλλάντιον βαρύτερον γένηται;

Καίτοι παρίσταταί γε τοῖς πολλοῖς τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ οὐ λανθάνουσιν ἑαυτοὺς ἐξαμαρτάνοντες, ὥσπερ οἱ τὰς μεγάλας κύλικας ἐκπίνειν ἀναγκαζόμενοι μόλις καὶ στένοντες καὶ τὰ πρόσωπα διαστρέψαντες ἐκτελοῦσι τὸ προστεταγμένον. ἀλλ’ ἔοικεν ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀτονία σώματος κράσει καὶ πρὸς ἀλέαν κακῶς πεφυκυίᾳ καὶ πρὸς κρύος· ἐπαινούμενοί τε γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν δυσωπούντων παντάπασι θρύπτονται καὶ χαλῶνται πρός τε τὰς μέμψεις καὶ ὑφοράσεις τῶν ἀποτυγχανόντων ψοφοδεῶς καὶ δειλῶς [e] ἔχουσι. δεῖ δ’ ἀντισχυρίζεσθαι πρὸς ἀμφότερα, μήτε τοῖς δεδιττομένοις μήτε τοῖς κολακεύουσιν ἐνδιδόντας. ὁ μὲν οὖν Θουκυδίδης (II 64, 5), ὡς ἀναγκαίως ἑπομένου τῷ δύνασθαι τοῦ φθονεῖσθαι, ‘καλῶς’ φησί ‘βουλεύεσθαι τὸν ἐπὶ μεγίστοις λαμβάνοντα τὸ ἐπίφθονον·’ ἡμεῖς δὲ τὸν μὲν φθόνον διαφεύγειν [οὐ] χαλεπὸν ἡγούμενοι, τὸ δὲ μέμψει μὴ περιπεσεῖν μηδὲ λυπηρόν τινι γενέσθαι τῶν χρωμένων ἀδύνατον παντάπασιν ὁρῶντες ὀρθῶς βουλευσόμεθα τὰς τῶν ἀγνωμόνων ἀπεχθείας ἐκδεχόμενοι μᾶλλον ἢ τὰς τῶν δικαίως ἐγκαλούντων, ἐὰν ἐκείνοις μὴ δικαίως ὑπουργῶμεν. καὶ μὴν ἔπαινόν γε τὸν παρὰ τῶν [f] δυσωπούντων κίβδηλον ὄντα παντάπασι δεῖ φυλάττεσθαι καὶ μὴ πάθος πάσχειν ὑῶδες, ὑπὸ κνησμοῦ καὶ γαργαλισμοῦ παρέχοντα χρῆσθαι ῥᾷστα τῷ δεομένῳ καὶ καταβάλλειν ἑαυτὸν ὑποκατακλινόμενον. οὐδὲν γὰρ διαφέρουσι τῶν τὰ σκέλη τοῖς ὑποσπῶσι παρεχόντων οἱ τὰ ὦτα τοῖς κολακεύουσι παραδιδόντες, ἀλλ’ αἴσχιον ἀνατρέπονται καὶ πίπτουσιν, [536] [a] οἱ μὲν ἔχθρας καὶ κολάσεις ἀνιέντες ἀνθρώποις πονηροῖς, ἵν’ ἐλεήμονες καὶ φιλάνθρωποι καὶ συμπαθεῖς κληθῶσιν, οἱ δὲ τοὐναντίον ἀπεχθείας καὶ κατηγορίας οὐκ ἀναγκαίας οὐδ’ ἀκινδύνους ἀναδέξασθαι πεισθέντες ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπαινούντων ὡς μόνους ἄνδρας καὶ μόνους ἀκολακεύτους καὶ νὴ Δία στόματα καὶ φωνὰς προσαγορευόντων. διὸ καὶ Βίων ἀπείκαζε τοὺς τοιούτους ἀμφορεῦσιν ἀπὸ τῶν ὤτων ῥᾳδίως μεταφερομένοις. ὥσπερ Ἀλεξῖνον ἱστοροῦσι τὸν σοφιστὴν πολλὰ φαῦλα λέγειν ἐν τῷ περιπάτῳ περὶ Στίλπωνος τοῦ Μεγαρέως, [b] εἰπόντος δέ τινος τῶν παρόντων ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν ἐκεῖνός σε πρῴην ἐπῄνει’ ‘νὴ Δία’ φάναι· ‘βέλτιστος γὰρ ἀνδρῶν ἐστι καὶ γενναιότατος.’ ἀλλὰ Μενέδημος τοὐναντίον, ἀκούσας ὡς Ἀλεξῖνος αὐτὸν ἐπαινεῖ πολλάκις ‘ἐγὼ δ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἀεὶ ψέγω Ἀλεξῖνον· ὥστε κακός ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος ἢ κακὸν ἐπαινῶν ἢ ὑπὸ χρηστοῦ ψεγόμενος.’ οὕτως ἄτρεπτος ἦν καὶ ἀνάλωτος ὑπὸ τῶν τοιούτων καὶ κρατῶν ἐκείνης τῆς παραινέσεως, ἣν ὁ Ἀντισθένειος Ἡρακλῆς παρῄνει, τοῖς παισὶ διακελευόμενος μηδενὶ χάριν ἔχειν ἐπαινοῦντι [αὐτούς]· τοῦτο δ’ ἦν οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ μὴ δυσωπεῖσθαι μηδ’ ἀντικολακεύειν τοὺς ἐπαινοῦντας. ἀρκεῖ γὰρ [c] οἶμαι τὸ τοῦ Πινδάρου πρὸς τὸν λέγοντα πανταχοῦ καὶ πρὸς πάντας ἐπαινεῖν αὐτὸν εἰπόντος ‘κἀγώ σοι χάριν ἀποδίδωμι· ποιῶ γάρ σ’ ἀληθεύειν.’

Ὃ τοίνυν πρὸς πάντα τὰ πάθη χρήσιμόν ἐστι, τούτου δεῖ μάλιστα τοῖς εὐδυσωπήτοις, ὅταν ἐκβιασθέντες ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους παρὰ γνώμην ἁμάρτωσι καὶ διατραπῶσιν, ἰσχυρῶς μνημονεύειν καὶ τὰ σημεῖα τοῦ δηγμοῦ καὶ τῆς μεταμελείας θεμένους ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἀναλαμβάνειν καὶ φυλάττειν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον χρόνον. ὡς γὰρ οἱ λίθῳ προσπταίσαντες ὁδοιπόροι ἢ περὶ ἄκραν ἀνατραπέντες κυβερνῆται, ἂν μνημονεύωσιν, οὐκ ἐκεῖνα μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ προσόμοια [d] φρίττοντες καὶ φυλαττόμενοι διατελοῦσιν, οὕτως οἱ τὰ τῆς δυσωπίας αἰσχρὰ καὶ βλαβερὰ συνεχῶς τῷ μετανοοῦντι καὶ δακνομένῳ προβάλλοντες ἀντιλήψονται πάλιν ἑαυτῶν ἐν τοῖς ὁμοίοις καὶ οὐ προήσονται ῥᾳδίως ὑποφερομένους.

De invidia et odio

ΠΕΡΙ ΦΘΟΝΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΜΙΣΟΥΣ

[536] Οὕτω δὴ καὶ δοκεῖ μηθὲν τοῦ μίσους διαφέρειν ἀλλ’ ὁ αὐτὸς εἶναι. καθόλου μὲν γὰρ ὥσπερ πολυάγκιστρον ἡ κακία τοῖς ἐξηρτημένοις αὐτῆς πάθεσι κινουμένη δεῦρο κἀκεῖσε πολλὰς πρὸς ἄλληλα συναφὰς καὶ περιπλοκὰς ἐνδίδωσι, ταῦτα δ’ ὥσπερ νοσήματα συμπαθεῖ ταῖς ἀλλήλων φλεγμοναῖς. ὁ γὰρ εὐτυχῶν ὁμοίως καὶ τὸν μισοῦντα λυπεῖ καὶ τὸν φθονοῦντα. διὸ καὶ τὴν εὔνοιαν ἀμφοτέροις νομίζομεν ἀντικεῖσθαι, βούλησιν οὖσαν ἀγαθῶν τοῖς πλησίον, [f] καὶ τὸ μισεῖν τῷ φθονεῖν ταὐτὸν εἶναι, ὅτι τὴν ἐναντίαν τῷ φιλεῖν ἔχει προαίρεσιν. ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐχ οὕτω ταὐτὸν αἱ ὁμοιότητες ὡς ἕτερον αἱ διαφοραὶ ποιοῦσι, κατὰ ταύτας τὸ ζητούμενον μεταδιώξωμεν, ἀπὸ τῆς γενέσεως ἀρξάμενοι τῶν παθῶν.

Γεννᾶται τοίνυν τὸ μῖσος ἐκ φαντασίας τοῦ ὅτι [537] [a] πονηρὸς ἢ κοινῶς ἢ πρὸς αὐτόν ἐστιν ὁ μισούμενος (καὶ γὰρ ἀδικεῖσθαι δόξαντες αὐτοὶ πεφύκασι μισεῖν καὶ τοὺς ἄλλως ἀδικητικοὺς ἢ πονηροὺς προβάλλονται καὶ δυσχεραίνουσι)· φθονοῦσι δ’ ἁπλῶς τοῖς εὖ πράττειν δοκοῦσιν. ὅθεν ἔοικεν ὁ μὲν φθόνος ἀόριστος εἶναι, καθάπερ ὀφθαλμία πρὸς ἅπαν τὸ λαμπρὸν ἐκταρασσόμενος, τὸ δὲ μῖσος ὥρισται, καθ’ ὑποκειμένων ἀεί τινων ἀπερειδόμενον προσώπων.

Δεύτερον δὲ τὸ μισεῖν γίνεται καὶ πρὸς ἄλογα ζῷα (καὶ γὰρ γαλᾶς καὶ κανθαρίδας ἔνιοι μισοῦσι καὶ φρύνους καὶ ὄφεις· Γερμανικὸς δ’ ἀλεκτρυόνος οὔτε φωνὴν οὔτ’ ὄψιν ὑπέμεινεν· οἱ δὲ Περσῶν μάγοι τοὺς μῦς ἀπεκτίννυσαν, [b] ὡς αὐτοί τε μισοῦντες καὶ τοῦ θεοῦ δυσχεραίνοντος τὸ ζῷον· ὁμοῦ τι γὰρ πάντες Ἄραβες καὶ Αἰθίοπες μυσάττονται)· τὸ μέντοι φθονεῖν πρὸς μόνον ἄνθρωπον ἀνθρώπῳ γίνεται.

Ἐν τοῖς θηρίοις φθόνον μὲν οὐκ εἰκὸς ἐγγίνεσθαι πρὸς ἄλληλα (τοῦ γὰρ εὖ πράττειν ἢ κακῶς ἕτερον φαντασίαν οὐ λαμβάνουσιν, οὐδ’ ἅπτεται τὸ ἔνδοξον ἢ ἄδοξον αὐτῶν, οἷς ὁ φθόνος ἐκτραχύνεται μάλιστα)· μισοῦσι δ’ ἄλληλα καὶ ἀπεχθάνονται καὶ πολεμοῦσιν ὥσπερ ἀσπείστους τινὰς πολέμους ἀετοὶ καὶ δράκοντες, κορῶναι καὶ γλαῦκες, αἰγιθαλλοὶ καὶ ἀκανθυλλίδες, ὥστε τούτων γέ φασι μηδὲ τὸ αἷμα κίρνασθαι σφαττομένων, ἀλλὰ κἂν [c] μίξῃς, ἰδίᾳ πάλιν ἀπορρεῖν διακρινόμενον. εἰκὸς δὲ καὶ τῷ λέοντι πρὸς τὸν ἀλεκτρυόνα καὶ τῷ ἐλέφαντι πρὸς τὴν ὗν μῖσος ἰσχυρὸν γεγεννηκέναι τὸν φόβον· ὃ γὰρ δεδίασι, καὶ μισεῖν πεφύκασιν. ὥστε καὶ ταύτῃ φαίνεσθαι διαφέροντα τοῦ μίσους τὸν φθόνον, τὸ μὲν δεχομένης τῆς τῶν θηρίων φύσεως τὸν δὲ μὴ δεχομένης.

Ἔτι τοίνυν τὸ μὲν φθονεῖν πρὸς οὐδένα γίνεται δικαίως (οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἀδικεῖ τῷ εὐτυχεῖν, ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ φθονοῦνται)· μισοῦνται δὲ πολλοὶ δικαίως, [ὡς] οὓς ἀξιομισήτους καλοῦμεν, ‹ὥστε καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐγκαλοῦμεν›, ἂν μὴ φεύγωσι τοὺς τοιούτους μηδὲ βδελύττωνται [d] καὶ δυσχεραίνωσι. μέγα δὲ τούτου τεκμήριον, ὅτι μισεῖν μὲν πολλοὺς ὁμολογοῦσιν ἔνιοι, φθονεῖν δ’ οὐδενὶ λέγουσι. καὶ γὰρ ἡ μισοπονηρία τῶν ἐπαινουμένων ἐστί· καὶ τὸν ἀδελφιδοῦν τοῦ Λυκούργου Χάριλλον, βασιλεύοντα τῆς Σπάρτης ἐπιεικῆ δ’ ὄντα καὶ πρᾶον, ἐπαινούντων τινῶν ὁ συνάρχων ‘καὶ πῶς’ ἔφη ‘χρηστός ἐστι Χάριλλος, ὃς οὐδὲ τοῖς πονηροῖς χαλεπός ἐστι;’ καὶ τοῦ Θερσίτου ὁ ποιητὴς τὴν μὲν τοῦ σώματος κακίαν πολυμερῶς καὶ περιωδευμένως ἐξεμόρφησε, τὴν δὲ τοῦ ἤθους μοχθηρίαν συντομώτατα καὶ δι’ ἑνὸς ἔφρασεν·

‘ἔχθιστος δ’ Ἀχιλῆι μάλιστ’ ἦν ἠδ’ Ὀδυσῆι’ (Β 220).

[e]ὑπερβολὴ γάρ τις φαυλότητος τὸ τοῖς κρατίστοις ἐχθρὸν εἶναι. [καὶ] φθονεῖν δ’ ἀρνοῦνται· κἂν ἐλέγχωνται, μυρίας σκήψεις προΐσχονται, ὀργίζεσθαι λέγοντες ἢ φοβεῖσθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἢ μισεῖν ἢ ὅ τι ἂν τύχωσιν ἄλλο [τῷ φθόνῳ] τοῦ πάθους ὄνομα περιβάλλοντες καὶ καλύπτοντες ὡς μόνον τοῦτο τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς νοσημάτων ἀπόρρητον.

Ἀνάγκη τοίνυν τὰ πάθη ταῦτα τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὥσπερ τὰ φυτὰ καὶ τρέφεσθαι καὶ αὔξεσθαι, ‹ὅθεν› καὶ ἐπιτείνεσθαι πέφυκεν †ἀλλήλοις. μισοῦμέν γε μᾶλλον τοὺς μᾶλλον εἰς πονηρίαν ἐπιδιδόντας, φθονοῦσι δὲ μᾶλλον τοῖς μᾶλλον ἐπ’ ἀρετῇ προϊέναι δοκοῦσι. διὸ καὶ Θεμιστοκλῆς [f] ἔτι μειράκιον ὢν οὐδὲν ἔφη πράττειν λαμπρόν· οὔπω γὰρ φθονεῖσθαι. καθάπερ γὰρ αἱ κανθαρίδες ἐμφύονται μάλιστα τῷ ἀκμάζοντι σίτῳ καὶ τοῖς εὐθαλέσι ῥόδοις, οὕτως ὁ φθόνος ἅπτεται μάλιστα τῶν χρηστῶν καὶ αὐξομένων πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ δόξαν ἠθῶν καὶ προσώπων. καὶ τοὐναντίον αὖ πάλιν αἱ μὲν ἄκρατοι πονηρίαι συνεπιτείνουσι τὸ μῖσος. τοὺς γοῦν Σωκράτη συκοφαντήσαντας [538] [a] ὡς εἰς ἔσχατον κακίας ἐληλακότας οὕτως ἐμίσησαν οἱ πολῖται καὶ ἀπεστράφησαν, ὡς μήτε πῦρ αὔειν μήτ’ ἀποκρίνεσθαι πυνθανομένοις, μὴ λουομένοις κοινωνεῖν ὕδατος, ἀλλ’ ἀναγκάζειν ἐκχεῖν ἐκεῖνο τοὺς παραχύτας ὡς μεμιασμένον, ἕως ἀπήγξαντο μὴ φέροντες τὸ μῖσος. αἱ δὲ τῶν εὐτυχημάτων ὑπεροχαὶ καὶ λαμπρότητες πολλάκις τὸν φθόνον κατασβεννύουσιν. οὐ γὰρ εἰκὸς Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τινὰ φθονεῖν οὐδὲ Κύρῳ, κρατήσασι καὶ γενομένοις κυρίοις ἁπάντων. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὁ ἥλιος, ὧν ἂν ὑπὲρ κορυφῆς γένηται, καταχεόμενος τὸ φῶς ἢ παντάπασι τὴν [b] σκιὰν ἀνεῖλεν ἢ μικρὰν ἐποίησεν, οὕτως πολὺ τῶν εὐτυχημάτων ὕψος λαβόντων καὶ γενομένων κατὰ κεφαλῆς τοῦ φθόνου συστέλλεται καὶ ἀναχωρεῖ καταλαμπόμενος· τὸ μέντοι μῖσος οὐκ ἀνίησιν ἡ τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὑπεροχὴ καὶ δύναμις. ὁ γοῦν Ἀλέξανδρος φθονοῦντα μὲν οὐδέν’ εἶχε, μισοῦντας δὲ πολλούς, ὑφ’ ὧν τέλος ἐπιβουλευθεὶς ἀπέθανεν. ὁμοίως τοίνυν καὶ τὰ δυστυχήματα τοὺς μὲν φθονοῦντας παύει τὰς δ’ αὖ ἔχθρας οὐκ ἀναιρεῖ. μισοῦσι γὰρ καὶ ταπεινοὺς τοὺς ἐχθροὺς γενομένους, φθονεῖ δ’ οὐδεὶς τῷ δυστυχοῦντι, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπό τινος τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς σοφιστῶν, ὅτι ἥδισθ’ οἱ φθονοῦντες ἐλεοῦσιν, ἀληθές [c] ἐστιν. ὥστε καὶ ταύτῃ μεγάλην εἶναι τῶν παθῶν διαφοράν, ὡς τὸ μὲν μῖσος οὔτ’ εὐτυχούντων οὔτε δυστυχούντων ἀφίστασθαι πέφυκεν, ὁ δὲ φθόνος πρὸς τὴν ἀμφοῖν ὑπερβολὴν ἀπαγορεύει. ἔτι τοίνυν μᾶλλον ἢ οὕτως ἀπὸ τῶν ἐναντίων τὸ αὐτὸ σκοπῶμεν. λύουσι γὰρ ἔχθρας καὶ μῖσος ἢ πεισθέντες μηδὲν ἀδικεῖσθαι ἢ δόξαν ὡς χρηστῶν, οὓς ἐμίσουν ὡς πονηρούς, λαβόντες ἢ τρίτον εὖ παθόντες· ‘ἡ γὰρ τελευταία χάρις’, ὡς Θουκυδίδης φησί (I 42, 3), ‘κἂν ἐλάττων ᾖ, καιρὸν ἔχουσα δύναται μεῖζον ἔγκλημα λῦσαι.’ τούτων δὲ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον οὐ λύει τὸν φθόνον (πεπεισμένοι γὰρ ἐξ ἀρχῆς μηδὲν ἀδικεῖσθαι φθονοῦσι), [d] τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ καὶ παροξύνει· τοῖς τε γὰρ δοκοῦσι χρηστοῖς βασκαίνουσι μᾶλλον ὡς δὴ τὸ μέγιστον ἀγαθὸν τὴν ἀρετὴν ἔχουσι, κἂν εὖ πάσχωσιν ὑπὸ τῶν εὐτυχούντων, ἀνιῶνται φθονοῦντες αὐτοῖς καὶ τῆς προαιρέσεως καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀρετῆς ἐστι τὸ δ’ εὐτυχίας, ἀγαθὰ δ’ ἀμφότερα. διὸ παντελῶς ἕτερόν ἐστι τοῦ μίσους πάθος ὁ φθόνος, εἰ, δι’ ὧν ἐκεῖνο πραΰνεται, τοῦτο λυπεῖται καὶ παροξύνεται.

Ἤδη τοίνυν καὶ τὴν προαίρεσιν αὐτὴν ἑκατέρου πάθους σκοπῶμεν. ἔστι δὲ μισοῦντος μὲν προαίρεσις [e] κακῶς ποιῆσαι κατὰ δύναμιν ( οὕτως ὁρίζονται, διάθεσίν τινα καὶ προαίρεσιν ἐπιτηρητικὴν τοῦ κακῶς ποιῆσαι), τῷ φθόνῳ δὲ τοῦτο γοῦν ἄπεστι. πολλοὺς ‹γὰρ› οἱ φθονοῦντες τῶν συνήθων καὶ οἰκείων ἀπολέσθαι μὲν οὐκ ἂν ἐθέλοιεν οὐδὲ δυστυχῆσαι, βαρύνονται δ’ εὐτυχοῦντας· καὶ κολούουσι μέν, εἰ δύνανται, τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν καὶ λαμπρότητα, συμφορὰς δ’ ἀνηκέστους οὐκ ἂν προσβάλοιεν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἰκίας ὑπερεχούσης τὸ ἐπισκοτοῦν αὐτοῖς καθελόντες ἀρκοῦνται.

De laude ipsius

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΕΑΥΤΟΝ ΕΠΑΙΝΕΙΝ ΑΝΕΠΙΦΘΟΝΩΣ

[539] Τὸ περὶ ἑαυτοῦ λέγειν ὥς τι ὄντος ἢ δυναμένου πρὸς ἑτέρους, ὦ Ἥρκλανε, λόγῳ μὲν ἐπαχθὲς ἀποφαίνουσι [b] πάντες καὶ ἀνελεύθερον, ἔργῳ δ’ οὐ πολλοὶ τὴν ἀηδίαν αὐτοῦ διαπεφεύγασιν οὐδὲ τῶν ψεγόντων. ὁ γοῦν Εὐριπίδης εἰπών (fr. 978)

‘εἰ δ’ ἦσαν ἀνθρώποισιν ὠνητοὶ λόγοι,

οὐδεὶς ἂν αὑτὸν εὖ λέγειν ἐβούλετο·

νῦν δ’, ἐκ βαθείας γὰρ πάρεστιν αἰθέρος

λαβεῖν ἀμισθί, πᾶς τις ἥδεται λέγων

τά τ’ ὄντα καὶ μή· ζημίαν γὰρ οὐκ ἔχει’

φορτικωτάτῃ κέχρηται μεγαλαυχίᾳ [καὶ] τῷ συγκαταπλέκειν τοῖς τραγῳδουμένοις πάθεσι καὶ πράγμασι μηδὲν [c] προσήκοντα τὸν περὶ αὑτοῦ λόγον. ὁμοίως ὁ Πίνδαρος φήσας (Ol. 9, 38) ‘καὶ τὸ καυχᾶσθαι παρὰ καιρὸν μανίαις ὑποκρέκειν’ οὐ παύεται μεγαληγορῶν περὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ δυνάμεως ἀξίας μὲν ἐγκωμίων οὔσης· τίς γὰρ οὔ φησιν; ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς στεφανουμένους ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσιν ἕτεροι νικῶντας ἀναγορεύουσι, τὴν ἀηδίαν τῆς περιαυτολογίας ἀφαιροῦντες. ᾗ καὶ τὸν Τιμόθεον ἐπὶ τῇ κατὰ Φρύνιδος νίκῃ γράφοντα (fr. 27 W.)

‘μακάριος ἦσθα, Τιμόθεος, εὖτε κᾶρυξ

εἶπε· ‘νικᾷ Τιμόθεος

Μιλήσιος τὸν Κάμωνος τὸν ἰωνοκάμπταν’’

εἰκότως δυσχεραίνομεν ὡς ἀμούσως καὶ παρανόμως ἀνακηρύττοντα [d] τὴν ἑαυτοῦ νίκην. αὐτῷ μὲν γὰρ ὁ παρ’ ἄλλων ἔπαινος ἥδιστον ἀκουσμάτων ἐστίν, ὥσπερ ὁ Ξενοφῶν εἴρηκεν (Mem. II 1, 31), ἑτέροις δ’ ὁ περὶ αὑτοῦ λυπηρότατον. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἀναισχύντους ἡγούμεθα τοὺς ἑαυτοὺς ἐπαινοῦντας, αἰδεῖσθαι προσῆκον αὐτοῖς κἂν ὑπ’ ἄλλων ἐπαινῶνται· δεύτερον δ’ ἀδίκους, ἃ λαμβάνειν ἔδει παρ’ ἑτέρων, ‹αὐτοὺς› αὑτοῖς διδόντας· τρίτον ἢ σιωπῶντες ἄχθεσθαι καὶ φθονεῖν δοκοῦμεν, ἢ τοῦτο δεδοικότες ἀναγκαζόμεθα συνεφάπτεσθαι παρὰ γνώμην τῶν ἐπαίνων καὶ συνεπιμαρτυρεῖν, πρᾶγμα κολακείᾳ μᾶλλον ἀνελευθέρῳ προσῆκον ἢ τιμῇ τὸ ἐπαινεῖν παρόντας ὑπομένοντες.

[e] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὕτω τούτων ἐχόντων ἔστιν ᾗ παρακινδυνεύσειεν ἂν ὁ πολιτικὸς ἀνὴρ ἅψασθαι τῆς καλουμένης περιαυτολογίας πρὸς οὐδεμίαν αὑτοῦ δόξαν ἢ χάριν, ἀλλὰ καιροῦ καὶ πράξεως ἀπαιτούσης ὡς περὶ ἄλλου τι λεχθῆναι καὶ περὶ αὑτοῦ τῶν ἀληθῶν· μάλιστα δ’ ὅταν ᾖ, τὰ πεπραγμένα καὶ προσόντα χρηστὰ [τὸ] μὴ φεισάμενον εἰπεῖν [ἢ] διαπράξασθαί τι τῶν ὁμοίων. καλὸν γὰρ ὁ τοιοῦτος ἔπαινος ἐκφέρει καρπόν, ὥσπερ ἀπὸ σπέρματος πλειόνων ἑτέρων ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ κρειττόνων φυομένων ἐπαίνων. καὶ γὰρ τὴν δόξαν ὁ πολιτικὸς ἀνὴρ οὐχ ὥς τινα μισθὸν ἢ παραμυθίαν τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀπαιτεῖ [f] καὶ ἀγαπᾷ ταῖς πράξεσι παροῦσαν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τὸ πιστεύεσθαι καὶ δοκεῖν χρηστὸν εἶναι πλειόνων καὶ καλλιόνων πράξεων ἀφορμὰς δίδωσι. πειθομένους γὰρ ἅμα καὶ φιλοῦντας ἡδὺ καὶ ῥᾴδιον ὠφελεῖν, πρὸς δ’ ὑποψίαν καὶ διαβολὴν οὐκ ἔστι χρήσασθαι τῇ ἀρετῇ, φεύγοντας εὖ παθεῖν προσβιαζόμενον.

Εἰ δὲ καὶ δι’ ἑτέρας αἰτίας ὁ πολιτικὸς ἂν αὑτὸν ἐπαινέσειε, [540] [a] [τίνες εἰσὶν αὗται] σκεπτέον, ὅπως ἐξευλαβούμενοι τὸ κενὸν καὶ δυσχεραινόμενον, εἴ τι χρήσιμον ἔχει, μὴ παραλίπωμεν.

Ἔστιν οὖν κενὸς ἔπαινος ὁ τῶν ἑαυτοὺς ἐπαινεῖν,

ὅπως ἐπαινεθῶσι, δοκούντων· καὶ καταφρονεῖται μάλιστα, φιλοτιμίας ἕνεκα γίγνεσθαι καὶ δόξης ἀκαίρου φαινόμενος. ὡς γὰρ οἱ τροφῆς ἀποροῦντες ἐξ αὐτοῦ τοῦ σώματος ἀναγκάζονται παρὰ φύσιν τρέφεσθαι, καὶ τοῦτο τοῦ λιμοῦ τέλος ἐστίν, οὕτως οἱ πεινῶντες ἐπαίνων, ἂν μὴ τυγχάνωσιν ἑτέρων ἐπαινούντων, αὐτοὶ τῇ φιλοδοξίᾳ παρ’ αὑτῶν ἐπαρκεῖν τι βούλεσθαι καὶ συνεισφέρειν δοκοῦντες ἀσχημονοῦσιν.

[b] ὅταν δὲ μηδ’ ἁπλῶς καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἐπαινεῖσθαι ζητῶσιν, ἀλλ’ ἁμιλλώμενοι πρὸς ἀλλοτρίους ἐπαίνους ἔργα καὶ πράξεις ἀντιπαραβάλλωσιν αὑτῶν ὡς ἀμαυρώσοντες ἑτέρους, πρὸς τῷ κενῷ βάσκανον πρᾶγμα καὶ κακόηθες ποιοῦσι. τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἐν ἀλλοτρίῳ χορῷ πόδα τιθέντα περίεργον ἡ παροιμία καὶ γελοῖον ἀποδείκνυσι, τὴν δ’ ἐν ἀλλοτρίοις ἐπαίνοις εἰς μέσον ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ ζηλοτυπίας ἐξωθουμένην περιαυτολογίαν εὖ μάλα δεῖ φυλάττεσθαι, καὶ μηδ’ ἑτέρων ὑπομένειν ἐπαινούντων αὑτόν, ἀλλὰ παραχωρεῖν τοῖς τιμωμένοις ἀξίοις οὖσιν· ἂν δ’ ἀνάξιοι καὶ φαῦλοι δόξωσιν εἶναι, μὴ τοῖς ἰδίοις ἐπαίνοις [c] ἀφαιρώμεθα τοὺς ἐκείνων, ἀλλ’ ἄντικρυς ἐλέγχοντες καὶ δεικνύντες οὐ προσηκόντως εὐδοκιμοῦντας.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν δῆλον ὅτι φυλακτέον. αὑτὸν δ’ ἐπαινεῖν ἀμέμπτως ἔστι πρῶτον μέν, ἂν ἀπολογούμενος τοῦτο ποιῇς πρὸς διαβολὴν ἢ κατηγορίαν, ὡς ὁ Περικλῆς (Thuc. II 60, 5)· ‘καίτοι ἐμοὶ τοιούτῳ ἀνδρὶ ὀργίζεσθε, ὃς οὐδενὸς ἥσσων οἴομαι εἶναι γνῶναί τε τὰ δέοντα καὶ ἑρμηνεῦσαι ταῦτα, φιλόπολίς τε καὶ χρημάτων κρείσσων.’ οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἀλαζονείαν καὶ κενότητα καὶ φιλοτιμίαν ἐκπέφευγε τὸ λέγειν τι τηνικαῦτα περὶ αὑτοῦ σεμνόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ φρόνημα καὶ μέγεθος ἀρετῆς διαδείκνυσι τῷ μὴ ταπεινοῦσθαι ταπεινούσης [d] καὶ χειρουμένης τὸν φθόνον. οὐδὲ γὰρ κρίνειν ἔτι τοὺς τοιούτους ἀξιοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπαίρονται καὶ γάνυνται καὶ συνενθουσιῶσι ταῖς μεγαλαυχίαις, ἄνπερ ὦσι βέβαιοι καὶ ἀληθεῖς· ὡς ἐπιμαρτυρεῖ τὰ γινόμενα. Θηβαῖοι γοῦν, ἐγκαλουμένων τῶν στρατηγῶν ὅτι τοῦ χρόνου τῆς βοιωταρχίας ἐξήκοντος αὐτοῖς οὐκ εὐθὺς ἐπανῆλθον ἀλλ’ εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἐνέβαλον καὶ τὰ περὶ Μεσσήνην διῴκησαν, Πελοπίδαν μὲν ὑποπίπτοντα καὶ δεόμενον μόλις ἀπέλυσαν, Ἐπαμεινώνδου δὲ πολλὰ περὶ τῶν πεπραγμένων μεγαληγορήσαντος, τέλος δὲ φήσαντος ὡς ἕτοιμός ἐστιν ἀποθνῄσκειν, [e] ἂν ὁμολογήσωσιν, ὅτι τὴν Λακωνικὴν διεπόρθησε καὶ Μεσσήνην ᾤκισε καὶ συνέστησεν Ἀρκαδίαν ἀκόντων ἐκείνων, οὐδὲ τὰς ψήφους ἀναλαβεῖν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὑπέμειναν, ἀλλὰ θαυμάζοντες τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ χαίροντες ἅμα καὶ γελῶντες ἀπηλλάγησαν. ὅθεν οὐδὲ τοῦ Ὁμηρικοῦ Σθενέλου παντάπασιν αἰτιατέον τὸ (Δ 405)

‘ἡμεῖς τοι πατέρων μέγ’ ἀμείνονες εὐχόμεθ’ εἶναι’

μεμνημένους τοῦ (Δ 370)

‘ὤ μοι, Τυδέος υἱὲ δαΐφρονος ἱπποδάμοιο,

τί πτώσσεις; τί δ’ ὀπιπεύεις πολέμοιο γεφύρας;’

οὐδὲ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἀκούσας κακῶς ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ φίλου λοιδορηθέντος [f] ἠμύνατο, τῇ περιαυτολογίᾳ παρρησίαν συγγνώμονα τῆς αἰτίας διδούσης. ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ Ῥωμαῖοι Κικέρωνι μὲν ἐδυσχέραινον ἐγκωμιάζοντι πολλάκις ἑαυτοῦ τὰς περὶ Κατιλίναν πράξεις, Σκιπίωνι δ’ εἰπόντι μὴ πρέπειν αὐτοῖς κρίνειν περὶ Σκιπίωνος, δι’ ὃν ἔχουσι τὸ κρίνειν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, στεφανωσάμενοι συνανέβησαν εἰς τὸ [541] [a] Καπιτώλιον καὶ συνέθυσαν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἀναγκαίως ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ δόξης ἐχρῆτο τοῖς ἐπαίνοις, τοῦ δ’ ἀφῄρει τὸν φθόνον ὁ κίνδυνος.

Οὐ μόνον δὲ κρινομένοις καὶ κινδυνεύουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δυστυχοῦσι μᾶλλον ἁρμόζει μεγαλαυχία καὶ κόμπος ἢ εὐτυχοῦσιν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ οἷον ἐπιδράττεσθαι τῆς δόξης καὶ ἀπολαύειν χαριζόμενοι τῷ φιλοτίμῳ δοκοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ πόρρω φιλοτιμίας διὰ τὸν καιρὸν ὄντες ἐξαναφέρειν πρὸς τὴν τύχην καὶ ὑπερείδειν τὸ φρόνημα καὶ φεύγειν ὅλως τὸ ἐλεεινὸν καὶ συνεπιθρηνοῦν τοῖς ἀβουλήτοις καὶ ταπεινούμενον. ὥσπερ οὖν τοὺς ἐν τῷ περιπατεῖν ἐπαιρομένους καὶ [b] ὑψαυχενοῦντας ἀνοήτους ἡγούμεθα καὶ κενούς, ἂν δὲ πυκτεύοντες ἢ μαχόμενοι διεγείρωσι καὶ ἀνάγωσιν ἑαυτούς, ἐπαινοῦμεν, οὕτως ἀνὴρ ὑπὸ τύχης σφαλλόμενος ἑαυτὸν εἰς ὀρθὸν καθιστὰς καὶ ἀντίπαλον ‘πύκτης ὅπως εἰς χεῖρας’ (Soph. Tr. 442), ἐκ τοῦ ταπεινοῦ καὶ οἰκτροῦ τῇ μεγαλαυχίᾳ μεταφέρων εἰς τὸ γαῦρον καὶ ὑψηλόν, οὐκ ἐπαχθὴς οὐδὲ θρασὺς ἀλλὰ μέγας εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ ἀήττητος. ὥς που καὶ τὸν Πάτροκλον ὁ ποιητὴς μέτριον καὶ ἀνεπίφθονον ἐν τῷ κατορθοῦν ἐν δὲ τῷ τελευτᾶν μεγαλήγορον πεποίηκε λέγοντα (Π 847)

‘τοιοῦτοι δ’ εἴπερ μοι ἐείκοσιν ἀντεβόλησαν.’

[c] καὶ Φωκίων τἄλλα πρᾶος ἦν, μετὰ δὲ τὴν καταδίκην ἄλλοις τε πολλοῖς διεδείκνυε τὴν μεγαλοφροσύνην, καὶ πρὸς ἕνα τῶν συναποθνῃσκόντων ὀδυρόμενον καὶ δυσανασχετοῦντα ‘τί λέγεις’ εἶπεν ‘οὗτος; οὐκ ἀγαπᾷς ἀποθνῄσκων μετὰ Φωκίωνος;’

Ἔτι τοίνυν οὐχ ἧττον ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον ἀδικουμένῳ τῷ πολιτικῷ δέδοται τὸ λέγειν τι περὶ αὑτοῦ πρὸς τοὺς ἀγνωμονοῦντας. ὥσπερ ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἄλλως μὲν ὑφίετο τῷ θείῳ τῆς δόξης καὶ μέτριος ἦν λέγων (Α 128)

‘αἴ κέ ποθι Ζεύς

δῷσι πόλιν Τροίην εὐτείχεον ἐξαλαπάξαι,’

ὑβρισθεὶς δὲ παρ’ ἀξίαν καὶ προπηλακισθεὶς ἐφίησι τὴν [d] μεγαλαυχίαν τῇ ὀργῇ (Ι 328)

‘δώδεκα γὰρ σὺν νηυσὶ πόλεις ἀλάπαξ’ ἀνθρώπων’

καί (Π 70)

‘οὐ γὰρ ἐμῆς κόρυθος λεύσουσι μέτωπον

ἐγγύθι λαμπομένης.’

δέχεται γὰρ ἡ παρρησία, μέρος οὖσα τῆς δικαιολογίας, τὴν μεγαληγορίαν. ἀμέλει δὲ καὶ Θεμιστοκλῆς οὐδὲν ἐπὶ τῶν πράξεων εἰπὼν οὐδὲ ποιήσας ἐπαχθές, ὁπηνίκα τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἑώρα μεστοὺς ὄντας αὐτοῦ καὶ περιορῶντας, οὐκ ἐφείδετο λέγειν ‘τί, ὦ μακάριοι, κοπιᾶτε πολλάκις ὑπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν εὖ πάσχοντες;’ καὶ ὅτι ‘χειμαζόμενοι μὲν [e] ὥσπερ ὑπὸ δένδρον ὑποφεύγετε, γενομένης δ’ εὐδίας τίλλετε παρεξιόντες.’

Οὗτοι μὲν οὖν ἄλλως ἀδικούμενοι τῶν κατωρθωμένων ἐμέμνηντο πρὸς τοὺς ἀγνωμονοῦντας· ὁ δ’ ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς ψεγόμενος οἷς κατώρθωκε καὶ παντάπασι συγγνωστός ἐστι καὶ ἄμεμπτος ἐγκωμιάζων τὰ πεπραγμένα· δοκεῖ γὰρ οὐκ ὀνειδίζειν ἀλλ’ ἀπολογεῖσθαι. τοῦτο γοῦν λαμπρὰν τῷ Δημοσθένει παρρησίαν ἐδίδου καὶ τὸν κόρον ἀφῄρει τῶν ἐπαίνων, οἷς παρὰ πάντα τὸν λόγον ὁμοῦ τι τὸν ὑπὲρ τοῦ στεφάνου κέχρηται, σεμνυνόμενος οἷς ἐνεκαλεῖτο περὶ τοῦ πολέμου πρεσβεύμασι καὶ ψηφίσμασιν.

Οὐ πόρρω δὲ τούτου τεταγμένον ἔχει τινὰ χάριν τὸ [f] τῆς ἀντιθέσεως, ὅταν, ἐφ’ ᾧ τις ἐγκαλεῖται, τούτου τοὐναντίον αἰσχρὸν ἀποδεικνύῃ καὶ φαῦλον. ὡς ὁ Λυκοῦργος ἐν Ἀθήναις ἐπὶ τῷ πεπεικέναι τὸν συκοφάντην ἀργυρίου λοιδορούμενος ‘εἶτ’’ ἔφη ‘ποῖός τις ὑμῖν δοκῶ εἶναι πολίτης, ὃς τοσοῦτον χρόνον τὰ δημόσια πράττων παρ’ ὑμῖν διδοὺς μᾶλλον ἀδίκως ἢ λαμβάνων εἴλημμαι;’ καὶ ὁ Κικέρων, [542] [a]τ οῦ Μετέλλου πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος ὅτι πλείονας ἀνῄρηκε καταμαρτυρήσας ἢ συνηγορήσας σέσωκε, ‘τίς δ’’ εἶπεν ‘οὔ φησιν ἐν ἐμοὶ πλέον εἶναι πίστεως ἢ δεινότητος;’ καὶ τὰ Δημοσθένους τοιαῦτα (18, 101)· ‘τίς δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἀπέκτεινέ με δικαίως, εἴ τι τῶν τῇ πόλει καλῶν ὑπαρχόντων λόγῳ μόνον αἰσχύνειν ἐπεχείρησα;’ καί (18, 240) ‘τί ἂν οἴεσθε λέγειν τοὺς μιαροὺς τούτους ἀνθρώπους, εἰ τότε μου περὶ τούτων ἀκριβολογουμένου ἀπῆλθον αἱ πόλεις;’ καὶ ὅλως ὁ περὶ τοῦ στεφάνου λόγος εὐφυεστάταις ἀντιθέσεσι ταῖς λύσεσι τῶν αἰτιῶν ἐπεισάγει τοὺς ἐπαίνους.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο χρήσιμόν ἐστιν ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ [b] λόγῳ καταμαθεῖν, ὅτι μιγνύων ἐμμελέστατα τῷ περὶ αὑτοῦ λόγῳ τὸν περὶ τῶν ἀκουόντων ἔπαινον ἀνεπίφθονον ἐποίει καὶ ἀφίλαυτον, οἵους μὲν Εὐβοεῦσιν οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι παρέσχον αὑτοὺς οἵους δὲ Θηβαίοις, ὅσα δὲ Βυζαντίους ἀγαθὰ καὶ Χερρονησίτας ἐποίησαν, αὑτῷ δὲ τῆς διακονίας μετεῖναι φάσκων. λανθάνει γὰρ οὕτως ὁ ἀκροατὴς τοῖς ἰδίοις ἐπαίνοις συνυποδυόμενον τὸν τοῦ λέγοντος ἡδέως προσδεχόμενος, καὶ χαίρει μὲν ἐφ’ οἷς κατώρθωσε λεγομένοις, τῷ δὲ χαίρειν εὐθὺς ἕπεται τὸ θαυμάζειν καὶ ἀγαπᾶν δι’ ὃν κατώρθωσεν. ὅθεν καὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδας Μενεκλείδου ποτὲ χλευάζοντος αὐτὸν ὡς μεῖζον τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος [c] φρονοῦντα ‘δι’ ὑμᾶς γ’,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ ἄνδρες Θηβαῖοι, μεθ’ ὧν μόνων ἐν ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ κατέλυσα τὴν Λακεδαιμονίων ἀρχήν.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ τῷ μὲν ἑαυτὸν ἐπαινοῦντι πολεμοῦσιν οἱ πολλοὶ σφόδρα καὶ ἄχθονται, τῷ δ’ ἕτερον οὐχ ὁμοίως, ἀλλὰ καὶ χαίρουσι πολλάκις καὶ συνεπιμαρτυροῦσι προθύμως, εἰώθασιν ἔνιοι τοὺς ταὐτὰ προαιρουμένους καὶ πράττοντας αὐτοῖς καὶ ὅλως ὁμοιοτρόπους ἐπαινοῦντες ἐν καιρῷ συνοικειοῦν καὶ συνεπιστρέφειν πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς τὸν ἀκροατήν· ἐπιγινώσκει γὰρ εὐθὺς ἐν τῷ λέγοντι, κἂν περὶ ἄλλου λέγηται, δι’ ὁμοιότητα τὴν ἀρετὴν τῶν αὐτῶν ἀξίαν [d] ἐπαίνων οὖσαν. ὡς γὰρ ὁ λοιδορῶν ἕτερον οἷς αὐτὸς ἔνοχός ἐστιν οὐ λανθάνει λοιδορῶν μᾶλλον ἑαυτὸν ἢ ἐκεῖνον, οὕτως οἱ ἀγαθοὶ τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς τιμῶντες ἀναμιμνήσκουσιν αὑτῶν τοὺς συνειδότας· ὥστ’ εὐθὺς ἐπιφωνεῖν ‘σὺ γὰρ οὐ τοιοῦτος;’ Ἀλέξανδρος μὲν οὖν Ἡρακλέα τιμῶν καὶ πάλιν Ἀλέξανδρον Ἀνδρόκοττος ἑαυτοὺς εἰς τὸ τιμᾶσθαι προῆγον ἀπὸ τῶν ὁμοίων, Διονύσιος δὲ τὸν Γέλωνα διασύρων καὶ γέλωτα τῆς Σικελίας ἀποκαλῶν ἐλάνθανεν ὑπὸ φθόνου καθαιρῶν τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ ἀξίωμα τῆς περὶ αὑτὸν δυνάμεως.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν καὶ ἄλλως ἐπίστασθαι καὶ παραφυλάττειν τῷ πολιτικῷ προσήκει. τοὺς δ’ ἀναγκασθέντας [e] ἐπαινεῖν αὑτοὺς ἐλαφροτέρους παρέχει καὶ τὸ μὴ πάντα προσποιεῖν ἑαυτοῖς, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ φορτίου τῆς δόξης τὸ μὲν εἰς τὴν τύχην τὸ δ’ εἰς τὸν θεὸν ἀποτίθεσθαι. διὸ καλῶς μὲν ὁ Ἀχιλλεύς (Χ 379)

‘ἐπεὶ δὴ τόνδ’ ἄνδρα θεοὶ δαμάσασθαι ἔδωκαν,’

καλῶς δὲ Τιμολέων, ἐν Συρακούσαις Αὐτοματίας βωμὸν ἱδρυσάμενος ἐπὶ ταῖς πράξεσι καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν Ἀγαθῷ Δαίμονι καθιερώσας· ἄριστα δὲ Πύθων ὁ Αἴνιος, ἐπειδὴ Κότυν ἀποκτείνας ἧκεν εἰς Ἀθήνας καὶ τῶν δημαγωγῶν διαμιλλωμένων τοῖς ἐγκωμίοις αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ᾔσθετο βασκαίνοντας ἐνίους καὶ βαρυνομένους, παρελθών [f] ‘ταῦτ’,’ εἶπεν ‘ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, θεός τις ἔπραξεν, ἡμεῖς δὲ τὰς χεῖρας ἐχρήσαμεν.’ ἀφῄρει δὲ καὶ Σύλλας τὸν φθόνον ἀεὶ τὴν Τύχην ἐπαινῶν, καὶ τέλος Ἐπαφρόδιτον ἑαυτὸν ἀνηγόρευσε. μᾶλλον γὰρ εὐτυχίας ἢ ἀρετῆς ἡττᾶσθαι βούλονται, τὸ μὲν ἀλλότριον ἀγαθὸν ἡγούμενοι τὸ δ’ [543] [a] οἰκεῖον ἔλλειμμα καὶ παρ’ αὑτοὺς γενόμενον. οὐχ ἥκιστα γοῦν λέγουσιν ἀρέσαι Λοκροῖς τὴν Ζαλεύκου νομοθεσίαν, ὅτι τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν ἔφασκεν αὑτῷ φοιτῶσαν εἰς ὄψιν ἑκάστοτε τοὺς νόμους ὑφηγεῖσθαι καὶ διδάσκειν αὑτοῦ δὲ μηδὲν εἶναι διανόημα μηδὲ βούλευμα τῶν εἰσφερομένων.

Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἴσως πρὸς τοὺς παντάπασι χαλεποὺς καὶ βασκάνους ἀνάγκη τὰ φάρμακα καὶ τὰ παρηγορήματα μηχανᾶσθαι· πρὸς δὲ τοὺς μετρίους οὐκ ἄτοπόν ἐστι χρῆσθαι καὶ ταῖς ἐπανορθώσεσι τῶν ἐπαίνων, εἴ τις ὡς λόγιον ἢ πλούσιον ἢ δυνατὸν ἐπαινοίη, κελεύοντα μὴ ταῦτα περὶ αὐτοῦ λέγειν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον, εἰ χρηστὸς καὶ [b] ἀβλαβὴς καὶ ὠφέλιμος. οὐ γὰρ εἰσφέρει τὸν ἔπαινον ὁ τοῦτο ποιῶν ἀλλὰ μετατίθησιν, οὐδὲ χαίρειν δοκεῖ τοῖς ἐγκωμιάζουσιν αὐτὸν ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον, ὅτι μὴ προσηκόντως μηδ’ ἐφ’ οἷς δεῖ, δυσχεραίνειν καὶ ἀποκρύπτειν τὰ φαυλότερα τοῖς βελτίοσιν, οὐκ ἐπαινεῖσθαι βουλόμενος ἀλλ’ ἐπαινεῖν ὡς χρὴ διδάσκων. τὸ γὰρ (Dem. 18, 299) ‘οὐ λίθοις ἐτείχισα τὴν πόλιν οὐδὲ πλίνθοις ἐγώ· ἀλλ’ ἐὰν τὸν ἐμὸν τειχισμὸν βούλῃ σκοπεῖν, εὑρήσεις ὅπλα καὶ ἵππους καὶ συμμάχους’ τοιούτου τινὸς ἔοικεν ἅπτεσθαι. καὶ τὸ τοῦ Περικλέους ἔτι μᾶλλον· ὀλοφυρόμενοι γάρ, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἤδη καταστρέφοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ δυσφοροῦντες οἱ ἐπιτήδειοι [c] τῶν στρατηγιῶν ἐμέμνηντο καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ ὅσα δὴ τρόπαια καὶ νίκας καὶ πόλεις Ἀθηναίοις κτησάμενος ἀπολέλοιπεν· ὁ δὲ μικρὸν ἐπαναστὰς ἐμέμψατ’ αὐτούς, ὡς κοινὰ πολλῶν καὶ τῆς τύχης ἔνια μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐγκώμια λέγοντας, τὸ δὲ κάλλιστον καὶ μέγιστον καὶ ἴδιον αὐτοῦ παραλείποντας, ὅτι δι’ αὐτὸν οὐδεὶς Ἀθηναίων μέλαν ἱμάτιον ἀνείληφε. τοῦτο δὴ τὸ παράδειγμα καὶ ῥήτορι δίδωσιν, ἄνπερ ᾖ χρηστός, ἐπαινουμένῳ περὶ λόγου δεινότητα μεταθεῖναι τὸν ἔπαινον ἐπὶ τὸν βίον καὶ τὸ ἦθος· καὶ στρατηγῷ θαυμαζομένῳ δι’ ἐμπειρίαν πολεμικὴν ἢ [d] δι’ εὐτυχίαν περὶ πραότητός τι καὶ δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ παρρησιάσασθαι· καὶ τοὐναντίον αὖ πάλιν, ὑπερφυῶν τινων λεγομένων ἐπαίνων, οἷα πολλοὶ κολακεύοντες ἐπίφθονα λέγουσιν, εἰπεῖν (π 187)

‘οὔ τίς τοι θεός εἰμι· τί μ’ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐίσκεις;

ἀλλ’ εἴ με γινώσκεις ἀληθῶς, ἐπαίνει τὸ ἀδωροδόκητον ἢ τὸ σῶφρον ἢ τὸ εὔγνωμον ἢ τὸ φιλάνθρωπον.’ ὁ γὰρ φθόνος οὐκ ἀηδῶς τῷ τὰ μείζονα παραιτουμένῳ τὰ μετριώτερα δίδωσι, καὶ τὸ ἀληθὲς ἐγκώμιον οὐκ ἀφαιρεῖται τῶν τὰ ψευδῆ καὶ κενὰ μὴ προσδεχομένων. διὸ καὶ τῶν βασιλέων τοὺς μὴ θεοὺς μηδὲ παῖδας θεῶν ἀναγορεύεσθαι θέλοντας [e] ἀλλὰ Φιλαδέλφους ἢ Φιλομήτορας ἢ Εὐεργέτας ἢ Θεοφιλεῖς οὐκ ἤχθοντο ταῖς καλαῖς μὲν ἀνθρωπικαῖς δὲ ταύταις προσηγορίαις τιμῶντες. ὥσπερ αὖ καὶ τῶν γραφόντων καὶ λεγόντων βαρυνόμενοι τοὺς τῆς σοφίας ἐπιγραφομένους τοὔνομα χαίρουσι τοῖς φιλοσοφεῖν ἢ προκόπτειν ἤ τι τοιοῦτο περὶ αὑτῶν ἀνεπίφθονον καὶ μέτριον λέγουσιν. οἱ δὲ ῥητορικοὶ σοφισταὶ τὸ ‘θείως’ καὶ τὸ ‘δαιμονίως’ ἐν ταῖς ἐπιδείξεσι προσδεχόμενοι καὶ τὸ ‘μετρίως’ καὶ τὸ ‘ἀνθρωπίνως’ προσαπολλύουσι.

Καὶ μὴν ὥσπερ οἱ τοὺς ὀφθαλμιῶντας ἐνοχλεῖν φυλαττόμενοι [f] τοῖς ἄγαν λαμπροῖς σκιάν τινα παραμιγνύουσιν, οὕτως ἔνιοι τοὺς αὑτῶν ἐπαίνους μὴ παντελῶς λαμπροὺς μηδ’ ἀκράτους προσφέροντες, ἀλλά τινας ἐλλείψεις ἢ ἀποτεύξεις ἢ ἁμαρτίας ἐλαφρὰς ἐμβάλλοντες ἀφαιροῦσι τὸ ἐπαχθὲς αὐτῶν καὶ νεμεσητόν. ὥσπερ ὁ Ἐπειός, οὐ μέτρια περὶ τῆς πυκτικῆς εἰπὼν καὶ θρασυνάμενος ὡς ‘ἀντικρὺ χρόα τε ῥήξει - ‘ ‘ἢ οὐχ ἅλις’ φησίν ‘ὅττι μάχης ἐπιδεύομαι;’ (Ψ 673. 670) [544] [a] ἀλλ’ οὗτος μὲν ἴσως γελοῖος, ἀθλητικὴν ἀλαζονείαν δειλίας καὶ ἀνανδρίας ἐξομολογήσει παραμυθούμενος· ἐμμελὴς δὲ καὶ χαρίεις ὁ λήθην τινὰ καθ’ αὑτοῦ λέγων ἢ ἄγνοιαν ἢ φιλοτιμίαν ἢ πρός τινα μαθήματα καὶ λόγους ἀκρασίαν ὡς ὁ Ὀδυσσεύς (μ 192)

‘αὐτὰρ ἐμὸν κῆρ

ἤθελ’ ἀκουέμεναι, λῦσαι δ’ ἐκέλευον ἑταίρους

ὀφρύσι νευστάζων,’

καὶ πάλιν (ι 228)

‘ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ οὐ πιθόμην - ἦ τ’ ἂν πολὺ κέρδιον ἦεν -,

[b] ὄφρ’ αὐτόν τε ἴδοιμι, καὶ εἴ μοι ξείνια δοίη.’

καὶ ὅλως ὅσαι μὴ παντάπασιν αἰσχραὶ μηδ’ ἀγεννεῖς ἁμαρτίαι, παρατιθέμεναι τοῖς ἐπαίνοις τὸν φθόνον ἀφαιροῦσι. πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ πενίας καὶ ἀπορίας καὶ νὴ Δία δυσγενείας ἐξομολόγησιν ἔστιν ὅτε τοῖς ἐγκωμίοις παρεμβάλλοντες ἀμβλυτέρῳ τῷ φθόνῳ χρῶνται. καθάπερ Ἀγαθοκλῆς χρυσᾶ ποτήρια καὶ τορευτὰ τοῖς νέοις προπίνων ἐκέλευσε καὶ κεραμεᾶ κομισθῆναι, καί ‘τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ ἐνδελεχὲς καὶ φιλόπονον καὶ ἀνδρεῖον· ἡμεῖς πάλαι ταῦτα, νῦν δ’ ἐκεῖνα ποιοῦμεν.’ ἐδόκει γὰρ ἐν κεραμείῳ τεθράφθαι [c] διὰ δυσγένειαν καὶ πενίαν ὁ Ἀγαθοκλῆς, εἶτα συμπάσης ὀλίγου δεῖν ἐβασίλευσε Σικελίας.

Καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἔξωθεν ἔστιν ἐπεισάγεσθαι φάρμακα τῆς περιαυτολογίας. ἕτερα δ’ αὐτοῖς τρόπον τινὰ τοῖς ἐπαινουμένοις ἔνεστιν· οἷς καὶ Κάτων ἐχρῆτο φθονεῖσθαι λέγων, ὅτι τῶν ἰδίων ἀμελεῖ καὶ τὰς νύκτας ἀγρυπνεῖ διὰ τὴν πατρίδα· καὶ τὸ (Eurip. Philoct. fr. 787)

‘πῶς δ’ ἂν φρονοίην, ᾧ παρῆν ἀπραγμόνως

ἐν τοῖσι πολλοῖς ἠριθμημένῳ στρατοῦ

ἴσον μετασχεῖν τῷ σοφωτάτῳ τύχης;’

καὶ τὸ (ibid. 789)

‘ὀκνῶν δὲ μόχθων τῶν πρὶν ἐκχέαι χάριν

καὶ τοὺς παρόντας οὐκ ἀπωθοῦμαι πόνους.’

[d] ὡς γὰρ οἰκίαν καὶ χωρίον, οὕτως καὶ δόξαν οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ ἀρετὴν τοῖς προῖκα καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἔχειν δοκοῦσιν οὐ τοῖς πριαμένοις πόνων πολλῶν καὶ κινδύνων φθονοῦσιν.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐ μόνον ἀλύπως καὶ ἀνεπιφθόνως ἀλλὰ καὶ χρησίμως καὶ ὠφελίμως προσοιστέον ἐστὶ τοὺς ἐπαίνους, ἵνα μὴ τοῦτο πράττειν ἀλλ’ ἕτερόν τι διὰ τούτου δοκῶμεν, ὅρα πρῶτον, εἰ προτροπῆς ἕνεκα καὶ ζήλου καὶ φιλοτιμίας τῶν ἀκουόντων αὑτὸν ἄν τις ἐπαινέσειεν, ὡς ὁ Νέστωρ τὰς ἑαυτοῦ διηγούμενος ἀριστείας καὶ μάχας τόν τε Πάτροκλον παρώρμησε καὶ τοὺς ἐννέα πρὸς τὴν μονομαχίαν ἀνέστησεν (Λ 655 sqq. Η 123 sqq.). ἡ γὰρ ἔργον ὁμοῦ [e] καὶ λόγον ἔχουσα προτροπὴ καὶ παράδειγμα καὶ ζῆλον οἰκεῖον ἔμψυχός ἐστι καὶ κινεῖ καὶ παροξύνει καὶ μεθ’ ὁρμῆς καὶ προαιρέσεως ἐλπίδας ὡς ἐφικτῶν καὶ οὐκ ἀδυνάτων παρίστησι. διὸ καὶ τῶν ἐν Λακεδαίμονι χορῶν ᾄδουσιν οἱ μὲν τῶν γερόντων (Carm. pop. 17 II 197 D)

‘ἁμές ποτ’ ἦμες ἄλκιμοι νεανίαι,’

οἱ δὲ τῶν παίδων

‘ἁμὲς δέ γ’ ἐσσόμεσθα πολλῷ κάρρονες,’

οἱ δὲ τῶν νεανίσκων

‘ἁμὲς δέ γ’ εἰμές· αἰ δὲ λῇς, αὐγάσδεο,’

καλῶς καὶ πολιτικῶς τοῦ νομοθέτου τὰ πλησίον καὶ οἰκεῖα παραδείγματα τοῖς νέοις δι’ αὐτῶν τῶν εἰργασμένων ἐκτιθέντος.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ καταπλήξεως ἐνιαχοῦ καὶ συστολῆς [f] ἕνεκα καὶ τοῦ ταπεινῶσαι καὶ λαβεῖν ὑποχείριον τὸν αὐθάδη καὶ ἰταμὸν οὐ χεῖρόν ἐστι κομπάσαι τι περὶ αὑτοῦ καὶ μεγαληγορῆσαι· καθάπερ αὖ πάλιν ὁ Νέστωρ (Α 260)

‘ἤδη γάρ ποτ’ ἐγὼ καὶ ἀρείοσιν ἠέπερ ὑμῖν

ἀνδράσιν ὡμίλησα, καὶ οὔ ποτέ μ’ οἵ γ’ ἀθέριζον.’

[545] [a] οὕτω δὴ καὶ πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 664) οὐ μόνον ἔφη τοῖς πολλῶν κρατοῦσιν ἐξεῖναι μέγα φρονεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς περὶ θεῶν δόξας ἀληθεῖς ἔχουσι. χρήσιμα δὲ καὶ πρὸς πολεμίους καὶ πρὸς ἐχθροὺς τὰ τοιαῦτα (Ζ 127)

‘δυστήνων δέ τε παῖδες ἐμῷ μένει ἀντιόωσι.’

καὶ περὶ τοῦ Περσῶν βασιλέως μεγάλου δὲ καλουμένου ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ‘τί δ’ ἐμοῦ γε μείζων ἐκεῖνος, εἰ μὴ καὶ δικαιότερος;’ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους τῶν Θηβαίων κατηγοροῦντας ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας ‘ἡμεῖς μέντοι ὑμᾶς βραχυλογοῦντας ἐπαύσαμεν.’ ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν πρὸς ἐχθροὺς [b] καὶ πολεμίους· τῶν δὲ φίλων καὶ πολιτῶν οὐ μόνον ἔστι τοὺς θρασυνομένους καταστορέσαι καὶ ποιῆσαι ταπεινοτέρους, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς περιφόβους καὶ καταπλῆγας ἐξᾶραι πάλιν καὶ παρορμῆσαι χρησάμενον ἐν δέοντι μεγαλαυχίᾳ. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Κῦρος παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ καὶ τὰς μάχας ‘ἐμεγαληγόρει ἄλλοτε δ’ οὐ μεγαλήγορος ἦν’ (Xen. Cyr. VII 1, 17)· καὶ Ἀντίγονος ὁ δεύτερος τἄλλα μὲν ἦν ἄτυφος καὶ μέτριος, ἐν δὲ τῇ περὶ Κῶ ναυμαχίᾳ τῶν φίλων τινὸς εἰπόντος ‘οὐχ ὁρᾷς, ὅσῳ πλείους εἰσὶν αἱ πολέμιαι νῆες;’ ‘ἐμὲ δέ γ’ αὐτόν’ εἶπε ‘πρὸς πόσας ἀντιτάττετε;’ καὶ τοῦτο δ’ ἔοικε συνιδεῖν Ὅμηρος· τὸν γὰρ Ὀδυσσέα πεποίηκεν ἀποδειλιώντων [c] τῶν ἑταίρων πρὸς τὸν ψόφον καὶ κλύδωνα τὸν περὶ τὴν Χάρυβδιν ἀναμιμνήσκοντα τῆς αὑτοῦ δεινότητος καὶ ἀνδρείας (μ 209)· ‘οὐ μὴν τόδε μεῖζον [οἱ] κακὸν ἢ ὅτε Κύκλωψ

εἴλει ἐνὶ σπῆι γλαφυρῷ κρατερῇ γε βίῃφι·

ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔνθεν ἐμῇ ἀρετῇ βουλῇ τε νόῳ τε

ἐκφύγομεν.’

οὐ γάρ ἐστι δημαγωγοῦντος οὐδὲ σοφιστιῶντος ὁ τοιοῦτος ἔπαινος οὐδὲ κρότον οὐδὲ ποππυσμὸν αἰτοῦντος, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν ἐπιστήμην ἐνέχυρον τοῦ θαρρεῖν τοῖς φίλοις διδόντος. μέγα γὰρ ἐν καιροῖς ἐπισφαλέσι πρὸς σωτηρίαν [d] δόξα καὶ πίστις ἀνδρὸς ἡγεμονικὴν ἐμπειρίαν καὶ δύναμιν ἔχοντος.

Ὅτι μὲν οὖν τὸ πρὸς ἔπαινον ἀλλότριον καὶ δόξαν ἀντιπαραβάλλειν ἑαυτὸν ἥκιστα πολιτικόν, εἴρηται πρότερον (c. 3)· οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ὅπου βλάπτει καὶ διαφθείρει ζῆλον ἐμποιῶν πρὸς τὰ φαῦλα καὶ προαίρεσιν πονηρὰν ἐν πράγμασι μεγάλοις ἡμαρτημένος ἔπαινος, οὐκ ἄχρηστόν ἐστιν ἐκκροῦσαι μᾶλλον δ’ ἀποστρέψαι τὸν ἀκροατὴν ἐπὶ τὰ κρείττω τὴν διαφορὰν ἐνδεικνύμενον. ἀγαπήσειε γὰρ ἄν τις οἶμαι λοιδορουμένης κακίας καὶ ψεγομένης ἐθέλοντας ἀπέχεσθαι τοὺς πολλοὺς ὁρῶν· εἰ δὲ προσλάβοι δόξαν ἡ κακία [e] καὶ τῷ καθ’ ἡδονὰς αὐτῆς ἢ πλεονεξίας ἄγοντι προσγένοιτο τιμὴ καὶ τὸ εὐδοκιμεῖν, οὐκ ἔστιν εὐτυχὴς οὕτως οὐδ’ ἰσχυρὰ φύσις, ἧς οὐκ ἂν κρατήσειε. διὸ δεῖ μὴ τοῖς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐπαίνοις, ἀλλὰ τοῖς τῶν πραγμάτων, ἄνπερ ᾖ φαῦλα, πολεμεῖν τὸν πολιτικόν· οὗτοι γὰρ διαστρέφουσι καὶ τούτοις τὸ μιμεῖσθαι τὰ αἰσχρὰ καὶ ζηλοῦν ὡς καλὰ συνεισέρχεται. μάλιστα δ’ ἐξελέγχονται τοῖς ἀληθινοῖς παρατιθεμένοις· οἷον ὁ τῶν τραγῳδιῶν ὑποκριτὴς Θεόδωρος εἰπεῖν ποτε πρὸς τὸν κωμικὸν λέγεται Σάτυρον, ὡς οὐ θαυμαστόν ἐστι τὸ γελᾶν ποιεῖν τοὺς θεατὰς ἀλλὰ τὸ [f] δακρύειν καὶ κλαίειν· ἂν δέ γ’ οἶμαι πρὸς τοῦτον αὐτὸν εἴπῃ φιλόσοφος ἀνήρ ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ τὸ ποιεῖν, ὦ βέλτιστε, κλαίειν καὶ δακρύειν, τὸ δὲ παύειν λυπουμένους καὶ κλαίοντας σεμνόν ἐστιν,’ ἐπαινῶν ἑαυτὸν ὠφελεῖ τὸν ἀκούοντα καὶ μετατίθησι τὴν κρίσιν. οὕτως καὶ ὁ Ζήνων (St. V. Fr. I 280) πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος τῶν Θεοφράστου μαθητῶν ‘ὁ [546] [a] ἐκείνου χορός’ ἔφη ‘μείζων, οὑμὸς δὲ συμφωνότερος.’ καὶ ὁ Φωκίων ἔτι τοῦ Λεωσθένους εὐημεροῦντος ὑπὸ τῶν ῥητόρων ἐρωτώμενος τί τὴν πόλιν αὐτὸς ἀγαθὸν πεποίηκεν ‘οὐδέν’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸ ὑμᾶς ἐμοῦ στρατηγοῦντος ἐπιτάφιον λόγον μὴ εἰπεῖν ἀλλὰ πάντας ἐν τοῖς πατρῴοις μνήμασι θάπτεσθαι τοὺς ἀποθνῄσκοντας.’ πάνυ δὲ χαριέντως καὶ ὁ Κράτης (fr. 8 Diels) πρὸς τό

‘ταῦτ’ ἔχω, ὅσσ’ ἔφαγον καὶ ἐφύβρισα καὶ μετ’ ἔρωτος

τέρπν’ ἔπαθον’

ἀντέγραψε τό

‘ταῦτ’ ἔχω, ὅσσ’ ἔμαθον καὶ ἐφρόντισα καὶ μετὰ Μουσῶν

σέμν’ ἐδάην.’

[b] καλὸς γὰρ ὁ τοιοῦτος ἔπαινος καὶ ὠφέλιμος καὶ διδάσκων τὰ χρήσιμα καὶ τὰ συμφέροντα θαυμάζειν καὶ ἀγαπᾶν ἀντὶ τῶν κενῶν καὶ περιττῶν. διὸ τοῦτο μὲν συγκατατετάχθω τοῖς εἰρημένοις εἰς τὸ πρόβλημα.

Λείπεται δ’ ἡμῖν, τοῦ λόγου τὸ ἐφεξῆς ἀπαιτοῦντος καὶ παρακαλοῦντος, εἰπεῖν ὅπως ἂν ἕκαστος ἐκφύγοι τὸ ἐπαινεῖν ἀκαίρως ἑαυτόν. μέγα γὰρ ἡ περιαυτολογία τὴν φιλαυτίαν ὁρμητήριον ἔχουσα καὶ τοῖς πάνυ δοκοῦσι μετρίως ἔχειν πρὸς δόξαν ἐμφαίνεται πολλάκις ἐπιτιθεμένη. καθάπερ γὰρ τῶν ὑγιεινῶν ἕν ἐστι παραγγελμάτων τὸ τὰ νοσώδη χωρία φυλάττεσθαι παντάπασιν ἢ προσέχειν μᾶλλον αὑτῷ γινόμενον ἐν αὐτοῖς, οὕτως ἔχει τινὰς ἡ περιαυτολογία [c] καιροὺς καὶ τόπους ὀλισθηροὺς καὶ περιφέροντας εἰς αὐτὴν ἐκ πάσης προφάσεως. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις ἐπαίνοις, ὥσπερ εἴρηται (c. 3), τὸ φιλότιμον ἐξανθεῖ τὴν περιαυτολογίαν· καί τις αὐτὸ καταλαμβάνει δακνόμενον καὶ γαργαλιζόμενον οἷον ὑπὸ κνησμοῦ δυσκαρτέρητος ἐπιθυμία καὶ ὁρμὴ πρὸς δόξαν, ἄλλως τε κἂν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἴσοις ἕτερος ἢ τοῖς ἐλάττοσιν ἐπαινῆται. καθάπερ γὰρ οἱ πεινῶντες ἑτέρων ἐσθιόντων ἐν ὄψει μᾶλλον ἐρεθίζονται καὶ παροξύνονται τὴν ὄρεξιν, οὕτως ὁ τῶν πλησίον ἔπαινος ἐκκαίει τῇ ζηλοτυπίᾳ τοὺς πρὸς δόξαν [d] ἀκρατῶς ἔχοντας. δεύτερον αἱ τῶν εὐτυχῶς καὶ κατὰ νοῦν πεπραγμένων διηγήσεις λανθάνουσι πολλοὺς εἰς μεγαλαυχίαν ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ἐκφέρουσαι καὶ κόμπον· ἐμπεσόντες γὰρ εἰς τὸ λέγειν νίκας τινὰς ἑαυτῶν ἢ κατορθώσεις ἐν πολιτεύμασιν ἢ παρ’ ἡγεμόσι πράξεις καὶ λόγους εὐδοκιμήσαντας οὐ κρατοῦσιν οὐδὲ μετριάζουσιν. ᾧ γένει μάλιστα τῆς περιαυτολογίας τὸ αὐλικὸν ἰδεῖν ἔστι καὶ στρατιωτικὸν ἁλισκόμενον. συμβαίνει δὲ καὶ τοῖς ἐκ πότων ἡγεμονικῶν καὶ πραγμάτων μεγάλων ἐπανήκουσι τοῦτο πάσχειν ἐπιεικῶς· μεμνημένοι γὰρ ἀνδρῶν ἐπιφανῶν καὶ βασιλικῶν [e] συγκαταπλέκουσι περὶ αὑτῶν εὐφημίας τινὰς ὑπ’ ἐκείνων εἰρημένας, καὶ νομίζουσιν οὐχ αὑτοὺς ἐπαινεῖν ἀλλ’ ἑτέρων ἐπαίνους διηγεῖσθαι περὶ αὑτῶν γενομένους. οἱ δ’ ὅλως οἴονται λανθάνειν τοὺς ἀκούοντας, ὅταν βασιλέων καὶ αὐτοκρατόρων δεξιώσεις καὶ προσαγορεύσεις καὶ φιλοφροσύνας ἀπαγγέλλωσιν, ὡς οὐχ αὑτῶν ἐπαίνους ἀποδείξεις δὲ τῆς ἐκείνων ἐπιεικείας καὶ φιλανθρωπίας διεξιόντες. ὅθεν εὖ μάλα δεῖ προσέχειν ἑαυτοῖς περὶ τοὺς ἑτέρων ἐπαίνους, ὅπως καθαροὶ καὶ ἀνύποπτοι φιλαυτίας καὶ περιαυτολογίας ὦσι καὶ μὴ δοκῶμεν ‘Πάτροκλον πρόφασιν’ [f] σφᾶς δ’ αὐτοὺς δι’ ἐκείνων ἐπαινεῖν.

Ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ τὸ περὶ τοὺς ψόγους καὶ τὰς καταιτιάσεις γένος ἐπισφαλές ἐστι καὶ παρέχον ἐκτροπὰς τοῖς περὶ δόξαν νοσοῦσιν. ᾧ μάλιστα περιπίπτουσιν οἱ γέροντες, ὅταν εἰς τὸ νουθετεῖν ἑτέρους καὶ κακίζειν ἔθη φαῦλα καὶ πράξεις ἡμαρτημένας προαχθῶσι, μεγαλύνοντες αὑτοὺς [547] [a] ὡς περὶ ταὐτὰ θαυμασίους δή τινας γενομένους. τούτοις μὲν οὖν, ἂν μὴ μόνον ἔχωσιν ἡλικίαν ἀλλὰ καὶ δόξαν καὶ ἀρετήν, δοτέον (οὐ γὰρ ἀνωφελὲς ἀλλὰ μέγα, ζῆλον ἐμποιοῦν ἅμα καὶ φιλοτιμίαν τινὰ τοῖς οὕτω κολαζομένοις)· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι σφόδρα φυλάττεσθαι καὶ δεδιέναι τὴν ἐκτροπὴν ταύτην ὀφείλομεν. ἀνιαροῦ γὰρ ὄντος ἄλλως καὶ μόλις ἀνεκτοῦ τοῦ τῶν πλησίον ἐλέγχου καὶ δεομένου πολλῆς εὐλαβείας ὁ μιγνύων ἔπαινον ἴδιον ἀλλοτρίῳ ψόγῳ καὶ δι’ ἀδοξίας ἑτέρου δόξαν αὑτῷ θηρώμενος ἐπαχθὴς παντάπασι καὶ φορτικός ἐστιν, ὡς ἐνευδοκιμεῖν ἀσχημονοῦσιν ἄλλοις βουλόμενος.

Ἔτι τοίνυν τοῖς μὲν πρὸς τοὺς γέλωτας εὐκαταφόροις [b] φύσει καὶ προχείροις μάλιστα φεύγειν προσήκει καὶ φυλάττεσθαι τοὺς γαργαλισμοὺς καὶ τὰς ψηλαφήσεις, ἐν αἷς τὰ λειότατα τοῦ σώματος ὀλισθάνοντα καὶ συρρέοντα κινεῖ καὶ συνεξορμᾷ τὸ πάθος· ὅσοι δὲ πρὸς δόξαν ἐμπαθέστερον ἐρρυήκασι, τούτοις ἄν τις οὐχ ἥκιστα παραινέσειεν ἀπέχεσθαι τοῦ σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ἐπαινεῖν, ὅταν ὑπ’ ἄλλων ἐπαινῶνται. δεῖ γὰρ ἐρυθριᾶν ἐπαινούμενον οὐκ ἀπερυθριᾶν, καὶ καταστέλλειν τοὺς μέγα τι περὶ αὑτῶν λέγοντας οὐκ ἐλέγχειν ὡς ἐνδεέστερον ἐπαινοῦντας· ὅπερ οἱ πολλοὶ ποιοῦσιν, ὑπομιμνήσκοντες αὐτοὶ καὶ [c] προσεμφοροῦντες ἄλλας τινὰς πράξεις καὶ ἀνδραγαθίας, ἄχρι οὗ τῷ παρ’ αὑτῶν καὶ τὸν παρ’ ἑτέρων ἔπαινον διαφθείρωσιν. ἔνιοι μὲν οὖν κολακεύοντες αὐτοὺς ὥσπερ γαργαλίζουσι καὶ φυσῶσιν, ἔνιοι δὲ κακοήθως οἷόν τι δέλεαρ μικρὸν εὐλογίας ὑποβάλλοντες ἐκκαλοῦνται τὴν περιαυτολογίαν, οἱ δὲ προσπυνθάνονται καὶ διερωτῶσιν, ὡς παρὰ τῷ Μενάνδρῳ (fr. 562) τὸν στρατιώτην, ἵνα γελάσωσι·

‘πῶς τὸ τραῦμα τοῦτ’ ἔχεις;’

‘μεσαγκύλῳ.’ ‘πῶς πρὸς θεῶν’; ‘ἐπὶ κλίμακα

πρὸς τεῖχος ἀναβαίνων.’ ‘ἐγὼ μὲν δεικνύω

ἐσπουδακώς, οἱ δὲ πάλιν ἐπεμυκτήρισαν.’

Ἐν ἅπασιν οὖν τούτοις εὐλαβητέον ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα, μήτε συνεκπίπτοντα τοῖς ἐπαίνοις μήτε ταῖς [d] ἐρωτήσεσιν ἑαυτὸν προϊέμενον. ἐντελεστάτη δὲ τούτων εὐλάβεια καὶ φυλακὴ τὸ προσέχειν ἑτέροις ἑαυτοὺς ἐπαινοῦσι καὶ μνημονεύειν, ὡς ἀηδὲς τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ λυπηρὸν ἅπασι καὶ λόγος ἄλλος οὐδεὶς οὕτως ἐπαχθὴς οὐδὲ βαρύς. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἔχοντες εἰπεῖν ὅ τι πάσχομεν ἄλλο κακὸν ὑπὸ τῶν αὑτοὺς ἐπαινούντων ὥσπερ φύσει βαρυνόμενοι τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ φεύγοντες ἀπαλλαγῆναι καὶ ἀναπνεῦσαι σπεύδομεν· ὅπου καὶ κόλακι καὶ παρασίτῳ καὶ δεομένῳ δύσοιστον ἐν χρείᾳ καὶ δυσεγκαρτέρητον ἑαυτὸν ἐγκωμιάζων πλούσιός τις ἢ σατράπης ἢ βασιλεύς, καὶ ‘συμβολὰς [e] ταύτας ἀποτίνειν μεγίστας’ λέγουσιν, ὡς ὁ παρὰ Μενάνδρῳ (fr. 563)·

‘σφάττει με, λεπτὸς γίνομ’ εὐωχούμενος·

τὰ σκώμμαθ’ οἷα τὰ σοφὰ καὶ στρατηγικά·

οἷος δ’ ἀλαζών ἐστιν ἁλιτήριος.’

ταῦτα γὰρ οὐ πρὸς στρατιώτας μόνον οὐδὲ νεοπλούτους εὐπάρυφα καὶ σοβαρὰ διηγήματα περαίνοντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς σοφιστὰς καὶ φιλοσόφους καὶ στρατηγοὺς ὀγκουμένους ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῖς καὶ μεγαληγοροῦντας εἰωθότες πάσχειν καὶ λέγειν, ἂν μνημονεύωμεν, ὅτι τοῖς ἰδίοις ἐπαίνοις ἀλλότριος ἕπεται ψόγος ἀεὶ καὶ γίνεται τέλος ἀδοξία τῆς κενοδοξίας ταύτης καὶ τὸ λυπεῖν τοὺς ἀκούοντας, ὡς ὁ [f] Δημοσθένης φησί (18, 128), περίεστιν οὐ τὸ δοκεῖν εἶναι τοιούτους, ἀφεξόμεθα τοῦ λέγειν περὶ αὑτῶν, ἂν μή τι μεγάλα μέλλωμεν ὠφελεῖν ἑαυτοὺς ἢ τοὺς ἀκούοντας.

De sera numinis vindicta

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΥΠΟ ΤΟΥ ΘΕΙΟΥ ΒΡΑΔΕΩΣ ΤΙΜΩΡΟΥΜΕΝΩΝ

[548] Τοιαῦτα μὲν ὁ Ἐπικούρειος εἰπών, ὦ Κυῆτε, καὶ [b] πρὶν ἀποκρίνασθαί τινα, πρὸς τῷ πέρατι τῆς στοᾶς γενομένων ἡμῶν ᾤχετ’ ἀπιών· ἡμεῖς δ’ ὅσον τι θαυμάσαι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὴν ἀτοπίαν, ἐπιστάντες σιωπῇ καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαβλέψαντες ἀνεστρέφομεν πάλιν ὥσπερ ἐτυγχάνομεν περιπατοῦντες. εἶτα πρῶτος ὁ Πατροκλέας ‘τί οὖν;’ εἶπεν ‘ἐᾶν δοκεῖ τὴν ζήτησιν, ἢ τῷ λόγῳ καθάπερ παρόντος ἀποκρινώμεθα τοῦ εἰπόντος;’ ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Τίμων ‘ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ εἰ βαλών’ εἶπεν ‘ἀπηλλάγη, καλῶς εἶχε περιορᾶν τὸ βέλος ἐγκείμενον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Βρασίδας ὡς ἔοικεν [c] ἐξελκύσας τὸ δόρυ τοῦ σώματος αὐτῷ τούτῳ τὸν βαλόντα πατάξας ἀνεῖλεν· ἡμῶν δ’ ἀμύνασθαι μὲν οὐδὲν ἔργον ἐστὶ δήπου τοὺς ἄτοπον ἢ ψευδῆ λόγον εἰς ἡμᾶς ἀφέντας, ἀρκεῖ δ’ αὐτοὶ πρὶν ἅψασθαι τὴν δόξαν ἂν ἐκβάλωμεν.’ ‘τί οὖν’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘μάλιστα κεκίνηκεν ὑμᾶς τῶν εἰρημένων; ἀθρόα γὰρ πολλὰ καὶ κατὰ τάξιν οὐδέν, ἄλλο δ’ ἀλλαχόθεν ἅνθρωπος ὥσπερ ὀργῇ τινι καὶ λοιδορίᾳ σπαράττων ἅμα κατεφόρει τῆς προνοίας.’

Καὶ ὁ Πατροκλέας ‘ἡ περὶ τὰς τιμωρίας’ εἶπε ‘τῶν πονηρῶν βραδυτὴς τοῦ δαιμονίου καὶ μέλλησις ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ μάλιστα δεινὸν εἶναι· καὶ νῦν ὑπὸ τῶν λόγων τούτων [d] ὥσπερ πρόσφατος γέγονα τῇ δόξῃ καὶ καινός, ἔκπαλαι δ’ ἠγανάκτουν ἀκούων Εὐριπίδου λέγοντος (Or. 420)

‘μέλλει, τὸ θεῖον δ’ ἐστὶ τοιοῦτον φύσει.’

καίτοι πρὸς οὐθὲν ἥκιστα δὲ πρέπει πρὸς τοὺς πονηροὺς ῥᾴθυμον εἶναι τὸν θεόν, οὐ ῥᾳθύμους ὄντας αὐτοὺς οὐδ’ ‘ἀμβολιεργούς’ τοῦ κακῶς ποιεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὀξυτάταις ὁρμαῖς ὑπὸ τῶν παθῶν φερομένους πρὸς τὰς ἀδικίας. καὶ μήν ‘τὸ ἀμύνασθαι τῷ παθεῖν,’ ὡς Θουκυδίδης (III 38, 1) φησίν, ‘ὅτι ἐγγυτάτω κείμενον’ εὐθὺς ἀντιφράττει τὴν ὁδὸν τοῖς ἐπὶ πλεῖστον εὐροούσῃ τῇ κακίᾳ χρωμένοις. οὐθὲν γὰρ οὕτω χρέος ὡς τὸ τῆς δίκης ὑπερήμερον γινόμενον ἀσθενῆ [e] μὲν ταῖς ἐλπίσι ποιεῖ καὶ ταπεινὸν τὸν ἀδικούμενον, αὔξει δὲ θρασύτητι καὶ τόλμῃ τὸν μοχθηρόν· αἱ δ’ ὑπὸ χεῖρα τοῖς τολμωμένοις ἀπαντῶσαι τιμωρίαι καὶ τῶν μελλόντων εἰσὶν ἐπισχέσεις ἀδικημάτων καὶ μάλιστα τὸ παρηγοροῦν τοὺς πεπονθότας ἔνεστιν αὐταῖς. ὡς ἔμοιγε καὶ τὸ τοῦ Βίαντος ἐνοχλεῖ πολλάκις ἀναλαμβάνοντι τὸν λόγον· ἔφη γάρ, ὡς ἔοικε, πρός τινα πονηρόν, ὡς οὐ δέδιε μὴ οὐ δῷ δίκην, ἀλλὰ μὴ οὐκ αὐτὸς ἐπίδῃ. τί γὰρ Μεσσηνίοις ὄφελος τοῖς προαναιρεθεῖσι τῆς Ἀριστοκράτους τιμωρίας, ὃς προδοὺς τὴν ἐπὶ Κάπρῳ μάχην καὶ λαθὼν ὑπὲρ εἴκοσιν [f] ἔτη καὶ πάντα ταῦτα βασιλεύσας Ἀρκάδων ὕστερον ἔδωκε δίκην φωραθείς, οἱ δ’ οὐκέτ’ ἦσαν; ἢ τίν’ Ὀρχομενίων τοῖς ἀποβαλοῦσι παῖδας καὶ φίλους καὶ οἰκείους ὑπὸ Λυκίσκου προδοθέντας ἤνεγκε παραμυθίαν ἡ χρόνοις ὕστερον πολλοῖς [549] [a] ἁψαμένη νόσος κατανεμηθεῖσα τοῦ σώματος, ὅσον ἀεὶ βάπτων καὶ βρέχων εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν ὤμοσε καὶ κατηράσατο σαπῆναι προδόντος αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀδικήσαντος; τὰς μὲν γὰρ Ἀθήνησι τῶν ἐναγῶν σωμάτων ῥίψεις καὶ νεκρῶν ἐξορισμοὺς οὐδὲ παίδων παισὶν ἐπιδεῖν ὑπῆρξε τῶν ἀποσφαγέντων ἐκείνων. ὅθεν Εὐριπίδης ἄτοπος εἰς ἀποτροπὴν κακίας τούτοις χρώμενος (fr. 979)·

‘οὔτοι προσελθοῦσ’ ἡ Δίκη σε, μὴ τρέσῃς,

παίσει πρὸς ἧπαρ οὐδὲ τῶν ἄλλων βροτῶν

τὸν ἄδικον, ἀλλὰ σῖγα καὶ βραδεῖ ποδὶ

στείχουσα μάρψει τοὺς κακούς, ὅταν τύχῃ.’

[b] οὐ γὰρ ἄλλα δήπου, ταῦτα δ’ αὐτὰ τοὺς κακοὺς εἰκός ἐστιν ἑαυτοῖς διακελευομένους καὶ παρεγγυῶντας ἐπιχειρεῖν τοῖς παρανομήμασιν, ὡς τῆς ἀδικίας τὸν μὲν καρπὸν εὐθὺς ὡραῖον καὶ προῦπτον ἀποδιδούσης, τὴν δὲ τιμωρίαν ὀψὲ καὶ πολὺ τῆς ἀπολαύσεως καθυστεροῦσαν.’

Ταῦτα τοῦ Πατροκλέου διελθόντος ἐπιβαλὼν ὁ Ὀλύμπιχος ‘ἐκεῖνο δ’’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Πατροκλέα, πηλίκον αἱ περὶ ταῦτα τοῦ θείου διατριβαὶ καὶ μελλήσεις ἄτοπον ἔχουσιν, ὅτι τὴν πίστιν ἡ βραδυτὴς ἀφαιρεῖ τῆς προνοίας, καὶ τὸ μὴ παρ’ ἕκαστον ἀδίκημα τοῖς πονηροῖς ἐπακολουθοῦν [c] κακὸν ἀλλ’ ὕστερον εἰς ἀτυχήματος χώραν τιθέμενοι καὶ συμφορὰν οὐ τιμωρίαν ὀνομάζοντες οὐθὲν ὠφελοῦνται, τοῖς μὲν συμβαίνουσιν ἀχθόμενοι τοῖς δὲ πεπραγμένοις μὴ μεταμελόμενοι; καθάπερ γὰρ ἵππον ἡ παραχρῆμα τὸ πταῖσμα καὶ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν διώκουσα πληγὴ καὶ νύξις ἐπανορθοῖ καὶ μετάγει πρὸς τὸ δέον, οἱ δ’ ὕστερον καὶ μετὰ χρόνον σπαραγμοὶ καὶ ἀνακρούσεις καὶ περιψοφήσεις ἑτέρου τινὸς ἕνεκα μᾶλλον δοκοῦσι γίνεσθαι ἢ διδασκαλίας, δι’ ὃ τὸ λυποῦν ἄνευ τοῦ παιδεύειν ἔχουσιν, οὕτως ἡ καθ’ ἕκαστον ὧν πταίει καὶ προσπίπτει ῥαπιζομένη καὶ ἀνακρουομένη τῷ κολάζεσθαι κακία μόλις ἂν γένοιτο σύννους [d] καὶ ταπεινὴ καὶ κατάφοβος πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ὡς ἐφεστῶτα τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις πράγμασι καὶ πάθεσιν οὐχ ὑπερήμερον δικαιωτήν· ἡ δ’ ἀτρέμα καί ‘βραδεῖ ποδί’ κατ’ Εὐριπίδην (cf. p. 397, 3) καὶ ὡς ἔτυχεν ἐπιπίπτουσα Δίκη τοῖς πονηροῖς τῷ αὐτομάτῳ μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ κατὰ πρόνοιαν ὅμοιον ἔχει τὸ πεπλανημένον καὶ ὑπερήμερον καὶ ἄτακτον. ὥστ’ οὐχ ὁρῶ, τί χρήσιμον ἔνεστι τοῖς ὀψὲ δὴ τούτοις ἀλεῖν λεγομένοις μύλοις τῶν θεῶν καὶ ποιοῦσι τὴν δίκην ἀμαυρὰν καὶ τὸν φόβον ἐξίτηλον τῆς κακίας.’

Ῥηθέντων οὖν τούτων κἀμοῦ πρὸς αὐτοῖς ὄντος ὁ Τίμων ‘πότερον’ εἶπεν ‘ἐπιθῶ καὶ αὐτὸς ἤδη τῷ λόγῳ τὸν [e] κολοφῶνα τῆς ἀπορίας, ἢ πρὸς ταῦτ’ ἐάσω πρότερον αὐτὸν διαγωνίσασθαι;’ ‘τί γάρ’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘δεῖ τὸ τρίτον ἐπενεγκεῖν κῦμα καὶ προσκατακλύσαι τὸν λόγον, εἰ τὰ πρῶτα μὴ δυνατὸς ἔσται διώσασθαι μηδ’ ἀποφυγεῖν ἐγκλήματα; πρῶτον οὖν ὥσπερ ἀφ’ ἑστίας ἀρχόμενοι πατρῴας τῆς πρὸς τὸ θεῖον εὐλαβείας τῶν ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ φιλοσόφων τὸ μὲν ὡς εἰδότες τι περὶ τούτων λέγειν ἀφοσιωσόμεθα. πλέον γάρ ἐστι τοῦ περὶ μουσικῶν ἀμούσους καὶ πολεμικῶν ἀστρατεύτους διαλέγεσθαι τὸ τὰ θεῖα καὶ τὰ δαιμόνια πράγματα διασκοπεῖν ἀνθρώπους ὄντας, οἷον ἀτέχνους [f] τεχνιτῶν διάνοιαν ἀπὸ δόξης καὶ ὑπονοίας κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς μετιόντας. οὐ γὰρ ἰατροῦ μὲν ἰδιώτην ὄντα συμβαλεῖν λογισμόν, ὡς πρότερον οὐκ ἔτεμεν ἀλλ’ ὕστερον οὐδ’ ἐχθὲς ἔκαυσεν ἀλλὰ σήμερον, ἔργον ἐστί, περὶ θεῶν δὲ θνητὸν ῥᾴδιον ἢ βέβαιον εἰπεῖν ἄλλο πλὴν ὅτι τὸν καιρὸν [550] [a] εἰδὼς ἄριστα τῆς περὶ τὴν κακίαν ἰατρείας ὡς φάρμακον ἑκάστῳ προσφέρει τὴν κόλασιν, οὔτε μεγέθους μέτρον κοινὸν οὔτε χρόνον ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πάντων ἔχουσαν. ὅτι γὰρ ἡ περὶ ψυχὴν ἰατρεία, δίκη δὲ καὶ δικαιοσύνη προσαγορευομένη, πασῶν ἐστι τεχνῶν μεγίστη, πρὸς μυρίοις ἑτέροις καὶ Πίνδαρος ἐμαρτύρησεν (fr. 57) ‘ἀριστοτέχναν’ ἀνακαλούμενος τὸν ἄρχοντα καὶ κύριον ἁπάντων θεόν, ὡς δὴ δίκης ὄντα δημιουργόν, ᾗ προσήκει τὸ πότε καὶ πῶς καὶ μέχρι πόσου κολαστέον ἕκαστον τῶν πονηρῶν ὁρίζειν. καὶ ταύτης φησὶ τῆς τέχνης ὁ Πλάτων (Legg. 624a Min. 319d) υἱὸν ὄντα τοῦ Διὸς γεγονέναι τὸν Μίνω μαθητήν, ὡς οὐ δυνατὸν ἐν τοῖς δικαίοις κατορθοῦν [b] οὐδ’ αἰσθάνεσθαι τοῦ κατορθοῦντος τὸν μὴ μαθόντα μηδὲ κτησάμενον τὴν ἐπιστήμην. οὐδὲ γὰρ οὓς ἄνθρωποι νόμους τίθενται τὸ εὔλογον ἁπλῶς ἔχουσι καὶ πάντοτε φαινόμενον, ἀλλ’ ἔνια καὶ δοκεῖ κομιδῇ γελοῖα τῶν προσταγμάτων. οἷον ἐν Λακεδαίμονι κηρύττουσιν οἱ ἔφοροι παριόντες εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν μὴ τρέφειν μύστακα καὶ πείθεσθαι τοῖς νόμοις, ὡς μὴ χαλεποὶ ὦσιν αὐτοῖς· Ῥωμαῖοι δέ, οὓς ἂν εἰς ἐλευθερίαν ἀφαιρῶνται, κάρφος αὐτῶν λεπτὸν ἐπιβάλλουσι τοῖς σώμασιν· ὅταν δὲ διαθήκας γράφωσιν, ἑτέρους μὲν ἀπολείπουσι κληρονόμους ἑτέροις δὲ πωλοῦσι τὰς οὐσίας· ὃ δοκεῖ παράλογον εἶναι. παραλογώτατον δὲ [c] τὸ τοῦ Σόλωνος, ἄτιμον εἶναι τὸν ἐν στάσει πόλεως μηδετέρᾳ μερίδι προσθέμενον μηδὲ συστασιάσαντα. καὶ ὅλως πολλὰς ἄν τις ἐξείποι νόμων ἀτοπίας μήτε τὸν λόγον ἔχων τοῦ νομοθέτου μήτε τὴν αἰτίαν συνιεὶς ἑκάστου τῶν γραφομένων. τί δὴ θαυμαστόν, εἰ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων οὕτως ἡμῖν ὄντων δυσθεωρήτων οὐκ εὔπορόν ἐστι τὸ περὶ τῶν θεῶν εἰπεῖν, ᾧτινι λόγῳ τοὺς μὲν ὕστερον τοὺς δὲ πρότερον τῶν ἁμαρτανόντων κολάζουσιν;’

‘Ταῦτα δ’ οὐκ ἀποδράσεως πρόφασίς ἐστιν ἀλλὰ συγγνώμης αἴτησις, ὅπως ὁ λόγος, οἷον εἰς λιμένα καὶ καταφυγὴν ἀποβλέπων, εὐθαρσέστερον ἐξαναφέρῃ τῷ πιθανῷ πρὸς τὴν ἀπορίαν. ἀλλὰ σκοπεῖτε πρῶτον, ὅτι κατὰ Πλάτωνα [d] πάντων καλῶν ὁ θεὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐν μέσῳ παράδειγμα θέμενος τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην ἀρετήν, ἐξομοίωσιν οὖσαν ἁμωσγέπως πρὸς αὑτόν, ἐνδίδωσι τοῖς ἕπεσθαι θεῷ δυναμένοις. καὶ γὰρ ἡ πάντων φύσις ἄτακτος οὖσα ταύτην ἔσχε τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ μεταβαλεῖν καὶ γενέσθαι κόσμος, ὁμοιότητι καὶ μεθέξει τινὶ τῆς περὶ τὸ θεῖον ἰδέας καὶ ἀρετῆς. καὶ τὴν ὄψιν αὐτὸς οὗτος ἁνὴρ ἀνάψαι φησὶ τὴν φύσιν ἐν ἡμῖν, ὅπως ὑπὸ θέας τῶν ἐν οὐρανῷ φερομένων καὶ θαύματος ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ ἀγαπᾶν ἐθιζομένη τὸ εὔσχημον ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ τεταγμένον ἀπεχθάνηται τοῖς ἀναρμόστοις [e] καὶ πλανητοῖς πάθεσι καὶ φεύγῃ τὸ εἰκῆ καὶ ὡς ἔτυχεν, ὡς κακίας καὶ πλημμελείας ἁπάσης γένεσιν. οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ὅ τι μεῖζον ἄνθρωπος ἀπολαύειν θεοῦ πέφυκεν ἢ τὸ μιμήσει καὶ διώξει τῶν ἐν ἐκείνῳ καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν εἰς ἀρετὴν καθίστασθαι. διὸ καὶ τοῖς πονηροῖς ἐν χρόνῳ καὶ σχολαίως τὴν δίκην ἐπιτίθησιν, οὐκ αὐτός τινα τοῦ ταχὺ κολάζειν ἁμαρτίαν δεδιὼς ἢ μετάνοιαν, ἀλλ’ ἡμῶν τὸ περὶ τὰς τιμωρίας θηριῶδες καὶ λάβρον ἀφαιρῶν καὶ διδάσκων μὴ σὺν ὀργῇ μηδ’ ὅτε μάλιστα φλέγεται καὶ σφαδᾴζει ‘πηδῶν ὁ θυμὸς τῶν φρενῶν ἀνωτέρω’ (Tr. adesp. 390), καθάπερ δίψαν ἢ πεῖναν ἀποπιμπλάντας ἐπιπηδᾶν τοῖς [f] λελυπηκόσιν, ἀλλὰ μιμουμένους τὴν ἐκείνου πραότητα καὶ τὴν μέλλησιν ἐν τάξει καὶ μετ’ ἐμμελείας, τὸν ἥκιστα μετανοίᾳ προσοισόμενον χρόνον ἔχοντας σύμβουλον, ἅπτεσθαι τῆς δίκης. ὕδατι γὰρ τεταραγμένῳ προσπεσόντα χρῆσθαι δι’ ἀκρασίαν ἧττόν ἐστι κακόν, ὡς Σωκράτης [551] [a] ἔλεγεν, ἢ θολερὸν ὄντα καὶ διάπλεω τὸν λογισμὸν ὀργῆς καὶ μανίας, πρὶν ἢ καταστῆναι καὶ γενέσθαι καθαρόν, ἐμφορεῖσθαι τιμωρίας συγγενοῦς καὶ ὁμοφύλου σώματος. οὐ γὰρ ‘ἐγγυτάτω τὸ ἀμύνασθαι τῷ παθεῖν’, ὡς Θουκυδίδης ἔλεγεν (III 38, 1), ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀπωτάτω κείμενον ἀπολαμβάνει τὸ προσῆκον. ὡς γὰρ ὁ θυμὸς κατὰ τὸν Μελάνθιον (Tr. fr. p. 760) ‘τὰ δεινὰ πράττει τὰς φρένας μετοικίσας’, οὕτω καὶ ὁ λογισμὸς τὰ δίκαια πράττει καὶ μέτρια, τὴν ὀργὴν καὶ τὸν θυμὸν ἐκποδὼν θέμενος. ὅθεν ἡμεροῦνται καὶ τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις παραδείγμασιν, ἀκούοντες ὡς Πλάτων τε τὴν βακτηρίαν ἀνατεινάμενος τῷ παιδὶ [b] πολὺν ἔστη χρόνον, ὡς αὐτὸς ἔφη, τὸν θυμὸν κολάζων, καὶ Ἀρχύτας οἰκετῶν τινα πλημμέλειαν ἐν ἀγρῷ καὶ ἀταξίαν καταμαθών, εἶθ’ ἑαυτοῦ συναισθανόμενος ἐμπαθέστερον ἔχοντος καὶ τραχύτερον πρὸς αὐτοὺς οὐδὲν ἐποίησεν ἀλλ’ ἢ τοσοῦτον ἀπιών ‘εὐτυχεῖτ’’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι ὀργίζομαι ὑμῖν.’ εἴπερ οὖν ἀνδρῶν λόγοι μνημονευόμενοι καὶ πράξεις λεγόμεναι τὸ τραχὺ καὶ σφοδρὸν ἀπαρύτουσι τῆς ὀργῆς, πολὺ μᾶλλον εἰκὸς ἡμᾶς τὸν θεὸν ὁρῶντας, ᾧ δέος οὐδὲν οὐδὲ μετάνοια πράγματος οὐδενός, ὅμως ἐν τῷ μέλλοντι τὴν τιμωρίαν κατατιθέμενον καὶ περιμένοντα [c] τὸν χρόνον εὐλαβεῖς περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα γίνεσθαι καὶ θεῖον ἡγεῖσθαι μόριον ἀρετῆς τὴν πραότητα καὶ τὴν μεγαλοπάθειαν, ἣν ὁ θεὸς ἐνδείκνυται τῷ μὲν κολάζειν ὀλίγους ἐπανορθοῦσαν, τῷ δὲ βραδέως πολλοὺς ὠφελοῦσαν καὶ νουθετοῦσαν.’

‘Δεύτερον τοίνυν τοῦτο διανοηθῶμεν, ὡς αἱ μὲν δικαιώσεις αἱ παρ’ ἀνθρώπων μόνον ἔχουσαι τὸ ἀντιλυποῦν [καὶ] ἐν τῷ κακῶς τὸν δεδρακότα παθεῖν ἵστανται, περαιτέρω δ’ οὐκ ἐξικνοῦνται, διὸ τοῖς ἡμαρτηκόσι κυνὸς δίκην ἐφυλακτοῦσαι κατακολουθοῦσι καὶ τὰς πράξεις ἐκ ποδὸς ἐπιδιώκουσι· τὸν θεὸν δ’ εἰκός, ἧς ἂν ἐφάπτηται τῇ δίκῃ ψυχῆς νοσούσης, τά τε πάθη διορᾶν, εἴ πή τι καμπτόμενα [d] πρὸς μετάνοιαν ἐνδίδωσι, καὶ χρόνον γε, οἷς οὐκ ἄκρατος οὐδ’ ἄτρεπτος ἡ κακία πέφυκε, προσορίζειν. ἅτε γὰρ εἰδώς, ὅσην μοῖραν ἀρετῆς ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ φερόμεναι πρὸς γένεσιν αἱ ψυχαὶ βαδίζουσι, καὶ τὸ γενναῖον ὡς ἰσχυρὸν αὐταῖς καὶ οὐκ ἐξίτηλον ἐμπέφυκεν, ἐξανθεῖ δὲ τὴν κακίαν παρὰ φύσιν ὑπὸ τροφῆς καὶ ὁμιλίας φαύλης φθειρόμενον, εἶτα θεραπευθὲν ἐνίοις καλῶς ἀπολαμβάνει τὴν προσήκουσαν ἕξιν, οὐ πᾶσι κατεπείγει τὴν τιμωρίαν ὁμοίως, ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν ἀνήκεστον εὐθὺς ἐξεῖλε τοῦ βίου καὶ ἀπέκοψεν, ὡς [e] ἑτέροις γε πάντως βλαβερὸν αὑτῷ τε βλαβερώτατον ἀεὶ συνεῖναι μετὰ πονηρίας, οἷς δ’ ὑπ’ ἀγνοίας τοῦ καλοῦ μᾶλλον ἢ προαιρέσει τοῦ αἰσχροῦ τὸ ἁμαρτητικὸν εἰκὸς ἐγγεγονέναι, δίδωσι μεταβαλέσθαι χρόνον, ἐὰν δ’ ἐπιμένωσι, καὶ τούτοις ἀπέδωκε τὴν δίκην· οὐ γάρ που δέδιε, μὴ διαφύγωσι. σκόπει δ’ ὅσαι μεταβολαὶ γεγόνασιν εἰς ἦθος ἀνδρῶν καὶ βίον· ᾗ καὶ τρόπος ὠνομάσθη τὸ μεταβάλλον αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἦθος, ὡς πλεῖστον [αὐτοῦ] ἐνδύεται τὸ ἔθος καὶ κρατεῖ μάλιστα καθαπτόμενον. οἶμαι μὲν οὖν καὶ τὸν Κέκροπα διφυᾶ προσαγορεῦσαι τοὺς παλαιούς, οὐχ ὡς ἔνιοι λέγουσιν ἐκ χρηστοῦ βασιλέως ἄγριον καὶ δρακοντώδη [f] γενόμενον τύραννον, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον ἐν ἀρχῇ σκολιὸν ὄντα καὶ φοβερόν, εἶθ’ ὕστερον ἄρξαντα πράως καὶ φιλανθρώπως. εἰ δὲ τοῦτ’ ἄδηλον, ἀλλὰ Γέλωνά γ’ ἴσμεν καὶ Ἱέρωνα τοὺς Σικελιώτας καὶ Πεισίστρατον τὸν Ἱπποκράτους, ὅτι πονηρίᾳ κτησάμενοι τυραννίδας ἐχρήσαντο [552] [a] πρὸς ἀρετὴν αὐταῖς καὶ παρανόμως ἐπὶ τὸ ἄρχειν ἐλθόντες ἐγένοντο μέτριοι καὶ δημωφελεῖς ἄρχοντες, οἱ μὲν εὐνομίαν τε πολλὴν καὶ γῆς ἐπιμέλειαν παρασχόντες αὐτούς τε σώφρονας τοὺς πολίτας καὶ φιλεργοὺς ἐκ πολυτελῶν καὶ λάλων κατασκευάσαντες, Γέλων δὲ καὶ προπολεμήσας ἄριστα καὶ κρατήσας μάχῃ μεγάλῃ Καρχηδονίων οὐ πρότερον εἰρήνην ἐποιήσατο πρὸς αὐτοὺς δεομένους ἢ καὶ τοῦτο ταῖς συνθήκαις περιλαβεῖν, ὅτι παύσονται τὰ τέκνα τῷ Κρόνῳ καταθύοντες. ἐν δὲ Μεγάλῃ πόλει Λυδιάδας ἦν τύραννος, εἶτ’ ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ τυραννεῖν μεταβαλόμενος [b] καὶ δυσχεράνας τὴν ἀδικίαν ἀπέδωκε μὲν τοὺς νόμους τοῖς πολίταις, μαχόμενος δὲ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἐπιφανῶς ἔπεσεν. εἰ δέ τις ἢ τύραννον ἀπέκτεινε Μιλτιάδην ἐν Χερρονήσῳ πρότερον ἢ Κίμωνα συνόντα τῇ ἀδελφῇ διώξας εἷλεν ἢ Θεμιστοκλέους, ἐφ’ οἷς ἀσελγαίνων ἐκώμαζε καὶ ὕβριζε δι’ ἀγορᾶς, ἀφείλετο τὴν πόλιν ὡς ὕστερον Ἀλκιβιάδου γραψάμενος, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν ἀπωλώλεσαν ἡμῖν οἱ Μαραθῶνες οἱ Εὐρυμέδοντες τὸ καλὸν Ἀρτεμίσιον,

‘ὅθι παῖδες Ἀθηναίων ἐβάλοντο φαεννὰν

κρηπῖδ’ ἐλευθερίας’ (Pind. fr. 77);

οὐδὲν γὰρ αἱ μεγάλαι φύσεις μικρὸν ἐκφέρουσιν οὐδ’ ἀργεῖ [c] δι’ ὀξύτητα τὸ σφοδρὸν ἐν αὐταῖς καὶ δραστήριον, ἀλλ’ ἐν σάλῳ διαφέρονται, πρὶν εἰς τὸ μόνιμον καὶ καθεστηκὸς ἦθος ἐλθεῖν. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ γεωργίας ἄπειρος οὐκ ἂν ἀσπάσαιτο χώραν ἰδὼν λόχμης ἔμπλεω δασείας καὶ φυτῶν ἀγρίων καὶ θηρία πολλὰ καὶ ῥεύματα καὶ πολὺν ἔχουσαν πηλόν, ἀλλὰ τῷ μεμαθηκότι διαισθάνεσθαι καὶ κρίνειν αὐτὰ ταῦτα τὴν ἰσχὺν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ὑποδείκνυσι καὶ τὴν μαλακότητα τῆς γῆς, οὕτως ἄτοπα πολλὰ καὶ φαῦλα προεξανθοῦσιν αἱ μεγάλαι φύσεις, ὧν ἡμεῖς μὲν εὐθὺς τὸ τραχὺ καὶ νύττον οὐ φέροντες ἀποκόπτειν οἰόμεθα δεῖν καὶ κολούειν, ὁ δὲ βελτίων κριτὴς καὶ ἀπὸ τούτων τὸ [d] χρηστὸν ἐνορῶν καὶ γενναῖον περιμένει λόγου καὶ ἀρετῆς συνεργὸν ἡλικίαν καὶ ὥραν, ᾗ τὸν οἰκεῖον ἡ φύσις καρπὸν ἀποδίδωσι.’

‘Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ταύτῃ· τὸν δ’ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ νόμον ἆρ’ οὐκ εἰκότως ὑμῖν ἀπογράψασθαι δοκοῦσιν ἔνιοι τῶν Ἑλλήνων, ὃς κελεύει τὴν ἔγκυον, ἂν ἁλῷ θανάτου, μέχρι τέκῃ, φυλάττειν;’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ ἔφασαν. εἶπον οὖν ἐγώ ‘εἰ δὲ παιδία μὴ κύοι τις, ἀλλὰ πρᾶξιν ἢ βουλὴν ἀπόρρητον εἰς φῶς ἡλίου δυνατὸς εἴη προαγαγεῖν χρόνῳ καὶ ἀναδεῖξαι κακόν τι μηνύσας λανθάνον ἢ σωτηρίου γνώμης γενόμενος σύμβουλος ἢ χρείας εὑρετὴς ἀναγκαίας, οὐκ ἀμείνων [e] ὁ περιμείνας τῆς τιμωρίας τὸ χρήσιμον τοῦ προανελόντος; ἐμοὶ μὲν γάρ’ ἔφην ‘δοκεῖ’. ‘καὶ ἡμῖν’ ὁ Πατροκλέας εἶπεν. ‘ὀρθῶς’ ἔφην· ‘σκόπει γάρ, εἰ Διονύσιος ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς τυραννίδος ἔδωκε δίκην, ὡς οὐδεὶς ἂν Ἑλλήνων ᾤκει Σικελίαν ἀνάστατον ὑπὸ Καρχηδονίων γενομένην, ὥσπερ οὐδ’ Ἀπολλωνίαν οὐδ’ Ἀνακτόριον οὐδὲ τὴν Λευκαδίων χερρόνησον ᾤκουν ἂν Ἕλληνες, εἰ Περίανδρος ἐκολάσθη μὴ μετὰ πολὺν χρόνον. οἶμαι δὲ καὶ Κασάνδρῳ γενέσθαι τῆς δίκης ἀναβολήν, ὅπως αἱ Θῆβαι συνοικῶνται πάλιν. τῶν δὲ τουτὶ τὸ ἱερὸν συγκαταλαβόντων ξένων οἱ [f] πολλοὶ Τιμολέοντι συνδιαβάντες εἰς Σικελίαν, ὅτε Καρχηδονίους ἐνίκησαν καὶ κατέλυσαν τὰς τυραννίδας, ἐξώλοντο κακοὶ κακῶς ὕστερον. ἐνίοις γὰρ ἀμέλει καὶ κολασταῖς ἑτέρων πονηρῶν οἷον δημοκοίνοις ἀπεχρήσατο τὸ δαιμόνιον, εἶτ’ ἐπέτριψε, καθάπερ οἶμαι τοὺς πλείστους τυράννους. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὑαίνης χολὴ καὶ φώκης πυτία, θηρίων [553] [a] τἄλλα μιαρῶν, ἔχουσί τι πρὸς τὰς νόσους χρήσιμον, οὕτως ἐνίοις δηγμοῦ δεομένοις καὶ κολάσεως ἐμβαλὼν ὁ θεὸς πικρίαν τινὰ τυράννου δυσμείλικτον καὶ τραχύτητα χαλεπὴν ἄρχοντος οὐ πρότερον ἐξεῖλε τὸ λυποῦν καὶ ταράττον ἢ τὸ νοσοῦν ἀπαλλάξαι καὶ καθᾶραι. τοιοῦτο καὶ Φάλαρις ἦν Ἀκραγαντίνοις φάρμακον καὶ Ῥωμαίοις Μάριος. Σικυωνίοις δὲ καὶ διαρρήδην ὁ θεὸς προεῖπε μαστιγονόμων δεῖσθαι τὴν πόλιν, ὅτε Τελητίαν παῖδα στεφανούμενον ἐν Πυθίοις ἀφαιρούμενοι Κλεωναίων ὡς ἴδιον πολίτην διέσπασαν. ἀλλὰ Σικυωνίοις μὲν Ὀρθαγόρας γενόμενος τύραννος [b] καὶ μετ’ ἐκεῖνον οἱ περὶ Μύρωνα καὶ Κλεισθένη τὴν ἀκολασίαν ἔπαυσαν· Κλεωναῖοι δὲ τῆς αὐτῆς οὐ τυχόντες ἰατρείας εἰς τὸ μηδὲν ἥκουσι. καὶ Ὁμήρου δέ που λέγοντος ἀκούετε (Ο 641)

‘τοῦ γένετ’ ἐκ πατρὸς πολὺ χείρονος υἱὸς ἀμείνων

παντοίην ἀρετήν·’

καίτοι λαμπρὸν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἐκπρεπὲς ἔργον ἐκεῖνος ὁ τοῦ Κοπρέως (Ο 369) παρέσχεν· ἀλλὰ τὸ Σισύφου καὶ τὸ Αὐτολύκου καὶ τὸ Φλεγύου γένος ἤνθησεν ἐν δόξαις καὶ ἀρεταῖς μεγάλων βασιλέων. γέγονε δὲ καὶ Περικλῆς Ἀθήνησιν ἐναγοῦς οἰκίας· καὶ Πομπήιος Μάγνος ἐν Ῥώμῃ Στράβωνος ἦν υἱός, οὗ τὸν νεκρὸν ὁ Ῥωμαίων [c] δῆμος ὑπὸ μίσους ἐξέβαλε καὶ κατεπάτησεν. τί οὖν ἄτοπον, εἰ, καθάπερ γεωργὸς οὐκ ἐκκόπτει τὴν ἄκανθαν ἂν μὴ λάβῃ τὸν ἀσπάραγον οὐδ’ οἱ Λίβυες τὸ φρύγανον ἐπικάουσι πρότερον ἢ τὸ λήδανον ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ συναγαγεῖν, οὕτως ὁ θεὸς ἐνδόξου καὶ βασιλικοῦ γένους ῥίζαν πονηρὰν καὶ τραχεῖαν οὐκ ἀναιρεῖ πρότερον ἢ φῦναι τὸν προσήκοντα καρπὸν ἀπ’ αὐτῆς; μυρίας γὰρ Ἰφίτου βοῦς καὶ ἵππους ἀπολέσθαι κρεῖττον ἦν Φωκεῦσι καὶ πλείονα χρυσὸν ἐκ Δελφῶν οἴχεσθαι καὶ ἄργυρον ἢ μήτ’ Ὀδυσσέα μήτ’ Ἀσκληπιὸν φῦναι μήτε τοὺς ἄλλους ἐκ κακῶν καὶ πονηρῶν ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς καὶ μεγαλωφελεῖς γενομένους.’

[d] ‘Τὸ δ’ ἐν καιρῷ καὶ τρόπῳ τῷ προσήκοντι γενέσθαι τὰς τιμωρίας οὐ βέλτιον εἶναι τοῦ ταχὺ καὶ παραχρῆμα νομίζεις; οἷόν ἐστι τὸ κατὰ Κάλλιππον, ᾧ ξιφιδίῳ φίλος εἶναι δοκῶν ἀπέκτεινε Δίωνα, τούτῳ πάλιν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων ἀποθανεῖν, καὶ τὸ Μίτυος τοῦ Ἀργείου κατὰ στάσιν ἀναιρεθέντος ἀνδριάντα χαλκοῦν ἐν ἀγορᾷ θέας οὔσης ἐμπεσεῖν τῷ κτείναντι τὸν Μίτυν καὶ ἀνελεῖν. καὶ τὰ περὶ τὸν Βέσσον τὸν Παίονα καὶ Ἀρίστωνα τὸν Οἰταῖον ξεναγὸν οἶσθα δήπουθεν, ὦ Πατροκλέα.’ ‘μὰ Δί’’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλὰ δέομαι μαθεῖν.’ ‘ὁ μὲν Ἀρίστων’ ἔφην ‘τὸν Ἐριφύλης κόσμον ἐνταῦθα κείμενον καθελὼν τῶν τυράννων διδόντων [e] ἐκόμισε τῇ γυναικὶ δῶρον· ὁ δ’ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὴν μητέρα διοργισθεὶς ἔκ τινος αἰτίας ὑφῆψε τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ πάντας ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ κατέκαυσεν. ὁ δὲ Βέσσος, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἀπεκτονὼς τὸν πατέρα τὸν ἑαυτοῦ πολὺν χρόνον ἐλάνθανεν, ὕστερον δὲ πρὸς ξένους ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἐλθὼν χελιδόνων τινὰ νεοσσιὰν τῇ λόγχῃ νύξας κατέβαλε καὶ τοὺς νεοσσοὺς διέφθειρε· λεγόντων δ’ οἷον εἰκὸς τῶν παρόντων ‘ἄνθρωπε, τί παθὼν ἔργον οὕτως ἀλλόκοτον ἔπραξας;’ ‘οὐ γάρ’ ἔφη ‘μου πάλαι καταμαρτυροῦσιν αὗται ψευδῶς καὶ καταβοῶσιν ὡς ἀπεκτονότος τὸν πατέρα;’ θαυμάσαντες δ’ οἱ παρόντες τὸν λόγον ἐμήνυσαν τῷ βασιλεῖ, καὶ τοῦ [f] πράγματος ἐξελεγχθέντος ἔτισεν ὁ Βέσσος τὴν δίκην.’

‘Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μέν’ ἔφην ‘ἡμεῖς λέγομεν, ὥσπερ ἠξίωται, γίγνεσθαί τινα τῆς τιμωρίας ἀναβολὴν ὑποθέμενοι τοῖς πονηροῖς· τὰ λοιπὰ δ’ Ἡσιόδου χρὴ νομίζειν ἀκροᾶσθαι λέγοντος οὐχ ᾗ Πλάτων (Legg. 728c) ‘ἀκόλουθον εἶναι τιμωρίαν ἀδικίας πάθην’, [554] [a] ἀλλ’ ἡλικιῶτιν ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς ὁμόθεν χώρας καὶ ῥίζης συνυποφυομένην· ‘ἡ γὰρ κακή’ φησί (OD. 266) ‘βουλὴ τῷ βουλεύσαντι κακίστη·’ καί

‘ὃς δ’ ἄλλῳ κακὰ τεύχει, ἑῷ κακὸν ἥπατι τεύχει.’

ἡ μὲν γὰρ κανθαρὶς ἐν αὑτῇ λέγεται τὸ βοηθητικὸν ἔκ τινος ἀντιπαθείας ἔχειν συγκεκραμένον, ἡ δὲ πονηρία συγγεννῶσα τὸ λυποῦν ἑαυτῇ καὶ κολάζον οὐχ ὕστερον ἀλλ’ ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ὕβρει τὴν δίκην τοῦ ἀδικεῖν δίδωσι· καὶ τῷ μὲν σώματι τῶν κολαζομένων ἕκαστος κακούργων ἐκφέρει τὸν αὑτοῦ σταυρόν, ἡ δὲ κακία τῶν κολαστηρίων [b] ἐφ’ ἑαυτὴν ἕκαστον ἐξ αὑτῆς τεκταίνεται, δεινή τις οὖσα βίου δημιουργὸς οἰκτροῦ καὶ σὺν αἰσχύνῃ φόβους τε πολλοὺς καὶ μεταμελείας καὶ πάθη χαλεπὰ καὶ ταραχὰς ἀπαύστους ἔχοντος. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἔνιοι διαφέρουσι παιδαρίων, ἃ τοὺς κακούργους ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις θεώμενα πολλάκις ἐν χιτῶσι διαχρύσοις καὶ χλαμυδίοις ἁλουργοῖς ἐστεφανωμένους καὶ πυρριχίζοντας ἄγαται καὶ τέθηπεν ὡς μακαρίους, ἄχρι οὗ κεντούμενοι καὶ μαστιγούμενοι καὶ πῦρ ἀνιέντες ἐκ τῆς ἀνθινῆς ἐκείνης καὶ πολυτελοῦς ἐσθῆτος ὀφθῶσιν. οἱ γὰρ πολλοὶ τῶν πονηρῶν οἰκίας περιβεβλημένοι μεγάλας [c] καὶ ἀρχὰς καὶ δυνάμεις περιφανεῖς λανθάνουσιν ὅτι κολάζονται, πρὶν ἂν φθῶσιν ἀποσφαγέντες ἢ κατακρημνισθέντες· ἅπερ ἄν τις οὐ τιμωρίαν εἴποι πέρας δὲ τιμωρίας καὶ συντέλειαν. ὥσπερ γὰρ Ἡρόδικον τὸν Σηλυμβριανὸν εἰς φθίσιν, ἀνήκεστον πάθος, ἐμπεσόντα καὶ μίξαντα πρῶτον ἀνθρώπων γυμναστικὴν ἰατρικῇ φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων (Resp. 406a b) μακρὸν ποιῆσαι τὸν θάνατον αὑτῷ καὶ τοῖς ὁμοίως νοσοῦσιν, οὕτως καὶ τῶν πονηρῶν ὅσοι τὴν παραυτίκα πληγὴν ἐκφυγεῖν ἔδοξαν, οὐ μετὰ πλείονα χρόνον ἀλλ’ ἐν πλείονι χρόνῳ τιμωρίαν μακροτέραν οὐ βραδυτέραν τίνουσιν, οὐδὲ γηράσαντες ἐκολάσθησαν ἀλλ’ [d] ἐγήρασαν κολαζόμενοι. λέγω δὲ πρὸς ἡμᾶς τὸν πολὺν χρόνον· ἐπεὶ τοῖς γε θεοῖς πᾶν ἀνθρωπίνου βίου διάστημα τὸ μηδέν ἐστι, καὶ τὸ νῦν ἀλλὰ μὴ πρὸ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν οἷον τὸ δείλης ἀλλὰ μὴ πρωὶ στρεβλοῦν ἢ κρεμαννύναι τὸν πονηρόν, ἄλλως τε καὶ φρουρούμενον ἐν τῷ βίῳ καθάπερ εἱρκτῇ μηδεμίαν μετανάστασιν ἐχούσῃ μηδὲ διάφευξιν, εὐωχίας δὲ πολλὰς διὰ μέσου καὶ πραγματείας καὶ δόσεις καὶ χάριτας ἀμέλει καὶ παιδιάς, ὥσπερ ἐν δεσμωτηρίῳ κυβευόντων ἢ πεττευόντων ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς τοῦ σχοινίου κρεμαμένου. καίτοι τί κωλύει μηδὲ τοὺς [e] ἐπὶ θανάτῳ καθειργμένους φάναι κολάζεσθαι, μέχρι οὗ τις ἀποκόψῃ τὸν τράχηλον, μηδὲ τὸν πεπωκότα τὸ κώνειον εἶτα περιιόντα καὶ προσμένοντα βάρος ἐγγενέσθαι τοῖς σκέλεσιν αὑτοῦ, πρὶν ἢ τὴν συνάπτουσαν ἀναισθησίᾳ σβέσιν καὶ πῆξιν καταλαβεῖν, εἰ τὸν ἔσχατον τῆς τιμωρίας καιρὸν ἡγούμεθα τιμωρίαν τὰ δ’ ἐν μέσῳ παθήματα καὶ φόβους καὶ προσδοκίας καὶ μεταμελείας, οἷς ἀδικήσας ἕκαστος ἐνέχεται τῶν πονηρῶν, παραλείπομεν, ὥσπερ ἰχθὺν καταπεπωκότα τὸ ἄγκιστρον οὐ φάσκοντες ἑαλωκέναι, πρὶν ὑπὸ τῶν μαγείρων ὀπτώμενον ἴδωμεν ἢ κατατεμνόμενον; [f] ἔχεται γὰρ ἕκαστος ἀδικήσας τῇ δίκῃ καὶ τὸ γλυκὺ τῆς ἀδικίας ὥσπερ δέλεαρ εὐθὺς ἐξεδήδοκε, τὸ δὲ συνειδὸς ἐγκείμενον ἔχων καὶ ἀποτινάσσων (Tr. adesp. 391)

‘θύννος βολαῖος πέλαγος ὣς διαστροβεῖ.’

ἡ γὰρ ἰταμότης ἐκείνη καὶ τὸ θρασὺ τῆς κακίας ἄχρι τῶν [555] [a] ἀδικημάτων ἰσχυρόν ἐστι καὶ πρόχειρον, εἶτα τοῦ πάθους ὥσπερ πνεύματος ὑπολείποντος ἀσθενὲς καὶ ταπεινὸν ὑποπίπτει τοῖς φόβοις καὶ ταῖς δεισιδαιμονίαις· ὥστε πρὸς τὰ γιγνόμενα καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἀποπλάττεσθαι τὸ τῆς Κλυταιμνήστρας ἐνύπνιον τὸν Στησίχορον, οὑτωσί πως λέγοντα (fr. 42 B)

‘τᾷ δὲ δράκων ἐδόκησεν μολεῖν κάρα βεβροτωμένος ἄκρον, ἐκ δ’ ἄρα τοῦ βασιλεὺς Πλεισθενίδας ἐφάνη.’

καὶ γὰρ ὄψεις ἐνυπνίων καὶ φάσματα μεθημερινὰ καὶ χρησμοὶ καὶ καταιβασίαι, καὶ ὅ τι δόξαν ἔσχεν αἰτίᾳ θεοῦ περαίνεσθαι, χειμῶνας ἐπάγει καὶ φόβους τοῖς οὕτω διακειμένοις.

[b] οἷόν φασιν Ἀπολλόδωρόν ποτε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ὁρᾶν ἐκδερόμενον ἑαυτὸν ὑπὸ Σκυθῶν εἶτα καθεψόμενον, τὴν δὲ καρδίαν ἐκ τοῦ λέβητος ὑποφθεγγομένην καὶ λέγουσαν ‘ἐγώ σοι τούτων αἰτία’, καὶ πάλιν τὰς θυγατέρας διαπύρους καὶ φλεγομένας τοῖς σώμασι κύκλῳ περὶ αὐτὸν τρεχούσας, Ἵππαρχον δὲ τὸν Πεισιστράτου μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν τῆς τελευτῆς αἷμα προσβάλλουσαν αὐτῷ τὴν Ἀφροδίτην ἔκ τινος φιάλης πρὸς τὸ πρόσωπον. †οἱ δὲ Πτολεμαίου τοῦ Κεραυνοῦ φίλοι καλούμενον αὐτὸν ἑώρων ἐπὶ δίκην ὑπὸ Σελεύκου γυπῶν καὶ λύκων δικαζόντων [c] καὶ κρέα πολλὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις διανέμοντα. Παυσανίας δὲ Κλεονίκην ἐν Βυζαντίῳ παρθένον ἐλευθέραν ὕβρει μεταπεμψάμενος ὡς ἕξων διὰ νυκτός, εἶτα προσιοῦσαν ἔκ τινος ταραχῆς καὶ ὑποψίας ἀνελὼν ἑώρα πολλάκις ἐν τοῖς ὕπνοις λέγουσαν αὐτῷ

‘βαῖνε δίκης ἆσσον· μάλα τοι κακὸν ἀνδράσιν ὕβρις.’

οὐ παυομένου δὲ τοῦ φάσματος, ὡς ἔοικε, πλεύσας ἐπὶ τὸ ψυχοπομπεῖον εἰς Ἡράκλειαν ἱλασμοῖς τισι καὶ χοαῖς ἀνεκαλεῖτο τὴν ψυχὴν τῆς κόρης· ἐλθοῦσα δ’ εἰς ὄψιν εἶπεν ὅτι παύσεται τῶν κακῶν, ὅταν ἐν Λακεδαίμονι γένηται· γενόμενος δ’ εὐθὺς ἐτελεύτησεν. ὥστ’, εἰ μηδὲν ἔστι [d] τῇ ψυχῇ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ χάριτος πέρας ἁπάσης καὶ τιμωρίας ὁ θάνατος, μᾶλλον ἄν τις εἴποι τοῖς ταχὺ κολαζομένοις τῶν πονηρῶν καὶ ἀποθνῄσκουσι μαλακῶς καὶ ῥαθύμως χρῆσθαι τὸ δαιμόνιον.

Καὶ γὰρ εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο φαίη τις ἐν τῷ βίῳ καὶ τῷ χρόνῳ τὸν πονηρὸν πάσχειν κακόν, ἀλλ’ ἐξελεγχομένης που τῆς ἀδικίας, πράγματος ἀκάρπου καὶ ἀχαρίστου καὶ χρηστὸν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἄξιον σπουδῆς ἀναφέροντος ἐκ πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων ἀγώνων ἡ αἴσθησις αὐτῶν ἀνατρέπει τὴν ψυχήν. οἷον ἱστοροῦσι δήπου Λυσίμαχον ὑπὸ δίψης ἐκβιασθέντα καὶ παραδόντα τοῖς Γέταις τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὴν δύναμιν, ὡς ἔπιεν ὑποχείριος [e] γενόμενος, εἰπεῖν ‘φεῦ τῆς ἐμῆς κακίας, ὃς δι’ ἡδονὴν οὕτω βραχεῖαν ἐστέρημαι βασιλείας τηλικαύτης.’ καίτοι γε πρὸς φυσικὴν πάθους ἀνάγκην ἀντιβῆναι παγχάλεπόν ἐστιν· ὅταν δ’ ἄνθρωπος ἢ χρημάτων ἕνεκα πλεονεξίας ἢ φθόνῳ πολιτικῆς δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως ἢ δι’ ἡδονήν τινα συνουσίας ἄνομον ἔργον ἐργασάμενος καὶ δεινόν, εἶτα τοῦ πάθους ἀφιεὶς τὸ διψῶδες καὶ μανικὸν ἐν χρόνῳ καθορᾷ τὰ αἰσχρὰ καὶ φοβερὰ τῆς ἀδικίας [πάθη] παραμένοντα, χρήσιμον δὲ μηδὲν μηδ’ ἀναγκαῖον μηδ’ ὀνησιφόρον, ἆρ’ οὐκ εἰκὸς ἐμπίπτειν αὐτῷ πολλάκις λογισμόν, [f] ὡς ὑπὸ κενῆς δόξης ἢ δι’ ἡδονὴν ἀνελεύθερον καὶ ἀχάριστον ἀνατρέψας τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις [δικαίων] ἐμπέπληκεν αἰσχύνης καὶ ταραχῆς τὸν βίον; ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ Σιμωνίδης ἔλεγε παίζων τὴν τοῦ ἀργυρίου κιβωτὸν εὑρίσκειν ἀεὶ πλήρη τὴν δὲ τῶν χαρίτων κενήν, οὕτως οἱ πονηροὶ τὴν κακίαν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς διορῶντες ἀνθ’ ἡδονῆς μὲν εὐθὺς κενὴν χάριν ἐχούσης ἐλπίδος ἔρημον [556] [a] εὑρίσκουσι, φόβων δὲ καὶ λυπῶν καὶ μνήμης ἀτερποῦς καὶ πρὸς μὲν τὸ μέλλον ὑποψίας ἀπιστίας δὲ πρὸς τὸ παρὸν ἀεὶ γέμουσαν· ὥσπερ τῆς Ἰνοῦς ἀκούομεν ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις λεγούσης, ἐφ’ οἷς ἔδρασε μεταμελομένης,

‘φίλαι γυναῖκες, πῶς ἂν ἐξ ἀρχῆς δόμους

Ἀθάμαντος οἰκήσαιμι τῶν πεπραγμένων

δράσασα μηδέν;’ (Eur. fr. 399)

ταῦθ’ ‹εἰκὸς› ἑκάστου τῶν πονηρῶν τὴν ψυχὴν ἀναπολεῖν ἐν αὑτῇ καὶ διαλογίζεσθαι, πῶς ἂν ἐκβᾶσα τῆς μνήμης τῶν ἀδικημάτων καὶ τὸ συνειδὸς ἐξ ἑαυτῆς ἐκβαλοῦσα καὶ [b] καθαρὰ γενομένη βίον ἄλλον ἐξ ἀρχῆς βιώσειεν. οὐ γάρ ἐστι θαρραλέον οὐδ’ ἄτυφον οὐδὲ μόνιμον καὶ βέβαιον ἐν οἷς προαιρεῖται τὸ πονηρόν, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία σοφούς τινας εἶναι φήσομεν τοὺς ἀδικοῦντας· ἀλλ’ ὅπου φιλοπλουτία καὶ φιληδονία περιμανὴς καὶ φθόνος ἄκρατος ἐνοικίζεται μετὰ δυσμενείας ἢ κακοηθείας, ἐνταῦθα καὶ δεισιδαιμονίαν σκοπῶν ἀνευρήσεις ὑποκαθημένην καὶ μαλακίαν πρὸς πόνον καὶ δειλίαν πρὸς θάνατον καὶ μετάπτωσιν ὀξεῖαν ὁρμῶν καὶ χαυνότητα πρὸς δόξαν ὑπ’ ἀλαζονείας· καὶ τοὺς ψέγοντας φοβοῦνται καὶ τοὺς ἐπαινοῦντας δεδίασιν ὡς ἀδικουμένους τῇ ἀπάτῃ καὶ μάλιστα [c] τοῖς κακοῖς πολεμοῦντας, ὅτι τοὺς δοκοῦντας ἀγαθοὺς ἐπαινοῦσι προθύμως. τὸ γὰρ σκληρὸν ἐν κακίᾳ καθάπερ ἐν φαύλῳ σιδήρῳ σαθρόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ ἀντίτυπον εὔθραυστον. ὅθεν ἐν χρόνῳ πολλῷ μᾶλλον ὡς ἔχουσιν αὑτοὺς καταμανθάνοντες ἄχθονται καὶ δυσκολαίνουσι καὶ προβάλλονται τὸν ἑαυτῶν βίον. οὐ γὰρ δήπου παρακαταθήκην μὲν ἀποδοὺς καὶ γνώριμον ἐγγυησάμενος καὶ πατρίδι μετὰ δόξης καὶ φιλοτιμίας ἐπιδοὺς καὶ συνεισενεγκὼν ὁ φαῦλος εὐθύς ἐστιν ἐν μεταμελείᾳ καὶ τοῖς πεπραγμένοις ἀνιᾶται διὰ τὸ πάντῃ μεταπτωτὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ πλανώμενον τῆς γνώμης, καὶ κροτούμενοί τινες ἐν [d] τοῖς θεάτροις εὐθὺς στένουσιν ὑπονοστούσης τῆς φιλοδοξίας εἰς τὴν φιλαργυρίαν, οἱ δὲ καταθύοντες ἀνθρώπους ἐπὶ τυραννίσι καὶ συνωμοσίαις ὡς Ἀπολλόδωρος, καὶ χρήματα φίλων ἀποστεροῦντες ὡς Γλαῦκος ὁ Ἐπικύδους οὐ μετενόουν οὐδ’ ἐμίσουν ἑαυτοὺς οὐδ’ ἠνιῶντο τοῖς γεγενημένοις. ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν, εἰ θέμις ἐστὶν εἰπεῖν, οὔτε τινὸς θεῶν οὔτ’ ἀνθρώπων δεῖσθαι κολαστοῦ νομίζω τοὺς ἀνοσιουργοῦντας, ἀλλὰ τὸν βίον αὐτῶν ἐξαρκεῖν ὑπὸ τῆς κακίας διεφθαρμένον ὅλον καὶ συντεταραγμένον.’

‘Ἀλλὰ σκοπεῖτε τὸν λόγον’ ἔφην ‘μὴ τοῦ καιροῦ πορρωτέρω πρόεισι.’ καὶ ὁ Τίμων ‘τυχόν’ ἔφη ‘πρὸς τὸ [e] μέλλον καὶ τὸ λειπόμενον αὐτῷ μῆκος. ἤδη γὰρ ὥσπερ ἔφεδρον ἀνίστημι τὴν τελευταίαν ἀπορίαν, ἐπεὶ ταῖς πρώταις διηγώνισται μετρίως. ἃ γὰρ Εὐριπίδης (fr. 580) ἐγκαλεῖ καὶ παρρησιάζεται πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς ‘τὰ τῶν τεκόντων σφάλματ’ εἰς τοὺς ἐγγόνους’ τρέποντας, αἰτιᾶσθαι νόμιζε καὶ τοὺς σιωπῶντας ἡμῶν. εἴτε γὰρ οἱ δράσαντες αὐτοὶ δίκην ἔδοσαν, οὐθὲν ἔτι δεῖ κολάζειν τοὺς μὴ ἀδικήσαντας, ὅπου δὶς ἐπὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς οὐδὲ τοὺς δράσαντας δίκαιον· εἴτε ῥᾳθυμίᾳ καταπροέμενοι τὴν τιμωρίαν ἐν τοῖς πονηροῖς ὀψὲ παρὰ τῶν ἀναιτίων εἰσπράττουσιν, οὐκ εὖ τῷ ἀδίκως τὸ βραδέως ἀναλαμβάνουσιν.

[f] οἷον ἐνταῦθα δήπουθεν λέγεται ἐλθεῖν Αἴσωπον, ἔχοντα παρὰ Κροίσου χρυσίον ὅπως τε τῷ θεῷ θύσῃ μεγαλοπρεπῶς καὶ Δελφῶν ἑκάστῳ διανείμῃ μνᾶς τέσσαρας· ὀργῆς δέ τινος, ὡς ἔοικεν, αὐτῷ καὶ διαφορᾶς γενομένης πρὸς τοὺς αὐτόθι τὴν μὲν θυσίαν ἐποιήσατο, τὰ δὲ χρήματ’ ἀνέπεμψεν εἰς Σάρδεις, [557] [a] ὡς οὐκ ἀξίων ὄντων ὠφεληθῆναι τῶν ἀνθρώπων· οἱ δὲ συνθέντες αἰτίαν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἱεροσυλίας ἀπέκτειναν, ὤσαντες ἀπὸ τῆς πέτρας ἐκείνης ἣν Ὑάμπειαν καλοῦσιν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου λέγεται μηνῖσαν τὸ θεῖον αὐτοῖς ἀφορίαν τε γῆς ἐπαγαγεῖν καὶ νόσων ἀτόπων ἰδέαν πᾶσαν, ὥστε περιιόντας ἐν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς πανηγύρεσι κηρύσσειν καὶ καλεῖν ἀεὶ τὸν βουλόμενον ὑπὲρ Αἰσώπου δίκην λαβεῖν παρ’ αὐτῶν. τρίτῃ δὲ γενεᾷ Σάμιος Ἴδμων ἀφίκετο, γένει μὲν οὐδὲν Αἰσώπῳ προσήκων ἀπόγονος δὲ τῶν πριαμένων αὐτὸν ἐν Σάμῳ γεγονώς· καὶ τούτῳ τινὰς δίκας δόντες οἱ Δελφοὶ τῶν κακῶν ἀπηλλάγησαν.

[b] ἐξ ἐκείνου δέ φασι καὶ τὴν τιμωρίαν τῶν ἱεροσύλων ἐπὶ τὴν Αὐλίαν ἀπὸ τῆς Ὑαμπείας μετατεθῆναι. καὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον οὐδ’ οἱ πάνυ φιλοῦντες, ὧν ἐσμεν καὶ ἡμεῖς, ἐπαινοῦσι τὸ Βραγχιδῶν ἄστυ συγχέαντα καὶ διαφθείραντα πᾶσαν ἡλικίαν διὰ τὴν γενομένην τοῦ περὶ Μίλητον ἱεροῦ προδοσίαν ὑπὸ τῶν προπάππων αὐτῶν. Ἀγαθοκλῆς δ’ ὁ Συρακοσίων τύραννος καὶ σὺν γέλωτι χλευάζων Κερκυραίους ἐρωτῶντας διὰ τί πορθοίη τὴν νῆσον αὐτῶν ‘ὅτι νὴ Δί’’ εἶπεν ‘οἱ πατέρες ὑμῶν ὑπεδέξαντο τὸν Ὀδυσσέα’, καὶ τῶν Ἰθακησίων ὁμοίως ἐγκαλούντων [c] ὅτι πρόβατα λαμβάνουσιν αὐτῶν οἱ στρατιῶται ‘ὁ δ’ ὑμέτερος’ ἔφη ‘βασιλεὺς ἐλθὼν πρὸς ἡμᾶς καὶ τὸν ποιμένα προσεξετύφλωσεν.’ ἆρ’ οὖν οὐκ ἀτοπώτερος τούτων ὁ Ἀπόλλων, εἰ Φενεάτας ἀπόλλυσι τοὺς νῦν, ἐμφράξας τὸ βάραθρον καὶ κατακλύσας τὴν χώραν ἅπασαν αὐτῶν, ὅτι πρὸ χιλίων ἐτῶν, ὥς φασιν, ὁ Ἡρακλῆς ἀνασπάσας τὸν τρίποδα τὸν μαντικὸν εἰς Φενεὸν ἀπήνεγκε, Συβαρίταις δὲ φράζων ἀπόλυσιν τῶν κακῶν, ὅταν τρισὶν ὀλέθροις ἱλάσωνται τὸ μήνιμα τῆς Λευκαδίας Ἥρας; καὶ μὴν οὐ πολὺς χρόνος ἀφ’ οὗ Λοκροὶ πέμποντες εἰς Τροίαν πέπαυνται τὰς παρθένους,

[d] ‘αἳ καὶ ἀναμπέχονοι γυμνοῖς ποσὶν ἠύτε δοῦλαι

ἠοῖαι σαίρεσκον Ἀθηναίης περὶ βωμόν,

νόσφι κρηδέμνοιο, καὶ εἰ βαθὺ γῆρας ἱκάνοι,’

διὰ τὴν Αἴαντος ἀκολασίαν. ποῦ δὴ ταῦτα τὸ εὔλογον ἴσχει καὶ δίκαιον; οὐδὲ γὰρ Θρᾷκας ἐπαινοῦμεν, ὅτι στίζουσιν ἄχρι νῦν τιμωροῦντες Ὀρφεῖ τὰς αὑτῶν γυναῖκας, οὐδὲ τοὺς περὶ Ἠριδανὸν βαρβάρους μελανοφοροῦντας ἐπὶ πένθει τοῦ Φαέθοντος, ὥσπερ λέγουσιν· ἔτι δ’ ἂν οἶμαι γελοιότερον ἦν, εἰ τῶν τότ’ ἀνθρώπων, ὅτε διεφθάρη Φαέθων, παραμελησάντων οἱ πέντε γενεαῖς ἢ δέκα [e] τοῦ πάθους ὕστερον γεγονότες ἤρξαντο τὴν ἐσθῆτα μεταβάλλειν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ καὶ πενθεῖν. καίτοι τοῦτ’ ἀβελτερίαν μὲν ἔχει μόνον οὐδὲν δὲ δεινὸν οὐδ’ ἀνήκεστον· αἱ δὲ τῶν θεῶν ὀργαὶ τίνι λόγῳ παραχρῆμα δυόμεναι καθάπερ ἔνιοι τῶν ποταμῶν εἶθ’ ὕστερον ἐπ’ ἄλλους ἀναφερόμεναι πρὸς ἐσχάτας συμφορὰς τελευτῶσιν;’

Ὡς δὲ πρῶτον ἐπέσχε, δείσας ἐγὼ μὴ πάλιν ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς ἐπαγάγῃ πλείονας καὶ μείζονας ἀτοπίας, εὐθὺς ἠρόμην αὐτόν ‘εἶεν’ ἔφην, ‘ταῦτα γὰρ πάντα ἀληθινὰ ἡγῇ;’ κἀκεῖνος ‘εἰ δὲ μὴ πάντ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλ’ ἔνια, τὴν αὐτὴν ἀπορίαν ἔχειν οὐ νομίζεις τὸν λόγον;’ ‘ἴσως’ ἔφην ἐγώ, ‘‹ἀλλὰ› [f] καὶ τοῖς σφόδρα πυρέττουσιν, ἐάν θ’ ἓν ἱμάτιον ἐάν τε πολλὰ περιβεβλημένοι τυγχάνωσι, ταὐτὸ καῦμα καὶ παραπλήσιον, ὅμως δ’ εἰς παραμυθίαν ἀφελεῖν τὸ πλῆθος· εἰ δὲ μὴ βούλει, τοῦτο μὲν ἐάσωμεν (καίτοι τὰ πλεῖστα μύθοις ἔοικε καὶ πλάσμασιν), ἀναμνήσθητι δὲ τῶν ἔναγχος Θεοξενίων καὶ τῆς καλῆς ἐκείνης μερίδος, ἣν ἀφαιροῦντες [558] [a] τοὺς Πινδάρου κηρύττουσι λαμβάνειν ἀπογόνους, ὥς σοι τὸ πρᾶγμα σεμνὸν ἐφάνη καὶ ἡδύ’. ‘τίς δ’ οὐκ ἄν’ εἶπεν ‘ἡσθείη τῇ χάριτι τῆς τιμῆς οὕτως Ἑλληνικῶς καὶ ἀφελῶς ἀρχαϊζούσης, εἰ μὴ ‘μέλαιναν καρδίαν κεχάλκευται ψυχρᾷ φλογί’ (fr. 123) κατ’ αὐτὸν τὸν Πίνδαρον;’ ‘ἐῶ τοίνυν’ ἔφην ‘ὅμοιον ἐν Σπάρτῃ κήρυγμα τούτῳ τὸ ‘μετὰ Λέσβιον ᾠδόν’ (Paroem. II p. 522) ἐπὶ τιμῇ καὶ μνήμῃ Τερπάνδρου τοῦ παλαιοῦ κηρυττόμενον· ὁ γὰρ αὐτός ἐστι λόγος. ἀλλ’ ὑμεῖς γε δήπου πλέον ἔχειν ἑτέρων ἔν τε Βοιωτοῖς Ὀφελτιάδαι γένος ὄντες ἀξιοῦτε καὶ παρὰ Φωκεῦσι διὰ Δαΐφαντον, ἐμοὶ δὲ καὶ παρῆτε καὶ συνελαμβάνεσθε [b] πρῴην, ὅτε Λυκόρμαις καὶ Σατιλαίοις τὴν πάτριον Ἡρακλειδῶν μετιοῦσι τιμὴν καὶ στεφανηφορίαν συνανασῴζων ἔλεγον ὅτι δεῖ μάλιστα τοῖς ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους γεγονόσι τὰς τιμὰς ὑπάρχειν βεβαίους καὶ τὰς χάριτας, ὧν τοὺς Ἕλληνας εὐεργετήσας οὐκ ἔτυχεν αὐτὸς ἀξίας χάριτος οὐδ’ ἀμοιβῆς.’ ‘καλοῦ γ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἡμᾶς ἀγῶνος καὶ φιλοσοφίᾳ μάλα πρέποντος ἀνέμνησας.’ ‘ἄφες οὖν’ εἶπον ‘ὦ τᾶν, τὸ σφοδρὸν τοῦτο τῆς κατηγορίας, καὶ μὴ φέρε πικρῶς, εἰ κολάζονταί τινες ἐκ κακῶν γεγονότες ἢ πονηρῶν, ἢ μὴ χαῖρε μηδ’ ἐπαίνει τιμωμένης εὐγενείας. δεῖ γάρ, εἰ τὴν [c] χάριν ἐν τῷ γένει τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀνασῴζομεν, εὐλόγως μηδὲ τὴν κόλασιν οἴεσθαι δεῖν ἀπαυδᾶν καὶ προαπολείπειν ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀδικίαις ἀλλὰ συνεκτρέχειν ἐκείνῃ τὸ κατ’ ἀξίαν ἀντιστρόφως ἀποδιδοῦσαν. ὁ δὲ τοὺς ἀπὸ Κίμωνος ἡδέως ὁρῶν Ἀθήνησι τιμωμένους, τῶν δὲ Λαχάρους ἢ Ἀριστίωνος ἐκγόνων ἐλαυνομένων ἀχθόμενος καὶ ἀγανακτῶν ὑγρός ἐστι λίαν καὶ ῥᾴθυμος μᾶλλον δὲ φιλαίτιος ὅλως καὶ δύσκολος πρὸς τὸ θεῖον, ἐγκαλῶν μέν, ἂν ἀνδρὸς ἀδίκου καὶ πονηροῦ παῖδες ἐκ παίδων εὐτυχεῖν δοκῶσιν, ἐγκαλῶν δὲ πάλιν, ἂν τὰ γένη κολούηται καὶ ἀφανίζηται τῶν φαύλων, [d] αἰτιώμενός τε τὸν θεὸν ὁμοίως μέν, ἂν χρηστοῦ πατρὸς τέκνα πράττῃ κακῶς, ὁμοίως δέ, ἂν πονηροῦ.’

‘Καὶ ταῦτα μέν’ ἔφην ‘ὥσπερ ἀντιφράγματά σοι κείσθω πρὸς τοὺς ἄγαν πικροὺς καὶ κατηγορικοὺς ἐκείνους. ἀναλαβόντες δ’ αὖθις ὥσπερ ἀρχὴν κλωστῆρος ἐν σκοτεινῷ καὶ πολλοὺς ἑλιγμοὺς καὶ πλάνας ἔχοντι τῷ περὶ θεοῦ λόγῳ, καθοδηγῶμεν αὑτοὺς μετ’ εὐλαβείας ἀτρέμα πρὸς τὸ εἰκὸς καὶ πιθανόν· ὡς τό γε σαφὲς καὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν οὐδ’ ἐν οἷς αὐτοὶ πράττομεν ἀσφαλῶς εἰπεῖν ἔχομεν. οἷον, διὰ τί τῶν ὑπὸ φθίσεως ἢ ὑδέρου διαφθαρέντων τοὺς [e] παῖδας εἰς ὕδωρ τὼ πόδε βρέχοντας καθίζεσθαι κελεύομεν, ἕως ἂν ὁ νεκρὸς κατακαῇ; δοκεῖ γὰρ οὕτω τὸ νόσημα μὴ μεθίστασθαι μηδὲ προσπελάζειν αὐτοῖς· ἢ πάλιν, δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν αἰγὸς τὸν ἠρυγγίτην λαβούσης εἰς τὸ στόμα ὅλον ἐφίσταται τὸ αἰπόλιον, ἄχρι ἂν ἐξέλῃ προσελθὼν ὁ αἰπόλος; ἄλλαι τε δυνάμεις ἁφὰς ἔχουσαι καὶ διαδόσεις ἀπίστους ὀξύτησι καὶ μήκεσι δι’ ἑτέρων εἰς ἕτερα περαίνουσιν. ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς τὰ κατὰ τοὺς χρόνους διαλείμματα θαυμάζομεν, οὐ τὰ κατὰ τοὺς τόπους. καίτοι θαυμασιώτερον εἰ πάθους ἐν Αἰθιοπίᾳ λαβόντος ἀρχὴν ἀνεπλήσθησαν αἱ Ἀθῆναι καὶ Περικλῆς ἀπέθανε καὶ Θουκυδίδης ἐνόσησεν, [f] ἢ εἰ Δελφῶν καὶ Συβαριτῶν γενομένων πονηρῶν (cap. 12) ἡ δίκη φερομένη περιῆλθεν εἰς τοὺς παῖδας. ἔχουσι γάρ τινας αἱ δυνάμεις ἀναφορὰς ἀπὸ τῶν ἐσχάτων ἐπὶ τὰ πρῶτα καὶ συνάψεις· ὧν ἡ αἰτία, κἂν ὑφ’ ἡμῶν ἀγνοῆται, σιωπῇ περαίνει τὸ οἰκεῖον.’

‘Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τά γε δημόσια τῶν πόλεων μηνίματα τὸν τοῦ δικαίου λόγον ἔχει πρόχειρον. [559] [a] ἓν γάρ τι πρᾶγμα καὶ συνεχὲς ἡ πόλις ὥσπερ ζῷον οὐκ ἐξιστάμενον αὑτοῦ ταῖς καθ’ ἡλικίαν μεταβολαῖς οὐδ’ ἕτερον ἐξ ἑτέρου τῷ χρόνῳ γινόμενον, ἀλλὰ συμπαθὲς ἀεὶ καὶ οἰκεῖον αὑτῷ καὶ πᾶσαν ὧν πράττει κατὰ τὸ κοινὸν ἢ ἔπραξεν αἰτίαν καὶ χάριν ἀναδεχόμενον, μέχρι ἂν ἡ ποιοῦσα καὶ συνδέουσα ταῖς ἐπιπλοκαῖς κοινωνία τὴν ἑνότητα διαφυλάττῃ. τὸ δὲ πολλὰς πόλεις διαιροῦντα τῷ χρόνῳ ποιεῖν μᾶλλον δ’ ἀπείρους ὅμοιόν ἐστι τῷ πολλοὺς τὸν ἕνα ποιεῖν ἄνθρωπον, ὅτι νῦν πρεσβύτερός ἐστι πρότερον δὲ νεώτερος ἀνωτέρω δὲ μειράκιον ἦν. μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ταῦτά γε τοῖς Ἐπιχαρμείοις [b] (fr. 170) ἔοικεν, ἐξ ὧν ὁ αὐξόμενος ἀνέφυ τοῖς σοφισταῖς λόγος· ὁ γὰρ λαβὼν πάλαι τὸ χρέος νῦν οὐκ ὀφείλει γεγονὼς ἕτερος, ὅ τε κληθεὶς ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἐχθὲς ἄκλητος ἥκει τήμερον· ἄλλος γάρ ἐστι. καίτοι μείζονάς γε παραλλαγὰς αἱ ἡλικίαι περὶ ἕκαστον ἡμῶν ποιοῦσιν ἢ κοινῇ περὶ τὰς πόλεις. γνοίη γὰρ ἄν τις ἰδὼν τὰς Ἀθήνας ἔτει τριακοστῷ, καὶ τὰ νῦν ἤθη καὶ κινήματα παιδιαί τε καὶ σπουδαὶ καὶ χάριτες καὶ ὀργαὶ τοῦ δήμου πάνυ γε τοῖς παλαιοῖς ἐοίκασι· ἀνθρώπου δὲ μόλις ἄν τις οἰκεῖος ἢ φίλος ἐντυχὼν διὰ χρόνου μορφὴν γνωρίσειεν, αἱ δὲ τῶν ἠθῶν μεταβολαὶ παντὶ λόγῳ καὶ πόνῳ καὶ πάθει καὶ [c] νόμῳ ῥᾳδίως τρεπόμεναι καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἀεὶ συνόντα τὴν ἀτοπίαν καὶ τὴν καινότητα θαυμαστὴν ἔχουσιν. ἀλλ’ ἄνθρωπός τε λέγεται μέχρι τέλους εἷς ἀπὸ γενέσεως, πόλιν τε τὴν αὐτὴν ὡσαύτως διαμένουσαν ἐνέχεσθαι τοῖς ὀνείδεσι τῶν προγόνων ἀξιοῦμεν, ᾧ δικαίῳ μέτεστιν αὐτῇ δόξης τε τῆς ἐκείνων καὶ δυνάμεως· ἢ λήσομεν εἰς τὸν Ἡρακλείτειον (fr. 91) ἅπαντα πράγματα ποταμὸν ἐμβαλόντες, εἰς ὃν οὔ φησι δὶς ἐμβῆναι τῷ πάντα κινεῖν καὶ ἑτεροιοῦν τὴν φύσιν μεταβάλλουσαν.’

‘Εἰ δ’ ἐστὶ [τι] πόλις ἓν πρᾶγμα καὶ συνεχές, ἔστι [d] δήπου καὶ γένος, ἐξηρτημένον ἀρχῆς μιᾶς καὶ δύναμίν τινα καὶ κοινωνίαν διαπεφυκυῖαν ἀναφερούσης, καὶ τὸ γεννηθὲν οὐχ ὥς τι δημιούργημα πεποιημένον ἀπήλλακται τοῦ γεννήσαντος· ἐξ αὐτοῦ γὰρ οὐχ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ γέγονεν, ὥστ’ ἔχει τι καὶ φέρεται τῶν ἐκείνου μέρος ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ κολαζόμενον προσηκόντως καὶ τιμώμενον. εἰ δὲ μὴ δόξαιμι παίζειν, ἐγὼ φαίην ἂν ἀνδριάντα Κασάνδρου καταχαλκευόμενον ὑπ’ Ἀθηναίων πάσχειν ἀδικώτερα καὶ τὸ Διονυσίου σῶμα μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ἐξοριζόμενον ὑπὸ Συρακοσίων ἢ τοὺς ἐκγόνους αὐτῶν δίκην τίνοντας. τῷ μὲν γὰρ ἀνδριάντι τῆς Κασάνδρου φύσεως οὐθὲν ἔνεστι, καὶ τὸν [e] νεκρὸν ἡ Διονυσίου ψυχὴ προλέλοιπε· Νυσαίῳ δὲ καὶ Ἀπολλοκράτει καὶ Ἀντιπάτρῳ καὶ Φιλίππῳ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὁμοίως παισὶ τῶν πονηρῶν τὸ κυριώτατον ἐμπέφυκε καὶ πάρεστι μέρος, οὐχ ἡσυχαῖον οὐδ’ ἀργόν, ἀλλὰ ζῶσιν αὐτῷ καὶ τρέφονται καὶ διοικοῦνται καὶ φρονοῦσι· καὶ οὐθὲν δεινὸν οὐδ’ ἄτοπον, ἂν ἐκείνων ὄντες πάσχωσι τὰ ἐκείνων. καθόλου δ’ εἰπεῖν, ὥσπερ ἐν ἰατρικῇ τὸ χρήσιμον καὶ δίκαιόν ἐστι, καὶ γελοῖος ὁ φάσκων ἄδικον εἶναι τῶν ἰσχίον πονούντων καίειν τὸν ἀντίχειρα καὶ τοῦ ἥπατος ὑπούλου γεγονότος ἀμύσσειν τὸ ἐπιγάστριον καὶ τῶν [f] βοῶν, ἂν εἰς τὰς χηλὰς μαλακιῶσι, προσαλείφειν τὰ ἄκρα τῶν κεράτων, οὕτως ὁ περὶ τὰς κολάσεις ἄλλο τι δίκαιον ἢ τὸ θεραπεῦον τὴν κακίαν ἡγούμενος καὶ ἀγανακτῶν, ἐάν τις δι’ ἑτέρων ἐφ’ ἑτέρους ἀναφέρῃ τὴν ἰατρείαν ὥσπερ οἱ τὴν φλέβα διαιροῦντες ἵνα τὴν ὀφθαλμίαν κουφίσωσιν, [560] [a] οὐδὲν ἔοικε περαιτέρω τῆς αἰσθήσεως ἐφορᾶν, οὐδὲ μνημονεύειν, ὅτι καὶ διδάσκαλος παίδων ἑνὸς καθικόμενος ἑτέρους ἐνουθέτησε, καὶ στρατηγὸς ἐκ δεκάδος ἀνελὼν ἕνα πάντας ἐνέτρεψε, καὶ οὕτως οὐ μέρει διὰ μέρους ἑτέρου μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ψυχῇ διὰ ψυχῆς γίνονταί τινες διαθέσεις καὶ κακώσεις καὶ ἐπανορθώσεις μᾶλλον ἢ σώματι διὰ σώματος. ἐκεῖ μὲν γάρ, ὡς ἔοικε, τὸ αὐτὸ δεῖ πάθος ἐγγίνεσθαι καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν μεταβολήν, ἐνταῦθα δ’ ἡ ψυχὴ ταῖς φαντασίαις ἀγομένη κατὰ τὸ θαρρεῖν καὶ δεδιέναι χεῖρον ἢ βέλτιον διαγίγνεσθαι πέφυκεν.’

Ἔτι δ’ ἐμοῦ λέγοντος ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Ὀλύμπιχος [b] ‘ἔοικας’ ἔφη ‘τῷ λόγῳ μεγάλην ὑπόθεσιν ὑποτίθεσθαι, τὴν ἐπιμονὴν τῆς ψυχῆς.’ ‘καὶ ὑμῶν γ’’ εἶπον ἐγώ ‘διδόντων μᾶλλον δὲ δεδωκότων· ὡς γὰρ τοῦ θεοῦ τὸ κατ’ ἀξίαν νέμοντος ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος ἐξ ἀρχῆς δεῦρο προελήλυθε.’ κἀκεῖνος ‘εἶτα δ’’ ἔφη ‘νομίζεις ἕπεσθαι τῷ τοὺς θεοὺς ἐπιβλέπειν καὶ νέμειν ἕκαστα τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς τὸ τὰς ψυχὰς ὑπάρχειν ἢ πάμπαν ἀφθάρτους ἢ χρόνον τινὰ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ἐπιμενούσας;’ ‘οὔκ, ὦ ‘γαθέ’; εἶπον ‘ἀλλὰ μικρὸς οὕτω καὶ κενόσπουδος ὁ θεός ἐστιν, ὥστε μηδὲν ἡμῶν ἐχόντων θεῖον ἐν αὑτοῖς μηδὲ προσόμοιον ἁμωσγέπως ἐκείνῳ καὶ διαρκὲς καὶ βέβαιον, ἀλλὰ φύλλοις, ὡς [c] Ὅμηρος ἔφη (Ζ 146), παραπλησίως ἀπομαραινομένων παντάπασι καὶ φθινόντων ἐν ὀλίγῳ ποιεῖσθαι λόγον τοσοῦτον, ὥσπερ αἱ τοὺς Ἀδώνιδος κήπους ἐπ’ ὀστράκοις τισὶ τιθηνούμεναι καὶ θεραπεύουσαι γυναῖκες ἐφημέρους ‹σπείρων› ψυχὰς ἐν σαρκὶ τρυφερᾷ καὶ βίου ῥίζαν ἰσχυρὰν οὐ δεχομένῃ βλαστανούσας εἶτ’ ἀποσβεννυμένας εὐθὺς ὑπὸ τῆς τυχούσης προφάσεως; εἰ δὲ βούλει, τοὺς ἄλλους θεοὺς ἐάσας σκόπει τουτονὶ τὸν ἐνταυθοῖ τὸν ἡμέτερον, εἴ σοι δοκεῖ τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν τελευτώντων ἀπολλυμένας ἐπιστάμενος εὐθὺς ὥσπερ ὁμίχλας ἢ καπνοὺς ἀποπνεούσας τῶν σωμάτων ἱλασμούς τε πολλοὺς προσφέρειν τῶν [d] κατοιχομένων καὶ γέρα μεγάλα καὶ τιμὰς ἀπαιτεῖν τοῖς τεθνηκόσιν, ἐξαπατῶν καὶ φενακίζων τοὺς πιστεύοντας. ἐγὼ μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἂν προείμην τῆς ψυχῆς τὴν διαμονήν, εἰ μή τις ὥσπερ ὁ Ἡρακλῆς ὑφελὼν τὸν τρίποδα τῆς Πυθίας ἀναιρήσει καὶ διαφθερεῖ τὸ χρηστήριον· ἄχρι ‹δὲ› τοῦ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα προθεσπίζεσθαι καὶ καθ’ ἡμᾶς, οἷα καὶ Κόρακι τῷ Ναξίῳ χρησθῆναι λέγουσιν, οὐχ ὅσιόν ἐστι τῆς ψυχῆς καταγνῶναι θάνατον.’ καὶ ὁ Πατροκλέας ‘τί δ’ ἦν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ χρησθὲν ἢ τίς ὁ Κόραξ οὗτος; ὡς ἐμοὶ καὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ τὸ ὄνομα ξένον.’ ‘οὐδαμῶς’ εἶπον, ‘ἀλλ’ αἴτιος ἐγὼ παρωνύμῳ χρησάμενος ἀντὶ τοῦ ὀνόματος. ὁ [e] γὰρ ἀποκτείνας ἐν τῇ μάχῃ τὸν Ἀρχίλοχον ἐκαλεῖτο Καλώνδης, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἦν δ’ αὐτῷ Κόραξ ἐπωνύμιον. ἐκβληθεὶς δὲ τὸ πρῶτον ὑπὸ τῆς Πυθίας ὡς ἱερὸν ἄνδρα τῶν Μουσῶν ἀνῃρηκώς, εἶτα χρησάμενος λιταῖς τισι καὶ προστροπαῖς μετὰ δικαιολογίας ἐκελεύσθη πορευθεὶς ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ Τέττιγος οἴκησιν ἱλάσασθαι τὴν τοῦ Ἀρχιλόχου ψυχήν. τοῦτο δ’ ἦν ὁ Ταίναρος· ἐκεῖ γάρ φασιν ἐλθόντα μετὰ στόλου Τέττιγα τὸν Κρῆτα πόλιν κτίσαι καὶ κατοικῆσαι παρὰ τὸ ψυχοπομπεῖον. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ Σπαρτιάταις χρησθὲν ἱλάσασθαι τὴν Παυσανίου ψυχὴν ἐξ Ἰταλίας [f] μεταπεμφθέντες οἱ ψυχαγωγοὶ καὶ θύσαντες ἀπεσπάσαντο τοῦ ἱεροῦ τὸ εἴδωλον.’

‘Εἷς οὖν ἐστι λόγος’, ἔφην ‘ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ τὴν πρόνοιαν ἅμα καὶ τὴν διαμονὴν τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ψυχῆς βεβαιῶν, καὶ θάτερον οὐκ ἔστιν ἀπολιπεῖν ἀναιροῦντα θάτερον. οὔσῃ δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν μᾶλλον εἰκὸς ἔτι [561] [a] καὶ τιμὰς ἀποδίδοσθαι καὶ τιμωρίας· ἀγωνίζεται γὰρ ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴς τὸν βίον, ὅταν δὲ διαγωνίσηται, τότε τυγχάνει τῶν προσηκόντων. ἀλλ’ ἃς μὲν ἐκεῖ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν οὖσα κομίζεται τῶν προβεβιωμένων χάριτας ἢ τίσεις, οὐθέν εἰσι πρὸς ἡμᾶς τοὺς ζῶντας, ἀλλ’ ἀπιστοῦνται καὶ λανθάνουσιν· αἱ δὲ διὰ τῶν παίδων ἰοῦσαι καὶ διὰ γένους ἐμφανεῖς τοῖς δεῦρο γενόμεναι πολλοὺς ἀποτρέπουσι καὶ συστέλλουσι τῶν πονηρῶν. ὅτι δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν αἰσχίων οὐδὲ λυποῦσα μᾶλλον ἑτέρα κόλασις ἢ τοὺς ἐξ ἑαυτῶν κακὰ πάσχοντας δι’ αὑτοὺς ὁρᾶν, καὶ ὅτι ψυχὴν ἀνδρὸς ἀσεβοῦς [b] καὶ παρανόμου μετὰ θάνατον ἐφορῶσαν οὐκ ἀνδριάντας οὐδὲ τιμάς τινας ἀνατρεπομένας ἀλλὰ παῖδας ἢ φίλους ἢ γένος οἰκεῖον αὑτῆς ἀτυχήμασι χρωμένους μεγάλοις δι’ αὑτὴν καὶ δίκην τίνοντας οὐδεὶς ἂν ἀναπείσειεν αὖθις ἐπὶ ταῖς τοῦ Διὸς τιμαῖς ἄδικον γενέσθαι καὶ ἀκόλαστον, ἔχω μέν τινα καὶ λόγον εἰπεῖν ἔναγχος ἀκηκοώς, ὀκνῶ δὲ μὴ φανῇ μῦθος ὑμῖν· μόνῳ οὖν χρῶμαι τῷ εἰκότι.’ ‘μηδαμῶς’ εἶπεν ὁ Ὀλύμπιχος ‘ἀλλὰ δίελθε κἀκεῖνον.’ τὰ δ’ αὐτὰ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων δεομένων ‘ἐάσατ’’ εἶπον ‘ἀποδοῦναί με τῷ λόγῳ τὸ εἰκός· ὕστερον δὲ τὸν μῦθον, ἐὰν δόξῃ, κινήσομεν, εἴ γε δὴ μῦθός ἐστιν.’

[c] ‘Ὁ γὰρ Βίων τὸν θεὸν κολάζοντα τοὺς παῖδας τῶν πονηρῶν γελοιότερον εἶναί φησιν ἰατροῦ διὰ νόσον πάππου καὶ πατρὸς ἔκγονον ἢ παῖδα φαρμακεύοντος. ἔστι δὲ πῆ μὲν ἀνόμοια τὰ πράγματα πῆ δ’ ἐοικότα καὶ ὅμοια. νόσου μὲν γὰρ ἄλλος ἄλλον οὐ παύει θεραπευόμενος, οὐδὲ βέλτιόν τις ἔσχε τῶν ὀφθαλμιώντων ἢ πυρεττόντων ἰδὼν ἄλλον ὑπαλειφόμενον ἢ καταπλαττόμενον· αἱ δὲ τιμωρίαι τῶν πονηρῶν διὰ τοῦτο δείκνυνται πᾶσιν, ὅτι δίκης κατὰ λόγον περαινομένης ἔργον ἐστὶν ἑτέρους δι’ ἑτέρων κολαζομένων ἐπισχεῖν. ᾗ δὲ προσέοικε τῷ ζητουμένῳ τὸ παραβαλλόμενον [ὑπὸ τοῦ Βίωνος], ἔλαθεν αὐτόν· ἤδη γὰρ [d] ἀνδρὸς εἰς νόσημα μοχθηρὸν οὐ μὴν ἀνίατον ἐμπεσόντος, εἶτ’ ἀκρασίᾳ καὶ μαλακίᾳ προεμένου τῷ πάθει τὸ σῶμα καὶ διαφθαρέντος υἱὸν οὐ δοκοῦντα νοσεῖν ἀλλὰ μόνον ἐπιτηδείως ἔχοντα πρὸς τὴν αὐτὴν νόσον ἰατρὸς ἢ οἰκεῖος ἢ ἀλείπτης καταμαθὼν ἢ δεσπότης χρηστὸς ἐμβαλὼν εἰς δίαιταν αὐστηρὰν καὶ ἀφελὼν ὄψα καὶ πέμματα καὶ πότους καὶ γύναια, φαρμακείαις δὲ χρησάμενος ἐνδελεχέσι καὶ διαπονήσας γυμνασίοις ἐσκέδασε καὶ ἀπέπεμψε μεγάλου πάθους σπέρμα μικρόν, οὐκ ἐάσας εἰς μέγεθος προελθεῖν. ἦ γὰρ οὐχ οὕτω παρακελευόμεθα προσέχειν ἀξιοῦντες [e] ἑαυτοῖς καὶ παραφυλάττεσθαι καὶ μὴ παραμελεῖν ὅσοι γεγόνασιν ἐκ πατέρων ἢ μητέρων νοσηματικῶν, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἐξωθεῖν τὴν ἐγκεκραμένην ἀρχὴν εὐκίνητον οὖσαν καὶ ἀκροσφαλῆ προκαταλαμβάνοντας;’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ ἔφασαν. ‘οὐ τοίνυν ἄτοπον’ εἶπον ‘ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαῖον, οὐδὲ γελοῖον ἀλλ’ ὠφέλιμον πρᾶγμα ποιοῦμεν, ἐπιληπτικῶν παισὶ καὶ μελαγχολικῶν καὶ ποδαγρικῶν γυμνάσια καὶ διαίτας καὶ φάρμακα προσάγοντες οὐ νοσοῦσιν ἀλλ’ ἕνεκα τοῦ μὴ νοσῆσαι· τὸ γὰρ ἐκ πονηροῦ σώματος γινόμενον σῶμα τιμωρίας μὲν οὐδεμιᾶς ἰατρείας δὲ καὶ φυλακῆς [f] ἄξιόν ἐστιν· ἣν εἴ τις, ὅτι τὰς ἡδονὰς ἀφαιρεῖ καὶ δηγμὸν ἐπάγει καὶ πόνον, τιμωρίαν ὑπὸ δειλίας καὶ μαλακίας ἀποκαλεῖ, χαίρειν ἐατέον. ἆρ’ οὖν σῶμα μὲν ἔκγονον φαύλου σώματος ἄξιόν ἐστι θεραπεύειν καὶ φυλάττειν, κακίας δ’ ὁμοιότητα συγγενικὴν ἐν νέῳ βλαστάνουσαν [562] [a] ἤθει καὶ ἀναφυομένην ἐᾶν δεῖ καὶ περιμένειν καὶ μέλλειν, ἄχρι ἂν ἐκχυθεῖσα τοῖς πάθεσιν ἐμφανὴς γένηται

‘κακόφρονά τ’ ἀμφάνῃ πραπίδων

καρπόν’

ὥς φησι Πίνδαρος (fr. 211); ἢ κατὰ τοῦτο μὲν ὁ θεὸς οὐδὲν τοῦ Ἡσιόδου σοφώτερος διακελευομένου καὶ παρεγγυῶντος (OD 735)

‘μηδ’ ἀπὸ δυσφήμοιο τάφου ἀπονοστήσαντα

σπερμαίνειν γενεήν, ἀλλ’ ἀθανάτων ἀπὸ δαιτός,’

ὡς οὐ κακίαν μόνον οὐδ’ ἀρετὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ λύπην καὶ χαρὰν καὶ πάνθ’ ὅσ’ ἀναδεχομένης τῆς γενέσεως ἱλαροὺς καὶ ἡδεῖς καὶ διακεχυμένους ἄγοντος πρὸς τὴν τέκνωσιν; ἐκεῖνο δ’ οὐκέτι καθ’ Ἡσίοδον οὐδ’ ἀνθρωπίνης ἔργον [b] σοφίας ἀλλὰ θεοῦ, τὸ διορᾶν καὶ διαισθάνεσθαι τὰς ὁμοιοπαθείας καὶ τὰς διαφοράς, πρὶν εἰς μεγάλα τοῖς πάθεσιν ἐμπεσούσας ἀδικήματα γενέσθαι καταφανεῖς. ἄρκτων μὲν γὰρ ἔτι νήπια καὶ λύκων τέκνα καὶ πιθήκων εὐθὺς ἐμφαίνει τὸ συγγενὲς ἦθος ὑπὸ μηδενὸς ὑπαμπεχόμενον μηδὲ καταπλαττόμενον· ἡ δ’ ἀνθρώπου φύσις εἰς ἔθη καὶ δόγματα καὶ νόμους ἑαυτὴν ἐμβαλοῦσα κρύπτει τὰ φαῦλα καὶ τὰ καλὰ μιμεῖται πολλάκις, ὥστ’ ἢ παντάπασιν ἐξαλεῖψαι καὶ διαφυγεῖν ἐγγενῆ κηλῖδα τῆς κακίας, ἢ διαλαθεῖν πολὺν χρόνον οἷον ἔλυτρόν τι τὴν πανουργίαν [c] ἑαυτῇ περιβαλοῦσαν, διαλαθεῖν δ’ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πληγῆς ἢ δήγματος ἑκάστου τῶν ἀδικημάτων μόλις αἰσθανομένους τῆς κακίας, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως τότε γίγνεσθαι νομίζοντας ἀδίκους ὅτ’ ἀδικοῦσιν, ἀκολάστους ὅθ’ ὑβρίζουσιν καὶ ἀνάνδρους ὅτε φεύγουσιν (ὥσπερ εἴ τις οἴοιτο τοῖς σκορπίοις ἐμφύεσθαι τὸ κέντρον ὅτε τύπτουσι, καὶ ταῖς ἐχίδναις τὸν ἰὸν ὅτε δάκνουσιν, εὐήθως οἰόμενος· οὐ γὰρ ἅμα γίγνεται καὶ φαίνεται τῶν πονηρῶν ἕκαστος, ἀλλ’ ἔχει μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς τὴν κακίαν χρῆται δὲ καιροῦ καὶ δυνάμεως ἐπιλαβόμενος τῷ κλέπτειν ὁ κλέπτης καὶ τῷ παρανομεῖν ὁ τυραννικός)· ἀλλ’ ὁ θεὸς οὔτ’ ἀγνοεῖ δήπου τὴν ἑκάστου [d] διάθεσιν καὶ φύσιν ἅτε δὴ ψυχῆς μᾶλλον ἢ σώματος αἰσθάνεσθαι πεφυκώς, οὔτ’ ἀναμένει τὴν βίαν ἐν χερσὶ γενομένην καὶ τὴν ἀναίδειαν ἐν φωνῇ καὶ τὴν ἀκολασίαν ἐν αἰδοίοις κολάζειν. οὐ γὰρ ἀμύνεται τὸν ἀδικήσαντα κακῶς παθὼν οὐδ’ ὀργίζεται τῷ ἁρπάσαντι βιασθεὶς οὐδὲ μισεῖ τὸν μοιχὸν ὑβρισθείς, ἀλλ’ ἰατρείας ἕνεκα τὸν μοιχικὸν καὶ τὸν πλεονεκτικὸν καὶ ἀδικητικὸν κολάζει πολλάκις, ὥσπερ ἐπιληψίαν τὴν κακίαν πρὶν ἢ καταλαβεῖν ἀναιρῶν.’

‘Ἡμεῖς δ’ ἀρτίως μὲν ἠγανακτοῦμεν ὡς ὀψὲ καὶ βραδέως τῶν πονηρῶν δίκην διδόντων, νῦν δ’ ὅτι καὶ πρὶν [e] ἀδικεῖν ἐνίων τὴν ἕξιν [αὐτῶν] κολούει καὶ τὴν διάθεσιν, ἐγκαλοῦμεν ἀγνοοῦντες ὅτι τοῦ γενομένου πολλάκις τὸ μέλλον καὶ τὸ λανθάνον τοῦ προδήλου χεῖρόν ἐστι καὶ φοβερώτερον, οὐ δυνάμενοι δὲ συλλογίζεσθαι τὰς αἰτίας, δι’ ἃς ἐνίους μὲν καὶ ἀδικήσαντας ἐᾶν βέλτιόν ἐστιν ἐνίους δὲ καὶ διανοουμένους προκαταλαμβάνειν· ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ φάρμακ’ ἐνίοις μὲν οὐχ ἁρμόζει νοσοῦσιν, ἐνίοις δὲ λυσιτελεῖ καὶ μὴ νοσοῦσιν ἐπισφαλέστερον ἐκείνων ἔχουσιν. ὅθεν οὐδὲ πάντα ‘τὰ τῶν τεκόντων σφάλματ’ εἰς τοὺς ἐκγόνους οἱ θεοὶ τρέπουσιν’ (Eurip. fr. 580), ἀλλ’ ἐὰν μὲν ἐκ φαύλου γένηται χρηστὸς ὥσπερ εὐεκτικὸς ἐκ νοσώδους, [f] ἀφεῖται τῆς τοῦ γένους ποινῆς οἷον ἐκποίητος τῆς κακίας γενόμενος, νόσον δ’ εἰς ὁμοιότητα μοχθηροῦ γένους ἀναφερομένῳ προσήκει δήπουθεν ὡς χρέα κληρονομίας διαδέχεσθαι τῆς πονηρίας τὴν κόλασιν. οὐ γὰρ Ἀντίγονός γε διὰ Δημήτριον οὐδὲ τῶν προτέρων Φυλεὺς [563] [a] δι’ Αὐγέαν οὐδὲ Νέστωρ διὰ Νηλέα δίκας ἔδωκεν (ἐκ κακῶν μὲν γὰρ ἀγαθοὶ δ’ ἦσαν), ἀλλ’ ὅσων ἡ φύσις ἔστερξε καὶ προσήκατο τὸ συγγενές, τούτων ἡ δίκη διώκουσα τὴν ὁμοιότητα τῆς κακίας ἐπεξῆλθεν. ὡς γὰρ ἀκροχορδόνες καὶ μελάσματα καὶ φακοὶ πατέρων ἐν παισὶν ἀφανισθέντες ἀνέκυψαν ὕστερον ἐν υἱωνοῖς καὶ θυγατριδοῖς, καὶ γυνή τις Ἑλληνὶς τεκοῦσα βρέφος μέλαν εἶτα κρινομένη μοιχείας ἐξανεῦρεν αὑτὴν Αἰθίοπος οὖσαν γενεὰν τετάρτην, τῶν δὲ Πύθωνος τοῦ Θισβέως παίδων, ὃς ἔναγχος τέθνηκε, λεγομένου τοῖς Σπαρτοῖς προσήκειν ‹εἷς› ἐξανήνεγκε λόγχης τύπον ἐν τῷ σώματι, διὰ χρόνων τοσούτων [b] ἀνασχούσης καὶ ἀναδύσης ὥσπερ ἐκ βυθοῦ τῆς πρὸς τὸ γένος ὁμοιότητος, οὕτω πολλάκις ἤθη καὶ πάθη ψυχῆς αἱ πρῶται κρύπτουσι γενέσεις καὶ καταδύουσιν, ὕστερον δέ ποτε καὶ δι’ ἑτέρων ἐξήνθησε καὶ ἀπέδωκε τὸ οἰκεῖον εἰς κακίαν καὶ ἀρετὴν ἡ φύσις.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἐσιώπησα, διαμειδιάσας ὁ Ὀλύμπιχος ‘οὐκ ἐπαινοῦμέν σ’’ εἶπεν, ‘ὅπως μὴ δόξωμεν ἀφιέναι τὸν μῦθον ὡς τοῦ λόγου πρὸς ἀπόδειξιν ἱκανῶς ἔχοντος, ἀλλὰ τότε δώσομεν τὴν ἀπόφασιν, ὅταν κἀκεῖνον ἀκούσωμεν.’ οὕτως οὖν ἔφην ὅτι ὁ Σολεὺς Θεσπέσιος, ἀνὴρ ἐκείνου τοῦ γενομένου μεθ’ ἡμῶν ἐνταῦθα Πρωτογένους [c] οἰκεῖος καὶ φίλος, ἐν πολλῇ βιώσας ἀκολασίᾳ τὸν πρῶτον χρόνον εἶτα ταχὺ τὴν οὐσίαν ἀπολέσας ἤδη χρόνον τινὰ καὶ διὰ τὴν ἀνάγκην ἐγένετο πονηρός, καὶ τὸν πλοῦτον ἐκ μετανοίας διώκων ταὐτὸ τοῖς ἀκολάστοις ἔπασχε πάθος, οἳ τὰς γυναῖκας ἔχοντες μὲν οὐ φυλάττουσι, προέμενοι δὲ πειρῶσιν αὖθις ἀδίκως ἑτέροις συνούσας [διαφθείρειν]. οὐδενὸς οὖν ἀπεχόμενος αἰσχροῦ φέροντος εἰς ἀπόλαυσιν ἢ κέρδος οὐσίαν μὲν οὐ πολλὴν δόξαν δὲ πονηρίας ἐν ὀλίγῳ πλείστην συνήγαγε. μάλιστα δ’ αὐτὸν διέβαλεν ἀνενεχθεῖσά τις ἐξ Ἀμφιλόχου μαντεία. πέμψας [d] γὰρ ὡς ἔοικεν ἠρώτα τὸν θεόν, εἰ βέλτιον βιώσεται τὸν ἐπίλοιπον βίον· ὁ δ’ ἀνεῖλεν ὅτι πράξει βέλτιον, ὅταν ἀποθάνῃ. καὶ δὴ τρόπον τινὰ τοῦτο μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον αὐτῷ συνέπεσε. κατενεχθεὶς γὰρ ἐξ ὕψους τινὸς εἰς τράχηλον οὐ γενομένου τραύματος ἀλλὰ πληγῆς μόνον ἐξέθανε, καὶ τριταῖος ἤδη περὶ τὰς ταφὰς αὐτὰς ἀνήνεγκε. ταχὺ δὲ ῥωσθεὶς καὶ παρ’ αὑτῷ γενόμενος ἄπιστόν τινα τοῦ βίου τὴν μεταβολὴν ἐποίησεν. οὔτε γὰρ δικαιότερον περὶ τὰ συμβόλαια γινώσκουσιν ἕτερον Κίλικες ἐν τοῖς τότε χρόνοις γενόμενον, οὔτε πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ὁσιώτερον οὔτε λυπηρότερον ἐχθροῖς ἢ βεβαιότερον φίλοις· ὥστε καὶ [e] ποθεῖν τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας αὐτῷ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀκοῦσαι τῆς διαφορᾶς, οὐκ ἀπὸ τοῦ τυχόντος οἰομένους γεγονέναι διακόσμησιν εἰς ἦθος τοσαύτην. ὅπερ ἦν ἀληθές, ὡς αὐτὸς διηγεῖτο τῷ τε Πρωτογένει καὶ τοῖς ὁμοίως ἐπιεικέσι τῶν φίλων.

Ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐξέπεσε τὸ φρονοῦν τοῦ σώματος, οἷον ἄν τις ἐκ πλοίου κολυμβητὴς εἰς βυθὸν ἀπορριφεὶς πάθοι τὸ πρῶτον, οὕτως ὑπὸ τῆς μεταβολῆς ἔσχεν· εἶτα μικρὸν ἐξαρθεὶς ἔδοξεν ἀναπνεῖν ὅλος καὶ περιορᾶν πανταχόθεν, ὥσπερ ἑνὸς ὄμματος ἀνοιχθείσης τῆς ψυχῆς. ἑώρα δὲ τῶν πρότερον οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ τὰ ἄστρα παμμεγέθη καὶ ἀπέχοντα [f] πλῆθος ἀλλήλων ἄπλετον, αὐγήν τε τῇ χρόᾳ θαυμαστὴν ἀφιέντα καὶ τόνον ἔχουσαν, ὥστε τὴν ψυχὴν ἐποχουμένην λείως πλοῖον ὥσπερ ἐν γαλήνῃ τῷ φωτὶ ῥᾳδίως πάντῃ καὶ ταχὺ διαφέρεσθαι. τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα τῶν θεαμάτων παραλιπὼν ἔφη τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν τελευτώντων κάτωθεν ἀνιούσας [564] [a] πομφόλυγα φλογοειδῆ ποιεῖν ἐξισταμένου τοῦ ἀέρος, εἶτα ῥηγνυμένης ἀτρέμα τῆς πομφόλυγος ἐκβαίνειν τύπον ἐχούσας ἀνθρωποειδῆ τὸν δ’ ὄγκον εὐσταλεῖς, κινουμένας δ’ οὐχ ὁμοίως, ἀλλὰ τὰς μὲν ἐκπηδᾶν ἐλαφρότητι θαυμαστῇ καὶ διᾴττειν ἐπ’ εὐθείας ἄνω, τὰς δ’ ὥσπερ οἱ ἄτρακτοι περιστρεφομένας ἅμα κύκλῳ, καὶ τοτὲ μὲν κάτω τοτὲ δ’ ἄνω ῥεπούσας μικτήν τινα ‹φορὰν› φέρεσθαι καὶ τεταραγμένην [καὶ] πολλῷ πάνυ χρόνῳ καὶ μόλις ἀποκαθισταμένην. τὰς μὲν οὖν πολλὰς ἠγνόει τίνες εἰσί, δύο δ’ ἢ τρεῖς ἰδὼν γνωρίμους ἐπειρᾶτο προσμῖξαι καὶ προσειπεῖν· αἱ δ’ οὔτ’ ἤκουον οὔτ’ ἦσαν παρ’ ἑαυταῖς, ἀλλ’ ἔκφρονες καὶ [b] διεπτοημέναι, πᾶσαν ὄψιν ἀποφεύγουσαι καὶ ψαῦσιν ἐρέμβοντο πρῶτον αὐταὶ καθ’ ἑαυτάς, εἶτα πολλαῖς ὁμοίως διακειμέναις ἐντυγχάνουσαι καὶ περιπλεκόμεναι φοράς τε πάσας πρὸς οὐδὲν ἀκρίτως ἐφέροντο καὶ φωνὰς ἵεσαν ἀσήμους, οἷον ἀλαλαγμοῖς θρήνου καὶ φόβου μεμιγμένας. ἄλλαι δ’ ἄνωθεν ἐν ‹τῷ› καθαρῷ τοῦ περιέχοντος ὀφθῆναί τε φαιδραὶ καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλας ὑπ’ εὐμενείας θαμὰ πελάζουσαι τὰς δὲ θορυβώδεις ἐκείνας ἐκτρεπόμεναι διεσήμαινον ὡς ἔοικε συστολῇ μὲν εἰς αὑτὰς τὸ δυσχεραῖνον, ἐκπετάσει δὲ καὶ διαχύσει τὸ χαῖρον καὶ προσιέμενον.

Ἐνταῦθα μίαν ἔφη ‹γνῶναι› συγγενοῦς τινος, οὐ [c] μέντοι σαφῶς· ἀποθανεῖν γὰρ ἔτι παιδὸς ὄντος· ἀλλ’ ἐκείνην προσαγαγοῦσαν ἐγγὺς εἰπεῖν ‘χαῖρε, Θεσπέσιε.’ θαυμάσαντος δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ φήσαντος ὡς οὐ Θεσπέσιος ἀλλ’ Ἀριδαῖός ἐστι, ‘πρότερόν γε’ φάναι, ‘τὸ δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦδε Θεσπέσιος. οὐδὲ γάρ τοι τέθνηκας, ἀλλὰ μοίρᾳ τινὶ θεῶν ἥκεις δεῦρο τῷ φρονοῦντι, τὴν δ’ ἄλλην ψυχὴν ὥσπερ ἀγκύριον ἐν τῷ σώματι καταλέλοιπας. σύμβολον δέ σοι καὶ νῦν καὶ αὖθις ἔστω τὸ τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν τεθνηκότων μήτε σκιὰν ποιεῖν μήτε σκαρδαμύττειν.’ ταῦτ’ ἀκούσας ὁ Θεσπέσιος ἤδη τε μᾶλλον ἑαυτὸν τῷ λογίζεσθαι συνήγαγε καὶ [d] διαβλέψας εἶδεν ἑαυτῷ μὲν [τινα] συναιωρουμένην ἀμυδράν τινα καὶ σκιώδη γραμμήν, ἐκείνους δὲ περιλαμπομένους κύκλῳ καὶ διαφανεῖς ἐντός, οὐ μὴν ὁμοίως ἅπαντας· ἀλλὰ τοὺς μέν, ὥσπερ ἡ καθαρωτάτη πανσέληνος, ἓν χρῶμα λεῖον καὶ συνεχὲς ὁμαλῶς ἱέντας, ἑτέρων δὲ φολίδας τινὰς διατρεχούσας ἢ μώλωπας ἀραιούς, ἄλλους δὲ κομιδῇ ποικίλους καὶ ἀτόπους τὴν ὄψιν, ὥσπερ οἱ ἔχεις μελάσμασι κατεστιγμένους, ἄλλους δέ τινας ἀμβλείας ἀμυχὰς ἔχοντας.

Ἔλεγεν οὖν ἕκαστα φράζων ὁ τοῦ Θεσπεσίου συγγενὴς (οὐδὲν γὰρ οὕτω κωλύει τὰς ψυχὰς ὀνόματι τῶν [e] ἀνθρώπων προσαγορεύειν), ὡς Ἀδράστεια μέν, Ἀνάγκης καὶ Διὸς θυγάτηρ, ἐπὶ πᾶσι τιμωρὸς ἀνωτάτω τέτακται τοῖς ἀδικήμασι. καὶ τῶν πονηρῶν οὔτε μέγας ‹οὕτως› οὐδεὶς οὔτε μικρὸς γέγονεν ὥστ’ ἢ λαθὼν διαφυγεῖν ἢ βιασάμενος. ἄλλῃ δ’ ἄλλη τιμωρία τριῶν οὐσῶν φύλακι καὶ χειρουργῷ προσήκει· τοὺς μὲν γὰρ εὐθὺς ἐν σώμασι καὶ διὰ σωμάτων κολαζομένους μεταχειρίζεται Ποινὴ ταχεῖα, πράῳ τινὶ τρόπῳ καὶ παραλείποντι πολλὰ τῶν καθαρμοῦ δεομένων· ὧν δὲ μεῖζόν ἐστιν ἔργον ἡ περὶ τὴν κακίαν [f] ἰατρεία, τούτους Δίκῃ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ὁ δαίμων παραδίδωσι· τοὺς δὲ πάμπαν ἀνιάτους ἀπωσαμένης τῆς Δίκης ἡ τρίτη καὶ ἀγριωτάτη τῶν Ἀδραστείας ὑπουργῶν Ἐρινύς, μεταθέουσα πλανωμένους καὶ περιφεύγοντας ἄλλον ἄλλως οἰκτρῶς δὲ καὶ χαλεπῶς ἅπαντας ἠφάνισε καὶ κατέδυσεν εἰς τὸ ἄρρητον καὶ ἀόρατον. [565] [a] ‘τῶν δ’ ἄλλων’ ἔφη ‘δικαιώσεων ἡ μὲν ὑπὸ τῆς Ποινῆς ἐν τῷ βίῳ ταῖς βαρβαρικαῖς ἔοικεν· ὡς γὰρ ἐν Πέρσαις τῶν κολαζομένων τὰ ἱμάτια καὶ τὰς τιάρας ἀποτίλλουσι καὶ μαστιγοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ παύσασθαι δακρύοντες ἀντιβολοῦσιν, οὕτως αἱ διὰ χρημάτων καὶ σωμάτων κολάσεις ἁφὴν οὐκ ἔχουσι δριμεῖαν οὐδ’ αὐτῆς ἐπιλαμβάνονται τῆς κακίας, ἀλλὰ πρὸς δόξαν αἱ πολλαὶ καὶ πρὸς αἴσθησιν αὐτῶν εἰσιν· ὃς δ’ ἂν ἐκεῖθεν ἀκόλαστος ἐνταῦθα καὶ ἀκάθαρτος ἐξίκηται, τοῦτον ἡ Δίκη διαλαβοῦσα τῇ ψυχῇ καταφανῆ, γυμνόν, [b] εἰς οὐδὲν ἔχοντα καταδῦναι καὶ ἀποκρύψασθαι καὶ περιστεῖλαι τὴν μοχθηρίαν ἀλλὰ πανταχόθεν καὶ ὑπὸ πάντων καὶ πάντα καθορώμενον ἔδειξε πρῶτον ἀγαθοῖς γονεῦσιν, ἄνπερ ὦσι, καὶ προγόνοις αὐτοῦ πρόσπτυστον ὄντα καὶ ἀνάξιον· ἐὰν δὲ φαῦλοι, κολαζομένους ἐπιδὼν ἐκείνους καὶ ὀφθεὶς δικαιοῦται πολὺν χρόνον ἐξαιρούμενος ἕκαστον τῶν παθῶν ἀλγηδόσι καὶ πόνοις, οἳ τοσοῦτο μεγέθει καὶ σφοδρότητι τοὺς διὰ σαρκὸς ὑπερβάλλουσιν, ὅσον τὸ ὕπαρ ἂν εἴη τοῦ ὀνείρατος ἐναργέστερον. οὐλαὶ δὲ καὶ μώλωπες ἐπὶ τῶν παθῶν ἑκάστου τοῖς μὲν μᾶλλον ἐμμένουσι τοῖς δ’ ἧσσον. ὅρα δ’’ εἶπε ‘τὰ ποικίλα ταῦτα καὶ [c] παντοδαπὰ χρώματα τῶν ψυχῶν· τὸ μὲν ὄρφνιον καὶ ῥυπαρόν, ἀνελευθερίας ἀλοιφὴν καὶ πλεονεξίας, τὸ δ’ αἱματωπὸν καὶ διάπυρον, ὠμότητος καὶ πικρίας· ὅπου δὲ τὸ γλαύκινόν ἐστιν, ἐντεῦθεν ἀκρασία τις περὶ ἡδονὰς ἐκτέτριπται μόλις· κακόνοια δ’ ἐνοῦσα μετὰ φθόνου τουτὶ τὸ ἰῶδες καὶ ὕπουλον, ὥσπερ αἱ σηπίαι τὸ μέλαν, ἀφίησιν. ἐκεῖ γὰρ ἡ [τε] κακία τῆς ψυχῆς τρεπομένης ὑπὸ τῶν παθῶν καὶ τρεπούσης τὸ σῶμα τὰς χρόας ἀναδίδωσι, ἐνταῦθα δὲ καθαρμοῦ καὶ κολάσεως πέρας ἐστὶ τούτων ἐκλεανθέντων παντάπασι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐγοειδῆ καὶ σύγχρουν [d] γίνεσθαι· μέχρι δ’ οὗ ταῦτ’ ἔνεστι, γίνονταί τινες ὑποτροπαὶ τῶν παθῶν σφυγμοὺς ἔχουσαι καὶ πήδησιν, ἐνίαις μὲν ἀμυδρὰν καὶ ταχὺ κατασβεννυμένην ἐνίαις δὲ νεανικῶς ἐντείνουσαν. ὧν αἱ μὲν πάλιν καὶ πάλιν κολασθεῖσαι τὴν προσήκουσαν ἕξιν καὶ διάθεσιν , τὰς δ’ αὖθις εἰς σώματα ζῴων ἐξήνεγκε βιαιότης ἀμαθίας καὶ φιληδονίας †εἶδος. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀσθενείᾳ λόγου καὶ δι’ ἀργίαν τοῦ θεωρεῖν ἔρρεψε τῷ πρακτικῷ πρὸς γένεσιν, ἡ δ’ ὀργάνου τῷ ἀκολάστῳ δεομένη ποθεῖ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας συρράψαι ταῖς ἀπολαύσεσι καὶ συνεπαυρέσθαι διὰ σώματος· [e] ἐνταῦθα γὰρ οὐδὲν ἢ σκιά τις ἀτελὴς καὶ ὄναρ ἡδονῆς πλήρωσιν οὐκ ἐχούσης πάρεστι.’

Ταῦτα δ’ εἰπὼν ἦγεν αὐτὸν ταχὺ μέν, ἄπλετον δέ τινα τόπον ὡς ἐφαίνετο διεξιόντα ῥᾳδίως καὶ ἀπλανῶς, οἷον ὑπὸ πτερῶν τῶν τοῦ φωτὸς αὐγῶν ἀναφερόμενον, μέχρι οὗ πρός τι χάσμα μέγα καὶ κάτω διῆκον ἀφικόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς ὀχούσης ἀπελείφθη δυνάμεως. καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ψυχὰς ἑώρα ταὐτὸ πασχούσας ἐκεῖ· συστελλόμεναι γὰρ ὥσπερ αἱ ὄρνιθες καὶ καταφερόμεναι κύκλῳ τὸ χάσμα περιῄεσαν (ἄντικρυς δὲ περᾶν οὐκ ἐτόλμων), εἴσω μὲν ὀφθῆναι τοῖς βακχικοῖς ἄντροις ὁμοίως ὕλης χλωρότητι [f] καὶ χρόαις ἀνθέων ἁπάσαις διαπεποικιλμένον· ἐξέπνει δὲ μαλακὴν καὶ πραεῖαν αὔραν ὀσμὰς ἀναφέρουσαν ἡδονάς τε θαυμασίας καὶ κρᾶσιν οἵαν ὁ οἶνος τοῖς μεθυσκομένοις ἐμποιοῦσαν· εὐωχούμεναι γὰρ αἱ ψυχαὶ ταῖς εὐωδίαις διεχέοντο καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλας ἐφιλοφρονοῦντο· καὶ τὸν τόπον ἐν κύκλῳ κατεῖχε βακχεία καὶ γέλως καὶ πᾶσα μοῦσα [566] [a] παιζόντων καὶ τερπομένων. ἔλεγε ‹δὲ› ταύτῃ τὸν Διόνυσον ἀνελθεῖν καὶ τὴν Σεμέλην ἀναγαγεῖν ὕστερον· καλεῖσθαι δὲ Λήθης τὸν τόπον. ὅθεν οὐδὲ διατρίβειν βουλόμενον εἴα τὸν Θεσπέσιον, ἀλλ’ ἀφεῖλκε βίᾳ, διδάσκων ἅμα καὶ λέγων ὡς ἐκτήκεται καὶ ἀνυγραίνεται τὸ φρονοῦν ὑπὸ τῆς ἡδονῆς, τὸ δ’ ἄλογον καὶ σωματοειδὲς ἀρδόμενον καὶ σαρκούμενον ἐμποιεῖ τοῦ σώματος μνήμην, ἐκ δὲ τῆς μνήμης ἵμερον καὶ πόθον ἕλκοντα πρὸς γένεσιν, ἣν οὕτως ὠνομάσθαι, νεῦσιν ἐπὶ γῆν οὖσαν ὑγρότητι βαρυνομένης τῆς ψυχῆς.

Ἄλλην οὖν τοσαύτην διελθὼν ὁδὸν ἔδοξεν ἀφορᾶν [b] κρατῆρα μέγαν, εἰς δὲ τοῦτον ἐμβάλλοντα ῥεύματα, τὸ μὲν ἀφροῦ θαλάσσης ἢ χιόνων λευκότερον, τὸ δ’ ὁποῖον ἶρις ἐξανθεῖ τὸ ἁλουργόν, ἄλλα δ’ ἄλλαις βαφαῖς κεχρωσμένα, πρόσωθεν ἴδιον ἐχούσαις φέγγος. ὡς δὲ πλησίον ἦλθον, ὁ κρατὴρ ἐκεῖνος ἀφανὴς †χλεμάβλου τοῦ περιέχοντος, τῶν τε χρωμάτων ἀμαυρουμένων τὸ ἀνθηρότερον ἀπέλειπε πλὴν τῆς λευκότητος. ἑώρα δὲ τρεῖς δαίμονας ὁμοῦ καθημένους ἐν σχήματι τριγώνου πρὸς ἀλλήλους τὰ ῥεύματα μέτροις τισὶν ἀνακεραννύντας. ἔλεγεν οὖν ὁ τοῦ Θεσπεσίου ψυχοπομπὸς ἄχρι τούτου τὸν Ὀρφέα (Orph. fr. 294) προελθεῖν, ὅτε τὴν ψυχὴν τῆς γυναικὸς μετῄει, [c] καὶ μὴ καλῶς διαμνημονεύσαντα λόγον εἰς ἀνθρώπους κίβδηλον ἐξενεγκεῖν ὡς κοινὸν εἴη μαντεῖον ἐν θεοῖς Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ Νυκτός· οὐδενὸς γὰρ Ἀπόλλωνι Νύκτα κοινωνεῖν· ‘ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μέν’ ἔφη ‘Νυκτός ἐστι καὶ Σελήνης μαντεῖον κοινόν, οὐδαμοῦ τῆς γῆς περαῖνον οὐδ’ ἔχον ἕδραν μίαν, ἀλλὰ πάντῃ πλανητὸν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐνυπνίοις καὶ εἰδώλοις· ἐκ τούτου γὰρ οἱ ὄνειροι μιγνύμενον, ὡς ὁρᾷς, τῷ ἀπατηλῷ καὶ ποικίλῳ τὸ ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀληθὲς παραλαμβάνοντες διασπείρουσι. τὸ δ’ Ἀπόλλωνος οὐκέτ’ οἶδα’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ κατιδεῖν ἔσῃ δυνατός· ἀνωτέρω [d] γὰρ οὐκ ἐπιδίδωσιν οὐδὲ χαλᾷ τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐπίγειον ἀλλὰ κατατείνει τῷ σώματι προσηρτημένον.’ ἅμα δ’ ἐπειρᾶτο προσάγων ἐπιδεικνύειν αὐτῷ τὸ φῶς ἐκ τοῦ τρίποδος, ὡς ἔλεγε, διὰ τῶν κόλπων τῆς Θέμιδος ἀπερειδόμενον εἰς τὸν Παρνασόν. προθυμούμενος ‹δ’ αὐτὸς› ἰδεῖν οὐκ εἶδεν ὑπὸ λαμπρότητος, ἀλλ’ ἤκουε παριὼν φωνὴν ὀξεῖαν γυναικὸς ἐν μέτρῳ φράζουσαν ἄλλα τινὰ καὶ χρόνον, ὡς ἔοικε, τῆς ἐκείνου τελευτῆς. ἔλεγε δ’ ὁ δαίμων τὴν φωνὴν εἶναι Σιβύλλης· ᾄδειν γὰρ αὐτὴν περὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἐν τῷ προσώπῳ τῆς σελήνης περιφερομένην. βουλόμενος οὖν ἀκροᾶσθαι [e] πλείονα τῇ ῥύμῃ τῆς σελήνης εἰς τοὐναντίον ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς δίναις ἐξεώσθη καὶ βραχέα κατήκουσεν· ὧν ἦν καὶ τὰ περὶ τὸ Βέσβιον ὄρος καὶ τὴν Δικαιαρχείας ὑπὸ πυρὸς φθορὰν γενησομένην, καί τι κομμάτιον περὶ τοῦ τότε ἡγεμόνος ὡς

‘ἐσθλὸς ἐὼν νούσῳ τυραννίδα λείψει.’

Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα πρὸς τὴν θέαν τῶν κολαζομένων ἐτρέποντο. καὶ τὰ μὲν πρῶτα δυσχερεῖς καὶ οἰκτρὰς εἶχον μόνον ὄψεις· ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ φίλοις καὶ οἰκείοις καὶ συνήθεσιν ὁ Θεσπέσιος οὐκ ἂν προσδοκήσας κολαζομένοις ἐνετύγχανε, καὶ δεινὰ παθήματα καὶ τιμωρίας ἀσχήμονας καὶ ἀλγεινὰς ὑπομένοντες ᾠκτίζοντο πρὸς ἐκεῖνον καὶ ἀνεκλαίοντο, τέλος δὲ τὸν πατέρα τὸν ἑαυτοῦ κατεῖδεν ἔκ [f] τινος βαράθρου στιγμάτων καὶ οὐλῶν μεστὸν ἀναδυόμενον, ὀρέγοντα τὰς χεῖρας αὐτῷ καὶ σιωπᾶν οὐκ ἐώμενον ἀλλ’ ὁμολογεῖν ἀναγκαζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐφεστώτων ταῖς τιμωρίαις, ὅτι περὶ ξένους τινὰς μιαρὸς γενόμενος χρυσίον ἔχοντας φαρμάκοις διαφθείρας καὶ ἐκεῖ διαλαθὼν ἅπαντας ἐνταῦθ’ ἐξελεγχθεὶς τὰ μὲν ἤδη πέπονθε [567] [a] τὰ δ’ ἄγεται πεισόμενος, ἱκετεύειν μὲν ἢ παραιτεῖσθαι περὶ τοῦ πατρὸς οὐκ ἐτόλμα δι’ ἔκπληξιν καὶ δέος, ὑποστρέψαι δὲ καὶ φυγεῖν βουλόμενος οὐκέτι τὸν πρᾶον ἐκεῖνον ἑώρα καὶ οἰκεῖον ξεναγόν, ἀλλ’ ὑφ’ ἑτέρων τινῶν φοβερῶν τὴν ὄψιν εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν ὠθούμενος, ὡς ἀνάγκην οὖσαν οὕτω διεξελθεῖν, ἐθεᾶτο τῶν μὲν γνωρίμως πονηρῶν γενομένων καὶ κολασθέντων αὐτόθι τὴν αἰκίαν οὐκέτ’ †εἶναι χαλεπῶς οὐδ’ ὁμοίως τριβομένην, ἅτε δὴ περὶ τὸ ἄλογον καὶ παθητικὸν ἔτι μόνον οὖσαν· ὅσοι δὲ πρόσχημα καὶ δόξαν ἀρετῆς περιβαλόμενοι διεβίωσαν κακίᾳ λανθανούσῃ, τούτους ἐπιπόνως καὶ ὀδυνηρῶς ἠνάγκαζον [b] ἕτεροι περιεστῶτες ἐκτρέπεσθαι τὰ ἐντὸς ἔξω τῆς ψυχῆς, ἰλυσπωμένους παρὰ φύσιν καὶ ἀνακαμπτομένους, ὥσπερ αἱ θαλάττιαι σκολόπενδραι καταπιοῦσαι τὸ ἄγκιστρον ἐκτρέπουσιν ἑαυτάς· ἐνίους δ’ ἀναδέροντες αὐτῶν καὶ ἀναπτύσσοντες ἀπεδείκνυσαν ὑπούλους καὶ ποικίλους, ἐν τῷ λογιστικῷ καὶ κυρίῳ τὴν μοχθηρίαν ἔχοντας. ἄλλας δ’ ἔφη ψυχὰς ἰδεῖν, ὥσπερ τὰς ἐχίδνας περιπεπλεγμένας σύνδυο καὶ σύντρεις καὶ πλείονας, ἀλλήλας ἐσθιούσας ὑπὸ μνησικακίας καὶ κακοθυμίας ὧν ἔπαθον ἐν τῷ ζῆν ἢ ἔδρασαν. εἶναι δὲ καὶ λίμνας παρ’ ἀλλήλας, τὴν μὲν [c] χρυσοῦ περιζέουσαν τὴν δὲ μολίβδου ψυχροτάτην ἄλλην δὲ τραχεῖαν σιδήρου· καί τινας ἐφεστάναι δαίμονας ὥσπερ οἱ χαλκεῖς ὀργάνοις ἀναλαμβάνοντας καὶ καθιέντας ἐν μέρει τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν δι’ ἀπληστίαν καὶ πλεονεξίαν πονηρῶν. ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῷ χρυσῷ διαπύρους καὶ διαφανεῖς ὑπὸ τοῦ φλέγεσθαι γενομένας ἐνέβαλλον εἰς τὴν τοῦ μολίβδου βάπτοντες· ἐκπαγείσας δ’ αὐτόθι καὶ γενομένας σκληρὰς ὥσπερ αἱ χάλαζαι πάλιν εἰς τὴν τοῦ σιδήρου μεθίστασαν· ἐνταῦθα δὲ μέλαιναί τε δεινῶς ἐγίνοντο καὶ περικλώμεναι διὰ σκληρότητα καὶ συντριβόμεναι τὰ εἴδη μετέβαλλον· [d] εἶθ’ οὕτω πάλιν εἰς τὸν χρυσὸν ἐκομίζοντο, δεινάς, ὡς ἔλεγεν, ἐν ταῖς μεταβολαῖς ἀλγηδόνας ὑπομένουσαι.

Πάντων δὲ πάσχειν ἔλεγεν οἰκτρότατα τὰς ἤδη δοκούσας ἀφεῖσθαι τῆς δίκης, εἶτ’ αὖθις συλλαμβανομένας· αὗται δ’ ἦσαν, ὧν εἴς τινας ἐκγόνους ἢ παῖδας ἡ ποινὴ περιῆλθεν. ὁπότε γάρ τις ἐκείνων ἀφίκοιτο καὶ περιτύχοι, προσέπιπτεν ὀργῇ καὶ κατεβόα καὶ τὰ σημεῖα τῶν παθῶν ἐδείκνυεν, ὀνειδίζουσα καὶ διώκουσα φεύγειν καὶ ἀποκρύπτεσθαι βουλομένην οὐ δυναμένην δέ. ταχὺ γὰρ μετέθεον οἱ κολασταὶ [πρὸς τὴν δίκην] καὶ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἀπῆγον ὀλοφυρομένας τῷ προγινώσκειν τὴν τιμωρίαν.

[e] ἐνίαις δὲ καὶ πολλὰς ἅμα τῶν ἐκγόνων ἔλεγε συνηρτῆσθαι καθάπερ μελίττας ἢ νυκτερίδας ἀτεχνῶς ἐχομένας καὶ τετριγυίας ὑπὸ μνήμης καὶ ὀργῆς ὧν ἔπαθον δι’ αὐτάς. ἔσχατα δ’ ὁρῶντος αὐτοῦ τὰς ἐπὶ δευτέραν γένεσιν τρεπομένας ψυχὰς εἴς τε ζῷα παντοδαπὰ καμπτομένας βίᾳ καὶ μετασχηματιζομένας ὑπὸ τῶν ταῦτα δημιουργούντων, ὀργάνοις τισὶ καὶ πληγαῖς τὰ μὲν κολλώντων μέρη καὶ συνελαυνόντων, τὰ δ’ ἀποστρεφόντων, ἔνια δ’ ἐκλεαινόντων καὶ ἀφανιζόντων παντάπασιν, ὅπως ἐφαρμόσειεν ἑτέροις ἤθεσι καὶ βίοις, ἐν ταύταις φανῆναι τὴν [f] Νέρωνος, τά τ’ ἄλλα κακῶς ἔχουσαν ἤδη καὶ διαπεπαρμένην ἥλοις διαπύροις. προκεχειρισμένων δὲ καὶ ταύτῃ τῶν δημιουργῶν Πινδαρικῆς (fr. 276) ἐχίδνης εἶδος, ἐν ᾧ κυηθεῖσαν καὶ διαφαγοῦσαν τὴν μητέρα βιώσεσθαι, φῶς ἔφασκεν ἐξαίφνης διαλάμψαι μέγα καὶ φωνὴν ἐκ τοῦ φωτὸς γενέσθαι προστάττουσαν εἰς ἄλλο γένος ἡμερώτερον μεταβαλεῖν, ᾠδικόν τι μηχανησαμένους περὶ ἕλη καὶ λίμνας ζῷον· ὧν μὲν γὰρ ἠδίκησε δεδωκέναι δίκας, ὀφείλεσθαι δέ τι καὶ χρηστὸν αὐτῷ παρὰ θεῶν, [568] [a] ὅτι τῶν ὑπηκόων τὸ βέλτιστον καὶ θεοφιλέστατον γένος ἠλευθέρωσε [τὴν Ἑλλάδα].

Μέχρι μὲν οὖν τούτων εἶναι θεατής· ὡς δ’ ἀναστρέφειν ἔμελλεν, ἐν παντὶ [κακῷ] γενέσθαι διὰ φόβον· γυναῖκα γὰρ αὐτοῦ λαβομένην θαυμαστὴν τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὸ μέγεθος ‘δεῦρο δή’ εἰπεῖν ‘οὗτος, ὅπως ἕκαστα μᾶλλον μνημονεύσῃς’, καί τι ῥαβδίον, ὥσπερ οἱ ζωγράφοι, διάπυρον προσάγειν· ἑτέραν δὲ κωλύειν, αὐτὸν δ’ ὥσπερ ὑπ’ ἴυγγος ἐξαίφνης σπασθέντα πνεύματι νεανικῷ σφόδρα καὶ βιαίῳ τῷ σώματι προσπεσεῖν καὶ ἀναβλέψαι σχεδὸν ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ μνήματος.

De fato

ΠΕΡΙ ΕΙΜΑΡΜΕΝΗΣ

[568] Τὰ περὶ τῆς εἱμαρμένης δοκοῦνθ’ ἡμῖν ὡς οἷόν τε σαφῶς [c] καὶ συντόμως πειράσομαι ἐπιστεῖλαί σοι, φίλτατε Πείσων, ἐπειδὴ σὺ τοῦτ’ ἠξίωσας οὐκ ἀγνοῶν ἣν ἔχω πρὸς τὸ γράφειν εὐλάβειαν.

Πρῶτον τοίνυν ἴσθι, ὅτι εἱμαρμένη διχῶς καὶ λέγεται καὶ νοεῖται· ἡ μὲν γάρ ἐστιν ἐνέργεια ἡ δ’ οὐσία. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἐνέργειαν τύπῳ ὑπέγραψεν ὁ Πλάτων ἔν τε τῷ Φαίδρῳ (248c) λέγων ‘θεσμός τε Ἀδραστείας ὅδε, ἥτις ἂν ‹ψυχὴ› θεῷ ξυνοπαδὸς γενομένη ...’ ἔν τε τῷ Τιμαίῳ (41e) ‘νόμους’ οὓς ἐπὶ τῇ τοῦ παντὸς φύσει ὁ θεὸς εἶπε ταῖς ἀθανάτοις ψυχαῖς· ἐν δὲ τῇ Πολιτείᾳ (617d) [d] ‘Ἀνάγκης θυγατρὸς κόρης Λαχέσεως λόγον’ φησὶν εἶναι τὴν εἱμαρμένην, οὐ τραγικῶς ἀλλὰ θεολογικῶς τὸ ἀρέσκον αὑτῷ ἀποφαινόμενος. εἰ δὲ κοινότερον ἐθέλοι τις ταῦτα μεταλαβὼν ὑπογράψαι, ὡς μὲν ἐν Φαίδρῳ, λέγοιτ’ ἂν ἡ εἱμαρμένη λόγος θεῖος ἀπαράβατος δι’ αἰτίαν ἀνεμπόδιστον, ὡς δ’ ἐν τῷ Τιμαίῳ, νόμος ἀκόλουθος τῇ τοῦ παντὸς φύσει, καθ’ ὃν διεξάγεται τὰ γινόμενα τοῦτο γὰρ ἡ Λάχεσις ἐργάζεται, ἡ τῆς Ἀνάγκης ἀληθῶς θυγάτηρ, ὡς καὶ πρότερον παρελάβομεν καὶ ὕστερον ἔτι μᾶλλον εἰσόμεθ’ ἐν τοῖς [e] κατὰ σχολὴν λόγοις. ἥδε μὲν οὖν ἡ κατ’ ἐνέργειαν εἱμαρμένη, ἡ ‹δὲ› κατ’ οὐσίαν ἔοικεν εἶναι σύμπασ’ ἡ τοῦ κόσμου ψυχὴ τριχῇ διανεμηθεῖσα, εἴς τε τὴν ἀπλανῆ μοῖραν καὶ εἰς τὴν πλανᾶσθαι νομιζομένην καὶ τρίτην [εἰς] τὴν ὑπουράνιον τὴν περὶ γῆν ὑπάρχουσαν· ὧν ἡ μὲν ἀνωτάτω Κλωθὼ προσαγορεύεται, ἡ δὲ μετ’ αὐτὴν Ἄτροπος, ἡ κατωτάτω δ’ αὖ Λάχεσις, δεχομένη μὲν τὰς οὐρανίας τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἐνεργείας, συμπλέκουσα δὲ καὶ διαδιδοῦσα ταύτας εἰς τὰ ὑπ’ αὐτῇ τεταγμένα τὰ ἐπίγεια. δυνάμει μὲν οὖν εἴρηται, ὁποῖα χρὴ λέγεσθαι περὶ τῆς κατ’ οὐσίαν [f] εἱμαρμένης· καὶ γὰρ ἥτις ἐστὶ καὶ πόση τις καὶ ὁποία καὶ ὅπως τέτακται καὶ ὅπως ἔχει αὐτή τε πρὸς ἑαυτὴν καὶ δὴ καὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὡς ἐν ἐπιτομῇ εἴρηται· τὰ δὲ καθ’ ἕκαστα περὶ τούτων ὁ ἕτερος μῦθος ὁ ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ μετρίως αἰνίττεται, καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς δύναμίν σοι ταῦτ’ ἐπειράθημεν ἐξηγήσασθαι.

Πάλιν γε μὴν τὴν κατ’ ἐνέργειαν εἱμαρμένην ἀναλαβόντες λέγωμεν· περὶ γὰρ ταύτην τὰ πολλὰ ζητήματα φυσικά τε καὶ ἠθικὰ καὶ διαλεκτικὰ τυγχάνει ὄντα. τίς μὲν οὖν ἐστιν, ἐπιεικῶς ἀφώρισται· ὁποία δ’ ἐστίν, ἑξῆς [569] [a] ῥητέον, εἰ καὶ πολλοῖς ἄτοπον φαίνεται. ἀπείρων γὰρ ἐξ ἀπείρου καὶ εἰς ἄπειρον ‹ὄντων› τῶν γινομένων τὰ πάντα περιβαλοῦσ’ ἐν κύκλῳ ἡ εἱμαρμένη οὐκ ἄπειρος ἀλλὰ πεπερασμένη ἐστίν· οὔτε γὰρ νόμος οὔτε λόγος οὔτε τι θεῖον ἄπειρον ἂν εἴη. ἔτι δ’ ἂν μάθοις τὸ λεγόμενον νοήσας τήν τε ὅλην περίοδον καὶ τὸν σύμπαντα χρόνον, ‘ὅταν τῶν ὀκτὼ περιόδων’ ὥς φησιν ὁ Τίμαιος (39d) ‘τὰ πρὸς ἄλληλα συμπερανθέντα τάχη σχῇ κεφαλήν, τῷ ‹τοῦ› ταὐτοῦ καὶ ὁμοίως ἰόντος ἀναμετρηθέντα κύκλῳ.’ ἐν γὰρ τούτῳ τῷ χρόνῳ ὡρισμένῳ τ’ ὄντι καὶ θεωρουμένῳ πάνθ’ [b] ὅσα τε κατ’ οὐρανὸν ἅ τ’ ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἄνωθεν συνίσταται, πάλιν μὲν εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ καταστήσεται, πάλιν δ’ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὅλα κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ ὡσαύτως ἀποδοθήσεται. μόνη γοῦν ἡ κατ’ οὐρανὸν σχέσις αὐτή τε πρὸς ἑαυτὴν κατὰ πάντα τεταγμένη πρός τε τὴν γῆν καὶ πρὸς τὰ ἐπίγεια πάντα διὰ μακρῶν περιόδων πάλιν ἐπανήξει ποτέ· αἵ τε μετ’ αὐτὴν ἐφεξῆς καὶ [ἐχόμεναι ἀλλήλαις] ἐχομένως παρέσονται, ἑκάστη τὰ αὑτῆς ἐξ ἀνάγκης φέρουσαι. ἔστω δὲ πρὸς τὸ σαφὲς τῶν περὶ ἡμᾶς νῦν ὄντων, ὅτι οὐ συμβαίνει ἀπὸ τῶν οὐρανίων ὡς πάντων αἰτιῶν ὄντων καὶ [c] τὸ ἐμὲ γράφειν νυνὶ τάδε καὶ ὡδὶ σέ τε πράττειν ἅπερ καὶ ὅπως τυγχάνεις πράττων· †πάλιν τοίνυν ἐπειδὰν ἡ αὐτὴ ἀφίκηται αἰτία, τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως οἱ αὐτοὶ γενόμενοι πράξομεν, οὕτω δὲ καὶ πάντες ἄνθρωποι· καὶ τά θ’ ἑξῆς κατὰ τὴν ἑξῆς αἰτίαν γενήσεται καὶ πραχθήσεται, καὶ πάνθ’ ὅσα ‹καὶ› κατὰ μίαν τὴν ὅλην περίοδον καὶ καθ’ ἑκάστην τῶν ὅλων, ὡσαύτως ἀποδοθήσεται. φανερὸν τοίνυν ἤδη ὅ τι ἔφαμεν, τὴν εἱμαρμένην ἄπειρον τρόπον τινὰ οὖσαν μὴ ἄπειρον εἶναι, καὶ τό γε ῥηθέν, ὅτι κύκλος τίς ἐστι, μετρίως που κατῶπται· ὡς γὰρ καὶ ἡ τοῦ κύκλου κίνησις ὅ τε ταύτην παραμετρῶν χρόνος κύκλος τίς ἐστιν, οὕτω καὶ τῶν κατὰ κύκλον γινομένων ὁ λόγος κύκλος ἂν νομισθείη.

[d] Σχεδὸν μὲν οὖν καὶ τοῦτο δηλοῖ, ὁποῖόν τι τυγχάνει ἡ εἱμαρμένη, πλὴν οὐχ ἥ γε κατὰ μέρος οὐδ’ ἡ καθ’ ἕκαστα. ποία τις οὖν καὶ ἥδε κατ’ αὐτὸ δὴ τὸ εἶδος τοῦ λόγου; ἔστι τοίνυν, ὡς ἄν τις εἰκάσαι, οἷος ὁ πολιτικὸς νόμος, ‹ὃς› πρῶτον μὲν τὰ πλεῖστα, εἰ καὶ μὴ πάντα, ἐξ ὑποθέσεως προστάττει, ἔπειτα μὴν καθόλου τὰ πόλει προσήκοντα εἰς δύναμιν περιλαμβάνει. πάλιν δὴ τούτων ἑκάτερον ὁποῖόν τί ἐστι, σκεπτέον. ἀκολούθως τοίνυν ὁ πολιτικὸς νόμος περί τ’ ἀριστέως καὶ λιποτάκτου διαλέγεται καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὡσαύτως, ἀλλ’ οὐ περὶ τοῦδ’ ἢ τοῦδ’ ‹ᾗ› νόμιμόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν καθόλου προηγουμένως, [e] τὰ δ’ ὑποπίπτοντα τούτοις ἑπομένως. καὶ γὰρ τὸ τιμῆσαι τόνδε τινὰ ἠριστευκότα καὶ τὸ κολάσαι τόνδε τινὰ λιποτακτήσαντα νόμιμον ἂν φήσαιμεν, ὡς δυνάμει καὶ περὶ τούτων διατεταγμένου τοῦ νόμου, ὃν τρόπον ὁ ἰατρικὸς καὶ ὁ γυμναστικὸς ὡς εἰπεῖν νόμος δυνάμει τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα τοῖς ὅλοις συμπεριλαμβάνει· οὕτω δὲ καὶ ὁ τῆς φύσεως νόμος τὰ μὲν καθόλου προηγουμένως, τὰ δὲ καθ’ [f] ἕκαστα ἑπομένως. ἔστι θ’ εἱμαρμένα τρόπον τινὰ καὶ ταῦτα, ὄντ’ ἐκείνοις συνειμαρμένα. τάχα δ’ ἄν τις τῶν ἄγαν ἀκριβολογουμένων τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ τοὐναντίον φαίη προηγούμενα συντετάχθαι τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα, εἶναί τε τούτων ἕνεκα καὶ τὸ καθόλου, προηγεῖσθαι δὲ τῶν ἕνεκά του τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα. ἀλλὰ περὶ μὲν τούτων ἐν ἄλλοις σκεπτέον· ὅτι δ’ οὐ πάντα καθαρῶς οὐδὲ διαρρήδην ἡ εἱμαρμένη περιέχει ἀλλ’ ὅσα καθόλου, τοῦτο δὴ ἐν τῷ παρόντι ῥηθὲν πρός τε τὸν ἑξῆς λόγον καὶ τὸν ὀλίγον ἔμπροσθεν χώραν ἔχει. [570] [a] τὸ μὲν γὰρ ὡρισμένον οἰκεῖον τῇ θείᾳ φρονήσει ἐν τῷ καθόλου μᾶλλον θεωρεῖται (τοιοῦτος μέντοι γε ὁ θεῖος νόμος καὶ ὁ πολιτικός), τὸ δ’ ἄπειρον ἐν τῷ καθ’ ἕκαστα.

μετὰ δὴ ταῦτα, οἷον μέν ἐστι ‹τὸ› ἐξ ὑποθέσεως, ὅτι δὲ τοιοῦτον καὶ ἡ εἱμαρμένη, ὁριζέσθω. ἐξ ὑποθέσεως δὴ ἔφαμεν τὸ μὴ καθ’ ἑαυτὸ τιθέμενον, ἀλλά πως ἑτέρῳ τινὶ ὡς ἀληθῶς ὑποτεθέν, ὁπόσα ἀκολουθίαν σημαίνει. ‘θεσμός τε Ἀδραστείας ὅδε· ἥτις ἂν ψυχὴ συνοπαδὸς γενομένη κατίδῃ τι τῶν ἀληθῶν, μέχρι τῆς ἑτέρας περιόδου εἶναι ἀπήμονα· κἂν ἀεὶ δύνηται τοῦτο ποιεῖν, ‹ἀεὶ› [b] ἀβλαβῆ εἶναι’ (Plat. Phaedr. 248c). τοιοῦτον μὲν δὴ τὸ ἐξ ὑποθέσεως ἅμα καὶ καθόλου. ὅτι δὲ καὶ ἡ εἱμαρμένη τοιοῦτον τυγχάνει ὄν, ἔκ τε τῆς οὐσίας αὐτῆς καὶ ἐκ τῆς προσηγορίας δῆλον. εἱμαρμένη τε γὰρ προσαγορεύεται ὡς ἂν εἰρομένη τις· θεσμὸς δὲ καὶ νόμος ὑπάρχει τῷ τὰ ἀκόλουθα τοῖς γινομένοις πολιτικῶς διατετάχθαι.

Ἑξῆς δὲ σκεπτέον καὶ τὰ κατὰ τὸ πρός τι, πῶς μὲν πρὸς τὴν πρόνοιαν ἡ εἱμαρμένη ἔχει, πῶς δὲ πρὸς τὴν τύχην καὶ τό γ’ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν καὶ τὸ ἐνδεχόμενον καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα· [c] πρὸς δὲ τούτῳ διωρίσθω, πῆ μὲν ἀληθὲς πῆ δὲ ψεῦδος τό ‘πάντα καθ’ εἱμαρμένην.’ εἰ μὲν οὖν τὸ ἐν τῇ εἱμαρμένῃ πάντα περιέχεσθαι δηλοῖ, συγχωρητέον εἶναι ἀληθές· εἴ θ’ ὅσα περὶ ἀνθρώπους εἴτε κατὰ γῆν ἅπαντα εἴτε κατ’ οὐρανὸν γινόμενα βούλεταί τις ἐν τῇ εἱμαρμένῃ τίθεσθαι, καὶ ταῦθ’ ὡς πρὸς τὸ παρὸν συγκεχωρήσθω· εἰ δ’, ὅπερ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐμφαίνει, τὸ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην οὐχ ἅπαντα, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸ μόνον τὸ ἑπόμενον αὐτῇ σημαίνει, οὐ πάντα ῥητέον καθ’ εἱμαρμένην, οὐδ’ εἰ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην πάντα. οὐδὲ γὰρ νόμιμα οὐδὲ κατὰ νόμον πάνθ’ ὁπόσα περιείληφεν ὁ νόμος· καὶ γὰρ προδοσίαν καὶ λιποταξίαν καὶ μοιχείαν [d] καὶ πολλὰ ἕτερα τοιαῦτα περιλαμβάνει, ὧν οὐδὲν ἄν τις εἴποι νόμιμον, ὁπότ’ οὐδὲ τὸ ἀριστεῦσαι ἢ τυραννοκτονῆσαι ἤ τι ἄλλο κατορθῶσαι φαίην ἂν ἔγωγε νόμιμον. τὸ μὲν γὰρ δὴ νόμιμον πρόσταγμα νόμου ἐστί· τὰ δ’ εἴπερ ὁ νόμος προστάττει, πῶς οὐκ ἂν ἀπειθοῖεν καὶ παρανομοῖεν οἵ γε μὴ ἀριστεύοντες καὶ τυραννοκτονοῦντες καὶ ὅσοι τὰ τοιαῦτα μὴ κατορθοῦσιν; ἢ πῶς, εἰ παράνομοι οἵδε, οὐ δίκαιον κολάζειν τοὺς τοιούτους; εἴ γε μὴν ταῦτα λόγον οὐκ ἔχει, μόνα ῥητέον νόμιμά τε καὶ κατὰ νόμον τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου ὁρισθέντ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς ὁπωσοῦν πραττομένοις· [e] μόνα δ’ εἱμαρμένα καὶ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην τὰ ἀκόλουθα τοῖς ἐν τῇ θείᾳ διατάξει προηγησαμένοις. ὥστε πάντα μὲν τὰ γινόμεν’ ἡ εἱμαρμένη περιλαμβάνει, πολλὰ δὲ τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ σχεδὸν ὅσα προηγεῖται οὐκ ὀρθὸν λέγειν καθ’ εἱμαρμένην.

Τούτων δ’ οὕτως ἐχόντων ἑξῆς ῥητέον, ὡς τό γ’ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν καὶ ἡ τύχη τό τε δυνατὸν καὶ τὸ ἐνδεχόμενον καὶ τὰ τούτων συγγενῆ ταχθέντα ἐν τοῖς προηγουμένοις αὐτά τε σῴζοιτ’ ἂν καὶ τὴν εἱμαρμένην σῴζοι. ἡ μὲν γὰρ εἱμαρμένη πάντα περιέχει καθάπερ καὶ δοκεῖ· τὰ δ’ οὐκ ἐξ [f] ἀνάγκης γενήσεται, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστον αὐτῶν οἷον καὶ πέφυκεν εἶναι. πέφυκε δὲ τὸ δυνατὸν ὡς γένος προϋφεστάναι τοῦ ἐνδεχομένου, τὸ ‹δ’› ἐνδεχόμενον ὡς ὕλη τῶν ἐφ’ ἡμῖν προϋποκεῖσθαι, τὸ δ’ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν ὡς κύριον χρῆσθαι τῷ ἐνδεχομένῳ· ἡ δὲ τύχη παρεμπίπτει τῷ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν διὰ τὴν ἐφ’ ἑκάτερα ῥοπὴν τοῦ ἐνδεχομένου. μάθοις δ’ ἂν τὸ λεγόμενον σαφῶς ἐννοήσας, ὡς τὸ γινόμενον ἅπαν καὶ ἡ γένεσις [571] [a] αὐτὴ οὐ δίχα δυνάμεως, ἡ δὲ δύναμις οὐκ ἄνευ οὐσίας. οἷον ‹ἀνθρώπου› εἴτε γένεσις εἴτε γενητὸν οὐκ ἄνευ τῆς δυνάμεως, αὕτη δὲ περὶ ἄνθρωπον, οὐσία δ’ ὁ ἄνθρωπος. ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς δυνάμεως μεταξὺ οὔσης ἡ μὲν οὐσία δυνάμενον, ἡ δὲ γένεσις καὶ τὸ γινόμενον ἄμφω δυνατά. τριῶν τοίνυν τούτων, δυνάμεως καὶ δυναμένου καὶ δυνατοῦ, δυνάμεως μὲν ὡς τὸ εἶναι προϋπόκειται τὸ δυνάμενον, δυνατοῦ δ’ ἡ δύναμις προϋφίσταται. σαφὲς μὲν οὖν καὶ οὕτως τὸ δυνατόν· τύπῳ δ’ ἂν ἀφορισθείη κοινότερον μὲν τὸ κατὰ δύναμιν πεφυκὸς γίνεσθαι, κυριώτερον δὲ ταὐτὸ τοῦτο, ὁπόταν μηδὲν ἔξωθεν ἔχῃ πρὸς τὸ [b] γίνεσθαι ἐμποδών. τῶν δὲ δυνατῶν τὰ μὲν οὐκ ἂν κωλυθείη ποτέ, ὥσπερ τὰ κατ’ οὐρανόν, ἀνατολαὶ καὶ δύσεις καὶ τὰ τούτοις παραπλήσια· τὰ δ’ οἷά τε κωλυθῆναί ἐστιν, ὡς πολλὰ μὲν τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων πολλὰ δὲ καὶ τῶν μεταρσίων. τὰ μὲν οὖν πρότερ’ ὡς ἐξ ἀνάγκης γινόμεν’ ἀναγκαῖα προσαγορεύεται, ἃ δέ πως τοὐναντίον ἐπιδέχεται ἐνδεχόμενα. ἀφορίζοιτο δ’ ἂν κατὰ ταῦτα· τὸ μὲν ἀναγκαῖον δυνατὸν τὸ ἀντικείμενον ἀδυνάτῳ, τὸ δ’ ἐνδεχόμενον δυνατόν, οὗ καὶ τὸ ἀντικείμενον δυνατόν. τὸ μὲν γὰρ [c] καταδῦναι τὸν ἥλιον ἀναγκαῖόν θ’ ἅμα καὶ δυνατόν, ἀντίκειται ‹γὰρ› ἀδύνατον τὸ μὴ καταδῦναι· τὸ δὲ καταδύντος ἡλίου ὄμβρον γενέσθαι ‹καὶ μὴ γενέσθαι›, ἀμφότερα δυνατὰ καὶ ἐνδεχόμενα. πάλιν δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ ἐνδεχομένου, τὸ μὲν ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ, τὸ δ’ ὡς ἐπ’ ἔλαττον, τὸ δ’ ὡς ἐπίσης καὶ ὁπότερον ἔτυχε· τοῦτο μὲν φανερὸν ὡς αὐτὸ αὑτῷ ἀντιτέτακται, τὸ δὲ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ καὶ ἐπ’ ἔλαττον ἀλλήλοις· καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἐπὶ τῇ φύσει τὸ πλεῖστον, ἐφ’ ἡμῖν δὲ τὸ ἐπίσης. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ὑπὸ κύνα καῦμ’ ἢ ψῦχος, ‹ὧν τὸ μὲν› ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ τὸ δ’ ὡς ἐπ’ ἔλαττον, τῇ φύσει ἄμφω ὑποτέτακται· τὸ δὲ περιπατεῖν [d] καὶ μὴ καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα, ὧν ἑκάτερον ἐπί‹σης›, τῇ ἀνθρωπίνῃ ὁρμῇ ὑποτέτακται, ὃ δὴ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν καὶ κατὰ προαίρεσιν λέγεται. γενικώτερον δὲ μᾶλλον τὸ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν· δύο γὰρ ἔχει εἴδη, τό τ’ ἐκ πάθους καὶ θυμοῦ ἢ ἐπιθυμίας τό τ’ ἐξ ἐπιλογισμοῦ ἢ διανοίας, ὅπερ ἤδη κατὰ προαίρεσιν ‹ἄν› τις εἴποι. ἔχει δὲ λόγον μὴ τὸ δυνατὸν καὶ ἐνδεχόμενον τοῦτο, ὅπερ καθ’ ὁρμὴν καὶ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν εἴρηται, [μὴ] τὸ αὐτὸ κατ’ ἄλλο λέγεται· κατὰ μὲν γὰρ τὸ μέλλον δυνατόν τε καὶ ἐνδεχόμενον, κατὰ δὲ τὸ παρὸν ἐφ’ ἡμῖν τε καὶ καθ’ ὁρμήν. ἀφορίζοιτο δ’ ἂν ὧδε· τὸ μὲν ἐνδεχόμενον ὅπερ αὐτό τε καὶ τὸ ἀντικείμενον, τὸ δ’ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν θάτερον [e] μέρος τοῦ ἐνδεχομένου τὸ κατὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν ὁρμὴν ἤδη γινόμενον. ὅτι μὲν οὖν τὸ δυνατὸν τοῦ ἐνδεχομένου πρότερον τῇ φύσει τὸ δ’ ἐνδεχόμενον τοῦ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν προϋφίσταται, καὶ οἷον αὐτῶν τυγχάνει ὂν ἕκαστον καὶ πόθεν ὀνομάζεται καὶ τά γε παρακείμενα αὐτοῖς, σχεδὸν εἴρηται.

Περὶ δὲ τῆς τύχης καὶ τοῦ αὐτομάτου καὶ εἴ τι παρὰ ταῦτα θεωρεῖται, νῦν ἡμῖν λεκτέον. αἴτιον μὲν δή τι ἡ τύχη. τῶν δ’ αἰτίων τὰ μὲν καθ’ αὑτά, τὰ δὲ κατὰ συμβεβηκός· οἷον οἰκίας ἢ νεὼς καθ’ αὑτὸ μὲν αἴτιον τὸ οἰκοδομικὸν καὶ τὸ ναυπηγικόν, κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς δὲ τὸ [f] μουσικὸν ἢ γεωμετρικόν, καὶ πᾶν ὅ τι ἂν τῷ οἰκοδομικῷ ἢ ναυπηγικῷ εἴδει συμβεβήκῃ, εἴτε κατὰ σῶμα εἴτε κατὰ ψυχὴν εἴτε κατὰ τὰ ἐκτός. ὅθεν καὶ δῆλον, ὡς τὸ καθ’ αὑτὸ ὡρισμένον καὶ ἕν, τὸ δὲ κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς οὐχ ἕν τε καὶ ἀόριστον· [572] [a] πολλὰ γὰρ καὶ ἄπειρα τῷ ἑνὶ ὑπάρχει παντάπασιν ἀλλήλων διαφέροντα. τὸ μέντοι κατὰ συμβεβηκός, ὅταν μὴ μόνον ἐν τοῖς ἕνεκά του γίγνηται, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν οἷς ἡ προαίρεσις, τότε δὴ καὶ [τὸ] ἀπὸ τύχης προσαγορεύεται· οἷον τὸ εὑρεῖν χρυσίον σκάπτονθ’ ἵνα φυτεύσῃ, ἢ παθεῖν τι ἢ δρᾶσαι τῶν παρὰ τὸ ἔθος φεύγοντ’ ἢ διώκοντ’ ἢ ἄλλως βαδίζοντ’ ἢ αὐτὸ μόνον ἐπιστραφέντ’ οὐ τούτου ἕνεκα, ὅπερ συνέπεσεν, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρου τινὸς χάριν. διὸ καὶ ἀπρονόητον αἰτίαν καὶ ἄδηλον ἀνθρωπίνῳ λογισμῷ τὴν τύχην ἀπέδοσαν τῶν παλαιῶν ἔνιοι. κατὰ δὲ τοὺς ἀπὸ Πλάτωνος [b] ἔγγιον ἔτι προσιόντας αὐτῆς τῷ λόγῳ οὕτως ἀφώρισται ἡ τύχη, αἰτία κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς τῶν ἕνεκά του ἐν τοῖς κατὰ προαίρεσιν· ἔπειτ’ ἤδη καὶ τὸ ἀπρονόητον καὶ τὸ ἄδηλον ἀνθρωπίνῳ λογισμῷ προστιθέασιν. καίτοι γε κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ τὸ σπάνιον καὶ παράλογον ἐμφαίνεται τῷ κατὰ συμβεβηκός· οἷον δ’ ἐστὶ τοῦτο, εἰ καὶ μὴ ἐκ τῶν ἄρτι ῥηθέντων, ἀλλ’ ἔκ γε τῶν ἐν τῷ Φαίδωνι γεγραμμένων σαφέστατα προσπίπτει. γέγραπται δ’ ὧδε (58a)· ‘οὐδὲ τὰ περὶ τῆς δίκης ἆρα ἐπύθοντο ὃν τρόπον ἐγένετο; Ναί· ταῦτα μὲν ἡμῖν ἤγγειλέ τις· καὶ ἐθαυμάζομέν γε, ὅτι πάλαι [c] αὐτῆς γενομένης ὕστερον φαίνεται ἀποθανών· τί ἦν τοῦτο, ὦ Φαίδων; Τύχη τις αὐτῷ, ὦ Ἐχέκρατες, συνέβη· ἔτυχε γὰρ τῇ προτεραίᾳ τῆς δίκης ἡ πρύμνα ἐστεμμένη τοῦ πλοίου, ὃ εἰς Δῆλον Ἀθηναῖοι πέμπουσιν.’ ἐν γὰρ τούτοις τό ‘συνέβη’ οὐκ ἀντὶ τοῦ ‘γέγονεν’ ἀκουστέον, ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον ἐκ συνδρομῆς τινος αἰτίων ἀπέβη ἄλλου πρὸς ἄλλο γεγονότος. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἱερεὺς ἔστεφε τὸ πλοῖον ἄλλου χάριν ἀλλ’ οὐ Σωκράτους· οἱ δὲ δι’ ἕτερον κατεψηφίσαντ’ αὐτοῦ· αὐτὸ δὲ τὸ ἀποβὰν παράλογον καὶ τοιοῦτο ἀπέβη, οἷον κἂν ἐκ προνοίας ἐγεγόνει ἤτοι ἀνθρωπίνου τινὸς ἢ τῶν [d] ἔτι κρειττόνων. καὶ περὶ μὲν τῆς τύχης ταῦθ’ ἱκανά· ‹ἑξῆς δὲ σκεπτέον› οἷς συνυφίστασθαι ‹αὐτὴν› ἀνάγκη. †τὸ μὲν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ παρωνύμως καὶ τοῦ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν προϋποκεῖσθαι ἐλέχθη, τὸ δ’ αὐτόματον ἐπὶ πλεῖον τῆς τύχης· εἰ γὰρ καὶ αὐτὴν περιλαβὸν ἔχει καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλως συμπίπτειν πεφυκότων. ἔστι δὲ κατ’ ὄνομα, ὅπερ αὐτόματον λέγεται, τὸ πεφυκὸς ἄλλου ἕνεκα, ὅταν μὴ ἐκεῖνο παρ.... ἐπεφύκει· οἷον δοκεῖ τὸ ὑπὸ κύνα ψῦχος. ποτὲ γὰρ ψῦχος οὐ μάτην, οὐδὲ .... τὸ δ’ ὅλον, ὡς τὸ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν μέρος τοῦ ἐνδεχομένου, οὕτως ἡ τύχη τοῦ αὐτομάτου.

[e] ἔστι δ’ ἑκατέρου ἑκάτερον σύμπτωμα, τὸ μὲν αὐτόματον τοῦ ἐνδεχομένου, ἡ δὲ τύχη τοῦ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν, καὶ τούτου οὐχ ἅπαντος, ἀλλ’ ὅπερ ἂν καὶ κατὰ προαίρεσιν ᾖ, ὡς προείρηται (571d). διὸ καὶ τὸ μὲν αὐτόματον κοινὸν ἐμψύχων τε καὶ ἀψύχων, ἡ δὲ τύχη ἀνθρώπου ἴδιον ἤδη πράττειν δυναμένου. τεκμήριον δέ, ὅτι τὸ εὐτυχεῖν καὶ εὐδαιμονεῖν ταὐτὰ εἶναι δοξάζεται· ἡ δὲ εὐδαιμονία εὐπραξία τις ἡ δ’ εὐπραξία περὶ μόνον καὶ τέλειον ἄνθρωπον.

Καὶ τὰ μὲν ἐντὸς τῆς εἱμαρμένης τοιαῦτα, τό τ’ ἐνδεχόμενον καὶ ‹τὸ› δυνατόν, ἥ τε προαίρεσις καὶ τὸ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν, ἥ τε τύχη καὶ τὸ αὐτόματον, τά τε παρακείμεν’ αὐτοῖς [f] ὧν καὶ τὸ τάχα καὶ τὸ ἴσως· ἃ δὴ πάντα περιέχει μὲν ἡ εἱμαρμένη, οὐδὲν δ’ αὐτῶν ἐστι καθ’ εἱμαρμένην. λοιπὸν δ’ ἂν εἴη καὶ περὶ προνοίας εἰπεῖν, ὡς αὐτή γε περιείληφε τὴν εἱμαρμένην.

Ἔστιν οὖν πρόνοια ἡ μὲν ἀνωτάτω καὶ πρώτη τοῦ πρώτου θεοῦ νόησις εἴτε καὶ βούλησις οὖσα εὐεργέτις ἁπάντων, καθ’ ἣν πρώτως ἕκαστα τῶν θείων διὰ παντὸς ἄριστά τε καὶ κάλλιστα κεκόσμηται, ἡ δὲ δευτέρα δευτέρων θεῶν τῶν κατ’ οὐρανὸν ἰόντων, [573] [a] καθ’ ἣν τά τε θνητὰ γίνεται τεταγμένως καὶ ὅσα πρὸς διαμονὴν καὶ σωτηρίαν ἑκάστων τῶν γενῶν, τρίτη δ’ ἂν εἰκότως ῥηθείη πρόνοιά τε καὶ προμήθεια τῶν ὅσοι περὶ γῆν δαίμονες τεταγμένοι τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων πράξεων φύλακές τε καὶ ἐπίσκοποί εἰσι. τριττῆς τοίνυν τῆς προνοίας θεωρουμένης, κυριώτατα δὲ καὶ μάλιστα τῆς πρώτης λεγομένης, οὐκ ἂν ὀκνήσαιμεν εἰπεῖν, εἰ καὶ φιλοσόφοις ἀνδράσι τἀναντία λέγειν δόξαιμεν, ὡς πάντα μὲν καθ’ εἱμαρμένην καὶ κατὰ πρόνοιαν, οὐ μὴν καὶ κατὰ φύσιν· ἀλλ’ ἔνια μὲν [b] κατὰ πρόνοιαν καὶ ἄλλα γε κατ’ ἄλλην, ἔνια δὲ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην. καὶ ἡ μὲν εἱμαρμένη πάντως κατὰ πρόνοιαν, ἡ δὲ πρόνοια οὐδαμῶς καθ’ εἱμαρμένην (ἔστω δ’ ὁ λόγος τὰ νῦν περὶ τῆς πρώτης καὶ ἀνωτάτω)· τὸ μὲν ‹γὰρ› κατά τι ὕστερον ἐκείνου, καθ’ ὅ τι ἂν καὶ λέγηται, οἷον τὸ κατὰ νόμον τοῦ νόμου καὶ τὸ κατὰ φύσιν τῆς φύσεως· οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὸ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην τῆς εἱμαρμένης νεώτερον ἂν εἴη· ἡ δ’ ἀνωτάτω πρόνοια πρεσβύτατον ἁπάντων, πλὴν οὗπέρ ἐστιν εἴτε βούλησις εἴτε νόησις εἴτε καὶ ἑκάτερον. ἔστι δ’ ὡς πρότερον εἴρηται τοῦ πάντων πατρός τε καὶ δημιουργοῦ. ‘λέγωμεν γὰρ δή’ φησὶν ὁ Τίμαιος [c] (29d) ‘δι’ ἥντινα αἰτίαν γένεσιν καὶ τὸ πᾶν τόδε ὁ ξυνιστὰς συνέστησεν. ἀγαθὸς ἦν· ἀγαθῷ δὲ οὐδεὶς οὐδέποτε περὶ οὐδενὸς ἐγγίγνεται φθόνος· τούτου δ’ ἐκτὸς ὢν πάντα ὅτι μάλιστα ἐβουλήθη γενέσθαι παραπλήσια ἑαυτῷ. ταύτην δὴ γενέσεως καὶ κόσμου μάλιστ’ ἄν τις ἀρχὴν κυριωτάτην παρ’ ἀνδρῶν φρονίμων ἀποδεχόμενος ὀρθότατ’ ἀποδέχοιτ’ ἄν. βουληθεὶς γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ἀγαθὰ μὲν πάντα, φαῦλον δὲ μηδὲν εἶναι κατὰ δύναμιν, οὕτω δὴ πᾶν ὅσον ἦν ὁρατὸν παραλαβών, οὐχ ἡσυχίαν ἄγον ἀλλὰ κινούμενον πλημμελῶς καὶ ἀτάκτως, εἰς τάξιν αὐτὸ ἦγεν ἐκ τῆς ἀταξίας, ἡγησάμενος ἐκεῖνο τοῦδε πάντως ἄμεινον. θέμις δὲ οὔτ’ ἦν οὔτ’ ἔστι τῷ ἀρίστῳ δρᾶν ἄλλο πλὴν τὸ κάλλιστον.’ [d] ταῦτα μὲν οὖν καὶ τὰ τούτων ἐχόμενα μέχρι ψυχῶν ἀνθρωπίνων κατὰ πρόνοιαν νομιστέον τήν γε πρώτην συνεστηκέναι· τὰ δ’ ἐντεῦθεν οὕτω λεγόμενα (41d) ‘συστήσας δὲ τὸ πᾶν ἰσαρίθμους τοῖς ἄστροις ἔταξεν .... διεῖλέ τε ψυχὰς ἑκάστην πρὸς ἕκαστον, καὶ ἐμβιβάσας ὡς εἰς ὄχημα τὴν τοῦ παντὸς φύσιν ἔδειξε νόμους τε τοὺς εἱμαρμένους ‹εἶπεν αὐταῖς›·’ ταῦτα δὲ τίς οὐκ ἂν διαρρήδην καὶ σαφέστατ’ οἰηθείη τὴν εἱμαρμένην δηλοῦν, ὥσπερ τινὰ βάσιν καὶ πολιτικὴν νομοθεσίαν ταῖς ἀνθρωπίναις ψυχαῖς προσήκουσαν, ἧς δὴ καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἑξῆς ἐπιφέρει; τὴν δὲ δευτέραν πρόνοιαν ὧδέ πως ἐπισημαίνεται [e] λέγων (42d) ‘διαθεσμοθετήσας πάντα αὐτοῖς, ἵνα τοῖς ἔπειτα εἴη κακίας ἑκάστων ἀναίτιος, ἔσπειρε τοὺς μὲν εἰς τὴν γῆν, τοὺς δ’ εἰς τὴν σελήνην, τοὺς δ’ εἰς τὰ ἄλλα ‹ὅσα› ὄργανα χρόνου. τὸ δὲ μετὰ τὸν σπόρον τοῖς νέοις παρέδωκε θεοῖς σώματα πλάττειν θνητά, τό τ’ ἐπίλοιπον, ὅσον ἐστὶ ψυχῆς ἀνθρωπίνης δέον προσγενέσθαι, τοῦτο καὶ πάνθ’ ὅσα ἀκόλουθα ἐκείνοις ἀπεργασαμένους ἄρχειν καὶ κατὰ [f] δύναμιν ὅτι κάλλιστα καὶ ἄριστα τὸ θνητὸν διακυβερνᾶν ζῷον, ὅ τι μὴ κακῶν αὐτὸ αὑτῷ γίνοιτο αἴτιον.’ ἐν γὰρ τούτοις τὸ μέν ‘ἵνα τοῖς ἔπειτα εἴη κακίας ἀναίτιος ἑκάστῳ’ σαφεστάτην αἰτίαν σημαίνει τῆς εἱμαρμένης, ἡ δὲ τῶν νέων θεῶν τάξις καὶ δημιουργία τὴν δευτέραν πρόνοιαν δηλοῖ· καί πως καὶ τρίτης παρεφάπτεσθαι ἔοικεν, εἴ γε δὴ τούτου χάριν ἡ θεσμοθεσία, ‘ἵνα τῆς ἔπειτα εἴη κακίας ἑκάστῳ ἀναίτιος·’ θεὸς δὲ κακίας ἄμοιρος οὔτε νόμων οὔθ’ εἱμαρμένης ἐπιδέοιτ’ ἄν, ἀλλὰ τῇ προνοίᾳ τοῦ γεννήσαντος συνεπισπώμενος ἕκαστος αὐτῶν πράττει τὰ [574] [a] αὑτοῦ· ταῦτα δ’ ἀληθῆ καὶ ἀρέσκοντα τῷ Πλάτωνι εἶναι φανερά μοι δοκεῖ μαρτύρια τὰ πρὸς τοῦ νομοθέτου ἐν τοῖς Νόμοις οὕτω λεγόμενα (875c sqq.)· ‘ἐπεὶ ταῦτα εἴ ποτέ τις ἀνθρώπων φύσει ἱκανός, θείᾳ μοίρᾳ γεννηθείς, παραλαβεῖν δυνατὸς εἴη, νόμων οὐδὲν ἂν δέοιτο αὑτοῦ ἀρξόντων· ἐπιστήμης γὰρ οὔτε νόμος οὔτε τάξις οὐδεμία κρείττων, οὐδὲ θέμις ἐστὶ ‹νοῦν› οὐδενὸς ὑπήκοον οὐδὲ δοῦλον ἀλλὰ πάντων ἄρχοντα εἶναι, ἐάνπερ ἀληθινὸς ἐλεύθερός τε ὄντως ᾖ κατὰ φύσιν.’

Ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν τὰ [πρὸς] τοῦ Πλάτωνος †ταύτῃ τῇ [b] παροιμίᾳ λαμβάνω. τριττῆς γὰρ οὔσης τῆς προνοίας ἡ μὲν ἅτε γεννήσασα τὴν εἱμαρμένην τρόπον τινὰ αὐτὴν περιλαμβάνει, ἡ δὲ συγγεννηθεῖσα τῇ εἱμαρμένῃ πάντως αὐτῇ συμπεριλαμβάνεται, ἡ δ’ ὡς ὕστερον τῆς εἱμαρμένης γενομένη κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ δὴ ἐμπεριέχεται ὑπ’ αὐτῆς, καθ’ ἃ καὶ τὸ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν καὶ ἡ τύχη εἴρηται. ‘οἷς γὰρ ἂν συλλάβηται τῆς συνουσίας ἡ τοῦ δαιμονίου δύναμις’, ὥς φησι Σωκράτης μονονουχὶ θεσμόν τινα καίτοι οὐ τὸν Ἀδραστείας διεξιὼν πρὸς τὸν Θεάγην, (129e) ‘οὗτοί εἰσιν, ὧν καὶ σὺ ᾔσθησαι· ταχὺ γὰρ παραχρῆμα ἐπιδιδόασιν.’ οὐκοῦν ἐν τούτῳ τὸ μέν ‘συλλαμβάνειν τισὶ τὸ [c] δαιμόνιον’ κατὰ τὴν τρίτην πρόνοιαν [ἀνα]θετέον, τὸ δέ ‘ταχὺ παραχρῆμα ἐπιδιδόναι’ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην, τὸ δ’ ὅλον οὐκ ἄδηλον, ὡς αὐτὸ τοῦθ’ εἱμαρμένη τίς ἐστιν. τάχα δ’ ἂν αὖ τῳ πολὺ πιθανώτερον δόξειε καὶ τὴν δευτέραν πρόνοιαν ὑπὸ τῆς εἱμαρμένης περιέχεσθαι καὶ πάνθ’ ἁπλῶς τὰ γινόμενα, εἴ γε καὶ ἡ κατ’ οὐσίαν εἱμαρμένη ὀρθῶς ἡμῖν εἰς τὰς τρεῖς μοίρας διανενέμηται καὶ ὁ τῆς ἁλύσεως λόγος τὰς περὶ οὐρανὸν περιόδους τοῖς ἐξ ὑποθέσεως ἀποβαίνουσι συγκαταλέγει. ἀλλὰ περὶ μὲν τούτων οὐκ ‹ἂν› [d] ἔγωγ’ ἐπὶ πλέον διενεχθείην πότερον ἐξ ὑποθέσεως †λεγόμενα ἢ ὡς μᾶλλον σὺν εἱμαρμένῃ προκατάρχοντος αὐτῆς τῆς εἱμαρμένης εἱμαρμένου.

Ὁ ‹μὲν› οὖν ἡμέτερος λόγος ἐπὶ κεφαλαίων εἰπεῖν τοιοῦτός τις ἂν εἴη, ὁ δὲ τούτων ἐναντίος οὐ μόνον ἐν εἱμαρμένῃ ἀλλὰ καὶ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην πάντα τίθεται, πάντα δὲ θατέρῳ συνᾴδει· τὰ δὲ τῷ ἑτέρῳ συνῳδὰ δῆλον ὅτι καὶ θατέρῳ. κατὰ μὲν οὖν τόνδε τὸν λόγον τὸ ἐνδεχόμενον ‹πρῶτον› εἴρηται καὶ τό γ’ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν δεύτερον καὶ τρίτον ἥ τε τύχη καὶ τὸ αὐτόματον καὶ ὅσα κατ’ αὐτά· ἔπαινος [e] δὲ καὶ ψόγος καὶ τὰ τούτων συγγενῆ τέταρτα, πέμπτον δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν εὐχαὶ θεῶν καὶ θεραπεῖαι λεγέσθω· ἀργοὶ δὲ καὶ θερίζοντες λόγοι καὶ ὁ παρὰ τὴν εἱμαρμένην ὀνομαζόμενος σοφίσμαθ’ ὡς ἀληθῶς κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον τυγχάνει ὄντα. κατὰ δὲ τὸν ἐναντίον μάλιστα μὲν καὶ πρῶτον ‹ἂν› εἶναι δόξειε τὸ μηδὲν ἀναιτίως γίγνεσθαι ἀλλὰ κατὰ προηγουμένας αἰτίας, δεύτερον δὲ τὸ φύσει διοικεῖσθαι τόνδε τὸν κόσμον σύμπνουν καὶ συμπαθῆ αὐτὸν αὑτῷ ὄντα, τρίτον δέ, ἃ πρὸς τούτοις μαρτύρια μᾶλλον ἔοικεν εἶναι· μαντικὴ μὲν ἅπασιν ἀνθρώποις εὐδόκιμος ὡς ἀληθῶς θεῷ ‹συν›υπάρχουσα, ἡ δὲ τῶν σοφῶν [f] πρὸς τὰ συμβαίνοντα εὐαρέστησις, ὡς πάντα κατὰ μοῖραν γιγνόμενα, δευτέρα, τρίτον δὲ τὸ πολυθρύλητον τοῦτο, ὅτι πᾶν ἀξίωμα ἢ ἀληθές ἐστιν ἢ ψευδές. τούτων γε μὴν ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον ἐμνήσθημεν, ἵνα ὡς ἐπὶ βραχὺ τὰ τῆς εἱμαρμένης ‹κεφάλαια δηλωθείη›· ἃ χρὴ διερευνήσασθαι κατὰ τὴν ἀκριβῆ βάσανον ἑκατέρου τῶν λόγων, τὰ δὲ καθ’ ἕκαστα τούτων ἐσαῦθις μέτιμεν.

De genio Socratis

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΣΩΚΡΑΤΟΥΣ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΟΥ

[575] Α. Ζωγράφου τινός, ὦ Καφισία, ‹μέμνημαί ποτε› περὶ τῶν θεωμένων τοὺς γεγραμμένους πίνακας λόγον [b] οὐ φαῦλον ἀκούσας ἐν εἰκόνι λελεγμένον. ἔφη γὰρ ἐοικέναι τοὺς μὲν ἰδιώτας καὶ ἀτέχνους θεατὰς ὄχλον ὁμοῦ πολὺν ἀσπαζομένοις, τοὺς δὲ κομψοὺς καὶ φιλοτέχνους καθ’ ἕκαστον ἰδίᾳ τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων προσαγορεύουσι. τοῖς μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἀκριβὴς ἀλλὰ τύπῳ τινὶ γίγνεται μόνον ἡ τῶν ἀποτελεσμάτων σύνοψις, τοὺς δὲ τῇ κρίσει κατὰ μέρος τὸ ἔργον διαλαμβάνοντας οὐδὲν ἀθέατον οὐδ’ ἀπροσφώνητον ἐκφεύγει τῶν καλῶς ἢ τοὐναντίον γεγονότων. οἶμαι δὴ καὶ περὶ τὰς ἀληθινὰς πράξεις ὁμοίως τῷ μὲν [c] ἀργοτέρῳ τὴν διάνοιαν ἐξαρκεῖν πρὸς ἱστορίαν, εἰ τὸ κεφάλαιον αὐτὸ καὶ τὸ πέρας πύθοιτο τοῦ πράγματος, τὸν δὲ φιλότιμον καὶ φιλόκαλον τῶν ὑπ’ ἀρετῆς ὥσπερ τέχνης μεγάλης ἀπειργασμένων θεατὴν τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα μᾶλλον εὐφραίνειν, ‹ὡς› τοῦ μὲν τέλους πολλὰ κοινὰ πρὸς τὴν τύχην ἔχοντος, τοὺς δ’ ἐν ταῖς αἰτίαις καὶ τοῖς .... μέρους ἀγῶνας ἀρετῆς πρὸς τὰ συντυγχάνοντα καὶ τόλμας ἔμφρονας παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ καθορῶντα καιρῷ καὶ πάθει μεμιγμένου [d] λογισμοῦ. τούτου δὴ τοῦ γένους τῶν θεατῶν καὶ ἡμᾶς ὑπολαμβάνων εἶναι δίελθέ τε τὴν πρᾶξιν ἡμῖν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ὡς ἐπράχθη καὶ τοῦ λόγου ‹μετάδος ὃν ἀκούομεν› γενέσθαι ‹τότε σοῦ› παρόντος, ὡς ἐμοῦ μηδ’ ἂν εἰς Θήβας ἐπὶ τούτῳ κατοκνήσαντος ἐλθεῖν, εἰ μὴ καὶ νῦν Ἀθηναίοις πέρα τοῦ δέοντος ἐδόκουν βοιωτίζειν.

Κ. Ἀλλ’ ἔδει μέν, ὦ Ἀρχίδαμε, σοῦ δι’ εὔνοιαν οὕτω προθύμως τὰ πεπραγμένα μαθεῖν σπουδάζοντος ἐμέ ‘καὶ ἀσχολίας ὑπέρτερον θέσθαι’ κατὰ Πίνδαρον (Isthm. I 2) τὸ δεῦρ’ ἐλθεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν διήγησιν· τὸ δὲ πρεσβείας ἀφιγμένους ἕνεκα καὶ σχολὴν ἄγοντας, ἄχρι οὗ τὰς ἀποκρίσεις [e] τοῦ δήμου λάβωμεν, ἀντιτείνειν καὶ ἀγροικίζεσθαι πρὸς εὐγνώμονα καὶ φίλον ἑταῖρον δόξειεν ἂν ἐγείρειν τὸ κατὰ Βοιωτῶν ἀρχαῖον εἰς μισολογίαν ὄνειδος ἤδη μαραινόμενον παρὰ Σωκράτη τὸν ὑμέτερον, ἡμεῖς δὲ παρὰ Λῦσιν τὸν ἱερὸν σπουδάζοντες οὕτω διεφάνημεν. ἀλλ’ ὅρα τοὺς παρόντας, εἰ πρὸς ἀκρόασιν ἅμα πράξεων καὶ λόγων τοσούτων εὐκαίρως ἔχουσιν· οὐ γὰρ βραχὺ μῆκός ἐστι τῆς διηγήσεως, ἐπεὶ σὺ καὶ τοὺς λόγους προσπεριβαλέσθαι κελεύεις.

Α. Ἀγνοεῖς, ὦ Καφισία, τοὺς ἄνδρας; ἦ μὴν ἄξιον εἰδέναι πατέρων ὄντας ἀγαθῶν καὶ πρὸς ὑμᾶς οἰκείως [f] ἐχόντων. ὁδὶ μέν ἐστιν ἀδελφιδοῦς Θρασυβούλου Λυσιθείδης, ὁδὶ δὲ Τιμόθεος Κόνωνος υἱός, οὗτοι δ’ Ἀρχίνου παῖδες, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι τῆς ἑταιρίας ‹καὶ αὐτοὶ τῆς› ἡμετέρας πάντες· ὥστε σοι θέατρον εὔνουν καὶ οἰκεῖον ἔχειν τὴν διήγησιν.

Κ. Εὖ λέγεις. ἀλλὰ τίς ἂν ὑμῖν μέτριος ἀρχὴ γένοιτο τῆς διηγήσεως πρὸς ἃς ἴστε πράξεις;

Α. Ἡμεῖς, ὦ Καφισία, σχεδὸν ὡς εἶχον αἱ Θῆβαι πρὸ τῆς καθόδου τῶν φυγάδων ἐπιστάμεθα. καὶ γάρ, ὡς οἱ περὶ Ἀρχίαν καὶ Λεοντίδην Φοιβίδαν πείσαντες ἐν σπονδαῖς καταλαβεῖν τὴν Καδμείαν τοὺς μὲν ἐξέβαλον τῶν [576] [a] πολιτῶν τοὺς δὲ φόβῳ κατεῖργον ἄρχοντες αὐτοὶ παρανόμως καὶ βιαίως, ἔγνωμεν ἐνταῦθα τῶν περὶ Μέλωνα καὶ Πελοπίδαν, ὡς οἶσθα, ἰδιόξενοι γενόμενοι καὶ παρ’ ὃν χρόνον ἔφευγον ἀεὶ συνδιατρίβοντες αὐτοῖς· καὶ πάλιν ὡς Λακεδαιμόνιοι Φοιβίδαν μὲν ἐζημίωσαν ἐπὶ τῷ τὴν Καδμείαν καταλαβεῖν καὶ τῆς εἰς Ὄλυνθον στρατηγίας ἀπέστησαν, Λυσανορίδαν δὲ τρίτον αὐτὸν ἀντ’ ἐκείνου πέμψαντες ἐγκρατέστερον ἐφρούρουν τὴν ἄκραν, ἠκούσαμεν· ἔγνωμεν δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἰσμηνίαν οὐ τοῦ βελτίστου θανάτου τυχόντ’ εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῆς δίκης τῆς περὶ αὐτοῦ γενομένης, [b] Γοργίδου πάντα τοῖς φυγάσι δεῦρο διὰ γραμμάτων ἐξαγγείλαντος. ὥστε σοι λείπεται τὰ περὶ τὴν κάθοδον αὐτὴν τῶν φίλων καὶ τὴν κατάλυσιν τῶν τυράννων διηγεῖσθαι.

Κ. Καὶ μὴν ἐκείναις γε ταῖς ἡμέραις, ὦ Ἀρχίδαμε, πάντες οἱ τῶν πραττομένων μετέχοντες εἰώθειμεν εἰς τὴν Σιμμίου συνιόντες οἰκίαν ἔκ τινος πληγῆς περὶ τὸ σκέλος ἀναλαμβάνοντος αὑτὸν ἐντυγχάνειν μὲν ἀλλήλοις εἴ του δεήσειε, φανερῶς δὲ διατρίβειν ἐπὶ λόγοις καὶ φιλοσοφίᾳ, πολλάκις ἐφελκόμενοι τὸν Ἀρχίαν καὶ τὸν Λεοντίδην εἰς τὸ ἀνύποπτον οὐκ ὄντας ἀλλοτρίους παντάπασι τῆς [c] τοιαύτης διατριβῆς. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Σιμμίας πολὺν χρόνον ἐπὶ τῆς ξένης γεγονὼς καὶ πεπλανημένος ἐν ἀλλοδαποῖς ἀνθρώποις ὀλίγῳ πρόσθεν εἰς Θήβας ἀφῖκτο μύθων τε παντοδαπῶν καὶ λόγων βαρβαρικῶν ὑπόπλεως· ὧν ὁπότε τυγχάνοι σχολὴν ἄγων ὁ Ἀρχίας, ἡδέως ἠκροᾶτο συγκαθιεὶς μετὰ τῶν νέων καὶ βουλόμενος ἡμᾶς ἐν λόγοις διάγειν μᾶλλον ἢ προσέχειν τὸν νοῦν οἷς ἔπραττον ἐκεῖνοι. τῆς δ’ ἡμέρας ἐκείνης, ἐν ᾗ σκότους ἔδει γενομένου τοὺς φυγάδας ἥκειν κρύφα πρὸς τὸ τεῖχος, ἀφικνεῖταί τις ἐνθένδε Φερενίκου πέμψαντος ἄνθρωπος οὐδενὶ τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν ἢ Χάρωνι γνώριμος· ἐδήλου δὲ τῶν φυγάδων ὄντας δώδεκα τοὺς νεωτάτους μετὰ κυνῶν περὶ τὸν Κιθαιρῶνα [d] θηρεῦσαι ὡς πρὸς ἑσπέραν ἀφιξομένους· αὐτὸς δὲ πεμφθῆναι ταῦτά τε προερῶν καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν ἐν ᾗ κρυβήσονται παρελθόντες, ὃς παρέξει, γνωσόμενος, ὡς ἂν εἰδότες εὐθὺς ἐκεῖ βαδίζοιεν. ἀπορουμένων δ’ ἡμῶν καὶ σκοπούντων αὐτὸς ὡμολόγησεν ὁ Χάρων παρέξειν. ὁ μὲν οὖν ἄνθρωπος ἔγνω πάλιν ἀπελθεῖν σπουδῇ πρὸς τοὺς φυγάδας· ἐμοῦ δ’ ὁ μάντις Θεόκριτος τὴν χεῖρα πιέσας σφόδρα καὶ πρὸς τὸν Χάρωνα βλέψας προερχόμενον ‘οὗτος,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Καφισία, φιλόσοφος οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲ μετείληφε παιδείας διαφόρου καὶ περιττῆς ὥσπερ Ἐπαμεινώνδας ὁ σὸς ἀδελφός· ἀλλ’ ὁρᾷς, ὅτι φύσει πρὸς τὸ [e] καλὸν ὑπὸ τῶν νόμων ἀγόμενος τὸν μέγιστον ὑποδύεται κίνδυνον ἑκουσίως ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος. Ἐπαμεινώνδας δὲ Βοιωτῶν ἁπάντων τῷ πεπαιδεῦσθαι πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἀξιῶν διαφέρειν ἀμβλύς ἐστι καὶ ἀπρόθυμος .... τοῦτον ἤ τινα βελτίονα καιρὸν αὑτῷ πεφυκότι καὶ παρεσκευασμένῳ καλῶς οὕτω χρησόμενος.’ κἀγὼ πρὸς αὐτόν ‘ὦ προθυμότατε’ [f] εἶπον ‘Θεόκριτε, τὰ δεδογμένα πράττομεν ἡμεῖς· Ἐπαμεινώνδας δὲ μὴ πείθων, ὡς οἴεται βέλτιον εἶναι, ταῦτα μὴ πράσσειν εἰκότως ἀντιτείνει πρὸς ἃ μὴ πέφυκε μηδὲ δοκιμάζει παρακαλούμενος. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἰατρὸν ἄνευ σιδήρου καὶ πυρὸς ὑπισχνούμενον τὸ νόσημα παύσειν εὐγνωμονοίης ἄν, οἶμαι, τέμνειν ἢ ἀποκάειν βιαζόμενος .... οὐκοῦν καὶ οὗτος .... δήπου μηδὲ διὰ τῶν πολιτῶν .... ἄκριτον, ἀλλὰ καὶ αἵματος ἐμφυλίου καὶ σφαγῆς τὴν πόλιν ἐλευθεροῦσι συναγωνιεῖσθαι προθύμως. ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐ πείθει τοὺς πολλούς, ἀλλὰ ταύτην ὡρμήκαμεν τὴν ὁδόν, [577] [a] ἐᾶν αὑτὸν κελεύει φόνου καθαρὸν ὄντα καὶ ἀναίτιον ἐφεστάναι τοῖς καιροῖς μετὰ τοῦ δικαίου καὶ τῷ συμφέροντι προσοισόμενον. οὐδὲ γὰρ ὅρον ἕξειν τὸ ἔργον, ἀλλὰ Φερένικον μὲν ἴσως καὶ Πελοπίδαν ἐπὶ τοὺς αἰτίους μάλιστα τρέψεσθαι καὶ πονηρούς, Εὐμολπίδαν δὲ καὶ Σαμίδαν, ἀνθρώπους διαπύρους πρὸς ὀργὴν καὶ θυμοειδεῖς, ἐν νυκτὶ λαβόντας ἐξουσίαν οὐκ ἀποθήσεσθαι τὰ ξίφη, πρὶν ἐμπλῆσαι τὴν πόλιν ὅλην φόνων καὶ διαφθεῖραι πολλοὺς τῶν ἰδίᾳ διαφόρων ὄντων.’

Ταῦτά μου διαλεγομένου πρὸς τὸν Θεόκριτον διέκρουσεν ὁ Γαλαξίδωρος, ἐγγὺς γὰρ ‹Ἀρχίαν ἔδειξε› καὶ Λυσανορίδαν τὸν Σπαρτιάτην ἀπὸ τῆς Καδμείας ὥσπερ [b] εἰς ταὐτὸν ἡμῖν σπεύδοντας. ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν ἐπέσχομεν, ὁ δ’ Ἀρχίας καλέσας τὸν Θεόκριτον καὶ τῷ Λυσανορίδᾳ προσαγαγὼν ἰδίᾳ ‹διε›λάλει πολὺν χρόνον ἐκνεύσας τῆς ὁδοῦ μικρὸν ὑπὸ τὸ Ἄμφιον, ὥσθ’ ἡμᾶς ἀγωνιᾶν, μή τις ὑπόνοια προσπέπτωκεν ἢ μήνυσις αὐτοῖς, περὶ ἧς ἀνακρίνουσι τὸν Θεόκριτον. ἐν τούτῳ δὲ Φυλλίδας, ὃν οἶσθ’, ὦ Ἀρχίδαμε, τότε τοῖς περὶ τὸν Ἀρχίαν πολεμαρχοῦσι γραμματεύων .... ἥξειν καὶ τῆς πράξεως μετέχων, λαβόμενός μου τῆς χειρὸς ὥσπερ εἰώθει φανερῶς ἔσκωπτεν εἰς τὰ γυμνάσια καὶ τὴν πάλην, εἶτα πόρρω τῶν ἄλλων ἀπαγαγὼν ἐπυνθάνετο περὶ τῶν φυγάδων, εἰ τὴν ἡμέραν φυλάττουσιν.

[c] ἐμοῦ δὲ φήσαντος ‘οὐκοῦν’ εἶπεν ‘ὀρθῶς ἐγὼ τὴν ὑποδοχὴν παρεσκεύακα σήμερον ὡς δεξόμενος Ἀρχίαν καὶ παρέξων ἐν οἴνῳ καὶ μέθῃ τοῖς ἀνδράσιν εὐχείρωτον.’ ‘ἄριστα μὲν οὖν,’ εἶπον ‘ὦ Φυλλίδα, καὶ πειράθητι πάντας ἢ ‹τούς γε› πλείους εἰς ταὐτὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν συναγαγεῖν.’ ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ ῥᾴδιον,’ ἔφη ‘μᾶλλον δ’ ἀδύνατον· ὁ γὰρ Ἀρχίας ἐλπίζων τινὰ τῶν ἐν ἀξιώματι γυναικῶν ἀφίξεσθαι τηνικαῦτα πρὸς αὐτὸν οὐ βούλεται παρεῖναι τὸν Λεοντίδην. ὥσθ’ ἡμῖν δίχα διαιρετέον αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ τὰς οἰκίας· Ἀρχίου [d] γὰρ ἅμα καὶ Λεοντίδου προκαταληφθέντων οἶμαι τοὺς ἄλλους ἐκποδὼν ἔσεσθαι φεύγοντας ἢ μενεῖν μεθ’ ἡσυχίας ἀγαπῶντας ἄν τις διδῷ τὴν ἀσφάλειαν.’ ‘οὕτως’ ἔφην ‘ποιήσομεν. ἀλλὰ τί πρᾶγμα τούτοις πρὸς Θεόκριτόν ἐστιν, ὑπὲρ οὗ διαλέγονται;’ καὶ ὁ Φυλλίδας ‘οὐ σαφῶς’ εἶπεν ‹’ἔχω λέγειν› οὐδ’ ὡς ἐπιστάμενος, ἤκουον δὲ σημεῖα καὶ μαντεύματα δυσχερῆ καὶ χαλεπὰ προτεθεσπίσθαι τῇ Σπάρτῃ.’ ... Φειδόλαος ὁ ‹Ἁλιάρ›τιος ἀπαντήσας ‘μικρόν’ εἶπεν ‘ὑμᾶς ἐνταῦθα περιμεῖναι ‹παρακαλεῖ› Σιμμίας· ἐντυγχάνει γὰρ ἰδίᾳ Λεοντίδῃ περὶ Ἀμφιθέου [e] παραιτούμενος [μεῖναι] αὐτὸν διαπράξασθαι φυγὴν ἀντὶ θανάτου τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ.’

Καὶ ὁ Θεόκριτος ‘εἰς καιρόν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ὥσπερ ἐπίτηδες· καὶ γὰρ ἐβουλόμην πυθέσθαι, τίν’ ἦν τὰ εὑρεθέντα καὶ τίς ὅλως ἡ ὄψις τοῦ Ἀλκμήνης τάφου παρ’ ὑμῖν ἀνοιχθέντος, εἰ δὴ παρεγένου καὶ αὐτός, ὅτε πέμψας Ἀγησίλαος εἰς Σπάρτην τὰ λείψανα μετεκόμιζε.’ καὶ ὁ Φειδόλαος ‘οὐ γάρ’ ἔφη ‘παρέτυχον, καὶ πολλὰ δυσανασχετῶν καὶ ἀγανακτῶν πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας ἐγκατελείφθην ὑπ’ [f] αὐτῶν. εὑρέθη δ’ οὖν .... σώματος, ψέλλιον δὲ χαλκοῦν οὐ μέγα καὶ δύ’ ἀμφορεῖς κεραμεοῖ γῆν ἔχοντες ἐντὸς ὑπὸ χρόνου λελιθωμένην ἤδη καὶ συμπεπηγυῖαν, ‹ἐπάνω δὲ› τοῦ μνήματος ‹ἔκειτο› πίναξ χαλκοῦς ἔχων γράμματα πολλὰ θαυμαστὸν ὡς παμπάλαια· γνῶναι γὰρ ἐξ αὑτῶν οὐδὲν παρεῖχε καίπερ ἐκφανέντα τοῦ χαλκοῦ καταπλυθέντος, ἀλλ’ ἴδιός τις ὁ τύπος καὶ βαρβαρικὸς τῶν χαρακτήρων ἐμφερέστατος Αἰγυπτίοις· διὸ καὶ Ἀγησίλαος, ὡς ἔφασαν, ἐξέπεμψεν ἀντίγραφα τῷ βασιλεῖ δεόμενος δεῖξαι τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν, εἰ ξυνήσουσιν. ἀλλὰ περὶ τούτων μὲν ἴσως [578] [a] ἂν ἔχοι τι καὶ Σιμμίας ἡμῖν ἀπαγγεῖλαι, κατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ πολλὰ τοῖς ἱερεῦσι διὰ φιλοσοφίαν συγγενόμενος. Ἁλιάρτιοι δὲ τὴν μεγάλην ἀφορίαν καὶ τὴν ἐπίβασιν τῆς λίμνης οὐκ ἀπὸ ταὐτομάτου γενέσθαι νομίζουσιν, ἀλλὰ μήνιμα τοῦ τάφου τοῦτο περιελθεῖν ἀνασχομένους ὀρυττόμενον’. καὶ ὁ Θεόκριτος μικρὸν διαλιπών ‘ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ αὐτοῖς’ ἔφη ‘Λακεδαιμονίοις ἀμήνιτον ἔοικεν εἶναι τὸ δαιμόνιον, ὡς προδείκνυσι τὰ σημεῖα περὶ ὧν ἄρτι Λυσανορίδας ἡμῖν ἐκοινοῦτο· καὶ νῦν μὲν ἄπεισιν εἰς Ἁλίαρτον ἐπιχώσων αὖθις τὸ σῆμα καὶ χοὰς ποιησόμενος [b] Ἀλκμήνῃ καὶ Ἀλέῳ κατὰ δή τινα χρησμόν, ἀγνοῶν τὸν Ἄλεον ὅστις ἦν· ἐπανελθὼν δ’ ἐκεῖθεν οἷός ἐστι τὸν Δίρκης ἀναζητεῖν τάφον ἄγνωστον ὄντα τοῖς Θηβαίοις πλὴν τῶν ἱππαρχηκότων. ὁ γὰρ ἀπαλλαττόμενος τὸν παραλαμβάνοντα τὴν ἀρχὴν μόνος ἄγων μόνον ἔδειξε νύκτωρ, καί τινας ἐπ’ αὐτῷ δράσαντες ἀπύρους ἱερουργίας, ὧν τὰ σημεῖα συγχέουσι καὶ ἀφανίζουσιν, ὑπὸ σκότος ἀπέρχονται χωρισθέντες. ἐγὼ δέ τ.... μέν, ὦ Φειδόλαε, .... καλῶς ἐξευρήσειν αὐτοὺς νομίζω· φεύγουσι [c] γὰρ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν ἱππαρχηκότων νομίμως, μᾶλλον δὲ πάντες πλὴν Γοργίδου καὶ Πλάτωνος, ὧν οὐδ’ ἂν ἐπιχειρήσειαν ἐκπυνθάνεσθαι δεδιότες τοὺς ἄνδρας· οἱ δὲ νῦν ἄρχοντες ἐν τῇ Καδμείᾳ τὸ δόρυ καὶ τὴν σφραγῖδα παραλαμβάνουσιν οὔτ’ εἰδότες οὐδὲν οὔτε ....’

Ταῦτα τοῦ Θεοκρίτου λέγοντος ὁ Λεοντίδης ἐξῄει μετὰ τῶν φίλων, ἡμεῖς δ’ εἰσελθόντες ἠσπαζόμεθα τὸν Σιμμίαν ἐπὶ τῆς κλίνης καθεζόμενον οὐ κατατετευχότα τῆς δεήσεως, οἶμαι, μάλα σύννουν καὶ διαλελυπημένον· ἀποβλέψας δὲ πρὸς ἅπαντας ἡμᾶς ‘ὦ Ἡράκλεις,’ εἶπεν [d] ‘ἀγρίων καὶ βαρβάρων ἠθῶν· εἶτ’ οὐχ ὑπέρευ Θαλῆς ὁ παλαιὸς ἀπὸ ξένης ἐλθὼν διὰ χρόνου τῶν φίλων ἐρωτώντων ὅ τι καινότατον ἱστορήκοι ‘τύραννον’ ἔφη ‘γέροντα.’ καὶ γὰρ ᾧ μηδὲν ἰδίᾳ συμβέβηκεν ἀδικεῖσθαι, τὸ βάρος αὐτὸ καὶ τὴν σκληρότητα τῆς ὁμιλίας δυσχεραίνων ἐχθρός ἐστι τῶν ἀνόμων καὶ ἀνυπευθύνων δυναστειῶν. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἴσως θεῷ μελήσει· τὸν δὲ ξένον ἴστε τὸν ἀφιγμένον, ὦ Καφισία, πρὸς ὑμᾶς ὅστις ἐστίν;’ ‘οὐκ οἶδ’,’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘τίνα λέγεις’. ‘καὶ μήν’ ἔφη ‘Λεοντίδης ‹φησὶν› ἄνθρωπον ὦφθαι παρὰ τὸ Λύσιδος μνημεῖον ἐκ νυκτῶν [e] ἀνιστάμενον, ἀκολουθίας πλήθει καὶ κατασκευῇ σοβαρόν, αὐτόθι κατηυλισμένον ἐπὶ στιβάδων· φαίνεσθαι γὰρ ἄγνου καὶ μυρίκης χαμεύνας ἔτι δ’ ἐμπύρων λείψανα καὶ χοὰς γάλακτος· ἕωθεν δὲ πυνθάνεσθαι τῶν ἀπαντώντων, εἰ τοὺς Πολύμνιος παῖδας ἐνδημοῦντας εὑρήσει.’ ‘καὶ τίς ἄν’ εἶπον ‘ὁ ξένος εἴη; περιττῷ γὰρ ἀφ’ ὧν λέγεις τινὶ καὶ οὐκ ἰδιώτῃ προσέοικεν.’

‘Οὐ γὰρ οὖν’ εἶπεν ὁ Φειδόλαος· ‘ἀλλὰ τοῦτον μέν, ὅταν ἥκῃ πρὸς ἡμᾶς, δεξόμεθα· νυνὶ δ’ ὑπὲρ ὧν ἀρτίως ἠποροῦμεν, ὦ Σιμμία, γραμμάτων, εἴ τι γιγνώσκεις πλεῖον [f] ἐξάγγειλον ἡμῖν· λέγονται γὰρ οἱ κατ’ Αἴγυπτον ἱερεῖς τὰ γράμματα συμβαλεῖν τοῦ πίνακος, ἃ παρ’ ἡμῶν ἔλαβεν Ἀγησίλαος τὸν Ἀλκμήνης τάφον ἀνασκευασάμενος.’ καὶ ὁ Σιμμίας εὐθὺς ἀναμνησθείς ‘οὐκ οἶδ’’ ἔφη ‘τὸν πίνακα τοῦτον, ὦ Φειδόλαε, γράμματα δὲ πολλὰ παρ’ Ἀγησιλάου κομίζων Ἀγητορίδας ὁ Σπαρτιάτης ἧκεν εἰς Μέμφιν ὡς Χόνουφιν τὸν προφήτην, .... ποτὲ συμφιλοσοφοῦντες διετρίβομεν ἐγὼ καὶ Πλάτων καὶ Ἐλλοπίων ὁ Πεπαρήθιος. ἧκε δὲ πέμψαντος βασιλέως καὶ κελεύσαντος τὸν Χόνουφιν, εἴ τι συμβάλλοι τῶν γεγραμμένων, ἑρμηνεύσαντα ταχέως ἀποστεῖλαι· πρὸς ἑαυτὸν δὲ τρεῖς ἡμέρας ἀναλεξάμενος βιβλίων τῶν παλαιῶν παντοδαποὺς [579] [a] χαρακτῆρας ἀντέγραψε τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἔφρασεν, ὡς Μούσαις ἀγῶνα συντελεῖσθαι κελεύει τὰ γράμματα, τοὺς δὲ τύπους εἶναι τῆς ἐπὶ Πρωτεῖ βασιλεύοντι γραμματικῆς, ‹ἣν› Ἡρακλέα τὸν Ἀμφιτρύωνος ἐκμαθεῖν, ὑφηγεῖσθαι μέντοι καὶ παραινεῖν τοῖς Ἕλλησι διὰ τῶν γραμμάτων τὸν θεὸν ἄγειν σχολὴν καὶ εἰρήνην διὰ φιλοσοφίας ἀγωνιζομένους ἀεί, Μούσαις καὶ λόγῳ διακρινομένους περὶ τῶν δικαίων τὰ ὅπλα καταθέντας. ἡμεῖς δὲ καὶ τότε λέγειν καλῶς ἡγούμεθα τὸν Χόνουφιν καὶ μᾶλλον ὁπηνίκα [b] κομιζομένοις ἡμῖν ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου περὶ Καρίαν Δηλίων τινὲς ἀπήντησαν δεόμενοι Πλάτωνος ὡς γεωμετρικοῦ λῦσαι χρησμὸν αὐτοῖς ἄτοπον ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ προβεβλημένον. ἦν δ’ ὁ χρησμὸς Δηλίοις καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις Ἕλλησι παῦλαν τῶν παρόντων κακῶν ἔσεσθαι διπλασιάσασι τὸν ἐν Δήλῳ βωμόν. οὔτε δὲ τὴν διάνοιαν ἐκεῖνοι συμβάλλειν δυνάμενοι καὶ περὶ τὴν τοῦ βωμοῦ κατασκευὴν γελοῖα πάσχοντες (ἑκάστης γὰρ τῶν τεσσάρων πλευρῶν διπλασιαζομένης ἔλαθον τῇ αὐξήσει τόπον στερεὸν ὀκταπλάσιον ἀπεργασάμενοι δι’ ἀπειρίαν ἀναλογίας ἣν τὸ μήκει διπλάσιον [c] παρέχεται) Πλάτωνα τῆς ἀπορίας ἐπεκαλοῦντο βοηθόν. ὁ δὲ τοῦ Αἰγυπτίου μνησθεὶς προσπαίζειν ἔφη τὸν θεὸν Ἕλλησιν ὀλιγωροῦσι παιδείας οἷον ἐφυβρίζοντα τὴν ἀμαθίαν ἡμῶν καὶ κελεύοντα γεωμετρίας ἅπτεσθαι μὴ παρέργως· οὐ γάρ τοι φαύλης οὐδ’ ἀμβλὺ διανοίας ὁρώσης ἄκρως δὲ τὰς γραμμὰς ἠσκημένης ἔργον εἶναι [καὶ] δυεῖν μέσων ἀνάλογον λῆψιν, ᾗ μόνῃ διπλασιάζεται σχῆμα κυβικοῦ σώματος ἐκ πάσης ὁμοίως αὐξόμενον διαστάσεως. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν Εὔδοξον αὐτοῖς τὸν Κνίδιον ἢ τὸν Κυζικηνὸν Ἑλίκωνα συντελέσειν· μὴ τοῦτο δ’ οἴεσθαι χρῆναι ποθεῖν τὸν θεὸν ἀλλὰ προστάσσειν Ἕλλησι πᾶσι πολέμου καὶ [d] κακῶν μεθεμένους Μούσαις ὁμιλεῖν καὶ διὰ λόγων καὶ μαθημάτων τὰ πάθη καταπραΰνοντας ἀβλαβῶς καὶ ὠφελίμως ἀλλήλοις συμφέρεσθαι.’

Μεταξὺ δὲ τοῦ Σιμμίου λέγοντος ὁ πατὴρ ἡμῶν Πολύμνις ἐπεισῆλθε καὶ καθίσας παρὰ τὸν Σιμμίαν ‘Ἐπαμεινώνδας’ ἔφη ‘καὶ σὲ καὶ τούτους παρακαλεῖ πάντας, εἰ μή τις ἀσχολία μείζων, ἐνταῦθα περιμεῖναι βουλόμενος ὑμῖν γνωρίσαι τὸν ξένον, ἄνδρα γενναῖον μὲν αὐτὸν ‹ὄντα› μετὰ ‹δὲ› γενναίας καὶ καλῆς ἀφιγμένον τῆς προαιρέσεως ‹ἀποστειλάντων› ἐξ Ἰταλίας τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν. ἀφῖκται δὲ Λύσιδι τῷ γέροντι χοὰς χέασθαι περὶ [e] τὸν τάφον ἔκ τινων ἐνυπνίων ὥς φησι καὶ φασμάτων ἐναργῶν, συχνὸν δὲ κομίζων χρυσίον οἴεται δεῖν Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ τὰς Λύσιδος γηροτροφίας ἀποτίνειν καὶ προθυμότατός ἐστιν οὐ δεομένων οὐδὲ βουλομένων ἡμῶν τῇ πενίᾳ βοηθεῖν.’ καὶ ὁ Σιμμίας ἡσθείς ‘πάνυ θαυμαστόν γε λέγεις’ εἶπεν ‘ἄνδρα καὶ φιλοσοφίας ἄξιον· ἀλλὰ τίς ἡ αἰτία, δι’ ἣν οὐκ εὐθὺς ἥκει πρὸς ἡμᾶς;’ ‘ἐκεῖνον’ ἔφη ‘νυκτερεύσαντα περὶ [f] τὸν τάφον ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ τὸν Λύσιδος ἦγεν Ἐπαμεινώνδας πρὸς τὸν Ἰσμηνὸν ἀπολουσόμενον, εἶτ’ ἀφίξονται δεῦρο πρὸς ἡμᾶς· πρὶν δ’ ἐντυχεῖν ἐνηυλίσατο τῷ τάφῳ διανοούμενος ἀνελέσθαι τὰ λείψανα τοῦ σώματος καὶ κομίζειν εἰς Ἰταλίαν, εἰ μή τι νύκτωρ ὑπεναντιωθείη δαιμόνιον.’ ὁ μὲν οὖν πατὴρ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἐσιώπησεν, ὁ δὲ Γαλαξίδωρος ‘ὦ Ἡράκλεις,’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς ἔργον ἐστὶν εὑρεῖν ἄνδρα καθαρεύοντα τύφου καὶ δεισιδαιμονίας. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἄκοντες ὑπὸ τῶν παθῶν τούτων ἁλίσκονται δι’ ἀπειρίαν ἢ δι’ ἀσθένειαν, οἱ δέ, ὡς θεοφιλεῖς καὶ περιττοί τινες εἶναι δοκοῖεν, ἐπιθειάζουσι τὰς πράξεις, ὀνείρατα καὶ φάσματα καὶ τοιοῦτον ἄλλον ὄγκον προϊστάμενοι τῶν ἐπὶ νοῦν ἰόντων. [580] [a] ὃ πολιτικοῖς μὲν ἀνδράσι καὶ πρὸς αὐθάδη καὶ ἀκόλαστον ὄχλον ἠναγκασμένοις ζῆν οὐκ ἄχρηστον ἴσως ἐστὶν ὥσπερ ἐκ χαλινοῦ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον ἀντεπισπάσαι καὶ μεταστῆσαι τοὺς πολλούς· φιλοσοφίᾳ δ’ οὐ μόνον ἔοικεν ἀσχήμων ὁ τοιοῦτος εἶναι σχηματισμός, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν ἐναντίος, εἰ πᾶν ἐπαγγειλαμένη λόγῳ τἀγαθὸν καὶ τὸ συμφέρον διδάσκειν εἰς θεοὺς ἐπαναχωρεῖ ‹περὶ› τῆς τῶν πράξεων ἀρχῆς ὡς τοῦ λόγου καταφρονοῦσα, καὶ τὴν ἀπόδειξιν ᾗ δοκεῖ διαφέρειν ἀτιμάσασα πρὸς μαντεύματα τρέπεται καὶ ὀνειράτων [b] ὄψεις, ἐν οἷς ὁ φαυλότατος οὐχ ἧττον τῷ κατατυγχάνειν πολλάκις φέρεται τοῦ κρατίστου. διὸ καὶ Σωκράτης ὁ ὑμέτερος, ὦ Σιμμία, δοκεῖ μοι φιλοσοφώτερον χαρακτῆρα παιδείας καὶ λόγου περιβάλλεσθαι, τὸ ἀφελὲς τοῦτο καὶ ἄπλαστον ὡς ἐλευθέριον καὶ μάλιστα φίλον ἀληθείας ἑλόμενος τὸν δὲ τῦφον ὥσπερ τινὰ καπνὸν φιλοσοφίας εἰς τοὺς σοφιστὰς ἀποσκεδάσας.’ ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Θεόκριτος ‘τί γάρ,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Γαλαξίδωρε; καὶ σὲ Μέλητος πέπεικεν, ὅτι Σωκράτης ὑπερεώρα τὰ θεῖα; τοῦτο γὰρ αὐτοῦ καὶ [c] πρὸς Ἀθηναίους κατηγόρησεν’. ‘οὐδαμῶς’ ἔφη ‘τά γε θεῖα· φασμάτων δὲ καὶ μύθων καὶ δεισιδαιμονίας ἀνάπλεω φιλοσοφίαν ἀπὸ Πυθαγόρου .... Ἐμπεδοκλέους δεξάμενος εὖ μάλα βεβακχευμένην εἴθισεν ὥσπερ πρὸς τὰ πράγματα πεπνῦσθαι καὶ λόγῳ νήφοντι μετιέναι τὴν ἀλήθειαν.’

‘Εἶεν’ εἶπεν ὁ Θεόκριτος, ‘τὸ δὲ δαιμόνιον, ὦ βέλτιστε, τὸ Σωκράτους ψεῦδος ἢ τί φαμεν; ἐμοὶ γὰρ οὐδὲν οὕτω μέγα τῶν περὶ Πυθαγόρου λεγομένων εἰς μαντικὴν ἔδοξε καὶ θεῖον· ἀτεχνῶς γὰρ οἵαν Ὅμηρος Ὀδυσσεῖ πεποίηκε τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν (Κ 279, ν 301) ‘ἐν πάντεσσι πόνοισι παρισταμένην,’ τοιαύτην ἔοικε Σωκράτει τοῦ βίου προποδηγὸν ἐξ ἀρχῆς τινα συνάψαι τὸ δαιμόνιον ὄψιν, ‘ἥ’ [d] μόνη ‘οἱ πρόσθεν ἰοῦσα τίθει φάος (Υ 95)’ ἐν πράγμασιν ἀδήλοις καὶ πρὸς ἀνθρωπίνην ἀσυλλογίστοις φρόνησιν, ‹ἐν› οἷς αὐτῷ συνεφθέγγετο πολλάκις τὸ δαιμόνιον ἐπιθειάζον ταῖς αὐτοῦ προαιρέσεσι. τὰ μὲν οὖν πλείονα καὶ μείζονα Σιμμίου χρὴ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐκπυνθάνεσθαι Σωκράτους ἑταίρων· ἐμοῦ δὲ παρόντος, ὅτε πρὸς Εὐθύφρονα τὸν μάντιν ἥκομεν, ἔτυχε μέν, ὦ Σιμμία, μέμνησαι γάρ, ἄνω πρὸς τὸ Σύμβολον Σωκράτης καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τὴν Ἀνδοκίδου βαδίζων ἅμα τι διερωτῶν καὶ διασείων τὸν Εὐθύφρονα μετὰ παιδιᾶς. ἄφνω δ’ ἐπιστὰς καὶ σιωπήσας προσέσχεν αὑτῷ συχνὸν χρόνον, εἶτ’ ἀναστρέψας ἐπορεύετο [e] τὴν διὰ τῶν κιβωτοποιῶν καὶ τοὺς προκεχωρηκότας ἤδη τῶν ἑταίρων .... γεγονέναι τὸ δαιμόνιον. οἱ μὲν οὖν πολλοὶ συνανέστρεφον, ἐν οἷς κἀγὼ τοῦ Εὐθύφρονος ἐχόμενος, νεανίσκοι δέ τινες τὴν εὐθεῖαν βαδίζοντες ὡς δὴ τὸ Σωκράτους ἐλέγξοντες δαιμόνιον ἐπεσπάσαντο Χάριλλον τὸν αὐλητὴν ἥκοντα καὶ αὐτὸν μετ’ ἐμοῦ εἰς Ἀθήνας πρὸς Κέβητα· πορευομένοις δ’ αὐτοῖς διὰ τῶν ἑρμογλύφων παρὰ τὰ δικαστήρια σύες ἀπαντῶσιν ἀθρόαι [f] βορβόρου περίπλεαι καὶ κατ’ ἀλλήλων ὠθούμεναι διὰ πλῆθος, ἐκτροπῆς δὲ μὴ παρούσης τοὺς μὲν ἀνέτρεψαν ἐμβαλοῦσαι τοὺς δ’ ἀνεμόλυναν. ἧκεν οὖν καὶ ὁ Χάριλλος οἴκαδε τά τε σκέλη καὶ τὰ ἱμάτια βορβόρου μεστός, ὥστ’ ἀεὶ τοῦ Σωκράτους δαιμονίου μεμνῆσθαι μετὰ γέλωτος ‹ἡμᾶς σφόδρα› θαυμάζοντας, εἰ μηδαμοῦ προλείπει τὸν ἄνδρα μηδ’ ἀμελεῖ τὸ θεῖον αὐτοῦ.’

Καὶ ὁ Γαλαξίδωρος ‘οἴει γάρ,’ ἔφη ‘Θεόκριτε, τὸ Σωκράτους δαιμόνιον ἰδίαν καὶ περιττὴν ἐσχηκέναι δύναμιν, οὐχὶ τῆς κοινῆς μόριόν τι ἀνάγκης τὸν ἄνδρα πείρᾳ βεβαιωσάμενον ἐν τοῖς ἀδήλοις καὶ ἀτεκμάρτοις τῷ λογισμῷ ῥοπὴν ἐπάγειν; ὡς γὰρ ὁλκὴ μία καθ’ αὑτὴν οὐκ ἄγει [581] [a] τὸν ζυγόν, ἰσορροποῦντι δὲ βάρει προστιθεμένη κλίνει τὸ σύμπαν ἐφ’ ἑαυτήν, οὕτω πταρμὸς ἢ κληδὼν ἤ τι τοιοῦτον σύμβολον .... καὶ κοῦφον ἐμβριθῆ διάνοιαν ἐπισπάσασθαι πρὸς πρᾶξιν· δυεῖν δ’ ἐναντίων λογισμῶν θατέρῳ προσελθὸν ἔλυσε τὴν ἀπορίαν τῆς ἰσότητος ἀναιρεθείσης, ὥστε κίνησιν γίγνεσθαι καὶ ὁρμήν.’ ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ πατήρ ‘ἀλλὰ μήν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ αὐτός, ὦ Γαλαξίδωρε, Μεγαρικοῦ τινος ἤκουσα, Τερψίωνος δὲ ἐκεῖνος, ὅτι τὸ Σωκράτους δαιμόνιον πταρμὸς ἦν, ὅ τε παρ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ὁ παρ’ ἄλλων. ἑτέρου μὲν γὰρ πταρόντος ἐκ δεξιᾶς εἴτ’ ὄπισθεν [b] εἴτ’ ἔμπροσθεν ὁρμᾶν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν, εἰ δ’ ἐξ ἀριστερᾶς, ἀποτρέπεσθαι· τῶν δ’ αὐτοῦ πταρμῶν τὸν μὲν ἔτι μέλλοντος βεβαιοῦν τὸν δ’ ἤδη πράσσοντος ἐπέχειν καὶ κωλύειν τὴν ὁρμήν. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνό μοι δοκεῖ θαυμαστόν, εἰ πταρμῷ χρώμενος οὐ τοῦτο τοῖς ἑταίροις ἀλλὰ δαιμόνιον εἶναι τὸ κωλῦον ἢ κελεῦον ἔλεγε· τύφου γὰρ ἂν ἦν τινος, ὦ φίλε, κενοῦ καὶ κόμπου τὸ τοιοῦτον, οὐκ ἀληθείας καὶ ἁπλότητος οἷς τὸν ἄνδρα μέγαν ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ διαφέροντα τῶν πολλῶν γεγονέναι δοκοῦμεν, ὑπὸ φωνῆς ἔξωθεν ἢ πταρμοῦ τινος ὁπηνίκα τύχοι θορυβούμενον ἐκ τῶν πράξεων ἀνατρέπεσθαι καὶ προΐεσθαι τὸ δεδογμένον.

[c] αἱ δὲ Σωκράτους ὁρμαὶ τὸ .... ἔχουσαι καὶ σφοδρότητα φαίνονται πρὸς ἅπαν, ὡς ἂν ἐξ ὀρθῆς καὶ ἰσχυρᾶς ἀφειμέναι κρίσεως καὶ ἀρχῆς· πενίᾳ γὰρ ἐμμεῖναι παρὰ πάντα τὸν βίον ἑκουσίως σὺν ἡδονῇ καὶ χάριτι τῶν διδόντων ἔχειν δυνάμενον καὶ φιλοσοφίας μὴ ἐκστῆναι πρὸς τοσαῦτα κωλύματα καὶ τέλος εἰς σωτηρίαν καὶ φυγὴν αὐτῷ σπουδῆς ἑταίρων καὶ παρασκευῆς εὐμηχάνου γενομένης μήτε καμφθῆναι λιπαροῦσι μήθ’ ὑποχωρῆσαι τῷ θανάτῳ πελάζοντι, [d] χρῆσθαι δ’ ἀτρέπτῳ τῷ λογισμῷ πρὸς τὸ δεινόν, οὐκ ἔστιν ἀνδρὸς ἐκ κληδόνων ἢ πταρμῶν μεταβαλλομένην ὅτε τύχοι γνώμην ἔχοντος ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ μείζονος ἐπιστασίας καὶ ἀρχῆς ἀγομένου πρὸς τὸ καλόν. ἀκούω δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐν Σικελίᾳ τῆς Ἀθηναίων δυνάμεως φθορὰν προειπεῖν αὐτὸν ἐνίοις τῶν φίλων. καὶ πρότερον ἔτι τούτων Πυριλάμπης ὁ Ἀντιφῶντος ἁλοὺς ἐν τῇ διώξει περὶ Δήλιον ὑφ’ ἡμῶν δορατίῳ τετρωμένος, ὡς ἤκουσε τῶν ἐπὶ τὰς σπονδὰς ἀφικομένων Ἀθήνηθεν, ὅτι Σωκράτης μετ’ Ἀλκιβιάδου [e] καὶ Λάχητος †ἐπὶ Ῥηγίστης καταβὰς ἀπονενοστήκοι, πολλὰ μὲν τοῦτον ἀνεκαλέσατο, πολλὰ δὲ φίλους τινὰς καὶ λοχίτας οἷς συνέβη μετ’ αὐτοῦ παρὰ τὴν Πάρνηθα φεύγουσιν ὑπὸ τῶν ἡμετέρων ἱππέων ἀποθανεῖν, ὡς τοῦ Σωκράτους δαιμονίου παρακούσαντας ἑτέραν ὁδὸν οὐχ ἣν ἐκεῖνος ἦγε τρεπομένους ἀπὸ τῆς μάχης. ταῦτα δ’ οἶμαι καὶ Σιμμίαν ἀκηκοέναι.’ ‘πολλάκις’ ὁ Σιμμίας ἔφη ‘καὶ πολλῶν· διεβοήθη γὰρ οὐκ ἠρέμα τὸ Σωκράτους Ἀθήνησιν ἐκ τούτων δαιμόνιον.’

‘Τί οὖν,’ ὁ Φειδόλαος εἶπεν ‘ὦ Σιμμία; Γαλαξίδωρον ἐάσωμεν παίζοντα καταβάλλειν τοσοῦτο μαντείας ἔργον εἰς πταρμοὺς καὶ κληδόνας, οἷς καὶ οἱ πολλοὶ [f] καὶ ἰδιῶται περὶ μικρὰ προσχρῶνται καὶ παίζοντες, ὅταν δὲ κίνδυνοι βαρύτεροι καὶ μείζονες καταλάβωσι πράξεις, ἐκεῖνο γίγνεται τὸ Εὐριπίδειον (fr. 282, 22)

‘οὐδεὶς σιδήρου ταῦτα μωραίνει πέλας’;’

καὶ ὁ Γαλαξίδωρος ‘Σιμμίου μέν,’ ἔφη ‘Φειδόλαε, περὶ τούτων, εἴ τι Σωκράτους αὐτὸς λέγοντος ἤκουσεν, ἕτοιμος ἀκροᾶσθαι καὶ πείθεσθαι μεθ’ ὑμῶν· τὰ δ’ ὑπὸ σοῦ λελεγμένα καὶ Πολύμνιος οὐ χαλεπὸν ἀνελεῖν. ὡς γὰρ ἐν ἰατρικῇ σφυγμὸς ἢ φλύκταινα μικρὸν οὐ μικροῦ δὲ σημεῖόν ἐστι, καὶ κυβερνήτῃ πελαγίου φθόγγος ὄρνιθος ἢ [582] [a] διαδρομὴ κνηκίδος ἀραιᾶς πνεῦμα σημαίνει καὶ κίνησιν τραχυτέραν θαλάσσης, οὕτω μαντικῇ ψυχῇ πταρμὸς ἢ κληδὼν οὐ μέγα καθ’ αὑτὸ ‹μεγάλου δὲ σημεῖον› συμπτώματος· ‹ἐπ’› οὐδεμιᾶς γὰρ τέχνης καταφρονεῖται τὸ μικροῖς μεγάλα καὶ δι’ ὀλίγων πολλὰ προμηνύειν. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ εἴ τις ἄπειρος γραμμάτων δυνάμεως ὁρῶν ὀλίγα πλήθει καὶ φαῦλα τὴν μορφὴν ἀπιστοίη ἄνδρα γραμματικὸν ἐκ τούτων ἀναλέγεσθαι πολέμους μεγάλους, οἳ τοῖς πάλαι συνέτυχον, καὶ κτίσεις πόλεων πράξεις τε καὶ παθήματα [b] βασιλέων, εἶτα φαίη δαιμόνιόν τι μηνύειν καὶ καταλέγειν ἐκείνῳ τῶν ἱστορικῶν τούτων ἕκαστον, ἡδὺς ἄν, ὦ φίλε, γέλως σοι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τῆς ἀπειρίας ἐπέλθοι, οὕτω σκόπει, μὴ καὶ ἡμεῖς τῶν μαντικῶν ἑκάστου τὴν δύναμιν ἀγνοοῦντες, ᾗ συμβάλλει πρὸς τὸ μέλλον, εὐήθως ἀγανακτῶμεν, εἰ νοῦν ἔχων ἄνθρωπος ἐκ τούτων [ἂν] ἀποφαίνεταί τι περὶ τῶν ἀδήλων, καὶ ταῦτα φάσκων αὐτὸς οὐ πταρμὸν οὐδὲ φωνὴν ἀλλὰ δαιμόνιον αὐτῷ τῶν πράξεων ὑφηγεῖσθαι. μέτειμι γὰρ ἤδη πρὸς σέ, ὦ Πολύμνι, θαυμάζοντα Σωκράτους ἀνδρὸς ἀτυφίᾳ καὶ ἀφελείᾳ μάλιστα δὴ φιλοσοφίαν ἐξανθρωπίσαντος, εἰ μὴ πταρμὸν [c] μηδὲ κληδόνα τὸ σημεῖον ἀλλὰ τραγικῶς πάνυ [τὸ] δαιμόνιον ὠνόμαζεν. ἐγὼ γὰρ ἂν τοὐναντίον ἐθαύμαζον ἀνδρὸς ἄκρου διαλέγεσθαι καὶ κρατεῖν ὀνομάτων, ὥσπερ Σωκράτης, εἰ μὴ τὸ δαιμόνιον ἀλλὰ τὸν πταρμὸν αὑτῷ σημαίνειν ἔλεγεν· ὥσπερ εἴ τις ὑπὸ τοῦ βέλους φαίη τετρῶσθαι μὴ τῷ βέλει ὑπὸ τοῦ βαλόντος, μεμετρῆσθαι δ’ αὖ τὸ βάρος ὑπὸ τοῦ ζυγοῦ μὴ τῷ ζυγῷ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἱστάντος. οὐ γὰρ τοῦ ὀργάνου τὸ ἔργον, ἀλλ’ οὗ καὶ τὸ ὄργανον ᾧ χρῆται πρὸς τὸ ἔργον· ὄργανον δέ τι καὶ τὸ σημεῖον ᾧ χρῆται τὸ σημαῖνον. ἀλλ’ ὅπερ εἶπον, εἴ τι Σιμμίας ἔχει λέγειν, ἀκουστέον, ὡς εἰδότος ἀκριβέστερον.’

Καὶ ὁ Θεόκριτος ‘πρότερόν γ’’ ἔφη ‘τοὺς εἰσιόντας [d] οἵτινές εἰσιν ἀποσκεψαμένοις, μᾶλλον δὲ τὸν ξένον ‹ὃν› ἔοικεν ἡμῖν Ἐπαμεινώνδας ὁδὶ κομίζειν.’ ἀποβλέψαντες οὖν πρὸς τὰς θύρας ἑωρῶμεν ἡγούμενον μὲν τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν καὶ ‹τῶν› †συνεστώτων φίλων Ἰσμηνόδωρον καὶ Βακχυλίδαν καὶ Μέλισσον τὸν αὐλητήν, ἑπόμενον δὲ τὸν ξένον οὐκ ἀγεννῆ τὸ εἶδος ἀλλὰ πραότητα καὶ φιλοφροσύνην τοῦ ἤθους ὑποφαίνοντα καὶ σεμνῶς ἀμπεχόμενον τὸ σῶμα. καθίσαντος οὖν ἐκείνου μὲν αὐτοῦ παρὰ τὸν Σιμμίαν τοῦ δ’ ἀδελφοῦ παρ’ ἐμὲ τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ὡς ἕκαστος ἔτυχε καὶ γενομένης σιωπῆς ὁ Σιμμίας τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἡμῶν καλέσας ‘εἶεν,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Ἐπαμεινώνδα, τίνα [e] χρὴ τὸν ξένον καὶ πῶς καὶ πόθεν προσαγορεύειν; ἀρχὴ γάρ τις ἐντυχίας καὶ γνώσεως αὕτη συνήθης.’ καὶ ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας ‘Θεάνωρ,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Σιμμία, ὄνομα μὲν τῷ ἀνδρί, γένος δὲ Κροτωνιάτης τῶν ἐκεῖ φιλοσόφων οὐ καταισχύνων τὸ μέγα Πυθαγόρου κλέος· ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν ἥκει δεῦρο μακρὰν ὁδὸν ἐξ Ἰταλίας ἔργοις καλοῖς καλὰ δόγματα βεβαιῶν.’ ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ ξένος ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘σὺ κωλύεις, ὦ Ἐπαμεινώνδα, τῶν ἔργων τὸ κάλλιστον. εἰ γὰρ εὖ ποιεῖν [f] φίλους καλόν, οὐκ αἰσχρὸν εὖ πάσχειν ὑπὸ φίλων· ἡ γὰρ χάρις οὐχ ἧττον δεομένη τοῦ λαμβάνοντος ἢ τοῦ διδόντος ἐξ ἀμφοῖν τελειοῦται πρὸς τὸ καλόν, ὁ δὲ μὴ δεξάμενος ὥσπερ σφαῖραν εὖ φερομένην κατῄσχυνεν ἀτελῆ πεσοῦσαν. ποίου γὰρ οὕτω σκοποῦ βάλλοντα καὶ τυχεῖν ἡδὺ καὶ διαμαρτάνειν ἀνιαρὸν ὡς ἀνδρὸς εὖ παθεῖν ἀξίου διὰ χάριτος ἐφιέμενον; ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖ μὲν ὁ τοῦ σκοποῦ μένοντος ἀτυχήσας σφάλλεται δι’ αὑτόν, ἐνταυθοῖ δ’ ὁ παραιτούμενος καὶ ὑποφεύγων ἀδικεῖ τὴν χάριν εἰς ὃ ἔσπευκε μὴ περαίνουσαν. σοὶ μὲν οὖν τὰς αἰτίας ἤδη διῆλθον, ὑφ’ ὧν ἔπλευσα [583] [a] δεῦρο, βούλομαι δὲ καὶ τούτοις διελθὼν χρήσασθαι πρός σε δικασταῖς. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐξέπεσον αἱ κατὰ πόλεις ἑταιρεῖαι τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν στάσει κρατηθέντων, τοῖς δ’ ἔτι συνεστῶσιν ἐν Μεταποντίῳ συνεδρεύουσιν ἐν οἰκίᾳ πῦρ οἱ Κυλώνειοι περιένησαν καὶ διέφθειραν ἐν ταὐτῷ πάντας πλὴν Φιλολάου καὶ Λύσιδος νέων ὄντων ἔτι ῥώμῃ καὶ κουφότητι διωσαμένων τὸ πῦρ, Φιλόλαος μὲν εἰς Λευκανοὺς φυγὼν ἐκεῖθεν ἀνεσώθη πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους φίλους ἤδη πάλιν ἀθροιζομένους καὶ κρατοῦντας τῶν Κυλωνείων, [b] Λῦσις δ’ ὅπου γέγονεν ἠγνοεῖτο πολὺν χρόνον, πρίν γε δὴ Γοργίας ὁ Λεοντῖνος ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀναπλέων εἰς Σικελίαν ἀπήγγελλε τοῖς περὶ Ἄρκεσον βεβαίως Λύσιδι συγγεγονέναι διατρίβοντι περὶ Θήβας. ὥρμησε μὲν ὁ Ἄρκεσος πόθῳ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτὸς ὡς εἶχε πλεῦσαι, κομιδῇ δὲ διὰ γῆρας καὶ ἀσθένειαν ἐλλείπων ἐπέσκηψε μάλιστα μὲν ζῶντα κομίσαι τὸν Λῦσιν εἰς Ἰταλίαν ἢ τὰ λείψανα τεθνηκότος. οἱ δ’ ἐν μέσῳ πόλεμοι καὶ στάσεις καὶ τυραννίδες ἐκώλυσαν αὐτῷ ζῶντι συντελέσαι τοὺς φίλους τὸν ἆθλον. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡμῖν τὸ Λύσιδος δαιμόνιον ἤδη τεθνηκότος ἐναργῶς προϋπέφαινε τὴν τελευτήν, καὶ τὰς παρ’ ὑμῖν, ὦ Πολύμνι, [c] θεραπείας καὶ διαίτας τοῦ ἀνδρὸς οἱ σαφῶς εἰδότες ἀπήγγελλον, ὅτι πλουσίας ἐν οἴκῳ πένητι γηροκομίας τυχὼν καὶ πατὴρ τῶν σῶν υἱέων ἐπιγραφεὶς οἴχοιτο μακαριστός, ἀπεστάλην ἐγὼ νέος καὶ εἷς ὑπὸ πολλῶν καὶ πρεσβυτέρων, ἐχόντων οὐκ ἔχουσι χρήματα διδόντων, πολλὴν ‹δὲ› χάριν καὶ φιλίαν ἀντιλαμβανόντων. Λῦσις δὲ καὶ κεῖται καλῶς ὑφ’ ὑμῶν, καὶ τάφου καλοῦ κρείττων αὐτῷ χάρις ἐκτινομένη φίλοις ὑπὸ φίλων καὶ οἰκείων.’

Ταῦτα τοῦ ξένου λέγοντος ὁ μὲν πατὴρ ἐπεδάκρυσε τῇ μνήμῃ τοῦ Λύσιδος πολὺν χρόνον, ὁ δ’ ἀδελφὸς ὑπομειδιῶν [d] ὥσπερ εἰώθει πρὸς ἐμέ ‘πῶς’ ἔφη ‘ποιοῦμεν, ὦ Καφισία; προϊέμεθα τὴν πενίαν τοῖς χρήμασι καὶ σιωπῶμεν;’ ‘ἥκιστ’’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘τὴν φίλην καὶ ‘ἀγαθὴν κουροτρόφον’ (ι 27), ἀλλ’ ἄμυνε· σὸς γὰρ ὁ λόγος.’ ‘καὶ μὴν ἐγώ,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ πάτερ, ταύτῃ μόνον τὴν οἰκίαν ἐδεδίειν ἁλώσιμον ὑπὸ χρημάτων εἶναι, κατὰ τὸ Καφισίου σῶμα καλῆς μὲν ἐσθῆτος δεόμενον ἵνα τοῖς ἐρασταῖς ἐγκαλλωπίσηται τοσούτοις οὖσιν, ἀφθόνου δὲ καὶ πολλῆς τροφῆς ἵν’ ἀντέχῃ πρὸς τὰ γυμνάσια καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἐν ταῖς παλαίστραις ἀγῶνας· ὁπηνίκα δ’ οὗτος οὐ προδίδωσι [τὴν πενίαν] οὐδ’ ὡς βαφὴν ἀνίησι τὴν πάτριον πενίαν, ἀλλὰ [e] καίπερ ὢν μειράκιον εὐτελείᾳ καλλωπίζεται καὶ στέργει τὰ παρόντα, τίς ἂν ἡμῖν γένοιτο τῶν χρημάτων διάθεσις καὶ χρῆσις; ἦπου καταχρυσώσομεν τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τὴν ἀσπίδα πορφύρᾳ συμμεμιγμένῃ πρὸς χρυσίον, ὥσπερ Νικίας ὁ Ἀθηναῖος, διαποικιλοῦμεν; σοὶ δ’, ὦ πάτερ, Μιλησίαν χλανίδα τῇ δὲ μητρὶ παραλουργὸν ὠνησόμεθα χιτώνιον; οὐ γὰρ εἰς γαστέρα δήπου καταχρησόμεθα τὴν δωρεὰν εὐωχοῦντες αὑτοὺς πολυτελέστερον, ὥσπερ ξένον ὑποδεδεγμένοι βαρύτερον τὸν πλοῦτον.’ ‘ἄπαγ’,’ [f] εἶπεν ὁ πατήρ ‘ὦ παῖ· μηδέποτε τοιαύτην ἐπίδοιμι μετακόσμησιν τοῦ βίου [ἡμῶν].’ ‘καὶ μὴν οὐδ’ ἀργόν’ ἔφη ‘καθισόμεθα φρουροῦντες οἴκοι τὸν πλοῦτον· ἄχαρις γὰρ ἂν οὕτως ἡ χάρις καὶ ἄτιμος ἡ κτῆσις εἴη.’ ‘τί μήν;’ εἶπεν ὁ πατήρ. ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας ‘Ἰάσωνι μὲν τῷ Θετταλῶν ταγῷ πέμψαντι δεῦρο πολὺ χρυσίον ἔναγχος πρὸς ἡμᾶς καὶ δεομένῳ λαβεῖν ἀγροικότερος ἐφάνην ἀποκρινόμενος ἀδίκων χειρῶν αὐτὸν κατάρχειν, ὅτι μοναρχίας ὢν ἐραστὴς ἄνδρα δημότην ἐλευθέρας καὶ αὐτονόμου [584] [a] πόλεως ἐπείρα διὰ χρημάτων· σοῦ δ’, ὦ ξένε, τὴν μὲν προθυμίαν (καλὴ γὰρ καὶ φιλόσοφος) δέχομαι καὶ ἀγαπῶ διαφερόντως, ἥκεις δὲ φάρμακα φίλοις μὴ νοσοῦσι κομίζων. ὥσπερ οὖν εἰ πολεμεῖσθαι πυθόμενος ἡμᾶς ἔπλευσας [ἡμᾶς] ὅπλοις καὶ βέλεσιν ὠφελήσων, εἶτα φιλίαν καὶ εἰρήνην εὗρες, οὐκ ἂν ᾤου δεῖν ἐκεῖνα διδόναι καὶ ἀπολείπειν μὴ δεομένοις, οὕτω σύμμαχος μὲν ἀφῖξαι πρὸς πενίαν ὡς ἐνοχλουμένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῆς, ἡ δ’ ἐστὶ ῥᾴστη φέρειν ἡμῖν καὶ φίλη σύνοικος· οὔκουν δεῖ χρημάτων [οὐδ’] ὅπλων ἐπ’ αὐτὴν μηδὲν ἀνιῶσαν, ἀλλ’ ἀπάγγελλε τοῖς ἐκεῖ γνωρίμοις, [b] ὅτι κάλλιστα μὲν αὐτοὶ πλούτῳ χρῶνται καλῶς δὲ πενίᾳ χρωμένους αὐτόθι φίλους ἔχουσι, τὰς δὲ Λύσιδος ἡμῖν τροφὰς καὶ ταφὰς αὐτὸς ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ Λῦσις ἀπέδωκε, τά τ’ ἄλλα καὶ πενίαν διδάξας μὴ δυσχεραίνειν.’

Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Θεάνωρ ‘ἆρ’ οὖν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ πενίαν δυσχεραίνειν ἀγεννές ἐστι τὸ δὲ πλοῦτον δεδιέναι καὶ φεύγειν οὐκ ἄτοπον;’ ‘‹ἄτοπον’, εἶπεν ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας›, ‘εἰ μὴ λόγῳ τις αὐτὸν ἀλλὰ σχηματιζόμενος ἢ δι’ ἀπειροκαλίαν ἢ τῦφόν τινα διωθεῖται.’ ‘καὶ τίς ἄν’ ἔφη ‘λόγος ἀπείργοι τὴν ἐκ καλῶν καὶ δικαίων κτῆσιν, ὦ Ἐπαμεινώνδα; μᾶλλον δὲ (πραότερον γὰρ ἡμῖν ἢ τῷ Θετταλῷ πρὸς τὰς ἀποκρίσεις [c] ἐνδίδου σαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τούτων) εἰπέ μοι, πότερον ἡγῇ δόσιν μὲν εἶναί τινα χρημάτων ὀρθὴν λῆψιν δὲ μηδεμίαν ἢ καὶ τοὺς διδόντας ἁμαρτάνειν πάντως καὶ τοὺς λαμβάνοντας;’ ‘οὐδαμῶς’ εἶπεν ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας, ‘ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἄλλου τινὸς ἐγὼ καὶ πλούτου χάριν τε καὶ κτῆσιν εἶναι νομίζω τὴν μὲν αἰσχρὰν τὴν δ’ ἀστείαν.’ ‘ἆρ’ οὖν’ ἔφη ὁ Θεάνωρ ‘ὁ [ἃ] ὀφείλων διδοὺς ἑκουσίως καὶ προθύμως οὐ καλῶς δίδωσιν;’ ὡμολόγησεν. ‘ὁ δ’ ἅ τις καλῶς δίδωσι δεξάμενος οὐ καλῶς εἴληφεν; ἢ γένοιτ’ ἂν δικαιοτέρα χρημάτων λῆψις τῆς παρὰ τοῦ δικαίως διδόντος;’ [d] ‘οὐκ ἄν’ ἔφη ‘γένοιτο.’ ‘δυεῖν ἄρα φίλων,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Ἐπαμεινώνδα, εἰ θατέρῳ δοτέον, θατέρῳ δήπου ληπτέον· ἐν μὲν γὰρ ταῖς μάχαις τὸν εὖ βάλλοντα τῶν πολεμίων ἐκκλιτέον, ἐν δὲ ταῖς χάρισι τὸν καλῶς διδόντα τῶν φίλων οὔτε φεύγειν οὔτ’ ἀπωθεῖσθαι δίκαιον· εἰ γὰρ ἡ πενία μὴ δυσχερές, οὐδ’ αὖ πάλιν ὁ πλοῦτος οὕτως ἄτιμος καὶ ἀπόβλητος.’ ‘οὐ γὰρ οὖν’ εἶπεν ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας, ‘ἀλλ’ ἔστιν ὅτῳ μὴ λαβόντι τὸ καλῶς διδόμενον τιμιώτερον ὑπάρχει καὶ κάλλιον· οὑτωσὶ δ’ ἐπίσκεψαι μεθ’ ἡμῶν. εἰσὶ δήπουθεν ἐπιθυμίαι πολλαὶ καὶ πολλῶν, ἔνιαι μὲν ἔμφυτοι λεγόμεναι καὶ περὶ τὸ σῶμα βλαστάνουσαι πρὸς τὰς [e] ἀναγκαίας ἡδονάς, αἱ δ’ ἐπήλυδες, αἳ ἕνεκα κενῶν δοξῶν, ἰσχὺν δὲ καὶ βίαν ὑπὸ χρόνου καὶ συνηθείας ἐν τροφῇ μοχθηρᾷ λαβοῦσαι πολλάκις ἕλκουσι καὶ ταπεινοῦσι τὴν ψυχὴν ἐρρωμενέστερον τῶν ἀναγκαίων. ἔθει δὲ καὶ μελέτῃ πολὺ μέν τις ἤδη καὶ τῶν ἐμφύτων ἀπαρύσαι παθῶν τῷ λόγῳ παρέσχε· τὸ δὲ πᾶν τῆς ἀσκήσεως κράτος, ὦ φίλε, ταῖς ἐπεισοδίοις καὶ περιτταῖς προσάγοντας ἐπιθυμίαις ἐκπονεῖν χρὴ καὶ ἀποκόπτειν αὐτὰς ἀνείρξεσι καὶ κατοχαῖς ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου κολαζομένας. εἰ γὰρ δίψαν ἐκβιάζεται καὶ [f] πεῖναν ἡ πρὸς τροφὴν καὶ ποτὸν ἀντίβασις τοῦ λογισμοῦ, μακρῷ δήπου ῥᾷόν ἐστι φιλοπλουτίαν κολοῦσαι καὶ φιλοδοξίαν ἀποχαῖς ὧν ἐφίενται καὶ ἀνείρξεσιν εἰς τέλος καταλυθείσας· ἢ οὐ δοκεῖ σοι;’ ὡμολόγησεν ὁ ξένος. ‘ἆρ’ οὖν’ ἔφη ‘διαφορὰν ὁρᾷς ἀσκήσεως καὶ τοῦ πρὸς ὃ ἡ ἄσκησις ἔργου, καὶ καθάπερ ἀθλητικῆς ἔργον μὲν ἂν εἴποις τὴν ὑπὲρ τοῦ στεφάνου πρὸς τὸν ἀντίπαλον ἅμιλλαν, ἄσκησιν δὲ τὴν ἐπὶ τοῦτο διὰ τῶν γυμνασίων παρασκευὴν τοῦ σώματος, οὕτω καὶ ἀρετῆς ὁμολογεῖς τὸ μὲν ἔργον εἶναι τὸ δ’ ἄσκησιν;’ ὁμολογήσαντος δὲ τοῦ ξένου ‘φέρε τοίνυν πρῶτον ἐπὶ τῆς ἐγκρατείας τὸ τῶν αἰσχρῶν καὶ παρανόμων [585] [a] ἡδονῶν ἀπέχεσθαι πότερον ἄσκησιν ἢ μᾶλλον ἔργον καὶ ἀπόδειξιν ἀσκήσεως εἶναι νομίζεις;’ ‘ἔργον’ εἶπεν ‘ἐγὼ καὶ ἀπόδειξιν.’ ‘ἄσκησιν δὲ καὶ μελέτην [μετὰ] ἐγκρατείας οὐχ ᾗπερ ἔτι νῦν ἐφείλκυσθε πάντες ὑμεῖς, ὅταν γυμνασάμενοι καὶ κινήσαντες ὥσπερ ζῷα τὰς ὀρέξεις ἐπιστῆτε λαμπραῖς τραπέζαις καὶ ποικίλοις ἐδέσμασι πολὺν χρόνον, εἶτα ταῦτα τοῖς οἰκέταις ὑμῶν εὐωχεῖσθαι παραδόντες αὐτοὶ τὰ λιτὰ καὶ ἁπλᾶ προσφέρησθε κεκολασμέναις ἤδη ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις; ἡ γὰρ ἐν οἷς ἔξεστιν ἀποχὴ τῶν ἡδονῶν ἄσκησίς ἐστι τῇ ψυχῇ πρὸς ἃ κεκώλυται.’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν. ‘ἔστιν οὖν τις, ὦ φίλε, καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ [b] πρὸς φιλοπλουτίαν καὶ φιλαργυρίαν ἄσκησις, οὐ τὸ μὴ κλέπτειν ἐπιόντα νύκτωρ τὰ τῶν πέλας μηδὲ λωποδυτεῖν, οὐδ’ εἰ μὴ προδίδωσί τις πατρίδα καὶ φίλους δι’ ἀργύριον, οὗτος ἀσκεῖ πρὸς φιλαργυρίαν (καὶ γὰρ ὁ νόμος ἴσως ἐνταῦθα καὶ ὁ φόβος ἀπείργει τὴν πλεονεξίαν τοῦ ἀδικεῖν), ἀλλ’ ὁ τῶν δικαίων καὶ συγκεχωρημένων ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου κερδῶν πολλάκις ἀφιστὰς ἑαυτὸν ἑκουσίως ἀσκεῖ καὶ προσεθίζεται μακρὰν εἶναι παντὸς ἀδίκου καὶ παρανόμου λήμματος. οὔτε γὰρ ἐν ἡδοναῖς μεγάλαις μὲν ἀτόποις δὲ καὶ βλαβεραῖς οἷόν τε τὴν διάνοιαν ἠρεμεῖν μὴ πολλάκις ἐν [c] ἐξουσίᾳ τοῦ ἀπολαύειν καταφρονήσασαν, οὔτε λήμματα μοχθηρὰ καὶ πλεονεξίας μεγάλας εἰς ἐφικτὸν ἡκούσας ὑπερβῆναι ῥᾴδιον ᾧτινι μὴ πόρρωθεν δέδεται καὶ κεκόλασται τὸ φιλοκερδές, ἀλλ’ ‹ἐν› οἷς ἔξεστιν ἀνέδην εἰς τὸ κερδαίνειν ἀνατεθραμμένον [ὁ γὰρ] σπαργᾷ [περὶ τῆς ἀδικίας] μάλα μόλις καὶ χαλεπῶς τοῦ πλεονεκτεῖν ἀπεχόμενον. ἀνδρὶ δὲ μὴ φίλων προϊεμένῳ χάρισι μὴ βασιλέων δωρεαῖς αὑτόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τύχης κλῆρον ἀπειπαμένῳ καὶ θησαυροῦ φανέντος ἐπιπηδῶσαν ἀποστήσαντι τὴν φιλοπλουτίαν οὐκ ἐπανίσταται πρὸς τὰς ἀδικίας οὐδὲ [d] θορυβεῖ τὴν διάνοιαν, ἀλλ’ εὐκόλως χρῆται πρὸς τὸ καλὸν αὑτῷ μέγα φρονῶν καὶ τὰ κάλλιστα τῇ ψυχῇ συνειδώς. τούτων ἐγὼ καὶ Καφισίας ἐρασταὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὄντες, ὦ φίλε Σιμμία, παραιτούμεθα τὸν ξένον ἐᾶν ἡμᾶς ἱκανῶς ἐγγυμνάσασθαι τῇ πενίᾳ πρὸς τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐκείνην.’

Ταῦτα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ διελθόντος [ὅσον] ὁ Σιμμίας δὶς ἢ τρὶς ἐπινεύσας τῇ κεφαλῇ ‘μέγας’ ἔφη ‘μέγας ἀνήρ ἐστιν Ἐπαμεινώνδας, τούτου δ’ αἴτιος οὑτοσὶ Πολύμνις ἐξ ἀρχῆς τὴν ἀρίστην τροφὴν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ τοῖς παισὶ παρασκευασάμενος. ἀλλὰ περὶ μὲν τούτων αὐτοὶ διαλύεσθε [e] πρὸς αὑτούς, ὦ ξένε· τὸν δὲ Λῦσιν ἡμῖν, εἰ θέμις ἀκοῦσαι, πότερον ἄρα κινεῖς ἐκ τοῦ τάφου καὶ μετοικίζεις εἰς Ἰταλίαν ἢ καταμένειν ἐνταῦθα παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐάσεις εὐμενέσι καὶ φίλοις, ὅταν ἐκεῖ γενώμεθα, συνοίκοις χρησόμενον;’ καὶ ὁ Θεάνωρ ἐπιμειδιάσας ‘ἔοικεν’ ἔφη ‘Λῦσις, ὦ Σιμμία, φιλοχωρεῖν οὐδενὸς τῶν καλῶν ἐνδεὴς γεγονὼς δι’ Ἐπαμεινώνδαν. ἔστι γάρ τι γιγνόμενον ἰδίᾳ περὶ τὰς ταφὰς τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν ὅσιον, οὗ μὴ τυχόντες οὐ δοκοῦμεν ἀπέχειν τὸ μακαριστὸν καὶ οἰκεῖον τέλος. ὡς οὖν ἔγνωμεν ἐκ τῶν ὀνείρων τὴν Λύσιδος τελευτήν (διαγιγνώσκομεν δὲ σημείῳ τινὶ φαινομένῳ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους, [f] εἴτε τεθνηκότος εἴτε ζῶντος εἴδωλόν ἐστιν), ἔννοια πολλοῖς ἐπεισῆλθεν, ὡς ἐπὶ ξένης ὁ Λῦσις ἄλλως κεκήδευται καὶ κινητέος ἐστὶν ἡμῖν ὅπως ἐκεῖ μεταλάχῃ τῶν νομιζομένων. τοιαύτῃ δὲ διανοίᾳ παραγενόμενος καὶ πρὸς τὸν τάφον εὐθὺς ὑπὸ τῶν ἐγχωρίων ὁδηγηθεὶς ἑσπέρας ἤδη χοὰς ἐχεόμην ἀνακαλούμενος τὴν Λύσιδος ψυχὴν κατελθεῖν ἀποθεσπίσουσαν ὡς χρὴ ταῦτα πράσσειν. προϊούσης δὲ τῆς νυκτὸς εἶδον μὲν οὐδέν, ἀκοῦσαι δὲ φωνῆς ἔδοξα τὰ ἀκίνητα μὴ κινεῖν· ὁσίως γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων κεκηδεῦσθαι τὸ Λύσιδος σῶμα, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν ἤδη κεκριμένην ἀφεῖσθαι πρὸς ἄλλην γένεσιν ἄλλῳ δαίμονι συλλαχοῦσαν. καὶ μέντοι καὶ συμβαλὼν ἕωθεν Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ [586] [a] καὶ τὸν τρόπον ἀκούσας ᾧ θάψειε Λῦσιν ἐπέγνων ὅτι καλῶς ἄχρι τῶν ἀπορρήτων πεπαιδευμένος ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τἀνδρὸς εἴη καὶ χρῷτο ταὐτῷ δαίμονι πρὸς τὸν βίον, εἰ μὴ κακὸς ἐγὼ τεκμήρασθαι τῷ πλῷ τὸν κυβερνήτην. μυρίαι μὲν γὰρ ἀτραποὶ βίων, ὀλίγαι δ’ ἃς δαίμονες ἀνθρώπους ἄγουσιν.’ ὁ μὲν οὖν Θεάνωρ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν τῷ Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ προσέβλεψεν, οἷον ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς ἀναθεώμενος αὐτοῦ τὴν φύσιν ‹καὶ› τὸ εἶδος.

Ἐν τούτῳ δ’ ὁ μὲν ἰατρὸς προσελθὼν περιέλυσε τοῦ Σιμμίου τὸν ἐπίδεσμον ὡς θεραπεύσων τὸ σῶμα, Φυλλίδας [b] δ’ ἐπεισελθὼν μεθ’ Ἱπποσθενείδου καὶ κελεύσας ἐμὲ καὶ Χάρωνα καὶ Θεόκριτον ἐξαναστῆναι προσῆγεν εἴς τινα γωνίαν τοῦ περιστύλου, σφόδρα τεταραγμένος ὡς διεφαίνετο τῷ προσώπῳ. κἀμοῦ ‘μή τι καινότερον, ὦ Φυλλίδα, προσπέπτωκεν;’ εἰπόντος ‘ἐμοὶ μὲν οὐδέν’ ἔφη ‘καινόν, ὦ Καφισία· καὶ γὰρ προῄδειν καὶ προύλεγον ὑμῖν τὴν Ἱπποσθενείδου μαλακίαν δεόμενος μὴ ἀνακοινοῦσθαι μηδὲ παραλαμβάνειν εἰς τὴν πρᾶξιν’. ἐκπλαγέντων δὲ τὸν λόγον ἡμῶν ὁ Ἱπποσθενείδας ‘μὴ λέγε πρὸς θεῶν,’ ἔφη ‘Φυλλίδα, ταῦτα μηδὲ τὴν προπέτειαν εὐτολμίαν οἰόμενος ἀνατρέψῃς καὶ ἡμᾶς καὶ τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλ’ ἔασον ἀσφαλῶς, εἴπερ εἵμαρται, κατελθεῖν τοὺς ἄνδρας’. καὶ ὁ Φυλλίδας [c] παροξυνόμενος ‘εἰπέ μοι,’ φησίν ‘ὦ Ἱπποσθενείδα, πόσους οἴει μετέχειν τῶν ἀπορρήτων εἰς τὴν πρᾶξιν ἡμῖν;’ ‘ἐγὼ μέν’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἐλάσσους ἢ τριάκοντα γιγνώσκω.’ ‘τί οὖν’ ἔφη ‘τοσούτων τὸ πλῆθος ὄντων τὰ πᾶσι δόξαντα μόνος ἀνῄρηκας καὶ διακεκώλυκας ἐκπέμψας ἱππέα πρὸς τοὺς ἄνδρας ἤδη καθ’ ὁδὸν ὄντας, ἀναστρέφειν κελεύσας καὶ μὴ κατατεῖναι σήμερον, ὅτε τῶν πρὸς τὴν κάθοδον αὐτοῖς τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ τὸ αὐτόματον συμπαρεσκεύασεν.’ εἰπόντος δὲ ταῦτα τοῦ Φυλλίδου πάντες μὲν διεταράχθημεν, [d] ὁ δὲ Χάρων τῷ Ἱπποσθενείδᾳ πάνυ σκληρῶς τὴν ὄψιν ἐνερείσας ‘ὦ μοχθηρέ’ εἶπεν ‘ἄνθρωπε, τί δέδρακας ἡμᾶς;’ ‘οὐδέν’ ἔφη ‘δεινόν’ ὁ Ἱπποσθενείδας, ‘ἐὰν ἀνεὶς τὴν τραχύτητα τῆς φωνῆς ἀνδρὸς ἡλικιώτου καὶ πολιὰς παραπλησίως ἔχοντος λογισμῶν μετάσχῃς. εἰ μὲν γὰρ εὐψυχίαν φιλοκίνδυνον ἀποδείξασθαι τοῖς πολίταις καὶ θυμὸν ὀλιγωροῦντα τοῦ βίου προῃρήμεθα, Φυλλίδα, πολὺ τὸ τῆς ἡμέρας μῆκος ἔτι, καὶ τὴν ἑσπέραν μὴ περιμένωμεν ἀλλ’ ἤδη βαδίζωμεν ἐπὶ τοὺς τυράννους τὰ ξίφη λαβόντες· ἀποκτιννύωμεν, ἀποθνήσκωμεν, ἀφειδῶμεν ἑαυτῶν. εἰ [e] δὲ ταῦτα μὲν οὔτε δρᾶσαι χαλεπὸν οὔτε παθεῖν, ἐξελέσθαι δὲ τὰς Θήβας ὅπλων τοσούτων πολεμίων περιεχόντων καὶ τὴν Σπαρτιατῶν φρουρὰν ἀπώσασθαι δυσὶ νεκροῖς ἢ τρισὶν οὐ ῥᾴδιον (οὐδὲ γὰρ τοσοῦτον εἰς τὰ συμπόσια καὶ τὰς ὑποδοχὰς παρεσκεύακε Φυλλίδας ἄκρατον, ὥστε τοὺς χιλίους καὶ πεντακοσίους Ἀρχία μεθυσθῆναι δορυφόρους· ἀλλὰ κἂν ἐκεῖνον ἀνέλωμεν, ἐφεδρεύει τῇ νυκτὶ νήφων Ἑρμιππίδας καὶ Ἄρκεσος), τί σπεύδομεν κατάγειν φίλους καὶ οἰκείους ἄνδρας ἐπὶ προῦπτον ὄλεθρον καὶ τοῦτο μηδ’ ἀγνοούντων τῶν ἐχθρῶν παντάπασι τὴν κάθοδον; διὰ τί γὰρ Θεσπιεῦσι μὲν παρήγγελται τρίτην ἡμέραν ταύτην [f] ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις εἶναι καὶ προσέχειν, ὅταν οἱ Σπαρτιατῶν ἡγεμόνες καλῶσιν; Ἀμφίθεον δὲ σήμερον, ὡς πυνθάνομαι, μέλλουσιν ἀνακρίναντες, ὅταν Ἀρχίας ἐπανέλθῃ, διαφθερεῖν. οὐ μεγάλα ταῦτα σημεῖα τοῦ μὴ λανθάνειν τὴν πρᾶξιν; οὐ κράτιστον ἐπισχεῖν χρόνον οὐχὶ πολὺν ἀλλ’ ὅσον ἐξοσιώσασθαι τὰ θεῖα; καὶ γὰρ οἱ μάντεις τῇ Δήμητρι τὸν βοῦν θύοντες πολὺν θόρυβον καὶ κίνδυνον λέγουσι δημόσιον ἀποσημαίνειν τὰ ἔμπυρα. καὶ τὸ σοὶ πλείστης δεόμενον, ὦ Χάρων, εὐλαβείας, ἐχθὲς ἐξ ἀγροῦ μοι συνοδεύων Ὑπατόδωρος ὁ Ἐριάνθους, χρηστὸς μὲν ἄλλως καὶ [587] [a] οἰκεῖος ἀνὴρ οὐδὲν δὲ τῶν πρασσομένων συνειδώς, ‘ἔστι σοι,’ φησίν ‘ὦ Ἱπποσθενείδα, Χάρων ἑταῖρος ἐμοὶ δ’ οὐ πάνυ συνήθης· ἐὰν οὖν δοκῇ σοι, φράσον αὐτῷ φυλάττεσθαί τινα κίνδυνον ἐξ ἐνυπνίου μάλα δυσχεροῦς καὶ ἀτόπου. τῆς γὰρ ἄλλης νυκτὸς ᾤμην αὐτοῦ τὴν οἰκίαν ὠδίνειν ὥσπερ κύουσαν, αὐτὸν δὲ καὶ τοὺς φίλους συναγωνιῶντας εὔχεσθαι καὶ κύκλῳ παρεῖναι, τὴν δὲ μυκᾶσθαι καὶ ἀφιέναι φωνάς τινας ἀνάρθρους, τέλος δὲ πῦρ λάμψαι πολὺ καὶ δεινὸν ἐξ αὐτῆς ἔνδοθεν, ὡς τὰ πλεῖστα τῆς πόλεως φλέγεσθαι τὴν δὲ Καδμείαν καπνῷ μόνῳ περιέχεσθαι [b] τὸ δὲ πῦρ ἄνω μὴ ἐπιπολάζειν.’ ἡ μὲν οὖν ὄψις, ὦ Χάρων, ἣν ὁ ἄνθρωπος διεξῆλθε, τοιαύτη τις ἦν· ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ παραχρῆμα κατέδεισα καὶ πολὺ μᾶλλον ἀκούσας σήμερον ὡς εἰς τὴν σὴν οἰκίαν οἱ φυγάδες καταίρειν μέλλουσιν, ἀγωνιῶ, μὴ μεγάλων κακῶν ἐμπλήσωμεν ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς οὐδὲν ἀξιόλογον τοὺς πολεμίους δράσαντες ἀλλ’ ὅσον διαταράξαντες. τὴν γὰρ πόλιν πρὸς ἡμῶν τίθεμαι, τὴν δὲ Καδμείαν ὥσπερ ἐστὶ πρὸς ἐκείνων.’ ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Θεόκριτος καὶ κατασχὼν τὸν Χάρωνα βουλόμενον εἰπεῖν τι πρὸς τὸν Ἱπποσθενείδαν ‘ἀλλ’ ἔμοιγ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς οὕτως οὐδέποτε θαρρῆσαι πρὸς τὴν [c] πρᾶξιν, ὦ Ἱπποσθενείδα, παρέστη, καίπερ ἱεροῖς ἀεὶ χρησαμένῳ καλοῖς ὑπὲρ τῶν φυγάδων, ὡς ἀπὸ τῆς ὄψεως ταύτης· εἴ γε φῶς μὲν πολὺ καὶ λαμπρὸν ἐν τῇ πόλει λέγεις ἐξ οἰκίας φίλης ἀνασχεῖν, καπνῷ δὲ συμμελανθῆναι τὸ τῶν πολεμίων οἰκητήριον οὐδὲν οὐδέποτε δακρύων καὶ ταραχῆς φέροντι κρεῖττον, ἀσήμους δὲ φωνὰς ἐκφέρεσθαι παρ’ ἡμῶν, ὥστε κἄν [εἰ] τις ἐπιχειρῇ κατηγορεῖν, περιφώνησιν ἀσαφῆ καὶ τυφλὴν ὑπόνοιαν ἡ πρᾶξις λαβοῦσα μόνον ἅμα καὶ φανήσεται καὶ κρατήσει. δυσιερεῖν δέ γε θύοντας εἰκός· ἡ γὰρ ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ ἱερεῖον οὐ δημόσιον ἀλλὰ τῶν κρατούντων ἐστίν.’ ἔτι δὲ τοῦ Θεοκρίτου λέγοντος λέγω πρὸς τὸν Ἱπποσθενείδαν ‘τίνα πρὸς [d] τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐξαπέστειλας; εἰ γὰρ οὐ πολὺ προείληφας, διωξόμεθα.’ καὶ ὁ Ἱπποσθενείδας ‘οὐκ οἶδ’,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Καφισία (δεῖ γὰρ ὑμῖν τἀληθῆ λέγειν), εἰ καταλάβοις ἂν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἵππῳ χρώμενον τῶν ἐν Θήβαις κρατίστῳ· γνώριμος δ’ ὑμῖν ὁ ἄνθρωπός ἐστι τῶν Μέλωνος ἁρματηλατῶν ἐπιστάτης καὶ διὰ Μέλωνα τὴν πρᾶξιν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς συνειδώς.’ κἀγὼ κατιδὼν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ‘ἆρ’ οὐ Χλίδωνα λέγεις,’ εἶπον ‘ὦ Ἱπποσθενείδα, τὸν κέλητι τὰ Ἡρά‹κλε›ια νικῶντα πέρυσιν;’ ‘ἐκεῖνον μὲν οὖν αὐτόν’ ἔφησε. ‘καὶ τίς οὗτος’ ἔφην ‘ἐστὶν ὁ πρὸς ταῖς αὐλείοις θύραις ἐφεστὼς πάλαι καὶ προσβλέπων ἡμῖν;’ ἐπιστρέψας [e] οὖν ὁ Ἱπποσθενείδας ‘Χλίδων’ ἔφη ‘νὴ τὸν Ἡρακλέα· φεῦ, μή τι χαλεπώτερον συμβέβηκε;’ κἀκεῖνος, ὡς εἶδεν ἡμᾶς προσέχοντας αὐτῷ, ἀπὸ τῆς θύρας ἡσυχῆ προσῆγε. τοῦ δ’ Ἱπποσθενείδου νεύσαντος αὐτῷ καὶ λέγειν κελεύσαντος εἰς ἅπαντας .... ‘οἶδ’’ ἔφη ‘τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀκριβῶς, Ἱπποσθενείδα, καί σε μήτε κατ’ οἶκον εὑρὼν μήτ’ ἐπ’ ἀγορᾶς δεῦρο πρὸς τούτους ἐτεκμαιρόμην ἥκειν καὶ συνέτεινον [f] εὐθύς, ἵνα μηδὲν ἀγνοῆτε τῶν γεγονότων. ὡς γὰρ ἐκέλευσας τάχει παντὶ χρησάμενον ἐπὶ τοῦ ὄρους ἀπαντῆσαι τοῖς ἀνδράσιν, εἰσῆλθον οἴκαδε ληψόμενος τὸν ἵππον, αἰτοῦντι δέ μοι τὸν χαλινὸν οὐκ εἶχεν ἡ γυνὴ δοῦναι, ἀλλὰ διέτριβεν ἐν τῷ ταμιείῳ πολὺν χρόνον ὡς ζητοῦσα καὶ σκευωρουμένη τὰ ἔνδον· ἱκανῶς δ’ ἀπολαύσασά μου τέλος ὡμολόγησε κεχρηκέναι τῷ γείτονι τὸν χαλινὸν ἑσπέρας αἰτησαμένης αὐτοῦ τῆς γυναικός. ἀγανακτοῦντος δ’ ἐμοῦ καὶ κακῶς αὐτὴν λέγοντος τρέπεται πρὸς δυσφημίας ἀποτροπαίους ἐπαρωμένη κακὰς ‹μὲν› ὁδοὺς [588] [a] κακὰς δ’ ἐπανόδους· ἃ νὴ Δία πάντα τρέψειαν εἰς αὐτὴν ἐκείνην οἱ θεοί. τέλος δὲ μέχρι πληγῶν προαχθεὶς ὑπ’ ὀργῆς, εἶτ’ ὄχλου γειτόνων καὶ γυναικῶν συνδραμόντος αἴσχιστα ποιήσας καὶ παθὼν μόλις ἀφῖγμαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς, ὅπως ἄλλον ἐκπέμπητε πρὸς τοὺς ἄνδρας, ὡς ἐμοῦ παντάπασιν ἐκστατικῶς ἐν τῷ παρόντι καὶ κακῶς ἔχοντος.’ ἡμᾶς δέ τις ἔσχεν ἄτοπος μεταβολὴ τοῦ πάθους. μικρὸν γὰρ ἔμπροσθεν τῷ κεκωλῦσθαι δυσχεραίνοντες πάλιν διὰ τὴν ὀξύτητα τοῦ καιροῦ καὶ τὸ τάχος, ὡς οὐκ οὔσης ἀναβολῆς, εἰς ἀγωνίαν ὑπηγόμεθα καὶ φόβον. οὐ [b] μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ προσαγορεύσας τὸν Ἱπποσθενείδαν καὶ δεξιωσάμενος ἐθάρρυνον, ὡς καὶ τῶν θεῶν παρακαλούντων ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν.

Ἐκ δὲ τούτου Φυλλίδας μὲν ᾤχετο τῆς ὑποδοχῆς ἐπιμελησόμενος καὶ τὸν Ἀρχίαν εὐθὺς ἐνσείσων εἰς τὸν πότον, Χάρων δὲ τῆς οἰκίας ...., ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ Θεόκριτος πάλιν πρὸς τὸν Σιμμίαν ἐπανήλθομεν, ὅπως τῷ Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ καιρὸν λαβόντες ἐντύχοιμεν. οἱ δ’ ἦσαν ἤδη πρόσω ζητήσεως οὐκ ἀγεννοῦς ἀλλ’ ἧς ὀλίγον ἔμπροσθεν οἱ περὶ Γαλαξίδωρον καὶ Φειδόλαον ἥψαντο, διαποροῦντες τίνος [c] οὐσίας καὶ δυνάμεως εἴη τὸ Σωκράτους λεγόμενον δαιμόνιον. ἃ μὲν οὖν πρὸς τὸν Γαλαξιδώρου λόγον ἀντεῖπεν ὁ Σιμμίας οὐκ ἠκούσαμεν· αὐτὸς δὲ Σωκράτη μὲν ἔφη περὶ τούτων ἐρόμενός ποτε μὴ τυχεῖν ἀποκρίσεως, διὸ μηδ’ αὖθις ἐρέσθαι, πολλάκις δ’ αὐτῷ παραγενέσθαι τοὺς μὲν δι’ ὄψεως ἐντυχεῖν θείῳ τινὶ λέγοντας ἀλαζόνας ἡγουμένῳ, τοῖς δ’ ἀκοῦσαί τινος φωνῆς φάσκουσι προσέχοντι τὸν νοῦν καὶ διαπυνθανομένῳ μετὰ σπουδῆς. ‘ὅθεν ἡμῖν παρίστατο σκοπουμένοις ἰδίᾳ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὑπονοεῖν μήποτε τὸ Σωκράτους δαιμόνιον οὐκ ὄψις ἀλλὰ φωνῆς τινος αἴσθησις [d] ἢ λόγου νόησις εἴη συνάπτοντος ἀτόπῳ τινὶ τρόπῳ πρὸς αὐτόν, ὥσπερ καὶ καθ’ ὕπνον οὐκ ἔστι φωνή, λόγων δέ τινων δόξας καὶ νοήσεις λαμβάνοντες οἴονται φθεγγομένων ἀκούειν. ἀλλὰ τοῖς μὲν ὡς ἀληθῶς ὄναρ ἡ τοιαύτη σύνεσις γίγνεται δι’ ἡσυχίαν καὶ γαλήνην τοῦ σώματος, ὅταν καθεύδωσι, .... μόλις ἐπήκοον ἔχουσι τὴν ψυχὴν τῶν κρειττόνων καὶ πεπνιγμένοι γε θορύβῳ τῶν παθῶν καὶ περιαγωγῇ τῶν χρειῶν εἰσακοῦσαι καὶ παρασχεῖν τὴν διάνοιαν οὐ δύνανται τοῖς δηλουμένοις. Σωκράτει δ’ ὁ νοῦς καθαρὸς ὢν καὶ ἀπαθής, τῷ σώματι [μὴ] μικρὰ τῶν ἀναγκαίων [e] χάριν καταμιγνὺς αὑτόν, εὐαφὴς ἦν καὶ λεπτὸς ὑπὸ τοῦ προσπεσόντος ὀξέως μεταβαλεῖν· τὸ δὲ προσπῖπτον οὐ φθόγγον ἀλλὰ λόγον ἄν τις εἰκάσειε δαίμονος ἄνευ φωνῆς ἐφαπτόμενον αὐτῷ τῷ δηλουμένῳ τοῦ νοοῦντος. πληγῇ γὰρ ἡ φωνὴ προσέοικε τῆς ψυχῆς δι’ ὤτων βίᾳ τὸν λόγον εἰσδεχομένης, ὅταν ἀλλήλοις ἐντυγχάνωμεν· ὁ δὲ τοῦ κρείττονος νοῦς ἄγει τὴν εὐφυᾶ ψυχὴν ἐπιθιγγάνων τῷ νοηθέντι πληγῆς μὴ δεομένην, ἡ δ’ ἐνδίδωσιν αὐτῷ χαλῶντι καὶ συντείνοντι τὰς ὁρμὰς οὐ βιαίους ὑπὸ παθῶν [f] ἀντιτεινόντων, ἀλλ’ εὐστρόφους καὶ μαλακὰς ὥσπερ ἡνίας ἐνδούσας. οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν ὁρῶντας τοῦτο μὲν ὑπὸ μικροῖς οἴαξι μεγάλων περιαγωγὰς ὁλκάδων τοῦτο δὲ τροχῶν κεραμεικῶν δίνησιν ἄκρας παραψαύσει χειρὸς ὁμαλῶς περιφερομένων· ἄψυχα μὲν γὰρ ἀλλ’ ὅμως τροχαλὰ ταῖς κατασκευαῖς ὑπὸ λειότητος ἐνδίδωσι πρὸς τὸ κινοῦν ῥοπῆς γενομένης, ψυχὴ δ’ ἀνθρώπου μυρίαις ὁρμαῖς οἷον ὕσπληξιν ἐντεταμένη μακρῷ πάντων ὀργάνων εὐστροφώτατόν ἐστιν, ἄν τις κατὰ λόγον ἅπτηται, ῥοπὴν λαβοῦσα [589] [a] πρὸς τὸ νοηθὲν κινεῖσθαι. ἐνταῦθα γὰρ εἰς τὸ νοοῦν αἱ τῶν παθῶν καὶ ὁρμῶν κατατείνουσιν ἀρχαί, τούτου δὲ σεισθέντος ἑλκόμεναι σπῶσι καὶ συντείνουσι τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ᾗ καὶ μάλιστα τὸ νοηθὲν ἡλίκην ἔχει ῥώμην καταμαθεῖν δίδωσιν· ὀστᾶ γὰρ ἀναίσθητα καὶ νεῦρα καὶ σάρκες ὑγρῶν περίπλεαι καὶ βαρὺς ὁ ἐκ τούτων ὄγκος ἡσυχάζων καὶ κείμενος, ἅμα ‹δὲ› τῷ τὴν ψυχὴν ἐν νῷ τι βαλέσθαι καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸ κινῆσαι τὴν ὁρμὴν ὅλος ἀναστὰς καὶ συνταθεὶς πᾶσι τοῖς μέρεσιν οἷον ἐπτερωμένος φέρεται πρὸς τὴν πρᾶξιν. οὐδ’ ὁ τῆς κινήσεως καὶ συνεντάσεως καὶ παραστάσεως [b] τρόπος χαλεπὸς ἢ παντελῶς ἄπορος συνοφθῆναι, καθ’ ὃν ἡ ψυχὴ νοήσασα ἐφέλκεται ταῖς ὁρμαῖς τὸν ὄγκον, ἀλλ’ †ἐν ὅσῳ μάλα δίχα φωνῆς ἐννοηθεὶς κινεῖ λόγος ἀπραγμόνως, οὕτως οὐκ ἂν οἶμαι δυσπείστως ἔχοιμεν ὑπὸ νοῦ κρείσσονος νοῦν καὶ ‹ψυχὴν› ψυχῆς θειοτέρας ἄγεσθαι θύραθεν ἐφαπτομένης ἣν πέφυκεν ἐπαφὴν λόγος ἴσχειν πρὸς λόγον ὥσπερ φῶς ἀνταύγειαν. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι τὰς μὲν ἀλλήλων νοήσεις οἷον ὑπὸ σκότῳ διὰ φωνῆς ψηλαφῶντες γνωρίζομεν· αἱ δὲ τῶν δαιμόνων φέγγος ἔχουσαι τοῖς δυναμένοις ‹ἰδεῖν› ἐλλάμπουσιν, οὐ δεόμεναι ῥημάτων οὐδ’ ὀνομάτων, [c] οἷς χρώμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους οἱ ἄνθρωποι συμβόλοις εἴδωλα τῶν νοουμένων καὶ εἰκόνας ὁρῶσιν, αὐτὰ δ’ οὐ γιγνώσκουσι πλὴν οἷς ἔπεστιν ἴδιόν τι καὶ δαιμόνιον ὥσπερ εἴρηται φέγγος. καίτοι τὸ περὶ τὴν φωνὴν γιγνόμενον ἔστιν ᾗ παραμυθεῖται τοὺς ἀπιστοῦντας· ὁ γὰρ ἀὴρ φθόγγοις ἐνάρθροις τυπωθεὶς καὶ γενόμενος δι’ ὅλου λόγος καὶ φωνὴ πρὸς τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ ἀκροωμένου περαίνει τὴν νόησιν. ὥστε θαυμάζειν ‹οὐκ› ἄξιον, εἰ καὶ κατὰ [τοῦτο] τὸ νοηθὲν ὑπὸ τῶν δαι‹μόνων› ὁ ἀὴρ τρεπόμενος δι’ εὐπάθειαν ἐνσημαίνεται τοῖς θείοις καὶ περιττοῖς ἀνδράσι τὸν τοῦ νοήσαντος λόγον. ὥσπερ γὰρ αἱ πληγαὶ τῶν ‹ὑπορυττ›όντων ἀσπίσι χαλκαῖς ἁλίσκονται διὰ τὴν [d] ἀντήχησιν, ὅταν ἐκ βάθους ἀναφερόμεναι προσπέσωσι, τὰ δ’ ἄλλ’ ἀδήλως διεκθέουσαι λανθάνουσιν, οὕτως οἱ τῶν δαιμόνων λόγοι διὰ πάντων φερόμενοι μόνοις ἐνηχοῦσι τοῖς ἀθόρυβον ‹τὸ› ἦθος καὶ νήνεμον ἔχουσι τὴν ψυχήν, οὓς δὴ καὶ ἱεροὺς καὶ δαιμονίους ἀνθρώπους καλοῦμεν. οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ καταδαρθοῦσιν οἴονται τὸ δαιμόνιον ἀνθρώποις ἐπιθειάζειν, εἰ δ’ ἐγρηγορότας καὶ καθεστῶτας ἐν τῷ φρονεῖν ὁμοίως κινοῦσι, θαυμαστὸν ἡγοῦνται καὶ ἄπιστον· ὥσπερ ἂν εἴ τις οἴοιτο τὸν μουσικὸν ἀνειμένῃ τῇ λύρᾳ χρώμενον, ὅταν συστῇ τοῖς τόνοις ἢ καθαρμοσθῇ, μὴ ἅπτεσθαι μηδὲ χρῆσθαι. τὸ γὰρ αἴτιον οὐ συνορῶσι, [e] τὴν ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀναρμοστίαν καὶ ταραχήν, ἧς ἀπήλλακτο Σωκράτης ὁ ἑταῖρος ἡμῶν, ὥσπερ ὁ δοθεὶς ἔτι παιδὸς ὄντος αὐτοῦ τῷ πατρὶ χρησμὸς ἀπεθέσπισεν· ἐᾶν γὰρ αὐτὸν ἐκέλευσεν ὅ τι ἂν ἐπὶ νοῦν ἴῃ πράττειν, καὶ μὴ βιάζεσθαι μηδὲ παράγειν ἀλλ’ ἐφιέναι τὴν ὁρμὴν τοῦ παιδός, εὐχόμενον ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ Διὶ Ἀγοραίῳ καὶ Μούσαις, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα μὴ πολυπραγμονεῖν περὶ Σωκράτους, ὡς κρείττονα δήπουθεν [f] ἔχοντος ἐν αὑτῷ μυρίων διδασκάλων καὶ παιδαγωγῶν ἡγεμόνα πρὸς τὸν βίον.’

‘Ἡμῖν μέν, ὦ Φειδόλαε, καὶ ζῶντος Σωκράτους καὶ τεθνηκότος οὕτως ἐννοεῖν περὶ τοῦ δαιμονίου παρίσταται, τῶν κληδόνας ἢ πταρμοὺς ἤ τι τοιοῦτον ‹παραγόντων› καταφρονοῦσιν· ἃ δὲ Τιμάρχου τοῦ Χαιρωνέως ἠκούσαμεν ὑπὲρ τούτων διεξιόντος, οὐκ οἶδα μὴ μύθοις ‹ὁμοιότερ’ ἢ› λόγοις ὄντα σιωπᾶν ἄμεινον.’ ‘μηδαμῶς’ εἶπεν ὁ Θεόκριτος, ‘ἀλλὰ δίελθ’ αὐτά· καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ λίαν ἀκριβῶς, ἀλλ’ ἔστιν ὅπη ψαύει τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ τὸ μυθῶδες. [590] [a] πρότερον δὲ τίς ἦν οὗτος ὁ Τίμαρχος φράσον· οὐ γὰρ ἔγνων τὸν ἄνθρωπον.’ ‘εἰκότως γ’,’ εἶπεν ὁ Σιμμίας ‘ὦ Θεόκριτε· νέος γὰρ ὢν κομιδῇ ‹κατέστρεψε τὸν βίον› καὶ Σωκράτους δεηθεὶς ταφῆναι παρὰ Λαμπροκλέα τὸν Σωκράτους υἱόν, ‹ὀλίγ›αις πρότερον ἡμέραις αὐτοῦ τεθνηκότα, φίλον καὶ ἡλικιώτην γενόμενον. οὗτος οὖν ποθῶν γνῶναι τὸ Σωκράτους δαιμόνιον ἣν ἔχει δύναμιν, ἅτε δὴ νέος οὐκ ἀγεννὴς ἄρτι γεγευμένος φιλοσοφίας, ἐμοὶ καὶ Κέβητι κοινωσάμενος μόνοις εἰς Τροφωνίου κατῆλθε δράσας [b] τὰ νομιζόμενα περὶ τὸ μαντεῖον. ἐμμείνας δὲ δύο νύκτας κάτω καὶ μίαν ἡμέραν, τῶν πολλῶν ἀπεγνωκότων αὐτὸν ἤδη καὶ τῶν οἰκείων ὀδυρομένων, πρωὶ μάλα φαιδρὸς ἀνῆλθε· προσκυνήσας δὲ τὸν θεόν, ὡς πρῶτον διέφυγε τὸν ὄχλον, διηγεῖτο ἡμῖν θαυμάσια πολλὰ καὶ ἰδεῖν καὶ ἀκοῦσαι. ἔφη δὲ καταβὰς εἰς τὸ μαντεῖον περιτυχεῖν σκότῳ πολλῷ τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτ’ ἐπευξάμενος κεῖσθαι πολὺν χρόνον οὐ μάλα συμφρονῶν ἐναργῶς εἴτ’ ἐγρήγορεν εἴτ’ ὀνειροπολεῖ· πλὴν δόξαι γε τῆς κεφαλῆς ἅμα ψόφῳ προσπεσόντι πληγείσης τὰς ῥαφὰς διαστάσας μεθιέναι τὴν ψυχήν. ὡς δ’ ἀναχωροῦσα κατεμίγνυτο πρὸς ἀέρα διαυγῆ καὶ καθαρὸν ἀσμένη, πρῶτον μὲν ἀναπνεῦσαι τότε δοκεῖν [c] διὰ χρόνου συχνοῦ τεινομένην τέως καὶ πλείονα γίγνεσθαι τῆς πρότερον ὥσπερ ἱστίον ἐκπεταννύμενον, ἔπειτα κατακούειν ἀμαυρῶς ῥοίζου τινὸς ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς περιελαυνομένου φωνὴν ἡδεῖαν ἱέντος. ἀναβλέψας δὲ τὴν μὲν γῆν οὐδαμοῦ καθορᾶν, νήσους δὲ λαμπομένας μαλακῷ πυρὶ κατ’ ἀλλήλων ἐξαμειβούσας ἄλλην ἄλλοτε χρόαν ὥσπερ βαφὴν ἅμα τῷ φωτὶ ποικιλλομένῳ κατὰ τὰς μεταβολάς. φαίνεσθαι δὲ πλήθει μὲν ἀναρίθμους μεγέθει δ’ ὑπερφυεῖς, οὐκ ἴσας δὲ πάσας ἀλλ’ ὁμοίως κυκλοτερεῖς· οἴεσθαι δὲ ταύταις τὸν αἰθέρα κύκλῳ φερομέναις ὑπορροιζεῖν ‹λιγυρῶς›· εἶναι γὰρ ὁμολογουμένην τῇ τῆς κινήσεως [d] λειότητι τὴν πραότητα τῆς φωνῆς ἐκείνης ἐκ πασῶν συνηρμοσμένης. διὰ μέσου δ’ αὐτῶν θάλασσαν ἢ λίμνην ὑποκεχύσθαι τοῖς χρώμασι διαλάμπουσαν διὰ τῆς γλαυκότητος ἐπιμιγνυμένοις· καὶ τῶν νήσων ὀλίγας μὲν ‹δι›εκπλεῖν κατὰ πόρον καὶ διακομίζεσθαι πέραν τοῦ ῥεύματος, ἄλλας δὲ πολλὰς .... ἐφέλκεσθαι τῇ .... σχεδὸν ὑποφερομένης. εἶναι δὲ τῆς θαλάσσης πῆ μὲν πολὺ βάθος κατὰ νότον μάλιστα, ‹πῆ› δ’ ἀραιὰ τενάγη καὶ βραχέα, πολλαχῆ δὲ καὶ ὑπερχεῖσθαι καὶ ἀπολείπειν αὖθις οὐ μεγάλας ἐκβολὰς λαμβάνουσαν, καὶ τῆς χρόας τὸ μὲν [e] ἄκρατον καὶ πελάγιον, τὸ δ’ οὐ καθαρὸν ἀλλὰ συγκεχυμένον καὶ λιμνῶδες. τῶν δὲ ῥοθίων τὰς νήσους ἅμα περιγινομένας ἐπανάγειν· οὐ μὴν εἰς ταὐτὸ τῇ ἀρχῇ συνάπτειν τὸ πέρας οὐδὲ ποιεῖν κύκλον, ἀλλ’ ἡσυχῆ παραλλάσσειν τὰς ἐπιβολὰς ἕλικα ποιούσας μίαν ἐν τῷ περιστρέφεσθαι. τούτων δὲ πρὸς τὸ μέσον μάλιστα τοῦ περιέχοντος καὶ μέγιστον ἐγκεκλίσθαι τὴν θάλασσαν ὀλίγῳ τῶν ὀκτὼ μερῶν τοῦ παντὸς ἔλαττον, ὡς αὐτῷ [f] κατεφαίνετο· δύο δ’ αὐτὴν ἔχειν ἀναστομώσεις πυρὸς ἐμβάλλοντας ἐναντίους ποταμοὺς δεχομένας, ὥστ’ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀνακοπτομένην κοχλάζειν καὶ ἀπολευκαίνεσθαι τὴν γλαυκότητα. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὁρᾶν τερπόμενος τῇ θέᾳ· κάτω δ’ ἀπιδόντι φαίνεσθαι χάσμα μέγα στρογγύλον οἷον ἐκτετμημένης σφαίρας, φοβερὸν δὲ δεινῶς καὶ βαθύ, πολλοῦ σκότους πλῆρες οὐχ ἡσυχάζοντος ἀλλ’ ἐκταραττομένου καὶ ἀνακλύζοντος πολλάκις· ὅθεν ἀκούεσθαι μυρίας μὲν ὠρυγὰς καὶ στεναγμοὺς ζῴων μυρίων δὲ κλαυθμὸν βρεφῶν καὶ μεμιγμένους ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν ὀδυρμούς, ψόφους δὲ παντοδαποὺς καὶ θορύβους ἐκ βάθους πόρρωθεν ἀμυδροὺς ἀναπεμπομένους [591] [a] οἷς οὐ μετρίως αὐτὸς ἐκπεπλῆχθαι. χρόνου δὲ προϊόντος εἰπεῖν τινα πρὸς αὐτὸν οὐχ ὁρώμενον ‘ὦ Τίμαρχε, τί ποθεῖς πυθέσθαι;’ φράσαι δ’ αὐτὸν ὅτι ‘πάντα, τί γὰρ οὐ θαυμάσιον;’ ‘ἀλλ’ ἡμῖν’ φάναι ‘τῶν ἄνω μέτεστι μικρόν· ἄλλων γὰρ θεῶν ἐκεῖνα· τὴν δὲ Φερσεφόνης μοῖραν, ἣν ἡμεῖς διέπομεν, τῶν τεττάρων μίαν οὖσαν ὡς ἡ Στὺξ ὁρίζει, βουλομένῳ σοι σκοπεῖν πάρεστιν.’ ἐρομένου δ’ αὐτοῦ τίς ἡ Στύξ ἐστιν, ‘ὁδὸς εἰς Ἅιδου’ φάναι ‘καὶ πρόεισιν ‹ἐξ› ἐναντίας, αὐτῇ σχίζουσα τῇ κορυφῇ τὸ φῶς· ἀνατείνουσα δ’, ὡς ὁρᾷς, ἐκ τοῦ Ἅιδου κάτωθεν ᾗ ψαύει περιφερομένη [καὶ] τοῦ [b] φωτός, ἀφορίζει τὴν ἐσχάτην μερίδα τῶν ὅλων. τέσσαρες δ’ εἰσὶν ἀρχαὶ πάντων, ζωῆς μὲν ἡ πρώτη κινήσεως δ’ ἡ δευτέρα γενέσεως δ’ ἡ τρίτη φθορᾶς δ’ ἡ τελευταία· συνδεῖ δὲ τῇ μὲν δευτέρᾳ τὴν πρώτην Μονὰς κατὰ τὸ ἀόρατον, τὴν δὲ δευτέραν τῇ τρίτῃ Νοῦς καθ’ ἥλιον, τὴν δὲ τρίτην πρὸς τετάρτην Φύσις κατὰ σελήνην. τῶν δὲ συνδέσμων ἑκάστου Μοῖρα κλειδοῦχος Ἀνάγκης θυγάτηρ κάθηται, τοῦ μὲν πρώτου Ἄτροπος τοῦ δὲ δευτέρου Κλωθώ, τοῦ δὲ πρὸς σελήνην Λάχεσις, περὶ ἣν ἡ καμπὴ τῆς γενέσεως.

[c] αἱ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλαι νῆσοι θεοὺς ἔχουσι· σελήνη δὲ δαιμόνων ἐπιχθονίων οὖσα φεύγει τὴν Στύγα μικρὸν ὑπερφέρουσα, λαμβάνεται δ’ ἅπαξ ἐν μέτροις δευτέροις ἑκατὸν ἑβδομήκοντα ἑπτά. καὶ τῆς Στυγὸς ἐπιφερομένης αἱ ψυχαὶ βοῶσι δειμαίνουσαι· πολλὰς γὰρ ὁ Ἅιδης ἀφαρπάζει περιολισθανούσας, ἄλλας δ’ ἀνακομίζεται κάτωθεν ἡ σελήνη προσνηχομένας, αἷς εἰς καιρὸν ἡ τῆς γενέσεως τελευτὴ συνέπεσε, πλὴν ὅσαι μιαραὶ καὶ ἀκάθαρτοι· ταύτας δ’ ἀστράπτουσα καὶ μυκωμένη φοβερὸν οὐκ ἐᾷ πελάζειν, ἀλλὰ θρηνοῦσαι τὸν ἑαυτῶν πότμον ἀποσφαλλόμεναι φέρονται κάτω πάλιν ἐπ’ ἄλλην γένεσιν, ὡς ὁρᾷς.’ ‘ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ὁρῶ’ [d] τὸν Τίμαρχον εἰπεῖν ‘ἢ πολλοὺς ἀστέρας περὶ τὸ χάσμα παλλομένους, ἑτέρους δὲ καταδυομένους εἰς αὐτό, τοὺς δ’ ᾄττοντας αὖ κάτωθεν.’ ‘αὐτοὺς ἄρα’ φάναι ‘τοὺς δαίμονας ὁρῶν ἀγνοεῖς. ἔχει γὰρ ὧδε· ψυχὴ πᾶσα νοῦ μετέσχεν, ἄλογος δὲ καὶ ἄνους οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ ὅσον ἂν αὐτῆς σαρκὶ μιχθῇ καὶ πάθεσιν, ἀλλοιούμενον τρέπεται καθ’ ἡδονὰς καὶ ἀλγηδόνας εἰς τὸ ἄλογον. μίγνυται δ’ οὐ πᾶσα τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον· ἀλλ’ αἱ ‹μὲν› ὅλαι κατέδυσαν εἰς σῶμα, καὶ δι’ ὅλων ἀναταραχθεῖσαι τὸ σύμπαν ὑπὸ παθῶν διαφέρονται κατὰ τὸν βίον· αἱ δὲ πῆ μὲν ἀνεκράθησαν, πῆ δ’ [e] ἔλιπον ἔξω τὸ καθαρώτατον, οὐκ ἐπισπώμενον ἀλλ’ οἷον ἀκρόπλουν ἐπιψαῦον ἐκ κεφαλῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καθάπερ ἐν βυθῷ δεδυκότος ἄρτημα κορυφαῖον, ὀρθουμένης περὶ αὐτὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀνέχον ὅσον ὑπακούει καὶ οὐ κρατεῖται τοῖς πάθεσιν. τὸ μὲν οὖν ὑποβρύχιον ἐν τῷ σώματι φερόμενον ψυχὴ λέγεται· τὸ δὲ φθορᾶς λειφθὲν οἱ πολλοὶ νοῦν καλοῦντες ἐντὸς εἶναι νομίζουσιν αὑτῶν, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ἐσόπτροις τὰ φαινόμενα κατ’ ἀνταύγειαν· οἱ δ’ ὀρθῶς ὑπονοοῦντες, ὡς ἐκτὸς ὄντα δαίμονα προσαγορεύουσι. τοὺς μὲν οὖν ἀποσβέννυσθαι δοκοῦντας ἀστέρας, ὦ Τίμαρχε,’ [f] φάναι ‘τὰς εἰς σῶμα καταδυομένας ὅλας ψυχὰς ὁρᾶν νόμιζε, τοὺς δ’ οἷον ἀναλάμποντας πάλιν καὶ ἀναφαινομένους κάτωθεν, ἀχλύν τινα καὶ ζόφον ὥσπερ πηλὸν ἀποσειομένους, τὰς ἐκ τῶν σωμάτων ἐπαναπλεούσας μετὰ τὸν θάνατον· οἱ δ’ ἄνω [δια]φερόμενοι δαίμονές εἰσι τῶν νοῦν ἔχειν λεγομένων ἀνθρώπων. πειράθητι δὲ κατιδεῖν ἑκάστου τὸν σύνδεσμον, ᾗ τῇ ψυχῇ συμπέφυκε.’ ταῦτ’ ἀκούσας αὐτὸς ἀκριβέστερον προσέχειν καὶ θεᾶσθαι τῶν ἀστέρων ἀποσαλεύοντας τοὺς μὲν ἧττον τοὺς δὲ μᾶλλον, [592] [a] ὥσπερ τοὺς τὰ δίκτυα διασημαίνοντας ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ φελλοὺς ὁρῶμεν ἐπιφερομένους· ἐνίους δὲ τοῖς κλωθομένοις ἀτράκτοις ὁμοίως ἕλικα τεταραγμένην καὶ ἀνώμαλον ἕλκοντας, οὐ δυναμένους καταστῆσαι τὴν κίνησιν ἐπ’ εὐθείας. λέγειν δὲ τὴν φωνὴν τοὺς μὲν εὐθεῖαν καὶ τεταγμένην κίνησιν ἔχοντας εὐηνίοις ψυχαῖς χρῆσθαι διὰ τροφὴν καὶ παίδευσιν ἀστείαν, οὐκ ἄγαν σκληρὸν καὶ ἄγριον παρεχομέναις τὸ ἄλογον· τοὺς δ’ ἄνω καὶ κάτω πολλάκις ἀνωμάλως καὶ τεταραγμένως ἐγκλίνοντας, οἷον [b] ἐκ δεσμοῦ σπαραττομένους, δυσπειθέσι καὶ ἀναγώγοις δι’ ἀπαιδευσίαν ζυγομαχεῖν ἤθεσι, πῆ μὲν κρατοῦντας καὶ περιάγοντας ἐπὶ δεξιάν, πῆ δὲ καμπτομένους ὑπὸ τῶν παθῶν καὶ συνεφελκομένους τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασιν, εἶτα πάλιν ἀντιτείνοντας καὶ βιαζομένους. τὸν μὲν γὰρ σύνδεσμον οἷα χαλινὸν τῷ ἀλόγῳ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐμβεβλημένον, ὅταν ἀντισπάσῃ, τὴν λεγομένην μεταμέλειαν ἐπάγειν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ ταῖς ἡδοναῖς, ὅσαι παράνομοι καὶ ἀκρατεῖς, αἰσχύνην, ἀλγηδόνα καὶ πληγὴν οὖσαν ἔνδοθεν [c] τῆς ψυχῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ κρατοῦντος καὶ ἄρχοντος ἐπιστομιζομένης, μέχρι ἂν οὕτω κολαζομένη πειθήνιος γένηται καὶ συνήθης ὥσπερ θρέμμα πρᾶον ἄνευ πληγῆς καὶ ἀλγηδόνος ὑπὸ συμβόλων ὀξέως καὶ σημείων αἰσθανομένη τοῦ δαίμονος. ‘αὗται μὲν οὖν ὀψέ ποτε καὶ βραδέως ἄγονται καὶ καθίστανται πρὸς τὸ δέον. ἐκ δὲ τῶν εὐηνίων ἐκείνων ‹καὶ› κατηκόων εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς καὶ γενέσεως τοῦ οἰκείου δαίμονος καὶ τὸ μαντικόν ἐστι καὶ θεοκλυτούμενον γένος· ὧν τὴν Ἑρμοδώρου τοῦ Κλαζομενίου ψυχὴν ἀκήκοας δήπουθεν, ὡς ἀπολείπουσα παντάπασι τὸ σῶμα νύκτωρ καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπλανᾶτο πολὺν τόπον, εἶτ’ αὖθις ἐπανῄει [d] πολλοῖς τῶν μακρὰν λεγομένων καὶ πραττομένων ἐντυχοῦσα καὶ παραγενομένη, μέχρι οὗ τὸ σῶμα τῆς γυναικὸς προδούσης λαβόντες οἱ ἐχθροὶ ψυχῆς ἔρημον οἴκοι κατέπρησαν. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἀληθές ἐστιν· οὐ γὰρ ἐξέβαινεν ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ σώματος, ὑπείκουσα δ’ ἀεὶ καὶ χαλῶσα τῷ δαίμονι τὸν σύνδεσμον ἐδίδου περιδρομὴν καὶ περιφοίτησιν, ὥστε πολλὰ συνορῶντα καὶ κατακούοντα τῶν ἐκτὸς εἰσαγγέλλειν. οἱ δ’ ἀφανίσαντες τὸ σῶμα κοιμωμένου μέχρι νῦν δίκην ἐν τῷ ταρτάρῳ τίνουσι. ταῦτα δ’ εἴσῃ’ [e] φάναι ‘σαφέστερον, ὦ νεανία, τρίτῳ μηνί· νῦν δ’ ἄπιθι.’ παυσαμένης δὲ τῆς φωνῆς βούλεσθαι μὲν αὑτὸν ὁ Τίμαρχος ἔφη θεάσασθαι περιστρέφοντα, τίς ὁ φθεγγόμενος εἴη· σφόδρα δὲ τὴν κεφαλὴν αὖθις ἀλγήσας, καθάπερ βίᾳ συμπιεσθεῖσαν, οὐδὲν ἔτι γιγνώσκειν οὐδ’ αἰσθάνεσθαι τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτόν, εἶτα μέντοι μετὰ μικρὸν ἀνενεγκὼν ὁρᾶν αὑτὸν ἐν Τροφωνίου παρὰ τὴν εἴσοδον, οὗπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς κατεκλίθη, κείμενον. ὁ μὲν οὖν Τιμάρχου μῦθος οὗτος· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐλθὼν Ἀθήναζε τρίτῳ μηνὶ κατὰ τὴν [f] γενομένην φωνὴν ἐτελεύτησεν, ἡμεῖς δὲ Σωκράτει θαυμάζοντες ἀπηγγέλλομεν, ἐμέμψατο Σωκράτης ἡμᾶς, ὅτι μὴ ζῶντος ἔτι τοῦ Τιμάρχου διήλθομεν· αὐτοῦ γὰρ ἂν ἡδέως ἐκείνου πυθέσθαι καὶ προσανακρῖναι σαφέστερον.’

‘Ἀπέχεις, ὦ Θεόκριτε, μετὰ τοῦ λόγου τὸν μῦθον, ἀλλ’ ὅρα μὴ καὶ τὸν ξένον ἡμῖν παρακλητέον ἐπὶ τὴν ζήτησιν· οἰκεία γὰρ πάνυ καὶ προσήκουσα θείοις ἀνδράσι.’ ‘τί δ’’ εἶπεν ‘Ἐπαμεινώνδας οὐ συμβάλλεται γνώμην ἀπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν ἀναγόμενος ἡμῖν;’ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ μειδιάσας ‘τοιοῦτον’ ἔφη ‘τὸ ἦθος, ὦ ξένε, τὸ τούτου, σιωπηλὸν καὶ πρὸς τοὺς λόγους εὐλαβές, ἄπληστον δὲ τοῦ μανθάνειν καὶ ἀκροᾶσθαι· διὸ καὶ Σπίνθαρος ὁ Ταραντῖνος οὐκ ὀλίγον αὐτῷ συνδιατρίψας ἐνταῦθα χρόνον ἀεὶ δήπου λέγει μηδενί [593] [a] πη τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀνθρώπων ἐντετυχηκέναι μήτε πλείονα γιγνώσκοντι μήτ’ ἐλάσσονα φθεγγομένῳ. σὺ οὖν ἃ φρονεῖς αὐτὸς δίελθε περὶ τῶν εἰρημένων.’

‘Ἐγὼ τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘τὸν μὲν Τιμάρχου λόγον ὥσπερ ἱερὸν καὶ ἄσυλον ἀνακεῖσθαί φημι τῷ θεῷ χρῆναι· θαυμάζω δ’ εἰ τοῖς ὑπὸ Σιμμίου λεγομένοις αὐτοῦ δυσπιστήσουσί τινες, κύκνους μὲν [γὰρ] ἱεροὺς καὶ δράκοντας καὶ κύνας καὶ ἵππους ὀνομάζοντες, ἀνθρώπους δὲ θείους εἶναι καὶ θεοφιλεῖς ἀπιστοῦντες, καὶ ταῦτα τὸν θεὸν οὐ φίλορνιν ἀλλὰ φιλάνθρωπον ἡγούμενοι. καθάπερ οὖν ἀνὴρ φίλιππος [b] οὐ πάντων ὁμοίως ἐπιμελεῖται τῶν ὑπὸ τὸ γένος, ἀλλ’ ἀεί τιν’ ἄριστον ἐξαιρῶν καὶ ἀποκρίνων καθ’ αὑτὸν ἀσκεῖ καὶ τρέφει καὶ ἀγαπᾷ διαφερόντως, ‹οὕτω› καὶ ἡμῶν οἱ ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς τοὺς βελτίστους οἷον ἐξ ἀγέλης χαράξαντες ἰδίας τινὸς καὶ περιττῆς παιδαγωγίας ἀξιοῦσι, οὐχ ὑφ’ ἡνίας οὐδὲ ῥυτήρων ἀλλὰ λόγῳ διὰ συμβόλων εὐθύνοντες· ὧν οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ ἀγελαῖοι παντάπασιν ἀπείρως ἔχουσιν. οὐδὲ γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ κύνες τῶν θηρατικῶν σημείων οὐδ’ [οἱ πολλοὶ] ἵπποι τῶν ἱππικῶν συνιᾶσιν, ἀλλ’ οἱ μεμαθηκότες εὐθὺς ἀπὸ σιγμοῦ τοῦ τυχόντος ἢ ποππυσμοῦ τὸ προσταττόμενον αἰσθανόμενοι ῥᾳδίως εἰς ὃ δεῖ καθίστανται.

[c] φαίνεται δὲ γιγνώσκων καὶ Ὅμηρος ἣν λέγομεν διαφορὰν ἡμεῖς· τῶν γὰρ μάντεων οἰωνοπόλους τινὰς καλεῖ καὶ ἱερεῖς, ἑτέρους δὲ τῶν θεῶν αὐτῶν διαλεγομένων συνιέντας καὶ συμφρονοῦντας ἀποσημαίνειν οἴεται τὸ μέλλον, ἐν οἷς λέγει (Η 44)

‘τῶν δ’ Ἕλενος, Πριάμοιο φίλος παῖς, ξύνθετο θυμῷ

βουλήν, ἥ ῥα θεοῖσιν ἐφήνδανε μητιόωσι·’

καί (Η 53)

‘ὣς γὰρ ἐγὼν ὄπ’ ἄκουσα θεῶν ‹αἰει›γενετάων.’

ὥσπερ γὰρ τῶν βασιλέων καὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν τὴν διάνοιαν οἱ μὲν ἐκτὸς αἰσθάνονται καὶ γιγνώσκουσι πυρσοῖς τισι καὶ κηρύγμασι καὶ ὑπὸ σαλπίγγων, τοῖς δὲ πιστοῖς καὶ συνήθεσιν αὐτοὶ φράζουσιν, οὕτω τὸ θεῖον ὀλίγοις ἐντυγχάνει δι’ αὑτοῦ καὶ σπανίως, τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς σημεῖα δίδωσιν, ἐξ ὧν ἡ λεγομένη μαντικὴ συνέστηκε. θεοὶ μὲν [γὰρ] οὖν ὀλίγων ἀνθρώπων κοσμοῦσι βίον, οὓς ἂν ἄκρως μακαρίους τε καὶ θείους ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀπεργάσασθαι βουληθῶσιν· αἱ δ’ ἀπηλλαγμέναι γενέσεως ψυχαὶ καὶ σχολάζουσαι τὸ λοιπὸν ἀπὸ σώματος, οἷον ἐλεύθεραι πάμπαν ἀφειμέναι, δαίμονές εἰσιν ἀνθρώπων ἐπιμελεῖς καθ’ Ἡσίοδον (OD 122 sq.). ὡς γὰρ ἀθλητὰς καταλύσαντας ἄσκησιν ὑπὸ γήρως οὐ τελέως ἀπολείπει τὸ φιλότιμον καὶ φιλοσώματον, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρους ἀσκοῦντας ὁρῶντες ἥδονται καὶ [d] παρακαλοῦσι καὶ συμπαραθέουσιν, οὕτως οἱ πεπαυμένοι τῶν περὶ τὸν βίον ἀγώνων δι’ ἀρετὴν ψυχῆς γενόμενοι δαίμονες οὐ παντελῶς ἀτιμάζουσι τὰ ἐνταῦθα πράγματα καὶ λόγους καὶ σπουδάς, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἐπὶ ταὐτὸ γυμναζομένοις τέλος εὐμενεῖς ὄντες καὶ συμφιλοτιμούμενοι πρὸς τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐγκελεύονται καὶ συνεξορμῶσιν, ὅταν ἐγγὺς ἤδη τῆς ἐλπίδος ἁμιλλωμένους καὶ ψαύοντας ὁρῶσιν. οὐ γὰρ οἷς ἔτυχε συμφέρεται τὸ δαιμόνιον, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐπὶ [e] τῶν νηχομένων ἐν θαλάττῃ τοὺς μὲν πελαγίους ἔτι καὶ πρόσω τῆς γῆς φερομένους οἱ ἐπὶ γῆς ἑστῶτες σιωπῇ θεῶνται μόνον, τοὺς δ’ ἐγγὺς ἤδη παραθέοντες καὶ παρεμβαίνοντες ἅμα καὶ χειρὶ καὶ φωνῇ βοηθοῦντες ἀνασῴζουσιν, οὗτος, ὦ .... τοῦ δαιμονίου ὁ τρόπος· .... ἡμᾶς βαπτιζομένους ὑπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ σώματα πολλὰ καθάπερ ὀχήματα μεταλαμβάνοντας αὐτοὺς ἐξαμιλλᾶσθαι καὶ μακροθυμεῖν δι’ οἰκείας πειρωμένους ἀρετῆς σῴζεσθαι καὶ τυγχάνειν λιμένος. ἥτις δ’ ἂν ἤδη διὰ μυρίων γενέσεων ἠγωνισμένη μακροὺς ἀγῶνας εὖ καὶ προθύμως [594] [a] ψυχὴ τῆς περιόδου συμπεραινομένης κινδυνεύουσα καὶ φιλοτιμουμένη περὶ τὴν ἔκβασιν ἱδρῶτι πολλῷ ‹τοῖς› ἄνω προσφέρηται, ταύτῃ τὸν οἰκεῖον οὐ νεμεσᾷ δαίμονα βοηθεῖν ὁ θεὸς ἀλλ’ ἀφίησι τῷ προθυμουμένῳ· προθυμεῖται δ’ ἄλλος ἄλλην ἀνασῴζειν ἐγκελευόμενος, ἡ δὲ συνακούει διὰ τὸ πλησιάζειν καὶ σῴζεται, μὴ πειθομένη δέ, ἀπολιπόντος τοῦ δαίμονος, οὐκ εὐτυχῶς ἀπαλλάσσει.’

Τούτων εἰρημένων ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας ἀποβλέψας εἰς ἐμέ ‘σοὶ μέν,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Καφισία, σχεδὸν ὥρα βαδίζειν εἰς τὸ γυμνάσιον ἤδη καὶ μὴ ἀπολείπειν τοὺς συνήθεις, [b] ἡμεῖς δὲ Θεάνορος ἐπιμελησόμεθα διαλύσαντες ὅταν δοκῇ τὴν συνουσίαν.’ κἀγώ ‘ταῦτ’’ ἔφην ‘πράττωμεν· ἀλλὰ μικρὸν οἶμαί τι μετ’ ἐμοῦ καὶ Γαλαξιδώρου βούλεταί σοι διαλεχθῆναι [ὁ] Θεόκριτος οὑτοσί.’ ‘ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ’ εἶπε ‘διαλεγέσθω’ καὶ προῆγεν ἀναστὰς εἰς τὸ ἐπικάμπειον τῆς στοᾶς. καὶ ἡμεῖς περισχόντες αὐτὸν ἐπεχειροῦμεν παρακαλεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν. ὁ δὲ καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἔφη πάνυ σαφῶς εἰδέναι τῆς καθόδου τῶν φυγάδων καὶ συντετάχθαι μετὰ Γοργίδου τοῖς φίλοις πρὸς τὸν καιρόν, ἀποκτενεῖν δὲ τῶν πολιτῶν ἄκριτον οὐδένα μὴ μεγάλης ἀνάγκης γενομένης, [c] ἄλλως δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος ἁρμόζειν τὸ Θηβαίων εἶναί τινας ἀναιτίους καὶ καθαροὺς τῶν πεπραγμένων, ‹οἳ› μᾶλλον ἕξουσιν ἀνυπόπτως ‹πρὸς› τὸν δῆμον ὡς ἀπὸ τοῦ βελτίστου παραινοῦντες. ἐδόκει ταῦθ’ ἡμῖν. κἀκεῖνος μὲν ἀνεχώρησεν αὖθις ὡς τοὺς περὶ Σιμμίαν, ἡμεῖς δὲ καταβάντες εἰς τὸ γυμνάσιον ἐνετυγχάνομεν τοῖς φίλοις, καὶ διαλαμβάνων ἄλλος ἄλλον ἐν τῷ συμπαλαίειν τὰ μὲν ἐπυνθάνετο τὰ δ’ ἔφραζε καὶ συνετάττετο πρὸς τὴν πρᾶξιν. ἑωρῶμεν δὲ καὶ τοὺς περὶ Ἀρχίαν καὶ Φίλιππον ἀληλιμμένους ἀπιόντας ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον. ὁ γὰρ Φυλλίδας [d] δεδιὼς μὴ τὸν Ἀμφίθεον προανέλωσιν, εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῆς Λυσανορίδου προπομπῆς τὸν Ἀρχίαν δεξάμενος καὶ περὶ τῆς .... γυναικός, ἧς ἐπιθυμῶν ἐτύγχανεν, εἰς ἐλπίδας ἐμβαλὼν ὡς ἀφιξομένης εἰς τὸν πότον, ἔπεισε πρὸς ῥᾳθυμίαν καὶ ἄνεσιν τραπέσθαι μετὰ τῶν εἰωθότων αὐτῷ συνακολασταίνειν.

Ὀψὲ δ’ ‹ἦν› ἤδη τό τε ψῦχος ἐπέτεινε πνεύματος γενομένου, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τῶν πολλῶν τάχιον εἰς τὰς οἰκίας ἀνακεχωρηκότων ἡμεῖς μὲν τοὺς περὶ Δαμοκλείδαν καὶ Πελοπίδαν καὶ Θεόπομπον ἐντυχόντες ἀνελαμβάνομεν, [e] ἄλλοι δ’ ἄλλους· ἐσχίσθησαν γὰρ εὐθὺς ὑπερβάλλοντες τὸν Κιθαιρῶνα, καὶ παρέσχεν αὐτοῖς ὁ χειμὼν τὰ πρόσωπα συγκεκαλυμμένοις ἀδεῶς διελθεῖν τὴν πόλιν· ἐνίοις δ’ ἐπήστραψε δεξιὸν ἄνευ βροντῆς εἰσιοῦσι διὰ τῶν πυλῶν· καὶ τὸ σημεῖον ἐδόκει καλὸν πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν καὶ δόξαν, ὡς λαμπρῶν ἀκινδύνων δὲ τῶν πράξεων ἐσομένων. ὡς οὖν ἅπαντες ἔνδον ἦμεν πεντήκοντα δυεῖν δέοντες, ἤδη τοῦ Θεοκρίτου καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐν οἰκίσκῳ τινὶ σφαγιαζομένου πολὺς ἦν τῆς θύρας ἀραγμός, καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ἧκέ τις ἀγγέλλων ὑπηρέτας τοῦ Ἀρχίου δύο κόπτειν τὴν αὔλειον ἀπεσταλμένους σπουδῇ πρὸς Χάρωνα καὶ κελεύειν [f] ἀνοίγειν καὶ ἀγανακτεῖν βράδιον ὑπακουόντων. θορυβηθεὶς οὖν ὁ Χάρων ἐκείνοις μὲν εὐθὺς ἀνοιγνύναι προσέταξεν, αὐτὸς δ’ ἀπαντήσας ἔχων στέφανον ὡς τεθυκὼς καὶ πίνων ἐπυνθάνετο τῶν ὑπηρετῶν ὅ τι βούλοιντο. λέγει δ’ ἅτερος ‘Ἀρχίας καὶ Φίλιππος ἔπεμψαν ἡμᾶς κελεύοντες ὡς τάχιστά σ’ ἥκειν πρὸς αὐτούς.’ ἐρομένου δὲ τοῦ Χάρωνος, τίς ἡ σπουδὴ τῆς τηνικαῦτα μεταπέμψεως αὐτοῦ καὶ μή τι καινότερον, ‘οὐδὲν ἴσμεν’ ὁ ὑπηρέτης ἔφη ‘πλέον, ἀλλὰ τί λέγωμεν αὐτοῖς;’ ‘ὅτι νὴ Δί’’ εἶπεν ὁ Χάρων ‘θεὶς τὸν στέφανον ἤδη καὶ λαβὼν τὸ ἱμάτιον ἕπομαι· μεθ’ ὑμῶν γὰρ τηνικαῦτα βαδίζων διαταράξω τινὰς [595] [a] ὡς ἀγόμενος.’ ‘οὕτως’ ἔφη ‘ποίει· καὶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς δεῖ τοῖς ὑπὸ πόλιν φρουροῖς κομίσαι τι πρόσταγμα παρὰ τῶν ἀρχόντων.’ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν οὖν ᾤχοντο, τοῦ δὲ Χάρωνος εἰσελθόντος πρὸς ἡμᾶς καὶ ταῦτα φράσαντος ἔκπληξις ἅπαντας ἔσχεν οἰομένους μεμηνῦσθαι, καὶ τὸν Ἱπποσθενείδαν ὑπενόουν οἱ πλεῖστοι κωλῦσαι μὲν ἐπιχειρήσαντα τὴν κάθοδον διὰ τοῦ Χλίδωνος, ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀπέτυχε καὶ συνῆπτε τῷ καιρῷ τὸ δεινόν, ἐξενηνοχέναι πιθανὸν ὄντα τὴν πρᾶξιν ὑπὸ δέους· οὐ γὰρ ἀφίκετο μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν, ἀλλ’ ὅλως ἐδόκει πονηρὸς γεγονέναι καὶ παλίμβολος. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τόν γε Χάρωνα πάντες ᾠόμεθα χρῆναι βαδίζειν [b] καὶ ὑπακούειν τοῖς ἄρχουσι καλούμενον. ὁ δὲ κελεύσας τὸν υἱὸν ἐλθεῖν κάλλιστον ὄντα Θηβαίων, ὦ Ἀρχίδαμε, παῖδα καὶ φιλοπονώτατον περὶ τὰ γυμνάσια, πεντεκαιδεκέτη μὲν σχεδὸν πολὺ δὲ ῥώμῃ καὶ μεγέθει διαφέροντα τῶν ὁμηλίκων, ‘οὗτος,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ ἄνδρες, ἐμοὶ μόνος ἐστὶ καὶ ἀγαπητός, ὥσπερ ἴστε· τοῦτον ὑμῖν παραδίδωμι πρὸς θεῶν ἅπασι πρὸς δαιμόνων ἐπισκήπτων· εἰ φανείην ἐγὼ πονηρὸς περὶ ὑμᾶς, ἀποκτείνατε, μὴ φείσησθ’ ἡμῶν· τὸ δὲ λοιπόν, ὦ ἄνδρες ἀγαθοί, πρὸς τὸ συμπεσὸν ἀντιτάξασθε, μὴ πρόησθε τὰ σώματα διαφθεῖραι τοῖς [c] ἐχθίστοις ἀνάνδρως καὶ ἀκλεῶς, ἀλλ’ ἀμύνασθε τὰς ψυχὰς ἀηττήτους τῇ πατρίδι φυλάττοντες.’ ταῦτα τοῦ Χάρωνος λέγοντος τὸ μὲν φρόνημα καὶ τὴν καλοκἀγαθίαν ἐθαυμάζομεν, πρὸς δὲ τὴν ὑποψίαν ἠγανακτοῦμεν καὶ ἀπάγειν ἐκελεύομεν τὸν παῖδα. ‘τὸ δ’ ὅλον’ εἶπεν ὁ Πελοπίδας ‘οὐδ’ εὖ βεβουλεῦσθαι δοκεῖς ἡμῖν, ὦ Χάρων, μὴ μεταστησάμενος εἰς οἰκίαν ἑτέραν τὸν υἱόν· τί γὰρ αὐτὸν δεῖ κινδυνεύειν μεθ’ ἡμῶν ἐγκαταλαμβανόμενον; καὶ νῦν ἐκπεμπτέος, ἵν’ ἡμῖν, ἐάν τι πάσχωμεν, εὐγενὴς ὑποτρέφηται τιμωρὸς ἐπὶ τοὺς τυράννους.’ ‘οὐκ ἔστιν’ εἶπεν ὁ Χάρων, ‘ἀλλ’ αὐτοῦ παραμενεῖ καὶ κινδυνεύσει μεθ’ [d] ὑμῶν· οὐδὲ γὰρ τούτῳ καλὸν ὑποχείριον γενέσθαι τοῖς ἐχθροῖς, ἀλλὰ τόλμα παρ’ ἡλικίαν, ὦ παῖ, γευόμενος ἄθλων ἀναγκαίων καὶ κινδύνευε μετὰ πολλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν πολιτῶν ὑπὲρ ἐλευθερίας καὶ ἀρετῆς· πολλὴ δ’ ἐλπὶς ἔτι λείπεται, καί πού τις ἐφορᾷ θεῶν ἡμᾶς ἀγωνιζομένους περὶ τῶν δικαίων.’

Δάκρυα πολλοῖς ἐπῆλθεν ἡμῶν, ὦ Ἀρχίδαμε, πρὸς τοὺς λόγους τἀνδρός, αὐτὸς δ’ ἄδακρυς καὶ ἄτεγκτος ἐγχειρίσας Πελοπίδᾳ τὸν υἱὸν ἐχώρει διὰ θυρῶν δεξιούμενος ἕκαστον ἡμῶν καὶ παραθαρρύνων. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἂν ἠγάσω τοῦ παιδὸς αὐτοῦ τὴν φαιδρότητα καὶ τὸ ἀδεὲς [e] πρὸς τὸν κίνδυνον, ὥσπερ τοῦ Νεοπτολέμου, μήτ’ ὠχριάσαντος μήτ’ ἐκπλαγέντος, ἀλλ’ ἕλκοντος τὸ ξίφος τοῦ Πελοπίδου καὶ καταμανθάνοντος. ἐν τούτῳ †Κηφισοδώρῳ Διότονος, εἷς τῶν φίλων, παρῆν πρὸς ἡμᾶς ξίφος ἔχων καὶ θώρακα σιδηροῦν ὑπενδεδυμένος καὶ πυθόμενος τὴν Χάρωνος ὑπ’ Ἀρχίου μετάπεμψιν ᾐτιᾶτο τὴν μέλλησιν ἡμῶν καὶ παρώξυνεν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὰς οἰκίας βαδίζειν· φθήσεσθαι γὰρ ἐμπεσόντας αὐτοῖς, εἰ δὲ μή, βέλτιον εἶναι προελθόντας ἐν ὑπαίθρῳ συμπλέκεσθαι πρὸς [ἀλλήλους] ἀσυντάκτους καὶ σποράδας ἢ μένειν ἐν οἰκίσκῳ καθείρξαντας [f] αὑτοὺς ὥσπερ σμῆνος ἐξαιρεθησομένους ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων. ἐνῆγε δὲ καὶ ὁ μάντις Θεόκριτος, ὡς τῶν ἱερῶν σωτηρίων καὶ καλῶν καὶ πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν ἐχεγγύων αὐτῷ γεγονότων. ὁπλιζομένων δ’ ἡμῶν καὶ συνταττομένων αὖθις ἀφικνεῖται Χάρων ἱλαρῷ τῷ προσώπῳ καὶ μειδιῶν καὶ προσβλέπων εἰς ἡμᾶς θαρρεῖν ἐκέλευεν, ὡς δεινοῦ μηδενὸς ὄντος ἀλλὰ τῆς πράξεως ὁδῷ βαδιζούσης. ‘ὁ γὰρ Ἀρχίας’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ὁ Φίλιππος ὡς ἤκουσαν [596] [a] ἥκειν ἐμὲ κεκλημένον, ἤδη βαρεῖς ὑπὸ τῆς μέθης ὄντες καὶ συνεκλελυμένοι τοῖς σώμασι τὰς ψυχάς, μόλις διαναστάντες ἔξω προῆλθον ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας. εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀρχίου ‘φυγάδας, ὦ Χάρων, ἀκούομεν ἐν τῇ πόλει κρύπτεσθαι παρεισελθόντας’ οὐ μετρίως ἐγὼ διαταραχθείς ‘ποῦ δ’’ εἶπον ‘εἶναι λέγονται καὶ τίνες;’ ‘ἀγνοοῦμεν’ ὁ Ἀρχίας εἶπε ‘καί σε τούτου χάριν ἐλθεῖν ἐκελεύσαμεν, εἰ δή τι τυγχάνοις σαφέστερον ἀκηκοώς.’ κἀγὼ μικρὸν ὥσπερ ἐκ πληγῆς ἀναφέρων τὴν διάνοιαν ἐλογιζόμην λόγον εἶναι τὴν μήνυσιν οὐ βέβαιον, οὐδ’ ὑπὸ τῶν συνειδότων [b] ἐξενηνέχθαι τὴν πρᾶξιν οὐδενός· οὐ γὰρ ‹ἂν› ἀγνοεῖν τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτούς, εἴ τις εἰδὼς ἀκριβῶς ἐμήνυεν, ἄλλως δ’ ὑποψίαν ἢ λόγον ἄσημον ἐν τῇ πόλει περιφερόμενον ἥκειν εἰς ἐκείνους. εἶπον οὖν πρὸς αὐτὸν ὅτι ‘ζῶντος μὲν Ἀνδροκλείδου πολλάκις ἐπίσταμαι φήμας τοιαύτας ῥυείσας διακενῆς καὶ λόγους ψευδεῖς ἐνοχλήσαντας ἡμῖν, νυνὶ δ’’ ἔφην ‘οὐδὲν ἀκήκοα τοιοῦτον, ὦ Ἀρχία· σκέψομαι δὲ τὸν λόγον, εἰ κελεύεις, κἂν πύθωμαί τι φροντίδος ἄξιον, ὑμᾶς οὐ λήσεται.’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ ὁ Φυλλίδας εἶπε ‘μηδέν, ὦ Χάρων, ἀδιερεύνητον μηδ’ ἄπυστον ὑπὲρ τούτων ἀπολίπῃς· τί γὰρ κωλύει μηδενὸς καταφρονεῖν ἀλλὰ [c] πάντα φυλάττεσθαι καὶ προσέχειν; καλὸν γὰρ ἡ πρόνοια καὶ τὸ ἀσφαλές.’ ἅμα δὲ τὸν Ἀρχίαν ὑπολαβὼν ἀπῆγεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον, ἐν ᾧ πίνοντες τυγχάνουσιν. ἀλλὰ μὴ μέλλωμεν, ἄνδρες,’ ἔφη, ‘προσευξάμενοι δὲ τοῖς θεοῖς ἐξίωμεν.’ ταῦτα τοῦ Χάρωνος εἰπόντος εὐχόμεθα τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ παρεκαλοῦμεν ἀλλήλους.

Ὥρα μὲν οὖν ἦν καθ’ ἣν ἅνθρωποι μάλιστα περὶ δεῖπνόν εἰσι, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα μᾶλλον ἐπιτεῖνον ἤδη νιφετὸν ὑπεκίνει ψεκάδι λεπτῇ μεμιγμένον, ὥστε πολλὴν ἐρημίαν εἶναι διὰ τῶν στενωπῶν διεξιοῦσιν. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τὸν Λεοντίδην καὶ τὸν Ὑπάτην ταχθέντες ἐγγὺς ἀλλήλων οἰκοῦντας ἐν ἱματίοις ἐξῄεσαν ἔχοντες οὐδὲν ἕτερον τῶν ὅπλων [d] ἢ μάχαιραν ἕκαστος (ἐν δὲ τούτοις ἦν καὶ Πελοπίδας καὶ Δαμοκλείδας καὶ Κηφισόδωρος), Χάρων δὲ καὶ Μέλων καὶ οἱ μετ’ αὐτῶν ἐπιτίθεσθαι τοῖς περὶ Ἀρχίαν μέλλοντες, ἡμιθωράκια ἐνδεδυμένοι καὶ στεφάνους δασεῖς ἔχοντες οἱ μὲν ἐλάτης οἱ δὲ πεύκης, ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ χιτώνια τῶν γυναικ‹εί›ων ἀμπεχόμενοι, μεθύοντας ἀπομιμούμενοι κώμῳ χρωμένους μετὰ γυναικῶν. ἡ δὲ χείρων, ὦ Ἀρχίδαμε, τύχη καὶ τὰς τῶν πολεμίων μαλακίας καὶ ἀγνοίας ταῖς ἡμετέραις ἐπανισοῦσα τόλμαις καὶ παρασκευαῖς καὶ καθάπερ δρᾶμα τὴν πρᾶξιν ἡμῶν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς διαποικίλλουσα [e] κινδυνώδεσιν ἐπεισοδίοις εἰς αὐτὸ συνέδραμε τὸ ἔργον, ὀξὺν ἐπιφέρουσα καὶ δεινὸν ἀνελπίστου περιπετείας ἀγῶνα. τοῦ γὰρ Χάρωνος ὡς ἀνέπεισε τοὺς περὶ Ἀρχίαν καὶ Φίλιππον ἀναχωρήσαντος οἴκαδε καὶ διασκευάζοντος ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν ἧκεν ἐνθένδε παρ’ ὑμῶν ἐπιστολὴ παρ’ Ἀρχίου τοῦ ἱεροφάντου πρὸς Ἀρχίαν ἐκεῖνον ὄντα φίλον αὐτῷ καὶ ξένον, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐξαγγέλλουσα τὴν κάθοδον [f] καὶ τὴν ἐπιβουλὴν τῶν φυγάδων καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν, εἰς ἣν παρεληλύθεισαν, καὶ τοὺς συμπράττοντας αὐτοῖς. ἤδη δὲ καὶ τῇ μέθῃ κατακεκλυσμένος ὁ Ἀρχίας καὶ τῇ προσδοκίᾳ τῶν γυναικῶν ἀνεπτοημένος ἐδέξατο μὲν τὴν ἐπιστολήν, τοῦ δὲ γραμματοφόρου φήσαντος ὑπὲρ [τῶν] σπουδαίων αὐτῷ γεγράφθαι ‘τὰ σπουδαῖα τοίνυν εἰς αὔριον’ ἔφη. καὶ τὴν μὲν ἐπιστολὴν ὑπέθηκεν ὑπὸ τὸ προσκεφάλαιον, αἰτήσας δὲ ποτήριον ἐκέλευσεν ἐγχεῖν καὶ τὸν Φυλλίδαν ἐξέπεμπε συνεχῶς ἐπὶ θύρας σκεψόμενον εἰ τὰ γύναια πρόσεισι. τοιαύτης δὲ τὸν πότον ἐλπίδος διαπαιδαγωγησάσης προσμίξαντες ἡμεῖς καὶ διὰ τῶν οἰκετῶν εὐθὺς ὠσάμενοι πρὸς τὸν ἀνδρῶνα μικρὸν ἐπὶ ταῖς θύραις ἔστημεν [597] [a] ἐφορῶντες τῶν κατακειμένων ἕκαστον. ἡ μὲν οὖν τῶν στεφάνων καὶ τῆς ἐσθῆτος ὄψις παραλογιζομένη τὴν ἐπιδημίαν ἡμῶν σιγὴν ἐποίησεν· ἐπεὶ δὲ πρῶτος ὁ Μέλων ὥρμησε διὰ μέσου τὴν χεῖρα τῇ λαβῇ τοῦ ξίφους ἐπιβεβληκώς, Καβίριχος ὁ κυαμευτὸς ἄρχων τοῦ βραχίονος αὐτὸν παραπορευόμενον ἀντισπάσας ἀνεβόησεν ‘οὐ Μέλων οὗτος, ὦ Φυλλίδα;’ τούτου μὲν οὖν ἐξέκρουσε τὴν ἐπιβο[υ]λὴν ἅμα τὸ ξίφος ἀνέλκων, διανιστάμενον δὲ χαλεπῶς τὸν Ἀρχίαν ἐπιδραμὼν οὐκ ἀνῆκε παίων ἕως ἀπέκτεινε. τὸν δὲ Φίλιππον ἔτρωσε μὲν Χάρων παρὰ τὸν τράχηλον, [b] ἀμυνόμενον δὲ τοῖς παρακειμένοις ἐκπώμασιν ὁ Λυσίθεος ἀπὸ τῆς κλίνης χαμαὶ καταβαλὼν ἀνεῖλε. τὸν δὲ Καβίριχον ἡμεῖς κατεπραΰνομεν ἀξιοῦντες μὴ τοῖς τυράννοις βοηθεῖν ἀλλὰ τὴν πατρίδα συνελευθεροῦν ἱερὸν ὄντα καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς καθωσιωμένον ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς· ὡς δὲ καὶ διὰ τὸν οἶνον οὐκ ἦν εὐπαρακόμιστος τῷ λογισμῷ πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον ἀλλὰ μετέωρος καὶ τεταραγμένος ἀνίστατο καὶ τὸ δόρυ προεβάλλετο κατ’ αἰχμήν, ὅπερ ἐξ ἔθους ἀεὶ φοροῦσιν οἱ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἄρχοντες, ἐγὼ μὲν ἐκ μέσου διαλαβὼν τὸ δόρυ καὶ μετεωρίσας ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς ἐβόων ἀφεῖναι [c] καὶ σῴζειν ἑαυτόν, εἰ δὲ μή, πεπλήξεσθαι· Θεόπομπος δὲ παραστὰς ἐκ δεξιῶν καὶ τῷ ξίφει πατάξας αὐτόν ‘ἐνταῦθ’’ ἔφη ‘κεῖσο μετὰ τούτων, οὓς ἐκολάκευες· μὴ γὰρ ἐν ἐλευθέραις στεφανώσαιο ταῖς Θήβαις μηδὲ θύσειας ἔτι τοῖς θεοῖς, ἐφ’ ὧν κατηράσω πολλὰ τῇ πατρίδι πολλάκις ὑπὲρ τῶν πολεμίων εὐχόμενος.’ πεσόντος δὲ τοῦ Καβιρίχου τὸ μὲν ἱερὸν δόρυ Θεόκριτος παρὼν ἀνήρπασεν ἐκ τοῦ φόνου, τῶν δὲ θεραπόντων ὀλίγους τολμήσαντας ἀμύνασθαι διεφθείραμεν ἡμεῖς, τοὺς δ’ ἡσυχίαν ἄγοντας εἰς τὸν ἀνδρῶνα κατεκλείσαμεν οὐ βουλόμενοι διαπεσόντας ἐξαγγεῖλαι τὰ πεπραγμένα, πρὶν εἰδέναι καὶ τὰ τῶν ἑταίρων [d] εἰ καλῶς κεχώρηκεν.

Ἐπράχθη δὲ κἀκεῖνα τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον· ἔκοψαν οἱ περὶ Πελοπίδαν τοῦ Λεοντίδου τὴν αὔλειον ἡσυχῆ προσελθόντες καὶ πρὸς τὸν ὑπακούσαντα τῶν οἰκετῶν ἔφασαν ἥκειν Ἀθήνηθεν γράμματα τῷ Λεοντίδῃ παρὰ Καλλιστράτου κομίζοντες. ὡς δ’ ἀπαγγείλας καὶ κελευσθεὶς ἀνοῖξαι τὸν μοχλὸν ἀφεῖλε καὶ μικρὸν ἐνέδωκε τὴν θύραν, ἐμπεσόντες ἀθρόοι καὶ ἀνατρέψαντες τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἵεντο δρόμῳ διὰ τῆς αὐλῆς ἐπὶ τὸν θάλαμον. ὁ δ’ εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐξενεχθεὶς τῇ ὑπονοίᾳ καὶ σπασάμενος τὸ [e] ἐγχειρίδιον ὥρμησε πρὸς ἄμυναν, ἄδικος μὲν ἀνὴρ καὶ τυραννικὸς εὔρωστος δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ κατὰ χεῖρα ῥωμαλέος· οὐ μὴν ἔγνω γε τὸν λύχνον καταβαλεῖν καὶ διὰ σκότους συμμῖξαι τοῖς ἐπιφερομένοις, ἀλλ’ ἐν φωτὶ καθορώμενος ὑπὸ τούτων ἅμα τῆς θύρας ἀνοιγομένης παίει τὸν Κηφισόδωρον εἰς τὸν λαγόνα καὶ δευτέρῳ τῷ Πελοπίδᾳ συμπεσὼν μέγα βοῶν ἀνεκαλεῖτο τοὺς θεράποντας. ἀλλ’ ἐκείνους μὲν οἱ περὶ τὸν Σαμίδαν ἀνεῖργον οὐ παρακινδυνεύοντας εἰς χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν ἀνδράσιν ἐπιφανεστάτοις τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ κατ’ ἀλκὴν διαφέρουσιν. ἀγὼν δ’ ἦν τῷ Πελοπίδᾳ πρὸς τὸν Λεοντίδην καὶ διαξιφισμὸς ἐν ταῖς [f] θύραις τοῦ θαλάμου στεναῖς οὔσαις καὶ τοῦ Κηφισοδώρου πεπτωκότος ἐν μέσαις αὐταῖς καὶ θνήσκοντος, ὥστε μὴ δύνασθαι τοὺς ἄλλους προσβοηθεῖν. τέλος δ’ ὁ ἡμέτερος λαβὼν μὲν εἰς τὴν κεφαλὴν οὐ μέγα τραῦμα δοὺς δὲ πολλὰ καὶ καταβαλὼν τὸν Λεοντίδην ἐπέσφαξε θερμῷ τῷ Κηφισοδώρῳ· καὶ γὰρ εἶδε πίπτοντα τὸν ἐχθρὸν ὁ ἀνὴρ καὶ τῷ Πελοπίδᾳ τὴν δεξιὰν ἐνέβαλε καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀσπασάμενος ἅμ’ ἵλεως ἐξέπνευσε. γενόμενοι δ’ ἀπὸ τούτων ἐπὶ τὸν Ὑπάτην τρέπονται καὶ τῶν θυρῶν ὁμοίως αὐτοῖς ἀνοιχθεισῶν φεύγοντα τὸν Ὑπάτην ὑπὲρ τέγους τινὸς εἰς τοὺς γείτονας ἀποσφάττουσιν.

[598] [a] Ἐκεῖθεν δὲ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἠπείγοντο καὶ συμβάλλουσιν ἡμῖν ἔξωθεν παρὰ τὴν πολύστυλον. ἀσπασάμενοι δ’ ἀλλήλους καὶ συλλαλήσαντες ἐχωροῦμεν ἐπὶ τὸ δεσμωτήριον. ἐκκαλέσας ‹δὲ τὸν› ἐπὶ τῆς εἱρκτῆς ὁ Φυλλίδας ‘Ἀρχίας’ ἔφη ‘καὶ Φίλιππος κελεύουσί σε ταχέως ἄγειν ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς Ἀμφίθεον.’ ὁ δ’ ὁρῶν καὶ τῆς ὥρας τὴν ἀτοπίαν καὶ τὸ μὴ καθεστηκότα λαλεῖν αὐτῷ τὸν Φυλλίδαν, ἀλλὰ θερμὸν ὄντα τῷ ἀγῶνι καὶ μετέωρον, ὑπ[ε]ιδόμενος τὸ πλάσμα ‘πότ’,’ ἔλεγεν ‘ὦ Φυλλίδα, τηνικαῦτα μετεπέμψαντο [b] δεσμώτην οἱ πολέμαρχοι; πότε δὲ διὰ σοῦ; τί δὲ κομίζεις παράσημον;’ ἅμα δὲ τῷ λόγῳ ξυστὸν ἱππικὸν ἔχων διῆκε τῶν πλευρῶν καὶ κατέβαλε πονηρὸν ἄνθρωπον, ᾧ καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπενέβησαν καὶ προσέπτυσαν οὐκ ὀλίγαι γυναῖκες. ἡμεῖς δὲ τὰς θύρας τῆς εἱρκτῆς κατασχίσαντες ἐκαλοῦμεν ὀνομαστὶ πρῶτον μὲν τὸν Ἀμφίθεον, εἶτα τῶν ἄλλων πρὸς ὃν ἕκαστος ἐπιτηδείως εἶχεν· οἱ δὲ τὴν φωνὴν γνωρίζοντες ἀνεπήδων ἐκ τῶν χαμευνῶν ἄσμενοι τὰς ἁλύσεις ἐφέλκοντες, οἱ δὲ τοὺς πόδας ἐν τῷ ξύλῳ δεδεμένοι τὰς χεῖρας ὀρέγοντες ἐβόων δεόμενοι μὴ ἀπολειφθῆναι. λυομένων δὲ τούτων ἤδη πολλοὶ [c] προσεφέροντο τῶν ἐγγὺς οἰκούντων αἰσθανόμενοι τὰ πραττόμενα καὶ χαίροντες. αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες, ὡς ἑκάστη περὶ τοῦ προσήκοντος ἤκουσεν, οὐκ ἐμμένουσαι τοῖς Βοιωτῶν ἔθεσιν ἐξέτρεχον πρὸς ἀλλήλας καὶ διεπυνθάνοντο παρὰ τῶν ἀπαντώντων, αἱ δ’ ἀνευροῦσαι πατέρας ἢ ἄνδρας αὑτῶν ἠκολούθουν, οὐδεὶς δ’ ἐκώλυε· ῥοπὴ γὰρ ἦν μεγάλη πρὸς τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας ὁ παρ’ αὐτῶν ἔλεος καὶ δάκρυα καὶ δεήσεις σωφρόνων γυναικῶν.

Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ τῶν πραγμάτων ὄντων πυθόμενος τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ἐγὼ καὶ τὸν Γοργίδαν ἤδη μετὰ τῶν [d] φίλων συναθροίζεσθαι περὶ τὸ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ἱερὸν ἐπορευόμην πρὸς αὐτούς, ἧκον δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ ἀγαθοὶ τῶν πολιτῶν ὁμοῦ καὶ συνέρρεον ἀεὶ πλείονες. ὡς δ’ ἀπήγγειλα καθ’ ἕκαστον αὐτοῖς τὰ πεπραγμένα καὶ παρεκάλουν βοηθεῖν ἐλθόντας εἰς τὴν ἀγοράν, ἅμα πάντες εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἐκήρυττον τοὺς πολίτας. τοῖς δὲ τότ’ ὄχλοις τῶν συνισταμένων ὅπλα παρεῖχον αἵ τε στοαὶ πλήρεις οὖσαι παντοδαπῶν λαφύρων καὶ τὰ τῶν ἐγγὺς οἰκούντων ἐργαστήρια μαχαιροποιῶν. ἧκε δὲ καὶ Ἱπποσθενείδας μετὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ οἰκετῶν τοὺς ἐπιδεδημηκότας κατὰ τύχην [e] πρὸς τὰ Ἡράκλεια σαλπικτὰς παραλαμβάνων. εὐθέως δ’ οἱ μὲν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς ἐσήμαινον οἱ δὲ κατ’ ἄλλους τόπους, πανταχόθεν ἐκταράττοντες τοὺς ὑπεναντίους, ὡς πάντων ἀφεστώτων. οἱ μὲν οὖν λακωνίζοντες .... τὴν Καδμείαν ἔφευγον ἐπισπασάμενοι καὶ τοὺς †κρείττους λεγομένους, εἰωθότας δὲ περὶ τὴν ἄκραν κάτω νυκτερεύειν, οἱ δ’ ἄνω, τούτων μὲν ἀτάκτως καὶ τεθορυβημένως ἐπιχεομένων, ἡμᾶς δὲ περὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν ἀφορῶντες, οὐδενὸς μέρους ἡσυχάζοντος, ἀλλὰ πανταχόθεν ψόφων καὶ θορύβων ἀναφερομένων, καταβαίνειν μὲν οὐ διενοοῦντο, [f] καίπερ περὶ πεντακοσίους καὶ χιλίους τὸ πλῆθος ὄντες, ἐκπεπληγμένοι δὲ τὸν κίνδυνον ἄλλως προυφασίζοντο Λυσανορίδαν περιμένειν· †γὰρ .... ἡ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης. διὸ καὶ τοῦτον μὲν ὕστερον, ὡς πυνθανόμεθα, χρήμασιν οὐκ ὀλίγοις ἐζημίωσαν τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων οἱ γέροντες, Ἑρμιππίδαν δὲ καὶ Ἄρκεσον ἀπέκτειναν εὐθὺς ἐν Κορίνθῳ λαβόντες, τὴν δὲ Καδμείαν ὑπόσπονδον παραδόντες ἡμῖν ἀπήλλαττον μετὰ τῶν στρατιωτῶν.

De exilio

ΠΕΡΙ ΦΥΓΗΣ

[599] Τῶν λόγων ἀρίστους καὶ βεβαιοτάτους ὥσπερ τῶν φίλων φασὶν εἶναι τοὺς ἐν ταῖς συμφοραῖς παρόντας ὠφελίμως [b] καὶ βοηθοῦντας, ἐπεὶ πάρεισί γε πολλοὶ καὶ προσδιαλέγονται τοῖς ἐπταικόσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀχρήστως μᾶλλον δὲ βλαβερῶς καθάπερ ἀκόλυμβοι πνιγομένοις ἐπιχειροῦντες βοηθεῖν περιπλεκόμενοι καὶ συγκαταδύνοντες· δεῖ δὲ τὸν παρὰ τῶν φίλων καὶ τῶν βοηθούντων λόγον παρηγορίαν εἶναι μὴ συνηγορίαν τοῦ λυποῦντος· οὐ γὰρ συνδακρυόντων καὶ συνεπιθρηνούντων ὥσπερ χορῶν τραγικῶν ἐν τοῖς ἀβουλήτοις χρείαν ἔχομεν, ἀλλὰ παρρησιαζομένων καὶ διδασκόντων ὅτι τὸ λυπεῖσθαι καὶ τὸ ταπεινοῦν [c] ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ παντὶ μὲν ἄχρηστόν ἐστι καὶ γιγνόμενον κενῶς καὶ ἀνοήτως, ὅπου δ’ αὐτὰ τὰ πράγματα δίδωσιν ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου ψηλαφηθέντα καὶ ἀνακαλυφθέντα πρὸς ἑαυτὸν εἰπεῖν (Menand. Epitr. fr. 179)

‘οὐδὲν πέπονθας δεινόν, ἂν μὴ προσποιῇ’,

κομιδῇ γελοῖόν ἐστι μὴ τῆς σαρκὸς πυνθάνεσθαι τί πέπονθε μηδὲ τῆς ψυχῆς εἰ διὰ τὸ σύμπτωμα τοῦτο χείρων γέγονεν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἔξωθεν συναχθομένοις καὶ συναγανακτοῦσι διδασκάλοις χρῆσθαι τῆς λύπης.

Ὅθεν αὐτοὶ καθ’ αὑτοὺς γινόμενοι τῶν συμπτωμάτων ὥσπερ φορτίων ἑκάστου τὸν σταθμὸν ἐξετάζωμεν.

[d] τὸ μὲν γὰρ σῶμα πιέζεται τῷ τοῦ βαρύνοντος ἄχθει, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ τοῖς πράγμασι πολλάκις τὸ βάρος ἐξ αὑτῆς προστίθησιν. ὁ λίθος φύσει σκληρός, ὁ κρύσταλλος φύσει ψυχρός ἐστιν, οὐκ ἔξωθεν εἰκῆ ταύτας τὰς ἀντιτυπίας ἐπιφέροντες καὶ τὰς πήξεις· φυγὰς δὲ καὶ ἀδοξίας καὶ τιμῶν ἀποβολάς, ὥσπερ αὖ τἀναντία, στεφάνους καὶ ἀρχὰς καὶ προεδρίας, οὐ τὴν αὑτῶν φύσιν ἀλλὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν κρίσιν μέτρον ἔχοντα τοῦ λυπεῖν καὶ εὐφραίνειν ἕκαστος ἑαυτῷ κοῦφα καὶ βαρέα καὶ ῥᾴδια φέρειν ποιεῖ καὶ τοὐναντίον. ἔξεστι δ’ [e] ἀκούειν τοῦ μὲν Πολυνείκους ἀποκρινομένου πρὸς τὸ ἐρώτημα τοῦτο (Eur. Phoen. 388)

‘τί τὸ στέρεσθαι πατρίδος; ἦ κακὸν μέγα;’

‘μέγιστον· ἔργῳ δ’ ἐστὶ μεῖζον ἢ λόγῳ·’

τοῦ δ’ Ἀλκμᾶνος, ὡς ὁ γράψας τὸ ἐπιγραμμάτιον πεποίηκε (Anth. Pal. VII 709),

‘Σάρδιες, ἀρχαῖος πατέρων νομός, εἰ μὲν ἐν ὑμῖν

ἐτρεφόμην, κερνᾶς ἦ τις ἂν ἢ βακέλας

χρυσοφόρος, ῥήσσων καλὰ τύμπανα· νῦν δέ μοι Ἀλκμὰν

οὔνομα, καὶ Σπάρτας εἰμὶ πολυτρίποδος,

καὶ Μούσας ἐδάην Ἑλληνίδας, αἵ με τυράννων

θῆκαν Δασκύλεω κρείσσονα καὶ Γύγεω.’

[f] τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ πρᾶγμα τῷ μὲν εὔχρηστον ἡ δόξα καθάπερ νόμισμα δόκιμον, τῷ δὲ δύσχρηστον καὶ βλαβερὸν ἐποίησεν.

Ἔστω δὲ δεινόν, ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ λέγουσι καὶ ᾄδουσιν, ἡ φυγή. καὶ γὰρ τῶν βρωμάτων πικρὰ πολλὰ καὶ δριμέα καὶ δάκνοντα τὴν αἴσθησίν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ μιγνύντες αὐτοῖς ἔνια τῶν γλυκέων καὶ προσηνῶν τὴν ἀηδίαν ἀφαιροῦμεν. ἔστι δὲ καὶ χρώματα λυπηρὰ τῇ ὄψει, πρὸς ἃ γίνεται τὸ συγχεῖσθαι καὶ μαραυγεῖν διὰ σκληρότητα [600] [a] καὶ βίαν ἄκρατον. εἰ τοίνυν ἴαμα τῆς δυσχρηστίας ἐκείνης ἐμίξαμεν τὴν σκιὰν αὐτοῖς ἢ τὴν ὄψιν ἀπεστρέψαμεν ἐπί τι τῶν χλοερῶν καὶ προσηνῶν, τοῦτ’ ἔξεστι ποιεῖν καὶ πρὸς τὰ συμπτώματα, κεραννύντας αὐτοῖς τὰ χρήσιμα καὶ φιλάνθρωπα τῶν νυνί σοι παρόντων, εὐπορίαν φίλους ἀπραγμοσύνην τὸ μηδὲν ἐνδεῖν τῶν ἀναγκαίων πρὸς τὸν βίον. οὐ γὰρ οἶμαι πολλοὺς εἶναι Σαρδιανῶν, οἳ μὴ τὰ σὰ πράγματα καὶ μετὰ φυγῆς μᾶλλον ἐθελήσουσιν αὑτοῖς ὑπάρχειν καὶ ἀγαπήσουσιν ἐπὶ ξένης οὕτω διάγοντες [b] ἢ καθάπερ οἱ κοχλίαι τοῖς ὀστράκοις συμφυεῖς ὄντες ἄλλο δὲ μηδὲν ἀγαθὸν ἔχοντες τῶν οἴκοι μετέχειν ἀλύπως. ὥσπερ οὖν ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ τις ἠτυχηκότα φίλον θαρρεῖν καὶ τὴν τύχην ἀμύνεσθαι παρακαλῶν ἐρομένου ‘τίνα τρόπον;’ ἀποκρίνεται ‘φιλοσόφως,’ οὕτω καὶ ἡμεῖς αὐτὴν ἀμυνώμεθα φιλοσοφοῦντες ἀξίως· (Com. adesp. 118)

‘τὸν Δία δὲ πῶς ὕοντα; τὸν βορέαν δὲ πῶς;’

πῦρ ζητοῦμεν βαλανεῖον ἱμάτιον στέγην· καὶ γὰρ οὐχ ὑόμενοι καθήμεθ’ οὐδὲ κλαίομεν. καὶ σοὶ τοίνυν παρ’ ὁντιναοῦν ἔστι τὸ κατεψυγμένον τοῦτο τοῦ βίου μέρος ἀναζωπυρεῖν καὶ ἀναθάλπειν ἑτέρων βοηθημάτων μὴ δεόμενον ἀλλὰ χρώμενον εὐλογίστως τοῖς παροῦσιν. αἱ μὲν [c] γὰρ ἰατρικαὶ σικύαι τὸ φαυλότατον ἐκ τοῦ σώματος ἀναλαμβάνουσαι κουφίζουσι καὶ σῴζουσι τὸ λοιπόν, οἱ δὲ φιλόλυποι καὶ φιλαίτιοι τῷ τὰ χείριστα τῶν ἰδίων συνάγειν ἀεὶ καὶ διαλογίζεσθαι καὶ προστετηκέναι τοῖς ἀνιαροῖς ἄχρηστα καὶ τὰ χρήσιμα ποιοῦσιν ἑαυτοῖς, ἐν ᾧ μάλιστα καιρῷ βοηθεῖν πέφυκε. τοὺς γὰρ δοιοὺς πίθους, ὦ φίλε, οὓς Ὅμηρος (Ω 527 sqq.) ἔφη κηρῶν ἐμπλείους ἐν οὐρανῷ κεῖσθαι τὸν μὲν ἀγαθῶν τὸν δὲ φαύλων, οὐχ ὁ Ζεὺς ταμιεύων κάθηται καὶ μεθιεὶς τοῖς μὲν ἤπια καὶ μεμιγμένα [d] τοῖς δ’ ἄκρατα ῥεύματα τῶν κακῶν, ἀλλ’ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν οἱ μὲν νοῦν ἔχοντες ἐκ τῶν ἀγαθῶν τοῖς κακοῖς ἐπαρυτόμενοι τὸν βίον ποιοῦσιν ἡδίω καὶ ποτιμώτερον, τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς ὥσπερ ἠθμοῖς ἐμμένει καὶ προσίσχεται τὰ φαυλότατα τῶν βελτιόνων ὑπεκρεόντων. διὸ κἂν ἀληθῶς κακῷ τινι καὶ λυπηρῷ περιπέσωμεν, ἐπάγεσθαι δεῖ τὸ ἱλαρὸν καὶ τὸ εὔθυμον ἐκ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων καὶ ὑπολειπομένων ἀγαθῶν τῷ οἰκείῳ τὸ ἀλλότριον ἐκλεαίνοντας· ὧν δ’ ἡ φύσις οὐδὲν ἔχει κακὸν ἀλλ’ ὅλον καὶ πᾶν τὸ λυποῦν [e] ἐκ κενῆς δόξης ἀναπέπλασται, ταῦτα δεῖ, καθάπερ τοῖς δεδοικόσι τὰ προσωπεῖα παιδίοις ἐγγὺς καὶ ὑπὸ χεῖρα ποιοῦντες καὶ ἀναστρέφοντες ἐθίζομεν καταφρονεῖν, οὕτως ἐγγὺς ἁπτομένους καὶ συνερείδοντας τῷ λογισμῷ τὸ σαθρὸν καὶ τὸ κενὸν καὶ τετραγῳδημένον ἀποκαλύπτειν.

Οἷόν ἐστιν ἡ νῦν σοι παροῦσα μετάστασις ἐκ τῆς νομιζομένης πατρίδος. φύσει γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι πατρίς, ὥσπερ οὐδ’ οἶκος οὐδ’ ἀγρὸς οὐδὲ χαλκεῖον, ὡς Ἀρίστων (St. V. Fr. I 371) ἔλεγεν, οὐδ’ ἰατρεῖον· ἀλλὰ γίνεται μᾶλλον δ’ ὀνομάζεται καὶ καλεῖται τούτων ἕκαστον ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸν [f] οἰκοῦντα καὶ χρώμενον. ὁ γὰρ ἄνθρωπος, ᾗ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Tim. 90a), ‘φυτὸν οὐκ ἔγγειον’ οὐδ’ ἀκίνητον ‘ἀλλ’ οὐράνιόν’ ἐστιν, ὥσπερ ἐκ ῥίζης τὸ σῶμα τῆς κεφαλῆς ὀρθὸν ἱστάσης πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνεστραμμένον. ὅθεν εὖ μὲν ὁ Ἡρακλῆς εἶπεν (Trag. adesp. 392)

‘Ἀργεῖος ἢ Θηβαῖος· οὐ γὰρ εὔχομαι

μιᾶς· ἅπας μοι πύργος Ἑλλήνων πατρίς.’

ὁ δὲ Σωκράτης βέλτιον, οὐκ Ἀθηναῖος οὐδ’ Ἕλλην ἀλλὰ κόσμιος εἶναι φήσας, ὡς ἄν τις Ῥόδιος εἶπεν ἢ Κορίνθιος, [601] [a] ὅτι μηδὲ Σουνίῳ μηδὲ Ταινάρῳ μηδὲ τοῖς Κεραυνίοις ἐνέκλεισεν ἑαυτόν.

‘ὁρᾷς τὸν ὑψοῦ τόνδ’ ἄπειρον αἰθέρα,

καὶ γῆν πέριξ ἔχονθ’ ὑγραῖς ‹ἐν› ἀγκάλαις;’

(Eur. fr. 941, 1. 2)

οὗτοι τῆς πατρίδος ἡμῶν ὅροι [εἰσί], καὶ οὐδεὶς οὔτε φυγὰς ἐν τούτοις οὔτε ξένος οὔτ’ ἀλλοδαπός, ὅπου τὸ αὐτὸ πῦρ ὕδωρ ἀήρ, ἄρχοντες οἱ αὐτοὶ καὶ διοικηταὶ καὶ πρυτάνεις ἥλιος σελήνη φωσφόρος· οἱ αὐτοὶ νόμοι πᾶσι, ὑφ’ ἑνὸς προστάγματος καὶ μιᾶς ἡγεμονίας τροπαὶ βόρειοι τροπαὶ νότιοι ἰσημερίαι Πλειὰς Ἀρκτοῦρος ὧραι σπόρων [b] ὧραι φυτειῶν· εἷς δὲ βασιλεὺς καὶ ἄρχων· ‘θεὸς ἀρχήν τε καὶ μέσα καὶ τελευτὴν ἔχων τοῦ παντὸς εὐθείᾳ περαίνει κατὰ φύσιν περιπορευόμενος· τῷ δ’ ἕπεται Δίκη τῶν ἀπολειπομένων τοῦ θείου νόμου τιμωρός’ (Plat. Legg. 716a), ᾗ χρώμεθα πάντες ἄνθρωποι φύσει πρὸς πάντας ἀνθρώπους ὥσπερ πολίτας. τὸ δέ σε μὴ κατοικεῖν Σάρδεις οὐδέν ἐστιν· οὐδὲ γὰρ Ἀθηναῖοι πάντες κατοικοῦσι Κολλυτὸν οὐδὲ Κορίνθιοι Κράνειον οὐδὲ Πιτάνην Λάκωνες. ἆρ’ οὖν ξένοι καὶ ἀπόλιδές εἰσιν Ἀθηναίων οἱ μεταστάντες ἐκ Μελίτης εἰς Διωμίδα, ὅπου καὶ μῆνα Μεταγειτνιῶνα καὶ θυσίαν ἐπώνυμον ἄγουσι τοῦ μετοικισμοῦ τὰ Μεταγείτνια, τὴν πρὸς ἑτέρους γειτνίασιν εὐκόλως καὶ ἱλαρῶς [c] ἐκδεχόμενοι καὶ στέργοντες; οὐκ ἂν εἴποις. τί οὖν τῆς οἰκουμένης μέρος ἢ τῆς γῆς ἁπάσης ἕτερον ἑτέρου μακράν ἐστιν, ἣν ἀποδεικνύουσιν οἱ μαθηματικοὶ σημείου λόγον ἔχουσαν ἀδιαστάτου πρὸς τὸν οὐρανόν; ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς ὥσπερ μύρμηκες ἢ μέλιτται μυρμηκιᾶς μιᾶς ἢ κυψέλης ἐκπεσόντες ἀδημονοῦμεν καὶ ξενοπαθοῦμεν, οὐκ εἰδότες οὐδὲ μεμαθηκότες οἰκεῖα τὰ πάντα ποιεῖσθαι καὶ νομίζειν ὥσπερ ἐστί. καίτοι γελῶμεν τὴν ἀβελτερίαν τοῦ φάσκοντος ‹τὴν› ἐν Ἀθήναις βελτίονα σελήνην εἶναι τῆς ἐν Κορίνθῳ τρόπον τινὰ τὸ αὐτὸ πάσχοντες, ὅταν ἀμφιγνοῶμεν ἐπὶ ξένης γενόμενοι τὴν γῆν τὴν θάλατταν τὸν ἀέρα τὸν οὐρανὸν [d] ὡς ἕτερα καὶ διαφέροντα τῶν συνήθων. ἡ μὲν γὰρ φύσις ἐλευθέρους ἡμᾶς καὶ λελυμένους ἀφίησιν, ἡμεῖς δ’ αὐτοὶ συνδέομεν ἑαυτοὺς συστενοχωροῦμεν ἐγκατοικοδομοῦμεν εἰς μικρὰ καὶ γλίσχρα συνελαύνομεν. εἶτα τῶν μὲν Περσῶν βασιλέων καταγελῶμεν, εἴ γε δὴ ἀληθῶς τὸ τοῦ Χοάσπου μόνον ὕδωρ πίνοντες ἄνυδρον αὑτοῖς τὴν ἄλλην ποιοῦσιν οἰκουμένην· ὅταν δὲ μεταστῶμεν εἰς ἕτερα χωρία, τοῦ Κηφισοῦ γλιχόμενοι καὶ τὸν Εὐρώταν ἢ τὸν Ταΰγετον ἢ τὸν Παρνασὸν ἐπιποθοῦντες ἄπολιν καὶ ἀοίκητον αὑτοῖς τὴν οἰκουμένην ποιοῦμεν.

Αἰγυπτίων μὲν οὖν οἱ δι’ ὀργήν τινα καὶ χαλεπότητα [e] τοῦ βασιλέως εἰς Αἰθιοπίαν μετοικιζόμενοι πρὸς τοὺς δεομένους ἐπανελθεῖν ἐπὶ τέκνα καὶ γυναῖκας ἐπιδεικνύντες τὰ αἰδοῖα κυνικώτερον οὔτε γάμων ἔφασαν οὔτε παίδων ἀπορήσειν, ἄχρι οὗ ταῦτα μεθ’ ἑαυτῶν ἔχωσιν· εὐπρεπέστερον δ’ ἐστὶ καὶ σεμνότερον εἰπεῖν ὡς, ὅπου καὶ ὅτῳ μετρίων πρὸς τὸν βίον εὐπορεῖν συμβέβηκεν, ἐνταῦθ’ οὗτος οὔτ’ ἄπολις οὔτ’ ἀνέστιος οὔτε ξένος ἐστί. μόνον [f] ἔχειν δεῖ πρὸς τούτοις νοῦν καὶ λογισμὸν ὥσπερ ἄγκυραν κυβερνήτην, ἵνα παντὶ χρῆσθαι λιμένι προσορμισθεὶς δύνηται. πλοῦτον μὲν γὰρ ἀποβαλόντα ῥᾳδίως οὐκ ἔστι καὶ ταχέως ἄλλον συναγαγεῖν, πατρὶς δὲ γίνεται πᾶσα πόλις εὐθὺς ἀνθρώπῳ χρῆσθαι μεμαθηκότι καὶ ῥίζας ἔχοντι πανταχοῦ ζῆν τε καὶ τρέφεσθαι καὶ παντὶ τόπῳ προσφύεσθαι δυναμένας, οἵας εἶχε Θεμιστοκλῆς οἵας Δημήτριος ὁ Φαληρεύς. οὗτος μὲν γὰρ ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ μετὰ τὴν φυγὴν πρῶτος ὢν τῶν Πτολεμαίου φίλων οὐ μόνον αὐτὸς ἐν ἀφθόνοις διῆγεν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις δωρεὰς ἔπεμπε, [602] [a] Θεμιστοκλῆς δὲ χορηγίᾳ βασιλικῇ πρυτανευόμενος εἰπεῖν λέγεται πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τοὺς παῖδας ‘ἀπωλόμεθ’ ἄν, εἰ μὴ ἀπωλόμεθα.’ διὸ καὶ Διογένης ὁ κύων πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα ‘Σινωπεῖς σου φυγὴν ἐκ Πόντου κατέγνωσαν’ ‘ἐγὼ δ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἐκείνων ἐν Πόντῳ μονήν’

‘ἄκραις ἐπὶ ῥηγμῖσιν ἀξένου πόρου (Eur. I. T. 253).’

Στρατόνικος δὲ τὸν ἐν Σερίφῳ ξένον ἠρώτησεν, ἐφ’ ὅτῳ τῶν ἀδικημάτων φυγὴ τέτακται παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἐπιτίμιον· ἀκούσας δ’ ὅτι τοὺς ῥᾳδιουργοὺς φυγαδεύουσι, ‘τί οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἐρρᾳδιούργησας, ὅπως ἐκ τῆς στενοχωρίας [b] ταύτης μεταστῇς;’ ὅπου φησὶν ὁ κωμικὸς (Cratinus fr. 217 Com. adesp. 812) τὰ σῦκα ταῖς σφενδόναις τρυγᾶσθαι καὶ πάντ’ ἔχειν ὅσων δεῖ τὴν νῆσον.

Ἂν γὰρ σκοπῇς ἄνευ κενῆς δόξης τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ὁ μίαν πόλιν ἔχων ξένος ἐστὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπασῶν καὶ ἀλλότριος. οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖ καλὸν οὐδὲ δίκαιον εἶναι καταλιπόντα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ νέμειν ἑτέραν.

‘Σπάρταν ἔλαχες, ταύτην κόσμει (Eur. fr. 723, 1),’

κἂν ἄδοξος ᾖ κἂν νοσώδης κἂν ταράττηται στάσεσιν ὑφ’ ἑαυτῆς καὶ πράγμασι μὴ ὑγιαίνουσιν. οὗ δ’ ἡ τύχη τὴν ἰδίαν ἀφῄρηται, τούτῳ δίδωσιν ἔχειν τὴν ἀρέσασαν. τὸ γὰρ καλὸν ἐκεῖνο παράγγελμα τῶν Πυθαγορείων ‘ἑλοῦ [c] βίον τὸν ἄριστον, ἡδὺν δ’ αὐτὸν ἡ συνήθεια ποιήσει,’ κἀνταῦθα σοφόν ἐστι καὶ χρήσιμον· ‘ἑλοῦ πόλιν τὴν ἀρίστην καὶ ἡδίστην, πατρίδα δ’ αὐτὴν ὁ χρόνος ποιήσει’, καὶ πατρίδα μὴ περισπῶσαν μὴ ἐνοχλοῦσαν μὴ προστάττουσαν ‘εἰσένεγκε, πρέσβευσον εἰς Ῥώμην, ὑπόδεξαι τὸν ἡγεμόνα, λειτούργησον.’ ἂν γὰρ τούτων τις μνημονεύῃ φρένας ἔχων καὶ μὴ παντάπασι τετυφωμένος, αἱρήσεται καὶ νῆσον οἰκεῖν φυγὰς γενόμενος Γύαρον ἢ Κίναρον (Trag. adesp. 393, Com. adesp. 1238)

‘σκληρὰν ἄκαρπον καὶ φυτεύεσθαι κακήν’

οὐκ ἀθυμῶν οὐδ’ ὀδυρόμενος οὐδὲ λέγων ἐκεῖνα τὰ τῶν [d] παρὰ Σιμωνίδῃ (fr. 51) γυναικῶν,

‘ἴσχει δέ με πορφυρέας ἁλὸς ἀμφιταρασσομένας ὀρυ [μαγδός’,

ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τὸ τοῦ Φιλίππου λογιζόμενος· πεσὼν γὰρ ἐν παλαίστρᾳ καὶ μεταστραφείς, ὡς εἶδε τοῦ σώματος τὸν τύπον, ‘ὦ Ἡράκλεις,’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς μικροῦ μέρους τῆς γῆς φύσει μετέχοντες ὅλης ἐφιέμεθα τῆς οἰκουμένης.’

Οἶμαί σε τῆς Νάξου γεγονέναι θεατήν, εἰ δὲ μή, τῆς γ’ Οὐρίας ἐνταῦθα πλησίον οὔσης· ἀλλ’ ἐκείνη μὲν ἐχώρει τὸν Ἐφιάλτην καὶ τὸν Ὦτον, αὕτη δὲ τοῦ Ὠρίωνος ἦν οἰκητήριον. ὁ δ’ Ἀλκμαίων ἰλὺν νεοπαγῆ τοῦ Ἀχελῴου προσχωννύντος ἐπῴκησεν ὑποφεύγων τὰς Εὐμενίδας, ὡς [e] οἱ ποιηταὶ λέγουσιν, ἐγὼ δὲ κἀκεῖνον εἰκάζω φεύγοντα πολιτικὰς ταραχὰς καὶ στάσεις καὶ συκοφαντίας ἐρινυώδεις ἑλέσθαι βραχὺ χωρίον ἀπραγμόνως ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ κατοικεῖν. Τιβέριος δὲ Καῖσαρ ἐν Καπρέαις ἑπτὰ ἔτη διῃτήθη μέχρι τῆς τελευτῆς, καὶ τὸ τῆς οἰκουμένης ἡγεμονικὸν [ἱερὸν] ὥσπερ εἰς καρδίαν συνηγμένον οὐδαμοῦ μετέστη τοσοῦτον χρόνον. ἀλλ’ ἐκείνῳ μὲν αἱ τῆς ἡγεμονίας φροντίδες ἐπιχεόμεναι καὶ προσφερόμεναι πανταχόθεν οὐ καθαρὰν παρεῖχον οὐδ’ ἀκύμονα τὴν νησιῶτιν ἡσυχίαν· ᾧ δ’ ἔξεστιν [f] εἰς μικρὰν ἀποβάντι νῆσον οὐ μικρῶν ἀπηλλάχθαι κακῶν, οὗτος ἄθλιός ἐστι μὴ προσλαλῶν ἑαυτῷ τὰ Πινδαρικὰ μηδ’ ἐπᾴδων πολλάκις (fr. 154 6 Paean IV 50 sqq.)

‘ἔα, φρήν, κυπάρισσον [φιλέειν], ἔα δὲ νομὸν [Κρήτας]

περιδάιον.

ἐμοὶ δ’ ὀλίγον μὲν γᾶς δέδοται, †ὅθεν ἄδρυς, πενθέων

δ’ οὐκ ἔλαχον ‹οὐδὲ› στασίων’

οὐδὲ προσταγμάτων ἡγεμονικῶν οὐδ’ ὑπουργιῶν ἐν πολιτικαῖς χρείαις καὶ λειτουργιῶν δυσπαραιτήτων. ὅπου γὰρ οὐ φαύλως δοκεῖ λέγειν ὁ Καλλίμαχος (fr. 481 6 Pap. Ox. XVII 2079, 18) τό ‘μὴ σχοίνῳ Περσίδι τὴν σοφίην,’ ἦπου τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν σχοίνοις καὶ παρασάγγαις μετροῦντες, [603] [a] ἐὰν νῆσον οἰκῶμεν διακοσίων σταδίων ἀλλὰ μὴ τεσσάρων ἡμερῶν ὥσπερ ἡ Σικελία περίπλουν ἔχουσαν, ὀδυνᾶν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ θρηνεῖν ὀφείλομεν ὡς κακοδαιμονοῦντες; τί γὰρ ἡ πλατεῖα χώρα πρὸς τὸν ἄλυπον βίον; οὐκ ἀκούεις τοῦ Ταντάλου λέγοντος ἐν τῇ τραγῳδίᾳ (Aeschyl. fr. 158, 1)

‘σπείρω δ’ ἄρουραν δώδεχ’ ἡμερῶν ὁδόν,

Βερέκυντα χῶρον,’

εἶτα μετ’ ὀλίγον λέγοντος (Aeschyl. fr. 159)

‘οὑμὸς δὲ πότμος οὐρανῷ κυρῶν ἄνω

ἔραζε πίπτει καί με προσφωνεῖ τάδε·

γίνωσκε τἀνθρώπεια μὴ σέβειν ἄγαν’;

ὁ δὲ Ναυσίθοος τὴν εὐρύχωρον Ὑπέρειαν καταλιπὼν διὰ [b] τὸ γειτνιᾶν τοὺς Κύκλωπας αὐτῇ καὶ μεταστὰς εἰς νῆσον ‘ἑκὰς ἀνδρῶν ἀλφηστάων’ (ζ 8) καὶ κατοικῶν ἀνεπίμικτος ἀνθρώπων ‘ἀπάνευθε πολυκλύστῳ ἐνὶ πόντῳ’ (ζ 204) τὸν ἥδιστον παρεσκεύασε βίον τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πολίταις. τὰς δὲ Κυκλάδας πρότερον μὲν οἱ Μίνω παῖδες, ὕστερον δ’ οἱ Κόδρου καὶ Νείλεω κατῴκησαν, ἐν αἷς τὰ νῦν οἱ ἀνόητοι φυγάδες οἴονται κολάζεσθαι. καίτοι ποία φυγαδικὴ νῆσος οὐκ ἔστι πλατυτέρα τῆς Σκιλλουντίας χώρας, ἐν ᾗ Ξενοφῶν μετὰ τὴν στρατείαν τὸ λιπαρὸν εἶδε γῆρας; ἡ δ’ Ἀκαδήμεια, τρισχιλίων δραχμῶν χωρίδιον ἐωνημένον, [c] οἰκητήριον ἦν Πλάτωνος καὶ Ξενοκράτους καὶ Πολέμωνος αὐτόθι σχολαζόντων καὶ καταβιούντων τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον πλὴν μίαν ἡμέραν, ἐν ᾗ Ξενοκράτης καθ’ ἕκαστον ἔτος εἰς ἄστυ κατῄει Διονυσίων καινοῖς τραγῳδοῖς ἐπικοσμῶν, ὡς ἔφασαν, τὴν ἑορτήν. Ἀριστοτέλην δὲ καὶ λελοιδόρηκε Θεόκριτος ὁ Χῖος (FHG. II p. 86), ὅτι τὴν παρὰ Φιλίππῳ καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ δίαιταν ἀγαπήσας

‘εἵλετο ναίειν

ἀντ’ Ἀκαδημείας Βορβόρου ἐν προχοαῖς.’

ἔστι γὰρ ποταμὸς περὶ Πέλλην, ὃν Μακεδόνες Βόρβορον καλοῦσι. τὰς δὲ νήσους ὥσπερ ἐπίτηδες ὑμνῶν καὶ συνιστὰς ἡμῖν ὁ ποιητής (Ξ 230)

‘Λῆμνον δ’ εἰσαφίκανε, πόλιν θείοιο Θόαντος·’

καί (Ω 544)

[d] ‘ὅσσον Λέσβος ἄνω, Μάκαρος ἕδος, ἐντὸς ἐέργει·’

καί (Ι 668)

‘Σκῦρον ἑλὼν αἰπεῖαν, Ἐνυῆος πτολίεθρον·’

καί (Β 625)

‘οἳ δ’ ἐκ Δουλιχίοιο Ἐχινάων θ’ ἱεράων

νήσων, αἳ ναίουσι πέρην ἁλὸς Ἤλιδος ἄντα·’

καὶ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν ἀνδρῶν νῆσον οἰκεῖν φησι τὸν θεοφιλέστατον Αἴολον, τὸν σοφώτατον Ὀδυσσέα, τὸν ἀνδρειότατον Αἴαντα, τὸν φιλοξενώτατον Ἀλκίνουν.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Ζήνων πυθόμενος ἣν ἔτι λοιπὴν εἶχε ναῦν μετὰ τῶν φορτίων καταπεπομένην ὑπὸ τῆς θαλάσσης ‘εὖγ’,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ τύχη, ποιεῖς, εἰς τρίβωνα καὶ βίον [e] φιλόσοφον συνελαύνουσ’ ἡμᾶς·’ ἀνὴρ δὲ μὴ τετυφωμένος παντάπασι μηδ’ ὀχλομανῶν οὐκ ἂν οἶμαι μέμψαιτο τὴν τύχην συνελαυνόμενος εἰς νῆσον, ἀλλ’ ἐπαινέσειεν ὅτι τὸν πολὺν ἄλυν καὶ ῥέμβον ἑαυτοῦ καὶ πλάνας ἐν ἀποδημίαις καὶ κινδύνους ἐν θαλάσσῃ καὶ θορύβους ἐν ἀγορᾷ περιελοῦσα μόνιμον καὶ σχολαῖον καὶ ἀπερίσπαστον καὶ ἴδιον βίον ὡς ἀληθῶς δίδωσι, κέντρῳ καὶ διαστήματι περιγράψασα τὴν τῶν ἀναγκαίων χρείαν. ποία γὰρ νῆσος οἰκίαν οὐκ ἔχει περίπατον λουτρὸν ἰχθῦς λαγωοὺς ἄγρᾳ καὶ παιδιᾷ χρῆσθαι βουλομένοις; τὸ ‹δὲ› μέγιστον, [f] ἡσυχίας, ἧς διψῶσιν ἕτεροι, σοὶ πολλάκις τυχεῖν ἔνεστιν. ἀλλὰ πεττεύοντας καὶ ἀποκρυπτομένους οἴκοι συκοφάνται καὶ πολυπράγμονες ἐξιχνεύοντες καὶ διώκοντες ἐκ τῶν προαστίων καὶ τῶν κήπων εἰς ἀγορὰν καὶ εἰς αὐλὴν βίᾳ κατάγουσιν, εἰς δὲ νῆσον οὐκ ἐνοχλῶν τις οὐκ αἰτῶν οὐ δανειζόμενος οὐκ ἐγγυήσασθαι παρακαλῶν οὐ συναρχαιρεσιάσαι, [604] [a] δι’ εὔνοιαν δὲ καὶ πόθον οἱ βέλτιστοι τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ οἰκείων πλέουσιν, ὁ δ’ ἄλλος βίος ἄσυλος καὶ ἱερὸς ἀνεῖται τῷ βουλομένῳ καὶ μεμαθηκότι σχολάζειν. ὁ δὲ τοὺς περιτρέχοντας ἔξω καὶ τοῦ βίου τὸ πλεῖστον ἐν πανδοκείοις καὶ πορθμείοις ἀναλίσκοντας εὐδαιμονίζων ὅμοιός ἐστι τῷ τοὺς πλάνητας οἰομένῳ τῶν ἀπλανῶν ἀστέρων πράττειν ἄμεινον. καίτοι τῶν πλανήτων ἕκαστος ἐν μιᾷ σφαίρᾳ καθάπερ ἐν νήσῳ περιπολῶν διαφυλάττει τὴν τάξιν· ‘ἥλιος γὰρ οὐχ ὑπερβήσεται μέτρα’ φησὶν ὁ Ἡράκλειτος (fr. 94)· ‘εἰ δὲ μή, Ἐρινύες [b] μιν Δίκης ἐπίκουροι ἐξευρήσουσιν.’

Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μέν, ὦ φίλε, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πρὸς ἐκείνους λέγωμεν κἀκείνοις ἐπᾴδωμεν, οἷς εἰς νῆσον ἀπῳκισμένοις ἀνεπίμικτα ποιεῖ τὰ ἄλλα (Φ 59)

‘πόντος ἁλὸς ‹πολιῆς›, ὃ πολεῖς ἀέκοντας ἐρύκει·’

σοὶ δ’ οὐχ ἑνὸς δεδομένου μόνον, ἀλλ’ ἀπειρημένου τόπου, πασῶν ἐστιν ἐξουσία πόλεων ἡ μιᾶς κώλυσις. ἀλλὰ μὴν τῷ ‘οὐκ ἄρχομεν οὐδὲ βουλεύομεν οὐδ’ ἀγωνοθετοῦμεν’ ἀντίθες τό ‘οὐ στασιάζομεν οὐδ’ ἀναλίσκομεν οὐδὲ προσηρτήμεθα θύραις ἡγεμόνος· οὐδὲν νῦν μέλει, ὅστις ὁ κεκληρωμένος τὴν ἐπαρχίαν ἐστίν, εἰ ἀκράχολος εἰ [c] ἐπαχθής.’ ἀλλ’ [ὡς] ἡμεῖς, καθάπερ Ἀρχίλοχος τῆς Θάσου τὰ καρποφόρα καὶ οἰνόπεδα παρορῶν διὰ τὸ τραχὺ καὶ ἀνώμαλον διέβαλε τὴν νῆσον εἰπών (fr. 21, 1. 2)

‘ἥδε δ’ ὥστ’ ὄνου ῥάχις

ἕστηκεν ὕλης ἀγρίας ἐπιστεφής,’

οὕτω τῆς φυγῆς πρὸς ἓν μέρος τὸ ἄδοξον ἐντεινόμενοι παρορῶμεν τὴν ἀπραγμοσύνην καὶ τὴν σχολὴν καὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν. καίτοι τούς γε Περσῶν βασιλέας ἐμακάριζον ἐν Βαβυλῶνι τὸν χειμῶνα διάγοντας, ἐν δὲ Μηδίᾳ τὸ θέρος, ἐν δὲ Σούσοις τὸ ἥδιστον τοῦ ἔαρος. ἔξεστι δήπου καὶ τῷ μεθεστῶτι μυστηρίοις ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι διατρίβειν, Διονυσίοις ἐν ἄστει πανηγυρίζειν, Πυθίων ἀγομένων εἰς Δελφοὺς παρελθεῖν, Ἰσθμίων εἰς Κόρινθον, ἄνπερ ᾖ φιλοθέωρος· [d] εἰ δὲ μή, σχολὴ περίπατος ἀνάγνωσις ὕπνος ἀθορύβητος τὸ τοῦ Διογένους ‘Ἀριστοτέλης ἀριστᾷ, ὅταν δοκῇ Φιλίππῳ, Διογένης, ὅταν Διογένει’ μήτε πραγματείας μήτ’ ἄρχοντος μήθ’ ἡγεμόνος τὴν συνήθη δίαιταν περισπῶντος.

Διὰ τοῦτο τῶν φρονιμωτάτων καὶ σοφωτάτων ὀλίγους ἂν εὕροις ἐν ταῖς ἑαυτῶν πατρίσι κεκηδευμένους, οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι μηδενὸς ἀναγκάζοντος αὐτοὶ τὸ ἀγκύριον ἀράμενοι μεθωρμίσαντο τοὺς βίους καὶ μετέστησαν οἱ μὲν εἰς Ἀθήνας οἱ δ’ ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν. τίς γὰρ εἴρηκε τῆς ἑαυτοῦ πατρίδος ἐγκώμιον τοιοῦτον, οἷον Εὐριπίδης;

‘ᾗ πρῶτα μὲν λεὼς οὐκ ἐπακτὸς ἄλλοθεν,

[e] αὐτόχθονες δ’ ἔφυμεν· αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι πόλεις

πεσσῶν ὁμοίως διαφορηθεῖσαι βολαῖς

ἄλλαι παρ’ ἄλλων εἰσὶν εἰσαγώγιμοι.’ (fr. 360)

‘εἰ δ’ ‹οὖν› πάρεργον χρή τι κομπάσαι, γύναι,

οὐρανὸν ὑπὲρ γῆς ἔχομεν εὖ κεκραμένον,

ἵν’ οὔτ’ ἄγαν πῦρ οὔτε χεῖμα συμπίτνει.

ἃ δ’ Ἑλλὰς Ἀσία τ’ ἐκτρέφει κάλλιστα, γῆς

δέλεαρ ἔχοντες ‹τῆσδε› συνθηρεύομεν·’ (fr. 981)

ἀλλ’ ὁ ταῦτα γράψας εἰς Μακεδονίαν ᾤχετο καὶ παρ’ Ἀρχελάῳ κατεβίωσεν. ἀκήκοας δὲ δήπου καὶ τουτὶ τὸ ἐπιγραμμάτιον (PL. II p. 241)

[f] ‘Αἰσχύλον Εὐφορίωνος Ἀθηναῖον τόδε κεύθει

μνῆμα καταφθίμενον πυροφόροιο Γέλας·’

καὶ γὰρ καὶ οὗτος εἰς Σικελίαν ἀπῆρε καὶ Σιμωνίδης πρότερον. τὸ δ’ ‘Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνασσέως ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε’ πολλοὶ μεταγράφουσιν ‘Ἡροδότου Θουρίου’· μετῴκησε γὰρ εἰς Θουρίους καὶ τῆς ἀποικίας ἐκείνης [605] [a] μετέσχε. τὸ δ’ ἱερὸν καὶ δαιμόνιον ἐν μούσαις πνεῦμα, ‘Φρυγίας κοσμήτορα μάχας,’ Ὅμηρον οὐ τοῦτο πεποίηκε πολλαῖς ἀμφισβητήσιμον πόλεσιν, ὅτι μὴ μιᾶς ἐστιν ἐγκωμιαστής; καὶ ξενίου Διὸς πολλαὶ τιμαὶ καὶ μεγάλαι.

εἰ δὲ φήσει τις ὅτι δόξαν οὗτοι καὶ τιμὰς ἐθήρευον, ἐπὶ τοὺς σοφοὺς ἐλθὲ καὶ τὰς σοφὰς Ἀθήνησι σχολὰς καὶ διατριβάς· ἀναπέμπασαι τὰς ἐν Λυκείῳ τὰς ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ τὴν Στοὰν τὸ Παλλάδιον τὸ Ὠιδεῖον. εἰ τὴν Περιπατητικὴν ἀσπάζῃ μάλιστα καὶ τεθαύμακας, Ἀριστοτέλης [b] ἦν ἐκ Σταγίρων, Θεόφραστος ἐξ Ἐρέσου, Στράτων ἐκ Λαμψάκου, Λύκων ἐκ Τρωάδος, Ἀρίστων ἐκ Κέω, Κριτόλαος Φασηλίτης· εἰ τὴν Στωικήν, Ζήνων Κιτιεύς, Κλεάνθης Ἄσσιος, Χρύσιππος Σολεύς, Διογένης Βαβυλώνιος, Ἀντίπατρος Ταρσεύς, ὁ δ’ Ἀθηναῖος Ἀρχέδημος εἰς τὴν Πάρθων μεταστὰς ἐν Βαβυλῶνι Στωικὴν διαδοχὴν ἀπέλιπε. τίς οὖν τούτους ἐδίωξεν; οὐδείς· ἀλλ’ αὐτοὶ διώκοντες ἡσυχίαν, ἧς οὐ πάνυ μέτεστιν οἴκοι τοῖς ἡντιναοῦν δόξαν ἢ δύναμιν ἔχουσι, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα λόγοις τοῦτο δ’ ἔργοις ἡμᾶς διδάσκουσι. καὶ γὰρ νῦν οἱ δοκιμώτατοι καὶ κράτιστοι ζῶσιν ἐπὶ ξένης οὐ μετασταθέντες [c] ἀλλὰ μεταστάντες οὐδὲ φυγαδευθέντες ἀλλὰ φυγόντες αὐτοὶ πράγματα καὶ περισπασμοὺς καὶ ἀσχολίας, ἃς αἱ πατρίδες φέρουσι. καὶ γὰρ τοῖς παλαιοῖς ὡς ἔοικεν αἱ Μοῦσαι τὰ κάλλιστα τῶν συνταγμάτων καὶ δοκιμώτατα φυγὴν λαβοῦσαι συνεργὸν ἐπετέλεσαν. ‘Θουκυδίδης Ἀθηναῖος συνέγραψε τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων’ (I 1) ἐν Θρᾴκῃ περὶ τὴν Σκαπτὴν ὕλην, Ξενοφῶν ἐν Σκιλλοῦντι τῆς Ἠλείας, Φίλιστος ἐν Ἠπείρῳ, Τίμαιος ὁ Ταυρομενείτης ἐν Ἀθήναις, Ἀνδροτίων Ἀθηναῖος [d] ἐν Μεγάροις, Βακχυλίδης ὁ Ἰουλιήτης ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ. πάντες οὗτοι καὶ πλείονες ἄλλοι τῶν πατρίδων ἐκπεσόντες οὐκ ἀπέγνωσαν οὐδ’ ἔρριψαν ἑαυτούς, ἀλλ’ ἐχρήσαντο ταῖς εὐφυΐαις ἐφόδιον παρὰ τῆς τύχης τὴν φυγὴν λαβόντες, δι’ ἣν πανταχοῦ καὶ τεθνηκότες μνημονεύονται· τῶν δ’ ἐκβαλόντων καὶ ‹κατα›στασιασάντων οὐδὲ εἷς λόγος οὐδενὸς ἀπολέλειπται. διὸ καὶ γελοῖός ἐστιν ὁ νομίζων ἀδοξίαν τῇ φυγῇ προσεῖναι. τί λέγεις; ἄδοξός ἐστι Διογένης ὃν ἰδὼν Ἀλέξανδρος ἐν ἡλίῳ [e] καθήμενον ἐπιστὰς ἠρώτησεν, εἴ τινος δεῖται, τοῦ δὲ μηδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ σμικρὸν ἀποσκοτίσαι κελεύσαντος ἐκπλαγεὶς τὸ φρόνημα πρὸς τοὺς φίλους εἶπεν ‘εἰ μὴ Ἀλέξανδρος ἤμην, Διογένης ἂν ἤμην’; ἠδόξει δὲ Κάμιλλος ἐκ τῆς Ῥώμης ἐλαυνόμενος, ἧς δεύτερος κτίστης νῦν ἀναγορεύεται; καὶ μὴν Θεμιστοκλῆς οὐ τὴν ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησι δόξαν φυγὼν ἀπέβαλεν ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς βαρβάροις προσέλαβε· καὶ οὐδείς ἐστιν οὕτως ἀφιλότιμος οὐδ’ ἀγεννής, ὃς μᾶλλον ἂν ἐβούλετο Λεωβώτης ὁ γραψάμενος ἢ Θεμιστοκλῆς [f] ὁ φυγαδευθεὶς εἶναι καὶ Κλώδιος ὁ ἐκβαλὼν ἢ Κικέρων ὁ ἐκβληθεὶς καὶ Ἀριστοφῶν ὁ κατηγορήσας ἢ Τιμόθεος ὁ μεταστὰς ἐκ τῆς πατρίδος.

Ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ πολλοὺς τὰ τοῦ Εὐριπίδου κινεῖ δυνατῶς τῆς φυγῆς κατηγορεῖν δοκοῦντος, ἴδωμεν ἃ λέγει καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐρωτῶν καὶ ἀποκρινόμενος (Phoen. 388)·

‘τί τὸ στέρεσθαι πατρίδος; ἦ κακὸν μέγα;’

‘μέγιστον· ἔργῳ δ’ ἐστὶ μεῖζον ἢ λόγῳ.’

‘τίς ὁ τρόπος αὐτοῦ; τί φυγάσιν τὸ δυστυχές;’

‘ἓν μὲν μέγιστον· οὐκ ἔχει παρρησίαν.’

‘δούλου τόδ’ εἶπας, μὴ λέγειν ἅ τις φρονεῖ.’

[606] [a] ‘τὴν τῶν κρατούντων ἀμαθίαν φέρειν χρεών.’

ταῦτα πρῶθ’ ‹ὁρᾷς› ὡς οὐκ ὀρθῶς οὐδ’ ἀληθῶς ἀξιοῦται. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ οὐ δούλου τό ‘μὴ λέγειν ἅ τις φρονεῖ’, ἀλλὰ νοῦν ἔχοντος ἀνδρὸς ἐν καιροῖς καὶ πράγμασιν ἐχεμυθίας καὶ σιωπῆς δεομένοις, ὥσπερ αὐτὸς ἀλλαχόθι βέλτιον εἴρηκε (fr. 413, 2)

 ‘σιγᾶν θ’ ὅπου δεῖ καὶ λέγειν ἵν’ ἀσφαλές·’

ἔπειτα ‘τὴν τῶν κρατούντων ἀμαθίαν’ οὐχ ἧττον οἴκοι μένοντας ἢ φεύγοντας ἀνάγκη φέρειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον πολλάκις οἱ μένοντες τῶν ἀπαλλαγέντων τοὺς ἰσχύοντας [b] ἐν πόλεσιν ἀδίκως τῷ συκοφαντεῖν ἢ βιάζεσθαι δεδίασι. τὸ δὲ μέγιστον καὶ ἀτοπώτατον, εἰ παρρησίαν τῶν φυγάδων ἀφαιρεῖται· θαυμαστὸν γάρ, εἰ Θεόδωρος ἀπαρρησίαστος ἦν, ὃς Λυσιμάχου τοῦ βασιλέως εἰπόντος πρὸς αὐτόν ‘ἡ πατρίς σε τοιοῦτον ὄντ’ ἐξέβαλε;’ ‘ναί,’ εἶπε ‘μὴ δυναμένη φέρειν ὥσπερ ἡ Σεμέλη τὸν Διόνυσον.’ ἐπιδείξαντος δ’ αὐτῷ Τελεσφόρον ἐν γαλεάγρᾳ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἐξορωρυγμένον καὶ περικεκομμένον τὴν ῥῖνα καὶ τὰ ὦτα καὶ τὴν γλῶτταν ἐκτετμημένον καὶ εἰπόντος ‘οὕτως ἐγὼ διατίθημι τοὺς κακῶς με ποιοῦντας·’ ‹’τί δὲ Θεοδώρῳ μέλει’, ἔφη, ‘πότερον ὑπὲρ γῆς ἢ ὑπὸ γῆς σήπεται;’› τί δέ; Διογένης οὐκ εἶχε παρρησίαν, ὃς εἰς τὸ Φιλίππου στρατόπεδον [c] παρελθών, ὁπηνίκα μαχούμενος ἐχώρει τοῖς Ἕλλησι, καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀναχθεὶς ὡς κατάσκοπος· ναί, κατάσκοπος ἔφη ἀφῖχθαι τῆς ἀπληστίας αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς ἀφροσύνης ἥκοντος ἐν βραχεῖ καιρῷ διακυβεῦσαι περὶ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἅμα καὶ τοῦ σώματος; τί δέ; Ἀννίβας ὁ Καρχηδόνιος οὐκ ἐχρῆτο παρρησίᾳ πρὸς Ἀντίοχον βασιλέα ὄντα φυγὰς ὤν, ὁπηνίκα καιροῦ διδόντος ἐκέλευσεν αὐτὸν ἐπιχειρεῖν τοῖς πολεμίοις, τοῦ δὲ θυσαμένου καὶ τὰ σπλάγχνα κωλύειν φάσκοντος ἐπετίμησεν εἰπών ‘σὺ τί κρέας λέγει σκοπεῖς, οὐ τί νοῦν ἔχων ἄνθρωπος;’ ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ γεωμετρῶν φυγὴ παρρησίαν οὐδὲ γραμματικῶν ἀφαιρεῖται, περὶ ὧν ἴσασι [d] καὶ μεμαθήκασι διαλεγομένων, πόθεν γε δὴ καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνθρώπων; ἀλλὰ τὸ ἀγεννὲς πανταχοῦ τὴν φωνήν ‘ἐμφράττει, τὴν γλῶσσαν ἀποστρέφει, ἄγχει, σιωπᾶν ποιεῖ (Dem. 19, 208).’ τὰ δ’ ἑξῆς τοῦ Εὐριπίδου ποῖά τιν’ ἐστίν; (Phoen. 396)

‘αἱ δ’ ἐλπίδες βόσκουσι φυγάδας, ὡς λόγος.’

‘καλοῖς βλέπουσαί γ’ ὄμμασιν, μέλλουσι δέ.’

καὶ τοῦτο τῆς ἀβελτερίας ἔγκλημα μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς φυγῆς ἐστιν. οὐ γὰρ οἱ μαθόντες οὐδ’ ἐπιστάμενοι χρῆσθαι τοῖς παροῦσιν, ἀλλ’ οἱ ἀεὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἐκκρεμάμενοι καὶ γλιχόμενοι τῶν ἀπόντων ὡς ἐπὶ σχεδίας διαφέρονται τῆς [e] ἐλπίδος, κἂν μηδέποτε τοῦ τείχους ἐκτὸς προέλθωσι. (Phoen. 402)

‘φίλοι δὲ πατρὸς καὶ ξένοι σ’ οὐκ ὠφέλουν;’

‘εὖ πρᾶσσε· τὰ φίλων δ’ οὐδέν, ἤν τι δυστυχῇς.’

‘οὐδ’ ηὑγένειά σ’ ᾖρεν εἰς ὕψος μέγα;’

‘κακὸν τὸ μὴ ἔχειν· τὸ γένος [δὲ] οὐκ ἔβοσκέ με.’

ταῦτ’ ἤδη καὶ ἀχάριστα τοῦ Πολυνείκους ἀτιμίαν μὲν εὐγενείας ἀφιλίαν δὲ τῆς φυγῆς κατηγοροῦντος, ὃς διὰ τὴν εὐγένειαν ἠξιώθη μὲν φυγὰς ὢν γάμων βασιλικῶν, φίλων δὲ συμμαχίᾳ καὶ δυνάμει τοσαύτῃ πεφραγμένος ἐστράτευσεν, [f] ὡς αὐτὸς μετὰ μικρὸν ὁμολογεῖ (v. 430)·

‘πολλοὶ ‹δὲ› Δαναῶν καὶ Μυκηναίων ἄκροι

πάρεισι, λυπρὰν χάριν ἀναγκαίαν δ’ ἐμοὶ

διδόντες.’

ὅμοια δὲ καὶ τὰ τῆς μητρὸς ὀλοφυρομένης (v. 344)· ‘ἐγὼ δέ σοι οὔτε πῦρ ἀνῆψα νόμιμον ἐν γάμοις .... ἀνυμέναια δ’ Ἰσμηνὸς ἐκηδεύθη λουτροφόρου χλιδᾶς.’ ταύτην ἔδει χαίρειν καὶ ἀγαπᾶν πυνθανομένην ναίοντα βασίλεια τηλικαῦτα τὸν υἱόν· ἡ δὲ θρηνοῦσα τὴν οὐκ ἀναφθεῖσαν λαμπάδα καὶ τὸν οὐ παρασχόντα λουτρὸν [607] [a] Ἰσμηνόν, ὡς ἐν Ἄργει μήθ’ ὕδωρ τῶν γαμούντων μήτε πῦρ ἐχόντων, τὰ τοῦ τύφου κακὰ καὶ τῆς ἀβελτερίας τῇ φυγῇ περιτίθησιν.

Ἀλλ’ ἐπονείδιστον ὁ φυγάς ἐστι; παρά γε τοῖς ἄφροσιν, οἳ καὶ τὸν πτωχὸν λοιδόρημα ποιοῦνται καὶ τὸν φαλακρὸν καὶ τὸν μικρὸν καὶ νὴ Δία τὸν ξένον καὶ τὸν μέτοικον. ἀλλὰ μὴν οἱ μὴ τούτοις ὑποφερόμενοι θαυμάζουσι τοὺς ἀγαθούς, κἂν πένητες ὦσι κἂν ξένοι κἂν φυγάδες. ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὁρῶμεν, ὥσπερ τὸν Παρθενῶνα καὶ τὸ Ἐλευσίνιον, οὕτω καὶ τὸ Θησεῖον ἅπαντας προσκυνοῦντας; καὶ μὴν ἔφυγε Θησεὺς ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν, δι’ ὃν οἰκοῦσι νῦν [εἰς] [b] Ἀθήνας ἄνθρωποι, καὶ πόλιν ἀπέβαλεν ἣν οὐκ ἔσχεν ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ἐποίησε. τῇ δ’ Ἐλευσῖνι τί λείπεται καλόν, ἂν αἰσχυνώμεθα τὸν Εὔμολπον, ὃς ἐκ Θρᾴκης μεταστὰς ἐμύησε καὶ μυεῖ τοὺς Ἕλληνας; Κόδρος δὲ τίνος ὢν ἐβασίλευσεν; οὐ Μελάνθου φυγάδος ἐκ Μεσσήνης; τὸ δὲ τοῦ Ἀντισθένους οὐκ ἐπαινεῖς πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα ὅτι ‘Φρυγία σού ἐστιν ἡ μήτηρ,’ ‘καὶ γὰρ ἡ τῶν θεῶν’; τί οὖν οὐ καὶ σὺ λοιδορούμενος φυγὰς ἀποκρίνῃ ‘καὶ γὰρ ὁ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους τοῦ καλλινίκου πατὴρ φυγὰς ἦν, καὶ ὁ τοῦ Διονύσου πάππος, ὡς ἐξεπέμφθη τὴν Εὐρώπην ἀνευρεῖν, οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ἐπανῆλθε (Eur. fr. 819, 3) ‘Φοίνιξ πεφυκώς, ἐκ δ’ ὁρίζεται γένος’ εἰς τὰς Θήβας παραγενόμενος ‘εὔιον [c] ὀρσιγύναικα Διόνυσον μαινομέναις ἀνθέοντα τιμαῖς’ (Lyr. adesp. 131);’ καὶ περὶ μὲν ὧν Αἰσχύλος ᾐνίξατο καὶ ὑπεδήλωσεν εἰπών (Suppl. 214)

‘ἁγνόν τ’ Ἀπόλλω φυγάδ’ ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ θεόν’

‘εὔστομά μοι κείσθω’ καθ’ Ἡρόδοτον (II 171), ὁ δ’ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς φιλοσοφίας προαναφωνήσας (fr. 115, 1. 3. 5. 6. 13)

‘ἔστιν ἀνάγκης χρῆμα, θεῶν ψήφισμα παλαιόν,

εὖτέ τις ἀμπλακίῃσι φόνῳ φίλα γυῖα μιήνῃ,

δαίμονες οἵ τε μακραίωνος λελάχασι βίοιο,

τρίς μιν μυρίας ὥρας ἀπὸ μακάρων ἀλάλησθαι.

[d] τὴν καὶ ἐγὼ νῦν εἶμι φυγὰς θεόθεν καὶ ἀλήτης’

οὐχ ἑαυτόν, ἀλλ’ ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ πάντας ἀποδείκνυσι μετανάστας ἐνταῦθα καὶ ξένους καὶ φυγάδας ἡμᾶς ὄντας. ‘οὐ γὰρ αἷμα’ φησίν ‘ἡμῖν οὐδὲ πνεῦμα συγκραθέν, ὦ ἄνθρωποι, ψυχῆς οὐσίαν καὶ ἀρχὴν παρέσχεν, ἀλλ’ ἐκ τούτων τὸ σῶμα συμπέπλασται γηγενὲς καὶ θνητόν’, τῆς δὲ ψυχῆς ἀλλαχόθεν ἡκούσης δεῦρο τὴν γένεσιν ἀποδημίαν ὑποκορίζεται τῷ πραοτάτῳ τῶν ὀνομάτων. τὸ δ’ ἀληθέστατον, φεύγει καὶ πλανᾶται θείοις ἐλαυνομένη δόγμασι [e] καὶ νόμοις, εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἐν νήσῳ σάλον ἐχούσῃ πολύν, καθάπερ φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων (Phaedr. 250c), ‘ὀστρέου τρόπον’ ἐνδεδεμένη τῷ σώματι διὰ τὸ μὴ ἀναφέρειν μηδὲ μνημονεύειν (Emp. fr. 119, 1) ‘ἐξ οἵης τιμῆς τε καὶ ὅσσου μήκεος ὄλβου’ μεθέστηκεν, οὐ Σάρδεων Ἀθήνας οὐδὲ Κορίνθου Λῆμνον ἢ Σκῦρον ἀλλ’ οὐρανοῦ καὶ σελήνης γῆν ἀμειψαμένη καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ γῆς βίον, ἂν μικρὸν ἐνταῦθα τόπον ἐκ τόπου παραλλάξῃ, δυσανασχετεῖ καὶ ξενοπαθεῖ καθάπερ φυτὸν ἀγεννὲς ἀπομαραινομένη. καίτοι φυτῷ μὲν ἔστι τις χώρα μᾶλλον ἑτέρας ἑτέρα πρόσφορος, ἐν ᾗ τρέφεται καὶ βλαστάνει βέλτιον, ἀνθρώπου δ’ οὐδεὶς ἀφαιρεῖται τόπος [f] εὐδαιμονίαν, ὥσπερ οὐδ’ ἀρετὴν οὐδὲ φρόνησιν. ἀλλ’ Ἀναξαγόρας (A 38) μὲν ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ τὸν τοῦ κύκλου τετραγωνισμὸν ἔγραφε, Σωκράτης δὲ φάρμακον πίνων ἐφιλοσόφει καὶ παρεκάλει φιλοσοφεῖν τοὺς συνήθεις εὐδαιμονιζόμενος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν· τὸν δὲ Φαέθοντα καὶ τὸν Τάνταλον εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀναβάντας οἱ ποιηταὶ λέγουσι ταῖς μεγίσταις συμφοραῖς περιπεσεῖν διὰ τὴν ἀφροσύνην.

Consolatio ad uxorem

ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΗΤΙΚΟΣ ΠΡΟΣ ΤΗΝ ΓΥΝΑΙΚΑ

[608] Πλούταρχος τῇ γυναικὶ εὖ πράττειν.

[b] Ὃν ἔπεμψας ἀπαγγελοῦντα περὶ τῆς τοῦ παιδίου τελευτῆς, ἔοικε διημαρτηκέναι καθ’ ὁδὸν εἰς Ἀθήνας πορευόμενος· ἐγὼ δ’ εἰς Τάναγραν ἐλθὼν ἐπυθόμην παρὰ τῆς θυγατριδῆς. τὰ μὲν οὖν περὶ τὴν ταφὴν ἤδη νομίζω γεγονέναι, γεγονότα δ’ ἐχέτω ὥς σοι μέλλει καὶ νῦν ἀλυπότατα καὶ πρὸς τὸ λοιπὸν ἕξειν. εἰ δέ τι βουλομένη μὴ πεποίηκας ἀλλὰ μένεις τὴν ἐμὴν γνώμην, οἴει δὲ κουφότερον οἴσειν γενομένου, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔσται δίχα πάσης περιεργίας καὶ δεισιδαιμονίας, ὧν ἥκιστά σοι μέτεστι.

Μόνον, ὦ γύναι, τήρει κἀμὲ τῷ πάθει καὶ σεαυτὴν [c] ἐπὶ τοῦ καθεστῶτος. ἐγὼ γὰρ αὐτὸς μὲν οἶδα καὶ ὁρίζω τὸ συμβεβηκὸς ἡλίκον ἐστίν· ἂν δέ σε τῷ δυσφορεῖν ὑπερβάλλουσαν εὕρω, τοῦτό μοι μᾶλλον ἐνοχλήσει τοῦ γεγονότος. καίτοι οὐδ’ αὐτός ‘ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ’ ἀπὸ πέτρης’ ἐγενόμην· οἶσθα δὲ καὶ αὐτὴ τοσούτων μοι τέκνων ἀνατροφῆς κοινωνήσασα, πάντων ἐκτεθραμμένων οἴκοι δι’ αὐτῶν ἡμῶν, τοῦτο δέ, ὅτι καὶ σοὶ ποθούσῃ θυγάτηρ μετὰ τέσσαρας υἱοὺς ἐγεννήθη κἀμοὶ τὸ σὸν ὄνομα θέσθαι παρέσχεν ἀφορμήν, [οἶδα] ἀγαπητὸν διαφερόντως γενόμενον. πρόσεστι δὲ καὶ δριμύτης ἰδία τις τῷ πρὸς τὰ τηλικαῦτα φιλοστόργῳ τὸ εὐφραῖνον αὐτῶν καθαρόν τε ὂν ἀτεχνῶς καὶ πάσης ἀμιγὲς ὀργῆς καὶ μέμψεως. αὕτη [d] δὲ καὶ φύσει θαυμαστὴν ἔσχεν εὐκολίαν καὶ πραότητα, καὶ τὸ ἀντιφιλοῦν καὶ χαριζόμενον αὐτῆς ἡδονὴν ἅμα καὶ κατανόησιν τοῦ φιλανθρώπου παρεῖχεν· οὐ γὰρ μόνον βρέφεσιν ἄλλοις ἀλλὰ καὶ σκεύεσιν, οἷς ἐτέρπετο, καὶ παιγνίοις ἐκέλευε τὴν τίτθην διδόναι [καὶ προσφέρειν τὸν μαστὸν] καὶ προσεκαλεῖτο καθάπερ πρὸς τράπεζαν ἰδίαν ὑπὸ φιλανθρωπίας, μεταδιδοῦσα τῶν καλῶν ὧν εἶχε καὶ τὰ ἥδιστα κοινουμένη τοῖς εὐφραίνουσιν αὐτήν.

Ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὁρῶ, γύναι, διὰ τί ταῦτα καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ζώσης μὲν ἔτερπεν ἡμᾶς νυνὶ δ’ ἀνιάσει καὶ συνταράξει λαμβάνοντας ἐπίνοιαν αὐτῶν. ἀλλὰ καὶ δέδια πάλιν, μὴ [e] συνεκβάλωμεν τῷ λυποῦντι τὴν μνήμην, ὥσπερ ἡ Κλυμένη λέγουσα (Eur. fr. 785) ‘μισῶ δ’ ἀγκύλον τόξον κρανείας, γυμνάσιά τ’ †οἴχοιτ’ ἀεί’ φεύγουσα καὶ τρέμουσα τὴν ὑπόμνησιν τοῦ παιδός, ὅτι συμπαροῦσαν λύπην εἶχε· πᾶν γὰρ ἡ φύσις φεύγει τὸ δυσχεραινόμενον. δεῖ δέ, ὥσπερ αὐτὴ πάντων ἥδιστον ἡμῖν ἄσπασμα καὶ θέαμα καὶ ἄκουσμα παρεῖχεν ἑαυτήν, οὕτω καὶ τὴν ἐπίνοιαν αὐτῆς ἐνδιαιτᾶσθαι καὶ συμβιοῦν ἡμῖν πλέον [f] ἔχουσαν μᾶλλον δὲ πολλαπλάσιον τὸ εὐφραῖνον ἢ τὸ λυποῦν· εἴπερ ἄρα τι τῶν λόγων, οὓς πολλάκις εἰρήκαμεν πρὸς ἑτέρους, εἰκός ἐστι καὶ ἡμῖν ὄφελος ἐν καιρῷ γενέσθαι, καὶ μὴ καθῆσθαι μηδ’ ἐγκεκλεῖσθαι πολλαπλασίας ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ἐκείναις λύπας ἀνταποδιδόντας.

Καὶ τοῦτο λέγουσιν οἱ παραγενόμενοι καὶ θαυμάζουσιν, ὡς οὐδ’ ἱμάτιον ἀνείληφας πένθιμον οὐδὲ σαυτῇ τινα προσήγαγες ἢ θεραπαινίσιν ἀμορφίαν καὶ αἰκίαν, οὐδ’ ἦν παρασκευὴ πολυτελείας πανηγυρικῆς περὶ τὴν ταφήν, ἀλλ’ ἐπράττετο κοσμίως πάντα καὶ σιωπῇ μετὰ [609] [a] τῶν ἀναγκαίων. ἐγὼ δὲ τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἐθαύμαζον, εἰ μηδέποτε καλλωπισαμένη περὶ θέατρον ἢ πομπὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὰς ἄχρηστον ἡγησαμένη τὴν πολυτέλειαν ἐν τοῖς σκυθρωποῖς διεφύλαξας τὸ ἀφελὲς καὶ λιτόν· οὐ γάρ ‘ἐν βακχεύμασι (Eur. Bacch. 317)’ δεῖ μόνον τὴν σώφρονα μένειν ἀδιάφθορον, ἀλλὰ μηδὲν ἧττον οἴεσθαι τὸν ἐν πένθεσι σάλον καὶ τὸ κίνημα τοῦ πάθους ἐγκρατείας δεῖσθαι διαμαχομένης οὐ πρὸς τὸ φιλόστοργον, ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσιν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸ ἀκόλαστον τῆς ψυχῆς. τῷ μὲν γὰρ φιλοστόργῳ χαριζόμεθα τὸ ποθεῖν καὶ τὸ τιμᾶν [b] καὶ τὸ μεμνῆσθαι τῶν ἀπογενομένων, ἡ δὲ θρήνων ἄπληστος ἐπιθυμία καὶ πρὸς ὀλοφύρσεις ἐξάγουσα καὶ κοπετοὺς αἰσχρὰ μὲν οὐχ ἧττον τῆς περὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς ἀκρασίας, λόγῳ δὲ συγγνώμης ἔτυχεν, ὅτι τὸ λυπηρὸν αὐτῆς καὶ πικρὸν ἀντὶ τοῦ τερπνοῦ τῷ αἰσχρῷ πρόσεστι. τί γὰρ ἀλογώτερον ἢ τὸ γέλωτος μὲν ὑπερβολὰς καὶ περιχαρείας ἀφαιρεῖν, τοῖς δὲ κλαυθμῶν καὶ ὀδυρμῶν ῥεύμασιν ἐκ μιᾶς πηγῆς φερομένων εἰς ἅπαν ἐφιέναι; καὶ περὶ μύρου μὲν ἐνίους καὶ πορφύρας διαμάχεσθαι ταῖς γυναιξί, κουρὰς δὲ συγχωρεῖν πενθίμους καὶ βαφὰς ἐσθῆτος μελαίνας καὶ [c] καθίσεις ἀμόρφους καὶ κατακλίσεις ἐπιπόνους; καί, ὃ δὴ πάντων ἐστὶ χαλεπώτατον, ἂν οἰκέτας ἢ θεραπαινίδας κολάζωσιν ἀμέτρως καὶ ἀδίκως, ἐνίστασθαι καὶ κωλύειν αὐτάς, ὑφ’ ἑαυτῶν δ’ ὠμῶς κολαζομένας καὶ πικρῶς περιορᾶν ἐν πάθεσι καὶ τύχαις ῥᾳστώνης καὶ φιλανθρωπίας δεομέναις; ἀλλ’ ἡμῖν γε, γύναι, πρὸς ἀλλήλους οὔτ’ ἐκείνης ἐδέησε τῆς μάχης οὔτε ταύτης οἶμαι δεήσειν. εὐτελείᾳ μὲν γὰρ τῇ περὶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἀθρυψίᾳ τῇ περὶ δίαιταν οὐδείς ἐστι τῶν φιλοσόφων, ὃν οὐκ ἐξέπληξας ἐν ὁμιλίᾳ καὶ συνηθείᾳ γενόμενον ἡμῖν, οὐδὲ τῶν πολιτῶν, [d] ᾧ μὴ θέαμα παρέχεις ἐν ἱεροῖς καὶ θυσίαις καὶ θεάτροις τὴν σεαυτῆς ἀφέλειαν. ἤδη δὲ καὶ περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πολλὴν εὐστάθειαν ἐπεδείξω τὸ πρεσβύτατον τῶν τέκνων ἀποβαλοῦσα καὶ πάλιν ἐκείνου τοῦ καλοῦ Χαίρωνος ἡμᾶς προλιπόντος. μέμνημαι γὰρ ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ξένους μοι συνοδεύσαντας ἀπηγγελμένης τῆς τοῦ παιδίου τελευτῆς καὶ συνελθόντας ἅμα τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐς τὴν οἰκίαν· ἐπεὶ δὲ πολλὴν κατάστασιν ἑώρων καὶ ἡσυχίαν, ὡς ὕστερον διηγοῦντο καὶ πρὸς ἑτέρους, ᾤοντο μηδὲν εἶναι δεινὸν ἀλλὰ [e] κενὸν ἄλλως ἐξενηνέχθαι λόγον· οὕτω σωφρόνως κατεκόσμησας τὸν οἶκον ἐν καιρῷ πολλὴν ἀκοσμίας ἐξουσίαν διδόντι, καίτοι τῷ σεαυτῆς ἐκεῖνον ἐξέθρεψας μαστῷ καὶ τομῆς ἠνέσχου τῆς θηλῆς περίθλασιν λαβούσης· γενναῖα [γὰρ] ταῦτα καὶ φιλόστοργα. τὰς δὲ πολλὰς ὁρῶμεν μητέρας, ὅταν ὑπ’ ἄλλων τὰ παιδία καθαρθῇ καὶ γανωθῇ, καθάπερ παίγνια λαμβανούσας εἰς χεῖρας, εἶτ’ ἀποθανόντων ἐκχεομένας εἰς κενὸν καὶ ἀχάριστον πένθος, οὐχ ὑπ’ εὐνοίας (εὐλόγιστον γὰρ εὔνοια καὶ καλόν), ἀλλὰ μικρῷ τῷ φυσικῷ πάθει πολὺ συγκεραννύμενον τὸ πρὸς [f] κενὴν δόξαν ἄγρια ποιεῖ καὶ μανικὰ καὶ δυσεξίλαστα ‹τὰ› πένθη. καὶ τοῦτο φαίνεται μὴ λαθεῖν Αἴσωπον· ἔφη γὰρ οὗτος ὅτι τοῦ Διὸς τὰς τιμὰς διανέμοντος τοῖς θεοῖς ᾔτει καὶ τὸ Πένθος. ἔδωκεν οὖν αὐτῷ, παρὰ τοῖς αἱρουμένοις δὲ μόνοις καὶ θέλουσιν. ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν οὖν οὕτω τοῦτο γινόμενόν ἐστιν· αὐτὸς γὰρ ἕκαστος εἰσάγει τὸ πένθος ἐφ’ ἑαυτόν. ὅταν δ’ ἱδρυθῇ χρόνῳ καὶ γένηται σύντροφον καὶ σύνοικον, οὐδὲ πάνυ βουλομένων ἀπαλλάττεται. διὸ δεῖ μάχεσθαι περὶ θύρας αὐτῷ καὶ μὴ προίεσθαι φρουρὰν δι’ [610] [a] ἐσθῆτος ἢ κουρᾶς ἤ τινος ἄλλου τῶν τοιούτων, ἃ καθ’ ἡμέραν ἀπαντῶντα καὶ δυσωποῦντα μικρὰν καὶ στενὴν καὶ ἀνέξοδον καὶ ἀμείλικτον καὶ ψοφοδεῆ ποιεῖ τὴν διάνοιαν, ὡς οὔτε γέλωτος αὐτῇ μετὸν οὔτε φωτὸς οὔτε φιλανθρώπου τραπέζης τοιαῦτα περικειμένῃ καὶ μεταχειριζομένῃ διὰ τὸ πένθος. ἀμέλειαι δὲ σώματος ἕπονται τῷ κακῷ τούτῳ καὶ διαβολαὶ πρὸς ἄλειμμα καὶ λουτρὸν καὶ τὴν ἄλλην δίαιταν· ὧν πᾶν τοὐναντίον ἔδει τὴν ψυχὴν πονοῦσαν αὐτὴν βοηθεῖσθαι διὰ τοῦ σώματος ἐρρωμένου. πολὺ γὰρ ἀμβλύνεται καὶ χαλᾶται τοῦ λυποῦντος, ὥσπερ [b] [ἐν] εὐδίᾳ κῦμα, τῇ γαλήνῃ τοῦ σώματος διαχεόμενον, ἐὰν δ’ αὐχμὸς ἐγγένηται καὶ τραχύτης ἐκ φαύλης διαίτης καὶ μηδὲν εὐμενὲς μηδὲ χρηστὸν ἀναπέμπῃ τὸ σῶμα τῇ ψυχῇ πλὴν ὀδύνας καὶ λύπας ὥσπερ τινὰς πικρὰς καὶ δυσχερεῖς ἀναθυμιάσεις, οὐδὲ βουλομένοις ἔτι ῥᾳδίως ἀναλαβεῖν ἔστι. τοιαῦτα λαμβάνει πάθη τὴν ψυχὴν οὕτω κακωθεῖσαν. καὶ μήν, ὅ γε μέγιστον ἐν τούτῳ καὶ φοβερώτατόν ἐστιν, οὐκ ἂν φοβηθείην ‘κακῶν γυναικῶν εἰσόδους’ (Eur. Andr. 930) καὶ φωνὰς καὶ συνεπιθρηνήσεις, αἷς ἐκτρίβουσι καὶ παραθήγουσι τὴν λύπην, οὔθ’ ὑπ’ ἄλλων [c] οὔτ’ αὐτὴν ἐφ’ ἑαυτῆς ἐῶσαι μαρανθῆναι. γινώσκω γὰρ ποίους ἔναγχος ἀγῶνας ἠγωνίσω τῇ Θέωνος ἀδελφῇ βοηθοῦσα καὶ μαχομένη ταῖς μετ’ ὀλοφυρμῶν καὶ ἀλαλαγμῶν ἔξωθεν ἐπιούσαις, ὥσπερ ἀτεχνῶς πῦρ ἐπὶ πῦρ φερούσαις. τὰς μὲν γὰρ οἰκίας τῶν φίλων ὅταν καιομένας ἴδωσι, σβεννύουσιν ὡς ἔχει τάχους ἕκαστος ἢ δυνάμεως, ταῖς δὲ ψυχαῖς φλεγομέναις αὐτοὶ προσφέρουσιν ὑπεκκαύματα. καὶ τῷ μὲν ὀφθαλμιῶντι τὰς χεῖρας οὐκ ἐῶσι προσάγειν τὸν βουλόμενον οὐδ’ ἅπτονται τοῦ φλεγμαίνοντος, ὁ δὲ πενθῶν κάθηται παντὶ τῷ προστυχόντι παρέχων [d] ὥσπερ ῥεῦμα κινεῖν καὶ διαγριαίνειν τὸ πάθος ἐκ μικροῦ τοῦ γαργαλίζοντος καὶ κινοῦντος εἰς πολλὴν καὶ δυσχερῆ κάκωσιν ἀναξαινόμενον. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν οἶδ’ ὅτι φυλάξῃ· πειρῶ δὲ τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ μεταφέρουσα σεαυτὴν ἀποκαθιστάναι πολλάκις εἰς ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον, ἐν ᾧ μηδέπω τοῦ παιδίου τούτου γεγονότος μηδὲν ἔγκλημα πρὸς τὴν τύχην εἴχομεν, εἶτα τὸν νῦν καιρὸν τοῦτον ἐκείνῳ συνάπτειν, ὡς ὁμοίων πάλιν τῶν περὶ ἡμᾶς γεγονότων. ἐπεὶ τὴν γένεσιν, ὦ γύναι, τοῦ τέκνου δυσχεραίνειν δόξομεν ἀμεμπτότερα ποιοῦντες αὑτοῖς τὰ πρὶν ἐκείνην γενέσθαι [e] πράγματα. τὴν δ’ ἐν μέσῳ διετίαν ἐξαιρεῖν μὲν οὐ δεῖ τῆς μνήμης, ὡς δὲ χάριν καὶ ἀπόλαυσιν παρασχοῦσαν ἐν ἡδονῇ τίθεσθαι καὶ μὴ τὸ μικρὸν ἀγαθὸν μέγα νομίζειν κακόν, μηδ’ ὅτι τὸ ἐλπιζόμενον οὐ προσέθηκεν ἡ τύχη, καὶ περὶ τοῦ δοθέντος ἀχαριστεῖν. ἀεὶ μὲν γὰρ ἡ περὶ τὸ θεῖον εὐφημία καὶ τὸ πρὸς τὴν τύχην ἵλεων καὶ ἀμεμφὲς καλὸν καὶ ἡδὺν ἀποδίδωσι καρπόν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς τοιούτοις ὁ μάλιστα τῇ μνήμῃ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀπαρυτόμενος καὶ τοῦ βίου πρὸς τὰ φωτεινὰ καὶ λαμπρὰ μεταστρέφων καὶ μεταφέρων ἐκ τῶν σκοτεινῶν καὶ ταρακτικῶν τὴν διάνοιαν ἢ [f] παντάπασιν ἔσβεσε τὸ λυποῦν ἢ τῇ πρὸς τοὐναντίον μίξει μικρὸν καὶ ἀμαυρὸν ἐποίησεν. ὥσπερ γὰρ τὸ μύρον ἀεὶ μὲν εὐφραίνει τὴν ὄσφρησιν πρὸς δὲ τὰ δυσώδη φάρμακόν ἐστιν, οὕτως ἡ ἐπίνοια τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἐν τοῖς κακοῖς καὶ βοηθήματος ἀναγκαίου παρέχεται χρείαν τοῖς μὴ φεύγουσι τὸ μεμνῆσθαι τῶν χρηστῶν μηδὲ πάντα καὶ πάντως μεμφομένοις τὴν τύχην. ὅπερ ἡμῖν παθεῖν οὐ προσήκει συκοφαντοῦσι τὸν ἑαυτῶν βίον, [611] [a] εἰ μίαν ἔσχηκεν ὥσπερ βιβλίον ἀλοιφὴν ἐν πᾶσι καθαροῖς καὶ ἀκεραίοις τοῖς ἄλλοις.

Ὅτι μὲν γὰρ ἐξ ὀρθῶν ἐπιλογισμῶν εἰς εὐσταθῆ διάθεσιν τελευτώντων ἤρτηται τὸ μακάριον, αἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς τύχης τροπαὶ μεγάλας ἀποκλίσεις οὐ ποιοῦσιν οὐδ’ ἐπιφέρουσι συγχυτικὰς ὀλισθήσεις τοῦ βίου, πολλάκις ἀκήκοας. εἰ δὲ δεῖ καὶ ἡμᾶς καθάπερ οἱ πολλοὶ τοῖς ἔξωθεν κυβερνᾶσθαι πράγμασι καὶ τὰ παρὰ τῆς τύχης ἀπαριθμεῖν καὶ κριταῖς χρῆσθαι πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν τοῖς ἐπιτυχοῦσιν ἀνθρώποις, μὴ σκόπει τὰ νῦν δάκρυα καὶ τὰς ἐπιθρηνήσεις [b] τῶν εἰσιόντων ἔθει τινὶ φαύλῳ περαινομένας πρὸς ἕκαστον, ἀλλ’ ἐννόει μᾶλλον ὡς ζηλουμένη διατελεῖς ὑπὸ τούτων ἐπὶ τέκνοις καὶ οἴκῳ καὶ βίῳ. καὶ δεινόν ἐστιν ἑτέρους μὲν ἡδέως ἂν ἑλέσθαι τὴν σὴν τύχην καὶ τούτου προσόντος ἐφ’ ᾧ νῦν ἀνιώμεθα, σὲ δ’ ἐγκαλεῖν καὶ δυσφορεῖν παρούσῃ καὶ μηδ’ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ δάκνοντος αἰσθάνεσθαι πηλίκας ἔχει τὰ σῳζόμενα χάριτας ἡμῖν· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ τοὺς ἀκεφάλους καὶ μειούρους Ὁμήρου στίχους ἐκλέγοντες τὰ δὲ πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα τῶν πεποιημένων ὑπέρευ παρορῶντες, οὕτως ἐξακριβοῦν καὶ συκοφαντεῖν τοῦ βίου τὰ [c] φαῦλα, τοῖς δὲ χρηστοῖς ἀνάρθρως καὶ συγκεχυμένως ἐπιβάλλουσαν ὅμοιόν τι τοῖς ἀνελευθέροις καὶ φιλαργύροις πάσχειν, οἳ πολλὰ συνάγοντες οὐ χρῶνται παροῦσιν ἀλλὰ θρηνοῦσι καὶ δυσφοροῦσιν ἀπολομένων. εἰ δ’ ἐκείνης ἔχεις οἶκτον ἀγάμου καὶ ἄπαιδος οἰχομένης, αὖθις ἔχεις ἐπ’ ἄλλοις ἡδίω σεαυτὴν ποιεῖν μηδενὸς τούτων ἀτελῆ μηδ’ ἄμοιρον γενομένην· οὐ γάρ ἐστι ταῦτα μεγάλα μὲν τοῖς στερομένοις ἀγαθὰ μικρὰ δὲ τοῖς ἔχουσιν. ἐκείνη δ’ εἰς τὸ ἄλυπον ἥκουσα λυπεῖν ἡμᾶς οὐ δεῖται· τί γὰρ ἡμῖν ἀπ’ ἐκείνης κακόν, εἰ μηδὲν ἐκείνῃ νῦν ἐστι λυπηρόν; καὶ [d] γὰρ αἱ τῶν μεγάλων στερήσεις ἀποβάλλουσι τὸ λυποῦν εἰς τὸ μὴ δεῖσθαι περιγενόμεναι. Τιμοξένα δ’ ἡ σὴ μικρῶν μὲν ἐστέρηται, μικρὰ γὰρ ἔγνω καὶ μικροῖς ἔχαιρεν· ὧν δ’ οὔτ’ αἴσθησιν ἔσχεν οὔτ’ εἰς ἐπίνοιαν ἦλθεν [οὔτ’ ἔλαβεν ἐπίνοιαν], πῶς ἂν στέρεσθαι λέγοιτο;

Καὶ μὴν ἃ τῶν ἄλλων ἀκούεις, οἳ πείθουσι πολλοὺς λέγοντες ὡς οὐδὲν οὐδαμῇ τῷ διαλυθέντι κακὸν οὐδὲ λυπηρόν ἐστιν, οἶδ’ ὅτι κωλύει σε πιστεύειν ὁ πάτριος λόγος καὶ τὰ μυστικὰ σύμβολα τῶν περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμῶν, ἃ σύνισμεν ἀλλήλοις οἱ κοινωνοῦντες. ὡς οὖν ἄφθαρτον οὖσαν τὴν ψυχὴν διανοοῦ ταὐτὸ ταῖς [e] ἁλισκομέναις ὄρνισι πάσχειν· ἂν μὲν γὰρ πολὺν ἐντραφῇ τῷ σώματι χρόνον καὶ γένηται τῷ βίῳ τούτῳ τιθασὸς ὑπὸ πραγμάτων πολλῶν καὶ μακρᾶς συνηθείας, αὖθις καταίρουσα πάλιν ἐνδύεται καὶ οὐκ ἀνίησιν οὐδὲ λήγει τοῖς ἐνταῦθα συμπλεκομένη πάθεσι καὶ τύχαις διὰ τῶν γενέσεων. μὴ γὰρ οἴου λοιδορεῖσθαι καὶ κακῶς ἀκούειν τὸ γῆρας διὰ τὴν ῥυσότητα καὶ τὴν πολιὰν καὶ τὴν ἀσθένειαν τοῦ σώματος· ἀλλὰ τοῦτ’ αὐτοῦ τὸ χαλεπώτατόν ἐστιν, ὅτι τὴν ψυχὴν ἕωλόν τε ποιεῖ ταῖς μνήμαις τῶν ἐκεῖ καὶ [f] λιπαρῆ περὶ ταῦτα καὶ κάμπτει καὶ πιέζει, τὸν σχηματισμόν, ὃν ἔσχεν ὑπὸ τοῦ σώματος ἐν τῷ ‹προς›πεπονθέναι, διαφυλάττουσαν. ἡ δὲ ληφθεῖσα μὲν .... ὑπὸ κρειττόνων ἔχεται, καθάπερ ἐκ καμπῆς ὑγρᾶς καὶ μαλθακῆς ἀναχαιτίσασα πρὸς ὃ πέφυκεν. ὥσπερ γὰρ τὸ πῦρ, ἄν τις ἀποσβέσας εὐθὺς ἐξάπτῃ, πάλιν ἀναρριπίζεται καὶ ἀναλαμβάνει ταχέως ....

‘ὅπως ὤκιστα πύλας Ἀίδαο περῆσαι’ (Theogn. 427),

πρὶν ἔρωτα πολὺν ἐγγενέσθαι τῶν αὐτόθι πραγμάτων καὶ μαλαχθῆναι πρὸς τὸ σῶμα καὶ συντακῆναι καθάπερ ὑπὸ φαρμάκων.

[612] [a] Τοῖς δὲ πατρίοις καὶ παλαιοῖς ἔθεσι καὶ νόμοις ἐμφαίνεται μᾶλλον ἡ περὶ τούτων ἀλήθεια. τοῖς γὰρ αὑτῶν νηπίοις ἀποθανοῦσιν οὔτε χοὰς ἐπιφέρουσιν οὔτ’ ἄλλα δρῶσι περὶ αὐτὰ οἷ’ εἰκὸς ὑπὲρ θανόντων ποιεῖν [τοὺς ἄλλους]· οὐ γὰρ μέτεστι γῆς οὐδὲν οὐδὲ τῶν περὶ γῆν αὐτοῖς· οὐδ’ αὐτοῦ περὶ ταφὰς καὶ μνήματα καὶ προθέσεις νεκρῶν φιλοχωροῦσι καὶ παρακάθηνται τοῖς σώμασιν· οὐ γὰρ ἐῶσιν οἱ νόμοι ‹περὶ› τοὺς τηλικούτους, ὡς οὐχ ὅσιον εἰς βελτίονα καὶ θειοτέραν μοῖραν ἅμα καὶ χώραν μεθεστηκότας .... ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ ἀπιστεῖν χαλεπώτερόν [b] ἐστιν αὐτοῖς ἢ τὸ πιστεύειν, τὰ μὲν ἐκτὸς οὕτως ὡς οἱ νόμοι προστάσσουσιν ἔχωμεν, τὰ δ’ ἐντὸς ἔτι μᾶλλον ἀμίαντα καὶ καθαρὰ καὶ σώφρονα.

Quaestiones convivales

ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΑΚΩΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΑ Θ

ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΠΡΩΤΟΝ

Τὸ ‘μισέω μνάμονα συμπόταν’ (Lyr. adesp. 141 II p. 160 D.), ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, ἔνιοι πρὸς τοὺς ἐπιστάθμους εἰρῆσθαι λέγουσιν, φορτικοὺς ἐπιεικῶς καὶ ἀναγώγους ἐν τῷ πίνειν ὄντας· οἱ γὰρ ἐν Σικελίᾳ Δωριεῖς ὡς ἔοικε τὸν ἐπίσταθμον ‘μνάμονα’ προσηγόρευον. ἔνιοι [d] δὲ τὴν παροιμίαν οἴονται τοῖς παρὰ πότον λεγομένοις καὶ πραττομένοις ἀμνηστίαν ἐπάγειν· διὸ τήν τε λήθην οἱ πάτριοι λόγοι καὶ τὸν νάρθηκα τῷ θεῷ συγκαθιεροῦσιν, ὡς ἢ μηδενὸς δέον μνημονεύειν τῶν ἐν οἴνῳ πλημμεληθέντων ἢ παντελῶς ἐλαφρᾶς καὶ παιδικῆς νουθεσίας δεομένων. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ σοὶ δοκεῖ τῶν μὲν ἀτόπων ἡ λήθη τῷ ὄντι σοφὴ κατ’ Εὐριπίδην (Or. 213) εἶναι, τὸ δ’ ὅλως ἀμνημονεῖν τῶν ἐν οἴνῳ μὴ μόνον τῷ φιλοποιῷ λεγομένῳ μάχεσθαι τῆς τραπέζης, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων τοὺς ἐλλογιμωτάτους ἀντιμαρτυροῦντας ἔχειν, Πλάτωνα καὶ Ξενοφῶντα καὶ Ἀριστοτέλην καὶ Σπεύσιππον Ἐπίκουρόν τε καὶ Πρύτανιν καὶ Ἱερώνυμον καὶ Δίωνα τὸν ἐξ Ἀκαδημίας, [e] ὡς ἄξιόν τινος σπουδῆς πεποιημένους ἔργον ἀναγράψασθαι λόγους παρὰ πότον γενομένους, ᾠήθης τε δεῖν ἡμᾶς τῶν σποράδην πολλάκις ἔν τε Ῥώμῃ μεθ’ ὑμῶν καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι παρούσης ἅμα τραπέζης καὶ κύλικος φιλολογηθέντων συναγαγεῖν τὰ ἐπιτήδεια, πρὸς τοῦτο γενόμενος τρία μὲν ἤδη σοι πέπομφα τῶν βιβλίων, ἑκάστου δέκα προβλήματα περιέχοντος, πέμψω δὲ καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ταχέως, ἂν ταῦτα δόξῃ μὴ παντελῶς ἄμουσα μηδ’ ἀπροσδιόνυσ’ εἶναι.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Α

Εἰ δεῖ φιλοσοφεῖν παρὰ πότον

 Πρῶτον δὲ πάντων τέτακται τὸ περὶ τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν παρὰ πότον. μέμνησαι γὰρ ὅτι, ζητήσεως Ἀθήνησι μετὰ δεῖπνον γενομένης εἰ χρηστέον ἐν οἴνῳ φιλοσόφοις [f] λόγοις καὶ τί μέτρον ἔστι χρωμένοις, Ἀρίστων παρών ‘εἰσὶν γάρ’ ἔφησε ‘πρὸς τῶν θεῶν οἱ φιλοσόφοις χώραν ἐπ’ οἴνῳ μὴ διδόντες;’ ἐγὼ δ’ εἶπον ‘ἀλλὰ γὰρ εἰσίν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, καὶ πάνυ γε σεμνῶς κατειρωνευόμενοι λέγουσι μὴ δεῖν ὥσπερ οἰκοδέσποιναν ἐν οἴνῳ φθέγγεσθαι φιλοσοφίαν, [613] [a] καὶ τοὺς Πέρσας ὀρθῶς φασι μὴ ταῖς γαμεταῖς ἀλλὰ ταῖς παλλακίσι συμμεθύσκεσθαι καὶ συνορχεῖσθαι· ταὐτὸ δὴ καὶ ἡμᾶς ἀξιοῦσι ποιεῖν εἰς τὰ συμπόσια τὴν μουσικὴν καὶ τὴν ὑποκριτικὴν ἐπεισάγοντας φιλοσοφίαν δὲ μὴ κινοῦντας, ὡς οὔτε συμπαίζειν ἐκείνην ἐπιτήδειον οὖσαν οὔθ’ ἡμᾶς τηνικαῦτα σπουδαστικῶς ἔχοντας· οὐδὲ γὰρ Ἰσοκράτη τὸν σοφιστὴν ὑπομεῖναι δεομένων εἰπεῖν τι παρ’ οἶνον ἀλλ’ ἢ τοσοῦτον ‘ἐν οἷς μὲν ἐγὼ δεινός, οὐχ ὁ νῦν καιρός· ἐν οἷς δ’ ὁ νῦν καιρός, οὐκ ἐγὼ δεινός.’’

Καὶ ὁ Κράτων ἀνακραγών ‘εὖ γ’’ εἶπεν ‘νὴ τὸν [b] Διόνυσον ἐξώμνυτο τὸν λόγον, εἰ τοιαύτας ἔμελλε περαίνειν περιόδους, αἷς ἔμελλεν Χαρίτων ἀνάστατον γενέσθαι συμπόσιον. οὐχ ὅμοιον δ’ οἶμαι ῥητορικὸν ἐξαιρεῖν συμποσίου λόγον καὶ φιλόσοφον, ἀλλ’ ἕτερόν ἐστι τὸ φιλοσοφίας, ἣν τέχνην περὶ βίον οὖσαν οὔτε τινὸς παιδιᾶς οὔτε τινὸς ἡδονῆς διαγωγὴν ἐχούσης ἀποστατεῖν εἰκὸς ἀλλὰ πᾶσι παρεῖναι τὸ μέτρον καὶ τὸν καιρὸν ἐπιφέρουσαν· ἢ μηδὲ σωφροσύνην μηδὲ δικαιοσύνην οἰώμεθα δεῖν εἰς τοὺς πότους δέχεσθαι, κατειρωνευόμενοι τὸ σεμνὸν αὐτῶν. εἰ μὲν οὖν, ὥσπερ οἱ τὸν Ὀρέστην ἑστιῶντες, ἐν Θεσμοθετείῳ σιωπῇ τρώγειν καὶ πίνειν ἐμέλλομεν, ἦν τι τοῦτο τῆς ἀμαθίας οὐκ ἀτυχὲς παραμύθιον· εἰ δὲ πάντων [c] μὲν ὁ Διόνυσος Λύσιός ἐστι καὶ Λυαῖος, μάλιστα δὲ τῆς γλώττης ἀφαιρεῖται τὰ χαλινὰ καὶ πλείστην ἐλευθερίαν τῇ φωνῇ δίδωσιν, ἀβέλτερον οἶμαι καὶ ἀνόητον ἐν λόγοις πλεονάζοντα καιρὸν ἀποστερεῖν τῶν ἀρίστων λόγων, καὶ ζητεῖν μὲν ἐν ταῖς διατριβαῖς περὶ συμποτικῶν καθηκόντων καὶ τίς ἀρετὴ συμπότου καὶ πῶς οἴνῳ χρηστέον, ἐξ αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν συμποσίων ἀναιρεῖν φιλοσοφίαν ὡς ἔργῳ βεβαιοῦν ἃ διδάσκει λόγῳ μὴ δυναμένην.’

Σοῦ δ’ εἰπόντος οὐκ ἄξιον εἶναι Κράτωνι περὶ τούτων ἀντιλέγειν, ὅρον δέ τινα καὶ χαρακτῆρα τῶν παρὰ πότον φιλοσοφουμένων ζητεῖν ἐκφεύγοντα τοῦτο δὴ τὸ παιζόμενον οὐκ ἀηδῶς πρὸς τοὺς ἐρίζοντας καὶ σοφιστιῶντας (Β 381)

[d] ‘νῦν δ’ ἔρχεσθ’ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἵνα ξυνάγωμεν Ἄρηα,’

καὶ παρακαλοῦντος ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ τὸν λόγον, ἔφην ἐγὼ πρῶτον ὅτι μοι δοκεῖ σκεπτέον εἶναι τὸ τῶν παρόντων. ‘ἂν μὲν γὰρ πλείονας ἔχῃ φιλολόγους τὸ συμπόσιον, ὡς τὸ Ἀγάθωνος Σωκράτας Φαίδρους Παυσανίας Ἐρυξιμάχους καὶ τὸ Καλλίου Χαρμίδας Ἀντισθένας Ἑρμογένας ἑτέρους τούτοις παραπλησίους, ἀφήσομεν αὐτοὺς †μύθῳ φιλοσοφεῖν, οὐχ ἧττον ταῖς Μούσαις τὸν Διόνυσον ἢ ταῖς Νύμφαις κεραννύντας· ἐκεῖναι μὲν γὰρ αὐτὸν τοῖς σώμασιν ἵλεω καὶ πρᾶον, αὗται δὲ ταῖς ψυχαῖς μειλίχιον ὄντως καὶ χαριδότην [e] ἐπεισάγουσι. καὶ γὰρ ἂν ὀλίγοι τινὲς ἰδιῶται παρῶσιν, ὥσπερ ἄφωνα γράμματα φωνηέντων ἐν μέσῳ πολλῶν τῶν πεπαιδευμένων ἐμπεριλαμβανόμενοι φθογγῆς τινος οὐ παντελῶς ἀνάρθρου καὶ συνέσεως κοινωνήσουσιν. ἂν δὲ πλῆθος ᾖ τοιούτων ἀνθρώπων, οἳ παντὸς μὲν ὀρνέου παντὸς δὲ νεύρου καὶ ξύλου μᾶλλον ἢ φιλοσόφου φωνὴν ὑπομένουσιν, τὸ τοῦ Πεισιστράτου χρήσιμον· ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ἐν διαφορᾷ τινι πρὸς τοὺς υἱοὺς γενόμενος, ὡς ᾔσθετο τοὺς ἐχθροὺς χαίροντας, ἐκκλησίαν συναγαγὼν ἔφη βούλεσθαι μὲν αὐτὸς πεῖσαι τοὺς παῖδας, ἐπεὶ δὲ δυσκόλως ἔχουσιν, αὐτὸς ἐκείνοις πείσεσθαι καὶ ἀκολουθήσειν.

[f] οὕτω δὴ καὶ φιλόσοφος ἀνὴρ ἐν συμπόταις μὴ δεχομένοις τοὺς λόγους αὐτοῦ μεταθέμενος ἕψεται καὶ ἀγαπήσει τὴν ἐκείνων διατριβήν, ἐφ’ ὅσον μὴ ἐκβαίνει τὸ εὔσχημον, εἰδὼς ὅτι ῥητορεύουσι μὲν ἄνθρωποι διὰ λόγου, φιλοσοφοῦσι δὲ καὶ σιωπῶντες καὶ παίζοντες καὶ νὴ Δία σκωπτόμενοι καὶ σκώπτοντες. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ‘ἀδικίας ἐσχάτης ἐστίν’ ὥς φησι Πλάτων (Rep. 361a) [614] [a] ‘μὴ ὄντα δίκαιον εἶναι δοκεῖν’, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνέσεως ἄκρας φιλοσοφοῦντα μὴ δοκεῖν φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ παίζοντα διαπράττεσθαι τὰ τῶν σπουδαζόντων. ὡς γὰρ αἱ παρ’ Εὐριπίδῃ (Bacch. 736) μαινάδες ἄνοπλοι καὶ ἀσίδηροι τοῖς θυρσαρίοις παίουσαι τοὺς ἐπιτιθεμένους τραυματίζουσιν, οὕτω τῶν ἀληθινῶν φιλοσόφων καὶ τὰ σκώμματα καὶ οἱ γέλωτες τοὺς μὴ παντελῶς ἀτρώτους κινοῦσιν ἁμωσγέπως καὶ συνεπιστρέφουσιν. οἶμαι δὲ ‹καὶ› διηγήσεων εἶναί τι συμποτικὸν γένος, ὧν τὰς μὲν ἱστορία δίδωσι, τὰς δ’ ἐκ τῶν ἀνὰ χεῖρα πραγμάτων λαβεῖν ἔστι, [b] πολλὰ μὲν εἰς φιλοσοφίαν παραδείγματα πολλὰ δ’ εἰς εὐσέβειαν ἐχούσας, ἀνδρικῶν τε πράξεων καὶ μεγαλοθύμων ἐνίας δὲ χρηστῶν καὶ φιλανθρώπων ζῆλον ἐπαγούσας· αἷς ἤν τις ἀνυπόπτως χρώμενος διαπαιδαγωγῇ τοὺς πίνοντας, οὐ τὰ ἐλάχιστα τῶν κακῶν ἀφαιρήσει τῆς μέθης. οἱ μὲν οὖν τὰ βούγλωσσα καταμιγνύντες εἰς τὸν οἶνον καὶ τοῖς ἀποβρέγμασι τῶν περιστερεώνων καὶ ἀδιάντων τὰ ἐδάφη ῥαίνοντες, ὡς τούτων τινὰ τοῖς ἑστιωμένοις εὐθυμίαν καὶ φιλοφροσύνην ἐνδιδόντων, ἀπομιμούμενοι τὴν Ὁμηρικὴν Ἑλένην (δ 220) ὑποφαρμάττουσαν τὸν ἄκρατον, οὐ συνορῶσιν ὅτι κἀκεῖνος ὁ μῦθος ἐκπεριελθὼν [c] ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου μακρὰν ὁδὸν εἰς λόγους ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ πρέποντας ἐτελεύτησεν· ἡ γὰρ Ἑλένη πίνουσιν αὐτοῖς διηγεῖται περὶ τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως (δ 242. 244), ‘οἷον ἔρεξε καὶ ἔτλη καρτερὸς ἀνήρ, αὐτόν μιν πληγῇσιν ἀεικελίῃσι δαμάσσας·’ τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν ὡς ἔοικε τὸ ‘νηπενθὲς’ (δ 221) φάρμακον καὶ ἀνώδυνον, λόγος ἔχων καιρὸν ἁρμόζοντα τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις πάθεσι καὶ πράγμασιν. οἱ δὲ χαρίεντες, κἂν ἀπ’ εὐθείας φιλοσοφῶσιν, τηνικαῦτα διὰ τοῦ πιθανοῦ μᾶλλον ἢ βιαστικοῦ τῶν ἀποδείξεων ἄγουσι τὸν λόγον. ὁρᾷς γὰρ ὅτι καὶ Πλάτων ἐν τῷ Συμποσίῳ περὶ τέλους [d] διαλεγόμενος καὶ τοῦ πρώτου ἀγαθοῦ καὶ ὅλως θεολογῶν οὐκ ἐντείνει τὴν ἀπόδειξιν οὐδ’ ὑποκονίεται, τὴν λαβὴν ὥσπερ εἴωθεν εὔτονον ποιῶν καὶ ἄφυκτον, ἀλλ’ ὑγροτέροις λήμμασι καὶ παραδείγμασι καὶ μυθολογίαις προσάγεται τοὺς ἄνδρας. εἶναι δὲ δεῖ καὶ αὐτὰς τὰς ζητήσεις ὑγροτέρας καὶ γνώριμα τὰ προβλήματα καὶ τὰς πεύσεις ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ μὴ γλίσχρας, ἵνα μὴ πνίγωσι τοὺς ἀνοητοτέρους μηδ’ ἀποτρέπωσιν. ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰ σώματα πινόντων δι’ ὀρχήσεως καὶ χορείας νενόμισται σαλεύειν, ἂν δ’ ὁπλομαχεῖν ἀναστάντας ἢ δισκεύειν ἀναγκάζωμεν αὐτούς, οὐ μόνον ἀτερπὲς ἀλλὰ καὶ βλαβερὸν ἔσται τὸ [e] συμπόσιον, οὕτω τὰς ψυχὰς αἱ μὲν ἐλαφραὶ ζητήσεις ἐμμελῶς καὶ ὠφελίμως κινοῦσιν, ‘ἐριδαντέων’ δὲ κατὰ Δημόκριτον (fr. 150) καὶ ‘ἱμαντελικτέων’ λόγους ἀφετέον, οἳ αὐτούς τε κατατείνουσιν ἐν πράγμασι γλίσχροις καὶ δυσθεωρήτοις τούς τε παρατυγχάνοντας ἀνιῶσιν· δεῖ γὰρ ὡς τὸν οἶνον κοινὸν εἶναι καὶ τὸν λόγον, οὗ πάντες μεθέξουσιν. οἱ δὲ τοιαῦτα προβλήματα καθιέντες οὐδὲν ἂν τῆς Αἰσωπείου γεράνου καὶ ἀλώπεκος ἐπιεικέστεροι πρὸς κοινωνίαν φανεῖεν· ὧν ἡ μὲν ἔτνος τι λιπαρὸν κατὰ λίθου πλατείας καταχεαμένη ἀλλὰ γέλωτα παρέχουσαν, ἐξέφευγε γὰρ ὑγρότητι τὸ ἔτνος τὴν λεπτότητα τοῦ στόματος αὐτῆς· ἐν μέρει τοίνυν ἡ γέρανος αὐτῇ καταγγείλασα [f] δεῖπνον ἐν λαγυνίδι προὔθηκε λεπτὸν ἐχούσῃ καὶ μακρὸν τράχηλον, ὥστ’ αὐτὴν μὲν καθιέναι τὸ στόμα ῥᾳδίως καὶ ἀπολαύειν, τὴν δ’ ἀλώπεκα μὴ δυναμένην κομίζεσθαι συμβολὰς πρεπούσας. οὕτω τοίνυν, ὅταν οἱ φιλόσοφοι παρὰ πότον εἰς λεπτὰ καὶ διαλεκτικὰ προβλήματα καταδύντες ἐνοχλῶσι τοῖς πολλοῖς ἕπεσθαι μὴ δυναμένοις, [615] [a] ἐκεῖνοι δὲ πάλιν ἐπ’ ᾠδάς τινας καὶ διηγήματα φλυαρώδη καὶ λόγους βαναύσους καὶ ἀγοραίους ἐμβάλλωσιν ἑαυτούς, οἴχεται τῆς συμποτικῆς κοινωνίας τὸ τέλος καὶ καθύβρισται ὁ Διόνυσος. ὥσπερ οὖν, Φρυνίχου καὶ Αἰσχύλου τὴν τραγῳδίαν εἰς μύθους καὶ πάθη προαγόντων, ἐλέχθη τὸ ‘τί ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον;’ οὕτως ἔμοιγε πολλάκις εἰπεῖν παρέστη πρὸς τοὺς ἕλκοντας εἰς τὰ συμπόσια τὸν Κυριεύοντα ‘ὦ ἄνθρωπε, τί ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον;’ ᾄδειν μὲν γὰρ ἴσως τὰ καλούμενα σκόλια, κρατῆρος ἐν μέσῳ προκειμένου καὶ στεφάνων [b] διανεμομένων, οὓς ὁ θεὸς ὡς ἐλευθερῶν ἡμᾶς ἐπιτίθησιν, οὐ καλὸν δ’ οὐδὲ συμποτικόν. ἐπεί τοι καὶ τὰ σκόλιά φασιν οὐ γένος ᾀσμάτων εἶναι πεποιημένων ἀσαφῶς, ἀλλ’ ὅτι πρῶτον μὲν ᾖδον ᾠδὴν τοῦ θεοῦ κοινῶς ἅπαντες μιᾷ φωνῇ παιανίζοντες, δεύτερον δ’ ἐφεξῆς ἑκάστῳ μυρσίνης παραδιδομένης, ἣν αἴσακον οἶμαι διὰ τὸ ᾄδειν τὸν δεξάμενον ἐκάλουν, ἐπὶ δὲ τούτῳ λύρας περιφερομένης ὁ μὲν πεπαιδευμένος ἐλάμβανε καὶ ᾖδεν ἁρμοζόμενος, τῶν δ’ ἀμούσων οὐ προσιεμένων σκολιὸν ὠνομάσθη τὸ μὴ κοινὸν αὐτοῦ μηδὲ ῥᾴδιον. ἄλλοι δέ φασι τὴν μυρσίνην οὐ καθεξῆς βαδίζειν, ἀλλὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀπὸ κλίνης ἐπὶ [c] κλίνην διαφέρεσθαι· τὸν γὰρ πρῶτον ᾄσαντα τῷ πρώτῳ τῆς δευτέρας κλίνης ἀποστέλλειν, ἐκεῖνον δὲ τῷ πρώτῳ τῆς τρίτης, εἶτα τὸν δεύτερον ὁμοίως τῷ δευτέρῳ, καὶ τὸ ποικίλον καὶ πολυκαμπὲς ὡς ἔοικε τῆς περιόδου σκολιὸν ὠνομάσθη.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Β

Πότερον αὐτὸν δεῖ κατακλίνειν τοὺς ἑστιωμένους τὸν ὑποδεχόμενον ἢ ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις ποιεῖσθαι

Τίμων ὁ ἀδελφὸς ἑστιῶν πλείονας ἕκαστον ἐκέλευε τῶν εἰσιόντων ὅποι βούλεται παρεμβάλλειν καὶ κατακλίνεσθαι, [d] διὰ τὸ καὶ ξένους καὶ πολίτας καὶ συνήθεις καὶ οἰκείους καὶ ὅλως παντοδαποὺς τοὺς κεκλημένους εἶναι. πολλῶν οὖν ἤδη παρόντων ξένος τις ὥσπερ εὐπάρυφος ἐκ κωμῳδίας, ἐσθῆτί τε περιττῇ καὶ ἀκολουθίᾳ παίδων ὑποσολοικότερος, ἧκεν ἄχρι τῶν θυρῶν τοῦ ἀνδρῶνος, καὶ κύκλῳ ταῖς ὄψεσιν ἐπελθὼν τοὺς κατακειμένους οὐκ ἠθέλησεν εἰσελθεῖν ἀλλ’ ᾤχετ’ ἀπιών· καὶ πολλῶν μεταθεόντων οὐκ ἔφη τὸν ἄξιον ἑαυτοῦ τόπον ὁρᾶν λειπόμενον. ἐκεῖνον μὲν οὖν πολλῷ γέλωτι ‘χαίροντας εὐφημοῦντας ἐκπέμπειν δόμων’ (Eur. fr. 449) ἐκέλευον οἱ [e] κατακείμενοι· καὶ γὰρ ἦσαν πολλοὶ μετρίως ὑποπεπωκότες. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὰ περὶ τὸ δεῖπνον τέλος εἶχεν, ὁ πατὴρ ἐμὲ πορρωτέρω κατακείμενον προσειπών ‘Τίμων’ ἔφη ‘κἀγὼ κριτήν σε πεποιήμεθα διαφερόμενοι· πάλαι γὰρ ἀκούει κακῶς ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ διὰ τὸν ξένον· εἰ γὰρ διετάττετ’ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, ὥσπερ ἐκέλευον ἐγώ, τὰς κλίσεις, οὐκ ἂν εὐθύνας ὑπείχομεν ἀταξίας ἀνδρὶ δεινῷ (Β 554) ‘κοσμῆσαι ἵππους τε καὶ ἀνέρας ἀσπιδιώτας.’ καὶ γὰρ δὴ Παῦλον Αἰμίλιον στρατηγὸν λέγουσιν, ὅτε Περσέα καταπολεμήσας ἐν Μακεδονίᾳ πότους συνεκρότει, κόσμῳ τε θαυμαστῷ περὶ πάντα καὶ περιττῇ τάξει χρώμενον [f] εἰπεῖν ὅτι τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἀνδρός ἐστι καὶ φάλαγγα συστῆσαι φοβερωτάτην καὶ συμπόσιον ἥδιστον, ἀμφότερα γὰρ εὐταξίας εἶναι. καὶ τοὺς ἀρίστους καὶ βασιλικωτάτους ὁ ποιητὴς (Α 16 et al.) εἴωθε ‘κοσμήτορας λαῶν’ προσαγορεύειν. καὶ τὸν μέγαν θεὸν ὑμεῖς πού φατε τὴν [616] [a] ἀκοσμίαν εὐταξίᾳ μεταβαλεῖν εἰς κόσμον οὔτ’ ἀφελόντα τῶν ὄντων οὐδὲν οὔτε προσθέντα, τῷ δ’ ἕκαστον ἐπὶ τὴν προσήκουσαν χώραν καταστῆσαι τὸ κάλλιστον ἐξ ἀμορφοτάτου σχῆμα περὶ τὴν φύσιν ἀπεργασάμενον. ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν τὰ σεμνότερα καὶ μείζονα παρ’ ὑμῶν μανθάνομεν· αὐτοὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν περὶ τὰ δεῖπνα δαπάνην ὁρῶμεν οὐδὲν ἔχουσαν ἐπιτερπὲς οὐδ’ ἐλευθέριον, εἰ μὴ τάξεως μετάσχοι. διὸ καὶ γελοῖόν ἐστι τοῖς μὲν ὀψοποιοῖς καὶ τραπεζοκόμοις σφόδρα μέλειν τί πρῶτον ἢ τί δεύτερον ἢ μέσον ἢ τελευταῖον ἐπάξουσιν, καὶ νὴ Δία μύρου τινὰ καὶ στεφάνων καὶ ψαλτρίας, ἂν τύχῃ παροῦσα, χώραν καὶ [b] τάξιν εἶναι, τοὺς δ’ ἐπὶ ταῦτα καλουμένους εἰκῆ καὶ ὡς ἔτυχεν κατακλίναντα χορτάζειν, μήθ’ ἡλικίᾳ μήτ’ ἀρχῇ μήτ’ ἄλλῳ τινὶ τῶν ὁμοίων τὴν ἁρμόττουσαν ἀποδιδόντα τάξιν, ἐν ᾗ τιμᾶται μὲν ὁ προέχων ἐθίζεται δ’ ὁ δευτερεύων γυμνάζεται δ’ ὁ τάττων πρὸς διάκρισιν καὶ στοχασμὸν τοῦ πρέποντος. οὐ γὰρ ἕδρα μὲν ἔστι καὶ στάσις τοῦ κρείττονος, κατάκλισις δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν· οὐδὲ προπίεται ‹μὲν› ἑτέρῳ πρὸ ἑτέρου μᾶλλον ὁ ἑστιῶν, περὶ δὲ τὰς κατακλίσεις παρόψεται τὰς διαφοράς, εὐθὺς ἐν ἀρχῇ τὴν λεγομένην ‘μίαν Μύκονον’ (Paroem. I 122. 445) ἀποφήνας τὸ συμπόσιον.’ ἡ μὲν οὖν τοῦ πατρὸς δικαιολογία τοιαύτη τις ἦν.

[c] Ὁ δ’ ἀδελφὸς εἶπεν ὅτι τοῦ Βίαντος οὐκ εἴη σοφώτερος, ὥστ’ ἐκείνου δυεῖν φίλων ἀπειπαμένου δίαιταν αὐτὸς ὁμοῦ τοσούτων μὲν οἰκείων τοσούτων δ’ ἑταίρων γίνεσθαι κριτής, οὐ περὶ χρημάτων ἀλλὰ περὶ πρωτείων ἀποφαινόμενος, ὥσπερ οὐ φιλοφρονήσασθαι παρακεκληκὼς ἀλλ’ ἀνιᾶσαι τοὺς ἐπιτηδείους. ‘ἄτοπος μὲν οὖν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ παροιμιώδης Μενέλαος (Β 408), εἴ γε σύμβουλος ἐγένετο μὴ παρακεκλημένος· ἀτοπώτερος δ’ ὁ ποιῶν ἑαυτὸν ἀνθ’ ἑστιάτορος δικαστὴν καὶ κριτὴν τῶν οὐκ ἐπιτρεπόντων οὐδὲ κρινομένων, τίς ἐστι βελτίων τίνος ἢ χείρων· οὐ γὰρ εἰς ἀγῶνα καθείκασιν ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον [d] ἥκουσιν. ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ εὐχερὴς ἡ διάκρισίς ἐστι, τῶν μὲν ἡλικίᾳ τῶν δὲ δυνάμει τῶν δὲ χρείᾳ τῶν δ’ οἰκειότητι διαφερόντων, ἀλλὰ δεῖ καθάπερ ὑπόθεσιν μελετῶντα συγκριτικὴν τοὺς Ἀριστοτέλους (p. 116 ss.) Τόπους ἢ τοὺς Θρασυμάχου (fr. 7) Ὑπερβάλλοντας ἔχειν προχείρους οὐδὲν τῶν χρησίμων διαπραττόμενον ἀλλὰ τὴν κενὴν δόξαν ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς καὶ τῶν θεάτρων εἰς τὰ συμπόσια μετάγοντα, καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα πάθη πειρώμενον ἀνιέναι συνουσίᾳ, τὸν δὲ †τύχηι ἐπισκευάζοντα, ...ον πολὺ μᾶλλον οἶμαι προσήκει τῆς ψυχῆς ‹ἢ› τὸν πηλὸν ἀπονιψαμένους τῶν ποδῶν ἐλαφρῶς καὶ ἀφελῶς παρὰ πότον ἀλλήλοις συμφέρεσθαι.

[e] νῦν δὲ τὴν μὲν ἐξ ὀργῆς τινος ἢ πραγμάτων ἔχθραν πειρώμεθα τῶν κεκλημένων ἀφαιρεῖν, τῇ δὲ φιλοτιμίᾳ πάλιν ὑπεκκάομεν καὶ ἀναζωπυροῦμεν, τοὺς μὲν ταπεινοῦντες τοὺς δ’ ὀγκοῦντες. καίτοι γ’, εἰ μὲν ἀκολουθήσουσι τῇ κατακλίσει προπόσεις τε συνεχέστεραι καὶ παραθέσεις ἔτι δ’ ὁμιλίαι καὶ προσαγορεύσεις, παντάπασι γενήσεται σατραπικὸν ἡμῖν ἀντὶ φιλικοῦ τὸ συμπόσιον· εἰ δὲ περὶ τἄλλα τὴν ἰσότητα τοῖς ἀνδράσι φυλάξομεν, τί οὐκ ἐντεῦθεν ἀρξάμενοι πρῶτον ἐθίζομεν ἀτύφως καὶ ἀφελῶς κατακλίνεσθαι μετ’ ἀλλήλων, εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῶν θυρῶν [f] ὁρῶντας, ὅτι δημοκρατικόν ἐστι τὸ δεῖπνον καὶ οὐκ ‹ἔχει τόπον› ἐξαίρετον ὥσ‹περ ἀκρό›πολιν, ἐφ’ οὗ κατακλιθεὶς ὁ πλούσιος ἐντρυφήσει τοῖς εὐτελεστέροις;’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐρρήθη καὶ τὴν κρίσιν ἀπῄτουν οἱ παρόντες, ἔφην ἐγὼ διαιτητὴς ᾑρημένος οὐ κριτὴς βαδιεῖσθαι διὰ μέσου. ‘νέους μὲν γάρ’ εἶπον ‘ἑστιῶντας [617] [a] καὶ πολίτας καὶ συνήθεις ἐθιστέον, ὥς φησι Τίμων, ἀφελῶς καὶ ἀτύφως κατανέμειν αὑτοὺς εἰς ἣν ἂν τύχωσι χώραν, καλὸν εἰς φιλίαν ἐφόδιον τὴν εὐκολίαν λαμβάνοντας· ἐν δὲ ξένοις ἢ ἄρχουσιν ἢ πρεσβυτέροις φιλοσοφοῦντες δέδια μὴ δοκῶμεν τῇ αὐλείῳ τὸν τῦφον ἀποκλείοντες εἰσάγειν τῇ παραθύρῳ μετὰ πολλῆς ἀδιαφορίας. ἐν ᾧ καὶ συνηθείᾳ τι καὶ νόμῳ δοτέον· ἢ καὶ προπόσεις καὶ προσαγορεύσεις ἀνέλωμεν, αἷσπερ οὐ τοὺς ἐπιτυγχάνοντας οὐδ’ ἀκρίτως ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐνδέχεται †μάλιστα χρώμενοι τιμῶμεν (Θ 162. Μ 311)

‘ἕδρῃ τε κρέασίν τ’ ἠδὲ πλείοις δεπάεσσιν’

ὥς φησιν ὁ τῶν Ἑλλήνων βασιλεύς, τὴν τάξιν ἐν πρώτῃ [b] τιμῇ τιθέμενος. ἐπαινοῦμεν δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἀλκίνουν, ὅτι τὸν ξένον ἱδρύει παρ’ αὑτόν (η 170)

‘υἱὸν ἀναστήσας, ἀγαπήνορα Λαομέδοντα,

ὅς οἱ πλησίον ἷζε, μάλιστα δέ μιν φιλέεσκεν.’

τὸ γὰρ εἰς τὴν τοῦ φιλουμένου χώραν καθίσαι τὸν ἱκέτην ἐπιδέξιον ἐμμελῶς καὶ φιλάνθρωπον. ἔστι δὲ καὶ παρὰ τοῖς θεοῖς διάκρισις τῶν τοιούτων· ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ποσειδῶν καίπερ ὕστατος εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν παραγενόμενος (Υ 15) ‘ἷζεν ἄρ’ ἐν μέσσοισιν,’ ὡς ταύτης αὐτῷ τῆς χώρας προσηκούσης. ἡ δ’ Ἀθηνᾶ φαίνεται τὸν πλησίον ἀεὶ τοῦ Διὸς τόπον ἐξαίρετον ἔχουσα· καὶ τοῦτο παρεμφαίνει μὲν ὁ ποιητὴς δι’ ὧν ἐπὶ τῆς Θέτιδός φησιν (Ω 100)

[c] ‘ἡ δ’ ἄρα πὰρ Διὶ πατρὶ καθέζετο, εἶξε δ’ Ἀθήνη,’

διαρρήδην δ’ ὁ Πίνδαρος λέγει (fr. 146)

‘πῦρ πνέοντος ἅ τε κεραυνοῦ

ἄγχιστα ἡμένη.’

καίτοι φήσει Τίμων οὐ δεῖν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τῶν ἄλλων ἑνὶ προσνέμοντα τὴν τιμήν. ὅπερ αὐτὸς ἔοικε ποιεῖν μᾶλλον· ἀφαιρεῖται γὰρ ὁ κοινὸν ποιῶν τὸ ἴδιον (ἴδιον δὲ τὸ κατ’ ἀξίαν ἑκάστου) καὶ ποιεῖ δρόμου καὶ σπουδῆς τὸ πρωτεῖον ἀρετῇ καὶ εὐγενείᾳ καὶ ἀρχῇ καὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις ὀφειλόμενον. καὶ τὸ λυπηρὸς εἶναι τοῖς κεκλημένοις φεύγειν δοκῶν μᾶλλον ἐφέλκεται καθ’ αὑτοῦ· λυπεῖ γὰρ ἀποστερῶν τῆς συνήθους τιμῆς ἕκαστον. ἐμοὶ δ’ οὐ λίαν χαλεπὸν εἶναι δοκεῖ τὸ περὶ τὴν διάκρισιν· πρῶτον μὲν [d] γὰρ ἐφάμιλλοι τοῖς ἀξιώμασι πολλοὶ πρὸς μίαν κλῆσιν οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἀπαντῶσιν· ἔπειτα πλειόνων τόπων ἐν δόξῃ γεγονότων ἀφθονία τῆς διανομῆς ἔστιν, ἄν τις εὐστοχεῖν δύνηται, τὸν μὲν ὅτι πρῶτος, τὸν δ’ ὅτι μέσος, τὸν δ’ ὅτι παρ’ αὑτὸν ἢ μετὰ φίλου τινὸς ἢ συνήθους ἢ καθηγητοῦ, διδοὺς ἑκάστῳ τῶν ἀξιωματικῶν λεγομένων· τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις δωρεὰς καὶ φιλοφροσύνην †ἔλιπον ἀνάπαυλαν μᾶλλον τῆς τιμῆς. ἂν δὲ ...τοι μὲν αἱ ἀξίαι δύσκολοι δ’ οἱ ἄνδρες ὦσιν, ὅρα τίνα μηχανὴν ἐπάγω· κατακλίνω γὰρ εἰς τὸν ἔνδοξον μάλιστα τόπον, ἂν μὲν ᾖ πατήρ, τοῦτον ἀράμενος, εἰ δὲ μή, πάππον ἢ πενθερὸν ἢ πατρὸς ἀδελφὸν [e] ἤ τινα τῶν ὁμολογουμένην καὶ ἰδίαν ἐχόντων παρὰ τῷ δεχομένῳ τιμῆς ὑπεροχήν, ἐκ τῶν Ὁμήρου τὸ θεώρημα τοῦτο λαμβάνων καθηκόντων. καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖ (Ψ 534 ss.) δήπουθεν ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς τὸν Μενέλεων καὶ τὸν Ἀντίλοχον περὶ τῶν δευτερείων τῆς ἱπποδρομίας ὁρῶν διαφερομένους καὶ δεδοικὼς μὴ πορρωτέρω προέλθωσιν ὀργῆς καὶ φιλονεικίας ἑτέρῳ βούλεται τὸ ἔπαθλον ἀποδιδόναι, λόγῳ μὲν Εὔμηλον οἰκτίρων καὶ τιμῶν, ἔργῳ δὲ τῆς ἐκείνων διαφορᾶς τὴν αἰτίαν ἀφαιρῶν.’

Ἐμοῦ δὲ τοιαῦτα λέγοντος ὁ Λαμπρίας ἐκ παραβύστου καθήμενος καθάπερ εἰώθει μέγα φθεγξάμενος [f] ἠρώτα τοὺς παρόντας, εἰ διδόασιν αὐτῷ νουθετῆσαι ληροῦντα δικαστήν· κελευόντων δὲ πάντων χρῆσθαι παρρησίᾳ καὶ μὴ φείδεσθαι, ‘τίς δ’ ἄν’ ἔφη ‘φείσαιτο φιλοσόφου [618] [a] γένεσι καὶ πλούτοις καὶ ἀρχαῖς ὥσπερ θέαν ἐν συμποσίῳ κατανέμοντος ἢ προεδρίας ψηφισμάτων ἀμφικτυονικῶν διδόντος, ὅπως μηδ’ ἐν οἴνῳ τὸν τῦφον ἀποφύγωμεν; οὔτε γὰρ πρὸς τὸ ἔνδοξον ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸ ἡδὺ δεῖ ποιεῖσθαι τὰς κατακλίσεις, οὔτε τὴν ἑνὸς ἑκάστου σκοπεῖν ἀξίαν ἀλλὰ τὴν ἑτέρου πρὸς ἕτερον σχέσιν καὶ ἁρμονίαν, ὥσπερ ἄλλων τινῶν εἰς μίαν κοινωνίαν παραλαμβανομένων. οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ οἰκοδόμος τὸν Ἀττικὸν λίθον ἢ τὸν Λακωνικὸν πρὸ τοῦ βαρβαρικοῦ ‹διὰ› τὴν εὐγένειαν τίθησιν οὐδ’ ὁ ζωγράφος τῷ πολυτελεστάτῳ χρώματι τὴν ἡγουμένην ἀποδίδωσι χώραν οὐδ’ ὁ ναυπηγὸς προτάττει [b] τὴν Ἰσθμικὴν πίτυν ἢ τὴν Κρητικὴν κυπάριττον, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἂν ἀλλήλοις ἕκαστα συντεθέντα καὶ συναρμοσθέντα μέλλῃ τὸ κοινὸν ἔργον ἰσχυρὸν καὶ καλὸν καὶ χρήσιμον παρέχειν, οὕτω κατανέμουσιν. καὶ τὸν θεὸν ὁρᾷς, ὃν ‘ἀριστοτέχναν’ ἡμῶν ὁ Πίνδαρος (fr. 57) προσεῖπεν, οὐ πανταχοῦ τὸ πῦρ ἄνω τάττοντα καὶ κάτω τὴν γῆν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἂν αἱ χρεῖαι τῶν σωμάτων ἀπαιτῶσιν·

‘τοῦτο μὲν ἐν κόγχαισι θαλασσονόμοις βαρυνώτοις,

ναὶ μὴν κηρύκων τε λιθορρίνων χελύων τε’

φησὶν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (fr. 76),

‘ἔνθ’ ὄψει χθόνα χρωτὸς ὑπέρτατα ναιετάουσαν’

οὐχ ἣν ἡ φύσις δίδωσι χώραν, ἀλλ’ ἣν ἡ πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν [c] ἔργον ποθεῖ σύνταξις, ταύτην ἔχουσαν. πανταχοῦ μὲν οὖν ἀταξία πονηρόν, ἐν δ’ ἀνθρώποις, καὶ ταῦτα πίνουσιν, ἐγγινομένη μάλιστα τὴν αὑτῆς ἀναδείκνυσι μοχθηρίαν ὕβρει καὶ κακοῖς ἄλλοις ἀμυθήτοις, ἃ προϊδέσθαι καὶ φυλάξασθαι τακτικοῦ καὶ ἁρμονικοῦ ἀνδρός ἐστιν.’

Ὀρθῶς οὖν ἔφαμεν λέγειν αὐτὸν ἡμεῖς, καί ‘τί δὴ φθονεῖς τῶν τακτικῶν ἡμῖν καὶ ἁρμονικῶν;’ [ὧν] ἐλέγομεν. ‘οὐδείς’ ἔφη ‘φθόνος, ἂν μέλλητε πείθεσθαι μετακινοῦντί μοι καὶ μετακοσμοῦντι τὸ συμπόσιον, ὥσπερ τῷ Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ τὴν φάλαγγα.’ συνεχωροῦμεν οὖν οὕτω [d] ποιεῖν ἅπαντες. ὁ δὲ τοὺς παῖδας ἐκ μέσου κελεύσας γενέσθαι, καταβλέψας ἕκαστον ‘ἀκούσατ’’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς μέλλω συντάττειν ὑμᾶς ἀλλήλοις· βούλομαι γὰρ προειπεῖν. δοκεῖ γάρ μοι καὶ τὸν Ὅμηρον οὐκ ἀδίκως ὁ Θηβαῖος αἰτιάσασθαι Παμμένης ὡς τῶν ἐρωτικῶν ἄπερον, ὅτι (Β 363) φῦλα φύλοις συνέταξεν καὶ φρατρίας φρατρίαις συνέμιξεν, δέον ἐραστὴν μετ’ ἐρωμένου παρεμβάλλειν ἵν’ ᾖ σύμπνους ἡ φάλαγξ δι’ ὅλης ἔμψυχον ἔχουσα δεσμόν. τοιοῦτο κἀγὼ βούλομαι ποιῆσαι τὸ συμπόσιον ἡμῶν, οὐ πλουσίῳ πλούσιον οὐδὲ νέῳ νέον οὐδ’ ἄρχοντι συγκατακλίνων ἄρχοντα καὶ [e] φίλῳ φίλον· ἀκίνητος γὰρ αὕτη καὶ ἀργὴ πρὸς εὐνοίας ἐπίδοσιν ἢ γένεσιν ἡ τάξις· ἀλλὰ τῷ δεομένῳ τὸ οἰκεῖον προσαρμόττων κελεύω φιλολόγῳ μὲν ὑποκατακλίνεσθαι φιλομαθῆ δυσκόλῳ δὲ πρᾶον ἀδολέσχῳ δὲ πρεσβύτῃ φιλήκοον νεανίσκον τῷ δ’ ἀλαζόνι τὸν εἴρωνα τῷ δ’ ὀργίλῳ τὸν σιωπηλόν· ἐὰν δέ που κατίδω πλούσιον μεγαλόδωρον, ἄξω πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐκ γωνίας τινὸς ἀναστήσας πένητα χρηστόν, ἵν’ ὥσπερ ἐκ πλήρους κύλικος εἰς κενὴν ἀπορροή τις γένηται. σοφιστὴν δὲ κωλύω συγκατακλίνεσθαι σοφιστῇ καὶ ποιητὴν ποιητῇ·

[f] ‘πτωχὸς γὰρ πτωχῷ ‹φθονέει› καὶ ἀοιδὸς ἀοιδῷ·’

(Hes. OD 26)

καίτοι Σωσικλῆς οὗτος καὶ Μόδεστος ἐνταῦθα συνερείδοντες ἔπος παρὰ ... †ζωπυρίων φλόγα μὲν †ἀλλὰ κινδυνεύουσιν τὰ κάλλιστα. διίστημι δὲ καὶ στραγγαλιῶντας καὶ φιλολοιδόρους καὶ ὀξυθύμους ... τινὰ παρεντιθεὶς [619] [a] μέσον ὥσπερ μάλαγμα τῆς ἀντιτυπίας. ἀλειπτικοὺς δὲ καὶ κυνηγετικοὺς καὶ γεωργικοὺς συνάγω. τῶν γὰρ ὁμοιοτήτων ἡ μὲν μάχιμος ὥσπερ ἀλεκτρυόνων, ἡ δ’ ἐπιεικὴς ὡσπερεὶ τῶν κολοιῶν. συνάγω δὲ καὶ ποτικοὺς εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ ἐρωτικούς, οὐ μόνον ‘ὅσοις ἔρωτος δῆγμα ‹παιδικὸν› πρόσεστιν’ ὥς φησι Σοφοκλῆς (fr. 757), ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἐπὶ γυναιξὶ καὶ τοὺς ἐπὶ παρθένοις δακνομένους· τῷ γὰρ αὐτῷ θαλπόμενοι πυρὶ μᾶλλον ἀλλήλων ἀντιλήψονται, καθάπερ ὁ κολλώμενος σίδηρος, ἂν μὴ νὴ Δία τοῦ αὐτοῦ τύχωσιν ἢ τῆς ἐρῶντες.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Γ

[b]

Διὰ τί τῶν τόπων ὁ καλούμενος ὑπατικὸς ἔσχε τιμήν

‹Ἐκ› τούτου περὶ τῶν τόπων ἐνέπεσε ζήτησις. ἄλλοι γὰρ ἄλλοις ἔντιμοι, Πέρσαις μὲν ὁ μεσαίτατος ἐφ’ οὗ κατακλίνεται βασιλεύς, Ἕλλησι δ’ ὁ πρῶτος, Ῥωμαίοις δ’ ὁ τῆς μέσης κλίνης τελευταῖος ὃν ὑπατικὸν προσαγορεύουσιν, τῶν δὲ περὶ τὸν Πόντον Ἑλλήνων ἐνίοις, ὥσπερ Ἡρακλεώταις, ἔμπαλιν ὁ τῆς μέσης πρῶτος. ἀλλὰ περὶ τοῦ γ’ ὑπατικοῦ λεγομένου μάλιστα διηποροῦμεν. οὗτος γὰρ ἐπρώτευε τῇ τιμῇ καθ’ ἡμᾶς, καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν οὔθ’ ὡς [c] ὁ πρῶτος οὔθ’ ὡς ὁ μέσος εἶχεν νενομισμένην ἔτι, καὶ τῶν συμβεβηκότων αὐτῷ τὰ μὲν οὐκ ἦν ἴδια τούτου μόνου τὰ δ’ οὐδεμιᾶς ἄξια σπουδῆς ἐφαίνετο. πλὴν τρία γε τῶν λεχθέντων ἐκίνει, πρῶτον μὲν ὅτι τοὺς βασιλεῖς καταλύσαντες οἱ ὕπατοι καὶ πρὸς τὸ δημοτικώτερον ἅπαντα μετακοσμήσαντες ἐκ τῆς μέσης καὶ βασιλικῆς χώρας ὑπῆγον αὑτοὺς κάτω συγχωροῦντες, ὡς μηδὲ τοῦτο τῆς ἀρχῆς αὐτῶν καὶ ἐξουσίας ἐπαχθὲς εἴη τοῖς συνοῦσιν· δεύτερον δ’ ὅτι, τῶν δυεῖν κλινῶν ἀποδεδομένων τοῖς παρακεκλημένοις, ἡ τρίτη καὶ ταύτης ὁ πρῶτος τόπος [d] μάλιστα τοῦ ἑστιῶντός ἐστιν· ἐνταῦθα γὰρ ὥσπερ ἡνίοχος ἢ κυβερνήτης ἐπὶ δεξιὰ πρὸς τὴν ἐπίβλεψιν ἐξικνεῖται τῆς ὑπηρεσίας καὶ τοῦ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι καὶ διαλέγεσθαι τοῖς παροῦσιν οὐκ ἀπήρτηται· τῶν ‹δὲ› συνέγγιστα τόπων ὁ μὲν [γὰρ] ὑπ’ αὐτὸν ἢ γυναικὸς ἢ παίδων ἐστίν, ὁ δ’ ὑπὲρ αὐτὸν εἰκότως τῷ μάλιστα τιμωμένῳ τῶν κεκλημένων ἀπεδόθη, ἵν’ ἐγγὺς ᾖ τοῦ ἑστιῶντος. τρίτον δ’ ἔχειν ἴδιον οὗτος ὁ τόπος ἐδόκει τὸ πρὸς τὴν πρᾶξιν εὐφυές· οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ὁ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ὕπατος οἷος Ἀρχίας ὁ Θηβαίων πολέμαρχος, ὥστε, γραμμάτων ἢ λόγων αὐτῷ μεταξὺ δειπνοῦντι φροντίδος ἀξίων προσπεσόντων, [e] ἐπιφθεγξάμενος ‘εἰς ἕω τὰ σπουδαῖα’ τὴν μὲν ἐπιστολὴν παρῶσαι λαβεῖν δὲ τὴν θηρίκλειον, ‘ἀλλὰ μάλ’ ἐμμεμαὼς’ (Υ 468) καὶ περιεσκεμμένος ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις καιροῖς. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ‘ὠδῖνα τίκτει ‹νὺξ› κυβ‹ερνήτῃ› σοφῷ’ κατὰ τὸ‹ν Αἰσχύλον› (Suppl. 770), ἀλλὰ καὶ πότου πᾶσα καὶ ἀνέ‹σεως ὥρα στρατη›γῷ καὶ ἄρχοντι φροντίδος ἄξιόν ἐστιν. ἵνα ‹τοίνυν› ἀκοῦσαί θ’ ἃ δεῖ καὶ προστάξαι καὶ ὑπογράψαι δύνηται, τοῦτον ἐξαίρετον ἔχει τὸν τόπον· ἐν ᾧ τῆς δευτέρας κλίνης τῇ τρίτῃ συναπτούσης, ἡ γωνία διάλειμμα ποιοῦσα τῇ καμπῇ δίδωσιν καὶ γραμματεῖ [f] καὶ ὑπηρέτῃ καὶ φύλακι σώματος καὶ ἀγγέλῳ τῶν ἀπὸ στρατοπέδου προσελθεῖν διαλεχθῆναι πυθέσθαι, μήτε τινὸς ἐνοχλοῦντος αὐτῷ μήτε τινὸς ἐνοχλουμένου τῶν συμποτῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ χεῖρα καὶ φωνὴν ὑπερδέξιον ἔχοντι καὶ ἀκώλυτον.

[620] [a]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Δ

Ποῖόν τινα δεῖ τὸν συμποσίαρχον εἶναι

Κράτων ὁ γαμβρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ Θέων ὁ ἑταῖρος ἔν τινι πότῳ παροινίας ἀρχὴν λαβούσης εἶτα παυσαμένης λόγον ἐποιήσαντο περὶ τῆς συμποσιαρχίας, οἰόμενοί με δεῖν στεφανηφοροῦντα μὴ περιιδεῖν ... ἔθος ἐκλειφθὲν παντάπασιν, ἀλλ’ ἀνακαλεῖν καὶ καταστῆσαι πάλιν τῆς ἀρχῆς τὴν νενομισμένην ἐπιστασίαν περὶ τὰ συμπόσια καὶ διακόσμησιν. ἐδόκει δὲ ταῦτα καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις, ὥστε θόρυβον [b] ἐκ πάντων καὶ παράκλησιν γενέσθαι. ‘ἐπεὶ τοίνυν’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘δοκεῖ ταῦτα πᾶσιν, ἐμαυτὸν αἱροῦμαι συμποσίαρχον ὑμῶν καὶ κελεύω τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ὡς βούλονται πίνειν ἐν τῷ παρόντι, Κράτωνα δὲ καὶ Θέωνα, τοὺς εἰσηγητὰς καὶ νομοθέτας τοῦ δόγματος, ἔν τινι τύπῳ βραχέως διελθεῖν, ὁποῖον ὄντα δεῖ τὸν συμποσίαρχον αἱρεῖσθαι καὶ τί ποιούμενος τέλος ὁ αἱρεθεὶς ἄρξει καὶ πῶς χρήσεται τοῖς κατὰ ‹τὸ› συμπόσιον· διελέσθαι δὲ τὸν λόγον ἐ.... αὐτοῖς ἐπιτρέπω.’

Μικρὰ μὲν οὖν ἠκκίσαντο παραιτούμενοι· κελευόντων δὲ πάντων πείθεσθαι τῷ ἄρχοντι καὶ ποιεῖν τὸ προσταττόμενον, [c] ἔφη πρότερος ὁ Κράτων, ὅτι δεῖ τὸν μὲν φυλάκων ἄρχοντα φυλακικώτατον, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Rep. 412c), εἶναι, τὸν δὲ συμποτῶν συμποτικώτατον. ‘ἔστι δὲ τοιοῦτος, ἂν μήτε τῷ μεθύειν εὐάλωτος ᾖ μήτε πρὸς τὸ πίνειν ἀπρόθυμος, ἀλλ’ ὡς ὁ Κῦρος ἔλεγεν πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους γράφων, ὅτι τά τ’ ἄλλα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ βασιλικώτερος εἴη καὶ φέροι καλῶς πολὺν ἄκρατον· ὅ τε γὰρ παροινῶν ὑβριστὴς καὶ ἀσχήμων, ὅ τ’ αὖ παντάπασι νήφων ἀηδὴς καὶ παιδαγωγεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ ‹συμ›ποσιαρχεῖν ἐπιτήδειος. ὁ μὲν οὖν Περικλῆς, ὁσάκις ᾑρημένος στρατηγὸς ἀναλαμβάνοι τὴν χλαμύδα, πρῶτον εἰώθει διαλέγεσθαι [d] πρὸς αὑτὸν ὥσπερ ὑπομιμνήσκων ‘ὅρα, Περίκλεις· ἐλευθέρων ἄρχεις, Ἑλλήνων ἄρχεις, Ἀθηναίων ἄρχεις’· ὁ δὲ συμποσίαρχος ἡμῶν ἐκεῖνος λεγέτω πρὸς αὑτόν ‘φίλων ἄρχεις’, ἵνα μήτ’ ἀσχημονεῖν ἐπιτρέπῃ μήτε τὰς ἡδονὰς ἀφαιρῇ. δεῖ δὲ καὶ σπουδῆς τὸν ἄρχοντα πινόντων οἰκεῖον εἶναι καὶ παιδιᾶς μὴ ἀλλότριον, ἀλλ’ εὖ πως συγκεκραμένον πρὸς ἀμφότερα, σμικρῷ δὲ μᾶλλον, ὥσπερ οἶνον ἀστεῖον, ἀπονεύοντα τῇ φύσει πρὸς τὸ αὐστηρόν· ὁ γὰρ οἶνος ἄξει τὸ ἦθος εἰς τὸ μέτριον μαλακώτερον ποιῶν καὶ ἀνυγραίνων. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ Ξενοφῶν (Exped. II 6, 11) ἔλεγεν τοῦ Κλεάρχου τὸ σκυθρωπὸν [e] καὶ ἄγροικον ἄλλως ἐν ταῖς μάχαις ἡδὺ καὶ φαιδρὸν ἐπιφαίνεσθαι διὰ τὸ θαρραλέον, οὕτως ὁ μὴ φύσει πικρὸς ἀλλὰ σεμνὸς καὶ αὐστηρὸς ἐν τῷ πίνειν ἀνιέμενος ἡδίων γίνεται καὶ προσφιλέστερος. ἔτι τοίνυν αὐτῷ δεῖ προσεῖναι τὸ μάλιστα μὲν ἑκάστου τῶν συμποτῶν ἐμπείρως ἔχειν, τίνα λαμβάνει μεταβολὴν ἐν οἴνῳ καὶ πρὸς τί πάθος ἀκροσφαλής ἐστι καὶ πῶς φέρει τὸν ἄκρατον (οὐ γὰρ οἴνου μὲν ἔστι πρὸς ὕδωρ ἕτερον ἑτέρα μῖξις, ἣν οἱ βασιλικοὶ γιγνώσκοντες οἰνοχόοι νῦν μὲν πλέον νῦν δ’ ἔλαττον ὑποχέουσιν, ἀνθρώπου δὲ πρὸς οἶνον οὐκ ἔστ’ ἰδία κρᾶσις, ἣν τῷ συμποσιάρχῳ γινώσκειν προσήκει καὶ [f] γιγνώσκοντι φυλάττειν, ἵν’ ὥσπερ ἁρμονικὸς τὸν μὲν ἐπιτείνων τῇ πόσει τὸν δ’ ἀνιεὶς καὶ ὑποφειδόμενος εἰς ὁμαλότητα καὶ συμφωνίαν ἐκ διαφορᾶς καταστήσῃ τὰς φύσεις), ὅπως μὴ κοτύλῃ μηδὲ κυάθοις τὸ ἴσον, ἀλλὰ καιροῦ τινι μέτρῳ καὶ σώματος δυνάμει τὸ οἰκεῖον ἑκάστῳ [621] [a] καὶ πρόσφορον ἀπονέμηται. εἰ δὲ τοῦτό γε δύσκολον, ἐκεῖνα δὲ πάντως ἐξειδέναι τῷ συμποσιάρχῳ προσήκει, τὰ κοινὰ περὶ τὰς φύσεις καὶ τὰς ἡλικίας· οἷον πρεσβῦται τάχιον μεθύσκονται νέων, σαλευόμενοι δ’ ἠρεμούντων, ἔλλυποι δὲ καὶ πεφροντικότες εὐθύμων καὶ ἱλαρῶν, ... ἀνέδην καὶ κατα‹κόρως› διάγοντες τῶν ἀσελγαινόντων, κἄλλα τοιαῦθ’ ἃ γιγνώσκων ἄν τις μᾶλλον τοῦ ἀγνοοῦντος εὐσχημοσύνην καὶ ὁμόνοιαν συμποσίου πρυτανεύσειεν. καὶ μὴν ὅτι γε δεῖ τὸν συμποσίαρχον οἰκείως ἔχειν καὶ φιλικῶς πρὸς ἅπαντας ὕπουλον δὲ μηδενὶ μηδ’ ἀπεχθῆ τῶν ἑστιωμένων εἶναι παντί που δῆλον· οὔτε γὰρ ἐπιτάττων ἀνεκτὸς οὔτ’ ἀπονέμων ἴσος οὔτε προσπαίζων ὅμως [b] ἀνέγκλητος ἔσται. τοιοῦτον’ ἔφη ‘σοι, Θέων, ἐγὼ τὸν ἄρχοντα συμποσίου πλάσας ὥσπερ ἐκ κηροῦ τοῦ λόγου παραδίδωμι.’

Καὶ ὁ Θέων ‘ἀλλὰ δέχομαι μέν’ εἶπεν ‘οὕτως ὁμαλὸν ἀπειργασμένον τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ συμποτικόν· εἰ δὲ χρήσομαι κατὰ ‹τρό›πον αὐτῷ καὶ μὴ καταισχυνῶ τὸ ἔργον, οὐκ οἶδα· ...τον δέ μοι δοκεῖ τοι‹οῦτο›ς ὢν τὸ συμπόσιον ‹διαφυλ›άξειν ἡμῖν καὶ μὴ ‹περι›όψεσθαι νῦν μὲν ἐκκλησίαν δημοκρατικὴν νῦν δὲ σχολὴν σοφιστοῦ γινομένην αὖθις δὲ κυβευτήριον εἶτά που σκηνὴν καὶ θυμέλην. ἢ γὰρ οὐχ ὁρᾶτε τοὺς μὲν δημαγωγοῦντας καὶ δικαζομένους παρὰ δεῖπνον, τοὺς δὲ μελετῶντας καὶ [c] ἀναγινώσκοντας αὑτῶν τινα συγγράμματα, τοὺς δὲ μίμοις καὶ ὀρχησταῖς ἀγωνοθετοῦντας; Ἀλκιβιάδης δὲ καὶ Θεόδωρος τελεστήριον ἐποίησαν τὸ Πολυτίωνος συμπόσιον ἀπομιμούμενοι δᾳδουχίας καὶ ἱεροφαντίας. ὧν οὐδὲν οἶμαι τῷ ἄρχοντι περιοπτέον· ἀλλὰ καὶ λόγοις καὶ θεάμασι καὶ παιδιαῖς δώσει τόπον ἐκείνοις μόνοις, ὅσα πρὸς τὸ συμποτικὸν τέλος ἐξικνεῖται· τοῦτο δ’ ἦν φιλίας ἐπίτασιν ἢ γένεσιν δι’ ἡδονῆς ἐνεργάσασθαι τοῖς παροῦσιν· διαγωγὴ γάρ ἐστιν ἐν οἴνῳ τὸ συμπόσιον εἰς φιλίαν ὑπὸ χάριτος τελευτῶσα. ἐπεὶ δὲ πανταχοῦ πλήσμιον καὶ πολλαχοῦ [d] βλαβερὸν τὸ ἄκρατον, ἡ δὲ μῖξις, οἷς ἂν ἐν καιρῷ καὶ μετὰ μέτρου παραγένηται πράγμασιν, ἀφαιρεῖ τἄγαν, ᾧ καὶ βλάπτει τὰ ἡδέα καὶ λυπεῖ τὰ ὠφέλιμα, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ τοῖς πίνουσιν ὁ ἐπιστάτης μεμιγμένην τινὰ παρέξει διαγωγήν. ἀκούων οὖν πολλῶν λεγόντων, ὅτι πλοῦς μὲν ὁ παρὰ γῆν περίπατος δ’ ὁ παρὰ θάλατταν ἥδιστός ἐστιν, οὕτως παραβαλεῖ τῇ σπουδῇ τὴν παιδιάν, ὅπως οἵ τε παίζοντες ἁμωσγέπως σπουδῆς τινος ἔχωνται καὶ πάλιν οἱ σπουδάζοντες ἀναθαρρῶσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ ναυτιῶντες ἐγγύθεν εἰς ‹γῆν› τὴν παιδιὰν ἀποβλέποντες. ἔστι γὰρ καὶ γέλωτι χρῆσθαι πρὸς πολλὰ τῶν ὠφελίμων καὶ σπουδὴν ἡδεῖαν παρασχεῖν, [e] (Lyr. adesp. 1 I p. 111 D)

‘ὡς ἀν’ ἐχινόποδας καὶ ἀνὰ τρηχεῖαν ὄνωνιν

φύονται μαλακῶν ἄνθεα λευκοΐων.’

ὅσαι δ’ ἄνευ σπουδῆς ἐπεισκωμάζουσιν τοῖς συμποσίοις παιδιαί, ταύτας ἐπιμελῶς διακελεύσεται τοῖς συμπόταις εὐλαβεῖσθαι, μὴ λάθωσιν ὕβριν ... καθάπερ ὑοσκύαμον ἐμβαλόντες οἴνῳ †τοῖς λεγομένοις προστάγμασιν ἐξυβρίζουσιν, προστάττοντες ᾄδειν ψελλοῖς ἢ κτενίζεσθαι φαλακροῖς ἢ ἀσκωλιάζειν χωλοῖς. ὥσπερ Ἀγαπήστορι τῷ Ἀκαδημαϊκῷ λεπτὸν ἔχοντι καὶ κατεφθινηκὸς τὸ σκέλος ἐπηρεάζοντες οἱ ξυμπόται πάντας ἐκέλευσαν ἐπὶ τοῦ [f] δεξιοῦ ποδὸς ἑστῶτας ἐκπιεῖν τὸ ποτήριον ἢ ζημίαν καταβαλεῖν· τοῦ δὲ προστάσσειν περιελθόντος εἰς αὐτόν, ἐκέλευσε πάντας οὕτως πιεῖν, ὡς ἂν αὐτὸν ἴδωσιν· καὶ κεραμίου στενοῦ κομισθέντος εἰς τοῦτο τὸν ἀσθενῆ πόδα καθεὶς ἐξέπιε τὸ ποτήριον, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι πάντες, ὡς ἐφαίνετο [622] [a] πειρωμένοις ἀδύνατον, ἀπέτισαν τὴν ζημίαν. χαρίεις οὖν Ἀγαπήστωρ, καὶ ποιητέον εὐκόλους οὕτω καὶ ἱλαρὰς τὰς ἀμύνας· ... προστάγμασιν ἐθιστέον χρῆσθαι πρὸς ἡδονὴν καὶ ὠφέλειαν, τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ δυνατὰ καὶ κοσμοῦντα τὸν δρῶντα προστάσσοντας, ᾠδικοῖς ᾆσαι ῥητορικοῖς εἰπεῖν φιλοσόφοις λῦσαί τι τῶν ἀπορουμένων ποιηταῖς προενέγκασθαι στίχους. ἡδέως γὰρ εἰς τοῦθ’ ἕκαστος ἄγεται καὶ προθύμως, (Eur. fr. 183)

‘ἵν’ αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ τυγχάνῃ κράτιστος ὤν.’

ὁ μὲν οὖν τῶν Ἀσσυρίων βασιλεὺς ἆθλον ὑπὸ κήρυκος κατήγγειλεν τῷ καινὴν ἡδονὴν ἐξευρόντι· συμποσίου δὲ βασιλεὺς ἀστεῖον ἆθλον ἂν καὶ γέρας προθείη τῷ παιδιὰν [b] ἀνύβριστον εἰσηγησαμένῳ καὶ τέρψιν ὠφέλιμον καὶ γέλωτα μὴ μώμου μηδ’ ὕβρεων ἀλλὰ χάριτος καὶ φιλοφροσύνης ἑταῖρον· ἐν οἷς τὰ πλεῖστα ναυαγεῖ συμπόσια μὴ τυχόντα παιδαγωγίας ὀρθῆς. ἔστι δὲ σώφρονος ἀνδρὸς ἔχθραν φυλάττεσθαι καὶ ὀργήν, ἐν ἀγορᾷ τὴν ἐκ πλεονεξίας ἐν γυμνασίοις καὶ παλαίστραις ἐκ φιλονικίας ἐν δ’ ἀρχαῖς καὶ φιλοτιμίαις ἐκ φιλοδοξίας ἐν δὲ δείπνῳ καὶ παρὰ πότον ἐκ παιδιᾶς ἐπιτιθεμένην.’

[c]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ε

Πῶς εἴρηται τὸ ‘ποιητὴν δ’ ἄρα Ἔρως διδάσκει’

Πῶς εἴρηται τὸ (Eur. fr. 663)

‘ποιητὴν δ’ ἄρα

Ἔρως διδάσκει, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν’,

ἐζητεῖτο παρὰ Σοσσίῳ Σαπφικῶν τινων ᾀσθέντων, ὅπου καὶ τὸν Κύκλωπα ‘μούσαις εὐφώνοις ἰᾶσθαι’ φησὶ ‘τὸν ἔρωτα’ Φιλόξενος (fr. 7). ἐλέχθη μὲν οὖν ὅτι πρὸς πάντα τόλμαν ὁ ἔρως καὶ καινοτομίαν †συγχωρῆσαι δεινός ἐστιν, ὥσπερ καὶ Πλάτων (Conv. 203d. Tim. 69d) ‘ἴτην’ αὐτὸν καὶ ‘παντὸς ἐπιχειρητὴν’ ὠνόμασεν· καὶ [d] γὰρ λάλον ποιεῖ τὸν σιωπηλὸν καὶ θεραπευτικὸν τὸν αἰσχυντηλόν, ἐπιμελῆ δὲ καὶ φιλόπονον τὸν ἀμελῆ καὶ ῥᾴθυμον· ὃ δ’ ἄν τις μάλιστα θαυμάσειεν, φειδωλὸς ἀνήρ τε καὶ μικρολόγος ἐμπεσὼν εἰς ἔρωτα καθάπερ εἰς πῦρ σίδηρος ἀνεθεὶς καὶ μαλαχθεὶς ἁπαλὸς καὶ ὑγρὸς καὶ ἡδίων, ὥστε τουτὶ τὸ παιζόμενον μὴ πάνυ φαίνεσθαι γελοῖον ὅτι ‘πράσου φύλλῳ τὸ τῶν ἐρώντων δέδεται βαλλάντιον’ (Paroem. I 447. II 47 al.). ἐλέχθη δὲ καὶ ὅτι τῷ μεθύειν τὸ ἐρᾶν ὅμοιόν ἐστιν· ποιεῖ γὰρ θερμοὺς καὶ ἱλαροὺς καὶ διακεχυμένους, γενόμενοι δὲ τοιοῦτοι πρὸς τὰς ἐπῳδοὺς καὶ ἐμμέτρους μάλιστα φωνὰς ἐκφέρονται· [e] καὶ τὸν Αἰσχύλον φασὶ τὰς τραγῳδίας πίνοντα ποιεῖν καὶ διαθερμαινόμενον. ἦν δὲ Λαμπρίας ὁ ἡμέτερος πάππος ἐν τῷ πίνειν εὑρετικώτατος αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ καὶ λογιώτατος· εἰώθει δὲ λέγειν ὅτι τῷ λιβανωτῷ παραπλησίως ὑπὸ θερμότητος ἀναθυμιᾶται. καὶ μὴν ἥδιστα τοὺς ἐρωμένους ὁρῶντες οὐχ ἧττον ἡδέως ἐγκωμιάζουσιν ἢ ὁρῶσιν, καὶ πρὸς πάντα λάλος ὢν ἔρως λαλίστατός ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς ἐπαίνοις. αὐτοί τε γὰρ οὕτως πεπεισμένοι τυγχάνουσιν καὶ [f] βούλονται πεπεῖσθαι πάντας ὡς καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἐρῶντες. τοῦτο καὶ τὸν Λυδὸν ἐπῆρεν ‹Κανδαύλην› τῆς ἑαυτοῦ γυναικὸς ἐπισπᾶσθαι θεατὴν εἰς τὸ δωμάτιον τὸν ....τὴν οὐ· βούλονται γὰρ ὑπ’ ἄλλων μαρτυρεῖσθαι· διὸ καὶ γράφοντες ἐγκώμια τῶν καλῶν ἐπικοσμοῦσιν αὐτὰ μέλεσι καὶ μέτροις καὶ ᾠδαῖς, ὥσπερ εἰκόνας χρυσῷ καλλωπίζοντες, ὅπως ἀκούηταί τε μᾶλλον ὑπὸ πολλῶν καὶ μνημονεύηται· καὶ γὰρ ἂν ἵππον καὶ ἀλεκτρυόνα κἂν ἄλλο [623] [a] τι τοῖς ἐρωμένοις διδῶσι, καλὸν εἶναι καὶ κεκοσμημένον ἐκπρεπῶς βούλονται καὶ περιττῶς τὸ δῶρον, μάλιστα δὲ λόγον κόλακα προσφέροντες ἡδὺν ἐθέλουσι φαίνεσθαι καὶ γαῦρον καὶ περιττόν, οἷος ὁ ποιητικός ἐστιν.

Ὁ μέντοι Σόσσιος ἐπαινέσας ἐκείνους εἶπεν ὡς οὐ χεῖρον ἄν τις ἐπιχειρήσειεν ὁρμηθεὶς ἀφ’ ὧν Θεόφραστος εἴρηκεν περὶ μουσικῆς· ‘καὶ γὰρ ἔναγχος’ ἔφη ‘τὸ βιβλίον ἀνέγνων. λέγει δὲ (fr. 90) μουσικῆς ἀρχὰς τρεῖς εἶναι, λύπην, ἡδονήν, ἐνθουσιασμόν, ὡς ἑκάστου τῶν ... αὐτῶν παρατρέ‹ποντος› ἐκ τοῦ συνήθους ‹καὶ παρ›εγκλίνοντος τὴν φωνήν. αἵ τε γὰρ λῦπαι τὸ γοερὸν καὶ θρηνητικὸν [b] ὀλισθηρὸν εἰς ᾠδὴν ἔχουσιν, διὸ καὶ τοὺς ῥήτορας ἐν τοῖς ἐπιλόγοις καὶ τοὺς ὑποκριτὰς ἐν τοῖς ὀδυρμοῖς ἀτρέμα τῷ μελῳδεῖν προσάγοντας ὁρῶμεν καὶ παρεντείνοντας τὴν φωνήν. αἵ τε σφοδραὶ περιχάρειαι τῆς ψυχῆς τῶν μὲν ἐλαφροτέρων τῷ ἤθει καὶ τὸ σῶμα συνεπαίρουσιν καὶ παρακαλοῦσιν εἰς ἔνρυθμον κίνησιν, ἐξαλλομένων καὶ κροτούντων εἴπερ ὀρχεῖσθαι μὴ δύνανται·

‘μανίαι τ’ ἀλαλαί τ’ ὀρινομένων ῥιψαύχενι σὺν κλόνῳ’

κατὰ Πίνδαρον (fr. 208 6 704a, 10)· οἱ δὲ χαρίεντες ἐν τῷ πάθει τούτῳ γενόμενοι τὴν φωνὴν μόνην εἰς τὸ ᾄδειν καὶ φθέγγεσθαι μέτρα καὶ μέλη προΐενται. μάλιστα δ’ ὁ [c] ἐνθουσιασμὸς ἐξίστησι καὶ παρατρέπει τό τε σῶμα καὶ τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ συνήθους καὶ καθεστηκότος. ὅθεν αἵ τε βακχεῖαι ῥυθμοῖς χρῶνται καὶ τὸ χρησμῳδεῖν ἐμμέτρως παρέχεται τοῖς ἐνθεαζομένοις, τῶν τε μαινομένων ὀλίγους ἰδεῖν ἔστιν ἄνευ μέτρου καὶ ᾠδῆς ληροῦντας. οὕτω δὲ τούτων ἐχόντων εἰ βούλοιο καθορᾶν ὑπ’ αὐγὰς διαπτύξας τὸν ἔρωτα καὶ καταμανθάνειν, οὐκ ἂν ἄλλο πάθος εὕροις οὔτε λύπας δριμυτέρας ἔχον οὔτε σφοδροτέρας περιχαρείας οὔτε μείζονας ἐκστάσεις καὶ παραφροσύνας, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τὴν Σοφοκλέους (O. R. 4) πόλιν ἀνδρὸς ἐρωτικοῦ ψυχὴν ‘ὁμοῦ μὲν θυμιαμάτων γέμουσαν,

[d] ὁμοῦ δὲ παιάνων τε καὶ στεναγμάτων.’

οὐδὲν οὖν ἄτοπον οὐδὲ θαυμαστόν, εἰ πάσας, ὅσαι μουσικῆς εἰσιν ἀρχαί, περιέχων ὁ ἔρως ἐν αὑτῷ καὶ συνειληφώς, λύπην ἡδονὴν ἐνθουσιασμόν, τά τ’ ἄλλα φιλόφωνός ἐστι καὶ λάλος εἴς τε ποίησιν μελῶν καὶ μέτρων ὡς οὐδὲν ἄλλο πάθος ἐπίφορος καὶ κατάντης.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ϛ

Περὶ τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου πολυποσίας

Λόγος ἦν περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ βασιλέως ὡς οὐ πολὺ πίνοντος ἀλλὰ πολὺν χρόνον ἐν τῷ πίνειν ‹καὶ› διαλέγεσθαι [e] τοῖς φίλοις ἕλκοντος. ἀπεδείκνυεν δ’ αὐτοὺς φλυαροῦντας Φιλῖνος ἐκ τῶν βασιλικῶν ἐφημερίδων, ἐν αἷς συνεχέστατα γέγραπται καὶ πλειστάκις ὅτι ‘τήνδε τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκ τοῦ πότου καθεύδων’ ἔστι δ’ ὅτε ‘καὶ τὴν ἐφεξῆς’· διὸ καὶ πρὸς τὰς συνουσίας ἀργότερος ἦν, ὀξὺς δὲ καὶ θυμοειδὴς ἅπερ ἐστὶ σωματικῆς θερμότητος. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τοῦ χρωτὸς ἥδιστον ἀποπνεῖν ὥστε καταπιμπλάναι τοὺς χιτωνίσκους εὐωδίας ἀρωματιζούσης, ὃ δοκεῖ καὶ αὐτὸ θερμότητος εἶναι· διὸ καὶ τῆς οἰκουμένης οἱ ξηρότατοι καὶ θερμότατοι τόποι τήν τε κασίαν καὶ τὸν λιβανωτὸν [f] ἐκφέρουσιν· πέψει γάρ τινι τῶν ὑγρῶν ὁ Θεόφραστός φησιν ἐπιγίνεσθαι τὴν εὐωδίαν, ὅταν ἐξαιρεθῇ τὸ βλαβερὸν †ρισσὸν ὑπὸ θερμότητος. δοκεῖ δὲ καὶ Κα‹λλισθένης› ἐν διαβολῇ γε‹νέσθαι πρὸς αὐ›τόν, ὡς δυσχεραί‹νων συν›δειπνεῖν διὰ τὸν ‹πότον›· ἐπεὶ καὶ κύλικα λεγομένην Ἀλεξάνδρου μεγάλην ἐλθοῦσαν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἀπεώσατο [624] [a] φήσας οὐκ ἐθέλειν Ἀλεξάνδρου πιὼν Ἀσκληπιοῦ δεῖσθαι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν περὶ τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου πολυποσίας.

Μιθριδάτην δὲ τὸν πολεμήσαντα Ῥωμαίοις ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσιν, οὓς ἐπετέλει, καὶ πολυφαγίας ἆθλα θεῖναι καὶ πολυποσίας φασίν, νικῆσαι δ’ αὐτὸν ἀμφότερα, καὶ ὅλως πιεῖν πλεῖστον ‹τῶν› καθ’ αὑτὸν ἀνθρώπων, διὸ καὶ Διόνυσον ἐπικληθῆναι. τοῦθ’ ἡμεῖς εἴπομεν ἕν τι τῶν εἰκῆ πεπιστευμένων εἶναι, τὸ περὶ τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς ἐπικλήσεως· νηπίου γὰρ ὄντος αὐτοῦ κεραυνὸς ἐπέφλεξε τὰ σπάργανα, τοῦ δὲ σώματος οὐχ ἥψατο, πλὴν ὅσον ἴχνος τι τοῦ πυρὸς ἐν τῷ μετώπῳ κρυπτόμενον ὑπὸ τῆς κόμης [b] ‹διαμέν›ειν αὐτῷ· παι... ἀνδρὸς ἤδη πάλιν ἐπὶ τὸ δωμάτιον ἐμπεσὼν κεραυνὸς αὐτοῦ μὲν παρέπεσεν καθεύδοντος, τῆς δὲ φαρέτρας ὑπερκρεμαμένης διεξῆλθε τὰ βέλη πυρακτώσας. οἱ μὲν οὖν μάντεις ἀπεφήναντο πλεῖστον αὐτὸν ἰσχύσειν ἀπὸ τῆς τοξικῆς καὶ κούφης στρατιᾶς, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ Διόνυσον αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῶν κεραυνοβολιῶν ὁμοιότητι τοῦ πάθους προσηγόρευσαν.

Ἐκ τούτου ‹πάλιν› περὶ τῶν πολὺ πιόντων ἦν λόγος· ἐν οἷς καὶ τὸν πύκτην Ἡρακλείδην ἐτίθεσαν, ὃν Ἡρακλοῦν Ἀλεξανδρεῖς ὑπεκορίζοντο, κατὰ τοὺς πατέρας ἡμῶν γενόμενον. οὗτος ἀπορῶν συμπότου παραμένοντος ἐκάλει [c] τοὺς μὲν ἐπὶ πρόπομα τοὺς δ’ ἐπ’ ἄριστον ἄλλους δ’ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον, ἐσχάτους δέ τινας ἐπὶ κῶμον· ἀπαλλαττομένων δὲ τῶν πρώτων ‹οἱ› δεύτεροι συνῆπτον εἶτ’ ἐφεξῆς οἱ τρίτοι καὶ τέταρτοι· κἀκεῖνος οὐθὲν διάλειμμα ποιῶν ἅπασιν ἐξήρκει καὶ τοὺς τέσσαρας πότους συνδιέφερεν.

Τῶν δὲ Δρούσῳ τῷ Τιβερίου Καίσαρος υἱῷ συμβιούντων ὁ πάντας ἐν τῷ πίνειν †προτρεπόμενος ἰατρὸς ἑάλω τῶν πικρῶν ἀμυγδαλῶν πέντ’ ἢ ἓξ ἑκάστοτε προλαμβάνων ἕνεκα τοῦ μὴ μεθύσκεσθαι· κωλυθεὶς δὲ καὶ παραφυλαχθεὶς οὐδ’ ἐπὶ μικρὸν ἀντέσχεν. ἔνιοι μὲν οὖν [d] ᾤοντο τὰς ἀμυγδαλίδας δηκτικόν τι καὶ ῥυπτικὸν ἔχειν τῆς σαρκός, ὥστε καὶ τῶν προσώπων τὰς ἐφηλίδας ἐξαιρεῖν· ὅταν οὖν προληφθῶσι, τῇ πικρότητι τοὺς πόρους ἀμύσσειν καὶ δηγμὸν ἐμποιεῖν, ὑφ’ οὗ τὸ ὑγρὸν κατασπῶσιν ἀπὸ τῆς κεφαλῆς διατμιζόμενον. ἡμῖν δὲ μᾶλλον ἡ τῆς πικρότητος ἐδόκει δύναμις ἀναξηραντικὴ καὶ δάπανος ὑγρῶν εἶναι· διὸ τῇ τε γεύσει πάντων ἐστὶ τῶν χυλῶν ὁ πικρὸς ἀηδέστατος (τὰ γὰρ φλέβια τῆς γλώττης, ὡς ὁ Πλάτων (Tim. 65c) φησίν, μαλακὰ καὶ μανότερ’ ὄντα συντείνεται παρὰ φύσιν ὑπὸ τῆς ξηρότητος, ἐκτηκομένων τῶν ὑγρῶν) καὶ τὰ ἕλκη τοῖς πικροῖς ἀπισχναίνουσι φαρμάκοις, ὡς ὁ ποιητής φησιν (Λ 846)

[e] ‘ἐπὶ δὲ ῥίζαν βάλε πικρὴν

χερσὶ διατρίψας ὀδυνήφατον, ἥ οἱ ‹ἁπάσας

ἔσχ’ ὀδύνας· τὸ μὲν ἕλκος ἐτέρσετο,› παύσατο δ’ αἷμα.’

τὸ γὰρ τῇ γεύσει πικρὸν τῇ δυνάμει ξηραντικὸν ὀρθῶς προσηγόρευσεν. φαίνεται δὲ καὶ τὰ διαπάσματα τῶν γυμνικῶν, οἷς ἀναρπάζουσι τοὺς ἱδρῶτας, πικρὰ τῇ γεύσει καὶ στυπτικὰ ὄντα σφοδρότητι †τοῦ στρυφνοῦ τὸ πικρόν . ‘οὕτως οὖν’ ἔφην ‘τούτων ἐχόντων, εἰκότως ἡ τῶν ἀμυγδαλῶν πικρότης βοηθεῖ πρὸς τὸν ἄκρατον, ἀναξηραίνουσα τοῦ σώματος τὰ ἐντὸς καὶ οὐκ ἐῶσα πίμπλασθαι τὰς [f] φλέβας, ὧν διατάσει φασὶ καὶ ταραχῇ συμβαίνει τὸ μεθύειν. τεκμήριον δὲ τοῦ λόγου μέγα τὸ συμβαῖνον περὶ τὰς ἀλώπεκας· ἂν γὰρ ἀμυγδάλας πικρὰς φαγοῦσαι ‹μὴ› ἐπιπίωσι‹ν, ἀποθνήσκουσι› τῶν ὑγρῶν ἀθρό‹ως ἐκλει›πόντων.’

[625] [a]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ζ

Διὰ τί μᾶλλον ἀκράτῳ χαίρουσιν οἱ γέροντες

Ἐζητεῖτο περὶ τῶν γερόντων, διὰ τί μᾶλλον ἀκρατοτέρῳ τῷ ποτῷ χαίρουσιν. οἱ μὲν οὖν κατεψυγμένην τὴν ἕξιν αὐτῶν καὶ δυσεκθέρμαντον οὖσαν οἰόμενοι διὰ τοῦτο τῇ σφοδρότητι τῆς κράσεως ἐναρμόττειν ἐφαίνοντο κοινόν τι καὶ πρόχειρον οὐχ ἱκανὸν δὲ πρὸς τὴν αἰτίαν οὐδ’ ἀληθὲς λέγοντες· καὶ γὰρ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων αἰσθήσεων τὸ αὐτὸ συμβέβηκεν· δυσκίνητοι γάρ εἰσι καὶ δυσμετάβλητοι [b] πρὸς τὰς ἀντιλήψεις τῶν ποιοτήτων, ἂν μὴ κατάκοροι καὶ σφοδραὶ προσπέσωσιν. αἰτία δ’ ἡ τῆς ἕξεως ἄνεσις· ἐκλυομένη γὰρ καὶ ἀτονοῦσα πλήττεσθαι φιλεῖ. διὸ τῇ τε γεύσει μάλιστα τοὺς δηκτικοὺς προσίενται χυμούς, ἥ τ’ ὄσφρησις αὐτῶν ὅμοια πέπονθε πρὸς τὰς ὀσμάς, κινεῖται γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀκράτων ‹καὶ σφοδρῶν› ἥδιον· ἡ δ’ ἁφὴ ‹πρὸς› τὰ ἕλκη δυσπα‹θής›, τραύματα γὰρ ‹ἐνίοτε› λαμβάνοντες ‹οὐ μάλ›α πονοῦσιν· ὁ ‹μοιό›τατον δὲ γίνεται ‹τὸ› τῆς ἀκοῆς, οἱ γὰρ μουσικοὶ γηρῶντες ὀξύτερον ἁρμόζονται καὶ σκληρότερον οἷον ὑπὸ πληγῆς [καὶ] τῆς συντόνου φωνῆς ἐγείροντες τὸ αἰσθητήριον.

[c] ὅ τι γὰρ σιδήρῳ πρὸς ἀκμὴν στόμωμα, τοῦτο σώματι πνεῦμα παρέχει πρὸς αἴσθησιν· ἐνδόντος δὲ τούτου καὶ χαλάσαντος, ἀργὸν ἀπολείπεται καὶ γεῶδες τὸ αἰσθητήριον καὶ σφοδροῦ τοῦ νύττοντος, οἷον ὁ ἄκρατός ἐστι, δεόμενον.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Η

Διὰ τί τὰ γράμματα πόρρωθεν οἱ πρεσβύτεροι μᾶλλον ἀναγινώσκουσιν

Ταῦτα δ’ ἡμῶν εἰς τὸ προκείμενον εὑρησιλογούντων ἐδόκει τὸ τῆς ὄψεως ἀντιπίπτειν. οἱ γὰρ πρεσβύτεροι [d] πόρρω τὰ γράμματα τῶν ὀμμάτων ἀπάγοντες ἀναγινώσκουσιν, ἐγγύθεν δ’ οὐ δύνανται· καὶ τοῦτο παραδηλῶν ὁ Αἰσχύλος φησίν (fr. 358)·

‘οὐδὲ ἀπὸ ... αὐτόν· οὐ γὰρ ἐγγύθεν

... γέρων δὲ γραμματεὺς γενοῦ σαφής’·

ἐνδηλότερον δὲ Σοφοκλῆς (fr. 774) τὸ αὐτὸ περὶ τῶν γερόντων·

‘βραδεῖα μὲν γὰρ ἐν λόγοισι προσβολὴ

μόλις δι’ ὠτὸς ἔρχεται τρυπωμένου,

πόρρω δὲ λεύσσων, ἐγγύθεν δὲ πᾶς τυφλός.’

εἴπερ οὖν πρὸς τὴν ἐπίτασιν καὶ σφοδρότητα μᾶλλον ὑπακούει ‹τὰ› τῶν γερόντων αἰσθητήρια, πῶς ἐν τῷ [e] ἀναγινώσκειν τὸν ἐγγύθεν ἀντιφωτισμὸν οὐ φέρουσιν, ἀλλὰ προάγοντες ἀπωτέρω τὸ βιβλίον ἐκλύουσι τὴν λαμπρότητα τῷ ἀέρι καθάπερ οἶνον ὕδατι κατακεραννυμένην;

Ἦσαν μὲν οὖν οἱ πρὸς τοῦτο λέγοντες, ὡς ἀπάγουσι τῶν ὄψεων τὸ βιβλίον οὐ μαλακώτερον τὸ φῶς ποιοῦντες, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐπιδραττόμενοι καὶ περιλαμβάνοντες αὐγὴν πλείονα καὶ πληροῦντες ἀέρος λαμπροῦ τὴν μεταξὺ τῶν ὀμμάτων καὶ τῶν γραμμάτων χώραν. ἕτεροι δὲ τοῖς συμβάλλουσι τὰς αὐγὰς μετεῖχον· ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἀποτείνεται τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν ἑκατέρου κῶνος, πρὸς τῷ ὄμματι τὴν κορυφὴν ἔχων, ἕδραν δὲ καὶ βάσιν ἣ περιλαμβάνει τὸ [f] ὁρώμενον, ἄχρι μέν τινος εἰκός ἐστιν ἰδίᾳ τῶν κώνων ἑκάτερον φέρεσθαι· γενόμενοι δ’ ἀπωτέρω καὶ συμπεσόντες ἀλλήλοις ἓν τὸ φῶς ποιοῦσι· διὸ καὶ τῶν ὁρωμένων ἕκαστον ἓν οὐ δύο φαίνεται, καίπερ ἀμφοτέροις ἅμα τοῖς ὄμμασι καταφαινόμενον· αἰτία γὰρ ἡ τῶν κώνων σύναψις εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ σύλλαμψις ἐκ δυεῖν μίαν ὄψιν ἀπειργασμένη. τούτων δ’ οὕτως ἐχόντων οἱ μὲν [626] [a] ἐγγὺς προσάγοντες τὰ γράμματα πρεσβῦται, μηδέπω τῶν αὐγῶν συγκεχυμένων ἀλλ’ ἑκατέρᾳ χωρὶς ἐπιθιγγάνοντες, ἀσθενέστερον ἐπιλαμβάνονται· οἱ δ’ ἀπωτέρω προθέμενοι, μεμιγμένου τοῦ φωτὸς ἤδη καὶ πολλοῦ γεγονότος, μᾶλλον ἐξακριβοῦσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ ταῖς δυσὶν ὁμοῦ χερσὶ κατέχοντες ὃ τῇ ἑτέρᾳ μὴ δύνανται.

Λαμπρίας δ’ ὁ ‹ἀδελφὸς› τὴν Ἱερωνύμου (fr. 19 Hi.) ... οὐκ ἀνέγνωκεν ... εὐφυΐαν ἐμπεσὼν ... ὅτι τοῖς προσπίπτουσιν ἀπὸ τῶν ὁρατῶν ‹εἴδε›σιν πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν ὁρῶμεν, ἃ πρῶτον μὲν ἀπέρχεται μεγάλα καὶ παχυμερῆ, διὸ τοὺς γέροντας ἐγγύθεν ἐπιταράττει βραδυπόρον καὶ σκληρὰν ἔχοντας τὴν ὅρασιν· ἀνενεχθέντων δ’ εἰς τὸν [b] ἀέρα καὶ λαβόντων διάστημα, τὰ μὲν γεώδη περιθραύεται καὶ ἀποπίπτει, τὰ δὲ λεπτὰ προσπελάζοντα ταῖς ὄψεσιν ἀλύπως καὶ ὁμαλῶς ἐναρμόττει τοῖς πόροις, ὥσθ’ ἧττον ταραττομένους μᾶλλον ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι. καὶ γὰρ αἱ τῶν ἀνθῶν ὀσμαὶ πόρρωθεν εὐωδέστεραι προσπίπτουσιν, ἂν δ’ ἐγγύθεν ἄγαν προσάγῃς, οὐχ οὕτω καθαρὸν οὐδ’ ἄκρατον ὀδώδασιν· αἴτιον δ’ ὅτι πολλὰ τῶν γεωδῶν καὶ θολερῶν συναποφέρεται τῇ ὀσμῇ καὶ διαφθείρει τὴν εὐωδίαν ἐγγύθεν λαμβανομένης, ἂν δ’ ἄπωθεν, τὰ μὲν θολερὰ καὶ γεώδη περιρρεῖ καὶ ὑποπίπτει, τὸ δ’ εἰλικρινὲς καὶ θερμὸν αὐτῆς ὑπὸ λεπτότητος διασῴζεται πρὸς τὴν [c] αἴσθησιν.

Ἡμεῖς δὲ τὴν Πλατωνικὴν (Tim. 45c s.) φυλάττοντες ἀρχὴν ἐλέγομεν ὅτι πνεῦμα τῶν ὀμμάτων αὐγοειδὲς ἐκπῖπτον ἀνακίρναται τῷ περὶ τὰ σώματα φωτὶ καὶ λαμβάνει σύμπηξιν, ὥσθ’ ἓν ἐξ ἀμφοῖν σῶμα δι’ ὅλου συμπαθὲς γενέσθαι. κεράννυται δ’ ἕτερον ἑτέρῳ συμμετρίας τε λόγῳ καὶ ποσότητος· οὐ γὰρ ἀναιρεθῆναι δεῖ θάτερον ὑπὸ θατέρου κρατηθέν, ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ ἀμφοῖν εἴς τι μέσον ἁρμονίᾳ καὶ κοινωνίᾳ συναχθέντων μίαν δύναμιν ἀποτελεσθῆναι. ὄντος οὖν τοῦ τῶν παρηλίκων, εἴτε ῥεῦμα χρὴ προσαγορεύειν τὸ διὰ τῆς κόρης φερόμενον εἴτε πνεῦμα φωτοειδὲς εἴτ’ αὐγήν, ἀσθενοῦς καὶ ἀδρανοῦς, [d] ‹οὐκ› ἐγγίνεται κρᾶσις προσ‹πίπτοντι πρὸς› τὸ ἐκτὸς οὐδὲ μῖξις ἀλλὰ φθορὰ καὶ †σύγκρισις, ἂν μὴ μακρὰν τὰ γράμματα τῶν ὀμμάτων ἀπάγοντες ἐκλύωσι τὴν ἄγαν λαμπρότητα τοῦ φωτός, ὥστε μὴ πολλὴν μηδ’ ἄκρατον ἀλλ’ ὁμοπαθῆ καὶ σύμμετρον ἀπαντῆσαι πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν. ὃ δὴ καὶ τοῦ περὶ τὰ νυκτίνομα τῶν ζῴων παθήματος αἴτιόν ἐστιν· ἡ γὰρ ὄψις αὐτῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ μεθημερινοῦ φωτὸς ἀδρανὴς οὖσα κατακλύζεται καὶ κρατεῖται, μὴ δυναμένη πρὸς πολὺ καὶ ἰσχυρὸν ‹ἀπ’› ἀσθενοῦς καὶ ὀλίγης ἀρχῆς κεράννυσθαι· πρὸς δὲ τὸ ἀμαυρὸν καὶ λεπτὸν [e] οἷον ἀστέρος φῶς αὐγὴν διαρκῆ καὶ σύμμετρον ἐξίησιν, ὥστε κοινωνεῖν καὶ συνεργεῖσθαι τὴν αἴσθησιν.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Θ

Διὰ τί τῷ ποτίμῳ μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ θαλαττίῳ πλύνεται τὰ ἱμάτια

Θέων ὁ γραμματικὸς ἑστιωμένων ἡμῶν παρὰ Μεστρίῳ Φλώρῳ πρὸς Θεμιστοκλέα τὸν Στωικὸν διηπόρησεν, τί δήποτε Χρύσιππος (St. V. Fr. III 546) ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν παραλόγων καὶ ἀτόπων ἐπιμνησθείς, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ ‘τάριχος, ἂν ἅλμῃ βρέχηται, γλυκύτερον γίνεσθαι’ καὶ τὸ ‘τῶν ἐρίων τοὺς πόκους ἧττον ὑπακούειν τοῖς βίᾳ [f] διασπῶσιν ἢ τοῖς ἀτρέμα διαλύουσιν’ καὶ τὸ ‘νηστεύσαντας ἀργότερον ἐσθίειν ἢ προφαγόντας’, οὐδενὸς αὐτῶν αἰτίαν ἀπέδωκεν. ὁ δὲ Θεμιστοκλῆς εἰπὼν ὅτι ταῦτα Χρύσιππος ἄλλως ἐν παραδείγματος λόγῳ προύθετο, ῥᾳδίως ἡμῶν καὶ ἀλόγως ὑπὸ τοῦ εἰκότος ἁλισκομένων καὶ πάλιν ἀπιστούντων τῷ παρὰ τὸ εἰκός, ἐπιστρέφων [627] [a] ‘σοὶ δ’’ ἔφη ‘βέλτιστε, τί πρᾶγμα περὶ τούτων διαπορεῖν; εἰ γὰρ ἡμῖν αἰτίων ζητητικὸς καὶ θεωρητικὸς γέγονας, μὴ μακρὰν οὕτως ἀποσκήνου τῶν ἰδίων, ἀλλ’ εἰπὲ δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν Ὅμηρος (ζ 59) ἐν τῷ ποταμῷ πλύνουσαν οὐκ ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ, καίπερ ἐγγὺς οὔσῃ, τὴν Ναυσικάαν πεποίηκεν, καίτοι θερμοτέραν γε καὶ διαφανεστέραν εἰκὸς καὶ ῥυπτικωτέραν εἶναι.’

Καὶ ὁ Θέων ‘ἀλλὰ τοῦτό γ’’ εἶπε ‘‹διὰ› τῶν γεωδῶν Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 217) πάλαι διαλέλυκεν, ‹ὃ προ›βέβληκας ἡμῖν. ‹πολὺ γὰρ› τῇ θαλάττῃ τὸ τραχὺ καὶ γεῶδες ἐνδιέσπαρται καὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖ τὴν ἁλυκότητα μεμιγμένον· ᾗ [b] καὶ μᾶλλον ἡ θάλαττα τούς τε νηχομένους ἐξαναφέρει καὶ στέγει τὰ βάρη, τοῦ γλυκέος ἐνδιδόντος διὰ κουφότητα καὶ ἀσθένειαν· ἔστι γὰρ ἄμικτον καὶ καθαρόν· ὅθεν ἐνδύεται διὰ λεπτότητα καὶ διεξιὸν τοῦ θαλαττίου μᾶλλον ἐκτήκει τὰς κηλῖδας. ἢ οὐ δοκεῖ σοι τοῦτο πιθανῶς λέγειν Ἀριστοτέλης;’

‘Πιθανῶς’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘οὐ μὴν ἀληθῶς· ὁρῶ γὰρ ὅτι καὶ τέφρᾳ καὶ λίτρῳ, κἂν μὴ παρῇ δὲ ταῦτα, κονιορτῷ πολλάκις παχύνουσι τὸ ὕδωρ, ὡς μᾶλλον τῶν γεωδῶν τῇ τραχύτητι καταπλύνειν δυναμένων τὸν ῥύπον, αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ ὕδατος διὰ λεπτότητα καὶ ἀσθένειαν οὐχ ὁμοίως [c] τοῦτο δρῶντος. τὸ μὲν οὖν παχυμερὲς τῆς θαλάττης οὐ ... †πετουτόποτε ... πρὸς τὴν κα... δὲ τὴν δριμύτητα· καὶ γὰρ αὕτη τοὺς ‹πόρους› ἀναστομοῦσα καὶ ‹ἀνοίγουσα› κατασύρει τὸν ῥύπον. ἐπεὶ δὲ πᾶν τὸ λιπαρὸν δυσέκπλυτόν ἐστι καὶ κηλῖδα ποιεῖ. λιπαρὰ δ’ ἡ θάλασσα, τοῦτ’ ἂν αἴτιον εἴη μάλιστα τοῦ μὴ καλῶς πλύνειν. ὅτι δ’ ἐστὶ λιπαρά, καὶ αὐτὸς εἴρηκεν Ἀριστοτέλης (Probl. Ph. 933a 19)· οἵ τε γὰρ ἅλες λίπος ἔχουσιν καὶ τοὺς λύχνους βέλτιον παρέχουσι καομένους, αὐτή θ’ ἡ θάλαττα προσραινομένη ταῖς φλοξὶ συνεκλάμπει, καὶ κάεται μάλιστα τῶν ὑδάτων τὸ θαλάττιον· ὡς δ’ ἐγᾦμαι, διὰ τοῦτο καὶ [d] θερμότατόν ἐστιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ κατ’ ἄλλον τρόπον· ἐπεὶ τῆς πλύσεως τέλος ἡ ψῦξίς ἐστιν καὶ μάλιστα φαίνεται καθαρὸν τὸ τάχιστα ξηρὸν γινόμενον, δεῖ δὴ τὸ πλῦνον ὑγρὸν τῷ ‹ῥύπ›ῳ συνεξελθεῖν, ὥσπερ τῷ νοσήματι τὸν ἐλλέβορον. τὸ μὲν οὖν γλυκὺ ῥᾳδίως ὁ ἥλιος ἐξάγει διὰ κουφότητα, τὸ δ’ ἁλμυρὸν ἐνισχόμενον τοῖς πόροις διὰ τραχύτητα δυσξήραντόν ἐστιν.’

Καὶ ὁ Θέων ὑπολαβών ‘οὐδέν’ ἔφη ‘λέγεις· Ἀριστοτέλης (Probl. Ph. 932b 25) γὰρ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ βυβλίῳ φησὶν τοὺς ἐν θαλάττῃ λουσαμένους τάχιον ἀποξηραίνεσθαι τῶν γλυκεῖ χρησαμένων, ἂν ἐν ἡλίῳ στῶσιν’.

[e] ‘λέγει γάρ’ εἶπον· ‘ἀλλ’ ᾤμην σε μᾶλλον Ὁμήρῳ τἀναντία λέγοντι πιστεύσειν. ὁ γὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς μετὰ τὸ ναυάγιον ἐντυγχάνει τῇ Ναυσικάᾳ ‘σμερδαλέος’ ὀφθῆναι ‘κεκακωμένος ἅλμῃ (ζ 137)’, καὶ πρὸς τὰς θεραπαινίδας φησίν (ζ 218)·

‘ἀμφίπολοι, στῆθ’ οὕτω ἀπόπροθεν, ὄφρ’

[ἂν] ἐγὼ αὐτὸς

ἅλμην ὤμοιιν ἀπολούσομαι’,

καταβὰς δ’ εἰς τὸν ποταμὸν (ζ 226) ‘ἐκ κεφαλῆς ἔσμηχεν ἁλὸς χνόον,’ ὑπερφυῶς τοῦ ποιητοῦ τὸ γινόμενον συνεωρακότος· ὅταν γὰρ ἐκ τῆς θαλάττης ἀναδύντες ἐν τῷ ἡλίῳ στῶσιν, τὸ λεπτότατον καὶ κουφότατον τῆς ὑγρασίας ἡ [f] θερμότης διεφόρησεν, τὸ δ’ ἁλμυρὸν αὐτὸ καὶ τραχὺ καταλειφθὲν ἐφίσταται καὶ παραμένει τοῖς σώμασιν ἁλώδης ἐπίπαγος, μέχρι ἂν αὐτὸ ποτίμῳ καὶ γλυκεῖ κατακλύσωσιν.’

[628] [a]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ι

Διὰ τί τῆς Αἰαντίδος φυλῆς Ἀθήνησιν οὐδέποτε τὸν χορὸν ἔκρινον ὕστατον

Ἐν δὲ τοῖς Σαραπίωνος ἐπινικίοις, ὅτε τῇ Λεοντίδι φυλῇ τὸν χορὸν διατάξας ἐνίκησεν, ἑστιωμένοις ἡμῖν ἅτε δὴ καὶ φυλέταις οὖσι δημοποιήτοις οἰκεῖοι λόγοι τῆς ἐν χειρὶ φιλοτιμίας παρῆσαν. ἔσχε γὰρ ὁ ἀγὼν ἐντονωτάτην ἅμιλλαν, ἀγωνοθετοῦντος ἐνδόξως καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς Φιλοπάππου τοῦ βασιλέως ταῖς φυλαῖς ὁμοῦ πάσαις [b] χορηγοῦντος. ἐτύγχανε δὲ συνεστιώμενος ἡμῖν καὶ τῶν παλαιῶν τὰ μὲν λέγων τὰ δ’ ἀκούων διὰ φιλανθρωπίαν οὐχ ἧττον ἢ φιλομάθειαν.

Προεβλήθη δέ τι τοιοῦτον ὑπὸ Μάρκου τοῦ γραμματικοῦ. Νεάνθη τὸν Κυζικηνὸν (FHG III 10) ἔφη λέγειν ἐν τοῖς κατὰ πόλιν μυθικοῖς, ὅτι τῇ Αἰαντίδι φυλῇ γέρας ὑπῆρχεν τὸ μὴ κρίνεσθαι τὸν ‹ταύτης› χορὸν ἔσχατον· ‘... μὲν οὖν’ ἔφη ‘προ...ξιν ἱστορίας ὁ ἀνα... εἰ δὲ τοῦτό γ’ οὐ νοθεύει, προκείσθω τῆς αἰτίας ἐν κοινῷ πᾶσιν ἡ ζήτησις.’ εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦ ἑταίρου Μίλωνος ‘ἂν οὖν ψεῦδος ᾖ τὸ λεγόμενον;’ ‘οὐδέν’ ἔφη ‘δεινόν’ ὁ Φιλόπαππος ‘εἰ ταὐτὸ πεισόμεθα Δημοκρίτῳ (A 17a) ‹τῷ› [c] σοφῷ διὰ φιλολογίαν. καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ὡς ἔοικε τρώγων σίκυον, ὡς ἐφάνη μελιτώδης ὁ χυμός, ἠρώτησε τὴν διακονοῦσαν, ὁπόθεν πρίαιτο· τῆς δὲ κῆπόν τινα φραζούσης, ἐκέλευσεν ἐξαναστὰς ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ δεικνύναι τὸν τόπον· θαυμάζοντος δὲ τοῦ γυναίου καὶ πυνθανομένου τί βούλεται, ‘τὴν αἰτίαν’ ἔφη ‘δεῖ με τῆς γλυκύτητος εὑρεῖν, εὑρήσω δὲ τοῦ χωρίου γενόμενος θεατής·’ ‘κατάκεισο δή’ τὸ γύναιον εἶπε μειδιῶν, ‘ἐγὼ γὰρ ἀγνοήσασα τὸ σίκυον εἰς ἀγγεῖον ἐθέμην μεμελιτωμένον’· ὁ δ’ ὥσπερ ἀχθεσθείς ‘ἀπέκναισας’ εἶπεν ‘καὶ οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐπιθήσομαι [d] τῷ λόγῳ καὶ ζητήσω τὴν αἰτίαν, ὡς ἂν οἰκείου καὶ συγγενοῦς οὔσης τῷ σικύῳ τῆς γλυκύτητος.’ οὐκοῦν μηδ’ ἡμεῖς τὴν Νεάνθους ἐν ἐνίοις εὐχέρειαν ἀποδράσεως ποιησώμεθα πρόφασιν· ἐγγυμνάσασθαι γάρ, εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο χρήσιμον, ὁ λόγος παρέξει.’

Πάντες οὖν ὁμαλῶς ἐρρύησαν πρὸς τὸ τὴν φυλὴν ἐγκωμιάζειν, εἴ τι καλὸν πρὸς δόξαν αὐτῇ ὑπῆρχεν ἀναλεγόμενοι. καὶ γὰρ ὁ Μαραθὼν εἰς μέσον εἵλκετο, δῆμος ὢν ἐκείνης τῆς φυλῆς· καὶ τοὺς περὶ Ἁρμόδιον Αἰαντίδας ἀπέφαινον, Ἀφιδναίους γε δὴ τῶν δήμων γεγονότας. Γλαυκίας δ’ ὁ ῥήτωρ καὶ τὸ δεξιὸν κέρας Αἰαντίδαις [e] τῆς ἐν Μαραθῶνι παρατάξεως ἀποδοθῆναι, ταῖς Αἰσχύλου (PLG II p. 240) †τὴν μεθορίαν ἐλεγείαις πιστούμενος, ἠγωνισμένου τὴν μάχην ἐκείνην ἐπιφανῶς· ἔτι δὲ καὶ Καλλίμαχον ἀπεδείκνυεν τὸν πολέμαρχον ἐξ ἐκείνης ὄντα τῆς φυλῆς, ὃς αὑτόν τε παρέσχεν ἄριστον ἄνδρα καὶ τῆς μάχης μετά γε Μιλτιάδην αἰτιώτατος κατέστη σύμψηφος ἐκείνῳ γενόμενος. ἐγὼ δὲ τῷ Γλαυκίᾳ προσετίθην, ὅτι καὶ τὸ ψήφισμα, καθ’ ὃ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐξήγαγεν, τῆς Αἰαντίδος φυλῆς πρυτανευούσης γραφείη, καὶ ὅτι περὶ τὴν ἐν Πλαταιαῖς μάχην εὐδοκιμήσειεν ἡ φυλὴ μάλιστα· διὸ καὶ ταῖς Σφραγίτισι Νύμφαις τὴν ἐπινίκιον καὶ πυθόχρηστον [f] ἀπῆγον Αἰαντίδαι θυσίαν εἰς Κιθαιρῶνα, τῆς πόλεως τὸ ἱερεῖον καὶ τὰ ἄλλα παρεχούσης αὐτοῖς. ‘ἀλλ’ ὁρᾷς’ ἔφην ‘ὅτι πολλὰ καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις φυλαῖς ὑπάρχει, [629] [a] καὶ πρώτην γε τὴν ἐμὴν ἴστε δὴ τὴν Λεοντίδα μηδεμιᾷ δόξης ὑφιεμένην. σκοπεῖτε δή, μὴ πιθανώτερον λέγεται τὸ παραμύθιον τοῦ ἐπωνύμου τῆς φυλῆς καὶ παραίτησιν εἶναι τὸ γινόμενον· οὐ γὰρ εὔκολος ἐνεγκεῖν ἧτταν ὁ Τελαμώνιος, ἀλλ’ οἷος ἀφειδεῖν πάντων ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ φιλονεικίας· ἵν’ οὖν μὴ χαλεπὸς ᾖ μηδ’ ἀπαραμύθητος, ἔδοξε τῆς ἥττης ἀφελεῖν τὸ δυσχερέστατον, εἰς τὴν ἐσχάτην χώραν μηδέποτε τὴν φυλὴν αὐτοῦ καταβαλόντας.’

ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΑΚΩΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΔΕΥΤΕΡΟΝ

[a] Τῶν εἰς τὰ δεῖπνα καὶ τὰ συμπόσια παρασκευαζομένων, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, τὰ μὲν ἀναγκαίων ἔχει τάξιν, ὥσπερ οἶνος καὶ σιτία καὶ ὄψα καὶ στρωμναὶ δηλαδὴ καὶ τράπεζαι· τὰ δ’ ἐπεισόδια γέγονεν ἡδονῆς ἕνεκεν, χρείας μὴ συναγομένης, ὥσπερ ἀκροάματα καὶ θεάματα καὶ γελωτοποιός τις ἐν Καλλίου Φίλιππος, οἷς παροῦσι μὲν ἥδονται, μὴ παρόντα δ’ οὐ πάνυ ποθοῦσιν οὐδ’ αἰτιῶνται τὴν συνουσίαν ὡς ἐνδεέστερον ἔχουσαν. οὕτω δὴ καὶ τῶν λόγων τοὺς μὲν ἐπὶ χρείᾳ τῇ περὶ τὰ συμπόσια παραλαμβάνουσιν οἱ μέτριοι, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους δέχονται θεωρίαν [b] πιθανὴν καὶ τῷ καιρῷ μᾶλλον αὐλοῦ καὶ βαρβίτου πρέπουσαν ἔχοντας. ὧν καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἡμῖν βιβλίον εἶχε μεμιγμένα δείγματα, τοῦ μὲν προτέρου γένους τὸ περὶ τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν παρὰ πότον καὶ περὶ τοῦ διανέμειν αὐτὸν ἢ τοῖς δειπνοῦσιν ἐφιέναι τὰς κλίσεις ‹καὶ τὰ τοι›αῦτα· τοῦ δὲ δευτέρου περὶ τοῦ τοὺς ἐρῶντας ποιητικοὺς εἶναι καὶ περὶ τῆς Αἰαντίδος φυλῆς. ... καλῶ δῆτα καὶ ... τὰ συμποτικά· τὰ δ’ ...τερα κοινῶς συμποσιακά. σποράδην δ’ ἀναγέγραπται καὶ οὐ διακεκριμένως ἀλλ’ ὡς ἕκαστον εἰς μνήμην ἦλθεν. οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν τοὺς ἀναγινώσκοντας, εἰ σοὶ προσφωνοῦντές τινα τῶν προρρηθέντων [c] [ἢ] ὑπὸ σοῦ συνηγάγομεν· καὶ γὰρ ἂν αἱ μαθήσεις ἀναμνήσεις μὴ ποιῶσιν, πολλάκις εἰς ταὐτὸ τῷ μανθάνειν τὸ ἀναμιμνήσκεσθαι καθίστησιν.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Α

Τίν’ ἐστὶν ἃ Ξενοφῶν παρὰ πότον ἥδιον ἐρωτᾶσθαί φησι καὶ σκώπτεσθαι ἢ μή

Δέκα δὲ προβλημάτων εἰς ἕκαστον νενεμημένων βιβλίον, ἐν τούτῳ πρῶτόν ἐστιν ὃ τρόπον τινὰ Ξενοφῶν ὁ Σωκρατικὸς ἡμῖν προβέβληκεν. τὸν γὰρ Γωβρύαν φησὶ (Cyr. V 2, 18) συνδειπνοῦντα τῷ Κύρῳ τά τ’ ἄλλα θαυμάζειν τῶν Περσῶν καὶ ὅτι τοιαῦτα μὲν ἀλλήλους ἠρώτων ἃ ἥδιον ἦν ἐρωτηθῆναι ἢ μή, ‹ἔσκωπτον δ’ ἃ› σκωφθῆναι ἥδι‹ον ἢ μή›· εἰ γὰρ ἐπαινοῦντες ἕτεροι πολλάκις ‹λυποῦσι› καὶ προσίστανται, πῶς οὐκ ἄξιον ἦν [d] ἄγασθαι τὴν εὐτραπελίαν ἐκείνων καὶ τὴν σύνεσιν, ὧν καὶ τὰ σκώμματα τοῖς σκωπτομένοις ἡδονὴν καὶ χάριν παρεῖχεν; δεχόμενος οὖν ἡμᾶς ἐν Πάτραις ἡδέως ἂν ἔφης πυθέσθαι τὰ τοιαῦτ’ ἐρωτήματα ποίου γένους εἴη καὶ τίς αὐτῶν τύπος· ‘οὐ γάρ τι μικρόν’ ἔφης ‘τῆς ὁμιλητικῆς μόριον ἡ περὶ τὰς ἐρωτήσεις καὶ τὰς παιδιὰς τοῦ ἐμμελοῦς ἐπιστήμη καὶ τήρησις.’

[630] [a] ‘Μέγα μὲν οὖν’ ἔφην ἐγώ, ‘ἀλλ’ ὅρα μὴ καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Ξενοφῶν ἔν τε τῷ Σωκρατικῷ καὶ τοῖς Περσικοῖς ἐπιδείκνυσι συμποσίοις τὸ γένος. εἰ δὲ δοκεῖ καὶ ἡμᾶς ἐπιθέσθαι τῷ λόγῳ, πρῶτον ἡδέως ἐρωτᾶσθαί μοι δοκοῦσιν ἃ ῥᾳδίως ἀποκρίνασθαι δύνανται· ταῦτα δ’ ἐστὶν ὧν ἐμπειρίαν ἔχουσιν. ἃ γὰρ ἀγνοοῦσιν, ἢ μὴ λέγοντες ἄχθονται καθάπερ αἰτηθέντες ὃ δοῦναι μὴ δύνανται, ἢ λέγοντες ἀπὸ δόξης καὶ εἰκασίας οὐ βεβαίου διαταράσσονται καὶ κινδυνεύουσιν. ἂν δὲ μὴ μόνον ἔχῃ τὸ ῥᾴδιον ἀλλὰ καί ‹τι› περιττὸν ἡ ἀπόκρισις, ἡδίων ἐστὶ τῷ ἀποκρινομένῳ· [b] περιτταὶ δ’ εἰσὶν αἱ τῶν ἐπισταμένων ἃ μὴ πολλοὶ γινώσκουσι μηδ’ ἀκηκόασιν, οἷον ἀστρολογικῶν, διαλεκτικῶν, ἄνπερ ἕξιν ἐν αὐτοῖς ἔχωσιν. οὐ γὰρ πράττων μόνον ἕκαστος οὐδὲ διημερεύων, ὡς Εὐριπίδης (fr. 183) φησίν, ἀλλὰ καὶ διαλεγόμενος

‘ἵν’ αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ τυγχάνῃ κράτιστος ὤν’

ἡδέως διατίθεται. καὶ χαίρουσι τοῖς ἐρωτῶσιν ἃ γινώσκοντες ἐγνοεῖσθαι καὶ λανθάνειν οὐ θέλουσιν. διὸ καὶ περὶ χώρας ἀποίκου καὶ ξένης θαλάττης ἐθῶν τε βαρβαρικῶν καὶ νόμων οἱ πεπλανημένοι καὶ πεπλευκότες ἥδιον ἐρωτῶνται καὶ προθύμως διηγοῦνται καὶ διαγράφουσι κόλπους καὶ τόπους, οἰόμενοι καὶ χάριν τινὰ τῶν [c] πόνων ταύτην καὶ παραμυθίαν κομίζεσθαι. καθόλου δ’ ὅσα μηδενὸς ἐρωτῶντος αὐτοὶ διηγεῖσθαι καὶ λέγειν ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν εἰώθαμεν, ἥδιον ἐρωτώμεθα, χαρίζεσθαι τούτοις δοκοῦντες, ὧν ἔργον ἦν ἐνοχλουμένων ἀποσχέσθαι. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἐν τοῖς πλωτικοῖς μάλιστα φύεται τὸ γένος τοῦ νοσήματος· οἱ δὲ κομψότεροι ταῦτ’ ἐρωτᾶσθαι θέλουσιν ἃ βουλόμενοι λέγειν αἰδοῦνται καὶ φείδονται τῶν παρόντων· οἷον ὅσα τυγχάνουσιν αὐτοὶ διαπεπραγμένοι καὶ κατωρθωκότες. ὀρθῶς γοῦν ὁ Νέστωρ τὴν φιλοτιμίαν τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως ἐπιστάμενος (Κ 544)

‘εἴπ’ ἄγε μ’, ὦ πολύαιν’ Ὀδυσεῦ’ φησί, ‘μέγα κῦδος

[Ἀχαιῶν, [d] ὅππως [δὴ] τούσδ’ ἵππους λάβετον.’

ἄχθονται γὰρ τοῖς αὑτοὺς ἐπαινοῦσιν καὶ τὰς ἑαυτῶν εὐτυχίας διεξιοῦσιν, ἂν μὴ κελεύσῃ ἄλλος τις τῶν παρόντων ‹καὶ οἷον βια›ζόμενοι λέγωσιν. ‹ἡδέως› γοῦν ἐρωτῶνται ‹περὶ› πρεσβειῶν καὶ ‹περὶ› πολιτειῶν ‹ὅσοι› μέγα τι καὶ λαμπρὸν εἰργασμένοι τυγχάνουσιν. ὅθεν ἥκιστα περὶ τούτων οἱ φθονεροὶ καὶ κακοήθεις ἐρωτῶσι, κἂν ἄλλο‹ς τις ἔρη›ται τὰ τοιαῦτα, διακρούονται καὶ παρατρέπουσιν, χώραν τῇ διηγήσει μὴ διδόντες μηδὲ βουλόμενοι λόγου τὸν λέγοντα κοσμοῦντος ἀφορμὰς προέσθαι. καὶ ταῦτ’ οὖν †ἐρωτῶντες χαρίζεσθαι τοῖς ἀποκρινομένοις, ἃ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς καὶ δυσμενεῖς αἰσθάνονται μὴ βουλομένους ἀκούειν.’

[e] ‘Καὶ μὴν ὅ γ’ Ὀδυσσεὺς τῷ Ἀλκινόῳ (ι 12)

‘σοὶ δ’ ἐμὰ κήδεα θυμὸς ἐπετράπετο στονόεντα

εἴρεσθ’, ὄφρ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον ὀδυρόμενος στεναχίζω.’

καὶ πρὸς τὸν χορὸν ὁ Οἰδίπους (Soph. O. C. 510)

‘δεινὸν μὲν τὸ πάλαι κείμενον ἤδη κακόν, ὦ ξεῖν’,

[‹ἐπε›γείρειν’·

ὁ δ’ Εὐριπίδης τοὐναντίον (fr. 133)

‘ὡς ἡδὺ ... πόνων’,

... οὐ τοῖς ἔτι πλανωμένοις καὶ κακὰ φέρουσιν. τῶν οὖν κακῶν φυλακτέον ἐστὶ τὰς ἐρωτήσεις· ἀνιῶνται γὰρ διηγούμενοι καταδίκας αὑτῶν ἢ ταφὰς παίδων ἤ τινας [f] κατὰ γῆν οὐκ εὐτυχεῖς ἢ κατὰ θάλατταν ἐμπορίας. τὸ δὲ πῶς εὐημέρησαν ἐπὶ βήματος ἢ προσηγορεύθησαν ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως ἢ τῶν ἄλλων περιπεσόντων χειμῶσιν ἢ λῃσταῖς αὐτοὶ διέφυγον τὸν κίνδυνον, ἡδέως ἐρωτῶνται πολλάκις καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ πράγματος ἀπολαύοντες ἀπλήστως ἔχουσι τοῦ διηγεῖσθαι καὶ μνημονεύειν. [631] [a] χαίρουσι δὲ καὶ περὶ φίλων εὐτυχούντων ἐρωτώμενοι καὶ περὶ παίδων προκοπτόντων ἐν μαθήμασιν ‹ἢ› συνηγορίαις ἢ φιλίαις βασιλέων. ἐχθρῶν δὲ καὶ δυσμενῶν ὀνείδη καὶ βλάβας καὶ καταδίκας ἐξελεγχθέντων καὶ σφαλέντων ἥδιον ἐρωτώμενοι καὶ προθυμότερον ἐξαγγέλλουσιν· αὐτοὶ δ’ ἀφ’ αὑτῶν ὀκνοῦσι φυλαττόμενοι δόξαν ἐπιχαιρεκακίας. ἥδιον δὲ καὶ περὶ κυνῶν ἄνδρα θηρευτικὸν ἐρωτᾶν καὶ φιλαθλητὴν περὶ γυμνικῶν ἀγώνων καὶ περὶ καλῶν ἐρωτικόν. ὁ δ’ εὐσεβὴς καὶ φιλοθύτης, διηγηματικὸς ὀνείρων καὶ ὅσα χρησάμενος ἢ φήμαις ἢ ἱεροῖς [ἢ] θεῶν εὐμενείᾳ κατώρθωσεν, ἡδέως ἂν καὶ περὶ [b] τούτων ἐρωτῷτο. τοῖς δὲ πρεσβύταις, κἂν μηδὲν ἡ διήγησις ᾖ προσήκουσα, πάντως οἱ ἐρωτῶντες χαρίζονται καὶ κινοῦσι βουλομένους. (γ 247)

‘ὦ Νέστορ Νηληιάδη, σὺ δ’ ἀληθὲς ἐνίσπες,

πῶς ἔθαν’ Ἀτρείδης; ποῦ Μενέλαος ἔην; ἦ οὐκ Ἄργεος ἦεν Ἀχαιικοῦ;’ πόλλ’ ἐρωτῶν ἅμα καὶ πολλῶν λόγων ἀφορμὰς προιέμενος, οὐχ ὥσπερ ἔνιοι συστέλλοντες εἰς τὸ ἀναγκαῖον αὐτὸ καὶ συνελαύνοντες τὰς ἀποκρίσεις ἀφαιροῦνται τῆς γεροντικῆς διατριβῆς τὸ ἥδιστον. ὅλως δ’ οἱ θέλοντες εὐφραίνειν μᾶλλον ἢ λυπεῖν τοιαύτας ἐρωτήσεις προφέρονται, ὧν ταῖς ἀποκρίσεσιν οὐ ψόγος ἀλλ’ ἔπαινος, [c] οὐδὲ μῖσος ἢ νέμεσις ἀλλ’ εὔνοια καὶ χάρις ἕπεται παρὰ τῶν ἀκουσάντων. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τὰ περὶ τὰς ἐρωτήσεις.’

‘Σκώμματος δὲ τῷ μὴ δυναμένῳ μετ’ εὐλαβείας καὶ τέχνης κατὰ καιρὸν ἅπτεσθαι παντάπασιν ἀφεκτέον· ὥσπερ ‹γὰρ τοὺς› ἐν ὀλισθηρῷ τόπῳ, κἂν θίγωσιν ἐκ παραδρομῆς μόνον, ἀνατρέπουσιν, οὕτως ἐν οἴνῳ πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀφορμὴν λόγου μὴ κατὰ σχῆμα γιγνομένην ἐπισφαλῶς ἔχομεν. τοῖς δὲ σκώμμασιν ἔστιν ὅτε μᾶλλον ἢ ταῖς λοιδορίαις ἐκκινούμεθα, τὸ μὲν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς πολλάκις ἀβουλήτως ὁρῶντες γινόμενον, τὸ δ’ ὡς οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον ἀλλ’ ἔργον ὕβρεως καὶ κακοηθείας προβαλλόμενοι· καὶ καθόλου [d] διαλέγεσθαι τοῖς ...νοις μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ... φλυαροῦσι χαλεπαίνομεν· ... ὅτι δ’ ὅλως τὸ ...ματι προσέσται ... τὸ σκῶμμα, λοιδόρημα δὲ ... εἶναι καὶ πεποιημένον ἐκ παρασκευῆς. ὁ γὰρ εἰπὼν ταριχοπώλην αὐτόθεν ἐλοιδόρησεν, ὁ δὲ φήσας ‘μεμνήμεθά σε τῷ βραχίονι ἀπομυττόμενον’ ἔσκωψεν. καὶ Κικέρων πρὸς Ὀκταούιον, ἐκ Λιβύης εἶναι δοκοῦντα λέγοντος δ’ αὐτοῦ φάσκοντα μὴ ἀκούειν, ‘καὶ μὴν τετρυπημένον’ ἔφη ‘ἔχεις τὸ οὖς.’ καὶ Μελάνθιος ὑπὸ τοῦ κωμῳδιοποιοῦ καταγελώμενος ἔφη ‘οὐκ ὀφειλόμενόν μοι ἀποδίδως ἔρανον.’ μᾶλλον οὖν τὰ σκώμματα δάκνει, καθάπερ τὰ [e] παρηγκιστρωμένα βέλη πλείονα χρόνον ἐμμένοντα, καὶ λυπεῖ τοὺς σκωφθέντας †ἡ τέρψις τῇ κομψότητι καὶ ἡδύνει τοὺς παρόντας· ἡδόμενοι γὰρ ἐπὶ τῷ λεγομένῳ, πιστεύειν ‹δοκοῦσι καὶ συν›διασύρειν τῷ λέγοντι. ‹ὀνειδι›σμὸς γάρ ἐστιν ‹τῆς› ἁμαρτίας παρε‹σχηματισμένος τὸ› σκῶμμα κατὰ τὸν Θεόφραστον· ὅθεν ἐξ αὑτοῦ τῇ ὑπονοίᾳ προστίθησιν ὁ ἀκούσας τὸ ἐλλεῖπον ὡς εἰδὼς καὶ πιστεύων. ὁ γὰρ γελάσας καὶ ἡσθείς, τοῦ Θεοκρίτου (FHG II 87) πρὸς τὸν δοκοῦντα λωποδυτεῖν ἐρωτῶντα δ’ αὐτὸν εἰ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον βαδίζει φήσαντος βαδίζειν ἐκεῖ μέντοι καθεύδειν, βεβαιοῦντι τὴν διαβολὴν ὅμοιός ἐστιν.

[f] διὸ καὶ προσαναπίμπλησι τοὺς παρόντας ὁ σκώπτων παρὰ μέλος κακοηθείας, ὡς ἐφηδομένους καὶ συνυβρίζοντας. ἓν δὲ τῇ καλῇ Λακεδαίμονι τῶν μαθημάτων ἐδόκει τὸ σκώπτειν ἀλύπως καὶ σκωπτόμενον φέρειν· εἰ δέ τις ἀπείποι σκωπτόμενος, εὐθὺς ὁ σκώπτων ἐπέπαυτο. πῶς οὖν οὐ χαλεπὸν εὑρεῖν σκῶμμα τῷ σκωπτομένῳ κεχαρισμένον, [632] [a] ὅπου καὶ τὸ μὴ λυποῦν τοῦ σκώμματος οὐ τῆς τυχούσης ἐμπειρίας καὶ δεξιότητός ἐστιν;’

‘Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ πρῶτά μοι δοκεῖ τὰ λυποῦντα τοὺς ἐνόχους σκώμματα τοῖς μακρὰν οὖσι τῆς διαβολῆς ἡδονήν τινα καὶ χάριν ποιεῖν. οἷον ὁ Ξενοφῶν (Cyr. II 2, 28) τὸν ὑπέραισχρον καὶ ὑπέρδασυν ἐκεῖνον ὡς παιδικὰ τοῦ Σαμβαύλα σκωπτόμενον εἰσάγει μετὰ παιδιᾶς. καὶ Κυήτου τοῦ ἡμετέρου, μέμνησαι γάρ, ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ τὰς χεῖρας ἔχειν ψυχρὰς λέγοντος, Αὐφίδιος Μόδεστος ‘ἀλλὰ μήν’ ἔφη ‘θερμὰς ἀπὸ τῆς ἐπαρχίας κεκόμικας αὐτάς·’ τοῦτο γὰρ ἐκείνῳ μὲν γέλωτα καὶ διάχυσιν παρέσχεν, κλέπτῃ δ’ [b] ἀνθυπάτῳ λοιδόρημα καὶ ὄνειδος ἦν. διὸ καὶ Κριτόβουλον ὁ Σωκράτης (Xen. Conv. IV 19) εὐπροσωπότατον ὄντα προκαλούμενος εἰς σύγκρισιν εὐμορφίας ἔπαιζεν οὐκ ἐχλεύαζεν. καὶ Σωκράτην πάλιν Ἀλκιβιάδης (Plat. Conv. 213c) ἔσκωπτεν εἰς ζηλοτυπίαν τὴν περὶ Ἀγάθωνος. ἥδονται δὲ καὶ βασιλεῖς τοῖς λεγομένοις ὡς εἰς πένητας αὐτοὺς καὶ ἰδιώτας, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ Φιλίππου σκωφθεὶς ὁ παράσιτος εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἐγώ σε τρέφω;’ τὰ γὰρ οὐ προσόντα φαῦλα λέγοντες ἐμφαίνουσι τὰ προσόντα χρηστά. δεῖ δ’ ὁμολογουμένως καὶ βεβαίως προσεῖναί τι χρηστόν· εἰ δὲ μή, τὸ λεγόμενον τοὐναντίον ἀμφισβητήσιμον ἔχει [c] τὴν ὑπόνοιαν. ὁ γὰρ τῷ πάνυ πλουσίῳ τοὺς δανειστὰς ἐπάξειν λέγων ἢ τὸν ὑδροπότην καὶ σώφρονα παροινεῖν καὶ μεθύειν ἢ τὸν εὐδάπανον καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῆ καὶ χαριστικὸν κίμβικα καὶ κυμινοπρίστην προσαγορεύων ἢ τὸν ἐν συνηγορίαις καὶ πολιτείαις μέγαν ἀπειλῶν ἐν ἀγορᾷ λήψεσθαι διάχυσιν καὶ μειδίαμα παρέσχεν. οὕτως ὁ Κῦρος (Xen. Cyr. I 4, 4) ἐν οἷς ἐλείπετο τῶν ἑταίρων εἰς ταῦτα προκαλούμενος ἐγίνετο προσηνὴς καὶ κεχαρισμένος. καὶ τοῦ Ἰσμηνίου τῇ θυσίᾳ προσαυλοῦντος, ὡς οὐκ ἐκαλλιέρει, παρελόμενος τοὺς αὐλοὺς ὁ μισθωτὸς ηὔλησε γελοίως· αἰτιωμένων δὲ τῶν παρόντων, ‘ἔστιν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ [d] κεχαρισμένως αὐλεῖν θεόθεν·’ ὁ δ’ Ἰσμηνίας γελάσας ‘ἀλλ’ ἐμοῦ μὲν αὐλοῦντος ἡδόμενοι διέτριβον οἱ θεοί, σοῦ δ’ ἀπαλλαγῆναι σπεύδοντες ἐδέξαντο τὴν θυσίαν.’’

‘Ἔτι τοίνυν οἱ τὰ χρηστὰ τῶν πραγμάτων τοῖς λοιδορουμένοις ὀνόμασι μετὰ παιδιᾶς καλοῦντες, ἂν ἐμμελῶς ποιῶσιν, αὐτῶν μᾶλλον εὐφραίνουσι τῶν ἀπ’ εὐθείας ἐπαινούντων. καὶ γὰρ δάκνουσι μᾶλλον οἱ διὰ τῶν εὐφήμων ὀνειδίζοντες, ὡς οἱ τοὺς πονηροὺς Ἀριστείδας καὶ τοὺς δειλοὺς Ἀχιλλεῖς καλοῦντες καὶ ὁ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους (O. R. 385) Οἰδίπους ...

‘‹ταύ›της Κρέων ὁ πιστὸς οὑξ ἀ‹ρ›χῆς φίλος.’

ἀντίστροφον οὖν ἔοικε γένος εἰρωνείας εἶναι τὸ περὶ τοὺς [e] ἐπαίνους· ᾧ καὶ Σωκράτης (Xen. Conv. IV 61) ἐχρήσατο, τοῦ Ἀντισθένους τὸ φιλοποιὸν καὶ συναγωγὸν ἀνθρώπων εἰς εὔνοιαν μαστροπείαν [καὶ συναγωγίαν] καὶ προαγωγείαν ὀνομάσας ... Κράτητα δὲ τὸν φιλόσοφον, εἰς πᾶσαν οἰκίαν εἰσιόντα μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ φιλοφροσύνης δεχομένων, ‘θυρεπανοίκτην’ ἐκάλουν. ποιεῖ δ’ εὔχαρι σκῶμμα καὶ μέμψις ἐμφαίνουσα χάριν· ὡς Διογένης περὶ Ἀντισθένους ἔλεγεν (Tr. adesp. 394)

‘ὅς με ῥάκη τ’ ἤμπισχε κἀξηνάγκασεν

πτωχὸν γενέσθαι κἀκ δόμων ἀνάστατον’·

οὐ γὰρ ἂν ὁμοίως πιθανὸς ἦν λέγων ‘ὅς με σοφὸν καὶ αὐτάρκη καὶ μακάριον ἐποίησεν’. καὶ ὁ Λάκων ἄκαπνα [f] ξύλα τῷ γυμνασιάρχῳ παρασχόντι προσποιούμενος ἐγκαλεῖν ἔλεγεν ‘δι’ ὃν οὐδ’ ἀποδακρῦσαι γέγονεν [ἐν] ἡμῖν.’ καὶ ‹ὁ› τὸν δειπνίζοντα καθ’ ἡμέραν ἀνδραποδιστὴν καλῶν καὶ τύραννον, δι’ ὃν ἐτῶν τοσούτων οὐχ ἑώρακεν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ τράπεζαν. καὶ ὁ λέγων ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπιβεβουλευμένος ἀφῃρῆσθαι τὴν σχολὴν καὶ τὸν ὕπνον, πλούσιος γεγονὼς ἐκ πένητος. καὶ εἴ τις ἀντιστρέψας αἰτιῷτο τοὺς [633] [a] Αἰσχύλου Καβείρους (fr. 97) ‘ὄξους σπανίζειν δῶμα’ ποιήσαντας, ὥσπερ αὐτοὶ παίζοντες ἠπείλησαν. ἅπτεται γὰρ ταῦτα μᾶλλον ἔχοντα δριμυτέραν χάριν, ὥστε μὴ προσίστασθαι μηδὲ λυπεῖν τοὺς ἐπαινουμένους.’

‘Δεῖ δὲ τὸν ἐμμελῶς σκώμματι χρησόμενον εἰδέναι καὶ νοσήματος διαφορὰν πρὸς ἐπιτήδευμα, λέγω δὲ φιλαργυρίας καὶ φιλοινίας πρὸς φιλομουσίαν καὶ φιλοθηρίαν· ἐπ’ ἐκείνοις μὲν γὰρ ἄχθονται σκωπτόμενοι, πρὸς ταῦτα δ’ ἡδέως ἔχουσιν. οὐκ ἀηδῶς γοῦν Δημοσθένης ὁ Μιτυληναῖος, φιλῳδοῦ τινος καὶ φιλοκιθαριστοῦ θύραν κόψας, ὑπακούσαντος αὐτοῦ καὶ κελεύσαντος εἰσελθεῖν ‘ἂν πρῶτον’ [b] ἔφη ‘τὴν κιθάραν δήσῃς·’ ἀηδῶς δ’ ὁ τοῦ Λυσιμάχου παράσιτος, ἐμβαλόντος αὐτοῦ σκορπίον ξύλινον εἰς τὸ ἱμάτιον ἐκταραχθεὶς καὶ ἀναπηδήσας, ὡς ᾔσθετο τὴν παιδιάν, ‘κἀγώ σε’ φησίν ‘ἐκφοβῆσαι βούλομαι, ὦ βασιλεῦ· δός μοι τάλαντον.’’

‘Εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ περὶ τὰ σωματικὰ τοιαῦται διαφοραὶ τῶν πολλῶν. οἷον εἰς γρυπότητα καὶ σιμότητα σκωπτόμενοι γελῶσιν, ὡς ὁ Κασάνδρου φίλος οὐκ ἠχθέσθη τοῦ Θεοφράστου πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος ‘θαυμάζω σου τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ὅτι οὐκ ᾄδουσιν, τοῦ μυκτῆρος αὐτοῖς ἐνδεδωκότος·’ καὶ ὁ Κῦρος (Xen. Cyr. VIII 4, 21) ἐκέλευσε τὸν γρυπὸν [c] ‹σιμὸν ἀγαγέσθαι γύναιον›, οὕτω γὰρ ἐφαρμόσειν· εἰς δὲ δυσωδίαν μυκτῆρος ἢ στόματος ἄχθονται σκωπτόμενοι. καὶ πάλιν εἰς φαλακρότητα πράως φέρουσιν, εἰς δὲ πήρωσιν ὀφθαλμῶν ἀηδῶς. καὶ γὰρ Ἀντίγονος αὐτὸς μὲν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν ἔσκωπτεν, καί ποτε λαβὼν ἀξίωμα μεγάλοις γράμμασι γεγραμμένον ‘ταυτὶ μέν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ τυφλῷ δῆλα’· Θεόκριτον δὲ τὸν Χῖον (FHG II 87) ἀπέκτεινεν, ὅτι φήσαντός τινος ‘εἰς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἂν ‹βασιλέως πα›ραγένῃ, σωθή‹σῃ›,’ ‘ἀλλά μοι’ εἶπεν †ἀδυνάτου τὰ ὑπὸ τὴν σωτηρίαν ‘. ‹Λέων› ὁ Βυζάντιος, εἰπόντος Πασιάδου πρὸς αὐτὸν ὀφθαλμισθῆναι δι’ αὐτοῦ τοὺς [d] ὀφθαλμούς, ‘ἀσθένειαν’ ἔφη ‘σώματος ὀνειδίζεις, νέμεσιν οὐχ ὁρῶν ἐπὶ τῶν ὤμων βαστάζοντά σου τὸν υἱόν·’ εἶχε δὲ κυρτὸν ὁ Πασιάδης υἱόν. ἠγανάκτησε δὲ καὶ Ἄρχιππος ὁ δημαγωγὸς τῶν Ἀθηναίων ὑπὸ Μελανθίου σκωφθεὶς εἰς τὸ κυρτόν· ἔφη γὰρ αὐτὸν ὁ Μελάνθιος οὐ προεστάναι τῆς πόλεως ἀλλὰ ‹προ›κεκυφέναι. τινὲς δὲ ταῦτα πράως καὶ μετρίως φέρουσιν, ὥσπερ ὁ φίλος τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου τάλαντον αἰτήσας καὶ μὴ λαβὼν ᾔτησε προπομποὺς καὶ φύλακας, ‘ὅπως’ ἔφη ‘μὴ ἐπιβουλευθῶ †προστάξας κατ’ ὤμου τὸ τάλαντον φέρειν. οὕτω μὲν περὶ [e] τὰ ἐκτὸς ἔχουσι διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν· ἄλλοι γὰρ ἐπ’ ἄλλοις ‹ἄχθονται›. [Ἐπαμεινώνδας μετὰ τῶν συναρχόντων ἑστιώμενος ἐπέπινεν ὄξος, καὶ πυνθανομένων εἰ πρὸς ὑγίειαν ἀγαθόν, ‘οὐκ οἶδ’’ εἶπεν, ‘ὅτι μέντοι πρὸς τὸ μεμνῆσθαι τῆς οἴκοι διαίτης ἀγαθόν, ἐπίσταμαι.’] διὸ δεῖ καὶ πρὸς τὰς φύσεις καὶ τὰ ἤθη σκοποῦντα ταῖς παιδιαῖς χρῆσθαι, πειρώμενον ἀλύπως καὶ κεχαρισμένως ἑκάστοις ὁμιλεῖν.’

‘Ὁ δ’ ἔρως τά τ’ ἄλλα ποικιλώτατός ἐστιν καὶ τοῖς σκώμμασιν οἱ μὲν ἄχθονται καὶ ἀγανακτοῦσιν οἱ δὲ χαίρουσιν. δεῖ δ’ εἰδέναι τὸν καιρόν· ὡς γὰρ τὸ πῦρ ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν ἀποσβέννυσι τὸ πνεῦμα διὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν, αὐξηθέντι [f] δὲ τροφὴν παρέχει καὶ ῥώμην, οὕτως φυόμενος ὁ ἔρως ἔτι καὶ λανθάνων δυσκολαίνει καὶ ἀγανακτεῖ πρὸς τοὺς ἀποκαλύπτοντας, ἐκλάμψας δὲ καὶ διαφανεὶς τρέφεται καὶ προσγελᾷ τοῖς σκώμμασι φυσώμενος. ἥδιστα δὲ σκώπτονται παρόντων τῶν ἐρωμένων εἰς αὐτὸ τὸ ἐρᾶν εἰς ἄλλο δ’ οὐδέν. ἐὰν δὲ καὶ γυναικῶν ἐρῶντες ἰδίων τύχωσιν [634] [a] ἢ νεανίσκων φιλοκάλων ἔρωτα γενναῖον, παντάπασι γάνυνται καὶ καλλωπίζονται τῷ σκώπτεσθαι πρὸς αὐτούς. διὸ καὶ Ἀρκεσίλαος, ἐν τῇ σχολῇ τοιαύτης μεταδόσεως αὐτῷ γενομένης ὑπό τινος τῶν ἐρωτικῶν ‘δοκεῖ μοι μηδὲν ἅπτεσθαι μηδενός’, ‘οὐδὲ σὺ τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘τοῦδ’ ἅπτῃ;’ δείξας τινὰ τῶν καλῶν καὶ ὡραίων παρακαθήμενον.’

‘Ἤδη δὲ καὶ τὸ τῶν παρόντων σκεπτέον· ἃ γὰρ ἐν φίλοις καὶ συνήθεσιν ἀκούοντες γελῶσιν, ταῦτα δυσχεραίνουσιν, ἂν λέγηται πρὸς αὐτοὺς τῆς γαμετῆς παρούσης ἢ τοῦ πατρὸς ἢ τοῦ καθηγητοῦ, πλὴν ἂν μή τι κεχαρισμένον ᾖ τῶν λεγομένων ἐκείνοις· οἷον ἄν ‹τις› σκώπτηται τοῦ φιλοσόφου παρόντος εἰς ἀνυποδησίαν ἢ νυκτογραφίαν [b] ἢ τοῦ πατρὸς ἀκούοντος ‹εἰς› μικρολογίαν ἢ τῆς γυναικὸς εἰς τὸ ἀνέραστον ἑτέρων ἐκείνης δὲ δοῦλον καὶ θεραπευτικόν, ὡς ὁ Τιγράνης (Xen. Cyr. III 1, 43) ὑπὸ τοῦ Κύρου ‘τί δ’, ἄν σ’ ἡ γυνὴ σκευοφοροῦντ’ ἀκούσῃ;’ ‘ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούσεται’ εἶπεν, ‘ὄψεται δ’ αὐτὴ παροῦσα.’’

‘Ποιεῖ δ’ ἀλυπότερα τὰ σκώμματα καὶ τὸ κοινωνεῖν ἁμωσγέπως τοὺς λέγοντας· οἷον ἂν εἰς πενίαν λέγῃ πένης ἢ δυσγενὴς εἰς δυσγένειαν ἢ ἐρῶν εἰς ἔρωτα· δοκεῖ δ’ οὐχ ὕβρει παιδιᾷ δέ τινι γίνεσθαι μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τῶν ὁμοίων· εἰ δὲ μή, παροξύνει καὶ λυπεῖ. τὸν γοῦν ἀπελεύθερον τοῦ βασιλέως νεόπλουτον ὄντα φορτικῶς δὲ καὶ [c] σοβαρῶς ἐπιπολάζοντα τοῖς συνδειπνοῦσι φιλοσόφοις καὶ τέλος ἐρωτῶντα πῶς ἔκ τε τῶν λευκῶν καὶ τῶν μελάνων κυάμων ὁμοίως χλωρὸν γίνεται τὸ ἔτνος, ἀντερωτήσας ὁ Ἀριδίκης πῶς ἐκ τῶν λευκῶν καὶ μελάνων ἱμάντων φοινικοῖ γίνονται μώλωπες, ἐποίησεν ἀναστῆναι περίλυπον γενόμενον. ὁ δὲ Ταρσεὺς Ἀμφίας ἐκ κηπουροῦ δοκῶν γεγονέναι, σκώψας δὲ τὸν φίλον τοῦ ἡγεμόνος εἰς δυσγένειαν, εἶθ’ ὑπολαβὼν εὐθύς ‘ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν σπερμάτων γεγόναμεν’ γέλωτ’ ἐποίησεν. κομψῶς δὲ καὶ τοῦ Φιλίππου τὴν ὀψιμαθίαν ἅμα καὶ περιεργίαν ὁ ψάλτης [d] ἐπέσχεν· οἰομένου γὰρ αὐτὸν ἐξελέγχειν τοῦ Φιλίππου περὶ κρουμάτων καὶ ἁρμονιῶν ‘μὴ γένοιτό σοι’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ βασιλεῦ, κακῶς οὕτως, ἵν’ ἐμοῦ σὺ ταῦτ’ εἰδῇς βέλτιον·’ σκώπτειν γὰρ ἑαυτὸν δοκῶν, ἐκεῖνον ἀλύπως ἐνουθέτησεν. διὸ καὶ τῶν κωμικῶν ἔνιοι τὴν πικρίαν ἀφαιρεῖν δοκοῦσι τῷ σκώπτειν ἑαυτούς, ὡς Ἀριστοφάνης (Pac. 767. 771. Ran. 83) εἰς τὴν φαλακρότητα καὶ τὴν Ἀγάθωνος ‹ἀπό›λειψιν· Κρατῖνος δὲ τὴν Πυτίνην ... ἐδίδαξεν.’

‘Οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ ‹δεῖ› προσέχειν καὶ φυλάττειν, ὅπως ἐκ τοῦ παρατυχόντος ἔσται τὸ σκῶμμα πρός τινας ἐρωτήσεις αὐτόθεν ἢ παιδιὰς γινόμενον, ἀλλὰ μὴ πόρρωθεν οἷον ἐκ παρασκευῆς ἐπεισόδιον. ὡς γὰρ ὀργὰς καὶ [e] μάχας τὰς ἐκ τῶν συμποσίων πραότερον φέρουσιν, ἐὰν δ’ ἐπελθών τις ἔξωθεν λοιδορῆται καὶ ταράττῃ τοῦτον ἐχθρὸν ἡγοῦνται καὶ μισοῦσιν, οὕτως μέτεστι συγγνώμης σκώμματι καὶ παρρησίας, ἂν ἐκ τῶν παρόντων ἔχῃ τὴν γένεσιν ἀφελῶς καὶ ἀπλάστως φυόμενον, ἂν δ’ ᾖ μὴ πρὸς λόγον ἀλλ’ ἔξωθεν, ἐπιβουλῇ καὶ ὕβρει προσέοικεν· οἷον τὸ Τιμαγένους (FHG III 319) πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα τῆς ἐμετικῆς (Tr. adesp. 395)

‘κακῶν γὰρ ἄρχεις τήνδε μοῦσαν εἰσάγων·’

καὶ πρὸς Ἀθηνόδωρον τὸν φιλόσοφον, ‘εἰ φυσικὴ ἡ πρὸς τὰ ‹ἔκγονα› φιλοστοργία.’ ἡ γὰρ ἀκαιρία καὶ τὸ μὴ πρὸς λόγον ὕβριν ἐμφαίνει καὶ δυσμένειαν. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν κατὰ [f] Πλάτωνα (Leg. 717d. 935a) κουφοτάτου πράγματος, λόγων, βαρυτάτην ζημίαν ἔτισαν· οἱ δὲ τὸν καιρὸν εἰδότες καὶ φυλάττοντες αὐτῷ τῷ Πλάτωνι (Leg. 654b?) μαρτυροῦσιν, ὅτι τοῦ πεπαιδευμένου καλῶς ἔργον ἐστὶ τὸ παίζειν ἐμμελῶς καὶ κεχαρισμένως.’

[635] [a]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Β

Διὰ τί βρωτικώτεροι γίνονται περὶ τὸ μετόπωρον

Ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι μετὰ τὰ μυστήρια τῆς πανηγύρεως ἀκμαζούσης εἱστιώμεθα παρὰ Γλαυκίᾳ τῷ ῥήτορι. πεπαυμένων δὲ δειπνεῖν τῶν ἄλλων, Ξενοκλῆς ὁ Δελφὸς ὥσπερ εἰώθει τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἡμῶν Λαμπρίαν εἰς ἀδηφαγίαν Βοιώτιον ἐπέσκωπτεν. ἐγὼ δ’ ἀμυνόμενος ‹ὑπὲρ› αὐτοῦ τὸν Ξενοκλέα τοῖς Ἐπικούρου λόγοις χρώμενον ‘οὐ γὰρ ἅπαντες’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ βέλτιστε, ποιοῦνται τὴν τοῦ ἀλγοῦντος ὑπεξαίρεσιν ὅρον ἡδονῆς καὶ πέρας· Λαμπρίᾳ δὲ καὶ ἀνάγκη, [b] πρὸ τοῦ κήπου κυδαίνοντι τὸν περίπατον καὶ τὸ Λύκειον, ἔργῳ μαρτυρεῖν Ἀριστοτέλει· φησὶ γὰρ ὁ ἀνὴρ (fr. 231) βρωτικώτατον ἕκαστον αὐτὸν αὑτοῦ περὶ τὸ φθινόπωρον εἶναι, καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἐπείρηκεν· ἐγὼ δ’ οὐ μνημονεύω.’ ‘βέλτιον’ εἶπεν ὁ Γλαυκίας· ‘αὐτοὶ γὰρ ἐπιχειρήσομεν ζητεῖν, ὅταν παυσώμεθα δειπνοῦντες.’ ὡς οὖν ἀφῃρέθησαν αἱ τράπεζαι, γλαυκίας μὲν καὶ Ξενοκλῆς ᾐτιάσαντο τὴν ὀπώραν διαφόρως, ὁ μὲν ὡς τὴν κοιλίαν ὑπεξάγουσαν καὶ τῷ κενοῦσθαι τὸ σῶμα νεαρὰς ὀρέξεις ἀεὶ παρασκευάζουσαν· ὁ δὲ Ξενοκλῆς ἔλεγεν εὔστομόν τι καὶ δηκτικὸν ἔχοντα τῶν ὡραίων τὰ πλεῖστα τὸν στόμαχον [c] ἐπὶ τὴν βρῶσιν ἐκκαλεῖσθαι παντὸς μᾶλλον ὄψου καὶ ἡδύσματος· καὶ γὰρ τοῖς ἀποσίτοις τῶν ἀρρώστων ὀπώρας τι προσενεχθὲν ἀναλαμβάνει τὴν ὄρεξιν. ὁ δὲ Λαμπρίας εἶπεν, ὅτι τὸ οἰκεῖον καὶ [τὸ] σύμφυτον θερμὸν ἡμῶν, ᾧ τρέφεσθαι πεφύκαμεν, ἐν μὲν τῷ θέρει διέσπαρται καὶ γέγονεν ἀσθενέστερον καὶ μανόν, ἐν δὲ τῷ φθίνοντι καιρῷ συναγείρεται πάλιν καὶ ἰσχύει, κατακρυπτόμενον ἐντὸς διὰ τὴν περίψυξιν καὶ τὴν πύκνωσιν τοῦ σώματος. ἐγὼ δ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ δοκεῖν ἀσύμβολος τοῦ λόγου μετασχεῖν εἶπον, ὅτι τοῦ θέρους διψητικώτεροι γινόμεθα καὶ πλείονι χρώμεθα τῷ ὑγρῷ διὰ τὸ καῦμα· [d] νῦν οὖν ἡ φύσις ἐν τῇ μεταβολῇ ζητοῦσα τοὐναντίον, ὥσπερ εἴωθεν, πεινητικωτέρους ποιεῖ, καὶ τὴν ξηρὰν τροφὴν τῇ κράσει τοῦ σώματος ἀνταποδίδωσιν. οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ τὰ σιτία φήσαι τις ἂν αἰτίας ἀμοιρεῖν παντάπασιν, ἀλλ’ ἐκ νέων καὶ προσφάτων γενόμενα καρπῶν, οὐ μόνον μάζας καὶ ὄσπρια καὶ ἄρτους καὶ πυροὺς ‹ἀλλὰ› καὶ κρέα ζῴων εὐωχουμένων τὰ ἐπέτεια, τοῖς τε χυμοῖς διαφέρειν τῶν παλαιῶν καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπάγεσθαι τοὺς χρωμένους καὶ ἀπολαύοντας.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Γ

Πότερον ἡ ἄρνις πρότερον ἢ τὸ ᾠὸν ἐγένετο

[e] Ἐξ ἐνυπνίου τινὸς ἀπε‹ιχό›μην ᾠῶν πολὺν ἡδο... παρὰ τοῦτο ποιούμενος, ἐν ᾠῷ καθάπερ ἐν Καρὶ διάπειραν λαβεῖν τῆς ὄψεως ἐναργῶς μοι πολλάκις γενομένης· ὑπόνοιαν μέντοι παρέσχον, ἑστιῶντος ἡμᾶς Σοσσίου Σενεκίωνος, ἐνέχεσθαι δόγμασιν Ὀρφικοῖς ἢ Πυθαγορικοῖς καὶ τὸ ᾠόν, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι καρδίαν καὶ ἐγκέφαλον, ἀρχὴν ἡγούμενος γενέσεως ἀφοσιοῦσθαι· καὶ προὔφερεν Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Ἐπικούρειος ἐπὶ γέλωτι τὸ (Orphic. fr. 291 Kern)

‘ἶσόν τοι κυάμους ἔσθειν κεφαλάς τε τοκήων,’

ὡς δὴ κυάμους τὰ ᾠὰ διὰ τὴν κύησιν αἰνιττομένων τῶν [f] ἀνδρῶν, διαφέρειν δὲ μηδὲν οἰομένων τὸ ἐσθίειν ᾠὰ τοῦ χρῆσθαι τοῖς τίκτουσι τὰ ᾠὰ ζῴοις. ἐγίνετο δὴ τὸ τῆς αἰτίας ἀπολόγημα τῆς αἰτίας αὐτῆς ἀλογώτερον, Ἐπικουρείῳ λέγειν ἐνύπνιον. ὅθεν οὐ παρῃτούμην τὴν δόξαν ἅμα προσπαίζων τι τῷ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ· καὶ γὰρ ἦν χαρίεις καὶ φιλόλογος ἐπιεικῶς.

[636] [a] Ἐκ δὲ τούτου τὸ ἄπορον καὶ πολλὰ πράγματα τοῖς ζητητικοῖς παρέχον εἰς μέσον εἵλκετο πρόβλημα περὶ τοῦ ᾠοῦ καὶ τῆς ὄρνιθος, ὁπότερον γένοιτο πρότερον αὐτῶν. καὶ Σύλλας μὲν ὁ ἑταῖρος εἰπὼν ὅτι μικρῷ προβλήματι καθάπερ ὀργάνῳ μέγα καὶ βαρὺ σαλεύομεν τὸ περὶ τοῦ κόσμου τῆς γενέσεως ἀπηγόρευσεν· τοῦ δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου τῆς ζητήσεως ὡς μηδὲν προσφυὲς φερούσης καταβελάσαντος ὁ γαμβρὸς ἡμῶν Φίρμος ‘ἐμοὶ τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘χρῆσον ἐν τῷ παρόντι τὰς ἀτόμους. εἰ γὰρ τὰ μικρὰ δεῖ στοιχεῖα τῶν μεγάλων ‹καὶ› ἀρχὰς ὑποτίθεσθαι, πρῶτον εἰκός ἐστιν τὸ ᾠὸν γεγονέναι τῆς ὄρνιθος· ἔστι γὰρ καὶ [b] ἁπλοῦν, ὡς ἐν αἰσθητοῖς, ποικίλον δὲ καὶ μεμιγμένον μᾶλλον ἡ ὄρνις. καθόλου δ’ ἡ μὲν ἀρχὴ πρῶτον ἀρχὴ δὲ τὸ σπέρμα, τὸ δ’ ᾠὸν σπέρματος μὲν πλέον ζῴου δὲ μικρότερον· ὡς γὰρ ἡ προκοπὴ μέσον εὐφυΐας εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ ἀρετῆς, οὕτω τὸ ᾠὸν προκοπή τίς ἐστι τῆς φύσεως ἐπὶ τὸ ἔμψυχον ἀπὸ τοῦ σπέρματος πορευομένης. ἔτι δ’, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ζῴῳ πρῶτα γίνεσθαι λέγουσιν ἀρτηρίας καὶ φλέβας, οὕτω λόγον ἔχει καὶ τοῦ ζῴου τὸ ᾠὸν γεγονέναι πρῶτον, ὡς περιέχον ἐμπεριεχομένου. καὶ γὰρ αἱ τέχναι πρῶτον ἀτύπωτα καὶ ἄμορφα πλάττουσιν, εἶθ’ ὕστερον [c] ἕκαστα τοῖς εἴδεσι διαρθροῦσιν· ᾗ Πολύκλειτος ὁ πλάστης εἶπεν χαλεπώτατον εἶναι τὸ ἔργον, ὅταν ἐν ὄνυχι ὁ πηλὸς γένηται· διὸ καὶ τῇ φύσει τὸ πρῶτον εἰκός ἐστιν ἀτρέμα κινούσῃ τὴν ὕλην ἀργοτέραν ὑπακούειν, τύπους ἀμόρφους καὶ ἀορίστους ἐκφέρουσαν ὥσπερ τὰ ᾠά, μορφουμένων δὲ τούτων καὶ διαχαρασσομένων ὕστερον ἐνδημιουργεῖσθαι τὸ ζῷον. ὡς δὲ κάμπη γίνεται τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτ’ ἐκπαγεῖσα διὰ ξηρότητα καὶ περιρραγεῖσ’ ἕτερον πτερωθὲν δι’ αὑτῆς τὴν καλουμένην ψυχὴν μεθίησιν, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον ἐνταῦθα προϋφίσταται τὸ ᾠὸν οἷον ὕλη τῆς γενέσεως. ἀνάγκη γὰρ ἐν πάσῃ μεταβολῇ [d] πρότερον εἶναι τοῦ μεταβάλλοντος ‹τὸ› ἐξ οὗ μετέβαλε. σκόπει δ’ ὅτι σκνῖπες ἐν δένδρῳ καὶ τερηδόνες ἐμφύονται ξύλῳ κατὰ σῆψιν ὑγρότητος ἢ πέψιν· ὧν οὐδεὶς ἂν ἀξιώσειεν μὴ προϋποκεῖσθαι μηδὲ πρεσβύτερον εἶναι φύσει τὸ γεννῶν. ἡ γὰρ ὕλη λόγον ἔχει πρὸς τὰ γινόμενα μητρὸς ὥς φησι Πλάτων (Tim. 52d) καὶ τιθήνης· ὕλη δὲ πᾶν ἐξ οὗ σύστασιν ἔχει τὸ γεννώμενον. τὸ δ’ ἐπὶ τούτοις’ ἔφη γελάσας ‘‘ἀείσω ξυνετοῖσι’ (Orph. fr. 334) τὸν Ὀρφικὸν καὶ ἱερὸν λόγον, ὃς οὐκ ὄρνιθος μόνον τὸ ᾠὸν ἀποφαίνει πρεσβύτερον, ἀλλὰ καὶ συλλαβὼν ἅπασαν αὐτῷ τὴν ἁπάντων ὁμοῦ πρεσβυγένειαν ἀνατίθησιν. καὶ τἄλλα [e] μὲν ‘εὔστομα κείσθω’ καθ’ Ἡρόδοτον (II 171), ἔστι γὰρ μυστικώτερα· ζῴων δὲ πολλὰς φύσεις τοῦ κόσμου περιέχοντος, οὐδὲν ὡς εἰπεῖν γένος ἄμοιρόν ἐστι τῆς ἐξ ᾠοῦ γενέσεως, ἀλλὰ καὶ πτηνὰ γεννᾷ καὶ νηκτὰ μυρία καὶ χερσαῖα, σαύρας, καὶ ἀμφίβια, [καὶ] κροκοδείλους, καὶ δίποδα, τὸν ὄρνιν, καὶ ἄποδα, τὸν ὄφιν, καὶ πολύποδα, τὸν ἀττέλεβον· ὅθεν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ὀργιασμοῖς ὡς μίμημα τοῦ τὰ πάντα γεννῶντος καὶ περιέχοντος ἐν ἑαυτῷ συγκαθωσίωται.’

Ταῦτα τοῦ Φίρμου διεξιόντος, ὁ Σενεκίων ἔφη τὴν τελευταίαν τῶν εἰκόνων αὐτῷ πρώτην ἀντιπίπτειν.

[f] ‘ἔλαθες γάρ’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ Φίρμε, τὸν κόσμον ἀντὶ τῆς παροιμιακῆς θύρας ‘ἐπὶ σεαυτὸν ἀνοίξας’. ὁ γὰρ κόσμος προϋφέστηκε πάντων τελειότατος ὤν· καὶ λόγον ἔχει τοῦ ἀτελοῦς φύσει πρότερον εἶναι τὸ τέλειον, ὡς τοῦ πεπηρωμένου τὸ ὁλόκληρον καὶ τοῦ μέρους τὸ ὅλον· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἔχει λόγον εἶναι μέρος οὗ μέρος ἐστὶ μὴ γεγονότος. ὅθεν οὐθεὶς λέγει τοῦ σπέρματος εἶναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον οὐδὲ τοῦ [637] [a] ᾠοῦ τὴν ἀλεκτορίδα, τῆς δ’ ἀλεκτορίδος τὸ ᾠὸν εἶναι καὶ τὸ σπέρμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου λέγομεν, ὡς τούτων ἐπιγινομένων ἐκείνοις καὶ τὴν γένεσιν ἐν ἐκείνοις λαμβανόντων εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ὄφλημα τῇ φύσει τὴν γένεσιν ἀποδιδόντων. ἐνδεᾶ γάρ ἐστι τοῦ οἰκείου· διὸ καὶ βούλεσθαι ποιεῖν πέφυκεν ἄλλο τοιοῦτον, οἷον ἦν ἐξ οὗ ἀπεκρίθη. καὶ τὸν σπερματικὸν λόγον ὁρίζονται γόνον ἐνδεᾶ γενέσεως· ἐνδεὲς δ’ οὐδέν ἐστι τοῦ μὴ γενομένου μηδ’ ὄντος. τὰ δ’ ᾠὰ καὶ παντάπασι βλέπεται τὴν φύσιν ἔχοντα τῆς ἔν τινι ζῴῳ πήξεως καὶ συστάσεως ὀργάνων τε τοιούτων καὶ ἀγγείων δεομένην· ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἱστόρηται γηγενὲς ᾠόν, [b] ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ Τυνδάρειον οἱ ποιηταὶ λέγουσιν οὐρανοπετὲς ἀναφανῆναι. ζῷα δ’ αὐτοτελῆ καὶ ὁλόκληρα μέχρι νῦν ἀναδίδωσιν ἡ γῆ, μῦς ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ πολλαχοῦ δ’ ὄφεις καὶ βατράχους καὶ τέττιγας, ἀρχῆς ἔξωθεν ἑτέρας καὶ δυνάμεως ἐγγενομένης· ἐν δὲ Σικελίᾳ περὶ τὸν δουλικὸν πόλεμον, αἵματος πολλοῦ καὶ νεκρῶν ἀτάφων ἐπὶ τῇ γῇ κατασαπέντων, πλῆθος ἀττελέβων ἐξήνθησεν καὶ τὸν σῖτον ἔφθειρον πανταχοῦ σκεδασθέντες ἐπὶ τὴν νῆσον. ταῦτα τοίνυν ἐκ γῆς φύεται καὶ τρέφεται καὶ τροφῆς περίσσωμα ποιεῖ γόνιμον, ᾧ καθ’ ἡδονὰς πρὸς ἄλληλα τρέπεται, καὶ συνδυαζόμενα τῇ μίξει τὰ μὲν ᾠοτοκεῖν τὰ δὲ [c] ζῳοτοκεῖν πέφυκε. καὶ τούτῳ μάλιστα δῆλόν ἐστιν, ὅτι τὴν πρώτην γένεσιν ἐκ γῆς λαβόντα καθ’ ἕτερον τρόπον ἤδη καὶ δι’ ἀλλήλων ποιεῖται τὰς τεκνώσεις. καθόλου δ’ ὅμοιόν ἐστι τῷ λέγειν ‘πρὸ τῆς γυναικὸς ἡ μήτρα γέγονεν’· ὡς γὰρ ἡ μήτρα πρὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οὕτω πάλιν τὸ ᾠὸν πρὸς τὸν νεοσσὸν πέφυκε, κυόμενον ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ λοχευόμενον· ὥστε μηδὲν διαφέρειν τὸν διαποροῦντα, πῶς ὄρνιθες ἐγένοντο μὴ γενομένων ᾠῶν, τοῦ πυνθανομένου, πῶς ἄνδρες ἐγένοντο καὶ γυναῖκες πρὶν αἰδοῖα γενέσθαι καὶ μήτρας. καίτοι τῶν μερῶν τὰ πλεῖστα συνυφίσταται τοῖς ὅλοις, αἱ δὲ δυνάμεις ἐπιγίνονται τοῖς [d] μέρεσιν αἱ δ’ ἐνέργειαι ταῖς δυνάμεσιν τὰ δ’ ἀποτελέσματα ταῖς ἐνεργείαις· ἀποτέλεσμα δὲ τῆς γεννητικῆς τῶν μορίων δυνάμεως τὸ σπέρμα καὶ τὸ ᾠόν· ὥστε τῆς τῶν ὅλων καθυστερεῖν γενέσεως. σκόπει δὲ μή, καθάπερ οὐ δυνατόν ἐστι πέψιν τροφῆς εἶναι πρὶν ἢ γενέσθαι ζῷον, οὕτως οὐδ’ ᾠὸν οὐδὲ σπέρμα· καὶ γὰρ ταῦτα πέψεσί τισι καὶ μεταβολαῖς ἔοικεν ἐπιγενέσθαι· καὶ οὐχ οἷόν τε, πρὶν ἢ γενέσθαι ζῷον, ἔχειν ζῴου τροφῆς περίττωμα τὴν φύσιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τὸ σπέρμα μὲν ἁμωσγέπως ἀρχῆς τινος ἀντιποιεῖται, τὸ δ’ ᾠὸν οὔτ’ ἀρχῆς ἔχει λόγον, οὐ γὰρ ὑφίσταται πρῶτον, οὔθ’ ὅλου φύσιν, ἀτελὲς γάρ ἐστιν. ὅθεν [e] ἀρχῆς μὲν ἄνευ γεγονέναι ζῷον οὐ λέγομεν, ἀρχὴν δ’ εἶναι ζῳογονίας ὑφ’ ἧς πρῶτον ἡ ὕλη μετέβαλε δυνάμεως, κρᾶσίν τινα καὶ μῖξιν ἐνεργασαμένης γόνιμον· τὸ δ’ ᾠὸν ἐπιγέννημ’ εἶναι, καθάπερ τὸ αἷμα καὶ τὸ γάλα, τοῦ ζῴου μετὰ τροφὴν καὶ πέψιν. οὐ γὰρ ὦπται συνιστάμενον ᾠὸν ἐκ τῆς ἰλύος, ἀλλ’ ἐν μόνῳ ζῴῳ τοῦτο τὴν σύστασιν ἔχει καὶ γένεσιν· ζῷα δὲ καθ’ αὑτὰ μυρία συνίσταται. καὶ τί δεῖ λέγειν τἄλλα; πολλῶν γὰρ ἐγχέλεων ἁλισκομένων οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν οὔτε θορὸν οὔτ’ ᾠὸν ἔγχελυν ἔχουσαν, ἀλλὰ κἂν τὸ ὕδωρ τις ἐξαρύσῃ καὶ τὴν ἰλὺν ἀναξύσῃ πᾶσαν, [f] εἰς τὸν τόπον ὕδατος συρρυέντος ἐγχέλεις ζῳογονοῦνται. δεῖ οὖν ὕστερον ἀνάγκῃ γεγονέναι τὸ θατέρου δεόμενον πρὸς γένεσιν, ᾧ δὲ καὶ νῦν θατέρου χωρὶς ἄλλως ὑπάρχει συνίστασθαι, τοῦτο προτερεῖν τῇ ἀρχῇ τῆς γενέσεως. περὶ ἐκείνης γὰρ ἔστι τῆς πρώτης ὁ λόγος· ἐπεὶ νῦν γε καὶ νεοττιὰς συντίθησι τὰ πτηνὰ πρὸ τῆς ᾠοτοκίας καὶ [638] [a] σπάργανα παρασκευάζουσιν αἱ γυναῖκες· ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἂν εἴποις καὶ νεοττιὰν ᾠοῦ γεγονέναι πρότερον καὶ σπάργανα παίδων. ‘οὐ γὰρ γῆ’ φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων (Menex. 238a) ‘γυναῖκα, γῆν δὲ γυνὴ μιμεῖται’ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων θηλέων ἕκαστον. διὸ πρώτην γένεσιν εἰκός ἐστιν ἐκ γῆς τελειότητι καὶ ῥώμῃ τοῦ γεννῶντος αὐτοτελῆ καὶ ἀπροσδεῆ γενέσθαι, τοιούτων ὀργάνων καὶ στεγασμάτων καὶ ἀγγείων μὴ δεομένην, ἃ νῦν ἡ φύσις ἐν τοῖς τίκτουσιν ἐργάζεται καὶ μηχανᾶται δι’ ἀσθένειαν.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Δ

Εἰ πρεσβύτατον ἡ πάλη τῶν ἀγωνισμάτων

[b] Σωσικλέα τὸν Κορωνῆθεν, Πυθίοις νενικηκότα ποιητάς, εἱστιῶμεν τὰ ἐπινίκια. τοῦ δὲ γυμνικοῦ ἀγῶνος ἐγγὺς ὄντος, ὁ πλεῖστος ἦν λόγος περὶ τῶν παλαιστῶν· πολλοὶ γὰρ ἐτύγχανον ἀφιγμένοι καὶ ἔνδοξοι. παρὼν οὖν Λυσίμαχος, εἷς τῶν Ἀμφικτυόνων ἐπιμελητής, ἔναγχος ἔφη γραμματικοῦ τινος ἀκοῦσαι τὴν πάλην ἀρχαιότατον ἀθλημάτων πάντων ἀποφαίνοντος, ὡς καὶ τοὔνομα μαρτυρεῖν· ἐπιεικῶς γὰρ ἀπολαύειν τὰ νεώτερα πράγματα κειμένων ἐν τοῖς παλαιοτέροις ὀνομάτων· ὥς [c] που καὶ τὸν αὐλὸν ‘ἡρμόσθαι’ λέγουσιν καὶ ‘κρούματα’ ‹τὰ› αὐλήματα καλοῦσιν, ἀπὸ τῆς λύρας λαμβάνοντες τὰς προσηγορίας. τὸν οὖν τόπον, ἐν ᾧ γυμνάζονται πάντες οἱ ἀθληταί, παλαίστραν καλοῦσι, τῆς πάλης [τοὔνομα] κτησαμένης τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτα καὶ τοῖς αὖθις ἐφευρεθεῖσιν †ἐμπαρασχεῖν. τοῦτ’ ἔφην ἐγὼ τὸ μαρτύριον οὐκ ἰσχυρὸν εἶναι· κεκλῆσθαι γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς πάλης τὴν παλαίστραν οὐχ ὅτι πρεσβύτατόν ἐστι τῶν ἄλλων, ἀλλ’ ὅτι μόνον τῶν τῆς ἀγωνίας εἰδῶν πηλοῦ καὶ κονίστρας καὶ κηρώματος τυγχάνει δεόμενον· οὔτε γὰρ δρόμον οὔτε πυγμὴν ἐν παλαίστραις [d] διαπονοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ πάλην καὶ παγκρατίου τὸ περὶ τὰς κυλίσεις· ὅτι γὰρ μέμικται τὸ παγκράτιον ἔκ τε πυγμῆς καὶ πάλης, δῆλόν ἐστιν. ‘ἄλλως δὲ πῶς’ ἔφην ‘λόγον ἔχει τεχνικώτατον καὶ πανουργότατον τῶν ἀθλημάτων τὴν πάλην οὖσαν ἅμα καὶ πρεσβύτατον εἶναι; τὸ γὰρ ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἄτεχνον καὶ βίᾳ μᾶλλον ἢ μεθόδῳ περαινόμενον αἱ χρεῖαι πρῶτον ἐκφέρουσιν.’ ἐμοῦ δὲ ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος, ὁ Σωσικλῆς ‘ὀρθῶς’ ἔφη ‘λέγεις, καὶ συμβάλλομαί σοι πίστιν ἀπὸ τοῦ ὀνόματος· ἡ γὰρ πάλη μοι δοκεῖ τῷ παλεύειν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ δολοῦν καὶ καταβάλλειν δι’ ἀπάτης, κεκλῆσθαι.’ καὶ ὁ Φιλῖνος ‘ἐμοὶ δ’’ εἶπεν [e] ‘ἀπὸ τῆς παλαιστῆς· τούτῳ γὰρ μάλιστα τῷ μέρει τοῖν χεροῖν ἐνεργοῦσιν οἱ παλαίοντες, ὥσπερ οἱ πυκτεύοντες αὖ πάλιν τῇ πυγμῇ· διὸ κἀκεῖνο πυγμὴ καὶ τοῦτο πάλη προσηγόρευται τὸ ἔργον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ συμπάσαι τῶν ποιητῶν καὶ καταπάσαι ‘παλῦναι’ λεγόντων, ᾧ μάλιστα χρωμένους τοὺς παλαιστὰς ὁρῶμεν, ἔστι καὶ ταύτῃ προσάγειν τὴν ἐτυμότητα τοῦ ὀνόματος. σκόπει δ’ ἔτι’ εἶπεν ‘μὴ τοῖς μὲν δρομεῦσιν ἔργον ἐστὶν ὅτι πλεῖστον ἀπολιπεῖν καὶ πορρωτάτω διαστῆναι, τοὺς δὲ πύκτας οὐδὲ πάνυ βουλομένους ἐῶσιν οἱ βραβευταὶ συμπλέκεσθαι· [f] μόνους δὲ τοὺς παλαιστὰς ὁρῶμεν ἀλλήλους ἀγκαλιζομένους καὶ περιλαμβάνοντας· καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ἀγωνισμάτων, ἐμβολαί, παρεμβολαί, συστάσεις, παραθέσεις, συνάγουσιν αὐτοὺς καὶ ἀναμιγνύουσιν ἀλλήλοις. διὸ τῷ πλησιάζειν μάλιστα καὶ γίνεσθαι πέλας οὐκ ἄδηλόν ἐστι τὴν πάλην ὠνομάσθαι.’

[639] [a]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ε

Διὰ τί τῶν ἀθλημάτων Ὅμηρος πρῶτον ἀεὶ τάττει τὴν πυγμὴν εἶτα τὴν πάλην καὶ τελευταῖον τὸν δρόμον

Ῥηθέντων δὲ τούτων καὶ τὸν Φιλῖνον ἡμῶν ἐπαινεσάντων, αὖθις ὁ Λυσίμαχος ἔφη ‘ποῖον οὖν φαίη τις ἂν τῶν ἀγωνισμάτων γεγονέναι πρῶτον; ἢ τὸ στάδιον, ὥσπερ Ὀλυμπίασιν; ‘ἐνταῦθα δὲ παρ’ ἡμῖν καθ’ ἕκαστον ἄθλημα τοὺς ἀγωνιζομένους εἰσάγουσιν, ἐπὶ παισὶ παλαισταῖς ἄνδρας παλαιστὰς καὶ πύκτας ἐπὶ πύκταις ὁμοίως καὶ παγκρατιαστάς· ἐκεῖ δ’, ὅταν οἱ παῖδες διαγωνίσωνται, [b] τότε τοὺς ἄνδρας καλοῦσιν. σκόπει δὲ μὴ μᾶλλον’ ἔφη ‘τὴν κατὰ χρόνον τάξιν Ὅμηρος ἀποδείκνυσιν· πρῶτον γὰρ ἀεὶ πυγμὴ παρ’ αὐτῷ, δεύτερον πάλη, καὶ τελευταῖον ὁ δρόμος τῶν γυμνικῶν ἀεὶ τέτακται.’ θαυμάσας οὖν Μενεκράτης ὁ Θεσσαλός ‘ὦ Ἡράκλεις’ εἶπεν, ‘ὅσα λανθάνει ἡμᾶς· εἰ δέ τινα τῶν ἐπῶν ἐστί σοι πρόχειρα, μὴ φθονήσῃς ἀναμνῆσαι.’ καὶ ὁ Τίμων ‘ἀλλ’ ὅτι μέν’ εἶπεν ‘αἱ Πατρόκλου ταφαὶ ταύτην ἔχουσι τῶν ἀγωνισμάτων τὴν τάξιν, ἅπασιν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἔναυλόν ἐστιν· διατηρῶν δὲ τὴν τάξιν ὁμαλῶς ὁ ποιητὴς τὸν μὲν Ἀχιλλέα λέγοντα τῷ Νέστορι πεποίηκεν (Ψ 620)

[c] ‘δίδωμι δέ σοι τόδ’ ἄεθλον

αὔτως· οὐ γὰρ πύξ γε μαχήσεαι οὐδὲ παλαίσεις,

οὐδέ τ’ ἀκοντιστὺν ἐνδύσεαι οὐδὲ πόδεσσι

θεύσεαι·’

τὸν δὲ πρεσβύτην ἐν τῷ ἀποκρίνεσθαι παραδολεσχοῦντα γεροντικῶς ὅτι (Ψ 634)

‘πὺξ μὲν ἐνίκησα Κλυτομήδεα, Οἴνοπος υἱόν,

Ἀγκαῖον ‹δὲ› πάλῃ Πλευρώνιον, Ἴφικλον δὲ πόδεσσι παρέδραμον·’ αὖθις δὲ τὸν μὲν Ὀδυσσέα τοὺς Φαίακας προκαλούμενον (θ 206)

‘ἢ πὺξ ἠὲ πάλῃ ἢ καὶ ποσίν,’

τὸν δ’ Ἀλκίνουν ὑποτιμώμενον (θ 246)

[d] ‘οὐ γὰρ πυγμάχοι εἰμὲν ἀμύμονες οὐδὲ παλαισταί,

ἀλλὰ ποσὶ κραιπνοῖς θέομεν·’

ὡς οὐ κατὰ τύχην ἐκ τοῦ παρισταμένου τῇ τάξει χρώμενος ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλως, ἀλλὰ τοῖς εἰθισμένοις τότε καὶ δρωμένοις κατὰ νόμον ἐπακολουθῶν· ἐδρᾶτο δ’ οὕτως τὴν παλαιὰν ἔτι τάξιν αὐτῶν διαφυλαττόντων.’

Παυσαμένου δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ, τἄλλα μὲν ἔφην ἀληθῶς λέγεσθαι, τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν τῆς τάξεως οὐκ ἐπῄνουν. ἐδόκει δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τισὶ μὴ πιθανὸν εἶναι ‹γεγονέναι› τὸ πυκτεύειν καὶ παλαίειν πρότερον ἐν ἀγῶνι καὶ ἁμίλλῃ τοῦ τροχάζειν, καὶ παρεκάλουν ἐξάγειν εἰς τὸ ἀνώτερον. ἔφην δ’ ἐκ τοῦ παραστάντος, ὅτι ταῦτά μοι [e] πάντα μιμήματα δοκεῖ καὶ γυμνάσματα τῶν πολεμικῶν εἶναι· καὶ γὰρ ὁπλίτης ἐπὶ πᾶσιν εἰσάγεται, μαρτυρούμενος ὅτι τοῦτο τὸ τέλος ἐστὶ τῆς σωμασκίας καὶ [τὸ] τῆς ἁμίλλης· καὶ τὸ τοῖς νικηφόροις ‹εἰς›ελαύνουσιν τῶν τειχῶν ἐφίεσθαι μέρος διελεῖν καὶ καταβαλεῖν τοιαύτην ἔχει διάνοιαν, ὡς οὐ μέγα πόλει τειχῶν ὄφελος ἄνδρας ἐχούσῃ μάχεσθαι δυναμένους καὶ νικᾶν. ἐν δὲ Λακεδαίμονι τοῖς νενικηκόσι στεφανίτας ἀγῶνας ἐξαίρετος ἦν ἐν ταῖς παρατάξεσι χώρα, περὶ αὐτὸν τὸν βασιλέα τεταγμένους μάχεσθαι· καὶ τῶν ζῴων μόνῳ τῷ ἵππῳ μετουσία στεφάνου καὶ ἀγῶνος ἔστιν, ὅτι μόνος καὶ πέφυκε καὶ ἤσκηται μαχομένοις παρεῖναι καὶ συμπολεμεῖν. ‘εἰ δὲ δὴ ταῦτα λέγεται [f] μὴ κακῶς, ἤδη σκοπῶμεν’ ἔφην ‘ὅτι τῶν μαχομένων πρῶτον ἔργον ἐστὶ τὸ πατάξαι καὶ φυλάξασθαι, δεύτερον δὲ συμπεσόντας ἤδη καὶ γενομένους ἐν χερσὶν ὠθισμοῖς τε χρῆσθαι καὶ περιτροπαῖς ἀλλήλων, ᾧ δὴ μάλιστά φασιν ἐν Λεύκτροις τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας ὑπὸ τῶν ἡμετέρων, παλαιστρικῶν ὄντων, καταβιασθῆναι· [640] [a] διὸ καὶ παρ’ Αἰσχύλῳ τις τῶν πολεμικῶν ὀνομάζεται ‘βριθὺς ὁπλιτοπάλας’ (PLG II p. 242 fr. 5, I 66 D.) καὶ Σοφοκλῆς εἴρηκέ που περὶ τῶν Τρώων ὡς (fr. 775)

‘φίλιπποι καὶ κερουλκοί,

καὶ μὴν ἐπὶ πᾶσί γε τὸ τρίτον ἐστὶν νικωμένους φεύγειν ἢ διώκειν νικῶντας. εἰκότως οὖν ἡ πυγμὴ προεισῆγε, δευτέραν δ’ εἶχεν ἡ πάλη τάξιν, καὶ τελευταίαν ὁ δρόμος· ὅτι πυγμὴ μέν ἐστι μίμημα πληγῆς καὶ φυλακῆς, πάλη δὲ συμπλοκῆς καὶ ὠθισμοῦ, δρόμῳ δὲ μελετῶσι φεύγειν καὶ διώκειν.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ϛ

Διὰ τί πεύκη καὶ πίτυς καὶ τὰ ὅμοια τούτοις οὐκ ἐνοφθαλμίζεται

[b] Σώκλαρος ἑστιῶν ἡμᾶς ἐν κήποις ὑπὸ τοῦ Κηφισοῦ ποταμοῦ περιρρεομένοις ἐπεδείκνυτο δένδρα παντοδαπῶς πεποικιλμένα τοῖς λεγομένοις ἐνοφθαλμισμοῖς· καὶ γὰρ ἐκ σχίνων ἐλαίας ἀναβλαστανούσας ἑωρῶμεν καὶ ῥοιὰς ἐκ μυρρίνης· ἦσαν δὲ καὶ δρύες ἀπίους ἀγαθὰς ἐκφέρουσαι καὶ πλάτανοι μηλεῶν δεδεγμέναι καὶ συκαῖ μορεῶν ἐμβολάδας, ἄλλαι τε μίξεις φυτῶν κεκρατημένων ἄρχι καρπογονίας. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι πρὸς τὸν Σώκλαρον ἔπαιζον, ὡς [c] τῶν ποιητικῶν σφιγγῶν καὶ χιμαιρῶν τερατωδέστερα γένη καὶ θρέμματα βόσκοντα· Κράτων δὲ προὔβαλεν ἡμῖν διαπορῆσαι περὶ τῆς αἰτίας, δι’ ἣν μόνα τῶν φυτῶν τὰ ἐλατώδη δέχεσθαι τὰς τοιαύτας ἐπιμιξίας οὐ πέφυκεν· οὔτε γὰρ κῶνον οὔτε κυπάριττον ἢ πίτυν ἢ πεύκην ἐκτρέφουσάν τι τῶν ἑτερογενῶν ὁρᾶσθαι.

Ὑπολαβὼν δὲ Φίλων ἔφη ‘λόγος τις ἔστιν, ὦ Κράτων, παρὰ τοῖς σοφοῖς, βεβαιούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν γεωργικῶν. τὸ γὰρ ἔλαιον εἶναί φασι τοῖς φυτοῖς πολέμιον καὶ τάχιστ’ ἂν ἀπολέσθαι φυτὸν ὃ βούλοιο χριόμενον ἐλαίῳ, καθάπερ τὰς μελίττας. τὰ δ’ εἰρημένα δένδρα πίονα καὶ πέπειραν ἔχει τὴν φύσιν, ὥστε πίσσαν ἀποδακρύειν [d] καὶ ῥητίνην· ὅταν δὲ πληγῇ, ταῖς διακοπαῖς οἴκοθεν ὥσπερ ἰχῶρας συνάγει· ἥ τε δᾲς αὐτῶν ἐλαιηρὰν ἀφίησιν ἰκμάδα καὶ περιστίλβει τὸ λιπαρὸν αὐτῇ· διὸ καὶ πρὸς τὰ ἄλλα γένη δυσμίκτως ἔχει, καθάπερ αὐτὸ τὸ ἔλαιον.’ παυσαμένου δὲ τοῦ Φίλωνος, ὁ μὲν Κράτων ᾤετο καὶ τὴν τοῦ φλοιοῦ φύσιν πρὸς τοῦτο συνεργεῖν· λεπτὸν γὰρ ὄντα καὶ ξηρὸν οὐ παρέχειν ἕδραν οὐδ’ ἐμβίωσιν τοῖς ἐντιθεμένοις, †ὥσπερ τὰ φλοιώδη καὶ νοτερὰ καὶ τὰ μαλακὰ τοῖς ὑπὸ τὸν φλοιὸν ὄντα μέρεσι †προσδεχομένοις περιπτύσσεσθαι κολλώμενον.’

Αὐτὸς δὲ Σώκλαρος ἔφη καὶ ‹τὸν› ταῦτα λέγοντα [e] μὴ κακῶς προσεννοεῖν, ὅτι δεῖ τὸ δεχόμενον ἑτέραν φύσιν εὔτρεπτον εἶναι, ἵνα κρατηθὲν ἐξομοιωθῇ καὶ μεταβάλῃ τὴν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τροφὴν πρὸς τὸ ἐμφυτευόμενον. ‘καὶ γὰρ τὴν γῆν προδιαλύομεν καὶ μαλάσσομεν, ἵνα κοπεῖσα μεταβάλῃ δι’ εὐπάθειαν καὶ ἅψηται τῶν ἐμφυτευομένων· ἡ γὰρ ἀτενὴς καὶ σκληρὰ δυσμετάβλητος. ταῦτα δὲ τὰ δένδρα κοῦφα τοῖς ξύλοις ὄντα κρᾶσιν οὐ ποιεῖ διὰ τὸ μὴ κρατεῖσθαι μηδὲ μεταβάλλειν. ἔτι δ’’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἄδηλον ὅτι δεῖ πρὸς τὸ ἐμφυτευόμενον χώρας λόγον ἔχειν τὸ δεξόμενον· τὴν δὲ χώραν δεῖ θήλειαν ἔχειν καὶ γόνιμον· ὅθεν τὰ πολυκαρπότατα τῶν φυτῶν ... [f] ἐκλεγόμενοι παραπηγνύουσιν, ὥσπερ γυναιξὶν ‹πολυ›γαλακτούσαις ἕτερα ‹βρέφη› προσβάλλοντες. πεύκην δὲ καὶ κυπάριττον καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πάντα γλίσχρα καὶ ἀγεννῆ τοῖς [641] [a] καρποῖς ὁρῶμεν. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ πολυσαρκίᾳ κεχρημένοι καὶ ὄγκῳ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πλεῖστον ἄτεκνοι (τὴν γὰρ τροφὴν εἰς τὸ σῶμα καταναλίσκοντες οὐ ποιοῦσιν ἐξ αὐτῆς περίττωμα σπερματικόν), οὕτω τὰ τοιαῦτα δένδρα τῆς τροφῆς ἀπολαύοντα, πάσης εἰς αὐτὰ δαπανωμένης, εὐσωματεῖ τοῖς μεγέθεσι καὶ αὐξάνεται, καρπὸν δὲ τὰ μὲν οὐ φέρει τὰ δὲ φέρει μικρὸν καὶ συντελούμενον βραδέως· ὥστ’ οὐ δεῖ θαυμάζειν, εἰ μὴ φύεται τἀλλότριον, ἐν ᾧ κακῶς τρέφεται καὶ τὸ οἰκεῖον.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ζ

Περὶ τῆς ἐχενηίδος

Χαιρημονιανὸς ὁ Τραλλιανὸς ἰχθυδίων ποτὲ [b] παντοδαπῶν παρατεθέντων ἓν ἐπιδείξας ἡμῖν ὀξὺ τῷ κεφαλίῳ καὶ πρόμηκες ἔλεγε τούτῳ προσεοικέναι τὴν ἐχενηίδα· θεάσασθαι γὰρ πλέων ἐν τῷ Σικελικῷ καὶ θαυμάσαι τὴν δύναμιν, οὐκ ὀλίγην βραδυτῆτα καὶ διατριβὴν παρὰ τὸν πλοῦν ἀπεργασαμένης τῆς ἐχενηίδος, ἕως ὑπὸ τοῦ πρῳρέως ἑάλω προσεχομένη τῷ τοίχῳ τῆς νεὼς ἔξωθεν. ἦσαν μὲν οὖν οἱ καταγελῶντες τοῦ Χαιρημονιανοῦ ὡς πλάσμα μυθῶδες παραδεδεγμένου καὶ ἄπιστον, ἦσαν δὲ καὶ οἱ τὰς ἀντιπαθείας θρυλοῦντες, καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ †παθόντων ἦν ἀκούειν, ὅτι μαινόμενον ἐλέφαντα καταπαύει [c] κριὸς ὀφθείς, ἔχιδναν δὲ φηγοῦ κλωνίον ἐὰν προσαγάγῃς καὶ θίγῃς ἵστησιν· ἄγριος δὲ ταῦρος ἀτρεμεῖ καὶ πραΰνεται συκῇ προσδεθείς· τὸ δ’ ἤλεκτρον πάντα κινεῖ καὶ προσάγεται τὰ κοῦφα πλὴν ὠκίμου καὶ τῶν ἐλαίῳ βρεχομένων· ἡ δὲ σιδηρῖτις λίθος οὐκ ἄγει τὸν σίδηρον, ἂν σκόρδῳ χρισθῇ. τούτων γὰρ ἐμφανῆ τὴν πεῖραν ἐχόντων, χαλεπὸν εἶναι τὴν αἰτίαν, εἰ μὴ καὶ παντελῶς ἀδύνατον, καταμαθεῖν.

Ἐγὼ δὲ τοῦτο μὲν ἔφην ἀπόδρασιν εἶναι τῆς ἐρωτήσεως μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς αἰτίας ἀπόδοσιν. ‘σκοπῶμεν δ’’ εἶπον ‘ὅτι πολλὰ συμπτώματος ἔχοντα ‹φύ›σιν αἰτιῶν λαμβάνει δόξαν οὐκ ὀρθῶς· ὅμοιον ὡς εἴ τις οἴοιτο τῇ [d] ἀνθήσει τοῦ ἄγνου πεπαίνεσθαι τὸν τῆς ἀμπέλου καρπόν, ὅτι δή, τοῦτο τὸ λεγόμενον, (Tr. adesp. 396 Iamb. adesp. 7 in I 262 D.)

‘ἥ ‹τ’› ἄγνος ἀνθεῖ χὠ βότρυς πεπαίνεται’,

ἢ τοῖς ἐπὶ τῶν λύχνων φαινομένοις μύκησι συγχεῖσθαι καὶ συννεφεῖν τὸ περιέχον, ‹ἢ› τὴν γρυπότητα τῶν ὀνύχων αἴτιον ἀλλὰ μὴ συμβεβηκὸς εἶναι τοῦ περὶ σπλάγχνον ἕλκους. ὥσπερ οὖν τούτων ἕκαστον ἐπακολούθημα τοῦ πάθους ἐστὶν ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν γεννώμενον αἰτιῶν, οὕτως ἔφην ἐγὼ μίαν αἰτίαν εἶναι δι’ ἣν βραδέως τε πλεῖ καὶ προσάγεται τὴν ἐχενηίδα τὸ πλοῖον· ξηρᾶς μὲν γὰρ οὔσης καὶ ‹μὴ› σφόδρα βαρείας ὑγρότητι τῆς νεώς, εἰκὸς ἐπολισθάνουσαν ὑπὸ κουφότητος τῇ θαλάττῃ τὴν τρόπιν διαλαβεῖν [e] [καὶ] τὸ κῦμα ‹ξύ›λῳ καθαρῷ διαι‹ρούμενον καὶ› ἀφιστάμενον εὐπετῶς· ὅταν δὲ νοτερὰ σφόδρα καὶ διάβροχος οὖσα φυκία τε πολλὰ καὶ βρυώδεις ἐπιπάγους προσάγηται, τοῦ τε ξύλου τὸν τόμον ἀμβλύτερον ἴσχει τό τε κῦμα τῇ γλισχρότητι προσπῖπτον οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἀπολύεται. διὸ καὶ παραψήχουσι τοὺς τοίχους, τὰ βρύα καὶ τὰ φυκία τῶν ξύλων ἀποκαθαίροντες, οἷς εἰκός ἐστι τὴν ἐχενηίδα προσισχομένην ὑπὸ τῆς γλισχρότητος αἴτιον τῆς βραδυτῆτος ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐπακολούθημα τοῦ τὴν βραδυτῆτα ποιοῦντος αἰτίου νομισθῆναι.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Η

[f]

Διὰ τί τοὺς λυκοσπάδας ἵππους θυμοειδεῖς εἶναι λέγουσιν

Ἵππους λυκοσπάδας οἱ μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν χαλινῶν τῶν λύκων ἔφασαν ὠνομάσθαι, διὰ τὸ θυμοειδὲς καὶ δυσκάθεκτον οὕτω σωφρονιζομένους· ὁ δὲ πατὴρ ἡμῶν [642] [a] ἥκιστα περὶ τὰς †ἰσηγορίας αὐτοσχέδιος ὢν καὶ κεχρημένος ἀεὶ κρατιστεύουσιν ἵπποις ἔλεγε τοὺς ὑπὸ λύκων ἐπιχειρηθέντας ἐν πώλοις, ἄνπερ ἐκφύγωσιν, ἀγαθοὺς μὲν ἀποβαίνειν καὶ ποδώκεις, καλεῖσθαι δὲ λυκοσπάδας. ταῦτα δὲ πλειόνων αὐτῷ μαρτυρούντων ἀπορίαν αἰτίας παρεῖχεν, δι’ ἣν τὸ σύμπτωμα τοῦτο θυμικωτέρους καὶ γοργοτέρους ποιεῖ τοὺς ἵππους. καὶ ὁ μὲν πλεῖστος ἦν λόγος τῶν παρόντων, ὅτι φόβον τὸ πάθος οὐ θυμὸν ἐνεργάζεται τοῖς ἵπποις, καὶ γινόμενοι ψοφοδεεῖς καὶ πρὸς ἅπαν εὐπτόητοι τὰς ὁρμὰς ὀξυρρόπους καὶ ταχείας ἴσχουσιν, ὥσπερ τὰ λινόπληκτα τῶν θηρίων. ἐγὼ δὲ σκοπεῖν [b] ἔφην χρῆναι, μὴ τοὐναντίον ἐστὶ τοῦ δοκοῦντος· οὐ γὰρ γίνεσθαι δρομικωτέρους τοὺς πώλους, ὅταν ἐκφύγωσι τὰς βλάβας τῶν θηρίων ἐπιχειρηθέντες, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐκφυγεῖν, εἰ μὴ φύσει θυμικοὶ καὶ ταχεῖς ἦσαν· οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα γενέσθαι φρόνιμον ὑπεκδράντα τοῦ Κύκλωπος, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τοιοῦτος ἦν ὑπεκδρᾶναι.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Θ

Διὰ τί τὰ λυκόβρωτα τῶν προβάτων τὸ κρέας μὲν γλυκύτερον τὸ δ’ ἔριον φθειροποιὸν ἴσχει

Μετὰ τοῦτο περὶ τῶν λυκοβρώτων ἐζητεῖτο προβάτων, ἃ λέγεται τὸ μὲν κρέας γλυκύτατον παρέχειν τὸ [c] δ’ ἔριον φθειροποιόν. οὐ φαύλως οὖν ἐδόκει Πατροκλέας ὁ γαμβρὸς ἐπιχειρεῖν περὶ τῆς γλυκύτητος, ὡς τοῦ θηρίου τῷ δήγματι τὴν σάρκα τακερὰν ποιοῦντος· καὶ γὰρ εἶναι τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ λύκου περίθερμον οὕτω καὶ πυρῶδες, ὥστε τὰ σκληρότατα τῶν ὀστῶν ἐν τῇ κοιλίᾳ τήκειν καὶ καθυγραίνειν· διὸ καὶ σήπεσθαι τὰ λυκόβρωτα τῶν ἄλλων τάχιον. περὶ δὲ τῶν ἐρίων διηποροῦμεν, μήποτ’ οὐ γεννᾷ τοὺς φθεῖρας ἀλλ’ ἐκκαλεῖται, τραχύτητός τινος ἀμυκτικῆς ἢ θερμότητος ἰδιότητι διακρίνοντα τὴν σάρκα· ταύτην δὲ τοῖς ἐρίοις τὴν δύναμιν ἐγγίνεσθαι πρὸς τὸ τοῦ [d] λύκου δῆγμα καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα μεταβάλλοντος ἄχρι τῶν τριχῶν τοῦ σφαττομένου. καὶ συνεβάλλετο τῷ λόγῳ πίστιν ἡ ἱστορία· τῶν γὰρ κυνηγῶν καὶ τῶν μαγείρων ἐπιστάμεθα τοὺς μὲν μιᾷ πληγῇ καταβάλλοντας, ὥστ’ ἀπνευστὶ τὰ πληγέντα κεῖσθαι, τοὺς δὲ πολλαῖς μόγις καὶ χαλεπῶς ἀναιροῦντας· ὃ δὲ τούτου θαυμασιώτερόν ἐστι, τοὺς μὲν τοιαύτην ἐνιέντας μετὰ τοῦ σιδήρου τῷ τιτρωσκομένῳ δύναμιν, ὥστε ταχὺ σήπεσθαι καὶ μηδὲ πρὸς μίαν ἡμέραν ἀντέχειν, τοὺς δ’ ἀποκτείνοντας μὲν οὐ βράδιον ἐκείνων, οὐδὲν δὲ τοιοῦτο γινόμενον περὶ τὴν σάρκα τῶν σφαγέντων ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ χρόνον διαμένουσαν. ὅτι δ’ αἱ [e] κατὰ τὰς σφαγὰς καὶ τοὺς θανάτους τῶν ζῴων μεταβολαὶ μέχρι δερμάτων καὶ τριχῶν καὶ ὀνύχων διατείνουσιν, ὑποδηλοῦν †εἰωθότα λέγειν καὶ Ὅμηρος ἐπὶ τῶν δερμάτων καὶ τῶν ἱμάντων, ὅτι φησὶν (Γ 375) ‘ἱμὰς βοὸς ἶφι κταμένοιο·’ τῶν γὰρ μὴ νόσῳ μηδὲ γήρᾳ διαλυομένων ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ σφαγῆς εὔτονον τὸ δέρμα καὶ στιφρὸν γίνεσθαι· τὰ δ’ ὑπὸ θηρίων δηχθέντα καὶ τοὺς ὄνυχας μελαίνεσθαι καὶ τριχορροεῖν καὶ τοῖς δέρμασι φλιδᾶν καὶ ῥακοῦσθαι.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ι

Πότερον οἱ παλαιοὶ βέλτιον ἐποίουν πρὸς μερίδας ἢ οἱ νῦν ἐκ κοινοῦ δειπνοῦντες

[f] Ὅτε τὴν ἐπώνυμον ἀρχὴν ἦρχον οἴκοι, τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν δείπνων δαῖτες ἦσαν, ἐν ταῖς θυσίαις ἑκάστῳ μερίδος ἀποκληρουμένης· ὅ τισι μὲν ἤρεσκε θαυμαστῶς, οἱ δ’ ὡς ἀκοινώνητον καὶ ἀνελεύθερον ψέγοντες ᾤοντο δεῖν ἅμα τῷ καταθέσθαι τὸν στέφανον ἐπὶ τὴν συνήθη δίαιταν αὖθις μεθαρμόσασθαι τὰς τραπέζας. ‘οὐ γὰρ τοῦ φαγεῖν’ ὁ [643] [a] Ἁγίας ἔφη ‘χάριν οὐδὲ τοῦ πιεῖν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ συμπιεῖν καὶ συμφαγεῖν ὡς ἐγᾦμαι καλοῦμεν ἀλλήλους, ἡ δ’ εἰς μερίδας αὕτη κρεωδαισία τὴν κοινωνίαν ἀναιροῦσα πολλὰ δεῖπνα ποιεῖ καὶ πολλοὺς δειπνοῦντας, οὐδένα δὲ σύνδειπνον οὐδενός, ὅταν ὥσπερ ἀπὸ κρεωπωλικῆς τραπέζης σταθμῷ λαβὼν ἕκαστος μοῖραν ἑαυτῷ πρόθηται. καίτοι τίν’ ἔχει διαφορὰν [ἢ] κύλικα καταθέντα τῶν κεκλημένων ἑκάστῳ καὶ χοῦν, ἐμπλησάμενον οἴνου, καὶ τράπεζαν ἰδίαν, ὥσπερ οἱ Δημοφωντίδαι τῷ Ὀρέστῃ λέγονται, πίνειν κελεῦσαι μὴ προσέχοντα τοῖς ἄλλοις, ἢ τοῦθ’ ὅπερ [b] νῦν γίνεται, κρέας προθέμενον καὶ ἄρτον ὥσπερ ἐκ φάτνης ἰδίας ἕκαστον εὐωχεῖσθαι, πλὴν ὅτι μὴ πρόσκειται σιωπῆς ἡμῖν ἀνάγκη, καθάπερ τοῖς τὸν Ὀρέστην ξενίζουσιν;

ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτ’ ἴσως αὐτὸ πρὸς τὴν ἁπάντων κοινωνίαν ἐκκαλεῖται τοὺς συνόντας, ὅτι καὶ λόγῳ κοινῷ πρὸς ἀλλήλους χρώμεθα καὶ ᾠδῇ ψαλτρίας τε τερπούσης καὶ αὐλητρίδος ὁμοίως μετέχομεν· καὶ ὁ κρατὴρ οὗτος ὅρον οὐκ ἔχων ἐν μέσῳ πρόκειται, πηγὴ φιλοφροσύνης ἄφθονος καὶ μέτρον ἔχουσα τῆς ἀπολαύσεως τὴν ὄρεξιν· οὐχ ὥσπερ ἡ τοῦ κρέως καὶ τοῦ ἄρτου μερὶς ἀδικωτάτῳ μέτρῳ καλλωπίζεται τῷ ἴσῳ πρὸς ἀνίσους· τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ τῷ μικροῦ [c] δεομένῳ πλέον ἐστὶν τῷ δὲ μείζονος ἔλαττον. ὥσπερ οὖν, ὦ ἑταῖρ’, ‹ὁ› κάμνουσι πολλοῖς ἴσα φάρμακα μέτροις ἀκριβέσι καὶ σταθμοῖς διανέμων παγγέλοιος, οὕτω τοιοῦτος ἑστιάτωρ οἷος ἀνθρώπους οὔτε διψῶντας ὡσαύτως οὔτε πεινῶντας εἰς ταὐτὸ συναγαγὼν ἀπὸ τῶν ἴσων θεραπεύειν ἅπαντας, ἀριθμητικῶς οὐ γεωμετρικῶς ὁρίζων τὸ δίκαιον. εἰς καπήλου μὲν οὖν φοιτῶμεν ἑνὶ χρώμενοι μέτρῳ τῷ δημοσίῳ πάντες· ἐπὶ δεῖπνον δ’ ἕκαστος ἰδίαν ἥκει γαστέρα κομίζων, ἣν οὐ τὸ ἴσον ἀλλὰ τὸ ἀρκοῦν ἐμπίπλησι. τὰς δ’ Ὁμηρικὰς ἐκείνας δαῖτας οὐ χρὴ μεταφέρειν [d] ἐκ τῶν στρατιωτικῶν καὶ παρεμβολικῶν ἐνταῦθα δείπνων, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τὴν τῶν παλαιῶν φιλανθρωπίαν ζηλοῦν, οὐ μόνον ὁμεστίους οὐδ’ ὁμωροφίους ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁμοχοίνικας καὶ ὁμοσιπύους τῷ πᾶσαν σέβεσθαι κοινωνίαν ἐν τιμῇ τιθεμένων. τὰ μὲν οὖν Ὁμήρου δεῖπνα χαίρειν ἐῶμεν· ὑπολιμώδη γάρ ἐστι καὶ διψαλέα καὶ τοὺς ἑστιάρχας βασιλεῖς ἔχοντα τῶν Ἰταλικῶν δεινοτέρους καπήλων, ὥστε παρὰ τὰς μάχας, ἐν χερσὶ τῶν πολεμίων ὄντων, ἀπομνημονεύειν (Δ 345) ἀκριβῶς, πόσον ἕκαστος τῶν δεδειπνηκότων παρ’ αὐτοῖς πέπωκε· τὰ δὲ Πινδαρικὰ βελτίω δήπουθεν, ἐν οἷς (fr. 187)

[e] ‘ἥρωες αἰδοίαν ἐμίγνυντ’ ἀμφὶ τράπεζαν θαμά’

τῷ κοινωνεῖν ἁπάντων ἀλλήλοις. ἐκεῖνο γὰρ ἦν οἷον ἀνάμιξις καὶ σύγκρασις ἀληθῶς, τοῦτο δὲ διαίρεσις καὶ διαβολὴ τῶν φιλτάτων εἶναι δοκούντων, ὡς μηδ’ ὄψου κοινωνεῖν δυναμένων.’

Ἐπὶ τούτοις εὐδοκιμήσαντι τῷ Ἁγίᾳ ‹Λαμπρίαν› παρωξύναμεν ἐπιθέσθαι. ἔλεγεν οὖν ‹οὐ› ξένον τι πεπονθέναι πάθος Ἁγίαν, εἰ τὴν ἴσην μερίδα λαμβάνων δυσκολαίνει, γαστέρα φορῶν τηλικαύτην· καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς εἶναι τῶν ἀδηφαγίᾳ χαιρόντων· ‘ἐν γὰρ ξυνῷ ἰχθύι ἄκανθαι οὐκ ἔνεισιν’ ὥς φησιν ὁ Δημόκριτος (B 151). ‘ἀλλὰ τοῦτ’ αὐτό’ ἔφη ‘καὶ μάλιστα τὴν μοῖραν ὑπὲρ εἱμαρμένην [f] ἡμῖν ἐπήγαγεν. ἰσότητος γάρ, ἣν

‘πόλεις τε πόλεσι συμμάχοις τε συμμάχους’

ἡ Εὐριπίδειος γραῦς (Phoen. 537) φησι ‘συνδεῖν’, οὐδὲν [οὖν] οὕτως ὡς ἡ περὶ τράπεζαν κοινωνία δεῖται, φύσει κοὐ νόμῳ καὶ ἀναγκαίαν οὐ καινὴν οὐδ’ ἐπείσακτον ὑπὸ δόξης ἔχουσα χρείαν· τῷ πλέονα δ’ ἐκ τῶν κοινῶν ἐσθίοντι ‘πολέμιον καθίσταται’ τὸ καθυστεροῦν καὶ ἀπολειπόμενον, [644] [a] ὥσπερ ἐν ῥοθίῳ ταχυναυτούσης τριήρους. οὐ γὰρ φιλικὸν οὐδὲ συμποτικὸν οἶμαι προοίμιον εὐωχίας ὑφόρασις καὶ ἁρπασμὸς καὶ χειρῶν ἅμιλλα καὶ διαγκωνισμός, ἀλλ’ ἄτοπα καὶ κυνικὰ καὶ τελευτῶντα πολλάκις εἰς λοιδορίας καὶ ὀργὰς οὐ κατ’ ἀλλήλων μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ κατὰ τῶν τραπεζοκόμων καὶ κατὰ τῶν ἑστιώντων. ὅσον δὲ χρόνον ἡ Μοῖρα καὶ ἡ Λάχεσις ἰσότητι τὴν περὶ τὰ δεῖπνα καὶ συμπόσια κοινωνίαν ἐβράβευον, οὐθὲν ἰδεῖν ἄκοσμον ἦν οὐδ’ ἀνελεύθερον· ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ δεῖπνα ‘δαῖτας’ ἐκάλουν καὶ τοὺς ἑστιωμένους ‘δαιτυμόνας’, ‘δαιτροὺς’ δὲ τοὺς τραπεζοκόμους ἀπὸ τοῦ διαιρεῖν καὶ [b] διανέμειν. Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ κρεωδαίτας εἶχον οὐ τοὺς τυχόντας ἀλλὰ τοὺς πρώτους ἄνδρας, ὥστε καὶ Λύσανδρον ὑπ’ Ἀγησιλάου τοῦ βασιλέως ἐν Ἀσίᾳ κρεωδαίτην ἀποδειχθῆναι. τότ’ οὖν αἱ νεμήσεις ἐξέπεσον, ὅτ’ ἐπεισῆλθον αἱ πολυτέλειαι τοῖς δείπνοις· οὐ γὰρ ἦν οἶμαι πέμματα καὶ κανδύλους καὶ καρυκείας ἄλλας τε παντοδαπὰς ὑποτριμμάτων καὶ ὄψων παραθέσεις διαιρεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐξηττώμενοι τῆς περὶ ταῦτα λιχνείας καὶ ἡδυπαθείας προήκαντο τὴν ἰσομοιρίαν. τεκμήριον δὲ τοῦ λόγου ‹τὸ› καὶ νῦν ἔτι τὰς θυσίας καὶ τὰ δημόσια δεῖπνα πρὸς μερίδα γίνεσθαι διὰ τὴν ἀφέλειαν καὶ καθαριότητα τῆς διαίτης· ὥσθ’ ὁ τὴν νέμησιν ἀναλαμβάνων ἅμα συνανασῴζει τὴν εὐτέλειαν.

[c] ‘ἀλλ’ ὅπου τὸ ἴδιον ἔστιν, ἀπόλλυται τὸ κοινόν’· ὅπου μὲν οὖν μὴ ἴσον ἔστιν· οὐ γὰρ οἰκείου κτῆσις ἀλλ’ ἀφαίρεσις ἀλλοτρίου καὶ πλεονεξία περὶ τὸ κοινὸν ἀδικίας ἦρξε καὶ διαφορᾶς, ἣν ὅρῳ καὶ μέτρῳ τοῦ ἰδίου καταπαύοντες οἱ νόμοι τῆς ἴσα νεμούσης εἰς τὸ κοινὸν ἀρχῆς καὶ δυνάμεως ἐπώνυμοι γεγόνασιν. ἐπεὶ μηδὲ στέφανον ἀξίου διανέμειν ἡμῖν ἑκάστῳ τὸν ἑστιῶντα μηδὲ κλισίας καὶ χώρας, ἀλλὰ κἂν ἐρωμένην τις ἢ ψάλτριαν ἥκῃ κομίζων, ‘κοινὰ τὰ φίλων,’ ἵν’ ‘ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα’ γίνηται [d] κατὰ τὸν Ἀναξαγόραν (fr. 1). εἰ δ’ οὐδὲν ἡ τούτων ἰδίωσις ἐπιταράττει τὴν κοινωνίαν τῷ τὰ μέγιστα καὶ πλείστης ἄξια σπουδῆς εἶναι κοινά, λόγους, προπόσεις, φιλοφροσύνας, παυσώμεθα τὰς Μοίρας ἀτιμάζοντες καὶ ‘τὸν τῆς τύχης παῖδα κλῆρον’ ὡς Εὐριπίδης (fr. 989) φησίν, ὃς οὔτε πλούτῳ νέμων οὔτε δόξῃ τὸ πρωτεῖον, ἀλλ’ ὅπως ἔτυχεν ἄλλως ἄλλοτε συμφερόμενος τὸν μὲν πένητα καὶ ταπεινὸν ἐπιγαυροῖ καὶ συνεξαίρει γευόμενόν τινος αὐτονομίας, τὸν δὲ πλούσιον καὶ μέγαν ἐθίζων ἰσότητι μὴ δυσκολαίνειν ἀλύπως σωφρονίζει.’

[e]

ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΑΚΩΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΤΡΙΤΟΝ

Σιμωνίδης ὁ ποιητής, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, ἔν τινι [f] πότῳ ξένον ἰδὼν κατακείμενον σιωπῇ καὶ μηδενὶ διαλεγόμενον, ‘ὦ ἄνθρωπ’’ εἶπεν, ‘εἰ μὲν ἠλίθιος εἶ, σοφὸν πρᾶγμα ποιεῖς· εἰ δὲ σοφός, ἠλίθιον.’ ‘ἀμαθίην γὰρ ἄμεινον’ ὥς φησιν Ἡράκλειτος (fr. 95) ‘κρύπτειν’, ἔργον δ’ ἐν ἀνέσει καὶ παρ’ οἶνον (ξ 464)

[645] [a] ‘ὅστ’ ἐφέηκε πολύφρονά περ μάλ’ ἀεῖσαι,

καί θ’ ἁπαλὸν γελάσαι καί τ’ ὀρχήσασθαι ἀνῆκεν,

καί τι ἔπος προέηκεν, ὅπερ τ’ ἄρρητον ἄμεινον·’

οἰνώσεως ἐνταῦθα τοῦ ποιητοῦ καὶ μέθης, ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ, διαφορὰν ὑποδεικνύντος. ᾠδὴ μὲν γὰρ καὶ γέλως καὶ ὄρχησις οἰνουμένοις μετρίως ἔπεισι· τὸ δὲ λαλεῖν καὶ λέγειν, ἃ βέλτιον ἦν σιωπᾶν, παροινίας ἤδη καὶ μέθης ἔργον ἐστίν. διὸ καὶ Πλάτων (Legg. 650a) ἐν οἴνῳ μάλιστα καθορᾶσθαι τὰ ἤθη τῶν πολλῶν νομίζει, καὶ Ὅμηρος εἰπὼν (φ 35) ‘οὐδὲ τραπέζῃ γνώτην ἀλλήλων’ δῆλός ἐστιν εἰδὼς τὸ ‹πολύφω›νον τοῦ οἴνου καὶ ‹λόγων› πολλῶν [b] γόνιμον. οὐ γὰρ ἔστι τρωγόντων σιωπῇ καὶ πινόντων γνῶσις· ἀλλ’ ὅτι τὸ πίνειν εἰς τὸ λαλεῖν προάγεται, τῷ δὲ λαλεῖν ἐμφαίνεται καὶ τὸ ἀπογυμνοῦσθαι πολλὰ τῶν ἄλλως λανθανόντων, παρέχει τινὰ τὸ συμπίνειν κατανόησιν ἀλλήλων· ὥστε μὴ φαύλως ἂν ἐπιτιμῆσαι τῷ Αἰσώπῳ· ‘τί τὰς θυρίδας, ὦ μακάριε, ζητεῖς ἐκείνας, δι’ ὧν ἄλλος ἄλλου κατόψεται τὴν διάνοιαν; ὁ γὰρ οἶνος ἡμᾶς ἀνοίγει καὶ δείκνυσιν οὐκ ἐῶν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, ἀλλ’ ἀφαιρῶν τὸ πλάσμα καὶ τὸν σχηματισμόν, ἀπωτάτω τοῦ νόμου καθάπερ παιδαγωγοῦ γεγονότων.’ Αἰσώπῳ μὲν οὖν καὶ Πλάτωνι, καὶ εἴ τις ἄλλος ἐξετάσεως τρόπου δεῖται, πρὸς [c] τοῦτο χρήσιμον ὁ ἄκρατος· οἱ δὲ μηδὲν ἀλλήλους βασανίζειν δεόμενοι μηδὲ καταφωρᾶν ἀλλ’ ἢ χρῆσθαι φιλοφρόνως, τὰ τοιαῦτα προβλήματα καὶ τοὺς ‹τοιούτους› λόγους ἄγουσι συνιόντες, οἷς ἀποκρύπτεται τὰ φαῦλα τῆς ψυχῆς, τὸ δὲ βέλτιστον ἀναθαρρεῖ καὶ τὸ μουσικώτατον, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ λειμῶνας οἰκείους καὶ νομὰς ὑπὸ φιλολογίας προερχόμενον. ὅθεν καὶ ἡμεῖς τρίτην δεκάδα ταύτην σοι πεποιήμεθα συμποτικῶν ζητημάτων, τὸ περὶ τῶν στεφάνων πρῶτον ἔχουσαν.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Α

[d]

Εἰ χρηστέον ἀνθίνοις στεφάνοις παρὰ πότον

Ἐγένοντο γάρ ποτε καὶ περὶ στεφάνων λόγοι· τὸ δὲ συμπόσιον ἦν Ἀθήνησιν, Ἐράτωνος τοῦ ἁρμονικοῦ ταῖς Μούσαις τεθυκότος καὶ πλείονας ἑστιῶντος. παντοδαπῶν γὰρ μετὰ τὸ δειπνῆσαι στεφάνων περιφερομένων, ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ἐπέσκωψέ πως ἡμᾶς ἀντὶ τοῦ δαφνίνου τοῖς ῥοδίνοις ἀναδησαμένους· ὅλως γὰρ εἶναι τοὺς ἀνθίνους κορασιώδεις καὶ παιζούσαις μᾶλλον ἐπιτηδείους παρθένοις καὶ γυναιξὶν ἢ συνουσίαις φιλοσόφων καὶ μουσικῶν ἀνδρῶν. ‘θαυμάζω δὲ καὶ Ἐράτωνα τουτονὶ τὰς μὲν ἐν τοῖς μέλεσι παραχρώσεις βδελυττόμενον καὶ κατηγοροῦντα τοῦ καλοῦ [e] Ἀγάθωνος, ὃν πρῶτον εἰς τραγῳδίαν φασὶν ἐμβαλεῖν καὶ ὑπομῖξαι τὸ χρωματικόν, ὅτε τοὺς Μυσοὺς ἐδίδασκεν, αὐτὸς δ’ ἡμῖν ὁρᾶθ’ ὡς ποικίλων χρωμάτων καὶ ἀνθηρῶν τὸ συμπόσιον ἐμπέπληκεν, καὶ τὴν διὰ τῶν ὤτων ἀποκλείει τρυφὴν καὶ ἡδυπάθειαν, ταύτην τὴν κατὰ τὰ ὄμματα καὶ κατὰ τὰς ῥῖνας ὥσπερ καθ’ ἑτέρας θύρας ἐπεισάγων τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ τὸν στέφανον ἡδονῆς ποιῶν οὐκ εὐσεβείας. καίτοι τό γε μύρον †τοῦτο τῆς ἀνθίνης ταύτης καὶ μαραινομένης ἐν ταῖς χερσὶ τῶν στεφανηπλόκων σπουδαιοτέραν ἀναδίδωσιν εὐωδίαν· ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔχει χώραν ἐν συμποσίῳ [f] φιλοσόφων ἀνδρῶν ἡδονὴ πρὸς μηδεμίαν συμπεπλεγμένη χρείαν μηδ’ ἀκολουθοῦσα φυσικῆς ὀρέξεως ἀρχῇ. καθάπερ ‹γὰρ› οἱ μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν κεκλημένων ἀγόμενοι φίλων ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον ἔθει φιλανθρώπῳ τυγχάνουσιν τῶν αὐτῶν, ὥσπερ Ἀριστόδημος ὑπὸ Σωκράτους εἰς Ἀγάθωνος ἀχθεὶς ἑστιῶντος (Plat. Conviv. 174a ss.), εἰ δέ τις ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ [646] [a] βαδίζοι, τούτῳ δεῖ τὴν θύραν κεκλεῖσθαι, οὕτως αἱ μὲν περὶ τὴν ἐδωδὴν καὶ πόσιν ἡδοναὶ κεκλημέναι ὑπὸ τῆς φύσεως ταῖς ὀρέξεσιν ἑπόμεναι τόπον ἔχουσιν, ταῖς δ’ ἄλλαις ἀκλήτοις καὶ σὺν οὐδενὶ λόγῳ φιληδονίαις †ἀπήλλακται.’

Πρὸς ταῦθ’ οἱ μὲν ἀήθεις τοῦ Ἀμμωνίου νεανίσκοι διαταραχθέντες ἡσυχῆ παρελύοντο τοὺς στεφάνους· ἐγὼ δ’ εἰδὼς ὅτι γυμνασίας ἕνεκα καὶ ζητήσεως καταβέβληκεν ἐν μέσῳ τὸν λόγον ὁ Ἀμμώνιος, προσαγορεύσας Τρύφωνα τὸν ἰατρόν ‘ὦ τᾶν, ἢ καταθέσθαι δίκαιος εἶ μεθ’ ἡμῶν τουτονὶ ‘τὸν καλ‹ύκεσσι› φλέγοντα τοῖς ῥοδίνοις στέφανον,’ [b] ἢ λέγειν, ὥσπερ εἴωθας ἑκάστοτε πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὅσας ἔχουσιν οἱ ἄνθινοι στέφανοι πρὸς τὸ πίνειν βοηθείας.’ ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Ἐράτων ‘οὕτω γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘δέδοκται μηδεμίαν ἡδονὴν ἀσύμβολον δέχεσθαι, ἀλλ’ εὐφραινομένους δυσκολαίνειν, ἂν μὴ μετά τινος μισθοῦ τοῦτο πάσχωμεν; ἢ τὸ μὲν μύρον εἰκότως ὑποδυσωπούμεθα καὶ τὴν πορφύραν διὰ τὴν ἐπίθετον πολυτέλειαν ὡς δολερὰ εἵματα καὶ χρίματα κατὰ τὴν τοῦ βαρβάρου φωνήν, αἱ δ’ αὐτοφυεῖς χρόαι καὶ ὀσμαὶ [οὐ] τὸ ἀφελὲς ἔχουσι καὶ καθαρὸν καὶ οὐδὲν ὀπώρας διαφέρουσιν; μὴ γὰρ εὔηθες ᾖ τοὺς μὲν χυμοὺς δρέπεσθαι καὶ ἀπολαύειν τῆς φύσεως διδούσης, [c] ὀσμὰς δὲ καὶ χρόας ‹ἃς› αἱ ὧραι φέρουσι, διὰ τὴν ἐπανθοῦσαν ἡδονὴν †ταῦτα καὶ χάριν ἀτιμάζειν, ἂν μή τι χρειῶδες ἔξωθεν ἄλλο συνεπιφέρωσιν. ... ἓν γὰρ αὐτὸ δοκεῖ τοὐναντίον, εἰ μηδὲν ἡ φύσις, ὡς ὑμεῖς φατε ..., μάτην πεποίηκε, ταῦτα τῆς ἡδονῆς πεποιῆσθαι χάριν, ἃ μηδὲν ἄλλο χρήσιμον ἔχοντα μόνον εὐφραίνειν πέφυκεν. σκόπει δ’ ὅτι τοῖς φυομένοις καὶ βλαστάνουσι τὰ μὲν φύλλα σωτηρίας ἕνεκα τοῦ καρποῦ καὶ ὅπως ὑπ’ αὐτῶν τὰ δένδρα θαλπόμενα καὶ ψυχόμενα μετρίως φέρῃ τὰς μεταβολὰς γέγονεν, τοῦ δ’ ἄνθους ὄφελος οὐδὲν ἐπιμένοντος, πλὴν εἴ τι χρωμένοις ἡμῖν ἐπιτερπὲς ὀσφρέσθαι καὶ ἰδεῖν [d] ἡδὺ παρέχει, θαυμαστὰς μὲν ὀσμὰς ἀφιέντα, ποικιλίαν δ’ ἀμιμήτοις χρώμασι καὶ βαφαῖς ἀνοιγόμενα. διὸ τῶν μὲν φύλλων ἀποσπωμένων οἷον ἀλγεῖ καὶ δάκνεται τὰ φυτὰ καὶ γίνεται περὶ αὐτὰ βλάβη τις ἑλκώδης καὶ ψίλωσις ἀπρεπής, καὶ οὐ μόνης ὡς ἔοικε κατ’ Ἐμπεδοκλέα (fr. 140) τῆς ‘δάφνης τῶν φύλλων ἀπὸ πάμπαν ἔχεσθαι’ χρή, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων φείδεσθαι δένδρων ἁπάντων καὶ μὴ κοσμεῖν ἑαυτοὺς ταῖς ἐκείνων ἀκοσμίαις, βίᾳ καὶ παρὰ φύσιν τὰ φύλλα συλῶντας αὐτῶν· αἱ δὲ τῶν ἀνθῶν ἀφαιρέσεις τρυγήσεσιν ἐοίκασιν καὶ βλάπτουσιν οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ κἂν μὴ [e] λάβῃ τις ἐν ὥρᾳ, περιερρύη μαρανθέντα. καθάπερ οὖν οἱ βάρβαροι τῶν θρεμμάτων τοῖς δέρμασιν ἀντὶ τῶν ἐρίων ἀμφιέννυνται, οὕτω μοι δοκοῦσιν οἱ μᾶλλον ἐκ τῶν φύλλων ἢ τῶν ἀνθῶν ὑφαίνοντες τοὺς στεφάνους οὐ κατὰ λόγον χρῆσθαι τοῖς φυτοῖς. ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν ταῦτα συμβάλλομαι ταῖς στεφανοπώλισιν· οὐ γάρ εἰμι γραμματικός, ὥστ’ ἀπομνημονεύειν ποιημάτων, ἐν οἷς τοὺς παλαιοὺς ἱερονίκας ἀναγινώσκομεν ἀνθίνοις ἀναδουμένους στεφάνοις· πλὴν ὅτι γε ταῖς Μούσαις ὁ τῶν ῥόδων στέφανος ἐπιπεφήμισται, μεμνῆσθαί μοι δοκῶ Σαπφοῦς λεγούσης πρός τινα τῶν ἀμούσων καὶ ἀμαθῶν γυναικῶν (fr. 68 I p. 354 D)

‘κατθάνοισα δὲ κείσεαι·

[f] οὐ γὰρ πεδέχεις ῥόδων

τῶν ἐκ Πιερίας.’

εἰ δέ τινα καὶ Τρύφων ἀπὸ τῆς ἰατρικῆς δίδωσι μαρτυρίαν, ἀκουστέον.’

Ἐκ τούτου δεξάμενος ὁ τρύφων τὸν λόγον οὐδενὸς ἔφη τούτων ἀσκέπτους γεγονέναι τοὺς παλαιούς, ἅτε δὴ πλείστῃ κεχρημένους ἀπὸ φυτῶν ἰατρικῇ· ‘τεκμήρια δ’ [647] [a] ἔσθ’ ἅτιν’ ἔτι νῦν Τύριοι μὲν Ἀγηνορίδῃ Μάγνητες δὲ Χείρωνι, τοῖς πρώτοις ἰατρεῦσαι λεγομένοις, ἀπαρχὰς κομίζουσιν· ῥίζαι γάρ εἰσι καὶ βοτάναι, δι’ ὧν ἰῶντο τοὺς κάμνοντας. ὁ δὲ Διόνυσος οὐ μόνον τῷ τὸν οἶνον εὑρεῖν, ἰσχυρότατον φάρμακον καὶ ἥδιστον, ἰατρὸς ἐνομίσθη †μέτριος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ τὸν κιττὸν ἀντιταττόμενον μάλιστα τῇ δυνάμει πρὸς τὸν οἶνον εἰς τιμὴν προαγαγεῖν καὶ στεφανοῦσθαι διδάξαι τοὺς βακχεύοντας ὡς ἧττον [ὑπὸ τοῦ οἴνου] ἀνιῷντο, τοῦ κιττοῦ κατασβεννύντος τὴν μέθην τῇ ψυχρότητι. δηλοῖ δὲ καὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων ἔνια τὴν περὶ ταῦτα πολυπραγμοσύνην τῶν παλαιῶν· τήν τε γὰρ καρύαν [b] οὕτως ὠνόμασαν, ὅτι πνεῦμα βαρὺ καὶ καρωτικὸν ἀφιεῖσα λυπεῖ τοὺς ὑπ’ αὐτῆς παρακεκλιμένους· καὶ τὸν νάρκισσον ὡς ἀμβλύνοντα τὰ νεῦρα καὶ βαρύτητας ἐμποιοῦντα ναρκώδεις· διὸ καὶ Σοφοκλῆς (O. C. 683) αὐτὸν ‘ἀρχαῖον μεγάλων θεῶν στεφάνωμα’, τουτέστι τῶν χθονίων, προσηγόρευκεν. φασὶ δὲ καὶ τὸ πήγανον ἀπὸ τῆς δυνάμεως ὠνομάσθαι· πήγνυσι γὰρ ξηρότητι διὰ θερμότητα τὸ σπέρμα καὶ ὅλως πολέμιόν ἐστι ταῖς κυούσαις. οἱ δὲ καὶ τὴν ἀμέθυστον οἰόμενοι τῷ πρὸς τὰς οἰνώσεις βοηθεῖν αὐτήν τε καὶ τὴν ἐπώνυμον αὐτῆς λίθον οὕτω κεκλῆσθαι διαμαρτάνουσιν· κέκληται γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς χρόας ἑκατέρα· [c] ... ἐστιν αὐτῆς τὸ φύλλον †ἄκρατον ἀλλ’ ἀναίμῳ καὶ ὑδαρεῖ τὴν κρᾶσιν οἴνῳ προσέοικεν. ἄλλα μέντοι πάμπολλα λαβεῖν ἔστιν, οἷς παρέσχον τὰς κλήσεις αἱ δυνάμεις· ἀρκεῖ δὲ κἀκεῖνα τὴν τῶν παλαιῶν ἐπιμέλειαν ὑποδηλῶσαι καὶ πολυπειρίαν, ἀφ’ ἧς ἐχρήσαντο τοῖς παροίνοις στεφάνοις. μάλιστα μὲν γὰρ ὁ ἄκρατος, ὅταν τῆς κεφαλῆς καθάψηται καὶ τονώσῃ †τὰ σώματα πρὸς τὰς τῶν αἰσθήσεων ἀρχάς, ἐπιταράσσει τὸν ἄνθρωπον· αἱ δὲ τῶν ἀνθῶν ἀπόρροιαι πρὸς τοῦτο θαυμασίως βοηθοῦσι καὶ ἀποτειχίζουσι τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀπὸ τῆς μέθης ὡς ἀκρόπολιν, τῶν μὲν θερμῶν [d] μαλακῶς ἀναχαλώντων τοὺς πόρους καὶ ἀναπνοὴν τῷ οἴνῳ διδόντων, ὅσα δ’ ἡσυχῆ ψυχρὰ τῷ μετρίως ἐπιψαύειν ἀνακρουομένων τὰς ἀναθυμιάσεις, ὥσπερ ὁ τῶν ἴων καὶ ῥόδων στέφανος· στύφει γὰρ ἀμφότερα καὶ ‹συ›στέλλει τῇ ὀσμῇ τὰς καρηβαρίας. τὸ δὲ τῆς κύπρου ἄνθος καὶ ὁ κρόκος καὶ ἡ βάκκαρις εἰς ὕπνον ἄλυπον ὑπάγει τοὺς πεπωκότας· ἔχει γὰρ ἀπορροὴν λείαν καὶ προσηνῆ καὶ τὰς περὶ τὸ σῶμα τῶν μεθυσκομένων ἀνωμαλίας καὶ τραχύτητας ἡσυχῆ διαχέουσαν, ὥστε γινομένης γαλήνης ἀμβλύνεσθαι καὶ συνεκπέττεσθαι τὸ κραιπαλῶδες. ἐνίων δ’ ἀνθῶν ὀσμαῖς ἄνω σκιδναμέναις περὶ τὸν ἐγκέφαλον οἵ [e] τε πόροι τῶν αἰσθητηρίων ἐκκαθαίρονται καὶ λεπτύνεται τὰ ὑγρὰ πράως ἄνευ πληγῆς καὶ σάλου τῇ θερμότητι διακρινόμενα, καὶ φύσει ψυχρὸς ὢν ὁ ἐγκέφαλος ἀναθάλπεται. διὸ μάλιστα τοὺς ἀνθίνους ἐκ τῶν τραχήλων καθάπτοντες ‘ὑποθυμίδας’ ἐκάλουν, καὶ τοῖς ἀπὸ τούτων μύροις ἔχριον τὰ στήθη· μαρτυρεῖ δ’ Ἀλκαῖος (fr. 42. I p. 427 D.) κελεύων ‘καταχέαι τὸ μύρον αὐτοῦ κατὰ τᾶς πόλλα παθοίσας κεφάλας καὶ τῶ πολίω στήθεος’. οὕτω καὶ ἐντεῦθεν αἱ ὀσμαὶ τοξεύουσιν ὑπὸ θερμότητος εἰς τὸν ἐγκέφαλον ἁρπαζόμεναι ταῖς ὀσφρήσεσιν. οὐ γάρ, ὅτι τῇ καρδίᾳ τὸν θυμὸν ἐνστρατοπεδεύειν ᾤοντο, τοὺς περιδεραίους [f] τῶν στεφάνων ὑποθυμίδας ἐκάλουν (ἐπιθυμίδας γὰρ αὐτοῖς διά γε τοῦτο μᾶλλον ἦν καλεῖσθαι προσῆκον), ἀλλ’ ὡς λέγω διὰ τὴν ἀποφορὰν καὶ ὑποθυμίασιν. μὴ θαυμάζωμεν δ’ εἰ τοσαύτην αἱ τῶν στεφάνων ἀποφοραὶ δύναμιν ἔχουσιν· ἱστοροῦσι γάρ, ὅτι καὶ σκιὰ σμίλακος ἀποκτείνυσιν ἀνθρώπους ἐγκαταδαρθόντας, ὅταν ὀργᾷ [648] [a] μάλιστα πρὸς τὴν ἄνθησιν· καὶ τὸ τῆς μήκωνος ἀπορρέον πνεῦμα μὴ φυλαξαμένοις τοῖς τὸν ὀπὸν τρυγῶσιν συνέβη καταπεσεῖν. τὴν δ’ ἄλυσσον καλουμένην βοτάνην καὶ λαβόντες εἰς τὴν χεῖρα μόνον, οἱ δὲ καὶ προσβλέψαντες, ἀπαλλάττονται λυγμοῦ· λέγεται δὲ καὶ ποιμνίοις ἀγαθὴ καὶ αἰπολίοις, παραφυτευομένη ταῖς μάνδραις. τὸ δὲ ῥόδον ὠνόμασται δήπουθεν, ὅτι ῥεῦμα πολὺ τῆς ὀδωδῆς ἀφίησι· διὸ καὶ τάχιστα μαραίνεται. ψυκτικὸν δ’ ἐστὶ δυνάμει τῇ δ’ ὄψει πυρωπόν, οὐκ ἀλόγως· λεπτὸν γὰρ αὐτῷ περιανθεῖ τὸ θερμὸν ἐπιπολῆς ἐξωθούμενον ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχρότητος.’

[b]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Β

Περὶ τοῦ κιττοῦ πότερον τῇ φύσει θερμὸς ἢ ψυχρός ἐστιν

Ἐπαινεσάντων δ’ ἡμῶν τὸν Τρύφωνα μειδιῶν ὁ Ἀμμώνιος οὐκ ἄξιον ἔφη ποικίλον οὕτω καὶ ἀνθηρὸν λόγον ὥσπερ στέφανον ἀντιλέγοντα διαλακτίζειν· ‘πλὴν ὅ γε κιττὸς οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως συγκαταπέπλεκται ψυχρότητι συγκατασβεννύναι λεγόμενος τὸν ἄκρατον· ἔστι γὰρ ἔμπυρος καὶ θερμότερος, καὶ ὅ γε καρπὸς αὐτοῦ μιγνύμενος εἰς τὸν οἶνον μεθυστικὸν ποιεῖ καὶ ταρακτικὸν τῷ πυροῦσθαι. τὸ δὲ κλῆμα λέγουσιν αὐτοῦ σπώμενον ὥσπερ [c] τἀν πυρὶ ξύλα συνδιαστρέφεσθαι. χιὼν δὲ πολλάκις ἡμέρας συχνὰς ἐπιμένουσα τοῖς ἄλλοις φυτοῖς φεύγει τάχιστα τὸν κιττόν, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως εὐθὺς ἀπόλλυται καὶ περιτήκεται περὶ αὐτὸν ὑπὸ θερμότητος. ὃ δὲ μέγιστόν ἐστιν ὑπὸ Θεοφράστου (h. pl. IV 4, 1) δ’ ἱστόρηται, Ἀλεξάνδρου κελεύσαντος Ἑλληνικὰ δένδρα τοῖς ἐν Βαβυλῶνι παραδείσοις ἐμβαλεῖν Ἅρπαλον, μάλιστα δέ, τῶν τόπων ἐμπύρων ὄντων καὶ περιφλεγόντων, τὰ ἀλσώδη καὶ εὐπέταλα καὶ σκιερὰ καταμῖξαι τοῖς φυτοῖς, μόνον οὐκ ἐδέξατο τὸν κιττὸν ἡ χώρα, καίτοι πολλὰ τοῦ Ἁρπάλου πραγματευομένου καὶ προσφιλονεικοῦντος, ἀλλ’ ἀπώλλυτο [d] καὶ κατεξηραίνετο, τῷ πυρώδης μὲν αὐτὸς εἶναι πρὸς πυρώδη δὲ μίγνυσθαι γῆν οὐ λαμβάνων κρᾶσιν ἀλλ’ ἐξιστάμενος. αἱ γὰρ ὑπερβολαὶ φθείρουσι τὰς δυνάμεις· διὸ τῶν ἐναντίων μᾶλλον ὀρέγονται, καὶ φιλόθερμόν ἐστι τὸ ψυχρὸν καὶ φιλόψυχρον τὸ θερμόν· ὅθεν οἱ ὄρειοι καὶ πνευματώδεις καὶ νιφόμενοι τόποι τὰ δᾳδώδη καὶ πισσοτρόφα τῶν φυτῶν, μάλιστα πεύκας καὶ στροβίλους, ἐκφέρουσιν. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων, ὦ φίλε Τρύφων, τὰ δύσριγα καὶ ψυχρὰ φυλλορροεῖ, μικρότητι τοῦ θερμοῦ καὶ ἀσθενείᾳ συστελλομένου καὶ προλείποντος τὸ φυτόν· ἐλαίαν δὲ καὶ δάφνην καὶ κυπάριττον ἀειθαλῆ διαφυλάσσει τὸ [e] λιπαρὸν καὶ τὸ θερμὸν ὥσπερ τὸν κιττόν. ὅθεν ὁ φίλτατος Διόνυσος οὐχ ὡς βοηθὸν ἐπὶ τὴν μέθην οὐδ’ ὡς πολέμιον τῷ οἴνῳ τὸν κιττὸν ἐπήγαγεν, ὅς γε τὸν ἄκρατον ἄντικρυς ‘μέθυ’ καί ‘μεθυμναῖον’ αὐτὸς αὑτὸν ὠνόμασεν· ἀλλά μοι δοκεῖ, καθάπερ οἱ φίλοινοι μὴ παρόντος ἀμπελίνου κριθίνῳ χρῶνται πόματι, καὶ μηλίτας τινάς, οἱ δὲ φοινικίνους οἴνους ποιοῦσιν, οὕτω καὶ ὁ ποθῶν χειμῶνος ὥρᾳ τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀμπέλου στέφανον, ὡς ἐκείνην ἑώρα γυμνὴν καὶ ἄφυλλον, ἀγαπῆσαι τὴν ὁμοιότητα τοῦ κιττοῦ. καὶ γὰρ τοῦ κλήματος τὸ ἑλικῶδες τοῦτο καὶ σφαλλόμενον ἐν τῇ [f] πορείᾳ καὶ τοῦ πετάλου τὸ ὑγρὸν καὶ περικεχυμένον ἀτάκτως, μάλιστα δ’ αὐτὸς ὁ κόρυμβος ὄμφακι πυκνῷ καὶ περκάζοντι προσεοικώς, ἐκμεμίμηται τὴν τῆς ἀμπέλου διάθεσιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ κἂν βοηθῇ τι πρὸς μέθην ὁ κιττός, θερμότητι τοῦτο ποιεῖν φήσομεν αὐτὸν ἀνοίγοντα τοὺς πόρους ἢ συνεκπέττοντα μᾶλλον τὸν ἄκρατον, ἵνα καὶ μένῃ σὴν χάριν, ὦ Τρύφων, ἰατρὸς ὁ Διόνυσος.’

Πρὸς ταῦθ’ ὁ μὲν Τρύφων ἄφωνος ἦν, ὅπως ἀντείποι [649] [a] σκεπτόμενος· ὁ δ’ Ἐράτων ἕκαστον ἡμῶν τῶν νέων ἀνακαλούμενος ἐκέλευε βοηθεῖν τῷ Τρύφωνι [τῶν στεφάνων] ἢ τοὺς στεφάνους ἀποτίθεσθαι· καὶ Ἀμμώνιος ἔφη παρέχειν ἄδειαν, οὐ γὰρ ἀντερεῖν οἷς ἂν ἡμεῖς εἴπωμεν. οὕτω δὴ καὶ τοῦ Τρύφωνος ἐπικελεύοντος εἰπεῖν ‹ἔφην ὅ›τι τὸ μὲν ἀποδεῖξαι ψυχρὸν εἶναι τὸν κιττὸν οὐκ ἐμὸν ἦν ἔργον, ἀλλὰ Τρύφωνος· οὗτος γὰρ αὐτῷ ψύχοντι καὶ στύφοντι πολλὰ χρῆται· ‘τῶν δ’ εἰρημένων’ ἔφην ‘τὸ μὲν μεθύσκειν κιττὸν οἴνῳ μιγνύμενον οὐκ ἀληθές ἐστιν· ὃ γὰρ ἐμποιεῖ τοῖς πιοῦσι πάθος οὐ μέθην ἄν τις εἴποι, ταραχὴν δὲ καὶ παραφροσύνην, οἷον ‹ὑος›κύαμος ἐμποιεῖ [b] καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα κινοῦντα μανικῶς τὴν διάνοιαν. ὁ δὲ τοῦ κλήματος σπασμὸς ἄλογός ἐστιν· τοιαῦτα γὰρ παρὰ φύσιν ἔργα τῶν κατὰ φύσιν δυνάμεων οὐκ ἔστιν· ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ ξύλα διαστρέφεται τοῦ πυρὸς τὸ ὑγρὸν ἕλκοντος ἐξ αὐτῶν βίᾳ κυρτότητας ἴσχοντα καὶ παραβάσεις· τὸ δὲ συγγενὲς θερμὸν αὔξειν καὶ τρέφειν πέφυκεν. σκόπει δὲ μὴ μᾶλλον ἀρρωστία τις καὶ ψυχρότης σώματος τὸ πολυκαμπὲς καὶ χαμαιπετὲς πέφυκε, ‹προσκρού›σεις πυκνὰς ‹καὶ› ἀντικοπὰς λαμβάνοντος, ὥσπερ ὁδοιπόρου δι’ ἀσθένειαν πολλάκις ἀποκαθίζοντος εἶτα πάλιν ἐρχομένου· [c] διὸ καὶ περιπλοκῆς δεῖται καὶ στηρίγματος, αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀνέχειν καὶ ποδηγεῖν ἀδυνατῶν δι’ ἔνδειαν θερμότητος, ἧς τὸ ἀνωφερὲς δύναμίς ἐστιν. ἡ δὲ χιὼν ἀπορρεῖ καὶ περιτήκεται δι’ ὑγρότητα τοῦ φύλλου· τὸ γὰρ ὕδωρ σβέννυσιν αὐτῆς καὶ κόπτει τὴν χαυνότητα διὰ τὸ μικρῶν εἶναι καὶ πυκνῶν ἄθροισμα πομφολύγων· ὅθεν ‹οὐχ ἧττον› ἐν τοῖς περιψύκτοις σφόδρα καὶ νοτεροῖς τόποις ἢ τοῖς προσείλοις αἱ χιόνες ῥέουσιν. τὸ δ’ ἀειθαλὲς τοῦτο καὶ ὥς φησιν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (fr. 77) ‘ἐμπεδόφυλλον’ οὐκ ἔστι θερμότητος· οὐδὲ γὰρ ψυχρότητος τὸ φυλλορροεῖν· ἡ γοῦν μυρρίνη καὶ τὸ ἀδίαντον [d] οὐκ ὄντα τῶν θερμῶν ἀλλὰ τῶν ψυχρῶν ἀεὶ τέθηλεν. ἔνιοι μὲν οὖν ὁμαλότητι κράσεως οἴονται παραμένειν τὸ φύλλον· Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ πρὸς τούτῳ καὶ πόρων τινὰ συμμετρίαν αἰτιᾶται, τεταγμένως καὶ ὁμαλῶς τὴν τροφὴν διιέντων, ὥστ’ ἀρκούντως ἐπιρρεῖν. τοῖς δὲ φυλλορροοῦσιν οὐκ ἔστι διὰ μανότητα τῶν ἄνω καὶ στενότητα τῶν κάτω πόρων, ὅταν οἱ μὲν μὴ ἐπιπέμπωσιν οἱ δὲ ‹μὴ› φυλάττωσιν ἀλλ’ ὀλίγον λαβόντες ἄθρουν ἐκχέωσιν, ὥσπερ ἐν ἀνδήροις τισὶν οὐχ ὁμαλοῖς· τὰ δ’ ὑδρευόμεν’ ἀεὶ τὴν τροφὴν διαρκῆ καὶ σύμμετρον ἀντέχει καὶ παραμένει ἀγήρω καὶ χλοερά. ‘ἀλλ’ ἐν Βαβυλῶνι φυτευόμενος ἐξίστατο [e] καὶ ἀπηγόρευεν’· εὖ γε ποιῶν ὁ γενναῖος οὗτος, ὅτι Βοιωτίου θεοῦ πελάτης καὶ παράσιτος ὢν οὐκ ἐβούλετο μετοικεῖν ἐν βαρβάροις οὐδ’ Ἀλέξανδρον ἐζήλωσεν ἐξοικειούμενον ἐκείνοις τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, ἀλλ’ ἔφευγε καὶ διεμάχετο πρὸς τὴν ἀποξένωσιν. αἰτία δ’ οὐχ ἡ θερμότης ἦν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἡ ψυχρότης, οὐχ ὑποφέρουσα τὴν ἐναντίαν κρᾶσιν· οὐ γὰρ φθείρει τὸ οἰκεῖον, ἀλλὰ προσίεται καὶ τρέφει, καθάπερ τὸ θύμον ἡ ξηρὰ γῆ, καίτοι θερμὸν ὄν. τὴν δὲ Βαβυλωνίαν οὕτω φασὶν ἀέρα πνιγώδη καὶ βαρὺν περιέχειν, ὥστε πολλοὺς τῶν εὐπόρων, ὅταν ἐμπλήσωσιν [f] ἀσκοὺς ὕδατος, ἐπὶ τούτων καθεύδειν ἀναψυχομένους.’

[650] [a]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Γ

Διὰ τί γυναῖκες ἥκιστα μεθύσκονται τάχιστα δ’ οἱ γέροντες

Ἐθαύμαζε Φλῶρος, εἰ γεγραφὼς Ἀριστοτέλης ἐν τῷ περὶ μέθης (fr. 108), ὅτι μάλιστα μὲν οἱ γέροντες ἥκιστα δ’ αἱ γυναῖκες ὑπὸ μέθης ἁλίσκονται, τὴν αἰτίαν οὐκ ἐξειργάσατο μηδὲν εἰωθὼς προΐεσθαι τῶν τοιούτων· εἶτα μέντοι προὔβαλεν ἐν μέσῳ σκοπεῖν τοῖς παροῦσιν. ἦν δὲ τῶν συνήθων τὸ δεῖπνον. ἔφη τοίνυν ὁ Σύλλας θατέρῳ θάτερον ἐμφαίνεσθαι· κἂν εἰ περὶ τῶν γυναικῶν ὀρθῶς τὴν αἰτίαν λάβοιμεν, οὐκ ἔτι πολλοῦ λόγου δεήσεσθαι περὶ τῶν γερόντων· ἐναντίας γὰρ εἶναι μάλιστα τὰς [b] φύσεις τῇ θ’ ὑγρότητι καὶ ξηρότητι ‹καὶ λειότητι› καὶ τραχύτητι καὶ μαλακότητι καὶ σκληρότητι. ‘καὶ τοῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘λαμβάνω κατὰ τῶν γυναικῶν πρῶτον, ὅτι τὴν κρᾶσιν ὑγρὰν ἔχουσιν, ἣ καὶ τὴν ἁπαλότητα τῆς σαρκὸς ἐμμεμιγμένη παρέχει καὶ τὸ στίλβον ἐπὶ λειότητι καὶ τὰς καθάρσεις· ὅταν οὖν ὁ οἶνος εἰς ὑγρότητα πολλὴν ἐμπέσῃ, κρατούμενος ἀποβάλλει τὴν βαφὴν καὶ γίνεται παντάπασιν ἀναφὴς καὶ ὑδατώδης. ἔστι δέ τι καὶ παρ’ αὐτοῦ λαβεῖν Ἀριστοτέλους· τοὺς γὰρ ἄθρουν καὶ ἀπνευστὶ πίνοντας, ὅπερ ‘ἀμυστίζειν’ ὠνόμαζον οἱ παλαιοί, φησὶν ἥκιστα περιπίπτειν μέθαις· οὐ γὰρ ἐνδιατρίβειν τὸν [c] ἄκρατον αὐτοῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐξωθούμενον ῥύμῃ διαπορεύεσθαι διὰ τοῦ σώματος· ἐπιεικῶς δὲ τὰς γυναῖκας ὁρῶμεν οὕτω πινούσας. εἰκὸς δ’ αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ σῶμα διὰ τὸν ἐνδελεχῆ τῶν ὑγρῶν κατασπασμὸν ἐπὶ τὰς ἀπο‹καθάρσεις› πολύπορον γεγονέναι καὶ τετμῆσθαι καθάπερ ἀνδήροις καὶ ὀχετοῖς· εἰς οὓς ἐμπίπτοντα τὸν ἄκρατον ὑπάγειν ταχέως καὶ μὴ προσίστασθαι τοῖς κυρίοις μέρεσιν, ὧν διαταραττομένων συμβαίνει τὸ μεθύειν. οἱ δὲ γέροντες ὅτι μέν εἰσιν ἐνδεεῖς ἰκμάδος οἰκείας, τοὔνομά μοι δοκεῖ φράζειν πρῶτον· οὐ γὰρ ὡς ῥέοντες εἰς γῆν, ἀλλ’ ὡς γεώδεις καὶ γεηροί τινες ἤδη γινόμενοι τὴν ἕξιν οὕτω προσαγορεύονται· [d] δηλοῖ δὲ καὶ τὸ δυσκαμπὲς αὐτῶν καὶ σκληρὸν ἔτι δ’ ἡ τραχύτης τὴν ξηρότητα τῆς φύσεως· ὅταν οὖν ἐμπίνωσιν, εἰκὸς ἀναλαμβάνεσθαι τὸν οἶνον, τοῦ σώματος σφογγώδους διὰ τὸν αὐχμὸν ὄντος, εἶτ’ ἐμμένοντα πληγὰς καὶ βαρύτητας ἐμποιεῖν· ὡς γὰρ τὰ ῥεύματα τῶν μὲν πυκνῶν ἀποκλύζεται χωρίων καὶ πηλὸν οὐ ποιεῖ τοῖς δ’ ἀραιοῖς ἀναμίγνυται μᾶλλον, οὕτως ὁ οἶνος ἐν τοῖς τῶν γερόντων σώμασιν ἔχει διατριβὴν ἑλκόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς ξηρότητος. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων ἰδεῖν ἔστι τὰ συμπτώματα τῆς μέθης τὴν τῶν γερόντων φύσιν ἐξ ἑαυτῆς ἔχουσαν· ἔστι γὰρ συμπτώματα [e] μέθης ἐπιφανέστατα, τρόμοι μὲν ἄρθρων ψελλισμοὶ δὲ γλώσσης, πλεονασμοὶ δὲ λαλιᾶς ὀξύτητες δ’ ὀργῆς, λῆθαί τε καὶ παραφοραὶ διανοίας· ὧν τὰ πολλὰ καὶ περὶ τοὺς ὑγιαίνοντας ὄντα πρεσβύτας ὀλίγης ῥοπῆς δεῖται καὶ σάλου τοῦ τυχόντος· ὥστε μὴ γένεσιν ἰδίων ἀλλὰ κοινῶν ἐπίτασιν συμπτωμάτων γίνεσθαι τὴν μέθην τῷ γέροντι· τεκμήριον δὲ τούτου τὸ μηθὲν εἶναι γέροντι νέου μεθυσθέντος ὁμοιότερον.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Δ

Πότερον ψυχρότεραι τῇ κράσει τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἢ θερμότεραί εἰσιν αἱ γυναῖκες

[f] Ὁ μὲν οὖν Σύλλας ταῦτ’ εἶπεν. ὁ δὲ τακτικὸς Ἀπολλωνίδης ἔφη τὸν μὲν περὶ τῶν γερόντων ἀποδέχεσθαι λόγον· ἐν δὲ ταῖς γυναιξὶν αὐτῷ δοκεῖν παραλελεῖφθαι τὸ τῆς ψυχρότητος, ᾗ θερμότατον ἄκρατον ἀποσβέννυσθαι καὶ ἀποβάλλειν τὸ πλῆττον καὶ πυρῶδες.

[651] [a] πιθανοῦ δὲ καὶ τούτου δοκοῦντος, Ἀθρύϊτος ὁ Θάσιος ἰατρὸς ἐμβαλών τινα τῇ ζητήσει διατριβὴν εἶναί τινας ἔφησεν, οἳ τὰς γυναῖκας οὐ ψυχρὰς ἀλλὰ θερμοτέρας τῶν ἀνδρῶν ὑπολαμβάνουσιν, ἑτέρους δὲ πάλιν οἳ τὸν οἶνον οὐ θερμὸν ἀλλὰ καὶ ψυχρὸν ἡγοῦνται.

Θαυμάσαντος δὲ τοῦ Φλώρου, ‘τὸν μὲν περὶ τοῦ οἴνου λόγον’ εἶπεν ‘ἀφίημι τούτῳ’ δείξας ἐμέ· καὶ γὰρ ἐτυγχάνομεν ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις πρότερον εἰς τοῦτο διειλεγμένοι· ‘τῶν δὲ γυναικῶν’ ἔφη ‘τὴν θερμότητα πρῶτον ἀπὸ τῆς ψιλότητος οἴονται δεικνύναι, καταναλισκομένου τοῦ περιττώματος ὑπὸ τῆς θερμότητος, ὃ πλεονάζον εἰς τρίχας τρέπεται· δεύτερον δὲ τῷ πλήθει τοῦ αἵματος, ὃ πηγὴ μὲν [b] εἶναι δοκεῖ τῆς ἐν τῷ σώματι θερμότητος, ἔστι δὲ τοσοῦτον ταῖς γυναιξίν, ὥστ’ αὐτὰς καταπιμπράναι καὶ περιφλέγειν, εἰ μὴ πολλαὶ καὶ ταχεῖαι συμβαίνοιεν καθάρσεις. τρίτον τοῦτο τὸ περὶ τὰς ταφὰς αἱ‹ρεῖ θερμότε›ρα τὰ θήλεα τῶν ἀρρένων εἶναι· λέγεται γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν σκευωρουμένων †τὰ μὲν συντίθεσθαι παρὰ δέκα νεκροὺς ἀνδρῶν ἕνα γυναικὸς καὶ συνεξάπτειν, δᾳδῶδές τι καὶ λιπαρὸν αὐτῶν τῆς σαρκὸς ἐχούσης, ὥσθ’ ὑπέκκαυμα γίνεσθαι τῶν ἄλλων. ἔτι δ’, εἰ θερμότερον τὸ γονιμώτερον αἱ δὲ παρθένοι τῶν παίδων ὀργῶσι πρότερον καὶ σαλεύονται πρὸς τὸ γεννᾶν, οὐδ’ αὕτη τις ἀσθενὴς ἀπόδειξις ἂν εἴη [c] τῆς θερμότητος. ἔτι δὲ μείζων καὶ πιθανωτέρα τὸ πρὸς τὰ κρύη καὶ τοὺς χειμῶνας εὐφόρως ἔχειν· ἧττον γὰρ αἱ πλεῖσται ῥιγοῦσι τῶν ἀνδρῶν καὶ παντάπασιν ἱματίων ὀλίγων δέονται.’

‘Ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ αὐτῶν οἶμαι τούτων’ ὁ Φλῶρος ἔφη ‘τῶν ἐπιχειρημάτων ἐλέγχεσθαι τὸ δόγμα. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἀντέχουσι τῷ ψύχει μᾶλλον, ὅτι πολλάκις τὸ ὅμοιον ὑπὸ τοῦ ὁμοίου δυσπαθέστερόν ἐστιν. ἔπειτα μέντοι καὶ τὸ σπέρμα †μὴ προγεγονέναι τὸ γόνιμον διὰ κατάψυξιν, ἀλλ’ ὕλην μόνον καὶ τροφὴν παρέχειν τῷ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἄρρενος. ἔπειτα λήγουσι τίκτουσαι πολὺ πρότερον ἢ γεννῶντες οἱ ἄνδρες. καίονται δὲ βέλτιον ὑπὸ πιμελῆς, ὃ δοκεῖ ψυχρότατον [d] εἶναι τοῦ σώματος· ἥκιστα γοῦν οἱ νέοι καὶ γυμναστικοὶ πιμελώδεις. ἡ δ’ ἔμμηνος κάθαρσις οὐ πλήθους ἀλλὰ διαφθορᾶς καὶ φαυλότητός ἐστιν αἵματος· τὸ γὰρ ἄπεπτον αὐτοῦ καὶ περιττωματικὸν οὐκ ἔχον ἵδρυσιν οὐδὲ σύστασιν ἐν τῷ σώματι δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἐκπίπτει, παντάπασιν ἀμβλὺ καὶ θολερὸν ἀρρωστίᾳ τοῦ θερμοῦ γινόμενον· δηλοῖ δὲ καὶ τὸ ῥιγοῦν καὶ τὸ ὑποφρίττειν ὡς ἐπὶ πολὺ τὰς καθαιρομένας, ὅτι ψυχρόν ἐστι καὶ ἄπεπτον τὸ κεκινημένον καὶ ἀποχωροῦν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος. τὴν δὲ ψιλότητα τίς ἂν εἴποι ‹ὅτι› θερμότητος οὐχὶ μᾶλλον ψυχρότητός ἐστι τὸ πάθος, ὁρῶν τὰ θερμότατα τοῦ σώματος [e] μέρη δασυνόμενα; πάντα γὰρ ἐξωθεῖται τὰ τοιαῦτα τῷ θερμῷ, χαράσσοντι καὶ ἀναστομοῦντι τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν. ἡ δὲ λειότης πυκνότητι γέγονεν ὑπὸ ψυχρότητος· ὅτι δ’ εἰσὶ πυκνότεραι τῶν ἀνδρῶν, ὦ φίλ’ Ἀθρύϊτε, πυθοῦ παρὰ τῶν ἔτι συναναπαυομένων γυναιξὶν ἢ μύρον ἀληλιμμέναις ἢ ἔλαιον· ἀναπίμπλανται γὰρ αὐτοὶ τοῦ χρίσματος ἐν τῷ συγκαθεύδειν, κἂν μὴ θίγωσι μηδὲ προσάψωνται τῶν γυναικῶν, διὰ θερμότητα καὶ μανότητα τοῦ σώματος ἕλκοντος.’

[f]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ε

Εἰ ψυχρότερος τῇ δυνάμει ὁ οἶνος

‘Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν περὶ τῶν γυναικῶν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἀνδρικῶς ἐπικεχείρηται. τὸν δ’ οἶνον ἐπιθυμῶ μαθεῖν ὁπόθεν ὑπόνοιαν ὑμῖν τοῦ ψυχρὸς εἶναι [652] [a] παρέσχεν.’ ‘οἴει γάρ’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘τοῦτον ἡμέτερον εἶναι τὸν λόγον;’ ‘ἀλλὰ τίνος’ εἶπεν ‘ἑτέρου;’ ‘μέμνημαι μὲν οὖν’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους ἐντυχὼν οὐ νεωστὶ λόγῳ περὶ τούτου τοῦ προβλήματος ἀλλ’ ἱκανῶς πάλαι. διείλεκται δὲ καὶ Ἐπίκουρος (fr. 60) ἐν τῷ Συμποσίῳ πολλοὺς λόγους, ὧν τὸ κεφάλαιόν ἐστιν ὡς ἐγᾦμαι τοιόνδε. φησὶ γὰρ οὐκ εἶναι θερμὸν αὐτοτελῶς τὸν οἶνον, ἀλλ’ ἔχειν τινὰς ἀτόμους ἐν αὑτῷ θερμασίας ἀποτελεστικὰς ἑτέρας δ’ αὖ ψυχρότητος· ὧν τὰς μὲν ἀποβάλλειν, ὅταν εἰς τὸ σῶμα παραγένηται, τὰς δὲ προσλαμβάνειν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος, ὡς ἂν ἔχουσι κράσεως ἡμῖν ἢ φύσεως ὁμιλήσῃ, ὡς τοὺς μὲν ἐκθερμαίνεσθαι τοὺς δὲ τοὐναντίον πάσχειν [b] μεθυσκομένους.’

‘Ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν ὁ Φλῶρος ‘ἄντικρυς εἰς τὸν Πύρρωνα διὰ τοῦ Πρωταγόρου φέρει ἡμᾶς· δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι καὶ περὶ ἐλαίου καὶ περὶ γάλακτος μέλιτός τε καὶ ὁμοίως τῶν ἄλλων διεξιόντες ἀποδρασόμεθα τὸ λέγειν περὶ ἑκάστου, ὁποῖον τῇ φύσει ἐστίν, μίξεσι ταῖς πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ κράσεσιν ἕκαστον γίνεσθαι φάσκοντες. ἀλλὰ σὺ πῶς ἐπιχειρεῖς ‹εἰς› τὸ ψυχρὸν εἶναι τὸν οἶνον;’ ‘οὕτως, ‹ὡς›’ ἔφην ‘ὑπέδυν τότε προσηναγκασμένος αὐτοσχεδιάσαι. πρῶτον δ’ ἐπῄει μοι τὸ γινόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἰατρῶν· τοῖς γὰρ ἐκλελυμένοις καὶ τόνου τινὸς δεομένοις κατὰ τὰς ἀρρωστίας στομάχου θερμὸν μὲν οὐδὲν προσφέρουσιν οἶνον δὲ διδόντες βοηθοῦσιν. ὡς δ’ αὔτως καὶ τὰς ῥύσεις [c] καὶ ἐφιδρώσεις οἴνῳ καταπαύουσιν, ὡς οὐδὲν ἧττον ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον τῆς χιόνος ἱστάντι καὶ κρατύνοντι τῷ ψύχειν καὶ περιστέλλειν φερομένην τὴν ἕξιν. εἰ δὲ φύσιν καὶ δύναμιν εἶχεν θερμαντικήν, ὅμοιον ἦν οἶμαι χιόνι πῦρ καὶ καρδιωγμῷ προσφέρειν ἄκρατον. ἔπειτα τὸν μὲν ὕπνον οἱ πλεῖστοι περιψύξει γίνεσθαι λέγουσιν καὶ ψυκτικὰ [καὶ] τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ὑπνωτικῶν φαρμάκων ἐστίν, ὡς ὁ μανδραγόρας καὶ τὸ μηκώνιον· ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν σφόδρα καὶ βίᾳ πολλῇ συνωθεῖ καὶ πήγνυσιν, ὁ δ’ οἶνος ἠρέμα καταψύχων ἵστησι μεθ’ ἡδονῆς καὶ ἀναπαύει τὴν κίνησιν ἐν τῷ [d] μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον οὔσης πρὸς ἐκεῖνα τῆς διαφορᾶς. ἔτι δὲ τὸ μὲν θερμὸν γόνιμον· εὔροιαν γὰρ ἡ ὑγρότης ἴσχει καὶ τόνον τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ δύναμιν ὑπὸ τῆς θερμότητος ἐξοργῶσαν· οἱ δὲ πίνοντες πολὺν ἄκρατον ἀμβλύτεροι πρὸς τὰς συνουσίας εἰσὶν καὶ σπείρουσιν οὐθὲν εἰς γένεσιν ἰσχυρὸν οὐδὲ κεκρατημένον, ἀλλ’ ἐξίτηλοι καὶ ἀτελεῖς εἰσιν αἱ πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας ὁμιλίαι αὐτῶν διὰ φαυλότητα καὶ κατάψυξιν τοῦ σπέρματος. καὶ μὴν ὅσα πάσχουσιν ἄνθρωποι ὑπὸ κρύους, πάντα συμβαίνει τοῖς μεθυσκομένοις, τρόμοι, βαρύτητες, ὠχριάσεις, σάλοι τοῦ περὶ τὰ γυῖα πνεύματος, ἀσάφεια γλώττης, ἔντασις τῶν περὶ τοῖς [e] ἄκροις νεύρων καὶ ἀπονάρκησις· τοῖς δὲ πλείστοις εἰς πάρεσιν αἱ μέθαι τελευτῶσιν, ὅταν ἐκπλήξῃ παντάπασιν καὶ κατασβέσῃ τὸ θερμὸν ὁ ἄκρατος. ἰῶνταί γε μὴν τὰς περὶ τὸ σῶμα τῶν μεθυσκομένων καὶ κραιπαλώντων κακώσεις εὐθὺς μὲν ὡς ἔοικε περιστολῇ καὶ κατακλίσει συνθάλποντες, μεθ’ ἡμέραν δὲ λουτρῷ καὶ ἀλείμματι καὶ σιτίοις, ὅσα μὴ ταράττοντα τὸν ὄγκον ἅμα πράως ἀνακαλεῖται [f] τὸ θερμὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ οἴνου διεσπασμένον καὶ πεφυγαδευμένον ἐκ τοῦ σώματος.’

‘Ὅμως δ’’ εἶπον ‘ἐν τοῖς φαινομένοις καὶ ὁμοιότητας ἀδήλους ἐξιχνεύωμεν καὶ δυνάμεις. οὐδὲν δὲ περὶ τῆς μέθης δεῖ διαπορεῖν, ὁποῖόν ποτ’ ἐστίν· ὡς γὰρ ἔοικεν . μάλιστα δ’, ὡς εἰρήκαμεν, ἐοίκασι τοῖς πρεσβύταις οἱ μεθύοντες· διὸ καὶ πρωιαίτατα γηρῶσιν οἱ φίλοινοι· τοὺς δὲ πολλοὺς αὐτῶν καὶ φαλακρώσεις ἄωροι καὶ πολιαὶ πρὸ ἡλικίας ἔχουσιν· πάντα δὲ ταῦτα δοκεῖ θερμότητος ἐνδείᾳ καταλαμβάνειν τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ἔτι τοίνυν τὸ ὄξος οἴνου τινός ἐστι φύσις καὶ δύναμις· οὐδὲν δὲ τῶν σβεστηρίων ὄξους πυρὶ μαχιμώτερον, ἀλλὰ μάλιστα πάντων ἐπικρατεῖ καὶ συμπιέζει τὴν φλόγα δι’ ὑπερβολὴν ψυχρότητος. καὶ τῶν ἄλλων δὲ καρπῶν τοῖς οἰνώδεσι μᾶλλον ὡς ψυκτικοῖς χρωμένους τοὺς ἰατροὺς ὁρῶμεν [653] [a] ὥσπερ ῥόαις καὶ μήλοις. αὐτὴν δὲ τὴν τοῦ μέλιτος φύσιν οὐχὶ πρὸς ὄμβριον ὕδωρ καὶ χιόνα συμμιγνύοντες οἰνοποιοῦσι, τοῦ ψυχροῦ τὸ γλυκὺ διὰ συγγένειαν εἰς τὸ αὐστηρόν, ὅταν κρατήσῃ, φθείροντος; οἱ παλαιοὶ δ’ οὐχὶ διὰ τοῦτο τῶν ἑρπετῶν τὸν δράκοντα καὶ τῶν φυτῶν τὸν κιττὸν ἀνέθεσαν τῷ θεῷ καὶ καθιέρωσαν ὥς τινος ψυχρᾶς καὶ κρυώδους ‹κυρίῳ› δυνάμεως; ἐὰν δ’, ὅτι τὸ κώνειον ἐπιπινόμενος ἰᾶσθαι δοκεῖ πολὺς ἄκρατος, οἴωνται τοῦτο θερμότητος εἶναι τεκμήριον, ἡμεῖς αὖ φήσομεν ἀναστρέψαντες, ὅτι συγκραθὲν αὐτῷ τοῦτο φάρμακον ἀνίατόν ἐστιν καὶ καθάπαξ ἀποκτείνει τοὺς πίνοντας· [b] ὥστε μηδὲν μᾶλλον εἶναι δοκεῖν τῷ ἀντιπράττειν θερμὸν ἢ τῷ συνεργεῖν ψυχρόν, εἴ γε δὴ ψυχρότητι τὸ κώνειον οὐκ ἄλλῃ τινὶ φύσει καὶ δυνάμει μᾶλλον πιθανόν ἐστιν ἀναιρεῖν τοὺς πιόντας.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ϛ

Περὶ καιροῦ συνουσίας

Νεανίσκοι τινὲς οὐ πάλαι τοῖς παλαιοῖς λόγοις προσπεφοιτηκότες ἐσπάραττον τὸν Ἐπίκουρον, ὡς οὐ καλὸν οὐδ’ ἀναγκαῖον ἐμβεβληκότα λόγον περὶ καιροῦ συνουσίας εἰς τὸ Συμπόσιον (fr. 61)· μιμνήσκεσθαι γὰρ ἀφροδισίων ἄνδρα πρεσβύτερον ἐν δείπνῳ μειρακίων παρόντων [c] καὶ διαπορεῖν, πότερον μετὰ δεῖπνον ἢ πρὸ δείπνου χρηστέον, ἐσχάτης ἀκολασίας εἶναι. πρὸς ταῦθ’ οἱ μὲν τὸν Ξενοφῶντα (Conv. 9, 7) παρέλαβον ὡς ἀπάγοντα τοὺς συμπότας μετὰ δεῖπνον οὐχὶ ... ἐφ’ ἵππων ἐπὶ συνουσίας πρὸς τὰς γυναῖκας. Ζώπυρος δ’ ὁ ἰατρός, εὖ μάλα τοῖς Ἐπικούρου λόγοις ἐνωμιληκώς, οὐκ ἔφη προσέχοντας αὐτοὺς ἀνεγνωκέναι τὸ Ἐπικούρου Συμπόσιον· οὐ γὰρ ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς τινος καὶ καταστάσεως τοῦτο πρόβλημα ποιησάμενον εἶτα λόγους ἐπ’ αὐτῷ περαίνειν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς νέους ἀνιστάντα μετὰ δεῖπνον εἰς περίπατον ἐπὶ σωφρονισμῷ [d] διαλέγεσθαι καὶ ἀνακρούειν ἀπὸ τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν, ὡς ἀεὶ μὲν ἐπισφαλοῦς εἰς βλάβην τοῦ πράγματος ὄντος, κάκιστα δὲ τοὺς περὶ πότον καὶ ἐδωδὴν χρωμένους αὐτῷ διατιθέντος. ‘εἰ δὲ δὴ καὶ προηγουμένως’ εἶπεν ‘ἐζητεῖτο περὶ τούτου, πότερον οὐδ’ ὅλως ἐσκέφθαι καλῶς εἶχε τὸν φιλόσοφον περὶ συνουσίας καιροῦ καὶ ὥρας, ἢ βέλτιον μὲν ἐν καιρῷ καὶ μετὰ λογισμοῦ τὰ τοιαῦτα πράττειν, τὸν δὲ καιρὸν ἄλλως μὲν ἐπισκοπεῖν οὐκ ἄωρον ‹ἐν› δὲ συμποσίῳ καὶ περὶ τράπεζαν αἰσχρόν; ἐμοὶ γὰρ δοκεῖ τοὐναντίον ἄν τις ἐγκαλέσαι φιλοσόφῳ μεθ’ ἡμέραν ἐν τῇ διατριβῇ πολλῶν καὶ παντοδαπῶν ἀνθρώπων παρόντων [e] περὶ τούτου διαλεγομένῳ, κύλικος δὲ προκειμένης ἐν συνήθεσι καὶ φίλοις, ἔνθα καὶ τὸ ‘†παραλέξαι θυμὸν ἀμβλύνοντα καὶ ψυχὴν ἐν οἴνῳ’ συμφέρει, πῶς αἰσχρὸν εἰπεῖν τι καὶ ἀκοῦσαι εἰς συνουσίας χρῆσιν ὠφελίμως λεγόμενον; ὡς ἔγωγε, νὴ τὸν κύνα, καὶ τοὺς Ζήνωνος (St. V. Fr. I 252) ἂν ἐβουλόμην’ ἔφη ‘διαμηρισμοὺς ἐν συμποσίῳ τινὶ καὶ παιδιᾷ μᾶλλον ἢ σπουδῆς τοσαύτης ἐχομένῳ συγγράμματι, τῇ Πολιτείᾳ, κατατετάχθαι.’

Πρὸς τοῦτο πληγέντες οἱ νεανίσκοι σιωπῇ κατέκειντο· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων τὸν Ζώπυρον ἀξιούντων τοὺς περὶ τούτου λόγους Ἐπικούρου διελθεῖν, ἔφη τῶν μὲν κατὰ [f] μέρος ‹οὐκ› ἀκριβῶς μνημονεύειν, οἴεσθαι δὲ τὸν ἄνδρα τὰς ἐκ τῆς συνουσίας πληγὰς δεδιέναι διὰ τὸν τῶν σωμάτων παλμὸν εἰς ταραχὴν καὶ σάλον ἐν τῷ τοιούτῳ βαδιζόντων. καθόλου μὲν γὰρ ἐξ ἕδρας τὰ σώματα μεθιστάναι πλήκτην ὄντα καὶ κινητικὸν ταραχῆς τὸν ἄκρατον· ἂν δ’ οὕτως ἔχοντα τὸν ὄγκον ἡμῶν γαλήνη ‹μὴ› παραλάβῃ καὶ ὕπνος, ἀλλ’ ἕτεραι διὰ τῶν ἀφροδισίων κινήσεις, ἐκθλιβομένων καὶ μοχλευομένων τῶν μάλιστα συνδεῖν [654] [a] καὶ κολλᾶν τὸ σῶμα πεφυκότων, κίνδυνός ἐστιν ἀνέδραστον γίνεσθαι τὸν ὄγκον, ὥσπερ ‹οἶκον› ἐκ θεμελίων κινούμενον· οὐδὲ γὰρ εὖ ῥεῖν τηνικαῦτα τὴν γονήν, σφηνώσεως διὰ τὴν πλησμονὴν οὔσης, ἀλλὰ βίᾳ καὶ συμπεφυρμένην ἀποσπᾶσθαι· διὸ χρῆναί φησιν ὁ ἀνήρ, ὅταν ἡσυχία γένηται περὶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ λωφήσωσιν αἱ τῆς τροφῆς ἀναδόσεις καὶ τὰ ῥεύματα διεξιούσης καὶ φευγούσης, τὰ τοιαῦτα πράττειν, πρὶν ἑτέρας αὖ πάλιν τροφῆς ἐνδεὲς γενέσθαι τὸ σῶμα. συμβάλλοιτο δ’ ἄν τις ... τῷ Ἐπικούρου καὶ τὸν ἰατρικὸν λόγον. ὁ γὰρ μεθ’ ἡμέραν καιρός, ἤδη τῆς πέψεως κρίσιν ἐχούσης, ἀσφαλέστερός ἐστιν· ἡ δὲ μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ὁρμὴ πρὸς τὴν συνουσίαν [b] οὐκ ἀκίνδυνος· ἄδηλον γὰρ εἰ, τῆς τροφῆς μὴ κρατηθείσης, ἀπεψία δέξαιτο τὸν ἐκ τῆς συνουσίας ἄραδον καὶ παλμόν, ὥστε διττὴν τὴν βλάβην γενέσθαι.

Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ Ὀλύμπιχος ‘ἐμοὶ μέν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ τοῦ Πυθαγορικοῦ Κλεινίου (Vorsokr. 54, 5) λίαν ἀρέσκει· λέγεται γὰρ ἐρωτηθείς, ὁπηνίκα δεῖ μάλιστα γυναικὶ προσιέναι, ‘ὅταν’ φάναι ‘μάλιστα τυγχάνῃς βλαβῆναι βουλόμενος.’ καὶ γὰρ ὃ Ζώπυρος εἴρηκε νῦν, ἔχει τινὰ λόγον, καὶ τὸν ἕτερον καιρὸν ἄλλας ἀκαιρίας ἔχοντα πρὸς τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ δυσχερείας ὁρῶ. καθάπερ οὖν Θαλῆς ὁ σοφὸς ὑπὸ τῆς μητρὸς ἐνοχλούμενος γῆμαι [c] κελευούσης †πῶς ὑπεξέφυγε παρήγαγε λέγων πρὸς αὐτὴν ἐν ἀρχῇ μέν ‘οὔπω καιρὸς ὦ μῆτερ,’ ὕστερον δ’ ‘οὐκέτι καιρὸς ὦ μῆτερ’, οὕτως ἄρα καὶ πρὸς ἀφροδίσια κράτιστον [ἔσται] ἔχειν ἕκαστον, ὥστε κατακλινόμενον λέγειν ‘οὔπω καιρός’, ἀνιστάμενον δ’ ‘οὐκέτι καιρός’.’

‘Ἀθλητικὰ ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν ὁ Σώκλαρος, ‘ὦ Ὀλύμπιχε, παντάπασιν ἔτι τῆς κοτταβίσεως ὄζοντα καὶ τῶν κρεοφαγιῶν ἐκείνων, οὐκ ἐν δέοντι. νέοι τε γὰρ πάρεισι γεγαμηκότες, ὑφ’ ὧν δεῖ ‘φιλοτήσια ἔργα τελεῖσθαι’ (λ 246), καὶ ἡμᾶς οὔπω παντάπασιν ἡ Ἀφροδίτη πέφευγεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ προσευχόμεθα δήπουθεν αὐτῇ λέγοντες ἐν τοῖς τῶν θεῶν ὕμνοις (Carm. popul. 4. II p. 29 D.)

[d] ‘ἀνάβαλλ’ ἄνω τὸ γῆρας,

ὦ καλὰ ‘φροδίτα.’

σκοπῶμεν οὖν, εἰ δοκεῖ, πότερον ἐμμελῶς καὶ προσηκόντως ὁ Ἐπίκουρος ‹ἢ› παρὰ πᾶν δίκαιον ἀφαιρεῖ τὴν Ἀφροδίτην τῆς νυκτός· †καὶ τὸ κράτιστον αὐτῇ θεῶν μετεῖναί φησιν ἐρωτικὸς ἀνὴρ Μένανδρος (fr. 739). †ἐνετέθη γὰρ οἶμαι καλῶς παρακάλυμμα τῆς ἡδονῆς τὸ σκότος προθεμένους ταῦτα πράσσειν καὶ μὴ διὰ φωτὸς ἐντυγχάνοντας ἐξελαύνειν τῶν ὀμμάτων τὸ αἰδούμενον καὶ τῷ ἀκολάστῳ θάρσος ἐμποιεῖν καὶ μνήμας ἐναργεῖς, αἷς τὸ [μὴ] ἐνδιατρίβειν αὖθις ἐκριπίζει τὰς ἐπιθυμίας. ‘ὄψις γὰρ ἡμῖν ὀξυτάτη τῶν διὰ τοῦ σώματος ἔρχεται’ κατὰ [e] τὸν Πλάτωνα (Phaedr. 250d) ‘παθημάτων’, καὶ σφόδρα ταῖς ἐγγὺς φαντασίαις [εἰς] τὴν ψυχὴν ἐγείρουσα πρὸς τὰ εἴδωλα τῆς ἡδονῆς, καινὴν ἀεὶ ‹ποιεῖ› καὶ πρόσφατον ‹τὴν› ἐπιθυμίαν. ἡ δὲ νὺξ τὰ ἄπληστα καὶ μανιωδέστατα τῶν ἔργων ἀφαιροῦσα παράγει καὶ κατευνάζει τὴν φύσιν οὐκ ἐξοκέλλουσαν ὑπὸ τῆς ὄψεως εἰς ὕβριν. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων, τίν’ ἔχει λόγον ἀπὸ δείπνου μὲν ἥκοντα γεγανωμένον, ἂν οὕτω τύχῃ, στέφανον κομίζοντα καὶ μύρῳ κεχριμένον, ἀποστραφέντα καὶ συγκαλυψάμενον καθεύδειν, ἡμέρας δὲ καὶ διὰ μέσου τῶν πράξεων ἐκ τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος τὴν γυναῖκα μεταπέμπεσθαι πρός τι τοιοῦτον ἢ πρωὶ [f] δίκην ἀλεκτρυόνος συμπλέκεσθαι; τὴν γὰρ ἑσπέραν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, τῶν πόνων ἀνάπαυσιν τὸν δ’ ὄρθρον ἀρχήν· καὶ τὴν μὲν ὁ Λύσιος ἐπισκοπεῖ Διόνυσος μετὰ τῆς Τερψιχόρης καὶ Θαλείας, ὁ δὲ πρὸς τὴν ἐργάνην Ἀθηνᾶν καὶ τὸν ἀγοραῖον Ἑρμῆν ἐπανίστησιν. διὸ τὴν μὲν ᾠδαὶ κατέχουσι καὶ χορεῖαι καὶ ὑμέναιος

‘κῶμοί τ’ εἰλαπίναι ‹τε› καὶ ἠχήεις θρόος αὐλῶν·’

τὸν δὲ κτύποι ῥαιστήρων καὶ τρισμοὶ πριόνων καὶ τελωνικῶν [655] [a] ἐπορθρισμοὶ κεκραγμῶν καὶ κηρύγματα καλουμένων ἐπὶ δίκας ἢ θεραπείας τινῶν βασιλέων ἢ ἀρχόντων· ἐν ᾧ καιρῷ φροῦδα τὰ τῆς ἡδονῆς, (Tr. adesp. 397)

‘λήγει δὲ Κύπρις θαλίαι τε νέων,

οὐδ’ ἔτι θύρσος †φῦλα Βακχίου·’

συντείνουσι γὰρ αἱ φροντίδες. ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ ὁ ποιητὴς τῶν ἡρώων οὔτε γαμετῇ τινα μεθ’ ἡμέραν οὔτε παλλακίδι συγκατέκλινεν πλὴν ἢ τὸν Πάριν δραπετεύσαντα ποιήσας (Γ 447) καταδυόμενον εἰς τοὺς κόλπους τῆς γυναικός, ὡς οὐκ ἀνδρὸς ἀλλὰ μοιχοῦ λυσσῶντος οὖσαν τὴν μεθημερινὴν ἀκρασίαν. καὶ μὴν οὐδὲ τὸ σῶμα βλάπτοιτ’ ἂν ὑπὸ τῆς συνουσίας μᾶλλον, ὡς Ἐπίκουρος οἴεται, μετὰ τὸ [b] δεῖπνον, ἄν γε μὴ μεθύων τις ἢ ῥηγνύμενος ὑπὸ πλησμονῆς ἅπτηται βεβαρημένος· ἀμέλει γὰρ οὕτως ἐπισφαλὲς τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ βλαβερόν. ἂν δ’ ἱκανῶς ἔχων τις αὑτοῦ καὶ μετρίως διακεχυμένος, τοῦ τε σώματος αὐτοῦ μαλακοῦ γεγονότος καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς παρεστώσης, διὰ χρόνου ποιῆται τὴν ἔντευξιν, οὔτε ταραχὴν ἀπεργάζεται μεγάλην κατὰ τὸν ὄγκον ...ταγένη †ψῦξις ἢ μετάθεσις ἐξ ἕδρας ἀτόμων, ᾗ φησιν Ἐπίκουρος· ‹ἀλλὰ τῇ φύσει τὸ οἰκεῖον› ἀποδούς, ἑαυτὸν δέ πως ἀπογαλ‹ηνίσας› ἀναπληρώσει, νέας ἐπιρροῆς τοῖς κενώμασι γινομένης.

ἐκεῖνο δὲ μᾶλλον ἄξιον εὐλαβείας, τὸ σύνεγγυς ὄντα [c] τῶν πράξεων ἀφροδισίοις χρῆσθαι, μή τι ἄρα μετέωρον τὸ σῶμα καὶ κεκλονημένον αἵ τε τῆς ψυχῆς φροντίδες αἵ τε περὶ τὰς χρείας πραγματεῖαι καὶ κόποι παραλαβόντες εὐθὺς ἐκτραχύνωσιν, οὐχ ἱκανὸν ἐν μέσῳ διάλειμμα τῆς φύσεως εἰς ἀνάπαυσιν λαβούσης. οὐ γὰρ πάντες, ὦ ἑταῖρε, τὴν Ἐπικούρου (fr. 426) σχολὴν καὶ ῥᾳστώνην ὑπὸ λόγου καὶ φιλοσοφίας ἄφθονον εἰς ἀεὶ παρεσκευασμένην ἔχουσιν, πολλοὶ δ’ ἕκαστον ἀγῶνες ἐκδέχονται δι’ ἡμέρας, γυμνάσια δ’ ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἅπαντας· οἷς οὔτε καλὸν οὔτε συμφέρον οὕτω διακείμενον τὸ σῶμα παρέχειν λυσσώσῃ συνουσίᾳ [d] δια‹κεχυμένον›. τὸ δὲ μακάριον καὶ ἄφθαρτον ἔστω μὲν οἷον αὐτὸ μὴ φροντίζειν τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς· ἡμῖν δέ που νόμῳ πόλεως συνεπομένοις ἐξευλαβητέον ἐστὶν εἰς θέρος ἐμβαλεῖν καὶ κατάρχεσθαι θυσιῶν, ὀλίγον ἔμπροσθεν διαπεπραγμένοις τι τοιοῦτον. ὅθεν εὖ ἔχει τὸ τὴν νύκτα καὶ τὸν ὕπνον ἐν μέσῳ θεμένους καὶ ποιήσαντας ἱκανὸν διάλειμμα καὶ διάστημα καθαροὺς αὖθις ὥσπερ ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς καὶ ‘νέα ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ φρονέοντας’ κατὰ Δημόκριτον (fr. 158) ἀνίστασθαι.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ζ

Διὰ τί τὸ γλεῦκος ἥκιστα μεθύσκει

[e] Τοῦ νέου οἴνου Ἀθήνησι μὲν ἑνδεκάτῃ μηνὸς ‹Ἀνθεστηριῶνος› κατάρχονται, Πιθοίγια τὴν ἡμέραν καλοῦντες· καὶ πάλαι γ’ ὡς ἔοικεν εὔχοντο, τοῦ οἴνου πρὶν ἢ πιεῖν ἀποσπένδοντες, ἀβλαβῆ καὶ σωτήριον αὐτοῖς τοῦ φαρμάκου τὴν χρῆσιν γενέσθαι. παρ’ ἡμῖν δ’ ὁ μὲν μὴν καλεῖται Προστατήριος, ἕκτῃ δ’ ἱσταμένου νομίζεται θύσαντας Ἀγαθῷ Δαίμονι γεύεσθαι τοῦ οἴνου μετὰ ζέφυρον· οὗτος γὰρ μάλιστα τῶν ἀνέμων ἐξίστησιν καὶ κινεῖ τὸν οἶνον, καὶ ὁ τοῦτον διαφυγὼν ἤδη δοκεῖ παραμένειν βέβαιος. ἔθυσεν οὖν ὁ πατὴρ ὥσπερ εἰώθει τὴν θυσίαν, καὶ μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον, ἐπαινουμένου τοῦ οἴνου, [f] τοῖς φιλοσοφοῦσι μειρακίοις μεθ’ ἡμῶν προὔβαλεν ζητεῖν λόγον, ὡς τὸ γλεῦκος ἥκιστα μεθύσκει. τοῖς μὲν οὖν πολλοῖς παράδοξον ἐφάνη καὶ ἄπιστον· ὁ δ’ Ἁγίας ἔφη τὸ γλυκὺ πανταχοῦ προσίστασθαι καὶ πλήσμιον εἶναι· διὸ καὶ γλεύκους οὐκ ἄν τινα πιεῖν ῥᾳδίως ὅσον εἰς μέθην ἱκανόν ἐστιν· ἀπαγορεύειν γὰρ ἀηδίᾳ τὴν ὄρεξιν ἄχρι τοῦ μὴ διψῆν προελθοῦσαν. ὅτι δὲ τοῦ γλυκέος διαφέρει τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ τὸν ποιητὴν ἐπιστάμενον λέγειν (υ 69)

[656] [a] ‘τυρῷ καὶ μέλιτι γλυκερῷ καὶ ἡδέι οἴνῳ·’

τὸν γὰρ οἶνον ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν εἶναι γλυκύν, γίνεσθαι δ’ ἡδὺν ὅταν εἰς τὸ αὐστηρὸν τῇ πέψει μεταβάλῃ παλαιούμενος.

Ἀρισταίνετος δ’ ὁ Νικαεὺς ἔν τισιν †ἐνίοις γράμμασιν ἀνεγνωκὼς ἔφη μνημονεύειν, ὅτι γλεῦκος μιχθὲν οἴνῳ παύει μέθην· τῶν δ’ ἰατρῶν τινας λέγει τοὺς πλέον πιόντας κελεύειν ‹ἐμεῖν›, εἶθ’, ὅταν μέλλωσι καθεύδειν, ἄρτον εἰς μέλι καταβάψαντας ἐμφαγεῖν ἔδοσαν. εἴ τι οὖν αἱ γλυκύτητες ἀμβλύνουσιν ἄκρατον, εἰκότως ὁ νέος οἶνος οὐ μεθύσκει, πρὶν ἂν ἡ γλυκύτης μεταβάλῃ.

Σφόδρ’ οὖν ἀπεδεξάμεθα τὴν εὑρησιλογίαν τῶν νεανίσκων, ὅτι τοῖς ἐμποδὼν οὐκ ἐπιπεσόντες ἰδίων [b] ηὐπόρησαν ἐπιχειρημάτων. ἐπεὶ τά γε πρόχειρα καὶ ῥᾴδια λαβεῖν ἥ τε βαρύτης ἐστὶ τοῦ γλεύκους, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησίν (fr. 220), ἡ διακόπτουσα τὴν κοιλίαν, καὶ τὸ πολὺ συμμεμιγμένον πνευματῶδες καὶ ὑδατῶδες· ὧν τὸ μὲν εὐθὺς ἐκπίπτει βιαζόμενον, τὸ δὲ πέφυκε [τὸ ὑδατῶδες] ἀμβλύτερον ποιεῖν τὸν οἶνον· παλαίωσις ‹δ’› ἐπίτα‹σιν ποιεῖ›, ἐκκρινομένου τοῦ ὑδατώδους· καὶ γίνεται μέτρῳ μὲν ἐλάττων ὁ οἶνος δυνάμει δὲ σφοδρότερος.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Η

Διὰ τί τῶν ἀκροθωράκων λεγομένων οἱ σφόδρα μεθύοντες ἧττον παρακινητικοί εἰσιν

[c] ‘Οὐκοῦν’ εἶπεν ὁ πατήρ ‘ἐπεὶ παρακεκινήκαμεν τὸν Ἀριστοτέλη, καὶ περὶ τῶν ἀκροθωράκων τι καλουμένων ἴδιον ἐπιχειρήσομεν εἰπεῖν· οὐ γὰρ ἱκανῶς μοι δοκεῖ, καίπερ ὀξύτατος ὢν ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις ζητήμασι, διηκριβωκέναι τὴν αἰτίαν. φησὶ γὰρ οἶμαι τοῦ μὲν νήφοντος εὖ καὶ ‹κατὰ› τὰ ὄντα κρίνειν τὸν λογισμόν, τοῦ δ’ ἄγαν μεθύοντος ἐκλελυμένην κατέχεσθαι τὴν αἴσθησιν, τοῦ δ’ ἀκροθώρακος ἔτι μὲν ἰσχύειν τὸ φανταστικὸν ἤδη δὲ τεταράχθαι τὸ λογιστικόν· διὸ καὶ κρίνειν καὶ κακῶς [d] κρίνειν ἐπακολουθοῦντα ταῖς φαντασίαις. ἀλλὰ πῶς’ εἶπεν ‘ὑμῖν δοκεῖ περὶ τούτων;’

‘Ἐμοὶ μέν’ ἔφην ‘ἐπισκοποῦντι κατ’ ἐμαυτὸν ἀποχρῶν οὗτος ἦν πρὸς τὴν αἰτίαν ὁ λόγος· εἰ δὲ κελεύεις ἴδιόν τι κινεῖν, ὅρα πρῶτον εἰ τὴν εἰρημένην διαφορὰν ἐπὶ τὸ σῶμα μετοιστέον ἐστίν. τῶν γὰρ ἀκροθωράκων ἡ διάνοια μόνον τετάρακται, τὸ δὲ σῶμα ταῖς ὁρμαῖς ἐξυπηρετεῖν δύναται, μήπω βεβαπτισμένον· ὅταν δὲ κατασεισθῇ καὶ πιεσθῇ, προδίδωσι τὰς ὁρμὰς καὶ παρεῖται, μέχρι γὰρ ἔργων οὐ πρόεισιν· ἐκεῖνοι δὲ τὸ ‹σῶμα› συνεξαμαρτάνον ἔχοντες οὐ τῷ μᾶλλον ἀλογιστεῖν ἀλλὰ τῷ μᾶλλον ἰσχύειν ἐλέγχονται. ἀπ’ ἄλλης δ’’ εἶπον [e] ‘ἀρχῆς σκοποῦντι τοῦ οἴνου τὴν δύναμιν οὐδὲν κωλύει ποικίλην εἶναι καὶ τῇ ποσότητι συμμεταβάλλουσαν· ὥσπερ τὸ πῦρ τὸν κέραμον, ἂν μὲν ᾖ μέτριον, συγκρατύνει καὶ πήγνυσιν, ἂν δ’ ὑπερβολῇ πλήξῃ, συνέτηξε καὶ ῥεῖν ἐποίησεν· ἀνάπαλιν δ’ ἡ ὥρα τοὺς πυρετοὺς ἀρχομένη μὲν ἀνακινεῖ καὶ ἐκκαίει, προϊούσης δὲ μᾶλλον καθίστανται καὶ ἀπολήγουσιν. τί οὖν κωλύει καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ὑπὸ τοῦ οἴνου φυσικῶς κινουμένην, ὅταν ταραχθῇ καὶ παροξυνθῇ, πάλιν ἀνίεσθαι καὶ καθίστασθαι πλεονάζοντος; ὁ γοῦν ἐλλέβορος ἀρχὴν τοῦ καθαίρειν ἔχει τὸ ταράττειν τὸν [f] ὄγκον· ἂν οὖν ἐλάττων τοῦ μετρίου δοθῇ, ταράττει μὲν οὐδὲν δὲ καθαίρει. καὶ τῶν ὑπνωτικῶν ἔνιοι λαβόντες ἐνδοτέρω τοῦ μετρίου θορυβωδέστερον διατίθενται, πλέον δὲ λαβόντες [ἔνιοι] καθεύδουσιν. εἰκὸς δέ που καὶ ταύτην τὴν περὶ τὸν ἀκροθώρακα ταραχήν, ὅταν ἀκμὴν λάβῃ, μαραίνεσθαι, καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο συνεργεῖν τὸν οἶνον· [657] [a] πολὺς γὰρ εἰσελθὼν τὸ σῶμα συνεξέκαυσε καὶ κατανάλωσε τὸ μανιῶδες τῆς ψυχῆς. ὥσπερ ‹γὰρ› ἡ θρηνῳδία καὶ ὁ ἐπικήδειος αὐλὸς ἐν ἀρχῇ πάθος κινεῖ καὶ δάκρυον ἐκβάλλει, προάγων δὲ τὴν ψυχὴν εἰς οἶκτον οὕτω κατὰ μικρὸν ἐξαιρεῖ καὶ ἀναλίσκει τὸ λυπητικόν, ὁμοίως ἴδοις ἂν καὶ τὸν οἶνον, ὅταν σφόδρα ταράξῃ ‹καὶ› παροξύνῃ τὸ ἀκμαῖον καὶ θυμοειδές, αὖθις καταδύοντα καὶ καθιστάντα τὴν διάνοιαν, ὡς πορρωτέρω μέθης προϊοῦσαν ἡσυχάζειν.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Θ

Περὶ τοῦ ‘ἢ πέντε πίνειν ἢ τρί’ ἢ μὴ τέσσαρα’

[b] Ἐμοῦ δὲ ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος, Ἀριστίων ἀναβοήσας ὥσπερ εἰώθει ‘πέφανται’ εἶπεν ‘εἰς τὰ συμπόσια τῷ δικαιοτάτῳ καὶ δημοκρατικωτάτῳ τῶν μέτρων κάθοδος, ὑπὸ δή τινος καιροῦ νήφοντος ὥσπερ τυράννου πεφυγαδευμένῳ πολὺν χρόνον. καθάπερ γὰρ οἱ περὶ λύραν κανονικοὶ τῶν λόγων φασὶ τὸν μὲν ἡμιόλιον τὴν διὰ πέντε συμφωνίαν παρασχεῖν, τὸν δὲ διπλάσιον τὴν διὰ πασῶν, τὴν δὲ διὰ τεσσάρων ἀμυδροτάτην οὖσαν ἐν ἐπιτρίτῳ συνίστασθαι, οὕτως οἱ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ἁρμονικοὶ τρεῖς κατεῖδον οἴνου συμφωνίας πρὸς ὕδωρ, διὰ πέντε καὶ διὰ τριῶν καὶ διὰ [c] τεσσάρων, οὕτω μὲν λέγοντες καὶ ᾄδοντες (Com. adesp. 604)

‘‹ἢ› πέντε πίνειν ἢ τρί’ ἢ μὴ τέσσαρα.’

πέντε γὰρ ... ἐν ἡμιολίῳ λόγῳ, ‹τρι›ῶν ὕδατος κεραννυμένων [οὐ] πρὸς δύ’ οἴνου· τρία δ’ ἐν διπλασίῳ πρὸς ‹ἕνα› μιγνυμένων δυεῖν· τέσσαρα δ’, εἰς ἕνα τριῶν ὕδατος ἐπιχεομένων, οὗτός ἐστιν ἐπίτριτος λόγος, ἀρχόντων τινῶν ἐν πρυτανείῳ νοῦν ἐχόντων ἢ διαλεκτικῶν τὰς ὀφρῦς ἀνεσπακότων, ὅταν τὰς μεταπτώσεις τῶν λόγων ἀνασκοπῶσι, νηφάλιος καὶ ἀδρανὴς κρᾶσις. ἐκείνων δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἡ μὲν δυεῖν πρὸς ἕνα τὸν ταρακτικὸν τοῦτον καὶ ἀκροθώρακα τῆς μέθης ἐπάγει τόνον (Tr. adesp. 361)

[d] ‘κινοῦντα χορδὰς τὰς ἀκινήτους φρενῶν·’

οὔτε γὰρ ἐᾷ νήφειν οὔτε καταδύει παντάπασι τὸν ἀνόητον εἰς τὸν ἄκρατον· ἡ δὲ δυεῖν πρὸς τρία μουσικωτάτη, πᾶσ’ ὑπνοφόρος καὶ λαθικηδὴς καὶ κατὰ τὴν Ἡσιόδειον ἐκείνην ‘ἀλεξιάρην παίδων εὐκηλήτειραν’ (OD 464) τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν ἀγερώχων καὶ ἀκόσμων παθῶν διὰ βάθους ποιοῦσα γαλήνην καὶ ἡσυχίαν.’

Πρὸς ταῦτα τῷ Ἀριστίωνι ἀντεῖπε μὲν οὐθείς· δῆλος γὰρ ἦν παίζων· ἐγὼ δ’ ἐκέλευσα λαβόντα ποτήριον ὥσπερ λύραν ἐντείνεσθαι τὴν ἐπαινουμένην κρᾶσιν καὶ ἁρμονίαν, καὶ προσελθὼν ὁ παῖς ὑπέχει τὸν ἄκρατον· ὁ [e] δ’ ἀνεδύετο, λέγων ἅμα γέλωτι τῶν λογικῶν εἶναι περὶ μουσικὴν οὐ τῶν ὀργανικῶν. ὁ μέντοι πατὴρ τοσοῦτον ἐπεῖπε τοῖς εἰρημένοις, ὅτι δοκοῦσιν αὐτῷ καὶ οἱ παλαιοὶ τοῦ μὲν Διὸς δύο ποιεῖν τιθήνας, τὴν Ἴδην καὶ τὴν Ἀδράστειαν, τῆς δ’ Ἥρας μίαν, τὴν Εὔβοιαν· ἀμέλει δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος δύο, τὴν Ἀλήθειαν καὶ τὴν Κορυθάλειαν· τοῦ δὲ Διονύσου πλείονας, ὅτι δεῖ τὸν θεὸν τοῦτον ἐν πλείοσι μέτροις νυμφῶν τιθασευόμενον καὶ παιδευόμενον ἡμερώτερον ποιεῖν καὶ φρονιμώτερον.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ι

Διὰ τί τὰ κρέα σήπεται μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τὴν σελήνην ἢ τὸν ἥλιον

[f] Εὐθύδημος ὁ Σουνιεὺς ἑστιῶν ἡμᾶς σῦν ἄγριον εὐμεγέθη παρέθηκεν· ἐπιθαυμασάντων δὲ τῶν παρόντων, ἄλλον ἔφη πολὺ μείζονα κομιζόμενον ὑπὸ τῆς σελήνης διαφθαρῆναι καὶ σφόδρα γε περὶ τῆς αἰτίας διαπορεῖν· οὐ γὰρ εἰκὸς εἶναι μὴ τὸν ἥλιον μᾶλλον τὰ κρέα σήπειν θερμότερον [658] [a] ὄντα τῆς σελήνης. ὁ δὲ Σάτυρος ‘οὐ τοῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘μάλιστα θαυμάσειεν ἄν τις, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τὸ ὑπὸ τῶν κυνηγῶν γινόμενον· ὅταν γὰρ ἢ σῦν ἢ ἔλαφον καταβαλόντες πόρρωθεν εἰς πόλιν ἀποστέλλωσι, χαλκοῦν ἐμπηγνύουσιν ἧλον ὡς βοηθοῦντα πρὸς τὴν σῆψιν.’

Ὡς οὖν ἐπαυσάμεθα δειπνοῦντες καὶ πάλιν ὁ Εὐθύδημος ἐπεμνήσθη τοῦ διαπορηθέντος, Μοσχίων ἔφησεν ὁ ἰατρὸς τὴν σῆψιν τῆξιν ‹εἶναι› καὶ ῥύσιν σαρκὸς εἰς ὑγρὸν φθορᾷ μεταβαλούσης, καὶ ὅλως ὑγραίνεσθαι τὰ σηπόμενα· θερμασίαν δὲ πᾶσαν, ἂν μὲν ᾖ μαλακὴ καὶ πραεῖα, κινεῖν τὰ ὑγρὰ καὶ †κωλύειν, ἂν δ’ ᾖ πυρώδης, [b] τοὐναντίον ἀπισχναίνειν τὰς σάρκας. ἐκ δὲ τούτων φανερὸν εἶναι τὸ ζητούμενον· τὴν γὰρ σελήνην ἠρέμα χλιαίνουσαν ἀνυγραίνειν τὰ σώματα, τὸν δ’ ἥλιον ἀναρπάζειν μᾶλλον ἐκ τῶν σωμάτων τὸ νοτερὸν διὰ τὴν πύρωσιν· πρὸς ὃ καὶ τὸν Ἀρχίλοχον εἰρηκέναι φυσικῶς (fr. 61. I p. 229 D)

‘ἔλπομαι, πολλοὺς μὲν αὐτῶν Σείριος καθαυανεῖ

ὀξὺς ἐλλάμπων·’

ἔτι δὲ σαφέστερον Ὅμηρον ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἕκτορος, ᾧ κειμένῳ νεφέλην τινὰ σκιερὰν ὁ Ἀπόλλων ἐπήγαγεν, (Ψ 190)

‘μὴ πρὶν μένος ἠελίοιο

σκήλῃ ἀμφὶ περὶ χρόα ἴνεσιν ἠδὲ μέλεσσιν·’

τὴν δὲ σελήνην ἀδρανεστέρας ἀφιέναι τὰς αὐγάς·

[c] ‘μέλας γὰρ αὐταῖς οὐ πεπαίνεται βότρυς’

κατὰ τὸν Ἴωνα (fr. 57 N.).

Λεχθέντων δὲ τούτων, ἐγώ ‘τἄλλα μέν’ ἔφην ‘εἴρηται καλῶς· τῇ δὲ ποσότητι καὶ τῷ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον τῆς θερμασίας κρίνειν τὸ σύμπαν οὐ δεῖ· ‹καὶ› γὰρ ἥλιον ὁρῶμεν ἧττον ‹ἐν› τῷ χειμῶνι θάλποντα καὶ μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ θέρει σήποντα τὰ σώματα· τοὐναντίον δ’ ὤφειλε ποιεῖν, εἰ μαλακότητι τῆς θερμασίας αἱ σήψεις ἐγίνοντο· νυνὶ δ’, ὅτε μᾶλλον ἐντείνει τὸ καῦμα, θᾶσσον διαφθείρει τὰς σάρκας. οὐκοῦν οὐδ’ ἡ σελήνη δι’ ἔνδειαν ἀλέας καὶ ἀσθένειαν εἰς σῆψιν ἄγει τὰ νεκρὰ τῶν σωμάτων, ἀλλ’ ἰδιότητα μᾶλλον αἰτιατέον τοῦ φερομένου ῥεύματος [d] ἀπ’ αὐτῆς. ὅτι γὰρ οὐ μίαν ἔχει ποιότητα πᾶν τὸ θερμόν, αὐτῷ μόνῳ τῷ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον διαφέρουσαν, ἀλλ’ εἰσὶ πάμπολλαι τοῦ πυρὸς δυνάμεις οὐθὲν ἀλλήλαις ἐοικυῖαι, δῆλον ἀπὸ τῶν προχειροτάτων. οἱ μὲν γὰρ χρυσοχόοι διὰ τῆς ἀχυρίνης φλογὸς ἐργάζονται τὸν χρυσόν, οἱ δ’ ἰατροὶ μάλιστα τῇ κληματίνῃ τὰ συνεψόμενα τῶν φαρμάκων ὑποχλιαίνουσιν· πρὸς δὲ τὴν τοῦ ὑέλου μάλαξιν καὶ τύπωσιν εὐάρμοστον εἶναι δοκεῖ τὸ μυρίκινον· τὸ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ἐλαίας τὰ μὲν σώματα ταῖς πυρίαις εὖ διατίθησι, τοῖς δὲ βαλανείοις πολέμιόν ἐστιν καὶ λυμαίνεται τὴν πινάκωσιν [e] αὐτῶν καὶ τοὺς θεμελίους ὑποκαιόμενον· ὅθεν οἱ χαρίεντες ἀγορανόμοι τοὺς ἐργολαβοῦντας οὐκ ἐῶσιν ἐλαΐνοις ξύλοις χρῆσθαι, καθάπερ οὐδ’ αἴρας ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν ὑπόκαυσιν, αἱ γὰρ ἀπὸ τούτων ἀναθυμιάσεις καρηβαρίας καὶ σκοτώματα τοῖς λουομένοις ἐμποιοῦσιν. οὐδὲν οὖν θαυμαστόν ἐστιν καὶ τὴν σελήνην τοῦ ἡλίου διαφέρειν, τοῦ μὲν ξηραντικὰ τῆς δὲ χαλαστικὰ καὶ κινητικὰ τῶν ἐν τοῖς σώμασιν ὑγρῶν ἀφιείσης ῥεύματα. διὸ τὰ μὲν νήπια παντάπασιν αἱ τίτθαι δεικνύναι ‹πρὸς› τὴν σελήνην φυλάττονται· πλήρη γὰρ ὑγρότητος ὄντα, καθάπερ τὰ χλωρὰ τῶν ξύλων, σπᾶται καὶ διαστρέφεται.

[f] τοὺς δὲ κατακοιμηθέντας ἐν αὐγῇ σελήνης μόλις ἐξανισταμένους οἷον ἐμπλήκτους ταῖς αἰσθήσεσι καὶ ναρκώδεις ὁρῶμεν· ἡ γὰρ ὑγρότης ὑπὸ τῆς σελήνης διαχεομένη βαρύνει τὰ σώματα. λέγεται δὲ καὶ πρὸς εὐτοκίαν συνεργεῖν, ὅταν ᾖ διχόμηνος, ἀνέσει τῶν ὑγρῶν μαλακωτέρας παρέχουσα τὰς ὠδῖνας. ὅθεν οἶμαι καὶ τὴν Ἄρτεμιν [659] [a] Λοχείαν καὶ Εἰλείθυιαν, οὐκ οὖσαν ἑτέραν ἢ τὴν σελήνην, ὠνομάσθαι. Τιμόθεος δ’ ἄντικρύς φησιν (fr. 28 Wil. II p. 152 D)

‘διὰ κυάνεον πόλον ἄστρων,

διά τ’ ὠκυτόκοιο σελάνας.’

γίνεται δὲ καὶ περὶ τὰ ἄψυχα τῶν σωμάτων ἐπίδηλος ἡ τῆς σελήνης δύναμις· τῶν τε γὰρ ξύλων τὰ τεμνόμενα ταῖς πανσελήνοις ἀποβάλλουσιν οἱ τέκτονες ὡς ἁπαλὰ καὶ μυδῶντα ταχέως δι’ ὑγρότητα, τούς τε πυροὺς οἱ γεωργοῦντες σπεύδουσι φθίνοντος τοῦ μηνὸς ἐκ τῆς ἅλω συναίρειν, ἵνα παγέντες τῇ ξηρότητι μᾶλλον πρὸς ‹τὸν χρό›νον ἀντέχωσιν· οἱ δ’ ἀκμῇ τῆς σελήνης διακομιζόμενοι κόπτονται μάλιστα διὰ τὴν ὑγρότητα μαλακώτεροι γινόμενοι.

[b] λέγουσι δὲ καὶ τἄλευρον ἐν ταῖς πανσελήνοις ζυμοῦσθαι βέλτιον· ἡ γὰρ ζύμωσις ὀλίγον ἀποδεῖ σῆψις εἶναι· κἂν †ἀποβάλῃ τὸ μέτρον, ἐπὶ τὴν αὐτὴν φθορὰν ἀραιοῦσα καὶ λεπτύνουσα τὸ φύραμα προήγαγεν. αἱ δὲ σηπόμεναι σάρκες οὐδὲν ἄλλο πάσχουσιν ἤ, τοῦ συνεκτικοῦ πνεύματος μεταβάλλοντος εἰς ὑγρόν, ἐξαραιοῦνται καὶ ῥέουσιν. ταὐτὸ δὲ καὶ τὸν ἀέρα πάσχοντα θεωροῦμεν· δροσοβολεῖ γὰρ ταῖς πανσελήνοις μάλιστα διατηκόμενος, ὥς που καὶ Ἀλκμὰν ὁ μελοποιὸς αἰνιττόμενος τὴν δρόσον ἀέρος θυγατέρα καὶ σελήνης (fr. 48 II p. 23 D)

‘οἷα’ φησί ‘Διὸς θυγάτηρ Ἔρσα τρέφει καὶ δίας

[Σελάνας.’

[c]οὕτω πανταχόθεν μαρτυρεῖται τὸ τῆς σελήνης φῶς ἀνυγραντικὴν ‹ἔχον› καὶ μαλακτικὴν δύναμιν.’

‘Ὁ δὲ χαλκοῦς ἧλος, εἴ γε διελαυνόμενος, ὥς φασιν, ἀσηπτότερα διατηρεῖ τὰ κρέα, φαίνεται †μὲν ἔχων καὶ στυπτικὸν ἐν αὑτῷ· τῷ γὰρ ἰῷ πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα χρῶνται τῶν φαρμάκων ἰατροί, καὶ τούς γε διατρίβοντας ἐν τοῖς χαλκωρυχείοις ἱστοροῦσιν ὠφελεῖσθαι τὰ ὄμματα καὶ βλεφαρίδας ἐκφύειν τοὺς ἀποβεβληκότας, ἡ γὰρ ἀπιοῦσα τῆς χαλκίτιδος ἄχνη καὶ ‹ἐμ›πίπτουσα τοῖς βλεφάροις ἀδήλως ἀναστέλλει τὰ ῥεύματα καὶ περιστύφει τὸ δάκρυον· διὸ καί φασιν ‘εὐήνορα’ καὶ ‘νώροπα χαλκὸν’ ὑπὸ τοῦ ποιητοῦ (ν 19, Β 578 passim) προσαγορεύεσθαι.

[d] Ἀριστοτέλης (863a 28) δὲ καὶ τὰ τραύματά φησιν τὰ ἀπὸ τῶν χαλκῶν ἐπιδορατίδων καὶ μαχαιρῶν ἧττον εἶναι δυσαλγῆ καὶ ῥᾴον’ ἰᾶσθαι τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ σιδήρου διὰ τὸ φαρμακῶδες ἔχειν τι τὸν χαλκὸν ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ τοῦτο ταῖς πληγαῖς εὐθὺς ἐναπολείπειν. ὅτι ‹δὲ› καὶ τῷ σήποντι τὸ στῦφον καὶ τὸ θεραπεῦον τῷ φθείροντι τὴν ἐναντίαν ἔχει δύναμιν, οὐκ ἄδηλον. εἰ μή τις ἄρα τῇ διελάσει φαίη τὸν ἧλον ἐφ’ ἑαυτὸν τὰ ὑγρὰ συνάγειν, ἐπιφορᾶς ἀεὶ γινομένης πρὸς τὸ πάσχον· διὸ καὶ περὶ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον τὸν τόπον οἷόν τινα μώλωπα καὶ σπῖλον ὁρᾶσθαί φασιν, καὶ λόγον ἔχει τὴν ἄλλην σάρκα διαμένειν ἀπαθῆ, τῆς φθορᾶς ἐκεῖ συντρεχούσης.’

[e]

ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΑΚΩΝ

ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΤΕΤΑΡΤΟΝ

ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, τοῦ Πολυβίου Σκηπίωνι παραινοῦντος Ἀφρικανῷ μὴ πρότερον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς ἀπελθεῖν ἢ [f] φίλον τινὰ ποιήσασθαι τῶν πολιτῶν· φίλον δὲ δεῖ μὴ πικρῶς μηδὲ σοφιστικῶς ἀκούειν ἐκεῖνον τὸν ἀμετάπτωτον καὶ βέβαιον, ἀλλὰ κοινῶς τὸν εὔνουν· ὥσπερ ᾤετο χρῆναι Δικαίαρχος (Fr. H. Gr. II 268) εὔνους μὲν αὑτῷ παρασκευάζειν ἅπαντας, φίλους δὲ ποιεῖσθαι τοὺς ἀγαθούς. [660] [a] φιλία γὰρ ἐν χρόνῳ πολλῷ καὶ δι’ ἀρετῆς ἁλώσιμον· εὔνοιαν δὲ καὶ χρεία καὶ ὁμιλία καὶ παιδιὰ πολιτικῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐπάγεται, καιρὸν λαβοῦσα πειθοῦς φιλανθρώπου καὶ χάριτος συνεργόν. ἀλλ’ ὅρα τὸ τῆς παραινέσεως, εἰ μὴ μόνον ἔχει δεξιῶς πρὸς ἀγορὰν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς συμπόσιον· ὥστε δεῖν μὴ πρότερον ἀναλύειν ἢ κτήσασθαί τινα τῶν συγκατακειμένων καὶ παρόντων εὔνουν ἑαυτῷ καὶ φίλον. εἰς ἀγορὰν μὲν γὰρ ἐμβάλλουσι πραγμάτων εἵνεκεν καὶ χρειῶν ἑτέρων, εἰς δὲ συμπόσιον οἵ γε νοῦν ἔχοντες ἀφικνοῦνται κτησόμενοι φίλους οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τοὺς ὄντας εὐφρανοῦντες.

[b] διότι τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ζητεῖν ἐκφορὰν ἀνελεύθερον ἂν εἴη καὶ φορτικόν, τὸ δὲ φίλων πλέον ἔχοντας ἀπιέναι καὶ ἡδὺ καὶ σεμνόν ἐστιν. καὶ τοὐναντίον ὁ τούτου παραμελῶν ἄχαριν αὑτῷ καὶ ἀτελῆ τὴν συνουσίαν ποιεῖ καὶ ἄπεισι τῇ γαστρὶ σύνδειπνος οὐ τῇ ψυχῇ γεγονώς· ὁ γὰρ σύνδειπνος οὐκ ὄψου καὶ οἴνου καὶ τραγημάτων μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ λόγων κοινωνὸς ἥκει καὶ παιδιᾶς καὶ φιλοφροσύνης εἰς εὔνοιαν τελευτώσης. αἱ μὲν γὰρ παλαιόντων ἐπιβολαὶ καὶ ἕλξεις κονιορτοῦ δέονται, ταῖς δὲ φιλικαῖς λαβαῖς ὁ οἶνος ἁφὴν ἐνδίδωσι μιγνύμενος λόγῳ· λόγος γὰρ αὐτῷ τὸ φιλάνθρωπον καὶ ἠθοποιὸν ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος ἐποχετεύει καὶ συν‹δια›δίδωσιν· [c] εἰ δὲ μή, πλανώμενος ἐν τῷ σώματι πλησμονῆς οὐδὲν σπουδαιότερον παρέσχεν. ὅθεν ὥσπερ ὁ μάρμαρος, τοῦ διαπύρου σιδήρου τῷ καταψύχειν τὴν ἄγαν ὑγρότητα καὶ ῥύσιν ἀφαιρῶν, εὔτονον ποιεῖ τὸ μαλασσόμενον αὐτοῦ καὶ τυπούμενον, οὕτως ὁ συμποτικὸς λόγος οὐκ ἐᾷ διαφορεῖσθαι παντάπασιν ὑπὸ τοῦ οἴνου τοὺς πίνοντας, ἀλλ’ ἐφίστησι καὶ ποιεῖ τῇ ἀνέσει τὸ ἱλαρὸν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ἐγκέραστον καὶ ‹τὸ› κεχαρισμένον, ἄν τις ἐμμελῶς ἅπτηται, καθάπερ σφραγῖδι φιλίας εὐτυπώτων καὶ ἁπαλῶν διὰ τὸν οἶνον ὄντων.

[d]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Α

Εἰ ἡ ποικίλη τροφὴ τῆς ἁπλῆς εὐπεπτοτέρα

Τῆς οὖν τετάρτης τῶν συμποτικῶν ζητημάτων δεκάδος ἡμῖν πρῶτον ἔσται τὸ περὶ τῆς ποικίλης τροφῆς ζητηθέν. Ἐλαφηβολίων γὰρ ὄντων εἰς Ὑάμπολιν ἐπὶ τὴν ἑορτὴν ἀφικνουμένους ἡμᾶς εἱστία Φίλων ὁ ἰατρὸς ἐκ παρασκευῆς τινος, ὡς ἐφαίνετο, νεανικῆς. ἰδὼν δὲ τῶν παιδίων ‹τῶν› ἅμα τῷ Φιλίνῳ τὸ νέον ἄρτῳ χρώμενον ἄλλου δὲ μηδενὸς δεόμενον, ‘ὦ Ἡράκλεις’ ἔφη ‘τοῦτ’ ἄρ’ ἦν τὸ λεγόμενον

‘ἐν δὲ λίθοις ἐμάχοντο, λίθον δ’ οὐκ ἦν ἀνελέσθαι·’’

[e]καὶ ἀνεπήδησεν οἰσόμενός τι τῶν χρησίμων ἐκείνοις, εἶθ’ ἧκε μετὰ χρόνον συχνὸν ἰσχάδας αὐτοῖς τινας καὶ τυρὸν κομίζων. ἐμοῦ δ’ εἰπόντος, ὅτι τοῦτο συμβαίνει τοῖς τὰ περιττὰ καὶ πολυτελῆ παρασκευαζομένοις, ἀμελεῖν καὶ σπανίζειν τῶν ἀναγκαίων καὶ χρησίμων, ‘οὐ γὰρ ἐμεμνήμην’ εἶπεν ὁ Φίλων ‘ὅτι Σώσαστρον ἡμῖν ὑποτρέφει [ὁ] Φιλῖνος, ὅν φασι μήτε ποτῷ χρησάμενον ἄλλῳ μήτ’ ἐδέσματι πλὴν [ἢ] γάλακτος διαβιῶσαι πάντα τὸν βίον· ἀλλ’ ἐκείνῳ μὲν ἐκ μεταβολῆς ἀρχὴν γενέσθαι τῆς τοιαύτης διαίτης εἰκός· τὸν δ’ ἡμέτερον ἀντιστρόφως τῷ Ἀχιλλεῖ τρέφων ὁ Χείρων οὗτος εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῆς γενέσεως [f] ἀναιμάκτοις ‹καὶ ἀψύ›χοις τροφαῖς οὐκ †ἄκραναποδειξιν ἔχει ἐναέρι καὶ δρόσῳ λέγουσι †καθάπερ οἱ τέττιγες σιτούμενον.’ ‘ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν’ ὁ Φιλῖνος εἶπεν ‘ἠγνοοῦμεν Ἑκατομφόνια δειπνήσοντες ὥσπερ ἐπ’ Ἀριστομένους· ἐπεὶ παρῆμεν ἂν ὄψα τῶν λιτῶν καὶ ὑγιαινόντων, ὥσπερ ἀλεξιφάρμακα, πρὸς οὕτω πολυτελεῖς καὶ φλεγμαινούσας τραπέζας περιαψάμενοι· [661] [a] καὶ ταῦτα, σοῦ πολλάκις ἀκηκοότες ὅτι τῶν ποικίλων τὰ ἁπλᾶ μᾶλλον εὔπεπτ’ ἐστὶν καὶ †εὐπόριστα.’ καὶ ὁ Μαρκίων πρὸς τὸν Φίλωνα ‘διαφθείρει σου Φιλῖνος’ ἔφη ‘τὴν παρασκευήν, ἀποτρέπων καὶ δεδιττόμενος τοὺς δαιτυμόνας· ἀλλ’ ἂν ἐμοῦ δεηθῇς, ἐγγυήσομαι πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὑπὲρ σοῦ τὴν ποικίλην τροφὴν εὐπεπτοτέραν εἶναι τῆς ἁπλῆς, ὥστε θαρροῦντας ἀπολαύειν τῶν παρακειμένων.’ ὁ μὲν οὖν Φίλων ἐδεῖτο τοῦ Μαρκίωνος οὕτω ποιεῖν.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡμεῖς παυσάμενοι τοῦ δειπνεῖν προσεκαλούμεθα τὸν Φιλῖνον ἐπιθέσθαι τῇ κατηγορίᾳ τῆς ποικίλης [b] τροφῆς, ‘‘οὐκ ἐμός’ εἶπεν ‘ὁ μῦθος’ ἀλλ’ οὑτοσὶ Φίλων ἑκάστοτε λέγει πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὅτι πρῶτον μὲν τὰ θηρία τροφαῖς μονοειδέσι καὶ ἁπλαῖς χρώμενα μᾶλλον ὑγιαίνει τῶν ἀνθρώπων· ὅσα δὲ σιτεύουσι καθείρξαντες, ἐπισφαλῆ πρὸς τὰς νόσους ἐστὶν καὶ ῥᾳδίως ταῖς ὠμότησιν ἁλίσκεται διὰ τὸ μικτήν τινα καὶ συνηδυσμένην τροφὴν προσφέρεσθαι. δεύτερον οὐδεὶς γέγονεν οὕτω τῶν ἰατρῶν παράτολμος ἐν καινοτομίᾳ καὶ ἀνδρεῖος, ὥστε ποικίλην τροφὴν πυρέττοντι προσενεγκεῖν· ἀλλὰ τὴν ἁπλῆν καὶ ἄκνισον ὡς ὑπήκοον μάλιστα τῇ πέψει προσφέρουσιν. δεῖ γὰρ παθεῖν τὴν τροφὴν καὶ μεταβαλεῖν κρατηθεῖσαν ὑπὸ [c] τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν δυνάμεων· κρατεῖ δὲ καὶ βαφὴ τῶν ἁπλῶν χρωμάτων μᾶλλον, καὶ μυρεψικοῖς φαρμάκοις τρέπεται τάχιστα τὸ ἀωδέστατον ἔλαιον, καὶ τροφῆς εὐπαθέστατον ὑπὸ πέψεως μεταβάλλειν τὸ ἀφελὲς καὶ μονοειδές. αἱ δὲ πολλαὶ καὶ ποικίλαι ποιότητες ὑπεναντιώσεις ἔχουσαι καὶ δυσμαχοῦσαι φθείρονται πρότερον προσπίπτουσαι, καθάπερ ἐν πόλει μιγάδων καὶ συγκλύδων ἀνθρώπων πλῆθος οὐ ῥᾳδίως μίαν οὐδ’ ὁμοπαθοῦσαν ἴσχουσαι κατάστασιν, ἀλλ’ ἑκάστη πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἀντιτείνουσα καὶ δυσσύμβατος οὖσα πρὸς τὸ ἀλλόφυλον. ἐμφανὲς δὲ τεκμήριον [d] τὸ περὶ τὸν οἶνον· αἱ γὰρ ἀλλοινίαι λεγόμεναι τάχιστα μεθύσκουσιν, ἀπεψίᾳ δ’ οἴνου προσέοικεν ἡ μέθη· διὸ φεύγουσι τὸν μεμιγμένον οἶνον οἱ πίνοντες, οἱ δὲ μιγνύοντες πειρῶνται λανθάνειν ὡς ἐπιβουλεύοντες, ἐκστατικὸν γὰρ ἡ μεταβολὴ καὶ ‹τὸ› ἀνώμαλον. ὅθεν που καὶ τὰς πολυχορδίας μετὰ πολλῆς οἱ μουσικοὶ κινοῦσιν εὐλαβείας, ‹αἷς› οὐδὲν ἄλλο κακὸν ἢ τὸ μικτόν ἐστι καὶ ποικίλον. ἐγὼ δ’ ἐκεῖν’ ἔχω εἰπεῖν, ὅτι μᾶλλον ἂν ... ἐκ λόγων ὑπεναντίων γένοιτ’ ἂν πίστις καὶ ‹συγ›κατάθεσις ἢ πέψις ἐκ διαφόρων ποιοτήτων. εἰ δὲ δὴ δοκῶ παίζειν, ταῦτ’ ἐάσας ἐπὶ τὰ Φίλωνος ἄνειμι. πολλάκις γὰρ ἀκούομεν [e] αὐτοῦ λέγοντος, ὡς ἐπὶ ποιότητι τροφῆς γίνεται τὸ δύσπεπτον ‹καὶ εὔπεπτον›, ἡ ‹δὲ› πολυμιγία βλαβερὸν καὶ γόνιμον ἀλλοκότων ποιοτήτων, καὶ δεῖ τὸ σύμφυλον ἐκ πείρας λαβόντα χρῆσθαι καὶ στέργειν. εἰ δὲ φύσει δύσπεπτον οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ πλῆθός ἐστι τὸ ταράσσον καὶ φθεῖρον, ἔτι μᾶλλον οἶμαι τὰ παντοδαπὰ ταῦτα καὶ ποικίλα φευκτέον, οἷς ἀρτίως ἡμᾶς ὁ Φίλωνος ὀψοποιὸς ὥσπερ ἀντίτεχνος αὐτοῦ κατεφάρματτεν, ἐξαλλάττων τῇ καινότητι καὶ μεταβολῇ τὴν ὄρεξιν οὐκ ἀπαγορεύουσαν, ἀλλ’ ἀγομένην ἐπ’ ἄλλα καὶ παρεκβαίνουσαν ἐν τῷ ποικίλῳ ‹τὸ μέτριον› καὶ αὔταρκες, ὥσ‹περ ὁ τῆς Ὑψι›πύλης τρόφιμος ... νος (Eur. fr. 754, Suppl. Eur. p. 56, 16)

[f] ‘ἕτερον ἐφ’ ἕτερον αἰρόμενος

ἄγρευμ’ ἀνθέων ἡδομένᾳ ψυχᾷ,

‹τὸ› νήπιον ἄπληστος ἐών’

ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐξανθίζεται τοῦ λειμῶνος. ἐνταῦθα δὲ καὶ τοῦ Σωκράτους ἅμα μνημονευτέον, παρακελευομένου (Xen. Mem. I 3, 6) φυλάττεσθαι τῶν βρωμάτων οἷα τοὺς μὴ πεινῶντας ἐσθίειν ἀναπείθει, ὡς οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸ παντοδαπὸν καὶ ποικίλον εὐλαβεῖσθαι καὶ δεδιέναι τῶν [662] [a] σιτίων παραινοῦντος. τοῦτο γὰρ πορρωτέρω ἐξάγει τῆς χρείας τὴν ἀπόλαυσιν ἐν θεάμασιν ἐν ἀκροάμασιν ἐν ἀφροδισίοις ἐν παιδιαῖς ἁπάσαις καὶ διατριβαῖς, ἀναλαμβανομένην ὑπὸ τοῦ περιττοῦ πολλὰς ἀρχὰς ἔχοντος· ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἁπλαῖς καὶ μονοτρόποις ἡδοναῖς οὐ παρεκβαίνει τὴν φύσιν ἡ θέλξις. ὅλως δέ μοι δοκεῖ μᾶλλον ἄν τις ὑπομεῖναι πολυχορδίαν μουσικὸν ἐπαινοῦντα καὶ μυραλοιφίαν ἀλείπτην ἢ πολυοψίαν ἰατρόν· αἱ γὰρ ἐκτροπαὶ καὶ μεταβολαὶ τῆς εἰς ὑγίειαν εὐθείας ἐκβιβάζουσιν.’

Τοῦ δὲ Φιλίνου ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος, ὁ Μαρκίων ἔφη [b] δοκεῖν αὐτῷ τῇ Σωκράτους ἐνέχεσθαι κατάρᾳ μὴ μόνον τοὺς τὸ λυσιτελὲς ἀπὸ τοῦ καλοῦ χωρίζοντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἡδονὴν διιστάντας ἀπὸ τῆς ὑγιείας, ὡς ἀντιταττομένην αὐτῇ καὶ πολεμοῦσαν οὐχὶ μᾶλλον συνεργοῦσαν· ‘σμικρὰ γάρ’ ἔφη ‘καὶ ἄκοντες ὡς βιαιοτάτῳ τῶν ὀργάνων ἀλγηδόνι προσχρώμεθα· τῶν δ’ ἄλλων οὐδεὶς ἂν οὐδὲ βουλόμενος ἀπώσαιτο τὴν ἡδονήν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τροφαῖς καὶ ὕπνοις καὶ περὶ λουτρὰ καὶ ἀλείμματα καὶ κατακλίσεις ἀεὶ πάρεστιν καὶ συνεκδέχεται καὶ συνεκτιθηνεῖται τὸν κάμνοντα, πολλῷ τῷ οἰκείῳ καὶ κατὰ φύσιν ἐξαμαυροῦσα [c] τὸ ἀλλότριον. ποία γὰρ ἀλγηδών, τίς ἔνδεια, ποῖον δηλητήριον οὕτω ῥᾳδίως καὶ ἀφελῶς νόσον ἔλυσεν, ὡς λουτρὸν ἐν καιρῷ γενόμενον καὶ οἶνος δοθεὶς δεομένοις; καὶ τροφὴ παρελθοῦσα μεθ’ ἡδονῆς εὐθὺς ἔλυσε τὰ δυσχερῆ πάντα καὶ κατέστησεν εἰς τὸ οἰκεῖον τὴν φύσιν, ὥσπερ εὐδίας καὶ γαλήνης γενομένης. αἱ δὲ διὰ τῶν ἐπιπόνων βοήθειαι μόγις καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ἀνύουσι, χαλεπῶς ἐκμοχλεύουσαι καὶ προσβιαζόμεναι τὴν φύσιν. οὐκ ἂν οὖν ἡμᾶς διαβάλοι Φιλῖνος, εἰ μὴ τὰ ἱστία ἑκάτερ’ ἐπαράμενοι τὴν ἡδονὴν φεύγοιμεν, ἀλλὰ πειρῴμεθα τὸ ἡδέως [d] καὶ ὑγιεινῶς ἐμμελέστερον ἢ ὡς ἔνιοι φιλόσοφοι τὸ ἡδέως καὶ καλῶς συνοικειοῦν. εὐθὺς οὖν περὶ τὸ πρῶτον, ὦ Φιλῖνε, τῶν ἐπιχειρημάτων δοκεῖς μοι διεψεῦσθαι, τὰ θηρία τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἁπλουστέραις τροφαῖς χρῆσθαι καὶ μᾶλλον ὑγιαίνειν ὑποτιθέμενος. οὐδέτερον γὰρ ἀληθές ἐστιν· ἀλλὰ τῷ μὲν αἱ παρ’ Εὐπόλιδος αἶγες (fr. 14) ἀντιμαρτυροῦσιν, ὑμνοῦσαι τὴν τροφὴν ὡς παμμιγῆ καὶ ποικίλην οὖσαν, οὕτως πως λέγουσαι

‘βοσκόμεθ’ ὕλης ἀπὸ παντοδαπῆς, ἐλάτης πρίνου κο

[μάρου τε πτόρθους ἁπαλοὺς ἀποτρώγουσαι, καὶ πρὸς τούτοισιν

[ἔτ’ ‹ἄλλα,› κύτισόν τ’ ἠδὲ σφά‹κον› εὐώδη καὶ σμίλακα ‹τὴν› πο

[λύφυλλον, [e] κότινον, σχῖνον, μελίαν, ‹λεύκην, ἀρίαν,› δρῦν, κιττόν,

[ἐρίκην, πρόμαλον, ῥάμνον, φλόμον, ἀνθέρικον, κισθόν, φηγόν,

[‹θύμα,› θύμβραν·’

τὰ γὰρ κατηριθμημένα μυρίας δήπου διαφορὰς ἔχει χυμῶν καὶ ὀδμῶν καὶ δυνάμεων· πλείονα δὲ τῶν εἰρημένων παραλέλειπται. τὸ δὲ δεύτερον Ὅμηρος (Α 50) ἀθετεῖ μᾶλλον ἐμπείρως, τὰ λοιμικὰ πάθη πρῶτον ἅπτεσθαι τῶν ἀλόγων ἀποφαινόμενος. κατηγορεῖ δ’ αὐτῶν καὶ ἡ βραχύτης τοῦ βίου τὸ ἐπίκηρον καὶ νοσῶδες· οὐδὲν γὰρ ὡς εἰπεῖν πολυχρόνιόν ἐστιν, πλὴν εἰ φαίη τις κόρακα καὶ ‹κορώνην›, ἃ δὴ παμφάγα τ’ ὄντα καὶ πάσης ἁπτόμενα [f] τροφῆς ὁρῶμεν. καὶ μὴν καὶ τῇ τῶν νοσούντων διαίτῃ καλῶς ἐποίεις τὰ εὔπεπτα καὶ δύσπεπτα τεκμαιρόμενος· καὶ γὰρ πόνος καὶ γυμνάσια †καὶ τὸ διαιρεῖν τὴν τροφὴν [663] [a] †εὔπεπτα μέν ἐστιν, οὐχ ἁρμόζει δὲ τοῖς πυρέττουσι. τὴν δὲ μάχην καὶ τὴν διαφορὰν τῆς ποικίλης τροφῆς ἀλόγως ἐδεδίεις. εἴτε γὰρ ἐξ ὁμοίων ἀναλαμβάνει τὸ οἰκεῖον ἡ φύσις καὶ εἰς τὸν ὄγκον αὐτόθεν ἡ ποικίλη τροφὴ πολλὰς μεθιεῖσα ποιότητας ἐξ ἑαυτῆς ἑκάστῳ μέρει τὸ πρόσφορον ἀναδίδωσιν, ὥστε γίνεσθαι τὸ τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους (fr. 90)

‘ὡς γλυκὺ μὲν [ἐπὶ] γλυκὺ μάρπτε, πικρὸν δ’ ἐπὶ πικρὸν

[ὄρουσεν,

†ὀξὺ δ’ ἐπ’ ὀξύ, δαλερὸν δαλεροῦ λαβετως †

δὲ καὶ ἄλλου ... ἐπὶ πρόσφορον †μένοντος τῇ θερμότητι ἐν τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ μίγματος σκεδασθέντος τὰ [b] οἰκεῖα τοῖς συγγενέσιν ἕπεται· τὸ γὰρ οὕτως παμμιγὲς σῶμα καὶ πανηγυρικόν, ὡς τὸ ἡμέτερον, ἐκ ποικίλης ὕλης λόγον ἔχει μᾶλλον ἢ ἁπλῆς συνερανίζεσθαι καὶ ἀναπληροῦν τὴν κρᾶσιν. εἴτε μὴ τοῦτ’ ἐστίν, ἀλλ’ ἡ καλουμένη πέψις ἀλλοιοῦν πέφυκεν καὶ μεταβάλλειν τὴν τροφήν, ἐν τῷ ποικίλῳ τοῦτο συμβήσεται θᾶττον καὶ κάλλιον· ἀπαθὲς γὰρ ὑπὸ τοῦ ὁμοίου τὸ ὅμοιον, ἡ δ’ ἀντίταξις καὶ διαφορὰ μᾶλλον ἐξίστησι τῇ πρὸς τὸ ἐναντίον μίξει τὰς ποιότητας ἀπομαραινομένας. εἰ δ’ ὅλως τὸ μικτὸν ἀθετεῖς καὶ ποικίλον, ὦ Φιλῖνε, μὴ δειπνίζοντα μηδ’ ὀψοποιοῦντα [c] μόνον λοιδόρει Φίλωνα τοῦτον, ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον, ὅταν μιγνύῃ τὰς βασιλικὰς καὶ ἀλεξιφαρμάκους ἐκείνας δυνάμεις, ἃς ‘θεῶν χεῖρας’ ὠνόμαζεν Ἐρασίστρατος, διέλεγχε τὴν ἀτοπίαν καὶ περιεργίαν, ὁμοῦ μεταλλικὰ καὶ βοτανικὰ καὶ θηριακὰ καὶ τὰ ἀπὸ γῆς καὶ θαλάττης εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συγκεραννύντος· καλὸν γὰρ ταῦτ’ ἐάσαντας ἐν πτισάνῃ καὶ σικύᾳ καὶ ἐν ὑδρελαίῳ τὴν ἰατρικὴν ἀπολιπεῖν. ‘ἀλλὰ νὴ Δία τὸ ποικίλον ἐξάγει καὶ γοητεύει τὴν ὄρεξιν οὐ κρατοῦσαν ἑαυτῆς’· καὶ γὰρ τὸ καθάριον, ὦ δαιμόνιε, καὶ τὸ εὐστόμαχον καὶ τὸ εὐῶδες καὶ ὅλως τὸ ἥδιον ἐφέλκεται καὶ ποιεῖ βρωτικωτέρους ἡμᾶς καὶ ποτικωτέρους.

[d] τί οὖν οὐχὶ κρίμνον μὲν ἡμεῖς ἀντὶ πόλτου μάττομεν ἀντὶ δ’ ἀσπαράγου γήτεια καὶ σκολύμους παρασκευάζομεν, τὸν δ’ ἀνθοσμίαν ἀπωσάμενοι τουτονὶ καὶ ἡμερίδην ἀγριώτερον πίνομεν ἐκ πίθου, κωνώπων χορῷ περιᾳδόμενον; ὅτι φαίης ἂν οὐ φυγὴν οὐδ’ ἀπόδρασιν ἡδονῆς εἶναι τὴν ὑγιεινὴν δίαιταν, ἀλλὰ περὶ ἡδονὰς μετριότητα καὶ τάξιν ὑπηκόῳ χρωμένην ὀρέξει τοῦ συμφέροντος. ὡς δὲ λάβρον πνεῦμα κυβερνῆται πολλαῖς μηχαναῖς ὑποφεύγουσιν, παυσάμενον δὲ καὶ μαρανθὲν οὐδεὶς πάλιν ἐκριπίσαι καὶ διασεῖσαι δυνατός ἐστιν, οὕτως πρὸς ὄρεξιν [e] ἐνστῆναι μὲν καὶ κολοῦσαι τὸ πλεονάζον αὐτῆς οὐ μέγ’ ἔργον, ἤδη δὲ κάμνουσαν πρὸ καιροῦ καὶ μαλθακιζομένην καὶ ἀπολείπουσαν τὸ οἰκεῖον ἐντεῖναι καὶ ἀναζωπυρῆσαι παγχάλεπον, ὦ ἑταῖρε, καὶ δύσεργον. ὅθεν ἡ ποικίλη τροφὴ βελτίων τῆς ἁπλῆς καὶ τὸ μονοειδὲς ἐχούσης πλήσμιον, ὅσῳ ῥᾷον ἱστάναι φερομένην τὴν φύσιν ἢ κινεῖν ἀπειποῦσαν. καὶ μήν, ὅ γε λέγουσί τινες ὡς πλησμονὴ φευκτότερον ἐνδείας, οὐκ ἀληθές ἐστιν ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον· εἴ γε πλησμονὴ μέν, ὅταν εἰς φθοράν τινα τελευτήσῃ καὶ νόσον, ἔβλαψεν, ἔνδεια δέ, κἂν ἄλλο μηδὲν ἐξεργάσηται [f] κακόν, αὐτὴ καθ’ αὑτὴν παρὰ φύσιν ἐστίν. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ὡς ἀντίχορδα κείσθω τοῖς ὑπὸ σοῦ πεφιλοσοφημένοις. ἐκεῖνο δέ πως ὑμᾶς λέληθεν ‘τοὺς περὶ ἅλα καὶ κύαμον’, ὅτι τὸ μὲν ποικίλον ‹ἥδιόν› ἐστι, τὸ δ’ ἥδιον εὐο‹ρεκτό›τερον, ‹τὸ δ’ εὐόρεκτον ὑγιεινότερον›, ἂν τὴν ὑπερ‹βολὴν καὶ τἄγ›αν ἀφέλῃς· προσφύεται γὰρ ὀργῶντι καὶ δεχομένῳ τῷ σώματι, [664] [a] τῆς ὄψεως προοδοποιούσης· τὸ δ’ ἀνόρεκτον ‹πλανώμενον› καὶ ῥεμβόμενον ἢ παντάπασιν ἐξέβαλεν ἡ φύσις ἢ μόλις ὑπ’ ἐνδείας ἔστερξεν. ἐκεῖνό μοι μόνον φύλαττε καὶ μέμνησο, τὸ ποικίλον ὡς οὐκ ἐν ἀβυρτάκαις καὶ κανδύλοις καὶ καρύκαις ἐστίν· ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν περίεργα καὶ σπερμολογικά, ποικιλίαν δὲ καὶ Πλάτων (Rep. 372c) παρέχει τοῖς καλοῖς καὶ γενναίοις ἐκείνοις πολίταις, παρατιθεὶς βολβούς, ἐλαίας, λάχανα, τυρόν, ἑψήματα παντοδαπά, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις οὐδὲ τραγημάτων ἀμοίρους περιορᾷ δειπνοῦντας.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Β

Διὰ τί τὰ ὕδνα δοκεῖ τῇ βροντῇ γίνεσθαι, καὶ διὰ τί τοὺς καθεύδοντας οἴονται μὴ κεραυνοῦσθαι

[b] Ὕδνα παμμεγέθη δειπνοῦσιν ἡμῖν Ἀγέμαχος παρέθηκεν ἐν Ἤλιδι. θαυμαζόντων δὲ τῶν παρόντων, ἔφη τις ὑπομειδιάσας ‘ἄξιά γε τῶν βροντῶν τῶν ἔναγχος γενομένων,’ ὡς δὴ καταγελῶν τῶν λεγόντων τὰ ὕδνα τὴν γένεσιν ἐκ βροντῆς λαμβάνειν. ἦσαν οὖν οἱ φάσκοντες ὑπὸ βροντῆς τὴν γῆν διίστασθαι καθάπερ ἥλῳ τῷ ἀέρι χρωμένης, εἶτα ταῖς ῥωγμαῖς τεκμαίρεσθαι τοὺς τὰ ὕδνα μετιόντας· ἐκ δὲ τούτου δόξαν ἐγγενέσθαι τοῖς πολλοῖς, [c] ὅτι τὸ ὕδνον αἱ βρονταὶ γεννῶσιν οὐ δεικνύουσιν, ὥσπερ εἴ τις οἴοιτο τοὺς κοχλίας ποιεῖν τὸν ὄμβρον ἀλλὰ μὴ προάγειν μηδ’ ἀναφαίνειν. ὁ δ’ Ἀγέμαχος ἰσχυρίζετο τῇ ἱστορίᾳ καὶ τὸ θαυμαστὸν ἠξίου μὴ ἄπιστον ἡγεῖσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ἄλλα πολλὰ θαυμάσια βροντῆς ἔργα καὶ κεραυνοῦ καὶ τῶν περὶ ταῦτα διοσημιῶν εἶναι, χαλεπὰς καταμαθεῖν ἢ παντελῶς ἀδυνάτους τὰς αἰτίας ἔχοντα. ‘καὶ γὰρ ὁ γελώμενος οὑτοσὶ καὶ παροιμιώδης’ ἔφη ‘βολβὸς οὐ μικρότητι διαφεύγει τὸν κεραυνόν, ἀλλ’ ἔχων δύναμιν ἀντιπαθῆ, καθάπερ ἡ συκῆ καὶ τὸ δέρμα τῆς φώκης ὥς φασι καὶ τὸ τῆς ὑαίνης, οἷς τὰ ἄκρα τῶν ἱστίων οἱ ναύκληροι καταδιφθεροῦσιν· [d] τὰ δ’ ἀστραπαῖα τῶν ὑδάτων εὐαλδῆ καλοῦσιν οἱ γεωργοὶ καὶ νομίζουσιν. καὶ ὅλως εὔηθές ἐστιν ταῦτα θαυμάζειν τὸ πάντων ἀπιστότατον ἐν τοῖς πάθεσι τούτοις καθορῶντας, ἐκ μὲν ὑγρῶν φλόγας ἐκ δὲ μαλακῶν ‹νεφῶν› ψόφους σκληροὺς ἀναδιδομένους. ταῦτα δ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἀδολεσχῶ παρακαλῶν ὑμᾶς ἐπὶ τὴν ζήτησιν τῆς αἰτίας, ἵνα μὴ πικρὸς γένωμαι συμβολὰς τῶν ὕδνων πρασσόμενος.’

Αὐτὸν οὖν ἔφην ἐγὼ τρόπον τινὰ τῷ λόγῳ δεξιὰν ὀρέγειν τὸν Ἀγέμαχον· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἔν γε τῷ παρόντι φαίνεσθαι πιθανώτερον, ‹ἢ› ὅτι ταῖς βρονταῖς πολλάκις ὕδωρ συνεκπίπτει γόνιμον. ‘αἰτία δ’ ἡ τῆς θερμότητος ἀνάμιξις· [e] τὸ μὲν γὰρ ὀξὺ καὶ καθαρὸν τοῦ πυρὸς ἄπεισιν ἀστραπὴ γενόμενον, τὸ δ’ ἐμβριθὲς καὶ πνευματῶδες ἐνειλούμενον τῷ νέφει καὶ συμμεταβάλλον ἐξαιρεῖ τὴν ψυχρότητα καὶ συνεκπονεῖ τὸ ὑγρόν· ὥστε μάλιστα [τὸ] προσηνὲς ἐνδύεσθαι τοῖς βλαστάνουσι καὶ ταχὺ παχύνειν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ κράσεων ἰδιότητα καὶ χυμοῦ διαφορὰν ἐμποιεῖ τὰ τοιαῦτα τοῖς ἀρδομένοις, ὥσπερ αἵ τε δρόσοι γλυκυτέραν ποιοῦσι τοῖς θρέμμασι τὴν πόαν καὶ ‹τὰ› τὴν ἶριν ἐξανθοῦντα νέφη, καθ’ ὧν ἂν ἐπερείσῃ ξύλων, εὐωδίας ἀναπίμπλησι (καὶ ταύτῃ γνωρίζοντες οἱ παρ’ ἡμῖν [f] ἰρίσκηπτα καλοῦσι, τὴν ἶριν ὑπολαμβάνοντες ἐπισκήπτειν), πολλῷ γε μᾶλλον εἰκός ἐστι τοῖς ἀστραπαίοις καὶ κεραυνίοις ὕδασι καὶ πνεύμασι καὶ θερμότησιν εἰς βάθος ἐλαυνομέναις τὴν γῆν στρέφεσθαι καὶ συστροφὰς ἴσχειν τοιαύτας καὶ χαυνότητας, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς σώμασι τὰ χοιραδώδη καὶ ἀδενώδη φύματα θερμότητές τινες καὶ ὑγρότητες αἱματώδεις ἐνδημιουργοῦσιν· οὐ γὰρ ἔοικε ‹φυ›τῷ τὸ ὕδνον [665] [a] οὐδ’ ἄνευ ὕδατος ἔχει τὴν γένεσιν, ἀλλ’ ἄρριζον καὶ ‹ἀβλας›τές ἐστι καὶ ἀπολελυμένον, τῷ καθ’ ἑαυτὸ τὴν σύστασιν ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἔχειν παθούσης τι καὶ μεταβαλούσης. εἰ δέ γε γλίσχρος’ ἔφην ‘ὁ λόγος ὑμῖν δοκεῖ, τοιαῦτά τοι τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν βρονταῖς καὶ κεραυνοῖς συνεπομένων· διὸ καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς πάθεσι τούτοις δόξα θειότητος πρόσεστι.’

Παρὼν δ’ ὁ ῥήτωρ Δωρόθεος ‘ὀρθῶς’ ἔφη ‘λέγεις· οὐ γὰρ μόνον οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ ἰδιῶται τοῦτο πεπόνθασιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων τινές. ἐγὼ γοῦν οἶδα, κεραυνοῦ παρ’ ἡμῖν εἰς οἰκίαν ἐμπεσόντος καὶ πολλὰ θαυμαστὰ δράσαντος (οἶνόν τε γὰρ ἐκ πίθων διεφόρησε τοῦ κεράμου [b] μηδὲν παθόντος, ἀνθρώπου τε καθεύδοντος διαπτάμενος οὔτ’ αὐτὸν ἠδίκησεν οὔτε τῆς ἐσθῆτος ἔθιγεν, ζώνην δὲ χαλκοῦς ἔχουσαν ὑπεζωσμένου διέτηξεν τὸ νό‹μις›μα πᾶν καὶ συνέχεεν) φιλοσόφῳ [δὲ] παρεπιδημοῦντι Πυθαγορικῷ προσελθόντα καὶ διαπυνθανόμενον· τὸν δ’ ἀφοσιωσάμενον καὶ κελεύσαντα ‹τὰ› καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ὁρᾶν καὶ προσεύχεσθαι τοῖς θεοῖς. ἀκούω δὲ καὶ στρατιώτου φυλάττοντος ἱερὸν ἐν Ῥώμῃ κεραυνὸν ἐγγὺς πεσόντα διακαῦσαι τῶν ὑποδημάτων τοὺς ἱμάντας, ἄλλο δὲ μηδὲν κακὸν ἐργάσασθαι· καὶ ‹κυ›λιχνίων ἀργυρῶν ξυλίνοις ἐγκειμένων ἐλύτροις τὸν μὲν ἄργυρον συνιζῆσαι τακέντα, [c] τὸ δὲ ξύλον ἄθικτον καὶ ἀπαθὲς εὑρεθῆναι. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἔξεστι πιστεύειν καὶ μή· πάντων δὲ θαυμασιώτατον, ὃ πάντες ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἴσμεν, ὅτι τῶν ὑπὸ κεραυνοῦ διαφθαρέντων ἄσηπτα τὰ σώματα διαμένει· πολλοὶ γὰρ οὔτε καίουσιν οὔτε κατορύττουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐῶσι περιφράξαντες, ὥσθ’ ὁρᾶσθαι τοὺς νεκροὺς ἀσήπτους ἀεί, τὴν Εὐριπίδου Κλυμένην ἐλέγχοντας ἐπὶ τοῦ Φαέθοντος εἰποῦσαν (fr. 786)

‘φίλος δέ μοι

ἄλουτος ἐν φάραγξι σήπεται νέκυς.’

ὅθεν οἶμαι καὶ τὸ θεῖον ὠνομάσθαι τῇ ὁμοιότητι τῆς ὀσμῆς, ἣν τὰ παιόμενα τοῖς κεραυνοῖς ἀφίησιν ἐκτριβομένην [d] πυρώδη καὶ δριμεῖαν· ὑφ’ ἧς ἐμοὶ δοκοῦσι καὶ κύνες καὶ ὄρνιθες ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν διοβλήτων σωμάτων. ‹ἀλλ’› ἐμοὶ γὰρ ἄχρι τούτου τῆς αἰτίας ὥσπερ δάφνης παρατετρώχθω· τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ τοῦτον’ ἔφη ‘παρακαλῶμεν, ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῖς ὕδνοις ἐνευημέρηκεν, ἵνα μὴ πάθωμεν τὸ τοῦ Ἀνδροκύδους· ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ὧν ἐποίησε πάντων ἐναργέστατα καὶ κάλλιστα τοὺς περὶ τὴν Σκύλλαν ἰχθῦς ζωγραφήσας ἔδοξε τῷ πάθει μᾶλλον ἢ τέχνῃ κεχρῆσθαι, φύσει γὰρ ἦν φίλοψος· οὕτω φήσει τις καὶ ἡμᾶς ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς φιλοσοφήσαντας περὶ τῶν ὕδνων ἀμφισβητήσιμον ἐχόντων τὴν γένεσιν ὡς ὁρᾶς ... ἐν δὲ τούτοις ὑποκειμένης [e] τῷ λόγῳ τῆς εὐπειθείας καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ... προδήλῳ τῷ εἶναι πειθούσης.’

Ἐμοῦ δὲ †παρακελευομένου καὶ λέγοντος καιρὸν εἶναι καθάπερ ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ μηχανὰς αἴροντα καὶ βροντὰς ἐμβάλλοντα παρὰ πότον διαλέγεσθαι περὶ κεραυνῶν, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα παρίεσαν συνομολογοῦντες, περὶ δὲ τῶν ἐν ᾧ καθεύδουσιν μὴ κεραυνουμένων ἀκοῦσαί τι βουλόμενοι λιπαρεῖς ἦσαν. ἐμοὶ δὲ πλέον οὐδὲν ἐγίνετο τῆς αἰτίας ἁψαμένῳ κοινὸν ἐχούσης τὸν λόγον· ὅμως δ’ οὖν ἔφην ὡς τὸ κεραύνιον πῦρ ἀκριβείᾳ καὶ λεπτότητι θαυμαστόν ἐστιν, αὐτόθεν τε τὴν γένεσιν ἐκ καθαρᾶς καὶ ἁγνῆς ἔχον [f] οὐσίας, καὶ πᾶν εἴ τι συμμίγνυται νοτερὸν ἢ γεῶδες αὐτῷ τῆς περὶ τὴν κίνησιν ὀξύτητος ἀποσειομένης καὶ διακαθαιρούσης. ‘διόβλητον μὲν οὐδέν’ ὥς φησι Δημόκριτος (fr. 152) ‘... παρ’ αἰθρίης στέγειν ‹εὐαγὲς› σέλας.’ τὰ μὲν οὖν πυκνὰ τῶν σωμάτων, ‹σίδηρος,› χαλκός, ἄργυρος, ‹χρυσός,› ἀποστέγει καὶ φθείρεται καὶ τήκεται, πάσχοντα τῷ προσμάχεσθαι καὶ ‹ἀν›τερείδειν· τῶν δ’ ἀραιῶν καὶ πολυπόρων καὶ χαλώντων ὑπὸ μανότητος [666] [a] ἀψαυστὶ διεκθεῖ, καθάπερ ἱματίων καὶ ξύλων αὔων· τὰ δὲ χλωρὰ καίει, τῆς ὑγρότητος ἀντιλαμβανομένης καὶ συνεξαπτομένης. εἴπερ οὖν τὸ τοὺς καθεύδοντας μὴ ἀποθνήσκειν ὑπὸ κεραυνῶν ἀληθές ἐστιν, ἐνταῦθα δεῖ ζητεῖν οὐκ ἀλλαχόθι τὴν αἰτίαν. μᾶλλον γὰρ ἔρρωται καὶ συνέστηκεν καὶ ἀντερείδει τὰ σώματα τῶν ἐγρηγορότων, ἅτε δὴ πᾶσι τοῖς μέρεσι πεπληρωμένα πνεύματος· ὑφ’ οὗ καὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις ἐπιστρέφοντος ὥσπερ ἐν ὀργάνῳ καὶ σφίγγοντος εὔτονον γέγονε καὶ συνεχὲς αὑτῷ καὶ πυκνὸν τὸ ζῷον. ἐν δὲ τοῖς ὕπνοις ἐξανεῖται καὶ μανὸν καὶ ἀνώμαλον καὶ ἄτονον καὶ διακεχυμένον, καὶ πόρους ἔσχηκε [b] πολλούς, τοῦ πνεύματος ἐνδιδόντος καὶ ἀπολείποντος, δι’ ὧν φωναί τε καὶ ὀσμαὶ διεκθέουσιν μηδεμίαν αἴσθησιν ἑαυτῶν παρέχουσαι. τὸ γὰρ ἀντερεῖδον καὶ τῷ ἀντερείδειν πάσχον οὐκ ἀπαντᾷ τοῖς προσφερομένοις, ἥκιστα δὲ τοῖς ὑπὸ λεπτότητος καὶ ὠκύτητος τοιαύτης ὥσπερ ὁ κεραυνὸς διιπταμένοις. τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἧττον ἰσχυρὰ δυσπαθείαις ἡ φύσις ἀμύνεται, σκληρότητας προβαλλομένη καὶ πυκνότητας· ὧν δ’ ἄμαχος ἡ δύναμίς ἐστιν, ὑπὸ τούτων ἧττον ἀδικεῖται τὰ εἴκοντα τῶν ἀνθισταμένων. ‘πρόσλαβε δὲ τούτοις’ ἔφην ‘οὔτι μικρὰν ἔκπληξιν πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ φόβον καὶ τάρβος, ὑφ’ ὧν πολλοὶ μηδὲν ἄλλο παθόντες αὐτῷ τῷ δεῖσαι ‹τὸ› ἀποθανεῖν ἀπέθανον. καὶ γὰρ τὰ [c] θρέμματα διδάσκουσι βροντῆς γενομένης οἱ ποιμένες εἰς ταὐτὸ συνθεῖν καὶ συννεύειν· τὰ γὰρ σποράδην ἀπολειφθέντα διὰ τὸν φόβον ἐκτιτρώσκει. καὶ μυρίους ἤδη τεθνηκότας ἰδεῖν ἔστιν ὑπὸ βροντῆς, οὐδὲν οὔτε πληγῆς ἴχνος οὔτε καύσεως ἔχοντας, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ φόβου τῆς ψυχῆς ὡς ἔοικεν ὄρνιθος δίκην ἀποπταμένης τοῦ σώματος· ‘πολλοὺς γάρ’, ὡς ὁ Εὐριπίδης (fr. 982) φησί, ‘βροντῆς

[πνεῦμ’ ἄναιμον ὤλεσε’.

καὶ γὰρ ἄλλως τῶν αἰσθητηρίων ἡ ἀκοὴ παθητικώτατόν ἐστιν, καὶ μεγίστας οἱ διὰ ψόφου θόρυβοι καὶ φόβοι ταραχὰς ἐπιφέρουσιν· ὧν τῷ καθεύδοντι πρόβλημα τὸ ἀναίσθητόν ἐστιν. οἱ δ’ ἐγρηγορότες καὶ ταῖς προπαθείαις [d] ἀναλίσκονται καί, τοῦ δέους τὸ σῶμα συνδέοντος ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ συνάγοντος καὶ πυκνοῦντος, ἰσχυρὰν ποιοῦσι τὴν πληγὴν τῷ ἀντερείδειν.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Γ

Διὰ τί πλείστους ἐν γάμοις ἐπὶ δεῖπνον καλοῦσιν

Ἐν τοῖς Αὐτοβούλου τοῦ υἱοῦ γάμοις συνεώρταζεν ἡμῖν παρὼν ἐκ Χαιρωνείας ὁ Σόσσιος Σενεκίων, καὶ πολλῶν ‹λόγων› ἄλλων τε τῇ τόθ’ ἑορτῇ μάλα πρεπόντων ‹παρέσχεν› ἀφορμὰς καὶ περὶ τῆ‹ς αἰτί›ας, δι’ ἣν πλεῖστοι τῶν ἄλλων ἐπὶ τὰ γαμικὰ δεῖπνα παραλαμβάνονται, [e] διηπόρησε· καὶ γὰρ τῶν νομοθετῶν τοὺς τῇ πολυτελείᾳ κατὰ κράτος πολεμήσαντας ὁρίσαι μάλιστα τῶν εἰς τοὺς γάμους καλουμένων τὸ πλῆθος. ‘ὁ γὰρ εἰπών’ ἔφη ‘περὶ τῆς αἰτίας αὐτῆς τῶν παλαιῶν φιλοσόφων οὐδέν, ἐμοὶ γοῦν κριτῇ, πιθανὸν εἴρηκεν, Ἑκαταῖος ὁ Ἀβδηρίτης (Vorsokr. 73 A 5)· λέγει δὲ τοὺς ἀγομένους γυναῖκας πολλοὺς παρακαλεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν ἑστίασιν, ἵνα πολλοὶ συνειδῶσι καὶ μαρτυρῶσιν ἐλευθέροις οὖσι καὶ παρ’ ἐλευθέρων γαμοῦσι. τοὐναντίον γὰρ οἱ κωμικοὶ τοὺς πολυτελῶς καὶ σοβαρῶς λαμπρότητι δείπνων καὶ παρασκευῆς γαμοῦντας ὡς οὐ βεβαίως οὐδὲ θαρραλέως †ἐπισυνάπτουσιν· ὡς Μένανδρος (fr. 865) πρὸς τὸν κελεύοντα ταῖς λοπάσι [f] περιφράττειν ...ωπον δεινῶς ... οὐ πρᾶγμα νύμφης λέγεις’.’

‘Ἀλλ’ ὅπως μή, ‹τὸ ῥᾷ›στον, ἐγκαλεῖν ἑτέροις δοκῶμεν αὐτοὶ μηδὲν λέγοντες, ἀποφαίνομαι πρῶτος’ εἶπεν ‘ἐγώ, οὐδεμίαν ἑστιάσεως πρόφασιν οὕτως ἔκδηλον εἶναι καὶ περιβόητον ὡς τὴν τῶν γαμούντων· καὶ γὰρ θύοντας θεοῖς καὶ προπέμποντας φίλον καὶ ξενίζοντας ἔστι πολλοὺς διαλαθεῖν τῶν ἐπιτηδείων, ἡ δὲ γαμήλιος [667] [a] τράπεζα κατήγορον ἔχει τὸν ὑμέναιον μέγα βοῶντα καὶ τὴν δᾷδα καὶ τὸν αὐλόν, ἅ φησιν Ὅμηρος (Σ 495) καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἱσταμένας ἐπὶ ταῖς θύραις θαυμάζειν καὶ θεᾶσθαι. διὸ μηδενὸς ἀγνοοῦντος τὴν ὑποδοχὴν καὶ τὴν κλῆσιν, αἰσχυνόμενοι παραλιπεῖν πάντας τοὺς συνήθεις καὶ οἰκείους καὶ ἁμωσγέπως προσήκοντας αὑτοῖς παραλαμβάνουσιν.’

Ἀποδεξαμένων δ’ ἡμῶν ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Θέων ‘καὶ τοῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘κείσθω, οὐκ ἀπίθανον γάρ ἐστι, κἀκεῖνο πρόσθες, εἰ βούλει, τὰς τοιαύτας ἑστιάσεις μὴ μόνον φιλικὰς ἀλλὰ καὶ συγγενικὰς εἶναι, καταμιγνυμένης εἰς τὸ [b] γένος ἑτέρας οἰκειότητος. ὃ δὲ τούτου μεῖζόν ἐστιν, οἴκων εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συνιόντων δυοῖν ὅ τε λαμβάνων τοὺς τοῦ διδόντος οἰκείους καὶ φίλους ὅ τε διδοὺς τοὺς τοῦ λαμβάνοντος οἰόμενοι δεῖν φιλοφρονεῖσθαι διπλασιάζουσιν τὴν ὑποδοχήν. ἔτι πολλὰ τῶν γαμικῶν ἢ τὰ πλεῖστα δρᾶται διὰ γυναικῶν· ὅπου δὲ γυναῖκες πάρεισι, καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι παραλαμβάνεσθαι.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Δ

Εἰ ἡ θάλασσα τῆς γῆς εὐοψοτέρα

[c] Τῆς Εὐβοίας ὁ Αἰδηψός, οὗ τὰ Θερμὰ χωρίον ἐστὶν αὐτοφυῆ πολλὰ πρὸς ἡδονὰς ἔχον ἐλευθερίους καὶ κατεσκευασμένον οἰκήσεσι καὶ διαίταις, κοινὸν οἰκητήριον ἀποδέδεικται τῆς Ἑλλάδος· πολλῶν δὲ καὶ πτηνῶν καὶ χερσαίων ἁλισκομένων, οὐχ ἧττον ἡ θάλαττα παρέχει τὴν ἀγορὰν εὐτράπεζον, ἐν τόποις καθαροῖς καὶ ἀγχιβαθέσι γενναῖον ἰχθὺν καὶ πολὺν ἐκτρέφουσα. μάλιστα δ’ ἀνθεῖ τὸ χωρίον ἀκμάζοντος ἔαρος· πολλοὶ γὰρ ἀφικνοῦνται τὴν ὥραν αὐτόθι καὶ συνουσίας ποιοῦνται μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἐν ἀφθόνοις πᾶσι καὶ πλείστας περὶ λόγους ὑπὸ σχολῆς διατριβὰς [d] ἔχουσι. Καλλιστράτου δὲ τοῦ σοφιστοῦ παρόντος ἔργον ἦν ἀλλαχόθι δειπνεῖν· ἄμαχος γὰρ ἡ φιλοφροσύνη, καὶ τὸ πάντας εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συνάγειν ἐπιεικῶς τοὺς χαρίεντας ἥδιστον παρεῖχε· πολλάκις μὲν γὰρ ἐμιμεῖτο τῶν παλαιῶν τὸν Κίμωνα πολλοὺς καὶ παντοδαποὺς ἑστιῶν ἡδέως, ἀεὶ ‹δ’› ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν τὸν Κελεόν, ὃν πρῶτον ἱστοροῦσιν εὐδοκίμων καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν κατασκευάσαντα σύνοδον καθημερινὴν ὀνομάσαι πρυτανεῖον.

Ἐγίνοντο δὴ λόγοι τοιαύτῃ συνουσίᾳ πρέποντες ἑκάστοτε· καί ποτε παρέσχον αἱ τράπεζαι ποικιλώταται [e] γινόμεναι ζήτησιν ὑπὲρ ὄψων, πότερον τὰ ἐκ γῆς ἢ τὰ ἐκ θαλάττης ἐπιτηδειότερα· καὶ τῶν ἄλλων σχεδὸν ἁπάντων ὑμνούντων τὰ ἐκ γῆς πολλὰ καὶ παντοδαπὰ καὶ δυσεξαρίθμητα τοῖς γένεσι καὶ ταῖς διαφοραῖς, τὸν Σύμμαχον ὁ Πολυκράτης προσαγορεύσας ‘σὺ δ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἀμφίαλον ὢν ζῷον καὶ τοσαύταις ἐντεθραμμένος θαλάτταις, αἳ τὴν ἱερὰν πέριξ ὑμῶν ἑλίττουσι Νικόπολιν, οὐκ ἀμύνεις τῷ Ποσειδῶνι;’ ‘βούλομαί γε νὴ Δί’’ ὁ Σύμμαχος εἶπεν ‘καὶ σὲ παραλαμβάνω καὶ παρακαλῶ, τὰ ἥδιστα τῆς Ἀχαϊκῆς καρπούμενον θαλάττης.’ ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘πρῶτον’ ὁ Πολυκράτης ‘ἴωμεν ἐπὶ τὴν συνήθειαν. ὡς γὰρ [f] πολλῶν ὄντων ποιητῶν ἕνα τὸν κράτιστον ἐξαιρέτως ποιητὴν καλοῦμεν, οὕτως πολλῶν ὄντων ὄψων ἐκνενίκηκεν ὁ ἰχθὺς μόνος ἢ μάλιστά γ’ ὄψον καλεῖσθαι διὰ τὸ πολὺ πάντων ἀρετῇ κρατεῖν. καὶ γὰρ ὀψοφάγους καὶ φιλόψους λέγομεν οὐχὶ τοὺς βοείοις χαίροντας ὥσπερ [668] [a] Ἡρακλῆς ὃς ‘τοῖς κρέασι χλωρὰ σῦκ’ ἐπήσθιεν’ (Eur. fr. 907), οὐδὲ τὸν φιλόσυκον οἷος ἦν Πλάτων, οὐ φιλόβοτρυν οἷος Ἀρκεσίλαος, ἀλλὰ τοὺς περὶ τὴν ἰχθυοπωλίαν †ἀναδιδόντας ἑκάστοτε καὶ τοῦ κώδωνος ὀξέως ἀκούοντας. καὶ ὁ Δημοσθένης (19, 229) τὸν Φιλοκράτην φησὶν ἐκ τοῦ προδοτικοῦ χρυσίου ‘πόρνας καὶ ἰχθῦς ἀγοράζειν’, ἐπ’ ὀψοφαγίᾳ καὶ ἀσελγείᾳ τὸν ἄνδρα λοιδορῶν. ὁ δὲ Κτησιφῶν οὐ κακῶς, ὀψοφάγου τινὸς ἐν τῇ βουλῇ βοῶντος ῥαγήσεσθαι, ‘μηδαμῶς’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ ἄνθρωπε ποιήσῃς ἡμᾶς ἰχθυοβρώτους.’ ὁ δὲ τὸ στιχίδιον τοῦτο ποιήσας (Com. adesp. 459)

‘πρὸς καππάριον ζῇς δυνάμενος πρὸς ἀνθίαν’

[b] τί ποτε βούλεται; τί δ’ οἱ πολλοὶ βούλονται, πρὸς θεῶν, ὅταν ἡδέως γενέσθαι παρακαλοῦντες ἀλλήλους λέγωσι ‘σήμερον ἀκτάσωμεν’; οὐχὶ τὸ παρ’ ἀκτῇ δεῖπνον ἥδιστον ἀποφαίνουσιν ὥσπερ ἔστιν; οὐ διὰ τὰ κύματα καὶ τὰς ψηφῖδας (τί γάρ; ἐπ’ ἀκτῆς τις λέκιθον ὀψᾶται καὶ κάππαριν;), ἀλλ’ ὡς ἰχθύος ἀφθόνου καὶ νεαροῦ τὴν παράλιον τράπεζαν εὐποροῦσαν. καὶ μέντοι καὶ πιπράσκεται παρὰ λόγον ἁπάντων τιμιώτατον τὸ θαλάττιον ὄψον· ὁ γοῦν Κάτων οὐχ ὑπερβολικῶς ἀλλ’ ἀληθῶς πρὸς τὴν τρυφὴν καὶ πολυτέλειαν τῆς πόλεως δημηγορῶν εἶπεν, [c] ὅτι πλείονος πιπράσκεται ἐν Ῥώμῃ ἰχθὺς ἢ βοῦς κεράμιόν τε ταρίχους πωλοῦσι τιμῆς, ὅσην οὐκ ἂν ἑκατόμβη βούπρῳρος ἄλφοι κατακοπεῖσα. καίτοι φαρμάκων δυνάμεως ὁ ἰατρικώτατος ἄριστος κριτὴς καὶ μελῶν ἀρετῆς ὁ φιλομουσότατος, οὐκοῦν καὶ ἀρετῆς ὄψων ὁ φιλοψότατος. οὐ γὰρ Πυθαγόρᾳ γε τούτων οὐδὲ Ξενοκράτει διαιτητῇ χρηστέον, Ἀνταγόρᾳ δὲ τῷ ποιητῇ καὶ Φιλοξένῳ τῷ Ἐρύξιδος καὶ τῷ ζωγράφῳ Ἀνδροκύδῃ, ὅν φασι τὴν Σκύλλαν ζωγραφοῦντα τοὺς περὶ αὐτὴν ἰχθῦς ἐμπαθέστατα καὶ ζωτικώτατα δι’ ὀψοφαγίαν ἐξεργάσασθαι. Ἀνταγόρᾳ δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἀντίγονος ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ λοπάδα γόγγρων [d] ἕψοντι περιεζωσμένῳ παραστάς ‘ἆρά γ’’ εἶπε ‘τὸν Ὅμηρον οἴει τὰς τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος πράξεις ἀναγράφειν γόγγρους ἕψοντα;’ κἀκεῖνος οὐ φαύλως ‘σὺ δ’ οἴει’ ἔφησε ‘τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα τὰς πράξεις ἐκείνας ἐργάσασθαι πολυπραγμονοῦντα, τίς ἐν τῷ στρατοπέδῳ γόγγρον ἕψει;’ ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν ὁ Πολυκράτης ‘ἔγωγε συμβάλλομαι ‹καὶ ὑμῖν› καὶ νὴ Δία τοῖς ἰχθυοπώλαις ἀπὸ τῶν μαρτύρων καὶ τῆς συνηθείας.’

‘Ἐγὼ δ’’ ὁ Σύμμαχος ἔφη ‘τῷ πράγματι μετὰ σπουδῆς πρόσειμι καὶ διαλεκτικώτερον. εἰ γὰρ ὄψον ἐστὶ τὸ τὴν τροφὴν ἐφηδῦνον, ἄριστον ἂν ὄψον εἴη τὸ μάλιστα [τὸ] τὴν ὄρεξιν ἐπὶ τῷ σίτῳ κατασχεῖν δυνάμενον. [e] ὥσπερ οὖν οἱ προσαγορευθέντες Ἐλπιστικοὶ φιλόσοφοι συνεκτικώτατον εἶναι τοῦ βίου τὸ ἐλπίζειν ἀποφαί‹νονται› τῷ ἀπούσης ἐλπίδος οὐδ’ ἡδυνούσης ‹οὐκ ἀ›νεκτὸν εἶναι τὸν βίον, οὕτω καὶ τῆς ἐπὶ τὴν τροφὴν ὀρέξεως συνεκτικὸν θετέον οὗ μὴ παρόντος ἄχαρις γίνεται τροφὴ πᾶσα καὶ δυσπρό‹σφορος›. τῶν μὲν οὖν ἐκ γῆς τοιοῦτον οὐδὲν εὑρήσεις, τῶν δὲ θαλαττίων τὸν ἅλα πρῶτον, ‹οὗ χωρὶς› οὐδὲν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἐστιν ἐδώδιμον· ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ἄρτον οὗτος ἐμμιγνύμενος συνηδύνει (διὸ καὶ Δήμητρος σύνναος ὁ Ποσειδῶν) καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὄψων οἱ [f] ἅλες ἥδιστον ὄψον εἰσίν. οἱ γοῦν ἥρωες εὐτελοῦς καὶ λιτῆς ἐθάδες ὥσπερ ἀσκηταὶ διαίτης ὄντες καὶ τῆς τροφῆς πᾶσαν ἡδονὴν ἐπίθετον καὶ περίεργον ἀφελόντες, ὡς μηδ’ ἰχθύσι χρῆσθαι παρὰ τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον στρατοπεδεύοντες, οὐχ ὑπέμενον τὰ κρέα χωρὶς ἁλῶν προσφέρεσθαι, μαρτυροῦντες ὅτι τοῦτο τῶν ὄψων μόνον ἀπαραίτητόν ἐστιν. ὡς γὰρ τὰ χρώματα ‹τοῦ φω›τός, οὕτως οἱ χυμοὶ ‹τοῦ [669] [a] ἁ›λὸς δέονται πρὸς τὸ ‹κινῆ›σαι τὴν αἴσθησιν· εἰ δὲ μή, βαρεῖς τῇ γεύσει προσπίπτουσι καὶ ναυτιώδεις. ‘νέκυες γὰρ κοπρίων ἐκβλητότεροι’ καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (fr. 96), κρέας δὲ πᾶν νεκρόν ἐστιν καὶ νεκροῦ μέρος· ἡ δὲ τῶν ἁλῶν δύναμις, ὥσπερ ψυχὴ παραγενομένη, χάριν αὐτῷ καὶ ἡδονὴν προστίθησι. διὸ καὶ προλαμβάνουσι τῆς ἄλλης τροφῆς τὰ δριμέα καὶ τὰ ἁλμυρά, καὶ ὅλως ὅσα μάλιστα τῶν ἁλῶν μετέσχηκε· γίνεται γὰρ φίλτρα ταῦτα τῇ ὀρέξει πρὸς τὰ ἄλλ’ ὄψα, καὶ δελεασθεῖσα διὰ τούτων ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνα πρόσεισιν νεαλὴς καὶ πρόθυμος· ἐὰν δ’ ἀπ’ ἐκείνων ἄρξηται, ταχέως ἀπαγορεύει. οὐ μόνον τοίνυν [b] πρὸς τὴν τροφὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὸ ποτὸν ὄψον εἰσὶν οἱ ἅλες. τὸ μὲν γὰρ Ὁμηρικὸν ἐκεῖνο ‘κρόμυον ποτῷ ὄψον’ (Λ 630) ναύταις καὶ κωπηλάταις μᾶλλον ἢ βασιλεῦσιν ἐπιτήδειον ἦν· τὰ δ’ ὑφαλμυρίζοντα μετρίως τῶν σιτίων δι’ εὐστομίαν πᾶν μὲν οἴνου γένος ἡδὺ τῇ γεύσει καὶ λεῖον ἐπάγει, πᾶν δ’ ὕδωρ προσφιλὲς παρέχει καὶ †ἄλκιμον· ἀηδίας δὲ καὶ δυσχερείας, ἣν ἐμποιεῖ τὸ κρόμμυον, οὐδ’ ὀλίγον μετέσχηκεν· ἀλλὰ καὶ διαφορεῖ τὴν ἄλλην τροφὴν καὶ παραδίδωσιν εὐπειθῆ καὶ μαλακωτέραν τῇ πέψει, †εὔχαριν μὲν [γὰρ] ὄψου δύναμιν δὲ φαρμάκου τῷ σώματι τῶν ἁλῶν προσφερομένων. καὶ μὴν τά γ’ [c] ἄλλα θαλάττης ὄψα πρὸς τῷ ἡδίστῳ καὶ τὸ ἀβλαβέστατον ἔχει· κρεώδη μὲν γάρ ἐστιν, οὐ βαρύνει δ’ ὁμοίως ἀλλὰ καταπέττεται καὶ διαφορεῖται ῥᾳδίως. μαρτυρήσει δ’ οὑτοσὶ Ζήνων καὶ νὴ Δία Κράτων, οἳ τοὺς ἀσθενοῦντας πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ἐπὶ τὸν ἰχθὺν ἄγουσιν ὡς κουφότατον ὄψων. καὶ λόγον ἔχει τὴν θάλατταν ὑγιεινὰ καὶ διαπεπονημένα τοῖς σώμασιν ἐκτρέφειν, εἴ γε καὶ ἡμῖν ἀέρα λεπτότητι καὶ καθαρότητι πρόσφορον ἀναδίδωσιν.’

‘Ὀρθῶς’ ἔφη ‘λέγεις’ ὁ Λαμπρίας, ‘ἀλλ’ ἔτι τῷ λόγῳ προσφιλοσοφήσωμεν. ὁ γὰρ ἐμὸς πάππος εἰώθει λέγειν ἑκάστοτε τοὺς Ἰουδαίους ἐπισκώπτων, ὅτι τὸ [d] δικαιότατον κρέας οὐκ ἐσθίουσιν· ἡμεῖς δὲ φήσομεν δικαιότατον ὄψον εἶναι τὸ ἐκ θαλάττης. πρὸς μὲν γὰρ ταυτὶ τὰ χερσαῖα κἂν ἄλλο μηδὲν ἡμῖν ᾖ δίκαιον, ἀλλὰ τρέφεταί γε τοῖς αὐτοῖς καὶ λαμβάνει τὸν αὐτὸν ἀέρα, καὶ λουτρὰ καὶ ποτὸν αὐτοῖς ἅπερ ἡμῖν ἔστιν· ᾗ καὶ σφάττοντες ἐδυσωποῦντο φωνὴν ἀφιέντα γοερὰν καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα πεποιημένοι συνήθη καὶ σύντροφα ταῖς διαίταις. τὸ δὲ τῶν ἐναλίων γένος ἔκφυλον ὅλως καὶ ἄποικον ἡμῶν, ὥσπερ ἐν ἄλλῳ τινὶ κόσμῳ γεγονότων καὶ ζώντων, οὔτ’ ὄψις οὔτε φωνή τις οὔθ’ ὑπουργία παραιτεῖται τῆς προσ‹φορ›ᾶς (οὐδὲν γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἔχει χρήσασθαι ζῷον, ὃ μηδ’ ὅλως [e] ζῇ παρ’ ἡμῖν), οὐδὲ δεῖ τινος ἐπ’ αὐτὰ στοργῆς, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ Ἅιδης αὐτοῖς ἐστιν οὗτος ὁ παρ’ ἡμῖν τόπος· ἐλθόντα γὰρ εἰς αὐτὸν εὐθέως τέθνηκεν.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ε

Πότερον οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι σεβόμενοι τὴν ὗν ἢ δυσχεραίνοντες ἀπέχονται τῶν κρεῶν

Ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῦτ’ ἐρρήθη, βουλομένων τινῶν ἀντικατατείνειν τὸν ἕτερον λόγον ἐκκρούων ὁ Καλλίστρατος ἔφη ‘πῶς ὑμῖν δοκεῖ λελέχθαι τὸ πρὸς τοὺς Ἰουδαίους, [f] ὅτι τὸ δικαιότατον κρέας οὐκ ἐσθίουσιν;’ ‘ὑπερφυῶς’ ἔφη ὁ Πολυκράτης, ‘ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ προσδιαπορῶ, πότερον οἱ ἄνδρες τιμῇ τινι τῶν ὑῶν ἢ μυσαττόμενοι τὸ ζῷον ἀπέχονται τῆς βρώσεως αὐτοῦ· τὰ γὰρ παρ’ ἐκείνοις λεγόμενα μύθοις ἔοικεν, εἰ μή τινας ἄρα λόγους σπουδαίους ἔχοντες οὐκ ἐκφέρουσιν.’

‘Ἐγὼ μὲν τοίνυν’ εἶπεν ὁ Καλλίστρατος ‘οἶμαί [670] [a] τινα τιμὴν τὸ ζῷον ἔχειν παρὰ τοῖς ἀνδράσιν· εἰ δὲ δύσμορφον ἡ ὗς καὶ θολερόν, ‹ἀλλ’ οὐ› κανθάρου καὶ γρυ... καὶ κροκοδείλου καὶ ‹αἰλο›ύρου τὴν ὄψιν ἀτοπώτερον ἢ τὴν φύσιν ἀμουσότερον· οἷς ὡς ἁγιωτάτοις ἱερεῖς Αἰγυπτίων ‹ἄλλοις› ἄλλοι προσφέρονται. τὴν δ’ ὗν ἀπὸ χρηστῆς αἰτίας τιμᾶσθαι λέγουσι· πρώτη γὰρ σχίσασα τῷ προύχοντι τοῦ ῥύγχους, ὥς φασι, τὴν γῆν ἴχνος ἀρόσεως ἔθηκεν καὶ τὸ τῆς ὕνεως ὑφηγήσατ’ ἔργον· ὅθεν καὶ τοὔνομα γενέσθαι τῷ ἐργαλείῳ λέγουσιν ἀπὸ τῆς ὑός. οἱ δὲ τὰ μαλθακὰ καὶ κοῖλα τῆς χώρας Αἰγύπτιοι γεωργοῦντες οὐδ’ ἀρότου δέονται τὸ παράπαν· [b] ἀλλ’ ὅταν ὁ Νεῖλος ἀπορρέῃ καταβρέξας τὰς ἀρούρας, ἐπακολουθοῦντες τὰς ὗς κατέβαλον, αἱ δὲ χρησάμεναι πάτῳ καὶ ὀρυχῇ ταχὺ τὴν γῆν ἔτρεψαν ἐκ βάθους καὶ τὸν σπόρον ἀπέκρυψαν. οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν, εἰ διὰ τοῦτό τινες ὗς οὐκ ἐσθίουσιν, ἑτέρων ζῴων μείζονας ἐπ’ αἰτίαις γλίσχραις, ἐνίων δὲ καὶ πάνυ γελοίαις, τιμὰς ἐχόντων παρὰ τοῖς βαρβάροις. τὴν μὲν γὰρ μυγαλῆν ἐκτεθειάσθαι λέγουσιν ὑπ’ Αἰγυπτίων τυφλὴν οὖσαν, ὅτι τὸ σκότος τοῦ φωτὸς ἡγοῦντο πρεσβύτερον· τίκτεσθαι δ’ αὐτὴν ἐκ μυῶν πέμπτῃ γενεᾷ νουμηνίας οὔσης· ἔτι δὲ μειοῦσθαι τὸ ἧπαρ ἐν τοῖς ἀφανισμοῖς τῆς σελήνης. τὸν ‹δὲ› λέοντα τῷ ἡλίῳ συνοικειοῦσιν, ὅτι τῶν γαμψωνύχων τετραπόδων βλέποντα τίκτει μόνος, κοιμᾶται δ’ ἀκαρὲς χρόνου καὶ ὑπολάμπει τὰ ὄμματα καθεύδοντος· κρῆναι δὲ [καὶ] κατὰ χασμάτων λεοντείων ἐξιᾶσι κρουνούς, ὅτι Νεῖλος ἐπάγει νέον ὕδωρ ταῖς Αἰγυπτίων ἀρούραις ἡλίου τὸν λέοντα παροδεύοντος. τὴν δ’ ἶβίν φασιν ἐκκολαφθεῖσαν εὐθὺς ἕλκειν δύο δραχμάς, ὅσον ἄρτι παιδίου γεγονότος καρδίαν· ποιεῖν δὲ τῇ τῶν ποδῶν ἀποστάσει πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ πρὸς τὸ ῥύγχος ἰσόπλευρον τρίγωνον. καὶ τί ἄν τις Αἰγυπτίους αἰτιῷτο τῆς τοσαύτης ἀλογίας, ὅπου καὶ τοὺς Πυθαγορικοὺς ἱστοροῦσιν καὶ ἀλεκτρυόνα λευκὸν [c] σέβεσθαι καὶ τῶν θαλαττίων μάλιστα τρίγλης καὶ ἀκαλήφης ἀπέχεσθαι, τοὺς δ’ ἀπὸ Ζωροάστρου μάγους τιμᾶν μὲν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα τὸν χερσαῖον ἐχῖνον, ἐχθαίρειν δὲ τοὺς ἐνύδρους μῦς καὶ τὸν ἀποκτείνοντα πλείστους θεοφιλῆ καὶ μακάριον νομίζειν; οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τοὺς Ἰουδαίους, εἴπερ ἐβδελύττοντο τὴν ὗν, ἀποκτείνειν ἄν, ὥσπερ οἱ μάγοι τοὺς μῦς ἀποκτείνουσι· νῦν δ’ ὁμοίως τῷ φαγεῖν τὸ ἀνελεῖν ἀπόρρητόν ἐστιν αὐτοῖς. καὶ ἴσως ἔχει λόγον, ὡς τὸν ὄνον [δὲ] ἀναφήναντα πηγὴν αὐτοῖς ὕδατος τιμῶσιν, οὕτως καὶ τὴν ὗν σέβεσθαι σπόρου καὶ ἀρότου διδάσκαλον γενομένην· ‹εἰ μή,› νὴ Δία, καὶ τοῦ λαγωοῦ φήσει τις [d] ἀπέχεσθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας ὡς μυσερὸν καὶ ἀκάθαρτον δυσχεραίνοντας τὸ ζῷον.’

‘Οὐ δ‹ῆτ’’ εἶπεν› ὁ Λαμπρίας ὑπολ‹αβών› ‘ἀλλὰ τοῦ μὲν λαγωοῦ ‹φείδον›ται διὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸν †μένον ὑπ’ αὐτῶν μυ...στα θηρίον ἐμφερέστατον . ὁ γὰρ λαγὼς μεγέθους ἔοικε καὶ πάχους ἐνδεὴς ὄνος εἶναι· καὶ γὰρ ἡ χρόα καὶ τὰ ὦτα καὶ τῶν ὀμμάτων ἡ λιπαρότης καὶ τὸ λαμυρὸν ἔοικε θαυμασίως· ὥστε μηδὲν οὕτω †μηδὲ μικρὸν μεγάλῳ τὴν μορφὴν ὅμοιον γεγονέναι. εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία καὶ πρὸς τὰς ποιότητας αἰγυπτιάζοντες τὴν ὠκύτητα τοῦ ζῴου θεῖον ἡγοῦνται καὶ τὴν ἀκρίβειαν τῶν αἰσθητηρίων· [e] ὅ τε γὰρ ὀφθαλμὸς ἄτρυτός ἐστιν αὐτῶν, ὥστε καὶ καθεύδειν ἀναπεπταμένοις τοῖς ὄμμασιν, ὀξυηκοΐᾳ τε δοκεῖ διαφέρειν, ἣν Αἰγύπτιοι θαυμάσαντες ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς γράμμασιν ἀκοὴν σημαίνουσιν οὖς λαγωοῦ γράφοντες.

τὸ δ’ ὕειον κρέας οἱ ἄνδρες ἀφοσιοῦσθαι ‹δο›κοῦσιν, ὅτι μάλιστα ... οἱ βάρβαροι τὰς ἐπὶ ‹χρωτὸς› λεύκας καὶ λέπρας δυσχεραίνουσι καὶ τῇ προσβολῇ τὰ τοιαῦτα καταβόσκεσθαι πάθη τοὺς ἀνθρώπους οἴονται, [671] [a] πᾶσαν δ’ ὗν ὑπὸ τὴν γαστέρα λέπρας ἀνάπλεων καὶ ψωρικῶν ἐξανθημάτων ὁρῶμεν, ἃ δή, καχεξίας τινὸς ἐγγενομένης τῷ σώματι καὶ φθορᾶς, ἐπιτρέχειν δοκεῖ τοῖς †σώμασιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ θολερὸν περὶ τὴν δίαιταν τοῦ θρέμματος ἔχει τινὰ πονηρίαν· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄλλο βορβόρῳ χαῖρον οὕτω καὶ τόποις ῥυπαροῖς καὶ ἀκαθάρτοις ὁρῶμεν, ἔξω λόγου τιθέμενοι τὰ τὴν γένεσιν καὶ τὴν φύσιν ἐν αὐτοῖς ἔχοντα τούτοις. λέγουσι δὲ καὶ τὰ ὄμματα τῶν ὑῶν οὕτως ἐγκεκλάσθαι καὶ κατεσπάσθαι ταῖς ὄψεσιν, ὥστε μηδενὸς ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι μηδέποτε [b] τῶν ἄνω μηδὲ προσορᾶν τὸν οὐρανόν, ἂν μὴ φερομένων ὑπτίων ἀναστροφήν τινα παρὰ φύσιν αἱ κόραι λάβωσιν· διὸ καὶ μάλιστα κραυγῇ χρώμενον τὸ ζῷον ἡσυχάζειν, ὅταν οὕτω φέρηται, καὶ σιωπᾶν κατατεθαμβημένον ἀηθείᾳ τὰ οὐράνια καὶ κρείττονι φόβῳ τοῦ βοᾶν συνεχόμενον. εἰ δὲ δεῖ καὶ τὰ μυθικὰ προσλαβεῖν, λέγεται μὲν ὁ Ἄδωνις ὑπὸ τοῦ συὸς διαφθαρῆναι, τὸν δ’ Ἄδωνιν οὐχ ἕτερον ἀλλὰ Διόνυσον εἶναι νομίζουσιν, καὶ πολλὰ τῶν τελουμένων ἑκατέρῳ περὶ τὰς ἑορτὰς βεβαιοῖ τὸν λόγον· οἱ δὲ παιδικὰ τοῦ Διονύσου γεγονέναι· καὶ Φανοκλῆς, ἐρωτικὸς ἀνήρ, ου... δήπου πεποίηκεν (Anth. L. II 226 D.)

[c] ‘ἠδ’ ὡς θεῖον Ἄδωνιν ὀρειφοίτης Διόνυσος

ἥρπασεν, ἠγαθέην Κύπρον ἐποιχόμενος.’’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ϛ

Τίς ὁ παρ’ Ἰουδαίοις θεός

Θαυμάσας οὖν τὸ ἐπὶ πᾶσι ῥηθὲν ὁ Σύμμαχος ‘ἆρ’’ ἔφη ‘σὺ τὸν πατριώτην θεόν, ὦ Λαμπρία, ‘εὔιον ὀρσιγύναικα μαινομέναις ἀνθέοντα τιμαῖσι Διόνυσον’ (Lyr. adesp. 131) ἐγγράφεις καὶ ὑποποιεῖς τοῖς Ἑβραίων ἀπορρήτοις; ἢ τῷ ὄντι λόγος ἔστι τις ὁ τοῦτον ἐκείνῳ τὸν αὐτὸν ἀποφαίνων;’ ὁ δὲ Μοιραγένης ὑπολαβών ‘ἔα τοῦτον’ εἶπεν· ‘ἐγὼ γὰρ Ἀθηναῖος ὢν ἀποκρίνομαί σοι καὶ λέγω μηδέν’ ἄλλον εἶναι· καὶ τὰ μὲν πολλὰ τῶν εἰς τοῦτο τεκμηρίων μόνοις ἐστὶ ῥητὰ καὶ διδακτὰ τοῖς [d] μυουμένοις παρ’ ἡμῖν εἰς τὴν τριετηρικὴν παντέλειαν· ἃ δὲ λόγῳ διελθεῖν οὐ κεκώλυται πρὸς φίλους ἄνδρας, ἄλλως τε καὶ παρ’ οἶνον ἐπὶ τοῖς τοῦ θεοῦ δώροις, ἂν οὗτοι κελεύωσι, λέγειν ἕτοιμος.’

Πάντων οὖν κελευόντων καὶ δεομένων ‘πρῶτον μέν’ ἔφη ‘τῆς μεγίστης καὶ τελειοτάτης ἑορτῆς παρ’ αὐτοῖς ὁ καιρός ἐστιν καὶ ὁ τρόπος Διονύσῳ προσήκων. τὴν γὰρ λεγομένην νηστείαν ‹ἄγοντες› ἀκμάζοντι τρυγητῷ τραπέζας τε προτίθενται παντοδαπῆς ὀπώρας ὑπὸ σκηναῖς καὶ καλιάσιν ἐκ κλημάτων μάλιστα καὶ κιττοῦ διαπεπλεγμέναις· καὶ τὴν προτέραν τῆς ἑορτῆς σκηνὴν ὀνομάζουσιν.

[e] ὀλίγαις δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέραις ἄλλην ἑορτήν, οὐκ †ἂν δι’ αἰνιγμάτων ἀλλ’ ἄντικρυς Βάκχου καλουμένην, τελοῦσιν. ἔστι δὲ καὶ κραδηφορία τις ἑορτὴ καὶ θυρσοφορία παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ἐν ᾗ θύρσους ἔχοντες εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν εἰσίασιν· εἰσελθόντες δ’ ὅ τι δρῶσιν, οὐκ ἴσμεν, εἰκὸς δὲ βακχείαν εἶναι τὰ ποιούμενα· καὶ γὰρ σάλπιγξι μικραῖς, ὥσπερ Ἀργεῖοι τοῖς Διονυσίοις, ἀνακαλούμενοι τὸν θεὸν χρῶνται, καὶ κιθαρίζοντες ἕτεροι προΐασιν, οὓς αὐτοὶ Λευίτας προσονομάζουσιν, εἴτε παρὰ τὸν Λύσιον εἴτε μᾶλλον παρὰ τὸν Εὔιον τῆς ἐπικλήσεως γεγενημένης. οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τὴν τῶν σαββάτων ἑορτὴν μὴ παντάπασιν ἀπροσδιόνυσον εἶναι· [f] Σάβους γὰρ καὶ νῦν ἔτι πολλοὶ τοὺς Βάκχους καλοῦσιν καὶ ταύτην ἀφιᾶσι τὴν φωνὴν ὅταν ὀργιάζωσι τῷ θεῷ, ‹οὗ πίστω›σιν ἔστι δήπου καὶ παρὰ Δημοσθένους (18, 260) λαβεῖν καὶ παρὰ Μενάνδρου (fr. 1060), καὶ οὐκ ἀπὸ ‹τρό›που τις ἂν φαίη τοὔνομα πεποιῆσθαι πρός τινα [672] [a] σόβησιν, ἣ κατέχει τοὺς βακχεύοντας· αὐτοὶ δὲ τῷ λόγῳ μαρτυροῦσιν, ὅταν σάββατα τελῶσι, μάλιστα μὲν πίνειν καὶ οἰνοῦσθαι παρακαλοῦντες ἀλλήλους, ὅταν δὲ κωλύῃ τι μεῖζον, ἀπογεύεσθαί γε πάντως ἀκράτου νομίζοντες. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν εἰκότα φαίη τις ἂν εἶναι· κατὰ κράτος ‹δὲ τοὺς› ἐναντίους πρῶτον μὲν ὁ ἀρχιερεὺς ἐλέγχει, μιτρηφόρος τε προϊὼν ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς καὶ νεβρίδα χρυσόπαστον ἐνημμένος, χιτῶνα δὲ ποδήρη φορῶν καὶ κοθόρνους, κώδωνες δὲ πολλοὶ κατακρέμανται τῆς ἐσθῆτος, ὑποκομποῦντες ἐν τῷ βαδίζειν, ὡς καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν· ψόφοις δὲ χρῶνται περὶ τὰ νυκτέλια, καὶ χαλκοκρότους τὰς τοῦ [b] θεοῦ τιθήνας προσαγορεύουσιν· καὶ ὁ δεικνύμενος ἐν τοῖς †ἐναντίοις τοῦ νεὼ θύρσος ἐντετυπωμένος καὶ τύμπανα· ταῦτα γὰρ οὐδενὶ δήπουθεν ἄλλῳ θεῶν ἢ Διονύσῳ προσῆκεν. ἔτι τοίνυν μέλι μὲν οὐ προσφέρουσι ταῖς ἱερουργίαις, ὅτι δοκεῖ φθείρειν τὸν οἶνον κεραννύμενον καὶ τοῦτ’ ἦν σπονδὴ καὶ μέθυ, πρὶν ἄμπελον φανῆναι· καὶ μέχρι νῦν τῶν τε βαρβάρων οἱ μὴ ποιοῦντες οἶνον μελίτειον πίνουσιν, ὑποφαρμάσσοντες τὴν γλυκύτητα οἰνώδεσι ῥίζαις καὶ αὐστηραῖς, Ἕλληνές τε νηφάλια ταὐτὰ καὶ μελίσπονδα θύουσιν, ὡς ἀντίθετον φύσιν μάλιστα τοῦ μέλιτος πρὸς τὸν οἶνον ἔχοντος. ὅτι δὲ τοῦτο νομίζουσι, [c] κἀκεῖνο σημεῖον οὐ μικρόν ἐστι, τὸ πολλῶν τιμωριῶν οὐσῶν παρ’ αὐτοῖς μίαν εἶναι μάλιστα διαβεβλημένην, τὴν οἴνου τοὺς κολαζομένους ἀπείργουσαν, ὅσον ἂν τάξῃ χρόνον ὁ κύριος τῆς κολάσεως· τοὺς δ’ οὕτω κολα...

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ζ

Διὰ τί τὰς ὁμωνύμους τοῖς πλάνησιν ἡμέρας οὐ κατὰ τὴν ἐκείνων τάξιν ἀλλ’ ἐνηλλαγμένως ἀριθμοῦσιν· ἐν ᾧ καὶ περὶ ἡλίου τάξεως

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Η

Διὰ τί τῶν δακτύλων μάλιστα τῷ παραμέσῳ σφραγῖδας φοροῦσιν

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Θ

Εἰ δεῖ θεῶν εἰκόνας ἐν ταῖς σφραγῖσιν ἢ σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν φορεῖν

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ι

Διὰ τί τὸ μέσον τῆς θρίδακος αἱ γυναῖκες οὐ τρώγουσιν

[d]

ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΑΚΩΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΠΕΜΠΤΟΝ

Περὶ τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος ἡδονῶν, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, ἣν σὺ νῦν ἔχεις γνώμην, ἐμοὶ γοῦν ἄδηλόν ἐστιν,

‘ἐπειὴ μάλα πολλὰ μεταξὺ

οὔρεά τε σκιόεντα θάλασσά τε ἠχήεσσα’ (Hom. Α 156)·

πάλαι γε μὴν ἐδόκεις μὴ πάνυ τι συμφέρεσθαι μηδ’ ἐπαινεῖν τοὺς οὐδὲν ἴδιον τῇ ψυχῇ τερπνὸν οὐδὲ χαρτὸν οὐδ’ αἱρετὸν ὅλως ἀλλ’ ἀτεχνῶς τῷ σώματι παραζῶσαν [e] αὐτὴν οἰομένους τοῖς ἐκείνου συνεπιμειδιᾶν πάθεσι καὶ πάλιν αὖ συνεπισκυθρωπάζειν, ὥσπερ ἐκμαγεῖον ἢ κάτοπτρον εἰκόνας καὶ εἴδωλα τῶν ἐν σαρκὶ γινομένων αἰσθήσεων ἀναδεχομένην. ἄλλοις τε γὰρ πολλοῖς ἁλίσκεται ψεύδους τὸ ἀφιλόκαλον τοῦ δόγματος, ἔν τε τοῖς πότοις οἱ ἀστεῖοι καὶ χαρίεντες εὐθὺς μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ἐπὶ τοὺς λόγους ὥσπερ δευτέρας τραπέζας φερόμενοι καὶ διὰ λόγων εὐφραίνοντες ἀλλήλους, ὧν σώματι μέτεστιν οὐδὲν ἢ βραχὺ παντάπασιν, ἴδιόν τι τοῦτο τῇ ψυχῇ ταμιεῖον εὐπαθειῶν ἀποκεῖσθαι μαρτυροῦσι καὶ ‹ταύ›τας ἡδονὰς μόνας εἶναι [f] τῆς ψυχῆς, ἐκείνας δ’ ἀλλοτρίας, προσαναχρωννυμένας τῷ σώματι. ὥσπερ οὖν αἱ τὰ βρέφη ψωμίζουσαι τροφοὶ μικρὰ μετέχουσι τῆς ἡδονῆς, ὅταν δ’ ἐκεῖνα κορέσωσι καὶ κοιμίσωσι παυσάμενα κλαυθμυρισμῶν, τηνικαῦτα καθ’ ἑαυτὰς γινόμεναι τὰ πρόσφορα σιτία καὶ ποτὰ λαμβάνουσι [673] [a] καὶ ἀπολαύουσιν, οὕτως ἡ ψυχὴ τῶν περὶ πόσιν καὶ βρῶσιν ἡδονῶν μετέχει ταῖς τοῦ σώματος ὀρέξεσι δίκην τίτθης ὑπηρετοῦσα καὶ χαριζομένη δεομένῳ καὶ πραΰνουσα τὰς ἐπιθυμίας, ὅταν δ’ ἐκεῖνο μετρίως ἔχῃ καὶ ἡσυχάσῃ, πραγμάτων ἀπαλλαγεῖσα καὶ λατρείας ἤδη τὸ λοιπὸν ἐπὶ τὰς αὑτῆς ἡδονὰς τρέπεται, λόγοις εὐωχουμένη καὶ μαθήμασι καὶ ἱστορίαις καὶ τῷ ζητεῖν τι [ἀκούειν] τῶν περιττῶν. καὶ τί ἄν τις λέγοι περὶ τούτων, ὁρῶν ὅτι καὶ οἱ φορτικοὶ καὶ ἀφιλόλογοι μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ἐφ’ ἡδονὰς ἑτέρας τοῦ σώματος ἀπωτάτω τὴν διάνοιαν ἀπαίρουσιν, αἰνίγματα καὶ γρίφους καὶ θέσεις ὀνομάτων [b] ἐν ἀριθμοῖς †ὑποσύμβολα προβάλλοντες; ἐκ τούτου δὲ καὶ μίμοις καὶ ἠθολόγοις [καὶ Μενάνδρῳ] καὶ τοῖς Μένανδρον ὑποκρινομένοις τὰ συμπόσια χώραν ἔδωκεν, οὐδεμίαν ‘ἀλγηδόνα τοῦ σώματος ὑπεξαιρουμένοις’ οὐδὲ ποιοῦσι ‘λείαν ἐν σαρκὶ καὶ προσηνῆ κίνησιν’, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τὸ φύσει φιλοθέαμον ἐν ἑκάστῳ καὶ φιλόσοφον τῆς ψυχῆς ἰδίαν χάριν ζητεῖ καὶ τέρψιν, ὅταν τῆς περὶ τὸ σῶμα θεραπείας καὶ ἀσχολίας ἀπαλλαγῶμεν.

[c]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Α

Διὰ τί τῶν μιμουμένων τοὺς ὀργιζομένους καὶ λυπουμένους ἡδέως ἀκούομεν, αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν ἐν τοῖς πάθεσιν ὄντων ἀηδῶς

Περὶ ὧν ἐγένοντο λόγοι καὶ σοῦ παρόντος ἐν Ἀθήναις ἡμῖν, ὅτε Στράτων ὁ κωμῳδὸς εὐημέρησεν (ἦν γὰρ αὐτοῦ πολὺς λόγος), ἑστιωμένων ἡμῶν παρὰ Βοήθῳ τῷ Ἐπικουρείῳ· συνεδείπνουν δ’ οὐκ ὀλίγοι τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς αἱρέσεως. εἶθ’ οἷον ἐν φιλολόγοις περιέστησεν ἡ τῆς κωμῳδίας μνήμη τὸν λόγον εἰς ζήτησιν αἰτίας, δι’ ἣν ὀργιζομένων [d] ἢ λυπουμένων ἢ δεδιότων φωνὰς ἀκούοντες ἀχθόμεθα καὶ δυσκολαίνομεν, οἱ δ’ ὑποκρινόμενοι ταῦτα τὰ πάθη καὶ μιμούμενοι τὰς φωνὰς αὐτῶν καὶ τὰς διαθέσεις εὐφραίνουσιν ἡμᾶς. ἐκείνων μὲν οὖν ἁπάντων σχεδὸν εἷς ἦν λόγος· ἔφασαν γάρ, ἐπειδὴ κρείττων ὁ μιμούμενός ἐστι τοῦ πάσχοντος ἀληθῶς καὶ τῷ μὴ πεπονθέναι διαφέρει, συνιέντας ἡμᾶς τοῦτο τέρπεσθαι καὶ χαίρειν.

Ἐγὼ δέ, καίπερ ἐν ἀλλοτρίῳ χορῷ πόδα τιθείς, εἶπον ὅτι φύσει λογικοὶ καὶ φιλότεχνοι γεγονότες πρὸς τὸ λογικῶς καὶ τεχνικῶς πραττόμενον οἰκείως διακείμεθα καὶ θαυμάζομεν, ἂν ἐπιτυγχάνηται. ‘καθάπερ γὰρ ἡ μέλιττα [e] τῷ φιλόγλυκυς εἶναι πᾶσαν ὕλην, ᾗ τι μελιτῶδες ἐγκέκραται, περιέπει καὶ διώκει, οὕτως ὁ ἄνθρωπος, γεγονὼς φιλότεχνος καὶ φιλόκαλος, πᾶν ἀποτέλεσμα καὶ πρᾶγμα νοῦ καὶ λόγου μετέχον ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ ἀγαπᾶν πέφυκεν. εἰ γοῦν παιδίῳ μικρῷ προθείη τις ὁμοῦ [μικρὸν] μὲν ἄρτον, ὁμοῦ δὲ πεπλασμένον ἐκ τῶν ἀλεύρων κυνίδιον ἢ βοΐδιον, ἐπὶ τοῦτ’ ἂν ἴδοις φερόμενον· καὶ ὁμοίως ‹εἴ τις› ἀργύριον ἄσημον, ἕτερος δὲ ζῴδιον ἀργυροῦν ἢ ἔκπωμα παρασταίη διδούς, τοῦτ’ ἂν λάβοι μᾶλλον, ᾧ τὸ τεχνικὸν καὶ λογικὸν ἐνορᾷ καταμεμιγμένον. ὅθεν καὶ τῶν λόγων τοῖς [f] ᾐνιγμένοις χαίρουσι μᾶλλον οἱ τηλικοῦτοι καὶ τῶν παιδιῶν ταῖς περιπλοκήν τινα καὶ δυσκολίαν ἐχούσαις· ἕλκει γὰρ ὡς οἰκεῖον ἀδιδάκτως τὴν φύσιν τὸ γλαφυρὸν καὶ πανοῦργον. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ὁ μὲν ἀληθῶς ὀργιζόμενος ἢ λυπούμενος ἔν τισι κοινοῖς πάθεσι καὶ κινήμασιν ὁρᾶται, τῇ δὲ μιμήσει πανουργία τις ἐμφαίνεται καὶ πιθανότης ἄνπερ [674] [a] ἐπιτυγχάνηται, τούτοις μὲν ἥδεσθαι πεφύκαμεν ἐκείνοις δ’ ἀχθόμεθα. καὶ γὰρ ἐπὶ τῶν θεαμάτων ὅμοια πεπόνθαμεν· ἀνθρώπους μὲν γὰρ ἀποθνήσκοντας καὶ νοσοῦντας ἀνιαρῶς ὁρῶμεν· τὸν δὲ γεγραμμένον Φιλοκτήτην καὶ τὴν πεπλασμένην Ἰοκάστην, ἧς φασιν εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον ἀργύρου τι συμμῖξαι τὸν τεχνίτην, ὅπως ἐκλείποντος ἀνθρώπου καὶ μαραινομένου λάβῃ περιφάνειαν ὁ χαλκός, ‹ἰδόντες› ἡδόμεθα καὶ θαυμάζομεν. τοῦτο δ’’ εἶπον, ‘ἄνδρες Ἐπικούρειοι, καὶ τεκμήριόν ἐστι μέγα τοῖς Κυρηναϊκοῖς πρὸς ὑμᾶς τοῦ μὴ περὶ τὴν ὄψιν εἶναι μηδὲ περὶ τὴν [b] ἀκοὴν ἀλλὰ περὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ἡμῶν τὸ ἡδόμενον ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀκούσμασι καὶ θεάμασιν. ἀλεκτορὶς γὰρ βοῶσα συνεχῶς καὶ κορώνη λυπηρὸν ἄκουσμα καὶ ἀηδές ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ μιμούμενος ἀλεκτορίδα βοῶσαν καὶ κορώνην εὐφραίνει· καὶ φθισικοὺς μὲν ὁρῶντες δυσχεραίνομεν, ἀνδριάντας δὲ καὶ γραφὰς φθισικῶν ἡδέως θεώμεθα τῷ τὴν διάνοιαν ὑπὸ τῶν μιμημάτων ἄγεσθαι [καὶ] κατὰ τὸ οἰκεῖον. ἐπεὶ τί πάσχοντες ἢ τίνος ἔξωθεν γενομένου πάθους τὴν ‹ὗν τὴν› Παρμένοντος οὕτως ἐθαύμασαν, ὥστε παροιμιώδη γενέσθαι; καίτοι φασὶ τοῦ Παρμένοντος εὐδοκιμοῦντος ἐπὶ τῇ μιμήσει, ζηλοῦντας ἑτέρους ἀντεπιδείκνυσθαι· προκατειλημμένων [c] δὲ τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ λεγόντων ‘εὖ μὲν ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν πρὸς τὴν Παρμένοντος ὗν’, ἕνα λαβόντα δελφάκιον ὑπὸ μάλης προσελθεῖν· ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τῆς ἀληθινῆς φωνῆς ἀκούοντες ὑπεφθέγγοντο ‘τί οὖν αὕτη πρὸς τὴν Παρμένοντος ὗν;’ ἀφεῖναι τὸ δελφάκιον εἰς τὸ μέσον, ἐξελέγχοντα τῆς κρίσεως τὸ πρὸς δόξαν οὐ πρὸς ἀλήθειαν. ᾧ μάλιστα δῆλόν ἐστιν, ὅτι τὸ αὐτὸ τῆς αἰσθήσεως πάθος οὐχ ὁμοίως διατίθησι τὴν ψυχήν, ὅταν μὴ προσῇ δόξα τοῦ λογικῶς ἢ φιλοτίμως περαίνεσθαι τὸ γινόμενον.’

[d]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Β

Ὅτι παλαιὸν ἦν ἀγώνισμα τὸ τῆς ποιητικῆς

Ἐν Πυθίοις ἐγίνοντο λόγοι περὶ τῶν ἐπιθέτων ἀγωνισμάτων, ὡς ἀναιρετέα. παραδεξάμενοι γὰρ ἐπὶ τρισὶ τοῖς καθεστῶσιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς, αὐλητῇ Πυθικῷ καὶ κιθαριστῇ καὶ κιθαρῳδῷ, τὸν τραγῳδόν, ὥσπερ πύλης ἀνοιχθείσης οὐκ ἀντέσχον ἀθρόοις συνεπιτιθεμένοις καὶ συνεισιοῦσι παντοδαποῖς ἀκροάμασιν· ὑφ’ ὧν ποικιλίαν μὲν ἔσχεν οὐκ ἀηδῆ καὶ πανηγυρισμὸν ὁ ἀγών, τὸ δ’ αὐστηρὸν καὶ μουσικὸν [e] οὐ διεφύλαξεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πράγματα τοῖς κρίνουσιν παρέσχεν καὶ πολλὰς ὡς εἰκὸς ἡττωμένων πολλῶν ἀπεχθείας. οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ τὸ τῶν λογογράφων καὶ ποιητῶν ἔθνος ᾤοντο δεῖν ἀποσκευάσασθαι τοῦ ἀγῶνος, οὐχ ὑπὸ μισολογίας, ἀλλὰ πολὺ πάντων τῶν ἀγωνιστῶν γνωριμωτάτους ὄντας ἐδυσωποῦντο τούτους καὶ ἤχθοντο, πάντας ἡγούμενοι χαρίεντας, οὐ πάντων δὲ νικᾶν δυναμένων. ἡμεῖς οὖν ἐν τῷ συνεδρίῳ παρεμυθούμεθα τοὺς ‹τὰ› καθεστῶτα κινεῖν βουλομένους καὶ τῷ ἀγῶνι καθάπερ ὀργάνῳ πολυχορδίαν καὶ πολυφωνίαν ἐπικαλοῦντας. καὶ παρὰ τὸ [f] δεῖπνον, ἐστιῶντος ἡμᾶς Πετραίου τοῦ ἀγωνοθέτου, πάλιν ὁμοίων λόγων προσπεσόντων, ἠμύνομεν τῇ μουσικῇ· τήν τε ποιητικὴν ἀπεφαίνομεν οὐκ ὄψιμον οὐδὲ νεαρὰν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἱεροὺς ἀγῶνας ἀφιγμένην, ἀλλὰ πρόπαλαι στεφάνων ἐπινικίων τυγχάνουσαν. ἐνίοις μὲν οὖν ἐπίδοξος ἤμην ἕωλα παραθήσειν πράγματα, τὰς Οἰολύκου τοῦ Θετταλοῦ ταφὰς [675] [a] καὶ τὰς Ἀμφιδάμαντος τοῦ Χαλκιδέως ἐν αἷς Ὅμηρον καὶ Ἡσίοδον ἱστοροῦσιν ἔπεσι διαγωνίσασθαι. καταβαλὼν δὲ ταῦτα τῷ διατεθρυλῆσθαι πάνθ’ ὑπὸ τῶν γραμματικῶν, καὶ τοὺς ἐπὶ ταῖς Πατρόκλου ταφαῖς ἀναγινωσκομένους ὑπό τινων οὐχ ‘ἥμονας’ (Ψ 886) ἀλλὰ ‘ῥήμονας’, ὡς δὴ καὶ λόγων ἆθλα τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως προθέντος, ἀφείς, εἶπον ὅτι καὶ Πελίαν θάπτων Ἄκαστος ὁ υἱὸς ἀγῶνα ποιήματος παράσχοι καὶ Σίβυλλα νικήσειεν. ἐπιφυομένων δὲ πολλῶν καὶ τὸν βεβαιωτὴν ὡς ἀπίστου ‹καὶ› παραλόγου τῆς ἱστορίας ἀπαιτούντων, ἐπιτυχῶς ἀναμνησθεὶς ἀπέφαινον Ἀκέσανδρον ἐν τῷ [b] περὶ Λιβύης (FHG IV 285) ταῦθ’ ἱστοροῦντα. ‘καὶ τοῦτο μέν’ ἔφην ‘τὸ ἀνάγνωσμα τῶν οὐκ ἐν μέσῳ ἐστίν· τοῖς δὲ Πολέμωνος τοῦ Ἀθηναίου περὶ τῶν ἐν Δελφοῖς θησαυρῶν οἶμαι [ὅτι] πολλοῖς ὑμῶν ἐντυγχάνειν ἐπιμελές ἐστι καὶ χρή, πολυμαθοῦς καὶ οὐ νυστάζοντος ἐν τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς πράγμασιν ἀνδρός· ἐκεῖ τοίνυν εὑρήσετε γεγραμμένον (FHG III 123), ὡς ἐν τῷ Σικυωνίων θησαυρῷ χρυσοῦν ἀνέκειτο βιβλίον Ἀριστομάχης ἀνάθημα τῆς Ἐρυθραίας ἐπικῷ ... ποιήματι δὶς Ἴσθμια νενικηκυίας. οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ τὴν Ὀλυμπίαν’ ἔφην ‘ἄξιόν ἐστιν ὥσπερ εἱμαρμένην ἀμετάστατον καὶ ἀμετάθετον ἐν τοῖς ἀθλήμασιν ἐκπεπλῆχθαι. τὰ μὲν γὰρ Πύθια τῶν μουσικῶν [c] ἔσχε τρεῖς ἢ τέτταρας ἐπεισοδίους ἀγῶνας, ὁ δὲ γυμνικὸς ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πλεῖστον οὕτως κατέστη, τοῖς δ’ Ὀλυμπίοις πάντα προσθήκη πλὴν τοῦ δρόμου γέγονεν· πολλὰ δὲ καὶ θέντες ἔπειτ’ ἀνεῖλον, ὥσπερ τὸν τῆς κάλπης ἀγῶνα καὶ τὸν τῆς ἀπήνης· ἀνῃρέθη δὲ καὶ παισὶ πεντάθλοις στέφανος τεθείς· καὶ ὅλως πολλὰ περὶ τὴν πανήγυριν νενεωτέρισται. δέδια δ’ εἰπεῖν ὅτι πάλαι καὶ μονομαχίας ἀγὼν περὶ Πῖσαν ἤγετο μέχρι φόνου καὶ σφαγῆς τῶν ἡττωμένων καὶ ὑποπιπτόντων, μή με πάλιν ἀπαιτῆτε τῆς ἱστορίας βεβαιωτὴν κἂν διαφύγῃ τὴν μνήμην [d] ἐν οἴνῳ τὸ ὄνομα καταγέλαστος γένωμαι.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Γ

Τίς αἰτία δι’ ἣν ἡ πίτυς ἱερὰ Ποσειδῶνος ἐνομίσθη καὶ Διονύσου· καὶ ὅτι τὸ πρῶτον ἐστεφάνουν τῇ πίτυι τοὺς Ἴσθμια νικῶντας, ἔπειτα σελίνῳ, νυνὶ δὲ πάλιν τῇ πίτυι

Ἡ πίτυς ἐζητεῖτο καθ’ ὃν λόγον ἐν Ἰσθμίοις στέμμα γέγονε· καὶ γὰρ ἦν τὸ δεῖπνον ἐν Κορίνθῳ, Ἰσθμίων ἀγομένων ἑστιῶντος ἡμᾶς Λουκανίου τοῦ ἀρχιερέως.

[e] Πραξιτέλης μὲν οὖν ὁ περιηγητὴς τὸ μυθῶδες ἐπῆγεν, ὡς λεγόμενον εὑρεθῆναι τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Μελικέρτου πίτυι προσβεβρασμένον ὑπὸ τῆς θαλάττης· καὶ γὰρ οὐ πρόσω Μεγάρων εἶναι τόπον, ὃς ‘Καλῆς δρόμος’ ἐπονομάζεται, δι’ οὗ φάναι Μεγαρεῖς τὴν Ἰνὼ τὸ παιδίον ἔχουσαν δραμεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν θάλατταν. κοινῶς δ’ ὑπὸ πολλῶν λεγομένου ὡς ἴδιόν ἐστι στέμμα Ποσειδῶνος ἡ πίτυς, Λουκανίου δὲ προστιθέντος ὅτι καὶ τῷ Διονύσῳ καθωσιωμένον τὸ φυτὸν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου ταῖς περὶ τὸν Μελικέρτην συνῳκείωται τιμαῖς, αὐτὸ τοῦτο ζήτησιν παρεῖχεν, ᾧτινι λόγῳ Ποσειδῶνι καὶ Διονύσῳ τὴν πίτυν οἱ παλαιοὶ καθωσίωσαν.

[f] ἐδόκει δ’ ἡμῖν μηδὲν εἶναι παράλογον· ἀμφότεροι γὰρ οἱ θεοὶ τῆς ὑγρᾶς καὶ γονίμου κύριοι δοκοῦσιν ἀρχῆς εἶναι· καὶ Ποσειδῶνί γε Φυταλμίῳ Διονύσῳ δὲ Δενδρίτῃ πάντες ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν Ἕλληνες θύουσιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ κατ’ ἰδίαν τῷ Ποσειδῶνι φαίη τις ἂν τὴν [676] [a] πίτυν προσήκειν, οὐχ ὡς Ἀπολλόδωρος (Fr. Gr. Hist. 244 F 123) οἴεται παράλιον φυτὸν οὖσαν οὐδ’ ὅτι φιλήνεμός ἐστιν ὥσπερ ἡ θάλασσα (καὶ γὰρ τοῦτό τινες λέγουσιν), ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰς ναυπηγίας μάλιστα. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὴ καὶ τὰ ἀδελφὰ δένδρα, πεῦκαι καὶ στρόβιλοι, τῶν τε ξύλων παρέχει τὰ πλοϊμώτατα πίττης τε καὶ ῥητίνης ἀλοιφήν, ἧς ἄνευ τῶν συμπαγέντων ὄφελος οὐδὲν ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ. τῷ δὲ Διονύσῳ τὴν πίτυν ἀνιέρωσαν ὡς ἐφηδύνουσαν τὸν οἶνον· τὰ γὰρ πιτυώδη χωρία λέγουσιν ἡδύοινον τὴν ἄμπελον φέρειν. καὶ τὴν θερμότητα τῆς γῆς Θεόφραστος αἰτιᾶται· καθόλου γὰρ ἐν ἀργιλώδεσι τόποις φύεσθαι τὴν [b] πίτυν, εἶναι δὲ τὴν ἄργιλον θερμήν, διὸ καὶ συνεκπέττειν τὸν οἶνον, ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ ἐλαφρότατον καὶ ἥδιστον ἡ ἄργιλος ἀναδίδωσιν, ἔτι δὲ καὶ καταμιγνυμένη πρὸς σῖτον ἐπίμετρον ποιεῖ δαψιλές, ἁδρύνουσα καὶ διογκοῦσα τῇ θερμότητι τὸν πυρόν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς πίτυος αὐτῆς εἰκὸς ἀπολαύειν τὴν ἄμπελον, ἐχούσης ἐπιτηδειότητα πολλὴν πρὸς σωτηρίαν οἴνου καὶ διαμονήν· τῇ τε γὰρ πίττῃ πάντες ἐξαλείφουσι τὰ ἀγγεῖα, καὶ τῆς ῥητίνης ὑπομιγνύουσι πολλοὶ τῷ οἴνῳ καθάπερ Εὐβοεῖς τῶν Ἑλλαδικῶν καὶ τῶν Ἰταλικῶν οἱ περὶ τὸν Πάδον οἰκοῦντες, [c] ἐκ δὲ τῆς περὶ Βίενναν Γαλατίας ὁ πισσίτης οἶνος κατακομίζεται, διαφερόντως τιμώμενος ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων. οὐ γὰρ μόνον εὐωδίαν τινὰ τὰ τοιαῦτα προσδίδωσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν οἶνον [ἐμποιεῖ] παρίστησι ταχέως ἐξαιροῦντα τῇ θερμότητι τοῦ οἴνου τὸ νεαρὸν καὶ ὑδατῶδες.

Ὡς δὲ ταῦτ’ ἐρρήθη, τῶν ῥητόρων ὁ μάλιστα δοκῶν ἀναγνώσμασιν ἐντυγχάνειν ἐλευθερίοις ‘ὦ πρὸς θεῶν’ εἶπεν, ‘οὐ γὰρ ἐχθὲς ἡ πίτυς ἐνταῦθα καὶ πρῴην στέμμα γέγονε τῶν Ἰσθμίων, πρότερον δὲ τοῖς σελίνοις ἐστέφοντο; καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔστι μὲν ἐν τῇ κωμῳδίᾳ φιλαργύρου τινὸς ἀκοῦσαι λέγοντος (Com. adesp. 153)

‘τὰ δ’ Ἴσθμι’ ἀποδοίμην ἂν ἡδέως ὅσου

[d] ὁ τῶν σελίνων στέφανός ἐστιν ὤνιος.’

ἱστορεῖ δὲ καὶ Τίμαιος ὁ συγγραφεύς, ὅτι Κορινθίοις, ὁπηνίκα μαχούμενοι πρὸς Καρχηδονίους ἐβάδιζον ὑπὲρ τῆς Σικελίας, ἐνέβαλόν τινες ὄνοι σέλινα κομίζοντες· οἰωνισαμένων δὲ τῶν πολλῶν τὸ σύμβολον ὡς οὐ χρηστόν, ὅτι δοκεῖ τὸ σέλινον ἐπικήδειον εἶναι καὶ τοὺς ἐπισφαλῶς νοσοῦντας δεῖσθαι τοῦ σελίνου φαμέν, ἄλλως θ’ ὁ Τιμολέων ἐθάρρυνεν αὐτοὺς καὶ ἀνεμίμνησκε τῶν Ἰσθμοῖ σελίνων, οἷς ἀναστέφουσι Κορίνθιοι τοὺς νικῶντας. ἔτι τοίνυν ἡ Ἀντιγόνου ναυαρχὶς ἀναφύσασα περὶ πρύμναν αὐτομάτως σέλινον Ἰσθμία ἐπωνομάσθη. καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ [e] σκολιὸν ἐπίγραμμα †δῆλον κεραμέα νομίζει †διαβεβυσμένην σελίνῳ· σύγκειται δ’ οὕτω

‘χθὼν ἡ †παλὰς γῆ πυρὶ κατῃθαλωμένη

κεύθει κελαινὸν αἷμα Διονύσου θοοῦ,

ἔχουσα κλῶνας Ἰσθμικοὺς ἀνὰ στόμα.’

ἦ ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἀνεγνώκαθ’ ὑμεῖς οἱ τὴν πίτυν ὡς οὐκ ἐπείσακτον οὐδὲ νέον ἀλλὰ πάτριον καὶ παλαιὸν δὴ στέμμα τῶν Ἰσθμίων σεμνύνοντες;’

Ἐκίνησεν οὖ‹ν τοὺς› νέους ὡς ἂν πολυμαθὴς ἀνὴρ καὶ πολυγράμματος. ὁ μέντοι Λουκάνιος εἰς ἐμὲ βλέψας ἅμα καὶ μειδιῶν ‘ὦ Πόσειδον’ ἔφη ‘τοῦ πλήθους τῶν γραμμάτων· ἕτεροι δ’ ἡμῶν τῆς ἀμαθίας ὡς ἔοικε καὶ [f] τῆς ἀνηκοΐας ἀπέλαυον ἀναπείθοντες τοὐναντίον, ὡς ἡ μὲν πίτυς ἦν στέμμα τῶν ἀγώνων πάτριον, ἐκ δὲ Νεμέας κατὰ ζῆλον ὁ τοῦ σελίνου ξένος ὢν ἐπεισῆλθε δι’ Ἡρακλέα καὶ κρατήσας ἠμαύρωσεν ἐκεῖνον ὡς †ἱερὸν ἐπιτήδειον· εἶτα μέντοι χρόνῳ πάλιν ἀνακτησαμένη τὸ πάτριον γέρας ἡ [677] [a] πίτυς ἀνθεῖ τῇ τιμῇ. ἐγὼ γοῦν ἀνεπειθόμην καὶ προσεῖχον, ὥστε καὶ τῶν μαρτυρίων ἐκμαθεῖν πολλὰ καὶ μνημονεύειν, Εὐφορίωνα μὲν οὕτω πως περὶ Μελικέρτου λέγοντα (fr. 98 Scheidw., 84 Powell, Meineke Anal. Al. p. 80 ss.)

‘κλαίοντες δέ τε κοῦρον ἐπ’ †αἰλίσι πιτύεσσι

κάτθεσαν, ὁκκότε δὴ στεφάνωμ’ ἄθλοις φορέονται.

οὐ γάρ πω τρηχεῖα λαβὴ κατεμήσατο χειρῶν

Μήνης παῖδα χάρωνα παρ’ Ἀσωποῦ γενετείρῃ,

ἐξότε πυκνὰ σέλινα κατὰ κροτάφων ἐβάλοντο·’

Καλλίμαχον δὲ μᾶλλον διασαφοῦντα· λέγει δ’ ὁ Ἡρακλῆς αὐτῷ περὶ τοῦ σελίνου (fr. 103 Schn.)

[b] ‘καί μιν Ἀλητιάδαι, πουλὺ γεγειότερον

τοῦδε παρ’ Αἰγαίωνι θεῷ τελέοντες ἀγῶνα,

θήσουσιν νίκης σύμβολον Ἰσθμιάδος,

ζήλῳ τῶν Νεμέηθε· πίτυν δ’ ἀποτιμήσουσιν,

ἣ πρὶν ἀγωνιστὰς ἔστεφε τοὺς Ἐφύρῃ.’

ἔτι δ’ οἶμαι Προκλέους ἐντετυχηκέναι γραφῇ (FHG II 342) περὶ τῶν Ἰσθμίων ἱστοροῦντος, ὅτι τὸν πρῶτον ἀγῶν’ ἔθεσαν περὶ στεφάνου πιτυΐνου· ὕστερον δέ, τοῦ ἀγῶνος ἱεροῦ γενομένου, ἐκ τῆς Νεμεακῆς πανηγύρεως μετήνεγκαν ἐνταῦθα τὸν τοῦ σελίνου στέφανον. ὁ δὲ Προκλῆς οὗτος ἦν εἷς τῶν ἐν Ἀκαδημίᾳ Ξενοκράτει συσχολασάντων.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Δ

[c]

Περὶ τοῦ ‘ζωρότερον δὲ κέραιε’

Γελοῖος ἐδόκει τισὶ τῶν συνδειπνούντων ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἀκρατότερον ἐγχεῖν τὸν Πάτροκλον κελεύων, εἶτ’ αἰτίαν τοιαύτην ἐπιλέγων (Ι 204)

‘οἱ γὰρ φίλτατοι ἄνδρες ἐμῷ ὑπέασι μελάθρῳ.’

Νικήρατος μὲν οὖν ὁ ἑταῖρος ἡμῶν ὁ Μακεδὼν ἄντικρυς ἀπισχυρίζετο μὴ ἄκρατον ἀλλὰ θερμὸν εἰρῆσθαι τὸ ‘ζωρὸν’ ἀπὸ τοῦ ζωτικοῦ καὶ τῆς ζέσεως, ὃ δὴ καὶ λόγον ἔχειν, ἀνδρῶν ἑταίρων παρόντων νέον ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς κεράννυσθαι κρατῆρα· καὶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς, ὅταν τοῖς θεοῖς ἀποσπένδειν [d] μέλλωμεν, νεοκρᾶτα ποιεῖν. Σωσικλῆς δ’ ὁ ποιητὴς τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους ἐπιμνησθεὶς εἰρηκότος ἐν τῇ καθόλου μεταβολῇ γίνεσθαι (fr. 35, 15) ‘ζωρά τε τὰ πρὶν ἄκρητα’ μᾶλλον ἔφη τὸ εὔκρατον ἢ τὸ ἄκρατον ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ζωρὸν λέγεσθαι καὶ μηδέν γε κωλύειν ἐπικελεύεσθαι τῷ Πατρόκλῳ τὸν Ἀχιλλέα παρασκευάζειν εὔκρατον εἰς πόσιν τὸν οἶνον· εἰ δ’ ἀντὶ τοῦ ζωροῦ ‘ζωρότερον’ εἶπεν, ὥσπερ ‘δεξιτερὸν’ ἀντὶ τοῦ δεξιοῦ καί ‘θηλύτερον’ ἀντὶ τοῦ θήλεος, οὐκ ἄτοπον εἶναι· χρῆσθαι γὰρ ἐπιεικῶς ἀντὶ τῶν ἁπλῶν τοῖς συγκριτικοῖς. Ἀντίπατρος δ’ ὁ ἑταῖρος ἔφη τοὺς μὲν ἐνιαυτοὺς ἀρχαϊκῶς ‘ὥρους’ λέγεσθαι, [e] τὸ ‹δὲ› ζα μέγαθος εἰωθέναι σημαίνειν· ὅθεν τὸν πολυετῆ καὶ παλαιὸν οἶνον ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως ζωρὸν ὠνομάσθαι.

Ἐγὼ δ’ ἀνεμίμνησκον αὐτούς, ὅτι τῷ ‘ζωρότερον’ τὸ θερμὸν ἔνιοι σημαίνεσθαι λέγουσι τῷ δὲ θερμοτέρῳ τὸ τάχιον· ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς ἐγκελευόμεθα πολλάκις τοῖς διακονοῦσι θερμότερον ἅπτεσθαι τῆς διακονίας. ἀλλὰ μειρακιώδη τὴν φιλοτιμίαν αὐτῶν ἀπέφαινον, δεδιότων ὁμολογεῖν ἀκρατότερον εἰρῆσθαι τὸ ζωρότερον, ὡς ἐν ἀτόπῳ τινὶ τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως ἐσομένου· καθάπερ ὁ Ἀμφιπολίτης Ζωίλος ὑπελάμβανεν, ἀγνοῶν ὅτι πρῶτον μὲν ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς τὸν Φοίνικα καὶ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα πρεσβυτέρους ὄντας εἰδὼς [f] οὐχ ὑδαρεῖ χαίροντας ἀλλ’ ἀκρατοτέρῳ, καθάπερ οἱ ἄλλοι γέροντες, ἐπιτεῖναι κελεύει τὴν κρᾶσιν. ἔπειτα Χείρωνος ὢν μαθητὴς καὶ τῆς περὶ τὸ σῶμα διαίτης οὐκ ἄπειρος ἐλογίζετο δήπουθεν, ὅτι τοῖς ἀργοῦσι καὶ σχολάζουσι παρὰ τὸ εἰωθὸς σώμασιν ἀνειμένη καὶ μαλακωτέρα κρᾶσις ἁρμόζει· [678] [a] καὶ γὰρ τοῖς ἵπποις ἐμβάλλει (Β 776) μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων χορτασμάτων τὸ σέλινον οὐκ ἀλόγως, ἀλλ’ ὅτι βλάπτονται μὲν οἱ σχολάζοντες ἀσυνήθως ἵπποι τοὺς πόδας, ἔστι δὲ τούτου μάλιστ’ ἴαμα τὸ σέλινον· ἄλλοις γοῦν οὐκ ἂν εὕροις παραβαλλόμενον ἵπποις ἐν Ἰλιάδι σέλινον ἤ τινα τοιοῦτον χιλόν· ἀλλ’ ἰατρὸς ὢν ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς τῶν θ’ ἵππων πρὸς τὸν καιρὸν οἰκείως ἐπεμελεῖτο καὶ τῷ σώματι τὴν ἐλαφροτάτην δίαιταν, ὡς ὑγιεινοτάτην ἐν τῷ σχολάζειν, παρεσκεύαζεν· ἄνδρας δ’ ἐν μάχῃ καὶ ἀγῶνι δι’ ἡμέρας γεγενημένους οὐχ ὁμοίως ἀξιῶν διαιτᾶν [b] τοῖς ἀργοῦσιν ἐπιτεῖναι τὴν κρᾶσιν ἐκέλευσε. καὶ μὴν οὐδὲ φύσει φαίνεται φίλοινος ἀλλ’ ἀπηνὴς ὁ Ἀχιλλεύς· (Υ 467)

‘οὐ γάρ τι γλυκύθυμος ἀνὴρ ἦν οὐδ’ ἀγανόφρων,

ἀλλὰ μάλ’ ἐμμεμαώς·’

καί που παρρησιαζόμενος ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ ‘πολλάς’ φησίν (Ι 325) ‘ἀύπνους νύκτας ἰαῦσαι·’ βραχὺς δ’ ὕπνος οὐκ ἐξαρκεῖ τοῖς χρωμένοις ἀκράτῳ. λοιδορούμενος δὲ τῷ Ἀγαμέμνονι πρῶτον αὐτὸν ‘οἰνοβαρῆ’ προσείρηκεν (Α 225), ὡς μάλιστα τῶν νοσημάτων τὴν οἰνοφλυγίαν προβαλλόμενος. διὰ ταῦτα δὴ πάντα λόγον εἶχεν αὐτὸν ἐννοῆσαι, τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐπιφανέντων, μή ποθ’ ἡ συνήθης κρᾶσις αὐτῷ τοῦ οἴνου πρὸς ἐκείνους ἀνειμένη καὶ ἀνάρμοστός ἐστιν.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ε

[c]

Περὶ τῶν πολλοὺς ἐπὶ δεῖπνον καλούντων

Τὸ περὶ τὰς κατακλίσεις φαινόμενον ἄτοπον πλείονα λόγον παρέσχεν ἐν ταῖς ὑποδοχαῖς, ἃς ἐποιεῖτο τῶν φίλων ἕκαστος ἑστιῶν ἡμᾶς ἥκοντας ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας· ἐκαλοῦντο γὰρ ἀεὶ πολλοὶ τῶν ὁπωσοῦν προσήκειν δοκούντων, καὶ τὰ συμπόσια θορυβώδεις εἶχε τὰς συμπεριφορὰς καὶ τὰς διαλύσεις ταχείας. ἐπειδὴ δ’ Ὀνησικράτης ὁ ἰατρὸς οὐ πολλοὺς ἀλλὰ τοὺς σφόδρα συνήθεις καὶ [d] οἰκειοτάτους παρέλαβεν ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον, ἐφάνη μοι τὸ λεγόμενον ὑπὸ Πλάτωνος (Rep. 422e 423b) ‘αὐξομένην ‹πόλιν› πόλεις οὐ πόλιν’ †συμποσίω δεδόσθαι . ‘καὶ γὰρ συμποσίου μέγεθος ἱκανόν ἐστιν, ἄχρι οὗ συμπόσιον ἐθέλει μένειν· ἐὰν δ’ ὑπερβάλῃ διὰ πλῆθος, ὡς μηκέτι προσήγορον ἑαυτῷ μηδὲ συμπαθὲς εἶναι ταῖς φιλοφροσύναις μηδὲ γνώριμον, οὐδὲ συμπόσιόν ἐστι. δεῖ γὰρ οὐχ ὥσπερ ἐν στρατοπέδῳ διαγγέλοις οὐδ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τριήρει χρῆσθαι κελευσταῖς, αὐτοὺς δὲ δι’ ἑαυτῶν ἐντυγχάνειν ἀλλήλοις, ὥσπερ χοροῦ τοῦ συμποσίου τὸν κρασπεδίτην τῷ κορυφαίῳ συνήκοον ἔχοντος.’

Ἐμοῦ δὲ ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος, εἰς μέσον ἤδη φθεγξάμενος

[e]ὁ πάππος ἡμῶν Λαμπρίας ‘ἆρ’ οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘οὐ περὶ τὰ δεῖπνα μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τὰς κλήσεις δεόμεθα τῆς ἐγκρατείας; ἔστι γάρ τις οἶμαι καὶ φιλανθρωπίας ἀκρασία, μηδένα παρερχομένης τῶν συμποτῶν ἀλλὰ πάντας ἑλκούσης ὡς ἐπὶ θέαν ἢ ἀκρόασιν. ἔμοιγ’ οὖν οὔτ’ ἄρτος οὔτ’ οἶνος ἐπιλείπων τοῖς κεκλημένοις οὕτω δοκεῖ τὸν κεκληκότα ποιεῖν γελοῖον, ὡς χώρα καὶ τόπος· ὧν καὶ μὴ κεκλημένοις ἀλλ’ ἐπελθοῦσιν αὐτομάτως ξένοις καὶ ἀλλοτρίοις ἀεὶ παρεσκευασμένην ἀφθονίαν ὑπάρχειν δεῖ. ἔτι δ’ ἄρτου μὲν καὶ οἴνου ἐπιλειπόντων ἔστι καὶ τοὺς [f] οἰκέτας ὡς κλέπτοντας αἰτιᾶσθαι, τόπου δὲ πενία καὶ κατανάλωσις εἰς πλῆθος ὀλιγωρία τίς ἐστι τοῦ καλοῦντος. εὐδοκιμεῖ δὲ θαυμαστῶς καὶ Ἡσίοδος εἰπών (Theog. 116) ‘ἤτοι μὲν πρώτιστα χάος γένετ’·’ χώραν γὰρ ἔδει καὶ [679] [a] τόπον προϋποκεῖσθαι τοῖς γινομένοις, οὐχ ὡς χθὲς οὑμὸς υἱός’ ἔφη ‘τὸ Ἀναξαγόρειον (fr. 1) ‘ἦν ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα’ τὸ σύνδειπνον ἐποίησεν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ κἂν τόπος ὑπάρχῃ καὶ παρασκευή, τὸ πλῆθος αὐτὸ φυλακτέον ὡς ἄμικτον τὴν συνουσίαν ποιοῦν καὶ ἀπροσήγορον· οἴνου γὰρ ἀνελεῖν ἧττόν ἐστι κακὸν ἢ λόγου κοινωνίαν ἐκ δείπνου· διὸ καὶ Θεόφραστος (fr. 76 Wi.) ἄοινα συμπόσια παίζων ἐκάλει τὰ κουρεῖα διὰ τὴν λαλιὰν τῶν προσκαθιζόντων. λόγων δὲ κοινωνίαν ἀναιροῦσιν οἱ πολλοὺς εἰς ταὐτὸ συμφοροῦντες, μᾶλλον δ’ ὀλίγους ποιοῦσιν ἀλλήλοις συνεῖναι· [καὶ] κατὰ δύο γὰρ ἢ τρεῖς ἀπολαμβάνοντες [b] ἐντυγχάνουσι καὶ προσδιαλέγονται, τοὺς δὲ πόρρω κατακειμένους οὐδ’ ἴσασιν οὐδὲ προσορῶσιν ἵππου δρόμον ἀπέχοντας (Λ 7)

‘ἠμὲν ἐπ’ Αἴαντος κλισίας Τελαμωνιάδαο

ἠδ’ ἐπ’ Ἀχιλλῆος.’

ὅθεν οὐκ ὀρθῶς οἱ πλούσιοι νεανιεύονται κατασκευάζοντες οἴκους τριακοντακλίνους καὶ μείζους· ἀμίκτων γὰρ αὕτη καὶ ἀφίλων δείπνων ἡ παρασκευὴ καὶ πανηγυριάρχου μᾶλλον ἢ συμποσιάρχου δεομένων. ἀλλ’ ἐκείνοις μὲν ταῦτα συγγνώμη ποιεῖν· ἄπλουτον γὰρ οἴονται τὸν πλοῦτον καὶ τυφλὸν ἀληθῶς καὶ ἀνέξοδον, ἂν μὴ μάρτυρας ἔχῃ ‹καὶ› καθάπερ τραγῳδία θεατάς· ἡμῖν δ’ ἂν ἴαμα γένοιτο τοῦ πολλοὺς ὁμοῦ συνάγειν τὸ πολλάκις [c] κατ’ ὀλίγους παραλαμβάνειν. οἱ γὰρ σπανίως καὶ ‘δι’ Ἅρματος’ ὥς φασιν ἑστιῶντες ἀναγκάζονται τὸν ὁπωσοῦν ἐπιτήδειον ἢ γνώριμον καταγράφειν· οἱ δὲ συνεχέστερον κατὰ τρεῖς ἢ τέτταρας ἀναλαμβάνοντες ὥσπερ πορθμεῖα τὰ συμπόσια κουφότερα ποιοῦσι. ποιεῖ δέ τινα τοῦ πολλοῦ τῶν φίλων πλήθους διάκρισιν καὶ ὁ τῆς αἰτίας διηνεκὴς ἐπιλογισμός· ὡς γὰρ ἐπὶ τὰς χρείας οὐ πάντας ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἁρμόττοντας ἑκάστῃ παρακαλοῦμεν, βουλευόμενοι μὲν τοὺς φρονίμους δικαζόμενοι δὲ τοὺς λέγοντας ἀποδημοῦντες δὲ τοὺς ἐλαφροὺς μάλιστα τοῖς βιωτικοῖς καὶ σχολὴν ἄγοντας, οὕτως ἐν ταῖς ὑποδοχαῖς ἑκάστοτε τοὺς ἐπιτηδείους παραληπτέον. ἐπιτήδειοι δὲ τῷ μὲν ἡγεμόνα δειπνίζοντι συνδειπνεῖν οἵ τ’ ἄρχοντες, ἐὰν ὦσι φίλοι, καὶ οἱ πρῶτοι τῆς πόλεως· ἐν δὲ γάμοις ἢ [καὶ] γενεθλίοις οἱ κατὰ γένος προσήκοντες καὶ Διὸς ὁμογνίου [d] κοινωνοῦντες· ἐν δὲ ταῖς τοιαύταις ὑποδοχαῖς ἢ προπομπαῖς τοὺς ἐκείνοις μάλιστα κεχαρισμένους εἰς ταὐτὸ συνακτέον. οὐδὲ γὰρ θεῷ θύοντες πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις θεοῖς, ‹ἀλλὰ› μάλιστα [καὶ] συννάοις καὶ συμβώμοις κατευχόμεθα, καὶ τριῶν κρατήρων κιρναμένων τοῖς μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου σπένδομεν τοῖς δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ δευτέρου τοῖς δ’ ἀπὸ [e] τοῦ τελευταίου· ‘φθόνος γὰρ ἔξω θείου χοροῦ ἵσταται’ (Plat. Phaedr. 247a)· θεῖος δέ που καὶ ὁ τῶν φίλων χορὸς εὐγνωμόνως διανεμόμενος ἐν ταῖς συμπεριφοραῖς.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ϛ

Τίς αἰτία τῆς ἐν ἀρχῇ στενοχωρίας τῶν δειπνούντων εἶθ’ ὕστερον εὐρυχωρίας

Ῥηθέντων δὲ τούτων, εὐθὺς ἐζητεῖτο περὶ τῆς ἐν ἀρχῇ στενοχωρίας τῶν κατακειμένων εἶτ’ ἀνέσεως· οὗ τοὐναντίον εἰκὸς ἦν συμβαίνειν διὰ τὴν ἐπὶ τοῦ δείπνου [f] πλήρωσιν. ἔνιοι μὲν οὖν ἡμῶν τὸ σχῆμα τῆς κατακλίσεως ᾐτιῶντο· πλατεῖς γὰρ ὡς ἐπίπαν κατακειμένους δειπνεῖν, ἅτε δὴ τὴν δεξιὰν προτείνοντας ἐπὶ τὰς τραπέζας· δειπνήσαντας δ’ ἀναστρέφειν αὑτοὺς μᾶλλον ἐπὶ πλευράν, ὀξὺ τὸ σχῆμα ποιοῦντας τοῦ σώματος καὶ οὐκέθ’ ὡς εἰπεῖν κατ’ ἐπίπεδον, ἀλλὰ κατὰ γραμμὴν τῆς χώρας ἁπτομένους· [680] [a] ὥσπερ οὖν οἱ ἀστράγαλοι τόπον ἐλάττω κατέχουσιν ὀρθοὶ πίπτοντες ἢ πρημεῖς, οὕτως ἡμῶν ἕκαστον ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν ἐπὶ στόμα προνεύειν ἀποβλέποντα πρὸς τὴν τράπεζαν ὕστερον δὲ μετασχηματίζειν ἐπὶ βάθος ἐκ πλάτους τὴν κατάκλισιν. οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τὴν συνένδοσιν τῆς στρωμνῆς προεφέροντο· θλιβομένην γὰρ ἐν τῇ κατακλίσει πλατύνεσθαι καὶ διαχωρεῖν, ὥσπερ τῶν ὑποδημάτων τὰ τριβόμενα, κατὰ μικρὸν ἐπιδιδόντα καὶ χαλῶντα τοῖς πόροις, εὐρυχωρίαν τῷ ποδὶ καὶ ἀναστροφὴν παρέχει. ὁ δὲ πρεσβύτης ἅμα παίζων δύ’ ἔφη τὸ αὐτὸ συμπόσιον [b] ἀνομοίους ἔχειν ἐπιστάτας τε καὶ ἡγεμόνας, ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν τὸν λιμὸν ᾧ τῶν τακτικῶν οὐδὲν μέτεστιν, ὕστερον δὲ τὸν Διόνυσον ὃν πάντες ἄριστον γεγονέναι στρατηγὸν ὁμολογοῦσιν· ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας, εἴς τινα δυσχωρίαν τῶν στρατηγῶν ὑπ’ ἀπειρίας εἰσβαλλόντων τὴν φάλαγγα περιπίπτουσαν ἑαυτῇ καὶ ταρασσομένην ὑπολαβών, ἐξέλυσε καὶ κατέστησεν εἰς τάξιν, οὕτως ἡμᾶς ἐν ἀρχῇ συμπεφορημένους ὑπὸ τοῦ λιμοῦ κυνηδὸν ἄρτι παραλαμβάνων ὁ Λυαῖος θεὸς καὶ Χορεῖος εἰς τάξιν ἱλαρὰν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον καθίστησιν.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ζ

Περὶ τῶν καταβασκαίνειν λεγομένων

[c] Περὶ τῶν καταβασκαίνειν λεγομένων καὶ βάσκανον ἔχειν ὀφθαλμὸν ἐμπεσόντος λόγου παρὰ δεῖπνον οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι παντάπασιν ἐξεφλαύριζον τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ κατεγέλων· ὁ δ’ ἑστιῶν ἡμᾶς Μέστριος Φλῶρος ἔφη τὰ μὲν γινόμενα τῇ φήμῃ θαυμαστῶς βοηθεῖν, τῷ δ’ αἰτίας ἀπορεῖν ἀπιστεῖσθαι τὴν ἱστορίαν, οὐ δικαίως, ὅπου μυρίων ἐμφανῆ τὴν οὐσίαν ἐχόντων ὁ τῆς αἰτίας λόγος ἡμᾶς διαπέφευγεν· ‘ὅλως δ’’ εἶπεν ‘ὁ ζητῶν ἐν ἑκάστῳ τὸ εὔλογον ἐκ πάντων ἀναιρεῖ τὸ θαυμάσιον· ὅπου γὰρ ὁ τῆς αἰτίας [d] ἐπιλείπει λόγος, ἐκεῖθεν ἄρχεται τὸ ἀπορεῖν, τουτέστι τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν· ὥστε τρόπον τινὰ φιλοσοφίαν ἀναιροῦσιν οἱ τοῖς θαυμασίοις ἀπιστοῦντες. δεῖ δ’’ ἔφη ‘τὸ μὲν διὰ τί γίνεται τῷ λόγῳ μετιέναι, τὸ δ’ ὅτι γίνεται παρὰ τῆς ἱστορίας λαμβάνειν. ἱστορεῖται δὲ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα· γινώσκομεν γὰρ ἀνθρώπους τῷ καταβλέπειν τὰ παιδία μάλιστα βλάπτοντας, ὑγρότητι τῆς ἕξεως καὶ ἀσθενείᾳ τρεπομένης ὑπ’ αὐτῶν καὶ κινουμένης ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον, ἧττον δὲ τῶν στερεῶν καὶ πεπηγότων ἤδη τοῦτο πασχόντων. καίτοι τούς γε περὶ τὸν Πόντον οἰκοῦντας πάλαι Θιβεῖς προσαγορευομένους ἱστορεῖ Φύλαρχος (FHG I 354 6 F. Gr. Hist. 81 F 79a) οὐ παιδίοις μόνον ἀλλὰ [e] καὶ τελείοις ὀλεθρίους εἶναι· καὶ γὰρ τὸ βλέμμα καὶ τὴν ἀναπνοὴν καὶ τὴν διάλεκτον αὐτῶν παραδεχομένους τήκεσθαι καὶ νοσεῖν· ᾔσθοντο δ’ ὡς ἔοικε τὸ γινόμενον οἱ μιγάδες οἰκέτας ἐκεῖθεν ὠνίους ἐξάγοντες. ἀλλὰ τούτων τὸ μὲν ἴσως ἧττόν ἐστι θαυμαστόν· ἡ γὰρ ἐπαφὴ καὶ συνανάχρωσις ἔχει τινὰ φαινομένην πάθους ἀρχήν, καὶ καθάπερ τὰ τῶν ἄλλων ὀρνέων πτερὰ τοῖς τοῦ ἀετοῦ συντεθέντα διόλλυται ψηχόμενα καὶ ἀπανθεῖ τῶν πτίλων μυδώντων, οὕτως οὐδὲν ἀπέχει καὶ ἀνθρώπου ψαῦσιν τὴν μὲν ὠφέλιμον εἶναι τὴν δ’ ἀπηνῆ καὶ βλαβεράν· τὸ δὲ καὶ προσβλεφθέντας [f] ἀδικεῖσθαι συμβαίνει μὲν ὥσπερ εἴρηκα, τῷ δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν ἔχειν δυσθήρατον ἀπιστεῖται.’

‘Καὶ μήν’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘τρόπον τινὰ τῆς αἰτίας αὐτὸς ἴχνος τι καὶ τρίβον ἀνεύρηκας, ἐπὶ τὰς ἀπορροίας τῶν σωμάτων ἀφικόμενος· καὶ γὰρ ἡ ὀσμὴ καὶ ἡ φωνὴ καὶ τὸ ῥεῦμα τῆς ἀναπνοῆς ἀποφοραί τινές εἰσι τῶν ζῴων καὶ μέρη κινοῦντα τὰς αἰσθήσεις, ὅταν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν προσπεσόντων πάθωσι. [681] [a] πολὺ δὲ μᾶλλον εἰκός ἐστι τῶν ζῴων ἀποφέρεσθαι τὰ τοιαῦτα διὰ τὴν θερμότητα καὶ τὴν κίνησιν, οἱονεί τινα σφυγμὸν καὶ κλόνον ἔχοντος τοῦ πνεύματος, ὑφ’ οὗ τὸ σῶμα κρουόμενον ἐνδελεχῶς ἐκπέμπει τινὰς ἀπορροίας. μάλιστα δὲ τοῦτο γίνεσθαι διὰ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν εἰκός ἐστι· πολυκίνητος γὰρ ἡ ὄψις οὖσα μετὰ πνεύματος αὐγὴν ἀφιέντος πυρώδη θαυμαστήν τινα διασπείρει δύναμιν, ὥστε πολλὰ καὶ πάσχειν καὶ ποιεῖν δι’ αὐτῆς τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ἡδοναῖς τε γὰρ συμμέτροις καὶ ἀηδίαις ὑπὸ τῶν ὁρατῶν τρεπόμενος συνέχεται· καὶ τῶν ἐρωτικῶν, ἃ δὴ μέγιστα καὶ σφοδρότατα παθήματα τῆς [b] ψυχῆς ἐστιν, ἀρχὴν ἡ ὄψις ἐνδίδωσιν, ὥστε ῥεῖν καὶ λείβεσθαι τὸν ἐρωτικόν, ὅταν ἐμβλέπῃ τοῖς καλοῖς, οἷον ἐκχεόμενον εἰς αὐτούς. διὸ καὶ θαυμάσειεν ἄν τις οἶμαι μάλιστα τῶν πάσχειν μὲν καὶ κακοῦσθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον διὰ τῆς ὄψεως οἰομένων, οὐκέτι δὲ δρᾶν καὶ βλάπτειν. αἱ γὰρ ἀντιβλέψεις τῶν ἐν ὥρᾳ καὶ τὸ διὰ τῶν ὀμμάτων ἐκπῖπτον, εἴτ’ ἄρα φῶς εἴτε ῥεῦμα, τοὺς ἐρῶντας ἐκτήκει καὶ ἀπόλλυσι μεθ’ ἡδονῆς ἀλγηδόνι μεμιγμένης, ἣν αὐτοὶ γλυκύπικρον ὀνομάζουσιν· οὔτε γὰρ ἁπτομένοις οὔτ’ ἀκούουσιν οὕτω τιτρώσκεσθαι συμβαίνει καὶ πάσχειν, ὡς [c] προσβλεπομένοις καὶ προσβλέπουσι. τοιαύτη γὰρ γίνεται διάδοσις καὶ ἀνάφλεξις ἀπὸ τῆς ὄψεως, ὥστε παντελῶς ἀπειράτους ἔρωτος ἡγεῖσθαι τοὺς τὸν Μηδικὸν νάφθαν θαυμάζοντας ἐκ διαστήματος ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς ἀναφλεγόμενον· αἱ γὰρ τῶν καλῶν ὄψεις, κἂν πάνυ πόρρωθεν ἀντιβλέπωσι, πῦρ ἐν ταῖς τῶν ἐρωτικῶν ψυχαῖς ἀνάπτουσιν. καὶ μὴν τό γε τῶν ἰκτερικῶν βοήθημα πολλάκις ἱστοροῦμεν· ἐμβλέποντες γὰρ τῷ χαραδριῷ θεραπεύονται· τοιαύτην ἔοικε τὸ ζῷον φύσιν καὶ κρᾶσιν ἔχειν, ὥσθ’ ἕλκειν καὶ δέχεσθαι τὸ πάθος ἐκπῖπτον, ὥσπερ ῥεῦμα, διὰ τῆς ὄψεως· ὅθεν οὐ προσβλέπουσιν οἱ χαραδριοὶ τοὺς τὸν ἴκτερον ἔχοντας οὐδὲ καρτεροῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀποστρέφονται [d] καὶ τὰ ὄμματα συγκλείσαντες ἔχουσιν, οὐ φθονοῦντες, ὡς ἔνιοι νομίζουσι, τῆς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἰάσεως ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πληγῆς τιτρωσκόμενοι. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων νοσημάτων μάλιστα καὶ τάχιστα τὰς ὀφθαλμίας ἀναλαμβάνουσιν οἱ συνόντες· οὕτω δύναμιν ἔχει ὀξεῖαν ἡ ὄψις ἐνδοῦναι καὶ προσβαλεῖν ἑτέρῳ πάθους ἀρχήν.’

‘Καὶ μάλ’’ ἔφη ‘λέγεις ὀρθῶς’ ὁ Πατροκλέας

‘ἐπί γε τῶν σωματικῶν· τὰ δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς, ὧν ἐστι καὶ τὸ βασκαίνειν, τίνα τρόπον καὶ πῶς διὰ τῆς ὄψεως τὴν βλάβην εἰς τοὺς ὁρωμένους διαδίδωσιν;’ ‘οὐκ οἶσθ’’ ἔφην ‘ὅτι πάσχουσ’ ἡ ψυχὴ τὸ σῶμα συνδιατίθησιν; ἐπίνοιαι γὰρ ἀφροδισίων ἐγείρουσιν αἰδοῖα, καὶ θυμοὶ κυνῶν ἐν [e] ταῖς πρὸς τὰ θηρία γινομέναις ἁμίλλαις ἀποσβεννύουσι τὰς ὁράσεις πολλάκις καὶ τυφλοῦσι, λῦπαι δὲ καὶ φιλαργυρίαι καὶ ζηλοτυπίαι τὰ χρώματα τρέπουσιν καὶ καταξαίνουσι τὰς ἕξεις· ὧν οὐδενὸς ὁ φθόνος ἧττον ἐνδύεσθαι τῇ ψυχῇ πεφυκὼς ἀναπίμπλησι καὶ τὸ σῶμα πονηρίας, ἣν οἱ ζωγράφοι καλῶς ἐπιχειροῦσιν ἀπομιμεῖσθαι τὸ τοῦ φθόνου πρόσωπον ὑπογράφοντες. ὅταν οὖν οὕτως ὑπὸ τοῦ φθονεῖν διατεθέντες ἀπερείδωσι τὰς ὄψεις, αἱ δ’ ἔγγιστα τεταγμέναι τῆς ψυχῆς σπάσασαι τὴν κακίαν ὥσπερ πεφαρμαγμένα βέλη προσπίπτωσιν, οὐδὲν οἶμαι [f] συμβαίνει παράλογον οὐδ’ ἄπιστον, εἰ κινοῦσι τοὺς προσορωμένους· καὶ γὰρ τὰ δήγματα τῶν κυνῶν χαλεπώτερα γίνεται μετ’ ὀργῆς δακνόντων, καὶ τὰ σπέρματα τῶν ἀνθρώπων μᾶλλον ἅπτεσθαί φασιν ὅταν ἐρῶντες πλησιάζωσι, καὶ ὅλως τὰ πάθη τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐπιρρώννυσι καὶ ποιεῖ σφοδροτέρας τὰς τοῦ σώματος δυνάμεις. διὸ καὶ τὸ τῶν λεγομένων προβασκανίων γένος οἴονται πρὸς τὸν [682] [a] φθόνον ὠφελεῖν ἑλκομένης διὰ τὴν ἀτοπίαν τῆς ὄψεως, ὥσθ’ ἧττον ἐπερείδειν τοῖς πάσχουσιν. αὗταί σοι’ εἶπον ‘ὦ Φλῶρε, συμβολαὶ τῆς εὐωχίας ἀπηριθμήσθωσαν.’

Καὶ ὁ Σώκλαρος ‘ἄν γ’’ ἔφη ‘πρότερον ἡμεῖς αὐτὰ δοκιμάσωμεν· ἔστι γὰρ ὅ τι τοῦ λόγου καταφαίνεται κίβδηλον. εἰ γὰρ ἃ λέγουσι πολλοὶ περὶ τῶν βασκαινομένων ὡς ἀληθῆ τίθεμεν, οὐκ ἀγνοεῖς δήπουθεν ὅτι καὶ φίλους καὶ οἰκείους, ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ πατέρας ἔχειν ὀφθαλμὸν βάσκανον ὑπολαμβάνουσιν, ὥστε μὴ δεικνύναι τὰς γυναῖκας αὐτοῖς τὰ παιδία μηδὲ πολὺν ἐᾶν χρόνον ὑπὸ τῶν τοιούτων καταβλέπεσθαι· πῶς οὖν ἔτι δόξει φθόνου τὸ [b] πάθος εἶναι; τί δ’, ὦ πρὸς τοῦ Διός, ἐρεῖς περὶ τῶν ἑαυτοὺς καταβασκαίνειν λεγομένων; καὶ γὰρ τοῦτ’ ἀκήκοας· εἰ δὲ μή, πάντως ταῦτ’ ἀνέγνωκας (Euphor. fr. 185 Scheidw. 175 Pow.)

‘καλαὶ μέν ποτ’ ἔσαν, καλαὶ φόβαι Εὐτελίδαο·

ἀλλ’ αὑτὸν βάσκαινεν ἰδὼν ὀλοφώιος ἀνὴρ

δίνῃ ἐν [τι] ποταμοῦ· τὸν δ’ αὐτίκα νοῦσος ἀεικής’ -

ὁ γὰρ Εὐτελίδας λέγεται, καλὸς ἑαυτῷ φανεὶς καὶ παθών τι πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, ἐκ τούτου νοσῆσαι καὶ τὴν εὐεξίαν μετὰ τῆς ὥρας ἀποβαλεῖν. ἀλλ’ ὅρα πῶς ἔχεις εὑρησιλογίας πρὸς τὰς τοιαύτας ἀτοπίας.’

‘Ἄλλως μέν’ ἔφην ‘οὐ μάλ’ ἱκανῶς· πίνων δ’ ὡς ὁρᾷς ἐκ τῆς τηλικαύτης κύλικος, οὐκ ἀτόλμως λέγω διότι [c] τὰ μὲν πάθη πάντα, ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἐμμείναντα πολὺν χρόνον, ἕξεις ἐνεργάζεται πονηράς· αὗται δ’, ὅταν ἰσχὺν φύσεως λάβωσιν, ὑπὸ τῆς τυχούσης κινούμεναι προφάσεως, πολλάκις καὶ ἄκοντας ἐπὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ συνήθη καταφέρουσι πάθη. σκόπει δὲ τοὺς δειλοὺς ὅτι καὶ τὰ σῴζοντα φοβοῦνται, καὶ τοὺς ὀργίλους ὅτι καὶ τοῖς φιλτάτοις δυσκολαίνουσι, καὶ τοὺς ἐρωτικοὺς καὶ ἀκολάστους ὅτι τελευτῶντες οὐδὲ τῶν ἁγιωτάτων ἀπέχεσθαι δύνανται σωμάτων. ἡ γὰρ συνήθεια δεινὴ πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἐξάγειν τὴν διάθεσιν, καὶ τὸν ἀκροσφαλῶς ἔχοντα πᾶσι προσπταίειν [d] ἀνάγκη τοῖς ὑποπίπτουσιν. ὥστ’ οὐκ ἄξιον θαυμάζειν τοὺς τὴν φθονητικὴν καὶ βασκαντικὴν ἀπειργασμένους ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἕξιν, εἰ καὶ πρὸς τὰ οἰκεῖα κατὰ τὴν τοῦ πάθους ἰδιότητα κινοῦνται· κινούμενοι δ’ οὕτως ὃ πεφύκασιν οὐχ ὃ βούλονται ποιοῦσιν. ὡς γὰρ ἡ σφαῖρα κινεῖσθαι σφαιρικῶς καὶ κυλινδρικῶς ὁ κύλινδρος ἀναγκάζεται κατὰ τὴν τοῦ σχήματος διαφοράν, οὕτως τὸν [οὕτω] φθονερὸν ἡ διάθεσις φθονητικῶς πρὸς ἅπαντα κινεῖ. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ καταβλέπειν εἰκός ἐστιν αὐτοὺς τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ ποθούμενα μᾶλλον· διὸ καὶ βλάπτουσι μᾶλλον. ὁ δὲ βέλτιστος Εὐτελίδας [ὃ] καὶ ὅσοι λέγονται καταβασκαίνειν [e] ἑαυτοὺς οὐκ ἀλόγως μοι δοκοῦσι τοῦτο πάσχειν. σφαλερὸν γὰρ ἡ ἐπ’ ἄκρον εὐεξία κατὰ τὸν Ἱπποκράτην (Aphor. 1, 3), καὶ τὰ σώματα προελθόντα μέχρι τῆς ἄκρας ἀκμῆς οὐχ ἕστηκεν, ἀλλὰ ῥέπει καὶ ταλαντεύεται πρὸς τοὐναντίον· ὅταν οὖν ἐπίδοσιν ἀθρόαν λάβωσι ‹καὶ› βέλτιον ἢ προσεδόκων ἔχοντας ἑαυτοὺς ἐπιβλέπωσιν, ὥστε θαυμάζειν καὶ κατασκοπεῖν τὸ σῶμα, τῆς μεταβολῆς ἐγγύς εἰσι καὶ φερόμενοι ταῖς ἕξεσι πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον ἑαυτοὺς ‹δοκοῦσι› καταβασκαίνειν. τοῦτο δὲ γίνεται μᾶλλον ἀπὸ τῶν πρὸς ὕδασιν ἤ τισιν ἄλλοις ἐσόπτροις ὑφισταμένων ῥευμάτων· ἀναπνεῖ γὰρ ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς τοὺς [f] ὁρῶντας, ὥσθ’ οἷς ἑτέρους ἔβλαπτον, αὐτοὺς κακοῦσθαι. τοῦτο δ’ ἴσως καὶ περὶ τὰ παιδία γινόμενον καταψεύδεται πολλάκις τὴν αἰτίαν τῶν ἐνορώντων.’

Ἐμοῦ δὲ παυσαμένου, Γάιος ὁ Φλώρου γαμβρός ‘τῶν δὲ Δημοκρίτου (A 77)’ ἔφη ‘εἰδώλων, ὥσπερ Αἰγιέων ἢ Μεγαρέων, ἀριθμὸς οὐδεὶς οὐδὲ λόγος; ἅ φησιν [683] [a] ἐκεῖνος ἐξιέναι τοὺς φθονοῦντας, οὔτ’ αἰσθήσεως ἄμοιρα παντάπασιν οὔθ’ ὁρμῆς, ἀνάπλεά τε τῆς ἀπὸ τῶν προϊεμένων μοχθηρίας καὶ βασκανίας, μεθ’ ἧς ἐμπλασσόμενα καὶ παραμένοντα καὶ συνοικοῦντα τοῖς βασκαινομένοις ἐπιταράττειν καὶ κακοῦν αὐτῶν τό τε σῶμα καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν· οὕτως γὰρ οἶμαί πως τὸν ἄνδρα τῇ δόξῃ, τῇ δὲ λέξει δαιμονίως λέγειν καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς.’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ ἔφην ‘ἀλλὰ θαυμάζω, πῶς ἔλαθον ὑμᾶς οὐδὲν ἄλλο τῶν ῥευμάτων τούτων ἢ τὸ ἔμψυχον ἀφελὼν καὶ προαιρετικόν· ἵνα μή με δόξητε πόρρω νυκτῶν οὖσιν ὑμῖν ἐπάγοντα φάσματα καὶ εἴδωλα πεπνυμένα καὶ φρονοῦντα [b] μορμολύττεσθαι καὶ διαταράττειν. ἕωθεν οὖν, ἐὰν δοκῇ, περὶ τούτων σκεψώμεθα.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Η

Διὰ τί τὴν μηλέαν ‘ἀγλαόκαρπον’ ὁ ποιητὴς εἶπεν, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δ’ ‘ὑπέρφλοια’ τὰ μῆλα

Ἑστιωμένων ἡμῶν ποτ’ ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ καὶ παρατεθείσης παντοδαπῆς ὀπώρας, ἐπῆλθέ τινι τῶν κατακειμένων ἀναφθέγξασθαι τὸν στίχον ἐκεῖνον (η 115)

[c] ‘συκέαι τε γλυκεραὶ καὶ μηλέαι ἀγλαόκαρποι’

καὶ ‘ἐλαῖαι τηλεθόωσαι’. ζήτησις οὖν ἦν, διὰ τί τὰς μηλέας ὁ ποιητὴς ‘ἀγλαοκάρπους’ ἐξαιρέτως προσεῖπεν. καὶ Τρύφων μὲν ὁ ἰατρὸς ἔλεγε κατὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸ δένδρον εἰρῆσθαι σύγκρισιν, ὅτι μικρὸν ὂν κομιδῇ καὶ τὴν ὄψιν εὐτελὲς καλὸν καὶ μέγαν ἐκφέρει τὸν καρπόν. ἄλλος δέ τις ἔφη τὸ καλὸν ἐκ πάντων συντεθὲν μόνῳ τούτῳ τῶν ἀκροδρύων ὁρᾶν ὑπάρχον· καὶ γὰρ τὴν ψαῦσιν ἔχει καθάριον, ὥστε μὴ μολύνειν ἀλλ’ εὐωδίας ἀναπιμπλάναι τὸν ἁπτόμενον, καὶ τὴν γεῦσιν ἡδεῖαν, ὀσφραίνεσθαί τε καὶ ἰδεῖν ἐπιτερπέστατόν ἐστι· διὸ καὶ πάσας ὁμοῦ τι τὰς [d] αἰσθήσεις προσαγόμενον εἰκότως ἐπαινεῖσθαι.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔφαμεν ἡμεῖς μετρίως λέγεσθαι· τοῦ δ’ Ἐμπεδοκλέους εἰρηκότος (fr. 80)

‘οὕνεκεν ὀψίγονοί τε σίδαι καὶ ὑπέρφλοια μῆλα,’

τὸ μὲν τῶν σιδῶν ἐπίθετον νοεῖν ὅτι τοῦ φθινοπώρου λήγοντος ἤδη καὶ τῶν καυμάτων μαραινομένων ἐκπέττουσι τὸν καρπόν· ἀσθενῆ γὰρ αὐτῶν τὴν ὑγρότητα καὶ γλίσχραν οὖσαν οὐκ ἐᾷ λαβεῖν σύστασιν ὁ ἥλιος, ἂν μὴ μεταβάλλειν ὁ ἀὴρ ἐπὶ τὸ ψυχρότερον ἄρχηται· διὸ καὶ μόνον τοῦτό φησιν Θεόφραστος τὸ δένδρον ἐν τῇ σκιᾷ βέλτιον ἐκπέττειν τὸν καρπὸν καὶ τάχιον. τὰ δὲ μῆλα καθ’ ἥντινα διάνοιαν ὁ σοφὸς ‘ὑπέρφλοια’ προσειρήκοι, διαπορεῖν, [e] καὶ μάλιστα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς οὐ καλλιγραφίας ἕνεκα τοῖς εὐπροσωποτάτοις τῶν ἐπιθέτων, ὥσπερ ἀνθηροῖς χρώμασι, τὰ πράγματα γανοῦν εἰωθότος, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστον οὐσίας τινὸς ἢ δυνάμεως δήλωμα ποιοῦντος, οἷον ‘ἀμφιβρότην χθόνα’ τὸ τῇ ψυχῇ περικείμενον σῶμα, καὶ ‘νεφεληγερέτην’ τὸν ἀέρα καὶ ‘πολυαίματον’ τὸ ἧπαρ (fr. 148150).

Εἰπόντος οὖν ἐμοῦ ταῦτα, γραμματικοί τινες ἔφασαν ‘ὑπέρφλοια’ λελέχθαι τὰ μῆλα διὰ τὴν ἀκμήν· τὸ γὰρ ἄγαν ἀκμάζειν καὶ τεθηλέναι ‘φλύειν’ ὑπὸ τῶν ποιητῶν λέγεσθαι. καὶ τὸν Ἀντίμαχον (fr. 36 Kink., 40 Wyss) οὕτω πως ‘φλείουσαν ὀπώραις’ εἰρηκέναι τὴν [f] τῶν Καδμείων πόλιν· ὁμοίως τὸν Ἄρατον ἐπὶ τοῦ Σειρίου λέγοντα (Phaen. 335)

‘καὶ τὰ μὲν ἔρρωσεν, τῶν δὲ φλόον ὤλεσε πάντα’

τὴν χλωρότητα καὶ τὸ ἄνθος τῶν καρπῶν ‘φλόον’ προσαγορεύειν· εἶναι δὲ καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων τινάς, οἳ Φλείῳ Διονύσῳ θύουσιν. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν μάλιστα τῶν καρπῶν ἡ χλωρότης καὶ τὸ τεθηλέναι τῷ μήλῳ παραμένει, ‘ὑπέρφλοιον’ αὐτὸ τὸν φιλόσοφον προσαγορεῦσαι. [684] [a] Λαμπρίας δ’ ὁ πάππος ἡμῶν ἔφη τὴν ‘ὑπὲρ’ φωνὴν οὐ μόνον τὸ ἄγαν καὶ τὸ σφοδρὸν δηλοῦν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ἔξωθεν καὶ τὸ ἄνωθεν· οὕτω γὰρ ‘ὑπέρθυρον’ καὶ ‘ὑπερῷον’ καλεῖν ἡμᾶς, τὸν δὲ ποιητὴν καὶ ‘κρέ’ ὑπέρτερα’ (γ 65 pass.) τὰ ἔξω τοῦ ἱερείου, ὥσπερ ‘ἔγκατα’ (Λ 176 pass.) τὰ ἐντός. ‘ὅρα τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘μὴ πρὸς τοῦτο μᾶλλον ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς πεποίηκε τὸ ἐπίθετον, ὅτι, τῶν ἄλλων καρπῶν τὸ ἔξωθεν ὑπὸ τοῦ φλοιοῦ περιεχομένων καὶ τὰ καλούμενα λεπύχανα καὶ κελύφη καὶ ὑμένας καὶ λοβοὺς ἐπιπολῆς ἐχόντων, ὁ τοῦ μήλου φλοιὸς ἐντός ἐστι κολλώδης χιτὼν καὶ λιπαρός, ᾧ προσίσχεται τὸ σπέρμα· τὸ δ’ ἐδώδιμον, [b] ἔξωθεν αὐτῷ περικείμενον, εἰκότως ‘ὑπέρφλοιον’ ὠνόμασται.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Θ

Τίς ‹ἡ› αἰτία, δι’ ἣν ἡ συκῆ δριμύτατον οὖσα δένδρον γλυκύτατον παρέχει τὸν καρπόν

Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα περὶ τῶν σύκων διηπορήθη, τί δήποτε πίων καὶ γλυκὺς οὕτως καρπὸς ἀπὸ δένδρου φύεται πικροτάτου· τῆς γὰρ συκῆς καὶ τὸ φύλλον διὰ τὴν τραχύτητα θρῖον ὠνόμασται, καὶ τὸ ξύλον ὀπῶδές ἐστιν, ὥστε καιόμενον μὲν ἐκδιδόναι δριμύτατον καπνὸν [c] κατακαυθὲν δὲ τὴν ἐκ τῆς τέφρας κονίαν ῥυπτικωτάτην παρέχειν ὑπὸ δριμύτητος. ὃ δ’ ἐστὶ θαυμασιώτατον, ἀνθούντων ἁπάντων ὅσα βεβλάστηκε καὶ καρπογονεῖ, μόνον ἀνανθές ἐστι τὸ τῆς συκῆς φυτόν· εἰ δ’, ὥς φασιν, οὐ κεραυνοῦνται, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἄν τις ἀναθείη τῇ πικρότητι καὶ καχεξίᾳ τοῦ στελέχους· τῶν γὰρ τοιούτων οὐ δοκοῦσιν ἐπιθιγγάνειν οἱ κεραυνοί, καθάπερ οὐδὲ τῆς φώκης τοῦ δέρματος οὐδὲ τῆς ὑαίνης. ὑπολαβὼν οὖν ὁ πρεσβύτης ἔφη, ‹ὅσον ἂν ἐνῇ› τῷ φυτῷ γλυκύτητος, ἅπαν τοῦτο συνθλιβόμενον εἰς τὸν καρπὸν εἰκότως δριμὺ ποιεῖν καὶ ἄκρατον τὸ λειπόμενον· ὥσπερ γὰρ τὸ ἧπαρ, εἰς ἕνα [d] τόπον τοῦ χολώδους ἀποκριθέντος, αὐτὸ γίνεται γλυκύτατον, οὕτω τὴν συκῆν εἰς τὸ σῦκον ἅπαν τὸ λιπαρὸν καὶ νόστιμον ἀφιεῖσαν αὐτὴν ἄμοιρον εἶναι γλυκύτητος. ‘ἐπεί, ὅτι γε μετέχει τινὸς εὐχυμίας τὸ ξύλον, ἐκεῖν’’ ἔφη ‘ποιοῦμαι σημεῖον, ὃ λέγουσιν οἱ κηπουροί· λέγουσι δὲ τοῦ πηγάνου τὸ φυόμενον ὑπ’ αὐτῇ καὶ παραφυτευόμενον ἥδιον εἶναι καὶ τῷ χυμῷ μαλακώτερον, ὡς ἂν ἀπ‹ολ›αῦόν τινος γλυκύτητος, ᾗ κατασβέννυται τὸ ἄγαν βαρὺ καὶ κατάκορον, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία τοὐναντίον ἡ συκῆ περισπῶσα τὴν τροφὴν ἐξαιρεῖ τι τῆς δριμύτητος.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ι

[e]

Τίνες οἱ περὶ ἅλα καὶ κύαμον· ἐν ᾧ καὶ διὰ τί τὸν ἅλα ‘θεῖον’ ὁ ποιητὴς εἶπεν

Ἐζήτει Φλῶρος, ἑστιωμένων ἡμῶν παρ’ αὐτῷ, τίνες ἂν εἶεν ‘οἱ περὶ ἅλα καὶ κύαμον’ ἐν τῇ παροιμίᾳ λεγόμενοι. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἐκ προχείρου διέλυσεν Ἀπολλοφάνης ὁ γραμματικός· ‘οἱ γὰρ οὕτω συνήθεις’ ἔφη ‘τῶν φίλων, ὥστε καὶ πρὸς ἅλα δειπνεῖν καὶ κύαμον, ὑπὸ [f] τῆς παροιμίας προβάλλονται.’ τὴν δὲ τῶν ἁλῶν τιμὴν ἀφ’ ὅτου γένοιτο διηποροῦμεν, Ὁμήρου μὲν ἄντικρυς λέγοντος (Ι 214)

‘πάσσε δ’ ἁλὸς θείοιο’,

Πλάτωνος (Tim. 60e) δὲ τῶν ἁλῶν σῶμα κατὰ νόμον ἀνθρώπων θεοφιλέστατον εἶναι φάσκοντος· ἐπέτεινε δὲ τὴν ἀπορίαν τὸ τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους ἱερέας ἁγνεύοντας ἀπέχεσθαι τὸ πάμπαν ἁλῶν, ὥστε καὶ τὸν ἄρτον ἄναλον προσφέρεσθαι· πῶς γάρ, εἰ θεοφιλὲς καὶ θεῖον, ἀφωσιώσαντο;

Φλῶρος μὲν οὖν ἐᾶν ἐκέλευε τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους, [685] [a] Ἑλληνιστὶ δ’ αὐτοὺς εἰπεῖν τι πρὸς τὸ ὑποκείμενον. ἐγὼ δ’ ἔφην οὐδὲ τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους μάχεσθαι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν· αἱ γὰρ ἁγνεῖαι καὶ παιδοποιίαν καὶ γέλωτα καὶ οἶνον καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἄλλως ἀξίων σπουδῆς ἀφαιροῦσι· τοὺς δ’ ἅλας τάχα μὲν ὡς ἐπὶ συνουσίαν ἄγοντας ὑπὸ θερμότητος, ὡς ἔνιοι λέγουσι, φυλάττονται καθαρεύοντες· εἰκὸς δὲ καὶ ὡς ὄψον ἥδιστον παραιτεῖσθαι· κινδυνεύουσι γὰρ οἱ ἅλες τῶν ἄλλων ὄψων ὄψον εἶναι καὶ ἥδυσμα, διὸ καὶ ‘χάριτας’ ἔνιοι προσαγορεύουσιν αὐτούς, ὅτι τῆς τροφῆς τὸ ἀναγκαῖον ἡδὺ ποιοῦσιν.

‘Ἆρ’ οὖν’ ὁ Φλῶρος ἔφη ‘διὰ τοῦτο θεῖον εἰρῆσθαι [b] τὸν ἅλα φῶμεν;’ ‘ἔστι μὲν δή’ εἶπον ‘οὐδὲ τοῦτ’ ἐλάχιστον. οἱ γὰρ ἄνθρωποι τὰ κοινὰ καὶ διήκοντα ταῖς χρείαις ἐπὶ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐκθειάζουσιν, ὡς τὸ ὕδωρ, τὸ φῶς, τὰς ὥρας· τὴν δὲ γῆν οὐ μόνον θεῖον, ἀλλὰ καὶ θεὸν ὑπολαμβάνουσιν· ὧν οὐδενὸς λείπεται χρείᾳ τὸ τῶν ἁλῶν, †θρίγκωμα τῆς τροφῆς γινόμενον εἰς τὸ σῶμα καὶ παρέχον εὐαρμοστίαν αὐτῇ πρὸς τὴν ὄρεξιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ σκόπει, μὴ κἀκεῖνο θεῖον αὐτῷ συμβέβηκεν, ὅτι τῶν σωμάτων τὰ νεκρὰ διατηροῦν ἄσηπτα καὶ μόνιμα πολὺν χρόνον ἀντιτάττεται τῷ θανάτῳ καὶ οὐκ ἐᾷ παντελῶς ἐξολέσθαι καὶ ἀφανισθῆναι τὸ θνητόν· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ [c] ἡ ψυχή, θειότατον οὖσα τῶν ἡμετέρων, τὰ ζῷα συνέχει καὶ ῥεῖν οὐκ ἐᾷ τὸν ὄγκον, οὕτως ἡ τῶν ἁλῶν φύσις τὰ νεκρὰ παραλαμβάνουσα καὶ μιμουμένη τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἔργον ἀντιλαμβάνεται φερομένων ἐπὶ τὴν φθορὰν καὶ κρατεῖ καὶ ἵστησιν, ἁρμονίαν παρέχουσα καὶ φιλίαν πρὸς ἄλληλα τοῖς μέρεσι. διὸ καὶ τῶν Στωικῶν ἔνιοι τὴν ὗν σάρκα νεκρὰν γεγονέναι λέγουσι, τῆς ψυχῆς, ὥσπερ ἁλῶν, παρεσπαρμένης ὑπὲρ τοῦ διαμένειν. ὁρᾷς δ’ ὅτι καὶ τὸ κεραύνιον πῦρ ἱερὸν ἡγούμεθα καὶ θεῖον, ὅτι τὰ σώματα τῶν διοβλήτων ἄσηπτα πρὸς πολὺν ἀντέχοντα χρόνον ὁρῶμεν. τί οὖν θαυμαστόν, εἰ καὶ τὸν ἅλα, τὴν αὐτὴν [d] ἔχοντα τῷ θείῳ δύναμιν πυρί, θεῖον ὑπέλαβον οἱ παλαιοί;’

Σιωπήσαντος δ’ ἐμοῦ, Φιλῖνος ὑπολαβών ‘τὸ δὲ γόνιμον οὐ δοκεῖ σοι’ ἔφη ‘θεῖον εἶναι, εἴπερ ἀρχὴ [ὁ] θεὸς πάντων;’ ὁμολογήσαντος δ’ ἐμοῦ ‘καὶ μήν’ ἔφη ‘τὸν ἅλ’ οὐκ ὀλίγον πρὸς γένεσιν συνεργεῖν οἴονται, καθάπερ αὐτὸς ἐμνήσθης τῶν Αἰγυπτίων. οἱ γοῦν τὰς κύνας φιλοτροφοῦντες, ὅταν ἀργότεραι πρὸς συνουσίαν ὦσιν, ἄλλοις τε βρώμασιν ἁλμυροῖς καὶ ταριχευτοῖς κρέασι κινοῦσι καὶ παροξύνουσιν τὸ σπερματικὸν αὐτῶν ἡσυχάζον. τὰ δ’ ἁληγὰ πλοῖα πλῆθος ἐκφύει μυῶν ἄπλετον, ὡς μὲν ἔνιοι λέγουσι, τῶν θηλειῶν καὶ δίχα συνουσίας [e] κυουσῶν, ὅταν τὸν ἅλα λείχωσιν· εἰκὸς δὲ μᾶλλον ἐμποιεῖν τὴν ἁλμυρίδα τοῖς μορίοις ὀδαξησμοὺς καὶ συνεξορμᾶν τὰ ζῷα πρὸς τοὺς συνδυασμούς. διὰ τοῦτο δ’ ἴσως καὶ κάλλος γυναικὸς τὸ μήτ’ ἀργὸν μήτ’ ἀπίθανον, ἀλλὰ μεμιγμένον χάριτι καὶ κινητικὸν ἁλμυρὸν καὶ δριμὺ καλοῦσιν. οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἀφροδίτην ἁλιγενῆ τοὺς ποιητὰς προσαγορεύειν καὶ μῦθον ἐπ’ αὐτῇ πεπλασμένον ἐξενεγκεῖν, ὡς ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ἐχούσῃ τὴν γένεσιν, εἰς τὸ τῶν ἁλῶν γόνιμον αἰνιττομένους. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸν τὸν Ποσειδῶνα [ἀλλὰ] καὶ ὅλως τοὺς πελαγίους θεοὺς πολυτέκνους [f] καὶ πολυγόνους ἀποφαίνουσιν· αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν ζῴων οὐδὲν ἂν χερσαῖον ἢ πτηνὸν εἰπεῖν ἔχοις οὕτω γόνιμον, ὡς πάντα ‹τὰ› θαλάττια· πρὸς ὃ καὶ πεποίηκεν ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (fr. 74)

‘φῦλον ἄμουσον ἄγουσα πολυσπερέων καμασήνων.’’

[686] [a]

ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΑΚΩΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΕΚΤΟΝ

Τιμόθεον τὸν Κόνωνος, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, ὡς ἐκ τῶν πολυτελῶν καὶ στρατηγικῶν δείπνων ἀναλαβὼν [b] ὁ Πλάτων ἐδείπνισεν ἐν Ἀκαδημίᾳ μουσικῶς καὶ ἀφελῶς ‘ταῖς ἀφλεγμάντοις’ ὥς φησιν ὁ Ἴων (PLG II p. 257) ‘τραπέζαις’, αἷς ὕπνοι τε καθαροὶ καὶ βραχυόνειροι φαντασίαι, τοῦ σώματος εὐδίαν καὶ γαλήνην ἔχοντος, ἕπονται, μεθ’ ἡμέραν [οὖν] ὁ Τιμόθεος αἰσθόμενος τῆς διαφορᾶς ἔφη τοὺς παρὰ Πλάτωνι δειπνήσαντας καὶ τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ καλῶς γίνεσθαι. μέγα γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς εὐημερίας ἐφόδιον εὐκρασία σώματος ἀβαπτίστου καὶ ἐλαφροῦ καὶ παρεστῶτος ἀνυπόπτως ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἐνέργειαν. ἀλλ’ ἕτερον οὐκ ἔλαττον ὑπῆρχε τοῦτο τοῖς παρὰ Πλάτωνι δειπνήσασιν, ἡ τῶν [c] λαληθέντων παρὰ πότον ἀναθεώρησις· αἱ μὲν γὰρ τῶν ποθέντων ‹ἢ βρωθέντων› ἡδοναὶ τὴν ἀνάμνησιν ἀνελεύθερον ἔχουσιν καὶ ἄλλως ἐξίτηλον, ὥσπερ ὀσμὴν ἕωλον ἢ κνῖσαν ἐναπολειπομένην, προβλημάτων δὲ καὶ λόγων φιλοσόφων ὑποθέσεις αὐτούς ‹τε› τοὺς μεμνημένους εὐφραίνουσιν, ἀεὶ πρόσφατοι παροῦσαι, καὶ τοὺς ἀπολειφθέντας οὐχ ἧττον ἑστιᾶν παρέχουσι τοῖς αὐτοῖς, ἀκούοντας καὶ μεταλαμβάνοντας· ὅπου καὶ νῦν τῶν Σωκρατικῶν συμποσίων μετουσία καὶ ἀπόλαυσίς ἐστι τοῖς φιλολόγοις, ὥσπερ αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις τοῖς τότε δειπνοῦσι.

[d] καίτοι, εἰ τὰ σωματικὰ τὰς ἡδονὰς παρεῖχεν, ἔδει καὶ Ξενοφῶντα καὶ Πλάτωνα μὴ τῶν λαληθέντων ἀλλὰ τῶν παρατεθέντων ἐν Καλλίου καὶ Ἀγάθωνος ὄψων καὶ πεμμάτων καὶ τραγημάτων ἀπογραφὴν ἀπολιπεῖν· νῦν δ’ ἐκεῖνα μὲν οὐδέποτε, καίπερ ὡς εἰκὸς ἐκ παρασκευῆς γενόμενα καὶ δαπάνης, λόγου τινὸς ἠξιώθη, τὰ δὲ φιλοσοφηθέντα μετὰ παιδιᾶς σπουδάζοντες εἰς γραφὴν ἀπετίθεντο, καὶ κατέλιπον παραδείγματα τοῦ μὴ μόνον συνεῖναι διὰ λόγων ἀλλήλοις παρὰ πότον ἀλλὰ καὶ μεμνῆσθαι τῶν λαληθέντων.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Α

[e]

Τίς ἡ αἰτία, δι’ ἣν οἱ νηστεύοντες διψῶσι μᾶλλον ἢ πεινῶσιν

Ἕκτον οὖν τοῦτό σοι πέμπω τῶν Συμποσιακῶν, ἐν ᾧ πρῶτόν ἐστι τὸ περὶ τοῦ διψῆν μᾶλλον ἢ πεινῆν τοὺς νηστεύοντας.

Ἄλογον γὰρ ἐφαίνετο διψῆν μᾶλλον ἢ πεινῆν τοὺς ἐκνηστεύσαντας· ἡ γὰρ ἔνδεια τῆς ξηρᾶς τροφῆς ἀναπλήρωσιν οἰκείαν ἐδόκει ‹καὶ› κατὰ φύσιν ἐπιζητεῖν. ἔλεγον οὖν ἐγὼ τοῖς παροῦσιν, ὅτι τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν ἢ μόνον ἢ μάλιστα δεῖται τροφῆς τὸ θερμόν· ὥσπερ ἀμέλει βλέπομεν ἔξω [f] μήτ’ ἀέρα μήθ’ ὕδωρ μήτε γῆν ἐφιέμενα τοῦ τρέφεσθαι μηδ’ ἀναλίσκοντα τὸ πλησιάζον, ἀλλὰ μόνον τὸ πῦρ. ᾗ καὶ τὰ νέα βρωτικώτερα τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ὑπὸ θερμότητος· καὶ τοὐναντίον οἱ γέροντες ῥᾷστα νηστείαν φέρουσιν, ἀμβλὺ γὰρ ἐν αὐτοῖς καὶ μικρὸν ἤδη τὸ θερμόν ἐστιν. ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ἀναίμοις τῶν ζῴων, ἃ δὴ καὶ τροφῆς [687] [a] ἥκιστα προσδεῖται δι’ ἔνδειαν θερμότητος· αὐτόν θ’ ἕκαστον αὑτοῦ γυμνάσια καὶ κραυγαὶ καὶ ὅσα τῷ κινεῖν αὔξει τὸ θερμὸν ἥδιον φαγεῖν ποιεῖ καὶ προθυμότερον. τροφὴ δὲ τῷ θερμῷ, καθάπερ νομίζω, ὃ πρῶτον κατὰ φύσιν μάλιστα, τὸ ὑγρόν ἐστιν, ὡς αἵ τε φλόγες αὐξανόμεναι τῷ ἐλαίῳ δηλοῦσιν καὶ τὸ πάντων ξηρότατον εἶναι τέφραν· ἐκκέκαυται γὰρ τὸ νοτερόν, τὸ δὲ γεῶδες ἔρημον ἰκμάδος λέλειπται· καὶ ὁμοίως διίστησι καὶ διαιρεῖ τὰ σώματα τὸ πῦρ τῷ ἐξαιρεῖν τὴν κολλῶσαν ὑγρότητα καὶ συνδέουσαν. ὅταν οὖν νηστεύσωμεν, ἐκ τῶν ὑπολειμμάτων τῆς ἐν τῷ σώματι τροφῆς ἀποσπᾶται βίᾳ τὸ ὑγρὸν ὑπὸ [b] τοῦ θερμοῦ τὸ πρῶτον, εἶτ’ ἐπ’ αὐτὴν βαδίζει τὴν σύμφυτον λιβάδα τῆς σαρκὸς ἡ πύρωσις διώκουσα τὸ νοτερόν· γενομένης οὖν ὥσπερ ἐν πηλῷ ξηρότητος, ποτοῦ μᾶλλον τὸ σῶμα δεῖσθαι πέφυκεν, ἄχρι οὗ πιόντων ἀναρρωσθὲν καὶ ἰσχῦσαν τὸ θερμὸν ἐμβριθοῦς τροφῆς ὄρεξιν ἐργάσηται.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Β

Πότερον ἔνδεια ποιεῖ τὸ πεινῆν καὶ διψῆν ἢ πόρων - μετασχηματισμός

Λεχθέντων δὲ τούτων οἱ περὶ Φίλων’ ἰατροὶ τὴν πρώτην θέσιν ἐκίνουν· ἐνδείᾳ γὰρ οὐ γίνεσθαι τὸ δίψος, [c] ἀλλὰ πόρων τινῶν μετασχηματισμῷ. τοῦτο μὲν γὰρ οἱ νύκτωρ διψῶντες, ἂν ἐπικαταδάρθωσι, παύονται τοῦ διψῆν μὴ πιόντες· τοῦτο δ’ οἱ πυρέττοντες, ἐνδόσεως γενομένης ἢ παντάπασι τοῦ πυρετοῦ λωφήσαντος, ἅμα καὶ τοῦ διψῆν ἀπαλλάττονται· πολλοῖς δὲ λουσαμένοις καὶ νὴ Δί’ ἐμέσασιν ἑτέροις λήγει τὸ δίψος. ὧν ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς αὔξεται τὸ ὑγρόν, ἀλλὰ μόνον οἱ πόροι παρ‹έχουσι, π›άσχοντές τι τῷ μετασχηματίζεσθαι, τάξιν ἑτέραν καὶ διάθεσιν. ἐκδηλότερον δὲ τοῦτο γίνεται περὶ τὴν πεῖναν. ἐνδεεῖς γὰρ ἅμα πολλοὶ γίνονται καὶ ἀνόρεκτοι τῶν νοσούντων· ἐνίοις δ’ ἐμπιπλαμένοις οὐδὲ ἓν αἱ ὀρέξεις [d] χαλῶσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατατείνουσι καὶ παραμένουσιν. ἤδη δὲ πολλοὶ τῶν ἀποσίτων, ἐλαίαν ἁλμάδα λαμβάνοντες ἢ κάππαριν, γευσάμενοι ταχέως ἀνέλαβον καὶ παρεστήσαντο τὴν ὄρεξιν. ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα δῆλόν ἐστιν, ὅτι πάθει τινὶ πόρων οὐχ ὑπ’ ἐνδείας ἐγγίνεται τὸ πεινῆν ἡμῖν· τὰ γὰρ τοιαῦτα βρώματα τὴν μὲν ἔνδειαν ἐλαττοῖ προστιθεμένης τροφῆς, ποιοῦσιν, οὕτως αἱ τῶν ἐφάλμων βρωμάτων εὐστομίαι καὶ δριμύτητες ἐπιστρέφουσαι καὶ πυκνοῦσαι τὸν στόμαχον ἢ πάλιν ἀνοίγουσαι καὶ χαλῶσαι δεκτικήν τινα τροφῆς εὐαρμοστίαν περιειργάσαντο περὶ αὐτόν, ἣν ὄρεξιν καλοῦμεν.

Ἐδόκει δή μοι ταῦτα πιθανῶς μὲν ἐγκεχειρῆσθαι, πρὸς δὲ τὸ μέγιστον ἐναντιοῦσθαι τῆς φύσεως τέλος, ἐφ’ [e] ὃ πᾶν ἄγει ζῷον ὄρεξις, ἀναπλήρωσιν τοῦ ἐνδεοῦς ποθοῦσα καὶ τὸ ἐκλεῖπον ἀεὶ τοῦ οἰκείου διώκουσα· ‘τὸ γὰρ ᾧ διαφέρει μάλιστα τὸ ζῷον τοῦ ἀψύχου, τοῦτο μὴ φάναι πρὸς σωτηρίαν καὶ διαμονὴν ὑπάρχειν ἡμῖν, ὥσπερ ὄμμα, τῶν οἰκείων τῷ σώματι καὶ δεητῶν ἐγγεγενημένον, ἀλλὰ πάθος εἶναι καὶ τροπήν τινα πόρων οἴεσθαι μεγέθεσι καὶ μικρότησι συμβαίνουσαν εἰς οὐδέν’ ἦν λόγον ἁπλῶς τιθεμένων τὴν φύσιν. ἔπειτα ῥιγοῦν ‹μὲν› ἐνδείᾳ θερμότητος οἰκείας τὸ σῶμα, μηκέτι ‹δὲ› διψῆν μηδὲ πεινῆν ὑγρότητος ἐνδείᾳ τῆς κατὰ φύσιν καὶ τροφῆς, ἄλογόν ἐστι [f] τούτου δ’ ἀλογώτερον, εἰ κενώσεως μὲν ἐφίεται διὰ πλήρωσιν ἡ φύσις, πληρώσεως δ’ οὐ διὰ κένωσιν, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρου τινὸς πάθους ἐγγενομένου. καὶ μὴν αἵ γε τοιαῦται περὶ τὰ ζῷα χρεῖαι καὶ ἀναπληρώσεις οὐθέν τι τῶν περὶ τὰς γεωργίας γινομένων διαφέρουσιν· πολλὰ γὰρ ὅμοια πάσχει καὶ βοηθεῖται· πρὸς μὲν γὰρ τὰς ξηρότητας [688] [a] ἀρδείαις ποτίζομεν, καὶ ψύχομεν μετρίως ὅταν φλέγηται, ῥιγοῦντα δ’ αὐτὰ θάλπειν πειρώμεθα καὶ σκέπειν πόλλ’ ἄττα περιβάλλοντες· καὶ ὅσα μὴ παρ’ ἡμᾶς ἐστιν, εὐχόμεθα τὸν θεὸν διδόναι, δρόσους μαλακὰς καὶ εἰλήσεις ἐν πνεύμασι μετρίοις, ὡς ἀεὶ τοῦ ἀπολείποντος ἀναπλήρωσιν ἡ φύσις ἔχοι, διατηροῦσα τὴν κρᾶσιν. οὕτω γὰρ οἶμαι καὶ τροφὴν ὠνομάσθαι τὸ τηροῦν τὴν φύσιν· τηρεῖται δὲ τοῖς μὲν φυτοῖς ἀναισθήτως ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος, ὥς φησιν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (A 70), ὑδρευομένοις τὸ πρόσφορον· ἡμᾶς δ’ ἡ ὄρεξις ζητεῖν διδάσκει καὶ διώκειν τὸ ἐκλεῖπον τῆς κράσεως.’

‘Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν εἰρημένων ἕκαστον ἴδωμεν ὡς [b] οὐκ ἀληθές ἐστι. τὰ μὲν γὰρ εὐστομίαν ἔχοντα καὶ δριμύτητα τάχα μὲν οὐκ ὄρεξιν, ἀλλὰ δηγμὸν ἐμποιεῖ τοῖς δεκτικοῖς μέρεσι τῆς τροφῆς, οἷον κνησμοὶ κατὰ θίξιν ἐνίων ἀμυσσόντων· εἰ δὲ καὶ τοῦτο τὸ πάθος ὀρεκτικόν ἐστιν, εἰκός ἐστιν ὑπὸ τῶν τοιούτων βρωμάτων λεπτυνόμενα διακρίνεσθαι τὰ προϋπόντα, καὶ ποιεῖν μὲν ἔνδειαν, οὐ μεταρρυθμιζομένων ‹δὲ› τῶν πόρων ἀλλὰ κενουμένων καὶ καθαιρομένων· τὰ γὰρ ὀξέα καὶ δριμέα καὶ ἁλμυρὰ θρύπτοντα τὴν ὕλην διαφορεῖ καὶ σκίδνησιν, ὥστε νεαρὰν ποιεῖν τὴν ὄρεξιν ἐκθλιβομένων τῶν ἑώλων καὶ χθιζῶν. τῶν δὲ λουομένων οὐ μετασχηματιζόμενοι παύουσιν οἱ [c] πόροι τὸ δίψος, ἀλλ’ ἰκμάδα ‹διὰ› τῆς σαρκὸς ἀναλαμβάνοντες καὶ ἀναπιμπλάμενοι νοτερᾶς ἀτμίδος. οἱ δ’ ἔμετοι τὸ ἀλλότριον ἐκβάλλοντες ἀπόλαυσιν τῇ φύσει τοῦ οἰκείου παρέσχον. οὐ γὰρ ἁπλῶς τοῦ ὑγροῦ τὸ δίψος, ἀλλὰ τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ οἰκείου· διό, κἂν πολὺ παρῇ τὸ ἀλλόφυλον, ἐνδεὴς ὁ ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν· ἐνίσταται γὰρ τοῖς κατὰ φύσιν ὑγροῖς, ὧν ἡ ὄρεξίς ἐστι, καὶ οὐ δίδωσιν ἀνάμιξιν οὐδὲ κατάκρασιν, ἄχρι ἂν ἐκστῇ καὶ ἀποχωρήσῃ· τότε δ’ οἱ πόροι τὸ σύμφυλον ἀναλαμβάνουσιν. οἱ δὲ πυρετοὶ τὸ ὑγρὸν εἰς βάθος ἀπωθοῦσιν, καὶ τῶν μέσων φλεγομένων ἐκεῖ πᾶν ἀποκεχώρηκεν καὶ κρατεῖται πεπιεσμένον· [d] ὅθεν ἐμεῖν τε πολλοὺς ἅμα συμβαίνει, πυκνότητι τῶν ἐντὸς ἀναθλιβόντων τὰ ὑγρά, καὶ διψῆν δι’ ἔνδειαν καὶ ξηρότητα τοῦ λοιποῦ σώματος. ὅταν οὖν ἄνεσις γένηται καὶ τὸ θερμὸν ἐκ τῶν μέσων ἀπίῃ, σκιδνάμενον αὖθις ὑπονοστεῖ καὶ διιόν, ὡς πέφυκε, πάντῃ τὸ νοτερὸν ἅμα τοῖς τε μέσοις ῥᾳστώνην παρέσχεν καὶ τὴν σάρκα λείαν καὶ ἁπαλὴν ἀντὶ τραχείας καὶ αὐχμώδους γενομένην ἐμάλαξεν, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ ἱδρῶτας ἐπήγαγεν· ὅθεν ἡ ποιοῦσα διψῆν ἔνδεια λήγει καὶ παύεται, τῆς ὑγρότητος ἀπὸ τοῦ βαρυνομένου καὶ †δυσαναβλαστοῦντος [e] ἐπὶ τὸν δεόμενον καὶ ποθοῦντα μεθισταμένης τόπον. ὡς γὰρ ἐν κήπῳ, φρέατος ἄφθονον ὕδωρ ἔχοντος, εἰ μή τις ἐπαντλοῖ καὶ ἄρδοι τὰ φυτά, διψῆν καὶ ἀτροφεῖν ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν, οὕτως ἐν σώματι, τῶν ὑγρῶν εἰς ἕνα κατασπωμένων τόπον, οὐ θαυμαστὸν ἔνδειαν εἶναι περὶ τὰ λοιπὰ καὶ ξηρότητα, μέχρι οὗ πάλιν ἐπιρροὴ καὶ διάχυσις γένηται· καθάπερ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν πυρεττόντων, ὅταν ἀνεθῶσι, συμβαίνει καὶ τῶν ἐγκαταδαρθανόντων τῷ διψῆν· καὶ γὰρ τούτοις ὁ ὕπνος ἐκ μέσων ἐπανάγων τὰ ὑγρὰ καὶ διανέμων πάντῃ τοῖς μέρεσιν ὁμαλισμὸν ἐμποιεῖ καὶ ἀναπλήρωσιν. ὁ γὰρ δὴ λεγόμενος τῶν πόρων μετασχηματισμὸς [f] οὗτος, ᾧ τὸ πεινῆν ἢ τὸ διψῆν ἐγγίνεται, ποῖός τίς ἐστιν; ἐγὼ μὲν γὰρ οὐχ ὁρῶ περὶ πόρους [ἢ πόρων] διαφορὰς ἄλλας κατὰ πάθος ἢ τὸ συμπίπτειν καὶ τὸ διίστασθαι· καὶ συμπίπτοντες μὲν οὔτε ποτὸν οὔτε τροφὴν δέχεσθαι δύνανται, διιστάμενοι δὲ κενότητα καὶ χώραν ποιοῦσιν, ἔνδειαν οὖσαν τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ οἰκείου. καὶ γὰρ αἱ στύψεις, ὦ βέλτιστε, τῶν βαπτομένων’ ἔφην [689] [a] †’τόπον ἔχουσι τὸ δριμὺ καὶ ῥυπτικόν, ᾧ τῶν περισσῶν ἐκκρινομένων καὶ ἀποτηκομένων οἱ πόροι δέχονται μᾶλλον καὶ στέγουσι δεξάμενοι τὴν βαφὴν ὑπ’ ἐνδείας καὶ κενότητος.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Γ

Διὰ τί πεινῶντες μέν, ἐὰν πίωσι, παύονται, διψῶντες δ’, ἐὰν φάγωσιν, ἐπιτείνονται

Ῥηθέντων δὲ τούτων ὁ ἑστιῶν ἡμᾶς καὶ ταῦτ’ ἔφη μετρίως λέγεσθαι καὶ πρὸς ἄλλην ἀπορίαν τὰς τῶν πόρων [b] κενώσεις καὶ ἀναπληρώσεις ἐν τῷ παραυτίκα, τοῖς δὲ διψῶσι τοὐναντίον, ἐὰν ἐμφάγωσιν, ἐπιτείνειν συμβαίνει τὸ δίψος. ‘τοῦτο δὲ τὸ πάθος οἱ τοὺς πόρους ὑποτιθέμενοι ῥᾷστα καὶ πιθανώτατά μοι δοκοῦσιν, εἰ καὶ μὴ πολλὰ μόνον πιθανῶς, αἰτιολογεῖν. πᾶσι γὰρ ὄντων πόρων, ἄλλας πρὸς ἄλλα συμμετρίας ἐχόντων, οἱ μὲν εὐρύτεροι τὴν ξηρὰν ἅμα καὶ τὴν ὑγρὰν τροφὴν ἀναλαμβάνουσιν, οἱ δ’ ἰσχνότεροι τὸ μὲν ποτὸν παραδέχονται, ‹τὸ δὲ σιτίον οὐ παραδέχονται›. ποιεῖ δὲ τὴν μὲν δίψαν ἡ τούτων κένωσις, ἡ δ’ ἐκείνων τὴν πεῖναν. ὅθεν, ἐὰν μὲν φάγωσιν οἱ διψῶντες, οἱ [c] μὲν οὐ βοηθοῦνται, τῶν πόρων διὰ λεπτότητα τὴν ξηρὰν τροφὴν μὴ δεχομένων ἀλλ’ ἐπιδεῶν τοῦ οἰκείου διαμενόντων· οἱ δὲ πεινῶντες ἐὰν πίνωσιν, ἐνδυόμενα τὰ ὑγρὰ τοῖς μείζοσι πόροις καὶ ἀναπληροῦντα τὰς κενότητας αὐτῶν ἀνίησι τὸ σφοδρὸν ἄγαν τῆς πείνης.’

Ἐμοὶ δὲ τὸ μὲν συμβαῖνον ἀληθὲς ἐφαίνετο, τῇ δ’ ὑποθέσει τῆς αἰτίας οὐ προσεῖχον. ‘καὶ γὰρ εἰ τοῖς πόροις τούτοις’ ἔφην, ‘ὧν ἔνιοι περιέχονται καὶ ἀγαπῶσι, κατατρήσειέ τις τὴν σάρκα, πλαδαρὰν καὶ τρομώδη καὶ σαθρὰν ‹ἂν› ποιήσειε· τό τε μὴ ταὐτὰ τοῦ σώματος μόρια τὸ ποτὸν προσδέχεσθαι καὶ τὸ σιτίον ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἠθμοῖς καταρρεῖσθαι καὶ ἀποκρίνεσθαι κομιδῇ πλασματῶδες [d] καὶ ἀλλόκοτον. αὕτη γὰρ ἡ πρὸς τὸ ὑγρὸν ἀνάμιξις, θρύπτουσα τὰ σιτία καὶ συνεργὰ λαμβάνουσα τὸ θερμὸν τὸ ἐντὸς καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα, πάντων ὀργάνων ἀκριβέστατα πάσαις τομαῖς καὶ διαιρέσεσι λεπτύνει τὴν τροφήν, ὥστε πᾶν μόριον αὐτῆς παντὶ μορίῳ γίνεσθαι φίλον καὶ οἰκεῖον, οὐκ ἐναρμόττον ὥσπερ ἀγγείοις καὶ τρήμασιν ἀλλ’ ἑνούμενον καὶ προσφυόμενον. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων οὐδὲ λέλυται τῆς ἀπορίας τὸ μέγιστον· οἱ γὰρ ἐμφαγόντες, ἂν μὴ πίωσιν, οὐ μόνον οὐ λύουσιν ἀλλὰ καὶ προσεπιτείνουσι τὸ δίψος· πρὸς τοῦτο δ’ οὐδὲν εἴρηται. σκόπει δὲ καὶ τὰ [e] παρ’ ἡμῶν’ ἔφην, ‘εἰ φαινομένας ὑποθέσεις λαμβάνομεν, πρῶτον μὲν λαμβάνοντες τὸ ὑγρὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ ξηροῦ διαφθείρεσθαι δαπανώμενον, τῷ δ’ ὑγρῷ τὸ ξηρὸν βρεχόμενον καὶ μαλασσόμενον διαχύσεις ἴσχειν καὶ ἀναθυμιάσεις· δεύτερον δὲ μὴ νομίζοντες ἔκθλιψιν εἶναι παντάπασιν μήτε τῆς ξηρᾶς τροφῆς ‹τὴν› πεῖναν μήτε τῆς ὑγρᾶς τὴν δίψαν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ μετρίου καὶ ἀρκοῦντος ἔνδειαν· οἷς γὰρ ὅλως ἂν ἐλλίπῃ θάτερον, οὔτε πεινῶσιν οὔτε διψῶσιν ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἀποθνήσκουσιν. ὑποκειμένων δὲ τούτων οὐ χαλεπὸν ἤδη τὴν αἰτίαν συνιδεῖν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ δίψα τοῖς φαγοῦσιν ἐπιτείνεται τῶν σιτίων τῇ ξηρότητι, ‹εἴ τι› διεσπαρμένον ὑγρὸν καὶ ἀπολειπόμενον ἀσθενὲς καὶ ὀλίγον ἐν [f] τῷ σώματι, συλλεγόντων καὶ προσεξικμαζόντων· ὥσπερ ἔξω γῆν ὁρῶμεν καὶ κόνιν καὶ ψάμμον τὰ μιγνύμενα τῶν ὑγρῶν ἀναλαμβάνουσαν εἰς ἑαυτὴν καὶ ἀφανίζουσαν. τὴν δὲ πεῖναν αὖ πάλιν ἀναγκαίως τὸ ποτὸν ἀνίησιν· ἡ γὰρ ὑγρότης τὰ ὑπόντα σιτία περισκελῆ καὶ γλίσχρα βρέξασα [690] [a] καὶ διαχέασα, χυμῶν ἐγγενομένων καὶ ἀτμῶν, ἀναφέρει τούτοις εἰς τὸ σῶμα καὶ προστίθησι τοῖς δεομένοις· ὅθεν οὐ κακῶς ὄχημα τῆς τροφῆς τὸ ὑγρὸν ὁ Ἐρασίστρατος προσεῖπεν· τὰ γὰρ ὑπὸ ξηρότητος ἢ πάχους ἀργὰ καὶ βαρέα μιγνύμενον ἀναπέμπει καὶ συνεξαίρει. πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ μὴ πιόντες ἀλλὰ λουσάμενοι μόνον ἐπαύσαντο συντόμως σφόδρα πεινῶντες· ἐνδυομένη γὰρ ἔξωθεν ἡ ὑγρότης εὐχυμότερα ποιεῖ καὶ τροφιμώτερα τῷ ἐγχαλᾶσθαι τὰ ἐντός, ὥστε τῆς πείνης τὸ σφόδρα πικρὸν καὶ θηριῶδες ἐνδιδόναι καὶ παρηγορεῖσθαι. διὸ καὶ πολὺν ζῶσιν ἔνιοι τῶν ἀποκαρτερούντων χρόνον, ἂν ὕδωρ μόνον λαμβάνωσιν, [b] ἄχρι ἂν οὗ πᾶν ἐξικμασθῇ τὸ τρέφειν καὶ προστίθεσθαι τῷ σώματι δυνάμενον.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Δ

Διὰ τίν’ αἰτίαν τὸ φρεατιαῖον ὕδωρ ἀρυσθέν, ἐὰν ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ τοῦ φρέατος ἀέρι νυκτερεύσῃ, ψυχρότερον γίνεται

Ψυχροπότῃ ξένῳ τρυφῶντι παρεσκεύασαν οἱ θεράποντες τοῦ ἐκ φρέατος ὕδωρ ψυχρότερον· ἀρυσάμενοι γὰρ ἀγγείῳ καὶ κρεμάσαντες τὸ ἀγγεῖον ἐν τῷ φρέατι τῆς [c] πηγῆς μὴ ἁπτόμενον εἴασαν ἐπινυκτερεῦσαι, καὶ πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον ἐκομίζετο τοῦ προσφάτου ψυχρότερον. ἦν δ’ ὁ ξένος φιλόλογος ἐπιεικῶς, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔφη λαβεῖν ἐκ τῶν Ἀριστοτέλους (fr. 216) μετὰ λόγου κείμενον· εἶναι δὲ τοιόνδε τὸν λόγον. πᾶν ὕδωρ προθερμανθὲν ψύχεται μᾶλλον, ὥσπερ τὸ τοῖς βασιλεῦσι παρασκευαζόμενον· ὅταν γὰρ ἑψηθῇ μέχρι ζέσεως, περισωρεύουσι τῷ ἀγγείῳ χιόνα πολλὴν καὶ γίνεται ψυχρότερον· ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ τὰ ἡμέτερα σώματα λουσαμένων περιψύχεται μᾶλλον· ἡ γὰρ ὑπὸ τῆς θερμότητος ἄνεσις πολύπορον τὸ σῶμα [d] καὶ μανὸν ἀπειργασμένη πολὺν δέχεται τὸν ἔξωθεν ἀέρα καὶ βιαιοτέραν ποιεῖ τὴν μεταβολήν· ὅταν οὖν ἀποσπασθῇ [ὑπὸ] τῆς πηγῆς τὸ ὕδωρ, ἐν τῷ ἀέρι, προθερμανθέν, περιψύχεται ταχέως.

Τὸν μὲν οὖν ξένον ἐπῃνέσαμεν ὡς ἀνδρικῶς καταμνημονεύσαντα· περὶ δὲ τοῦ λόγου διηποροῦμεν. ὁ γὰρ ἀήρ, ἐν ᾧ κρέμαται τὸ ἀγγεῖον, εἰ μὲν ψυχρός ἐστι, πῶς θερμαίνει τὸ ὕδωρ; εἰ δὲ θερμός, πῶς περιψύχει πάλιν; ἄλογον γὰρ ὑπὸ τοῦ αὐτοῦ τὸ αὐτὸ πάσχειν τὰ ἐναντία, μηδεμιᾶς διαφορᾶς γενομένης. σιωπῶντος δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ διαποροῦντος, οὐδὲν ἔφην δεῖν περὶ τοῦ ἀέρος διαπορεῖν· ἡ γὰρ αἴσθησις λέγει ὅτι ψυχρός ἐστι, καὶ μάλιστά γ’ ὁ [e] ἐν βάθει φρεάτων· ὥστ’ ἀμήχανον ὑπ’ ἀέρος ψυχροῦ θερμαίνεσθαι τὸ ὕδωρ· ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὁ ψυχρὸς οὗτος ἀὴρ τὴν μὲν πηγὴν διὰ πλῆθος οὐ δύναται μεταβάλλειν, ἂν δέ τις ἀφαιρῇ κατ’ ὀλίγον, μᾶλλον κρατῶν περιψύξει.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ε

Διὰ τίν’ αἰτίαν οἱ χάλικες καὶ αἱ μολιβδίδες ἐμβαλλόμεναι ψυχρότερον τὸ ὕδωρ ποιοῦσιν

[f] ‘Ἀλλὰ μὴν περὶ τῶν χαλίκων’ ἔφην ‘ἢ τῶν ἀκμόνων, οὓς ἐμβάλλοντες εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ ψύχειν αὐτὸ καὶ στομοῦν δοκοῦσιν, εἰρημένον Ἀριστοτέλει (fr. 213) μνημονεύεις;’ ‘αὐτὸ τοῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘μόνον ἐν προβλήμασιν εἴρηκε τὸ γινόμενον· εἰς δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν ἐπιχειρήσομεν ἡμεῖς· ἔστι γὰρ μάλιστα δυσθεώρητος.’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ ἔφην, ‘καὶ θαυμάσαιμ’ ἄν, εἰ μὴ διαφύγοι ὁ λόγος ἡμᾶς· ὅρα δ’ ὅμως. πρῶτον οὐ δοκεῖ σοι περιψύχεσθαι μὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀέρος [691] [a] τὸ ὕδωρ ἔξωθεν ἐμπίπτοντος, ὁ δ’ ἀὴρ μᾶλλον ἰσχύειν πρὸς τοὺς λίθους καὶ τοὺς ἄκμονας ἀπερειδόμενος; οὐ γὰρ ἐῶσιν αὐτόν, ὥσπερ τὰ χαλκᾶ καὶ τὰ κεραμεᾶ τῶν ἀγγείων, διεκπίπτειν, ἀλλὰ τῇ πυκνότητι στέγοντες ἀνακλῶσιν εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ ἀπ’ αὐτῶν, ὥστε δι’ ὅλου καὶ ἰσχυρὰν γίνεσθαι τὴν περίψυξιν. διὸ καὶ χειμῶνος οἱ ποταμοὶ ψυχρότεροι γίνονται τῆς θαλάττης· ἰσχύει γὰρ ἐν αὐτοῖς ὁ ψυχρὸς ἀὴρ ἀνακλώμενος, ἐν δὲ τῇ θαλάττῃ διὰ βάθος ἐκλύεται πρὸς μηθὲν ἀντερείδων. κατ’ ἄλλον δὲ τρόπον εἰκός ἐστι τὰ λεπτότερα τῶν ὑδάτων περιψύχεσθαι μᾶλλον [ἢ] ὑπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ· κρατεῖται γὰρ δι’ ἀσθένειαν.

[b] αἱ δ’ ἀκόναι καὶ οἱ χάλικες λεπτύνουσι τὸ ὕδωρ, ὅ τι θολερὸν καὶ γεῶδες ἀναμέμικται, τοῦτο συνάγοντες καὶ κατασπῶντες ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ, ὥστε λεπτότερον καὶ ἀσθενέστερον τὸ ὕδωρ γενόμενον μᾶλλον ὑπὸ περιψύξεως κρατεῖσθαι. καὶ μὴν ὅ τε μόλιβδος τῶν φύσει ψυχρῶν ἐστιν, ὅς γε τριβόμενος ὄξει τὸ ψυκτικώτατον τῶν θανασίμων φαρμάκων ἐξανίησι ψιμύθιον· οἵ τε χάλικες πυκνότητι τὸ ψυχρὸν διὰ βάθους ποιοῦσιν· πᾶς μὲν γὰρ λίθος κατεψυγμένης καὶ πεπιλημένης ὑπὸ κρύους γῆς πάγος ἐστίν, μᾶλλον δ’ ὁ μᾶλλον πεπυκνωμένος· ὥστ’ οὐκ ἄτοπον, εἰ τὴν ψυχρότητα τοῦ ὕδατος ἀντερείδων συνεπιτείνει καὶ [c] ὁ λίθος καὶ ὁ μόλιβδος.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ϛ

Διὰ τίν’ αἰτίαν ἀχύροις καὶ ἱματίοις τὴν χιόνα διαφυλάττουσι

Μικρὸν οὖν ὁ ξένος διαλιπών ‘οἱ ἐρῶντες’ ἔφη ‘μάλιστα μὲν αὐτοῖς τοῖς παιδικοῖς, εἰ δὲ μή, περὶ αὐτῶν ἐπιθυμοῦσι διαλέγεσθαι· τοῦτο πέπονθα περὶ τῆς χιόνος. ἐπεὶ γὰρ οὐ πάρεστιν οὐδ’ ἔχομεν, ἐπιθυμῶ μαθεῖν, τίς αἰτία δι’ ἣν ὑπὸ τῶν θερμοτάτων φυλάσσεται. καὶ γὰρ ἀχύροις σπαργανοῦντες αὐτὴν καὶ περιστέλλοντες ἱματίοις [d] ἀγνάπτοις ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄπταιστον διατηροῦσιν. θαυμαστὸν οὖν, εἰ συνεκτικὰ τὰ θερμότατα τῶν ψυχροτάτων ἐστί.’

‘Κομιδῇ γ’’ ἔφην, ‘εἴπερ ἀληθές ἐστιν· οὐκ ἔχει δ’ οὕτως, ἀλλ’ αὑτοὺς παραλογιζόμεθα, θερμὸν εὐθὺς εἶναι τὸ θερμαῖνον ὑπολαμβάνοντες· καὶ ταῦθ’ ὁρῶντες ὅτι ταὐτὸν ἱμάτιον ἐν χειμῶνι θερμαίνειν ἐν δ’ ἡλίῳ ψύχειν γέγονεν· ὥσπερ ἡ τραγικὴ τροφὸς ἐκείνη τὰ τῆς Νιόβης τέκνα τιθηνεῖται (Trag. adesp. 7)

‘λεπτοσπαθήτων χλανιδίων ἐρειπίοις

θάλπουσα καὶ ψύχουσα.’

Γερμανοὶ μὲν οὖν κρύους πρόβλημα ποιοῦνται τὴν ἐσθῆτα μόνον, Αἰθίοπες δὲ θάλπους μόνον, ἡμεῖς δ’ ἀμφοῖν.

[e] ὥστε τί μᾶλλον, εἰ θάλπει, θερμὴν ἢ ψυχρὰν ἀπὸ τοῦ περιψύχειν λεκτέον; εἰ δὲ δεῖ τῇ αἰσθήσει τεκμαίρεσθαι, μᾶλλον ἂν ψυχρὰ γένοιτο· καὶ γὰρ ὁ χιτὼν ψυχρὸς ἡμῖν προσπίπτει τὸ πρῶτον ἐνδυσαμένοις καὶ τὰ στρώματα κατακλινεῖσιν· εἶτα μέντοι συναλεαίνει τῆς ἀφ’ ἡμῶν πιπλάμενα θερμασίας καὶ ἅμα μὲν περιστέλλοντα καὶ κατέχοντα τὸ θερμὸν ἅμα δ’ ἀπείργοντα τὸ κρύος καὶ τὸν ἔξω‹θεν› ἀέρα τοῦ σώματος. οἱ μὲν οὖν πυρέττοντες ἢ καυματιζόμενοι συνεχῶς ἀλλάττουσι τὰ ἱμάτια τῷ ψυχρὸν εἶναι τὸ ἐπιβαλλόμενον, ἂν δ’ ἐπιβληθῇ, [f] παραχρῆμα γίνεσθαι θερμὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ σώματος. ὥσπερ οὖν ἡμᾶς θερμαινόμενον θερμαίνει τὸ ἱμάτιον, οὕτως τὴν χιόνα ψυχόμενον ἀντιπεριψύχει· ψύχεται δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῆς ἀφιείσης πνεῦμα λεπτόν· τοῦτο γὰρ συνέχει τὴν πῆξιν αὐτῆς ἐγκατακεκλεισμένον· ἀπελθόντος δὲ τοῦ πνεύματος, ὕδωρ οὖσα ῥεῖ καὶ διατήκεται, καὶ ἀπανθεῖ τὸ λευκὸν ὅπερ ἡ τοῦ πνεύματος πρὸς τὸ ὑγρὸν ἀνάμιξις ἀφρώδης γενομένη παρεῖχεν· ἅμα τ’ οὖν τὸ ψυχρὸν ἐγκατέχεται περιστεγόμενον τῷ ἱματίῳ, καὶ ὁ ἔξωθεν ἀὴρ ἀπειργόμενος [692] [a] οὐ τέμνει τὸν πάγον οὐδ’ ἀνίησιν. ἀγνάπτοις δὲ τούτοις πρὸς τοῦτο διὰ τὴν τραχύτητα καὶ ξηρότητα τῆς κροκύδος οὐκ ἐώσης ἐπιπεσεῖν βαρὺ τὸ ἱμάτιον οὐδὲ συνθλῖψαι τὴν χαυνότητα τῆς χιόνος· ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ ἄχυρον διὰ κουφότητα μαλακῶς περιπῖπτον οὐ θρύπτει τὸν πάγον, ἄλλως δὲ πυκνόν ἐστι καὶ στεγανόν, ὥστε καὶ ‹τὴν› θερμότητα τοῦ ἀέρος ἀπείργειν καὶ τὴν ψυχρότητα κωλύειν ἀπιέναι τῆς χιόνος. ὅτι δ’ ἡ τοῦ πνεύματος διάκρισις ἐμποιεῖ τὴν τῆξιν, ἐμφανές ἐστι τῇ αἰσθήσει· τηκομένη γὰρ ἡ χιὼν πνεῦμα ποιεῖ.’

[b]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ζ

Εἰ δεῖ τὸν οἶνον ἐνδιηθεῖν

Νίγρος ὁ πολίτης ἡμῶν ἀπὸ σχολῆς ἀφῖκτο συγγεγονὼς ἐνδόξῳ φιλοσόφῳ χρόνον οὐ πολύν, ἀλλ’ ἐν ὅσῳ τὰ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς οὐ καταλαμβάνοντες ἀνεπίμπλαντο τῶν ἐπαχθῶν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ μιμούμενοι τὸ ἐπιτιμητικὸν καὶ ἐλέγχοντες ἐπὶ παντὶ πράγματι τοὺς συνόντας. ἑστιῶντος οὖν ἡμᾶς Ἀριστίωνος, τήν τ’ ἄλλην χορηγίαν ὡς πολυτελῆ καὶ περίεργον ἐμέμφετο καὶ τὸν οἶνον οὐκ ἔφη δεῖν ἐγχεῖσθαι ‹δι›ηθημένον, ἀλλ’, ὥσπερ Ἡσίοδος ἐκέλευσεν, ἀπὸ τοῦ πίθου πίνεσθαι τὴν σύμφυτον ἔχοντα ῥώμην καὶ δύναμιν.

[c] ‘ἡ δὲ τοιαύτη κάθαρσις αὐτοῦ πρῶτον μὲν ἐκτέμνει τὰ νεῦρα καὶ τὴν θερμότητα κατασβέννυσιν· ἐξανθεῖ γὰρ καὶ ἀποπνεῖ διερωμένου πολλάκις. ἔπειτα περιεργίαν καὶ καλλωπισμὸν ἐμφαίνει καὶ τρυφὴν εἰς τὸ ἡδὺ καταναλίσκουσα τὸ χρήσιμον. ὥσπερ γὰρ τὸ τοὺς ἀλεκτρυόνας ἐκτέμνειν καὶ τοὺς χοίρους, ἁπαλὴν αὐτῶν παρὰ φύσιν τὴν σάρκα ποιοῦντας καὶ θήλειαν, οὐχ ὑγιαινόντων ἐστὶν ἀνθρώπων ἀλλὰ διεφθαρμένων ὑπὸ λιχνείας, οὕτως, εἰ δεῖ μεταφορᾷ χρησάμενον λέγειν, ἐξευνουχίζουσι τὸν ἄκρατον καὶ ἀποθηλύνουσιν οἱ διηθοῦντες, οὔτ’ ἄφθονον ὑπ’ [d] ἀσθενείας οὔτε πίνειν [τὸν] μέτριον δυνάμενοι διὰ τὴν ἀκρασίαν· ἀλλὰ σόφισμα τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν αὐτοῖς καὶ μηχάνημα πολυποσίας· ἐξαιροῦσι δὲ τοῦ οἴνου τὸ ἐμβριθές, τὸ λεῖον ἀπολιπόντες, ὥσπερ οἱ τοῖς ἀκρατῶς ἔχουσι πρὸς ψυχροποσίαν ἀρρώστοις ἀφεψημένον διδόντες· ὅ τι γὰρ στόμωμα τοῦ οἴνου καὶ κράτος ἐστίν, τοῦτ’ ἐν τῷ διυλίζειν ἐξαιροῦσι καὶ ἀποκρίνουσι. μέγα ‹δὲ› τεκμήριον νὴ Δία φθορᾶς τὸ μὴ διαμένειν ἀλλ’ ἐξίστασθαι καὶ μαραίνεσθαι, καθάπερ ἀπὸ ῥίζης κοπέντα τῆς τρυγός· οἱ δὲ παλαιοὶ καὶ τρύγα τὸν οἶνον ἄντικρυς ἐκάλουν, ὥσπερ ψυχὴν καὶ κεφαλὴν τὸν ἄνθρωπον εἰώθαμεν ἀπὸ τῶν [e] κυριωτάτων ὑποκορίζεσθαι, καὶ τρυγᾶν λέγομεν τοὺς δρεπομένους τὴν ἀμπελίνην ὀπώραν, καὶ ‘διατρύγιόν’ που Ὅμηρος (ω 342) εἴρηκεν, αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν οἶνον ‘αἴθοπα’ καί ‘ἐρυθρὸν’ εἴωθε καλεῖν· οὐχ ὡς Ἀριστίων ἡμῖν ὠχριῶντα καὶ χλωρὸν ὑπὸ τῆς πολλῆς καθάρσεως παρέχεται.’

Καὶ ὁ Ἀριστίων γελάσας ‘οὐκ ὠχριῶντ’’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ τᾶν, οὐδ’ ἀναίμον’, ἀλλὰ μειλίχιον καὶ ἡμερίδην, ἀπὸ τῆς ὄψεως αὐτῆς πρῶτον. σὺ δ’ ἀξιοῖς τοῦ νυκτερινοῦ καὶ μελαναίγιδος ἐμφορεῖσθαι, καὶ ψέγεις τὴν κάθαρσιν ὥσπερ χολημεσίαν ‹δι’› ἧς τὸ βαρὺ καὶ μεθυστικὸν ἀφιεὶς καὶ [f] νοσῶδες ἐλαφρὸς καὶ ἄνευ ὀργῆς ἀναμίγνυται ἡμῖν, οἷον Ὅμηρός φησι πίνειν τοὺς ἥρωας· αἴθοπα γὰρ οὐ καλεῖ τὸν ζοφερόν, ἀλλὰ τὸν διαυγῆ καὶ λαμπρόν· οὐ γὰρ †ανωφλεγων ‘εὐήνορα’ καὶ ‘νώροπα χαλκὸν’ ‘αἴθοπα’ (Δ 495 passim) προσηγόρευεν. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ σοφὸς Ἀνάχαρσις [693] [a] ἄλλ’ ἄττα τῶν Ἑλλήνων μεμφόμενος ἐπῄνει τὴν ἀνθρακείαν ὅτι τὸν καπνὸν ἔξω καταλιπόντες οἴκαδε πῦρ κομίζουσιν, οὕτως ἡμᾶς ἐφ’ ἑτέροις ἂν ψέγοιτε μᾶλλον οἱ σοφοὶ ὑμεῖς· εἰ δὲ τοῦ οἴνου τὸ ταρακτικὸν καὶ ὀχλῶδες ἐξωθούμενοι καὶ ἀποσκεδάσαντες, αὐτὸν δ’ †εὐφραίνοντες οὐ καλλωπίσαντες, οὐδ’ ὥσπερ σιδήρου στόμωμα καὶ ἀκμὴν ἀποκόψαντες, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὥσπερ ἰὸν ἢ ῥύπον ἀποκαθάραντες προσφερόμεθα, τί πλημμελοῦμεν; ‘ὅτι νὴ Δία πλέον ἰσχύει μὴ διηθούμενος’· καὶ γὰρ ἄνθρωπος, ὦ φίλε, φρενετίζων καὶ μαινόμενος· ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἐλλεβόρῳ χρησάμενος ἢ διαίτῃ καταστῇ, τὸ μὲν σφοδρὸν [b] ἐκεῖνο καὶ σύντονον οἴχεται καὶ γέγονεν ἐξίτηλον, ἡ δ’ ἀληθινὴ δύναμις καὶ σωφροσύνη παραγίνεται τῷ σώματι· οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἡ κάθαρσις τοῦ οἴνου τὸ πληκτικὸν ἀφαιροῦσα καὶ μανικόν, εἰς πραεῖαν ἕξιν καὶ ὑγιαίνουσαν καθίστησι. περιεργίαν δ’ οἶμαι πάμπολυ διαφέρειν καθαριότητος· καὶ γὰρ αἱ γυναῖκες φυκούμεναι καὶ μυριζόμεναι καὶ χρυσὸν φοροῦσαι καὶ πορφύραν περίεργοι δοκοῦσιν, λουτρὸν δὲ καὶ ἄλειμμα καὶ κόμης ῥύψιν οὐδεὶς αἰτιᾶται. χαριέντως δὲ τὴν διαφορὰν ὁ ποιητὴς ἐπιδείκνυσιν ἐπὶ τῆς κοσμουμένης Ἥρας, (Ξ 170)

‘ἀμβροσίῃ μὲν πρῶτον ἀπὸ χροὸς ἀθανάτοιο

[c] λύματα πάντα κάθηρεν, ἀλείψατο δὲ λίπ’ ἐλαίῳ·’

μέχρι τούτων ἐπιμέλεια [καὶ] καθαριότητός ἐστιν· ὅταν δὲ τὰς χρυσᾶς περόνας ἀναλαμβάνῃ καὶ τὰ διηκριβωμένα τέχνῃ ἐλλόβια καὶ τελευτῶσα τῆς περὶ τὸν κεστὸν ἅπτηται γοητείας, περιεργία τὸ χρῆμα καὶ λαμυρία μὴ πρέπουσα γαμετῇ γέγονεν. οὐκοῦν καὶ τὸν οἶνον οἱ μὲν ἀλόαις χρωτίζοντες ἢ κινναμώμοις καὶ κρόκοις ἐφηδύνοντες ὥσπερ γυναῖκα καλλωπίζουσιν εἰς τὰ συμπόσια καὶ προαγωγεύουσιν· οἱ δ’ ἀφαιροῦντες τὸ ῥυπαρὸν καὶ ἄχρηστον ἐξ αὐτοῦ θεραπεύουσι καὶ καθαίρουσιν. ἐπεὶ πάντ’ ἂν εἴποις [d] ταῦτα περιεργίαν, ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ τοῦ οἴκου· τί γὰρ οὕτως κεκονίαται; τί δ’ ἀνέῳγε τοῦ περιέχοντος ὅθεν ἂν μάλιστα πνεῦμα λαμβάνοι καθαρὸν καὶ τοῦ φωτὸς ἀπολαύοι περιιόντος ἐπὶ τὰς δύσεις; τί δὲ τῶν ἐκπωμάτων ἕκαστον ἐκτέτριπται καὶ διέσμηκται πανταχόθεν ὥστε λάμπειν καὶ περιστίλβειν; ἢ τὸ μὲν ἔκπωμ’ ἔδει μὴ ῥύπου μηδὲ μοχθηρίας ὀδωδὸς εἶναι, τὸ δ’ ἐξ αὐτοῦ πινόμενον εὐρῶτος ἢ κηλίδων ἀναπεπλῆσθαι; καὶ τί δεῖ τὰ ἄλλα λέγειν; ἡ γὰρ αὐτοῦ τοῦ πυροῦ διαπόνησις εἰς τὸν ἄρτον, οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἢ κάθαρσις οὖσα, θέασαι μεθ’ ὅσης γίνεται πραγματείας· οὐ γὰρ μόνον ὑποσκαφισμοὶ καὶ διαττήσεις καὶ [e] ἀποκρίσεις καὶ διακρίσεις εἰσὶ τῶν σιτίων καὶ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων, ἀλλ’ ἡ τρῖψις ἐκθλίβουσα τοῦ φυράματος τὸ τραχὺ καὶ ἡ πέψις ἐξικμάζουσα τὸ ὑγρὸν [καὶ] καθαίρουσι καὶ συστέλλουσι τὴν ὕλην εἰς αὐτὸ τὸ ἐδώδιμον. τί οὖν ἄτοπον, εἰ καὶ τοῦ οἴνου τὸ τρυγῶδες ὡς κρίμνον ἢ σκύβαλον ἡ διήθησις ἐξαιρεῖ, μήτε δαπάνης τινὸς τῇ καθάρσει μήτ’ ἀσχολίας πολλῆς προσούσης;’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Η

Τίς αἰτία βουλίμου

Θυσία τις ἔστι πάτριος, ἣν ὁ μὲν ἄρχων ἐπὶ τῆς κοινῆς ἑστίας δρᾷ τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἕκαστος ἐπ’ οἴκου· καλεῖται δὲ ‘βουλίμου ἐξέλασις’· καὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν ἕνα τύπτοντες [f] ἀγνίναις ῥάβδοις διὰ θυρῶν ἐξελαύνουσιν, ἐπιλέγοντες ‘ἔξω Βούλιμον ἔσω δὲ Πλοῦτον καὶ Ὑγίειαν.’ ἄρχοντος οὖν ἐμοῦ πλείονες ἐκοινώνουν τῆς θυσίας· [694] [a] κᾆθ’ ὡς ἐποιήσαμεν τὰ νενομισμένα καὶ πάλιν κατεκλίνημεν, ἐζητεῖτο πρῶτον ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ τοῦ ὀνόματος, ἔπειτα τῆς φωνῆς ἣν ἐπιλέγουσι τῷ διωκομένῳ, μάλιστα δ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ πάθους καὶ τῶν κατ’ αὐτὸ γινομένων. τὸ μὲν οὖν λιμὸν ἐδόκει μέγαν ἢ δημόσιον ἀποσημαίνειν, καὶ μάλιστα παρ’ ἡμῖν τοῖς Αἰολεῦσιν ἀντὶ τοῦ β τῷ π χρωμένοις· οὐ γὰρ βούλιμον, ἀλλὰ πούλιμον, οἷον πολὺν ὄντα λιμόν, ὀνομάζομεν. ἐδόκει δ’ ἡ βούβρωστις ἕτερον εἶναι· τὸ δὲ τεκμήριον ἐλαμβάνομεν ἐκ τῶν Μητροδώρου Ἰωνικῶν (FHG III 205 6 Fr. Gr. Hist. 43 F 3)· ἱστορεῖ γάρ, ὅτι Σμυρναῖοι τὸ παλαιὸν Αἰολεῖς ὄντες θύουσι Βουβρώστει [b] ταῦρον μέλανα καὶ κατακόψαντες αὐτόδορον ὁλοκαυτοῦσιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ πᾶς μὲν ἔοικεν [ὁ] λιμὸς νόσῳ, μάλιστα δ’ ὁ βούλιμος, ὅτι γίνεται παθόντος παρὰ φύσιν τοῦ σώματος, εἰκότως ἀντιτάττουσιν ὡς μὲν ἐνδείᾳ τὸν πλοῦτον ὡς δὲ νόσῳ τὴν ὑγίειαν· ὡς δὲ ναυτιᾶν ὠνομάσθη μὲν ἐπὶ τῶν ἐν νηὶ καὶ κατὰ πλοῦν τὸν στόμαχον ἐκλυομένων, ἔθει δ’ ἴσχυκεν ἤδη καὶ κατὰ τῶν ὁπωσοῦν τοῦτο πασχόντων ὄνομα τοῦ πάθους εἶναι, οὕτως ἄρα καὶ τὸ βουλιμιᾶν ἐκεῖθεν ἀρξάμενον ἐνταῦθα διέτεινεν. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔρανον κοινὸν ἐκ πάντων συνεπληροῦμεν λόγων.

Ἐπειδὴ δ’ ἡπτόμεθα τῆς αἰτίας τοῦ πάθους, πρῶτον [c] μὲν ἠπορήθη τὸ μάλιστα βουλιμιᾶν τοὺς διὰ χιόνος πολλῆς βαδίζοντας, ὥσπερ καὶ Βροῦτος ἐκ Δυρραχίου πρὸς Ἀπολλωνίαν ‹ἰὼν› ἐκινδύνευσεν ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους· ἦν δὲ νιφετὸς πολὺς καὶ τῶν τὰ σιτία κομιζόντων οὐδεὶς ἐξηκολούθει· λιποθυμοῦντος οὖν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀπολιπόντος, ἠναγκάσθησαν οἱ στρατιῶται προσδραμόντες τοῖς τείχεσιν ἄρτον αἰτῆσαι παρὰ τῶν τειχοφυλάκων πολεμίων ‹ὄντων›· καὶ λαβόντες εὐθὺς ἀνεκτήσαντο τὸν Βροῦτον· διὸ καὶ φιλανθρώπως ἐχρήσατο πᾶσι κύριος τῆς πόλεως γενόμενος. πάσχουσι δὲ τοῦτο καὶ ἵπποι καὶ ὄνοι, καὶ μάλισθ’ ὅταν [ἢ] ἰσχάδας ἢ μῆλα κομίζωσιν. ὃ δὲ θαυμασιώτατόν [d] ἐστιν, οὐκ ἀνθρώπους μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ κτήνη μάλιστα πάντων ἐδωδίμων ἀναρρώννυσιν ἄρτος· ὥστε, κἂν ἐλάχιστον ἐμφάγωσιν, ἵστανται καὶ βαδίζουσι.

Γενομένης δὲ σιωπῆς, ἐγὼ συννοῶν ὅτι τὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἐπιχειρήματα τοὺς μὲν ἀργοὺς καὶ ἀφυεῖς οἷον ἀναπαύει καὶ ἀναπίμπλησι, τοῖς δὲ φιλοτίμοις καὶ φιλολόγοις ἀρχὴν ἐνδίδωσιν οἰκείαν καὶ τόλμαν ἐπὶ τὸ ζητεῖν καὶ ἀνιχνεύειν τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ἐμνήσθην τῶν Ἀριστοτελικῶν (Probl. phys. 888a 118), ἐν οἷς λέγεται, ὅτι, πολλῆς περιψύξεως γενομένης ἔξωθεν, ἐκθερμαίνεται σφόδρα τὰ ἐντὸς καὶ πολὺ σύντηγμα ποιεῖ· τοῦτο δ’, ἐὰν [e] μὲν ἐπὶ τὰ σκέλη ῥυῇ, κόπους ἀπεργάζεται καὶ βαρύτητας, ἐὰν δ’ ἐπὶ τὰς τῆς κινήσεως καὶ τῆς ἀναπνοῆς ἀρχάς, ἀψυχίαν [ἢ] καὶ ἀσθένειαν.

Ὅπερ οὖν εἰκός, τοῦ λόγου λεχθέντος ἐπεραίνετο, τῶν μὲν ἐπιφυομένων τῷ δόγματι τῶν δ’ ὑπερδικούντων. Σώκλαρος δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἔφη τοῦ λόγου κάλλιστα κεῖσθαι· περιψύχεσθαι γὰρ ἱκανῶς καὶ πυκνοῦσθαι τὰ σώματα τῶν βαδιζόντων διὰ χιόνος· τὸ δὲ σύντηγμα τὴν θερμότητα ποιεῖν καὶ τοῦτο καταλαμβάνειν τὰς ἀρχὰς τῆς ἀναπνοῆς αἰτηματῶδες εἶναι· μᾶλλον οὖν δοκεῖν αὐτῷ τὴν θερμότητα συστελλομένην καὶ πλεονάζουσαν ἐντὸς ἀναλίσκειν τὴν τροφήν, εἶτ’ ἐπιλειπούσης καὶ αὐτὴν [f] ὥσπερ πῦρ ἀπομαραίνεσθαι· διὸ πεινῶσι σφόδρα καὶ βραχὺ παντελῶς ἐμφαγόντες εὐθὺς ἀναλάμπουσι· γίνεται γὰρ ὥσπερ ὑπέκκαυμα τῆς θερμότητος τὸ προσφερόμενον.

Κλεομένης δ’ ὁ ἰατρὸς ἄλλως ἔφη τῷ ὀνόματι τὸν λιμὸν συντετάχθαι δίχα τοῦ πράγματος, ὥσπερ τῷ [695] [a] καταπίνειν τὸ πίνειν καὶ τῷ ἀνακύπτειν τὸ κύπτειν· οὐ γὰρ εἶναι λιμόν, ὥσπερ δοκεῖ, τὴν βουλιμίαν, ἀλλὰ πάθος ἐν ‹τῷ› στομάχῳ διὰ συνδρομὴν θερμοῦ λιποψυχίαν ποιοῦν. ὥσπερ οὖν τὰ ὀσφραντὰ πρὸς τὰς λιποθυμίας βοηθεῖν, καὶ τὸν ἄρτον ἀναλαμβάνειν [καὶ] τοὺς βουλιμιῶντας, οὐχ ὅτι τροφῆς ἐνδεεῖς εἰσι (μικρὸν γοῦν παντάπασιν [ἀνα]λαβόντες ἀναζωπυροῦσιν), ἀλλ’ ὅτι τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἀνακαλεῖται καταφερομένην. ὅτι δ’ ἔστι λιποθυμία καὶ οὐ πεῖνα, μηνύει τὸ τῶν ὑποζυγίων· ἡ γὰρ τῶν ἰσχάδων ἀποφορὰ καὶ ἡ τῶν μήλων ἔνδειαν μὲν οὐ ποιεῖ, καρδιωγμὸν δέ τινα μᾶλλον καὶ ‹νὴ› Δί’ εἴλιγγον.

[b] Ἡμῖν δὲ καὶ ταῦτα μετρίως ἐδόκει λέγεσθαι, ‹καὶ› ἀπὸ τῆς ἐναντίας ἀρχῆς δυνατὸν εἶναι, μὴ πύκνωσιν ἀλλ’ ἀραίωσιν ὑποθεμένοις, διασῶσαι τὸ πιθανόν. τὸ γὰρ ἀπορρέον πνεῦμα τῆς χιόνος ἐστὶ μὲν οἷον αἰθὴρ τοῦ πάγου καὶ ψῆγμα λεπτομερέστατον, ἔχει δέ τι τομὸν καὶ διαιρετικὸν οὐ σαρκὸς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀργυρῶν καὶ χαλκῶν ἀγγείων· ὁρῶμεν γὰρ ταῦτα μὴ στέγοντα τὴν χιόνα· πνεομένη γὰρ ἀναλίσκεται καὶ τὴν ἐκτὸς ἐπιφάνειαν τοῦ ἀγγείου νοτίδος ἀναπίμπλησι λεπτῆς καὶ κρυσταλλοειδοῦς, ἣν ἀπολείπει τὸ πνεῦμα διὰ τῶν πόρων ἀδήλως ἀπερχόμενον. τοῦτο δὴ τοῖς βαδίζουσι διὰ χιόνος ὀξὺ καὶ φλογοειδὲς [c] προσπῖπτον ἐπικαίειν δοκεῖ τὰ ἄκρα τῷ τέμνειν καὶ †παρελθεῖν τῇ σαρκί, καθάπερ τὸ πῦρ· ὅθεν ἀραίωσις γίνεται περὶ τὸ σῶμα πολλὴ καὶ ῥεῖ τὸ θερμὸν ἔξω καὶ ‹διὰ› τὴν ψυχρότητα τοῦ πνεύματος περὶ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν σβεννύμενον ἱδρῶτα δροσώδη διατμίζει καὶ λεπτόν, ὥστε τήκεσθαι καὶ ἀναλίσκεσθαι [καὶ] τὴν δύναμιν. ἐὰν μὲν οὖν ἡσυχάζῃ τις, οὐ πολλὴ τοῦ σώματος ἀπέρχεται θερμότης· ὅταν δὲ τὴν μὲν τροφὴν τοῦ σώματος ἡ κίνησις εἰς τὸ θερμὸν ὀξέως μεταβάλλῃ τὸ δὲ θερμὸν ἔξω φέρηται, διακρινομένης τῆς σαρκός, ἀθρόαν ἀνάγκη τῆς [d] δυνάμεως ἐπίλειψιν γενέσθαι. ὅτι δὲ τὸ ἐκψύχεσθαι οὐ πήγνυσιν μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τήκει τὰ σώματα, δῆλόν ἐστιν· ἐν μὲν γὰρ τοῖς μεγάλοις χειμῶσιν ἀκόναι μολίβδου διατηκόμεναι τό τε τῆς ἀφιδρώσεως καὶ τὸ πολλοῖς μὴ πεινῶσι συμπίπτειν τὴν βουλιμίασιν ‹ἀραίωσιν› κατηγορεῖ μᾶλλον καὶ ῥύσιν ἢ πύκνωσιν τοῦ σώματος. ἀραιοῦνται δὲ χειμῶνος μέν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, τῇ λεπτότητι, ἄλλως δὲ τοῦ κόπου καὶ τῆς κινήσεως ἀποξυνούσης τὴν ἐν τῷ σώματι θερμότητα· λεπτὴ γὰρ γενομένη καὶ κοπιῶσα ῥεῖ πολλὴ καὶ διασπείρεται διὰ τοῦ σώματος. τὰ δὲ μῆλα καὶ τὰς ἰσχάδας εἰκὸς ἀποπνεῖν τι τοιοῦτον, ὥστε τῶν [e] ὑποζυγίων τὸ θερμὸν ἀπολεπτύνειν καὶ κατακερματίζειν· ἄλλα γὰρ ἄλλοις ὥσπερ ἀναλαμβάνειν καὶ καταλύεσθαι πέφυκεν.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Θ

Διὰ τί ὁ ποιητὴς ἐπὶ μὲν τῶν ἄλλων ὑγρῶν τοῖς ἰδίοις ἐπιθέτοις χρῆται, μόνον δὲ τὸ ἔλαιον ὑγρὸν καλεῖ

Ἠπορήθη ποτὲ καὶ διὰ τί πολλῶν ὑγρῶν ὄντων τὰ μὲν ἄλλα τοῖς ἰδίοις ἐπιθέτοις ὁ ποιητὴς εἴωθε κοσμεῖν, τὸ γάλα τε λευκὸν καὶ τὸ μέλι χλωρὸν καὶ τὸν οἶνον ἐρυθρὸν καλῶν, τὸ δ’ ἔλαιον ἀπὸ κοινοῦ τοῦ πᾶσι συμβεβηκότος μόνον ἐπιεικῶς ὑγρὸν προσαγορεύει. εἰς τοῦτ’ [f] ἐλέχθη, ὅτι ὡς γλυκύτατόν ἐστι τὸ δι’ ὅλου γλυκὺ καὶ λευκότατον τὸ δι’ ὅλου λευκόν, δι’ ὅλου δὲ τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν, ᾧ μηδὲν ἐμμέμικται τῆς ἐναντίας φύσεως, οὕτω δὴ καὶ [τὸ] ὑγρὸν μάλιστα ῥητέον, οὗ μηθὲν μέρος ξηρόν ἐστι· τοῦτο δὲ τῷ ἐλαίῳ συμβέβηκεν.

Πρῶτον μὲν ἡ λειότης αὐτοῦ τὴν ὁμαλότητα τῶν [696] [a] μορίων ἐπιδείκνυται· δι’ ὅλου γὰρ αὑτῷ συμπαθεῖ πρὸς τὴν ψαῦσιν. ἔπειτα τῇ ὄψει παρέχει καθαρώτατον ἐνοπτρίσασθαι· τραχὺ γὰρ οὐδὲν ‹ἔν›εστιν ὥστε διασπᾶν τὴν ἀνταύγειαν, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ παντὸς μέρους δι’ ὑγρότητα καὶ σμικρότατον ἀνακλᾷ τὸ φῶς ἐπὶ τὴν ὄψιν· ὥσπερ αὖ τοὐναντίον τὸ γάλα τῶν ὑγρῶν μόνον οὐκ ἐσοπτρίζει, πολλῆς ἀναμεμιγμένης αὐτῷ γεώδους ‹οὐσίας›. ἔτι δὲ κινούμενον ἥκιστα ψοφεῖ τῶν ὑγρῶν· ὑγρὸν γάρ ἐστι δι’ ὅλου· τῶν ‹δ’› ἄλλων ἐν τῷ ῥεῖν καὶ φέρεσθαι τὰ σκληρὰ καὶ γεώδη μέρη προσκρούσεις λαμβάνοντα καὶ πληγὰς ψοφεῖ διὰ τραχύτητα. καὶ μὴν μόνον ἄκρα[τη]τον [b] διαμένει καὶ ἄμικτον· ἔστι γὰρ πυκνότατον· οὐ γὰρ ἔχει μεταξὺ τῶν ξηρῶν καὶ γεωδῶν ἐν αὑτῷ μερῶν κενώματα καὶ πόρους, οἷς δέξεται τὸ παρεμπῖπτον, ἀλλὰ δι’ ὁμοιότητα τῶν μερῶν εὐάρμοστόν ἐστιν καὶ συνεχές· ὅταν δ’ ἀφρίζῃ τὸ ἔλαιον, οὐ δέχεται τὸ πνεῦμα διὰ λεπτότητα καὶ συνέχειαν. τοῦτο δ’ αἴτιον καὶ τοῦ τρέφεσθαι τὸ πῦρ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ· τρέφεται μὲν γὰρ οὐδενὶ πλὴν ὑγρῷ, καὶ τοῦτο μόνον καυστόν ἐστιν· ἐκ γοῦν τῶν ξύλων ὁ μὲν ἀὴρ ἄπεισι καπνὸς γενόμενος, τὸ δὲ γεῶδες ἐκτεφρωθὲν ὑπολείπεται, μόνον δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς τὸ νοτερὸν ἀναλοῦται, τούτῳ γὰρ τρέφεσθαι πέφυκεν· ὕδωρ μὲν οὖν καὶ [c] οἶνος καὶ τὰ λοιπά, πολλοῦ μετέχοντα τοῦ θολεροῦ καὶ γεώδους, ἐμπίπτοντα τὴν φλόγα διασπᾷ καὶ τῇ τραχύτητι καὶ τῷ βάρει θλίβει καὶ κατασβέννυσι, τὸ δ’ ἔλαιον, ὅτι μάλιστ’ εἰλικρινῶς ὑγρόν ἐστι, διὰ λεπτότητα μεταβάλλει καὶ κρατούμενον ἐκπυροῦται. μέγιστον δ’ αὐτοῦ τῆς ὑγρότητος τεκμήριον ‹ἡ› ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐξ ὀλιγίστου διανομὴ καὶ χύσις· οὔτε γὰρ μέλιτος οὔθ’ ὕδατος οὔτ’ ἄλλου τινὸς ὑγροῦ βραχὺς οὕτως ὄγκος ἐπίδοσιν λαμβάνει τοσαύτην, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἐπιλείπων καταναλίσκεται διὰ ξηρότητα· τὸ δ’ ἔλαιον, ὅλκιμον πανταχῆ [d] καὶ μαλακόν, ἄγεται περὶ τὸ σῶμα χριομένοις καὶ συνεπιρρεῖ πορρωτάτω δι’ ὑγρότητα τῶν μερῶν μηκυνομένων, ὥστε καὶ παραμένειν δυσεξίτηλον. ὕδατι μὲν γὰρ βρεχθὲν ἱμάτιον ἀποξηραίνεται ῥᾳδίως, ἐλαίου δὲ κηλῖδας οὐ τῆς τυχούσης ἐστὶ πραγματείας ἐκκαθᾶραι· μάλιστα γὰρ ἐνδύεται τῷ μάλιστα λεπτὸν καὶ ὑγρὸν εἶναι· καὶ γὰρ οἶνον κεκραμένον δυσχερέστερον ἐξαιροῦσι τῶν ἱματίων, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης (874a 30) φησίν, ὅτι λεπτότερός ἐστι καὶ μᾶλλον ἐνδύεται τοῖς πόροις.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ι

[e]

Τίς αἰτία, δι’ ἣν ψαθυρὰ γίνεται ταχὺ τὰ ἐκ συκῆς κρεμαννύμενα τῶν ἱερείων

‹Ὁ› Ἀριστίωνος εὐημέρει παρὰ τοῖς δειπνοῦσι μάγειρος, ὡς τά τ’ ἄλλα χαριέντως ὀψοποιήσας καὶ τὸν ἄρτι τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ τεθυμένον ἀλεκτρυόνα παραθεὶς ἁπαλὸν ὥσπερ χθιζόν, νεαρὸν ὄντα καὶ πρόσφατον. εἰπόντος οὖν τοῦ Ἀριστίωνος, ὅτι τοῦτο γίνεται ταχέως, εἰ σφαγεὶς εὐθὺς ἀπὸ συκῆς κρεμασθείη, τὴν αἰτίαν ἐζητοῦμεν. ὅτι μὲν δὴ πνεῦμα τῆς συκῆς ἄπεισιν ἰσχυρὸν καὶ σφοδρόν, ἥ τ’ ὄσφρησις ἐκμαρτυρεῖ καὶ τὸ περὶ τῶν [f] ταύρων λεγόμενον, ὡς ἄρα συκῇ προσδεθεὶς ὁ χαλεπώτατος ἡσυχίαν ἄγει καὶ ψαύσεως ἀνέχεται καὶ ὅλως ἀφίησι τὸν θυμὸν ὥσπερ ἀπομαραινόμενον. τὴν δὲ πλείστην αἰτίαν καὶ δύναμιν ἡ δριμύτης εἶχεν· τὸ γὰρ φυτὸν ἁπάντων ὀπωδέστατον, ὥστε καὶ τὸ σῦκον αὐτὸ καὶ τὸ [697] [a] ξύλον καὶ τὸ θρῖον ἀναπεπλῆσθαι· διὸ καιόμενόν τε τῷ καπνῷ δάκνει μάλιστα καὶ κατακαυθέντος ἡ τέφρα ῥυπτικωτάτην παρέχει κονίαν. ταὐτὰ δὲ πάντα θερμότητος· καὶ τὴν πῆξιν ἐμποιεῖν τῷ γάλακτι τὸν ὀπὸν οἴονταί τινες οὐ σκαληνίᾳ σχημάτων περιπλέκοντα καὶ κολλῶντα τὰ ‹τραχέα› μέρη τοῦ γάλακτος, ἐκθλιβομένων ἐπιπολῆς τῶν λείων καὶ περιφερῶν, ἀλλὰ [καὶ] ὑπὸ θερμότητος ἐκτήκοντα τοῦ ὑγροῦ τὸ ἀσύστατον καὶ ὑδατῶδες. τεκμήριον δὲ καὶ τὸ †ἄχρηστον γλυκὺ †εἶναι τὸν ὀρόν, ἀλλὰ πομάτων φαυλότατον· οὐ γὰρ τὸ λεῖον ὑπὸ τῶν σκαληνῶν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ψυχρὸν ‹ἐξαν›έστη καὶ ἄπεπτον ὑπὸ τῆς θερμότητος· [b] καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο συνεργοῦσιν οἱ ἅλες, θερμοὶ γάρ εἰσι, πρὸς δὲ τὴν λεγομένην περιπλοκὴν καὶ σύνδεσιν ἀντιπράττουσι [διάλυσιν], διαλύειν γὰρ μάλιστα πεφύκασι. θερμὸν οὖν πνεῦμα καὶ δριμὺ καὶ τμητικὸν ἀφίησιν ἡ συκῆ, καὶ τοῦτο θρύπτει καὶ πεπαίνει τὴν σάρκα τοῦ ὄρνιθος. τὸ αὐτὸ δὲ πάσχει καὶ πυρῶν ἐντεθεὶς σωρῷ καὶ νίτρῳ †συνημένος, ὑπὸ θερμότητος. ὅτι δ’ ὁ πυρὸς ἔχει τι θερμόν, τεκμαίρονται τοῖς ἀμφορεῦσιν, ὧν ἐντιθεμένων εἰς σιρὸν †ἐξαναλίσκεται ταχέως ὁ οἶνος.

[c]

ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΑΚΩΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΕΒΔΟΜΟΝ

Χαρίεντος ἀνδρός, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, καὶ φιλανθρώπου λόγον ἔχουσι Ῥωμαῖοι διὰ στόματος, ὅστις ἦν ὁ εἰπών, ἐπεὶ μόνος ἐδείπνησεν, ‘βεβρωκέναι, μὴ δεδειπνηκέναι σήμερον’, ὡς τοῦ δείπνου κοινωνίαν καὶ φιλοφροσύνην ἐφηδύνουσαν ἀεὶ ποθοῦντος. Εὔηνος (fr. 10 [d] PLG II 271) μὲν γὰρ ἔλεγεν τὸ πῦρ ἥδιστον ἡδυσμάτων εἶναι, καὶ τὸν ἅλα ‘θεῖον’ Ὅμηρος (Ι 214) οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ ‘χάριτας’ καλοῦσιν, ὅτι [ἐπὶ] τὰ πλεῖστα μιγνύμενος εὐάρμοστα τῇ γεύσει καὶ προσφιλῆ ποιεῖ καὶ κεχαρισμένα· δείπνου δὲ καὶ τραπέζης θειότατον ὡς ἀληθῶς ἥδυσμα φίλος ἐστὶ παρὼν καὶ συνήθης καὶ γνώριμος οὐ τῷ συνεσθίειν καὶ συμπίνειν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι λόγου μεταλαμβάνει καὶ μεταδίδωσιν, ἄν γε δὴ χρήσιμον ἐνῇ τι καὶ πιθανὸν καὶ οἰκεῖον τοῖς λεγομένοις· ἐπεὶ τούς γε πολλοὺς αἱ παρ’ οἶνον ἀδολεσχίαι ληροῦντας ἐμβάλλουσι πρὸς τὰ πάθη καὶ προσδιαστρέφουσιν. ὅθεν ἄξιόν ἐστι μηδὲν ἧττον λόγους [e] ἢ φίλους δεδοκιμασμένους παραλαμβάνειν ἐπὶ τὰ δεῖπνα, τοὐναντίον ἢ Λακεδαιμόνιοι φρονοῦντας καὶ λέγοντας· ἐκεῖνοι μὲν γάρ, ὅταν νέον ἢ ξένον εἰς τὸ φιδίτιον παραλάβωσι, τὰς θυρίδας δείξαντες ‘ταύτῃ’ φασίν ‘οὐκ ἐξέρχεται λόγος’· ἡμεῖς δ’ ἑαυτοὺς χρῆσθαι λόγοις συνεθίζωμεν, ὧν πᾶσίν ἐστιν καὶ πρὸς πάντας ἐξαγωγή, διὰ τὰς ὑποθέσεις μηδὲν ἀκόλαστον μηδὲ βλάσφημον μηδὲ κακόηθες ἐχούσας μηδ’ ἀνελεύθερον. ἔξεστι δὲ κρίνειν τοῖς παραδείγμασιν, ὧν τὴν ἑβδόμην δεκάδα τουτὶ περιέχει τὸ βιβλίον.

[f]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Α

Πρὸς τοὺς ἐγκαλοῦντας Πλάτωνι τὸ ποτὸν εἰπόντι διὰ τοῦ πλεύμονος ἐξιέναι

Εἰσῆλθέ τινι τῶν συμποτῶν ὥρᾳ θέρους τουτὶ τὸ πρόχειρον ἅπασιν ἀναφθέγξασθαι (Alc. fr. 39, I p. 430 D)

[698] [a] ‘τέγγε πλεύμονας οἴνῳ· τὸ γὰρ ἄστρον περιτέλλεται·’

καὶ Νικίας ὁ Νικοπολίτης ἰατρὸς οὐδὲν ἔφη θαυμαστόν, εἰ ποιητικὸς ἀνὴρ Ἀλκαῖος ἠγνόησεν ὃ καὶ Πλάτων ὁ φιλόσοφος. καίτοι τὸν μὲν Ἀλκαῖον ἁμωσγέπως εὐπορήσειν βοηθείας, ἀπολαύειν ‹γὰρ› ἰκμάδος τὸν πλεύμονα, γειτνιῶντα τῷ στομάχῳ, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τέγγεσθαι πιθανόν ἐστιν· ‘ὁ δὲ φιλόσοφος οὑτωσὶ σαφῶς’ ἔφη ‘γράψας (Tim. 70c 91a) διεξιέναι τὰ ποτὰ διὰ τοῦ πλεύμονος οὐδὲ τοῖς προθυμοτάτοις ἀμύνειν ἐπιχείρησιν ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ πιθανὴν ἀπολέλοιπεν. τὸ γὰρ ἀγνόημα μέγα· πρῶτον [b] μὲν ὅτι, τῆς ὑγρᾶς τροφῆς πρὸς τὴν ξηρὰν ἀναγκαίαν ἐχούσης τὴν ἀνάμιξιν, εἰκός ἐστιν ταὐτὸν ἀμφοτέραις ἀγγεῖον ὑποκεῖσθαι τὸν στόμαχον εἰς τὴν κάτω κοιλίαν ἐκδιδόντα μαλακὸν καὶ διάβροχον τὸ σιτίον· ἔπειτα τοῦ πλεύμονος ‹μὴ› λείου καὶ πυκνοῦ παντάπασι γεγονότος, πῶς τὸ σὺν κυκεῶνι πινόμενον ἄλφιτον διέξεισι καὶ οὐκ ἐνίσχεται; τουτὶ γὰρ Ἐρασίστρατος ὀρθῶς πρὸς αὐτὸν ἠπόρησεν. καὶ μὴν ἐπί γε τῶν πλείστων τοῦ σώματος μορίων τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα τῷ λόγῳ μετιὼν καὶ πρὸς ἣν ἕκαστον ἡ φύσις χρείαν πεποίηκεν βουλόμενος, ὥσπερ καὶ προσήκει τῷ φιλοσόφῳ, φρονεῖν, οὐκ εὖ παρίησι τὸ τῆς ἐπιγλωττίδος [c] ἔργον, ἐπὶ τούτῳ τεταγμένης, ὅπως ἐν τῇ καταπόσει τῆς τροφῆς τὴν ἀρτηρίαν πιέζουσα κωλύῃ παρεμπεσεῖν ὁτιοῦν εἰς τὸν πλεύμονα· δεινὰς γὰρ ὑπὸ βηχὸς ἴσχει τραχύτητας καὶ χαράξεις, ὅταν παρολίσθῃ φερομένου τοῦ πνεύματος· ἡ δὲ μέταυλος αὕτη κλίσιν ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα λαμβάνουσα φθεγγομένων μὲν ἐπιπίπτει τῷ στομάχῳ, σιτουμένων δὲ καὶ πινόντων τῇ ἀρτηρίᾳ, καθαρὸν τῷ πνεύματι τὸν δρόμον φυλάττουσα καὶ τὴν ἀναπνοήν. ἔτι τοίνυν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ τοὺς ἀτρέμα πίνοντας ἴσμεν [ὅτι] τὰς κοιλίας ὑγροτέρας ἴσχοντας τῶν ἄθρουν ἐφελκομένων τὸ [d] ὑγρόν· ὠθεῖ‹ται› γὰρ εὐθὺς εἰς κύστιν ὑπὸ ῥύμης διεξιόν· ἐκεῖνο δὲ μᾶλλον ἐνδιατρίβει τοῖς σιτίοις καὶ μαλάσσει, ὥστ’ ἀναμίγνυσθαι καὶ παραμένειν. οὐκ ἂν δὲ ταῦτα συνέβαινε διακρινομένων εὐθὺς ἐν τῇ καταπόσει τῶν ὑγρῶν, ἀλλὰ συμπλεκομένων [ἡμῶν] ἅμα καὶ συμπαραπεμπόντων τὸ σιτίον, οἷον ὀχήματι τῷ ὑγρῷ χρώμενον, ὡς ἔλεγεν Ἐρασίστρατος.’

Τοιαῦτα τοῦ Νικίου διεξιόντος ὁ γραμματικὸς πρωτογένης ‹ἔφη› συνεωρακέναι πρῶτον Ὅμηρον, ὅτι τῆς μὲν τροφῆς ὁ στόμαχος ἀγγεῖόν ἐστιν, τοῦ δὲ πνεύματος ‹ὁ› βρόγχος, ὃν ἀσφάραγον ἐκάλουν οἱ παλαιοί· διὸ [e] καὶ τοὺς μεγαλοφώνους ‘ἐρισφαράγους’ ἐπονομάζειν εἰώθασιν· εἰπὼν οὖν ὅτι τοῦ Ἕκτορος ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἤλασε (Χ 325. 328 s.)

‘λευκανίην, ἵνα τε ψυχῆς ὤκιστος ὄλεθρος·

οὐδ’ ἄρ’ ἀπ’ ἀσφάραγον μελίη τάμε χαλκοβάρεια,

ὄφρα τί μιν προτιείποι ἀμειβόμενος ἐπέεσσιν,’

ὡς τὸν ἀσφάραγον ὄντα φωνῆς ἴδιον ὀχετὸν καὶ πνεύματος, τὴν δὲ λευκανίην ἐσέθηκα.

Γενομένης οὖν ἐπὶ τῷ λόγῳ σιωπῆς ὁ Φλῶρος εἶπεν ‘οὕτως ὑφησόμεθα τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐρήμην ὀφλισκάνοντος;’ ‘οὐχ ἡμεῖς γ’’ ἔφην ἐγώ· ‘προησόμεθα γὰρ ἅμα τῷ Πλάτωνι καὶ τὸν Ὅμηρον, ὃς τοσοῦτον ἀποδεῖ τοῦ τὸ ὑγρὸν ἀπελαύνειν καὶ ἀποστρέφειν τῆς ἀρτηρίας, ὥστε καὶ τὸ σιτίον ὁμοῦ συνεκβαλεῖν ἐνταῦθα· ‘φάρυγος’ γάρ φησιν (ι 373) ‘ἐξέσσυτο οἶνος ψωμοί τ’ ἀνδρόμεοι·’ [f] χωρὶς εἰ μὴ τὸν Κύκλωπα φήσει τις ὥσπερ ὀφθαλμὸν ἔχειν ἕνα καὶ πόρον τροφῆς καὶ φωνῆς τὸν αὐτόν· ἢ τὸν φάρυγγα φήσει στόμαχον εἰρῆσθαι καὶ μὴ βρόγχον, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πάντων καὶ πάλαι καὶ νῦν ὠνόμασται. ταῦτα δ’ οὐκ ἀπορίᾳ μαρτύρων, ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας ἐπηγαγόμην· ἐπεὶ μάρτυρές γε τῷ Πλάτωνι πολλοί τε κἀγαθοὶ [699] [a] πάρεισιν. Εὔπολιν μὲν γάρ, εἰ βούλει, πάρες ἐν Κόλαξιν εἰπόντα (fr. 147)

‘πίνειν γὰρ †ὁ Πρωταγόρας ἐκέλευσ’, ἵνα

πρὸ τοῦ κυνὸς τὸν πλεύμον’ ἔκκλυστον φορῇ·’

πάρες δὲ καὶ τὸν κομψὸν Ἐρατοσθένην λέγοντα (p. 3. 100 s. Hiller)

‘καὶ βαθὺν ἀκρήτῳ πλεύμονα τεγγόμενος·’

Εὐριπίδης δὲ σαφῶς δήπου λέγων (fr. 983)

‘οἶνος περάσας πλευμόνων διαρροάς’

δῆλός ἐστιν Ἐρασιστράτου βλέπων τι ὀξύτερον· εἶδεν γὰρ ὅτι σήραγγας ὁ πλεύμων ἔχει καὶ πόροις κατατέτρηται, δι’ ὧν τὸ ὑγρὸν διίησιν. οὐ γὰρ τὸ πνεῦμα πόρων ἐδεῖτο πρὸς τὴν ἐξαγωγήν, ἀλλ’ ἕνεκα τῶν ὑγρῶν καὶ τῶν τοῖς ὑγροῖς συμπαρολισθαινόντων γέγονεν ἠθμοειδὴς καὶ πολύπορος.

[b] καὶ οὐδὲν ἧττον, ὦ μακάριε, τῷ πλεύμονι προσῆκόν ἐστιν ἢ τῷ στομάχῳ συνεκδιδόναι τὸ ἄλφιτον καὶ τὸ κρίμνον· οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ στόμαχος ἡμῶν λεῖος, ὥς τινες, οὐδ’ ὀλισθηρός, ἀλλ’ ἔχει τραχύτητας, αἷς εἰκός ἐστι τὰ λεπτὰ καὶ μικρὰ περιπίπτοντα καὶ προσισχόμενα διαφεύγειν τὴν κατάποσιν. ἀλλ’ οὔτε τοῦτο λέγειν οὔτ’ ἐκεῖνο καλῶς ἔχον ἐστίν· ἡ γὰρ φύσις οὐκ ἐφικτὸν ἔχει τῷ λόγῳ τὸ περὶ τὰς ἐνεργείας εὐμήχανον, οὐδ’ ἔστι τῶν ὀργάνων αὐτῆς τὴν ἀκρίβειαν οἷς χρῆται (λέγω δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ θερμόν) ἀξίως διελθεῖν. ἔτι δὴ τῶν μαρτύρων [c] τῷ Πλάτωνι προσκαλοῦμαι Φιλιστίωνά τε τὸν Λοκρόν (fr. 7 Wellm.), εὖ μάλα παλαιὸν ἄνδρα καὶ λαμπρὸν ἀπὸ τῆς τέχνης ὑμῶν γενόμενον, καὶ Ἱπποκράτη καὶ Διώξιππον τὸν Ἱπποκράτειον· οὗτοι γὰρ οὐχ ἑτέραν ὁδόν, ἀλλ’ ἣν Πλάτων, ὑφηγοῦνται τοῦ πόματος. ἥ γε μὴν πολυτίμητος ἐπιγλωττὶς οὐκ ἔλαθε τὸν Διώξιππον, ἀλλὰ περὶ ταύτην φησὶ τὸ ὑγρὸν ἐν τῇ καταπόσει διακρινόμενον εἰς τὴν ἀρτηρίαν ἐπιρρεῖν, τὸ δὲ σιτίον εἰς τὸν στόμαχον ἐπικυλινδεῖσθαι· καὶ τῇ μὲν ἀρτηρίᾳ τῶν ἐδωδίμων μηδὲν παρεμπίπτειν, τὸν δὲ στόμαχον ἅμα τῇ ξηρᾷ τροφῇ καὶ τῆς ὑγρᾶς ἀναμιγνύμενόν τι μέρος ὑποδέχεσθαι· [d] [πιθανὸν γάρ ἐστι] τὴν [μὲν] γὰρ ἐπιγλωττίδα τῆς ἀρτηρίας προκεῖσθαι διάφραγμα καὶ ταμιεῖον, ὅπως ἀτρέμα καὶ κατ’ ὀλίγον διηθῆται τὸ ποτόν, ἀλλὰ μὴ ταχὺ μηδ’ ἄθρουν ἐπιρρακτὸν ἀποβιάζηται τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ διαταράττῃ· διὸ τοῖς ὄρνισιν οὐ γέγονεν ἐπιγλωσσὶς οὐδ’ ἔστιν· οὐδὲ γὰρ σπῶντες οὐδὲ λάπτοντες, ἀλλὰ κάπτοντες ‹καὶ› κατ’ ὀλίγον διιέντες τὸ ποτὸν ἡσυχῆ τὴν ἀρτηρίαν διαίνουσι καὶ τέγγουσι. μαρτύρων μὲν οὖν ἅλις. ὁ δὲ λόγος τῷ Πλάτωνι πρῶτον ἐκ τῆς αἰσθήσεως ἔχει τὴν πίστιν· τῆς γὰρ ἀρτηρίας τρωθείσης οὐ καταπίνεται τὸ ὑγρόν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὀχετοῦ διακοπέντος ἐκπῖπτον [e] ἔξω καὶ ἀποκρουνίζον ὁρᾶται, καίπερ ὑγιοῦς καὶ ἀκεραίου τοῦ στομάχου μένοντος. ἔπει‹τα› πάντες ἴσμεν, ὅτι τοῖς περιπλευμονικοῖς πάθεσι δίψος ἕπεται περιφλεγέστατον ὑπὸ ξηρότητος ἢ θερμότητος ἤ τινος ἄλλης αἰτίας ἅμα τῇ φλεγμονῇ τὴν ὄρεξιν ἐμποιούσης· ὃ δὲ τούτου μεῖζόν ἐστι τεκμήριον, ὅσοις πλεύμων οὐκ ἐμπέφυκε τῶν ζῴων ἢ σφόδρα μικρὸς ἐμπέφυκε, ταῦτ’ οὐ δεῖται ποτοῦ τὸ παράπαν οὐδ’ ὀρέγεται, διὰ τὸ τῶν μορίων ἑκάστῳ σύμφυτον ὑπάρχειν τὴν πρὸς τοὔργον ἐπιθυμίαν, οἷς δ’ οὐκ ἔστι μόρια, μηδὲ χρείαν παρεῖναι μηδὲ προθυμίαν [f] τῆς δι’ αὐτῶν ἐνεργείας. ὅλως δὲ δόξει μάτην ἡ κύστις γεγονέναι τοῖς ἔχουσιν· εἰ γὰρ ὁ στόμαχος ἅμα τῷ σιτίῳ τὸ ποτὸν ἀναλαμβάνει καὶ τῇ κοιλίᾳ παραδίδωσιν, οὐθὲν ἰδίου πόρου δεῖται τὸ περίττωμα τῆς ὑγρᾶς τροφῆς, ἀλλ’ εἷς ἀρκεῖ καὶ κοινὸς ὥσπερ εὐδιαῖος ἀμφοτέροις εἰς ταὐτὸ διὰ ταὐτοῦ ‹συν›εισκομιζομένοις· νῦν δὲ χωρὶς μὲν ἡ κύστις γέγονεν, χωρὶς δὲ τὸ ἔντερον, ὅτι τὸ μὲν ἐκ τοῦ [700] [a] πλεύμονος βαδίζει, τὸ δ’ ἐκ τοῦ στομάχου, διακρινόμενον εὐθὺς περὶ τὴν κατάποσιν. ὅθεν οὐδ’ ἐπιφαίνεται τῷ ὑγρῷ τοῦ ξηροῦ περιττώματος οὐδέν, οὔτε χρόᾳ προσεοικὸς οὔτ’ ὀσμῇ τὸ παράπαν· καίτοι φύσιν εἶχεν ἀναμιγνύμενον ἐν τῇ κοιλίᾳ κἀνδυόμενον ἀναπίμπλασθαι τῶν ἐκείνου ποιοτήτων καὶ μὴ καθαρὸν οὕτως ἀπηθεῖσθαι καὶ ἄχραντον. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ λίθος ἐν κοιλίᾳ πώποτε συνέστη· καίτοι λόγον εἶχεν μηδὲν ἧττον ἢ ἐν κύστει συνίστασθαι καὶ πήγνυσθαι τὸ ὑγρόν, εἴπερ εἰς κοιλίαν ἐχώρει διὰ στομάχου πᾶν τὸ πινόμενον. ἀλλ’ ἔοικεν ὁ μὲν στόμαχος ἐκ τῆς ἀρτηρίας εὐθὺς ἕλκων τοῦ παροδεύοντος ὑγροῦ τὸ [b] ἱκανὸν καὶ τὸ μέτριον ἀποχρῆσθαι πρὸς μάλαξιν καὶ χύλωσιν τῆς τροφῆς, διὸ μηδὲν ὑγροῦ περίττωμα ποιεῖν· ὁ δὲ πλεύμων ὡσπερεὶ τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ ὑγρὸν ἐξ αὑτοῦ διανέμων τοῖς δεομένοις τὸ λοιπὸν ἐκκρίνειν εἰς τὴν κύστιν. εἰκότα γὰρ μακρῷ ταῦτα μᾶλλον ἐκείνων. τὸ δ’ ἀληθὲς ἴσως ἄληπτον ἔν γε τούτοις, καὶ οὐκ ἔδει πρὸς φιλόσοφον δόξῃ τε καὶ δυνάμει πρῶτον οὕτως ἀπαυθαδίσασθαι περὶ πράγματος ἀδήλου καὶ τοσαύτην ἀντιλογίαν ἔχοντος.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Β

Τίς ὁ παρὰ ‹τῷ› Πλάτωνι κερασβόλος, καὶ διὰ τί τῶν σπερμάτων [c] ἀτεράμονα γίγνεται τὰ προσπίπτοντα τοῖς κέρασι τῶν βοῶν

Ἐν ταῖς Πλατωνικαῖς συναναγνώσεσιν ὁ λεγόμενος ‘κερασβόλος’ καὶ ‘ἀτεράμων’ (Legg. IX 853d) ζήτησιν ἀεὶ παρεῖχεν· οὐχ ὅστις εἴη, δῆλον γὰρ ἦν ὅτι τῶν σπερμάτων τὰ προσπίπτοντα τοῖς τῶν βοῶν κέρασιν ἀτεράμονα τὸν καρπὸν ἐκφύειν νομίζοντες οὕτως τὸν αὐθάδη καὶ σκληρὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐκ μεταφορᾶς κερασβόλον καὶ ἀτεράμονα προσηγόρευον· ἀλλὰ περὶ αὐτῆς διηπορεῖτο τῆς αἰτίας καθ’ ἣν τοῦτο πάσχει τὰ προσπίπτοντα τοῖς κέρασι [d] τῶν βοῶν σπέρματα. καὶ πολλάκις ἀπειπάμεθα τοῖς φίλοις, οὐχ ἥκιστα Θεοφράστου (fr. 175) δεδιττομένου τὸν λόγον, ἐν οἷς πολλὰ συναγήοχεν καὶ ἱστόρηκεν τῶν τὴν αἰτίαν ἀνεύρετον ἡμῖν ἐχόντων· οἷός ἐστιν ὁ τῶν ἀλεκτορίδων ὅταν τέκωσι περικαρφισμός, ἥ τε καταπίνουσα φώκη τὴν πυτίαν ἁλισκομένη, καὶ τὸ κατορυσσόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐλάφων κέρας, καὶ τὸ ἠρύγγιον, ὃ μιᾶς αἰγὸς εἰς τὸ στόμα λαβούσης ἅπαν ἐφίσταται τὸ αἰπόλιον· ἐν τούτοις γὰρ καὶ τὰ κερασβόλα τῶν σπερμάτων προτίθεται, πρᾶγμα πίστιν ἔχον ὅτι γίγνεται, τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν ἔχον ἄπορον ἢ παγχάλεπον. ἀλλ’ ἔν γε Δελφοῖς [e] παρὰ δεῖπνον ἐπέθεντό τινες ἡμῖν τῶν ἑταίρων, ὡς οὐ μόνον (Callim. Schneideri II p. 786 fr. 378)

‘γαστρὸς ἀπὸ πλείης βουλὴν καὶ μῆτιν ἀμείνω’

γινομένην ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ζητήσεις πολὺ προθυμοτέρας καὶ θρασυτέρας τὰς ἀποφάνσεις τοῦ οἴνου ποιοῦντος, ἀξιοῦντες εἰπεῖν τι περὶ τοῦ προβλήματος.

Εἶχον μὲν οὖν ἀρνούμενος οὐ φαύλους συνηγόρους, Εὐθύδημον τὸν συνιερέα καὶ Πατροκλέα τὸν γαμβρόν, οὐκ ὀλίγα τοιαῦτα τῶν ἀπὸ γεωργίας καὶ κυνηγίας προφέροντας· οἷον ἐδόκει τὸ περὶ τὴν χάλαζαν εἶναι τὴν ὑπὸ τῶν χαλαζοφυλάκων αἵματι σπάλακος ἢ ῥακίοις γυναικείοις [f] ἀποτρεπομένην· καὶ τὸ τῶν ἀγρίων ἐρινεῶν, ἃ ταῖς ἡμέροις περιαπτόμενα συκαῖς ἀπορρεῖν οὐκ ἐᾷ τὸν καρπὸν ἀλλὰ συνέχει καὶ συνεκπεπαίνει· καὶ τὸ τὰς ἐλάφους ἁλμυρὸν ἀφιέναι, τοὺς δὲ σῦς γλυκὺ τὸ δάκρυον ἁλισκομένους. ‘ἀλλ’ ἐὰν ταῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘ζητῇς’ ὁ Εὐθύδημος, ‘αὐτίκα δεήσει σε καὶ περὶ τοῦ σελίνου καὶ περὶ τοῦ κυμίνου διδόναι λόγον, ὧν τὸ μὲν ἐν τῷ βλαστάνειν καταπατοῦντες καὶ συντρίβοντες οἴονται βέλτιον αὐξάνεσθαι, [701] [a] τὸ δ’ ‹ἂν› καταρώμενοι σπείρωσι καὶ λοιδοροῦντες.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦτο μὲν ὁ Φλῶρος ᾤετο παιδιὰν εἶναι καὶ φλύαρον, ἐκείνων δ’ οὐκ ἄν τινα τῆς αἰτίας ὡς ἀλήπτου προέσθαι τὴν ζήτησιν, ‘ἐξεύρηκ’’ ἔφην ‘φάρμακον, ᾧ πρὸς τὸν λόγον †ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς προσάξεις τοῦτον, ἵνα καὶ σὺ διαλύσῃς ἔνια τῶν ἐκκειμένων. δοκεῖ δή μοι ἡ ψυχρότης τὸ ἀτέραμον ἐμποιεῖν τοῖς τε πυροῖς καὶ τοῖς χέδροψι, πιέζουσα καὶ πηγνύουσα τὴν ἕξιν ἄχρι σκληρότητος, ἡ δὲ θερμότης ‹τὸ› εὐδιάλυτον καὶ μαλακόν. ὅθεν οὐκ ὀρθῶς οἱ λέγοντες †’ἔτος φέρει οὔτις ἄρουρα’ †τὰ καθ’ Ὁμήρου λέγουσιν· τὰ γὰρ ἔνθερμα φύσει χωρία, [b] κρᾶσιν εὐμενῆ τοῦ ἀέρος ἐνδιδόντος, ἐκφέρει μαλακωτέρους τοὺς καρπούς. ὅσα τοίνυν ἐκ τῆς χειρὸς εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν γῆν ἀφιέμεν’ ἐμπίπτει τῶν σπερμάτων, ἐνδυόμενα καὶ λοχευόμενα τῇ κρύψει μᾶλλον ἀπολαύει τῆς ἐν τῇ γῇ θερμότητος καὶ ὑγρότητος· τὰ δὲ προσκρούοντα τοῖς κέρασι τῶν βοῶν οὐ τυγχάνει τῆς ‘ἀρίστης’ καθ’ Ἡσίοδον (OD 471) ‘εὐθημοσύνης’, ἀλλὰ σφαλλόμενα καὶ παρολισθαίνοντα ῥιπτομένοις μᾶλλον ἢ σπειρομένοις προσέοικεν· ὅθεν ἢ φθείρουσιν αὐτὰ παντάπασιν αἱ ψυχρότητες ἢ δύστηκτα καὶ ἄχυμα καὶ ξυλώδη τοῖς χιτῶσι γυμνοῖς ἐπισκήπτουσαι ποιοῦσιν. ὁρᾷς γὰρ ὅτι καὶ τῶν λίθων τὰ ἔγγαια καὶ ζοφόδυτα μέρη μαλακώτερα τῶν ἐπιπολῆς [c] ἡ ἀλέα φυλάττει· διὸ καὶ κατορύττουσιν οἱ τεχνῖται τοὺς ἐργασίμους λίθους, ὥσπερ ἐκπεπαινομένους ὑπὸ τῆς θερμότητος· οἱ δ’ ὕπαιθροι καὶ γυμνοὶ διὰ ψῦχος ἀντίτυποι καὶ δυσμετάβλητοι καὶ ἀτεράμονες ἀπαντῶσι τοῖς ἔργοις. τοὺς δὲ καρπούς, κἂν ἐπὶ τῆς ἅλω διαμείνωσι πλείω χρόνον ὑπαίθριοι καὶ γυμνοί, μᾶλλον ἀτεράμονας γίνεσθαι λέγουσιν τῶν εὐθὺς αἰρομένων. ἐνιαχοῦ δὲ καὶ πνεῦμα λικμωμένοις ἐπιγινόμενον ἀτεράμονας ποιεῖ διὰ τὸ ψῦχος, ὥσπερ ἐν Φιλίπποις τῆς Μακεδονίας ἱστοροῦσι· τοῖς δ’ ἀποκειμένοις βοηθεῖ τὸ ἄχυρον. οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν [d] ἀκούοντας τῶν γεωργῶν, ὅτι καὶ δυεῖν αὐλάκων παραλλήλων ἡ μὲν ἀτεράμονας, ‹ἡ δὲ τεράμονας› ἐκφέρει τοὺς καρπούς, καὶ ὃ μέγιστόν ἐστι, τοὺς κυάμους τῶν λοβῶν οἱ μὲν τοίους οἱ δὲ τοίους, δηλονότι τοῖς μὲν ἧττον τοῖς δὲ μᾶλλον ἢ πνεύματος ψυχροῦ ‹προς›πεσόντος ‹ἢ› ὕδατος.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Γ

Διὰ τί τοῦ μὲν οἴνου τὸ μέσον, τοῦ δ’ ἐλαίου τὸ ἐπάνω, τοῦ δὲ μέλιτος τὸ κατώτατον γίνεται βέλτιον

Ἀλεξίων ὁ πενθερὸς κατεγέλα τοῦ Ἡσιόδου παραινοῦντος (OD 368) ‘ἀρχομένου πίθου καὶ λήγοντος ἐμφορεῖσθαι, μεσσόθι δὲ φείδεσθαι,’ ὅπου τὸ χρηστότατον [e] οἰνάριον ἔστιν. ‘τίς γάρ’ ἔφη ‘οὐκ οἶδεν, ὅτι τοῦ μὲν οἴνου τὸ μέσον γίνεται βέλτιστον, τοῦ δ’ ἐλαίου τὸ ἀνωτάτω, τὸ δὲ κατωτάτω τοῦ μέλιτος; ὁ δ’ ἐᾶν ἐκέλευεν τὸν ἐν μέσῳ [οἶνον] καὶ περιμένειν, ἄχρι ἂν μεταβάλῃ πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον, ἀποδεοῦς τοῦ πίθου γενομένου.’ ῥηθέντων δὲ τούτων, χαίρειν ἐάσαντες τὸν Ἡσίοδον ἐπὶ τὸ ζητεῖν τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς διαφορᾶς ὡρμήσαμεν.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν τοῦ μέλιτος λόγος οὐ πάνυ πολλὰ πράγματα παρέσχεν ἡμῖν, πάντων ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἐπισταμένων, ὅτι τὸ κουφότατον ὑπὸ μανότητος κουφότατόν ἐστιν, τὸ δὲ πυκνὸν καὶ συνεχὲς διὰ βάρος ὑφίσταται τῷ λεπτῷ· [f] κἂν περιστρέψῃς τὸ ἀγγεῖον, αὖθις ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ τὴν προσήκουσαν ἑκάτερον ἀπολαμβάνει χώραν, τοῦ μὲν κάτω φερομένου τοῦ δ’ ἐπιπολάζοντος. οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ὁ οἶνος ἀπελείφθη πιθανῶν ἐπιχειρημάτων· πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἡ δύναμις αὐτοῦ, θερμότης οὖσα, πρὸς τὸ μέσον εὐλόγως δοκεῖ συνῆχθαι μάλιστα καὶ τοῦτο διατηρεῖν βέλτιστον· ἔπειτα τὸ μὲν κάτω διὰ τὴν τρύγα φαῦλον εἶναι, τὸ δ’ ἐξ [702] [a] ἐπιπολῆς τοῦ ἀέρος φθείρεσθαι πλησιάζοντος· ὅσων γὰρ ἐξίστησιν ὁ ἀὴρ τῆς ποιότητος τὸν οἶνον ἐπισφαλέστατον ἴσμεν ὄντα· διὸ καὶ κατορύττουσι τοὺς πίθους καὶ σκεπάζουσιν, ὅπως ὅτι σμικρότατος ἀὴρ αὐτῶν ἐπιψαύῃ. τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, οὐ φθείρει πλῆρες ἀγγεῖον οὕτως ῥᾳδίως οἶνον ὡς ἀποδεὲς γενόμενον· πολὺς γὰρ εἰς τὸ κενούμενον ἐπεισρέων ὁ ἀὴρ ἐξίστησι μᾶλλον· ἐν δὲ τοῖς μεστοῖς ὁ οἶνος αὐτὸς ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ συνέχεται, πολὺ τοῦ φθείροντος ἔξωθεν μὴ παραδεχόμενος.

Τὸ δ’ ἔλαιον οὐ φαύλην διατριβὴν παρέσχεν. ὁ μὲν γάρ τις ἔφη τὸ κάτω τοῦ ἐλαίου γίνεσθαι χεῖρον ἀπὸ τῆς ἀμόργης ἀναθολούμενον, οὐ τὸ ἄνω βέλτιον, ἀλλὰ δοκεῖν, [b] ὅτι πορρωτάτω τοῦ βλάπτοντός ἐστιν. ἄλλος ᾐτιᾶτο τὴν πυκνότητα, δι’ ἣν ἀμικτότατόν ἐστι καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὑγρῶν οὐδὲν εἰς αὑτὸ δέχεται, πλὴν βίᾳ καὶ ὑπὸ πληγῆς ἀνακοπτόμενον· ὅθεν οὐδὲ τῷ ἀέρι δίδωσιν ἀνάμιξιν, ἀλλ’ ἀποστατεῖ διὰ λεπτότητα τῶν μορίων καὶ συνέχειαν, ὥσθ’ ἧττον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τρέπεσθαι μὴ κρατοῦντος. ἐδόκει δὲ πρὸς τοῦτον ὑπεναντιοῦσθαι τὸν λόγον Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 224), τετηρηκώς, ὥς φησιν, εὐωδέστερόν τε γινόμενον καὶ βέλτιον ὅλως τὸ ἐν τοῖς ἀποκενουμένοις ἀγγείοις ἔλαιον· εἶτα τῷ ἀέρι τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς βελτιώσεως ἀνατίθησιν, πλείων γάρ ἐστι καὶ κρατεῖ μᾶλλον εἰς ἀποδεὲς [c] κατερχόμενος τὸ ἀγγεῖον. ‘Μήποτ’ οὖν’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘καὶ τὸ ἔλαιον ὁ ἀὴρ ὠφελεῖ καὶ βλάπτει τὸν οἶνον ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς δυνάμεως; οἴνῳ μὲν γὰρ ὠφέλιμον, ἐλαίῳ δ’ ἀσύμφορον παλαίωσις, ἣν ἑκατέρου προσπίπτων ὁ ἀὴρ ἀφαιρεῖ· τὸ γὰρ ψυχόμενον νεαρὸν διαμένει, τὸ δ’ οὐκ ἔχον διαπνοὴν ὑπὸ συνεχείας ταχὺ παλαιοῦται καὶ ἀπογηράσκει [λελέχθαι πιθανῶς, ὅτι τοῖς ἐπιπολῆς πλησιάζων ὁ ἀὴρ νεαροποιεῖ]. διὸ τοῦ μὲν οἴνου τὸ ἄνω φαυλότατον τοῦ δ’ ἐλαίου βέλτιστον· ἡ γὰρ παλαίωσις τῷ μὲν τὴν ἀρίστην τῷ δὲ τὴν κακίστην ἐμποιεῖ διάθεσιν.’

[d]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Δ

Διὰ τί τοῖς πάλαι Ῥωμαίοις ἔθος ἦν μή‹τε› τράπεζαν αἰρομένην περιορᾶν κενὴν μήτε λύχνον σβεννύμενον

Φιλάρχαιος ‹ὢν› ὁ Φλῶρος οὐκ εἴα κενὴν ἀπαίρειν τὴν τράπεζαν, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ τῶν ἐδωδίμων ἐπ’ αὐτῆς ὑπέλειπεν· ‘καὶ οὐ τοῦτο μόνον’ ἔφη ‘οἶδα τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὸν πάππον εὖ μάλα παραφυλάττοντας, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ λύχνον ἐῶντας ἀποσβεννύναι· καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο τοὺς παλαιοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἐξευλαβεῖσθαι· τοὺς δὲ νῦν εὐθὺς ἀποσβεννύναι μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον, ὅπως μὴ μάτην τοὔλαιον ἀναλίσκωσι.’ παρὼν οὖν Εὔστροφος ‹ὁ› Ἀθηναῖος ‘εἶτ’’ ἔφη ‘τί πλέον αὐτοῖς, ἂν μὴ τὸ Πολυχάρμου τοῦ ἡμετέρου [e] σοφὸν ἐκμάθωσιν; ὃς πολὺν ἔφη σκεπτόμενος χρόνον, ὅπως οὐ κλέψουσι τοὔλαιον οἱ παῖδες, ἐξευρεῖν μόλις· εὐθὺς γὰρ ἀποπληροῦν τοὺς λύχνους ἀποσβεσθέντας, εἶτ’ ἐπισκοπεῖν τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ πάλιν, εἰ πλήρεις διαμένουσιν.’ γελάσας δ’ ὁ Φλῶρος ‘οὐκοῦν’ εἶπεν ‘ἐπεὶ τοῦτο τὸ πρόβλημα λέλυται, σκεψώμεθα τὸν λόγον, ᾧ τοὺς παλαιοὺς εἰκός ἐστι καὶ περὶ τοὺς λύχνους καὶ περὶ τὰς τραπέζας οὕτως εὐλαβεῖς γεγονέναι.’

Πρότερον οὖν ἐζητεῖτο περὶ τῶν λύχνων· καὶ ὁ μὲν γαμβρὸς αὐτοῦ Καισέρνιος ᾤετο τῇ πρὸς τὸ ἄσβεστον καὶ ἱερὸν πῦρ συγγενείᾳ παντὸς φθορὰν πυρὸς ἀφοσιώσασθαι τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους· δύο γὰρ εἶναι φθοράς, ὥσπερ [f] ἀνθρώπου, τὴν μὲν βίαιον σβεννυμένου, τὴν δ’ ὥσπερ κατὰ φύσιν ἀπομαραινομένου· τῷ μὲν οὖν ἱερῷ πρὸς ἀμφοτέρας ἀρήγειν, ἀεὶ τρέφοντας καὶ φυλάττοντας· τὸ δ’ ἄλλο δι’ αὑτοῦ περιορᾶν μαραινόμενον, αὐτοὺς δὲ μὴ βιάζεσθαι μηδὲ φθονεῖν ὥσπερ θρέμματος ἀφαιρουμένους τὸ ζῆν ἵνα μὴ μάτην τρέφοιτο.

Λεύκιος δ’ ὁ τοῦ Φλώρου υἱὸς τἄλλα μὲν ἔφη καλῶς λέγεσθαι, τὸ δ’ ἱερὸν πῦρ οὐκ ἄμεινον ἡγουμένους ἑτέρου πυρὸς οὐδὲ σεμνότερον οὕτω σέβεσθαι καὶ περιέπειν· [703] [a] ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ Αἰγυπτίων ἐνίους ‹μὲν› τὸ κυνῶν γένος ἅπαν σέβεσθαι καὶ τιμᾶν, ἐνίους δὲ τὸ λύκων ‹ἢ› κροκοδείλων, ἕνα μέντοι τρέφειν τοὺς μὲν κύνα τοὺς δὲ κροκόδειλον τοὺς δὲ λύκον (οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τ’ ἦν ἅπαντας), οὕτως ἐνταῦθα τὴν περὶ ἐκεῖνο θεραπείαν καὶ φυλακὴν τὸ πῦρ τῆς πρὸς ἅπαν εὐλαβείας εἶναι σύμβολον. ‘οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄλλο μᾶλλον ἐμψύχῳ προσέοικεν ἢ πῦρ, κινούμενόν τε καὶ τρεφόμενον δι’ αὑτοῦ καὶ τῇ λαμπρότητι δηλοῦν, ὥσπερ ἡ ψυχή, καὶ σαφηνίζον ἅπαντα· μάλιστα δὲ ταῖς σβέσεσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ φθοραῖς ἐμφαίνεται δύναμις οὐκ ἀμοιροῦσα [b] ζωτικῆς ἀρχῆς· βοᾷ γὰρ καὶ φθέγγεται καὶ ἀμύνεται, καθάπερ ἔμψυχον ἀποθνῆσκον βίᾳ καὶ φονευόμενον· ‹εἰ› μή τι σὺ λέγεις’ ἔφη πρὸς ἐμὲ βλέψας ‘βέλτιον.’

‘Οὐδέν’ εἶπον ἐγώ ‘τῶν εἰρημένων αἰτιῶμαι· προσθείην δ’ ἄν, ὅτι καὶ φιλανθρωπίας διδασκαλία τὸ ἔθος ἐστίν· οὔτε γὰρ τροφὴν ἀφανίζειν ὅσιον αὐτοὺς ἄδην ἔχοντας, οὔτε νάματος ἐμφορηθέντας πηγὴν ἀποτυφλοῦν καὶ ἀποκρύπτειν, οὔτε πλοῦ σημεῖα καὶ ὁδοῦ διαφθείρειν χρησαμένους, ἀλλ’ ἐᾶν καὶ ἀπολείπειν τὰ χρήσιμα τοῖς δεησομένοις μεθ’ ἡμᾶς. ὅθεν οὐδὲ φῶς λύχνου μὴ δεομένους ἀπολλύναι διὰ μικρολογίαν καλόν, [c] ἀλλὰ τηρεῖν καὶ ἀπολείπειν, εἴ τις ἔλθοι δεόμενος παρόντος ἔτι καὶ λάμποντος· καὶ γὰρ ὄψιν, εἰ δυνατὸν ἦν, καὶ ἀκοὴν χρῆσαι καλῶς εἶχεν ἑτέρῳ καὶ νὴ Δία τὴν φρόνησιν καὶ τὴν ἀνδρείαν, μέλλοντας αὐτοὺς καθεύδειν καὶ ἡσυχάζειν. ὅρα δ’, εἰ καὶ μελέτης ἕνεκα τοῦ εὐχαρίστου τὰς τοιαύτας ἐφιέντες ὑπερβολὰς οὐκ ἀτόπως οἱ παλαιοὶ καὶ δρῦς ἐσέβοντο καρποφόρους καὶ συκῆν τινα προσηγόρευσαν ἱερὰν Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ μορίαν ἐκκόπτειν ἀπαγορεύουσιν· ταῦτα γὰρ οὐ ποιεῖ πρὸς δεισιδαιμονίαν ἐπιφόρους, ὡς ἔνιοί φασιν, ἀλλὰ προσεθίζει τὸ εὐχάριστον [d] ἡμῶν καὶ κοινωνικὸν ἐν τοῖς ἀναισθήτοις καὶ ἀψύχοις πρὸς ἀλλήλους. ὅθεν ὀρθῶς μὲν Ἡσίοδος οὐδ’ (OD 748) ‘ἀπὸ χυτροπόδων ἀνεπιρρέκτων’ ἐᾷ παρατίθεσθαι σῖτον ἢ ὄψον, ἀλλ’ ἀπαρχὰς τῷ πυρὶ καὶ γέρα τῆς διακονίας ἀποδιδόντας· εὖ δὲ Ῥωμαῖοι χρησάμενοι τοῖς λύχνοις ἣν ἔδοσαν οὐκ ἀφῃροῦντο τροφήν, ἀλλὰ χρῆσθαι ζῶν‹τας εἴων› καὶ λάμποντας.’

Ἐμοῦ δὲ ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος ὁ Εὔστροφος ‘ἆρ’ οὖν’ ἔφη ‘τοῦτο καὶ τῷ περὶ τῆς τραπέζης λόγῳ πάροδον οἰκείαν δίδωσιν, οἰομένων δεῖν ἀεί τι καταλιπεῖν οἰκέταις ἀπὸ δείπνου καὶ παισὶν οἰκετῶν; χαίρουσι γὰρ οὐχ οὕτως λαμβάνοντες ὡς μεταλαμβάνοντες. διὸ καὶ τοὺς Περσῶν [e] βασιλεῖς φασιν οὐ μόνον φίλοις καὶ ἡγεμόσι καὶ σωματοφύλαξιν ἀποπέμπειν ἀεὶ μερίδας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ τῶν δούλων καὶ τὸ τῶν κυνῶν ἀεὶ δεῖπνον ἐπὶ τῆς ἐκείνων προτίθεσθαι τραπέζης, ὡς ἀνυστὸν ἦν, πάντας οἷς ἐχρῶντο ποιουμένων ὁμοτραπέζους καὶ ὁμεστίους. ἡμεροῦται γὰρ τῇ τῆς τροφῆς μεταδόσει καὶ τὰ σκυθρωπότατα τῶν θηρίων.’

Ἐγὼ δὲ γελάσας ‘ἐκεῖνον δ’’ εἶπον ‘ὦ ἑταῖρε, τὸν ἐκ τῆς παροιμίας ‘ἀποκείμενον ἰχθῦν’ οὐχ ἕλκομεν εἰς μέσον μετὰ τῆς Πυθαγορικῆς χοίνικος, ἐφ’ ἧς ἀπηγόρευεν καθῆσθαι, διδάσκων ἡμᾶς ἀεί τι τοῦ παρόντος εἰς [f] τὸ μέλλον ὑπολείπειν καὶ τῆς αὔριον ἐν τῇ σήμερον μνημονεύειν; ἡμῖν μὲν οὖν τοῖς Βοιωτοῖς τὸ ‘λεῖπέ τι καὶ Μήδοις’ διὰ στόματός ἐστιν, ἐξ οὗ Μῆδοι τήν τε Φωκίδα καὶ τὰ ἔσχατα τῆς Βοιωτίας ἄγοντες καὶ φέροντες ἐπέτρεχον· ἀεὶ δὲ καὶ πανταχοῦ δεῖ πρόχειρον εἶναι τὸ ‘λεῖπέ τι καὶ ξένοις ἐπελθοῦσιν.’ ὡς ἔγωγε καὶ τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως κενὴν ἀεὶ καὶ λιμώδη καταλαμβανομένην αἰτιῶμαι τὴν τράπεζαν· [704] [a] τῶν τε γὰρ περὶ τὸν Αἴαντα καὶ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα πρέσβεων ἀφικομένων, οὐδὲν ἔχων ἕτοιμον ἀναγκάζεται (Ι 206) μαγειρεύειν ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς καὶ ὀψοποιεῖν, τόν τε Πρίαμον φιλοφρονεῖσθαι βουλόμενος πάλιν ‘ἀναΐξας ὄιν ἄργυφον’ σφάττει (Ω 621) καὶ διαιρεῖ καὶ ὀπτᾷ, πολὺ μέρος περὶ ταῦτ’ ἀναλίσκων τῆς νυκτός. ὁ δ’ Εὔμαιος, ἅτε δὴ θρέμμα γεγονὼς σοφοῦ σοφόν, οὐ πράγματ’ εἶχεν τοῦ Τελεμάχου ἐπιφανέντος, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἑστιᾷ καθίσαντα, πίνακας κρεῶν παρατιθείς (π 50)

‘ὀπταλέων, ἅ ῥα τῇ προτέρῃ κατέλειπον ἔδοντες.’

εἰ δὲ τοῦτο δόξει μικρόν, ἐκεῖνό γ’ οὐ μικρόν, τὸ συστέλλειν [b] καὶ ἀνέχειν τὴν ὄρεξιν ἔτι παρούσης τῆς ἀπολαύσεως· ἧττον γὰρ ἐπιθυμοῦσι τῶν ἀπόντων οἱ ἐθισθέντες ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν παρόντων.’

Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Λεύκιος ἔφη τῆς μάμμης ἀκηκοὼς μνημονεύειν, ὡς ἱερὸν μὲν ἡ τράπεζα, δεῖ δὲ τῶν ἱερῶν μηδὲν εἶναι κενόν. ‘ἐμοὶ δ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἐδόκει καὶ μίμημα τῆς γῆς ἡ τράπεζ’ εἶναι· πρὸς γὰρ τῷ τρέφειν ἡμᾶς καὶ στρογγύλη καὶ μόνιμός ἐστι καὶ καλῶς ὑπ’ ἐνίων ‘ἑστία’ καλεῖται. καθάπερ γὰρ τὴν γῆν ἀεί τι χρήσιμον ἔχειν καὶ φέρειν ἡμῖν ἀξιοῦμεν, οὕτως οὐδὲ τὴν τράπεζαν οἰόμεθα δεῖν κενὴν ὁρᾶν καὶ ἀνερμάτιστον ἀπολειπομένην.’

[c]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ε

Ὅτι δεῖ μάλιστα τὰς διὰ τῆς κακομουσίας ἡδονὰς φυλάττεσθαι, καὶ πῶς φυλακτέον

Ἐν Πυθίοις Καλλίστρατος, τῶν Ἀμφικτυόνων ἐπιμελητής, αὐλῳδόν τινα πολίτην καὶ φίλον ὑστερήσαντα τῆς ἀπογραφῆς τοῦ μὲν ἀγῶνος εἶρξε κατὰ τὸν νόμον, ἑστιῶν δ’ ἡμᾶς παρήγαγεν εἰς τὸ συμπόσιον ἐσθῆτι καὶ στεφάνοις, ὥσπερ ἐν ἀγῶνι, μετὰ τοῦ χοροῦ κεκοσμημένον ἐκπρεπῶς. καὶ νὴ Δία κομψὸν ἦν ἀκρόαμα τὸ πρῶτον· [d] ἔπειτα διασείσας καὶ διακωδωνίσας τὸ συμπόσιον, ὡς ᾐσθάνετο τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐγκεκλικότας καὶ παρέχοντας ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ὅ τι βούλοιτο χρῆσθαι καὶ καταυλεῖν καὶ ἀκολασταίνειν, ἀποκαλυψάμενος παντάπασιν ἐπεδείξατο τὴν μουσικὴν παντὸς οἴνου μᾶλλον μεθύσκουσαν τοὺς ὅπως ἔτυχεν καὶ ἀνέδην αὐτῆς ἐμφορουμένους· οὐδὲ γὰρ κατακειμένοις ἔτι βοᾶν ἐξήρκει καὶ κροτεῖν, ἀλλὰ τελευτῶντες ἀνεπήδων οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ συνεκινοῦντο κινήσεις ἀνελευθέρους, πρεπούσας δὲ τοῖς κρούμασιν ἐκείνοις καὶ τοῖς μέλεσιν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐπαύσαντο καὶ κατάστασιν αὖθις [e] ὥσπερ ἐκ μανίας ὁ πότος ἐλάμβανεν, ἐβούλετο μὲν ὁ Λαμπρίας εἰπεῖν τι καὶ παρρησιάσασθαι πρὸς τοὺς νέους· ὀρρωδοῦντι δ’ ὅμως αὐτῷ μὴ λίαν ἀηδὴς γένηται καὶ λυπηρός, αὐτὸς ὁ Καλλίστρατος ὥσπερ ἐνδόσιμον παρέσχε τοιαῦτά τινα διαλεχθείς·

‘Ἀκρασίας μέν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ αὐτὸς ἀπολύω τὸ φιλήκοον καὶ φιλοθέαμον· οὐ μὴν Ἀριστοξένῳ γε (FHG II 288) συμφέρομαι παντάπασι, ταύταις μόναις φάσκοντι ταῖς ἡδοναῖς τὸ ‘καλῶς’ ἐπιλέγεσθαι· καὶ γὰρ ὄψα καλὰ καὶ μύρα καλοῦσι καὶ καλῶς γεγονέναι λέγουσιν δειπνήσαντες ἡδέως καὶ πολυτελῶς. δοκεῖ δέ μοι μηδ’ Ἀριστοτέλης (Eth. N. 1118a 23 ss. Probl. 950a 5 al.) αἰτίᾳ [f] δικαίᾳ τὰς περὶ θέαν καὶ ἀκρόασιν εὐπαθείας ἀπολύειν ἀκρασίας, ὡς μόνας ἀνθρωπικὰς οὔσας, ταῖς δ’ ἄλλαις καὶ τὰ θηρία φύσιν ἔχοντα χρῆσθαι καὶ κοινωνεῖν. ὁρῶμεν γὰρ ὅτι καὶ μουσικῇ πολλὰ κηλεῖται τῶν ἀλόγων, ὥσπερ ἔλαφοι σύριγξιν, ἵπποις δὲ μιγνυμέναις ἐπαυλεῖται νόμος, ὃν ἱππόθορον ὀνομάζουσιν· ὁ δὲ Πίνδαρός φησι κεκινῆσθαι πρὸς ᾠδήν (fr. 235 6 Appendic. fr. 140b 69)

‘ἁλίου δελφῖνος ὑπόκρισιν·

[705] [a] τὸν μὲν ἀκύμονος ἐν πόντου πελάγει

αὐλῶν ἐκίνησ’ ἐρατὸν μέλος·’

ὀρχούμενοι δὲ τοὺς ὤτους αἱροῦσι, χαίροντας τῇ ὄψει καὶ μιμητικῶς ἅμα δεῦρο κἀκεῖσε τοὺς ὤμους συνδιαφέροντας. οὐδὲν οὖν ὁρῶ τὰς τοιαύτας ἡδονὰς ἴδιον ἐχούσας, ‹ἢ› ὅτι μόναι τῆς ψυχῆς εἰσιν, αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι τοῦ σώματος καὶ περὶ τὸ σῶμα καταλήγουσιν· μέλος δὲ καὶ ῥυθμὸς καὶ ὄρχησις καὶ ᾠδὴ παραμειψάμεναι τὴν αἴσθησιν ἐν τῷ χαίροντι τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπερείδονται τὸ ἐπιτερπὲς καὶ γαργαλίζον. ὅθεν οὐδεμία τῶν τοιούτων ἡδονῶν ἀπόκρυφός ἐστιν οὐδὲ σκότους δεομένη καὶ τῶν τοίχων ‘περιθεόντων’, ὡς [b] οἱ Κυρηναϊκοὶ λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ στάδια ταύταις καὶ θέατρα ποιεῖται, καὶ τὸ μετὰ πολλῶν θεάσασθαί τι καὶ ἀκοῦσαι ἐπιτερπέστερόν ἐστι καὶ σεμνότερον, οὐκ ἀκρασίας δήπου καὶ ἡδυπαθείας ἀλλ’ ἐλευθερίου διατριβῆς καὶ ἀστείας μάρτυρας ἡμῶν ὅτι πλείστους λαμβανόντων.’

Ταῦτα τοῦ Καλλιστράτου εἰπόντος ὁ Λαμπρίας ὁρῶν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐκείνους τοὺς τῶν ἀκροαμάτων χορηγοὺς θρασυνομένους ‘οὐ τοῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘τὸ αἴτιον, ὦ παῖ Λέοντος, ἀλλά μοι δοκοῦσιν οὐκ ὀρθῶς οἱ παλαιοὶ παῖδα Λήθης τὸν Διόνυσον (ἔδει γὰρ πατέρα) προσαγορεύειν· ὑφ’ οὗ καὶ σὺ νῦν ἀμνημονεῖν ἔοικας, ὅτι τῶν περὶ τὰς [c] ἡδονὰς ἁμαρτανομένων τὰ μὲν ἀκρασία τὰ δ’ ἄγνοια ποιεῖ καὶ παρόρασις. ὅπου μὲν γὰρ ἡ βλάβη πρόδηλός ἐστι, ταῦτ’ ἀκρασίᾳ καταβιαζόμενοι τὸν λογισμὸν ἐξαμαρτάνουσιν· ὅσα δ’ οὐκ εὐθὺς οὐδὲ παραχρῆμα τῆς ἀκολασίας τὸν μισθὸν ἐπιτίθησι, ταῦθ’ ὑπ’ ἀγνοίας τοῦ βλάπτοντος αἱροῦνται καὶ πράττουσι. διὸ τοὺς μὲν περὶ ἐδωδὰς καὶ ἀφροδίσια καὶ πότους ἀστοχοῦντας, οἷς νόσοι τε πολλαὶ καὶ χρημάτων ὄλεθροι συνακολουθοῦσι καὶ τὸ κακῶς ἀκούειν, ἀκρατεῖς προσαγορεύομεν· ὡς Θεοδέκτην ἐκεῖνον εἰπόντα ‘χαῖρε φίλον φῶς’ ὀφθαλμιῶντα, τῆς ἐρωμένης ἐπιφανείσης· ‹ἢ› τὸν Ἀβδηρίτην Ἀνάξαρχον, (Timon. fr. 58 D)

[d] ‘ὅς ῥα καὶ εἰδώς,

ὡς φάσαν, ἄθλιος ἔσκε· φύσις δέ μιν ἔμπαλιν ἦγεν

ἡδονοπλήξ, τῇ πλεῖστοι ὑποτρείουσι σοφιστῶν.’

ὅσαι δὲ τῶν ἡδονῶν τοὺς περὶ γαστέρα καὶ αἰδοῖα καὶ γεῦσιν καὶ ὄσφρησιν ἀντιτεταγμένους αὐταῖς ‹καὶ› ὅπως οὐχ ἁλώσονται [καὶ] προσέχοντας ἐκπεριοδεύουσαι περὶ τὰ ὄμματα καὶ τὰ ὦτα λανθάνουσιν ἐνῳκισμέναι καὶ λοχῶσαι, ‹τού›τους ἐκείνων οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐμπαθεῖς ὄντας καὶ ἀκολάστους [καὶ] ἀκρατεῖς ὁμοίως οὐ καλοῦμεν· οὐ γὰρ εἰδότες ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀπειρίαν ὑποφέρονται, καὶ νομίζουσι τῶν ἡδονῶν εἶναι κρείττονες, ἂν ‹ἐν› θεάτροις ἄσιτοι καὶ ἄποτοι διημερεύσωσιν· ὥσπερ εἰ τῶν κεραμίων [e] μέγα φρονοίη τὸ ‹μὴ ἀπὸ› τῆς γαστρὸς αἰρόμενον ἢ τοῦ πυθμένος, ἐκ δὲ τῶν ὤτων ῥᾳδίως μεταφερόμενον· ὅθεν Ἀρκεσίλαος οὐδὲν ἔφη διαφέρειν τοῖς ὄπισθεν εἶναι κίναιδον ἢ τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν. δεῖ δὴ καὶ τὴν ἐν ὄμμασι καὶ τὴν ἐν ὠσὶν γαργαλίζουσαν μαλακίαν καὶ ἡδυπάθειαν φοβεῖσθαι, καὶ μήτε πόλιν ἀνάλωτον νομίζειν τὴν τὰς ἄλλας πύλας βαλανάγραις καὶ μοχλοῖς καὶ καταρράκταις ὀχυρὰς ἔχουσαν, εἰ διὰ μιᾶς οἱ πολέμιοι παρελθόντες ἔνδον εἰσίν, μήθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀήττητον ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς, εἰ μὴ κατὰ τὸ Ἀφροδίσιον ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸ Μουσεῖον ἑάλωκεν ἢ τὸ θέατρον· ὁμοίως γὰρ ἐγκέκλικε καὶ παραδέδωκε ταῖς [f] ἡδοναῖς ἄγειν καὶ φέρειν τὴν ψυχήν. αἱ δὲ παντὸς ὀψοποιοῦ καὶ μυρεψοῦ δριμύτερα καὶ ποικιλώτερα φάρμακα ‹τὰ› τῶν μελῶν καὶ τῶν ῥυθμῶν καταχεόμεναι τούτοις ἄγουσιν ἡμᾶς καὶ διαφθείρουσιν, αὑτῶν τρόπον τινὰ καταμαρτυροῦντας. τῶνδε γὰρ ‘οὔτε τι μεμπτὸν [706] [a] οὔτ’ ὦν μεταλλακτόν,’ ὡς Πίνδαρος ἔφη (fr. 220), τῶν ἐπὶ ταῖς τραπέζαις, ‘ὅσσ’ ἀγλαὰ χθὼν πόντου τε ῥιπαὶ φέρουσιν,’ ἄρτι παρακειμένων· ἀλλ’ οὔτ’ ὄψον οὐδὲν οὔτε σιτίον οὔθ’ ὁ βέλτιστος οὑτοσὶ πινόμενος οἶνος ἐξήγαγεν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς φωνήν, οἷον ἄρτι τὰ αὐλήματα καὶ τὰ κρούματα τὴν οἰκίαν, εἰ μὴ καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἅπασαν, ἐμπέπληκε θορύβων καὶ κρότων καὶ ἀλαλαγμῶν. διὸ δεῖ μάλιστα ταύτας εὐλαβεῖσθαι τὰς ἡδονάς· ἰσχυρόταται γάρ εἰσιν, ἅτε δὴ μή, καθάπερ αἱ περὶ γεῦσιν καὶ ἁφὴν καὶ ὄσφρησιν, εἰς τὸ ἄλογον καὶ φυσικὸν ἀποτελευτῶσαι τῆς ψυχῆς, [b] ἀλλὰ τοῦ κρίνοντος ἁπτόμεναι καὶ [τοῦ] φρονοῦντος· ἔπειτα ταῖς μὲν ἄλλαις ἡδυπαθείαις κἂν ὁ λογισμὸς ἐλλίπῃ διαμαχόμενος, ἀλλὰ τῶν παθῶν ἔνια πολλάκις ἐμποδών ἐστι· καὶ γὰρ ἐν ἰχθύων ἀγορᾷ μικρολογία καθαιρεῖ δάκτυλον ὀψοφάγου, καὶ πολυτελοῦς ἑταίρας ἀπέστρεψε φιλαργυρία φιλογυνίαν· ὥσπερ ἀμέλει παρὰ τῷ Μενάνδρῳ [παρὰ] τῶν συμποτῶν ἕκαστος ἐπιβουλευόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ πορνοβοσκοῦ σοβαράν τινα παιδίσκην ἐπάγοντος αὐτοῖς (fr. 607)

‘κύψας καθ’ ἑαυτὸν τῶν τραγημάτων ἔφλα·’

χαλεπὸν γὰρ ὁ δανεισμὸς τῆς ἀκρασίας κόλασμα καὶ τὸ [c] λῦσαι βαλάντιον οὐ πάνυ ῥᾴδιον· ταύταις δὲ ταῖς ἐλευθερίαις λεγομέναις ‹περὶ› ὦτα καὶ ὄμματα φιλομούσοις καὶ φιλαύλοις μουσομανίαις προῖκα καὶ ἀμισθὶ τῶν ἡδονῶν πάρεστι πολλαχόθεν ἀρύτεσθαι καὶ ἀπολαύειν, ἐν ἀγῶσιν, ἐν θεάτροις, ἐν συμποσίοις, ἑτέρων χορηγούντων· ὅθεν ἕτοιμον τὸ διαφθαρῆναι τοῖς μὴ βοηθοῦντα καὶ παιδαγωγοῦντα τὸν λογισμὸν ἔχουσι.’

Γενομένης οὖν σιωπῆς ‘τί οὖν’ ἔφην ‘ποιοῦντα τὸν λογισμὸν ἢ τί λέγοντα βοηθεῖν ἀξιοῦμεν; οὐ γὰρ ἀμφωτίδας γε περιθήσει τὰς Ξενοκράτους (fr. 96 H.) ἡμῖν οὐδ’ ἀναστήσει μεταξὺ δειπνοῦντας, ἐὰν αἰσθώμεθα [d] λύρας ἁρμοζομένης ἢ κινουμένων αὐλῶν.’ ‘οὐ γὰρ οὖν’ εἶπεν ὁ Λαμπρίας, ‘ἀλλ’ ὁσάκις ἂν εἰς τὰς Σειρῆνας ἐμπέσωμεν, ἐπικαλεῖσθαι δεῖ τὰς Μούσας καὶ καταφεύγειν εἰς τὸν Ἑλικῶνα τὸν τῶν παλαιῶν. ἐρῶντι μὲν γὰρ πολυτελοῦς οὐκ ἔστι τὴν Πηνελόπην προσαγαγεῖν οὐδὲ συνοικίσαι τὴν Πάνθειαν· ἡδόμενον δὲ μίμοις καὶ μέλεσι καὶ ᾠδαῖς κακοτέχνοις καὶ κακοζήλοις ἔξεστι μετάγειν ἐπὶ τὸν Εὐριπίδην καὶ τὸν Πίνδαρον καὶ τὸν Μένανδρον, ‘ποτίμῳ λόγῳ ἁλμυρὰν ἀκοήν’ ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Phaedr. 243d) ‘ἀποκλυζόμενον.’ ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ μάγοι [e] τοὺς δαιμονιζομένους κελεύουσι τὰ Ἐφέσια γράμματα πρὸς αὑτοὺς καταλέγειν καὶ ὀνομάζειν, οὕτως ἡμεῖς ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις τερετίσμασι καὶ σκιρτήμασι (Pind. fr. 208 6 704a, 10)

‘μανίαις τ’ ἀλαλαῖς τ’ ὀρινόμενοι ῥιψαύχενι σὺν κλόνῳ’

τῶν ἱερῶν καὶ σεμνῶν ἐκείνων γραμμάτων ἀναμιμνησκόμενοι καὶ παραβάλλοντες ᾠδὰς καὶ ποιήματα καὶ λόγους †κενοὺς οὐκ ἐκπλαγησόμεθα παντάπασιν ὑπὸ τούτων οὐδὲ πλαγίους παραδώσομεν ἑαυτοὺς ὥσπερ ὑπὸ ῥεύματος λείου φέρεσθαι.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ϛ

Περὶ τῶν λεγομένων σκιῶν, καὶ εἰ δεῖ βαδίζειν καλούμενον πρὸς ἑτέρους ὑφ’ ἑτέρων ἐπὶ δεῖπνον, καὶ πότε, καὶ παρὰ τίνας

[f] Τὸν Μενέλαον Ὅμηρος πεποίηκεν αὐτόματον ἑστιῶντι τοὺς ἀριστεῖς τῷ Ἀγαμέμνονι παραγινόμενον·

‘ᾔδεε γὰρ κατὰ θυμὸν ἀδελφεὸν ὡς ἐπονεῖτο·’(Β 409)

καὶ τὴν ἄγνοιαν οὐ περιεῖδεν αὐτοῦ καταφανῆ γενομένην οὐδ’ ἤλεγξε τῷ μὴ ἐλθεῖν, ὥσπερ οἱ φιλομεμφεῖς καὶ δύσκολοι ταῖς τοιαύταις τῶν φίλων παροράσεσι καὶ ἀγνοίαις ἐπιτίθενται, τῷ ἀμελεῖσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ τιμᾶσθαι χαίροντες, [707] [a] ὅπως ἐγκαλεῖν ἔχωσιν. τὸ δὲ τῶν ἐπικλήτων ἔθος, οὓς νῦν σκιὰς καλοῦσιν, οὐ κεκλημένους αὐτοὺς ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τῶν κεκλημένων ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον ἀγομένους, ἐζητεῖτο πόθεν ἔσχε τὴν ἀρχήν· ἐδόκει δ’ ἀπὸ Σωκράτους, Ἀριστόδημον ἀναπείσαντος οὐ κεκλημένον εἰς Ἀγάθωνος ἰέναι σὺν αὐτῷ (Plat. Conv. 174a ss.) καὶ παθόντα τι γελοῖον· ἔλαθε γὰρ κατὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ὑπολειφθεὶς ὁ Σωκράτης, [b] ὁ δὲ προεισῆλθεν, ἀτεχνῶς σκιὰ προβαδίζουσα σώματος ἐξόπισθεν τὸ φῶς ἔχοντος. ὕστερον μέντοι περὶ τὰς τῶν ξένων ὑποδοχάς, μάλιστα τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν, ἀναγκαῖον ἐγίνετο τοῖς ἀγνοοῦσι τοὺς ἑπομένους καὶ τιμωμένους ἐπὶ τῷ ξένῳ ποιεῖσθαι τὴν κλῆσιν, ἀριθμὸν δ’ ὁρίζειν, ὅπως μὴ πάθωσιν ὃ παθεῖν συνέπεσε τῷ δεχομένῳ τὸν βασιλέα Φίλιππον ἐπὶ τῆς χώρας· ἧκε γὰρ ἄγων πολλούς, τὸ δὲ δεῖπνον οὐ πολλοῖς ἦν παρεσκευασμένον· ἰδὼν οὖν θορυβούμενον τὸν ξένον περιέπεμπε πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ἀτρέμα, χώραν πλακοῦντι καταλιπεῖν κελεύων· οἱ δὲ προσδοκῶντες ὑπεφείδοντο τῶν παρακειμένων καὶ πᾶσιν οὕτως ἐξήρκεσε τὸ δεῖπνον.

[c] Ἐμοῦ δὲ ταῦτα πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ἀδολεσχοῦντος, ἔδοξε Φλώρῳ καὶ σπουδάσαι τι περὶ τῶν σκιῶν λεγομένων, διαπορήσαντας εἰ προσήκει τοῖς καλουμένοις οὕτω βαδίζειν καὶ συνακολουθεῖν. ὁ μὲν οὖν γαμβρὸς αὐτοῦ Καισέρνιος ὅλως ἀπεδοκίμαζε τὸ πρᾶγμα. μάλιστα μὲν γὰρ τῷ Ἡσιόδῳ (OD 342) πειθομένους ἔφη χρῆναι ‘τὸν φιλέοντ’ ἐπὶ δαῖτα καλεῖν’· εἰ δὲ μή, γνωρίμους αὑτῶν καὶ ἐπιτηδείους παρακαλεῖν ἐπὶ κοινωνίαν σπονδῆς καὶ τραπέζης καὶ λόγων ἐν οἴνῳ γινομένων καὶ φιλοφροσύνης. ‘νῦν δ’ ὥσπερ’ εἶπεν ‘οἱ τὰ πλοῖα ναυλοῦντες, ὅ τι ἂν φέρῃ τις, ἐμβάλλεσθαι παρέχουσιν, οὕτως ἡμεῖς τὰ συμπόσια παραδόντες [d] ἑτέροις πληροῦν ἀφίεμεν ἐκ τῶν προστυχόντων, ἄν τε χαρίεντες ὦσιν ἄν τε φαῦλοι. θαυμάσαιμι δ’ ἄν, εἰ χαρίεις ἀνὴρ ἐπίκλητος ἀφίκοιτο, μᾶλλον δ’ ἄκλητος, ὅν γε πολλάκις οὐδὲ γινώσκει τὸ παράπαν ὁ δειπνίζων· εἰ δὲ γινώσκων καὶ χρώμενος μὴ κέκληκεν, ἔτι γε μᾶλλον αἰσχύνη βαδίζειν πρὸς τοῦτον ὥσπερ ἐξελέγχοντα ‹καὶ› μετέχειν τῶν ἐκείνου τρόπον τινὰ βίᾳ καὶ ἄκοντος.

ἔτι καὶ προτερεῖν ἢ ἀπολείπεσθαι τοῦ κεκληκότος πρὸς ἕτερον ἔχει τινὰ δυσωπίαν, καὶ οὐκ ἀστεῖόν ἐστι μαρτύρων δεόμενον πρὸς τοὺς ὑποδεχομένους βαδίζειν, ὡς οὐ‹κ ἄ›κλητος ἀλλὰ σκιὰ τοῦ δεῖνος ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον [e] ἥκει· καὶ πάλιν τὸ παρέπεσθαι καὶ παραφυλάττειν ἄλειμμα καὶ λουτρὸν ἑτέρου καὶ ὥραν βραδύνοντος ἢ ταχύνοντος ἀνελεύθερον εὖ μάλα καὶ Γναθώνειον, εἰ δὴ Γνάθων γέγονε δεινότατος ἀνθρώπων τἀλλότρια δειπνεῖν.

ἔτι γε μὴν οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτε μᾶλλον ἀνθρώποις ἐφιᾶσιν εἰπεῖν

‹’ὦ› γλῶσσα, μέτριον εἴ τι κομπάσαι θέλεις,

ἔξειπε,’ (Trag. adesp. 398 6 Com. adesp. 1228)

καὶ παρρησία πλείστη μετὰ παιδιᾶς ἀναμέμικται τοῖς λεγομένοις ἐν οἴνῳ καὶ πραττομένοις· ἐνταῦθα δὴ πῶς ἄν τις ἑαυτὸν μεταχειρίσαιτο μὴ γνήσιος ὢν μηδ’ αὐτόκλητος, ἀλλὰ τρόπον τινὰ νόθος καὶ παρεγγεγραμμένος [f] εἰς τὸ συμπόσιον; καὶ γὰρ τὸ χρῆσθαι καὶ τὸ μὴ χρῆσθαι παρρησίᾳ πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας εὐσυκοφάντητον. οὐ μικρὸν δὲ κακὸν οὐδ’ ἡ τῶν ὀνομάτων εὐχέρεια καὶ βωμολοχία τοῖς μὴ δυσχεραίνουσιν ἀλλ’ ὑπομένουσι σκιὰς καλεῖσθαι καὶ ὑπακούειν· προσεθίζει γὰρ εἰς τὰ ἔργα [708] [a] †τῷ αἰσχρῷ τὸ ῥᾳδίως ὑπὸ τῶν ῥημάτων ἄγεσθαι. διὸ καλῶν μὲν ἑταίρους ἔδωκα τόπον σκιαῖς, ἰσχυρὰ γὰρ ἡ τῆς πόλεως συνήθεια καὶ δυσπαραίτητος· αὐτὸς δὲ κληθεὶς ὑφ’ ἑτέρου πρὸς ἕτερον ἄχρι γε νῦν ἀντέχω μὴ ὑπακοῦσαι.’

Γενομένης δὲ μετὰ τοὺς λόγους τούτους ἡσυχίας ὁ Φλῶρος ‘τοῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘τὸ δεύτερον ἔχει μᾶλλον ἀπορίαν· τὸ δὲ καλεῖν οὕτως ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς τῶν ξένων ὑποδοχαῖς, ὥσπερ εἴρηται πρότερον (707b)· οὔτε γὰρ ἄνευ φίλων ἐστὶ δὴ ἐπιεικὲς οὔτε γινώσκειν οὓς ἔχων ἥκει ῥᾴδιον.’ κἀγὼ πρὸς αὐτόν ‘ὅρα τοίνυν’ ἔφην ‘μὴ οἱ καλεῖν οὕτω δεδωκότες τοῖς ἑστιῶσι καὶ τὸ πείθεσθαι [b] τοῖς καλουμένοις καὶ βαδίζειν δεδώκασιν· οὔτε γὰρ διδόναι καλὸν ‹ὃ αἰτεῖν› οὔτ’ αἰτεῖν ὃ διδόναι μὴ καθῆκεν, οὔθ’ ὅλως παρακαλεῖν ἃ μὴ δεῖ παρακαλεῖσθαι μηδ’ ὁμολογεῖν μηδὲ πράττειν. τὰ μὲν οὖν πρὸς ἡγεμόνας ἢ ξένους οὐκ ἔχει κλῆσιν οὐδ’ αἵρεσιν, ἀλλὰ δεῖ δέχεσθαι τοὺς μετ’ αὐτῶν παραγινομένους. ἄλλως δὲ φίλον ἑστιῶντα φιλικώτερον μέν ἐστι τὸ καλεῖν αὐτόν, ὡς οὐκ ἀγνοοῦντα τοὺς γνωρίμους αὐτοῦ καὶ συνήθεις ἢ οἰκείους· μείζων γὰρ ἡ τιμὴ καὶ ἡ χάρις, ὡς μὴ λανθάνοντος ὅτι τούτους ἀσπάζεται μάλιστα καὶ τούτοις ἥδιστα σύνεστι καὶ χαίρει τιμωμένοις ὁμοίως καὶ παρακαλουμένοις. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ [c] ἔστιν ὅτε ποιητέον ἐπ’ αὐτῷ, [καὶ] καθάπερ οἱ θεῷ θύοντες ἅμα συμβώμοις καὶ συννάοις κοινῶς συνεπεύχονται καὶ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐκείνων μὴ ὀνομάζοντες· οὔτε γὰρ ὄψον οὔτ’ οἶνος οὔτε μύρον οὕτως ἡδέως διατίθησιν ὡς σύνδειπνος εὔνους καὶ προσηνής. ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν ὄψοις καὶ πέμμασιν οἵοις ὁ μέλλων ἑστιᾶσθαι μάλιστα χαίρει καὶ περὶ οἴνων διαφορᾶς καὶ μύρων ἐρωτᾶν καὶ διαπυνθάνεσθαι φορτικὸν κομιδῇ καὶ νεόπλουτον· ᾧ δὲ πολλοὶ φίλοι καὶ οἰκεῖοι καὶ συνήθεις εἰσίν, αὐτὸν παρακαλεῖν ἐκείνων, οἷς ἂν ἥδιστα συγγίνοιτο καὶ μεθ’ ὧν εὐφραίνεται [d] παρόντων μάλιστα, τούτους ἄγειν οὐκ ἀηδὲς οὐδ’ ἄτοπον. οὔτε γὰρ τὸ συμπλεῖν οὔτε τὸ συνοικεῖν οὔτε τὸ συνδικάζειν μεθ’ ὧν οὐ βούλεταί τις οὕτως ἀηδὲς ὡς τὸ συνδειπνεῖν, καὶ τοὐναντίον ἡδύ· κοινωνία γάρ ἐστι καὶ σπουδῆς καὶ παιδιᾶς καὶ λόγων καὶ πράξεων τὸ συμπόσιον. ὅθεν οὐ τοὺς τυχόντας ἀλλὰ [τοὺς] προσφιλεῖς εἶναι δεῖ καὶ συνήθεις ἀλλήλοις, ὡς ἡδέως συνεσομένους· ὄψα μὲν γὰρ οἱ μάγειροι σκευάζουσιν ἐκ χυμῶν διαφόρων, αὐστηρὰ καὶ λιπαρὰ καὶ γλυκέα καὶ δριμέα συγκεραννύντες, σύνδειπνον δὲ χρηστὸν οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο καὶ κεχαρισμένον ἀνθρώπων μὴ ὁμοφύλων μηδ’ ὁμοιοπαθῶν εἰς [e] τὸ αὐτὸ συμφθαρέντων. Ἐπεὶ δ’, ὥσπερ οἱ Περιπατητικοὶ λέγουσι τὸ μὲν πρῶτον φύσει κινοῦν μὴ κινούμενον δ’ εἶναι τὸ δ’ ἔσχατον κινούμενον μηδὲ ἓν δὲ κινοῦν μεταξὺ δ’ ἀμφοῖν τὸ καὶ κινοῦν ἕτερα καὶ κινούμενον ὑφ’ ἑτέρων, οὕτως,’ ἔφην, ‘‹περὶ ὧν› ὁ λόγος τριῶν ὄντων, ὁ μὲν καλῶν μόνον ὁ δὲ καλούμενος ὁ δὲ καὶ καλῶν καὶ καλούμενός ἐστιν, εἴρηται μὲν περὶ τοῦ καλοῦντος, οὐ χεῖρον δ’ ἐστὶ καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων’ ἔφην, ‘ἅ γ’ ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ, διελθεῖν. ὁ μὲν οὖν καλούμενος ὑφ’ ἑτέρου καὶ καλῶν ἑτέρους πρῶτον, οἶμαι, τοῦ πλήθους φείδεσθαι δίκαιός [f] ἐστι, μὴ καθάπερ ἐκ πολεμίας ὁμοῦ πᾶσι τοῖς περὶ αὑτὸν ἐπισιτιζόμενος μηδ’, ὥσπερ οἱ χώρας καταλαμβάνοντες ἐν τῷ πεττεύειν, ἀεὶ τοῖς ἰδίοις φίλοις τοὺς τοῦ καλέσαντος ἐκκρούων καὶ ἀποκρούων ἅπαντας, ὥστε πάσχειν τοὺς δειπνίζοντας, ἃ πάσχουσιν οἱ τῇ Ἑκάτῃ καὶ τοῖς [709] [a] ἀποτροπαίοις ἐκφέροντες τὰ δεῖπνα, μὴ γευομένους αὐτοὺς μηδὲ τοὺς οἴκοι, πλὴν καπνοῦ καὶ θορύβου μετέχοντας. ἄλλως γὰρ ἡμῖν προσπαίζουσιν οἱ λέγοντες (Com. adesp. 460)

‘Δελφοῖσι θύσας αὐτὸς ὀψωνεῖ κρέας·’

ἀληθῶς δὲ τοῦτο συμβαίνει τοῖς ξένους ἀγνώμονας ἢ φίλους δεχομένοις μετὰ σκιῶν πολλῶν ὥσπερ Ἁρπυιῶν διαφοροῦντας τὰ δεῖπνα καὶ προνομεύοντας. ἔπειτα δεῖ μὴ μεθ’ ὧν ἔτυχε βαδίζειν πρὸς ἑτέρους ἐπὶ δεῖπνον, ἀλλὰ μάλιστα μὲν καλεῖν τοὺς τοῦ δειπνίζοντος οἰκείους καὶ συνήθεις, πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον ἁμιλλώμενον καὶ προκαταλαμβάνοντα ταῖς κλήσεσιν· εἰ δὲ μή, τῶν ἰδίων φίλων οὓς ἂν καὶ ἤθελεν αὐτὸς ἑλέσθαι [ὁ δειπνίζων], ἐπιεικὴς ὢν [b] ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ φιλόλογος φιλολόγους ὄντας ἢ δυνατοὺς δυνάμενος, πάλαι καὶ ζητῶν ἁμωσγέπως αὐτοῖς ἐν προσηγορίᾳ καὶ κοινωνίᾳ γενέσθαι. τὸ γὰρ οὕτως ἔχοντι παραδοῦναι καὶ παρασχεῖν ὁμιλίας ἀρχὴν καὶ φιλοφροσύνης εὔστοχον ἐπιεικῶς καὶ ἀστεῖον· ὁ δ’ ἀσυμφύλους καὶ ἀσυναρμόστους ἐπάγων, οἷον νηπτικῷ πολυπότας καὶ λιτῷ περὶ δίαιταν [καὶ] ἀκολάστους καὶ πολυτελεῖς ἢ νέῳ πάλιν ποτικῷ καὶ φιλοπαίγμονι πρεσβύτας σκυθρωποὺς ἢ βαρὺ φθεγγομένους ἐκ πώγωνος σοφιστάς, ἄκαιρός ἐστιν [ἡ] ἀηδίᾳ φιλοφροσύνην ἀμειβόμενος. δεῖ γὰρ οὐχ ἧττον ἡδὺν εἶναι τῷ δειπνίζοντι τὸν κεκλημένον ἢ τῷ κεκλημένῳ τὸν [c] ὑποδεχόμενον· ἔσται δ’ ἡδύς, ἐὰν μὴ μόνον ἑαυτὸν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὑτῷ καὶ δι’ αὑτὸν ἥκοντας ἐπιδεξίους παρέχῃ καὶ προσηνεῖς. Ὅ γε μὴν λοιπὸς ἔτι τῶν τριῶν οὗτος ὁ καλούμενος ὑφ’ ἑτέρου πρὸς ἕτερον τὸ μὲν τῆς σκιᾶς ἀναινόμενος ὄνομα καὶ δυσχεραίνων ἀληθῶς σκιὰν δόξει φοβεῖσθαι, δεῖται δὲ πλείστης εὐλαβείας· οὔτε γὰρ τοῖς τυχοῦσιν ἀκολουθεῖν ἑτοίμως καλὸν οὔθ’ ὅπως ἔτυχεν· δεῖ ‹δὲ› σκοπεῖν πρῶτον τίς ὁ καλῶν ἐστιν. εἰ μὲν γὰρ οὐ σφόδρα συνήθης, ἀλλὰ [μὴ] τῶν πλουσίων τις ἢ σατραπικῶν, ὡς ἐπὶ σκηνῆς δορυφορήματος λαμπροῦ δεόμενος ἢ πάνυ χαρίζεσθαι τῇ κλήσει πεπεισμένος ‹καὶ› τιμᾶν, ἐπάγεται, παραιτητέος εὐθύς· εἰ δὲ φίλος καὶ συνήθης, [d] οὐκ εὐθὺς ὑπακουστέον, ἀλλ’ ἐὰν δοκῇ δεῖσθαί τινος ἀναγκαίας ὁμιλίας καὶ κοινωνίας καιρὸν ἄλλον οὐκ ἐχούσης, ἢ διὰ χρόνου ποθὲν ἀφιγμένος ἢ μέλλων ἀπαίρειν φανερὸς ᾖ δι’ εὔνοιαν ἐπιθυμῶν καὶ ποθῶν συμπεριενεχθῆναι, καὶ μήτε πολλοὺς μήτ’ ἀλλοτρίους ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἢ μετ’ ὀλίγων ἑταίρων ἐπαγόμενος, ἢ μετὰ ταῦτα πάντα πραγματευόμενος ἀρχήν τινα συνηθείας καὶ φιλίας δι’ αὑτοῦ γενέσθαι τῷ καλουμένῳ πρὸς τὸν καλοῦντα χρηστὸν ὄντα καὶ φιλίας ἄξιον. ἐπεὶ τούς γε μοχθηρούς, ὅσῳ μᾶλλον ἐπιλαμβάνονται καὶ συμπλέκονται, καθάπερ βάτους [e] καὶ ἀπαρίνας ὑπερβατέον ἐστίν· κἂν ἐπιεικεῖς οἱ ἄγοντες ὦσιν πρὸς ἐπιεικῆ δὲ μὴ ἄγωσιν, οὐ δεῖ συνακολουθεῖν οὐδ’ ὑπομένειν, ὥσπερ διὰ μέλιτος φάρμακον λαμβάνοντας, μοχθηρὸν διὰ χρηστοῦ φίλον. ἄτοπον δὲ καὶ τὸ πρὸς ἀγνῶτα κομιδῇ καὶ ἀσυνήθη βαδίζειν, ἂν μή τις ᾖ διαφέρων ἀρετῇ, καθάπερ εἴρηται, καὶ τοῦτο φιλίας ποιησόμενος ἀρχὴν καὶ ἀγαπήσων τὸ ῥᾳδίως καὶ ἀφελῶς ἀφικέσθαι σὺν ἑτέρῳ πρὸς αὐτόν. καὶ μὴν τῶν συνήθων πρὸς τούτους μάλιστα βαδιστέον ὑφ’ ἑτέρου καλούμενον, οἷς ἐφίεται [καὶ] μεθ’ ἑτέρων καὶ αὐτοῖς βαδίζειν πρὸς ἡμᾶς. Φιλίππῳ μὲν γὰρ ἐδόκει τῷ γελωτοποιῷ (Xen. Conv.

[f] I 13) τὸ αὐτόκλητον ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἐλθεῖν γελοιότερον εἶναι τοῦ κεκλημένον· ἀγαθοῖς δὲ καὶ φίλοις ἀνδράσι παρὰ φίλους καὶ ἀγαθοὺς σεμνότερόν ἐστιν καὶ ἥδιον, ἂν μὴ καλέσασι μηδὲ προσδοκῶσιν ἐν καιρῷ παραγίνωνται μετὰ [710] [a] φίλων ἑτέρων, εὐφραίνοντες ἅμα τοὺς δεχομένους καὶ τιμῶντες τοὺς ἀγαγόντας. ἥκιστα δὲ πρὸς ἡγεμόνας ἢ πλουσίους ἢ δυνάστας μὴ καλουμένους ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀλλ’ ὑφ’ ἑτέρων πρέπει βαδίζειν, ἀναιδείας καὶ ἀπειροκαλίας καὶ φιλοτιμίας ἀκαίρου δόξαν οὐκ ἄλογον φυλαττομένους.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ζ

Εἰ δεῖ παρὰ πότον αὐλητρίσι χρῆσθαι

[b] Περὶ ἀκροαμάτων ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ λόγοι παρὰ πότον ἐγένοντο Διογενιανοῦ τοῦ Περγαμηνοῦ παρόντος, καὶ πράγματ’ εἴχομεν ἀμυνόμενοι βαθυπώγωνα σοφιστὴν ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, ὃς ἐπήγαγεν τὸν Πλάτωνα (Prot. 347c Conv. 176e) κατηγοροῦντα τῶν αὐλητρίσι χρωμένων παρ’ οἶνον, ἀλλήλοις δὲ συγγίνεσθαι διὰ λόγου μὴ δυναμένων. καίτοι παρὼν ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς παλαίστρας Φίλιππος ὁ Προυσιεὺς ἐᾶν ἐκέλευσεν τοὺς παρ’ Ἀγάθωνι δαιτυμόνας ἐκείνους παντὸς αὐλοῦ καὶ πηκτίδων ἐπιτερπέστερα φθεγγομένους· οὐ γὰρ αὐλητρίδα παρόντων ἐκείνων ἐκπεσεῖν [c] θαυμαστὸν ἦν, ἀλλ’ εἰ μὴ καὶ πότου καὶ σίτου λήθη κατελάμβανεν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς καὶ κηλήσεως τὸ συμπόσιον. ‘καίτοι Ξενοφῶν οὐκ ᾐσχύνθη, Σωκράτους καὶ Ἀντισθένους καὶ ἄλλων παρόντων τοιούτων, τὸν γελωτοποιὸν φέρων Φίλιππον, ὥσπερ Ὅμηρος (Λ 630) τὸ ‘κρόμυον ποτῷ ὄψον,’ ὑποδεῖξαι τοῖς ἀνδράσι. Πλάτων δὲ τόν τ’ Ἀριστοφάνους λόγον περὶ τοῦ ἔρωτος ὡς κωμῳδίαν ἐμβέβληκεν εἰς τὸ Συμπόσιον, καὶ τελευτῶν ἔξωθεν ἀναπετάσας τὴν αὔλειον ἐπάγει δρᾶμα τῶν ποικιλωτάτων, μεθύοντα καὶ κώμῳ χρώμενον ἐστεφανωμένον Ἀλκιβιάδην. εἶθ’ οἱ πρὸς Σωκράτην διαπληκτισμοὶ περὶ Ἀγάθωνος καὶ ‹τὸ› Σωκράτους [d] ἐγκώμιον - ὦ φίλαι Χάριτες, ἆρά γ’ εἰπεῖν ὅσιόν ἐστιν, ὅτι, τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἥκοντος εἰς τὸ συμπόσιον ἡρμοσμένην τὴν λύραν ἔχοντος, ἱκέτευσαν ‹ἂν› οἱ παρόντες ἐπισχεῖν τὸν θεόν, ἕως ὁ λόγος συμπερανθῇ καὶ λάβῃ τέλος; εἶτ’ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν οἱ ἄνδρες’ ἔφη ‘τοσαύτην ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι χάριν ἔχοντες ὅμως ἐχρῶντο τοῖς ἐπεισοδίοις καὶ διεποίκιλλον τὰ συμπόσια παιδιαῖς τοιαύταις, ἡμεῖς δὲ μεμιγμένοι πολιτικοῖς καὶ ἀγοραίοις ἀνδράσι, πολλοῖς δ’, ὅταν οὕτω τύχωμεν, ἰδιώταις καὶ ὑπαγροικοτέροις ἐκβάλωμεν τὴν τοιαύτην χάριν καὶ διατριβὴν ἐκ τῶν συμποσίων ἢ ἀπίωμεν, ὥσπερ [τὰς] Σειρῆνας ἐπιούσας φεύγοντες; ἀλλὰ Κλειτόμαχος μὲν ὁ ἀθλητὴς ἐξανιστάμενος [e] καὶ ἀπιών, εἴ τις ἐμβάλοι λόγον ἐρωτικόν, ἐθαυμάζετο, φιλόσοφος δ’ ἀνὴρ αὐλὸν ἐκ συμποσίου φεύγων καὶ ψαλτρίας ἁρμοζομένης ὑποδεῖσθαι βοῶν ταχὺ καὶ τὸν λυχνοῦχον ἅπτειν οὐ καταγέλαστός ἐστι, τὰς ἀβλαβεστάτας ἡδονάς, ὥσπερ οἱ κάνθαροι τὰ μύρα, βδελυττόμενος; εἰ γὰρ ἄλλοτε, μάλιστα δήπου παρὰ πότον προσπαιστέον ἐστὶ τούτοις καὶ δοτέον εἰς ταῦτα τῷ θεῷ τὴν ψυχήν. ὡς τά γ’ ἄλλα φίλος ὢν Εὐριπίδης (Med. 190 ss.) ἐμὲ γοῦν οὐ πέπεικε, περὶ μουσικῆς νομοθετῶν, ὡς ἐπὶ τὰ πένθη καὶ τὰς βαρυφροσύνας μετακομιστέας οὔσης· ἐκεῖ μὲν γὰρ ὥσπερ ἰατρὸν ἐφιστάναι δεῖ νοσοῦσιν ἐσπουδακότα [f] καὶ νήφοντα τὸν λόγον, τὰς δὲ τοιαύτας ἡδονὰς τῷ Διονύσῳ καταμίξαντας ἐν παιδιᾶς μέρει τίθεσθαι. χάριεν γάρ τοι τὸ τοῦ Λάκωνος, ‹ὃς› Ἀθήνησι καινῶν ἀγωνιζομένων τραγῳδῶν θεώμενος τὰς παρασκευὰς τῶν χορηγῶν καὶ τὰς σπουδὰς τῶν διδασκάλων καὶ τὴν ἅμιλλαν οὐκ ἔφη σωφρονεῖν τὴν πόλιν μετὰ τοσαύτης σπουδῆς [711] [a] παίζουσαν. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι παίζοντα δεῖ παίζειν καὶ μήτε δαπάνης πολλῆς μήτε τῶν πρὸς ἄλλα χρησίμων καιρῶν ὠνεῖσθαι τὸ ῥᾳθυμεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐν πότῳ καὶ ἀνέσει τῶν τοιούτων ἀπογεύεσθαι καὶ σκοπεῖν ἅμα τερπόμενον, εἴ τι χρήσιμον ἐξ αὐτῶν λαβεῖν ἔστιν.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Η

Τίσι μάλιστα χρηστέον ἀκροάμασι παρὰ δεῖπνον

Ἐπεὶ δὲ ταῦτ’ ἐρρήθη, βουλόμενον αὖθις ἀντιλέγειν τὸν σοφιστὴν ἐγὼ διακρουόμενος ‘ἐκεῖνο μᾶλλον’ ἔφην [b] ‘σκέψαιτ’ ἄν τις, ὦ Διογενιανέ, πολλῶν ἀκροαμάτων ‹ὄντων› ποῖον ἂν μάλιστα γένος εἰς πότον ἐναρμόσειεν, καὶ παρακαλῶμεν ἐπικρῖναι τουτονὶ ‹τὸν› σοφόν· ἀπαθὴς γὰρ ὢν πρὸς ἅπαντα καὶ ἀκήλητος οὐκ ἂν σφαλείη πρὸ τοῦ βελτίονος ἑλέσθαι τὸ ἥδιον.’ ὡς οὖν ὅ τε Διογενιανὸς παρεκάλει καὶ ἡμεῖς, οὐδὲν μελλήσας ἐκεῖνος ἔφη τἄλλα μὲν ἐπὶ τὴν θυμέλην καὶ τὴν ὀρχήστραν ἐξελαύνειν, εἰσάγειν δὲ τὸ νεωστὶ μὲν ἐν Ῥώμῃ παρεισηγμένον εἰς τὰ συμπόσια μήπω δ’ ἀναλάμπον ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς. ‘ἴστε γάρ’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι τῶν Πλάτωνος διαλόγων διηγηματικοί τινές [c] εἰσιν οἱ δὲ δραματικοί· τούτων οὖν τῶν δραματικῶν τοὺς ἐλαφροτάτους ἐκδιδάσκονται παῖδες ὥστ’ ἀπὸ στόματος λέγειν· πρόσεστι δ’ ὑπόκρισις πρέπουσα τῷ ἤθει τῶν ὑποκειμένων προσώπων καὶ φωνῆς πλάσμα καὶ σχῆμα καὶ διαθέσεις ἑπόμεναι τοῖς λεγομένοις. ταῦθ’ οἱ μὲν αὐστηροὶ καὶ χαρίεντες ἠγάπησαν ὑπερφυῶς, οἱ δ’ ἄνανδροι καὶ διατεθρυμμένοι τὰ ὦτα δι’ ἀμουσίαν καὶ ἀπειροκαλίαν, οὕς φησιν Ἀριστόξενος (FHG II 288) χολὴν ἐμεῖν ὅταν ἐναρμονίου ἀκούσωσιν, ἐξέβαλλον· καὶ οὐ θαυμάσαιμ’ ἄν, εἰ τὸ πάμπαν ἐκβαλοῦσιν· ἐπικρατεῖ γὰρ ἡ θηλύτης.’

Καὶ ὁ Φίλιππος ὁρῶν ὑποδυσχεραίνοντας ἐνίους [d] ‘φείδου’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ τᾶν, καὶ παραβάλλου λοιδορῶν ἡμᾶς· ἡμεῖς γάρ ἐσμεν οἱ πρῶτοι τοῦ πράγματος εἰσαγομένου δυσχεράναντες ἐν Ῥώμῃ καὶ καθαψάμενοι τῶν ἀξιούντων Πλάτωνα διαγωγὴν ἐν οἴνῳ ποιεῖσθαι καὶ τῶν Πλάτωνος διαλόγων ἐπὶ τραγήμασι καὶ μύροις ἀκούειν διαπίνοντας· ὅτε καὶ Σαπφοῦς ἂν ᾀδομένης καὶ τῶν Ἀνακρέοντος ἐγώ μοι δοκῶ καταθέσθαι τὸ ποτήριον αἰδούμενος. πολλὰ δ’ εἰπεῖν ἐπιόντα μοι δέδια μὴ μετὰ σπουδῆς τινος οὐ παιδιᾶς λέγεσθαι πρός σε δόξῃ· ὅθεν, ὡς ὁρᾷς, ‘ποτίμῳ λόγῳ ἁλμυρὰν ἀκοὴν’ (Plat. Phaedr. 243d) κατακλύσαι τῷ φίλῳ Διογενιανῷ μετὰ τῆς κύλικος δίδωμι.’

[e] Δεξάμενος οὖν ὁ Διογενιανός ‘ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτους’ ἔφη ‘νήφοντας ἀκούω λόγους· ὥσθ’ ὁ οἶνος ἡμᾶς ἀδικεῖν οὐκ ἔοικεν οὐδὲ κρατεῖν. δέδια δὴ μὴ καὶ αὐτὸς εὐθύνας ὑπόσχω· καίτοι τὰ πολλὰ περικοπτέα τῶν ἀκροαμάτων ἐστίν· πρώτην ‹τὴν› τραγῳδίαν, ὡς οὐ πάνυ τι συμποτικὸν ἀλλὰ σεμνότερον βοῶσαν καὶ σκευωρουμένην πραγμάτων ὑποκρίσεις πάθος ἐχόντων καὶ οἶκτον. ἀποπέμπω δὲ τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὴν Πυλάδειον, ὀγκώδη καὶ παθητικὴν καὶ πολυπρόσωπον οὖσαν· αἰδοῖ δὲ τῶν ἐγκωμίων ἐκείνων, ἃ Σωκράτης περὶ ὀρχήσεως διῆλθε (Xen. Conv. II 15 ss.), δέχομαι τὴν Βαθύλλειον αὐτόθεν πέζαν τοῦ κόρδακος [f] ἁπτομένην, Ἠχοῦς ἤ τινος Πανὸς ἢ Σατύρου σὺν Ἔρωτι κωμάζοντος ὑπόρχημά τι διατιθεμένην. τῶν δὲ κωμῳδιῶν ἡ μὲν ἀρχαία διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν ἀνάρμοστος ἀνθρώποις πίνουσιν· ἥ τε γὰρ ἐν ταῖς λεγομέναις παραβάσεσιν αὐτῶν σπουδὴ καὶ παρρησία λίαν ἄκρατός [712] [a] ἐστι καὶ σύντονος, ἥ τε πρὸς τὰ σκώμματα καὶ βωμολοχίας εὐχέρεια δεινῶς κατάκορος καὶ ἀναπεπταμένη καὶ γέμουσα ῥημάτων ἀκόσμων καὶ ἀκολάστων ὀνομάτων· ἔτι δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ἡγεμονικοῖς δείπνοις ἑκάστῳ παρέστηκε τῶν κατακειμένων οἰνοχόος, οὕτω δεήσει γραμματικὸν ἑκάστῳ τὸ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐξηγεῖσθαι, τίς ὁ Λαισποδίας παρ’ Εὐπόλιδι (fr. 102) καὶ ὁ Κινησίας παρὰ Πλάτωνι (fr. 184) καὶ ὁ Λάμπων παρὰ Κρατίνῳ (fr. 117. 57. 58), καὶ τῶν κωμῳδουμένων ἕκαστος, ὥστε γραμματοδιδασκαλεῖον ἡμῖν γενέσθαι τὸ συμπόσιον ἢ κωφὰ καὶ ἄσημα τὰ σκώμματα διαφέρεσθαι. περὶ δὲ τῆς νέας [b] κωμῳδίας τί ‹ἂν› ἀντιλέγοι τις; οὕτω γὰρ ἐγκέκραται τοῖς συμποσίοις, ὡς μᾶλλον ἂν οἴνου χωρὶς ἢ Μενάνδρου διακυβερνῆσαι τὸν πότον. ἥ τε γὰρ λέξις ἡδεῖα καὶ πεζὴ κατέσπαρται τῶν πραγμάτων, ὡς μήθ’ ὑπὸ νηφόντων καταφρονεῖσθαι μήτ’ οἰνωμένους ἀνιᾶν· γνωμολογίαι τε χρησταὶ καὶ ἀφελεῖς ὑπορρέουσαι καὶ τὰ σκληρότατα τῶν ἠθῶν ὥσπερ ἐν πυρὶ τῷ οἴνῳ μαλάττουσι καὶ κάμπτουσι πρὸς τὸ ἐπιεικέστερον· ἥ τε τῆς σπουδῆς πρὸς τὴν παιδιὰν ἀνάκρασις ἐπ’ οὐδὲν ἂν πεποιῆσθαι δόξειεν ἀλλ’ ἢ [c] πεπωκότων καὶ διακεχυμένων ἡδονὴν ὁμοῦ καὶ ὠφέλειαν. ἔχει δὲ καὶ τὰ ἐρωτικὰ παρ’ αὐτῷ καιρὸν πεπωκόσιν ἀνθρώποις καὶ ἀναπαυσομένοις μετὰ μικρὸν ἀπιοῦσι παρὰ τὰς ἑαυτῶν γυναῖκας· οὔτε ‹γὰρ› παιδὸς ἔρως ἄρρενός ἐστιν ἐν τοσούτοις δράμασιν, αἵ τε φθοραὶ τῶν παρθένων εἰς γάμον ἐπιεικῶς καταστρέφουσιν· τὰ δὲ πρὸς τὰς ἑταίρας, ἂν μὲν ὦσιν ἰταμαὶ καὶ θρασεῖαι, διακόπτεται σωφρονισμοῖς τισιν ἢ μετανοίαις τῶν νέων, ταῖς δὲ χρησταῖς καὶ ἀντερώσαις ἢ πατήρ τις ἀνευρίσκεται γνήσιος ἢ χρόνος τις ἐπιμετρεῖται τῷ ἔρωτι συμπεριφορὰν αἰδοῦς ἔχων φιλάνθρωπον. ταῦτα δ’ ἀνθρώποις ἄλλο μέν τι πράττουσιν ἴσως οὐδεμιᾶς σπουδῆς ἄξι’ ἐστίν· ἐν δὲ [d] τῷ πίνειν οὐ θαυμάσαιμ’ ἂν εἰ τὸ τερπνὸν αὐτῶν καὶ γλαφυρὸν ἅμα καὶ πλάσιν τινὰ καὶ κατακόσμησιν ἐπιφέρει συνεξομοιοῦσαν τὰ ἤθη τοῖς ἐπιεικέσι καὶ φιλανθρώποις.’

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Διογενιανὸς ἢ παυσάμενος ἢ διαλείπων ἐσιώπησεν· ἐπιφυομένου δ’ αὐτῷ τοῦ σοφιστοῦ πάλιν καὶ ῥήσεις τινὰς οἰομένου δεῖν τῶν Ἀριστοφανείων περαίνειν, ὁ Φίλιππος ἐμὲ προσαγορεύσας ‘οὗτος μέν’ ἔφη ‘τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἐμπέπληκε, τὸν ἥδιστον αὐτῷ Μένανδρον ἐπαινέσας, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων οὐδὲν ἔτι φροντίζειν ἔοικεν· λείπεται δὲ πολλὰ τῶν ἀκροαμάτων ἡμῖν ἀνεξέταστα, περὶ ὧν ἂν ἡδέως ἀκούσαιμί σου· τὸν δὲ τῶν ζῳδιογλύφων [e] ἀγῶνα βραβεύσομεν αὔριον, ἂν δοκῇ τῷ ξένῳ καὶ Διογενιανῷ, νήφοντες.’ ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘μῖμοί τινές εἰσιν, ὧν τοὺς μὲν ὑποθέσεις τοὺς δὲ παίγνια καλοῦσιν· ἁρμόζειν δ’ οὐδέτερον οἶμαι συμποσίῳ γένος, τὰς μὲν ὑποθέσεις διὰ τὰ μήκη τῶν δραμάτων καὶ τὸ δυσχορήγητον, τὰ δὲ παίγνια πολλῆς γέμοντα βωμολοχίας καὶ σπερμολογίας οὐδὲ τοῖς τὰ ὑποδήματα κομίζουσι παιδαρίοις, ἄν γε δὴ δεσποτῶν ᾖ σωφρονούντων, θεάσασθαι προσήκει· οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ γυναικῶν συγκατακειμένων καὶ παίδων ἀνήβων ἐπιδείκνυνται μιμήματα [f] πραγμάτων καὶ λόγων, ἃ πάσης μέθης ταραχωδέστερον τὰς ψυχὰς διατίθησιν. ἀλλ’ ἥ γε κιθάρα πάλαι που καὶ καθ’ Ὅμηρον †ἔτι τοῖς χρόνοις γνωρίμη τῆς δαιτός ἐστιν, καὶ μακρὰν οὕτως φιλίαν καὶ συνήθειαν οὐ πρέπει διαλύειν, ἀλλὰ δεῖσθαι τῶν κιθαρῳδῶν μόνον, ὅπως τὸν πολὺν θρῆνον καὶ γόον ἐξαιρῶσιν τῶν ᾠδῶν, εὔφημα καὶ πρέποντα θαλιάζουσιν ἀνθρώποις ᾄδοντες. τὸν δ’ αὐλὸν [713] [a] οὐδὲ βουλομένοις ἀπώσασθαι τῆς τραπέζης ἔστιν· αἱ γὰρ σπονδαὶ ποθοῦσιν αὐτὸν ἅμα τῷ στεφάνῳ καὶ συνεπιφθέγγεται τῷ παιᾶνι τὸ θεῖον, εἶτ’ ἀπελίγανε καὶ διεξῆλθε τῶν ὤτων καταχεόμενος φωνὴν ἡδεῖαν ἄχρι τῆς ψυχῆς ποιοῦσαν γαλήνην· ὥστ’, εἴ τι τῶν ἀσηρῶν καὶ πεφροντισμένων ὁ ἄκρατος οὐκ ἐξέσεισεν οὐδὲ διέλυσεν, τοῦτο τῇ χάριτι καὶ πραότητι τοῦ μέλους ὑποκατακλινόμενον ἡσυχάζειν, ἄν γε δὴ καὶ αὐτὸς τὸ μέτριον διαφυλάττῃ μὴ παθαινόμενος μηδ’ ἀνασοβῶν καὶ παρεξιστὰς βόμβυξι καὶ πολυχορδίαις τὴν διάνοιαν ὑγρὰν ὑπὸ τῆς μέθης καὶ ἀκροσφαλῆ γεγενημένην· ὡς γὰρ τὰ θρέμματα λόγου μὲν οὐ συνίησιν διάνοιαν ἔχοντος, σιγμοῖς δὲ καὶ ποππυσμοῖς ἐμμελέσιν ἢ σύριγξιν καὶ στρόμβοις ἐγείρουσι καὶ κατευνάζουσι [καὶ] πάλιν οἱ νέμοντες, οὕτως, ὅσον ἔνεστι τῇ ψυχῇ φορβαδικὸν καὶ ἀγελαῖον καὶ ἀξύνετον λόγου καὶ ἀνήκοον, μέλεσι καὶ ῥυθμοῖς ἐπιψάλλοντες καὶ καταυλοῦντες εὖ τίθενται καὶ καταπραΰνουσιν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ εἰ ‹δεῖ› τό γ’ ἐμοὶ φαινόμενον εἰπεῖν, οὔτ’ ἂν αὐλοῦ ποτε καθ’ αὑτὸν οὔτε λύρας μέλει χωρὶς λόγου καὶ ᾠδῆς ἐπιτρέψαιμι τὸ συμπόσιον ὥσπερ ῥεύματι φέρειν ὑπολαμβάνοντι· δεῖ γὰρ οὕτως ἐθίζειν καὶ σπουδάζοντας ‹καὶ [b] παίζοντας›, ὥστε καὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς ἐκ λόγου λαμβάνειν καὶ τὰς διατριβὰς ἐν λόγῳ ποιεῖσθαι, τὸ δὲ μέλος καὶ τὸν ῥυθμὸν ὥσπερ ὄψον ἐπὶ τῷ λόγῳ καὶ μὴ καθ’ αὑτὰ προσφέρεσθαι μηδὲ λιχνεύειν. ὡς γὰρ ἡδονὴν ἐν οἴνῳ καὶ ὄψῳ τῇ χρείᾳ τῆς τροφῆς συνεισιοῦσαν οὐδεὶς ἀπωθεῖται, τὴν δ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς μύροις οὐκ ἀναγκαίαν καὶ περίεργον οὖσαν ὁ Σωκράτης ἐπὶ κόρρης ῥαπίζων ἐξέβαλλεν (Xen. Conv. II 3 s.), οὕτω ψαλτηρίου φωνῆς καὶ αὐτοῦ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν τὰ ὦτα κοπτούσης μὴ ὑπακούωμεν, ἂν δ’ ἕπηται μετὰ λόγου καὶ ᾠδῆς ἑστιῶσα καὶ τέρπουσα τὸν ἐν ἡμῖν λόγον, [c] εἰσάγωμεν, οἰόμενοι καὶ τὸν Μαρσύαν ἐκεῖνον ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ κολασθῆναι, ὅτι φορβειᾷ καὶ αὐλοῖς ἐπιστομίσας ἑαυτὸν ἐτόλμησεν ψιλῷ μέλει διαγωνίζεσθαι πρὸς ᾠδὴν καὶ κιθάραν. μόνον’ ἔφην ‘σκοπῶμεν, ὅπως συμπόταις διὰ λόγου καὶ φιλοσοφίας ἀλλήλους εὐφραίνειν δυναμένοις μηδὲν ἐπάξομεν τοιοῦτον θύραθεν, ὃ κώλυμα διαγωγῆς μᾶλλον ἢ διαγωγή τις ἔσται. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ὅσοι τὴν σωτηρίαν οἴκοι καὶ παρ’ αὑτῶν ἔχοντες

‘ἄλλην θέλουσιν εἰσαγώγιμον λαβεῖν,’

ὡς Εὐριπίδης (fr. 984) εἶπεν, ἀβέλτεροί εἰσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅσοι, πολλῆς ἐν αὐτοῖς εὐφροσύνης καὶ θυμηδίας παρούσης, [d] ἔξωθεν ἐπάγειν τὰ τέρποντα φιλοτιμοῦνται. καὶ γὰρ ἡ τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως μεγαλοφροσύνη πρὸς Ἀνταλκίδαν τὸν Λάκωνα δεινῶς ἀπειρόκαλος ἐφάνη καὶ ἀγροῖκος, ὁπηνίκα ῥόδων καὶ κρόκου μεμιγμένων στέφανον εἰς μύρον βάψας ἔπεμψεν αὐτῷ, τὸ σύμφυτον καὶ ἴδιον καλὸν ἀποσβέσας καὶ καθυβρίσας τοῖς ἄνθεσιν· ὅμοιον οὖν ἐστι τό, συμποσίου χάριν ἔχοντος ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ μοῦσαν ἰδίαν, καταυλεῖν καὶ καταψάλλειν ἔξωθεν, ἀφαιρούμενον τῷ ἀλλοτρίῳ τὸ οἰκεῖον. μάλιστ’ ἂν οὖν ἀκροαμάτων εἴη καιρὸς ἐν συμποσίῳ κυμαίνοντι καὶ κορυσσομένῳ πρὸς [e] ἔριν ἢ φιλονεικίαν, ὥστε λοιδορίαν τινὰ κατασβέσαι καὶ ζητήσεως εἰς ἅμιλλαν ἀτερπῆ καὶ ἀγῶνα σοφιστικὸν ἐκφερομένης ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ †πρὸς ἀγῶνας ἐκκλησιαστικοὺς καὶ ἀγοραίους ἐπισχεῖν, ἄχρι ἂν αὖθις ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἀθόρυβον καὶ ἀνήνεμον γένηται τὸ συμπόσιον.’

[714] [a]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Θ

Ὅτι βουλεύεσθαι παρὰ πότον οὐχ ἧττον ἦν Ἑλληνικὸν ἢ Περσικόν

Περὶ ὧν ἔμελλον ἐκκλησιάζειν Ἀθηναῖοι λόγος ἦν παρὰ τὸ δεῖπνον, ἑστιῶντος ἡμᾶς Νικοστράτου· καί τινος εἰπόντος ὡς ‘Περσικὸν πρᾶγμα ποιοῦμεν, ὦ ἄνδρες, βουλευόμενοι παρ’ οἶνον,’ ‘τί μᾶλλον’ ἔφη ὁ Γλαυκίας ὑπολαβών ‘‹ἢ› Ἑλληνικόν; Ἕλλην μὲν γὰρ ἦν ὁ εἰπών (Callim. Schneideri II p. 786 fr. 378)

‘γαστρὸς ἀπὸ πλείης βουλὴ καὶ μῆτις ἀμείνων·’

Ἕλληνες δὲ σὺν Ἀγαμέμνονι Τροίαν ἐπολιόρκουν, οἷς φαγοῦσι [b] καὶ πιοῦσιν ‘ὁ γέρων πάμπρωτον ὑφαίνειν ἤρχετο μῆτιν’ (Ι 93), ἐπ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτο τῆς κλήσεως [καὶ] τῶν ἀρίστων εἰσηγητὴς τῷ βασιλεῖ γενόμενος· ‘δαίνυ δαῖτα γέρουσι’ (Ι 70), ‘πολλῶν’ γάρ τοι, φησίν (Ι 74), ‘ἀγρομένων τῷ πείσεαι, ὅς κεν ἀρίστην βουλὴν βουλεύσῃ.’ διὸ καὶ τὰ πλείστῃ χρησάμενα τῆς Ἑλλάδος εὐνομίᾳ γένη καὶ μάλιστα φιλοχωρήσαντα περὶ τοὺς ἀρχαίους ἐθισμοὺς ἐν οἴνῳ τὰς ἀρχὰς συνεῖχε. τὰ γὰρ παρὰ Κρησὶν Ἀνδρεῖα καλούμενα, παρὰ δὲ Σπαρτιάταις Φιδίτια, βουλευτηρίων ἀπορρήτων καὶ συνεδρίων ἀριστοκρατικῶν τάξιν εἶχεν, ὥσπερ οἶμαι καὶ τὸ ἐνθάδε Πρυτανεῖον καὶ Θεσμοθετεῖον· [c] οὐ πόρρω δὲ τούτων ὁ νυκτερινὸς σύλλογος παρὰ Πλάτωνι (Legg. 968a. 961b) τῶν ἀρίστων καὶ πολιτικωτάτων ἀνδρῶν ἐστιν, ἐφ’ ὃν ἀναπέμπεται τὰ μέγιστα καὶ πλείστης ἄξια φροντίδος. οἱ δὲ τῷ Ἑρμῇ ‘πυμάτῳ σπένδοντες, ὅτε μνησαίατο κοίτου’ (η 138), ἆρ’ οὐκ εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συνάγουσιν τῷ οἴνῳ τὸν λόγον; ὡς γοῦν παρόντι καὶ συνεπισκοποῦντι τῷ φρονιμωτάτῳ θεῷ πρῶτον ἀπαλλαττόμενοι προσεύχονται. οἱ δὲ πάμπαν ἀρχαῖοι ὡς οὐδὲ τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ δεόμενον τὸν Διόνυσον αὐτὸν Εὐβουλέα καὶ τὴν νύκτα δι’ ἐκεῖνον ‘εὐφρόνην’ προσεῖπον.’

[d]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ι

Εἰ καλῶς ἐποίουν βουλευόμενοι παρὰ πότον

Ταῦτα τοῦ Γλαυκίου διεξελθόντος, ἔδοξαν ἡμῖν ἐπιεικῶς οἱ θορυβώδεις ἐκεῖνοι κατακεκοιμῆσθαι λόγοι, καὶ ὅπως ἔτι μᾶλλον αὐτῶν ἀμνηστία γένοιτο, ζήτησιν ἑτέραν ἐπάγων Νικόστρατος ἔφη πρότερον οὐ πάνυ μέλειν αὐτῷ Περσικοῦ τοῦ πράγματος εἶναι δοκοῦντος· ἐπεὶ δὲ νῦν Ἑλληνικὸν ὂν πεφώραται, δεῖσθαι λόγου βοηθοῦντος αὐτῷ πρὸς τὴν αὐτόθεν φαινομένην ἀτοπίαν. ‘ὅ τε γὰρ λογισμὸς ὥσπερ ὀφθαλμὸς ἐν ὑγρῷ σάλον ἔχοντι δυσκίνητον ἡμῖν καὶ δύσεργόν ἐστι, τά τε πάθη πανταχόθεν [e] ὥσπερ ἑρπετὰ πρὸς ἥλιον σαλευόμενα πρὸς τὸν οἶνον καὶ ἀναδυόμενα τὴν γνώμην ἐπισφαλῆ ποιεῖ καὶ ἀκατάστατον. ὅθεν ὥσπερ ἡ κλίνη τοῖς πίνουσι τῆς καθέδρας ἀμείνων, ὅτι τὸ σῶμα κατέχει καὶ ἀπολύει κινήσεως ἁπάσης, οὕτως ἔχειν ἀτρέμα τὴν ψυχὴν ἄριστον· εἰ δὲ μή, δοτέον, ὥσπερ παισὶν ἀτρεμεῖν μὴ δυναμένοις, οὐ δόρυ καὶ ξίφος, ἀλλὰ πλαταγὴν καὶ σφαῖραν, ὥσπερ ὁ θεὸς τὸν νάρθηκα τοῖς μεθύουσιν ἐνεχείρισε κωφότατον βέλος καὶ μαλακώτατον ἀμυντήριον, ὅπως, ἐπεὶ τάχιστα παίουσιν, ἥκιστα βλάπτωσιν· δεῖ γὰρ γελοῖα τὰ σφάλματα τοῖς μεθύουσι ποιεῖν, οὐκ οἰκτρὰ καὶ τραγικὰ καὶ μεγάλας [f] ἀποτεύξεις ἔχοντα. καὶ μήν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ μέγιστον ἐν ταῖς περὶ τῶν μεγίστων σκέψεσι, τὸν [μὲν] ἐνδεᾶ νοῦ καὶ πραγμάτων ἄπειρον ἕπεσθαι τοῖς φρονοῦσι καὶ τῶν ἐμπείρων ἀκούειν, ἀφαιρεῖται τοὺς μεθύοντας ὁ οἶνος· [715] [a] ὥστε καὶ τοὔνομα γενέσθαι φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων (Crat. 406c) ‘ὅτι οἴεσθαι νοῦν ἔχειν ποιεῖ’ τοὺς πίνοντας· οὔτε γὰρ ἐλλόγιμος οὔτε καλὸς οὔτε πλούσιος οὕτως οἴεται, καίπερ οἰόμενος, εἶναι τῶν πινόντων ἕκαστος ὡς φρόνιμος· διὸ καὶ πολύφωνος ὁ οἶνός ἐστι καὶ λαλιᾶς ἀκαίρου καὶ φρονήματος ἡγεμονικοῦ καταπίμπλησιν, ὡς οὐκ ἀκούειν ἀλλ’ ἀκούεσθαι μᾶλλον ἡμῖν καὶ ἄγειν οὐχ ἕπεσθαι προσῆκον. ἀλλὰ γάρ’ ἔφη ‘τὰ μὲν εἰς τοῦτο ῥᾳδίως ἄν τις συναγάγοι, δῆλα γάρ ἐστιν· τῶν δ’ ἐναντίων ἀκουστέον εἴ τις ἢ νέος προσέστηκεν ἢ πρεσβύτερος.’

Ἐπιβούλως δὴ πάνυ καὶ σοφιστικῶς ὁ ἀδελφὸς [b] ἡμῶν ‘οἴει γὰρ ἄν’ ἔφη ‘τινὰ τοὺς ἐνδεχομένους λόγους εὑρεῖν ἐν τῷ παρόντι καιρῷ πρὸς τὸ πρόβλημα;’ τοῦ δὲ Νικοστράτου πάνυ φήσαντος οἴεσθαι, τοσούτων φιλολόγων καὶ πολιτικῶν παρόντων, ὑπομειδιάσας ἐκεῖνος ‘εἶτ’’ ἔφη ‘περὶ τούτων μὲν οἴει καὶ σεαυτὸν ἱκανῶς ἂν εἰπεῖν πρὸς ἡμᾶς, πρὸς δὲ πραγματικὴν καὶ πολιτικὴν σκέψιν ἀθέτως ἔχειν διὰ τὸν οἶνον; ἢ τοῦθ’ ὅμοιόν ἐστι τῷ νομίζειν ὅτι ταῖς ὄψεσιν ὁ πίνων †γὰρ εὖ μεταβλέπει, αὖθις δὲ τοῖς ὠσὶ παρακούει τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων καὶ διαλεγομένων, τῶν δ’ ᾀδόντων καὶ αὐλούντων ἀκριβῶς ἀκούει; ὡς γὰρ ἐνταῦθα μᾶλλον εἰκός ἐστι τῶν γλαφυρῶν τὰ χρειώδη τὴν αἴσθησιν ἐπιστρέφειν, οὕτως καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν οὐ θαυμάσαιμί γ’ ἂν εἴ τι τῶν φιλοσόφων καὶ περιττῶν ἐκφύγοι παρ’ οἶνον, εἰς δὲ πραγματικὰς σκέψεις ἀγομένην πυκνοῦσθαι καὶ συνίστασθαι τῷ φρονεῖν εἰκός ἐστιν· ὥσπερ ὁ Φίλιππος ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ, πολλὰ ληρῶν ὑπὸ μέθης καὶ καταγέλαστος ὤν, ἅμα τῷ προσπεσεῖν αὐτῷ περὶ σπονδῶν καὶ εἰρήνης λόγον ἔστησε τὸ πρόσωπον καὶ συνήγαγε τὰς ὀφρῦς καὶ τὸ ῥεμβῶδες καὶ ἀκόλαστον ἐκσοβήσας εὖ μάλα βεβουλευμένην καὶ νήφουσαν ἔδωκε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἀπόκρισιν. καίτοι τὸ πίνειν τοῦ [c] μεθύειν διαφέρει, καὶ τοὺς μεθύοντας ὥστε ληρεῖν οἰόμεθα δεῖν ἀπιόντας καθεύδειν, οἴνῳ δὲ χρωμένους ἐπὶ πλέον καὶ διαπίνοντας, ἄλλως νοῦν ἔχοντας ἄνδρας, οὐκ ἄξιον δεδιέναι μὴ σφαλῶσι τῷ λογισμῷ καὶ τὴν ἐμπειρίαν ἀποβάλωσιν, ‹ὁρῶντας› ὀρχηστάς τε καὶ κιθαριστὰς οὐδέν τι χεῖρον ἐν συμποσίοις ἢ θεάτροις πράττοντας· ἡ γὰρ ἐμπειρία παροῦσα καὶ τὸ σῶμα ταῖς ἐνεργείαις ὀρθούμενον παρέχει καὶ συγκινούμενον ἀσφαλῶς. πολλοῖς δ’ ἰταμότητα θάρσους συνεργὸν ὁ ἄκρατος, οὐ [δὲ] βδελυρὰν οὐδ’ ἄκρατον ἀλλ’ εὔχαριν καὶ πιθανήν, προστίθησιν· ὥσπερ καὶ τὸν Αἰσχύλον ἱστοροῦσι τὰς [d] τραγῳδίας ἐμπίνοντα ποιεῖν, καὶ οὐχ, ὡς Γοργίας (fr. 24) εἶπεν, ἓν τῶν δραμάτων αὐτοῦ ‘μεστὸν Ἄρεως’ εἶναι, τοὺς Ἕπτ’ ἐπὶ Θήβας, ἀλλὰ πάντα Διονύσου. ‘θερμαντικὸς’ γὰρ ὢν κατὰ τὸν Πλάτωνα (Tim. 60a) ‘τῆς ψυχῆς μετὰ τοῦ σώματος ὁ οἶνος’ εὔδρομον τὸ σῶμα ποιεῖ καὶ πόρους ῥήγνυσι φαντασιῶν ἐφελκομένων μετὰ τοῦ θαρρεῖν τὸν λόγον· ἔνιοι γὰρ εὑρετικὴν φύσιν ἔχοντες, ἐν δὲ τῷ νήφειν ἀτολμοτέραν καὶ πεπηγυῖαν, ὅταν εἰς τὸ πίνειν ἔλθωσιν ὥσπερ ὁ λιβανωτὸς ὑπὸ θερμότητος ἀναθυμιῶνται. τὸν δὲ δὴ φόβον οὐδενὸς ἧττον ἐμποδὼν ὄντα βουλευομένοις ἐξελαύνει, καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἄλλων παθῶν ἀφιλότιμα [e] καὶ ἀγεννῆ κατασβέννυσι, καὶ ‹τὸ› κακόηθες καὶ τὸ ὕπουλον ὥσπερ τινὰς διπλόας ἀναπτύσσει τῆς ψυχῆς, καὶ παντὸς ἤθους καὶ πάθους ποιεῖ καταφάνειαν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις· ἔστι [716] [a] δὲ παρρησίας καὶ δι’ αὐτὴν ἀληθείας γονιμώτατος· ἧς μὴ παρούσης οὐδὲν ἐμπειρίας οὐδ’ ἀγχινοίας ὄφελος. ἀλλὰ πολλοὶ τῷ ἐπιόντι χρώμενοι μᾶλλον κατορθοῦσιν ἢ ‹εἰ› κρύπτουσιν ἐπιβούλως καὶ πανούργως τὸ παριστάμενον. οὐδὲν οὖν δεῖ δεδιέναι κινοῦντα τὰ πάθη τὸν οἶνον· κινεῖ γὰρ οὐ τὰ φαυλότατα, πλὴν ἐν τοῖς κακίστοις, ὧν οὐδέποτε νήφει τὸ βουλευόμενον· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τὰ κουρεῖα Θεόφραστος (fr. 76 Wi.) εἰώθει καλεῖν ἄοινα συμπόσια διὰ τὴν λαλιάν, οὕτως ἄοινος ἀεὶ μέθη καὶ σκυθρωπὴ ταῖς τῶν ἀπαιδεύτων ἐνοικεῖ ψυχαῖς, ἐπιταραττομένη ὑπ’ ὀργῆς τινος ἢ δυσμενείας ἢ φιλονεικίας ἢ ἀνελευθερίας· ὧν ὁ οἶνος ἀμβλύνων τὰ πολλὰ μᾶλλον ἢ παροξύνων οὐκ ἄφρονας [b] οὐδ’ ἠλιθίους ἀλλ’ ἁπλοῦς ποιεῖ καὶ ἀπανούργους, οὐδὲ παρορατικοὺς τοῦ συμφέροντος ἀλλὰ τοῦ καλοῦ προαιρετικούς. οἱ δὲ τὴν πανουργίαν δεινότητα καὶ φρόνησιν ἡγούμενοι τὴν ψευδοδοξίαν καὶ ἀνελευθερίαν εἰκότως ἀβελτέρους ἀποφαίνουσι τοὺς ἐν οἴνῳ λέγοντας ἀφελῶς καὶ ἀδόλως τὸ φαινόμενον· τοὐναντίον δ’ οἱ παλαιοὶ τὸν θεὸν Ἐλευθερέα καὶ Λύσιον ἐκάλουν καὶ μαντικῆς πολλὴν ἔχειν ἡγοῦντο μοῖραν, οὐ διὰ ‘τὸ βακχεύσιμον καὶ μανιῶδες’ ὥσπερ Εὐριπίδης (Bacch. 298) εἶπεν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τὸ δουλοπρεπὲς καὶ περιδεὲς καὶ ἄπιστον ἐξαιρῶν καὶ ἀπολύων [c] τῆς ψυχῆς ἀληθείᾳ καὶ παρρησίᾳ χρῆσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους δίδωσιν.’

ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΑΚΩΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΟΓΔΟΟΝ

[d] Οἱ φιλοσοφίαν, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, ἐκ τῶν συμποσίων ἐκβάλλοντες οὐ ταὐτὸ ποιοῦσι τοῖς τὸ φῶς ἀναιροῦσιν, ἀλλὰ χεῖρον, ὅσῳ λύχνου μὲν ἀρθέντος οἱ μέτριοι καὶ σώφρονες οὐδὲν ἔσονται κακίους, τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι τοῦ βλέπειν ἀλλήλους μεῖζον ἔχοντες, ἀμαθίας δὲ δὴ καὶ ἀμουσίας σὺν οἴνῳ παρούσης οὐδ’ ὁ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς χρυσοῦς [e] λύχνος ἐκεῖνος εὔχαριν ἂν πότον καὶ κόσμιον παράσχοι. σιωπῶντας μὲν γὰρ ἐμπίπλασθαι μετ’ ἀλλήλων κομιδῇ συῶδες καὶ ἴσως ἀδύνατον· ὁ δὲ λόγον μὲν ἀπολιπὼν ἐν συμποσίῳ, τὸ δὲ τεταγμένως χρῆσθαι λόγῳ καὶ ὠφελίμως οὐ προσιέμενος πολὺ γελοιότερός ἐστιν τοῦ πίνειν μὲν οἰομένου δεῖν καὶ τρώγειν τοὺς δειπνοῦντας, ἄκρατον δὲ τὸν οἶνον αὐτοῖς ἐγχέοντος καὶ τοὔψον ἀνήδυντον καὶ ἀκάθαρτον παρατιθέντος. οὔτε γὰρ ποτὸν οὐδὲν οὔτ’ ἐδεστὸν οὕτως ἀηδὲς καὶ βλαβερόν ἐστιν μὴ θεραπευθὲν ὃν προσήκει τρόπον, ὡς λόγος ἀκαίρως καὶ ἀνοήτως ἐν [f] συμποσίῳ περιφερόμενος. τὴν γοῦν μέθην οἱ λοιδοροῦντες φιλόσοφοι λήρησιν πάροινον ἀποκαλοῦσιν· τὸ δὲ ληρεῖν οὐδέν ἐστιν ἀλλ’ ἢ λόγῳ κενῷ χρῆσθαι καὶ φλυαρώδει· λαλιᾶς δ’ ἀτάκτου καὶ φλυαρίας εἰς ἄκρατον ἐμπεσούσης ὕβρις καὶ παροινία τέλος ἀμουσότατον καὶ ἀχαριστότατον.

[717] [a] οὐ φαύλως οὖν καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐν τοῖς Ἀγριωνίοις τὸν Διόνυσον αἱ γυναῖκες ὡς ἀποδεδρακότα ζητοῦσιν, εἶτα παύονται καὶ λέγουσιν ὅτι πρὸς τὰς Μούσας καταπέφευγεν καὶ κέκρυπται παρ’ ἐκείναις, μετ’ ὀλίγον δέ, τοῦ δείπνου τέλος ἔχοντος, αἰνίγματα καὶ γρίφους ἀλλήλαις προβάλλουσιν, τοῦ μυστηρίου διδάσκοντος, ὅτι λόγῳ τε δεῖ χρῆσθαι παρὰ πότον θεωρίαν τινὰ καὶ μοῦσαν ἔχοντι καὶ λόγου τοιούτου τῇ μέθῃ παρόντος ἀποκρύπτεται τὸ ἄγριον καὶ μανικόν, ὑπὸ τῶν Μουσῶν εὐμενῶς κατεχόμενον. ἃ τοίνυν ἐν τοῖς Πλάτωνος γενεθλίοις πέρυσι καὶ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν συνέτυχεν ἡμῖν, πρῶτα τοῦτο περιέχει τὸ βυβλίον· ἔστι δὲ τῶν Συμποσιακῶν ὄγδοον.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Α

Περὶ ἡμερῶν ἐν αἷς γεγόνασί τινες τῶν ἐπιφανῶν· ἐν ᾧ καὶ περὶ τῆς λεγομένης ἐκ θεῶν γενέσεως

[b] Τῇ ἕκτῃ τοῦ Θαργηλιῶνος ἱσταμένου τὴν Σωκράτους ἀγαγόντες γενέθλιον τῇ ἑβδόμῃ τὴν Πλάτωνος ἤγομεν, καὶ τοῦτο πρῶτον λόγους ἡμῖν παρεῖχε τῇ συντυχίᾳ πρέποντας, ὧν κατῆρξεν Διογενιανὸς ὁ Περγαμηνός. ἔφη γὰρ οὐ φαύλως εἰπεῖν Ἴωνα (Vorsokr. 36 B 3) περὶ τῆς τύχης ὅτι πολλὰ τῆς σοφίας διαφέρουσα πλεῖστ’ αὐτῇ ὅμοια ποιεῖ· τοῦτο μέντοι μουσικῶς ἔοικεν ἀπαυτοματίσαι τὸ μὴ μόνον οὕτω σύνεγγυς, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρότερον τῇ τάξει γεγονέναι τὸν πρεσβύτερον καὶ καθηγητήν. ἐμοὶ δὲ πολλὰ λέγειν ἐπῄει τοῖς παροῦσι τῶν εἰς ταὐτὸ καιροῦ συνδραμόντων· οἷον ἦν τὸ περὶ τῆς Εὐριπίδου γενέσεως [c] καὶ τελευτῆς, γενομένου μὲν ἡμέρᾳ καθ’ ἣν οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐναυμάχουν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι πρὸς τὸν Μῆδον, ἀποθανόντος δὲ καθ’ ἣν ἐγεννήθη Διονύσιος ὁ πρεσβύτερος τῶν ἐν Σικελίᾳ τυράννων· ἅμα τῆς τύχης, ὡς Τίμαιος (FHG I 223) ἔφη, τὸν μιμητὴν ἐξαγούσης τῶν τραγικῶν παθῶν καὶ τὸν ἀγωνιστὴν ἐπεισαγούσης. ἐμνήσθησαν δὲ καὶ τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ βασιλέως τελευτῆς καὶ τῆς Διογένους τοῦ Κυνὸς ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ γενομένης. καὶ τὸν μὲν Ἄτταλον ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ γενεθλίοις τὸν βασιλέα τελευτῆσαι συνεφωνεῖτο· Πομπήιον δὲ Μᾶγνον οἱ μὲν ἐν τοῖς γενεθλίοις ἔφασαν, οἱ δὲ πρὸ μιᾶς ἡμέρας τῶν γενεθλίων ἀποθανεῖν [d] περὶ Αἴγυπτον. ἧκεν δὲ καὶ Πίνδαρος ἐπὶ μνήμην ἐν Πυθίοις γενόμενος, πολλῶν καὶ καλῶν ὕμνων τῷ θεῷ χορηγός.

Ὁ δὲ Φλῶρος οὐδὲ Καρνεάδην ἀπαξιοῦν ἔφη μνήμης ἐν τοῖς Πλάτωνος γενεθλίοις, ἄνδρα τῆς Ἀκαδημίας εὐκλεέστατον ὀργιαστήν· Ἀπόλλωνος γὰρ ἀμφοτέρους ἑορτῇ γενέσθαι, τὸν μὲν [γὰρ] Θαργηλίοις Ἀθήνησιν, τὸν δὲ Κάρνεια Κυρηναίων ἀγόντων· ‘ἑβδόμῃ δ’ ἀμφοτέρας ἑορτάζουσιν, καὶ τὸν θεὸν ὡς ταύτῃ γενόμενον ὑμεῖς’ εἶπεν ‘οἱ προφῆται καὶ ἱερεῖς Ἑβδομαγενῆ καλεῖτε. διὸ τοὺς Ἀπόλλωνι τὴν Πλάτωνος τέκνωσιν ἀνατιθέντας οὐκ ἂν οἶμαί τινα φάναι καταισχύνειν τὸν θεόν, ἐπὶ μείζονα [e] πάθη καὶ νοσήματα τοῦτον ἡμῖν διὰ Σωκράτους ἰατρὸν ὥσπερ ἑτέρου Χείρωνος ἀπειργασμένον.’ ἅμα δὲ τῆς λεγομένης Ἀρίστωνι τῷ Πλάτωνος πατρὶ γενέσθαι καθ’ ὕπνον ὄψεως καὶ φωνῆς ἀπαγορευούσης μὴ συγγενέσθαι τῇ γυναικὶ μηδ’ ἅψασθαι δέκα μηνῶν ἐμνημόνευσεν.

Ὑπολαβὼν δὲ Τυνδάρης ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος ‘ἄξιον μέν ἐστιν’ ἔφη ‘περὶ Πλάτωνος ᾄδειν καὶ λέγειν τὸ (Ω 258)

‘οὐδὲ ἐῴκει

ἀνδρός γε θνητοῦ πάις ἔμμεναι ἀλλὰ θεοῖο·’

τοῦ δὲ θείου δέδια μὴ δόξῃ τῷ ἀφθάρτῳ μάχεσθαι τὸ γεννῶν οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τὸ γεννώμενον· μεταβολὴ γάρ τις [f] καὶ αὐτὴ καὶ πάθος· ὥς που καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος ὑπενόησεν, εἰπὼν μάλιστα θνητὸν καὶ φθαρτὸν ἐπιγινώσκειν ἑαυτὸν ἐν τῷ συγγίνεσθαι γυναικὶ καὶ καθεύδειν, ὡς τὸν μὲν ὕπνον ἐνδόσει γινόμενον ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας, γένεσιν δὲ πᾶσαν [718] [a] οἰκείου τινὸς εἰς ἕτερον ἔκστασιν καὶ φθορὰν οὖσαν. ἀναθαρρῶ δὲ πάλιν αὐτοῦ Πλάτωνος (Tim. 28c al.) ἀκούων πατέρα καὶ ποιητὴν τοῦ τε κόσμου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων γεννητῶν τὸν ἀγέννητον καὶ ἀίδιον θεὸν ὀνομάζοντος, οὐ διὰ σπέρματος δήπου γενομένων, ἄλλῃ δὲ δυνάμει τοῦ θεοῦ τῇ ὕλῃ γόνιμον ἀρχήν, ὑφ’ ἧς ἔπαθεν καὶ μετέβαλεν, ἐντεκόντος·

‘λήθουσι γάρ τοι κἀνέμων διέξοδοι

θήλειαν ὄρνιν, πλὴν ὅταν παρῇ τόκος’ (Soph. fr. 436)·

καὶ οὐδὲν οἴομαι δεινόν, εἰ μὴ πλησιάζων ὁ θεὸς ὥσπερ ἄνθρωπος, ἀλλ’ ἑτέραις τισὶν ἁφαῖς δι’ ἑτέρων καὶ ψαύσεσι τρέπει καὶ ὑποπίμπλησι θειοτέρας γονῆς τὸ θνητόν. ‘καὶ οὐκ ἐμὸς ὁ μῦθος’ (Eur. fr. 484)’ εἶπεν ‘ἀλλ’ Αἰγύπτιοι [b] τόν τ’ Ἆπιν οὕτως λοχεύεσθαί φασιν ἐπαφῇ τῆς σελήνης, καὶ ὅλως ἄρρενι θεῷ πρὸς γυναῖκα θνητὴν ἀπολείπουσιν ὁμιλίαν· ἀνάπαλιν δ’ οὐκ ἂν οἴονται θνητὸν ἄνδρα θηλείᾳ θεῷ τόκου καὶ κυήσεως ἀρχὴν παρασχεῖν διὰ τὸ τὰς οὐσίας τῶν θεῶν ἐν ἀέρι καὶ πνεύμασιν καί τισι θερμότησι καὶ ὑγρότησι τίθεσθαι.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Β

Πῶς Πλάτων ἔλεγε τὸν θεὸν ἀεὶ γεωμετρεῖν

Ἐκ δὲ τούτου γενομένης σιωπῆς, πάλιν ὁ Διογενιανὸς ἀρξάμενος ‘βούλεσθ’’ εἶπεν, ‘ἐπεὶ λόγοι περὶ [c] θεῶν γεγόνασιν, ἐν τοῖς Πλάτωνος γενεθλίοις αὐτὸν Πλάτωνα κοινωνὸν παραλάβωμεν, ἐπισκεψάμενοι τίνα λαβὼν γνώμην ἀπεφήνατ’ ‹ἀεὶ› γεωμετρεῖν τὸν θεόν; εἴ γε δὴ θετέον εἶναι τὴν ἀπόφασιν ταύτην Πλάτωνος.’ ἐμοῦ δὲ ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος ὡς γέγραπται μὲν ἐν οὐδενὶ σαφῶς τῶν ἐκείνου βυβλίων, ἔχει δὲ πίστιν ἱκανὴν καὶ τοῦ Πλατωνικοῦ χαρακτῆρός ἐστιν, εὐθὺς ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Τυνδάρης ‘οἴει γάρ’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ Διογενιανέ, τῶν περιττῶν τι καὶ δυσθεωρήτων αἰνίττεσθαι τὸν λόγον, οὐχ ὅπερ αὐτὸς εἴρηκε καὶ γέγραφεν πολλάκις, ὑμνῶν γεωμετρίαν ὡς ἀποσπῶσαν [d] ἡμᾶς προσισχομένους τῇ αἰσθήσει καὶ ἀποστρέφουσαν ἐπὶ τὴν νοητὴν καὶ ἀίδιον φύσιν, ἧς θέα τέλος ἐστὶ φιλοσοφίας οἷον ἐποπτεία τελετῆς; ὁ γὰρ ἡδονῆς καὶ ἀλγηδόνος ἧλος, ᾧ πρὸς τὸ σῶμα τὴν ψυχὴν προσηλοῖ (Plat. Phaed. 83d), μέγιστον κακὸν ἔχειν ἔοικεν τὸ τὰ αἰσθητὰ ποιεῖν ἐναργέστερα τῶν νοητῶν καὶ καταβιάζεσθαι [καὶ] πάθει μᾶλλον ἢ λόγῳ κρίνειν τὴν διάνοιαν· ἐθιζομένη γὰρ ὑπὸ τοῦ σφόδρα πονεῖν καὶ ἥδεσθαι τῷ περὶ τὰ σώματα πλανητῷ καὶ μεταβλητῷ προσέχειν ὡς ὄντι τοῦ ἀληθῶς ὄντος τυφλοῦται καὶ τὸ ‘μυρίων’ ἀντάξιον ‘ὀμμάτων’ (Plat. Rep. 527e) ὄργανον ψυχῆς καὶ φέγγος ἀπόλλυσιν, [e] ᾧ μόνῳ θεατόν ἐστι τὸ θεῖον. πᾶσι μὲν οὖν τοῖς καλουμένοις μαθήμασιν, ὥσπερ ἀστραβέσι καὶ λείοις κατόπτροις, ἐμφαίνεται τῆς τῶν νοητῶν ἀληθείας ἴχνη καὶ εἴδωλα· μάλιστα δὲ γεωμετρία κατὰ τὸν Φιλόλαον (Vorsokr. α a) ἀρχὴ καὶ μητρόπολις οὖσα τῶν ἄλλων ἐπανάγει καὶ στρέφει τὴν διάνοιαν, οἷον ἐκκαθαιρομένην καὶ ἀπολυομένην ἀτρέμα τῆς αἰσθήσεως. διὸ καὶ Πλάτων αὐτὸς ἐμέμψατο τοὺς περὶ Εὔδοξον καὶ Ἀρχύταν καὶ Μέναιχμον εἰς ὀργανικὰς καὶ μηχανικὰς κατασκευὰς τὸν τοῦ στερεοῦ διπλασιασμὸν ἀπάγειν ἐπιχειροῦντας, ὥσπερ πειρωμένους δίχα λόγου δύο μέσας ἀνὰ λόγον, ᾗ παρείκοι, λαβεῖν· ἀπόλλυσθαι γὰρ οὕτω καὶ διαφθείρεσθαι [f] τὸ γεωμετρίας ἀγαθὸν αὖθις ἐπὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ παλινδρομούσης καὶ μὴ φερομένης ἄνω μηδ’ ἀντιλαμβανομένης τῶν ἀιδίων καὶ ἀσωμάτων εἰκόνων, πρὸς αἷσπερ ὢν ὁ θεὸς ἀεὶ θεός ἐστιν’ (Plat. Phaedr. 249c).

Μετὰ δὲ τὸν Τυνδάρην ὁ Φλῶρος, ἑταῖρος ὢν [719] [a] αὐτοῦ καὶ προσποιούμενος ἀεὶ μετὰ παιδιᾶς ἐραστὴς εἶναι καὶ φάσκων, ‘ὤνησας’ ἔφη ‘τὸν λόγον οὐ σεαυτοῦ ποιησάμενος ἀλλὰ κοινόν· ἐλέγξαι γὰρ ἔδωκας αὐτὸν ἀποδεικνύοντα μὴ θεοῖς οὖσαν ἀλλ’ ἡμῖν ἀναγκαίαν τὴν γεωμετρίαν· οὐ γάρ τί που καὶ θεὸς δεῖται μαθήματος οἷον ὀργάνου στρέφοντος ἀπὸ τῶν γενητῶν καὶ περιάγοντος ἐπὶ τὰ ὄντα τὴν διάνοιαν· ἐν αὐτῷ γὰρ ἔστιν ἐκείνῳ καὶ σὺν αὐτῷ καὶ περὶ αὐτόν. ἀλλ’ ὅρα μή τι σοι προσῆκον ὁ Πλάτων καὶ οἰκεῖον αἰνιττόμενος λέληθεν, ἅτε δὴ τῷ Σωκράτει τὸν Λυκοῦργον ἀναμιγνὺς οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τὸν Πυθαγόραν, ‹ὡς› ᾤετο Δικαίαρχος (FHG II 243). ὁ γὰρ Λυκοῦργος οἶσθα δήπουθεν ὅτι τὴν ἀριθμητικὴν ἀναλογίαν, [b] ὡς δημοκρατικὴν καὶ ὀχλικὴν οὖσαν, ἐξέβαλεν ἐκ τῆς Λακεδαίμονος, ἐπεισήγαγεν δὲ τὴν γεωμετρικήν, ὀλιγαρχίᾳ σώφρονι καὶ βασιλείᾳ νομίμῃ πρέπουσαν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀριθμῷ τὸ ἴσον ἡ δὲ λόγῳ τὸ κατ’ ἀξίαν ἀπονέμει· καὶ οὐ πάνθ’ ὁμοῦ μίγνυσιν, ἀλλ’ ἔστιν χρηστῶν καὶ πονηρῶν εὔσημος ἐν αὐτῇ διάκρισις, οὐ ζυγοῖς οὐδὲ κλήροις ἀρετῆς δὲ καὶ κακίας διαφορᾷ τὸ οἰκεῖον ἀεὶ διαλαγχανόντων. ταύτην ὁ θεὸς ἐπάγει τὴν ἀναλογίαν τοῖς πράγμασι, δίκην καὶ νέμεσιν, ὦ φίλε Τυνδάρη, προσαγορευομένην καὶ διδάσκουσαν ἡμᾶς τὸ δίκαιον ἴσον, ἀλλὰ μὴ τὸ ἴσον δεῖν ποιεῖσθαι δίκαιον· ἣν γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ διώκουσιν [c] ἰσότητα, πασῶν ἀδικιῶν οὖσαν μεγίστην, ὁ θεὸς ἐξαιρῶν, ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστι, τὸ κατ’ ἀξίαν διαφυλάττει, γεωμετρικῶς τῷ κατὰ λόγον τὸ κατὰ νόμον ὁριζόμενος.’

Ταῦθ’ ἡμεῖς ἐπῃνοῦμεν. ὁ δὲ Τυνδάρης φθονεῖν ἔφασκεν καὶ παρεκάλει τὸν Αὐτόβουλον ἅψασθαι Φλώρου καὶ κολάσαι τὸν λόγον. ὁ δὲ τοῦτο μὲν ἀπεῖπεν, ἰδίαν δέ τινα δόξαν ἀντιπαρήγαγεν. ἔφη γὰρ οὔτε τὴν γεωμετρίαν ἄλλου τινὸς ἢ τῶν περὶ τὰ πέρατα συμπτωμάτων καὶ παθῶν εἶναι θεωρητικήν, οὔτε τὸν θεὸν ἑτέρῳ τινὶ τρόπῳ κοσμοποιεῖν ἢ περατοῦντα τὴν ὕλην ἄπειρον οὖσαν, οὐ [d] μεγέθει καὶ πλήθει, διὰ δ’ ἀταξίαν καὶ πλημμέλειαν αὐτῆς τὸ ἀόριστον καὶ ἀπεράτωτον ἄπειρον εἰωθότων καλεῖν τῶν παλαιῶν. καὶ γὰρ ἡ μορφὴ καὶ τὸ σχῆμα πέρας ἐστὶ τοῦ μεμορφωμένου καὶ ἐσχηματισμένου παντός, ὧν στερήσει καθ’ αὑτὴν ἄμορφος ἦν καὶ ἀσχημάτιστος· ἀριθμῶν δὲ καὶ λόγων ἐγγενομένων, οἷον δεθεῖσα καὶ περιληφθεῖσα γραμμαῖς ἐκ δὲ τῶν γραμμῶν ἐπιπέδοις καὶ βάθεσιν, εἴδη τὰ πρῶτα καὶ διαφορὰς σωμάτων ὥσπερ θεμελίων παρέσχεν πρὸς γένεσιν ἀέρος καὶ γῆς ὕδατός τε καὶ πυρός· ὀκταέδρων γὰρ καὶ εἰκοσαέδρων, ἔτι δὲ πυραμίδων καὶ κύβων ἰσότητας ἐν πλευραῖς καὶ ὁμοιότητας ἐν [e] γωνίαις καὶ ἁρμονίας ἀνασχεῖν ἐξ ὕλης ἀτάκτου καὶ πλανητῆς ἄνευ τοῦ περιορίζοντος καὶ διαρθροῦντος ἕκαστα γεωμετρικῶς ἄπορον ἦν καὶ ἀδύνατον. ὅθεν ἀπείρῳ πέρατος ἐγγενομένου τὸ πᾶν ἡρμοσμένον καὶ κεκραμένον ἄριστα καὶ πεπερασμένον γέγονέν τε καὶ γίνεται, τῆς μὲν ὕλης ἀεὶ βιαζομένης εἰς τὸ ἀόριστον ἀναδῦναι καὶ φευγούσης τὸ γεωμετρεῖσθαι, τοῦ δὲ λόγου καταλαμβάνοντος αὐτὴν καὶ περιγράφοντος καὶ διανέμοντος εἰς ἰδέας καὶ διαφοράς, ἐξ ὧν τὰ φυόμενα πάντα τὴν γένεσιν ἔσχεν καὶ σύστασιν.

Ἐπὶ τούτοις ῥηθεῖσιν ἠξίουν καὶ ἐμὲ συμβαλέσθαι τι [f] πρὸς τὸν λόγον αὐτοῖς. ἐγὼ δὲ τὰς μὲν εἰρημένας δόξας ὡς ἰθαγενεῖς καὶ ἰδίας αὐτῶν ἐκείνων ἐπῄνεσα καὶ τὸ εἰκὸς ἔφην ἔχειν ἱκανῶς· ‘ὅπως δ’’ εἶπον ‘ἑαυτῶν μὴ καταφρονῆτε μηδ’ ἔξω βλέπητε παντάπασιν, ἀκούσατε τὸν μάλιστα παρὰ τοῖς καθηγηταῖς ἡμῶν εὐδοκιμοῦντα [720] [a] περὶ τούτου λόγον. ἔστι γὰρ ἐν τοῖς γεωμετρικωτάτοις θεωρήμασιν, μᾶλλον δὲ προβλήμασι, τὸ δυεῖν εἰδῶν δοθέντων ἄλλο τρίτον παραβάλλειν τῷ μὲν ἴσον τῷ δ’ ὅμοιον· ἐφ’ ᾧ καί φασιν ἐξευρεθέντι θῦσαι τὸν Πυθαγόραν· πολὺ γὰρ ἀμέλει γλαφυρώτερον τοῦτο καὶ μουσικώτερον ἐκείνου τοῦ θεωρήματος, ὃ τὴν ὑποτείνουσαν ἀπέδειξεν ταῖς περὶ τὴν ὀρθὴν ἴσον δυναμένην.’ ‘εὖ λέγεις’ εἶπεν ὁ Διογενιανός, ‘ἀλλὰ τί τοῦτο πρὸς τὸν λόγον;’ ‘εἴσεσθε ῥᾳδίως’ εἶπον ‘ἀναμνήσαντες αὑτοὺς τῆς ἐν Τιμαίῳ (48e ss.) διαιρέσεως, ᾗ διεῖλε τριχῇ τὰ πρῶθ’, ὑφ’ ὧν τὴν γένεσιν ὁ κόσμος ἔσχεν, ὧν τὸ μὲν θεὸν τῷ δικαιοτάτῳ τῶν ὀνομάτων [b] τὸ δ’ ὕλην τὸ δ’ ἰδέαν καλοῦμεν, ἡ μὲν οὖν ὕλη τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἀτακτότατόν ἐστιν, ἡ δ’ ἰδέα τῶν παραδειγμάτων κάλλιστον, ὁ δὲ θεὸς τῶν αἰτίων ἄριστον. ἐβούλετ’ οὖν μηθέν, ὡς ἀνυστὸν ἦν, ὑπολιπεῖν †ὁριστὸν καὶ ἀόριστον, ἀλλὰ κοσμῆσαι λόγῳ καὶ μέτρῳ καὶ ἀριθμῷ τὴν φύσιν, ἕν τι ποιῶν ἐκ πάντων ὁμοῦ τῶν ὑποκειμένων, οἷον ‹ἡ› ἰδέα καὶ ὅσον ἡ ὕλη γενόμενον. διὸ τοῦτο πρόβλημα δοὺς αὑτῷ, δυεῖν ὄντων τρίτον ἐποίησε καὶ ποιεῖ καὶ φυλάττει διὰ παντὸς τὸ ἴσον τῇ ὕλῃ καὶ ὅμοιον τῇ ἰδέᾳ τὸν κόσμον· ἀεὶ γὰρ ὢν διὰ τὴν σύμφυτον ἀνάγκην τοῦ σώματος [c] ἐν γενέσει καὶ μετατροπῇ καὶ πάθεσι παντοδαποῖς ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ δημιουργοῦ βοηθεῖται τῷ λόγῳ πρὸς τὸ παράδειγμα τὴν οὐσίαν ὁρίζοντος· ᾗ καὶ κάλλιον τοῦ συμμέτρου τὸ περὶ μέτρον τῶν ὄντων.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Γ

Διὰ τί τῆς ἡμέρας ἠχωδεστέρα ἡ νύξ

Θόρυβός τις, ἑστιωμένων ἡμῶν Ἀθήνησι παρ’ Ἀμμωνίῳ, τὴν οἰκίαν περιήχησεν, ἔξωθεν ἐπιβοωμένων τὸν στρατηγόν· ἐστρατήγει δὲ τὸ τρίτον ὁ Ἀμμώνιος. ἐπεὶ δὲ [d] πέμψας τῶν περὶ αὑτόν τινας ἔπαυσε τὴν ταραχὴν καὶ παρέπεμψαν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ἐζητοῦμεν ἡμεῖς, διὰ τί τῶν ἔξωθεν βοώντων συνεξακούουσιν οἱ ἐντὸς οἱ δ’ ἔξω τῶν ἐντὸς οὐχ ὁμοίως. καὶ ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ἔφη τοῦτο μὲν ὑπ’ Ἀριστοτέλους (Probl. 903b 13) λελύσθαι· τὴν γὰρ φωνὴν τῶν ἔνδον ἔξω φερομένην εἰς ἀέρα πολὺν καὶ ἀναπεπταμένον εὐθὺς ἐξαμαυροῦσθαι καὶ διασπείρεσθαι, τὴν δ’ ἔξωθεν εἴσω κατιοῦσαν οὐδὲν τοιοῦτο πάσχειν ἀλλὰ συνέχεσθαι καὶ διαμένειν εὔσημον· ἐκεῖνο δὲ μᾶλλον λόγου δεῖσθαι, τὸ νυκτὸς ἠχωδεστέρας εἶναι τὰς φωνὰς καὶ πρὸς τῷ μεγέθει τὴν τρανότητα καθαρῶς συνδιαφυλάττειν. ‘ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν ‘οὐ φαύλως ἡ πρόνοια δοκεῖ [e] μεμηχανῆσθαι τῇ ἀκοῇ σαφήνειαν, ὅτε τῆς ὄψεως οὐδὲν ἢ κομιδῇ τι μικρὸν ἔργον ἐστί· σκοτεινὸς γὰρ ὢν ὁ ἀὴρ κατ’ Ἐμπεδοκλέα (fr. 49) ‘νυκτὸς ἐρημαίης ἀλαώπιδος’, ὅσον τῶν ὀμμάτων ἀφαιρεῖται τοῦ προαισθάνεσθαι, διὰ τῶν ὤτων ἀποδίδωσιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ δεῖ καὶ τὰ δι’ ἀνάγκης φύσει περαινόμενα τῶν αἰτίων ἀνευρίσκειν καὶ τοῦτο τοῦ φυσικοῦ ἴδιόν ἐστιν, ἡ περὶ τὰς ὑλικὰς καὶ ὀργανικὰς ἀρχὰς πραγματεία, τίς ἄν’ ἔφη ‘πρῶτος ὑμῶν εὐπορήσειεν λόγου τὸ πιθανὸν ἔχοντος;’

Ἡσυχίας δὲ γενομένης Βόηθος ἔφη νέος μὲν ὢν ἔτι καὶ σοφιστεύων ἀπὸ γεωμετρίας αἰτήμασι χρῆσθαι [f] καὶ λαμβάνειν ἀναποδείκτους ὑποθέσεις, νυνὶ δὲ χρήσεσθαί τισι τῶν προαποδεδειγμένων ὑπ’ Ἐπικούρου (fr. 323). ‘φέρεται τὰ ὄντ’ ἐν τῷ μὴ ὄντι· πολὺ γὰρ κενὸν ἐνδιέσπαρται καὶ μέμικται ταῖς τοῦ ἀέρος ἀτόμοις· ὅταν μὲν οὖν ᾖ διακεχυμένος καὶ πλάτος ἔχων καὶ περιδρομὴν ὑπὸ μανότητος, μικρὰ καὶ λεπτὰ τὰ μεταξὺ τῶν [721] [a] μορίων κενὰ λείπεται καὶ πολλὴν αἱ ἄτομοι κατεσπαρμέναι χώραν ἐπέχουσιν· ὅταν δὲ συσταλῇ καὶ πίλησις εἰς ὀλίγον αὐτῶν γένηται καὶ συμπέσωσιν ἀποβιασθεῖσαι πρὸς ἀλλήλας, πολλὴν εὐρυχωρίαν ἔξω καὶ διαστάσεις μεγάλας ποιοῦσιν, τοῦτο δὲ γίνεται νυκτὸς ὑπὸ ψυχρότητος· ἡ γὰρ θερμότης χαλᾷ καὶ διίστησιν καὶ λύει τὰς πυκνώσεις, διὸ πλείονα τόπον τὰ ζέοντα καὶ μαλασσόμενα καὶ τηκόμενα τῶν σωμάτων ἐπιλαμβάνει· καὶ τοὐναντίον αὖ πάλιν τὰ πηγνύμενα καὶ ψυχόμενα συγχωρεῖ πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ συνάγεται καὶ ἀπολείπει [καὶ] κενότητας ἐν τοῖς περιέχουσιν ἀγγείοις καὶ τόπους, ἐξ ὧν ὑποκεχώρηκεν.

[b] ἡ δὲ φωνὴ προσφερομένη καὶ προστυγχάνουσα σώμασι πολλοῖς καὶ ἀθρόοις ἢ τυφλοῦται παντάπασιν ἢ διασπάσματα λαμβάνει μεγάλα καὶ πολλὰς ἀντικρούσεις καὶ διατριβάς· ἐν δὲ κενῷ καὶ σωμάτων ἐρήμῳ διαστήματι λεῖον δρόμον ἔχουσα καὶ συνεχῆ καὶ ἄπταιστον ἐξικνεῖται πρὸς τὴν ἀκοήν, ὑπὸ τάχους ἅμα τῷ λόγῳ διασῴζουσα τὴν σαφήνειαν. ὁρᾷς γὰρ ὅτι καὶ τῶν ἀγγείων τὰ κενὰ πληττόμενα μᾶλλον ὑπακούει ‹ταῖς› πληγαῖς καὶ τὸν ἦχον ἀποτείνει μακράν, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ κύκλῳ περιφερόμενον διαδίδωσι πολύ· τὸ δ’ [ἀγγεῖον] ἐμπλησθὲν ἢ στερεοῦ [c] σώματος ἤ τινος ὑγροῦ παντάπασιν γίνεται κωφὸν καὶ ἄναυδον, ὁδὸν οὐκ ἐχούσης οὐδὲ χώραν ᾗ δίεισι τῆς φωνῆς. αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν σωμάτων χρυσὸς μὲν καὶ λίθος ὑπὸ πληρότητος ἰσχνόφωνα καὶ δυσηχῆ καὶ ταχὺ κατασβέννυσι τοὺς φθόγγους ἐν αὑτοῖς· εὔφωνος δὲ καὶ λάλος ὁ χαλκός, ᾗ πολύκενος καὶ ὄγκον ἐλαφρὸς καὶ λεπτός, οὐ πολλοῖς συντεθλιμμένος ἐπαλλήλοις σώμασιν, ἀλλ’ ἄφθονον ἔχων τὸ τῆς †ἐπιεικοῦς καὶ ἀναφοῦς μεμιγμένον οὐσίας, ἣ ταῖς τ’ ἄλλαις κινήσεσιν εὐπορίαν δίδωσι τήν τε φωνὴν εὐμενῶς ὑπολαμβάνουσα παραπέμπει, μέχρι ἂν [d] ἁψάμενός τις ὥσπερ ἐν ὁδῷ καταλάβῃ καὶ τυφλώσῃ [τὸ κενόν]· ἐνταῦθα δ’ ἔστη καὶ ἀπεπαύσατο τοῦ πρόσω χωρεῖν διὰ τὴν ἀντίφραξιν. ταῦτ’’ ἔφη ‘δοκεῖ μοι τὴν νύκτα ποιεῖν ἠχώδη, τὴν δ’ ἡμέραν ἧττον, θερμότητι καὶ διαχύσει τοῦ ἀέρος μικρὰ τὰ διαστήματα τῶν ἀτόμων ποιοῦσαν· μόνον’ ἔφη ‘μηδεὶς ἐνιστάσθω πρὸς τὰς πρώτας ὑποθέσεις.’

Κἀγώ, τοῦ Ἀμμωνίου κελεύοντος εἰπεῖν τι πρὸς αὐτόν, ‘αἱ μὲν πρῶταί σοι τῶν ὑποθέσεων’ ἔφην, ‘ὦ φίλε Βόηθε, καίπερ πολὺ τὸ κενὸν ἔχουσαι μενέτωσαν· τῇ δὲ φωνῇ τὸ κενὸν οὐκ ὀρθῶς πρὸς σωτηρίαν καὶ κίνησιν ὑποτίθεσθε. σιωπῆς γὰρ οἰκεῖον καὶ ἡσυχίας τὸ ἀναφὲς [e] καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἄπληκτον, ἡ δὲ φωνὴ πληγὴ σώματος διηχοῦς, διηχὲς δὲ τὸ συμπαθὲς αὑτῷ καὶ συμφυὲς εὐκίνητον δὲ καὶ κοῦφον καὶ ὁμαλὸν καὶ ὑπήκοον †τοῦ δι’ εὐτονίαν καὶ συνέχειαν, οἷός ἐστι παρ’ ἡμῖν ὁ ἀήρ· καὶ γὰρ ὕδωρ καὶ γῆ καὶ πῦρ ἄφωνα καθ’ ἑαυτά, φθέγγεται δὲ πνεύματος ἐμπεσόντος ἅπαντα καὶ ψόφους καὶ πατάγους ἀναδίδωσιν· χαλκῷ δὲ κενοῦ μὲν οὐδὲν μέτεστιν, ὁμαλῷ δὲ πνεύματι καὶ λείῳ κεκραμένος εὔπληκτός ἐστι καὶ ἠχώδης· εἰ δὲ δεῖ τῇ ὄψει τεκμαίρεσθαι, φαίνεται μᾶλλον ὁ σίδηρος ἔχων τι σαθρὸν καὶ πολύκενον καὶ τενθρηνῶδες, [f] ἔστι δὲ κακόφωνος σφόδρα καὶ τῶν μεταλλικῶν κωφότατος. οὐδὲν οὖν ἔδει τῇ νυκτὶ παρέχειν πράγματα συσπῶντας αὐτῆς τὸν ἀέρα καὶ συντείνοντας ἑτέρωθι δ’ αὖ χώρας καὶ κενότητας ἀπολείποντας, ὥσπερ ἐμποδὼν ὄντα τῇ φωνῇ τὸν ἀέρα καὶ φθείροντα τὴν οὐσίαν, ἧς αὐτὸς οὐσία καὶ σῶμα καὶ δύναμίς ἐστιν. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων ἔδει δή που τὰς ἀνωμάλους νύκτας, οἷον ὁμιχλώδεις καὶ δυσχειμέρους, ἠχωδεστέρας εἶναι τῶν αἰθρίων [722] [a] καὶ κεκραμένων ὁμαλῶς (διὰ τὸ δεῦρο μὲν συνωθεῖν τὰς ἀτόμους ἐκεῖ δ’ ὅθεν μεθίστανται χώραν ἔρημον ἀπολείπειν σωμάτων), καὶ τὸ δὴ προχειρότατον, ἡμέραν ψυχρὰν ἠχωδεστέραν εἶναι νυκτὸς ἀλεεινῆς καὶ θερινῆς· ὧν οὐδέτερον ἀληθές ἐστι. διὸ τὸν λόγον τοῦτον ἀπολελοιπὼς ἐπιβάλλω τὸν Ἀναξαγόραν (A 74), ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου λέγοντα κινεῖσθαι τὸν ἀέρα κίνησιν τρομώδη καὶ παλμοὺς ἔχουσαν, ὡς δῆλόν ἐστι τοῖς διὰ τοῦ φωτὸς ἀεὶ διᾴττουσι ψήγμασι μικροῖς καὶ θραύμασιν, ἃ δή τινες τίλας καλοῦσιν· ταῦτ’ οὖν φησιν ὁ ἀνὴρ πρὸς τὴν θερμότητα σίζοντα καὶ ψοφοῦντα δι’ ἡμέρας δυσηκόους τῷ ψόφῳ τὰς [b] φωνὰς ποιεῖν, νυκτὸς δὲ †φαίνεσθαι τὸν σάλον αὐτῶν καὶ τὸν ἦχον.’

Ἐμοῦ δὲ ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος Ἀμμώνιος ἔφη ‘γελοῖοι μὲν ἴσως φανούμεθα, καὶ Δημόκριτον ἐλέγχειν οἰόμενοι καὶ Ἀναξαγόραν ἐπανορθοῦσθαι θέλοντες· οὐ μὴν ‹ἀλλ’› ἀφαιρετέον γε τῶν Ἀναξαγόρου σωμάτων τὸν σιγμόν· οὔτε γὰρ πιθανὸς οὔτ’ ἀναγκαῖος, ἀλλ’ ὁ τρόμος ἀρκεῖ τῶν σωμάτων καὶ ἡ κίνησις ἐν τῷ φωτὶ κλονουμένων τὰς φωνὰς διασπᾶν καὶ διαρρίπτειν πολλάκις. ὁ γὰρ ἀήρ, ὥσπερ εἴρηται (721f), σῶμα τῆς φωνῆς καὶ οὐσίαν ἐμπαρέχων ἑαυτόν, ἐὰν μὲν ᾖ σταθερός, εὐθύπορα καὶ λεῖα καὶ συνεχῆ τὰ τῶν ψόφων μόρια καὶ κινήματα πόρρωθεν διαδίδωσι· [c] νηνεμία γὰρ ἠχῶδες καὶ γαλήνη, καὶ τοὐναντίον, ὡς Σιμωνίδης φησίν (fr. 41; II 79 D.),

‘οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐννοσίφυλλος ἀήτα τότ’ ὦρτ’ ἀνέμων,

ἅ τις κατεκώλυε κιδναμένα μελιαδέα γᾶρυν

ἀραρεῖν ἀκοαῖσι βροτῶν’·

πολλάκις μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲ τὸ σχῆμα τῆς φωνῆς ὁ τοῦ ἀέρος σάλος ἔναρθρον ἐᾷ πρὸς τὴν αἴσθησιν ἐξικνεῖσθαι καὶ διαμεμορφωμένον, ἀεὶ μέντοι τι τοῦ πλήθους φθείρει καὶ τοῦ μεγέθους. ἡ μὲν οὖν νὺξ αὐτὴ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν οὐδὲν ἔχει κινητικὸν ἀέρος, ἡ δ’ ἡμέρα μέγα, τὸν ἥλιον, ὥσπερ αὐτὸς ὁ Ἀναξαγόρας (722a) εἴρηκεν.’

Ὑπολαβὼν δὲ Θράσυλλος ὁ Ἀμμωνίου υἱός ‘εἶτ’’ [d] ἔφη ‘τί παθόντες, ὦ πρὸς Διός, †εἶπας τῶι θεωρητὰ κινήματα τοῦ ἀέρος οἰόμεθα δεῖν αἰτιᾶσθαι, τὸν δ’ ἐμφανῆ σάλον καὶ σπαραγμὸν αὐτοῦ παρορῶμεν; ὁ γὰρ δὴ μέγας ἡγεμὼν ἐν οὐρανῷ Ζεὺς οὗτος οὐ λανθάνων οὐδ’ ἀτρέμα διακινῶν τὰ σμικρότατα τοῦ ἀέρος ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἐκφανεὶς ἀνίστησιν καὶ κινεῖ πάντα πράγματα (Arat. Phaen. 6)

‘δεξιὰ σημαίνων, λαοὺς δ’ ἐπὶ ἔργον ἐγείρων·’

οἱ δ’ ἕπονται, καθάπερ ἐκ παλιγγενεσίας ‘νέα ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ φρονέοντες’, ὥς φησι Δημόκριτος (fr. 158), οὔτ’ ἀφώνοις οὔτ’ ἀπράκτοις ἐνεργείαις· ᾗ καὶ τὸν ὄρθρον ὁ Ἴβυκος (fr. 7; II 56 D.) οὐ κακῶς ‘κλυτὸν’ προσεῖπεν, ἐν ᾧ κλύειν καὶ †ἤδη φθέγγεσθαι συμβέβηκεν. τῆς δὲ νυκτὸς [e] ἀκύμων τὰ πολλὰ καὶ ἄκλυτος ὢν ὁ ἀήρ, ἀναπαυομένων ἁπάντων, εἰκότως τὴν φωνὴν ἄθραυστον ἀναπέμπει καὶ ἀκέραιον πρὸς ἡμᾶς.’

Παρὼν οὖν Ἀριστόδημος [πρὸς ἡμᾶς] ὁ Κύπριος ‘ἀλλ’ ὅρα’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ Θράσυλλε, μὴ τοῦτο μὲν αἱ νυκτομαχίαι καὶ νυκτοπορίαι τῶν μεγάλων στρατοπέδων ἐλέγχουσιν, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἠχωδεστέρας ποιοῦσαι τὰς φωνάς, καίπερ ἐν ταραχῇ καὶ σάλῳ τοῦ ἀέρος ὄντος. ἔχει δέ τι καὶ τὸ παρ’ ἡμᾶς αἴτιον· αὐτοὶ γὰρ ὧν φθεγγόμεθα νύκτωρ τὰ πολλὰ θορυβώδη καὶ μετὰ πάθους ἐπείγοντος ἐγκελευόμενοί τισιν ἢ διαπυνθανόμενοι συντόνους ποιούμεθα τὰς γεγωνήσεις. τὸ γάρ, ἐν ᾧ μάλιστα καιρῷ [f] πεφύκαμεν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, ἐξανιστὰν ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ πράξεις καὶ λόγους οὐ μικρὸν οὐδ’ ἀτρεμαῖόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ μέγα καὶ μεγάλης τινὸς ἀνάγκῃ χρείας ἐπιταχυνόμενον, ὥστε καὶ τὰς φωνὰς φέρεσθαι σφοδροτέρας.’

[723] [a]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Δ

Διὰ τί τῶν ἱερῶν ἀγώνων ἄλλος ἄλλον ἔχει στέφανον, τὸν δὲ φοίνικα πάντες ἐν ᾧ καὶ διὰ τί τὰς μεγάλας φοινικοβαλάνους Νικολάους καλοῦσιν

Ἰσθμίων ἀγομένων ἐν τῇ δευτέρᾳ τῶν Σώσπιδος ἀγωνοθεσιῶν τὰς μὲν ἄλλας ἑστιάσεις διεφύγομεν, ἑστιῶντος αὐτοῦ πολλοὺς μὲν ἅμα ξένους πάντας δὲ πολλάκις τοὺς πολίτας· ἅπαξ δὲ τοὺς μάλιστα φίλους καὶ φιλολόγους οἴκοι δεχομένου καὶ αὐτοὶ παρῆμεν. ἀπηρμένων [b] δὲ τῶν πρώτων τραπεζῶν ἧκέν τις Ἡρώδῃ τῷ ῥήτορι παρὰ γνωρίμου νενικηκότος ἐγκωμίῳ φοίνικα καὶ στέφανόν τινα τῶν πλεκτῶν κομίζων. ὁ δὲ ταῦτα μὲν δεξιωσάμενος ἀπέπεμψε πάλιν, ἔφη δ’ ἀπορεῖν, τί δήποτε τῶν ἀγώνων στέφανον ἄλλος ἄλλον ἔχει, τὸν δὲ φοίνικα κοινῇ πάντες. ‘οὐ γὰρ ἐμὲ γοῦν’ ἔφη ‘πείθουσιν οἱ τὴν ἰσότητα τῶν φύλλων, οἷον ἀντανισταμένων ἀεὶ καὶ συνεκτρεχόντων, ἀγῶνι καὶ ἁμίλλῃ παραπλήσιόν τι ποιεῖν φάσκοντες αὐτήν τε τὴν ‘νίκην’ παρὰ τὸ μὴ εἶκον ὠνομάσθαι· καὶ γὰρ ἄλλα πάμπολλα μονονοὺ μέτροις τισὶ καὶ σταθμοῖς [c] ἀκριβῶς τὴν τροφὴν διανέμοντα τοῖς ἀντιζύγοις πετάλοις ἰσότητα θαυμαστὴν καὶ τάξιν ἀποδίδωσιν. ἐπεὶ πιθανώτεροι τούτων εἰσὶν οἱ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὴν εὐφυΐαν ἀγαπῆσαι τοὺς παλαιούς, ὡς Ὅμηρον (ζ 163) ‘ἔρνεϊ φοίνικος’ ἀπεικάσαντα τὴν ὥραν τῆς Φαιακίδος, ὑπονοοῦντες· οὐ γὰρ ἀγνοεῖτε δήπουθεν, ὅτι καὶ ῥόδοις καὶ λυχνίσιν, ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ μήλοις καὶ ῥοιαῖς ἔβαλλον ὡς καλοῖς γεραίροντες ἀεὶ τοὺς νικηφόρους. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν οὕτως ἐπιφανῶς ἐκπρεπέστερον ἔχει τῶν ἄλλων ὁ φοῖνιξ, ἅτε μηδὲ καρπὸν ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι φέρων ἐδώδιμον ἀλλ’ ἀτελῆ καὶ ἄπεπτον. εἰ γὰρ ὥσπερ ἐν Συρίᾳ καὶ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ παρεῖχε τὴν βάλανον [d] ὄψει τε θεαμάτων καὶ γλυκύτητι τραγημάτων πάντων ἥδιστον, οὐκ ἂν ἦν ἕτερον αὐτῷ παραβαλεῖν· ὁ γοῦν βασιλεύς, ὥς φασιν, ἀγαπήσας διαφερόντως τὸν Περιπατητικὸν φιλόσοφον Νικόλαον, γλυκὺν ὄντα τῷ ἤθει ῥαδινὸν δὲ τῷ μήκει τοῦ σώματος διάπλεων δὲ τὸ πρόσωπον ἐπιφοινίσσοντος ἐρυθήματος, τὰς μεγίστας καὶ καλλίστας τῶν φοινικοβαλάνων Νικολάους ὠνόμαζεν, καὶ μέχρι νῦν οὕτως ὀνομάζονται.’

Ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ὁ Ἡρώδης οὐκ ἀτερπέστερον ἐμβάλλειν ἔδοξεν τοῦ ζητουμένου ‹τὸ› περὶ τοῦ Νικολάου. ‘διὸ καὶ μᾶλλον’ ἔφη ‘προθυμητέον’ ‹ὁ Σῶσπις› ‘ὡς [e] ἕκαστον αὐτῷ τι συνεπεισενεγκεῖν εἰς τὸ ζητούμενον. ἐγὼ δ’ εἰσφέρω πρῶτος, ὅτι δεῖ τὴν τῶν νικηφόρων δόξαν ἄφθιτον, ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστι, καὶ ἀγήρω διαμένειν· ὁ δὲ φοῖνιξ μακρόβιον μέν ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα τῶν φυτῶν, ὥς που καὶ τὰ Ὀρφικὰ (fr. 225) ταῦτα μεμαρτύρηκεν

‘ζῶον δ’ ἴσον ἀκροκόμοισιν

φοινίκων ἔρνεσσιν,’

μόνῳ δ’ αὐτῷ σχεδὸν ὑπάρχει τὸ κατὰ πολλῶν οὐκ ἀληθῶς λεγόμενον· τί δὲ τοῦτ’ ἔστι; τὸ ‘ἐμπεδόφυλλον’ εἶναι καὶ ἀείφυλλον· οὔτε γὰρ δάφνην οὔτ’ ἐλαίαν οὔτε μυρσίνην οὔτ’ ἄλλο τι τῶν μὴ φυλλορροεῖν λεγομένων ὁρῶμεν ἀεὶ ταὐτὰ φύλλα διατηροῦν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς πρώτοις ἀπορρέουσιν ἑτέρων ἐπιβλαστανόντων, ὥσπερ πόλεις ἕκαστον [f] ἀείζωον διαμένει καὶ †ἀμείλικτον· ὁ δὲ φοῖνιξ, οὐθὲν ἀποβάλλων ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ τῶν φυομένων, βεβαίως ἀείφυλλός ἐστιν, καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ κράτος αὐτοῦ μάλιστα τῆς νίκης τῷ ἰσχυρῷ συνοικειοῦσιν.’

Παυσαμένου δὲ τοῦ Σώσπιδος Πρωτογένης ὁ γραμματικὸς ὀνόματι καλέσας Πραξιτέλην τὸν περιηγητήν [724] [a] ‘οὕτω δὴ τούτους’ ἔφη ‘τοὺς ῥήτορας ἐάσομεν περαίνειν τὸ οἰκεῖον, ἐξ εἰκότων καὶ πιθανῶν ἐπιχειροῦντας, αὐτοὶ δ’ ἀφ’ ἱστορίας οὐδὲν ἂν ἔχοιμεν τῷ λόγῳ συμβάλλεσθαι; καίτοι δοκῶ μοι μνημονεύειν ἐν τοῖς Ἀττικοῖς ἀνεγνωκὼς ἔναγχος, ὅτι πρῶτος ἐν Δήλῳ Θησεὺς ἀγῶνα ποιῶν ἀπέσπασε κλάδον τοῦ ἱεροῦ φοίνικος· ᾗ καὶ σπάδιξ ὠνομάσθη.’

Καὶ ὁ Πραξιτέλης ‹’ἔστι› ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν, ‘ἀλλὰ

καὶ τοῦ Θησέως αὐτοῦ πυνθάνεσθαι φήσουσιν, ᾧτινι λόγῳ φοίνικος, οὐ δάφνης οὐδ’ ἐλαίας, κλάδον ἀπέσπασεν ἀγωνοθετῶν. σκόπει δή, μὴ Πυθικόν ἐστι τὸ νικητήριον, ὡς [b] Ἀμφικτύονος κἀκεῖ πρῶτον ἐπὶ τιμῇ τοῦ θεοῦ †δάφνῃ καὶ φοίνικι τοὺς νικῶντας ἐκόσμησαν, ἅτε δὴ καὶ τῷ θεῷ μὴ δάφνας μηδ’ ἐλαίας ἀλλὰ φοίνικας ἀνατιθέντες, ὡς ἐν Δήλῳ Νικίας χορηγήσας Ἀθηναίων καὶ ἐν Δελφοῖς Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ Κύψελος πρότερον Κορίνθιος. ἐπεὶ καὶ φίλαθλος ἄλλως ‹καὶ› φιλόνικος ἡμῖν ὁ θεός, αὐτὸς μὲν κιθαρίσει καὶ ᾠδῇ καὶ βολαῖς δίσκων, ὡς δ’ ἔνιοί φασι, καὶ πυγμῇ, ἁμιλλώμενος, ἀνθρώποις δὲ προσαμύνων ἀγωνιζομένοις, ὡς Ὅμηρος ἐμαρτύρησεν, τὸν μὲν Ἀχιλλέα λέγοντα ποιήσας (Ψ 659)

‘ἄνδρε δύω περὶ τῶνδε κελεύομεν, ὥπερ ἀρίστω,

πὺξ μάλ’ ἀνασχομένω πεπληγέμεν· ᾧ δέ κ’ Ἀπόλλων

δώῃ καμμονίην,’

[c] τῶν δὲ τοξοτῶν (Ψ 850 ss.) τὸν μὲν εὐξάμενον τῷ θεῷ κατορθῶσαι καὶ λαβεῖν τὰ πρωτεῖα, τὸν δὲ γαῦρον ἀστοχῆσαι τοῦ σκοποῦ μὴ εὐξάμενον. καὶ μὴν οὐδ’ Ἀθηναίους εἰκός ἐστιν Ἀπόλλωνι καθιερῶσαι τὸ γυμνάσιον ἀλόγως καὶ αὐτομάτως, ἀλλὰ παρ’ οὗ τὴν ὑγίειαν ἔχομεν θεοῦ, τοῦτον εὐεξίαν τε διδόναι καὶ ῥώμην ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας ᾤοντο. κούφων δὲ καὶ βαρέων ἀγωνισμάτων ὄντων, πύκτῃ μὲν Ἀπόλλωνι Δελφούς, δρομαίῳ δὲ Κρῆτας ἱστοροῦσι θύειν καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους. σκύλων δὲ Πυθοῖ καὶ ἀκροθινίων καὶ τροπαίων ἀναθέσεις ἆρ’ οὐ συμμαρτυροῦσιν [d] ὅτι τῆς εἰς τὸ νικᾶν καὶ κρατεῖν δυνάμεως τῷ θεῷ τούτῳ πλεῖστον μέτεστιν;’

Ἔτι δ’ αὐτοῦ λέγοντος ὑπολαβὼν Καφισίας ὁ Θέωνος υἱός ‘ἀλλὰ ταῦτά γ’’ εἶπεν ‘οὐχ ἱστορίας οὐδὲ περιηγητικῶν ὄδωδε βυβλίων, ἀλλ’ ἐκ μέσων ἀνεσπασμένα τῶν Περιπατητικῶν τόπων εἰς τὸ πιθανὸν ἐπικεχείρηται, καὶ προσέτι τραγικῶς μηχανὴν ἄραντες, ὦ φίλοι, δεδίττεσθε τῷ θεῷ τοὺς ἀντιλέγοντας. ὁ μὲν οὖν θεός, ὥσπερ προσήκει, πᾶσιν ἴσος ἐστὶν μετ’ εὐμενείας· ἡμεῖς δ’ ἑπόμενοι Σώσπιδι (καλῶς γὰρ ὑφηγεῖται) πάλιν ἐχώμεθα τοῦ φοίνικος ἀμφιλαφεῖς τῷ λόγῳ λαβὰς διδόντος. Βαβυλώνιοι [e] μὲν γὰρ ὑμνοῦσι καὶ ᾄδουσιν ὡς ἑξήκοντα καὶ τριακόσια χρειῶν γένη παρέχον αὐτοῖς τὸ δένδρον· ἡμῖν δὲ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἥκιστα μέν ἐστι χρειώδης, ἀθλητικῆς δὲ φιλοσοφίας καὶ τὸ ἄκαρπον ἂν εἴη· κάλλιστος γὰρ ὢν καὶ μέγιστος ὑπ’ εὐταξίας οὐ γόνιμός ἐστι παρ’ ἡμῖν, ἀλλὰ τὴν τροφὴν ὥσπερ ἀθλητοῦ περὶ τὸ σῶμα τῆς εὐταξίας ἀναλισκούσης σμικρὸν αὐτῷ καὶ φαῦλον εἰς σπέρμα περίεστιν. ἴδιον δὲ παρὰ ταῦτα πάντα καὶ μηδενὶ συμβεβηκὸς ἑτέρῳ τὸ μέλλον λέγεσθαι· φοίνικος γὰρ ξύλον ἂν ἄνωθεν ἐπιθεὶς βάρη πιέζῃς, οὐ κάτω θλιβόμενον ἐνδίδωσιν, ἀλλὰ κυρτοῦται πρὸς τοὐναντίον ὥσπερ ἀνθιστάμενον [f] τῷ βιαζομένῳ· τοῦτο δὴ καὶ περὶ τοὺς ἀθλητικοὺς ἀγῶνάς ἐστιν· τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας καὶ μαλακίας εἴκοντας αὐτοῖς πιέζουσι κάμπτοντες, οἱ δ’ ἐρρωμένως ὑπομένοντες τὴν ἄσκησιν οὐ μόνον τοῖς σώμασιν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς φρονήμασιν ἐπαίρονται καὶ αὔξονται.’

[725] [a]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ε

Διὰ τί πρὸ ἡμέρας ἐκ τοῦ Νείλου οἱ πλέοντες ὑδρεύονται

Αἰτίαν τις ἐζήτησεν, δι’ ἣν οἱ ναύκληροι τὰς ὑδρείας ἐκ τοῦ Νείλου νυκτὸς οὐχ ἡμέρας ποιοῦνται. καί τισι μὲν ἐδόκουν τὸν ἥλιον δεδιέναι, τῷ προθερμαίνειν τὰ ὑγρὰ μᾶλλον εὔσηπτα ποιοῦντα· πᾶν γὰρ τὸ θερμανθὲν καὶ χλιανθὲν ἀεὶ πρὸς μεταβολὴν ἑτοιμότερόν ἐστιν καὶ προπέπονθεν ἀνέσει τῆς ποιότητος· ἡ δὲ ψυχρότης πιέζουσα συνέχειν δοκεῖ καὶ φυλάττειν ἕκαστον ἐν ᾧ πέφυκεν, †ἥκιστα τὸ ὕδωρ· ὕδατος γὰρ ἡ ψυχρότης σχετικόν ἐστι [b] φύσει· δηλοῦσιν αἱ χιόνες, τὰ κρέα δύσσηπτα τηροῦσαι πολὺν χρόνον. ἡ δὲ θερμότης τά τ’ ἄλλα καὶ τὸ μέλι [καὶ] τῆς ἰδίας ποιότητος ἐξίστησι· φθείρεται γὰρ ἑψηθέν· ἂν δ’ ὠμὸν διαμένῃ, καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πρὸς τὸ μὴ φθείρεσθαι βοηθεῖ. μεγίστην δὲ τῇ αἰτίᾳ πίστιν παρεῖχεν τὰ λιμναῖα τῶν ὑδάτων· χειμῶνος γὰρ οὐδὲν διαφέροντα τῶν ἄλλων ποθῆναι, τοῦ θέρους γίνεται πονηρὰ καὶ νοσώδη· διὸ χειμῶνι μὲν τῆς νυκτὸς ἀναλογεῖν δοκούσης θέρει δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας, μᾶλλον οἴονται διαμένειν ἄτρεπτον καὶ ἀπαθὲς τὸ ὕδωρ, ἂν νυκτὸς λαμβάνηται.

Τούτοις ἐπιεικῶς οὖσι πιθανοῖς ἐπανέκυψεν λόγος ὥσπερ [c] ἀτέχνῳ πίστει ναυτικῇ βεβαιούμενος ἐμπειρίᾳ· νυκτὸς γὰρ ἔφασαν λαμβάνειν τὸ ὕδωρ ἔτι τοῦ ποταμοῦ καθεστῶτος καὶ ἡσυχάζοντος, ἡμέρας δέ, πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων ὑδρευομένων καὶ πλεόντων, πολλῶν δὲ θηρίων διαφερομένων, ἀναταραττόμενον γίνεσθαι παχὺ καὶ γεῶδες· τὸ δὲ τοιοῦτον εὔσηπτον εἶναι. πάντα γὰρ τὰ μεμιγμένα τῶν ἀμίκτων ἐπισφαλέστερα πρὸς σῆψίν ἐστιν· ποιεῖ γὰρ ἡ μῖξις μάχην, ἡ δὲ μάχη μεταβολήν, μεταβολὴ δέ τις ἡ σῆψις· διὸ τάς τε μίξεις τῶν χρωμάτων οἱ ζωγράφοι φθορὰς ὀνομάζουσιν καὶ τὸ βάψαι ‘μιῆναι’ κέκληκεν ὁ ποιητής (Δ 141), ἡ δὲ κοινὴ συνήθεια τὸ ἄμικτον καὶ καθαρὸν [d] ἄφθαρτον καὶ ἀκήρατον. μάλιστα δὲ γῆ μιχθεῖσα πρὸς ὕδωρ ἐξίστησιν καὶ φθείρει τὸ πότιμον καὶ οἰκεῖον· ὅθεν εὔσηπτα μᾶλλόν ἐστι τὰ στάσιμα καὶ κοῖλα, πολλῆς ἀναπιμπλάμενα γῆς, τὰ δὲ ῥέοντα φεύγει καὶ διακρούεται τὴν προσφερομένην· καὶ καλῶς Ἡσίοδος ἐπῄνεσεν (OD 595)

‘κρήνης ἀενάου καὶ ἀπορρύτου, ἥ τ’ ἀθόλωτος’·

ὑγιεινὸν γὰρ τὸ ἀδιάφθορον, ἀδιάφθορον δὲ τὸ ἄμικτον καὶ καθαρόν. οὐχ ἥκιστα δ’ αἱ τῆς γῆς διαφοραὶ τῷ λόγῳ μαρτυροῦσιν· τὰ γὰρ ὀρεινὴν διεξιόντα γῆν καὶ λιθώδη στερρότερα τῶν ἑλείων καὶ πεδινῶν ἐστιν, πολλὴν γὰρ οὐκ ἀποσπᾷ γῆν· ὁ δὲ Νεῖλος ὑπὸ μαλθακῆς χώρας περιεχόμενος, [e] μᾶλλον δ’ ὥσπερ αἷμα σαρκὶ κεκραμένος, γλυκύτητος μὲν ἀπολαύει καὶ χυμῶν ἀναπίμπλαται δύναμιν ἐμβριθῆ καὶ τρόφιμον ἐχόντων, συμμιγὴς δὲ φέρεται καὶ θολερός· ἂν δ’ ἀναταράττηται, καὶ μᾶλλον· ἡ γὰρ κίνησις ἀναμίγνυσι τῷ ὑγρῷ τὸ γεῶδες, ὅταν δ’ ἠρεμήσῃ, κάτω ῥέπον διὰ βάρος ἄπεισιν. ὅθεν ὑδρεύονται τῆς νυκτός, ἅμα καὶ τὸν ἥλιον προλαμβάνοντες, ὑφ’ οὗ τὸ λεπτότατον καὶ κουφότατον ἀεὶ τῶν ὑγρῶν αἰρόμενον διαφθείρεται.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ϛ

Περὶ τῶν ὀψὲ παραγινομένων ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον· ἐν ᾧ καὶ πόθεν [f] ἀκράτισμα καὶ ἄριστον καὶ δεῖπνον ὠνομάσθη

Τῶν υἱῶν μου τοὺς νεωτέρους ἐν θεάτρῳ προσδιατρίψαντας ἀκροάμασι καὶ βράδιον ἐπὶ τὸ δεῖπνον ἐλθόντας [726] [a] οἱ Θέωνος υἱοὶ ‘κωλυσιδείπνους’ καὶ ‘ζοφοδορπίδας’ καὶ τοιαῦτα μετὰ παιδιᾶς ἔσκωπτον· οἱ δ’ ἀμυνόμενοι πάλιν ἐκείνους ‘τρεχεδείπνους’ ἀπεκάλουν. καί τις εἶπε τῶν πρεσβυτέρων τρεχέδειπνον εἶναι τὸν ὑστερίζοντα τοῦ δείπνου· θᾶττον γὰρ ἢ βάδην ἐπειγόμενον, ὅταν βραδύνῃ, φαίνεσθαι· καὶ Γάββα τοῦ παρὰ Καίσαρι γελωτοποιοῦ χάριεν ἀπεμνημόνευσεν· ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ‘ἐπιθυμοδείπνους’ ἐκάλει τοὺς ὀψὲ παραγινομένους ἐπὶ δεῖπνον, ἀσχολουμένους γὰρ αὐτοὺς ὅμως διὰ τὸ φιλόδειπνον οὐκ ἀπολέγεσθαι τὰς κλήσεις. ἐγὼ δ’ εἶπον, ὅτι καὶ Πολύχαρμος ἐν Ἀθήναις δημαγωγῶν καὶ τοῦ [b] βίου διδοὺς ἀπολογισμὸν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ ‘ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν, ‘ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τἀμά· καὶ πρὸς τούτοις, οὐδέποτε κληθεὶς ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ὕστατος ἀφικόμην.’ δημοτικὸν γὰρ εὖ μάλα δοκεῖ τὸ τοιοῦτο, καὶ τοὐναντίον οἱ ἄνθρωποι τοὺς ὀψὲ παραγινομένους ἀναγκαζόμενοι περιμένειν ὡς ἀηδεῖς καὶ ὀλιγαρχικοὺς βαρύνονται.

Ὁ δὲ Σώκλαρος ὑπερδικῶν τῶν νεανίσκων ‘ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τὸν Πιττακόν’ ἔφη ‘ζοφοδορπίδαν ὁ Ἀλκαῖος (fr. 37 B) ὡς ὀψὲ δειπνοῦντα λέγεται προσειπεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀδόξοις τὰ πολλὰ καὶ φαύλοις ἡδόμενον συμπόταις· τὸ μέντοι πρωίτερον δειπνεῖν ὄνειδος ἦν πάλαι, καὶ τὸ ἀκράτισμά φασιν οὕτως λέγεσθαι διὰ τὴν ἀκρασίαν.’ [c] ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Θέων ‘ἥκιστ’’ εἶπεν, ‘εἰ δεῖ τοῖς τὸν ἀρχαῖον βίον διαμνημονεύουσιν πιστεύειν. φασὶ γὰρ ἐκείνους, ἐργατικοὺς ἅμα καὶ σώφρονας ὄντας, ἕωθεν ἐσθίειν ἄρτον ἐν ἀκράτῳ, καὶ μηθὲν ἄλλο· διὸ τοῦτο μὲν ἀκράτισμα καλεῖν διὰ τὸν ἄκρατον, ὄψον δὲ τὸ παρασκευαζόμενον εἰς δεῖπνον αὐτοῖς· ὀψὲ γὰρ δειπνεῖν ἀπὸ τῶν πράξεων γενομένους.’

Ἐκ τούτου καὶ τὸ δεῖπνον καὶ τὸ ἄριστον, ἀφ’ ὅτου λάβοι τοὔνομα, ζήτησιν παρέσχεν. καὶ τὸ μὲν ἄριστον ἐδόκει τῷ ἀκρατίσματι ταὐτὸν εἶναι, †μαρτυρεῖ τῷ Ὁμήρῳ λέγοντι τοὺς περὶ τὸν Εὔμαιον (π 2)

[d] ‘ἐντύνοντ’ ἄριστον ἅμ’ ἠοῖ φαινομένῃφι,’

καὶ πιθανὸν ἐδόκει διὰ τὴν ἑωθινὴν αὔραν ἄριστον ὠνομάσθαι καθάπερ τὸ αὔριον· τὸ δὲ δεῖπνον, ὅτι τῶν πόνων διαναπαύει· πράξαντες γάρ τι δειπνοῦσιν ἢ μεταξὺ πράττοντες· ἔστι δὲ καὶ τοῦτο παρ’ Ὁμήρου λαβεῖν λέγοντος (Λ 86)

‘ἦμος δὲ δρυτόμος περ ἀνὴρ ὡπλίσσατο δεῖπνον.’

εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία τὸ ἄριστον αὐτόθεν ἀπραγμόνως προσφερόμενοι καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἀπὸ τῶν τυχόντων, τὸ δὲ δεῖπνον ἤδη παρεσκευασμένον, ἐκεῖνο μὲν ῥᾷστον, τοῦτο δ’ ὥσπερ διαπεπονημένον ἐκάλεσαν.

Ὑβριστὴς δ’ ὢν καὶ φιλόγελως φύσει ὁ ἀδελφὸς [e] ἡμῶν Λαμπρίας ἔφη μυρίῳ τὰ Ῥωμαϊκὰ δείξειν οἰκειότερα τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ὀνόματα, τοσαύτης ἀδείας τῷ φλυαρεῖν δεδομένης. ‘τὸ μὲν γὰρ δεῖπνόν φασι ‘κῆναν’ διὰ τὴν κοινωνίαν καλεῖσθαι· καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς γὰρ ἠρίστων ἐπιεικῶς οἱ πάλαι Ῥωμαῖοι συνδειπνοῦντες τοῖς φίλοις. τὸ δ’ ἄριστον ἐκλήθη ‘πράνδιον’ ἀπὸ τῆς ὥρας· ἔνδιον γὰρ τὸ δειλινόν, καὶ τὴν μετ’ ἄριστον ἀνάπαυσιν ἐνδιάζειν· ἢ πρωινήν τινα σημαίνοντες ἐδωδήν, ἢ τροφὴν ᾗ χρῶνται πρὶν ἐνδεεῖς γενέσθαι. καὶ μήν, ἵν’ ἀφῶ τὰ στρώματ’’ ἔφη ‘τὸν οἶνον τὸ μέλι τοὔλαιον τὸ γεύσασθαι τὸ προπιεῖν [f] ἕτερα πάμπολλα τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασι καταφανῶς χρώμενα, τίς οὐκ ἂν εἴποι ἐπὶ κῶμον Ἑλληνικῶς ‘κωμισσᾶτον’ λέγεσθαι, καὶ τὸ κεράσαι ‘μισκῆρε’ καθ’ Ὅμηρον (κ 356)

‘ἡ δ’ αὖτ’ ἐν κρητῆρι μελίφρονα οἶνον ἔμισγε,’

καί ‘μῆνσαν’ μὲν τὴν τράπεζαν ‹ἀπὸ› τῆς ἐν μέσῳ θέσεως, ‘πᾶνιν’ δὲ τὸν ἄρτον ὡς ἀνιέντα τὴν πεῖναν, τὸν δὲ στέφανον ‘κορῶναν’ ἀπὸ τῆς κεφαλῆς ὡς Ὅμηρος (Η 12 al.) τὸ κράνος εἴκασέ που στεφάνῃ, τὸ δ’ ἔδειν [727] [a] ‘ἔδερε’ καί ‘δέντης’ τοὺς ὀδόντας καί ‘λάβρα’ τὰ χείλη ἀπὸ τοῦ λαμβάνειν τὴν βορὰν δι’ αὐτῶν; ἢ καὶ τούτων οὖν ἀκουστέον ἀγελαστὶ λεγομένων ἢ μηδ’ ἐκείνοις εὐκόπους οὕτως διὰ τῶν ὀνομάτων ὥσπερ τριγχίων τὰ μὲν ἐκκόπτουσι μέρη τὰ δὲ καθαιροῦσιν παραδύσεις διδῶμεν.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ζ

Περὶ συμβόλων Πυθαγορικῶν, ἐν οἷς παρεκελεύοντο χελιδόνα οἰκίᾳ μὴ δέχεσθαι καὶ τὰ στρώματα συνταράττειν εὐθὺς ἀναστάντας

[b] Σύλλας ὁ Καρχηδόνιος εἰς Ῥώμην ἀφικομένῳ μοι διὰ χρόνου τὸ ὑποδεκτικόν, ὡς Ῥωμαῖοι καλοῦσιν, καταγγείλας δεῖπνον ἄλλους τε τῶν ἑταίρων παρέλαβεν οὐ πολλοὺς καὶ Μοδεράτου τινὰ τοῦ Πυθαγορικοῦ μαθητήν, ὄνομα Λεύκιον, ἀπὸ Τυρρηνίας. οὗτος οὖν ὁρῶν Φιλῖνον τὸν ἡμέτερον ἐμψύχων ἀπεχόμενον, οἷον εἰκός, εἰς τοὺς Πυθαγόρου λόγους προήχθη· καὶ Τυρρηνὸν ἀπέφηνεν, οὐ πατρόθεν, ὥσπερ ἕτεροί τινες, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἐν Τυρρηνίᾳ καὶ γεγονέναι καὶ τεθράφθαι καὶ πεπαιδεῦσθαι τὸν Πυθαγόραν [c] ἰσχυριζόμενος οὐχ ἥκιστα τοῖς συμβόλοις, οἷόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ συνταράττειν ἀναστάντας ἐξ εὐνῆς τὰ στρώματα καὶ χύτρας τύπον ἀρθείσης ἐν σποδῷ μὴ ἀπολείπειν ἀλλὰ συγχεῖν καὶ χελιδόνας οἰκίᾳ μὴ δέχεσθαι μηδὲ σάρον ὑπερβαίνειν μηδὲ γαμψώνυχον οἴκοι τρέφειν· ταῦτα γὰρ ἔφη τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν λεγόντων καὶ γραφόντων μόνους ἔργῳ Τυρρηνοὺς ἐξευλαβεῖσθαι καὶ φυλάττειν.

Λεχθέντων δὲ τούτων ὑπὸ τοῦ Λευκίου, μάλιστα τὸ τῶν χελιδόνων ἀτοπίαν ἔχειν ἐδόκει, ζῷον ἀσινὲς καὶ φιλάνθρωπον εἴργεσθαι τοῖς γαμψωνύχοις ὁμοίως, ἀγριωτάτοις οὖσιν καὶ φονικωτάτοις· καὶ γὰρ ᾧ μόνῳ τινὲς τῶν [d] παλαιῶν ᾤοντο λύειν τὸ σύμβολον, ὡς πρὸς τοὺς διαβόλους καὶ ψιθύρους τῶν συνήθων ᾐνιγμένον, οὐδ’ αὐτὸς ὁ Λεύκιος ἐδοκίμαζεν· ψιθυρισμοῦ μὲν γὰρ ἥκιστα χελιδόνι μέτεστι, λαλιᾶς ‹δὲ› καὶ πολυφωνίας οὐ μᾶλλον ἢ κίτταις καὶ πέρδιξι καὶ ἀλεκτορίσιν. ‘ἆρ’ οὖν’ ὁ Σύλλας ἔφη ‘διὰ τὸν μῦθον τὸν περὶ τὴν παιδοφονίαν ἀφοσιοῦνται τὰς χελιδόνας, ἄπωθεν ἡμᾶς πρὸς ἐκεῖνα τὰ πάθη διαβάλλοντες, ἐξ ὧν τὸν Τηρέα καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας τὰ μὲν δρᾶσαι τὰ δὲ παθεῖν ἄθεσμα καὶ σχέτλια λέγουσι, καὶ μέχρι νῦν Δαυλίδας ὀνομάζουσιν τὰς ὄρνιθας, Γοργίας δ’ ὁ σοφιστής, χελιδόνος ἀφείσης ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ἀπόπατον, ἀναβλέψας [e] πρὸς αὐτήν ‘οὐ καλὰ ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ Φιλομήλα’; ἢ καὶ τοῦτο κενόν ἐστιν; τὴν γὰρ ἀηδόνα, ταῖς αὐταῖς τραγῳδίαις ἔνοχον οὖσαν, οὐκ ἀπείργουσιν οὐδὲ ξενηλατοῦσιν.’

‘Ἴσως’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘καὶ ταῦτ’ ἔχει λόγον, ὦ Σύλλα. σκόπει δὲ μὴ πρῶτον μέν, ᾧ λόγῳ τὸ γαμψώνυχον οὐ προσίενται, τούτῳ καὶ ἡ χελιδὼν ἀδοξεῖ παρ’ αὐτοῖς· σαρκοφάγος γάρ ἐστιν καὶ μάλιστα τοὺς τέττιγας, ἱεροὺς καὶ μουσικοὺς ὄντας, ἀποκτίννυσι καὶ σιτεῖται· καὶ πρόσγειος αὐτῆς ἡ πτῆσίς ἐστιν, τὰ μικρὰ καὶ λεπτὰ τῶν ζῴων ἀγρευούσης, ὥς φησιν Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 353). ἔπειτα [f] μόνη τῶν ὁμωροφίων ἀσύμβολος ἐνοικεῖ καὶ ἀτελὴς ἐνδιαιτᾶται· καίτοι ὅ γε πελαργὸς οὔτε σκέπης μετέχων οὔτ’ ἀλέας οὔτ’ ἀδείας τινὸς ἢ βοηθείας παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐπίβαθρόν τι τῆς ‹διαίτης› δίδωσιν, τὰ γὰρ ἐπίβουλα καὶ πολέμια τῶν ἀνθρώπων, φρύνους καὶ ὄφεις, ἀναιρεῖ περιιών· ἡ δὲ πάντων τυχοῦσα τούτων, ὅταν ἐκθρέψῃ καὶ τελειώσῃ τοὺς νεοσσούς, ἄπεισιν ἀχάριστος γενομένη καὶ [728] [a] ἄπιστος. ὃ δὲ δεινότατόν ἐστι, μόνα τῶν συνοίκων μυῖα καὶ χελιδὼν οὐχ ἡμεροῦται πρὸς ἄνθρωπον οὐδ’ ἀνέχεται ψαῦσιν οὐδ’ ὁμιλίαν οὐδὲ κοινωνίαν ἔργου τινὸς ἢ παιδιᾶς, ἡ μὲν μυῖα φοβουμένη τῷ πάσχειν κακῶς καὶ διασοβεῖσθαι πολλάκις, ἡ δὲ χελιδὼν τῷ φύσει μισάνθρωπος εἶναι καὶ δι’ ἀπιστίαν ἀτιθάσευτος ἀεὶ καὶ ὕποπτος· εἴπερ οὖν δεῖ τὰ τοιαῦτα μὴ κατ’ εὐθυωρίαν ἀλλ’ ἀνακλάσαντας ὥσπερ ἐμφάσεις ἑτέρων ἐν ἑτέροις θεωρεῖν, παράδειγμα τὰς χελιδόνας τοῦ ἀβεβαίου καὶ ἀχαρίστου θέμενος οὐκ ἐᾷ τοὺς ἕνεκα καιροῦ προσφερομένους καὶ ὑποδυομένους ποιεῖσθαι [b] συνήθεις ἐπὶ πλέον, ἑστίας καὶ οἴκου καὶ τῶν ἁγιωτάτων μεταδιδόντας.’

Ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἐγώ μοι δοκῶ ποιῆσαι λόγων ἄδειαν· εὐθαρσῶς γὰρ ἤδη τοῖς ἄλλοις συμβόλοις προσῆγον, ἠθικὰς ἐπιεικῶς ποιούμενοι τὰς λύσεις αὐτῶν. τῆς μὲν γὰρ χύτρας τὸν τύπον ἔφη Φιλῖνος ἀφανίζειν αὐτοὺς διδάσκοντας ὅτι δεῖ μηδὲν ὀργῆς ἔνδηλον ἀπολείπειν ἴχνος, ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἀναζέσασα παύσηται καὶ καταστῇ, πᾶσαν ἐξαληλίφθαι μνησικακίαν. ἡ δὲ τῶν στρωμάτων συντάραξις ἐνίοις μὲν ἐδόκει μηθὲν ἔχειν ἀποκεκρυμμένον, ἀλλ’ αὐτόθεν φαίνεσθαι τὸ μὴ πρέπον, ἀνδρὶ συγκεκοιμημένης γαμετῆς χώραν ὁρᾶσθαι καὶ τύπον ὥσπερ ἐκμαγεῖον ἀπολειπόμενον.

[c] ὁ δὲ Σύλλας μᾶλλον εἴκαζε κοιμήσεως μεθημερινῆς ἀποτροπὴν εἶναι τὸ σύμβολον, ἀναιρουμένης ἕωθεν εὐθὺς τῆς πρὸς τὸν ὕπνον παρασκευῆς· ὡς νυκτὸς ἀναπαύεσθαι δεῖν, ἡμέρας δὲ πράττειν ἀναστάντας καὶ μὴ περιορᾶν οἷον ἴχνος πτώματος· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἀνδρὸς ὄφελος καθεύδοντος, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τεθνηκότος. τούτοις δὲ συμμαρτυρεῖν ἐδόκει καὶ τὸ παρεγγυᾶν τοὺς Πυθαγορικοὺς τοῖς ἑταίροις μηδενὸς ἀφαιρεῖν βάρος, συνεπιτιθέναι δὲ καὶ συνεπιφορτίζειν, ὡς μηδεμίαν σχολὴν μηδὲ ῥᾳστώνην ἀποδεχομένους.

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Διὰ τί μάλιστα οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ ἐμψύχων τοὺς ἰχθῦς παρῃτοῦντο

Ἐπεὶ δὲ τούτων λεγομένων ὁ Λεύκιος οὔτε ψέγων [d] οὔτ’ ἐπαινῶν, ἀλλ’ ἡσυχίαν ἄγων, σιγῇ δὲ καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ὁρῶν ἤκουεν, ὀνομαστὶ καλέσας τὸν Σύλλαν ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ‘Λεύκιος’ εἶπεν ‘ὁ ἑταῖρος εἰ μὲν ἄχθεται τοῖς λεγομένοις, ὥρα πεπαῦσθαι καὶ ἡμᾶς· εἰ δὲ ταῦτα τῶν ὑπὸ τὴν ἐχεμυθίαν ἐστίν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνό γε δοκῶ μήτ’ ἄρρητον [e] εἶναι μήτ’ ἀνέξοιστον πρὸς ἑτέρους, ὅτι δὴ μάλιστα τῶν ἰχθύων ἀπείχοντο· καὶ γὰρ ἱστορεῖται τοῦτο περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν Πυθαγορικῶν, καὶ τοῦ καθ’ ἡμᾶς Ἀλεξικράτους ἐνέτυχον μαθηταῖς ἄλλα μὲν ‹ἔμψυχ’› ἔστιν ὅτε μετρίως προσφερομένοις καὶ νὴ Δία θύουσιν, ἰχθύος δὲ μὴ γεύσασθαι τὸ παράπαν ὑπομένουσιν. ἣν δὲ Τυνδάρης ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος αἰτίαν ἔλεγε δὲ τῆς ἐχεμυθίας τοῦτο γέρας εἶναι, τοὺς ἰχθῦς καλεῖν ‹ἔλλοπας› οἷον ἰλλομένην τὴν ὄπα καὶ καθειργομένην ἔχοντας· καὶ τὸν ὁμώνυμον ἐμοὶ τῷ Παυσανίᾳ Πυθαγορικῶς παραινεῖν τὰ δόγματα ‘στεγάσαι φρενὸς ἔλλοπος εἴσω’ (Vorsokr. 31 B 5), [f] καὶ ὅλως θεῖον ἡγεῖσθαι τὴν σιωπὴν τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἅτε δὴ καὶ τῶν θεῶν ἔργοις καὶ πράγμασιν ἄνευ φωνῆς ἐπιδεικνυμένων ἃ βούλονται τοῖς ξυνετοῖς.’

Τοῦ δὲ Λευκίου πράως καὶ ἀφελῶς εἰπόντος, ὡς ὁ μὲν ἀληθὴς ἴσως λόγος καὶ νῦν ἀπόθετος καὶ ἀπόρρητος εἴη, τοῦ δὲ πιθανοῦ καὶ εἰκότος οὐ φθόνος ἀποπειρᾶσθαι, πρῶτος Θέων ὁ γραμματικὸς εἶπεν, ὅτι Τυρρηνὸν μὲν [729] [a] ἀποδεῖξαι Πυθαγόραν μέγ’ ἔργον εἴη καὶ οὐ ῥᾴδιον· ‘Αἰγυπτίων δὲ τοῖς σοφοῖς συγγενέσθαι πολὺν χρόνον ὁμολογεῖται ζηλῶσαί τε πολλὰ καὶ δοκιμάσαι μάλιστα τῶν περὶ τὰς ἱερατικὰς ἁγιστείας, οἷόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ τῶν κυάμων· οὔτε γὰρ σπείρειν οὔτε σιτεῖσθαι κύαμον Αἰγυπτίους, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὁρῶντας ἀνέχεσθαί φησιν ὁ Ἡρόδοτος (II 37). ἰχθύων δὲ †καὶ τοὺς ἱερεῖς ἴσμεν ἔτι νῦν ἀπεχομένους· ἁγνεύοντες δὲ καὶ τὸν ἅλα φεύγουσιν, ὡς μήτ’ ὄψον προσφέρεσθαι μήτ’ ‹ἄρτον› ἁλσὶ θαλαττίοις μεμιγμένον. ἄλλοι μὲν οὖν ἄλλας αἰτίας φέρουσιν· ἔστι δ’ ἀληθὴς μία, τὸ πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν ἔχθος ὡς ἀσύμφυλον ἡμῖν καὶ [b] ἀλλότριον μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως πολέμιον τῇ φύσει τοῦ ἀνθρώπου στοιχεῖον. οὐ γὰρ τρέφεσθαι τοὺς θεοὺς ἀπ’ αὐτῆς, ὥσπερ οἱ Στωικοὶ τοὺς ἀστέρας, ὑπολαμβάνουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον εἰς ταύτην ἀπόλλυσθαι τὸν πατέρα καὶ σωτῆρα τῆς χώρας, ὃν Ὀσίριδος ἀπορροὴν ὀνομάζουσιν· καὶ θρηνοῦντες τὸν ἐν τοῖς ἀριστεροῖς μέρεσι γεννώμενον ἐν ‹δὲ› τοῖς δεξιοῖς φθειρόμενον αἰνίττονται τὴν τοῦ Νείλου τελευτὴν καὶ φθορὰν ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ γινομένην. ὅθεν οὔτε τὸ ὕδωρ πότιμον αὐτῆς οὔθ’ ὧν τρέφει τι καὶ γεννᾷ καθαρὸν ἡγοῦνται καὶ οἰκεῖον, οἷς μήτε πνεύματος κοινοῦ μήτε συμφύλου νομῆς μέτεστιν, ἀλλ’ ὁ σῴζων [c] πάντα τἄλλα καὶ τρέφων ἀὴρ ἐκείνοις ὀλέθριός ἐστιν, ὡς παρὰ φύσιν καὶ χρείαν γεγονόσι καὶ ζῶσιν. οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν, εἰ τὰ ζῷα διὰ τὴν θάλατταν ἀλλότρια καὶ οὐκ ἐπιτήδεια καταμίγνυσθαι εἰς αἷμα καὶ πνεῦμα νομίζουσιν αὑτῶν, οἵ γε μηδὲ τοὺς κυβερνήτας ἀξιοῦσι προσαγορεύειν ἀπαντῶντες, ὅτι τὸν βίον ἀπὸ θαλάττης ἔχουσιν.’

Ταῦτ’ ἐπαινέσας ὁ Σύλλας προσεῖπε περὶ τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν, ὡς μάλιστα μὲν ἐγεύοντο τῶν ἱεροθύτων ἀπαρξάμενοι τοῖς θεοῖς, ἰχθύων δὲ θύσιμος οὐδεὶς οὐδ’ ἱερεύσιμός ἐστιν. ἐγὼ δέ, παυσαμένων ἐκείνων, Αἰγυπτίοις [d] μὲν ἔφην ὑπὲρ τῆς θαλάττης πολλοὺς μαχεῖσθαι καὶ φιλοσόφους καὶ ἰδιώτας, ἐκλογιζομένους ὅσοις ἀγαθοῖς εὐπορώτερον καὶ ἡδίω τὸν βίον ἡμῶν πεποίηκεν. ‘ἡ δὲ τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν πρὸς τὸν ἰχθῦν ἐκεχειρία διὰ τὸ μὴ σύμφυλον ἄτοπος καὶ γελοία, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀνήμερος ὅλως καὶ Κυκλώπειόν τι τοῖς ἄλλοις γέρας νέμουσα τῆς συγγενείας καὶ τῆς οἰκειότητος, ὀψοποιουμένοις καὶ ἀναλισκομένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν. καίτοι βόλον ἰχθύων πρίασθαί ποτέ φασι τὸν Πυθαγόραν, εἶτ’ ἀφεῖναι κελεῦσαι τὴν σαγήνην, οὐχ ὡς ἀλλοφύλων καὶ πολεμίων ἀμελήσαντα τῶν ἰχθύων [e] ἀλλ’ ὡς ὑπὲρ φίλων καὶ οἰκείων γεγονότων αἰχμαλώτων λύτρα καταβάλλοντα. διὸ τοὐναντίον’ ἔφην ‘ὑπονοεῖν τῶν ἀνδρῶν ‹ἡ› ἐπιείκεια καὶ πραότης δίδωσιν, μήποτ’ ἄρα μελέτης ἕνεκεν τοῦ δικαίου καὶ συνηθείας ἐφείδοντο μάλιστα τῶν ἐναλίων, ὡς τἄλλα μὲν αἰτίαν ἁμωσγέπως παρέχοντα τοῦ κακῶς πάσχειν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, τοὺς δ’ ἰχθῦς οὐδὲν ἀδικοῦντας ἡμᾶς, οὐδ’ εἰ πάνυ πεφύκασι δυνάμενοι. πάρεστι δὲ τῶν τε λόγων καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν εἰκάζειν τοῖς παλαιοῖς, ὡς οὐ μόνον ἐδωδὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ φόνον ζῴου μὴ βλάπτοντος ἔργον ἐναγὲς καὶ ἄθεσμον ἐποιοῦντο· πλήθει [f] δ’ ἐπιχεομένῳ καθειργόμενοι καὶ χρησμοῦ τινος, ὥς φασιν, ἐκ Δελφῶν ἐπικελευσαμένου τοῖς καρποῖς ἀρήγειν φθειρομένοις, ἤρξαντο μὲν καθιερεύειν· ἔτι δ’ ὅμως ταραττόμενοι καὶ δειμαίνοντες ‘ἔρδειν’ μὲν ἐκάλουν καὶ ‘ῥέζειν,’ ὥς τι μέγα δρῶντες τὸ θύειν ἔμψυχον, ἄχρι δὲ νῦν παραφυλάττουσιν ἰσχυρῶς τὸ μὴ σφάττειν πρὶν ἐπινεῦσαι κατασπενδόμενον. οὕτως εὐλαβεῖς πρὸς ἅπασαν [730] [a] ἀδικίαν ἦσαν. καίτοι, ἵνα τἄλλ’ ἐάσωμεν, εἰ μόνον ἀλεκτορίδων ἀπείχοντο πάντες ἢ δασυπόδων, οὐκ ἂν ἦν χρόνου βραχέος ὑπὸ πλήθους οὔτε πόλιν οἰκεῖν οὔτε καρπῶν ὄνασθαι· διὸ τῆς ἀνάγκης ἐπαγούσης τὸ πρῶτον, ἤδη καὶ δι’ ἡδονὴν ἔργον ἐστὶν παῦσαι τὴν σαρκοφαγίαν. τὸ δὲ τῶν θαλαττίων γένος οὔτ’ ἀέρα τὸν αὐτὸν οὔθ’ ὕδωρ ἀναλίσκον ἡμῖν οὔτε καρποῖς προσιόν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἑτέρῳ κόσμῳ περιεχόμενον καὶ χρώμενον ὅροις ἰδίοις, οὓς ὑπερβαίνουσιν αὐτοῖς ἐπίκειται δίκη [ὁ] θάνατος, οὔτε μικρὰν οὔτε μεγάλην τῇ γαστρὶ πρόφασιν κατ’ αὐτῶν δίδωσιν· ἀλλὰ παντὸς ἰχθύος ἄγρα καὶ σαγηνεία λαιμαργίας καὶ [b] φιλοψίας περιφανῶς ἔργον ἐστίν, ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ δικαίῳ ταραττούσης τὰ πελάγη καὶ καταδυομένης εἰς τὸν βυθόν. οὔτε γὰρ τρίγλαν ἔστιν δήπου ‘ληιβότειραν’ οὔτε σκάρον ‘τρυγηφάγον’ οὔτε κεστρεῖς τινας ἢ λάβρακας ‘σπερμολόγους’ προσειπεῖν, ὡς τὰ χερσαῖα κατηγοροῦντες ὀνομάζομεν· ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὅσα γαλῇ καὶ μυὶ κατοικιδίῳ μικρολόγως ἐγκαλοῦμεν, ἔχοι τις ἂν αἰτιάσασθαι τὸν μέγιστον ἰχθῦν. ὅθεν ἀνείργοντες ἑαυτοὺς οὐ νόμῳ μόνῳ τῆς πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἀδικίας ἀλλὰ καὶ φύσει τῆς πρὸς ἅπαν τὸ μὴ βλάπτον, ἥκιστα τῶν ὄψων ἐχρῶντο τοῖς ἰχθύσιν ἢ τὸ παράπαν οὐκ ἐχρῶντο· καὶ γὰρ ἄνευ τῆς ἀδικίας ἀκρασίαν [c] τινὰ καὶ λιχνείαν ἐμφαίνειν ἔοικεν ἡ περὶ ταῦτα πραγματεία πολυτελὴς οὖσα καὶ περίεργος. ὅθεν Ὅμηρος οὐ μόνον τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἰχθύων ἀπεχομένους πεποίηκε παρὰ τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον στρατοπεδεύοντας, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τοῖς ἁβροβίοις Φαίαξιν οὐδὲ τοῖς ἀσώτοις μνηστῆρσιν, ἀμφοτέροις οὖσιν νησιώταις, θαλάττιον παρατέθεικεν ὄψον· οἱ δ’ Ὀδυσσέως ἑταῖροι, τοσαύτην πλέοντες θάλατταν, οὐδαμοῦ καθῆκαν ἄγκιστρον οὐδὲ πόρκον οὐδὲ δίκτυον ἀλφίτων παρόντων·

‘ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ νηὸς ἐξέφθιτο ἤια πάντα’ (μ 329),

μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν ἢ ταῖς τοῦ Ἡλίου βουσὶν ἐπιχειρεῖν, [d] ἰχθῦς ἀγρεύοντες, οὐκ ὄψον ἀλλὰ τροφὴν ἀναγκαίαν ἐποιοῦντο

‘γναμπτοῖς ἀγκίστροισιν· ἔτειρε δὲ γαστέρα λιμὸς’ (μ 332) ὑπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς ἀνάγκης ἰχθύσι τε χρωμένων καὶ τὰς τοῦ Ἡλίου βοῦς κατεσθιόντων. ὅθεν οὐ παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις μόνον οὐδὲ Σύροις, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρ’ Ἕλλησι γέγονεν ἁγνείας μέρος ἀποχὴ ἰχθύων, μετὰ τοῦ δικαίου καὶ τὸ περίεργον οἶμαι τῆς βρώσεως ἀποδιοπομπουμένοις.’

Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Νέστωρ ‘τῶν δ’ ἐμῶν’ ἔφη ‘πολιτῶν ὥσπερ Μεγαρέων οὐδεὶς λόγος; καίτοι πολλάκις ἀκήκοας ἐμοῦ λέγοντος, ὅτι οἱ ἐν Λέπτει τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ἱερεῖς, οὓς ἱερομνήμονας καλοῦμεν, ἰχθῦς οὐκ ἐσθίουσιν· ὁ γὰρ θεὸς λέγεται φυτάλμιος. οἱ δ’ ἀφ’ Ἕλληνος τοῦ παλαιοῦ [e] καὶ πατρογενείῳ Ποσειδῶνι θύουσιν, ἐκ τῆς ὑγρᾶς τὸν ἄνθρωπον οὐσίας φῦναι δοξάζοντες, ὡς καὶ Σύροι· διὸ καὶ σέβονται τὸν ἰχθῦν, ὡς ὁμογενῆ καὶ σύντροφον, ἐπιεικέστερον Ἀναξιμάνδρου (A 30) φιλοσοφοῦντες· οὐ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐκεῖνος ἰχθῦς καὶ ἀνθρώπους, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἰχθύσιν ἐγγενέσθαι τὸ πρῶτον ἀνθρώπους ἀποφαίνεται καὶ τραφέντας ὥσπερ οἱ γαλεοὶ καὶ γενομένους ἱκανοὺς ἑαυτοῖς βοηθεῖν ἐκβῆναι τηνικαῦτα καὶ γῆς λαβέσθαι. καθάπερ οὖν τὸ πῦρ τὴν ὕλην, ἐξ ἧς ἀνήφθη, μητέρα καὶ πατέρ’ οὖσαν, ἤσθιεν, ὡς ὁ τὸν Κήυκος γάμον εἰς τὰ [f] Ἡσιόδου (fr. 158) παρεμβαλὼν εἴρηκεν, οὕτως ὁ Ἀναξίμανδρος τῶν ἀνθρώπων πατέρα καὶ μητέρα κοινὸν ἀποφήνας τὸν ἰχθῦν διέβαλεν πρὸς τὴν βρῶσιν.’

[731] [a]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Θ

Εἰ δυνατόν ἐστι συστῆναι νοσήματα καινὰ καὶ δι’ ἃς αἰτίας

Φίλων ὁ ἰατρὸς διεβεβαιοῦτο τὴν καλουμένην ἐλεφαντίασιν οὐ πρὸ πολλοῦ πάνυ χρόνου γνώριμον γεγονέναι· μηδένα γὰρ τῶν παλαιῶν ἰατρῶν τοῦ πάθους τούτου πεποιῆσθαι λόγον, εἰς ἕτερα μικρὰ καὶ γλίσχρα καὶ δυσθεώρητα τοῖς πολλοῖς ἐνταθέντας. ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ μάρτυν αὐτῷ παρεῖχον ἐκ φιλοσοφίας Ἀθηνόδωρον, ἐν τῷ προτέρῳ τῶν Ἐπιδημιῶν ἱστοροῦντα πρῶτον ἐν τοῖς κατ’ Ἀσκληπιάδην [b] χρόνοις οὐ μόνον τὴν ἐλεφαντίασιν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ὑδροφόβαν ἐκφανῆ γενέσθαι. θαυμάζοντες οὖν οἱ παρόντες, εἰ νέα πάθη τότε πρῶτον ἔσχεν ἐν τῇ φύσει γένεσιν καὶ ‹σύ›στασιν, οὐχ ἧττον ᾤοντο θαυμάσιον εἶναι τὸ λαθεῖν τηλικαῦτα συμπτώματα χρόνον τοσοῦτον· ἐρρύησαν δέ πως μᾶλλον οἱ πλείους ἐπὶ τὸ δεύτερον ὡς ἀνθρώπινον μᾶλλον, ἥκιστα τὴν φύσιν ἔν γε τούτοις φιλόκαινον εἶναι καὶ νέων πραγμάτων ὥσπερ ἐν πόλει τῷ σώματι δημιουργὸν ἀξιοῦντες.

Ὁ δὲ Διογενιανὸς ἔφη καὶ τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς νοσήματα καὶ πάθη κοινήν τινα καὶ πάτριον ὁδὸν βαδίζειν. ‘καίτοι [c] παντοδαπὸν μέν’ εἶπεν ‘ἡ μοχθηρία καὶ πολύτολμον, αὐτοκρατὲς δ’ ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ κύριον ὑφ’ αὑτῆς, εἰ βούλοιτο, μεταβάλλειν καὶ τρέπεσθαι ῥᾳδίως· ἔχει δέ τινα τάξιν τὸ ἄτακτον αὐτῆς καὶ τὰ μέτρα τηρεῖ τοῖς πάθεσιν, ὥσπερ ἡ θάλαττα ταῖς ὑπερεκχύσεσι, καὶ καινὸν οὐδὲν οὐδὲ τοῖς παλαιοῖς ἀνιστόρητον ἐξήνθηκε κακίας εἶδος· ἀλλὰ πολλαὶ μὲν ἐπιθυμιῶν διαφοραί, μυρία δὲ κινήματα φόβου καὶ σχήματα, τὰς δὲ λύπης καὶ ἡδονῆς μορφὰς ἔργον ἐστὶ μὴ ἀπειπεῖν ἐξαριθμούμενον·

‘οὐ μήν τι νῦν γε κἀχθές, ἀλλ’ ἀεί ποτε

ζῇ ταῦτα, κοὐδεὶς οἶδεν ἐξ ὅτου ‘φάνη·’ (Soph. Ant. 456)

πόθεν γε δὴ σώματι νόσημα καινὸν ἢ πάθος ὀψίγονον, [d] ἰδίαν μὲν ὥσπερ ἡ ψυχὴ κινήσεως ἀρχὴν οἴκοθεν οὐκ ἔχοντι, συνημμένῳ δὲ κοιναῖς πρὸς τὴν φύσιν αἰτίαις καὶ κεκραμένῳ κρᾶσιν, ἧς καὶ τὸ ἀόριστον ἐντὸς ὅρων πλανᾶται, καθάπερ πλοῖον ἐν περιδρόμῳ σαλεῦον; οὔτε γὰρ ἀναίτιος νόσου σύστασίς ἐστιν, τὴν ἐκ μὴ ὄντος παρανόμως ἐπεισάγουσα γένεσιν [δύναμιν] τοῖς πράγμασιν, αἰτίαν τε καινὴν ἔργον ἐξευρεῖν μὴ καινὸν ἀέρα καὶ ξένον ὕδωρ καὶ τροφὰς ἀγεύστους τοῖς πρότερον ἐξ ἑτέρων τινῶν κόσμων ἢ μετακοσμίων ἀποφήναντι δεῦρο νῦν πρῶτον ἐπιρρεούσας. ἐκ τούτων γὰρ νοσοῦμεν οἷς καὶ ζῶμεν, ἴδια δὲ σπέρματα [e] νόσων οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ αἱ τούτων μοχθηρίαι πρὸς ἡμᾶς καὶ ἡμῶν περὶ ταῦτα πλημμέλειαι τὴν φύσιν ἐπιταράττουσιν. αἱ δὲ ταραχαὶ διαφορὰς ἀιδίους ἔχουσιν πολλάκις νέοις χρωμένας ὀνόμασιν· τὰ γὰρ ὀνόματα τῆς συνηθείας ἐστὶν τὰ δὲ πάθη τῆς φύσεως· ὅθεν ‹ἐν› ἀφωρισμένοις τούτοις ἐκεῖνα ποικιλλόμενα τὴν ἀπάτην πεποίηκεν· ὡς δὲ τοῖς τοῦ λόγου μορίοις καὶ ταῖς πρὸς ἄλληλα τούτων συντάξεσι καινὸν ἐγγενέσθαι βαρβαρισμὸν ἢ σολοικισμὸν ἐξαίφνης ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν, οὕτως αἱ τοῦ σώματος κράσεις ὡρισμένας ἔχουσι τὰς ὀλισθήσεις καὶ παραβάσεις, τρόπον τινὰ τῇ φύσει καὶ τῶν παρὰ φύσιν ἐμπεριεχομένων.

[f] ταύτῃ γε κομψοὶ καὶ οἱ μυθογράφοι· τὰ γὰρ παντάπασιν ἔκφυλα καὶ τεράστια τῶν ζῴων γενέσθαι λέγουσιν ἐν τῇ γιγαντομαχίᾳ, τῆς σελήνης ἐκτρεπομένης καὶ τὰς ἀνατολὰς οὐχ ὅθεν εἴωθεν ποιουμένης· οἱ δὲ καινὰ νοσήματα [732] [a] τὴν φύσιν ὥσπερ τέρατα γεννᾶν ἀξιοῦσιν, μήτε πιθανὴν μήτ’ ἀπίθανον αἰτίαν τῆς ἐξαλλαγῆς πλάσσοντες, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἄγαν καὶ τὸ μᾶλλον ἐνίων παθῶν καινότητα καὶ διαφορὰν ἀποφαίνοντες· οὐκ ὀρθῶς, ὦ μακάριε Φίλων· ἐπίτασις γὰρ καὶ αὔξησις μέγεθος ἢ πλῆθος προστίθησι, τοῦ δὲ γένους ‹οὐκ› ἐκβιβάζει τὸ ὑποκείμενον· ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τὴν ἐλεφαντίασιν οἴομαι, σφοδρότητα τῶν ψωρικῶν τινος τούτων οὖσαν, οὐδὲ τὸν ὑδροφόβαν τῶν στομαχικῶν ἢ μελαγχολικῶν. καίτοι τοῦτό γε θαυμαστὸν εἰ μηδ’ Ὅμηρος (Θ 299) ἀγνοῶν ἐλάνθανεν ὑμᾶς· τὸν γὰρ ‘λυσσητῆρα κύνα’ δῆλός ἐστιν ἀπὸ τοῦ πάθους τούτου προσαγορεύων, [b] ἀφ’ οὗ καὶ ἄνθρωποι λυσσᾶν λέγονται.’

Ταῦτα τοῦ Διογενιανοῦ διελθόντος, ὁ Φίλων αὐτός τε μέτρια διελέχθη πρὸς τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ, κἀμὲ συνειπεῖν παρεκάλει τοῖς ἀρχαίοις ἰατροῖς, ὡς ἀμελείας ἢ ἀγνοίας τῶν μεγίστων ὀφλισκάνουσιν, εἴ γε μὴ ταῦτα τὰ πάθη νεώτερα φαίνεται τῆς ἐκείνων ἡλικίας. πρῶτον οὖν ὁ Διογενιανὸς οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἀξιοῦν ἔδοξεν ἡμῖν τὰς ἐπιτάσεις καὶ ἀνέσεις μὴ ποιεῖν διαφορὰς μηδὲ τοῦ γένους ἐκβιβάζειν· οὕτω γὰρ οὔτ’ ὄξος ὀξίνου φήσομεν διαφέρειν οὔτε πικρότητα στρυφνότητος οὔτε πυρῶν αἶραν οὔτε μίνθον ἡδυόσμων. καίτοι περιφανῶς ἐκστάσεις αὗται καὶ μεταβολαὶ ποιοτήτων εἰσίν, αἱ μὲν ἀνέσεις μαραινομένων αἱ δ’ ἐπιτάσεις [c] σφοδρυνομένων· ἢ μηδὲ φλόγα πνεύματος λεπτοῦ μηδὲ φλογὸς αὐγὴν μηδὲ πάχνην δρόσου μηδὲ χάλαζαν ὄμβρου διαφέρειν λέγωμεν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιτάσεις εἶναι ταῦτα πάντα καὶ σφοδρότητας· ὥρα δὲ καὶ τυφλότητα μηθὲν ἀμβλυωπίας φάναι διαφέρειν μηδὲ ναυτίας χολέραν, ἀλλὰ τῷ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον παραλλάττειν. καίτοι ταῦτα πρὸς λόγον οὐθέν ἐστιν· ἂν γὰρ αὐτὴν λέγωσι δεξάμενοι τὴν ἐπίτασιν καὶ τὴν σφοδρότητα νῦν γεγονέναι πρῶτον, ἐν τῷ ποσῷ γινομένης τῆς καινότητος οὐκ ἐν ποιῷ, μένει τὸ παράδοξον [d] ὁμοίως. ἔπειτα τοῦ Σοφοκλέους ἐπὶ τῶν ὅτι μὴ πρότερον ἦν ἀπιστουμένων, εἰ γέγονεν νῦν, οὐ φαύλως εἰπόντος (fr. 776)

‘ἅπαντα τἀγένητα πρῶτον ἦλθ’ ἅπαξ,’

ἐδόκει καὶ λόγον ἔχειν τὸ μὴ δρόμῳ, καθάπερ ὕσπληγος μιᾶς πεσούσης, ἐκδραμεῖν τὰ πάθη πρὸς τὴν γένεσιν, ἄλλων δ’ ἄλλοις ἀεὶ κατόπιν ἐπιγινομένων ἕκαστον ἐν χρόνῳ τινὶ λαβεῖν τὴν πρώτην γένεσιν. ‘εἰκάσαι δ’ ἄν τις’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘τὰ μὲν ἀπ’ ἐνδείας ὅσα τε καῦμα προσπῖπτον ἢ ψῦχος ἐμποιεῖ, ταῦτα πρῶτον τοῖς σώμασι παραγενέσθαι, πλησμονὰς δὲ καὶ θρύψεις καὶ ἡδυπαθείας ὕστερον [e] ἐπελθεῖν μετ’ ἀργίας καὶ σχολῆς δι’ ἀφθονίαν τῶν ἀναγκαίων πολὺ περίττωμα ποιούσας καὶ πονηρόν, ἐν ᾧ ποικίλα νοσημάτων εἴδη παντοδαπάς τε τούτων ἐπιπλοκὰς πρὸς ἀλλήλας καὶ μίξεις ἀεί τι νεωτερίζειν. τὸ μὲν γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν τέτακται καὶ διώρισται, τάξις γὰρ ἢ τάξεως ἔργον ἡ φύσις· ἡ δ’ ἀταξία καθάπερ ἡ Πινδαρικὴ ψάμμος (Ol. 2, 179) ‘ἀριθμὸν περιπέφευγεν’, καὶ τὸ παρὰ τὴν φύσιν εὐθὺς ἀόριστον καὶ ἄπειρόν ἐστιν. ἀληθεύειν μὲν γὰρ ἁπλῶς ψεύδεσθαι δ’ ἀπειραχῶς παρέχει τὰ πράγματα· καὶ ῥυθμοὶ καὶ ἁρμονίαι λόγους ἔχουσιν, ἃ δὲ πλημμελοῦσιν ἄνθρωποι περὶ λύραν καὶ ᾠδὴν καὶ ὄρχησιν, οὐκ [f] ἄν τις περιλάβοι. καίτοι καὶ Φρύνιχος ὁ τῶν τραγῳδιῶν ποιητὴς περὶ αὑτοῦ φησιν ὅτι

‘σχήματα δ’ ὄρχησις τόσα μοι πόρεν, ὅσσ’ ἐνὶ πόντῳ

κύματα ποιεῖται χείματι νὺξ ὀλοή’ (fr. 3 Bergk I 65 D.),

καὶ Χρύσιππος (St. V. Fr. II 210) τὰς ἐκ δέκα μόνων ἀξιωμάτων συμπλοκὰς πλήθει φησὶν ἑκατὸν μυριάδας ὑπερβάλλειν· ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ἤλεγξεν Ἵππαρχος, ἀποδείξας ὅτι τὸ μὲν καταφατικὸν περιέχει συμπεπλεγμένων μυριάδας δέκα καὶ πρὸς ταύταις ‹τρις›χίλια τεσσαράκοντ’ ἐννέα, τὸ δ’ ἀποφατικὸν αὐτοῦ μυριάδας τριάκοντα μίαν [733] [a] καὶ πρὸς ταύταις ἐνακόσια πεντήκοντα δύο· Ξενοκράτης (fr. 11 H.) δὲ τὸν τῶν συλλαβῶν ἀριθμόν, ὃν τὰ στοιχεῖα μιγνύμενα πρὸς ἄλληλα παρέχει, μυριάδων ἀπέφηνεν εἰκοσάκις καὶ μυριάκις μυρίων. τί δὴ θαυμαστόν ἐστιν εἰ, τοσαύτας μὲν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοῦ σώματος δυνάμεις ἔχοντος, τοσαύτας δὲ διὰ σίτων καὶ ποτῶν ἐπεισαγομένου ποιότητας ἑκάστοτε, χρωμένου δὲ κινήσεσι καὶ μεταβολαῖς μήτε καιρὸν ἕνα μήτε τάξιν ἀεὶ μίαν ἐχούσαις, αἱ πρὸς ἀλλήλας συμπλοκαὶ [b] τούτων ἁπάντων ἔστιν ὅτε καινὰ καὶ ἀσυνήθη νοσήματα φέρουσιν; οἷον ὁ Θουκυδίδης (II 50) ἱστορεῖ τὸν Ἀθήνησι λοιμὸν γενέσθαι, τεκμαιρόμενος αὐτοῦ τὸ μὴ σύντροφον μάλιστα τῷ τὰ σαρκοφάγα μὴ γεύεσθαι τῶν νεκρῶν· οἱ δὲ περὶ τὴν Ἐρυθρὰν θάλασσαν νοσήσαντες, ὡς Ἀγαθαρχίδας (FHG III 195) ἱστόρηκεν, ἄλλοις τε συμπτώμασιν ἐχρήσαντο καινοῖς καὶ ἀνιστορήτοις, καὶ δρακόντια μικρὰ τὰς κνήμας διεσθίοντα καὶ τοὺς βραχίονας ἐξέκυψεν, ἁψαμένων δ’ αὖθις ἐνεδύετο καὶ φλεγμονὰς ἀκαρτερήτους ἐνειλούμενα τοῖς μυώδεσι παρεῖχεν· καὶ τοῦτο τὸ πάθος οὔτε πρότερον οἶδεν οὐδεὶς οὔθ’ ὕστερον ἄλλοις [c] ἀλλ’ ἐκείνοις γε μόνοις γενόμενον, ὡς ἕτερα πολλά. καὶ γὰρ ἐν δυσουρίᾳ τις γενόμενος πολὺν χρόνον ἐξέδωκε κριθίνην καλάμην γόνατ’ ἔχουσαν. καὶ τὸν ἡμέτερον ξένον Ἔφηβον Ἀθήνησιν ἴσμεν ἐκβαλόντα μετὰ πολλοῦ σπέρματος θηρίδιον δασὺ καὶ πολλοῖς ποσὶ ταχὺ βαδίζον. τὴν δὲ Τίμωνος ἐν Κιλικίᾳ τήθην Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 43) ἱστόρηκεν φωλεύειν τοῦ ἔτους ἑκάστου δύο μῆνας, μηδενὶ πλὴν μόνῳ τῷ ἀναπνεῖν ὅτι ζῇ διάδηλον οὖσαν. καὶ μὴν ἔν γε τοῖς Μενωνείοις (Aristot. fr. 375) σημεῖον ἡπατικοῦ πάθους ἀναγέγραπται τὸ τοὺς κατοικιδίους μῦς ἐπιμελῶς παραφυλάττειν καὶ διώκειν· ὃ νῦν οὐδαμοῦ γινόμενον ὁρᾶται.

[d] διὸ μὴ θαυμάζωμεν, ἂν γένηταί τι τῶν οὐ πρότερον ὄντων, ‹μηδ’ εἴ τι τῶν πρότερον ὄντων› ὕστερον ἐκλέλοιπεν· αἰτία γὰρ ἡ τῶν σωμάτων φύσις, ἄλλην ἄλλοτε λαμβάνουσα κρᾶσιν. τὸ μὲν οὖν ἀέρα καινὸν ἐπεισάγειν ἢ ξένον ὕδωρ, εἰ μὴ βούλεται Διογενιανός, ἐάσωμεν· καίτοι τούς γε Δημοκριτείους ἴσμεν καὶ λέγοντας καὶ γράφοντας, ὅτι [καὶ] κόσμων ἐκτὸς φθαρέντων καὶ σωμάτων ἀλλοφύλων ἐκ τῆς ἀπειρίας ἐπιρρεόντων ἐνταῦθα πολλάκις ἀρχαὶ παρεμπίπτουσιν λοιμῶν καὶ παθῶν οὐ συνήθων. ἐάσωμεν δὲ καὶ τὰς φθορὰς ‹τὰς› κατὰ μέρος παρ’ ἡμῖν ὑπό τε σεισμῶν καὶ αὐχμῶν καὶ ὄμβρων, αἷς καὶ τὰ [e] πνεύματα καὶ τὰ νάματα γηγενῆ φύσιν ἔχοντα συννοσεῖν ἀνάγκη καὶ συμμεταβάλλειν. ἀλλὰ τὴν περὶ τὰ σιτία καὶ τὰ ὄψα καὶ τὰς ἄλλας διαίτας τοῦ σώματος ἐξαλλαγήν, ὅση γέγονεν, οὐ παραλειπτέον. πολλὰ γὰρ τῶν ἀγεύστων καὶ ἀβρώτων πρότερον ἥδιστα νῦν γέγονεν, ὥσπερ οἰνόμελι καὶ μήτρα· λέγουσι δὲ μηδ’ ἐγκέφαλον ἐσθίειν τοὺς παλαιούς· διὸ καὶ Ὅμηρον εἰπεῖν (Ι 378)

‘τίω δέ μιν ἔγκαρος αἴσῃ,’

τὸν ἐγκέφαλον οὕτως, διὰ τὸ ῥίπτειν καὶ ἀποβάλλειν μυσαττομένους, προσειπόντα· σικύου δὲ πέπονος καὶ μήλου Μηδικοῦ καὶ πεπέρεως πολλοὺς ἴσμεν ἔτι τῶν πρεσβυτέρων γεύσασθαι μὴ δυναμένους. ὑπό τε δὴ τούτων εἰκός [f] ἐστι ξενοπαθεῖν τὰ σώματα καὶ παραλλάττειν ταῖς κράσεσιν ἡσυχῆ ποιότητα καὶ περίττωμα ποιούντων ἴδιον, τήν τε τάξιν αὖ τῶν ἐδεστῶν καὶ μετακόσμησιν οὐ μικρὰν ἔχειν διαφοράν· αἱ γὰρ καλούμεναι ψυχραὶ τράπεζαι πρότερον, ὀστρέων, ἐχίνων, ὠμῶν λαχάνων, ὥσπερ ἐλαφρῶν ὅπλων, ἀπ’ οὐρᾶς ἐπὶ στόμα μεταχθεῖσαι τὴν πρώτην ἀντὶ [734] [a] τῆς ἐσχάτης τάξιν ἔχουσιν. μέγα δὲ καὶ τὸ τῶν καλουμένων προπομάτων· οὐδὲ γὰρ ὕδωρ οἱ παλαιοὶ πρὶν ἐντραγεῖν ἔπινον· οἱ δὲ νῦν ἄσιτοι προμεθυσθέντες ἅπτονται τῆς τροφῆς διαβρόχῳ τῷ σώματι καὶ ζέοντι, λεπτὰ καὶ τομὰ καὶ ὀξέα προσφέροντες ὑπέκκαυμα τῆς ὀρέξεως, εἶθ’ οὕτως ἐμφορούμενοι τῶν ἄλλων. οὐδενὸς δὲ πρὸς μεταβολὴν καὶ τὸ ποιῆσαι νοσημάτων καινῶν γένεσιν ἀσθενέστερόν ἐστιν ἡ περὶ τὰ λουτρὰ τῆς σαρκὸς πολυπάθεια καθάπερ σιδήρου πυρὶ μαλασσομένης καὶ ῥεούσης, εἶτα βαφὴν ὑπὸ ψυχροῦ καὶ στόμωσιν ἀναδεχομένης·

‘ἔνθα μὲν εἰς Ἀχέρων τε Πυριφλεγέθων τε ῥέουσιν’ (κ 513)·

[b] τοῦτο γὰρ ἄν τις εἰπεῖν μοι δοκεῖ τῶν ὀλίγον ἡμῶν ἔμπροσθεν γεγονότων, βαλανείου θύρας ἀνοιχθείσης. ἐκεῖνοι γὰρ οὕτως ἀνειμένοις ἐχρῶντο καὶ μαλακοῖς, ὥστ’ Ἀλέξανδρος μὲν ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐν τῷ λουτρῶνι πυρέττων ἐκάθευδεν, αἱ δὲ Γαλατῶν γυναῖκες εἰς τὰ βαλανεῖα πόλτου χύτρας εἰσφέρουσαι μετὰ τῶν παίδων ἤσθιον ὁμοῦ λουόμεναι. νῦν δὲ λυττῶσιν ἔοικε τὰ βαλανεῖα καὶ ὑλακτοῦσι καὶ σπαράττουσιν· ὁ δ’ ἑλκόμενος ἀὴρ ἐν αὐτοῖς, ὑγροῦ μῖγμα καὶ πυρὸς γεγονώς, οὐδὲν ἐᾷ τοῦ σώματος ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν ἄτομον κλονεῖ καὶ ταράττει καὶ μεθίστησιν ἐξ ἕδρας, ἄχρι οὗ κατασβέσωμεν αὑτοὺς πεπυρωμένους [c] καὶ ζέοντας. οὐδὲν οὖν’ ἔφην, ‘ὦ Διογενιανέ, δεῖται ὁ λόγος αἰτιῶν ἐπεισοδίων ἔξωθεν οὐδὲ μετακοσμίων, ἀλλ’ αὐτόθεν ἡ περὶ τὴν δίαιταν μεταβολὴ τὰ μὲν νῦν γεννᾶν τὰ δ’ ἀφανίζειν τῶν νοσημάτων οὐκ ἀδύνατός ἐστιν.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ι

Διὰ τί τοῖς φθινοπωρινοῖς ἐνυπνίοις ἥκιστα πιστεύομεν

Προβλήμασιν Ἀριστοτέλους φυσικοῖς ἐντυγχάνων [d] Φλῶρος εἰς Θερμοπύλας κομισθεῖσιν αὐτός τε πολλῶν ἀποριῶν, ὅπερ εἰώθασι πάσχειν ἐπιεικῶς αἱ φιλόσοφοι φύσεις, ὑπεπίμπλατο καὶ τοῖς ἑταίροις μετεδίδου, μαρτυρῶν αὐτῷ τῷ Ἀριστοτέλει (fr. 62) λέγοντι τὴν πολυμάθειαν πολλὰς ‹ἀποριῶν› ἀρχὰς ποιεῖν. τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλα μεθ’ ἡμέραν οὐκ ἄχαριν ἡμῖν ἐν τοῖς περιπάτοις διατριβὴν παρέσχεν· τὸ δὲ λεγόμενον (fr. 242) περὶ τῶν ἐνυπνίων, ὥς ἐστιν ἀβέβαια καὶ ψευδῆ μάλιστα περὶ τοὺς φυλλοχόους μῆνας, οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως ‹ἐφ’› ἑτέροις λόγοις πραγματευσαμένου τοῦ Φαβωρίνου μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον ἀνέκυψεν.

[e] τοῖς μὲν οὖν σοῖς ἑταίροις ἐμοῖς δ’ υἱοῖς ἐδόκει λελυκέναι τὴν ἀπορίαν Ἀριστοτέλης, καὶ οὐδὲν ᾤοντο δεῖν ζητεῖν οὐδὲ λέγειν ἀλλ’ ἢ τοὺς καρπούς, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνος, αἰτιᾶσθαι. νέοι γὰρ ὄντες ἔτι καὶ σφριγῶντες πολὺ πνεῦμα γεννῶσιν ἐν τῷ σώματι καὶ ταραχῶδες· οὐ γὰρ τὸν οἶνον εἰκός ἐστι μόνον ζεῖν καὶ ἀγανακτεῖν, οὐδὲ τοὔλαιον ἂν ᾖ νεουργὸν ἐν τοῖς λύχνοις ψόφον ἐμποιεῖν, ἀποκυματιζούσης τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς θερμότητος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ σιτία τὰ πρόσφατα καὶ τὴν ὀπώραν ἅπασαν ὁρῶμεν ἐντεταμένην καὶ οἰδοῦσαν, ἄχρι ἂν ἀποπνεύσῃ τὸ φυσῶδες καὶ ἄπεπτον. ὅτι δ’ ἐστὶ τῶν βρωμάτων ἔνια δυσόνειρα καὶ ταρακτικὰ [f] τῶν καθ’ ὕπνον ὄψεων, μαρτυρίοις ἐχρῶντο τοῖς τε κυάμοις καὶ τῇ κεφαλῇ τοῦ πολύποδος, ὧν ἀπέχεσθαι κελεύουσι τοὺς δεομένους τῆς διὰ τῶν ὀνείρων μαντικῆς.

Ὁ δὲ Φαβωρῖνος αὐτὸς τὰ μὲν ἄλλα δαιμονιώτατος Ἀριστοτέλους ἐραστής ἐστι καὶ τῷ Περιπάτῳ νέμει μερίδα τοῦ πιθανοῦ πλείστην· τότε μέντοι λόγον τινὰ τοῦ Δημοκρίτου (A 77) παλαιὸν ὥσπερ ἐκ καπνοῦ καθελὼν ἠμαυρωμένον [735] [a] οἷος ἦν ἐκκαθαίρειν καὶ διαλαμπρύνειν, ὑποθέμενος τοῦτο δὴ τοὐπιδήμιον ὅ φησιν Δημόκριτος ἐγκαταβυσσοῦσθαι τὰ εἴδωλα διὰ τῶν πόρων εἰς τὰ σώματα καὶ ποιεῖν τὰς κατὰ τὸν ὕπνον ὄψεις ἐπαναφερόμενα· φοιτᾶν δὲ ταῦτα πανταχόθεν ἀπιόντα καὶ σκευῶν καὶ ἱματίων καὶ φυτῶν, μάλιστα δὲ ζῴων ὑπὸ σάλου πολλοῦ καὶ θερμότητος οὐ μόνον ἔχοντα μορφοειδεῖς τοῦ σώματος ἐκμεμαγμένας ὁμοιότητας (ὡς Ἐπίκουρος (fr. 326) οἴεται μέχρι τούτου Δημοκρίτῳ συνεπόμενος, ἐνταῦθα δὲ προλιπὼν τὸν λόγον), ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν κατὰ ψυχὴν κινημάτων καὶ βουλευμάτων ἑκάστῳ καὶ ἠθῶν καὶ παθῶν ἐμφάσεις ἀναλαμβάνοντα [b] συνεφέλκεσθαι, καὶ προσπίπτοντα μετὰ τούτων ὥσπερ ἔμψυχα φράζειν καὶ διαγγέλλειν τοῖς ὑποδεχομένοις τὰς τῶν μεθιέντων αὐτὰ δόξας καὶ διαλογισμοὺς καὶ ὁρμάς, ὅταν ἐνάρθρους καὶ ἀσυγχύτους φυλάττοντα προσμίξῃ τὰς εἰκόνας. τοῦτο δὲ μάλιστα ποιεῖ δι’ ἀέρος λείου τῆς φορᾶς αὐτοῖς γινομένης ἀκωλύτου καὶ ταχείας. ὁ δὲ φθινοπωρινός, ἐν ᾧ φυλλοχοεῖ τὰ δένδρα, πολλὴν ἀνωμαλίαν ἔχων καὶ τραχύτητα διαστρέφει καὶ παρατρέπει πολλαχῆ τὰ εἴδωλα καὶ τὸ ἐναργὲς αὐτῶν ἐξίτηλον καὶ ἀσθενὲς ποιεῖ τῇ βραδυτῆτι τῆς πορείας ἀμαυρούμενον, ὥσπερ αὖ πάλιν πρὸς ὀργώντων καὶ διακαιομένων ἐκθρώσκοντα [c] πολλὰ καὶ ταχὺ κομιζόμενα τὰς ἐμφάσεις νεαρὰς καὶ σημαντικὰς ἀποδίδωσιν.

Εἶτα διαβλέψας πρὸς τοὺς περὶ τὸν Αὐτόβουλον καὶ μειδιάσας ‘ἀλλ’ ὁρῶ’ εἶπεν ‘ὑμᾶς οἵους [τε] ὄντας ἤδη σκιαμαχεῖν πρὸς τὰ εἴδωλα καὶ δόξῃ παλαιᾷ καθάπερ γραφῇ προσφέροντας ἁφὴν οἴεσθαί τι ποιεῖν.’ καὶ ὁ Αὐτόβουλος ‘παῦε ποικίλλων’ ἔφη ‘πρὸς ἡμᾶς· οὐ γὰρ ἀγνοοῦμεν, ὅτι τὴν Ἀριστοτέλους δόξαν εὐδοκιμῆσαι βουλόμενος ὥσπερ σκιὰν αὐτῇ τὴν Δημοκρίτου παραβέβληκας. ‹ἐπ’› ἐκείνην οὖν τρεψόμεθα κἀκείνῃ μαχούμεθα κατηγορούσῃ [d] τῶν νέων καρπῶν καὶ τῆς φίλης ὀπώρας οὐ προσηκόντως. τὸ γὰρ θέρος αὐτοῖς μαρτυρεῖ καὶ τὸ μετόπωρον, ὅτε μάλιστα χλωρὰν καὶ φλείουσαν, ὡς Ἀντίμαχος (fr. 36 Kink. 40 Wyss) ἔφη, τὴν ὀπώραν, γεννωμένην ἄρτι, προσφερόμενοι [τοὺς καρποὺς] ἧττον ἀπατηλοῖς καὶ ψευδέσιν ἐνυπνίοις σύνεσμεν· οἱ δὲ φυλλοχόοι μῆνες ἤδη τῷ χειμῶνι παρασκηνοῦντες ἐν πέψει τὰ σιτία καὶ τὰ περιόντα τῶν ἀκροδρύων ἰσχνὰ καὶ ῥυσὰ καὶ πᾶν ἀφεικότα τὸ πληκτικὸν ἐκεῖνο καὶ μανικὸν ἔχουσιν. καὶ μὴν οἴνου γε τὸν νέον οἱ πρωιαίτατα πίνοντες Ἀνθεστηριῶνι πίνουσι μηνὶ μετὰ χειμῶνα, καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἡμεῖς μὲν Ἀγαθοῦ Δαίμονος, Ἀθηναῖοι [e] δὲ Πιθοίγια προσαγορεύουσιν· γλεύκους δὲ ζέοντος †ἀεὶ ἀφαιρεῖσθαι καὶ τοὺς ἐργάτας δεδιότας ὁρῶμεν. ἀφέντες οὖν τὸ συκοφαντεῖν τὰ τῶν θεῶν δῶρα μετίωμεν ἑτέραν ὁδόν, ἣν ὑφηγεῖται τοὔνομα τοῦ χρόνου [καὶ] τῶν ὑπηνεμίων καὶ ψευδῶν ὀνείρων. φυλλοχόος γὰρ ὀνομάζεται διὰ ψυχρότητα καὶ ξηρότητα τηνικαῦτα τῶν φύλλων ἀπορρεόντων, πλὴν εἴ τι θερμόν ἐστι καὶ λιπαρὸν ὡς ἐλαῖαι καὶ δάφναι καὶ φοίνικες ἢ διερὸν ὡς μυρσίνη καὶ κιττός· τούτοις γὰρ ἡ κρᾶσις βοηθεῖ τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις οὔ· οὐ γὰρ παραμένει τὸ ἐχέκολλον καὶ συνεκτικόν, ἢ πυκνουμένης ψυχρότητι [f] τῆς ἰκμάδος ἢ ξηραινομένης δι’ ἔνδειαν καὶ ἀσθένειαν. ἔστι μὲν οὖν καὶ φυτοῖς ὑγρότητι καὶ θερμότητι τεθηλέναι καὶ αὐξάνεσθαι, μᾶλλον δὲ τοῖς ζῴοις· καὶ τοὐναντίον ἡ ψυχρότης καὶ ἡ ξηρότης ὀλέθριον. διὸ χαριέντως Ὅμηρος εἴωθεν ‘διεροὺς βροτοὺς’ (ζ 201) καλεῖν, καὶ τὸ μὲν χαίρειν ‘ἰαίνεσθαι’ (ζ 156 al.), ‘ῥιγεδανὸν’ (Τ 325) δὲ καὶ ‘κρυερὸν’ (λ 212 al.) τὸ λυπηρὸν καὶ τὸ φοβερόν· [736] [a] ὁ δ’ ἀλίβας καὶ ὁ σκελετὸς ἐπὶ τοῖς νεκροῖς λέγονται, λοιδορουμένης τῷ ὀνόματι τῆς ξηρότητος. ἔτι τὸ μὲν αἷμα κυριωτάτην τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν ἔχον δύναμιν ἅμα καὶ θερμόν ἐστι καὶ ὑγρόν, τὸ δὲ γῆρας ἀμφοῖν ἐνδεές. ἔοικε δὲ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ περιιόντος οἷον γῆρας εἶναι τὸ φθινόπωρον· οὔπω γὰρ ἥκει τὸ ὑγρόν, οὐκέτι δὲ τὸ θερμὸν ἔρρωται· δεῖγμα δὴ γεγονὸς ἀτεχνῶς ξηρότητος ἅμα καὶ ψυχρότητος ἐπισφαλῆ ποιεῖ τὰ σώματα πρὸς τὰς νόσους. τοῖς δὲ σώμασι τὰς ψυχὰς συμπαθεῖν ἀνάγκη, καὶ μάλιστα παχνουμένου τοῦ πνεύματος ἀμαυροῦσθαι τὸ μαντικόν, ὥσπερ [b] κάτοπτρον ὁμίχλης ἀναπιμπλάμενον. οὐδὲν οὖν τρανὸν οὐδ’ ἔναρθρον οὐδ’ εὔσημον ἐν ταῖς φαντασίαις ἀποδίδωσι, μέχρι οὗ τραχὺ καὶ ἀλαμπὲς καὶ συνεσταλμένον ἐστίν.’

ΣΥΜΠΟΣΙΑΚΩΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΕΝΑΤΟΝ

[c] Τὸ ἔνατον τῶν Συμποσιακῶν, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, περιέχει λόγους τοὺς Ἀθήνησιν ἐν τοῖς Μουσείοις γενομένους ‹τῷ› καὶ μάλιστα τὴν ἐννεάδα ταῖς Μούσαις προσήκειν. ὁ δ’ ἀριθμὸς ἂν ὑπερβάλλῃ τὴν συνήθη δεκάδα τῶν ζητημάτων, οὐ θαυμαστέον· ἔδει γὰρ πάντα ταῖς Μούσαις ἀποδοῦναι τὰ τῶν Μουσῶν καὶ μηδὲν ἀφελεῖν ὥσπερ ἀφ’ ἱερῶν, πλείονα καὶ καλλίονα τούτων ὀφείλοντας αὐταῖς.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Α

Περὶ στίχων εὐκαίρως ἀναπεφωνημένων καὶ ἀκαίρως

[d] Ἀμμώνιος Ἀθήνησι στρατηγῶν ἀπόδειξιν ἔλαβεν ‹ἐν› τῷ Διογενείῳ τῶν γράμματα καὶ γεωμετρίαν καὶ τὰ ῥητορικὰ καὶ μουσικὴν μανθανόντων ἐφήβων, καὶ τοὺς εὐδοκιμήσαντας τῶν διδασκάλων ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἐκάλεσεν. παρῆσαν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων φιλολόγων συχνοὶ καὶ πάντες ἐπιεικῶς οἱ συνήθεις. ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀχιλλεὺς (Ψ 810) μόνοις τῶν ἀγωνισαμένων τοῖς μονομαχήσασι δεῖπνον κατήγγειλεν, βουλόμενος, ὥς φασιν, εἴ τις ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις ὀργὴ πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ χαλεπότης γένοιτο, ταύτην ἀφεῖναι καὶ καταθέσθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας ἑστιάσεως κοινῆς καὶ τραπέζης μετασχόντας· τῷ δ’ Ἀμμωνίῳ συνέβαινε τοὐναντίον· [e] ἀκμὴν γὰρ ἡ τῶν διδασκάλων ἅμιλλα καὶ φιλονεικία σφοδροτέραν ἔλαβεν ἐν ταῖς κύλιξι γενομένων· ἤδη δὲ καὶ προτάσεις καὶ προκλήσεις ἦσαν ἄκριτοι καὶ ἄτακτοι.

Διὸ πρῶτον μὲν ἐκέλευσεν ᾆσαι τὸν Ἐράτωνα πρὸς τὴν λύραν· ᾄσαντος δὲ τὰ πρῶτα τῶν Ἔργων (Hes. OD 11) ‘οὐκ ἄρα μοῦνον ἔην Ἐρίδων γένος’, ἐπῄνεσεν ὡς τῷ καιρῷ πρεπόντως ἁρμοσάμενον· ἔπειτα περὶ στίχων εὐκαιρίας ἐνέβαλεν λόγον, ὡς μὴ μόνον χάριν ἀλλὰ καὶ χρείαν ἔστιν ὅτε μεγάλην ἐχούσης. καὶ ὁ μὲν ῥαψῳδὸς εὐθὺς ἦν διὰ στόματος πᾶσιν, ἐν τοῖς Πτολεμαίου γάμοις ἀγομένου τὴν ἀδελφὴν καὶ πρᾶγμα δρᾶν ἀλλόκοτον ‹νομιζ›ομένου καὶ ἄθεσμον ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ τῶν ἐπῶν ἐκείνων (Σ 356)

‘Ζεὺς δ’ Ἥρην ἐκάλεσσε κασιγνήτην ἄλοχόν τε·’

καὶ ὁ παρὰ Δημητρίῳ τῷ βασιλεῖ ἀπρόθυμος ὢν ᾄδειν μετὰ τὸ δεῖπνον, ὡς δὲ προσέπεμψεν αὐτῷ τὸν υἱὸν ἔτι παιδάριον ὄντα τὸν Φίλιππον, ἐπιβαλὼν εὐθύς

‘τὸν παῖδά μοι τόνδ’ ἀξίως Ἡρακλέους

ἡμῶν τε θρέψαι’ (Trag. adesp. 399)·

[737] [a] καὶ Ἀνάξαρχος ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου μήλοις βαλλόμενος παρὰ δεῖπνον ἐπαναστὰς καὶ εἰπών (Eur. Or. 271)

‘βεβλήσεταί τις θεῶν βροτησίᾳ χερί.’

πάντων δ’ ἄριστος Κορίνθιος παῖς αἰχμάλωτος, ὅθ’ ἡ πόλις ἀπώλετο καὶ Μόμμιος ἐκ τῶν ἐλευθέρων τοὺς ἐπισταμένους γράμματα παῖδας †εὐσυσκόπων ἐκέλευσε γράψαι στίχον, ἔγραψε (ε 306)

‘τρὶς μάκαρες Δαναοὶ καὶ τετράκις, οἳ τότ’ ὄλοντο·’

καὶ γὰρ παθεῖν τι τὸν Μόμμιόν φασι καὶ δακρῦσαι καὶ πάντας ἀφεῖναι ἐλευθέρους τοὺς τῷ παιδὶ προσήκοντας. ἐμνήσθη δὲ καὶ τῆς Θεοδώρου ‹τοῦ› τραγῳδοῦ γυναικὸς [b] οὐ προσδεξαμένης αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ συγκαθεύδειν ὑπογύου τοῦ ἀγῶνος ὄντος, ἐπεὶ δὲ νικήσας εἰσῆλθεν πρὸς αὐτήν, ἀσπασαμένης καὶ εἰπούσης (Soph. El. 2)

‘Ἀγαμέμνονος παῖ, νῦν ἐκεῖν’ ἔξεστί σοι.’

Ἐκ δὲ τούτου πολλὰ καὶ τῶν ἀκαίρων ἐνίοις ἐπῄει λέγειν, ὡς οὐκ ἄχρηστον εἰδέναι καὶ φυλάττεσθαι. οἷον Πομπηίῳ Μάγνῳ φασὶν ἀπὸ τῆς μεγάλης ἐπανήκοντι στρατείας τὸν διδάσκαλον τῆς θυγατρὸς ἀπόδειξιν διδόντα βιβλίου κομισθέντος ἐνδοῦναι τῇ παιδὶ τοιαύτην ἀρχήν (Γ 428)

‘ἤλυθες ἐκ πολέμου· ὡς ὤφελες αὐτόθ’ ὀλέσθαι.’

Κασσίῳ δὲ Λογγίνῳ λόγου προσπεσόντος ἀδεσπότου, τὸν υἱὸν ἐπὶ ξένης τεθνάναι, καὶ τὸ ἀληθὲς ἔχοντος εἰπεῖν [c] ‹οὐδενὸς› οὐδ’ ἀνελεῖν τὸ ὕποπτον, εἰσελθὼν συγκλητικὸς ἀνὴρ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἤδη πρεσβύτερος ‘οὐ καταφρονήσεις’ ἔφη, ‘Λογγῖνε, λαλιᾶς ἀπίστου καὶ κακοήθους φήμης, ὥσπερ οὐκ εἰδὼς οὐδ’ ἀνεγνωκὼς τὸ ‘φήμη δ’ οὔ τις πάμπαν ἀπόλλυται’ (Hes. OD 763);’ ὁ δ’ ἐν Ῥόδῳ στίχον αἰτήσαντι γραμματικῷ ποιουμένῳ δεῖξιν ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ προτείνας (κ 72)

‘ἔρρ’ ἐκ νήσου θᾶσσον, ἐλέγχιστε ζωόντων’

ἄδηλον εἴτε παίζων ἐφύβρισεν εἴτ’ ἄκων ἠστόχησεν. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν παρηγόρησεν ἀστείως τὸν θόρυβον.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Β

Τίς αἰτία, δι’ ἣν τὸ ἄλφα προτέτακται τῶν στοιχείων

[d] Ἔθους δ’ ὄντος ἐν τοῖς Μουσείοις κλήρους περιφέρεσθαι καὶ τοὺς συλλαχόντας ἀλλήλοις προτείνειν φιλόλογα ζητήματα, φοβούμενος ὁ Ἀμμώνιος μὴ τῶν ὁμοτέχνων τινὲς ἀλλήλοις συλλάχωσι, προσέταξεν ἄνευ κλήρου γεωμέτρην [e] γραμματικῷ προτεῖναι καὶ ῥητορικῷ μουσικόν, εἶτ’ ἔμπαλιν ἀναστρέφειν τὰς ἀνταποδόσεις.

Προὔτεινεν οὖν [ὁ] Ἑρμείας ὁ γεωμέτρης Πρωτογένει τῷ γραμματικῷ πρῶτος αἰτίαν εἰπεῖν, δι’ ἣν τὸ ἄλφα προτάττεται τῶν γραμμάτων ἁπάντων. ὁ δὲ τὴν ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς λεγομένην ἀπέδωκε. τὰ μὲν γὰρ φωνήεντα τῷ δικαιοτάτῳ λόγῳ πρωτεύειν τῶν ἀφώνων καὶ ἡμιφώνων· ἐν δὲ τούτοις τῶν μὲν μακρῶν ὄντων τῶν δὲ βραχέων τῶν δ’ ἀμφότερα καὶ διχρόνων λεγομένων, ταῦτ’ εἰκότως τῇ δυνάμει διαφέρειν. αὐτῶν δὲ τούτων πάλιν ἡγεμονικωτάτην ἔχειν τάξιν τὸ προτάττεσθαι τῶν ἄλλων δυεῖν ὑποτάττεσθαι δὲ μηδετέρῳ πεφυκός, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ [f] ἄλφα· τουτὶ γὰρ οὔτε τοῦ ἰῶτα δεύτερον οὔτε τοῦ υ ταττόμενον ἐθέλειν ὁμολογεῖν οὐδ’ ὁμοπαθεῖν ὥστε συλλαβὴν μίαν ἐξ ἀμφοῖν γενέσθαι, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀγανακτοῦν καὶ ἀποπηδῶν ἰδίαν ἀρχὴν ζητεῖν ἀεί· ἐκείνων δ’ ὁποτέρου βούλῃ προταττόμενον ἀκολουθοῦντι καὶ συμφωνοῦντι χρῆσθαι καὶ συλλαβὰς ὀνομάτων ποιεῖν, ὥσπερ τοῦ ‘αὔριον’ καὶ τοῦ ‘αὐλεῖν’ καὶ τοῦ ‘Αἴαντος’ καὶ τοῦ ‘αἰδεῖσθαι’ [738] [a] καὶ μυρίων ἄλλων. διὸ τοῖς τρισίν, ὥσπερ οἱ πένταθλοι, περίεστι καὶ νικᾷ τὰ μὲν πολλὰ τῷ φωνᾶεν εἶναι, τὰ δ’ αὖ φωνάεντα [ἐν] τῷ δίχρονον, ταῦτα δ’ αὐτὰ τῷ πεφυκέναι καθηγεῖσθαι δευτερεύειν δὲ μηδέποτε μηδ’ ἀκολουθεῖν.

Παυσαμένου δὲ τοῦ Πρωτογένους, καλέσας ἔμ’ ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ‘οὐδέν’ ἔφη ‘σὺ τῷ Κάδμῳ βοηθεῖς ὁ Βοιώτιος, ὅν φασι τὸ ἄλφα πάντων προτάξαι διὰ τὸ Φοίνικας οὕτω καλεῖν τὸν βοῦν, ‹ὃν› οὐ δεύτερον οὐδὲ τρίτον, ὥσπερ Ἡσίοδος (OD 405), ἀλλὰ πρῶτον τίθεσθαι τῶν ἀναγκαίων;’ ‘οὐδέν’ ἔφην ἐγώ· ‘τῷ γὰρ ἐμῷ πάππῳ βοηθεῖν, εἴ τι δύναμαι, δίκαιός εἰμι μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ τοῦ Διονύσου.

[b] Λαμπρίας γὰρ ὁ ἐμὸς πάππος ἔλεγεν πρώτην φύσει φωνὴν τῶν ἐνάρθρων ἐκφέρεσθαι διὰ τῆς τοῦ ἄλφα δυνάμεως· τὸ γὰρ ἐν τῷ στόματι πνεῦμα ταῖς περὶ τὰ χείλη μάλιστα πλάττεσθαι κινήσεσιν, ὧν πρώτην ἀνοιγομένων τὴν ἄνω διάστασιν οὖσαν ἐξιέναι τοῦτον τὸν ἦχον, ἁπλοῦν ὄντα κομιδῇ καὶ μηδεμιᾶς δεόμενον πραγματείας, μηδὲ τὴν γλῶτταν παρακαλοῦντα μηδ’ ὑπομένοντ’, ἀλλὰ κατὰ χώραν ἀποκειμένης [ἐσκειμένης] ἐκείνης ἐκπεμπόμενον· ᾗ καὶ τὰ νήπια ταύτην πρώτην ἀφιέναι φωνήν, ὠνομάσθαι ‹δὲ› καὶ τὸ ‘ἀίειν’ ἐπὶ τῷ φωνῆς αἰσθάνεσθαι [c] καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ὁμοίων, ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ ‘ᾄδειν’ καὶ ‹τὸ› ‘αὐλεῖν’ καὶ τὸ ‘ἀλαλάζειν’· οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τὸ ‘αἴρειν’ καὶ τὸ ‘ἀνοίγειν’ οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου τῇ τῶν χειλῶν ἀνοίξει καὶ ἄρσει, καθ’ ἣν οὗτος ἐκπίπτει τοῦ στόματος ὁ φθόγγος, ὠνομάσθαι. διὸ καὶ τὰ τῶν ἀφώνων γραμμάτων ὀνόματα πλὴν ἑνὸς ἅπαντα προσχρῆται τῷ ἄλφα καθάπερ φωτὶ τῆς περὶ αὐτὰ τυφλότητος· τοῦ δὲ πῖ μόνον ἄπεστιν ἡ δύναμις αὕτη· τὸ γὰρ φῖ καὶ τὸ χῖ τὸ μέν ἐστι πῖ τὸ δὲ κάππα δασυνόμενον.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Γ

Κατὰ ποίαν ἀναλογίαν ὁ τῶν φωνηέντων καὶ ἡμιφώνων ἀριθμὸς συντέτακται

Πρὸς ταῦτα τοῦ Ἑρμείου φήσαντος ἀμφοτέρους ἀποδέχεσθαι τοὺς λόγους ‘τί οὖν’ ἔφην ‘οὐ καὶ σὺ διῆλθες [d] ἡμῖν, εἴ τις ἔστι λόγος τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τῶν στοιχείων, ὥς γ’ ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ; τεκμήριον δὲ ποιοῦμαι τὸ μὴ κατὰ τύχην τῶν ἀφώνων καὶ ἡμιφώνων πρός τ’ ἄλληλα καὶ πρὸς τὰ φωνήεντα γεγονέναι τὸ πλῆθος, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν πρώτην ἀναλογίαν ἀριθμητικὴν δὲ καλουμένην ὑφ’ ἡμῶν· ἐννέα γὰρ ὄντων καὶ ὀκτὼ ‹καὶ ἑπτά›, ταὐτῷ τὸν μέσον ἀριθμὸν ὑπερέχειν καὶ ὑπερέχεσθαι συμβέβηκε. τῶν δ’ ἄκρων ὁ μέγιστος πρὸς τὸν ἐλάχιστον ἔχει λόγον, ‹ὃν› ὁ τῶν Μουσῶν πρὸς τὸν τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος· ἡ γὰρ ἐννεὰς δήπου ταῖς Μούσαις ἡ δ’ ἑβδομὰς τῷ Μουσηγέτῃ προσκεκλήρωται· συντεθέντα δ’ ἀλλήλοις διπλασιάζει τὸν μέσον [e] εἰκότως, ἐπεὶ καὶ τὰ ἡμίφωνα τῆς ἀμφοῖν τρόπον τινὰ κοινωνεῖ δυνάμεως.’

Καὶ ὁ Ἑρμείας ‘Ἑρμῆς’ ἔφη ‘λέγεται θεῶν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ γράμματα πρῶτος εὑρεῖν· διὸ καὶ τὸ τῶν γραμμάτων Αἰγύπτιοι πρῶτον ἶβιν γράφουσιν, ὡς Ἑρμῇ προσήκουσαν, οὐκ ὀρθῶς κατά γε τὴν ἐμὴν δόξαν ἀναύδῳ καὶ ἀφθόγγῳ προεδρίαν ἐν γράμμασιν ἀποδόντες. Ἑρμῇ [f] δὲ μάλιστα τῶν ἀριθμῶν ἡ τετρὰς ἀνάκειται, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ τετράδι μηνὸς ἱσταμένου γενέσθαι τὸν θεὸν ἱστοροῦσιν· τά τε δὴ πρῶτα καὶ Φοινίκεια διὰ Κάδμον ὀνομασθέντα τετράκις ἡ τετρὰς γενομένη παρέσχεν, καὶ τῶν αὖθις ἐφευρεθέντων δὲ Παλαμήδης τε πρότερος τέτταρα καὶ Σιμωνίδης αὖθις ἄλλα τοσαῦτα προσέθηκεν. καὶ μὴν ὅ‹τι› πάντων ἀριθμῶν πρῶτος τέλειος ἡ μὲν τριὰς ὡς ἀρχὴν καὶ μέσον ἔχουσα καὶ τέλος, ἡ δ’ ἑξὰς ὡς ἴση τοῖς αὑτῆς μέρεσι γινομένη, δῆλόν ἐστι· τούτων τοίνυν ἡ μὲν ἑξὰς ὑπὸ τῆς τετράδος, ‹ἡ δὲ τριὰς ὑπὸ τῆς ὀγδοάδος› πολλαπλασιασθεῖσα, πρώτου κύβου πρῶτος τέλειος, τὸ τῶν τεττάρων καὶ εἴκοσι παρέσχηκε πλῆθος.’

Ἔτι δ’ αὐτοῦ λέγοντος ὁ γραμματιστὴς Ζωπυρίων δῆλος ἦν καταγελῶν καὶ παρεφθέγγετο· παυσαμένου δ’ οὐ κατέσχεν ἀλλὰ φλυαρίαν τὰ τοιαῦτα πολλὴν ἀπεκάλει· [739] [a] μηδενὶ γὰρ λόγῳ συντυχίᾳ δέ τινι καὶ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν γραμμάτων γεγονέναι τοσοῦτον καὶ τὴν τάξιν οὕτως ἔχουσαν, ὥσπερ, ἔφη, καὶ τὸ τῆς Ἰλιάδος τὸν πρῶτον στίχον τῷ τῆς Ὀδυσσείας ἰσοσύλλαβον εἶναι καὶ πάλιν τῷ τελευταίῳ τὸν τελευταῖον ἐκ τύχης καὶ αὐτομάτως ἐπηκολουθηκέναι.

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Δ

Ποτέραν χεῖρα τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἔτρωσεν ὁ Διομήδης

[b] Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα τὸν μὲν Ἑρμείαν βουλόμενόν τι προβαλεῖν τῷ Ζωπυρίωνι ἀπεκωλύσαμεν· ὁ δὲ ῥήτωρ Μάξιμος ἄπωθεν ἠρώτησεν αὐτὸν ἐκ τῶν Ὁμήρου, ποτέραν χεῖρα τρώσειεν τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ὁ Διομήδης. ταχὺ δὲ τοῦ Ζωπυρίωνος ἀντερομένου ποτέρῳ σκέλει χωλὸς ἦν ὁ Φίλιππος, ‘οὐχ ὅμοιον’ εἶπεν ὁ Μάξιμος· ‘οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ Δημοσθένης ὑπόλογον περὶ τούτου δέδωκεν· σὺ δ’ ἐὰν ἀπορεῖν ὁμολογήσῃς, ἕτεροι δείξουσιν ὅπου τὴν τετρωμένην χεῖρα φράζει τοῖς νοῦν ἔχουσιν ὁ ποιητής.’ ἔδοξεν οὖν ἡμῖν ὁ Ζωπυρίων διηπορῆσθαι, καὶ τὸν Μάξιμον, ἐκείνου σιωπῶντος, ἠξιοῦμεν ἐπιδεικνύναι.

[c] ‘Πρῶτον οὖν’ ὁ Μάξιμος ἔφη ‘τῶν ἐπῶν οὕτως ἐχόντων (Ε 335)

‘ἔνθ’ ἐπορεξάμενος μεγαθύμου Τυδέος υἱὸς

ἄκρην οὔτασε χεῖρα, μετάλμενος ὀξέι δουρί’

δῆλόν ἐστιν, ὅτι τὴν ‹ἀριστερὰν› πατάξαι βουλόμενος οὐκ ἐδεῖτο μετα‹πη›δήσεως, ἐπεὶ κατὰ τὴν ἀριστερὰν τὴν δεξιὰν εἶχεν ἐξ ἐναντίου προσφερόμενος· καὶ γὰρ εὔλογον ἦν τὴν ἐρρωμενεστέραν χεῖρα καὶ μᾶλλον τοῦ Αἰνείου φερομένου περιεχομένην ἐκεῖνόν τε τρῶσαι καὶ ‹αὐ›τὴν τρωθεῖσαν προέσθαι τὸ σῶμα’. δεύτερον, εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν αὐτῆς ἀνακομισθείσης, καὶ τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν ἀναγελάσαι λέγουσαν (Ε 422)

[d] ‘ἦ μάλα δή τινα Κύπρις Ἀχαιιάδων ἀνιεῖσα

Τρωσὶν ἅμα σπέσθαι, τοὺς νῦν ἔκπαγλα φίλησεν,

τῶν τινα καρρέζουσα Ἀχαιιάδων βαθυκόλπων,

πρὸς χρυσῇ περόνῃ κατεμύξατο χεῖρα ἀραιήν·’

‘οἶμαι δὲ καὶ σέ’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ βέλτιστε διδασκάλων, ὅταν τινὰ τῶν μαθητῶν φιλοφρονούμενος καταψᾷς καὶ καταρρέζῃς, μὴ τῇ ἀριστερᾷ χειρὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖν ἀλλὰ τῇ δεξιᾷ· καθάπερ εἰκός ἐστι καὶ τὴν Ἀφροδίτην, ἐπιδεξιωτάτην θεῶν οὖσαν, οὕτω φιλοφρονεῖσθαι τὰς ἡρωίδας.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ε

[e]

Διὰ τί Πλάτων εἰκοστὴν ἔφη τὴν Αἴαντος ψυχὴν ἐπὶ τὸν κλῆρον ἐλθεῖν

Ταῦτα τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας ἡδίους ἐποίησεν, μόνον δὲ τὸν γραμματικὸν Ὕλαν ὁ ῥήτωρ Σῶσπις ὁρῶν ἀποσιωπῶντα καὶ βαρυθυμούμενον (οὐ πάνυ γὰρ εὐημέρησεν ἐν ταῖς ἐπιδείξεσιν) ἀνεφώνησεν (λ 543)

‘οἴη δ’ Αἴαντος ψυχὴ Τελαμωνιάδαο·’

τὰ ‹δὲ› λοιπὰ μεῖζον [ἢ] φθεγγόμενος ἤδη πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἐπέραινεν (λ 561)

‘ἀλλ’ ἴθι δεῦρο, ἄναξ, ἵν’ ἔπος καὶ μῦθον ἀκούσῃς

ἡμέτερον· δάμασον δὲ μένος καὶ ἀτειρέα θυμόν.’

[f] ἔτι δ’ ἀνώμαλος ὢν ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ὁ Ὕλας ἀπεκρίνατο σκαιῶς· τὴν μὲν Αἴαντος ἔφη ψυχὴν εἰκοστὴν λαχοῦσαν ἐν Ἅιδου διαμείψασθαι κατὰ τὸν Πλάτωνα (Rep. 620b) φύσιν λέοντος, αὑτῷ δὲ πολλάκις παρίστασθαι καὶ τὰ τοῦ κωμικοῦ γέροντος (Menand. fr. 223, 18)

‘ὄνον γενέσθαι κρεῖττον ἢ τοὺς χείρονας

ὁρᾶν ἑαυτοῦ ζῶντας ἐπιφανέστερον.’

καὶ ὁ Σῶσπις γελάσας ‘ἀλλ’ ἕως μέλλομεν ἐνδύεσθαι [740] [a] τὸ κανθήλιον, εἴ τι κήδει Πλάτωνος, δίδαξον ἡμᾶς, ᾧτινι λόγῳ τὴν τοῦ Τελαμωνίου ψυχὴν πεποίηκεν ἀπὸ κλήρου βαδίζουσαν εἰκοστὴν ἐπὶ τὴν αἵρεσιν.’ ἀποσκορακίσαντος ‹δὲ› τοῦ Ὕλα (χλευάζεσθαι γὰρ ᾤετο δυσημερῶν) ὑπολαβὼν ὁ ἀδελφὸς ἡμῶν ‘τί οὖν;’ εἶπεν ‘οὐ δευτερεῖα μὲν ὁ Αἴας κάλλους καὶ μεγέθους καὶ ἀνδρείας ἀεὶ φέρεται ‘μετ’ ἀμύμονα Πηλείωνα’ (λ 551), τὰ δ’ εἴκοσι δευτέρα δεκάς, ἡ δὲ δεκὰς ἐν τοῖς ἀριθμοῖς κράτιστος, ὡς ἐν τοῖς Ἀχαιοῖς ὁ Ἀχιλλεύς;’ γελασάντων δ’ ἡμῶν ‘ταῦτα μέν’ ὁ Ἀμμώνιος εἶπεν, ‘ὦ Λαμπρία, κείσθω σοι πεπαιγμένα πρὸς Ὕλαν· ἡμῖν δὲ μὴ παίζων [b] ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ σπουδῆς, ἐπεὶ τὸν λόγον ἑκὼν ἐξεδέξω, δίελθε περὶ τῆς αἰτίας.’

Θορυβηθεὶς οὖν ὁ Λαμπρίας, εἶτα χρόνον οὐ πολὺν ἐπισχὼν ἔφη πολλαχοῦ μὲν ἡμῖν τὸν Πλάτωνα προσπαίζειν διὰ τῶν ὀνομάτων· ὅπου δὲ μῦθόν τινα τῷ περὶ ψυχῆς λόγῳ μίγνυσι, χρῆσθαι μάλιστα τῷ νῷ. τοῦ τε γὰρ οὐρανοῦ τὴν νοητὴν φύσιν ἅρμα καλεῖν πτηνὸν (Phaedr. 246e) ‹διὰ› τὴν ἐναρμόνιον τοῦ κόσμου περιφοράν, ἐνταῦθά τε τὸν αὐτάγγελον τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου Πάμφυλον γένος Ἁρμονίου πατρὸς Ἦρα δ’ αὐτὸν ὀνομάζειν (Rep. 614b), αἰνιττόμενον ὅτι γεννῶνται μὲν αἱ ψυχαὶ καθ’ ἁρμονίαν [c] καὶ συναρμόττονται τοῖς σώμασιν, ἀπαλλαγεῖσαι δὲ συμφέρονται πανταχόθεν εἰς τὸν ἀέρα κἀκεῖθεν αὖθις ἐπὶ τὰς δευτέρας γενέσεις τρέπονται. ‘τί δὴ κωλύει καὶ τὸ ‘εἰκοστὸν’ εἰρῆσθαι πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀληθὲς ἀλλ’ ‘εἰκὸς’ τοῦ λόγου καὶ πλαττόμενον, ἢ πρὸς τὸν κλῆρον ὡς ‘εἰκῆ’ καὶ κατὰ τύχην γινόμενον; ἀεὶ μὲν γὰρ ἅπτεται τῶν τριῶν αἰτιῶν, ἅτε δὴ πρῶτος ἢ μάλιστα συνιδών, ὅπη τὸ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην τῷ κατὰ τύχην αὖθίς τε τὸ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν ἑκατέρῳ καὶ συναμφοτέροις ἐπιμίγνυσθαι καὶ συμπλέκεσθαι πέφυκε. νῦν δὲ θαυμαστῶς, ἣν ἔχει δύναμιν ‹ἐν› τοῖς ἡμετέροις [d] πράγμασιν ἕκαστον, ὑποδεδήλωκεν, τὴν μὲν αἵρεσιν τῶν βίων τῷ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν ἀποδιδούς (ἀρετὴ γὰρ ἀδέσποτον καὶ κακία), τὸ δ’ εὖ βιοῦν τοὺς ὀρθῶς ἑλομένους καὶ τἀναντία τοὺς κακῶς εἱμαρμένης ἀνάγκῃ συνάπτων· αἱ δὲ τῶν κλήρων ἀτάκτως διασπειρομένων ἐπιπτώσεις τὴν τύχην παρεισάγουσιν καὶ τροφαῖς καὶ πολιτείαις, ὧν ἕκαστοι λαγχάνουσι, πολλὰ τῶν ἡμετέρων προκαταλαμβάνουσαν. ὅρα δή, μὴ τῶν κατὰ τύχην αἰτίαν ζητεῖν ἄλογόν ἐστιν· ἂν γὰρ ἔν τινι λόγῳ φαίνηται γεγονὼς ὁ κλῆρος, οὐκέτι γίνεται κατὰ τύχην οὐδ’ αὐτομάτως ἀλλ’ ἔκ τινος εἱμαρμένης καὶ προνοίας.’

[e] Ἔτι δὲ τοῦ Λαμπρίου λέγοντος ὁ γραμματικὸς ἤδη Μᾶρκος ἐδόκει τι συλλογίζεσθαι καὶ διαριθμεῖν πρὸς αὑτόν· ἔπειτα παυσαμένου ‘τῶν Ὁμηρικῶν’ ‹ἔφη ‘ψυχῶν›, ὅσας ἐν Νεκυίᾳ κατωνόμακεν, ἡ μὲν Ἐλπήνορος οὔπω καταμεμιγμένη ταῖς ‹ἐν› Ἅιδου διὰ τὸ μὴ τεθάφθαι τὸν νεκρὸν ὥσπερ ἐν μεθορίοις πλανᾶται· τὴν δὲ Τειρεσίου ταῖς ἄλλαις οὐκ ἄξιον δήπου συγκαταριθμεῖν,

‘ᾧ καὶ τεθνειῶτι νόον πόρε Περσεφόνεια

οἴῳ πεπνῦσθαι’ (κ 494)

καὶ διαλέγεσθαι καὶ ξυνιέναι τῶν ζώντων, πρὶν ἢ πιεῖν [f] τοῦ αἵματος. ἂν οὖν ταύτας ὑπεξελόμενος, ὦ Λαμπρία, τὰς ἄλλας διαριθμῇς, αὐτὸ συμβαίνει, τὴν Αἴαντος εἰκοστὴν εἰς ὄψιν ἀφῖχθαι τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως· καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο παίζειν τὸν Πλάτωνα τῇ Ὁμηρικῇ Νεκυίᾳ προσαναχρωννύμενον.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ϛ

Τί αἰνίττεται ὁ περὶ τῆς ἥττης τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος μῦθος· ἐν ᾧ καὶ διὰ τί τὴν δευτέραν Ἀθηναῖοι τοῦ Βοηδρομιῶνος ἐξαιροῦσιν

[741] [a] Θορυβησάντων δὲ πάντων, Μενέφυλος ὁ Περιπατητικὸς προσαγορεύσας τὸν Ὕλαν ‘ὁρᾷς’ εἶπεν ‘ὡς οὐκ ἦν τὸ ἐρώτημα χλευασμὸς οὐδ’ ὕβρις· ἀλλ’ ἀφείς, ὦ μακάριε, τὸν δυστράπελον Αἴαντα καὶ δυσώνυμον, ὥς φησι Σοφοκλῆς (Ai. 914), γενοῦ μετὰ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος, ὃν αὐτὸς εἴωθας ἱστορεῖν ἡμῖν ἡττώμενον πολλάκις, ἐνταῦθα μὲν ὑπ’ Ἀθηνᾶς ἐν Δελφοῖς δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἐν Ἄργει δ’ ὑπὸ τῆς Ἥρας ἐν Αἰγίνῃ δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Διὸς ἐν Νάξῳ δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Διονύσου, πρᾶον δὲ πανταχοῦ καὶ ἀμήνιτον ὄντα περὶ τὰς δυσημερίας· ἐνταῦθα γοῦν καὶ νεὼ [b] κοινωνεῖ μετὰ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς, ἐν ᾧ καὶ βωμός ἐστιν Λήθης ἱδρυμένος.’ καὶ ὁ Ὕλας ὥσπερ ἡδίων γενόμενος ‘ἐκεῖνο δέ σ’’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ Μενέφυλε, λέληθεν, ὅτι καὶ τὴν δευτέραν τοῦ Βοηδρομιῶνος ἡμέραν ἐξαιροῦμεν οὐ πρὸς τὴν σελήνην, ἀλλ’ ὅτι ταύτῃ δοκοῦσιν ἐρίσαι περὶ τῆς χώρας οἱ θεοί.’ ‘παπαί’ εἶπεν ὁ Λαμπρίας, ‘ὅσῳ τοῦ Θρασυβούλου γέγονεν Ποσειδῶν πολιτικώτερος, εἰ μὴ κρατῶν ὡς ἐκεῖνος, ἀλλ’ ἡττώ’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ζ

Τίς αἰτία τῆς εἰς τριάδα διαιρέσεως τῶν μελῶν

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Η

Τίνι διαφέρει τὰ ἐμμελῆ διαστήματα τῶν συμφώνων

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Θ

Τίς αἰτία συμφωνήσεως· ἐν ᾧ καὶ διὰ τί, τῶν συμφώνων ὁμοῦ κρουομένων, τοῦ βαρυτέρου γίνεται τὸ μέλος

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ Ι

Διὰ τί, τῶν ἐκλειπτικῶν περιόδων ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης ἰσαρίθμων οὐσῶν, ἡ σελήνη φαίνεται πλεονάκις ἐκλείπουσα τοῦ ἡλίου

[c]

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ ΙΑ

Περὶ τοῦ μὴ τοὺς αὐτοὺς διαμένειν ἡμᾶς, ἀεὶ τῆς οὐσίας ῥεούσης

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ ΙΒ

Πότερόν ἐστι πιθανώτερον τὸ ἀρτίους εἶναι τοὺς σύμπαντας ἀστέρας ἢ περιττούς

ὅρκοις δ’ ἄνδρας ἐξαπατητέον;’ καὶ ὁ Γλαυκίας ‘ἐγὼ μέν’ ἔφη ‘κατὰ Πολυκράτους ἀκήκοα τοῦ τυράννου λεγόμενον τὸν λόγον τοῦτον· εἰκὸς δὲ καὶ καθ’ ἑτέρων λέγεσθαι· σὺ δὲ πρὸς τί τοῦτ’ ἐρωτᾷς;’ ‘ὅτι νὴ Δί’’ ὁ Σῶσπις ἔφη ‘τοὺς μὲν παῖδας ἀστραγάλοις ὁρῶ τοὺς δ’ Ἀκαδημαϊκοὺς λόγοις ἀρτιάζοντας· οὐδὲν γὰρ οἱ τοιοῦτοι στοχασμοὶ διαφέρουσιν τῶν ἐρωτώντων, πότερον ἄρτια τῇ χειρὶ συνειληφότες ἢ περιττὰ προτείνουσιν.’ ἐπαναστὰς οὖν ὁ Πρωτογένης καί με καλέσας ἐξ ὀνόματος ‘τί παθόντες’ εἶπεν ‘τοὺς ῥήτορας τούτους τρυφᾶν ἐῶμεν, ἑτέρων καταγελῶντας, αὐτοὺς δὲ μηδὲν ἐρωτωμένους μηδὲ συμβολὰς λόγων τιθέντας; εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία φήσουσι μηδὲν αὐτοῖς μετεῖναι [d] τῆς ἐν οἴνῳ κοινωνίας, Δημοσθένους ἐπαινέταις καὶ ζηλωταῖς οὖσιν, ἀνδρὸς ἐν ἅπαντι τῷ βίῳ μηδέποτε πιόντος οἶνον.’ ‘οὐκ αἴτιον’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘τοῦτο τούτων, ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς οὐδὲν αὐτοὺς ἠρωτήκαμεν· εἰ δὲ μή τι σὺ χρησιμώτερον ἔχεις, ἐγώ μοι δοκῶ προβαλεῖν αὐτοῖς ἐκ τῶν Ὁμήρου ῥητορικῶν θέσεων μίαν ἀντινομικήν.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ ΙΓ

Περὶ τοῦ ἐν τῇ τρίτῃ ῥαψῳδίᾳ τῆς Ἰλιάδος ἀντινομικοῦ ζητήματος

‘Τίν’’ ἔφη ‘ταύτην;’ ‘ἐγώ σοι φράσω’ εἶπον ‘ἅμα [e] καὶ τούτοις προβάλλων· διὸ τὸν νοῦν ἤδη προσεχέτωσαν. ὁ γὰρ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς δήπου πεποίηται τὴν πρόκλησιν οὕτως· (Γ 69)

‘αὐτὰρ ἔμ’ ἐν μέσσῳ καὶ ἀρηίφιλον Μενέλαον

συμβάλετ’ ἀμφ’ Ἑλένῃ καὶ κτήμασι πᾶσι μάχεσθαι.

ὁππότερος δέ κε νικήσῃ κρείσσων τε γένηται,

κτήμαθ’ ἑλὼν εὖ πάντα γυναῖκά τε οἴκαδ’ ἀγέσθω·’

καὶ πάλιν ὁ Ἕκτωρ ἀναγορεύων καὶ τιθεὶς εἰς μέσον πᾶσι τὴν πρόκλησιν αὐτοῦ μονονουχὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν κέχρηται· (Γ 8891. 255)

‘ἄλλους μὲν κέλεται Τρῶας καὶ πάντας Ἀχαιοὺς

[f] τεύχεα κάλ’ ἀποθέσθαι ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ,

αὐτὸν δ’ ἐν μέσσῳ καὶ ἀρηίφιλον Μενέλαον

‹οἴους ἀμφ’ Ἑλένῃ καὶ› κτήμασι πᾶσι μάχεσθαι.

τῷ δέ κε νικήσαντι γυνὴ καὶ κτήμαθ’ ἕποιτο.’

δεξαμένου δὲ τοῦ Μενελάου, ποιοῦνται τὰς συνθήκας ἐνόρκους, ἐξάρχει δ’ ὁ Ἀγαμέμνων· (Γ 281 s. 284. 72)

[742] [a] ‘εἰ μέν κεν Μενέλαον Ἀλέξανδρος καταπέφνῃ,

αὐτὸς ἔπειθ’ Ἑλένην ἀγέτω καὶ κτήματα πάντα.

εἰ δέ κ’ Ἀλέξανδρον κτείνῃ ξανθὸς Μενέλαος,

κτήμαθ’ ἑλὼν εὖ πάντα γυναῖκά τε οἴκαδ’ ἀγέσθω.’

ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ἐνίκησεν μὲν οὐκ ἀνεῖλεν δ’ ὁ Μενέλαος, μεταλαβόντες ἑκάτεροι τὴν ἀξίωσιν ἰσχυρίζονται τοῖς τῶν πολεμίων, οἱ μὲν ὡς νενικημένου τοῦ Πάριδος ἀπαιτοῦντες, οἱ δ’ ὡς μὴ τεθνηκότος οὐκ ἀποδιδόντες. πῶς οὖν’ ἔφην ‘τὴν δίκην ταύτην ‘ἰθύντατα εἴποι’ (Σ 508) καὶ διαιτήσειεν τὴν ἀντινομίαν, οὐ φιλοσόφων οὐδὲ γραμματικῶν, [b] ἀλλὰ ῥητόρων ἔργον ἐστὶ φιλογραμματούντων ὥσπερ ὑμεῖς καὶ φιλοσοφούντων.’

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Σῶσπις ἔφη κυριώτερον εἶναι τὸν τοῦ προκεκλημένου λόγον, ὥσπερ νόμον· ‘ἐκεῖνος γὰρ ἐφ’ οἷς διαγωνιοῦνται κατήγγειλεν, οἱ δὲ δεξάμενοι καὶ ὑπακούσαντες οὐκέτι κύριοι προστιθέντες. ἡ δὲ πρόκλησις οὐ περὶ φόνου καὶ θανάτου γέγονεν, ἀλλὰ περὶ νίκης καὶ ἥττης· καὶ μάλα δικαίως. ἔδει γὰρ τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ κρείττονος εἶναι, κρείττων δ’ ὁ νικῶν, ἀποθνήσκειν δὲ πολλάκις συμβαίνει καὶ ἀγαθοῖς ὑπὸ κακῶν, ὡς ὕστερον Ἀχιλλεὺς ἀπέθανεν τοξευθεὶς ὑπὸ Πάριδος· καὶ οὐκ ἂν οἶμαι φαίημεν Ἀχιλλέως ἧτταν γεγονέναι τὸν θάνατον οὐδὲ νίκην [c] ἀλλ’ ἄδικον εὐτυχίαν τοῦ βάλλοντος. ἀλλ’ ὁ Ἕκτωρ ἥττητο καὶ πρὶν ἀποθνήσκειν, μὴ δεξάμενος ἀλλὰ δείσας καὶ φυγὼν ἐπερχομένου τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως· ὁ γὰρ ἀπειπάμενος καὶ φυγὼν ἧτταν ἀπροφάσιστον ἥττηται καὶ συγκεχώρηκε κρείττονα τὸν ἀντίπαλον εἶναι. διὸ πρῶτον μὲν ἡ Ἶρις ἐξαγγέλλουσα τῇ Ἑλένῃ φησί (Γ 137)

‘μακρῇς ἐγχείῃσι μαχήσονται περὶ σεῖο·

τῷ δέ κε νικήσαντι φίλη κεκλήσῃ ἄκοιτις·’

ἔπειθ’ ὁ Ζεὺς τῷ Μενελάῳ τῆς μάχης τὸ βραβεῖον ἀπέδωκεν εἰπών (Γ 457, cf. Δ 13)

‘νίκη μὲν δὴ φαίνετ’ ἀρηιφίλου Μενελάου.’

γελοῖον γάρ, εἰ τὸν μὲν Ποδῆν ἐνίκησεν (Ρ 575) πόρρωθεν [d] ἀκοντίσας μὴ προσδοκήσαντα μηδὲ φυλαξάμενον, τοῦ δ’ ἀπειπαμένου καὶ δραπετεύσαντος καὶ καταδύντος εἰς τοὺς κόλπους τῆς γυναικὸς ἐσκυλευμένου ζῶντος οὐκ ἄξιος ἦν τὰ νικητήρια φέρεσθαι, κατὰ τὴν αὐτοῦ πρόκλησιν ἐκείνου κρείττων φανεὶς καὶ περιγενόμενος.’

Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Γλαυκίας ἔφη πρῶτον μὲν ἔν τε δόγμασι καὶ νόμοις ἔν τε συνθήκαις καὶ ὁμολογίαις κυριώτερα τὰ δεύτερα νομίζεσθαι καὶ βεβαιότερα τῶν πρώτων· ‘δεύτεραι δ’ ἦσαν αἱ δι’ Ἀγαμέμνονος ὁμολογίαι τέλος ἔχουσαι θάνατον οὐχὶ ἧτταν τοῦ κρατηθέντος. ἔπειτ’ ἐκεῖναι μὲν λόγοις, αὗται δὲ καὶ μεθ’ ὅρκων εἵποντο καὶ [e] προσῆσαν ἀραὶ τοῖς παραβαίνουσιν, οὐχ ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς ἀλλὰ πάντων ἀποδεχομένων καὶ συνομολογούντων· ὥστε ταύτας γεγονέναι κυρίως ὁμολογίας, ἐκείνας δὲ μόνας προκλήσεις. μαρτυρεῖ δ’ ὁ Πρίαμος μετὰ τὰ ὅρκια τοῦ ἀγῶνος ἀπιὼν [καί] (Γ 308)

‘Ζεὺς μέν που τό γε οἶδε καὶ ἀθάνατοι θεοὶ ἄλλοι,

ὁπποτέρῳ θανάτοιο τέλος πεπρωμένον ἐστίν·’

ᾔδει γὰρ ἐπὶ τούτοις τὰς ὁμολογίας γεγενημένας· διὸ καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν ὁ Ἕκτωρ φησίν (Η 69)

‘ὅρκια μὲν Κρονίδης ὑψίζυγος οὐκ ἐτέλεσσεν.’

ἀτελὴς γὰρ ἔμεινεν ὁ ἀγὼν καὶ πέρας ἀναμφισβήτητον [f] οὐκ εἶχεν μηδετέρου πεσόντος. ὅθεν ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ μηδ’ ἀντινομικὸν γεγονέναι τὸ ζήτημα, ταῖς δευτέραις ὁμολογίαις τῶν πρώτων ἐμπεριεχομένων· ὁ γὰρ ἀποκτείνας νενίκηκεν, οὐ μὴν ὁ νικήσας ἔκτεινεν. συνελόντι δ’ εἰπεῖν, Ἀγαμέμνων οὐκ ἔλυσε τὴν τοῦ Ἕκτορος πρόκλησιν ἀλλ’ ἐσαφήνισεν, οὐδὲ μετέθηκεν ἀλλὰ προσέθηκεν τὸ [743] [a] κυριώτατον, ἐν τῷ κτεῖναι τὸ νικῆσαι θέμενος· αὕτη γάρ ἐστι νίκη παντελής, αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι προφάσεις καὶ ἀντιλογίας ἔχουσιν, ὡς ἡ παρὰ Μενελάου μήτε τρώσαντος μήτε διώξαντος. ὥσπερ οὖν ἐν ταῖς ἀληθιναῖς ἀντινομίαις οἱ δικασταὶ τῷ μηδὲν ἀμφισβητήσιμον ἔχοντι προστίθενται, τὸν ἀσαφέστερον ἐάσαντες, οὕτως ἐνταῦθα τὴν ἀπροφάσιστον καὶ γνώριμον τέλος ἄγουσαν ὁμολογίαν βεβαιοτέραν χρὴ καὶ κυριωτέραν νομίζειν. ὃ δὲ μέγιστόν ἐστιν, αὐτὸς ὁ δοκῶν κρατεῖν, οὐκ ἀποστὰς φυγόντος οὐδὲ παυσάμενος, ἀλλὰ πανταχόσε ‘φοιτῶν ἀν’ ὅμιλον’

‘εἴ που ἐσαθρήσειεν Ἀλέξανδρον θεοειδέα,’ (Γ 450)

[b] μεμαρτύρηκεν ἄκυρον εἶναι καὶ ἀτελῆ ‹τὴν› νίκην, ἐκείνου διαπεφευγότος· οὐδ’ ἠμνημόνει τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ ‹δι›ειρημένων· (Γ 101)

‘ἡμέων δ’ ὁπποτέρῳ θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα τέτυκται,

τεθναίη, ἄλλοι δὲ διακρινθεῖτε τάχιστα.’

διὸ ζητεῖν μὲν ἀναγκαῖον ἦν αὐτῷ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον, ὅπως ἀποκτείνας συντελέσῃ τὸ τοῦ ἀγῶνος ἔργον, μὴ κτείνας δὲ μηδὲ λαβὼν οὐ δικαίως ἀπῄτει τὸ νικητήριον. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνίκησεν, εἰ δεῖ τεκμήρασθαι τοῖς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λεγομένοις, ἐγκαλοῦντος τῷ Διὶ καὶ τὰς ἀποτεύξεις ὀδυρομένου· (Γ 365)

‘Ζεῦ πάτερ, οὔ τις σεῖο θεῶν ὀλοώτερος ἄλλος·

[c] ἦ τ’ ἐφάμην τίσασθαι Ἀλέξανδρον κακότητος,

νῦν δέ μοι ἐν χείρεσσιν ἄγη ξίφος, ἐκ δέ μοι ἔγχος

ἠίχθη παλάμηφιν ἐτώσιον, οὐδ’ ἔβαλόν μιν·’

αὐτὸς γὰρ ὁμολογεῖ μηδὲν εἶναι τὸ διακόψαι τὸ ἀσπίδιον καὶ λαβεῖν ἀπορρυὲν τὸ κράνος, εἰ μὴ βάλοι μηδ’ ἀποκτείνειε τὸν πολέμιον.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ ΙΔ

Περὶ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τῶν Μουσῶν ὅσα λέγεται μὴ κοινῶς

Ἐκ τούτου σπονδὰς ἐποιησάμεθα ταῖς Μούσαις, καὶ τῷ Μουσηγέτῃ [Ἀπόλλωνι] παιανίσαντες συνῄσαμεν τῷ Ἐράτωνι πρὸς τὴν λύραν ἐκ τῶν Ἡσιόδου (Th. 53 ss.) τὰ περὶ τὴν τῶν Μουσῶν γένεσιν. μετὰ δὲ τὴν ᾠδὴν Ἡρώδης [d] ὁ ῥήτωρ ‘ἀκούετ’’ ἔφη ‘ὑμεῖς οἱ τὴν Καλλιόπην ἀποσπῶντες ἡμῶν, ὡς τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν αὐτὴν παρεῖναί φησιν (Th. 80), οὐκ ἀναλύουσι δήπου συλλογισμοὺς οὐδ’ ἐρωτῶσι μεταλλάττοντας, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα πράττουσιν ἃ ῥητόρων ἐστὶ καὶ πολιτικῶν ἔργα. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἥ τε Κλειὼ τὸ ἐγκωμιαστικὸν προσάγεται· ‘κλέα’ γὰρ ἐκάλουν τοὺς ἐπαίνους· ἥ τε Πολύμνια τὸ ἱστορικόν· ἔστι γὰρ μνήμη πολλῶν· ἐνιαχοῦ δὲ καὶ πάσας, ὥσπερ ἐν Χίῳ, τὰς Μούσας Μνείας καλεῖσθαι λέγουσιν. ἐγὼ δὲ μεταποιοῦμαί τι καὶ τῆ‹ς Εὐ›τέρπης, εἴπερ, ὥς φησι Χρύσιππος (St. V. Fr. II 1099), αὕτη τὸ περὶ τὰς ὁμιλίας ἐπιτερπὲς εἴληχε καὶ κεχαρισμένον· ὁμιλητικὸς γὰρ οὐδὲν [e] ἧττον ἢ δικανικὸς ὁ ῥήτωρ καὶ συμβουλευτικός· αἱ γὰρ †ἕξεις ἔχουσι καὶ εὐμενείας καὶ συνηγορίας καὶ ἀπολογίας· πλείστῳ δὲ τῷ ἐπαινεῖν χρώμεθα καὶ τῷ ψέγειν ἐν τούτοις, οὐ φαύλων οὐδὲ μικρῶν τυγχάνοντες, ἂν τεχνικῶς τοῦτο πράττωμεν, ἂν δ’ ἀπείρως καὶ ἀτέχνως, ἀστοχοῦντες· τὸ γάρ

‘ὦ πόποι, ὡς ὅδε πᾶσι φίλος καὶ τίμιός ἐστιν

ἀνθρώποις’ (κ 38)

* * * δὲ μᾶλλον, ὡς τὸ περὶ τὰς ὁμιλίας εὐάρμοστον ἔχουσι, πειθὼ καὶ χάριν, οἶμαι προσήκειν.’

Καὶ ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ‘οὐκ ἄξιον’ ἔφη ‘σοι νεμεσᾶν, ὦ Ἡρώδη, καὶ ‘παχείῃ’ χειρὶ τῶν Μουσῶν ἐπιδραττομένῳ· κοινὰ γὰρ τὰ φίλων, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πολλὰς ἐγέννησε Μούσας ὁ Ζεύς, ὅπως ᾖ πᾶσιν ἀρύσασθαι τῶν καλῶν [f] ἀφθόνως· οὔτε γὰρ κυνηγίας πάντες οὔτε στρατείας οὔτε ναυτιλίας οὔτε βαναυσουργίας, παιδείας δὲ καὶ λόγου δεόμεθα πάντες (Simon. fr. 5, 17 II p. 65 D.)

‘εὐρυεδοῦς ὅσοι καρπὸν αἰνύμεθα χθονός’·

ὅθεν Ἀθηνᾶν μίαν καὶ Ἄρτεμιν καὶ Ἥφαιστον ἕνα, Μούσας δὲ πολλὰς ἐποίησεν. [744] [a] ὅ τι δ’ ἐννέα καὶ οὐκ ἐλάττους οὐδὲ πλείους, ἆρ’ ἂν ἡμῖν φράσειας; οἶμαι δέ σε πεφροντικέναι φιλόμουσον οὕτω καὶ πολύμουσον ὄντα.’ ‘τί δὲ τοῦτο σοφόν;’ εἶπεν ὁ Ἡρώδης· ‘πᾶσι γὰρ διὰ στόματός ἐστι καὶ πάσαις ὑμνούμενος ‹ὁ› τῆς ἐννεάδος ἀριθμός, ὡς πρῶτος ἀπὸ πρώτου περισσοῦ τετράγωνος ὢν καὶ περισσάκις περισσός, ἅτε δὴ τὴν διανομὴν εἰς τρεῖς ἴσους [b] λαμβάνων περισσούς.’ καὶ ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ἐπιμειδιάσας ‘ἀνδρικῶς ταυτὶ διεμνημόνευσας· καὶ πρόσθες αὐτοῖς ἔτι τοσοῦτον, τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἐκ δυεῖν τῶν πρώτων ‹κύβων› συνηρμόσθαι μονάδος καὶ ὀγδοάδος, καὶ καθ’ ἑτέραν αὖ πάλιν σύνθεσιν ἐκ δυεῖν τριγώνων, τριάδος καὶ ἑξάδος, ὧν ἑκάτερος καὶ τέλειός ἐστιν. ἀλλὰ τί ταῦτα ταῖς Μούσαις μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ἄλλοις θεοῖς προσῆκεν, ὥστε Μούσας ἔχομεν ἐννέα, Δήμητρας δὲ καὶ Ἀθηνᾶς καὶ Ἀρτέμιδας οὐκ ἔχομεν; οὐ γὰρ δήπου καὶ σὲ πείθει τὸ Μούσας γεγονέναι τοσαύτας, ὅτι τοὔνομα τῆς μητρὸς αὐτῶν ἐκ τοσούτων γραμμάτων ἐστίν.’ γελάσαντος δὲ τοῦ Ἡρώδου καὶ σιωπῆς γενομένης, [c] προὔτρεπεν ἡμᾶς ἐπιχειρεῖν ὁ Ἀμμώνιος,

Εἶπεν οὖν ὁ ἀδελφός, ὅτι τρεῖς ᾔδεσαν οἱ παλαιοὶ Μούσας· ‘καὶ τούτου λέγειν ἀπόδειξιν ὀψιμαθές ἐστι καὶ ἄγροικον ἐν τοσούτοις καὶ τοιούτοις ἀνδράσιν. αἰτία δ’ οὐχ ὡς ἔνιοι λέγουσι τὰ μελῳδούμενα γένη, τὸ διάτονον καὶ τὸ χρωματικὸν καὶ τὸ ἐναρμόνιον· οὐδ’ οἱ τὰ διαστήματα παρέχοντες ὅροι, νήτη καὶ μέση καὶ ὑπάτη· καίτοι Δελφοί γε τὰς Μούσας οὕτως ὠνόμαζον, οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἑνὶ μαθήματι, μᾶλλον δὲ μορίῳ μαθήματος ἑνὸς τοῦ μουσικοῦ, τῷ γ’ ἁρμονικῷ, προστιθέντες. ἁπάσας δ’ ὡς ἐγὼ νομίζω [d] τὰς διὰ λόγου περαινομένας ἐπιστήμας καὶ τέχνας οἱ παλαιοὶ καταμαθόντες ἐν τρισὶ γένεσιν οὔσας, τῷ φιλοσόφῳ καὶ τῷ ῥητορικῷ καὶ τῷ μαθηματικῷ, τριῶν ἐποιοῦντο δῶρα καὶ χάριτας θεῶν ἃς Μούσας ὠνόμαζον. ὕστερον δὲ καὶ καθ’ Ἡσίοδον ἤδη μᾶλλον ἐκκαλυπτομένων τῶν δυνάμεων, διαιροῦντες εἰς μέρη καὶ εἴδη τρεῖς πάλιν ἑκάστην ἔχουσαν ἐν αὑτῇ διαφορὰς ἑώρων· ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῷ μαθηματικῷ τὸ περὶ μουσικήν ἐστιν καὶ τὸ περὶ ἀριθμητικὴν καὶ τὸ περὶ γεωμετρίαν, ἐν δὲ τῷ φιλοσόφῳ τὸ λογικὸν καὶ τὸ ἠθικὸν καὶ τὸ φυσικόν, ἐν δὲ τῷ ῥητορικῷ τὸ ἐγκωμιαστικὸν πρῶτον γεγονέναι λέγουσιν δεύτερον δὲ τὸ [e] συμβουλευτικὸν ἔσχατον δὲ τὸ δικανικόν. ὧν μηδὲν ἄθεον μηδ’ ἄμουσον εἶναι μηδ’ ἄμοιρον ἀρχῆς κρείττονος καὶ ἡγεμονίας ἀξιοῦντες, εἰκότως ἰσαρίθμους τὰς Μούσας οὐκ ἐποίησαν ἀλλ’ οὔσας ἀνεῦρον. ὥσπερ οὖν τὰ ἐννέα διαίρεσιν εἰς τρεῖς λαμβάνει τριάδας, ὧν ἑκάστη πάλιν εἰς μονάδας διαιρεῖται τοσαύτας, οὕτως ἓν μέν ἐστι καὶ κοινὸν ἡ τοῦ λόγου περὶ τὸ κύριον ὀρθότης, νενέμηνται δὲ σύντρεις τῶν τριῶν γενῶν ἕκαστον, εἶτα πάλιν αὖ μοναδικῶς ἑκάστη μίαν περιέπει λαχοῦσα καὶ κοσμεῖ δύναμιν. οὐ γὰρ οἶμαι τοὺς ποιηματικοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἀστρολογικοὺς ἐγκαλεῖν ἡμῖν ὡς [f] παραλείπουσι τὰς τέχνας αὐτῶν, εἰδότας οὐδὲν ἧττον ἡμῶν ἀστρολογίαν γεωμετρίᾳ ποιητικὴν δὲ μουσικῇ συνεπομένην.’

Ὡς δὲ ταῦτ’ ἐρρήθη, τοῦ ἰατροῦ Τρύφωνος εἰπόντος ‘τῇ δ’ ἡμετέρᾳ τέχνῃ τί παθὼν τὸ Μουσεῖον ἀποκέκλεικας;’ ὑπολαβὼν Διονύσιος ὁ Μελιτεύς ‘πολλούς’ ἔφη ‘συμπαρακαλεῖς ἐπὶ τὴν κατηγορίαν· καὶ γὰρ ἡμεῖς οἱ γεωργοὶ [745] [a] τὴν Θάλειαν οἰκειούμεθα, φυτῶν καὶ σπερμάτων εὐθαλούντων καὶ βλαστανόντων ἐπιμέλειαν αὐτῇ καὶ σωτηρίαν ἀποδιδόντες’. ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ δίκαι’’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘ποιεῖτε· καὶ γὰρ ὑμῖν ἔστι Δημήτηρ ἀνησιδώρα καὶ Διόνυσος ‘δενδρέων νομὸν πολυγαθὴς αὐξάνων, ἁγνὸν φέγγος ὀπώρας’, ὡς Πίνδαρός (fr. 153) φησιν, καὶ τοὺς ἰατροὺς Ἀσκληπιὸν ἔχοντας ἴσμεν ἡγεμόνα καὶ Ἀπόλλωνι Παιᾶνι χρωμένους πάντα, Μουσηγέτῃ μηθέν· πάντες γὰρ ‘ἄνθρωποι θεῶν χατέουσι’ καθ’ Ὅμηρον (γ 48), οὐ πάντες δὲ πάντων. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο θαυμάζω, πῶς ἔλαθε Λαμπρίαν τὸ λεγόμενον ὑπὸ Δελφῶν. λέγουσι γὰρ οὐ φθόγγων οὐδὲ [b] χορδῶν ἐπωνύμους γεγονέναι τὰς Μούσας παρ’ αὐτοῖς, ἀλλὰ τοῦ κόσμου τριχῇ πάντα νενεμημένου πρώτην μὲν εἶναι τὴν τῶν ἀπλανῶν μερίδα, δευτέραν δὲ τὴν τῶν πλανωμένων, ἐσχάτην δὲ τὴν τῶν ὑπὸ σελήνην, συνηρτῆσθαι δὲ πάσας καὶ συντετάχθαι κατὰ λόγους ἐναρμονίους, ὧν ἑκάστης φύλακα Μοῦσαν εἶναι, τῆς μὲν πρώτης Ὑπάτην, τῆς δ’ ἐσχάτης Νεάτην, Μέσην δὲ τῆς μεταξύ, συνέχουσαν ἅμα καὶ συνεπιστρέφουσαν, ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστι, τὰ θνητὰ τοῖς θείοις καὶ τὰ περίγεια τοῖς οὐρανίοις· ὡς καὶ Πλάτων (Rep. 617b3c) ᾐνίξατο τοῖς τῶν Μοιρῶν ὀνόμασιν τὴν [c] μὲν Ἄτροπον ‹τὴν δὲ Κλωθὼ› τὴν δὲ Λάχεσιν προσαγορεύσας· ἐπεὶ ταῖς γε τῶν ὀκτὼ σφαιρῶν περιφοραῖς Σειρῆνας οὐ Μούσας ἰσαρίθμους ἐπέστησεν.’

Ὑπολαβὼν δὲ Μενέφυλος ὁ Περιπατητικός ‘τὰ μὲν Δελφῶν’ εἶπεν ‘ἁμωσγέπως μετέχει πιθανότητος· ὁ δὲ Πλάτων ἄτοπος, ταῖς μὲν ἀιδίοις καὶ θείαις περιφοραῖς ἀντὶ τῶν Μουσῶν τὰς Σειρῆνας ἐνιδρύων, οὐ πάνυ φιλανθρώπους οὐδὲ χρηστὰς δαίμονας, τὰς δὲ Μούσας ἢ παραλείπων παντάπασιν ἢ τοῖς τῶν Μοιρῶν ὀνόμασι προσαγορεύων καὶ καλῶν θυγατέρας Ἀνάγκης· ἄμουσον γὰρ ἡ Ἀνάγκη μουσικὸν δ’ ἡ Πειθώ, καὶ Μούσαις †φιλοδαμοῦσα [d] πολὺ μᾶλλον οἶμαι τῆς Ἐμπεδοκλέους (fr. 116) Χάριτος ‘στυγέει δύστλητον Ἀνάγκην’.’ ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ ὁ Ἀμμώνιος ἔφη ‘τὴν ἐν ἡμῖν ἀκούσιον αἰτίαν καὶ ἀπροαίρετον· ἡ δ’ ἐν θεοῖς ἀνάγκη δύστλητος οὔκ ἐστ’, οἶμαι δ’ ‹οὐδὲ› δυσπειθὴς οὐδὲ βιαία, πλὴν τοῖς κακοῖς, ὥς ἐστι νόμος ἐν πόλει τοῖς βελτίστοις ‹ὡς› τὸ βέλτιστον αὐτῆς ἀπαρέκτρεπτον καὶ ἀπαράβατον οὐ τῷ [μὲν] ἀδυνάτῳ τῷ δ’ ἀβουλήτῳ τῆς μεταβολῆς. αἵ γε μὲν δὴ Ὁμήρου Σειρῆνες οὐ κατὰ λόγον ἡμᾶς τῷ μύθῳ φοβοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖνος ὀρθῶς ᾐνίξατο τὴν τῆς μουσικῆς αὐτῶν δύναμιν οὐκ ἀπάνθρωπον οὐδ’ ὀλέθριον οὖσαν ἀλλὰ ταῖς ἐντεῦθεν [e] ἀπιούσαις ἐκεῖ ψυχαῖς, ὡς ἔοικε, καὶ πλανωμέναις μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν ἔρωτα πρὸς τὰ οὐράνια καὶ θεῖα λήθην δὲ τῶν θνητῶν ἐμποιοῦσαν κατέχειν καὶ κατᾴδειν θελγομένας, αἱ δ’ ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ἕπονται καὶ συμπεριπολοῦσιν. ἐνταῦθα δὲ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἀμυδρά τις οἷον ἠχὼ τῆς μουσικῆς ἐκείνης ἐξικνουμένη διὰ λόγων ἐκκαλεῖται καὶ ἀναμιμνήσκει τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν τότε· ‹τὰ δ’ ὦτα τῶν› μὲν πλείστων περιαλήλιπται καὶ καταπέπλασται σαρκίνοις ἐμφράγμασι καὶ πάθεσιν, οὐ κηρίνοις· ἣ δὲ ‹δι’› εὐφυΐαν αἰσθάνεται καὶ μνημονεύει, καὶ τῶν ἐμμανεστάτων ἐρώτων οὐδὲν ἀποδεῖ τὸ πάθος αὐτῆς, γλιχομένης καὶ ποθούσης [f] λῦσαί τε μὴ δυναμένης ἑαυτὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος. οὐ μὴν ἔγωγε παντάπασι συμφέρομαι τούτοις· ἀλλά μοι δοκεῖ Πλάτων (Rep. 616c ss.) ὡς ἀτράκτους καὶ ἠλακάτας τοὺς ἄξονας σφονδύλους δὲ τοὺς ἀστέρας, ἐξηλλαγμένως ἐνταῦθα καὶ τὰς Μούσας Σειρῆνας ὀνομάζειν ‘εἰρούσας’ τὰ θεῖα καὶ λεγούσας ἐν Ἅιδου, καθάπερ ‹ὁ› Σοφοκλέους (fr. 777) Ὀδυσσεύς φησι ‘Σειρῆνας εἰσαφικέσθαι

Φόρκου κόρας, θροοῦντε τοὺς Ἅιδου νόμους.’

[746] [a] Μοῦσαι δ’ εἰσὶν ὀκτὼ μὲν αἱ συμπεριπολοῦσαι ταῖς ὀκτὼ σφαίραις, μία δὲ τὸν περὶ γῆν εἴληχε τόπον. αἱ μὲν οὖν ὀκτὼ περιόδοις ἐφεστῶσαι τὴν τῶν πλανωμένων ἄστρων πρὸς τὰ ἀπλανῆ καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα συνέχουσι καὶ διασῴζουσιν ἁρμονίαν· μία δὲ τὸν μεταξὺ γῆς καὶ σελήνης τόπον ἐπισκοποῦσα καὶ περιπολοῦσα, τοῖς θνητοῖς, ὅσον αἰσθάνεσθαι καὶ δέχεσθαι πέφυκε χαρίτων καὶ ῥυθμοῦ καὶ ἁρμονίας, ἐνδίδωσι διὰ λόγου καὶ ᾠδῆς, πειθὼ πολιτικῆς καὶ κοινωνητικῆς συνεργὸν ἐπάγουσα παραμυθουμένην καὶ κηλοῦσαν ἡμῶν τὸ ταραχῶδες καὶ τὸ πλανώμενον ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀνοδίας ἀνακαλουμένην ἐπιεικῶς καὶ καθιστᾶσαν.

[b] ‘ὅσσα δὲ μὴ πεφίληκεν

Ζεύς, ἀτύζονται βοὰν

Πιερίδων ἀίοντα’

κατὰ Πίνδαρον (Pyth. I 13).’

Τούτοις ἐπιφωνήσαντος τοῦ Ἀμμωνίου τὰ τοῦ Ξενοφάνους ὥσπερ εἰώθει (fr. 35)

‘ταῦτα δεδοξάσθω μὲν ἐοικότα τοῖς ἐτύμοισι’

καὶ παρακαλοῦντος ἀποφαίνεσθαι καὶ λέγειν τὸ δοκοῦν ἕκαστον, ἐγὼ μικρὸν διασιωπήσας ἔφην ὅτι ‘καὶ Πλάτων (Cratyl. 396 ss. al.) αὐτὸς ὥσπερ ἴχνεσι τοῖς ὀνόμασι τῶν θεῶν ἀνευρίσκειν οἴεται τὰς δυνάμεις, καὶ ἡμεῖς ὁμοίως μὲν τιθῶμεν ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ περὶ τὰ οὐράνια μίαν τῶν Μουσῶν, ἣ Οὐρανία φαίνεται· καὶ εἰκὸς ἐκεῖνα μὴ πολλῆς μηδὲ ποικίλης κυβερνήσεως δεῖσθαι, μίαν ἔχοντα [c] καὶ ἁπλῆν αἴτιον φύσιν· ὅπου δὲ πολλαὶ πλημμέλειαι πολλαὶ δ’ ἀμετρίαι καὶ παραβάσεις, ἐνταῦθα τὰς ὀκτὼ μετοικιστέον, ἄλλην ἄλλο κακίας καὶ ἀναρμοστίας εἶδος ἐπανορθουμένας. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ βίου τὸ μὲν σπουδῇ τὸ δὲ παιδιᾷ μέρος †ἐστί, καὶ δεῖται τοῦ μουσικῶς καὶ μετρίως, τὸ μὲν σπουδάζον ἡμῶν ἥ τε Καλλιόπη καὶ ἡ Κλειὼ καὶ ἡ Θάλεια, τῆς περὶ θεοὺς ἐπιστήμης καὶ θέας ἡγεμὼν οὖσα, δόξουσιν ἐπιστρέφειν καὶ συγκατορθοῦν, αἱ δὲ λοιπαὶ τὸ μεταβάλλον ἐφ’ ἡδονὴν καὶ παιδιὰν ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας μὴ περιορᾶν ἀνιέμενον ἀκολάστως καὶ θηριωδῶς, ἀλλ’ ὀρχήσει καὶ ᾠδῇ καὶ χορείᾳ ῥυθμὸν ἐχούσῃ καὶ ἁρμονίᾳ [d] καὶ λόγῳ κεραννύμενον εὐσχημόνως καὶ κοσμίως ἐκδέχεσθαι καὶ παραπέμπειν. ἐγὼ μέντοι, τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐν ἑκάστῳ δύο πράξεων ἀπολείποντος ἀρχάς, τὴν μὲν ἔμφυτον ἐπιθυμίαν ἡδονῶν τὴν δ’ ἐπείσακτον δόξαν ἐφιεμένην τοῦ ἀρίστου, καὶ τὸ μὲν λόγον τὸ δὲ πάθος ἔστιν ὅτε καλοῦντος, ἑτέρας δ’ αὖ πάλιν τούτων ἑκατέρου διαφορὰς ἔχοντος, ἑκάστην ὁρῶ μεγάλης καὶ θείας ὡς ἀληθῶς παιδαγωγίας δεομένην αὐτίκα τοῦ λόγου τὸ μέν ἐστι πολιτικὸν καὶ βασιλικόν, ἐφ’ ᾧ τὴν Καλλιόπην τετάχθαι φησὶν ὁ Ἡσίοδος (Th. 80)· τὸ φιλότιμον δ’ ἡ Κλειὼ [e] μάλιστα κυδαίνειν καὶ συνεπιγαυροῦν εἴληχεν· ἡ δὲ Πολύμνια τοῦ φιλομαθοῦς ἐστι καὶ μνημονικοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς, διὸ καὶ Σικυώνιοι τῶν τριῶν Μουσῶν μίαν Πολυμάθειαν καλοῦσιν· Εὐτέρπῃ δὲ πᾶς ἄν τις ἀποδοίη τὸ θεωρητικὸν τῆς περὶ φύσιν ἀληθείας, οὔτε καθαρωτέρας οὔτε καλλίους ἑτέρῳ γένει παραλιπὼν εὐπαθείας καὶ τέρψεις. τῆς δ’ ἐπιθυμίας τὸ μὲν περὶ ἐδωδὴν καὶ πόσιν ἡ Θάλεια κοινωνητικὸν ποιεῖ καὶ συμποτικὸν ἐξ ‹ἀπ›ανθρώπου καὶ θηριώδους, διὸ τοὺς φιλοφρόνως καὶ ἱλαρῶς συνόντας ἀλλήλοις ἐν οἴνῳ ‘θαλιάζειν’ λέγομεν, οὐ τοὺς ὑβρίζοντας καὶ παροινοῦντας· ταῖς δὲ περὶ συνουσίαν σπουδαῖς ἡ Ἐρατὼ [f] παροῦσα μετὰ πειθοῦς [ὡς] λόγον ἐχούσης καὶ καιρὸν ἐξαιρεῖ καὶ κατασβέννυσι τὸ μανικὸν τῆς ἡδονῆς καὶ οἰστρῶδες, εἰς φιλίαν καὶ πίστιν οὐχ ὕβριν οὐδ’ ἀκολασίαν τελευτώσης. τὸ δὲ ‹δι’ ὤτων› καὶ ὀφθαλμῶν ἡδονῆς εἶδος, εἴτε τῷ λόγῳ μᾶλλον εἴτε τῷ πάθει προσῆκον εἴτε κοινὸν ἀμφοῖν ἐστιν, αἱ λοιπαὶ δύο, Μελπομένη καὶ Τερψιχόρη, [747] [a] παραλαβοῦσαι κοσμοῦσιν· ὥστε τὸ μὲν εὐφροσύνην μὴ κήλησιν εἶναι, τὸ δὲ μὴ γοητείαν ἀλλὰ τέρψιν.’

ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ ΙΕ

Ὅτι τρία μέρη τῆς ὀρχήσεως, φορὰ καὶ σχῆμα καὶ δεῖξις· καὶ τί ἕκαστον αὐτῶν, καὶ τίνα κοινὰ ποιητικῆς καὶ ὀρχηστικῆς

Ἐκ τούτου πυραμοῦντες ἐπήγοντο τοῖς παισὶ νικητήριον ὀρχήσεως· ἀπεδείχθη δὲ κριτὴς μετὰ Μενίσκου τοῦ [b] παιδοτρίβου Λαμπρίας ὁ ἀδελφός· ὠρχήσατο γὰρ πιθανῶς τὴν πυρρίχην καὶ χειρονομῶν ἐν ταῖς παλαίστραις ἐδόκει διαφέρειν τῶν παίδων. ὀρχουμένων δὲ πολλῶν προθυμότερον ἢ μουσικώτερον, δύο τοὺς εὐδοκίμους καὶ βουλομένους ἀνασῴζειν τὴν ἐμμέλειαν ἠξίουν τινὲς ὀρχεῖσθαι φορὰν παρὰ φοράν. ἐπεζήτησεν οὖν ὁ Θρασύβουλος, [Ἀμμωνίου] τί βούλεται τοὔνομα τῆς φορᾶς, καὶ παρέσχε τῷ Ἀμμωνίῳ περὶ τῶν μερῶν τῆς ὀρχήσεως πλείονα διελθεῖν.

Ἔφη δὲ τρί’ εἶναι, τὴν φορὰν καὶ τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὴν δεῖξιν. ‘ἡ γὰρ ὄρχησις ἔκ τε κινήσεων καὶ σχέσεων συνέστηκεν, [c] ὡς τὸ μέλος τῶν φθόγγων καὶ τῶν διαστημάτων· ἐνταῦθα δ’ αἱ μοναὶ πέρατα τῶν κινήσεών εἰσιν. φορὰς μὲν οὖν τὰς κινήσεις ὀνομάζουσι, σχήματα δὲ ‹τὰς› σχέσεις καὶ διαθέσεις, εἰς ἃς φερόμεναι τελευτῶσιν αἱ κινήσεις, ὅταν Ἀπόλλωνος ἢ Πανὸς ἤ τινος Βάκχης σχῆμα διαθέντες ἐπὶ τοῦ σώματος γραφικῶς τοῖς εἴδεσιν ἐπιμένωσι. τὸ δὲ τρίτον, ἡ δεῖξις, οὐ μιμητικόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ δηλωτικὸν ἀληθῶς τῶν ὑποκειμένων· ὡς γὰρ οἱ ποιηταὶ τοῖς κυρίοις ὀνόμασι δεικτικῶς χρῶνται, τὸν Ἀχιλλέα καὶ τὸν Ὀδυσσέα καὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν ὀνομάζοντες [d] ὡς ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν λέγονται, πρὸς δὲ τὰς ἐμφάσεις καὶ τὰς μιμήσεις ὀνοματοποιίαις χρῶνται καὶ μεταφοραῖς, ‘κελαρύζειν’ καὶ ‘καχλάζειν’ τὰ κλώμενα τῶν ῥευμάτων λέγοντες, καὶ τὰ βέλη φέρεσθαι ‘λιλαιόμενα χροὸς ἆσαι’ (Λ 574 al.), ‹καὶ› τὴν ἰσόρροπον μάχην ‘ἴσας ὑσμίνη κεφαλὰς ἔχεν’ (Λ 72), πολλὰς δὲ καὶ συνθέσεις τῶν ὀνομάτων κατὰ μέλη μιμητικῶς σχηματίζουσιν, ὡς Εὐριπίδης (fr. 985)

‘ὁ πετόμενος ἱερὸν ἀνὰ Διὸς αἰθέρα γοργοφόνος,’

καὶ περὶ τοῦ ἵππου Πίνδαρος (Ol. I 20)

‘ὅτε παρ’ Ἀλφεῷ σύτο δέμας

ἀκέντητον ἐν δρόμοισι παρέχων,’

καὶ Ὅμηρος ἐπὶ τῆς ἱπποδρομίας (Ψ 503)

[e] ‘ἅρματα δ’ αὖ χαλκῷ πεπυκασμένα κασσιτέρῳ τε

ἵπποις ὠκυπόδεσσιν ἐπέτρεχον’,

οὕτως ἐν ὀρχήσει τὸ μὲν σχῆμα μιμητικόν ἐστι μορφῆς καὶ ἰδέας, καὶ πάλιν ἡ φορὰ πάθους τινὸς ἐμφαντικὸν ἢ πράξεως ἢ δυνάμεως· ταῖς δὲ δείξεσι κυρίως αὐτὰ δηλοῦσι τὰ πράγματα, τὴν γῆν, τὸν οὐρανόν, αὐτοὺς τοὺς πλησίον· ὃ δὴ τάξει μέν τινι καὶ ἀριθμῷ γινόμενον ἔοικεν τοῖς ἐν ποιητικῇ κυρίοις ὀνόμασιν μετά τινος κόσμου καὶ λειότητος ἐκφερομένοις, ὡς τὰ τοιαῦτα (Hes. Th. 16).

‘καὶ Θέμιν αἰδοίην ἑλικοβλέφαρόν τ’ Ἀφροδίτην

Ἥρην τε χρυσοστέφανον καλήν τε Διώνην’,

καὶ (Hes. fr. `27] 7)

[f] ‘Ἕλληνος δ’ ἐγένοντο θεμιστοπόλοι βασιλῆες,

Δῶρός τε Ξοῦθός τε καὶ Αἴολος ἱππιοχάρμης·’

εἰ δὲ μή, τοῖς ἄγαν πεζοῖς καὶ κακομέτροις, ὡς τὰ τοιαῦτα (Tr. adesp. 400)·

‘ἐγένοντο τοῦ μὲν Ἡρακλῆς τοῦ δ’ Ἴφικλος·’

‘τῆσδε πατὴρ καὶ ἀνὴρ καὶ παῖς βασιλεῖς, καὶ ἀδελφοί,

[748] [a] καὶ πρόγονοι. κλῄζει δ’ Ἑλλὰς Ὀλυμπιάδα’·

τοιαῦτα γὰρ ἁμαρτάνεται καὶ περὶ τὴν ὄρχησιν ἐν ταῖς δείξεσιν, ἂν μὴ πιθανότητα μηδὲ χάριν μετ’ εὐπρεπείας καὶ ἀφελείας ἔχωσι. καὶ ὅλως’ ἔφη ‘μεταθετέον τὸ Σιμωνίδειον ἀπὸ τῆς ζωγραφίας ἐπὶ τὴν ὄρχησιν· σιωπῶσαν, καὶ φθεγγομένην ὄρχησιν [δὲ] πάλιν τὴν ποίησιν· †ὅθεν εἶπεν οὔτε γραφικὴν εἶναι ποιητικῆς οὔτε ποιητικὴν γραφ‹ικ›ῆς, οὐδὲ χρῶνται τὸ παράπαν ἀλλήλαις· ὀρχηστικῇ δὲ καὶ ποιητικῇ κοινωνία πᾶσα καὶ μέθεξις ἀλλήλων ἐστί, καὶ μάλιστα [μιμούμεναι] περὶ ‹τὸ› τῶν ὑπορχημάτων γένος ἓν ἔργον ἀμφότεραι τὴν διὰ τῶν [b] σχημάτων καὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων μίμησιν ἀποτελοῦσι. δόξειε δ’ ἂν ὥσπερ ἐν γραφικῇ τὰ μὲν ποιήματα ταῖς γραμμαῖς, ὑφ’ ὧν ὁρίζεται τὰ εἴδη . δηλοῖ δ’ ὁ μάλιστα κατωρθωκέναι δόξας ἐν ὑπορχήμασι καὶ γεγονέναι πιθανώτατος ἑαυτοῦ τὸ δεῖσθαι τὴν ἑτέραν τῆς ἑτέρας· τὸ γὰρ (Pind. fr. 107a)

‘Πελασγὸν ἵππον ἢ κύνα

Ἀμυκλαίαν ἀγωνίῳ

ἐλελιζόμενος ποδὶ μίμεο καμπύλον μέλος διώκων,’

†τὸν μὲν ‘οἷ’ ἀνὰ Δώτιον ἀνθεμόεν πεδίον

πέτεται θάνατον κεροέσσᾳ

εὑρέμεν ματεῖσ’ ἐλάφῳ

τὰν δ’ ἐπ’ αὐχένι στρέφοισαν [ἕτερον] κάρα πάντ’

[ἐπ’ οἶμον’

καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς μόνον οὐ †λειόθεν τὴν ἐν ὀρχήσει διάθεσιν [c] [τὰ ποιήματα] καὶ παρακαλεῖν τὼ χεῖρε καὶ τὼ πόδε, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλον ὥσπερ τισὶ μηρίνθοις ἕλκειν τὸ σῶμα τοῖς μέλεσι καὶ ἐντείνειν, τούτων [δὲ] λεγομένων καὶ ᾀδομένων ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν μὴ δυνάμενον. αὐτὸς γοῦν ἑαυτὸν οὐκ αἰσχύνεται περὶ τὴν ὄρχησιν οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τὴν ποίησιν ἐγκωμιάζων, ὅταν λέγῃ ῥῶσαι †νῦν (Pind. fr. 107b)

‘ἐλαφρὸν ὄρχημ’ ἀοιδᾷ ποδῶν μειγνύμεν·

Κρῆτα μὲν καλέουσι τρόπον.’

ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν οὕτως τὸ νῦν ἀπολέλαυκε τῆς κακομουσίας ὡς ἡ ὄρχησις. διὸ καὶ πέπονθεν ὃ φοβηθεὶς Ἴβυκος ἐποίησε (fr. 24. II p. 58 D)

‘δέδοικα μή τι παρὰ θεοῖς

ἀμπλακὼν τιμὰν πρὸς ἀνθρώπων ἀμείψω.’

[d] καὶ γὰρ αὕτη [καὶ] πάνδημόν τινα ποιητικὴν προσεταιρισαμένη τῆς δ’ οὐρανίας ἐκπεσοῦσ’ ἐκείνης, τῶν μὲν ἐμπλήκτων καὶ ἀνοήτων κρατεῖ θεάτρων, ὥσπερ τύραννος ὑπήκοον ἑαυτῇ πεποιημένη μουσικὴν ὀλίγου τὴν ἅπασαν, τὴν δὲ παρὰ τοῖς νοῦν ἔχουσι καὶ θείοις ἀνδράσιν ὡς ἀληθῶς τιμὴν ἀπολώλεκε.’

Ταῦτα σχεδόν, ὦ Σόσσιε Σενεκίων, τελευταῖα τῶν ἐν τοῖς Μουσείοις τότε παρ’ Ἀμμωνίῳ τῷ ἀγαθῷ φιλολογηθέντων.

Amatorius

ΕΡΩΤΙΚΟΣ

[748] Φ. Ἐν Ἑλικῶνι φής, ὦ Αὐτόβουλε, τοὺς περὶ Ἔρωτος λόγους γενέσθαι, οὓς εἴτε γραψάμενος εἴτε καταμνημονεύσας τῷ πολλάκις ἐπανερέσθαι τὸν πατέρα νυνὶ [f] μέλλεις ἡμῖν δεηθεῖσιν ἀπαγγέλλειν;

ΑΥ. Ἐν Ἑλικῶνι παρὰ ταῖς Μούσαις, ὦ Φλαουιανέ, τὰ Ἐρωτίδια Θεσπιέων ἀγόντων· ἄγουσι γὰρ ἀγῶνα πενταετηρικὸν ὥσπερ καὶ ταῖς Μούσαις καὶ τῷ Ἔρωτι φιλοτίμως πάνυ καὶ λαμπρῶς.

Φ. Οἶσθ’ οὖν ὃ σοῦ μέλλομεν δεῖσθαι πάντες οἱ πρὸς τὴν ἀκρόασιν ἥκοντες;

[749] [a] ΑΥ. Οὔκ, ἀλλ’ εἴσομαι λεγόντων.

Φ. Ἄφελε τοῦ λόγου τὸ νῦν ἔχον ἐποποιῶν τε λειμῶνας καὶ σκιὰς καὶ ἅμα κιττοῦ τε καὶ σμιλάκων διαδρομὰς καὶ ὅσ’ ἄλλα τοιούτων τόπων ἐπιλαβόμενοι γλίχονται τὸν Πλάτωνος (Phaedr. 229a. 230c) Ἰλισσὸν καὶ τὸν ἄγνον ἐκεῖνον καὶ τὴν ἠρέμα προσάντη πόαν πεφυκυῖαν προθυμότερον ἢ κάλλιον ἐπιγράφεσθαι.

ΑΥ. Τί δὲ δεῖται τοιούτων, ὦ ἄριστε Φλαουιανέ, προοιμίων ἡ διήγησις; εὐθὺς ἡ πρόφασις, ἐξ ἧς ὡρμήθησαν οἱ λόγοι, χορὸν αἰτεῖ τῷ πάθει καὶ σκηνῆς δεῖται, τά τ’ ἄλλα δράματος οὐδὲν ἐλλείπει· μόνον εὐχώμεθα τῇ μητρὶ [b] τῶν Μουσῶν ἵλεω παρεῖναι καὶ συνανασῴζειν τὸν μῦθον.

Ὁ γὰρ πατήρ, ἐπεὶ πάλαι, πρὶν ἡμᾶς γενέσθαι, τὴν μητέρα νεωστὶ κεκομισμένος ἐκ τῆς γενομένης τοῖς γονεῦσιν αὐτῶν διαφορᾶς καὶ στάσεως ἀφίκετο τῷ Ἔρωτι θύσων, ἐπὶ τὴν ἑορτὴν ἦγε τὴν μητέρα· καὶ γὰρ ἦν ἐκείνης ἡ εὐχὴ καὶ ἡ θυσία. τῶν δὲ φίλων οἴκοθεν μὲν αὐτῷ παρῆσαν οἱ συνήθεις, ἐν δὲ Θεσπιαῖς εὗρε Δαφναῖον τὸν Ἀρχιδάμου [καὶ] Λυσάνδρας ἐρῶντα τῆς Σίμωνος καὶ μάλιστα τῶν μνωμένων αὐτὴν εὐημεροῦντα, καὶ Σώκλαρον ἐκ Τιθόρας ἥκοντα τὸν Ἀριστίωνος· ἦν δὲ καὶ Πρωτογένης ὁ Ταρσεύς, καὶ Ζεύξιππος ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος, ξένοι· [c] Βοιωτῶν δ’ ὁ πατὴρ ἔφη τῶν γνωρίμων τοὺς πλείστους παρεῖναι. δύο μὲν οὖν ἢ τρεῖς ἡμέρας κατὰ πόλιν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἡσυχῆ πως φιλοσοφοῦντες ἐν ταῖς παλαίστραις καὶ διὰ τῶν θεάτρων ἀλλήλοις συνῆσαν· ἔπειτα φεύγοντες ἀργαλέον ἀγῶνα κιθαρῳδῶν, ἐντεύξεσι καὶ σπουδαῖς προειλημμένον, ἀνέζευξαν οἱ πλείους ὥσπερ ἐκ πολεμίας εἰς τὸν Ἑλικῶνα καὶ κατηυλίσαντο παρὰ ταῖς Μούσαις. ἕωθεν οὖν ἀφίκετο πρὸς αὐτοὺς Ἀνθεμίων, καὶ Πεισίας, ἄνδρες ἔνδοξοι, Βάκχωνι δὲ τῷ καλῷ λεγομένῳ προσήκοντες καὶ τρόπον τινὰ δι’ εὔνοιαν ἀμφότεροι τὴν ἐκείνου [d] διαφερόμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους. ἦν γὰρ ἐν Θεσπιαῖς Ἰσμηνοδώρα γυνὴ πλούτῳ καὶ γένει λαμπρὰ καὶ νὴ Δία τὸν ἄλλον εὔτακτος βίον· ἐχήρευσε γὰρ οὐκ ὀλίγον χρόνον ἄνευ ψόγου, καίπερ οὖσα νέα καὶ ἱκανὴ τὸ εἶδος. τῷ δὲ Βάκχωνι φίλης ὄντι καὶ συνήθους γυναικὸς υἱῷ πράττουσα γάμον κόρης κατὰ γένος προσηκούσης ἐκ τοῦ συμπαρεῖναι καὶ διαλέγεσθαι πολλάκις ἔπαθε πρὸς τὸ μειράκιον αὐτή· καὶ λόγους φιλανθρώπους ἀκούουσα καὶ λέγουσα περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ πλῆθος ὁρῶσα γενναίων ἐραστῶν εἰς τὸ ἐρᾶν προήχθη καὶ διενοεῖτο μηθὲν ποιεῖν ἀγεννές, [e] ἀλλὰ γημαμένη φανερῶς συγκαταζῆν τῷ Βάκχωνι. παραδόξου δὲ τοῦ πράγματος αὐτοῦ φανέντος, ἥ τε μήτηρ ὑφεωρᾶτο τὸ βάρος τοῦ οἴκου καὶ τὸν ὄγκον ὡς οὐ κατὰ τὸν ἐραστήν, τινὲς δὲ καὶ συγκυνηγοὶ τῷ μὴ καθ’ ἡλικίαν τῆς Ἰσμηνοδώρας δεδιττόμενοι τὸν Βάκχωνα καὶ σκώπτοντες ἐργωδέστεροι τῶν ἀπὸ σπουδῆς ἐνισταμένων ἦσαν ἀνταγωνισταὶ πρὸς τὸν γάμον, ᾐδεῖτο γὰρ ἔφηβος ἔτι ὢν χήρᾳ συνοικεῖν. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐάσας παρεχώρησε τῷ Πεισίᾳ καὶ τῷ Ἀνθεμίωνι βουλεύσασθαι τὸ συμφέρον, ὧν ὁ μὲν ἀνεψιὸς ἦν αὐτοῦ πρεσβύτερος, ὁ δὲ [f] Πεισίας αὐστηρότατος τῶν ἐραστῶν· διὸ καὶ πρὸς τὸν γάμον ἀντέπραττε καὶ καθήπτετο τοῦ Ἀνθεμίωνος ὡς προϊεμένου τῇ Ἰσμηνοδώρᾳ τὸ μειράκιον· ὁ δ’ ἐκεῖνον οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἔλεγε ποιεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὰ ἄλλα χρηστὸν ὄντα μιμεῖσθαι τοὺς φαύλους ἐραστὰς οἴκου καὶ γάμου καὶ πραγμάτων μεγάλων ἀποστεροῦντα τὸν φίλον, ὅπως ἄθικτος αὐτῷ καὶ νεαρὸς [750] [a] ἀποδύοιτο πλεῖστον χρόνον ἐν ταῖς παλαίστραις. ἵν’ οὖν μὴ παροξύνοντες ἀλλήλους κατὰ μικρὸν εἰς ὀργὴν προαγάγοιεν, ὥσπερ διαιτητὰς ἑλόμενοι καὶ βραβευτὰς τὸν πατέρα καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ παρεγένοντο· καὶ τῶν ἄλλων φίλων οἷον ἐκ παρασκευῆς τῷ μὲν ὁ Δαφναῖος παρῆν τῷ δ’ ὁ Πρωτογένης. ἀλλ’ οὗτος μὲν ἀνέδην ἔλεγε κακῶς τὴν Ἰσμηνοδώραν· ὁ δὲ Δαφναῖος ‘ὦ Ἡράκλεις’ ἔφη; ‘τί οὐκ ἄν τις προσδοκήσειεν, εἰ καὶ Πρωτογένης Ἔρωτι πολεμήσων πάρεστιν ᾧ καὶ παιδιὰ πᾶσα καὶ σπουδὴ περὶ Ἔρωτα καὶ δι’ Ἔρωτος, ‘λήθη δὲ λόγων λήθη δὲ πάτρας’ [b] (Fr. Tr. Gr. p. 632), οὐχ ὡς τῷ Λαΐῳ πέντε μόνον ἡμερῶν ἀπέχοντι τῆς πατρίδος; βραδὺς γὰρ ὁ ἐκείνου καὶ χερσαῖος Ἔρως, ὁ δὲ σὸς ἐκ Κιλικίας Ἀθήναζε ‘λαιψηρὰ κυκλώσας πτερὰ διαπόντιος πέταται’, τοὺς καλοὺς ἐφορῶν καὶ συμπλανώμενος.’ ἀμέλει γὰρ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐγεγόνει τοιαύτη τις αἰτία τῷ Πρωτογένει τῆς ἀποδημίας.

Γενομένου δὲ γέλωτος ὁ Πρωτογένης ‘ἐγὼ δέ σοι δοκῶ’ εἶπεν ‘Ἔρωτι νῦν πολεμεῖν, οὐχ ὑπὲρ Ἔρωτος διαμάχεσθαι πρὸς ἀκολασίαν καὶ ὕβριν αἰσχίστοις πράγμασι καὶ πάθεσιν εἰς τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ σεμνότατα τῶν ὀνομάτων εἰσβιαζομένην;’ καὶ ὁ Δαφναῖος ‘αἴσχιστα δὲ [c] καλεῖς’ ἔφη ‘γάμον καὶ σύνοδον ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικός, ἧς οὐ γέγονεν οὐδ’ ἔστιν ἱερωτέρα κατάζευξις;’ ‘ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μέν’ εἶπεν ὁ Πρωτογένης ‘ἀναγκαῖα πρὸς γένεσιν ὄντα σεμνύνουσιν οὐ φαύλως οἱ νομοθέται καὶ κατευλογοῦσι πρὸς τοὺς πολλούς· ἀληθινοῦ δ’ Ἔρωτος οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν τῇ γυναικωνίτιδι μέτεστιν, οὐδ’ ἐρᾶν ὑμᾶς ἔγωγέ φημι τοὺς γυναιξὶ προσπεπονθότας ἢ παρθένοις, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ μυῖαι γάλακτος οὐδὲ μέλιτται κηρίων ἐρῶσιν οὐδὲ σιτευταὶ καὶ μάγειροι φίλα φρονοῦσι πιαίνοντες ὑπὸ σκότῳ μόσχους καὶ ὄρνιθας. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐπὶ σιτίον ἄγει καὶ ὄψον ἡ φύσις μετρίως καὶ ἱκανῶς τὴν ὄρεξιν, ἡ δ’ ὑπερβολὴ πάθος [d] ἐνεργασαμένη λαιμαργία τις ἢ φιλοψία καλεῖται, οὕτως ἔνεστι τῇ φύσει τὸ δεῖσθαι τῆς ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων ἡδονῆς γυναῖκας καὶ ἄνδρας, τὴν δ’ ἐπὶ τοῦτο κινοῦσαν ὁρμὴν σφοδρότητι καὶ ῥώμῃ γενομένην πολλὴν καὶ δυσκάθεκτον οὐ προσηκόντως Ἔρωτα καλοῦσιν. Ἔρως γὰρ εὐφυοῦς καὶ νέας ψυχῆς ἁψάμενος εἰς ἀρετὴν διὰ φιλίας τελευτᾷ· ταῖς δὲ πρὸς γυναῖκας ἐπιθυμίαις ταύταις, ἂν ἄριστα πέσωσιν, ἡδονὴν περίεστι καρποῦσθαι καὶ ἀπόλαυσιν ὥρας καὶ σώματος, ὡς ἐμαρτύρησεν Ἀρίστιππος, τῷ κατηγοροῦντι Λαΐδος πρὸς αὐτὸν ὡς οὐ φιλούσης ἀποκρινάμενος, ὅτι [e] καὶ τὸν οἶνον οἴεται καὶ τὸν ἰχθῦν μὴ φιλεῖν αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ἡδέως ἑκατέρῳ χρῆται. τέλος γὰρ ἐπιθυμίας ἡδονὴ καὶ ἀπόλαυσις· Ἔρως δὲ προσδοκίαν φιλίας ἀποβαλὼν οὐκ ἐθέλει παραμένειν οὐδὲ θεραπεύειν ἐφ’ ὥρᾳ τὸ †λυποῦν καὶ ἀκμάζον, εἰ καρπὸν ἤθους οἰκεῖον εἰς φιλίαν καὶ ἀρετὴν οὐκ ἀποδίδωσιν. ἀκούεις δέ τινος τραγικοῦ γαμέτου λέγοντος πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα (Trag. adesp. 401)

‘μισεῖς; ἐγὼ δὲ ῥᾳδίως μισήσομαι,

πρὸς κέρδος ἕλκων τὴν ἐμὴν ἀτιμίαν.’

τούτου γὰρ οὐδέν ἐστιν ἐρωτικώτερος ὁ μὴ διὰ κέρδος ἀλλ’ ἀφροδισίων ἕνεκα καὶ συνουσίας ὑπομένων γυναῖκα [f] μοχθηρὰν καὶ ἄστοργον· ὥσπερ Στρατοκλεῖ τῷ ῥήτορι Φιλιππίδης ὁ κωμικὸς (fr. 31) ἐπεγγελῶν ἐποίησεν

‘ἀποστρεφομένης τὴν κορυφὴν φιλεῖς μόλις.’

Εἰ δ’ οὖν καὶ τοῦτο τὸ πάθος δεῖ καλεῖν Ἔρωτα, θῆλυν καὶ νόθον ὥσπερ εἰς Κυνόσαργες συντελοῦντα τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν· μᾶλλον δ’ ὥσπερ ἀετόν τινα λέγουσι γνήσιον [751] [a] καὶ ὀρεινόν, ὃν Ὅμηρος (Φ 252. Ω 315 s.) ‘μέλανα’ καὶ ‘θηρευτὴν’ προσεῖπεν, ἄλλα δὲ γένη νόθων ἐστὶν ἰχθῦς περὶ ἕλη καὶ ὄρνιθας ἀργοὺς λαμβανόντων, ἀπορούμενοι δὲ πολλάκις ἀναφθέγγονταί τι λιμῶδες καὶ ὀδυρτικόν, οὕτως εἷς Ἔρως [ὁ] γνήσιος ὁ παιδικός ἐστιν, οὐ ‘πόθῳ στίλβων’, ὡς ἔφη τὸν παρθένιον Ἀνακρέων (fr. 13a), οὐδὲ ‘μύρων ἀνάπλεως καὶ γεγανωμένος’, ἀλλὰ λιτὸν αὐτὸν ὄψει καὶ ἄθρυπτον ἐν σχολαῖς φιλοσόφοις ἤ που περὶ γυμνάσια καὶ παλαίστρας περὶ θήραν νέων ὀξὺ μάλα καὶ γενναῖον ἐγκελευόμενον πρὸς ἀρετὴν τοῖς ἀξίοις ἐπιμελείας. τὸν δ’ ὑγρὸν τοῦτον καὶ οἰκουρὸν ἐν κόλποις διατρίβοντα καὶ κλινιδίοις γυναικῶν ἀεὶ διώκοντα τὰ μαλθακὰ [b] καὶ θρυπτόμενον ἡδοναῖς ἀνάνδροις καὶ ἀφίλοις καὶ ἀνενθουσιάστοις καταβάλλειν ἄξιον, ὡς καὶ Σόλων κατέβαλε· δούλοις μὲν γὰρ ἐρᾶν ἀρρένων παίδων ἀπεῖπε καὶ ξηραλοιφεῖν, χρῆσθαι δὲ συνουσίαις γυναικῶν οὐκ ἐκώλυσε· καλὸν γὰρ ἡ φιλία καὶ ἀστεῖον, ἡ δ’ ἡδονὴ κοινὸν καὶ ἀνελεύθερον. ὅθεν οὐδὲ δούλων ἐρᾶν παίδων ἐλευθέριόν ἐστιν οὐδ’ ἀστεῖον· συνουσίας γὰρ οὗτος ὁ ἔρως, καθάπερ ‹ὁ› τῶν γυναικῶν.’

Ἔτι δὲ πλείονα λέγειν προθυμουμένου τοῦ Πρωτογένους, ἀντικρούσας ὁ Δαφναῖος ‘εὖ γε νὴ Δί’’ ἔφη ‘τοῦ Σόλωνος ἐμνήσθης καὶ χρηστέον αὐτῷ γνώμονι τοῦ ἐρωτικοῦ ἀνδρός,

[c] ‘ἔσθ’ ἥβης ἐρατοῖσιν ἐπ’ ἄνθεσι παιδοφιλήσῃ

μηρῶν ‹ἱμείρων› καὶ γλυκεροῦ στόματος’

(fr. 25 I p. 29 D.).

πρόσλαβε δὲ τῷ Σόλωνι καὶ τὸν Αἰσχύλον λέγοντα (fr. 135)

‘σέβας δὲ μηρῶν οὐ κατῃδέσω,

ὦ δυσχάριστε τῶν πυκνῶν φιλημάτων.’

ἕτεροι μὲν γὰρ καταγελῶσιν αὐτῶν, εἰ καθάπερ θύτας καὶ μάντεις εἰς τὰ μηρία καὶ τὴν ὀσφὺν ἀποβλέπειν τοὺς ἐραστὰς κελεύουσιν· ἐγὼ δὲ παμμέγεθες τοῦτο ποιοῦμαι σημεῖον ὑπὲρ τῶν γυναικῶν· εἰ γὰρ ἡ παρὰ φύσιν ὁμιλία πρὸς ἄρρενας οὐκ ἀναιρεῖ τὴν ἐρωτικὴν εὔνοιαν οὐδὲ βλάπτει, πολὺ μᾶλλον εἰκός ἐστι τὸν γυναικῶν ἢ ἀνδρῶν ἔρωτα [d] τῇ φύσει χρώμενον εἰς φιλίαν διὰ χάριτος ἐξικνεῖσθαι. χάρις γὰρ οὖν, ὦ Πρωτόγενες, ἡ τοῦ θήλεος ὕπειξις τῷ ἄρρενι κέκληται πρὸς τῶν παλαιῶν· ὡς καὶ Πίνδαρος ἔφη τὸν Ἥφαιστον ‘ἄνευ χαρίτων’ ἐκ τῆς Ἥρας γενέσθαι· καὶ τὴν οὔπω γάμων ἔχουσαν ὥραν ἡ Σαπφὼ (fr. 34. I p. 347 D.) προσαγορεύουσά φησιν ὅτι

‘σμίκρα μοι πάις ἔμμεν ἐφαίνεο κἄχαρις’.

ὁ δ’ Ἡρακλῆς ὑπό τινος ἐρωτᾶται (Trag. adesp. 402)

‘βίᾳ δ’ ἔπραξας χάριτας ἢ πείσας κόρην;’

ἡ δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν ἀρρένων ἀκόντων ‹μὲν› μετὰ βίας γινομένη καὶ λεηλασίας, ἂν δ’ ἑκουσίως, σὺν μαλακίᾳ καὶ θηλύτητι, ‘βαίνεσθαι’ κατὰ Πλάτωνα (Phaedr. 250e) ‘νόμῳ τετράποδος [e] καὶ παιδοσπορεῖσθαι’ παρὰ φύσιν ἐνδιδόντων, ἄχαρις ‹χάρις› παντάπασι καὶ ἀσχήμων καὶ ἀναφρόδιτος. ὅθεν, οἶμαι, καὶ Σόλων ἐκεῖνα μὲν ἔγραψε νέος ὢν ἔτι καὶ ‘σπέρματος πολλοῦ μεστός’ ὡς ὁ Πλάτων (Leg. VIII 839b) φησί· ταυτὶ δὲ πρεσβύτης γενόμενος (fr. 26. I p. 32 D.)·

‘ἔργα δὲ Κυπρογενοῦς νῦν μοι φίλα καὶ Διονύσου

καὶ Μουσέων, ἃ τίθησ’ ἀνδράσιν εὐφροσύνας’,

ὥσπερ ἐκ ζάλης καὶ χειμῶνος [καὶ] τῶν παιδικῶν ἐρώτων ἔν τινι γαλήνῃ τῇ περὶ γάμον καὶ φιλοσοφίαν θέμενος τὸν βίον. Εἰ μὲν οὖν τὸ ἀληθὲς σκοποῦμεν, ὦ Πρωτόγενες, ἓν καὶ ταὐτόν ἐστι πρὸς παῖδας καὶ γυναῖκας πάθος [f] τὸ τῶν Ἐρώτων· εἰ δὲ βούλοιο φιλονεικῶν διαιρεῖν, οὐ μέτρι’ ἂν δόξειε ποιεῖν ὁ παιδικὸς οὗτος, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὀψὲ γεγονὼς καὶ παρ’ ὥραν τῷ βίῳ νόθος καὶ σκότιος ἐξελαύνειν τὸν γνήσιον Ἔρωτα καὶ πρεσβύτερον. ἐχθὲς γάρ, ὦ ἑταῖρε, καὶ πρῴην μετὰ τὰς ἀποδύσεις καὶ ἀπογυμνώσεις τῶν νέων παραδὺς εἰς τὰ γυμνάσια καὶ προσανατριβόμενος ἡσυχῆ καὶ προσαγκαλιζόμενος, εἶτα κατὰ μικρὸν ἐν ταῖς παλαίστραις πτεροφυήσας οὐκέτι καθεκτός ἐστιν, [752] [a] ἀλλὰ λοιδορεῖ καὶ προπηλακίζει τὸν γαμήλιον ἐκεῖνον καὶ συνεργὸν ἀθανασίας τῷ θνητῷ γένει, σβεννυμένην ἡμῶν τὴν φύσιν αὖθις ἐξανάπτοντα διὰ τῶν γενέσεων. οὗτος δ’ ἀρνεῖται τὴν ἡδονήν; αἰσχύνεται γὰρ καὶ φοβεῖται· δεῖ δέ τινος εὐπρεπείας ἁπτομένῳ καλῶν καὶ ὡραίων· πρόφασις οὖν φιλία καὶ ἀρετή. κονίεται δὴ καὶ ψυχρολουτεῖ καὶ τὰς ὀφρῦς αἴρει καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν φησι καὶ σωφρονεῖν ἔξω διὰ τὸν νόμον· εἶτα νύκτωρ καὶ καθ’ ἡσυχίαν

‘γλυκεῖ’ ὀπώρα φύλακος ἐκλελοιπότος’ (Trag. ad. 403).

Εἰ δ’, ὥς φησι Πρωτογένης, οὐκ ἔστιν ἀφροδισίων †παιδικῶν κοινωνία, πῶς Ἔρως ἔστιν Ἀφροδίτης μὴ παρούσης, [b] ἣν εἴληχε θεραπεύειν ἐκ θεῶν καὶ περιέπειν, τιμῆς τε μετέχειν καὶ δυνάμεως ὅσον ἐκείνη δίδωσιν; εἰ δ’ ἔστι τις Ἔρως χωρὶς Ἀφροδίτης, ὥσπερ μέθη χωρὶς οἴνου πρὸς σύκινον πόμα καὶ κρίθινον, ἄκαρπον αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀτελὲς τὸ ταρακτικόν ἐστι καὶ πλήσμιον καὶ ἁψίκορον.’

Λεγομένων τούτων ὁ Πεισίας ἦν δῆλος ἀγανακτῶν καὶ παροξυνόμενος ἐπὶ τὸν Δαφναῖον· μικρὸν δ’ αὐτοῦ καταλιπόντος ‘ὦ Ἡράκλεις’ ἔφη ‘τῆς εὐχερείας καὶ θρασύτητος, ἀνθρώπους ὁμολογοῦντας ὥσπερ οἱ κύνες ἐκ ‹τῶν› μορίων συνηρτῆσθαι πρὸς τὸ θῆλυ μεθιστάναι καὶ μετοικίζειν [c] τὸν θεὸν ἐκ γυμνασίων καὶ περιπάτων καὶ τῆς ἐν ἡλίῳ καθαρᾶς καὶ ἀναπεπταμένης διατριβῆς εἰς ματρυλεῖα καὶ κοπίδας καὶ φάρμακα καὶ μαγεύματα καθειργνύμενον ἀκολάστων γυναικῶν· ἐπεὶ ταῖς γε σώφροσιν οὔτ’ ἐρᾶν οὔτ’ ἐρᾶσθαι δήπου προσῆκόν ἐστιν.’ ἐνταῦθα μέντοι καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἔφη τοῦ Πρωτογένους ἐπιλαβέσθαι καὶ εἰπεῖν

‘‘τόδ’ ἐξοπλίζει τοὔπος Ἀργεῖον λεών’ (Trag. ad. 404),

καὶ νὴ Δία Δαφναίῳ συνδίκους ἡμᾶς προστίθησιν οὐ μετριάζων ὁ Πεισίας, ἀλλὰ τοῖς γάμοις ἀνέραστον ἐπάγων καὶ ἄμοιρον ἐνθέου φιλίας κοινωνίαν, ἣν τῆς ἐρωτικῆς πειθοῦς καὶ χάριτος ἀπολιπούσης μονονοὺ ζυγοῖς καὶ [d] χαλινοῖς ὑπ’ αἰσχύνης καὶ φόβου μάλα μόλις συνεχομένην ὁρῶμεν.’ καὶ ὁ Πεισίας ‘ἐμοὶ μέν’ εἶπεν ‘ὀλίγον μέλει τοῦ λόγου· Δαφναῖον δ’ ὁρῶ ταὐτὸν πάσχοντα τῷ χαλκῷ· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος οὐχ οὕτως ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς ὡς ὑπὸ τοῦ πεπυρωμένου χαλκοῦ καὶ ῥέοντος, ἂν ἐπιχέῃ τις, ἀνατήκεται καὶ ῥεῖ συνεξυγραινόμενος· καὶ τοῦτον οὐκ ἐνοχλεῖ τὸ Λυσάνδρας κάλλος, ἀλλὰ συνδιακεκαυμένῳ καὶ γέμοντι πυρὸς ἤδη πολὺν χρόνον [ὁ] πλησιάζων καὶ ἁπτόμενος ἀναπίμπλαται· καὶ δῆλός ἐστιν, εἰ μὴ ταχὺ φύγοι πρὸς ἡμᾶς, συντακησόμενος. ἀλλ’ ὁρῶ’ εἶπε ‘γινόμενον ὅπερ ἂν μάλιστα σπουδάσειεν Ἀνθεμίων, προσκρούοντα [e] τοῖς δικασταῖς καὶ ἐμαυτόν, ὥστε παύομαι.’ καὶ ὁ Ἀνθεμίων ‘ὤνησας’ εἶπεν, ‘ὡς ἔδει γ’ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς λέγειν τι πρὸς τὴν ὑπόθεσιν.’

‘Λέγω τοίνυν’ ὁ Πεισίας ἔφη, ‘προκηρύξας ἐμοῦ †γ’ ἕνεκα πάσαις γυναιξὶν ἂν ἐραστήν, ὅτι τῆς γυναικὸς ὁ πλοῦτός ἐστι φυλακτέος τῷ νεανίσκῳ, μὴ συμμίξαντες αὐτὸν ὄγκῳ καὶ βάρει τοσούτῳ λάθοιμεν ὥσπερ ἐν χαλκῷ κασσίτερον ἀφανίσαντες. μέγα γάρ, ἂν ἐλαφρᾷ καὶ λιτῇ γυναικὶ μειρακίου συνελθόντος εἰς ταὐτὸν ἡ κρᾶσις οἴνου δίκην ἐπικρατήσῃ· ταύτην δ’ ὁρῶμεν ἄρχειν καὶ κρατεῖν δοκοῦσαν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἀπορρίψασα δόξας καὶ γένη τηλικαῦτα [f] καὶ πλούτους ἐμνᾶτο μειράκιον ἐκ χλαμύδος, ἔτι παιδαγωγεῖσθαι δεόμενον. ὅθεν οἱ νοῦν ἔχοντες αὐτοὶ προΐενται καὶ περικόπτουσιν ὥσπερ ὠκύπτερα τῶν γυναικῶν τὰ περιττὰ χρήματα, τρυφὰς ἐμποιοῦντα καὶ χαυνότητας ἀβεβαίους καὶ κενάς, ὑφ’ ὧν ἐπαιρόμεναι πολλάκις ἀποπέτονται· [753] [a] κἂν μένωσι, χρυσαῖς ὥσπερ ἐν Αἰθιοπίᾳ πέδαις δεδέσθαι βέλτιον ἢ πλούτῳ γυναικός.’

‘Ἐκεῖνο δ’ οὐ λέγεις’ ‹ὁ› Πρωτογένης εἶπεν ‘ὅτι κινδυνεύομεν ἀναστρέφειν ἀτόπως καὶ γελοίως τὸν Ἡσίοδον, ἄν, ἐκείνου λέγοντος (OD 696)

‘μήτε τριηκόντων ἐτέων μάλα πόλλ’ ἀπολείπων

μήτ’ ἐπιθεὶς μάλα πολλά· γάμος δέ τοι ὥριος οὗτος·

ἡ δὲ γυνὴ τέτορ’ ἡβώοι, πέμπτῳ δὲ γαμοῖτο’,

σχεδὸν ἡμεῖς ἔτεσι τοσούτοις γυναικὶ πρεσβυτέρᾳ καθάπερ οἱ φοίνικας ἢ σῦκα ....... καὶ ἄωρον ἄνδρα περιάψωμεν. ‘Ἐρᾶται γὰρ αὐτοῦ νὴ Δία καὶ κάεται·’ τίς οὖν ὁ κωλύων ἐστὶ κωμάζειν ἐπὶ θύρας, ᾄδειν τὸ παρακλαυσίθυρον, [b] ἀναδεῖν τὰ εἰκόνια, παγκρατιάζειν πρὸς τοὺς ἀντεραστάς; ταῦτα γὰρ ἐρωτικά· καὶ καθείσθω τὰς ὀφρῦς καὶ παυσάσθω τρυφῶσα, [καὶ] σχῆμα λαβοῦσα τῶν τοῦ πάθους οἰκείων. εἰ δ’ αἰσχύνεται καὶ σωφρονεῖ, κοσμίως οἴκοι καθήσθω περιμένουσα τοὺς μνωμένους καὶ σπουδάζοντας. ἐρᾶν δὲ φάσκουσαν γυναῖκα φυγεῖν τις ἂν ἔχοι καὶ βδελυχθείη, μήτι γε λάβοι γάμου ποιησάμενος ἀρχὴν τὴν τοιαύτην ἀκρασίαν.’

Παυσαμένου δὲ τοῦ Πρωτογένους, ‘ὁρᾷς’ εἶπεν ὁ πατήρ, ‘ὦ Ἀνθεμίων, ὅτι πάλιν κοινὴν ποιοῦσι τὴν ὑπόθεσιν καὶ τὸν λόγον ἀναγκαῖον ἡμῖν τοῖς οὐκ ἀρνουμένοις [c] οὐδὲ φεύγουσι τοῦ περὶ γάμον Ἔρωτος εἶναι χορευταῖς;’ [καὶ] ‘ναὶ μὰ Δί’’ εἶπεν ὁ Ἀνθεμίων· †’ἀμύνει διὰ πλειόνων νῦν αὐτοὺς ἐρᾶν· εἰ †δὲ τῷ πλούτῳ βοηθήσων, ᾧ μάλιστα δεδίττεται Πεισίας ἡμᾶς.’ ‘τί δ’’ εἶπεν ὁ πατήρ ‘οὐκ ἂν ἔγκλημα γένοιτο γυναικός, εἰ δι’ ἔρωτα καὶ πλοῦτον ἀπορρίψομεν Ἰσμηνοδώραν; ‘βαρεῖα γὰρ καὶ πλουσία·’ τί δ’ εἰ καλὴ καὶ νέα; τί δ’ εἰ γένει σοβαρὰ καὶ ἔνδοξος; αἱ δὲ σώφρονες οὐ τὸ αὐστηρὸν καὶ κατεγρυπωμένον ἐπαχθὲς .... καὶ δυσκαρτέρητον ἔχουσι, καὶ ποινὰς καλοῦσιν αὐτὰς καὶ τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ὀργιζομένας, ὅτι σωφρονοῦσιν; [d] ἆρ’ οὖν κράτιστον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς γαμεῖν Ἀβρότονόν τινα Θρῇσσαν ἢ Βακχίδα Μιλησίαν ‹ἀν›έγγυον ἐπαγομένην δι’ ὠνῆς καὶ καταχυσμάτων; ἀλλὰ καὶ ταύταις ἴσμεν οὐκ ὀλίγους αἴσχιστα δουλεύσαντας. αὐλητρίδες δὲ Σάμιαι καὶ ὀρχηστρίδες, Ἀριστονίκα καὶ τύμπανον ἔχουσ’ Οἰνάνθη καὶ Ἀγαθόκλεια διαδήμασι βασιλέων ἐπέβησαν. ἡ δὲ Σύρα Σεμίραμις οἰκότριβος μὲν ἦν βασιλικοῦ θεράπαινα παλλακευομένη· Νίνου δὲ τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως ἐντυχόντος αὐτῇ καὶ στέρξαντος οὕτως ἐκράτησε καὶ κατεφρόνησεν, ὥστ’ ἀξιῶσαι καὶ μίαν ἡμέραν αὐτὴν περιιδεῖν ἐν τῷ θρόνῳ καθεζομένην ἔχουσαν τὸ διάδημα καὶ [e] χρηματίζουσαν. δόντος δ’ ἐκείνου καὶ κελεύσαντος πάντας ὑπηρετεῖν ὥσπερ αὐτῷ καὶ πείθεσθαι, μετρίως ἐχρῆτο τοῖς πρώτοις ἐπιτάγμασι, πειρωμένη τῶν δορυφόρων· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἑώρα μηδὲν ἀντιλέγοντας μηδ’ ὀκνοῦντας, ἐκέλευσε συλλαβεῖν τὸν Νίνον εἶτα δῆσαι, τέλος δ’ ἀποκτεῖναι· πραχθέντων δὲ πάντων, ἐβασίλευσε τῆς Ἀσίας ἐπιφανῶς πολὺν χρόνον. ἡ δὲ Βελεστίχη, πρὸς Διός, οὐ βάρβαρον ἐξ ἀγορᾶς γύναιον, ἧς ἱερὰ καὶ ναοὺς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς ἔχουσιν, ἐπιγράψαντος δι’ ἔρωτα τοῦ βασιλέως ‘Ἀφροδίτης Βελεστίχης’; ἡ δὲ σύνναος μὲν ἐνταυθοῖ καὶ συνίερος τοῦ [f] Ἔρωτος, ἐν ‹δὲ› Δελφοῖς κατάχρυσος [δ’] ἑστῶσα μετὰ τῶν βασιλέων καὶ βασιλειῶν, ποίᾳ προικὶ τῶν ἐραστῶν ἐκράτησεν; ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνοι δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἑαυτῶν καὶ μαλακίαν ἔλαθον ‹ἑαυτοὺς› γενόμενοι λεία γυναικῶν, οὕτω πάλιν ἄδοξοι καὶ πένητες ἕτεροι πλουσίαις γυναιξὶ [754] [a] καὶ λαμπραῖς συνελθόντες οὐ διεφθάρησαν οὐδ’ ὑφῆκάν τι τοῦ φρονήματος, ἀλλὰ τιμώμενοι καὶ κρατοῦντες μετ’ εὐνοίας συγκατεβίωσαν. ὁ δὲ συστέλλων τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ συνάγων εἰς μικρόν, ὥσπερ δακτύλιον ἰσχνὸς ὢν μὴ περιρρυῇ δεδιώς, ὅμοιός ἐστι τοῖς ἀποκείρουσι τὰς ἵππους εἶτα πρὸς ποταμὸν ἢ λίμνην ἄγουσι· καθορῶσαν γὰρ ἑκάστην τὴν εἰκόνα τῆς ὄψεως ἀκαλλῆ καὶ ἄμορφον ἀφιέναι τὰ φρυάγματα λέγεται καὶ προσδέχεσθαι τὰς τῶν ὄνων ἐπιβάσεις. πλοῦτον δὲ γυναικὸς αἱρεῖσθαι μὲν πρὸ ἀρετῆς ἢ γένους ἀφιλότιμον καὶ ἀνελεύθερον, ἀρετῇ δὲ καὶ γένει [b] προσόντα φεύγειν ἀβέλτερον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ἀντίγονος ὠχυρωμένῳ τὴν Μουνιχίαν τῷ φρουροῦντι γράφων ἐκέλευε ποιεῖν μὴ μόνον τὸν κλοιὸν ἰσχυρὸν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν κύνα λεπτόν, ὅπως ὑφαιρῇ τὰς εὐπορίας τῶν Ἀθηναίων· ἀνδρὶ δὲ πλουσίας ἢ καλῆς οὐ προσήκει, μηδὲ τὴν γυναῖκα ποιεῖν ἄμορφον ἢ πενιχράν, ἀλλ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐγκρατείᾳ καὶ φρονήσει καὶ τῷ μηθὲν ἐκπεπλῆχθαι τῶν περὶ ἐκείνην ἴσον παρέχειν καὶ ἀδούλωτον, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ζυγοῦ ῥοπὴν τῷ ἤθει προστιθέντα καὶ βάρος, ὑφ’ οὗ κρατεῖται καὶ ἄγεται ‹δι›καίως ἅμα ‹καὶ› συμφερόντως. Καὶ μὴν ἡλικία γε πρὸς γάμον καὶ ὥρα τὸ τίκτειν ἔχουσα καὶ τὸ γεννᾶν [c] εὐάρμοστός ἐστιν· ἀκμάζειν δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα πυνθάνομαι·’ καὶ ἅμα τῷ Πεισίᾳ προσμειδιάσας ‘οὐδενὸς γάρ’ ἔφη ‘τῶν ἀντεραστῶν πρεσβυτέρα, οὐδ’ ἔχει πολιὰς ὥσπερ ἔνιοι τῶν Βάκχωνι προσαναχρωννυμένων. εἰ δ’ οὗτοι καθ’ ὥραν ὁμιλοῦσι, τί κωλύει κἀκείνην ἐπιμεληθῆναι τοῦ νεανίσκου βέλτιον ἡστινοσοῦν νέας; δύσμικτα γὰρ τὰ νέα καὶ δυσκέραστα καὶ μόλις ἐν χρόνῳ πολλῷ τὸ φρύαγμα καὶ τὴν ὕβριν ἀφίησιν, ἐν ἀρχῇ δὲ κυμαίνει καὶ ζυγομαχεῖ, καὶ μᾶλλον ἂν Ἔρως ἐγγένηται [καὶ] καθάπερ πνεῦμα κυβερνήτου μὴ παρόντος ἐτάραξε καὶ συνέχεε τὸν γάμον οὔτ’ [d] ἄρχειν δυναμένων οὔτ’ ἄρχεσθαι βουλομένων. εἰ δ’ ἄρχει βρέφους μὲν ἡ τίτθη καὶ παιδὸς ὁ διδάσκαλος ἐφήβου δὲ γυμνασίαρχος ἐραστὴς δὲ μειρακίου γενομένου δ’ ἐν ἡλικίᾳ νόμος καὶ στρατηγὸς οὐδεὶς δ’ ἄναρκτος οὐδ’ αὐτοτελής, τί δεινὸν εἰ γυνὴ νοῦν ἔχουσα πρεσβυτέρα κυβερνήσει νέου βίον ἀνδρός, ὠφέλιμος μὲν οὖσα τῷ φρονεῖν μᾶλλον ἡδεῖα δὲ τῷ φιλεῖν καὶ προσηνής; τὸ δ’ ὅλον’ ἔφη ‘καὶ τὸν Ἡρακλέα Βοιωτοὺς ὄντας ἔδει σέβεσθαι καὶ μὴ δυσχεραίνειν τῷ παρ’ ἡλικίαν τοῦ γάμου, γιγνώσκοντας ὅτι κἀκεῖνος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα Μεγάραν Ἰολάῳ συνῴκισεν [e] ἑκκαιδεκαέτει τότ’ ὄντι τρία καὶ τριάκοντ’ ἔτη γεγενημένην.’

Τοιούτων λόγων ὁ πατὴρ ἔφη παρόντων αὐτοῖς ἐλθεῖν τῷ Πεισίᾳ ἑταῖρον ἐκ πόλεως ἵππῳ θέοντα, πρᾶγμα θαυμαστὸν ἀπαγγέλλοντα τετολμημένον. ἡ γὰρ Ἰσμηνοδώρα, ὡς ἔοικεν, αὐτὸν μὲν οὐκ ἀηδῶς ἔχειν οἰομένη τὸν Βάκχωνα πρὸς τὸν γάμον, αἰσχύνεσθαι δὲ τοὺς ἀποτρέποντας, ἔγνω μὴ προέσθαι τὸ μειράκιον. τῶν οὖν φίλων τοὺς μάλιστα τοῖς βίοις νεαροὺς καὶ συνερῶντας αὐτῇ καὶ τῶν γυναικῶν τὰς συνήθεις μεταπεμψαμένη καὶ συγκροτήσασα παρεφύλαττε τὴν ὥραν, ἣν ὁ Βάκχων ἔθος εἶχεν [f] ἀπιὼν ἐκ παλαίστρας παρὰ τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτῆς παρεξιέναι κοσμίως. ὡς οὖν τότε προσῄει μετὰ δυοῖν ἢ τριῶν ἑταίρων ἀληλιμμένος, αὐτὴ μὲν ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας ἀπήντησεν ἡ Ἰσμηνοδώρα καὶ τῆς χλαμύδος ἔθιγε μόνον, οἱ δὲ φίλοι καλὸν καλῶς ἐν τῇ χλαμύδι καὶ τῇ διβολίᾳ συναρπάσαντες εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν παρήνεγκαν ἀθρόοι καὶ τὰς θύρας εὐθὺς ἀπέκλεισαν· [755] [a] ἅμα δ’ αἱ μὲν γυναῖκες ἔνδον αὐτοῦ τὸ χλαμύδιον ἀφαρπάσασαι περιέβαλον ἱμάτιον νυμφικόν· οἰκέται δὲ περὶ κύκλῳ δραμόντες ἀνέστεφον ἐλαίᾳ καὶ δάφνῃ τὰς θύρας οὐ μόνον τὰς τῆς Ἰσμηνοδώρας ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς τοῦ Βάκχωνος· ἡ δ’ αὐλητρὶς αὐλοῦσα διεξῆλθε τὸν στενωπόν. τῶν δὲ Θεσπιέων καὶ τῶν ξένων οἱ μὲν ἐγέλων, οἱ δ’ ἠγανάκτουν καὶ τοὺς γυμνασιάρχους παρώξυνον· ἄρχουσι γὰρ ἰσχυρῶς τῶν ἐφήβων καὶ προσέχουσι τὸν νοῦν σφόδρα τοῖς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν πραττομένοις. ἦν δὲ λόγος οὐθεὶς τῶν ἀγωνιζομένων, ἀλλ’ ἀφέντες τὸ θέατρον ἐπὶ τῶν [b] θυρῶν τῆς Ἰσμηνοδώρας ἐν λόγοις ἦσαν καὶ φιλονεικίαις πρὸς ἀλλήλους.

Ὡς οὖν ὁ τοῦ Πεισίου φίλος ὥσπερ ἐν πολέμῳ προσελάσας τὸν ἵππον αὐτὸ τοῦτο τεταραγμένος εἶπεν, ὅτι Βάκχων’ ἥρπακεν Ἰσμηνοδώρα, τὸν μὲν Ζεύξιππον ὁ πατὴρ ἔφη γελάσαι καὶ εἰπεῖν, ἅτε δὴ καὶ φιλευριπίδην ὄντα, (Eur. fr. 986)

‘πλούτῳ χλιδῶσα θνητὰ δ’ ὦ γύναι φρονεῖς·’

τὸν δὲ Πεισίαν ἀναπηδήσαντα βοᾶν ‘ὦ θεοί, τί πέρας ἔσται τῆς ἀνατρεπούσης τὴν πόλιν ἡμῶν ἐλευθερίας; ἤδη γὰρ εἰς ἀνομίαν τὰ πράγματα διὰ τῆς αὐτονομίας βαδίζει. καίτοι γελοῖον ἴσως ἀγανακτεῖν περὶ νόμων καὶ δικαίων, [c] ἡ γὰρ φύσις παρανομεῖται γυναικοκρατουμένη. τί τοιοῦτον ἡ Λῆμνος; ἴωμεν ἡμεῖς, ἴωμεν’ εἶπεν, ‘ὅπως καὶ τὸ γυμνάσιον ταῖς γυναιξὶ παραδῶμεν καὶ τὸ βουλευτήριον, εἰ παντάπασιν ἡ πόλις ἐκνενεύρισται.’ προάγοντος οὖν τοῦ Πεισίου, ὁ μὲν Πρωτογένης οὐκ ἀπελείπετο τὰ μὲν συναγανακτῶν τὰ δὲ πραΰνων ἐκεῖνον· ὁ δ’ Ἀνθεμίων ‘νεανικὸν μέν’ ἔφη ‘τὸ τόλμημα καὶ Λήμνιον ὡς ἀληθῶς, αὐτοὶ γάρ ἐσμεν, σφόδρ’ ἐρώσης γυναικός.’ καὶ ὁ Σώκλαρος ὑπομειδιῶν ‘οἴει γὰρ ἁρπαγήν’ ἔφη ‘γεγονέναι καὶ βιασμόν, οὐκ ἀπολόγημα καὶ στρατήγημα τοῦ νεανίσκου [d] νοῦν ἔχοντος, ὅτι τὰς τῶν ἐραστῶν ἀγκάλας διαφυγὼν ἐξηυτομόληκεν εἰς χεῖρας καλῆς καὶ πλουσίας γυναικός;’ ‘μὴ λέγε ταῦτ’,’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Σώκλαρε, μηδ’ ὑπονόει ἐπὶ Βάκχωνος’ ὁ Ἀνθεμίων· ‘καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ φύσει τὸν τρόπον ἁπλοῦς ἦν καὶ ἀφελής, ἐμὲ γοῦν ‹οὐκ ἂν› ἀπεκρύψατο, τῶν τ’ ἄλλων μεταδιδοὺς ἁπάντων ἔν τε τούτοις ὁρῶν προθυμότατον ὄντα τῆς Ἰσμηνοδώρας βοηθόν· Ἔρωτι δὲ ‘μάχεσθαι χαλεπόν’ οὐ ‘θυμῷ’ καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (fr. 85)· ‘ὅ τι γὰρ ἂν θελήσῃ, καὶ ψυχῆς ὠνεῖται’ καὶ χρημάτων καὶ δόξης. ἐπεὶ τί κοσμιώτερον Ἰσμηνοδώρας ἐν τῇ πόλει; πότε δ’ εἰσῆλθεν ἢ λόγος αἰσχρὸς ἢ πράξεως [e] ὑπόνοια φαύλης ἔθιγε τῆς οἰκίας; ἀλλ’ ἔοικε θεία τις ὄντως εἰληφέναι τὴν ἄνθρωπον ἐπίπνοια καὶ κρείττων ἀνθρωπίνου λογισμοῦ.’

Καὶ ὁ Πεμπτίδης ἐπιγελάσας ‘ἀμέλει καὶ σώματός τις’ ἔφη ‘νόσος ἔστιν, ἣν ἱερὰν καλοῦσιν· οὐδὲν οὖν ἄτοπον, εἰ καὶ ψυχῆς τὸ μανικώτατον πάθος καὶ μέγιστον ἱερὸν καὶ θεῖον ἔνιοι προσαγορεύουσιν. εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ ποτὲ γείτονας ἑώρων δύο διαμφισβητοῦντας, ὄφεως προερπύσαντος εἰς τὴν ὁδόν, ἀμφοτέρων μὲν ἀγαθὸν δαίμονα καλούντων ἑκατέρου δ’ ἔχειν ἀξιοῦντος ὡς ἴδιον, οὕτως ὁρῶν ὑμῶν ἄρτι τοὺς μὲν εἰς τὴν ἀνδρωνῖτιν [f] ἕλκοντας τὸν Ἔρωτα τοὺς δ’ εἰς τὴν γυναικωνῖτιν, ὑπερφυὲς καὶ θεῖον ἀγαθόν, οὐκ ἐθαύμαζον, εἰ τηλικαύτην δύναμιν ἔσχε καὶ τιμὴν τὸ πάθος, οἷς ἦν προσῆκον ἐξελαύνειν αὐτὸ πανταχόθεν καὶ κολούειν, ὑπὸ τούτων αὐξανόμενον καὶ σεμνυνόμενον. ἄρτι μὲν οὖν ἡσυχίαν ἦγον· ἐν γὰρ ἰδίοις μᾶλλον ἢ κοινοῖς ἑώρων τὴν ἀμφισβήτησιν [756] [a] οὖσαν· νυνὶ δ’ ἀπηλλαγμένος Πεισίου, ἡδέως ἂν ὑμῶν ἀκούσαιμι πρὸς τί βλέψαντες ἀπεφήναντο τὸν Ἔρωτα θεὸν οἱ πρῶτοι τοῦτο λέξαντες.’

Παυσαμένου δὲ τοῦ Πεμπτίδου καὶ τοῦ πατρὸς ἀρξαμένου τι περὶ τούτων λέγειν, ἕτερος ἧκεν ἐκ πόλεως, τὸν Ἀνθεμίωνα μεταπεμπομένης τῆς Ἰσμηνοδώρας· ἐπέτεινε γὰρ ἡ ταραχή, καὶ τῶν γυμνασιάρχων ἦν διαφορά, τοῦ μὲν οἰομένου δεῖν τὸν Βάκχωνα ἀπαιτεῖν τοῦ δὲ πολυπραγμονεῖν οὐκ ἐῶντος. ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀνθεμίων ἀναστὰς ἐβάδιζεν· ὁ δὲ πατὴρ τὸν Πεμπτίδην ὀνομαστὶ προσαγορεύσας ‘μεγάλου μοι δοκεῖς ἅπτεσθαι’ εἶπεν ‘καὶ [b] παραβόλου πράγματος, ὦ Πεμπτίδη, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως τὰ ἀκίνητα κινεῖν τῆς περὶ θεῶν δόξης ἣν ἔχομεν, περὶ ἑκάστου λόγον ἀπαιτῶν καὶ ἀπόδειξιν. ἀρκεῖ γὰρ ἡ πάτριος καὶ παλαιὰ πίστις, ἧς οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν οὐδ’ ἀνευρεῖν τεκμήριον ἐναργέστερον (Eur. Bacch. 203)

‘οὐδ’ εἰ δι’ ἄκρας τὸ σοφὸν εὕρηται φρενός’·

ἀλλ’ ἕδρα τις αὕτη καὶ βάσις ὑφεστῶσα κοινὴ πρὸς εὐσέβειαν, ἐὰν ἐφ’ ἑνὸς ταράττηται καὶ σαλεύηται τὸ βέβαιον αὐτῆς καὶ νενομισμένον, ἐπισφαλὴς γίνεται πᾶσι καὶ ὕποπτος. ἀκούεις δὲ δήπου τὸν Εὐριπίδην ὡς ἐθορυβήθη ποιησάμενος ἀρχὴν τῆς Μελανίππης ἐκείνην (fr. 480)

‘Ζεύς, ‹ὅστις ὁ Ζεύς,› οὐ γὰρ οἶδα πλὴν λόγῳ,’

[c] μεταλαβὼν δὲ χορὸν ἄλλον (ἐθάρρει ‹γὰρ› ὡς ἔοικε τῷ δράματι γεγραμμένῳ πανηγυρικῶς καὶ περιττῶς) ἤλλαξε τὸν στίχον ὡς νῦν γέγραπται (fr. 481)

‘Ζεύς, ὡς λέλεκται τῆς ἀληθείας ὕπο.’

τί οὖν διαφέρει τὴν περὶ τοῦ Διὸς δόξαν ἢ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ἢ τοῦ Ἔρωτος εἰς ἀμφίβολον τῷ λόγῳ θέσθαι [ἢ] καὶ ἄδηλον; οὐ γὰρ νῦν αἰτεῖ πρῶτον βωμὸν ὁ Ἔρως καὶ θυσίαν οὐδ’ ἔπηλυς ἔκ τινος βαρβαρικῆς δεισιδαιμονίας, ὥσπερ Ἄτται τινὲς καὶ Ἀδωναῖοι λεγόμενοι, δι’ ἀνδρογύνων καὶ γυναικῶν παραδύεται [καὶ] κρύφα τιμὰς οὐ προσηκούσας καρπούμενος, ὥστε παρεισγραφῆς δίκην φεύγειν καὶ νοθείας [d] τῆς ἐν θεοῖς. Ἀλλ’ ὅταν Ἐμπεδοκλέους (fr. 17, 20) ἀκούσῃς λέγοντος, ὦ ἑταῖρε,

‘καὶ Φιλότης ἐν τοῖσιν ἴση μῆκός τε πλάτος τε,

τὴν σὺ νόῳ δέρκου, μηδ’ ὄμμασιν ἧσο τεθηπώς’,

ταῦτ’ οἴεσθαι χρὴ λέγεσθαι ‹καὶ› περὶ Ἔρωτος· οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ὁρατός, ἀλλὰ δοξαστὸς ἡμῖν ὁ θεὸς οὗτος ἐν τοῖς πάνυ παλαιοῖς· ὧν ἂν περὶ ἑκάστου τεκμήριον ἀπαιτῇς, παντὸς ἁπτόμενος ἱεροῦ καὶ παντὶ βωμῷ σοφιστικὴν ἐπάγων πεῖραν, οὐδέν’ ἀσυκοφάντητον οὐδ’ ἀβασάνιστον ἀπολείψεις· πόρρω γὰρ οὐκ ἄπειμι (Eur. fr. 898, 1),

‘τὴν δ’ Ἀφροδίτην οὐχ ὁρᾷς ὅση θεός;’

‘ἥδ’ ἐστὶν ἡ σπείρουσα καὶ διδοῦσ’ ἔρον,

οὗ πάντες ἐσμὲν οἱ κατὰ χθόν’ ἔκγονοι’ (Eur. Hipp. 449).

[e]’ζείδωρον’ γὰρ αὐτὴν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (fr. 151) ‘εὔκαρπον’ δὲ Σοφοκλῆς (fr. 763) ἐμμελῶς πάνυ καὶ πρεπόντως ὠνόμασαν. ἀλλ’ ὅμως τὸ μέγα τοῦτο καὶ θαυμαστὸν Ἀφροδίτης μὲν ἔργον Ἔρωτος δὲ πάρεργόν ἐστιν Ἀφροδίτῃ συμπαρόντος· μὴ συμπαρόντος δὲ κομιδῇ τὸ γινόμενον ἄζηλον ἀπολείπεται καὶ ‘ἄτιμον καὶ ἄφιλον’. ἀνέραστος γὰρ ὁμιλία καθάπερ πεῖνα καὶ δίψα πλησμονὴν ἔχουσα πέρας εἰς οὐθὲν ἐξικνεῖται καλόν· ἀλλ’ ἡ θεὸς Ἔρωτι τὸν κόρον ἀφαιροῦσα τῆς ἡδονῆς φιλότητα ποιεῖ καὶ σύγκρασιν. διὸ Παρμενίδης (fr. 13) μὲν ἀποφαίνει τὸν Ἔρωτα τῶν Ἀφροδίτης ἔργων πρεσβύτατον ἐν τῇ κοσμογονίᾳ γράφων

[f] ‘πρώτιστον μὲν Ἔρωτα θεῶν μητίσατο πάντων’·

Ἡσίοδος (Th. 120) δὲ φυσικώτερον ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ ποιεῖν Ἔρωτα πάντων προγενέστατον, ἵνα πάντα δι’ ἐκεῖνον μετάσχῃ γενέσεως. ἂν οὖν τὸν Ἔρωτα τῶν νενομισμένων τιμῶν ἐκβάλλωμεν, οὐδ’ αἱ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης κατὰ χώραν [757] [a] μενοῦσιν. Οὐδὲ γὰρ τοῦτ’ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν, ὅτι τῷ μὲν Ἔρωτι λοιδοροῦνταί τινες [ἀλλὰ] ἀπέχονται ‹δ’› ἐκείνης, ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ μιᾶς σκηνῆς ἀκούομεν (Eur. fr. 322, 1)

‘Ἔρως γὰρ ἀργὸν κἀπὶ τοιούτοις ἔφυ’

καὶ πάλιν (Soph. fr. 855, 1)

‘ὦ παῖδες, ‹ἥ τοι Κύπρις› οὐ Κύπρις μόνον,

ἀλλ’ ἔστι πολλῶν ὀνομάτων ἐπώνυμος.

ἔστιν μὲν Ἅιδης, ἔστι δ’ ἄφθιτος βίος,

ἔστιν δὲ λύσσα μανιάς·’

ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τῶν ἄλλων θεῶν σχεδὸν ἀλοιδόρητος οὐδεὶς ἐκπέφευγε τὴν εὐλοιδόρητον ἀμαθίαν. σκόπει δὲ τὸν Ἄρην καθάπερ ἐν πίνακι χαλκῷ τὴν ἀντικειμένην ἐκ διαμέτρου τῷ Ἔρωτι χώραν ἔχοντα πηλίκας εἴληχε τιμὰς ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων καὶ πάλιν ὅσα κακῶς ἀκούει, (Soph. fr. 754)

[b] ‘τυφλὸς γάρ, ὦ γυναῖκες, οὐδ’ ὁρῶν Ἄρης

συὸς προσώπῳ πάντα τυρβάζει κακά’

καὶ ‘μιαιφόνον’ Ὅμηρος (Ε 31. 831 al.) αὐτὸν καλεῖ καὶ ‘ἀλλοπρόσαλλον.’ Ὁ δὲ Χρύσιππος (St. V. Fr. II 1094) ἐξηγούμενος τοὔνομα τοῦ θεοῦ κατηγορίαν ποιεῖ καὶ διαβολήν· Ἀναίρην γὰρ εἶναι τὸν Ἄρην φησίν, ἀρχὰς διδοὺς τοῖς τὸ μαχητικὸν ἐν ἡμῖν καὶ διάφορον καὶ θυμοειδὲς Ἄρην κεκλῆσθαι νομίζουσιν. ἕτεροι δ’ αὖ φήσουσι τὴν Ἀφροδίτην ἐπιθυμίαν εἶναι καὶ τὸν Ἑρμῆν λόγον καὶ τέχνας τὰς Μούσας καὶ φρόνησιν τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν. ὁρᾷς δήπου τὸν ὑπολαμβάνοντα βυθὸν ἡμᾶς ἀθεότητος, ἂν εἰς [c] πάθη καὶ δυνάμεις καὶ ἀρετὰς διαγράφωμεν ἕκαστον τῶν θεῶν.’

‘Ὁρῶ’ εἶπεν ὁ Πεμπτίδης, ‘ἀλλ’ οὔτε πάθη τοὺς θεοὺς ποιεῖν ὅσιον οὔτ’ αὖ πάλιν τὰ πάθη θεοὺς νομίζειν.’ καὶ ὁ πατήρ ‘τί οὖν’ ἔφη ‘τὸν Ἄρην, θεὸν εἶναι νομίζεις ἢ πάθος ἡμέτερον;’ ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Πεμπτίδου θεὸν ἡγεῖσθαι τὸν Ἄρην κοσμοῦντα τὸ θυμοειδὲς ἡμῶν καὶ ἀνδρῶδες, ἀνακραγὼν ὁ πατήρ ‘εἶτ’’ ἔφη ‘τὸ μὲν μαχητικόν, ὦ Πεμπτίδη, καὶ πολεμικὸν καὶ ἀντίπαλον θεὸν ἔχει, τὸ δὲ φιλητικὸν καὶ κοινωνικὸν καὶ συνελευστικὸν ἄθεόν ἐστι; καὶ κτείνοντας μὲν ἄρα καὶ κτεινομένους ἀνθρώπους ὅπλα τε καὶ βέλη καὶ τειχομαχίας καὶ λεηλασίας [d] ἔστι τις ἐφορῶν καὶ βραβεύων θεὸς Ἐνυάλιος καὶ Στράτιος· †πάθους δὲ γάμου καὶ φιλότητος εἰς ὁμοφροσύνην καὶ κοινωνίαν τελευτώσης οὐδεὶς θεῶν μάρτυς οὐδ’ ἐπίσκοπος οὐδ’ ἡγεμὼν ἢ συνεργὸς ἡμῖν γέγονεν; ἀλλὰ δορκάδας μὲν θηρεύουσι καὶ λαγωοὺς καὶ ἐλάφους Ἀγροτέρα τις συνεπιθωΰσσει καὶ συνεξορμᾷ θεός, εὔχονται δ’ Ἀρισταίῳ δολοῦντες ὀρύγμασι καὶ βρόχοις λύκους καὶ ἄρκτους,

‘ὃς πρῶτος θήρεσσιν ἔπηξε ποδάγρας·’

ὁ δ’ Ἡρακλῆς ἕτερον θεὸν παρακαλεῖ μέλλων ἐπὶ τὸν ὄρνιν αἴρεσθαι τὸ τόξον, ὡς Αἰσχύλος (fr. 200) φησίν,

‘Ἀγρεὺς δ’ Ἀπόλλων ὀρθὸν ἰθύνοι βέλος·’

[e] ἀνδρὶ δὲ τὸ κάλλιστον ἐπιχειροῦντι θήραμα φιλίαν ἑλεῖν οὔτε θεὸς οὔτε δαίμων ἀπευθύνει καὶ συνεφάπτεται τῆς ὁρμῆς; ἐγὼ μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲ δρυὸς οὐδὲ μορίας οὐδ’ ἣν Ὅμηρος (ε 69) ‘ἡμερίδα’ σεμνύνων προσεῖπεν ἀκαλλέστερον ἔρνος οὐδὲ φαυλότερον ἡγοῦμαι φυτὸν ἄνθρωπον, ὦ φίλε Δαφναῖε, βλαστήσεως ὁρμὴν ἔχοντα διαφαίνουσαν ὥραν καὶ κάλλος ἅμα σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς.’ καὶ ὁ Δαφναῖος ‘τίς δ’ ἄλλως’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ πρὸς τῶν θεῶν;’ ‘οὗτοι νὴ Δί’’ ἔφη ‘πάντες’ ὁ πατήρ ‘οἱ νομίζοντες ἀρότου καὶ σπόρου καὶ φυτείας ἐπιμέλειαν θεοῖς προσήκειν (ἢ γὰρ οὐ νύμφαι τινὲς αὐτοῖς δρυάδες εἰσίν

‘ἰσοδένδρου τέκμαρ αἰῶνος λαχοῦσαι·’

[f] ‘δενδρέων δὲ νομὸν Διόνυσος πολυγαθὴς αὐξάνει,

φέγγος ἁγνὸν ὀπώρας’ (fr. 165. 153)

κατὰ Πίνδαρον;), μειρακίων δ’ ἄρα καὶ παίδων ἐν ὥρᾳ καὶ ἄνθει πλαττομένων καὶ ῥυθμιζομένων τροφαὶ καὶ αὐξήσεις οὐδενὶ θεῶν ἢ δαιμόνων προσήκουσιν, οὐδ’ ἔστιν ᾧ μέλει φυόμενον ἄνθρωπον εἰς ἀρετὴν ὀρθὸν [758] [a] ἐλθεῖν καὶ μὴ παρατραπῆναι μηδὲ κλασθῆναι τὸ γενναῖον ἐρημίᾳ κηδεμόνος ἢ κακίᾳ τῶν προστυγχανόντων.

Ἢ καὶ τὸ λέγειν ταῦτα δεινόν ἐστι καὶ ἀχάριστον, ἀπολαύοντάς γε τοῦ θείου τοῦ φιλανθρώπου πανταχόσε νενεμημένου καὶ μηδαμοῦ προλείποντος ἐν χρείαις, ὧν ἀναγκαιότερον ἔνιαι τὸ τέλος ἢ κάλλιον ἔχουσιν; ὥσπερ εὐθὺς ἡ περὶ τὴν γένεσιν ἡμῶν, οὐκ εὐπρεπὴς οὖσα δι’ αἵματος καὶ ὠδίνων, ὅμως ἔχει θεῖον ἐπίσκοπον Εἰλείθυιαν καὶ Λοχείαν· ἦν δέ που μὴ γίνεσθαι κρεῖττον ἢ γίνεσθαι κακόν, ἁμαρτάνοντα κηδεμόνος ἀγαθοῦ καὶ φύλακος. οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ νοσοῦντος ἀνθρώπου θεὸς ἀποστατεῖ [b] τὴν περὶ τοῦτο χρείαν καὶ δύναμιν εἰληχώς, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἀποθανόντος· ἔστι δέ τις ἐκεῖ κομιστὴρ ἐνθένδε καὶ ἀρωγὸς ἐν τέλει γενομένων κατευναστὴς καὶ ψυχοπομπὸς ὥσπερ οὗτος·

‘οὐ γάρ με Νὺξ ἔτικτε δεσπότην λύρας,

οὐ μάντιν οὐδ’ ἰατρόν, ἀλλὰ †θνητὸν ἅμα

ψυχαῖς’ (Trag. ad. 405).

καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πολλὰς ἔχει δυσχερείας· ἐκείνου δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ἔργον ἱερώτερον οὐδ’ ἅμιλλαν ἑτέραν οὐδ’ ἀγῶνα θεῷ πρέπειν μᾶλλον ἐφορᾶν καὶ βραβεύειν ἢ τὴν περὶ τοὺς καλοὺς καὶ ὡραίους ἐπιμέλειαν τῶν ἐρώντων καὶ δίωξιν· οὐδὲν γάρ ἐστιν αἰσχρὸν οὐδ’ ἀναγκαῖον, ἀλλὰ πειθὼ καὶ χάρις ἐνδιδοῦσα ‘πόνον ἡδὺν’ ὡς ἀληθῶς ‘κάματόν ‹τ’ εὐκάματον’› (Eur.

[c] Bacch. 66) ὑφηγεῖται πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ φιλίαν, οὔτ’ ‘ἄνευ θεοῦ’ (Hom. β 372. ο 531) τὸ προσῆκον τέλος λαμβάνουσαν, οὔτ’ ἄλλον ἔχουσαν ἡγεμόνα καὶ δεσπότην θεὸν ἀλλὰ τὸν Μουσῶν καὶ Χαρίτων καὶ Ἀφροδίτης ἑταῖρον Ἔρωτα.

‘γλυκὺ γὰρ θέρος ἀνδρὸς ὑποσπείρων πραπίδων πόθῳ’

κατὰ τὸν Μελανιππίδην (fr. 7 II p. 154 D.), τὰ ἥδιστα μίγνυσι τοῖς καλλίστοις· ἢ πῶς’ ἔφη ‘λέγομεν, ὦ Ζεύξιππε;’ κἀκεῖνος ‘οὕτως’ ἔφη ‘νὴ Δία παντὸς μᾶλλον· ἄτοπον γὰρ ἀμέλει τοὐναντίον.’ ‘Ἐκεῖνο δ’’ ὁ πατήρ ‘οὐκ ἄτοπον’ εἶπεν, ‘εἰ τέσσαρα γένη τῆς φιλίας ἐχούσης, ὥσπερ οἱ παλαιοὶ διώρισαν, τὸ φυσικὸν πρῶτον εἶτα τὸ [d] ξενικὸν ἐπὶ τούτῳ καὶ τρίτον τὸ ἑταιρικὸν καὶ τελευταῖον τὸ ἐρωτικόν, ἔχει τούτων ἕκαστον ἐπιστάτην θεὸν ἢ φίλιον ἢ ξένιον ἢ ὁμόγνιον καὶ πατρῷον· μόνον δὲ τὸ ἐρωτικὸν ὥσπερ δυσιεροῦν ἄθεον καὶ ἀδέσποτον ἀφεῖται, καὶ ταῦτα πλείστης ἐπιμελείας καὶ κυβερνήσεως δεόμενον;’ ‘ἔχει καὶ ταῦθ’’ ὁ Ζεύξιππος εἶπεν ‘οὐ μικρὰν ἀλογίαν.’ ‘Ἀλλὰ μήν’ ὁ πατὴρ ἔφη ‘τά γε τοῦ Πλάτωνος (Phaedr. 244 ss. 265a al.) ἐπιλάβοιτ’ ἂν τοῦ λόγου καὶ παρεξιόντος. μανία γὰρ ἡ μὲν ἀπὸ σώματος ἐπὶ ψυχὴν ἀνεσταλμένη δυσκρασίαις τισὶν ἢ συμμίξεσιν [ἢ] πνεύματος βλαβεροῦ περιφερομένου τραχεῖα καὶ χαλεπὴ [e] καὶ νοσώδης· ἑτέρα δ’ ἐστὶν οὐκ ἀθείαστος οὐδ’ οἰκογενής, ἀλλ’ ἔπηλυς ἐπίπνοια καὶ παρατροπὴ τοῦ λογιζομένου καὶ φρονοῦντος ἀρχὴν κρείττονος δυνάμεως ἀρχὴν ἔχουσα καὶ κίνησιν, ἧς τὸ μὲν κοινὸν ἐνθουσιαστικὸν καλεῖται πάθος· ὡς γὰρ ἔμπνουν τὸ πνεύματος πληρωθὲν ἔμφρον δὲ τὸ φρονήσεως, οὕτως ὁ τοιοῦτος σάλος ψυχῆς ἐνθουσιασμὸς ὠνόμασται μετοχῇ καὶ κοινωνίᾳ θειοτέρας δυνάμεως· ἐνθουσιασμοῦ δὲ τὸ μαντικὸν ἐξ Ἀπόλλωνος ἐπιπνοίας καὶ κατοχῆς, τὸ δὲ βακχεῖον ἐκ Διονύσου,

‘κἀπὶ Κυρβάντεσι χορεύσατε’

φησὶ Σοφοκλῆς (fr. 778)· τὰ γὰρ μητρῷα καὶ πανικὰ [f] κοινωνεῖ τοῖς βακχικοῖς ὀργιασμοῖς. ‘τρίτη δ’ ἀπὸ Μουσῶν λαβοῦσ’ ἁπαλὴν καὶ ἄβατον ψυχὴν’ (Plat. Phaedr. 245a) τὸ ποιητικὸν καὶ μουσικὸν ἐξώρμησε καὶ ἀνερρίπισεν. ἡ δ’ ἀρειμάνιος αὕτη λεγομένη καὶ πολεμικὴ παντὶ δῆλον ὅτῳ θεῶν ἀνίεται καὶ βακχεύεται

‘ἄχορον ἀκίθαριν δακ‹ρυο›γόνον Ἄρ‹η

βο›άν τ’ ἔνδημον ἐξοπλίζουσα’ (Aesch. Suppl. 681).

[759] [a] λείπεται δὲ τῆς ἐξαλλαγῆς ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ παρατροπῆς οὐκ ἀμαυρὸν οὐδ’ ἡσυχαῖον, ὦ Δαφναῖε, μόριον, ὑπὲρ οὗ βούλομαι τουτονὶ Πεμπτίδην ἐρέσθαι ...

‘τί‹ς καλλί›καρπον θύρσον ἀνασείει θεῶν;’ (Trag. ad. 406)

τὸν φιλητικὸν τοῦτον περὶ παῖδας ἀγαθοὺς καὶ σώφρονας γυναῖκας ἐνθουσιασμὸν πολὺ δριμύτατον ὄντα καὶ θερμότατον; ἢ γὰρ οὐχ ὁρᾷς, ὡς ὁ μὲν στρατιώτης τὰ ὅπλα θεὶς πέπαυται τῆς πολεμικῆς μανίας,

 ‘τοῦ μὲν ἔπειτα

γηθόσυνοι θεράποντες ἀπ’ ὤμων τεύχε’ ἕλοντο’ (Η 121),

καὶ κάθηται τῶν ἄθλων ἀπόλεμος θεατής, ταυτὶ δὲ τὰ βακχικὰ καὶ κορυβαντικὰ σκιρτήματα τὸν ῥυθμὸν [b] μεταβάλλοντες ἐκ τροχαίου καὶ τὸ μέλος ἐκ Φρυγίου πραΰνουσι καὶ καταπαύουσιν, ὡς δ’ αὔτως ἡ Πυθία τοῦ τρίποδος ἐκβᾶσα καὶ τοῦ πνεύματος ἐν γαλήνῃ καὶ ἡσυχίᾳ διατελεῖ; τὴν δ’ ἐρωτικὴν μανίαν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καθαψαμένην ἀληθῶς καὶ διακαύσασαν οὐ μοῦσά τις οὐκ ‘ἐπῳδὴ θελκτήριος’ οὐ τόπου μεταβολὴ καθίστησιν· ἀλλὰ καὶ παρόντες ἐρῶσι καὶ ἀπόντες ποθοῦσι καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν διώκουσι καὶ νύκτωρ θυραυλοῦσι καὶ νήφοντες καλοῦσι τοὺς καλοὺς καὶ πίνοντες ᾄδουσι. καὶ οὐχ ὥς τις εἶπεν αἱ ποιητικαὶ φαντασίαι διὰ [c] τὴν ἐνάργειαν ἐγρηγορότων ἐνύπνι’ εἰσίν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον αἱ τῶν ἐρώντων, διαλεγομένων ὡς πρὸς παρόντας, ἀσπαζομένων, ἐγκαλούντων. ἡ γὰρ ὄψις ἔοικε τὰς μὲν ἄλλας φαντασίας ἐφ’ ὑγροῖς ζωγραφεῖν, ταχὺ μαραινομένας καὶ ἀπολειπούσας τὴν διάνοιαν· αἱ δὲ τῶν ἐρωμένων εἰκόνες ὑπ’ αὐτῆς οἷον ἐν ἐγκαύμασι γραφόμεναι διὰ πυρὸς εἴδωλα ταῖς μνήμαις ἐναπολείπουσι κινούμενα καὶ ζῶντα καὶ φθεγγόμενα καὶ παραμένοντα τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ῥωμαῖος Κάτων ἔλεγε τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ ἐρῶντος ἐνδιαιτᾶσθαι τῇ τοῦ ἐρωμένου· καὶ τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὸ ἦθος καὶ ὁ βίος καὶ αἱ πράξεις, ὑφ’ ὧν ἀγόμενος [d] ταχὺ συναιρεῖ πολλὴν ὁδόν, ὥσπερ οἱ Κυνικοὶ λέγουσι ‘σύντονον ὁμοῦ καὶ σύντομον εὑρηκέναι πορείαν ἐπ’ ἀρετήν·’ καὶ γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν φιλίαν ... καθάπερ ἐπὶ κύματος τοῦ πάθους ἅμα θεῷ φερομένη. λέγω δὴ κεφάλαιον, ὡς οὔτ’ ἀθείαστον ὁ τῶν ἐρώντων ἐνθουσιασμός ἐστιν οὔτ’ ἄλλον ἔχει θεὸν ἐπιστάτην καὶ ἡνίοχον ἢ τοῦτον, ᾧ νῦν ἑορτάζομεν καὶ θύομεν.’

‘Ὅμως δ’ ἐπεὶ δυνάμει καὶ ὠφελείᾳ μάλιστα θεοῦ ...

καθότι καὶ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ἀγαθῶν δύο ταῦτα, βασιλείαν καὶ ἀρετήν, θειότατα καὶ νομίζομεν καὶ ὀνομάζομεν, ὥρα [e] σκοπεῖν πρότερον, εἴ τινι θεῶν ὁ Ἔρως ὑφίεται δυνάμεως. καίτοι

‘μέγα μὲν σθένος ἁ Κύπρις ἐκφέρεται νίκας’

ὥς φησι καὶ Σοφοκλῆς (Trach. 497), μεγάλη δ’ ἡ τοῦ Ἄρεος ἰσχύς· καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τῶν ἄλλων θεῶν νενεμημένην δίχα τὴν δύναμιν ἐν τούτοις ὁρῶμεν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ οἰκειωτικὴ πρὸς τὸ καλὸν ἡ δ’ ἀντιτακτικὴ πρὸς τὸ αἰσχρὸν ἀρχῆθεν ἐγγέγονε ταῖς ψυχαῖς, ὥς που καὶ Πλάτων ... τὰ εἴδη. σκοπῶμεν οὖν εὐθύς, ὅτι τῆς Ἀφροδίτης τὸ ἔργον †ἔρωτος ὤνιόν ἐστι δραχμῆς, καὶ οὔτε πόνον οὐδεὶς οὔτε κίνδυνον ἀφροδισίων ἕνεκα μὴ ἐρῶν ὑπέμεινε. καὶ ὅπως ἐνταῦθα μὴ Φρύνην ὀνομάζωμεν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, Λαΐς τις ἢ Γναθαίνιον

[f] ‘ἐφέσπερον δαίουσα λαμπτῆρος σέλας’ (Trag. ad. 407)

ἐκδεχομένη καὶ καλοῦσα παροδεύεται πολλάκις· ‘ἐλθὼν δ’ ἐξαπίνης ἄνεμος’ (Ρ 57) σὺν ἔρωτι πολλῷ καὶ πόθῳ ταὐτὸ τοῦτο τῶν Ταντάλου λεγομένων ταλάντων καὶ τῆς Γύγου ἀρχῆς ἀντάξιον ἐποίησεν. οὕτως ἀσθενὴς καὶ ἁψίκορός ἐστιν ἡ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης χάρις Ἔρωτος μὴ ἐπιπνεύσαντος. Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον κἀκεῖθεν ἂν συνίδοις· πολλοὶ γὰρ ἀφροδισίων ἑτέροις ἐκοινώνησαν, οὐ μόνον ἑταίρας ἀλλὰ καὶ γαμετὰς προαγωγεύοντες· ὥσπερ καὶ ὁ Ῥωμαῖος ἐκεῖνος, [760] [a] ὦ ἑταῖρε, Γάββας εἱστία Μαικήναν ὡς ἔοικεν, εἶθ’ ὁρῶν διαπληκτιζόμενον ἀπὸ νευμάτων πρὸς τὸ γύναιον, ἀπέκλινεν ἡσυχῆ τὴν κεφαλὴν ὡς δὴ καθεύδων· ἐν τούτῳ δὴ τῶν οἰκετῶν τινος προσρυέντος ἔξωθεν τῇ τραπέζῃ καὶ τὸν οἶνον ὑφαιρουμένου, διαβλέψας ‘κακόδαιμον’ εἶπεν, ‘οὐκ οἶσθ’ ὅτι μόνῳ Μαικήνᾳ καθεύδω;’ τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ἴσως ‹οὐ› δεινόν ἐστιν· ἦν γὰρ ὁ Γάββας γελωτοποιός. ἐν δ’ Ἄργει Νικόστρατος ἀντεπολιτεύσατο πρὸς Φάυλλον· ἐπιδημήσαντος οὖν Φιλίππου τοῦ βασιλέως, ἐπίδοξος ἦν διὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ὁ Φάυλλος ἐκπρεποῦς οὔσης, εἰ συγγένοιτο τῷ Φιλίππῳ, διαπράξασθαί τινα [b] δυναστείαν αὑτῷ καὶ ἀρχήν. αἰσθομένων δὲ τῶν περὶ Νικόστρατον τοῦτο καὶ παρὰ τὰς θύρας τῆς οἰκίας περιπατούντων, ὁ Φάυλλος ὑποδήσας τὴν γυναῖκα κρηπῖσι καὶ χλαμύδα περιθεὶς καὶ καυσίαν Μακεδονικήν, ὡς ἕνα τῶν βασιλικῶν νεανίσκων παρεισέπεμψε λαθοῦσαν. ἆρ’ οὖν, ἐραστῶν τοσούτων γεγονότων καὶ ὄντων, οἶσθ’ ἐπὶ ταῖς τοῦ Διὸς τιμαῖς προαγωγὸν ἐρωμένου γενόμενον; ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ οἶμαι· πόθεν γάρ, ὅπου καὶ τοῖς τυράννοις ἀντιλέγων μὲν οὐδεὶς οὔτ’ ἀντιπολιτευόμενός ἐστιν, ἀντερῶντες δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ φιλοτιμούμενοι περὶ τῶν καλῶν καὶ ὡραίων; ἀκούετε γὰρ ὅτι καὶ Ἀριστογείτων [c] ὁ Ἀθηναῖος καὶ Ἀντιλέων ὁ Μεταποντῖνος καὶ Μελάνιππος ὁ Ἀκραγαντῖνος οὐ διεφέροντο τοῖς τυράννοις, πάντα τὰ πράγματα λυμαινομένους καὶ παροινοῦντας ὁρῶντες· ἐπεὶ δὲ τοὺς ἐρωμένους αὐτῶν ἐπείρων, ὥσπερ ἱεροῖς ἀσύλοις καὶ ἀθίκτοις ἀμύνοντες ἠφείδησαν ἑαυτῶν. λέγεται καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος ἐπιστεῖλαι Θεοδώρῳ Πρωτέου ἀδελφῷ ‘πέμψον μοι τὴν μουσουργὸν δέκα τάλαντα λαβών, εἰ μὴ ἐρᾷς αὐτῆς·’ ἑτέρου δὲ τῶν ἑταίρων Ἀντιπατρίδου μετὰ ψαλτρίας ἐπικωμάσαντος, ἡδέως διατεθεὶς πρὸς τὴν ἄνθρωπον ἐρέσθαι τὸν Ἀντιπατρίδην ‘οὐ δήπου [d] σὺ τυγχάνεις ἐρῶν ταύτης;’ τοῦ δέ ‘καὶ πάνυ’ φήσαντος, εἰπών ‘ἀπόλοιο τοίνυν κακὸς κακῶς’ ἀποσχέσθαι καὶ μὴ θιγεῖν τῆς γυναικός. Σκόπει τοίνυν αὖθις’ ἔφη ‘τοῖς ἀρηίοις ἔργοις ὅσον Ἔρως περίεστιν, οὐκ ἀργὸς ὤν, ὡς Εὐριπίδης (fr. 322, 1) ἔλεγεν, οὐδ’ ἀστράτευτος οὐδ’ ‘ἐν μαλακαῖσιν ‹ἐννυχεύ›ων παρειαῖς νεανίδων’ (Soph. Ant. 783). ἀνὴρ γὰρ ὑποπλησθεὶς Ἔρωτος οὐδὲν Ἄρεος δεῖται μαχόμενος πολεμίοις, ἀλλὰ τὸν αὑτοῦ θεὸν ἔχων συνόντα

‘πῦρ καὶ θάλασσαν καὶ πνοὰς τὰς αἰθέρος

περᾶν ἕτοιμος’ (Trag. ad. 408)

ὑπὲρ τοῦ φίλου οὗπερ ἂν κελεύῃ. τῶν μὲν γὰρ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους Νιοβιδῶν βαλλομένων καὶ θνησκόντων ἀνακαλεῖταί [e] τις οὐθένα βοηθὸν ἄλλον οὐδὲ σύμμαχον ἢ τὸν ἐραστήν,

‘ὦ ... ἀμφ’ ἐμοῦ στεῖλαι’ (Soph. fr. 410).

Κλεόμαχον δὲ τὸν Φαρσάλιον ἴστε δήπουθεν ἐξ ἧς αἰτίας ἐτελεύτησεν ἀγωνιζόμενος.’ ‘οὐχ ἡμεῖς γοῦν’ οἱ περὶ Πεμπτίδην ἔφασαν, ‘ἀλλ’ ἡδέως ἂν πυθοίμεθα.’ ‘καὶ γὰρ ἄξιον’ ἔφη ὁ πατήρ· ‘ἧκεν ἐπίκουρος Χαλκιδεῦσι τοῦ †Θεσσαλικοῦ πολέμου πρὸς Ἐρετριεῖς ἀκμάζοντος· καὶ τὸ μὲν πεζὸν ἐδόκει τοῖς Χαλκιδεῦσιν ἐρρῶσθαι, τοὺς δ’ ἱππέας μέγ’ ἔργον ἦν ὤσασθαι τῶν πολεμίων παρεκάλουν δὴ τὸν Κλεόμαχον ἄνδρα λαμπρὸν ὄντα τὴν ψυχὴν οἱ σύμμαχοι πρῶτον ἐμβάλλειν εἰς τοὺς ἱππέας.

[f] ὁ δ’ ἠρώτησε παρόντα τὸν ἐρώμενον, εἰ μέλλοι θεᾶσθαι τὸν ἀγῶνα· φήσαντος δὲ τοῦ νεανίσκου καὶ φιλοφρόνως αὐτὸν ἀσπασαμένου καὶ τὸ κράνος ἐπιθέντος, ἐπιγαυρωθεὶς ὁ Κλεόμαχος καὶ τοὺς ἀρίστους τῶν Θεσσαλῶν συναγαγὼν περὶ αὑτὸν ἐξήλασε λαμπρῶς καὶ προσέπεσε τοῖς πολεμίοις, ὥστε συνταράξαι καὶ τρέψασθαι τὸ ἱππικόν· ἐκ δὲ τούτου καὶ τῶν ὁπλιτῶν φυγόντων, [761] [a] ἐνίκησαν κατὰ κράτος οἱ Χαλκιδεῖς. τὸν μέντοι Κλεόμαχον ἀποθανεῖν συνέτυχε· τάφον δ’ αὐτοῦ δεικνύουσιν ἐν ἀγορᾷ Χαλκιδεῖς, ἐφ’ οὗ μέχρι νῦν ὁ μέγας ἐφέστηκε κίων· καὶ τὸ παιδεραστεῖν πρότερον ἐν ψόγῳ τιθέμενοι τότε μᾶλλον ἑτέρων ἠγάπησαν καὶ ἐτίμησαν. Ἀριστοτέλης (FHG II 141) δὲ τὸν μὲν Κλεόμαχον ἄλλως ἀποθανεῖν φησι, κρατήσαντα τῶν Ἐρετριέων τῇ μάχῃ· τὸν δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἐρωμένου φιληθέντα τῶν ἀπὸ Θρᾴκης Χαλκιδέων γενέσθαι, πεμφθέντα τοῖς ἐν Εὐβοίᾳ Χαλκιδεῦσιν ἐπίκουρον· ὅθεν ᾄδεσθαι παρὰ τοῖς Χαλκιδεῦσιν

‘ὦ παῖδες, οἳ χαρίτων τε καὶ πατέρων λάχετ’ ἐσθλῶν, [b] μὴ φθονεῖθ’ ὥρας ἀγαθοῖσιν ὁμιλίαν· σὺν γὰρ ἀνδρείᾳ καὶ ὁ λυσιμελὴς Ἔρως ἐνὶ Χαλκιδέων θάλλει πόλεσιν.’ (Carm. popul. 44 Bgk. II p. 205 D.)

Ἄντων ἦν ὄνομα τῷ ἐραστῇ τῷ δ’ ἐρωμένῳ Φίλιστος, ὡς ἐν τοῖς Αἰτίοις Διονύσιος ὁ ποιητὴς ἱστόρησε. παρ’ ὑμῖν δ’, ὦ Πεμπτίδη, τοῖς Θηβαίοις οὐ πανοπλίᾳ ὁ ἐραστὴς ἐδωρεῖτο τὸν ἐρώμενον εἰς ἄνδρας ἐγγραφόμενον; ἤλλαξε δὲ καὶ μετέθηκε τάξιν τῶν ὁπλιτῶν ἐρωτικὸς ἀνὴρ Παμμένης, Ὅμηρον (Β 362) ἐπιμεμψάμενος ὡς ἀνέραστον, ὅτι κατὰ φῦλα καὶ φρήτρας συνελόχιζε τοὺς Ἀχαιούς, οὐκ ἐρώμενον ἔταττε παρ’ ἐραστήν, ἵν’ οὕτω γένηται τὸ

‘ἀσπὶς δ’ ἀσπίδ’ ἔρειδε κόρυς δὲ κόρυν’ (Ν 131. Π 215),

μόνον ἀήττητον ὂν πάντων τῶν στρατηγημάτων. καὶ [c] γὰρ φυλέτας καὶ οἰκείους καὶ νὴ Δία γονεῖς καὶ παῖδας ἐγκαταλείπουσιν· ἐραστοῦ δ’ ἐνθέου καὶ ἐρωμένου μέσος οὐδεὶς πώποτε διεξῆλθε πολέμιος οὐδὲ διεξήλασεν· ὅπου καὶ μηθὲν δεομένοις ‹ἔπεισιν› ἐπιδεικνύναι τὸ φιλοκίνδυνον κἀφιλόψυχον· ὡς Θήρων ὁ Θεσσαλὸς προσβαλὼν τὴν χεῖρα τῷ τοίχῳ τὴν εὐώνυμον καὶ σπασάμενος τὴν μάχαιραν ἀπέκοψε τὸν ἀντίχειρα προκαλούμενος τὸν ἀντεραστήν. ἕτερος δέ τις ἐν μάχῃ πεσὼν ἐπὶ πρόσωπον, ὡς ἔμελλε παίσειν αὐτὸν ὁ πολέμιος, ἐδεήθη περιμεῖναι μικρόν, ‹ὅπως μὴ› ὁ ἐρώμενος ἴδῃ κατὰ νώτου τετρωμένον. οὐ μόνον τοίνυν τὰ μαχιμώτατα τῶν ἐθνῶν ἐρωτικώτατα, [d] Βοιωτοὶ καὶ Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ Κρῆτες, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν παλαιῶν ὁ Μελέαγρος ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς ὁ Ἀριστομένης ὁ Κίμων ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας· καὶ γὰρ οὗτος ἐρωμένους ἔσχεν Ἀσώπιχον καὶ Καφισόδωρον, ὃς αὐτῷ συναπέθανεν ἐν Μαντινείᾳ καὶ τέθαπται πλησίον. τὸν δὲ μω..... φοβερώτατον γενόμενον τοῖς πολεμίοις καὶ δεινότατον ὁ πρῶτος ὑποστὰς καὶ πατάξας Εὔκναμος Ἀμφισσεὺς ἡρωικὰς ἔσχε τιμὰς παρὰ Φωκεῦσιν. Ἡρακλέους δὲ τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἔρωτας ἔργον ἐστὶν εἰπεῖν διὰ πλῆθος· Ἰόλαον δὲ νομίζοντες ἐρώμενον αὐτοῦ γεγονέναι μέχρι νῦν σέβονται καὶ τιμῶσιν ‹οἱ› ἐρῶντες, ὅρκους τε [e] καὶ πίστεις ἐπὶ τοῦ τάφου παρὰ τῶν ἐρωμένων λαμβάνοντες. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἄλκηστιν ἰατρικὸς ὢν ἀπεγνωσμένην σῶσαι τῷ Ἀδμήτῳ χαριζόμενος, ἐρῶντι μὲν αὐτῷ τῆς γυναικός, ἐρωμένου δ’ αὐτοῦ γενομένου· καὶ γὰρ τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα μυθολογοῦσιν ἐραστὴν γενόμενον

‘Ἀδμήτῳ πάρα θητεῦσαι μέγαν εἰς ἐνιαυτόν’.

Εὖ δέ πως ἐπὶ μνήμην ἦλθεν ἡμῖν Ἄλκηστις. Ἄρεος γὰρ οὐ πάνυ μέτεστι γυναικί, ἡ δ’ ἐξ Ἔρωτος κατοχὴ προάγεταί τι τολμᾶν παρὰ φύσιν καὶ ἀποθνήσκειν. Εἰ δή πού τι καὶ μύθων πρὸς πίστιν ὄφελός ἐστι, δηλοῖ τὰ περὶ Ἄλκηστιν καὶ Πρωτεσίλεων καὶ Εὐρυδίκην τὴν Ὀρφέως, [f] ὅτι μόνῳ θεῶν ὁ Ἅιδης Ἔρωτι ποιεῖ τὸ προσταττόμενον· καίτοι πρός γε τοὺς ἄλλους, ὥς φησι Σοφοκλῆς (fr. 703), ἅπαντας

‘οὔτε τοὐπιεικὲς οὔτε τὴν χάριν

οἶδεν, μόνην δ’ ἔστερξε τὴν ἁπλῶς δίκην·’

αἰδεῖται δὲ τοὺς ἐρῶντας καὶ μόνοις τούτοις οὔκ ἐστιν ἀδάμαστος οὐδ’ ἀμείλιχος. ὅθεν ἀγαθὸν μέν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, τῆς ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι τελετῆς μετασχεῖν, ἐγὼ δ’ ὁρῶ τοῖς [762] [a] Ἔρωτος ὀργιασταῖς καὶ μύσταις ἐν Ἅιδου βελτίονα μοῖραν οὖσαν, οὔτι τοῖς μύθοις πειθόμενος οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ἀπιστῶν παντάπασιν· εὖ γὰρ δὴ λέγουσι καὶ θείᾳ τινὶ τύχῃ ψαύουσι τοῦ ‹ἀληθοῦς› λέγοντες ἐξ Ἅιδου τοῖς ἐρωτικοῖς ἄνοδον εἰς φῶς ὑπάρχειν, ὅπη δὲ καὶ ὅπως, ἀγνοοῦσιν, ὥσπερ ἀτραποῦ διαμαρτόντες ἣν πρῶτος ἀνθρώπων διὰ φιλοσοφίας Πλάτων κατεῖδε. καίτοι λεπταί τινες ἀπόρροιαι καὶ ἀμυδραὶ τῆς ἀληθείας ἔνεισι ταῖς Αἰγυπτίων ἐνδιεσπαρμέναι μυθολογίαις, ἀλλ’ ἰχνηλάτου δεινοῦ δέονται καὶ μεγάλα μικροῖς ἑλεῖν δυναμένου.’

‘Διὸ ταῦτα μὲν ἐῶμεν, μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἰσχὺν τοῦ Ἔρωτος [b] οὖσαν τοσαύτην ἤδη τὴν πρὸς ἀνθρώπους εὐμένειαν καὶ χάριν ἐπισκοπῶ‹μεν›, οὐκ εἰ πολλὰ τοῖς ἐρωμένοις ἀγαθὰ περιποιεῖ (δῆλα γάρ ἐστι ταῦτά γε πᾶσιν), ἀλλ’ εἰ πλείονα καὶ μείζονα τοὺς ἐρῶντας αὐτοὺς ὀνίνησιν· ἐπεί, καίπερ ὢν ἐρωτικὸς ὁ Εὐριπίδης (fr. 663), τὸ σμικρότατον ἀπεθαύμασεν εἰπὼν

‘ποιητὴν ἄρα

Ἔρως διδάσκει, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν.’

συνετόν τε γὰρ ποιεῖ, κἂν ῥᾴθυμος ᾖ τὸ πρίν· καὶ ἀνδρεῖον, ᾗ λέλεκται, τὸν ἄτολμον, ὥσπερ οἱ τὰ ξύλα πυρακτοῦντες ἐκ μαλακῶν ἰσχυρὰ ποιοῦσι. δωρητικὸς δὲ καὶ ἁπαλὸς καὶ μεγαλόφρων γίνεται πᾶς ἐραστής, κἂν γλίσχρος ᾖ [c] πρότερον, τῆς μικρολογίας καὶ φιλαργυρίας δίκην σιδήρου διὰ πυρὸς ἀνιεμένης· ὥστε χαίρειν τοῖς ἐρωμένοις διδόντας, ὡς παρ’ ἑτέρων οὐ χαίρουσιν αὐτοὶ λαμβάνοντες. ἴστε γὰρ δήπου, ὡς Ἀνύτῳ ‹τῷ› Ἀνθεμίωνος, ἐρῶντι μὲν Ἀλκιβιάδου ξένους δ’ ἑστιῶντι φιλοτίμως καὶ λαμπρῶς, ἐπεκώμασεν ὁ Ἀλκιβιάδης καὶ λαβὼν ἀπὸ τῆς τραπέζης εἰς ἥμισυ τῶν ἐκπωμάτων ἀπῆλθεν· ἀχθομένων δὲ τῶν ξένων καὶ λεγόντων ‘ὑβριστικῶς σοι κέχρηται καὶ ὑπερηφάνως τὸ μειράκιον,’ ‘φιλανθρώπως μὲν οὖν’ ὁ Ἄνυτος εἶπε· ‘πάντα γὰρ ἐξῆν αὐτῷ λαβεῖν, ὁ δὲ κἀμοὶ τοσαῦτα καταλέλοιπεν.’’ Ἡσθεὶς οὖν ὁ [d] Ζεύξιππος ‘ὦ Ἡράκλεις’ εἶπεν, ‘ὡς ὀλίγου διελύσατο πρὸς Ἄνυτον τὴν ἀπὸ Σωκράτους καὶ φιλοσοφίας πατρικὴν ἔχθραν, εἰ πρᾶος ἦν οὕτω περὶ ἔρωτα καὶ γενναῖος.’ ‘εἶεν’ εἶπεν ὁ πατήρ· ‘ἐκ δὲ δυσκόλων καὶ σκυθρωπῶν τοῖς συνοῦσιν οὐ ποιεῖ φιλανθρωποτέρους καὶ ἡδίους; ‘αἰθομένου’ γὰρ ‘πυρὸς γεραρώτερον οἶκον’ ‹ἔστιν› ‘ἰδέσθαι’ καὶ ἄνθρωπον ὡς ἔοικε φαιδρότερον ὑπὸ τῆς ἐρωτικῆς θερμότητος. ἀλλ’ οἱ πολλοὶ παράλογόν τι πεπόνθασιν· ἂν μὲν ἐν οἰκίᾳ νύκτωρ σέλας ἴδωσι, θεῖον ἡγοῦνται καὶ θαυμάζουσι· ψυχὴν δὲ μικρὰν καὶ ταπεινὴν καὶ ἀγεννῆ [e] ὁρῶντες ἐξαίφνης ὑποπιμπλαμένην φρονήματος ἐλευθερίας φιλοτιμίας χάριτος ἀφειδίας, οὐκ ἀναγκάζονται λέγειν ὡς ὁ Τηλέμαχος (τ 40)

‘ἦ μάλα τις θεὸς ἔνδον’.’

‘Ἐκεῖνο δ’’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ Δαφναῖε, πρὸς Χαρίτων οὐ δαιμόνιον; ὅτι τῶν ἄλλων ὁ ἐρωτικὸς ὀλίγου δεῖν ἁπάντων περιφρονῶν, οὐ μόνον ἑταίρων καὶ οἰκείων, ἀλλὰ καὶ νόμων καὶ ἀρχόντων καὶ βασιλέων, φοβούμενος δὲ μηθὲν μηδὲ θαυμάζων μηδὲ θεραπεύων, ἀλλὰ ‘καὶ τὸν αἰχματὰν κεραυνὸν’ (Pind. Pyth. 1, 5) οἷος ὢν ὑπομένειν, ἅμα τῷ τὸν καλὸν ἰδεῖν

‘ἔπτηξ’ ἀλέκτωρ δοῦλον ὣς κλίνας πτερόν,’ (Phryn. fr. 17)

καὶ τὸ θράσος ἐκκέκλασται καὶ κατακέκοπται [οἱ] τὸ [f] τῆς ψυχῆς γαῦρον. Ἄξιον δὲ Σαπφοῦς παρὰ ταῖς Μούσαις μνημονεῦσαι· τὸν μὲν γὰρ Ἡφαίστου παῖδα Ῥωμαῖοι Κᾶκον ἱστοροῦσι πῦρ καὶ φλόγας ἀφιέναι διὰ τοῦ στόματος ἔξω ῥεούσας· αὕτη δ’ ἀληθῶς μεμιγμένα πυρὶ φθέγγεται καὶ διὰ τῶν μελῶν ἀναφέρει τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς καρδίας θερμότητα ‘Μούσαις εὐφώνοις ἰωμένη τὸν ἔρωτα’ κατὰ Φιλόξενον (fr. 7). ἀλλ’ εἴ τι μὴ ‹διὰ› Λυσάνδραν, ὦ [763] [a] Δαφναῖε, τῶν παλαιῶν ἐκλέλησαι παιδικῶν, ἀνάμνησον ἡμᾶς, ἐν οἷς ἡ καλὴ Σαπφὼ λέγει τῆς ἐρωμένης ἐπιφανείσης τήν τε φωνὴν ἴσχεσθαι καὶ φλέγεσθαι τὸ σῶμα καὶ καταλαμβάνειν ὠχρότητα καὶ πλάνον αὐτὴν καὶ ἴλιγγον.’ λεχθέντων οὖν ὑπὸ τοῦ Δαφναίου τῶν μελῶν ἐκείνων ‘ὡς .....’ (Sapph. fr. 2, 7 ss. I p. 329 D.), ὑπολαβὼν ὁ πατήρ ‘ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν, ‘ὦ πρὸς τοῦ Διός, ‹οὐ› θεοληψία καταφανής; οὗτος οὐ δαιμόνιος σάλος τῆς ψυχῆς; τί τοσοῦτον ἡ Πυθία πέπονθεν ἁψαμένη τοῦ τρίποδος; τίνα τῶν ἐνθεαζομένων οὕτως ὁ αὐλὸς καὶ τὰ μητρῷα καὶ τὸ [b] τύμπανον ἐξίστησιν; Καὶ μὴν τὸ αὐτὸ σῶμα πολλοὶ καὶ τὸ αὐτὸ κάλλος ὁρῶσιν, εἴληπται δ’ εἷς ὁ ἐρωτικός· διὰ τίν’ αἰτίαν; οὐ γὰρ μανθάνομέν γέ που τοῦ Μενάνδρου (fr. 541, 7) λέγοντος οὐδὲ συνίεμεν,

‘καιρός ἐστιν ἡ νόσος

ψυχῆς, ὁ πληγεὶς δ’ ε‹ἴσεθ’ ᾗ› τιτρώσκεται·’

ἀλλ’ ὁ θεὸς αἴτιος τοῦ μὲν καθαψάμενος τὸν δ’ ἐάσας.’

‘Ὃ τοίνυν ἐν ἀρχῇ καιρὸν εἶχε ῥηθῆναι μᾶλλον, οὐδὲ νῦν ‘ὅτι νῦν ἦλθεν ἐπὶ στόμα’ κατ’ Αἰσχύλον (fr. 351), ἄρρητον ἐάσειν μοι δοκῶ· καὶ γάρ ἐστι παμμέγεθες. ἴσως μὲν γάρ, ὦ ἑταῖρε, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων, ὅσα μὴ δι’ αἰσθήσεως ἡμῖν εἰς ἔννοιαν ἥκει, τὰ μὲν μύθῳ τὰ δὲ νόμῳ [c] τὰ δὲ λόγῳ πίστιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἔσχηκε· τῆς δ’ οὖν περὶ θεῶν δόξης καὶ παντάπασιν ἡγεμόνες καὶ διδάσκαλοι γεγόνασιν ἡμῖν οἵ τε ποιηταὶ καὶ οἱ νομοθέται καὶ τρίτον οἱ φιλόσοφοι, τὸ μὲν [οὖν] εἶναι θεοὺς ὁμοίως τιθέμενοι, πλήθους δὲ πέρι καὶ τάξεως αὐτῶν οὐσίας τε καὶ δυνάμεως μεγάλα διαφερόμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους. ἐκεῖνοι μὲν γὰρ οἱ τῶν φιλοσόφων

‘ἄνοσοι καὶ ἀγήραοι

πόνων τ’ ἄπειροι, βαρυβόαν

πορθμὸν πεφευγότες Ἀχέροντος·’ (Pind. fr. 143)

ὅθεν ‹οὐ› προσίενται ποιητικὰς Ἔριδας οὐ Λιτάς, οὐ‹δὲ› Δεῖμον οὐδὲ Φόβον ἐθέλουσι θεοὺς εἶναι ‹καὶ› παῖδας Ἄρεος ὁμολογεῖν· μάχονται δὲ περὶ πολλῶν καὶ τοῖς νομοθέταις, ὥσπερ Ξενοφάνης (A 13) Αἰγυπτίους ἐκέλευσε [d] τὸν Ὄσιριν, εἰ θνητὸν νομίζουσι, μὴ τιμᾶν ὡς θεόν, εἰ δὲ θεὸν ἡγοῦνται, μὴ θρηνεῖν. αὖθις δὲ ποιηταὶ καὶ νομοθέται, φιλοσόφων ἰδέας τινὰς καὶ ἀριθμοὺς μονάδας τε καὶ πνεύματα θεοὺς ποιουμένων, οὔτ’ ἀκούειν ὑπομένουσιν οὔτε συνιέναι δύνανται. πολλὴν δ’ ὅλως ἀνωμαλίαν ἔχουσιν αἱ δόξαι καὶ διαφοράν. ὥσπερ οὖν ἦσάν ποτε τρεῖς στάσεις Ἀθήνησι, Παράλων Ἐπακρίων Πεδιέων, χαλεπῶς ἔχουσαι καὶ διαφερόμεναι πρὸς ἀλλήλας, ἔπειτα δὲ πάντες ἐν ταὐτῷ γενόμενοι καὶ τὰς ψήφους λαβόντες ἤνεγκαν πάσας Σόλωνι καὶ τοῦτον εἵλοντο κοινῇ [e] διαλλακτὴν καὶ ἄρχοντα καὶ νομοθέτην, ὃς ἔδοξε τῆς ἀρετῆς ἔχειν ἀδηρίτως τὸ πρωτεῖον, οὕτως αἱ τρεῖς στάσεις αἱ περὶ θεῶν, διχοφρονοῦσαι καὶ ψῆφον ἄλλην ἄλλη φέρουσαι καὶ μὴ δεχόμεναι ῥᾳδίως τὸν ἐξ ἑτέρας, περὶ ἑνὸς βεβαίως ὁμογνωμονοῦσι καὶ κοινῇ τὸν Ἔρωτα συνεγγράφουσιν εἰς θεοὺς ποιητῶν οἱ κράτιστοι καὶ νομοθετῶν καὶ φιλοσόφων ‘ἀθρόᾳ φωνᾷ μέγ’ ἐπαινέοντες’ ὥσπερ ἔφη τὸν Πιττακὸν ὁ Ἀλκαῖος αἱρεῖσθαι τοὺς Μυτιληναίους τύραννον. Ἡμῖν δὲ βασιλεὺς καὶ ἄρχων καὶ ἁρμοστὴς ὁ Ἔρως ὑφ’ Ἡσιόδου καὶ Πλάτωνος καὶ Σόλωνος ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἑλικῶνος εἰς τὴν Ἀκαδημίαν ἐστεφανωμένος [f] κατάγεται καὶ κεκοσμημένος εἰσελαύνει πολλαῖς συνωρίσι φιλίας καὶ κοινωνίας, οὐχ οἵαν Εὐριπίδης (fr. 595) φησὶν ‘ἀχαλκεύτοισιν ἐζεῦχθαι πέδαις’, ψυχρὰν οὗτός γε καὶ βαρεῖαν ἐν χρείᾳ περιβαλὼν ὑπ’ αἰσχύνης ἀνάγκην, ἀλλ’ ὑποπτέρου φερομένης ἐπὶ τὰ κάλλιστα τῶν ὄντων καὶ θειότατα, περὶ ὧν ἑτέροις εἴρηται βέλτιον.’

Εἰπόντος δὲ ταῦτα τοῦ πατρός, ὁ Σώκλαρος [764] [a] ‘ὁρᾷς’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι δεύτερον ἤδη τοῖς αὐτοῖς περιπεσὼν οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως βίᾳ σαυτὸν ἀπάγεις καὶ ἀποστρέφεις, οὐ δικαίως χρεωκοπῶν, εἴ γε δεῖ τὸ φαινόμενον εἰπεῖν, ἱερὸν ὄντα τὸν λόγον; καὶ γὰρ ἄρτι τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἅμα καὶ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ὥσπερ ἄκων ἁψάμενος παρῆλθες καὶ νῦν ταὐτὰ ποιεῖς. τὰ μὲν οὖν ‘ἀριζήλως εἰρημένα’ (Hom. μ 453) Πλάτωνι, μᾶλλον δὲ ταῖς θεαῖς ταύταις διὰ Πλάτωνος, ὦγαθέ, ‘μηδ’ ἂν κελεύωμεν εἴπῃς·’ ᾗ δ’ ὑπῃνίξω τὸν Αἰγυπτίων μῦθον εἰς ταὐτὰ τοῖς Πλατωνικοῖς συμφέρεσθαι περὶ Ἔρωτος, οὐκ ἔστι σοι μὴ διακαλύψαι μηδὲ διαφῆναι [b] πρὸς ἡμᾶς· ἀγαπήσομεν δέ, κἂν μικρὰ περὶ μεγάλων ἀκούσωμεν.’ δεομένων δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἔφη ὁ πατήρ, ὡς Αἰγύπτιοι δύο μὲν Ἕλλησι παραπλησίως Ἔρωτας, τόν τε πάνδημον καὶ τὸν οὐράνιον, ἴσασι, τρίτον δὲ νομίζουσιν Ἔρωτα τὸν ἥλιον, Ἀφροδίτην ἔχουσι μάλα σεβάσμιον. ‘ἡμεῖς δὲ πολλὴν μὲν Ἔρωτος ὁμοιότητα πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ὁρῶμεν οὖσαν. πῦρ μὲν γὰρ οὐδέτερός ἐστιν ὥσπερ οἴονταί τινες, αὐ‹γὴ› δὲ καὶ θερμότης γλυκεῖα καὶ γόνιμος ἡ μὲν ἀπ’ ἐκείνου φερομένη σώματι παρέχει τροφὴν καὶ φῶς καὶ αὔξησιν, ἡ δ’ ἀπὸ τούτου ψυχαῖς. ὡς δ’ ἥλιος ἐκ νεφῶν καὶ μετ’ ὀμίχλην θερμότερος, [c] οὕτως Ἔρως μετ’ ὀργῆς καὶ ζηλοτυπίας ἐρωμένου διαλλαγέντος ἡδίων καὶ δριμύτερος. ἔτι δ’ ὥσπερ ἥλιον ἅπτεσθαι καὶ σβέννυσθαι δοκοῦσιν ἔνιοι, ταὐτὰ καὶ περὶ Ἔρωτος ὡς θνητοῦ καὶ ἀβεβαίου διανοοῦνται. καὶ μὴν οὔτε σώματος ἀγύμναστος ἕξις ἥλιον οὔτ’ Ἔρωτα δύναται φέρειν ἀλύπως τρόπος ἀπαιδεύτου ψυχῆς· ἐξίσταται δ’ ὁμοίως ἑκάτερον καὶ νοσεῖ, τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ δύναμιν οὐ τὴν αὑτοῦ μεμφόμενον ἀσθένειαν. πλὴν ἐκείνῃ γε δόξειαν ἂν διαφέρειν, ᾗ δείκνυσιν ἥλιος μὲν ἐπίσης τὰ καλὰ καὶ τὰ αἰσχρὰ τοῖς ὁρῶσιν, Ἔρως δὲ μόνων τῶν καλῶν φέγγος ἐστὶ καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα μόνα τοὺς ἐρῶντας ἀναπείθει [d] βλέπειν καὶ στρέφεσθαι, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων πάντων περιορᾶν. γῆν δὲ κατ’ οὐδὲν Ἀφροδίτην καλοῦντες ἅπτονταί τινος ὁμοιότητος· καὶ γὰρ χθονία καὶ οὐρανία καὶ μίξεως χώρα τοῦ ἀθανάτου πρὸς τὸ θνητόν, ἀδρανὴς δὲ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν καὶ σκοτώδης ἡλίου μὴ προσλάμποντος, ὥσπερ Ἀφροδίτη μὴ παρόντος Ἔρωτος. ἐοικέναι μὲν οὖν Ἀφροδίτῃ σελήνην ἥλιον δ’ Ἔρωτι τῶν ἄλλων θεῶν μᾶλλον εἰκός ἐστιν, οὐ μὴν εἶναί γε παντάπασι τοὺς αὐτούς· οὐ γὰρ ψυχῇ σῶμα ταὐτὸν ἀλλ’ ἕτερον, ὥσπερ ἥλιον μὲν ὁρατὸν Ἔρωτα δὲ νοητόν. Εἰ δὲ μὴ δόξει πικρότερον λέγεσθαι, καὶ τἀναντία φαίη τις ἂν ἥλιον Ἔρωτι [e] ποιεῖν· ἀποστρέφει γὰρ ἀπὸ τῶν νοητῶν ἐπὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ τὴν διάνοιαν, χάριτι καὶ λαμπρότητι τῆς ὄψεως γοητεύων καὶ ἀναπείθων ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ περὶ αὑτὸν †αἰτεῖσθαι τά τ’ ἄλλα καὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ἑτέρωθι δὲ μηθέν·

‘δυσέρωτες δὴ φαινόμεθ’ ὄντες

‹τοῦδ’, ὅ τι τοῦτο στίλβει› κατὰ γῆν’,

ὡς Εὐριπίδης φησί (Hipp. 193 ss.),

‘δι’ ἀπειροσύνην ἄλλου βιότου’,

μᾶλλον δὲ λήθην ὧν ὁ Ἔρως ἀνάμνησίς ἐστιν. ὥσπερ γὰρ εἰς φῶς πολὺ καὶ λαμπρὸν ἀνεγρομένων ἐξοίχεται πάντα τῆς ψυχῆς τὰ καθ’ ὕπνους φανέντα καὶ διαπέφευγεν, οὕτω τῶν γενομένων ἐνταῦθα καὶ μεταβαλόντων ἐκπλήττειν [f] ἔοικε τὴν μνήμην καὶ φαρμάττειν τὴν διάνοιαν ὁ ἥλιος, ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς καὶ θαύματος ἐκλανθανομένων ἐκείνων. καίτοι τό γ’ ὕπαρ ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐκεῖ καὶ περὶ ἐκεῖνα τῆς ψυχῆς ἐστι, δευρὶ δὲ ... τῶν ἐνυπνίων ἀσπάζεται καὶ τέθηπε τὸ κάλλιστον καὶ θειότατον.

‘ἀμφὶ δέ οἱ δολόεντα φιλόφρονα χεῦεν ὄνειρα,’

πᾶν ἐνταῦθα πειθομένῃ τὸ καλὸν εἶναι καὶ τίμιον, ἂν μὴ τύχῃ θείου καὶ σώφρονος Ἔρωτος ἰατροῦ καὶ σωτῆρος, [765] [a] ‹ὃς ἐνταῦθα μὲν› διὰ σωμάτων ἀφικόμενος ἀγωγὸς ἐπὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ἐξ Ἅιδου δ’ εἰς ‘τὸ ἀληθείας πεδίον’, οὗ τὸ πολὺ καὶ καθαρὸν καὶ ἀψευδὲς ἵδρυται κάλλος, ἀσπάσασθαι καὶ συγγενέσθαι διὰ χρόνου ποθοῦντας ἐξαναφέρων καὶ ἀναπέμπων εὐμενὴς οἷον ἐν τελετῇ παρέστη μυσταγωγός. Ἐνταῦθα ‹δὲ› πάλιν πεμπομένων αὐτῇ μὲν οὐ πλησιάζει ψυχῇ καθ’ ἑαυτήν, ἀλλὰ διὰ σώματος. ὡς δὲ γεωμέτραι παισὶν οὔπω δυναμένοις ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν τὰ νοητὰ μυηθῆναι τῆς ἀσωμάτου καὶ ἀπαθοῦς οὐσίας εἴδη πλάττοντες ἁπτὰ καὶ ὁρατὰ μιμήματα σφαιρῶν καὶ κύβων καὶ δωδεκαέδρων προτείνουσιν, οὕτως [b] ἡμῖν ὁ οὐράνιος Ἔρως ἔσοπτρα καλῶν καλά, θνητὰ μέντοι θείων ‹καὶ ἀπαθῶν› παθητὰ καὶ νοητῶν αἰσθητὰ μηχανώμενος ἔν τε σχήμασι καὶ χρώμασι καὶ εἴδεσι νέων ὥρᾳ στίλβοντα δείκνυσι καὶ κινεῖ τὴν μνήμην ἀτρέμα διὰ τούτων ἀναφλεγομένην τὸ πρῶτον. ὅθεν διὰ σκαιότητας ἔνιοι φίλων καὶ οἰκείων σβεννύναι πειρώμενοι βίᾳ καὶ ἀλόγως τὸ πάθος οὐδὲν ἀπέλαυσαν αὐτοῦ χρηστὸν ἀλλ’ ἢ καπνοῦ καὶ ταραχῆς ἐνέπλησαν ἑαυτοὺς ἢ πρὸς ἡδονὰς σκοτίους καὶ παρανόμους ῥυέντες ἀκλεῶς ἐμαράνθησαν. ὅσοι δὲ σώφρονι λογισμῷ μετ’ αἰδοῦς οἷον ἀτεχνῶς πυρὸς ἀφεῖλον τὸ μανικόν, αὐτὴν δὲ καὶ φῶς [c] ἀπέλιπον τῇ ψυχῇ μετὰ θερμότητος, οὐ σεισμόν, ὥς τις εἶπε, κινούσης ἐπὶ σπέρμα καὶ ὄλισθον ἀτόμων ὑπὸ λειότητος καὶ γαργαλισμοῦ θλιβομένων, διάχυσιν δὲ θαυμαστὴν καὶ γόνιμον ὥσπερ ἐν φυτῷ βλαστάνοντι καὶ τρεφομένῳ καὶ πόρους ἀνοίγουσαν εὐπειθείας καὶ φιλοφροσύνης, οὐκ ἂν εἴη πολὺς χρόνος, ἐν ᾧ τό τε σῶμα τὸ τῶν ἐρωμένων παρελθόντες ἔσω φέρονται καὶ ἅπτονται τοῦ ἤθους, †ἐκκαλούμενος τὰς ὄψεις καθορῶσι καὶ συγγίνονται διὰ λόγων πολλὰ καὶ πράξεων ἀλλήλοις, ἂν περίκομμα τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ εἴδωλον ἐν ταῖς διανοίαις ἔχωσιν· [d] εἰ δὲ μή, χαίρειν ἐῶσι καὶ τρέπονται πρὸς ἑτέρους ὥσπερ αἱ μέλιτται πολλὰ τῶν χλωρῶν καὶ ἀνθηρῶν μέλι δ’ οὐκ ἐχόντων ἀπολιπόντες· ὅπου δ’ ἂν ἔχωσιν ἴχνος τι τοῦ θείου καὶ ἀπορροὴν καὶ ὁμοιότητα σαίνουσαν, ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς καὶ θαύματος ἐνθουσιῶντες καὶ περιέποντες, εὐπαθοῦσι τῇ μνήμῃ καὶ ἀναλάμπουσι πρὸς ἐκεῖνο τὸ ἐράσμιον ἀληθῶς καὶ μακάριον καὶ φίλιον ἅπασι καὶ ἀγαπητόν.’

‘Τὰ μὲν οὖν πολλὰ ποιηταὶ προσπαίζοντες ἐοίκασι

τῷ θεῷ γράφειν περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ ᾄδειν ἐπικωμάζοντες, ὀλίγα δ’ εἴρηται μετὰ σπουδῆς αὐτοῖς, εἴτε κατὰ νοῦν καὶ λογισμὸν εἴτε σὺν θεῷ τῆς ἀληθείας ἁψαμένοις· ὧν [e] ἕν ἐστι καὶ τὸ περὶ τῆς γενέσεως (Alcaei fr. 13b I p. 393 D.)·

‘δεινότατον θέων

‹τὸν› γέννατ’ εὐπέδιλλος Ἶρις

χρυσοκόμᾳ Ζεφύρῳ μίγεισα·’

εἰ μή τι καὶ ὑμᾶς ἀναπεπείκασιν οἱ γραμματικοί, λέγοντες πρὸς τὸ ποικίλον τοῦ πάθους καὶ τὸ ἀνθηρὸν γεγονέναι τὴν εἰκασίαν.’ καὶ ὁ Δαφναῖος ‘πρὸς τί γάρ’ ἔφη ‘ἕτερον;’ ‘ἀκούετ’’ εἶπεν ὁ πατήρ· ‘οὕτω γὰρ βιάζεται τὸ φαινόμενον λέγειν. ἀνάκλασις δή που τὸ περὶ τὴν ἶρίν ἐστι τῆς ὄψεως πάθος, ὅταν ἡσυχῆ νοτερῷ λείῳ δὲ καὶ μέτριον πάχος ἔχοντι προσπεσοῦσα νέφει τοῦ ἡλίου ψαύσῃ κατ’ ἀνάκλασιν καὶ τὴν περὶ ἐκεῖνον αὐγὴν ὁρῶσα καὶ τὸ [f] φῶς δόξαν ἡμῖν ἐνεργάσηται τοῦ φαντάσματος ὡς ἐν τῷ νέφει ὄντος. ταὐτὸ δὴ τὸ ἐρωτικὸν μηχάνημα καὶ σόφισμα περὶ τὰς εὐφυεῖς καὶ φιλοκάλους ψυχάς· ἀνάκλασιν ποιεῖ τῆς μνήμης ἀπὸ τῶν ἐνταῦθα φαινομένων καὶ προσαγορευομένων καλῶν εἰς τὸ θεῖον καὶ ἐράσμιον καὶ μακάριον ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐκεῖνο καὶ θαυμάσιον καλόν. ἀλλ’ οἱ πολλοὶ μὲν ἐν παισὶ καὶ γυναιξὶν ὥσπερ ἐν κατόπτροις εἴδωλον αὐτοῦ φανταζόμενον διώκοντες καὶ ψηλαφῶντες [766] [a] οὐδὲν ἡδονῆς μεμιγμένης λύπῃ δύνανται λαβεῖν βεβαιότερον· ἀλλ’ οὗτος ἔοικεν ὁ τοῦ Ἰξίονος ἴλιγγος εἶναι καὶ πλάνος, ἐν νέφεσι κενὸν ὥσπερ σκιαῖς θηρωμένου τὸ ποθούμενον· ὥσπερ οἱ παῖδες προθυμούμενοι τὴν ἶριν ἑλεῖν τοῖν χεροῖν, ἑλκόμενοι πρὸς τὸ φαινόμενον. εὐφυοῦς δ’ ἐραστοῦ καὶ σώφρονος ἄλλος τρόπος· ἐκεῖ γὰρ ἀνακλᾶται πρὸς τὸ θεῖον καὶ νοητὸν καλόν· ὁρατοῦ δὲ σώματος ἐντυχὼν κάλλει καὶ χρώμενος οἷον ὀργάνῳ τινὶ τῆς μνήμης ἀσπάζεται καὶ ἀγαπᾷ, καὶ συνὼν καὶ γεγηθὼς ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐκφλέγεται τὴν διάνοιαν. Καὶ οὔτε μετὰ σωμάτων ὄντες ἐνταῦθα τουτὶ τὸ φῶς ἐπιποθοῦντες κάθηνται [b] καὶ θαυμάζοντες, οὔτ’ ἐκεῖ γενόμενοι μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν δεῦρο πάλιν στρεφόμενοι καὶ δραπετεύοντες ἐν θύραις νεογάμων καὶ δωματίοις κυλινδοῦνται, δυσόνειρα φαντασμάτια φιληδόνων καὶ φιλοσωμάτων ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν οὐ δικαίως ἐρωτικῶν προσαγορευομένων. ὁ γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐρωτικὸς ἐκεῖ γενόμενος καὶ τοῖς καλοῖς ὁμιλήσας, ᾗ θέμις, ἐπτέρωται καὶ κατωργίασται καὶ διατελεῖ περὶ τὸν αὑτοῦ θεὸν ἄνω χορεύων καὶ συμπεριπολῶν, ἄχρις οὗ πάλιν εἰς τοὺς Σελήνης καὶ Ἀφροδίτης λειμῶνας ἐλθὼν καὶ καταδαρθὼν ἑτέρας ἄρχηται γενέσεως.’

‘Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μέν’ ἔφη ‘μείζονας ἔχει τῶν παρόντων λόγων [c] ὑποθέσεις. τῷ δ’ Ἔρωτι καὶ τοῦτο καθάπερ τοῖς ἄλλοις θεοῖς ‘ἔνεστιν’ ὡς Εὐριπίδης (Hipp. 7 s.) φησί ‘τιμωμένῳ χαίρειν ἀνθρώπων ὕπο’ καὶ τοὐναντίον· εὐμενέστατος γάρ ἐστι τοῖς δεχομένοις ἐμμελῶς αὐτὸν βαρὺς δὲ τοῖς ἀπαυθαδισαμένοις. οὔτε γὰρ ξένων καὶ ἱκετῶν ἀδικίας ὁ Ξένιος οὔτε γονέων ἀρὰς ὁ Γενέθλιος οὕτω διώκει καὶ μέτεισι ταχέως ὡς ἐρασταῖς ἀγνωμονηθεῖσιν ὁ Ἔρως ὀξὺς ὑπακούει, τῶν ἀπαιδεύτων καὶ ὑπερηφάνων κολαστής. τί γὰρ ἂν λέγοι τις Εὐξύνθετον καὶ Λευκοκόμαν; τί δὲ τὴν ἐν Κύπρῳ Παρακύπτουσαν ἔτι νῦν προσαγορευομένην; ἀλλὰ τὴν Γοργοῦς ἴσως ποινὴν οὐκ ἀκηκόατε [d] τῆς Κρήσσης, παραπλήσια τῇ Παρακυπτούσῃ παθούσης· πλὴν ἐκείνη μὲν ἀπελιθώθη παρακύψασα τὸν ἐραστὴν ἰδεῖν ἐκκομιζόμενον· τῆς δὲ Γοργοῦς Ἄσανδρός τις ἠράσθη, νέος ἐπιεικὴς καὶ γένει λαμπρός· ἐκ δὲ λαμπρῶν εἰς ταπεινὰ πράγματα καὶ εὐτελῆ ἀφιγμένος, ὅμως αὑτὸν οὐδενὸς ἀπηξιοῦτο, ἀλλὰ τὴν Γοργώ, διὰ πλοῦτον ὡς ἔοικε περιμάχητον οὖσαν καὶ πολυμνήστευτον, ᾔτει γυναῖκα συγγενὴς ὤν, πολλοὺς ἔχων καὶ ἀγαθοὺς συνερῶντας αὐτῷ, πάντας δὲ τοὺς περὶ τὴν κόρην ἐπιτρόπους καὶ οἰκείους πεπεικὼς

‘Ἔτι τοίνυν ἃς λέγουσιν αἰτίας καὶ γενέσεις Ἔρωτος, [e] ἴδιαι μὲν οὐδετέρου γένους εἰσὶ κοιναὶ δ’ ἀμφοτέρων. καὶ γὰρ εἴδωλα δήπουθεν ἐνδυόμενα τοῖς ἐρωτικοῖς καὶ διατρέχοντα κινεῖν καὶ γαργαλίζειν τὸν ὄγκον εἰς σπέρμα συνολισθαίνοντα τοῖς ἄλλοις σχηματισμοῖς οὐ δυνατὸν μὲν ἀπὸ παίδων, [ἀ]δυνατὸν δ’ ἀπὸ γυναικῶν; καὶ τὰς καλὰς ταύτας καὶ ἱερὰς ἀναμνήσεις †καλοῦμεν ἡμεῖς ἐπὶ τὸ θεῖον καὶ ἀληθινὸν καὶ Ὀλύμπιον ἐκεῖνο κάλλος, αἷς ψυχὴ πτεροῦται, .. τί ... κωλύει γίνεσθαι μὲν ἀπὸ παίδων καὶ ἀπὸ νεανίσκων, γίνεσθαι δ’ ἀπὸ παρθένων καὶ γυναικῶν, ὅταν ἦθος ἁγνὸν καὶ κόσμιον ἐν ὥρᾳ καὶ [f] χάριτι μορφῆς διαφανὲς γένηται, καθάπερ ὄρθιον ὑπόδημα δείκνυσι ποδὸς εὐφυΐαν, ὡς Ἀρίστων (St. V. Fr. I 390) ἔλεγεν· ‹ἢ› ὅταν ἐν εἴδεσι καλοῖς καὶ καθαροῖς σώμασιν ἴχνη λαμπρᾶς κείμενα ψυχῆς ὀρθὰ καὶ ἄθρυπτα κατίδωσιν οἱ δεινοὶ τῶν τοιούτων αἰσθάνεσθαι; οὐ γὰρ ὁ μὲν φιλήδονος ἐρωτηθεὶς εἰ (Tr. ad. 355, Com. adesp. 360)

‘πρὸς θῆλυ νεύει μᾶλλον ἢ ἐπὶ τἄρρενα’

[767] [a] καὶ ἀποκρινάμενος

‘ὅπου προσῇ τὸ κάλλος, ἀμφιδέξιος,’

ἔδοξεν οἰκείως ἀποκρίνασθαι τῆς ἐπιθυμίας, ὁ δὲ φιλόκαλος καὶ γενναῖος οὐ πρὸς τὸ καλὸν οὐδὲ τὴν εὐφυΐαν ἀλλὰ μορίων διαφορὰς ποιεῖται τοὺς ἔρωτας· καὶ φίλιππος μὲν ἀνὴρ οὐδὲν ἧττον ἀσπάζεται τοῦ Ποδάργου τὴν εὐφυΐαν [ἢ] ‘Αἴθης τῆς Ἀγαμεμνονέης’ (Ψ 295), καὶ θηρατικὸς οὐ τοῖς ἄρρεσι χαίρει μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ Κρήσσας τρέφει καὶ Λακαίνας σκύλακας, ὁ δὲ φιλόκαλος καὶ φιλάνθρωπος οὐχ ὁμαλός ἐστιν οὐδ’ ὅμοιος ἀμφοτέροις τοῖς γένεσιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἱματίων οἰόμενος εἶναι διαφορὰς [b] ἐρώτων γυναικῶν καὶ ἀνδρῶν. καίτοι τήν γ’ ὥραν ‘ἄνθος ἀρετῆς’ εἶναι λέγουσι (St. V. Fr. III 718), μὴ φάναι δ’ ἀνθεῖν τὸ θῆλυ μηδὲ ποιεῖν ἔμφασιν εὐφυΐας πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἄτοπόν ἐστι· καὶ γὰρ Αἰσχύλος ὀρθῶς ἐποίησε (fr. 243)

‘νέας γυναικὸς οὔ με μὴ λάθῃ φλέγων

ὀφθαλμός, ἥτις ἀνδρὸς ᾖ γεγευμένη.’

πότερον οὖν ἰταμοῦ μὲν ἤθους καὶ ἀκολάστου καὶ διεφθορότος σημεῖα τοῖς εἴδεσι τῶν γυναικῶν ἐπιτρέχει, κοσμίου δὲ καὶ σώφρονος οὐδὲν ἔπεστι τῇ μορφῇ φέγγος, ‹ἢ› πολλὰ μὲν ἔπεστι καὶ συνεπιφαίνεται, κινεῖ δ’ οὐθὲν οὐδὲ προσκαλεῖται τὸν ἔρωτα; οὐδέτερον γὰρ εὔλογον οὐδ’ ἀληθές.’

[c] ‘Ἀλλὰ κοινῶς ὥσπερ δέδεικται τοῖς γένεσι πάντων ὑπαρχόντων, ὥσπερ κοινοῦ συστάντος ‹αὐτοῖς τοῦ ἀγῶνος›, ὦ Δαφναῖε, πρὸς ἐκείνους μαχώμεθα τοὺς λόγους, οὓς ὁ Ζεύξιππος ἀρτίως διῆλθεν, ἐπιθυμίᾳ τὸν Ἔρωτα ταὐτὸ ποιῶν ἀκαταστάτῳ καὶ πρὸς τὸ ἀκόλαστον ἐκφερούσῃ τὴν ψυχήν, οὐκ αὐτὸς οὕτω πεπεισμένος ἀκηκοὼς δὲ πολλάκις ἀνδρῶν δυσκόλων καὶ ἀνεράστων· ‹ὧν› οἱ μὲν ἄθλια γύναια προικιδίοις ἐφελκόμενοι μετὰ χρημάτων εἰς οἰκονομίαν καὶ λογισμοὺς ἐμβάλλοντες ἀνελευθέρους, ζυγομαχοῦντες ὁσημέραι διὰ χειρὸς ἔχουσιν· οἱ [d] δὲ παίδων δεόμενοι μᾶλλον ἢ γυναικῶν, ὥσπερ οἱ τέττιγες εἰς σκίλλαν ἤ τι τοιοῦτο τὴν γονὴν ἀφιᾶσιν, οὕτω διὰ τάχους οἷς ἔτυχε σώμασιν ἐναπογεννήσαντες καὶ καρπὸν ἀράμενοι χαίρειν ἐῶσιν ἤδη τὸν γάμον, ἢ μένοντος οὐ φροντίζουσιν οὐδ’ ἀξιοῦσιν ἐρᾶν οὐδ’ ἐρᾶσθαι. στέργεσθαι δὲ καὶ στέργειν ἑνί μοι δοκεῖ γράμματι τοῦ στέγειν παραλλάττον εὐθὺς ἐμφαίνειν τὴν ὑπὸ χρόνου καὶ συνηθείας ἀνάγκῃ μεμιγμένην εὔνοιαν. Ὧι δ’ ἂν Ἔρως ἐπισκήψῃ ... καὶ ἐπιπνεύσῃ, πρῶτον μὲν ἐκ τῆς Πλατωνικῆς πόλεως (Rep. V 462c) ‘τὸ ἐμὸν’ ἕξει καὶ ‘τὸ οὐκ ἐμόν’· οὐ γὰρ ἁπλῶς ‘κοινὰ τὰ φίλων’ ‹οὐδὲ πάντων› ἀλλ’ οἳ [e] τοῖς σώμασιν ὁριζόμενοι τὰς ψυχὰς βίᾳ συνάγουσι καὶ συντήκουσι, μήτε βουλόμενοι δύ’ εἶναι μήτε νομίζοντες. Ἔπειτα σωφροσύνη πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἧς μάλιστα δεῖται γάμος, ἡ μὲν ἔξωθεν καὶ νόμων ... πλέον ἔχουσα τοῦ ἑκουσίου τὸ βεβιασμένον ὑπ’ αἰσχύνης καὶ φόβων,

‘πολλῶν χαλινῶν ἔργον οἰάκων θ’ ἅμα’ (Soph. fr. 785),

διὰ χειρός ἐστιν ἀεὶ τοῖς συνοῦσιν· Ἔρωτι δ’ ἐγκρατείας τοσοῦτον καὶ κόσμου καὶ πίστεως μέτεστιν, ὥστε, κἂν ἀκολάστου ποτὲ θίγῃ ψυχῆς, ἀπέστρεψε τῶν ἄλλων ἐραστῶν, ἐκκόψας δὲ τὸ θράσος καὶ κατακλάσας τὸ σοβαρὸν καὶ ἀνάγωγον, ἐμβαλὼν ‹δ’› αἰδῶ καὶ σιωπὴν καὶ ἡσυχίαν καὶ σχῆμα περιθεὶς κόσμιον, ἑνὸς ἐπήκοον ἐποίησεν.

[f] ἴστε δήπουθεν ἀκοῇ Λαΐδα τὴν ἀοίδιμον ἐκείνην καὶ πολυήρατον, ὡς ἐπέφλεγε πόθῳ τὴν Ἑλλάδα, μᾶλλον δὲ ταῖς δυσὶν ἦν περιμάχητος θαλάσσαις· ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἔρως ἔθιγεν αὐτῆς Ἱππολόχου τοῦ Θεσσαλοῦ, τὸν ‘ὕδατι χλωρῷ κατακλυζόμενον προλιποῦσ’ Ἀκροκόρινθον’ (Eur. fr. 1084) καὶ ἀποδρᾶσα τῶν ἄλλων ἐραστῶν κρύφα ... μέγαν στρατὸν ᾤχετο κοσμίως· [768] [a] ἐκεῖ δ’ αὐτὴν αἱ γυναῖκες ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ ζήλου διὰ τὸ κάλλος εἰς ἱερὸν Ἀφροδίτης προαγαγοῦσαι κατέλευσαν καὶ διέφθειραν· ὅθεν ὡς ἔοικεν ἔτι νῦν τὸ ἱερὸν ‘Ἀφροδίτης ἀνδροφόνου’ καλοῦσιν. ἴσμεν δὲ καὶ θεραπαινίδια δεσποτῶν φεύγοντα συνουσίας καὶ βασιλίδων ὑπερορῶντας ἰδιώτας, ὅταν Ἔρωτα δεσπότην ἐν ψυχῇ κτήσωνται· καθάπερ γὰρ ἐν Ῥώμῃ φασὶ τοῦ καλου‹μένου› δικτάτωρος ἀναγορευθέντος ἀποτίθεσθαι τὰς ἄλλας ἀρχὰς τοὺς ἔχοντας, οὕτως, οἷς ἂν Ἔρως κύριος ἐγγένηται, τῶν ἄλλων δεσποτῶν καὶ ἀρχόντων ἐλεύθεροι καὶ ἄφετοι καθάπερ ἱερόδουλοι διατελοῦσιν. Ἡ δὲ γενναία [b] γυνὴ πρὸς ἄνδρα νόμιμον συγκραθεῖσα δι’ Ἔρωτος ἄρκτων ἂν ὑπομείνειε καὶ δρακόντων περιβολὰς μᾶλλον ἢ ψαῦσιν ἀνδρὸς ἀλλοτρίου καὶ συγκατάκλισιν. ἀφθονίας δὲ παραδειγμάτων οὔσης πρός γ’ ὑμᾶς τοὺς ὁμοχώρους τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ θιασώτας, ὅμως τὸ περὶ Κάμμαν οὐκ ἄξιόν ἐστι τὴν Γαλατικὴν παρελθεῖν. ταύτης γὰρ ἐκπρεπεστάτης τὴν ὄψιν γενομένης, Σινάτῳ δὲ τῷ τετράρχῃ γαμηθείσης, Σινόριξ ἐρασθεὶς δυνατώτατος Γαλατῶν ἀπέκτεινε τὸν Σινάτον, ὡς οὔτε βιάσασθαι δυνάμενος οὔτε πεῖσαι τὴν ἄνθρωπον ἐκείνου ζῶντος. ἦν δὲ [c] τῇ Κάμμῃ καταφυγὴ καὶ παραμυθία τοῦ πάθους ἱερωσύνη πατρῷος Ἀρτέμιδος· καὶ τὰ πολλὰ παρὰ τῇ θεῷ διέτριβεν, οὐδένα προσιεμένη, μνωμένων πολλῶν βασιλέων καὶ δυναστῶν αὐτήν. τοῦ μέντοι Σινόριγος τολμήσαντος ἐντυχεῖν περὶ γάμου, τὴν πεῖραν οὐκ ἔφυγεν οὐδ’ ἐμέμψατο περὶ τῶν γεγονότων, ὡς δι’ εὔνοιαν αὐτῆς καὶ πόθον οὐκ ἄλλῃ τινὶ μοχθηρίᾳ προαχθέντος τοῦ Σινόριγος. ἧκεν οὖν πιστεύσας ἐκεῖνος καὶ ᾔτει τὸν γάμον· ἡ δ’ ἀπήντησε καὶ δεξιωσαμένη καὶ προσαγαγοῦσα τῷ βωμῷ τῆς θεᾶς ἔσπεισεν ἐκ φιάλης μελίκρατον, ὡς ἔοικε, πεφαρμακωμένον· εἶθ’ ὅσον ἥμισυ μέρος αὐτὴ προεκπιοῦσα [d] παρέδωκε τῷ Γαλάτῃ τὸ λοιπόν· ὡς δ’ εἶδεν ἐκπεπωκότα, λαμπρὸν ἀνωλόλυξε καὶ φθεγξαμένη τοὔνομα τοῦ τεθνεῶτος ‘ταύτην’ εἶπεν ‘ἐγὼ τὴν ἡμέραν, ὦ φίλτατ’ ἄνερ, προσμένουσα σοῦ χωρὶς ἔζων ἀνιαρῶς· νῦν δὲ κόμισαί με χαίρων· ἠμυνάμην γὰρ ὑπὲρ σοῦ τὸν κάκιστον ἀνθρώπων, σοὶ μὲν βίου τούτῳ δὲ θανάτου κοινωνὸς ἡδέως γενομένη.’ ὁ μὲν οὖν Σινόριξ ἐν φορείῳ κομιζόμενος μετὰ μικρὸν ἐτελεύτησεν, ἡ δὲ Κάμμα τὴν ἡμέραν ἐπιβιώσασα καὶ τὴν νύκτα λέγεται μάλ’ εὐθαρσῶς καὶ ἱλαρῶς ἀποθανεῖν.’

‘Πολλῶν δὲ τοιούτων γεγονότων καὶ παρ’ ἡμῖν καὶ [e] παρὰ τοῖς βαρβάροις, τίς ‹ἂν› ἀνάσχοιτο τῶν τὴν Ἀφροδίτην λοιδορούντων, ὡς Ἔρωτι προσθεμένη καὶ παροῦσα κωλύει φιλίαν γενέσθαι; τὴν μὲν πρὸς ἄρρεν’ ἄρρενος ὁμιλίαν, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀκρασίαν καὶ ἐπιπήδησιν, εἴποι τις ἂν ἐννοήσας

‘ὕβρις τάδ’ οὐχὶ Κύπρις ἐξεργάζεται’ (Tr. adesp. 409).

διὸ τοὺς μὲν ἡδομένους τῷ πάσχειν εἰς τὸ χείριστον τιθέμενοι γένος κακίας οὔτε πίστεως μοῖραν οὔτ’ αἰδοῦς οὔτε φιλίας νέμομεν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀληθῶς κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα (fr. 779)

‘φίλων τοιούτων οἱ μὲν ἐστερημένοι

[καὶ] χαίρουσιν, οἱ δ’ ἔχοντες εὔχονται φυγεῖν.’

ὅσοι δὲ μὴ κακοὶ πεφυκότες ἐξηπατήθησαν ἢ κατεβιάσθησαν [f] ἐνδοῦναι καὶ παρασχεῖν ἑαυτούς, οὐδένα μᾶλλον ἀνθρώπων ἢ τοὺς διαθέντας ὑφορώμενοι καὶ μισοῦντες διατελοῦσι καὶ πικρῶς ἀμύνονται καιροῦ παραδόντος· Ἀρχέλαόν τε γὰρ ἀπέκτεινε Κρατέας ἐρώμενος γεγονώς, καὶ τὸν Φεραῖον Ἀλέξανδρον Πυθόλαος· Περίανδρος δ’ ὁ Ἀμβρακιωτῶν τύραννος ἠρώτα τὸν ἐρώμενον εἰ μήπω κυεῖ, κἀκεῖνος παροξυνθεὶς ἀπέκτεινεν αὐτόν. ἀλλὰ γυναιξί γε ‹καὶ› γαμέταις [769] [a] ἀρχαὶ ταῦτα φιλίας, ὥσπερ ἱερῶν μεγάλων κοινωνήματα. καὶ τὸ τῆς ἡδονῆς μικρόν, ἡ δ’ ἀπὸ ταύτης ἀναβλαστάνουσα καθ’ ἡμέραν τιμὴ καὶ χάρις καὶ ἀγάπησις ἀλλήλων καὶ πίστις οὔτε Δελφοὺς ἐλέγχει ληροῦντας, ὅτι τὴν Ἀφροδίτην ‘Ἄρμα’ καλοῦσιν, οὔθ’ Ὅμηρον ‘φιλότητα’ τὴν τοιαύτην προσαγορεύοντα συνουσίαν· τόν τε Σόλωνα μαρτυρεῖ γεγονέναι τῶν γαμικῶν ἐμπειρότατον νομοθέτην, κελεύσαντα μὴ ἔλαττον ἢ τρὶς κατὰ μῆνα τῇ γαμετῇ πλησιάζειν, οὐχ ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα ‹δή›πουθεν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ αἱ πόλεις διὰ χρόνου σπονδὰς [b] ἀνανεοῦνται πρὸς ἀλλήλας, οὕτως ἄρα βουλόμενον ἀνανεοῦσθαι τὸν γάμον ἐκ τῶν ἑκάστοτε συλλεγομένων †σχημάτων ἐν τῇ τοιαύτῃ φιλοφροσύνῃ. ‘ἀλλὰ πολλὰ φαῦλα καὶ μανικὰ τῶν γυναικείων ἐρώτων·’ τί δ’ οὐχὶ πλείονα τῶν παιδικῶν;

†’οἰκειότητος ἐμβλέπων ὠλίσθανον.’

‘ἀγένειος ἁπαλὸς καὶ νεανίας καλός·’

‘ἐμφύντ’ ἀποθανεῖν κἀπιγράμματος τυχεῖν.’

(Com. adesp. 222-224)

ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τοῦτο παιδομανία, ‹οὕτως ἐκεῖνο γυναικομανία› τὸ πάθος, οὐδέτερον δ’ Ἔρως ἐστίν. Ἄτοπον οὖν τὸ γυναιξὶν ἀρετῆς φάναι μηδαμῇ μετεῖναι· τί δὲ δεῖ λέγειν περὶ σωφροσύνης καὶ συνέσεως αὐτῶν, ἔτι δὲ πίστεως καὶ δικαιοσύνης, ὅπου καὶ τὸ ἀνδρεῖον καὶ τὸ [c] θαρραλέον καὶ τὸ μεγαλόψυχον ἐν πολλαῖς ἐπιφανὲς γέγονε †δὲ πρὸς τὰ ἄλλα κατὰ τὴν φύσιν αὐτῶν, ἀλλ’ ἢ ψέγοντας εἰς μόνην φιλίαν ἀνάρμοστον ἀποφαίνειν, παντάπασι δεινόν. καὶ γὰρ φιλότεκνοι καὶ φίλανδροι, καὶ τὸ στερκτικὸν ὅλως ἐν αὐταῖς, ὥσπερ εὐφυὴς χώρα καὶ δεκτικὴ φιλίας, οὔτε πειθοῦς οὔτε χαρίτων ἄμοιρον ὑπόκειται. καθάπερ δὲ λόγῳ ποίησις ἡδύσματα μέλη καὶ μέτρα καὶ ῥυθμοὺς ἐφαρμόσασα καὶ τὸ παιδεῦον αὐτοῦ κινητικώτερον ἐποίησε καὶ τὸ βλάπτον ἀφυλακτότερον, οὕτως ἡ φύσις γυναικὶ περιθεῖσα χάριν ὄψεως καὶ φωνῆς πιθανότητα καὶ μορφῆς ἐπαγωγὸν εἶδος, τῇ μὲν ἀκολάστῳ [d] πρὸς ἡδονὴν καὶ ἀπάτην τῇ δὲ σώφρονι πρὸς εὔνοιαν ἀνδρὸς καὶ φιλίαν μεγάλα συνήργησεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Πλάτων τὸν Ξενοκράτη, τἄλλα γενναῖον ὄντα καὶ μέγαν αὐστηρότατον δὲ τῷ ἤθει, παρεκάλει θύειν ταῖς Χάρισι· χρηστῇ δ’ ἄν τις γυναικὶ καὶ σώφρονι παραινέσειε τῷ Ἔρωτι θύειν, ὅπως εὐμενὴς συνοικουρῇ τῷ γάμῳ καὶ ἡδὺς ... γυναικείοις, καὶ μὴ πρὸς ἑτέραν ἀπορρυεὶς ὁ ἀνὴρ ἀναγκάζηται τὰς ἐκ τῆς κωμῳδίας λέγειν φωνάς (Com. adesp. 221)

‘οἵαν ἀδικῶ γυναῖχ’ ὁ δυσδαίμων ἐγώ.’

τὸ γὰρ ἐρᾶν ἐν γάμῳ τοῦ ἐρᾶσθαι μεῖζον ἀγαθόν ἐστι· [e] πολλῶν γὰρ ἁμαρτημάτων ἀπαλλάττει, μᾶλλον δὲ πάντων ὅσα διαφθείρει καὶ λυμαίνεται τὸν γάμον.’

‘Τὸ δ’ ἐμπαθὲς ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ δάκνον, ὦ μακάριε Ζεύξιππε, μὴ φοβηθῇς ὡς ἕλκος ἢ ὀδαξησμόν· καίτοι καὶ μεθ’ ἕλκους ἴσως οὐδὲν [ἢ] δεινὸν ὥσπερ τὰ δένδρα συμφυῆ γενέσθαι πρὸς γυναῖκα χρηστήν. ἕλκωσις δὲ καὶ κυήσεως ἀρχή· μῖξις γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι τῶν μὴ πρὸς ἄλληλα πεπονθότων. ταράττει δὲ καὶ μαθήματα παῖδας ἀρχομένους καὶ φιλοσοφία νέους· ἀλλ’ οὔτε τούτοις ἀεὶ παραμένει τὸ δηκτικὸν οὔτε τοῖς ἐρῶσιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὑγρῶν [f] πρὸς ἄλληλα συμπεσόντων ποιεῖν τινα δοκεῖ ζέσιν ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ τάραξιν ὁ Ἔρως, εἶτα χρόνῳ καταστὰς καὶ καθαρθεὶς τὴν βεβαιοτάτην διάθεσιν παρέσχεν. αὕτη γάρ ἐστιν ὡς ἀληθῶς ἡ δι’ ὅλων λεγομένη κρᾶσις, ἡ τῶν ἐρώντων· ‹ἡ δὲ τῶν› ἄλλως συμβιούντων ταῖς κατ’ Ἐπίκουρον ἁφαῖς καὶ περιπλοκαῖς ἔοικε, συγκρούσεις λαμβάνουσα καὶ ἀποπηδήσεις, ἑνότητα δ’ οὐ ποιοῦσα [770] [a] τοιαύτην, οἵαν Ἔρως ποιεῖ γαμικῆς κοινωνίας ἐπιλαβόμενος. οὔτε γὰρ ἡδοναὶ μείζονες ἀπ’ ἄλλων οὔτε χρεῖαι συνεχέστεραι πρὸς ἄλλους οὔτε φιλίας τὸ καλὸν ἑτέρας ἔνδοξον οὕτω καὶ ζηλωτόν, ὡς

‘ὅθ’ ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον

ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή’ (ζ 183).

καὶ γὰρ ὁ νόμος βοηθεῖ καὶ γεννήσεως κοινῆς ‹ἕνεκα› καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς Ἔρωτος ἡ φύσις ἀποδείκνυσι δεομένους. οὕτω γὰρ ‘ἐρᾶν μὲν ὄμβρου γαῖαν’ οἱ ποιηταὶ (Eur. fr. 898, 7) λέγουσι καὶ γῆς οὐρανόν, ἐρᾶν δ’ ἡλίου σελήνην οἱ φυσικοὶ καὶ συγγίνεσθαι καὶ κυεῖσθαι· καὶ γῆν δ’ ἀνθρώπων μητέρα καὶ ζῴων καὶ φυτῶν ἁπάντων γένεσιν οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον ἀπολέσθαι ποτὲ καὶ σβεσθῆναι παντάπασιν, [b] ὅταν ὁ δεινὸς ἔρως καὶ ἵμερος τοῦ θεοῦ τὴν ὕλην ἀπολίπῃ καὶ παύσηται ποθοῦσα καὶ διώκουσα τὴν ἐκεῖθεν ἀρχὴν καὶ κίνησιν;’

‘Ἀλλ’ ἵνα μὴ μακρὰν ἀποπλανᾶσθαι δοκῶμεν ἢ κομιδῇ φλυαρεῖν, οἶσθα τοὺς παιδικοὺς ἔρωτας ὡς ‹εἰς› ἀβεβαιότητα πολλὰ λέγουσι καὶ σκώπτουσι, λέγοντες ὥσπερ ᾠὸν αὐτῶν τριχὶ διαιρεῖσθαι τὴν φιλίαν, αὐτοὺς δὲ νομάδων δίκην ἐνεαρίζοντας τοῖς τεθηλόσι καὶ ἀνθηροῖς εὐθὺς ‹ὡς› ἐκ γῆς πολεμίας ἀναστρατοπεδεύειν· ἔτι δὲ φορτικώτερον ὁ σοφιστὴς Βίων τὰς τῶν καλῶν τρίχας Ἁρμοδίους ἐκάλει καὶ Ἀριστογείτονας, ὡς ἅμα καλῆς τυραννίδος [c] ἀπαλλαττομένους ὑπ’ αὐτῶν τοὺς ἐραστάς. ταῦτα μὲν οὐ δικαίως κατηγορεῖται τῶν γνησίων ἐραστῶν· τὰ δ’ ὑπ’ Εὐριπίδου ῥηθέντ’ ἐστὶ κομψά· ἔφη γὰρ Ἀγάθωνα τὸν καλὸν ἤδη γενειῶντα περιβάλλων καὶ κατασπαζόμενος, ὅτι τῶν καλῶν καὶ τὸ μετόπωρον ‹καλόν›. ἐκδέχεται μόνον ... οὐδὲν †πολιῶσα ἀκμάζων καὶ ῥυτίσιν, ἀλλ’ ἄχρι τάφων καὶ μνημάτων παραμένει. καὶ συζυγίας ὀλίγας ἔστι παιδικῶν, μυρίας δὲ γυναικείων ἐρώτων καταριθμήσασθαι, πάσης πίστεως κοινωνίαν πιστῶς ἅμα καὶ προθύμως συνδιαφερούσας· βούλομαι δ’ ἕν τι τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ Καίσαρος Οὐεσπασιανοῦ γεγονότων διελθεῖν.’

[d] ‘Κιουίλιος γάρ, ὁ τὴν ἐν Γαλατίᾳ κινήσας ἀπόστασιν, ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς ὡς εἰκὸς ἔσχε κοινωνοὺς καὶ Σαβῖνον ἄνδρα νέον οὐκ ἀγεννῆ, πλούτῳ δὲ καὶ δόξῃ Γαλατῶν πάντων ἐπιφανέστατον. ἁψάμενοι δὲ πραγμάτων μεγάλων ἐσφάλησαν καὶ δίκην δώσειν προσδοκῶντες οἱ μὲν αὑτοὺς ἀνῄρουν, οἱ δὲ φεύγοντες ἡλίσκοντο. τῷ δὲ Σαβίνῳ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα πράγματα ῥᾳδίως παρεῖχεν ἐκποδὼν γενέσθαι καὶ καταφυγεῖν εἰς τοὺς βαρβάρους· ἦν δὲ γυναῖκα πασῶν ἀρίστην ἠγμένος, ἣν ἐκεῖ μὲν Ἐμπονὴν ἐκάλουν, Ἑλληνιστὶ δ’ ἄν τις Ἡρωίδα προσαγορεύσειεν· [e] ‹ἣν› οὔτ’ ἀπολιπεῖν δυνατὸς ἦν οὔτε μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ κομίζειν. ἔχων οὖν κατ’ ἀγρὸν ἀποθήκας χρημάτων ὀρυκτὰς ὑπογείους, ἃς δύο μόνοι τῶν ἀπελευθέρων συνῄδεσαν, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἀπήλλαξεν οἰκέτας, ὡς μέλλων φαρμάκοις ἀναιρεῖν ἑαυτόν, δύο δὲ πιστοὺς παραλαβὼν εἰς τὰ ὑπόγεια κατέβη. πρὸς δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα Μαρτιάλιον ἔπεμψεν ἀπελεύθερον ἀπαγγελοῦντα τεθνάναι μὲν ὑπὸ φαρμάκων, συμπεφλέχθαι δὲ μετὰ τοῦ σώματος τὴν ἔπαυλιν· ἐβούλετο γὰρ τῷ ‹πένθει χρῆσθαι› τῆς γυναικὸς ἀληθινῷ πρὸς πίστιν τῆς λεγομένης τελευτῆς. ὃ καὶ συνέβη· ῥίψασα γάρ, ὅπως ἔτυχε, τὸ σῶμα μετ’ ‹οἴκτων› [f] καὶ ὀλοφυρμῶν ἡμέρας τρεῖς καὶ νύκτας ἄσιτος διεκαρτέρησε. ταῦτα δ’ ὁ Σαβῖνος πυνθανόμενος καὶ φοβηθείς, μὴ διαφθείρῃ παντάπασιν ἑαυτήν, ἐκέλευσε φράσαι κρύφα τὸν Μαρτιάλιον πρὸς αὐτήν, ὅτι ζῇ καὶ κρύπτεται, δεῖται δ’ αὐτῆς ὀλίγον ἐμμεῖναι τῷ πένθει [771] [a] καὶ μηδὲ ... πιθανὴν ἐν τῇ προσποιήσει γενέσθαι. τὰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλα παρὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ἐναγωνίως συνετραγῳδεῖτο τῇ δόξῃ τοῦ πάθους· ἐκεῖνον δ’ ἰδεῖν ποθοῦσα νυκτὸς ᾤχετο, καὶ πάλιν ἐπανῆλθεν. ἐκ δὲ τούτου λανθάνουσα τοὺς ἄλλους ὀλίγον ἀπέδει συζῆν ἐν Ἅιδου τῷ ἀνδρὶ πλέον ἑξῆς ἑπτὰ μηνῶν· ἐν οἷς κατασκευάσασα τὸν Σαβῖνον ἐσθῆτι καὶ κουρᾷ καὶ καταδέσει τῆς κεφαλῆς ἄγνωστον εἰς Ῥώμην ἐκόμισε μεθ’ ἑαυτῆς ‹ἐλπίδων› τινῶν ἐνδεδομένων. πράξασα δ’ οὐθὲν αὖθις ἐπανῆλθε, καὶ τὰ μὲν πόλλ’ ἐκείνῳ συνῆν ὑπὸ γῆς, διὰ χρόνου δ’ εἰς πόλιν ἐφοίτα ταῖς φίλαις ὁρωμένη καὶ οἰκείαις γυναιξί.

[b] τὸ δὲ πάντων ἀπιστότατον, ἔλαθε κυοῦσα λουομένη μετὰ τῶν γυναικῶν· τὸ γὰρ φάρμακον, ᾧ τὴν κόμην αἱ γυναῖκες ἐναλειφόμεναι ποιοῦσι χρυσοειδῆ καὶ πυρράν, ἔχει λίπασμα σαρκοποιὸν ἢ χαυνωτικὸν σαρκός, ὥσθ’ οἷον διάχυσίν τιν’ ἢ διόγκωσιν ἐμποιεῖν· ἀφθόνῳ δὴ χρωμένη τούτῳ πρὸς τὰ λοιπὰ μέρη τοῦ σώματος, αἰρόμενον καὶ ἀναπιμπλάμενον ἀπέκρυπτε τὸν τῆς γαστρὸς ὄγκον. τὰς δ’ ὠδῖνας αὐτὴ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν διήνεγκεν, ὥσπερ ἐν φωλεῷ λέαινα καταδῦσα πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ τοὺς γενομένους ὑπεθρέψατο σκύμνους ἄρρενας· δύο γὰρ ἔτεκε. τῶν δ’ υἱῶν ὁ μὲν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ πεσὼν ἐτελεύτησεν, ὁ δ’ [c] ἕτερος ἄρτι καὶ πρῴην γέγονεν ἐν Δελφοῖς παρ’ ἡμῖν ὄνομα Σαβῖνος. ἀποκτείνει μὲν οὖν αὐτὴν ὁ Καῖσαρ· ἀποκτείνας δὲ δίδωσι δίκην, ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ τοῦ γένους παντὸς ἄρδην ἀναιρεθέντος· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἤνεγκεν ἡ τόθ’ ἡγεμονία σκυθρωπότερον οὐδὲ μᾶλλον ἑτέραν εἰκὸς ἦν καὶ θεοὺς καὶ δαίμονας ὄψιν ἀποστραφῆναι. καίτοι τὸν οἶκτον ἐξῄρει τῶν θεωμένων τὸ θαρραλέον αὐτῆς καὶ μεγαλήγορον, ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα παρώξυνε τὸν Οὐεσπασιανόν, ὡς ἀπέγνω τῆς σωτηρίας πρὸς αὐτὸν †ἀλλαγὴν κελεύουσα· βεβιωκέναι γὰρ ὑπὸ σκότῳ καὶ κατὰ γῆς ἥδιον ἢ †βασιλεύων ἐκείνως.’

[d] Ἐνταῦθα μὲν ὁ πατὴρ ἔφη τὸν περὶ Ἔρωτος αὐτοῖς τελευτῆσαι λόγον, τῶν Θεσπιῶν ἐγγὺς οὖσιν· ὀφθῆναι δὲ προσιόντα θᾶττον ἢ βάδην πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἕνα τῶν Πεισίου ἑταίρων Διογένη· τοῦ δὲ Σωκλάρου πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔτι πόρρωθεν εἰπόντος ‘οὐ πόλεμόν γ’, ὦ Διόγενες, ἀπαγγέλλων’, ἐκεῖνον ‘οὐκ εὐφημήσετε’ φάναι ‘γάμων ὄντων καὶ προάξετε θᾶσσον, ὡς ὑμᾶς τῆς θυσίας περιμενούσης;’ πάντας μὲν οὖν ἡσθῆναι, τὸν δὲ Ζεύξιππον ἐρέσθαι, ‹εἰ› ἔτι χαλεπός ἐστι. ‘πρῶτος μὲν οὖν’ ‹φάναι τὸν Διογ›ένη ‘συνεχώρησε τῇ Ἰσμηνοδώρᾳ· καὶ νῦν ἑκὼν στέφανον καὶ λευκὸν ἱμάτιον λαβὼν οἷός ἐστιν ἡγεῖσθαι δι’ ἀγορᾶς πρὸς τὸν θεόν.’ ‘ἀλλ’ ἴωμεν, ναὶ μὰ [e] Δία’, τὸν πατέρ’ εἰπεῖν ‘ἴωμεν, ὅπως ἐπεγγελάσωμεν τῷ ἀνδρὶ καὶ τὸν θεὸν προσκυνήσωμεν· δῆλος γάρ ἐστι χαίρων καὶ παρὼν εὐμενὴς τοῖς πραττομένοις.’

Amatoriae narrationes

ΕΡΩΤΙΚΑΙ ΔΙΗΓΗΣΕΙΣ

[771] Α.

Ἐν Ἁλιάρτῳ τῆς Βοιωτίας κόρη τις γίνεται κάλλει διαπρέπουσα ὄνομα Ἀριστόκλεια· θυγάτηρ δ’ ἦν Θεοφάνους.

[f] ταύτην μνῶνται Στράτων Ὀρχομένιος καὶ Καλλισθένης Ἁλιάρτιος. πλουσιώτερος δ’ ἦν Στράτων καὶ μᾶλλόν τι τῆς παρθένου ἡττημένος· ἐτύγχανε γὰρ ἰδὼν αὐτὴν ἐν Λεβαδείᾳ λουομένην ἐπὶ τῇ κρήνῃ τῇ Ἑρκύνῃ· [772] [a] ἔμελλε γὰρ τῷ Διὶ τῷ βασιλεῖ κανηφορεῖν. ἀλλ’ ὁ Καλλισθένης γε πλέον ἐφέρετο· ἦν γὰρ καὶ γένει προσήκων τῇ κόρῃ. ἀπορῶν δὲ τῷ πράγματι ὁ Θεοφάνης, ἐδεδίει γὰρ τὸν Στράτωνα πλούτῳ τε καὶ γένει σχεδὸν ἁπάντων διαφέροντα τῶν Βοιωτῶν, τὴν αἵρεσιν ἐβούλετο τῷ Τροφωνίῳ ἐπιτρέψαι. καὶ ὁ Στράτων, ἀνεπέπειστο γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν τῆς παρθένου οἰκετῶν ὡς πρὸς αὐτὸν μᾶλλον ἐκείνη ῥέποι, ἠξίου ἐπ’ αὐτῇ ποιεῖσθαι τῇ γαμουμένῃ τὴν ἐκλογήν. ὡς δὲ τῆς παιδὸς ὁ Θεοφάνης ἐπυνθάνετο ἐν ὄψει πάντων, ἡ δὲ τὸν Καλλισθένην προὔκρινεν, [b] εὐθὺς μὲν ὁ Στράτων δῆλος ἦν βαρέως φέρων τὴν ἀτιμίαν· ἡμέρας δὲ διαλιπὼν δύο προσῆλθε τῷ Θεοφάνει καὶ τῷ Καλλισθένει, ἀξιῶν τὴν φιλίαν αὐτῷ πρὸς αὐτοὺς διαφυλάττεσθαι, εἰ καὶ τοῦ γάμου ἐφθονήθη ὑπὸ δαιμονίου τινός. οἱ δ’ ἐπῄνουν τὰ λεγόμενα, ὥστε καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν ἑστίασιν τῶν γάμων παρεκάλουν αὐτόν. ὁ δὲ παρεσκευασμένος ἑταίρων ὄχλον καὶ πλῆθος οὐκ ὀλίγον θεραπόντων, διεσπαρμένους παρὰ τούτοις καὶ λανθάνοντας, ἕως ἡ κόρη κατὰ τὰ πάτρια ἐπὶ τὴν Κισσόεσσαν καλουμένην κρήνην κατῄει ταῖς Νύμφαις τὰ προτέλεια θύσουσα, [c] τότε δὴ συνδραμόντες πάντες οἱ λοχῶντες ἐκείνῳ συνελάμβανον αὐτήν. καὶ ὁ Στράτων γ’ εἴχετο τῆς παρθένου· ἀντελαμβάνετο δ’ ὡς εἰκὸς ὁ Καλλισθένης ἐν μέρει καὶ οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ, ἕως ἔλαθεν ἡ παῖς ἐν χερσὶ τῶν ἀνθελκόντων διαφθαρεῖσα. ὁ Καλλισθένης μὲν οὖν παραχρῆμα ἀφανὴς ἐγένετο, εἴτε διαχρησάμενος ἑαυτὸν εἴτε φυγὰς ἀπελθὼν ἐκ τῆς Βοιωτίας· οὐκ εἶχε δ’ οὖν τις εἰπεῖν ὅ τι καὶ πεπόνθοι. ὁ δὲ Στράτων φανερῶς ἐπικατέσφαξεν ἑαυτὸν τῇ παρθένῳ.

Β.

Φείδων τις τῶν Πελοποννησίων ἐπιτιθέμενος ἀρχῇ, τὴν Ἀργείων πόλιν, τὴν πατρίδα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ, ἡγεμονεύειν [d] τῶν λοιπῶν βουλόμενος, πρῶτον ἐπεβούλευσε Κορινθίοις· πέμψας γὰρ ᾔτει παρ’ αὐτῶν νεανίας χιλίους τοὺς ἀκμῇ διαφέροντας καὶ ἀνδρείᾳ· οἱ δὲ πέμπουσι τοὺς χιλίους, στρατηγὸν αὐτῶν ἀποδείξαντες Δέξανδρον. ἐν νῷ δ’ ἔχων ὁ Φείδων ἐπιθέσθαι τούτοις, ἵν’ ἔχοι Κόρινθον ἀτονωτέραν καὶ τῇ πόλει χρήσαιτο, προτείχισμα γὰρ τοῦτο ἐπικαιρότατον ἔσεσθαι τῆς ὅλης Πελοποννήσου, τὴν πρᾶξιν ἀνέθετο τῶν ἑταίρων τισίν. ἦν δὲ καὶ Ἅβρων ἐν αὐτοῖς· οὗτος δὲ ξένος ὢν τοῦ Δεξάνδρου ἔφρασεν αὐτῷ τὴν ἐπιβουλήν. καὶ οὕτως οἱ μὲν Φλιάσιοι πρὸ τῆς ἐπιθέσεως εἰς τὴν Κόρινθον ἐσώθησαν, Φείδων [e] δ’ ἀνευρεῖν ἐπειρᾶτο τὸν προδόντα καὶ ἐπιμελῶς ἐζήτει. δείσας δ’ ὁ Ἅβρων φεύγει εἰς Κόρινθον, ἀναλαβὼν τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τοὺς οἰκέτας, ἐν Μελίσσῳ, κώμῃ τινὶ τῆς Κορινθίων χώρας· ἔνθα καὶ παῖδα γεννήσας Μέλισσον προσηγόρευσεν, ἀπὸ τοῦ τόπου θέμενος τοὔνομα αὐτῷ. τούτου δὴ τοῦ Μελίσσου υἱὸς Ἀκταίων γίνεται, κάλλιστος καὶ σωφρονέστατος τῶν ὁμηλίκων, οὗ πλεῖστοι μὲν ἐγένοντο ἐρασταί, διαφερόντως δ’ Ἀρχίας, γένους μὲν ὢν τοῦ τῶν Ἡρακλειδῶν, πλούτῳ δὲ καὶ τῇ ἄλλῃ δυνάμει λαμπρότατος Κορινθίων. ἐπεὶ δὲ πείθειν οὐκ ἠδύνατο τὸν παῖδα, ἔγνω βιάσασθαι καὶ συναρπάσαι τὸ μειράκιον· [f] ἐπεκώμασεν ‹οὖν› ἐπὶ τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ Μελίσσου, πλῆθος ἐπαγόμενος καὶ φίλων καὶ οἰκετῶν, καὶ ἀπάγειν τὸν παῖδα ἐπειρᾶτο. ἀντιποιουμένου δὲ τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τῶν φίλων, ἐπεκδραμόντων δὲ καὶ τῶν γειτόνων καὶ ἀνθελκόντων, ἀνθελκόμενος ὁ Ἀκταίων διεφθάρη· καὶ οἱ μὲν [773] [a] οὕτως ἀπεχώρουν. Μέλισσος δὲ τὸν νεκρὸν τοῦ παιδὸς εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν τῶν Κορινθίων παρακομίσας ἐπεδείκνυε, δίκην ἀπαιτῶν παρὰ τῶν ταῦτα πραξάντων· οἱ δὲ πλέον οὐδὲν ἢ τὸν ἄνδρα ἠλέουν. ἄπρακτος δ’ ἀναχωρήσας παρεφύλασσε τὴν πανήγυριν τῶν Ἰσθμίων, ἀναβάς τ’ ἐπὶ τὸν τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος νεὼν κατεβόα τῶν Βακχιαδῶν καὶ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς Ἅβρωνος εὐεργεσίαν ὑπεμίμνησκε, τούς τε θεοὺς ἐπικαλεσάμενος ῥίπτει ἑαυτὸν κατὰ τῶν πετρῶν. μετ’ οὐ πολὺ δ’ αὐχμὸς καὶ λοιμὸς κατελάμβανε τὴν πόλιν· καὶ τῶν Κορινθίων περὶ ἀπαλλαγῆς χρωμένων, ὁ θεὸς ἀνεῖλε μῆνιν εἶναι Ποσειδῶνος οὐκ ἀνήσοντος, [b] ἕως ἂν τὸν Ἀκταίωνος θάνατον μετέλθοιεν. ταῦτα πυθόμενος Ἀρχίας, αὐτὸς γὰρ θεωρὸς ἦν, εἰς μὲν τὴν Κόρινθον ἑκὼν οὐκ ἐπανῆλθε, πλεύσας δ’ εἰς τὴν Σικελίαν Συρακούσας ἔκτισε. πατὴρ δὲ γενόμενος ἐνταῦθα θυγατέρων δυεῖν, Ὀρτυγίας τε καὶ Συρακούσης, ὑπὸ τοῦ Τηλέφου δολοφονεῖται, ὃς ἐγεγόνει μὲν αὐτοῦ παιδικά, νεὼς δ’ ἀφηγούμενος συνέπλευσεν εἰς Σικελίαν.

Γ.

Ἀνὴρ πένης Σκέδασος τοὔνομα κατῴκει Λεῦκτρα· ἔστι δὲ κώμιον τῆς τῶν Θεσπιέων χώρας. τούτῳ θυγατέρες γίνονται δύο· ἐκαλοῦντο δ’ Ἱππὼ καὶ Μιλητία, ἤ, ὥς [c] τινες, Θεανὼ καὶ Εὐξίππη. ἦν δὲ χρηστὸς ὁ Σκέδασος καὶ τοῖς ξένοις ἐπιτήδειος, καίπερ οὐ πολλὰ κεκτημένος. ἀφικομένους οὖν πρὸς αὐτὸν δύο Σπαρτιάτας νεανίας ὑπεδέξατο προθύμως· οἱ δὲ τῶν παρθένων ἡττώμενοι διεκωλύοντο πρὸς τὴν τόλμαν ὑπὸ τῆς τοῦ Σκεδάσου χρηστότητος. τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ Πυθώδε ἀπῄεσαν· αὕτη γὰρ αὐτοῖς προὔκειτο ἡ ὁδός· καὶ τῷ θεῷ χρησάμενοι περὶ ὧν ἐδέοντο, πάλιν ἐπανῄεσαν οἴκαδε, καὶ χωροῦντες διὰ τῆς Βοιωτίας ἐπέστησαν πάλιν τῇ τοῦ Σκεδάσου οἰκίᾳ. ὁ δ’ ἐτύγχανεν οὐκ ἐπιδημῶν τοῖς Λεύκτροις, ἀλλ’ αἱ θυγατέρες αὐτοῦ ὑπὸ τῆς συνήθους ἀγωγῆς [d] τοὺς ξένους ὑπεδέξαντο. οἱ δὲ καταλαβόντες ἐρήμους τὰς κόρας βιάζονται· ὁρῶντες δ’ αὐτὰς καθ’ ὑπερβολὴν τῇ ὕβρει χαλεπαινούσας ἀπέκτειναν, καὶ ἐμβαλόντες ἔς τι φρέαρ ἀπηλλάγησαν. ἐπανελθὼν δ’ ὁ Σκέδασος τὰς μὲν κόρας οὐχ ἑώρα, πάντα δὲ τὰ καταλειφθέντα εὑρίσκει σῷα καὶ τῷ πράγματι ἠπόρει, ἕως τῆς κυνὸς κνυζωμένης καὶ πολλάκις μὲν προστρεχούσης πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀπὸ δ’ αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸ φρέαρ ἐπανιούσης, εἴκασεν ὅπερ ἦν, καὶ τῶν θυγατέρων τὰ νεκρὰ οὕτως ἀνιμήσατο. πυθόμενος δὲ παρὰ τῶν γειτόνων, ὅτι ἴδοιεν τῇ χθὲς [e] ἡμέρᾳ τοὺς καὶ πρῴην καταχθέντας ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους εἰσιόντας, συνεβάλετο τὴν πρᾶξιν ἐκείνων, ὅτι καὶ πρῴην συνεχῶς ἐπῄνουν τὰς κόρας, μακαρίζοντες τοὺς γαμήσοντας. ἀπῄει εἰς Λακεδαίμονα, τοῖς ἐφόροις ἐντευξόμενος· γενόμενος δ’ ἐν τῇ Ἀργολικῇ, νυκτὸς καταλαμβανούσης, εἰς πανδοκεῖόν τι κατήχθη· κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ δὲ καὶ πρεσβύτης τις ἕτερος τὸ γένος ἐξ Ὠρεοῦ πόλεως τῆς Ἑστιαιάτιδος· οὗ στενάξαντος καὶ ‹κατὰ› Λακεδαιμονίων ἀρὰς ποιουμένου ἀκούσας ὁ Σκέδασος ἐπυνθάνετο τί κακὸν ὑπὸ Λακεδαιμονίων πεπονθὼς εἴη. ὁ δὲ διηγεῖτο, ὡς ὑπήκοος μέν ἐστι τῆς Σπάρτης, πεμφθεὶς [f] δ’ εἰς Ὠρεὸν Ἀριστόδημος ἁρμοστὴς παρὰ Λακεδαιμονίων ὠμότητα καὶ παρανομίαν ἐπιδείξαιτο πολλήν. ‘ἐρασθεὶς γάρ’ ἔφη ‘τοῦ ἐμοῦ παιδός, ἐπειδὴ πείθειν ἀδύνατος ἦν, ἐπεχείρει βιάσασθαι καὶ ἀπάγειν αὐτὸν τῆς παλαίστρας· κωλύοντος δὲ τοῦ παιδοτρίβου καὶ νεανίσκων πολλῶν ἐκβοηθούντων, παραχρῆμα ὁ Ἀριστόδημος ἀπεχώρησε· τῇ δ’ ὑστεραίᾳ πληρώσας τριήρη συνήρπασε τὸ μειράκιον, καὶ ἐξ Ὠρεοῦ διαπλεύσας εἰς τὴν περαίαν ἐπεχείρει ὑβρίσαι, οὐ συγχωροῦντα δ’ αὐτὸν [774] [a] ἀπέσφαξεν. ἐπανελθὼν δ’ εἰς τὴν Ὠρεὸν εὐωχεῖτο. ἐγὼ δ’’ ἔφη ‘τὸ πραχθὲν πυθόμενος καὶ τὸ σῶμα κηδεύσας παρεγενόμην εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην καὶ τοῖς ἐφόροις ἐνετύγχανον· οἱ δὲ λόγον οὐκ ἐποιοῦντο.’ Σκέδασος δὲ ταῦτα ἀκούων ἀθύμως διέκειτο, ὑπολαμβάνων ὅτι οὐδ’ αὐτοῦ λόγον τινὰ ποιήσονται οἱ Σπαρτιᾶται· ἐν μέρει τε τὴν οἰκείαν διηγήσατο συμφορὰν τῷ ξένῳ· ὁ δὲ παρεκάλει αὐτὸν μηδ’ ἐντυχεῖν τοῖς ἐφόροις, ἀλλ’ ὑποστρέψαντα εἰς τὴν Βοιωτίαν κτίσαι τῶν θυγατέρων τὸν τάφον. οὐκ ἐπείθετο δ’ ὅμως ὁ Σκέδασος, ἀλλ’ εἰς τὴν Σπάρτην ἀφικόμενος τοῖς ἐφόροις ἐντυγχάνει· ὧν μηδὲν προσεχόντων, ἐπὶ τοὺς βασιλέας ἵεται καὶ ἀπὸ τούτων ἑκάστῳ τῶν δημοτῶν προσιὼν ὠδύρετο. μηδὲν δὲ πλέον ἀνύων ἔθει διὰ μέσης τῆς πόλεως ἀνατείνων πρὸς ἥλιον τὼ χεῖρε, αὖθις δὲ τὴν γῆν τύπτων ἀνεκαλεῖτο τὰς Ἐρινύας, καὶ τέλος αὑτὸν τοῦ ζῆν μετέστησεν. ὑστέρῳ γε μὴν χρόνῳ δίκας ἔδοσαν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι· ἐπειδὴ γὰρ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἁπάντων ἦρχον καὶ τὰς πόλεις φρουραῖς κατειλήφεσαν, Ἐπαμεινώνδας ὁ Θηβαῖος πρῶτον μὲν τὴν παρ’ αὑτῷ φρουρὰν ἀπέσφαξε· Λακεδαιμονίων δ’ ἐπὶ τούτῳ πόλεμον ἐξενεγκάντων, [b] ἀπήντων οἱ Θηβαῖοι ἐπὶ τὰ Λεῦκτρα, αἰσιούμενοι τὸ χωρίον, ὅτι καὶ πρότερον ἐνταῦθα ἠλευθερώθησαν, ὅτε Ἀμφιτρύων ὑπὸ Σθενέλου φυγὰς ἐλαθεὶς εἰς τὴν Θηβαίων ἀφίκετο πόλιν καὶ Χαλκιδεῦσιν ὑποφόρους λαβὼν ἔπαυσε τὸν δασμόν, Χαλκώδοντα τὸν βασιλέα τῶν Εὐβοέων ἀποκτείνας. συνέβη δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων ἧτταν παντελῆ γενέσθαι περὶ αὐτὸ τὸ μνῆμα τῶν Σκεδάσου θυγατέρων. φασὶ δὲ πρὸ τῆς μάχης Πελοπίδᾳ, ἑνὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν τοῦ Θηβαϊκοῦ στρατεύματος, ἐπὶ σημείοις τισὶν οὐ καλοῖς κρινομένοις θορυβουμένῳ Σκέδασον ἐπιστῆναι κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους, θαρρεῖν κελεύοντα· παραγίνεσθαι [c] γὰρ εἰς Λεῦκτρα Λακεδαιμονίους αὐτῷ τε καὶ ταῖς θυγατράσι δώσοντας δίκας· πρὸ μιᾶς δ’ ἡμέρας ἢ συμβαλεῖν τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις πῶλον ἐκέλευεν ἵππου λευκὸν ἕτοιμον παρὰ τῷ τάφῳ τῶν παρθένων σφαγιάσασθαι. τὸν δὲ Πελοπίδαν, ἔτι τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων στρατευομένων ἐν Τεγέᾳ, εἰς Λεῦκτρα πέμψαι τοὺς ἐξετάσοντας περὶ τοῦ τάφου τούτου, καὶ πυθόμενον παρὰ τῶν ἐγχωρίων θαρροῦντα τὴν στρατιὰν ἐξαγαγεῖν καὶ νικῆσαι.

Δ.

Φῶκος Βοιώτιος μὲν ἦν τῷ γένει, ἦν γὰρ ἐκ Γλίσαντος, πατὴρ δὲ Καλλιρρόης κάλλει τε καὶ σωφροσύνῃ διαφερούσης.

[d] ταύτην ἐμνηστεύοντο νεανίαι τριάκοντα εὐδοκιμώτατοι ἐν Βοιωτίᾳ· ὁ δὲ Φῶκος ἄλλας ἐξ ἄλλων ἀναβολὰς τῶν γάμων ἐποιεῖτο, φοβούμενος μὴ βιασθείη, τέλος δὲ λιπαρούντων ἐκείνων, ἠξίου ἐπὶ τῷ Πυθίῳ ποιήσασθαι τὴν αἵρεσιν. οἱ δὲ πρὸς τὸν λόγον ἐχαλέπηναν καὶ ὁρμήσαντες ἀπέκτειναν τὸν Φῶκον· ἐν δὲ τῷ θορύβῳ ἡ κόρη φυγοῦσα ἵετο διὰ τῆς χώρας· ἐδίωκον δ’ αὐτὴν οἱ νεανίαι. ἡ δ’ ἐντυχοῦσα γεωργοῖς ἅλω συντιθεῖσι σωτηρίας ἔτυχε παρ’ αὐτῶν· ἀπέκρυψαν γὰρ αὐτὴν οἱ γεωργοὶ ἐν τῷ σίτῳ. καὶ οὕτω παρῇξαν μὲν οἱ διώκοντες· ἡ δὲ [e] διασωθεῖσα ἐφύλαξε τὴν τῶν Παμβοιωτίων ἑορτήν, καὶ τότε εἰς Κορώνειαν ἐλθοῦσα ἱκέτις καθέζεται ἐπὶ τῷ βωμῷ τῆς Ἰτωνίας Ἀθηνᾶς καὶ τῶν μνηστήρων τὴν παρανομίαν διηγεῖτο, τό τε ἑκάστου ὄνομα καὶ τὴν πατρίδα σημαίνουσα. ἠλέουν οὖν οἱ Βοιωτοὶ τὴν παῖδα καὶ τοῖς νεανίαις ἠγανάκτουν· οἱ δὲ ταῦτα πυθόμενοι εἰς Ὀρχομενὸν καταφεύγουσιν. οὐ δεξαμένων δ’ αὐτοὺς [775] [a] τῶν Ὀρχομενίων πρὸς Ἱππότας εἰσώρμησαν· κώμη δ’ ἦν παρὰ τῷ Ἑλικῶνι κειμένη μεταξὺ Θίσβης καὶ Κορωνείας· οἱ δ’ ὑποδέχονται αὐτούς. εἶτα πέμπουσι Θηβαῖοι ἐξαιτοῦντες τοὺς Φώκου φονεῖς· τῶν δ’ οὐ διδόντων, ἐστράτευσαν μὲν μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων Βοιωτῶν, στρατηγοῦντος Φοίδου, ὃς τότε τὴν ἀρχὴν τῶν Θηβαίων διεῖπε· πολιορκήσαντες δὲ τὴν κώμην ὀχυρὰν οὖσαν, δίψει δὲ τῶν ἔνδον κρατηθέντων, τοὺς μὲν φονεῖς ληφθέντας κατέλευσαν, τοὺς δ’ ἐν τῇ κώμῃ ἐξηνδραποδίσαντο· κατασκάψαντες δὲ τὰ τείχη καὶ τὰς οἰκίας διένειμαν τὴν χώραν Θισβεῦσι τε καὶ Κορωνεῦσι. φασὶ δὲ νυκτός, πρὸ [b] τῆς ἁλώσεως τῶν Ἱπποτῶν, φωνὴν ἐκ τοῦ Ἑλικῶνος πολλάκις ἀκουσθῆναι λέγοντός τινος ‘πάρειμι’· τοὺς δὲ μνηστῆρας τοὺς τριάκοντα τόδε τὸ φώνημα γνωρίζειν, ὅτι Φώκου εἴη. ᾗ δ’ ἡμέρᾳ κατελεύσθησαν, τὸ ἐν Γλίσαντι μνῆμα τοῦ γέροντος κρόκῳ φασὶ ῥεῦσαι· Φοίδῳ δὲ τῷ Θηβαίων ἄρχοντι καὶ στρατηγῷ ἐκ τῆς μάχης ἐπανιόντι ἀγγελθῆναι θυγατέρα γεγενημένην, ‹ἣν› αἰσιούμενον προσαγορεῦσαι Νικοστράτην.

Ε.

Ἄλκιππος τὸ μὲν γένος Λακεδαιμόνιος ἦν· γήμας δὲ Δαμοκρίταν πατὴρ θυγατέρων γίνεται δύο· συμβουλεύων [c] τε τῇ πόλει κράτιστα [τε] καὶ πράττων ὅτου δέοιντο Λακεδαιμόνιοι, ἐφθονήθη ὑπὸ τῶν ἀντιπολιτευομένων, οἳ τοὺς ἐφόρους ψευδέσι λόγοις παραγαγόντες, ὡς τοῦ Ἀλκίππου βουλομένου τοὺς νόμους καταλῦσαι, φυγῇ περιέβαλον τὸν ἄνδρα. καὶ ὁ μὲν ὑπεξῆλθε τῆς Σπάρτης, Δαμοκρίταν δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα μετὰ τῶν θυγατέρων βουλομένην ἕπεσθαι τἀνδρὶ ἐκώλυον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ ἐδήμευσαν, ἵνα μὴ εὐπορῶσι προικὸς αἱ παρθένοι. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ ὣς ἐμνηστεύοντό τινες τὰς παῖδας διὰ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς ἀρετήν, ἐκώλυσαν οἱ ἐχθροὶ διὰ ψηφίσματος [d] μνηστεύεσθαί τινας τὰς κόρας, λέγοντες ὡς ἡ μήτηρ αὐτῶν Δαμοκρίτα πολλάκις εὔξατο τὰς θυγατέρας ταχέως γεννῆσαι παῖδας τιμωροὺς τῷ πατρὶ γενησομένους. πανταχόθεν δ’ ἡ Δαμοκρίτα περιελαυνομένη ἐτήρησέ τινα πάνδημον ἑορτήν, ἐν ᾗ γυναῖκες ἅμα παρθένοις καὶ οἰκείοις καὶ νηπίοις ἑώρταζον, αἱ δὲ τῶν ἐν τέλει καθ’ ἑαυτὰς ἐν ἀνδρῶνι μεγάλῳ διεπαννύχιζον· ξίφος τε ὑποζωσαμένη καὶ τὰς κόρας λαβοῦσα νυκτὸς ἦλθεν εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν [e] καιρὸν παραφυλάξασα, ἐν ᾧ πᾶσαι τὸ μυστήριον ἐπετέλουν ἐν τῷ ἀνδρῶνι· καὶ κεκλεισμένων τῶν εἰσόδων, ξύλα ταῖς θύραις πολλὰ προσνήσασα (ταῦτα δ’ ἦν εἰς τὴν τῆς ἑορτῆς θυσίαν ὑπ’ ἐκείνων παρεσκευασμένα), πῦρ ἐνῆκε. συνθεόντων δὲ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐπὶ τὴν βοήθειαν, ἡ Δαμοκρίτα τὰς θυγατέρας ἀπέσφαξε καὶ ἐπ’ ἐκείναις ἑαυτήν. οὐκ ἔχοντες δ’ οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι, ὅπη τὸν θυμὸν ἀπερείσονται, ἐκτὸς ὅρων ἔρριψαν τῆς τε Δαμοκρίτας καὶ τῶν θυγατέρων τὰ σώματα. ἐφ’ ᾧ μηνίσαντος τοῦ θεοῦ τὸν μέγαν ἱστοροῦσι Λακεδαιμονίοις σεισμὸν ἐπιγενέσθαι.

Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΟΤΙ ΜΑΛΙΣΤΑ ΤΟΙΣ ΗΓΕΜΟΣΙ ΔΕΙ ΤΟΝ ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΟΝ ΔΙΑΛΕΓΕΣΘΑΙ

[776] Σωρκανὸν ἐγκολπίσασθαι καὶ φιλίαν τιμᾶν [b] καὶ μετιέναι καὶ προσδέχεσθαι καὶ γεωργεῖν, πολλοῖς μὲν ἰδίᾳ πολλοῖς δὲ καὶ δημοσίᾳ χρήσιμον καὶ ἔγκαρπον γενησομένην, φιλοκάλων ἐστὶ καὶ πολιτικῶν καὶ φιλανθρώπων οὐχ ὡς ἔνιοι νομίζουσι φιλοδόξων· ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὐναντίον, φιλόδοξός ἐστι καὶ ψοφοδεὴς ὁ φεύγων καὶ φοβούμενος ἀκοῦσαι λιπαρὴς τῶν ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ καὶ θεραπευτικός. ἐπεὶ τί φησιν ἀνὴρ θεραπευτικὸς καὶ φιλοσοφίας δεόμενος; Σίμων οὖν γένωμαι ὁ σκυτοτόμος ἢ Διονύσιος ὁ γραμματιστὴς ἐκ Περικλέους ἢ Κάτωνος, ἵνα μοι προσδιαλέγηται καὶ προσκαθίζῃ [c] ὡς Σωκράτης ἐκείνῳ; καὶ Ἀρίστων μὲν ὁ Χῖος ἐπὶ τῷ πᾶσι διαλέγεσθαι τοῖς βουλομένοις ὑπὸ τῶν σοφιστῶν κακῶς ἀκούων “ὤφελεν,” εἶπε, “καὶ τὰ θηρία λόγων συνιέναι κινητικῶν πρὸς ἀρετήν”· ἡμεῖς δὲ φευξούμεθα τοῖς δυνατοῖς καὶ ἡγεμονικοῖς ὥσπερ ἀγρίοις καὶ ἀνημέροις γίγνεσθαι συνήθεις;

Οὐκ “ἀνδριαντοποιός” ἐστιν ὁ τῆς φιλοσοφίας λόγος, “ὥστ’ ἐλινύοντα ποιεῖν ἀγάλματ’ ἐπ’ αὐτᾶς βαθμίδος ἑσταότα” κατὰ Πίνδαρον· ἀλλ’ ἐνεργὰ βούλεται ποιεῖν ὧν ἂν ἅψηται καὶ πρακτικὰ καὶ ἔμψυχα καὶ κινητικὰς ὁρμὰς ἐντίθησι καὶ κρίσεις ἀγωγοὺς ἐπὶ τὰ ὠφέλιμα καὶ προαιρέσεις [d] φιλοκάλους καὶ φρόνημα καὶ μέγεθος μετὰ πραότητος καὶ ἀσφαλείας, δι’ ὧν τοῖς ὑπερέχουσι καὶ δυνατοῖς ὁμιλοῦσιν οἱ πολιτικοὶ προθυμότερον. καὶ γάρ, ἂν ἰατρὸς ᾖ φιλόκαλος, ἥδιον ὀφθαλμὸν ἰάσεται τὸν ὑπὲρ πολλῶν βλέποντα καὶ πολλοὺς φυλάσσοντα· καὶ φιλόσοφος ψυχῆς ἐπιμελήσεται προθυμότερον, ἣν ὑπὲρ πολλῶν φροντίζουσαν ὁρᾷ καὶ πολλοῖς φρονεῖν καὶ σωφρονεῖν καὶ δικαιοπραγεῖν ὀφείλουσαν. καὶ γὰρ εἰ δεινὸς ἦν περὶ ζήτησιν ὑδάτων καὶ συναγωγήν, ὥσπερ ἱστοροῦσι τὸν Ἡρακλέα καὶ πολλοὺς τῶν πάλαι, οὐκ ἂν ἔχαιρε φρεωρυχῶν ἐν ἐσχατιᾷ “παρὰ Κόρακος πέτρῃ” τὴν συβωτικὴν ἐκείνην Ἀρέθουσαν, ἀλλὰ ποταμοῦ τινος ἀενάους πηγὰς ἀνακαλύπτων πόλεσι καὶ στρατοπέδοις καὶ φυτείαις βασιλέων καὶ ἄλσεσιν. ἀκούομεν δὴ Ὁμήρου τὸν Μίνω “θεοῦ μεγάλου ὀαριστὴν” ἀποκαλοῦντος· τοῦτο δ’ ἐστίν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, ὁμιλητὴν καὶ μαθητήν· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἰδιώτας οὐδ’ οἰκουροὺς οὐδ’ ἀπράκτους ἠξίουν εἶναι θεῶν μαθητάς, ἀλλὰ βασιλεῖς, οἷς [e] εὐβουλίας ἐγγενομένης καὶ δικαιοσύνης καὶ χρηστότητος καὶ μεγαλοφροσύνης, πάντες ἔμελλον ὠφεληθήσεσθαι καὶ ἀπολαύσειν οἱ χρώμενοι. τὸ ἠρύγγιον τὸ βοτάνιον λέγουσι μιᾶς αἰγὸς εἰς τὸ στόμα λαβούσης, αὐτήν τε πρώτην ἐκείνην καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν αἰπόλιον ἵστασθαι, μέχρι ἂν ὁ αἰπόλος ἐξέλῃ προσελθών· τοιαύτην ἔχουσιν αἱ ἀπορροιαὶ τῆς δυνάμεως ὀξύτητα, πυρὸς δίκην ἐπινεμομένην τὰ γειτνιῶντα καὶ κατασκιδναμένην. καὶ μὴν ὁ τοῦ φιλοσόφου λόγος, ἐὰν μὲν ἰδιώτην ἕνα λάβῃ, χαίροντα ἀπραγμοσύνῃ καὶ περιγράφοντα ἑαυτὸν ὡς κέντρῳ καὶ διαστήματι γεωμετρικῷ [777] [a] ταῖς περὶ τὸ σῶμα χρείαις, οὐ διαδίδωσιν εἰς ἑτέρους, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἑνὶ ποιήσας ἐκείνῳ γαλήνην καὶ ἡσυχίαν ἀπεμαράνθη καὶ συνεξέλιπεν. ἂν δ’ ἄρχοντος ἀνδρὸς καὶ πολιτικοῦ καὶ πρακτικοῦ καθάψηται καὶ τοῦτον ἀναπλήσῃ καλοκαγαθίας, πολλοὺς δι’ ἑνὸς ὠφέλησεν, ὡς Ἀναξαγόρας Περικλεῖ συγγενόμενος καὶ Πλάτων Δίωνι καὶ Πυθαγόρας τοῖς πρωτεύουσιν Ἰταλιωτῶν. Κάτων δ’ αὐτὸς ἔπλευσεν ἀπὸ στρατιᾶς ἐπ’ Ἀθηνόδωρον· καὶ Σκιπίων μετεπέμψατο Παναίτιον, ὅτ’ αὐτὸν ἡ σύγκλητος ἐξέπεμψεν

ἀνθρώπων ὕβριν τε καὶ εὐνομίην ἐφορώμενον

ὥς φησι Ποσειδώνιος. τί οὖν ἔδει λέγειν τὸν [b] Παναίτιον; εἰ μὲν ἦς ἢ Βάτων ἢ Πολυδεύκης ἤ τις ἄλλος ἰδιώτης, τὰ μέσα τῶν πόλεων ἀποδιδράσκειν βουλόμενος, ἐν γωνίᾳ τινὶ καθ’ ἡσυχίαν ἀναλύων συλλογισμοὺς καὶ περιέλκων φιλοσόφων, ἄσμενος ἄν σε προσεδεξάμην καὶ συνῆν· ἐπεὶ δ’ υἱὸς μὲν Αἰμιλίου Παύλου τοῦ δισυπάτου γέγονας, υἱωνὸς δὲ Σκιπίωνος τοῦ Ἀφρικανοῦ τοῦ νικήσαντος τὸν Ἀννίβαν τὸν Καρχηδόνιον, οὐκ οὖν σοι διαλέξομαι;

Τὸ δὲ λέγειν ὅτι δύο λόγοι εἰσίν, ὁ μὲν ἐνδιάθετος ἡγεμόνος Ἑρμοῦ δῶρον, ὁ δ’ ἐν προφορᾷ διάκτορος καὶ ὀργανικός, ἕωλόν ἐστι καὶ ὑποπιπτέτω τῷ

[c] τουτὶ μὲν ᾔδειν πρὶν Θέογνιν γεγονέναι.

ἐκεῖνο δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐνοχλήσειεν, ὅτι καὶ τοῦ ἐνδιαθέτου λόγου καὶ τοῦ προφορικοῦ φιλία τέλος ἐστί, τοῦ μὲν πρὸς ἑαυτὸν τοῦ δὲ πρὸς ἕτερον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ εἰς ἀρετὴν διὰ φιλοσοφίας τελευτῶν σύμφωνον ἑαυτῷ καὶ ἄμεμπτον ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ μεστὸν εἰρήνης καὶ φιλοφροσύνης τῆς πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀεὶ παρέχεται τὸν ἄνθρωπον.

οὐ στάσις οὐδέ τε δῆρις ἀναίσιος ἐν μελέεσσιν,

οὐ πάθος λόγῳ δυσπειθές, οὐχ ὁρμῆς μάχη πρὸς ὁρμήν, οὐ λογισμοῦ πρὸς λογισμὸν ἀντίβασις, οὐχ ὥσπερ ἐν μεθορίῳ τοῦ ἐπιθυμοῦντος καὶ τοῦ μετανοοῦντος τὸ τραχὺ καὶ ταραχῶδες καὶ τὸ ἡδόμενον, [d] ἀλλ’ εὐμενῆ πάντα καὶ φίλα καὶ ποιοῦντα πλείστων τυγχάνειν ἀγαθῶν καὶ ἑαυτῷ χαίρειν ἕκαστον. τοῦ δὲ προφορικοῦ τὴν Μοῦσαν ὁ Πίνδαρος “οὐ φιλοκερδῆ,” φησίν, “οὐδ’ ἐργάτιν” εἶναι πρότερον, οἶμαι δὲ μηδὲ νῦν, ἀλλ’ ἀμουσίᾳ καὶ ἀπειροκαλίᾳ τὸν κοινὸν Ἑρμῆν ἐμπολαῖον καὶ ἔμμισθον γενέσθαι. οὐ γὰρ ἡ μὲν Ἀφροδίτη ταῖς τοῦ Προποίτου θυγατράσιν ἐμήνιεν ὅτι

πρῶται μίσεα μηχανήσαντο καταχέειν νεανίσκων,

ἡ δ’ Οὐρανία καὶ Καλλιόπη καὶ ἡ Κλειὼ χαίρουσι τοῖς ἐπ’ ἀργυρίῳ λυμαινομένοις τὸν λόγον. ἀλλ’ ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ τὰ τῶν Μουσῶν ἔργα καὶ δῶρα μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης φιλοτήσια εἶναι. καὶ γὰρ τὸ [e] ἔνδοξον, ὅ τινες τοῦ λόγου ποιοῦνται τέλος, ὡς ἀρχὴ καὶ σπέρμα φιλίας ἠγαπήθη· μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως οἵ γε πολλοὶ κατ’ εὔνοιαν τὴν δόξαν τίθενται, νομίζοντες ἡμᾶς μόνον ἐπαινεῖν οὓς φιλοῦμεν. ἀλλ’ οὗτοι μέν, ὡς ὁ Ἰξίων διώκων τὴν Ἥραν ὤλισθεν εἰς τὴν νεφέλην, οὕτως ἀντὶ τῆς φιλίας εἴδωλον ἀπατηλὸν καὶ πανηγυρικὸν καὶ περιφερόμενον ὑπολαμβάνουσιν. ὁ δὲ νοῦν ἔχων, ἂν ἐν πολιτείαις καὶ πράξεσιν ἀναστρέφηται, δεήσεται δόξης τοσαύτης, ὅση δύναμιν περὶ τὰς πράξεις ἐκ τοῦ [f] πιστεύεσθαι δίδωσιν· οὔτε γὰρ ἡδὺ μὴ βουλομένους οὔτε ῥᾴδιον ὠφελεῖν, βούλεσθαι δὲ ποιεῖ τὸ πιστεύειν· ὥσπερ γὰρ τὸ φῶς μᾶλλόν ἐστιν ἀγαθὸν τοῖς βλέπουσιν ἢ τοῖς βλεπομένοις, οὕτως ἡ δόξα τοῖς αἰσθανομένοις ἢ τοῖς μὴ παρορωμένοις. ὁ δ’ ἀπηλλαγμένος τοῦ τὰ κοινὰ πράττειν καὶ συνὼν ἑαυτῷ καὶ τἀγαθὸν ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ καὶ ἀπραγμοσύνῃ τιθέμενος τὴν μὲν ἐν ὄχλοις καὶ θεάτροις πάνδημον [778] [a] καὶ ἀναπεπταμένην δόξαν οὕτως ὡς τὴν Ἀφροδίτην ὁ Ἱππόλυτος “ἄπωθεν ἁγνὸς ὢν ἀσπάζεται,” τῆς δέ γε τῶν ἐπιεικῶν καὶ ἐλλογίμων οὐδ’ αὐτὸς καταφρονεῖ· πλοῦτον δὲ καὶ δόξαν ἡγεμονικὴν καὶ δύναμιν ἐν φιλίαις οὐ διώκει, οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ φεύγει ταῦτα μετρίῳ προσόντ’ ἤθει· οὐδὲ γὰρ τοὺς καλοὺς τῶν νέων διώκει καὶ ὡραίους, ἀλλὰ τοὺς εὐαγώγους καὶ κοσμίους καὶ φιλομαθεῖς· οὐδ’ οἷς ὥρα καὶ χάρις συνέπεται καὶ ἄνθος δεδίττεται τὸν φιλόσοφον οὐδ’ ἀποσοβεῖ καὶ ἀπελαύνει τῶν ἀξίων ἐπιμελείας τὸ κάλλος. οὕτως οὖν ἀξίας ἡγεμονικῆς καὶ δυνάμεως ἀνδρὶ μετρίῳ καὶ ἀστείῳ προσούσης, [b] οὐκ ἀφέξεται τοῦ φιλεῖν καὶ ἀγαπᾶν οὐδὲ φοβήσεται τὸ αὐλικὸς ἀκοῦσαι καὶ θεραπευτικός·

οἱ γὰρ Κύπριν φεύγοντες ἀνθρώπων ἄγαν

νοσοῦσ’ ὁμοίως τοῖς ἄγαν θηρωμένοις·

καὶ οἱ πρὸς ἔνδοξον οὕτως καὶ ἡγεμονικὴν φιλίαν ἔχοντες. ὁ μὲν οὖν ἀπράγμων φιλόσοφος οὐ φεύξεται τοὺς τοιούτους, ὁ δὲ πολιτικὸς καὶ περιέξεται αὐτῶν, ἄκουσιν οὐκ ἐνοχλῶν οὐδ’ ἐπισταθμεύων τὰ ὦτα διαλέξεσιν ἀκαίροις καὶ σοφιστικαῖς, βουλομένοις δὲ χαίρων καὶ διαλεγόμενος καὶ σχολάζων καὶ συνὼν προθύμως.

Σπείρω δ’ ἄρουραν δώδεχ’ ἡμερῶν ὁδὸν

Βερέκυντα χῶρον·

[c] οὗτος εἰ μὴ μόνον φιλογέωργος ἀλλὰ καὶ φιλάνθρωπος ἦν, ἥδιον ἂν ἔσπειρε τὴν τοσούτους τρέφειν δυναμένην ἢ τὸ Ἀντισθένους ἐκεῖνο χωρίδιον, ὃ μόλις Αὐτολύκῳ παλαίειν ἂν ἤρκεσε· εἰ δέ σε ἠρόμην τὴν οἰκουμένην ἅπασαν ἐπιστρέφειν παραιτοῦμαι. καίτοι Ἐπίκουρος τἀγαθὸν ἐν τῷ βαθυτάτῳ τῆς ἡσυχίας ὥσπερ ἐν ἀκλύστῳ λιμένι καὶ κωφῷ τιθέμενος τοῦ εὖ πάσχειν τὸ εὖ ποιεῖν οὐ μόνον κάλλιον ἀλλὰ καὶ ἥδιον εἶναί φησι.

χαρᾶς γὰρ οὕτω γόνιμον οὐδὲν ἐστιν

ὡς χάρις·

ἀλλὰ σοφὸς ἦν ὁ ταῖς Χάρισι τὰ ὀνόματα θέμενος [d] Ἀγλαΐην καὶ Εὐφροσύνην καὶ Θάλειαν· τὸ γὰρ ἀγαλλόμενον καὶ τὸ χαῖρον ἐν τῷ διδόντι τὴν χάριν πλεῖόν ἐστι καὶ καθαρώτερον. διὸ τῷ πάσχειν εὖ αἰσχύνονται πολλάκις, ἀεὶ δ’ ἀγάλλονται τῷ εὖ ποιεῖν· εὖ δὲ ποιοῦσι πολλοὺς οἱ ποιοῦντες ἀγαθοὺς ὧν πολλοὶ δέονται· καὶ τοὐναντίον, οἱ ἀεὶ διαφθείροντες ἡγεμόνας ἢ βασιλεῖς ἢ τυράννους διάβολοι καὶ συκοφάνται καὶ κόλακες ὑπὸ πάντων ἐλαύνονται καὶ κολάζονται, καθάπερ οὐκ εἰς μίαν κύλικα φάρμακον [e] ἐμβάλλοντες θανάσιμον, ἀλλ’ εἰς πηγὴν δημοσίᾳ ῥέουσαν, ᾗ χρωμένους πάντας ὁρῶσιν. ὥσπερ οὖν τοὺς Καλλίου κωμῳδουμένους κόλακας γελῶσιν, οὓς

οὐ πῦρ οὐδὲ σίδηρος

οὐδὲ χαλκὸς ἀπείργει

μὴ φοιτᾶν ἐπὶ δεῖπνον

κατὰ τὸν Εὔπολιν· τοὺς δ’ Ἀπολλοδώρου τοῦ τυράννου καὶ Φαλάριδος καὶ Διονυσίου φίλους καὶ συνήθεις ἀπετυμπάνιζον, ἐστρέβλουν καὶ ἐνεπίμπρασαν, ἐναγεῖς ἐποιοῦντο καὶ καταράτους, ὡς ἐκείνων μὲν ἀδικούντων ἕνα τούτων δὲ πολλοὺς δι’ ἑνὸς τοῦ ἄρχοντος· οὕτως οἱ μὲν ἰδιώταις συνόντες αὐτοὺς ἐκείνους ποιοῦσιν ἑαυτοῖς ἀλύπους καὶ ἀβλαβεῖς καὶ προσηνεῖς, ὁ δ’ ἄρχοντος ἦθος [f] ἀφαιρῶν μοχθηρὸν ἢ γνώμην ἐφ’ ὃ δεῖ συγκατευθύνων τρόπον τινὰ δημοσίᾳ φιλοσοφεῖ καὶ τὸ κοινὸν ἐπανορθοῦται, ᾧ πάντες διοικοῦνται. τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν αἰδῶ καὶ τιμὴν αἱ πόλεις νέμουσιν, ὅτι τἀγαθὰ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν οὐ μόνον αὑτοῖς καὶ φίλοις καὶ οἰκείοις, ἀλλὰ κοινῇ πᾶσιν αἰτοῦνται τοῖς πολίταις· καίτοι τοὺς θεοὺς οἱ ἱερεῖς οὐ ποιοῦσιν ἀγαθῶν δοτῆρας, ἀλλὰ τοιούτους ὄντας παρακαλοῦσι· τοὺς δ’ ἄρχοντας οἱ συνόντες τῶν φιλοσόφων δικαιοτέρους ποιοῦσι καὶ μετριωτέρους καὶ προθυμοτέρους εἰς τὸ εὖ ποιεῖν, ὥστε καὶ χαίρειν εἰκός ἐστι μᾶλλον.

[779] [a] Ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκεῖ καὶ λυροποιὸς ἂν ἥδιον λύραν ἐργάσασθαι καὶ προθυμότερον, μαθὼν ὡς ὁ ταύτην κτησόμενος τὴν λύραν μέλλει τὸ Θηβαίων ἄστυ τειχίζειν ὡς ὁ Ἀμφίων, ἢ τὴν Λακεδαιμονίων στάσιν παύειν ἐπᾴδων καὶ παραμυθούμενος ὡς Θαλῆς· καὶ τέκτων ὁμοίως πηδάλιον δημιουργῶν ἡσθῆναι, πυθόμενος ὅτι τοῦτο τὴν Θεμιστοκλέους ναυαρχίδα κυβερνήσει προπολεμοῦσαν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἢ τὴν Πομπηίου τὰ πειρατικὰ καταναυμαχοῦντος· τί οὖν οἴει περὶ τοῦ λόγου τὸν φιλόσοφον, διανοούμενον [b] ὡς ὁ τοῦτον παραλαβὼν πολιτικὸς ἀνὴρ καὶ ἡγεμονικὸς κοινὸν ὄφελος ἔσται δικαιοδοτῶν, νομοθετῶν, κολάζων τοὺς πονηρούς, αὔξων τοὺς ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ ἀγαθούς; ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκεῖ καὶ ναυπηγὸς ἀστεῖος ἥδιον ἂν ἐργάσασθαι πηδάλιον, πυθόμενος ὅτι τοῦτο τὴν Ἀργὼ κυβερνήσει τὴν “πᾶσι μέλουσαν”· καὶ τεκτονικὸς οὐκ ἂν οὕτω κατασκευάσαι ἄροτρον προθύμως ἢ ἅμαξαν, ὡς τοὺς ἄξονας, οἷς ἔμελλε Σόλων τοὺς νόμους ἐγχαράξειν. καὶ μὴν οἱ λόγοι τῶν φιλοσόφων, ἐὰν ψυχαῖς ἡγεμονικῶν καὶ πολιτικῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐγγραφῶσι βεβαίως καὶ κρατήσωσι, νόμων δύναμιν λαμβάνουσιν· ᾗ καὶ Πλάτων εἰς Σικελίαν ἔπλευσεν, ἐλπίζων τὰ δόγματα νόμους καὶ ἔργα ποιήσειν ἐν [c] τοῖς Διονυσίου πράγμασιν· ἀλλ’ εὗρε Διονύσιον ὥσπερ βιβλίον παλίμψηστον ἤδη μολυσμῶν ἀνάπλεων καὶ τὴν βαφὴν οὐκ ἀνιέντα τῆς τυραννίδος, ἐν πολλῷ χρόνῳ δευσοποιὸν οὖσαν καὶ δυσέκπλυτον· ἀκμαίους δ’ ὄντας ἔτι δεῖ τῶν χρηστῶν ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι λόγων.

Ad principem ineruditum

ΠΡΟΣ ΗΓΕΜΟΝΑ ΑΠΑΙΔΕΥΤΟΝ

[779] Πλάτωνα Κυρηναῖοι παρεκάλουν νόμους τε γραψάμενον αὐτοῖς ἀπολιπεῖν καὶ διακοσμῆσαι τὴν πολιτείαν, ὁ δὲ παρῃτήσατο φήσας χαλεπὸν εἶναι Κυρηναίοις νομοθετεῖν οὕτως εὐτυχοῦσιν·

οὐδὲν γὰρ οὕτω γαῦρον

καὶ τραχὺ καὶ δύσαρκτον

ὡς ἀνὴρ ἔφυ

εὐπραγίας δοκούσης ἐπιλαμβανόμενος. διὸ τοῖς [e] ἄρχουσι χαλεπόν ἐστι σύμβουλον περὶ ἀρχῆς γενέσθαι· τὸν γὰρ λόγον ὥσπερ ἄρχοντα παραδέξασθαι φοβοῦνται, μὴ τῆς ἐξουσίας αὐτῶν τἀγαθὸν κολούσῃ τῷ καθήκοντι δουλωσάμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἴσασι τὰ Θεοπόμπου τοῦ Σπαρτιατῶν βασιλέως, ὃς πρῶτος ἐν Σπάρτῃ τοῖς βασιλεύουσι καταμίξας τοὺς Ἐφόρους, εἶτ’ ὀνειδιζόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς γυναικός, εἰ τοῖς παισὶν ἐλάττονα παραδώσει τὴν ἀρχὴν ἧς παρέλαβε, “μείζονα μὲν οὖν,” εἶπεν, “ὅσῳ καὶ βεβαιοτέραν.” τὸ γὰρ σφοδρὸν ἀνεὶς καὶ ἄκρατον αὐτῆς ἅμα τῷ φθόνῳ διέφυγε τὸν [f] κίνδυνον. καίτοι Θεόπομπος μὲν εἰς ἑτέρους τὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς ὥσπερ ῥεύματος μεγάλου παροχετευσάμενος, ὅσον ἄλλοις ἔδωκεν, αὑτοῦ περιέκοψεν· ὁ δ’ ἐκ φιλοσοφίας τῷ ἄρχοντι πάρεδρος καὶ φύλαξ ἐγκατοικισθεὶς λόγος, ὥσπερ εὐεξίας τῆς δυνάμεως τὸ ἐπισφαλὲς ἀφαιρῶν, ἀπολείπει τὸ ὑγιαῖνον.

Ἀλλὰ νοῦν οὐκ ἔχοντες οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν βασιλέων καὶ ἀρχόντων μιμοῦνται τοὺς ἀτέχνους ἀνδριαντοποιούς, οἳ νομίζουσι μεγάλους καὶ ἁδροὺς φαίνεσθαι τοὺς κολοσσούς, ἂν διαβεβηκότας σφόδρα [780] [a] καὶ διατεταμένους καὶ κεχηνότας πλάσωσι· καὶ γὰρ οὗτοι βαρύτητι φωνῆς καὶ βλέμματος τραχύτητι καὶ δυσκολίᾳ τρόπων καὶ ἀμιξίᾳ διαίτης ὄγκον ἡγεμονίας καὶ σεμνότητα μιμεῖσθαι δοκοῦσιν, οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν τῶν κολοσσικῶν διαφέροντες ἀνδριάντων, οἳ τὴν ἔξωθεν ἡρωικὴν καὶ θεοπρεπῆ μορφὴν ἔχοντες ἐντός εἰσι γῆς μεστοὶ καὶ λίθου καὶ μολίβδου· πλὴν ὅτι τῶν μὲν ἀνδριάντων ταῦτα τὰ βάρη τὴν ὀρθότητα μόνιμον καὶ ἀκλινῆ διαφυλάττει, οἱ [b] δ’ ἀπαίδευτοι στρατηγοὶ καὶ ἡγεμόνες ὑπὸ τῆς ἐντὸς ἀγνωμοσύνης πολλάκις σαλεύονται καὶ περιτρέπονται· βάσει γὰρ οὐ κειμένῃ πρὸς ὀρθὰς ἐξουσίαν ἐποικοδομοῦντες ὑψηλὴν συναπονεύουσι. δεῖ δέ, ὥσπερ ὁ κανὼν αὐτός, ἀστραβὴς γενόμενος καὶ ἀδιάστροφος, οὕτως ἀπευθύνει τὰ λοιπὰ τῇ πρὸς αὑτὸν ἐφαρμογῇ καὶ παραθέσει συνεξομοιῶν, παραπλησίως τὸν ἄρχοντα πρῶτον τὴν ἀρχὴν κτησάμενον ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ κατευθύναντα τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ καταστησάμενον τὸ ἦθος οὕτω συναρμόττειν τὸ ὑπήκοον· οὔτε γὰρ πίπτοντός ἐστιν ὀρθοῦν οὔτε διδάσκειν ἀγνοοῦντος οὔτε κοσμεῖν ἀκοσμοῦντος ἢ τάττειν ἀτακτοῦντος ἢ ἄρχειν μὴ [c] ἀρχομένου· ἀλλ’ οἱ πολλοὶ κακῶς φρονοῦντες οἴονται πρῶτον ἐν τῷ ἄρχειν ἀγαθὸν εἶναι τὸ μὴ ἄρχεσθαι, καὶ ὅ γε Περσῶν βασιλεὺς πάντας ἡγεῖτο δούλους πλὴν τῆς αὑτοῦ γυναικός, ἧς μάλιστα δεσπότης ὤφειλεν εἶναι.

Τίς οὖν ἄρξει τοῦ ἄρχοντος; ὁ

νόμος ὁ πάντων βασιλεὺς

θνατῶν τε καὶ ἀθανάτων,

ὡς ἔφη Πίνδαρος, οὐκ ἐν βιβλίοις ἔξω γεγραμμένος οὐδέ τισι ξύλοις, ἀλλ’ ἔμψυχος ὢν ἐν αὐτῷ λόγος, ἀεὶ συνοικῶν καὶ παραφυλάττων καὶ μηδέποτε τὴν ψυχὴν ἐῶν ἔρημον ἡγεμονίας. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Περσῶν βασιλεὺς ἕνα τῶν κατευναστῶν εἶχε πρὸς τοῦτο τεταγμένον, ὥσθ’ ἕωθεν εἰσιόντα λέγειν πρὸς αὐτὸν “ἀνάστα, ὦ βασιλεῦ, καὶ φρόντιζε πραγμάτων, ὧν σε φροντίζειν ὁ μέγας Ὠρομάσδης ἠθέλησε”· [d] τοῦ δὲ πεπαιδευμένου καὶ σωφρονοῦντος ἄρχοντος ἐντός ἐστιν ὁ τοῦτο φθεγγόμενος ἀεὶ καὶ παρακελευόμενος. Πολέμων γὰρ ἔλεγε τὸν ἔρωτα εἶναι “θεῶν ὑπηρεσίαν εἰς νέων ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ σωτηρίαν”· ἀληθέστερον δ’ ἄν τις εἴποι τοὺς ἄρχοντας ὑπηρετεῖν θεῷ πρὸς ἀνθρώπων ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ σωτηρίαν, ὅπως ὧν θεὸς δίδωσιν ἀνθρώποις καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν τὰ μὲν νέμωσι τὰ δὲ φυλάττωσιν.

ὁρᾷς τὸν ὑψοῦ τόνδ’ ἄπειρον αἰθέρα,

καὶ γῆν πέριξ ἔχονθ’ ὑγραῖς ἐν ἀγκάλαις;

ὁ μὲν καθίησιν ἀρχὰς σπερμάτων προσηκόντων γῆ δ’ ἀναδίδωσιν, αὔξεται δὲ τὰ μὲν ὄμβροις τὰ δ’ ἀνέμοις τὰ δ’ ἄστροις ἐπιθαλπόμενα καὶ σελήνῃ, [e] κοσμεῖ δ’ ἥλιος ἅπαντα καὶ πᾶσι τοῦτο δὴ τὸ παρ’ αὑτοῦ φίλτρον ἐγκεράννυσιν. ἀλλὰ τῶν τοιούτων καὶ τηλικούτων ἃ θεοὶ χαρίζονται δώρων καὶ ἀγαθῶν οὐκ ἔστιν ἀπόλαυσις οὐδὲ χρῆσις ὀρθὴ δίχα νόμου καὶ δίκης καὶ ἄρχοντος. δίκη μὲν οὖν νόμου τέλος ἐστί, νόμος δ’ ἄρχοντος ἔργον, ἄρχων δ’ εἰκὼν θεοῦ τοῦ πάντα κοσμοῦντος, οὐ Φειδίου δεόμενος πλάττοντος οὐδὲ Πολυκλείτου καὶ Μύρωνος, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς αὑτὸν εἰς ὁμοιότητα θεῷ δι’ ἀρετῆς [f] καθιστὰς καὶ δημιουργῶν ἀγαλμάτων τὸ ἥδιστον ὀφθῆναι καὶ θεοπρεπέστατον. οἷον δ’ ἥλιον ἐν οὐρανῷ περικαλλὲς εἴδωλον ἑαυτοῦ καὶ σελήνην ὁ θεὸς ἐνίδρυσε, τοιοῦτον ἐν πόλεσι μίμημα καὶ φέγγος ἄρχων

ὅστε θεουδὴς

εὐδικίας ἀνέχῃσι,

τουτέστι θεοῦ λόγον ἔχων, διάνοιαν, οὐ σκῆπτρον οὐδὲ κεραυνὸν οὐδὲ τρίαιναν, ὡς ἔνιοι πλάττουσιν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ γράφουσι τῷ ἀνεφίκτῳ ποιοῦντες ἐπίφθονον τὸ ἀνόητον· νεμεσᾷ γὰρ ὁ θεὸς τοῖς ἀπομιμουμένοις βροντὰς καὶ κεραυνοὺς καὶ ἀκτινοβολίας, [781] [a] τοὺς δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν ζηλοῦντας αὐτοῦ καὶ πρὸς τὸ καλὸν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ἀφομοιοῦντας ἑαυτοὺς ἡδόμενος αὔξει καὶ μεταδίδωσι τῆς περὶ αὐτὸν εὐνομίας καὶ δίκης καὶ ἀληθείας καὶ πραότητος· ὧν θειότερον οὐ πῦρ ἐστιν οὐ φῶς οὐχ ἡλίου δρόμος οὐκ ἀνατολαὶ καὶ δύσεις ἄστρων οὐ τὸ ἀίδιον καὶ ἀθάνατον. οὐ γὰρ χρόνῳ ζωῆς ὁ θεὸς εὐδαίμων ἀλλὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς τῷ ἄρχοντι· τοῦτο γὰρ θεῖόν ἐστι, καλὸν δ’ αὐτῆς καὶ τὸ ἀρχόμενον.

Ἀνάξαρχος μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τῷ Κλείτου φόνῳ δεινοπαθοῦντα παραμυθούμενος Ἀλέξανδρον ἔφη [b] καὶ τῷ Διὶ τὴν Δίκην εἶναι καὶ τὴν Θέμιν παρέδρους, ἵνα πᾶν πραττόμενον ὑπὸ βασιλέως θεμιτὸν δοκῇ καὶ δίκαιον, οὐκ ὀρθῶς οὐδ’ ὠφελίμως τὴν ἐφ’ οἷς ἥμαρτε μετάνοιαν αὐτοῦ τῷ πρὸς τὰ ὅμοια θαρρύνειν ἰώμενος. εἰ δὲ δεῖ ταῦτ’ εἰκάζειν, ὁ μὲν Ζεὺς οὐκ ἔχει τὴν Δίκην πάρεδρον, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς Δίκη καὶ Θέμις ἐστὶ καὶ νόμων ὁ πρεσβύτατος καὶ τελειότατος. οἱ δὲ παλαιοὶ οὕτω λέγουσι καὶ γράφουσι καὶ διδάσκουσιν, ὡς ἄνευ Δίκης ἄρχειν μηδὲ τοῦ Διὸς καλῶς δυναμένου· “ἡ δέ γε παρθένος [c] ἐστὶ” καθ’ Ἡσίοδον ἀδιάφθορος, αἰδοῦς καὶ σωφροσύνης καὶ ὠφελείας σύνοικος· ὅθεν “αἰδοίους” προσαγορεύουσι τοὺς βασιλεῖς· μάλιστα γὰρ αἰδεῖσθαι προσήκει τοῖς ἥκιστα φοβουμένοις. φοβεῖσθαι δὲ δεῖ τὸν ἄρχοντα τοῦ παθεῖν κακῶς μᾶλλον τὸ ποιῆσαι· τοῦτο γὰρ αἴτιόν ἐστιν ἐκείνου καὶ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ φόβος τοῦ ἄρχοντος φιλάνθρωπος καὶ οὐκ ἀγεννής, ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀρχομένων δεδιέναι μὴ λάθωσι βλαβέντες,

ὡς δὲ κύνες περὶ μῆλα δυσωρήσονται ἐν αὐλῇ,

θηρὸς ἀκούσαντες κρατερόφρονος,

οὐχ ὑπὲρ αὑτῶν ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ τῶν φυλαττομένων. ὁ δ’ Ἐπαμεινώνδας, εἰς ἑορτήν τινα καὶ πότον ἀνειμένως [d] τῶν Θηβαίων ῥυέντων, μόνος ἐφώδευε τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τὰ τείχη, νήφειν λέγων καὶ ἀγρυπνεῖν ὡς ἂν ἐξῇ τοῖς ἄλλοις μεθύειν καὶ καθεύδειν. καὶ Κάτων ἐν Ἰτύκῃ τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας ἀπὸ τῆς ἥττης ἐκήρυττε πέμπειν ἐπὶ θάλατταν· καὶ ἐμβιβάσας, εὔπλοιαν εὐξάμενος ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν, εἰς οἶκον ἐπανελθὼν ἑαυτὸν ἀπέσφαξε· διδάξας ὑπὲρ τίνων δεῖ τὸν ἄρχοντα τῷ φόβῳ χρῆσθαι καὶ τίνων δεῖ τὸν ἄρχοντα καταφρονεῖν. Κλέαρχος δ’ ὁ Ποντικὸς τύραννος εἰς κιβωτὸν ἐνδυόμενος ὥσπερ ὄφις [e] ἐκάθευδε. καὶ Ἀριστόδημος ὁ Ἀργεῖος εἰς ὑπερῷον οἴκημα θύραν ἔχον ἐπιρρακτήν, ἧς ἐπάνω τιθεὶς τὸ κλινίδιον ἐκάθευδε μετὰ τῆς ἑταίρας· ἡ δὲ μήτηρ ἐκείνης ὑφεῖλκε κάτωθεν τὸ κλιμάκιον, εἶθ’ ἡμέρας πάλιν προσετίθει φέρουσα. πῶς οὗτος, οἴεσθε, τὸ θέατρον ἐπεφρίκει καὶ τὸ ἀρχεῖον, τὸ βουλευτήριον, τὸ συμπόσιον, ὁ τὸν θάλαμον ἑαυτῷ δεσμωτήριον πεποιηκώς; τῷ γὰρ ὄντι δεδίασιν οἱ βασιλεῖς ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀρχομένων, οἱ δὲ τύραννοι τοὺς ἀρχομένους· διὸ τῇ δυνάμει τὸ δέος συναύξουσι· πλειόνων γὰρ ἄρχοντες πλείονας φοβοῦνται.

[f] Οὐ γὰρ εἰκὸς οὐδὲ πρέπον, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι φιλόσοφοι λέγουσι, τὸν θεὸν ἐν ὕλῃ πάντα πασχούσῃ καὶ πράγμασι μυρίας δεχομένοις ἀνάγκας καὶ τύχας καὶ μεταβολὰς ὑπάρχειν ἀναμεμιγμένον· ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ἄνω που περὶ τὴν ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ὡσαύτως φύσιν ἔχουσαν ἱδρυμένος ἐν βάθροις ἁγίοις ᾗ φησι Πλάτων, εὐθείᾳ περαίνει κατὰ φύσιν περιπορευόμενος· οἷον δ’ ἥλιος ἐν οὐρανῷ μίμημα τὸ περικαλλὲς αὐτοῦ δι’ ἐσόπτρου εἴδωλον ἀναφαίνεται τοῖς ἐκεῖνον ἐνορᾶν δι’ αὐτοῦ δυνατοῖς, οὕτω τὸ ἐν πόλεσι φέγγος εὐδικίας καὶ λόγου τοῦ [782] [a] περὶ αὑτὸν ὥσπερ εἰκόνα κατέστησεν, ἣν οἱ μακάριοι καὶ σώφρονες ἐκ φιλοσοφίας ἀπογράφονται πρὸς τὸ κάλλιστον τῶν πραγμάτων πλάττοντες ἑαυτούς. ταύτην δ’ οὐδὲν ἐμποιεῖ τὴν διάθεσιν ἢ λόγος ἐκ φιλοσοφίας παραγενόμενος· ἵνα μὴ πάσχωμεν τὸ τοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου, ὃς ἐν Κορίνθῳ Διογένην θεασάμενος καὶ δι’ εὐφυΐαν ἀγαπήσας καὶ θαυμάσας τὸ φρόνημα καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ ἀνδρὸς εἶπεν “εἰ μὴ Ἀλέξανδρος ἤμην, Διογένης ἂν ἤμην”· ὀλίγου δέων εἰπεῖν, τὴν περὶ αὑτὸν εὐτυχίαν καὶ λαμπρότητα καὶ δύναμιν ὡς κώλυσιν [b] ἀρετῆς καὶ ἀσχολίαν βαρυνόμενος καὶ ζηλοτυπῶν τὸν τρίβωνα καὶ τὴν πήραν, ὅτι τούτοις ἦν ἀνίκητος καὶ ἀνάλωτος Διογένης, οὐχ ὡς ἐκεῖνος ὅπλοις καὶ ἵπποις καὶ σαρίσσαις. ἐξῆν οὖν φιλοσοφοῦντα καὶ τῇ διαθέσει γίγνεσθαι Διογένην καὶ τῇ τύχῃ μένειν Ἀλέξανδρον, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο γενέσθαι Διογένην μᾶλλον, ὅτι ἦν Ἀλέξανδρος, ὡς πρὸς τύχην μεγάλην πολὺ πνεῦμα καὶ σάλον ἔχουσαν ἕρματος πολλοῦ καὶ κυβερνήτου μεγάλου δεόμενον.

Ἐν μὲν γὰρ τοῖς ἀσθενέσι καὶ ταπεινοῖς καὶ ἰδιώταις τῷ ἀδυνάτῳ μιγνύμενον τὸ ἀνόητον εἰς τὸ ἀναμάρτητον τελευτᾷ, ὥσπερ ἐν ὀνείρασι φαύλοις τις ἀνία τὴν ψυχὴν διαταράττει συνεξαναστῆναι [c] ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις μὴ δυναμένην· ἡ δ’ ἐξουσία παραλαβοῦσα τὴν κακίαν νεῦρα τοῖς πάθεσι προστίθησι· καὶ τὸ τοῦ Διονυσίου ἀληθές ἐστιν· ἔφη γὰρ ἀπολαύειν μάλιστα τῆς ἀρχῆς, ὅταν ταχέως ἃ βούλεται ποιῇ. μέγας οὖν ὁ κίνδυνος βούλεσθαι ἃ μὴ δεῖ τὸν ἃ βούλεται ποιεῖν δυνάμενον·

αὐτίκ’ ἔπειτά γε μῦθος ἔην, τετέλεστο δὲ ἔργον.

ὀξὺν ἡ κακία διὰ τῆς ἐξουσίας δρόμον ἔχουσα πᾶν πάθος ἐξωθεῖ, ποιοῦσα τὴν ὀργὴν φόνον τὸν ἔρωτα μοιχείαν τὴν πλεονεξίαν δήμευσιν.

αὐτίκ’ ἔπειθ’ ἅμα μῦθος ἔην,

καὶ ἀπόλωλεν ὁ προσκρούσας· ὑπόνοια, καὶ τέθνηκεν [d] ὁ διαβληθείς. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ φυσικοὶ λέγουσι τὴν ἀστραπὴν τῆς βροντῆς ὑστέραν μὲν ἐκπίπτειν ὡς αἷμα τραύματος, προτέραν δὲ φαίνεσθαι, τὸν μὲν ψόφον ἐκδεχομένης τῆς ἀκοῆς τῷ δὲ φωτὶ τῆς ὄψεως ἀπαντώσης· οὕτως ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς φθάνουσιν αἱ κολάσεις τὰς κατηγορίας καὶ προεκπίπτουσιν αἱ καταδίκαι τῶν ἀποδείξεων.

εἴκει γὰρ ἤδη θυμὸς οὐδ’ ἔτ’ ἀντέχει,

θινῶδες ὡς ἄγκιστρον ἀγκύρας σάλῳ,

ἂν μὴ βάρος ἔχων ὁ λογισμὸς ἐπιθλίβῃ καὶ πιέζῃ τὴν ἐξουσίαν, μιμουμένου τὸν ἥλιον τοῦ ἄρχοντος, [e] ὃς ὅταν ὕψωμα λάβῃ μέγιστον, ἐξαρθεὶς ἐν τοῖς βορείοις, ἐλάχιστα κινεῖται, τῷ σχολαιοτέρῳ τὸν δρόμον εἰς ἀσφαλὲς καθιστάμενος.

Οὐδὲ γὰρ λαθεῖν οἷόν τε τὰς κακίας ἐν ταῖς ἐξουσίαις· ἀλλὰ τοὺς μὲν ἐπιληπτικούς, ἂν ἐν ὕψει τινὶ γένωνται καὶ περιενεχθῶσιν, ἴλιγγος ἴσχει καὶ σάλος, ἐξελέγχων τὸ πάθος αὐτῶν, τοὺς δ’ ἀπαιδεύτους καὶ ἀμαθεῖς ἡ τύχη μικρὸν ἐκκουφίσασα πλούτοις τισὶν ἢ δόξαις ἢ ἀρχαῖς μετεώρους γενομένους εὐθὺς ἐπιδείκνυσι πίπτοντας· μᾶλλον δ’, ὥσπερ τῶν κενῶν ἀγγείων οὐκ ἂν διαγνοίης τὸ ἀκέραιον καὶ πεπονηκός, ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἐγχέῃς, [f] φαίνεται τὸ ῥέον· οὕτως αἱ σαθραὶ ψυχαὶ τὰς ἐξουσίας μὴ στέγουσαι ῥέουσιν ἔξω ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις, ταῖς ὀργαῖς, ταῖς ἀλαζονείαις, ταῖς ἀπειροκαλίαις. καίτοι τί δεῖ ταῦτα λέγειν, ὅπου καὶ τὰ σμικρότατα τῶν ἐλλειμμάτων περὶ τοὺς ἐπιφανεῖς καὶ ἐνδόξους συκοφαντεῖται; Κίμωνος ἦν ὁ οἶνος διαβολή, Σκιπίωνος ὁ ὕπνος, Λεύκολλος ἐπὶ τῷ δειπνεῖν πολυτελέστερον ἤκουε κακῶς * * *

An seni respublica gerenda sit

ΕΙ ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΕΡΩΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΥΤΕΟΝ

[783] Ὅτι μέν, ὦ Εὔφανες, ἐπαινέτης ὢν Πινδάρου πολλάκις ἔχεις διὰ στόματος ὡς εἰρημένον εὖ καὶ πιθανῶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ

τιθεμένων ἀγώνων πρόφασις

ἀρετὰν ἐς αἰπὺν ἔβαλε σκότον,

οὐκ ἀγνοοῦμεν. ἐπειδὴ δὲ πλείστας αἱ πρὸς τοὺς πολιτικοὺς ἀγῶνας ἀποκνήσεις καὶ μαλακίαι προφάσεις ἔχουσαι τελευταίαν ὥσπερ τὴν “ἀφ’ ἱερᾶς” ἐπάγουσιν ἡμῖν τὸ γῆρας, καὶ μάλιστα δὴ τούτῳ τὸ φιλότιμον ἀμβλύνειν καὶ δυσωπεῖν δοκοῦσαι πείθουσιν εἶναί τινα πρέπουσαν οὐκ ἀθλητικῆς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ πολιτικῆς περιόδου κατάλυσιν· [c] οἴομαι δεῖν ἃ πρὸς ἐμαυτὸν ἑκάστοτε λογίζομαι καὶ πρὸς σὲ διελθεῖν περὶ τῆς πρεσβυτικῆς πολιτείας· ὅπως μηδέτερος ἀπολείψει τὴν μακρὰν συνοδίαν μέχρι δεῦρο κοινῇ προερχομένην μηδὲ τὸν πολιτικὸν βίον ὥσπερ ἡλικιώτην καὶ συνήθη φίλον ἀπορρίψας μεταβαλεῖται πρὸς ἄλλον ἀσυνήθη καὶ χρόνον οὐκ ἔχοντα συνήθη γενέσθαι καὶ οἰκεῖον, ἀλλ’ ἐμμενοῦμεν οἷς ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς προειλόμεθα, ταὐτὸ τοῦ ζῆν καὶ τοῦ καλῶς ζῆν ποιησάμενοι πέρας· εἴ γε δὴ μὴ μέλλοιμεν ἐν βραχεῖ τῷ λειπομένῳ τὸν πολὺν ἐλέγχειν χρόνον, ὡς ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ καλῷ μάτην ἀνηλωμένον.

[d] Οὐ γὰρ ἡ τυραννίς, ὥς τις εἶπε Διονυσίῳ, καλὸν ἐντάφιον· ἀλλ’ ἐκείνῳ γε τὴν μοναρχίαν μετὰ τῆς ἀδικίας τό γε μὴ παύσασθαι συμφορὰν τελεωτέραν ἐποίησε. καὶ καλῶς Διογένης ὕστερον ἐν Κορίνθῳ τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ θεασάμενος ἰδιώτην ἐκ τυράννου γεγενημένον “ὡς ἀναξίως,” ἔφη, “Διονύσιε, σεαυτοῦ πράττεις· οὐ γὰρ ἐνταῦθά σε μεθ’ ἡμῶν ἔδει ζῆν ἐλευθέρως καὶ ἀδεῶς, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖ τοῖς τυραννείοις ἐγκατῳκοδομημένον ὥσπερ ὁ πατὴρ ἄχρι γήρως ἐγκαταβιῶσαι.” πολιτεία δὲ δημοκρατικὴ καὶ νόμιμος ἀνδρὸς εἰθισμένου παρέχειν αὑτὸν οὐχ ἧττον ἀρχόμενον [e] ὠφελίμως ἢ ἄρχοντα καλὸν ἐντάφιον ὡς ἀληθῶς τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ βίου δόξαν τῷ θανάτῳ προστίθησι· τοῦτο γὰρ

ἔσχατον δύεται κατὰ γᾶς

ὥς φησι Σιμωνίδης, πλὴν ὧν προαποθνήσκει τὸ φιλάνθρωπον καὶ φιλόκαλον καὶ προαπαυδᾷ τῆς τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἐπιθυμίας ὁ τῶν καλῶν ζῆλος, ὡς τὰ πρακτικὰ μέρη καὶ θεῖα τῆς ψυχῆς ἐξιτηλότερα τῶν παθητικῶν καὶ σωματικῶν ἐχούσης· ὅπερ οὐδὲ λέγειν καλὸν οὐδ’ ἀποδέχεσθαι τῶν λεγόντων, [f] ὡς κερδαίνοντες μόνον οὐ κοπιῶμεν· ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ τοῦ Θουκυδίδου παράγειν ἐπὶ τὸ βέλτιον, μὴ τὸ φιλότιμον ἀγήρων μόνον ἡγουμένους, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τὸ κοινωνικὸν καὶ πολιτικόν, ὃ καὶ μύρμηξιν ἄχρι τέλους παραμένει καὶ μελίτταις· οὐδεὶς γὰρ πώποτ’ εἶδεν ὑπὸ γήρως κηφῆνα γενομένην μέλιτταν, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι τοὺς πολιτικοὺς ἀξιοῦσιν, ὅταν παρακμάσωσιν, οἴκοι σιτουμένους καθῆσθαι καὶ ἀποκεῖσθαι, καθάπερ ἰῷ σίδηρον ὑπ’ ἀργίας τὴν πρακτικὴν ἀρετὴν σβεννυμένην περιορῶντας.

[784] [a] ὁ γὰρ Κάτων ἔλεγεν, ὅτι πολλὰς ἰδίας ἔχοντι τῷ γήρᾳ κῆρας οὐ δεῖ τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς κακίας ἑκόντας ἐπάγειν αἰσχύνην· πολλῶν δὲ κακιῶν οὐδεμιᾶς ἧττον ἀπραξία καὶ δειλία καὶ μαλακία καταισχύνουσιν ἄνδρα πρεσβύτην, ἐκ πολιτικῶν ἀρχείων καταδυόμενον εἰς οἰκουρίαν γυναικῶν ἢ κατ’ ἀγρὸν ἐφορῶντα καλαμητρίδας καὶ θεριστάς·

ὁ δ’ Οἰδίπους ποῦ καὶ τὰ κλείν’ αἰνίγματα;

Τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἐν γήρᾳ πολιτείας ἄρχεσθαι καὶ μὴ πρότερον, ὥσπερ Ἐπιμενίδην λέγουσι κατακοιμηθέντα νεανίαν ἐξεγρέσθαι γέροντα μετὰ πεντήκοντα [b] ἔτη· εἶτα τὴν οὕτω μακρὰν καὶ συμβεβιωκυῖαν ἡσυχίαν ἀποθέμενον ἐμβαλεῖν ἑαυτὸν εἰς ἀγῶνας καὶ ἀσχολίας, ἀήθη καὶ ἀγύμναστον ὄντα καὶ μήτε πράγμασιν ἐνωμιληκότα πολιτικοῖς μήτ’ ἀνθρώποις, ἴσως ἂν αἰτιωμένῳ τινὶ παράσχοι τὸ τῆς Πυθίας εἰπεῖν “ὄψ’ ἦλθες” ἀρχὴν καὶ δημαγωγίαν διζήμενος, καὶ παρ’ ὥραν στρατηγίου κόπτεις θύραν, ὥσπερ τις ἀτεχνότερος ὢν νύκτωρ ἐπίκωμος ἀφιγμένος, ἢ ξένος οὐ τόπον οὐδὲ χώραν ἀλλὰ βίον, οὗ μὴ πεπείρασαι, μεταλλάττων. τὸ γὰρ “πόλις ἄνδρα διδάσκει” κατὰ Σιμωνίδην ἀληθές ἐστιν ἐπὶ τῶν ἔτι χρόνον ἐχόντων μεταδιδαχθῆναι καὶ μεταμαθεῖν μάθημα, διὰ πολλῶν ἀγώνων καὶ [c] πραγμάτων μόλις ἐκπονούμενον, ἄνπερ ἐν καιρῷ φύσεως ἐπιλάβηται καὶ πόνον ἐνεγκεῖν καὶ δυσημερίαν εὐκόλως δυναμένης. ταῦτα δόξει τις μὴ κακῶς λέγεσθαι πρὸς τὸν ἀρχόμενον ἐν γήρᾳ πολιτείας.

Καίτοι τοὐναντίον ὁρῶμεν ὑπὸ τῶν νοῦν ἐχόντων τὰ μειράκια καὶ τοὺς νέους ἀποτρεπομένους τοῦ τὰ κοινὰ πράττειν· καὶ μαρτυροῦσιν οἱ νόμοι διὰ τοῦ κήρυκος ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις οὐκ Ἀλκιβιάδας οὐδὲ Πυθέας ἀνιστάντες ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα πρώτους, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ὑπὲρ πεντήκοντ’ ἔτη γεγονότας, [d] λέγειν καὶ συμβουλεύειν παρακαλοῦντες· οὐ γὰρ τοιούτους ἀήθεια τόλμης καὶ τριβῆς ἔνδεια καλεῖ πρὸς τροπαῖον κατ’ ἀντιστασιωτῶν. ὁ δὲ Κάτων μετ’ ὀγδοήκοντ’ ἔτη δίκην ἀπολογούμενος ἔφη χαλεπὸν εἶναι βεβιωκότα μετ’ ἄλλων ἐν ἄλλοις ἀπολογεῖσθαι. Καίσαρος δὲ τοῦ καταλύσαντος Ἀντώνιον οὔτι μικρῷ βασιλικώτερα καὶ δημωφελέστερα γενέσθαι πολιτεύματα πρὸς τῇ τελευτῇ πάντες ὁμολογοῦσιν· αὐτὸς δὲ τοὺς νέους ἔθεσι καὶ νόμοις αὐστηρῶς σωφρονίζων, ὡς ἐθορύβησαν, “ἀκούσατ’,” εἶπε, “νέοι γέροντος οὗ νέου γέροντες [e] ἤκουον.” ἡ δὲ Περικλέους πολιτεία τὸ μέγιστον ἐν γήρᾳ κράτος ἔσχεν, ὅτε καὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἄρασθαι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἔπεισε· καὶ προθυμουμένων οὐ κατὰ καιρὸν μάχεσθαι πρὸς ἑξακισμυρίους ὁπλίτας, ἐνέστη καὶ διεκώλυσε, μονονοὺ τὰ ὅπλα τοῦ δήμου καὶ τὰς κλεῖς τῶν πυλῶν ἀποσφραγισάμενος. ἀλλὰ μὴν ἅ γε Ξενοφῶν περὶ Ἀγησιλάου γέγραφεν, αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν ἄξιόν ἐστι παραθέσθαι· “ποίας γάρ,” φησί, “νεότητος οὐ κρεῖττον τὸ ἐκείνου γῆρας ἐφάνη; τίς μὲν γὰρ τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἀκμάζων οὕτω φοβερὸς ἦν, ὡς Ἀγησίλαος τὸ μήκιστον τοῦ αἰῶνος ἔχων; τίνος δ’ ἐκποδὼν γενομένου μᾶλλον ἥσθησαν οἱ πολέμιοι ἢ Ἀγησιλάου, καίπερ γηραιοῦ [f] τελευτήσαντος; τίς δὲ συμμάχοις θάρσος παρέσχεν ἢ Ἀγησίλαος, καίπερ ἤδη πρὸς τῷ τέρματι τοῦ βίου ὤν; τίνα δὲ νέον οἱ φίλοι πλέον ἐπόθησαν ἢ Ἀγησίλαον γηραιὸν ἀποθανόντα;”

Εἶτ’ ἐκείνους μὲν τηλικαῦτα πράττειν ὁ χρόνος οὐκ ἐκώλυεν, ἡμεῖς δ’ οἱ νῦν τρυφῶντες ἐν πολιτείαις, μὴ τυραννίδα μὴ πόλεμόν τινα μὴ πολιορκίαν ἐχούσαις, ἀπολέμους δ’ ἁμίλλας καὶ φιλοτιμίας νόμῳ τὰ πολλὰ καὶ λόγῳ μετὰ δίκης [785] [a] περαινομένας ἀποδειλιῶμεν; οὐ μόνον στρατηγῶν τῶν τότε καὶ δημαγωγῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ποιητῶν καὶ σοφιστῶν καὶ ὑποκριτῶν ὁμολογοῦντες εἶναι κακίους· εἴγε Σιμωνίδης μὲν ἐν γήρᾳ χοροῖς ἐνίκα, ὡς τοὐπίγραμμα δηλοῖ τοῖς τελευταίοις ἔπεσιν·

ἀμφὶ διδασκαλίῃ δὲ Σιμωνίδῃ ἕσπετο κῦδος

ὀγδωκονταέτει παιδὶ Λεωπρέπεος.

Σοφοκλῆς δὲ λέγεται μὲν ὑπὸ παίδων παρανοίας δίκην φεύγων ἀναγνῶναι τὴν ἐν Οἰδίποδι τῷ ἐπὶ Κολωνῷ πάροδον, ᾗ ἐστιν ἀρχὴ

εὐίππου, ξένε, τᾶσδε χώρας

ἵκου τὰ κράτιστα γᾶς ἔπαυλα,

τὸν ἀργῆτα Κολωνόν, ἔνθ’

ἁ λίγεια μινύρεται

θαμίζουσα μάλιστ’ ἀηδὼν

χλωραῖς ὑπὸ βάσσαις.

[b] θαυμαστοῦ δὲ τοῦ μέλους φανέντος, ὥσπερ ἐκ θεάτρου τοῦ δικαστηρίου προπεμφθῆναι μετὰ κρότου καὶ βοῆς τῶν παρόντων. τουτὶ δ’ ὁμολογουμένως Σοφοκλέους ἐστὶ τοὐπιγραμμάτιον

ᾠδὴν Ἡροδότῳ τεῦξεν Σοφοκλῆς ἐτέων ὢν

πέντ’ ἐπὶ πεντήκοντα.

Φιλήμονα δὲ τὸν κωμικὸν καὶ Ἄλεξιν ἐπὶ τῆς σκηνῆς ἀγωνιζομένους καὶ στεφανουμένους ὁ θάνατος κατέλαβε. Πῶλον δὲ τὸν τραγῳδὸν Ἐρατοσθένης καὶ Φιλόχορος ἱστοροῦσιν ἑβδομήκοντ’ [c] ἔτη γεγενημένον ὀκτὼ τραγῳδίας ἐν τέτταρσιν ἡμέραις διαγωνίσασθαι μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν τῆς τελευτῆς.

Ἆρ’ οὖν οὐκ αἰσχρόν ἐστι τῶν ἀπὸ σκηνῆς γερόντων τοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος ἀγεννεστέρους ὁρᾶσθαι, καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐξισταμένους ἀγώνων ἀποτίθεσθαι τὸ πολιτικὸν πρόσωπον, οὐκ οἶδ’ ὁποῖον ἀντιμεταλαμβάνοντας; καὶ γὰρ τὸ τῆς γεωργίας ἐκ βασιλικοῦ ταπεινόν· ὅπου γὰρ ὁ Δημοσθένης φησὶν ἀνάξια πάσχειν τὴν Πάραλον, ἱερὰν οὖσαν τριήρη, ξύλα καὶ χάρακας καὶ βοσκήματα τῷ Μειδίᾳ παρακομίζουσαν, ἦ που πολιτικὸς ἀνὴρ ἀγωνοθεσίας καὶ βοιωταρχίας καὶ τὰς ἐν Ἀμφικτύοσι προεδρίας ἀπολιπών, εἶθ’ ὁρώμενος ἐν ἀλφίτων καὶ στεμφύλων διαμετρήσει καὶ πόκοις προβάτων οὐ παντάπασι δόξει τοῦτο δὴ τὸ καλούμενον “ἵππου γῆρας” ἐπάγεσθαι, μηδενὸς ἀναγκάζοντος; ἐργασίας γε μὴν βαναύσου καὶ ἀγοραίας ἅπτεσθαι μετὰ πολιτείαν ὅμοιόν ἐστι τῷ γυναικὸς ἐλευθέρας καὶ σώφρονος ἔνδυμα περισπάσαντα καὶ περίζωμα δόντα συνέχειν ἐπὶ καπηλείου· καὶ γὰρ τῆς πολιτικῆς ἀρετῆς οὕτως ἀπόλλυται τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ τὸ μέγεθος πρός τινας [d] οἰκονομίας καὶ χρηματισμοὺς ἀγομένης. ἂν δ’, ὅπερ λοιπόν ἐστι, ῥᾳστώνας καὶ ἀπολαύσεις τὰς ἡδυπαθείας καὶ τὰς τρυφὰς ὀνομάζοντες ἐν ταύταις μαραινόμενον ἡσυχῆ παρακαλῶσι γηράσκειν τὸν πολιτικόν, οὐκ οἶδα ποτέρᾳ δυεῖν εἰκόνων αἰσχρῶν πρέπειν δόξει μᾶλλον ὁ βίος αὐτοῦ· πότερον ἀφροδίσια ναύταις ἄγουσι πάντα τὸν λοιπὸν ἤδη χρόνον οὐκ ἐν λιμένι τὴν ναῦν ἔχουσιν ἀλλ’ ἔτι πλέουσαν ἀπολείπουσιν· ἢ καθάπερ ἔνιοι τὸν Ἡρακλέα παίζοντες οὐκ εὖ γράφουσιν ἐν Ὀμφάλης κροκωτοφόρον ἐνδιδόντα Λυδαῖς θεραπαινίσι ῥιπίζειν καὶ παραπλέκειν ἑαυτόν, οὕτω τὸν πολιτικὸν [e] ἐκδύσαντες τὴν λεοντῆν καὶ κατακλίναντες εὐωχήσομεν ἀεὶ καταψαλλόμενον καὶ καταυλούμενον, οὐδὲ τῇ τοῦ Πομπηίου Μάγνου φωνῇ διατραπέντες τῇ πρὸς Λεύκολλον αὑτὸν μὲν εἰς λουτρὰ καὶ δεῖπνα καὶ συνουσίας μεθημερινὰς καὶ πολὺν ἄλυν καὶ κατασκευὰς οἰκοδομημάτων νεοπρεπεῖς μετὰ τὰς στρατείας καὶ πολιτείας ἀφεικότα, τῷ δὲ Πομπηίῳ φιλαρχίαν ἐγκαλοῦντα καὶ φιλοτιμίαν παρ’ ἡλικίαν· ἔφη γὰρ ὁ Πομπήιος ἀωρότερον [786] [a] εἶναι γέροντι τὸ τρυφᾶν ἢ τὸ ἄρχειν· ἐπεὶ δὲ νοσοῦντι συνέταξε κίχλην ὁ ἰατρός, ἦν δὲ δυσπόριστον καὶ παρ’ ὥραν, ἔφη δέ τις εἶναι παρὰ Λευκόλλῳ πολλὰς τρεφομένας, οὐκ ἔπεμψεν οὐδ’ ἔλαβεν εἰπών, “οὐκοῦν, εἰ μὴ Λεύκολλος ἐτρύφα, Πομπήιος οὐκ ἂν ἔζησε;”

Καὶ γὰρ εἰ ζητεῖ πάντως ἡ φύσις τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ τὸ χαίρειν, τὸ μὲν σῶμα τῶν γερόντων ἀπείρηκε πρὸς πάσας, πλὴν ὀλίγων τῶν ἀναγκαίων, τὰς ἡδονάς, καὶ οὐχ

ἡ Ἀφροδίτη τοῖς γέρουσιν ἄχθεται

[b] μόνον, ὡς Εὐριπίδης φησίν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς περὶ πόσιν καὶ βρῶσιν ἐπιθυμίας ἀπημβλυμμένας τὰ πολλὰ καὶ νωδὰς κατέχοντες μόλις οἷον ἐπιθήγουσι καὶ χαράττουσιν· ἐν δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ παρασκευαστέον ἡδονὰς οὐκ ἀγεννεῖς οὐδ’ ἀνελευθέρους, ὡς Σιμωνίδης ἔλεγε πρὸς τοὺς ἐγκαλοῦντας αὐτῷ φιλαργυρίαν, ὅτι τῶν ἄλλων ἀπεστερημένος διὰ τὸ γῆρας ἡδονῶν ὑπὸ μιᾶς ἔτι γηροβοσκεῖται τῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ κερδαίνειν. ἀλλ’ ἡ πολιτεία καλλίστας μὲν ἡδονὰς ἔχει καὶ μεγίστας, αἷς καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς εἰκός ἐστιν ἢ μόναις ἢ μάλιστα χαίρειν· αὗται δ’ εἰσίν, ἃς τὸ εὖ ποιεῖν καὶ καλόν τι πράττειν ἀναδίδωσιν. εἰ γὰρ Νικίας ὁ ζῳγράφος οὕτως ἔχαιρε τοῖς τῆς [c] τέχνης ἔργοις, ὥστε τοὺς οἰκέτας ἐρωτᾶν πολλάκις, εἰ λέλουται καὶ ἠρίστηκεν· Ἀρχιμήδην δὲ τῇ σανίδι προσκείμενον ἀποσπῶντες βίᾳ καὶ ἀποδύοντες ἤλειφον οἱ θεράποντες, ὁ δ’ ἐπὶ τοῦ σώματος ἀληλιμμένου διέγραφε τὰ σχήματα· Κάνος δ’ ὁ αὐλητής, ὃν καὶ σὺ γιγνώσκεις, ἔλεγεν ἀγνοεῖν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ὅσῳ μᾶλλον αὑτὸν αὐλῶν ἢ ἑτέρους εὐφραίνει· λαμβάνειν γὰρ ἂν μισθὸν οὐ διδόναι τοὺς ἀκούειν ἐθέλοντας· ἆρ’ οὐκ ἐπινοοῦμεν, ἡλίκας ἡδονὰς αἱ ἀρεταὶ τοῖς χρωμένοις ἀπὸ τῶν καλῶν πράξεων καὶ τῶν κοινωνικῶν ἔργων καὶ φιλανθρώπων παρασκευάζουσιν, οὐ κνῶσαι οὐδὲ θρύπτουσαι, ὥσπερ αἱ εἰς σάρκα λεῖαι καὶ προσηνεῖς [d] γινόμεναι κινήσεις; ἀλλ’ αὗται μὲν οἰστρῶδες καὶ ἀβέβαιον καὶ μεμιγμένον σφυγμῷ τὸ γαργαλίζον ἔχουσιν, αἱ δ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς καλοῖς ἔργοις, οἵων δημιουργὸς ὁ πολιτευόμενος ὀρθῶς ἐστιν, οὐ ταῖς Εὐριπίδου χρυσαῖς πτέρυξιν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς Πλατωνικοῖς ἐκείνοις καὶ οὐρανίοις πτεροῖς ὅμοια τὴν ψυχὴν μέγεθος καὶ φρόνημα μετὰ γήθους λαμβάνουσαν ἀναφέρουσιν.

Ὑπομίμνησκε δὲ σεαυτὸν ὧν πολλάκις ἀκήκοας· ὁ μὲν γὰρ Ἐπαμεινώνδας ἐρωτηθεὶς τί ἥδιστον αὐτῷ γέγονεν, ἀπεκρίνατο τὸ τοῦ πατρὸς ἔτι ζῶντος καὶ τῆς μητρὸς νικῆσαι τὴν ἐν Λεύκτροις μάχην. ὁ δὲ Σύλλας, ὅτε τῶν ἐμφυλίων πολέμων [e] τὴν Ἰταλίαν καθήρας προσέμιξε τῇ Ῥώμῃ πρῶτον, οὐδὲ μικρὸν ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ κατέδαρθεν, ὑπὸ γήθους καὶ χαρᾶς μεγάλης ὥσπερ πνεύματος ἀναφερόμενος τὴν ψυχήν· καὶ ταῦτα περὶ αὑτοῦ γέγραφεν ἐν τοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν. ἄκουσμα μὲν γὰρ ἔστω μηδὲν ἥδιον ἐπαίνου κατὰ τὸν Ξενοφῶντα, θέαμα δὲ καὶ μνημόνευμα καὶ διανόημα τῶν ὄντων οὐδὲν ἔστιν ὃ τοσαύτην φέρει χάριν, ὅσην πράξεων ἰδίων ἐν ἀρχαῖς καὶ πολιτείαις ὥσπερ ἐν τόποις λαμπροῖς καὶ δημοσίοις ἀναθεώρησις. οὐ μὴν [f] ἀλλὰ καὶ χάρις εὐμενὴς συμμαρτυροῦσα τοῖς ἔργοις καὶ συναμιλλώμενος ἔπαινος, εὐνοίας δικαίας ἡγεμών, οἷόν τι φῶς καὶ γάνωμα τῷ χαίροντι τῆς ἀρετῆς προστίθησι· καὶ δεῖ μὴ περιορᾶν ὥσπερ ἀθλητικὸν στέφανον ἐν γήρᾳ ξηρὰν γενομένην τὴν δόξαν, ἀλλὰ καινὸν ἀεί τι καὶ πρόσφατον ἐπιφέροντα τὴν τῶν παλαιῶν χάριν ἐγείρειν καὶ ποιεῖν ἀμείνω καὶ μόνιμον· ὥσπερ οἱ τεχνῖται, οἷς ἐπέκειτο φροντίζειν σῶον εἶναι τὸ Δηλιακὸν πλοῖον, ἀντὶ τῶν πονούντων ξύλων ἐμβάλλοντες ἄλλα καὶ συμπηγνύντες ἀίδιον ἐκ τῶν τότε χρόνων καὶ ἄφθαρτον [787] [a] ἐδόκουν διαφυλάττειν. ἔστι δὲ καὶ δόξης καὶ φλογὸς οὐ χαλεπὴ σωτηρία καὶ τήρησις ἀλλὰ μικρῶν ὑπεκκαυμάτων δεομένη, κατασβεσθὲν δὲ καὶ ὑποψυχθὲν οὐδέτερον ἄν τις ἀπραγμόνως πάλιν ἐξάψειεν. ὡς δὲ Λάμπις ὁ ναύκληρος ἐρωτηθεὶς πῶς ἐκτήσατο τὸν πλοῦτον “οὐ χαλεπῶς” ἔφη “τὸν μέγαν, τὸν δὲ βραχὺν ἐπιπόνως καὶ βραδέως”· οὕτω τῆς πολιτικῆς δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως ἐν ἀρχῇ τυχεῖν οὐ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστι, τὸ δὲ συναυξῆσαι καὶ διαφυλάξαι μεγάλην γενομένην ἀπὸ τῶν τυχόντων ἕτοιμον. οὔτε γὰρ φίλος ὅταν γένηται πολλὰς [b] λειτουργίας ἐπιζητεῖ καὶ μεγάλας, ἵνα μένῃ φίλος, μικροῖς δὲ σημείοις τὸ ἐνδελεχὲς ἀεὶ διαφυλάττει τὴν εὔνοιαν· ἥ τε δήμου φιλία καὶ πίστις οὐκ ἀεὶ δεομένη χορηγοῦντος οὐδὲ προδικοῦντος οὐδ’ ἄρχοντος αὐτῇ τῇ προθυμίᾳ συνέχεται καὶ τῷ μὴ προαπολείποντι μηδ’ ἀπαγορεύοντι τῆς ἐπιμελείας καὶ φροντίδος. οὐδὲ γὰρ αἱ στρατεῖαι παρατάξεις ἀεὶ καὶ μάχας καὶ πολιορκίας ἔχουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ θυσίας ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ συνουσίας διὰ μέσου καὶ σχολὴν ἄφθονον ἐν παιδιαῖς καὶ φλυαρίαις δέχονται. πόθεν γε δὴ τὴν πολιτείαν φοβητέον, ὡς ἀπαραμύθητον καὶ πολύπονον καὶ βαρεῖαν, ὅπου καὶ θέατρα καὶ πομπαὶ καὶ νεμήσεις καὶ “χοροὶ καὶ [c] Μοῖσα καὶ Ἀγλαΐα” καὶ θεοῦ τινος ἀεὶ τιμὴ τὰς ὀφρῦς λύουσα παντὸς ἀρχείου καὶ συνεδρίου πολλαπλάσιον τὸ ἐπιτερπὲς καὶ κεχαρισμένον ἀποδίδωσιν;

Ὃ τοίνυν μέγιστον κακὸν ἔχουσιν αἱ πολιτεῖαι, τὸν φθόνον, ἥκιστα διερείδεται πρὸς τὸ γῆρας· “κύνες γὰρ καὶ βαΰζουσιν ὃν ἂν μὴ γινώσκωσι” καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον, καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἀρχόμενον ὥσπερ ἐν θύραις τοῦ βήματος μάχεται καὶ πάροδον οὐ δίδωσι· τὴν δὲ σύντροφον καὶ συνήθη δόξαν οὐκ ἀγρίως οὐδὲ χαλεπῶς ἀλλὰ πράως ἀνέχεται. διὸ τὸν φθόνον ἔνιοι τῷ καπνῷ παρεικάζουσι· πολὺς γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἀρχομένοις διὰ τὸ φλέγεσθαι προεκπίπτων, [d] ὅταν ἐκλάμψωσιν, ἀφανίζεται. καὶ ταῖς μὲν ἄλλαις ὑπεροχαῖς προσμάχονται καὶ διαμφισβητοῦσιν ἀρετῆς καὶ γένους καὶ φιλοτιμίας, ὡς ἀφαιροῦντες αὑτῶν ὅσον ἄλλοις ὑφίενται· τὸ δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ χρόνου πρωτεῖον, ὃ καλεῖται κυρίως πρεσβεῖον, ἀζηλοτύπητόν ἐστι καὶ παραχωρούμενον· οὐδεμιᾷ γὰρ οὕτω τιμῇ συμβέβηκε τὸν τιμῶντα μᾶλλον ἢ τὸν τιμώμενον κοσμεῖν, ὡς τῇ τῶν γερόντων. ἔτι τὴν μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ πλούτου δύναμιν ἢ λόγου δεινότητος ἢ σοφίας οὐ πάντες αὑτοῖς γενήσεσθαι προσδοκῶσιν, ἐφ’ ἣν δὲ προάγει τὸ γῆρας αἰδῶ καὶ δόξαν οὐδεὶς ἀπελπίζει τῶν πολιτευομένων. οὐδὲν οὖν διαφέρει κυβερνήτου πρὸς ἐναντίον κῦμα καὶ πνεῦμα πλεύσαντος ἐπισφαλῶς, [e] εὐδίας δὲ καὶ εὐαερίας γενομένης ὁρμίσασθαι ζητοῦντος, ὁ τῷ φθόνῳ διαναυμαχήσας πολὺν χρόνον, εἶτα παυσαμένου καὶ στορεσθέντος, ἀνακρουόμενος ἐκ τῆς πολιτείας καὶ προϊέμενος ἅμα ταῖς πράξεσι τὰς κοινωνίας καὶ τὰς ἑταιρείας. ὅσῳ γὰρ χρόνος γέγονε πλείων, καὶ φίλους πλείονας καὶ συναγωνιστὰς πεποίηκεν, οὓς οὔτε συνεξάγειν ἑαυτῷ πάντας ἐνδέχεται καθάπερ διδασκάλῳ χορὸν [f] οὔτ’ ἐγκαταλείπειν δίκαιον· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τὰ παλαιὰ δένδρα τὴν μακρὰν πολιτείαν οὐ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστιν ἀνασπάσαι πολύρριζον οὖσαν καὶ πράγμασιν ἐμπεπλεγμένην, ἃ πλείονας παρέχει ταραχὰς καὶ σπαραγμοὺς ἀπερχομένοις ἢ μένουσιν. εἰ δέ τι καὶ περίεστι φθόνου λείψανον ἢ φιλονεικίας πρὸς τοὺς γέροντας ἐκ τῶν πολιτικῶν ἀγώνων, κατασβεστέον τοῦτο τῇ δυνάμει μᾶλλον ἢ δοτέον τὰ νῶτα, γυμνοὺς καὶ ἀόπλους ἀπιόντας· οὐ γὰρ οὕτως ἀγωνιζομένοις φθονοῦντες ὡς ἀπειπαμένοις καταφρονήσαντες ἐπιτίθενται.

[788] [a] Μαρτυρεῖ δὲ καὶ τὸ λεχθὲν ὑπ’ Ἐπαμεινώνδα τοῦ μεγάλου πρὸς τοὺς Θηβαίους, ὅτε χειμῶνος ὄντος οἱ Ἀρκάδες παρεκάλουν αὐτοὺς ἐν ταῖς οἰκίαις διαιτᾶσθαι παρελθόντας εἰς τὴν πόλιν· οὐ γὰρ εἴασεν, ἀλλὰ “νῦν μέν,” ἔφη, “θαυμάζουσιν ὑμᾶς καὶ θεῶνται πρὸς τὰ ὅπλα γυμναζομένους καὶ παλαίοντας· ἂν δὲ πρὸς τῷ πυρὶ καθημένους ὁρῶσι τὸν κύαμον κάπτοντας, οὐδὲν αὑτῶν ἡγήσονται διαφέρειν.” οὕτω δὴ σεμνόν ἐστι θέαμα πρεσβύτης [b] λέγων τι καὶ πράττων καὶ τιμώμενος, ὁ δ’ ἐν κλίνῃ διημερεύων ἢ καθήμενος ἐν γωνίᾳ στοᾶς φλυαρῶν καὶ ἀπομυττόμενος εὐκαταφρόνητος. τοῦτο δ’ ἀμέλει καὶ Ὅμηρος διδάσκει τοὺς ὀρθῶς ἀκούοντας· ὁ μὲν γὰρ Νέστωρ στρατευόμενος ἐν Τροίᾳ σεμνὸς ἦν καὶ πολυτίμητος, ὁ δὲ Πηλεὺς καὶ ὁ Λαέρτης οἰκουροῦντες ἀπερρίφησαν καὶ κατεφρονήθησαν. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἡ τοῦ φρονεῖν ἕξις ὁμοίως παραμένει τοῖς μεθεῖσιν αὑτούς, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ἀργίας ἐξανιεμένη καὶ ἀναλυομένη κατὰ μικρὸν ἀεί τινα ποθεῖ φροντίδος μελέτην, τὸ λογιστικὸν καὶ πρακτικὸν ἐγειρούσης καὶ διακαθαιρούσης·

λάμπει γὰρ ἐν χρείαισιν, ὥσπερ εὐπρεπὴς

χαλκός.

[c] οὐ γὰρ τόσον σώματος ἀσθένεια κακὸν πρόσεστι ταῖς πολιτείαις τῶν παρ’ ἡλικίαν ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὸ στρατήγιον βαδιζόντων, ὅσον ἔχουσιν ἀγαθὸν τὴν εὐλάβειαν καὶ τὴν φρόνησιν, καὶ τὸ μὴ φερόμενον, ἄλλοτε μὲν δι’ ἐσφαλμένα ὅτε δ’ ὑπὸ δόξης κενῆς, προσπίπτειν πρὸς τὰ κοινὰ καὶ συνεφέλκεσθαι τὸν ὄχλον, ὥσπερ θάλατταν ὑπὸ πνευμάτων ἐκταραττόμενον, ἀλλὰ πράως τε χρῆσθαι καὶ μετρίως τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν. ὅθεν αἱ πόλεις, ὅταν πταίσωσιν ἢ φοβηθῶσι, πρεσβυτέρων ποθοῦσιν ἀρχὴν [d] ἀνθρώπων· καὶ πολλάκις ἐξ ἀγροῦ κατάγουσαι γέροντα μὴ δεόμενον μηδὲ βουλόμενον ἠνάγκασαν ὥσπερ οἰάκων ἐφαψάμενον εἰς ἀσφαλὲς καταστῆσαι τὰ πράγματα, παρωσάμεναί τε στρατηγοὺς καὶ δημαγωγοὺς βοᾶν μέγα καὶ λέγειν ἀπνευστὶ καὶ νὴ Δία τοῖς πολεμίοις διαβάντας εὖ μάχεσθαι δυναμένους· οἷον οἱ ῥήτορες Ἀθήνησι Τιμοθέῳ καὶ Ἰφικράτει Χάρητα τὸν Θεοχάρους ἐπαποδύοντες ἀκμάζοντα τῷ σώματι καὶ ῥωμαλέον ἠξίουν τοιοῦτον εἶναι τὸν τῶν Ἀθηναίων στρατηγόν, ὁ [e] δὲ Τιμόθεος “οὐ μὰ τοὺς θεούς,” εἶπεν, “ἀλλὰ τοιοῦτον μὲν εἶναι τὸν μέλλοντα τῷ στρατηγῷ τὰ στρώματα κομίζειν, τὸν δὲ στρατηγόν ‘ἅμα πρόσω καὶ ὀπίσω’ τῶν πραγμάτων ὁρῶντα καὶ μηδενὶ πάθει τοὺς περὶ τῶν συμφερόντων λογισμοὺς ἐπιταραττόμενον.” ὁ γὰρ Σοφοκλῆς ἄσμενος ἔφη τὰ ἀφροδίσια γεγηρακὼς ἀποπεφευγέναι καθάπερ ἄγριον καὶ λυσσῶντα δεσπότην· ἐν δὲ ταῖς πολιτείαις οὐχ ἕνα δεῖ δεσπότην, ἔρωτα παίδων ἢ γυναικῶν, ἀποφεύγειν, ἀλλὰ πολλοὺς μανικωτέρους τούτου, φιλονεικίαν, φιλοδοξίαν, τὴν τοῦ πρῶτον εἶναι καὶ μέγιστον ἐπιθυμίαν, γονιμώτατον φθόνου νόσημα [f] καὶ ζηλοτυπίας καὶ διχοστασίας· ὧν τὰ μὲν ἀνίησι καὶ παραμβλύνει, τὰ δ’ ὅλως ἀποσβέννυσι καὶ καταψύχει τὸ γῆρας, οὐ τοσοῦτον τῆς πρακτικῆς ὁρμῆς παραιρούμενον, ὅσον τῶν ἀκρατῶν καὶ διαπύρων ἀπερύκει παθῶν, ὥστε νήφοντα καὶ καθεστηκότα τὸν λογισμὸν ἐπάγειν ταῖς φροντίσιν.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἔστω καὶ δοκείτω διατρεπτικὸς εἶναι λόγος πρὸς τὸν ἀρχόμενον ἐν πολιαῖς νεανιεύεσθαι λεγόμενος καὶ καθαπτόμενος ἐκ μακρᾶς οἰκουρίας ὥσπερ νοσηλείας ἐξανισταμένου καὶ κινουμένου γέροντος ἐπὶ στρατηγίαν ἢ πραγματείαν,

μέν’, ὦ ταλαίπωρ’, ἀτρέμα σοῖς ἐν δεμνίοις·

[789] [a] ὁ δὲ τὸν ἐμβεβιωκότα πολιτικαῖς πράξεσι καὶ διηγωνισμένον οὐκ ἐῶν ἐπὶ τὴν δᾷδα καὶ τὴν κορωνίδα τοῦ βίου προελθεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἀνακαλούμενος καὶ κελεύων ὥσπερ ἐξ ὁδοῦ μακρᾶς μεταβαλέσθαι, παντάπασιν ἀγνώμων καὶ μηδὲν ἐκείνῳ προσεοικώς ἐστιν. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ γαμεῖν παρασκευαζόμενον γέροντ’ ἐστεφανωμένον καὶ μυριζόμενον ἀποτρέπων καὶ λέγων τὰ πρὸς τὸν Φιλοκτήτην

τίς δ’ ἄν σε νύμφη, τίς δὲ παρθένος νέα

δέξαιτ’ ἄν; εὖ γοῦν ὡς γαμεῖν ἔχεις τάλας

[b] οὐκ ἄτοπός ἐστι· καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα παίζουσιν εἰς ἑαυτούς

γαμῶ γέρων, εὖ οἶδα, καὶ τοῖς γείτοσιν·

ὁ δὲ τὸν πάλαι συνοικοῦντα καὶ συμβιοῦντα πολὺν χρόνον ἀμέμπτως οἰόμενος δεῖν ἀφεῖναι διὰ τὸ γῆρας τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ ζῆν καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἢ παλλακίδιον ἀντὶ τῆς γαμετῆς ἐπισπάσασθαι, σκαιότητος ὑπερβολὴν οὐκ ἀπολέλοιπεν· οὕτως ἔχει τινὰ λόγον τὸ προσιόντα δήμῳ πρεσβύτην, ἢ Χλίδωνα τὸν γεωργὸν ἢ Λάμπωνα τὸν ναύκληρον ἤ τινα τῶν ἐκ τοῦ κήπου φιλοσόφων, νουθετῆσαι καὶ κατασχεῖν [c] ἐπὶ τῆς συνήθους ἀπραγμοσύνης· ὁ δὲ Φωκίωνος ἢ Κάτωνος ἢ Περικλέους ἐπιλαβόμενος καὶ λέγων “ὦ ξέν’ Ἀθηναῖε ἢ Ῥωμαῖε,

ἀζαλέῳ γήρᾳ κρᾶτ’ ἀνθίζων κήδει,

γραψάμενος ἀπόλειψιν τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ τὰς περὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὸ στρατήγιον ἀφεὶς διατριβὰς καὶ τὰς φροντίδας εἰς ἀγρὸν ἐπείγου σὺν ἀμφιπόλῳ τῇ γεωργίᾳ συνεσόμενος ἢ πρὸς οἰκονομίᾳ τινὶ καὶ λογισμοῖς διαθησόμενος τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον,” ἄδικα πείθει καὶ ἀχάριστα πράττειν τὸν πολιτικόν.

Τί οὖν; φήσαι τις ἄν, οὐκ ἀκούομεν ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ στρατιώτου λέγοντος

λευκή με θρὶξ ἀπόμισθον ἐντεῦθεν ποιεῖ;

πάνυ μὲν οὖν, ὦ ἑταῖρε· τοὺς γὰρ Ἄρεος θεράποντας ἡβᾶν πρέπει καὶ ἀκμάζειν, οἷα δή

πόλεμον πολέμοιό τε μέρμερα ἔργα

[d] διέποντας, ἐν οἷς τοῦ γέροντος κἂν τὸ κράνος ἀποκρύψῃ τὰς πολιάς,

ἀλλά τε λάθρῃ γυῖα βαρύνεται

καὶ προαπολείπει τῆς προθυμίας ἡ δύναμις· τοὺς δὲ τοῦ Βουλαίου καὶ Ἀγοραίου καὶ Πολιέως Διὸς ὑπηρέτας οὐ ποδῶν ἔργα καὶ χειρῶν ἀπαιτοῦμεν, ἀλλὰ βουλῆς καὶ προνοίας καὶ λόγου, μὴ ῥαχίαν ποιοῦντος ἐν δήμῳ καὶ ψόφον ἀλλὰ νοῦν ἔχοντος καὶ φροντίδα πεπνυμένην καὶ ἀσφάλειαν· οἷς ἡ γελωμένη πολιὰ καὶ ῥυτὶς ἐμπειρίας μάρτυς ἐπιφαίνεται, καὶ πειθοῦς συνεργὸν αὐτῷ καὶ δόξαν [e] ἤθους προστίθησι. πειθαρχικὸν γὰρ ἡ νεότης ἡγεμονικὸν δὲ τὸ γῆρας, καὶ μάλιστα σῴζεται πόλις

ἔνθα βουλαὶ γερόντων, καὶ νέων ἀνδρῶν ἀριστεύοισιν αἰχμαί·

καὶ τὸ

βουλὴν δὲ πρῶτον μεγαθύμων ἷζε γερόντων

Νεστορέῃ παρὰ νηὶ

θαυμαστῶς ἐπαινεῖται. διὸ τὴν μὲν ἐν Λακεδαίμονι παραζευχθεῖσαν ἀριστοκρατίαν τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν ὁ Πύθιος “πρεσβυγενέας” ὁ δὲ Λυκοῦργος ἄντικρυς “γέροντας” ὠνόμασεν, ἡ δὲ Ῥωμαίων σύγκλητος ἄχρι νῦν “γερουσία” καλεῖται. καὶ καθάπερ ὁ νόμος τὸ διάδημα καὶ τὸν στέφανον, οὕτω τὴν πολιὰν ἡ φύσις ἔντιμον ἡγεμονικοῦ σύμβολον [f] ἀξιώματος ἐπιτίθησι· καὶ τὸ “γέρας” οἶμαι καὶ τὸ “γεραίρειν” ὄνομα σεμνὸν ἀπὸ τῶν γερόντων γενόμενον διαμένει, οὐχ ὅτι θερμολουτοῦσι καὶ καθεύδουσι μαλακώτερον, ἀλλ’ ὡς βασιλικὴν ἐχόντων τάξιν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι κατὰ τὴν φρόνησιν, ἧς καθάπερ ὀψικάρπου φυτοῦ τὸ οἰκεῖον ἀγαθὸν καὶ τέλειον ἐν γήρᾳ μόλις ἡ φύσις ἀποδίδωσι. τὸν γοῦν βασιλέα τῶν βασιλέων εὐχόμενον τοῖς θεοῖς

τοιοῦτοι δέκα μοι συμφράδμονες εἶεν Ἀχαιῶν,

[790] [a] οἷος ἦν ὁ Νέστωρ, οὐδεὶς ἐμέμψατο τῶν “ἀρηίων” καὶ “μένεα πνεόντων Ἀχαιῶν,” ἀλλὰ συνεχώρουν ἅπαντες οὐκ ἐν πολιτείᾳ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν πολέμῳ μεγάλην ἔχειν ῥοπὴν τὸ γῆρας·

σοφὸν γὰρ ἓν βούλευμα τὰς πολλὰς χέρας

νικᾷ

καὶ μία γνώμη λόγον ἔχουσα καὶ πειθὼ τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ μέγιστα διαπράττεται τῶν κοινῶν.

Ἀλλὰ μὴν ἥ γε βασιλεία, τελεωτάτη πασῶν οὖσα καὶ μεγίστη τῶν πολιτειῶν, πλείστας φροντίδας ἔχει καὶ πόνους καὶ ἀσχολίας· τὸν γοῦν Σέλευκον ἑκάστοτε λέγειν ἔφασαν, εἰ γνοῖεν οἱ πολλοὶ τὸ γράφειν μόνον ἐπιστολὰς τοσαύτας καὶ ἀναγινώσκειν [b] ὡς ἐργῶδές ἐστιν, ἐρριμμένον οὐκ ἂν ἀνελέσθαι διάδημα· τὸν δὲ Φίλιππον ἐν καλῷ χωρίῳ μέλλοντα καταστρατοπεδεύειν, ὡς ἤκουσεν ὅτι χόρτος οὐκ ἔστι τοῖς ὑποζυγίοις “ὦ Ἡράκλεις,” εἰπεῖν, “οἷος ἡμῶν ὁ βίος, εἰ καὶ πρὸς τὸν τῶν ὄνων καιρὸν ὀφείλομεν ζῆν.” ὥρα τοίνυν καὶ βασιλεῖ παραινεῖν πρεσβύτῃ γεγενημένῳ τὸ μὲν διάδημα καταθέσθαι καὶ τὴν πορφύραν, ἱμάτιον δ’ ἀναλαβόντα καὶ καμπύλην ἐν ἀγρῷ διατρίβειν, μὴ δοκῇ περίεργα καὶ ἄωρα πράττειν ἐν πολιαῖς βασιλεύων. εἰ δ’ οὐκ ἄξιον ταῦτα λέγειν περὶ [c] Ἀγησιλάου καὶ Νομᾶ καὶ Δαρείου, μηδὲ τῆς ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλῆς Σόλωνα μηδὲ τῆς συγκλήτου Κάτωνα διὰ τὸ γῆρας ἐξάγωμεν, οὐκοῦν μηδὲ Περικλεῖ συμβουλεύωμεν ἐγκαταλιπεῖν τὴν δημοκρατίαν· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἄλλως λόγον ἔχει νέον ὄντα κατασκιρτῆσαι τοῦ βήματος, εἶτ’ ἐκχέαντα τὰς μανικὰς ἐκείνας φιλοτιμίας καὶ ὁρμὰς εἰς τὸ δημόσιον, ὅταν ἡ τὸ φρονεῖν ἐπιφέρουσα δι’ ἐμπειρίαν ἡλικία παραγένηται, προέσθαι καὶ καταλιπεῖν ὥσπερ γυναῖκα τὴν πολιτείαν καταχρησάμενον.

Ἡ μὲν γὰρ Αἰσώπειος ἀλώπηξ τὸν ἐχῖνον οὐκ εἴα τοὺς κρότωνας αὐτῆς ἀφαιρεῖν βουλόμενον· [d] “ἂν γὰρ τούτους,” ἔφη, “μεστοὺς ἀπαλλάξῃς, ἕτεροι προσίασι πεινῶντες”· τὴν δὲ πολιτείαν ἀεὶ τοὺς γέροντας ἀποβάλλουσαν ἀναπίμπλασθαι νέων ἀνάγκη διψώντων δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως, νοῦν δὲ πολιτικὸν οὐκ ἐχόντων· πόθεν γὰρ, εἰ μηδενὸς ἔσονται μαθηταὶ μηδὲ θεαταὶ πολιτευομένου γέροντος; ἢ πλοίων μὲν ἄρχοντας οὐ ποιεῖ γράμματα κυβερνητικά, μὴ πολλάκις γενομένους ἐν πρύμνῃ θεατὰς τῶν πρὸς κῦμα καὶ πνεῦμα καὶ νύκτα χειμέριον ἀγώνων,

ὅτε Τυνδαριδᾶν ἀδελφῶν ἅλιον ναύταν πόθος

βάλλει,

πόλιν δὲ μεταχειρίσασθαι καὶ πεῖσαι δῆμον ἢ [e] βουλὴν δύναιτ’ ἂν ὀρθῶς νέος ἀναγνοὺς βίβλον ἢ σχολὴν περὶ πολιτείας ἐν Λυκείῳ γραψάμενος, ἂν μὴ παρ’ ἡνίαν καὶ παρ’ οἴακα πολλάκις στὰς δημαγωγῶν καὶ στρατηγῶν ἀγωνιζομένων ἐμπειρίαις ἅμα καὶ τύχαις συναποκλίνων ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα, μετὰ κινδύνων καὶ πραγμάτων λάβῃ τὴν μάθησιν; οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν· ἀλλ’ εἰ διὰ μηδὲν ἄλλο τῷ γέροντι παιδείας ἕνεκα τῶν νέων καὶ διδασκαλίας πολιτευτέον ἐστίν. ὡς γὰρ οἱ γράμματα καὶ μουσικὴν διδάσκοντες, αὐτοὶ προανακρούονται καὶ προαναγινώσκουσιν [f] ὑφηγούμενοι τοῖς μανθάνουσιν, οὕτως ὁ πολιτικὸς οὐ λέγων μόνον οὐδ’ ὑπαγορεύων ἔξωθεν ἀλλὰ πράττων τὰ κοινὰ καὶ διοικῶν ἐπευθύνει τὸν νέον, ἔργοις ἅμα καὶ λόγοις πλαττόμενον ἐμψύχως καὶ κατασχηματιζόμενον. ὁ γὰρ τοῦτον ἀσκηθεὶς τὸν τρόπον οὐκ ἐν παλαίστραις καὶ κηρώμασιν ἀκινδύνοις εὐρύθμων σοφιστῶν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐν Ὀλυμπιακοῖς καὶ Πυθικοῖς ἀγῶσιν

ἄθηλος ἵππῳ πῶλος ὣς ἅμα τρέχει

κατὰ Σιμωνίδην, ὡς Ἀριστείδης Κλεισθένει καὶ [791] [a] Κίμων Ἀριστείδῃ καὶ Φωκίων Χαβρίᾳ καὶ Κάτων Μαξίμῳ Φαβίῳ καὶ Σύλλᾳ Πομπήιος καὶ Φιλοποίμενι Πολύβιος· νέοι γὰρ ὄντες πρεσβυτέροις ἐπιβάλλοντες, εἶθ’ οἷον παραβλαστάνοντες καὶ συνεξανιστάμενοι ταῖς ἐκείνων πολιτείαις καὶ πράξεσιν, ἐμπειρίαν καὶ συνήθειαν ἐκτῶντο πρὸς τὰ κοινὰ μετὰ δόξης καὶ δυνάμεως.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν Ἀκαδημαϊκὸς Αἰσχίνης, σοφιστῶν τινων λεγόντων ὅτι προσποιεῖται γεγονέναι Καρνεάδου μὴ γεγονὼς μαθητής, “ἀλλὰ τότε γ’,” εἶπεν, “ἐγὼ Καρνεάδου διήκουον, ὅτε τὴν ῥαχίαν [b] καὶ τὸν ψόφον ἀφεικὼς ὁ λόγος αὐτοῦ διὰ τὸ γῆρας εἰς τὸ χρήσιμον συνῆκτο καὶ κοινωνικόν”· τῆς δὲ πρεσβυτικῆς πολιτείας οὐ τῷ λόγῳ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῖς πράξεσιν ἀπηλλαγμένης πανηγυρισμοῦ καὶ δοξοκοπίας, ὥσπερ τὴν ἶριν λέγουσιν ὅταν παλαιὰ γενομένη τὸ βρομῶδες ἀποπνεύσῃ καὶ θολερὸν εὐωδέστερον τὸ ἀρωματικὸν ἴσχειν, οὕτως οὐδέν ἐστι δόγμα γεροντικὸν οὐδὲ βούλευμα τεταραγμένον ἀλλ’ ἐμβριθῆ πάντα καὶ καθεστῶτα. διὸ καὶ τῶν νέων ἕνεκα δεῖ, καθάπερ εἴρηται, πολιτεύεσθαι τὸν πρεσβύτην, ἵνα, ὃν τρόπον φησὶ Πλάτων ἐπὶ τοῦ μιγνυμένου πρὸς ὕδωρ ἀκράτου, μαινόμενον [c] θεὸν ἑτέρῳ θεῷ νήφοντι σωφρονίζεσθαι κολαζόμενον, οὕτως εὐλάβεια γεροντικὴ κεραννυμένη πρὸς ζέουσαν ἐν δήμῳ νεότητα, βακχεύουσαν ὑπὸ δόξης καὶ φιλοτιμίας, ἀφαιρῇ τὸ μανικὸν καὶ λίαν ἄκρατον.

Ἄνευ δὲ τούτων ἁμαρτάνουσιν οἱ οἷον τὸ

πλεῦσαι καὶ τὸ στρατεύσασθαι, τοιοῦτον ἡγούμενοι καὶ τὸ πολιτεύσασθαι πρὸς ἄλλο τι πραττόμενον, εἶτα καταλῆγον ἐν τῷ τυχεῖν ἐκείνου· λειτουργία γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν ἡ πολιτεία τὴν χρείαν ἔχουσα πέρας, ἀλλὰ βίος ἡμέρου καὶ πολιτικοῦ καὶ κοινωνικοῦ ζῴου καὶ πεφυκότος ὅσον χρὴ χρόνον πολιτικῶς καὶ φιλοκάλως καὶ φιλανθρώπως ζῆν. διὸ πολιτεύεσθαι καθῆκόν ἐστιν οὐ πεπολιτεῦσθαι, καθάπερ ἀληθεύειν οὐκ ἀληθεῦσαι καὶ δικαιοπραγεῖν οὐ δικαιοπραγῆσαι καὶ φιλεῖν οὐ φιλῆσαι τὴν πατρίδα [d] καὶ τοὺς πολίτας. ἐπὶ ταῦτα γὰρ ἡ φύσις ἄγει, καὶ ταύτας ὑπαγορεύει τὰς φωνὰς τοῖς μὴ διεφθορόσι τελείως ὑπ’ ἀργίας καὶ μαλακίας·

πολλοῦ σε θνητοῖς ἄξιον τίκτει πατὴρ

καὶ

μή τι παυσώμεσθα δρῶντες εὖ βροτούς.

Οἱ δὲ τὰς ἀρρωστίας προβαλλόμενοι καὶ τὰς ἀδυναμίας νόσου καὶ πηρώσεως μᾶλλον ἢ γήρως κατηγοροῦσι· καὶ γὰρ νέοι πολλοὶ νοσώδεις καὶ ῥωμαλέοι γέροντες· ὥστε δεῖ μὴ τοὺς γέροντας ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἀδυνάτους ἀποτρέπειν, μηδὲ τοὺς νέους [e] παρακαλεῖν ἀλλὰ τοὺς δυναμένους. καὶ γὰρ καὶ Ἀριδαῖος ἦν νέος γέρων δ’ Ἀντίγονος, ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ἅπασαν ὀλίγου δεῖν κατεκτήσατο τὴν Ἀσίαν, ὁ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐπὶ σκηνῆς δορυφόρημα κωφὸν ἦν ὄνομα βασιλέως καὶ πρόσωπον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀεὶ κρατούντων παροινούμενον. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ Πρόδικον τὸν σοφιστὴν ἢ Φιλήταν τὸν ποιητὴν ἀξιῶν πολιτεύεσθαι. νέους μὲν ἰσχνοὺς δὲ καὶ νοσώδεις καὶ τὰ πολλὰ κλινοπετεῖς δι’ ἀρρωστίαν ὄντας, ἀβέλτερός ἐστιν· οὕτως ὁ κωλύων ἄρχειν καὶ στρατηγεῖν τοιούτους γέροντας, οἷος ἦν Φωκίων οἷος ἦν Μασανάσσης ὁ Λίβυς οἷος Κάτων ὁ Ῥωμαῖος. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Φωκίων, ὡρμημένων πολεμεῖν ἀκαίρως τῶν Ἀθηναίων, [f] παρήγγειλε τοὺς ἄχρι ἑξήκοντ’ ἐτῶν ἀκολουθεῖν ὅπλα λαβόντας· ὡς δ’ ἠγανάκτουν, “οὐδέν,” ἔφη, “δεινόν· ἐγὼ γὰρ ἔσομαι μεθ’ ὑμῶν ὁ στρατηγὸς ὑπὲρ ὀγδοήκοντ’ ἔτη γεγονώς.” Μασανάσσην δ’ ἱστορεῖ Πολύβιος ἐνενήκοντα μὲν ἐτῶν ἀποθανεῖν, τετράετες καταλιπόντα παιδάριον ἐξ αὐτοῦ γεγενημένον, ὀλίγῳ δ’ ἔμπροσθεν τῆς τελευτῆς μάχῃ [792] [a] νικήσαντα μεγάλῃ Καρχηδονίους ὀφθῆναι τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ πρὸ τῆς σκηνῆς ῥυπαρὸν ἄρτον ἐσθίοντα, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς θαυμάζοντας εἰπεῖν, ὅτι τοῦτο ποιεῖ

λάμπει γὰρ ἐν χρείαισιν ὥσπερ εὐπρεπὴς

χαλκός· χρόνῳ δ’ ἀργῆσαν ἤμυσε στέγος,

ὥς φησι Σοφοκλῆς· ὡς δ’ ἡμεῖς φαμεν, ἐκεῖνο τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ γάνωμα καὶ τὸ φέγγος, ᾧ λογιζόμεθα καὶ μνημονεύομεν καὶ φρονοῦμεν.

Διὸ καὶ τοὺς βασιλεῖς φασι γίγνεσθαι βελτίονας ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις καὶ ταῖς στρατείαις ἢ σχολὴν ἄγοντας. Ἄτταλον γοῦν τὸν Εὐμένους [b] ἀδελφόν, ὑπ’ ἀργίας μακρᾶς καὶ εἰρήνης ἐκλυθέντα κομιδῇ, Φιλοποίμην εἷς τῶν ἑταίρων ἐποίμαινεν ἀτεχνῶς πιαινόμενον· ὥστε καὶ τοὺς Ῥωμαίους παίζοντας ἑκάστοτε διαπυνθάνεσθαι παρὰ τῶν ἐξ Ἀσίας πλεόντων, εἰ δύναται παρὰ τῷ Φιλοποίμενι βασιλεύς. Λευκόλλου δὲ Ῥωμαίων οὐ πολλοὺς ἄν τις εὕροι δεινοτέρους στρατηγούς, ὅτε τῷ πράττειν τὸ φρονεῖν συνεῖχεν· ἐπεὶ δὲ μεθῆκεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς βίον ἄπρακτον καὶ δίαιταν οἰκουρὸν καὶ ἄφροντιν, ὥσπερ οἱ σπόγγοι ταῖς γαλήναις ἐννεκρωθεὶς καὶ καταμαρανθείς, εἶτα Καλλισθένει τινὶ τῶν ἀπελευθόρων [c] βόσκειν καὶ τιθασεύειν παρέχων τὸ γῆρας, ἐδόκει καταφαρμακεύεσθαι φίλτροις ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ γοητεύμασιν, ἄχρι οὗ Μάρκος ὁ ἀδελφὸς ἀπελάσας τὸν ἄνθρωπον αὐτὸς ᾠκονόμει καὶ ἐπαιδαγώγει τὸν λοιπὸν αὐτοῦ βίον, οὐ πολὺν γενόμενον. ἀλλὰ Δαρεῖος ὁ Ξέρξου πατὴρ ἔλεγεν αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ γίγνεσθαι φρονιμώτερος, ὁ δὲ Σκύθης Ἀτέας μηδὲν οἴεσθαι τῶν ἱπποκόμων διαφέρειν ἑαυτόν, ὅτε σχολάζοι· Διονύσιος δ’ ὁ πρεσβύτερος πρὸς τὸν πυθόμενον εἰ σχολάζοι “μηδέποτ’,” εἶπεν, “ἐμοὶ τοῦτο συμβαίη.” τόξον μὲν γάρ, ὥς φασιν, ἐπιτεινόμενον [d] ῥήγνυται, ψυχὴ δ’ ἀνιεμένη. καὶ γὰρ ἁρμονικοὶ τὸ κατακούειν ἡρμοσμένου καὶ γεωμέτραι τὸ ἀναλύειν καὶ ἀριθμητικοὶ τὴν ἐν τῷ λογίζεσθαι συνέχειαν ἐκλιπόντες ἅμα ταῖς ἐνεργείαις ἀμαυροῦσι ταῖς ἡλικίαις τὰς ἕξεις, καίπερ οὐ πρακτικὰς ἀλλὰ θεωρητικὰς τέχνας ἔχοντες· ἡ δὲ τῶν πολιτικῶν ἕξις, εὐβουλία καὶ φρόνησις καὶ δικαιοσύνη, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἐμπειρία στοχαστικὴ καιρῶν καὶ λόγων, πειθοῦς δημιουργὸς δύναμις οὖσα, τῷ λέγειν ἀεί τι καὶ πράττειν καὶ λογίζεσθαι καὶ δικάζειν συνέχεται· καὶ δεινόν, εἰ τούτων ἀποδρᾶσα περιόψεται τηλικαύτας ἀρετὰς καὶ τοσαύτας ἐκρυείσας τῆς ψυχῆς· [e] καὶ γὰρ τὸ φιλάνθρωπον εἰκός ἐστιν ἀπομαραίνεσθαι καὶ τὸ κοινωνικὸν καὶ τὸ εὐχάριστον, ὧν οὐδεμίαν εἶναι δεῖ τελευτὴν οὐδὲ πέρας.

Εἰ γοῦν πατέρα τὸν Τιθωνὸν εἶχες, ἀθάνατον μὲν ὄντα χρείαν δ’ ἔχοντα διὰ γῆρας ἀεὶ πολλῆς ἐπιμελείας, οὐκ ἂν οἶμαί σε φυγεῖν οὐδ’ ἀπείπασθαι τὸ θεραπεύειν καὶ προσαγορεύειν καὶ βοηθεῖν ὡς λελειτουργηκότα πολὺν χρόνον· ἡ δὲ πατρὶς καὶ μητρὶς ὡς Κρῆτες καλοῦσι, πρεσβύτερα καὶ μείζονα [f] δίκαια γονέων ἔχουσα, πολυχρόνιος μέν ἐστιν οὐ μὴν ἀγήρως οὐδ’ αὐτάρκης, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ πολυωρίας δεομένη καὶ βοηθείας καὶ φροντίδος ἐπισπᾶται καὶ κατέχει τὸν πολιτικὸν

εἱανοῦ ἁπτομένη καί τ’ ἐσσύμενον κατερύκει.

Καὶ μὴν οἶσθά με τῷ Πυθίῳ λειτουργοῦντα πολλὰς Πυθιάδας· ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἂν εἴποις “ἱκανά σοι, ὦ Πλούταρχε, τέθυται καὶ πεπόμπευται καὶ κεχόρευται, νῦν δ’ ὥρα πρεσβύτερον ὄντα τὸν στέφανον ἀποθέσθαι καὶ τὸ χρηστήριον ἀπολιπεῖν διὰ τὸ γῆρας.” οὐκοῦν μηδὲ σεαυτὸν οἴου δεῖν, τῶν πολιτικῶν ἱερῶν ἔξαρχον ὄντα καὶ προφήτην, ἀφεῖναι τὰς τοῦ Πολιέως καὶ Ἀγοραίου τιμὰς Διός, ἔκπαλαι κατωργιασμένον αὐταῖς.

[793] [a] Ἀλλ’ ἀφέντες, εἰ βούλει, τὸν ἀποσπῶντα τῆς πολιτείας λόγον ἐκεῖνο σκοπῶμεν ἤδη καὶ φιλοσοφῶμεν, ὅπως μηδὲν ἀπρεπὲς μηδὲ βαρὺ τῷ γήρᾳ προσάξωμεν ἀγώνισμα, πολλὰ μέρη τῆς πολιτείας ἐχούσης ἁρμόδια καὶ πρόσφορα τοῖς τηλικούτοις. ὥσπερ γάρ, εἰ καθῆκον ἦν ᾄδοντας διατελεῖν, ἔδει, πολλῶν τόνων καὶ τρόπων ὑποκειμένων φωνῆς, οὓς ἁρμονίας οἱ μουσικοὶ καλοῦσι, μὴ τὸν ὀξὺν ἅμα καὶ σύντονον διώκειν γέροντας γενομένους, ἀλλ’ ἐν ᾧ τὸ ῥᾴδιον ἔπεστι μετὰ τοῦ πρέποντος ἤθους· [b] οὕτως, ἐπεὶ τὸ πράττειν καὶ λέγειν μᾶλλον ἀνθρώποις ἢ κύκνοις τὸ ᾄδειν ἄχρι τελευτῆς κατὰ φύσιν ἔστιν, οὐκ ἀφετέον τὴν πρᾶξιν ὥσπερ τινὰ λύραν σύντονον, ἀλλ’ ἀνετέον ἐπὶ τὰ κοῦφα καὶ μέτρια καὶ προσῳδὰ πρεσβύταις πολιτεύματα μεθαρμοττομένους. οὐδὲ γὰρ τὰ σώματα παντελῶς ἀκίνητα καὶ ἀγύμναστα περιορῶμεν, ὅτε μὴ δυνάμεθα σκαφείοις μηδ’ ἁλτῆρσι χρῆσθαι μηδὲ δισκεύειν μηδ’ ὁπλομαχεῖν ὡς καὶ πρότερον, ἀλλ’ αἰώραις καὶ περιπάτοις, ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ σφαίρᾳ προσπαλαίοντες ἐλαφρῶς καὶ διαλεγόμενοι κινοῦσι τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ [c] τὸ θερμὸν ἀναρριπίζουσι· μήτε δὴ τελέως ἐκπαγέντας ἑαυτοὺς καὶ καταψυχθέντας ἀπραξίᾳ περιίδωμεν μήτ’ αὖ πάλιν πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν ἐπαιρόμενοι καὶ παντὸς ἐπιδραττόμενοι πολιτεύματος ἀναγκάζωμεν τὸ γῆρας ἐξελεγχόμενον ἐπὶ τοιαύτας φωνὰς καταφέρεσθαι

ὦ δεξιὰ χείρ, ὡς ποθεῖς λαβεῖν δόρυ·

ἐν δ’ ἀσθενείᾳ τὸν πόθον διώλεσας.

οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀκμάζων καὶ δυνάμενος ἀνὴρ ἐπαινεῖται, πάντα συλλήβδην ἀνατιθεὶς ἑαυτῷ τὰ κοινὰ πράγματα [d] καὶ μηδὲν ἑτέρῳ παριέναι βουλόμενος, ὥσπερ οἱ Στωικοὶ τὸν Δία λέγουσιν, εἰς πάντα παρενείρων καὶ πᾶσι καταμιγνὺς ἑαυτὸν ἀπληστίᾳ δόξης ἢ φθόνῳ τῶν μεταλαμβανόντων ἁμωσγέπως τιμῆς τινος ἐν τῇ πόλει καὶ δυνάμεως· πρεσβύτῃ δὲ κομιδῇ, κἂν τὸ ἄδοξον ἀφέλῃς, ἐπίπονος καὶ ταλαίπωρος ἡ πρὸς πᾶν μὲν ἀεὶ κληρωτήριον ἀπαντῶσα φιλαρχία, παντὶ δ’ ἐφεδρεύουσα δικαστηρίου καιρῷ καὶ συνεδρίου πολυπραγμοσύνη, πᾶσαν δὲ [e] πρεσβείαν καὶ προδικίαν ὑφαρπάζουσα φιλοτιμία. καὶ γὰρ ταῦτα πράττειν καὶ μετ’ εὐνοίας βαρὺ παρ’ ἡλικίαν, συμβαίνει δέ γε τἀναντία· μισοῦνται μὲν γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν νέων, ὡς οὐ προϊέμενοι πράξεων αὐτοῖς ἀφορμὰς μηδ’ εἰς μέσον ἐῶντες προελθεῖν, ἀδοξεῖ δὲ παρὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις τὸ φιλόπρωτον αὐτῶν καὶ φίλαρχον οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τὸ φιλόπλουτον ἑτέρων γερόντων καὶ φιλήδονον.

Ὥσπερ οὖν τὸν Βουκέφαλον ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος πρεσβύτερον ὄντα μὴ βουλόμενος πιέζειν ἑτέροις ἐπωχεῖτο πρὸ τῆς μάχης ἵπποις, ἐφοδεύων τὴν φάλαγγα καὶ καθιστὰς εἰς τὴν τάξιν, εἶτα δοὺς τὸ [f] σύνθημα καὶ μεταβὰς ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνον εὐθὺς ἐπῆγε τοῖς πολεμίοις καὶ διεκινδύνευεν· οὕτως ὁ πολιτικός, ἂν ἔχῃ νοῦν, αὐτὸς αὑτὸν ἡνιοχῶν πρεσβύτην γενόμενον ἀφέξεται τῶν οὐκ ἀναγκαίων καὶ παρήσει τοῖς ἀκμάζουσι χρῆσθαι πρὸς τὰ μικρότερα τὴν πόλιν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς μεγάλοις αὐτὸς ἀγωνιεῖται προθύμως. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἀθληταὶ τὰ σώματα τῶν ἀναγκαίων πόνων ἄθικτα τηροῦσι καὶ ἀκέραια πρὸς τοὺς ἀχρήστους· ἡμεῖς δὲ τοὐναντίον, ἐῶντες τὰ μικρὰ καὶ φαῦλα, τοῖς ἀξίοις σπουδῆς φυλάξομεν ἑαυτούς. “νέῳ” μὲν γὰρ ἴσως “ἐπέοικε” καθ’ Ὅμηρον “πάντα,” καὶ δέχονται καὶ ἀγαπῶσι τὸν μὲν μικρὰ καὶ πολλὰ πράττοντα δημοτικὸν καὶ φιλόπονον [794] [a] τὸν δὲ λαμπρὰ καὶ σεμνὰ γενναῖον καὶ μεγαλόφρονα καλοῦντες· ἔστι δ’ ὅπου καὶ τὸ φιλόνεικον καὶ παράβολον ὥραν ἔχει τινὰ καὶ χάριν ἐπιπρέπουσαν τοῖς τηλικούτοις. ὁ πρεσβύτης δ’ ἀνὴρ ἐν πολιτείᾳ διακονικὰς λειτουργίας ὑπομένων, οἷα τελῶν πράσεις καὶ λιμένων ἐπιμελείας καὶ ἀγορᾶς, ἔτι δὲ πρεσβείας καὶ ἀποδημίας πρὸς ἡγεμόνας καὶ δυνάστας ὑποτρέχων, ἐν αἷς ἀναγκαῖον οὐδὲν οὐδὲ σεμνὸν ἔνεστιν ἀλλὰ θεραπεία καὶ τὸ πρὸς χάριν, ἐμοὶ μὲν οἰκτρόν, ὦ φίλε, φαίνεται καὶ ἄζηλον, ἑτέροις δ’ ἴσως καὶ ἐπαχθὲς φαίνεται καὶ φορτικόν.

Οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐν ἀρχαῖς τὸν τηλικοῦτον ὥρα [b] φέρεσθαι, πλὴν ὅσαι γε μέγεθός τι κέκτηνται καὶ ἀξίωμα· καθάπερ ἣν σὺ νῦν Ἀθήνησι μεταχειρίζῃ τῆς ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλῆς ἐπιστασίαν καὶ νὴ Δία τὸ πρόσχημα τῆς Ἀμφικτυονίας, ἥν σοι διὰ τοῦ βίου παντὸς ἡ πατρὶς ἀνατέθεικε “πόνον ἡδὺν κάματόν τ’ εὐκάματον” ἔχουσαν. δεῖ δὲ καὶ ταύτας μὴ διώκειν τὰς τιμὰς ἀλλὰ φεύγοντας ἄρχειν, μηδ’ αἰτουμένους ἀλλὰ παραιτουμένους, μηδ’ ὡς αὑτοῖς τὸ ἄρχειν λαμβάνοντας ἀλλ’ ὡς αὑτοὺς τῷ ἄρχειν ἐπιδιδόντας. οὐ γάρ, ὡς Τιβέριος ὁ Καῖσαρ ἔλεγε, [c] τὸ τὴν χεῖρα τῷ ἰατρῷ προτείνειν ὑπὲρ ἑξήκοντ’ ἔτη γεγονότας αἰσχρόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τὸ τὴν χεῖρα τῷ δήμῳ προτείνειν ψῆφον αἰτοῦντας ἢ φωνὴν ἀρχαιρεσιάζουσαν· ἀγεννὲς γὰρ τοῦτο καὶ ταπεινόν· ὡς τοὐναντίον ἔχει τινὰ σεμνότητα καὶ κόσμον, αἱρουμένης τῆς πατρίδος καὶ καλούσης καὶ περιμενούσης, κατιόντα μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ φιλοφροσύνης γεραρὸν ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ περίβλεπτον ἀσπάσασθαι καὶ δεξιώσασθαι τὸ γέρας.

Οὕτω δέ πως καὶ λόγῳ χρηστέον ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ πρεσβύτην γενόμενον, μὴ ἐπιπηδῶντα συνεχῶς τῷ βήματι μηδ’ ἀεὶ δίκην ἀλεκτρυόνος ἀντᾴδοντα τοῖς φθεγγομένοις, μηδὲ τῷ συμπλέκεσθαι καὶ διερεθίζειν ἀποχαλινοῦντα τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν [d] αἰδῶ τῶν νέων μηδὲ μελέτην ἐμποιοῦντα καὶ συνήθειαν ἀπειθείας καὶ δυσηκοΐας, ἀλλὰ καὶ παριέντα ποτὲ καὶ διδόντα πρὸς δόξαν ἀναχαιτίσαι καὶ θρασύνασθαι, μηδὲ παρόντα μηδὲ πολυπραγμονοῦντα, ὅπου μὴ μέγα τὸ κινδυνευόμενόν ἐστι πρὸς σωτηρίαν κοινὴν ἢ τὸ καλὸν καὶ πρέπον. ἐκεῖ δὲ χρὴ καὶ μηδενὸς καλοῦντος ὠθεῖσθαι δρόμῳ παρὰ δύναμιν, ἀναθέντα χειραγωγοῖς αὑτὸν ἢ φοράδην κομιζόμενον, ὥσπερ ἱστοροῦσιν ἐν Ῥώμῃ Κλαύδιον Ἄππιον· ἡττημένων γὰρ ὑπὸ Πύρρου μάχῃ μεγάλῃ, [e] πυθόμενος τὴν σύγκλητον ἐνδέχεσθαι λόγους περὶ σπονδῶν καὶ εἰρήνης οὐκ ἀνασχετὸν ἐποιήσατο, καίπερ ἀμφοτέρας ἀποβεβληκὼς τὰς ὄψεις, ἀλλ’ ἧκε δι’ ἀγορᾶς φερόμενος πρὸς τὸ βουλευτήριον· εἰσελθὼν δὲ καὶ καταστὰς εἰς μέσον ἔφη πρότερον μὲν ἄχθεσθαι τῷ τῶν ὀμμάτων στέρεσθαι, νῦν δ’ ἂν εὔξασθαι μηδ’ ἀκούειν οὕτως αἰσχρὰ καὶ ἀγεννῆ βουλευομένους καὶ πράττοντας ἐκείνους. ἐκ δὲ τούτου τὰ μὲν καθαψάμενος αὐτῶν τὰ δὲ διδάξας [f] καὶ παρορμήσας, ἔπεισεν εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὰ ὅπλα χωρεῖν καὶ διαγωνίζεσθαι περὶ τῆς Ἰταλίας πρὸς τὸν Πύρρον. ὁ δὲ Σόλων, τῆς Πεισιστράτου δημαγωγίας, ὅτι τυραννίδος ἦν μηχάνημα, φανερᾶς γενομένης, μηδενὸς ἀμύνεσθαι μηδὲ κωλύειν τολμῶντος, αὐτὸς ἐξενεγκάμενος τὰ ὅπλα καὶ πρὸ τῆς οἰκίας θέμενος ἠξίου βοηθεῖν τοὺς πολίτας· πέμψαντος δὲ τοῦ Πεισιστράτου πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ πυνθανομένου τίνι πεποιθὼς ταῦτα πράττει, “τῷ γήρᾳ,” εἶπεν.

Ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν οὕτως ἀναγκαῖα καὶ τοὺς ἀπεσβηκότας κομιδῇ γέροντας, ἂν μόνον ἐμπνέωσιν, ἐξάπτει καὶ διανίστησιν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις ποτὲ μέν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, παραιτούμενος ἐμμελὴς ἔσται [795] [a] τὰ γλίσχρα καὶ διακονικὰ καὶ μείζονας ἔχοντα τοῖς πράττουσιν ἀσχολίας ἢ δι’ οὓς πράττεται χρείας καὶ ὠφελείας· ἔστι δ’ ὅπου περιμένων καλέσαι καὶ ποθῆσαι καὶ μετελθεῖν οἴκοθεν τοὺς πολίτας ἀξιοπιστότερος δεομένοις κάτεισι. τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα καὶ παρὼν σιωπῇ τοῖς νεωτέροις λέγειν παρίησιν, οἷον βραβεύων φιλοτιμίας πολιτικῆς ἅμιλλαν· ἐὰν δ’ ὑπερβάλλῃ τὸ μέτριον, καθαπτόμενος ἠπίως καὶ μετ’ εὐμενείας ἀφαιρῶν φιλονεικίας καὶ βλασφημίας καὶ ὀργάς, ἐν δὲ ταῖς γνώμαις τὸν ἁμαρτάνοντα παραμυθούμενος ἄνευ ψόγου καὶ διδάσκων, ἐπαινῶν δ’ ἀφόβως τὸν κατορθοῦντα καὶ νικώμενος ἑκουσίως [b] καὶ προϊέμενος τὸ πεῖσαι καὶ περιγενέσθαι πολλάκις ὅπως αὐξάνωνται καὶ θαρσῶσιν, ἐνίοις δὲ καὶ συναναπληρῶν μετ’ εὐφημίας τὸ ἐλλεῖπον, ὡς ὁ Νέστωρ

οὔτις τοι τὸν μῦθον ὀνόσσεται ὅσσοι Ἀχαιοί,

οὐδὲ πάλιν ἐρέει· ἀτὰρ οὐ τέλος ἵκεο μύθων.

ἦ μὴν καὶ νέος ἐσσί, ἐμὸς δέ κε καὶ πάις εἴης.

Τούτου δὲ πολιτικώτερον, μὴ μόνον ἐμφανῶς μηδὲ δημοσίᾳ ὀνειδίζων ἄνευ δηγμοῦ σφόδρα κολούοντος καὶ ταπεινοῦντος, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἰδίᾳ τοῖς εὖ πεφυκόσι πρὸς πολιτείαν ὑποτιθέμενος [c] καὶ συνεισηγούμενος εὐμενῶς λόγους τε χρηστοὺς καὶ πολιτεύματα, συνεξορμῶν πρὸς τὰ καλὰ καὶ συνεπιλαμπρύνων τὸ φρόνημα καὶ παρέχων, ὥσπερ οἱ διδάσκοντες ἱππεύειν, ἐν ἀρχῇ χειροήθη καὶ πρᾶον ἐπιβῆναι τὸν δῆμον· εἰ δέ τι σφαλείη, μὴ περιορῶν ἐξαθυμοῦντα τὸν νέον, ἀλλ’ ἀνιστὰς καὶ παραμυθούμενος, ὡς Ἀριστείδης Κίμωνα καὶ Μνησίφιλος Θεμιστοκλέα, δυσχεραινομένους καὶ κακῶς ἀκούοντας ἐν τῇ πόλει τὸ πρῶτον ὡς ἰταμοὺς καὶ ἀκολάστους, ἐπῆραν καὶ ἀνεθάρρυναν. λέγεται δὲ καὶ Δημοσθένους ἐκπεσόντος ἐν τῷ [d] δήμῳ καὶ βαρέως φέροντος ἅψασθαι παλαιόν τινα γέροντα τῶν ἀκηκοότων Περικλέους καὶ εἰπεῖν, ὡς ἐκείνῳ τἀνδρὶ προσεοικὼς τὴν φύσιν οὐ δικαίως αὑτοῦ κατέγνωκεν. οὕτω δὲ καὶ Τιμόθεον Εὐριπίδης συριττόμενον ἐπὶ τῇ καινοτομίᾳ καὶ παρανομεῖν εἰς τὴν μουσικὴν δοκοῦντα θαρρεῖν ἐκέλευσεν, ὡς ὀλίγου χρόνου τῶν θεάτρων ὑπ’ αὐτῷ γενησομένων.

Καθόλου δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν Ῥώμῃ ταῖς Ἑστιάσι παρθένοις τοῦ χρόνου διώρισται τὸ μὲν μανθάνειν τὸ δὲ δρᾶν τὰ νενομισμένα τὸ δὲ τρίτον ἤδη διδάσκειν, καὶ τῶν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ περὶ τὴν Ἄρτεμιν [e] ὁμοίως ἑκάστην Μελλιέρην τὸ πρῶτον εἶθ’ Ἱέρην τὸ δὲ τρίτον Παριέρην καλοῦσιν· οὕτως ὁ τελέως πολιτικὸς ἀνὴρ τὰ μὲν πρῶτα μανθάνων ἔτι πολιτεύεται καὶ μυούμενος τὰ δ’ ἔσχατα διδάσκων καὶ μυσταγωγῶν· τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἐπιστάτην ἀθλοῦσιν ἑτέροις οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτὸν ἀθλεῖν, ὁ δὲ παιδοτριβῶν νέον ἐν πράγμασι κοινοῖς καὶ δημοσίοις ἀγῶσι καὶ παρασκευάζων τῇ πατρίδι

μύθων τε ῥητῆρ’ ἔμεναι πρηκτῆρά τε ἔργων

ἐν οὐ μικρῷ μέρει πολιτείας οὐδὲ φαύλῳ χρήσιμός ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ εἰς ὃ μάλιστα καὶ πρῶτον ὁ Λυκοῦργος [f] ἐντείνας ἑαυτὸν εἴθισε τοὺς νέους παντὶ πρεσβύτῃ καθάπερ νομοθέτῃ πειθομένους διατελεῖν. ἐπεὶ πρὸς τί βλέψας ὁ Λύσανδρος εἶπεν, ὡς ἐν Λακεδαίμονι κάλλιστα γηρῶσιν; ἆρ’ ὅτι γ’ ἀργεῖν ἔξεστι μάλιστα τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις ἐκεῖ καὶ δανείζειν ἢ κυβεύειν συγκαθεζομένους ἢ πίνειν ἐν ὥρᾳ συνάγοντας; οὐκ ἂν εἴποις· ἀλλ’ ὅτι τρόπον τινὰ πάντες οἱ τηλικοῦτοι τάξιν ἀρχόντων ἤ τινων πατρονόμων ἢ παιδαγωγῶν ἔχοντες οὐ τὰ κοινὰ [796] [a] μόνον ἐπισκοποῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν νέων ἕκαστ’ ἀεὶ περί τε τὰ γυμνάσια καὶ παιδιὰς καὶ διαίτας καταμανθάνουσιν οὐ παρέργως, φοβεροὶ μὲν ὄντες τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσιν αἰδεστοὶ δὲ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς καὶ ποθεινοί· θεραπεύουσι γὰρ ἀεὶ καὶ διώκουσιν αὐτοὺς οἱ νέοι, τὸ κόσμιον καὶ τὸ γενναῖον αὔξοντας καὶ συνεπιγαυροῦντας ἄνευ φθόνου.

Τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ πάθος οὐδενὶ χρόνῳ πρέπον ἡλικίας, ὅμως ἐν νέοις εὐπορεῖ χρηστῶν ὀνομάτων, ἅμιλλα καὶ ζῆλος καὶ φιλοτιμία προσαγορευόμενον, ἐν δὲ πρεσβύταις παντελῶς ἄωρόν ἐστι καὶ ἄγριον καὶ ἀγεννές. διὸ δεῖ πορρωτάτω τοῦ φθονεῖν ὄντα τὸν πολιτικὸν γέροντα μὴ καθάπερ τὰ βάσκανα [b] γεράνδρυα τῶν παραβλαστανόντων καὶ ὑποφυομένων σαφῶς ἀφαιρεῖσθαι καὶ κολούειν τὴν βλάστην καὶ τὴν αὔξησιν, ἀλλ’ εὐμενῶς προσδέχεσθαι καὶ παρέχειν τοῖς ἀντιλαμβανομένοις καὶ προσπλεκομένοις ἑαυτὸν ὀρθοῦντα καὶ χειραγωγοῦντα καὶ τρέφοντα μὴ μόνον ὑφηγήσεσι καὶ συμβουλίαις ἀγαθαῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ παραχωρήσεσι πολιτευμάτων τιμὴν ἐχόντων καὶ δόξαν ἤ τινας ὑπουργίας ἀβλαβεῖς μὲν ἡδείας δὲ τοῖς πολλοῖς καὶ πρὸς χάριν ἐσομένας· ὅσα δ’ ἐστὶν ἀντίτυπα καὶ προσάντη καὶ καθάπερ τὰ φάρμακα δάκνει παραχρῆμα καὶ λυπεῖ τὸ δὲ [c] καλὸν καὶ λυσιτελὲς ὕστερον ἀποδίδωσι, μὴ τοὺς νέους ἐπὶ ταῦτα προσάγοντα μηδ’ ὑποβάλλοντα θορύβοις, ὄχλων ἀγνωμονούντων ἀήθεις ὄντας, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἐκδεχόμενον τὰς ὑπὲρ τῶν συμφερόντων ἀπεχθείας· τούτῳ γὰρ εὐνουστέρους τε ποιήσει τοὺς νέους καὶ προθυμοτέρους ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις ὑπηρεσίαις.

Παρὰ πάντα δὲ ταῦτα χρὴ μνημονεύειν, ὡς οὐκ ἔστι πολιτεύεσθαι μόνον τὸ ἄρχειν καὶ πρεσβεύειν καὶ μέγα βοᾶν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ καὶ περὶ τὸ βῆμα βακχεύειν λέγοντας ἢ γράφοντας, ἃ οἱ πολλοὶ τοῦ πολιτεύεσθαι νομίζουσιν, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ [d] φιλοσοφεῖν τοὺς ἀπὸ τοῦ δίφρου διαλεγομένους καὶ σχολὰς ἐπὶ βιβλίοις περαίνοντας· ἡ δὲ συνεχὴς ἐν ἔργοις καὶ πράξεσιν ὁρωμένη καθ’ ἡμέραν ὁμαλῶς πολιτεία καὶ φιλοσοφία λέληθεν αὐτούς. καὶ γὰρ τοὺς ἐν ταῖς στοαῖς ἀνακάμπτοντας περιπατεῖν φασιν, ὡς ἔλεγε Δικαίαρχος, οὐκέτι δὲ τοὺς εἰς ἀγρὸν ἢ πρὸς φίλον βαδίζοντας. ὅμοιον δ’ ἐστὶ τῷ φιλοσοφεῖν τὸ πολιτεύεσθαι. Σωκράτης γοῦν οὔτε βάθρα θεὶς οὔτ’ εἰς θρόνον καθίσας οὔθ’ ὥραν διατριβῆς ἢ περιπάτου τοῖς γνωρίμοις τεταγμένην φυλάττων, ἀλλὰ καὶ συμπαίζων, ὅτε τύχοι, καὶ συμπίνων καὶ συστρατευόμενος ἐνίοις καὶ συναγοράζων, τέλος δὲ καὶ δεδεμένος καὶ [e] πίνων τὸ φάρμακον, ἐφιλοσόφει· πρῶτος ἀποδείξας τὸν βίον ἅπαντι χρόνῳ καὶ μέρει καὶ πάθεσι καὶ πράγμασιν ἁπλῶς ἅπασι φιλοσοφίαν δεχόμενον. οὕτω δὴ διανοητέον καὶ περὶ πολιτείας, ὡς τοὺς μὲν ἀνοήτους, οὐδ’ ὅταν στρατηγῶσιν ἢ γραμματεύωσιν ἢ δημηγορῶσι, πολιτευομένους ἀλλ’ ὀχλοκοποῦντας ἢ πανηγυρίζοντας ἢ στασιάζοντας ἢ λειτουργοῦντας ἀναγκαίως· τὸν δὲ κοινωνικὸν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον καὶ φιλόπολιν καὶ κηδεμονικὸν καὶ πολιτικὸν ἀληθῶς, κἂν μηδέποτε τὴν χλαμύδα περίθηται, πολιτευόμενον ἀεὶ τῷ παρορμᾶν τοὺς [f] δυναμένους, ὑφηγεῖσθαι τοῖς δεομένοις, συμπαρεῖναι τοῖς βουλευομένοις, διατρέπειν τοὺς κακοπραγμονοῦντας, ἐπιρρωννύναι τοὺς εὐγνώμονας, φανερὸν εἶναι μὴ παρέργως προσέχοντα τοῖς κοινοῖς μηδ’ ὅπου σπουδή τις ἢ παράκλησις διὰ τὸ πρωτεῖον εἰς τὸ θέατρον βαδίζοντα καὶ τὸ βουλευτήριον, ἄλλως δὲ διαγωγῆς χάριν ὡς ἐπὶ θέαν ἢ ἀκρόασιν, [797] [a] ὅταν ἐπέλθῃ, παραγιγνόμενον, ἀλλά, κἂν μὴ παραγένηται τῷ σώματι, παρόντα τῇ γνώμῃ καὶ τῷ πυνθάνεσθαι τὰ μὲν ἀποδεχόμενον τοῖς δὲ δυσκολαίνοντα τῶν πραττομένων.

Οὐδὲ γὰρ Ἀθηναίων Ἀριστείδης οὐδὲ Ῥωμαίων Κάτων ἦρξε πολλάκις, ἀλλὰ πάντα τὸν αὑτῶν βίον ἐνεργὸν ἀεὶ ταῖς πατρίσι παρέσχον. Ἐπαμεινώνδας δὲ πολλὰ μὲν καὶ μεγάλα κατώρθωσε στρατηγῶν, οὐκ ἔλαττον δ’ αὐτοῦ μνημονεύεται μηδὲ στρατηγοῦντος μηδ’ ἄρχοντος ἔργον περὶ Θετταλίαν, ὅτε τῶν στρατηγῶν εἰς τόπους χαλεποὺς ἐμβαλόντων τὴν φάλαγγα καὶ θορυβουμένων [b] (ἐπέκειντο γὰρ οἱ πολέμιοι βάλλοντες), ἀνακληθεὶς ἐκ τῶν ὁπλιτῶν πρῶτον μὲν ἔπαυσε θαρρύνας τὸν τοῦ στρατεύματος τάραχον καὶ φόβον, ἔπειτα διατάξας καὶ διαρμοσάμενος τὴν φάλαγγα συγκεχυμένην ἐξήγαγε ῥᾳδίως καὶ κατέστησεν ἐναντίαν τοῖς πολεμίοις, ὥστ’ ἀπελθεῖν ἐκείνους μεταβαλομένους. Ἄγιδος δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐν Ἀρκαδίᾳ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐπάγοντος ἤδη τὸ στράτευμα συντεταγμένον εἰς μάχην, τῶν πρεσβυτέρων τις Σπαρτιατῶν ἐπεβόησεν, ὅτι διανοεῖται κακὸν κακῷ ἰᾶσθαι, δηλῶν τῆς ἐξ Ἄργους ἐπαιτίου [c] ἀναχωρήσεως τὴν παροῦσαν ἄκαιρον προθυμίαν ἀνάληψιν βουλομένην εἶναι, ὡς ὁ Θουκυδίδης φησίν· ὁ δ’ Ἆγις ἀκούσας ἐπείσθη καὶ ἀνεχώρησε. Μενεκράτει δὲ καὶ δίφρος ἔκειτο καθ’ ἡμέραν παρὰ ταῖς θύραις τοῦ ἀρχείου, καὶ πολλάκις ἀνιστάμενοι πρὸς αὐτὸν οἱ Ἔφοροι διεπυνθάνοντο καὶ συνεβουλεύοντο περὶ τῶν μεγίστων. ἐδόκει γὰρ ἔμφρων ἀνὴρ εἶναι καὶ συνετὸς ἱστορεῖσθαι· διὸ καὶ παντάπασιν ἤδη τὴν τοῦ σώματος ἐξημαυρωμένος δύναμιν καὶ τὰ πολλὰ κλινήρης διημερεύων, μεταπεμπομένων εἰς ἀγορὰν τῶν Ἐφόρων, ὥρμησε μὲν ἐξαναστὰς βαδίζειν, μόλις δὲ καὶ χαλεπῶς προερχόμενος, εἶτα [d] παιδαρίοις ἐντυχὼν καθ’ ὁδόν, ἠρώτησεν, εἴ τι γινώσκουσιν ἀναγκαιότερον ὂν τοῦ πείθεσθαι δεσπότῃ· τῶν δὲ φησάντων “τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι,” τοῦτο τῆς ὑπουργίας λογισάμενος πέρας ἀνέστρεψεν οἴκαδε. δεῖ γὰρ μὴ προαπολείπειν τὴν προθυμίαν τῆς δυνάμεως, ἐγκαταλειφθεῖσαν δὲ μὴ βιάζεσθαι. καὶ μὴν Γαΐῳ Λαιλίῳ Σκιπίων ἐχρῆτο συμβούλῳ στρατηγῶν ἀεὶ καὶ πολιτευόμενος, ὥστε καὶ λέγειν ἐνίους ὑποκριτὴν τῶν πράξεων Σκιπίωνα ποιητὴν δὲ τὸν Γάιον εἶναι. Κικέρων δ’ αὐτὸς ὁμολογεῖ τὰ κάλλιστα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν συμβουλευμάτων, οἷς ὤρθωσεν ὑπατεύων τὴν πατρίδα, μετὰ Ποπλίου Νιγιδίου τοῦ φιλοσόφου συνθεῖναι.

[e] Οὕτω διὰ πολλῶν τρόπων τῆς πολιτείας οὐδὲν ἀποκωλύει τοὺς γέροντας ὠφελεῖν τὸ κοινὸν ἀπὸ τῶν βελτίστων, λόγου καὶ γνώμης καὶ παρρησίας καὶ φροντίδος πινυτῆς, ὡς δὴ ποιηταὶ λέγουσιν. οὐ γὰρ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν οὐδ’ οἱ πόδες, οὐδ’ ἡ τοῦ σώματος ῥώμη κτῆμα καὶ μέρος ἐστὶ τῆς πόλεως μόνον, ἀλλὰ πρῶτον ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς κάλλη, δικαιοσύνη καὶ σωφροσύνη καὶ φρόνησις· ὧν ὀψὲ καὶ βραδέως τὸ οἰκεῖον ἀπολαμβανόντων, ἄτοπόν ἐστι τὴν μὲν οἰκίαν καὶ τὸν ἀγρὸν [f] ἀπολαύειν καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ χρήματα καὶ κτήματα, κοινῇ δὲ τῇ πατρίδι καὶ τοῖς πολίταις μηκέτι χρησίμους εἶναι διὰ τὸν χρόνον, οὐ τοσοῦτον τῶν ὑπηρετικῶν παραιρούμενον δυνάμεων, ὅσον ταῖς ἡγεμονικαῖς καὶ πολιτικαῖς προστίθησι. διὸ καὶ τῶν Ἑρμῶν τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους ἄχειρας καὶ ἄποδας ἐντεταμένους δὲ τοῖς μορίοις δημιουργοῦσιν, αἰνιττόμενοι τῶν γερόντων ἐλάχιστα δεῖσθαι διὰ τοῦ σώματος ἐνεργούντων, ἐὰν τὸν λόγον ἐνεργόν, ὡς προσήκει, καὶ γόνιμον ἔχωσιν.

Praecepta gerendae reipublicae

ΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΑ ΠΑΡΑΓΓΕΛΜΑΤΑ

[798] Εἰ πρὸς ἄλλο τι χρήσασθαι καλῶς ἐστιν ἔχον, ὦ Μενέμαχε, τῷ

οὔτις τοι τὸν μῦθον ὀνόσσεται ὅσσοι Ἀχαιοί,

οὐδὲ πάλιν ἐρέει· ἀτὰρ οὐ τέλος ἵκεο μύθων,

[b] καὶ πρὸς τοὺς προτρεπομένους τῶν φιλοσόφων διδάσκοντας δὲ μηδὲν μηδ’ ὑποτιθεμένους· ὅμοιοι γάρ εἰσι τοῖς τοὺς λύχνους προμύττουσιν ἔλαιον δὲ μὴ ἐγχέουσιν. ὁρῶν οὖν σε παρωρμημένον ἀξίως τῆς εὐγενείας ἐν τῇ πατρίδι

μύθων τε ῥητῆρ’ ἔμεναι πρηκτῆρά τε ἔργων,

ἐπειδὴ χρόνον οὐκ ἔχεις ἀνδρὸς φιλοσόφου βίον ὕπαιθρον ἐν πράξεσι πολιτικαῖς καὶ δημοσίοις ἀγῶσι κατανοῆσαι καὶ γενέσθαι παραδειγμάτων [c] ἔργῳ μὴ λόγῳ περαινομένων θεατής, ἀξιοῖς δὲ παραγγέλματα λαβεῖν πολιτικά, τὴν μὲν ἄρνησιν οὐδαμῶς ἐμαυτῷ προσήκουσαν εἶναι νομίζω, τὸ δ’ ἔργον εὔχομαι καὶ τῆς σῆς ἄξιον σπουδῆς καὶ τῆς ἐμῆς προθυμίας γενέσθαι· τοῖς δὲ παραδείγμασι ποικιλωτέροις, ὥσπερ ἠξίωσας, ἐχρησάμην.

Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ὑποκείσθω πολιτείᾳ καθάπερ

ἔδαφος βέβαιον καὶ ἰσχυρὸν ἡ προαίρεσις ἀρχὴν ἔχουσα κρίσιν καὶ λόγον, ἀλλὰ μὴ πτοίαν ὑπὸ δόξης κενῆς ἢ φιλονεικίας τινὸς ἢ πράξεων ἑτέρων ἀπορίας. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἷς οὐδὲν ἔστιν οἴκοι χρηστόν, ἐν ἀγορᾷ διατρίβουσι, κἂν μὴ δέωνται, τὸν πλεῖστον [d] χρόνον, οὕτως ἔνιοι τῷ μηδὲν ἔχειν ἴδιον ἄλλο πράττειν ἄξιον σπουδῆς ἐμβάλλουσιν ἑαυτοὺς εἰς δημόσια πράγματα, τῇ πολιτείᾳ διαγωγῇ χρώμενοι. πολλοὶ δ’ ἀπὸ τύχης ἁψάμενοι τῶν κοινῶν καὶ ἀναπλησθέντες οὐκέτι ῥᾳδίως ἀπελθεῖν δύνανται, ταὐτὸ τοῖς ἐμβᾶσιν εἰς πλοῖον αἰώρας χάριν εἶτ’ ἀποσπασθεῖσιν εἰς πέλαγος πεπονθότες· ἔξω βλέπουσι ναυτιῶντες καὶ ταραττόμενοι, μένειν δὲ καὶ χρῆσθαι τοῖς παροῦσιν ἀνάγκην ἔχοντες·

λευκᾶς καθύπερθε γαλάνας

εὐπρόσωποι σφᾶς παρήισαν ἔρωτες ναΐας

κλαΐδος χαραξιπόντου δαιμονίαν ἐς ὕβριν.

οὗτοι καὶ μάλιστα διαβάλλουσι τὸ πρᾶγμα τῷ [e] μετανοεῖν καὶ ἀσχάλλειν, ὅταν ἢ δόξαν ἐλπίσαντες ἀδοξίᾳ περιπέσωσιν, ἢ φοβεροὶ προσδοκήσαντες ἑτέροις ἔσεσθαι διὰ δύναμιν εἰς πράγματα κινδύνους ἔχοντα καὶ ταραχὰς ἄγωνται. ὁ δ’ ὡς μάλιστα προσῆκον ἑαυτῷ καὶ κάλλιστον ἔργον ἀπὸ γνώμης καὶ λογισμῷ τὰ κοινὰ πράσσειν ἀρξάμενος ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἐκπλήττεται τούτων οὐδ’ ἀναστρέφεται τὴν γνώμην. οὔτε γὰρ ἐπ’ ἐργασίᾳ καὶ χρηματισμῷ προσιτέον τοῖς κοινοῖς, ὡς οἱ περὶ Στρατοκλέα καὶ Δρομοκλείδην ἐπὶ τὸ χρυσοῦν θέρος, τὸ βῆμα [f] μετὰ παιδιᾶς οὕτως ὀνομάζοντες, ἀλλήλους παρεκάλουν· οὔθ’ οἷον ἐπιλήπτους ὑπὸ πάθους ἄφνω γενομένους, ὡς Γάιος Γράκχος ἐπὶ θερμοῖς τοῖς περὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀτυχήμασιν ἀπωτάτω τῶν κοινῶν τὸν βίον θέμενος, εἶθ’ ὕβρει τινῶν καὶ λοιδορίᾳ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀναφλεχθεὶς ὑπ’ ὀργῆς, ἐνέπεσε τοῖς κοινοῖς· καὶ ταχὺ μὲν ἐπλήσθη πραγμάτων καὶ δόξης, ζητῶν δὲ παύσασθαι καὶ δεόμενος μεταβολῆς καὶ ἡσυχίας [799] [a] οὐχ εὗρε καταθέσθαι τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ διὰ μέγεθος ἀλλὰ προαπώλετο· τούς τε πρὸς ἅμιλλαν ἢ δόξαν ὥσπερ ὑποκριτὰς εἰς θέατρον ἀναπλάττοντας ἑαυτοὺς ἀνάγκη μετανοεῖν, ἢ δουλεύοντας ὧν ἄρχειν ἀξιοῦσιν ἢ προσκρούοντας οἷς ἀρέσκειν ἐθέλουσιν. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ εἰς φρέαρ οἶμαι τὴν πολιτείαν τοὺς μὲν ἐμπίπτοντας αὐτομάτως καὶ παραλόγως ταράττεσθαι καὶ μετανοεῖν, τοὺς δὲ καταβαίνοντας ἐκ παρασκευῆς καὶ λογισμοῦ καθ’ ἡσυχίαν χρῆσθαί τε τοῖς πράγμασι μετρίως καὶ πρὸς μηδὲν δυσκολαίνειν, ἅτε δὴ τὸ καλὸν αὐτὸ καὶ μηδὲν ἄλλο τῶν πράξεων ἔχοντας τέλος.

[b] Οὕτω δὴ τὴν προαίρεσιν ἀπερείσαντας ἐν ἑαυτοῖς καὶ ποιήσαντας ἄτρεπτον καὶ δυσμετάθετον, τρέπεσθαι χρὴ πρὸς κατανόησιν τοῦ ἤθους τῶν πολιτῶν, ὃ μάλιστα συγκραθὲν ἐκ πάντων ἐπιφαίνεται καὶ ἰσχύει. τὸ μὲν γὰρ εὐθὺς αὐτὸν ἐπιχειρεῖν ἠθοποιεῖν καὶ μεθαρμόττειν τοῦ δήμου τὴν φύσιν οὐ ῥᾴδιον οὐδ’ ἀσφαλές, ἀλλὰ καὶ χρόνου δεόμενον πολλοῦ καὶ μεγάλης δυνάμεως. δεῖ δ’, ὥσπερ οἶνος ἐν ἀρχῇ μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν ἠθῶν κρατεῖται τοῦ πίνοντος ἡσυχῆ δὲ διαθάλπων καὶ [c] κατακεραννύμενος αὐτὸς ἠθοποιεῖ τὸν πίνοντα καὶ μεθίστησιν, οὕτω τὸν πολιτικόν, ἕως ἂν ἰσχὺν ἀγωγὸν ἐκ δόξης καὶ πίστεως κατασκευάσηται, τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις ἤθεσιν εὐάρμοστον εἶναι καὶ στοχάζεσθαι τούτων, ἐπιστάμενον οἷς χαίρειν ὁ δῆμος καὶ ὑφ’ ὧν ἄγεσθαι πέφυκεν· οἷον ὁ Ἀθηναίων εὐκίνητός ἐστι πρὸς ὀργήν, εὐμετάθετος πρὸς ἔλεον, μᾶλλον ὀξέως ὑπονοεῖν ἢ διδάσκεσθαι καθ’ ἡσυχίαν βουλόμενος· ὥσπερ τῶν ἀνδρῶν τοῖς ἀδόξοις καὶ ταπεινοῖς βοηθεῖν προθυμότερος, οὕτω τῶν λόγων τοὺς παιγνιώδεις καὶ γελοίους ἀσπάζεται καὶ προτιμᾷ· τοῖς μὲν ἐπαινοῦσιν αὐτὸν μάλιστα χαίρει, τοῖς δὲ σκώπτουσιν ἥκιστα δυσχεραίνει· φοβερός ἐστιν [d] ἄχρι τῶν ἀρχόντων, εἶτα φιλάνθρωπος ἄχρι τῶν πολεμίων. ἕτερον ἦθος τοῦ Καρχηδονίων δήμου, πικρόν, σκυθρωπόν, ὑπήκοον τοῖς ἄρχουσι, βαρὺ τοῖς ὑπηκόοις, ἀγεννέστατον ἐν φόβοις, ἀγριώτατον ἐν ὀργαῖς, ἐπίμονον τοῖς γνωσθεῖσι, πρὸς παιδιὰν καὶ χάριν ἀνήδυντον καὶ σκληρόν· οὐκ ἂν οὗτοι, Κλέωνος ἀξιοῦντος αὐτούς, ἐπεὶ τέθυκε καὶ ξένους ἑστιᾶν μέλλει, τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ὑπερθέσθαι, γελάσαντες ἂν καὶ κροτήσαντες ἀνέστησαν· οὐδ’ Ἀλκιβιάδην ὄρτυγος ἐν τῷ λέγειν διαφυγόντος ἐκ τοῦ ἱματίου, φιλοτίμως συνθηρεύσαντες ἀπέδωκαν [e] ἄν· ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀπέκτειναν ἄν, ὡς ὑβρίζοντας καὶ τρυφῶντας· ὅπου καὶ Ἄννωνα λέοντι χρώμενον σκευοφόρῳ παρὰ τὰς στρατείας αἰτιασάμενοι τυραννικὰ φρονεῖν ἐξήλασαν. οἶμαι δ’ ἂν ἔγωγε μηδὲ Θηβαίους ἀποσχέσθαι γραμμάτων πολεμίων κυρίους γενομένους, ὡς Ἀθηναῖοι Φιλίππου γραμματοφόρους λαβόντες ἐπιστολὴν ἐπιγεγραμμένην Ὀλυμπιάδι κομίζοντας οὐκ ἔλυσαν οὐδ’ ἀπεκάλυψαν ἀπόρρητον ἀνδρὸς ἀποδήμου πρὸς γυναῖκα φιλοφροσύνην· οὐδέ γ’ αὖ πάλιν Ἀθηναίους, Ἐπαμεινώνδου πρὸς τὴν κατηγορίαν ἀπολογεῖσθαι μὴ [f] θέλοντος ἀλλ’ ἀναστάντος ἐκ τοῦ θεάτρου καὶ διὰ τῆς ἐκκλησίας εἰς τὸ γυμνάσιον ἀπιόντος, εὐκόλως ἐνεγκεῖν τὴν ὑπεροψίαν καὶ τὸ φρόνημα τοῦ ἀνδρός· πολλοῦ δ’ ἂν ἔτι καὶ Σπαρτιάτας δεῆσαι τὴν Στρατοκλέους ὕβριν ὑπομεῖναι καὶ βωμολοχίαν, πείσαντος μὲν αὐτοὺς εὐαγγέλια θύειν ὡς νενικηκότας, ἐπεὶ δέ, τῆς ἥττης ἀληθῶς ἀπαγγελθείσης, [800] [a] ἠγανάκτουν, ἐρωτῶντος τὸν δῆμον τί ἠδίκηται, τρεῖς ἡμέρας δι’ αὐτὸν ἡδέως γεγονώς. οἱ μὲν οὖν αὐλικοὶ κόλακες ὥσπερ ὀρνιθοθῆραι μιμούμενοι τῇ φωνῇ καὶ συνεξομοιοῦντες ἑαυτοὺς ὑποδύονται μάλιστα καὶ προσάγουσι δι’ ἀπάτης τοῖς βασιλεῦσι· τῷ δὲ πολιτικῷ μιμεῖσθαι μὲν οὐ προσήκει τοῦ δήμου τὸν τρόπον, ἐπίστασθαι δὲ καὶ χρῆσθαι πρὸς ἕκαστον, οἷς ἁλώσιμός ἐστιν· ἡ γὰρ ἄγνοια τῶν ἠθῶν ἀστοχίας φέρει καὶ διαπτώσεις οὐχ ἥττονας ἐν ταῖς πολιτείαις ἢ ταῖς φιλίαις τῶν βασιλέων.

Τὸ μὲν οὖν τῶν πολιτῶν ἦθος ἰσχύοντα δεῖ καὶ πιστευόμενον ἤδη πειρᾶσθαι ῥυθμίζειν ἀτρέμα [b] πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον ὑπάγοντα καὶ πράως μεταχειριζόμενον· ἐργώδης γὰρ ἡ μετάθεσις τῶν πολλῶν. αὐτὸς δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν θεάτρῳ τὸ λοιπὸν ἀναπεπταμένῳ βιωσόμενος, ἐξάσκει καὶ κατακόσμει τὸν τρόπον· εἰ δὲ μὴ ῥᾴδιον ἀπαλλάξαι παντάπασι τῆς ψυχῆς τὴν κακίαν, ὅσα γοῦν ἐπανθεῖ μάλιστα καὶ προπίπτει τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἀφαιρῶν καὶ κολούων. ἀκούεις γάρ, ὅτι καὶ Θεμιστοκλῆς ἅπτεσθαι τῆς πολιτείας διανοούμενος ἀπέστησε τῶν πότων καὶ τῶν κώμων ἑαυτόν, ἀγρυπνῶν δὲ καὶ νήφων καὶ πεφροντικὼς ἔλεγε πρὸς τοὺς συνήθεις, ὡς οὐκ ἐᾷ καθεύδειν αὐτὸν τὸ Μιλτιάδου τρόπαιον· [c] Περικλῆς δὲ καὶ περὶ τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὴν δίαιταν ἐξήλλαξεν αὑτὸν ἠρέμα βαδίζειν καὶ πράως διαλέγεσθαι καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ἀεὶ συνεστηκὸς ἐπιδείκνυσθαι καὶ τὴν χεῖρα συνέχειν ἐντὸς τῆς περιβολῆς καὶ μίαν ὁδὸν πορεύεσθαι τὴν ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ τὸ βουλευτήριον. οὐ γὰρ εὐμεταχείριστον οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιον ἁλῶναι τὴν σωτήριον ἅλωσιν ὑπὸ τοῦ τυχόντος ὄχλος, ἀλλ’ ἀγαπητόν, εἰ μήτ’ ὄψει μήτε φωνῇ πτυρόμενος ὥσπερ θηρίον ὕποπτον καὶ ποικίλον ἐνδέχοιτο τὴν ἐπιστασίαν. ᾧ τοίνυν οὐδὲ [d] τούτων ἐπιμελητέον ἐστὶ παρέργως, ἦπου τῶν περὶ τὸν βίον καὶ τὸ ἦθος ἀμελητέον ὅπως ᾖ ψόγου καθαρὰ καὶ διαβολῆς ἁπάσης; οὐ γὰρ ὧν λέγουσιν ἐν κοινῷ καὶ πράττουσιν οἱ πολιτευόμενοι μόνον εὐθύνας διδόασιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δεῖπνον αὐτῶν πολυπραγμονεῖται καὶ κοίτη καὶ γάμος καὶ παιδιὰ καὶ σπουδὴ πᾶσα. τί γὰρ δεῖ λέγειν Ἀλκιβιάδην, ὃν περὶ τὰ κοινὰ πάντων ἐνεργότατον ὄντα καὶ στρατηγὸν ἀήττητον ἀπώλεσεν ἡ περὶ τὴν δίαιταν ἀναγωγία καὶ θρασύτης, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀγαθῶν αὐτοῦ τὴν πόλιν ἀνόνητον ἐποίησε διὰ τὴν πολυτέλειαν καὶ τὴν ἀκολασίαν; ὅπου καὶ Κίμωνος οὗτοι [e] τὸν οἶνον, καὶ Ῥωμαῖοι Σκιπίωνος οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἔχοντες λέγειν τὸν ὕπνον ᾐτιῶντο· Πομπήιον δὲ Μάγνον ἐλοιδόρουν οἱ ἐχθροί, παραφυλάξαντες ἑνὶ δακτύλῳ τὴν κεφαλὴν κνώμενον. ὡς γὰρ ἐν προσώπῳ φακὸς καὶ ἀκροχορδὼν δυσχεραίνεται μᾶλλον ἢ στίγματα καὶ κολοβότητες καὶ οὐλαὶ τοῦ λοιποῦ σώματος, οὕτω τὰ μικρὰ φαίνεται μεγάλα τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἐν ἡγεμονικοῖς καὶ πολιτικοῖς ὁρώμενα βίοις διὰ δόξαν, ἣν οἱ πολλοὶ περὶ ἀρχῆς καὶ πολιτείας ἔχουσιν, ὡς πράγματος μεγάλου καὶ καθαρεύειν ἀξίου πάσης ἀτοπίας καὶ πλημμελείας.

[f] εἰκότως οὖν Λιούιος Δροῦσος ὁ δημαγωγὸς εὐδοκίμησεν ὅτι, τῆς οἰκίας αὐτοῦ πολλὰ μέρη κάτοπτα τοῖς γειτνιῶσιν ἐχούσης καὶ τῶν τεχνιτῶν τινος ὑπισχνουμένου ταῦτ’ ἀποστρέψειν καὶ μεταθήσειν ἀπὸ πέντε μόνων ταλάντων, “δέκα,” ἔφη, “λαβὼν ὅλην μου ποίησον καταφανῆ τὴν οἰκίαν, ἵνα πάντες ὁρῶσιν οἱ πολῖται πῶς διαιτῶμαι”· καὶ γὰρ ἦν ἀνὴρ σώφρων καὶ κόσμιος. ἴσως δὲ ταύτης οὐδὲν ἔδει τῆς καταφανείας αὐτῷ· διορῶσι γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ τὰ πάνυ βαθέως περιαμπέχεσθαι δοκοῦντα τῶν πολιτευομένων [801] [a] ἤθη καὶ βουλεύματα καὶ πράξεις καὶ βίους, οὐχ ἧττον ἀπὸ τῶν ἰδίων ἢ τῶν δημοσίων ἐπιτηδευμάτων τὸν μὲν φιλοῦντες καὶ θαυμάζοντες τὸν δὲ δυσχεραίνοντες καὶ καταφρονοῦντες.

Τί οὖν δή; οὐχὶ καὶ τοῖς ἀσελγῶς καὶ τεθρυμμένως ζῶσιν αἱ πόλεις χρῶνται; καὶ γὰρ αἱ κιττῶσαι λίθους καὶ οἱ ναυτιῶντες ἁλμυρίδας καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα βρώματα διώκουσι πολλάκις, εἶτ’ ὀλίγον ὕστερον ἐξέπτυσαν καὶ ἀπεστράφησαν· οὕτω καὶ οἱ δῆμοι διὰ τρυφὴν καὶ ὕβριν ἢ βελτιόνων ἀπορίᾳ δημαγωγῶν [b] χρῶνται τοῖς ἐπιτυχοῦσι βδελυττόμενοι καὶ καταφρονοῦντες, εἶτα χαίρουσι τοιούτων εἰς αὐτοὺς λεγομένων, οἷα Πλάτων ὁ κωμικὸς τὸν Δῆμον αὐτὸν λέγοντα ποιεῖ·

λαβοῦ, λαβοῦ τῆς χειρὸς ὡς τάχιστά μου,

μέλλω στρατηγὸν χειροτονεῖν Ἀγύρριον·

καὶ πάλιν αἰτοῦντα λεκάνην καὶ πτερόν, ὅπως ἐμέσῃ, λέγοντα

προσίσταταί μου πρὸς τὸ βῆμα Μαντίας

καὶ

βόσκει δυσώδη Κέφαλον, ἐχθίστην νόσον.

ὁ δὲ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος, ὑπισχνουμένου τι Κάρβωνος καὶ προστιθέντος ὅρκον δή τινα καὶ ἀράν, ἀντώμοσεν ὁμοῦ μὴ πιστεύειν. ἐν δὲ Λακεδαίμονι [c] τινὸς Δημοσθένους ἀνδρὸς ἀκολάστου γνώμην εἰπόντος ἁρμόζουσαν, ἀπέρριψεν ὁ δῆμος, οἱ δ’ Ἔφοροι κληρώσαντες ἕνα τῶν γερόντων ἐκέλευσαν εἰπεῖν τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον ἐκεῖνον, ὥσπερ εἰς καθαρὸν ἀγγεῖον ἐκ ῥυπαροῦ μετεράσαντες, ὅπως εὐπρόσδεκτος γένηται τοῖς πολλοῖς. οὕτω μεγάλην ἔχει ῥοπὴν ἐν πολιτείᾳ πίστις ἤθους καὶ τοὐναντίον.

Οὐ μὴν ἀμελητέον γε διὰ τοῦτο τῆς περὶ τὸν λόγον κάριτος καὶ δυνάμεως ἐν ἀρετῇ θεμένους τὸ σύμπαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ῥητορικὴν νομίσαντας μὴ δημιουργὸν ἀλλά τοι συνεργὸν εἶναι πειθοῦς, ἐπανορθωτέον τὸ τοῦ Μενάνδρου

τρόπος ἔσθ’ ὁ πείθων τοῦ λέγοντος, οὐ λόγος·

καὶ γὰρ ὁ τρόπος καὶ ὁ λόγος· εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία φήσει τις, ὡς τὸν κυβερνήτην ἄγειν τὸ πλοῖον οὐ τὸ πηδάλιον, [d] καὶ τὸν ἱππέα στρέφειν τὸν ἵππον οὐ τὸν χαλινόν, οὕτω πόλιν πείθειν οὐ λόγῳ, ἀλλὰ τρόπῳ χρωμένην ὥσπερ οἴακι καὶ χαλινῷ τὴν πολιτικὴν ἀρετήν, ᾗπερ εὐστροφώτατον ζῷον, ὥς φησι Πλάτων, οἷον ἐκ πρύμνης ἁπτομένην καὶ κατευθύνουσαν. ὅπου γὰρ οἱ μεγάλοι βασιλεῖς ἐκεῖνοι καὶ διογενεῖς, ὡς Ὅμηρός φησιν, ἁλουργίσι καὶ σκήπτροις καὶ δορυφόροις καὶ θεῶν χρησμοῖς ἐξογκοῦσιν ἑαυτούς, καὶ δουλούμενοι τῇ σεμνότητι τοὺς πολλοὺς ὡς κρείττονες, ὅμως ἐβούλοντο “μύθων ῥητῆρες” εἶναι καὶ οὐκ ἠμέλουν τῆς τοῦ λέγειν χάριτος,

οὐδ’ ἀγορέων, ἵνα τ’ ἄνδρες ἀριπρεπέες τελέθουσιν,

[e] οὐδὲ Διὸς Βουλαίου μόνον ἔχρῃζον οὐδ’ Ἄρεος Ἐνυαλίου καὶ Στρατίας Ἀθηνᾶς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν Καλλιόπην παρεκάλουν

ἣ δὴ βασιλεῦσιν ἅμ’ αἰδοίοισιν ὀπηδεῖ,

πραΰνουσα πειθοῖ καὶ κατᾴδουσα τῶν δήμων τὸ αὔθαδες καὶ βίαιον· ἦ που δυνατὸν ἄνθρωπον ἰδιώτην ἐξ ἱματίου καὶ σχήματος δημοτικοῦ πόλιν ἄγειν βουλόμενον ἐξισχῦσαι καὶ κρατῆσαι τῶν πολλῶν, εἰ μὴ λόγον ἔχοι συμπείθοντα καὶ προσαγόμενον; [f] οἱ μὲν οὖν τὰ πλοῖα κυβερνῶντες ἑτέροις χρῶνται κελευσταῖς, ὁ δὲ πολιτικὸς ἐν ἑαυτῷ μὲν ὀφείλει τὸν κυβερνῶντα νοῦν ἔχειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ δὲ τὸν ἐγκελευόμενον λόγον, ὅπως μὴ δέηται φωνῆς ἀλλοτρίας μηδ’ ὥσπερ Ἰφικράτης ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ Ἀριστοφῶντα καταρρητορευόμενος λέγῃ “βελτίων μὲν ὁ τῶν ἀντιδίκων ὑποκριτὴς δρᾶμα δὲ τοὐμὸν ἄμεινον,” μηδὲ πολλάκις δέηται τῶν Εὐριπιδείων ἐκείνων

εἴθ’ ἦν ἄφωνον σπέρμα δυστήνων βροτῶν·

[802] [a] καὶ

φεῦ φεῦ, τὸ μὴ τὰ πράγματ’ ἀνθρώποις ἔχειν

φωνήν, ἵν’ ἦσαν μηδὲν οἱ δεινοὶ λέγειν.

ταῦτα μὲν γὰρ ἴσως Ἀλκαμένει καὶ Νησιώτῃ καὶ Ἰκτίνῳ καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς βαναύσοις καὶ χειρώναξι τὸ δύνασθαι λέγειν ἀπομνυμένοις δοτέον ἀποδιδράσκειν· ὥσπερ Ἀθήνησιν ἀρχιτεκτόνων ποτὲ δυεῖν ἐξεταζομένων πρὸς δημόσιον ἔργον ὁ μὲν αἱμύλος καὶ κομψὸς εἰπεῖν λόγον τινὰ διελθὼν περὶ τῆς κατασκευῆς μεμελετημένον ἐκίνησε τὸν δῆμον, ὁ [b] δὲ βελτίων τῇ τέχνῃ λέγειν δ’ ἀδύνατος, παρελθὼν εἰς μέσον εἶπεν “ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, ὡς οὗτος εἴρηκεν, ἐγὼ ποιήσω.” τὴν γὰρ Ἐργάνην οὗτοι μόνον θεραπεύουσιν, ὥς φησι Σοφοκλῆς, οἱ “παρ’ ἄκμονι τυπάδι βαρείᾳ” καὶ πληγαῖς ὑπακούουσαν ὕλην ἄψυχον δημιουργοῦντες· ὁ δὲ τῆς Πολιάδος Ἀθηνᾶς καὶ τῆς Βουλαίας Θέμιδος,

ἥ τ’ ἀνδρῶν ἀγορὰς ἠμὲν λύει ἠδὲ καθίζει,

προφήτης, ἑνὶ χρώμενος ὀργάνῳ τῷ λόγῳ τὰ μὲν πλάττων καὶ συναρμόττων, τὰ δ’ ἀντιστατοῦντα πρὸς τὸ ἔργον ὥσπερ ὄζους τινὰς ἐν ξύλῳ καὶ διπλόας ἐν σιδήρῳ μαλάσσων καὶ καταλεαίνων, [c] κοσμεῖ τὴν πόλιν. διὰ τοῦτ’ ἦν ἡ κατὰ Περικλέα πολιτεία “λόγῳ μέν,” ὥς φησι Θουκυδίδης, “δημοκρατία, ἔργῳ δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ πρώτου ἀνδρὸς ἀρχὴ” διὰ τὴν τοῦ λόγου δύναμιν. ἐπεὶ καὶ Κίμων ἀγαθὸς ἦν καὶ Ἐφιάλτης καὶ Θουκυδίδης, ἀλλ’ ἐρωτηθεὶς οὗτος ὑπ’ Ἀρχιδάμου τοῦ βασιλέως τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν πότερον αὐτὸς ἢ Περικλῆς παλαίει βέλτιον “οὐκ ἂν εἰδείη τις” εἶπεν· “ὅταν γὰρ ἐγὼ καταβάλω παλαίων, ἐκεῖνος λέγων μὴ πεπτωκέναι νικᾷ καὶ πείθει τοὺς θεωμένους.” τοῦτο δ’ οὐκ αὐτῷ μόνον ἐκείνῳ δόξαν ἀλλὰ καὶ τῇ πόλει σωτηρίαν ἔφερε· πειθομένη γὰρ αὐτῷ τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν εὐδαιμονίαν ἔσῳζε, τῶν δ’ ἐκτὸς [d] ἀπείχετο. Νικίας δὲ τὴν αὐτὴν προαίρεσιν ἔχων, πειθοῦς δὲ τοιαύτης ἐνδεὴς ὢν καὶ καθάπερ ἀμβλεῖ χαλινῷ τῷ λόγῳ πειρώμενος ἀποστρέφειν τὸν δῆμον, οὐ κατέσχεν οὐδ’ ἐκράτησεν, ἀλλ’ ᾤχετο βίᾳ φερόμενος εἰς Σικελίαν καὶ συνεκτραχηλιζόμενος. τὸν μὲν οὖν λύκον οὔ φασι τῶν ὤτων κρατεῖν, δῆμον δὲ καὶ πόλιν ἐκ τῶν ὤτων ἄγειν δεῖ μάλιστα, μή, καθάπερ ἔνιοι τῶν ἀγυμνάστων περὶ λόγον λαβὰς ἀμούσους καὶ ἀτέχνους ζητοῦντες ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς τῆς γαστρὸς ἕλκουσιν εὐωχοῦντες ἢ τοῦ βαλλαντίου διδόντες, ἢ πυρρίχας τινὰς ἢ μονομάχων θεάματα παρασκευάζοντες ἀεὶ δημαγωγοῦσι, [e] μᾶλλον δὲ δημοκοποῦσι. δημαγωγία γὰρ ἡ διὰ λόγου πειθομένων ἐστίν, αἱ δὲ τοιαῦται τιθασεύσεις τῶν ὄχλων οὐδὲν ἀλόγων ζῴων ἄγρας καὶ βουκολήσεως διαφέρουσιν.

Ὁ μέντοι λόγος ἔστω τοῦ πολιτικοῦ μήτε νεαρὸς καὶ θεατρικός, ὥσπερ πανηγυρίζοντος καὶ στεφανηπλοκοῦντος ἐξ ἁπαλῶν καὶ ἀνθηρῶν ὀνομάτων· μήτ’ αὖ πάλιν, ὡς ὁ Πυθέας τὸν Δημοσθένους ἔλεγεν, ἐλλυχνίων ὄζων καὶ σοφιστικῆς [f] περιεργίας ἐνθυμήμασι πικροῖς καὶ περιόδοις πρὸς κανόνα καὶ διαβήτην ἀπηκριβωμέναις· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ μουσικοὶ τὴν θίξιν ἀξιοῦσι τῶν χορδῶν ἠθικὴν καταφαίνεσθαι μὴ κρουστικήν, οὕτω τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ πολιτευομένου καὶ συμβουλεύοντος καὶ ἄρχοντος ἐπιφαινέσθω μὴ δεινότης μηδὲ πανουργία, μηδ’ εἰς ἔπαινον αὐτοῦ τιθέσθω τὸ ἑκτικῶς ἢ τεχνικῶς ἢ διαιρετικῶς, ἀλλ’ ἤθους ἀπλάστου καὶ φρονήματος ἀληθινοῦ καὶ παρρησίας πατρικῆς καὶ προνοίας καὶ [803] [a] συνέσεως κηδομένης ὁ λόγος ἔστω μεστός, ἐπὶ τῷ καλῷ τὸ κεχαρισμένον ἔχων καὶ ἀγωγὸν ἔκ τε σεμνῶν ὀνομάτων καὶ νοημάτων ἰδίων καὶ πιθανῶν. δέχεται δ’ ὁ πολιτικὸς λόγος δικανικοῦ μᾶλλον καὶ γνωμολογίας καὶ ἱστορίας καὶ μύθους καὶ μεταφοράς, αἷς μάλιστα κινοῦσιν οἱ χρώμενοι μετρίως καὶ κατὰ καιρόν· ὡς ὁ εἰπὼν “μὴ ποιήσητε ἑτερόφθαλμον τὴν Ἑλλάδα,” καὶ Δημάδης τὰ ναυάγια λέγων πολιτεύεσθαι τῆς πόλεως, καὶ Ἀρχίλοχος

μηδ’ ὁ Ταντάλου λίθος

τῆσδ’ ὑπὲρ νήσου κρεμάσθω·

καὶ Περικλῆς τὴν λήμην τοῦ Πειραιῶς ἀφελεῖν κελεύων· καὶ Φωκίων ἐπὶ τῆς Λεωσθένους νίκης [b] καλὸν τὸ στάδιον εἶναι, δεδιέναι δὲ τοῦ πολέμου τὸν δόλιχον. καθόλου δ’ ὁ μὲν ὄγκος καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τῷ πολιτικῷ μᾶλλον ἁρμόττει, παράδειγμα δ’ οἵ τε Φιλιππικοὶ καὶ τῶν Θουκυδίδου δημηγοριῶν ἡ Σθενελαΐδα τοῦ Ἐφόρου καὶ Ἀρχιδάμου τοῦ βασιλέως ἐν Πλαταιαῖς καὶ Περικλέους ἡ μετὰ τὸν λοιμόν· ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν Ἐφόρου καὶ Θεοπόμπου καὶ Ἀναξιμένους ῥητορειῶν καὶ περιόδων, ἃς περαίνουσιν ἐξοπλίσαντες τὰ στρατεύματα καὶ παρατάξαντες, ἔστιν εἰπεῖν

οὐδεὶς σιδήρου ταῦτα μωραίνει πέλας.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ σκῶμμα καὶ γελοῖον ἔστιν ὅτε γίγνεται πολιτικοῦ λόγου μέρος, εἰ μὴ πρὸς [c] ὕβριν ἢ βωμολοχίαν, ἀλλὰ χρησίμως ἐπιπλήττοντος ἢ διασύροντος λέγοιτο. μάλιστα δ’ εὐδοκιμεῖ τὰ τοιαῦτα περὶ τὰς ἀμείψεις καὶ τὰς ἀπαντήσεις· τὸ γὰρ ἐκ παρασκευῆς καὶ κατάρχοντα γελωτοποιοῦντος ἐστι καὶ δόξα κακοηθείας πρόσεστιν, ὡς προσῆν τοῖς Κικέρωνος σκώμμασι καὶ τοῖς Κάτωνος τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου καὶ Εὐξιθέου τοῦ Ἀριστοτέλους συνήθους· οὗτοι γὰρ ἔσκωπτον ἀρχόμενοι πολλάκις. ἀμυνομένῳ δὲ συγγνώμην ἅμα καὶ χάριν ὁ καιρὸς δίδωσι, καθάπερ Δημοσθένει πρὸς τὸν αἰτίαν ἔχοντα [d] κλέπτειν χλευάζοντα δ’ αὐτοῦ τὰς νυκτογραφίας, “οἶδ’ ὅτι σε λυπῶ λύχνον καίων”· καὶ πρὸς Δημάδην βοῶντα Δημοσθένης ἐμὲ βούλεται διορθοῦν “ἡ ὗς τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν,” “αὕτη μέντοι πέρυσιν ἡ Ἀθηνᾶ μοιχεύουσα ἐλήφθη.” χάριεν δὲ καὶ τὸ Ξεναινέτου πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας λοιδοροῦντας αὐτὸν ὅτι στρατηγὸς ὢν πέφευγε, “μεθ’ ὑμῶν γ’, ὦ φίλαι κεφαλαί.” τὸ δ’ ἄγαν φυλακτέον ἐν τῷ γελοίῳ καὶ τὸ λυποῦν ἀκαίρως τοὺς ἀκούοντας ἢ τὸν λέγοντα ποιοῦν ἀγεννῆ καὶ ταπεινόν, ὥσπερ τὰ Δημοκράτους· ἀναβαίνων μὲν γὰρ εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἔφη, καθάπερ ἡ πόλις, μικρὸν ἰσχύειν καὶ μέγα φυσᾶν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς Χαιρωνικοῖς παρελθὼν εἰς τὸν [e] δῆμον, “οὐκ ἂν ἐβουλόμην κακῶς οὕτω πεπραγέναι τὴν πόλιν, ὥστε κἀμοῦ συμβουλεύοντος ὑμᾶς ἀκούειν”· καὶ γὰρ καὶ τοῦτο μικροῦ κἀκεῖνο μανικοῦ, πολιτικῷ δ’ οὐδέτερον ἁρμόττον. Φωκίωνος δὲ καὶ τὴν βραχυλογίαν ἐθαύμαζον· ὁ γοῦν Πολύευκτος ἀπεφαίνετο ῥήτορα μέγιστον εἶναι Δημοσθένην, δεινότατον δ’ εἰπεῖν Φωκίωνα· πλεῖστον γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὸν λόγον ἐν λέξει βραχυτάτῃ νοῦν περιέχειν. καὶ ὁ Δημοσθένης τῶν ἄλλων καταφρονῶν εἰώθει λέγειν, ἀνισταμένου Φωκίωνος, “ἡ τῶν ἐμῶν λόγων κοπὶς ἀνίσταται.”

[f] Μάλιστα μὲν οὖν ἐσκεμμένῳ πειρῶ καὶ μὴ διακένῳ τῷ λόγῳ χρῆσθαι πρὸς τοὺς πολλοὺς μετ’ ἀσφαλείας, εἰδὼς ὅτι καὶ Περικλῆς ἐκεῖνος εὔχετο πρὸ τοῦ δημηγορεῖν μηδὲ ῥῆμα μηδὲν ἀλλότριον τῶν πραγμάτων ἐπελθεῖν αὐτῷ. δεῖ δ’ ὅμως καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἀπαντήσεις τὸν λόγον εὔστροφον ἔχειν [804] [a] καὶ γεγυμνασμένον· ὀξεῖς γὰρ οἱ καιροὶ καὶ πολλὰ φέροντες ἐν ταῖς πολιτείαις αἰφνίδια. διὸ καὶ Δημοσθένης ἠλαττοῦτο πολλῶν, ὥς φασι, παρὰ τὸν καιρὸν ἀναδυόμενος καὶ κατοκνῶν· Ἀλκιβιάδην δ’ ὁ Θεόφραστος ἱστορεῖ, μὴ μόνον ἃ δεῖ λέγειν ἀλλὰ καὶ ὡς δεῖ βουλευόμενον, πολλάκις ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ λέγειν ζητοῦντα καὶ συντιθέντα τὰς λέξεις ἐνίσχεσθαι καὶ διαπίπτειν. ὁ δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῶν ἀνιστάμενος καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν καιρῶν ἐκπλήττει μάλιστα καὶ προσάγεται τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ μετατίθησιν· οἷον ὁ Βυζάντιος Λέων ἧκε δή ποτε τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις στασιάζουσι διαλεξόμενος· ὀφθεὶς δὲ [b] μικρὸς καὶ γελασθεὶς “τί δ’” εἶπεν “εἰ τὴν γυναῖκά μου θεάσαισθε μόλις ἐξικνουμένην πρὸς τὸ γόνυ;” πλείων οὖν ἐγένετο γέλως· “ἀλλ’ ἡμᾶς” ἔφη “μικροὺς οὕτως ὄντας, ὅταν διαφερώμεθα πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἡ Βυζαντίων πόλις οὐ χωρεῖ.” Πυθέας δ’ ὁ ῥήτωρ, ὅτε πρὸς τὰς Ἀλεξάνδρου τιμὰς ἀντέλεγεν, εἰπόντος τινὸς “οὕτω σὺ νέος ὢν περὶ πραγμάτων τολμᾷς λέγειν τηλικούτων;” “καὶ μὴν Ἀλέξανδρος” εἶπεν “ἐμοῦ νεώτερός ἐστιν, ὃν ψηφίζεσθε θεὸν εἶναι.”

Δεῖ δὲ καὶ φωνῆς εὐεξίᾳ καὶ πνεύματος ῥώμῃ πρὸς οὐ φαῦλον ἀλλὰ πάμμαχον ἀγῶνα τὸν τῆς [c] πολιτείας ἠθληκότα κομίζειν τὸν λόγον, ὡς μὴ πολλάκις ἀπαγορεύοντα καὶ σβεννύμενον ὑπερβάλλῃ τις αὐτὸν

ἅρπαξ κεκράκτης, κυκλοβόρου φωνὴν ἔχων.

Κάτων δέ, περὶ ὧν οὐκ ἤλπιζε πείσειν τῷ προκατέχεσθαι χάρισι καὶ σπουδαῖς τὸν δῆμον ἢ τὴν βουλήν, ἔλεγε τὴν ἡμέραν ὅλην ἀναστὰς καὶ τὸν καιρὸν οὕτως ἐξέκρουε. περὶ μὲν οὖν τῆς τοῦ λόγου παρασκευῆς καὶ χρείας ἱκανὰ ταῦτα τῷ δυναμένῳ τὸ ἀκόλουθον προσεξευρίσκειν.

Εἰσβολαὶ δὲ καὶ ὁδοὶ δύο τῆς πολιτείας εἰσίν, ἡ μὲν ταχεῖα καὶ λαμπρὰ πρὸς δόξαν οὐ [d] μὴν ἀκίνδυνος, ἡ δὲ πεζοτέρα καὶ βραδυτέρα τὸ δ’ ἀσφαλὲς ἔχουσα μᾶλλον. οἱ μὲν γὰρ εὐθὺς ὥσπερ ἐξ ἄκρας πελαγίου πράξεως ἐπιφανοῦς καὶ μεγάλης ἐχούσης δὲ τόλμαν ἄραντες ἀφῆκαν ἐπὶ τὴν πολιτείαν, ἡγούμενοι λέγειν ὀρθῶς τὸν Πίνδαρον ὡς

ἀρχομένου δ’ ἔργου πρόσωπον

χρὴ θέμεν τηλαυγές·

καὶ γὰρ δέχονται προθυμότερον οἱ πολλοὶ κόρῳ τινὶ καὶ πλησμονῇ τῶν συνήθων τὸν ἀρχόμενον, ὥσπερ ἀγωνιστὴν θεαταί, καὶ τὸν φθόνον ἐκπλήττουσιν αἱ λαμπρὰν ἔχουσαι καὶ ταχεῖαν αὔξησιν [e] ἀρχαὶ καὶ δυνάμεις. οὔτε γὰρ πῦρ φησιν ὁ Ἀρίστων καπνὸν ποιεῖν οὔτε δόξαν φθόνον, ἢν εὐθὺς ἐκλάμψῃ καὶ ταχέως, ἀλλὰ τῶν κατὰ μικρὸν αὐξανομένων καὶ σχολαίως ἄλλον ἀλλαχόθεν ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι· διὸ πολλοὶ πρὶν ἀνθῆσαι περὶ τὸ βῆμα κατεμαράνθησαν. ὅπου δ’, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τοῦ Λάδα λέγουσιν,

ὁ ψόφος ἦν ὕσπληγος ἐν οὔασιν,

ἔνθα κἀστεφανοῦτο πρεσβεύων ἢ θριαμβεύων ἢ στρατηγῶν ἐπιφανῶς, οὔθ’ οἱ φθονοῦντες οὔθ’ οἱ καταφρονοῦντες ὁμοίως ἐπὶ τοιούτων ἰσχύουσιν. οὕτω παρῆλθεν εἰς δόξαν Ἄρατος, ἀρχὴν ποιησάμενος [f] πολιτείας τὴν Νικοκλέους τοῦ τυράννου κατάλυσιν· οὕτως Ἀλκιβιάδης, τὰ Μαντινικὰ συστήσας ἐπὶ Λακεδαιμονίους. Πομπήιος δὲ καὶ θριαμβεύειν ἠξίου μήπω παριὼν εἰς σύγκλητον· οὐκ ἐῶντος δὲ Σύλλα, “πλείονες” ἔφη “τὸν ἥλιον ἀνατέλλοντα προσκυνοῦσιν ἢ δυόμενον”· καὶ Σύλλας ὑπεῖξε τοῦτ’ ἀκούσας. καὶ Σκιπίωνα δὲ Κορνήλιον οὐκ ἀφ’ ἧς ἔτυχεν ἀρχῆς ὁ Ῥωμαίων δῆμος ἀγορανομίαν μετερχόμενον ἐξαίφνης ὕπατον ἀπέδειξε [805] [a] παρὰ τὸν νόμον, ἀλλὰ θαυμάσας αὐτοῦ μειρακίου μὲν ὄντος τὴν ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ μονομαχίαν καὶ νίκην, μικρὸν δ’ ὕστερον τὰ πρὸς Καρχηδόνι χιλιαρχοῦντος ἔργα, περὶ ὧν καὶ Κάτων ὁ πρεσβύτερος ἀνεφώνησεν

οἶος πέπνυται, τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀίσσουσιν.

νῦν οὖν ὅτε τὰ πράγματα τῶν πόλεων οὐκ ἔχει πολέμων ἡγεμονίας οὐδὲ τυραννίδων καταλύσεις οὐδὲ συμμαχικὰς πράξεις, τίν’ ἄν τις ἀρχὴν ἐπιφανοῦς λάβοι καὶ λαμπρᾶς πολιτείας; αἱ δίκαι τε λείπονται αἱ δημόσιαι καὶ πρεσβεῖαι πρὸς αὐτοκράτορα [b] ἀνδρὸς διαπύρου καὶ θάρσος ἅμα καὶ νοῦν ἔχοντος δεόμεναι. πολλὰ δ’ ἔστι καὶ τῶν παρειμένων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι καλῶν ἀναλαμβάνοντα καὶ τῶν ἐξ ἔθους φαύλου παραδυομένων ἐπ’ αἰσχύνῃ τινὶ τῆς πόλεως ἢ βλάβῃ μεθιστάντα πρὸς αὑτὸν ἐπιστρέφειν. ἤδη δὲ καὶ δίκη μεγάλη καλῶς δικασθεῖσα καὶ πίστις ἐν συνηγορίᾳ πρὸς ἀντίδικον ἰσχυρὸν ὑπὲρ ἀσθενοῦς καὶ παρρησία πρὸς ἡγεμόνα μοχθηρὸν ὑπὲρ τοῦ δικαίου κατέστησεν ἐνίους εἰς ἀρχὴν πολιτείας ἔνδοξον. οὐκ ὀλίγοι δὲ καὶ δι’ ἔχθρας ηὐξήθησαν, ἐπιχειρήσαντες ἀνθρώποις ἐπίφθονον ἔχουσιν ἀξίωμα καὶ φοβερόν· εὐθὺς γὰρ ἡ [c] τοῦ καταλυθέντος ἰσχὺς τῷ κρατήσαντι μετὰ βελτίονος δόξης ὑπάρχει. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀνδρὶ χρηστῷ καὶ δι’ ἀρετὴν πρωτεύοντι προσμάχεσθαι κατὰ φθόνον, ὡς Περικλεῖ Σιμμίας, Ἀλκμέων δὲ Θεμιστοκλεῖ, Πομπηίῳ δὲ Κλώδιος, Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ δὲ Μενεκλείδης ὁ ῥήτωρ, οὔτε πρὸς δόξαν καλὸν οὔτ’ ἄλλως συμφέρον· ὅταν γὰρ ἐξαμαρτόντες οἱ πολλοὶ πρὸς ἄνδρα χρηστόν, εἶθ’ ὃ γίγνεται ταχέως ἐπ’ ὀργῇ μετανοήσωσι, πρὸς τοῦτο τὴν ῥᾴστην ἀπολογίαν δικαιοτάτην νομίζουσιν, ἐπιτρῖψαι τὸν ἀναπείσαντα καὶ καταρξάμενον. τὸ μέντοι φαῦλον ἄνθρωπον, ἀπονοίᾳ δὲ καὶ δεινότητι πεποιημένον [d] ὑφ’ αὑτῷ τὴν πόλιν, οἷος ἦν Κλέων Ἀθήνησι καὶ Κλεοφῶν, ἐπαναστάντα καθελεῖν καὶ ταπεινῶσαι λαμπρὰν ποιεῖται τὴν πάροδον ὥσπερ δράματος τῆς πολιτείας. οὐκ ἀγνοῶ δ’ ὅτι καὶ βουλήν τινες ἐπαχθῆ καὶ ὀλιγαρχικὴν κολούσαντες, ὥσπερ Ἐφιάλτης Ἀθήνησι καὶ Φορμίων παρ’ Ἠλείοις, δύναμιν ἅμα καὶ δόξαν ἔσχον· ἀλλὰ μέγας ἀρχομένῳ πολιτείας οὗτος ὁ κίνδυνός ἐστι. διὸ καὶ βελτίονα Σόλων ἔλαβεν ἀρχήν, διεστώσης ἐς τρία μέρη τῆς [e] πόλεως, τὸ τῶν Διακρίων λεγομένων καὶ τὸ τῶν Πεδιέων καὶ τὸ τῶν Παραλίων· οὐδενὶ γὰρ ἐμμίξας ἑαυτόν, ἀλλὰ κοινὸς ὢν πᾶσι καὶ πάντα λέγων καὶ πράττων πρὸς ὁμόνοιαν ᾑρέθη νομοθέτης ἐπὶ τὰς διαλύσεις καὶ κατέστησεν οὕτω τὴν ἀρχήν. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἐπιφανεστέρα πάροδος εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν τοσαύτας ἔχει καὶ τοιαύτας ἀρχάς.

Τὴν δ’ ἀσφαλῆ καὶ σχολαίαν εἵλοντο πολλοὶ τῶν ἐνδόξων, Ἀριστείδης, Φωκίων, Παμμένης ὁ Θηβαῖος, Λεύκολλος ἐν Ῥώμῃ, Κάτων, Ἀγησίλαος ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος· τούτων γὰρ ἕκαστος, ὥσπερ οἱ κιττοὶ τοῖς ἰσχύουσι τῶν δένδρων περιπλεκόμενοι [f] συνεξανίστανται, προσδραμὼν ἀνδρὶ πρεσβυτέρῳ νέος ἔτι καὶ ἄδοξος ἐνδόξῳ, κατὰ μικρὸν αἰρόμενος ὑπὸ τῆς περὶ ἐκεῖνον δυνάμεως καὶ συναυξανόμενος ἤρεισε καὶ κατερρίζωσεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν. Ἀριστείδην μὲν γὰρ ηὔξησε Κλεισθένης καὶ Φωκίωνα Χαβρίας, Λεύκολλον δὲ Σύλλας, Κάτωνα δὲ Μάξιμος, Ἐπαμεινώνδας δὲ Παμμένη, καὶ Λύσανδρος Ἀγησίλαον· ἀλλ’ οὗτος μὲν ὑπὸ φιλοτιμίας ἀκαίρου καὶ ζηλοτυπίας διὰ δόξαν ὑβρίσας ἀπέρριψε ταχὺ τὸν καθηγεμόνα τῶν πράξεων· οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι καλῶς καὶ πολιτικῶς καὶ ἄχρι τέλους ἐθεράπευσαν [806] [a] καὶ συνεπεκόσμησαν, ὥσπερ τὰ πρὸς ἥλιον ὑφιστάμενα σώματα, τὸ λαμπρῦνον αὑτοὺς πάλιν ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν αὔξοντες καὶ συνεκφωτίζοντες. οἱ γοῦν Σκιπίωνι βασκαίνοντες ὑποκριτὴν αὐτὸν ἀπεφαίνοντο τῶν πράξεων ποιητὴν δὲ Λαίλιον τὸν ἑταῖρον, ὁ δὲ Λαίλιος ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἐπήρθη τούτων ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ διετέλεσε τῇ Σκιπίωνος ἀρετῇ καὶ δόξῃ συμφιλοτιμούμενος. Ἀφράνιος δὲ Πομπηίου φίλος, εἰ καὶ πάνυ ταπεινὸς ἦν, ὅμως ἐπίδοξος ὢν ὕπατος αἱρεθήσεσθαι, [b] Πομπηίου σπουδάζοντος ἑτέροις, ἀπέστη τῆς φιλοτιμίας εἰπὼν οὐκ ἂν οὕτω λαμπρὸν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τὸ τυχεῖν ὑπατείας, ὡς ἀνιαρὸν ἅμα καὶ δυσχερές, εἰ Πομπηίου μὴ θέλοντος μηδὲ συμπράττοντος· ἐνιαυτὸν οὖν ἀνασχόμενος μόνον οὔτε τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀπέτυχε καὶ τὴν φιλίαν διετήρησε. τοῖς δ’ οὕτω χειραγωγουμένοις ὑφ’ ἑτέρων ἐπὶ δόξαν ἅμα συμβαίνει χαρίζεσθαί τε πολλοῖς, κἄν τι συμβαίνῃ δύσκολον, ἧττον ἀπεχθάνεσθαι· διὸ καὶ Φίλιππος Ἀλεξάνδρῳ παρῄνει κτᾶσθαι φίλους, ἕως ἔξεστι, βασιλεύοντος ἑτέρου πρὸς χάριν ὁμιλοῦντα καὶ φιλοφρονούμενον.

Αἱρεῖσθαι δὲ δεῖ τὸν ἀρχόμενον πολιτείας [c] ἡγεμόνα μὴ ἁπλῶς τὸν ἔνδοξον καὶ δυνατόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν δι’ ἀρετὴν τοιοῦτον. ὡς γὰρ οὐ πᾶν δένδρον ἐθέλει προσίεσθαι καὶ φέρειν περιπλεκομένην τὴν ἄμπελον ἀλλ’ ἔνια καταπνίγει καὶ διαφθείρει τὴν αὔξησιν αὐτῆς, οὕτως ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν οἱ μὴ φιλόκαλοι, φιλότιμοι δὲ καὶ φίλαρχοι μόνον, οὐ προΐενται τοῖς νέοις πράξεων ἀφορμάς, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τροφὴν ἑαυτῶν τὴν δόξαν ἀφαιρουμένους πιέζουσιν ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ καταμαραίνουσιν· ὡς Μάριος ἐν Λιβύῃ καὶ πάλιν ἐν Γαλατίᾳ πολλὰ διὰ Σύλλα κατορθώσας ἐπαύσατο χρώμενος, ἀχθεσθεὶς μὲν [d] αὐτοῦ τῇ αὐξήσει, πρόφασιν δὲ τὴν σφραγῖδα ποιησάμενος ἀπέρριψεν· ὁ γὰρ Σύλλας, ὅτε τῷ Μαρίῳ στρατηγοῦντι συνῆν ταμιεύων ἐν Λιβύῃ, πεμφθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πρὸς Βῶκχον ἤγαγεν Ἰογόρθαν αἰχμάλωτον· οἷα δὲ νέος φιλότιμος, ἄρτι δόξης γεγευμένος, οὐκ ἤνεγκε μετρίως τὸ εὐτύχημα, γλυψάμενος δ’ εἰκόνα τῆς πράξεως ἐν σφραγῖδι τὸν Ἰογόρθαν αὐτῷ παραδιδόμενον ἐφόρει· καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐγκαλῶν ὁ Μάριος ἀπέρριψεν αὐτόν· ὁ δὲ πρὸς Κάτουλον καὶ Μέτελλον ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς καὶ Μαρίῳ διαφόρους μεταστὰς ταχὺ τὸν Μάριον ἐξήλασε καὶ κατέλυσε τῷ ἐμφυλίῳ πολέμῳ μικροῦ [e] δεήσαντα τὴν Ῥώμην ἀνατρέψαι. Σύλλας μέντοι καὶ Πομπήιον ἐκ νέου μὲν ἦρεν ὑπεξανιστάμενος αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποκαλυπτόμενος ἐπιόντι, καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις νέοις πράξεων ἡγεμονικῶν μεταδιδοὺς ἀφορμάς, ἐνίους δὲ καὶ παροξύνων ἄκοντας, ἐνέπλησε φιλοτιμίας καὶ ζήλου τὰ στρατεύματα· καὶ πάντων ἐκράτησε βουλόμενος εἶναι μὴ μόνος ἀλλὰ πρῶτος καὶ μέγιστος ἐν πολλοῖς καὶ μεγάλοις. τούτων οὖν ἔχεσθαι δεῖ τῶν ἀνδρῶν καὶ τούτοις ἐμφύεσθαι, μή, καθάπερ ὁ Αἰσώπου βασιλίσκος [f] ἐπὶ τῶν ὤμων τοῦ ἀετοῦ κομισθεὶς αἰφνίδιον ἐξέπτη καὶ προέφθασεν, οὕτω τὴν ἐκείνων δόξαν ὑφαρπάζοντας αὐτοὺς ἀλλὰ παρ’ ἐκείνων ἅμα μετ’ εὐνοίας καὶ φιλίας λαμβάνοντας, ὡς οὐδ’ ἄρξαι καλῶς τοὺς μὴ πρότερον ὀρθῶς δουλεύσαντας, ᾗ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, δυναμένους.

Ἕπεται δὲ τούτοις ἡ περὶ φίλων κρίσις, μήτε τὴν Θεμιστοκλέους ἐπαινοῦσα μήτε τὴν Κλέωνος διάνοιαν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Κλέων, ὅτε πρῶτον ἔγνω τῆς πολιτείας ἅπτεσθαι, τοὺς φίλους συναγαγὼν εἰς ταὐτὸ διελύσατο τὴν φιλίαν πρὸς αὐτούς, ὡς πολλὰ τῆς ὀρθῆς καὶ δικαίας προαιρέσεως μαλάσσουσαν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ παράγουσαν· ἄμεινον δ’ ἂν ἐποίησε τὴν φιλοπλουτίαν ἐκβαλὼν [807] [a] τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τὴν φιλονεικίαν καὶ φθόνου καὶ κακοηθείας καθήρας αὑτόν· οὐ γὰρ ἀφίλων αἱ πόλεις ἀνδρῶν καὶ ἀνεταίρων ἀλλὰ χρηστῶν καὶ σωφρόνων δέονται· νυνὶ δὲ τοὺς μὲν φίλους ἀπήλασεν,

ἑκατὸν δὲ κύκλῳ κεφαλαὶ κολάκων οἰμωξομένων ἐλιχμῶντο

περὶ αὐτόν, ὡς οἱ κωμικοὶ λέγουσι· καὶ τραχὺς ὢν πρὸς τοὺς ἐπιεικεῖς καὶ βαρὺς αὖθις ὑπέβαλλε τοῖς πολλοῖς πρὸς χάριν ἑαυτόν,

γερονταγωγῶν κἀναμισθαρνεῖν διδούς,

καὶ τὸ φαυλότατον καὶ τὸ νοσοῦν μάλιστα τοῦ δήμου προσεταιριζόμενος ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀρίστους. ὁ δὲ Θεμιστοκλῆς πάλιν πρὸς τὸν ἀποφηνάμενον, ὡς ἄρξει καλῶς ἴσον ἅπασι παρέχων ἑαυτόν, [b] “μηδέποτ’,” εἶπεν, “εἰς τοιοῦτον ἐγὼ καθίσαιμι θρόνον, ἐν ᾧ πλέον οὐχ ἕξουσιν οἱ φίλοι παρ’ ἐμοῦ τῶν μὴ φίλων,” οὐδ’ οὗτος ὀρθῶς τῇ φιλίᾳ κατεπαγγελλόμενος τὴν πολιτείαν καὶ τὰ κοινὰ καὶ δημόσια ταῖς ἰδίαις χάρισι καὶ σπουδαῖς ὑφιέμενος. καίτοι πρός γε Σιμωνίδην ἀξιοῦντά τι τῶν μὴ δικαίων “οὔτε ποιητής,” ἔφη, “σπουδαῖός ἐστιν ᾄδων παρὰ μέλος οὔτ’ ἄρχων ἐπιεικὴς παρὰ τὸν νόμον χαριζόμενος.” δεινὸν γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ σχέτλιον, εἰ ναύτας μὲν ἐκλέγεται κυβερνήτης καὶ κυβερνήτην ναύκληρος

[c] εὖ μὲν ἐνὶ πρύμνῃ οἰήιον, εὖ δὲ κεραίην

εἰδότας ἐντείνασθαι ἐπορνυμένου ἀνέμοιο·

καί τις ἀρχιτέκτων ὑπουργοὺς καὶ χειροτέχνας, οἳ μὴ διαφθεροῦσιν αὐτοῦ τοὔργον ἀλλ’ ἄριστα συνεκπονήσουσιν· ὁ δὲ πολιτικός, ἀριστοτέχνας τις ὢν κατὰ Πίνδαρον καὶ δημιουργὸς εὐνομίας καὶ δίκης, οὐκ εὐθὺς αἱρήσεται φίλους ὁμοιοπαθεῖς καὶ ὑπηρέτας καὶ συνενθουσιῶντας αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸ καλόν, ἀλλ’ ἄλλους πρὸς ἄλλην ἀεὶ χρείαν [d] κάμπτοντας αὐτὸν ἀδίκως καὶ βιαίως· οὐδέν τ’ ὀφθήσεται διαφέρων οἰκοδόμου τινὸς ἢ τέκτονος ἀπειρίᾳ καὶ πλημμελείᾳ γωνίαις χρωμένου καὶ κανόσι καὶ στάθμαις, ὑφ’ ὧν διαστρέφεσθαι τοὔργον ἔμελλεν· ὄργανα γὰρ οἱ φίλοι ζῶντα καὶ φρονοῦντα τῶν πολιτικῶν ἀνδρῶν εἰσι, καὶ οὐ δεῖ συνολισθάνειν αὐτοῖς παραβαίνουσιν, ἀλλὰ προσέχειν ὅπως μηδ’ ἀγνοούντων αὐτῶν ἐξαμαρτάνωσι. τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ Σόλωνα κατῄσχυνε καὶ διέβαλε πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας· ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐν νῷ λαβὼν τὰ [e] ὀφλήματα κουφίσαι καὶ τὴν σεισάχθειαν (τοῦτο δ’ ἦν ὑποκόρισμα χρεῶν ἀποκοπῆς) εἰσενεγκεῖν ἐκοινώσατο τοῖς φίλοις· οἱ δ’ ἔργον ἀδικώτατον ἔπραξαν· ἐδανείσαντο γὰρ ὑποφθάσαντες ἀργύριον πολὺ καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγον χρόνον εἰς φῶς τοῦ νόμου προαχθέντος οἱ μὲν ἐφάνησαν οἰκίας τε λαμπρὰς καὶ γῆν συνεωνημένοι πολλὴν ἐξ ὧν ἐδανείσαντο χρημάτων, ὁ δὲ Σόλων αἰτίαν ἔσχε συναδικεῖν ἠδικημένος. Ἀγησίλαος δὲ περὶ τὰς τῶν φίλων σπουδὰς αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ γιγνόμενος ἀσθενέστατος καὶ ταπεινότατος ὥσπερ ὁ Εὐριπίδου Πήγασος

ἔπτηξ’ ὑπείκων μᾶλλον εἰ μᾶλλον θέλοι,

καὶ ταῖς ἀτυχίαις προθυμότερον βοηθῶν τοῦ δέοντος [f] ἐδόκει συνεξομοιοῦσθαι ταῖς ἀδικίαις· καὶ γάρ τοι Φοιβίδαν κρινόμενον ἔσωσεν ἐπὶ τῷ τὴν Καδμείαν καταλαβεῖν ἄνευ προστάγματος, φήσας τὰ τοιαῦτα δεῖν αὐτοματίζειν· καὶ Σφοδρίαν ἐπ’ ἔργῳ παρανόμῳ καὶ δεινῷ φεύγοντα δίκην (ἐνέβαλε γὰρ εἰς τὴν Ἀττικὴν φίλων ὄντων καὶ συμμάχων) ἀφεθῆναι διεπράξατο, δεήσεσιν ἐρωτικαῖς τοῦ παιδὸς μαλαχθείς· καὶ πρός τινα δυνάστην ἐπιστόλιον αὐτοῦ [808] [a] τοιοῦτον φέρεται “Νικίαν, εἰ μὲν οὐκ ἀδικεῖ, ἄφες· εἰ δ’ ἀδικεῖ, ἐμοὶ ἄφες· πάντως δ’ ἄφες.” ἀλλὰ Φωκίων οὐδὲ τῷ γαμβρῷ Χαρίκλῳ δίκην ἔχοντι περὶ τῶν Ἁρπαλείων συνεισῆλθεν, ἀλλ’ “ἐγώ σε,” φήσας, “ἐπὶ πᾶσι τοῖς δικαίοις ἐποιησάμην κηδεστήν,” ᾤχετ’ ἀπιών. καὶ Τιμολέων ὁ Κορίνθιος τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἐπεὶ διδάσκων καὶ δεόμενος οὐκ ἀπέστησε τῆς τυραννίδος, συνέπραξε τοῖς ἀνελοῦσι. δεῖ γὰρ οὐκ ἄχρι τοῦ βωμοῦ φίλον εἶναι τῷ μὴ [b] συνεπιορκεῖν, ὥς ποτε Περικλῆς εἶπεν, ἀλλ’ ἄχρι παντὸς νόμου καὶ δικαίου καὶ συμφέροντος, ὃ παροφθὲν εἴς τινα μεγάλην βλάβην ἀναφέρει καὶ κοινήν, ὡς ἀνέφερε τὸ μὴ δοῦναι δίκην Σφοδρίαν μηδὲ Φοιβίδαν· οὗτοι γὰρ οὐχ ἥκιστα τὴν Σπάρτην ἐνέβαλον εἰς τὸν Λευκτρικὸν πόλεμον. ἐπεὶ τοῖς γε μετρίοις ἁμαρτήμασι τῶν φίλων ἐπεμβαίνειν βαρὺν ὁ πολιτικὸς οὐκ ἀναγκάζει λόγος, ἀλλὰ καὶ δίδωσιν εἰς ἀσφαλὲς θεμένους τὰ μέγιστα τῶν κοινῶν ἐκ περιουσίας βοηθεῖν τοῖς φίλοις καὶ παρίστασθαι καὶ συνεκπονεῖν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν. εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ χάριτες ἀνεπίφθονοι, συλλαβέσθαι πρὸς ἀρχὴν τῷ φίλῳ μᾶλλον, ἐγχειρίσαι τινὰ διοίκησιν ἔνδοξον ἢ πρεσβείαν [c] φιλάνθρωπον, οἷον ἡγεμόνος τιμὰς ἔχουσαν, ἢ πρὸς πόλιν ὑπὲρ φιλίας καὶ ὁμονοίας ἔντευξιν· ἂν δ’ ᾖ τις ἐργώδης ἐπιφανὴς δὲ καὶ μεγάλη πρᾶξις, αὑτὸν ἐπὶ ταύτην τάξαντα πρῶτον εἶτα προσελέσθαι τὸν φίλον, ὡς ὁ Διομήδης

εἰ μὲν δὴ ἕταρόν γε κελεύετέ μ’ αὐτὸν ἑλέσθαι,

πῶς ἂν ἔπειτ’ Ὀδυσῆος ἐγὼ θείοιο λαθοίμην;

κἀκεῖνος αὖ πάλιν ἀνταποδίδωσιν οἰκείως τὸν ἔπαινον

ἵπποι δ’ οἵδε, γεραιέ, νεήλυδες, οὓς ἐρεείνεις,

Θρηίκιοι, τὸν δέ σφιν ἄνακτ’ ἀγαθὸς Διομήδης

ἔκτανε, πὰρ δ’ ἑτάρους δυοκαίδεκα πάντας ἀρίστους.

αὕτη γὰρ ἡ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ὕφεσις οὐχ ἧττον [d] ἐπικοσμεῖ τῶν ἐπαινουμένων τοὺς ἐπαινοῦντας· ἡ δ’ αὐθάδεια, φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων, ἐρημίᾳ σύνοικος. ἔτι τοίνυν ταῖς καλαῖς καὶ φιλανθρώποις χάρισι δεῖ τοὺς φίλους συνεισποιεῖν καὶ κελεύειν τοὺς εὖ παθόντας ἐκείνους ἐπαινεῖν καὶ ἀγαπᾶν, ὡς αἰτίους ἅμα καὶ συμβούλους γεγενημένους· τὰς δὲ φαύλας καὶ ἀτόπους ἀξιώσεις ἀποτρίβεσθαι μὴ πικρῶς ἀλλὰ πράως, διδάσκοντα καὶ παραμυθούμενον ὡς οὐκ [e] ἄξιαι τῆς ἐκείνων ἀρετῆς εἰσι καὶ δόξης. ἄριστα δ’ ἀνθρώπων ὁ Ἐπαμεινώνδας, ἀρνησάμενος δεηθέντι τῷ Πελοπίδᾳ τὸν κάπηλον ἐκ τῆς εἱρκτῆς ἀφεῖναι καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγον τῆς ἐρωμένης δεηθείσης ἀφείς, “τοιαύτας,” ἔφη, “χάριτας, ὦ Πελοπίδα, λαμβάνειν ἑταιριδίοις οὐ στρατηγοῖς πρέπον ἐστίν.” ὁ δὲ Κάτων βαρέως καὶ αὐθάδως, ἐπεὶ Κάτλος ὁ τιμητής, φίλος ὢν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα καὶ συνήθης, ἐξῃτεῖτό τινα τῶν κρινομένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ ταμιεύοντος “αἰσχρόν ἐστιν,” ἔφη, “σὲ τὸν ὀφείλοντα τοὺς νέους ἡμᾶς σωφρονίζειν ὑπὸ τῶν ἡμετέρων ὑπηρετῶν ἐκβάλλεσθαι.” τῷ γὰρ ἔργῳ τὴν χάριν [f] ἐξῆν ἀπειπάμενον ἀφελεῖν τοῦ λόγου τὴν τραχύτητα καὶ πικρίαν, ὡς μηδὲ τῇ πράξει τὸ λυπηρὸν ἑκουσίως ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαίως ἐπιφέροντα διὰ τὸν νόμον καὶ τὸ δίκαιον. εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ πρὸς χρηματισμὸν οὐκ ἀγεννεῖς ἐν πολιτείᾳ τοῖς δεομένοις τῶν φίλων αἱ συλλήψεις· οἷον ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς, μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἰδὼν νεκρὸν στρεπτὰ χρυσᾶ καὶ μανιάκην περικείμενον αὐτὸς μὲν παρῆλθεν, ἐπιστραφεὶς δὲ πρὸς τὸν φίλον “ἀνελοῦ ταῦτ’” εἶπεν, “οὐ γὰρ καὶ [809] [a] σὺ Θεμιστοκλῆς γέγονας.” δίδωσι γὰρ καὶ τοῦτο πολλάκις τῷ πολιτικῷ τὰ πράγματα πρὸς τοὺς φίλους. οὐ γὰρ δὴ Μενέμαχοι πάντες εἰσί· τῷ μὲν ἐγχείρισον συνηγορίαν ἔμμισθον ὑπὲρ τοῦ δικαίου, τῷ δὲ σύστησον πλούσιον ἐπιμελείας καὶ προστασίας δεόμενον· ἄλλῳ δ’ εἰς ἐργολαβίαν τινὰ σύμπραξον ἢ μίσθωσιν ὠφελείας ἔχουσαν. Ἐπαμεινώνδας δὲ καὶ πλουσίῳ τινὶ προσελθόντα φίλον αἰτεῖν ἐκέλευσε τάλαντον, ὡς αὐτοῦ δοῦναι κελεύσαντος· ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ αἰτηθεὶς ἐλθὼν ἐπυνθάνετο τὴν αἰτίαν, “ὅτι χρηστός,” εἶπεν, “οὗτος ὢν πένης ἐστί, σὺ δὲ πλουτεῖς πολλὰ τῆς πόλεως νενοσφισμένος.”

[b] καὶ τὸν Ἀγησίλαον ὁ Ξενοφῶν ἀγάλλεσθαί φησι πλουτίζοντα τοὺς φίλους, αὐτὸν ὄντα κρείττονα χρημάτων.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ “πάσαις κορυδαλλίσι” κατὰ Σιμωνίδην “χρὴ λόφον ἐγγενέσθαι” καὶ πᾶσα πολιτεία φέρει τινὰς ἔχθρας καὶ διαφοράς, οὐχ ἥκιστα προσήκει καὶ περὶ τούτων ἐσκέφθαι τὸν πολιτικόν. οἱ μὲν οὖν πολλοὶ τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα καὶ τὸν Ἀριστείδην ἐπαινοῦσιν ἐπὶ τῶν ὅρων τὴν ἔχθραν ἀποτιθεμένους, ὁσάκις ἐπὶ πρεσβείαν ἢ στρατηγίαν ἐξίοιεν, εἶτα πάλιν ἀναλαμβάνοντας. ἐνίοις δὲ καὶ τὸ Κρητίνου τοῦ Μάγνητος ὑπερφυῶς [c] ἀρέσκει· Ἑρμείᾳ γὰρ ἀντιπολιτευόμενος ἀνδρὶ οὐ δυνατῷ μὲν φιλοτίμῳ δὲ καὶ λαμπρῷ τὴν ψυχήν, ἐπεὶ κατέσχεν ὁ Μιθριδατικὸς πόλεμος, τὴν πόλιν ὁρῶν κινδυνεύουσαν ἐκέλευσε τὸν Ἑρμείαν τὴν ἀρχὴν παραλαβόντα χρῆσθαι τοῖς πράγμασιν, αὐτοῦ μεταστάντος· εἰ δὲ βούλεται στρατηγεῖν ἐκεῖνον, αὐτὸν ἐκποδὼν ἀπελθεῖν, ὡς μὴ φιλοτιμούμενοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀπολέσειαν τὴν πόλιν. ἤρεσεν ἡ πρόκλησις τῷ Ἑρμείᾳ, καὶ φήσας ἑαυτοῦ πολεμικώτερον εἶναι τὸν Κρητίναν ὑπεξῆλθε μετὰ παίδων καὶ γυναικός. ὁ δὲ Κρητίνας ἐκεῖνόν τε προύπεμψε, τῶν ἰδίων χρημάτων ἐπιδοὺς ὅσα [d] φεύγουσιν ἦν ἢ πολιορκουμένοις χρησιμώτερα, καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἄριστα στρατηγήσας παρ’ οὐδὲν ἐλθοῦσαν ἀπολέσθαι περιεποίησεν ἀνελπίστως. εἰ γὰρ εὐγενὲς καὶ φρονήματος μεγάλου τὸ ἀναφωνῆσαι

φιλῶ τέκν’, ἀλλὰ πατρίδ’ ἐμὴν μᾶλλον φιλῶ,

πῶς οὐκ ἐκείνοις γε προχειρότερον εἰπεῖν ἑκάστῳ “μισῶ τὸν δεῖνα καὶ βούλομαι ποιῆσαι κακῶς, ἀλλὰ πατρίδ’ ἐμὴν μᾶλλον φιλῶ”; τὸ γὰρ μὴ θέλειν διαλυθῆναι πρὸς ἐχθρόν, ὧν ἕνεκα δεῖ καὶ φίλον προέσθαι, δεινῶς ἄγριον καὶ θηριῶδες. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ βέλτιον οἱ περὶ Φωκίωνα καὶ Κάτωνα, μηδ’ ὅλως ἔχθραν τινὰ πρὸς πολιτικὰς τιθέμενοι [e] διαφοράς, ἀλλὰ δεινοὶ καὶ ἀπαραίτητοι μόνον ἐν τοῖς δημοσίοις ἀγῶσιν ὄντες μὴ προέσθαι τὸ συμφέρον, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀμηνίτως καὶ φιλανθρώπως χρώμενοι τοῖς ἐκεῖ διαφερομένοις. δεῖ γὰρ ἐχθρὸν μηδένα πολίτην νομίζειν, ἂν μή τις, οἷος Ἀριστίων ἢ Νάβις ἢ Κατιλίνας, νόσημα καὶ ἀπόστημα πόλεως ἐγγένηται· τοὺς δ’ ἄλλως ἀπᾴδοντας ὥσπερ ἁρμονικὸν ἐπιτείνοντα καὶ χαλῶντα πράως εἰς τὸ ἐμμελὲς ἄγειν, μὴ τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι σὺν ὀργῇ καὶ πρὸς ὕβριν ἐπιφυόμενον, ἀλλ’ ὡς Ὅμηρος ἠθικώτερον·

[f] ὦ πέπον, ἦ τ’ ἐφάμην σε περὶ φρένας ἔμμεναι ἄλλων

καὶ

οἶσθα καὶ ἄλλον μῦθον ἀμείνονα τοῦδε νοῆσαι.

ἄν τέ τι χρηστὸν εἴπωσιν ἢ πράξωσι, μὴ τιμαῖς ἀχθόμενον αὐτῶν μηδὲ λόγων εὐφήμων ἐπὶ καλοῖς ἔργοις φειδόμενον· οὕτω γὰρ ὅ τε ψόγος ὅπου δεῖ πίστιν ἕξει, καὶ πρὸς τὴν κακίαν διαβαλοῦμεν αὐτοὺς αὔξοντες τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ ταῦτα παραβάλλοντες ἐκείνοις ὡς ἄξια καὶ πρέποντα μᾶλλον.

[810] [a] ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ μαρτυρεῖν ἀξιῶ τὰ δίκαια καὶ τοῖς διαφόροις τὸν πολιτικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ βοηθεῖν κρινομένοις πρὸς τοὺς συκοφάντας καὶ ταῖς διαβολαῖς ἀπιστεῖν, ἂν ὦσιν ἀλλότριαι τῆς προαιρέσεως αὐτῶν· ὥσπερ ὁ Νέρων ἐκεῖνος ὀλίγον ἔμπροσθεν ἢ κτεῖναι τὸν Θρασέαν μάλιστα μισῶν καὶ φοβούμενος, ὅμως ἐγκαλοῦντός τινος ὡς κακῶς κεκριμένου καὶ ἀδίκως, “ἐβουλόμην ἄν,” ἔφη, “Θρασέαν οὕτως ἐμὲ φιλεῖν, ὡς δικαστὴς ἄριστός ἐστιν.”

Οὐ χεῖρον δὲ καὶ πρὸς ἐπίπληξιν ἑτέρων φύσει πονηρῶν καὶ μᾶλλον ἁμαρτανόντων ἐχθροῦ μνησθέντα κομψοτέρου τὸ ἦθος εἰπεῖν “ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος [b] οὐκ ἂν τοῦτ’ εἶπεν οὐδ’ ἐποίησεν.” ὑπομνηστέον δὲ καὶ πατέρων ἀγαθῶν ἐνίους, ὅταν ἐξαμαρτάνωσιν· οἷον Ὅμηρος

ἦ ὀλίγον οἷ παῖδα ἐοικότα γείνατο Τυδεύς·

καὶ πρὸς Σκιπίωνα τὸν Ἀφρικανὸν Ἄππιος ἐν ἀρχαιρεσίαις διαγωνιζόμενος “ἡλίκον ἄν,” εἶπεν, “ὦ Παῦλε, στενάξειας ὑπὸ γῆς, αἰσθόμενος ὅτι σου τὸν υἱὸν ἐπὶ τιμητικὴν ἀρχὴν καταβαίνοντα Φιλόνικος ὁ τελώνης δορυφορεῖ.” τὰ γὰρ τοιαῦτα νουθετεῖ τοὺς ἁμαρτάνοντας ἅμα καὶ κοσμεῖ τοὺς νουθετοῦντας. πολιτικῶς δὲ καὶ ὁ Νέστωρ ὁ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους ἀποκρίνεται λοιδορούμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ Αἴαντος

[c] οὐ μέμφομαί σε· δρῶν γὰρ εὖ κακῶς λέγεις.

καὶ Κάτων διενεχθεὶς πρὸς τὸν Πομπήιον ἐν οἷς ἐβιάζετο τὴν πόλιν μετὰ Καίσαρος, ἐπεὶ κατέστησαν εἰς πόλεμον, ἐκέλευσε Πομπηίῳ παραδοῦναι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, ἐπειπὼν ὅτι τῶν αὐτῶν ἐστι καὶ ποιεῖν τὰ μεγάλα κακὰ καὶ παύειν. ὁ γὰρ μεμιγμένος ἐπαίνῳ ψόγος οὐκ ἔχων ὕβριν ἀλλὰ παρρησίαν, οὐδὲ θυμὸν ἀλλὰ δηγμὸν ἐμποιῶν καὶ μετάνοιαν, εὐμενὴς φαίνεται καὶ θεραπευτικός· αἱ δὲ λοιδορίαι τοῖς πολιτικοῖς ἥκιστα πρέπουσιν. ὅρα δὲ τὰ πρὸς Αἰσχίνην ὑπὸ Δημοσθένους εἰρημένα καὶ τὰ πρὸς τοῦτον ὑπ’ Αἰσχίνου, καὶ πάλιν ἃ πρὸς Δημάδην γέγραφεν Ὑπερείδης, εἰ Σόλων [d] ἂν εἶπεν ἢ Περικλῆς ἢ Λυκοῦργος ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος ἢ Πιττακὸς ὁ Λέσβιος. καίτοι γε καὶ Δημοσθένης ἐν τῷ δικανικῷ τὸ λοίδορον ἔχει μόνον, οἱ δὲ Φιλιππικοὶ καθαρεύουσι καὶ σκώμματος καὶ βωμολοχίας ἁπάσης· τὰ γὰρ τοιαῦτα τῶν ἀκουόντων μᾶλλον αἰσχύνει τοὺς λέγοντας, ἔτι δὲ καὶ σύγχυσιν ἀπεργάζεται τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ διαταράττει τὰ βουλευτήρια καὶ τὰς ἐκκλησίας. ὅθεν ἄρισθ’ ὁ Φωκίων ὑπεκστὰς τῷ λοιδοροῦντι καὶ παυσάμενος τοῦ λέγειν, ἐπεὶ μόλις ἐσιώπησεν ὁ ἄνθρωπος, αὖθις παρελθὼν “οὐκοῦν,” ἔφη, “περὶ μὲν τῶν ἱππέων καὶ τῶν ὁπλιτῶν ἀκηκόατε, λείπεται δέ μοι περὶ [e] τῶν ψιλῶν καὶ πελταστῶν διελθεῖν.” ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ πολλοῖς γε δυσκάθεκτόν ἐστι τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ πολλάκις οὐκ ἀχρήστως οἱ λοιδοροῦντες ἐπιστομίζονται ταῖς ἀπαντήσεσιν, ἔστω βραχεῖα τῇ λέξει καὶ μὴ θυμὸν ἐμφαίνουσα μηδ’ ἀκραχολίαν, ἀλλὰ πραότητα μετὰ παιδιᾶς καὶ χάριτος ἁμωσγέπως δάκνουσαν· αἱ δ’ ἀντεπιστρέφουσαι μάλιστα τοιαῦται. καθάπερ γὰρ τῶν βελῶν ὅσα πρὸς τὸν βαλόντα φέρεται πάλιν ῥώμῃ τινὶ δοκεῖ καὶ στερεότητι [f] τοῦ πληγέντος ἀνακρουόμενα τοῦτο πάσχειν· οὕτω τὸ λεχθὲν ὑπὸ ῥώμης καὶ συνέσεως τοῦ λοιδορηθέντος ἐπὶ τοὺς λοιδορήσαντας ἀναστρέφειν ἔοικεν· ὡς τὸ Ἐπαμεινώνδου πρὸς Καλλίστρατον, ὀνειδίζοντα Θηβαίοις καὶ Ἀργείοις τὴν Οἰδίποδος πατροκτονίαν καὶ τὴν Ὀρέστου μητροκτονίαν, ὅτι “τοὺς ταῦτα ποιήσαντας ἡμῶν ἐκβαλόντων ὑμεῖς ἐδέξασθε”· καὶ τὸ Ἀνταλκίδου τοῦ Σπαρτιάτου πρὸς τὸν Ἀθηναῖον τὸν φήσαντα “πολλάκις ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ Κηφισοῦ ἐδιώξαμεν,” “ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς [811] [a] γ’ ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ Εὐρώτα οὐδέποτε.” χαριέντως δὲ καὶ ὁ Φωκίων, τοῦ Δημάδου κεκραγότος “Ἀθηναῖοί σε ἀποκτενοῦσιν”· “ἄν γε μανῶσιν,” ἔφη, “σὲ δέ, ἂν σωφρονῶσι.” καὶ Κράσσος ὁ ῥήτωρ, Δομιτίου πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος “οὐ σὺ μυραίνης ἐν κολυμβήθρᾳ σοι τρεφομένης εἶτ’ ἀποθανούσης ἔκλαυσας;” ἀντηρώτησεν “οὐ σὺ τρεῖς γυναῖκας ἔθαψας καὶ οὐκ ἐδάκρυσας;” ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔχει τινὰ χρείαν καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἄλλον βίον.

Πολιτείας δ’ οἱ μὲν εἰς ἅπαν ἐνδύονται μέρος, ὥσπερ ὁ Κάτων, οὐδεμιᾶς ἀξιοῦντες εἰς [b] δύναμιν ἀπολείπεσθαι φροντίδος οὐδ’ ἐπιμελείας τὸν ἀγαθὸν πολίτην· καὶ τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν ἐπαινοῦσιν, ὅτι φθόνῳ καὶ πρὸς ὕβριν ἀποδειχθεὶς τέλμαρχος ὑπὸ τῶν Θηβαίων οὐκ ἠμέλησεν, ἀλλ’ εἰπὼν ὡς οὐ μόνον ἀρχὴ ἄνδρα δείκνυσιν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀρχὴν ἀνήρ, εἰς μέγα καὶ σεμνὸν ἀξίωμα προήγαγε τὴν τελμαρχίαν, οὐδὲν οὖσαν πρότερον ἀλλ’ ἢ περὶ τοὺς στενωποὺς ἐκβολῆς κοπρίων καὶ ῥευμάτων ἀποτροπῆς ἐπιμέλειάν τινα. κἀγὼ δ’ ἀμέλει παρέχω γέλωτα τοῖς παρεπιδημοῦσιν, ὁρώμενος ἐν δημοσίῳ περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα πολλάκις· ἀλλὰ βοηθεῖ μοι τὸ τοῦ Ἀντισθένους μνημονευόμενον· θαυμάσαντος [c] γάρ τινος, εἰ δι’ ἀγορᾶς αὐτὸς φέρει τάριχος, “ἐμαυτῷ γ’,” εἶπεν· ἐγὼ δ’ ἀνάπαλιν πρὸς τοὺς ἐγκαλοῦντας, εἰ κεράμῳ παρέστηκα διαμετρουμένῳ καὶ φυράμασι καὶ λίθοις παρακομιζομένοις, οὐκ ἐμαυτῷ γέ φημι ταῦτ’ οἰκονομεῖν ἀλλὰ τῇ πατρίδι. καὶ γὰρ εἰς ἄλλα πολλὰ μικρὸς ἄν τις εἴη καὶ γλίσχρος αὑτῷ διοικῶν καὶ δι’ αὑτὸν πραγματευόμενος· εἰ δὲ δημοσίᾳ καὶ διὰ τὴν πόλιν, οὐκ ἀγεννής, ἀλλὰ μεῖζον τὸ μέχρι μικρῶν ἐπιμελὲς καὶ πρόθυμον. ἕτεροι δὲ σεμνότερον οἴονται καὶ μεγαλοπρεπέστερον εἶναι τὸ τοῦ Περικλέους· ὧν καὶ Κριτόλαός ἐστιν ὁ Περιπατητικὸς ἀξιῶν, ὥσπερ [d] ἡ Σαλαμινία ναῦς Ἀθήνησι καὶ ἡ Πάραλος οὐκ ἐπὶ πᾶν ἔργον ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τὰς ἀναγκαίας καὶ μεγάλας κατεσπῶντο πράξεις, οὕτως ἑαυτῷ πρὸς τὰ κυριώτατα καὶ μέγιστα χρῆσθαι, ὡς ὁ τοῦ κόσμου βασιλεύς,

τῶν ἄγων γὰρ ἅπτεται

θεός, τὰ μικρὰ δ’ εἰς τύχην ἀνεὶς ἐᾷ

κατὰ τὸν Εὐριπίδην.

Οὐδὲ γὰρ τοῦ Θεαγένους τὸ φιλότιμον ἄγαν καὶ φιλόνεικον ἐπαινοῦμεν, ὃς οὐ μόνον τὴν περίοδον νενικηκὼς ἀλλὰ καὶ πολλοὺς ἀγῶνας, οὐ παγκρατίῳ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ πυγμῇ καὶ δολίχῳ, τέλος ἡρῷα δειπνῶν ἐπιταφίου τινός, ὥσπερ εἰώθει, προτεθείσης [e] ἅπασι τῆς μερίδος, ἀναπηδήσας διεπαγκρατίασεν, ὡς οὐδένα νικᾶν δέον αὐτοῦ παρόντος· ὅθεν ἤθροισε χιλίους καὶ διακοσίους στεφάνους, ὧν συρφετὸν ἄν τις ἡγήσαιτο τοὺς πλείστους. οὐδὲν οὖν τούτου διαφέρουσιν οἱ πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀποδυόμενοι πολιτικὴν πρᾶξιν, ἀλλὰ μεμπτούς τε ταχὺ ποιοῦσιν ἑαυτοὺς τοῖς πολλοῖς, ἐπαχθεῖς τε γίγνονται καὶ κατορθοῦντες ἐπίφθονοι, κἂν σφαλῶσιν, ἐπίχαρτοι, καὶ τὸ θαυμαζόμενον αὐτῶν ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς ἐπιμελείας εἰς χλευασμὸν ὑπονοστεῖ καὶ γέλωτα. τοιοῦτον τὸ

[f]

Μητίοχος μὲν γὰρ στρατηγεῖ, Μητίοχος δὲ τὰς ὁδούς,

Μητίοχος δ’ ἄρτους ἐπωπᾷ, Μητίοχος δὲ τἄλφιτα,

Μητίοχος δὲ πάντ’ ἀκεῖται, Μητίοχος δ’ οἰμώξεται.

τῶν Περικλέους οὗτος εἷς ἦν ἑταίρων, τῇ δι’ ἐκεῖνον, ὡς ἔοικε, δυνάμει χρώμενος ἐπιφθόνως καὶ κατακόρως. δεῖ δέ, ὥς φασιν, ἐρῶντι τῷ δήμῳ τὸν πολιτικὸν προσφέρεσθαι καὶ μὴ παρόντος ἑαυτοῦ πόθον ἐναπολείπειν· ὃ καὶ Σκιπίων ὁ [812] [a] Ἀφρικανὸς ἐποίει πολὺν χρόνον ἐν ἀγρῷ διαιτώμενος, ἅμα καὶ τοῦ φθόνου τὸ βάρος ἀφαιρῶν καὶ διδοὺς ἀναπνοὴν τοῖς πιέζεσθαι δοκοῦσιν ὑπὸ τῆς ἐκείνου δόξης. Τιμησίας δ’ ὁ Κλαζομένιος τὰ μὲν ἄλλα ἦν περὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός, τῷ δὲ πάντα πράσσειν δι’ ἑαυτοῦ φθονούμενος ἠγνόει καὶ μισούμενος, ἕως αὐτῷ συνέβη τι τοιοῦτον· ἔτυχον ἐν ὁδῷ παῖδες ἐκ λάκκου τινὸς ἀστράγαλον ἐκκόπτοντες, ἐκείνου παριόντος· ὧν οἱ μὲν ἔφασκον μένειν, ὁ δὲ πατάξας “οὕτως,” εἶπεν, “ἐκκόψαιμι Τιμησίου τὸν ἐγκέφαλον, ὡς οὗτος ἐκκέκοπται.” τοῦθ’ ὁ Τιμησίας ἀκούσας καὶ συνεὶς τὸν διήκοντα διὰ [b] πάντων αὑτοῦ φθόνον, ἀναστρέψας ἔφρασε τὸ πρᾶγμα τῇ γυναικί, καὶ κελεύσας ἕπεσθαι συνεσκευασμένην εὐθὺς ἀπὸ τῶν θυρῶν ᾤχετ’ ἀπιὼν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως. ἔοικε δὲ καὶ Θεμιστοκλῆς, τοιούτου τινὸς ἀπαντῶντος αὐτῷ παρὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων, εἰπεῖν “τί, ὦ μακάριοι, κοπιᾶτε πολλάκις εὖ πάσχοντες;”

Τῶν δὲ τοιούτων τὰ μὲν ὀρθῶς τὰ δ’ οὐκ εὖ λέλεκται. τῇ μὲν γὰρ εὐνοίᾳ καὶ κηδεμονίᾳ δεῖ μηδενὸς ἀφεστάναι τῶν κοινῶν, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι προσέχειν καὶ γιγνώσκειν ἕκαστα, μηδ’ ὥσπερ ἐν [c] πλοίῳ σκεῦος ἱερὸν ἀποκεῖσθαι τὰς ἐσχάτας περιμένοντα χρείας τῆς πόλεως καὶ τύχας· ἀλλ’ ὡς οἱ κυβερνῆται τὰ μὲν ταῖς χερσὶ δι’ αὑτῶν πράττουσι, τὰ δ’ ὀργάνοις ἑτέροις δι’ ἑτέρων ἄπωθεν καθήμενοι περιάγουσι καὶ στρέφουσι, χρῶνται δὲ καὶ ναύταις καὶ πρῳρεῦσι καὶ κελευσταῖς, καὶ τούτων ἐνίους ἀνακαλούμενοι πολλάκις εἰς πρύμναν ἐγχειρίζουσι τὸ πηδάλιον· οὕτω τῷ πολιτικῷ προσήκει παραχωρεῖν μὲν ἑτέροις ἄρχειν καὶ προσκαλεῖσθαι πρὸς τὸ βῆμα μετ’ εὐμενείας καὶ φιλανθρωπίας, κινεῖν δὲ μὴ πάντα τὰ τῆς πόλεως τοῖς αὑτοῦ λόγοις καὶ ψηφίσμασιν ἢ πράξεσιν, ἀλλ’ ἔχοντα πιστοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας ἕκαστον ἑκάστῃ χρείᾳ κατὰ τὸ οἰκεῖον προσαρμόττειν· ὡς Περικλῆς [d] Μενίππῳ μὲν ἐχρῆτο πρὸς τὰς στρατηγίας, δι’ Ἐφιάλτου δὲ τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴν ἐταπείνωσε, διὰ δὲ Χαρίνου τὸ κατὰ Μεγαρέων ἐκύρωσε ψήφισμα, Λάμπωνα δὲ Θουρίων οἰκιστὴν ἐξέπεμψεν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον, τῆς δυνάμεως εἰς πολλοὺς διανέμεσθαι δοκούσης, ἧττον ἐνοχλεῖ τῶν φθόνων τὸ μέγεθος, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ τῶν χρειῶν ἐπιτελεῖται μᾶλλον. ὡς γὰρ ὁ τῆς χειρὸς εἰς τοὺς δακτύλους μερισμὸς οὐκ ἀσθενῆ πεποίηκεν ἀλλὰ τεχνικὴν καὶ ὀργανικὴν αὐτῆς τὴν χρῆσιν, οὕτως ὁ πραγμάτων [e] ἑτέροις ἐν πολιτείᾳ μεταδιδοὺς ἐνεργοτέραν ποιεῖ τῇ κοινωνίᾳ τὴν πρᾶξιν· ὁ δ’ ἀπληστίᾳ δόξης ἢ δυνάμεως πᾶσαν αὑτῷ τὴν πόλιν ἀνατιθεὶς καὶ πρὸς ὃ μὴ πέφυκε μηδ’ ἤσκηται προσάγων αὑτόν, ὡς Κλέων πρὸς τὸ στρατηγεῖν, Φιλοποίμην δὲ πρὸς τὸ ναυαρχεῖν, Ἀννίβας δὲ πρὸς τὸ δημηγορεῖν, οὐκ ἔχει παραίτησιν ἁμαρτάνων ἀλλὰ προσακούει τὸ τοῦ Εὐριπίδου

τέκτων γὰρ ὢν ἔπρασσες οὐ ξυλουργικά,

λέγειν ἀπίθανος ὢν ἐπρέσβευες ἢ ῥᾴθυμος ὢν ὠκονόμεις, ψήφων ἄπειρος ἐταμίευες ἢ γέρων καὶ [f] ἀσθενὴς ἐστρατήγεις. Περικλῆς δὲ καὶ πρὸς Κίμωνα διενείματο τὴν δύναμιν, αὐτὸς μὲν ἄρχειν ἐν ἄστει, τὸν δὲ πληρώσαντα τὰς ναῦς τοῖς βαρβάροις πολεμεῖν· ἦν γὰρ ὁ μὲν πρὸς πολιτείαν ὁ δὲ πρὸς πόλεμον εὐφυέστερος. ἐπαινοῦσι δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἀναφλύστιον Εὔβουλον, ὅτι πίστιν ἔχων ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα καὶ δύναμιν οὐδὲν τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἔπραξεν οὐδ’ ἐπὶ στρατηγίαν ἦλθεν, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τὰ χρήματα τάξας ἑαυτὸν ηὔξησε τὰς κοινὰς προσόδους καὶ μεγάλα τὴν πόλιν ἀπὸ τούτων ὠφέλησεν. Ἰφικράτης δὲ καὶ μελέτας λόγων ποιούμενος ἐν οἴκῳ πολλῶν [813] [a] παρόντων, ἐχλευάζετο· καὶ γὰρ εἰ λογεὺς ἀγαθὸς ἀλλὰ μὴ φαῦλος ἦν, ἔδει τὴν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις δόξαν ἀγαπῶντα τῆς σχολῆς ἐξίστασθαι τοῖς σοφισταῖς.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ παντὶ δήμῳ τὸ κακόηθες καὶ φιλαίτιον ἔνεστι πρὸς τοὺς πολιτευομένους καὶ πολλὰ τῶν χρησίμων, ἂν μὴ στάσιν ἔχῃ μηδ’ ἀντιλογίαν, ὑπονοοῦσι πράττεσθαι συνωμοτικῶς, καὶ τοῦτο διαβάλλει μάλιστα τὰς ἑταιρείας καὶ φιλίας, ἀληθινὴν μὲν ἔχθραν ἢ διαφορὰν οὐδεμίαν ἑαυτοῖς ὑπολειπτέον, ὡς ὁ τῶν Χίων δημαγωγὸς Ὀνομάδημος οὐκ εἴα τῇ στάσει κρατήσας πάντας ἐκβάλλειν τοὺς [b] ὑπεναντίους “ὅπως” ἔφη “μὴ πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ἀρξώμεθα διαφέρεσθαι, τῶν ἐχθρῶν παντάπασιν ἀπαλλαγέντες.” τοῦτο μὲν γὰρ εὔηθες· ἀλλ’ ὅταν ὑπόπτως ἔχωσιν οἱ πολλοὶ πρός τι πρᾶγμα καὶ μέγα καὶ σωτήριον, οὐ δεῖ πάντας ὥσπερ ἀπὸ συντάξεως ἥκοντας τὴν αὐτὴν λέγειν γνώμην, ἀλλὰ καὶ δύο καὶ τρεῖς διαστάντας ἀντιλέγειν ἠρέμα τῶν φίλων, εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἐξελεγχομένους μετατίθεσθαι· συνεφέλκονται γὰρ οὕτω τὸν δῆμον, ὑπὸ τοῦ συμφέροντος ἄγεσθαι δόξαντες. ἐν μέντοι τοῖς ἐλάττοσι καὶ [c] πρὸς μέγα μηδὲν διήκουσιν οὐ χεῖρόν ἐστι καὶ ἀληθῶς ἐᾶν διαφέρεσθαι τοὺς φίλους, ἕκαστον ἰδίῳ λογισμῷ χρώμενον, ὅπως περὶ τὰ κυριώτατα καὶ μέγιστα φαίνωνται πρὸς τὸ βέλτιστον οὐκ ἐκ παρασκευῆς ὁμοφρονοῦντες.

Φύσει μὲν οὖν ἄρχων ἀεὶ πόλεως ὁ πολιτικὸς ὥσπερ ἡγεμὼν ἐν μελίτταις, καὶ τοῦτο χρὴ διανοούμενον ἔχειν τὰ δημόσια διὰ χειρός· ἃς δ’ ὀνομάζουσιν ἐξουσίας καὶ χειροτονοῦσιν ἀρχὰς μήτ’ ἄγαν διώκειν καὶ πολλάκις, οὐ γὰρ σεμνὸν οὐδὲ δημοτικὸν ἡ φιλαρχία· μήτ’ ἀπωθεῖσθαι, τοῦ δήμου κατὰ νόμον διδόντος καὶ καλοῦντος· ἀλλὰ κἂν ταπεινότεραι τῆς δόξης ὦσι, δέχεσθαι καὶ συμφιλοτιμεῖσθαι· [d] δίκαιον γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν μειζόνων κοσμουμένους ἀρχῶν ἀντικοσμεῖν τὰς ἐλάττονας, καὶ τῶν μὲν βαρυτέρων οἷον στρατηγίας Ἀθήνησι καὶ πρυτανείας ἐν Ῥόδῳ καὶ βοιωταρχίας παρ’ ἡμῖν, ὑφίεσθαί τι καὶ παρενδιδόναι μετριάζοντα ταῖς δὲ μικροτέραις ἀξίωμα προστιθέναι καὶ ὄγκον, ὅπως μήτε περὶ ταύτας εὐκαταφρόνητοι μήτ’ ἐπίφθονοι περὶ ἐκείνας ὦμεν. εἰσιόντα δ’ εἰς ἅπασαν ἀρχὴν οὐ μόνον ἐκείνους δεῖ προχειρίζεσθαι τοὺς λογισμούς, οὓς ὁ Περικλῆς αὑτὸν ὑπεμίμνησκεν [e] ἀναλαμβάνων τὴν χλαμύδα, “πρόσεχε, Περίκλεις· ἐλευθέρων ἄρχεις, Ἑλλήνων ἄρχεις, πολιτῶν Ἀθηναίων”· ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖνο λέγειν πρὸς ἑαυτόν, “ἀρχόμενος ἄρχεις, ὑποτεταγμένης πόλεως ἀνθυπάτοις, ἐπιτρόποις Καίσαρος· ‘οὐ ταῦτα λόγχη πεδιάς,’ οὐδ’ αἱ παλαιαὶ Σάρδεις οὐδ’ ἡ Λυδῶν ἐκείνη δύναμις”· εὐσταλεστέραν δεῖ τὴν χλαμύδα ποιεῖν, καὶ βλέπειν ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατηγίου πρὸς τὸ βῆμα, καὶ τῷ στεφάνῳ μὴ πολὺ φρονεῖν μηδὲ πιστεύειν, ὁρῶντα τοὺς καλτίους ἐπάνω τῆς κεφαλῆς· ἀλλὰ μιμεῖσθαι [f] τοὺς ὑποκριτάς, πάθος μὲν ἴδιον καὶ ἦθος καὶ ἀξίωμα τῷ ἀγῶνι προστιθέντας, τοῦ δ’ ὑποβολέως ἀκούοντας καὶ μὴ παρεκβαίνοντας τοὺς ῥυθμοὺς καὶ τὰ μέτρα τῆς διδομένης ἐξουσίας ὑπὸ τῶν κρατούντων. ἡ γὰρ ἔκπτωσις οὐ φέρει συριγμὸν οὐδὲ χλευασμὸν οὐδὲ κλωγμόν, ἀλλὰ πολλοῖς μὲν ἐπέβη

δεινὸς κολαστὴς πέλεκυς αὐχένος τομεύς,

ὡς τοῖς περὶ Παρδάλαν τὸν ὑμέτερον ἐκλαθομένοις τῶν ὅρων· ὁ δέ τις ἐκριφεὶς εἰς νῆσον γέγονε κατὰ τὸν Σόλωνα

Φολεγάνδριος ἢ Σικινήτης,

[814] [a] ἀντί γ’ Ἀθηναίου πατρίδ’ ἀμειψάμενος.

Τὰ μὲν γὰρ μικρὰ παιδία τῶν πατέρων ὁρῶντες ἐπιχειροῦντα τὰς κρηπῖδας ὑποδεῖσθαι καὶ τοὺς στεφάνους περιτίθεσθαι μετὰ παιδιᾶς γελῶμεν, οἱ δ’ ἄρχοντες ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν ἀνοήτως τὰ τῶν προγόνων ἔργα καὶ φρονήματα καὶ πράξεις ἀσυμμέτρους τοῖς παροῦσι καιροῖς καὶ πράγμασιν οὔσας μιμεῖσθαι κελεύοντες ἐξαίρουσι τὰ πλήθη, γέλωτά τε ποιοῦντες οὐκέτι γέλωτος ἄξια πάσχουσιν, ἂν μὴ πάνυ καταφρονηθῶσι. πολλὰ γὰρ ἔστιν ἄλλα τῶν πρότερον [b] Ἑλλήνων διεξιόντα τοῖς νῦν ἠθοποιεῖν καὶ σωφρονίζειν, ὡς Ἀθήνησιν ὑπομιμνήσκοντα μὴ τῶν πολεμικῶν, ἀλλ’ οἷόν ἐστι τὸ ψήφισμα τὸ τῆς ἀμνηστίας ἐπὶ τοῖς τριάκοντα· καὶ τὸ ζημιῶσαι Φρύνιχον τραγῳδίᾳ διδάξαντα τὴν Μιλήτου ἅλωσιν· καὶ ὅτι, Θήβας Κασάνδρου κτίζοντος, ἐστεφανηφόρησαν· τὸν δ’ ἐν Ἄργει πυθόμενοι σκυταλισμόν, ἐν ᾧ πεντακοσίους καὶ χιλίους ἀνῃρήκεσαν ἐξ αὑτῶν οἱ Ἀργεῖοι, περιενεγκεῖν καθάρσιον περὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἐκέλευσαν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς Ἁρπαλείοις τὰς οἰκίας ἐρευνῶντες μόνην τὴν τοῦ γεγαμηκότος νεωστὶ παρῆλθον. ταῦτα γὰρ καὶ νῦν ἔξεστι ζηλοῦντας [c] ἐξομοιοῦσθαι τοῖς προγόνοις· τὸν δὲ Μαραθῶνα καὶ τὸν Εὐρυμέδοντα καὶ τὰς Πλαταιάς, καὶ ὅσα τῶν παραδειγμάτων οἰδεῖν ποιεῖ καὶ φρυάττεσθαι διακενῆς τοὺς πολλούς, ἀπολιπόντας ἐν ταῖς σχολαῖς τῶν σοφιστῶν.

Οὐ μόνον δὲ δεῖ παρέχειν αὑτόν τε καὶ τὴν πατρίδα πρὸς τοὺς ἡγεμόνας ἀναίτιον, ἀλλὰ καὶ φίλον ἔχειν ἀεί τινα τῶν ἄνω δυνατωτάτων, ὥσπερ ἕρμα τῆς πολιτείας βέβαιον· αὐτοὶ γάρ εἰσι Ῥωμαῖοι πρὸς τὰς πολιτικὰς σπουδὰς προθυμότατοι τοῖς φίλοις· καὶ καρπὸν ἐκ φιλίας ἡγεμονικῆς λαμβάνοντας, οἷον ἔλαβε Πολύβιος καὶ Παναίτιος τῇ [d] Σκιπίωνος εὐνοίᾳ πρὸς αὐτοὺς μεγάλα τὰς πατρίδας ὠφελήσαντες, εἰς εὐδαιμονίαν δημοσίαν ἐξενέγκασθαι καλόν. Ἄρειόν τε Καῖσαρ, ὅτε τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρειαν εἷλε, διὰ χειρὸς ἔχων καὶ μόνῳ προσομιλῶν τῶν συνήθων συνεισήλασεν, εἶτα τοῖς Ἀλεξανδρεῦσι τὰ ἔσχατα προσδοκῶσι καὶ δεομένοις ἔφη διαλλάττεσθαι διά τε τὸ μέγεθος τῆς πόλεως καὶ διὰ τὸν οἰκιστὴν Ἀλέξανδρον, “καὶ τρίτον,” ἔφη, “τῷ φίλῳ μου τούτῳ χαριζόμενος.” ἆρά γ’ ἄξιον τῇ χάριτι ταύτῃ παραβαλεῖν τὰς πολυταλάντους ἐπιτροπὰς καὶ διοικήσεις τῶν ἐπαρχιῶν, ἃς διώκοντες οἱ πολλοὶ γηράσκουσι πρὸς ἀλλοτρίαις θύραις, τὰ οἴκοι προλιπόντες· ἢ [e] τὸν Εὐριπίδην ἐπανορθωτέον ᾄδοντα καὶ λέγοντα, ὡς εἴπερ ἀγρυπνεῖν χρὴ καὶ φοιτᾶν ἐπ’ αὔλειον ἑτέρου καὶ ὑποβάλλειν ἑαυτὸν ἡγεμονικῇ συνηθείᾳ, πατρίδος πέρι κάλλιστον ἐπὶ ταῦτα χωρεῖν, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα τὰς ἐπὶ τοῖς ἴσοις καὶ δικαίοις φιλίας ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ φυλάττειν;

Ποιοῦντα μέντοι καὶ παρέχοντα τοῖς κρατοῦσιν εὐπειθῆ τὴν πατρίδα δεῖ μὴ προσεκταπεινοῦν, [f] μηδὲ τοῦ σκέλους δεδεμένου προσυποβάλλειν καὶ τὸν τράχηλον, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι, καὶ μικρὰ καὶ μείζω φέροντες ἐπὶ τοὺς ἡγεμόνας ἐξονειδίζουσι τὴν δουλείαν, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως τὴν πολιτείαν ἀναιροῦσι, καταπλῆγα καὶ περιδεᾶ καὶ πάντων ἄκυρον ποιοῦντες. ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ χωρὶς ἰατροῦ μήτε δειπνεῖν μήτε λούεσθαι συνεθισθέντες οὐδ’ ὅσον ἡ φύσις δίδωσι χρῶνται τῷ ὑγιαίνειν, οὕτως οἱ παντὶ δόγματι καὶ συνεδρίῳ καὶ χάριτι καὶ διοικήσει προσάγοντες ἡγεμονικὴν κρίσιν ἀναγκάζουσιν ἑαυτῶν [815] [a] μᾶλλον ἢ βούλονται δεσπότας εἶναι τοὺς ἡγουμένους. αἰτία δὲ τούτου μάλιστα πλεονεξία καὶ φιλονεικία τῶν πρώτων· ἢ γὰρ ἐν οἷς βλάπτουσι τοὺς ἐλάττονας ἐκβιάζονται φεύγειν τὴν πόλιν ἢ περὶ ὧν διαφέρονται πρὸς ἀλλήλους οὐκ ἀξιοῦντες ἐν τοῖς πολίταις ἔχειν ἔλαττον ἐπάγονται τοὺς κρείττονας· ἐκ τούτου δὲ καὶ βουλὴ καὶ δῆμος καὶ δικαστήρια καὶ ἀρχὴ πᾶσα τὴν ἐξουσίαν ἀπόλλυσι. δεῖ δὲ τοὺς μὲν ἰδιώτας ἰσότητι, τοὺς δὲ δυνατοὺς ἀνθυπείξει πραΰνοντα κατέχειν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ διαλύειν τὰ πράγματα, πολιτικήν τινα ποιούμενον [b] αὐτῶν ὥσπερ νοσημάτων ἀπόρρητον ἰατρείαν, αὐτόν τε μᾶλλον ἡττᾶσθαι βουλόμενον ἐν τοῖς πολίταις ἢ νικᾶν ὕβρει καὶ καταλύσει τῶν οἴκοι δικαίων, τῶν τ’ ἄλλων ἑκάστου δεόμενον καὶ διδάσκοντα τὴν φιλονεικίαν ὅσον ἐστὶ κακόν· νῦν δ’ ὅπως μὴ πολίταις καὶ φυλέταις οἴκοι καὶ γείτοσι καὶ συνάρχουσιν ἀνθυπείξωσι μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ χάριτος, ἐπὶ ῥητόρων θύρας καὶ πραγματικῶν χεῖρας ἐκφέρουσι σὺν πολλῇ βλάβῃ καὶ αἰσχύνῃ τὰς διαφοράς. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἰατροὶ τῶν νοσημάτων ὅσα μὴ δύνανται παντάπασιν ἀνελεῖν ἔξω τρέπουσιν εἰς τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν τοῦ σώματος· ὁ δὲ πολιτικός, ἂν μὴ δύνηται τὴν πόλιν ἀπράγμονα παντελῶς διαφυλάττειν, ἐν αὐτῇ γε πειράσεται τὸ ταρασσόμενον αὐτῆς καὶ στασιάζον ἀποκρύπτων ἰᾶσθαι καὶ διοικεῖν, ὡς ἂν ἥκιστα τῶν ἐκτὸς ἰατρῶν καὶ φαρμάκων δέοιτο. ἡ μὲν γὰρ προαίρεσις ἔστω [c] τοῦ πολιτικοῦ τῆς ἀσφαλείας ἐχομένη καὶ φεύγουσα τὸ ταρακτικὸν τῆς κενῆς δόξης καὶ μανικόν, ὡς εἴρηται· τῇ μέντοι διαθέσει φρόνημα καὶ

 μένος πολυθαρσὲς ἐνέστω

ἄτρομον, οἷόν τ’ ἄνδρας ἐσέρχεται, οἳ περὶ πάτρης

ἀνδράσι δυσμενέεσσι

καὶ πράγμασι δυσκόλοις καὶ καιροῖς ἀντερείδουσι καὶ διαμάχονται. δεῖ γὰρ οὐ ποιεῖν χειμῶνας αὐτὸν ἀλλὰ μὴ προλείπειν ἐπιπεσόντων, οὐδὲ [d] κινεῖν τὴν πόλιν ἐπισφαλῶς, σφαλλομένῃ δὲ καὶ κινδυνευούσῃ βοηθεῖν, ὥσπερ ἄγκυραν ἱερὰν ἀράμενον ἐξ αὐτοῦ τὴν παρρησίαν ἐπὶ τοῖς μεγίστοις· οἷα Περγαμηνοὺς ἐπὶ Νέρωνος κατέλαβε πράγματα, καὶ Ῥοδίους ἔναγχος ἐπὶ Δομετιανοῦ, καὶ Θεσσαλοὺς πρότερον ἐπὶ τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ Πετραῖον ζῶντα κατακαύσαντας.

ἔνθ’ οὐκ ἂν βρίζοντα ἴδοις

οὐδὲ καταπτώσσοντα τὸν ἀληθῶς πολιτικὸν οὐδ’ αἰτιώμενον ἑτέρους αὑτὸν δὲ τῶν δεινῶν ἔξω τιθέμενον, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρεσβεύοντα καὶ πλέοντα καὶ λέγοντα πρῶτον οὐ μόνον

ἥκομεν οἱ κτείναντες, ἀπότρεπε λοιγόν, Ἄπολλον,

ἀλλά, κἂν τῆς ἁμαρτίας μὴ μετάσχῃ τοῖς πολλοῖς, [e] τοὺς κινδύνους ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν ἀναδεχόμενον. καὶ γὰρ καλὸν τοῦτο καὶ πρὸς τῷ καλῷ πολλάκις ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς ἀρετὴ καὶ φρόνημα θαυμασθὲν ἠμαύρωσε τὴν πρὸς πάντας ὀργὴν καὶ διεσκέδασε τὸ φοβερὸν καὶ πικρὸν τῆς ἀπειλῆς· οἷα καὶ πρὸς Βοῦλιν ἔοικε καὶ Σπέρχιν τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας παθεῖν ὁ Πέρσης, καὶ πρὸς Σθέννωνα Πομπήιος ἔπαθεν, ὅτε, Μαμερτίνους μέλλοντος αὐτοῦ κολάζειν διὰ τὴν ἀπόστασιν, [f] οὐκ ἔφη δίκαια πράξειν αὐτὸν ὁ Σθέννων, εἰ πολλοὺς ἀναιτίους ἀπολεῖ δι’ ἕνα τὸν αἴτιον· ὁ γὰρ ἀποστήσας τὴν πόλιν αὐτὸς εἶναι τοὺς μὲν φίλους πείσας τοὺς δ’ ἐχθροὺς βιασάμενος. οὕτω ταῦτα διέθηκε τὸν Πομπήιον, ὥστε καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἀφεῖναι καὶ τῷ Σθέννωνι χρήσασθαι φιλανθρώπως. ὁ δὲ Σύλλα ξένος ὁμοίᾳ μὲν ἀρετῇ πρὸς οὐχ ὁμοίαν [816] [a] δὲ χρησάμενος εὐγενῶς ἐτελεύτησεν· ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἑλὼν Πραινεστὸν ὁ Σύλλας ἔμελλε τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας ἀποσφάττειν ἕνα δ’ ἐκεῖνον ἠφίει διὰ τὴν ξενίαν, εἰπὼν ὡς οὐ βούλεται σωτηρίας χάριν εἰδέναι τῷ φονεῖ τῆς πατρίδος, ἀνέμιξεν ἑαυτὸν καὶ συγκατεκόπη τοῖς πολίταις. τοιούτους μὲν οὖν καιροὺς ἀπεύχεσθαι δεῖ καὶ τὰ βελτίονα προσδοκᾶν.

Ἱερὸν δὲ χρῆμα καὶ μέγα πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν οὖσαν καὶ ἄρχοντα δεῖ μάλιστα τιμᾶν, τιμὴ δ’ ἀρχῆς ὁμοφροσύνη καὶ φιλία πρὸς συνάρχοντας πολὺ μᾶλλον ἢ στέφανοι καὶ χλαμὺς περιπόρφυρος. οἱ [b] δὲ τὸ συστρατεύσασθαι καὶ συνεφηβεῦσαι φιλίας ἀρχὴν τιθέμενοι, τὸ δὲ συστρατηγεῖν καὶ συνάρχειν ἔχθρας αἰτίαν λαμβάνοντες, ἓν τῶν τριῶν κακῶν οὐ διαπεφεύγασιν· ἢ γὰρ ἴσους ἡγούμενοι τοὺς συνάρχοντας αὐτοὶ στασιάζουσιν ἢ κρείττονας φθονοῦσιν ἢ ταπεινοτέρους καταφρονοῦσι. δεῖ δὲ καὶ θεραπεύειν τὸν κρείττονα καὶ κοσμεῖν τὸν ἥττονα καὶ τιμᾶν τὸν ὅμοιον, ἀσπάζεσθαι δὲ καὶ φιλεῖν ἅπαντας, ὡς

οὐ διὰ τραπέζης

οὐδὲ κώθωνος,

οὐδ’ ἐφ’ ἑστίας,

ἀλλὰ κοινῇ καὶ δημοσίᾳ ψήφῳ φίλους γεγονότας καὶ τρόπον τινὰ πατρῴαν τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς πατρίδος [c] εὔνοιαν ἔχοντας. ὁ γοῦν Σκιπίων ἤκουσεν ἐν Ῥώμῃ κακῶς, ὅτι φίλους ἑστιῶν ἐπὶ τῇ καθιερώσει τοῦ Ἡρακλείου τὸν συνάρχοντα Μόμμιον οὐ παρέλαβε· καὶ γάρ, εἰ τἄλλα μὴ φίλους ἐνόμιζον ἑαυτούς, ἐν τοῖς γε τοιούτοις ἠξίουν τιμᾶν καὶ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι διὰ τὴν ἀρχήν. ὅπου τοίνυν ἀνδρὶ τἄλλα θαυμασίῳ τῷ Σκιπίωνι μικρὸν οὕτω φιλανθρώπευμα παραλειφθὲν ὑπεροψίας ἤνεγκε δόξαν, ἦπου κολούων ἄν τις ἀξίωμα συνάρχοντος ἢ πράξεσιν ἐχούσαις φιλοτιμίαν ἐπηρεάζων ἢ πάντα συλλήβδην ἀνατιθεὶς ἅμα καὶ περιάγων ὑπ’ αὐθαδείας [d] εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐκείνου δ’ ἀφαιρούμενος, ἐπιεικὴς ἂν φανείη καὶ μέτριος; μέμνημαι νέον ἐμαυτὸν ἔτι πρεσβευτὴν μεθ’ ἑτέρου πεμφθέντα πρὸς ἀνθύπατον, ἀπολειφθέντος δέ πως ἐκείνου, μόνον ἐντυχόντα καὶ διαπραξάμενον· ὡς οὖν ἔμελλον ἐπανελθὼν ἀποπρεσβεύειν, ἀναστὰς ὁ πατὴρ κατ’ ἰδίαν ἐκέλευσε μὴ λέγειν “ᾠχόμην” ἀλλ’ “ᾠχόμεθα,” μηδ’ “εἶπον” ἀλλ’ “εἴπομεν,” καὶ τἄλλα συνεφαπτόμενον οὕτω καὶ κοινούμενον ἀπαγγέλλειν. οὐ γὰρ [e] μόνον ἐπιεικὲς τὸ τοιοῦτον καὶ φιλάνθρωπόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ λυποῦν τὸν φθόνον ἀφαιρεῖ τῆς δόξης. ὅθεν οἱ μεγάλοι καὶ δαίμονα καὶ τύχην τοῖς κατορθώμασι συνεπιγράφουσιν, ὡς Τιμολέων ὁ τὰς ἐν Σικελίᾳ καταλύσας τυραννίδας Αὐτοματίας ἱερὸν ἱδρύσατο· καὶ Πύθων ἐπὶ τῷ Κότυν ἀποκτεῖναι θαυμαζόμενος καὶ τιμώμενος ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων “ὁ θεός,” ἔφη, “ταῦτ’ ἔπραξε, τὴν χεῖρα παρ’ ἐμοῦ χρησάμενος.” Θεόπομπος δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα σῴζεσθαι τὴν Σπάρτην διὰ τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἀρχικοὺς ὄντας “μᾶλλον,” ἔφη, “διὰ τοὺς πολλοὺς πειθαρχικοὺς ὄντας.”

[f] Γίγνεται μὲν οὖν δι’ ἀλλήλων ἀμφότερα ταῦτα. λέγουσι δ’ οἱ πλεῖστοι καὶ νομίζουσι πολιτικῆς παιδείας ἔργον εἶναι τὸ καλῶς ἀρχομένους παρασχεῖν· καὶ γὰρ πλέον ἐστὶ τοῦ ἄρχοντος ἐν ἑκάστῃ πόλει τὸ ἀρχόμενον· καὶ χρόνον ἕκαστος ἄρχει βραχύν, ἄρχεται δὲ τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον ἐν δημοκρατίᾳ πολιτευόμενος· ὥστε κάλλιστον εἶναι μάθημα καὶ χρησιμώτατον τὸ πειθαρχεῖν τοῖς ἡγουμένοις, κἂν ὑποδεέστεροι δυνάμει καὶ δόξῃ τυγχάνωσιν ὄντες. ἄτοπον γάρ ἐστι τὸν μὲν ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ πρωταγωνιστήν, Θεόδωρον ἢ Πῶλον ὄντα μισθωτῷ τὰ τρίτα λέγοντι πολλάκις ἕπεσθαι καὶ προσδιαλέγεσθαι ταπεινῶς, ἂν ἐκεῖνος ἔχῃ τὸ διάδημα καὶ [817] [a] τὸ σκῆπτρον· ἐν δὲ πράξεσιν ἀληθιναῖς καὶ πολιτείᾳ τὸν πλούσιον καὶ ἔνδοξον ὀλιγωρεῖν καὶ καταφρονεῖν ἄρχοντος ἰδιώτου καὶ πένητος, ἐνυβρίζοντα καὶ καθαιροῦντα τῷ περὶ αὑτὸν ἀξιώματι τὸ τῆς πόλεως, ἀλλὰ μὴ μᾶλλον αὔξοντα καὶ προστιθέντα τὴν ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ δόξαν καὶ δύναμιν τῇ ἀρχῇ. καθάπερ ἐν Σπάρτῃ τοῖς ἐφόροις οἵ τε βασιλεῖς ὑπεξανίσταντο, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὁ κληθεὶς οὐ βάδην ὑπήκουεν ἀλλὰ δρόμῳ καὶ σπουδῇ δι’ ἀγορᾶς θέοντες ἐπεδείκνυντο τὴν εὐπείθειαν τοῖς πολίταις, ἀγαλλόμενοι τῷ τιμᾶν τοὺς ἄρχοντας· [b] οὐχ ὥσπερ ἔνιοι τῶν ἀπειροκάλων καὶ σολοίκων, οἷον ἰσχύος ἑαυτῶν καλλωπιζόμενοι περιουσίᾳ, βραβευτὰς ἐν ἀγῶσι προπηλακίζουσι καὶ χορηγοὺς ἐν Διονυσίοις λοιδοροῦσι καὶ στρατηγῶν καὶ γυμνασιάρχων καταγελῶσιν, οὐκ εἰδότες οὐδὲ μανθάνοντες ὅτι τοῦ τιμᾶσθαι τὸ τιμᾶν πολλάκις ἐστὶν ἐνδοξότερον. ἀνδρὶ γὰρ ἐν πόλει δυναμένῳ μέγα μείζονα φέρει κόσμον ἄρχων δορυφορούμενος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ προπεμπόμενος ἢ δορυφορῶν καὶ προπέμπων· μᾶλλον δὲ τοῦτο μὲν ἀηδίαν καὶ φθόνον, ἐκεῖνο δὲ τὴν ἀληθινὴν φέρει, τὴν ἀπ’ εὐνοίας, [c] δόξαν· ὀφθεὶς δ’ ἐπὶ θύραις ποτὲ καὶ πρότερος ἀσπασάμενος καὶ λαβὼν ἐν περιπάτῳ μέσον, οὐδὲν ἀφαιρούμενος ἑαυτοῦ, τῇ πόλει κόσμον περιτίθησι.

Δημοτικὸν δὲ καὶ βλασφημίαν ἐνεγκεῖν καὶ ὀργὴν ἄρχοντος ἢ τὸ τοῦ Διομήδους ὑπειπόντα

τούτῳ μὲν γὰρ κῦδος ἅμ’ ἕψεται

ἢ τὸ τοῦ Δημοσθένους, ὅτι νῦν οὐκ ἔστι Δημοσθένης μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ θεσμοθέτης ἢ χορηγὸς ἢ στεφανηφόρος. ἀναθετέον οὖν τὴν ἄμυναν εἰς τὸν χρόνον· ἢ γὰρ ἐπέξιμεν ἀπαλλαγέντι τῆς ἀρχῆς ἢ κερδανοῦμεν ἐν τῷ περιμένειν τὸ παύσασθαι τῆς ὀργῆς.

[d] Σπουδῇ μέντοι καὶ προνοίᾳ περὶ τὰ κοινὰ καὶ φροντίδι πρὸς ἅπασαν ἀρχὴν ἀεὶ διαμιλλητέον, ἂν μὲν ὦσι χαρίεντες, αὐτὸν ὑφηγούμενον ἃ δεῖ καὶ φράζοντα καὶ διδόντα χρῆσθαι τοῖς βεβουλευμένοις ὀρθῶς καὶ τὸ κοινὸν εὐδοκιμεῖν ὠφελοῦντας· ἐὰν δ’ ἐνῇ τις ἐκείνοις ὄκνος ἢ μέλλησις ἢ κακοήθεια πρὸς τὴν πρᾶξιν, οὕτω χρὴ παριέναι καὶ λέγειν αὐτὸν εἰς τοὺς πολλοὺς καὶ μὴ παραμελεῖν μηδ’ ὑφίεσθαι τῶν κοινῶν, ὡς οὐ προσῆκον, ἄρχοντος ἑτέρου, πολυπραγμονεῖν καὶ παραδιοικεῖν. ὁ γὰρ νόμος ἀεὶ τῷ [e] τὰ δίκαια πράσσοντι καὶ γιγνώσκοντι τὰ συμφέροντα τὴν πρώτην τάξιν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ δίδωσιν. “ἦν δέ τις,” φησίν, “ἐν τῷ στρατεύματι Ξενοφῶν, οὔτε στρατηγὸς οὔτε λοχαγός,” ἀλλὰ τῷ φρονεῖν τὰ δέοντα καὶ τολμᾶν αὑτὸν εἰς τὸ ἄρχειν καταστήσας διέσῳσε τοὺς Ἕλληνας. καὶ τῶν Φιλοποίμενος ἔργων ἐπιφανέστατόν ἐστι τό, τοῦ Νάβιδος Μεσσήνην καταλαβόντος οὐκ ἐθέλοντος δὲ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν βοηθεῖν ἀλλ’ ἀποδειλιῶντος, αὐτὸν ὁρμήσαντα μετὰ τῶν προθυμοτάτων ἄνευ δόγματος ἐξελέσθαι τὴν πόλιν. οὐ μὴν διὰ μικρὰ [f] δεῖ καὶ τὰ τυχόντα καινοτομεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις ὡς ὁ Φιλοποίμην, ἢ τοῖς καλοῖς ὡς Ἐπαμεινώνδας, ἐπιβαλὼν τέτταρας μῆνας τῇ βοιωταρχίᾳ παρὰ τὸν νόμον, ἐν οἷς εἰς τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἐνέβαλε καὶ τὰ περὶ Μεσσήνην ἔπραξεν· ὅπως, κἂν ἀπαντᾷ τις ἐπὶ τούτῳ κατηγορία καὶ μέμψις, ἀπολογίαν τῆς αἰτίας τὴν ἀνάγκην ἔχωμεν ἢ παραμυθίαν τοῦ κινδύνου τὸ μέγεθος τῆς πράξεως καὶ τὸ κάλλος.

Ἰάσονος τοῦ Θεσσαλῶν μονάρχου γνώμην ἀπομνημονεύουσιν, ἐφ’ οἷς ἐβιάζετο καὶ παρηνώχλει τινάς, [818] [a] ἀεὶ λεγομένην, ὡς ἀναγκαῖον ἀδικεῖν τὰ μικρὰ τοὺς βουλομένους τὰ μεγάλα δικαιοπραγεῖν. τοῦτον μὲν οὖν ἄν τις εὐθὺς καταμάθοι τὸν λόγον ὡς ἔστι δυναστευτικός· ἐκεῖνο δὲ πολιτικώτερον παράγγελμα, τὸ τὰ μικρὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς προΐεσθαι χαριζόμενον ἐπὶ τῷ τοῖς μείζοσιν ἐνίστασθαι καὶ κωλύειν ἐξαμαρτάνοντας. ὁ γὰρ αὖ περὶ πάντα λίαν ἀκριβὴς καὶ σφοδρός, οὐδὲν ὑποχωρῶν οὐδ’ ὑπείκων ἀλλὰ τραχὺς ἀεὶ καὶ ἀπαραίτητος, ἀντιφιλονεικεῖν τὸν δῆμον αὐτῷ καὶ προσδυσκολαίνειν ἐθίζει,

μικρὸν δὲ δεῖ ποδὸς

χαλάσαι μεγάλῃ κύματος ἀλκῇ,

[b] τὰ μὲν αὐτὸν ἐνδιδόντα καὶ συμπαίζοντα κεχαρισμένως οἷον ἐν θυσίαις καὶ ἀγῶσι καὶ θεάτροις, τὰ δ’ ὥσπερ ἐν οἰκίᾳ νέων ἁμαρτήματα προσποιούμενον παρορᾶν καὶ παρακούειν, ὅπως ἡ τοῦ νουθετεῖν καὶ παρρησιάζεσθαι δύναμις ὥσπερ φαρμάκου μὴ κατακεχρημένη μηδ’ ἕωλος ἀλλ’ ἀκμὴν ἔχουσα καὶ πίστιν ἐν τοῖς μείζοσι μᾶλλον καθάπτηται καὶ δάκνῃ τοὺς πολλούς. Ἀλέξανδρος μὲν γὰρ ἀκούσας τὴν ἀδελφὴν ἐγνωκέναι τινὰ τῶν [c] καλῶν καὶ νέων οὐκ ἠγανάκτησεν εἰπών, ὅτι κἀκείνῃ τι δοτέον ἀπολαῦσαι τῆς βασιλείας· οὐκ ὀρθῶς τὰ τοιαῦτα συγχωρῶν οὐδ’ ἀξίως ἑαυτοῦ· δεῖ γὰρ ἀρχῆς τὴν κατάλυσιν καὶ ὕβριν ἀπόλαυσιν μὴ νομίζειν. δήμῳ δ’ ὕβριν μὲν οὐδεμίαν εἰς πολίτας οὐδὲ δήμευσιν ἀλλοτρίων οὐδὲ κοινῶν διανέμησιν ὁ πολιτικὸς ἐφήσει κατὰ δύναμιν, ἀλλὰ πείθων καὶ διδάσκων καὶ δεδιττόμενος διαμαχεῖται ταῖς τοιαύταις ἐπιθυμίαις, οἵας οἱ περὶ Κλέωνα βόσκοντες καὶ αὔξοντες πολύν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, κηφῆνα τῇ πόλει κεκεντρωμένον ἐνεποίησαν. ἐὰν δ’ ἑορτὴν πάτριον οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ θεοῦ τιμὴν πρόφασιν λαβόντες ὁρμήσωσι πρός τινα θέαν ἢ νέμησιν ἐλαφρὰν ἢ χάριν τινὰ φιλάνθρωπον ἢ φιλοτιμίαν, [d] ἔστω πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα ἡ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἅμα καὶ τῆς εὐπορίας ἀπόλαυσις αὐτοῖς. καὶ γὰρ τοῖς Περικλέους πολιτεύμασι καὶ τοῖς Δημητρίου πολλὰ τοιαῦτ’ ἔνεστι, καὶ Κίμων ἐκόσμησε τὴν ἀγορὰν πλατάνων φυτείαις καὶ περιπάτοις· Κάτων δὲ τὸν δῆμον ὑπὸ Καίσαρος ὁρῶν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Κατιλίναν διαταρασσόμενον καὶ πρὸς μεταβολὴν τῆς πολιτείας ἐπισφαλῶς ἔχοντα συνέπεισε τὴν βουλὴν ψηφίσασθαι νεμήσεις τοῖς πένησι, καὶ τοῦτο δοθὲν ἔστησε τὸν θόρυβον καὶ κατέπαυσε τὴν ἐπανάστασιν. ὡς γὰρ ἰατρός, ἀφελὼν πολὺ τοῦ [e] διεφθορότος αἵματος, ὀλίγον ἀβλαβοῦς τροφῆς προσήνεγκεν, οὕτως ὁ πολιτικὸς ἀνήρ, μέγα τι τῶν ἀδόξων ἢ βλαβερῶν παρελόμενος, ἐλαφρᾷ πάλιν χάριτι καὶ φιλανθρώπῳ τὸ δυσκολαῖνον καὶ μεμψιμοιροῦν παρηγόρησεν.

Οὐ χεῖρον δὲ καὶ μετάγειν ἐπ’ ἄλλα χρειώδη τὸ σπουδαζόμενον, ὡς ἐποίησε Δημάδης, ὅτε τὰς προσόδους εἶχεν ὑφ’ ἑαυτῷ τῆς πόλεως· ὡρμημένων γὰρ ἐκπέμπειν τριήρεις βοηθοὺς τοῖς ἀφισταμένοις Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ χρήματα κελευόντων παρέχειν ἐκεῖνον, “ἔστιν ὑμῖν,” ἔφη, “χρήματα· παρεσκευασάμην γὰρ εἰς τοὺς χόας, ὥσθ’ ἕκαστον ὑμῶν λαβεῖν ἡμιμναῖον· εἰ δ’ εἰς ταῦτα βούλεσθε [f] μᾶλλον, αὐτοὶ καταχρῆσθε τοῖς ἰδίοις.” καὶ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον, ὅπως μὴ στεροῖντο τῆς διανομῆς, ἀφέντων τὸν ἀπόστολον, ἔλυσε τὸ πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ἔγκλημα τοῦ δήμου. πολλὰ γὰρ ἀπ’ εὐθείας οὐκ ἔστιν ἐξῶσαι τῶν ἀλυσιτελῶν, ἀλλὰ δεῖ τινος ἁμωσγέπως καμπῆς καὶ περιαγωγῆς, οἵᾳ καὶ [819] [a] Φωκίων ἐχρῆτο κελευόμενος εἰς Βοιωτίαν ἐμβαλεῖν παρὰ καιρόν· ἐκήρυξε γὰρ εὐθὺς ἀκολουθεῖν ἀφ’ ἥβης τοὺς μέχρι ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα· καὶ θορύβου τῶν πρεσβυτέρων γενομένου “τί δεινόν;” εἶπεν· “ἐγὼ γὰρ ὁ στρατηγὸς ὀγδοήκοντα γεγονὼς ἔτη μεθ’ ὑμῶν ἔσομαι.” τούτῳ δὴ τῷ τρόπῳ καὶ πρεσβείας διακοπτέον ἀκαίρους, συγκαταλέγοντα πολλοὺς τῶν ἀνεπιτηδείως ἐχόντων, καὶ κατασκευὰς ἀχρήστους, κελεύοντα συνεισφέρειν, καὶ δίκας καὶ ἀποδημίας ἀπρεπεῖς, ἀξιοῦντα συμπαρεῖναι καὶ συναποδημεῖν. πρώτους δὲ τοὺς γράφοντας τὰ τοιαῦτα [b] καὶ παροξύνοντας ἕλκειν δεῖ καὶ παραλαμβάνειν· ἢ γὰρ ἀναδυόμενοι τὴν πρᾶξιν αὐτοὶ διαλύειν δόξουσιν ἢ μεθέξουσι τῶν δυσχερῶν παρόντες.

Ὅπου μέντοι μέγα δεῖ τι περανθῆναι καὶ χρήσιμον ἀγῶνος δὲ πολλοῦ καὶ σπουδῆς δεόμενον, ἐνταῦθα πειρῶ τῶν φίλων αἱρεῖσθαι τοὺς κρατίστους ἢ τῶν κρατίστων τοὺς πραοτάτους· ἥκιστα γὰρ ἀντιπράξουσιν οὗτοι καὶ μάλιστα συνεργήσουσι, τὸ φρονεῖν ἄνευ τοῦ φιλονεικεῖν ἔχοντες. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ φύσεως ἔμπειρον ὄντα δεῖ πρὸς ὃ χείρων ἑτέρου πέφυκας αἱρεῖσθαι τοὺς [c] μᾶλλον δυναμένους ἀντὶ τῶν ὁμοίων, ὡς ὁ Διομήδης ἐπὶ τὴν κατασκοπὴν μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ τὸν φρόνιμον εἵλετο, τοὺς ἀνδρείους παρελθών. καὶ γὰρ αἱ πράξεις μᾶλλον ἰσορροποῦσι καὶ τὸ φιλόνεικον οὐκ ἐγγίγνεται πρὸς ἀλλήλους τοῖς ἀφ’ ἑτέρων ἀρετῶν καὶ δυνάμεων φιλοτιμουμένοις. λάμβανε δὴ καὶ δίκης συνεργὸν καὶ πρεσβείας κοινωνόν, ἂν λέγειν μὴ δυνατὸς ᾖς, τὸν ῥητορικόν, ὡς Πελοπίδας Ἐπαμεινώνδαν· κἂν ᾖς ἀπίθανος πρὸς ὁμολίαν τῷ πλήθει καὶ ὑψηλός, ὡς Καλλικρατίδας, τὸν εὔχαριν καὶ θεραπευτικόν· κἂν ἀσθενὴς καὶ δύσεργος τὸ σῶμα, τὸν φιλόπονον καὶ ῥωμαλέον, ὡς Νικίας [d] Λάμαχον. οὕτω γὰρ ἂν ἦν ὁ Γηρυόνης ζηλωτὸς ἔχων σκέλη πολλὰ καὶ χεῖρας καὶ ὀφθαλμούς, εἰ πάντα μιᾷ ψυχῇ διῴκει. τοῖς δὲ πολιτικοῖς ἔξεστι μὴ σώματα μηδὲ χρήματα μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τύχας καὶ δυνάμεις καὶ ἀρετάς, ἂν ὁμονοῶσιν, εἰς μίαν χρείαν συντιθέντας εὐδοκιμεῖν μᾶλλον ἄλλου περὶ τὴν αὐτὴν πρᾶξιν· οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ Ἀργοναῦται τὸν Ἡρακλέα καταλιπόντες ἠναγκάζοντο διὰ τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος κατᾳδόμενοι καὶ φαρμακευόμενοι σῴζειν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ κλέπτειν τὸ νάκος.

[e] Χρυσὸν μὲν εἰς ἔνια τῶν ἱερῶν εἰσιόντες ἔξω καταλείπουσι, σίδηρον δ’ ὡς ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν εἰς οὐδὲν συνεισφέρουσιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ κοινόν ἐστιν ἱερὸν τὸ βῆμα Βουλαίου τε Διὸς καὶ Πολιέως καὶ Θέμιδος καὶ Δίκης, αὐτόθεν μὲν ἤδη φιλοπλουτίαν καὶ φιλοχρηματίαν, ὥσπερ σίδηρον μεστὸν ἰοῦ καὶ νόσημα τῆς ψυχῆς, ἀποδυσάμενος εἰς ἀγορὰς καπήλων ἢ δανειστῶν ἀπόρριψον,

αὐτὸς δ’ ἀπονόσφι τραπέσθαι

τὸν ἀπὸ δημοσίων χρηματιζόμενον ἡγούμενος ἀφ’ ἱερῶν κλέπτειν, ἀπὸ τάφων, ἀπὸ φίλων, ἐκ προδοσίας, ἀπὸ ψευδομαρτυρίας, σύμβουλον ἄπιστον εἶναι, δικαστὴν ἐπίορκον, ἄρχοντα δωροδόκον, οὐδεμιᾶς ἁπλῶς καθαρὸν ἀδικίας. ὅθεν οὐ δεῖ πολλὰ [f] περὶ τούτων λέγειν.

Ἡ δὲ φιλοτιμία, καίπερ οὖσα σοβαρωτέρα τῆς φιλοκερδείας, οὐκ ἐλάττονας ἔχει κῆρας ἐν πολιτείᾳ· καὶ γὰρ τὸ τολμᾶν αὐτῇ πρόσεστι μᾶλλον· ἐμφύεται γὰρ οὐκ ἀργαῖς οὐδὲ ταπειναῖς ἀλλ’ ἐρρωμέναις μάλιστα καὶ νεανικαῖς προαιρέσεσι, καὶ τὸ παρὰ τῶν ὄχλων ῥόθιον πολλάκις συνεξαῖρον αὐτὴν [820] [a] καὶ συνεξωθοῦν τοῖς ἐπαίνοις ἀκατάσχετον ποιεῖ καὶ δυσμεταχείριστον. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ Πλάτων ἀκουστέον εἶναι τοῖς νέοις ἔλεγεν ἐκ παίδων εὐθύς, ὡς οὔτε περικεῖσθαι χρυσὸν αὐτοῖς ἔξωθεν οὔτε κεκτῆσθαι θέμις, οἰκεῖον ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ συμμεμιγμένον ἔχοντας, αἰνιττόμενος οἶμαι τὴν ἐκ γένους διατείνουσαν εἰς τὰς φύσεις αὐτῶν ἀρετήν· οὕτω παραμυθώμεθα τὴν φιλοτιμίαν, λέγοντες ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἔχειν χρυσὸν ἀδιάφθορον καὶ ἀκήρατον καὶ ἄχραντον ὑπὸ φθόνου καὶ μώμου τιμήν, ἅμα λογισμῷ καὶ παραθεωρήσει τῶν πεπραγμένων ἡμῖν καὶ πεπολιτευμένων [b] αὐξανόμενον· διὸ μὴ δεῖσθαι γραφομένων τιμῶν ἢ πλαττομένων ἢ χαλκοτυπουμένων, ἐν αἷς καὶ τὸ εὐδοκιμοῦν ἀλλότριόν ἐστιν· ἐπαινεῖται γὰρ οὐχ ᾧ γέγονεν ἀλλ’ ὑφ’ οὗ γέγονεν ὡς ὁ σαλπικτὴς καὶ ὁ δορυφόρος. ὁ δὲ Κάτων, ἤδη τότε τῆς Ῥώμης καταπιμπλαμένης ἀνδριάντων, οὐκ ἐῶν αὑτοῦ γενέσθαι “μᾶλλον,” ἔφη, “βούλομαι πυνθάνεσθαί τινας, διὰ τί μου ἀνδριὰς οὐ κεῖται ἢ διὰ τί κεῖται.” καὶ γὰρ φθόνον ἔχει τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ νομίζουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ τοῖς μὴ λαβοῦσιν αὐτοὶ χάριν ὀφείλειν, τοὺς δὲ λαβόντας αὑτοῖς καὶ βαρεῖς εἶναι, οἷον ἐπὶ μισθῷ [c] τὰς χρείας ἀπαιτοῦντας. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ παραπλεύσας τὴν Σύρτιν εἶτ’ ἀνατραπεὶς περὶ τὸν πορθμὸν οὐδὲν μέγα πεποίηκεν οὐδὲ σεμνόν, οὕτως ὁ τὸ ταμιεῖον φυλαξάμενος καὶ τὸ δημοσιώνιον ἁλοὺς δὲ περὶ τὴν προεδρίαν ἢ τὸ πρυτανεῖον, ὑψηλῷ μὲν προσέπταικεν ἀκρωτηρίῳ βαπτίζεται δ’ ὁμοίως. ἄριστος μὲν οὖν ὁ μηδενὸς δεόμενος τῶν τοιαούτων ἀλλὰ φεύγων καὶ παραιτούμενος· ἂν δ’ ᾖ μὴ ῥᾴδιον [d] δήμου τινὰ χάριν ἀπώσασθαι καὶ φιλοφροσύνην πρὸς τοῦτο ῥυέντος, ὥσπερ οὐκ ἀργυρίτην οὐδὲ δωρίτην ἀγῶνα πολιτείας ἀγωνιζομένοις ἀλλ’ ἱερὸν ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ στεφανίτην, ἐπιγραφή τις ἀρκεῖ καὶ πινάκιον καὶ ψήφισμα καὶ θαλλός, ὡς Ἐπιμενίδης ἔλαβεν ἐξ ἀκροπόλεως καθήρας τὴν πόλιν. Ἀναξαγόρας δὲ τὰς διδομένας ἀφεὶς τιμὰς ᾐτήσατο τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην, καθ’ ἣν ἂν τελευτήσῃ, τοὺς παῖδας ἀφιέναι παίζειν καὶ σχολάζειν ἀπὸ τῶν μαθημάτων. τοῖς δὲ τοὺς Μάγους ἀνελοῦσιν ἑπτὰ Πέρσαις ἔδωκαν αὐτοῖς καὶ τοῖς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν γενομένοις εἰς τοὔμπροσθεν τῆς κεφαλῆς τὴν τιάραν φορεῖν· τοῦτο [e] γὰρ ἐποιήσαντο σύμβολον, ὡς ἔοικε, χωροῦντες ἐπὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν. ἔχει δέ τι καὶ ἡ τοῦ Πιττακοῦ τιμὴ πολιτικόν· ἧς γὰρ ἐκτήσατο χώρας τοῖς πολίταις γῆν ὅσην ἐθέλοι λαβεῖν κελευσθεὶς ἔλαβε τοσαύτην, ὅσην ἐπῆλθε τὸ ἀκόντιον αὐτοῦ βαλόντος· ὁ δὲ Ῥωμαῖος Κόκλης, ὅσην ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ χωλὸς ὢν περιήροσεν. οὐ γὰρ μισθὸν εἶναι δεῖ τῆς πράξεως ἀλλὰ σύμβολον τὴν τιμήν, ἵνα καὶ διαμένῃ πολὺν χρόνον, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖναι διέμειναν. τῶν δὲ Δημητρίου τοῦ Φαληρέως τριακοσίων ἀνδριάντων οὐδεὶς [f] ἔσχεν ἰὸν οὐδὲ πίνον, ἀλλὰ πάντες ἔτι ζῶντος προανῃρέθησαν· τοὺς δὲ Δημάδου κατεχώνευσαν εἰς ἀμίδας· καὶ πολλαὶ τοιαῦτα τιμαὶ πεπόνθασιν οὐ μοχθηρίᾳ τοῦ λαβόντος μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ μεγέθει τοῦ δοθέντος δυσχερανθεῖσαι. διὸ κάλλιστον καὶ βεβαιότατον εὐτέλεια τιμῆς φυλακτήριον, αἱ δὲ μεγάλαι καὶ ὑπέρογκοι καὶ βάρος ἔχουσαι παραπλησίως τοῖς ἀσυμμέτροις ἀνδριᾶσι ταχὺ περιτρέπονται.

Ὀνομάζω δὲ νῦν τιμάς, ἃς οἱ πολλοὶ κατ’ Ἐμπεδοκλέα

ᾗ θέμις οὐ καλέουσι, νόμῳ δ’ ἐπίφημι καὶ αὐτός·

ἐπεὶ τήν γ’ ἀληθινὴν τιμὴν καὶ χάριν ἱδρυμένην ἐν εὐνοίᾳ καὶ διαθέσει τῶν μεμνημένων οὐχ ὑπερόψεται πολιτικὸς ἀνήρ, [821] [a] οὐδέ γε δόξαν ἀτιμάσει φεύγων τὸ “τοῖς πέλας ἁνδάνειν,” ὡς ἠξίου Δημόκριτος. οὐδὲ γὰρ κυνῶν ἀσπασμὸς οὐδ’ ἵππων εὔνοια θηραταῖς καὶ ἱπποτρόφοις ἀπόβλητον, ἀλλὰ καὶ χρήσιμον καὶ ἡδὺ συντρόφοις καὶ συνήθεσι ζῴοις τοιαύτην ἐνεργάσασθαι διάθεσιν πρὸς αὑτόν, οἵαν ὁ Λυσιμάχου κύων ἐπεδείκνυτο καὶ τῶν Ἀχιλλέως ἵππων ὁ ποιητὴς διηγεῖται περὶ τὸν Πάτροκλον· οἶμαι δ’ ἂν καὶ τὰς μελίττας ἀπαλλάττειν βέλτιον, [b] εἰ τοὺς τρέφοντας καὶ θεραπεύοντας ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ προσίεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ κεντεῖν καὶ χαλεπαίνειν ἐβούλοντο· νυνὶ δὲ ταύτας μὲν καπνῷ κολάζουσιν, ἵππους δ’ ὑβριστὰς καὶ κύνας ἀποστάτας κλοιοῖς καὶ χαλινοῖς ἄγουσιν ἠναγκασμένους· ἄνθρωπον δ’ ἀνθρώπῳ χειροήθη καὶ πρᾶον ἑκουσίως οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ πίστις εὐνοίας καὶ καλοκαγαθίας δόξα καὶ δικαιοσύνης παρίστησιν. ᾗ καὶ Δημοσθένης ὀρθῶς μέγιστον ἀποφαίνεται πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους φυλακτήριον ἀπιστίαν ταῖς πόλεσι· τοῦτο γὰρ μάλιστα τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ μέρος, ᾧ πιστεύομεν, ἁλώσιμόν ἐστιν. ὥσπερ οὖν τῆς Κασάνδρας ἀδοξούσης ἀνόνητος ἦν ἡ μαντικὴ τοῖς πολίταις

“ἄκραντα γάρ με” φησίν “ἔθηκε θεσπίζειν θεός,

[c] καὶ πρὸς παθόντων κἀν κακοῖσι κειμένων

σοφὴ κέκλημαι, πρὶν παθεῖν δέ ‘μαίνομαι,’”

οὕτως ἡ πρὸς Ἀρχύταν πίστις καὶ πρὸς Βάττον εὔνοια τῶν πολιτῶν μεγάλα τοὺς χρωμένους αὐτοῖς διὰ τὴν δόξαν ὠφέλησε. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν πρῶτον καὶ μέγιστον ἔνεστι τῇ δόξῃ τῇ τῶν πολιτικῶν ἀγαθόν, ἡ πάροδον ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις διδοῦσα πίστις· δεύτερον δ’ ὅτι πρὸς τοὺς βασκάνους καὶ πονηροὺς ὅπλον ἡ παρὰ τῶν πολλῶν εὔνοια τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἐστιν

ὡς ὅτε μήτηρ

παιδὸς ἐέργει μυῖαν, ὅθ’ ἡδέι λέξεται ὕπνῳ,

ἀπερύκουσα τὸν φθόνον καὶ πρὸς τὰς δυνάμεις ἐπανισοῦσα τὸν ἀγεννῆ τοῖς εὐπατρίδαις καὶ τὸν πένητα τοῖς πλουσίοις καὶ τὸν ἰδιώτην τοῖς ἄρχουσι· [d] καὶ ὅλως, ὅταν ἀλήθεια καὶ ἀρετὴ προσγένηται, φορόν ἐστι πνεῦμα καὶ βέβαιον ἐπὶ τὴν πολιτείαν. σκόπει δὲ τὴν ἐναντίαν καταμανθάνων διάθεσιν ἐν τοῖς παραδείγμασι. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ Διονυσίου παῖδας καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καταπορνεύσαντες οἱ περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἀνεῖλον, εἶτα καύσαντες τὰ σώματα τὴν τέφραν κατέσπειραν ἐκ πλοίου κατὰ τῆς θαλάττης. Μενάνδρου δέ τινος ἐν Βάκτροις ἐπιεικῶς βασιλεύσαντος [e] εἶτ’ ἀποθανόντος ἐπὶ στρατοπέδου, τὴν μὲν ἄλλην ἐποιήσαντο κηδείαν κατὰ τὸ κοινὸν αἱ πόλεις, περὶ δὲ τῶν λειψάνων αὐτοῦ καταστάντες εἰς ἀγῶνα μόλις συνέβησαν, ὥστε νειμάμενοι μέρος ἴσον τῆς τέφρας ἀπελθεῖν, καὶ γενέσθαι μνημεῖα παρὰ πᾶσι τοῦ ἀνδρός. αὖθις δ’ Ἀκραγαντῖνοι μὲν ἀπαλλαγέντες Φαλάριδος ἐψηφίσαντο μηδένα φορεῖν ἱμάτιον γλαύκινον· οἱ γὰρ ὑπηρέται τοῦ τυράννου γλαυκίνοις ἐχρῶντο περιζώμασι. Πέρσαι δ’, ὅτι [f] γρυπὸς ἦν ὁ Κῦρος, ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἐρῶσι τῶν γρυπῶν καὶ καλλίστους ὑπολαμβάνουσιν.

Οὕτως ἁπάντων ἐρώτων ἰσχυρότατος ἅμα καὶ θειότατός ἐστιν ὁ πόλεσι καὶ δήμοις πρὸς ἕνα δι’ ἀρετὴν ἐγγιγνόμενος· αἱ δ’ ἀπὸ θεάτρων ἢ νεμήσεων ἢ μονομάχων ψευδώνυμοι τιμαὶ καὶ ψευδομάρτυρες ἑταιρικαῖς ἐοίκασι κολακείαις, ὄχλων ἀεὶ τῷ διδόντι καὶ χαριζομένῳ προσμειδιώντων, ἐφήμερόν τινα καὶ ἀβέβαιον δόξαν. εὖ μὲν οὖν ὁ πρῶτος εἰπὼν καταλυθῆναι δῆμον ὑπὸ τοῦ πρώτου δεκάσαντος συνεῖδεν, ὅτι τὴν ἰσχὺν ἀποβάλλουσιν [822] [a] οἱ πολλοὶ τοῦ λαμβάνειν ἥττονες γενόμενοι· δεῖ δὲ καὶ τοὺς δεκάζοντας οἴεσθαι καταλύειν ἑαυτούς, ὅταν ἀναλωμάτων μεγάλων ὠνούμενοι τὴν δόξαν ἰσχυροὺς ποιῶσι καὶ θρασεῖς τοὺς πολλούς, ὡς μέγα τι καὶ δοῦναι καὶ ἀφελέσθαι κυρίους ὄντας.

Οὐ μὴν διὰ τοῦτο μικρολογητέον ἐν τοῖς νενομισμένοις φιλοτιμήμασι, τῶν πραγμάτων εὐπορίαν παρεχόντων· ὡς μᾶλλον οἱ πολλοὶ μὴ μεταδιδόντα τῶν ἰδίων πλούσιον ἢ πένητα τῶν δημοσίων κλέπτοντα δι’ ἔχθους ἔχουσιν, ὑπεροψίαν τοῦτο καὶ περιφρόνησιν αὑτῶν ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἀνάγκην [b] ἡγούμενοι. γιγνέσθωσαν οὖν αἱ μεταδόσεις πρῶτον μὲν ἀντὶ μηδενός· οὕτω γὰρ ἐκπλήττουσι καὶ χειροῦνται μᾶλλον τοὺς λαμβάνοντας· ἔπειτα σὺν καιρῷ πρόφασιν ἀστείαν καὶ καλὴν ἔχοντι, μετὰ τιμῆς θεοῦ πάντας ἀγούσης πρὸς εὐσέβειαν· ἐγγίγνεται γὰρ ἅμα τοῖς πολλοῖς ἰσχυρὰ διάθεσις καὶ δόξα τοῦ τὸ δαιμόνιον εἶναι μέγα καὶ σεμνόν, ὅταν, οὓς αὐτοὶ τιμῶσι καὶ μεγάλους νομίζουσιν, οὕτως ἀφειδῶς καὶ προθύμως περὶ τὸ θεῖον ὁρῶσι φιλοτιμουμένους. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ Πλάτων ἀφεῖλε τῶν παιδευομένων [c] νέων τὴν ἁρμονίαν τὴν Λύδιον καὶ τὴν ἰαστί, τὴν μὲν τὸ θρηνῶδες καὶ φιλοπενθὲς ἡμῶν ἐγείρουσαν τῆς ψυχῆς, τὴν δὲ τὸ πρὸς ἡδονὰς ὀλισθηρὸν καὶ ἀκόλαστον αὔξουσαν· οὕτω σὺ τῶν φιλοτιμιῶν ὅσαι τὸ φονικὸν καὶ θηριῶδες ἢ τὸ βωμολόχον καὶ ἀκόλαστον ἐρεθίζουσι καὶ τρέφουσι, μάλιστα μὲν ἐξέλαυνε τῆς πόλεως, εἰ δὲ μή, φεῦγε καὶ διαμάχου τοῖς πολλοῖς αἰτουμένοις τὰ τοιαῦτα θεάματα· χρηστὰς δὲ καὶ σώφρονας ἀεὶ ποιοῦ τῶν ἀναλωμάτων ὑποθέσεις, τὸ καλὸν ἢ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον ἐχούσας τέλος ἢ τὸ γοῦν ἡδὺ καὶ κεχαρισμένον ἄνευ βλάβης καὶ ὕβρεως προσούσης.

[d] Ἂν δ’ ᾖ τὰ τῆς οὐσίας μέτρια καὶ κέντρῳ καὶ διαστήματι περιγραφόμενα πρὸς τὴν χρείαν, οὔτ’ ἀγεννὲς οὔτε ταπεινὸν οὐδέν ἐστι πενίαν ὁμολογοῦντα ταῖς τῶν ἐχόντων ἐξίστασθαι φιλοτιμίαις, καὶ μὴ δανειζόμενον οἰκτρὸν ἅμα καὶ καταγέλαστον εἶναι περὶ τὰς λειτουργίας· οὐ γὰρ λανθάνουσιν ἐξασθενοῦντες ἢ φίλοις ἐνοχλοῦντες ἢ θωπεύοντες δανειστάς, ὥστε μὴ δόξαν αὐτοῖς μηδ’ ἰσχὺν ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον αἰσχύνην καὶ καταφρόνησιν ἀπὸ τῶν τοιούτων [e] ἀναλωμάτων ὑπάρχειν. διὸ χρήσιμον ἀεὶ πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα μεμνῆσθαι τοῦ Λαμάχου καὶ τοῦ Φωκίωνος· οὗτος μὲν γάρ, ἀξιούντων αὐτὸν ἐν θυσίᾳ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐπιδοῦναι καὶ κροτούντων πολλάκις “αἰσχυνοίμην ἄν” εἶπεν “ὑμῖν μὲν ἐπιδιδοὺς Καλλικλεῖ δὲ τούτῳ μὴ ἀποδιδούς,” δείξας τὸν δανειστήν. Λάμαχος δ’ ἐν τοῖς τῆς στρατηγίας ἀεὶ προσέγραφεν ἀπολογισμοῖς ἀργύριον εἰς κρηπῖδας αὑτῷ καὶ ἱμάτιον· Ἕρμωνι δὲ Θεσσαλοὶ φεύγοντι τὴν ἀρχὴν ὑπὸ πενίας ἐψηφίσαντο λάγυνον οἴνου κατὰ μῆνα διδόναι καὶ μέδιμνον ἀλφίτων ἀφ’ ἑκάστης τετράδος. οὕτως οὔτ’ ἀγεννές [f] ἐστι πενίαν ὁμολογεῖν, οὔτε λείπονται πρὸς δύναμιν ἐν πόλεσι τῶν ἑστιώντων καὶ χορηγούντων οἱ πένητες, ἂν παρρησίαν ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς καὶ πίστιν ἔχωσι. δεῖ δὴ μάλιστα κρατεῖν ἑαυτῶν ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις καὶ μήτ’ εἰς πεδία καταβαίνειν πεζὸν ἱππεῦσι μαχούμενον μήτ’ ἐπὶ στάδια καὶ θυμέλας καὶ τραπέζας πένητα πλουσίοις ὑπὲρ δόξης καὶ δυναστείας διαγωνιζόμενον· ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς καὶ φρονήματος ἀεὶ μετὰ λόγου πειρωμένοις ἄγειν τὴν [823] [a] πόλιν, οἷς οὐ μόνον τὸ καλὸν καὶ τὸ σεμνὸν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ κεχαρισμένον καὶ ἀγωγὸν ἔνεστι “Κροισείων αἱρετώτερον στατήρων.” οὐ γὰρ αὐθάδης οὐδ’ ἐπαχθὴς ὁ χρηστὸς οὐδ’ αὐθέκαστός ἐστιν ὁ σώφρων ἀνὴρ καὶ

στείχει πολίταις ὄμμ’ ἔχων ἰδεῖν πικρόν,

ἀλλὰ πρῶτον μὲν εὐπροσήγορος καὶ κοινὸς ὢν πελάσαι καὶ προσελθεῖν ἅπασιν, οἰκίαν τε παρέχων ἄκλειστον ὡς λιμένα φύξιμον ἀεὶ τοῖς χρῄζουσι, καὶ τὸ κηδεμονικὸν καὶ φιλάνθρωπον οὐ χρείαις οὐδὲ πράξεσι μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ συναλγεῖν πταίουσι [b] καὶ κατορθοῦσι συγχαίρειν ἐπιδεικνύμενος· οὐδαμῆ δὲ λυπηρὸς οὐδ’ ἐνοχλῶν οἰκετῶν πλήθει περὶ λουτρὸν ἢ καταλήψεσι τόπων ἐν θεάτροις οὐδὲ τοῖς εἰς τρυφὴν καὶ πολυτέλειαν ἐπιφθόνοις παράσημος· ἀλλ’ ἴσος καὶ ὁμαλὸς ἐσθῆτι καὶ διαίτῃ καὶ τροφαῖς παίδων καὶ θεραπείᾳ γυναικός, οἷον ὁμοδημεῖν καὶ συνανθρωπεῖν τοῖς πολλοῖς βουλόμενος. ἔπειτα σύμβουλον εὔνουν καὶ συνήγορον ἄμισθον καὶ διαλλακτὴν εὐμενῆ πρὸς γυναῖκας ἀνδρῶν καὶ φίλων πρὸς ἀλλήλους παρέχων ἑαυτόν, οὐ μικρὸν ἡμέρας μέρος ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος ἢ τοῦ λογείου πολιτευόμενος, εἶτ’ ἤδη πάντα τὸν ἄλλον βίον

[c] ἕλκων ἐφ’ αὑτὸν ὥστε καικίας νέφη

τὰς χρείας καὶ τὰς οἰκονομίας πανταχόθεν· ἀλλὰ δημοσιεύων ἀεὶ ταῖς φροντίσι, καὶ τὴν πολιτείαν βίον καὶ πρᾶξιν οὐκ ἀσχολίαν ὥσπερ οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ λειτουργίαν ἡγούμενος, πᾶσι τούτοις καὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις ἐπιστρέφει καὶ προσάγεται τοὺς πολλούς, νόθα καὶ κίβδηλα τὰ τῶν ἄλλων θωπεύματα καὶ δελεάσματα πρὸς τὴν τούτου κηδεμονίαν καὶ φρόνησιν ὁρῶντας. οἱ μὲν γὰρ Δημητρίου κόλακες οὐκ ἠξίουν βασιλεῖς τοὺς ἄλλους προσαγορεύειν, ἀλλὰ τὸν μὲν Σέλευκον ἐλεφαντάρχην τὸν δὲ Λυσίμαχον [d] γαζοφύλακα τὸν δὲ Πτολεμαῖον ναύαρχον ἐκάλουν, τὸν δ’ Ἀγαθοκλέα νησιάρχην· οἱ δὲ πολλοί, κἂν ἐν ἀρχῇ τὸν ἀγαθὸν καὶ φρόνιμον ἀπορρίψωσιν, ὕστερον καταμανθάνοντες τὴν ἀλήθειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ ἦθος τοῦτον ἡγοῦνται μόνον πολιτικὸν καὶ δημοτικὸν καὶ ἄρχοντα, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων τὸν μὲν χορηγὸν τὸν δ’ ἑστιάτορα τὸν δὲ γυμνασίαρχον καὶ νομίζουσι καὶ καλοῦσιν. εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς συμποσίοις, Καλλίου δαπανῶντος ἢ Ἀλκιβιάδου, Σωκράτης ἀκούεται καὶ πρὸς Σωκράτην [e] πάντες ἀποβλέπουσιν, οὕτως ἐν ταῖς ὑγιαινούσαις πόλεσιν Ἰσμηνίας μὲν ἐπιδίδωσι καὶ δειπνίζει Λίχας καὶ χορηγεῖ Νικήρατος, Ἐπαμεινώνδας δὲ καὶ Ἀριστείδης καὶ Λύσανδρος καὶ ἄρχουσι καὶ πολιτεύονται καὶ στρατηγοῦσι. πρὸς ἃ χρὴ βλέποντα μὴ ταπεινοῦσθαι μηδ’ ἐκπεπλῆχθαι τὴν ἐκ θεάτρων καὶ ὀπτανείων καὶ πολυανδρίων προσισταμένην τοῖς ὄχλοις δόξαν, ὡς ὀλίγον χρόνον ἐπιζῶσαν καὶ τοῖς μονομάχοις καὶ ταῖς σκηναῖς ὁμοῦ συνδιαλυομένην, ἔντιμον δὲ μηδὲν μηδὲ σεμνὸν ἔχουσαν.

[f] Οἱ μὲν οὖν ἔμπειροι θεραπείας καὶ τροφῆς μελιττῶν τὸν μάλιστα βομβοῦντα τῶν σίμβλων καὶ θορύβου μεστὸν τοῦτον εὐθηνεῖν καὶ ὑγιαίνειν νομίζουσιν· ᾧ δὲ τοῦ λογικοῦ καὶ πολιτικοῦ σμήνους ἐπιμέλειαν ἔχειν ὁ θεὸς ἔδωκεν, ἡσυχίᾳ μάλιστα καὶ πραότητι δήμου τεκμαιρόμενος εὐδαιμονίαν τὰ μὲν ἄλλα τοῦ Σόλωνος ἀποδέξεται καὶ μιμήσεται κατὰ δύναμιν, ἀπορήσει δὲ καὶ θαυμάσει τί παθὼν ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἀνὴρ ἔγραψεν ἄτιμον εἶναι τὸν [824] [a] ἐν στάσει πόλεως μηδετέροις προσθέμενον. οὔτε γὰρ σώματι νοσοῦντι γίγνεται μεταβολῆς ἀρχὴ πρὸς τὸ ὑγιαίνειν ἀπὸ τῶν συννοσούντων μερῶν, ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἡ παρὰ τοῖς ἐρρωμένοις ἰσχύσασα κρᾶσις ἐκστήσῃ τὸ παρὰ φύσιν· ἔν τε δήμῳ στασιάσαντι μὴ δεινὴν μηδ’ ὀλέθριον στάσιν ἀλλὰ παυσομένην ποτὲ δεῖ τὸ ἀπαθὲς καὶ τὸ ὑγιαῖνον ἐγκεκρᾶσθαι πολὺ καὶ παραμένειν καὶ συνοικεῖν· ἐπιρρεῖ γὰρ τούτῳ τὸ οἰκεῖον ἐκ τῶν σωφρονούντων καὶ δίεισι διὰ τοῦ νενοσηκότος· αἱ δὲ δι’ ὅλων ἀναταραχθεῖσαι πόλεις κομιδῇ διεφθάρησαν, ἂν μή τινος ἀνάγκης [b] ἔξωθεν τυχοῦσαι καὶ κολάσεως ὑπὸ κακῶν βίᾳ σωφρονήσωσιν. οὐ μὴν ἀναίσθητον οὐδ’ ἀνάλγητον ἐν στάσει καθῆσθαι προσήκει τὴν περὶ αὑτὸν ἀταραξίαν ὑμνοῦντα καὶ τὸν ἀπράγμονα καὶ μακάριον βίον, ἐν ἑτέροις ἐπιτερπόμενον ἀγνωμονοῦσιν· ἀλλ’ ἐνταῦθα δεῖ μάλιστα τὸν Θηραμένους κόθορνον ὑποδούμενον ἀμφοτέροις ὁμιλεῖν καὶ μηδετέροις προστίθεσθαι· δόξεις γὰρ οὐχὶ τῷ μὴ συναδικεῖν ἀλλότριος ἀλλὰ τῷ βοηθεῖν κοινὸς εἶναι πάντων· καὶ τὸ μὴ συνατυχεῖν οὐχ ἕξει φθόνον, ἂν πᾶσι φαίνῃ συναλγῶν ὁμοίως. κράτιστον [c] δὲ προνοεῖν ὅπως μηδέποτε στασιάζωσι, καὶ τοῦτο τῆς πολιτικῆς ὥσπερ τέχνης μέγιστον ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ κάλλιστον. ὅρα γὰρ ὅτι τῶν μεγίστων ἀγαθῶν ταῖς πόλεσιν, εἰρήνης ἐλευθερίας εὐετηρίας εὐανδρίας ὁμονοίας, πρὸς μὲν εἰρήνην οὐδὲν οἱ δῆμοι τῶν πολιτικῶν ἔν γε τῷ παρόντι χρόνῳ δέονται· πέφευγε γὰρ ἐξ ἡμῶν καὶ ἠφάνισται πᾶς μὲν Ἕλλην πᾶς δὲ βάρβαρος πόλεμος· ἐλευθερίας δ’ ὅσον οἱ κρατοῦντες νέμουσι τοῖς δήμοις μέτεστι καὶ τὸ πλέον ἴσως οὐκ ἄμεινον· εὐφορίαν δὲ γῆς ἄφθονον εὐμενῆ τε κρᾶσιν ὡρῶν καὶ τίκτειν [d] γυναῖκας “ἐοικότα τέκνα γονεῦσι” καὶ σωτηρίαν τοῖς γεννωμένοις εὐχόμενος ὅ γε σώφρων αἰτήσεται παρὰ θεῶν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πολίταις.

Λείπεται δὴ τῷ πολιτικῷ μόνον ἐκ τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἔργων, ὃ μηδενὸς ἔλαττόν ἐστι τῶν ἀγαθῶν, ὁμόνοιαν ἐμποιεῖν καὶ φιλίαν ἀεὶ τοῖς συνοικοῦσιν, ἔριδας δὲ καὶ διχοφροσύνας καὶ δυσμένειαν ἐξαιρεῖν ἅπασαν, ὥσπερ ἐν φίλων διαφοραῖς, τὸ μᾶλλον οἰόμενον ἀδικεῖσθαι μέρος ἐξομιλοῦντα πρότερον καὶ συναδικεῖσθαι δοκοῦντα καὶ συναγανακτεῖν, εἶθ’ οὕτως ἐπιχειροῦντα πραΰνειν καὶ διδάσκειν ὅτι τῶν βιάζεσθαι καὶ νικᾶν [e] ἐριζόντων οἱ παρέντες οὐκ ἐπιεικείᾳ καὶ ἤθει μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ φρονήματι καὶ μεγέθει ψυχῆς διαφέρουσι, καὶ μικρὸν ὑφιέμενοι νικῶσιν ἐν τοῖς καλλίστοις καὶ μεγίστοις· ἔπειτα καὶ καθ’ ἕνα καὶ κοινῇ διδάσκοντα καὶ φράζοντα τὴν τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν πραγμάτων ἀσθένειαν, ἧς ἓν ἀπολαῦσαι ἄμεινόν ἐστι τοῖς εὖ φρονοῦσι, μεθ’ ἡσυχίας καὶ ὁμονοίας καταβιῶναι, μηδὲν ἐν μέσῳ τῆς τύχης ἆθλον ὑπολελοιπυίας. τίς γὰρ ἡγεμονία, τίς δόξα τοῖς περιγενομένοις; ποία δύναμις, ἣν μικρὸν ἀνθυπάτου [f] διάταγμα κατέλυσεν ἢ μετέστησεν εἰς ἄλλον, οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἂν παραμένῃ σπουδῆς ἄξιον ἔχουσαν; ἐπεὶ δέ, ὥσπερ ἐμπρησμὸς οὐ πολλάκις ἐκ τόπων ἱερῶν ἄρχεται καὶ δημοσίων, ἀλλὰ λύχνος τις ἐν οἰκίᾳ παραμεληθεὶς ἢ συρφετὸς διακαεὶς ἀνῆκε φλόγα πολλὴν καὶ δημοσίαν φθορὰν ἀπεργασαμένην, οὕτως [825] [a] οὐκ ἀεὶ στάσιν πόλεως αἱ περὶ τὰ κοινὰ φιλονεικίαι διακάουσιν, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις ἐκ πραγμάτων καὶ προσκρουμάτων ἰδίων εἰς δημόσιον αἱ διαφοραὶ προελθοῦσαι συνετάραξαν ἅπασαν τὴν πόλιν· οὐδενὸς ἧττον τῷ πολιτικῷ προσήκει ταῦτ’ ἰᾶσθαι καὶ προκαταλαμβάνειν, ὅπως τὰ μὲν οὐδ’ ὅλως ἔσται τὰ δὲ παύσεται ταχέως, τὰ δ’ οὐ λήψεται μέγεθος οὐδ’ ἅψεται τῶν δημοσίων, ἀλλ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς μενεῖ τοῖς διαφερομένοις, αὐτόν τε προσέχοντα καὶ φράζοντα τοῖς ἄλλοις, ὡς ἴδια κοινῶν καὶ μικρὰ μεγάλων αἴτια καθίσταται παροφθέντα καὶ μὴ τυχόντα θεραπείας ἐν ἀρχῇ μηδὲ παρηγορίας.

Οἷον ἐν Δελφοῖς ὁ μέγιστος λέγεται γενέσθαι νεωτερισμὸς ὑπὸ Κράτητος, οὗ μέλλων θυγατέρα γαμεῖν Ὀρσίλαος ὁ Φάλιδος, εἶτα, τοῦ κρατῆρος αὐτομάτως ἐπὶ ταῖς σπονδαῖς μέσου ῥαγέντος, οἰωνισάμενος καὶ καταλιπὼν τὴν νύμφην ἀπῆλθε μετὰ τοῦ πατρός· ὁ δὲ Κράτης ὀλίγον ὕστερον θύουσιν αὐτοῖς ὑποβαλὼν χρυσίον τι τῶν ἱερῶν κατεκρήμνισε τὸν Ὀρσίλαον καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀκρίτους, καὶ πάλιν τῶν φίλων τινὰς καὶ οἰκείων ἱκετεύοντας ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τῆς Προναίας ἀνεῖλε· πολλῶν δὲ τοιούτων γενομένων, ἀποκτείναντες οἱ Δελφοὶ τὸν Κράτητα [b] καὶ τοὺς συστασιάσαντας ἐκ τῶν χρημάτων ἐναγικῶν προσαγορευθέντων τοὺς κάτω ναοὺς ἀνῳκοδόμησαν. ἐν δὲ Συρακούσαις δυεῖν νεανίσκων συνήθων ὁ μὲν τὸν ἐρώμενον τοῦ ἑτέρου λαβὼν φυλάσσειν διέφθειρεν ἀποδημοῦντος, ὁ δ’ ἐκείνῳ πάλιν ὥσπερ ἀνταποδιδοὺς ὕβριν ἐμοίχευσε τὴν γυναῖκα· τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων τις εἰς βουλὴν παρελθὼν ἐκέλευσεν ἀμφοτέρους ἐλαύνειν, πρὶν ἀπολαῦσαι καὶ ἀναπλησθῆναι τὴν πόλιν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν τῆς ἔχθρας· οὐ μὴν ἔπεισεν, ἀλλ’ ἐκ τούτου στασιάσαντες [c] ἐπὶ συμφοραῖς μεγάλαις τὴν ἀρίστην πολιτείαν ἀνέτρεψαν. ἔχεις δὲ δήπου καὶ αὐτὸς οἰκεῖα παραδείγματα, τὴν Παρδάλα πρὸς Τυρρηνὸν ἔχθραν, ὡς ὀλίγον ἐδέησεν ἀνελεῖν τὰς Σάρδεις, ἐξ αἰτιῶν μικρῶν καὶ ἰδίων εἰς ἀπόστασιν καὶ πόλεμον ἐμβαλοῦσα.

Διὸ χρὴ μὴ καταφρονεῖν τὸν πολιτικὸν ὥσπερ ἐν σώματι προσκρουμάτων διαδρομὰς ὀξείας ἐχόντων, ἀλλ’ ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ πιέζειν καὶ βοηθεῖν· προσοχῇ γάρ, ὥς φησιν ὁ Κάτων, καὶ τὸ μέγα γίγνεται μικρὸν καὶ τὸ μικρὸν εἰς τὸ μηδὲν ἄγεται. μηχανὴ δ’ ἐπὶ ταῦτα πειθοῦς οὐκ ἔστι μείζων ἢ τὸ [d] παρέχειν ἑαυτὸν ἐν ταῖς ἰδίαις διαφοραῖς ἥμερον διαλλακτήν, ἀμήνιτον, ἐπὶ τῶν πρώτων αἰτιῶν μένοντα καὶ μηδενὶ προστιθέντα φιλονεικίαν μηδ’ ὀργὴν μηδ’ ἄλλο πάθος ἐμποιοῦν τραχύτητα καὶ πικρίαν τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις ἀμφισβητήμασι. τῶν μὲν γὰρ ἐν ταῖς παλαίστραις διαμαχομένων ἐπισφαίροις περιδέουσι τὰς χεῖρας, ὅπως εἰς ἀνήκεστον ἡ ἅμιλλα μηδὲν ἐκπίπτῃ, μαλακὴν ἔχουσα τὴν πληγὴν καὶ ἄλυπον· ἐν δὲ ταῖς κρίσεσι καὶ ταῖς δίκαις πρὸς τοὺς πολίτας ἄμεινόν ἐστι καθαραῖς καὶ ψιλαῖς ταῖς αἰτίαις χρώμενον ἀγωνίζεσθαι, καὶ μὴ καθάπερ [e] βέλη τὰ πράγματα χαράσσοντα καὶ φαρμάσσοντα ταῖς βλασφημίαις καὶ ταῖς κακοηθείαις καὶ ταῖς ἀπειλαῖς ἀνήκεστα καὶ μεγάλα καὶ δημόσια ποιεῖν. ὁ γὰρ οὕτω προσφερόμενος τοῖς καθ’ αὑτὸν ὑπηκόους ἕξει καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους· αἱ δὲ περὶ τὰ δημόσια φιλοτιμίαι, τῶν ἰδίων ὑφαιρουμένων ἀπεχθειῶν, εὐτελεῖς γίγνονται καὶ δυσχερὲς οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἀνήκεστον ἐπιφέρουσιν.

De unius in republica dominatione, populari statu, et paucorum imperio

ΠΕΡΙ ΜΟΝΑΡΧΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΟΛΙΓΑΡΧΙΑΣ

[826] Εἰς τοῦτο δὴ τὸ δικαστήριον καὶ αὐτὸς [b] εἰσάγων τὴν γενομένην μοι πρὸς ὑμᾶς διάλεξιν ἐχθές, ᾤμην τῆς πολιτικῆς ἀρετῆς ὕπαρ οὐκ ὄναρ ἀκοῦσαι λεγούσης

κεκρότηται χρυσέα κρηπὶς ἱεραῖσιν ἀοιδαῖς,

ὁ προτρεπόμενος καὶ διαίρων ἐπὶ πολιτείαν βέβληται λόγος· “εἶα τειχίζωμεν ἤδη” τὴν ὀφειλομένην ἐποικοδομοῦντες τῇ προτροπῇ διδασκαλίαν, ὀφείλεται δὲ τῷ παραδεδεγμένῳ τὴν ἐπὶ τὸ πράττειν τὰ κοινὰ προτροπὴν καὶ ὁρμὴν ἑξῆς ἀκοῦσαι καὶ λαβεῖν παραγγέλματα πολιτείας, οἷς χρώμενος, [c] ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστιν ἀνθρώπῳ, δημωφελὴς ἔσται, μετ’ ἀσφαλείας ἅμα καὶ τιμῆς δικαίας εὖ τιθέμενος τὸ οἰκεῖον. ὃ δὲ προὔργου μέν ἐστιν εἰς τὰ μέλλοντα τοῖς δὲ προλελεγμένοις ἕπεται, σκεπτέον ἥτις ἀρίστη πολιτεία. καθάπερ γὰρ ἀνθρώπου βίοι πλείονες, ἔστι καὶ δήμου ἡ πολιτεία βίος· ὥστε λαβεῖν τὴν ἀρίστην ἀναγκαῖον· ἢ γὰρ ἐκ πασῶν αἱρήσεται ταύτην ὁ πολιτικὸς ἢ τῶν λοιπῶν τὴν ὁμοιοτάτην, εἰ ταύτην ἀδύνατον.

Λέγεται μὲν δὴ πολιτεία καὶ μετάληψις τῶν ἐν πόλει δικαίων· ὥς φαμεν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ πολιτείαν Μεγαρεῖς ψηφίσασθαι· τοῦ δ’ εἰς γέλωτα θεμένου τὴν σπουδὴν αὐτῶν, εἰπεῖν ἐκείνους ὅτι μόνῳ πρότερον τὴν πολιτείαν Ἡρακλεῖ καὶ μετ’ ἐκεῖνον αὐτῷ [d] ψηφίσαιντο· τὸν δὲ θαυμάσαντα δέξασθαι τὸ τίμιον ἐν τῷ σπανίῳ τιθέμενον. λέγεται δὲ καὶ βίος ἀνδρὸς πολιτικοῦ καὶ τὰ κοινὰ πράττοντος πολιτεία· καθὸ τὴν Περικλέους πολιτείαν ἐπαινοῦμεν καὶ τὴν Βίαντος, ψέγομεν δὲ τὴν Ὑπερβόλου καὶ Κλέωνος. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ μίαν πρᾶξιν εὔστοχον εἰς τὰ κοινὰ καὶ λαμπρὰν πολιτείαν προσαγορεύουσιν, οἷον χρημάτων ἐπίδοσιν, διάλυσιν πολέμου, ψηφίσματος εἰσήγησιν· καθὸ καὶ πολιτεύσασθαι τὸν δεῖνα σήμερον λέγομεν, εἰ τύχοι τι διαπραξάμενος ἐν κοινῷ τῶν δεόντων.

Παρὰ πάντα ταῦτα λέγεται πολιτεία τάξις [e] καὶ κατάστασις πόλεως διοικοῦσα τὰς πράξεις· καθά φασι τρεῖς εἶναι πολιτείας, μοναρχίαν καὶ ὀλιγαρχίαν καὶ δημοκρατίαν, ὧν καὶ Ἡρόδοτος ἐν τῇ τρίτῃ σύγκρισιν πεποίηται· καὶ δοκοῦσι γενικώταται εἶναι. τὰς γὰρ ἄλλας, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς μουσικοῖς διαγράμμασι τῶν πρώτων τρόπων ἀνιεμένων ἢ ἐπιτεινομένων, συμβέβηκε παρακρούσεις καὶ [f] διαφθορὰς κατ’ ἔλλειψιν καὶ ὑπερβολὴν εἶναι. ταύτας δὲ καὶ πλεῖστον καὶ μέγιστον ἐν ἡγεμονίαις δυνηθείσας τῶν ἐθνῶν ἀπεκληρώσαντο τὰς πολιτείας, Πέρσαι μὲν αὐτοκρατῆ βασιλείαν καὶ ἀνυπεύθυνον, Σπαρτιᾶται δ’ ἀριστοκρατικὴν ὀλιγαρχίαν καὶ αὐθέκαστον, Ἀθηναῖοι δ’ αὐτόνομον καὶ ἄκρατον δημοκρατίαν. ὧν ἁμαρτανομένων παρατροπαὶ καὶ ὑπερχύσεις εἰσὶν αἱ λεγόμεναι τυραννίδες καὶ δυναστεῖαι καὶ ὀχλοκρατίαι· ὅταν βασιλεία μὲν [827] [a] ὕβριν ἐντέκῃ καὶ τὸ ἀνυπεύθυνον· ὀλιγαρχία δ’ ὑπερφροσύνην καὶ τὸ αὔθαδες· δημοκρατία δ’ ἀναρχίαν, ἰσότης δ’ ἀμετρίαν, πᾶσαι δὲ τὸ ἀνόητον.

Ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ ἁρμονικὸς καὶ μουσικὸς ἀνὴρ παντὶ μὲν ὀργάνῳ χρήσεται προσῳδῷ τεχνικῶς ἁρμοσάμενος καὶ λόγῳ κρούων ἕκαστον, ὡς πέφυκεν ἐμμελὲς ὑπηχεῖν· ἤδη μέντοι συμβούλῳ Πλάτωνι χρησάμενος, πηκτίδας, σαμβύκας καὶ ψαλτήρια πολύφθογγα καὶ βαρβίτους καὶ τρίγωνα παραπέμψας, [b] τὴν λύραν καὶ τὴν κιθάραν προτιμήσει· τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον ὁ πολιτικὸς ἀνὴρ εὖ μὲν ὀλιγαρχίαν Λακωνικὴν καὶ Λυκούργειον μεταχειριεῖται, συναρμοσάμενος αὑτῷ τοὺς ἰσοκρατεῖς καὶ ὁμοτίμους ἄνδρας, ἡσυχῇ προσβιαζόμενος· εὖ δὲ πολυφθόγγῳ καὶ πολυχόρδῳ συνοίσεται δημοκρατίᾳ, τὰ μὲν ἀνιεὶς τὰ δ’ ἐπιτείνων τῆς πολιτείας, χαλάσας τ’ ἐν καιρῷ καὶ καρτερῶς αὖθις ἐμφύς, ἀντιβῆναι καὶ ἀντισχεῖν ἐπιστάμενος· εἰ δ’ αἵρεσις αὐτῷ δοθείη, καθάπερ ὀργάνων, τῶν πολιτειῶν, οὐκ ἂν ἄλλην ἕλοιτο πλὴν τὴν μοναρχίαν, Πλάτωνι πειθόμενος, τὴν μόνην δυναμένην τὸν ἐντελῆ καὶ ὄρθιον ἐκεῖνον ὡς ἀληθῶς [c] τῆς ἀρετῆς τόνον ἀνασχέσθαι καὶ μήτε πρὸς ἀνάγκην μήτε πρὸς χάριν ἁρμόσαι τοῦ συμφέροντος. αἱ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλαι πολιτεῖαι τρόπον τινὰ κρατούμεναι κρατοῦσι καὶ φερόμεναι φέρουσι τὸν πολιτικόν, οὐκ ἔχοντα τὴν ἰσχὺν βέβαιον ἐπὶ τούτους, παρ’ ὧν ἔχει τὸ ἰσχῦον, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις ἀναγκαζόμενον τὸ Αἰσχύλειον ἀναφωνεῖν, ᾧ πρὸς τὴν τύχην ἐχρῆτο Δημήτριος ὁ πολιορκητὴς ἀποβαλὼν τὴν ἡγεμονίαν

σύ τοί με φυσᾷς, σύ με καταίθειν μοι δοκεῖς.

De vitando aere alieno

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΜΗ ΔΕΙΝ ΔΑΝΕΙΖΕΣΘΑΙ

[827] Ὁ Πλάτων ἐν τοῖς Νόμοις οὐκ ἐᾷ μεταλαμβάνειν [e] ὕδατος ἀλλοτρίου τοὺς γείτονας, ἂν μὴ παρ’ αὑτοῖς ὀρύξαντες ἄχρι τῆς κεραμίτιδος καλουμένης γῆς ἄγονον εὕρωσι νάματος τὸ χωρίον· ἡ γὰρ κεραμῖτις φύσιν ἔχουσα λιπαρὰν καὶ πυκνὴν στέγει παραλαβοῦσα τὸ ὑγρὸν καὶ οὐ διίησι· δεῖν δὲ μεταλαμβάνειν τἀλλοτρίου τοὺς ἴδιον κτήσασθαι μὴ δυναμένους· ἀπορίᾳ γὰρ βοηθεῖν τὸν νόμον. ἆρ’ οὐ δὴ ἔδει καὶ περὶ χρημάτων εἶναι νόμον, ὅπως μὴ [f] δανείζωνται παρ’ ἑτέρων μηδ’ ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίας πηγὰς βαδίζωσι, μὴ πρότερον οἴκοι τὰς αὑτῶν ἀφορμὰς ἐξελέγξαντες καὶ συναγαγόντες ὥσπερ ἐκ λιβάδων τὸ χρήσιμον καὶ ἀναγκαῖον αὑτοῖς; νυνὶ δ’ ὑπὸ τρυφῆς καὶ μαλακίας ἢ πολυτελείας οὐ χρῶνται τοῖς ἑαυτῶν, ἔχοντες, ἀλλὰ λαμβάνουσιν ἐπὶ πολλῷ παρ’ ἑτέρων, μὴ δεόμενοι· τεκμήριον δὲ μέγα· τοῖς γὰρ ἀπόροις οὐ δανείζουσιν, ἀλλὰ βουλομένοις εὐπορίαν τιν’ ἑαυτοῖς κτᾶσθαι· καὶ μάρτυρα δίδωσι καὶ βεβαιωτὴν ἄξιον, ὅτι ἔχει, πιστεύεσθαι, δέον ἔχοντα μὴ δανείζεσθαι.

Τί θεραπεύεις τὸν τραπεζίτην ἢ πραγματευτήν; [828] [a] ἀπὸ τῆς ἰδίας δάνεισαι τραπέζης· ἐκπώματ’ ἔχεις, παροψίδας ἀργυρᾶς, λεκανίδας· ὑπόθου ταῦτα τῇ χρείᾳ· τὴν δὲ τράπεζαν ἡ καλὴ Αὐλὶς ἢ Τένεδος ἀντικοσμήσει τοῖς κεραμεοῖς, καθαρωτέροις οὖσι τῶν ἀργυρῶν· οὐκ ὄζει τόκου βαρὺ καὶ δυσχερὲς ὥσπερ ἰοῦ καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐπιρρυπαίνοντος τὴν πολυτέλειαν, οὐδ’ ἀναμνήσει τῶν καλανδῶν καὶ τῆς νουμηνίας, ἣν ἱερωτάτην ἡμερῶν οὖσαν ἀποφράδα ποιοῦσιν οἱ δανεισταὶ καὶ στύγιον. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἀντὶ τοῦ πωλεῖν τιθέντας ἐνέχυρα τὰ αὑτῶν οὐδ’ [b] ἂν ὁ θεὸς σῴσειεν ὁ Κτήσιος· αἰσχύνονται τιμὴν λαμβάνοντες, οὐκ αἰσχύνονται τόκον τῶν ἰδίων διδόντες. καίτοι ὅ γε Περικλῆς ἐκεῖνος τὸν τῆς θεᾶς κόσμον, ἄγοντα τάλαντα τεσσαράκοντα χρυσίου ἀπέφθου, περιαιρετὸν ἐποίησεν, ὅπως, ἔφη, χρησάμενοι πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον αὖθις ἀποδῶμεν μὴ ἔλαττον· οὐκοῦν καὶ ἡμεῖς ὥσπερ ἐν πολιορκίᾳ ταῖς χρείαις μὴ παραδεχώμεθα φρουρὰν δανειστοῦ πολεμίου, μηδ’ ὁρᾶν τὰ αὑτῶν ἐπὶ δουλείᾳ διδόμενα· ἀλλὰ τῆς τραπέζης περιελόντες τὰ μὴ χρήσιμα, τῆς κοίτης, τῶν ὀχημάτων, τῆς διαίτης, ἐλευθέρους διαφυλάττωμεν ἑαυτούς, ὡς ἀποδώσοντες αὖθις, ἐὰν εὐτυχήσωμεν.

[c] Αἱ μὲν οὖν Ῥωμαίων γυναῖκες εἰς ἀπαρχὴν τῷ Πυθίῳ Ἀπόλλωνι τὸν κόσμον ἐπέδωκαν, ὅθεν ὁ χρυσοῦς κρατὴρ εἰς Δελφοὺς ἐπέμφθη· αἱ δὲ Καρχηδονίων γυναῖκες ἐκείραντο τὰς κεφαλὰς καὶ ταῖς θριξὶν ἐντεῖναι τὰς μηχανὰς καὶ τὰ ὄργανα παρέσχον ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος· ἡμεῖς δὲ τὴν αὐτάρκειαν αἰσχυνόμενοι καταδουλοῦμεν ἑαυτοὺς ὑποθήκαις καὶ συμβολαίοις, δέον εἰς αὐτὰ τὰ χρήσιμα συσταλέντας καὶ συσπειραθέντας ἐκ τῶν ἀχρήστων καὶ περιττῶν κατακοπέντων ἢ πραθέντων ἐλευθερίας αὑτοῖς ἱερὸν ἱδρύσασθαι καὶ τέκνοις καὶ γυναιξίν.

[d] ἡ μὲν γὰρ Ἄρτεμις ἡ ἐν Ἐφέσῳ τοῖς χρεώσταις, ὅταν καταφύγωσιν εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν αὐτῆς, ἀσυλίαν παρέχει καὶ ἄδειαν ἀπὸ τῶν δανείων· τὸ δὲ τῆς εὐτελείας καὶ ἄσυλον καὶ ἄβατον πανταχοῦ τοῖς σώφροσιν ἀναπέπταται, πολλῆς σχολῆς εὐρυχωρίαν παρέχον ἱλαρὰν καὶ ἐπίτιμον. ὡς γὰρ ἡ Πυθία τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις περὶ τὰ Μηδικὰ τεῖχος ξύλινον διδόναι τὸν θεὸν ἔφη, κἀκεῖνοι τὴν χώραν καὶ τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὰ κτήματα καὶ τὰς οἰκίας ἀφέντες εἰς τὰς ναῦς κατέφυγον ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας, οὕτως ἡμῖν ὁ θεὸς δίδωσι ξυλίνην τράπεζαν καὶ κεραμεᾶν λεκάνην καὶ τραχὺ ἱμάτιον, ἐὰν ἐλεύθεροι ζῆν ἐθέλωμεν.

[e] μηδὲ σύ γ’ ἱπποσύνας τε μένειν,

μηδ’ ὀχήματα ζευκτὰ κερασφόρα καὶ κατάργυρα, ἃ τόκοι ταχεῖς καταλαμβάνουσι καὶ παρατρέχουσιν· ἀλλ’ ὄνῳ τινὶ τῷ τυχόντι καὶ καβάλλῃ χρώμενος φεῦγε πολέμιον καὶ τύραννον δανειστήν, οὐ γῆν αἰτοῦντα καὶ ὕδωρ ὡς ὁ Μῆδος, ἀλλὰ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἁπτόμενον καὶ προγράφοντα τὴν ἐπιτιμίαν· κἂν μὴ διδῷς, ἐνοχλοῦντα· κἂν ἔχῃς, μὴ λαμβάνοντα· κἂν πωλῇς, ἐπευωνίζοντα· κἂν μὴ πωλῇς, ἀναγκάζοντα· κἂν δικάζῃς, ἐντυγχάνοντα· κἂν [f] ὀμόσῃς, ἐπιτάττοντα· κἂν βαδίζῃς ἐπὶ θύρας, ἀποκλείοντα· κἂν οἴκοι μένῃς, ἐπισταθμεύοντα καὶ θυροκοποῦντα.

Τί γὰρ ὤνησε Σόλων Ἀθηναίους ἀπαλλάξας τοῦ ἐπὶ τοῖς σώμασιν ὀφείλειν; δουλεύουσι γὰρ ἅπασι τοῖς ἀφανισταῖς, μᾶλλον δ’ οὐδ’ αὐτοῖς· τί γὰρ ἦν τὸ δεινόν; ἀλλὰ δούλοις ὑβρισταῖς καὶ βαρβάροις καὶ ἀγρίοις, ὥσπερ οὓς ὁ Πλάτων φησὶ καθ’ Ἅιδου διαπύρους κολαστὰς καὶ δημοκοίνους ἐφεστάναι τοῖς ἠσεβηκόσι. καὶ γὰρ οὗτοι τὴν ἀγορὰν [829] [a] ἀσεβῶν χώραν ἀποδείξαντες τοῖς ἀθλίοις χρεώσταις γυπῶν δίκην ἔσθουσι καὶ ὑποκείρουσιν αὐτοὺς “δέρτρον ἔσω δύνοντες,” τοὺς δ’ ὥσπερ Ταντάλους ἐφεστῶτες εἴργουσι γεύσασθαι τῶν ἰδίων τρυγῶντας καὶ συγκομίζοντας. ὡς δὲ Δαρεῖος ἐπὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας ἔπεμψε Δᾶτιν καὶ Ἀρταφέρνην ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν ἁλύσεις ἔχοντας καὶ δεσμὰ κατὰ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων, παραπλησίως οὗτοι τῶν χειρογράφων καὶ συμβολαίων ὥσπερ πεδῶν ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα κομίζοντες ἀγγεῖα μεστὰ τὰς πόλεις ἐπιπορεύονται καὶ διελαύνουσι, [b] σπείροντες οὐχ ἥμερον καρπὸν ὡς ὁ Τριπτόλεμος, ἀλλ’ ὀφλημάτων ῥίζας πολυπόνους καὶ πολυτόκους καὶ δυσεκλείπτους τιθέντες, αἳ κύκλῳ νεμόμεναι καὶ περιβλαστάνουσαι κάμπτουσι καὶ ἄγχουσι τὰς πόλεις. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ λαγὼς λέγουσι τίκτειν ἅμα καὶ τρέφειν ἕτερα καὶ ἐπικυΐσκεσθαι πάλιν, τὰ δὲ τῶν μαστιγιῶν τούτων καὶ βαρβάρων χρέα πρὶν ἢ συλλαβεῖν τίκτει· διδόντες γὰρ εὐθὺς ἀπαιτοῦσι καὶ τιθέντες αἴρουσι καὶ δανείζουσιν ὃ λαμβάνουσιν ὑπὲρ τοῦ δανεῖσαι.

Λέγεται μὲν παρὰ Μεσσηνίοις

[c] ἔστι Πύλος πρὸ Πύλοιο, Πύλος γε μὲν ἔστι καὶ ἄλλος·

λεχθήσεται δὲ πρὸς τοὺς δανειστὰς

ἔστι τόκος πρὸ τόκοιο, τόκος γε μὲν ἔστι καὶ ἄλλος.

εἶτα τῶν φυσικῶν δήπου καταγελῶσι, λεγόντων μηδὲν ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος γενέσθαι· παρὰ τούτοις γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ μηκέτ’ ὄντος μηδ’ ὑφεστῶτος γεννᾶται τόκος· καὶ τὸ τελωνεῖν ὄνειδος ἡγοῦνται, τοῦ νόμου διδόντος· αὐτοὶ γὰρ παρανόμως δανείζουσι τελωνοῦντες, μᾶλλον δ’, εἰ δεῖ τἀληθὲς εἰπεῖν, ἐν τῷ δανείζειν χρεωκοποῦντες· ὁ γὰρ οὗ γράφει λαμβάνων ἔλαττον χρεωκοπεῖται. καίτοι Πέρσαι γε τὸ ψεύδεσθαι δεύτερον ἡγοῦνται τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων, πρῶτον δὲ τὸ ὀφείλειν· ὅτι καὶ τὸ ψεύδεσθαι τοῖς ὀφείλουσι [d] συμβαίνει πολλάκις· ψεύδονται δὲ μᾶλλον οἱ δανείζοντες καὶ ῥᾳδιουργοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς ἑαυτῶν ἐφημερίσι, γράφοντες ὅτι τῷ δεῖνι τοσοῦτον διδόασιν, ἔλαττον διδόντες· καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος αἰτίαν ἔχει πλεονεξίαν, οὐκ ἀνάγκην οὐδ’ ἀπορίαν, ἀλλ’ ἀπληστίαν, ἧς ἀναπόλαυστόν ἐστιν αὐτοῖς τὸ τέλος καὶ ἀνωφελὲς ὀλέθριον δὲ τοῖς ἀδικουμένοις. οὔτε γὰρ ἀγροὺς οὓς ἀφαιροῦνται τῶν χρεωστῶν γεωργοῦσιν, οὔτ’ οἰκίας αὐτῶν, ἐκβαλόντες ἐκείνους, οἰκοῦσιν, οὔτε τραπέζας παρατίθενται οὔτ’ ἐσθῆτας ἐκείνων· ἀλλὰ πρῶτός τις ἀπόλωλε, καὶ δεύτερος κυνηγετεῖται [e] ὑπ’ ἐκείνου δελεαζόμενος. νέμεται γὰρ ὡς πῦρ τὸ ἄγριον αὐξόμενον ὀλέθρῳ καὶ φθορᾷ τῶν ἐμπεσόντων, ἄλλον ἐξ ἄλλου καταναλίσκον· ὁ δὲ τοῦτο ῥιπίζων καὶ τρέφων ἐπὶ πολλοὺς δανειστὴς οὐδὲν ἔχει πλέον ἢ διὰ χρόνου λαβὼν ἀναγνῶναι πόσους πέπρακε καὶ πόσους ἐκβέβληκε καὶ πόθεν που κυλινδόμενον καὶ σωρευόμενον διαβέβηκε τὸ ἀργύριον.

Καὶ ταῦτα μή μ’ οἴεσθε λέγειν πόλεμον ἐξενηνοχότα πρὸς τοὺς δανειστάς·

οὐ γὰρ πώποτ’ ἐμὰς βοῦς ἤλασαν οὐδὲ μὲν ἵππους·

[f] ἀλλ’ ἐνδεικνύμενον τοῖς προχείρως δανειζομένοις, ὅσην ἔχει τὸ πρᾶγμα αἰσχύνην καὶ ἀνελευθερίαν καὶ ὅτι τὸ δανείζεσθαι τῆς ἐσχάτης ἀφροσύνης καὶ μαλακίας ἐστίν. ἔχεις; μὴ δανείσῃ, οὐ γὰρ ἀπορεῖς. οὐκ ἔχεις; μὴ δανείσῃ, οὐ γὰρ ἐκτίσεις. κατ’ ἰδίαν δ’ οὕτως ἑκάτερα σκοπῶμεν. ὁ Κάτων πρός τινα πρεσβύτην πονηρευόμενον “ὦ ἄνθρωπε, τί τῷ γήρᾳ,” ἔφη, “πολλὰ κακὰ ἔχοντι τὴν ἐκ τῆς πονηρίας αἰσχύνην προστίθης;” οὐκοῦν καὶ σὺ [830] [a] τῇ πενίᾳ, πολλῶν κακῶν προσόντων, μὴ ἐπισώρευε τὰς ἐκ τοῦ δανείζεσθαι καὶ ὀφείλειν ἀμηχανίας μηδ’ ἀφαιροῦ τῆς πενίας, ᾧ μόνῳ τοῦ πλούτου διαφέρει, τὴν ἀμεριμνίαν. ἐπεὶ τὸ τῆς παροιμίας ἔσται γελοῖον

οὐ δύναμαι τὴν αἶγα φέρειν, ἐπί μοι θέτε τὸν βοῦν.

πενίαν φέρειν μὴ δυνάμενος δανειστὴν ἐπιτίθης σεαυτῷ, φορτίον καὶ πλουτοῦντι δύσοιστον. πῶς οὖν διατραφῶ; τοῦτ’ ἐρωτᾷς, ἔχων χεῖρας, ἔχων πόδας, ἔχων φωνήν, ἄνθρωπος ὤν, ᾧ τὸ φιλεῖν ἔστι καὶ φιλεῖσθαι καὶ τὸ χαρίζεσθαι καὶ τὸ εὐχαριστεῖν; [b] γράμματα διδάσκων, καὶ παιδαγωγῶν, καὶ θυρωρῶν, πλέων, παραπλέων· οὐδέν ἐστι τούτων αἴσχιον οὐδὲ δυσχερέστερον τοῦ ἀκοῦσαι “ἀπόδος.”

Ὁ Ῥουτίλιος ἐκεῖνος ἐν Ῥώμῃ τῷ Μουσωνίῳ προσελθὼν “Μουσώνιε,” εἶπεν, “ὁ Ζεὺς ὁ σωτήρ, ὃν σὺ μιμῇ καὶ ζηλοῖς, οὐ δανείζεται.” καὶ ὁ Μουσώνιος μειδιάσας εἶπεν “οὐδὲ δανείζει.” ὁ γὰρ Ῥουτίλιος, δανείζων αὐτὸς ὠνείδιζεν ἐκείνῳ δανειζομένῳ. Στωική τις αὕτη τυφομανία· τί γάρ σε δεῖ τὸν Δία τὸν σωτῆρα κινεῖν, αὐτόθεν ὑπομνῆσαι τοῖς φαινομένοις ἐνόν; οὐ δανείζονται χελιδόνες, οὐ δανείζονται μύρμηκες, οἷς ἡ φύσις οὐ [c] χεῖρας, οὐ λόγον, οὐ τέχνην δέδωκεν· ἄνθρωποι δὲ περιουσίᾳ συνέσεως διὰ τὸ εὐμήχανον ἵππους παρατρέφουσι, κύνας, πέρδικας, λαγωούς, κολοιούς· τί οὖν γε σεαυτοῦ κατέγνωκας, ἀπιθανώτερος ὢν κολοιοῦ καὶ ἀφωνότερος πέρδικος καὶ κυνὸς ἀγεννέστερος, ὥστ’ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπου μηδενὸς ὠφελεῖσθαι περιέπων, ψυχαγωγῶν, φυλάττων, προμαχόμενος; οὐχ ὁρᾷς, ὡς πολλὰ μὲν γῆ παρέχει πολλὰ δὲ θάλαττα;

καὶ μὴν Μίκκυλον εἰσεῖδον

φησὶν ὁ Κράτης

τῶν ἐρίων ξαίνοντα, γυναῖκά τε συγξαίνουσαν,

τὸν λιμὸν φεύγοντας ἐν αἰνῇ δηιοτῆτι.

Κλεάνθη δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἀντίγονος ἠρώτα διὰ χρόνου θεασάμενος ἐν ταῖς Ἀθήναις “ἀλεῖς ἔτι, Κλέανθες;”

[d] “ἀλῶ,” φησίν, “ὦ βασιλεῦ· ὃ ποιῶ ἕνεκα τοῦ Ζήνωνος μὴ ἀποστῆναι μηδὲ φιλοσοφίας.” ὅσον τὸ φρόνημα τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἀπὸ τοῦ μύλου καὶ τῆς μάκτρας πεττούσῃ χειρὶ καὶ ἀλούσῃ γράφειν περὶ θεῶν καὶ σελήνης καὶ ἄστρων καὶ ἡλίου. ἡμῖν δὲ δουλικὰ δοκεῖ ταῦτ’ ἔργα. τοιγαροῦν ἵν’ ἐλεύθεροι ὦμεν δανεισάμενοι, κολακεύομεν οἰκοτριβέας ἀνθρώπους καὶ δορυφοροῦμεν καὶ δειπνίζομεν καὶ δῶρα καὶ φόρους ὑποτελοῦμεν, οὐ διὰ τὴν πενίαν (οὐδεὶς γὰρ δανείζει πένητι), ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν πολυτέλειαν. εἰ γὰρ ἠρκούμεθα τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις πρὸς τὸν βίον, οὐκ ἂν ἦν γένος δανειστῶν, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ Κενταύρων ἔστιν οὐδὲ Γοργόνων· [e] ἀλλ’ ἡ τρυφὴ δανειστὰς ἐποίησεν οὐχ ἧττον ἢ χρυσοχόους καὶ ἀργυροκόπους καὶ μυρεψοὺς καὶ ἀνθοβάφους. οὐ γὰρ ἄρτων οὐδ’ οἴνου τιμὴν ὀφείλομεν, ἀλλὰ χωρίων καὶ ἀνδραπόδων καὶ ἡμιόνων καὶ τρικλίνων καὶ τραπεζῶν, καὶ χορηγοῦντες ἐκλελυμένως πόλεσι, φιλοτιμούμενοι φιλοτιμίας ἀκάρπους καὶ ἀχαρίστους. ὁ δ’ ἅπαξ ἐνειληθεὶς μένει χρεώστης διὰ παντός, ἄλλον ἐξ ἄλλου μεταλαμβάνων ἀναβάτην, ὥσπερ ἵππος ἐγχαλινωθείς· [f] ἀποφυγὴ δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπὶ τὰς νομὰς ἐκείνας καὶ τοὺς λειμῶνας, ἀλλὰ πλάζονται καθάπερ οἱ θεήλατοι καὶ οὐρανοπετεῖς ἐκεῖνοι τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους δαίμονες·

αἰθέριον μὲν γάρ σφε μένος πόντονδε διώκει,

πόντος δ’ ἐς χθονὸς οὖδας ἀπέπτυσε· γαῖα δ’ ἐς αὐγὰς

ἠελίου ἀκάμαντος· ὁ δ’ αἰθέρος ἔμβαλε δίναις·

[831] [a] “ἄλλος δ’ ἐξ ἄλλου δέχεται” τοκιστὴς ἢ πραγματευτὴς Κορίνθιος, εἶτα Πατρεύς, εἶτ’ Ἀθηναῖος, ἄχρι ἂν ὑπὸ πάντων περικρουόμενος εἰς τόκους διαλυθῇ καὶ κατακερματισθῇ. καθάπερ γὰρ ἀναστῆναι δεῖ τὸν πεπηλωμένον ἢ μένειν, ὁ δὲ στρεφόμενος καὶ κυλινδούμενος ὑγρῷ τῷ σώματι καὶ διαβρόχῳ προσπεριβάλλεται πλείονα μολυσμόν· οὕτως ἐν ταῖς μεταγραφαῖς καὶ μεταπτώσεσι τῶν δανείων τοὺς τόκους προσαναλαμβάνοντες αὑτοῖς [b] καὶ προσπλάττοντες ἀεὶ βαρύτεροι γίγνονται καὶ τῶν χολερικῶν οὐδὲν διαφέρουσιν, οἳ θεραπείαν μὲν οὐ προσδέχονται, τὸ δὲ προστεταγμένον ἐξερῶντες, εἶτα πλέον αὖθις συλλέγοντες ἀεὶ διατελοῦσι· καὶ γὰρ οὗτοι καθαρθῆναι μὲν οὐ θέλουσιν, ἀεὶ δ’, ὅσαι τοῦ ἔτους ὧραι, μετ’ ὀδύνης καὶ σπαραγμῶν τὸν τόκον ἀναφέροντες, ἐπιρρέοντος εὐθὺς ἑτέρου καὶ προσισταμένου, πάλιν ναυτιῶσι καὶ καρηβαροῦσι· δέον ἀπαλλαγέντας εἰλικρινεῖς καὶ ἐλευθέρους γίγνεσθαι.

Ἤδη γάρ μοι πρὸς τοὺς εὐπορωτέρους καὶ μαλακωτέρους ὁ λόγος ἔστι, τοὺς λέγοντας “ἄδουλος οὖν γένωμαι καὶ ἀνέστιος καὶ ἄοικος;” ὥσπερ [c] εἰ λέγοι πρὸς ἰατρὸν ἄρρωστος ὑδρωπιῶν καὶ ᾠδηκὼς “ἰσχνὸς οὖν γένωμαι καὶ κενός;” τί δ’ οὐ μέλλεις, ἵν’ ὑγιαίνῃς; καὶ σὺ γενοῦ ἄδουλος, ἵνα μὴ δοῦλος ᾖς· καὶ ἀκτήμων, ἵνα μὴ κτῆμ’ ᾖς ἄλλου. καὶ τὸν τῶν γυπῶν λόγον ἄκουσον· ἐμοῦντος τοῦ ἑτέρου καὶ λέγοντος τὰ σπλάγχν’ ἐκβάλλειν, ἕτερος παρὼν “καὶ τί δεινόν;” εἶπεν· “οὐ γὰρ τὰ σεαυτοῦ σπλάγχν’ ἐκβάλλεις, ἀλλὰ τὰ τοῦ νεκροῦ ὃν ἄρτι ἐσπαράττομεν.” καὶ τῶν χρεωστῶν οὐ πωλεῖ ἕκαστος τὸ ἑαυτοῦ χωρίον οὐδὲ τὴν ἰδίαν οἰκίαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν τοῦ δανείσαντος ὃν τῷ νόμῳ [d] κύριον αὐτῶν πεποίηκε. “νὴ Δία,” φησίν, “ἀλλ’ ὁ πατήρ μου τὸν ἀγρὸν τοῦτον κατέλιπε.” καὶ γὰρ καὶ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν καὶ τὴν ἐπιτιμίαν ὁ πατὴρ ἔδωκεν, ὧν σε δεῖ λόγον ἔχειν πλείονα. καὶ τὸν πόδα καὶ τὴν χεῖρ’ ὁ γεννήσας ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ’ ὅταν σαπῇ, μισθὸν δίδως τῷ ἀποκόπτοντι. τῷ δ’ Ὀδυσσεῖ τὴν ἐσθῆτα ἡ Καλυψὼ περιέθηκεν “εἵματ’ ἀμφιέσασα θυώδεα” χρωτὸς ἀθανάτου πνέοντα, δῶρα καὶ μνημόσυνα τῆς φιλίας ὄντα τῆς ἐκείνης· ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ περιτραπεὶς καὶ βυθισθεὶς μόλις ἀνέσχε, τῆς ἐσθῆτος γενομένης διαβρόχου καὶ βαρείας, ἐκείνην μὲν ἔρριψεν ἀποδυσάμενος, κρηδέμνῳ δέ τινι γυμνὸν ὑποζώσας τὸ στέρνον

[e] νῆχε παρὲξ ἐς γαῖαν ὁρώμενος

καὶ διασωθεὶς οὔτ’ ἐσθῆτος οὔτε τροφῆς ἠπόρησε. τί οὖν; οὐ γίγνεται χειμὼν περὶ τοὺς χρεώστας, ὅταν ἐπιστῇ διὰ χρόνου δανειστὴς λέγων

“ἀπόδος”;

ὣς εἰπὼν σύναγεν νεφέλας, ἐτάραξε δὲ πόντον·

σὺν δ’ εὖρός τε νότος τ’ ἔπεσε ζέφυρός τε δυσαής

τόκων τόκοις ἐπικυλισθέντων· ὁ δὲ συγκλυζόμενος ἀντέχεται τῶν βαρυνόντων, ἀπονήξασθαι καὶ φυγεῖν μὴ δυνάμενος· ἀλλ’ ὠθεῖται κατὰ βυθοῦ, μετὰ τῶν ἐγγυησαμένων φίλων ἀφανιζόμενος. Κράτης δ’ ὁ [f] Θηβαῖος ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἀπαιτούμενος οὐδ’ ὀφείλων, αὐτὰς δὲ τὰς οἰκονομίας καὶ φροντίδας καὶ περισπασμοὺς δυσχεραίνων, ἀφῆκεν οὐσίαν ὀκτὼ ταλάντων, καὶ τρίβωνα καὶ πήραν ἀναλαβὼν εἰς φιλοσοφίαν καὶ πενίαν κατέφυγεν. Ἀναξαγόρας δὲ τὴν χώραν κατέλιπε μηλόβοτον. καὶ τί δεῖ τούτους λέγειν, ὅπου Φιλόξενος ὁ μελοποιὸς ἐν ἀποικίᾳ Σικελικῇ, κλήρου μετασχὼν καὶ βίου καὶ οἴκου πολλὴν εὐπορίαν ἔχοντος, ὁρῶν δὲ τρυφὴν καὶ ἡδυπάθειαν καὶ ἀμουσίαν ἐπιχωριάζουσαν “μὰ τοὺς θεούς,” εἶπεν, “ἐμὲ ταῦτα” τἀγαθὰ οὐκ ἀπολεῖ, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ ταῦτα· καὶ καταλιπὼν ἑτέροις τὸν κλῆρον [832] [a] ἐξέπλευσεν. οἱ δ’ ὀφείλοντες ἀπαιτούμενοι δασμολογούμενοι δουλεύοντες ὑπαργυρεύοντες ἀνέχονται, καρτεροῦσιν, ὡς ὁ Φινεύς, Ἁρπυίας τινὰς ὑποπτέρους βόσκοντες, αἳ φέρουσι τὴν τροφὴν καὶ διαρπάζουσιν, οὐ καθ’ ὥραν ἀλλὰ πρὶν θερισθῆναι τὸν σῖτον ὠνούμενοι, καὶ πρὶν ἢ πεσεῖν τὴν ἐλαίαν ἀγοράζοντες τοὔλαιον· καὶ “τὸν οἶνον ἔχω,” φησί, “τοσούτου” καὶ πρόσγραφον ἔδωκε τῆς τιμῆς· ὁ δὲ βότρυς κρέμαται καὶ προσπέφυκεν ἔτι τὸν ἀρκτοῦρον ἐκδεχόμενος.

Vitae decem oratorum

ΒΙΟΙ ΤΩΝ ΔΕΚΑ ΡΗΤΟΡΩΝ

[832] ΑΝΤΙΦΩΝ

Ἀντιφῶν Σοφίλου μὲν ἦν πατρὸς τῶν δὲ δήμων Ῥαμνούσιος· [c] μαθητεύσας δὲ τῷ πατρὶ (ἦν γὰρ σοφιστής, †ὧ καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδης †παρ’ αὐτὸν ἔτι παῖδα ὄντα φοιτῆσαι) καὶ δύναμιν λόγων κτησάμενος, ὥς τινες νομίζουσιν, ἀπ’ οἰκείας φύσεως, παρέπεμψε μὲν πολιτεύεσθαι, διατριβὴν δὲ συνέστησε καὶ Σωκράτει τῷ φιλοσόφῳ διεφέρετο τὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν λόγων διαφορὰν οὐ φιλονείκως ἀλλ’ ἐλεγκτικῶς, ὡς Ξενοφῶν ἱστόρηκεν ἐν τοῖς Ἀπομνημονεύμασι (1, 6). καί τινας λόγους τοῖς δεομένοις τῶν πολιτῶν συνέγραφεν εἰς τοὺς ἐν τοῖς δικαστηρίοις ἀγῶνας πρῶτος ἐπὶ τοῦτο [d] τραπείς, ὥσπερ τινές φασι· τῶν γοῦν πρὸ αὐτοῦ γενομένων οὐδενὸς φέρεται δικανικὸς λόγος, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τῶν κατ’ αὐτόν, διὰ τὸ μηδέπω ἐν ἔθει τοῦ συγγράφειν εἶναι, οὐ Θεμιστοκλέους οὐκ Ἀριστείδου οὐ Περικλέους, καίτοι πολλὰς ἀφορμὰς καὶ ἀνάγκας παρασχόντων αὐτοῖς τῶν καιρῶν· καὶ γὰρ οὐ δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀπελείποντο τοῦ συγγράφειν, ὡς δῆλον ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων παρὰ τοῖς συγγραφεῦσι περὶ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου τῶν προειρημένων ἀνδρῶν. ὅσους μέντοι ἔχομεν ἐπὶ τὸ παλαιότατον ἀναφέροντες [e] ἀπομνημονεῦσαι τὴν ἰδέαν τῶν λόγων ταύτην μεταχειρισαμένους, τούτους εὕροι τις ἂν ἐπιβεβληκότας Ἀντιφῶντι πρεσβύτῃ ἤδη ὄντι, οἷον Ἀλκιβιάδην, Κριτίαν, Λυσίαν, Ἀρχῖνον. πρῶτος δὲ καὶ ῥητορικὰς τέχνας ἐξήνεγκε, γενόμενος ἀγχίνους· διὸ καὶ Νέστωρ ἐπεκαλεῖτο. Καικίλιος (fr. 99 Ofenloch, FHG III 332) δ’ ἐν τῷ περὶ αὐτοῦ συντάγματι Θουκυδίδου τοῦ συγγραφέως καθηγητὴν τεκμαίρεται γεγονέναι ἐξ ὧν ἐπαινεῖται παρ’ αὐτῷ (8, 68) ὁ Ἀντιφῶν. ἔστι δ’ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἀκριβὴς καὶ πιθανὸς καὶ δεινὸς περὶ τὴν εὕρεσιν καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀπόροις τεχνικὸς καὶ ἐπιχειρῶν ἐξ ἀδήλου καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς νόμους καὶ ‹οὐ› τὰ πάθη τρέπων τοὺς λόγους τοῦ εὐπρεποῦς μάλιστα στοχαζόμενος.

[f] γέγονε δὲ κατὰ τὰ Περσικὰ καὶ Γοργίαν τὸν σοφιστήν, ὀλίγῳ ‹ὢν› νεώτερος αὐτοῦ· καὶ παρατέτακεν ἕως καταλύσεως τῆς δημοκρατίας ὑπὸ τῶν τετρακοσίων γενομένης, ἣν αὐτὸς δοκεῖ συγκατασκευάσαι, ὁτὲ μὲν δυσὶ τριηραρχῶν ναυσὶν ὁτὲ δὲ στρατηγῶν, καὶ πολλαῖς μάχαις νικῶν, καὶ συμμαχίας μεγάλας αὐτοῖς προσαγόμενος, καὶ τοὺς ἀκμάζοντας ὁπλίζων, καὶ τριήρεις πληρῶν ἑξήκοντα, καὶ πρεσβεύων δ’ ἑκάστοτε ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν εἰς [833] [a] Λακεδαίμονα, ἡνίκα ἐτετείχιστο Ἠετιώνεια. μετὰ δὲ τὴν κατάλυσιν τῶν τετρακοσίων εἰσαγγελθεὶς σὺν Ἀρχεπτολέμῳ, ἑνὶ τῶν τετρακοσίων, ἑάλω, καὶ τοῖς περὶ τῶν προδοτῶν ἐπιτιμίοις ὑπαχθεὶς ἄταφος ἐρρίφη καὶ σὺν τοῖς ἐκγόνοις ἄτιμος ἐνεγράφη. οἱ δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν τριάκοντα ἀνῃρῆσθαι αὐτὸν ἱστοροῦσιν, ὥσπερ Λυσίας (fr. 11) ἐν τῷ ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἀντιφῶντος θυγατρὸς λόγῳ· ἐγένετο γὰρ αὐτῷ θυγάτριον, οὗ Κάλλαισχρος ἐπεδικάσατο. ὅτι δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν τριάκοντα ἀπέθανεν, ἱστορεῖ καὶ Θεόπομπος (FGr Hist 115 F 120) ἐν τῇ πεντεκαιδεκάτῃ τῶν Φιλιππικῶν· [b] ἀλλ’ οὗτός γ’ ἂν εἴη ἕτερος, Λυσιδωνίδου πατρός, ‹οὗ› καὶ Κρατῖνος ἐν Πυτίνῃ (fr. 201, I p. 74 Kock) ὡς [οὐ] πονηροῦ μνημονεύει· πῶς ‹γὰρ› ἂν ὁ προτεθνεὼς ‹καὶ› ἀναιρεθεὶς ἐπὶ τῶν τετρακοσίων πάλιν ἐπὶ τῶν τριάκοντα εἴη; ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἄλλος λόγος περὶ τῆς τελευτῆς αὐτοῦ. πρεσβευτὴν γὰρ ὄντα αὐτὸν εἰς Συρακούσας πλεῦσαι, ἡνίκα ἤκμαζεν ἡ τοῦ προτέρου Διονυσίου τυραννίς· γενομένης δὲ παρὰ πότον ζητήσεως, τίς ἄριστός ἐστι χαλκός, καὶ τῶν πολλῶν διαφερομένων, αὐτὸν εἰπεῖν ἄριστον εἶναι ἐξ οὗ Ἁρμόδιος καὶ Ἀριστογείτων πεποίηνται· τοῦτο δ’ ἀκούσαντα τὸν Διονύσιον καὶ ὑπονοήσαντα προτροπὴν εἰς ἐπίθεσιν εἶναι τὸ ῥηθὲν προστάξαι ἀναιρεθῆναι αὐτόν· [c] οἱ δέ, ὅτι τὰς τραγῳδίας αὐτοῦ διέσυρε, χαλεπήναντα. φέρονται δὲ τοῦ ῥήτορος λόγοι ἑξήκοντα, ὧν κατεψευσμένους φησὶ Καικίλιος (fr. 100 Of. FHG III 332) εἶναι τοὺς εἰκοσιπέντε. κεκωμῴδηται δ’ εἰς φιλαργυρίαν ὑπὸ Πλάτωνος ἐν Πεισάνδρῳ (fr. 103, I p. 629 Kock). λέγεται δὲ τραγῳδίας συνθεῖναι καὶ ἰδίᾳ καὶ σὺν Διονυσίῳ τῷ τυράννῳ (p. 7926 Nauck²). ἔτι δ’ ὢν πρὸς τῇ ποιήσει τέχνην ἀλυπίας συνεστήσατο, ὥσπερ τοῖς νοσοῦσιν ἡ παρὰ τῶν ἰατρῶν θεραπεία ὑπάρχει· ἐν Κορίνθῳ τε κατεσκευασμένος οἴκημά τι παρὰ τὴν ἀγορὰν προέγραψεν, ὅτι δύναται [d] τοὺς λυπουμένους διὰ λόγων θεραπεύειν· καὶ πυνθανόμενος τὰς αἰτίας παρεμυθεῖτο τοὺς κάμνοντας. νομίζων δὲ τὴν τέχνην ἐλάττω ἢ καθ’ αὑτὸν εἶναι ἐπὶ ῥητορικὴν ἀπετράπη. εἰσὶ δ’ οἳ καὶ τὸ Γλαύκου τοῦ Ῥηγίνου περὶ ποιητῶν βιβλίον (FHG II 23) εἰς Ἀντιφῶντα ἀναφέρουσιν. ἐπαινεῖται δ’ αὐτοῦ μάλιστα ὁ περὶ Ἡρώδου (or. 5), καὶ ‹ὁ› πρὸς Ἐρασίστρατον (fr. 5759 Thalh.) περὶ τῶν ταῶν, καὶ ὁ περὶ τῆς ‹εἰς›αγγελίας (fr. 16 Thalh.), ὃν ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ γέγραφε, καὶ ὁ πρὸς Δημοσθένη τὸν στρατηγὸν παρανόμων. ἔγραψε δὲ καὶ κατὰ Ἱπποκράτους τοῦ [ἰατροῦ] στρατηγοῦ λόγον καὶ εἷλεν αὐτὸν ἐξ ἐρήμου.

Ψήφισμα ἐπὶ Θεοπόμπου ἄρχοντος, ἐφ’ οὗ οἱ τετρακόσιοι [e] κατελύθησαν, [ψήφισμα] καθ’ ὃ ἔδοξεν Ἀντιφῶντα κριθῆναι, ὃ Καικίλιος παρατέθειται· ‘ἔδοξε τῇ βουλῇ μιᾷ καὶ εἰκοστῇ τῆς πρυτανείας· Δημόνικος Ἀλωπεκῆθεν ἐγραμμάτευε· Φιλόστρατος Παλληνεὺς ἐπεστάτει· Ἄνδρων εἶπε· περὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν, οὓς ἀποφαίνουσιν οἱ στρατηγοὶ πρεσβευομένους εἰς Λακεδαίμονα ἐπὶ κακῷ τῆς πόλεως τῆς Ἀθηναίων καὶ [ἐκ] τοῦ στρατοπέδου πλεῖν ἐπὶ πολεμίας [f] νεὼς καὶ πεζεῦσαι διὰ Δεκελείας, Ἀρχεπτόλεμον καὶ Ὀνομακλέα καὶ Ἀντιφῶντα συλλαβεῖν καὶ ἀποδοῦναι εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον, ὅπως δῶσι δίκην· παρασχόντων δ’ αὐτοὺς οἱ στρατηγοί, καὶ ἐκ τῆς βουλῆς οὕστινας ἂν δοκῇ τοῖς στρατηγοῖς προσελομένοις μέχρι δέκα, ὅπως ἂν περὶ παρόντων γένηται ἡ κρίσις. προσκαλεσάσθωσαν δ’ αὐτοὺς οἱ θεσμοθέται ἐν τῇ αὔριον ἡμέρᾳ καὶ εἰσαγόντων, ἐπειδὰν αἱ κλήσεις ἐξήκωσιν εἰς τὸ δικαστήριον, περὶ προδοσίας κατηγορεῖν τοὺς ᾑρημένους συνηγόρους καὶ τοὺς στρατηγοὺς καὶ ἄλλους, ἄν τις βούληται· ὅτου δ’ ἂν καταψηφίσηται τὸ δικαστήριον, περὶ αὐτοῦ ποιεῖν κατὰ τὸν νόμον, ὃς κεῖται περὶ τῶν προδόντων.’

[834] [a] Τούτῳ ὑπογέγραπται τῷ δόγματι ἡ καταδίκη. ‘προδοσίας ὦφλον Ἀρχεπτόλεμος Ἱπποδάμου Ἀγρύληθεν παρών, Ἀντιφῶν Σοφίλου Ῥαμνούσιος παρών· τούτοιν ἐτιμήθη τοῖς ἕνδεκα παραδοθῆναι καὶ τὰ χρήματα δημόσια εἶναι καὶ τῆς θεοῦ τὸ ἐπιδέκατον, καὶ τὼ οἰκία κατασκάψαι αὐτῶν καὶ ὅρους θεῖναι ‹ἐπὶ› τοῖν οἰκοπέδοιν, ἐπιγράψαντας ΑΡΧΕΠΤΟΛΕΜΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΑΝΤΙΦΩΝΤΟΣ ΤΟΙΝ ΠΡΟΔΟΤΑΙΝ. τὼ δὲ δημάρχω ἀποφῆναι [b] τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῖν καὶ μὴ ἐξεῖναι θάψαι Ἀρχεπτόλεμον καὶ Ἀντιφῶντα Ἀθήνησι, μηδ’ ὅσης Ἀθηναῖοι κρατοῦσι· καὶ ἄτιμον εἶναι Ἀρχεπτόλεμον καὶ Ἀντιφῶντα καὶ γένος τὸ ἐκ τούτοιν, καὶ νόθους καὶ γνησίους· καὶ ἐάν ‹τις› ποιήσηταί τινα τῶν ἐξ Ἀρχεπτολέμου καὶ Ἀντιφῶντος, ἄτιμος ἔστω ὁ ποιησάμενος. ταῦτα δὲ γράψαι ἐν στήλῃ χαλκῇ· ‹καὶ› ᾗπερ ἀν‹ά›κ‹ειτ›αι τὰ ψηφίσματα τὰ περὶ Φρυνίχου, καὶ τοῦτο θέσθαι.’

ΑΝΔΟΚΙΔΗΣ

Ἀνδοκίδης Λεωγόρου μὲν ἦν πατρὸς ‹τοῦ Ἀνδοκίδου› τοῦ θεμένου ποτὲ πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους εἰρήνην Ἀθηναίοις, τῶν δήμων δὲ Κυδαθήναιος ἢ Θορεύς, γένους εὐπατριδῶν, ὡς δ’ Ἑλλάνικος (FGrHist 4 F 170a) καὶ [c] ἀπὸ Ἑρμοῦ· καθήκει γὰρ εἰς αὐτὸν τὸ κηρύκων γένος· διὸ καὶ προεχειρίσθη ποτὲ μετὰ Γλαύκωνος σὺν ναυσὶν εἴκοσι Κερκυραίοις βοηθήσων, διαφερομένοις πρὸς Κορινθίους. μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα αἰτιαθεὶς ἀσεβεῖν ὡς καὶ αὐτὸς τοὺς Ἑρμᾶς περικόψας καὶ εἰς τὰ τῆς Δήμητρος ἁμαρτὼν μυστήρια,

[(διὰ τὸ πρότερον ἀκόλαστον ὄντα νύκτωρ κωμάσαντα θραῦσαί τι τῶν ἀγαλμάτων τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ εἰσαγγελθέντα, [d] ἐπειδὴ οὐκ ἠβουλήθη ὃν ἐζήτουν οἱ κατήγοροι δοῦλον ἐκδοῦναι διαβληθῆναι καὶ πρὸς τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς δευτέρας γραφῆς ὕποπτον γενέσθαι, ἣν μετ’ οὐ πολὺν χρόνον τοῦ ἐπὶ Σικελίαν στόλου συνέβη γενέσθαι, Κορινθίων εἰσπεμψάντων Λεοντίνους τε καὶ Αἰγεσταίους ἄνδρας ἰδίᾳ μελλόντων βοηθεῖν αὐτοῖς τῶν Ἀθηναίων νύκτωρ τοὺς περὶ τὴν ἀγορὰν Ἑρμᾶς περιέκοψαν. ὡς Κράτιππός φησιν) ..... προσαμαρτὼν μυστήρια] κριθεὶς ἐπὶ τούτοις ἀπέφυγεν ἐπὶ τῷ μηνύσειν τοὺς ἀδικοῦντας· σπουδὴν δὲ πᾶσαν ‹εἰς›ενεγκάμενος ἐξεῦρε τοὺς περὶ τὰ ἱερὰ ἁμαρτόντας, [e] ἐν οἷς καὶ τὸν αὑτοῦ πατέρα ἐμήνυσε. καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους πάντας ἐλέγξας ἐποίησεν ἀπολέσθαι, τὸν δὲ πατέρα ἐρρύσατο, καίτοι δεδεμένον ἤδη, ὑποσχόμενος πολλὰ λυσιτελήσειν αὐτὸν τῇ πόλει. καὶ οὐκ ἐψεύσατο· ἤλεγξε γὰρ ὁ Λεωγόρας πολλοὺς δημόσια χρήματα σφετεριζομένους καὶ ἄλλα τινὰ ἀδικοῦντας. καὶ διὰ μὲν ταῦτα ἀφείθη τῆς αἰτίας· ‹οὐκ› εὐδοκιμῶν δ’ ὁ Ἀνδοκίδης ἐπὶ τοῖς πολιτευομένοις ἐπέθετο ναυκληρίᾳ, καὶ τοῖς τε Κυπρίων βασιλεῦσι καὶ πολλοῖς ἄλλοις δοκίμοις ἐπεξενώθη. ὅτε καὶ μίαν τῶν πολιτίδων, Ἀριστείδου θυγατέρα, ἀνεψιὰν οὖσαν αὐτῷ, λάθρα τῶν οἰκείων ἐξαγαγὼν ἔπεμψε δῶρον τῷ Κυπρίων [f] βασιλεῖ. μέλλων δ’ ἐπὶ τούτοις εἰς δικαστήριον εἰσάγεσθαι πάλιν αὐτὴν ἐξέκλεψεν ἀπὸ τῆς Κύπρου, καὶ ληφθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐδέθη· διαδρὰς δ’ ἧκεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, καθ’ ὃν χρόνον οἱ τετρακόσιοι διεῖπον τὰ πράγματα· δεθεὶς δ’ ὑπὸ τούτων καὶ διαφυγών, [αὖθις] ὁπότε κατελύθη ἡ ὀλιγαρχία, ‹αὖθις› ἐξέπεσε τῆς πόλεως, τῶν τριάκοντα τὴν ἀρχὴν παραλαβόντων. οἰκήσας δὲ τὸν τῆς [835] [a] φυγῆς χρόνον ἐν Ἤλιδι, κατελθόντων τῶν περὶ Θρασύβουλον καὶ αὐτὸς ἧκεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν. πεμφθεὶς δὲ περὶ τῆς εἰρήνης εἰς Λακεδαίμονα καὶ δόξας ἀδικεῖν ἔφυγε. δηλοῖ δὲ περὶ πάντων ἐν τοῖς λόγοις οἷς συγγέγραφεν· οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἀπολογουμένου περὶ τῶν μυστηρίων εἰσίν, οἱ δὲ καθόδου δεομένου. σῴζεται δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ὁ περὶ τῆς ἐνδείξεως λόγος καὶ ἀπολογία πρὸς Φαίακα καὶ περὶ τῆς εἰρήνης. καὶ ἤκμακε μὲν κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον ἅμα Σωκράτει τῷ φιλοσόφῳ· ἀρχὴ δ’ αὐτῷ τῆς γενέσεως ὀλυμπιὰς μὲν ἑβδομηκοστὴ ὀγδόη, ἄρχων δ’ Ἀθήνησι Θεογενίδης· ὥστ’ [b] εἶναι πρεσβύτερον αὐτὸν Λυσίου ἔτεσί που η΄. τούτου δ’ ἐπώνυμός ἐστι καὶ Ἑρμῆς ὁ Ἀνδοκίδου καλούμενος, ἀνάθημα μὲν ὢν φυλῆς Αἰγηίδος, ἐπικληθεὶς δ’ Ἀνδοκίδου διὰ τὸ πλησίον παροικῆσαι τὸν Ἀνδοκίδην. καὶ αὐτὸς δ’ ἐχορήγησε κυκλίῳ χορῷ τῇ αὑτοῦ φυλῇ ἀγωνιζομένῃ διθυράμβῳ, καὶ νικήσας ἀνέθηκε τρίποδα ἐφ’ ὑψηλοῦ ἀντικρὺ τοῦ πωρίνου Σειληνοῦ. ἔστι δ’ ἁπλοῦς καὶ ἀκατάσκευος ἐν τοῖς λόγοις, ἀφελής τε καὶ ἀσχημάτιστος.

ΛΥΣΙΑΣ

[c] Λυσίας υἱὸς ἦν Κεφάλου τοῦ Λυσανίου τοῦ Κεφάλου, Συρακουσίου μὲν γένος μεταναστάντος δ’ εἰς Ἀθήνας ἐπιθυμίᾳ τε τῆς πόλεως καὶ Περικλέους τοῦ Ξανθίππου πείσαντος αὐτόν, φίλον ὄντα καὶ ξένον, πλούτῳ διαφέροντα· ὡς δέ τινες, ἐκπεσόντα τῶν Συρακουσῶν, ἡνίκα ὑπὸ Γέλωνος ἐτυραννοῦντο. γενόμενος Ἀθήνησιν ἐπὶ Φιλοκλέους ἄρχοντος τοῦ μετὰ Φρασικλῆ κατὰ τὸ δεύτερον ἔτος τῆς ὀγδοηκοστῆς [καὶ δευτέρας] ὀλυμπιάδος, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον συνεπαιδεύετο τοῖς ἐπιφανεστάτοις Ἀθηναίων· [d] ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν εἰς Σύβαριν ἀποικίαν τὴν ὕστερον Θουρίους μετονομασθεῖσαν ἔστελλεν ἡ πόλις, ᾤχετο σὺν τῷ πρεσβυτάτῳ ἀδελφῷ Πολεμάρχῳ (ἦσαν γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ ἄλλοι δύο, Εὐθύδημος καὶ Βράχυλλος), τοῦ πατρὸς ἤδη τετελευτηκότος, ὡς κοινωνήσων τοῦ κλήρου, ἔτη γεγονὼς πεντεκαίδεκα, ἐπὶ Πραξιτέλους ἄρχοντος, κἀκεῖ διέμεινε παιδευόμενος παρὰ Τισίᾳ καὶ Νικίᾳ τοῖς Συρακουσίοις, κτησάμενός τ’ οἰκίαν καὶ κλήρου τυχὼν ἐπολιτεύσατο ἕως Κλεοκρίτου τοῦ Ἀθήνησιν ἄρχοντος †ἔτη ἑξήκοντα τρία τῷ δ’ ἑξῆς †Καλλίᾳ ὀλυμπιάδι ἐνενηκοστῇ δευτέρᾳ [e] τῶν κατὰ Σικελίαν συμβάντων Ἀθηναίοις καὶ κινήσεως γενομένης τῶν τ’ ἄλλων συμμάχων καὶ μάλιστα τῶν τὴν Ἰταλίαν οἰκούντων, αἰτιαθεὶς ἀττικίζειν ἐξέπεσε μετ’ ἄλλων τριῶν. παραγενόμενος δ’ Ἀθήνησιν ἐπὶ Καλλίου τοῦ μετὰ Κλεόκριτον ἄρχοντος, ἤδη τῶν τετρακοσίων κατεχόντων τὴν πόλιν, διέτριβεν αὐτόθι. τῆς δ’ ἐν Αἰγὸς ποταμοῖς ναυμαχίας γενομένης καὶ τῶν τριάκοντα παραλαβόντων τὴν πόλιν, ἐξέπεσεν ἑπτὰ ἔτη μείνας, ἀφαιρεθεὶς [f] τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν Πολέμαρχον· αὐτὸς δὲ διαδρὰς ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας ἀμφιθύρου οὔσης, ἐν ᾗ ἐφυλάσσετο ὡς ἀπολούμενος, διῆγεν ἐν Μεγάροις. ἐπιθεμένων δὲ τῶν ἀπὸ Φυλῆς τῇ καθόδῳ, ἐπεὶ χρησιμώτατος ἁπάντων ὤφθη, χρήματά τε παρασχὼν δραχμὰς δισχιλίας καὶ ἀσπίδας διακοσίας πεμφθείς τε σὺν Ἑρμᾶνι ἐπικούρους ἐμισθώσατο τριακοσίους, δύο τ’ ἔπεισε τάλαντα δοῦναι Θρασυδαῖον τὸν Ἠλεῖον, ξένον αὐτῷ γεγονότα. ἐφ’ οἷς γράψαντος αὐτῷ Θρασυβούλου πολιτείαν μετὰ τὴν κάθοδον ἐπ’ ἀναρχίας τῆς πρὸ Εὐκλείδου, ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἐκύρωσε τὴν δωρεάν, ἀπενεγκαμένου δ’ Ἀρχίνου γραφὴν παρανόμων [836] [a] διὰ τὸ ἀπροβούλευτον εἰσαχθῆναι, ἑάλω τὸ ψήφισμα· καὶ οὕτως ἀπελαθεὶς τῆς πολιτείας τὸν λοιπὸν ᾤκησε χρόνον ἰσοτελὴς ὤν, καὶ ἐτελεύτησεν αὐτόθι ὀγδοήκοντα τρία ἔτη βιούς, ἢ ὥς τινες ἓξ καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα, ἢ ὥς τινες ὑπὲρ ὀγδοήκοντα, ἰδὼν Δημοσθένη μειράκιον ὄντα. γεννηθῆναι δέ φασιν ἐπὶ Φιλοκλέους ἄρχοντος. φέρονται δ’ αὐτοῦ λόγοι τετρακόσιοι εἰκοσιπέντε· τούτων γνησίους φασὶν οἱ περὶ Διονύσιον (Lys. 17) καὶ Καικίλιον εἶναι διακοσίους τριάκοντα ‹καὶ τρεῖς›, ἐν οἷς δὶς μόνον ἡττῆσθαι λέγεται. ἔστι δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ὁ ὑπὲρ τοῦ ψηφίσματος, [b] ‹ὃ› ἐγράψατο Ἀρχῖνος τὴν πολιτείαν αὐτοῦ περιελών, καὶ κατὰ τῶν τριάκοντα ἕτερος (or. 12). ἐγένετο δὲ πιθανώτατος καὶ βραχύτατος, [τοῖς ἰδιώταις] τοῖς πολλοῖς λόγους ἐκδούς. εἰσὶ δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ τέχναι ῥητορικαὶ πεποιημέναι καὶ δημηγορίαι, ἐπιστολαί τε καὶ ἐγκώμια καὶ ἐπιτάφιοι καὶ ἐρωτικοὶ καὶ Σωκράτους ἀπολογία ἐστοχασμένη τῶν δικαστῶν. δοκεῖ δὲ κατὰ τὴν λέξιν εὔκολος εἶναι, δυσμίμητος ὤν. Δημοσθένης δ’ ἐν τῷ κατὰ Νεαίρας λόγῳ (or. 59, 21) ἐραστὴν αὐτόν φησι γεγονέναι Μετανείρας, ὁμοδούλου τῇ Νεαίρᾳ· ὕστερον δ’ ἔγημε Βραχύλλου τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ θυγατέρα. μνημονεύει δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ Πλάτων ἐν τῷ [c] Φαίδρῳ (279a) ὡς δεινοτάτου εἰπεῖν καὶ Ἰσοκράτους πρεσβυτέρου. ἐποίησε δὲ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἐπίγραμμα Φιλίσκος ὁ Ἰσοκράτους μὲν γνώριμος ἑταῖρος δὲ Λυσίου, δι’ οὗ φανερὸν ὡς προέλαβε τοῖς ἔτεσιν, ὃ καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὑπὸ Πλάτωνος εἰρημένων ἀποδείκνυται· ἔχει δ’ οὕτως·

‘‹νῦν› ὦ Καλλιόπης θύγατερ, πολυήγορε Φρόντι,

δείξεις εἴ τι φρονεῖς καί τι περισσὸν ἔχεις·

τῷ γὰρ ἐς ἄλλο σχῆμα μεθαρμοσθέντι καὶ ἄλλοις

ἐν κόσμοισι βίου σῶμα λαβόνθ’ ἕτερον

δεῖ σ’ ἀρετῆς κήρυκα τεκεῖν τινα Λυσίᾳ ὕμνον,

δόντα καταφθιμένῳ †καὶ σοφῷ †ἀθάνατον,

ὃς τό τ’ ἐμῆς ψυχῆς δείξει φιλέταιρον ἅπασι,

[d] καὶ τὴν τοῦ φθιμένου πᾶσι βροτοῖς ἀρετήν.’

συνέγραψε δὲ λόγω καὶ Ἰφικράτει, τὸν μὲν πρὸς Ἁρμόδιον (fr. 18 Thalh.), τὸν δὲ προδοσίας κρίνοντι Τιμόθεον (fr. 116 Thalh.)· καὶ ἀμφοτέροις ἐνίκα· ἀναδεξαμένου δ’ Ἰφικράτους τὰς τοῦ Τιμοθέου πράξεις, ταῖς εὐθύναις ἀναλαβὼν τὴν τῆς προδοσίας αἰτίαν ἀπολογεῖται διὰ τοῦ Λυσίου λόγου· καὶ αὐτὸς μὲν ἀπελύθη, ὁ δὲ Τιμόθεος ἐζημιώθη πλείστοις χρήμασιν. ἀνέγνω δὲ καὶ ἐν τῇ Ὀλυμπιακῇ πανηγύρει λόγον μέγιστον, διαλλαγέντας τοὺς Ἕλληνας καταλῦσαι Διονύσιον.

[e]

ΙΣΟΚΡΑΤΗΣ

Ἰσοκράτης Θεοδώρου μὲν ἦν παῖς τοῦ Ἐρχιέως τῶν μετρίων πολιτῶν, θεράποντας αὐλοποιοὺς κεκτημένου καὶ εὐπορήσαντος ἀπὸ τούτων, ὡς καὶ χορηγῆσαι καὶ παιδεῦσαι τοὺς υἱούς· ἦσαν γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ ἄλλοι, Τελέσιππος καὶ Διόμνηστος· ἦν δὲ καὶ θυγάτριον· ὅθεν εἰς τοὺς αὐλοὺς [f] κεκωμῴδηται ὑπ’ Ἀριστοφάνους καὶ Στράττιδος. γενόμενος δὲ κατὰ τὴν ὀγδοηκοστὴν ἕκτην ὀλυμπιάδα Λυσιμάχου Μυρρινουσίου ‹ἄρχοντος, νεώτερος μὲν Λυσίου› δυσὶ καὶ εἴκοσιν ἔτεσι, πρεσβύτερος δὲ Πλάτωνος ἑπτά, παῖς μὲν ὢν ἐπαιδεύετο οὐδενὸς ἧττον Ἀθηναίων, ἀκροώμενος Προδίκου τε τοῦ Κείου καὶ Γοργίου τοῦ Λεοντίνου καὶ Τισίου τοῦ Συρακουσίου καὶ Θηραμένους τοῦ ῥήτορος· οὗ καὶ συλλαμβανομένου ὑπὸ τῶν τριάκοντα καὶ φυγόντος ἐπὶ τὴν Βουλαίαν Ἑστίαν, ἁπάντων καταπεπληγμένων, μόνος ἀνέστη βοηθήσων καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἐσίγησε [837] [a] κατ’ ἀρχάς, ἔπειτα ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ παρῃτήθη, εἰπόντος ὀδυνηρότερον αὐτῷ συμβήσεσθαι, εἴ τις τῶν φίλων ἀπολαύσει τῆς συμφορᾶς· καὶ ἐκείνου τινὰς οὔσας τέχνας αὐτῷ φασι συμπραγματεύσασθαι, ἡνίκα ἐν τοῖς δικαστηρίοις ἐσυκοφαντεῖτο, αἵ εἰσιν ἐπιγεγραμμέναι Βότωνος. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἠνδρώθη, τῶν μὲν πολιτικῶν πραγμάτων ἀπέσχετο ἰσχνόφωνός τ’ ὢν καὶ εὐλαβὴς τὸν τρόπον καὶ τὰ πατρῷα ἀποβεβληκὼς ἐν τῷ πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους πολέμῳ· ἄλλοις δὲ ‹οὔτε συνηγωνισμένος οὔτε› μεμαρτυρηκὼς φαίνεται, ἕνα δὲ μόνον εἰπὼν λόγον, τὸν περὶ τῆς ἀντιδόσεως. διατριβὴν [b] δὲ συστησάμενος ἐπὶ τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ γράφειν διανοηθεὶς ἐτράπετο, καὶ τόν τε Πανηγυρικὸν λόγον καί τινας ἄλλους τῶν συμβουλευτικῶν, οὓς μὲν αὐτὸς γράφων ἀνεγίνωσκεν οὓς δ’ ἑτέροις παρεσκεύαζεν, ἡγούμενος οὕτως ἐπὶ τὸ τὰ δέοντα φρονεῖν τοὺς Ἕλληνας προτρέψεσθαι. διαμαρτάνων δὲ τῆς προαιρέσεως τούτων μὲν ἀπέστη σχολῆς δ’ ἡγεῖτο, ὥς τινές φασι, πρῶτον ἐπὶ Χίου, μαθητὰς ἔχων ἐννέα· ὅτε καὶ ἰδὼν τὸν μισθὸν ἀριθμούμενον εἶπε δακρύσας ὡς ‘ἐπέγνων ἐμαυτὸν νῦν τούτοις πεπραμένον’. ὡμίλει δὲ τοῖς βουλομένοις, χωρίσας πρῶτος τοὺς ἐριστικοὺς λόγους [c] τῶν πολιτικῶν, περὶ οὓς ἐσπούδασε. καὶ ἀρχὰς δὲ καὶ περὶ τὴν Χίον κατέστησε καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν τῇ πατρίδι πολιτείαν· ἀργύριόν τε ὅσον οὐδεὶς σοφιστῶν εὐπόρησεν, ὡς καὶ τριηραρχῆσαι. ἀκροαταὶ δ’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένοντο εἰς ἑκατόν, ἄλλοι τε πολλοὶ καὶ Τιμόθεος ὁ Κόνωνος, σὺν ᾧ καὶ πολλὰς πόλεις ἐπῆλθε, συντιθεὶς τὰς πρὸς Ἀθηναίους ὑπὸ Τιμοθέου πεμπομένας ἐπιστολάς· ὅθεν ἐδωρήσατο αὐτῷ τάλαντον τῶν ἀπὸ Σάμου περιγενομένων. ἐμαθήτευσε δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ Θεόπομπος ὁ Χῖος καὶ Ἔφορος ὁ Κυμαῖος καὶ Ἀσκληπιάδης ὁ τὰ τραγῳδούμενα συγγράψας καὶ Θεοδέκτης ὁ Φασηλίτης ὁ τὰς τραγῳδίας ὕστερον γράψας, οὗ ἐστι τὸ μνῆμα ἐπὶ τὴν Κυαμῖτιν πορευομένοις κατὰ τὴν ἱερὰν [d] ὁδὸν τὴν ἐπ’ Ἐλευσῖνα, τὰ νῦν κατερηρειμμένον· ἔνθα καὶ τοὺς ἐνδόξους τῶν ποιητῶν ἀνέστησε σὺν αὐτῷ, ὧν Ὅμηρος ὁ ποιητὴς σῴζεται μόνος· Λεώδαμός τ’ Ἀθηναῖος καὶ Λάκριτος †ὁ νομοθέτης Ἀθηναίοις· ὡς δέ τινές φασι, καὶ Ὑπερείδης καὶ Ἰσαῖος. καὶ Δημοσθένη δ’ ἔτι ῥητορεύοντί φασι μετὰ σπουδῆς προσελθεῖν αὐτῷ, καὶ χιλίας μὲν ἃς [μόνας] εἰσεπράττετο οὐκ ἔχειν φάναι παρασχεῖν, διακοσίας δὲ ‹μόνας› δώσειν, ἐφ’ ᾧ τε τὸ πέμπτον μέρος ἐκμαθεῖν· [e] τὸν δ’ ἀποκρίνασθαι ὡς ‘οὐ τεμαχίζομεν, ὦ Δημόσθενες, τὴν πραγματείαν· ὥσπερ δὲ τοὺς καλοὺς ἰχθῦς ὅλους πωλοῦσιν, οὕτω κἀγώ σοι, εἰ βούλοιο μαθητεύειν, ὁλόκληρον ἀποδώσομαι τὴν τέχνην’. ἐτελεύτα δ’ ἐπὶ Χαιρώνδου ἄρχοντος, ἀπαγγελθέντων τῶν περὶ Χαιρώνειαν ἐν τῇ Ἱπποκράτους παλαίστρᾳ πυθόμενος, ἐξαγαγὼν αὑτὸν τοῦ βίου τέτταρσιν ἡμέραις διὰ τοῦ σιτίων ἀποσχέσθαι, προειπὼν τρεῖς ἀρχὰς δραμάτων Εὐριπίδου (fr. 228, IT 1, fr. 819).

‘Δαναὸς ὁ πεντήκοντα θυγατέρων πατήρ’

‘Πέλοψ ὁ Ταντάλειος εἰς Πῖσαν μολών’

‘Σιδώνιόν ποτ’ ἄστυ Κάδμος ἐκλιπών’

[f]ὀκτὼ καὶ ἐνενήκοντα ἔτη βιοὺς ἢ ὥς τινες ἑκατόν, οὐχ ὑπομείνας τετράκις ἰδεῖν τὴν Ἑλλάδα καταδουλουμένην· πρὸ ἐνιαυτοῦ ἢ ὥς τινες πρὸ τεσσάρων τῶν τῆς τελευτῆς συγγράψας τὸν Παναθηναϊκόν (or. 12). τὸν δὲ Πανηγυρικὸν (or. 4) ἔτεσι δέκα συνέθηκεν, οἱ δὲ δεκαπέντε λέγουσιν, ὃν μετενηνοχέναι ἐκ τοῦ Γοργίου τοῦ Λεοντίνου καὶ Λυσίου· τὸν δὲ περὶ τῆς ἀντιδόσεως (or. 15) δύο καὶ ὀγδοήκοντα ἔτη γεγονώς· τοὺς δὲ πρὸς Φίλιππον (or. 5) [838] [a] ὀλίγῳ πρότερον τοῦ θανάτου. ἐγένετο δ’ αὐτῷ καὶ παῖς Ἀφαρεὺς πρεσβύτῃ ὄντι ἐκ Πλαθάνης τῆς Ἱππίου τοῦ ῥήτορος ποιητός, τῶν δὲ τῆς γυναικὸς τριῶν παίδων ὁ νεώτατος. εὐπόρησε ‹δ’› ἱκανῶς οὐ μόνον ἀργύριον εἰσπράττων τοὺς γνωρίμους, ἀλλὰ καὶ παρὰ Νικοκλέους τοῦ Κυπρίων βασιλέως, ὃς ἦν υἱὸς Εὐαγόρου, εἴκοσι τάλαντα λαβὼν ὑπὲρ τοῦ πρὸς αὐτὸν γραφέντος λόγου· ἐφ’ οἷς φθονηθεὶς τρὶς προεβλήθη τριηραρχεῖν, καίτοι δὶς μὲν ἀσθένειαν σκηψάμενος διὰ τοῦ παιδὸς παρῃτήσατο, τὸ δὲ τρίτον ὑποστὰς ἀνήλωσεν οὐκ ὀλίγα. πρὸς δὲ τὸν εἰπόντα πατέρα ὡς οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ ἀνδράποδον συμπέμψαι ‹αἰτεῖ› τῷ παιδίῳ ‘τοιγαροῦν’ ἔφη ‘ἄπιθι· δύο γὰρ ἀνθ’ ἑνὸς ἕξεις [b] ἀνδράποδα.’ ἠγωνίσατο δὲ καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ Μαυσώλῳ τεθέντα ὑπ’ Ἀρτεμισίας ἀγῶνα· τὸ δ’ ἐγκώμιον οὐ σῴζεται. ἐποίησε δὲ καὶ εἰς Ἑλένην ἐγκώμιον (or. 10) καὶ Ἀρεοπαγιτικόν (or. 7). ἐξελθεῖν δὲ τοῦ βίου οἱ μὲν ἐναταῖόν φασι σίτων ἀποσχόμενον, οἱ δὲ τεταρταῖον ἅμα ταῖς ταφαῖς τῶν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ πεσόντων. συνέγραψε δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ὁ παῖς Ἀφαρεὺς λόγους. ἐτάφη δὲ μετὰ τῆς συγγενείας πλησίον Κυνοσάργους ἐπὶ τοῦ λόφου ‹ἐν› ἀριστερᾷ αὐτός τε καὶ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ Θεόδωρος καὶ ἡ μήτηρ †αὐτοῦ· ταύτης τ’ ἀδελφὴ τηθὶς τοῦ ῥήτορος Ἀνακὼ καὶ ὁ ποιητὸς υἱὸς Ἀφαρεὺς καὶ ὁ [c] ἀνεψιὸς αὐτοῦ Σωκράτης , μητρὸς Ἰσοκράτους ἀδελφῆς Ἀνακοῦς υἱὸς ὤν, ὅ τ’ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ ὁμώνυμος τοῦ πατρὸς Θεόδωρος καὶ οἱ υἱωνοὶ ‹αὐτοῦ›, τοῦ ποιηθέντος αὐτῷ παιδὸς Ἀφαρέως, [Ἀφαρεὺς καὶ ὁ τούτου πατὴρ Θεόδωρος] ἥ τε γυνὴ Πλαθάνη, μήτηρ δὲ τοῦ ποιητοῦ Ἀφαρέως. ἐπὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων τράπεζαι ἐπῆσαν ἕξ, αἳ νῦν οὐ σῴζονται· αὐτῷ δ’ Ἰσοκράτει ἐπὶ τοῦ μνήματος ἐπῆν κίων τριάκοντα πηχῶν, ἐφ’ οὗ σειρὴν πηχῶν ἑπτὰ συμβολικῶς, [d] ὃς νῦν οὐ σῴζεται. ἦν δὲ καὶ αὐτοῦ τράπεζα πλησίον ἔχουσα ποιητάς τε καὶ τοὺς διδασκάλους αὐτοῦ, ἐν οἷς καὶ Γοργίαν εἰς σφαῖραν ἀστρολογικὴν βλέποντα αὐτόν τε τὸν Ἰσοκράτην παρεστῶτα. ἀνάκειται δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι εἰκὼν χαλκῆ ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ προστῴου ὑπὸ Τιμοθέου τοῦ Κόνωνος, καὶ ἐπιγέγραπται

‘Τιμόθεος φιλίας τε χάριν ξύνεσίν τε προτιμῶν

Ἰσοκράτους εἰκὼ τήνδ’ ἀνέθηκε θεαῖς.

Λεωχάρους ἔργον.’

φέρονται δ’ αὐτοῦ λόγοι ἑξήκοντα, ὧν εἰσι γνήσιοι κατὰ μὲν Διονύσιον εἰκοσιπέντε κατὰ δὲ Καικίλιον εἰκοσιοκτώ, οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι κατεψευσμένοι. εἶχε δ’ ἀλλοτρίως πρὸς ἐπίδειξιν, ὡς ἀφικομένων ποτὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν τριῶν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀκρόασιν τοὺς μὲν δύο κατασχεῖν τὸν δὲ τρίτον ἀπολῦσαι, φάμενος εἰς τὴν ἐπιοῦσαν ἥξειν· νῦν γὰρ αὐτῷ τὸ θέατρον εἶναι ἐν †ἀκρωτηρίῳ . εἰώθει δὲ καὶ πρὸς τοὺς γνωρίμους αὑτοῦ λέγειν, ὡς αὐτὸς μὲν δέκα μνῶν διδάσκοι, τῷ δ’ αὐτὸν διδάξοντι τόλμαν καὶ εὐφωνίαν δώσειν δεκακισχιλίας. καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἐρόμενον διὰ τί οὐκ ὢν αὐτὸς ἱκανὸς ἄλλους ποιεῖ, εἶπεν ὅτι καὶ αἱ ἀκόναι αὐταὶ μὲν τεμεῖν οὐ δύνανται τὸν δὲ σίδηρον τμητικὸν ποιοῦσιν. εἰσὶ δ’ [e] οἳ καὶ τέχνας αὐτὸν λέγουσι συγγεγραφέναι, οἱ δ’ οὐ μεθόδῳ ἀλλ’ ἀσκήσει χρήσασθαι. πολίτην δ’ οὐδέποτ’ εἰσέπραξε μισθόν. προσέταττε δὲ τοῖς γνωρίμοις εἰς τὰς ἐκκλησίας ἀπαντῶσιν ἀναφέρειν αὐτῷ τὰ εἰρημένα. ἐλυπήθη δὲ καὶ οὐ μετρίως ἐπὶ τῷ Σωκράτους θανάτῳ καὶ μελανειμονῶν τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ προῆλθε. πάλιν δ’ ἐρομένου τινὸς αὐτὸν τί ῥητορική, εἶπε ‘τὰ μὲν μικρὰ μεγάλα τὰ δὲ μεγάλα μικρὰ ποιεῖν’. ἑστιώμενος δέ ποτε παρὰ Νικοκρέοντι τῷ Κύπρου τυράννῳ, προτρεπομένων αὐτὸν τῶν παρόντων διαλεχθῆναι ἔφη ‘οἷς μὲν ἐγὼ δεινὸς οὐχ ὁ νῦν καιρός, οἷς δ’ ὁ νῦν καιρὸς οὐκ ἐγὼ δεινός’. Σοφοκλέα δὲ τὸν τραγικὸν θεασάμενος ἑπόμενον ἐρωτικῶς [839] [a] παιδὶ εἶπεν ‘οὐ μόνον δεῖ, Σοφόκλεις, τὰς χεῖρας ἔχειν παρ’ αὑτῷ, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς’. τοῦ δὲ Κυμαίου Ἐφόρου ἀπράκτου τῆς σχολῆς ἐξελθόντος καὶ πάλιν ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς Δημοφίλου πεμφθέντος ἐπὶ δευτέρῳ μισθῷ, παίζων Δίφορον αὐτὸν ἐκάλει· ἐσπούδασε μέντοι ἱκανῶς περὶ τὸν ἄνδρα καὶ τὴν ὑπόθεσιν τῆς χρείας αὐτὸς ὑπεθήκατο. ἐγένετο δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὰ ἀφροδίσια καταφερής, ὡς ὑποπάστῳ παρειλκυσμένῳ ἐν τῇ κοίτῃ χρῆσθαι, [b] κρόκῳ διάβροχον ἔχοντα τὸ προσκεφάλαιον. καὶ νέον μὲν ὄντα μὴ γῆμαι, γηράσαντα δ’ ἑταίρᾳ συνεῖναι ᾗ ὄνομα ἦν Λαγίσκη, ἐξ ἧς ἔσχε θυγάτριον ὃ γενόμενον ἐτῶν δώδεκα πρὸ γάμων ἐτελεύτησεν. ἔπειτα Πλαθάνην τὴν Ἱππίου τοῦ ῥήτορος γυναῖκα ἠγάγετο τρεῖς παῖδας ἔχουσαν, ὧν τὸν Ἀφαρέα ὡς προείρηται ἐποιήσατο, ὃς καὶ εἰκόνα αὐτοῦ χαλκῆν ἀνέθηκε πρὸς τῷ Ὀλυμπιείῳ ἐπὶ κίονος καὶ ἐπέγραψεν

‘Ἰσοκράτους Ἀφαρεὺς πατρὸς εἰκόνα τήνδ’ ἀνέθηκε

Ζηνί, θεούς τε σέβων καὶ γονέων ἀρετήν.’

[c] λέγεται δὲ καὶ κελητίσαι ἔτι παῖς ὤν· ἀνάκειται γὰρ ἐν ἀκροπόλει χαλκοῦς ἐν τῇ σφαιρίστρᾳ τῶν Ἀρρηφόρων κελητίζων ἔτι παῖς ὤν, ὡς εἶπόν τινες. δύο δ’ ἐν ἅπαντι τῷ βίῳ συνέστησαν αὐτῷ ἀγῶνες· πρότερος μὲν εἰς ἀντίδοσιν προκαλεσαμένου αὐτὸν Μεγακλείδου, πρὸς ὃν οὐκ ἀπήντησε διὰ νόσον, τὸν δ’ υἱὸν πέμψας Ἀφαρέα ἐνίκησε· δεύτερος δὲ Λυσιμάχου αὐτὸν προκαλεσαμένου περὶ τριηραρχίας εἰς ἀντίδοσιν· ἡττηθεὶς δὲ τὴν τριηραρχίαν ὑπέστη. ἦν δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ γραπτὴ εἰκὼν ἐν τῷ Πομπείῳ. ὁ δ’ Ἀφαρεὺς συνέγραψε μὲν λόγους οὐ πολλοὺς δέ, δικανικούς τε καὶ συμβουλευτικούς· ἐποίησε δὲ καὶ τραγῳδίας περὶ [d] ἑπτὰ καὶ τριάκοντα, ὧν ἀντιλέγονται δύο. ἀρξάμενος δ’ ἀπὸ Λυσιστράτου διδάσκειν ἄχρι Σωσιγένους ἐν ἔτεσιν εἰκοσιοκτὼ διδασκαλίας ἀστικὰς καθῆκεν ἓξ καὶ δὶς ἐνίκησε διὰ Διονυσίου, καθεὶς καὶ δι’ ἑτέρων ἑτέρας δύο Ληναϊκάς. τῆς δὲ μητρὸς αὐτῶν Ἰσοκράτους καὶ Θεοδώρου καὶ τῆς ταύτης ἀδελφῆς Νακοῦς εἰκόνες ἀνέκειντο ἐν ἀκροπόλει· ὧν ἡ τῆς μητρὸς παρὰ τὴν Ὑγίειαν νῦν κεῖται μετεπιγεγραμμένη, ἡ δὲ Νακοῦς οὐ σῴζεται. ἔσχε δὲ υἱούς, Ἀλέξανδρον μὲν ἐκ Κόννου, Σωσικλέα δ’ ἐκ Λυσίου.

[e]

ΙΣΑΙΟΣ

Ἰσαῖος Χαλκιδεὺς μὲν ἦν τὸ γένος, παραγενόμενος δ’ εἰς Ἀθήνας καὶ σχολάσας ‹μὲν Ἰσοκράτει ὥς φησιν Ἕρμιππος μάλιστα δ’ ἠκολούθει› Λυσίᾳ κατά τε τὴν τῶν ὀνομάτων ἁρμονίαν καὶ τὴν ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι δεινότητα, ὥστ’ εἰ μή τις ἔμπειρος πάνυ τοῦ χαρακτῆρος τῶν ἀνδρῶν εἴη, οὐκ ἂν διαγνοίη πολλοὺς τῶν λόγων ῥᾳδίως ὁποτέρου τῶν ῥητόρων εἰσίν. ἤκμασε δὲ μετὰ τὸν Πελοποννησιακὸν πόλεμον, ὡς ἔστι τεκμήρασθαι ἐκ λόγων αὐτοῦ, καὶ [f] μέχρι τῆς Φιλίππου ἀρχῆς παρέτεινε. καθηγήσατο δὲ Δημοσθένους, ἀποστὰς τῆς σχολῆς, ἐπὶ δραχμαῖς μυρίαις· διὸ καὶ μάλιστα ἐπιφανὴς ἐγένετο. αὐτὸς δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἐπιτροπικοὺς λόγους συνέταττε τῷ Δημοσθένει, ὥς τινες εἶπον. καταλέλοιπε δὲ λόγους ἑξήκοντα τέσσαρας, ὧν εἰσι γνήσιοι πεντήκοντα, καὶ ἰδίας τέχνας. πρῶτος δὲ καὶ σχηματίζειν ἤρξατο καὶ τρέπειν ἐπὶ τὸ πολιτικὸν τὴν διάνοιαν· ὃ μάλιστα μεμίμηται Δημοσθένης. μνημονεύει δ’ αὐτοῦ Θεόπομπος ὁ κωμικὸς ἐν τῷ Θησεῖ (fr. 18 I, p. 737 K.)

[840] [a]

ΑΙΣΧΙΝΗΣ

Αἰσχίνης Ἀτρομήτου, φυγόντος μὲν ἐπὶ τῶν τριάκοντα συγκαταγαγόντος δὲ τὸν δῆμον, καὶ Γλαυκοθέας, τῶν δήμων Κοθωκίδης, οὔτε κατὰ γένος τῶν ἐπιφανῶν οὔτε κατὰ περιουσίαν χρημάτων. νέος δ’ ὢν καὶ ἐρρωμένος τῷ σώματι περὶ τὰ γυμνάσια ἐπόνει· λαμπρόφωνος δ’ ὢν μετὰ ταῦτα τραγῳδίαν ἤσκησεν· ὡς δὲ Δημοσθένης φησίν, ὑπογραμματεύων καὶ τριταγωνιστῶν Ἀριστοδήμῳ ἐν τοῖς Διονυσίοις [b] διετέλει, ἀναλαμβάνων ἐπὶ σχολῆς τὰς παλαιὰς τραγῳδίας, καὶ ἔτι παῖς ὢν ἐδίδασκε γράμματα σὺν τῷ πατρί, καὶ μειράκιον ὢν ἐστρατεύετο ἐν τοῖς ‹περι›πόλοις. ἀκροατὴς δὲ γενόμενος ὡς μέν τινες λέγουσιν Ἰσοκράτους καὶ Πλάτωνος, ὡς δὲ Καικίλιος (fr. 126 Of.) Λεωδάμαντος, καὶ πολιτευόμενος οὐκ ἀφανῶς ἐκ τῆς ἐναντίας μερίδος τοῖς περὶ Δημοσθένη, ἐπρέσβευσεν ἄλλας τε πρεσβείας πολλὰς καὶ πρὸς Φίλιππον ὑπὲρ τῆς εἰρήνης· ἐφ’ ᾗ κατηγορήθη ὑπὸ Δημοσθένους ‹ὡς› ἀνῃρημένου τοῦ Φωκέων ἔθνους, ἔτι δ’ ὡς πόλεμον ἐξάψας, ἡνίκα πυλαγόρας ᾑρέθη Ἀμφικτύοσι πρὸς Ἀμφισσεῖς ‹τὴν ἱερὰν γῆν› καὶ τὸν λιμένα ἐργαζομένους· ἐξ οὗ συνέβη τοὺς Ἀμφικτύονας Φιλίππῳ προσφυγεῖν, [c] τὸν δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Αἰσχίνου συνεργούμενον ἐπιθέσθαι τοῖς πράγμασι καὶ τὴν Φωκίδα λαβεῖν· ἀλλὰ συνειπόντος αὐτῷ Εὐβούλου τοῦ Σπινθάρου Προβαλλουσίου δημαγωγοῦντος τριάκοντα ψήφοις ἀπέφυγεν. εἰσὶ δ’ οἵ φασι συγγράψαι μὲν τοὺς ῥήτορας τοὺς λόγους, ἐμποδὼν δὲ γενομένων τῶν περὶ Χαιρώνειαν, μηκέτι τὴν δίκην εἰσελθεῖν. χρόνῳ δ’ ὕστερον, Φιλίππου μὲν τετελευτηκότος Ἀλεξάνδρου δὲ διαβαίνοντος εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν, ἐγράψατο Κτησιφῶντα (or. 3) παρανόμων ἐπὶ ταῖς Δημοσθένους τιμαῖς· οὐ μεταλαβὼν δὲ τὸ πέμπτον μέρος τῶν ψήφων ἔφυγεν εἰς τὴν Ῥόδον, χιλίας δραχμὰς ὑπὲρ τῆς ἥττης οὐ [d] βουληθεὶς καταθέσθαι. οἱ δ’ ἀτιμίας αὐτῷ προστιμηθῆναι λέγουσιν οὐ θέλοντι ἐξελθεῖν τῆς πόλεως, καὶ ἐλθεῖν εἰς Ἔφεσον ὡς Ἀλέξανδρον. τοῦ δὲ τελευτήσαντος, ταραχῆς οὔσης, ἀπάρας εἰς τὴν Ῥόδον ἐνταῦθα σχολὴν καταστησάμενος ἐδίδασκεν. ἀνέγνω τε τοῖς Ῥοδίοις τὸν κατὰ Κτησιφῶντος λόγον ἐπιδεικνύμενος· θαυμαζόντων δὲ πάντων [e] εἰ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἡττήθη ‘οὐκ ἄν’ ἔφη ‘ἐθαυμάζετε, Ῥόδιοι, εἰ πρὸς ταῦτα Δημοσθένους λέγοντος ἠκούσατε’. σχολήν τ’ ἐκεῖ προσκατέλιπε, τὸ Ῥοδιακὸν διδασκαλεῖον κληθέν. ἔπειτα πλεύσας εἰς Σάμον καὶ διατρίβων ἐπὶ τῆς νήσου ὀλίγον ὕστερον ἐτελεύτησεν. ἐγένετο δ’ εὔφωνος, ὡς δῆλον ἔκ τε ὧν φησι Δημοσθένης (or. 18, 259. 308) καὶ ἐκ τοῦ Δημοχάρους λόγου. φέρονται δ’ αὐτοῦ λόγοι τέσσαρες, ὅ τε κατὰ Τιμάρχου καὶ ὁ ‹περὶ› τῆς παραπρεσβείας καὶ ὁ κατὰ Κτησιφῶντος, οἳ καὶ μόνοι εἰσὶ γνήσιοι. ὁ γὰρ ἐπιγραφόμενος Δηλιακὸς οὐκ ἔστιν Αἰσχίνου· ἀπεδείχθη μὲν γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν κρίσιν ‹ἀγῶνος› τοῦ περὶ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τοῦ ἐν Δήλῳ συσταθεῖσαν συνήγορος· οὐ μὴν εἶπε τὸν λόγον· [f] ἐχειροτονήθη γὰρ Ὑπερείδης ἀντ’ αὐτοῦ, ὥς φησι Δημοσθένης (or. 18, 134). ἔσχε δὲ καὶ ἀδελφούς, ὥς φησιν αὐτός (or. 2, 149), Ἀφόβητον καὶ Φιλοχάρη. ἀπήγγειλε δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐν Ταμύναις νίκην πρῶτος Ἀθηναίοις, ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ ἐστεφανώθη τὸ δεύτερον. οἱ δ’ εἶπον μηδὲ μαθητεῦσαί τισι τὸν Αἰσχίνην, ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῆς ὑπογραμματείας ἀρθῆναι ἐν τοῖς δικαστηρίοις τότε διάγοντα· πρῶτον δ’ εἰπεῖν ἐν τῷ δήμῳ κατὰ Φιλίππου, εὐδοκιμήσαντά τε πρεσβευτὴν χειροτονηθῆναι πρὸς Ἀρκάδας· πρὸς οὓς ἀφικόμενος [841] [a] συστῆσαι τοὺς μυρίους ἐπὶ Φίλιππον. ἐγράψατο δὲ καὶ Τίμαρχον ἑταιρήσεως· ὁ δ’ ἐκλιπὼν τὸν ἀγῶνα αὑτὸν ἀνήρτησεν, ὥς πού φησι Δημοσθένης (or. 19, 2). ἐχειροτονήθη δὲ πρεσβευτὴς ὡς Φίλιππον μετὰ Κτησιφῶντος καὶ Δημοσθένους περὶ τῆς εἰρήνης, ἐν ᾗ ἄμεινον τοῦ Δημοσθένους ἠνέχθη· τὸ ‹δὲ› δεύτερον δέκατος ὤν, κυρώσας ὅρκοις τὴν εἰρήνην, κριθεὶς ἀπέφυγεν, ὡς προείρηται.

ΛΥΚΟΥΡΓΟΣ

Λυκοῦργος πατρὸς μὲν ἦν Λυκόφρονος τοῦ Λυκούργου, [b] ὃν οἱ τριάκοντα τύραννοι ἀπέκτειναν, αἰτίου αὐτῷ τῆς ἀναιρέσεως γενομένου Ἀριστοδήμου Βατῆθεν, ὃς καὶ ἑλληνοταμίας γενόμενος ἔφυγεν ἐν τῇ δημοκρατίᾳ· τῶν δήμων δὲ Βουτάδης, γένους τοῦ τῶν Ἐτεοβουταδῶν. ἀκροατὴς δὲ γενόμενος Πλάτωνος τοῦ φιλοσόφου, τὰ πρῶτα ἐφιλοσόφησεν· εἶτα καὶ Ἰσοκράτους τοῦ ῥήτορος γνώριμος γενόμενος ἐπολιτεύσατο ἐπιφανῶς, καὶ λέγων καὶ πράττων καὶ δὴ πιστευσάμενος τὴν διοίκησιν τῶν χρημάτων· ταμίας γὰρ ἐγένετο ἐπὶ τρεῖς πενταετηρίδας ταλάντων μυρίων τετρακισχιλίων, ἢ ὥς τινες μυρίων ὀκτακισχιλίων ἑξακοσίων πεντήκοντα, καὶ ὁ τὰς τιμὰς αὐτῷ [c] ψηφιζόμενος Στρατοκλῆς ὁ ῥήτωρ, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον αἱρεθεὶς αὐτός, ἔπειτα τῶν φίλων ἐπιγραψάμενός τινα αὐτὸς ἐποιεῖτο τὴν διοίκησιν διὰ τὸ φθάσαι νόμον εἰσενεγκεῖν, μὴ πλείω πέντε ἐτῶν διέπειν τὸν χειροτονηθέντα ἐπὶ τὰ δημόσια χρήματα. ἀεί τ’ ἐφεστὼς τοῖς ἔργοις διετέλεσε καὶ θέρους καὶ χειμῶνος. καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ πολέμου παρασκευὴν χειροτονηθεὶς πολλὰ τῆς πόλεως ἐπηνώρθωσε, καὶ τριήρεις παρεσκεύασε τῷ δήμῳ τετρακοσίας, καὶ τὸ [d] ἐν Λυκείῳ γυμνάσιον ἐποίησε καὶ ἐφύτευσε καὶ τὴν παλαίστραν ᾠκοδόμησε καὶ τὸ ἐν Διονύσου θέατρον ἐπιστατῶν ἐπετέλεσε. πιστευσάμενος δ’ ἐν παρακαταθήκῃ παρὰ τῶν ἰδιωτῶν διακόσια πεντήκοντα τάλαντα ἐφύλαξε, πομπεῖά τε χρυσᾶ καὶ ἀργυρᾶ τῇ πόλει κατεσκεύασε καὶ Νίκας χρυσᾶς. πολλὰ δ’ ἡμίεργα παραλαβὼν ἐξετέλεσε καὶ νεωσοίκους καὶ τὴν σκευοθήκην· καὶ τῷ σταδίῳ τῷ Παναθηναϊκῷ τὴν κρηπῖδα περιέθηκεν, ἐξεργασάμενος τοῦτό τε καὶ τὴν χαράδραν ὁμαλὴν ποιήσας, Δεινίου τινός, ὃς ἐκέκτητο τοῦτο τὸ χωρίον, ἀνέντος τῇ πόλει, προειπόντος [e] αὐτὸ χαρίσασθαι Λυκούργῳ. ἔσχε δὲ καὶ τοῦ ἄστεος τὴν φυλακὴν καὶ τῶν κακούργων τὴν σύλληψιν, οὓς ἐξήλασεν ἅπαντας, ὡς καὶ τῶν σοφιστῶν ἐνίους λέγειν Λυκοῦργον οὐ μέλανι ἀλλὰ θανάτῳ χρίοντα τὸν κάλαμον κατὰ τῶν πονηρῶν, οὕτω συγγράφειν. ὅθεν ἐξαιτηθέντα αὐτὸν ὑπ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ βασιλέως ὁ δῆμος οὐ προήκατο. καθ’ ὃν δὲ χρόνον ἐπολέμει Φίλιππος πρὸς Ἀθηναίους τὸν δεύτερον πόλεμον, ἐπρέσβευε μετὰ Πολυεύκτου καὶ Δημοσθένους εἴς τε Πελοπόννησον καί τινας ἑτέρας πόλεις.

[f] διετέλεσέ τε τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον εὐδοκιμῶν παρὰ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις καὶ δίκαιος εἶναι νομιζόμενος, ὥστε καὶ ἐν τοῖς δικαστηρίοις τὸ φῆσαι Λυκοῦργον ἐδόκει βοήθημα εἶναι τῷ συναγορευομένῳ. εἰσήνεγκε δὲ καὶ νόμους, τὸν μὲν περὶ τῶν κωμῳδῶν, ἀγῶνα τοῖς Χύτροις ἐπιτελεῖν ἐφάμιλλον ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ καὶ τὸν νικήσαντα εἰς ἄστυ καταλέγεσθαι, πρότερον οὐκ ἐξόν, ἀναλαμβάνων τὸν ἀγῶνα ἐκλελοιπότα· τὸν δέ, ὡς χαλκᾶς εἰκόνας ἀναθεῖναι τῶν ποιητῶν, Αἰσχύλου Σοφοκλέους Εὐριπίδου, καὶ τὰς τραγῳδίας αὐτῶν ἐν κοινῷ γραψαμένους φυλάττειν καὶ τὸν τῆς πόλεως γραμματέα παραναγινώσκειν τοῖς ὑποκρινομένοις· οὐκ ἐξεῖναι γὰρ ‹παρ’› αὐτὰς ὑποκρίνεσθαι. καὶ τρίτον, [842] [a] μηδενὶ ἐξεῖναι Ἀθηναίων μηδὲ τῶν οἰκούντων Ἀθήνησιν ἐλεύθερον σῶμα πρίασθαι ἐπὶ δουλείᾳ ἐκ τῶν ἁλισκομένων ‹μηδὲ δοῦλον› ἄνευ τῆς τοῦ προτέρου δεσπότου γνώμης. ἔτι δέ, ὡς τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ἀγῶνα ποιεῖν ἐν Πειραιεῖ κυκλίων χορῶν οὐκ ἔλαττον τριῶν, ‹καὶ› δίδοσθαι μὲν τοῖς νικῶσιν οὐκ ἔλαττον δέκα μνᾶς, τοῖς δὲ δευτέροις ὀκτώ, ἓξ δὲ τοῖς τρίτοις κριθεῖσιν. ἔτι ‹δέ›, ἐπὶ ζεύγους μὴ ἀπιέναι γυναῖκα Ἐλευσῖνάδε, ὅπως μὴ ἐλαττῶνται ‹αἱ δημοτικαὶ› ὑπὸ τῶν πλουσιῶν· εἰ δέ τις φωραθείη, ἀποτίνειν δραχμὰς ἑξακισχιλίας. τῆς δὲ γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ μὴ πεισθείσης, τῶν συκοφαντῶν φωρασάντων, τάλαντον [b] αὐτοῖς ἔδωκε· κατηγορούμενος δ’ ἐν ὑστέρῳ ἐν τῷ δήμῳ ἔφη ‘ἀλλ’ οὖν ἐγὼ μὲν διδοὺς οὐ λαμβάνων ἑώραμαι’. τελώνου δέ ποτ’ ἐπιβαλόντος Ξενοκράτει τῷ φιλοσόφῳ τὰς χεῖρας καὶ πρὸς τὸ μετοίκιον αὐτὸν ἀπάγοντος, ἀπαντήσας ῥάβδῳ τε κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς τοῦ τελώνου κατήνεγκε, καὶ τὸν μὲν Ξενοκράτην ἀπέλυσε, τὸν δ’ ὡς οὐ τὰ πρέποντα δράσαντα εἰς τὸ δεσμωτήριον κατέκλεισεν· ἐπαινουμένου δ’ ἐπὶ τῇ πράξει, μεθ’ ἡμέρας τινὰς συντυχὼν ὁ Ξενοκράτης τοῖς παισὶ τοῦ Λυκούργου ἔφη ‘ταχέως [c] γε τῷ πατρὶ ὑμῶν ἀπέδωκα, ὦ παῖδες, τὴν χάριν· ἐπαινεῖται γὰρ ὑπὸ πολλῶν ἐπὶ τῷ βοηθῆσαί μοι’. εἰσήνεγκε δὲ καὶ ψηφίσματα Εὐκλείδῃ τινὶ Ὀλυνθίῳ χρώμενος ἱκανωτάτῳ περὶ τὰ ψηφίσματα. εὔπορος δ’ ὢν ἱμάτιον ἓν καὶ ταὐτὸ ἐφόρει τοῦ χειμῶνος καὶ τοῦ θέρους καὶ ὑπεδέδετο ταῖς ἀναγκαίαις ‹μόνον› ἡμέραις. ἐμελέτα δὲ καὶ νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας, οὐκ εὖ πρὸς τὰ αὐτοσχέδια πεφυκώς, κλινιδίου δ’ αὐτῷ ὑποκειμένου, ἐφ’ ᾧ μόνον ἦν κώδιον καὶ προσκεφάλαιον, ὅπως ἐγείροιτο ῥᾳδίως καὶ μελετῴη. ἐγκαλοῦντος δ’ αὐτῷ τινος ὅτι μισθοὺς σοφισταῖς δίδωσι [d] περὶ λόγους διατρίβων, ἀλλ’ εἴ τις γ’ ἐπαγγέλλοιτο, ἔφη, τοὺς υἱοὺς ἀμείνους αὐτῷ ποιήσειν, οὐ χιλίας ἀλλὰ τὰ ἡμίση τῆς οὐσίας προΐεσθαι. ἦν δὲ καὶ παρρησιαστὴς διὰ τὴν εὐγένειαν· Ἀθηναίων γέ τοί ποτε οὐκ ἀνεχομένων αὐτοῦ δημηγοροῦντος, ἀνέκραγεν ἐκβαλλόμενος ‘ὦ Κερκυραία μάστιξ, ὡς πολλῶν ταλάντων εἶ ἀξία’. πάλιν δὲ θεὸν ἀναγορευόντων Ἀλέξανδρον ‘καὶ ποδαπὸς ἂν ‹εἴη›’ εἶπεν ‘ὁ θεός, οὗ τὸ ἱερὸν ἐξιόντας δεήσει περιρραίνεσθαι;’ [e] ἀποθανόντος δ’ αὐτοῦ παρέδωκαν τοὺς παῖδας τοῖς ἕνδεκα, Μενεσαίχμου μὲν κατηγορήσαντος γραψαμένου δὲ Θρασυκλέους· Δημοσθένους δὲ καθ’ ὃν ἔφευγε χρόνον ἐπιστείλαντος τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ὡς κακῶς ἀκούοιεν ἐπὶ τοῖς Λυκούργου παιδίοις, μετενόησαν καὶ ἀφῆκαν αὐτούς, Δημοκλέους τοῦ Θεοφράστου μαθητοῦ ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν ἀπολογησαμένου. ἐτάφη δ’ αὐτὸς καὶ τῶν ἐκγόνων τινὲς δημοσίᾳ· καὶ ἔστιν αὐτῶν τὰ μνήματα ἄντικρυς τῆς Παιωνίας Ἀθηνᾶς ἐν τῷ Μελανθίου τοῦ φιλοσόφου κήπῳ, τράπεζαι πεποιημέναι, αὐτοῦ τε τοῦ Λυκούργου καὶ τῶν παίδων αὐτοῦ ἐπιγεγραμμέναι καὶ εἰς ἡμᾶς ἔτι σῳζόμεναι. τὸ μέγιστον, [f] χίλια διακόσια τάλαντα προσόδου τῇ πόλει κατέστησε, πρότερον ἑξήκοντα προσιόντων. μέλλων δὲ τελευτήσειν εἰς τὸ μητρῷον καὶ τὸ βουλευτήριον ἐκέλευσεν αὑτὸν κομισθῆναι, βουλόμενος εὐθύνας δοῦναι τῶν πεπολιτευμένων· οὐδενὸς δὲ κατηγορῆσαι τολμήσαντος πλὴν Μενεσαίχμου, τὰς διαβολὰς ἀπολυσάμενος εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν ἀπεκομίσθη καὶ ἐτελεύτησεν, ἐπιεικὴς νομισθεὶς παρὰ πάντα τὸν ‹τοῦ› βίου χρόνον καὶ ἐν λόγοις ἐπαινεθείς, καὶ μηδένα ἀγῶνα ἁλούς, καίτοι πολλῶν κατηγορησάντων. ἔσχε δὲ τρεῖς παῖδας ἐκ Καλλιστοῦς τῆς Ἅβρωνος μὲν θυγατρός, Καλλίου δὲ τοῦ Ἅβρωνος Βατῆθεν ἀδελφῆς, τοῦ ταμιεύσαντος [843] [a]στρατιωτικῶν ἐπὶ Χαιρώνδου ἄρχοντος· περὶ δὲ τῆς κηδείας ταύτης λέγει ὁ Δείναρχος ἐν τῷ κατὰ Πιστίου. κατέλιπε δὲ παῖδας Ἅβρωνα Λυκοῦργον Λυκόφρονα· ὧν ὁ Ἅβρων καὶ ὁ Λυκοῦργος ἄπαιδες μετήλλαξαν· ἀλλ’ ὅ γ’ Ἅβρων καὶ πολιτευσάμενος ἐπιφανῶς μετήλλαξε, Λυκόφρων δὲ γήμας Καλλιστομάχην Φιλίππου Αἰξωνέως ἐγέννησε Καλλιστώ. ταύτην δὲ γήμας Κλεόμβροτος Δεινοκράτους Ἀχαρνεὺς ἐγέννησε Λυκόφρονα· τοῦτον δ’ ὁ πάππος εἰσεποιήσατο Λυκόφρων· οὗτος δ’ ἐτελεύτησεν ἄπαις· μετὰ δὲ τὴν Λυκόφρονος τελευτὴν ἔγημε [b] τὴν Καλλιστὼ Σωκράτης καὶ ἔσχεν υἱὸν Σύμμαχον· τοῦ δ’ ἐγένετο Ἀριστώνυμος, τοῦ δὲ Χαρμίδης, τοῦ δὲ Φιλίππη· ταύτης δὲ καὶ Λυσάνδρου Μήδειος, ὁ καὶ ἐξηγητὴς ἐξ Εὐμολπιδῶν γενόμενος· τούτου δὲ καὶ Τιμοθέας τῆς Γλαύκου παῖδες Λαοδάμεια καὶ Μήδειος, ὃς τὴν ἱερωσύνην Ποσειδῶνος Ἐρεχθέως εἶχε, καὶ Φιλίππη, ἥτις ἱεράσατο τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ὕστερον· πρότερον δ’ αὐτὴν γήμας Διοκλῆς ὁ Μελιτεὺς ἐγέννησε Διοκλέα τὸν ἐπὶ τοὺς ὁπλίτας στρατηγήσαντα· γήμας δ’ οὗτος Ἡδίστην Ἅβρωνος [c] Φιλιππίδην καὶ Νικοστράτην ἐγέννησε· γήμας δὲ τὴν Νικοστράτην Θεμιστοκλῆς ὁ Θεοφράστου ὁ δᾳδοῦχος ἐγέννησε Θεόφραστον καὶ Διοκλέα· διετάξατο δὲ καὶ τὴν ἱερωσύνην τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος Ἐρεχθέως. φέρονται δὲ τοῦ ῥήτορος λόγοι δεκαπέντε. ἐστεφανώθη δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου πολλάκις καὶ εἰκόνων ἔτυχεν· ἀνάκειται δ’ αὐτοῦ χαλκῆ εἰκὼν ἐν Κεραμεικῷ κατὰ ψήφισμα ἐπ’ Ἀναξικράτους ἄρχοντος· ἐφ’ οὗ ἔλαβε καὶ σίτησιν ἐν πρυτανείῳ αὐτός τε [καὶ] ὁ Λυκοῦργος καὶ ὁ πρεσβύτατος αὐτοῦ τῶν ἐκγόνων κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ ψήφισμα· ἀποθανόντος δὲ Λυκούργου ὁ πρεσβύτατος τῶν παίδων Λυκόφρων ἠμφισβήτησε τῆς [d] δωρεᾶς. εἶπε δὲ καὶ περὶ ἱερῶν πολλάκις. γραψάμενος ‹δ’› Αὐτόλυκον τὸν Ἀρεοπαγίτην καὶ Λυσικλέα τὸν στρατηγὸν καὶ Δημάδη τὸν Δημέου καὶ Μενέσαιχμον ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς καὶ πάντας εἷλεν. ἔκρινε δὲ καὶ Δίφιλον, ἐκ τῶν ἀργυρείων μετάλλων τοὺς μεσοκρινεῖς, οἳ ἐβάσταζον τὰ ὑπερκείμενα βάρη, ὑφελόντα καὶ ἐξ αὐτῶν πεπλουτηκότα παρὰ τοὺς νόμους· καὶ θανάτου ὄντος ἐπιτιμίου ἁλῶναι ἐποίησε, καὶ πεντήκοντα δραχμὰς ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας αὐτοῦ ἑκάστῳ τῶν πολιτῶν διένειμε, τῶν πάντων συναχθέντων [e] ταλάντων ἑκατὸν ἑξήκοντα· ἤ, ὥς τινες, †μνᾶν. †‹ἐγράψατ›ο δ’ εὐθύνας Ἀριστογείτονα καὶ Λεωκράτην καὶ Αὐτόλυκον δειλίας. ἐπεκαλεῖτο δ’ ὁ Λυκοῦργος ἶβις ‹ὥς φησιν Ἀριστοφάνης·

‘ἶβις› Λυκούργῳ, Χαιρεφῶντι νυκτερίς’ (Av. 1296).

κατῆγον δὲ τὸ γένος ἀπὸ Βούτου καὶ Ἐρεχθέως τοῦ Γῆς καὶ Ἡφαίστου, τὰ δ’ ἐγγυτάτω ἀπὸ Λυκομήδους καὶ Λυκούργου, οὓς ὁ δῆμος ταφαῖς ἐτίμησε δημοσίᾳ· καὶ ἔστιν αὕτη ἡ καταγωγὴ τοῦ γένους τῶν ἱερασαμένων τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ἐν πίνακι τελείῳ, ὃς ἀνάκειται ἐν Ἐρεχθείῳ, γεγραμμένος ὑπ’ Ἰσμηνίου τοῦ Χαλκιδέως· καὶ εἰκόνες ξύλιναι τοῦ τε Λυκούργου καὶ τῶν υἱῶν αὐτοῦ, Ἅβρωνος [f] Λυκούργου Λυκόφρονος, ἃς εἰργάσαντο Τίμαρχος καὶ Κηφισόδοτος, οἱ Πραξιτέλους υἱεῖς· τὸν δὲ πίνακα ἀνέθηκεν Ἅβρων ὁ παῖς αὐτοῦ, λαχὼν ἐκ τοῦ γένους τὴν ἱερωσύνην καὶ παραχωρήσας τῷ ἀδελφῷ Λυκόφρονι· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πεποίηται ὁ Ἅβρων προσδιδοὺς αὐτῷ τὴν τρίαιναν. πάντων δ’ ὧν διῴκησεν ἀναγραφὴν ποιησάμενος ἀνέθηκεν ἐν στήλῃ πρὸ τῆς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ κατασκευασθείσης παλαίστρας, σκοπεῖν τοῖς βουλομένοις· οὐδεὶς μέντοι ἐδυνήθη ἐλέγξαι τὸν ἄνδρα νοσφισμοῦ. ἔγραψε δὲ καὶ Νεοπτόλεμον Ἀντικλέους στεφανῶσαι καὶ εἰκόνα ἀναθεῖναι, ὅτι ἐπηγγείλατο χρυσώσειν [844] [a] τὸν βωμὸν τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἐν ἀγορᾷ κατὰ τὴν μαντείαν τοῦ θεοῦ. ἐψηφίσατο δὲ καὶ Διοτίμῳ Διοπείθους Εὐωνυμεῖ τιμὰς ἐπὶ Κτησικλέους ἄρχοντος.

ΔΗΜΟΣΘΕΝΗΣ

Δημοσθένης Δημοσθένους καὶ Κλεοβούλης τῆς Γύλωνος θυγατρός, τῶν δὲ δήμων Παιανιεύς, καταλειφθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ [b] πατρὸς ἐτῶν ἑπτὰ μετ’ ἀδελφῆς πενταέτιδος τὸν μὲν τῆς ὀρφανίας χρόνον παρὰ τῇ μητρὶ διῆγε, σχολάζων Ἰσοκράτει ὥς τινες ἔφασαν, ὡς δ’ οἱ πλεῖστοι Ἰσαίῳ τῷ Χαλκιδεῖ, ὃς ἦν Ἰσοκράτους μαθητής, διάγοντι ἐν Ἀθήναις, ζηλῶν Θουκυδίδην καὶ Πλάτωνα τὸν φιλόσοφον, ᾧ τινες εἶπον προηγουμένως αὐτὸν σχολάσαι. ὡς δ’ Ἡγησίας ὁ Μάγνης φησίν (FGrHist 142 F 22), ἐδεήθη τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ, ἵνα Καλλιστράτου Ἐμπέδου Ἀφιδναίου, ῥήτορος δοκίμου ‹τοῦ› καὶ ἱππαρχήσαντος καὶ ἀναθέντος τὸν βωμὸν τῷ Ἑρμῇ τῷ ἀγοραίῳ, μέλλοντος ἐν τῷ δήμῳ λέγειν, ἀκούσῃ· ἀκούσας δ’ ἐραστὴς ἐγένετο τῶν λόγων.

[c] καὶ τούτου μὲν ἐπ’ ὀλίγον ἤκουσεν, ἕως ἐπεδήμει. ἐπειδὴ δ’ ὁ μὲν ἔφυγεν εἰς Θρᾴκην ὁ δ’ ἐγεγόνει ἐξ ἐφήβων, τηνικαῦτα παρέβαλλεν Ἰσοκράτει καὶ Πλάτωνι· εἶτα καὶ Ἰσαῖον ἀναλαβὼν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τετραετῆ χρόνον αὑτὸν διεπόνησε, μιμούμενος αὐτοῦ τοὺς λόγους. ὡς δὲ Κτησίβιός φησιν ἐν τῷ περὶ φιλοσοφίας, διὰ Καλλίου τοῦ Συρακουσίου πορίσας τοὺς Ζήθου τοῦ Ἀμφιπολίτου λόγους, διὰ δὲ Χαρικλέους τοῦ Καρυστίου τοὺς Ἀλκιδάμαντος, ἀνέλαβεν αὐτούς. τελειωθεὶς δέ, ἐλάττω παρὰ τῶν ἐπιτρόπων παραλαβών, ἔκρινεν αὐτοὺς ἐπιτροπῆς ἐπὶ Τιμοκράτους ἄρχοντος, τρεῖς ὄντας, Ἄφοβον Θηριππίδην [d] Δημοφῶντα ἢ Δημέαν· καὶ μάλιστα τοῦ πρώτου κατηγόρησεν ἀδελφοῦ τῆς μητρὸς ὄντος, δέκα τάλαντα τίμημα ἑκάστῃ τῶν δικῶν ἐπιγραψάμενος· καὶ εἷλεν αὐτούς· τῆς δὲ καταδίκης οὐδὲν ἐπράξατο, τοὺς μὲν ‹ἀφεὶς› ἀργυρίου τοὺς δὲ καὶ χάριτος. Ἀριστοφῶντος δ’ ἤδη τὴν προστασίαν διὰ γῆρας καταλιπόντος καὶ χορηγὸς ἐγένετο. Μειδίαν δὲ τὸν Ἀναγυράσι‹ον› πλήξαντα αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ χορηγοῦντα εἰς κρίσιν καταστήσας, λαβὼν τρισχιλίας ἀφῆκε τῆς δίκης. λέγουσι δ’ αὐτὸν ἔτι νέον ὄντα εἰς σπήλαιον ἀπιέναι κἀκεῖ φιλολογεῖν τὸ ἥμισυ τῆς κεφαλῆς ἐξυρημένον, ἵνα μὴ προέρχοιτο· καὶ ἐπὶ στενῆς [e] κλίνης κοιμᾶσθαι, ἵνα διὰ ταχέων ἀνίστηται· τό τε ῥῶ μὴ δυνάμενον λέγειν ἐκπονῆσαι, καὶ τὸν ὦμον ἐν τῷ μελετᾶν κινοῦντα ἀπρεπῶς καταπαῦσαι, παραρτήσαντα ὀβελίσκον ἢ ὥς τινες ξιφίδιον ἐκ τῆς ὀροφῆς, ἵνα φοβούμενος ἠρεμοίη. προβαίνοντα δὴ κατὰ τὴν τῶν λόγων ἰσχὺν ἔσοπτρον ἰσομέγεθες αὑτῷ κατασκευάσαι καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο ἀφορῶντα μελετᾶν, ἵν’ ἐπανορθώσηται τὰ ἐλλείποντα· καὶ [f] κατιόντα ἐπὶ τὸ Φαληρικὸν πρὸς τὰς τῶν κυμάτων ἐμβολὰς τὰς σκέψεις ποιεῖσθαι, ἵν’, εἴ ποτε θορυβοίη ὁ δῆμος, μὴ ἐκσταίη· τοῦ δὲ πνεύματος αὐτῷ ἐνδέοντος Νεοπτολέμῳ τῷ ὑποκριτῇ μυρίας δοῦναι, ἵν’ ὅλας περιόδους ἀπνεύστως λέγῃ. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῷ πολιτεύεσθαι προσῆλθεν, εἰς δύο διῃρημένων τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει, καὶ τῶν μὲν φιλιππιζόντων τῶν δ’ ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευθερίας δημηγορούντων, τὴν τῶν ἀντιπολιτευομένων Φιλίππῳ τάξιν εἵλετο· καὶ ‹διὰ› παντὸς τοῦ χρόνου διετέλεσε συμβουλεύων τοῖς κινδυνεύουσιν ὑπὸ Φιλίππῳ γενέσθαι βοηθεῖν, συμπολιτευόμενος Ὑπερείδῃ [845] [a] Ναυσικλεῖ Πολυεύκτῳ Διοτίμῳ· διὸ καὶ συμμάχους τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἐποίησε Θηβαίους Εὐβοεῖς Κερκυραίους Κορινθίους Βοιωτούς, καὶ πολλοὺς ἄλλους πρὸς τούτοις. ἐκπεσὼν δέ ποτ’ ἐπὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας καὶ ἀθυμῶν ἐβάδιζεν οἴκοι· συντυχὼν δ’ αὐτῷ Εὔνομος ὁ Θριάσιος πρεσβύτης ἤδη ὢν προετρέψατο τὸν Δημοσθένη, μάλιστα δ’ ὁ ὑποκριτὴς Ἀνδρόνικος εἰπὼν ὡς οἱ μὲν λόγοι καλῶς ἔχοιεν λείποι δ’ αὐτῷ τὰ τῆς ὑποκρίσεως, ἀπεμνημόνευσέ [b] τε τῶν ἐπὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λελεγμένων· καὶ δὴ πιστεύσαντα τὸν Δημοσθένη παραδοῦναι αὑτὸν τῷ Ἀνδρονίκῳ. ὅθεν ἐρομένου αὐτόν ‹τινος› τί πρῶτον ἐν ῥητορικῇ, εἶπεν ‘ὑπόκρισις’· καὶ τί δεύτερον ‘ὑπόκρισις’· καὶ τί τρίτον ‘ὑπόκρισις’. προελθὼν δὲ πάλιν εἰς τὰς ἐκκλησίας, νεωτερικῶς τινα λέγων διεσύρετο, ὡς κωμῳδηθῆναι αὐτὸν ὑπ’ Ἀντιφάνους καὶ Τιμοκλέους (fr. 296, 38, II p. 128. 466 Kock).

‘μὰ γῆν μὰ κρήνας μὰ ποταμοὺς μὰ νάματα’·

ὀμόσας δὲ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ἐν τῷ δήμῳ θόρυβον ἐκίνησεν. ὤμνυε δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἀσκληπιόν, προπαροξύνων Ἀσκλήπιον· καὶ παρεδείκνυεν αὑτὸν ὀρθῶς λέγοντα· εἶναι γὰρ [c] τὸν θεὸν ἤπιον· καὶ ἐπὶ τούτῳ πολλάκις ἐθορυβήθη. σχολάσας δ’ Εὐβουλίδῃ τῷ διαλεκτικῷ Μιλησίῳ ἐπηνωρθώσατο πάντα. γενόμενος δὲ καὶ ἐν τῇ Ὀλυμπιακῇ πανηγύρει καὶ ἀκούσας Λαμάχου τοῦ Τερειναίου Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἐγκώμιον ἀναγινώσκοντος Θηβαίων δὲ καὶ Ὀλυνθίων κατατρέχοντος, παραναστὰς ἀρχαίων ποιητῶν μαρτυρίας προηνέγκατο περὶ τῶν Θηβαίοις καὶ Ὀλυνθίοις καλῶς πραχθέντων, ὡς παύσασθαί τε τὸ λοιπὸν τὸν [d] Λάμαχον καὶ φυγεῖν ἐκ τῆς πανηγύρεως. Φίλιππον δὲ πρὸς τοὺς ἀναφέροντας αὐτῷ τὰς κατ’ αὐτοῦ δημηγορίας εἰπεῖν ὅτι ‘καὶ αὐτὸς ἂν ἀκούων λέγοντος Δημοσθένους ἐχειροτόνησα τὸν ἄνδρα πρὸς τὸν κατ’ ἐμοῦ πόλεμον’. ἐκάλει δὲ τοὺς μὲν αὐτοῦ λόγους ὁμοίους τοῖς στρατιώταις διὰ τὴν πολεμικὴν δύναμιν, τοὺς δ’ Ἰσοκράτους τοῖς ἀθληταῖς· τέρψιν γὰρ παρέχειν αὐτοὺς θεατρικήν. ἑπτὰ δὲ καὶ τριάκοντα ἔτη γεγονώς, λογιζομένοις ἀπὸ Δεξιθέου εἰς Καλλίμαχον, ἐφ’ οὗ παρ’ Ὀλυνθίων ἧκε πρεσβεία περὶ τῆς βοηθείας, ἐπεὶ ἐπιέζοντο ὑπὸ Φιλίππου τῷ πολέμῳ, ἔπεισεν [e] ἐκπέμψαι τὴν βοήθειαν (or. 1)· τῷ δ’ ἑξῆς, ἐφ’ οὗ Πλάτων ἐτελεύτησε, Φίλιππος Ὀλυνθίους κατεστρέψατο. ἔγνω δ’ αὐτὸν καὶ Ξενοφῶν ὁ Σωκρατικὸς ἢ ἀρχόμενον ἢ ἀκμάζοντα· τῷ μὲν γὰρ τὰ Ἑλληνικὰ ἐτελεῖτο τὰ περὶ τὴν ἐν Μαντινείᾳ μάχην, ἄρχοντα δὲ Χαρικλείδην· ὁ δὲ πρότερον ἐπὶ Τιμοκράτους εἷλε τοὺς ἐπιτρόπους. φεύγοντος δ’ Αἰσχίνου μετὰ τὴν καταδίκην, ἵππῳ κατεδίωξεν αὐτόν· τοῦ δ’ οἰηθέντος αὐτὸν συλλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ προσπεσόντος καὶ συγκαλυψαμένου, ἀναστήσας αὐτὸν παρεμυθήσατο [f] καὶ τάλαντον ἔδωκεν ἀργυρίου. καὶ συνεβούλευσε δὲ τῷ δήμῳ ξενικὸν ἐν Θάσῳ τρέφειν, καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦτο τριηράρχης ἐξέπλευσε. σιτώνης δὲ γενόμενος καὶ κατηγορηθεὶς κλοπῆς ἀφείθη. Φιλίππου δ’ Ἐλάτειαν καταλαβομένου καὶ αὐτὸς τοῖς ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ μαχεσαμένοις συνεξῆλθεν· ὅθεν καὶ δοκεῖ τὴν τάξιν λιπεῖν, φεύγοντος δ’ αὐτοῦ βάτον ἐπιλαβέσθαι τῆς χλαμύδος, τὸν δ’ ἐπιστραφέντα εἰπεῖν ‘ζώγρει’. εἶχε δὲ καὶ ἐπίσημον ἐπὶ τῆς ἀσπίδος ‘ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ’. εἶπε μέντοι τὸν ἐπιτάφιον ἐπὶ τοῖς πεσοῦσι. μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα πρὸς τὴν ἐπισκευὴν τῆς πόλεως τῇ ἐπιμελείᾳ προσελθὼν καὶ τῶν τειχῶν ἐπιμελητὴς χειροτονηθεὶς ἀπὸ τῆς ἰδίας οὐσίας εἰσήνεγκε τὸ ἀναλωθὲν [846] [a] ἀργύριον, μνᾶς ἑκατόν· ἐπέδωκε δὲ καὶ θεωροῖς μυρίας· τριήρους τ’ ἐπιβὰς περιέπλευσε τοὺς συμμάχους ἀργυρολογῶν. ἐφ’ οἷς πολλάκις ἐστεφανώθη, πρότερον μὲν ὑπὸ Δημομελοῦς Ἀριστονίκου Ὑπερείδου χρυσῷ στεφάνῳ, τελευταῖον δ’ ὑπὸ Κτησιφῶντος· καὶ γραφέντος τοῦ ψηφίσματος παρανόμων ὑπὸ Διοδότου καὶ Αἰσχίνου, ἀπολογούμενος ἐνίκησεν, ὥστε τὸ πέμπτον μέρος τῶν ψήφων τὸν διώκοντα μὴ μεταλαβεῖν. ὕστερον δ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν στρατευομένου καὶ φυγόντος Ἁρπάλου μετὰ χρημάτων εἰς Ἀθήνας, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἐκώλυσεν αὐτὸν εἰσδεχθῆναι· ἐπειδὴ δ’ εἰσέπλευσε, λαβὼν [b] Δαρεικοὺς χιλίους μετετάξατο· βουλομένων τ’ Ἀθηναίων Ἀντιπάτρῳ παραδοῦναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἀντεῖπεν, ἔγραψέ τ’ ἀποθέσθαι τὰ χρήματα εἰς ἀκρόπολιν μηδὲ τῷ δήμῳ τὸν ἀριθμὸν εἰπόντα· φήσαντος δ’ Ἁρπάλου ἑπτακόσια ‹συγκατακομίσαι τάλαντα τὰ ἀνενεχθέντα εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, εὑρέθη τριακόσια› καὶ πεντήκοντα ἢ ὀλίγῳ πλείονα ὥς φησι Φιλόχορος (FGrHist 328 F 163)· μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα φυγόντος Ἁρπάλου ἐκ τοῦ δεσμωτηρίου, ἐν ᾧ ἐφυλάσσετο, μέχρις ἂν ἀφίκηταί τις παρ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου, καὶ πορευθέντος εἰς Κρήτην ἢ ὡς ἔνιοι ἐπὶ Ταίναρον τῆς Λακωνικῆς, αἰτίαν ἔσχεν ὁ Δημοσθένης δωροδοκίας, [c] ὡς διὰ τοῦτο μήτε τὸν ἀριθμὸν τῶν ἀνακομισθέντων μεμηνυκὼς μήτε τὴν τῶν φυλασσόντων ἀμέλειαν. εἰσαχθεὶς δ’ εἰς δικαστήριον ὑπὸ Ὑπερείδου Πυθέου Μενεσαίχμου Ἱμεραίου Πατροκλέους, οἳ ἐποίησαν καταγνῶναι αὐτοῦ τὴν ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλήν, καὶ ἁλοὺς ἔφυγε, πενταπλασίονα ἀποτῖσαι μὴ δυνάμενος (εἶχε δ’ αἰτίαν τριάκοντα τάλαντα λαβεῖν), ἢ ὡς ἔνιοι οὐχ ὑπομείνας τὴν κρίσιν. μετὰ δὲ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον τῶν Ἀθηναίων Πολύευκτον πεμψάντων πρεσβευτὴν πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν τῶν [d] Ἀρκάδων, ὥστ’ ἀποστῆσαι αὐτοὺς τῆς τῶν Μακεδόνων συμμαχίας, καὶ τοῦ Πολυεύκτου πεῖσαι μὴ δυναμένου, ἐπιφανεὶς Δημοσθένης καὶ συνειπὼν ἔπεισεν. ἐφ’ ᾧ θαυμασθεὶς μετὰ χρόνον τινὰ κάθοδον εὕρατο, ψηφίσματος γραφέντος τριήρους ἀποσταλείσης. τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων ψηφισαμένων οἷς ὤφειλε τριάκοντα ‹ταλάντοις κοσμ›ῆσαι αὐτὸν τὸν βωμὸν τοῦ σωτῆρος Διὸς ἐν Πειραιεῖ καὶ ἀφεῖσθαι, τοῦτο γράψαντος τὸ ψήφισμα Δήμωνος Παιανιέως, ὃς ἦν ἀνεψιὸς αὐτῷ, πάλιν ἐπὶ τούτοις ἦν πολιτευόμενος. Ἀντιπάτρου δ’ εἰς Λάμειαν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων συγκλεισθέντος, [e] τῶν Ἀθηναίων εὐαγγέλια θυόντων, πρός τινα τῶν ἑταίρων Ἀγησίστρατον ἔφη οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν γνώμην ἔχειν τοῖς ἄλλοις περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων· ‘ἐπίσταμαι γάρ’ εἰπεῖν ‘τοὺς Ἕλληνας στάδιον μὲν πολεμεῖν καὶ εἰδότας καὶ δυναμένους, δόλιχον δ’ οὐκέτι’. Φάρσαλον δ’ ἑλόντος Ἀντιπάτρου καὶ πολιορκήσειν ἀπειλοῦντος Ἀθηναίους, εἰ μὴ τοὺς ῥήτορας ἐκδοίησαν, καταλιπὼν ὁ Δημοσθένης τὴν πόλιν ἔφυγε πρῶτον μὲν εἰς Αἴγιναν ἐπὶ τὸ Αἰάκειον καθεδούμενος, φοβηθεὶς δ’ εἰς Καλαυρίαν μετέστη. ἐκδιδόναι δὲ τοὺς ῥήτορας τῶν Ἀθηναίων ψηφισαμένων [f] κἀκεῖνον, καθέζετο ἱκέτης ἐν τῷ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ἱερῷ· ἐλθόντος δ’ ἐπ’ αὐτὸν Ἀρχίου τοῦ Φυγαδοθήρου ἐπικαλουμένου, ὃς παρέβαλεν Ἀναξιμένει τῷ ῥήτορι, καὶ πείθοντος αὐτὸν ἀναστῆναι ὡς φίλον Ἀντιπάτρῳ γενησόμενον, εἶπεν ὅτι ‘οὔτε, ὅτε ἐτραγῴδεις, ἔπειθές με οὔτε νῦν πείσεις συμβουλεύων’· τοῦ δ’ ἐπιχειροῦντος βιάζεσθαι, ἐκώλυσαν αὐτὸν οἱ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν· καὶ Δημοσθένης ἔφη ‘οὐ σωτηρίας δεόμενος κατέφυγον εἰς Καλαυρίαν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐλέγξων Μακεδόνας καὶ [κα]τὰ τῶν θεῶν βιασομένους’· [847] [a] αἰτήσας τε γραμματεῖον ἔγραψεν, ὡς μὲν Δημήτριος ὁ Μάγνης φησί (fr. p. 66 Sch.), τὸ ἐπὶ τῆς εἰκόνος αὐτοῦ ἐλεγεῖον, ἐπιγεγραμμένον ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ὕστερον

‘εἴπερ ἴσην ῥώμην γνώμῃ, Δημόσθενες, ἔσχες,

οὔποτ’ ἂν Ἑλλήνων ἦρξεν Ἄρης Μακεδών.’

κεῖται δ’ ‹ἡ› εἰκὼν πλησίον τοῦ περισχοινίσματος καὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τῶν δώδεκα θεῶν, ὑπὸ Πολυεύκτου πεποιημένη. ὡς δ’ ἔνιοί φασι, τοῦτο εὑρέθη γεγραμμένον ‘Δημοσθένης Ἀντιπάτρῳ χαίρειν’. ἀποθανεῖν δ’ αὐτὸν Φιλόχορος (FGrHist 328 F 164) μέν φησι φάρμακον πιόντα· Σάτυρος (FHG III 162) δ’ ὁ συγγραφεὺς τὸν [b] κάλαμον πεφαρμάχθαι, ᾧ γράφειν ἤρξατο τὴν ἐπιστολήν, οὗ γευσάμενον ἀποθανεῖν· Ἐρατοσθένης (FGrHist 241 F 31) δ’ ἐκ πολλοῦ δεδοικότα Μακεδόνας περὶ τῷ βραχίονι κρίκον περικεῖσθαι πεφαρμαγμένον. εἰσὶ δ’ οἵ φασι συσχόντα αὐτὸν τὸ πνεῦμα ἀποθανεῖν· οἱ δ’ εἶπον τοῦ κατὰ τὴν σφραγῖδα φαρμάκου γευσάμενον. ‹ἐβίω δ’ ὡς μὲν οἱ τὰ πλείω λέγουσιν ἔτη ἑβδομήκοντα, ὡς δ’ οἱ τὰ ἐλάττω ἑπτὰ καὶ ἑξήκοντα· ἐπολιτεύσατο› δὲ δύο καὶ εἴκοσιν. ἡνίκα δὲ Φίλιππος ἐτεθνήκει, λαμπρὰν ἐσθῆτα προῆλθεν ἔχων, καίτοι τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ νεωστὶ τετελευτηκυίας, ἐφηδόμενος τῷ τοῦ Μακεδόνος θανάτῳ. συνήργησε καὶ [c] Θηβαίοις πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον πολεμοῦσι καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους Ἕλληνας ἐπέρρωσεν ἀεί· διόπερ Θήβας κατασκάψας ἐξῄτει παρ’ Ἀθηναίων Ἀλέξανδρος αὐτόν, ἀπειλῶν, εἰ μὴ δοίησαν. στρατευομένῳ δ’ αὐτῷ ἐπὶ Πέρσας καὶ αἰτοῦντι ναυτικὸν παρ’ Ἀθηναίων ἀντεῖπεν, ἄδηλον εἰπών, εἰ οὐ κατὰ τῶν παρασχόντων χρήσεται. κατέλιπε δὲ δύο παῖδας ἐκ Σαμίας γυναικὸς τῶν εὐδοκίμων, Ἡλιοδώρου τινὸς θυγατρός· θυγατέρα ‹δὲ› μίαν ἔσχεν, ἣ παῖς ἔτι οὖσα πρὸ γάμου ἐτελεύτησεν· εἶχε δὲ καὶ ἀδελφήν, ἐξ ἧς καὶ Λάχου Λευκονοέως ἀδελφιδοῦς αὐτῷ Δημοχάρης ἐγένετο, ἀνὴρ καὶ κατὰ πόλεμον ἀγαθὸς καὶ κατὰ τοὺς πολιτικοὺς λόγους [d] οὐδενὸς χείρων. ἔστι δ’ αὐτοῦ εἰκὼν ἐν τῷ πρυτανείῳ εἰσιόντων πρὸς τὴν ἑστίαν ‹ἐν› δεξιᾷ ὁ πρῶτος περιεζωσμένος ἅμα τῷ ἱματίῳ καὶ ξίφος· οὕτω γὰρ δημηγορῆσαι λέγεται, ἡνίκα Ἀντίπατρος ἐξῄτει τοὺς ῥήτορας. χρόνῳ δ’ ὕστερον Ἀθηναῖοι σίτησίν τ’ ἐν πρυτανείῳ τοῖς συγγενέσι τοῦ Δημοσθένους ἔδοσαν καὶ αὐτῷ τετελευτηκότι [καὶ] τὴν εἰκόνα ἀνέθεσαν ἐν ἀγορᾷ ἐπὶ Γοργίου ἄρχοντος, αἰτησαμένου αὐτῷ τὰς δωρεὰς τοῦ ἀδελφιδοῦ Δημοχάρους· ᾧ καὶ αὐτῷ πάλιν ὁ υἱὸς Λάχης Δημοχάρους Λευκονοεὺς ᾐτήσατο δωρεὰς ἐπὶ Πυθαράτου ἄρχοντος, [e] δεκάτῳ ὕστερον ἔτει, εἰς τὴν τῆς εἰκόνος στάσιν ἐν ἀγορᾷ καὶ σίτησιν ἐν πρυτανείῳ αὐτῷ τε καὶ ἐκγόνων ἀεὶ τῷ πρεσβυτάτῳ καὶ προεδρίαν ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς ἀγῶσι. καὶ ἔστι τὰ ψηφίσματα ὑπὲρ ἀμφοτέρων ἀναγεγραμμένα, ἡ δ’ εἰκὼν τοῦ Δημοχάρους εἰς τὸ πρυτανεῖον μετεκομίσθη, περὶ ἧς προείρηται. φέρονται δ’ αὐτοῦ λόγοι γνήσιοι ἑξήκοντα πέντε. φασὶ δέ τινες καὶ ἀσώτως αὐτὸν βιῶναι, γυναικείαις τ’ ἐσθῆσι χρώμενον καὶ κωμάζοντα ἑκάστοτε, ὅθεν Βάταλον ἐπικληθῆναι· οἱ δ’ ὑποκοριστικῶς ἀπὸ τοῦ [f] ὀνόματος τῆς τροφοῦ λέγουσιν αὐτὸν οὕτω λελοιδορῆσθαι. Διογένης δ’ ὁ κύων θεασάμενος αὐτόν ποτ’ ἐν καπηλείῳ αἰσχυνόμενον καὶ ὑποχωροῦντα εἶπεν ‘ὅσῳ μᾶλλον ὑποχωρεῖς, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ καπηλείῳ ἔσῃ’. ἔλεγε δ’ αὐτὸν παρασκώπτων ἐν μὲν τοῖς λόγοις Σκύθην εἶναι, ἐν δὲ ταῖς μάχαις ἀστικόν. ἔλαβε καὶ παρ’ Ἐφιάλτου χρυσίον ἑνὸς τῶν δημαγωγῶν, ὃς πρεσβεύσας πρὸς βασιλέα χρήματα φέρων ἧκε λάθρα, ὅπως διανείμας τοῖς δημαγωγοῖς [848] [a] τὸν πρὸς Φίλιππον ἐξάψῃ πόλεμον· καὶ ἰδίᾳ αὐτὸν δωροδοκῆσαι παρὰ βασιλέως φασὶ δαρεικοὺς τρισχιλίους. Ἀναξίλαν δέ τινα Ὠρείτην, ξένον αὐτοῦ γεγονότα, συλλαβὼν ἐβασάνιζεν ὡς κατάσκοπον, οὐδὲν δ’ ἐξειπόντα ἐψηφίσατο τοῖς ἕνδεκα παραδοῦναι. λέγειν δέ ποτε κωλυόμενος ὑπ’ Ἀθηναίων ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ βραχὺ ἔφη βούλεσθαι πρὸς αὐτοὺς εἰπεῖν, τῶν δὲ σιωπησάντων ‘νεανίας’ εἶπε ‘θέρους ὥρᾳ ἐμισθώσατο ἐξ ἄστεος ὄνον Μέγαράδε· μεσούσης δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας καὶ σφοδρῶς φλέγοντος τοῦ ἡλίου ἑκάτερος αὐτῶν ἐβούλετο ὑποδύεσθαι ὑπὸ τὴν σκιάν· εἶργον δ’ ἀλλήλους, ὁ μὲν μεμισθωκέναι τὸν ὄνον οὐ τὴν [b] σκιὰν λέγων, ὁ δὲ μεμισθωμένος τὴν πᾶσαν ἔχειν ἐξουσίαν’· καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰπὼν ἀπῄει. τῶν δ’ Ἀθηναίων ἐπισχόντων καὶ δεομένων πέρας ἐπιθεῖναι τῷ λόγῳ, ‘εἶθ’ ὑπὲρ μὲν ὄνου σκιᾶς’ ἔφη ‘βούλεσθε ἀκούειν, λέγοντος δὲ ὑπὲρ σπουδαίων πραγμάτων οὐ βούλεσθε;’ Πώλου δέ ποτε τοῦ ὑποκριτοῦ πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος, ὅτι δυσὶν ἡμέραις ἀγωνισάμενος τάλαντον λάβοι μισθόν ‘ἐγὼ δ’’ εἶπε ‘πέντε τάλαντα μίαν ἡμέραν σιωπήσας’. παραφθαρεὶς δὲ τὴν φωνὴν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ καὶ θορυβηθεὶς τοὺς ὑποκριτὰς ἔφη δεῖν κρίνειν ἐκ τῆς φωνῆς τοὺς δὲ ῥήτορας ἐκ τῆς γνώμης. [c] ὀνειδίσαντος δ’ αὐτὸν Ἐπικλέους ὅτι ἀεὶ σκέπτοιτο ‘αἰσχυνοίμην γὰρ ‹ἄν›’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ τηλικούτῳ δήμῳ συμβουλεύων αὐτοσχεδιάζοιμι’. ἱστοροῦσι δ’ ὡς οὐδὲ λύχνον ἔσβεσεν, ἄχρι πεντήκοντα ἐτῶν ἐγένετο, διακριβῶν τοὺς λόγους. αὐτὸς δέ φησιν ὑδροποσίᾳ χρήσασθαι (or. 19, 46). ἔγνω δ’ αὐτὸν καὶ Λυσίας ὁ ῥήτωρ καὶ Ἰσοκράτης εἶδε πολιτευόμενον ἄχρι τῆς ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ μάχης, καί τινες τῶν Σωκρατικῶν φιλοσόφων. τοὺς δὲ πλείστους λόγους εἶπεν [d] αὐτοσχεδιάσας, εὖ πρὸς αὐτὸ πεφυκώς. πρῶτος δ’ ἔγραψε στεφανωθῆναι αὐτὸν χρυσῷ στεφάνῳ Ἀριστόνικος Νικοφάνους Ἀναγυράσιος, ὑπωμόσατο δὲ Διώνδας.

ΥΠΕΡΕΙΔΗΣ

Ὑπερείδης Γλαυκίππου μὲν ἦν πατρὸς τοῦ Διονυσίου, τῶν δὲ δήμων Κολλυτεύς. ἔσχε δ’ υἱὸν ὁμώνυμον τῷ πατρὶ Γλαύκιππον, ῥήτορα καὶ λόγους συγγράψαντα· οὗ πάλιν Ἀλφίνους ἐγένετο. ἀκροατὴς δὲ Πλάτωνος γενόμενος τοῦ φιλοσόφου ἅμα Λυκούργου καὶ Ἰσοκράτους τοῦ [e] ῥήτορος ἐπολιτεύσατο Ἀθήνησι, καθ’ ὃν χρόνον Ἀλέξανδρος τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἥπτετο πραγμάτων· καὶ περὶ τῶν στρατηγῶν ὧν ᾔτει παρ’ Ἀθηναίων ἀντεῖπε ‹...› καὶ περὶ τῶν τριήρων· συνεβούλευσε δὲ καὶ τὸ ἐπὶ Ταινάρῳ ξενικὸν μὴ διαλῦσαι, οὗ Χάρης ἡγεῖτο, εὐνόως πρὸς τὸν στρατηγὸν διακείμενος. τὸ δὲ πρῶτον μισθοῦ δίκας ἔλεγε. δόξας δὲ κεκοινωνηκέναι τῶν Περσικῶν χρημάτων Ἐφιάλτῃ τριήραρχός τε αἱρεθείς, ὅτε Βυζάντιον ἐπολιόρκει Φίλιππος, βοηθὸς Βυζαντίοις ἐκπεμφθεὶς κατὰ τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν τοῦτον ὑπέστη χορηγῆσαι, τῶν ἄλλων λειτουργίας [f] πάσης ἀφειμένων. ἔγραψε καὶ Δημοσθένει τιμάς, καὶ τοῦ ψηφίσματος ὑπὸ Διώνδα παρανόμων γραφέντος ἀπέφυγε. φίλος δ’ ὢν τοῖς περὶ Δημοσθένη καὶ Λυσικλέα καὶ Λυκοῦργον οὐκ ἐνέμεινε μέχρι τέλους· ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ Λυσικλῆς μὲν καὶ Λυκοῦργος ἐτεθνήκεσαν, Δημοσθένης δ’ ὡς παρ’ Ἁρπάλου δωροδοκήσας ἐκρίνετο, προχειρισθεὶς ἐξ ἁπάντων (μόνος γὰρ ἔμεινεν ἀδωροδόκητος) κατηγόρησεν αὐτοῦ. κριθεὶς δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀριστογείτονος παρανόμων ἐπὶ [849] [a] τῷ γράψαι μετὰ Χαιρώνειαν τοὺς μετοίκους πολίτας ποιήσασθαι τοὺς δὲ δούλους ἐλευθέρους, ἱερὰ δὲ καὶ παῖδας καὶ γυναῖκας εἰς τὸν Πειραιᾶ ἀποθέσθαι, ἀπέφυγεν. αἰτιωμένων δέ τινων αὐτὸν ὡς παριδόντα πολλοὺς νόμους ἐν τῷ ψηφίσματι ‘ἐπεσκότει’ ἔφη ‘μοι τὰ Μακεδόνων ὅπλα. οὐκ ἐγὼ τὸ ψήφισμα ἔγραψα ἡ δ’ ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ μάχη’. μετὰ μέντοι τοῦτο νεκρῶν ἔδωκεν ἀναίρεσιν ὁ Φίλιππος φοβηθείς, πρότερον οὐ δοὺς τοῖς ἐλθοῦσιν ἐκ Λεβαδείας κήρυξιν. ὕστερον δὲ μετὰ τὰ περὶ Κραννῶνα συμβάντα ἐξαιτηθεὶς ὑπ’ Ἀντιπάτρου καὶ μέλλων ἐκδίδοσθαι ὑπὸ [b] τοῦ δήμου ἔφυγεν ἐκ τῆς πόλεως εἰς Αἴγιναν ἅμα τοῖς κατεψηφισμένοις· καὶ συμβαλὼν Δημοσθένει καὶ περὶ τῆς διαφορᾶς ἀπολογησάμενος, ἀπαλλαγεὶς ἐκεῖθεν, ὑπ’ Ἀρχίου τοῦ Φυγαδοθήρου ἐπικληθέντος, Θουρίου μὲν τὸ γένος ὑποκριτοῦ δὲ τὰ πρῶτα τότε δὲ τῷ Ἀντιπάτρῳ βοηθοῦντος, ἐλήφθη πρὸς βίαν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ἐχόμενος ‹τοῦ› ἀγάλματος· καὶ ἀχθεὶς πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον εἰς Κόρινθον, ἔπειτα βασανιζόμενος, διέφαγε τὴν γλῶτταν, ὥστε μηδὲν ἐξειπεῖν τῶν τῆς πόλεως ἀπορρήτων δυνηθῆναι· καὶ οὕτως ἐτελεύτησε, Πυανεψιῶνος [c] ἐνάτῃ ἱσταμένου. Ἕρμιππος (FHG III 50) δέ φησιν αὐτὸν γλωττοτομηθῆναι εἰς Μακεδονίαν ἐλθόντα καὶ ῥιφῆναι ἄταφον, Ἀλφίνουν δ’ ἀνεψιὸν ὄντα αὐτῷ ἤ, ὥς τινες, Γλαυκίππου τοῦ υἱοῦ τὸν υἱὸν διὰ Φιλοπείθους τινὸς ἰατροῦ λαβόντα ἐξουσίαν τοῦ σώματος καῦσαι αὐτὸν καὶ τὰ ὀστᾶ κομίσαι εἰς Ἀθήνας τοῖς προσήκουσι παρὰ τὰ Ἀθηναίων καὶ Μακεδόνων δόγματα· οὐ μόνον γὰρ κελεῦσαι αὐτοὺς φυγεῖν, ἀλλὰ μηδ’ ἐν τῇ οἰκείᾳ ταφῆναι. οἱ δ’ ἐν Κλεωναῖς ἀποθανεῖν αὐτὸν λέγουσιν, ἀπαχθέντα μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων, ὅπου γλωττοτομηθῆναι καὶ διαφθαρῆναι ὃν προείρηται τρόπον· τοὺς δ’ οἰκείους τὰ ὀστᾶ λαβόντας θάψαι [τε] ἅμα τοῖς γονεῦσι πρὸ τῶν Ἱππάδων πυλῶν, ὥς φησιν Ἡλιόδωρος (FGrHist 372 F 34) ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ [d] περὶ μνημάτων. νυνὶ δὲ κατερήρειπται τὸ μνῆμα καὶ ἔστιν ἄδηλον. πάντων δὲ κατὰ τὴν δημηγορίαν διενεγκεῖν λέγεται· τέτακται δὲ ὑπ’ ἐνίων πρὸ Δημοσθένους. φέρονται δ’ αὐτοῦ λόγοι ἑβδομήκοντα ἑπτά, ὧν γνήσιοί εἰσι πεντήκοντα δύο. ἐγένετο δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὰ ἀφροδίσια καταφερής, ὡς ἐκβαλεῖν μὲν τὸν υἱὸν εἰσαγαγεῖν δὲ Μυρρίνην τὴν πολυτελεστάτην ἑταίραν, ἐν Πειραιεῖ δ’ ἔχειν Ἀρισταγόραν, ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι δ’ ἐν τοῖς ἰδίοις κτήμασι Φίλαν τὴν Θηβαίαν, [e] εἴκοσι μνῶν λυτρωσάμενος. ἐποιεῖτό τε τὸν περίπατον ἐν τῇ ἰχθυοπώλιδι ὁσημέραι ὡς εἰκός. ‹καὶ› δὴ καὶ [δίκῃ] Φρύνῃ τῇ ἑταίρᾳ ἀσεβεῖν κρινομένῃ συνεξητάσθη· αὐτὸς γὰρ τοῦτο ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ λόγου δηλοῖ· μελλούσης δ’ αὐτῆς ἁλίσκεσθαι, παραγαγὼν εἰς μέσον καὶ περιρρήξας τὴν ἐσθῆτα ἐπέδειξε τὰ στέρνα τῆς γυναικός, καὶ τῶν δικαστῶν εἰς τὸ κάλλος ἀπιδόντων ἀφείθη. συνετίθει δ’ ἡσυχῆ κατὰ τοῦ Δημοσθένους ἐγκλήματα, ὡς καὶ φωραθῆναι· νοσοῦντος γὰρ τοῦ Ὑπερείδου ἥκοντα εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν [f] τὸν Δημοσθένη ὡς ἐπισκεψόμενον καταλαβεῖν κατέχοντα τὸ καθ’ αὑτοῦ βιβλίον· τούτου δ’ ἀγανακτοῦντος εἶπε ‘φίλον μὲν ὄντα οὐδένα λυπήσει, ἐχθρὸν δὲ γενόμενον κωλύσει τι κατ’ ἐμοῦ πρᾶξαι’. ἐψηφίσατο δὲ καὶ τιμὰς Ἰόλᾳ τῷ δο‹κοῦ›ντι Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τὸ φάρμακον δοῦναι. ἐκοινώνησε δὲ καὶ Λεωσθένει τοῦ Λαμιακοῦ πολέμου, καὶ ἐπὶ τοῖς πεσοῦσιν εἶπε τὸν ἐπιτάφιον θαυμασίως. Φιλίππου δὲ πλεῖν ἐπ’ Εὐβοίας παρεσκευασμένου καὶ τῶν Ἀθηναίων εὐλαβῶς ἐχόντων, τεσσαράκοντα τριήρεις ἤθροισεν ἐξ ἐπιδόσεως καὶ πρῶτος ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ καὶ τοῦ [850] [a] παιδὸς ἐπέδωκε δύο τριήρεις. συστάντος δὲ πρὸς Δηλίους ἀμφισβητήματος, ποτέρους δεῖ προΐστασθαι τοῦ ἱεροῦ, αἱρεθέντος Αἰσχίνου συνειπεῖν, ἡ ἐξ Ἀρείου πάγου βουλὴ Ὑπερείδην ἐχειροτόνησεν· καὶ ἔστιν ὁ λόγος Δηλιακὸς ἐπιγεγραμμένος (fr. 6775 Jensen). ἐπρέσβευσε δὲ καὶ πρὸς Ῥοδίους (fr. 161 Jensen). ἡκόντων δὲ καὶ παρ’ Ἀντιπάτρου πρέσβεων, ἐπαινούντων τὸν Ἀντίπατρον ὡς χρηστόν, ἀπαντήσας αὐτοῖς εἶπεν ‘οἶδα μὲν ὅτι χρηστὸς ὑπάρχει, ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς γ’ οὐ δεόμεθα χρηστοῦ δεσπότου’.

[b] λέγεται δ’ ἄνευ ὑποκρίσεως δημηγορῆσαι καὶ μόνον διηγεῖσθαι τὰ πραχθέντα καὶ τούτοις οὐκ ἐνοχλεῖν τοὺς δικαστάς. ἐπέμφθη δὲ καὶ πρὸς Ἠλείους ἀπολογησόμενος ὑπὲρ Καλλίππου τοῦ ἀθλητοῦ, ἔχοντος αἰτίαν φθεῖραι τὸν ἀγῶνα, καὶ ἐνίκησε. γραψάμενος δὲ καὶ τὴν Φωκίωνος δωρεάν, ἣν εἶπε Μειδίας Μειδίου Ἀναγυράσιος ἐπὶ Ξενίου ἄρχοντος, Γαμηλιῶνος ἑβδόμῃ φθίνοντος, ἡττήθη.

ΔΕΙΝΑΡΧΟΣ

Δείναρχος Σωκράτους ἢ Σωστράτου, ὡς μέν τινες ἐγχώριος, ὡς δέ τισι δοκεῖ Κορίνθιος, ἀφικόμενος εἰς [c] Ἀθήνας ἔτι νέος, καθ’ ὃν χρόνον Ἀλέξανδρος ἐπὶ τὴν Ἀσίαν ‹ἐστρατεύετο›, κατοικήσας αὐτόθι ἀκροατὴς μὲν ἐγένετο Θεοφράστου τοῦ διαδεξαμένου τὴν Ἀριστοτέλους διατριβήν, ὡμίλησε δὲ καὶ Δημητρίῳ τῷ Φαληρεῖ· μάλιστα δὲ ‹...› τῷ πολιτεύεσθαι μετὰ τὴν Ἀντιπάτρου τελευτήν, τῶν μὲν ἀνῃρημένων ῥητόρων τῶν δὲ πεφευγότων. φίλος δὲ Κασάνδρῳ γενόμενος, ὡς ἐπὶ πλεῖστον προέκοψε χρήματα τῶν λόγων εἰσπραττόμενος, οὓς τοῖς δεομένοις συνέγραφεν· ἀντετάξατο δὲ πρὸς τοὺς ἐπιφανεστάτους τῶν ῥητόρων, οὐκ εἰς δῆμον παριών· οὐ γὰρ οἷός τ’ ἦν· ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἐναντιουμένοις λόγους συγγράφων· καὶ [d] ἐπεὶ Ἅρπαλος διέδρα, πλείους λόγους συνέγραφε κατὰ τῶν αἰτίαν λαβόντων δωροδοκῆσαι, καὶ τούτους τοῖς κατηγόροις ἐξέδωκε. χρόνῳ δ’ ὕστερον αἰτιαθεὶς εἰς λόγους παραγίνεσθαι Ἀντιπάτρῳ καὶ Κασάνδρῳ περὶ τὴν κατάληψιν τῆς Μουνυχίας, ἡνίκα ὑπ’ Ἀντιγόνου καὶ Δημητρίου ἐφρουρήθη ἐπ’ Ἀναξικράτους ἄρχοντος, ἐξαργυρισάμενος τὰ πλεῖστα τῆς οὐσίας ἔφυγεν εἰς Χαλκίδα. διατρίψας δ’ ἐπὶ τῆς φυγῆς ὡς πεντεκαίδεκα ἔτη καὶ πολλὴν οὐσίαν κτησάμενος κατῆλθε, πραξάντων αὐτῷ τὴν κάθοδον τῶν περὶ Θεόφραστον ἅμα τοῖς ἄλλοις φυγάσι. καταλύσας δὲ παρὰ Προξένῳ ἑταίρῳ αὐτοῦ καί τι χρυσίον [e] ἀπολέσας, ἤδη γηραιὸς ὢν καὶ τὰς ὁράσεις ἀσθενής, ‹οὐ› βουλομένου τοῦ Προξένου ἀναζητεῖν, λαγχάνει αὐτῷ δίκην καὶ τότε πρῶτον εἶπεν ἐν δικαστηρίῳ. σῴζεται δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ὁ λόγος. φέρονται δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ λόγοι γνήσιοι ἑξήκοντα τέσσαρες· τούτων ἔνιοι παραλαμβάνονται ὡς Ἀριστογείτονος. ζηλωτὴς δ’ ἐγένετο Ὑπερείδου ἢ ὥς τινες διὰ τὸ παθητικὸν Δημοσθένους καὶ τὸ σφοδρόν· τῶν σχημάτων δ’ αὐτοῦ μιμητὴς ὑπάρχει.

ΨΗΦΙΣΜΑΤΑ

Α΄

[f] Δημοχάρης Λάχητος Λευκονοεὺς αἰτεῖ Δημοσθένει τῷ Δημοσθένους Παιανιεῖ δωρεὰν εἰκόνα χαλκῆν ἐν ἀγορᾷ καὶ σίτησιν ἐν πρυτανείῳ καὶ προεδρίαν αὐτῷ καὶ ἐκγόνων ἀεὶ τῷ πρεσβυτάτῳ· εὐεργέτῃ καὶ συμβούλῳ γεγονότι πολλῶν καὶ καλῶν τῷ δήμῳ τῶν Ἀθηναίων καὶ τήν τε οὐσίαν εἰς τὸ κοινὸν καθεικότι τὴν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἐπιδόντι τάλαντα ὀκτὼ καὶ τριήρη, ὅτε ὁ δῆμος ἠλευθέρωσεν Εὔβοιαν· [851] [a] καὶ ἑτέραν, ὅτε εἰς Ἑλλήσποντον Κηφισόδωρος ἐξέπλευσε· καὶ ἑτέραν, ὅτε Χάρης καὶ Φωκίων στρατηγοὶ ἐξεπέμφθησαν εἰς Βυζάντιον ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου· καὶ λυτρωσαμένῳ πολλοὺς τῶν ἁλόντων ἐν Πύδνῃ καὶ Μεθώνῃ καὶ Ὀλύνθῳ ὑπὸ Φιλίππου· καὶ χορηγίαν ἀνδράσιν ἐπιδόντι, ὅτε ἐκλιπόντων τῶν Πανδιονιδῶν τοῦ χορηγεῖν ἐπέδωκε καὶ καθώπλισε τοὺς πολίτας τῶν ἐλλειπόντων· καὶ εἰς τὴν τειχοποιίαν ἀνάλωσε χειροτονηθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου, ἐπιδόντος αὐτοῦ τρία τάλαντα καὶ ἃς ἐπέδωκε δύο τάφρους περὶ τὸν Πειραιᾶ ταφρεύσας· καὶ μετὰ τὴν ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ μάχην [b] ἐπέδωκε τάλαντον, καὶ εἰς τὴν σιτωνίαν ἐπέδωκεν ἐν τῇ σιτοδείᾳ τάλαντον· καὶ ὅτι εἰς συμμαχίαν τῷ δήμῳ προσηγάγετο πείσας καὶ εὐεργέτης γενόμενος καὶ σύμβουλος ‹Θηβαίους›, δι’ ὧν ἔπεισε [Θηβαίους] Εὐβοεῖς Κορινθίους Μεγαρεῖς Ἀχαιοὺς Λοκροὺς Βυζαντίους Μεσσηνίους, καὶ ‹διὰ› δυνάμεις ἃς συνεστήσατο τῷ δήμῳ καὶ τοῖς συμμάχοις, πεζοὺς μὲν μυρίους ἱππέας δὲ χιλίους, καὶ σύνταξιν χρημάτων ἣν ἔπεισε πρεσβεύσας διδόναι τοὺς [μὲν] συμμάχους εἰς τὸν πόλεμον πλείω πεντακοσίων ταλάντων· καὶ ὡς ἐκώλυσε Πελοποννησίους ἐπὶ Θήβας Ἀλεξάνδρῳ [c] βοηθῆσαι, χρήματα δοὺς καὶ αὐτὸς πρεσβεύσας· καὶ ἄλλων πολλῶν καὶ καλῶν τῷ δήμῳ συμβούλῳ γεγονότι καὶ πεπολιτευμένῳ τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτὸν πρὸς ἐλευθερίαν καὶ δημοκρατίαν ἄριστα· φυγόντι δὲ δι’ ὀλιγαρχίαν, καταλυθέντος τοῦ δήμου, καὶ τελευτήσαντι αὐτῷ ἐν Καλαυρίᾳ διὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸν δῆμον εὔνοιαν, πεμφθέντων στρατιωτῶν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὑπὸ Ἀντιπάτρου, διαμείναντι ἐν τῇ πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος εὐνοίᾳ καὶ οἰκειότητι, καὶ οὔτε ὑποχειρίῳ γενομένῳ τοῖς ἐχθροῖς οὔτε ‹τι› ἀνάξιον ἐν τῷ κινδύνῳ πράξαντι τοῦ δήμου.

Β΄

[d] Ἄρχων Πυθάρατος· Λάχης Δημοχάρους Λευκονοεὺς αἰτεῖ δωρεὰν τὴν βουλὴν καὶ τὸν δῆμον τὸν Ἀθηναίων Δημοχάρει Λάχητος Λευκονοεῖ εἰκόνα χαλκῆν ἐν ἀγορᾷ καὶ σίτησιν ἐν πρυτανείῳ ‹αὐτῷ› καὶ τῶν ἐκγόνων ἀεὶ τῷ πρεσβυτάτῳ καὶ προεδρίαν ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἀγῶσιν, εὐεργέτῃ καὶ συμβούλῳ γεγονότι ἀγαθῷ τῷ δήμῳ τῷ Ἀθηναίων καὶ εὐηργετηκότι τὸν δῆμον τάδε πρεσβεύοντι καὶ γράφοντι καὶ πολιτευομένῳ· οἰκοδομὴν τειχῶν καὶ παρασκευὴν ὅπλων καὶ βελῶν καὶ μηχανημάτων, καὶ ὀχυρωσαμένῳ [e] τὴν πόλιν ἐπὶ τοῦ τετραετοῦς πολέμου, καὶ εἰρήνην καὶ ἀνοχὰς καὶ συμμαχίαν ποιησαμένῳ πρὸς Βοιωτούς· ἀνθ’ ὧν ἐξέπεσεν ὑπὸ τῶν καταλυσάντων τὸν δῆμον· καὶ ὡς κατῆλθεν ἐπὶ Διοκλέους ἄρχοντος ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου, συστείλαντι τὴν διοίκησιν πρώτῳ καὶ φεισαμένῳ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων καὶ πρεσβεύσαντι πρὸς Λυσίμαχον καὶ λαβόντι τῷ δήμῳ τριάκοντα τάλαντα ἀργυρίου καὶ πάλιν ἕτερα ἑκατόν· καὶ γράψαντι πρεσβείαν πρὸς Πτολεμαῖον εἰς Αἴγυπτον, καθ’ ἣν ἐκπλεύσαντες πεντήκοντα ἐκόμισαν τάλαντα ἀργυρίου τῷ δήμῳ· καὶ πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον πρεσβεύσαντι [f] καὶ λαβόντι εἴκοσι τάλαντα ἀργυρίου καὶ Ἐλευσῖνα κομισαμένῳ τῷ δήμῳ καὶ ταῦτα πείσαντι ἑλέσθαι τὸν δῆμον καὶ πράξαντι, καὶ φυγόντι μὲν ὑπὲρ δημοκρατίας, μετεσχηκότι δὲ οὐδεμιᾶς ὀλιγαρχίας οὐδὲ ἀρχὴν οὐδεμίαν ἠρχότι καταλελυκότος τοῦ δήμου· καὶ μόνῳ Ἀθηναίων τῶν κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν ἡλικίαν πολιτευσαμένων μὴ μεμελετηκότι τὴν πατρίδα κινεῖν ἑτέρῳ πολιτεύματι ἢ δημοκρατίᾳ· καὶ τὰς κρίσεις καὶ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὰ δικαστήρια καὶ τὰς οὐσίας πᾶσιν Ἀθηναίοις ἐν ἀσφαλεῖ ποιήσαντι διὰ τῆς αὑτοῦ πολιτείας καὶ μηδὲν ὑπεναντίον τῇ δημοκρατίᾳ πεπραχότι μήτε λόγῳ μήτε ἔργῳ.

Γ΄

Λυκόφρων Λυκούργου Βουτάδης ἀπεγράψατο αὑτῷ εἶναι σίτησιν ἐν πρυτανείῳ κατὰ τὴν δοθεῖσαν δωρεὰν ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου Λυκούργῳ Βουτάδῃ· [852] [a] Ἐπὶ Ἀναξικράτους ἄρχοντος, ἐπὶ τῆς Ἀντιοχίδος ἕκτης πρυτανείας, Στρατοκλῆς Εὐθυδήμου Διομειεὺς εἶπεν. ἐπειδὴ Λυκοῦργος Λυκόφρονος Βουτάδης παραλαβὼν παρὰ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ προγόνων οἰκείαν ἐκ παλαιοῦ τὴν πρὸς τὸν δῆμον εὔνοιαν ‹...›, καὶ οἱ πρόγονοι οἱ Λυκούργου, Λυκομήδης τε καὶ Λυκοῦργος, καὶ ζῶντες ἐτιμῶντο ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου καὶ τελευτήσασιν αὐτοῖς δι’ ἀνδραγαθίαν ἔδωκεν ὁ δῆμος δημοσίας ταφὰς ἐν Κεραμεικῷ, [b] καὶ Λυκοῦργος αὐτὸς πολιτευόμενος νόμους τε πολλοὺς καὶ καλοὺς ἔθηκε τῇ πατρίδι, καὶ γενόμενος τῆς κοινῆς προσόδου ταμίας τῇ πόλει ἐπὶ τρεῖς πενταετηρίδας καὶ διανείμας ἐκ τῆς κοινῆς προσόδου μύρια καὶ ὀκτακισχίλια καὶ ἐνακόσια τάλαντα, πολλὰ δὲ τῶν ἰδιωτῶν διὰ πίστεως λαβὼν καὶ προδανείσας καὶ εἰς τοὺς τῆς πόλεως καιροὺς καὶ τοῦ δήμου τὰ πάντα ἑξακόσια καὶ πεντήκοντα τάλαντα, δόξας δὲ ἅπαντα ταῦτα δικαίως διῳκηκέναι πολλάκις ἐστεφανώθη ὑπὸ τῆς πόλεως, ἔτι δὲ αἱρεθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου χρήματα πολλὰ συνήγαγεν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, καὶ παρασκευάσας τῇ θεῷ κόσμον, Νίκας τε ὁλοχρύσους πομπεῖά τε χρυσᾶ καὶ ἀργυρᾶ καὶ κόσμον χρυσοῦν εἰς ἑκατὸν κανηφόρους, [c] χειροτονηθεὶς δὲ ἐπὶ τῆς τοῦ πολέμου παρασκευῆς ὅπλα μὲν πολλὰ καὶ βελῶν μυριάδας πέντε ἀνήνεγκεν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, τετρακοσίας ‹δὲ› τριήρεις πλωΐμους κατεσκεύασε, τὰς μὲν ἐπισκευάσας τὰς δὲ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ναυπηγησάμενος, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἡμίεργα παραλαβὼν τούς τε νεωσοίκους καὶ τὴν σκευοθήκην καὶ τὸ θέατρον τὸ Διονυσιακὸν ἐξειργάσατο, καὶ ἐπετέλεσε τό τε στάδιον τὸ Παναθηναϊκὸν καὶ τὸ γυμνάσιον τὸ κατὰ Λύκειον κατεσκεύασε, καὶ ἄλλαις πολλαῖς κατασκευαῖς ἐκόσμησε τὴν πόλιν, Ἀλεξάνδρου τε τοῦ βασιλέως ἅπασαν μὲν τὴν Ἀσίαν [d] κατεστραμμένου, κοινῇ δὲ πᾶσι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐπιτάττειν ἀξιοῦντος, ἐξαιτήσα‹ντο›ς Λυκοῦργον ὡς ἐναντία πράττοντα αὐτῷ, οὐκ ἐξέδωκεν ὁ δῆμος ‹διὰ τὸν› παρ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου φόβον, καὶ διδοὺς εὐθύνας πολλάκις τῶν πεπολιτευμένων ἐν ἐλευθέρᾳ καὶ δημοκρατουμένῃ τῇ πόλει διετέλεσεν ἀνεξέλεγκτος καὶ ἀδωροδόκητος τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον· ὅπως ἂν εἰδῶσι πάντες, διότι τοὺς προαιρουμένους ὑπὲρ τῆς δημοκρατίας καὶ τῆς ἐλευθερίας δικαίως πολιτεύεσθαι καὶ ζῶντας μὲν περὶ πλείστου ποιεῖται καὶ τελευτήσασι δὲ ἀποδίδωσι χάριτας ἀειμνήστους, [e] ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ δεδόχθαι τῷ δήμῳ ἐπαινέσαι μὲν Λυκοῦργον Λυκόφρονος Βουτάδην ἀρετῆς ἕνεκα καὶ δικαιοσύνης καὶ στῆσαι αὐτοῦ τὸν δῆμον χαλκῆν εἰκόνα ἐν ἀγορᾷ, πλὴν εἴ που ὁ νόμος ἀπαγορεύει μὴ ἱστάναι, δοῦναι δὲ σίτησιν ἐν πρυτανείῳ τῶν ἐκγόνων ἀεὶ τῶν Λυκούργου τῷ πρεσβυτάτῳ εἰς ἅπαντα τὸν χρόνον, ἀναθεῖναι δ’ αὐτοῦ - καὶ εἶναι κύρια - πάντα τὰ ψηφίσματα τὸν γραμματέα τοῦ δήμου ἐν στήλαις λιθίναις καὶ στῆσαι ἐν ἀκροπόλει πλησίον τῶν ἀναθημάτων· εἰς δὲ τὴν ἀναγραφὴν τῶν στηλῶν δοῦναι τὸν ταμίαν τοῦ δήμου πεντήκοντα δραχμὰς ἐκ τῶν εἰς τὰ ‹κατὰ› ψηφίσματα ἀναλισκομένων τῷ δήμῳ.

Comparisonnis Aristophanis et Menandri compendium

ΣΥΓΚΡΙΣΕΩΣ ΑΡΙΣΤΟΦΑΝΟΥΣ ΚΑΙ ΜΕΝΑΝΔΡΟΥ ΕΠΙΤΟΜΗ

[853] Ὡς μὲν κοινῶς καὶ καθόλου εἰπεῖν πολλῷ προκρίνει τὸν Μένανδρον, ὡς δ’ ἐπὶ μέρους καὶ ταῦτα προστίθησι·

[b] “Τὸ φορτικόν,” φησίν, “ἐν λόγοις καὶ θυμελικὸν καὶ βάναυσον ὥς ἐστιν Ἀριστοφάνει, Μενάνδρῳ δ’ οὐδαμῶς. καὶ γὰρ ὁ μὲν ἀπαίδευτος καὶ ἰδιώτης, οἷς ἐκεῖνος λέγει, ἁλίσκεται· ὁ δὲ πεπαιδευμένος δυσχερανεῖ· λέγω δὲ τὰ ἀντίθετα καὶ ὁμοιόπτωτα καὶ παρωνυμίας. τούτοις γὰρ ὁ μὲν μετὰ τοῦ προσήκοντος λόγου καὶ ὀλιγάκις χρῆται ἐπιμελείας αὐτὰ ἀξιῶν, ὁ δὲ καὶ πολλάκις καὶ οὐκ εὐκαίρως καὶ ψυχρῶς· ἐπαινεῖται γάρ,” φησίν,

ὅτι τοὺς ταμίας ἐβάπτισεν,

οὐχὶ ταμίας ἀλλὰ Λαμίας

ὄντας. καὶ

οὗτος ἤτοι καικίας ἢ συκοφαντίας πνεῖ

[c] καὶ

γάστριζε καὶ τοῖς ἐντέροις καὶ τοῖς κόλοις

καὶ

ὑπὸ τοῦ γέλωτος εἰς Γέλαν ἀφίξομαι

καὶ

τί δῆτα δράσω σ’, ὦ κακόδαιμον, ἀμφορεὺς

ἐξοστρακισθείς;

καὶ

ἄγρια γὰρ ἡμᾶς, ὦ γυναῖκες, δρᾷ κακά,

ἅτ’ ἐν ἀγρίοισι τοῖς λαχάνοις αὐτὸς τραφείς

καὶ

ἀλλ’ ἦ τριχόβρωτες τὸν λόφον μου κατέφαγον

καὶ

φέρε δεῦρο γοργόνωτον ἀσπίδος κύκλον.

κἀμοὶ πλακοῦντος τυρόνωτον δὸς κύκλον

καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα. ἔνεστι μὲν οὖν ἐν τῇ κατασκευῇ τῶν ὀνομάτων αὐτῷ τὸ τραγικὸν τὸ κωμικὸν τὸ σοβαρὸν τὸ πεζόν, ἀσάφεια, κοινότης, ὄγκος καὶ δίαρμα, σπερμολογία καὶ φλυαρία ναυτιώδης. καὶ [d] τοσαύτας διαφορὰς ἔχουσα καὶ ἀνομοιότητας ἡ λέξις οὐδὲ τὸ πρέπον ἑκάστῃ καὶ οἰκεῖον ἀποδίδωσιν· οἷον λέγω βασιλεῖ τὸν ὄγκον ῥήτορι τὴν δεινότητα γυναικὶ τὸ ἁπλοῦν ἰδιώτῃ τὸ πεζὸν ἀγοραίῳ τὸ φορτικόν· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀπὸ κλήρου ἀπονέμει τοῖς προσώποις τὰ προστυχόντα τῶν ὀνομάτων, καὶ οὐκ ἂν διαγνοίης εἴθ’ υἱός ἐστιν εἴτε πατὴρ εἴτ’ ἄγροικος εἴτε θεὸς εἴτε γραῦς εἴθ’ ἥρως ὁ διαλεγόμενος.

“Ἡ δὲ Μενάνδρου φράσις οὕτω συνέξεσται καὶ συμπέπνευκε κεκραμένη πρὸς ἑαυτήν, ὥστε διὰ [e] πολλῶν ἀγομένη παθῶν καὶ ἠθῶν καὶ προσώποις ἐφαρμόττουσα παντοδαποῖς μία τε φαίνεσθαι καὶ τὴν ὁμοιότητα τηρεῖν ἐν τοῖς κοινοῖς καὶ συνήθεσι καὶ ὑπὸ τὴν χρείαν ὀνόμασιν· ἐὰν δέ τινος ἄρα τερατείας εἰς τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ ψόφου δεήσῃ, καθάπερ αὐλοῦ πάντρητον ἀνασπάσας ταχὺ πάλιν καὶ πιθανῶς ἐπέβαλε καὶ κατέστησε τὴν φωνὴν εἰς τὸ οἰκεῖον. πολλῶν δὲ γεγονότων εὐδοκίμων τεχνιτῶν, οὔθ’ ὑπόδημα δημιουργὸς οὔτε προσωπεῖον σκευοποιὸς οὔτε τις ἱμάτιον ἅμα ταὐτὸν ἀνδρὶ καὶ γυναικὶ καὶ μειρακίῳ καὶ γέροντι καὶ οἰκότριβι [f] πρέπον ἐποίησεν· ἀλλὰ Μένανδρος οὕτως ἔμιξε τὴν λέξιν, ὥστε πάσῃ καὶ φύσει καὶ διαθέσει καὶ ἡλικίᾳ σύμμετρον εἶναι, καὶ ταῦτα νέος μὲν ἔτι τοῦ πράγματος ἁψάμενος, ἐν ἀκμῇ δὲ τοῦ ποιεῖν καὶ διδάσκειν τελευτήσας, ὅτε μάλιστα καὶ πλείστην ἐπίδοσιν, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησί, λαμβάνει τὰ περὶ τὴν λέξιν τοῖς γράφουσιν. εἰ οὖν πρὸς τὰ πρῶτα τῶν Μενάνδρου δραμάτων τὰ μέσα καὶ τὰ τελευταῖα παραβάλοι τις, ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐπιγνώσεται, ὅσα ἔμελλεν, εἰ ἐπεβίω, καὶ τούτοις ἕτερα προσθήσειν.

[854] [a] “Ὅτι τῶν διδασκόντων οἱ μὲν πρὸς τὸν ὄχλον καὶ τὸν δῆμον γράφουσιν οἱ δὲ τοῖς ὀλίγοις, τὸ δ’ ἐν ἀμφοῖν ἁρμόττον τοῖς γένεσιν οὐ ῥᾴδιον ὅτῳ τῶν πάντων ὑπῆρξεν εἰπεῖν. Ἀριστοφάνης μὲν οὖν οὔτε τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀρεστὸς οὔτε τοῖς φρονίμοις ἀνεκτός, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἑταίρας τῆς ποιήσεως παρηκμακυίας, εἶτα μιμουμένης γαμετήν, οὔθ’ οἱ πολλοὶ τὴν αὐθάδειαν ὑπομένουσιν οἵ τε σεμνοὶ βδελύττονται τὸ ἀκόλαστον καὶ κακόηθες. ὁ δὲ Μένανδρος μετὰ χαρίτων μάλιστα ἑαυτὸν αὐτάρκη παρέσχηκεν, ἐν θεάτροις ἐν διατριβαῖς ἐν συμποσίοις, ἀνάγνωσμα [b] καὶ μάθημα καὶ ἀγώνισμα κοινότατον ὧν ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἐνήνοχε καλῶν παρέχων τὴν ποίησιν, δεικνὺς ὅ τι δὴ καὶ ὁποῖον ἦν ἄρα δεξιότης λόγου, ἐπιὼν ἁπανταχόσε μετὰ πειθοῦς ἀφύκτου καὶ χειρούμενος ἅπασαν ἀκοὴν καὶ διάνοιαν Ἑλληνικῆς φωνῆς. τίνος γὰρ ἄξιον ἀληθῶς εἰς θέατρον ἐλθεῖν ἄνδρα πεπαιδευμένον ἢ Μενάνδρου ἕνεκα; πότε δὲ θέατρα πίμπλαται ἀνδρῶν φιλολόγων, κωμικοῦ προσώπου δειχθέντος; ἐν δὲ συμποσίοις τίνι δικαιότερον ἡ τράπεζα παραχωρεῖ καὶ τόπον ὁ Διόνυσος δίδωσι; φιλοσόφοις δὲ καὶ φιλολόγοις, ὥσπερ ὅταν οἱ γραφεῖς ἐκπονηθῶσι τὰς ὄψεις, ἐπὶ τὰ ἀνθηρὰ [c] καὶ ποώδη χρώματα τρέπουσιν, ἀνάπαυλα τῶν ἀκράτων καὶ συντόνων ἐκείνων Μένανδρός ἐστιν, οἷον εὐανθεῖ λειμῶνι καὶ σκιερῷ καὶ πνευμάτων μεστῷ δεχόμενος τὴν διάνοιαν.

“Ὅτι κωμῳδίας ὑποκριτὰς τοῦ χρόνου τούτου πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς τῆς πόλεως ἐνεγκούσης, μόναι αἱ Μενάνδρου κωμῳδίαι ἀφθόνων ἁλῶν καὶ ἱλαρῶν μετέχουσιν, ὥσπερ ἐξ ἐκείνης γεγονότων τῆς θαλάττης, ἐξ ἧς Ἀφροδίτη γέγονεν. οἱ δ’ Ἀριστοφάνους ἅλες πικροὶ καὶ τραχεῖς ὄντες ἑλκωτικὴν δριμύτητα καὶ δηκτικὴν ἔχουσι· καὶ οὐκ οἶδ’ ἐν οἷς ἔστιν ἡ θρυλουμένη δεξιότης ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, ἐν λόγοις ἢ προσώποις· ἀμέλει καὶ τὰ μεμιμημένα πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον [d] μεμίμηται· τὸ γὰρ πανοῦργον οὐ πολιτικὸν ἀλλὰ κακόηθες, καὶ τὸ ἄγροικον οὐκ ἀφελὲς ἀλλ’ ἠλίθιον, καὶ τὸ γελοῖον οὐ παιγνιῶδες ἀλλὰ καταγέλαστον, καὶ τὸ ἐρωτικὸν οὐχ ἱλαρὸν ἀλλ’ ἀκόλαστον. οὐδενὶ γὰρ ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἔοικε μετρίῳ τὴν ποίησιν γεγραφέναι, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν αἰσχρὰ καὶ ἀσελγῆ τοῖς ἀκολάστοις, τὰ βλάσφημα δὲ καὶ πικρὰ τοῖς βασκάνοις καὶ κακοήθεσιν.”

De Herodoti malignitate

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΗΡΟΔΟΤΟΥ ΚΑΚΟΗΘΕΙΑΣ

[854] Πολλοὺς μέν, ὦ Ἀλέξανδρε, τοῦ Ἡροδότου καὶ ἡ λέξις ὡς ἀφελὴς καὶ δίχα πόνου καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἐπιτρέχουσα τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐξηπάτηκε· πλείονες δὲ τοῦτο πρὸς τὸ ἦθος αὐτοῦ πεπόνθασιν. οὐ γὰρ [f] μόνον, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, τῆς ἐσχάτης ἀδικίας μὴ ὄντα δοκεῖν εἶναι δίκαιον, ἀλλὰ καὶ κακοηθείας ἄκρας ἔργον εὐκολίαν μιμούμενον καὶ ἁπλότητα δυσφώρατον εἶναι. μάλιστα πρός τε Βοιωτοὺς καὶ Κορινθίους κέχρηται μηδὲ τῶν ἄλλων τινὸς ἀπεσχημένος, οἶμαι προσήκειν ἡμῖν, ἀμυνομένοις ὑπὲρ τῶν προγόνων ἅμα καὶ τῆς ἀληθείας, κατ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτο τῆς γραφῆς τὸ μέρος· ἐπεὶ τά γ’ ἄλλα ψεύσματα καὶ πλάσματα βουλομένοις ἐπεξιέναι πολλῶν ἂν βιβλίων δεήσειεν. ἀλλὰ

δεινὸν τὸ τᾶς Πειθοῦς πρόσωπον,

[855] [a] ὥς φησιν ὁ Σοφοκλῆς, μάλιστα δ’ ὅταν ἐν λόγῳ χάριν ἔχοντι καὶ δύναμιν τοσαύτην ἐγγένηται τάς τ’ ἄλλας ἀτοπίας καὶ τὸ ἦθος ἀποκρύπτειν τοῦ συγγραφέως. ὁ μὲν γὰρ Φίλιππος ἔλεγε πρὸς τοὺς ἀφισταμένους Ἕλληνας αὐτοῦ καὶ τῷ Τίτῳ προστιθεμένους, ὅτι λειότερον μὲν μακρότερον δὲ κλοιὸν μεταλαμβάνουσιν· ἡ δ’ Ἡροδότου κακοήθεια λειοτέρα μέν ἐστιν ἀμέλει καὶ μαλακωτέρα τῆς Θεοπόμπου, καθάπτεται δὲ καὶ λυπεῖ μᾶλλον, ὥσπερ οἱ κρύφα διὰ στενοῦ παραπνέοντες ἄνεμοι τῶν διακεχυμένων.

Δοκεῖ δέ μοι βέλτιον εἶναι τύπῳ τινὶ λαβόντας [b] ὅσα κοινῇ μὴ καθαρᾶς μηδ’ εὐμενοῦς ἐστιν ἀλλὰ κακοήθους οἷον ἴχνη καὶ γνωρίσματα διηγήσεως, εἰς ταῦτα τῶν ἐξεταζομένων ἕκαστον, ἂν ἐναρμόττῃ, τίθεσθαι.

Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ὁ τοῖς δυσχερεστάτοις ὀνόμασι καὶ ῥήμασιν, ἐπιεικεστέρων παρόντων, ἐν τῷ λέγειν τὰ πεπραγμένα χρώμενος (ὥσπερ εἰ θειασμῷ προσκείμενον ἄγαν ἐξὸν εἰπεῖν τὸν Νικίαν ὁ δὲ θεόληπτον προσείποι, ἢ θρασύτητα καὶ μανίαν Κλέωνος μᾶλλον ἢ κουφολογίαν) οὐκ εὐμενής ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἀπολαύων τῷ †σοφῶς †διηγεῖσθαι τοῦ πράγματος.

[c] Δεύτερον, ὅτῳ κακὸν πρόσεστιν ἄλλως τῇ δ’ ἱστορίᾳ μὴ προσῆκον, ὁ δὲ συγγραφεὺς ἐπιδράττεται τούτου καὶ παρεμβάλλει τοῖς πράγμασιν οὐδὲν δεομένοις, ἀλλὰ τὴν διήγησιν ἐπεξάγων καὶ κυκλούμενος, ὅπως ἐμπεριλάβῃ ἀτύχημά τινος ἢ πρᾶξιν ἄτοπον καὶ οὐ χρηστήν, δῆλός ἐστιν ἡδόμενος τῷ κακολογεῖν. ὅθεν ὁ Θουκυδίδης οὐδὲ τῶν Κλέωνος ἁμαρτημάτων ἀφθόνων ὄντων ἐποιήσατο σαφῆ διήγησιν, Ὑπερβόλου τε τοῦ δημαγωγοῦ θιγὼν ἑνὶ ῥήματι καὶ μοχθηρὸν ἄνθρωπον προσειπὼν ἀφῆκε. Φίλιστος δὲ καὶ Διονυσίου τῶν πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους ἀδικιῶν ὅσαι μὴ συνεπλέκοντο τοῖς [d] Ἑλληνικοῖς πράγμασιν ἁπάσας παρέλιπεν· αἱ γὰρ ἐκβολαὶ καὶ παρατροπαὶ τῆς ἱστορίας μάλιστα τοῖς μύθοις δίδονται καὶ ταῖς ἀρχαιολογίαις, ἔτι δὲ πρὸς τοὺς ἐπαίνους· ὁ δὲ παρενθήκην λόγου τὸ βλασφημεῖν καὶ ψέγειν ποιούμενος ἔοικεν εἰς τὴν τραγικὴν ἐμπίπτειν κατάραν,

θνητῶν ἐκλέγων τὰς συμφοράς.

Καὶ μὴν τό γ’ ἀντίστροφον τούτῳ παντὶ δῆλον ὡς καλοῦ τινος κἀγαθοῦ παράλειψίς ἐστιν, ἀνυπεύθυνον δοκοῦν πρᾶγμα εἶναι, γινόμενον δὲ κακοήθως, [e] ἄνπερ ἐμπίπτῃ τὸ παραλειφθὲν εἰς τόπον προσήκοντα τῇ ἱστορίᾳ· τὸ γὰρ ἀπροθύμως ἐπαινεῖν τοῦ ψέγοντα χαίρειν οὐκ ἐπιεικέστερον, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τῷ μὴ ἐπιεικέστερον ἴσως καὶ χεῖρον.

Τέταρτον τοίνυν τίθεμαι σημεῖον οὐκ εὐμενοῦς ἐν ἱστορίᾳ τρόπου τὸ δυοῖν ἢ πλειόνων περὶ ταὐτοῦ λόγων ὄντων τῷ χείρονι προστίθεσθαι. τοῖς γὰρ σοφισταῖς ἐφεῖται πρὸς ἐργασίαν ἢ δόξαν ἔστιν ὅτε τῶν λόγων κοσμεῖν τὸν ἥττονα παραλαμβάνοντας· οὐ γὰρ ἐμποιοῦσι πίστιν ἰσχυρὰν περὶ τοῦ πράγματος [f] οὐδ’ ἀρνοῦνται πολλάκις εἰς τὸ παράδοξον ἐπιχειρεῖν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀπίστων. ὁ δ’ ἱστορίαν γράφων ἃ μὲν οἶδεν ἀληθῆ λέγων δίκαιός ἐστι, τῶν δ’ ἀδήλων τὰ βελτίονα δοκεῖν ἀληθῶς λέγεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ χείρονα. πολλοὶ δ’ ὅλως τὰ χείρονα παραλείπουσιν· ὥσπερ ἀμέλει περὶ Θεμιστοκλέους Ἔφορος μέν, εἰπὼν ὅτι τὴν Παυσανίου προδοσίαν ἔγνω καὶ τὰ πρασσόμενα πρὸς τοὺς βασιλέως στρατηγούς, “ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐπείσθη,” φησίν, “οὐδὲ προσεδέξατο κοινουμένου καὶ παρακαλοῦντος αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὰς ἐλπίδας”· Θουκυδίδης δὲ καὶ τὸ παράπαν τὸν λόγον τοῦτον ὡς κατεγνωκὼς παρῆκεν.

Ἔτι τοίνυν ἐπὶ τῶν ὁμολογουμένων πεπρᾶχθαι, τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν ἀφ’ ἧς πέπρακται καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ἐχόντων ἄδηλον, ὁ πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον εἰκάζων δυσμενής ἐστι καὶ κακοήθης· ὥσπερ οἱ κωμικοὶ [856] [a] τὸν πόλεμον ὑπὸ τοῦ Περικλέους ἐκκεκαῦσθαι δι’ Ἀσπασίαν ἢ διὰ Φειδίαν ἀποφαίνοντες, οὐ φιλοτιμίᾳ τινὶ καὶ φιλονεικίᾳ μᾶλλον στορέσαι τὸ φρόνημα Πελοποννησίων καὶ μηδενὸς ὑφεῖσθαι Λακεδαιμονίοις ἐθελήσαντος. εἰ μὲν γάρ τις εὐδοκιμοῦσιν ἔργοις καὶ πράγμασιν ἐπαινουμένοις αἰτίαν φαύλην ὑποτίθησι καὶ κατάγεται ταῖς διαβολαῖς εἰς ὑποψίας ἀτόπους περὶ τῆς ἐν ἀφανεῖ προαιρέσεως τοῦ πράξαντος, αὐτὸ τὸ πεπραγμένον ἐμφανῶς οὐ δυνάμενος ψέγειν (ὥσπερ οἱ τὸν ὑπὸ Θήβης Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ τυράννου φόνον οὐ μεγαλονοίας οὐδὲ μισοπονηρίας, ζήλου δέ τινος ἔργον [b] καὶ πάθους γυναικείου τιθέμενοι· καὶ Κάτωνα λέγοντες ἑαυτὸν ἀνελεῖν δείσαντα τὸν μετ’ αἰκίας θάνατον ὑπὸ Καίσαρος), εὔδηλον ὅτι φθόνου καὶ κακοηθείας ὑπερβολὴν οὐ λέλοιπε.

Δέχεται δὲ καὶ παρὰ τὸν τρόπον τοῦ ἔργου διήγησις ἱστορικὴ κακοήθειαν, ἂν χρήμασι φάσκῃ μὴ δι’ ἀρετῆς κατειργάσθαι τὴν πρᾶξιν, ὡς Φίλιππον ἔνιοι φάσκουσιν· ἂν σὺν οὐδενὶ πόνῳ καὶ ῥᾳδίως, ὡς Ἀλέξανδρον· ἂν μὴ φρονίμως ἀλλ’ εὐτυχῶς, ὡς Τιμόθεον οἱ ἐχθροί, γράφοντες ἐν πίναξιν εἰς κύρτον τινὰ τὰς πόλεις αὐτάς, ἐκείνου καθεύδοντος, ὑποδυομένας. δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι τῶν [c] πράξεων ἐλαττοῦσι τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ κάλλος οἱ τὸ γενναίως καὶ φιλοπόνως καὶ κατ’ ἀρετὴν καὶ δι’ αὑτῶν ἀφαιροῦντες.

Ἔστι τοίνυν τοῖς ἀπ’ εὐθείας οὓς βούλονται κακῶς λέγουσι δυσκολίαν ἐπικαλεῖν καὶ θρασύτητα καὶ μανίαν, ἐὰν μὴ μετριάζωσιν· οἱ δὲ πλαγίως οἷον ἐξ ἀφανοῦς βέλεσι χρώμενοι ταῖς διαβολαῖς, εἶτα περιιόντες ὀπίσω καὶ ἀναδυόμενοι, τῷ φάσκειν ἀπιστεῖν ἃ πάνυ πιστεύεσθαι θέλουσιν, ἀρνούμενοι κακοήθειαν ἀνελευθερίαν τῇ κακοηθείᾳ προσοφλισκάνουσιν.

Ἐγγὺς δὲ τούτων εἰσὶν οἱ τοῖς ψόγοις ἐπαίνους τινὰς παρατιθέντες, ὡς ἐπὶ Σωκράτους Ἀριστόξενος, [d] ἀπαίδευτον καὶ ἀμαθῆ καὶ ἀκόλαστον εἰπών, ἐπήνεγκεν “ἀδικία δ’ οὐ προσῆν.” ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ σύν τινι τέχνῃ καὶ δεινότητι κολακεύοντες ἔστιν ὅτε πολλοῖς καὶ μακροῖς ἐπαίνοις ψόγους παραμιγνύουσιν ἐλαφρούς, οἷον ἥδυσμα τῇ κολακείᾳ τὴν παρρησίαν ἐμβάλλοντες, οὕτω τὸ κακόηθες εἰς πίστιν ὧν ψέγει προϋποτίθεται τὸν ἔπαινον.

Ἦν δὲ καὶ πλείονας καταριθμεῖσθαι τῶν χαρακτήρων· ἀρκοῦσι δ’ οὗτοι κατανόησιν τἀνθρώπου τῆς προαιρέσεως καὶ τοῦ τρόπου παρασχεῖν.

Πρῶτα δὴ πάντων ὥσπερ ἀφ’ ἑστίας ἀρξάμενος Ἰοῦς τῆς Ἰνάχου θυγατρός, ἣν πάντες Ἕλληνες [e] ἐκτεθειῶσθαι νομίζουσι ταῖς τιμαῖς ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων καὶ καταλιπεῖν ὄνομα πολλαῖς μὲν θαλάτταις, πορθμῶν δὲ τοῖς μεγίστοις ἀφ’ αὑτῆς διὰ τὴν δόξαν, ἀρχὴν δὲ καὶ πηγὴν τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων καὶ βασιλικωτάτων γενῶν παρασχεῖν· ταύτην ὁ γενναῖος ἐπιδοῦναί φησιν ἑαυτὴν Φοίνιξι φορτηγοῖς, ὑπὸ τοῦ ναυκλήρου διαφθαρεῖσαν ἑκουσίως καὶ φοβουμένην μὴ κύουσα φανερὰ γένηται. καὶ καταψεύδεται Φοινίκων ὡς ταῦτα περὶ αὐτῆς λεγόντων. Περσῶν δὲ τοὺς λογίους μαρτυρεῖν φήσας, ὅτι τὴν Ἰοῦν μετ’ ἄλλων γυναικῶν οἱ Φοίνικες ἀφαρπάσειαν, [f] εὐθὺς ἀποφαίνεται γνώμην τὸ κάλλιστον ἔργον καὶ μέγιστον τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀβελτερίᾳ τὸν Τρωικὸν πόλεμον γενέσθαι διὰ γυναῖκα φαύλην. “δῆλον γάρ,” φησίν, “ὅτι, εἰ μὴ αὐταὶ ἐβούλοντο, οὐκ ἂν ἡρπάζοντο.” καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς τοίνυν ἀβέλτερα ποιεῖν λέγωμεν, ὑπὲρ τῶν Λεύκτρου θυγατέρων βιασθεισῶν μηνίοντας Λακεδαιμονίοις καὶ κολάζοντας Αἴαντα διὰ τὴν Κασάνδρας ὕβριν· δῆλα γὰρ δὴ καθ’ Ἡρόδοτον ὅτι, εἰ μὴ αὐταὶ ἐβούλοντο, οὐκ ἂν ὑβρίζοντο. καίτοι καὶ Ἀριστομένη φησὶν αὐτὸς ὑπὸ Λακεδαιμονίων ζῶντα συναρπασθῆναι, καὶ Φιλοποίμην ὕστερον ὁ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν στρατηγὸς [857] [a] ταὐτὸ τοῦτ’ ἔπαθε, καὶ Ῥηγοῦλον ἐχειρώσαντο Καρχηδόνιοι τὸν Ῥωμαίων ὕπατον· ὧν ἔργον εὑρεῖν μαχιμωτέρους καὶ πολεμικωτέρους ἄνδρας. ἀλλὰ θαυμάζειν οὐκ ἄξιον, ὅπου καὶ παρδάλεις ζώσας καὶ τίγρεις συναρπάζουσιν ἄνθρωποι· Ἡρόδοτος δὲ κατηγορεῖ τῶν βιασθεισῶν γυναικῶν, ἀπολογούμενος ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁρπασάντων.

Οὕτω δὲ φιλοβάρβαρός ἐστιν, ὥστε Βούσιριν ἀπολύσας τῆς λεγομένης ἀνθρωποθυσίας καὶ ξενοκτονίας, καὶ πᾶσιν Αἰγυπτίοις ὁσιότητα πολλὴν καὶ δικαιοσύνην μαρτυρήσας, ἐφ’ Ἕλληνας ἀναστρέφει τὸ μύσος τοῦτο καὶ τὴν μιαιφονίαν. ἐν γὰρ τῇ [b] δευτέρᾳ βίβλῳ Μενέλαόν φησι παρὰ Πρωτέως ἀπολαβόντα τὴν Ἑλένην καὶ τιμηθέντα δωρεαῖς μεγάλαις ἀδικώτατον ἀνθρώπων γενέσθαι καὶ κάκιστον· ὑπὸ γὰρ ἀπλοίας συνεχόμενον “ἐπιτεχνήσασθαι πρᾶγμα οὐχ ὅσιον, καὶ λαβόντα δύο παιδία ἀνδρῶν ἐπιχωρίων ἔντομά σφεα ποιῆσαι· μισηθέντα δ’ ἐπὶ τούτῳ καὶ διωκόμενον οἴχεσθαι φεύγοντα τῇσι νηυσὶν ἐπὶ Λιβύης.” τοῦτον δὲ τὸν λόγον οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅστις Αἰγυπτίων εἴρηκεν· ἀλλὰ τἀναντία πολλαὶ μὲν Ἑλένης πολλαὶ δὲ Μενελάου τιμαὶ διαφυλάττονται παρ’ αὐτοῖς.

Ὁ δὲ συγγραφεὺς ἐπιμένων Πέρσας μέν φησι [c] παισὶ μίσγεσθαι παρ’ Ἑλλήνων μαθόντας. καίτοι πῶς Ἕλλησι Πέρσαι διδασκάλια ταύτης ὀφείλουσι τῆς ἀκολασίας, παρ’ οἷς ὀλίγου δεῖν ὑπὸ πάντων ὁμολογεῖται παῖδας ἐκτετμῆσθαι, πρὶν Ἑλληνικὴν ἰδεῖν θάλασσαν; Ἕλληνας δὲ μαθεῖν παρ’ Αἰγυπτίων πομπὰς καὶ πανηγύρεις, καὶ τὸ τοὺς δώδεκα θεοὺς σέβεσθαι· Διονύσου δὲ καὶ τοὔνομα παρ’ Αἰγυπτίων Μελάμποδα μαθεῖν καὶ διδάξαι τοὺς ἄλλους Ἕλληνας· μυστήρια δὲ καὶ τὰς περὶ Δήμητρα τελετὰς ὑπὸ τῶν Δαναοῦ θυγατέρων ἐξ Αἰγύπτου κομισθῆναι. καὶ τύπτεσθαι μὲν Αἰγυπτίους φησὶ καὶ πενθεῖν, ὃν δὲ θεὸν οὐ βούλεσθαι [d] αὐτὸς ὀνομάζειν, ἀλλ’ εὐστόμως κεῖσθαι περὶ τῶν θείων. Ἡρακλέα δὲ καὶ Διόνυσον οὓς μὲν Αἰγύπτιοι σέβονται, παλαιοὺς ἀποφαίνων ὄντας θεούς, οὓς Ἕλληνες δέ, ἀνθρώπους καταγεγηρακότας, οὐδαμοῦ ταύτην προύθετο τὴν εὐλάβειαν. καίτοι καὶ τὸν Αἰγύπτιον Ἡρακλέα τῶν δευτέρων θεῶν γενέσθαι λέγει καὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τῶν τρίτων, ὡς ἀρχὴν ἐσχηκότας γενέσεως καὶ οὐκ ὄντας ἀιδίους· ἀλλ’ ὅμως ἐκείνους μὲν ἀποφαίνει θεούς, τούτοις δ’ ὡς φθιτοῖς καὶ ἥρωσιν ἐναγίζειν οἴεται δεῖν ἀλλὰ μὴ θύειν ὡς θεοῖς. ταὐτὰ καὶ περὶ Πανὸς εἴρηκε, [e] ταῖς Αἰγυπτίων ἀλαζονείαις καὶ μυθολογίαις τὰ σεμνότατα καὶ ἁγνότατα τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἱερῶν ἀνατρέπων.

Καὶ οὐ τοῦτο δεινόν· ἀλλ’ ἀναγαγὼν εἰς Περσέα τὸ Ἡρακλέους γένος Περσέα μὲν Ἀσσύριον γεγονέναι λέγει κατὰ τὸν Περσῶν λόγον· “οἱ δὲ Δωριέων,” φησίν, “ἡγεμόνες φαίνοιντ’ ἂν Αἰγύπτιοι ἰθαγενέες ἐόντες, καταλέγοντι τοὺς ἄνω Δανάης καὶ Ἀκρισίου πατέρας.” τὸν γὰρ Ἔπαφον καὶ τὴν Ἰὼ καὶ τὸν Ἴασον καὶ τὸν Ἄργον ὅλως ἀφῆκε, φιλοτιμούμενος μὴ μόνον ἄλλους Ἡρακλεῖς Αἰγυπτίους καὶ Φοίνικας ἀποφαίνειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτον, ὃν αὐτὸς τρίτον γεγονέναι φησίν, [f] εἰς βαρβάρους ἀποξενῶσαι τῆς Ἑλλάδος. καίτοι τῶν παλαιῶν καὶ λογίων ἀνδρῶν οὐχ Ὅμηρος οὐχ Ἡσίοδος οὐκ Ἀρχίλοχος οὐ Πείσανδρος οὐ Στησίχορος οὐκ Ἀλκμὰν οὐ Πίνδαρος Αἰγυπτίου ἔσχον λόγον Ἡρακλέους ἢ Φοίνικος, ἀλλ’ ἕνα τοῦτον ἴσασι πάντες Ἡρακλέα τὸν Βοιώτιον ὁμοῦ καὶ Ἀργεῖον.

Καὶ μὴν τῶν ἑπτὰ σοφῶν, οὓς αὐτὸς σοφιστὰς προσεῖπε, τὸν μὲν Θάλητα Φοίνικα τῷ γένει τὸ ἀνέκαθεν ἀποφαίνεται βάρβαρον· τοῖς δὲ θεοῖς λοιδορούμενος ἐν τῷ Σόλωνος προσωπείῳ ταῦτ’ εἴρηκεν· “ὦ Κροῖσε, ἐπιστάμενόν με τὸ θεῖον πᾶν [858] [a] ἐὸν φθονερόν τε καὶ ταραχῶδες ἐπειρωτᾷς ἀνθρωπηίων πραγμάτων πέρι”· ἃ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐφρόνει περὶ τῶν θεῶν τῷ Σόλωνι προστριβόμενος κακοήθειαν τῇ βλασφημίᾳ προστίθησι. Πιττακῷ τοίνυν εἰς μικρὰ καὶ οὐκ ἄξια λόγου χρησάμενος, ὃ μέγιστόν ἐστι τῶν πεπραγμένων τἀνδρὶ καὶ κάλλιστον, ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι γενόμενος, παρῆκε. πολεμούντων γὰρ Ἀθηναίων καὶ Μυτιληναίων περὶ Σιγείου καὶ Φρύνωνος τοῦ στρατηγοῦ τῶν Ἀθηναίων προκαλεσαμένου τὸν βουλόμενον εἰς μονομαχίαν, ἀπήντησεν [b] ὁ Πιττακὸς καὶ δικτύῳ περιβαλὼν τὸν ἄνδρα ῥωμαλέον ὄντα καὶ μέγαν ἀπέκτεινε· τῶν δὲ Μυτιληναίων δωρεὰς αὐτῷ μεγάλας διδόντων, ἀκοντίσας τὸ δόρυ τοῦτο μόνον τὸ χωρίον ἠξίωσεν ὅσον ἐπέσχεν ἡ αἰχμή· καὶ καλεῖται μέχρι νῦν Πιττάκειον. τί οὖν ὁ Ἡρόδοτος, κατὰ τὸν τόπον γενόμενος τοῦτον; ἀντὶ τῆς Πιττακοῦ ἀριστείας τὴν Ἀλκαίου διηγήσατο τοῦ ποιητοῦ φυγὴν ἐκ τῆς μάχης, τὰ ὅπλα ῥίψαντος· τῷ τὰ μὲν χρηστὰ μὴ γράψαι τὰ δ’ αἰσχρὰ μὴ παραλιπεῖν μαρτυρήσας τοῖς ἀπὸ μιᾶς κακίας καὶ τὸν φθόνον φύεσθαι καὶ τὴν ἐπιχαιρεκακίαν λέγουσι.

[c] Μετὰ ταῦτα τοὺς Ἀλκμεωνίδας, ἄνδρας γενομένους καὶ τὴν πατρίδα τῆς τυραννίδος ἐλευθερώσαντας, εἰς αἰτίαν ἐμβαλὼν προδοσίας δέξασθαί φησι τὸν Πεισίστρατον ἐκ τῆς φυγῆς καὶ συγκαταγαγεῖν ἐπὶ τῷ γάμῳ τῆς Μεγακλέους θυγατρός· τὴν δὲ παῖδα πρὸς τὴν μητέρα φράσαι τὴν ἑαυτῆς ὅτι “ὦ μαμμίδιον, ὁρᾷς; οὐ μίγνυταί μοι κατὰ νόμον Πεισίστρατος.” ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ τοὺς Ἀλκμεωνίδας τῷ παρανομήματι σχετλιάσαντας ἐξελάσαι τὸν τύραννον.

Ἵνα τοίνυν μηδ’ οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἔλαττον ἔχωσι τῆς κακοηθείας, τὸν ἐν αὐτοῖς μάλιστα θαυμαζόμενον καὶ τιμώμενον ὅρα πῶς [d] διαλελύμανται, τὸν Ὀθρυάδαν· “τὸν δὲ ἕνα,” φησί, “τὸν περιλειφθέντα τῶν τριηκοσίων αἰσχυνόμενον ἀπονοστέειν ἐς Σπάρτην, τῶν συλλοχιτέων διεφθαρμένων, αὐτοῦ μιν ἐν τῇσι Θυρέῃσι καταχρήσασθαι ἑωυτόν.” ἄνω μὲν γὰρ ἀμφοτέροις ἐπίδικον εἶναι τὸ νίκημά φησιν, ἐνταῦθα δὲ τῇ αἰσχύνῃ τοῦ Ὀθρυάδου τὴν ἧτταν τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων κατεμαρτύρησεν· ἡττηθέντα μὲν γὰρ ζῆν αἰσχρὸν ἦν, περιγενέσθαι δὲ νικῶντα κάλλιστον.

Ἐῶ τοίνυν ὅτι τὸν Κροῖσον ἀμαθῆ καὶ ἀλαζόνα καὶ γελοῖον φήσας ἐν πᾶσιν, ὑπὸ τούτου φησίν, αἰχμαλώτου γενομένου, καὶ παιδαγωγεῖσθαι καὶ νουθετεῖσθαι τὸν Κῦρον, ὃς φρονήσει καὶ ἀρετῇ καὶ [e] μεγαλονοίᾳ πολὺ πάντων δοκεῖ πεπρωτευκέναι τῶν βασιλένω· τῷ δὲ Κροίσῳ μηδὲν ἄλλο καλὸν ἢ τὸ τιμῆσαι τοὺς θεοὺς ἀναθήμασι πολλοῖς καὶ μεγάλοις μαρτυρήσας, αὐτὸ τοῦτο πάντων ἀσεβέστατον ἀποδείκνυσιν ἔργον. ἀδελφὸν γὰρ αὐτοῦ Πανταλέοντα περὶ τῆς βασιλείας αὐτῷ διαφέρεσθαι, ζῶντος ἔτι τοῦ πατρός· τὸν οὖν Κροῖσον, ὡς εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν κατέστη, τῶν ἑταίρων καὶ φίλων τοῦ Πανταλέοντος [f] ἕνα τῶν γνωρίμων ἐπὶ κνάφου διαφθεῖραι καταξαινόμενον, ἐκ δὲ τῶν χρημάτων αὐτοῦ ποιησάμενον ἀναθήματα τοῖς θεοῖς ἀποστεῖλαι. Δηιόκην δὲ τὸν Μῆδον ἀρετῇ καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ κτησάμενον τὴν ἡγεμονίαν οὐ φύσει γενέσθαι φησὶ τοιοῦτον, ἐρασθέντα δὲ τυραννίδος ἐπιθέσθαι προσποιήματι δικαιοσύνης.

Ἀλλ’ ἀφίημι τὰ τῶν βαρβάρων· ἀφθονίαν γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐν τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς πεποίηκεν. Ἀθηναίους τοίνυν καὶ τοὺς πολλοὺς τῶν ἄλλων Ἰώνων ἐπαισχύνεσθαι τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ, μὴ βουλομένους ἀλλὰ φεύγοντας Ἴωνας κεκλῆσθαι, τοὺς δὲ νομίζοντας αὐτῶν γενναιοτάτους εἶναι καὶ ὁρμηθέντας ἀπὸ τοῦ πρυτανηίου τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐκ βαρβάρων παιδοποιήσασθαι γυναικῶν, πατέρας αὐτῶν καὶ ἄνδρας καὶ παῖδας φονεύσαντας· διὸ τὰς γυναῖκας νόμον θέσθαι καὶ ὅρκους ἐπελάσαι καὶ παραδοῦναι ταῖς θυγατράσι, μήποτε ὁμοσιτῆσαι τοῖς ἀνδράσι μηδ’ ὀνομαστὶ βοῆσαι τὸν αὑτῆς ἄνδρα· καὶ τοὺς [859] [a] νῦν ὄντας Μιλησίους ἐξ ἐκείνων γεγονέναι τῶν γυναικῶν. ὑπειπὼν δὲ καθαρῶς Ἴωνας γεγονέναι τοὺς Ἀπατούρια ἄγοντας ἑορτήν, “ἄγουσι δὲ πάντες,” φησί, “πλὴν Ἐφεσίων καὶ Κολοφωνίων.” τούτους μὲν οὕτως ἐκκέκλεικε τῆς εὐγενείας.

Πακτύην δ’ ἀποστάντα Κύρου φησὶ Κυμαίους καὶ Μυτιληναίους ἐκδιδόναι παρασκευάζεσθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον “ἐπὶ μισθῷ ὅσῳ δή, οὐ γὰρ ἔχω γε εἰπεῖν ἀτρεκέως” (εὖ τὸ μὴ διαβεβαιοῦσθαι πόσος ἦν ὁ μισθός, τηλικοῦτο δ’ Ἑλληνίδι πόλει προσβαλεῖν ὄνειδος, ὡς δὴ σαφῶς εἰδότα)· Χίους [b] μέντοι τὸν Πακτύην κομισθέντα πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἐξ ἱροῦ Ἀθηναίης πολιούχου ἐκδοῦναι, καὶ ταῦτα ποιῆσαι τοὺς Χίους τὸν Ἀταρνέα μισθὸν λαβόντας. καίτοι Χάρων ὁ Λαμψακηνός, ἀνὴρ πρεσβύτερος, ἐν τοῖς περὶ Πακτύην λόγοις γενόμενος, τοιοῦτον οὐδὲν οὔτε Μυτιληναίοις οὔτε Χίοις ἄγος προστέτριπται· ταυτὶ δὲ κατὰ λέξιν γέγραφε, “Πακτύης δὲ ὡς ἐπύθετο προσελαύνοντα τὸν στρατὸν τὸν Περσικὸν ᾤχετο φεύγων ἄρτι μὲν εἰς Μυτιλήνην, ἔπειτα δὲ εἰς Χίον· καὶ αὐτοῦ ἐκράτησε Κῦρος.”

Ἐν δὲ τῇ τρίτῃ τῶν βίβλων διηγούμενος τὴν Λακεδαιμονίων ἐπὶ Πολυκράτη τὸν τύραννον [c] στρατείαν, αὐτοὺς μὲν οἴεσθαί φησι καὶ λέγειν Σαμίους, ὡς χάριν ἐκτίνοντες αὐτοῖς τῆς ἐπὶ Μεσσηνίους βοηθείας στρατεύσειαν, τούς τε φεύγοντας κατάγοντες τῶν πολιτῶν καὶ τῷ τυράννῳ πολεμοῦντες· ἀρνεῖσθαι δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν ταύτην Λακεδαιμονίους, καὶ λέγειν ὡς οὐ βοηθοῦντες οὐδ’ ἐλευθεροῦντες ἀλλὰ τιμωρούμενοι Σαμίους στρατεύσαιντο, κρατῆρά τινα πεμπόμενον Κροίσῳ παρ’ αὐτῶν καὶ θώρακα πάλιν παρ’ Ἀμάσιδος κομιζόμενον αὐτοῖς ἀφελομένους. καίτοι πόλιν ἐν τοῖς τότε χρόνοις οὔτε φιλότιμον οὕτως οὔτε μισοτύραννον ἴσμεν ὡς τὴν Λακεδαιμονίων γενομένην· ποίου γὰρ ἕνεκα θώρακος ἢ τίνος κρατῆρος ἑτέρου Κυψελίδας μὲν [d] ἐξέβαλον ἐκ Κορίνθου καὶ Ἀμπρακίας ἐκ δὲ Νάξου Λύγδαμιν ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν δὲ τοὺς Πεισιστράτου παῖδας ἐκ δὲ Σικυῶνος Αἰσχίνην ἐκ Θάσου δὲ Σύμμαχον ἐκ δὲ Φωκέων Αὖλιν ἐκ Μιλήτου δ’ Ἀριστογένη, τὴν δ’ ἐν Θετταλοῖς δυναστείαν ἔπαυσαν, Ἀριστομήδη καὶ Ἀγέλαον καταλύσαντες διὰ Λεωτυχίδου τοῦ βασιλέως; περὶ ὧν ἐν ἄλλοις ἀκριβέστερον γέγραπται. κατὰ δ’ Ἡρόδοτον οὔτε κακίας οὔτ’ ἀβελτερίας ὑπερβολὴν λελοίπασιν, εἰ τὴν καλλίστην καὶ δικαιοτάτην τῆς στρατείας ἀρνούμενοι πρόφασιν ὡμολόγουν διὰ μνησικακίαν καὶ μικρολογίαν ἐπιτίθεσθαι δυστυχοῦσιν ἀνθρώποις καὶ κακῶς πράττουσιν.

[e] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ Λακεδαιμονίους μὲν ἁμωσγέπως ὑποπεσόντας αὐτοῦ τῷ γραφείῳ προσέχρωσε· τὴν δὲ Κορινθίων πόλιν, ἐκτὸς δρόμου κατὰ τοῦτον οὖσαν τὸν τόπον, ὅμως προσπεριλαβὼν ὁδοῦ, φασί, πάρεργον ἀνέπλησεν αἰτίας δεινῆς καὶ μοχθηροτάτης διαβολῆς. “συνεπελάβοντο γάρ,” φησί, “τοῦ στρατεύματος τοῦ ἐπὶ Σάμον ὥστε γενέσθαι [f] καὶ Κορίνθιοι προθύμως, ὑβρίσματος εἰς αὐτοὺς ὑπὸ Σαμίων πρότερον ὑπάρξαντος. ἦν δὲ τοιοῦτο· Κερκυραίων παῖδας τριακοσίους τῶν πρώτων Περίανδρος ὁ Κορίνθου τύραννος ἐπ’ ἐκτομῇ παρ’ Ἀλυάττην ἔπεμπε· τούτους ἀποβάντας εἰς τὴν νῆσον οἱ Σάμιοι διδάξαντες ἐν ἱερῷ Ἀρτέμιδος ἱκέτας καθίζεσθαι καὶ τρωκτὰ προτιθέντες αὐτοῖς ὁσημέραι σησάμου καὶ μέλιτος περιεποίησαν.” τοῦθ’ ὕβρισμα Σαμίων εἰς Κορινθίους ὁ συγγραφεὺς προσαγορεύει καὶ διὰ τοῦτό φησι συμπαροξῦναι Λακεδαιμονίους κατ’ αὐτῶν ἔτεσιν οὐκ ὀλίγοις ὕστερον, ἔγκλημα ποιησαμένους ὅτι τριακοσίους παῖδας Ἑλλήνων ἐφύλαξαν ἄνδρας. ὁ δὲ τοῦτο Κορινθίοις προστριβόμενος τοὔνειδος ἀποφαίνει τοῦ τυράννου μοχθηροτέραν τὴν πόλιν· ἐκεῖνος μέν γε τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ Κερκυραίους ἀνελόντας ἠμύνατο, Κορίνθιοι δὲ τί παθόντες ἐτιμωροῦντο Σαμίους ἐμποδὼν στάντας ὠμότητι καὶ παρανομίᾳ τοσαύτῃ, καὶ ταῦτα μετὰ τρεῖς γενεὰς ὀργὴν καὶ μνησικακίαν ἀναφέροντες ὑπὲρ τυραννίδος, [860] [a] ἧς καταλυθείσης πᾶν τε μνῆμα καὶ πᾶν ἴχνος ἐξαλείφοντες καὶ ἀφανίζοντες οὐκ ἐπαύοντο, χαλεπῆς καὶ βαρείας αὐτοῖς γενομένης;

Ἀλλὰ δὴ τὸ μὲν ὕβρισμα τοιοῦτον ἦν τὸ Σαμίων εἰς Κορινθίους· τὸ δὲ τιμώρημα ποῖόν τι τὸ Κορινθίων εἰς Σαμίους; εἰ γὰρ ὄντως ὠργίζοντο Σαμίοις, οὐ παροξύνειν, ἀποτρέπειν δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτοῖς ἦν προσῆκον Λακεδαιμονίους ἐπὶ Πολυκράτη [b] στρατευομένους, ὅπως μὴ τοῦ τυράννου καταλυθέντος ἐλεύθεροι Σάμιοι γένοιντο καὶ παύσαιντο δουλεύοντες. ὃ δὲ μέγιστόν ἐστι, τί δήποτε Κορίνθιοι Σαμίοις μὲν ὠργίζοντο βουληθεῖσι σῷσαι καὶ μὴ δυνηθεῖσι Κερκυραίων παῖδας, Κνιδίοις δὲ τοῖς σῴσασι καὶ ἀποδοῦσιν οὐκ ἐνεκάλουν; καίτοι Κερκυραῖοι Σαμίων μὲν ἐπὶ τούτῳ λόγον οὐ πολὺν ἔχουσι, Κνιδίων δὲ μέμνηνται καὶ Κνιδίοις εἰσὶ τιμαὶ καὶ ἀτέλειαι καὶ ψηφίσματα παρ’ αὐτοῖς· οὗτοι γὰρ ἐπιπλεύσαντες ἐξήλασαν ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τοὺς Περιάνδρου [c] φύλακας, αὐτοὶ δ’ ἀναλαβόντες τοὺς παῖδας εἰς Κέρκυραν διεκόμισαν, ὡς Ἀντήνωρ ἐν τοῖς Κρητικοῖς ἱστόρηκε καὶ Διονύσιος ὁ Χαλκιδεὺς ἐν ταῖς Κτίσεσιν.

Ὅτι δ’ οὐ τιμωρούμενοι Σαμίους ἀλλ’ ἐλευθεροῦντες ἀπὸ τοῦ τυράννου καὶ σῴζοντες ἐστράτευσαν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι, Σαμίοις αὐτοῖς ἔστι χρήσασθαι μάρτυσιν. Ἀρχίᾳ γὰρ ἀνδρὶ Σπαρτιάτῃ λαμπρῶς ἀγωνισαμένῳ τότε καὶ πεσόντι τάφον εἶναι δημοσίᾳ κατεσκευασμένον ἐν Σάμῳ καὶ τιμώμενον ὑπ’ αὐτῶν λέγουσι· διὸ καὶ τοὺς ἀπογόνους τἀνδρὸς ἀεὶ διατελεῖν Σαμίοις οἰκείως καὶ φιλανθρώπως προσφερομένους, ὡς αὐτὸς Ἡρόδοτος ταῦτα γοῦν ἀπομεμαρτύρηκεν.

Ἐν δὲ τῇ πέμπτῃ, τῶν ἀρίστων Ἀθήνησι καὶ πρώτων ἀνδρῶν Κλεισθένη μὲν ἀναπεῖσαί φησι [d] τὴν Πυθίαν ψευδόμαντιν γενέσθαι, προφέρουσαν ἀεὶ Λακεδαιμονίοις ἐλευθεροῦν ἀπὸ τῶν τυράννων τὰς Ἀθήνας, καλλίστῳ μὲν ἔργῳ καὶ δικαιοτάτῳ προσάπτων ἀσεβήματος διαβολὴν τηλικούτου καὶ ῥᾳδιουργήματος, ἀφαιρούμενος δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ μαντείαν καλὴν καὶ ἀγαθὴν καὶ τῆς λεγομένης συμπροφητεύειν Θέμιδος ἀξίαν. Ἰσαγόραν δὲ τῆς γαμετῆς ὑφίεσθαι Κλεομένει φοιτῶντι παρ’ αὐτήν· ὡς δ’ εἰώθει, παραμιγνὺς πίστεως ἕνεκα τοῖς ψόγοις ἐπαίνους [e] τινάς, “Ἰσαγόρης δέ,” φησίν, “ὁ Τισάνδρου οἰκίης μὲν ἦν δοκίμου, ἀτὰρ τὰ ἀνέκαθεν οὐκ ἔχω φράσαι· θύουσι δὲ οἱ συγγενεῖς αὐτοῦ Διὶ Καρίῳ.” εὔρυθμός γε καὶ πολιτικὸς ὁ μυκτὴρ τοῦ συγγραφέως, εἰς Κᾶρας ὥσπερ εἰς κόρακας ἀποδιοπομπουμένου τὸν Ἰσαγόραν. Ἀριστογείτονα μέντοι οὐκέτι κύκλῳ καὶ κακῶς, ἀλλ’ ἄντικρυς διὰ πυλῶν εἰς Φοινίκην ἐξελαύνει, Γεφυραῖον γεγονέναι λέγων ἀνέκαθεν· τοὺς δὲ Γεφυραίους οὐκ ἀπ’ Εὐβοίας [f] οὐδ’ Ἐρετριεῖς, ὥσπερ οἴονταί τινες, ἀλλὰ Φοίνικας εἶναί φησιν, αὐτὸς οὕτω πεπυσμένος.

Ἀφελέσθαι τοίνυν Λακεδαιμονίους μὴ δυνάμενος τὴν Ἀθηναίων ἐλευθέρωσιν ἀπὸ τῶν τυράννων αἰσχίστῳ πάθει κάλλιστον ἔργον οἷός τ’ ἐστὶν ἀφανίζειν καὶ καταισχύνειν. ταχὺ γὰρ μετανοῆσαι φησιν αὐτούς, ὡς οὐ ποιήσαντας ὀρθῶς, ὅτι “κιβδήλοισι μαντηίοισιν ἐπαρθέντες ἄνδρας ξείνους ὄντας αὐτοῖσι καὶ ὑποσχομένους ὑποχειρίας παρέξειν τὰς Ἀθήνας ἐξήλασαν ἐκ τῆς πατρίδος τοὺς τυράννους καὶ δήμῳ ἀχαρίστῳ παρέδωκαν τὴν πόλιν.” εἶτα μεταπεμψαμένους Ἱππίαν ἀπὸ Σιγείου κατάγειν εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας· ἀντιστῆναι δὲ [861] [a] Κορινθίους αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀποτρέψαι, Σωκλέους διελθόντος ὅσα Κύψελος καὶ Περίανδρος κακὰ τὴν Κορινθίων πόλιν εἰργάσαντο τυραννοῦντες. καίτοι Περιάνδρου σχετλιώτερον οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ὠμότερον ἔργον ἱστορεῖται τῆς ἐκπομπῆς τῶν τριακοσίων ἐκείνων, οὓς ἐξαρπάσασι καὶ διακωλύσασι παθεῖν ταῦτα Σαμίοις ὀργίζεσθαί φησι καὶ μνησικακεῖν Κορινθίους ὥσπερ ὑβρισθέντας. τοσαύτης ἀναπίμπλησι ταραχῆς καὶ διαφωνίας τὸ κακόηθες αὐτοῦ τὸν λόγον, ἐξ ἁπάσης τῇ διηγήσει προφάσεως ὑποδυόμενον.

Ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἐφεξῆς τὰ περὶ Σάρδεις διηγούμενος, ὡς ἐνῆν μάλιστα διέλυσε καὶ διελυμήνατο τὴν πρᾶξιν, ἃς μὲν Ἀθηναῖοι ναῦς ἐξέπεμψαν Ἴωσι τιμωροὺς ἀποστᾶσι βασιλέως ἀρχεκάκους τολμήσας [b] προσειπεῖν, ὅτι τοσαύτας πόλεις καὶ τηλικαύτας Ἑλληνίδας ἐλευθεροῦν ἐπεχείρησαν ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων, Ἐρετριέων δὲ κομιδῇ μνησθεὶς ἐν παρέργῳ καὶ παρασιωπήσας μέγα κατόρθωμα καὶ ἀοίδιμον. ἤδη γὰρ ὡς τῶν περὶ τὴν Ἰωνίαν συγκεχυμένων καὶ στόλου βασιλικοῦ προσπλέοντος, ἀπαντήσαντες ἔξω Κυπρίους ἐν τῷ Παμφυλίῳ πελάγει κατεναυμάχησαν· εἶτ’ ἀναστρέψαντες ὀπίσω καὶ τὰς ναῦς ἐν Ἐφέσῳ καταλιπόντες ἐπέθεντο Σάρδεσι καὶ Ἀρταφέρνην ἐπολιόρκουν εἰς τὴν ἀκρόπολιν καταφυγόντα, [c] βουλόμενοι τὴν Μιλήτου λῦσαι πολιορκίαν· καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἔπραξαν καὶ τοὺς πολεμίους ἀνέστησαν ἐκεῖθεν, ἐν φόβῳ θαυμαστῷ γενομένους· πλήθους δ’ ἐπιχυθέντος αὐτοῖς ἀπεχώρησαν. ταῦτα δ’ ἄλλοι τε καὶ Λυσανίας ὁ Μαλλώτης ἐν τοῖς περὶ Ἐρετρίας εἴρηκε· καὶ καλῶς εἶχεν, εἰ καὶ διὰ μηδὲν ἄλλο, τῇ γοῦν ἁλώσει καὶ φθορᾷ τῆς πόλεως ἐπειπεῖν τὸ ἀνδραγάθημα τοῦτο καὶ τὴν ἀριστείαν. ὁ δὲ καὶ κρατηθέντας αὐτοὺς ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων φησὶν εἰς τὰς ναῦς καταδιωχθῆναι, μηδὲν τοιοῦτο τοῦ Λαμψακηνοῦ Χάρωνος ἱστοροῦντος, ἀλλὰ ταυτὶ γράφοντος κατὰ λέξιν· “Ἀθηναῖοι δ’ εἴκοσι τριήρεσιν [d] ἔπλευσαν ἐπικουρήσοντες τοῖς Ἴωσι, καὶ εἰς Σάρδεις ἐστρατεύσαντο καὶ εἷλον τὰ περὶ Σάρδεις ἅπαντα χωρὶς τοῦ τείχους τοῦ βασιληίου· ταῦτα δὲ ποιήσαντες ἐπαναχωροῦσιν εἰς Μίλητον.”

Ἐν δὲ τῇ ἕκτῃ διηγησάμενος περὶ Πλαταιέων, ὡς σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ἐδίδοσαν Σπαρτιάταις, οἱ δὲ μᾶλλον ἐκέλευσαν πρὸς Ἀθηναίους τρέπεσθαι “πλησιοχώρους ἐόντας αὐτοῖς καὶ τιμωρέειν οὐ κακούς,” προστίθησιν οὐ καθ’ ὑπόνοιαν οὐδὲ δόξαν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀκριβῶς ἐπιστάμενος, ὅτι “ταῦτα συνεβούλευον οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι οὐ κατ’ εὔνοιαν οὕτω τῶν Πλαταιέων, ὡς βουλόμενοι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους [e] ἔχειν πόνους συνεστεῶτας Βοιωτοῖς.” οὐκοῦν εἰ μὴ κακοήθης Ἡρόδοτος, ἐπίβουλοι μὲν Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ κακοήθεις, ἀναίσθητοι δ’ Ἀθηναῖοι παρακρουσθέντες, Πλαταιεῖς δ’ οὐ κατ’ εὔνοιαν οὐδὲ τιμὴν ἀλλὰ πολέμου πρόφασις εἰς μέσον ἐρρίφησαν.

Καὶ μὴν τὴν πανσέληνον ἤδη σαφῶς ἐξελήλεγκται Λακεδαιμονίων καταψευδόμενος, ἥν φησι περιμένοντας αὐτοὺς εἰς Μαραθῶνα μὴ βοηθῆσαι τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἄλλας μυρίας ἐξόδους καὶ μάχας πεποίηνται μηνὸς ἱσταμένου, μὴ περιμείναντες [f] τὴν πανσέληνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ταύτης τῆς μάχης, ἕκτῃ Βοηδρομιῶνος ἱσταμένου γενομένης, ὀλίγον ἀπελείφθησαν, ὥστε καὶ θεάσασθαι τοὺς νεκροὺς ἐπελθόντες ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον. ἀλλ’ ὅμως ταῦτα περὶ τῆς πανσελήνου γέγραφεν, “ἀδύνατα δέ σφι τὸ παραυτίκα ποιέειν ταῦτα, οὐ βουλομένοισι λύειν τὸν νόμον· ἦν γὰρ ἱσταμένου τοῦ μηνὸς ἐνάτη· ἐνάτῃ δὲ οὐκ ἐξελεύσεσθαι ἔφασαν, οὐ πλήρεος ἐόντος τοῦ κύκλου. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν τὴν πανσέληνον ἔμενον.”

Σὺ δὲ μεταφέρεις τὴν πανσέληνον εἰς ἀρχὴν μηνὸς ἐκ διχομηνίας, καὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν ὁμοῦ καὶ τὰς ἡμέρας καὶ πάντα πράγματα συνταράσσεις. καὶ [862] [a] τὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐπαγγελλόμενος γράφειν ὡς μὴ ἀκλεᾶ γένηται, ἐσπουδακὼς δὲ περὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας διαφερόντως, οὐδὲ τὴν πρὸς Ἄγρας πομπὴν ἱστόρηκας, ἣν πέμπουσιν ἔτι νῦν τῇ ἕκτῃ χαριστήρια τῆς νίκης ἑορτάζοντες.

Ἀλλὰ τοῦτό γε βοηθεῖ τῷ Ἡροδότῳ πρὸς ἐκείνην τὴν διαβολὴν ἣν ἔχει, κολακεύσας τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἀργύριον πολὺ λαβεῖν παρ’ αὐτῶν. εἰ γὰρ ἀνέγνω ταῦτ’ Ἀθηναίοις, οὐκ ἂν εἴασαν οὐδὲ περιεῖδον ἐνάτῃ τὸν Φιλιππίδην παρακαλοῦντα Λακεδαιμονίους [b] ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην ἐκ τῆς μάχης γεγενημένον, καὶ ταῦτα δευτεραῖον εἰς Σπάρτην ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν, ὡς αὐτός φησιν, ἀφιγμένον· εἰ μὴ μετὰ τὸ νικῆσαι τοὺς πολεμίους Ἀθηναῖοι μετεπέμποντο τοὺς συμμάχους. ὅτι μέντοι δέκα τάλαντα δωρεὰν ἔλαβεν ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν Ἀνύτου τὸ ψήφισμα γράψαντος, ἀνὴρ Ἀθηναῖος, οὐ τῶν παρημελημένων ἐν ἱστορίᾳ, Δίυλλος εἴρηκεν.

Ἀπαγγείλας δὲ τὴν ἐν Μαραθῶνι μάχην ὁ Ἡρόδοτος ὡς μὲν οἱ πλεῖστοι λέγουσι, καὶ τῶν νεκρῶν τῷ ἀριθμῷ καθεῖλε τοὔργον. εὐξαμένους γάρ φασι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους τῇ Ἀγροτέρᾳ θύσειν χιμάρους ὅσους ἂν τῶν βαρβάρων καταβάλωσιν, [c] εἶτα μετὰ τὴν μάχην, ἀναρίθμου πλήθους τῶν νεκρῶν ἀναφανέντος, παραιτεῖσθαι ψηφίσματι τὴν θεόν, ὅπως καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν ἀποθύωσι πεντακοσίας τῶν χιμάρων.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τοῦτ’ ἐάσαντες ἴδωμεν τὰ μετὰ τὴν μάχην· “τῇσι δὲ λοιπῇσι,” φησίν, “οἱ βάρβαροι ἐξανακρουσάμενοι, καὶ ἀναλαβόντες ἐκ τῆς νήσου ἐν τῇ ἔλιπον τὰ ἐξ Ἐρετρίης ἀνδράποδα, περιέπλεον Σούνιον, βουλόμενοι φθῆναι τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἀφικόμενοι εἰς τὸ ἄστυ· αἰτίη δὲ ἔσχεν Ἀθηναίοισι ἐξ Ἀλκμεωνιδέων μηχανῆς αὐτοὺς ταῦτα ἐπινοηθῆναι· τούτους γὰρ συνθεμένους τοῖσι Πέρσῃσιν ἀναδεῖξαι ἀσπίδα ἐοῦσιν ἤδη ἐν τῇσι νηυσί· οὗτοι μὲν δὴ περιέπλεον Σούνιον.” ἐνταῦθα [d] τὸ μὲν τοὺς Ἐρετριέας ἀνδράποδα προσειπεῖν, οὔτε τόλμαν Ἑλλήνων οὐδενὸς οὔτε φιλοτιμίαν ἐνδεεστέραν παρασχομένους καὶ παθόντας ἀνάξια τῆς ἀρετῆς, ἀφείσθω· διαβεβλημένων δὲ τῶν Ἀλκμεωνιδῶν, ἐν οἷς οἱ μέγιστοί τε τῶν οἴκων καὶ δοκιμώτατοι τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἦσαν, ἐλάττων λόγος· ἀνατέτραπται δὲ τῆς νίκης τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ τέλος εἰς οὐδὲν ἥκει τοῦ περιβοήτου κατορθώματος, οὐδ’ ἀγών τις ἔοικεν οὐδ’ ἔργον γεγονέναι τοσοῦτον, ἀλλὰ πρόσκρουσμα βραχὺ τοῖς βαρβάροις ἀποβᾶσιν (ὥσπερ οἱ διασύροντες καὶ βασκαίνοντες λέγουσιν), εἰ μετὰ τὴν μάχην οὐ φεύγουσι κόψαντες [e] τὰ πείσματα τῶν νεῶν, τῷ φέροντι προσωτάτω τῆς Ἀττικῆς ἀνέμῳ παραδόντες αὑτούς, ἀλλ’ αἴρεται μὲν ἀσπὶς αὐτοῖς προδοσίας σημεῖον, ἐπιπλέουσι δὲ ταῖς Ἀθήναις ἐλπίζοντες αἱρήσειν, καὶ καθ’ ἡσυχίαν Σούνιον κάμψαντες ὑπεραιωροῦνται Φαλήρων οἱ δὲ πρῶτοι καὶ δοκιμώτατοι τῶν ἀνδρῶν προδιδόασιν ἀπεγνωκότες τὴν πόλιν. καὶ γὰρ ἀπολύων ὕστερον Ἀλκμεωνίδας ἑτέροις τὴν προδοσίαν ἀνατίθησιν· “ἀνεδείχθη μὲν γὰρ ἀσπίς, καὶ τοῦτο [f] οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλως εἰπεῖν,” φησὶν αὐτὸς ἰδών. τοῦτο δ’ ἀμήχανον μὲν ἦν γενέσθαι, νενικηκότων κατὰ κράτος τῶν Ἀθηναίων· γενόμενον δ’ οὐκ ἂν ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων συνώφθη, φυγῇ καὶ πόνῳ πολλῷ καὶ τραύμασι καὶ βέλεσιν εἰς τὰς ναῦς ἐλαυνομένων καὶ ἀπολιπόντων τὸ χωρίον, ὡς ἕκαστος τάχους εἶχεν. ἀλλ’ ὅταν γε πάλιν ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἀλκμεωνιδῶν ἀπολογεῖσθαι προσποιῆται, μεθεὶς ἃ πρῶτος ἀνθρώπων ἐπενήνοχεν ἐγκλήματα, καὶ εἴπῃ “θῶμα δέ μοι καὶ οὐκ ἐνδέχομαι τὸν λόγον, Ἀλκμεωνίδας ἄν ποτε ἀναδεῖξαι Πέρσῃσιν ἐκ συνθήματος ἀσπίδα, βουλομένους ὑπὸ βαρβάροισί τε εἶναι Ἀθηναίους καὶ ὑπὸ Ἱππίῃ,” κόμματός τινος ἀναμιμνήσκομαι παροιμιακοῦ·

μένε, καρκίνε, καί σε μεθήσω.

τί γὰρ ἐσπούδακας καταλαβεῖν, εἰ καταλαβὼν μεθιέναι [863] [a] μέλλεις; καὶ σὺ κατηγορεῖς, εἶτ’ ἀπολογῇ· καὶ γράφεις κατ’ ἐπιφανῶν ἀνδρῶν διαβολάς, ἃς πάλιν ἀναιρεῖς, ἀπιστῶν δὲ σεαυτῷ δηλονότι· σεαυτοῦ γὰρ ἀκήκοας λέγοντος Ἀλκμεωνίδας ἀνασχεῖν ἀσπίδα νενικημένοις καὶ φεύγουσι τοῖς βαρβάροις. καὶ μὴν ἐν οἷς περὶ Ἀλκμεωνιδῶν ἀπολογῇ σεαυτὸν ἀποφαίνεις συκοφάντην· εἰ γὰρ “μᾶλλον ἢ ὁμοίως Καλλίῃ τῷ Φαινίππου, Ἱππονίκου δὲ πατρί, φαίνονται μισοτύραννοι ἐόντες,” ὡς ἐνταῦθα γράφεις, Ἀλκμεωνίδαι, ποῦ θήσεις αὐτῶν ἐκείνην τὴν συνωμοσίαν ἣν ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις γέγραφας; ὡς ἐπιγαμίαν [b] ποιησόμενοι Πεισιστράτῳ κατήγαγον αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς φυγῆς ἐπὶ τὴν τυραννίδα καὶ οὐκ ἂν ἐξήλασαν αὖθις, ἕως διεβλήθη παρανόμως τῇ γυναικὶ μιγνύμενος.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τοιαύτας ἔχει ταραχάς· ἐν μέσῳ γὰρ τῆς Ἀλκμεωνιδῶν διαβολῆς καὶ ὑπονοίας τοῖς Καλλίου τοῦ Φαινίππου χρησάμενος ἐπαίνοις καὶ προσάψας αὐτῷ τὸν υἱὸν Ἱππόνικον, ὃς ἦν καθ’ Ἡρόδοτον ἐν τοῖς πλουσιωτάτοις Ἀθηναίων, ὡμολόγησεν ὅτι μηδὲν τῶν πραγμάτων δεομένων, ἀλλὰ θεραπείᾳ καὶ χάριτι τοῦ Ἱππονίκου τὸν Καλλίαν παρενέβαλεν.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ Ἀργείους ἅπαντες ἴσασιν οὐκ ἀπειπαμένους τοῖς Ἕλλησι τὴν συμμαχίαν, ἡγεῖσθαι δὲ κατὰ τὸ ἥμισυ πάσης τῆς συμμαχίας ἀξιώσαντας, [c] ὡς ἂν μὴ Λακεδαιμονίοις ἐχθίστοις καὶ πολεμιωτάτοις οὖσι ποιοῦντες ἀεὶ τὸ προστασσόμενον ἕπωνται, καὶ τοῦτ’ ἄλλως οὐκ ἦν, αἰτίαν κακοηθεστάτην ὑποβάλλεται, γράφων, “ἐπεὶ δέ σφεας παραλαμβάνειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας, οὕτω δὴ ἐπισταμένους, ὅτι οὐ μεταδώσουσι τῆς ἀρχῆς Λακεδαιμόνιοι, μεταιτέειν, ἵνα ἐπὶ προφάσεως ἡσυχίαν ἄγωσι.” τούτων δ’ ὕστερον ἀναμνῆσαί φησιν Ἀρταξέρξην ἀναβάντας εἰς Σοῦσα πρέσβεις Ἀργείων, κἀκεῖνον εἰπεῖν ὡς “οὐδεμίαν νομίζοι πόλιν Ἄργεος φιλιωτέρην”· εἶθ’ ὑπειπών, ὥσπερ εἴωθε, καὶ ἀναδυόμενος οὐκ εἰδέναι φησὶ περὶ τούτων ἀτρεκέως, εἰδέναι δ’ ὅτι πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐστὶν [d] ἐγκλήματα, “καὶ οὐκ Ἀργείοισιν αἴσχιστα πεποίηται. ἐγὼ δὲ λέγειν ὀφείλω τὰ λεγόμενα, πείθεσθαί γε μὴν οὐ παντάπασι ὀφείλω, καί μοι τὸ ἔπος τοῦτο ἐχέτω ἐς πάντα τὸν λόγον. ἐπεὶ καὶ ταῦτα λέγεται, ὡς ἄρα Ἀργεῖοι ἦσαν οἱ ἐπικαλεσάμενοι τὸν Πέρσην ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα, ἐπειδή σφιν πρὸς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους κακῶς ἡ αἰχμὴ ἑστήκεε, πᾶν δὴ βουλόμενοι σφίσι εἶναι πρὸ τῆς παρούσης λύπης.”

Ἆρ’ οὖν οὐχ, ὅπερ αὐτὸς τὸν Αἰθίοπά φησι πρὸς [e] τὰ μύρα καὶ τὴν πορφύραν εἰπεῖν, ὡς δολερὰ μὲν τὰ χρίματα δολερὰ δὲ τὰ εἵματα τῶν Περσέων ἐστί, τοῦτ’ ἄν τις εἴποι πρὸς αὐτόν, ὡς δολερὰ μὲν τὰ ῥήματα δολερὰ δὲ τὰ σχήματα τῶν Ἡροδότου λόγων,

ἑλικτὰ κοὐδὲν ὑγιὲς ἀλλὰ πᾶν πέριξ,

ὥσπερ οἱ ζῳγράφοι τὰ λαμπρὰ τῇ σκιᾷ τρανότερα ποιοῦσιν, οὕτω ταῖς ἀρνήσεσι τὰς διαβολὰς ἐπιτείνοντος αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰς ὑπονοίας ταῖς ἀμφιβολίαις βαθυτέρας ποιοῦντος; Ἀργεῖοι δ’ ὅτι μὲν οὐ συναράμενοι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν ἡγεμονίαν [f] καὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς Λακεδαιμονίοις ἐκστάντες, κατῄσχυναν τὸν Ἡρακλέα καὶ τὴν εὐγένειαν, οὐκ ἔστιν ἀντειπεῖν. ὑπὸ Σιφνίοις γὰρ ἦν καὶ Κυθνίοις ἄμεινον ἐλευθεροῦν τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἢ Σπαρτιάταις φιλονεικοῦντας ὑπὲρ ἀρχῆς ἐγκαταλιπεῖν τοσούτους καὶ τοιούτους ἀγῶνας. εἰ δ’ αὐτοὶ ἦσαν οἱ ἐπικαλεσάμενοι τὸν Πέρσην ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα διὰ τὴν κακῶς ἑστῶσαν αὐτοῖς αἰχμὴν πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους, πῶς οὐκ ἐμήδιζον ἀναφανδὸν ἥκοντος οὐδ’, εἰ μὴ συστρατεύειν ἐβούλοντο βασιλεῖ, τὴν γοῦν Λακωνικὴν ὑπολειπόμενοι κακῶς ἐποίουν, ἢ Θυρέας ἥπτοντο πάλιν ἢ τρόπον ἄλλον ἀντελαμβάνοντο καὶ [864] [a] παρηνώχλουν Λακεδαιμονίοις, μέγα βλάψαι δυνάμενοι τοὺς Ἕλληνας, εἰ μὴ παρῆκαν εἰς Πλαταιὰς ἐκείνους ἐκστρατεῦσαι τοσούτοις ὁπλίταις;

Ἀλλ’ Ἀθηναίους γε μεγάλους ἐνταῦθα τῷ λόγῳ πεποίηκε καὶ σωτῆρας ἀνηγόρευκε τῆς Ἑλλάδος· ὀρθῶς γε ποιῶν καὶ δικαίως, εἰ μὴ πολλὰ καὶ βλάσφημα προσῆν τοῖς ἐπαίνοις. νῦν δὲ προδοθῆναι μὲν ἂν λέγων ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων Λακεδαιμονίους, “μονωθέντας δ’ ἂν καὶ ἀποδεξαμένους ἔργα μεγάλα ἀποθανεῖν γενναίως, ἢ πρὸ τούτου ὁρῶντας καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους Ἕλληνας μηδίζοντας ὁμολογίῃ ἂν χρήσασθαι πρὸς Ξέρξεα,” δῆλός ἐστιν οὐ τοῦτο λέγων εἰς τὸν Ἀθηναίων ἔπαινον, ἀλλ’ [b] Ἀθηναίους ἐπαινῶν ἵνα κακῶς εἴπῃ τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας. τί γὰρ ἄν τις ἔτι δυσχεραίνοι, Θηβαίους ἀεὶ καὶ Φωκέας πικρῶς αὐτοῦ καὶ κατακόρως ἐξονειδίζοντος, ὅπου καὶ τῶν προκινδυνευσάντων ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος τὴν γενομένην μὲν οὐ, γενομένην δ’ ἄν, ὡς αὐτὸς εἰκάζει, καταψηφίζεται προδοσίαν; αὐτοὺς δὲ Λακεδαιμονίους ἐν ἀδήλῳ θέμενος, ἐπηπόρησεν εἴτ’ ἔπεσον ἂν μαχόμενοι τοῖς πολεμίοις εἴτε παρέδωκαν ἑαυτούς, μικροῖς γε νὴ Δία τεκμηρίοις αὐτῶν ἀπιστήσας τοῖς περὶ Θερμοπύλας.

[c] Διηγούμενος δὲ συμπεσοῦσαν ναυαγίαν ταῖς βασιλικαῖς ναυσὶ καὶ ὅτι “πολλῶν χρημάτων ἐκπεσόντων, Ἀμεινοκλῆς ὁ Κρητίνεω Μάγνης ἀνὴρ ὠφελήθη μεγάλως, χρυσία ἄφατα καὶ χρήματα περιβαλόμενος,” οὐδὲ τοῦτον ἄδηκτον παρῆκεν. “ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν τἄλλα,” φησίν, “οὐκ εὐτυχέων εὑρήμασι μέγα πλούσιος ἐγένετο· ἦν γάρ τις καὶ τοῦτον ἄχαρις συμφορὴ λυπεῦσα παιδοφόνος.” τοῦτο μὲν οὖν παντὶ δῆλον, ὅτι τὰ χρυσᾶ χρήματα καὶ τὰ εὑρήματα καὶ τὸν ἐκβρασσόμενον ὑπὸ τῆς θαλάσσης πλοῦτον ἐπεισήγαγε τῇ ἱστορίᾳ χώραν καὶ τόπον ποιῶν, ἐν ᾧ θήσεται τὴν Ἀμεινοκλέους παιδοφονίαν.

[d] Ἀριστοφάνους δὲ τοῦ Βοιωτοῦ γράψαντος ὅτι χρήματα μὲν αἰτήσας οὐκ ἔλαβε παρὰ Θηβαίων, ἐπιχειρῶν δὲ τοῖς νέοις διαλέγεσθαι καὶ συσχολάζειν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχόντων ἐκωλύθη δι’ ἀγροικίαν αὐτῶν καὶ μισολογίαν, ἄλλο μὲν οὐδέν ἐστι τεκμήριον· ὁ δ’ Ἡρόδοτος τῷ Ἀριστοφάνει μεμαρτύρηκε, δι’ ὧν τὰ μὲν ψευδῶς, τὰ δὲ διὰ κολακείαν, τὰ δὲ ὡς μισῶν καὶ διαφερόμενος τοῖς Θηβαίοις ἐγκέκληκε.

Θεσσαλοὺς μὲν γὰρ ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ἀποφαίνεται [e] μηδίσαι τὸ πρῶτον, ἀληθῆ λέγων· καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων μαντευόμενος ὡς προδόντων ἂν Λακεδαιμονίους ὑπεῖπεν ὡς “οὐχ ἑκόντων ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ἁλισκομένων κατὰ πόλεις.” Θηβαίοις δὲ τῆς αὐτῆς ἀνάγκης οὐ δίδωσι τὴν αὐτὴν συγγνώμην. καίτοι πεντακοσίους μὲν εἰς τὰ Τέμπη καὶ Μναμίαν στρατηγὸν ἔπεμψαν, εἰς δὲ Θερμοπύλας ὅσους ᾔτησε Λεωνίδας, οἳ καὶ μόνοι σὺν Θεσπιεῦσι παρέμειναν αὐτῷ, τῶν ἄλλων ἀπολιπόντων μετὰ τὴν κύκλωσιν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν παρόδων κρατήσας ὁ βάρβαρος [f] ἐν τοῖς ὅροις ἦν καὶ Δημάρατος ὁ Σπαρτιάτης διὰ ξενίας εὔνους ὢν Ἀτταγίνῳ τῷ προεστῶτι τῆς ὀλιγαρχίας διεπράξατο φίλον βασιλέως γενέσθαι καὶ ξένον, οἱ δ’ Ἕλληνες ἐν ταῖς ναυσὶν ἦσαν, πεζῇ δ’ οὐδεὶς προσήλαυνεν, οὕτω προσεδέξαντο τὰς διαλύσεις ὑπὸ τῆς μεγάλης ἀνάγκης ἐγκαταληφθέντες. οὔτε γὰρ θάλασσα καὶ νῆες αὐτοῖς παρῆσαν ὡς Ἀθηναίοις, οὔτ’ ἀπωτάτω κατῴκουν ὡς Σπαρτιᾶται τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐν μυχῷ, μιᾶς δ’ ἡμέρας ὁδὸν καὶ ἡμισείας ἀπέχοντι τῷ Μήδῳ συστάντες ἐπὶ τῶν στενῶν καὶ διαγωνισάμενοι μετὰ μόνων Σπαρτιατῶν [865] [a] καὶ Θεσπιέων ἠτύχησαν. ὁ δὲ συγγραφεὺς οὕτως ἐστὶ δίκαιος, ὥστε “Λακεδαιμονίους μὲν μονωθέντας καὶ γενομένους συμμάχων ἐρήμους τυχὸν ἄν,” φησιν, “ὁμολογίῃ χρήσασθαι πρὸς Ξέρξεα”· Θηβαίοις δὲ ταὐτὸ διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀνάγκην παθοῦσι λοιδορεῖται. τὸ δὲ μέγιστον καὶ κάλλιστον ἔργον ἀνελεῖν μὴ δυνηθεὶς ὡς οὐ πραχθὲν αὐτοῖς, αἰτίᾳ φαύλῃ καὶ ὑπονοίᾳ διαλυμαινόμενος ταῦτ’ ἔγραφεν· “οἱ μέν νυν ξύμμαχοι ἀποπεμπόμενοι ᾤχοντό τε ἀπιόντες καὶ ἐπείθοντο Λεωνίδῃ· Θεσπιέες δὲ καὶ Θηβαῖοι κατέμειναν μοῦνοι παρὰ Λακεδαιμονίοισι.

[b] τούτων δὲ Θηβαῖοι μὲν ἀέκοντες ἔμενον καὶ οὐ βουλόμενοι· κατεῖχε γάρ σφεας Λεωνίδης ἐν ὁμήρων λόγῳ ποιεύμενος· Θεσπιέες δὲ ἑκόντες μάλιστα, οἳ οὐδαμᾶ ἔφασαν ἀπολιπόντες Λεωνίδην καὶ τοὺς μετὰ τούτου ἀπαλλάξεσθαι.”

Εἶτ’ οὐ δῆλός ἐστιν ἰδίαν τινὰ πρὸς Θηβαίους ἔχων ὀργὴν καὶ δυσμένειαν, ὑφ’ ἧς οὐ μόνον διέβαλε ψευδῶς καὶ ἀδίκως τὴν πόλιν, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τοῦ πιθανοῦ τῆς διαβολῆς ἐφρόντισεν, οὐδ’ ὅπως αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ τἀναντία λέγων παρ’ ὀλίγους ἀνθρώπους οὐ φανεῖται συνειδώς; προειπὼν γὰρ ὡς “ὁ Λεωνίδης, [c] ἐπεί τ’ ᾔσθετο τοὺς συμμάχους ἐόντας ἀπροθύμους καὶ οὐκ ἐθέλοντας συγκινδυνεύειν, κελεύσαι σφέας ἀπαλλάττεσθαι,” πάλιν μετ’ ὀλίγον λέγει τοὺς Θηβαίους ἄκοντας αὐτὸν κατασχεῖν, οὓς εἰκὸς ἦν ἀπελάσαι καὶ βουλομένους παραμένειν, εἰ μηδίζειν αἰτίαν εἶχον. ὅπου γὰρ οὐκ ἐδεῖτο τῶν μὴ προθύμων, τί χρήσιμον ἦν ἀναμεμίχθαι μαχομένοις ἀνθρώπους ὑπόπτους; οὐ γὰρ δὴ φρένας εἶχε τοιαύτας ὁ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν βασιλεὺς καὶ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἡγεμών, ὥστε “κατέχειν ἐν ὁμήρων λόγῳ” τοῖς τριακοσίοις τοὺς τετρακοσίους ὅπλ’ ἔχοντας καὶ προσκειμένων ἔμπροσθεν ἤδη καὶ ὄπισθεν ἅμα τῶν πολεμίων. καὶ γὰρ εἰ πρότερον ἐν [d] ὁμήρων λόγῳ ποιούμενος ἦγεν αὐτούς, ἔν γε τοῖς ἐσχάτοις εἰκὸς ἦν καιροῖς ἐκείνους τε Λεωνίδα μηδὲν φροντίσαντας ἀπαλλαγῆναι καὶ Λεωνίδαν δεῖσαι τὴν ὑπ’ ἐκείνων μᾶλλον ἢ τῶν βαρβάρων κύκλωσιν.

Ἄνευ δὲ τούτων, πῶς οὐ γελοῖος ὁ Λεωνίδας, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους Ἕλληνας ἀπιέναι κελεύων ὡς αὐτίκα μάλα τεθνηξομένους, Θηβαίους δὲ κωλύων ὡς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ φυλάττοιντο τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἀποθνήσκειν μέλλοντος; εἰ γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐν ὁμήρων λόγῳ, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀνδραπόδων, περιῆγε τοὺς ἄνδρας, οὐ κατέχειν ὤφειλεν αὐτοὺς μετὰ τῶν ἀπολουμένων, ἀλλὰ παραδοῦναι τοῖς ἀπιοῦσι τῶν Ἑλλήνων.

[e] ὃ δὲ λοιπὸν ἦν τῶν αἰτίων εἰπεῖν, “ἴσως δὲ ἀπολουμένους κατεῖχε,” καὶ τοῦτ’ ἀνῄρηκεν ὁ συγγραφεύς, οἷς περὶ τῆς φιλοτιμίας τοῦ Λεωνίδου κατὰ λέξιν εἴρηκε· “ταῦτα δὲ δὴ ἐπιλεγόμενον Λεωνίδεα καὶ βουλόμενον καταθέσθαι κλέος μούνων Σπαρτιητέων ἀποπέμψαι τοὺς συμμάχους μᾶλλον ἢ τῇσι γνώμῃσι διενεχθέντας.” ὑπερβολὴ γὰρ εὐηθείας ἦν, ἧς ἀπήλαυνε δόξης τοὺς συμμάχους [f] κατέχειν μεθέξοντας τοὺς πολεμίους. ὅτι τοίνυν οὐ διεβέβλητο τοῖς Θηβαίοις ὁ Λεωνίδας, ἀλλὰ καὶ φίλους ἐνόμιζε βεβαίους, ἐκ τῶν πεπραγμένων δῆλόν ἐστι. καὶ γὰρ παρῆλθεν εἰς Θήβας ἄγων τὸ στράτευμα καὶ δεηθεὶς ἔτυχεν οὗ μηδὲ εἷς ἄλλος, ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ κατακοιμηθῆναι τοῦ Ἡρακλέους, καὶ τὴν ὄψιν ἣν εἶδεν ὄναρ ἐξήγγειλε τοῖς Θηβαίοις· ἔδοξε γὰρ ἐν θαλάσσῃ πολὺν ἐχούσῃ καὶ τραχὺν κλύδωνα τὰς ἐπιφανεστάτας καὶ μεγίστας πόλεις τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀνωμάλως διαφέρεσθαι καὶ σαλεύειν, τὴν δὲ Θηβαίων ὑπερέχειν τε πασῶν καὶ μετέωρον ἀρθῆναι πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν εἶτ’ ἐξαίφνης ἀφανῆ γενέσθαι· καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἦν ὅμοια τοῖς ὕστερον χρόνῳ πολλῷ συμπεσοῦσι περὶ τὴν πόλιν.

[866] [a] Ὁ δ’ Ἡρόδοτος ἐν τῇ διηγήσει τῆς μάχης καὶ τοῦ Λεωνίδου τὴν μεγίστην ἠμαύρωκε πρᾶξιν, αὐτοῦ πεσεῖν πάντας εἰπὼν ἐν τοῖς στενοῖς περὶ τὸν Κολωνόν· ἐπράχθη δ’ ἄλλως. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐπύθοντο νύκτωρ τὴν περίοδον τῶν πολεμίων, ἀναστάντες ἐβάδιζον ἐπὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον καὶ τὴν σκηνὴν ὀλίγου δεῖν βασιλέως, ὡς ἐκεῖνον αὐτὸν ἀποκτενοῦντες καὶ περὶ ἐκείνῳ τεθνηξόμενοι· μέχρι μὲν οὖν τῆς σκηνῆς ἀεὶ τὸν ἐμποδὼν φονεύοντες, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους τρεπόμενοι προῆλθον· ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐχ εὑρίσκετο Ξέρξης, [b] ζητοῦντες ἐν μεγάλῳ καὶ ἀχανεῖ στρατεύματι καὶ πλανώμενοι μόλις ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων πανταχόθεν περιχυθέντων διεφθάρησαν. ὅσα δ’ ἄλλα πρὸς τούτῳ τολμήματα καὶ ῥήματα τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν παραλέλοιπεν, ἐν τῷ Λεωνίδου βίῳ γραφήσεται· μικρὰ δ’ οὐ χεῖρόν ἐστι καὶ νῦν διελθεῖν. ἀγῶνα μὲν γὰρ ἐπιτάφιον αὐτῶν ἠγωνίσαντο πρὸ τῆς ἐξόδου καὶ τοῦτον ἐθεῶντο πατέρες αὐτῶν καὶ μητέρες· αὐτὸς δ’ ὁ Λεωνίδας πρὸς μὲν τὸν εἰπόντα παντελῶς ὀλίγους ἐξάγειν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην “πολλοὺς μέν,” ἔφη, “τεθνηξομένους”· πρὸς δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα, πυνθανομένην ἐξιόντος εἴ τι λέγοι, [c] μεταστραφεὶς εἶπεν· “ἀγαθοῖς γαμεῖσθαι κἀγαθὰ τίκτειν.” ἐν δὲ Θερμοπύλαις μετὰ τὴν κύκλωσιν δύο τῶν ἀπὸ γένους ὑπεξελέσθαι βουλόμενος ἐπιστολὴν ἐδίδου τῷ ἑτέρῳ καὶ ἔπεμπεν· ὁ δ’ οὐκ ἐδέξατο φήσας μετ’ ὀργῆς· “μαχατάς τοι, οὐκ ἀγγελιαφόρος, εἱπόμαν”· τὸν δ’ ἕτερον ἐκέλευεν εἰπεῖν τι πρὸς τὰ τέλη τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν· ὁ δ’ ἀπεκρίνατο, ‹”κρείσσων ἐγὼ μένων καὶ κρείσσον’ ἐμοῦ μένοντος› τὰ πράγματα,” καὶ τὴν ἀσπίδα λαβὼν εἰς τάξιν κατέστη.

Ταῦτ’ οὐκ ἄν τις ἐπετίμησεν ἄλλου παραλιπόντος· ὁ δὲ τὴν Ἀμάσιδος ἀποψόφησιν καὶ τὴν τῶν ὄνων τοῦ κλέπτου προσέλασιν καὶ τὴν τῶν ἀσκῶν ἐπίδοσιν καὶ πόλλ’ ἄλλα τοιαῦτα συναγαγὼν καὶ [d] διαμνημονεύων, οὐκ ἀμελείᾳ δόξειεν ἂν καὶ ὑπεροψίᾳ προΐεσθαι καλὰ μὲν ἔργα καλὰς δὲ φωνάς, ἀλλ’ οὐκ εὐμενὴς ὢν πρὸς ἐνίους οὐδὲ δίκαιος.

Τοὺς δὲ Θηβαίους πρῶτον μέν φησι “μετὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐόντας μάχεσθαι ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ἐχομένους”· οὐ γὰρ μόνον Ξέρξης, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Λεωνίδας μαστιγοφόρους εἶχεν ἑπομένους, ὑφ’ ὧν οἱ Θηβαῖοι παρὰ γνώμην ἠναγκάζοντο μαστιγούμενοι μάχεσθαι. καὶ τίς ἂν ὠμότερος τούτου γένοιτο συκοφάντης, ὃς μάχεσθαι μὲν ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης φησὶ τοὺς ἀπελθεῖν καὶ φεύγειν δυναμένους, μηδίσαι δ’ ἑκόντας οἷς οὐδεὶς παρῆν βοηθῶν; ἑξῆς δὲ τούτοις γέγραφεν ὅτι “τῶν ἄλλων ἐπειγομένων [e] ἐπὶ τὸν Κολωνὸν ἀποσχισθέντες οἱ Θηβαῖοι χεῖράς τε προέτειναν καὶ ᾖσαν ἆσσον τῶν βαρβάρων, λέγοντες τὸν ἀληθέστατον τῶν λόγων, ὡς μηδίσειαν καὶ γῆν τε καὶ ὕδωρ ἔδοσαν βασιλεῖ, ὑπὸ δ’ ἀνάγκης ἐχόμενοι εἰς Θερμοπύλας ἀπικέατο καὶ ἀναίτιοι εἶεν τοῦ τρώματος τοῦ γενομένου βασιλεῖ· ταῦτα λέγοντες περιεγένοντο· εἶχον γὰρ καὶ Θεσσαλοὺς τούτων τῶν λόγων μάρτυρας.” ὅρα διὰ τοσούτων ἐν βαρβάροις κραυγαῖς καὶ παμμιγέσι θορύβοις καὶ φυγαῖς καὶ διώξεσιν ἀκουομένην δικαιολογίαν καὶ μαρτύρων ἀνάκρισιν καὶ Θεσσαλοὺς μεταξὺ τῶν φονευομένων καὶ πατουμένων ὑπ’ [f] ἀλλήλων παρὰ τὰ στενὰ Θηβαίοις συνδικοῦντας, ὅτι τῆς Ἑλλάδος αὐτοὺς κρατοῦντας ἄχρι Θεσπιέων ἔναγχος ἐξήλασαν μάχῃ περιγενόμενοι καὶ τὸν ἄρχοντα Λατταμύαν ἀποκτείναντες. ταῦτα γὰρ ὑπῆρχε Βοιωτοῖς τότε καὶ Θεσσαλοῖς πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἐπιεικὲς δὲ καὶ φιλάνθρωπον οὐδέν.

Ἀλλὰ δὴ τῶν Θεσσαλῶν μαρτυρούντων, πῶς περιεγένοντο Θηβαῖοι; “τοὺς μὲν αὐτῶν ἀπέκτειναν οἱ βάρβαροι προσιόντας,” ὡς αὐτὸς εἴρηκε, “τοὺς δὲ πλεῦνας, κελεύσαντος Ξέρξεω, ἔστιξαν στίγματα βασιλήια, ἀρξάμενοι ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ [867] [a] Λεοντιάδεω.” ἀλλ’ οὔτε Λεοντιάδης ἐν Θερμοπύλαις ἦν στρατηγός, ἀλλ’ Ἀνάξανδρος, ὡς Ἀριστοφάνης ἐκ τῶν κατ’ ἄρχοντας ὑπομνημάτων ἱστόρησε καὶ Νίκανδρος ὁ Κολοφώνιος· οὔτε γινώσκει τις ἀνθρώπων πρὸ Ἡροδότου στιχθέντας ὑπὸ Ξέρξου Θηβαίους. ἐπεὶ μέγιστον ἦν ἀπολόγημα τῆς διαβολῆς καὶ καλῶς εἶχε τὴν πόλιν ἀγάλλεσθαι τοῖς στίγμασιν ἐκείνοις, ὡς Ξέρξου δικάσαντος ἐχθίστοις χρήσασθαι Λεωνίδῃ καὶ Λεοντιάδῃ· τοῦ μὲν γὰρ ᾐκίσατο πεπτωκότος τὸ σῶμα, τοῦ δὲ ζῶντος ἔστιξεν. ὁ δὲ τὴν μὲν εἰς Λεωνίδαν ὠμότητα [b] δήλωμα ποιούμενος, ὅτι μάλιστα δὴ ἀνδρῶν ὁ βάρβαρος ἐθυμώθη ζῶντι Λεωνίδῃ, Θηβαίους δὲ καὶ μηδίζοντας λέγων ἐν Θερμοπύλαις στιχθῆναι καὶ στιχθέντας αὖθις ἐν Πλαταιαῖς μηδίζειν προθύμως δοκεῖ μοι, καθάπερ Ἱπποκλείδης ὁ τοῖς σκέλεσι χειρονομῶν ἐπὶ τῆς τραπέζης, εἰπεῖν ἂν ἐξορχούμενος τὴν ἀλήθειαν· “οὐ φροντὶς Ἡροδότῳ.”

Ἐν δὲ τῇ ὀγδόῃ τοὺς Ἕλληνάς φησι καταδειλιάσαντας ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀρτεμισίου δρησμὸν βουλεύεσθαι ἔσω εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα, καὶ τῶν Εὐβοέων δεομένων ὀλίγον ἐπιμεῖναι χρόνον, ὅπως ὑπεκθοῖντο γενεὰς καὶ τὸ οἰκετικόν, ὀλιγωρεῖν, ἄχρι οὗ [c] Θεμιστοκλῆς ἀργύριον λαβὼν Εὐρυβιάδῃ τε μετέδωκε καὶ Ἀδειμάντῳ τῷ Κορινθίων στρατηγῷ· τότε δὲ μεῖναι καὶ διαναυμαχῆσαι πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους. ὁ μὲν Πίνδαρος, οὐκ ὢν συμμάχου πόλεως ἀλλὰ μηδίζειν αἰτίαν ἐχούσης, ὅμως τοῦ Ἀρτεμισίου μνησθεὶς ἐπιπεφώνηκεν·

ὅθι παῖδες Ἀθαναίων ἐβάλοντο φαεννὰν

κρηπῖδ’ ἐλευθερίας.

Ἡρόδοτος δέ, ὑφ’ οὗ κεκοσμῆσθαί τινες ἀξιοῦσι τὴν Ἑλλάδα, δωροδοκίας καὶ κλοπῆς ἔργον ἀποφαίνει τὴν νίκην ἐκείνην γενομένην καὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀκουσίως ἀγωνισαμένους, ὑπὸ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἐξαπατηθέντας ἀργύριον λαβόντων. καὶ τοῦτο τὸ [d] πέρας οὐ γέγονεν αὐτῷ τῆς κακοηθείας· ἀλλὰ πάντες μὲν ἄνθρωποι σχεδὸν ὁμολογοῦσι ταῖς ναυμαχίαις αὐτόθι κρατοῦντας τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὅμως ὑφέσθαι τοῦ Ἀρτεμισίου τοῖς βαρβάροις, τὰ περὶ Θερμοπύλας ἀκούσαντας· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἦν ὄφελος ἐνταῦθα καθημένους φρουρεῖν τὴν θάλασσαν, ἐντὸς Πυλῶν τοῦ πολέμου γεγονότος καὶ Ξέρξου τῶν παρόδων κρατοῦντος. Ἡρόδοτος δέ, πρὶν ἀπαγγελῆναι τὸν Λεωνίδου θάνατον, ἤδη ποιεῖ τοὺς Ἕλληνας βουλευομένους ἀποδιδράσκειν· λέγει δ’ οὕτως· “τρηχέως δὲ περιεφθέντες, καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα [e] Ἀθηναῖοι, τῶν αἱ ἡμίσειαι τῶν νεῶν τετρωμέναι ἦσαν, δρησμὸν ἐβούλευον εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα.” καίτοι τὴν πρὸ τοῦ ἀγῶνος ἀναχώρησιν οὕτως ὀνομάσαι, μᾶλλον δ’ ὀνειδίσαι, δεδόσθω· ὁ δὲ καὶ πρότερον δρασμὸν εἶπε καὶ νῦν δρασμὸν ὀνομάζει καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγον πάλιν ἐρεῖ δρασμόν· οὕτω πικρῶς τῷ ῥήματι προσπέφυκε. “τοῖς δὲ βαρβάροισιν αὐτίκα μετὰ ταῦτα πλοίῳ ἦλθεν ἀνὴρ Ἑστιαιεύς, ἀγγέλλων τὸν δρησμὸν τὸν ἀπ’ Ἀρτεμισίου τῶν Ἑλλήνων· οἱ δὲ ὑπὸ ἀπιστίης τὸν μὲν ἀγγέλλοντα εἶχον ἐν φυλακῇ, νέας δὲ ταχείας ἀπέστειλαν προκατοψομένας.”

Τί σὺ λέγεις; ἀποδιδράσκειν ὡς κεκρατημένους,

[f]οὓς οἱ πολέμιοι μετὰ τὴν μάχην ἀπιστοῦσι φεύγειν ὡς πολὺ κρατοῦντας; εἶτα πιστεύειν ἄξιον τούτῳ γράφοντι περὶ ἀνδρὸς ἢ πόλεως μιᾶς, ὃς ἑνὶ ῥήματι τὸ νίκημα τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἀφαιρεῖται καὶ τὸ τρόπαιον καθαιρεῖ καὶ τὰς ἐπιγραφάς, ἃς ἔθεντο παρὰ τῇ Ἀρτέμιδι τῇ Προσηῴᾳ, κόμπον ἀποφαίνει καὶ ἀλαζονείαν; ἔχει δ’ οὕτω τοὐπίγραμμα·

παντοδαπῶν ἀνδρῶν γενεὰς Ἀσίας ἀπὸ χώρας

παῖδες Ἀθηναίων τῷδέ ποτ’ ἐν πελάγει

ναυμαχίᾳ δαμάσαντες, ἐπεὶ στρατὸς ὤλετο Μήδων,

σήματα ταῦτ’ ἔθεσαν παρθένῳ Ἀρτέμιδι.

[868] [a] ἐν μὲν οὖν ταῖς μάχαις οὐκ ἔταξε τοὺς Ἕλληνας οὐδ’ ἐδήλωσεν ἣν ἑκάστη πόλις ἔχουσα χώραν ἐναυμάχησε, κατὰ δὲ τὸν ἀπόπλουν, ὃν αὐτὸς δρασμὸν προσαγορεύει, πρώτους φησὶ Κορινθίους πλεῖν ὑστάτους δ’ Ἀθηναίους.

Ἔδει μὲν οὖν μηδὲ τοῖς μηδίσασιν Ἑλλήνων ἄγαν ἐπεμβαίνειν, καὶ ταῦτα Θούριον μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων νομιζόμενον αὐτὸν δὲ Ἁλικαρνασέων περιεχόμενον, οἳ Δωριεῖς ὄντες μετὰ τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐστράτευσαν.

Ὁ δὲ τοσοῦτον ἀποδεῖ τοῦ πραότερον ὀνομάζειν

[b]τὰς τῶν μηδισάντων ἀνάγκας, ὥστε περὶ Θεσσαλῶν διηγησάμενος ὅτι Φωκεῦσιν, ἐχθροῖς καὶ πολεμίοις οὖσι, προσέπεμψαν ἐπαγγελλόμενοι τὴν χώραν αὐτῶν ἀβλαβῆ διαφυλάξειν, εἰ πεντήκοντα τάλαντα μισθὸν λάβοιεν, ταῦτα περὶ Φωκέων γέγραφεν αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν· “οἱ γὰρ Φωκεῖς μοῦνοι τῶν ταύτῃ ἀνθρώπων οὐκ ἐμήδιζον, κατ’ ἄλλο μὲν οὐδέν, ὡς ἐγὼ συμβαλλόμενος εὑρίσκω, κατὰ δὲ τὸ ἔχθος τὸ Θεσσαλῶν· εἰ δὲ Θεσσαλοὶ τὰ Ἑλλήνων ηὖξον, ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ, ἐμήδιζον ἂν οἱ Φωκεῖς.” καίτοι μετὰ μικρὸν αὐτὸς ἐρεῖ τρισκαίδεκα πόλεις τῶν Φωκέων ὑπὸ τοῦ βαρβάρου κατακεκαῦσθαι, διεφθάρθαι [c] τὴν χώραν, ἐμπεπρῆσθαι τὸ ἐν Ἄβαις ἱερόν, ἄνδρας ἀπολωλέναι καὶ γυναῖκας, ὅσοι μὴ διαφυγόντες ἔφθησαν εἰς τὸν Παρνασόν. ἀλλ’ ὅμως τοὺς τὰ ἔσχατα παθεῖν ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ προέσθαι τὸ καλὸν ὑπομείναντας εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν ἔθετο κακίαν τοῖς προθυμότατα μηδίσασι· καὶ τὰ ἔργα τῶν ἀνδρῶν ψέξαι μὴ δυνηθείς, αἰτίας ἐκάθητο φαύλας καὶ ὑπονοίας ἐπὶ τοῦ γραφείου συντιθεὶς κατ’ αὐτῶν καὶ κελεύων οὐκ ἀφ’ ὧν ἔπραξαν, ἀλλ’ ἀφ’ ὧν ἔπραξαν ἂν εἰ μὴ ταῦτα Θεσσαλοῖς ἔδοξε, κρίνεσθαι τὴν διάνοιαν αὐτῶν, ὥσπερ χώρας ἀντειλημμένης [d] ὑφ’ ἑτέρων τῆς προδοσίας ἀπολειφθέντας.

Εἰ τοίνυν Θεσσαλούς τις ἐπιχειρεῖ τοῦ μηδισμοῦ παραιτεῖσθαι, λέγων ὡς οὐ ταῦτ’ ἐβούλοντο, τῇ δὲ πρὸς Φωκέας διαφορᾷ τοῖς Ἕλλησι προστιθεμένους ὁρῶντες αὐτοὶ παρὰ γνώμην ἐμήδισαν, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν αἴσχιστα κολακεύειν ἔδοξε καὶ πρὸς ἑτέρων χάριν αἰτίας χρηστὰς ἐπὶ πράγμασι φαύλοις πορίζων διαστρέφειν τὴν ἀλήθειαν; ἐγὼ μὲν οἶμαι. πῶς οὖν οὐ περιφανέστατα δόξει συκοφαντεῖν ὁ μὴ δι’ ἀρετὴν τὰ βέλτιστα Φωκεῖς ἑλομένους ἀποφαινόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τἀναντία Θεσσαλοὺς ἔγνωσαν φρονοῦντας; [e] οὐδὲ γὰρ εἰς ἑτέρους, ὥσπερ εἴωθεν, ἀνάγει τὴν διαβολὴν ἀκηκοέναι λέγων ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς εὑρίσκειν συμβαλλόμενος. εἰπεῖν οὖν ἔδει τὰ τεκμήρια, δι’ ὧν ἐπείσθη τοὺς ὅμοια πράττοντας τοῖς ἀρίστοις ταὐτὰ τοῖς φαυλοτάτοις διανοηθῆναι.

Τὸ γὰρ τῆς ἔχθρας γελοῖόν ἐστιν· οὔτε γὰρ Αἰγινήτας ἐκώλυσεν ἡ πρὸς Ἀθηναίους διαφορὰ καὶ Χαλκιδεῖς ἡ πρὸς Ἐρετριέας καὶ Κορινθίους ἡ πρὸς Μεγαρέας τῇ Ἑλλάδι συμμαχεῖν· οὐδ’ αὖ πάλιν Θεσσαλοὺς μηδίζοντες οἱ πολεμιώτατοι Μακεδόνες τῆς πρὸς τὸν βάρβαρον φιλίας ἀπέστρεψαν. τὰς γὰρ ἰδίας ἀπεχθείας ὁ κοινὸς ἀπέκρυψε κίνδυνος, ὥστε τῶν ἄλλων παθῶν ἐκπεσόντας ἢ τῷ καλῷ δι’ [f] ἀρετὴν ἢ τῷ συμφέροντι δι’ ἀνάγκην προστίθεσθαι τὴν γνώμην. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ μετὰ τὴν ἀνάγκην ἐκείνην, ᾗ κατελήφθησαν ὑπὸ Μήδοις γενέσθαι, πάλιν μετεβάλοντο πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας οἱ ἄνδρες, καὶ Λακράτης μὲν αὐτοῖς ὁ Σπαρτιάτης ἄντικρυς ἐμαρτύρησεν· αὐτὸς δ’ ὁ Ἡρόδοτος ὥσπερ ἐκβιασθεὶς ἐν τοῖς Πλαταιικοῖς ὁμολογεῖ καὶ Φωκέας παραγενέσθαι τοῖς Ἕλλησιν.

Οὐ δεῖ δὲ θαυμάζειν εἰ τοῖς ἀτυχήσασιν ἔγκειται πικρῶς, ὅπου καὶ τοὺς παραγενομένους [869] [a] καὶ συγκινδυνεύσαντας εἰς τὴν τῶν πολεμίων μερίδα καὶ προδοτῶν μετατίθησι. “Νάξιοι γὰρ τρεῖς ἔπεμψαν τριήρεις συμμάχους τοῖς βαρβάροις, εἷς δὲ τῶν τριηράρχων Δημόκριτος ἔπεισε τοὺς ἄλλους ἑλέσθαι τὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων.” οὕτως οὐδ’ ἐπαινεῖν ἄνευ τοῦ ψέγειν οἶδεν, ἀλλ’ ἵν’ εἷς ἀνὴρ ἐγκωμιασθῇ, πόλιν ὅλην δεῖ κακῶς ἀκοῦσαι καὶ δῆμον. μαρτυρεῖ δ’ αὐτοῖς τῶν μὲν πρεσβυτέρων Ἑλλάνικος τῶν δὲ νεωτέρων Ἔφορος, ὁ μὲν ἓξ ὁ δὲ πέντε ναυσὶ τοὺς Ναξίους ἐλθεῖν τοῖς Ἕλλησι βοηθοῦντας ἱστορήσας. αὐτὸς δὲ καὶ παντάπασιν ἑαυτὸν ὁ Ἡρόδοτος ἐξελέγχει ταῦτα πλαττόμενον.

[b] οἱ μὲν γὰρ Ναξίων ὡρογράφοι λέγουσι καὶ πρότερον Μεγαβάτην ἀπώσασθαι ναυσὶ διακοσίαις ἐπιπλεύσαντα τῇ νήσῳ, καὶ Δᾶτιν αὖθις τὸν στρατηγὸν ἐξελάσαι καταπρήσαντα ‹τὰ ἱερά, αὐτοὺς δὲ Ναξίους οὐδὲν ἐπιχειρήσαντα› ποιῆσαι κακόν. εἰ δέ, ὡς Ἡρόδοτος εἴρηκεν ἀλλαχόθι, τὴν μὲν πόλιν αὐτῶν ἐμπρήσαντες διέφθειραν, οἱ δ’ ἄνθρωποι καταφυγόντες εἰς τὰ ὄρη διεσώθησαν, ἦπου καλὴν αἰτίαν εἶχον τοῖς ἀπολέσασι τὴν πατρίδα πέμπειν βοήθειαν, ἀλλὰ μὴ τοῖς ἀμυνομένοις ὑπὲρ τῆς κοινῆς ἐλευθερίας ἀμύνειν. ὅτι δ’ οὐκ ἐπαινέσαι βουληθεὶς Δημόκριτον, ἀλλ’ ἐπ’ αἰσχύνῃ Ναξίων [c] συνέθηκε τὸ ψεῦδος, δῆλός ἐστι τῷ παραλιπεῖν ὅλως καὶ παρασιωπῆσαι τὸ Δημοκρίτου κατόρθωμα καὶ τὴν ἀριστείαν, ἣν ἐπιγράμματι Σιμωνίδης ἐδήλωσε

Δημόκριτος τρίτος ἦρξε μάχης, ὅτε πὰρ Σαλαμῖνα

Ἕλληνες Μήδοις σύμβαλον ἐν πελάγει·

πέντε δὲ νῆας ἕλεν δηίων, ἕκτην δ’ ὑπὸ χεῖρα

ῥύσατο βαρβαρικὴν Δωρίδ’ ἁλισκομένην.

Ἀλλὰ τί ἄν τις ἀγανακτοίη περὶ Ναξίων; εἰ γάρ εἰσιν ἀντίποδες ἡμῶν, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι λέγουσι, τῆς γῆς τὰ κάτω περιοικοῦντες, οἶμαι μηδ’ ἐκείνους ἀνηκόους εἶναι Θεμιστοκλέους καὶ τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους βουλεύματος, ὃ βουλεύσας τῇ Ἑλλάδι ναυμαχῆσαι [d] πρὸ τῆς Σαλαμῖνος ἱδρύσατο ναὸν Ἀριστοβούλης Ἀρτέμιδος ἐν Μελίτῃ, τοῦ βαρβάρου καταπολεμηθέντος. τοῦτο μὲν τοῦ Θεμιστοκλέους ὁ χαρίεις συγγραφεὺς ὅσον ἐφ’ ἑαυτῷ παραιρούμενος καὶ τὴν δόξαν εἰς ἕτερον μεταφέρων ταῦτα γράφει κατὰ λέξιν· “ἐνταῦθα δὲ Θεμιστοκλέα ἀφικόμενον ἐπὶ τὴν νέα εἴρετο Μνησίφιλος ἀνὴρ Ἀθηναῖος, ὅ τι σφιν εἴη βεβουλευμένον· πυθόμενος δὲ πρὸς αὐτοῦ, ὡς ἐστὶ δεδογμένον ἀνάγειν τὰς νέας πρὸς τὸν Ἰσθμὸν καὶ πρὸ τῆς Πελοποννήσου ναυμαχέειν, εἶπε· ‘οὐκ ἄρα, ἢν ἀπαίρωσι τὰς νέας ἀπὸ Σαλαμῖνος, οὐδὲ περὶ μιῆς ἔτι πατρίδος ναυμαχήσεις· κατὰ γὰρ πόλεις ἕκαστοι τρέψονται’”

[e] (καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγον) “‘ἀλλὰ εἴ τις ἔστι μηχανή, ἴθι τε καὶ πειρῶ διαχέαι τὰ βεβουλευμένα, ἤν κως δύνῃ ἀναγνῶσαι Εὐρυβιάδεα μεταβουλεύσασθαι ὥστε αὐτοῦ μενεῖν.’” εἶθ’ ὑπειπὼν ὅτι “κάρτα τῷ Θεμιστοκλεῖ ἤρεσεν ἡ ὑποθήκη, καὶ οὐδὲν πρὸς ταῦτα ἀμειψάμενος ἀφίκετο πρὸς τὸν Εὐρυβιάδην,” πάλιν αὐταῖς λέξεσι γέγραφεν· “ἐνταῦθα δὲ Θεμιστοκλῆς παριζόμενός οἱ καταλέγει κεῖνά τε πάντα [f] ἃ ἤκουσε Μνησιφίλου ἑωυτοῦ ποιεύμενος, καὶ ἄλλα προστιθείς.” ὁρᾷς ὅτι κακοηθείας προστρίβεται τἀνδρὶ δόξαν, ἴδιον αὐτοῦ βούλευμα ποιεῖσθαι τὸ τοῦ Μνησιφίλου λέγων;

Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον τῶν Ἑλλήνων καταγελῶν Θεμιστοκλέα μὲν οὔτε φησὶ φρονῆσαι τὸ συμφέρον ἀλλὰ παριδεῖν, ὃς Ὀδυσσεὺς ἐπωνομάσθη διὰ τὴν φρόνησιν, Ἀρτεμισίαν δὲ τὴν Ἡροδότου πολῖτιν, μηδενὸς διδάξαντος, αὐτὴν ἀφ’ ἑαυτῆς ἐπινοήσασαν Ξέρξῃ προειπεῖν, ὡς “οὐχ οἷοί τε πολλὸν χρόνον ἔσονταί τοι ἀντέχειν οἱ Ἕλληνες, ἀλλά σφεας διασκεδᾷς, [870] [a] κατὰ πόλεις δὲ ἕκαστοι φεύξονται· καὶ οὐκ εἰκὸς αὐτούς, ἢν σὺ ἐπὶ τὴν Πελοπόννησον ἐλαύνῃς τὸν πεζὸν στρατόν, ἀτρεμήσειν, οὐδέ σφιν μελήσειν πρὸ τῶν Ἀθηνέων ναυμαχέειν· ἢν δὲ αὐτίκα ἐπειχθῇς ναυμαχῆσαι, δειμαίνω μὴ ὁ ναυτικὸς στρατὸς κακωθεὶς καὶ τὸν πεζὸν προσδηλήσηται.” ταῦτα μὲν οὖν μέτρων ἐνδεῖ τῷ Ἡροδότῳ, Σίβυλλαν ἀποφῆναι τὴν Ἀρτεμισίαν τὰ μέλλοντα προθεσπίζουσαν οὕτως ἀκριβῶς. διὸ καὶ Ξέρξης αὐτῇ παρέδωκε τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ παῖδας ἀπάγειν εἰς Ἔφεσον· ἐπελέληστο γὰρ ἐκ Σούσων, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἄγειν γυναῖκας, εἰ γυναικείας ἐδέοντο παραπομπῆς οἱ παῖδες.

Ἀλλ’ ὃ μὲν ἔψευσται, λόγος ἡμῖν οὐδείς·

[b]ἃ δέ γε κατέψευσται μόνον ἐξετάζομεν. φησὶ τοίνυν Ἀθηναίους λέγειν, ὡς Ἀδείμαντος ὁ Κορινθίων στρατηγός, ἐν χερσὶ τῶν πολεμίων γενομένων, ὑπερεκπλαγεὶς καὶ καταδείσας ἔφευγεν, οὐ πρύμναν κρουσάμενος οὐδὲ διαδὺς ἀτρέμα διὰ τῶν μαχομένων, ἀλλὰ λαμπρῶς ἐπαιρόμενος τὰ ἱστία καὶ τὰς ναῦς ἁπάσας ἀποστρέψας· εἶτα μέντοι κέλης ἐλαυνόμενος αὐτῷ συνέτυχε περὶ τὰ λήγοντα τῆς Σαλαμινίας, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ κέλητος ἐφθέγξατό τις· “σὺ μέν, ὦ Ἀδείμαντε, φεύγεις καταπροδοὺς τοὺς Ἕλληνας· [c] οἱ δὲ καὶ δὴ νικῶσι, καθάπερ ἠρῶντο ἐπικρατῆσαι τῶν ἐχθρῶν.” ὁ δὲ κέλης οὗτος ἦν, ὡς ἔοικεν, οὐρανοπετής· τί γὰρ ἔδει φείδεσθαι μηχανῆς τραγικῆς, ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις ὑπερπαίοντα τοὺς τραγῳδοὺς ἀλαζονείᾳ; πιστεύσας οὖν ὁ Ἀδείμαντος “ἐπανῆλθεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον ἐπ’ ἐξειργασμένοις· αὕτη φάτις ἔχει ὑπὸ Ἀθηναίων· οὐ μέντοι Κορίνθιοι ὁμολογέουσιν, ἀλλὰ ἐν πρώτοισι σφέας αὐτοὺς τῆς ναυμαχίης νομίζουσι γενέσθαι· μαρτυρεῖ δέ σφι καὶ ἡ ἄλλη Ἑλλάς.”

Τοιοῦτός ἐστιν ἐν πολλοῖς ὁ ἄνθρωπος· ἑτέρας καθ’ ἑτέρων διαβολὰς καὶ κατηγορίας κατατίθησιν, ὥστε μὴ διαμαρτεῖν τοῦ φανῆναί τινα πάντως πονηρόν· ὥσπερ ἐνταῦθα περίεστιν αὐτῷ, ἀπιστουμένους Ἀθηναίους, πιστευομένης δὲ τῆς διαβολῆς Κορινθίους ἀδοξεῖν. οἶμαι δὲ ‹μήτ’ Ἀθηναίων αὐτὸν ἀκοῦσαι κακιζόντων Κορινθίους› μήτε Κορινθίων Ἀθηναίους, ἀλλὰ τούτων ἀμφοτέρων ὁμοῦ καταψεύδεσθαι. Θουκυδίδης γοῦν, ἀντιλέγοντα ποιῶν τῷ Κορινθίῳ τὸν Ἀθηναῖον ἐν Λακεδαίμονι καὶ πολλὰ περὶ τῶν Μηδικῶν λαμπρυνόμενον ἔργων καὶ περὶ τῆς ἐν Σαλαμῖνι ναυμαχίας, οὐδεμίαν αἰτίαν προδοσίας ἢ λιποταξίας ἐπενήνοχε Κορινθίοις· οὐδὲ γὰρ εἰκὸς ἦν Ἀθηναῖον ταῦτα βλασφημεῖν περὶ τῆς Κορινθίων πόλεως, ἣν τρίτην μὲν ἑώρα μετὰ Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ μετ’ αὐτοὺς ἐγχαραττομένην [d] τοῖς ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων ἀναθήμασιν. ἐν δὲ Σαλαμῖνι παρὰ τὴν πόλιν ἔδωκαν αὐτοῖς θάψαι τε τοὺς ἀποθανόντας, ὡς ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς γενομένους, καὶ ἐπιγράψαι τόδε τὸ ἐλεγεῖον·

ὦ ξεῖν’, εὔυδρόν ποτ’ ἐναίομεν ἄστυ Κορίνθου,

νῦν δ’ ἅμ’ Αἴαντος νᾶσος ἔχει Σαλαμίς.

ἐνθάδε Φοινίσσας νῆας καὶ Πέρσας ἑλόντες

καὶ Μήδους, ἱερὰν Ἑλλάδα ῥυσάμεθα.

τὸ δ’ ἐν Ἰσθμῷ κενοτάφιον ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχει ταύτην

ἀκμᾶς ἑστακυῖαν ἐπὶ ξυροῦ Ἑλλάδα πᾶσαν

[e] ταῖς αὐτῶν ψυχαῖς κείμεθα ῥυσάμενοι.

Διοδώρου δέ τινος τῶν Κορινθίων τριηράρχων ἐν ἱερῷ Λητοῦς ἀναθήμασι κειμένοις καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐπεγέγραπτο·

ταῦτ’ ἀπὸ δυσμενέων Μήδων ναῦται Διοδώρου

ὅπλ’ ἀνέθεν Λατοῖ, μνάματα ναυμαχίας.

αὐτός γε μὴν ὁ Ἀδείμαντος, ᾧ πλεῖστα λοιδορούμενος Ἡρόδοτος διατελεῖ καὶ λέγων, “μοῦνον ἀσπαίρειν τῶν στρατηγῶν, ὡς φευξόμενον ἀπ’ Ἀρτεμισίου καὶ μὴ περιμενοῦντα,” σκόπει τίνα δόξαν εἶχεν·

οὗτος Ἀδειμάντου κείνου τάφος, ὃν δία πᾶσα

Ἑλλὰς ἐλευθερίας ἀμφέθετο στέφανον.

[871] [a] Οὔτε γὰρ τελευτήσαντι τοιαύτην εἰκὸς ἦν ἀνδρὶ δειλῷ καὶ προδότῃ γενέσθαι τιμήν, οὔτ’ ἂν ἐτόλμησε τῶν θυγατέρων ὄνομα θέσθαι τῇ μὲν Ναυσινίκην τῇ δ’ Ἀκροθίνιον τῇ δ’ Ἀλεξιβίαν, Ἀριστέα δὲ καλέσαι τὸν υἱόν, εἰ μή τις ἦν ἐπιφάνεια καὶ λαμπρότης περὶ αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων ἐκείνων. καὶ μὴν ὅτι μόναι τῶν Ἑλληνίδων αἱ Κορίνθιαι γυναῖκες εὔξαντο τὴν καλὴν ἐκείνην καὶ δαιμόνιον εὐχήν, ἔρωτα τοῖς ἀνδράσι τῆς πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους μάχης [b] ἐμβαλεῖν τὴν θεόν, οὐχ ὅπως τοὺς περὶ τὸν Ἡρόδοτον ἀγνοῆσαι πιθανὸν ἦν, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τὸν ἔσχατον Καρῶν· διεβοήθη γὰρ τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ Σιμωνίδης ἐποίησεν ἐπίγραμμα, χαλκῶν εἰκόνων ἀνασταθεισῶν ἐν τῷ ναῷ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης, ὃν ἱδρύσασθαι Μήδειαν λέγουσιν, οἱ μὲν αὐτὴν παυσαμένην τἀνδρός, οἱ δ’ ἐπὶ τῷ τὸν Ἰάσονα τῆς Θέτιδος ἐρῶντα παῦσαι τὴν θεόν. τὸ δ’ ἐπίγραμμα τοῦτ’ ἐστίν·

αἵδ’ ὑπὲρ Ἑλλάνων τε καὶ ἰθυμάχων πολιητᾶν

ἔσταθεν εὐξάμεναι Κύπριδι δαιμόνιαι.

οὐ γὰρ τοξοφόροισιν ἐμήδετο δῖ’ Ἀφροδίτα

Μήδοις Ἑλλάνων ἀκρόπολιν προδόμεν.

[c] ταῦτ’ ἔδει γράφειν καὶ τούτων μεμνῆσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ τὴν Ἀμεινοκλέους ἐμβαλεῖν συμφορὰν καὶ παιδοφονίαν.

Τῶν τοίνυν αἰτιῶν τῶν κατὰ Θεμιστοκλέους ἀνέδην ἐμφορηθείς, ἐν οἷς κλέπτοντα καὶ πλεονεκτοῦντα λάθρα τῶν ἄλλων στρατηγῶν οὔ φησι παύσασθαι περὶ τὰς νήσους, τέλος αὐτῶν Ἀθηναίων τὸν στέφανον ἀφελόμενος Αἰγινήταις ἐπιτίθησι, γράφων ταῦτα· “πέμψαντες ἀκροθίνια οἱ Ἕλληνες εἰς Δελφοὺς ἐπηρώτων τὸν θεὸν κοινῇ, εἰ λελάβηκε πλήρεα καὶ ἀρεστὰ τὰ ἀκροθίνια· ὁ δὲ παρ’ Ἑλλήνων μὲν τῶν ἄλλων ἔφησεν ἔχειν, παρ’ [d] Αἰγινητέων δὲ οὔ, ἀλλ’ ἀπαίτεε αὐτοὺς τὰ ἀριστεῖα τῆς ἐν Σαλαμῖνι ναυμαχίας.” οὐκέτι Σκύθαις οὐδὲ Πέρσαις οὐδ’ Αἰγυπτίοις τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ λόγους ἀνατίθησι πλάττων, ὥσπερ Αἴσωπος κόραξι καὶ πιθήκοις, ἀλλὰ τῷ τοῦ Πυθίου προσώπῳ χρώμενος ἀπωθεῖ τῶν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι πρωτείων τὰς Ἀθήνας. Θεμιστοκλεῖ δὲ τῶν δευτερείων ἐν Ἰσθμῷ γενομένων διὰ τὸ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἕκαστον αὑτῷ μὲν τὸ πρωτεῖον ἐκείνῳ δὲ τὸ δευτερεῖον ἀποδοῦναι, καὶ τέλος τῆς κρίσεως μὴ λαβούσης, δέον αἰτιάσασθαι [e] τὴν φιλοτιμίαν τῶν στρατηγῶν, πάντας ἀποπλεῦσαί φησι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὑπὸ φθόνου μὴ βουληθέντας ἀναγορεῦσαι τὸν ἄνδρα πρῶτον.

Ἐν δὲ τῇ ἐνάτῃ καὶ τελευταίᾳ τῶν βίβλων, ὅσον ἦν ὑπόλοιπον ἔτι τῆς πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους αὐτῷ δυσμενείας ἐκχέαι σπεύδων, τὸ παρ’ αὑτὸν ἀφείλετο τὴν ἀοίδιμον νίκην καὶ τὸ περιβόητον Πλαταιᾶσι κατόρθωμα τῆς πόλεως. γέγραφε γὰρ ὡς πρότερον μὲν ὠρρώδουν τοὺς Ἀθηναίους, μὴ πεισθέντες ὑπὸ Μαρδονίου τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐγκαταλίπωσι, τοῦ δ’ Ἰσθμοῦ τειχισθέντος ἐν ἀσφαλεῖ θέμενοι τὴν Πελοπόννησον ἠμέλουν ἤδη τῶν ἄλλων καὶ περιεώρων, ἑορτάζοντες οἴκοι καὶ τοὺς πρέσβεις τῶν Ἀθηναίων κατειρωνευόμενοι καὶ διατρίβοντες.

[f] πῶς οὖν ἐξῆλθον εἰς Πλαταιὰς πεντακισχίλιοι Σπαρτιᾶται, περὶ αὑτὸν ἔχων ἀνὴρ ἕκαστος ἑπτὰ εἵλωτας; ἢ πῶς κίνδυνον ἀράμενοι τοσοῦτον ἐκράτησαν καὶ κατέβαλον μυριάδας τοσαύτας; ἄκουσον αἰτίας πιθανῆς· “ἔτυχε,” φησίν, “ἐν Σπάρτῃ παρεπιδημῶν ἐκ Τεγέας ἀνὴρ ὄνομα Χείλεως, ᾧ φίλοι τινὲς καὶ ξένοι τῶν ἐφόρων ἦσαν· οὗτος οὖν ἔπεισεν αὐτοὺς ἐκπέμψαι τὸ στράτευμα, λέγων ὅτι τοῦ διατειχίσματος οὐδὲν ὄφελός ἐστι Πελοποννησίοις, ἂν Ἀθηναῖοι Μαρδονίῳ προσγένωνται.” τοῦτο Παυσανίαν ἐξήγαγεν εἰς Πλαταιὰς μετὰ τῆς [872] [a] δυνάμεως· εἰ δέ τι κατέσχεν οἰκεῖον ἐν Τεγέᾳ πρᾶγμα τὸν Χείλεων ἐκεῖνον, οὐκ ἂν ἡ Ἑλλὰς περιεγένετο.

Πάλιν δὲ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις οὐκ ἔχων ὅ τι χρήσαιτο, ποτὲ μὲν αἴρει ποτὲ δὲ καταβάλλει τὴν πόλιν ἄνω καὶ κάτω μεταφέρων, οὓς Τεγεάταις μὲν εἰς ἀγῶνα λέγει περὶ τῶν δευτερείων καταστάντας Ἡρακλειδῶν τε μεμνῆσθαι καὶ τὰ πρὸς Ἀμαζόνας πραχθέντα προφέρειν ταφάς τε Πελοποννησίων τῶν ὑπὸ τῇ Καδμείᾳ πεσόντων· καὶ τέλος εἰς τὸν Μαραθῶνα καταβαίνειν τῷ λόγῳ φιλοτιμουμένους καὶ ἀγαπῶντας ἡγεμονίας τυχεῖν τοῦ ἀριστεροῦ κέρως· [b] ὀλίγον δ’ ὕστερον αὐτοῖς Παυσανίαν καὶ Σπαρτιάτας τῆς ἡγεμονίας ὑφίεσθαι, καὶ παρακαλεῖν ὅπως κατὰ Πέρσας ἀντιταχθῶσι τὸ δεξιὸν κέρας παραλαβόντες, αὐτοῖς δὲ παραδόντες τὸ εὐώνυμον ὡς ἀηθείᾳ τὴν πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους μάχην ἀπολεγομένους. καίτοι γελοῖον, εἰ μὴ συνήθεις εἶεν οἱ πολέμιοι, μάχεσθαι μὴ θέλειν.

Ἀλλὰ τούς γ’ ἄλλους Ἕλληνας εἰς ἕτερον ὑπὸ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἀγομένους στρατόπεδον, “ὡς ἐκινήθησαν,”

[c] φησί, “φεύγειν ἀσμένως τὴν ἵππον πρὸς τὴν τῶν Πλαταιέων πόλιν, φεύγοντας δὲ ἀφικέσθαι πρὸς τὸ Ἡραῖον”· ἐν ᾧ καὶ ἀπείθειαν καὶ λιποταξίαν καὶ προδοσίαν ὁμοῦ τι πάντων κατηγόρησε. τέλος δὲ μόνους φησὶ τοῖς μὲν βαρβάροις Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ Τεγεάτας τοῖς δὲ Θηβαίοις Ἀθηναίους συμπεσόντας διαγωνίσασθαι, τὰς δ’ ἄλλας πόλεις ὁμαλῶς ἁπάσας τοῦ κατορθώματος ἀπεστέρηκεν· “οὐδένα συνεφάψασθαι τοῦ ἀγῶνος, ἀλλὰ καθημένους πάντας ἐπὶ τῶν ὅπλων ἐγγὺς καταλιπεῖν καὶ προδοῦναι τοὺς ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν μαχομένους· ὀψὲ δὲ Φλιασίους καὶ Μεγαρέας πυθομένους νικῶντα Παυσανίαν, προσφερομένους καὶ ἐμπεσόντας εἰς τὸ Θηβαίων ἱππικόν, οὐδενὶ λόγῳ διαφθαρῆναι· Κορινθίους δὲ τῇ μὲν μάχῃ μὴ παραγενέσθαι, μετὰ [d] δὲ τὴν νίκην ἐπειγομένους διὰ τῶν λόφων, μὴ περιπεσεῖν τοῖς ἱππεῦσι τῶν Θηβαίων”· οἱ γὰρ Θηβαῖοι, τῆς τροπῆς γενομένης, προϊππεύοντες τῶν βαρβάρων προθύμως παρεβοήθουν φεύγουσιν αὐτοῖς, δηλονότι τῶν ἐν Θερμοπύλαις στιγμάτων χάριν ἀποδιδόντες.

Ἀλλὰ Κορινθίους γε καὶ τάξιν ἣν ἐμάχοντο τοῖς βαρβάροις, καὶ τέλος ἡλίκον ὑπῆρξεν αὐτοῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ Πλαταιᾶσιν ἀγῶνος ἔξεστι Σιμωνίδου πυθέσθαι γράφοντος ἐν τούτοις·

μέσσοι δ’ οἵ τ’ Ἔφυραν πολυπίδακα ναιετά οντες,

παντοίης ἀρετῆς ἴδριες ἐν πολέμῳ,

οἵ τε πόλιν Γλαύκοιο, Κορίνθιον ἄστυ, νέμοντες,

[e] οἳ καὶ κάλλιστον μάρτυν ἔθεντο πόνων

χρυσοῦ τιμήεντος ἐν αἰθέρι· καί σφιν ἀέξει

αὐτῶν τ’ εὐρεῖαν κληδόνα καὶ πατέρων.

ταῦτα γὰρ οὐ χορὸν ἐν Κορίνθῳ διδάσκων οὐδ’ ᾆσμα ποιῶν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἄλλως δὲ τὰς πράξεις ἐκείνας ἐν ἐλεγείᾳ γράφων ἱστόρηκεν.

Ὁ δὲ προλαμβάνων τὸν ἔλεγχον τοῦ ψεύσματος [f] τῶν ἐρησομένων, “πόθεν οὖν πολυάνδρια καὶ θῆκαι τοσαῦται καὶ μνήματα νεκρῶν, ἐν οἷς ἐναγίζουσιν ἄχρι νῦν Πλαταιεῖς τῶν Ἑλλήνων συμπαρόντων,” πρᾶγμα αἴσχιον, ὡς οἶμαι, τῆς προδοσίας τῶν γενεῶν κατηγόρηκεν ἐν τούτοις· “τῶν δὲ ἄλλων ὅσοι καὶ φαίνονται ἐν Πλαταιῇσιν ἐόντες τάφοι, τούτους δέ, ὡς ἐγὼ πυνθάνομαι, αἰσχυνομένους τῇ ἀπεστοῖ τῆς μάχης ἑκάστους χώματα χῶσαι κεινὰ τῶν ἐπιγινομένων εἵνεκ’ ἀνθρώπων.” ταύτην τὴν ἀπεστὼ τῆς μάχης προδοσίαν οὖσαν Ἡρόδοτος ἀνθρώπων μόνος ἁπάντων ἤκουσε, Παυσανίαν δὲ [873] [a] καὶ Ἀριστείδην καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ Ἀθηναίους ἔλαθον οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐγκαταλιπόντες τὸν κίνδυνον· καὶ οὔτ’ Αἰγινήτας Ἀθηναῖοι διαφόρους ὄντας εἶρξαν τῆς ἐπιγραφῆς, οὔτε Κορινθίους ἤλεγξαν, οὓς πρότερον νικῶντες φεύγειν ἀπὸ Σαλαμῖνος, ἀντιμαρτυρούσης αὐτοῖς τῆς Ἑλλάδος. καίτοι Κλεάδας ἦν ὁ Πλαταιεύς, ὕστερον ἔτεσι δέκα τῶν Μηδικῶν Αἰγινήταις χαριζόμενος, ὥς φησιν Ἡρόδοτος, ὃς ἐπώνυμον ἔχωσεν αὐτῶν πολυάνδριον.

Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ καὶ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τί παθόντες εὐθὺς τότε πρὸς μὲν ἀλλήλους ὀλίγον ἐδέησαν εἰς [b] χεῖρας ἐλθεῖν περὶ τοῦ τροπαίου τῆς ἀναστάσεως, τοὺς δ’ Ἕλληνας ἀποδειλιάσαντας καὶ ἀποδράντας οὐκ ἀπήλαυνον τῶν ἀριστείων, ἀλλ’ ἐνέγραφον τοῖς τρίποσι καὶ τοῖς κολοσσοῖς καὶ μετεδίδοσαν τῶν λαφύρων; τέλος δὲ τῷ βωμῷ τοὐπίγραμμα τοῦτο γράφοντες ἐνεχάραξαν·

τόνδε ποθ’ Ἕλληνες Νίκης κράτει, ἔργῳ Ἄρηος, Πέρσας ἐξελάσαντες, ἐλευθέρᾳ Ἑλλάδι κοινὸν

ἱδρύσαντο Διὸς βωμὸν Ἐλευθερίου.

μὴ καὶ τοῦτο Κλεάδας ἤ τις ἄλλος, ὦ Ἡρόδοτε, κολακεύων τὰς πόλεις ἐπέγραψε; τί οὖν ἐδέοντο τὴν γῆν ὀρύσσοντες διακενῆς ἔχειν πράγματα καὶ [c] ῥᾳδιουργεῖν χώματα καὶ μνήματα τῶν ἐπιγινομένων ἕνεκ’ ἀνθρώπων κατασκευάζοντες, ἐν τοῖς ἐπιφανεστάτοις καὶ μεγίστοις ἀναθήμασι τὴν δόξαν αὑτῶν καθιερουμένην ὁρῶντες;

Καὶ μὴν Παυσανίας, ὡς λέγουσιν, ἤδη τυραννικὰ φρονῶν ἐπέγραψεν ἐν Δελφοῖς·

Ἑλλήνων ἀρχηγός, ἐπεὶ στρατὸν ὤλεσε Μήδων,

Παυσανίας Φοίβῳ μνῆμ’ ἀνέθηκε τόδε,

κοινούμενος ἁμωσγέπως τοῖς Ἕλλησι τὴν δόξαν ὧν ἑαυτὸν ἀνηγόρευσεν ἡγεμόνα· τῶν δ’ Ἑλλήνων οὐκ ἀνασχομένων ἀλλ’ ἐγκαλούντων, πέμψαντες εἰς Δελφοὺς Λακεδαιμόνιοι τοῦτο μὲν ἐξεκόλαψαν ‹ἀπὸ τοῦ τρίποδος τὸ ἐλεγεῖον, πασῶν δ’ ἀντεπέγραψαν› [d] τὰ ὀνόματα τῶν πόλεων, ὥσπερ ἦν δίκαιον. καίτοι πῶς εἰκός ἐστιν ἢ τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀγανακτεῖν τῆς ἐπιγραφῆς μὴ μετασχόντας, εἰ συνῄδεσαν ἑαυτοῖς τὴν ἀπεστὼ τῆς μάχης, ἢ Λακεδαιμονίους τὸν ἡγεμόνα καὶ στρατηγὸν ἐκχαράξαντας ἐπιγράψαι τοὺς ἐγκαταλιπόντας καὶ περιιδόντας τὸν κίνδυνον; ὡς δεινότατόν ἐστιν, εἰ Σωφάνης μὲν καὶ Ἀείμνηστος καὶ πάντες οἱ διαπρεπῶς ἀγωνισάμενοι τὴν μάχην ἐκείνην οὐδὲ [e] Κυθνίων ἐπιγραφομένων τοῖς τροπαίοις οὐδὲ Μηλίων ἠχθέσθησαν, Ἡρόδοτος δὲ τρισὶ μόναις πόλεσιν ἀναθεὶς τὸν ἀγῶνα τὰς ἄλλας πάσας ἐκχαράττει τῶν τροπαίων καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν.

Τεσσάρων δ’ ἀγώνων τότε πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους γενομένων, ἐκ μὲν Ἀρτεμισίου τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀποδρᾶναί φησιν, ἐν δὲ Θερμοπύλαις, τοῦ στρατηγοῦ καὶ βασιλέως προκινδυνεύοντος, οἰκουρεῖν καὶ ἀμελεῖν Ὀλύμπια καὶ Κάρνεια πανηγυρίζοντας· τὰ δ’ ἐν Σαλαμῖνι διηγούμενος τοσούτους περὶ Ἀρτεμισίας λόγους γέγραφεν, ὅσοις ὅλην τὴν [f] ναυμαχίαν οὐκ ἀπήγγελκε· τέλος δέ, καθημένους ἐν Πλαταιαῖς ἀγνοῆσαι μέχρι τέλους τὸν ἀγῶνα τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὥσπερ βατραχομαχίας γινομένης, ἣν Πίγρης ὁ Ἀρτεμισίας ἐν ἔπεσι παίζων καὶ φλυαρῶν ἔγραψε, σιωπῇ διαγωνίσασθαι συνθεμένων, ἵνα λάθωσι τοὺς ἄλλους· αὐτοὺς δὲ Λακεδαιμονίους ἀνδρείᾳ μὲν οὐδὲν κρείττονας γενέσθαι τῶν βαρβάρων, ἀνόπλοις δὲ καὶ γυμνοῖς μαχομένους κρατῆσαι. Ξέρξου μὲν γὰρ αὐτοῦ παρόντος, ὑπὸ μαστίγων μόλις ὄπισθεν ὠθούμενοι προσεφέροντο [874] [a] τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἐν δὲ Πλαταιαῖς, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἑτέρας ψυχὰς μεταλαβόντες “λήματι μὲν καὶ ῥώμῃ οὐκ ἥσσονες ἦσαν, ἡ δὲ ἐσθής, ἔρημος ἐοῦσα ὅπλων, πλεῖστον ἐδηλήσατό σφεας· πρὸς γὰρ ὁπλίτας ἐόντες γυμνῆται ἀγῶνα ἐποιέοντο.”

Τί οὖν περίεστιν ἔνδοξον ἢ μέγα τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἀπ’ ἐκείνων τῶν ἀγώνων, εἰ Λακεδαιμόνιοι μὲν ἀόπλοις ἐμάχοντο, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἡ μάχη παρόντας ἔλαθε, κενὰ δὲ πολυάνδρια τιμώμενα τοῖς ἑκάστου, ψευστῶν δὲ γραμμάτων μεστοὶ τρίποδες ἑστᾶσι καὶ βωμοὶ παρὰ τοῖς θεοῖς, μόνος δὲ τἀληθὲς Ἡρόδοτος ἔγνω, τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους ἅπαντας ἀνθρώπους, [b] ὅσοι λόγον Ἑλλήνων ἔχουσιν, ἐξηπάτηκεν ἡ φήμη τῶν τότε κατορθωμάτων, ὡς ὑπερφυῶν γενομένων;

Τί δῆτα; γραφικὸς ἁνήρ, καὶ ἡδὺς ὁ λόγος, καὶ χάρις ἔπεστι καὶ δεινότης καὶ ὥρα τοῖς διηγήμασι,

μῦθον δ’ ὡς ὅτ’ ἀοιδός, ἐπισταμένως

μὲν οὔ, λιγυρῶς δὲ καὶ γλαφυρῶς ἠγόρευκεν. ἀμέλει ταῦτα καὶ κηλεῖ καὶ προσάγεται πάντας, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν ῥόδοις δεῖ κανθαρίδα φυλάττεσθαι τὴν βλασφημίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ κακολογίαν, λείοις καὶ ἁπαλοῖς [c] σχήμασιν ὑποδεδυκυῖαν, ἵνα μὴ λάθωμεν ἀτόπους καὶ ψευδεῖς περὶ τῶν ἀρίστων καὶ μεγίστων τῆς Ἑλλάδος πόλεων καὶ ἀνδρῶν δόξας λαβόντες.

Aetia physica

ΑΙΤΙΑ ΦΥΣΙΚΑ

[911] Α΄.

Διὰ τί τὸ θαλάττιον ὕδωρ οὐ τρέφει τὰ δένδρα;

Πότερον δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν οὐδὲ τῶν ζῴων τὰ χερσαῖα; ζῷον γὰρ ἔγγαιον τὸ φυτὸν εἶναι οἱ περὶ Πλάτωνα καὶ [d] Ἀναξαγόραν (A 116. 117) καὶ Δημόκριτον οἴονται· οὐ γὰρ διότι τοῖς ἐναλίοις φυτοῖς τρόφιμόν ἐστι καὶ πότιμον ὥσπερ τοῖς ἰχθύσιν, ἤδη καὶ τὰ ἐν τῇ χέρσῳ φυτά τε καὶ δένδρα τρέφει· οὔτε γὰρ ἐνδύεται ταῖς ῥίζαις ὑπὸ πάχους οὔτ’ ἀναφέρεται ὑπὸ βάρους· ὅτι δ’ ἐμβριθές ἐστι καὶ γεῶδες, ἄλλοις τε πολλοῖς ἀποδείκνυται καὶ τῷ μᾶλλον ἀνέχειν καὶ ὑπερείδειν τὰ πλοῖα καὶ τοὺς κολυμβῶντας. ἢ μάλιστα μὲν βλάπτεται ξηρότητι τὰ δένδρα, ξηραντικὸν δὲ τὸ θαλάττιον; ὅθεν πρός γε τὰς σήψεις οἱ ἅλες βοηθοῦσι, καὶ τὰ σώματα τῶν λουσαμένων ἐν θαλάττῃ ξηρὰν εὐθὺς ἴσχει καὶ τραχεῖαν τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν.

[e] ἢ τὸ μὲν ἔλαιον τοῖς φυτοῖς πολέμιον καὶ φθείρει τὰ προσαλειφόμενα, μετέχει δὲ πολλῆς ἡ θάλαττα λιπαρότητος· διὸ συνεξάπτει, καὶ παραινοῦμεν εἰς τὰς φλόγας μὴ ἐμβάλλειν θαλάττιον ὕδωρ. ἢ γέγονεν ἄποτον καὶ πικρὸν τὸ ὕδωρ, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησίν (Meteor. II 358a 14), ἀναμίξει κατακεκαυμένης γῆς; καὶ γὰρ ἡ κονία γίνεται γλυκέος ὕδατος εἰς τέφραν ἐμπεσόντος, ἡ δὲ διάκαυσις ἐξίστησι καὶ φθείρει τὸ χρηστὸν καὶ πότιμον, ὡς ἐν ἡμῖν οἱ πυρετοὶ τὸ ὑγρὸν εἰς χολὴν τρέπουσιν. ἃ δ’ ἱστοροῦσιν ἐν τῇ Ἐρυθρᾷ θαλάσσῃ βλαστάνειν ὑλήματα καὶ φυτά, καρπὸν μὲν οὐδένα φέρει τρέφεται δὲ τοῖς ποταμοῖς πολλὴν [f] ἐμβάλλουσιν ἰλύν· ὅθεν οὐ πρόσω τῆς γῆς ἀλλὰ πλησίον ἔχει τὴν γένεσιν.

Β΄.

Διὰ τί μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τῶν ὑετίων ἢ τῶν ἐπιρρύτων ὑδάτων τὰ δένδρα καὶ τὰ σπέρματα πέφυκε τρέφεσθαι;

Πότερον, ὡς Λαῖτος ἔλεγε, τῇ πληγῇ τὰ ὄμβρια διιστάντα τὴν γῆν πόρους ποιεῖ καὶ διαδύεται μᾶλλον εἰς τὴν ῥίζαν; ἢ τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἀληθές, ἀλλ’ ἔλαθε τὸν [912] [a] Λαῖτον ὅτι καὶ τὰ λιμναῖα φυτά, τίφη καὶ φλέως καὶ θρύον, ἀναυξῆ καὶ ἀβλαστῆ μένει μὴ γενομένων ὄμβρων καθ’ ὥραν· τὸ δὲ τοῦ Ἀριστοτέλους (fr. 215 R.) ἀληθές, ὅτι πρόσφατόν ἐστι καὶ νέον ὕδωρ τὸ ὑόμενον ἕωλον δὲ καὶ παλαιὸν τὸ λιμναῖον; ἢ καὶ τοῦτο πιθανὸν μᾶλλον ἢ ἀληθές ἐστι; τὰ γὰρ πηγαῖα καὶ ποτάμια νάματα πρόσφατα μέν ἐστι καὶ νεογενῆ (‘ποταμοῖς γὰρ δὶς τοῖς αὐτοῖς οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης’ ὥς φησιν Ἡράκλειτος (fr. 91. 49a. 12), ἕτερα γὰρ ἐπιρρεῖ ὕδατα), τρέφει δὲ καὶ ταῦτα τῶν ὀμβρίων χεῖρον. ἆρ’ οὖν κοῦφόν ἐστι τὸ ἐκ Διὸς ὕδωρ καὶ ἀερῶδες, καὶ πνεύματι μεμιγμένον ὁδηγεῖται καὶ ἀναπέμπεται [b] ταχέως εἰς τὸ φυτὸν ὑπὸ λεπτότητος, δι’ ὃ καὶ πομφόλυγας ποιεῖ τῇ ἀναμίξει τοῦ ἀέρος; ἢ τρέφει μὲν μάλιστα ‹τὸ μάλιστα› κρατούμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ τρεφομένου (τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι πέψις· ἀπεψία δὲ τοὐναντίον, ὅταν ἰσχυρότερα τοῦ παθεῖν ᾖ), καὶ μεταβάλλει τὰ λεπτὰ καὶ ἁπλᾶ καὶ ἄχυμα μᾶλλον, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ ὄμβριον ὕδωρ; γεννώμενον γὰρ ἐν ἀέρι καὶ πνεύματι καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμιγὲς κάτεισι· τὰ δὲ πηγαῖα καὶ τῇ γῇ καὶ τοῖς τόποις ὁμοιούμενα, δι’ ὧν ἔξεισι, πολλῶν ἀναπίμπλαται ποιοτήτων, δι’ ἃς ἧττόν ἐστιν εὔτρεπτα καὶ βράδιον αὑτὰ παρέχει τῇ πέψει μεταβάλλειν εἰς τὸ τρεφόμενον. τῶν δ’ ὀμβρίων [c] τὸ εὔτρεπτον αἱ σήψεις κατηγοροῦσιν· εὐσηπτότερα γάρ ἐστι τῶν ποταμίων καὶ φρεατιαίων, ἡ δὲ πέψις ἔοικεν εἶναι σῆψις, ὡς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (fr. 81) μαρτυρεῖ λέγων

‘οἶνος ἀπὸ φλοιοῦ πέλεται σαπὲν ἐν ξύλῳ ὕδωρ’.

ἢ πάντων ἑτοιμότατόν ἐστι καὶ ῥᾷστον αἰτιάσασθαι τὸ γλυκὺ τῶν ὀμβρίων καὶ χρηστόν, ἐκπεμπόμενον εὐθὺς ὑπὸ τοῦ πνεύματος; διὸ καὶ τὰ θρέμματα τούτων ἀπολαύει προθυμότερον, καὶ οἱ βάτραχοι προσδοκῶντες ὄμβρον ἐπιλαμπρύνουσι τὴν φωνὴν ὑπὸ χαρᾶς, ὥσπερ ἥδυσμα τοῦ λιμναίου τὸ ὑέτιον προσδεχόμενοι καὶ σπέρμα τῆς ἐκείνων γλυκύτητος· ἓν γὰρ καὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖται [d] σημεῖον ὑετοῦ μέλλοντος Ἄρατος εἰπών (Phaen. 946 sq.)

‘ἦ μάλα δείλαιαι γενεαί, ὕδροισιν ὄνειαρ,

αὐτόθεν ἐκ λίμνης πατέρες βοόωσι γυρίνων.’

Γ΄.

Διὰ τί παραβάλλουσι τοῖς θρέμμασιν ἅλας οἱ νομεῖς;

Πότερον, ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσι, πλήθους τροφῆς ἕνεκα καὶ τοῦ παχύνειν; τήν τε γὰρ ὄρεξιν ἡ δριμύτης ἐκκαλεῖται καὶ τοὺς πόρους ἀναστομοῦσα μᾶλλον ὁδοποιεῖ τῇ τροφῇ πρὸς τὴν ἀνάδοσιν· διὸ καὶ τοὺς ἰσχνοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἀτρόφους Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ Ἡροφίλειος ἐκέλευε μὴ γλυκεῖ μηδὲ χονδρῷ τρέφειν ἀλλὰ τοῖς ταριχευτοῖς καὶ ὑφαλμυρίζουσιν, [e] ὧν ἡ λεπτότης, ὥσπερ ἐντρίχωμα γενομένη, τὰ σιτία τοῖς σώμασι διὰ τῶν πόρων προστίθησιν. ἢ μᾶλλον ὑγιείας ἕνεκα καὶ συγκοπῆς πλήθους τὸν ἅλα λείχειν ἐθίζουσι τὰ βοσκήματα; νοσεῖ γὰρ ἄγαν πιαινόμενα, τὴν δὲ πιμελὴν τήκουσιν οἱ ἅλες καὶ διαχέουσιν· ὅθεν εὐμαρῶς καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἀποδέρουσιν αὐτὰ σφάξαντες· ἡ γὰρ κολλῶσα καὶ συνδέουσα τὸ δέρμα πιμελὴ λεπτὴ καὶ ἀσθενὴς γέγονεν ὑπὸ τῆς δριμύτητος. λεπτύνεται δὲ καὶ τὸ αἷμα τῶν [τὸ] ἅλας λειχόντων οὐδὲ πήγνυται τὰ ἐντὸς ἁλῶν μιγέντων. σκόπει δέ, μὴ καὶ γονιμώτερα καὶ προθυμότερα πρὸς τὰς συνουσίας· καὶ γὰρ αἱ κύνες [f] κύουσι ταχέως τάριχος ἐπεσθίουσαι, καὶ τὰ ἁληγὰ τῶν πλοίων πλείους τρέφει μῦς διὰ τὸ πολλάκις συμπλέκεσθαι.

Δ΄.

Διὰ τί τῶν ὀμβρίων ὑδάτων εὐαλδέστερα τοῖς σπέρμασι τὰ μετὰ βροντῶν καὶ ἀστραπῶν, ἃ δὴ καὶ ἀστραπαῖα καλοῦσι;

Πότερον ὅτι πνευματώδη διὰ τὴν τοῦ ἀέρος ταραχὴν καὶ ἀνάμιξιν, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα τὴν ὑγρότητα κινοῦν μᾶλλον ἀναπέμπει καὶ ἀναδίδωσιν; ἢ βροντὰς μὲν καὶ [913] [a] ἀστραπὰς ποιεῖ τὸ θερμὸν ἐν τῷ ἀέρι πρὸς τὸ ψυχρὸν μαχόμενον (διὸ χειμῶνος ἥκιστα βροντᾷ μάλιστα δ’ ἔαρος καὶ φθινοπώρου διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν τῆς κράσεως), ἡ δὲ θερμότης πέττουσα τὸ ὑγρὸν προσφιλὲς ποιεῖ τοῖς βλαστάνουσι καὶ ὠφέλιμον; ἢ μάλιστα μὲν ἔαρος βροντᾷ καὶ ἀστράπτει διὰ τὴν εἰρημένην αἰτίαν, τὰ δ’ ἐαρινὰ τῶν ὑδάτων ἀναγκαιότερα τοῖς σπέρμασι πρὸ τοῦ θέρους, ὅθεν ἡ πλεῖστον ὑομένη τοῦ ἔαρος χώρα καθάπερ ἡ ἐν Σικελίᾳ πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς καρποὺς ἀναδίδωσιν;

Ε΄.

Διὰ τί τῶν χυμῶν, ὀκτὼ τῷ γένει ὄντων, ἕνα μόνον, τὸν [b] ἁλμυρόν, ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς καρποῦ γεννώμενον ὁρῶμεν; καίτοι καὶ τὸν πικρὸν ἡ ἐλαία φέρει πρῶτον καὶ τὸν ὀξὺν ὁ βότρυς, εἶτα μεταβάλλων ὁ μὲν γίνεται λιπαρὸς ὁ δ’ οἰνώδης· μεταβάλλει δὲ καὶ ὁ στρυφνὸς ἐν ταῖς φοινικοβαλάνοις καὶ ὁ αὐστηρὸς ἐν ταῖς ῥόαις εἰς τὸν γλυκύν· ἔνιαι δὲ ῥόαι καὶ μῆλα τὸν ὀξὺν ἁπλῶς φέρουσιν, ὁ δὲ δριμὺς ἐν ταῖς ῥίζαις καὶ σπέρμασι πολύς ἐστι.

Πότερον οὖν οὐκ ἔστιν ἁλμυροῦ γένεσις ἀλλὰ φθορὰ τῶν ἄλλων τὸ ἁλμυρόν, διὸ καὶ πᾶσιν ἄτροφον τοῖς ἀπὸ φυτῶν καὶ σπερμάτων τρεφομένοις, ἥδυσμα δ’ ἐνίοις γίνεται τῷ τὸ πλήσμιον ἀφαιρεῖν τῶν τρεφόντων; ἤ, [c] καθάπερ τῆς θαλάττης ἕψοντες ἀφαιροῦσι τὸ ἁλυκὸν καὶ δηκτικόν, ἐν τοῖς θερμοῖς ὑπὸ θερμότητος ἐξαμαυροῦται τὸ ἁλμυρόν; ἢ χυμὸς μέν ἐστιν, ὡς Πλάτων (Tim. 59e) εἶπεν, ὕδωρ ἠθημένον διὰ φυτοῦ, διηθουμένη δὲ καὶ θάλαττα τὸ ἁλμυρὸν ἀποβάλλει; γεῶδες γὰρ καὶ παχυμερές ἐστιν, ὅθεν ὀρύττοντες παρὰ τὸν αἰγιαλὸν ἐντυγχάνουσι ποτίμοις λιβαδίοις, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ κηρίνοις ἀγγείοις ἀναλαμβάνουσιν ἐκ τῆς θαλάττης ὕδωρ γλυκὺ διηθούμενον, ἀποκρινομένου τοῦ ἁλυκοῦ καὶ γεώδους· ἡ δὲ δι’ ἀργίλου προδιαγωγὴ παντάπασι τὴν θάλατταν διηθουμένην πότιμον [d] ἀποδίδωσι τῷ κατέχειν ἐν ἑαυτῇ καὶ μὴ διιέναι τὸ γεῶδες. οὕτω δὲ τούτων ἐχόντων, εἰκός ἐστι τὰ φυτὰ μήτ’ ἔξωθεν ἀναλαμβάνειν ἁλμυρίδα μήτ’, ἂν ἐν αὐτοῖς λάβῃ γένεσιν, ἐκκρίνειν εἰς τὸν καρπόν· οἱ γὰρ πόροι διὰ λεπτότητα τὸ γεῶδες καὶ παχυμερὲς οὐ διηθοῦσιν. ἢ τῆς πικρότητος εἶδος τὴν ἁλμυρότητα θετέον, ὡς Ὅμηρος (ε 322)

‘στόματος δ’ ἐξέπτυσεν ἅλμην

πικρήν, ἥ οἱ πολλὴ ἀπὸ κρατὸς κελάρυζε’,

καὶ ὁ Πλάτων (tim. 65d e) φησὶν ἀμφοτέρους ῥύπτειν καὶ ἀποτήκειν τοὺς χυμούς, ἧττον δὲ ταῦτα ποιεῖν τὸν ἁλυκὸν καὶ οὐ τραχὺν εἶναι· δόξει δὲ τὸ πικρὸν τοῦ ἁλυκοῦ [e] ξηρότητος ὑπερβολῇ διαφέρειν, ἐπεὶ ξηραντικόν τι καὶ τὸ ἁλυκόν.

Ϛ΄.

Διὰ τί τοῖς συνεχῶς διὰ τῶν δεδροσισμένων δένδρων βαδίζουσι λέπραν ἴσχει τὰ ψαύοντα τῆς ὕλης μόρια τοῦ σώματος;

Πότερον, ὡς Λαῖτος ἔλεγε, τῇ λεπτότητι τὸ δροσῶδες ὑγρὸν ἀποξύει τοῦ χρωτός· ἤ, καθάπερ ἐρυσίβη [ἢ] τοῖς ὑγραινομένοις ἐγγίνεται σπέρμασιν, οὕτως ὑπὸ τῆς δρόσου τῶν ἐπιπολῆς χλωρῶν καὶ ἁπαλῶν ἀναχαρασσομένων καὶ ἀποτηκομένων ἄχνη τις ἀπιοῦσα τοῦ σίνοντος ἀναπίμπλησι, προσχεομένη τοῖς ἀναιμοτάτοις μέρεσι τῆς σαρκός, οἷα κνῆμαι καὶ πόδες, ‹καὶ› ἀμύσσει καὶ δάκνει [f] τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν; ὅτι γὰρ φύσει τι δηκτικὸν ἔνεστι τῇ δρόσῳ, μαρτυρεῖ τὸ τοὺς πίονας ἰσχνοτέρους ποιεῖν· αἱ γοῦν πίονες γυναῖκες ἱματίοις ἢ ἐρίοις ἁπαλοῖς ἀναλαμβάνουσαι τῆς δρόσου δοκοῦσι συντήκειν τὴν πολυσαρκίαν.

Ζ΄.

Διὰ τί τὰ πλοῖα χειμῶνος ἐν τοῖς ποταμοῖς πλεῖ βράδιον, ἐν δὲ τῇ θαλάττῃ οὐ παραπλησίως;

Πότερον ὁ ποτάμιος ἀήρ, ἀεὶ δυσκίνητος ὢν καὶ βαρὺς ἐν δὲ χειμῶνι μᾶλλον παχυνόμενος διὰ τὴν περίψυξιν, ἐμποδών ἐστι τοῖς πλέουσιν; ἢ τοῦτο μᾶλλον τοῦ [914] [a] ἀέρος πάσχουσιν οἱ ποταμοί; ‹συν›ελαύνουσα γὰρ ἡ ψυχρότης τὸ ὕδωρ ποιεῖ βαρὺ καὶ σωματῶδες, ὡς ἔστιν ἐν ταῖς κλεψύδραις καταμαθεῖν, βράδιον γὰρ ἕλκουσι χειμῶνος ἢ θέρους· ἐν δὲ Θρᾴκῃ περὶ τὸ Πάγγαιον ἱστορεῖ Θεόφραστος (fr. 161 Wi.) εἶναι κρήνην, ἀφ’ ἧς ταὐτὸ γέμον ‹ἀγγεῖον› ὕδατος ἱστάμενον χειμῶνος ἕλκειν διπλάσιον σταθμὸν ἢ θέρους. ὅτι δ’ ἡ πυκνότης τοῦ ὕδατος τὴν βραδυτῆτα ποιεῖ τοῦ πλοῦ, δῆλόν ἐστι τῷ πλείονα γόμον φέρειν τὰ ποτάμια πλοῖα τοῦ χειμῶνος· τὸ γὰρ ὕδωρ μᾶλλον ἀντερείδει πυκνότερον καὶ βαρύτερον γινόμενον, τὴν δὲ θάλατταν ἡ θερμότης κωλύει πυκνοῦσθαι, δι’ ἣν οὐδὲ [b] πήγνυται, μάλκη γὰρ ἔοικεν εἶναι [ἡ] πύκνωσις.

Η΄.

Διὰ τί, τῶν ἄλλων ὑγρῶν ἐν τῷ κινεῖσθαι καὶ στρέφεσθαι ψυχομένων, τὴν θάλατταν ὁρῶμεν ἐν τῷ κυματοῦ σθαι θερμοτέραν γιγνομένην;

Ἦ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ὑγρῶν ἐπεισόδιον οὖσαν καὶ ἀλλοτρίαν ἐξίστησιν ἡ κίνησις τὴν θερμότητα καὶ διαφορεῖ, τὴν δὲ τῆς θαλάττης σύμφυτον οὖσαν ἐκριπίζουσι μᾶλλον οἱ ἄνεμοι καὶ τρέφουσι; μαρτύρια δὲ τῆς θερμότητος ἡ διαύγεια καὶ τὸ μὴ πήγνυσθαι, καίπερ οὖσαν γεώδη καὶ βαρεῖαν.

Θ΄.

Διὰ τί τοῦ χειμῶνος ἧττον πικρὰ γίνεται γευομένοις ἡ θάλαττα; τοῦτο γάρ φασι καὶ Διονύσιον ἱστορεῖν τὸν ὑδραγωγόν.

[c] ‹Ἦ› ὅτι παντελῶς μὲν ἔρημος οὐκ ἔστι γλυκύτητος οὐδ’ ἄμοιρος ἡ πικρότης, ἅτε δὴ ποταμοὺς τοσούτους ὑποδεχομένης τῆς θαλάττης· τοῦ δ’ ἡλίου τὸ γλυκὺ καὶ πότιμον ἐξαιροῦντος ὑπὸ κουφότητος [τὸ] ἐπιπολάζον καὶ μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ θέρει τοῦτο ποιοῦντος, ἐν δὲ τῷ χειμῶνι μαλακώτερον ἁπτομένου δι’ ἀσθένειαν θερμότητος, ὑπολειπομένη μοῖρα πολλὴ γλυκύτητος ἀνίησι τὸ ἀκράτως πικρὸν καὶ φαρμακῶδες; τοῦτο δ’ ἡσυχῆ καὶ τοῖς ποτίμοις συμβέβηκε· θέρους γὰρ πονηρότερα γίνεται, τὸ κουφότατον καὶ γλυκύτατον τοῦ θερμοῦ διαφοροῦντος, ἐν δὲ χειμῶνι [d] νέον ἐπιρρεῖ καὶ πρόσφατον, οὗ μετέχειν ἀνάγκη καὶ τὴν θάλατταν, ὑομένην ἅμα καὶ τῶν ποταμῶν ἐπιδιδόντων.

Ι΄.

Διὰ τί τῷ οἴνῳ θάλασσαν παραχέουσι καὶ χρησμόν τινα λέγουσιν ἁλιεῖς κομισθῆναι προστάττοντα βαπτίζειν τὸν Διόνυσον πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν, οἱ δὲ πόρρω θαλάττης ἐμβάλλουσι γύψον Ζακυνθίαν ὀπτήσαντες;

Πότερον ἡ θερμότης βοηθεῖ πρὸς τὴν περίψυξιν, ἢ αὐτὴ ἐξίστησι μάλιστα τὸν οἶνον ἀποσβεννύουσα καὶ φθείρουσα τὴν δύναμιν; ἢ τὸ ὑδατῶδες καὶ πνευματῶδες τοῦ οἴνου πρὸς μεταβολὴν ἐπισφαλέστατ’ ἔχον ἵστησι τὰ γεώδη πεφυκότα στύφειν καὶ κατισχναίνειν, οἱ δ’ ἅλες μετὰ τῆς θαλάττης λεπτύνοντες καὶ ἀποτήκοντες τὸ ἀλλότριον [e] καὶ περιττὸν οὐκ ἐῶσι δυσωδίαν οὐδὲ σῆψιν ἐγγίνεσθαι; πρὸς δὲ τούτοις, ὅσον ἐστὶ παχὺ καὶ γεῶδες, ἐμπλεκόμενον τοῖς βαρυτέροις καὶ συγκατασπώμενον ὑποστάθμην ποιεῖ καὶ τρύγα τὸν δ’ οἶνον ἀπολείπει καθαρόν;

ΙΑ΄.

Διὰ τί μᾶλλον ναυτιῶσι τὴν θάλατταν πλέοντες ἢ τοὺς ποταμούς, κἂν ἐν γαλήνῃ πλέωσι;

‹Ἦ ὅτι› μάλιστα ναυτίαν κινεῖ τῶν αἰσθήσεων ἡ ὄσφρησις, τῶν δὲ παθῶν ὁ φόβος; καὶ γὰρ τρέμουσι καὶ φρίττουσι καὶ κοιλίας ἐξυγραίνονται φαντασίαν κινδύνου λαβόντες. τούτων δ’ οὐδέτερον ἐνοχλεῖ τοῖς διὰ ποταμοῦ πλέουσιν· ἡ γὰρ ὄσφρησις παντὶ ποτίμῳ καὶ γλυκεῖ συνήθης ἐστὶν ὁ δὲ πλοῦς ἀκίνδυνος. ἐν δὲ τῇ θαλάττῃ τήν [f] τ’ ὀσμὴν ἀηθείᾳ δυσχεραίνουσι καὶ φοβοῦνται, μὴ πιστεύοντες τῷ παρόντι, περὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος· οὐδὲν οὖν ὄφελος τῆς ἔξω γαλήνης, ἀλλὰ [καὶ] ἡ ψυχὴ σάλον ἔχουσα καὶ θορυβουμένη συγκινεῖ καὶ ἀναπίμπλησι τὸ σῶμα τῆς ταραχῆς.

ΙΒ΄.

Διὰ τί τῆς θαλάττης ἐλαίῳ καταρραινομένης γίνεται καταφάνεια καὶ γαλήνη;

Πότερον, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησί, τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς λειότητος ἀπολισθαῖνον οὐ ποιεῖ πληγὴν οὐδὲ σάλον; ἢ τοῦτο [915] [a] μὲν πιθανῶς εἴρηται πρὸς τὰ ἐκτός, ἐπεὶ δέ φασι καὶ τοὺς κατακολυμβῶντας, ὅταν ἔλαιον εἰς τὸ στόμα λαβόντες ἐκφυσήσωσιν, ἐν τῷ βυθῷ φέγγος ἴσχειν καὶ δίοψιν, οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκεῖ πνεύματος ὄλισθον αἰτιάσασθαι; σκόπει δὴ μὴ τὴν θάλατταν γεώδη καὶ ἀνώμαλον οὖσαν ἐξωθεῖ καὶ διαστέλλει τῇ πυκνότητι τὸ ἔλαιον, εἶτ’ ἀνατρεχούσης εἰς αὑτὴν καὶ συστελλομένης ἀπολείπονται πόροι μεταξὺ ταῖς ὄψεσι διαύγειαν καὶ καταφάνειαν διδόντες. ἢ φύσει μέν ἐστι φωτεινὸς ὑπὸ θερμότητος ὁ τῇ θαλάττῃ καταμεμιγμένος ἀήρ, γίνεται δὲ ταραχθεὶς ἀνώμαλος καὶ σκιώδης· ὅταν οὖν τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν ἐπιλεάνῃ πυκνότητι τὸ [b] ἔλαιον, ἀπολαμβάνει τὴν ὁμαλότητα καὶ τὴν διαύγειαν;

ΙΓ΄.

διὰ τί χειμῶνος μᾶλλον ἢ θέρους τὰ τῶν ἁλιέων σήπεται δίκτυα, καίτοι τά γ’ ἄλλα μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ θέρει τοῦτο πάσχει;

Πότερον, ὡς Θεόφραστος (fr. 163 Wi.) οἴεται, τῷ ψυχρῷ τὸ θερμὸν ὑποχωροῦν ἀντιπεριίσταται καὶ θερμότερα ποιεῖ τὰ ἐν βάθει τῆς θαλάττης, ὥσπερ τῆς γῆς; διὸ καὶ τὰ πηγαῖα τῶν ὑδάτων χλιαρώτερα τοῦ χειμῶνός ἐστι καὶ μᾶλλον ἀτμίζουσιν αἱ λίμναι καὶ οἱ ποταμοί· κατακλείεται γὰρ εἰς βάθος ἡ θερμότης ὑπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ κρατήσαντος. ἢ σῆψις μὲν οὐκ ἔστι τῶν δικτύων, ὅταν δὲ φρίξῃ καὶ παγῇ διὰ τὸ ψῦχος ἀναξηραινόμενα καὶ θρυπτόμενα, [c] μᾶλλον ὑπὸ τοῦ κλύδωνος σήψει τι[νὶ] καὶ μυδήσει πάσχει παραπλήσιον; καὶ γὰρ πονεῖ μᾶλλον ἐν κρύει, καθάπερ τὰ νεῦρα συντεινόμενα σπαράττεται, πλεονάκις ἐκταραττομένης διὰ τὸν χειμῶνα τῆς θαλάττης· διὸ καὶ στύφουσιν αὐτὰ ταῖς βαφαῖς καὶ πυκνοῦσι, φοβούμενοι τὰς ἀναλύσεις· ἐπεὶ μὴ βαφέντα μηδὲ χρισθέντα μᾶλλον ἂν ἐλάνθανε τοὺς ἰχθῦς, ἐνάερον γὰρ τὸ τοῦ λίνου χρῶμα καὶ ἀπατηλὸν ἐν θαλάττῃ.

ΙΔ΄.

Διὰ τί Δωριεῖς εὔχονται κακὴν χόρτου συγκομιδήν;

Ἦ κακῶς μὲν συγκομίζεται χόρτος ὑόμενος; κόπτεται γὰρ οὐ ξηρὸς ἀλλὰ χλωρός, ὥστε σήπεται ταχὺ διάβροχος [d] γενόμενος· ὑόμενος δὲ πρὸ τοῦ θέρους ὁ σῖτος βοηθεῖται πρὸς τὰ θερμὰ καὶ νότια πνεύματα· ταῦτα γὰρ οὐκ ἐᾷ πυκνωθῆναι συνιστάμενον ἐν τῷ στάχυι τὸν καρπόν, ἀλλ’ ἐξίστησι καὶ διαχεῖ τῇ θερμότητι τὴν πῆξιν, ἂν μὴ βεβρεγμένης τῆς γῆς ὑγρότης παραρρέῃ ψύχουσα καὶ νοτίζουσα τὸν στάχυν.

ΙΕ΄.

Διὰ τί πυροφόρος ἡ πίων καὶ βαθεῖα χώρα, κριθοφόρος δὲ μᾶλλον ἡ λεπτόγεως;

Ἦ ὅτι τῶν σπερμάτων τὰ ἰσχυρὰ πλείονος τροφῆς δεῖται τὰ δ’ ἀσθενῆ λεπτῆς καὶ ἐλαφρᾶς, ἀσθενέστερον δ’ ἡ κριθὴ καὶ μανότερον· ὅθεν οὐ φέρει τὴν πολλὴν τροφὴν καὶ βαρεῖαν; μαρτυρεῖ δὲ τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ πυροῦ τὸν τρίμηνον [e] ἐν τοῖς ὑποξήροις φύεσθαι βέλτιον, ἀνο‹τι›στότερον ὄντα καὶ τροφῆς ἐλάττονος δεόμενον· διὸ καὶ συντελεῖται τάχιον.

ΙϚ΄.

Διὰ τί λέγεται (Carm. pop. 16 II 6 p. 34 D.²) ‘σῖτον ἐν πηλῷ φύτευε, τὴν δὲ κριθὴν ἐν κόνει’;

Πότερον, ὡς εἰρήκαμεν, ὁ μὲν δύναται πλείονος τροφῆς κατακρατεῖν ἡ δ’ οὐ φέρει τὸ πολὺ καὶ κατακλύζον, ἢ πυκνὸς ὢν ὁ πυρὸς καὶ ξυλώδης φύεται βέλτιον ἐν ὑγρῷ μαλαττόμενος καὶ χυλούμενος, τῇ δὲ κριθῇ διὰ μανότητα σύμφορον ἐν ἀρχῇ τὸ ξηρότερον; ἢ διὰ θερμότητα σύμμετρος καὶ ἀβλαβὴς ἡ κρᾶσις ψυχρότερον δ’ ἡ κριθή; ἢ φοβοῦνται τὸν πυρὸν ἐν ξηρῷ τρίβειν διὰ τοὺς μύρμηκας, [f] εὐθὺς γὰρ ἐπιτίθενται· τὰς δὲ κριθὰς ἧττον φέρονται, δυσβάστακτοι γάρ εἰσι καὶ δυσπαρακόμιστοι διὰ μέγεθος;

ΙΖ΄.

Διὰ τί τῶν ἀρρένων ἵππων μᾶλλον ἢ τῶν θηλειῶν τὰς τρίχας εἰς τὴν ὁρμιὰν λαμβάνουσι;

Πότερον, ὡς τοῖς ἄλλοις τὸ ἄρρεν τοῦ θήλεος μέρεσι, [916] [a] καὶ ταῖς θριξὶν εὐτονώτερόν ἐστιν; ἢ μᾶλλον διὰ τὸ οὖρον οἴονται τὰς τρίχας τῶν θηλειῶν βρεχομένας γίνεσθαι χείρονας;

ΙΗ΄.

Διὰ τί τευθὶς φαινομένη σημεῖόν ἐστι μεγάλου χειμῶνος;

Ἦ πάντα φύσει τὰ μαλάκια δύσριγα διὰ γυμνότητα τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ ψιλότητα, μήτ’ ὀστράκῳ μήτε δέρματι μήτε λεπίδι σκεπομένης ἀλλ’ ἐντὸς ἐχούσης τὸ σκληρὸν καὶ ὀστεῶδες, διὸ καὶ κέκληται μαλάκια; ταχὺ δὴ προαισθάνεται δι’ εὐπάθειαν τοῦ χειμῶνος· ὅθεν ὁ μὲν πολύπους εἰς γῆν ἀνατρέχει καὶ τῶν πετριδίων ἀντιλαμβανόμενος σημεῖόν ἐστι πνεύματος ὅσον οὔπω παρόντος, ἡ [b] δὲ τευθὶς ἐξάλλεται, φεύγουσα τὸ ψῦχος καὶ τὴν ἐν βάθει ταραχὴν τῆς θαλάττης· καὶ γὰρ ἔχει μάλιστα τῶν μαλακίων εὔθρυπτον καὶ ἁπαλὸν τὸ σαρκῶδες.

ΙΘ΄.

Διὰ τί τὴν χρόαν ὁ πολύπους ἐξαλλάττει;

Πότερον, ὡς Θεόφραστος (fr. 188 Wi.) ᾤετο, δειλόν ἐστι φύσει ζῷον· ὅταν οὖν ταραχθῇ τρεπόμενον τῷ πνεύματι, συμμεταβάλλει τὸ χρῶμα καθάπερ ἄνθρωπος· διὸ καὶ λέλεκται (Hom. Ν 279)

‘τοῦ μὲν γάρ τε κακοῦ τρέπεται χρώς’;

ἢ τοῦτο πρὸς τὴν μεταβολὴν πιθανῶς λέλεκται πρὸς δὲ τὴν ἐξομοίωσιν οὐχ ἱκανῶς; μεταβάλλει γὰρ οὕτως, ὥστε τὴν χρόαν αἷς ἂν πλησιάζῃ πέτραις ὁμοιοῦν· πρὸς ὃ καὶ Πίνδαρος (fr. 43) ἐποίησε

‘ποντίου θηρὸς χρωτὶ μάλιστα νόον

[c] προσφέρων πάσαις πολίεσσιν ὁμίλει’,

καὶ Θέογνις (215 sq.)

‘πουλύποδος νόον ἴσχε πολυχρόου, ὃς ποτὶ πέτρῃ,

τῇ προσομιλήσῃ, τοῖος ἰδεῖν ἐφάνη.’

τοῦτο δὴ καὶ τοὺς πανουργίᾳ καὶ δεινότητι ὑπερφέροντας ἔχειν τὸ ἐπιτήδευμα λέγουσιν, ὡς ὑπὲρ τοῦ λαθεῖν καὶ διαφυγεῖν †τοὺς πλησίον ἑαυτοὺς ἀεὶ ἀπεικάζειν πολύποδι. ἢ καθάπερ ἐσθῆτι τῇ χρόᾳ νομίζουσι χρῆσθαι, ῥᾳδίως οὕτως ᾗ βούλεται μετενδυόμενον. ἆρ’ οὖν τὴν μὲν ἀρχὴν αὐτὸς ἐνδίδωσι τοῦ πάθους δείσας, τὰ δὲ κύρια τῆς αἰτίας ἐν ἄλλοις ἐστί; σκόπει δή, κατ’ Ἐμπεδοκλέα (fr. 89)

[d] ‘γνοὺς ὅτι πάντων εἰσὶν ἀπορροαὶ ὅσσ’ ἐγένοντο·’

οὐ γὰρ ζῴων μόνον οὐδὲ φυτῶν οὐδὲ γῆς καὶ θαλάττης, ἀλλὰ καὶ λίθων ἄπεισιν ἐνδελεχῶς πολλὰ ῥεύματα καὶ χαλκοῦ καὶ σιδήρου· καὶ γὰρ φθέγγεται πάντα καὶ ὄδωδε τῷ ῥεῖν ἀεί τι καὶ φθείρεσθαι συνεχῶς· καὶ γὰρ ἕλξεις ἢ ἐπιπηδήσεις ποιοῦσι ταῖς ἀπορροίαις, οἱ μὲν ἐμπλοκὰς αὐτῶν οἱ δὲ πληγὰς οἱ δ’ ὤσεις τινὰς καὶ περιελάσεις ὑποτιθέμενοι. μάλιστα δὲ τῶν παράλων πετρῶν ἐπιρραινομένων καὶ ψηχομένων ὑπὸ τῆς θαλάττης ἀπιέναι μέρη καὶ θραύσματα πολλὰ καὶ λεπτὰ ‹εἰκὸς› συνεχῶς, ἃ τ‹οῖς χρώμασιν ἀλλήλων διαφέροντα τοῖς μὲν ἄλ›λοις οὐ [e] προσί‹σχεται› σώμα‹σιν› ἀλλὰ λανθάνει περιολισθάνοντα τῶν πυκνοτέρους ἐχόντων πόρους ἢ διεκθέοντα τῶν μανοτέρους. ὁ δὲ πολύπους τήν τε σάρκα προσιδεῖν αὐτόθεν ἀνθρηνιώδης καὶ πολύπορος καὶ δεκτικὸς ἀπορροιῶν ἐστιν, ὅταν τε δείσῃ, τῷ πνεύματι τρεπόμενος καὶ τρέπων οἷον ἔσφιγξε τὸ σῶμα καὶ συνήγαγεν, ὥστε προσδέχεσθαι καὶ στέγειν ἐπιπολῆς τὰς τῶν ἐγγὺς ἀπορροίας. καὶ γὰρ ἡ τραχύτης μετὰ τῆς μαλακότητος ἕλικας παρέχουσα τοῖς ἐπιφερομένοις μέρεσι, μὴ σκεδαννυμένοις ἀλλ’ ἀθροιζομένοις καὶ προσμένουσι, σύγχρου‹ν ἀπεργάζεται› [f] τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν ‹τοῖς ἐγγύ›τατα. τεκμήριον δὲ τῆς αἰτίας μέγα τὸ μήτε τοῦτον πᾶσιν ἐξομοιοῦσθαι τοῖς πλησίον μήτε τὸν χαμαιλέοντα τοῖς λευκοῖς χρώμασιν, ἀλλὰ μόνοις ἑκάτερον, ὧν ταῖς ἀπορροίαις πόρους συμμέτρους ἔχουσιν.

Κ΄.

Διὰ τίν’ αἰτίαν τὸ τῶν ἀγρίων συῶν δάκρυον ἡδὺ τὸ δὲ τῶν ἐλάφων ἁλμυρόν ἐστι καὶ φαῦλον;

[917] [a] Αἰτία δὲ θερμότης καὶ ψυχρότης τούτων, καὶ ψυχρὸν μὲν ὁ ἔλαφος περίθερμον δὲ καὶ πυρῶδες ὁ σῦς· ὅθεν τὸ μὲν φεύγει τὸ δ’ ἀμύνεται τοὺς ἐπιόντας, ὅτε καὶ μάλιστα διὰ τὸν θυμὸν ἐκβάλλει τὸ δάκρυον· πολλῆς γὰρ ἐπὶ τὰ ὄμματα θερμότητος φερομένης, ὡς εἴρηται (Hom. τ 446)

 ‘φρίξας εὖ λοφιήν, πῦρ ὀφθαλμοῖσι δεδορκώς’,

γλυκὺ γίνεται τὸ ἀποτηκόμενον. ἔνιοι δέ φασιν, ὥσπερ γάλακτος ὀρρὸν τοῦ αἵματος ταραχθέντος ἐκκρούεσθαι τὸ δάκρυον, ὡς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (A 78). ἐπεὶ τοίνυν τραχὺ καὶ μέλαν τὸ τῶν κάπρων αἷμα διὰ θερμότητα λεπτὸν δὲ καὶ ὑδαρὲς τὸ τῶν ἐλάφων, εἰκότως καὶ τὸ [b] ἀποκρινόμενον ἐν τοῖς θυμοῖς καὶ τοῖς φόβοις ἑκατέρου τοιοῦτον.

ΚΑ΄.

Διὰ τί τῶν ὑῶν αἱ μὲν ἥμεροι πλεονάκις τίκτουσι καὶ κατ’ ἄλλον ἄλλαι χρόνον, αἱ δ’ ἄγριαι καὶ ἅπαξ καὶ περὶ τὰς αὐτὰς ἅπασαι σχεδὸν ἡμέρας; αὗται δ’ εἰσὶν ἀρχομένου θέρους· διὸ καὶ λέλεκται ‘μηκέτι νυκτὸς ὕειν, ᾗ κεν τέκῃ ἀγροτέρη σῦς.’

Ἦ διὰ πλῆθος τροφῆς, ὄντως ‘ἐν πλησμονῇ Κύπρις’ (Eur. fr. 895); ἀφθονία γὰρ τροφῆς τὸ γόνιμον περίττωμα ποιεῖ καὶ φυτοῖς καὶ ζῴοις· αἱ μὲν οὖν ἄγριαι δι’ αὑτῶν καὶ μετὰ φόβου τὴν τροφὴν ζητοῦσι, ταῖς δ’ ἡμέροις ὑπάρχει διὰ παντὸς ἡ μὲν αὐτοφυὴς ἡ δ’ ἐκ παρασκευῆς.

[c] ἢ τὸ τῆς σχολῆς καὶ ἀσχολίας ἅμα συμβαῖνον; αἱ μὲν γὰρ ἀργοῦσι, μὴ βουλόμεναι πόρρω πλανᾶσθαι τῶν συφορβῶν, αἱ δ’ ὀρειβατοῦσαι καὶ περιθέουσαι τὴν τροφὴν διαφοροῦσι καὶ καταναλίσκουσιν εἰς τὸ σῶμα πᾶσαν, ὥστε διὰ τὸ ἀεὶ συντείνειν μὴ γίνεσθαι περίττωμα. ἢ καὶ τὸ συντρέφεσθαι καὶ συναγελάζεσθαι τὰ θήλεα τοῖς ἄρρεσιν ἀνάμνησιν ποιεῖ τῶν ἀφροδισίων καὶ συνεκκαλεῖται τὴν ὄρεξιν (ὡς ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπων Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἐποίησε (fr. 64)

‘τῷ δ’ ἐπὶ καὶ πόθος εἶσι δι’ ὄψιος ἀμμιμνῄσκων’),

ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἀγρίοις, ἀποτρόφοις οὖσιν ἀλλήλων, τὸ ἄστοργον καὶ δυσεπίμικτον ἀμβλύνει καὶ ἀνασβέννυσι τὰς ὁρμάς; [d] ἢ καὶ τὸ λεγόμενον ὑπ’ Ἀριστοτέλους (H. An. VI 578b 1) ἀληθές ἐστιν, ὅτι ‘χλούνην’ Ὅμηρος (Ι 539) ὠνόμασε σῦν τὸν μόνορχιν; τῶν γὰρ πλείστων φησὶ προσκνωμένων τοῖς στελέχεσι θρύπτεσθαι τοὺς ὄρχεις.

ΚΒ΄.

Διὰ τί τῆς ἄρκτου φασὶ τὴν χεῖρα γλυκυτάτην ἔχειν σάρκα καὶ φαγεῖν ἡδίστην;

Ἦ ὅτι τὰ πέττοντα τὴν τροφὴν μάλιστα τοῦ σώματος παρέχει τὸ κρέας ἥδιστον; πέττει δὲ κάλλιστα τὸ διαπνέον, κινούμενον μάλιστα καὶ συγγυμναζόμενον, ὥσπερ ἡ ἄρκτος τῷ μέρει τούτῳ πλεῖστα κινεῖται· καὶ γὰρ ὡς ποσὶ τοῖς ἐμπροσθίοις βαδίζουσα χρῆται καὶ τρέχουσα καὶ ὡς χερσὶν ἀντιλαμβανομένη.

ΚΓ΄.

[e]

Διὰ τί δυστίβευτος ἡ τοῦ ἔαρος ὥρα;

Πότερον αἱ κύνες, ὥς φησιν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (fr. 101), ‘κέρματα θηρείων μελέων μυκτῆρσιν ἐρευνῶσαι’ τὰς ἀπορροίας ἀναλαμβάνουσιν, ἃς ἐναπολείπει τὰ θηρία τῇ ὕλῃ, ταύτας δὲ τοῦ ἔαρος ἐξαμαυροῦσι καὶ συγχέουσιν αἱ πλεῖσται τῶν φυτῶν καὶ τῶν ὑλημάτων ὀσμαί, ‹αἳ› ὑπὲρ τὴν ἄνθησιν ὑπερχεόμεναι καὶ κεραννύμεναι †περιποτῶσι καὶ διαπλανῶσι τὰς κύνας τῆς τῶν θηρίων ὀσμῆς ἐπιλαβέσθαι; διὸ περὶ τὴν Αἴτνην ἐν Σικελίᾳ φασὶ [f] μηδένα κυνηγεῖν· πολὺ γὰρ ἀναφύεσθαι καὶ τεθηλέναι δι’ ἔτους ἴον ὀρεινὸν ἐν τοῖς λειμῶσι, καὶ τὸν τόπον εὐωδίαν ἀεὶ κατέχουσαν ἁρπάζειν τὰς τῶν θηρίων ἀναπνοάς. λέγεται δὲ μῦθος, ὡς τὴν Κόρην ἐκεῖθεν ἀνθολογοῦσαν ὁ Πλούτων ἀφαρπάσειε, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τιμῶντες καὶ σεβόμενοι τὸ χωρίον ὡς ἄσυλον οὐκ ἐπιτίθενται τοῖς ἐκεῖ νεμομένοις.

ΚΔ΄.

Διὰ τί περὶ τὰς πανσελήνους ἥκιστα ταῖς ἰχνοσκοπίαις ἐπιτυγχάνουσιν;

Ἦ διὰ τὴν εἰρημένην αἰτίαν; δροσοβόλοι γὰρ αἱ πανσέληνοι· [918] [a] διὸ καὶ τὴν δρόσον ὁ Ἀλκμὰν (fr. 43 II 2 p. 26 D.) Διὸς θυγατέρα καὶ Σελήνης προσεῖπε ποιήσας

‘Διὸς θυγάτηρ Ἔρσα τρέφει καὶ Σελάνας δίας’.

ἡ γὰρ δρόσος ἀσθενής ἐστι καὶ ἀδρανὴς ὄμβρος, ἀσθενὲς δὲ καὶ τὸ τῆς σελήνης θερμόν· ὅθεν ἕλκει μὲν ἀπὸ γῆς ὥσπερ ὁ ἥλιος, ἄγειν δ’ εἰς ὕψος μὴ δυναμένη μηδ’ ἀναλαμβάνειν μεθίησιν.

ΚΕ΄.

Διὰ τί τὸ δρόσιμον γενόμενον διὰ τοῦ ψύχους δυστίβευτον;

Πότερον ὅτι τὰ θηρία πόρρω τῶν κοιτῶν ὀκνοῦντα προϊέναι διὰ τὸ κρύος οὐ ποιεῖ πολλὰ σημεῖα; διὸ καί φασιν αὐτὰ φείδεσθαι τῶν πλησίον, ὅπως μὴ κακοπαθῇ πλανώμενα μακρὰν τοῦ χειμῶνος ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ ἐγγύθεν ἔχῃ [b] νέμεσθαι. ἢ δεῖ μὴ μόνον ἔχειν ἴχνη τὸν στιβευόμενον τόπον ἀλλὰ κινεῖν τὴν ὄσφρησιν, κινεῖ δὲ λυόμενα καὶ χαλώμενα μαλακῶς ὑπὸ θερμότητος, ἡ δ’ ἄγαν περίψυξις πηγνύουσα τὰς ὀσμὰς οὐκ ἐᾷ ῥεῖν οὐδὲ κινεῖν τὴν αἴσθησιν; ὅθεν καὶ τὰ μύρα καὶ τὸν οἶνον ἧττον ὄζειν ψύχους καὶ χειμῶνος λέγουσιν· ὁ γὰρ ἀὴρ πηγνύμενος ἵστησι τὰς ὀσμὰς ἐν αὑτῷ καὶ οὐκ ἐᾷ ἀναδίδοσθαι.

ΚϚ΄.

Διὰ τί τὰ ζῷα τὰς βοηθούσας δυνάμεις, ὅταν ἐν πάθει γένηται, ζητεῖ καὶ διώκει καὶ χρώμενα πολλάκις ὠφελεῖται; καθάπερ αἱ κύνες ἐσθίουσι πόαν, ἵνα τὴν χολὴν ἐξεμῶσιν· αἱ δ’ ὕες ἐπὶ τοὺς ποταμίους καρκίνους φέρονται, [c] βοηθοῦνται γὰρ ἐσθίουσαι πρὸς κεφαλαλγίαν· ἡ δὲ χελώνη φαγοῦσα τὴν σάρκα τοῦ ἔχεως ὀρίγανον ἐπεσθίει· τὴν δ’ ἄρκτον λέγουσιν ἀσωμένην τοὺς μύρμηκας ἀναλαμβάνειν τῇ γλώττῃ καὶ καταπίνουσαν ἀπαλλάττεσθαι. τούτων δ’ οὔτε πεῖρα οὔτε περίπτωσις γέγονεν αὐτοῖς.

Πότερον οὖν, ὥσπερ τὰ κηρία τὴν μέλιτταν τῇ ὀσμῇ καὶ τὰ κενέβρεια τὸν γῦπα κινεῖ καὶ προσάγεται πόρρωθεν, οὕτως [οὖν] καὶ σῦς οἱ καρκίνοι καὶ τὴν χελώνην ἡ ὀρίγανος, αἱ δὲ μυρμηκιαὶ τὴν ἄρκτον ὀσμαῖς καὶ ῥεύμασι προσφερέσι καὶ οἰκείοις ἕλκουσιν, οὐ λογισμῷ τοῦ συμφέροντος [d] ἀγούσης τῆς αἰσθήσεως; ἢ τὰς ὀρέξεις ἐπιφέρουσι τοῖς ζῴοις αἱ τῶν σωμάτων κράσεις, ‹ἃς› αἱ νόσοι ποιοῦσι, διαφόρους δριμύτητας ἢ γλυκύτητας ἤ τινας ἄλλας ἐντίκτουσαι ποιότητας ἀήθεις καὶ ἀτόπους, τῶν ὑγρῶν τρεπομένων; ὡς δῆλόν ἐστιν ἐπὶ τῶν γυναικῶν, ὅταν κύωσι, καὶ λίθους καὶ γῆν προσφερομένων· διὸ καὶ τῶν νοσούντων ταῖς ὀρέξεσιν οἱ χαρίεντες ἰατροὶ προΐσασι τοὺς ἀσώτως ἢ σωτηρίως ἔχοντας· ἱστορεῖ γοῦν Μνησίθεος ἰατρὸς ἐν ἀρχῇ πνευμονίας τὸν ἐπιθυμήσαντα κρομμύων σῴζεσθαι τὸν δὲ σύκων ἀπόλλυσθαι, διὰ τὸ ταῖς κράσεσι τὰς ὀρέξεις τὰς δὲ κράσεις τοῖς πάθεσιν [e] ἕπεσθαι. πιθανὸν οὖν ἐστι καὶ τῶν θηρίων τὰ μὴ παντελῶς ὀλεθρίοις μηδ’ ἀναιρετικοῖς περιπίπτοντα νοσήμασι ταύτην τὴν διάθεσιν καὶ κρᾶσιν ἴσχειν, ὑφ’ ἧς ἐπὶ τὰ σῴζοντα φέρεται καὶ ἄγεται ταῖς ὀρέξεσιν ἕκαστον αὐτῶν.

ΚΖ΄.

Διὰ τί τὸ γλεῦκος, ἂν ὑπὸ ψύχους περιέχηται τὸ ἀγγεῖον, γλυκὺ διαμένει πολὺν χρόνον;

Πότερον ὅτι πέψις ἐστὶ τοῦ γλεύκους ἡ εἰς τὸ οἰνῶδες μεταβολὴ κωλύει δὲ τὴν πέψιν ἡ ψυχρότης, ὑπὸ θερμοῦ γὰρ ἡ πέψις; ἢ τοὐναντίον, οἰκεῖός ἐστι τῆς σταφυλῆς χυμὸς ὁ γλυκύς, διὸ καὶ πεπαίνεσθαι λέγεται τὸ γλυκὺ κιρνώμενον· ἡ δὲ ψυχρότης οὐκ ἐῶσα διαπνεῖν, ἀλλὰ συνέχουσα [f] τὸ θερμὸν τὴν γλυκύτητα διατηρεῖ τοῦ γλεύκους. αὕτη δ’ ἐστὶν αἰτία καὶ τῶν τρυγωμένων ὄμβρῳ τὸ γλεῦκος ἧττον ἀναζεῖν· ἡ γὰρ ζέσις ὑπὸ θερμότητος, τὴν δὲ θερμότητα κατέχει καὶ συστέλλει τὸ ψυχρόν.

ΚΗ΄.

Διὰ τί τῶν θηρίων ἡ ἄρκτος ἥκιστα διεσθίει τὰ δίκτυα, καίτοι καὶ λύκοι καὶ ἀλώπεκες διεσθίουσι;

Πότερον ἐνδοτάτω τοὺς ὀδόντας ἔχουσα τοῦ χάσματος ἥκιστα πρὸς τὰ λίνα ἐξικνεῖται, προεμπίπτει γὰρ τὰ χείλη [919] [a] διὰ πάχος καὶ μέγεθος; ἢ μᾶλλον ἰσχύουσα ταῖς χερσὶ ῥήγνυσι καὶ διασπᾷ τὸν βρόχον; ἢ καὶ ταῖς χερσὶν ἅμα χρῆται καὶ τῷ στόματι, ταῖς μὲν διασπῶσα τὸ λίνον τῷ δ’ ἀμυνομένη τοὺς διώκοντας; οὐδενὸς δ’ ἧττον αὐτῇ βοηθοῦσιν αἱ περικαλινδήσεις· διὸ μᾶλλον ἢ διασπᾶν τὰ λίνα πραγματευομένη πολλάκις ἐκκυβιστᾷ καὶ σῴζεται, .... †ἀμὴ καὶ δέοι ἡ τῶν ὀδόντων.

ΚΘ΄.

Τίς ἡ αἰτία, δι’ ἣν τὰ ψυχρὰ τῶν ὑδάτων οὐ θαυμάζομεν ἀλλὰ τὰ θερμά; καίτοι δῆλον ὅτι θερμότης αἰτία τούτων ὡς ψυχρότης ἐκείνων.

Οὐ γάρ, ὡς ἔνιοι νομίζουσιν, ἡ μὲν θερμότης δύναμίς [b] ἐστιν ἡ δὲ ψυχρότης στέρησις θερμότητος, ἐπεὶ πλειόνων ‹ἂν› αἴτιον ἐφαίνετο τὸ μὴ ὂν τοῦ ὄντος. ἀλλ’ ἔοικε τῷ σπανίῳ τὸ θαυμάσιον ἡ φύσις νέμουσα πῶς γίνεται ζητεῖν τὸ μὴ πολλάκις γινόμενον.

‘ὁρᾷς τὸν ὑψοῦ τόνδ’ ἄπειρον αἰθέρα

καὶ γῆν πέριξ ἔχονθ’ ὑγραῖς ἐν ἀγκάλαις’ (Eur. fr. 941);

ὅσα μὲν ἔρχεται φέρων θεάματα νυκτός, ὅσον δὲ μεθ’ ἡμέραν κάλλος ἀναδείκνυσιν; οἱ ‹δὲ› πολλοὶ τὴν τούτων φύσιν ‹οὐ θαυμάζουσιν›, ἴριδες δὲ καὶ ποικίλματα νεφῶν ἡμέρας καὶ σέλα ῥηγνύμενα πομφόλυγος δίκην καὶ κομῆται * * *

Λ΄.

Διὰ τί τῶν ἀμπέλων τὰς ἀκάρπους, ‹τοῖς δ’ ἀκρέ›μοσι ‹καὶ ἔρνεσι›ν εὐτρο‹φούς›ασ τραγᾶν ‹λέγο›μεν;

[c] Ἦ ὅτι τῶν τράγων οἱ σφόδρα πίονες ἧττόν εἰσι γόνιμοι καὶ μόλις ὑπὸ πιμελῆς ὀχεύουσι; τὸ γὰρ σπέρμα περίττωμα τῆς τροφῆς ἐστι [καὶ] τῆς τῷ σώματι προστιθεμένης· ὅταν οὖν ἢ ζῷον ἢ δένδρον εὐεκτῇ καὶ παχύνηται, τοῦτο σημεῖόν ἐστι τοῦ τὴν τροφὴν ἐν ἑαυτῷ καταναλισκομένην μηθὲν ἢ μικρόν τι καὶ ἀγεννὲς περίττωμα ποιεῖν.

ΛΑ΄.

Διὰ τί ἄμπελος οἴνῳ ῥαινομένη, μάλιστα τῷ ἐξ αὑτῆς, ἀναξηραίνεται;

Πότερον, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς πολυπόταις γίνεται φαλάκρωσις, ὑπὸ θερμότητος τοῦ οἴνου τὸ ὑγρὸν ἐξατμίζοντος; ἢ φύ...... τὸ οἰνῶδές ἐστιν, ὥς φησιν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς [d] (fr. 81) ‘οἶνον ἀπὸ φλοιοῦ πέλεσθαι σαπὲν ἐν ξύλῳ ὕδωρ’; ὅταν οὖν ἔξωθεν οἴνῳ βρέχηται, γίνεται πῦρ ἀμπέλῳ καὶ τοῦ τρέφοντος ..... δύναμιν ἐξίστησιν ἡ κρᾶσις· ἢ στυπτικὴν φύσιν ἔχων ὁ ἄκρατος ἐνδύεται ταῖς ῥίζαις, καὶ τοὺς πόρους συναγαγὼν καὶ πυκνώσας οὐ διίησι τὸ ὕδωρ εἰς τὸ φυτόν, ‹ᾧ› εὐθαλεῖν καὶ βλαστάνειν πέφυκεν; ἢ καὶ τοῦτο μᾶλλον εἶναι τῇ ἀμπέλῳ παρὰ φύσιν, τὸ ἐξ αὐτῆς ἀπιὸν εἰς αὐτὴν ἐπανιὸν πάλιν δέχεσθαι; τῆς γὰρ ἐν τοῖς φυτοῖς ὑγρότητος †ἤνθει καί τι τρέφειν [e] μηδὲ προστίθεσθαι μηδὲ μέρος εἶναι τοῦ φυ.....

De facie in orbe lunae

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΕΜΦΑΙΝΟΜΕΝΟΥ ΠΡΟΣΩΠΟΥ ΤΩΙ ΚΥΚΛΩΙ ΤΗΣ ΣΕΛΗΝΗΣ

[920] ... †Ὀαυνοσύλλας ‘ταῦτ’’ εἶπε· ‘τῷ γὰρ ἐμῷ μύθῳ προσήκει κἀκεῖθέν ἐστι· ἀλλ’ εἰ δή τι πρὸς τὰς ἀνὰ χεῖρα ταύτας καὶ διὰ στόματος πᾶσι δόξας περὶ τοῦ προσώπου τῆς σελήνης προανεκρούσασθε, πρῶτον ἡδέως ἄν μοι δοκῶ πυθέσθαι’. ‘τί δ’ οὐκ ἐμέλλομεν’, εἶπον, ‘ὑπὸ τῆς ἐν τούτοις ἀπορίας ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνα ἀπωσθέντες; ὡς γὰρ οἱ ἐν νοσήμασι χρονίοις πρὸς τὰ κοινὰ βοηθήματα καὶ τὰς συνήθεις διαίτας ἀπειπόντες ἐπὶ καθαρμοὺς καὶ περίαπτα καὶ ὀνείρους τρέπονται, οὕτως ἀναγκαῖον ἐν δυσθεωρήτοις [c] καὶ ἀπόροις σκέψεσιν, ὅταν οἱ κοινοὶ καὶ ἔνδοξοι καὶ συνήθεις λόγοι μὴ πείθωσι, πειρᾶσθαι τῶν ἀτοπωτέρων καὶ μὴ καταφρονεῖν ἀλλ’ ἐπᾴδειν ἀτεχνῶς ἑαυτοῖς τὰ τῶν παλαιῶν καὶ διὰ πάντων τἀληθὲς ἐξελέγχειν.

Ὁρᾷς γὰρ εὐθὺς ὡς ἄτοπος ὁ λέγων τὸ φαινόμενον εἶδος ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ πάθος εἶναι τῆς ὄψεως ὑπεικούσης τῇ λαμπρότητι δι’ ἀσθένειαν, ὃ ‹μαρμαρυγὴν› καλοῦμεν, οὐ συνορῶν ὅτι πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ἔδει τοῦτο γίνεσθαι μᾶλλον ὀξὺν ἀπαντῶντα καὶ πλήκτην - ὥς που καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τὴν ἑκατέρων ἀποδίδωσιν οὐκ ἀηδῶς διαφοράν (B 40)

‘Ἥλιος ὀξυβελὴς ἠδ’ ἱλάειρα Σελήνη,’

[d] τὸ ἐπαγωγὸν αὐτῆς καὶ ἱλαρὸν καὶ ἄλυπον οὕτως προσαγορεύσας - , ἔπειτα λόγον ἀποδιδούς, καθ’ ὃν αἱ ἀμυδραὶ καὶ ἀσθενεῖς ὄψεις οὐδεμίαν διαφορὰν ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ μορφῆς ἐνορῶσιν, ἀλλὰ λεῖος αὐταῖς ἀντιλάμπει καὶ περίπλεως αὐτῆς ὁ κύκλος, οἱ δ’ ὀξὺ καὶ σφοδρὸν ὁρῶντες ἐξακριβοῦσι μᾶλλον καὶ διαστέλλουσιν ἐκτυπούμενα τὰ εἴδη τοῦ προσώπου καὶ τῆς διαφορᾶς ἅπτονται σαφέστερον· ἔδει γὰρ οἶμαι τοὐναντίον, εἴπερ ἡττωμένου πά‹θος› ὄμματος ἐποίει τὴν φαντασίαν, ὅπου τὸ πάσχον ἀσθενέστερον, ‹σαφέστερον› εἶναι τὸ φαινόμενον. ἡ δ’ ἀνωμαλία καὶ παντάπασιν ἐλέγχει τὸν λόγον· οὐ γὰρ ἔστι [e] συνεχοῦς σκιᾶς καὶ συγκεχυμένης ὄψις, ἀλλ’ οὐ φαύλως ὑπογράφων ὁ Ἀγησιάναξ εἴρηκε (fr. 1 Powell An. Alex.)

‘πᾶσα μὲν ἥδε πέριξ πυρὶ λάμπεται, ἐν δ’ ἄρα μέσσῃ

γλαυκότερον κυάνοιο φαείνεται ἠύτε κούρης

ὄμμα καὶ ὑγρὰ μέτωπα· τὰ δὲ ῥέθει ἄντα ἔοικεν·’

ὄντως γὰρ ὑποδύεται περιόντα τοῖς λαμπροῖς τὰ σκιερὰ καὶ πιέζει ‹πιεζόμενα› πάλιν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν καὶ ἀποκοπτόμενα, καὶ ὅλως πέπλεκται δι’ ἀλλήλων, ... γραφικὴν τὴν δια‹τύπωσιν› εἶναι τοῦ σχήματος.

‹Ταὐτὸ δὲ› καὶ πρὸς Κλέαρχον (fr. 97 W.), ὦ Ἀριστότελες, οὐκ ἀπιθάνως ἐδόκει λέγεσθαι τὸν ὑμέτερον· ὑμέτερος [f] γὰρ ἁνήρ, Ἀριστοτέλους τοῦ παλαιοῦ γεγονὼς συνήθης, εἰ καὶ πολλὰ τοῦ Περιπάτου παρέτρεψεν.’ ὑπολαβόντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀπολλωνίδου τὸν λόγον καὶ τίς ἦν ἡ δόξα τοῦ Κλεάρχου διαπυθομένου ‘παντὶ μᾶλλον’ ἔφην ‘ἀγνοεῖν ἢ σοὶ προσῆκόν ἐστι λόγον ὥσπερ ἀφ’ ἑστίας τῆς γεωμετρίας ὁρμώμενον. λέγει γὰρ ἁνὴρ εἰκόνας ἐσοπτρικὰς εἶναι καὶ εἴδωλα τῆς μεγάλης θαλάσσης ἐμφαινόμενα [921] [a] τῇ σελήνῃ τὸ καλούμενον πρόσωπον. ἥ τε γὰρ ἀκτὶς ἀνακλωμένη πολλαχόθεν ἅπτεσθαι τῶν οὐ κατ’ εὐθυωρίαν ὁρωμένων πέφυκεν, ἥ τε πανσέληνος αὐτὴ πάντων ἐσόπτρων ὁμαλότητι καὶ στιλπνότητι κάλλιστόν ἐστι καὶ καθαρώτατον. ὥσπερ οὖν τὴν ἶ‹ριν› οἴεσθ’ ὑμεῖς ἀνακλωμένης ἐπὶ τὸν ἥλιον τῆς ὄψεως ἐνορᾶσθαι τῷ νέφει λαβόντι νοτερὰν ἡσυχῇ λειότητα καὶ ‹πῆ›ξιν, οὕτως ἐκεῖνος ἐνορᾶσθαι τῇ σελήνῃ τὴν ἔξω θάλασσαν οὐκ ἐφ’ ἧς ἐστι χώρας, ἀλλ’ ὅθεν ἡ κλάσις ἐποίησε τῇ ὄψει τὴν ἐπαφὴν αὐτῆς καὶ τὴν ἀνταύγειαν· ὥς που πάλιν ὁ Ἀγησιάναξ εἴρηκεν (fr. 2)

[b] ‘ᾗ πόντου μέγα κῦμα καταντία κυμαίνοντος

δείκελον ἰνδάλλοιτο πυριφλεγέθοντος ἐσόπτρου.’’

ἡσθεὶς οὖν ὁ Ἀπολλωνίδης ‘ὡς ἴδιον’ εἶπε ‘καὶ καινὸν ὅλως τὸ σκευώρημα τῆς δόξης, τόλμαν δέ τινα καὶ μοῦσαν ἔχοντος ἀνδρός· ἀλλὰ πῆ τὸν ἔλεγχον αὐτῷ προσῆγε’; ‘πρῶτον μέν’ εἶπον, ‘ᾗ μία φύσις τῆς ἔξω θαλάσσης ἐστί, σύρρουν καὶ συνεχὲς ‹κύκλῳ› πέλαγος, ἡ δ’ ἔμφασις οὐ μία τῶν ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ μελασμάτων, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἰσθμοὺς ἔχουσα, τοῦ λαμπροῦ διαιροῦντος καὶ διορίζοντος τὸ σκιερόν· ὅθεν ἑκάστου τόπου χωρισθέντος καὶ πέρας [c] ἴδιον ἔχοντος αἱ τῶν φωτεινῶν ἐπιβολαὶ τοῖς σκοτεινοῖς ὕψους εἰκόνα καὶ βάθους λαμβάνουσαι τὰς περὶ τὰ ὄμματα καὶ τὰ χείλη φαινομένας εἰκόνας ὁμοιότατα διετύπωσαν· ὥστ’ ἢ πλείονας ἔξω θαλάσσας ὑποληπτέον ἰσθμοῖς τισι καὶ ἠπείροις ἀπολαμβανομένας, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἄτοπον καὶ ψεῦδος, ἢ μιᾶς οὔσης οὐ πιθανὸν εἰκόνα διεσπασμένην οὕτως ἐμφαίνεσθαι. ἐκεῖνο μὲν γὰρ ἐρωτῶν ἀσφαλέστερόν ἐστιν ἢ ἀποφαίνεσθαι σοῦ παρόντος, εἰ τῆς οἰκουμένης εὖρος τοσαύτης καὶ μῆκος ἐνδέχεται πᾶσιν ὡσαύτως ἀπὸ τῆς σελήνης ὄψιν ἀνακλωμένην ἐπιθιγγάνειν τῆς θαλάσσης, καὶ τοῖς ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ μεγάλῃ θαλάττῃ [d] πλέουσι νὴ Δία καὶ οἰκοῦσιν, ὥσπερ Βρεττανοῖς, καὶ ταῦτα μηδὲ τῆς γῆς, ὥς φατε, πρὸς τὴν σφαῖραν τῆς σελήνης κέντρου λόγον ἐπεχούσης. τουτὶ μὲν οὖν’ ἔφην ‘σὸν ἔργον ἐπισκοπεῖν, τὴν δὲ πρὸς τὴν σελήνην [ἢ] τῆς ὄψεως κλάσιν οὐκέτι σὸν οὐδ’ Ἱππάρχου· καίτοι γε φιλοπράγμ‹ων ἁνήρ›· ἀλλὰ πολλοῖς οὐκ ἀρέσκει φυσιολογῶν περὶ τῆς ὄψεως. ‹ὡς› αὐτὴν ὁμοπαθῆ κρᾶσιν ἴσχειν καὶ σύμπηξιν εἰκός ἐστι μᾶλλον ἢ πληγάς τινας καὶ ἀποπηδήσεις, οἵας ἔπλαττε τῶν ἀτόμων Ἐπίκουρος. οὐκ ἐθελήσει δ’ οἶμαι τὴν σελήνην ἐμβριθὲς ὑποθέσθαι σῶμα καὶ στερεὸν ὑμῖν ὁ Κλέαρχος, ἀλλ’ ἄστρον αἰθέριον καὶ φωσφόρον, ὥς φατε· τοιαύτῃ ‹δὲ› τὴν ὄψιν ἢ θραύειν προσήκει ἢ ἀποστρέφειν, ὥστ’ οἴχεσθαι τὴν ἀνάκλασιν.

[e] εἰ δὲ προσαμυνεῖταί τις ἡμᾶς, ἐρησόμεθα πῶς μόνον πρόσωπόν ἐστιν ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ τὸ τῆς θαλάσσης ἔσοπτρον, ἄλλῳ δ’ οὐδενὶ τῶν τοσούτων ἀστέρων ἐνορᾶται· καίτοι τό γ’ εἰκὸς ἀπαιτεῖ πρὸς ἅπαντας ἢ πρὸς μηθένα τοῦτο πάσχειν τὴν ὄψιν. ἀλλ’ ...’ πρὸς τὸν Λεύκιον ἔφην ἀποβλέψας, ‘ὃ πρῶτον ἐλέχθη τῶν ἡμετέρων ὑπόμνησον.’

Καὶ ὁ Λεύκιος ‘ἀλλὰ μὴ δόξωμεν’ ἔφη ‘κομιδῇ προπηλακίζειν τὸν Φαρνάκην, οὕτω τὴν Στωικὴν δόξαν [f] ἀπροσαύδητον ὑπερβαίνοντες, εἰπὲ δή τι πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα, πα‹γέ›ντος ἀέρος μῖγμα καὶ μαλακοῦ πυρὸς ὑποτιθέμενον τὴν σελήνην, εἶθ’ οἷον ἐν γαλήνῃ φρίκης ὑποτρεχούσης φάσκοντα τοῦ ἀέρος διαμελαίνοντος ἔμφασιν γίνεσθαι μορφοειδῆ ... .’ ‘χρηστῶς γ’’ εἶπον ‘ὦ Λεύκιε, τὴν ἀτοπίαν εὐφήμοις περιαμπέχεις ὀνόμασιν· οὐχ οὕτω δ’ ὁ ἑταῖρος ἡμῶν, ἀλλ’, ὅπερ ἀληθὲς ἦν, ἔλεγεν ὑπωπιάζειν αὐτοὺς τὴν σελήνην, σπίλων [922] [a] καὶ μελασμῶν ἀναπιμπλάντας, ὁμοῦ μὲν Ἄρτεμιν καὶ Ἀθηνᾶν ἀνακαλοῦντας ὁμοῦ δὲ σύμμιγμα καὶ φύραμα ποιοῦντας ἀέρος ζοφεροῦ καὶ πυρὸς ἀνθρακώδους, οὐκ ἔχουσαν ἔξαψιν οὐδ’ αὐγὴν οἰκείαν, ἀλλὰ δυσκρινές τι σῶμα τυφόμενον ἀεὶ καὶ πυρίκαυστον, ὥσπερ τῶν κεραυνῶν τοὺς ἀλαμπεῖς καὶ ‘ψολόεντας’ ὑπὸ τῶν ποιητῶν προσαγορευομένους. ὅτι μέντοι πῦρ ἀνθρακῶδες, οἷον οὗτοι τὸ τῆς σελήνης ποιοῦσιν, οὐκ ἔχει διαμονὴν οὐδὲ σύστασιν ὅλως, ἐὰν μὴ στερεᾶς ὕλης καὶ στεγούσης ἅμα καὶ τρεφούσης ἐπιλάβηται, βέλτιον οἶμαι συνορᾶν ἐνίων [b] φιλοσόφων τοὺς ἐν παιδιᾷ λέγοντας τὸν Ἥφαιστον εἰρῆσθαι χωλόν, ὅτι τὸ πῦρ ξύλου χωρὶς ὥσπερ οἱ χωλοὶ βακτηρίας οὐ πρόεισιν. εἰ οὖν ἡ σελήνη πῦρ ἐστι, πόθεν αὐτῇ τοσοῦτος ἐγγέγονεν ἀήρ; ὁ γὰρ ἄνω καὶ κύκλῳ φερόμενος οὑτοσὶ τόπος οὐκ ἀέρος, ἀλλὰ κρείττονος οὐσίας καὶ πάντα λεπτύνειν καὶ συνεξάπτειν φύσιν ἐχούσης ἐστίν· εἰ δ’ ἐγγέγονε, πῶς οὐκ οἴχεται μεταβάλλων εἰς ἕτερον εἶδος ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐξαιθερωθείς, ἀλλὰ σῴζεται καὶ συνοικεῖ πυρὶ τοσοῦτον χρόνον, ὥσπερ ἥλοις ἀραρὼς ἀεὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς μέρεσι καὶ συγγεγομφωμένος; ἀραιῷ μὲν γὰρ ὄντι καὶ συγκεχυμένῳ μὴ μένειν ἀλλὰ σφάλλεσθαι [c] προσήκει, συμπεπηγέναι δ’ οὐ δυνατὸν ἀναμεμιγμένον πυρὶ καὶ μήθ’ ὑγροῦ μετέχοντα μήτε γῆς, οἷς μόνοις ἀὴρ συμπήγνυσθαι πέφυκεν. ἡ δὲ ῥύμη καὶ τὸν ἐν λίθοις ἀέρα καὶ τὸν ἐν ψυχρῷ μολίβδῳ συνεκκάει, μήτι γε δὴ τὸν ἐν πυρὶ δινούμενον μετὰ τάχους τοσούτου. καὶ γὰρ Ἐμπεδοκλεῖ (A 60) δυσκολαίνουσι πάγον ἀέρος χαλαζώδη ποιοῦντι τὴν σελήνην ὑπὸ τῆς τοῦ πυρὸς σφαίρας περιεχόμενον, αὐτοὶ δὲ τὴν σελήνην σφαῖραν οὖσαν πυρὸς ἀέρα φασὶν ἄλλον ἄλλῃ διεσπασμένον περιέχειν, καὶ ταῦτα μήτε ῥήξεις ἔχουσαν ἐν ἑαυτῇ μήτε βάθη καὶ κοιλότητας, [d] ἅπερ οἱ γεώδη ποιοῦντες ἀπολείπουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπιπολῆς δηλονότι τῇ κυρτότητι ἐπικείμενον. τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ καὶ πρὸς διαμονὴν ἄλογον καὶ πρὸς θέαν ἀδύνατον ἐν ταῖς πανσελήνοις· διορίσασθαι γὰρ οὐκ ἔδει μέλανα ‹μένοντα› καὶ σκιερόν, ἀλλ’ ἀμαυροῦσθαι κρυπτόμενον ἢ συνεκλάμπειν ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου καταλαμβανομένης τῆς σελήνης. καὶ γὰρ παρ’ ἡμῖν ὁ μὲν ἐν βάθεσι καὶ κοιλώμασι τῆς γῆς, οὗ μὴ δίεισιν αὐγή, διαμένει σκιώδης καὶ ἀφώτιστος, ὁ δ’ ἔξωθεν τῇ γῇ περικεχυμένος φέγγος ἴσχει καὶ χρόαν αὐγοειδῆ. πρὸς πᾶσαν μὲν γάρ ἐστι ποιότητα καὶ δύναμιν [e] εὐκέραστος ὑπὸ μανότητος, μάλιστα δὲ φωτὸς ἂν ἐπιψαύσῃ μόνον, ὥς φατε, καὶ θίγῃ, δι’ ὅλου τρεπόμενος ἐκφωτίζεται. ταὐτὸν οὖν τοῦτο καὶ τοῖς εἰς βάθη τινὰ καὶ φάραγγας συνωθοῦσιν ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ τὸν ἀέρα κἂν καλῶς ἔοικε βοηθεῖν, ὑμᾶς τε διεξελέγχει τοὺς ἐξ ἀέρος καὶ πυρὸς οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως μιγνύντας αὐτῆς καὶ συναρμόζοντας τὴν σφαῖραν. οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε λείπεσθαι σκιὰν ἐπὶ τῆς ἐπιφανείας, ὅταν ὁ ἥλιος ἐπιλάμπῃ τῷ φωτὶ πᾶν ὁπόσον καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀποτεμνόμεθα τῇ ὄψει τῆς σελήνης.’

Καὶ ὁ Φαρνάκης ἔτι μου λέγοντος ‘τοῦτ’ ἐκεῖνο πάλιν’ εἶπεν ‘ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς ἀφῖκται τὸ περίακτον ἐκ τῆς Ἀκαδημείας, [f] ἐν τῷ πρὸς ἑτέρους λέγειν διατρίβοντας ἑκάστοτε μὴ παρέχειν ἔλεγχον ὧν αὐτοὶ λέγουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀπολογουμένοις ἀεὶ χρῆσθαι, μὴ κατηγοροῦσιν, ἂν ἐντυγχάνωσιν. ἐμὲ δ’ οὖν οὐκ ἐξάξεσθε τήμερον εἰς τὸ διδόναι λόγον ὧν ἐπικαλεῖτε τοῖς Στωικοῖς, πρὶν εὐθύνας λαβεῖν παρ’ ὑμῶν ἄνω τὰ κάτω τοῦ κόσμου ποιούντων.’ καὶ ὁ Λεύκιος γελάσας ‘μόνον’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ τάν, μὴ κρίσιν ἡμῖν [923] [a] ἀσεβείας ἐπαγγείλῃς, ὥσπερ Ἀρίσταρχον ᾤετο δεῖν Κλεάνθης τὸν Σάμιον ἀσεβείας προσκαλεῖσθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὡς κινοῦντα τοῦ κόσμου τὴν ἑστίαν, ὅτι ‹τὰ› φαινόμενα σῴζειν ἁνὴρ ἐπειρᾶτο μένειν τὸν οὐρανὸν ὑποτιθέμενος, ἐξελίττεσθαι δὲ κατὰ λοξοῦ κύκλου τὴν γῆν, ἅμα καὶ περὶ τὸν αὑτῆς ἄξονα δινουμένην. ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν οὐδὲν αὐτοὶ παρ’ αὑτῶν λέγομεν· οἱ δὲ γῆν ὑποτιθέμενοι τὴν σελήνην, ὦ βέλτιστε, τί μᾶλλον ὑμῶν ἄνω τὰ κάτω ποιοῦσι τὴν γῆν ἱδρυόντων ἐνταῦθα μετέωρον ἐν τῷ ἀέρι, πολλῷ τινι μείζονα τῆς σελήνης οὖσαν, ὡς ἐν τοῖς ἐκλειπτικοῖς πάθεσιν οἱ μαθηματικοὶ [καὶ] ταῖς διὰ τοῦ [b] σκιάσματος παρόδοις τῆς ἐποχῆς τὸ μέγεθος ἀναμετροῦσιν; ἥ τε γὰρ σκιὰ τῆς γῆς ἐλάττων ὑπὸ μείζονος τοῦ φωτίζοντος ἀνατείνει καὶ τῆς σκιᾶς αὐτῆς λεπτὸν ὂν τὸ ἄνω καὶ στενὸν οὐδ’ Ὅμηρον, ὥς φασιν, ἔλαθεν, ἀλλὰ τὴν νύκτα ‘θοήν’ ὀξύτητι τῆς σκιᾶς προσηγόρευσεν· ὑπὸ τούτου δ’ ὅμως ἁλισκομένη ταῖς ἐκλείψεσιν ἡ σελήνη τρισὶ μόλις τοῖς αὑτῆς μεγέθεσιν ἀπαλλάττεται. σκόπει δὴ πόσων ἡ γῆ σεληνῶν ἐστιν, εἰ σκιὰν ἀφίησιν, ᾗ βραχυτάτη, πλάτος τρισέληνον. ἀλλ’ ὅμως ὑπὲρ τῆς σελήνης μὴ πέσῃ δεδοίκατε, περὶ δὲ τῆς γῆς ἴσως Αἰσχύλος ὑμᾶς πέπεικεν (Prom. 349) ὡς ὁ Ἄτλας

‘ἕστηκε κίον’ οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ χθονὸς

[c] ὤμοις ἐρείδων, ἄχθος οὐκ εὐάγκαλον.’

ἢ τῇ μὲν σελήνῃ κοῦφος ἀὴρ ὑποτρέχει καὶ στερεὸν ὄγκον οὐκ ἐχέγγυος ἐνεγκεῖν, τὴν δὲ γῆν κατὰ Πίνδαρον (fr. 88, 6 6 33c Sn.) ‘ἀδαμαντοπέδιλοι κίονες’ περιέχουσι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο Φαρνάκης αὐτὸς μὲν ἐν ἀδείᾳ τοῦ πεσεῖν τὴν γῆν ἐστιν, οἰκτίρει δὲ τοὺς ὑποκειμένους τῇ μεταφορᾷ τῆς σελήνης Αἰθίοπας ἢ Ταπροβηνούς, μὴ βάρος αὐτοῖς ἐμπέσῃ τοσοῦτον; καίτοι τῇ μὲν σελήνῃ βοήθεια πρὸς τὸ μὴ πεσεῖν ἡ κίνησις αὐτὴ καὶ τὸ ῥοιζῶδες τῆς περιαγωγῆς, ὥσπερ ὅσα ταῖς σφενδόναις ἐντεθέντα τῆς καταφορᾶς κώλυσιν ἴσχει τὴν κύκλῳ περιδίνησιν· ἄγει γὰρ ἕκαστον [d] ἡ κατὰ φύσιν κίνησις, ἂν ὑπ’ ἄλλου μηδενὸς ἀποστρέφηται. διὸ τὴν σελήνην οὐκ ἄγει τὸ βάρος, ὑπὸ τῆς περιφορᾶς τὴν ῥοπὴν ἐκκρουόμενον· ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἴσως λόγον εἶχε θαυμάζειν μένουσαν αὐτὴν παντάπασιν ὥσπερ ἡ γῆ καὶ ἀτρεμοῦσαν. νῦν δὲ σελήνη μὲν ἔχει μεγάλην αἰτίαν τοῦ δεῦρο μὴ φέρεσθαι, τὴν δὲ γῆν ἑτέρας κινήσεως ἄμοιρον οὖσαν εἰκὸς ἦν μόνῳ τῷ βαρύνοντι κινεῖν. βαρυτέρα δ’ ἐστὶ τῆς σελήνης οὐχ ὅσῳ μείζων, ἀλλ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον, ἅτε δὴ διὰ θερμότητα καὶ πύρωσιν ἐλαφρᾶς γεγενημένης. ὅλως δ’ ἔοικεν ἐξ ὧν λέγεις ἡ σελήνη μᾶλλον, εἰ πῦρ ἐστι, γῆς δεῖσθαι καὶ ὕλης, ἐν ᾗ βέβηκε [e] καὶ προσπέφυκε καὶ συνέχει καὶ ζωπυρεῖ τὴν δύναμιν (οὐ γὰρ ἔστι πῦρ χωρὶς ὕλης διανοηθῆναι σῳζόμενον)· γῆν δέ φατε ὑμεῖς ἄνευ βάσεως καὶ ῥίζης διαμένειν.’

‘Πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν ὁ Φαρνάκης, ‘τὸν οἰκεῖον καὶ κατὰ φύσιν τόπον ἔχουσαν, ὥσπερ αὕτη, τὸν μέσον. οὗτος γάρ ἐστι, περὶ ὃν ἀντερείδει πάντα τὰ βάρη ῥέποντα καὶ φέρεται καὶ συννεύει πανταχόθεν· ἡ δ’ ἄνω χώρα πᾶσα, κἄν τι δέξηται γεῶδες ὑπὸ βίας ἀναρριφέν, εὐθὺς ἐκθλίβει δεῦρο, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀφίησιν, ᾗ πέφυκεν οἰκείᾳ ῥοπῇ [f] καταφερόμενον.’ πρὸς τοῦτ’ ἐγὼ τῷ Λευκίῳ χρόνον ἐγγενέσθαι βουλόμενος ἀναμιμνησκομένῳ, τὸν Θέωνα καλέσας ‘τίς’ ἔφην ‘ὦ Θέων, εἴρηκε τῶν τραγικῶν ὡς ἰατροί

‘πικρὰν πικροῖς κλύζουσι φαρμάκοις χολήν;’’

ἀποκριναμένου δὲ τοῦ Θέωνος ὅτι Σοφοκλῆς (fr. 770), ‘καὶ δοτέον’ εἶπον ‘ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ἐκείνοις· φιλοσόφων δ’ οὐκ ἀκουστέον, ἂν τὰ παράδοξα παραδόξοις ἀμύνεσθαι βούλωνται καὶ μαχόμενοι πρὸς τὰ θαυμάσια τῶν δογμάτων [924] [a] ἀτοπώτερα καὶ θαυμασιώτερα πλάττωσιν, ὥσπερ οὗτοι τὴν ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον φορὰν εἰσάγουσιν. ᾗ τί παράδοξον οὐκ ἔνεστιν; οὐχὶ τὴν γῆν σφαῖραν εἶναι, τηλικαῦτα βάθη καὶ ὕψη καὶ ἀνωμαλίας ἔχουσαν; οὐκ ἀντίποδας οἰκεῖν ὥσπερ θρῖπας ἢ γαλεώτας τραπέντα ἄνω τὰ κάτω τῇ γῇ προσισχομένους; ἡμᾶς δ’ αὐτοὺς μὴ πρὸς ὀρθὰς βεβηκότας ἀλλὰ πλαγίους ἐπιμένειν ἀπονεύοντας, ὥσπερ οἱ μεθύοντες; οὐ μύδρους χιλιοταλάντους διὰ βάθους τῆς γῆς φερομένους, ὅταν ἐξίκωνται πρὸς τὸ μέσον, ἵστασθαι μηδενὸς ἀπαντῶντος μηδ’ ὑπερείδοντος, εἰ δὲ ῥύμῃ κάτω φερόμενοι τὸ μέσον ὑπερβάλλοιεν, αὖθις ὀπίσω στρέφεσθαι [b] καὶ ἀνακάμπτειν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν; οὐ τμήματα δοκῶν ἀποπρισθέντα τῆς γῆς ἑκατέρωθεν μὴ φέρεσθαι κάτω διὰ παντός, ἀλλὰ προσπίπτοντα πρὸς τὴν γῆν ἔξωθεν εἴσω διωθεῖσθαι καὶ ἀποκρύπτεσθαι περὶ τὸ μέσον; οὐ ῥεῦμα λάβρον ὕδατος κάτω φερόμενον εἰ πρὸς τὸ μέσον ἔλθοι σημεῖον, ὅπερ αὐτοὶ λέγουσιν ἀσώματον, ἵστασθαι περικορυσσόμενον ‹ἢ› κύκλῳ περιπολεῖν, ἄπαυστον αἰώραν καὶ ἀκατάπαυστον αἰωρούμενον; οὐδὲ γὰρ ψευδῶς ἔνια τούτων βιάσαιτο ἄν τις αὑτὸν εἰς τὸ δυνατὸν τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ καταστῆσαι. τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι τὰ ἄνω κάτω κἂν πάντα τραπέμπαλιν εἶναι, τῶν ἄχρι τοῦ μέσου κάτω τῶν δ’ ὑπὸ [c] τὸ μέσον αὖ πάλιν ἄνω γινομένων· ὥστ’, εἴ τις συμπαθείᾳ τῆς γῆς τὸ μέσον αὐτῆς ἔχων σταίη περὶ τὸν ὀμφαλόν, ἅμα καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἄνω καὶ τοὺς πόδας ἄνω ἔχειν τὸν αὐτόν· κἂν μὲν διασκάπτῃ τις τὸν ἐπέκεινα τόπον, ἀνακύπτον αὐτοῦ τὸ ... εἶναι καὶ κάτω ἄνωθεν ἕλκεσθαι τὸν ἀνασκαπτόμενον, εἰ δὲ δὴ τούτῳ τις ἀντιβεβηκὼς νοοῖτο, τοὺς ἀμφοτέρων ἅμα πόδας ἄνω γίνεσθαι καὶ λέγεσθαι.

Τοιούτων μέντοι καὶ τοσούτων παραδοξολογιῶν οὐ μὰ Δία πήραν, ἀλλὰ θαυματοποιοῦ τινος ἀποσκευὴν καὶ πυλαίαν κατανωτισάμενοι καὶ παρέλκοντες ἑτέρους φασὶ [d] γελοιάζειν, ἄνω τὴν σελήνην γῆν οὖσαν ἐνιδρύοντας, οὐχ ὅπου τὸ μέσον ἐστί. καίτοι γ’ εἰ πᾶν σῶμα ἐμβριθὲς εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συννεύει καὶ πρὸς τὸ αὑτοῦ μέσον ἀντερείδει πᾶσι τοῖς μορίοις, οὐχ ὡς μέσον οὖσα τοῦ παντὸς ἡ γῆ μᾶλλον ἢ ὡς ὅλον οἰκειώσεται μέρη αὐτῆς ὄντα τὰ βάρη· καὶ τεκμήριον ... ἔσται τῶν ῥεπόντων οὐ τῇ ‹γῇ› τῆς μεσότητος πρὸς τὸν κόσμον, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὴν γῆν κοινωνίας τινὸς καὶ συμφυΐας τοῖς ἀπωσμένοις αὐτῆς εἶτα πάλιν καταφερομένοις. ὡς γὰρ ὁ ἥλιος εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐπιστρέφει τὰ μέρη ἐξ ὧν συνέστηκε, καὶ ἡ γῆ τὸν λίθον ὥσπερ [e] ... προσήκοντα δέχεται καὶ φέρει προσκείμενον· ὅθεν ἑνοῦται τῷ χρόνῳ καὶ συμφύεται πρὸς αὐτὴν τῶν τοιούτων ἕκαστον. εἰ δέ τι τυγχάνει σῶμα τῇ γῇ μὴ προσνενεμημένον ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς μηδ’ ἀπεσπασμένον, ἀλλά που καθ’ αὑτὸ σύστασιν ἔσχεν ἰδίαν καὶ φύσιν, ὡς φαῖεν ἂν ἐκεῖνοι τὴν σελήνην, τί κωλύει χωρὶς εἶναι καὶ μένειν περὶ αὑτό, τοῖς αὑτοῦ πεπιεσμένον μέρεσι καὶ συμπεπεδημένον; οὔτε γὰρ ἡ γῆ μέσον οὖσα δείκνυται τοῦ παντὸς ἥ τε πρὸς τὴν γῆν τῶν ἐνταῦθα συνέρεισις καὶ σύστασις ὑφηγεῖται τὸν τρόπον, ᾧ μένειν τὰ ἐκεῖ συμπεσόντα πρὸς τὴν σελήνην [f] εἰκός ἐστιν. ὁ δὲ πάντα τὰ γεώδη καὶ βαρέα συνελαύνων εἰς μίαν χώραν καὶ μέρη ποιῶν ἑνὸς σώματος οὐχ ὁρῶ διὰ τί τοῖς κούφοις τὴν αὐτὴν ἀνάγκην οὐκ ἀνταποδίδωσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐᾷ χωρὶς εἶναι συστάσεις πυρὸς τοσαύτας καὶ οὐ πάντας εἰς ταὐτὸ συνάγων τοὺς ἀστέρας ἓν φῶς οἴεται δεῖν καὶ σῶμα κοινὸν εἶναι τῶν ἀνωφερῶν καὶ φλογοειδῶν ἁπάντων.

[925] [a] Ἀλλ’ ἥλιον μὲν ἀπλέτους μυριάδας ἀπέχειν τῆς ἄνω περιφορᾶς φατε’ εἶπον, ‘ὦ φίλε Ἀπολλωνίδη, καὶ φωσφόρον ἐπ’ αὐτῷ καὶ στίλβοντα καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους πλάνητας ὑφιεμένους τε τῶν ἀπλανῶν καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐν διαστάσεσι μεγάλαις φέρεσθαι, τοῖς δὲ βαρέσι καὶ γεώδεσιν οὐδεμίαν οἴεσθε τὸν κόσμον εὐρυχωρίαν παρέχειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ διάστασιν; ὁρᾶτε ὅτι γελοῖόν ἐστιν, εἰ γῆν οὐ φήσομεν εἶναι τὴν σελήνην, ὅτι τῆς κάτω χώρας ἀφέστηκεν, ἄστρον δὲ φήσομεν, ὁρῶντες ἀπωσμένην τῆς ἄνω περιφορᾶς μυριάσι σταδίων τοσαύταις ὥσπερ ‹εἰς› βυθόν [b] τινα καταδεδυκυῖαν. τῶν μέν γ’ ἄστρων κατωτέρω τοσοῦτόν ἐστιν, ὅσον οὐκ ἄν τις εἴποι μέτρον, ἀλλ’ ἐπιλείπουσιν ὑμᾶς τοὺς μαθηματικοὺς ἐκλογιζομένους οἱ ἀριθμοί, τῆς δὲ γῆς τρόπον τινὰ ψαύει καὶ περιφερομένη πλησίον, ‘ἅρματος ὡς πέρι χνοίη ἑλίσσεται’ φησὶν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (B 46), ‘ἥ τε περὶ ἄκραν ... .’ οὐδὲ γὰρ τὴν σκιὰν αὐτῆς ὑπερβάλλει πολλάκις ἐπὶ μικρὸν αἰρομένην τῷ παμμέγεθες εἶναι τὸ φωτίζον, ἀλλ’ οὕτως ἔοικεν ἐν χρῷ καὶ σχεδὸν ἐν ἀγκάλαις τῆς γῆς περιπολεῖν, ὥστ’ ἀντιφράττεσθαι πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ὑπ’ αὐτῆς, μὴ ὑπεραίρουσα τὸν σκιερὸν καὶ χθόνιον καὶ νυκτέριον τοῦτον τόπον, ὃς γῆς [c] κλῆρός ἐστι. διὸ λεκτέον οἶμαι θαρροῦντας ἐν τοῖς γῆς ὅροις εἶναι τὴν σελήνην ὑπὸ τῶν ἄκρων αὐτῆς ἐπιπροσθουμένην. σκόπει δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀφεὶς ἀπλανεῖς καὶ πλάνητας, ἃ δείκνυσιν Ἀρίσταρχος ἐν τῷ Περὶ μεγεθῶν καὶ ἀποστημάτων (Propos. 7 p. 581 Wall.), ὅτι τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου ἀπόστημα τοῦ ἀποστήματος τῆς σελήνης ὃ ἀφέστηκεν ἡμῶν πλέον μὲν ἢ ὀκτωκαιδεκαπλάσιον ἔλαττον δ’ ἢ εἰκοσαπλάσιόν ἐστι. καίτοι ὁ τὴν σελήνην ἐπὶ μήκιστον αἴρων ἀπέχειν φησὶν ἡμῶν ἓξ καὶ πεντηκονταπλάσιον τῆς ἐκ τοῦ κέντρου τῆς γῆς· αὕτη δ’ ἐστὶ τεσσάρων μυριάδων καὶ κατὰ τοὺς μέσως ἀναμετροῦντας· [d] καὶ ἀπὸ ταύτης συλλογιζομένοις ἀπέχει ὁ ἥλιος τῆς σελήνης πλέον ἢ τετρακισχιλίας τριάκοντα μυριάδας· οὕτως ἀπῴκισται τοῦ ἡλίου διὰ βάρος καὶ τοσοῦτο τῇ γῇ προσκεχώρηκεν. ὥστε, εἰ τοῖς τόποις τὰς οὐσίας διαιρετέον, ἡ γῆς μοῖρα καὶ χώρα προσκαλεῖται σελήνην, καὶ τοῖς περὶ γῆν πράγμασι καὶ σώμασιν ἐπίδικός ἐστι κατ’ ἀγχιστείαν καὶ γειτνίασιν. καὶ οὐδὲν οἶμαι πλημμελοῦμεν, ὅτι τοῖς ἄνω προσαγορευομένοις βάθος τοσοῦτο καὶ διάστημα διδόντες ἀπολείπομέν τινα καὶ τῷ κάτω περιδρομὴν καὶ πλάτος, ὅσον ἐστὶν ἀπὸ γῆς ἐπὶ σελήνην. οὔτε γὰρ ὁ τὴν ἄκραν ἐπιφάνειαν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ μόνην ἄνω [e] τἄλλα δὲ κάτω προσαγορεύων ἅπαντα μέτριός ἐστιν, οὔθ’ ὁ τῇ γῇ μᾶλλον δ’ ὁ τῷ κέντρῳ τὸ κάτω περιγράφων ἀνεκτός· ἀλλὰ καὶ κινητικὸ‹ν› ταύτῃ διάστημα δοτέον ἐπιχωροῦντος τοῦ κόσμου διὰ μέγεθος. πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἀξιοῦντα πᾶν εὐθὺς ἄνω καὶ μετέωρον εἶναι τὸ ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἕτερος ἀντηχεῖ πάλιν εὐθὺς εἶναι κάτω τὸ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀπλανοῦς περιφορᾶς.

Ὅλως δὲ πῶς λέγεται καὶ τίνος ἡ γῆ μέση κεῖσθαι; τὸ γὰρ πᾶν ἄπειρόν ἐστι, τῷ δ’ ἀπείρῳ μήτ’ ἀρχὴν ἔχοντι μήτε πέρας οὐ προσήκει μέσον ἔχειν· πέρας γάρ τι καὶ τὸ μέσον, ἡ δ’ ἀπειρία περάτων στέρησις. ὁ [f] δὲ μὴ τοῦ παντὸς ἀλλὰ τοῦ κόσμου μέσην εἶναι τὴν γῆν ἀποφαινόμενος ἡδύς ἐστιν, εἰ μὴ καὶ τὸν κόσμον αὐτὸν ἐνέχεσθαι ταῖς αὐταῖς ἀπορίαις νομίζει. τὸ γὰρ πᾶν οὐδὲ τούτῳ μέσον ἀπέλιπεν, ἀλλ’ ἀνέστιος καὶ ἀνίδρυτός ἐστιν ἐν ἀπείρῳ κενῷ φερόμενος πρὸς οὐδὲν οἰκεῖον· εἰ ‹δ’› [926] [a] ἄλλην τινὰ τοῦ μένειν εὑράμενος αἰτίαν ἕστηκεν, οὐ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ τόπου φύσιν, ὅμοια καὶ περὶ γῆς καὶ περὶ σελήνης εἰκάζειν τινὶ πάρεστιν, ὡς ἑτέρᾳ τινὶ τύχῃ καὶ φύσει μᾶλλον ‹ἢ τόπου› διαφορᾷ τῆς μὲν ἀτρεμούσης ἐνταῦθα τῆς δ’ ἐκεῖ φερομένης. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων, ὅρα μὴ μέγα τι λέληθεν αὐτούς· εἰ γάρ, καὶ ὁπωσοῦν ὅ τι ἂν ἐκτὸς γένηται τοῦ κέντρου τῆς γῆς, ἄνω ἐστίν, οὐθέν ἐστι τοῦ κόσμου κάτω μέρος, ἀλλ’ ἄνω καὶ ἡ γῆ καὶ τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς, καὶ πᾶν ἁπλῶς σῶμα τὸ κέντρῳ περιεστηκὸς ἢ περικείμενον ἄνω γίνεται, κάτω δὲ μόνον [ὂν] ἕν, τὸ ἀσώματον σημεῖον ἐκεῖνο, ὃ πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀντικεῖσθαι τὴν [b] τοῦ κόσμου φύσιν ἀναγκαῖον, εἴ γε δὴ τὸ κάτω πρὸς τὸ ἄνω κατὰ φύσιν ἀντίκειται. καὶ οὐ τοῦτο μόνον τὸ ἄτοπον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπόλλυσι τὰ βάρη, δι’ ἣν δεῦρο καταρρέπει καὶ φέρεται· σῶμα μὲν γὰρ οὐθέν ἐστι κάτω πρὸς ὃ κινεῖται, τὸ δ’ ἀσώματον οὔτ’ εἰκὸς οὔτε βούλονται τοσαύτην ἔχειν δύναμιν, ὥστε πάντα κατατείνειν ἐφ’ ἑαυτὸ καὶ περὶ αὑτὸ συνέχειν. ἀλλ’ ὅλως ἄλογον εὑρίσκεται καὶ μαχόμενον τοῖς πράγμασι τὸ ἄνω τὸν κόσμον ὅλον εἶναι, τὸ δὲ κάτω μηθὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ πέρας ἀσώματον καὶ ἀδιάστατον· ἐκεῖνο δ’ εὔλογον, ὡς λέγομεν ἡμεῖς, τῷ τ’ ἄνω χώραν καὶ τῷ κάτω πολλὴν καὶ πλάτος [c] ἔχουσαν διῃρῆσθαι.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ θέντες, εἰ βούλει, παρὰ φύσιν ἐν οὐρανῷ τοῖς γεώδεσι τὰς κινήσεις ὑπάρχειν, ἀτρέμα, μὴ τραγικῶς ἀλλὰ πράως σκοπῶμεν, ὅτι τοῦτο τὴν σελήνην οὐ δείκνυσι γῆν μὴ οὖσαν ἀλλὰ γῆν ὅπου μὴ πέφυκεν οὖσαν· ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ πῦρ τὸ Αἰτναῖον ὑπὸ γῆν παρὰ φύσιν ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ πῦρ ἐστι, καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τοῖς ἀσκοῖς περιληφθὲν ἔστι μὲν ἀνωφερὲς φύσει καὶ κοῦφον, ἥκει δ’ ὅπου μὴ πέφυκεν ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης· αὐτὴ δ’ ἡ ψυχή, πρὸς Διός’ εἶπον ‘οὐ παρὰ φύσιν τῷ σώματι συνεῖρκται βραδεῖ ταχεῖα καὶ ψυχρῷ πυρώδης, ὥσπερ ὑμεῖς φατε, καὶ ἀόρατος [d] αἰσθητῷ; διὰ τοῦτ’ οὖν σώματι ψυχὴν μὴ λέγωμεν ‹ἐν›εῖναι μηδὲ νοῦ‹ν›, χρῆμα θεῖον, ‹ἀήττητον› ὑπὸ βρίθους καὶ πάχους οὐρανόν τε πάντα καὶ γῆν καὶ θάλασσαν ἐν ταὐτῷ περιπολοῦντα καὶ διιπτάμενον, εἰς σάρκας ἥκειν καὶ νεῦρα καὶ μυελοὺς καὶ παθέων μυρίων μεστὰς ὑγρότητας; ὁ δὲ Ζεὺς ὑμῖν οὗτος οὐ τῇ μὲν αὑτοῦ φύσει χρώμενος ἕν ἐστι μέγα πῦρ καὶ συνεχές, νυνὶ δ’ ὑφεῖται καὶ κέκαμπται καὶ διεσχημάτισται, πᾶν χρῶμα γεγονὼς καὶ γινόμενος ἐν ταῖς μεταβολαῖς; ὥσθ’ ὅρα καὶ σκόπει, δαιμόνιε, μὴ μεθιστὰς καὶ ἀπάγων ἕκαστον, ὅπου πέφυκεν εἶναι, διάλυσίν τινα κόσμου φιλοσοφῇς καὶ [e] τὸ νεῖκος ἐπάγῃς τὸ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τοῖς πράγμασι, μᾶλλον δὲ τοὺς παλαιοὺς κινῇς Τιτᾶνας ἐπὶ τὴν φύσιν καὶ Γίγαντας καὶ τὴν μυθικὴν ἐκείνην καὶ φοβερὰν ἀκοσμίαν καὶ πλημμέλειαν ἐπιδεῖν ποθῇς, χωρὶς τὸ βαρὺ πᾶν καὶ χωρὶς ... τὸ κοῦφον

‘ἔνθ’ οὔτ’ ἠελίοιο δεδίσκεται ἀγλαὸν εἶδος,

οὐδὲ μὲν οὐδ’ αἴης λάσιον γένος, οὐδὲ θάλασσα’,

ὥς φησιν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (B 27), οὐ γῆ θερμότητος μετεῖχεν, οὐχ ὕδωρ πνεύματος, οὐκ ἄνω τι τῶν βαρέων, οὐ κάτω τι τῶν κούφων· ἀλλ’ ἄκρατοι καὶ ἄστοργοι καὶ μονάδες αἱ τῶν ὅλων ἀρχαί, μὴ προσιέμεναι σύγκρισιν ἑτέρου [f] πρὸς ἕτερον μηδὲ κοινωνίαν, ἀλλὰ φεύγουσαι καὶ ἀποστρεφόμεναι καὶ φερόμεναι φορὰς ἰδίας καὶ αὐθάδεις οὕτως εἶχον ὡς ἔχει πᾶν οὗ θεὸς ἄπεστι κατὰ Πλάτωνα (Tim. 53b), τουτέστιν, ὡς ἔχει τὰ σώματα νοῦ καὶ ψυχῆς ἀπολιπούσης, ἄχρις οὗ τὸ ἱμερτὸν ἧκεν ἐπὶ τὴν φύσιν ἐκ προνοίας, Φιλότητος ἐγγενομένης καὶ Ἀφροδίτης καὶ [927] [a] Ἔρωτος, ὡς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς λέγει καὶ Παρμενίδης καὶ Ἡσίδος, ἵνα καὶ τόπους ἀμείψαντα καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων μεταλαβόντα καὶ τὰ μὲν κινήσεως τὰ δὲ μονῆς ἀνάγκαις ἐνδεθέντα καὶ καταβιασθέντα πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον, ἐξ οὗ πέφυκεν, ἐνδοῦναι καὶ μεταστῆναι ... ἁρμονίαν καὶ κοινωνίαν ἀπεργάσηται τοῦ παντός.

Εἰ μὲν γὰρ οὐδ’ ἄλλο τι τῶν τοῦ κόσμου μερῶν παρὰ φύσιν ἔσχεν, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστον ᾗ πέφυκε κεῖται, μηδεμιᾶς μεθιδρύσεως μηδὲ μετακοσμήσεως δεόμενον μηδ’ ἐν ἀρχῇ δεηθέν, ἀπορῶ τί τῆς προνοίας ἔργον ἐστὶν ἢ τίνος γέγονε ποιητὴς καὶ πατὴρ δημιουργὸς ὁ Ζεὺς ‘ὁ ἀριστοτέχνας.’ [b] οὐ γὰρ ἐν στρατοπέδῳ τακτικῶν ὄφελος, εἴπερ εἰδείη τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἕκαστος ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ τάξιν τε καὶ χώραν κατὰ καιρὸν οὗ δεῖ λαβεῖν καὶ διαφυλάσσειν, οὐδὲ κηπουρῶν οὐδ’ οἰκοδόμων, εἰ πῆ μὲν αὐτὸ τὸ ὕδωρ ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ πέφυκεν ἐπιέναι τοῖς δεομένοις καὶ κατάρδειν ἐπιρρέον, πῆ δὲ πλίνθοι καὶ ξύλα καὶ λίθοι ταῖς κατὰ φύσιν χρώμενα ῥοπαῖς καὶ νεύσεσιν ἐξ ἑαυτῶν καταλαμβάνειν τὴν προσήκουσαν ἁρμονίαν καὶ χώραν. εἰ δ’ οὗτος μὲν ἄντικρυς ἀναιρεῖ τὴν πρόνοιαν ὁ λόγος, τῷ θεῷ δ’ ἡ τάξις τῶν ὄντων προσήκει καὶ ‹τὸ› διαιρεῖν, τί θαυμαστὸν οὕτως τετάχθαι καὶ διηρμόσθαι τὴν φύσιν, ὡς [c] ἐνταῦθα μὲν πῦρ ἐκεῖ δ’ ἄστρα, καὶ πάλιν ἐνταῦθα μὲν γῆν ἄνω δὲ σελήνην ἱδρῦσθαι, βεβαιοτέρῳ τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν τῷ κατὰ λόγον δεσμῷ περιληφθεῖσαν; ὡς, εἴ γε πάντα δεῖ ταῖς κατὰ φύσιν ῥοπαῖς χρῆσθαι καὶ φέρεσθαι καθ’ ὃ πέφυκε, μήθ’ ἥλιος κυκλοφορείσθω μήτε φωσφόρος μηδὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἀστέρων μηδείς· ἄνω γάρ, οὐ κύκλῳ τὰ κοῦφα καὶ πυροειδῆ κινεῖσθαι πέφυκεν. εἰ δὲ τοιαύτην ἐξαλλαγὴν ἡ φύσις ἔχει παρὰ τὸν τόπον, ὥστ’ ἐνταῦθα μὲν ἄνω φαίνεσθαι φερόμενον τὸ πῦρ, ὅταν δ’ εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν παραγένηται, τῇ δίνῃ συμπεριστρέφεσθαι, τί [d] θαυμαστὸν εἰ καὶ τοῖς βαρέσι καὶ γεώδεσιν ἐκεῖ γενομένοις συμβέβηκεν ὡσαύτως εἰς ἄλλο κινήσεως εἶδος ὑπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἐκνενικῆσθαι; οὐ γὰρ δὴ τῶν μὲν ἐλαφρῶν τὴν ἄνω φορὰν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τῷ οὐρανῷ κατὰ φύσιν ἐστί, τῶν δὲ βαρέων καὶ κάτω ῥεπόντων οὐ δύναται κρατεῖν, ἀλλ’ ‹ᾗ› ποτ’ ἐκεῖνα δυνάμει, καὶ ταῦτα μετακοσμήσας ἐχρήσατο τῇ φύσει αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τὸ βέλτιον.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ εἴ γε δεῖ τὰς καταδεδουλωμένας ἕξεις ... δόξας ἀφέντας ἤδη τὸ φαινόμενον ἀδεῶς λέγειν, οὐδὲν ἔοικεν ὅλου μέρος αὐτὸ καθ’ ἑαυτὸ τάξιν ἢ θέσιν ἢ κίνησιν ἰδίαν ἔχειν, ἣν ἄν τις ἁπλῶς κατὰ φύσιν προσαγορεύσειεν· [e] ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἕκαστον, οὗ χάριν γέγονε καὶ πρὸς ὃ πέφυκεν ἢ πεποίηται, τούτῳ ‹μέλλῃ› παρέχειν χρησίμως καὶ οἰκείως κινούμενον ἑαυτὸ καὶ πάσχον ἢ ποιοῦν ἢ διακείμενον, ὡς ἐκείνῳ πρὸς σωτηρίαν ἢ κάλλος ἢ δύναμιν ἐπιτήδειόν ἐστι, τότε δοκεῖ τὴν κατὰ φύσιν χώραν ἔχειν καὶ κίνησιν καὶ διάθεσιν. ὁ γοῦν ἄνθρωπος, ὡς εἴ τι τῶν ὄντων ἕτερον κατὰ φύσιν γεγονώς, ἄνω μὲν ἔχει τὰ ἐμβριθῆ καὶ γεώδη μάλιστα περὶ τὴν κεφαλήν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς μέσοις τὰ θερμὰ καὶ πυρώδη· τῶν δ’ ὀδόντων οἱ μὲν ἄνωθεν οἱ δὲ κάτωθεν ἐκφύονται καὶ οὐδέτεροι παρὰ φύσιν ἔχουσιν· οὐδὲ τοῦ πυρὸς τὸ μὲν ἄνω περὶ τὰ ὄμματα [f] ἀποστίλβον κατὰ φύσιν ἐστὶ τὸ δ’ ἐν κοιλίᾳ καὶ καρδίᾳ παρὰ φύσιν, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστον οἰκείως καὶ χρησίμως τέτακται. ‘ναὶ μὴν κηρύκων τε λιθορρίνων’ χελωνῶν τε καὶ παντὸς ὀστρέου φύσιν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (B 76), καταμανθάνων

‘ἔνθ’ ὄψει χθόνα χρωτὸς ὑπέρτατα ναιετάουσαν’,

καὶ οὐ πιέζει τὸ λιθῶδες οὐδὲ καταθλίβει τὴν ἕξιν ἐπικείμενον, [928] [a] οὐδέ γε πάλιν τὸ θερμὸν ὑπὸ κουφότητος εἰς τὴν ἄνω χώραν ἀποπτάμενον οἴχεται, μέμικται δέ πως πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ συντέτακται κατὰ τὴν ἑκάστου φύσιν. ὥσπερ εἰκὸς ἔχειν καὶ τὸν κόσμον, εἴ γε δὴ ζῷόν ἐστι, πολλαχοῦ γῆν ἔχοντα πολλαχοῦ δὲ πῦρ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ πνεῦμα, οὐκ ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀποτεθλιμμένον ἀλλὰ λόγῳ διακεκοσμημένον. οὐδὲ γὰρ ὀφθαλμὸς ἐνταῦθα τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὑπὸ κουφότητος ἐκπιεσθείς, οὐδ’ ἡ καρδία τῷ βάρει ὀλισθοῦσα πέπτωκεν εἰς τὸ στῆθος, ἀλλ’ ὅτι βέλτιον ἦν οὕτως ἑκάτερον τετάχθαι. μὴ τοίνυν μηδὲ [b] τῶν τοῦ κόσμου μερῶν νομίζωμεν μήτε γῆν ἐνταῦθα κεῖσθαι συμπεσοῦσαν διὰ βάρος, μήτε τὸν ἥλιον, ὡς ᾤετο Μητρόδωρος ὁ Χῖος, εἰς τὴν ἄνω χώραν ἀσκοῦ δίκην ὑπὸ κουφότητος ἐκτεθλῖφθαι, μήτε τοὺς ἄλλους ἀστέρας ὥσπερ ἐν ζυγῷ σταθμοῦ διαφορᾷ ῥέψαντας ἐν οἷς εἰσι γεγονέναι τόποις· ἀλλὰ τοῦ κατὰ λόγον κρατοῦντος οἱ μὲν ὥσπερ ‘ὄμματα φωσφόρα’ τῷ προσώπῳ τοῦ παντὸς ‘ἐνδεδεμένοι’ περιπολοῦσιν, ἥλιος δὲ καρδίας ἔχων δύναμιν ὥσπερ αἷμα καὶ πνεῦμα διαπέμπει καὶ διασκεδάννυσιν ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ θερμότητα καὶ φῶς, γῇ δὲ καὶ θαλάσσῃ χρῆται κατὰ φύσιν ὁ κόσμος, ὅσα κοιλίᾳ καὶ κύστει ζῷον.

[c] σελήνη δ’ ἡλίου μεταξὺ καὶ γῆς ὥσπερ καρδίας καὶ κοιλίας ἧπαρ ἤ τι μαλθακὸν ἄλλο σπλάγχνον ἐγκειμένη τήν τ’ ἄνωθεν ἀλέαν ἐνταῦθα διαπέμπει καὶ τὰς ἐντεῦθεν ἀναθυμιάσεις πέψει τινὶ καὶ καθάρσει λεπτύνουσα περὶ ἑαυτὴν ἀναδίδωσιν. εἰ δὲ καὶ πρὸς ἄλλα τὸ γεῶδες αὐτῆς καὶ στερέμνιον ἔχει τινὰ πρόσφορον χρείαν, ἄδηλον ἡμῖν. ἐν παντὶ δὲ κρατεῖ τὸ βέλτιον τοῦ κατηναγκασμένου. τί γὰρ ‹οὐχ› οὕτως λάβωμεν, ἐξ ὧν ἐκεῖνοι λέγουσι, τὸ εἰκός; λέγουσι δὲ τοῦ αἰθέρος τὸ μὲν αὐγοειδὲς καὶ λεπτὸν ὑπὸ μανότητος οὐρανὸν γεγονέναι, τὸ δὲ πυκνωθὲν καὶ συνειληθὲν ἄστρα· τούτων δὲ τὸ νωθρότατον [d] εἶναι τὴν σελήνην καὶ θολερώτατον. ἀλλ’ ὅμως ὁρᾶν πάρεστιν οὐκ ἀποκεκριμένην τοῦ αἰθέρος τὴν σελήνην, ἀλλ’ ἔτι πολλῷ μὲν τῷ περὶ αὐτὴν ἐμφερομένην, πολλὴν δ’ ὑφ’ ἑαυτὴν ἔχουσαν ἀνέμων ... δινεῖσθαι καὶ κομήτας. οὕτως οὐ ταῖς ῥοπαῖς σεσήκωται κατὰ βάρος καὶ κουφότητα τῶν σωμάτων ἕκαστον, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρῳ λόγῳ κεκόσμηται.’

Λεχθέντων δὲ τούτων κἀμοῦ τῷ Λευκίῳ τὸν λόγον παραδιδόντος ἐπὶ τὰς ἀποδείξεις βαδίζοντα τοῦ δόγματος, Ἀριστοτέλης μειδιάσας ‘μαρτύρομαι’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι τὴν πᾶσαν ἀντιλογίαν πεποίησαι πρὸς τοὺς αὐτὴν μὲν [e] ἡμίπυρον εἶναι τὴν σελήνην ὑποτιθεμένους, κοινῇ δὲ τῶν σωμάτων τὰ μὲν ἄνω τὰ δὲ κάτω ῥέπειν ἐξ ἑαυτῶν φάσκοντας· εἰ δ’ ἔστι τις ὁ λέγων κύκλῳ τε κινεῖσθαι κατὰ φύσιν τὰ ἄστρα καὶ πολὺ παρηλλαγμένης οὐσίας εἶναι τῶν τεττάρων, οὐδ’ ἀπὸ τύχης ἦλθεν ἐπὶ μνήμην ἡμῖν, ὥστ’ ἐμέ τε πραγμάτων ἀπηλλάχθαι καὶ ... Λεύκιος ‘‹ἥκιστα,› ὠγαθέ’ εἶπεν, ‘ἀλλὰ τὰ ἄλλα μὲν ἴσως ἄστρα καὶ τὸν ὅλον οὐρανὸν εἴς τινα φύσιν καθαρὰν καὶ εἰλικρινῆ καὶ τῆς κατὰ πάθος ἀπηλλαγμένην μεταβολῆς τιθεμένοις ὑμῖν καὶ κύκλον ἄγουσιν ἀιδίου καὶ ἀτελευτήτου [f] περιφορᾶς ... οὐκ ἄν τις ἔν γε τῷ νῦν διαμάχοιτο, καίτοι μυρίων οὐσῶν ἀποριῶν· ὅταν δὲ καταβαίνων ὁ λόγος οὕτω θίγῃ τῆς σελήνης, οὐκέτι φυλάττει τὴν ἀπάθειαν ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ τὸ κάλλος ἐκείνου τοῦ σώματος· ἀλλ’ ἵνα τὰς ἄλλας ἀνωμαλίας καὶ διαφορὰς ἀφῶμεν, αὐτὸ τοῦτο τὸ διαφαινόμενον πρόσωπον πάθει τινὶ τῆς οὐσίας ἢ ἀναμίξει πως ἑτέρας ἐπιγέγονε· πάσχει δέ τι καὶ τὸ μιγνύμενον· ἀποβάλλει γὰρ τὸ εἰλικρινές, βίᾳ τοῦ χείρονος ἀναπιμπλάμενον. [929] [a] αὐγῆς δὲ νώθειαν καὶ τάχους ἀμβλύτητα καὶ τὸ θερμὸν ἀδρανὲς καὶ ἀμαυρόν, ᾧ κατὰ τὸν Ἴωνα (fr. 57) ‘μέλας οὐ πεπαίνεται βότρυς’, εἰς τί θησόμεθα πλὴν ἀσθένειαν αὐτῆς καὶ πάθος; ‹πόθεν οὖν πάθους› ἀιδίῳ σώματι καὶ ὀλυμπίῳ μέτεστιν; ὅλως γάρ, ὦ φίλε Ἀριστότελες, γῆ μὲν οὖσα πάγκαλόν τι χρῆμα καὶ σεμνὸν ἀναφαίνεται καὶ κεκοσμημένον, ὡς δ’ ἄστρον ἢ φῶς ἤ τι σῶμα θεῖον καὶ οὐράνιον δέδια μὴ ἄμορφος ᾖ καὶ ἀπρεπὴς καὶ καταισχύνουσα τὴν καλὴν ἐπωνυμίαν· εἴ γε τῶν ἐν οὐρανῷ τοσούτων τὸ πλῆθος ὄντων μόνη φωτὸς ἀλλοτρίου δεομένη περίεισι, κατὰ Παρμενίδην [b] (B 15) ‘ἀεὶ παπταίνουσα πρὸς αὐγὰς ἠελίοιο’. ὁ μὲν οὖν ἑταῖρος ἐν τῇ διατριβῇ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ Ἀναξαγόρειον (B 18) ἀποδεικνύς, ὡς ἥλιος ἐντίθησι τῇ σελήνῃ τὸ λαμπρόν, ηὐδοκίμησεν· ἐγὼ δὲ ταῦτα μὲν οὐκ ἐρῶ, ἃ παρ’ ὑμῶν ἢ μεθ’ ὑμῶν ἔμαθον, ἔχων δὲ τοῦτο πρὸς τὰ λοιπὰ βαδιοῦμαι.

Φωτίζεσθαι τοίνυν τὴν σελήνην οὐχ ὡς ὕελον ἢ κρύσταλλον ἐλλάμψει καὶ διαφαύσει τοῦ ἡλίου πιθανόν ἐστιν, οὐδ’ αὖ κατὰ σύλλαμψίν τινα καὶ συναυγασμόν, ὥσπερ αἱ δᾷδες αὐξομένου τοῦ φωτός· οὕτως γὰρ οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐν νουμηνίαις ἢ διχομηνίαις ἔσται πανσέληνος ἡμῖν, εἰ μὴ στέγει μηδ’ ἀντιφράττει τὸν ἥλιον, ἀλλὰ δίεισιν ὑπὸ μανότητος [c] ἢ κατὰ σύγκρασιν εἰσλάμπει καὶ συνεξάπτει περὶ αὐτὴν τὸ φῶς. οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἐκκλίσεις οὐδ’ ἀποστροφὰς αὐτῆς, ὥσπερ ὅταν ᾖ διχότομος καὶ ἀμφίκυρτος ἢ μηνοειδής, αἰτιᾶσθαι περὶ τὴν σύνοδον, ἀλλὰ κατὰ στάθμην, φησὶ Δημόκριτος (A 69a), ἱσταμένη τοῦ φωτίζοντος ὑπολαμβάνει καὶ δέχεται τὸν ἥλιον, ὥστ’ αὐτήν τε φαίνεσθαι καὶ διαφαίνειν ἐκεῖνον εἰκὸς ἦν. ἡ δὲ πολλοῦ δεῖ τοῦτο ποιεῖν· αὐτή τε γὰρ ἄδηλός ἐστι τηνικαῦτα κἀκεῖνον ἀπέκρυψε καὶ ἠφάνισε πολλάκις, ‘ἀπεσκέδασεν δέ οἱ αὐγάς’, ὥς φησιν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (B 42),

†’ἔσ τε αἶαν καθύπερθεν, ἀπεσκνίφωσε δὲ γαίης

τόσσον, ὅσον τ’ εὖρος γλαυκώπιδος ἔπλετο μήνης’,

[d]καθάπερ εἰς νύκτα καὶ σκότος οὐκ εἰς ἄστρον ἕτερο‹ν› τοῦ φωτὸς ἐμπεσόντος. ὃ δὲ λέγει Ποσειδώνιος, ὡς ὑπὸ βάθους τῆς σελήνης οὐ περαιοῦται δι’ αὐτῆς τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου φῶς πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἐλέγχεται καταφανῶς. ὁ γὰρ ἀὴρ ἄπλετος ὢν καὶ βάθος ἔχων πολλαπλάσιον τῆς σελήνης ὅλος ἐξηλιοῦται καὶ καταλάμπεται ταῖς αὐγαῖς.

Ἀπολείπεται τοίνυν τὸ τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους, ἀνακλάσει τινὶ τοῦ ἡλίου πρὸς τὴν σελήνην γίνεσθαι τὸν ἐνταῦθα φωτισμὸν ἀπ’ αὐτῆς. ὅθεν οὐδὲ θερμὸν οὐδὲ λαμπρὸν ἀφικνεῖται πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὥσπερ ἦν εἰκὸς ἐξάψεως καὶ μίξεως ‹δυοῖν› φώτων γεγενημένης ἀλλ’ οἷον αἵ τε φωναὶ [e] κατὰ τὰς ἀνακλάσεις ἀμαυροτέραν ἀναφαίνουσι τὴν ἠχὼ τοῦ φθέγματος αἵ τε πληγαὶ τῶν ἀφαλλομένων βελῶν μαλακώτεραι προσπίπτουσιν, ‘ὣς αὐγὴ τύψασα σεληναίης κύκλον εὐρύν’ (Empedocles B 43) ἀσθενῆ καὶ ἀμυδρὰν ἀνάρροιαν ἴσχει πρὸς ἡμᾶς, διὰ τὴν κλάσιν ἐκλυομένης τῆς δυνάμεως’.

Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Σύλλας ‘ἀμέλει ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν ‘ἔχει τινὰς πιθανότητας· ὃ δ’ ἰσχυρότατόν ἐστι τῶν ἀντιπιπτόντων, πότερον ἔτυχέ τινος παραμυθίας ἢ παρῆλθεν ἡμῶν τὸν ἑταῖρον;’ ‘τί τοῦτο’ ἔφη ‘λέγεις;’ ὁ Λεύκιος· ‘ἦ τὸ πρὸς τὴν διχότομον ἀπορούμενον’; ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ [f] ὁ Σύλλας εἶπεν· ‘ἔχει γάρ τινα λόγον τὸ πάσης ἐν ἴσαις γωνίαις γινομένης ἀνακλάσεως, ὅταν ἡ σελήνη διχοτομοῦσα μεσουρανῇ, μὴ φέρεσθαι τὸ φῶς ἐπὶ γῆς ἀπ’ αὐτῆς ἀλλ’ ὀλισθάνειν ἐπέκεινα τῆς γῆς· ὁ γὰρ ἥλιος ἐπὶ [930] [a] τοῦ ὁρίζοντος ὢν ἅπτεται τῇ ἀκτῖνι τῆς σελήνης· διὸ καὶ κλασθεῖσα πρὸς ἴσα‹ς› ἐπὶ θάτερον ἐκπεσεῖται πέρας καὶ οὐκ ἀφήσει δεῦρο τὴν αὐγήν· ἢ διαστροφὴ μεγάλη καὶ παράλλαξις ἔσται τῆς γωνίας, ὅπερ ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν’. ‘ἀλλὰ νὴ Δί’’ εἶπεν ὁ Λεύκιος ‘καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐρρήθη’. καὶ πρός γε Μενέλαον ἀποβλέψας ἐν τῷ διαλέγεσθαι τὸν μαθηματικόν ‘αἰσχύνομαι μέν’ ἔφη ‘σοῦ παρόντος, ὦ φίλε Μενέλαε, θέσιν ἀναιρεῖν μαθηματικὴν ὥσπερ θεμέλιον τοῖς κατοπτρικοῖς ὑποκειμένην πράγμασιν· ἀνάγκη δ’ εἰπεῖν ὅτι τὸ πρὸς ἴσας γίνεσθαι γωνίας ἀνάκλασιν πᾶσαν οὔτε φαινόμενον αὐτόθεν οὔθ’ ὁμολογούμενόν [b] ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ διαβάλλεται μὲν ἐπὶ τῶν κυρτῶν κατόπτρων, ὅταν ἐμφάσεις ποιῇ μείζονας ἑαυτῶν πρὸς ἓν τὸ τῆς ὄψεως σημεῖον, διαβάλλεται δὲ τοῖς διπτύχοις κατόπτροις, ὧν ἐπικλιθέντων πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ γωνίας ἐντὸς γενομένης ἑκάτερον τῶν ἐπιπέδων διττὴν ἔμφασιν ἀποδίδωσι καὶ ποιεῖ τέτταρας εἰκόνας ἀφ’ ἑνὸς προσώπου, δύο μὲν ἀντιστρόφους τοῖς ἔξωθεν [ἀριστεροῖς] μέρεσι, δύο δὲ δεξιοφανεῖς ‹ἀλλ’› ἀμαυρὰς ἐν βάθει τῶν κατόπτρων. ὧν τῆς γενέσεως τὴν αἰτίαν Πλάτων ἀποδίδωσιν (Tim. 46b). εἴρηκε γὰρ ὅτι τοῦ κατόπτρου ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν [c] ὕψος λαβόντος ὑπαλλάττουσιν αἱ ὄψεις τὴν ἀνάκλασιν ἀπὸ τῶν ἑτέρων ἐπὶ θάτερα μεταπίπτουσαν. εἴπερ οὖν τῶν ὄψεων εὐθὺς πρὸς ἡμᾶς ... ἀνατρέχουσιν, αἱ δ’ ἐπὶ θάτερα μέρη τῶν κατόπτρων ὀλισθάνουσαι πάλιν ἐκεῖθεν ἀναφέρονται πρὸς ἡμᾶς, οὐ δυνατόν ἐστιν ἐν ἴσαις γωνίαις γίνεσθαι πάσας ἀνακλάσεις. οἷς οἱ ὁμόσε χωροῦντες ἀξιοῦσιν αὐτοῖς τοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς σελήνης ἐπὶ γῆν φερομένοις ῥεύμασι τὴν ἰσότητα τῶν γωνιῶν ἀναιρεῖν, πολλῷ τοῦτ’ ἐκείνου πιθανώτερον εἶναι νομίζοντες. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ εἰ δεῖ τοῦτο χαρίζεσθαι τῇ πολλὰ δὴ φίλῃ γεωμετρίᾳ [d] καὶ δοῦναι, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν ἠκριβωμένων ταῖς λειότησι συμπίπτειν ἐσόπτρων εἰκός ἐστιν, ἡ δὲ σελήνη πολλὰς ἀνωμαλίας ἔχει καὶ τραχύτητας, ὥστε τὰς αὐγὰς ἀπὸ σώματος μεγάλου προσφερομένας ὕψεσιν ἀξιολόγοις ἀντιλάμψεις καὶ διαδόσεις ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων λαμβάνουσιν, ἀνακλᾶσθαί τε παντοδαπῶς καὶ περιπλέκεσθαι καὶ συνάπτειν αὐτὴν ἑαυτῇ τὴν ἀνταύγειαν, οἷον ἀπὸ πολλῶν φερομένην πρὸς ἡμᾶς κατόπτρων. ἔπειτα κἂν πρὸς αὐτῇ τῇ σελήνῃ τὰς ἀντανακλάσεις ἐν ἴσαις γωνίαις ποιῶμεν, οὐκ ἀδύνατον φερομένας ἐν διαστήματι τοσούτῳ τὰς αὐγὰς κλάσεις ἴσχειν καὶ περιολισθήσεις, ὡς συγχεῖσθαι [e] καὶ κάμπτειν τὸ φῶς.

Ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ δεικνύουσι γράφοντες, ὅτι πολλὰ τῶν φώτων αὐγὴν ἀφίησι κατὰ γραμμῆς ὑπὸ τὴν κεκλιμένην ὑποταθείσης· σκευωρεῖσθαι δ’ ἅμα λέγοντι διάγραμμα, καὶ ταῦτα πρὸς πολλούς, οὐκ ἐνῆν.

Τὸ δ’ ὅλον’ ἔφη ‘θαυμάζω πῶς τὴν διχότομον ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς κινοῦσιν ἐμπίπτουσαν μετὰ τῆς ἀμφικύρτου καὶ τῆς μηνοειδοῦς. εἰ γὰρ αἰθέριον ὄγκον ἢ πύρινον ὄντα τὸν τῆς σελήνης ἐφώτιζεν ὁ ἥλιος, οὐκ ἂν ἀπέλειπεν αὐτῆ‹ς› σκιερὸν ἀεὶ καὶ ἀλαμπὲς ἡμισφαίριον πρὸς αἴσθησιν, ἀλλ’ εἰ καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ἔψαυε περιών, ὅλην ἀναπίμπλασθαι [f] καὶ δι’ ὅλης τρέπεσθαι τῷ φωτὶ πανταχόσε χωροῦντι δι’ εὐπετείας ἦν προσῆκον. ὅπου γὰρ οἶνος ὕδατος θιγὼν κατὰ πέρας καὶ σταγὼν αἵματος εἰς ὑγρὸν ἐμπεσόντος ἀνέχρωσε πᾶν ἅμα ... φοινιχθέν, αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν ἀέρα λέγουσιν οὐκ ἀπορροίαις τισὶν οὐδ’ ἀκτῖσι μεμιγμέναις ἀλλὰ τροπῇ καὶ μεταβολῇ κατὰ νύξιν ἢ ψαῦσιν ἀπὸ τοῦ φωτὸς ἐξηλιοῦσθαι, πῶς ἄστρον ἄστρου καὶ φῶς φωτὸς ἁψάμενον οἴονται μὴ κεράννυσθαι μηδὲ σύγχυσιν [931] [a] ποιεῖν δι’ ὅλου καὶ μεταβολὴν ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνα φωτίζειν μόνον, ὧν ἅπτεται κατὰ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν; ὃν γὰρ ὁ ἥλιος περιιὼν κύκλον ἄγει καὶ περιστρέφει περὶ τὴν σελήνην, νῦν μὲν ἐπιπίπτοντα τῷ διορίζοντι τὸ ὁρατὸν αὐτῆς καὶ τὸ ἀόρατον, νῦν δ’ ἀνιστάμενον πρὸς ὀρθὰς ὥστε τέμνειν ἐκεῖνον ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τε τέμνεσθαι, ἄλλαις ‹δὲ› κλίσεσι καὶ σχέσεσι τοῦ λαμπροῦ πρὸς τὸ σκιερὸν ἀμφικύρτους καὶ μηνοειδεῖς ἀποδιδόντα μορφὰς ἐν αὐτῇ, παντὸς μᾶλλον ἐπιδείκνυσιν οὐ σύγκρασιν ἀλλ’ ἐπαφήν, οὐδὲ σύλλαμψιν ἀλλὰ περίλαμψιν αὐτῆς ὄντα τὸν φωτισμόν.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ οὐκ αὐτὴ φωτίζεται μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ δεῦρο [b] τῆς αὐγῆς ἀναπέμπει τὸ εἴδωλον, ἔτι καὶ μᾶλλον ἰσχυρίσασθαι τῷ λόγῳ περὶ τῆς οὐσίας δίδωσιν. αἱ γὰρ ἀνακλάσεις γίνονται πρὸς οὐδὲν ἀραιὸν οὐδὲ λεπτομερές, οὐδ’ ἔστι φῶς ἀπὸ φωτὸς ἢ πῦρ ἀπὸ πυρὸς ἀφαλλόμενον [ἢ] νοῆσαι ῥᾴδιον, ἀλλὰ δεῖ τὸ ποιῆσον ἀντιτυπίαν τινὰ καὶ κλάσιν ἐμβριθὲς εἶναι καὶ πυκνόν, ἵνα πρὸς αὐτὸ πληγὴ καὶ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ φορὰ γένηται. τὸν γοῦν αὐτὸν ἥλιον ὁ μὲν ἀὴρ διίησιν οὐ παρέχων ἀνακοπὰς οὐδ’ ἀντερείδων, ἀπὸ δὲ ξύλων καὶ λίθων καὶ ἱματίων εἰς φῶς τιθεμένων πολλὰς ἀντιλάμψεις καὶ περιλάμψεις ἀποδίδωσιν. οὕτω [c] δὲ καὶ τὴν γῆν ὁρῶμεν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ φωτιζομένην· οὐ γὰρ εἰς βάθος ὥσπερ ὕδωρ οὐδὲ δι’ ὅλης ὥσπερ ἀὴρ διίησι τὴν αὐγήν, ἀλλ’ οἷος τὴν σελήνην περιστείχει κύκλος αὐτοῦ καὶ ὅσον ὑποτέμνεται μέρος ἐκείνης, τοιοῦτος ἕτερος περίεισι τὴν γῆν καὶ τοσοῦτον φωτίζων ἀεὶ καὶ ἀπολείπων ἕτερον ἀφώτιστον· ἡμισφαιρίου γὰρ ὀλίγῳ δοκεῖ μεῖζον εἶναι τὸ περιλαμπόμενον ἑκατέρας. δότε δή μοι γεωμετρικῶς εἰπεῖν πρὸς ἀναλογίαν ὡς, εἰ τριῶν ὄντων οἷς τὸ ἀφ’ ἡλίου φῶς πλησιάζει, γῆς σελήνης ἀέρος, ὁρῶμεν οὐχ ὡς ὁ ἀὴρ μᾶλλον ἢ ὡς ἡ γῆ φωτιζομένην τὴν σελήνην, ἀνάγκη φύσιν ἔχειν ὁμοίαν ἃ τὰ αὐτὰ πάσχειν [d] ὑπὸ τοῦ αὐτοῦ πέφυκεν.’

Ἐπεὶ δὲ πάντες ἐπῄνεσαν τὸν Λεύκιον, ‘εὖ γ’’ ἔφην ‘ὅτι καλῷ λόγῳ καλὴν ἀναλογίαν προσέθηκας· οὐ γὰρ ἀποστερητέον σε τῶν ἰδίων’. κἀκεῖνος ἐπιμειδιάσας ‘οὐκοῦν’ ἔφη ‘καὶ δεύτερον ἀναλογίᾳ προσχρηστέον, ὅπως μὴ ‹τῷ› τὰ αὐτὰ πάσχειν ὑπὸ τοῦ αὐτοῦ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ ταὐτὰ ποιεῖν ταὐτὸν ἀποδείξωμεν τῇ γῇ τὴν σελήνην προσεοικυῖαν. ὅτι μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν οὕτως τῶν περὶ τὸν ἥλιον γινομένων ὅμοιόν ἐστιν ὡς ἔκλειψις ἡλίου δύσει, δότε μοι ταύτης τῆς ἔναγχος συνόδου μνησθέντες, ἣ πολλὰ μὲν ἄστρα πολλαχόθεν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ διέφηνεν εὐθὺς [e] ἐκ μεσημβρίας ἀρξαμένη, κρᾶσιν δ’ οἵαν τὸ λυκαυγὲς τῷ ἀέρι παρέσχεν. εἰ δὲ μή, Θέων ἡμῖν οὗτος τὸν Μίμνερμον ἐπάξει καὶ τὸν Κυδίαν καὶ τὸν Ἀρχίλοχον, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις τὸν Στησίχορον καὶ τὸν Πίνδαρον ἐν ταῖς ἐκλείψεσιν ὀλοφυρομένους ‘ἄστρον φανερώτατον κλεπτόμενον’ καί ‘μέσῳ ἄματι νύκτα γινομένην’ καὶ τὴν ‘ἀκτῖνα τοῦ ἡλίου σκότους ἀτραπὸν ‹ἐσσυμέναν›’ φάσκοντας, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ τὸν Ὅμηρον νυκτὶ καὶ ζόφῳ τὰ πρόσωπα κατέχεσθαι τῶν ἀνθρώπων λέγοντα καί ‘τὸν ἥλιον ἐξαπολωλέναι τοῦ [f] οὐρανοῦ’ περὶ τὴν †σελήνην καὶ ... τοῦτο γίνεσθαι πέφυκε ‘τοῦ μὲν φθίνοντος μηνὸς τοῦ δ’ ἱσταμένου’. τὰ λοιπὰ δ’ οἶμαι ταῖς μαθηματικαῖς ἀκριβείαις εἰς τὸν ... ἐξῆχθαι καὶ βέβαιον, ὡς ἥ γε νύξ ἐστι σκιὰ γῆς, ἡ δ’ ἔκλειψις τοῦ ἡλίου σκιὰ σελήνης, ὅταν ἡ ὄψις ἐν αὐτῇ γένηται. δυόμενος γὰρ ὑπὸ τῆς γῆς ἀντιφράττεται πρὸς [932] [a] τὴν ὄψιν, ἐκλιπὼν δ’ ὑπὸ τῆς σελήνης· ἀμφότεραι δ’ εἰσὶν ἐπισκοτήσεις, ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν δυτικὴ τῆς γῆς ἡ δ’ ἐκλειπτικὴ τῆς σελήνης τῇ σκιᾷ καταλαμβανούσης τὴν ὄψιν. ἐκ δὲ τούτων εὐθεώρητον τὸ γινόμενον. εἰ γὰρ ὅμοιον τὸ πάθος, ὅμοια τὰ ποιοῦντα· τῷ γὰρ αὐτῷ τὰ αὐτὰ συμβαίνειν ὑπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν. εἰ δ’ οὐχ οὕτως τὸ περὶ τὰς ἐκλείψεις σκότος βύθιόν ἐστιν οὐδ’ ὁμοίως τῇ νυκτὶ πιέζει τὸν ἀέρα, μὴ θαυμάζωμεν· οὐσία μὲν γὰρ ἡ αὐτὴ τοῦ τὴν νύκτα ποιοῦντος καὶ τοῦ τὴν ἔκλειψιν σώματος, μέγεθος δ’ οὐκ ἴσον· ἀλλ’ Αἰγυπτίους μὲν ἑβδομηκοστόδυον οἶμαι φάναι μόριον εἶναι [b] τὴν σελήνην, Ἀναξαγόραν δ’ ὅση Πελοπόννησος. Ἀρίσταρχος δὲ (Prop. 17 p. 593 W.) ‹τὴν διάμετρον τῆς γῆς πρὸς› τὴν διάμετρον τῆς σελήνης λόγον ἔχουσαν ἀποδείκνυσιν, ὃς ἐλάττων μὲν ἢ ἑξήκοντα πρὸς δεκαεννέα, μείζων δ’ ἢ ὡς ἑκατὸν ὀκτὼ πρὸς τεσσαράκοντα τρί’ ἐστίν. ὅθεν ἡ μὲν γῆ παντάπασι τῆς ὄψεως τὸν ἥλιον ἀφαιρεῖται διὰ μέγεθος· μεγάλη γὰρ ἡ ἐπιπρόσθησις καὶ χρόνον ἔχουσα τὸν τῆς νυκτός· ἡ δὲ σελήνη κἂν ὅλον ποτὲ κρύψῃ τὸν ἥλιον, οὐκ ἔχει χρόνον οὐδὲ πλάτος ἡ ἔκλειψις, ἀλλὰ περιφαίνεταί τις αὐγὴ περὶ τὴν ἴτυν, οὐκ ἐῶσα βαθεῖαν γενέσθαι τὴν σκιὰν καὶ ἄκρατον. Ἀριστοτέλης δ’ ὁ παλαιὸς (fr. 210) αἰτίαν τοῦ πλεονάκις τὴν [c] σελήνην ἐκλείπουσαν ἢ τὸν ἥλιον καθορᾶσθαι πρὸς ἄλλαις τισὶ καὶ ταύτην ἀποδίδωσιν· ἥλιον γὰρ ἐκλείπειν σελήνης ἀντιφράξει, σελήνην δὲ ... . ὁ δὲ Ποσειδώνιος (p. 74 B) ὁρισάμενος οὕτω τόδε τὸ πάθος ‘ἔκλειψίς ἐστιν ἡλίου †σύνοδος σκιᾶς σελήνης ἧς τὴν ἔκλειψιν ....’· ἐκείνοις γὰρ μόνοις ἔκλειψίς ἐστιν, ὧν ἂν ἡ σκιὰ τῆς σελήνης καταλαβοῦσα τὴν ὄψιν ἀντιφράξῃ πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον· ὁμολογῶν δὲ σκιὰν τῆς σελήνης φέρεσθαι πρὸς ἡμᾶς οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅ τι λέγειν ἑαυτῷ καταλέλοιπεν ἄστρου δὲ σκιὰν ἀδύνατον γενέσθαι· τὸ γὰρ ἀφώτιστον σκιὰ λέγεται, τὸ [d] δὲ φῶς οὐ ποιεῖ σκιὰν ἀλλ’ ἀναιρεῖν πέφυκεν.’

‘Ἀλλὰ τί δή’ ἔφη ‘μετὰ τοῦτο τῶν τεκμηρίων ἐλέχθη’; κἀγώ ‘τὴν αὐτήν’ ἔφην ‘ἐλάμβανεν ἡ σελήνη ἔκλειψιν’. ‘ὀρθῶς’ εἶπεν ‘ὑπέμνησας· ἀλλὰ δὴ πότερον ὡς πεπεισμένων ὑμῶν καὶ τιθέντων ἐκλείπειν τὴν σελήνην ὑπὸ τοῦ σκιάσματος ἁλισκομένην ἤδη τρέπωμαι πρὸς τὸν λόγον, ἢ βούλεσθε μελέτην ποιήσωμαι καὶ ἀπόδειξιν ὑμῖν τῶν ἐπιχειρημάτων ἕκαστον ἀπαριθμήσας’; ‘νὴ Δί’’ εἶπεν ὁ Θέων ‘τούτοις καὶ ἐμμελέτησον· ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ πειθοῦς τινος δέομαι, ταύτῃ μόνον ἀκηκοὼς ὡς ἐπὶ μίαν [e] [μὲν] εὐθεῖαν τῶν τριῶν σωμάτων γιγνομένων, γῆς καὶ ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης, αἱ ἐκλείψεις συντυγχάνουσιν· ἡ γὰρ γῆ τῆς σελήνης ἢ πάλιν ἡ σελήνη τῆς γῆς ἀφαιρεῖται τὸν ἥλιον· ἐκλείπει γὰρ οὗτος μὲν σελήνης, σελήνη δὲ γῆς ἐν μέσῳ τῶν τριῶν ἱσταμένης· ὧν γίνεται τὸ μὲν ἐν συνόδῳ τὸ δ’ ἐν διχομηνίᾳ’. καὶ ὁ Λεύκιος ἔφη ‘σχεδὸν μέντοι τῶν λεγομένων κυριώτατα ταῦτ’ ἐστί· πρόσλαβε δὲ πρῶτον, εἰ βούλει, τὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ σχήματος τῆς σκιᾶς λόγον· ἔστι γὰρ κῶνος, ἅτε δὴ μεγάλου πυρὸς ἢ φωτὸς σφαιροειδοῦς ἐλάττονα σφαιροειδῆ δὲ περιβάλλοντος ὄγκον. ὅθεν ἐν ταῖς ἐκλείψεσι τῆς σελήνης αἱ περιγραφαὶ τῶν μελαινομένων [f] πρὸς τὰ λαμπρὰ τὰς ἀποτομὰς περιφερεῖς ἴσχουσιν· ἃς γὰρ ἂν στρογγύλον στρογγύλῳ προσμῖξαν ἢ δέξηται τομὰς ἢ παράσχῃ, πανταχόσε χωροῦσαι δι’ ὁμοιότητα γίνονται κυκλοτερεῖς. δεύτερον οἶμαί σε γινώσκειν, ὅτι σελήνης μὲν ἐκλείπει πρῶτα μέρη τὰ πρὸς ἀπηλιώτην, ἡλίου δὲ τὰ πρὸς δύσιν, κινεῖται δ’ ἡ μὲν σκιὰ τῆς γῆς ἐπὶ τὴν ἑσπέραν ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνατολῶν, ἥλιος [933] [a] δὲ καὶ σελήνη τοὐναντίον ἐπὶ τὰς ἀνατολάς. ταῦτα γὰρ ἰδεῖν τε παρέχει τῇ αἰσθήσει τὰ φαινόμενα κἀκ λόγων οὐ πάνυ τι μακρῶν μαθεῖν ἔστιν· ἐκ δὲ τούτων ἡ αἰτία βεβαιοῦται τῆς ἐκλείψεως. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἥλιος μὲν ἐκλείπει καταλαμβανόμενος, σελήνη δ’ ἀπαντῶσα τῷ ποιοῦντι τὴν ἔκλειψιν, εἰκότως μᾶλλον δ’ ἀναγκαίως ὁ μὲν ὄπισθεν ἁλίσκεται πρῶτον ἡ δ’ ἔμπροσθεν. ἄρχεται γὰρ ἐκεῖθεν ἡ ἐπιπρόσθησις, ὅθεν πρῶτον [μὲν] ἐπιβάλλει τὸ ἐπιπροσθοῦν· ἐπιβάλλει δ’ ἐκείνῳ μὲν ἀφ’ ἑσπέρας ἡ σελήνη πρὸς αὐτὸν ἁμιλλωμένη, ταύτῃ δ’ ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνατολῶν, ὡς πρὸς τοὐναντίον ὑποφερομένη. τρίτον τοίνυν ἔτι τὸ [b] τοῦ χρόνου λάβε καὶ τὸ τοῦ μεγέθους τῶν ἐκλείψεων αὐτῆς. ὑψηλὴ μὲν ἐκλείπουσα καὶ ἀπόγειος ὀλίγον ἀποκρύπτεται χρόνον, πρόσγειος δὲ καὶ ταπεινὴ αὐτὸ τοῦτο παθοῦσα σφόδρα πιέζεται καὶ βραδέως ἐκ τῆς σκιᾶς ἄπεισι. καίτοι ταπεινὴ μὲν οὖσα τοῖς μεγίστοις χρῆται κινήμασιν, ὑψηλὴ δὲ τοῖς ἐλαχίστοις· ἀλλὰ τὸ αἴτιον ἐν τῇ σκιᾷ τῆς διαφορᾶς ἔστιν. εὐρυτάτη γὰρ οὖσα περὶ τὴν βάσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ κῶνοι, συστελλομένη τε κατὰ μικρὸν εἰς ὀξὺ τῇ κορυφῇ καὶ λεπτὸν ἀπολήγει πέρας. ὅθεν ἡ σελήνη ταπεινὴ μὲν ἐμπεσοῦσα τοῖς μεγίστοις λαμβάνεται κύκλοις ὑπ’ αὐτῆς καὶ διαπερᾷ τὸ βύθιον καὶ σκοτωδέστατον, [c] ἄνω δ’ οἷον ἐν τενάγει διὰ λεπτότητα τοῦ σκιεροῦ χρανθεῖσα ταχέως ἀπαλλάττεται. παρίημι δ’ ὅσα χωρὶς ἰδίᾳ πρὸς τὰς βάσεις καὶ ‹τὰς› διαφορήσεις ἐλέχθη· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖναι μέχρι γε τοῦ ἐνδεχομένου προσίενται τὴν αἰτίαν· ἀλλ’ ἐπανάγω πρὸς τὸν ὑποκείμενον λόγον ἀρχὴν ἔχοντα τὴν αἴσθησιν.

Ὁρῶμεν γὰρ ὅτι πῦρ ἐκ τόπου σκιεροῦ διαφαίνεται καὶ διαλάμπει μᾶλλον, εἴτε παχύτητι τοῦ σκοτώδους ἀέρος οὐ δεχομένου τὰς ἀπορρεύσεις καὶ διαχύσεις ἀλλὰ συνέχοντος ἐν ταὐτῷ τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ σφίγγοντος, εἴτε τῆς αἰσθήσεως τοῦτο πάθος ἐστίν, ὡς τὰ θερμὰ παρὰ τὰ ψυχρὰ θερμότερα καὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς παρὰ τοὺς πόνους σφοδροτέρας, οὕτω τὰ λαμπρὰ φαίνεσθαι παρὰ τὰ σκοτεινὰ φανερώτερα, τοῖς διαφόροις πάθεσιν ἀντεπιτείνοντα τὴν φαντασίαν. ἔοικε δὲ πιθανώτερον εἶναι τὸ πρότερον· [d] ἐν γὰρ ἡλίῳ πᾶσα πυρὸς φύσις οὐ μόνον τὸ λαμπρὸν ἀπόλλυσιν, ἀλλὰ τῷ εἴκειν γίνεται δύσεργος καὶ ἀμβλυτέρα· σκίδνησι γὰρ ἡ θερμότης καὶ διαχέει τὴν δύναμιν. εἴπερ οὖν ἡ σελήνη πυρὸς εἴληχε βληχροῦ καὶ ἀδρανοῦς, ἄστρον οὖσα θολερώτερον, ὥσπερ αὐτοὶ λέγουσιν, οὐθὲν ὧν πάσχουσα φαίνεται νῦν, ἀλλὰ τὰ ἐναντία πάντα πάσχειν αὐτὴν προσῆκόν ἐστι, φαίνεσθαι μὲν ὅτε κρύπτεται, κρύπτεσθαι δ’ ὁπηνίκα φαίνεται· τουτέστι κρύπτεσθαι μὲν τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον ὑπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος αἰθέρος ἀμαυρουμένην, ἐκλάμπειν δὲ καὶ γίνεσθαι καταφανῆ δι’ [e] ἓξ μηνῶν καὶ πάλιν διὰ πέντε τῇ σκιᾷ τῆς γῆς ὑποδυομένην. αἱ γὰρ πέντε καὶ ἑξήκοντα καὶ τετρακόσιαι περίοδοι τῶν ἐκλειπτικῶν πανσελήνων τὰς τέσσαρας καὶ τετρακοσίας ἑξαμήνους ἔχουσι τὰς δ’ ἄλλας πενταμήνους. ἔδει τοίνυν διὰ τοσούτων χρόνων φαίνεσθαι τὴν σελήνην ἐν τῇ σκιᾷ λαμπρυνομένην· ἡ δ’ ἐν ‹τῇ σκιᾷ› μὲν ἐκλείπει καὶ ἀπόλλυσι τὸ φῶς, ἀναλαμβάνει δ’ αὖθις, ὅταν ἐκφύγῃ τὴν σκιάν, καὶ φαίνεταί γε πολλάκις ἡμέρας, ὡς [f] πάντα μᾶλλον ἢ πύρινον οὖσα σῶμα καὶ ἀστεροειδές.’

Εἰπόντος δὲ τοῦτο τοῦ Λευκίου συνεξέδραμον ἅμα πως τῷ ... ὅ τε Φαρνάκης καὶ ὁ Ἀπολλωνίδης· εἶτα τοῦ Ἀπολλωνίδου παρέντος ὁ Φαρνάκης εἶπεν, ὅτι τοῦτο καὶ μάλιστα τὴν σελήνην δείκνυσιν ἄστρον ἢ πῦρ οὖσαν· οὐ γάρ ἐστι παντελῶς ἄδηλος ἐν ταῖς ἐκλείψεσιν, ἀλλὰ διαφαίνει τινὰ χρόαν ἀνθρακώδη καὶ βλοσυράν, ἥτις ἴδιός ἐστιν αὐτῆς. ὁ δ’ Ἀπολλωνίδης ἐνέστη περὶ τῆς σκιᾶς· ἀεὶ γὰρ οὕτως ... ὀνομάζειν τοὺς μαθηματικοὺς τὸν ἀλαμπῆ τόπον ... σκιάν τε μὴ δέχεσθαι τὸν οὐρανόν. [934] [a] ἐγὼ δέ ‘τοῦτο μὲν’ ἔφην ‘πρὸς τοὔνομα μᾶλλον ἐριστικῶς ἢ πρὸς τὸ πρᾶγμα φυσικῶς καὶ μαθηματικῶς ἐνισταμένου. τὸν γὰρ ἀντιφραττόμενον ὑπὸ τῆς γῆς τόπον εἰ μὴ σκιάν τις ἐθέλοι καλεῖν ἀλλ’ ἀφεγγὲς χωρίον, ὅμως ἀναγκαῖον ἐν αὐτῷ τὴν σελήνην γενομένην ... καὶ ὅλως’ ἔφην ‘εὔηθές ἐστιν ἐκεῖ μὴ φάναι τῆς γῆς ἐξικνεῖσθαι τὴν σκιάν, ... ἡ σκιὰ τῆς σελήνης ἐπιπίπτουσα τῇ ὄψει καὶ ‹διήκουσα› πρὸς τὴν γῆν ἔκλειψιν ἡλίου ποιεῖν. πρὸς σὲ δέ, ὦ Φαρνάκη, τρέψομαι. τὸ γὰρ ἀνθρακῶδες ἐκεῖνο [b] καὶ διακαὲς χρῶμα τῆς σελήνης, ὃ φῂς ἴδιον αὐτῆς εἶναι, σώματός ἐστι πυκνότητα καὶ βάθος ἔχοντος· οὐθὲν γὰρ ἐθέλει τοῖς ἀραιοῖς ὑπόλειμμα φλογὸς οὐδ’ ἴχνος ἐμμένειν οὐδ’ ἔστιν ἄνθρακος γένεσις, οὗ μὴ στερέμνιον σῶμα δεξάμενον διὰ βάθους τὴν πύρωσιν καὶ σῷζον· ὥς που καὶ Ὅμηρος εἴρηκεν (Ι 213)

‘αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ πυρὸς ἄνθος ἀπέπτατο, παύσατο δὲ φλὸξ

ἀνθρακιὴν στορέσασα’.

ὁ γὰρ ἄνθραξ ἔοικεν οὐ πῦρ ἀλλὰ σῶμα πεπυρωμένον εἶναι καὶ πεπονθὸς ὑπὸ πυρὸς στερεῷ καὶ ῥίζαν ἔχοντι προσμένοντος ὄγκῳ καὶ προσδιατρίβοντος· αἱ δὲ φλόγες [c] ἀραιᾶς εἰσιν ἔξαψις καὶ ῥεύματα τροφῆς καὶ ὕλης, ταχὺ δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀναλυομένης. ὥστ’ οὐδὲν ἂν ὑπῆρχε τοῦ γεώδη καὶ πυκνὴν εἶναι τὴν σελήνην ἕτερον οὕτως ἐναργὲς τεκμήριον, εἴπερ αὐτῆς ἴδιον ἦν ὡς χρῶμα τὸ ἀνθρακῶδες. ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστιν, ὦ φίλε Φαρνάκη· πολλὰς γὰρ ἐκλείπουσα χρόας ἀμείβει καὶ διαιροῦσιν αὐτὰς οὕτως οἱ μαθηματικοὶ κατὰ χρόνον καὶ ὥραν ἀφορίζοντες· ἂν ἀφ’ ἑσπέρας ἐκλείπῃ, φαίνεται μέλαινα δεινῶς ἄχρι τρίτης ὥρας καὶ ἡμισείας· ἂν δὲ μέσῃ, τοῦτο δὴ τὸ ἐπιφοινίσσον ἵησι καὶ [πῦρ καὶ] πυρωπόν· ἀπὸ δ’ ἑβδόμης ὥρας καὶ ἡμισείας ἀνίσταται τὸ ἐρύθημα· καὶ τέλος ἤδη πρὸς ἕω λαμβάνει χρόαν κυανοειδῆ καὶ χαροπήν, ἀφ’ ἧς δὴ καὶ [d] μάλιστα ‘γλαυκῶπιν’ αὐτὴν οἱ ποιηταὶ καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (B 42) ἀνακαλοῦνται. τοσαύτας οὖν χρόας ἐν τῇ σκιᾷ τὴν σελήνην λαμβάνουσαν ὁρῶντες οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἐπὶ μόνον καταφέρονται τὸ ἀνθρακῶδες, ὃ μάλιστα φήσαι τις ἂν ἀλλότριον αὐτῆς εἶναι καὶ μᾶλλον ὑπόμιγμα καὶ λεῖμμα τοῦ φωτὸς διὰ τῆς σκιᾶς περιλάμποντος, ἴδιον δὲ τὸ μέλαν καὶ γεῶδες. ὅπου δὲ πορφυρίσιν ἐνταῦθα καὶ φοινικίσι λίμναις τε καὶ ποταμοῖς δεχομένοις ἥλιον ἐπίσκια χωρία γειτνιῶντα συγχρῴζεται καὶ περιλάμπεται, διὰ τὰς ἀνακλάσεις ἀποδιδόντα πολλοὺς καὶ διαφόρους ἀπαυγασμούς, [e] τί θαυμαστὸν εἰ ῥεῦμα πολὺ σκιᾶς ἐμβάλλον ὥσπερ εἰς πέλαγος οὐράνιον οὐ σταθεροῦ φωτὸς οὐδ’ ἠρεμοῦντος ἀλλὰ μυρίοις ἄστροις περιελαυνομένου μίξεις τε παντοδαπὰς καὶ μεταβολὰς λαμβάνοντος, ἄλλην ἄλλοτε χρόαν ἐκματτόμενον ἀπὸ τῆς σελήνης ἐνταῦθ’ ἀποδίδωσιν; ἄστρον μὲν γὰρ ἢ πῦρ οὐκ ἂν ἐν σκιᾷ διαφανείη μέλαν ἢ γλαυκὸν ἢ κυανοειδές, ὄρεσι δὲ καὶ πεδίοις καὶ θαλάσσαις πολλαὶ μὲν ἀφ’ ἡλίου μορφαὶ χρωμάτων ἐπιτρέχουσι καὶ σκιαῖς καὶ ὁμίχλαις, οἵας φαρμάκοις γραφικοῖς μιγνύμενον ἐπάγει βαφὰς τὸ λαμπρόν. ὧν τὰ μὲν τῆς θαλάττης ἐπικεχείρηκεν [f] ἁμωσγέπως ἐξονομάζειν Ὅμηρος ‘ἰοειδέα’ καλῶν καί ‘οἴνοπα πόντον’, αὖθις δέ ‘πορφύρεον κῦμα’ ‘γλαυκήν’ τ’ ἄλλως ‘θάλασσαν’ καί ‘λευκὴν γαλήνην’, τὰς δὲ περὶ τὴν γῆν διαφορὰς τῶν ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλως ἐπιφαινομένων χρωμάτων παρῆκεν ὡς ἀπείρους τὸ πλῆθος οὔσας. τὴν δὲ σελήνην οὐκ εἰκὸς ὥσπερ τὴν θάλασσαν μίαν ἔχειν ἐπιφάνειαν, ἀλλ’ ἐοικέναι μάλιστα τῇ γῇ τὴν φύσιν, ἣν ἐμυθολόγει Σωκράτης ὁ παλαιός (Plato Phaedon [935] [a] 110b), εἴτε δὴ ταύτην αἰνιττόμενος εἴτε δὴ ἄλλην τινὰ διηγούμενος. οὐ γὰρ ἄπιστον οὐδὲ θαυμαστόν, εἰ μηδὲν ἔχουσα διεφθορὸς ‹ἐν› ἑαυτῇ μηδ’ ἰλυῶδες, ἀλλὰ φῶς τε καρπουμένη καθαρὸν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καὶ θερμότητος οὐ διακαοῦς οὐδὲ μανικοῦ πυρὸς ἀλλὰ νοτεροῦ καὶ ἀβλαβοῦς καὶ κατὰ φύσιν ἔχοντος οὖσα πλήρης κάλλη τε θαυμαστὰ κέκτηται τόπων ὄρη τε φλογοειδῆ καὶ ζώνας ἁλουργοὺς ἔχει χρυσόν τε καὶ ἄργυρον οὐκ ἐν βάθει διεσπαρμένον, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τοῖς πεδίοις ἐξανθοῦντα πολὺν ἢ πρὸς ὕψεσι λείοις προφερόμενον.

Εἰ δὲ τούτων ὄψις ἀφικνεῖται διὰ τῆς σκιᾶς ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλη [b] πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἐξαλλαγῇ καὶ διαφορᾷ τινι τοῦ περιέχοντος, τό γε μὴν τίμιον οὐκ ἀπόλλυσι τῆς δόξης οὐδὲ τὸ θεῖον ἡ σελήνη, γῆ τις ... ἱερὰ πρὸς ἀνθρώπων νομιζομένη μᾶλλον ἢ πῦρ θολερόν, ὥσπερ οἱ Στωικοὶ λέγουσι, καὶ τρυγῶδες. πῦρ μέν γε παρὰ Μήδοις καὶ Ἀσσυρίοις βαρβαρικὰς ἔχει τιμάς, οἳ φόβῳ τὰ βλάπτοντα θεραπεύουσι πρὸ τῶν σεμνῶν ἀφοσιούμενοι, τὸ δὲ γῆς ὄνομα παντί που φίλον Ἕλληνι καὶ τίμιον, καὶ πατρῷον ἡμῖν ὥσπερ ἄλλον τινὰ θεῶν σέβεσθαι. πολλοῦ δὲ δέομεν ἄνθρωποι τὴν σελήνην, γῆν οὖσαν ὀλυμπίαν, ἄψυχον ἡγεῖσθαι σῶμα [c] καὶ ἄνουν καὶ ἄμοιρον ὧν θεοῖς ἀπάρχεσθαι προσήκει, νόμῳ τε τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀμοιβὰς τίνοντας καὶ κατὰ φύσιν σεβομένους τὸ κρεῖττον ἀρετῇ καὶ δυνάμει καὶ τιμιώτερον. ὥστε μηδὲν οἰώμεθα πλημμελεῖν γῆν αὐτὴν θέμενοι, τὸ δὲ φαινόμενον τουτὶ πρόσωπον αὐτῆς, ὥσπερ ἡ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἔχει γῆ κόλπους τινὰς μεγάλους, οὕτως ἐκείνην ἀνεπτύχθαι βάθεσι μεγάλοις καὶ ῥήξεσιν ὕδωρ ἢ ζοφερὸν ἀέρα περιέχουσιν, ὧν ἐντὸς οὐ καθίησιν οὐδ’ ἐπιψαύει τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου φῶς, ἀλλ’ ἐκλείπει καὶ διεσπασμένην ἐνταῦθα τὴν ἀνάκλασιν ἀποδίδωσιν.’ Ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Ἀπολλωνίδης ‘εἶτ’, ὦ πρὸς αὐτῆς’ [d] ἔφη ‘τῆς Σελήνης, δυνατὸν εἶναι δοκεῖ ὑμῖν ῥηγμάτων τινῶν ἢ φαράγγων εἶναι σκιὰς κἀκεῖθεν ἀφικνεῖσθαι δεῦρο πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, ἢ τὸ συμβαῖνον οὐ λογίζεσθε κἀγὼ τουτὶ εἴπω; ἀκούοιτε δὲ καίπερ οὐκ ἀγνοοῦντες. ἡ μὲν διάμετρος τῆς σελήνης δυοκαίδεκα δακτύλους ἔχει τὸ φαινόμενον ἐν τοῖς μέσοις ἀποστήμασι μέγεθος. τῶν δὲ μελάνων καὶ σκιερῶν ἕκαστον ἡμιδακτυλίου φαίνεται μεῖζον, ὥστε τῆς διαμέτρου μεῖζον ἢ εἰκοστοτέταρτον εἶναι. καὶ μήν, εἰ μόνων ὑποθοίμεθα τὴν περίμετρον τῆς σελήνης τρισμυρίων σταδίων μυρίων δὲ τὴν διάμετρον, κατὰ τὸ ὑποκείμενον οὐκ ἔλαττον ἂν εἴη πεντακοσίων σταδίων [e] ἐν αὐτῇ τῶν σκιερῶν ἕκαστον. ὅρα δὴ πρῶτον, ἂν ᾖ δυνατὸν τῇ σελήνῃ τηλικαῦτα βάθη καὶ τηλικαύτας εἶναι τραχύτητας ὥστε σκιὰν ποιεῖν τοσαύτην, ἔπειτα πῶς οὖσαι τηλικαῦται τὸ μέγεθος ὑφ’ ἡμῶν οὐχ ὁρῶνται.’ κἀγὼ μειδιάσας πρὸς αὐτόν ‘εὖγ’’ ἔφην ‘ὅτι τοιαύτην ἐξεύρηκας ἀπόδειξιν, ὦ Ἀπολλωνίδη, δι’ ἧς κἀμὲ καὶ σαυτὸν ἀποδείξεις τῶν Ἀλωαδῶν ἐκείνων εἶναι μείζονας, οὐκ ἐν ἅπαντι μέντοι χρόνῳ τῆς ἡμέρας ἀλλὰ πρωῒ μάλιστα καὶ δείλης, ‹εἴ γ’› οἴει, τὰς σκιὰς ἡμῶν τοῦ ἡλίου ποιοῦντος ἠλιβάτους, τὸν καλὸν τοῦτο τῇ αἰσθήσει παρέχειν συλλογισμόν, [f] ὡς, εἰ μέγα τὸ σκιαζόμενον, ὑπερμέγεθες τὸ σκιάζον. ἐν Λήμνῳ μὲν οὐδέτερος ἡμῶν εὖ οἶδ’ ὅτι γέγονε, τουτὶ μέντοι τὸ τεθρυλημένον ἰαμβεῖον ἀμφότεροι πολλάκις ἀκηκόαμεν (Soph. fr. 708)

‘Ἄθως καλύψει πλευρὰ Λημνίας βοός·’

ἐπιβάλλει γὰρ ἡ σκιὰ τοῦ ὄρους, ὡς ἔοικε, χαλκέῳ τινι [936] [a] βοιδίῳ, μῆκος ἀποτείνουσα διὰ τῆς θαλάττης οὐκ ἔλαττον ἑπτακοσίων σταδίων, τὸ κατασκιάζον ὕψος εἶναι. διὰ τίν’ αἰτίαν; ὅτι πολλαπλασίους αἱ τοῦ φωτὸς ἀποστάσεις τῶν σωμάτων τὰς σκιὰς ποιοῦσι. δεῦρο δὴ θεῶ καὶ τῆς σελήνης, ὅτε πάμμηνός ἐστι καὶ μάλιστα τὴν ἰδέαν ἔναρθρον τοῦ προσώπου βαθύτητι τῆς σκιᾶς ἀποδίδωσι, τὸ μέγιστον ἀπέχοντα διάστημα τὸν ἥλιον· ἡ γὰρ ἀπόστασις τοῦ φωτὸς αὕτη τὴν σκιὰν μεγάλην, οὐ τὰ μεγέθη τῶν ὑπὲρ τὴν σελήνην ἀνωμαλιῶν πεποίηκε. καὶ μὴν οὐδὲ τῶν ὀρῶν τὰς ὑπεροχὰς ἐῶσι μεθ’ ἡμέραν αἱ [b] περιαυγαὶ τοῦ ἡλίου καθορᾶσθαι, τὰ μέντοι βαθέα καὶ κοῖλα φαίνεται καὶ σκιώδη πόρρωθεν. οὐδὲν οὖν ἄτοπον, εἰ καὶ τῆς σελήνης τὴν ἀντίλαμψιν καὶ τὸν ἐπιφωτισμὸν οὐκ ἔστι καθορᾶν ἀκριβῶς, αἱ δὲ τῶν σκιερῶν παραθέσεις παρὰ τὰ λαμπρὰ τῇ διαφορᾷ τὴν ὄψιν οὐ λανθάνουσιν.

Ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο μᾶλλον’ ἔφην ‘ἐλέγχειν δοκεῖ τὴν λεγομένην ἀνάκλασιν ἀπὸ τῆς σελήνης, ὅτι τοὺς ἐν ταῖς ἀνακλωμέναις αὐγαῖς ἑστῶτας οὐ μόνον συμβαίνει τὸ φωτιζόμενον ὁρᾶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ φωτίζον. ὅταν γὰρ αὐγῆς ἀφ’ ὕδατος πρὸς τοῖχον ἁλλομένης ὄψις ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ πεφωτισμένῳ κατὰ τὴν ἀνάκλασιν τόπῳ γένηται, τὰ τρία [c] καθορᾷ, τήν τ’ ἀνακλωμένην αὐγὴν καὶ τὸ ποιοῦν ὕδωρ τὴν ἀνάκλασιν καὶ τὸν ἥλιον αὐτόν, ἀφ’ οὗ τὸ φῶς τῷ ὕδατι προσπίπτον ἀνακέκλασται. τούτων δ’ ὁμολογουμένων καὶ φαινομένων κελεύουσι τοὺς ἀνακλάσει φωτίζεσθαι τὴν γῆν ὑπὸ τῆς σελήνης ἀξιοῦντας ἐπιδεικνύναι νύκτωρ ἐμφαινόμενον τῇ σελήνῃ τὸν ἥλιον, ὥσπερ ἐμφαίνεται τῷ ὕδατι μεθ’ ἡμέραν, ὅταν ἀνάκλασις ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ γένηται· μὴ φαινομένου δὲ τούτου, κατ’ ἄλλον οἴονται τρόπον, οὐκ ἀνακλάσει, γίνεσθαι τὸν φωτισμόν· εἰ δὲ μὴ τοῦτο, μηδὲ γῆν εἶναι τὴν σελήνην’. ‘τί οὖν’ ἔφη ‘πρὸς [d] αὐτοὺς λεκτέον’; ὁ Ἀπολλωνίδης· ‘κοινὰ γὰρ ἔοικε καὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς εἶναι τὰ τῆς ἀνακλάσεως.’ ‘ἀμέλει τρόπον τινά’ ἔφην ἐγώ ‘κοινά, τρόπον δ’ ἄλλον οὐ κοινά. πρῶτον δ’ ὅρα τὰ τῆς εἰκόνος ὡς ‘ἄνω ποταμῶν’ καὶ τραπέμπαλιν λαμβάνουσιν. ἐπὶ γῆς γάρ ἐστι καὶ κάτω τὸ ὕδωρ, ὑπὲρ γῆς δὲ σελήνη καὶ μετέωρος· ὅθεν ἀντίστροφον αἱ κεκλασμέναι τὸ σχῆμα τῆς γωνίας ποιοῦσι, τῆς μὲν ἄνω πρὸς τῇ σελήνῃ τῆς δὲ κάτω πρὸς τῇ γῇ τὴν κορυφὴν ἐχούσης. μὴ ἅπασαν οὖν ἰδέαν κατόπτρων μηδ’ ἐκ πάσης ἀποστάσεως ὁμοίαν ἀνάκλασιν ποιεῖν ἀξιούτωσαν, ἐπεὶ μάχονται πρὸς τὴν ἐνάργειαν. οἱ δὲ σῶμα [e] μὴ λεπτὸν μηδὲ λεῖον, ὥσπερ ἐστὶ τὸ ὕδωρ, ἀποφαίνοντες τὴν σελήνην ἀλλ’ ἐμβριθὲς καὶ γεῶδες οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως ἀπαιτοῦνται τοῦ ἡλίου τὴν ἔμφασιν ἐν αὐτῇ πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν. οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸ γάλα τοὺς τοιούτους ἐσοπτρισμοὺς ἀποδίδωσιν οὐδὲ ποιεῖ τῆς ὄψεως ἀνακλάσεις διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν καὶ τραχύτητα τῶν μορίων· πόθεν γε τὴν σελήνην δυνατόν ἐστιν ἀναπέμπειν ἀφ’ ἑαυτῆς τὴν ὄψιν, ὥσπερ ἀναπέμπει τὰ λειότερα τῶν ἐσόπτρων; καίτοι καὶ ταῦτα δήπουθεν, ἐὰν ἀμυχή τις ἢ ῥύπος ἢ τραχύτης καταλάβῃ τὸ σημεῖον [ἂν], ἀφ’ οὗ πέφυκεν ἡ ὄψις ἀνακλασθῆναι, [f] τυφλοῦται, καὶ βλέπεται μὲν αὐτά, τὴν δ’ ἀνταύγειαν οὐκ ἀποδίδωσιν. ὁ δ’ ἀξιῶν ἢ καὶ τὴν ὄψιν ἡμῶν ἐπὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἢ μηδὲ τὸν ἥλιον ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς ἀνακλᾶν ἀφ’ ἑαυτῆς τὴν σελήνην ἡδύς ἐστι τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν ἥλιον ἀξιῶν εἶναι φῶς δὲ τὴν ὄψιν οὐρανὸν δὲ τὸν ἄνθρωπον. τοῦ μὲν γὰρ ἡλίου δι’ εὐτονίαν καὶ λαμπρότητα πρὸς τῇ σελήνῃ γινομένην μετὰ πληγῆς τὴν ἀνάκλασιν φέρεσθαι πρὸς ἡμᾶς εἰκός ἐστιν· ἡ δ’ ὄψις ἀσθενὴς οὖσα καὶ λεπτὴ καὶ ὀλιγοστὴ τί θαυμαστὸν εἰ μήτε πληγὴν ἀνακρουστικὴν ποιεῖ μήτ’ ἀφαλλομένης τηρεῖ τὴν συνέχειαν ἀλλὰ θρύπτεται [937] [a] καὶ ἀπολείπει, πλῆθος οὐκ ἔχουσα φωτὸς ὥστε μὴ διασπᾶσθαι περὶ τὰς ἀνωμαλίας καὶ τραχύτητας; ἀπὸ μὲν γὰρ ὕδατος καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἐσόπτρων ἰσχύουσαν ἔτι τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐγγὺς οὖσαν ἐπὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἅλλεσθαι τὴν ἀνάκλασιν οὐκ ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν· ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς σελήνης, κἂν γίνωνταί τινες ὀλισθήσεις αὐτῆς, ἀσθενεῖς ἔσονται καὶ ἀμυδραὶ καὶ προαπολείπουσαι διὰ τὸ μῆκος τῆς ἀποστάσεως. καὶ γὰρ ἄλλως τὰ μὲν κοῖλα τῶν ἐσόπτρων εὐτονωτέραν ποιεῖ τῆς προηγουμένης αὐγῆς τὴν ἀνακλωμένην, ὥστε καὶ φλόγας ἀναπέμπειν πολλάκις, τὰ δὲ κυρτὰ καὶ τὰ σφαιροειδῆ τῷ μὴ πανταχόθεν ἀντερείδειν [b] ἀσθενῆ καὶ ἀμαυράν ... . ὁρᾶτε δήπουθεν, ὅταν ἴριδες δύο φανῶσι, νέφους νέφος ἐμπεριέχοντος, ἀμαυρὰ ποιοῦσαν καὶ ἀσαφῆ τὰ χρώματα τὴν περιέχουσαν· τὸ γὰρ ἐκτὸς νέφος ἀπωτέρω τῆς ὄψεως κείμενον οὐκ εὔτονον οὐδ’ ἰσχυρὰν τὴν ἀνάκλασιν ἀποδίδωσι. καὶ τί δεῖ πλείονα λέγειν; ὅπου γὰρ τὸ τοῦ ἡλίου φῶς ἀνακλώμενον ἀπὸ τῆς σελήνης τὴν μὲν θερμότητα πᾶσαν ἀποβάλλει, τῆς δὲ λαμπρότητος αὐτοῦ λεπτὸν ἀφικνεῖται μόλις πρὸς ἡμᾶς καὶ ἀδρανὲς λείψανον, ἦπου τῆς ὄψεως τὸν ἴσον φερομένης δίαυλον ἐνδέχεται μόριον ὁτιοῦν λείψανον ἐξικέσθαι πρὸς [c] τὸν ἥλιον ἀπὸ τῆς σελήνης; ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ οἶμαι. σκοπεῖτε δ’’ εἶπον ‘καὶ ὑμεῖς· εἰ τὰ αὐτὰ πρὸς τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ τὴν σελήνην ἔπασχεν ἡ ὄψις, ἔδει καὶ γῆς καὶ φυτῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἄστρων ἐμφάσεις ποιεῖν τὴν πανσέληνον, οἵας τὰ λοιπὰ ποιεῖται τῶν ἐσόπτρων· εἰ δ’ οὐ γίνονται πρὸς ταῦτα τῆς ὄψεως ἀνακλάσεις δι’ ἀσθένειαν αὐτῆς ἢ τραχύτητα τῆς σελήνης, μηδὲ πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ἀπαιτῶμεν.

Ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν’ ἔφην, ‘ὅσα μὴ διαπέφευγε τὴν μνήμην τῶν ἐκεῖ λεχθέντων, ἀπηγγέλκαμεν· ὥρα δὲ καὶ Σύλλαν παρακαλεῖν μᾶλλον δ’ ἀπαιτεῖν τὴν διήγησιν, [d] οἷον ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς ἀκροατὴν γεγενημένον· ὥστε, εἰ δοκεῖ, καταπαύσαντες τὸν περίπατον καὶ καθίσαντες ἐπὶ τῶν βάθρων ἑδραῖον αὐτῷ παράσχωμεν ἀκροατήριον.’ ἔδοξε δὴ ταῦτα, καὶ καθισάντων ἡμῶν ὁ Θέων ‘ἐγώ τοι, ὦ Λαμπρία’ εἶπεν ‘ἐπιθυμῶ μὲν οὐδενὸς ἧττον ὑμῶν ἀκοῦσαι τὰ λεχθησόμενα, πρότερον δ’ ἂν ἡδέως ἀκούσαιμι περὶ τῶν οἰκεῖν λεγομένων ἐπὶ τῆς σελήνης, οὐκ εἰ κατοικοῦσί τινες ἀλλ’ εἰ δυνατὸν ἐκεῖ κατοικεῖν. εἰ γὰρ οὐ δυνατόν, ἄλογον καὶ τὸ γῆν εἶναι τὴν σελήνην. δόξει γὰρ πρὸς οὐθὲν ἀλλὰ μάτην γεγονέναι μήτε καρποὺς ἐκφέρουσα [e] μήτ’ ἀνθρώποις τισὶν ἕδραν παρέχουσα καὶ γένεσιν καὶ δίαιταν· ὧν ἕνεκα καὶ ταύτην γεγονέναι φαμὲν κατὰ Πλάτωνα (Tim. 40b) ‘τροφὸν ἡμετέραν ἡμέρας τε καὶ νυκτὸς ἀτρεκῆ φύλακα καὶ δημιουργόν’. ὁρᾷς δ’ ὅτι πολλὰ λέγεται καὶ σὺν γέλωτι καὶ μετὰ σπουδῆς περὶ τούτων. τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ὑπὸ τὴν σελήνην οἰκοῦσιν ὥσπερ Ταντάλοις ἐκ κεφαλῆς ἐκκρέμασθαί φασι, τοὺς δ’ οἰκοῦντας αὖ πάλιν ἐπ’ αὐτῆς ὥσπερ Ἰξίονας ἐνδεδεμένους ῥύμῃ τόση... . καίτοι μίαν οὐ κινεῖται κίνησιν, ἀλλ’, ὥς που καὶ λέγεται, Τριοδῖτίς ἐστιν, ἅμα μῆκος ἐπὶ τοῦ ζῳδιακοῦ καὶ πλάτος φερομένη καὶ βάθος· ὧν [f] τὴν μὲν περιδρομὴν τὴν δ’ ἕλικα τὴν δ’ οὐκ οἶδα πῶς ἀνωμαλίαν ὀνομάζουσιν οἱ μαθηματικοί, καίπερ οὐδεμίαν †ὁμαλὴν οὐδὲ τεταγμένην ταῖς ἀποκαταστάσεσιν ὁρῶντες ἔχουσαν. οὔκουν εἰ λέων τις ἔπεσεν ὑπὸ ῥύμης εἰς Πελοπόννησον, ἄξιόν ἐστι θαυμάζειν, ἀλλ’ ὅπως οὐ μυρί’ ὁρῶμεν ἀεὶ ‘πεσήματ’ ἀνδρῶν καὶ ἀπολακτισμοὺς βίων’ (Aesch. Suppl. 937) ἐκεῖθεν οἷον ἐκκυβιστώντων καὶ περιτρεπομένων.

[938] [a] Καὶ γὰρ γελοῖον περὶ μονῆς τῶν ἐκεῖ διαπορεῖν, εἰ μὴ γένεσιν μηδὲ σύστασιν ἔχειν δύνανται. ὅπου γὰρ Αἰγύπτιοι καὶ Τρωγλοδῦται, οἷς ἡμέρας μιᾶς ἀκαρὲς ἵσταται κατὰ κορυφὴν ὁ ἥλιος ἐν τροπαῖς εἶτ’ ἄπεισιν, ὀλίγον ἀπέχουσι τοῦ κατακεκαῦσθαι ξηρότητι τοῦ περιέχοντος, ἦπου τοὺς ἐπὶ τῆς σελήνης εἰκός ἐστι δώδεκα θερείας ὑπομένειν ἔτους ἑκάστου, κατὰ μῆνα τοῦ ἡλίου πρὸς κάθετον αὐτοῖς ἐφισταμένου καὶ στηρίζοντος, ὅταν ᾖ πανσέληνος; πνεύματά γε μὴν καὶ νέφη καὶ ὄμβρους, ὧν χωρὶς οὔτε γένεσις φυτῶν ἔστιν οὔτε σωτηρία γενομένοις, [b] ἀμήχανον ἐκεῖ διανοηθῆναι συνιστάμενα διὰ θερμότητα καὶ λεπτότητα τοῦ περιέχοντος. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα τῶν ὀρῶν τὰ ὑψηλὰ δέχεται τοὺς ἀγρίους καὶ ἐναντίους χειμῶνας, ἀλλ’ ... ἤδη καὶ σάλον ἔχων ὑπὸ κουφότητος ὁ ἀὴρ ἐκφεύγει τὴν σύστασιν ταύτην καὶ πύκνωσιν. εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία φήσομεν, ὥσπερ ἡ Ἀθηνᾶ τῷ Ἀχιλλεῖ νέκταρός τι καὶ ἀμβροσίας ἐνέσταξε μὴ προσιεμένῳ τροφήν, οὕτω τὴν σελήνην, Ἀθηνᾶν λεγομένην καὶ οὖσαν, τρέφειν τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀμβροσίαν ἀνιεῖσαν αὐτοῖς ἐφημέριον, ὡς Φερεκύδης ὁ παλαιὸς οἴεται σιτεῖσθαι τοὺς θεούς. τὴν μὲν γὰρ Ἰνδικὴν ῥίζαν, ἥν φησι Μεγασθένης τοὺς ‹μήτ’ ἐσθίοντας› [c] μήτε πίνοντας ἀλλ’ ἀστόμους ὄντας ὑποτύφειν καὶ θυμιᾶν καὶ τρέφεσθαι τῇ ὀσμῇ, πόθεν ἄν τις ἐκεῖ φυομένην λάβοι μὴ βρεχομένης τῆς σελήνης;’

Ταῦτα τοῦ Θέωνος εἰπόντος ‹’κάλλιστά› γε’ ἔφην ‘καὶ ἄριστα τῇ παιδιᾷ τοῦ λόγου τὰς ὀφρῦς ‹ἡμῶν ἔλυσας· δι’› ἃ καὶ θάρσος ἡμῖν ἐγγίνεται πρὸς τὴν ἀπόκρισιν, μὴ πάνυ πικρὰν μηδ’ αὐστηρὰν εὐθύνην προσδοκῶσι. καὶ γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς τῶν σφόδρα πεπεισμένων τὰ τοιαῦτα διαφέρουσιν ‹οὐδὲν› οἱ σφόδρα δυσκολαίνοντες αὐτοῖς καὶ διαπιστοῦντες ἀλλὰ μὴ πράως τὸ δυνατὸν καὶ τὸ ἐνδεχόμενον ἐθέλοντες ἐπισκοπεῖν. εὐθὺς οὖν τὸ πρῶτον οὐκ ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν, εἰ μὴ κατοικοῦσιν ἄνθρωποι [d] τὴν σελήνην, μάτην γεγονέναι καὶ πρὸς μηθέν. οὐδὲ γὰρ τήνδε τὴν γῆν δι’ ὅλης ἐνεργὸν οὐδὲ προσοικουμένην ὁρῶμεν, ἀλλὰ μικρὸν αὐτῆς μέρος ὥσπερ ἄκροις τισὶν ἢ χερρονήσοις ἀνέχουσιν ἐκ βυθοῦ γόνιμόν ἐστι ζῴων καὶ φυτῶν, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων τὰ μὲν ἔρημα καὶ ἄκαρπα χειμῶσι καὶ αὐχμοῖς, τὰ δὲ πλεῖστα κατὰ τῆς μεγάλης δέδυκε θαλάσσης. ἀλλὰ σύ, τὸν Ἀρίσταρχον ἀγαπῶν ἀεὶ καὶ θαυμάζων, οὐκ ἀκούεις Κράτητος ἀναγινώσκοντος (Ξ 246. 246a)

‘Ὠκεανός, ὅσπερ γένεσις πάντεσσι τέτυκται

ἀνδράσιν ἠδὲ θεοῖς, πλείστην ἐπὶ γαῖαν ἵησιν.’

ἀλλὰ πολλοῦ δεῖ μάτην ταῦτα γεγονέναι· καὶ γὰρ ἀναθυμιάσεις [e] ἡ θάλασσα μαλακὰς ἀνίησι, καὶ τῶν πνευμάτων τὰ ἥδιστα θέρους ἀκμάζοντος ἐκ τῆς ἀοικήτου καὶ κατεψυγμένης αἱ χιόνες ἀτρέμα διατηκόμεναι χαλῶσι καὶ διασπείρουσιν, ‘ἡμέρας τε καὶ νυκτὸς’ ἕστηκεν ἀτρεκὴς ἐν μέσῳ ‘φύλαξ’ κατὰ Πλάτωνα ‘καὶ δημιουργός’. οὐδὲν οὖν κωλύει καὶ τὴν σελήνην ζῴων μὲν ἔρημον εἶναι, παρέχειν δ’ ἀνακλάσεις τε τῷ φωτὶ περὶ αὐτὴν διαχεομένῳ καὶ συρροὴν ταῖς τῶν ἀστέρων αὐγαῖς ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ σύγκρασιν, ᾗ συνεκπέττει τε τὰς ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἀναθυμιάσεις ἅμα τε καὶ τοῦ ἡλίου τὸ ἔμπυρον ἄγαν καὶ σκληρὸν ἀνίησι. καί πού τι καὶ παλαιᾷ φήμῃ διδόντες Ἄρτεμιν [f] αὐτὴν νομισθῆναι φήσομεν ὡς παρθένον καὶ ἄγονον, ἄλλως δὲ βοηθητικὴν καὶ ὠφέλιμον.

Ἐπεὶ τῶν γ’ εἰρημένων οὐδέν, ὦ φίλε Θέων, ἀδύνατον δείκνυσι τὴν λεγομένην ἐπ’ αὐτῆς οἴκησιν. ἥ τε γὰρ δίνη πολλὴν ἔχουσα πραότητα καὶ γαλήνην ἐπιλεαίνει τὸν ἀέρα [939] [a] καὶ διανέμει συγκατακοσμούμενον, ὥστε μηδὲν εἶναι δέος ἐκπεσεῖν καὶ ἀποσφαλῆναι τοὺς ἐκεῖ βεβηκότας, †εἰ δὲ μὴ δὲ αὐτὴ †καὶ τὸ ποικίλον τοῦτο τῆς φορᾶς καὶ πεπλανημένον οὐκ ἀνωμαλίας οὐδὲ ταραχῆς ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ θαυμαστὴν ἐπιδείκνυνται τάξιν ἐν τούτοις καὶ πορείαν οἱ ἀστρολόγοι κύκλοις τισὶ περὶ κύκλους ἑτέρους ἐξελιττομένοις συνάγοντες, ‹οἳ ἄγουσιν› αὐτὴν οἱ μὲν ἀτρεμοῦσαν, οἱ δὲ λείως καὶ ὁμαλῶς ἀεὶ τάχεσι τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀνθυποφερομένην· αὗται γὰρ αἱ τῶν κύκλων ἐπιβάσεις καὶ περιαγωγαὶ καὶ σχέσεις πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς τὰ φαινόμενα τῆς κινήσεως ὕψη καὶ βάθη καὶ τὰς κατὰ [b] πλάτος παραλλάξεις ἅμα ταῖς κατὰ μῆκος αὐτῆς περιόδοις ἐμμελέστατα συμπεραίνουσι.

Τὴν δὲ πολλὴν θερμότητα καὶ συνεχῆ πύρωσιν ὑφ’ ἡλίου [οὐ] παύσῃ φοβούμενος, ἂν πρῶτον μὲν ἀντιθῇς †ταῖς ἕνδεκα θεριναῖς συνόδοις τὰς πανσελήνους· εἴσῃ †δὲ τὸ συνεχὲς τῆς μεταβολῆς ταῖς ὑπερβολαῖς χρόνον οὐκ ἐχούσαις πολὺν ἐμποιεῖν κρᾶσιν οἰκείαν καὶ τὸ ἄγαν ἑκατέρας ἀφαιρεῖν· διὰ μέσου δὲ τούτων, ὡς εἰκός, ὥραν ἔαρι προσφορωτάτην ἔχουσιν. ἔπειτα πρὸς μὲν ἡμᾶς καθίησι δι’ ἀέρος θολεροῦ καὶ συνεπερείδοντος τὴν θερμότητα ταῖς ἀναθυμιάσεσι τρεφομένην, ἐκεῖ δὲ λεπτὸς ὢν [c] καὶ διαυγὴς ὁ ἀὴρ σκίδνησι καὶ διαχεῖ τὴν αὐγήν, ὑπέκκαυμα καὶ σῶμα μηδὲν ἔχουσαν.

Ὕλην δὲ καὶ καρποὺς αὐτόθι μὲν ὄμβροι τρέφουσιν, ἑτέρωθι δέ, ὥσπερ ἄνω περὶ Θήβας παρ’ ὑμῖν καὶ Συήνην, οὐκ ὄμβριον ὕδωρ ἀλλὰ γηγενὲς ἡ γῆ πίνουσα καὶ χρωμένη πνεύμασι καὶ δρόσοις οὐκ ἂν ἐθελήσειεν οἶμαι τῇ πλεῖστον ὑομένῃ πολυκαρπίας ὑφίεσθαι δι’ ἀρετήν τινα καὶ κρᾶσιν. τὰ δ’ αὐτὰ φυτὰ τῷ γένει παρ’ ἡμῖν μέν, ἐὰν σφόδρα πιεσθῇ χειμῶσιν, ἐκφέρει πολὺν καὶ καλὸν καρπόν, ἐν δὲ Λιβύῃ καὶ παρ’ ὑμῖν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ δύσριγα κομιδῇ καὶ δειλὰ πρὸς χειμῶνάς ἐστι. τῆς δὲ Γεδρωσίας καὶ Τρωγλοδύτιδος, [d] ἣ καθήκει πρὸς τὸν ὠκεανόν, ἀφόρου διὰ ξηρότητα καὶ ἀδένδρου παντάπασιν οὔσης, ἐν τῇ παρακειμένῃ καὶ περικεχυμένῃ θαλάττῃ θαυμαστὰ μεγέθη φυτῶν τρέφεται καὶ κατὰ βυθοῦ τέθηλεν, ὧν τὰ μὲν ἐλαίας τὰ δὲ δάφνας τὰ δ’ Ἴσιδος τρίχας καλοῦσιν. οἱ δ’ ἀνακαμψέρωτες οὗτοι προσαγορευόμενοι τῆς γῆς ἐξαιρεθέντες οὐ μόνον ζῶσι κρεμάμενοι χρόνον ὅσον βούλεταί τις, ἀλλὰ βλαστάνουσιν. ... σπείρεται δὲ τὰ μὲν πρὸς χειμῶνος τὰ δὲ θέρους ἀκμάζοντος, ὥσπερ σήσαμον καὶ μελίνη· τὸ δὲ θύμον ἢ τὸ κενταύριον ἂν εἰς ἀγαθὴν καὶ πίονα σπαρῇ χώραν καὶ βρέχηται καὶ ἄρδηται, τῆς κατὰ [e] φύσιν ἐξίσταται ποιότητος καὶ ἀποβάλλει τὴν δύναμιν, αὐχμῷ δὲ χαίρει καὶ πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἐπιδίδωσιν. εἰ δ’ ὥς φασιν οὐδὲ τὰς δρόσους ἀνέχεται, καθάπερ τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν Ἀραβικῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐξαμαυροῦται διαινόμενα καὶ φθείρεται, τί δὴ θαυμαστόν ἐστιν εἰ γίνονται περὶ τὴν σελήνην ῥίζαι καὶ σπέρματα καὶ ὗλαι μηθὲν ὑετῶν δεόμεναι μηδὲ χιόνων ἀλλὰ πρὸς θερινὸν ἀέρα καὶ λεπτὸν εὐφυῶς ἔχουσαι;

Πῶς δ’ οὐκ εἰκὸς ἀνιέναι τε πνεύματα θαλπόμενα τῇ σελήνῃ καὶ τῷ σάλῳ τῆς περιφορᾶς αὔρας τε παρομαρτεῖν ἀτρέμα καὶ δρόσους [καὶ] ὑγρότητας ἐλαφρὰς περιχεούσας καὶ διασπειρομένας ἐπαρκεῖν τοῖς βλαστάνουσιν, [f] αὐτὴν δὲ τῇ κράσει μὴ πυρώδη μηδ’ αὐχμηρὰν ἀλλὰ μαλακὴν καὶ ὑδροποιὸν εἶναι; ξηρότητος μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀφικνεῖται πάθος ἀπ’ αὐτῆς πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὑγρότητος δὲ πολλὰ καὶ θηλύτητος, αὐξήσεις φυτῶν, σήψεις κρεῶν, τροπαὶ καὶ ἀνέσεις οἴνων, μαλακότητες ξύλων, εὐτοκίαι γυναικῶν. δέδοικα δ’ ἡσυχάζοντα Φαρνάκην αὖθις ἐρεθίζειν καὶ κινεῖν, [940] [a] ὠκεανοῦ τε πλημμύρας, ὡς λέγουσιν αὐτοί, καὶ πορθμῶν ἐπιδόσεις διαχεομένων καὶ αὐξανομένων ὑπὸ τῆς σελήνης τῷ ἀνυγραίνεσθαι παρατιθέμενος. διὸ πρὸς σὲ τρέψομαι μᾶλλον, ὦ φίλε Θέων· λέγεις γὰρ ἡμῖν ἐξηγούμενος ταυτὶ τὰ Ἀλκμᾶνος (fr. 48 D.)

‘‹οἷα Διὸς› θυγάτηρ Ἔρσα τρέφει καὶ ‹δίας› Σελάνας’,

ὅτι νῦν τὸν ἀέρα καλεῖ Δία καί φησιν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τῆς σελήνης καθυγραινόμενον εἰς δρόσους τρέπεσθαι. κινδυνεύει γάρ, ὦ ἑταῖρε, πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ἀντιπαθῆ φύσιν ἔχειν, εἴγε μὴ μόνον, ὅσα πυκνοῦν καὶ ξηραίνειν ἐκεῖνος, αὕτη [b] μαλάσσειν καὶ διαχεῖν πέφυκεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ἀπ’ ἐκείνου θερμότητα καθυγραίνειν καὶ καταψύχειν προσπίπτουσαν αὐτῇ καὶ συμμιγνυμένην.

Οἵ τε δὴ τὴν σελήνην ἔμπυρον σῶμα καὶ διακαὲς εἶναι νομίζοντες ἁμαρτάνουσιν, οἵ τε τοῖς ἐκεῖ ζῴοις ὅσα τοῖς ἐνταῦθα πρὸς γένεσιν καὶ τροφὴν καὶ δίαιταν ἀξιοῦντες ὑπάρχειν ἐοίκασιν ἀθεάτοις τῶν περὶ τὴν φύσιν ἀνωμαλιῶν, ἐν αἷς μείζονας ἔστι καὶ πλέονας πρὸς ἄλληλα τῶν ζῴων ἢ πρὸς τὰ μὴ ζῷα διαφορὰς καὶ ἀνομοιότητας εὑρεῖν. καὶ ἄστομοι μὲν ἄνθρωποι καὶ ὀσμαῖς τρεφόμενοι μὴ ἔστωσαν, εἰ †μὴ ... μὴ δοκοῦσι, τὴν δ’ ἄλιμον, ἧς ἡμῖν αὐτὸς ἐξηγεῖτο δύναμιν, ᾐνίξατο μὲν Ἡσίοδος εἰπών [c] (O. D. 41)

‘οὐδ’ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχῃ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγ’ ὄνειαρ,’

ἔργῳ δ’ ἐμφανῆ παρέσχεν Ἐπιμενίδης, διδάξας ὅτι μικρῷ παντάπασιν ἡ φύσις ὑπεκκαύματι ζωπυρεῖ καὶ συνέχει τὸ ζῷον, ἂν ὅσον ἐλαίας μέγεθος λάβῃ, μηδεμιᾶς ἔτι τροφῆς δεόμενον. τοὺς δ’ ἐπὶ τῆς σελήνης, εἴπερ εἰσίν, εὐσταλεῖς εἶναι τοῖς σώμασι καὶ διαρκεῖς ὑπὸ τῶν τυχόντων τρέφεσθαι πιθανόν ἐστι. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὴν τὴν σελήνην, ὥσπερ τὸν ἥλιον ζῷον ὄντα πύρινον καὶ τῆς γῆς ὄντα πολλαπλάσιον, ἀπὸ τῶν ὑγρῶν φασι τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς τρέφεσθαι καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀστέρας ἀπείρους ὄντας· [d] οὕτως ἐλαφρὰ καὶ λιτὰ τῶν ἀναγκαίων φέρειν ζῷα τὸν ἄνω τόπον ὑπολαμβάνουσιν. ἀλλ’ οὔτε ταῦτα συνορῶμεν οὔθ’ ὅτι καὶ χώρα καὶ φύσις καὶ κρᾶσις ἄλλη πρόσφορός ἐστιν αὐτοῖς. ὥσπερ οὖν εἰ τῇ θαλάττῃ μὴ δυναμένων ἡμῶν προσελθεῖν μηδ’ ἅψασθαι, μόνον δὲ τὴν θέαν αὐτῆς πόρρωθεν ἀφορώντων καὶ πυνθανομένων ὅτι πικρὸν καὶ ἄποτον καὶ ἁλμυρὸν ὕδωρ ἐστίν, ἔλεγέ τις ὡς ‘ζῷα πολλὰ καὶ μεγάλα καὶ παντοδαπὰ ταῖς μορφαῖς τρέφει κατὰ βυθοῦ καὶ θηρίων ἐστὶ πλήρης ὕδατι χρωμένων ὅσαπερ ἡμεῖς ἀέρι’, μύθοις ἂν ὅμοια καὶ τέρασιν ἐδόκει περαίνειν, οὕτως ἐοίκαμεν ἔχειν καὶ ταὐτὸ πάσχειν πρὸς [e] τὴν σελήνην, ἀπιστοῦντες ἐκεῖ τινας ἀνθρώπους κατοικεῖν. ἐκείνους δ’ ἂν οἴομαι πολὺ μᾶλλον ἀποθαυμάσαι τὴν γῆν ἀφορῶντας οἷον ὑποστάθμην καὶ ἰλὺν τοῦ παντὸς ἐν ὑγροῖς καὶ ὁμίχλαις καὶ νέφεσι διαφαινομένην ἀλαμπὲς καὶ ταπεινὸν καὶ ἀκίνητον χωρίον, εἰ ζῷα φύει καὶ τρέφει μετέχοντα κινήσεως ἀναπνοῆς θερμότητος· κἂν εἴ ποθεν αὐτοῖς ἐγγένοιτο τῶν Ὁμηρικῶν τούτων ἀκοῦσαι (Υ 65)

‘σμερδαλέ’, εὐρώεντα, τά τε στυγέουσι θεοί περ’,

καί (Θ 16)

‘τόσσον ἔνερθ’ Ἀίδαο, ὅσον οὐρανὸς ἔστ’ ἀπὸ γαίης’,

ταῦτα φήσουσιν ἀτεχνῶς περὶ τοῦ χωρίου τούτου λέγεσθαι [f] καὶ τὸν Ἅιδην ἐνταῦθα καὶ τὸν Τάρταρον ἀπῳκίσθαι, γῆν δὲ μίαν εἶναι τὴν σελήνην, ἴσον ἐκείνων τῶν ἄνω καὶ τῶν κάτω τούτων ἀπέχουσαν.’

Ἔτι δέ μου σχεδὸν λέγοντος ὁ Σύλλας ὑπολαβών ‘ἐπίσχες’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Λαμπρία, καὶ παραβαλοῦ τὸ θυρίον τοῦ λόγου, μὴ λάθῃς τὸν μῦθον ὥσπερ εἰς γῆν ἐξοκείλας καὶ συγχέῃς τὸ δρᾶμα τοὐμὸν ἑτέραν ἔχον σκηνὴν καὶ [941] [a] διάθεσιν. ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν ὑποκριτής εἰμι, πρότερον δ’ αὐτοῦ φράσω τὸν ποιητὴν ὑμῖν εἰ μή τι κωλύει, καθ’ Ὅμηρον ἀρξάμενος (η 244).

‘Ὠγυγίη τις νῆσος ἀπόπροθεν εἰν ἁλὶ κεῖται’,

δρόμον ἡμερῶν πέντε Βρεττανίας ἀπέχουσα πλέοντι πρὸς ἑσπέραν· ἕτεραι δὲ τρεῖς ἴσον ἐκείνης ἀφεστῶσαι καὶ ἀλλήλων πρόκεινται μάλιστα κατὰ δυσμὰς ἡλίου θερινάς. ὧν ἐν μιᾷ τὸν Κρόνον οἱ βάρβαροι καθεῖρχθαι μυθολογοῦσιν ὑπὸ τοῦ Διός, †τὸν δ’ ὡς υἱὸν ἔχοντα φρουρὸν τῶν τε νήσων ἐκείνων καὶ τῆς θαλάττης, ἣν Κρόνιον πέλαγος ὀνομάζουσι, παρακατῳκίσθαι. τὴν δὲ μεγάλην [b] ἤπειρον, ὑφ’ ἧς ἡ μεγάλη περιέχεται κύκλῳ θάλαττα, τῶν μὲν ἄλλων ἔλαττον ἀπέχει‹ν›, τῆς δ’ Ὠγυγίας περὶ πεντακισχιλίους σταδίους κωπήρεσι πλοίοις κομιζομένῳ· (βραδύπορον γὰρ εἶναι καὶ πηλῶδες ὑπὸ πλήθους ῥευμάτων τὸ πέλαγος· τὰ δὲ ῥεύματα τὴν μεγάλην ἐξιέναι γῆν καὶ γίνεσθαι προχώσεις ἀπ’ αὐτῶν καὶ βαρεῖαν εἶναι καὶ γεώδη τὴν θάλατταν, ᾗ καὶ πεπηγέναι δόξαν ἔσχε). τῆς δ’ ἠπείρου τὰ πρὸς τῇ θαλάττῃ κατοικεῖν Ἕλληνας περὶ κόλπον οὐκ ἐλάττονα τῆς Μαιώτιδος, οὗ τὸ στόμα τῷ στόματι τοῦ Κασπίου πελάγους μάλιστα κατ’ εὐθεῖαν κεῖσθαι· καλεῖν δὲ καὶ νομίζειν ἐκείνους ἠπειρώτας μὲν [c] αὑτοὺς ‹νησιώτας δὲ τοὺς› ταύτην τὴν γῆν κατοικοῦντας, ὡς καὶ κύκλῳ περίρρυτον οὖσαν ὑπὸ τῆς θαλάσσης· οἴεσθαι δὲ τοῖς Κρόνου λαοῖς ἀναμιχθέντας ὕστερον τοὺς μεθ’ Ἡρακλέους παραγενομένους καὶ ὑπολειφθέντας ἤδη σβεννύμενον τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν ἐκεῖ καὶ κρατούμενον γλώττῃ τε βαρβαρικῇ καὶ νόμοις καὶ διαίταις οἷον ἀναζωπυρῆσαι πάλιν ἰσχυρὸν καὶ πολὺ γενόμενον· διὸ τιμὰς ἔχειν πρώτας τὸν Ἡρακλέα, δευτέρας δὲ τὸν Κρόνον.

Ὅταν οὖν ὁ τοῦ Κρόνου ἀστήρ, ὃν Φαίνοντα μὲν ἡμεῖς, ἐκείνους δὲ Νυκτοῦρον ἔφη καλεῖν, εἰς Ταῦρον παραγένηται δι’ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα, παρασκευασαμένους ἐν χρόνῳ [d] πολλῷ τὰ περὶ τὴν θυσίαν καὶ τὸν ἀ... ἐκπέμπειν κλήρῳ λαχόντας ἐν πλοίοις τοσούτοις θεραπείαν τε πολλὴν καὶ παρασκευὴν ἀναγκαίαν μέλλουσι πλεῖν πέλαγος τοσοῦτον εἰρεσίᾳ καὶ χρόνον ἐπὶ ξένης βιοτεύειν πολὺν ἐμβαλλομένους. ἀναχθέντας οὖν χρῆσθαι τύχαις, ὡς εἰκός, ἄλλους ἄλλαις, τοὺς δὲ διασωθέντας ἐκ τῆς θαλάττης πρῶτον μὲν ἐπὶ τὰς προκειμένας νήσους οἰκουμένας δ’ ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων κατίσχειν καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ὁρᾶν κρυπτόμενον ὥρας μιᾶς ἔλαττον ἐφ’ ἡμέρας τριάκοντα· καὶ νύκτα τοῦτ’ εἶναι, σκότος ἔχουσαν ἐλαφρὸν καὶ λυκαυγὲς ἀπὸ δυσμῶν περιλαμπόμενον. ἐκεῖ δὲ διατρίψαντας ἡμέρας ἐνενήκοντα μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ φιλοφροσύνης, ἱεροὺς νομιζομένους καὶ [e] προσαγορευομένους, ὑπὸ πνευμάτων ἤδη περαιοῦσθαι· μηδ’ ἄλλους τινὰς ἐνοικεῖν ἢ σφᾶς τ’ αὐτοὺς καὶ τοὺς πρὸ αὐτῶν ἀποπεμφθέντας. ἐξεῖναι μὲν γὰρ ἀποπλεῖν οἴκαδε τοὺς τῷ θεῷ τὰ τρὶς δέκ’ ἔτη συλλατρεύσαντας, αἱρεῖσθαι δὲ τοὺς πλείστους ἐπιεικῶς αὐτόθι κατοικεῖν, τοὺς μὲν ὑπὸ συνηθείας τοὺς δ’ ὅτι πόνου δίχα καὶ πραγμάτων ἄφθονα πάρεστι πάντα, πρὸς θυσίαις καὶ χορηγίαις ἢ περὶ λόγους τινὰς ἀεὶ καὶ φιλοσοφίαν διατρίβουσι· θαυμαστὴν γὰρ εἶναι τῆς τε νήσου τὴν φύσιν καὶ τὴν πραότητα τοῦ περιέχοντος ἀέρος· ἐνίοις δὲ καὶ τὸ θεῖον ἐμποδὼν [f] γίνεσθαι διανοηθεῖσιν ἀποπλεῖν ὥσπερ συνήθεσι καὶ φίλοις ἐπιδεικνύμενον. οὐκ ὄναρ ‹γὰρ› μόνον οὐδὲ διὰ συμβόλων, ἀλλὰ καὶ φανερῶς ἐντυγχάνειν πολλοὺς ὄψεσι δαιμόνων καὶ φωναῖς. αὐτὸν μὲν γὰρ τὸν Κρόνον ἐν ἄντρῳ βαθεῖ περιέχεσθαι πέτρας χρυσοειδοῦς καθεύδοντα (τὸν γὰρ ὕπνον αὐτῷ μεμηχανῆσθαι δεσμὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ Διός), ὄρνιθας δὲ τῆς πέτρας κατὰ κορυφὴν εἰσπετομένους ἀμβροσίαν ἐπιφέρειν αὐτῷ, καὶ τὴν νῆσον εὐωδίᾳ κατέχεσθαι πᾶσαν, ὥσπερ ἐκ πηγῆς σκιδναμένῃ τῆς πέτρας· [942] [a] τοὺς δὲ δαίμονας ἐκείνους περιέπειν καὶ θεραπεύειν τὸν Κρόνον, ἑταίρους αὐτῷ γενομένους, ὅτε δὴ θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων ἐβασίλευε· καὶ πολλὰ μὲν ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν μαντικοὺς ὄντας προλέγειν, τὰ δὲ μέγιστα καὶ περὶ τῶν μεγίστων ὡς ὀνείρατα τοῦ Κρόνου κατιόντας ἐξαγγέλλειν· ὅσα γὰρ ὁ Ζεὺς προδιανοεῖται, ταῦτ’ ὀνειροπολεῖν τὸν Κρόνον, ἐπειδὰν στασιάσαντα τὰ τιτανικὰ πάθη καὶ κινήματα τῆς ψυχῆς ἐν αὐτῷ παντάπασιν ὁ ὕπνος ‹κατακοιμήσῃ› καὶ γένηται τὸ βασιλικὸν καὶ θεῖον αὐτὸ καθ’ ἑαυτὸ καθαρὸν καὶ ἀκήρατον.

Ἐνταῦθα δὴ κομισθείς, ὡς ἔλεγεν, ὁ ξένος καὶ θεραπεύων [b] τὸν θεὸν ἐπὶ σχολῆς, ἀστρολογίας μὲν ἐφ’ ὅσον γεωμετρήσαντι πορρωτάτω προελθεῖν δυνατόν ἐστιν ἐμπειρίαν ἔσχε, φιλοσοφίας δὲ τῆς ἄλλης τῷ φυσικῷ χρώμενος. ἐπιθυμίαν δέ τινα καὶ πόθον ἔχων γενέσθαι τῆς μεγάλης νήσου θεατής (οὕτως γὰρ ὡς ἔοικε τὴν παρ’ ἡμῖν οἰκουμένην ὀνομάζουσιν), ἐπεὶ δὴ τὰ τριάκοντ’ ἔτη διῆλθεν, ἀφικομένων τῶν διαδόχων οἴκοθεν ἀσπασάμενος τοὺς φίλους ἐξέπλευσε, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα κατεσκευασμένος εὐσταλῶς ἐφόδιον δὲ συχνὸν ἐν χρυσοῖς ἐκπώμασι κομίζων. ἃ μὲν οὖν ἔπαθε καὶ ὅσους ἀνθρώπους διῆλθεν, ἱεροῖς τε [c] γράμμασιν ἐντυγχάνων ἐν τελεταῖς τε πάσαις τελούμενος, οὐ μιᾶς ἡμέρας ἔργον ἐστὶ διελθεῖν, ὡς ἐκεῖνος ἡμῖν ἀπήγγελλεν εὖ μάλα καὶ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀπομνημονεύων· ὅσα δ’ οἰκεῖα τῆς ἐνεστώσης διατριβῆς ἐστιν, ἀκούσατε. πλεῖστον γὰρ ἐν Καρχηδόνι χρόνον διέτριψεν, ἅτε δὴ παρ’ ἡμῖν μεγάλας ‹τοῦ Κρόνου τιμὰς› ἔχοντος, καί τινας, ὅθ’ ἡ προτέρα πόλις ἀπώλλυτο, διφθέρας ἱερὰς ὑπεκκομισθείσας κρύφα καὶ διαλαθούσας πολὺν χρόνον ἐν γῇ κειμένας ἐξευρών, τῶν τε φαινομένων θεῶν ἔφη χρῆναι καί μοι παρεκελεύετο τιμᾶν διαφερόντως τὴν Σελήνην [d] ὡς τοῦ βίου κυριωτάτην οὖσαν ... ἐχομένην.’

Θαυμάζοντος δέ μου ταῦτα καὶ δεομένου σαφέστερον ἀκοῦσαι ‘πολλά’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ Σύλλα, περὶ θεῶν οὐ πάντα δὲ καλῶς λέγεται παρ’ Ἕλλησιν. οἷον εὐθὺς ὀρθῶς Δήμητραν καὶ Κόρην ὀνομάζοντες οὐκ ὀρθῶς ὁμοῦ καὶ περὶ τὸν αὐτὸν ἀμφοτέρας εἶναι τόπον νομίζουσιν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἐν γῇ καὶ κυρία τῶν περὶ γῆν ἐστιν, ἡ δ’ ἐν σελήνῃ καὶ τῶν περὶ σελήνην, Κόρη τε καὶ Φερσεφόνη κέκληται, τὸ μὲν ὡς φωσφόρος οὖσα, Κόρη δ’ ὅτι καὶ τοῦ ὄμματος, ἐν ᾧ τὸ εἴδωλον ἀντιλάμπει τοῦ βλέποντος, ὥσπερ τὸ ἡλίου φέγγος ἐνορᾶται τῇ σελήνῃ, κόρην προσαγορεύομεν.

[e] τοῖς τε περὶ τὴν πλάνην καὶ τὴν ζήτησιν αὐτῶν λεγομένοις ἔνεστι ‹μέν τι καὶ› ἀληθές· ἀλλήλων γὰρ ἐφίενται χωρὶς οὖσαι καὶ συμπλέκονται περὶ τὴν σκιὰν πολλάκις· τὸ δὲ νῦν μὲν ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ φωτὶ νῦν δ’ ἐν σκότῳ καὶ νυκτὶ γενέσθαι [περὶ] τὴν Κόρην ψεῦδος μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν, τοῦ δὲ χρόνου τῷ ἀριθμῷ πλάνην παρέσχηκεν· οὐ γὰρ ἓξ μῆνας ἀλλὰ παρ’ ἓξ μῆνας ὁρῶμεν αὐτὴν ὑπὸ τῆς γῆς ὥσπερ ὑπὸ τῆς μητρὸς τῇ σκιᾷ λαμβανομένην, ὀλιγάκις δὲ τοῦτο διὰ πέντε μηνῶν πάσχουσαν. ἐπεὶ τόν γ’ Ἅιδην ἀπολιπεῖν ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν αὐτήν, τοῦ Ἅιδου πέρας οὖσαν· [f] ὥσπερ καὶ Ὅμηρος ἐπικρυψάμενος οὐ φαύλως τοῦτ’ εἶπεν (δ 563)

‘ἀλλά ‹σ’› ἐς Ἠλύσιον πεδίον καὶ πείρατα γαίης’.

ὅπου γὰρ ἡ σκιὰ τῆς γῆς ἐπινεμομένη παύεται, τοῦτο τέρμα τῆς γῆς ἔθετο καὶ πέρας. εἰς δὲ τοῦτο φαῦλος μὲν οὐδεὶς οὐδ’ ἀκάθαρτος ἄνεισιν, οἱ δὲ χρηστοὶ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν κομισθέντες αὐτόθι ῥᾷστον μὲν οὕτως βίον, οὐ μὴν μακάριον οὐδὲ θεῖον ἔχοντες ἄχρι τοῦ δευτέρου θανάτου διατελοῦσι.’

‘Τίς δ’ οὗτός ἐστιν, ὦ Σύλλα;’ ‘μὴ περὶ τούτων ἔρῃ, μέλλω γὰρ αὐτὸς διηγεῖσθαι.

[943] [a] Τὸν ἄνθρωπον οἱ πολλοὶ σύνθετον μὲν ὀρθῶς, ἐκ δυοῖν δὲ μόνων σύνθετον οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἡγοῦνται. μόριον γὰρ εἶναί πως ψυχῆς οἴονται τὸν νοῦν, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐκείνων ἁμαρτάνοντες, οἷς ἡ ψυχὴ δοκεῖ μόριον εἶναι τοῦ σώματος. νοῦς γὰρ ψυχῆς, ὅσῳ ψυχὴ σώματος, ἄμεινόν ἐστι καὶ θειότερον. ποιεῖ δ’ ἡ μὲν ψυχῆς ‹καὶ σώματος μῖξις αἴσθησιν ἡ δὲ νοῦ καὶ ψυχῆς› σύνοδος λόγον· ὧν τὸ μὲν ἡδονῆς ἀρχὴ καὶ πόνου τὸ δ’ ἀρετῆς καὶ κακίας. τριῶν δὲ τούτων συμπαγέντων, τὸ μὲν σῶμα ἡ γῆ τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν ἡ σελήνη, τὸν δὲ νοῦν ὁ ἥλιος παρέσχεν εἰς τὴν γένεσιν ... ὥσπερ αὖ τῇ σελήνῃ τὸ φέγγος. ὃν δ’ ἀποθνήσκομεν θάνατον, [b] ὁ μὲν ἐκ τριῶν δύο ποιεῖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὁ δ’ ἓν ἐκ δυοῖν, καὶ ὁ μέν ἐστιν ἐν τῇ ‹γῇ› τῆς Δήμητρος, ... ἐν αὐτῇ τελεῖν καὶ τοὺς νεκροὺς Ἀθηναῖοι Δημητρείους ὠνόμαζον τὸ παλαιόν· ‹ὁ› δ’ ἐν τῇ σελήνῃ τῆς Φερσεφόνης· καὶ σύνοικός ἐστι τῆς μὲν χθόνιος ὁ Ἑρμῆς τῆς δ’ οὐράνιος. λύει δ’ αὕτη μὲν ταχὺ καὶ μετὰ βίας τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος, ἡ δὲ Φερσεφόνη πράως καὶ χρόνῳ πολλῷ τὸν νοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μονογενὴς κέκληται· μόνον γὰρ γίνεται τὸ βέλτιστον τοῦ ἀνθρώπου διακρινόμενον αὐτῆς. συντυγχάνει δ’ οὕτως κατὰ φύσιν ἑκάτερον·

[c] Πᾶσαν ψυχήν, ἄνουν τε καὶ σὺν νῷ, σώματος ἐκπεσοῦσαν εἱμαρμένον ἐστὶν ‹ἐν› τῷ μεταξὺ γῆς καὶ σελήνης χωρίῳ πλανηθῆναι χρόνον - οὐκ ἴσον, ἀλλ’ αἱ μὲν ἄδικοι καὶ ἀκόλαστοι δίκας τῶν ἀδικημάτων τίνουσι, τὰς δ’ ἐπιεικεῖς, ὅσον ἀφαγνεῦσαι καὶ ἀποπνεῦσαι ‹τοὺς› ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος ὥσπερ ἀτμοῦ πονηροῦ μιασμούς, ἐν τῷ πραοτάτῳ τοῦ ἀέρος, ὃν λειμῶνας Ἅιδου καλοῦσι, δεῖ γίνεσθαι χρόνον τινὰ τεταγμένον. ‹ἔνθ’› οἷον ἐξ ἀποδημίας ἀνακομιζόμεναι φυγαδικῆς εἰς πατρίδα γεύονται χαρᾶς, οἵαν οἱ τελούμενοι μάλιστα θορύβῳ καὶ πτοήσει συγκεκραμένην μετ’ ἐλπίδος ἡδείας ἔχουσι· πολλὰς γὰρ ἐξωθεῖ [d] καὶ ἀποκυματίζει γλιχομένας ἤδη τῆς σελήνης, ἐνίας δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐκεῖ περικάτω τρεπομένας οἷον εἰς βυθὸν αὖθις ὁρῶσι καταδυομένας. αἱ δ’ ἄνω γενόμεναι καὶ βεβαίως ἱδρυθεῖσαι πρῶτον μέν, ὥσπερ οἱ νικηφόροι, περιίασιν ἀναδούμεναι στεφάνοις πτερῶν εὐσταθείας λεγομένοις, ὅτι τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ ἄλογον καὶ τὸ παθητικὸν εὐήνιον ἐπιεικῶς τῷ λόγῳ καὶ κεκοσμημένον ἐν τῷ βίῳ παρέσχοντο. δεύτερον ‹δ’› ἀκτῖνι τὴν ὄψιν ἐοικυῖαι, πυρὶ δὲ τὴν ψυχὴν ἄνω κουφιζομένην ὥσπερ ἐνταῦθα, τῷ περὶ τὴν σελήνην αἰθέρι καὶ τόνον ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ δύναμιν, οἷον τὰ στομούμενα βαφήν, ἴσχουσι· τὸ γὰρ ἀραιὸν ἔτι [e] καὶ διακεχυμένον ῥώννυται καὶ γίνεται σταθερὸν καὶ διαυγές, ὥσθ’ ὑπὸ τῆς τυχούσης ἀναθυμιάσεως τρέφεσθαι· καὶ καλῶς Ἡράκλειτος εἶπεν ὅτι ‘αἱ ψυχαὶ ὀσμῶνται καθ’ Ἅιδην’ (B 98).

Ἐφορῶσι δὲ πρῶτον μὲν αὐτῆς σελήνης τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὴν φύσιν οὐχ ἁπλῆν οὐδ’ ἄμικτον, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἄστρου σύγκραμα καὶ γῆς οὖσαν. ὡς γὰρ ἡ γῆ πνεύματι μεμιγμένη καὶ ὑγρῷ ... μαλακὴ γέγονε καὶ τὸ αἷμα τῇ σαρκὶ παρέχει τὴν αἴσθησιν ἐγκεκραμένον, οὕτως τῷ αἰθέρι λέγουσι τὴν σελήνην ἀνακεκραμένην διὰ βάθους ἅμα μὲν ἔμψυχον εἶναι καὶ γόνιμον, ἅμα δ’ ἰσόρροπον ἔχειν τὴν πρὸς τὸ βαρὺ συμμετρίαν τῆς κουφότητος.

[f] καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸν οὕτως τὸν κόσμον ἐκ τῶν ἄνω καὶ τῶν κάτω φύσει φερομένων συνηρμοσμένον ἀπηλλάχθαι παντάπασι τῆς κατὰ τόπον κινήσεως. ταῦτα δὲ καὶ Ξενοκράτης (fr. 56) ἔοικεν ἐννοῆσαι θείῳ τινὶ λογισμῷ, τὴν ἀρχὴν λαβὼν παρὰ Πλάτωνος (Tim. 31). Πλάτων γάρ ἐστιν ὁ καὶ τῶν ἀστέρων ἕκαστον ἐκ γῆς καὶ πυρὸς συνηρμόσθαι διὰ τῶν ‹δυοῖν› μεταξὺ φύσεων ἀναλογίᾳ δεθεισῶν ἀποφηνάμενος· οὐδὲν γὰρ εἰς αἴσθησιν ἐξικνεῖσθαι, ᾧ μή τι γῆς ἐμμέμικται καὶ φωτός. ὁ δὲ Ξενοκράτης (fr. 56) τὰ μὲν ἄστρα καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἐκ πυρός φησι καὶ τοῦ πρώτου [944] [a] πυκνοῦ συγκεῖσθαι, τὴν δὲ σελήνην ἐκ τοῦ δευτέρου πυκνοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἰδίου ἀέρος, τὴν δὲ γῆν ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ ἀέρος καὶ τοῦ τρίτου τῶν πυκνῶν· ὅλως δὲ μήτε τὸ πυκνὸν αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτὸ μήτε τὸ μανὸν εἶναι ψυχῆς δεκτικόν. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν περὶ οὐσίας σελήνης.

Εὖρος δὲ καὶ μέγεθος οὐχ ὅσον οἱ γεωμέτραι λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ μεῖζον πολλάκις ἐστί· καταμετρεῖ δὲ τὴν σκιὰν τῆς γῆς ὀλιγάκις τοῖς ἑαυτῆς μεγέθεσιν οὐχ ὑπὸ σμικρότητος, ἀλλὰ θερμ‹ότητος, ᾗ κατ›επείγει τὴν κίνησιν ὅπως ταχὺ διεκπερᾷ τὸν σκοτώδη τόπον ὑπεκφέρουσα τῶν ἀγαθῶν ‹τὰς ψυχὰς› σπευδούσας καὶ βοώσας. οὐκέτι [b] γὰρ ἐξακούουσιν ἐν τῇ σκιᾷ γενόμεναι τῆς περὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἁρμονίας· ἅμα δὲ καὶ κάτωθεν αἱ τῶν κολαζομένων ψυχαὶ τηνικαῦτα διὰ τῆς σκιᾶς ὀδυρόμεναι ‹καὶ› ἀλαλάζουσαι προσφέρονται (διὸ καὶ κροτεῖν ἐν ταῖς ἐκλείψεσιν εἰώθασιν οἱ πλεῖστοι χαλκώματα καὶ ψόφον ποιεῖν καὶ πάταγον ἐπὶ τὰς φαύλας)· ἐκφοβεῖ δ’ αὐτὰς καὶ τὸ καλούμενον πρόσωπον, ὅταν ἐγγὺς γένωνται, βλοσυρόν τι καὶ φρικῶδες ὁρώμενον. ἔστι δ’ οὐ τοιοῦτον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἡ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἔχει γῆ κόλπους βαθεῖς καὶ μεγάλους, ἕνα μὲν ἐνταῦθα διὰ στηλῶν Ἡρακλείων ἀναχεόμενον εἴσω πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἔξω δὲ τὸν Κάσπιον καὶ τοὺς περὶ τὴν Ἐρυθρὰν [c] θάλατταν, οὕτως βάθη ταῦτα τῆς σελήνης ἐστὶ καὶ κοιλώματα. καλοῦσι δ’ αὐτῶν τὸ μὲν μέγιστον Ἑκάτης μυχόν, ὅπου καὶ δίκας διδόασιν αἱ ψυχαὶ καὶ λαμβάνουσιν ὧν ἂν ἤδη γεγενημέναι δαίμονες ἢ πάθωσιν ἢ δράσωσι, τὰς δὲ δύο Μακράς· περαιοῦνται γὰρ αἱ ψυχαὶ δι’ αὐτῶν, νῦν μὲν εἰς τὰ πρὸς οὐρανὸν τῆς σελήνης, νῦν δὲ πάλιν εἰς τὰ πρὸς γῆν· ὀνομάζεσθαι δὲ τὰ μὲν πρὸς οὐρανὸν τῆς σελήνης Ἠλύσιον πεδίον, τὰ δ’ ἐνταῦθα Φερσεφόνης †οὐκ ἀντίχθονος.

Οὐκ ἀεὶ δὲ διατρίβουσιν ἐπ’ αὐτὴν οἱ δαίμονες, ἀλλὰ χρηστηρίων δεῦρο κατίασιν ἐπιμελησόμενοι, καὶ ταῖς ἀνωτάτω συμπάρεισι καὶ συνοργιάζουσι τῶν τελετῶν, [d] κολασταί τε γίνονται καὶ φύλακες ἀδικημάτων καὶ σωτῆρες ἔν τε πολέμοις καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν ἐπιλάμπουσιν. ὅ τι δ’ ἂν μὴ καλῶς περὶ ταῦτα πράξωσιν ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ὀργῆς ἢ πρὸς ἄδικον χάριν ἢ φθόνῳ, δίκην τίνουσιν· ὠθοῦνται γὰρ αὖθις ἐπὶ γῆν συνειργνύμενοι σώμασιν ἀνθρωπίνοις. ἐκ δὲ τῶν βελτιόνων ἐκείνων οἵ τε περὶ τὸν Κρόνον ὄντες ἔφασαν αὐτοὺς εἶναι καὶ πρότερον ἐν τῇ Κρήτῃ τοὺς Ἰδαίους Δακτύλους, ἔν τε Φρυγίᾳ τοὺς Κορύβαντας γενέσθαι καὶ τοὺς περὶ Βοιωτίαν ἐν †Οὐδώρα Τροφωνιάδας καὶ μυρίους ἄλλους πολλαχόθι τῆς οἰκουμένης· ὧν [e] ἱερὰ καὶ τιμαὶ καὶ προσηγορίαι διαμένουσιν, αἱ δὲ δυνάμεις ‹ἐξέλιπον› ἐνίων εἰς ἕτερον τόπον τῆς ἀρίστης ἐξαλλαγῆς τυγχανόντων.

Τυγχάνουσι δ’ οἱ μὲν πρότερον οἱ δ’ ὕστερον, ὅταν ὁ νοῦς ἀποκριθῇ τῆς ψυχῆς· ἀποκρίνεται δ’ ἔρωτι τῆς περὶ τὸν ἥλιον εἰκόνος, δι’ ἧς ἐπιλάμπει τὸ ἐφετὸν καὶ καλὸν καὶ θεῖον καὶ μακάριον, οὗ πᾶσα φύσις, ἄλλη δ’ ἄλλως ὀρέγεται. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὴν τὴν σελήνην ἔρωτι τοῦ ἡλίου περιπολεῖν ἀεὶ καὶ συγγίνεσθαι ὀρεγομένην ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τὸ γονιμώτατον. λείπεται δ’ ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς φύσις ἐπὶ τὴν σελήνην, οἷον ἴχνη τινὰ βίου καὶ ὀνείρατα διαφυλάττουσα· [f] καὶ περὶ ταύτης ὀρθῶς ἡγοῦ λελέχθαι τό ‘ψυχὴ δ’ ἠύτ’ ὄνειρος ἀποπταμένη πεπότηται’ (λ 222). οὐδὲ γὰρ εὐθὺς οὐδὲ τοῦ σώματος ἀπαλλαγεῖσα τοῦτο πέπονθεν ἀλλ’ ὕστερον, ὅταν ἔρημος καὶ μόνη τοῦ νοῦ ἀπαλλαττομένη γένηται. καὶ Ὅμηρος ὧν εἶπε πάντων μάλιστα δὴ κατὰ θεὸν εἰπεῖν ἔοικε περὶ τῶν καθ’ Ἅιδου (λ 601)

‘τὸν δὲ μετ’ εἰσενόησα βίην Ἡρακληείην,

εἴδωλον· αὐτὸς δὲ μετ’ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν.’

αὐτός τε γὰρ ἕκαστος ἡμῶν οὐ θυμός ἐστιν οὐδὲ φόβος οὐδ’ ἐπιθυμία, καθάπερ οὐδὲ σάρκες οὐδ’ ὑγρότητες, ἀλλ’ [945] [a] ᾧ διανοούμεθα καὶ φρονοῦμεν, ἥ τε ψυχὴ τυπουμένη μὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ τυποῦσα δὲ τὸ σῶμα καὶ περιπτύσσουσα πανταχόθεν ἐκμάττεται τὸ εἶδος· ὥστε κἂν χωρὶς ἑκατέρου γένηται, πολὺν χρόνον διατηροῦσα τὴν ὁμοιότητα καὶ τὸν τύπον εἴδωλον ὀρθῶς ὀνομάζεται.

Τούτων δ’ ἡ σελήνη, καθάπερ εἴρηται, στοιχεῖόν ἐστιν. ἀναλύονται γὰρ εἰς ταύτην, ὥσπερ εἰς τὴν γῆν τὰ σώματα τῶν νεκρῶν, ταχὺ μὲν αἱ σώφρονες, μετὰ σχολῆς ἀπράγμονα καὶ φιλόσοφον στέρξασαι βίον (ἀφεθεῖσαι γὰρ ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ καὶ πρὸς οὐθὲν ἔτι χρώμεναι τοῖς πάθεσιν ἀπομαραίνονται)· [b] τῶν δὲ φιλοτίμων καὶ πρακτικῶν ἐρωτικῶν τε περὶ σώματα καὶ θυμοειδῶν αἱ μὲν οἷον ἐν ὕπνῳ ταῖς τοῦ βίου μνημοσύναις ὀνείρασι χρώμεναι διαφέρονται, καθάπερ ἡ τοῦ Ἐνδυμίωνος· εἰ δ’ αὐτὰς τὸ ἄστατον καὶ τὸ εὐπαθὲς ἐξίστησι καὶ ἀφέλκει τῆς σελήνης πρὸς ἄλλην γένεσιν, οὐκ ἐᾷ ... ἀλλ’ ἀνακαλεῖται καὶ καταθέλγει. μικρὸν γὰρ οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ἥσυχον οὐδ’ ὁμολογούμενον ἔργον ἐστίν, ὅταν ἄνευ νοῦ τῷ παθητικῷ σώματος ἐπιλάβωνται. Τιτυοὶ δὲ καὶ Τυφῶνες ὅ τε Δελφοὺς κατασχὼν καὶ συνταράξας τὸ χρηστήριον ὕβρει καὶ βίᾳ Πύθων ἐξ ἐκείνων [c] ἄρα τῶν ψυχῶν ἦσαν, ἐρήμων λόγου καὶ τύφῳ πλανηθέντι τῷ παθητικῷ χρησαμένων.

Χρόνῳ δὲ κἀκείνας κατεδέξατο εἰς αὑτὴν ἡ σελήνη καὶ κατεκόσμησεν, εἶτα τὸν νοῦν αὖθις ἐπισπείραντος τοῦ ἡλίου τῷ ζωτικῷ δεχομένη νέας ποιεῖ ψυχάς, ἡ δὲ γῆ τρίτον σῶμα παρέσχεν. οὐδὲν γὰρ αὕτη δίδωσιν ‹ἀλλ’ ἀποδίδωσιν› μετὰ θάνατον ὅσα λαμβάνει πρὸς γένεσιν· ἥλιος δὲ λαμβάνει μὲν οὐδὲν ἀπολαμβάνει δὲ τὸν νοῦν διδούς, σελήνη δὲ καὶ λαμβάνει καὶ δίδωσι καὶ συντίθησι καὶ διαιρεῖ [καὶ] κατ’ ἄλλην καὶ ἄλλην δύναμιν· ὧν Εἰλείθυια μὲν ἣ συντίθησιν Ἄρτεμις δ’ ἣ διαιρεῖ καλεῖται. καὶ τριῶν Μοιρῶν ἡ μὲν Ἄτροπος περὶ τὸν ἥλιον [d] ἱδρυμένη τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐνδίδωσι τῆς γενέσεως, ἡ δὲ Κλωθὼ περὶ τὴν σελήνην φερομένη συνδεῖ καὶ μίγνυσιν, ἐσχάτη δὲ συνεφάπτεται περὶ γῆν ἡ Λάχεσις· ᾗ πλεῖστον τύχης μέτεστι. τὸ γὰρ ἄψυχον ἄκυρον αὐτὸ καὶ παθητὸν ὑπ’ ἄλλων, ὁ δὲ νοῦς ἀπαθὴς καὶ αὐτοκράτωρ, μικτὸν δὲ καὶ μέσον ἡ ψυχὴ καθάπερ ἡ σελήνη τῶν ἄνω καὶ κάτω σύμμιγμα καὶ μετακέρασμα ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ γέγονε, τοῦτον ἄρα πρὸς ἥλιον ἔχουσα τὸν λόγον ὃν ἔχει γῆ πρὸς σελήνην.

Ταῦτ’’ εἶπεν ὁ Σύλλας ‘ἐγὼ μὲν ἤκουσα τοῦ ξένου διεξιόντος, ἐκείνῳ δ’ οἱ τοῦ Κρόνου κατευνασταὶ καὶ θεράποντες, [e] ὡς ἔλεγεν αὐτός, ἐξήγγειλαν. ὑμῖν δ’, ὦ Λαμπρία, χρῆσθαι τῷ λόγῳ πάρεστιν ᾗ βούλεσθε.’

De primo frigido

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΠΡΩΤΩΣ ΨΥΧΡΟΥ

[945] Ἔστι τις ἆρα τοῦ ψυχροῦ δύναμις, ὦ Φαβωρῖνε, πρώτη καὶ οὐσία, καθάπερ τοῦ θερμοῦ τὸ πῦρ, ἧς παρουσίᾳ τινὶ καὶ μετοχῇ γίνεται τῶν ἄλλων ἕκαστον ψυχρόν; ἢ μᾶλλον ἡ ψυχρότης στέρησίς ἐστι θερμότητος, ὥσπερ τοῦ φωτὸς τὸ σκότος λέγουσι καὶ τῆς κινήσεως τὴν στάσιν; ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ ψυχρὸν ἔοικε στάσιμον εἶναι, κινητικὸν [946] [a] δὲ τὸ θερμόν· αἵ τε τῶν θερμῶν καταψύξεις οὐδεμιᾶς παρουσίᾳ γίνονται δυνάμεως, ἀλλ’ ἐκστάσει θερμότητος· ἅμα γὰρ ἀπιοῦσα πολλὴ φαίνεται καὶ ψύχεται τὸ ὑπολειπόμενον· ὁ γὰρ ἀτμός, ὃν τὰ ζέοντα τῶν ὑδάτων μεθίησιν, ἀπιόντι τῷ θερμῷ συνεκπίπτει· διὸ καὶ μειοῖ τὸ πλῆθος ἡ περίψυξις, ἐκκρίνουσα τὸ θερμὸν ἑτέρου μηδενὸς ἐπεισιόντος.

Ἢ πρῶτον μὲν ἄν τις ὑπίδοιτο τοῦ λόγου τούτου τὸ πολλὰς τῶν ἐμφανῶν ἀναιρεῖν δυνάμεων, ὡς οὐ ποιότητας οὐδ’ ἕξεις ἕξεων δὲ καὶ ποιοτήτων στερήσεις, βαρύτητα μὲν κουφότητος καὶ σκληρότητα μαλακότητος τὸ [b] μέλαν δὲ τοῦ λευκοῦ καὶ τὸ πικρὸν τοῦ γλυκέος, καὶ ὧν ἕκαστον ἑκάστῳ πέφυκεν ἀντικεῖσθαι κατὰ δύναμιν, οὐχ ὡς ἕξει στέρησις; ἔπειθ’ ὅτι πᾶσα στέρησις ἀργόν ἐστι καὶ ἄπρακτον, ὡς τυφλότης καὶ κωφότης καὶ σιωπὴ καὶ θάνατος (ἐκστάσεις γάρ εἰσιν εἰδῶν καὶ ἀναιρέσεις οὐσιῶν, οὐ φύσεις τινὲς οὐδ’ οὐσίαι καθ’ ἑαυτάς), ἡ δὲ ψυχρότης οὐκ ἐλάττονα τῆς θερμότητος ἐγγινομένη τοῖς σώμασι πάθη καὶ μεταβολὰς ἐνεργάζεσθαι πέφυκε; καὶ γὰρ πήγνυται πολλὰ τῷ ψυχρῷ καὶ συγκρίνεται καὶ πυκνοῦται· καὶ τὸ στάσιμον αὐτῷ καὶ δυσκίνητον οὐκ ἀργόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐμβριθὲς καὶ βέβαιον, ὑπὸ ῥώμης συνερειστικὸν [c] καὶ συνεκτικὸν ἐχούσης τόνον. ὅθεν ἡ μὲν στέρησις ἔκλειψις γίνεται καὶ ὑποχώρησις τῆς ἀντικειμένης δυνάμεως, ψύχεται δὲ πολλὰ πολλῆς αὐτοῖς θερμότητος ἐνυπαρχούσης· ἔνια δὲ καὶ μᾶλλον ἡ ψυχρότης, ἂν λάβῃ θερμότερα, πήγνυσι καὶ συνάγει, καθάπερ τὸν βαπτόμενον σίδηρον. οἱ δὲ Στωικοὶ καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα λέγουσιν ἐν τοῖς σώμασι τῶν βρεφῶν τῇ περιψύξει στομοῦσθαι καὶ μεταβάλλον ἐκ φύσεως γίνεσθαι ψυχήν· ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ἀμφισβητήσιμον, ἑτέρων δὲ πολλῶν τὴν ψυχρότητα φαινομένην δημιουργὸν οὐκ ἄξιον ἡγεῖσθαι στέρησιν.

Ἔτι στέρησις μὲν οὐδεμία δέχεται τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ [d] τὸ ἧττον, οὐδ’ ἂν εἴποι τις ἕτερον ἑτέρου μᾶλλον πεπηρῶσθαι τῶν μὴ βλεπόντων ἢ σιωπᾶν τῶν μὴ φθεγγομένων ἢ τεθνάναι τῶν μὴ ζώντων· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ψυχροῖς πολὺ τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ τὸ ἧττον ἔνεστι καὶ τὸ λίαν καὶ τὸ μὴ λίαν καὶ ὅλως ἐπιτάσεις καὶ ἀνέσεις, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς θερμοῖς, διὰ τὸ τὴν ὕλην πῆ μὲν σφόδρα πῆ δ’ ἠρέμα πάσχουσαν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐναντίων δυνάμεων ἕτερα μᾶλλον ἑτέρων καὶ θερμότερα καὶ ψυχρότερα παρέχειν ἐξ ἑαυτῆς. καὶ γὰρ ἕξεως μὲν οὐκ ἔστι μῖξις πρὸς στέρησιν οὐδ’ ἀναδέχεται δύναμις οὐδεμία τὴν ἀντικειμένην αὐτῇ στέρησιν [e] ἐπιοῦσαν οὐδὲ ποιεῖ κοινωνὸν ἀλλ’ ἀντεξανίσταται· θερμὰ δ’ ἔστιν ἄχρις οὗ κεραννύμενα ψυχροῖς ὑπομένει, καθάπερ μέλανα λευκοῖς καὶ βαρέσιν ὀξέα καὶ γλυκέσιν αὐστηρά, παρέχοντα τῇ κοινωνίᾳ ταύτῃ καὶ ἁρμονίᾳ χρωμάτων τε καὶ φθόγγων καὶ φαρμάκων καὶ ὄψων προσφιλεῖς πολλὰς καὶ φιλανθρώπους γενέσεις. ἡ μὲν γὰρ κατὰ στέρησιν καὶ ἕξιν ἀντίθεσις πολεμικὴ καὶ ἀσύμβατός ἐστιν, οὐσίαν θατέρου τὴν θατέρου φθορὰν ἔχοντος· τῇ δὲ κατὰ τὰς ἐναντίας δυνάμεις καιροῦ τυχούσῃ πολλὰ μὲν [f] αἱ τέχναι χρῶνται, πλεῖστα δ’ ἡ φύσις ἔν τε ταῖς ἄλλαις γενέσεσι καὶ ταῖς περὶ τὸν ἀέρα τροπαῖς, καὶ ὅσα διακοσμῶν καὶ βραβεύων ὁ θεὸς ἁρμονικὸς καλεῖται καὶ μουσικός, οὐ βαρύτητας συναρμόττων καὶ ὀξύτητας οὐδὲ λευκὰ καὶ μέλανα συμφώνως ὁμιλοῦντα παρέχων ἀλλήλοις, ἀλλὰ τὴν τῆς θερμότητος καὶ ψυχρότητος ἐν κόσμῳ κοινωνίαν καὶ διαφοράν, ὅπως συνοίσονταί τε μετρίως καὶ διοίσονται πάλιν, ἐπιτροπεύων καὶ τὸ ἄγαν ἑκατέρας ἀφαιρῶν εἰς τὸ δέον ἀμφοτέρας καθίστησι.

[947] [a] Καὶ μὴν ψυχροῦ μὲν αἴσθησις ἔστιν, ὥσπερ καὶ θερμοῦ· στέρησις δ’ οὔθ’ ὁρατὸν οὔτ’ ἀκουστὸν οὔθ’ ἁπτὸν οὔτε ταῖς ἄλλαις αἰσθήσεσι γνωστόν. οὐσίας γάρ τινος αἴσθησις ἦν· ὅπου δ’ οὐσία μὴ φαίνεται, νοεῖται στέρησις, οὐσίας ἀπόφασις οὖσα, καθάπερ ὄψεως τυφλότης καὶ φωνῆς σιωπὴ καὶ σώματος ἐρημία καὶ κενόν. οὔτε γὰρ κενοῦ δι’ ἁφῆς αἴσθησις ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ ὅπου μὴ γίνεται σώματος ἁφή, κενοῦ γίνεται νόησις· οὔτε σιγῆς ἀκούομεν, ἀλλά, ἐὰν μηδενὸς ἀκούωμεν, σιγὴν νοοῦμεν· ὡς δ’ αὔτως καὶ τυφλῶν καὶ γυμνῶν καὶ ἀνόπλων οὐκ αἴσθησις ἔστιν ἀλλ’ αἰσθήσεως ἀποφάσει νόησις. ἔδει τοίνυν [b] μὴ γίνεσθαι ψυχρῶν αἴσθησιν, ἀλλ’ ὅπου τὸ θερμὸν ἐπιλείπει νοεῖσθαι τὸ ψυχρόν, εἴπερ ἦν θερμοῦ στέρησις· εἰ δ’, ὥσπερ τὸ θερμὸν ἀλέᾳ καὶ διακρίσει τῆς σαρκός, οὕτω συγκρίσει καὶ πυκνώσει τὸ ψυχρὸν αἰσθητόν ἐστι, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ ψυχρότητος ἰδία τις ἔστιν ἀρχὴ καὶ πηγὴ καθάπερ θερμότητος.

Ἔτι τοίνυν ἕν τι καὶ ἁπλοῦν ἡ περὶ ἕκαστον εἶδος στέρησις, αἱ δ’ οὐσίαι πλείονας διαφορὰς καὶ δυνάμεις ἔχουσι. μονοειδὲς γὰρ ἡ σιωπὴ ποικίλον δ’ ἡ φωνή, νῦν μὲν ἐνοχλοῦσα νῦν δὲ τέρπουσα τὴν αἴσθησιν· ἔχει δὲ τοιαύτας καὶ τὰ χρώματα καὶ τὰ σχήματα διαφοράς, ἐν [c] αἷς ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλως τὸν προστυγχάνοντα διατίθησι· τὸ δ’ ἀναφὲς καὶ ἄχρωστον καὶ ὅλως ἄποιον οὐκ ἔχει διαφοράν, ἀλλ’ ὅμοιόν ἐστιν. ἆρ’ οὖν ἔοικε τοῖς στερητικοῖς τούτοις τὸ ψυχρόν, ὥστε μὴ ποιεῖν ἐν τοῖς πάθεσι διαφοράν, ἢ τοὐναντίον ἡδοναί τε μεγάλαι καὶ ὠφέλιμοι τοῖς σώμασιν ἀπὸ ψυχρῶν ὑπάρχουσι καὶ βλάβαι πάλιν νεανικαὶ καὶ πόνοι καὶ βαρύτητες, ὑφ’ ὧν οὐκ ἀεὶ φεύγει καὶ ἀπολείπει τὸ θερμὸν ἀλλὰ πολλάκις ἐγκαταλαμβανόμενον ἀνθίσταται καὶ μάχεται, τῇ μάχῃ δ’ αὐτῶν ὄνομα φρίκη καὶ τρόμος, ἡττωμένῳ δὲ τῷ θερμῷ τὸ πήγνυσθαι καὶ ναρκᾶν ἐπιγίνεται, κρατοῦν δὲ τοῦ ψυχροῦ διάχυσιν [d] παρέχει καὶ ἀλέαν τῷ σώματι μεθ’ ἡδονῆς, ὅπερ Ὅμηρος ‘ἰαίνεσθαι’ κέκληκεν; ἀλλὰ ταῦτά γε παντὶ δῆλα, καὶ τούτοις οὐχ ἥκιστα τοῖς πάθεσιν ἐνδείκνυται τὸ ψυχρὸν ὅτι πρὸς τὸ θερμὸν ὡς οὐσία πρὸς οὐσίαν ἢ πάθος πρὸς πάθος οὐχ ὡς ἀπόφασις ἀντίκειται καὶ στέρησις, οὐδὲ φθορά τίς ἐστι τοῦ θερμοῦ καὶ ἀναίρεσις ἀλλὰ φθαρτικὴ φύσις καὶ δύναμις. ἢ καὶ τὸν χειμῶνα τῶν ὡρῶν καὶ τὰ βόρεια τῶν πνευμάτων ἐξέλωμεν, ὡς στερήσεις ὄντα τῶν θερμῶν καὶ νοτίων ἰδίαν δ’ ἀρχὴν οὐκ ἔχοντα.

Καὶ μὴν τεττάρων γε τῶν πρώτων ὄντων ἐν τῷ παντὶ σωμάτων, ἃ διὰ πλῆθος καὶ ἁπλότητα καὶ δύναμιν [e] οἱ πλεῖστοι στοιχεῖα τῶν ἄλλων ὑποτίθενται καὶ ἀρχάς, πυρὸς καὶ ὕδατος καὶ ἀέρος καὶ γῆς, ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι καὶ ποιότητας εἶναι τὰς πρώτας καὶ ἁπλᾶς τοσαύτας. τίνες οὖν εἰσιν αὗται πλὴν θερμότης καὶ ψυχρότης καὶ ξηρότης καὶ ὑγρότης, αἷς τὰ στοιχεῖα πάσχειν ἅπαντα καὶ ποιεῖν πέφυκεν; ὡς δὲ τῶν ἐν γραμματικῇ στοιχείων βραχύτητές εἰσι καὶ μακρότητες, τῶν δ’ ἐν μουσικῇ βαρύτητες καὶ ὀξύτητες, οὐ θάτερα τῶν ἑτέρων στέρησις, οὕτως ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς σώμασιν ἀντιστοιχίαν ὑποληπτέον ὑγρῶν πρὸς ξηρὰ καὶ ψυχρῶν πρὸς θερμά, τὸ κατὰ λόγον ἅμα καὶ τὰ [f] φαινόμενα διαφυλάττοντας. ἢ, καθάπερ Ἀναξιμένης (fr. 1) ὁ παλαιὸς ᾤετο, μήτε τὸ ψυχρὸν ἐν οὐσίᾳ μήτε τὸ θερμὸν ἀπολείπωμεν, ἀλλὰ πάθη κοινὰ τῆς ὕλης ἐπιγινόμενα ταῖς μεταβολαῖς· τὸ γὰρ συστελλόμενον αὐτῆς καὶ πυκνούμενον ψυχρὸν εἶναί φησι, τὸ δ’ ἀραιὸν καὶ τὸ χαλαρὸν (οὕτω πως ὀνομάσας καὶ τῷ ῥήματι) θερμόν· ὅθεν οὐκ ἀπεικότως λέγεσθαι τὸ καὶ θερμὰ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐκ [948] [a] τοῦ στόματος καὶ ψυχρὰ μεθιέναι· ψύχεται γὰρ ἡ πνοὴ πιεσθεῖσα καὶ πυκνωθεῖσα τοῖς χείλεσιν, ἀνειμένου δὲ τοῦ στόματος ἐκπίπτουσα γίνεται θερμὸν ὑπὸ μανότητος. (τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ἀγνόημα ποιεῖται τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης· ἀνειμένου γὰρ τοῦ στόματος ἐκπνεῖσθαι τὸ θερμὸν ἐξ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν, ὅταν δὲ συστρέψαντες τὰ χείλη φυσήσωμεν, οὐ τὸν ἐξ ἡμῶν ἀλλὰ τὸν ἀέρα τὸν πρὸ τοῦ στόματος ὠθεῖσθαι ψυχρὸν ὄντα καὶ προσπίπτειν.)

Εἰ δ’ ἀπολειπτέον οὐσίαν ψυχροῦ καὶ θερμοῦ, προάγωμεν ἐπὶ τὸ ἑξῆς τὸν λόγον, ἥτις ἐστὶν οὐσία καὶ ἀρχὴ καὶ φύσις ψυχρότητος ζητοῦντες. οἱ μὲν οὖν, τῶν σκαληνῶν [b] καὶ τριγωνοειδῶν σχηματισμῶν ἐν τοῖς σώμασι κειμένων, τὸ ῥιγοῦν καὶ τρέμειν καὶ φρίττειν καὶ ὅσα συγγενῆ τοῖς πάθεσι τούτοις ὑπὸ τραχύτητος ἐγγίνεσθαι λέγοντες, εἰ καὶ τοῖς κατὰ μέρος διαμαρτάνουσι, τὴν ἀρχὴν ὅθεν δεῖ λαμβάνουσι· δεῖ γὰρ ὥσπερ ἀφ’ ἑστίας τῆς τῶν ὅλων οὐσίας ἄρχεσθαι τὴν ζήτησιν. ᾧ καὶ μάλιστα δόξειεν ἂν ἰατροῦ καὶ γεωργοῦ καὶ αὐλητοῦ διαφέρειν ὁ φιλόσοφος. ἐκείνοις μὲν γὰρ ἐξαρκεῖ τὰ ἔσχατα τῶν αἰτίων θεωρῆσαι· τὸ γὰρ ἐγγυτάτω τοῦ πάθους αἴτιον ἂν συνοφθῇ, πυρετοῦ μὲν ἔντασις ἢ παρέμπτωσις ἐρυσίβης δ’ ἥλιοι πυριφλεγεῖς ἐπ’ ὄμβρῳ βαρύτητος δὲ κλίσις αὐλῶν [c] καὶ συναγωγὴ πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἱκανόν ἐστι τῷ τεχνίτῃ πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἔργον. τῷ δὲ φυσικῷ θεωρίας ἕνεκα μετιόντι τἀληθὲς ἡ τῶν ἐσχάτων γνῶσις οὐ τέλος ἐστὶν ἀλλ’ ἀρχὴ τῆς ἐπὶ τὰ πρῶτα καὶ ἀνωτάτω πορείας. διὸ καὶ Πλάτων ὀρθῶς καὶ Δημόκριτος αἰτίαν θερμότητος καὶ βαρύτητος ζητοῦντες οὐ κατέπαυσαν ἐν γῇ καὶ πυρὶ τὸν λόγον ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τὰς νοητὰς ἀναφέροντες ἀρχὰς τὰ αἰσθητὰ μέχρι τῶν ἐλαχίστων ὥσπερ σπερμάτων προῆλθον.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ ταυτὶ προανακινῆσαι βέλτιόν ἐστιν, ἐν οἷς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τε καὶ Στράτων καὶ οἱ Στωικοὶ τὰς οὐσίας τίθενται τῶν δυνάμεων, οἱ μὲν Στωικοὶ [d] τῷ ἀέρι τὸ πρώτως ψυχρὸν ἀποδιδόντες, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ καὶ Στράτων τῷ ὕδατι· τὴν δὲ γῆν ἴσως ἂν ἕτερος φανείη ψυχρότητος αἰτίαν ὑποτιθέμενος. πρότερον δὲ τὰ ἐκείνων σκοπῶμεν. ἐπεὶ τὸ πῦρ θερμὸν ἅμα καὶ λαμπρόν ἐστι, δεῖ τὴν ἀντικειμένην τῷ πυρὶ φύσιν ψυχράν τ’ εἶναι καὶ σκοτεινήν· ἀντίκειται γὰρ ὡς τῷ λαμπρῷ τὸ ζοφερὸν οὕτω τῷ θερμῷ τὸ ψυχρόν· ἔστι γὰρ ὡς ὄψεως τὸ σκοτεινὸν οὕτω τὸ ψυχρὸν ἁφῆς συγχυτικόν, ἡ δὲ θερμότης διαχεῖ τὴν αἴσθησιν τοῦ ἁπτομένου καθάπερ [e] ἡ λαμπρότης τοῦ ὁρῶντος. τὸ ἄρα πρώτως σκοτεινὸν ἐν τῇ φύσει πρώτως καὶ ψυχρόν ἐστιν. ὅτι δ’ ἀὴρ τὸ πρώτως σκοτεινόν ἐστιν, οὐδὲ τοὺς ποιητὰς λέληθεν· ἀέρα γὰρ τὸ σκότος καλοῦσιν· (Hom. ι 144)

‘ἀὴρ γὰρ παρὰ νηυσὶ βαθεῖ’ ἦν οὐδὲ σελήνη

οὐρανόθεν προύφαινε·’

καὶ πάλιν (Hes. O. D. 255)

‘ἠέρα ἑσσάμενοι πᾶσαν φοιτῶσιν ἐπ’ αἶαν’

καὶ πάλιν (Ρ 649)

‘αὐτίκα δ’ ἠέρα μὲν σκέδασεν καὶ ἀπῶσεν ὀμίχλην,

ἠέλιος δ’ ἐπέλαμψε· μάχη δ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσα φαάνθη.’

καὶ γὰρ ‘κνέφας’ τὸν ἀφώτιστον ἀέρα καλοῦσι, κενὸν ὡς ἔοικε φάους ὄντα· καὶ ‘νέφος’ ὁ συμπεσὼν καὶ πυκνωθεὶς ἀὴρ ἀποφάσει φωτὸς κέκληται· †καλεῖται δὲ καὶ ἀχλὺς καὶ ὁμίχλη καὶ ὅσα τοῦ φωτὸς οὐ παρέχει τῇ αἰσθήσει δίοψιν ἀέρος εἰσὶ διαφοραί· καὶ τὸ ἀειδὲς αὐτοῦ [f] καὶ ἄχρωστον Ἅιδης καὶ Ἀχέρων ἐπίκλησιν ἔσχεν. ὥσπερ οὖν αὐγῆς ἐπιλιπούσης σκοτεινὸς ἀήρ, οὕτω θερμοῦ μεταστάντος τὸ ἀπολειπόμενον ἀὴρ ψυχρὸς ἄλλο δ’ οὐδέν ἐστι· διὸ καὶ ‘Τάρταρος’ οὗτος, ὑπὸ ψυχρότητος, κέκληται (δηλοῖ δὲ καὶ Ἡσίοδος εἰπὼν (Th. 119) ‘Τάρταρά τ’ ἠερόεντα’) καὶ τὸ ῥιγοῦντα πάλλεσθαι καὶ τρέμειν ‘ταρταρίζειν’. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τοιοῦτον ἔχει λόγον.

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡ φθορὰ μεταβολή τίς ἐστι τῶν φθειρομένων [949] [a] εἰς τοὐναντίον ἑκάστῳ, σκοπῶμεν εἰ καλῶς εἴρηται τὸ ‘πυρὸς θάνατος ἀέρος γένεσις’. θνήσκει καὶ πῦρ ὥσπερ ζῷον ἢ βίᾳ σβεννύμενον ἢ δι’ αὑτοῦ μαραινόμενον. ἡ μὲν οὖν σβέσις ἐμφανεστέραν ποιεῖ τὴν εἰς ἀέρα μεταβολὴν αὐτοῦ· καὶ γὰρ ὁ καπνὸς ἀέρος ἐστὶν εἶδος καὶ ἡ κατὰ Πίνδαρον (Isthm. 4, 84) ‘ἀέρα κνισᾶντι λακτίζοισα καπνῷ’ λιγνὺς καὶ ἀναθυμίασις. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ φθινούσης ἀτροφίᾳ φλογὸς ἰδεῖν ἔστιν, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τῶν λύχνων, τὸ ἄκρον εἰς ἀέρα [καὶ] γνοφώδη καὶ ζοφερὸν ἀποχεόμενον. ἱκανῶς δὲ καὶ ὁ τῶν μετὰ λουτρὸν ἢ πυρίαν περιχεαμένων ψυχρὸν ἀνιὼν ἀτμὸς ἐνδείκνυται τὴν εἰς [b] ἀέρα τοῦ θερμοῦ φθειρομένου μεταβολήν, ὡς φύσει πρὸς τὸ πῦρ ἀντικείμενον. ᾧ τὸ πρώτως τὸν ἀέρα σκοτεινὸν εἶναι καὶ ψυχρὸν ἠκολούθει.

Καὶ μὴν ἁπάντων γε τῶν γινομένων ὑπὸ ψυχρότητος ἐν τοῖς σώμασι σφοδρότατον καὶ βιαιότατον ἡ πῆξις οὖσα πάθος μέν ἐστιν ὕδατος ἔργον δ’ ἀέρος· αὐτὸ μὲν γὰρ καθ’ ἑαυτὸ τὸ ὕδωρ εὐδιάχυτον καὶ ἀπαγὲς καὶ ἀσύστατόν ἐστιν, ἐντείνεται δὲ καὶ συνάγεται τῷ ἀέρι σφιγγόμενον ὑπὸ ψυχρότητος. διὸ καὶ λέλεκται (Callim. fr. anon. 384 Schn. om. Pfeiffer)

‘εἰ δὲ νότος βορέην προκαλέσσεται, αὐτίκα νίψει’·

τοῦ γὰρ νότου καθάπερ ὕλην τὴν ὑγρότητα παρασκευάσαντος, ὁ βόρειος ἀὴρ ὑπολαβὼν ἔπηξε. καὶ δῆλόν ἐστι [c] μάλιστα περὶ τὰς χιόνας· ἀέρα γὰρ μεθεῖσαι καὶ προαναπνεύσασαι λεπτὸν καὶ ψυχρὸν οὕτω ῥέουσιν. Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ (fr. 212 R.) καὶ τὰς ἀκόνας τοῦ μολίβδου τήκεσθαί φησι καὶ ῥεῖν ὑπὸ κρύους καὶ χειμῶνος, ὕδατος μόνου πλησιάζοντος αὐταῖς· ὁ δ’ ἀήρ, ὡς ἔοικε, συνελαύνων τὰ σώματα τῇ ψυχρότητι καταθραύει καὶ ῥήγνυσιν. ἔτι τοίνυν τὰ μὲν ἀποσπασθέντα τῆς πηγῆς ὕδατα μᾶλλον πήγνυται· μᾶλλον γὰρ ὁ ἀὴρ ἐπικρατεῖ τοῦ ἐλάττονος. ἂν δέ τις ψυχρὸν ἐκ φρέατος ὕδωρ λαβὼν ἐν ἀγγείῳ καὶ καθεὶς αὖθις εἰς τὸ φρέαρ ὥστε μὴ ψαύειν τοῦ ὕδατος τὸ ἀγγεῖον ἀλλ’ ἐν τῷ ἀέρι κρέμασθαι, περιμείνῃ χρόνον [d] οὐ πολύν, ἔσται ψυχρότερον τὸ ὕδωρ· ᾧ μάλιστα δηλοῦται τὸ μὴ τοῦ ὕδατος εἶναι τὴν πρώτην αἰτίαν τῆς ψυχρότητος ἀλλὰ τοῦ ἀέρος. τῶν γε μὴν μεγάλων ποταμῶν οὐδεὶς πήγνυται διὰ βάθους· οὐ γὰρ καθίησιν εἰς ὅλον ὁ ἀήρ, ἀλλ’ ὅσα τῇ ψυχρότητι περιλαμβάνει ψαύων καὶ πλησιάζων, ταῦθ’ ἵστησιν. ὅθεν οἱ βάρβαροι διαβαίνουσι πεζῇ, προβαλόντες ἀλώπεκας· ἂν γὰρ μὴ πολὺς ἀλλ’ ἐπιπόλαιος ὁ πάγος ᾖ, αἰσθανόμεναι τῷ ψόφῳ τοῦ ὑπορρέοντος ὕδατος ἀναστρέφουσιν. ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ θηρεύουσιν ἰχθῦς ὕδατι θερμῷ τοῦ πάγου παραλύοντες καὶ χαλῶντες τό γε τὴν ὁρμιὰν δεξόμενον. οὕτως οὐδὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ τὸ ἐν βάθει [e] πέπονθε. καίτοι τῶν ἄνω τοσαύτη γίνεται μεταβολὴ διὰ τὴν πῆξιν, ὥστε συντρίβειν τὰ πλοῖα τὸ ὕδωρ ἀποβιαζόμενον εἰς ἑαυτὸ καὶ συνθλιβόμενον, ὡς ἱστοροῦσιν οἱ νῦν μετὰ τοῦ Καίσαρος ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἴστρου διαχειμάσαντες. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ περὶ ἡμᾶς συμβαῖνον ἱκανὴν μαρτυρίαν δίδωσι· μετὰ γὰρ τὰ λουτρὰ καὶ τὰς ἐξιδρώσεις περιψυχόμεθα μᾶλλον, τοῖς σώμασιν ἀνειμένοις καὶ διακεχυμένοις πολλὴν ψυχρότητα μετὰ τοῦ ἀέρος καταδεχόμενοι. τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ τοῦτο καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ πάσχει· ψύχεται γάρ, ἂν προθερμανθῇ, μᾶλλον, εὐπαθέστερον τῷ ἀέρι γενόμενον· ὁπότε τὰ ζέοντα τῶν ὑδάτων ἀναρύτοντες καὶ [f] μετεωρίζοντες οὐδὲν ἄλλο δήπου ποιοῦσιν ἢ πρὸς ἀέρα πολὺν ἀνακεραννύουσιν. ὁ μὲν οὖν τῷ ἀέρι τὴν πρώτην ἀποδιδοὺς τῆς ψυχρότητος δύναμιν, ὦ Φαβωρῖνε, λόγος ἐν τοιαύταις ἐστὶ πιθανότησιν.

Ὁ δὲ τῷ ὕδατι λαμβάνει μὲν καὶ αὐτὸς ἀρχὰς ὁμοίως, οὕτω πως τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους λέγοντος (fr. 21, 3. 5)·

‘ἠέλιον μὲν λαμπρὸν ὅρα καὶ θερμὸν ἁπάντῃ,

ὄμβρον δ’ ἐν πᾶσι δνοφόεντά τε ῥιγαλέον τε’·

τῷ γὰρ θερμῷ τὸ ψυχρὸν ὡς τῷ λαμπρῷ τὸ μέλαν ἀντιτάξας συλλογίσασθαι δέδωκεν, ὅτι τῆς αὐτῆς οὐσίας ἐστὶ [950] [a] τὸ μέλαν καὶ τὸ ψυχρόν, ὡς τῆς αὐτῆς τὸ λαμπρὸν καὶ τὸ θερμόν. ὅτι δ’ οὐ τοῦ ἀέρος τὸ μέλαν ἀλλὰ τοῦ ὕδατός ἐστιν, ἡ αἴσθησις ἐπιμαρτυρεῖ, τῷ μὲν ἀέρι μηδενὸς ὡς ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν μελαινομένου τῷ δ’ ὕδατι πάντων. ἂν γὰρ τὸ λευκότατον ἐμβάλῃς ἔριον εἰς ὕδωρ ἢ ἱμάτιον, ἀναφαίνεται μέλαν καὶ διαμένει, μέχρι ἂν ὑπὸ θερμότητος ἐξικμασθῇ τὸ ὑγρὸν ἤ τισι στρέβλαις καὶ βάρεσιν ἐκπιεσθῇ· τῆς τε γῆς ὕδατι ῥαινομένης, διαμελαίνουσιν οἱ καταλαμβανόμενοι ταῖς σταγόσι τόποι, τῶν ἄλλων ὁμοίων μενόντων. αὐτοῦ μὲν οὖν τοῦ ὕδατος σκοτεινότατον ὑπὸ πλήθους φαίνεται τὸ βαθύτατον, οἷς δ’ ἀὴρ [b] πλησιάζει, ταῦτα περιλάμπεται καὶ διαγελᾷ. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ὑγρῶν διαφανὲς μάλιστα τοὔλαιόν ἐστι, πλείστῳ χρώμενον ἀέρι· τούτου δὲ τεκμήριον ἡ κουφότης, δι’ ἣν ἐπιπολάζει πᾶσιν ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀέρος ἄνω φερόμενον. ποιεῖ δὲ καὶ τὴν γαλήνην ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ τοῖς κύμασιν ἐπιρραινόμενον, οὐ διὰ τὴν λειότητα τῶν ἀνέμων ἀπολισθαινόντων, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης ἔλεγεν, ἀλλὰ παντὶ μὲν ὑγρῷ τὸ κῦμα διαχεῖται πληττόμενον, ἰδίως δὲ τοὔλαιον αὐγὴν καὶ καταφάνειαν ἐν βυθῷ παρέχει, διαστελλομένων τῷ ἀέρι τῶν ὑγρῶν· οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἐπιπολῆς τοῖς διανυκτερεύουσιν ἀλλὰ καὶ κάτω τοῖς σπογγοθήραις διαφυσώμενον ἐκ τοῦ [c] στόματος ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ φέγγος ἐνδίδωσιν. οὐ μᾶλλον οὖν τῷ ἀέρι τοῦ μέλανος ἢ τῷ ὕδατι μέτεστιν, ἧττον δὲ τοῦ ψυχροῦ. τὸ γοῦν ἔλαιον, ἀέρος πλείστου τῶν ὑγρῶν μετέχον, ἥκιστα ψυχρόν ἐστι καὶ πήγνυται μαλακῶς· ὁ γὰρ ἀὴρ ἐγκεκραμένος οὐκ ἐᾷ σκληρὰν γενέσθαι τὴν πῆξιν· βελόνας δὲ καὶ πόρπας σιδηρᾶς καὶ τὰ λεπτὰ τῶν ἔργων οὐχ ὕδατι βάπτουσιν ἀλλ’ ἐλαίῳ, τὴν ἄγαν ψυχρότητα φοβούμενοι τοῦ ὕδατος ὡς διαστρέφουσαν. ἀπὸ τούτων γὰρ δικαιότερόν ἐστιν ἐξετάζεσθαι τὸν λόγον, οὐκ ἀπὸ τῶν χρωμάτων· ἐπεὶ καὶ χιὼν καὶ χάλαζα καὶ κρύσταλλος ἅμα λαμπρότατα γίνεται [d] καὶ ψυχρότατα· καὶ πάλιν πίττα θερμότερόν ἐστι μέλιτος καὶ σκοτωδέστερον.

Ὅμως δὲ θαυμάζω τῶν ἀξιούντων τὸν ἀέρα ψυχρὸν εἶναι διὰ τὸ καὶ σκοτεινόν, εἰ μὴ συνορῶσιν ἑτέρους ἀξιοῦντας θερμὸν εἶναι διὰ τὸ καὶ κοῦφον. οὐ γὰρ οὕτω τῷ ψυχρῷ τὸ σκοτεινὸν ὡς τὸ βαρὺ καὶ στάσιμον οἰκεῖόν ἐστι καὶ συγγενές· πολλὰ γὰρ ἄμοιρα θερμότητος ὄντα μετέχει λαμπηδόνος, ἐλαφρὸν δὲ καὶ κοῦφον καὶ ἀνωφερὲς οὐδέν ἐστι τῶν ψυχρῶν. ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ νέφη, μέχρι μὲν ἀέρος οὐσίᾳ μᾶλλον προσήκει, μετεωρίζεται· μεταβαλόντα δ’ εἰς ὑγρὸν εὐθὺς ὀλισθαίνει καὶ τὸ κοῦφον οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τὸ θερμὸν ἀποβάλλει, ψυχρότητος ἐγγιγνομένης· [e] καὶ τοὐναντίον ὅταν θερμότης ἐπέλθῃ, πάλιν ἀναστρέφει τὴν κίνησιν, ἅμα τῷ μεταβαλεῖν εἰς ἀέρα τῆς οὐσίας ἄνω φερομένης. καὶ μὴν οὐδὲ τὸ τῆς φθορᾶς ἀληθές ἐστιν· οὐ γὰρ εἰς τοὐναντίον ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἐναντίου φθείρεται τῶν ἀπολλυμένων ἕκαστον, ὥσπερ τὸ πῦρ ὑπὸ τοῦ ὕδατος εἰς τὸν ἀέρα. τὸ γὰρ ὕδωρ ὁ μὲν Αἰσχύλος εἰ καὶ τραγικῶς ἀλλ’ ἀληθῶς εἶπε (fr. 360)

‘παύσυβριν δίκην πυρός·’

Ὅμηρος δὲ (Φ 342. 435) τῷ ποταμῷ τὸν Ἥφαιστον καὶ τῷ Ποσειδῶνι τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα κατὰ τὴν μάχην φυσικῶς μᾶλλον ἢ μυθικῶς ἀντέταξεν. ὁ δ’ Ἀρχίλοχος ἐπὶ τῆς τἀναντία φρονούσης οὐ κακῶς εἶπε (fr. 86, I 3 p. 38 D³.)

‘τῇ μὲν ὕδωρ ἐφόρει

[f] δολοφρονέουσα χειρί, θἠτέρῃ δὲ πῦρ.’

ἐν δὲ Πέρσαις τῶν ἱκετευμάτων μέγιστον ἦν καὶ ἀπαραίτητον, εἰ πῦρ λαβὼν ὁ ἱκετεύων καὶ ἐν ποταμῷ βεβηκὼς ἀπειλοίη μὴ τυχὼν τὸ πῦρ εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ ἀφήσειν· ἐτύγχανε μὲν γὰρ ὧν ἐδεῖτο, τυχὼν δ’ ἐκολάζετο διὰ τὴν ἀπειλὴν ὡς παράνομον καὶ κατὰ τῆς φύσεως γενομένην. καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ πρόχειρον ἅπασι ‘πῦρ ὕδατι μιγνύναι’ τὸ παροιμιαζόμενον ἐν τοῖς ἀδυνάτοις μαρτυρεῖν ἔοικεν ὅτι τῷ πυρὶ τὸ ὕδωρ πολέμιόν ἐστι καὶ ὑπὸ τούτου φθείρεται [951] [a] καὶ κολάζεται σβεννύμενον, οὐχ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀέρος †τίον ὡς ὑπολαμβάνει τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ δέχεται μεταβάλλοντος. εἰ γὰρ ἀεὶ τὸ εἰς ὃ μεταβάλλει τὸ φθειρόμενον ἐναντίον ἐστί, τί μᾶλλον τῷ ἀέρι τὸ πῦρ ἢ τὸ ὕδωρ ἐναντίον φανεῖται; μεταβάλλει γὰρ εἰς ὕδωρ συνιστάμενος εἰς δὲ πῦρ διακρινόμενος· ὥσπερ αὖ πάλιν τὸ ὕδωρ διακρίσει μὲν εἰς ἀέρα φθείρεται συγκρίσει δ’ εἰς γῆν, ὡς μὲν ἐγὼ νομίζω δι’ οἰκειότητα τὴν πρὸς ἀμφότερα καὶ συγγένειαν, οὐχ ὡς ἐναντίον ἑκατέρῳ καὶ πολέμιον. ἐκεῖνοι δέ, ὁποτέρως ἂν εἴπωσι, τὸ ἐπιχείρημα διαφθείρουσι. πήγνυσθαί γε μὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀέρος φάναι ‹τὸ› ὕδωρ ἀλογώτατόν ἐστιν, αὐτὸν τὸν ἀέρα μηδαμοῦ πηγνύμενον ὁρῶντας. νέφη γὰρ καὶ ὁμίχλαι καὶ κνηκίδες οὐ πήξεις εἰσὶν ἀλλὰ συστάσεις καὶ παχύτητες ἀέρος διεροῦ καὶ ἀτμώδους· ὁ δ’ ἄνικμος καὶ ξηρὸς οὐδ’ ἄχρι ταύτης τὴν κατάψυξιν ἐνδέχεται τῆς μεταβολῆς. ἔστι γὰρ ἃ τῶν ὀρῶν οὐ λαμβάνει νέφος οὐδὲ δρόσον οὐδ’ ὁμίχλην, εἰς καθαρὸν ἀέρα καὶ ἄμοιρον ὑγρότητος ἐξικνούμενα τοῖς ἄκροις· ᾧ μάλιστα δῆλόν ἐστιν ὡς τὰς κάτω πυκνώσεις καὶ συστάσεις τῷ ἀέρι συμμεμιγμένον ὑγρὸν καὶ ψυχρὸν ἐνδίδωσι.

Τὰ δὲ κάτω τῶν μεγάλων ποταμῶν οὐ πήγνυται κατὰ λόγον. τὰ γὰρ ἄνω παγέντα τὴν ἀναθυμίασιν οὐ [b] διίησιν, ἀλλ’ ἐγκαθειργνυμένη καὶ ἀποστρεφομένη θερμότητα παρέχει τοῖς διὰ βάθους ὑγροῖς· ἀπόδειξις δὲ τούτου τὸ λυομένου τοῦ πάγου πάλιν ἀτμὸν πολὺν ἐκ τῶν ὑγρῶν ἀναφέρεσθαι. διὸ καὶ τὰ τῶν ζῴων σώματα χειμῶνός ἐστι θερμότερα, τῷ συνέχειν τὸ θερμὸν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ὑπὸ τῆς ἔξωθεν ψυχρότητος εἴσω συνελαυνόμενον. αἱ δ’ ἀναρύσεις καὶ μετεωρίσεις οὐ μόνον τὸ θερμὸν ἐξαιροῦσι τῶν ὑδάτων ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ψυχρόν· ὅθεν ἥκιστα τὰς χιόνας καὶ τὸ συνθλιβόμενον ὑγρὸν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν οἱ σφόδρα ψυχροῦ δεόμενοι κινοῦσιν· ἐκστατικὸν γὰρ ἀμφοῖν ἡ κίνησις.

[c] Ὅτι δ’ οὐκ ἀέρος ἐστὶν ἀλλ’ ὕδατος ἡ τοιαύτη δύναμις, οὕτως ἄν τις ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς ἐπέλθοι. πρῶτον μὲν οὐκ εἰκός ἐστιν ἀέρα, τῷ αἰθέρι γειτνιῶντα καὶ ψαύοντα τῆς περιφορᾶς καὶ ψαυόμενον, οὔσης πυρώδους, τὴν ἐναντίαν ἔχειν δύναμιν· οὔτε γὰρ ἄλλως δυνατὸν ἁπτόμενα καὶ συνεχῆ τοῖς πέρασιν ὄντα δύο σώματα μὴ πάσχειν ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων, εἰ δὲ πάσχει, μὴ ἀναπίμπλασθαι τῆς τοῦ κρείττονος δυνάμεως τὸ ἧττον· οὔτε τὴν φύσιν ἔχει λόγον ἐφεξῆς τῷ φθείροντι τάξαι τὸ φθειρόμενον, ὥσπερ οὐ κοινωνίας οὖσαν οὐδ’ ἁρμονίας ἀλλὰ πολέμου καὶ μάχης δημιουργόν. χρῆται μὲν γὰρ ἐναντίοις εἰς τὰ ὅλα πράγμασι· χρῆται δ’ οὐκ ἀκράτοις οὐδ’ ἀντιτύποις, ἀλλ’ ἐναλλάξ τινα θέσιν καὶ τάξιν οὐκ ἀναιρετικὴν ἀλλὰ κοινωνικὴν δι’ ἑτέρων καὶ συνεργὸν ἐν μέσῳ παρεμπλεκομένην ἔχουσι· καὶ ταύτην [d] εἴληφεν ὁ ἀήρ, ὑποκεχυμένος τῷ πυρὶ πρὸ τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ διαδιδοὺς ἐπ’ ἀμφότερα καὶ συνάγων, οὔτε θερμὸς ὢν αὐτὸς οὔτε ψυχρὸς ἀλλὰ ψυχροῦ καὶ θερμοῦ μετακέρασμα καὶ κοινώνημα, μιγνυμένων ἐν αὐτῷ μῖξιν ἀβλαβῆ καὶ μαλακῶς ἀνιεῖσαν καὶ δεχομένην τὰς ἐναντίας ἀκρότητας.

Ἔπειτα πανταχοῦ μέν ἐστιν ἀὴρ ἴσος, οὐ πανταχοῦ δὲ χειμὼν ὅμοιος οὐδὲ ψῦχος, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν τὰ μέρη ψυχρὰ καὶ κάθυγρα, ταῦτα δὲ ξηρὰ καὶ θερμὰ τῆς οἰκουμένης, οὐ κατὰ τύχην, ἀλλὰ τῷ μίαν οὐσίαν ψυχρότητος καὶ ὑγρότητος εἶναι. Λιβύης μὲν γὰρ ἔνθερμος ἡ πολλὴ [e] καὶ ἄνυδρος, Σκυθίαν δὲ καὶ Θρᾴκην καὶ Πόντον οἱ πεπλανημένοι λίμνας τε μεγάλας ἔχειν καὶ ποταμοῖς διαρρεῖσθαι βαθέσι καὶ πολλοῖς ἱστοροῦσιν· αὐτῶν τε τῶν ἐν μέσῳ τόπων τὰ παράλιμνα καὶ ἑλώδη ψῦχος ἔχει μάλιστα διὰ τὰς ἀπὸ τῶν ὑγρῶν ἀναθυμιάσεις· Ποσειδώνιος δὲ τῆς ψυχρότητος αἰτίαν εἰπὼν τὸ πρόσφατον εἶναι τὸν ἕλειον ἀέρα καὶ νοτερὸν οὐκ ἔλυσε τὸ πιθανόν, ἀλλὰ πιθανώτερον ἐποίησεν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἐφαίνετο τοῦ ἀέρος ὁ πρόσφατος ἀεὶ ψυχρότερος, εἰ μὴ τὸ ψυχρὸν ἐν τοῖς [952] [a] ὑγροῖς τὴν γένεσιν εἶχε. βέλτιον οὖν Ὅμηρος εἰπὼν (ε 469)

‘αὔρη δ’ ἐκ ποταμοῦ ψυχρὴ ‹πνέει› ἠῶθι πρό’,

τὴν πηγὴν τῆς ψυχρότητος ἔδειξεν. ἔτι τοίνυν ἡ μὲν αἴσθησις πολλάκις ἡμᾶς ἐξαπατᾷ, ὅταν ἱματίων ἢ ἐρίων ψυχρῶν θιγγάνωμεν, οἰομένους ὑγρῶν θιγγάνειν διὰ τὸ κοινὴν ἀμφοτέροις οὐσίαν ὑπάρχειν καὶ τὰς φύσεις σύνεγγυς εἶναι καὶ οἰκείας. ἐν δὲ τοῖς δυσχειμέροις κλίμασι πολλὰ ῥηγνύει τὸ ψῦχος ἀγγεῖα καὶ χαλκᾶ καὶ κεραμεᾶ· κενὸν δ’ οὐδὲν ἀλλὰ πάντα πλήρη, βιαζομένου τῇ ψυχρότητι τοῦ ὕδατος. καίτοι φησὶ Θεόφραστος τὸν ἀέρα ῥηγνύειν τὰ ἀγγεῖα τῷ ὑγρῷ καθάπερ ἥλῳ χρώμενον· ὅρα [b] δὲ μὴ τοῦτο κομψῶς μᾶλλον ἢ ἀληθῶς εἰρημένον ἐστίν· ἔδει γὰρ τὰ πίττης γέμοντα μᾶλλον ῥήγνυσθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀέρος καὶ τὰ γάλακτος. ἀλλ’ ἔοικε τὸ ὕδωρ ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ ψυχρὸν εἶναι καὶ πρώτως· ἀντίκειται γὰρ τῇ ψυχρότητι πρὸς τὴν θερμότητα τοῦ πυρός, ὥσπερ τῇ ὑγρότητι πρὸς τὴν ξηρότητα καὶ τῇ βαρύτητι πρὸς τὴν κουφότητα. καὶ ὅλως τὸ μὲν πῦρ διαστατικόν ἐστι καὶ διαιρετικόν, τὸ δ’ ὕδωρ κολλητικὸν καὶ σχετικόν, τῇ ὑγρότητι συνέχον καὶ πιέζον· ᾗ καὶ παρέσχεν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (fr. 17, 19. 19) ὑπόνοιαν, ὡς τὸ μὲν πῦρ ‘Νεῖκος οὐλόμενον’ ‘σχεδύνην’ δὲ ‘Φιλότητα’ τὸ ὑγρὸν ἑκάστοτε προσαγορεύων· ἐπεὶ [c] τροφὴ μὲν πυρὸς τὸ μεταβάλλον εἰς πῦρ, μεταβάλλει δὲ τὸ συγγενὲς καὶ οἰκεῖον, τὸ δ’ ἐναντίον δυσμετάβλητον, ὡς τὸ ὕδωρ· καὶ αὐτὸ μὲν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἄκαυστόν ἐστιν, ὕλην δὲ καὶ πόαν νοτερὰν καὶ ξύλα βεβρεγμένα δυσκαῆ παρέχει, καὶ φλόγα ζοφερὰν καὶ ἀμβλεῖαν ὑπὸ χλωρότητος ἀναδίδωσι τῷ ψυχρῷ μαχόμενον πρὸς τὸ θερμὸν ὡς φύσει πολέμιον.

Σκόπει δὲ καὶ ταῦτα παραβάλλων ἐκείνοις. ἐπειδὴ καὶ Χρύσιππος (fr. 429) οἰόμενος τὸν ἀέρα πρώτως ψυχρὸν εἶναι, διότι καὶ σκοτεινόν, ἐμνήσθη μόνον τῶν πλέον ἀφεστάναι τὸ ὕδωρ τοῦ αἰθέρος ἢ τὸν ἀέρα λεγόντων, καὶ πρὸς αὐτούς τι βουλόμενος εἰπεῖν ‘οὕτω μὲν ἄν’ ἔφη [d] ‘καὶ τὴν γῆν ψυχρὰν εἶναι πρώτως λέγοιμεν, ὅτι τοῦ αἰθέρος ἀφέστηκε πλεῖστον,’ ὡς ἀδόκιμόν τινα παντελῶς τοῦτον καὶ ἄτοπον ἀπορρίψας τὸν λόγον, ἐγώ μοι δοκῶ μηδὲ τὴν γῆν ἄμοιρον εἰκότων καὶ πιθανῶν ἀποφαίνειν, ποιησάμενος ἀρχὴν ᾧ μάλιστα Χρύσιππος ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἀέρος κέχρηται. τί δὲ τοῦτ’ ἐστί; τὸ σκοτεινὸν ὄντα πρώτως ‹εἶναι καὶ ψυχρὸν πρώτως›. εἰ γὰρ δύο λαβὼν οὗτος ἀντιθέσεις δυνάμεων οἴεται τῇ ἑτέρᾳ καὶ τὴν ἑτέραν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἕπεσθαι, μυρίαι δήπουθέν εἰσιν ἀντιτάξεις καὶ ἀντιπάθειαι πρὸς τὸν αἰθέρα τῆς γῆς, αἷς καὶ ταύτην ἄν τις ἀκολουθεῖν ἀξιώσειεν. οὐ γὰρ ὡς βαρεῖα πρὸς κοῦφον [e] καὶ καταρρεπὴς πρὸς ἀνωφερὲς ἀντίκειται μόνον, οὐδ’ ὡς πυκνὴ πρὸς ἀραιὸν οὐδ’ ὡς βραδεῖα καὶ στάσιμος πρὸς ὀξύρροπον καὶ κινητικόν, ἀλλ’ ὡς βαρυτάτη πρὸς κουφότατον καὶ πυκνοτάτη πρὸς ἀραιότατον καὶ τέλος ὡς ἀκίνητος ἐξ ἑαυτῆς πρὸς αὐτοκίνητον καὶ τὴν μέσην χώραν ἐπέχουσα πρὸς ἀεὶ κυκλοφορούμενον. οὐκ ἄτοπον οὖν τηλικαύταις καὶ τοσαύταις ἀντιτάξεσι καὶ τὴν τῆς ψυχρότητος καὶ θερμότητος ἕπεσθαι. ‘ναί, ἀλλὰ τὸ πῦρ καὶ λαμπρόν ἐστιν· οὔτι μὴν σκοτεινὸν ἡ γῆ;’ σκοτεινότατον μὲν οὖν ἁπάντων καὶ ἀφεγγέστατον. ἀέρι μέν τοι μετοχὴ φωτός ἐστι πρώτῳ, καὶ τάχιστα τρέπεται καὶ ἀναπλησθεὶς [f] διανέμει πανταχοῦ τὴν λαμπρότητα, σῶμα παρέχων τῆς αὐγῆς ἑαυτόν· ὁ γὰρ ἥλιος ἀνίσχων, ὥς τις εἶπε τῶν διθυραμβοποιῶν,

‘εὐθὺς ἀνέπλησεν ἀεροβατᾶν μέγαν οἶκον ἀνέμων·’

ἐκ τούτου δὲ καὶ λίμνῃ καὶ θαλάττῃ μοῖραν αὐγῆς κατιὼν ἐνίησι καὶ βυθοὶ ποταμῶν διαγελῶσιν, ὅσον ἀέρος ἐξικνεῖται πρὸς αὐτούς. μόνη δ’ ἡ γῆ τῶν σωμάτων ἀεὶ ἀφώτιστός ἐστι καὶ ἄτρωτος [ὑφ’] ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης τῷ φωτίζοντι· θάλπεται δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῶν καὶ παρέχει χλιαίνειν [953] [a] ἐπ’ ὀλίγον βάθος ἐνδυομένῳ τῷ θερμῷ, τὸ δὲ λαμπρὸν οὐ παρίησιν ὑπὸ στερεότητος ἀλλ’ ἐπιπολῆς περιφωτίζεται, τὰ δ’ ἐντὸς ὄρφνη καὶ χάος καὶ Ἅιδης ὀνομάζεται· καὶ τὸ ἔρεβος τοῦτ’ ἦν ἄρα, τὸ χθόνιον καὶ ἔγγαιον σκότος. τὴν δὲ νύκτα ποιηταὶ μὲν ἐκ γῆς γεγονέναι μυθολογοῦσι, μαθηματικοὶ δὲ γῆς σκιὰν οὖσαν ἀποδεικνύουσιν ἀντιφραττούσης πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον· ὁ γὰρ ἀὴρ ἀναπίμπλαται σκότους ὑπὸ γῆς ὡς φωτὸς ὑφ’ ἡλίου· καὶ τὸ ἀφώτιστον αὐτοῦ μῆκός ἐστι νυκτός, ὅσον ἡ σκιὰ τῆς γῆς ἐπινέμεται. διὸ τῷ μὲν ἐκτὸς ἀέρι καὶ νυκτὸς οὔσης ἄνθρωποί τε χρῶνται καὶ θηρία πολλὰ νομὰς ποιούμενα [b] διὰ σκότους, ἁμωσγέπως ἴχνη φωτὸς καὶ ἀπορροὰς αὐγῆς ἐνδιεσπαρμένας ἔχοντος· ὁ δ’ οἰκουρὸς καὶ ὑπωρόφιος, ἅτε δὴ τῆς γῆς πανταχόθεν περιεχούσης, κομιδῇ τυφλός ἐστι καὶ ἀφώτιστος. ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ δέρματα καὶ κέρατα ζῴων ὅλα μὲν οὐ διίησιν αὐγὴν ὑπὸ στερεότητος, ὅταν δὲ πρισθῇ καὶ καταξεσθῇ, γίνεται διαφανῆ, παραμιχθέντος αὐτοῖς τοῦ ἀέρος. οἶμαι δὲ καὶ μέλαιναν ἑκάστοτε τὴν γῆν ὑπὸ τῶν ποιητῶν καλεῖσθαι διὰ τὸ σκοτῶδες καὶ τὸ ἀφώτιστον· ὥστε καὶ τὴν πολυτίμητον ἀντίθεσιν τοῦ σκοτεινοῦ πρὸς τὸ λαμπρὸν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ ἀέρος ὑπάρχειν.

Ἀλλ’ αὕτη μὲν ἀπήρτηται τοῦ ζητουμένου· πολλὰ [c] γὰρ δέδεικται ψυχρὰ τῶν λαμπρῶν ὄντα καὶ θερμὰ τῶν ἀμαυρῶν καὶ σκοτεινῶν. ἐκεῖναι δὲ συγγενέστεραι δυνάμεις ψυχρότητός εἰσι, τὸ ἐμβριθὲς τὸ πυκνὸν τὸ μόνιμον τὸ ἀμετάβλητον· ὧν ἀέρι μὲν οὐδεμιᾶς, γῇ δὲ μᾶλλον ἢ ὕδατι πασῶν μέτεστι. καὶ μὴν ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα τὸ ψυχρὸν αἰσθητῶς σκληρόν ἐστι καὶ σκληροποιὸν καὶ ἀντίτυπον. ἰχθῦς μὲν γὰρ ἱστορεῖ Θεόφραστος (fr. 184) ὑπὸ ῥίγους πεπηγότας, ἂν ἀφεθῶσιν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν, κατάγνυσθαι καὶ συντρίβεσθαι δίκην ὑελῶν ἢ κεραμεῶν σωμάτων. ἐν δὲ Δελφοῖς αὐτὸς ἤκουες ὅτι τῶν εἰς τὸν Παρνασὸν ἀναβάντων [d] βοηθῆσαι ταῖς Θυιάσιν, ἀπειλημμέναις ὑπὸ πνεύματος χαλεποῦ καὶ χιόνος, οὕτως ἐγένοντο διὰ τὸν πάγον σκληραὶ καὶ ξυλώδεις αἱ χλαμύδες, ὡς καὶ θραύεσθαι διατεινομένας καὶ ῥήγνυσθαι. ποιεῖ δὲ καὶ νεῦρα δυσκαμπῆ καὶ γλῶτταν ἄναυδον ἀκινησίᾳ καὶ σκληρότητι τὸ ἄγαν ψῦχος, ἐκπηγνύον τὰ ὑγρὰ καὶ μαλακὰ τοῦ σώματος.

Ὧν βλεπομένων, σκόπει τὸ γιγνόμενον οὕτω· πᾶσα δήπου δύναμις, ἂν περιγένηται, πέφυκε μεταβάλλειν καὶ τρέπειν εἰς ἑαυτὴν τὸ νικώμενον· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ὑπὸ θερμοῦ κρατηθὲν ἐκπυροῦται, τὸ δ’ ὑπὸ πνεύματος ἐξαεροῦται, τὸ δ’ εἰς ὕδωρ ἐμπεσόν, ἂν μὴ διαφύγῃ, καθυγραίνεται [e] συνδιαχεόμενον. ἀνάγκη δὴ καὶ τὰ ψυχόμενα κομιδῇ μεταβάλλειν εἰς τὸ πρώτως ψυχρόν· ἔστι δ’ ὑπερβολὴ ψύξεως πῆξις, πῆξις δ’ εἰς ἀγνωσίαν τελευτᾷ καὶ λίθωσιν, ὅταν, παντάπασι τοῦ ψυχροῦ κρατήσαντος, ἐκπαγῇ μὲν τὸ ὑγρὸν ἐκθλιβῇ δὲ τὸ θερμόν. ὅθεν ἡ μὲν ἐν βάθει γῆ πάγος ἐστὶν ὡς εἰπεῖν καὶ κρύσταλλος ἅπασα· τὸ γὰρ ψυχρὸν ἄκρατον οἰκουρεῖ καὶ ἀμάλακτον ἀπεωσμένον ἐκεῖ τοῦ αἰθέρος ἀπωτάτω· ταυτὶ δὲ τὰ ἐμφανῆ, κρημνοὺς καὶ σκοπέλους καὶ πέτρας, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (A 69) μὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς οἴεται τοῦ ἐν βάθει τῆς γῆς ἑστάναι καὶ ἀνέχεσθαι διερειδόμενα φλεγμαίνοντος· ἐμφαίνεται δὲ μᾶλλον, [f] ὅσων τὸ θερμὸν ἐξεθλίβη καὶ διέπτατο, πάντα ταῦτα παντάπασιν ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχρότητος παγῆναι· διὸ καὶ πάγοι καλοῦνται. καὶ τὰ ἄκρα πολλῶν ἐπιμελανθέντων, ᾗ τὸ θερμὸν ἐξέπεσε, πυρικαύστοις ἰδεῖν προσέοικε· πήγνυσι γὰρ τὸ ψυχρὸν τὰ μὲν μᾶλλον τὰ δ’ ἧττον, μάλιστα δ’ οἷς πρώτως ἐνυπάρχειν πέφυκεν. ὥσπερ γάρ, εἰ θερμοῦ τὸ [954] [a] κουφίζειν, θερμότατόν ἐστι τὸ κουφότατον, εἰ δ’ ὑγροῦ τὸ μαλάσσειν, ὑγρότατον τὸ μαλακώτατον, οὕτως, εἰ ψυχροῦ τὸ πηγνύειν, ἀνάγκη ψυχρότατον εἶναι τὸ μάλιστα πεπηγός, οἷον ἡ γῆ. τὸ δὲ ψυχρότατον φύσει δήπου καὶ πρώτως ψυχρόν· ὥστε φύσει καὶ πρώτως ψυχρὸν ἡ γῆ. τοῦτο δ’ ἀμέλει καὶ τῇ αἰσθήσει δῆλόν ἐστι· καὶ γὰρ πηλὸς ὕδατος ψυχρότερος καὶ τὸ πῦρ γῆν ἐπιφοροῦντες ἀφανίζουσιν· οἱ δὲ χαλκεῖς τῷ πυρουμένῳ καὶ ἀνατηκομένῳ σιδήρῳ μάρμαρον καὶ λατύπην παραπάσσουσι, τὴν πολλὴν ῥύσιν ἐφιστάντες καὶ καταψύχοντες· ψύχει δὲ καὶ [b] τὰ τῶν ἀθλητῶν ἡ κόνις σώματα καὶ κατασβέννυσι τοὺς ἱδρῶτας.

Ἡ δὲ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν ἡμᾶς μετάγουσα καὶ μετοικίζουσα χρεία τί βούλεται, χειμῶνος μὲν ἀπωτάτω φεύγουσα τῆς γῆς εἰς τὰ μετέωρα καὶ ἀπόγεια, θέρους δὲ πάλιν ἀντεχομένη τῶν κάτω καὶ ὑποδυομένη καὶ διώκουσα προσφόρους καταφυγάς, τιθεμένη τὴν δίαιταν ἐν ἀγκάλαις γῆς ἀγαπητῶς; ἆρ’ οὐχὶ ταῦτα ποιοῦμεν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν ὑπὸ ψυχρότητος ὁδηγούμενοι τῇ αἰσθήσει καὶ τὸ πρώτως ‹καὶ› φύσει ψυχρὸν ἐπιγινώσκοντες; αἱ γοῦν παράλιοι χειμῶνος δίαιται τρόπον τινὰ γῆς φυγαί εἰσιν, ὡς ἀνυστὸν ἀπολειπόντων διὰ κρύος αὐτήν, τὸν δ’ ἔναλον [c] ἀέρα καὶ πελάγιον θερμὸν ὄντα περιβαλλομέν‹ων›· εἶτ’ αὖθις ἐν θέρει τὸν γηγενῆ καὶ χερσαῖον ὑπὸ καύματος ποθοῦμεν, οὐκ αὐτὸν ὄντα ψυχρὸν ἀλλὰ τοῦ φύσει ψυχροῦ καὶ πρώτως ἀποβλαστάνοντα καὶ βεβαμμένον ὑπὸ τῆς ἐν τῇ γῇ δυνάμεως ὥσπερ βαφῇ σίδηρον. καὶ γὰρ τῶν ῥυτῶν ὑδάτων τὰ πετραῖα καὶ ὀρεινὰ ψυχρότατα καὶ τῶν φρεατιαίων τὰ κοιλότατα· τούτοις μὲν γὰρ οὐκέτι μίγνυται διὰ βάθους ἔξωθεν ὁ ἀήρ, ἐκεῖνα δ’ ἐκπίπτει διὰ γῆς ἀμίκτου καὶ καθαρᾶς, ὡς περὶ τὸ Τιτάριον ὃ δὴ [d] Στυγὸς ὕδωρ καλοῦσιν ἐκ πέτρας γλίσχρως συλλειβόμενον οὕτω ψυχρόν ἐστιν, ὥστε μηδὲν ἀγγεῖον ἄλλο μόνην δ’ ὁπλὴν ὄνου στέγειν, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα διακόπτει καὶ ῥήγνυσιν.

Ἔτι γε μὴν τῶν ἰατρῶν ἀκούομεν, ὡς πᾶσα γῆ τῷ γένει στύφειν καὶ ψύχειν πέφυκε· καὶ πολλὰ τῶν μεταλλευομένων καταριθμοῦσι στυπτικὴν αὐτοῖς παρέχοντα καὶ σχετικὴν εἰς τὰς φαρμακείας δύναμιν· καὶ γὰρ τὸ στοιχεῖον αὐτῆς οὐ τμητικὸν οὐδὲ κινητικὸν οὐδὲ †λεῖπον οὐδ’ ἔχον ὀξύτητας οὐδὲ μαλθακὸν οὐδ’ εὐπερίχυτον γέγονεν, ἀλλ’ ἑδραῖον ὡς ὁ κύβος καὶ συνερειστικόν. ὅθεν αὐτή τε βρῖθος ἔσχε, καὶ τὸ ψυχρόν, ὅπερ ἦν δύναμις [e] αὐτῆς, τῷ πυκνοῦν καὶ συνωθεῖν καὶ ἀποθλίβειν τὰ ὑγρὰ φρίκας καὶ τρόμους διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν ἐνεργάζεται τοῖς σώμασιν· ἂν δ’ ἐπικρατήσῃ παντάπασι, τοῦ θερμοῦ φυγόντος ἢ σβεσθέντος, ἔστησε τὴν ἕξιν ἐκπαγεῖσαν καὶ νεκρωθεῖσαν. ὅθεν οὐδὲ καίεται γῆ τὸ παράπαν ἢ καίεται γλίσχρως καὶ μόγις. ἀὴρ μὲν γὰρ ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ πολλάκις φλόγας ἀναδίδωσι καὶ ζεῖ καὶ διαστράπτει πυρούμενος· τῷ δ’ ὑγρῷ τροφῇ χρῆται τὸ θερμόν· οὐ γὰρ τὸ στερεὸν ἀλλὰ τὸ νοτερὸν τοῦ ξύλου καυστόν ἐστιν· ἐξικμασθέντος δὲ τούτου, τὸ στερεὸν καὶ ξηρὸν ἀπολείπεται τέφρα γενόμενον. οἱ δὲ καὶ τοῦτο φιλοτιμούμενοι μεταβάλλον ἀποδεῖξαι καὶ καταναλισκόμενον ἀναδεύοντες πολλάκις ἐλαίῳ [f] καὶ στέατι φύροντες οὐδὲν περαίνουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὅταν ἐκκαῇ τὸ λιπαρόν, περίεστι πάντως καὶ διαμένει τὸ γεῶδες· ὅθεν οὐ κατὰ χώραν μόνον ἐξ ἕδρας ἀκίνητον οὖσαν αὐτὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ κατ’ οὐσίαν ἀμετάβλητον, Ἑστίαν, ἅτε δή ‘μένουσαν ἐν θεῶν οἴκῳ’, †κλίτα προσηγόρευσαν οἱ παλαιοί, διὰ τὴν στάσιν καὶ πῆξιν· ἧς ἡ ψυχρότης δεσμός ἐστιν, ὡς Ἀρχέλαος ὁ φυσικὸς (fr. 1a) εἶπεν, οὐδενὸς χαλῶντος αὐτὴν οὐδὲ μαλάττοντος, ἅτε θερομένην καὶ ἀλεαινομένην [955] [a] †οὖσαν. οἱ δὲ πνεύματος μὲν αἰσθάνεσθαι ψυχροῦ καὶ ὕδατος, γῆς δ’ ἧττον οἰόμενοι, τὴν ἔγγιστα γῆν ὁρῶσιν ἀέρων καὶ ὑδάτων καὶ ἡλίου [καὶ] θερμότητος ἀνάπλεων σύμμιγμα καὶ συμφόρημα γεγενημένην· καὶ οὐδὲν διαφέρουσι τῶν μὴ τὸν αἰθέρα φύσει καὶ πρώτως θερμὸν ἀλλὰ τὸ ζέον ὕδωρ ἢ τὸν διάπυρον σίδηρον ἀποφαινομένων, ὅτι τούτων μὲν ἅπτονται καὶ προσθιγγάνουσι, τοῦ δὲ πρώτου καθαροῦ καὶ οὐρανίου πυρὸς αἴσθησιν δι’ ἁφῆς οὐ λαμβάνουσιν, ὥσπερ οὐδ’ οὗτοι τῆς ἐν βάθει γῆς, ἣν μάλιστα γῆν ἄν τις νοήσειεν αὐτὴν καθ’ αὑτὴν ἀποκεκριμένην τῶν ἄλλων. δεῖγμα δ’ αὐτῆς ἐστι [b] κἀνταῦθα περὶ τὰς πέτρας· πολὺ γὰρ ἐκ βάθους καὶ οὐ ῥᾴδιον ἀνασχέσθαι προβάλλουσι κρύος. οἱ δὲ ψυχροτέρου ποτοῦ δεόμενοι χάλικας ἐμβάλλουσιν εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ· γίνεται γὰρ οὐλότερον καὶ στομοῦται παρὰ τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν λίθων ψυχρότητα, πρόσφατον καὶ ἄκρατον ἀναφερομένην.

Τοὺς οὖν πάλαι σοφοὺς καὶ λογίους ἄμικτα θέσθαι τὰ ἐπίγεια καὶ τὰ οὐράνια χρὴ νομίζειν, οὐ τοῖς τόποις, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ ζυγοῦ πρὸς τὰ κάτω καὶ ἄνω βλέποντας, ἀλλὰ τῇ διαφορᾷ τῶν δυνάμεων τὰ μὲν θερμὰ καὶ λαμπρὰ καὶ ταχέα καὶ κοῦφα τῇ θείᾳ καὶ ἀιδίῳ φύσει προσνέμοντας, [c] τὰ δὲ σκοτεινὰ καὶ ψυχρὰ καὶ βραδέα φθιτῶν καὶ ἐνέρων οὐκ εὐδαίμονα κλῆρον ἀποφαίνοντας. ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ ζῴου, μέχρι μὲν ἔμπνουν ἐστὶ καὶ ‘θαλερόν’, ὡς οἱ ποιηταὶ λέγουσι, θερμότητι χρῆται καὶ ζωῇ· γενόμενον δὲ τούτων ἔρημον καὶ ἀπολειφθὲν ἐν μόνῃ τῇ τῆς γῆς μοίρᾳ ψυχρότης εὐθὺς ἴσχει καὶ κρύος, ὡς ἐν παντὶ μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ γεώδει κατὰ φύσιν θερμότητος ἐνυπαρχούσης.

Ταῦτ’, ὦ Φαβωρῖνε, τοῖς εἰρημένοις ὑφ’ ἑτέρων παράβαλλε· κἂν μήτε λείπηται τῇ πιθανότητι μήθ’ ὑπερέχῃ πολύ, χαίρειν ἔα τὰς δόξας, τὸ ἐπέχειν ἐν τοῖς ἀδήλοις τοῦ συγκατατίθεσθαι φιλοσοφώτερον ἡγούμενος.

Aquane an ignis sit utilior

ΠΟΤΕΡΟΝ ΥΔΩΡ Η ΠΥΡ ΧΡΗΣΙΜΩΤΕΡΟΝ

[955] ‘Ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ, ὁ δὲ χρυσὸς αἰθόμενον πῦρ,’

[e] φησιν ὁ Πίνδαρος (O. I 1)· ὥσθ’ οὗτος μὲν δευτέραν ἄντικρυς τῷ πυρὶ χώραν ἔδωκε· συμφωνεῖ δὲ καὶ Ἡσίοδος εἰπὼν (Th 116)

‘ἤτοι μὲν πρώτιστα χάος γένετο’·

τοῖς πλείστοις γὰρ ὠνομακέναι δοκεῖ τὸ ὕδωρ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον παρὰ τὴν χύσιν. ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν τῶν μαρτύρων ἑκατέροις ἴσον· ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ πῦρ εἰσιν οἱ τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὴν ἀποφαινόμενοι καὶ οἷον σπέρμα τοῦτ’ ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ τε πάντα ποιεῖν καὶ εἰς ἑαυτὸ ἐκλαμβάνειν κατὰ τὴν ἐκπύρωσιν. ἀφέμενοι δὲ τῶν ἀνδρῶν σκεψώμεθα τοὺς εἰς ἑκάτερον λόγους πῇ μᾶλλον ἄγουσιν ἡμᾶς.

Ἆρ’ οὖν οὐ χρησιμώτερον ἐκεῖνο, οὗ πάντοτε καὶ [f] διηνεκῶς δεόμεθα καὶ πλείστου, καθάπερ ἐργαλεῖον καὶ ὄργανον καὶ νὴ Δία φίλος ὁ πάσης ὥρας καὶ παντὸς καιροῦ παρὼν ἕτοιμος; καὶ μὴν τὸ μὲν πῦρ οὐ πάντοτε χρήσιμον, ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ βαρυνόμεθα καὶ ἀποσπώμεθα· τοῦ δ’ ὕδατος χρεία καὶ χειμῶνος καὶ θέρους καὶ νοσοῦσι [956] [a] καὶ ὑγιαίνουσι, νυκτὸς καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν, καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτ’ ἄνθρωπος οὐ δεῖται. ἀμέλει τοὺς ἀποθανόντας ἀλίβαντας καλοῦσιν ὡς ἐνδεεῖς λιβάδος, τουτέστιν ὑγρότητος, καὶ παρὰ τοῦτο στερουμένους τοῦ ζῆν. καὶ ἄνευ μὲν πυρὸς ἦν πολλά‹κις›, ὕδατος δ’ οὐδέποτ’ ἄνθρωπος. ἔτι τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς καὶ ἅμα τῇ πρώτῃ καταβολῇ τῶν ἀνθρώπων χρησιμώτερον τοῦ ὕστερον εὑρεθέντος· δῆλον γὰρ ὡς τὸ μὲν ὡς ἀναγκαῖον ἡ φύσις ἔδωκε, τὸ δὲ περιουσίᾳ τῆς χρήσεως τέχνη καὶ μηχανή τις εὗρεν. ὕδωρ μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ὅτ’ οὐκ ἦν ἀνθρώποις οὐδέ τις εὑρετὴς λέγεται θεῶν ἢ ἡρώων· σχεδὸν γὰρ γενομένων εὐθὺς [b] ὑπῆρχε, †τὸ γεγενῆσθαι παρεῖχεν· ἡ δὲ πυρὸς χρῆσις ἐχθές φασι καὶ πρῴην ὑπὸ Προμηθέως βίος πυρός, οὐκ ἄνευ δ’ ὕδατος ἦν. καὶ τὸ μὲν πλάσμα τοῦτο μὴ εἶναι ποιητικὸν ἀποδείκνυσιν ὁ καθ’ ἡμᾶς βίος· ἔστι γὰρ ἀνθρώπων γένη τινὰ χωρὶς πυρὸς ποιούμενα τὴν δίαιταν, ἄοικα καὶ ἀνέστια καὶ ὑπαίθρια· καὶ Διογένης δ’ ὁ κύων ἥκιστα προσεχρῆτο πυρί, ὥστε καὶ πολύποδα καταπιὼν ὠμόν ‘οὕτως ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν’ εἶπεν ‘ὦ ἄνδρες, παραβάλλομαι·’ χωρὶς δ’ ὕδατος οὔτε καλόν τις ἐνόμισε ζῆν οὔτε δυνατόν.

Καὶ τί μικρολογοῦμαι τὴν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐπερχόμενος φύσιν; πολλῶν γὰρ ὄντων, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀπείρων [c] γενῶν τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων σχεδὸν μόνον οἶδε πυρὸς χρῆσιν, τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ ἀπύροις χρῆται διαίταις καὶ τροφαῖς, καὶ βίος αὐτοῖς νεμομένοις, ἱπταμένοις, ἕρπουσιν ἀπὸ ῥιζῶν καὶ καρπῶν καὶ σαρκῶν ἄνευ πυρός· ὕδατος δὲ χωρὶς οὐκ ἔναλον οὐ[δὲ] χερσαῖον οὐκ αἰθέριον· καὶ γὰρ τὰ σαρκοβόρα τῶν ζῴων, ὧν ἔνιά φησι μὴ πίνειν Ἀριστοτέλης, τῷ γ’ ἐντὸς ὑγρῷ χρώμενα διαζῇ. τοῦτ’ οὖν χρησιμώτερον, οὗ μηδεμία ζωὴ φύσις ἄνευ ἵσταται καὶ διαμένει.

Μετίωμεν ἀπὸ τῶν χρωμένων ἐπὶ ταῦθ’ οἷς χρώμεθα, φυτὰ καὶ καρπούς. τούτων ἃ μὲν οὐδ’ ὅλως θερμοῦ μετείληφεν, ἃ δ’ ἥκιστα καὶ ἀδήλως· ἡ δ’ ὑγρὰ φύσις [d] βλαστάνοντα πάντα παρέχεται καὶ αὐξανόμενα καὶ καρποφοροῦντα· καὶ τί με δεῖ καταριθμεῖσθαι μέλι καὶ οἶνον καὶ ἔλαιον καὶ τὰ λοιπά, ὅσα τρυγῶμεν καὶ ἀμέλγομεν καὶ βλίττομεν, ἐν φανερῷ κείμενα, ὅπου γε καὶ ὁ πυρός, δοκῶν εἶναι τῆς ξηρᾶς τροφῆς, μεταβολῇ καὶ σήψει καὶ διαχύσει τοῦ ὑγροῦ γίγνεται;

Καὶ μὴν καὶ χρησιμώτερον ὃ μηδέποτε βλάπτει. πῦρ μὲν οὖν ῥαγδαῖον ὀλεθριώτατον, ἡ δ’ ὕδατος φύσις οὐδέποτε βλαβερά. καὶ μὴν δυεῖν ὠφελιμώτερον τὸ εὐτελέστερον καὶ χωρίς τινος παρασκευῆς τὴν ἐξ αὑτοῦ παρέχον ὠφέλειαν. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἀπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς χορηγίας [e] δεῖται καὶ ὕλης, διὰ τοῦτο μετέχουσιν αὐτοῦ πλέον πλούσιοι πενήτων, βασιλεῖς ἰδιωτῶν· τὸ δ’ ὕδωρ καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔχει φιλάνθρωπον, τὴν ἰσότητα, τὸ ὅμοιον, οὐ δεῖται γὰρ ὀργάνων οὐδ’ ἐργαλείων, ἀπροσδεές, αὐτοτελὲς ἀγαθόν.

Ἔτι μήν, ὃ πολλαπλασιαζόμενον τὴν ὠφέλειαν ἀπόλλυσιν, ἀχρηστότερον· τοιοῦτον δὲ τὸ πῦρ, οἷον θηρίον παμφάγον καὶ δαπανῶν τῶν παρακειμένων, καὶ μεθόδῳ καὶ τέχνῃ μᾶλλον καὶ μετριότητι ‹ἢ› τῇ αὑτοῦ φύσει ὠφέλιμον· τὸ δ’ ὕδωρ οὐδέποτε φοβερόν. καὶ μὴν δυεῖν τὸ μετὰ τοῦ ἑτέρου χρησιμώτερον· πῦρ μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἐπιδέχεται τὸ ὑγρὸν οὐδὲ τῇ δι’ αὐτοῦ κοινωνίᾳ [f] χρήσιμον, ὕδωρ δ’ ἐστὶ μετὰ πυρὸς ὠφέλιμον· τὰ γοῦν θερμὰ τῶν ὑδάτων ἀκέσιμα καὶ πρὸς θεραπείαν εὐαίσθητα. καὶ πῦρ μὲν ὑγρὸν οὐκ ἄν τις εὕροι, ὕδωρ δ’ ὡς ψυχρὸν οὕτω καὶ θερμὸν ὠφέλιμον ἀνθρώπῳ.

Καὶ μὴν τεττάρων ὄντων στοιχείων τὸ ὕδωρ ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ πέμπτον, ὡς ἄν τις εἴποι, πεποίηκε στοιχεῖον [957] [a] τὴν θάλασσαν, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐκείνων ὠφέλιμον τῶν τ’ ἄλλων ἕνεκεν καὶ μάλιστα τῆς ἐπιμιξίας· ἄγριον οὖν ἡμῶν ὄντα καὶ ἀσύμβολον τὸν βίον τοῦτο τὸ στοιχεῖον συνῆψε καὶ τέλειον ἐποίησε, διορθούμενον ταῖς παρ’ ἀλλήλων ἐπικουρίαις καὶ ἀντιδόσεσι, κοινωνίαν δ’ ἐργαζόμενον καὶ φιλίαν. Ἡράκλειτος (B 99) μὲν οὖν ‘εἰ μὴ ἥλιος’ φησίν ‘ἦν, εὐφρόνη ἂν ἦν·’ ἔστι δ’ εἰπεῖν, ὡς, εἰ μὴ θάλαττα ἦν, πάντων ‹ἂν› ἀγριώτατον ζῷον καὶ ἐνδεέστατον ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἦν. νυνὶ δὲ τοῦτο μὲν παρ’ Ἰνδῶν ἄμπελον τοῖς Ἕλλησιν, ἐκ δὲ τῆς Ἑλλάδος καρπῶν χρῆσιν τοῖς ἐπέκεινα [ὁ] τῆς θαλάσσης ἔδωκεν, ἐκ Φοινίκης [b] δὲ γράμματα μνημόσυνα λήθης ἐκόμισε, καὶ ἄοινον καὶ ἄκαρπον καὶ ἀπαίδευτον ἐκώλυσεν εἶναι τὸ πλεῖστον ἀνθρώπων γένος. πῶς οὖν οὐ χρησιμώτερον ὕδωρ στοιχείῳ περιττεῦον;

Ἢ πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἄν τις ἐντεῦθεν †ἔχων λέγοι, διότι τέτταρα μὲν στοιχεῖα θεῷ καθάπερ τεχνίτῃ πρὸς τὴν τῶν ὅλων ἐργασίαν ὑποκείμενα, τούτων δ’ αὖ πάλιν ‹ἐν› ἀλλήλοις διαφοραί, πλὴν γῆ μὲν καὶ ὕδωρ ὑποβέβληται δίκην ὕλης ποιούμενα καὶ πλαττόμενα καὶ μετέχοντα κόσμου καὶ τάξεως καὶ τοῦ φύειν γε [φασί] καὶ γεννᾶν, ὅσον ἂν μεταλάβῃ παρὰ ‹τῶν› ἑτέρων, πνεῦμά ‹φα›μεν καὶ πῦρ, ποιούντων καὶ δημιουργούντων καὶ ‹τὰ› κείμενα [c] νεκρὰ τέως ἐπὶ τὴν γένεσιν ἀνιστάντων. τῶν δὲ δυεῖν τούτων αὖθις τὸ πῦρ ἄρχει καὶ ἡγεμονεύει. δῆλον δ’ ἐκ τῆς ἐπαγωγῆς· γῆ τε γὰρ ἄνευ θερμῆς οὐσίας ἄγονος καὶ ἄκαρπος· τὸ δὲ πῦρ ἐγκραθὲν καὶ διαχέαν παρίστησιν εἰς τὴν γένεσιν ὀργῶντα οὐδεμίαν γὰρ αἰτίαν εὕροι τις ἄν, δι’ ἣν ἄγονοι πέτραι καὶ τὰ κατεσκληκότα τῶν ὀρῶν, πλὴν ὅτι πυρὸς οὐδ’ ὅλως ἢ ὀλίγον μετέσχηκε.

Τὸ δ’ ὅλον τοσοῦτον ἀπέχει πρὸς σωτηρίαν ἢ ἑτέρων γένεσιν αὐτοτελὲς εἶναι, ὥστε καὶ αὐτῷ φθορὰ πυρὸς ἔνδεια· συνέχει γὰρ ἡ θερμότης ἕκαστον ἐν τῷ εἶναι καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς ἰδίας οὐσίας φυλάττει καθάπερ καὶ τἄλλα καὶ [d] τὸ ὕδωρ· ἀπ[εχ]όντος δ’ ἢ ἐνδεήσαντος σήπεται, καὶ θάνατος ὕδατι καὶ ὄλεθρος ἐπίλειψις θερμότητος. ἀμέλει τὰ λιμναῖα καὶ ὅσα στάσιμα τῶν ὑδάτων καί τιν’ ἀδιεξόδοις ἐγκαθήμενα κοιλότησι μοχθηρὰ καὶ τελευτῶντα σήπεται τῷ κινήσεως ἥκιστα μετέχειν, ἣ τὸ θερμὸν ἐν ἑκάστοις ῥιπίζουσα τηρεῖ μάλιστα περὶ τὰ φερόμενα καὶ ῥέοντα τῶν ὑδάτων, ‹ἃ› διὰ τὴν κίνησιν συνεχομένης τῆς θερμότητος οὕτω καὶ προσαγορεύομεν, ζῆν λέγοντες. πῶς τοίνυν δυεῖν οὐκ ὠφελιμώτερον, ὃ τῷ ἑτέρῳ τὴν αἰτίαν τοῦ εἶναι παρέσχηκε, καθάπερ τὸ πῦρ τῷ ὕδατι; καὶ μήν, οὗ παντάπασιν ἀπαλλαγέντος [e] φθείρεται τὸ ζῷον, τοῦτ’ ὠφελιμώτερον· δῆλον γὰρ ὡς, [τὸ] οὗ στερούμενον οὐκ ἔστιν εἶναι, τοῦτο καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν παρέσχηκεν, ὅτ’ ἦν. ὑγρότης μὲν οὖν καὶ τοῖς τεθνηκόσι πάρεστι καὶ οὐκ ἐξῄρηται παντάπασιν· ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἂν ἐσήπετο τὰ νεκρὰ τῶν σωμάτων, τῆς σήψεως εἰς ὑγρὸν οὔσης ἐκ ξηροῦ μεταβολῆς, μᾶλλον δ’ ὑγρῶν ἐν σαρκὶ φθορᾶς. θάνατος δ’ οὐκ ἄλλο τι πλὴν ἔκλειψις θερμοῦ παντελής· ψυχρότατοι τοίνυν οἱ νεκροί, καὶ τὰς ἀκμάς, εἴ τις ἐπιχειροίη, τῶν ξυρῶν ἀπαμβλύνουσι δι’ ὑπερβολὴν ψυχρότητος. καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ δὲ τῷ ζῴῳ τὰ ἥκιστα μετέχοντα ἀναισθητότατα, καθάπερ ὀστᾶ καὶ τρίχες καὶ [f] τὰ πόρρωθεν ἀφεστῶτα τῆς καρδίας· σχεδὸν γὰρ ἡ πρὸς τὰ μὴ ζῶ‹ντα τῶν ζών›των ἐκ τῆς τοῦ πυρὸς γίγνεται παρουσίας διαφορά. φυτὰ μὲν γὰρ καὶ καρποὺς οὐχ ἡ ὑγρότης ἀναδίδωσιν ἀλλ’ ἡ θερμὴ ὑγρότης· ἀμέλει τὰ ψυχρὰ τῶν ὑδάτων ἧττον ἢ οὐδ’ ὅλως γόνιμα. καίτοι γ’ εἰ τῇ αὑτοῦ φύσει τὸ ὕδωρ καρποφόρον, δεῖ πάντοτε καὶ [958] [a] καθ’ αὑτὸ ἀναφέρειν καρπούς· τὸ δὲ τοὐναντίον καὶ βλαβερόν ἐστιν.

Ἀπ’ ἄλλης ἀρχῆς. πρὸς μὲν τὴν πυρὸς ὡς πυρὸς χρῆσιν ὕδατος οὐ προσδεόμεθα, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον ἐμποδὼν γίγνεται· κατασβέννυσι γὰρ καὶ διαφθείρει. ὕδατος δὲ τοῖς πλείστοις χρῆσις οὐκ ἔστιν ἄνευ πυρός· θερμανθὲν γὰρ ὠφέλιμον, ‹καθ’› αὑτὸ δὲ βλαβερόν. ὥστε δυεῖν ἄμεινον, ὃ ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ παρέχεται χρείαν, τοῦ ἑτέρου μὴ προσδεόμενον. ἔτι ὕδωρ μὲν μοναχῶς ὠφέλιμον κατὰ θίξιν λουσαμένοις ἢ ἁψαμένοις, τὸ δὲ πῦρ διὰ πάσης αἰσθήσεως, καὶ γὰρ διὰ τῆς ἁφῆς καὶ πόρρωθεν ὁρώμενον· ὥστε προσεῖναι τοῖς ἄλλοις τῆς χρείας αὐτοῦ καὶ [b] τὴν ποικιλίαν.

Τὸ γὰρ λέγειν ὡς ἔστι ποτὲ ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἄνευ πυρὸς οὐδ’ ὅλως δύναται γενέσθαι ὁ ἄνθρωπος. διαφοραὶ δ’ εἰσὶν ἐν γένει καθάπερ καὶ ἐν ἄλλοις. καὶ τὴν θάλατταν ἡ θερμότης ὠφελιμωτέραν ἐποίησεν, ὡς †καταθέρει τῶν ὑδάτων, ἐπεὶ καθ’ αὑτήν γε τῶν λοιπῶν οὐδὲν διέφερε. καὶ οἱ μὴ προσδεόμενοι δὲ τοῦ ἔξωθεν πυρὸς οὐχ ὡς ἀπροσδεεῖς τοῦτο πάσχουσιν, ἀλλὰ περιουσίᾳ καὶ πλεονασμῷ τοῦ ἐν αὑτοῖς θερμοῦ· ὥστε καὶ κατὰ τοῦθ’ ὑπερέχειν τὴν τοῦ πυρὸς χρείαν, ὡς εἰκός. τὸ μὲν ὕδωρ οὐδέποτε τοιοῦτον, ὥστε μὴ δεῖσθαι τῶν ἐκτός, τὸ [c] δὲ πῦρ ὑπ’ ἀρετῆς πολλῆς καὶ αὔταρκες. ὡς οὖν στρατηγὸς ἀμείνων ὁ παρασκευάσας τὴν πόλιν μὴ δεῖσθαι τῶν ἔξωθεν συμμάχων, οὕτω καὶ στοιχεῖον τὸ τῆς ἔξωθεν ἐπικουρίας παρέχον πολλάκις μὴ δεομένους. τοῦτο ῥητέον [πολλάκις] καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων, ὅσα μὴ πυρὸς δεῖται. καίτοι γ’ εἰς τοὐναντίον λάβοι τις ἄν, τὸ χρησιμώτερον εἶναι τοῦτο, ᾧ χρώμεθα μόνοι καὶ μάλιστα ‹οἱ› τὸ βέλτιον ἐκ λογισμοῦ λαβεῖν δυνάμενοι· ἐπεὶ τί λόγου χρησιμώτερον ἢ †μᾶλλον ἀνθρώποις λυσιτελέστερον; ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ πάρεστι τοῖς ἀλόγοις·’ τί οὖν; διὰ τοῦθ’ ἧττον ὠφέλιμον ‹τὸ› ἐκ τῆς προνοίας τοῦ βελτίονος εὑρεθέν;

[d] Ἐπεὶ δὲ κατὰ τοῦτο τοῦ λόγου γεγόναμεν, τί τέχνης τῷ βίῳ λυσιτελέστερον; τέχνας δὲ πάσας καὶ ἀνεῦρε τὸ πῦρ καὶ σῴζει· διὸ καὶ τὸν Ἥφαιστον ἀρχηγὸν αὐτῶν ποιοῦσι. καὶ μὴν ὀλίγου χρόνου καὶ βίου τοῖς ἀνθρώποις δεδομένου ὁ μὲν Ἀρίστων (SVF I 403) φησὶν ὅτι ὁ ὕπνος οἷον τελώνης τὸ ἥμισυ ἀφαιρεῖ τούτου· ἐγὼ δ’ ἂν εἴποιμι †διόπερ σκότος ἐγρήγορεν ἀεὶ διὰ νυκτός, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ὄφελος τῆς ἐγρηγόρσεως, εἰ μὴ τὸ πῦρ τὰ τῆς ἡμέρας ἡμῖν παρεῖχεν ἀγαθά, καὶ τὴν ‹πρὸς› ἡμέραν νυκτὸς ἐξῄρει διαφοράν. εἰ τοίνυν τοῦ ζῆν οὐδὲν ἀνθρώποις λυσιτελέστερον καὶ τοῦτο πολλαπλασιάζει τὸ πῦρ, πῶς οὐκ ἂν εἴη πάντων ὠφελιμώτατον;

Καὶ μήν, οὗ πλεῖστον ἡ κρατίστη τῶν αἰσθήσεων [e] μετείληφεν, οὐκ ἂν εἴη λυσιτελέστατον; οὐχ ὁρᾷς οὖν, ὡς τῇ μὲν ὑγρᾷ φύσει οὐδεμία τῶν αἰσθήσεων καθ’ αὑτὴν προσχρῆται χωρὶς πνεύματος ἢ πυρὸς ἐγκεκραμένου, τοῦ δὲ πυρὸς ἅπασα μὲν αἴσθησις, οἷον τὸ ζωτικὸν ἐνεργαζομένου, μετείληφεν, ἐξαιρέτως δ’ ἡ ὄψις, ἥτις ὀξυτάτη τῶν διὰ σώματός ἐστιν αἰσθήσεων, πυρὸς ἔξαμμα οὖσα; καὶ ὅτι θεῶν πίστιν παρέσχηκεν· ἔτι τε, ᾗ Πλάτων (Tim. 47b) φησί, δυνάμεθα κατασχηματίζειν πρὸς τὰς τῶν ἐν οὐρανῷ κινήσεις τὴν ψυχὴν διὰ τῆς ὄψεως.

De sollertia animalium

ΠΟΤΕΡΑ ΤΩΝ ΖΩΙΩΝ ΦΡΟΝΙΜΩΤΕΡΑ, ΤΑ ΧΕΡΣΑΙΑ Η ΤΑ ΕΝΥΔΡΑ

[959] ΑΥ. Τὸν Τυρταῖον ὁ Λεωνίδας ἐρωτηθεὶς ποῖόν τινα [b] νομίζοι ποιητήν, ‘ἀγαθόν’ ἔφη ‘νέων ψυχὰς κακκονῆν’, ὡς τοῖς νέοις διὰ τῶν ἐπῶν ὁρμὴν ἐμποιοῦντα μετὰ θυμοῦ καὶ φιλοτιμίας, ἐν ταῖς μάχαις ἀφειδοῦσιν αὑτῶν. δέδια δή, ὦ φίλοι, μὴ καὶ τὸ τῆς κυνηγεσίας ἐγκώμιον ἐχθὲς ἀνεγνωσμένον ἐπάρῃ τοῦ μετρίου πέρα τοὺς φιλοθήρους ἡμῖν νεανίσκους, ὥστε τἄλλα πάρεργα καὶ τὸ μηδὲν ἡγεῖσθαι, πρὸς τοῦτο παντάπασι ῥυέντας· ὅπου δοκῶ μοι καὶ αὐτὸς ἐκ νέας αὖθις ἀρχῆς παρ’ ἡλικίαν ἐμπαθέστερος γεγονέναι καὶ ποθεῖν, ὥσπερ ἡ Εὐριπίδου Φαίδρα (Hipp. 218 sq.), ‘κυσὶ θωΰξαι βαλιαῖς ἐλάφοις [c] ἐγχριμπτόμενος’· οὕτως ἔθιγέ μου πυκνὰ καὶ πιθανὰ τῶν ἐπιχειρημάτων ἐπάγων ὁ λόγος.

Σ. Ἀληθῆ λέγεις, ὦ Αὐτόβουλε· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ἔδοξέ μοι τὸ ῥητορικὸν ἐγεῖραι διὰ χρόνου, χαριζόμενος καὶ συνεαρίζων τοῖς μειρακίοις· μάλιστα δ’ ἥσθην τοὺς μονομάχους αὐτοῦ παραθέντος, ὡς οὐχ ἥκιστα τὴν θηρευτικὴν ἄξιον ἐπαινεῖν, ὅτι τοῦ πεφυκότος ἐν ἡμῖν ἢ μεμαθηκότος χαίρειν μάχαις ἀνδρῶν πρὸς ἀλλήλους διὰ σιδήρου τὸ πολὺ δεῦρο τρέψασα καθαρὰν παρέχει θέαν, ἅμα τέχνης καὶ τόλμης νοῦν ἐχούσης πρὸς ἀνόητον ἰσχὺν καὶ βίαν ἀντιταττομένης καὶ ἐπαινούσης τὸ Εὐριπίδειον (fr. 27)

‘ἦ βραχύ τοι σθένος ἀνέρος. ἀλλὰ

[d] ποικιλίᾳ πραπίδων

δεινὰ μὲν πόντου χθονίων τ’ ὀρέων

δάμναται παιδεύματα.’

ΑΥ. Καὶ μὴν ἐκεῖθεν, ὦ φίλε Σώκλαρε, φασὶν ἥκειν ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους τὴν ἀπάθειαν καὶ τὴν ἀγριότητα γευσαμένην φόνου καὶ προεθισθεῖσαν ἐν ταῖς ἄγραις καὶ τοῖς κυνηγεσίοις αἷμα καὶ τραύματα ζῴων μὴ δυσχεραίνειν ἀλλὰ χαίρειν σφαττομένοις καὶ ἀποθνήσκουσιν. εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἐν Ἀθήναις πρῶτός τις ὑπὸ τῶν τριάκοντα συκοφάντης ἀποθανὼν ἐπιτήδειος ἐλέχθη, καὶ δεύτερος ὁμοίως καὶ τρίτος, ἐκ τούτου δὲ κατὰ μικρὸν ἤδη προϊόντες ἥπτοντο τῶν ἐπιεικῶν καὶ τέλος οὐδὲ τῶν ἀρίστων ἀπέσχοντο πολιτῶν, [e] οὕτως ὁ πρῶτος ἄρκτον ἀνελὼν ἢ λύκον εὐδοκίμησε, καὶ βοῦς τις ἢ σῦς αἰτίαν ἔσχε προκειμένων ἱερῶν γευσάμενος [ἐπιτήδειος ἀποθανεῖν]· ἔλαφοι δὲ τοὐντεῦθεν ἤδη καὶ λαγωοὶ καὶ δορκάδες ἐσθιόμενοι προβάτων καὶ κυνῶν ἐνιαχοῦ καὶ ἵππων κρέα προυξένησαν· τιθασὸν δὲ χῆνα καὶ περιστεράν, ‘ἐφέστιον οἰκέτιν’ τὸ Σοφοκλέους (fr. 782), οὐχ ὡς γαλαῖ καὶ αἴλουροι τροφῆς ἕνεκα διὰ λιμόν, ἀλλ’ ἐφ’ ἡδονῇ καὶ ὄψῳ διασπῶντες καὶ κατακόπτοντες ὅσον ‹ἔν›εστι τῇ φύσει φονικὸν καὶ θηριῶδες ἔρρωσαν καὶ πρὸς οἶκτον ἀκαμπὲς ἀπειργάσαντο, τοῦ δ’ [f] ἡμέρου τὸ πλεῖστον ἀπήμβλυναν· ὥσπερ αὖ πάλιν οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ τὴν πρὸς τὰ θηρία πραότητα μελέτην ἐποιήσαντο [960] [a] πρὸς τὸ φιλάνθρωπον καὶ φιλοίκτιρμον· ἡ γὰρ συνήθεια δεινὴ τοῖς κατὰ μικρὸν ἐνοικειουμένοις πάθεσι πόρρω προαγαγεῖν τὸν ἄνθρωπον. ἀλλ’ οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως ἐν λόγοις γεγονότες λελήθαμεν οὔτε τῶν χθὲς ἡμῖν γεγονότων οὔτε τῶν τάχα δὴ γενησομένων σήμερον ἀπηρτημένοις. ‹ἀποφηνάμενοι› γὰρ ἐχθές, ὡς οἶσθα, μετέχειν ἁμωσγέπως πάντα τὰ ζῷα διανοίας καὶ λογισμοῦ παρέσχομεν οὐκ ἄμουσον οὐδ’ ἄχαριν τοῖς θηρατικοῖς νεανίσκοις περὶ συνέσεως θηρίων ἐνάλων τε καὶ πεζῶν ἅμιλλαν, ἣν σήμερον, ὡς ἔοικε, βραβεύσομεν, ἄν γε δὴ ταῖς προκλήσεσιν οἱ περὶ Ἀριστότιμον καὶ Φαίδιμον ἐμμείνωσιν· [b] ἐκείνων γὰρ ὁ μὲν τῆς γῆς ὡς διαφέροντα τῷ φρονεῖν ζῷα γεννώσης ἐπεδίδου τοῖς ἑταίροις συνήγορον ἑαυτόν, ὁ δὲ τῆς θαλάττης.

Σ. Ἐμμένουσιν, ὦ Αὐτόβουλε, καὶ ὅσον οὔπω πάρεισι· συντασσομένους γὰρ αὐτοὺς ἕωθεν ἑώρων. ἀλλ’ εἰ βούλει, πρὸ τοῦ ἀγῶνος ὅσα τοῖς ἐχθὲς λόγοις προσήκοντα λεχθῆναι καιρὸν οὐκ ἔσχεν ἢ σὺν οἴνῳ καὶ παρὰ πότον οὐ μετὰ σπουδῆς ἐλέχθη πρὸς αὑτοὺς ἀναλάβωμεν. ἐδόκει γάρ τι πραγματικῶς οἷον ἀντηχεῖν ἐκ τῆς Στοᾶς, ὡς τῷ θνητῷ τὸ ἀθάνατον ἀντίκειται καὶ τῷ φθαρτῷ τὸ ἄφθαρτον καὶ σώματί γε τὸ ἀσώματον, οὕτως ὑπάρχοντι [c] τῷ λογικῷ χρῆναι τὸ ἄλογον ἀντικεῖσθαι καὶ ἀνθυπάρχειν καὶ μὴ μόνην ἐν τοσαῖσδε συζυγίαις ἀτελῆ τήνδε λείπεσθαι καὶ πεπηρωμένην.

ΑΥ. Τίς δ’, ὦ φίλε Σώκλαρε, τοῦτ’ ἠξίωσεν, ὄντος ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι τοῦ λογικοῦ, μὴ εἶναι τὸ ἄλογον; πολὺ γάρ ἐστι καὶ ἄφθονον ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ψυχῆς ἀμοιροῦσι καὶ οὐδὲν ἑτέρας δεόμεθα πρὸς τὸ λογικὸν ἀντιθέσεως, ἀλλὰ πᾶν εὐθὺς τὸ ἄψυχον ὡς ἄλογον καὶ ἀνόητον ἀντίκειται τῷ μετὰ ψυχῆς λόγον ἔχοντι καὶ διάνοιαν. εἰ δέ τις ἀξιοῖ μὴ κολοβὸν εἶναι τὴν φύσιν ἀλλὰ τὴν ἔμψυχον φύσιν ἔχειν τὸ μὲν λογικὸν τὸ δ’ ἄλογον, ἕτερος ἀξιώσει τὴν [d] ἔμψυχον φύσιν ἔχειν τὸ μὲν φανταστικὸν τὸ δ’ ἀφαντασίωτον, καὶ τὸ μὲν αἰσθητικὸν τὸ δ’ ἀναίσθητον· ἵνα δὴ τὰς ἀντιζύγους ταύτας καὶ ἀντιθέτους ἕξεις καὶ στερήσεις περὶ ταὐτὸν ἡ φύσις ἔχῃ γένος οἷον ἰσορροπούσας. εἰ δ’ ἄτοπος ὁ ζητῶν τοῦ ἐμψύχου τὸ μὲν αἰσθητικὸν τὸ δ’ ἀναίσθητον εἶναι, καὶ τὸ μὲν φαντασιούμενον τὸ δ’ ἀφαντασίωτον, ὅτι πᾶν τὸ ἔμψυχον αἰσθητικὸν εὐθὺς εἶναι καὶ φανταστικὸν πέφυκεν, οὐδ’ οὗτος ἐπιεικῶς ἀπαιτήσει τὸ μὲν λογικὸν εἶναι τοῦ ἐμψύχου τὸ δ’ ἄλογον, πρὸς ἀνθρώπους διαλεγόμενος μηδὲ ἓν οἰομένους αἰσθήσεως μετέχειν ὃ μὴ καὶ συνέσεως, μηδ’ εἶναι ζῷον ᾧ μὴ δόξα τις καὶ λογισμὸς ὥσπερ αἴσθησις καὶ [e] ὁρμὴ κατὰ φύσιν πάρεστιν. ἡ γὰρ φύσις, ἣν ἕνεκά του καὶ πρός τι πάντα ποιεῖν ὀρθῶς λέγουσιν, οὐκ ἐπὶ ψιλῷ τῷ πάσχον τι αἰσθάνεσθαι τὸ ζῷον αἰσθητικὸν ἐποίησεν· ἀλλ’ ὄντων μὲν οἰκείων πρὸς αὐτὸ πολλῶν ὄντων δ’ ἀλλοτρίων, οὐδ’ ἀκαρὲς ἦν περιεῖναι μὴ μαθόντι τὰ μὲν φυλάττεσθαι τοῖς δὲ συμφέρεσθαι. τὴν μὲν οὖν γνῶσιν ἀμφοῖν ὁμοίως ἡ αἴσθησις ἑκάστῳ παρέχει· τὰς δ’ ἑπομένας τῇ αἰσθήσει τῶν μὲν ὠφελίμων λήψεις καὶ διώξεις, διακρούσεις δὲ καὶ φυγὰς τῶν ὀλεθρίων καὶ λυπηρῶν οὐδεμία μηχανὴ ‹παρεῖναι› τοῖς μὴ λογίζεσθαί τι καὶ [f] κρίνειν καὶ μνημονεύειν καὶ προσέχειν πεφυκόσιν· ἀλλ’ ὧν ἂν ἀφέλῃς παντάπασι προσδοκίαν μνήμην πρόθεσιν παρασκευὴν τὸ ἐλπίζειν τὸ δεδοικέναι τὸ ἐπιθυμεῖν τὸ ἀσχάλλειν, οὔτ’ ὀμμάτων ὄφελος οὐδὲν αὐτοῖς παρόντων οὔτ’ ὤτων· αἰσθήσεώς τε πάσης καὶ φαντασίας τὸ χρώμενον οὐκ ἐχούσης ἀπηλλάχθαι βέλτιον ἢ πονεῖν καὶ λυπεῖσθαι [961] [a] καὶ ἀλγεῖν, ᾧ διακρούσεται ταῦτα μὴ παρόντος. καίτοι Στράτωνός γε τοῦ φυσικοῦ λόγος ἐστὶν ἀποδεικνύων ὡς οὐδ’ αἰσθάνεσθαι τὸ παράπαν ἄνευ τοῦ νοεῖν ὑπάρχει· καὶ γὰρ γράμματα πολλάκις ἐπιπορευομένους τῇ ὄψει καὶ λόγοι προσπίπτοντες τῇ ἀκοῇ διαλανθάνουσιν ἡμᾶς καὶ διαφεύγουσι πρὸς ἑτέροις τὸν νοῦν ἔχοντας· εἶτ’ αὖθις ἐπανῆλθε καὶ μεταθεῖ καὶ διώκει τῶν προϊεμένων ἕκαστον ἀναλεγόμενος· ᾗ καὶ λέλεκται (Epich. fr. 249)

‘νοῦς ὁρῇ καὶ νοῦς ἀκούει, τἄλλα κωφὰ καὶ τυφλά’,

ὡς τοῦ περὶ τὰ ὄμματα καὶ ὦτα πάθους, ἂν μὴ παρῇ τὸ φρονοῦν, αἴσθησιν οὐ ποιοῦντος. διὸ καὶ Κλεομένης ὁ [b] βασιλεύς, παρὰ πότον εὐδοκιμοῦντος ἀκροάματος, ἐρωτηθεὶς εἰ μὴ φαίνεται σπουδαῖον, ἐκέλευσεν ἐκείνους σκοπεῖν, αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ τὸν νοῦν ἔχειν. ὅθεν ἀνάγκη πᾶσιν, οἷς ἂν τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι, καὶ τὸ νοεῖν ὑπάρχειν, εἰ τῷ νοεῖν αἰσθάνεσθαι πεφύκαμεν. ἔστω δὲ μὴ δεῖσθαι τοῦ νοῦ τὴν αἴσθησιν πρὸς τὸ αὑτῆς ἔργον· ἀλλ’ ὅταν γε τῷ ζῴῳ πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον καὶ τὸ ἀλλότριον ἡ αἴσθησις ἐνεργασαμένη διαφορὰν ἀπέλθῃ, τί τὸ μνημονεῦόν ἐστιν ἤδη καὶ δεδιὸς τὰ λυποῦντα καὶ ποθοῦν τὰ ὠφέλιμα καί, μὴ παρόντων, ὅπως παρέσται μηχανώμενον [c] ἐν αὐτοῖς καὶ παρασκευαζόμενον ὁρμητήρια καὶ καταφυγὰς καὶ θήρατρα πάλιν αὖ τοῖς ἁλωσομένοις καὶ ἀποδράσεις τῶν ἐπιτιθεμένων; καὶ ταυτί γε κἀκεῖνοι λέγοντες ἀποκναίουσιν, ἐν ταῖς εἰσαγωγαῖς ἑκάστοτε τὴν ‘πρόθεσιν’ ὁριζόμενοι ‘σημείωσιν ἐπιτελειώσεως’, τὴν δ’ ‘ἐπιβολὴν’ ‘ὁρμὴν πρὸ ὁρμῆς’, ‘παρασκευὴν’ δὲ ‘πρᾶξιν πρὸ πράξεως’, ‘μνήμην’ δὲ ‘κατάληψιν ἀξιώματος παρεληλυθότος, οὗ τὸ παρὸν ἐξ αἰσθήσεως κατελήφθη’. τούτων γὰρ οὐδὲν ὅ τι μὴ λογικόν ἐστι, καὶ πάντα τοῖς ζῴοις ὑπάρχει πᾶσιν· ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς νοήσεις, ἃς ἐναποκειμένας μὲν ‘ἐννοίας’ καλοῦσι κινουμένας δὲ [d] ‘διανοήσεις’. τὰ δὲ πάθη σύμπαντα κοινῶς ‘κρίσεις φαύλας καὶ δόξας’ ὁμολογοῦντες εἶναι, θαυμαστὸν ὅτι δὴ παρορῶσιν ἐν τοῖς θηρίοις ἔργα καὶ κινήματα πολλὰ μὲν θυμῶν πολλὰ δὲ φόβων καὶ ναὶ μὰ Δία φθόνων καὶ ζηλοτυπιῶν· αὐτοὶ δὲ καὶ κύνας ἁμαρτάνοντας καὶ ἵππους κολάζουσιν, οὐ διὰ κενῆς ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ σωφρονισμῷ, λύπην δι’ ἀλγηδόνος ἐμποιοῦντες αὐτοῖς, ἣν μετάνοιαν ὀνομάζομεν. ἡδονῆς δὲ τῷ μὲν δι’ ὤτων ὄνομα κήλησίς ἐστι τῷ δὲ δι’ ὀμμάτων γοητεία· χρῶνται δ’ ἑκατέροις ἐπὶ τὰ θηρία. κηλοῦνται μὲν ‹γὰρ› ἔλαφοι καὶ ἵπποι σύριγξι καὶ [e] αὐλοῖς, καὶ τοὺς παγούρους ἐκ τῶν χηραμῶν ἀνακαλοῦνται βιαζόμενοι ταῖς φώτιγξι, καὶ τὴν θρίσσαν ᾀδόντων καὶ κροτούντων ἀναδύεσθαι καὶ προϊέναι λέγουσιν. ὁ δ’ ὦτος αὖ πάλιν ἁλίσκεται γοητευόμενος, ὀρχουμένων ἐν ὄψει μεθ’ ἡδονῆς ἅμα ῥυθμῷ γλιχόμενος τοὺς ὤμους συνδιαφέρειν. οἱ δὲ περὶ τούτων ἀβελτέρως λέγοντες μήθ’ ἥδεσθαι μήτε θυμοῦσθαι μήτε φοβεῖσθαι μήτε παρασκευάζεσθαι μήτε μνημονεύειν, ἀλλ’ ‘ὡσανεὶ μνημονεύειν’ τὴν μέλιτταν καὶ ‘ὡσανεὶ παρασκευάζεσθαι’ τὴν χελιδόνα καὶ ‘ὡσανεὶ θυμοῦσθαι’ τὸν λέοντα καὶ ‘ὡσανεὶ φοβεῖσθαι’ τὴν ἔλαφον, οὐκ οἶδα τί χρήσονται τοῖς [f] λέγουσι μηδὲ βλέπειν μηδ’ ἀκούειν ἀλλ’ ‘ὡσανεὶ βλέπειν’ αὐτὰ καὶ ‘ὡσανεὶ ἀκούειν’, μηδὲ φωνεῖν ἀλλ’ ‘ὡσανεὶ φωνεῖν’, μηδ’ ὅλως ζῆν ἀλλ’ ‘ὡσανεὶ ζῆν’· ταῦτα γὰρ ἐκείνων οὐ μᾶλλόν ἐστι λεγόμενα παρὰ τὴν ἐνάργειαν, ὡς ἐγὼ πείθομαι.

Σ. Κἀμὲ τοίνυν, ὦ Αὐτόβουλε, ταῦτά γε τίθει πειθόμενον· τῷ δὲ τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις ἤθεσι καὶ βίοις καὶ [962] [a] πράξεσι καὶ διαίταις τὰ τῶν ζῴων παρατιθέναι ἄλλην τε πολλὴν ἐνορῶν φλαυρότητα καὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς, πρὸς ἣν ὁ λόγος γέγονε, μηδέν’ ἐμφανῆ στοχασμὸν αὐτῶν μηδὲ προκοπὴν μηδ’ ὄρεξιν, ἀπορῶ πῶς ἡ φύσις ἔδωκε τὴν ἀρχὴν αὐτοῖς, ἐπὶ τὸ τέλος ἐξικέσθαι μὴ δυναμένοις.

ΑΥ. Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν οὐδ’ αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις, ὦ Σώκλαρε, τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἄτοπον εἶναι δοκεῖ· τὴν γοῦν πρὸς τὰ ἔγγονα φιλοστοργίαν ἀρχὴν μὲν ἡμῖν κοινωνίας καὶ δικαιοσύνης τιθέμενοι, πολλὴν δὲ τοῖς ζῴοις καὶ ἰσχυρὰν ὁρῶντες παροῦσαν, οὔ φασιν αὐτοῖς οὐδ’ ἀξιοῦσι μετεῖναι [b] δικαιοσύνης· ἡμιόνοις δὲ τῶν γεννητικῶν μορίων οὐδὲν ἐνδεῖ, καὶ γὰρ αἰδοῖα καὶ μήτρας καὶ τὸ χρῆσθαι μεθ’ ἡδονῆς τούτοις ἔχουσαι πρὸς τὸ τέλος οὐκ ἐξικνοῦνται τῆς γενέσεως. σκόπει δ’ ἄλλως, μὴ καὶ καταγέλαστόν ἐστι τοὺς Σωκράτεις καὶ τοὺς Πλάτωνας οὐδὲν ἐλαφροτέρᾳ κακίᾳ τοῦ τυχόντος ἀνδραπόδου συνεῖναι φάσκοντας, ἀλλ’ ὁμοίως ἄφρονας εἶναι καὶ ἀκολάστους καὶ ἀδίκους, εἶτα τῶν θηρίων αἰτιᾶσθαι τὸ μὴ καθαρὸν μηδ’ ἀπηκριβωμένον πρὸς ἀρετὴν ὡς στέρησιν οὐχὶ φαυλότητα λόγου καὶ ἀσθένειαν, καὶ ταῦτα τὴν κακίαν ὁμολογοῦντας εἶναι [c] λογικήν, ἧς πᾶν θηρίον ἀναπέπλησται· καὶ γὰρ δειλίαν πολλοῖς καὶ ἀκολασίαν ἀδικίαν τε καὶ κακοήθειαν ὁρῶμεν ‹ἐν›υπάρχουσαν. ὁ δ’ ἀξιῶν τὸ μὴ πεφυκὸς ὀρθότητα λόγου δέχεσθαι ‹μηδὲ λόγον δέχεσθαι› πρῶτον μὲν οὐδὲν διαφέρει τοῦ μήτε πίθηκον αἴσχους φύσει μετέχειν μήτε χελώνην βραδυτῆτος ἀξιοῦντος, ὅτι μηδὲ κάλλους ἐπιδεκτικὰ μηδὲ τάχους ἐστίν· ἔπειτα τὴν διαφορὰν ἐμποδὼν οὖσαν οὐ συνορᾷ· λόγος μὲν γὰρ ἐγγίγνεται φύσει, σπουδαῖος δὲ λόγος καὶ τέλειος ἐξ ἐπιμελείας καὶ διδασκαλίας· διὸ τοῦ λογικοῦ πᾶσι τοῖς ἐμψύχοις μέτεστιν, ἣν δὲ ζητοῦσιν ὀρθότητα καὶ σοφίαν οὐδ’ ἄνθρωπον εἰπεῖν κεκτημένον ἔχουσιν. ὡς γὰρ ὄψεώς ἐστι πρὸς ὄψιν [d] διαφορὰ καὶ πτήσεως πρὸς πτῆσιν (οὐ γὰρ ὁμοίως ἱέρακες βλέπουσι καὶ τέττιγες οὐδ’ ἀετοὶ πέτονται καὶ πέρδικες), οὕτως οὐδὲ παντὶ λογικῷ μέτεστιν ὡσαύτως τῆς εὑρομένης τὸ ἄκρον εὐστροφίας καὶ ὀξύτητος· ἐπεὶ δείγματά γε πολλὰ κοινωνίας καὶ ἀνδρείας καὶ τοῦ πανούργου περὶ τοὺς πορισμοὺς καὶ τὰς οἰκονομίας ὥσπερ αὖ καὶ τῶν ἐναντίων, ἀδικίας δειλίας ἀβελτερίας, ἔνεστιν αὐτοῖς. καὶ μαρτυρεῖ τὸ νυνὶ πεποιηκὸς ἐν τοῖς νεανίσκοις τὴν ἅμιλλαν· ὡς γὰρ οὔσης τινὸς διαφορᾶς, οἱ μὲν τὰ χερσαῖά φασιν οἱ δὲ τὰ θαλάσσια μᾶλλον προῆχθαι φύσει [e] πρὸς ἀρετήν· ὃ δὴ καὶ δῆλόν ἐστι, παραβαλλομένων πελαργοῖς ἵππων ποταμίων (οἱ μὲν γὰρ τρέφουσι τοὺς πατέρας οἱ δ’ ἀποκτιννύουσιν ἵνα τὰς μητέρας ὀχεύωσι) καὶ περιστεραῖς περδίκων· οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἀφανίζουσι τὰ ᾠὰ καὶ διαφθείρουσι, τῆς θηλείας, ὅταν ἐπῳάζῃ, μὴ προσδεχομένης τὴν ὀχείαν, οἱ δὲ καὶ διαδέχονται τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν, ἐν μέρει θάλποντες τὰ ᾠά, καὶ ψωμίζουσι πρότεροι τὰ νεόττια, καὶ τὴν θήλειαν, ἂν πλείονα χρόνον ἀποπλανηθῇ, κόπτων ὁ ἄρρην εἰσελαύνει πρὸς τὰ ᾠὰ καὶ τοὺς νεοττούς. ὄνοις δὲ καὶ προβάτοις Ἀντίπατρος (fr. 47) [f] ἐγκαλῶν ὀλιγωρίαν καθαριότητος οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως παρεῖδε τὰς λύγγας καὶ τὰς χελιδόνας, ὧν αἱ μὲν ἐκτοπίζουσι παντάπασι κρύπτουσαι καὶ ἀφανίζουσαι τὸ λυγγούριον, αἱ δὲ χελιδόνες ἔξω στρεφομένους διδάσκουσι τοὺς νεοττοὺς ἀφιέναι τὸ περίττωμα. καίτοι διὰ τί δένδρου δένδρον οὐ λέγομεν ἀμαθέστερον ὡς κυνὸς πρόβατον, οὐδὲ λαχάνου [963] [a] λάχανον ἀνανδρότερον ὡς ἔλαφον λέοντος; ἢ καθάπερ ἐν τοῖς ἀκινήτοις ἕτερον ἑτέρου βραδύτερον οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲ μικροφωνότερον ἐν τοῖς ἀναύδοις, οὕτως οὐδὲ δειλότερον οὐδὲ νωθρότερον οὐδ’ ἀκρατέστερον, οἷς μὴ φύσει πάρεστιν ἡ τοῦ φρονεῖν δύναμις, ἄλλοις δ’ ἄλλως κατὰ τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον παροῦσα τὰς ὁρωμένας διαφορὰς πεποίηκεν;

Σ. Ἀλλὰ θαυμαστὸν ὅσον ἄνθρωπος εὐμαθείᾳ καὶ ἀγχινοίᾳ καὶ τοῖς περὶ δικαιοσύνην καὶ κοινωνίαν διαφέρει τῶν ζῴων.

ΑΥ. Καὶ γὰρ ἐκείνων, ὦ ἑταῖρε, πολλὰ τοῦτο μὲν μεγέθει καὶ ποδωκείᾳ τοῦτο δ’ ὄψεως ῥώμῃ καὶ ἀκοῆς ἀκριβείᾳ πάντας ἀνθρώπους ἀπολέλοιπεν· ἀλλ’ οὐ διὰ [b] τοῦτο τυφλὸς οὐδ’ ἀδύνατος οὐδ’ ἄωτος ὁ ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν· ἀλλὰ καὶ ‹θέομεν εἰ καὶ βραδύτερον ἐλάφων, καὶ βλέπομεν εἰ καὶ› χεῖρον ἱεράκων, ἰσχύος τε καὶ μεγέθους ἡ φύσις ἡμᾶς οὐκ ἀπεστέρησεν, καίτοι τὸ μηδὲν ἐν τούτοις πρὸς ἐλέφαντα καὶ κάμηλον ὄντας. οὐκοῦν ὁμοίως μηδὲ τὰ θηρία λέγωμεν, εἰ νωθρότερον φρονεῖ καὶ κάκιον διανοεῖται, μὴ διανοεῖσθαι μηδὲ φρονεῖν ὅλως μηδὲ κεκτῆσθαι λόγον, ἀσθενῆ δὲ κεκτῆσθαι καὶ θολερόν, ὥσπερ ὀφθαλμὸν ἀμβλυώττοντα καὶ τεταραγμένον. εἰ δὲ μὴ πολλὰ τοὺς νεανίσκους αὐτίκα δὴ μάλα προσεδόκων τὸν μὲν ἐκ γῆς τὸν δ’ ἐκ θαλάττης ἐνταῦθα συνερανίσειν, [c] φιλολόγους καὶ φιλογραμμάτους ὄντας, οὐκ ἂν ἀπεσχόμην σου μυρία μὲν εὐμαθείας μυρία δ’ εὐφυΐας παραδείγματα θηρίων διηγούμενος, ὧν ἄμαις καὶ σκάφαις ἡμῖν ἐκ τῶν βασιλικῶν ἀρύσασθαι θεάτρων ἡ καλὴ Ῥώμη παρέσχηκε. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐκείνοις νεαρὰ καὶ ἄθικτα πρὸς τὸν λόγον ἐγκαλλωπίσασθαι καταλείπωμεν· βούλομαι δὲ μικρόν τι μετὰ σοῦ σκέψασθαι καθ’ ἡσυχίαν. οἶμαι γὰρ ἰδίαν τινὰ μέρους ἑκάστου καὶ δυνάμεως φαυλότητα καὶ πήρωσιν εἶναι καὶ νόσον, ὥσπερ ὀφθαλμοῦ τυφλότητα καὶ σκέλους χωλότητα καὶ ψελλότητα γλώσσης, ἄλλου δὲ μηδενός· οὐ γὰρ ἔστι τυφλότης μὴ πεφυκότος [d] ὁρᾶν οὐδὲ χωλότης μὴ πεφυκότος βαδίζειν, ψελλόν τε τῶν ἀγλώσσων ἢ τῶν ἀναύδων φύσει τραυλὸν οὐδὲν ἂν προσείποις· οὐκοῦν οὐδὲ παραπαῖον ἢ παραφρονοῦν ἢ μαινόμενον, ᾧ μὴ τὸ φρονεῖν καὶ διανοεῖσθαι καὶ λογίζεσθαι κατὰ φύσιν ὑπῆρχεν· οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἐμπαθὲς γενέσθαι μὴ κεκτημένον δύναμιν, ἧς τὸ πάθος ἢ στέρησις ἢ πήρωσις ἤ τις ἄλλη κάκωσις ἦν. ἀλλὰ μὴν ἐντετύχηκάς γε λυττώσαις κυσίν, ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ ἵπποις· ἔνιοι δέ φασι καὶ βοῦς μαίνεσθαι καὶ ἀλώπεκας· ἀρκεῖ δὲ τὸ τῶν κυνῶν, ὃ ἀναμφισβήτητόν ἐστι, καὶ μαρτυρεῖ λόγον ἔχειν καὶ διάνοιαν οὐ φαύλην τὸ ζῷον, ἧς ταραττομένης καὶ συγχεομένης [e] ἡ λεγομένη λύττα καὶ μανία πάθος ἐστίν· οὔτε γὰρ ὄψιν ἀλλοιουμένην αὐτῶν οὔτ’ ἀκοὴν ὁρῶμεν. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀνθρώπου μελαγχολῶντος ἢ παρακόπτοντος ὁ μὴ λέγων ἐξεστάναι καὶ διεφθορέναι τὸ φρονοῦν καὶ λογιζόμενον καὶ μνημονεῦον ἄτοπός ἐστι (καὶ γὰρ ἡ συνήθεια ταῦτά γε κατηγορεῖ τῶν παραφρονούντων μὴ εἶναι παρ’ αὑτοῖς ἀλλ’ ἐκπεπτωκέναι τῶν λογισμῶν), οὕτως ὁ τοὺς λυττῶντας κύνας ἄλλο τι πεπονθέναι νομίζων ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ τοῦ φρονεῖν πεφυκότος καὶ λογίζεσθαι καὶ μνημονεύειν ἀναπεπλησμένου ταραχῆς καὶ παραπεπαικότος ἀγνοεῖν τὰ [f] φίλτατα πρόσωπα καὶ φεύγειν τὰς συντρόφους διαίτας, ἢ παρορᾶν τὸ φαινόμενον ἔοικεν ἢ συνορῶν τὸ γινόμενον ἐξ αὐτοῦ φιλονεικεῖν πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν.

Σ. Ὀρθῶς μοι δοκεῖς ὑπονοεῖν· οἱ γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς καὶ τοῦ Περιπάτου μάλιστα πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἐντείνονται τῷ λόγῳ, τῆς δικαιοσύνης ἑτέραν γένεσιν οὐκ ἐχούσης, ἀλλὰ παντάπασιν ἀσυστάτου καὶ ἀνυπάρκτου [964] [a] γιγνομένης, εἰ πᾶσι τοῖς ζῴοις λόγου μέτεστι· γίγνεται γὰρ ἢ τὸ ἀδικεῖν ἀναγκαῖον ἡμῖν ἀφειδοῦσιν αὐτῶν, ἢ μὴ χρωμένων αὐτοῖς τὸ ζῆν ἀδύνατον καὶ ἄπορον· καὶ τρόπον τινὰ θηρίων βίον βιωσόμεθα, τὰς ἀπὸ τῶν θηρίων προέμενοι χρείας. ἀφίημι γὰρ Νομάδων καὶ Τρωγλοδυτῶν ἀνεξευρέτους ἀριθμῷ μυριάδας, οἳ τροφὴν σάρκας ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν ἴσασιν· ἀλλ’ ἡμῖν τοῖς ἡμέρως καὶ φιλανθρώπως ζῆν δοκοῦσι ποῖον ἔργον ἀπολείπεται γῆς, ποῖον ἐν θαλάττῃ, τίς ἐν ὄρεσι τέχνη, τίς κόσμος διαίτης, ἂν ὡς προσήκει λογικοῖς καὶ ὁμοφύλοις πᾶσι τοῖς ζῴοις οὖσιν [b] ἀβλαβῶς καὶ μετ’ εὐλαβείας προσφέρεσθαι μάθωμεν, ἔργον ἐστὶν εἰπεῖν. οὐδὲν οὖν φάρμακον οὐδ’ ἴαμα τῆς ἢ τὸν βίον ἀναιρούσης ἢ τὴν δικαιοσύνην ἀπορίας [οὐδὲν] ἔχομεν, ἂν μὴ τὸν ἀρχαῖον ὅρον καὶ νόμον φυλάττωμεν, ᾧ καθ’ Ἡσίοδον (OD 277 sqq.) ὁ τὰς φύσεις διελὼν καὶ θέμενος ἰδίᾳ τῶν γενῶν ἑκάτερον

‘ἰχθύσι μὲν καὶ θηρσὶ καὶ οἰωνοῖς πετεηνοῖς

ἔσθειν ἀλλήλους, ἐπεὶ οὐ δίκη ἔστι μετ’ αὐτοῖς,

ἀνθρώποισι δ’ ἔδωκε δίκην’

πρὸς ἀλλήλους. οἷς δ’ οὐκ ἔστι τὸ δικαιοπραγεῖν πρὸς ἡμᾶς, οὐδ’ ἡμῖν πρὸς ἐκεῖνα γίγνεται τὸ ἀδικεῖν· ὡς οἵ γε τοῦτον προέμενοι τὸν λόγον οὔτ’ εὐρεῖαν ἄλλην οὔτε [c] λιτὴν τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ παρεισελθεῖν ὁδὸν ἀπολελοίπασι.

ΑΥ. Ταῦτα μέν, ὦ φίλε, ‘τἀπὸ καρδίας’ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐξείρηκας· οὐ μὴν δοτέον, ὥσπερ δυστοκούσαις γυναιξί, περιάψασθαι τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ὠκυτόκιον, ἵνα ῥᾳδίως καὶ ἀταλαιπώρως τὸ δίκαιον ἡμῖν ἀποτέκωσιν. οὐδὲ γὰρ αὐτοὶ τῷ Ἐπικούρῳ (fr. 281) διδόασιν ὑπὲρ τῶν μεγίστων σμικρὸν οὕτω πρᾶγμα καὶ φαῦλον, ἄτομον παρεγκλῖναι μίαν ἐπὶ τοὐλάχιστον, ὅπως ἄστρα καὶ ζῷα καὶ τύχη παρεισέλθῃ καὶ τὸ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν μὴ ἀπόληται· δεικνύναι δὲ τὸ ἄδηλον ἢ λαμβάνειν τι τῶν προδήλων προσήκει καὶ ‹μή› τι περὶ τῶν ζῴων ὑποτίθεσθαι πρὸς τὴν δικαιοσύνην, εἰ μήθ’ ὁμολογεῖται μήτ’ ἄλλως ἀποδεικνύουσιν.

[d] ἔχει γὰρ ἑτέραν ὁδὸν ἐκεῖ τὸ δίκαιον οὐ σφαλερὰν καὶ παράκρημνον οὕτω καὶ διὰ τῶν ἐναργῶν ἀνατρεπομένων ἄγουσαν, ἀλλ’ ἥν, Πλάτωνος ὑφηγουμένου, δείκνυσιν οὑμὸς υἱός, ὦ Σώκλαρε, σὸς δ’ ἑταῖρος, τοῖς μὴ φιλομαχεῖν ἕπεσθαι δὲ καὶ μανθάνειν βουλομένοις. ἐπεὶ τό γε μὴ παντάπασι καθαρεύειν ἀδικίας τὸν ἄνθρωπον οὕτω τὰ ζῷα μεταχειριζόμενον Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Ἡράκλειτος ὡς ἀληθὲς προσδέχονται, πολλάκις ὀδυρόμενοι καὶ λοιδοροῦντες τὴν φύσιν, ὡς ἀνάγκην καὶ πόλεμον οὖσαν, [e] ἀμιγὲς δὲ μηδὲν μηδ’ εἰλικρινὲς ἔχουσαν ἀλλὰ διὰ πολλῶν κἀδίκων παθῶν περαινομένην· ὅπου καὶ τὴν γένεσιν αὐτὴν ἐξ ἀδικίας συντυγχάνειν λέγουσι, τῷ θνητῷ συνερχομένου τοῦ ἀθανάτου, καὶ τρέφεσθαι τὸ γεννώμενον παρὰ φύσιν μέλεσι τοῦ γεννήσαντος ἀποσπωμένοις. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἄκρατα καὶ πικρὰ φαίνεται κατακόρως· ἑτέρα δ’ ἐστὶν ἐμμελὴς παρηγορία, μήτε τῶν ζῴων τὸν λόγον ἀφαιρουμένη καὶ σῴζουσα χρωμένων αὐτοῖς ὡς προσήκει τὸ δίκαιον, ἣν τῶν σοφῶν καὶ παλαιῶν εἰσαγόντων συστᾶσα λαιμαργία μεθ’ ἡδυπαθείας ἐξέβαλε καὶ ἠφάνισεν, αὖθις δὲ Πυθαγόρας ἀνελάμβανε, διδάσκων [f] ὠφελεῖσθαι μὴ ἀδικοῦντας. οὐ γὰρ ἀδικοῦσιν οἱ τὰ μὲν ἄμικτα καὶ βλαβερὰ κομιδῇ κολάζοντες καὶ ἀποκτιννύοντες, τὰ δ’ ἥμερα καὶ φιλάνθρωπα ποιούμενοι τιθασὰ καὶ συνεργὰ χρείας, πρὸς ἣν ἕκαστον εὖ πέφυκεν,

‘ἵππων ὄνων τ’ ὀχεῖα καὶ ταύρων γονάς,’

ὧν ὁ Αἰσχύλου (fr. 194) Προμηθεύς ‘δοῦναι’ φησὶν ἡμῖν

[965] [a] ‘ἀντίδουλα καὶ πόνων ἐκδέκτορα·’

κυσὶ δὲ χρώμενοι προφυλάττουσιν, αἶγάς τε καὶ ὄϊς ἀμελγομένας καὶ κειρομένας νέμοντες. οὐ γὰρ ἀναιρεῖται τὸ ζῆν οὐδὲ βίος ἀπόλλυται τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ἂν μὴ λοπάδας ἰχθύων μηδ’ ἥπατα χηνῶν ἔχωσι μηδὲ βοῦς μηδ’ ἐρίφους κατακόπτωσιν ἐπ’ εὐωχίᾳ, μηδ’ ἀλύοντες ἐν θεάτροις μηδὲ παίζοντες ἐν θήραις τὰ μὲν ἀναγκάζωσι τολμᾶν ἄκοντα καὶ μάχεσθαι, τὰ δὲ μηδ’ ἀμύνεσθαι πεφυκότα διαφθείρωσι. τὸν γὰρ παίζοντα καὶ τερπόμενον οἶμαι συμπαίζουσι δεῖν χρῆσθαι καὶ ἱλαροῖς, οὐχ ὥσπερ ὁ Βίων [b] ἔλεγε τὰ παιδάρια παίζοντα τῶν βατράχων τοῖς λίθοις ἐφίεσθαι, τοὺς δὲ βατράχους μηκέτι παίζοντας ἀλλ’ ἀληθῶς ἀποθνήσκειν, οὕτω κυνηγεῖν καὶ ἁλιεύειν, ὀδυνωμένοις τερπομένους καὶ ἀποθνήσκουσι, τοῖς δ’ ἀπὸ σκύμνων καὶ νεοσσῶν ἐλεεινῶς ἀγομένοις. οὐ γὰρ οἱ χρώμενοι ζῴοις ἀδικοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ οἱ χρώμενοι βλαβερῶς καὶ ὀλιγώρως καὶ μετ’ ὠμότητος.

Σ. Ἐπίσχες, ὦ Αὐτόβουλε, καὶ παραβαλοῦ ‹τὸ θυρίον› τῆς κατηγορίας· ἐγγὺς γὰρ οἵδε προσιόντες πολλοὶ καὶ θηρατικοὶ πάντες, οὓς οὔτε μεταθεῖναι ῥᾴδιον οὔτε λυπεῖν ἀναγκαῖον.

ΑΥ. Ὀρθῶς παραινεῖς· ἀλλ’ Εὐβίοτον μὲν εὖ οἶδα καὶ [c] τὸν ἐμὸν ἀνεψιὸν Ἀρίστωνα, τούς τε Διονυσίου παῖδας ἀπὸ Δελφῶν, Αἰακίδην καὶ Ἀριστότιμον τοῦτον, εἶτα Νίκανδρον τὸν Εὐθυδάμου, χερσαίας ‘δαήμονας’ ἄγρας ὡς Ὅμηρος (θ 159 al.) ἔφη, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πρὸς Ἀριστοτίμου γενησομένους· ὥσπερ αὖ πάλιν τούσδε τοὺς νησιώτας καὶ παραλίους, Ἡρακλέωνα τὸν Μεγαρόθεν καὶ Φιλόστρατον τὸν Εὐβοέα, ‘τοῖσίν τε θαλάσσια ἔργα μέμηλε’ (ε 67), Φαίδιμος ἔχων περὶ αὑτὸν βαδίζει.

‘Τυδείδην δ’ οὐκ ἂν γνοίης ποτέροισι μετείη’ (Ε 85),

τουτονὶ τὸν ἡμέτερον ἡλικιώτην Ὀπτᾶτον, ὃς

‘πολλοῖς μὲν ἐνάλου ὀρείου δὲ πολλοῖς ἄγρας ἀκροθινίοις

 ἀγλαΐσας’

τὴν Ἀγροτέραν ἅμα θεὸν καὶ Δίκτυνναν, ἐνταῦθα [d] δῆλός ἐστι πρὸς ἡμᾶς βαδίζων, ὡς μηδετέροις προσθήσων ἑαυτόν· ἢ φαύλως εἰκάζομεν, ὦ φίλε Ὀπτᾶτε, κοινόν σε καὶ μέσον ἔσεσθαι τῶν νεανίσκων βραβευτήν;

ΟΠΤΑΤΟΣ. Πάνυ μὲν οὖν ὀρθῶς ὑπονοεῖς, ὦ Αὐτόβουλε· πάλαι γὰρ ὁ Σόλωνος ἐκλέλοιπε νόμος, τοὺς ἐν στάσει μηδετέρῳ μέρει προσγενομένους κολάζων.

ΑΥ. Δεῦρο δὴ καθίζου πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὅπως, εἰ δεήσει μάρτυρος, μὴ τοῖς Ἀριστοτέλους πράγματα βιβλίοις παρέχωμεν, ἀλλὰ σοὶ δι’ ἐμπειρίαν ἑπόμενοι τοῖς λεγομένοις ἀληθῶς τὴν ψῆφον ἐπιφέρωμεν.

Σ. Εἶεν, ὦ ἄνδρες νέοι, γέγονέ τις ὑμῖν ὁμολογία περὶ τάξεως;

ΦΑΙΔΙΜΟΣ. Γέγονεν, ὦ Σώκλαρε, πολλὴν παρασχοῦσα [e] φιλονεικίαν· εἶτα κατ’ Εὐριπίδην (fr. 989)

‘ὁ τῆς τύχης παῖς κλῆρος ἐπὶ τούτῳ ταγεὶς’

τὰ χερσαῖα προεισάγει δίκαια τῶν ἐνάλων.

Σ. Καιρὸς οὖν, ὦ Ἀριστότιμε, σοὶ μὲν ἤδη λέγειν ἡμῖν δ’ ἀκούειν.

ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΙΜΟΣ. Ἡ μὲν ἀγορὰ τοῖς δικαζομένοις * * * τὰ δὲ τὸν γόνον ἀναλίσκει περὶ τὰς ἀποκυήσεις ἐπιτρέχοντα τοῖς θήλεσι· κεστρέως δὲ γένος, οὓς παρδίας καλοῦσιν, ἀπὸ τῆς μύξης τρέφονται τῆς ἑαυτῶν· ὁ δὲ πολύπους αὑτὸν ἐσθίων κάθηται χειμῶνος (Hes. OD 525)

‘ἐν τ’ ἀπύρῳ οἴκῳ καὶ ἐν ἤθεσι λευγαλέοισιν·’

οὕτως ἀργὸς ἢ ἀναίσθητος ἢ γαστρίμαργος ἢ πᾶσι τούτοις ἔνοχός ἐστι. διὸ καὶ Πλάτων (Legg. VII 823d) αὖ [f] πάλιν ἀπεῖπε νομοθετῶν μᾶλλον δ’ ἀπεύξατο τοὺς νέους θαλαττίου θήρας ἔρωτα λαβεῖν· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἀλκῆς γυμνάσιον οὐδὲ μελέτημα σοφίας οὐδ’ ὅσα πρὸς ἰσχὺν ἢ τάχος ἢ κινήσεις διαπονοῦσι τοῖς πρὸς λάβρακας ἢ γόγγρους [966] [a] ἢ σκάρους ἀγῶσιν· ὥσπερ ἐνταῦθα τὰ μὲν θυμοειδῆ τὸ φιλοκίνδυνον καὶ τὸ ἀνδρεῖον ἀσκεῖ τῶν μαχομένων, τὰ δὲ πανοῦργα τὸ φροντιστικὸν καὶ συνετὸν τῶν ἐπιτιθεμένων, τὰ δὲ ποδώκη τὸ ῥωμαλέον καὶ φιλόπονον τῶν διωκόντων. καὶ ταῦτα τὸ κυνηγεῖν καλὸν πεποίηκε· τὸ δ’ ἁλιεύειν ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς ἔνδοξον· οὐδέ γε θεῶν τις ἠξίωσεν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, ‘γογγροκτόνος’, ὥσπερ ὁ Ἀπόλλων ‘λυκοκτόνος’, οὐδὲ ‘τριγλοβόλος’, ὥσπερ ‘ἐλαφηβόλος’ ἡ Ἄρτεμις, λέγεσθαι. καὶ τί θαυμαστόν, ὅπου καὶ ἀνθρώπῳ σῦν μὲν καὶ ἔλαφον καὶ νὴ Δία δορκάδα καὶ λαγωὸν ἑλεῖν κάλλιον ἢ πρίασθαι, θύννον δὲ καὶ κάραβον καὶ ἀμίαν σεμνότερόν ἐστιν αὐτὸν ὀψωνεῖν ἢ ἁλιεύειν; [b] τὸ γὰρ ἀγεννὲς καὶ ἀμήχανον ὅλως καὶ ἀπάνουργον αὐτῶν αἰσχρὸν καὶ ἄζηλον καὶ ἀνελεύθερον τὴν ἄγραν πεποίηκε.

Καθόλου δ’, ἐπεὶ δι’ ὧν οἱ φιλόσοφοι δεικνύουσι τὸ [τε] μετέχειν λόγου τὰ ζῷα, προθέσεις εἰσὶ καὶ παρασκευαὶ καὶ μνῆμαι καὶ πάθη καὶ τέκνων ἐπιμέλειαι καὶ χάριτες εὖ παθόντων καὶ μνησικακίαι πρὸς τὸ λυπῆσαν, ἔτι δ’ εὑρέσεις τῶν ἀναγκαίων, ἐμφάσεις ἀρετῆς, οἷον ἀνδρείας κοινωνίας ἐγκρατείας μεγαλοφροσύνης, σκοπῶμεν τὰ ἔναλα, εἰ τούτων ἐκεῖνα μὲν οὐδὲν ἤ πού τι παντελῶς ἀμαυρὸν αἴθυγμα καὶ δυσθέατον ἐνιδεῖν μάλα μόλις τεκμαιρομένῳ δίδωσιν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς πεζοῖς καὶ [c] γηγενέσι λαμπρὰ καὶ ἐναργῆ καὶ βέβαια παραδείγματα τῶν εἰρημένων ἑκάστου λαμβάνειν ἔστι καὶ θεᾶσθαι. πρῶτον οὖν ὅρα προθέσεις καὶ παρασκευὰς ταύρων ἐπὶ μάχῃ κονιομένων καὶ κάπρων θηγόντων ὀδόντας· ἐλέφαντες δέ, τῆς ὕλης, ἣν ὀρύττοντες ἢ κείροντες ἐσθίουσιν, ἀμβλὺν τὸν ὀδόντα ποιούσης ἀποτριβόμενον, τῷ ἑτέρῳ πρὸς ταῦτα χρῶνται, τὸν δ’ ἕτερον ἔπακμον ἀεὶ καὶ ὀξὺν ἐπὶ τὰς ἀμύνας φυλάττουσιν. ὁ δὲ λέων ἀεὶ βαδίζει συνεστραμμένοις τοῖς ποσίν, ἐντὸς ἀποκρύπτων τοὺς ὄνυχας, ἵνα μὴ τριβόμενοι τὴν ἀκμὴν ἀπαμβλύνωσι μηδὲ [d] καταλείπωσιν εὐπορίαν τοῖς στιβεύουσιν· οὐ γὰρ ῥᾳδίως ὄνυχος εὑρίσκεται λεοντείου σημεῖον, ἀλλ’ ἀμαυροῖς καὶ τυφλοῖς ἴχνεσιν ἐντυγχάνοντες ἀποπλανῶνται καὶ διαμαρτάνουσιν. ὁ δ’ ἰχνεύμων ἀκηκόατε δήπουθεν ὡς οὐθὲν ἀπολείπει θωρακιζομένου πρὸς μάχην ὁπλίτου· τοσοῦτον ἰλύος περιβάλλεται καὶ περιπήγνυσι τῷ σώματι χιτῶνα μέλλων ἐπιτίθεσθαι τῷ κροκοδείλῳ. τὰς δὲ χελιδόνων πρὸ τῆς τεκνοποιίας παρασκευὰς ὁρῶμεν, ὡς εὖ τὰ στερεὰ κάρφη προϋποβάλλονται δίκην θεμελίων, εἶτα περιπλάττουσι τὰ κουφότερα· κἂν πηλοῦ τινος ἐχεκόλλου δεομένην αἴσθωνται τὴν νεοττιάν, λίμνης ἢ θαλάττης [e] ἐν χρῷ παραπετόμεναι ψαύουσι τοῖς πτίλοις ἐπιπολῆς, ὅσον νοτεραί, μὴ βαρεῖαι γενέσθαι τῇ ὑγρότητι, συλλαβοῦσαι δὲ κονιορτὸν οὕτως ἐξαλείφουσι καὶ συνδέουσι τὰ χαλῶντα καὶ διολισθαίνοντα· τῷ δὲ σχήματι τοὔργον οὐ γωνιῶδες οὐδὲ πολύπλευρον, ἀλλ’ ὁμαλὸν ὡς ἔνεστι μάλιστα καὶ σφαιροειδὲς ἀποτελοῦσι· καὶ γὰρ μόνιμον καὶ χωρητικὸν τὸ τοιοῦτο καὶ τοῖς ἐπιβουλεύουσι θηρίοις ἔξωθεν ἀντιλήψεις οὐ πάνυ δίδωσι. τὰ δ’ ἀράχνης ἔργα, κοινὸν ἱστῶν γυναιξὶ καὶ θήρας σαγηνευταῖς ἀρχέτυπον, οὐ καθ’ ἓν ἄν τις θαυμάσειε· καὶ γὰρ ἡ τοῦ νήματος ἀκρίβεια καὶ τῆς ὑφῆς τὸ μὴ διεχὲς μηδὲ [f] στημονῶδες ἀλλὰ λείου συνέχειαν ὑμένος καὶ κόλλησιν ὑπό τινος ἀδήλως παραμεμιγμένης γλισχρότητος ἀπειργασμένον, ἥ τε βαφὴ τῆς χρόας ἐνάερον καὶ ἀχλυώδη ποιοῦσα τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν ὑπὲρ τοῦ λαθεῖν, αὐτή τε μάλιστα πάντων ἡ τῆς μηχανῆς αὐτῆς ἡνιοχεία καὶ κυβέρνησις, ὅταν ἐνσχεθῇ τι τῶν ἁλωσίμων, ὥσπερ δεινοῦ σαγηνευτοῦ ταχὺ συναιρεῖν εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ συνάγειν τὸ θήρατρον, [967] [a] αἰσθανομένης καὶ φρονούσης, τῇ καθ’ ἡμέραν ὄψει καὶ θέᾳ τοῦ γιγνομένου πιστὸν ἔσχε τὸν λόγον, ἄλλως δ’ ἂν ἐδόκει μῦθος· ὥσπερ ἡμῖν ἐδόκει τὸ τῶν ἐν Λιβύῃ κοράκων, οἳ ποτοῦ δεόμενοι †καὶ λίθους ἐμβάλλουσιν ἀναπληροῦντες καὶ ἀνάγοντες τὸ ὕδωρ, μέχρι ἂν ἐν ἐφικτῷ γένηται· εἶτα μέντοι κύνα θεασάμενος ἐν πλοίῳ, τῶν ναυτῶν μὴ παρόντων, εἰς ἔλαιον ἀμφορέως ἀποδεοῦς ἐμβάλλοντα τῶν χαλίκων, ἐθαύμασα πῶς νοεῖ καὶ συνίησι τὴν γιγνομένην ἔκθλιψιν ὑπὸ τῶν βαρυτέρων τοῖς κουφοτέροις ὑφισταμένων. ὅμοια δὲ καὶ τὰ τῶν Κρητικῶν [b] μελισσῶν καὶ τὰ τῶν ἐν Κιλικίᾳ χηνῶν· ἐκεῖναι μὲν γὰρ ἀνεμῶδές τι μέλλουσαι κάμπτειν ἀκρωτήριον ἑρματίζουσιν ἑαυτάς, ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ παραφέρεσθαι, μικροῖς λιθιδίοις· οἱ δὲ χῆνες τοὺς ἀετοὺς δεδοικότες, ὅταν ὑπερβάλλωσι τὸν Ταῦρον, εἰς τὸ στόμα λίθον εὐμεγέθη λαμβάνουσιν, οἷον ἐπιστομίζοντες αὑτῶν καὶ χαλινοῦντες τὸ φιλόφωνον καὶ λάλον, ὅπως λάθωσι σιωπῇ παρελθόντες. τῶν δὲ γεράνων καὶ τὸ περὶ τὴν πτῆσιν εὐδοκιμεῖ· πέτονται γάρ, ὅταν ᾖ πνεῦμα πολὺ καὶ τραχὺς ἀήρ, οὐχ, ὥσπερ εὐδίας οὔσης, μετωπηδὸν ἢ κόλπῳ μηνοειδοῦς περιφερείας, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς εἰς τρίγωνον συνάγουσαι σχίζουσι [c] τῇ κορυφῇ τὸ πνεῦμα περιρρέον, ὥστε μὴ διασπᾶσθαι τὴν τάξιν. ὅταν δὲ κατάρωσιν ἐπὶ γῆν, αἱ προφυλακὴν ἔχουσαι νυκτὸς ἐπὶ θατέρου σκέλους ὀχοῦνται τὸ σῶμα, τῷ δ’ ἑτέρῳ ποδὶ λίθον περιλαβοῦσαι κρατοῦσι· συνέχει γὰρ ὁ τῆς ἁφῆς τόνος ἐν τῷ μὴ καθεύδειν πολὺν χρόνον· ὅταν δ’ ἀνῶσιν, ἐκπεσὼν ὁ λίθος ταχὺ διήγειρε τὴν προεμένην· ὥστε μὴ πάνυ θαυμάζειν τοῦ Ἡρακλέους, εἰ τόξα μασχάλῃ ὑποθεὶς καὶ (Trag. fr. adesp. 416)

‘κραταιῷ περιβαλὼν βραχίονι,

εὕδει πιέζων χειρὶ δεξιᾷ ξύλον·’

μηδ’ αὖ πάλιν τοῦ πρώτου ὑπονοήσαντος ὀστρέου μεμυκότος ἀνάπτυξιν ἐντυχόντα τοῖς ἐρωδιῶν σοφίσμασιν· [d] ὅταν γὰρ τὴν κόγχην καταπίῃ μεμυκυῖαν, ἐνοχλούμενος ἐγκαρτερεῖ, μέχρι ἂν αἴσθηται μαλασσομένην καὶ χαλῶσαν ὑπὸ τῆς θερμότητος· τότε δ’ ἐκβαλὼν κεχηνυῖαν καὶ ἀνεσπασμένην ἐξεῖλε τὸ ἐδώδιμον.

Τὰς δὲ μυρμήκων οἰκονομίας καὶ παρασκευὰς ἐκφράσαι μὲν ἀκριβῶς ἀμήχανον, ὑπερβῆναι δὲ παντελῶς ὀλίγωρον· οὐδὲν γὰρ οὕτω μικρὸν ἡ φύσις ἔχει μειζόνων καὶ καλλιόνων κάτοπτρον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν σταγόνι καθαρᾷ πάσης ἔνεστιν ἀρετῆς ἔμφασις· ‘ἔνθ’ ἔνι μὲν φιλότης’ (Ξ 216) τὸ κοινωνικόν, ἔνι δ’ ἀνδρείας εἰκὼν τὸ φιλόπονον, ἔνεστι δὲ πολλὰ μὲν ἐγκρατείας σπέρματα πολλὰ δὲ [e] φρονήσεως καὶ δικαιοσύνης. ὁ μὲν οὖν Κλεάνθης (fr. 515) ἔλεγε, καίπερ οὐ φάσκων μετέχειν λόγου τὰ ζῷα, τοιαύτῃ θεωρίᾳ παρατυχεῖν· μύρμηκας ἐλθεῖν ἐπὶ μυρμηκιὰν ἑτέραν μύρμηκα νεκρὸν φέροντας· ἀνιόντας οὖν ἐκ τῆς μυρμηκιᾶς ἐνίους οἷον ἐντυγχάνειν αὐτοῖς καὶ πάλιν κατέρχεσθαι· καὶ τοῦτο δὶς ἢ τρὶς γενέσθαι· τέλος δὲ τοὺς μὲν κάτωθεν ἀνενεγκεῖν ὥσπερ λύτρα τοῦ νεκροῦ σκώληκα, [f] τοὺς δ’ ἐκεῖνον ἀραμένους ἀποδόντας δὲ τὸν νεκρὸν οἴχεσθαι. τῶν δὲ πᾶσιν ἐμφανῶν ἥ τε περὶ τὰς ἀπαντήσεις ἐστὶν εὐγνωμοσύνη, τῶν μηδὲν φερόντων τοῖς φέρουσιν ἐξισταμένων ὁδοῦ καὶ παρελθεῖν διδόντων· αἵ τε τῶν δυσφόρων καὶ δυσπαρακομίστων διαβρώσεις καὶ διαιρέσεις, ὅπως εὐβάστακτα πλείοσι γένηται. τὰς δὲ τῶν κυημάτων διαθέσεις καὶ διαψύξεις ἐκτὸς ὑετοῦ ποιεῖται σημεῖον ὁ Ἄρατος (Phaen. 956)·

‘ἢ κοίλης μύρμηκες ὀχῆς ἒξ ὤεα πάντα

θᾶσσον ἀνηνέγκαντο·’

καί τινες οὐκ ‘‹ἒξ› ὤεα’ γράφουσιν, ἀλλ’ ‘‹ἔξω› ἑά’, ‹ὡς› τοὺς ἀποκειμένους καρπούς, ὅταν εὐρῶτα συνάγοντας [968] [a] αἴσθωνται καὶ φοβηθῶσι φθορὰν καὶ σῆψιν, ἀναφερόντων. ὑπερβάλλει δὲ πᾶσαν ἐπίνοιαν συνέσεως ἡ τοῦ πυροῦ τῆς βλαστήσεως προκατάληψις· οὐ γὰρ δὴ παραμένει ξηρὸς οὐδ’ ἄσηπτος ἀλλὰ διαχεῖται καὶ γαλακτοῦται μεταβάλλων εἰς τὸ φύειν· ἵν’ οὖν μὴ γενόμενος σπέρμα τὴν σιτίου χρείαν διαφθείρῃ παραμένῃ δ’ αὐτοῖς ἐδώδιμος, ἐξεσθίουσι τὴν ἀρχήν, ἀφ’ ἧς τὸν βλαστὸν ὁ πυρὸς ἀφίησιν. τοὺς δὲ τὰς μυρμηκιὰς αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τῷ καταμαθεῖν ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀνατομῆς †πληροῦντας οὐκ ἀποδέχομαι· λέγουσι δ’ οὖν οὐκ εὐθεῖαν εἶναι τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς ὀπῆς κάθοδον [b] οὐδ’ εὔπορον ἄλλῳ θηρίῳ διεξελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ καμπαῖς καὶ στρεβλότησι κεκλασμένας ὑποπορεύσεις καὶ ἀνατρήσεις ἐχούσαις εἰς τρεῖς κοιλότητας ἀποτελευτῶσαν, ὧν τὴν μὲν ἐνδιαίτημα κοινὸν αὐτοῖς εἶναι, τὴν δὲ τῶν ἐδωδίμων ταμεῖον, εἰς δὲ τὴν τρίτην ἀποτίθεσθαι τοὺς θνήσκοντας.

Οἶμαι δὲ μὴ ἄκαιρος ὑμῖν φανεῖσθαι τοῖς μύρμηξιν ἐπεισάγων τοὺς ἐλέφαντας, ἵνα τοῦ νοῦ τὴν φύσιν ἔν τε τοῖς μικροτάτοις ἅμα καὶ μεγίστοις σώμασι κατανοήσωμεν, μήτε τούτοις ἐναφανιζομένην μήτ’ ἐκείνοις ἐνδέουσαν. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι θαυμάζουσι τοῦ ἐλέφαντος ὅσα μανθάνων καὶ διδασκόμενος ἐν θεάτροις ἐπιδείκνυται [c] σχημάτων εἴδη καὶ μεταβολάς, ὧν οὐδ’ ἀνθρωπίναις μελέταις τὸ ποικίλον καὶ περιττὸν ἐν μνήμῃ καὶ καθέξει γενέσθαι πάνυ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστιν· ἐγὼ δὲ μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ καὶ ἀδιδάκτοις τοῦ θηρίου πάθεσι καὶ κινήμασιν, ὥσπερ ἀκράτοις καὶ ἀπαραχύτοις, ἐμφαινομένην ὁρῶ τὴν σύνεσιν. ἐν Ῥώμῃ μὲν γὰρ οὐ πάλαι πολλῶν προδιδασκομένων στάσεις τινὰς ἵστασθαι παραβόλους καὶ κινήσεις δυσεξελίκτους ἀνακυκλεῖν, εἷς ὁ δυσμαθέστατος ἀκούων κακῶς ἑκάστοτε καὶ κολαζόμενος πολλάκις ὤφθη νυκτὸς αὐτὸς ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ πρὸς τὴν σελήνην ἀναταττόμενος τὰ [d] μαθήματα καὶ μελετῶν. ἐν δὲ Συρίᾳ πρότερον Ἅγνων ἱστορεῖ, τρεφομένου κατ’ οἰκίαν ἐλέφαντος, τὸν ἐπιστάτην λαμβάνοντα κριθῶν μέτρον ὑφαιρεῖν καὶ χρεωκοπεῖν μέρος ἥμισυ καθ’ ἡμέραν· ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ δεσπότου παρόντος ποτὲ καὶ θεωμένου πᾶν τὸ μέτρον κατήρασεν, ἐμβλέψαντα καὶ διαγαγόντα τὴν προβοσκίδα τῶν κριθῶν ἀποδιαστῆσαι καὶ διαχωρίσαι τὸ μέρος, ὡς ἐνῆν λογιώτατα κατειπόντα τοῦ ἐπιστάτου τὴν ἀδικίαν· ἄλλον δέ, ταῖς κριθαῖς λίθους καὶ γῆν εἰς τὸ μέτρον τοῦ ἐπιστάτου καταμιγνύοντος, ἑψομένων κρεῶν δραξάμενον τῆς τέφρας [e] ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς τὴν χύτραν. ὁ δ’ ὑπὸ τῶν παιδαρίων προπηλακισθεὶς ἐν Ῥώμῃ τοῖς γραφείοις τὴν προβοσκίδα κεντούντων ὃν συνέλαβε μετέωρον ἐξάρας ἐπίδοξος ἦν ἀποτυμπανίσειν· κραυγῆς δὲ τῶν παρόντων γενομένης ἀτρέμα πρὸς τὴν γῆν πάλιν ἀπηρείσατο καὶ παρῆλθεν, ἀρκοῦσαν ἡγούμενος δίκην τῷ τηλικούτῳ φοβηθῆναι. περὶ δὲ τῶν ἀγρίων καὶ αὐτονόμων ἄλλα τε θαυμάσια καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς διαβάσεις τῶν ποταμῶν ἱστοροῦσι· προδιαβαίνει γὰρ ἐπιδοὺς αὑτὸν ὁ νεώτατος καὶ μικρότατος· οἱ δ’ ἑστῶτες ἀποθεωροῦσιν ὡς, ἂν ἐκεῖνος ὑπεραίρῃ τῷ μεγέθει τὸ ῥεῦμα, πολλὴν τοῖς μείζοσι πρὸς τὸ θαρρεῖν [f] περιουσίαν τῆς ἀσφαλείας οὖσαν.

Ἐνταῦθα τοῦ λόγου γεγονὼς οὐ δοκῶ μοι παρήσειν δι’ ὁμοιότητα τὸ τῆς ἀλώπεκος. οἱ μὲν οὖν μυθολόγοι τῷ Δευκαλίωνί φασι περιστερὰν ἐκ τῆς λάρνακος ἀφιεμένην δήλωμα γενέσθαι χειμῶνος μὲν εἴσω πάλιν ἐνδυομένην, εὐδίας δ’ ἀποπτᾶσαν· οἱ δὲ Θρᾷκες ἔτι νῦν, ὅταν παγέντα διαβαίνειν ποταμὸν ἐπιχειρῶσιν, ἀλώπεκα ποιοῦνται γνώμονα [969] [a] τῆς τοῦ πάγου στερρότητος· ἡσυχῆ γὰρ ὑπάγουσα παραβάλλει τὸ οὖς· κἂν μὲν αἴσθηται ψόφῳ τοῦ ῥεύματος ἐγγὺς ὑποφερομένου, τεκμαιρομένη μὴ γεγονέναι διὰ βάθους τὴν πῆξιν ἀλλὰ λεπτὴν καὶ ἀβέβαιον ἵσταται, κἂν ἐᾷ τις, ἐπανέρχεται· τῷ δὲ μὴ ψοφεῖν θαρροῦσα διῆλθε. καὶ τοῦτο μὴ λέγωμεν αἰσθήσεως ἄλογον ἀκρίβειαν, ἀλλ’ ἐξ αἰσθήσεως συλλογισμὸν ὅτι ‘τὸ ψοφοῦν κινεῖται, τὸ δὲ κινούμενον οὐ πέπηγε, τὸ δὲ μὴ πεπηγὸς ὑγρόν ἐστι, τὸ δ’ ὑγρὸν ἐνδίδωσιν.’ οἱ δὲ διαλεκτικοί φασι τὸν κύνα τῷ διὰ πλειόνων διεζευγμένῳ χρώμενον ἐν ταῖς [b] πολυσχιδέσιν ἀτραποῖς συλλογίζεσθαι πρὸς ἑαυτόν ‘ἤτοι τήνδε τὸ θηρίον ὥρμηκεν ἢ τήνδε ‹ἢ τήνδε›· ἀλλὰ μὴν οὔτε τήνδε οὔτε τήνδε· τὴν λοιπὴν ἄρα·’ τῆς μὲν αἰσθήσεως οὐδὲν ἢ τὴν πρόσληψιν διδούσης, τοῦ δὲ λόγου τὰ λήμματα καὶ τὸ συμπέρασμα τοῖς λήμμασιν ἐπιφέροντος. οὐ μὴν δεῖταί γε τοιαύτης μαρτυρίας ὁ κύων· ψευδὴς γάρ ἐστι καὶ κίβδηλος· ἡ γὰρ αἴσθησις αὐτὴ τοῖς ἴχνεσι καὶ τοῖς ῥεύμασι τοῦ θηρίου τὴν φυγὴν ἐπιδείκνυσι, χαίρειν λέγουσα διεζευγμένοις ἀξιώμασι καὶ συμπεπλεγμένοις. δι’ ἄλλων δὲ πολλῶν ἔργων καὶ παθῶν καὶ καθηκόντων οὔτ’ ὀσφραντῶν οὔθ’ ὁρατῶν ἀλλὰ διανοίᾳ [c] καὶ λόγῳ μόνον πρακτῶν καὶ θεατῶν ὄντων κατιδεῖν ἔστι τὴν κυνὸς φύσιν. οὗ τὰς μὲν ἐν ἄγραις ἐγκρατείας καὶ πειθαρχίας καὶ ἀγχινοίας γελοῖος ἔσομαι λέγων πρὸς ὑμᾶς τοὺς ὁρῶντας αὐτὰ καθ’ ἡμέραν καὶ μεταχειριζομένους. ‹Κάλβ›ου δὲ τοῦ Ῥωμαίου σφαγέντος ἐν τοῖς ἐμφυλίοις πολέμοις οὐδεὶς ἐδυνήθη τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποτεμεῖν πρότερον, πρὶν ἢ τὸν κύνα τὸν φυλάττοντα καὶ προμαχόμενον αὐτοῦ κατακεντῆσαι περιστάντας. Πύρρος δ’ ὁ βασιλεὺς ὁδεύων ἐνέτυχε κυνὶ φρουροῦντι σῶμα πεφονευμένου, καὶ πυθόμενος τρίτην ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἄσιτον παραμένειν καὶ μὴ ἀπολιπεῖν τὸν μὲν νεκρὸν ἐκέλευσε [d] θάψαι, τὸν δὲ κύνα μεθ’ ἑαυτοῦ κομίζειν ἐπιμελομένους. ὀλίγαις δ’ ὕστερον ἡμέραις ἐξέτασις ἦν τῶν στρατιωτῶν καὶ πάροδος καθημένου τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ παρῆν ὁ κύων ἡσυχίαν ἔχων· ἐπεὶ δὲ τοὺς φονέας τοῦ δεσπότου παριόντας εἶδεν ἐξέδραμε μετὰ φωνῆς ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς καὶ θυμοῦ καὶ καθυλάκτει πολλάκις μεταστρεφόμενος εἰς τὸν Πύρρον, ὥστε μὴ μόνον ἐκείνῳ δι’ ὑποψίας ἀλλὰ καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς παροῦσι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους γενέσθαι· διὸ συλληφθέντες εὐθὺς καὶ ἀνακρινόμενοι, μικρῶν τινων τεκμηρίων ἔξωθεν προσγενομένων, ὁμολογήσαντες τὸν φόνον ἐκολάσθησαν.

[e] ταὐτὰ δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἡσιόδου κύνα τοῦ σοφοῦ δρᾶσαι λέγουσι, τοὺς Γανύκτορος ἐξελέγξαντα τοῦ Ναυπακτίου παῖδας, ὑφ’ ὧν ὁ Ἡσίοδος ἀπέθανεν. ὃ δ’ οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν ἔγνωσαν αὐτοὶ σχολάζοντες Ἀθήνησιν ἐναργέστερόν ἐστι τῶν εἰρημένων· παραρρυεὶς γὰρ ἄνθρωπος εἰς τὸν νεὼν τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ τὰ εὔογκα τῶν ἀργυρῶν καὶ χρυσῶν ἔλαβεν ἀναθημάτων καὶ λεληθέναι νομίζων ὑπεξῆλθεν· ὁ δὲ φρουρὸς κύων, ὄνομα Κάππαρος, ἐπεὶ μηδεὶς ὑλακτοῦντι τῶν ζακόρων ὑπήκουσεν αὐτῷ, φεύγοντα τὸν ἱερόσυλον ἐπεδίωκε· καὶ πρῶτον μὲν βαλλόμενος λίθοις [f] οὐκ ἀπέστη· γενομένης δ’ ἡμέρας, ἐγγὺς οὐ προσιὼν ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ ὀφθαλμοῦ παραφυλάττων εἵπετο καὶ τροφὴν προβάλλοντος οὐκ ἐλάμβανεν· ἀναπαυομένῳ δὲ παρενυκτέρευε καὶ βαδίζοντος πάλιν ἀναστὰς ἐπηκολούθει, τοὺς δ’ ἀπαντῶντας ὁδοιπόρους ἔσαινεν, ἐκείνῳ δ’ ἐφυλάκτει καὶ προσέκειτο. ταῦτα δ’ οἱ διώκοντες πυνθανόμενοι παρὰ τῶν ἀπαντώντων ἅμα καὶ τὸ χρῶμα φραζόντων καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ κυνὸς προθυμότερον ἐχρήσαντο τῇ διώξει, καὶ καταλαβόντες τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἀνήγαγον ἀπὸ [970] [a] Κρομμυῶνος. ὁ δὲ κύων ἀναστρέψας προηγεῖτο γαῦρος καὶ περιχαρής, οἷον ἑαυτοῦ ποιούμενος ἄγραν καὶ θήραμα τὸν ἱερόσυλον. ἐψηφίσαντο δὴ σῖτον αὐτῷ δημοσίᾳ μετρεῖσθαι καὶ παρεγγυᾶσθαι τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν εἰς ἀεὶ τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν, ἀπομιμησάμενοι τὸ πρὸς τὸν ἡμίονον φιλανθρώπευμα τῶν παλαιῶν Ἀθηναίων. τὸν γὰρ ἑκατόμπεδον νεὼν Περικλέους ἐν ἀκροπόλει κατασκευάζοντος, ὡς εἰκός, λίθοι προσήγοντο πολλοῖς ζεύγεσι καθ’ ἡμέραν· τῶν οὖν συνειργασμένων μὲν προθύμως ἤδη δὲ διὰ γῆρας ἀφειμένων ὀρέων εἷς κατερχόμενος εἰς Κεραμεικὸν καὶ [b] τοῖς ἀνάγουσι ζεύγεσι τοὺς λίθους ὑπαντῶν ἀεὶ συνανέστρεφε καὶ συμπαρετρόχαζεν, οἷον ἐγκελευόμενος καὶ παρορμῶν· διὸ θαυμάσας αὐτοῦ τὴν φιλοτιμίαν ὁ δῆμος ἐκέλευσε δημοσίᾳ τρέφεσθαι, καθάπερ ἀθλητῇ σίτησιν ὑπὸ γήρως ἀπειρηκότι ψηφισάμενος.

Διὸ τοὺς λέγοντας, ὡς ἡμῖν οὐδὲν πρὸς τὰ ζῷα δίκαιόν ἐστι, ῥητέον εὖ λέγειν ἄχρι τῶν ἐνάλων καὶ βυθίων· ἄμικτα γὰρ ἐκεῖνα κομιδῇ πρὸς χάριν καὶ ἄστοργα καὶ πάσης ἄμοιρα γλυκυθυμίας· καὶ καλῶς Ὅμηρος (Π 34) εἶπε ‘γλαυκὴ δέ σ’ ἔτικτε θάλασσα’ πρὸς τὸν ἀνήμερον εἶναι δοκοῦντα καὶ ἄμικτον, ὡς μηδὲν τῆς θαλάσσης εὐνοϊκὸν μηδὲ πρᾶον φερούσης. ὁ δὲ καὶ πρὸς τὰ χερσαῖα [c] τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ χρώμενος ἀπηνὴς καὶ θηριώδης· ἢ μηδὲ Λυσιμάχῳ τι γεγονέναι φήσῃ πρὸς τὸν κύνα τὸν Ὑρκανὸν δίκαιον, ὃς νεκρῷ τε μόνος παρέμεινεν αὐτῷ καί, καομένου τοῦ σώματος, ἐνδραμὼν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐπέρριψε. τὰ δ’ αὐτὰ καὶ τὸν ἀετὸν δρᾶσαι λέγουσιν, ὃν Πύρρος οὐχ ὁ βασιλεὺς ἀλλ’ ἕτερός τις ἰδιώτης ἔθρεψεν· ἀποθανόντος γὰρ αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸ σῶμα διατρίβων καὶ περὶ τὸ κλινίδιον αἰωρούμενος ἐκφερομένου, τέλος εἰς τὴν πυρὰν στειλάμενος ἀφῆκεν ἑαυτὸν καὶ συγκατέκαυσε. Πώρου δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως ὁ ἐλέφας, ἐν τῇ πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον μάχῃ [d] κατατετρωμένου, πολλὰ τῶν ἀκοντισμάτων ἀτρέμα καὶ φειδόμενος ἐξῄρει τῇ προβοσκίδι, καὶ κακῶς ἤδη διακείμενος αὐτὸς οὐ πρότερον ἐνέδωκεν ἢ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐξαίμου γενομένου καὶ περιρρέοντος αἰσθόμενος καὶ φοβηθεὶς μὴ πέσῃ πράως ὑφῆκε, παρέχων ἐκείνῳ τὴν ἀπόκλισιν ἄλυπον. ὁ δὲ Βουκεφάλας γυμνὸς μὲν ὢν παρεῖχεν ἀναβῆναι τῷ ἱπποκόμῳ, κοσμηθεὶς δὲ τοῖς βασιλικοῖς προκοσμίοις καὶ περιδεραίοις οὐδένα προσίετο πλὴν αὐτὸν Ἀλέξανδρον· τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις, εἰ πειρώμενοι προσίοιεν, ἐναντίος ἐπιτρέχων ἐχρεμέτιζε μέγα καὶ ἐνήλλετο καὶ [e] κατεπάτει τοὺς μὴ πρόσω ἵεσθαι μηδ’ ἀποφεύγειν φθάσαντας.

Οὐκ ἀγνοῶ δ’ ὅτι ‹τὸ› τῶν παραδειγμάτων ὑμῖν φανεῖταί τι ποικίλον· οὐκ ἔστι δὲ ῥᾳδίως τῶν εὐφυῶν ζῴων πρᾶξιν εὑρεῖν μιᾶς ἔμφασιν ἀρετῆς ἔχουσαν· ἀλλ’ ἐμφαίνεται καὶ τῷ φιλοστόργῳ τὸ φιλότιμον αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ γενναίῳ τὸ θυμόσοφον, ἥ τε πανουργία καὶ τὸ συνετὸν οὐκ ἀπήλλακται τοῦ θυμοειδοῦς καὶ ἀνδρώδους. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ βουλομένοις διαιρεῖν καὶ διορίζειν καθ’ ἕκαστον, ἡμέρου μὲν ἔμφασιν ὁμοῦ καὶ ὑψηλοῦ φρονήματος ποιοῦσιν οἱ κύνες, ἀποτρεπόμενοι τῶν συγκαθεζομένων· ὥς που καὶ ταῦτ’ εἴρηται (ξ 30)

[f] ‘οἱ μὲν κεκλήγοντες ἐπέδραμον· αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς

ἕζετο κερδοσύνῃ, σκῆπτρον δέ οἱ ἔκπεσε χειρός·’

οὐκέτι γὰρ προσμάχονται τοῖς ὑποπεσοῦσι καὶ γεγονόσι ταπεινῶν τὰς ἕξεις ὁμοίοις. φασὶ δὲ καὶ τὸν πρωτεύοντα κύνα τῶν Ἰνδικῶν †καὶ μαχεσθέντα πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον, ἐλάφου ‹μὲν› ἀφιεμένου καὶ κάπρου καὶ ἄρκτου, ἡσυχίαν ἔχοντα κεῖσθαι καὶ περιορᾶν, ὀφθέντος δὲ λέοντος εὐθὺς [971] [a] ἐξαναστῆναι καὶ διακονίεσθαι καὶ φανερὸν εἶναι αὑτοῦ ποιούμενον ἀνταγωνιστήν, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ὑπερφρονοῦντα πάντων. οἱ δὲ τοὺς δασύποδας διώκοντες, ἐὰν μὲν αὐτοὶ κτείνωσιν, ἥδονται διασπῶντες καὶ τὸ αἷμα λάπτουσι προθύμως· ἐὰν δ’ ἀπογνοὺς ἑαυτὸν ὁ λαγωός, ὃ γίγνεται πολλάκις, ὅσον ἔχει πνεύματος εἰς τὸν ἔσχατον ἀναλώσας δρόμον ἐκλίπῃ, νεκρὸν καταλαβόντες οὐχ ἅπτονται τὸ παράπαν, ἀλλ’ ἵστανται τὰς οὐρὰς κινοῦντες, ὡς οὐ κρεῶν χάριν ἀλλὰ νίκης καὶ φιλονεικίας ἀγωνιζόμενοι.
 Πανουργίας δὲ πολλῶν παραδειγμάτων ὄντων, ἀφεὶς ἀλώπεκας καὶ λύκους καὶ τὰ γεράνων σοφίσματα καὶ κολοιῶν, [b] ἔστι γὰρ δῆλα, μάρτυρι χρήσομαι Θαλῇ τῷ παλαιοτάτῳ τῶν σοφῶν, ὃν οὐχ ἥκιστα θαυμασθῆναι λέγουσιν ὀρέως τέχνῃ περιγενόμενον. τῶν γὰρ ἁληγῶν ἡμιόνων εἷς ἐμβαλὼν εἰς ποταμὸν ὤλισθεν αὐτομάτως καὶ τῶν ἁλῶν διατακέντων ἀναστὰς ἐλαφρὸς ᾔσθετο τὴν αἰτίαν καὶ κατεμνημόνευσεν· ὥστε διαβαίνων ἀεὶ τὸν ποταμὸν ἐπίτηδες ὑφιέναι καὶ βαπτίζειν τὰ ἀγγεῖα, συγκαθίζων καὶ ἀπονεύων εἰς ἑκάτερον μέρος. ἀκούσας οὖν ὁ Θαλῆς ἐκέλευσεν ἀντὶ τῶν ἁλῶν ἐρίων τὰ ἀγγεῖα καὶ σπόγγων ἐμπλήσαντας καὶ ἀναθέντας ἐλαύνειν τὸν [c] ἡμίονον. ποιήσας οὖν τὸ εἰωθὸς καὶ ἀναπλήσας ὕδατος τὰ φορτία συνῆκεν ἀλυσιτελῆ σοφιζόμενος ἑαυτῷ, καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν οὕτω προσέχων καὶ φυλαττόμενος διέβαινε τὸν ποταμόν, ὥστε μηδ’ ἄκοντος αὐτοῦ τῶν φορτίων παραψαῦσαι τὸ ὑγρόν. ἄλλην δὲ πανουργίαν ὁμοῦ μετὰ τοῦ φιλοστόργου πέρδικες ἐπιδεικνύντες τοὺς μὲν νεοττοὺς ἐθίζουσι μηδέπω φεύγειν δυναμένους, ὅταν διώκωνται, καταβαλόντας ὑπτίους ἑαυτοὺς βῶλόν τιν’ ἢ συρφετὸν ἄνω προΐσχεσθαι τοῦ σώματος οἷον ἐπηλυγαζομένους· αὐταὶ δὲ τοὺς διώκοντας ὑπάγουσιν ἄλλῃ καὶ περισπῶσιν ‹εἰς› ἑαυτάς, ἐμποδὼν διαπετόμεναι καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν [d] ἐξανιστάμεναι, μέχρις ἂν οὕτως ἁλισκομένων δόξαν ἐνδιδοῦσαι μακρὰν ἀποσπάσωσι τῶν νεοττῶν. οἱ δὲ δασύποδες πρὸς εὐνὴν ἐπανιόντες ἄλλον ἀλλαχῆ κομίζουσι τῶν λαγιδέων, καὶ πλέθρου διάστημα πολλάκις ἀλλήλων ἀπέχοντας, ὅπως, ἂν ἄνθρωπος ἢ κύων ἐπίῃ, μὴ πάντες ἅμα συγκινδυνεύωσιν· αὐτοὶ δὲ πολλαχόθι ταῖς μεταδρομαῖς ἴχνη θέντες, τὸ δ’ ἔσχατον ἅλμα μέγα καὶ μακρὰν τῶν ἰχνῶν ἀποσπάσαντες οὕτω καθεύδουσιν. ἡ δ’ ἄρκτος ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους, ὃ καλοῦσι φωλείαν, καταλαμβανομένη, πρὶν ἢ παντάπασι ναρκῆσαι καὶ γενέσθαι βαρεῖα [e] καὶ δυσκίνητος, τόν τε τόπον ἀνακαθαίρει καὶ μέλλουσα καταδύεσθαι τὴν μὲν ἄλλην πορείαν ὡς ἐνδέχεται μάλιστα ποιεῖται μετέωρον καὶ ἐλαφρὰν ἄκροις ἐπιθιγγάνουσα τοῖς ἴχνεσι, τῷ νώτῳ δὲ τὸ σῶμα προσάγει καὶ παρακομίζει πρὸς τὸν φωλεόν. τῶν ἐλάφων δ’ αἱ θήλειαι μάλιστα τίκτουσι παρὰ τὴν ὁδόν, ὅπου τὰ σαρκοβόρα θηρία μὴ πρόσεισιν· οἵ τ’ ἄρρενες, ὅταν αἴσθωνται βαρεῖς ὑπὸ πιμελῆς καὶ πολυσαρκίας ὄντες, ἐκτοπίζουσι σῴζοντες αὑτοὺς τῷ λανθάνειν, ὅτε τῷ φεύγειν οὐ πεποίθασιν. τῶν δὲ χερσαίων ἐχίνων ἡ μὲν ὑπὲρ αὑτῶν [f] ἄμυνα καὶ φυλακὴ παροιμίαν πεποίηκε (Archilochi fr. 103 D.)

‘πόλλ’ οἶδ’ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα’·

προσιούσης γὰρ αὐτῆς, ὥς φησιν ὁ Ἴων (fr. 38 N. 6 81 Bl.),

‘στρόβιλος ἀμφ’ ἄκανθαν εἱλίξας δέμας

κεῖται θιγεῖν τε καὶ δακεῖν ἀμήχανος.’

γλαφυρωτέρα δ’ ἐστὶν ἡ περὶ τῶν σκυμνίων πρόνοια· μετοπώρου γὰρ ὑπὸ τὰς ἀμπέλους ὑποδυόμενος καὶ τοῖς ποσὶ τὰς ῥᾶγας ἀποσείσας τοῦ βότρυος χαμᾶζε καὶ περικυλινδηθείς, [972] [a] ἀναλαμβάνει ταῖς ἀκάνθαις· καὶ παρέσχε ποτὲ παισὶν ἡμῖν ὁρῶσιν ὄψιν ἑρπούσης ἢ βαδιζούσης σταφυλῆς, οὕτως ἀνάπλεως ἐχώρει τῆς ὀπώρας· εἶτα καταδὺς εἰς τὸν φωλεὸν τοῖς σκύμνοις χρῆσθαι καὶ λαμβάνειν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ ταμιευομένοις παραδίδωσι. τὸ δὲ κοιταῖον αὐτῶν ὀπὰς ἔχει δύο, τὴν μὲν πρὸς νότον τὴν δὲ πρὸς βορέαν βλέπουσαν· ὅταν δὲ προαίσθωνται τὴν διαφορὰν τοῦ ἀέρος, ὥσπερ ἱστίον κυβερνῆται μεταλαμβάνοντες ἐμφράττουσι τὴν κατ’ ἄνεμον τὴν δ’ ἑτέραν ἀνοίγουσι. καὶ τοῦτό τις ἐν Κυζίκῳ καταμαθὼν δόξαν ἔσχεν ὡς ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ τὸν μέλλοντα πνεῖν ἄνεμον προαγορεύων.

[b] Τό γε μὴν κοινωνικὸν μετὰ τοῦ συνετοῦ τοὺς ἐλέφαντας ἀποδείκνυσθαί φησιν ὁ Ἰόβας (fr. 51a). ὀρύγματα γὰρ αὐτοῖς οἱ θηρεύοντες ὑπεργασάμενοι λεπτοῖς φρυγάνοις καὶ φορυτῷ κούφῳ κατερέφουσιν· ὅταν οὖν ‹εἷς› τις εἰσολίσθῃ πολλῶν ὁμοῦ πορευομένων, οἱ λοιποὶ φοροῦντες ὕλην καὶ λίθους ἐμβάλλουσιν, ἀναπληροῦντες τὴν κοιλότητα τοῦ ὀρύγματος, ὥστε ῥᾳδίαν ἐκείνῳ γίνεσθαι τὴν ἔκβασιν. ἱστορεῖ δὲ καὶ (fr. 53) εὐχῇ χρῆσθαι θεῶν τοὺς ἐλέφαντας ἀδιδάκτως, ἁγνιζομένους τε τῇ θαλάσσῃ καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἐκφανέντα προσκυνοῦντας ὥσπερ χειρὸς ἀνασχέσει τῆς προβοσκίδος. ὅθεν καὶ θεοφιλέστατόν ἐστι τὸ θηρίον, ὡς Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Φιλοπάτωρ ἐμαρτύρησε. κρατήσας γὰρ Ἀντιόχου καὶ βουλόμενος ἐκπρεπῶς τιμῆσαι τὸ θεῖον ἄλλα τε πάμπολλα κατέθυσεν ἐπινίκια τῆς μάχης καὶ τέσσαρας ἐλέφαντας· εἶτα νύκτωρ ὀνείρασιν ἐντυχών, ὡς τοῦ θεοῦ μετ’ ὀργῆς ἀπειλοῦντος αὐτῷ διὰ τὴν ἀλλόκοτον ἐκείνην θυσίαν, ἱλασμοῖς τε πολλοῖς ἐχρήσατο καὶ χαλκοῦς ἐλέφαντας ἀντὶ τῶν σφαγέντων ἀνέστησε τέσσαρας. οὐχ ἧττον δὲ κοινωνικὰ τὰ τῶν λεόντων. οἱ γὰρ νέοι τοὺς βραδεῖς καὶ γέροντας ἤδη συνεξάγουσιν ἐπὶ θήραν· ὅπου δ’ ἂν ἀπαγορεύσωσιν, οἱ μὲν κάθηνται περιμένοντες οἱ δὲ θηρεύουσι· κἂν λάβωσιν [c] ὁτιοῦν, ἀνακαλοῦνται, μόσχου μυκήματι τὸ βρύχημα ποιοῦντες ὅμοιον· οἱ δ’ εὐθὺς αἰσθάνονται καὶ παραγενόμενοι κοινῇ τὴν ἄγραν ἀναλίσκουσιν.

Ἔρωτες δὲ πολλῶν οἱ μὲν ἄγριοι καὶ περιμανεῖς γεγόνασιν, οἱ δ’ ἔχοντες οὐκ ἀπάνθρωπον ὡραϊσμὸν οὐδ’ ἀναφρόδιτον ὁμιλίαν. οἷος ἦν ὁ τοῦ ἐλέφαντος ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ τοῦ ἀντερῶντος Ἀριστοφάνει τῷ γραμματικῷ· τῆς γὰρ αὐτῆς ἤρων στεφανοπώλιδος, καὶ οὐχ ἧττον ἦν ὁ ἐλέφας διάδηλος· ἔφερε γὰρ αὐτῇ τῆς ὀπώρας ἀεὶ ‹τὰ› πρατήρια παραπορευόμενος, καὶ χρόνον πολὺν ὑφίστατο καὶ τὴν προβοσκίδα τῶν χιτωνίων ἐντὸς ὥσπερ χεῖρα [d] παραβαλὼν ἀτρέμα τῆς περὶ τὸ στῆθος ὥρας ἔψαυεν. ὁ δὲ δράκων ὁ τῆς Αἰτωλίδος ἐρασθεὶς ἐφοίτα νύκτωρ παρ’ αὐτὴν καὶ τοῦ σώματος ὑποδυόμενος ἐν χρῷ καὶ περιπλεκόμενος οὐδὲν οὔθ’ ἑκὼν οὔτ’ ἄκων ἔβλαψεν ἀλλὰ κοσμίως ἀεὶ περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον ἀπηλλάττετο. συνεχῶς δὲ τοῦτο ποιοῦντος αὐτοῦ, μετῴκισαν οἱ προσήκοντες ἀπωτέρω τὴν ἄνθρωπον· ὁ δὲ τρεῖς μὲν ἢ τέτταρας ‹νύκτας› οὐκ ἦλθεν ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔοικε περιῄει ζητῶν καὶ πλανώμενος· μόλις δέ πως ἐξανευρὼν καὶ περιπεσὼν οὐ πρᾴως ὥσπερ εἰώθει ἀλλὰ τραχύτερον τῷ μὲν ἄλλῳ σπειράματι τὰς [e] χεῖρας αὐτῆς ἔδησε πρὸς τὸ σῶμα, τῷ δ’ ἀπολήγοντι τῆς οὐρᾶς ἐμαστίγου τὰς κνήμας, ἐλαφράν τινα καὶ φιλόστοργον καὶ πλέον ἔχουσαν τοῦ κολάζοντος τὸ φειδόμενον ὀργὴν ἀποδεικνύμενος. τὸν δ’ ἐν Αἰγίῳ παιδεραστοῦντα χῆνα καὶ τὸν ἐπιθυμήσαντα Γλαύκης τῆς κιθαρῳδοῦ κριόν, περιβόητοι γάρ εἰσι καὶ πολλῶν οἶμαι διηγημάτων διακορεῖς ὑμᾶς εἶναι, διὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἀφίημι.

Ψᾶρες δὲ καὶ κόρακες καὶ ψιττακοὶ μανθάνοντες διαλέγεσθαι καὶ τὸ τῆς φωνῆς πνεῦμα τοῖς διδάσκουσιν εὔπλαστον οὕτω καὶ μιμηλὸν ἐξαρθροῦν καὶ ῥυθμίζειν [973] [a] παρέχοντες ἐμοὶ δοκοῦσι προδικεῖν καὶ συνηγορεῖν τοῖς ἄλλοις ζῴοις ἐν τῷ μανθάνειν, τρόπον τινὰ διδάσκοντες ἡμᾶς, ὅτι καὶ προφορικοῦ λόγου καὶ φωνῆς ἐνάρθρου μέτεστιν αὐτοῖς· ᾗ καὶ πολὺς κατάγελως τὸ πρὸς ταῦτα καταλιπεῖν ἐκείνοις σύγκρισιν, οἷς οὐδ’ ὅσον ὠρύσασθαι μέτεστιν οὐδ’ ὅσον στενάξαι φωνῆς. τούτων δὲ καὶ τοῖς αὐτοφυέσι καὶ τοῖς ἀδιδάκτοις γηρύμασιν ὅση μοῦσα καὶ χάρις ἔπεστιν, οἱ λογιώτατοι καὶ καλλιφωνότατοι μαρτυροῦσι, τὰ ἥδιστα ποιήματα μέλεσι κύκνων καὶ ἀηδόνων ᾠδαῖς ἀπεικάζοντες. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦ μαθεῖν τὸ διδάξαι λογικώτερον, ἤδη πειστέον Ἀριστοτέλει (an. h. 536b 18) [b] λέγοντι καὶ τοῦτο τὰ ζῷα ποιεῖν· ὀφθῆναι γὰρ ἀηδόνα νεοσσὸν ᾄδειν προδιδάσκουσαν. μαρτυρεῖ δ’ αὐτῷ τὸ φαυλότερον ᾄδειν ὅσαις συμβέβηκε μικραῖς ἁλούσαις ἀποτρόφοις τῶν μητέρων γενέσθαι· διδάσκονται γὰρ αἱ συντρεφόμεναι καὶ μανθάνουσιν οὐ διὰ μισθὸν οὐδὲ πρὸς δόξαν ἀλλὰ τῷ χαίρειν διαμελιζόμεναι καὶ τὸ καλὸν ἀγαπᾶν μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ χρειῶδες τῆς φωνῆς. ἔχω δὲ περὶ τούτου καὶ λόγον εἰπεῖν πρὸς ὑμᾶς, ἀκούσας Ἑλλήνων τε πολλῶν καὶ Ῥωμαίων παραγενομένων. κουρεὺς γάρ τις ἐργαστήριον ἔχων ἐν Ῥώμῃ πρὸ τοῦ τεμένους, ὃ καλοῦσιν [c] Ἑλλήνων ἀγοράν, θαυμαστόν τι χρῆμα πολυφώνου καὶ πολυφθόγγου κίττης ἔτρεφε, καὶ ἀνθρώπου ῥήματα καὶ θηρίων φθόγγους καὶ ψόφους ὀργάνων ἀνταπεδίδου, μηδενὸς ἀναγκάζοντος ἀλλ’ αὑτὴν ἐθίζουσα καὶ φιλοτιμουμένη μηδὲν ἄρρητον ἀπολιπεῖν μηδ’ ἀμίμητον. ἔτυχε δέ τις ἐκεῖθεν τῶν πλουσίων ἐκκομιζόμενος ὑπὸ σάλπιγξι πολλαῖς, καὶ γενομένης ὥσπερ εἴωθε κατὰ τὸν τόπον ἐπιστάσεως, εὐδοκιμοῦντες οἱ σαλπιγκταὶ καὶ κελευόμενοι πολὺν χρόνον ἐνδιέτριψαν· ἡ δὲ κίττα μετὰ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἄφθογγος ἦν καὶ ἄναυδος, οὐδὲ τὴν αὑτῆς ἐπὶ τοῖς [d] ἀναγκαίοις πάθεσιν ἀφιεῖσα φωνήν. τοῖς οὖν πρότερον αὐτῆς θαυμάζουσι τὴν φωνὴν τότε θαῦμα μεῖζον ἡ σιωπὴ παρεῖχε, κωφὸν ἀκροάματος συνήθους παροδεύουσι τὸν τόπον· ὑποψίαι δὲ φαρμάκων ἐπὶ τοὺς ὁμοτέχνους ἦσαν· οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι τὰς σάλπιγγας εἴκαζον ἐκπλῆξαι τὴν ἀκοήν, τῇ δ’ ἀκοῇ συγκατεσβέσθαι τὴν φωνήν. ἦν δ’ οὐδέτερα τούτων, ἀλλ’ ἄσκησις ὡς ἔοικε καὶ ἀναχώρησις εἰς ἑαυτὸ τοῦ μιμητικοῦ, καθάπερ ὄργανον ἐξαρτυομένου τὴν φωνὴν καὶ παρασκευάζοντος· ἄφνω γὰρ αὖθις ἧκε καὶ ἀνέλαμψεν οὐδὲν τῶν συνήθων καὶ παλαιῶν μιμημάτων [e] ἐκείνων, ἀλλὰ τὰ μέλη τῶν σαλπίγγων αὐταῖς περιόδοις φθεγγομένη καὶ μεταβολὰς πάσας καὶ κρουμάτων διεξιοῦσα πάντας ῥυθμούς· ὥστε, ὅπερ ἔφην, τῆς εὐμαθείας λογικωτέραν εἶναι τὴν αὐτομάθειαν ἐν αὐτοῖς. πλὴν ἕν γέ τι μάθημα κυνὸς οὐ δοκῶ μοι παρήσειν, γενόμενος ἐν Ῥώμῃ θεατής. παρὼν γὰρ ὁ κύων μίμῳ πλοκὴν ἔχοντι δραματικὴν καὶ πολυπρόσωπον ἄλλας τε μιμήσεις ἀπεδίδου τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις πάθεσι καὶ πράγμασι προσφόρους, καὶ φαρμάκου ποιουμένων ἐν αὐτῷ πεῖραν ὑπνωτικοῦ μὲν ὑποκειμένου δ’ εἶναι θανασίμου, τόν τ’ ἄρτον, ᾧ δῆθεν ἐμέμικτο τὸ φάρμακον, ἐδέξατο καὶ [f] καταφαγὼν ὀλίγον ὕστερον ὅμοιος ἦν ὑποτρέμοντι καὶ σφαλλομένῳ καὶ καρηβαροῦντι· τέλος δὲ προτείνας ἑαυτὸν ὥσπερ νεκρὸς ἔκειτο, καὶ παρεῖχεν ἕλκειν καὶ μεταφέρειν, ὡς ὁ τοῦ δράματος ὑπηγόρευε λόγος. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸν καιρὸν ἐκ τῶν λεγομένων καὶ πραττομένων ἐνόησεν, ἡσυχῆ τὸ πρῶτον ἐκίνησεν ἑαυτόν, ὥσπερ ἐξ ὕπνου βαθέος ἀναφερόμενος, [974] [a] καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπάρας διέβλεψεν· ἔπειτα θαυμασάντων, ἐξαναστὰς ἐβάδιζε πρὸς ὃν ἔδει καὶ προσῄκαλλε χαίρων καὶ φιλοφρονούμενος, ὥστε πάντας ἀνθρώπους καὶ Καίσαρα (παρῆν γὰρ ὁ γέρων Οὐεσπασιανὸς ἐν τῷ Μαρκέλλου θεάτρῳ) συμπαθεῖς γενέσθαι.

Γελοῖοι δ’ ἴσως ἐσμὲν ἐπὶ τῷ μανθάνειν τὰ ζῷα σεμνύνοντες, ὧν ὁ Δημόκριτος (B 154) ἀποφαίνει μαθητὰς ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις γεγονότας ἡμᾶς· ἀράχνης ‹ἐν› ὑφαντικῇ καὶ ἀκεστικῇ, χελιδόνος ἐν οἰκοδομίᾳ, καὶ τῶν λιγυρῶν, κύκνου καὶ ἀηδόνος, ἐν ᾠδῇ κατὰ μίμησιν. ἰατρικῆς δὲ πολὺ τῶν τριῶν εἰδῶν ἑκάστου καὶ γενναῖον [b] ἐν αὐτοῖς μόριον ὁρῶμεν· οὐ γὰρ μόνον τῷ φαρμακευτικῷ χρῶνται, χελῶναι μὲν ὀρίγανον γαλαῖ δὲ πήγανον, ὅταν ὄφεως φάγωσιν, ἐπεσθίουσαι· κύνες δὲ πόᾳ τινὶ καθαίροντες ἑαυτοὺς χολεριῶντας· ὁ δὲ δράκων τῷ μαράθρῳ τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν ἀμβλυώττοντα λεπτύνων καὶ διαχαράττων· ἡ δ’ ἄρκτος, ὅταν ἐκ τοῦ φωλεοῦ προέλθῃ, τὸ ἄρον ἐσθίουσα πρῶτον τὸ ἄγριον· ἡ γὰρ δριμύτης ἀνοίγει συμπεφυκὸς αὐτῆς τὸ ἔντερον· ἄλλως δ’ ἀσώδης γενομένη πρὸς τὰς μυρμηκιὰς τρέπεται καὶ κάθηται προβάλλουσα λιπαρὰν καὶ μαλακὴν ἰκμάδι γλυκείᾳ τὴν γλῶσσαν, ἄχρι [c] οὗ μυρμήκων ἀνάπλεως γένηται· καταπίνουσα γὰρ ὠφελεῖται. τῆς τ’ ἴβεως τὸν ὑποκλυσμὸν ἅλμῃ καθαιρομένης Αἰγύπτιοι συνιδεῖν καὶ μιμήσασθαι λέγουσιν· οἱ δ’ ἱερεῖς ὕδατι χρῶνται, περιαγνίζοντες ἑαυτούς, ἐξ οὗ πέπωκεν ἶβις· ἂν γὰρ ᾖ φαρμακῶδες ἢ νοσηρὸν ἄλλως τὸ ὕδωρ, οὐ πρόσεισιν. ἀλλὰ καὶ τροφῆς ἀποσχέσει ἔνια θεραπεύονται· καθάπερ λύκοι καὶ λέοντες, ὅταν κρεῶν γένωνται διακορεῖς, ἡσυχίαν ἄγουσι κατακείμενοι καὶ συνθάλποντες ἑαυτούς. τίγριν δέ φασιν, ἐρίφου παραδοθέντος αὐτῇ, χρωμένην διαίτῃ μὴ φαγεῖν ἐφ’ ἡμέρας δύο, τῇ δὲ [d] τρίτῃ πεινῶσαν αἰτεῖν ἄλλο καὶ τὴν γαλεάγραν σπαράσσειν· ἐκείνου δὲ φείσασθαι οἰομένην σύντροφον ἔχειν ἤδη καὶ σύνοικον. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ χειρουργίᾳ χρῆσθαι τοὺς ἐλέφαντας ἱστοροῦσι· καὶ γὰρ ξυστὰ καὶ λόγχας καὶ τοξεύματα, παριστάμενοι τοῖς τετρωμένοις, ἄνευ σπαραγμοῦ ῥᾳδίως καὶ ἀβλαβῶς ἐξέλκουσιν. αἱ δὲ Κρητικαὶ αἶγες, ὅταν τὸ δίκταμνον φάγωσιν, ἐκβάλλουσαι τὰ τοξεύματα ῥᾳδίως καταμαθεῖν ταῖς ἐγκύοις τὴν βοτάνην παρέσχον ἐκτρωτικὴν δύναμιν ἔχουσαν· ἐπ’ οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄλλο τρωθεῖσαι φέρονται καὶ ζητοῦσι καὶ διώκουσιν ‹ἢ› τὸ δίκταμνον.

Ἧττον δὲ ταῦτα θαυμαστά, καίπερ ὄντα θαυμάσια, [e] ποιοῦσιν αἱ νόησιν ἀριθμοῦ καὶ δύναμιν τοῦ ἀριθμεῖν ἔχουσαι φύσεις, ὥσπερ ἔχουσιν αἱ περὶ Σοῦσα βόες. εἰσὶ γὰρ αὐτόθι τὸν βασιλικὸν παράδεισον ἄρδουσαι περιάκτοις ἀντλήμασιν, ὧν ὥρισται τὸ πλῆθος· ἑκατὸν γὰρ ἑκάστη βοῦς ἀναφέρει καθ’ ἡμέραν ἑκάστην ἀντλήματα· πλείονα δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν οὔτε λαθεῖν οὔτε βιάσασθαι βουλόμενον· ἀλλὰ καὶ πείρας ἕνεκα πολλάκις προστιθέντων ὑφίσταται καὶ οὐ πρόεισιν, ἀποδοῦσα τὸ τεταγμένον· οὕτως ἀκριβῶς συντίθησι καὶ καταμνημονεύει τὸ κεφάλαιον, ὡς Κτησίας ὁ Κνίδιος (fr. 53) ἱστόρηκε. Λίβυες δ’ Αἰγυπτίων καταγελῶσι μυθολογούντων περὶ τοῦ ὄρυγος, [f] ὡς φωνὴν ἀφιέντος ἡμέρας ἐκείνης καὶ ὥρας ἧς ἐπιτέλλει τὸ ἄστρον, ὃ Σῶθιν αὐτοὶ Κύνα δὲ καὶ Σείριον ἡμεῖς καλοῦμεν· τὰς γὰρ αὑτῶν ὁμοῦ πάσας αἶγας, ὅταν ἀνάσχῃ μεθ’ ἡλίου τὸ ἄστρον ἀτρεκῶς, ἐκεῖ στρεφομένας ἀποβλέπειν πρὸς τὴν ἀνατολήν· καὶ τεκμήριον τοῦτο τῆς περιόδου βεβαιότατον εἶναι καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς μαθηματικοῖς κανόσιν ὁμολογούμενον.

[975] [a] Ἵνα δὲ κορυφὴν ὁ λόγος ἐπιθεὶς ἑαυτῷ παύσηται, φέρε κινήσαντες τὴν ἀφ’ ἱερᾶς βραχέα περὶ θειότητος αὐτῶν καὶ μαντικῆς εἴπωμεν. οὐ γάρ τι μικρὸν οὐδ’ ἄδοξον, ἀλλὰ πολὺ καὶ παμπάλαιον μαντικῆς μόριον οἰωνιστικὴ κέκληται· τὸ γὰρ ὀξὺ καὶ νοερὸν αὐτῶν καὶ δι’ εὐστροφίαν ὑπήκοον ἁπάσης φαντασίας ὥσπερ ὀργάνῳ τῷ θεῷ παρέχει χρῆσθαι καὶ τρέπειν ἐπί τε κίνησιν ἐπί τε φωνὰς καὶ γηρύματα καὶ σχήματα νῦν μὲν ἐνστατικὰ νῦν δὲ φορὰ καθάπερ πνεύματα †ταῖς μὲν ἐπικόπτοντα ταῖς δ’ ἐπευθύνοντα πράξεις καὶ ὁρμὰς εἰς τὸ τέλος. διὸ [b] κοινῇ μὲν ὁ Εὐριπίδης ‘θεῶν κήρυκας’ ὀνομάζει τοὺς ὄρνιθας· ἰδίᾳ δέ φησιν ὁ Σωκράτης (Plat. Phaed. 85b) ‘ὁμόδουλον’ ἑαυτὸν ποιεῖσθαι ‘τῶν κύκνων’· ὥσπερ αὖ καὶ τῶν βασιλέων Ἀετὸς μὲν ὁ Πύρρος ἥδετο καλούμενος Ἰέραξ δ’ ὁ Ἀντίοχος· ἰχθῦς δὲ τοὺς ἀμαθεῖς καὶ ἀνοήτους λοιδοροῦντες ἢ σκώπτοντες ὀνομάζομεν. ἀλλὰ δὴ μυρίων μυριάκις εἰπεῖν παρόντων, ἃ προδείκνυσιν ἡμῖν καὶ προσημαίνει τὰ πεζὰ καὶ πτηνὰ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν, ἓν οὐκ ἔστι τοιοῦτον ἀποφῆναι τῷ προδικοῦντι τῶν ἐνύδρων, ἀλλὰ κωφὰ πάντα καὶ τυφλὰ τῆς προνοίας εἰς τὸν ἄθεον καὶ τιτανικὸν ἀπέρριπται τόπον ὥσπερ ἀσεβῶν χῶρον, οὗ τὸ λογικὸν καὶ νοερὸν ἐγκατέσβεσται τῆς ψυχῆς, [c] ἐσχάτῳ δέ τινι συμπεφυρμένης καὶ κατακεκλυσμένης αἰσθήσεως μορίῳ σπαίρουσι μᾶλλον ἢ ζῶσιν ἔοικεν.

ΗΡΑΚΛΕΩΝ. Ἄναγε τὰς ὀφρῦς, ὦ φίλε Φαίδιμε, καὶ διέγειρε σεαυτὸν ἡμῖν τοῖς ἐνάλοις καὶ νησιώταις· οὐ παιδιὰ τὸ χρῆμα τοῦ λόγου γέγονεν, ἀλλ’ ἐρρωμένος ἀγὼν καὶ ῥητορεία κιγκλίδων ἐπιδέουσα καὶ βήματος.

ΦΑΙΔΙΜΟΣ. Ἐνέδρα μὲν οὖν, ὦ Ἡρακλέων, σὺν δόλῳ καταφανής· κραιπαλῶσι γὰρ ἔτι τὸ χθιζὸν καὶ βεβαπτισμένοις νήφων, ὡς ὁρᾷς, ὁ γενναῖος ἐκ παρασκευῆς ἐπιτέθειται. παραιτεῖσθαι δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν· οὐ γὰρ βούλομαι Πινδάρου (fr. 228) ζηλωτὴς ὢν ἀκοῦσαι τὸ

[d] ‘τιθεμένων ἀγώνων πρόφασις

ἀρετὰν ἐς αἰπὺν ἔβαλε σκότον.’

σχολὴ μὲν οὖν πολλὴ πάρεστιν ὑμῖν, ἀργούντων οὐ χορῶν ἀλλὰ κυνῶν καὶ ἵππων καὶ δικτύου καὶ πάσης σαγήνης, διὰ τοὺς λόγους ἐκεχειρίας κοινῇ πᾶσι τοῖς ζῴοις κατά τε γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν δεδομένης τὸ σήμερον. ἀλλὰ μὴ φοβηθῆτε· χρήσομαι γὰρ αὐτῇ μετρίως, οὔτε δόξας φιλοσόφων οὔτ’ Αἰγυπτίων μύθους οὔτ’ ἀμαρτύρους Ἰνδῶν ἐπαγόμενος ἢ Λιβύων διηγήσεις· ἃ δὲ πανταχοῦ μάρτυρας ἔχει τοὺς ἐργαζομένους τὴν θάλατταν ὁρώμενα καὶ δίδωσι τῇ ὄψει πίστιν, τούτων ὀλίγα παραθήσομαι.

[e] καίτοι τῶν ἐν γῇ παραδειγμάτων ἐπιπροσθοῦν οὐδέν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἀνεῳγμένη παρέχει τῇ αἰσθήσει τὴν ἱστορίαν· ἡ δὲ θάλασσα μικρὰ κατιδεῖν καὶ γλίσχρα δίδωσι, τῶν δὲ πλείστων κατακαλύπτει γενέσεις καὶ τροφὰς ἐπιθέσεις τε καὶ φυλακὰς ἀλλήλων, ἐν αἷς οὐκ ὀλίγα καὶ συνέσεως ἔργα καὶ μνήμης καὶ κοινωνίας ἀγνοούμενα βλάπτει τὸν λόγον. ἔπειτα τὰ μὲν ἐν γῇ διὰ τὴν ὁμοφυλίαν καὶ τὴν συνδιαίτησιν ἁμωσγέπως συναναχρωννύμενα τοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις ἤθεσιν ἀπολαύει καὶ τροφῆς καὶ διδασκαλίας καὶ μιμήσεως· ἣ τὸ μὲν πικρὸν ἅπαν καὶ [f] σκυθρωπὸν ὥσπερ ἐπιμιξία ποτίμου θάλασσαν ἐφηδύνει, τὸ δὲ δυσξύνετον ἅπαν καὶ νωθρὸν ἐπεγείρει ταῖς μετ’ ἀνθρώπων κινήσεσιν ἀναρριπιζόμενον. ὁ δὲ τῶν ἐνάλων βίος ὅροις μεγάλοις τῆς πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ἀπῳκισμένος ὁμιλίας ἐπείσακτον οὐδὲν οὐδὲ συνειθισμένον [976] [a] ἔχων ἴδιός ἐστι καὶ αὐθιγενὴς καὶ ἄκρατος ἀλλοτρίοις ἤθεσι διὰ τὸν τόπον, οὐ διὰ τὴν φύσιν. ἡ γὰρ φύσις ὅσον ἐξικνεῖται μαθήσεως ἐπ’ αὐτὴν δεχομένη καὶ στέγουσα παρέχει πολλὰς μὲν ἐγχέλεις [ἱερὰς λεγομένας] ἀνθρώποις χειροήθεις, ὥσπερ τὰς ‹ἱερὰς λεγομένας› ἐν τῇ Ἀρεθούσῃ, πολλαχοῦ δ’ ἰχθῦς ὑπακούοντας αὐτῶν ὀνόμασιν· ὥσπερ τὴν Κράσσου μύραιναν ἱστοροῦσιν, ἧς ἀποθανούσης ἔκλαυσεν ὁ Κράσσος· καί ποτε Δομετίου πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰπόντος ‘οὐ σὺ μυραίνης ἀποθανούσης ἔκλαυσας;’ ἀπήντησεν ‘οὐ σὺ τρεῖς θάψας γυναῖκας οὐκ ἐδάκρυσας;’ οἱ δὲ κροκόδειλοι τῶν ἱερέων οὐ μόνον γνωρίζουσι τὴν [b] φωνὴν καλούντων καὶ τὴν ψαῦσιν ὑπομένουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ διαχανόντες παρέχουσι τοὺς ὀδόντας ἐκκαθαίρειν ταῖς χερσὶ καὶ περιμάττειν ὀθονίοις. ἔναγχος δὲ Φιλῖνος ὁ βέλτιστος ἥκων πεπλανημένος ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ παρ’ ἡμᾶς διηγεῖτο γραῦν ἰδεῖν ἐν Ἀνταίου πόλει κροκοδείλῳ συγκαθεύδουσαν ἐπὶ σκίμποδος εὖ μάλα κοσμίως παρεκτεταμένῳ. πάλαι δ’ ἱστοροῦσι Πτολεμαίου τοῦ βασιλέως παρακαλουμένου τὸν ἱερὸν κροκόδειλον μὴ ἐπακούσαντα μηδὲ πεισθέντα λιπαροῦσι καὶ δεομένοις τοῖς ἱερεῦσι δόξαι προσημαίνειν τὴν μετ’ οὐ πολὺ συμβᾶσαν αὐτῷ τοῦ βίου [c] τελευτήν· ὥστε μηδὲ τῆς πολυτιμήτου μαντικῆς ἄμοιρον εἶναι τὸ τῶν ἐνύδρων γένος μηδ’ ἀγέραστον· ἐπεὶ καὶ περὶ Σοῦραν πυνθάνομαι, κώμην ἐν τῇ Λυκίᾳ Φελλοῦ μεταξὺ καὶ Μύρων, καθεζομένους ἐπ’ ἰχθύσιν ὥσπερ οἰωνοῖς διαμαντεύεσθαι τέχνῃ τινὶ καὶ λόγῳ νήξεις καὶ φυγὰς καὶ διώξεις αὐτῶν ἐπισκοποῦντας.

Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἔστω τοῦ μὴ παντάπασιν ἐκφύλου μηδ’ ἀσυμπαθοῦς πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἱκανὰ δείγματα· τῆς δ’ ἀκράτου καὶ φυσικῆς συνέσεως μέγα δήλωμα τὸ κοινόν ἐστιν· οὐδὲν γὰρ οὕτως εὐχείρωτον ἀνθρώπῳ νηκτόν, ὃ μὴ πέτραις προσέχεται καὶ προσπέφυκεν, οὐδ’ ἁλώσιμον [d] ἄνευ πραγματείας, ὡς λύκοις μὲν ὄνοι καὶ μέροψι μέλισσαι χελιδόσι δὲ τέττιγες, ἐλάφοις δ’ ὄφεις ἀγόμενοι ῥᾳδίως ὑπ’ αὐτῶν (ᾗ καὶ τοὔνομα πεποίηται παρώνυμον οὐ τῆς ἐλαφρότητος ἀλλὰ τῆς ἕλξεως τοῦ ὄφεως)· καὶ τὸ πρόβατον προσκαλεῖται τῷ ποδὶ τὸν λύκον, τῇ δὲ παρδάλει τὰ πλεῖστα προσχωρεῖν χαίροντα τῇ ὀσμῇ, μάλιστα δὲ τὸν πίθηκον λέγουσι. τῶν δὲ θαλαττίων ὁμοῦ τι πάντων ἡ προαίσθησις ὕποπτος οὖσα καὶ πεφυλαγμένη πρὸς τὰς ἐπιθέσεις ὑπὸ συνέσεως, οὐχ ἁπλοῦν τὸ τῆς ἄγρας ἔργον οὐδὲ φαῦλον ἀλλ’ ὀργάνων τε παντοδαπῶν καὶ σοφισμάτων [e] ἐπ’ αὐτὰ δεινῶν καὶ ἀπατηλῶν δεόμενον ἀπείργασται. καὶ τοῦτο δῆλόν ἐστιν ἀπὸ τῶν πάνυ προχείρων. τὸν μὲν γὰρ ἀσπαλιευτικὸν κάλαμον οὐ βούλονται πάχος ἔχειν, καίπερ εὐτόνου δεόμενοι πρὸς τοὺς σπαραγμοὺς τῶν ἁλισκομένων, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἐκλέγονται τὸν λεπτόν, ὅπως μὴ πλατεῖαν ἐπιβάλλων σκιὰν ἐκταράττῃ τὸ ὕποπτον αὐτῶν. ἔπειτα τὴν ὁρμιὰν οὐ ποιοῦσι πολύπλοκον τοῖς ἅμμασι τῶν βρόχων οὐδὲ τραχεῖαν· ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῦτο τοῦ δόλου γίγνεται τεκμήριον αὐτοῖς. καὶ τῶν τριχῶν τὰ καθήκοντα πρὸς τὸ ἄγκιστρον ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα λευκὰ φαίνεσθαι μηχανῶνται· μᾶλλον γὰρ οὕτως ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ [f] δι’ ὁμοιότητα τῆς χρόας λανθάνουσι. τὸ δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ ποιητοῦ λεγόμενον (Ω 80)

‘ἡ δὲ μολυβδαίνῃ ἰκέλη ἐς βυσσὸν ὄρουσεν,

ἥτε κατ’ ἀγραύλοιο βοὸς κέρας ἐμβεβαυῖα

ἔρχεται ὠμηστῇσιν ἐπ’ ἰχθύσι κῆρα φέρουσα·’

παρακούοντες ἔνιοι βοείαις θριξὶν οἴονται πρὸς τὰς ὁρμιὰς χρῆσθαι τοὺς παλαιούς· ‘κέρας’ γὰρ τὴν τρίχα λέγεσθαι καὶ τὸ κείρασθαι διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τὴν κουράν· καὶ [977] [a] τὸν παρ’ Ἀρχιλόχῳ (fr. 59 D) ‘κεροπλάστην’ φιλόκοσμον εἶναι περὶ κόμην καὶ καλλωπιστήν. ἔστι δ’ οὐκ ἀληθές· ἱππείαις γὰρ θριξὶ χρῶνται, τὰς τῶν ἀρρένων λαμβάνοντες· αἱ γὰρ θήλειαι τῷ οὔρῳ τὴν τρίχα βεβρεγμένην ἀδρανῆ ποιοῦσιν. Ἀριστοτέλης δέ φησι μηδὲν ἐν τούτοις λέγεσθαι σοφὸν ἢ περιττὸν ἀλλὰ τῷ ὄντι κεράτιον περιτίθεσθαι πρὸ τοῦ ἀγκίστρου περὶ τὴν ὁρμιάν, ἐπεὶ πρὸς ἄλλο ἐρχόμενοι διεσθίουσι. τῶν δ’ ἀγκίστρων τοῖς μὲν στρογγύλοις ἐπὶ κεστρέας καὶ ἀμίας χρῶνται μικροστόμους ὄντας· τὸ γὰρ εὐθύτερον εὐλαβοῦνται· πολλάκις δὲ καὶ τὸ στρογγύλον ὁ κεστρεὺς ὑποπτεύων ἐν κύκλῳ περινήχεται, τῇ οὐρᾷ περιρραπίζων τὸ ἐδώδιμον [b] καὶ ἀνακάπτων τὸ ἀποκρουόμενον· ἂν δὲ μὴ δύνηται, συν‹αγ›αγὼν τὸ στόμα καὶ περιστείλας, τοῖς χείλεσιν ἄκροις ἐπιψαύων ἀποκνίζει τοῦ δελέατος. ὁ δὲ λάβραξ ἀνδρικώτερον τοῦ ἐλέφαντος οὐχ ἕτερον ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ἑαυτόν, ὅταν περιπέσῃ τῷ ἀγκίστρῳ, βελουλκεῖ, τῇ δεῦρο κἀκεῖ παραλλάξει τῆς κεφαλῆς ἀνευρύνων τὸ τραῦμα καὶ τὸν ἐκ τοῦ σπαραγμοῦ πόνον ὑπομένων, ἄχρις ἂν ἐκβάλῃ τὸ ἄγκιστρον. ἡ δ’ ἀλώπηξ οὐ πολλάκις μὲν ἀγκίστρῳ πρόσεισιν ἀλλὰ φεύγει τὸν δόλον, ἁλοῦσα δ’ εὐθὺς ἐκτρέπεται· πέφυκε γὰρ δι’ εὐτονίαν καὶ ὑγρότητα μεταβάλλειν τὸ σῶμα καὶ στρέφειν, ὥστε τῶν ἐντὸς ἐκτὸς γενομένων [c] ἀποπίπτειν τὸ ἄγκιστρον.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν γνῶσιν ἐμφαίνει καὶ χρῆσιν ἐπὶ καιρῷ τοῦ συμφέροντος εὐμήχανον καὶ περιττήν· ἄλλα δ’ ἐπιδείκνυται μετὰ τοῦ συνετοῦ τὸ κοινωνικὸν καὶ τὸ φιλάλληλον, ὥσπερ ἀνθίαι καὶ σκάροι. σκάρου μὲν γὰρ ἄγκιστρον καταπιόντος, οἱ παρόντες σκάροι προσαλλόμενοι τὴν ὁρμιὰν ἀποτρώγουσιν· οὗτοι δὲ καὶ τοῖς εἰς κύρτον ἐμπεσοῦσι τὰς οὐρὰς παραδόντες ἔξωθεν ἕλκουσι δάκνοντας προθύμως καὶ συνεξάγουσιν. οἱ δ’ ἀνθίαι τῷ συμφύλῳ βοηθοῦσιν ἰταμώτερον· τὴν γὰρ ὁρμιὰν ἀναθέμενοι κατὰ τὴν ῥάχιν καὶ στήσαντες ὀρθὴν τὴν ἄκανθαν [d] ἐπιχειροῦσι διαπρίειν τῇ τραχύτητι καὶ διακόπτειν. καίτοι χερσαῖον οὐδὲν ἴσμεν ἑτέρῳ κινδυνεύοντι τολμῶν ἀμύνειν, οὐκ ἄρκτον οὐ σῦν οὐδὲ λέαιναν οὐδὲ πάρδαλιν· ἀλλὰ συγχωρεῖ μὲν εἰς ταὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις τὰ ὁμόφυλα καὶ κύκλῳ μετ’ ἀλλήλων περίεισιν, ἑτέρῳ δ’ ἕτερον οὐκ οἶδεν οὐδὲ φρονεῖ βοηθεῖν, ἀλλὰ φεύγει καὶ ἀποπηδᾷ πορρωτάτω γιγνόμενα τοῦ τετρωμένου καὶ θνήσκοντος. ἡ δὲ τῶν ἐλεφάντων ἱστορία, φίλε, τῶν εἰς τὰ ὀρύγματα φορούντων καὶ τὸν ὀλισθόντα διὰ χώματος ἀναβιβαζόντων ἔκτοπός ἐστι δεινῶς καὶ ἀλλοδαπὴ καὶ καθάπερ ἐκ βασιλικοῦ διαγράμματος ἐπιτάττουσα πιστεύειν αὐτῇ τῶν [e] Ἰόβα βιβλίων· ἀληθὴς δ’ οὖσα πολλὰ δείκνυσι τῶν ἐνάλων μηδὲν ἀπολειπόμενα τῷ κοινωνικῷ καὶ συνετῷ τοῦ σοφωτάτου τῶν χερσαίων. ἀλλὰ περὶ κοινωνίας αὐτῶν ἴδιος ἔσται τάχα λόγος.

Οἱ δ’ ἁλιεῖς συνορῶντες ὥσπερ ἀλεξήμασι παλαισμάτων τὰ πλεῖστα διακρουόμενα τὰς ἀπ’ ἀγκίστρου βολὰς ἐπὶ βίας ἐτράπησαν, καθάπερ οἱ Πέρσαι σαγηνεύοντες, ὡς τοῖς ἐνσχεθεῖσιν οὐδεμίαν ἐκ λογισμοῦ καὶ σοφίας διάφευξιν οὖσαν. ἀμφιβλήστροις μὲν γὰρ καὶ ὑποχαῖς κεστρεῖς καὶ ἰουλίδες ἁλίσκονται, μόρμυροί τε καὶ [f] σαργοὶ καὶ κωβιοὶ καὶ λάβρακες· τὰ δὲ βολιστικὰ καλούμενα, τρίγλαν καὶ χρυσωπὸν καὶ σκορπίον, γρίποις τε καὶ σαγήναις σύρουσι περιλαμβάνοντες, [τῶν δικτύων] ὧν τὸ γένος ὀρθῶς Ὅμηρος (Ε 487) πανάγραν προσεῖπεν. ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα μηχαναὶ ταῖς γαλαῖς εἰσιν ὥσπερ τῷ λάβρακι· συρομένην γὰρ αἰσθανόμενος βίᾳ διίστησι καὶ τύπτων κοιλαίνει τοὔδαφος· ὅταν δὲ ποιήσῃ τῇ ἐπιδρομῇ τοῦ δικτύου χώραν, ‹ἐν›έωσεν ἑαυτὸν καὶ προσέχεται, μέχρις ἂν παρέλθῃ. δελφὶς δὲ περιληφθείς, ὅταν συναίσθηται γεγονὼς ἐν ἀγκάλαις σαγήνης, ὑπομένει μὴ ταραττόμενος ἀλλὰ χαίρων· εὐωχεῖται γὰρ ἄνευ πραγματείας ἀφθόνων ἰχθύων παρόντων· ὅταν δὲ πλησίον τῇ γῇ προσίῃ, ‹δια›φαγὼν τὸ δίκτυον ἄπεισιν. [978] [a] εἰ δὲ μὴ φθαίη διαφυγών, τὸ πρῶτον οὐδὲν ἔπαθε δεινὸν ἀλλὰ διαρράψαντες αὐτοῦ περὶ τὸν λόφον ὁλοσχοίνους ἀφῆκαν· αὖθις δὲ ληφθέντα πληγαῖς κολάζουσι, γνωρίσαντες ἐκ τοῦ διαρράμματος. σπανίως δὲ τοῦτο συμβαίνει· συγγνώμης γὰρ τυγχάνοντες τὸ πρῶτον εὐγνωμονοῦσιν οἱ πλεῖστοι καὶ φυλάττονται τὸ λοιπὸν μὴ ἀδικεῖν. ἔτι δὲ πολλῶν τῶν πρὸς εὐλάβειαν καὶ προφυλακὴν καὶ ἀπόδρασιν ὄντων παραδειγμάτων, οὐκ ἄξιόν ἐστι τὸ τῆς σηπίας παρελθεῖν. τὴν γὰρ καλουμένην μύτιν παρὰ τὸν τράχηλον ἔχουσα πλήρη ζοφερᾶς ὑγρότητος, [b] ἣν θόλον καλοῦσιν, ὅταν καταλαμβάνηται, μεθίησιν ἔξω, τεχνωμένη, τῆς θαλάττης διαθολωθείσης ποιήσασα περὶ αὑτὴν σκότος, ὑπεκδῦναι καὶ ἀποδρᾶναι τὴν τοῦ θηρεύοντος ὄψιν· ἀπομιμουμένη τοὺς Ὁμήρου (Ε 345 passim) θεοὺς ‘κυανέῃ νεφέλῃ’ πολλάκις οὓς ἂν σῶσαι θέλωσιν ὑφαιρουμένους καὶ διακλέπτοντας. ἀλλὰ τούτων μὲν ἅλις.

Τῆς δ’ ἐπιχειρητικῆς καὶ θηρευτικῆς δεινότητος αὐτῶν ἐν πολλοῖς σοφίσματα κατιδεῖν ἔστιν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἀστήρ, ὧν ἂν ἅψηται, πάντα διαλυόμενα καὶ διατηκόμενα γιγνώσκων ἐνδίδωσι τὸ σῶμα καὶ περιορᾷ ψαυόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν παρατρεχόντων ἢ προσπελαζόντων. τῆς δὲ νάρκης ἴστε δήπου τὴν δύναμιν, οὐ μόνον τοὺς θιγόντας [c] αὐτῆς ἐκπηγνύουσαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τῆς σαγήνης βαρύτητα ναρκώδη ταῖς χερσὶ τῶν ἀντιλαμβανομένων ἐμποιοῦσαν. ἔνιοι δ’ ἱστοροῦσι, πεῖραν αὐτῆς ἐπὶ πλέον λαμβάνοντες, ἂν ἐκπέσῃ ζῶσα, κατασκεδαννύντες ὕδωρ ἄνωθεν, αἰσθάνεσθαι τοῦ πάθους ἀνατρέχοντος ἐπὶ τὴν χεῖρα καὶ τὴν ἁφὴν ἀμβλύνοντος ὡς ἔοικε διὰ τοῦ ὕδατος τρεπομένου καὶ προπεπονθότος. ταύτης οὖν ἔχουσα σύμφυτον αἴσθησιν μάχεται μὲν ἐξ ἐναντίας πρὸς οὐδὲν οὐδὲ διακινδυνεύει· κύκλῳ δὲ περιιοῦσα τὸ θηρευόμενον ὥσπερ βέλη διασπείρει τὰς ἀπορροάς, φαρμάττουσα τὸ ὕδωρ πρῶτον, [d] εἶτα τὸ ζῷον διὰ τοῦ ὕδατος, μήτ’ ἀμύνεσθαι δυνάμενον μήτε φυγεῖν ἀλλ’ ἐνισχόμενον ὥσπερ ὑπὸ δεσμῶν καὶ πηγνύμενον. ὁ δὲ καλούμενος ἁλιεὺς γνώριμος μέν ἐστι πολλοῖς καὶ διὰ τοὔργον αὐτῷ γέγονε τοὔνομα· ᾧ σοφίσματι καὶ τὴν σηπίαν χρῆσθαί φησιν ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης· καθίησι γὰρ ὥσπερ ὁρμιὰν ἀπὸ τοῦ τραχήλου πλεκτάνην, μηκύνεσθαί τε πόρρω χαλώσης καὶ πάλιν συντρέχειν εἰς ἑαυτὴν ἀναλαμβανούσης ῥᾷστα πεφυκυῖαν. ὅταν οὖν τι τῶν μικρῶν ἰχθυδίων ἴδῃ πλησίον, ἐνδίδωσι δακεῖν καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν ἀναμηρύεται λανθάνουσα καὶ προσάγεται, μέχρις ἂν ἐν ἐφικτῷ τοῦ στόματος γένηται τὸ προσισχόμενον.

[e] τῶν δὲ πολυπόδων τῆς χρόας τὴν ἄμειψιν ὅ τε Πίνδαρος περιβόητον πεποίηκεν εἰπὼν (fr. 43)

‘ποντίου θηρὸς ‹πετραίου› χρωτὶ μάλιστα νόον

προσφέρων πάσαις πολίεσσιν ὁμίλει·’

καὶ Θέογνις ὁμοίως (v. 215)

‘πουλύποδος νόον ἴσχε πολυχρόου, ὃς ποτὶ πέτρῃ,

τῇ περ ὁμιλήσῃ, τοῖος ἰδεῖν ἐφάνη.’

μεταβάλλει γὰρ ὁ μὲν χαμαιλέων οὐδέν τι μηχανώμενος οὐδὲ κατακρύπτων ἑαυτὸν ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ δέους ἄλλως τρέπεται, φύσει ψοφοδεὴς ὢν καὶ δειλός· συνέπεται δὲ καὶ πνεύματος πλῆθος, ὡς Θεόφραστος (fr. 189)· ὀλίγον γὰρ ἀποδεῖ πᾶν τὸ σῶμα τοῦ ζῴου πλῆρες εἶναι πνεύμονος, [f] ᾧ τεκμαίρεται τὸ πνευματικὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πρὸς τὰς μεταβολὰς εὔτρεπτον. τοῦ δὲ πολύποδος ἔργον ἐστὶν οὐ πάθος ἡ μεταβολή· μεταβάλλει γὰρ ἐκ προνοίας, μηχανῇ χρώμενος τοῦ λανθάνειν ἃ δέδιε καὶ λαμβάνειν οἷς τρέφεται· παρακρουόμενος γὰρ ‹τὰ μὲν› αἱρεῖ μὴ φεύγοντα τὰ δ’ ἐκφεύγει παρερχόμενα. τὸ μὲν γὰρ αὑτοῦ τὰς πλεκτάνας κατεσθίειν αὐτὸν ψεῦδός ἐστιν· τὸ δὲ μύραιναν δεδιέναι καὶ γόγγρον ἀληθές ἐστιν· ὑπ’ ἐκείνων γὰρ κακῶς πάσχει, δρᾶν μὴ δυνάμενος ἐξολισθανόντων. [979] [a] ὥσπερ αὖ πάλιν ὁ κάραβος ἐκείνων μὲν ἐν λαβαῖς γενομένων περιγίγνεται ῥᾳδίως· ἡ γὰρ ψιλότης οὐ βοηθεῖ πρὸς τὴν τραχύτητα· τοῦ δὲ πολύποδος εἴσω τὰς πλεκτάνας διωθοῦντος ἀπόλλυται. καὶ τὸν κύκλον τοῦτον καὶ τὴν περίοδον ταῖς κατ’ ἀλλήλων διώξεσι καὶ φυγαῖς γύμνασμα καὶ μελέτην ἡ φύσις αὐτοῖς ἐναγώνιον πεποίηκε δεινότητος καὶ συνέσεως.

Ἀλλὰ μὴν ἐχίνου γέ τινα χερσαίου διηγήσατο πρόγνωσιν Ἀριστότιμος πνευμάτων, ὃς ἐθαύμαζε καὶ γεράνων τὴν ἐν τριγώνῳ πτῆσιν· ἐγὼ δ’ ἐχῖνον μὲν οὐχ ἕνα Κυζικηνὸν ἢ Βυζάντιον, ἀλλὰ πάντας ὁμοῦ παρέχομαι [b] τοὺς θαλαττίους, ὅταν αἴσθωνται μέλλοντα χειμῶνα καὶ σάλον, ἑρματιζομένους λιθιδίοις, ὅπως μὴ περιτρέπωνται διὰ κουφότητα μηδ’ ἀποσύρωνται γενομένου κλύδωνος, ἀλλ’ ἐπιμένωσιν ἀραρότως τοῖς πετριδίοις. ἡ δὲ γεράνων μεταβολὴ τῆς πτήσεως πρὸς ἄνεμον οὐχ ἑνὸς γένους ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο κοινῇ πάντες ἰχθύες νοοῦντες ἀεὶ πρὸς κῦμα καὶ ῥοῦν ἀντινήχονται καὶ παραφυλάττουσιν, ὅπως μὴ κατ’ οὐρὰν προσφερομένου τοῦ πνεύματος ἡ λεπὶς ἀναπτυσσομένη λυπῇ τὸ σῶμα γυμνούμενον καὶ διατραχυνόμενον· ὅθεν ἀεὶ συνέχουσιν ἑαυτοὺς ἀντιπρῴρους· σχιζομένη [c] γὰρ οὕτω κατὰ κορυφὴν ἡ θάλασσα τά τε βράγχια καταστέλλει καὶ κατὰ τῆς ἐπιφανείας ῥέουσα λείως πιέζει καὶ οὐκ ἀνίστησι τὸ φρικῶδες. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν, ὥσπερ ἔφην, κοινόν ἐστι τῶν ἰχθύων, πλὴν τοῦ ἔλλοπος· τοῦτον δέ φασι κατ’ ἄνεμον καὶ ῥοῦν νήχεσθαι, μὴ φοβούμενον τὴν ἀναχάραξιν τῆς λεπίδος, ἅτε δὴ μὴ πρὸς οὐρὰν τὰς ἐπιπτυχὰς ἐχούσης.

Ὁ δὲ θύννος οὕτως ἰσημερίας αἰσθάνεται καὶ τροπῆς, ὥστε καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον διδάσκειν μηδὲν ἀστρολογικῶν κανόνων δεόμενος· ὅπου γὰρ ἂν αὐτὸν χειμῶνος αἱ τροπαὶ καταλάβωσιν, ἀτρεμεῖ καὶ διατρίβει περὶ τὸν [d] αὐτὸν τόπον ἄχρι τῆς ἰσημερίας. ‘ἀλλὰ τῆς γεράνου σοφὸν ἡ τοῦ λίθου περίδραξις, ὅπως προϊεμένη †πυκνὸν ἐξυπνίζηται’. καὶ πόσῳ σοφώτερον, ὦ φίλε, τὸ τοῦ δελφῖνος, ᾧ

‘στῆναι μὲν οὐ θέμις οὐδὲ παύσασθαι φορᾶς·’

ἀεικίνητος γάρ ἐστιν ἡ φύσις αὐτοῦ καὶ ταὐτὸν ἔχουσα τοῦ ζῆν καὶ τοῦ κινεῖσθαι πέρας· ὅταν δ’ ὕπνου δέηται, μετεωρίσας ἄνω τὸ σῶμα πρὸς τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς θαλάττης, ὕπτιον ἀφῆκε διὰ βάθους, αἰώρας τινὶ σάλῳ κοιμιζόμενος, ἄχρι προσπεσεῖν καὶ ψαῦσαι τῆς γῆς· οὕτω δ’ ἐξυπνισθεὶς ἀναρροιζεῖ καὶ πάλιν ἄνω γενόμενος ἐνδίδωσι, καὶ φέρεται κινήσει τινὰ μεμιγμένην ἀνάπαυσιν αὑτῷ [e] μηχανώμενος. τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ δρᾶν καὶ θύννους ἀπὸ τῆς αὐτῆς αἰτίας λέγουσιν. ἐπεὶ δ’ ἄρτι τὴν μαθηματικὴν αὐτῶν τῆς τοῦ ἡλίου μεταβολῆς †ἐτέλεσα πρόγνωσιν, ἧς μάρτυς Ἀριστοτέλης (an. h. 598b 25) ἐστίν, ἄκουσον ἤδη τὴν ἀριθμητικὴν ἐπιστήμην αὐτῶν· πρότερον δέ, ναὶ μὰ Δία, τὴν ὀπτικήν, ἣν ἔοικε μηδ’ Αἰσχύλος ἀγνοῆσαι· λέγει γάρ που (fr. 308)

‘τὸ σκαιὸν ὄμμα παραβαλὼν θύννου δίκην.’

τῷ γὰρ ἑτέρῳ δοκοῦσιν ἀμβλυώττειν· ὅθεν ἐμβάλλουσιν εἰς τὸν Πόντον ἐν δεξιᾷ τῆς γῆς ἐχόμενοι, καὶ τοὐναντίον ὅταν ἐξίωσιν, ἐμφρόνως πάνυ καὶ νουνεχῶς ἀεὶ τὴν τοῦ σώματος φυλακὴν ἐπὶ τῷ κρείττονι ποιούμενοι τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν.

[f] ἀριθμητικῆς δὲ διὰ τὴν κοινωνικήν, ὡς ἔοικε, καὶ φιλάλληλον ἀγάπησιν ἑαυτῶν δεηθέντες οὕτως ἐπ’ ἄκρον ἥκουσι τοῦ μαθήματος, ὥστ’, ἐπεὶ πάνυ χαίρουσι τῷ συντρέφεσθαι καὶ συναγελάζεσθαι μετ’ ἀλλήλων, ἀεὶ τὸ πλῆθος τῷ σχήματι κυβίζουσι καὶ στερεὸν ἐκ πάντων ποιοῦσιν, ἓξ ἴσοις ἐπιπέδοις περιεχόμενον· εἶτα νήχονται κατὰ τάξιν οὕτως τὸ πλαίσιον ἀμφίστομον διαφυλάττοντες. [980] [a] ὁ γοῦν θυννοσκόπος, ἂν ἀκριβῶς λάβῃ τὸν ἀριθμὸν τῆς ἐπιφανείας, εὐθὺς ἀποφαίνεται πόσον καὶ ἅπαν τὸ πλῆθός ἐστιν, εἰδὼς ὅτι καὶ τὸ βάθος αὐτῶν ἐν ἴσῳ τεταγμένον στοιχείῳ πρός τε τὸ πλάτος ἐστὶ καὶ τὸ μῆκος. ἀμίαις δὲ καὶ τοὔνομα παρέσχηκεν ὁ συναγελασμός, οἶμαι δὲ καὶ ταῖς πηλαμύσι.

Τῶν δ’ ἄλλων γενῶν ὅσα φαίνεται καὶ ζῇ κοινωνικῶς μετ’ ἀλλήλων ἀγεληδὸν οὐκ ἄν τις εἴποι τὸν ἀριθμόν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἐπὶ τὰς κατ’ ἰδίαν κοινωνίας αὐτῶν καὶ συμβιώσεις ἰτέον. ὧν ἐστι καὶ ὁ τὸ πλεῖστον ἐξαναλώσας Χρυσίππου μέλαν πιννοτήρας, παντὶ καὶ φυσικῷ βιβλίῳ καὶ [b] ἠθικῷ προεδρίαν ἔχων· τὸν γὰρ σπογγοτήραν οὐχ ἱστόρηκεν, οὐ γὰρ ἂν παρέλιπεν. ὁ μὲν οὖν πιννοτήρας ζῷόν ἐστι καρκινῶδες, ὥς φασι, καὶ τῇ πίννῃ σύνεστι καὶ πυλωρεῖ τὴν κόγχην προκαθήμενος, ἐῶν ἀνεῳγμένην καὶ διακεχηνυῖαν, ἄχρις οὗ προσπέσῃ τι τῶν ἁλωσίμων αὐτοῖς ἰχθυδίων· τότε δὲ τὴν σάρκα τῆς πίννης δακὼν παρεισῆλθεν, ἡ δὲ συνέκλεισε τὴν κόγχην, καὶ κοινῶς τὴν ἄγραν ἐντὸς ἕρκους γενομένην κατεσθίουσι. τὸν δὲ σπόγγον ἡνιοχεῖ θηρίδιον οὐ καρκινῶδες ἀλλ’ ἀράχνῃ παραπλήσιον· οὐ γὰρ ἄψυχον οὐδ’ ἀναίσθητον οὐδ’ ἄναιμον ὁ σπόγγος ἐστὶν ἀλλὰ ταῖς μὲν πέτραις, ὡς ἄλλα [c] πολλά, προσπέφυκεν, ἔχει δὲ κίνησιν ἰδίαν ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ εἰς ἑαυτόν, οἷον ὑπομνήσεως καὶ παιδαγωγίας δεομένην· μανὸς γὰρ ὢν ἄλλως καὶ τοῖς ἀραιώμασιν ἀνειμένος ὑπ’ ἀργίας καὶ ἀμβλύτητος, ὅταν ἐμβῇ τι τῶν ἐδωδίμων, ἐκείνου σημήναντος ἔμυσε καὶ κατηνάλωσεν· ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἀνθρώπου προσιόντος ἢ θιγόντος διδασκόμενος καὶ χαρασσόμενος οἷον ἔφριξε καὶ συνέκλεισε τὸ σῶμα πήξας καὶ πυκνώσας, ὥστε μὴ ῥᾳδίαν ἀλλὰ δύσεργον εἶναι τὴν ὑποτομὴν αὐτοῦ τοῖς θηρεύουσιν. αἱ δὲ πορφύραι συναγελαζόμεναι τὸ μὲν κηρίον, ὥσπερ αἱ μέλιτται, κοινῇ ποιοῦσιν, ἐν ᾧ λέγονται γονεύειν· τὰ δ’ ἐδώδιμα τῶν [d] βρύων καὶ τῶν φυκίων ἀναλαμβάνουσαι προσισχόμενα τοῖς ὀστράκοις οἷον ἐν περιόδῳ κυκλουμένην ἑστίασιν ἀλλήλαις παρέχουσιν, ἑτέραν ἑτέρας ἔξωθεν ἐπινεμομένης.

Καὶ τί ἄν τις ἐν τούτοις τὴν κοινωνίαν θαυμάσειεν, ὅπου τὸ πάντων ἀμικτότατον καὶ [τὸ] θηριωδέστατον ὧν τρέφουσι ποταμοὶ καὶ λίμναι καὶ θάλασσαι ζῷον, ὁ κροκόδειλος, θαυμαστὸν ἑαυτὸν ἐπιδείκνυται πρὸς κοινωνίαν καὶ χάριν ἐν τοῖς πρὸς τὸν τροχίλον συμβολαίοις; ὁ γὰρ τροχίλος ἐστὶ μὲν ὄρνις τῶν ἑλείων καὶ παραποταμίων, φρουρεῖ δὲ τὸν κροκόδειλον οὐκ οἰκόσιτος ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἐκείνου λειψάνοις παρατρεφόμενος· ὅταν γὰρ αἴσθηται, [e] τοῦ κροκοδείλου καθεύδοντος, ἐπιβουλεύοντα τὸν ἰχνεύμονα πηλούμενον ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴν κονιόμενον, ἐπεγείρει φθεγγόμενος καὶ κολάπτων· ὁ δ’ οὕτως ἐξημεροῦται πρὸς αὐτόν, ὥστε τοῦ στόματος διαχανὼν ἐντὸς παρίησι, καὶ χαίρει τὰ λεπτὰ τῶν ἐνισχομένων τοῖς ὀδοῦσι σαρκῶν ἐκλέγοντος ἀτρέμα τῷ ῥάμφει καὶ διασκαλεύοντος· ἂν δὲ μετρίως ἔχων ἤδη βούληται συναγαγεῖν τὸ στόμα καὶ κλεῖσαι, προκλίνει τὴν σιαγόνα καὶ διασημαίνει καὶ οὐ πρότερον καθίησιν ἢ συναισθανόμενον ἐκπτῆναι τὸν τροχίλον. ὁ δὲ καλούμενος ἡγεμὼν μεγέθει [f] μέν ἐστι καὶ σχήματι κωβιῶδες ἰχθύδιον, τὴν δ’ ἐπιφάνειαν ὄρνιθι φρίσσοντι διὰ τὴν τραχύτητα τῆς λεπίδος ἐοικέναι λέγεται, καὶ ἀεὶ σύνεστιν ἑνὶ τῶν μεγάλων κητῶν καὶ προνήχεται, τὸν δρόμον ἐπευθύνων, ὅπως οὐκ ἐνσχεθήσεται βράχεσιν οὐδ’ εἰς τέναγος ἤ τινα πορθμὸν [981] [a] ἐμπεσεῖται δυσέξοδον· ἕπεται γὰρ αὐτῷ τὸ κῆτος, ὥσπερ οἴακι ναῦς, παραγόμενον εὐπειθῶς. καὶ τῶν μὲν ἄλλων, ὅ τι ἂν παραλάβῃ τῷ χάσματι ζῷον ἢ σκάφος ἢ λίθον, εὐθὺς διέφθαρται καὶ ἀπόλωλε πᾶν ἐμβεβυθισμένον· ἐκεῖνον δὲ γιγνῶσκον ἀναλαμβάνει τῷ στόματι καθάπερ ἄγκυραν ἐντός· ἐγκαθεύδει γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ τὸ κῆτος ἕστηκεν ἀναπαυομένου καὶ ὁρμεῖ· προελθόντος δ’ αὖθις ἐπακολουθεῖ μήθ’ ἡμέρας μήτε νυκτὸς ἀπολειπόμενον, ἢ ῥέμβεται καὶ πλανᾶται, καὶ πολλὰ διεφθάρη καθάπερ ἀκυβέρνητα πρὸς γῆν ἐξενεχθέντα. καὶ γὰρ ἡμεῖς περὶ Ἀντίκυραν ἑωράκαμεν οὐ πάλαι· καὶ πρότερον ἱστοροῦσιν οὐ [b] πόρρω Βουνῶν ἐξοκείλαντος καὶ κατασαπέντος λοιμὸν γενέσθαι. ἆρ’ οὖν ἄξιόν ἐστι ταύταις ταῖς κοινωνίαις καὶ συμπεριφοραῖς παραβάλλειν ἅσπερ Ἀριστοτέλης (p. 354 R.) ἱστορεῖ φιλίας ἀλωπέκων καὶ ὄφεων διὰ τὸ κοινὸν αὐτοῖς πολέμιον εἶναι τὸν ἀετόν, ἢ τὰς ὠτίδων πρὸς ἵππους, ὅτι χαίρουσι προσπελάζουσαι καὶ διασκάλλουσαι τὸν ὄνθον; ἐγὼ μὲν γὰρ οὐδ’ ἐν μελίτταις ὁρῶ τοσαύτην ἀλλήλων ἐπιμέλειαν οὐδ’ ἐν μύρμηξι· τὸ γὰρ κοινὸν αὔξουσι πᾶσαι καὶ πάντες ἔργον, ἑτέρῳ δὲ καθ’ ἕτερον ἑτέρου στοχασμὸς οὐδεὶς οὐδὲ φροντὶς ἔστιν.

Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον κατοψόμεθα τὴν διαφοράν, ἐπὶ τὰ [c] πρεσβύτατα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν κοινωνικῶν ἔργων καὶ καθηκόντων τὰ περὶ τὰς γενέσεις καὶ τεκνώσεις τὸν λόγον τρέψαντες. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ οἱ λίμναις παρήκουσαν ἢ ποταμοὺς ὑποδεχομένην νεμόμενοι θάλατταν ἰχθύες, ὅταν μέλλωσι τίκτειν, ἀνατρέχουσι, τῶν ποτίμων ὑδάτων τὴν πραότητα καὶ τὸ ἄσαλον διώκοντες· ἀγαθὴ γὰρ ἡ γαλήνη λοχεῦσαι· καὶ τὸ ἄθηρον ἅμα ταῖς λίμναις ἔνεστι καὶ ποταμοῖς, ὥστε σῴζεσθαι τὰ τικτόμενα. διὸ καὶ πλεῖστα καὶ μάλιστα γονεύεται περὶ τὸν Εὔξεινον πόντον· οὐ γὰρ τρέφει κήτη ἀλλ’ ἢ φώκην ἀραιὰν καὶ δελφῖνα μικρόν· ἔτι δ’ ἡ τῶν ποταμῶν ἐπιμιξία, πλείστων καὶ [d] μεγίστων ἐκδιδόντων εἰς τὸν Πόντον, ἤπιον παρέχει καὶ πρόσφορον τοῖς λοχευομένοις κρᾶσιν. τὸ δὲ τοῦ ἀνθίου θαυμασιώτατόν ἐστιν, ὃν Ὅμηρος (Π 407) ‘ἱερὸν ἰχθύν’ εἴρηκε· καίτοι μέγαν τινὲς οἴονται τὸν ἱερὸν καθάπερ ὀστοῦν ἱερὸν τὸ μέγα, καὶ τὴν ἐπιληψίαν, μεγάλην νόσον οὖσαν, ἱερὰν καλοῦσιν· ἔνιοι δὲ κοινῶς τὸν ἄφετον καὶ ἱερωμένον. Ἐρατοσθένης δὲ τὸν χρύσοφρυν ἔοικεν (fr. 14 H.)

‘εὐδρομίην χρύσειον ἐπ’ ὀφρύσιν ἱερὸν ἰχθύν’

λέγειν· πολλοὶ δὲ τὸν ἔλλοπα, σπάνιος γάρ ἐστι καὶ οὐ ῥᾴδιος ἁλῶναι. φαίνεται δὲ περὶ Παμφυλίαν πολλάκις· ἂν οὖν ποτε λάβωσι, στεφανοῦνται μὲν αὐτοὶ στεφανοῦσι δὲ τὰς ἁλιάδας, κρότῳ δὲ καὶ πατάγῳ καταπλέοντας αὐτοὺς [e] ὑποδέχονται καὶ τιμῶσιν. οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι τὸν ἀνθίαν ἱερὸν εἶναι καὶ λέγεσθαι νομίζουσιν· ὅπου γὰρ ἂν ἀνθίας ὀφθῇ, θηρίον οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλὰ θαρροῦντες μὲν οἱ σπογγοθῆραι κατακολυμβῶσι θαρροῦντες δὲ τίκτουσιν οἱ ἰχθύες, ὥσπερ ἐγγυητὴν ἀσυλίας ἔχοντες. ἡ δ’ αἰτία δυσλόγιστος, εἴτε φεύγει τὰ θηρία τὸν ἀνθίαν ὡς σῦν ἐλέφαντες ἀλεκτρυόνα δὲ λέοντες, εἴτ’ ἐστὶ σημεῖα τόπων ἀθήρων, ἃ γιγνώσκει καὶ παραφυλάττει συνετὸς ὢν καὶ μνημονικὸς ὁ ἰχθύς.

Ἀλλ’ ἥ γε πρόνοια κοινὴ τοῖς τίκτουσι τῶν γεννωμένων· οἱ δ’ ἄρρενες οὐ τὸν αὑτῶν κατεσθίουσι γόνον, [f] ἀλλὰ καὶ προσδιατρίβουσι τοῖς κυήμασιν ᾠοφυλακοῦντες ὡς ἱστόρηκεν Ἀριστοτέλης (an. h. 621a 23)· οἱ δ’ ἑπόμενοι ταῖς θηλείαις καταρραίνουσι ‹κατὰ› μικρὸν τὸν θορόν· ἄλλως γὰρ οὐ γίγνεται μέγα τὸ τεχθὲν ἀλλ’ ἀτελὲς μένει καὶ ἄναυξον. ἰδίᾳ δ’ αἱ φυκίδες ἐκ τῶν φυκίων οἷον νεοττιὰν διαπλασάμεναι περιαμπέχουσι τὸν γόνον [982] [a] καὶ σκέπουσιν ἀπὸ τοῦ κλύδωνος. τοῦ δὲ γαλεοῦ τὸ φιλόστοργον οὐδενὶ τῶν ἡμερωτάτων ζῴων ὑπερβολὴν γλυκυθυμίας πρὸς τὰ ἔγγονα καὶ χρηστότητος ἀπολέλοιπε· τίκτουσι μὲν γὰρ ᾠόν, εἶτα ‹τὸ› ζῷον οὐκ ἐκτὸς ἀλλ’ ἐντὸς ἐν ἑαυτοῖς [καὶ] τρέφουσιν οὕτω καὶ φέρουσιν ὥσπερ ἐκ δευτέρας γενέσεως· ὅταν δὲ μείζονα γένηται, μεθιᾶσι θύραζε καὶ διδάσκουσι νήχεσθαι πλησίον· εἶτα πάλιν εἰς ἑαυτοὺς διὰ τοῦ στόματος ἐπαναλαμβάνουσι καὶ παρέχουσιν ἐνδιαιτᾶσθαι τὸ σῶμα χώραν ἅμα καὶ τροφὴν καὶ καταφυγήν, ἄχρις ἂν ἐν δυνάμει τοῦ βοηθεῖν αὑτοῖς γένηται. θαυμαστὴ δὲ καὶ ἡ τῆς χελώνης [b] περὶ τὴν γένεσιν καὶ σωτηρίαν τῶν γεννωμένων ἐπιμέλεια· τίκτει μὲν γὰρ ἐκβαίνουσα τῆς θαλάττης πλησίον, ἐπῳάζειν δὲ μὴ δυναμένη μηδὲ χερσεύειν πολὺν χρόνον ἐντίθησι τῇ ψάμμῳ τὰ ᾠὰ καὶ τὸ λειότατον ἐπαμᾶται τῆς θινὸς αὐτοῖς καὶ μαλακώτατον· ὅταν δὲ καταχώσῃ καὶ ἀποκρύψῃ βεβαίως, οἱ μὲν λέγουσι τοῖς ποσὶν ἀμύττειν καὶ καταστίζειν τὸν τόπον, εὔσημον ἑαυτῇ ποιοῦσαν, οἱ δὲ τὴν θήλειαν ὑπὸ τοῦ ἄρρενος στρεφομένην τύπους ἰδίους καὶ σφραγῖδας ἐναπολείπειν· ὃ δὲ τούτου θαυμασιώτερόν ἐστιν, ἡμέραν ἐκφυλάξασα τεσσαρακοστὴν [c] (ἐν τοσαύταις γὰρ ἐκπέττεται καὶ περιρρήγνυται τὰ ᾠά) πρόσεισι, καὶ γνωρίσασα τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἑκάστη θησαυρόν, ὡς οὐδεὶς χρυσίου θήκην ἄνθρωπος, ἀσμένως ἀνοίγει καὶ προθύμως.

Τῶν δὲ κροκοδείλων τὰ μὲν ἄλλα παραπλήσια, τῆς δὲ χώρας ὁ στοχασμὸς ἐπίνοιαν ἀνθρώπῳ τῆς αἰτίας οὐ δίδωσιν οὐδὲ συλλογισμόν· ὅθεν οὔ φασι λογικὴν ἀλλὰ μαντικὴν εἶναι τὴν παρὰ τούτου τοῦ θηρίου πρόγνωσιν· οὔτε γὰρ πλέον οὔτ’ ἔλαττον ἐκβᾶσ’ ἀλλ’ ὅσον εἰς ὥραν ἔτους ὁ Νεῖλος αὐξηθεὶς ἐπικλύσει καὶ ἀποκρύψει τῆς γῆς, ἐκεῖ τὰ ᾠὰ τίθησιν· ὥστε τὸν ἐντυχόντα τῶν γεωργῶν [d] αὐτόν ‹τε› γιγνώσκειν ἑτέροις τε φράζειν, ὁπόσον αὐτοῖς ὁ ποταμὸς πρόεισιν· οὕτω συνεμετρήσατο, μὴ βρεχομένων αὐτὸς βρεχόμενος ἐπῳάζῃ· ἐκλεπισθέντων δὲ τῶν σκύμνων, ὃς ἂν εὐθὺς ἀναδὺς μὴ λάβῃ τι τῶν προστυχόντων, ἢ μυῖαν ἢ σέριφον ἢ γῆς ἔντερον ἢ κάρφος ἢ βοτάνην, τῷ στόματι, διασπαράξασα τοῦτον ἡ μήτηρ ἀπέκτεινε δακοῦσα· τὰ δὲ θυμοειδῆ καὶ δραστήρια στέργει καὶ περιέπει, καθάπερ οἱ σοφώτατοι τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀξιοῦσι, κρίσει τὸ φιλεῖν ἀπαθεῖ νέμουσα. καὶ μὴν αἱ φῶκαι τίκτουσι μὲν ἐν τῷ ξηρῷ, κατὰ μικρὸν δὲ προάγουσαι τὰ σκυμνία γεύουσι τῆς θαλάττης καὶ ταχὺ πάλιν [e] ἐξάγουσι· καὶ τοῦτο πολλάκις ποιοῦσιν ἐν μέρει, μέχρι ἂν οὕτως ἐθιζόμενα θαρρήσῃ καὶ στέρξῃ τὴν ἔναλον δίαιταν. οἱ δὲ βάτραχοι περὶ τὰς ὀχείας ἀνακλήσεσι χρῶνται, τὴν λεγομένην ποιοῦντες ὀλολυγόνα, φωνὴν ἐρωτικὴν καὶ γαμήλιον οὖσαν· ὅταν δὲ τὴν θήλειαν οὕτως ὁ ἄρρην προσαγάγηται, κοινῇ τὴν νύκτα περιμένουσιν· ἐν ὑγρῷ μὲν γὰρ οὐ δύνανται, μεθ’ ἡμέραν δὲ δεδίασιν ἐπὶ γῆς μίγνυσθαι· γενομένου δὲ σκότους, ἀδεῶς συμπλέκονται προϊόντες· ἄλλως δὲ λαμπρύνουσι τὴν φωνήν, ὑετὸν προσδεχόμενοι· καὶ τοῦτο σημεῖον ἐν τοῖς βεβαιοτάτοις ἐστίν.

Ἀλλ’ οἷον, ὦ φίλε Πόσειδον, ὀλίγου πάθος ὡς ἄτοπον [f] πέπονθα καὶ καταγέλαστον, εἴ με διατρίβοντα περὶ φώκας καὶ βατράχους τὸ σοφώτατον καὶ θεοφιλέστατον ἐξέφυγε καὶ παρῆλθε τῶν ἐνάλων. ποίας γὰρ ἀηδόνας ἄξιον τῷ φιλομούσῳ τῆς ἀλκυόνος ἢ τῷ φιλοτέκνῳ χελιδόνας ἢ τῷ φιλάνδρῳ πελειάδας ἢ τῷ τεχνικῷ παραβάλλειν μελίττας; τίνος δὲ γενέσεις καὶ τόκους καὶ ὠδῖνας ὁ θεὸς οὕτως ἐτίμησε; τὰς μὲν γὰρ Λητοῦς γονὰς μίαν ἑδρασθεῖσαν ὑποδέξασθαι νῆσον ἱστοροῦσι, τῇ δ’ ἀλκυόνι τικτούσῃ περὶ τροπὰς πᾶσαν ἵστησι θάλασσαν ἀκύμονα [983] [a] καὶ ἀσάλευτον. ὅθεν οὐδὲν ἔστι ζῷον ἄλλο, ὃ ‹μᾶλλον› φιλοῦσιν ἄνθρωποι· δι’ ἣν ἑπτὰ μὲν ἡμέρας ἑπτὰ δὲ νύκτας ἐν ἀκμῇ χειμῶνος ἀδεῶς πλέουσι, τῆς κατὰ γῆν πορείας τηνικαῦτα τὴν διὰ τῆς θαλάσσης ἀσφαλεστέραν ἔχοντες. εἰ δὲ δεῖ καὶ περὶ ἑκάστης τῶν ἀρετῶν ἃς ἔχει βραχέα φάναι, φίλανδρος μὲν οὕτως ἐστίν, ὥστε μὴ καθ’ ἕνα καιρὸν ἀλλὰ δι’ ἔτους συνεῖναι καὶ προσδέχεσθαι τὴν τοῦ ἄρρενος ὁμιλίαν, οὐ διὰ τὸ ἀκόλαστον (ἄλλῳ γὰρ οὐ μίγνυται τὸ παράπαν) ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ εὐνοίας ὥσπερ γυνὴ γαμετὴ καὶ φιλοφροσύνης· ὅταν δὲ διὰ γῆρας ἀσθενὴς ὁ ἄρρην γένηται συνέπεσθαι καὶ βαρύς, ὑπολαβοῦσα [b] γηροφορεῖ καὶ γηροτροφεῖ, μηδαμοῦ προϊεμένη μηδὲ καταλείπουσα χωρίς, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ὤμοις ἐκεῖνον ἀναθεμένη καὶ κομίζει πανταχόσε καὶ θεραπεύει καὶ σύνεστιν ἄχρι τελευτῆς. τῷ δὲ φιλοτέκνῳ καὶ πεφροντικότι σωτηρίας τῶν γεννωμένων συναισθανομένη κύουσαν ἑαυτὴν τάχιστα τρέπεται πρὸς ἐργασίαν τῆς νεοττιᾶς, οὐ φύρουσα πηλὸν οὐδὲ προσερείδουσα τοίχοις καὶ ὀρόφοις ὥσπερ αἱ χελιδόνες, οὐδὲ χρωμένη πολλοῖς τοῦ σώματος ἐνεργοῖς μέρεσιν, ὥσπερ τῆς μελίττης ἐνδυομένης τῷ σώματι ‹καὶ› τὸ κηρίον ἀνοιγούσης ὁμοῦ ψαύοντες ‹οἱ ἓξ πόδες› εἰς ‹ἑξ›άγωνα τὸ πᾶν ἀγγεῖα διαιροῦσιν· ἡ δ’ ἀλκυὼν ἓν [c] ὄργανον ἁπλοῦν ἓν ὅπλον ἓν ἐργαλεῖον ἔχουσα, τὸ στόμα, καὶ μηδὲν ἄλλο τοῦ φιλοπόνου καὶ φιλοτέχνου συνεργόν, οἷα μηχανᾶται καὶ δημιουργεῖ χαλεπόν ἐστι πεισθῆναι μὴ καταμαθόντας ὄψει τὸ πλαττόμενον ὑπ’ αὐτῆς μᾶλλον δὲ ναυπηγούμενον, σχημάτων πολλῶν μόνον ἀπερίτρεπτον καὶ ἀβάπτιστον· συλλέξασα γὰρ τὰς τῆς βελόνης ἀκίδας συντίθησι καὶ συνδεῖ πρὸς ἀλλήλας ἐγκαταπλέκουσα τὰς μὲν εὐθείας τὰς δὲ πλαγίας, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ στήμονι κρόκην ἐμβάλλουσα, προσχρωμένη καμπαῖς καὶ περιαγωγαῖς δι’ ἀλλήλων, ὥστε διαρμόσαι καὶ γενέσθαι στρογγύλον [d] †ἐνήρεμον προμήκει τῷ σχήματι, ἁλιευτικῷ κύρτῳ παραπλήσιον. ὅταν δὲ συντελέσῃ, φέρουσα παρέθηκε παρὰ τὸ κλύσμα τοῦ κύματος, ὅπου προσπίπτουσα μαλακῶς ἡ θάλασσα τὸ μὲν οὐ καλῶς ἀραρὸς ἐδίδαξεν ἀκέσασθαι καὶ καταπυκνῶσαι χαλώμενον ὁρῶσαν ὑπὸ τῆς πληγῆς· τὰ δ’ ἡρμοσμένα κατασφίγγει καὶ πήγνυσιν, ὥστε καὶ λίθῳ καὶ σιδήρῳ δυσδιάλυτον εἶναι καὶ δύστρωτον. οὐδενὸς δ’ ἧσσον ἀξιοθαύμαστόν ἐστιν ἥ τε συμμετρία τό τε σχῆμα τῆς τοῦ ἀγγείου κοιλότητος· πεποίηται γὰρ αὐτὴν ἐκείνην μόνην ἐνδυομένην δέχεσθαι τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις τυφλὸν εἶναι πάντῃ καὶ κρύφιον, ὥστε παριέναι μηδὲν [e] εἴσω μηδὲ τῆς θαλάττης. οἶμαι μὲν οὖν μηδέν’ ὑμῶν ἀθέατον εἶναι τῆς νεοττιᾶς· ἐμοὶ δὲ πολλάκις ἰδόντι καὶ θιγόντι παρίσταται λέγειν καὶ ᾄδειν (ζ 162)

‘Δήλῳ δή ποτε τοῖον Ἀπόλλωνος παρὰ ναῷ’

τὸν κεράτινον βωμὸν εἶδον ἐν τοῖς ἑπτὰ καλουμένοις θεάμασιν ὑμνούμενον, ὅτι μήτε κόλλης δεόμενος μήτε τινὸς ἄλλου δεσμοῦ διὰ μόνων τῶν δεξιῶν συμπέπηγε καὶ συνήρμοσται κεράτων. ἵλεως δ’ ὁ θεὸς εἴη .... καὶ †πρός τι μουσικὸν ὄντα καὶ νησιώτην, ὑμνουμένης τῆς πελαγίου σειρῆνος εὐμενῶς ‹δέχεσθαι› καὶ καταγελᾶν τῶν ἐρωτημάτων ἐκείνων, ἃ σκώπτοντες ἐρωτῶσιν οὗτοι, δια τι... Ἀπολλων συθ... οὐδὲ τριγλοβο...δη γινώσκοντα [f] ... Ἀφροδίτην ὁμου... κατὰ θάλατταν ποιουμένην αὑτῆς ἱερὰ καὶ ἀδελφὰ καὶ μηδενὶ φονευομένῳ χαίρουσαν. ἐν δὲ Λέπτει τοὺς ἱερεῖς τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος οὐδὲν ἔναλον τὸ παράπαν ἐσθίοντας, τρίγλαν δὲ τοὺς ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι μύστας σεβομένους ἴστε, καὶ τῆς Ἥρας ἐν Ἄργει τὴν ἱέρειαν ἀπεχομένην ἐπὶ τιμῇ τοῦ ζῴου· τὸν γὰρ θαλάττιον λαγωόν, ὅς ἐστιν ἀνθρώπῳ θανάσιμος, κτείνουσιν αἱ τρίγλαι μάλιστα καὶ καταναλίσκουσι· διὸ ταύτην ὡς φιλάνθρωπα καὶ σωτήρια ζῷα τὴν ἄδειαν ἔχουσι.

[984] [a] Καὶ μὴν Ἀρτέμιδός γε Δικτύννης Δελφινίου τ’ Ἀπόλλωνος ἱερὰ καὶ βωμοὶ παρὰ πολλοῖς εἰσιν Ἑλλήνων· ὃν δ’ αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ τόπον ἐξαίρετον ὁ θεὸς πεποίηται, ... Κρητῶν ἀπογόνους ‹ἀπ›οικοῦντας ἡγεμόνι δελφῖνι χρησαμένους· οὐ γὰρ ὁ θεὸς προενήχετο τοῦ στόλου μεταβαλὼν τὸ εἶδος, ὡς οἱ μυθογράφοι λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ δελφῖνα πέμψας τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἰθύνοντα τὸν πλοῦν κατήγαγεν εἰς Κίρραν. ἱστοροῦσι δὲ καὶ τοὺς πεμφθέντας εἰς Σινώπην ὑπὸ Πτολεμαίου τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἐπὶ τὴν Σαράπιδος κομιδήν, ‹Σωτέλη› καὶ Διονύσιον, ἀπωσθέντας ἀνέμῳ βιαίῳ κομίζεσθαι παρὰ γνώμην ὑπὲρ Μαλέαν, ἐν [b] δεξιᾷ Πελοπόννησον ἔχοντας, εἶτα ῥεμβομένους καὶ δυσθυμοῦντας αὐτοὺς προφανέντα δελφῖνα πρῴραθεν ὥσπερ ἐκκαλεῖσθαι καθηγούμενον εἰς τὰ ναύλοχα καὶ σάλους μαλακοὺς ἔχοντα τῆς χώρας καταμένειν ἀσφαλεῖς, ἄχρις οὗ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ἄγων καὶ παραπέμπων τὸ πλοῖον εἰς Κίρραν κατέστησεν. ὅθεν ἀναβατήριον θύσαντες ἔγνωσαν ὅτι δεῖ δυεῖν ἀγαλμάτων τὸ μὲν τοῦ Πλούτωνος ἀνελέσθαι καὶ κομίζειν τὸ δὲ τῆς Κόρης ἀπομάξασθαι καὶ καταλιπεῖν. εἰκὸς μὲν οὖν ἦν καὶ τὸ φιλόμουσον ἀγαπᾶν τοῦ θηρίου τὸν θεόν· ᾧ καὶ Πίνδαρος ἀπεικάζων ἑαυτὸν ἐρεθίζεσθαί φησιν (fr. 235 6 Appendix 140b 69)

[c] ‘‹ἁλί›ου δελφῖνος ὑπόκρισιν·

τὸν μὲν ἀκύμονος ἐν πόντου πελάγει

αὐλῶν ἐκίνησ’ ἐρατὸν μέλος.’

ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἔοικε τὸ φιλάνθρωπον αὐτοῦ θεοφιλὲς εἶναι· μόνος γὰρ ἄνθρωπον ἀσπάζεται, καθ’ ὃ ἄνθρωπός ἐστι. τῶν δὲ χερσαίων τὰ μὲν οὐδένα τὰ δ’ ἡμερώτατα μόνους περιέπει τοὺς τρέφοντας ὑπὸ χρείας, καὶ τοὺς συνήθεις ὁ κύων ὁ ἵππος ὁ ἐλέφας· αἱ δὲ χελιδόνες ὅσων μὲν δέονται τυγχάνουσιν εἰσοικισάμεναι, σκιᾶς καὶ ἀναγκαίας ἀσφαλείας, φεύγουσι δὲ καὶ φοβοῦνται τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὥσπερ θηρίον. τῷ δὲ δελφῖνι παρὰ πάντα καὶ μόνῳ τὸ ζητούμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρίστων φιλοσόφων ἐκεῖνο, τὸ φιλεῖν [d] ἄνευ χρείας, φύσει πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ὑπάρχει. μηδενὸς γὰρ εἰς μηδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεόμενος πᾶσιν εὐμενής τε φίλος ἐστὶ καὶ βεβοήθηκε πολλοῖς. ὧν τὰ μὲν Ἀρίονος οὐδεὶς ἀγνοεῖ, περιβόητα γάρ ἐστιν· Ἡσιόδου δὲ κατὰ καιρὸν αὐτὸς ἡμᾶς, ὦ φίλε, ἀνέμνησας, ‘ἀτὰρ οὐ τέλος ἵκεο μύθων’ (Ι 56). ἔδει δὲ τὸν κύν’ αἰτιασάμενον μὴ παραλιπεῖν τοὺς δελφῖνας· τυφλὸν γὰρ ἦν τὸ μήνυμα τοῦ κυνός, ὑλακτοῦντος καὶ μετὰ βοῆς ἐπιφερομένου τοῖς φονεῦσιν, ‹εἰ μὴ τὸν νεκρὸν› περὶ τὸ Νέμειον θαλάσσῃ διαφερόμενον ἀράμενοι δελφῖνες, ἕτεροι παρ’ ἑτέρων ἐκδεχόμενοι προθύμως, εἰς τὸ Ῥίον ἐκθέντες ἔδειξαν ἐσφαγμένον.

[e] Ἔναλον δὲ τὸν Αἰολέα Μυρσίλος ὁ Λέσβιος (FHG IV 459 fr. 12) ἱστορεῖ, τῆς Σμινθέως ἐρῶντα θυγατρὸς ῥιφείσης κατὰ χρησμὸν τῆς Ἀμφιτρίτης ὑπὸ τῶν Πενθιλιδῶν, καὶ αὐτὸν ἐξαλόμενον εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ὑπὸ δελφῖνος σῶον ἐξενεχθῆναι πρὸς τὴν Λέσβον. ἡ δὲ πρὸς τὸν Ἰασέα παῖδα τοῦ δελφῖνος εὔνοια καὶ φιλία δι’ ὑπερβολὴν ἔρως ἔδοξε· συνέπαιζε γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ συνενήχετο καθ’ ἡμέραν καὶ παρεῖχεν ἐν χρῷ ψαυόμενος· ἔπειτα περιβαίνοντος οὐκ ἔφευγεν, ἀλλ’ ἔφερε χαίρων, πρὸς ὃ ἔκαμπτε κλίνων, ὁμοῦ πάντων Ἰασέων ἑκάστοτε συντρεχόντων ἐπὶ τὴν θάλατταν. ὄμβρου δέ ποτε πολλοῦ μετὰ χαλάζης ἐπιπεσόντος [f] ὁ μὲν παῖς ἀπορρυεὶς ἐξέλιπεν, ὁ δὲ δελφὶν ὑπολαβὼν ἅμα τῷ νεκρῷ συνεξέωσεν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ οὐκ ἀπέστη τοῦ σώματος, ἕως ἀπέθανε, δικαιώσας μετασχεῖν ἧς συναίτιος ἔδοξε γεγονέναι τελευτῆς. καὶ τοῦ πάθους ἐπίσημον Ἰασεῦσι τὸ χάραγμα τοῦ νομίσματός ἐστι, παῖς ὑπὲρ δελφῖνος ὀχούμενος. ἐκ δὲ τούτου καὶ τὰ περὶ Κοίρανον ὄντα μυθώδη πίστιν ἔσχε. [985] [a] Πάριος γὰρ ὢν τὸ γένος ἐν Βυζαντίῳ δελφίνων βόλον, ἐνσχεθέντων σαγήνῃ καὶ κινδυνευόντων κατακοπῆναι, πριάμενος μεθῆκε πάντας· ὀλίγῳ δ’ ὕστερον ἔπλει πεντηκόντορον ἔχων, ὥς φασι, ναῦν λῃστῶν ἄνδρας ἄγουσαν ‹πεντήκοντα›· ἐν δὲ τῷ μεταξὺ Νάξου καὶ Πάρου πορθμῷ τῆς νεὼς ἀνατραπείσης καὶ τῶν ἄλλων διαφθαρέντων, ἐκεῖνον λέγουσι, δελφῖνος ὑποδραμόντος αὐτῷ καὶ ἀνακουφίζοντος, ἐξενεχθῆναι τῆς †Σικύνθου κατὰ σπήλαιον, ὃ δείκνυται μέχρι νῦν καὶ καλεῖται Κοιράνειον· ἐπὶ τούτῳ δὲ λέγεται ποιῆσαι τὸν Ἀρχίλοχον (fr. 117 D.)

‘πεντήκοντ’ ἀνδρῶν λίπε Κοίρανον ἤπιος Ποσειδῶν.’

[b] ἐπεὶ δ’ ὕστερον ἀποθανόντος αὐτοῦ τὸ σῶμα πλησίον τῆς θαλάττης οἱ προσήκοντες ἔκαιον, ἐπεφαίνοντο πολλοὶ δελφῖνες παρὰ τὸν αἰγιαλόν, ὥσπερ ἐπιδεικνύντες ἑαυτοὺς ἥκοντας ἐπὶ τὰς ταφάς, καὶ παραμείναντες ἄχρις οὗ συνετελέσθησαν. ἡ δ’ Ὀδυσσέως ἀσπὶς ὅτι μὲν ἐπίσημον εἶχε δελφῖνα καὶ Στησίχορος (fr. 70) ἱστόρηκεν· ἐξ ἧς δ’ αἰτίας, Ζακύνθιοι διαμνημονεύουσιν, ὡς Κριθεὺς μαρτυρεῖ· νήπιος γὰρ ὢν ὁ Τηλέμαχος, ὥς φασιν, εἰς ἀγχιβαθὲς τῆς θαλάττης ὀλισθὼν ἐσώθη δελφίνων ὑπολαβόντων καὶ ἀνανηξαμένων· ὅθεν ἐποιήσατο γλυφὴν τῇ σφραγῖδι καὶ τῆς ἀσπίδος κόσμον ὁ πατὴρ ἀμειβόμενος [c] τὸ ζῷον. ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ προειπὼν ὡς οὐδὲ μῦθον ὑμῖν ἐρῶ, καὶ αὐτὸς οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως πρὸς τοῖς δελφῖσιν ἔλαθον πορρωτέρω τοῦ πιθανοῦ συνεξοκείλας εἰς τὸν Ὀδυσσέα καὶ Κοίρανον, ἐπιτίθημι δίκην ἐμαυτῷ· παύομαι γὰρ ἤδη λέγων.

ΑΡΙΣΤ. Ἔξεστιν οὖν ὑμῖν, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, τὴν ψῆφον φέρειν.

ΣΩΚΛ. Ἀλλ’ ἡμῖν γε πάλαι τὸ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους (fr. 783) δεδογμένον ἐστίν·

‘εὖ γὰρ καὶ διχοστατῶν λόγος

σύγκολλά τ’ ἀμφοῖν ἐς μέσον τεκταίνεται.’

ταυτὶ γάρ, ἃ πρὸς ἀλλήλους εἰρήκατε, συνθέντες εἰς ταὐτὸν ἀμφότεροι καλῶς ἀγωνιεῖσθε κοινῇ πρὸς τοὺς τὰ ζῷα λόγου καὶ συνέσεως ἀποστεροῦντας.

Bruta animalia ratione uti

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΤΑ ΑΛΟΓΑ ΛΟΓΩΙ ΧΡΗΣΘΑΙ

[985] Ο. Ταῦτα μέν, ὦ Κίρκη, μεμαθηκέναι δοκῶ καὶ διαμνημονεύσειν· ἡδέως δ’ ἄν σου πυθοίμην, εἴ τινας ἔχεις Ἕλληνας ἐν τούτοις, οὓς λύκους καὶ λέοντας ἐξ ἀνθρώπων πεποίηκας.

[e] Κ. Καὶ πολλούς, ὦ ποθούμεν’ Ὀδυσσεῦ. πρὸς τί δὲ τοῦτ’ ἐρωτᾷς;

Ο. Ὅτι νὴ Δία καλὴν ἄν μοι δοκῶ γενέσθαι φιλοτιμίαν πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας, εἰ χάριτι σῇ λαβὼν τούτους αὖθις ‹εἰς› ἀνθρώπους [ἑταίρους] ἀνασώσαιμι καὶ μὴ περιίδοιμι καταγηράσαντας παρὰ φύσιν ἐν σώμασι θηρίων, οἰκτρὰν καὶ ἄτιμον οὕτω δίαιταν ἔχοντας.

Κ. Οὗτος ὁ ἀνὴρ οὐχ αὑτῷ μόνον οὐδὲ τοῖς ἑταίροις, ἀλλὰ τοῖς μηδὲν προσήκουσιν οἴεται δεῖν ὑπ’ ἀβελτερίας συμφορὰν γενέσθαι τὴν αὑτοῦ φιλοτιμίαν.

Ο. Ἕτερον αὖ τινα τοῦτον, ὦ Κίρκη, κυκεῶνα λόγων ταράττεις καὶ ὑποφαρμάττεις, ἐμὲ γοῦν ἀτεχνῶς ποιοῦσα θηρίον, εἰ πείσομαί σοι ὡς συμφορά ἐστιν ἄνθρωπον [f] ἐκ θηρίου γενέσθαι.

Κ. Οὐ γὰρ ἤδη τούτων ἀτοπώτερα πεποίηκας σεαυτόν, ὃς τὸν ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀγήρω σὺν ἐμοὶ βίον ἀφεὶς ἐπὶ γυναῖκα θνητήν, ὡς δ’ ἐγώ φημι καὶ γραῦν ἤδη, διὰ μυρίων [986] [a] ἔτι κακῶν σπεύδεις, ὡς δὴ περίβλεπτος ἐκ τούτου καὶ ὀνομαστὸς ἔτι μᾶλλον ἢ νῦν γεν‹ης›όμενος, κενὸν ἀγαθὸν καὶ εἴδωλον ἀντὶ τῆς ἀληθείας διώκων;

Ο. Ἐχέτω ταῦτα, ὡς λέγεις, ὦ Κίρκη· τί γὰρ δεῖ πολλάκις ζυγομαχεῖν ἡμᾶς περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν; τούτους δέ μοι δὸς ἀναλύσασα καὶ χάρισαι τοὺς ἄνδρας.

Κ. Οὐχ οὕτω γ’ ἁπλῶς, μὰ τὴν Ἑκάτην· οὐ γὰρ οἱ τυχόντες εἰσίν· ἀλλ’ ἐροῦ πρῶτον αὐτούς, εἰ θέλουσιν· ἂν δὲ μὴ φῶσι, διαλεχθείς, ὦ γενναῖε, πεῖσον· ἐὰν δὲ μὴ πείσῃς ἀλλὰ καὶ περιγένωνται διαλεγόμενοι, ἱκανὸν ἔστω σοι περὶ σεαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν φίλων κακῶς βεβουλεῦσθαι.

[b] Ο. Τί μου καταγελᾷς, ὦ μακαρία; πῶς γὰρ ἂν ἢ δοῖεν οὗτοι λόγον ἢ λάβοιεν, ἕως ὄνοι καὶ σύες καὶ λέοντές εἰσι;

Κ. Θάρρει, φιλοτιμότατ’ ἀνθρώπων· ἐγώ σοι παρέξω καὶ συνιέντας αὐτοὺς καὶ διαλεγομένους· μᾶλλον δ’ εἷς ἱκανὸς ἔσται καὶ διδοὺς καὶ λαμβάνων ὑπὲρ πάντων λόγον· ἰδού, τούτῳ διαλέγου.

Ο. Καὶ τίνα τοῦτον, ὦ Κίρκη, προσαγορεύσομεν; ἢ τίς ἦν οὗτος ἀνθρώπων;

Κ. Τί γὰρ τοῦτο πρὸς τὸν λόγον; ἀλλὰ κάλει αὐτόν, εἰ βούλει, Γρύλλον. ἐγὼ δ’ ἐκστήσομαι ὑμῖν, μὴ καὶ παρὰ γνώμην ἐμοὶ δοκῇ χαριζόμενος διαλέγεσθαι.

[c] Γ. Χαῖρε, Ὀδυσσεῦ.

Ο. Καὶ σὺ νὴ Δία, Γρύλλε.

Γ. Τί βούλει ἐρωτᾶν;

Ο. Ἐγὼ γινώσκων ὑμᾶς ἀνθρώπους γεγονότας οἰκτείρω μὲν [οὖν] ἅπαντας οὕτως ἔχοντας, εἰκὸς δέ μοι μᾶλλον διαφέρειν ὅσοι Ἕλληνες ὄντες εἰς ταύτην ἀφῖχθε τὴν δυστυχίαν· νῦν οὖν ἐποιησάμην τῆς Κίρκης δέησιν, ὅπως τὸν βουλόμενον ὑμῶν ἀναλύσασα καὶ καταστήσασα πάλιν εἰς τὸ ἀρχαῖον εἶδος ἀποπέμψῃ μεθ’ ἡμῶν.

Γ. Παῦε, Ὀδυσσεῦ, καὶ περαιτέρω μηδὲν εἴπῃς· ὡς καὶ σοῦ πάντες ἡμεῖς καταφρονοῦμεν, ὡς μάτην ἄρα δεινὸς ἐλέγου καὶ τῷ φρονεῖν πολὺ τῶν ἄλλων ἀνθρώπων [d] ἐδόκεις διαφέρειν, ὃς αὐτὸ τοῦτ’ ἔδεισας, τὴν μεταβολὴν ἐκ χειρόνων εἰς ἀμείνω, μὴ σκεψάμενος· ὡς γὰρ οἱ παῖδες τὰ φάρμακα τῶν ἰατρῶν φοβοῦνται καὶ τὰ μαθήματα φεύγουσιν, ἃ μεταβάλλοντα ἐκ νοσερῶν καὶ ἀνοήτων ὑγιεινοτέρους καὶ φρονιμωτέρους ποιοῦσιν αὐτούς, οὕτω σὺ διεκρούσω τὸ ἄλλος ἐξ ἄλλου γενέσθαι, καὶ νῦν αὐτός τε φρίττων καὶ ὑποδειμαίνων τῇ Κίρκῃ σύνει, μή σε ποιήσῃ λαθοῦσα σῦν ἢ λύκον, ἡμᾶς τε πείθεις, ἐν ἀφθόνοις ζῶντας ἀγαθοῖς, ἀπολιπόντας ἅμα τούτοις τὴν ταῦτα παρασκευάζουσαν ἐκπλεῖν μετὰ σοῦ, τὸ πάντων φιλο‹πονώτατον [e] καὶ βαρυ›ποτμότατον ζῷον αὖθις ἀνθρώπους γενομένους.

Ο. Ἐμοὶ σύ, Γρύλλε, δοκεῖς οὐ τὴν μορφὴν μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ὑπὸ τοῦ πόματος ἐκείνου διεφθάρθαι καὶ γεγονέναι μεστὸς ἀτόπων καὶ διαλελωβημένων παντάπασι δοξῶν· ἢ σέ τις αὖ συνηθείας ἡδονὴ πρὸς τόδε τὸ σῶμα καταγεγοήτευκεν;

Γ. Οὐδέτερα τούτων, ὦ βασιλεῦ Κεφαλλήνων· ἂν δὲ διαλέγεσθαι μᾶλλον ἐθέλῃς ἢ λοιδορεῖσθαι, ταχύ σε μεταπείσομεν, ἑκατέρου τῶν βίων ἐμπείρως ἔχοντες, ὅτι ταῦτα πρὸ ἐκείνων εἰκότως ἀγαπῶμεν.

Ο. Ἀλλὰ μὴν ἐγὼ πρόθυμος ἀκροᾶσθαι.

[f] Γ. Καὶ ἡμεῖς τοίνυν λέγειν. ἀρκτέον δὲ πρῶτον ἀπὸ τῶν ἀρετῶν, ἐφ’ αἷς ὁρῶμεν ὑμᾶς μέγα φρονοῦντας, ὡς τῶν θηρίων πολὺ καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ φρονήσει καὶ ἀνδρείᾳ καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις ἀρεταῖς διαφέροντας. ἀπόκριναι δή μοι, σοφώτατ’ ἀνδρῶν· ἤκουσα γάρ σού ποτε διηγουμένου τῇ Κίρκῃ περὶ τῆς τῶν Κυκλώπων γῆς, ὡς οὔτ’ ἀρουμένη τὸ παράπαν οὔτε τινὸς εἰς αὐτὴν φυτεύοντος οὐδὲν οὕτως ἐστὶν γενναία καὶ ἀγαθὴ τὴν φύσιν, ὥσθ’ ἅπαντας ἐκφέρειν [987] [a] τοὺς καρποὺς ἀφ’ αὑτῆς· πότερον οὖν ταύτην ἐπαινεῖς μᾶλλον ἢ τὴν αἰγίβοτον Ἰθάκην καὶ τραχεῖαν, ἣ μόλις ἀπ’ ἔργων τε πολλῶν καὶ διὰ πόνων μεγάλων μικρὰ καὶ γλίσχρα καὶ μηδενὸς ἄξια τοῖς γεωργοῦσιν ἀναδίδωσι; καὶ ὅπως οὐ χαλεπῶς οἴσεις, παρὰ τὸ φαινόμενον εὐνοίᾳ τῆς πατρίδος ἀποκρινόμενος.

Ο. Ἀλλ’ οὐ δεῖ ψεύδεσθαι· φιλῶ μὲν γὰρ καὶ ἀσπάζομαι τὴν ἐμαυτοῦ πατρίδα καὶ χώραν μᾶλλον, ἐπαινῶ δὲ καὶ θαυμάζω τὴν ἐκείνων.

Γ. Οὐκοῦν τοῦτο μὲν οὕτως ἔχειν φήσομεν, ὡς ὁ φρονιμώτατος ἀνθρώπων ἄλλα μὲν οἴεται δεῖν ἐπαινεῖν καὶ [b] δοκιμάζειν ἄλλα δ’ αἱρεῖσθαι καὶ ἀγαπᾶν, ἐκεῖνο δ’ οἶμαί σε καὶ περὶ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀποκεκρίσθαι· ταὐτὸν γάρ ἐστι τῷ περὶ τῆς χώρας, ὡς ἀμείνων ἥτις ἄνευ πόνου τὴν ἀρετὴν ὥσπερ αὐτοφυῆ καρπὸν ἀναδίδωσιν.

Ο. Ἔστω καὶ τοῦτό σοι οὕτως.

Γ. Ἤδη μὲν οὖν ὁμολογεῖς τὴν τῶν θηρίων ψυχὴν εὐφυεστέραν εἶναι πρὸς γένεσιν ἀρετῆς καὶ τελειοτέραν· ἀνεπίτακτος γὰρ καὶ ἀδίδακτος ὥσπερ ἄσπορος καὶ ἀνήροτος ἐκφέρει καὶ αὔξει κατὰ φύσιν τὴν ἑκάστῳ προσήκουσαν ἀρετήν.

Ο. Καὶ τίνος ποτ’ ἀρετῆς, ὦ Γρύλλε, μέτεστι τοῖς θηρίοις;

Γ. Τίνος μὲν οὖν οὐχὶ μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ σοφωτάτῳ τῶν [c] ἀνθρώπων; σκόπει δὲ πρῶτον, εἰ βούλει, τὴν ἀνδρείαν, ἐφ’ ᾗ σὺ φρονεῖς μέγα καὶ οὐκ ἐγκαλύπτῃ ‘θρασὺς’ καὶ ‘πτολίπορθος’ ἀποκαλούμενος, ὅστις, ὦ σχετλιώτατε, δόλοις καὶ μηχαναῖς ἀνθρώπους ἁπλοῦν καὶ γενναῖον εἰδότας πολέμου τρόπον ἀπάτης δὲ καὶ ψευδῶν ἀπείρους παρακρουσάμενος ὄνομα τῇ πανουργίᾳ προστίθης ἀρετῆς ἥκιστα πανουργίαν προσιεμένης. ἀλλὰ τῶν γε θηρίων τοὺς πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἀγῶνας ὁρᾷς ὡς ἄδολοι καὶ ἄτεχνοι καὶ μετ’ ἐμφανοῦς γυμνοῦ τε τοῦ θαρρεῖν πρὸς ἀληθινῆς ἀλκῆς ποιοῦνται τὰς ἀμύνας· καὶ οὔτε [d] νόμου καλοῦντος οὔτ’ ἀστρατείας δεδοικότα γραφὴν ἀλλὰ φύσει φεύγοντα τὸ κρατεῖσθαι μέχρι τῶν ἐσχάτων ἐγκαρτερεῖ καὶ διαφυλάττει τὸ ἀήττητον· οὐ γὰρ ἡττᾶται κρατούμενα τοῖς σώμασιν οὐδ’ ἀπαγορεύει ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἀλλὰ ταῖς μάχαις ἐναποθνήσκει. πολλῶν δὲ θνησκόντων ἡ ἀλκὴ μετὰ τοῦ θυμοειδοῦς ἀποχωρήσασά που καὶ συναθροισθεῖσα περὶ ἕν τι τοῦ σώματος μόριον ἀνθίσταται τῷ κτείνοντι καὶ πηδᾷ καὶ ἀγανακτεῖ, μέχρις ἂν ὥσπερ πῦρ ἐγκατασβεσθῇ παντάπασι καὶ ἀπόληται. δέησις δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδ’ οἴκτου παραίτησις οὐδ’ ἐξομολόγησις ἥττης, οὐδὲ δουλεύει λέων λέοντι καὶ ἵππος ἵππῳ δι’ [e] ἀνανδρίαν, ὥσπερ ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπῳ, τὴν τῆς δειλίας ἐπώνυμον εὐκόλως [ἐν]ἀσπαζόμενος. ὅσα δ’ ἄνθρωποι πάγαις ἢ δόλοις ἐχειρώσαντο, τὰ μὲν ἤδη τέλεια καὶ τροφὴν ἀπωσάμενα καὶ πρὸς δίψαν ἐγκαρτερήσαντα τὸν πρὸ δουλείας ἐπάγεται καὶ ἀγαπᾷ θάνατον· νεοσσοῖς δὲ καὶ σκύμνοις τούτων, δι’ ἡλικίαν εὐαγώγοις καὶ ἁπαλοῖς οὖσιν, πολλὰ καὶ ἀπατηλὰ μειλίγματα καὶ †ὑποπεττεύματα προσφέροντες καὶ καταφαρμάττοντες, ἡδονῶν παρὰ φύσιν γευόμενα καὶ διαίτης ἀδρανῆ χρόνῳ κατειργάσαντο, ἕως προσεδέξαντο καὶ ὑπέμειναν τὴν καλουμένην ἐξημέρωσιν [f] ὥσπερ ἀπογυναίκωσιν τοῦ θυμοειδοῦς· οἷς δὴ μάλιστα δῆλον ὅτι τὰ θηρία πρὸς τὸ θαρρεῖν εὖ πέφυκε. τοῖς δ’ ἀνθρώποις ἡ καρτέρησις καὶ παρὰ φύσιν ἐστίν. ἐκεῖθεν δ’ ἄν, ὦ βέλτιστ’ Ὀδυσσεῦ, μάλιστα καταμάθοις. ἐν γὰρ τοῖς θηρίοις ἰσορροπεῖ πρὸς ἀλκὴν ἡ φύσις καὶ τὸ θῆλυ τοῦ ἄρρενος οὐδὲν ἀποδεῖ πονεῖν τε τοὺς ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις πόνους ἀγωνίζεσθαί τε τοὺς ὑπὲρ τῶν τέκνων ἀγῶνας. ἀλλὰ καὶ Κρομμυωνίαν τινὰ σῦν ἀκούεις, ἣ πράγματα πολλά, θῆλυ θηρίον οὖσα, τῷ Θησεῖ παρέσχε· [988] [a] καὶ τὴν Σφίγγα ἐκείνην οὐκ ἂν ὤνησεν ἡ σοφία περὶ τὸ Φίκιον ἄνω καθεζομένην, αἰνίγματα καὶ γρίφους πλέκουσαν, εἰ μὴ ῥώμῃ καὶ ἀνδρείᾳ πολὺ τῶν Καδμείων ἐπεκράτει. ἐκεῖ δέ που καὶ Τευμησίαν ἀλώπεκα ‘μέρμερον χρῆμα’ καὶ πλησίον ὄφιν τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι περὶ τοῦ χρηστηρίου μονομαχοῦσαν ἐν Δελφοῖς γενέσθαι λέγουσι. τὴν δ’ Αἴθην ὁ βασιλεὺς ὑμῶν ἔλαβε παρὰ τοῦ Σικυωνίου μισθὸν ἀστρατείας, ἄριστα βουλευσάμενος, ὃς δειλοῦ προετίμησεν ἀνδρὸς ἵππον ἀγαθὴν καὶ φιλόνικον. αὐτὸς δὲ καὶ παρδάλεις καὶ λεαίνας πολλάκις ἑώρακας ὡς οὐδέν τι τὰ θήλεα [b] τοῖς ἄρρεσιν ὑφίεται θυμοῦ καὶ ἀλκῆς, ὥσπερ ἡ σὴ γυνὴ σοῦ πολεμοῦντος οἴκοι κάθηται πρὸς ἐσχάρᾳ πυρός, οὐκ ἂν οὐδ’ ὅσον αἱ χελιδόνες ἀμυνομένη τοὺς ἐπ’ αὐτὴν καὶ τὸν οἶκον βαδίζοντας, καὶ ταῦτα Λάκαινα οὖσα· τί οὖν ἔτι σοι λέγω τὰς Καρίνας ἢ Μαιονίδας; ἀλλ’ ἐκ τούτων γε δῆλόν ἐστιν, ὅτι τοῖς ἀνδράσιν οὐ φύσει μέτεστι τῆς ἀνδρείας· μετῆν γὰρ ἂν ὁμοίως καὶ ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἀλκῆς. ὥσθ’ ὑμεῖς κατὰ νόμων ἀνάγκην οὐχ ἑκούσιον οὐδὲ βουλομένην ἀλλὰ δουλεύουσαν ἔθεσι καὶ ψόγοις καὶ δόξαις ἐπήλυσι καὶ λόγοις πλανωμένοις μελετᾶτε ἀνδρείαν· καὶ [c] τοὺς πόνους ὑφίστασθε καὶ τοὺς κινδύνους οὐ πρὸς ταῦτα θαρροῦντες ἀλλὰ τῷ ἕτερα μᾶλλον τούτων δεδιέναι. ὥσπερ οὖν τῶν σῶν ἑταίρων ὁ φθάσας πρῶτος ἐπὶ τὴν ἐλαφρὰν ἀνίσταται κώπην οὐ καταφρονῶν ἐκείνης ἀλλὰ δεδιὼς καὶ φεύγων τὴν βαρυτέραν, οὕτως ὁ πληγὴν ὑπομένων, ἵνα μὴ λάβῃ τραύματα, καὶ πρὸ αἰκίας τινὸς ἢ θανάτου πολέμιον ἀμυνόμενος οὐ πρὸς ταῦτα θαρραλέος ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἐκεῖνα δειλός ἐστιν. οὕτω δ’ ἀναφαίνεται ὑμῖν ἡ μὲν ἀνδρεία δειλία φρόνιμος οὖσα, τὸ δὲ θάρσος φόβος ἐπιστήμην ἔχων τοῦ δι’ ἑτέρων ἕτερα φεύγειν. ὅλως δ’, εἰ πρὸς [d] ἀνδρείαν οἴεσθε βελτίους εἶναι τῶν θηρίων, τί ποθ’ ὑμῶν οἱ ποιηταὶ τοὺς κράτιστα τοῖς πολεμίοις μαχομένους ‘λυκόφρονας’ καὶ ‘θυμολέοντας’ καὶ ‘συῒ εἰκέλους ἀλκὴν’ προσαγορεύουσιν, ἀλλ’ οὐ λέοντά τις αὐτῶν ‘ἀνθρωπόθυμον’ οὐ σῦν ‘ἀνδρὶ εἴκελον ἀλκὴν’ προσαγορεύει; ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἶμαι τοὺς ταχεῖς ‘ποδηνέμους’ καὶ τοὺς καλοὺς ‘θεοειδεῖς’ ὑπερβαλλόμενοι ταῖς εἰκόσιν ὀνομάζουσιν, οὕτω τῶν δεινῶν μάχεσθαι πρὸς τὰ κρείττονα ποιοῦνται τὰς ἀφομοιώσεις. αἴτιον δ’, ὅτι τῆς μὲν ἀνδρείας οἷον βαφή τις ὁ θυμός ἐστι καὶ στόμωμα· τούτῳ δ’ ἀκράτῳ τὰ θηρία χρῆται πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας, ὑμῖν δὲ προσμιγνύμενος [e] πρὸς τὸν λογισμὸν ὥσπερ οἶνος πρὸς ὕδωρ ἐξίσταται παρὰ τὰ δεινὰ καὶ ἀπολείπει τὸν καιρόν. ἔνιοι δ’ ὑμῶν οὐδ’ ὅλως φασὶ χρῆναι παραλαμβάνειν ἐν ταῖς μάχαις τὸν θυμὸν ἀλλ’ ἐκποδὼν θεμένους νήφοντι χρῆσθαι τῷ λογισμῷ, πρὸς μὲν σωτηρίας ἀσφάλειαν ὀρθῶς πρὸς δ’ ἀλκὴν καὶ ἄμυναν αἴσχιστα λέγοντες. πῶς γὰρ οὐκ ἄτοπον αἰτιᾶσθαι μὲν ὑμᾶς τὴν φύσιν, ὅτι μὴ κέντρα προσέφυσε τοῖς σώμασι μηδ’ ἀμυντηρίους ὀδόντας μηδ’ ἀγκύλους ὄνυχας, αὐτοὺς δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ σύμφυτον ἀφαιρεῖν ὅπλον καὶ κολούειν;

Ο. Παπαί, ὦ Γρύλλε, δεινός μοι δοκεῖς γεγονέναι [f] σοφιστής, ὅς γε καὶ νῦν ἐκ τῆς συηνίας φθεγγόμενος οὕτω νεανικῶς πρὸς τὴν ὑπόθεσιν ἐπικεχείρηκας. ἀλλὰ τί οὐ περὶ τῆς σωφροσύνης ἐφεξῆς διεξῆλθες;

Γ. Ὅτι ᾤμην σε τῶν εἰρημένων πρότερον ἐπιλήψεσθαι· σὺ δὲ σπεύδεις ἀκοῦσαι τὸ περὶ τῆς σωφροσύνης, ἐπεὶ σωφρονεστάτης μὲν ἀνὴρ εἶ γυναικός, ἀπόδειξιν δὲ σωφροσύνης αὐτὸς οἴει δεδωκέναι, τῶν Κίρκης ἀφροδισίων περιφρονήσας. καὶ τούτῳ μὲν οὐδενὸς τῶν θηρίων διαφέρεις πρὸς ἐγκράτειαν· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐκεῖνα τοῖς κρείττοσιν [989] [a] ἐπιθυμεῖ πλησιάζειν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς καὶ τοὺς ἔρωτας πρὸς τὰ ὁμόφυλα ποιεῖται. οὐ θαυμαστὸν οὖν ἐστιν, εἰ καθάπερ ὁ Μενδήσιος ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ τράγος λέγεται πολλαῖς καὶ καλαῖς συνειργνύμενος γυναιξὶν οὐκ εἶναι μίγνυσθαι πρόθυμος ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὰς αἶγας ἐπτόηται μᾶλλον, οὕτω σὺ χαίρων ἀφροδισίοις συνήθεσιν οὐ θέλεις ἄνθρωπος ὢν θεᾷ συγκαθεύδειν. τὴν δὲ Πηνελόπης σωφροσύνην μυρίαι κορῶναι κρώζουσαι γέλωτα θήσονται καὶ καταφρονήσουσιν, ὧν ἑκάστη, ἂν ἀποθάνῃ ὁ ἄρρην, οὐκ ὀλίγον χρόνον ἀλλ’ ἐννέα χηρεύει γενεὰς ἀνθρώπων· ὥστε [b] σοι τὴν καλὴν Πηνελόπην ἐννάκις ἀπολείπεσθαι τῷ σωφρονεῖν ἧς βούλει κορώνης.

Ἀλλ’ ἐπεί σε μὴ λέληθα σοφιστὴς ὤν, φέρε χρήσωμαι τάξει τινὶ τοῦ λόγου, τῆς μὲν σωφροσύνης ὅρον θέμενος κατὰ γένος δὲ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας διελόμενος. ἡ μὲν οὖν σωφροσύνη βραχύτης τίς ἐστιν ἐπιθυμιῶν καὶ τάξις, ἀναιροῦσα μὲν τὰς ἐπεισάκτους καὶ περιττὰς καιρῷ δὲ καὶ μετριότητι κοσμοῦσα τὰς ἀναγκαίας. ταῖς δ’ ἐπιθυμίαις ἐνορᾷς που μυρίαν διαφοράν· ‹αἱ μὲν γὰρ περὶ τὴν βρῶσιν› καὶ τὴν πόσιν ἅμα τῷ φυσικῷ καὶ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον ἔχουσιν· αἱ δὲ τῶν ἀφροδισίων αἷς ἀρχὰς ἡ φύσις ἐνδίδωσιν, ἔστι [c] δέ που καὶ μὴ χρώμενον ἔχειν ἱκανῶς ἀπαλλαγέντα, φυσικαὶ μὲν οὐκ ἀναγκαῖαι δ’ ἐκλήθησαν. τὸ δὲ τῶν μήτ’ ἀναγκαίων μήτε φυσικῶν ἀλλ’ ἔξωθεν ὑπὸ δόξης κενῆς δι’ ἀπειροκαλίαν ἐπικεχυμένων γένος ὑμῶν μὲν ὀλίγου δεῖν τὰς φυσικὰς ἀπέκρυψεν ὑπὸ πλήθους ἁπάσας, ἔχει δὲ καθάπερ ξένων ὄχλος ἔπηλυς ἐν δήμῳ καταβιαζόμενος πρὸς τοὺς ἐγγενεῖς πολίτας. τὰ δὲ θηρία παντάπασιν ἀβάτους καὶ ἀνεπιμίκτους ἔχοντα τοῖς ἐπεισάκτοις πάθεσι τὰς ψυχὰς καὶ τοῖς βίοις πόρρω τῆς κενῆς δόξης ὥσπερ θαλάσσης ἀπῳκισμένα τοῦ γλαφυρῶς καὶ περιττῶς διάγειν ἀπολείπεται· τὸ δὲ σωφρονεῖν καὶ μᾶλλον εὐνομεῖσθαι [d] ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις, οὔτε πολλαῖς συνοικούσαις οὔτ’ ἀλλοτρίαις, σφόδρα διαφυλάττεται. ἐμὲ γοῦν καὶ αὐτὸν οὐχ ἧττον ἢ σὲ νῦν ἐξέπληττε μὲν χρυσὸς ὡς κτῆμα τῶν ἄλλων οὐδενὶ παραβλητὸν ᾕρει δ’ ἄργυρος καὶ ἐλέφας· ὁ δὲ πλεῖστα τούτων κεκτημένος ἐδόκει μακάριός τις εἶναι καὶ θεοφιλὴς ἀνήρ, εἴτε Φρὺξ ἦν εἴτε Κὰρ τοῦ Δόλωνος ἀγεννέστερος καὶ τοῦ Πριάμου βαρυποτμότερος· ἐνταῦθα ‹δ’› ἀνηρτημένος ἀεὶ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις οὔτε χάριν οὔθ’ ἡδονὴν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων πραγμάτων ἀφθόνων ὄντων καὶ ἱκανῶν ἐκαρπούμην, ‹ἀλλ’ ἐμεμφόμην› τὸν ἐμαυτοῦ βίον, ὡς [e] τῶν μεγίστων ἐνδεὴς καὶ ἄμοιρος ἀγαθῶν ἀπολελειμμένος. τοιγαροῦν, ὥς σε μέμνημαι ἐν Κρήτῃ θεασάμενος ἀμπεχόνῃ κεκοσμημένον πανηγυρικῶς, οὐ τὴν φρόνησιν ἐζήλουν οὐδὲ τὴν ἀρετήν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ χιτῶνος εἰργασμένου περιττῶς τὴν λεπτότητα καὶ τῆς χλαμύδος οὔσης ἁλουργοῦ τὴν οὐλότητα καὶ τὸ κάλλος ἀγαπῶν καὶ τεθηπὼς (εἶχε δέ τι καὶ ἡ πόρπη χρυσὸς οὖσα παίγνιον οἶμαι τορείαις διηκριβωμένον) [καὶ] εἱπόμην γεγοητευμένος, ὥσπερ αἱ γυναῖκες. ἀλλὰ νῦν ἀπηλλαγμένος ἐκείνων τῶν κενῶν δοξῶν καὶ κεκαθαρμένος χρυσὸν μὲν καὶ ἄργυρον ὥσπερ [f] τοὺς ἄλλους λίθους περιορῶν ὑπερβαίνω, ταῖς δὲ σαῖς χλανίσι καὶ τάπησιν οὐδὲν ἂν μὰ Δί’ ἥδιον ἢ βαθεῖ καὶ μαλθακῷ πηλῷ μεστὸς ὢν ἐγκατακλιθείην ἀναπαυόμενος. †τὰ δὲ τοιαῦτα τῶν ἐπεισάκτων ἐπιθυμιῶν οὐδεμία ταῖς ἡμετέραις ἐνοικίζεται ψυχαῖς· ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν πλεῖστα ταῖς ἀναγκαίαις ὁ βίος ἡμῶν ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ ἡδοναῖς διοικεῖται, ταῖς δ’ οὐκ ἀναγκαίαις ἀλλὰ φυσικαῖς μόνον οὔτ’ ἀτάκτως οὔτ’ ἀπλήστως ὁμιλοῦμεν.

[990] [a] Καὶ ταύτας γε πρῶτον διέλθωμεν. ἡ μὲν οὖν πρὸς τὰ εὐώδη καὶ κινοῦντα ταῖς ἀποφοραῖς τὴν ὄσφρησιν οἰκείως ἡδονὴ πρὸς τῷ τὸ ὄφελος καὶ προῖκα καὶ ἁπλοῦν ἔχειν ἅμα χρείαν τινὰ συμβάλλεται τῇ διαγνώσει τῆς τροφῆς. ἡ μὲν γὰρ γλῶττα τοῦ γλυκέος καὶ δριμέος καὶ αὐστηροῦ γνώμων ἐστί τε καὶ λέγεται, ὅταν τῷ γευστικῷ προσμιγέντες οἱ χυμοὶ σύγχυσίν τινα λάβωσιν· ἡ δ’ ὄσφρησις ἡμῶν πρὸ τῶν χυμῶν γνώμων οὖσα τῆς δυνάμεως ἑκάστου πολὺ τῶν βασιλικῶν προγευστῶν σκεπτικώτερον διαισθανομένη, τὸ μὲν οἰκεῖον εἴσω παρίησι τὸ δ’ ἀλλότριον ἀπελαύνει καὶ οὐκ ἐᾷ θιγεῖν οὐδὲ λυπῆσαι τὴν γεῦσιν [b] ἀλλὰ διαβάλλει καὶ κατηγορεῖ τὴν φαυλότητα πρὶν ἢ βλαβῆναι· τἄλλα δ’ οὐκ ἐνοχλεῖ, καθάπερ ὑμῖν, τὰ θυμιάματα καὶ κινάμωμα καὶ νάρδους καὶ φύλλα καὶ καλάμους Ἀραβικοὺς μετὰ δεινῆς τινος καὶ δευσοποιοῦ φαρμακίδος τέχνης, ᾗ μυρεψικῆς ὄνομα, συνάγειν εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ †συμφαγεῖν ἀναγκάζουσα, χρημάτων πολλῶν ἡδυπάθειαν ἄνανδρον καὶ κορασιώδη καὶ πρὸς οὐδὲν οὐδαμῶς χρήσιμον ὠνουμένους. ἀλλὰ καίπερ οὖσα τοιαύτη διέφθαρκεν οὐ μόνον πάσας γυναῖκας ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἤδη τοὺς πλείστους, ὡς μηδὲ ταῖς αὑτῶν ἐθέλειν συγγίγνεσθαι γυναιξίν, εἰ μὴ μύρων ὑμῖν ὀδωδυῖαι καὶ [c] διαπασμάτων εἰς ταὐτὸ φοιτῷεν. ἀλλὰ κάπρους τε σύες καὶ τράγους αἶγες καὶ τἄλλα θήλεα τοὺς συννόμους αὐτῶν ταῖς ἰδίαις ὀσμαῖς ἐπάγεται, δρόσου τε καθαρᾶς καὶ λειμώνων ὀδωδότα καὶ χλόης, συμφέρεται ‹δὲ› πρὸς τοὺς γάμους ὑπὸ κοινῆς φιλοφροσύνης, οὐχὶ θρυπτόμεναι μὲν αἱ θήλειαι καὶ προϊσχόμεναι τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἀπάτας καὶ γοητείας καὶ ἀρνήσεις, οἱ δ’ ἄρρενες ὑπ’ οἴστρου καὶ μαργότητος ὠνούμενοι μισθῶν καὶ πόνου καὶ λατρείας τὸ τῆς γενέσεως ἔργον, ἄδολον δὲ σὺν καιρῷ καὶ ἄμισθον Ἀφροδίτην μετιόντες, ἣ καθ’ ὥραν ἔτους ὥσπερ φυτῶν βλάστην [d] ἐγείρουσα τῶν ζῴων τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν εὐθὺς ἔσβεσεν, οὔτε τοῦ θήλεος προσιεμένου μετὰ τὴν κύησιν οὔτε πειρῶντος ἔτι τοῦ ἄρρενος. οὕτω μικρὰν ἔχει καὶ ἀσθενῆ τιμὴν ‹ἡ› ἡδονὴ παρ’ ἡμῖν τὸ δ’ ὅλον ἡ φύσις. ὅθεν οὔτ’ ἄρρενος πρὸς ἄρρεν οὔτε θήλεος πρὸς θῆλυ μῖξιν αἱ τῶν θηρίων ἐπιθυμίαι μέχρι γε νῦν ἐνηνόχασιν· ὑμῶν δὲ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν σεμνῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν. ἐῶ γὰρ τοὺς οὐδενὸς ἀξίους· ὁ δ’ Ἀγαμέμνων τὴν Βοιωτίαν ἐπῆλθε κυνηγετῶν τὸν Ἄργυννον ὑποφεύγοντα καὶ καταψευδόμενος τῆς θαλάσσης καὶ τῶν πνευμάτων, εἶτα καλὸν καλῶς ἑαυτὸν [e] βαπτίζων εἰς τὴν Κωπαΐδα λίμνην, ὡς αὐτόθι κατασβέσων τὸν ἔρωτα καὶ τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἀπαλλαξόμενος· ὁ δ’ Ἡρακλῆς ὁμοίως ἑταῖρον ἀγένειον ἐπιδιώκων ἀπελείφθη τῶν ἀριστέων καὶ προύδωκε τὸν στόλον· ἐν δὲ τῇ θόλῳ τοῦ Πτῴου Ἀπόλλωνος λαθών τις ὑμῶν ἐνέγραψεν ‘Ἀχιλλεὺς καλός’ ἤδη τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως υἱὸν ἔχοντος, καὶ τὰ γράμματα πυνθάνομαι διαμένειν. ἀλεκτρυὼν δ’ ἀλεκτρυόνος ἐπιβαίνων, θηλείας μὴ παρούσης, καταπίμπραται ζωός, μάντεώς τινος ἢ τερατοσκόπου μέγα καὶ δεινὸν ἀποφαίνοντος εἶναι τὸ γιγνόμενον. οὕτω καὶ παρ’ αὐτῶν ἀνωμολόγηται [f] τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὅτι μᾶλλον τοῖς θηρίοις σωφρονεῖν προσήκει καὶ μὴ παραβιάζεσθαι ταῖς ἡδοναῖς τὴν φύσιν. τὰ δ’ ἐν ὑμῖν ἀκόλαστα οὐδὲ τὸν νόμον ἔχουσα σύμμαχον ἡ φύσις ἐντὸς ὅρων καθείργνυσιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὑπὸ ῥεύματος ἐκφερόμενα πολλαχοῦ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις δεινὴν ὕβριν καὶ ταραχὴν καὶ σύγχυσιν ἐν τοῖς ἀφροδισίοις ἀπεργάζεται τῆς φύσεως. καὶ γὰρ αἰγῶν ἐπειράθησαν ἄνδρες καὶ ὑῶν καὶ ἵππων μιγνύμενοι καὶ γυναῖκες ἄρρεσι [991] [a] θηρίοις ἐπεμάνησαν· ἐκ γὰρ τῶν τοιούτων γάμων ὑμῖν Μινώταυροι καὶ Αἰγίπανες, ὡς δ’ ἐγᾦμαι καὶ Σφίγγες ἀναβλαστάνουσι καὶ Κένταυροι. καίτοι διὰ λιμόν ποτ’ ἀνθρώπου καὶ κύων ἔφαγεν ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης καὶ ὄρνις ἀπεγεύσατο· πρὸς δὲ συνουσίαν οὐδέποτε θηρίον ἐπεχείρησεν ἀνθρώπῳ χρήσασθαι. θηρία δ’ ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα καὶ πρὸς ἄλλα πολλὰ καθ’ ἡδονὰς βιάζονται καὶ παρανομοῦσιν.

Οὕτω δὲ φαῦλοι καὶ ἀκρατεῖς περὶ τὰς εἰρημένας ἐπιθυμίας ὄντες ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐν ταῖς ἀναγκαίαις ἐλέγχονται πολὺ τῷ σωφρονεῖν ἀπολειπόμενοι τῶν θηρίων. αὗται δ’ εἰσὶν αἱ περὶ βρῶσιν καὶ πόσιν· ὧν ἡμεῖς μὲν τὸ ἡδὺ [b] μετὰ χρείας τινὸς ἀεὶ λαμβάνομεν, ὑμεῖς δὲ τὴν ἡδονὴν μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ κατὰ φύσιν τῆς τροφῆς διώκοντες ὑπὸ πολλῶν καὶ μακρῶν κολάζεσθε νοσημάτων, ἅπερ ἐκ μιᾶς πηγῆς ἐπαντλούμενα τῆς πλησμονῆς τοῖς σώμασι παντοδαπῶν πνευμάτων καὶ δυσκαθάρτων ὑμᾶς ἐμπίπλησι. πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ ἑκάστῳ γένει ζῴου μία τροφὴ σύμφυλός ἐστι, τοῖς μὲν πόα τοῖς δὲ ῥίζα τις ἢ καρπός· ὅσα δὲ σαρκοφαγεῖ, πρὸς οὐδὲν ἄλλο τρέπεται βορᾶς εἶδος οὐδ’ ἀφαιρεῖται τῶν ἀσθενεστέρων τὴν τροφήν, ἀλλ’ ἐᾷ νέμεσθαι καὶ λέων ἔλαφον καὶ λύκος πρόβατον ᾗ πέφυκεν. ὁ δ’ ἄνθρωπος [c] ἐπὶ πάντα ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ὑπὸ λαιμαργίας ἐξαγόμενος καὶ πειρώμενος πάντων καὶ ἀπογευόμενος, ὡς οὐδέπω τὸ πρόσφορον καὶ οἰκεῖον ἐγνωκώς, μόνος γέγονε τῶν ὄντων παμφάγον. καὶ σαρξὶ χρῆται πρῶτον ὑπ’ οὐδεμιᾶς ἀπορίας οὐδ’ ἀμηχανίας (ᾧ πάρεστιν ἀεὶ καθ’ ὥραν ἄλλ’ ἐπ’ ἄλλοις ἀπὸ φυτῶν καὶ σπερμάτων τρυγῶντι καὶ †λαμβάνοντι καὶ δρεπομένῳ μὴ κάμνειν διὰ πλῆθος), ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τρυφῆς καὶ κόρου τῶν ἀναγκαίων βρώσεις ἀνεπιτηδείους καὶ οὐ καθαρὰς σφαγαῖς ζῴων μετερχόμενος πολὺ τῶν ἀγριωτάτων θηρίων ὠμότερον· αἷμα μὲν γὰρ [d] καὶ φόνος καὶ σάρκες ἰκτίνῳ καὶ λύκῳ καὶ δράκοντι σιτίον οἰκεῖον, ἀνθρώπῳ δ’ ὄψον ἐστίν. ἔπειτα παντὶ γένει χρώμενος οὐχ ὡς τὰ θηρία τῶν πλείστων ἀπέχεται ὀλίγοις δὲ πολεμεῖ διὰ τὴν τῆς τροφῆς ἀνάγκην, ἀλλ’ οὔτε τι πτηνὸν οὔτε νηκτὸν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν οὔτε χερσαῖον ἐκπέφευγε τὰς ἡμέρους δὴ λεγομένας ὑμῶν καὶ φιλοξένους τραπέζας.

Εἶεν· ἀλλ’ ὄψοις χρῆσθε τούτοις ἐφηδύνοντες τὴν τροφήν· τί οὖν ἐπ’ αὐτὰ ταῦτα ...φῶντας; ἀλλ’ ἡ τῶν θηρίων φρόνησις τῶν μὲν ἀχρήστων καὶ ματαίων τεχνῶν οὐδεμιᾷ χώραν δίδωσι, τὰς δ’ ἀναγκαίας οὐκ ἐπεισάκτους [e] παρ’ ἑτέρων οὐδὲ μισθοῦ διδακτὰς οὐδὲ κολλῶσα μελέτῃ καὶ συμπηγνύουσα γλίσχρως τῶν θεωρημάτων ἕκαστον πρὸς ἕκαστον ἀλλ’ αὐτόθεν ἐξ αὑτῆς οἷον ἰθαγενεῖς καὶ συμφύτους ἀναδίδωσι. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ Αἰγυπτίους πάντας ἰατροὺς ἀκούομεν εἶναι, τῶν δὲ ζῴων ἕκαστον οὐ μόνον πρὸς ἴασιν αὐτότεχνόν ἐστιν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς διατροφὴν καὶ πρὸς ἀλκὴν θήραν τε καὶ φυλακὴν καὶ μουσικῆς ὅσον ἑκάστῳ προσήκει κατὰ φύσιν. παρὰ τίνος γὰρ ἡμεῖς ἐμάθομεν νοσοῦντες ἐπὶ τοὺς ποταμοὺς χάριν τῶν καρκίνων βαδίζειν; τίς δὲ τὰς χελώνας ἐδίδαξε τῆς ἔχεως φαγούσας τὴν ὀρίγανον ἐπεσθίειν; τίς δὲ τὰς Κρητικὰς [f] αἶγας, ὅταν περιπέσωσι τοῖς τοξεύμασι, τὸ δίκταμνον διώκειν, οὗ βρωθέντος ἐκβάλλουσι τὰς ἀκίδας; ἂν γὰρ εἴπῃς, ὅπερ ἀληθές ἐστι, τούτων διδάσκαλον εἶναι τὴν φύσιν, εἰς τὴν κυριωτάτην καὶ σοφωτάτην ἀρχὴν ἀναφέρεις τὴν τῶν θηρίων φρόνησιν· ἣν εἰ μὴ λόγον οἴεσθε δεῖν μηδὲ φρόνησιν καλεῖν, ὥρα σκοπεῖν ὄνομα κάλλιον αὐτῇ καὶ τιμιώτερον, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ δι’ ἔργων ἀμείνονα καὶ [992] [a] θαυμασιωτέραν παρέχεται τὴν δύναμιν· οὐκ ἀμαθὴς οὐδ’ ἀπαίδευτος, αὐτομαθὴς δέ τις μᾶλλον οὖσα καὶ ἀπροσδεής, οὐ δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀλλὰ ῥώμῃ καὶ τελειότητι τῆς κατὰ φύσιν ἀρετῆς χαίρειν ἐῶσα τὸν παρ’ ἑτέρων διὰ μαθήσεως τοῦ φρονεῖν συνερανισμόν. ὅσα γοῦν ἄνθρωποι τρυφῶντες ἢ παίζοντες εἰς τὸ μανθάνειν καὶ μελετᾶν ἄγουσι, τούτων ἡ διάνοια καὶ παρὰ φύσιν τοῦ σώματος [καὶ] περιουσίᾳ συνέσεως ἀναλαμβάνει τὰς μαθήσεις. ἐῶ γὰρ ἰχνεύειν σκύλακας καὶ βαδίζειν ἐν ῥυθμῷ πώλους μελετῶντας, ἀλλὰ κόρακας διαλέγεσθαι καὶ κύνας ἅλλεσθαι διὰ τροχῶν περιφερομένων. ἵπποι δὲ καὶ βόες ἐν [b] θεάτροις κατακλίσεις καὶ χορείας καὶ στάσεις παραβόλους καὶ κινήσεις οὐδ’ ἀνθρώποις πάνυ ῥᾳδίας ἀκριβοῦσιν ἐκδιδασκόμενοι καὶ μνημονεύοντες †εὐμαθείας ἐπίδειξιν ὡς ἄλλο οὐδὲν οὐδαμῶς χρήσιμον ἔχουσιν. εἰ δ’ ἀπιστεῖς ὅτι τέχνας μανθάνομεν, ἄκουσον ὅτι καὶ διδάσκομεν. αἵ τε γὰρ πέρδικες ἐν τῷ προφεύγειν τοὺς νεοττοὺς ἐθίζουσιν ἀποκρύπτεσθαι καὶ προΐσχεσθαι βῶλον †ἀνθ’ ἑαυτῶν τοῖς ποσὶν ὑπτίους ἀναπεσόντας· καὶ τοῖς πελαργιδεῦσιν ὁρᾷς ἐπὶ τῶν τεγῶν ὡς οἱ τέλειοι παρόντες ἀναπειρωμένοις ὑφηγοῦνται τὴν πτῆσιν. αἱ δ’ ἀηδόνες τοὺς νεοσσοὺς [c] προδιδάσκουσιν ᾄδειν· οἱ δὲ ληφθέντες ἔτι νήπιοι καὶ τραφέντες ἐν χερσὶν ἀνθρώπων χεῖρον ᾄδουσιν, ὥσπερ πρὸ ὥρας ἀπὸ διδασκάλου γεγονότες. καταδὺς εἰς τουτὶ τὸ σῶμα θαυμάζω τοὺς λόγους ἐκείνους, οἷς ἀνεπειθόμην ὑπὸ τῶν σοφιστῶν ἄλογα καὶ ἀνόητα πάντα πλὴν ἀνθρώπου νομίζειν.

Ο. Νῦν μὲν οὖν, ὦ Γρύλλε, μεταβέβλησαι σὺ καὶ τὸ πρόβατον λογικὸν ἀποφαίνεις καὶ τὸν ὄνον;

Γ. Αὐτοῖς μὲν οὖν τούτοις, ὦ βέλτιστε Ὀδυσσεῦ, μάλιστα δεῖ τεκμαίρεσθαι τὴν τῶν θηρίων φύσιν, ὡς λόγου καὶ συνέσεως οὐκ ἔστιν ἄμοιρος. ὡς γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι δένδρον [d] ἕτερον ἑτέρου μᾶλλον οὐδ’ ἧττον ἄψυχον, ἀλλ’ ὁμοίως ἔχει πάντα πρὸς ἀναισθησίαν (οὐδενὶ γὰρ αὐτῶν ψυχῆς μέτεστιν), οὕτως οὐκ ἂν ἐδόκει ζῷον ἕτερον ἑτέρου τῷ φρονεῖν ἀργότερον εἶναι καὶ δυσμαθέστερον, εἰ μὴ πάντα λόγου καὶ συνέσεως, ἄλλα δὲ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον ἄλλων πως μετεῖχεν. ἐννόησον δ’ ὅτι τὰς ἐνίων ἀβελτερίας καὶ βλακείας ἐλέγχουσιν ἑτέρων πανουργίαι καὶ δριμύτητες, ὅταν ἀλώπεκι καὶ λύκῳ καὶ μελίττῃ παραβάλῃς ὄνον καὶ πρόβατον · ὥσπερ εἰ σαυτῷ τὸν Πολύφημον ἢ τῷ πάππῳ σου τῷ Αὐτολύκῳ τὸν Κορίνθιον ἐκεῖνον Ὅμηρον.

[e] οὐ γὰρ οἶμαι θηρίου πρὸς θηρίον ἀπόστασιν εἶναι τοσαύτην, ὅσον ἄνθρωπος ἀνθρώπου τῷ φρονεῖν καὶ λογίζεσθαι καὶ μνημονεύειν ἀφέστηκεν.

Ο. Ἀλλ’ ὅρα, Γρύλλε, μὴ δεινὸν ᾖ καὶ βίαιον ἀπολιπεῖν λόγον, οἷς οὐκ ἐγγίγνεται θεοῦ νόησις.

Γ. Εἶτά σε μὴ φῶμεν, ὦ Ὀδυσσεῦ, σοφὸν οὕτως ὄντα καὶ περιττὸν Σισύφου γεγονέναι;

De esu carnium I

ΠΕΡΙ ΣΑΡΚΟΦΑΓΙΑΣ Α΄

ΛΟΓΟΣ Α΄

[993] Ἀλλὰ σὺ μὲν ἐρωτᾷς τίνι λόγῳ Πυθαγόρας ἀπείχετο σαρκοφαγίας, ἐγὼ δὲ θαυμάζω καὶ τίνι πάθει καὶ ποίᾳ [b] ψυχῇ [ἢ λόγῳ] ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος ἥψατο φόνου στόματι καὶ τεθνηκότος ζῴου χείλεσι προσήψατο σαρκὸς καὶ νεκρῶν σωμάτων καὶ ἑώλων προθέμενος τραπέζας ὄψα καὶ τρυφὰς [καὶ] προσέτι εἶπεν τὰ μικρὸν ἔμπροσθεν βρυχώμενα μέρη καὶ φθεγγόμενα καὶ κινούμενα καὶ βλέποντα· πῶς ἡ ὄψις ὑπέμεινε τὸν φόνον σφαζομένων δερομένων διαμελιζομένων, πῶς ἡ ὄσφρησις ἤνεγκε τὴν ἀποφοράν, πῶς τὴν γεῦσιν οὐκ ἀπέστρεψεν ὁ μολυσμὸς ἑλκῶν ψαύουσαν ἀλλοτρίων καὶ τραυμάτων θανασίμων χυμοὺς καὶ ἰχῶρας ἀπολαμβάνουσαν. (μ 395)

[c] ‘εἷρπον μὲν ῥινοί, κρέα δ’ ἀμφ’ ὀβελοῖς ἐμεμύκει

ὀπταλέα τε καὶ ὠμά, βοῶν δ’ ὣς γίγνετο φωνή·’

τοῦτο πλάσμα καὶ μῦθός ἐστι, τὸ δέ γε δεῖπνον ἀληθῶς τερατῶδες, πεινῆν τινα τῶν μυκωμένων ἔτι, [καὶ] διδάσκοντα ἀφ’ ὧν δεῖ τρέφεσθαι ζώντων ἔτι καὶ λαλούντων, ‹καὶ› διαταττόμενον ἀρτύσεις τινὰς καὶ ὀπτήσεις καὶ παραθέσεις· τούτων ἔδει ζητεῖν τὸν πρῶτον ἀρξάμενον οὐ τὸν ὀψὲ παυσάμενον.

Ἢ τοῖς μὲν πρώτοις ἐκείνοις ἐπιχειρήσασι σαρκοφαγεῖν τὴν αἰτίαν ἂν εἴποι τις εἶναι τὴν ἀπορίαν· οὐ γὰρ ἐπιθυμίαις ἀνόμοις συνδιάγοντες οὐδ’ ἐν περιουσίᾳ τῶν [d] ἀναγκαίων ὑβρίσαντες εἰς ἡδονὰς παρὰ φύσιν ἀσυμφύλους ἐπὶ ταῦτ’ ἦλθον· ἀλλ’ εἴποιεν ἂν αἴσθησιν ἐν τῷ παρόντι καὶ φωνὴν λαβόντες· ‘ὦ μακάριοι καὶ θεοφιλεῖς οἱ νῦν ὄντες ὑμεῖς, οἷον βίου λαχόντες αἰῶνα καρποῦσθε καὶ νέμεσθε κλῆρον ἀγαθῶν ἄφθονον· ὅσα φύεται ὑμῖν, ὅσα τρυγᾶται· ὅσον πλοῦτον ἐκ πεδίων, ὅσας ἀπὸ φυτῶν ἡδονὰς [ἃς] δρέπεσθαι πάρεστιν· ἔξεστιν ὑμῖν καὶ τρυφᾶν μὴ μιαινομένοις. ἡμᾶς δὲ σκυθρωπότατον καὶ φοβερώτατον ἐδέξατο βίου καὶ χρόνου μέρος, εἰς πολλὴν καὶ ἀμήχανον ἐκπεσόντας ἀπὸ τῆς πρώτης γενέσεως ἀπορίαν· ἔτι [e] μὲν οὐρανὸν ἔκρυπτεν ἀὴρ καὶ ἄστρα, θολερῷ καὶ δυσδιαστατοῦντι πεφυρμένος ὑγρῷ καὶ πυρὶ καὶ ζάλαις ἀνέμων· ‘οὔπω δ’ ἥλιος’ ἵδρυτο ἀπλανὴς καὶ βέβαιον

‘ἔχων δρόμον, ἠῶ

καὶ δύσιν ἔκρινεν, περὶ δ’ ἤγαγεν αὖθις ὀπίσσω

καρποφόροισιν ἐπιστέψας καλυκοστεφάνοισιν

Ὥραις, γῆ δ’ ὕβριστο’ (Empedocl. B 154)

ποταμῶν ἐκβολαῖς ἀτάκτοις, καὶ πολλὰ ‘λίμναισιν ἄμορφα’ καὶ πηλοῖς βαθέσι καὶ λόχμαις ἀφόροις καὶ ὕλαις ἐξηγρίωτο· φορὰ δ’ ἡμέρων καρπῶν καὶ τέχνης ὄργανον οὐδὲν ‹ἦν› οὐδὲ μηχανὴ σοφίας· ὁ δὲ λιμὸς οὐκ ἐδίδου χρόνον οὐδ’ ὥρας ἐτησίους σπόρος †ὢν τότ’ ἀνέμενε. τί θαυμαστόν, εἰ ζῴων ἐχρησάμεθα σαρξὶ παρὰ φύσιν, ὅτ’ [f] ἰλὺς ἠσθίετο ‘καὶ φλοιὸς ἐβρώθη ξύλου’, καὶ ‘ἄγρωστιν εὑρεῖν βλαστάνουσαν ἢ φλεώ’ τινα ῥίζαν εὐτυχὲς ἦν; βαλάνου δὲ γευσάμενοι καὶ φαγόντες ἐχορεύσαμεν ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς περὶ δρῦν τινα καὶ φηγόν, ζείδωρον καὶ μητέρα καὶ τροφὸν [994] [a] ἀποκαλοῦντες· ἐκείνην [ἣν] ὁ τότε βίος ἑορτὴν ἔγνω, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα φλεγμονῆς ἦν ἅπαντα μεστὰ καὶ στυγνότητος. ὑμᾶς δὲ τοὺς νῦν τίς λύσσα καὶ τίς οἶστρος ἄγει πρὸς μιαιφονίαν, οἷς τοσαῦτα περίεστι τῶν ἀναγκαίων; τί καταψεύδεσθε τῆς γῆς ὡς τρέφειν μὴ δυναμένης; τί τὴν θεσμοφόρον ἀσεβεῖτε Δήμητραν καὶ τὸν ἡμερίδην καὶ μειλίχιον αἰσχύνετε Διόνυσον, ὡς οὐχ ἱκανὰ παρὰ τούτων λαμβάνοντες; οὐκ αἰδεῖσθε τοὺς ἡμέρους καρποὺς αἵματι καὶ φόνῳ μιγνύοντες; ἀλλὰ δράκοντας ἀγρίους καλεῖτε καὶ παρδάλεις καὶ λέοντας, αὐτοὶ δὲ μιαιφονεῖτ’ εἰς ὠμότητα [b] καταλιπόντες ἐκείνοις οὐδέν· ἐκείνοις μὲν γὰρ ὁ φόνος τροφή, ὑμῖν δ’ ὄψον ἐστίν’.

Οὐ γὰρ δὴ λέοντάς γ’ ἀμυνόμενοι καὶ λύκους ἐσθίομεν· ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἐῶμεν, τὰ δ’ ἀβλαβῆ καὶ χειροήθη καὶ ἄκεντρα καὶ νωδὰ πρὸς τὸ δακεῖν συλλαμβάνοντες ἀποκτιννύομεν, ἃ νὴ Δία καὶ κάλλους ἕνεκα καὶ χάριτος ἡ φύσις ἔοικεν ἐξενεγκεῖν.

Ὅμοιον ὡς εἴ τις τὸν Νεῖλον ὁρῶν πλημμυροῦντα καὶ τὴν χώραν ἐμπιπλάντα γονίμου καὶ καρποφόρου ῥεύματος μὴ τοῦτο θαυμάζοι τοῦ φερομένου, τὸ φυτάλμιον καὶ εὔφορον τῶν ἡμερωτάτων καὶ βιωφελεστάτων καρπῶν, ἀλλ’ ἰδών που καὶ κροκόδειλον ἐννηχόμενον καὶ ἀσπίδα [c] κατασυρομένην καὶ μύας, ἄγρια ζῷα καὶ μιαρά, ταύτας λέγοι τὰς αἰτίας τῆς μέμψεως κατὰ τῆς τοῦ πράγματος ἀνάγκης· ἢ νὴ Δία τὴν γῆν ταύτην καὶ τὴν ἄρουραν ἀποβλέψας ἐμπεπλησμένην ἡμέρων καρπῶν καὶ βρίθουσαν ἀσταχύων, ἔπειθ’ ὑποβλέψας που τοῖς ληίοις τούτοις καί πού τινος αἴρας στάχυν ‹ἐν›ιδὼν καὶ ὀροβάγχην, εἶτ’ ἀφεὶς ἐκεῖνα καρποῦσθαι καὶ ληίζεσθαι μέμφοιτο περὶ τούτων. τί οὖν, εἰ καὶ λόγον ῥήτορος ὁρῶν ἐν δίκῃ τινὶ καὶ συνηγορίᾳ πληθύοντα καὶ φερόμενον ἐπὶ βοηθείᾳ κινδύνων ἢ νὴ Δί’ ἐλέγχῳ καὶ κατηγορίᾳ τολμημάτων καὶ [d] †ἀποδείξεων, ῥέοντα δὲ καὶ φερόμενον οὐχ ἁπλῶς οὐδὲ λιτῶς, ἀλλ’ ὁμοῦ πάθεσι πολλοῖς μᾶλλον δὲ παντοδαποῖς, εἰς ψυχὰς ὁμοίως πολλὰς καὶ ποικίλας καὶ διαφόρους τῶν ἀκροωμένων ἢ τῶν δικαζόντων, ἃς δεῖ τρέψαι καὶ μεταβαλεῖν ἢ νὴ Δία πραῧναι καὶ ἡμερῶσαι καὶ καταστῆσαι, εἶτα παρεὶς τοῦτο τοῦ πράγματος ὁρᾶν καὶ μετρεῖν τὸ †φύλαιον καὶ ἀγώνισμα, παραρρήσεις ἐκλέγοι, ἃς κατιὼν ὁ λόγος συγκατήνεγκε τῇ ῥύμῃ τῆς φορᾶς, συνεκπεσούσας καὶ παρολισθούσας τῷ λοιπῷ τοῦ λόγου; καὶ δημηγόρου τινὸς ὁρῶν

Ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν ἡμᾶς δυσωπεῖ, οὐ χρόας ἀνθηρὸν εἶδος, [e] οὐ φωνῆς ἐμμελοῦς πιθανότης, οὐ πανουργία ψυχῆς, οὐ τὸ καθάριον ἐν διαίτῃ καὶ περιττὸν ἐν συνέσει τῶν ἀθλίων, ἀλλὰ σαρκιδίου μικροῦ χάριν ἀφαιρούμεθα ψυχήν, ἡλίου φῶς, τὸν τοῦ βίου χρόνον, ἐφ’ ἃ γέγονε καὶ πέφυκεν. εἶθ’ ἃς φθέγγεται καὶ διατρίζει φωνὰς ἀνάρθρους εἶναι δοκοῦμεν, οὐ παραιτήσεις καὶ δεήσεις καὶ δικαιολογίας ἑκάστου λέγοντος ‘οὐ παραιτοῦμαί σου τὴν ἀνάγκην ἀλλὰ τὴν ὕβριν· ἵνα φάγῃς ἀπόκτεινον, ἵνα δ’ ἥδιον φάγῃς μή μ’ ἀναίρει.’ ὢ τῆς ὠμότητος· δεινὸν μέν ἐστι καὶ τιθεμένην ἰδεῖν τράπεζαν ἀνθρώπων πλουσίων νεκροκόσμοις χρωμένων [f] μαγείροις καὶ ὀψοποιοῖς, δεινότερον δ’ ἀποκομιζομένην· πλείονα γὰρ τὰ λειπόμενα τῶν βεβρωμένων ἐστίν· οὐκοῦν ταῦτα μάτην ἀπέθανεν· ἕτερα δὲ φειδόμενοι τῶν παρατεθέντων οὐκ ἐῶσι τέμνειν οὐδὲ κατακόπτειν, παραιτούμενοι νεκρά, ζώντων δ’ οὐκ ἐφείσαντο.

Ἀλλ’ ἄγε παρειλήφαμεν ἐκείνους λέγειν τοὺς ἄνδρας ἀρχὴν ἔχειν τὴν φύσιν ὅτι γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν ἀνθρώπῳ κατὰ φύσιν τὸ σαρκοφαγεῖν, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν σωμάτων δηλοῦται τῆς κατασκευῆς. οὐδενὶ γὰρ ἔοικε τὸ ἀνθρώπου σῶμα τῶν ἐπὶ σαρκοφαγίᾳ γεγονότων, οὐ γρυπότης [995] [a] χείλους, οὐκ ὀξύτης ὄνυχος, οὐ τραχύτης ὀδόντος πρόσεστιν, οὐ κοιλίας εὐτονία καὶ πνεύματος θερμότης τρέψαι καὶ κατεργάσασθαι δυνατὴ τὸ βαρὺ καὶ κρεῶδες· ἀλλ’ αὐτόθεν ἡ φύσις τῇ λειότητι τῶν ὀδόντων καὶ τῇ σμικρότητι τοῦ στόματος καὶ τῇ μαλακότητι τῆς γλώσσης καὶ τῇ πρὸς πέψιν ἀμβλύτητι τοῦ πνεύματος ἐξόμνυται τὴν σαρκοφαγίαν. εἰ δὲ λέγεις πεφυκέναι σεαυτὸν ἐπὶ τοιαύτην ἐδωδήν, ὃ βούλει φαγεῖν πρῶτον αὐτὸς ἀπόκτεινον, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς διὰ σεαυτοῦ, μὴ χρησάμενος κοπίδι μηδὲ τυμπάνῳ τινὶ μηδὲ πελέκει· ἀλλ’, ὡς λύκοι καὶ ἄρκτοι [b] καὶ λέοντες αὐτοί, ὅσα ἐσθίουσι, φονεύουσιν, ἄνελε δήγματι βοῦν ἢ στόματι σῦν, ἢ ἄρν’ ἢ λαγωὸν διάρρηξον καὶ φάγε προσπεσὼν ἔτι ζῶντος, ὡς ἐκεῖνα. εἰ δ’ ἀναμένεις νεκρὸν γενέσθαι τὸ ἐσθιόμενον καὶ δυσωπεῖ σε παροῦσα ψυχὴ ἀπολαύειν τῆς σαρκός, τί παρὰ φύσιν ἐσθίεις τὸ ἄψυχον; ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἄψυχον ἄν τις φάγοι καὶ νεκρὸν οἷόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἕψουσιν ὀπτῶσι μεταβάλλουσι διὰ πυρὸς καὶ φαρμάκων, ἀλλοιοῦντες καὶ τρέποντες καὶ σβεννύοντες ἡδύσμασι μυρίοις τὸν φόνον, ἵν’ ἡ γεῦσις ἐξαπατηθεῖσα προσδέξηται τὸ ἀλλότριον. καίτοι χάριέν γε τὸ τοῦ Λάκωνος, ὃς ἰχθύδιον ἐν πανδοκείῳ πριάμενος τῷ πανδοκεῖ [c] σκευάσαι παρέδωκεν· αἰτοῦντος δ’ ἐκείνου τυρὸν καὶ ὄξος καὶ ἔλαιον, ‘ἀλλ’ εἰ ταῦτ’ εἶχον’ εἶπεν ‘οὐκ ἂν ἰχθὺν ἐπριάμην’. ἡμεῖς δ’ οὕτως ἐν τῷ μιαιφόνῳ τρυφῶμεν, ὥστ’ ὄψον τὸ κρέας προσαγορεύομεν, εἶτ’ ὄψων πρὸς αὐτὸ τὸ κρέας δεόμεθα, ἀναμιγνύντες ἔλαιον οἶνον μέλι γάρον ὄξος ἡδύσμασι Συριακοῖς Ἀραβικοῖς, ὥσπερ ὄντως νεκρὸν ἐνταφιάζοντες. καὶ γὰρ οὕτως αὐτῶν διαλυθέντων καὶ μαλαχθέντων καὶ τρόπον τινὰ προσαπέντων ἔργον ἐστὶ τὴν πέψιν κρατῆσαι, καὶ διακρατησάσης δὲ δεινὰς βαρύτητας ἐμποιεῖ καὶ νοσώδεις ἀπεψίας. Διογένης [d] δ’ ὠμὸν φαγεῖν πολύπουν ἐτόλμησεν, ἵνα τὴν διὰ τοῦ πυρὸς ἐκβάλῃ κατεργασίαν τῶν κρεῶν· καὶ πολλῶν περιεστώτων αὐτὸν ἀνθρώπων, ἐγκαλυψάμενος τῷ τρίβωνι καὶ τῷ στόματι προσφέρων τὸ κρέας ‘ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν’ φησίν ‘ἐγὼ παραβάλλομαι καὶ προκινδυνεύω.’ καλόν, ὦ Ζεῦ, κίνδυνον· οὐ γάρ, ὡς Πελοπίδας ὑπὲρ τῆς Θηβῶν ἐλευθερίας ἢ ὡς Ἁρμόδιος καὶ Ἀριστογείτων ὑπὲρ Ἀθηναίων, προεκινδύνευσεν ὁ φιλόσοφος ὠμῷ πολύποδι διαμαχόμενος, ἵνα τὸν βίον ἀποθηριώσῃ; οὐ τοίνυν μόνον αἱ κρεοφαγίαι τοῖς σώμασι γίγνονται παρὰ φύσιν, [e] ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς ὑπὸ πλησμονῆς καὶ κόρου παχύνουσιν· ‘οἶνος γὰρ καὶ σαρκῶν ἐμφορήσιες σῶμα μὲν ἰσχυρὸν ποιέουσι καὶ ῥωμαλέον, ψυχὴν δὲ ἀσθενέα.’ καὶ ἵνα μὴ τοῖς ἀθληταῖς ἀπεχθάνωμαι, συγγενέσι χρῶμαι παραδείγμασι· τοὺς γὰρ Βοιωτοὺς ἡμᾶς οἱ Ἀττικοὶ καὶ παχεῖς καὶ ἀναισθήτους καὶ ἠλιθίους μάλιστα διὰ τὰς ἀδηφαγίας προσηγόρευον· ‘οὗτοι δ’ αὖ †σῦς καὶ ὁ Μένανδρος (fr. 748 Koerte) †οἳ γνάθους ἔχουσι,’ καὶ ὁ Πίνδαρος (Ol. VI 89 sq.) ‘γνῶναί τ’ ἔπειτα ‘ ‘αὐγὴ ξηρὴ ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη’ κατὰ τὸν Ἡράκλειτον (B 118)· οἱ κενοὶ πίθοι κρουσθέντες ἠχοῦσι, γενόμενοι δὲ πλήρεις οὐχ ὑπακούουσι ταῖς πληγαῖς· τῶν χαλκωμάτων τὰ λεπτὰ τοὺς ψόφους [f] ἐν κύκλῳ διαδίδωσιν, ἄχρις οὗ ἐμφράξῃ καὶ τυφλώσῃ ‹τις› τῇ χειρὶ τῆς πληγῆς περιφερομένης ἐπιλαμβανόμενος· ὀφθαλμὸς ὑγροῦ πλεονάσαντος ἀναπλησθεὶς μαραυγεῖ καὶ ἀτονεῖ πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἔργον· τὸν ἥλιον δι’ ἀέρος ὑγροῦ καὶ πλῆθος ἀναθυμιάσεων ἀπέπτων ἀθροίσαντος οὐ καθαρὸν οὐδὲ λαμπρὸν ἀλλὰ βύθιον καὶ ἀχλυώδη καὶ ὀλισθάνοντα ταῖς αὐγαῖς ὁρῶμεν. οὕτω δὴ καὶ διὰ σώματος θολεροῦ καὶ διακόρου καὶ βαρυνομένου [996] [a] τροφαῖς ἀσυμφύλοις πᾶσ’ ἀνάγκη τὸ γάνωμα τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τὸ φέγγος ἀμβλύτητα καὶ σύγχυσιν ἔχειν καὶ πλανᾶσθαι καὶ φέρεσθαι, πρὸς τὰ λεπτὰ καὶ δυσθεώρητα τέλη τῶν πραγμάτων αὐγὴν καὶ τόνον οὐκ ἐχούσης.

Χωρὶς δὲ τούτων ὁ πρὸς φιλανθρωπίαν ἐθισμὸς οὐ δοκεῖ θαυμαστὸν εἶναι; τίς γὰρ ἂν ἀδικήσειεν ἄνθρωπον οὕτω πρὸς ἀλλότρια καὶ ἀσύμφυλα διακείμενος [καὶ] πράως καὶ φιλανθρώπως; ἐμνήσθην δὲ τρίτην ἡμέραν διαλεγόμενος τὸ τοῦ Ξενοκράτους (fr. 99 H.), καὶ ὅτι Ἀθηναῖοι τῷ ζῶντα τὸν κριὸν ἐκδείραντι δίκην ἐπέθηκαν· οὐκ ἔστι δ’, οἶμαι, χείρων ὁ ζῶντα βασανίζων τοῦ παραιρουμένου [b] τὸ ζῆν καὶ φονεύοντος, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον, ὡς ἔοικε, τῶν παρὰ συνήθειαν ἢ τῶν παρὰ φύσιν αἰσθανόμεθα. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἐκεῖ κοινότερον ἔλεγον· τὴν δὲ μεγάλην καὶ μυστηριώδη καὶ ἄπιστον ἀνδράσι δεινοῖς, ᾗ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Phaedr. 245c), καὶ θνητὰ φρονοῦσιν ἀρχὴν τοῦ δόγματος ὀκνῶ μὲν ἔτι τῷ λόγῳ κινεῖν, ὥσπερ ναῦν ἐν χειμῶνι ναύκληρος ἢ μηχανὴν αἴρειν ποιητικὸς ἀνὴρ ἐν θεάτρῳ σκηνῆς περιφερομένης. οὐ χεῖρον δ’ ἴσως καὶ προανακρούσασθαι καὶ προαναφωνῆσαι τὰ τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους· ἀλληγορεῖ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα τὰς ψυχάς, ὅτι φόνων καὶ βρώσεως σαρκῶν καὶ ἀλληλοφαγίας δίκην [c] τίνουσαι σώμασι θνητοῖς ἐνδέδενται. καίτοι δοκεῖ παλαιότερος οὗτος ὁ λόγος εἶναι· τὰ γὰρ δὴ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον μεμυθευμένα πάθη τοῦ διαμελισμοῦ καὶ τὰ Τιτάνων ἐπ’ αὐτὸν τολμήματα γευσαμένων τε τοῦ φόνου κολάσεις [τε τούτων] καὶ κεραυνώσεις, ᾐνιγμένος ἐστὶ μῦθος εἰς τὴν παλιγγενεσίαν· τὸ γὰρ ἐν ἡμῖν ἄλογον καὶ ἄτακτον καὶ βίαιον οὐ θεῖον ἀλλὰ δαιμονικὸν οἱ παλαιοὶ Τιτᾶνας ὠνόμασαν, [καὶ] τοῦτ’ ἔστι κολαζομένους καὶ δίκην τίνοντας.

De esu carnium II

ΠΕΡΙ ΣΑΡΚΟΦΑΓΙΑΣ Β΄

ΛΟΓΟΣ Β΄

[996] Ἐπὶ τὰ ἕωλα τῆς σαρκοφαγίας προσφάτους ἡμᾶς ὁ λόγος παρακαλεῖ ταῖς τε διανοίαις καὶ ταῖς προθυμίαις γενέσθαι. χαλεπὸν μὲν γάρ, ὥσπερ Κάτων ἔφησε, λέγειν πρὸς γαστέρας ὦτα μὴ ἐχούσας· καὶ πέποται ὁ τῆς συνηθείας κυκεών, ὥσπερ ὁ τῆς Κίρκης (Emped. B 154a)

[e] ὠδίνας ‹τ’› ὀδύνας ‹τε› κυκέων ἀπάτας τε γόους τε·

καὶ τὸ ἄγκιστρον ἐκβάλλειν τῆς σαρκοφαγίας [ὡς] ἐμπεπηγμένον τῇ φιληδονίᾳ καὶ διαπεπαρμένον οὐ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστιν. ἐπεὶ καλῶς εἶχεν, ὥσπερ Αἰγύπτιοι τῶν νεκρῶν τὴν κοιλίαν ἐξελόντες καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ἀνασχόντες ἐκβάλλουσιν ὡς αἰτίαν ἁπάντων ὧν ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἥμαρτεν, οὕτως ἡμᾶς ἑαυτῶν τὴν γαστριμαργίαν καὶ μιαιφονίαν ἐκτεμόντας ἁγνεῦσαι τὸν λοιπὸν βίον· ἐπεὶ ἥ γε γαστὴρ οὐ μιαιφόνον ἐστὶν ἀλλὰ μιαινόμενον ὑπὸ τῆς ἀκρασίας. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ εἰ καὶ ἀδύνατον ἤδη διὰ τὴν συνήθειαν τὸ [f] ἀναμάρτητον, αἰσχυνόμενοι τῷ ἁμαρτάνοντι χρησόμεθα διὰ τὸν λόγον, ἐδόμεθα σάρκας, ἀλλὰ πεινῶντες οὐ τρυφῶντες· ἀναιρήσομεν ζῷον, ἀλλ’ οἰκτείροντες καὶ ἀλγοῦντες, οὐχ ὑβρίζοντες οὐδὲ βασανίζοντες· οἷα νῦν πολλὰ δρῶσιν οἱ μὲν εἰς σφαγὴν ὑῶν ὠθοῦντες ὀβελοὺς διαπύρους, [997] [a] ἵνα τῇ βαφῇ τοῦ σιδήρου περισβεννύμενον τὸ αἷμα καὶ διαχεόμενον τὴν σάρκα θρύψῃ καὶ μαλάξῃ· οἱ δ’ οὔθασι συῶν ἐπιτόκων ἐναλλόμενοι καὶ λακτίζοντες, ἵν’ αἷμα καὶ γάλα καὶ λύθρον ἐμβρύων ὁμοῦ συμφθαρέντων ἐν ὠδῖσιν ἀναδόντος, ὦ Ζεῦ καθάρσιε, φάγωσι τοῦ ζῴου τὸ μάλιστα φλεγμαῖνον· ἄλλοι γεράνων ὄμματα καὶ κύκνων ἀπορράψαντες καὶ ἀποκλείσαντες ἐν σκότει πιαίνουσιν ἀλλοκότοις μίγμασι καὶ καρυκείαις τισὶν αὐτῶν τὴν σάρκα ὀψοποιοῦντες. ἐξ ὧν καὶ μάλιστα δῆλόν ἐστιν, ὡς οὐ διὰ τροφὴν οὐδὲ χρείαν οὐδ’ ἀναγκαίως [b] ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ κόρου καὶ ὕβρεως καὶ πολυτελείας ἡδονὴν πεποίηνται τὴν ἀνομίαν· εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἐν γυναιξὶν κόρον ἡδονῆς οὐκ ἐχούσαις ἀποπειρώμενος πάντα καὶ πλανώμενος ‹ὁ› ἀκολασταίνων ἐξέπεσεν εἰς τὰ ἄρρητα, οὕτως αἱ περὶ τὴν ἐδωδὴν ἀκρασίαι τὸ φυσικὸν παρελθοῦσαι καὶ ἀναγκαῖον τέλος ἐν ὠμότητι καὶ παρανομίᾳ ποικίλλουσι τὴν ὄρεξιν. συννοσεῖ γὰρ ἀλλήλοις τὰ αἰσθητήρια καὶ συναναπείθεται καὶ συνακολασταίνει μὴ κρατοῦντα τῶν φυσικῶν μέτρων. οὕτως ἀκοὴ νοσήσασα μουσικὴν διέφθειρεν, ἀφ’ ἧς τὸ θρυπτόμενον καὶ ἐκλυόμενον αἰσχρὰς ποθεῖ ψηλαφήσεις καὶ γυναικώδεις γαργαλισμούς. ταῦτα [c] τὴν ὄψιν ἐδίδαξε μὴ πυρρίχαις χαίρειν μηδὲ χειρονομίαις μηδ’ ὀρχήμασι γλαφυροῖς μηδ’ ἀγάλμασι καὶ γραφαῖς, ἀλλὰ φόνον καὶ θάνατον ἀνθρώπων καὶ τραύματα καὶ μάχας θέαμα ποιεῖσθαι πολυτελέστατον. οὕτως ἕπονται παρανόμοις τραπέζαις συνουσίαι ἀκρατεῖς, ἀφροδισίοις αἰσχροῖς ἀκροάσεις ἄμουσοι, μέλεσι καὶ ἀκούσμασιν ἀναισχύντοις θέατρα ἔκφυλα, θεάμασιν ἀνημέροις ἀπάθεια πρὸς ἀνθρώπους καὶ ὠμότης. διὰ τοῦτο ‹διέταττεν› ὁ θεῖος Λυκοῦργος ἐν ταῖς τρισὶ ῥήτραις τὸ ἀπὸ πρίονος καὶ πελέκεως γίγνεσθαι τὰ θυρώματα τῶν οἰκιῶν καὶ [d] τὰς ἐρέψεις, ἄλλο δ’ ὄργανον μηδὲν προσφέρεσθαι, οὐ πολεμῶν δήπου τερέτροις καὶ σκεπάρνοις καὶ ὅσα λεπτουργεῖν πέφυκεν ἀλλ’ εἰδὼς ὅτι διὰ τοιούτων ἔργων οὐκ εἰσοίσεις κλινίδιον ἐπίχρυσον οὐδὲ τολμήσεις εἰς οἰκίαν λιτὴν ἀργυρᾶς εἰσενεγκεῖν τραπέζας καὶ δάπιδας ἁλουργοὺς καὶ λίθους πολυτελεῖς· ἀλλ’ ἕπεται οἰκίᾳ καὶ κλίνῃ καὶ τραπέζῃ καὶ κύλικι τοιαύτῃ δεῖπνον ἀφελὲς καὶ ἄριστον δημοτικόν, ἀρχῇ δὲ μοχθηρᾶς διαίτης (Semon. fr. 5)

‘ἄθηλος ἵππῳ πῶλος ὣς ἅμα τρέχει’

πᾶσα τρυφὴ καὶ πολυτέλεια.

Ποῖον οὖν οὐ πολυτελὲς δεῖπνον, εἰς ὃ [οὐ] θανατοῦταί τι ἔμψυχον; μικρὸν ἀνάλωμα ἡγούμεθα ψυχήν; οὔπω [e] λέγω τάχα μητρὸς ἢ πατρὸς ἢ φίλου τινὸς ἢ παιδός, ὡς ἔλεγεν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς· ἀλλ’ αἰσθήσεώς γε μετέχουσαν, ὄψεως ἀκοῆς, φαντασίας συνέσεως, ἣν ἐπὶ κτήσει τοῦ οἰκείου καὶ φυγῇ τοῦ ἀλλοτρίου παρὰ τῆς φύσεως ἕκαστον εἴληχε. σκόπει δ’ ἡμᾶς πότεροι βέλτιον ἐξημεροῦσι τῶν φιλοσόφων, οἱ καὶ τέκνα καὶ φίλους καὶ πατέρας καὶ γυναῖκας ἐσθίειν κελεύοντες [ὡς] ἀποθανόντας, ἢ Πυθαγόρας καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἐθίζοντες εἶναι καὶ πρὸς τὰ ἀλλογενῆ δικαίους. σὺ μὲν καταγελᾷς τοῦ τὸ πρόβατον μὴ ἐσθίοντος· ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς σε, φήσουσι, θεασάμενοι τοῦ πατρὸς τεθνηκότος ἢ τῆς μητρὸς ἀποτεμόντα μερίδας καὶ [f] τῶν φίλων ἀποπεμπόμενον τοῖς μὴ παροῦσι, τοὺς δὲ παρόντας καλοῦντα καὶ παρατιθέντα τῶν σαρκῶν ἀφειδῶς, μή τι γελάσωμεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν ἴσως ἁμαρτάνομεν, ὅταν ἁψώμεθα τῶν βιβλίων τούτων, μὴ καθαιρόμενοι χεῖρας καὶ ὄψεις καὶ πόδας καὶ ἀκοάς, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δί’ ἐκείνων καθαρμός ἐστι τὸ περὶ τούτων διαλέγεσθαι ‘ποτίμῳ [998] [a] λόγῳ’ ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Phaedr. 243d) ‘ἁλμυρὰν ἀκοὴν ἀποκλυζομένους’. εἰ δὲ θείη τις τὰ βιβλία παρ’ ἄλληλα καὶ τοὺς λόγους, ἐκεῖνα μὲν Σκύθαις †φιλοσοφῆσαι καὶ Σογδιανοῖς καὶ Μελαγχλαίνοις, περὶ ὧν Ἡρόδοτος ἱστορῶν ἀπιστεῖται· τὰ δὲ Πυθαγόρου καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους δόγματα νόμοι τῶν παλαιῶν ἦσαν Ἑλλήνων †καὶ πυρία καὶ δίαιται [ὅτι πρὸς τὰ ἄλογα ζῷα δίκαιον ἡμῖν οὐδὲν ἔστι.]

Τίνες οὖν ὕστερον τοῦτ’ ἔγνωσαν; (Arati Phaen. 131)

‘οἳ πρῶτοι κακοεργὸν ἐχαλκεύσαντο μάχαιραν

εἰνοδίην, πρῶτοι δὲ βοῶν ἐπάσαντ’ ἀροτήρων.’

οὕτω τοι καὶ οἱ τυραννοῦντες ἄρχουσι μιαιφονίας. ὥσπερ [b] ‹γὰρ› τὸ πρῶτον ἀπέκτειναν Ἀθήνησι τὸν κάκιστον τῶν συκοφαντῶν, ὃς ἐπιτήδειος προσηγορεύθη, καὶ δεύτερον ὁμοίως καὶ τρίτον· εἶτ’ ἐκ τούτου συνήθεις γενόμενοι Νικήρατον ‹περι›εώρων ἀπολλύμενον τὸν Νικίου καὶ Θηραμένη τὸν στρατηγὸν καὶ Πολέμαρχον τὸν φιλόσοφον· οὕτω τὸ πρῶτον ἄγριόν τι ζῷον ἐβρώθη καὶ κακοῦργον, εἶτ’ ὄρνις τις ἢ ἰχθὺς εἵλκυστο· καὶ γευσάμενον οὕτω καὶ προμελετῆσαν ἐν ἐκείνοις τὸ φονικὸν ἐπὶ βοῦν ἐργάτην ἦλθε καὶ τὸ κοσμοῦν πρόβατον καὶ τὸν οἰκουρὸν ἀλεκτρυόνα· καὶ κατὰ μικρὸν οὕτω τὴν ἀπληστίαν στομώσαντες [c] ἐπὶ σφαγὰς ἀνθρώπων καὶ πολέμους καὶ φόνους προῆλθον. ἀλλ’ ἐὰν μὴ προσαποδείξῃ τις, ὅτι χρῶνται κοινοῖς αἱ ψυχαὶ σώμασιν ἐν ταῖς παλιγγενεσίαις καὶ τὸ νῦν λογικὸν αὖθις γίγνεται ἄλογον καὶ πάλιν ἥμερον τὸ νῦν ἄγριον, ἀλλάσσει δ’ ἡ φύσις ἅπαντα καὶ μετοικίζει

‘σαρκῶν ἀλλογνῶτι περιστέλλουσα χιτῶνι’ (Emped. B 126), ταῦτ’ οὐκ ἀποτρέψει τὸ ἀνήμερον, τὸ ἀκόλαστον, τὸ καὶ σώματι νόσους καὶ βαρύτητας ἐμποιοῦν καὶ ψυχὴν ἐπὶ πόλεμον ἀνομώτερον τρεπομένην διαφθεῖρον, ὅταν ἐθισθῶμεν [μὴ] αἵματος ἄνευ καὶ φόνου μὴ ξένον ἑστιᾶν, μὴ γάμον ἑορτάζειν, μὴ φίλοις συγγίγνεσθαι.

[d] Καίτοι τῆς λεγομένης ταῖς ψυχαῖς εἰς σώματα πάλιν μεταβολῆς εἰ μὴ πίστεως ἄξιον τὸ ἀποδεικνύμενον, ἀλλ’ εὐλαβείας γε μεγάλης καὶ δέους τὸ ἀμφίβολον. οἷον εἴ τις ἐν νυκτομαχίᾳ στρατοπέδων ἀνδρὶ πεπτωκότι καὶ τὸ σῶμα κρυπτομένῳ τοῖς ὅπλοις ἐπιφέρων ξίφος ἀκούσειέ τινος λέγοντος οὐ πάνυ μὲν εἰδέναι βεβαίως, οἴεσθαι δὲ καὶ δοκεῖν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν κείμενον ἢ ἀδελφὸν ἢ πατέρα ἢ σύσκηνον εἶναι· τί βέλτιον, ὑπονοίᾳ προσθέμενον οὐκ ἀληθεῖ προέσθαι τὸν ἐχθρὸν ὡς φίλον, ἢ καταφρονήσαντα τοῦ μὴ βεβαίου πρὸς πίστιν ἀνελεῖν τὸν οἰκεῖον ὡς πολέμιον; ἐκεῖνο δεινὸν φήσετε πάντες. σκόπει δὲ καὶ τὴν [e] ἐν τῇ τραγῳδίᾳ Μερόπην ἐπὶ τὸν υἱὸν αὐτὸν ὡς φονέα τοῦ υἱοῦ πέλεκυν ἀραμένην καὶ λέγουσαν (Eur. fr. 456)

†’ὠνητέραν δὴ τήνδ’ ἐγὼ δίδωμί σοι

πληγήν’

ὅσον ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ κίνημα ποιεῖ, συνεξορθιάζουσα φόβῳ, καὶ δέος μὴ φθάσῃ τὸν ἐπιλαμβανόμενον γέροντα καὶ τρώσῃ τὸ μειράκιον. εἰ δ’ ἕτερος γέρων παρεστήκοι λέγων ‘παῖσον, πολέμιός ἐστιν’, ἕτερος δὲ ‘μὴ παίσῃς, υἱός ἐστι’, πότερον ἀδίκημα μεῖζον, ἐχθροῦ κόλασιν ἐκλιπεῖν διὰ τὸν υἱὸν ἢ τεκνοκτονίᾳ περιπεσεῖν ὑπὸ τῆς πρὸς τὸν ἐχθρὸν ὀργῆς; ὁπότε τοίνυν οὐ μῖσός ἐστιν οὐδὲ θυμὸς ὁ πρὸς τὸν φόνον ἐξάγων ἡμᾶς οὐδ’ ἄμυνά τις οὐδὲ φόβος [f] ὑπὲρ αὑτῶν, ἀλλ’ εἰς ἡδονῆς μέρος ἕστηκεν ἱερεῖον ἀνακεκλασμένῳ τραχήλῳ ὑποκείμενον, εἶτα λέγει τῶν φιλοσόφων ὁ μέν ‘κατάκοψον, ἄλογόν ἐστι τὸ ζῷον’, ὁ δέ ‘ἀνάσχου· τί γὰρ εἰ συγγενοῦς ἢ φίλου τινος ἐνταῦθα ψυχὴ κεχώρηκεν;’ ἴσος γ’, ὦ θεοί, καὶ ὅμοιος ὁ κίνδυνος, ἐκεῖ, ἂν ἀπειθῶ, ‹μὴ› φαγεῖν κρέας, ‹ἐνταῦθα δ’›, ἂν ἀπιστῶ, φονεῦσαι τέκνον ἢ ἕτερον οἰκεῖον.

[999] [a] Οὐκ ἴσος δέ τις οὗτος ὁ ἀγὼν τοῖς Στωικοῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς σαρκοφαγίας. τίς γὰρ ὁ πολὺς τόνος εἰς τὴν γαστέρα καὶ τὰ ὀπτανεῖα; τί τὴν ἡδονὴν θηλύνοντες καὶ διαβάλλοντες ὡς οὔτ’ ἀγαθὸν οὔτε προηγμένον οὔτ’ οἰκεῖον οὕτω πρὸς τὰ περι‹ττὰ› τῶν ἡδονῶν ἐσπουδάκασι; καὶ μὴν ἀκόλουθον ἦν αὐτοῖς, εἰ μύρον ἐξελαύνουσι καὶ πέμμα τῶν συμποσίων, μᾶλλον αἷμα καὶ σάρκα δυσχεραίνειν. νῦν δ’ ὥσπερ εἰς τὰς ἐφημερίδας φιλοσοφοῦντες δαπάνην ἀφαιροῦσι τῶν δείπνων ἐν τοῖς ἀχρήστοις καὶ περιττοῖς, τὸ δ’ ἀνήμερον τῆς πολυτελείας καὶ φονικὸν οὐ παραιτοῦνται. ‘ναί, φησίν, οὐδὲν γὰρ ἡμῖν πρὸς τὰ ἄλογα οἰκεῖον [b] ἔστιν.’ οὐδὲ γὰρ πρὸς τὸ μύρον, φαίη τις ἄν, οὐδὲ πρὸς τὰ ξενικὰ τῶν ἡδυσμάτων· ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτων ἀποτρέπεσθε, τὸ μὴ χρήσιμον μηδ’ ἀναγκαῖον ἐν ἡδονῇ πανταχόθεν ἐξελαύνοντες.

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτ’ ἤδη σκεψώμεθα, τὸ μηδὲν εἶναι πρὸς τὰ ζῷα δίκαιον ἡμῖν, μήτε τεχνικῶς μήτε σοφιστικῶς, ἀλλὰ τοῖς πάθεσιν ἐμβλέψαντες τοῖς ἑαυτῶν καὶ πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς ἀνθρωπικῶς λαλήσαντες καὶ ἀνακρίναντες.

Platonicae quaestiones

ΠΛΑΤΩΝΙΚΑ ΖΗΤΗΜΑΤΑ

[999] ΖΗΤΗΜΑ Α΄.

‘Τί δήποτε τὸν Σωκράτην ὁ θεὸς μαιοῦσθαι μὲν ἐκέλευσεν ἑτέρους, αὐτὸν δὲ γεννᾶν ἀπεκώλυσεν, ὡς ἐν Θεαιτήτῳ (150c) λέγεται;’ Οὐ γὰρ εἰρωνευόμενός γε καὶ παίζων προσεχρήσατ’ ἂν τῷ τοῦ θεοῦ ὀνόματι. καὶ [d] ἄλλως ἐν τῷ Θεαιτήτῳ πολλὰ μεγάλαυχα καὶ σοβαρὰ Σωκράτει περιτέθεικεν, ὧν καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐστί (151c)· ‘πολλοὶ γὰρ δή, ὦ θαυμάσιε, πρός με οὕτω διετέθησαν, ὥστ’ ἀτεχνῶς δάκνειν ‹ἕτοιμοι εἶναι›, ἐπειδάν τινα λῆρον αὐτῶν ἀφαιρῶμαι· καὶ οὐκ οἴονταί με εὐνοίᾳ τοῦτο ποιεῖν, πόρρω ὄντες τοῦ εἰδέναι ὅτι οὐδεὶς θεὸς δύσνους ἀνθρώποις· οὐδ’ ἐγὼ δυσνοίᾳ τοιοῦτον οὐδὲν δρῶ, ἀλλά μοι ψεῦδός τε συγχωρῆσαι καὶ ἀληθὲς ἀφανίσαι οὐδαμῶς θέμις.’

Πότερον οὖν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν ὡς κριτικωτέραν ἢ γονιμωτέραν οὖσαν θεὸν προσεῖπε, καθάπερ Μένανδρος ‘ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός’ καὶ Ἡράκλειτος (B 119) [e] ‘ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων’· ἢ θεῖόν τι καὶ δαιμόνιον ὡς ἀληθῶς αἴτιον ὑφηγήσατο Σωκράτει τοῦτο τῆς φιλοσοφίας τὸ γένος, ᾧ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐξετάζων ἀεὶ τύφου καὶ πλάνου καὶ ἀλαζονείας καὶ τοῦ βαρεῖς εἶναι πρῶτον μὲν αὑτοῖς εἶτα καὶ τοῖς συνοῦσιν ἀπήλλαττε; καὶ γὰρ ὥσπερ ἐκ τύχης τότε φορὰν συνέβη γενέσθαι σοφιστῶν ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι· καὶ τούτοις οἱ νέοι πολὺ τελοῦντες ἀργύριον οἰήματος ἐπληροῦντο καὶ δοξοσοφίας, καὶ λόγων ἐζήλουν σχολὴν καὶ διατριβὰς ἀπράκτους ἐν ἔρισι καὶ φιλοτιμίαις καλὸν δὲ καὶ χρήσιμον οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν. τὸν οὖν ἐλεγκτικὸν λόγον ὥσπερ καθαρτικὸν ἔχων φάρμακον ὁ Σωκράτης [f] ἀξιόπιστος ἦν ἑτέρους ἐλέγχων τῷ μηδὲν ἀποφαίνεσθαι, καὶ μᾶλλον ἥπτετο δοκῶν ζητεῖν κοινῇ τὴν ἀλήθειαν οὐκ αὐτὸς ἰδίᾳ δόξῃ βοηθεῖν.

[1000] [a] Ἔπειτα τοῦ κρίνειν ὄντος ὠφελίμου τὸ γεννᾶν ἐμπόδιόν ἐστι. τυφλοῦται γὰρ τὸ φιλοῦν περὶ τὸ φιλούμενον· φιλεῖται δὲ τῶν ἰδίων οὐδὲν οὕτως ὡς δόξα καὶ λόγος ὑπὸ τοῦ τεκόντος. ἡ γὰρ λεγομένη τέκνων δικαιοτάτη διανομὴ πρὸς λόγους ἐστὶν ἀδικωτάτη· δεῖ γὰρ ἐκεῖ μὲν λαβεῖν τὸ ἴδιον, ἐνταῦθα δέ, κἂν ἀλλότριον ᾖ, τὸ βέλτιστον. ὅθεν ὁ γεννῶν ἴδια γίγνεται φαυλότερος ἑτέρων κριτής. καὶ καθάπερ Ἠλείους τῶν σοφῶν τις ἔφη βελτίους ἂν εἶναι τῶν Ὀλυμπίων ἀγωνοθέτας, εἰ μηδὲ εἷς Ἠλείων ἦν ἀγωνιστής, οὕτως ὁ μέλλων ἐν λόγοις ὀρθῶς ἐπιστατήσειν καὶ βραβεύσειν οὐ δίκαιός ἐστιν αὐτὸς [b] φιλοστεφανεῖν οὐδ’ ἀνταγωνίζεσθαι τοῖς κρινομένοις. καὶ γὰρ οἱ τῶν Ἑλλήνων στρατηγοὶ τὴν περὶ τῶν ἀριστείων ψῆφον φέροντες αὑτοὺς ἀρίστους ἔκριναν ἅπαντες· καὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων οὐδεὶς ἔστιν, ὃς οὐ τοῦτο πέπονθε δίχα τῶν ὥσπερ Σωκράτης ὁμολογούντων μηδὲν ἴδιον λέγειν· οὗτοι δὲ καθαροὺς μόνοι καὶ ἀδεκάστους τῆς ἀληθείας παρέχουσιν ἑαυτοὺς δικαστάς. ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ ἐν τοῖς ὠσὶν ἀήρ, ἂν μὴ σταθερὸς ᾖ μηδὲ φωνῆς ἰδίας ἔρημος ἀλλ’ ἤχου καὶ ῥοίζου μεστός, οὐκ ἀκριβῶς ἀντιλαμβάνεται τῶν φθεγγομένων, οὕτω τὸ τοὺς λόγους ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ [c] κρῖνον, ἂν ἔνδοθεν ἀντιπαταγῇ ‹τι› καὶ ἀντηχῇ, δυσξύνετον ἔσται τῶν λεγομένων ἔξωθεν. ἡ γὰρ οἰκεία δόξα καὶ σύνοικος οὐ προσδέξεται τὸ διαφωνοῦν πρὸς αὑτήν, ὡς μαρτυρεῖ τῶν αἱρέσεων τὸ πλῆθος, ὧν, ἂν ἄριστα πράττῃ φιλοσοφία, μίαν ἔχει κατορθοῦσαν, οἰομένας δὲ τὰς ἄλλας ἁπάσας καὶ μαχομένας πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν.

Ἔτι τοίνυν, εἰ μὲν οὐδέν ἐστι καταληπτὸν ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ γνωστόν, εἰκότως ὁ θεὸς ἀπεκώλυσεν αὐτὸν ὑπηνέμια καὶ ψευδῆ καὶ ἀβέβαια γεννᾶν, ἐλέγχειν δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους ἠνάγκαζε τοιαῦτα δοξάζοντας. οὐ γὰρ μικρὸν ἦν ὄφελος ἀλλὰ μέγιστον ὁ τοῦ μεγίστου τῶν κακῶν, ἀπάτης καὶ κενοφροσύνης, ἀπαλλάττων λόγος (Theogn. 432)

‘οὐδ’ Ἀσκληπιάδαις τοῦτό γ’ ἔδωκε θεός.’

[d] οὐ γὰρ σώματος ἡ Σωκράτους ἰατρεία, ψυχῆς δ’ ἦν ὑπούλου καὶ διεφθαρμένης καθαρμός. εἰ δ’ ἔστιν ἐπιστήμη τοῦ ἀληθοῦς ἓν δὲ τὸ ἀληθές, οὐκ ἔλαττον ἔχει τοῦ εὑρόντος ὁ μαθὼν παρὰ τοῦ εὑρόντος· λαμβάνει δὲ μᾶλλον ὁ μὴ πεπεισμένος ἔχειν, καὶ λαμβάνει τὸ βέλτιστον ἐξ ἁπάντων, ὥσπερ ὁ μὴ τεκὼν παῖδα ποιεῖται τὸν ἄριστον.

Ὅρα δὲ μὴ τἄλλα μὲν οὐδεμιᾶς ἦν ἄξια σπουδῆς ποιήματα καὶ μαθήματα καὶ λόγοι ῥητόρων καὶ δόγματα σοφιστῶν, ἃ Σωκράτην γεννᾶν τὸ δαιμόνιον ἀπεκώλυσεν· ἣν δὲ μόνην ἡγεῖτο Σωκράτης σοφίαν ‹τὴν› περὶ τὸ θεῖον καὶ νοητόν, ἐρωτικὴν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ προσαγορευομένην, ταύτης [e] οὐ γένεσις ἔστιν ἀνθρώποις οὐδ’ εὕρεσις ἀλλ’ ἀνάμνησις. ὅθεν οὐδὲν ἐδίδασκε Σωκράτης, ἀλλ’ ἐνδιδοὺς ἀρχὰς ἀποριῶν ὥσπερ ὠδίνων τοῖς νέοις ἐπήγειρε καὶ ἀνεκίνει καὶ συνεξῆγε τὰς ἐμφύτους νοήσεις· καὶ τοῦτο μαιωτικὴν τέχνην ὠνόμαζεν, οὐκ ἐντιθεῖσαν ἔξωθεν, ὥσπερ ἕτεροι προσεποιοῦντο, νοῦν τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἔχοντας οἰκεῖον ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἀτελῆ δὲ καὶ συγκεχυμένον καὶ δεόμενον τοῦ τρέφοντος καὶ βεβαιοῦντος ἐπιδεικνύουσαν.

ΖΗΤΗΜΑ Β΄.

‘Τί δήποτε τὸν ἀνωτάτω θεὸν πατέρα τῶν πάντων καὶ ποιητὴν προσεῖπεν;’ (Tim. 28c al.) πότερον ὅτι τῶν μὲν θεῶν τῶν γεννητῶν καὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων πατήρ ἐστιν, [f] ὡς Ὅμηρος ἐπονομάζει, ποιητὴς δὲ τῶν ἀλόγων καὶ ἀψύχων; οὐδὲ γὰρ χορίου φησὶ Χρύσιππος (fr. 1158) πατέρα καλεῖσθαι τὸν παρασχόντα τὸ σπέρμα, καίπερ ἐκ τοῦ σπέρματος γεγονότος. ἢ τῇ μεταφορᾷ χρώμενος, ὥσπερ εἴωθε, τὸν αἴτιον πατέρα τοῦ κόσμου κέκληκεν; ὡς τῶν ἐρωτικῶν λόγων ‘πατέρα’ Φαῖδρον ἐν Συμποσίῳ [1001] [a] (177d) προσεῖπεν, εἰσηγητὴν αὐτῶν γενόμενον· ἐν δὲ τῷ ὁμωνύμῳ διαλόγῳ (Phaedr. 261a) ‘καλλίπαιδα’· πολλοὺς γὰρ καὶ καλοὺς λόγους ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ γενέσθαι τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐκείνου παρασχόντος. ἢ διαφέρει πατήρ τε ποιητοῦ καὶ γεννήσεως ποίησις; ὡς γὰρ τὸ γεγεννημένον καὶ πεποίηται, οὐ μὴν ἀνάπαλιν, οὕτως ὁ γεννήσας καὶ πεποίηκεν· ἐμψύχου γὰρ ποίησις ἡ γέννησίς ἐστι. καὶ ποιητοῦ μέν, οἷος οἰκοδόμος ἢ ὑφάντης ἢ λύρας δημιουργὸς ἢ ἀνδριάντος, ἀπήλλακται γενόμενον τὸ ἔργον· ἡ δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ γεννήσαντος ἀρχὴ καὶ δύναμις ἐγκέκραται τῷ τεκνωθέντι καὶ συνέχει τὴν φύσιν, ἀπόσπασμα καὶ μόριον [b] οὖσαν τοῦ τεκνώσαντος. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν οὐ πεπλασμένοις ὁ κόσμος οὐδὲ συνηρμοσμένοις ποιήμασιν ἔοικεν, ἀλλ’ ἔνεστιν αὐτῷ μοῖρα πολλὴ ζωότητος καὶ θειότητος, ἣν ὁ θεὸς ἐγκατέσπειρεν ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ τῇ ὕλῃ καὶ κατέμιξεν, εἰκότως ἅμα πατήρ τε τοῦ κόσμου, ζῴου γεγονότος, καὶ ποιητὴς ἐπονομάζεται.

Τούτων δὲ μάλιστα τῆς Πλάτωνος ἁπτομένων δόξης, ἐπίστησον εἰ κἀκεῖνο λεχθήσεται πιθανῶς· ὅτι, δυεῖν ὄντων ἐξ ὧν ὁ κόσμος συνέστηκε, σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς, τὸ μὲν οὐκ ἐγέννησε θεὸς ἀλλά, τῆς ὕλης παρασχομένης, ἐμόρφωσε καὶ συνήρμοσε, πέρασιν οἰκείοις καὶ σχήμασι [c] δήσας καὶ ὁρίσας τὸ ἄπειρον· ἡ δὲ ψυχή, νοῦ μετασχοῦσα καὶ λογισμοῦ καὶ ἁρμονίας, οὐκ ἔργον ἐστὶ τοῦ θεοῦ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ μέρος, οὐδ’ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐξ αὐτοῦ γέγονεν.

ΖΗΤΗΜΑ Γ΄.

Ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ (509d), τοῦ παντὸς ὥσπερ μιᾶς γραμμῆς τετμημένης εἰς ἄνισα τμήματα, πάλιν τέμνων ἑκάτερον τμῆμα εἰς δύο ἀνὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον, τό τε τοῦ ὁρωμένου γένους καὶ τὸ τοῦ νοουμένου, τέτταρα τὰ πάντα ποιήσας, τοῦ μὲν νοητοῦ πρῶτον ἀποφαίνει τὸ περὶ τὰ πρῶτα εἴδη, δεύτερον τὸ μαθηματικόν· τοῦ δ’ αἰσθητοῦ πρῶτον μὲν τὰ στερέμνια σώματα, δεύτερον δὲ τὰς εἰκόνας καὶ τὰ εἴδωλα τούτων· καὶ κριτήριον ἑκάστῳ τῶν [d] τεττάρων ἀποδίδωσιν ἴδιον, νοῦν μὲν τῷ πρώτῳ διάνοιαν δὲ τῷ μαθηματικῷ, τοῖς δ’ αἰσθητοῖς πίστιν, εἰκασίαν δὲ τοῖς περὶ τὰ εἴδωλα καὶ τὰς εἰκόνας. ‘τί οὖν διανοηθεὶς εἰς ἄνισα τὰ τμήματα τὸ πᾶν ἔτεμε; καὶ πότερον τῶν τμημάτων, τὸ νοητὸν ἢ τὸ αἰσθητόν, μεῖζόν ἐστιν;’ αὐτὸς γὰρ οὐ δεδήλωκε.

Δόξει δ’ αὐτόθεν μὲν εἶναι μεῖζον τὸ αἰσθητόν· ἡ γὰρ ἀμέριστος οὐσία καὶ κατὰ ταὐτὸν ὡσαύτως ἔχουσα τῶν νοητῶν ἐστιν εἰς βραχὺ συνηγμένη καὶ καθαρόν, ἡ δὲ σκεδαστὴ περὶ τὰ σώματα καὶ περιπλανὴς τὸ αἰσθητὸν παρέσχεν. ἔτι τὸ μὲν ἀσώματον πέρατος οἰκεῖον, τὸ δὲ σῶμα τῇ ὕλῃ μὲν ἄπειρον καὶ ἀόριστον, αἰσθητὸν δὲ [e] γιγνόμενον ὅταν ὁρισθῇ μετοχῇ τοῦ νοητοῦ. ἔτι, καθάπερ αὐτῶν τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἕκαστον εἰκόνας ἔχει πλείους καὶ σκιὰς καὶ εἴδωλα καὶ ὅλως ἀφ’ ἑνὸς παραδείγματος πάμπολλα μιμήματα γίγνεσθαι καὶ φύσει καὶ τέχνῃ δυνατόν ἐστιν, οὕτως ἀνάγκη τὰ ἐνταῦθα τῶν ἐκεῖ πλήθει διαφέρειν κατὰ τὸν Πλάτωνα παραδείγματα καὶ ἰδέας τὰ νοητὰ τῶν αἰσθητῶν ὥσπερ εἰκόνων ἢ ἐμφάσεων ὑποτιθέμενον. ἔτι τῶν εἰδῶν νόησιν ἐξ ἀφαιρέσεως καὶ περικοπῆς σώματος ἐπάγει, τῇ τῶν μαθημάτων τάξει καταβιβάζων (Rep. VI 524 sqq.) ἀπὸ τῆς ἀριθμητικῆς ἐπὶ γεωμετρίαν, εἶτα μετὰ ταύτην ἐπ’ ἀστρολογίαν, ἐπὶ [f] πάσαις δὲ τὴν ἁρμονικὴν τιθείς· γίγνεται γὰρ τὰ μὲν γεωμετρούμενα τοῦ ποσοῦ μέγεθος προσλαβόντος· τὰ δὲ στερεὰ τοῦ μεγέθους βάθος· τὰ δ’ ἀστρολογούμενα τοῦ στερεοῦ κίνησιν· τὰ δ’ ἁρμονικὰ τῷ κινουμένῳ σώματι φωνῆς προσγενομένης. ὅθεν ἀφαιροῦντες φωνὴν μὲν τῶν κινουμένων κίνησιν δὲ τῶν στερεῶν βάθος δὲ τῶν [1002] [a] ἐπιπέδων μέγεθος δὲ τῶν ποσῶν, ἐν αὐταῖς γενησόμεθα ταῖς νοηταῖς ἰδέαις, οὐδεμίαν διαφορὰν ἐχούσαις πρὸς ἀλλήλας, κατὰ τὸ ἓν καὶ μόνον νοουμέν‹αις›. οὐ γὰρ ποιεῖ μονὰς ἀριθμόν, ἂν μὴ τῆς ἀπείρου δυάδος ἅψηται· ποιήσασα δ’ οὕτως ἀριθμόν, εἰς στιγμὰς εἶτα γραμμὰς ἐκ δὲ τούτων εἰς ἐπιφανείας καὶ βάθη καὶ σώματα πρόεισι καὶ σωμάτων ποιότητας ἐν πάθεσι γιγνομένων. ἔτι τῶν μὲν νοητῶν ἓν κριτήριον ὁ νοῦς· καὶ γὰρ ἡ διάνοια νοῦς ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς μαθηματικοῖς ὥσπερ ἐν κατόπτροις ἐμφαινομένων τῶν νοητῶν. ἐπὶ δὲ τὴν τῶν σωμάτων γνῶσιν ὑπὸ πλήθους πέντε δυνάμεις καὶ διαφορὰς αἰσθητηρίων ἡ φύσις ἔδωκεν ἡμῖν· καὶ οὐ πάντα [b] φωρᾶται ταύταις ἀλλ’ ἐκφεύγει πολλὰ διὰ μικρότητα τὴν αἴσθησιν. ἔτι, ὥσπερ ἡμῶν ἑκάστου συνεστῶτος ἔκ τε τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τοῦ σώματος μικρόν ἐστι τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν καὶ νοερὸν ἐν πολλῷ τῷ τῆς σαρκὸς ὄγκῳ κεκρυμμένον, οὕτως εἰκὸς ἔχειν ἐν τῷ παντὶ τὸ νοητὸν πρὸς τὸ αἰσθητόν. καὶ γὰρ ἄρχει τὰ νοητὰ τῶν σωματικῶν, ἀρχῆς δὲ πάσης πλέον τὸ ἐξ αὐτῆς καὶ μεῖζον.

Πρὸς δὲ τοὐναντίον εἴποι τις ἂν πρῶτον, ὅτι συγκρίνοντες ‹τὰ› αἰσθητὰ τοῖς νοητοῖς τρόπον τινὰ τὰ θνητὰ τοῖς θείοις ἐξισοῦμεν· ὁ γὰρ θεὸς ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς. ἔπειτα πανταχοῦ δήπου τὸ περιεχόμενον ἔλαττόν ἐστι τοῦ περιέχοντος, ἡ δὲ τοῦ παντὸς φύσις τῷ νοητῷ περιέχει [c] τὸ αἰσθητόν· ὁ γὰρ θεὸς ‘τὴν ψυχὴν εἰς τὸ μέσον θεὶς διὰ παντός τ’ ἔτεινε καὶ ἔτι ἔξωθεν τὰ σώματα αὐτῇ περιεκάλυψεν’ (Plat. Tim. 34b). ἔστι δ’ ἀόρατος ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ ‘πάσαις ταῖς αἰσθήσεσιν ἀναίσθητος’ ὡς ἐν τοῖς Νόμοις (898e) εἴρηται· διὸ καὶ φθαρτὸς ἡμῶν εἷς ἕκαστός ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ κόσμος οὐ φθαρησόμενος· ἡμῶν μὲν γὰρ ἑκάστου τὴν ζωτικὴν δύναμιν ἐντὸς περιέχει τὸ θνητοειδὲς καὶ διαλυτόν, ἐν δὲ τῷ κόσμῳ τοὐναντίον ὑπὸ τῆς κυριωτέρας ἀρχῆς καὶ κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ ὡσαύτως ἐχούσης ἀεὶ σῴζεται τὸ σωματικὸν ἐν μέσῳ περιεχόμενον. καὶ μὴν ἀμερές γε λέγεται καὶ ἀμέριστον τὸ μὲν σῶμα μικρότητι, τὸ [d] δ’ ἀσώματον καὶ νοητὸν ὡς ἁπλοῦν καὶ εἰλικρινὲς καὶ καθαρὸν ἁπάσης ἑτερότητος καὶ διαφορᾶς. καὶ ἄλλως εὔηθές ἐστι τοῖς σωματικοῖς τεκμαίρεσθαι περὶ τῶν ἀσωμάτων. τὸ γοῦν ‘νῦν’ ἀμερὲς μὲν καλεῖται καὶ ἀμέριστον, ἅμα δὲ πανταχοῦ ἐνέστηκε καὶ οὐδὲν αὐτοῦ τῆς οἰκουμένης μέρος ἔρημόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάθη πάντα καὶ πράξεις φθοραί τε πᾶσαι καὶ γενέσεις αἱ ὑπὸ τὸν κόσμον ἐν τῷ ‘νῦν’ περιέχονται. κριτήριον δὲ τοῦ νοητοῦ μόνον ἐστὶν ὁ νοῦς, ὡς φωτὸς ὄψις, δι’ ἁπλότητα καὶ ὁμοιότητα· τὰ δὲ σώματα, πολλὰς διαφορὰς ἔχοντα καὶ ἀνομοιότητας, ἄλλα ἄλλοις κριτηρίοις ὥσπερ ὀργάνοις ἁλίσκεσθαι [e] πέφυκεν. ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδὲ τῆς ἐν ἡμῖν νοητῆς καὶ νοερᾶς δυνάμεως καταφρονοῦσιν ὀρθῶς· πολλὴ γὰρ οὖσα καὶ μεγάλη περίεστι παντὸς τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ καὶ μέχρι τῶν θείων ἐξικνεῖται. τὸ δὲ μέγιστον αὐτὸς ἐν Συμποσίῳ (p. 210d) διδάσκων, πῶς δεῖ τοῖς ἐρωτικοῖς χρῆσθαι, μετάγοντα τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπὸ τῶν αἰσθητῶν καλῶν ἐπὶ τὰ νοητά, παρεγγυᾷ μήτε σώματός τινος μήτ’ ἐπιτηδεύματος μήτ’ ἐπιστήμης κάλλει μιᾶς ὑποτετάχθαι καὶ δουλεύειν, ἀλλ’ ἀποστάντα τῆς περὶ ταῦτα μικρολογίας ‘ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ τοῦ καλοῦ πέλαγος τρέπεσθαι’.

ΖΗΤΗΜΑ Δ΄.

‘Τί δήποτε, τὴν ψυχὴν ἀεὶ πρεσβυτέραν ἀποφαίνων [f] τοῦ σώματος αἰτίαν τε τῆς ἐκείνου γενέσεως καὶ ἀρχήν, πάλιν φησὶν (Tim. 30b) οὐκ ἂν γενέσθαι ψυχὴν ἄνευ σώματος οὐδὲ νοῦν ἄνευ ψυχῆς, ἀλλὰ ψυχὴν μὲν ἐν σώματι νοῦν δ’ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ; δόξει γὰρ τὸ σῶμα καὶ εἶναι καὶ μὴ εἶναι, συνυπάρχον ἅμα τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ γεννώμενον ὑπὸ τῆς [1003] [a] ψυχῆς.’ ἢ τὸ πολλάκις ὑφ’ ἡμῶν λεγόμενον ἀληθές ἐστιν; ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἄνους ψυχὴ καὶ τὸ ἄμορφον σῶμα συνυπῆρχον ἀλλήλοις ἀεὶ καὶ οὐδέτερον αὐτῶν γένεσιν ἔσχεν οὐδ’ ἀρχήν· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡ ψυχὴ νοῦ μετέλαβε καὶ ἁρμονίας καὶ γενομένη διὰ συμφωνίας ἔμφρων μεταβολῆς αἰτία γέγονε τῇ ὕλῃ καὶ κρατήσασα ταῖς αὑτῆς κινήσεσι τὰς ἐκείνης ἐπεσπάσατο καὶ ἐπέστρεψεν, οὕτω τὸ σῶμα τοῦ κόσμου γένεσιν ἔσχεν ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς, καὶ κατασχηματιζόμενον καὶ συνομοιούμενον. οὐ γὰρ ἐξ αὑτῆς ἡ ψυχὴ τὴν τοῦ σώματος ἐδημιούργει φύσιν οὐδ’ ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος, ἀλλ’ ἐκ σώματος ἀτάκτου καὶ ἀσχηματίστου σῶμα [b] τεταγμένον ἀπειργάσατο καὶ πειθήνιον. ὥσπερ οὖν, εἰ φαίη τις ἀεὶ τὴν τοῦ σπέρματος δύναμιν εἶναι μετὰ σώματος, γεγονέναι μέντοι τὸ σῶμα τῆς συκῆς ἢ τῆς ἐλαίας ὑπὸ σπέρματος, οὐδὲν ἐρεῖ διάφωνον (αὐτὸ γὰρ τὸ σῶμα, κινήσεως αὐτῷ καὶ μεταβολῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ σπέρματος ἐγγενομένης, ἔφυ τοιοῦτο καὶ διεβλάστησεν), οὕτως ἡ ἄμορφος ὕλη καὶ ἀόριστος ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐνούσης σχηματισθεῖσα μορφὴν ἔσχε τοιαύτην καὶ διάθεσιν.

ΖΗΤΗΜΑ Ε΄.

‘Διὰ τί, τῶν μὲν εὐθυγράμμων τῶν δὲ κυκλικῶν σωμάτων καὶ σχημάτων ὄντων, τὰς τῶν εὐθυγράμμων ἀρχὰς ἔλαβε (Tim. 53 sqq.), τὸ ἰσοσκελὲς τρίγωνον καὶ [c] τὸ σκαληνόν, ὧν τὸ μὲν τὸν κύβον συνέστησε γῆς στοιχεῖον ὄντα, τὸ δὲ σκαληνὸν τήν τε πυραμίδα καὶ τὸ ὀκτάεδρον καὶ τὸ εἰκοσάεδρον, τὸ μὲν πυρὸς σπέρμα τὸ δ’ ἀέρος τὸ δ’ ὕδατος γενόμενον· τὸ δὲ τῶν κυκλικῶν ὅλως παρῆκε, καίτοι μνησθεὶς τοῦ σφαιροειδοῦς, ἐν οἷς φησι (55a) τῶν κατηριθμημένων σχημάτων ἕκαστον σώματος περιφεροῦς εἰς ἴσα διανεμητικὸν εἶναι;’

Πότερον, ὡς ὑπονοοῦσιν ἔνιοι, τὸ δωδεκάεδρον τῷ σφαιροειδεῖ προσένειμεν, εἰπὼν (55c) ὅτι τούτῳ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ‘ὁ θεὸς κατεχρήσατο’ φύσιν ‘ἐκεῖνο διαζωγραφῶν’; καὶ γὰρ μάλιστα τῷ πλήθει τῶν στοιχείων [d] ἀμβλύτητι δὲ τῶν γωνιῶν τὴν εὐθύτητα διαφυγὸν εὐκαμπές ἐστι, καὶ τῇ περιτάσει καθάπερ αἱ δωδεκάσκυτοι σφαῖραι κυκλοτερὲς γίγνεται καὶ περιληπτικόν· ἔχει γὰρ εἴκοσι γωνίας στερεάς, ὧν ἑκάστην ἐπίπεδοι περιέχουσιν ἀμβλεῖαι τρεῖς· ἑκάστη γὰρ ὀρθῆς ἐστι καὶ πέμπτου μορίου· συνήρμοσται δὲ καὶ συμπέπηγεν ἐκ δώδεκα πενταγώνων ἰσογωνίων καὶ ἰσοπλεύρων, ὧν ἕκαστον ἐκ τριάκοντα τῶν πρώτων σκαληνῶν τριγώνων συνέστηκε· διὸ καὶ δοκεῖ τὸν ζῳδιακὸν ἅμα καὶ τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν ἀπομιμεῖσθαι ταῖς διανομαῖς τῶν μοιρῶν ἰσαρίθμοις οὔσαις.

Ἢ πρότερόν ἐστι κατὰ φύσιν τὸ εὐθὺ τοῦ περιφεροῦς, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως πάθος τι τῆς εὐθείας ἡ περιφερής; [e] κάμπτεσθαι γὰρ λέγεται τὸ ὀρθόν, καὶ ὁ κύκλος γράφεται κέντρῳ καὶ διαστήματι, τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶν εὐθείας τόπος, ὑφ’ ἧς καὶ μετρεῖται, τὸ γὰρ περιέχον ἐκ τοῦ μέσου πανταχόθεν ἴσον ἀφέστηκε. γεννᾶται δὲ καὶ κῶνος καὶ κύλινδρος ἀπ’ εὐθυγράμμων, ὁ μὲν τριγώνου περὶ μίαν πλευρὰν μένουσαν τῇ ἑτέρᾳ πλευρᾷ καὶ τῇ βάσει περιενεχθέντος, ὁ δὲ κύλινδρος παραλληλογράμμου ταὐτὸ τοῦτο παθόντος. ἔτι τῆς μὲν ἀρχῆς ἐγγυτέρω τὸ ἔλαττον, ἐλαχίστη δὲ πασῶν ἡ εὐθεῖα· τῆς γὰρ περιφεροῦς τὸ μὲν ‹ἐντός› ἐστι κοῖλον κυρτὸν δὲ τὸ ἐκτός. ἔτι τῶν σχημάτων [f] οἱ ἀριθμοὶ πρότεροι, καὶ γὰρ ἡ μονὰς τῆς στιγμῆς· ἔστι γὰρ ἡ στιγμὴ μονὰς ἐν θέσει. καὶ μὴν ἡ μονὰς τρίγωνός ἐστι· πᾶς γὰρ τρίγωνος ἀριθμὸς ὀκτάκις γενόμενος καὶ μονάδα προσλαβὼν γίγνεται τετράγωνος· τοῦτο δὲ καὶ τῇ μονάδι συμβέβηκε· πρότερον οὖν τοῦ κύκλου τὸ τρίγωνον· εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, καὶ εὐθεῖα τῆς περιφεροῦς. ἔτι τὸ στοιχεῖον εἰς οὐδὲν διαιρεῖται τῶν συνισταμένων ἐξ [1004] [a] αὐτοῦ, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις εἰς τὸ στοιχεῖον ἡ διάλυσις. εἰ τοίνυν τὸ μὲν τρίγωνον εἰς οὐδὲν περιφερὲς διαλύεται, τὸν δὲ κύκλον εἰς τέτταρα τρίγωνα τέμνουσιν αἱ δύο διάμετροι, πρότερον ἂν τῇ φύσει καὶ στοιχειωδέστερον εἴη τοῦ κυκλικοῦ τὸ εὐθύγραμμον. ὅτι τοίνυν προηγούμενον μέν ἐστι τὸ εὐθύγραμμον, τὸ δὲ κυκλικὸν ἐπιγιγνόμενον καὶ συμβεβηκός, αὐτὸς ὁ Πλάτων (Tim. 55d) ἐνεδείξατο· τὴν γὰρ γῆν ἐκ κύβων συστησάμενος, ὧν ἕκαστον εὐθύγραμμοι περιέχουσιν ἐπιφάνειαι, σφαιροειδὲς αὐτῆς γεγονέναι τὸ σχῆμά φησι καὶ στρογγύλον. ὥστ’ οὐδὲν ἔδει ποιεῖν τῶν περιφερῶν ἴδιον στοιχεῖον, εἰ καὶ τοῖς εὐθυγράμμοις πρὸς ἄλληλά πως συναρμοττομένοις ὁ σχηματισμὸς [b] οὗτος ἐπιγίγνεσθαι πέφυκεν.

Ἔτι, εὐθεῖα μὲν ἥ τε μείζων ἥ τε μικροτέρα τὴν αὐτὴν εὐθύτητα διατηρεῖ, τὰς δὲ τῶν κύκλων περιφερείας, ἂν ὦσι σμικρότεραι, καμπυλωτέρας καὶ σφιγγομένας τῇ κυρτότητι μᾶλλον ὁρῶμεν· ἂν δὲ μείζους, ἀνειμένας· ἱστάμενοι γοῦν κατὰ τὴν κυρτὴν περιφέρειαν οἱ μὲν κατὰ σημεῖον οἱ δὲ κατὰ γραμμὴν ἅπτονται τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἐπιπέδων· ὥσθ’ ὑπονοήσειεν ἄν τις εὐθείας κατὰ μικρὰ πολλὰς συντιθεμένας τὴν περιφερῆ γραμμὴν ἀποτελεῖν.

Ὅρα δὲ μὴ τῶν μὲν ἐνταῦθα κυκλικῶν καὶ σφαιροειδῶν οὐδέν ἐστιν ἀπηκριβωμένον, ἀλλ’ ἐντάσει καὶ περιτάσει τῶν εὐθυγράμμων ἢ μικρότητι τῶν μορίων τῆς [c] διαφορᾶς λανθανούσης ἐπιφαίνεται τὸ στρογγύλον καὶ κυκλοειδές, ὅθεν οὐδὲ κινεῖται φύσει τῶν ἐνταῦθα σωμάτων ἐγκυκλίως οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἐπ’ εὐθείας ἅπαντα· τὸ δ’ ὄντως σφαιροειδὲς οὐκ ἔστιν αἰσθητοῦ σώματος ἀλλὰ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τοῦ νοῦ στοιχεῖον, οἷς καὶ τὴν κυκλοφορητικὴν κίνησιν ὡς προσήκουσαν κατὰ φύσιν ἀποδίδωσιν (Tim. 36e sq.).

ΖΗΤΗΜΑ Ϛ΄.

‘Πῶς ποτ’ ἐν τῷ Φαίδρῳ (246d) λέγεται τὸ τὴν τοῦ πτεροῦ φύσιν, ὑφ’ ἧς ἄνω τὸ ἐμβριθὲς ἄγεται, κεκοινωνηκέναι μάλιστα τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ θείου;’

Πότερον ὅτι περὶ ἔρωτος ὁ λόγος ἐστί, κάλλους δὲ τοῦ περὶ τὸ σῶμα ὁ ἔρως, τὸ δὲ κάλλος ὁμοιότητι τῇ πρὸς [d] τὰ θεῖα κινεῖ καὶ ἀναμιμνήσκει τὴν ψυχήν; ἢ μᾶλλον οὐδὲν περιεργαστέον ἀλλ’ ἁπλῶς ἀκουστέον ὅτι, τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεων πλειόνων οὐσῶν, ἡ διαλογιστικὴ καὶ διανοητικὴ μάλιστα τοῦ θείου κεκοινώνηκεν, ἣν τῶν θείων καὶ οὐρανίων ἔφησεν; ἣν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου πτερὸν προσηγόρευσεν, ὡς τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπὸ τῶν ταπεινῶν καὶ θνητῶν ἀναφέρουσαν.

ΖΗΤΗΜΑ Ζ΄.

‘Πῶς ποτέ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Tim. 79e80c) τὴν ἀντιπερίστασιν τῆς κινήσεως διὰ τὸ μηδαμοῦ κενὸν ὑπάρχειν αἰτίαν εἶναι τῶν περὶ τὰς ἰατρικὰς σικύας παθημάτων, καὶ τῶν περὶ τὴν κατάποσιν καὶ τὰ ῥιπτούμενα [e] βάρη καὶ τὰ τῶν ὑδάτων ῥεύματα καὶ κεραυνούς, τήν τε φαινομένην πρὸς ἤλεκτρα καὶ τὴν λίθον τὴν Ἡρακλείαν ὁλκὴν τάς τε τῶν φθόγγων συμφωνίας;’ δόξει γὰρ ἀτόπως αἰτίαν ‹μίαν› παμπόλλων καὶ ἀνομοίων γένεσιν ἐπάγειν παθῶν. τὸ μὲν γὰρ περὶ τὴν ἀναπνοὴν ὡς γίγνεται τῇ ἀντιπεριστάσει τοῦ ἀέρος, αὐτὸς ἱκανῶς ἀποδέδειχε (79b. 80d)· τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ πάντα φήσας θαυματουργεῖσθαι καὶ τῷ κενὸν εἶναι μηδὲν περιωθεῖν θ’ αὑτὰ ταῦτ’ εἰς ἄλληλα καὶ διαμείβεσθαι πρὸς τὰς αὑτῶν ἕδρας ἰόντα, τὴν καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐξεργασίαν ἡμῖν ἀφῆκε.

Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τὸ περὶ τὴν σικύαν τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν· ὁ περιληφθεὶς ὑπ’ αὐτῆς πρὸς τῇ σαρκὶ μετὰ θερμότητος [f] ἀὴρ ἐκπυρωθεὶς καὶ γενόμενος τῶν τοῦ χαλκοῦ πόρων ἀραιότερος ἐξέπεσεν οὐκ εἰς κενὴν χώραν, οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν, εἰς δὲ τὸν περιεστῶτα τὴν σικύαν ἔξωθεν ἀέρα, κἀκεῖνον ἀπέωσεν· ὁ δὲ τὸν πρὸ αὑτοῦ· καὶ τοῦτο πάσχων ἀεὶ καὶ δρῶν ὁ ἔμπροσθεν ὑποχωρεῖ, τῆς κενουμένης γλιχόμενος [1005] [a] χώρας, ἣν ὁ πρῶτος ἐξέλιπεν· οὕτω δὲ τῇ σαρκὶ περιπίπτων, ἧς ἡ σικύα δέδρακται, καὶ ἀναζέων ἅμα συνεκθλίβει τὸ ὑγρὸν εἰς τὴν σικύαν.

Ἡ δὲ κατάποσις γίγνεται τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον· αἱ γὰρ περὶ τὸ στόμα καὶ τὸν στόμαχον κοιλότητες ἀέρος ἀεὶ πλήρεις εἰσίν· ὅταν οὖν ἐμπιεσθῇ τὸ σιτίον ὑπὸ τῆς γλώττης, ἅμα καὶ τῶν παρισθμίων ἐνταθέντων, ἐκθλιβόμενος ὁ ἀὴρ πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἔχεται τοῦ ὑποχωροῦντος καὶ συνεπωθεῖ τὸ σιτίον.

Τὰ δὲ ῥιπτούμενα βάρη τὸν ἀέρα σχίζει μετὰ πληγῆς ἐμπεσόντα καὶ διίστησιν· ὁ δὲ περιρρέων ὀπίσω, τῷ φύσιν ἔχειν ἀεὶ τὴν ἐρημουμένην χώραν διώκειν καὶ ἀναπληροῦν συνέπεται τῷ ἀφιεμένῳ τὴν κίνησιν συνεπιταχύνων.

[b] Αἱ δὲ τῶν κεραυνῶν πτώσεις καὶ αὐταὶ ῥίψεσιν ἐοίκασιν· ἐκπηδᾷ γὰρ ὑπὸ πληγῆς ἐν τῷ νέφει γενομένης τὸ πυρῶδες εἰς τὸν ἀέρα· κἀκεῖνος ἀντιρραγεὶς ὑποχωρεῖ, καὶ πάλιν ἐς ταὐτὸ συμπίπτων ἄνωθεν ἐξωθεῖ κάτω παρὰ φύσιν ἀποβιαζόμενος τὸν κεραυνόν.

Τὸ δ’ ἤλεκτρον οὐδὲν ἕλκει τῶν παρακειμένων ὥσπερ οὐδ’ ἡ σιδηρῖτις λίθος, οὐδὲ προσπηδᾷ τι τούτοις ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ τῶν πλησίον· ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν λίθος τινὰς ἀπορροίας ἐξίησιν ἐμβριθεῖς καὶ πνευματώδεις, αἷς ὁ συνεχὴς ἀναστελλόμενος ἀὴρ ὠθεῖ τὸν πρὸ αὑτοῦ· κἀκεῖνος ἐν κύκλῳ περιιὼν καὶ ὑπονοστῶν αὖθις ἐπὶ τὴν κενουμένην χώραν [c] ἀποβιάζεται καὶ συνεφέλκεται τὸν σίδηρον. τὸ δ’ ἤλεκτρον ἔχει μέν τι φλογοειδὲς ἢ πνευματικόν, ἐκβάλλει δὲ τοῦτο τρίψει τῆς ἐπιφανείας, τῶν πόρων ἀναστομωθέντων· τὸ δὲ ταὐτὸ μὲν ἐκπεσὸν ποιεῖ τῷ τῆς σιδηρίτιδος, ἐφέλκεται δὲ τῶν πλησίον τὰ κουφότατα καὶ ξηρότατα διὰ λεπτότητα καὶ ἀσθένειαν· οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἰσχυρὸν οὐδ’ ἔχει βάρος οὐδὲ ῥύμην πλῆθος ἀέρος ἐξῶσαι δυναμένην, ᾧ τῶν μειζόνων, ὥσπερ ἡ σιδηρῖτις, ἐπικρατήσει. πῶς οὖν οὔτε λίθον οὔτε ξύλον ὁ ἀὴρ ἀλλὰ μόνον τὸν σίδηρον ὠθεῖ καὶ προστέλλει πρὸς τὴν λίθον; αὕτη δ’ ἐστὶ μὲν ἀπορία κοινὴ πρός τε τοὺς ὁλκῇ τῆς λίθου καὶ τοὺς φορᾷ τοῦ σιδήρου τὴν σύμπηξιν οἰομένους γίγνεσθαι τῶν σωμάτων, εὔλυτος δ’ ἂν οὕτως ὑπὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος.

[d] ὁ σίδηρος οὔτ’ ἄγαν ἀραιός ἐστιν ὡς ξύλον οὔτ’ ἄγαν πυκνὸς ὡς χρυσὸς ἢ λίθος, ἀλλ’ ἔχει πόρους καὶ οἴμους καὶ τραχύτητας διὰ τὰς ἀνωμαλίας τῷ ἀέρι συμμέτρους, ὥστε μὴ ἀπολισθαίνειν ἀλλ’ ἕδραις τισὶν ἐνισχόμενον καὶ ἀντερείσεσι περιπλοκὴν σύμμετρον ἐχούσαις, ὡς ἂν ἐμπέσῃ πρὸς τὴν λίθον φερόμενος, ἀποβιάζεσθαι καὶ προωθεῖν τὸν σίδηρον. τούτων μὲν οὖν τοιοῦτός τις ἂν εἴη λόγος.

Ἡ δὲ τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς ὑδάτων ῥύσις οὐχ ὁμοίως εὐσύνοπτον ἔχει τὸν τῆς ἀντιπεριώσεως τρόπον. ἀλλὰ χρὴ καταμανθάνειν τὰ λιμναῖα τῶν ὑδάτων ἀτρεμοῦντα καὶ μένοντα τῷ περικεχύσθαι καὶ συναγαγεῖν πανταχόθεν [e] αὑτοῖς ἀκίνητον ἀέρα, μηδαμοῦ κενὴν ποιοῦντα χώραν. τὸ γοῦν ἐπιπολῆς ὕδωρ ἔν τε ταῖς λίμναις καὶ ἐν τοῖς πελάγεσι δονεῖται καὶ κυμαίνεται τοῦ ἀέρος σάλον λαμβάνοντος· ἕπεται γὰρ εὐθὺς μεθισταμένῳ καὶ συναπορρεῖ διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν· ἡ δὰρ κάτω πληγὴ τὴν κοιλότητα ποιεῖ τοῦ κύματος, ἡ δ’ ἄνω τὸν ὄγκον, ἄχρις οὗ καταστῇ καὶ παύσηται, τῆς περιεχούσης τὰ ὑγρὰ χώρας ἱσταμένης. αἱ ῥύσεις οὖν τῶν φερομένων ἀεὶ τὰ ὑποχωροῦντα τοῦ ἀέρος διώκουσαι τοῖς δ’ ἀντιπεριωθουμένοις ἐλαυνόμεναι τὸ ἐνδελεχὲς καὶ ἀλώφητον ἔχουσι. διὸ καὶ φέρονται θᾶττον [f] οἱ ποταμοὶ πληθύοντες· ὅταν δ’ ὀλίγον ᾖ καὶ κοῖλον, †ἵεται τὸ ὑγρὸν ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας, οὐχ ὑπείκοντος τοῦ ἀέρος οὐδὲ πολλὴν ἀντιπερίστασιν λαμβάνοντος. οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὰ πηγαῖα τῶν ὑδάτων ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν ἀναφέρεσθαι, τοῦ θύραθεν ἀέρος εἰς τὰς κενουμένας ἐν βάθει χώρας ὑποφερομένου [1006] [a] καὶ πάλιν θύραζε τὸ ὕδωρ ἐκπέμποντος. οἴκου δὲ βαθυσκίου καὶ περιέχοντος ἀέρα νήνεμον ὕδατι ῥανθὲν ἔδαφος πνεῦμα ποιεῖ καὶ ἄνεμον, μεθισταμένου τοῦ ἀέρος ἐξ ἕδρας παρεμπίπτοντι τῷ ὑγρῷ καὶ πληγὰς λαμβάνοντος. οὕτως ἐξωθεῖσθαί θ’ ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων καὶ ἀνθυπείκειν ἀλλήλοις πέφυκεν, οὐκ οὔσης κενότητος ἐν ᾗ θάτερον ἱδρυθὲν οὐ μεθέξει τῆς θατέρου μεταβολῆς.

Καὶ μὴν τὰ περὶ τῆς συμφωνίας αὐτὸς εἴρηκεν (Tim.

80a sq.), ὃν τρόπον ὁμοι‹οπαθεῖς αἱ κινήσεις ποι›οῦσι τοὺς φθόγγους. ὀξὺς μὲν γὰρ ὁ ταχὺς γίγνεται βαρὺς δ’ ὁ βραδύς· διὸ καὶ πρότερον κινοῦσι τὴν αἴσθησιν οἱ ὀξεῖς· ὅταν δὲ τούτοις ἤδη μαραινομένοις καὶ ἀπολήγουσιν οἱ [b] βραδεῖς ἐπιβάλωσιν ἀρχόμενοι, τὸ κραθὲν αὐτῶν δι’ ὁμοιοπάθειαν ἡδονὴν τῇ ἀκοῇ παρέσχεν, ἣν συμφωνίαν καλοῦσιν. ὅτι δὲ τούτων ὄργανον ὁ ἀήρ ἐστι, ῥᾴδιον συνιδεῖν ἐκ τῶν προειρημένων. ἔστι γὰρ ἡ φωνὴ πληγὴ τοῦ αἰσθανομένου δι’ ὤτων ὑπ’ ἀέρος· πλήττει γὰρ πληγεὶς ὁ ἀὴρ ὑπὸ τοῦ κινήσαντος, ἂν μὲν ᾖ σφοδρόν, ὀξέως, ἂν δ’ ἀμβλύ, μαλακώτερον· ὁ δὴ σφόδρα καὶ συντόνως πληγεὶς προσμίγνυσι τῇ ἀκοῇ πρότερος, εἶτα περιιὼν πάλιν καὶ καταλαμβάνων τὸν βραδύτερον συνέπεται καὶ συμπαραπέμπει τὴν αἴσθησιν.

ΖΗΤΗΜΑ Η΄.

‘Πῶς λέγει τὰς ψυχὰς ὁ Τίμαιος (42d) εἴς τε γῆν καὶ σελήνην καὶ τἄλλα ὅσα ὄργανα χρόνου σπαρῆναι;’

[c] Πότερον οὕτως ἐκίνει τὴν γῆν, ὥσπερ ἥλιον καὶ σελήνην καὶ τοὺς πέντε πλάνητας, οὓς ὄργανα χρόνου διὰ τὰς τροπὰς προσηγόρευε, καὶ ἔδει τὴν γῆν (Tim. 40b) ‘ἰλλομένην περὶ τὸν διὰ πάντων πόλον τεταμένον’ μὴ μεμηχανῆσθαι συνεχομένην καὶ μένουσαν, ἀλλὰ στρεφομένην καὶ ἀνειλουμένην νοεῖν, ὡς ὕστερον Ἀρίσταρχος καὶ Σέλευκος ἀπεδείκνυσαν, ὁ μὲν ὑποτιθέμενος μόνον ὁ δὲ Σέλευκος καὶ ἀποφαινόμενος; Θεόφραστος δὲ καὶ προσιστορεῖ τῷ Πλάτωνι πρεσβυτέρῳ γενομένῳ μεταμέλειν, ὡς οὐ προσήκουσαν ἀποδόντι τῇ γῇ τὴν μέσην χώραν τοῦ παντός.

[d] Ἢ τούτοις μὲν ἀντίκειται πολλὰ τῶν ὁμολογουμένως ἀρεσκόντων τῷ ἀνδρί, μεταγραπτέον δὲ τὸ ‘χρόνου’ ‘χρόνῳ’ λαμβάνοντας ἀντὶ τῆς γενικῆς τὴν δοτικήν, καὶ δεκτέον ὄργανα μὴ τοὺς ἀστέρας ἀλλὰ τὰ σώματα τῶν ζῴων λέγεσθαι; καθάπερ Ἀριστοτέλης (de an. II 412a 27. b 5) ὡρίσατο τὴν ψυχὴν ‘ἐντελέχειαν σώματος φυσικοῦ ὀργανικοῦ δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος.’ ὥστε τοιοῦτον εἶναι τὸν λόγον· αἱ ψυχαὶ εἰς τὰ προσήκοντα ὀργανικὰ σώματα ἐν χρόνῳ κατεσπάρησαν. ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦτο παρὰ τὴν δόξαν ἐστίν· οὐ γὰρ ἅπαξ ἀλλὰ πολλάκις ὄργανα χρόνου τοὺς ἀστέρας εἴρηκεν, ὅπου καὶ τὸν ἥλιον αὐτὸν ‘εἰς [e] διορισμὸν καὶ φυλακὴν ἀριθμῶν χρόνου γεγονέναι’ φησὶ (Tim. 38c) μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων πλανήτων.

Ἄριστον οὖν τὴν γῆν ὄργανον ἀκούειν χρόνου μὴ κινουμένην ὥσπερ τοὺς ἀστέρας, ἀλλὰ τῷ περὶ αὑτὴν μένουσαν ἀεὶ παρέχειν ἐκείνοις φερομένοις ἀνατολὰς καὶ δύσεις, αἷς τὰ πρῶτα μέτρα τῶν χρόνων, ἡμέραι καὶ νύκτες, ὁρίζονται· διὸ καὶ ‘φύλακα καὶ δημιουργὸν’ αὐτὴν ἀτρεκῆ ‘νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας’ προσεῖπε (40c)· καὶ γὰρ οἱ τῶν ὡρολογίων γνώμονες οὐ συμμεθιστάμενοι ταῖς σκιαῖς ἀλλ’ ἑστῶτες ὄργανα χρόνου καὶ μέτρα γεγόνασι, μιμούμενοι τῆς γῆς τὸ ἐπιπροσθοῦν τῷ ἡλίῳ περὶ αὐτὴν ὑποφερομένῳ, καθάπερ εἶπεν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς (B 48)

[f] ‘νύκτα δὲ γαῖα τίθησιν, ὑφισταμένη φαέεσσι.’

τοῦτο μὲν οὖν τοιαύτην ἔχει τὴν ἐξήγησιν.

Ἐκεῖνο δὲ μᾶλλον ἄν τις ὑπίδοιτο, μὴ παρὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ὁ ἥλιος καὶ ἀτόπως λέγεται μετὰ τῆς σελήνης καὶ τῶν πλανήτων εἰς διορισμὸν χρόνου γεγονέναι. καὶ γὰρ ἄλλως μέγα τοῦ ἡλίου τὸ ἀξίωμα καὶ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐν Πολιτείᾳ (508a. 509d) βασιλεὺς ἀνηγόρευται παντὸς [1007] [a] τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ καὶ κύριος, ὥσπερ τοῦ νοητοῦ τὸ ἀγαθόν· ἐκείνου γὰρ ἔγγονος λέγεται, παρέχων τοῖς ὁρατοῖς μετὰ τοῦ φαίνεσθαι τὸ γίγνεσθαι, καθάπερ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ γιγνώσκεσθαι τοῖς νοητοῖς ὑπάρχει. τὸν δὴ τοιαύτην φύσιν ἔχοντα καὶ δύναμιν τηλικαύτην θεὸν ὄργανον χρόνου γεγονέναι καὶ μέτρον ἐναργὲς τῆς πρὸς ἀλλήλας βραδυτῆτι καὶ τάχει τῶν ὀκτὼ σφαιρῶν διαφορᾶς οὐ πάνυ δοκεῖ πρεπῶδες οὐδ’ ἄλλως εὔλογον εἶναι. ῥητέον οὖν τοὺς ὑπὸ τούτων ταραττομένους δι’ ἄγνοιαν οἴεσθαι τὸν χρόνον ‘μέτρον εἶναι κινήσεως καὶ ἀριθμὸν κατὰ ‹τὸ› πρότερον καὶ ὕστερον’ ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης (Phys. IV 219b 2 al.) εἶπεν, ἢ ‘τὸ ἐν κινήσει ποσόν’ ὡς Σπεύσιππος, [b] ἢ ‘διάστημα κινήσεως’ ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν ὡς ἔνιοι τῶν Στωικῶν (II 515) ἀπὸ συμβεβηκότος ὁριζόμενοι τὴν δ’ οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν δύναμιν οὐ συνορῶντες, ἣν ὅ γε Πίνδαρος ἔοικεν οὐ φαύλως ὑπονοῶν εἰπεῖν (fr. 33)

‘ἄνακτα τὸν πάντων ὑπερβάλλοντα χρόνον μακάρων’

ὅ τε Πυθαγόρας, ἐρωτηθεὶς τί χρόνος ἐστί, τὴν τοῦ ὅλου ψυχὴν εἰπεῖν. οὐ γὰρ πάθος οὐδὲ συμβεβηκὸς ἧς ἔτυχε κινήσεως ὁ χρόνος ἐστίν, αἰτία δὲ καὶ δύναμις καὶ ἀρχὴ τῆς πάντα συνεχούσης τὰ γιγνόμενα συμμετρίας καὶ τάξεως, ἣν ἡ τοῦ ὅλου φύσις ἔμψυχος οὖσα κινεῖται· μᾶλλον [c] δὲ κίνησις οὖσα καὶ τάξις αὐτὴ καὶ συμμετρία χρόνος καλεῖται· (Eur. Tro. 887)

‘πάντα γὰρ δι’ ἀψόφου

βαίνων κελεύθου κατὰ δίκην τὰ θνήτ’ ἄγει·’

καὶ γὰρ ἡ ψυχῆς οὐσία κατὰ τοὺς παλαιοὺς ‘ἀριθμὸς ἦν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν κινῶν’. διὸ δὴ καὶ Πλάτων (Tim. 38b) ἔφη χρόνον ἅμα μετ’ οὐρανοῦ γεγονέναι, κίνησιν δὲ καὶ πρὸ τῆς τοῦ οὐρανοῦ γενέσεως. χρόνος δ’ οὐκ ἦν· οὐδὲ γὰρ τάξις οὐδὲ μέτρον οὐδὲν οὐδὲ διορισμός, ἀλλὰ κίνησις ἀόριστος ὥσπερ ἄμορφος ὕλη χρόνου καὶ ἀσχημάτιστος· †ἐπικλύσασα δ’ ἐν χρόᾳ καὶ καταβαλοῦσα τὴν μὲν ὕλην σχήμασι τὴν δὲ κίνησιν περιόδοις, τὴν μὲν κόσμον ἅμα τὴν δὲ χρόνον ἐποίησεν. εἰκόνες δ’ εἰσὶν ἄμφω τοῦ θεοῦ, [d] τῆς μὲν οὐσίας ὁ κόσμος τῆς δ’ ἀιδιότητος ‹ὁ› χρόνος, ἐν κινήσει, καθάπερ ἐν γενέσει θεὸς ὁ κόσμος. ὅθεν ὁμοῦ γεγονότας φησὶν (Tim. 38b) ὁμοῦ καὶ λυθήσεσθαι πάλιν, ἄν τις αὐτοὺς καταλαμβάνῃ λύσις· οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε χωρὶς χρόνου τὸ γενητὸν ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τὸ νοητὸν αἰῶνος, εἰ μέλλει τὸ μὲν ἀεὶ μένειν τὸ δὲ μηδέποτε διαλύεσθαι γιγνόμενον. οὕτως οὖν ἀναγκαίαν πρὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἔχων συμπλοκὴν καὶ συναρμογὴν ὁ χρόνος οὐχ ἁπλῶς ἐστι κίνησις, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ εἴρηται κίνησις ἐν τάξει μέτρον ἐχούσῃ καὶ πέρατα καὶ περιόδους· ὧν ὁ ἥλιος ἐπιστάτης ὢν καὶ [e] σκοπὸς ὁρίζειν καὶ βραβεύειν καὶ ἀναδεικνύναι καὶ ἀναφαίνειν μεταβολὰς καὶ ὥρας ‘αἳ πάντα φέρουσι’ καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (B 100), οὐ φαύλων οὐδὲ μικρῶν ἀλλὰ τῶν μεγίστων καὶ κυριωτάτων τῷ ἡγεμόνι καὶ πρώτῳ θεῷ γίγνεται συνεργός.

ΖΗΤΗΜΑ Θ΄.

Περὶ τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεων ἐν Πολιτείᾳ (443d) Πλάτωνος τὴν τοῦ λογι‹στι›κοῦ καὶ θυμοειδοῦς καὶ ἐπιθυμητικοῦ συμφωνίαν ἁρμονίᾳ μέσης καὶ ὑπάτης καὶ νήτης εἰκάσαντος ἄριστα, διαπορήσειεν ἄν τις ‘πότερον κατὰ τῆς μέσης τὸ θυμοειδὲς ἢ τὸ λογιστικὸν ἔταξεν;’ αὐτὸς γὰρ ἔν γε τούτοις οὐ δεδήλωκεν. ἡ μὲν οὖν κατὰ τόπον [f] τῶν μερῶν τάξις εἰς τὴν τῆς μέσης χώραν τίθεται τὸ θυμοειδές, τὸ δὲ λογιστικὸν εἰς τὴν τῆς ὑπάτης. τὸ γὰρ ἄνω καὶ πρῶτον ὕπατον οἱ παλαιοὶ προσηγόρευον· ᾗ καὶ Ξενοκράτης (fr. 18 H.) Δία τὸν μὲν ἐν τοῖς κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως ἔχουσιν ὕπατον καλεῖ, νέατον δὲ τὸν ὑπὸ σελήνην· πρότερος δ’ Ὅμηρος (Θ 31 al.) τὸν τῶν ἀρχόντων [1008] [a] ἄρχοντα θεὸν ‘ὕπατον κρειόντων’ προσεῖπε. καὶ δικαίως τῷ κρατίστῳ ἀποδέδωκε τὴν ἄνω χώραν ἡ φύσις, ὥσπερ κυβερνήτην ἐνιδρύσασα τῇ κεφαλῇ τὸν λογισμόν, ἔσχατον δὲ καὶ νέατον ἀποικίσασα πόρρω τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν. ἡ γὰρ κάτω νεάτη προσαγορεύεται τάξις, ὡς δηλοῦσιν αἱ τῶν νεκρῶν κλήσεις ‘νερτέρων’ καὶ ‘ἐνέρων’ προσαγορευομένων· ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἀνέμων φασὶ τὸν κάτωθεν ἐκ τοῦ ἀφανοῦς πνέοντα νότον ὠνομάσθαι. ἣν οὖν τὸ ἔσχατον ἔχει πρὸς τὸ πρῶτον ἀντίθεσιν καὶ τὸ νέατον πρὸς τὸ ὕπατον, ταύτην τοῦ ἐπιθυμητικοῦ πρὸς τὸ λογιστικὸν ἔχοντος, οὐκ ἔστιν ἀνωτάτω μὲν εἶναι καὶ πρῶτον ὕπατον δὲ μὴ εἶναι τὸ λογιστικὸν ἀλλ’ ἕτερον. οἱ γὰρ ὡς [b] κυρίαν δύναμιν αὐτῷ τὴν τῆς μέσης ἀποδιδόντες ἀγνοοῦσιν ὅτι τὴν κυριωτέραν ἀφαιροῦνται τὴν τῆς ὑπάτης, μήτε τῷ θυμῷ μήτε τῇ ἐπιθυμίᾳ προσήκουσαν· ἑκάτερον γὰρ ἄρχεσθαι καὶ ἀκολουθεῖν οὐδέτερον δ’ ἄρχειν ἢ ἡγεῖσθαι τοῦ λογιστικοῦ πέφυκεν. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον τῇ φύσει φανεῖται τὸ θυμοειδὲς ‹ἢ› τῷ τόπῳ τὴν μέσην ἔχον ἐκείνων τάξιν· εἴ γε δὴ τῷ μὲν λογιστικῷ τὸ ἄρχειν, τῷ δὲ θυμοειδεῖ τὸ ἄρχεσθαι καὶ τὸ ἄρχειν κατὰ φύσιν ἐστίν, ὑπηκόῳ μὲν ὄντι τοῦ λογισμοῦ κρατοῦντι δὲ καὶ κολάζοντι τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν, ὅταν ἀπειθῇ τῷ λογισμῷ. καὶ καθάπερ ἐν γράμμασι τὰ ἡμίφωνα μέσα τῶν ἀφώνων ἐστὶ καὶ [c] τῶν φωνηέντων τῷ πλέον ἐκείνων ἠχεῖν ἔλαττον δὲ τούτων, οὕτως ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὸ θυμοειδὲς οὐκ ἀκράτως παθητικόν ἐστιν ἀλλὰ φαντασίαν καλοῦ πολλάκις ἔχει μεμιγμένην ἀλόγῳ τῇ τῆς τιμωρίας ὀρέξει. καὶ Πλάτων (Phaedr. 246a) αὐτὸς εἰκάσας συμφύτῳ ζεύγει καὶ ἡνιόχῳ τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς, εἶδος, ἡνίοχον μέν, ὡς παντὶ δῆλον, ἀπέφηνε τὸ λογιστικόν· τῶν δ’ ἵππων τὸ μὲν περὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας ἀπειθὲς καὶ ἀνάγωγον παντάπασι ‘περὶ ὦτα λάσιον, κωφόν, μάστιγι μετὰ κέντρων μόγις ὑπεῖκον’ (253e), τὸ δὲ θυμοειδὲς εὐήνιον τὰ πολλὰ τῷ λογισμῷ καὶ σύμμαχον. ὥσπερ οὖν συνωρίδος οὐχ ὁ [d] ἡνίοχός ἐστιν ἀρετῇ καὶ δυνάμει μέσος, ἀλλὰ τῶν ἵππων ὁ φαυλότερος μὲν τοῦ ἡνιόχου βελτίων δὲ τοῦ ὁμοζύγου, οὕτω τῆς ψυχῆς οὐ τῷ κρατοῦντι τὴν μέσην ἀπένειμε τάξιν, ἀλλ’ ᾧ πάθους μὲν ἧττον ἢ τῷ ‹τρίτῳ μᾶλλον δ’ ἢ τῷ› πρώτῳ, λόγου δὲ μᾶλλον ἢ τῷ τρίτῳ ‹ἧττον δ’ ἢ τῷ πρώτῳ› μέτεστιν. αὕτη γὰρ ἡ τάξις καὶ τὴν τῶν συμφωνιῶν ἀναλογίαν φυλάσσει, τοῦ μὲν θυμοειδοῦς πρὸς τὸ λογιστικὸν ὡς ὑπάτην τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων, πρὸς δὲ τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν ὡς νήτην τὸ διὰ πέντε, τοῦ δὲ λογιστικοῦ πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν ὡς ὑπάτη πρὸς νήτην τὸ διὰ πασῶν. ἐὰν δὲ τὸν λογισμὸν εἰς τὸ μέσον ἕλκωμεν, ἔσται [e] πλέον ὁ θυμὸς ἀπέχων τῆς ἐπιθυμίας, ὃν ἔνιοι τῶν φιλοσόφων ἐπιθυμίᾳ ταὐτὸν εἶναι δι’ ὁμοιότητα νομίζουσιν.

Ἢ τὸ μὲν τοῖς τόποις ἀπονέμειν τὰ πρῶτα καὶ τὰ μέσα καὶ τὰ τελευταῖα γελοῖόν ἐστιν, αὐτὴν τὴν ὑπάτην ὁρῶντας ἐν μὲν λύρᾳ τὸν ἀνωτάτω καὶ πρῶτον, ἐν δ’ αὐλοῖς τὸν κάτω καὶ τὸν τελευταῖον ἐπέχουσαν, ἔτι δὲ τὴν μέσην ἐν ᾧ τις ἂν χωρίῳ τῆς λύρας θέμενος ὡσαύτως ἁρμόσηται, φθεγγομένην ὀξύτερον μὲν ὑπάτης βαρύτερον δὲ νήτης. καὶ γὰρ ὀφθαλμὸς οὐκ ἐν παντὶ ζῴῳ τὴν αὐτὴν ἔχει τάξιν, ἐν παντὶ δὲ καὶ πανταχοῦ κείμενος κατὰ φύσιν ὁρᾶν ὁμοίως πέφυκεν. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ παιδαγωγὸς οὐ [f] πρόσθεν ἀλλ’ ὄπισθεν βαδίζων ἄγειν λέγεται, καὶ ὁ τῶν Τρώων στρατηγὸς (Λ 64)

‘ὁτὲ μέν τε μετὰ πρώτοισι φάνεσκεν,

ἄλλοτε δ’ ἐν πυμάτοισι κελεύων’,

ἑκατέρωθι δ’ ἦν πρῶτος καὶ τὴν πρώτην δύναμιν εἶχεν, οὕτω τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς μόρια δεῖ μὴ τοῖς τόποις καταβιάζεσθαι μηδὲ τοῖς ὀνόμασιν, ἀλλὰ τὴν δύναμιν καὶ τὴν ἀναλογίαν [1009] [a] ἐξετάζειν. τὸ γὰρ τῇ θέσει πρῶτον ἱδρῦσθαι τὸ λογιστικὸν ἐν τῷ σώματι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου κατὰ συμβεβηκός ἐστι· τὴν δὲ πρώτην ἔχει καὶ κυριωτάτην δύναμιν ὡς μέση πρὸς ὑπάτην μὲν τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν, νήτην δὲ τὸ θυμοειδές, τῷ χαλᾶν καὶ ἐπιτείνειν καὶ ὅλως συνῳδὰ καὶ σύμφωνα ποιεῖν ἑκατέρου τὴν ὑπερβολὴν ἀφαιρῶν καὶ πάλιν οὐκ ἐῶν ἀνίεσθαι παντάπασιν οὐδὲ καταδαρθάνειν· τὸ γὰρ μέτριον καὶ σύμμετρον ὁρίζεται μεσότητι. μᾶλλον δὲ τοῦτο τέλος ἐστὶ τῆς τοῦ λόγου δυνάμεως, μεσότητας ἐν τοῖς πάθεσι ποιεῖν, ἃς ἱερὰς καλοῦσι καὶ ὁσίας, ἐχούσας [b] τὴν τῶν ἄκρων πρὸς τὸν λόγον καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα διὰ τοῦ λόγου σύγκρασιν. οὐ γὰρ ἡ συνωρὶς μέσον ἔχει τῶν ὑποζυγίων τὸ κρεῖττον, οὐδὲ τὴν ἡνιοχείαν ἀκρότητα θετέον ἀλλὰ μεσότητα τῆς ἐν ὀξύτητι καὶ βραδύτητι τῶν ἵππων ἀμετρίας, ὥσπερ ἡ τοῦ λόγου δύναμις ἀντιλαμβανομένη κινουμένων ἀλόγως τῶν παθῶν καὶ συναρμόττουσα περὶ αὑτὴν εἰς τὸ μέτριον ἐλλείψεως καὶ ὑπερβολῆς μεσότητα καθίστησι.

ΖΗΤΗΜΑ Ι΄.

‘Διὰ τί Πλάτων εἶπε (Soph. 262c) τὸν λόγον ἐξ ὀνομάτων καὶ ῥημάτων κεράννυσθαι;’ δοκεῖ γὰρ πάντα πλὴν δυεῖν τούτων τὰ μέρη τοῦ λόγου †μηθὲν .... Ὅμηρον [c] δὲ καὶ νεανιευσάμενον εἰς ἕνα στίχον ἐμβαλεῖν ἅπαντα τοῦτον (Α 185)

‘αὐτὸς ἰὼν κλισίηνδε, τὸ σὸν γέρας· ὄφρ’ εὖ εἰδῇς.’

καὶ γὰρ ἀντωνυμία καὶ μετοχὴ καὶ ὄνομα καὶ ῥῆμα καὶ πρόθεσις καὶ ἄρθρον καὶ σύνδεσμος καὶ ἐπίρρημα ἔνεστι· τὸ γὰρ ‘δε’ μόριον νῦν ἀντὶ τῆς ‘εἰς’ προθέσεως τέτακται· τὸ γὰρ ‘κλισίηνδε’ τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν οἷον τὸ ‘Ἀθήναζε’. τί δὴ ῥητέον ὑπὲρ τοῦ Πλάτωνος;

Ἦ ὅτι πρῶτον λόγον οἱ παλαιοὶ τὴν τότε καλουμένην πρότασιν νῦν δ’ ἀξίωμα προσηγόρευον, ὃ πρῶτον λέγοντες ἀληθεύουσιν ἢ ψεύδονται; τοῦτο δ’ ἐξ ὀνόματος καὶ ῥήματος συνέστηκεν, ὧν τὸ μὲν πτῶσιν οἱ διαλεκτικοὶ [d] τὸ δὲ κατηγόρημα καλοῦσιν. ἀκούσαντες γὰρ ὅτι ‘Σωκράτης φιλοσοφεῖ’ καὶ πάλιν ὅτι ‘Σωκράτης πέτεται’, τὸν μὲν ἀληθῆ λόγον εἶναι τὸν δὲ ψευδῆ φήσομεν, οὐδενὸς ἄλλου προσδεηθέντες. καὶ γὰρ εἰκὸς ἀνθρώπους ἐν χρείᾳ λόγου τὸ πρῶτον καὶ φωνῆς ἐνάρθρου γενέσθαι τάς τε πράξεις καὶ τοὺς πράττοντας αὐτὰς καὶ τὰ πάθη καὶ τοὺς πάσχοντας ἀλλήλοις διασαφεῖν καὶ ἀποσημαίνειν βουλομένους. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν τῷ μὲν ῥήματι τὰ πράγματα καὶ τὰ πάθη, τῷ δ’ ὀνόματι τοὺς πράττοντας αὐτὰ καὶ πάσχοντας ἀποχρώντως δηλοῦμεν, ὡς αὐτὸς εἴρηκε (Soph. 262a), ταῦτα σημαίνειν ἔδοξε· τὰ δ’ ἄλλα φαίη τις ἂν οὐ σημαίνειν· [e] οἷον οἱ στεναγμοὶ καὶ ὀλολυγμοὶ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν, καὶ νὴ Δία πολλάκις ἐπιμειδίασις καὶ ἀποσιώπησις ἐμφαντικώτερον ποιεῖ τὸν λόγον, οὐ μὴν ἀναγκαίαν ἔχει πρὸς τὸ σημαίνειν ὡς τὸ ῥῆμα καὶ τοὔνομα δύναμιν ἀλλ’ ἐπίθετόν τινα ποικίλλουσαν τὸν λόγον· ὥσπερ τὰ στοιχεῖα ποικίλλουσιν οἱ τὰ πνεύματα καὶ τὰς δασύτητας αὐτῶν ἐκτάσεις τε καὶ συστολὰς ἐνίων αὐτὰ καθ’ αὑτὰ στοιχεῖα τιθέμενοι, πάθη μᾶλλον ὄντα καὶ συμβεβηκότα καὶ διαφορὰς στοιχείων, ὡς ἐδήλωσαν οἱ παλαιοὶ διὰ τῶν ἑκκαίδεκα φράζοντες ἀποχρώντως καὶ γράφοντες.

[f] Ἔπειτα σκόπει μὴ παρακούωμεν τοῦ Πλάτωνος, ἐκ τούτων κεράννυσθαι τὸν λόγον οὐ διὰ τούτων εἰρηκότος· εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ὁ τὸν λέγοντα τὸ φάρμακον ἐκ κηροῦ μεμῖχθαι καὶ χαλβάνης συκοφαντῶν, ἐπεὶ τὸ πῦρ παρέλιπε καὶ τὸ ἀγγεῖον ὧν χωρὶς οὐκ ἐνῆν μεμῖχθαι, καὶ ἡμεῖς ὁμοίως ἐγκαλῶμεν ὅτι συνδέσμους καὶ προθέσεις καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα παρῆκεν· οὐ γὰρ ἐκ τούτων ὁ λόγος ἀλλ’, εἴπερ ἄρα, διὰ τούτων καὶ οὐκ ἄνευ τούτων κεράννυσθαι πέφυκεν. [1010] [a] οὐ γάρ, ὥσπερ ὁ τὸ ‘τύπτει’ φθεγξάμενος ἢ τὸ ‘τύπτεται’ καὶ πάλιν τὸ ‘Σωκράτης’ ἢ τὸ ‘Πυθαγόρας’ ἁμωσγέπως νοῆσαί τι καὶ διανοηθῆναι παρέσχηκεν, οὕτω τοῦ ‘μέν’ ἢ ‘γάρ’ ἢ ‘περί’ καθ’ αὑτὸ ἐκφωνηθέντος ἔστιν ἔννοιάν τινα λαβεῖν ἢ πράγματος ἢ σώματος· ἀλλ’ ἐὰν μὴ περὶ ἐκεῖνα καὶ μετ’ ἐκείνων ἐκφέρηται, ψόφοις κενοῖς καὶ ἤχοις ἔοικεν· ὅτι ταῦτα μὲν οὔτε καθ’ αὑτὰ σημαίνειν οὔτε μετ’ ἀλλήλων οὐδὲν πέφυκεν, ἀλλ’ ὅπως ἂν συμπλέκωμεν ἢ μιγνύωμεν εἰς ταὐτὸ συνδέσμους καὶ ἄρθρα καὶ προθέσεις, ἕν τι πειρώμενοι κοινὸν ἐξ αὐτῶν ποιεῖν, [b] τερετίζειν μᾶλλον ἢ διαλέγεσθαι δόξομεν· ῥήματος δ’ ὀνόματι συμπλεκομένου, τὸ γενόμενον εὐθὺς διάλεκτός ἐστι καὶ λόγος. ὅθεν εἰκότως ἔνιοι μόνα ταῦτα μέρη τοῦ λόγου τίθενται· καὶ Ὅμηρος ἴσως τοῦτο βούλεται δηλοῦν ἑκάστοτε λέγων (Η 108)

‘ἔπος τ’ ἔφατ’ ἔκ τ’ ὀνόμαζεν·’

ἔπος γὰρ τὸ ῥῆμα καλεῖν εἴωθεν, ὥσπερ ἐν τούτοις (ψ 183)

‘ὦ γύναι, ἦ μάλα τοῦτο ἔπος θυμαλγὲς ἔειπες’

καὶ (θ 408)

‘χαῖρε πάτερ ὦ ξεῖνε, ἔπος δ’ εἴπερ τι λέλεκται

δεινόν, ἄφαρ τὸ φέροιεν ἀναρπάξασαι ἄελλαι.’

οὔτε γὰρ σύνδεσμον οὔτ’ ἄρθρον οὔτε πρόθεσιν δεινὸν ἔστι καὶ θυμαλγὲς εἰπεῖν, ἀλλὰ ῥῆμα πράξεως ἐμφαντικὸν [c] αἰσχρᾶς ἢ πάθους τινὸς ἀνεπιτηδείου. διὸ καὶ ποιητὰς καὶ συγγραφεῖς εἰώθαμεν ἐπαινεῖν ἢ ψέγειν οὕτω πως λέγοντες ‘Ἀττικοῖς ὀνόμασιν ὁ δεῖνα κέχρηται’ καὶ ‘καλοῖς ῥήμασιν’ ἢ πάλιν ‘πεζοῖς’· τὸ δέ γε ‘πεζοῖς’ ἢ ‘καλοῖς’ πάλιν καὶ ‘Ἀττικοῖς ἄρθροις’ οὐκ ἂν εἴποι τις Εὐριπίδην ἢ Θουκυδίδην διειλέχθαι.

‘Τί οὖν;’ φήσαι τις ἄν, ‘οὐδὲν ταῦτα συμβάλλεται πρὸς λόγον;’ ἔγωγε φήσαιμ’ ἂν ὥσπερ ἅλας συμβάλλεσθαι πρὸς ὄψον ὕδωρ δὲ πρὸς μᾶζαν· Εὔηνος δὲ καὶ τὸ πῦρ ἔφασκεν ἡδυσμάτων εἶναι κράτιστον. ἀλλ’ οὔθ’ ὕδωρ μάζης ἢ ἄρτου μέρος εἶναι λέγομεν οὔτε πῦρ οὔθ’ ἅλας ἑψήματος ἢ βρώματος· ὧν ἀεὶ τυγχάνομεν δεόμενοι, οὐχ ὥσπερ ὁ λόγος πολλάκις ἐκείνων ἀπροσδεής ἐστιν· ὡς [d] δοκεῖ μοι περὶ Ῥωμαίων λέγειν ὁρῶ μέλλω †νῦν ὁμοῦ τι πάντες ἄνθρωποι χρῶνται· προθέσεις τε γὰρ ἀφῄρηκε πλὴν ὀλίγων ἁπάσας, τῶν τε καλουμένων ἄρθρων οὐδὲν προσδέχεται τὸ παράπαν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀκρασπέδοις χρῆται τοῖς ὀνόμασι. καὶ οὐ θαυμαστόν ἐστιν, ὅπου καὶ Ὅμηρος ‘ἐπέων κόσμῳ’ περιγενόμενος ὀλίγοις τῶν ὀνομάτων ἄρθρα ὥσπερ λαβὰς ἐκπώμασι δεομένοις ἢ λόφους κράνεσιν ἐπιτίθησι· διὸ καὶ παράσημα τῶν ἐπῶν ἐν οἷς ταῦτα ποιεῖ γέγονεν, ὡς τὸ (Ξ 459)

‘Αἴαντι δὲ μάλιστα δαΐφρονι θυμὸν ὄρινε

τῷ Τελαμωνιάδῃ’

καὶ τὸ (Υ 147)

‘ποιέεν, ὄφρα τὸ κῆτος ὑπεκπροφυγὼν ἀλέοιτο·’

[e]καὶ βραχέα πρὸς τούτοις ἕτερα· τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις μυρίοις οὖσιν ἄρθρου μὴ προσόντος οὐδὲν εἰς σαφήνειαν οὐδὲ κάλλος ἡ φράσις βλάπτεται.

Καὶ μὴν οὔτε ζῷον οὔτ’ ὄργανον οὔθ’ ὅπλον οὔτ’ ἄλλο τῶν ὄντων οὐδὲν οἰκείου μέρους ἀφαιρέσει καὶ στερήσει πέφυκε γίγνεσθαι κάλλιον οὐδ’ ἐνεργέστερον οὐδ’ ἥδιον· λόγος δέ, συνδέσμων ἐξαιρεθέντων, πολλάκις ἐμπαθεστέραν καὶ κινητικωτέραν ἔχει δύναμιν· ὡς ὁ τοιοῦτος (Σ 536)

‘ἄλλον ζωὸν ἔχουσα νεούτατον, ἄλλον ἄουτον,

ἄλλον τεθνειῶτα κατὰ μόθον ἕλκε ποδοῖιν·’

καὶ τὰ τοῦ Δημοσθένους (21, 72) ταυτὶ ‘πολλὰ γὰρ ἂν ποιήσειεν ὁ τύπτων, ὧν ὁ παθὼν ἔνι’ οὐδ’ ἂν ἀπαγγεῖλαι [f] δύναιθ’ ἑτέρῳ· τῷ σχήματι τῷ βλέμματι τῇ φωνῇ· ὅταν ὑβρίζων, ὅταν ἐχθρὸς ὑπάρχων, ὅταν κονδύλοις, ὅταν ἐπὶ κόρρης· ταῦτα κινεῖ, ταῦτ’ ἐξίστησιν αὑτῶν ἀνθρώπους ἀήθεις τοῦ προπηλακίζεσθαι.’ καὶ πάλιν (21, 200) ‘ἀλλ’ οὐ Μειδίας· ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ ταύτης τῆς ἡμέρας λέγει, λοιδορεῖται, βοᾷ· χειροτονεῖται τίς; Μειδίας Ἀναγυράσιος.

[1011] [a] προβέβληται· Πλουτάρχου προξενεῖ, τὰ ἀπόρρητ’ οἶδεν, ἡ πόλις αὐτὸν οὐ χωρεῖ.’ διὸ καὶ σφόδρα τὸ ἀσύνδετον σχῆμα παρὰ τοῖς τέχνας γράφουσιν εὐδοκιμεῖ· τοὺς δ’ ἄγαν νομίμους ἐκείνους καὶ μηδένα σύνδεσμον ἐκ τῆς συνηθείας ἀφιέντας ὡς ἀργὴν καὶ ἀπαθῆ καὶ κοπώδη τῷ ἀμεταβλήτῳ τὴν φράσιν ποιοῦντας αἰτιῶνται. τὸ δὲ τοὺς διαλεκτικοὺς μάλιστα συνδέσμων δεῖσθαι πρὸς τὰς τῶν ἀξιωμάτων συναφὰς καὶ συμπλοκὰς καὶ διαζεύξεις, ὥσπερ ἡνιόχους ζυγῶν καὶ τὸν ‹ἐν› Κύκλωπος Ὀδυσσέα λύγων πρὸς τὴν τῶν προβάτων σύν‹δεσιν ....› οὐ μέρος λόγου τὸν σύνδεσμον ἀλλ’ ὄργανόν τι συνδετικὸν ἀποφαίνει, [b] καθάπερ ὠνόμασται, καὶ συνεκτικὸν οὐ πάντων ἀλλὰ τῶν οὐχ ἁπλῶς λεγομένων· εἰ μὴ καὶ τοῦ φορτίου τὸν ἱμάντα καὶ τοῦ βιβλίου τὴν κόλλαν ἀξιοῦσι μέρος εἶναι, καὶ νὴ Δία τὰς διανομὰς τοῦ πολιτεύματος, ὡς ἔλεγε Δημάδης, κόλλαν ὀνομάζων τὰ θεωρικὰ τῆς δημοκρατίας. ποῖος δὲ σύνδεσμος οὕτως ἓν ἐκ πολλῶν ἀξίωμα ποιεῖ συμπλέκων καὶ συνάπτων, ὡς ἡ μάρμαρος τὸν συλλιπαινόμενον διὰ τοῦ πυρὸς σίδηρον; ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲ λέγεται τοῦ σιδήρου μέρος· καίτοι ταῦτά γε τοῖς κεραννυμένοις ἐνδυόμενα καὶ συντηκόμενα ποιεῖ τι καὶ πάσχει [c] κοινὸν ἐκ πλειόνων, τοὺς δὲ συνδέσμους εἰσὶν οἱ μὴ νομίζοντες ἕν τι ποιεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἐξαρίθμησιν εἶναι τὴν διάλεκτον, ὥσπερ ἀρχόντων ἐφεξῆς ‹ἢ› ἡμερῶν καταλεγομένων.

Καὶ μὴν τῶν γε λοιπῶν ἡ μὲν ἀντωνυμία περιφανῶς γένος ὀνόματός ἐστιν, οὐχ ᾗ πτώσεων μετέχει μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ κυριωτάτην ἅμα τῇ φάσει ποιεῖν δεῖξιν ἐνίας ἐπὶ τῶν ὡρισμένων ἐκφερομένας· καὶ οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅ τι μᾶλλον ὁ ‘Σωκράτην’ φθεγξάμενος ἢ ὁ ‘τοῦτον’ εἰπὼν ὀνομαστὶ πρόσωπον δεδήλωκεν. ἡ δὲ καλουμένη μετοχή, μῖγμα ῥήματος οὖσα καὶ ὀνόματος, καθ’ ἑαυτὴν μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τὰ κοινὰ θηλυκῶν καὶ ἀρρενικῶν ὀνόματα, [d] συντάττεται δ’ ἐκείνοις, ἐφαπτομένη τοῖς μὲν χρόνοις τῶν ῥημάτων ταῖς δὲ πτώσεσι τῶν ὀνομάτων. οἱ δὲ διαλεκτικοὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα καλοῦσιν ‹ἀντ›ανακλάστους, οἷον ὁ ‘φρονῶν’ ἀπὸ τοῦ ‘φρονίμου’ καὶ ὁ ‘σωφρονῶν’ ἀπὸ τοῦ ‘σώφρονός’ ἐστιν, ὡς ὀνομάτων καὶ προσηγοριῶν δύναμιν ἔχοντα. τάς γε μὴν προθέσεις ἔστιν ἐπικράνοις καὶ βάσεσι καὶ ὑποθέμασιν, ὡς οὐ λόγους ἀλλὰ περὶ τοὺς λόγους μᾶλλον οὔσας, ὁμοιοῦν. ὅρα δὲ μὴ κόμμασι καὶ θραύσμασιν ὀνομάτων ἐοίκασιν, ὥσπερ γραμμάτων σπαράγμασι καὶ κεραίαις οἱ σπεύδοντες γράφουσι· τὸ γὰρ ‘ἐμβῆναι’ καὶ [e] ‘ἐκβῆναι’ συγκοπὴ προφανής ἐστι τοῦ ‘ἐντὸς βῆναι’ καὶ τοῦ ‘ἐκτὸς βῆναι’, καὶ τὸ ‘προγενέσθαι’ τοῦ ‘πρότερον γενέσθαι’, καὶ τὸ ‘καθίζειν’ τοῦ ‘κάτω ἵζειν’· ὥσπερ ἀμέλει τὸ ‘λίθους βάλλειν’ καὶ ‘τοίχους ὀρύσσειν’ ‘λιθοβολεῖν’ καὶ ‘τοιχωρυχεῖν’ ἐπιταχύνοντες καὶ σφίγγοντες τὴν φράσιν λέγουσι.

Διὸ χρείαν μέν τινα τῷ λόγῳ παρέχεται τούτων ἕκαστον, μέρος δὲ λόγου καὶ στοιχεῖον οὐδέν ἐστι, πλὴν ὥσπερ εἴρηται τὸ ῥῆμα καὶ τοὔνομα, ποιοῦντα τὴν πρώτην τό τ’ ἀληθὲς καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος δεχομένην σύνθεσιν, ἣν οἱ μὲν πρότασιν οἱ δ’ ἀξίωμα, Πλάτων δὲ λόγον προσηγόρευκεν.

De animae procreatione in Timaeo

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΕΝ ΤΙΜΑΙΩΙ ΨΥΧΟΓΟΝΙΑΣ

[1012] Ο ΠΑΤΗΡ ΑΥΤΟΒΟΥΛΩΙ ΚΑΙ ΠΛΟΥΤΑΡΧΩΙ ΕΥ ΠΡΑΤΤΕΙΝ

[c] Ἐπεὶ τὰ πολλάκις εἰρημένα καὶ γεγραμμένα σποράδην ἐν ἑτέροις ἕτερα, τὴν Πλάτωνος ἐξηγουμένοις δόξαν ἣν εἶχεν ὑπὲρ ψυχῆς, ὡς ὑπενοοῦμεν ἡμεῖς, οἴεσθε δεῖν εἰς ἓν συναχθῆναι καὶ τυχεῖν ἰδίας ἀναγραφῆς τὸν λόγον τοῦτον, οὔτ’ ἄλλως εὐμεταχείριστον ὄντα καὶ διὰ τὸ τοῖς πλείστοις τῶν ἀπὸ Πλάτωνος ὑπεναντιοῦσθαι δεόμενον παραμυθίας, προεκθήσομαι τὴν λέξιν, ὡς ἐν Τιμαίῳ (35a) γέγραπται. ‘τῆς ἀμεροῦς καὶ ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἐχούσης οὐσίας καὶ τῆς αὖ περὶ τὰ σώματα γιγνομένης μεριστῆς [d] τρίτον ἐξ ἀμφοῖν ἐν μέσῳ συνεκεράσατο οὐσίας εἶδος, τῆς τε ταὐτοῦ φύσεως αὖ πέρι καὶ τῆς τοῦ ἑτέρου· καὶ κατὰ ταῦτα συνέστησεν ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ τ’ ἀμεροῦς αὐτὴν καὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὰ σώματα μεριστοῦ. καὶ τρία λαβὼν αὐτὰ ὄντα συνεκεράσατο εἰς μίαν πάντα ἰδέαν, τὴν θατέρου φύσιν δύσμικτον οὖσαν εἰς ταὐτὸ συναρμόττων βίᾳ· μιγνὺς δὲ μετὰ τῆς οὐσίας καὶ ἐκ τριῶν ποιησάμενος ἕν, πάλιν ὅλον τοῦτο μοίρας εἰς ἃς προσῆκε διένειμεν, ἑκάστην δὲ τούτων ἔκ τε ταὐτοῦ καὶ θατέρου καὶ τῆς οὐσίας μεμιγμένην· ἤρχετο δὲ διαιρεῖν ὧδε.’ ταῦτα πρῶτον ὅσας παρέσχηκε τοῖς ἐξηγουμένοις διαφοράς, ἄπλετον ἔργον ἐστὶ διελθεῖν [e] ἐν τῷ παρόντι, πρὸς δ’ ὑμᾶς ἐντετυχηκότας ὁμοῦ ταῖς πλείσταις καὶ περιττόν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν δοκιμωτάτων ἀνδρῶν τοὺς μὲν Ξενοκράτης (fr. 68 H.) προσηγάγετο, τῆς ψυχῆς τὴν οὐσίαν ἀριθμὸν αὐτὸν ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ κινούμενον ἀποφηνάμενος, οἱ δὲ Κράντορι τῷ Σολεῖ προσέθεντο, μιγνύντι τὴν ψυχὴν ἔκ τε τῆς νοητῆς καὶ τῆς περὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ δοξαστῆς φύσεως, οἶμαί τι τὴν τούτων ἀνακαλυφθέντων σαφήνειαν ὥσπερ ἐνδόσιμον ἡμῖν παρέξειν.

Ἔστι δὲ βραχὺς ὑπὲρ ἀμφοῖν ὁ λόγος. οἱ μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἢ γένεσιν ἀριθμοῦ δηλοῦσθαι νομίζουσι τῇ μίξει [f] τῆς ἀμερίστου καὶ μεριστῆς οὐσίας· ἀμέριστον μὲν γὰρ εἶναι τὸ ἓν μεριστὸν δὲ τὸ πλῆθος, ἐκ δὲ τούτων γίγνεσθαι τὸν ἀριθμὸν τοῦ ἑνὸς ὁρίζοντος τὸ πλῆθος καὶ τῇ ἀπειρίᾳ πέρας ἐντιθέντος, ἣν καὶ δυάδα καλοῦσιν ἀόριστον (καὶ Ζαράτας ὁ Πυθαγόρου διδάσκαλος ταύτην μὲν ἐκάλει τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ μητέρα τὸ δ’ ἓν πατέρα· διὸ καὶ βελτίονας εἶναι τῶν ἀριθμῶν ὅσοι τῇ μονάδι προσεοίκασι)· τοῦτον δὲ μήπω ψυχὴν τὸν ἀριθμὸν εἶναι· τὸ γὰρ κινητικὸν καὶ τὸ κινητὸν ἐνδεῖν αὐτῷ. τοῦ δὲ ταὐτοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου συμμιγέντων, ὧν τὸ μέν ἐστι κινήσεως ἀρχὴ καὶ μεταβολῆς τὸ δὲ μονῆς, ψυχὴν γεγονέναι, μηδὲν ἧττον τοῦ ἱστάναι [10] καὶ ἵστασθαι δύναμιν ἢ τοῦ κινεῖσθαι καὶ κινεῖν οὖσαν. οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Κράντορα μάλιστα τῆς ψυχῆς ἴδιον ὑπολαμβάνοντες ἔργον εἶναι τὸ κρίνειν τά τε νοητὰ καὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ τάς τε τούτων ἐν αὑτοῖς καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα γιγνομένας διαφορὰς καὶ ὁμοιότητας, ἐκ πάντων φασίν, ἵνα [1013] [a] πάντα γιγνώσκῃ, συγκεκρᾶσθαι τὴν ψυχήν· ταῦτα δ’ εἶναι τέτταρα, τὴν νοητὴν φύσιν ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως ἔχουσαν καὶ τὴν περὶ τὰ σώματα παθητικὴν καὶ μεταβλητήν, ἔτι δὲ τὴν ταὐτοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου διὰ τὸ κἀκείνων ἑκατέραν μετέχειν ἑτερότητος καὶ ταὐτότητος.

Ὁμαλῶς δὲ πάντες οὗτοι χρόνῳ μὲν οἴονται τὴν ψυχὴν μὴ γεγονέναι μηδ’ εἶναι γενητήν, πλείονας δὲ δυνάμεις ἔχειν, εἰς ἃς ἀναλύοντα θεωρίας ἕνεκα τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτῆς λόγῳ τὸν Πλάτωνα γιγνομένην ὑποτίθεσθαι καὶ συγκεραννυμένην· τὰ δ’ αὐτὰ καὶ περὶ τοῦ κόσμου διανοούμενον ἐπίστασθαι μὲν ἀίδιον ὄντα καὶ ἀγένητον, [b] τὸ δ’ ᾧ τρόπῳ συντέτακται καὶ διοικεῖται καταμαθεῖν οὐ ῥᾴδιον ὁρῶντα τοῖς μήτε γένεσιν αὐτοῦ μήτε τῶν γενητικῶν σύνοδον ἐξ ἀρχῆς προϋποθεμένοις ταύτην τὴν ὁδὸν τραπέσθαι. τοιούτων δὲ τῶν καθόλου λεγομένων, ὁ μὲν Εὔδωρος οὐδετέρους ἀμοιρεῖν οἴεται τοῦ εἰκότος· ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκοῦσι τῆς Πλάτωνος ἀμφότεροι διαμαρτάνειν δόξης, εἰ κανόνι τῷ πιθανῷ χρηστέον, οὐκ ἴδια δόγματα περαίνοντας ἀλλ’ ἐκείνῳ τι βουλομένους λέγειν ὁμολογούμενον. ἡ μὲν ‹γὰρ› ἐκ τῆς νοητῆς καὶ τῆς αἰσθητῆς οὐσίας λεγομένη μῖξις οὐ διασαφεῖται πῆ ποτε ψυχῆς μᾶλλον ἢ τῶν ἄλλων, ὅ τι ἄν τις εἴπῃ, γένεσίς ἐστιν. αὐτός [c] τε γὰρ ὁ κόσμος οὗτος καὶ τῶν μερῶν ἕκαστον αὐτοῦ συνέστηκεν ἔκ τε σωματικῆς οὐσίας καὶ νοητῆς, ὧν ἡ μὲν ὕλην καὶ ὑποκείμενον ἡ δὲ μορφὴν καὶ εἶδος τῷ γενομένῳ παρέσχε· καὶ τῆς μὲν ὕλης τὸ μετοχῇ καὶ εἰκασίᾳ τοῦ νοητοῦ μορφωθὲν εὐθὺς ἁπτὸν ‹καὶ› ὁρατόν ἐστιν, ἡ ψυχὴ δὲ πᾶσαν αἴσθησιν ἐκπέφευγεν. ἀριθμόν γε μὴν ὁ Πλάτων οὐδέποτε τὴν ψυχὴν προσεῖπεν, ἀλλὰ κίνησιν αὐτοκίνητον ἀεὶ καὶ ‘κινήσεως πηγὴν καὶ ἀρχήν’ (Phaedr. 245c)· ἀριθμῷ δὲ καὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἁρμονίᾳ διακεκόσμηκε τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτῆς ὑποκειμένην καὶ δεχομένην τὸ κάλλιστον εἶδος ὑπὸ τούτων ἐγγιγνόμενον. οἶμαι [d] δὲ μὴ ταὐτὸν εἶναι τῷ κατ’ ἀριθμὸν συνεστάναι τὴν ψυχὴν τὸ τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτῆς ἀριθμὸν ὑπάρχειν· ἐπεὶ ‹καὶ› καθ’ ἁρμονίαν συνέστηκεν ἁρμονία δ’ οὔκ ἐστιν, ὡς αὐτὸς ἐν τῷ περὶ Ψυχῆς (Phaed. 92) ἀπέδειξεν. ἐκφανῶς δὲ τούτοις ἠγνόηται τὸ περὶ τοῦ ταὐτοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου· λέγουσι γὰρ ὡς τὸ μὲν στάσεως τὸ δὲ κινήσεως συμβάλλεται δύναμιν εἰς τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς γένεσιν, αὐτοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐν τῷ Σοφιστῇ (p. 250. 254255) τὸ ὂν καὶ τὸ ταὐτὸν καὶ τὸ ἕτερον, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις στάσιν καὶ κίνησιν, ὡς ἕκαστον ἑκάστου διαφέρον καὶ πέντε ὄντα χωρὶς ἀλλήλων τιθεμένου καὶ διορίζοντος.

Ὅ γε μὴν οὗτοί τε κοινῇ καὶ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν χρωμένων [e] Πλάτωνι φοβούμενοι καὶ παραμυθούμενοι πάντα μηχανῶνται καὶ παραβιάζονται καὶ στρέφουσιν, ὥς τι δεινὸν καὶ ἄρρητον οἰόμενοι δεῖν περικαλύπτειν καὶ ἀρνεῖσθαι, τήν τε τοῦ κόσμου τήν τε τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ γένεσιν καὶ σύστασιν, οὐκ ἐξ ἀιδίου συνεστώτων οὐδὲ τὸν ἄπειρον χρόνον οὕτως ἐχόντων, ἰδίᾳ τε λόγου τέτευχε καὶ νῦν ἀρκέσει ῥηθέν, ὅτι τὸν περὶ θεῶν ἀγῶνα καὶ λόγον, ᾧ Πλάτων (Legg. X 885b sqq. 892d sqq.) ὁμολογεῖ φιλοτιμότατα καὶ παρ’ ἡλικίαν πρὸς τοὺς ἀθέους κεχρῆσθαι, συγχέουσι, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἀναιροῦσιν. εἰ γὰρ ἀγένητος ὁ κόσμος ἐστίν, οἴχεται τῷ Πλάτωνι τὸ πρεσβυτέραν τοῦ [f] σώματος τὴν ψυχὴν οὖσαν ἐξάρχειν μεταβολῆς καὶ κινήσεως πάσης, ἡγεμόνα καὶ πρωτουργόν, ὡς αὐτὸς εἴρηκεν (Legg. 897a), ἐγκαθεστῶσαν. τίς δ’ οὖσα καὶ τίνος ὄντος ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ σώματος προτέρα καὶ πρεσβυτέρα λέγεται γεγονέναι, προϊὼν ὁ λόγος ἐνδείξεται· τοῦτο γὰρ ἠγνοημένον ἔοικε τὴν πλείστην ἀπορίαν καὶ ἀπιστίαν παρέχειν τῆς ἀληθοῦς δόξης.

[1014] [a] Πρῶτον οὖν ἣν ἔχω περὶ τούτων διάνοιαν ἐκθήσομαι, πιστούμενος τῷ εἰκότι καὶ παραμυθούμενος, ὡς ἔνεστι, τὸ ἄηθες τοῦ λόγου καὶ παράδοξον· ἔπειτ’ αὐταῖς λέξεσιν ἐπάξω συνοικειῶν ἅμα τὴν ἐξήγησιν καὶ τὴν ἀπόδειξιν. ἔχει γὰρ οὕτω κατά γε τὴν ἐμὴν τὰ πράγματα δόξαν. ‘κόσμον τόνδε’ φησὶν Ἡράκλειτος (B 30) ‘οὔτε τις θεῶν οὔτ’ ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν,’ ὥσπερ φοβηθεὶς μὴ θεοῦ ἀπογνόντες ἄνθρωπόν τινα γεγονέναι τοῦ κόσμου δημιουργὸν ὑπονοήσωμεν. βέλτιον οὖν Πλάτωνι πειθομένους τὸν μὲν κόσμον ὑπὸ θεοῦ γεγονέναι λέγειν καὶ ᾄδειν ‘ὁ μὲν γὰρ κάλλιστος τῶν γεγονότων ὁ δ’ ἄριστος [b] τῶν αἰτίων’ (Tim. 29a), τὴν δ’ οὐσίαν καὶ ὕλην, ἐξ ἧς γέγονεν, οὐ γενομένην ἀλλ’ ὑποκειμένην ἀεὶ τῷ δημιουργῷ εἰς διάθεσιν καὶ τάξιν αὑτὴν καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐξομοίωσιν ὡς δυνατὸν ἦν ἐμπαρασχεῖν. οὐ γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἡ γένεσις ἀλλ’ ἐκ τοῦ μὴ καλῶς μηδ’ ἱκανῶς ἔχοντος, ὡς οἰκίας καὶ ἱματίου καὶ ἀνδριάντος. ἀκοσμία γὰρ ἦν τὰ πρὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως· ἀκοσμία δ’ οὐκ ἀσώματος οὐδ’ ἀκίνητος οὐδ’ ἄψυχος ἀλλ’ ἄμορφον μὲν καὶ ἀσύστατον τὸ σωματικὸν ἔμπληκτον δὲ καὶ ἄλογον τὸ κινητικὸν ἔχουσα· τοῦτο δ’ ἦν ἀναρμοστία ψυχῆς οὐκ ἐχούσης λόγον. ὁ γὰρ θεὸς οὔτε σῶμα τὸ ἀσώματον οὔτε ψυχὴν [c] τὸ ἄψυχον ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἁρμονικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ῥυθμικὸν οὐ φωνὴν ποιεῖν οὐδὲ κίνησιν ἐμμελῆ δὲ φωνὴν καὶ κίνησιν εὔρυθμον ἀξιοῦμεν, οὕτως ὁ θεὸς οὔτε τοῦ σώματος τὸ ἁπτὸν καὶ ἀντίτυπον οὔτε τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ φανταστικὸν καὶ κινητικὸν αὐτὸς ἐποίησεν· ἀμφοτέρας δὲ τὰς ἀρχὰς παραλαβών, τὴν μὲν ἀμυδρὰν καὶ σκοτεινὴν τὴν δὲ ταραχώδη καὶ ἀνόητον ἀτελεῖς δὲ τοῦ προσήκοντος ἀμφοτέρας καὶ ἀορίστους, ἔταξε καὶ διεκόσμησε καὶ συνήρμοσε, τὸ κάλλιστον ἀπεργασάμενος καὶ τελειότατον ἐξ αὐτῶν ζῷον.

Ἡ μὲν οὖν σώματος οὐσία τῆς λεγομένης ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ [d] πανδεχοῦς φύσεως ἕδρας τε καὶ τιθήνης τῶν γενητῶν οὐχ ἑτέρα τίς ἐστιν. τὴν δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐν Φιλήβῳ (24a25a. b sqq.) μὲν ἀπειρίαν κέκληκεν, ἀριθμοῦ καὶ λόγου στέρησιν οὖσαν, ἐλλείψεώς τε καὶ ὑπερβολῆς καὶ διαφορᾶς καὶ ἀνομοιότητος ἐν αὑτῇ πέρας οὐδὲν οὐδὲ μέτρον ἔχουσαν· ἐν δὲ Τιμαίῳ (35a) τὴν τῇ ἀμερίστῳ συγκεραννυμένην φύσει καὶ περὶ τὰ σώματα γίγνεσθαι λεγομένην μεριστὴν οὔτε πλῆθος ἐν μονάσι καὶ στιγμαῖς οὔτε μήκη καὶ πλάτη λέγεσθαι νομιστέον, ἃ σώμασι προσήκει καὶ σωμάτων μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἄτακτον καὶ ἀόριστον αὐτοκίνητον δὲ καὶ κινητικὴν ἀρχὴν ἐκείνην, ἣν πολλαχοῦ μὲν ἀνάγκην ἐν δὲ τοῖς Νόμοις [e] (896d sq.) ἄντικρυς ψυχὴν ἄτακτον εἴρηκε καὶ κακοποιόν· αὕτη γὰρ ἦν ψυχὴ καθ’ ἑαυτήν, νοῦ δὲ καὶ λογισμοῦ καὶ ἁρμονίας ἔμφρονος μετέσχεν, ἵνα κόσμου ψυχὴ γένηται. καὶ γὰρ τὸ πανδεχὲς καὶ ὑλικὸν ἐκεῖνο μέγεθος μὲν ἐκέκτητο καὶ διάστημα καὶ χώραν, κάλλους δὲ καὶ μορφῆς καὶ σχημάτων μετριότητος ἐνδεῶς εἶχεν· ἔλαχε δὲ τούτων, ἵνα γῆς καὶ θαλάττης καὶ οὐρανοῦ καὶ ἀστέρων φυτῶν τε καὶ ζῴων παντοδαπὰ σώματα καὶ ὄργανα γίγνηται κοσμηθέν. οἱ δὲ τὴν ἐν Τιμαίῳ (48a. 56c. 68e) λεγομένην ἀνάγκην, ἐν δὲ Φιλήβῳ (24a sqq.) περὶ τὸ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον ἐλλείψεως καὶ ὑπερβολῆς ἀμετρίαν καὶ [f] ἀπειρίαν τῇ ὕλῃ προστιθέντες ἀλλὰ μὴ τῇ ψυχῇ, ποῦ θήσονται τὸ τὴν ὕλην ἀεὶ μὲν ἄμορφον καὶ ἀσχημάτιστον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λέγεσθαι (Tim. 50e) καὶ πάσης ποιότητος καὶ δυνάμεως οἰκείας ἔρημον, εἰκάζεσθαι δ’ ἀώδεσιν ἐλαίοις, [1015] [a] ἃ πρὸς τὰς βαφὰς οἱ μυρεψοὶ λαμβάνουσιν; οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε τὸ ἄποιον καὶ ἀργὸν ἐξ αὑτοῦ καὶ ἀρρεπὲς αἰτίαν κακοῦ καὶ ἀρχὴν ὑποτίθεσθαι τὸν Πλάτωνα καὶ καλεῖν ἀπειρίαν αἰσχρὰν καὶ κακοποιόν, αὖθις δ’ ἀνάγκην πολλὰ τῷ θεῷ δυσμαχοῦσαν καὶ ἀφηνιάζουσαν. ἡ γάρ ‘ἀναστρέφουσα’ τὸν οὐρανόν, ὥσπερ ἐν Πολιτικῷ (272e) λέγεται, καὶ ἀνελίττουσα πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἀνάγκη καὶ ‘σύμφυτος ἐπιθυμία’ καὶ (273b) ‘τὸ τῆς πάλαι ποτὲ φύσεως σύντροφον πολλῆς μετέχον ἀταξίας, πρὶν εἰς τὸν νῦν κόσμον ἀφικέσθαι’, πόθεν ἐγγέγονε τοῖς πράγμασιν, εἰ τὸ μὲν ὑποκείμενον ἄποιος ἦν ὕλη καὶ ἄμοιρος αἰτίας [b] ἁπάσης, ὁ δὲ δημιουργὸς ἀγαθὸς καὶ πάντα βουλόμενος αὑτῷ κατὰ δύναμιν ἐξομοιῶσαι, τρίτον δὲ παρὰ ταῦτα μηδέν; αἱ γὰρ Στωικαὶ καταλαμβάνουσιν ἡμᾶς ἀπορίαι, τὸ κακὸν ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἀναιτίως καὶ ἀγενήτως ἐπεισάγοντας· ἐπεὶ τῶν γ’ ὄντων οὔτε τὸ ἀγαθὸν οὔτε τὸ ἄποιον εἰκός ἐστιν οὐσίαν κακοῦ καὶ γένεσιν παρασχεῖν. ἀλλὰ ταὐτὸ Πλάτων οὐκ ἔπαθε τοῖς ὕστερον, οὐδὲ παριδὼν ὡς ἐκεῖνοι τὴν μεταξὺ τῆς ὕλης καὶ τοῦ θεοῦ τρίτην ἀρχὴν καὶ δύναμιν ὑπέμεινε τῶν λόγων τὸν ἀτοπώτατον, ἐπεισόδιον οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως ποιοῦντα τὴν τῶν κακῶν φύσιν ἀπ’ αὐτομάτου κατὰ συμβεβηκός. Ἐπικούρῳ (fr. 281) μὲν γὰρ [c] οὐδ’ ἀκαρὲς ἐγκλῖναι τὴν ἄτομον συγχωροῦσιν, ὡς ἀναίτιον ἐπεισάγοντι κίνησιν ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος· αὐτοὶ δὲ κακίαν καὶ κακοδαιμονίαν τοσαύτην ἑτέρας τε περὶ σῶμα μυρίας ἀτοπίας καὶ δυσχερείας, αἰτίαν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς οὐκ ἐχούσας, κατ’ ἐπακολούθησιν γεγονέναι λέγουσιν.

Ὁ δὲ Πλάτων οὐχ οὕτως, ἀλλὰ τήν γ’ ὕλην διαφορᾶς ἁπάσης ἀπαλλάττων καὶ τοῦ θεοῦ τὴν τῶν κακῶν αἰτίαν ἀπωτάτω τιθέμενος ταῦτα περὶ τοῦ κόσμου γέγραφεν ἐν τῷ Πολιτικῷ (273b) ‘παρὰ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ ξυνθέντος πάντα τὰ καλὰ κέκτηται· παρὰ δὲ τῆς ἔμπροσθεν ἕξεως ὅσα χαλεπὰ καὶ ἄδικα ἐν οὐρανῷ γίγνεται, ταῦτ’ ἐξ [d] ἐκείνης αὐτός τε ἔχει καὶ τοῖς ζῴοις ἐναπεργάζεται.’ καὶ μικρὸν ἔτι προελθὼν (273c) ‘προϊόντος δέ’ φησι ‘τοῦ χρόνου καὶ λήθης ἐγγιγνομένης ἐν αὐτῷ, μᾶλλον δυναστεύει τὸ τῆς παλαιᾶς ἀναρμοστίας πάθος’ καὶ κινδυνεύει ‘διαλυθεὶς εἰς τὸν τῆς ἀνομοιότητος ἄπειρον ὄντα τόπον’ δῦναι πάλιν. ἀνομοιότης δὲ περὶ τὴν ὕλην, ἄποιον καὶ ἀδιάφορον οὖσαν, οὐκ ἔστιν. ἀλλὰ μετὰ πολλῶν ἄλλων καὶ Εὔδημος ἀγνοήσας κατειρωνεύεται τοῦ Πλάτωνος, ὡς οὐκ εὖ τὴν πολλάκις ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ μητέρα καὶ τιθήνην προσαγορευομένην αἰτίαν κακῶν καὶ ἀρχὴν ἀποφαίνοντος. ὁ γὰρ Πλάτων μητέρα μὲν καὶ τιθήνην καλεῖ τὴν ὕλην, [e] αἰτίαν δὲ κακοῦ τὴν κινητικὴν τῆς ὕλης καὶ περὶ τὰ σώματα γιγνομένην μεριστὴν ἄτακτον καὶ ἄλογον οὐκ ἄψυχον δὲ κίνησιν, ἣν ἐν Νόμοις ὥσπερ εἴρηται (p. 149, 13 sq.) ψυχὴν ἐναντίαν καὶ ἀντίπαλον τῇ ἀγαθουργῷ προσεῖπε. ψυχὴ γὰρ αἰτία κινήσεως καὶ ἀρχή, νοῦς δὲ τάξεως καὶ συμφωνίας περὶ κίνησιν. ὁ γὰρ θεὸς οὐκ ἀνέστησε τὴν ὕλην ἀργοῦσαν ἀλλ’ ἔστησεν ὑπὸ τῆς ἀνοήτου ταραττομένην αἰτίας· οὐδ’ ἀρχὰς τῇ φύσει μεταβολῆς καὶ παθῶν παρέσχεν, ἀλλ’ οὔσης ἐν πάθεσι παντοδαποῖς καὶ μεταβολαῖς ἀτάκτοις ἐξεῖλε τὴν πολλὴν ἀοριστίαν καὶ πλημμέλειαν, ἁρμονίᾳ καὶ ἀναλογίᾳ καὶ ἀριθμῷ χρώμενος ὀργάνοις· ὧν ἔργον ἐστὶν οὐ μεταβολῇ καὶ κινήσει ἑτερότητος [f] πάθη καὶ διαφορὰς παρέχειν τοῖς πράγμασιν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀπλανῆ καὶ στάσιμα καὶ τοῖς κατὰ ταὐτὰ ὡσαύτως ἔχουσιν ὅμοια ποιεῖν.

Ἡ μὲν οὖν διάνοια τοιαύτη, κατά γε τὴν ἐμὴν δόξαν, τοῦ Πλάτωνος· ἀπόδειξις δὲ πρώτη μὲν ἡ τῆς λεγομένης καὶ δοκούσης αὐτοῦ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀσυμφωνίας καὶ [1016] [a] διαφορᾶς λύσις. οὐδὲ γὰρ σοφιστῇ κραιπαλῶντι, πόθεν γε δὴ Πλάτωνι, τοιαύτην ἄν τις ἀναθείη περὶ οὓς ἐσπουδάκει μάλιστα τῶν λόγων ταραχὴν καὶ ἀνωμαλίαν, ὥστε τὴν αὐτὴν φύσιν ὁμοῦ καὶ ἀγένητον ἀποφαίνειν καὶ γενομένην, ἀγένητον μὲν ἐν Φαίδρῳ (245c. 246a) τὴν ψυχὴν ἐν δὲ Τιμαίῳ (34b sqq.) γενομένην. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἐν Φαίδρῳ διάλεκτος ὀλίγου δεῖν ἅπασι διὰ στόματός ἐστι, τῷ ἀγενήτῳ τὸ ἀνώλεθρον τῷ δ’ αὐτοκινήτῳ πιστουμένη τὸ ἀγένητον αὐτῆς· ἐν δὲ Τιμαίῳ ‘τὴν δὲ ψυχήν’ φησιν ‘οὐχ ὡς νῦν ὑστέραν ἐπιχειροῦμεν λέγειν οὕτως ἐμηχανήσατο καὶ ὁ θεὸς νεωτέραν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἄρχεσθαι πρεσβύτερον ὑπὸ [b] νεωτέρου συνέρξας εἴασεν· ἀλλά πως ἡμεῖς πολὺ μετέχοντες τοῦ προστυχόντος τε καὶ εἰκῇ ταύτῃ πη καὶ λέγομεν· ὁ δὲ καὶ γενέσει καὶ ἀρετῇ προτέραν ‹καὶ πρεσβυτέραν› τὴν ψυχὴν σώματος, ὡς δεσπότιν καὶ ἄρξουσαν ἀρξομένου, συνεστήσατο.’ καὶ πάλιν, εἰπὼν (36e) ὡς ‘αὐτὴ ἐν ἑαυτῇ στρεφομένη θείαν ἀρχὴν ἤρξατο ἀπαύστου καὶ ἔμφρονος βίου,’ ‘τὸ μὲν δὴ σῶμά’ φησιν ‘ὁρατὸν οὐρανοῦ γέγονεν, αὐτὴ δ’ ἀόρατος μὲν λογισμοῦ δὲ μετέχουσα καὶ ἁρμονίας ψυχή, τῶν νοητῶν ἀεί τ’ ὄντων ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀρίστου ἀρίστη γενομένη τῶν γεννηθέντων.’ ἐνταῦθα γὰρ τὸν μὲν θεὸν ἄριστον εἰπὼν τῶν ἀεὶ ὄντων, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν ἀρίστην [c] τῶν γεννηθέντων, σαφεστάτῃ ταύτῃ τῇ διαφορᾷ καὶ ἀντιθέσει τὸ ἀίδιον αὐτῆς καὶ τὸ ἀγένητον ἀφῄρηται.

Τίς οὖν τούτων ἐπανόρθωσις ἑτέρα πλὴν ἧς αὐτὸς δίδωσι τοῖς δέχεσθαι βουλομένοις; ἀγένητον μὲν γὰρ ἀποφαίνει ψυχὴν τὴν πρὸ τῆς κόσμου γενέσεως πλημμελῶς πάντα καὶ ἀτάκτως κινοῦσαν· γενομένην δὲ καὶ γενητὴν πάλιν, ἣν ὁ θεὸς ἔκ τε ταύτης καὶ τῆς μονίμου τε καὶ ἀρίστης οὐσίας ἐκείνης ἔμφρονα καὶ τεταγμένην ἀπεργασάμενος καθάπερ εἶδος καὶ τῷ αἰσθητικῷ τὸ νοερὸν καὶ τῷ κινητικῷ τὸ τεταγμένον ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ παρασχὼν ἡγεμόνα τοῦ παντὸς ἐγκατέστησεν. οὕτω γὰρ καὶ [d] τὸ σῶμα τοῦ κόσμου πῇ μὲν ἀγένητον ἀποφαίνει πῇ δὲ γενητόν· ὅταν μὲν γὰρ εἴπῃ (Tim. 30a), πᾶν ὅσον ἦν ὁρατὸν οὐχ ἡσυχίαν ἄγον ἀλλὰ κινούμενον ἀτάκτως τὸν θεὸν παραλαβόντα διακοσμεῖν, καὶ πάλιν (Tim. 52e sq.), τὰ τέτταρα γένη, πῦρ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ γῆν καὶ ἀέρα, πρὶν ἢ τὸ πᾶν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν διακοσμηθὲν γενέσθαι, σεισμὸν ἐμποιεῖν τῇ ὕλῃ καὶ ὑπ’ ἐκείνης τινάσσεσθαι διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν, ὄντα που ποιεῖ καὶ ὑποκείμενα τὰ σώματα πρὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως· ὅταν δὲ πάλιν λέγῃ (Tim. 34c) τῆς ψυχῆς νεώτερον γεγονέναι τὸ σῶμα καὶ (28b sq.) τὸν κόσμον εἶναι γενητόν, ὅτι ὁρατὸς καὶ ἁπτὸς καὶ σῶμα [e] ἔχων ἐστὶ τὰ δὲ τοιαῦτα γιγνόμενα καὶ γενητὰ ἐφάνη, παντὶ δῆλον ὡς γένεσιν τῇ φύσει τοῦ σώματος ἀποδίδωσιν. ἀλλὰ πολλοῦ δεῖ τἀναντία λέγειν καὶ διαφέρεσθαι πρὸς αὑτὸν οὕτως ἐκφανῶς ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις. οὐ γὰρ ὡσαύτως οὐδὲ ταὐτὸ σῶμα γίγνεσθαί τέ φησιν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ εἶναι πρὶν ἢ γενέσθαι· ταῦτα γὰρ ἄντικρυς φαρμακῶντός ἐστιν. ἀλλὰ τί δεῖ νοεῖν καὶ τὴν γένεσιν, αὐτὸς διδάσκει. ‘τὸ μὲν γὰρ πρὸ τούτου’ φησί (Tim. 53a sq.) ‘ταῦτα πάντα εἶχεν ἀλόγως καὶ ἀμέτρως· ὅτε δ’ ἐπεχειρεῖτο κοσμεῖσθαι τὸ πᾶν, πῦρ πρῶτον καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ γῆν καὶ ἀέρα, ἴχνη μὲν ἔχοντα ἄττα αὑτῶν, παντάπασι μὴν [f] διακείμενα ὥσπερ εἰκὸς ἔχειν ἅπαν ὅταν ἀπῇ τινος θεός, οὕτω δὴ τότε πεφυκότα ταῦτα πρῶτον διεσχηματίσατο εἴδεσι καὶ ἀριθμοῖς.’ ἔτι δὲ πρότερον εἰπὼν (32a sqq.) ὡς οὐ μιᾶς ἔργον ἦν ἀναλογίας ἀλλὰ δυεῖν τὸ συνδῆσαι στερεὸν ὄντα καὶ βάθος ἔχοντα τὸν τοῦ παντὸς ὄγκον, καὶ διελθὼν ὅτι πυρὸς καὶ γῆς ὕδωρ ἀέρα τε ὁ θεὸς ἐν μέσῳ θεὶς συνέδησε καὶ συνεστήσατο τὸν οὐρανόν, ‘ἔκ τε δὴ [1017] [a] τούτων’ φησί ‘τοιούτων καὶ τὸν ἀριθμὸν τεττάρων τὸ τοῦ κόσμου σῶμα ἐγεννήθη δι’ ἀναλογίας ὁμολογῆσαν, φιλίαν τ’ ἔσχεν ἐκ τούτων, ὥστ’ εἰς ταὐτὸν αὑτῷ συνελθὸν ἄλυτον ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων πλὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ συνδήσαντος γενέσθαι·’ σαφέστατα διδάσκων ὡς οὐχὶ σώματος ἁπλῶς οὐδ’ ὄγκου καὶ ὕλης, ἀλλὰ συμμετρίας περὶ σῶμα καὶ κάλλους καὶ ὁμοιότητος ἦν ὁ θεὸς πατὴρ καὶ δημιουργός. ταῦτα δὴ δεῖ διανοεῖσθαι καὶ περὶ ψυχῆς, ὡς τὴν μὲν οὔθ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ γενομένην οὔτε κόσμου ψυχὴν οὖσαν, ἀλλά τινα φανταστικῆς καὶ δοξαστικῆς ἀλόγου δὲ καὶ ἀτάκτου φορᾶς καὶ ὁρμῆς δύναμιν αὐτοκίνητον καὶ [b] ἀεικίνητον, τὴν δ’ αὐτὸς ὁ θεὸς διαρμοσάμενος τοῖς προσήκουσιν ἀριθμοῖς καὶ λόγοις ἐγκατέστησεν ἡγεμόνα τοῦ κόσμου γεγονότος γενητὴν οὖσαν.

Ὅτι δὲ περὶ τούτων διενοεῖτο ταῦτα, καὶ οὐ θεωρίας ἕνεκα τοῦ τε κόσμου μὴ γενομένου καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς ὅμως ὑπετίθετο σύστασιν καὶ γένεσιν, ἐκεῖνο πρὸς πολλοῖς τεκμήριόν ἐστι ... τὸ τὴν μὲν ψυχὴν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀγένητον ὥσπερ εἴρηται (1016c) καὶ γενητὴν λέγεσθαι, τὸν δὲ κόσμον ἀεὶ μὲν γεγονότα καὶ γενητὸν ἀγένητον δὲ μηδέποτε μηδ’ ἀίδιον. τὰ μὲν οὖν ἐν Τιμαίῳ τί δεῖ προφέρειν; ὅλον γὰρ καὶ πᾶν τὸ σύγγραμμα περὶ κόσμου γενέσεως [c] ἄχρι τέλους ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ἐστι. τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἐν μὲν Ἀτλαντικῷ (Criti. 106a) προσευχόμενος ὁ Τίμαιος ὀνομάζει τὸν πάλαι μὲν ἔργῳ γενονότα νῦν δὲ λόγῳ θεόν, ἐν Πολιτικῷ (269d. 273b) δ’ ὁ Παρμενίδειος ξένος τὸν κόσμον ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ συντεθέντα φησὶ πολλῶν ἀγαθῶν μεταλαβεῖν, εἰ δέ τι φλαῦρόν ἐστιν ἢ χαλεπόν, ἐκ τῆς προτέρας ἕξεως ἀναρμόστου καὶ ἀλόγου συμμεμιγμένον ἔχειν· ἐν δὲ τῇ Πολιτείᾳ (546b) περὶ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ, ὃν γάμον ἔνιοι καλοῦσιν, ὁ Σωκράτης ἀρχόμενος λέγειν ‘ἔστι δέ’ φησι ‘θείῳ μὲν γενητῷ περίοδος ἣν ἀριθμὸς περιλαμβάνει τέλειος,’ οὐκ ἄλλο καλῶν θεῖον γενητὸν ἢ τὸν κόσμον ...

[1022]κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔχον ὡς μορφὴν καὶ εἶδος, τὸ δὲ περὶ τὰ σώματα γιγνόμενον μεριστὸν ὡς ὑποδοχὴν καὶ ὕλην, τὸ δὲ μῖγμα κοινὸν ἐξ ἀμφοῖν ἀποτετελεσμένον. ἡ μὲν οὖν ἀμέριστος οὐσία καὶ ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως ἔχουσα μὴ μικρότητι, καθάπερ τὰ ἐλάχιστα τῶν σωμάτων, νοείσθω φεύγουσα τὸν μερισμόν· τὸ γὰρ ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ καθαρὸν αὐτῆς καὶ μονοειδὲς ἀμερὲς εἴρηται καὶ [d] ἀμέριστον· ᾧ καὶ τῶν συνθέτων καὶ μεριστῶν καὶ διαφερομένων ἁμωσγέπως θιγοῦσα παύει τὸ πλῆθος καὶ καθίστησιν εἰς μίαν δι’ ὁμοιότητος ἕξιν. τὴν δὲ περὶ τὰ σώματα γιγνομένην μεριστὴν εἰ μέν τις ἐθέλοι καλεῖν ὕλην, ὡς καὶ ὑποκειμένην ἐκείνῃ καὶ μεταληπτικὴν ἐκείνης φύσιν, ὁμωνυμίᾳ χρώμενος, οὐ διαφέρει πρὸς τὸν λόγον· οἱ δὲ σωματικὴν ἀξιοῦντες ὕλην συμμίγνυσθαι τῇ ἀμερίστῳ [1023] [a] διαμαρτάνουσι· πρῶτον μὲν ὅτι τῶν ἐκείνης ὀνομάτων οὐδενὶ νῦν ὁ Πλάτων κέχρηται· δεξαμενὴν γὰρ εἴωθε καὶ πανδεχῆ καὶ τιθήνην ἀεὶ καλεῖν ἐκείνην, οὐ περὶ τὰ σώματα μεριστήν, μᾶλλον δὲ σῶμα μεριζόμενον εἰς τὸ καθ’ ἕκαστον. ἔπειτα τί διοίσει τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς, εἴπερ ἀμφοτέροις ἔκ τε τῆς ὕλης καὶ τῶν νοητῶν γέγονεν ἡ σύστασις; αὐτός γε μὴν ὁ Πλάτων, ὥσπερ ἀπωθούμενος τῆς ψυχῆς τὴν ἐκ σώματος γένεσιν, ἐντὸς αὐτῆς φησιν (Tim. 34b. 36e) ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ τεθῆναι τὸ σωματικόν, εἶτ’ ἔξωθεν ὑπ’ ἐκείνης περικαλυφθῆναι· [b] καὶ ὅλως ἀπεργασάμενος τῷ λόγῳ τὴν ψυχὴν ὕστερον (p. 49) ἐπεισάγει τὴν περὶ τῆς ὕλης ὑπόθεσιν, μηδὲν αὐτῆς πρότερον, ὅτε τὴν ψυχὴν ἐγέννα, δεηθείς, ὡς χωρὶς ὕλης γενομένην.

Ὅμοια δὲ τούτοις ἔστιν ἀντειπεῖν καὶ τοῖς περὶ Ποσειδώνιον· οὐ γὰρ μακρὰν τῆς ὕλης ἀπέστησαν· ἀλλὰ δεξάμενοι τὴν τῶν περάτων οὐσίαν περὶ τὰ σώματα λέγεσθαι μεριστὴν καὶ ταῦτα τῷ νοητῷ μίξαντες ἀπεφήναντο τὴν ψυχὴν ἰδέαν εἶναι τοῦ πάντῃ διαστατοῦ κατ’ ἀριθμὸν συνεστῶσαν ἁρμονίαν περιέχοντα· τά τε γὰρ μαθηματικὰ τῶν πρώτων νοητῶν μεταξὺ καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν τετάχθαι, τῆς τε ψυχῆς, τῶν νοητῶν τὸ ἀίδιον καὶ [c] τῶν αἰσθητῶν τὸ παθητικὸν ἐχούσης, προσῆκον ἐν μέσῳ τὴν οὐσίαν ὑπάρχειν. ἔλαθε γὰρ καὶ τούτους ὁ θεὸς τοῖς τῶν σωμάτων πέρασιν ὕστερον, ἀπειργασμένης ἤδη τῆς ψυχῆς, χρώμενος ἐπὶ τὴν τῆς ὕλης διαμόρφωσιν, τὸ σκεδαστὸν αὐτῆς καὶ ἀσύνδετον ὁρίζων καὶ περιλαμβάνων ταῖς ἐκ τῶν τριγώνων συναρμοττομένων ἐπιφανείαις. ἀτοπώτερον δὲ τὸ τὴν ψυχὴν ἰδέαν ποιεῖν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀεικίνητος ἡ δ’ ἀκίνητος, καὶ ἡ μὲν ἀμιγὴς πρὸς τὸ αἰσθητὸν ἡ δὲ τῷ σώματι συνειργμένη. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ὁ θεὸς τῆς μὲν ἰδέας ὡς παραδείγματος γέγονε μιμητής, τῆς δὲ ψυχῆς ὥσπερ ἀποτελέσματος δημιουργός. ὅτι δ’ [d] οὐδ’ ἀριθμὸν ὁ Πλάτων τὴν οὐσίαν τίθεται τῆς ψυχῆς ἀλλὰ ταττομένην ὑπ’ ἀριθμοῦ, προείρηται (1013c. d).

Πρὸς δ’ ἀμφοτέρους τούτους κοινόν ἐστι τὸ μήτε τοῖς πέρασι μήτε τοῖς ἀριθμοῖς μηθὲν ἴχνος ἐνυπάρχειν ἐκείνης τῆς δυνάμεως, ᾗ τὸ αἰσθητὸν ἡ ψυχὴ πέφυκε κρίνειν· νοῦν μὲν γὰρ αὐτῇ καὶ νοητ‹ικ›ὸν ἡ τῆς νοητῆς μέθεξις ἀρχῆς ἐμπεποίηκε, δόξας δὲ καὶ πίστεις καὶ τὸ φανταστικὸν καὶ τὸ παθητικὸν ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα ποιοτήτων [ὃ] οὐκ ἄν τις ἐκ μονάδων οὐδὲ γραμμῶν οὐδ’ ἐπιφανειῶν ἁπλῶς νοήσειεν ἐγγιγνόμενον. καὶ μὴν οὐ μόνον αἱ τῶν θνητῶν ψυχαὶ γνωστικὴν τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ [e] δύναμιν ἔχουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν τοῦ κόσμου φησὶν (Tim. 37a sq.) ἀνακυκλουμένην αὐτὴν πρὸς ἑαυτήν, ὅταν οὐσίαν σκεδαστὴν ἔχοντός τινος ἐφάπτηται καὶ ὅταν ἀμέριστον, λέγειν κινουμένην διὰ πάσης ἑαυτῆς, ὅτῳ τ’ ἄν τι ταὐτὸν ᾖ καὶ ὅτου ἂν ἕτερον, πρὸς ὅ τι τε μάλιστα καὶ ὅπη καὶ ὅπως συμβαίνει κατὰ τὰ γιγνόμενα πρὸς ἕκαστον ‹ἕκαστα› εἶναι καὶ πάσχειν. ἐν τούτοις ἅμα καὶ τῶν δέκα κατηγοριῶν ποιούμενος ὑπογραφὴν ἔτι μᾶλλον τοῖς ἐφεξῆς διασαφεῖ. ‘λόγος’ γάρ φησιν ‘ἀληθής, ὅταν μὲν περὶ τὸ αἰσθητὸν γίγνηται καὶ ὁ τοῦ θατέρου κύκλος ὀρθὸς ἰὼν εἰς πᾶσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν ψυχὴν διαγγείλῃ, δόξαι [f] καὶ πίστεις γίγνονται βέβαιοι καὶ ἀληθεῖς· ὅταν δ’ αὖ περὶ τὸ λογιστικὸν ᾖ καὶ ὁ τοῦ ταὐτοῦ κύκλος εὔτροχος ὢν αὐτὰ μηνύσῃ, ἐπιστήμη ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀποτελεῖται· τούτω δ’ ἐν ᾧ τῶν ὄντων ἐγγίγνεσθον, ἐάν ποτέ τις αὐτὸ ἄλλο πλὴν ψυχὴν προσείπῃ, πᾶν μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ ἀληθὲς ἐρεῖ.’ πόθεν οὖν ἔσχεν ἡ ψυχὴ τὴν ἀντιληπτικὴν τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ καὶ δοξαστικὴν ταύτην κίνησιν, ἑτέραν τῆς νοητικῆς ἐκείνης [1024] [a] καὶ τελευτώσης εἰς ἐπιστήμην, ἔργον εἰπεῖν μὴ θεμένους βεβαίως, ὅτι νῦν οὐχ ἁπλῶς ψυχὴν ἀλλὰ κόσμου ψυχὴν συνίστησιν ἐξ ὑποκειμένων τῆς τε κρείττονος οὐσίας καὶ ἀμερίστου καὶ τῆς χείρονος, ἣν περὶ τὰ σώματα μεριστὴν κέκληκεν, οὐχ ἑτέραν οὖσαν ἢ τὴν δοξαστικὴν καὶ φανταστικὴν καὶ συμπαθῆ τῷ αἰσθητῷ κίνησιν, οὐ γενομένην ἀλλ’ ὑφεστῶσαν ἀίδιον ὥσπερ ἡ ἑτέρα. τὸ γὰρ νοερὸν ἡ φύσις ἔχουσα καὶ τὸ δοξαστικὸν εἶχεν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο μὲν ἀκίνητον ‹καὶ› ἀπαθὲς καὶ περὶ τὴν ἀεὶ μένουσαν ἱδρυμένον οὐσίαν, τοῦτο δὲ μεριστὸν καὶ πλανητόν, ἅτε δὴ φερομένης καὶ σκεδαννυμένης ἐφαπτόμενον [b] ὕλης. οὔτε γὰρ τὸ αἰσθητὸν εἰλήχει τάξεως ἀλλ’ ἦν ἄμορφον καὶ ἀόριστον, ἥ τε περὶ τοῦτο τεταγμένη δύναμις οὔτε δόξας ἐνάρθρους οὔτε κινήσεις ἁπάσας εἶχε τεταγμένας, ἀλλὰ τὰς πολλὰς ἐνυπνιώδεις καὶ παραφόρους καὶ ταραττούσας τὸ σωματοειδές, ὅσα μὴ κατὰ τύχην τῷ βελτίονι περιέπιπτεν· ἐν μέσῳ γὰρ ἦν ἀμφοῖν καὶ πρὸς ἀμφότερα συμπαθῆ καὶ συγγενῆ φύσιν εἶχε, τῷ μὲν αἰσθητικῷ τῆς ὕλης ἀντεχομένη τῷ δὲ κριτικῷ τῶν νοητῶν.

Οὕτω δέ πως καὶ αὐτὸς διασαφεῖ τοῖς ὀνόμασιν· ‘οὗτος’ γάρ φησι (Tim. 52d) ‘παρὰ τῆς ἐμῆς ψήφου λογισθεὶς ἐν κεφαλαίῳ δεδόσθω λόγος, ὄν τε καὶ χώραν [c] καὶ γένεσιν εἶναι τρία τριχῆ καὶ πρὶν οὐρανὸν γενέσθαι.’ χώραν τε γὰρ καλεῖ τὴν ὕλην ὥσπερ ἕδραν ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ ὑποδοχήν, ὂν δὲ τὸ νοητόν, γένεσιν δὲ τοῦ κόσμου μήπω γεγονότος οὐδεμίαν ἄλλην ἢ τὴν ἐν μεταβολαῖς καὶ κινήσεσιν οὐσίαν, τοῦ τυποῦντος καὶ τοῦ τυπουμένου μεταξὺ τεταγμένην, διαδιδοῦσαν ἐνταῦθα τὰς ἐκεῖθεν εἰκόνας. διά τε δὴ ταῦτα μεριστὴ προσηγορεύθη καὶ ὅτι τῷ αἰσθητῷ τὸ αἰσθανόμενον καὶ τῷ φανταστῷ τὸ φανταζόμενον ἀνάγκη συνδιανέμεσθαι καὶ συμπαρήκειν· ἡ γὰρ αἰσθητικὴ κίνησις, ἰδία ψυχῆς οὖσα, κινεῖται πρὸς τὸ αἰσθητὸν ἐκτός· [d] ὁ δὲ νοῦς αὐτὸς μὲν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ μόνιμος ἦν καὶ ἀκίνητος, ἐγγενόμενος δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ κρατήσας εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐπιστρέφει καὶ συμπεραίνει τὴν ἐγκύκλιον φορὰν περὶ τὸ μένον ἀεὶ μάλιστα ψαύουσαν τοῦ ὄντος. διὸ καὶ δυσανάκρατος ἡ κοινωνία γέγονεν αὐτῶν, τῷ ἀμερίστῳ τὸ μεριστὸν καὶ τῷ μηδαμῇ κινητῷ τὸ πάντῃ φορητὸν μιγνύουσα καὶ καταβιαζομένη θάτερον εἰς ταὐτὸν συνελθεῖν. ἦν δὲ τὸ θάτερον οὐ κίνησις ὥσπερ οὐδὲ ταὐτὸν στάσις, ἀλλ’ ἀρχὴ διαφορᾶς καὶ ἀνομοιότητος. ἑκάτερον γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς ἑτέρας ἀρχῆς κάτεισι, τὸ μὲν ταὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς τὸ δὲ θάτερον ἀπὸ τῆς δυάδος· καὶ μέμικται πρῶτον ἐνταῦθα [e] περὶ τὴν ψυχήν, ἀριθμοῖς καὶ λόγοις συνδεθέντα καὶ μεσότησιν ἐναρμονίοις, καὶ ποιεῖ θάτερον μὲν ἐγγενόμενον τῷ ταὐτῷ διαφοράν, τὸ δὲ ταὐτὸν ἐν τῷ ἑτέρῳ τάξιν, ὡς δῆλόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς πρώταις τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεσιν· εἰσὶ δ’ αὗται τὸ κριτικὸν καὶ τὸ κινητικόν. ἡ μὲν οὖν κίνησις εὐθὺς ἐπιδείκνυται περὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐν μὲν τῇ ταὐτότητι τὴν ἑτερότητα τῇ περιφορᾷ τῶν ἀπλανῶν, ἐν δὲ τῇ ἑτερότητι τὴν ταὐτότητα τῇ τάξει τῶν πλανήτων· ἐπικρατεῖ γὰρ ἐν ἐκείνοις τὸ ταὐτὸν ἐν δὲ τοῖς περὶ γῆν τοὐναντίον. ἡ δὲ κρίσις ἀρχὰς μὲν ἔχει δύο, τόν τε νοῦν ἀπὸ τοῦ ταὐτοῦ πρὸς τὰ καθόλου καὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀπὸ [f] τοῦ ἑτέρου πρὸς τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα. μέμικται δὲ λόγος ἐξ ἀμφοῖν, νόησις ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς καὶ δόξα γιγνόμενος ἐν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς· ὀργάνοις τε ‹ταῖς› μεταξὺ φαντασίαις τε καὶ μνήμαις χρώμενος, ὧν τὰ μὲν ἐν τῷ ταὐτῷ τὸ ἕτερον τὰ δ’ ἐν τῷ ἑτέρῳ ποιεῖ τὸ ταὐτόν. ἔστι γὰρ ἡ μὲν νόησις κίνησις τοῦ νοοῦντος περὶ τὸ μένον, ἡ δὲ δόξα [1025] [a] μονὴ τοῦ αἰσθανομένου περὶ τὸ κινούμενον· φαντασίαν δὲ συμπλοκὴν δόξης πρὸς αἴσθησιν οὖσαν ἵστησιν ἐν μνήμῃ τὸ ταὐτόν· τὸ δὲ θάτερον κινεῖ πάλιν ἐν διαφορᾷ τοῦ πρόσθεν καὶ νῦν, ἑτερότητος ἅμα καὶ ταὐτότητος ἐφαπτόμενον.

Δεῖ δὲ τὴν περὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ κόσμου γενομένην σύντηξιν εἰκόνα λαβεῖν τῆς ἀναλογίας ἐν ᾗ διηρμόσατο ‹τὴν› ψυχήν. ἐκεῖ μὲν γὰρ ἦν ἄκρα τὸ πῦρ καὶ ἡ γῆ, χαλεπὴν πρὸς ἄλληλα κραθῆναι φύσιν ἔχοντα, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἄκρατον καὶ ἀσύστατον· ὅθεν ἐν μέσῳ θέμενος αὐτῶν τὸν μὲν ἀέρα πρὸ τοῦ πυρὸς τὸ δ’ ὕδωρ πρὸ τῆς γῆς, ταῦτα πρῶτον ἀλλήλοις ἐκέρασεν, εἶτα διὰ τούτων ἐκεῖνα [b] πρός τε ταῦτα καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα συνέμιξε καὶ συνήρμοσεν. ἐνταῦθα δὲ πάλιν τὸ ταὐτὸν καὶ τὸ θάτερον, ἐναντίας δυνάμεις καὶ ἀκρότητας ἀντιπάλους, συνήγαγεν οὐ δι’ αὑτῶν, ἀλλ’ οὐσίας ἑτέρας μεταξύ, τὴν μὲν ἀμέριστον πρὸ τοῦ ταὐτοῦ πρὸ δὲ τοῦ θατέρου τὴν μεριστήν, ἔστιν ᾗ προσήκουσαν ἑκατέραν ἑκατέρᾳ τάξας, εἶτα μιχθείσας ἐκείναις ἐπεγκεραννύμενος, οὕτω τὸ πᾶν συνύφηνε τῆς ψυχῆς εἶδος, ὡς ἦν ἀνυστόν, ἐκ διαφόρων ὅμοιον ἔκ τε πολλῶν ἓν ἀπειργασμένος. οὐκ εὖ δέ τινες εἰρῆσθαι λέγουσι δύσμικτον ὑπὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος τὴν θατέρου φύσιν, οὐκ ἄδεκτον οὖσαν ἀλλὰ καὶ φίλην μεταβολῆς· μᾶλλον [c] δὲ τὴν τοῦ ταὐτοῦ, μόνιμον καὶ δυσμετάβλητον οὖσαν, οὐ ῥᾳδίως προσίεσθαι μῖξιν ἀλλ’ ἀπωθεῖσθαι καὶ φεύγειν, ὅπως ἁπλῆ διαμείνῃ καὶ εἰλικρινὴς καὶ ἀναλλοίωτος. οἱ δὲ ταῦτ’ ἐγκαλοῦντες ἀγνοοῦσιν ὅτι τὸ μὲν ταὐτὸν ἰδέα τῶν ὡσαύτως ἐχόντων ἐστὶ τὸ δὲ θάτερον τῶν διαφόρως· καὶ τούτου μὲν ἔργον, ὧν ἂν ἅψηται, διιστάναι καὶ ἀλλοιοῦν καὶ πολλὰ ποιεῖν· ἐκείνου δὲ συνάγειν καὶ συνιστάναι δι’ ὁμοιότητος ἐκ πολλῶν μίαν ἀναλαμβάνοντα μορφὴν καὶ δύναμιν.

Αὗται μὲν οὖν δυνάμεις τῆς τοῦ παντός εἰσι ψυχῆς· †εἰς δὲ θνητὰ καὶ παθητὰ παρεισιοῦσαι ὄργανα [d] ἄφθαρτα καὶ αὐτὰ σωμάτων, ἐν ταύταις τὸ τῆς δυαδικῆς καὶ ἀορίστου μερίδος ἐπιφαίνεται μᾶλλον εἶδος, ‹τὸ› δὲ τῆς ἁπλῆς καὶ μοναδικῆς ἀμυδρότερον ὑποδέδυκεν. οὐ μὴν ῥᾳδίως ἄν τις οὔτε πάθος ἀνθρώπου παντάπασιν ἀπηλλαγμένον λογισμοῦ κατανοήσειεν οὔτε διανοίας κίνησιν, ᾗ μηδὲν ἐπιθυμίας ἢ φιλοτιμίας ἢ τοῦ χαίροντος ἢ λυπουμένου πρόσεστι. διὸ τῶν φιλοσόφων οἱ μὲν τὰ πάθη λόγους ποιοῦσιν, ὡς πᾶσαν ἐπιθυμίαν καὶ λύπην καὶ ὀργὴν κρίσεις οὔσας· οἱ δὲ τὰς ἀρετὰς ἀποφαίνουσι παθητικάς, καὶ γὰρ ἀνδρείᾳ τὸ φοβούμενον καὶ σωφροσύνῃ τὸ ἡδόμενον καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ τὸ κερδαλέον εἶναι. καὶ μὴν [e] θεωρητικῆς γε τῆς ψυχῆς οὔσης ἅμα καὶ πρακτικῆς, καὶ θεωρούσης ‹μὲν τὰ καθόλου πραττούσης δὲ› τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα, καὶ νοεῖν μὲν ἐκεῖνα ταῦτα δ’ αἰσθάνεσθαι δοκούσης, ὁ κοινὸς λόγος ἀεὶ περί τε ταὐτὸν ἐντυγχάνων τῷ θατέρῳ καὶ ταὐτῷ περὶ θάτερον ἐπιχειρεῖ μὲν ὅροις καὶ διαιρέσεσι χωρίζειν τὸ ἓν καὶ τὰ πολλὰ καὶ τὸ ἀμερὲς καὶ τὸ μεριστόν, οὐ δύναται δὲ καθαρῶς ἐν οὐδετέρῳ γενέσθαι διὰ τὸ καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐναλλὰξ ἐμπεπλέχθαι καὶ καταμεμῖχθαι δι’ ἀλλήλων. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τῆς οὐσίας τὴν ἐκ τῆς ἀμερίστου καὶ τῆς μεριστῆς ὁ θεὸς ὑποδοχὴν τῷ ταὐτῷ καὶ τῷ θατέρῳ συνέστησεν, ἵν’ ἐν διαφορᾷ [f] τάξις γένηται· τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν γενέσθαι. ἐπεὶ χωρὶς τούτων τὸ μὲν ταὐτὸν οὐκ εἶχε διαφορὰν ὥστ’ οὐδὲ κίνησιν οὐδὲ γένεσιν, τὸ θάτερον δὲ τάξιν οὐκ εἶχεν ὥστ’ οὐδὲ σύστασιν οὐδὲ †γένεσιν. καὶ γὰρ εἰ τῷ ταὐτῷ συμβέβηκεν ἑτέρῳ εἶναι τοῦ ἑτέρου καὶ τῷ ἑτέρῳ πάλιν αὑτῷ ταὐτόν, οὐθὲν ἡ τοιαύτη μέθεξις ἀλλήλων ποιεῖ γόνιμον, ἀλλὰ δεῖται τρίτης τινὸς οἷον ὕλης ὑποδεχομένης καὶ διατιθεμένης [1026] [a] ὑπ’ ἀμφοτέρων. αὕτη δ’ ἐστίν, ἣν πρώτην συνέστησε τῷ περὶ τὰ νοητὰ μονίμῳ τοῦ περὶ τὰ σώματα κινητικοῦ τὸ ἄπειρον ὁρίσας.

Ὡς δὲ φωνή τίς ἐστιν ἄλογος καὶ ἀσήμαντος, λόγος δὲ λέξις ἐν φωνῇ σημαντικῇ διανοίας, ἁρμονία δὲ τὸ ἐκ φθόγγων καὶ διαστημάτων, καὶ φθόγγος μὲν ἓν καὶ ταὐτὸν διάστημα δὲ φθόγγων ἑτερότης καὶ διαφορά, μιχθέντων δὲ τούτων ᾠδὴ γίγνεται καὶ μέλος· οὕτω τὸ παθητικὸν τῆς ψυχῆς ἀόριστον ἦν καὶ ἀστάθμητον, εἶθ’ ὡρίσθη πέρατος ἐγγενομένου καὶ εἴδους τῷ μεριστῷ καὶ παντοδαπῷ τῆς κινήσεως· συλλαβοῦσα δὲ τὸ ταὐτὸν καὶ τὸ θάτερον, ὁμοιότησι καὶ ἀνομοιότησιν ἀριθμῶν ἐκ διαφορᾶς ὁμολογίαν ἀπεργασαμένων ζωή τε τοῦ παντός [b] ἐστιν ἔμφρων καὶ ἁρμονία καὶ λόγος ἄγων πειθοῖ μεμιγμένην ἀνάγκην, ἣν εἱμαρμένην οἱ πολλοὶ καλοῦσιν, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ (A 45) Φιλίαν ὁμοῦ καὶ Νεῖκος, Ἡράκλειτος δὲ (B 51) ‘παλίντροπον ἁρμονίην κόσμου ὅκωσπερ λύρης καὶ τόξου,’ Παρμενίδης δὲ (B 7. 8) φῶς καὶ σκότος, Ἀναξαγόρας δὲ νοῦν καὶ ἀπειρίαν, Ζωροάστρης δὲ θεὸν καὶ δαίμονα, τὸν μὲν Ὠρομάσδην καλῶν τὸν δ’ Ἀρειμάνιον. Εὐριπίδης δ’ οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἀντὶ τοῦ συμπλεκτικοῦ τῷ διαζευκτικῷ κέχρηται (Tro. 886)

‘Ζεὺς εἴτ’ ἀνάγκη φύσεος εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν·’

[c]καὶ γὰρ ἀνάγκη καὶ νοῦς ἐστιν ἡ διήκουσα διὰ πάντων δύναμις. Αἰγύπτιοι μὲν οὖν μυθολογοῦντες αἰνίττονται, τοῦ Ὥρου δίκην ὀφλόντος τῷ μὲν πατρὶ τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ αἷμα τῇ δὲ μητρὶ τὴν σάρκα καὶ τὴν πιμελὴν προσνεμηθῆναι. τῆς δὲ ψυχῆς οὐδὲν μὲν εἰλικρινὲς οὐδ’ ἄκρατον οὐδὲ χωρὶς ἀπολείπεται τῶν ἄλλων· ‘ἁρμονίη γὰρ ἀφανὴς φανερῆς κρείττων’ καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (B 54), ἐν ᾗ τὰς διαφορὰς καὶ τὰς ἑτερότητας ὁ μιγνύων θεὸς ἔκρυψε καὶ κατέδυσεν· ἐμφαίνεται δ’ ὅμως αὐτῆς τῷ μὲν ἀλόγῳ τὸ ταραχῶδες τῷ δὲ λογικῷ τὸ εὔτακτον, ταῖς δ’ αἰσθήσεσι τὸ κατηναγκασμένον τῷ δὲ νῷ τὸ αὐτοκρατές. ἡ δ’ [d] ὁριστικὴ δύναμις τὸ καθόλου καὶ τὸ ἀμερὲς διὰ συγγένειαν ἀγαπᾷ, καὶ τοὐναντίον ἡ διαιρετικὴ πρὸς τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα φέρεται τῷ μεριστῷ. χαίρει δ’ ὅλον τῇ διὰ τὸ ταὐτὸν ἐφ’ ἃ δεῖται μεταβολῇ ‹μᾶλλον ἢ τῇ› διὰ τὸ θάτερον. οὐχ ἥκιστα δ’ ἥ τε πρὸς τὸ καλὸν διαφορὰ καὶ τὸ αἰσχρὸν ἥ τε πρὸς τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ τὸ ἀλγεινὸν αὖθις οἵ τε τῶν ἐρώντων ἐνθουσιασμοὶ καὶ πτοήσεις καὶ διαμάχαι τοῦ φιλοκάλου πρὸς τὸ ἀκόλαστον ἐνδείκνυνται τὸ μικτὸν ἔκ τε τῆς θείας καὶ ἀπαθοῦς ἔκ τε τῆς θνητῆς καὶ περὶ τὰ σώματα παθητῆς μερίδος· ὧν καὶ αὐτὸς ὀνομάζει (Phaedr. 237d) τὸ μὲν ἐπιθυμίαν ἔμφυτον ἡδονῶν, τὸ δ’ ἐπείσακτον δόξαν ἐφιεμένην τοῦ ἀρίστου· τὸ γὰρ [e] παθητικὸν ἀναδίδωσιν ἐξ ἑαυτῆς ἡ ψυχή, τοῦ δὲ νοῦ μετέσχεν ἀπὸ τῆς κρείττονος ἀρχῆς ἐγγενομένου.

Τῆς δὲ διπλῆς κοινωνίας ταύτης οὐδ’ ἡ περὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀπήλλακται φύσις, ἀλλ’ ἑτερορρεποῦσα νῦν μὲν ὀρθοῦται τῇ ταὐτοῦ περιόδῳ κράτος ἐχούσῃ καὶ διακυβερνᾷ τὸν κόσμον· ἔσται δέ τις χρόνου μοῖρα καὶ γέγονεν ἤδη πολλάκις, ἐν ᾗ τὸ μὲν φρόνιμον ἀμβλύνεται καὶ καταδαρθάνει λήθης ἐμπιπλάμενον τοῦ οἰκείου, τὸ δὲ σώματι σύνηθες ἐξ ἀρχῆς καὶ συμπαθὲς ἐφέλκεται καὶ βαρύνει καὶ ἀνελίσσει τὴν ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ παντὸς πορείαν, [f] ἀναρρῆξαι δ’ οὐ δύναται παντάπασιν, ἀλλ’ ἀνήνεγκεν αὖθις τὰ βελτίω καὶ ἀνέβλεψε πρὸς τὸ παράδειγμα θεοῦ [1027] [a] συνεπιστρέφοντος καὶ συναπευθύνοντος. οὕτως ἐνδείκνυται πολλαχόθεν ἡμῖν τὸ μὴ πᾶν ἔργον εἶναι θεοῦ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀλλὰ σύμφυτον ἔχουσαν ἐν ἑαυτῇ τὴν τοῦ κακοῦ μοῖραν ὑπ’ ἐκείνου διακεκοσμῆσθαι, τῷ μὲν ἑνὶ τὴν ἀπειρίαν ὁρίσαντος, ἵν’ οὐσία γένηται πέρατος μετασχοῦσα, τῇ δὲ ταὐτοῦ καὶ τῇ ἑτέρου δυνάμει τάξιν καὶ μεταβολὴν καὶ διαφορὰν καὶ ὁμοιότητα συμμίξαντος, πᾶσι δὲ τούτοις, ὡς ἀνυστὸν ἦν, κοινωνίαν πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ φιλίαν ἐργασαμένου δι’ ἀριθμῶν καὶ ἁρμονίας.

Περὶ ὧν εἰ καὶ πολλάκις ἀκηκόατε καὶ πολλοῖς ἐντετυχήκατε λόγοις καὶ γράμμασιν, οὐ χεῖρόν ἐστι κἀμὲ βραχέως διελθεῖν, προεκθέμενον τὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος (Tim. 35b)· [b] ‘μίαν ἀφεῖλε τὸ πρῶτον ἀπὸ παντὸς μοῖραν, μετὰ δὲ ταύτην ἀφῄρει διπλασίαν ταύτης· τὴν δ’ αὖ τρίτην, ἡμιολίαν μὲν τῆς δευτέρας τριπλασίαν δὲ τῆς πρώτης· τετάρτην δὲ τῆς δευτέρας διπλῆν, πέμπτην δὲ τριπλῆν τῆς τρίτης, τὴν δ’ ἕκτην τῆς πρώτης ὀκταπλασίαν, ἑβδόμην δ’ ἑπτακαιεικοσαπλασίαν τῆς πρώτης. μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα συνεπληροῦτο τά τε διπλάσια καὶ τριπλάσια διαστήματα, μοίρας ἔτι ἐκεῖθεν ἀποτέμνων καὶ τιθεὶς εἰς τὸ μεταξὺ τούτων, ὥστ’ ἐν ἑκάστῳ διαστήματι δύο εἶναι μεσότητας, τὴν μὲν ταὐτῷ μέρει τῶν ἄκρων αὐτῶν ὑπερέχουσαν καὶ ὑπερεχομένην, τὴν δ’ ἴσῳ μὲν κατ’ ἀριθμὸν ὑπερέχουσαν [c] ἴσῳ δ’ ὑπερεχομένην· ἡμιολίων δὲ διαστάσεων καὶ ἐπιτρίτων καὶ ἐπογδόων γενομένων ἐκ τούτων τῶν δεσμῶν ἐν ταῖς πρόσθεν διαστάσεσι, τῷ τοῦ ἐπογδόου διαστήματι τὰ ἐπίτριτα πάντα συνεπληροῦτο, λείπων αὐτῶν ἑκάστου μόριον, τῆς τοῦ μορίου ταύτης διαστάσεως λειφθείσης ἀριθμοῦ πρὸς ἀριθμόν, ἐχούσης τοὺς ὅρους ἓξ καὶ πεντήκοντα καὶ διακοσίων πρὸς τρία καὶ τεσσαράκοντα καὶ διακόσια.’ ἐν τούτοις ζητεῖται πρῶτον περὶ τῆς ποσότητος τῶν ἀριθμῶν, δεύτερον περὶ τῆς τάξεως, τρίτον περὶ τῆς δυνάμεως· περὶ μὲν τῆς ποσότητος τίνες εἰσίν, οὓς ἐν τοῖς διπλασίοις καὶ τριπλασίοις διαστήμασι λαμβάνει· [d] περὶ δὲ τῆς τάξεως πότερον ἐφ’ ἑνὸς στίχου πάντας ἐκθετέον ὡς Θεόδωρος, ἢ μᾶλλον ὡς Κράντωρ ἐν τῷ Λ σχήματι, τοῦ πρώτου κατὰ κορυφὴν τιθεμένου καὶ χωρὶς μὲν τῶν διπλασίων χωρὶς δὲ τῶν τριπλασίων ἐν δυσὶ στίχοις ὑποταττομένων· περὶ δὲ τῆς χρείας καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως τί ποιοῦσι παραλαμβανόμενοι πρὸς τὴν σύστασιν τῆς ψυχῆς.

Πρῶτον οὖν περὶ τοῦ πρώτου παραιτησόμεθα τοὺς λέγοντας, ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν λόγων αὐτῶν ἀπόχρη θεωρεῖν ἣν ἔχει τά τε διαστήματα φύσιν αἵ τε ταῦτα συμπληροῦσαι μεσότητες, ἐν οἷς ἄν τις ἀριθμοῖς ὑπόθηται χώρας ἔχουσι δεκτικὰς μεταξὺ τῶν εἰρημένων ἀναλογιῶν, ὁμοίως περαινομένης [e] τῆς διδασκαλίας. κἂν γὰρ ἀληθὲς ᾖ τὸ λεγόμενον, ἀμυδρὰν ποιεῖ τὴν μάθησιν ἄνευ παραδειγμάτων, ἄλλης τε θεωρίας ἀπείργει χάριν ἐχούσης οὐκ ἀφιλόσοφον. ἂν οὖν ἀπὸ τῆς μονάδος ἀρξάμενοι τοὺς διπλασίους καὶ τριπλασίους ἐν μέρει τιθῶμεν, ὡς αὐτὸς ὑφηγεῖται, γενήσονται κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς ὅπου μὲν τὸ δεύτερον καὶ τὸ τέταρτον καὶ ὄγδοον, ὅπου δὲ τρίτον καὶ ἔννατον καὶ εἰκοστοέβδομον, συνάπαντες μὲν ἑπτά, κοινῆς δὲ λαμβανομένης τῆς μονάδος ἄχρι τεσσάρων τῷ πολλαπλασιασμῷ προιόντες. οὐ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα μόνον ἀλλὰ πολλαχόθι [f] τῆς τετράδος ἡ πρὸς τὴν ἑβδομάδα συμπάθεια γίγνεται κατάδηλος. ἡ μὲν οὖν ὑπὸ τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν ὑμνουμένη τετρακτύς, τὰ ἓξ καὶ τριάκοντα, θαυμαστὸν ἔχειν δοκεῖ τὸ συγκεῖσθαι μὲν ἐκ πρώτων ἀρτίων τεσσάρων καὶ πρώτων περισσῶν τεσσάρων, γίγνεσθαι δὲ συζυγία τετάρτη τῶν ἐφεξῆς συντεθειμένων· πρώτη μὲν γάρ ἐστι συζυγία [1017] ἡ τοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ τῶν δυεῖν, δευτέρα δ’ ἡ τῶν τριῶν [7] καὶ τεττάρων, τρίτη δ’ ἡ τῶν ε΄ καὶ Ϛ΄· ὧν οὐδεμία ποιεῖ τετράγωνον οὔτ’ αὐτὴ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν οὔτε μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων· ‹ἡ δὲ τῶν ζ΄ καὶ η΄› τετάρτη μέν ἐστιν, συντιθεμένη δὲ ταῖς προτέραις τριακονταὲξ τετράγωνον παρέσχεν. ἡ δὲ τῶν ὑπὸ Πλάτωνος ἐκκειμένων ἀριθμῶν τετρακτὺς ἐντελεστέραν ἔσχηκε τὴν γένεσιν, τῶν μὲν ἀρτίων ἀρτίοις διαστήμασι τῶν δὲ περιττῶν περιττοῖς πολλαπλασιασθέντων· περιέχει δὲ τὴν μὲν μονάδα, κοινὴν οὖσαν ἀρχὴν ἀρτίων καὶ περιττῶν, τῶν δ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῇ τὰ μὲν δύο καὶ τρία πρώτους ἐπιπέδους, τὰ δὲ τέτταρα καὶ ἐννέα πρώτους τετραγώνους, τὰ δ’ ὀκτὼ καὶ εἰκοσιεπτὰ πρώτους κύβους [8] ἐν ἀριθμοῖς, ἔξω λόγου τῆς μονάδος τιθεμένης. ᾗ καὶ δῆλός ἐστι βουλόμενος οὐκ ἐπὶ μιᾶς εὐθείας ἅπαντας ἀλλ’ ἐναλλὰξ καὶ ἰδίᾳ τάσσεσθαι τοὺς ἀρτίους μετ’ ἀλλήλων καὶ πάλιν τοὺς περισσούς, ὡς ὑπογέγραπται. οὕτως αἱ συζυγίαι τῶν ὁμοίων ἔσονται πρὸς τοὺς ὁμοίους καὶ ποιήσουσιν ἀριθμοὺς ἐπιφανεῖς κατά τε σύνθεσιν καὶ πολλαπλασιασμὸν ἐξ ἀλλήλων.

Κατὰ σύνθεσιν οὕτως· τὰ δύο καὶ τὰ τρία πέντε γίγνεται, τὰ τέσσαρα καὶ τὰ ἐννέα τριακαίδεκα, τὰ δ’ ὀκτὼ καὶ εἰκοσιεπτὰ πέντε καὶ τριάκοντα. τούτων γὰρ τῶν ἀριθμῶν οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ τὰ μὲν πέντε τροφόν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ [9] φθόγγον, ἐκάλουν, οἰόμενοι τῶν τοῦ τόνου διαστημάτων πρῶτον εἶναι φθεγκτὸν τὸ πέμπτον· τὰ δὲ τρισκαίδεκα λεῖμμα, καθάπερ Πλάτων, τὴν εἰς ἴσα τοῦ τόνου διανομὴν ἀπογιγνώσκοντες· τὰ δὲ πέντε καὶ τριάκοντα ἁρμονίαν, ὅτι συνέστηκεν ἐκ δυεῖν κύβων πρώτων ἀπ’ ἀρτίου καὶ περιττοῦ γεγονότων, ἐκ τεσσάρων δ’ ἀριθμῶν, τοῦ Ϛ΄ καὶ τοῦ η΄ καὶ τοῦ θ΄ καὶ τοῦ ιβ΄, τὴν ἀριθμητικὴν καὶ τὴν [1018] [a] ἁρμονικὴν ἀναλογίαν περιεχόντων. ἔσται δὲ μᾶλλον ἡ δύναμις ἐκφανὴς ἐπὶ διαγράμματος. ἔστω τὸ α β γ δ παραλληλόγραμμον ὀρθογώνιον, ἔχον τῶν πλευρῶν τὴν α β πέντε, τὴν δὲ α δ ἑπτά· καὶ τμηθείσης τῆς μὲν ἐλάττονος εἰς δύο καὶ τρία κατὰ τὸ κ, τῆς δὲ μείζονος εἰς τρία καὶ τέτταρα κατὰ τὸ λ, διήχθωσαν ἀπὸ τῶν τομῶν εὐθεῖαι τέμνουσαι ἀλλήλας κατὰ τὸ κ μ ν καὶ κατὰ τὸ λ μ ξ, καὶ ποιοῦσαι τὸ μὲν α κ μ λ ἕξ, τὸ δὲ κ β ξ μ ἐννέα, τὸ δὲ λ μ ν δ ὀκτώ, τὸ δὲ μ ξ γ ν δώδεκα· τὸ δ’ ὅλον παραλληλόγραμμον τριάκοντα καὶ πέντε τοὺς τῶν συμφωνιῶν τῶν πρώτων λόγους ἐν τοῖς τῶν χωρίων [b] ἀριθμοῖς, εἰς ἃ διῄρηται, περιέχον. τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἓξ καὶ ὀκτὼ τὸν ἐπίτριτον ἔχει λόγον, ἐν ᾧ τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων· τὰ δ’ ἓξ καὶ ἐννέα τὸν ἡμιόλιον, ἐν ᾧ τὸ διὰ πέντε· τὰ δ’ ἓξ καὶ ιβ΄ τὸν διπλάσιον, ἐν ᾧ τὸ διὰ πασῶν· ἔνεστι δὲ καὶ ὁ τοῦ τόνου λόγος ἐπόγδοος ὢν ἐν τοῖς ἐννέα καὶ ὀκτώ. διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ἁρμονίαν τὸν περιέχοντα τοὺς λόγους τούτους ἀριθμὸν ἐκάλεσαν. ἑξάκις δὲ γενόμενος τὸν τῶν δέκα ποιεῖ καὶ διακοσίων ἀριθμόν, ἐν ὅσαις ἡμέραις λέγεται τὰ ἑπτάμηνα τῶν βρεφῶν τελεογονεῖσθαι.

Πάλιν δ’ ἀφ’ ἑτέρας ἀρχῆς, κατὰ πολλαπλασιασμὸν ὁ μὲν δὶς γ΄ τὸν Ϛ΄ ποιεῖ, ὁ δὲ τετράκις ἐννέα τὸν τριακονταέξ, [c] ὁ δ’ ὀκτάκις κζ΄ τὸν σιϚ΄. καὶ ἔστιν ὁ μὲν Ϛ΄ τέλειος, ἴσος ὢν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ μέρεσι· καὶ γάμος καλεῖται διὰ τὴν τοῦ ἀρτίου καὶ περιττοῦ σύμμιξιν· ἔτι δὲ συνέστηκεν ἔκ τε τῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ τοῦ ‹πρώτου› ἀρτίου καὶ τοῦ πρώτου περιττοῦ. ὁ δὲ λϚ΄ πρῶτός ἐστι τετράγωνος ἅμα καὶ τρίγωνος, τετράγωνος μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς ἑξάδος τρίγωνος δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ὀγδοάδος· καὶ γέγονε πολλαπλασιασμῷ μὲν τετραγώνων δυεῖν, τοῦ τέσσαρα τὸν ἐννέα πολλαπλασιάσαντος, συνθέσει δὲ τριῶν κύβων, τὸ γὰρ ἓν καὶ τὰ ὀκτὼ καὶ τὰ εἰκοσιεπτὰ συντεθέντα ποιεῖ τὸν προγεγραμμένον ἀριθμόν.

[d] ἔτι δ’ ἑτερομήκης ἀπὸ δυεῖν πλευρῶν, τῶν μὲν δώδεκα τρὶς γινομένων τῶν δ’ ἐννέα τετράκις. ἂν οὖν ἐκτεθῶσιν αἱ τῶν σχημάτων πλευραί, τοῦ τετραγώνου τὰ Ϛ΄ καὶ τοῦ τριγώνου τὰ ὀκτὼ καὶ παραλληλογράμμων τοῦ μὲν ἑτέρου τὰ ἐννέα τοῦ δ’ ἑτέρου τὰ ιβ΄, τοὺς τῶν συμφωνιῶν ποιήσουσι λόγους. ἔσται γὰρ τὰ δώδεκα πρὸς μὲν τὰ ἐννέα διὰ τεσσάρων ὡς νήτη πρὸς παραμέσην, πρὸς δὲ τὰ ὀκτὼ διὰ πέντε ὡς νήτη πρὸς μέσην, πρὸς δὲ τὰ Ϛ΄ διὰ πασῶν ὡς νήτη πρὸς ὑπάτην. ὁ δὲ τῶν σιϚ΄ κύβος ἐστὶν ἀπὸ ἑξάδος ἴσος τῇ ἑαυτοῦ περιμέτρῳ.

Τοιαύτας δὲ δυνάμεις τῶν ἐκκειμένων ἀριθμῶν ἐχόντων, ἴδιον τῷ τελευταίῳ συμβέβηκε, τῷ κζ΄, τὸ τοῖς [e] πρὸ αὐτοῦ συντιθεμένοις ἴσον εἶναι πᾶσιν, ἔστι δὲ καὶ περιοδικὸς σελήνης. καὶ τῶν ἐμμελῶν διαστημάτων οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ τὸν τόνον ἐν τούτῳ τῷ ἀριθμῷ τάττουσι· διὸ καὶ τὰ τρισκαίδεκα λεῖμμα καλοῦσιν, ἀπολείπει γὰρ μονάδι τοῦ ἡμίσεος. ὅτι δ’ οὗτοι καὶ τοὺς τῶν συμφωνιῶν λόγους περιέχουσι, ῥᾴδιον καταμαθεῖν. καὶ γὰρ διπλάσιος λόγος ἐστὶν ὁ τῶν δύο πρὸς τὸ ἓν ἐν ᾧ τὸ διὰ πασῶν, καὶ ἡμιόλιος ὁ πρὸς τὰ δύο τῶν τριῶν ἐν ᾧ τὸ διὰ πέντε, καὶ ἐπίτριτος ὁ πρὸς τὰ τρία τῶν τεσσάρων ἐν ᾧ τὸ διὰ [f] τεσσάρων, καὶ τριπλάσιος ὁ πρὸς τὰ τρία τῶν ἐννέα ἐν ᾧ τὸ διὰ πασῶν καὶ διὰ πέντε, καὶ τετραπλάσιος ὁ πρὸς τὰ δύο τῶν ὀκτὼ ἐν ᾧ τὸ δὶς διὰ πασῶν· ἔνεστι δὲ καὶ ἐπόγδοος ὁ πρὸς τὰ ὀκτὼ τῶν ἐννέα ἐν ᾧ τὸ τονιαῖον. ἂν τοίνυν ἡ μονὰς ἐπίκοινος οὖσα καὶ τοῖς ἀρτίοις συναριθμῆται καὶ τοῖς περιττοῖς, ὁ μὲν ἅπας ἀριθμὸς τὸ τῆς δεκάδος παρέχεται πλῆθος· οἱ γὰρ ἀπὸ μονάδος μέχρι τῶν δέκα συντιθέμενοι .... πεντεκαίδεκα, τρίγωνον ἀπὸ [1019] [a] πεντάδος· ὁ δὲ περιττὸς τὸν τεσσαράκοντα κατὰ σύνθεσιν μὲν ἐκ τῶν δεκατριῶν καὶ τῶν κζ΄ γεννώμενον, οἷς τὰ μελῳδούμενα μετροῦσιν εὐσήμως οἱ μαθηματικοὶ διαστήματα, τὸ μὲν δίεσιν τὸ δὲ τόνον καλοῦντες· κατὰ τὸν πολλαπλασιασμὸν δὲ τῇ τῆς τετρακτύος δυνάμει γιγνόμενον· τῶν γὰρ πρώτων τεσσάρων καθ’ αὑτὸν ἑκάστου τετράκις λαμβανομένου γίγνεται τέσσαρα καὶ η΄ καὶ ιβ΄ καὶ ιϚ΄· ταῦτα τὸν μ΄ συντίθησι, περιέχοντα τοὺς τῶν συμφωνιῶν λόγους· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ιϚ΄ ἐπίτριτα τῶν δεκαδύο ἐστὶν τῶν δ’ ὀκτὼ διπλάσια, τῶν δὲ τεσσάρων τετραπλάσια· [b] τὰ ‹δὲ› ιβ΄ τῶν ὀκτὼ ἡμιόλια, τῶν δὲ τεσσάρων τριπλάσια· οὗτοι δ’ οἱ λόγοι τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων καὶ τὸ διὰ πέντε καὶ τὸ διὰ πασῶν καὶ τὸ δὶς διὰ πασῶν περιέχουσιν. ἴσος γε μήν ἐστιν ὁ τῶν τεσσαράκοντα δυσὶ τετραγώνοις καὶ δυσὶ κύβοις ὁμοῦ λαμβανομένοις· τὸ γὰρ ἓν καὶ τὰ τέσσαρα καὶ τὰ ὀκτὼ καὶ τὰ κζ΄ κύβοι καὶ τετράγωνοι ‹μ΄› γίγνονται συντεθέντες. ὥστε πολὺ τῆς Πυθαγορικῆς τὴν Πλατωνικὴν τετρακτὺν ποικιλωτέραν εἶναι τῇ διαθέσει καὶ τελειοτέραν.

Ἀλλὰ ταῖς εἰσαγομέναις μεσότησι τῶν ὑποκειμένων ἀριθμῶν χώρας οὐ διδόντων, ἐδέησε μείζονας ὅρους [c] λαβεῖν ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῖς λόγοις· καὶ λεκτέον τίνες εἰσὶν οὗτοι. πρότερον δὲ περὶ τῶν μεσοτήτων· ὧν τὴν μὲν ἴσῳ κατ’ ἀριθμὸν ὑπερέχουσαν ἴσῳ δ’ ὑπερεχομένην ἀριθμητικὴν οἱ νῦν καλοῦσι, τὴν δὲ ταὐτῷ μέρει τῶν ἄκρων αὐτῶν ὑπερέχουσαν καὶ ὑπερεχομένην ὑπεναντίαν. ὅροι δ’ εἰσὶ τῆς μὲν ἀριθμητικῆς Ϛ΄ καὶ θ΄ καὶ ιβ΄, τὰ γὰρ ἐννέα τῷ ἴσῳ κατ’ ἀριθμὸν τῶν ἓξ ὑπερέχει καὶ τῶν ιβ΄ λείπεται· τῆς δ’ ὑπεναντίας Ϛ΄ η΄ ιβ΄, τὰ γὰρ ὀκτὼ δυσὶ μὲν τῶν Ϛ΄ ὑπερέχει τέτταρσι δὲ τῶν ιβ΄ λείπεται, ὧν τὰ μὲν δύο τῶν ἓξ τὰ δὲ τέσσαρα τῶν δώδεκα τριτημόριόν ἐστι. συμβέβηκεν οὖν ἐν μὲν τῇ ἀριθμητικῇ ταὐτῷ μέρει τὸ μέσον ὑπερέχεσθαι καὶ ὑπερέχειν, ἐν δὲ τῇ ὑπεναντίᾳ ταὐτῷ μέρει τῶν ἄκρων τοῦ μὲν ἀποδεῖν τὸ δ’ ὑπερβάλλειν· ἐκεῖ μὲν γὰρ τὰ τρία τοῦ μέσου τρίτον ἐστὶ μέρος, ἐνταῦθα δὲ τὰ δ΄ καὶ τὰ β΄ τῶν ἄκρων ἑκάτερον ἑκατέρου· ὅθεν ὑπεναντία κέκληται. ταύτην δ’ ἁρμονικὴν ὀνομάζουσιν, ὅτι τοῖς ὅροις τὰ πρῶτα σύμφωνα παρέχεται, τῷ μὲν μεγίστῳ πρὸς τὸν ἐλάχιστον τὸ διὰ πασῶν, τῷ δὲ μεγίστῳ πρὸς τὸν μέσον τὸ διὰ πέντε, τῷ δὲ μέσῳ πρὸς τὸν ἐλάχιστον τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων· †ὅτι τοῦ μεγίστου τῶν ὅρων κατὰ νήτην τιθεμένου τοῦ δ’ ἐλαχίστου καθ’ ὑπάτην, ὁ [d] μέσος γίγνεται [ὁ] κατὰ μέσην πρὸς μὲν τὸν μέγιστον τὸ διὰ πέντε ποιοῦσαν πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἐλάχιστον τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων· ὥστε γίγνεσθαι τὰ ὀκτὼ κατὰ τὴν μέσην τὰ δὲ δώδεκα κατὰ νήτην τὰ δ’ ἓξ καθ’ ὑπάτην.

Τὸν δὲ τρόπον, ᾧ λαμβάνουσι τὰς εἰρημένας μεσότητας, ἁπλῶς καὶ σαφῶς Εὔδωρος ἀποδείκνυσι. σκόπει δὲ πρότερον ἐπὶ τῆς ἀριθμητικῆς· ἂν γὰρ ἐκθεὶς τοὺς ἄκρους λάβῃς ἑκατέρου τὸ ἥμισυ μέρος καὶ συνθῇς, ὁ συντεθεὶς ἔσται μέσος ἔν τε τοῖς διπλασίοις καὶ τοῖς τριπλασίοις ὁμοίως. ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς ὑπεναντίας, ἐν μὲν τοῖς διπλασίοις ἂν τοὺς ἄκρους ἐκθεὶς τοῦ μὲν ἐλάττονος τὸ [e] τρίτον τοῦ δὲ μείζονος τὸ ἥμισυ λάβῃς, ὁ συντεθεὶς γίγνεται μέσος· ἐν δὲ τοῖς τριπλασίοις ἀνάπαλιν, τοῦ μὲν ἐλάττονος ἥμισυ δεῖ λαβεῖν τοῦ δὲ μείζονος τρίτον· ὁ γὰρ συντεθεὶς οὕτω γίγνεται μέσος. ἔστω γὰρ ἐν τριπλασίῳ λόγῳ τὰ Ϛ΄ ἐλάχιστος ὅρος τὰ δὲ ιη΄ μέγιστος· ἂν οὖν τῶν Ϛ΄ τὸ ἥμισυ λαβὼν τὰ τρία καὶ τῶν ὀκτὼ καὶ δέκα τὸ τρίτον τὰ Ϛ΄ συνθῇς, ἕξεις τὸν ἐννέα ταὐτῷ μέρει τῶν ἄκρων ὑπερέχοντα καὶ ὑπερεχόμενον. οὕτω μὲν αἱ μεσότητες [1020] [a] λαμβάνονται. δεῖ δ’ αὐτὰς ἐκεῖ παρεντάξαι καὶ ἀναπληρῶσαι τὰ διπλάσια καὶ τριπλάσια διαστήματα. τῶν δ’ ἐκκειμένων ἀριθμῶν οἱ μὲν οὐδ’ ὅλως μεταξὺ χώραν ἔχουσιν οἱ δ’ οὐχ ἱκανήν· αὔξοντες οὖν αὐτούς, τῶν αὐτῶν λόγων διαμενόντων, ὑποδοχὰς ποιοῦσιν ἀρκούσας ταῖς εἰρημέναις μεσότησι. καὶ πρῶτον μὲν ἐλάχιστον ἀντὶ τοῦ ἑνὸς τὰ ἓξ θέντες, ἐπεὶ πρῶτος ἥμισύ τε καὶ τρίτον ἔχει μέρος, ἅπαντας ἑξαπλασίους τοὺς ὑποτεταγμένους ἐποίησαν, ὡς ὑπογέγραπται, δεχομένους τὰς μεσότητας ἀμφοτέρας καὶ τοῖς διπλασίοις διαστήμασι καὶ τοῖς τριπλασίοις. εἰρηκότος δὲ τοῦ Πλάτωνος (Tim. 36a) ‘ἡμιολίων δὲ διαστάσεων καὶ ἐπιτρίτων καὶ ἐπογδόων γενομένων, [b] ἐκ τούτων τῶν δεσμῶν ἐν ταῖς πρόσθεν διαστάσεσι τῷ τοῦ ἐπογδόου διαστήματι τὰ ἐπίτριτα πάντα συνεπληροῦτο, λείπων αὐτῶν ἑκάστου μόριον, τῆς δὲ τοῦ μορίου ταύτης διαστάσεως λειφθείσης ἀριθμοῦ πρὸς ἀριθμὸν ἐχούσης τοὺς ὅρους Ϛ΄ καὶ ν΄ καὶ σ΄ πρὸς γ΄ καὶ μ΄ καὶ σ΄’, διὰ ταύτην τὴν λέξιν ἠναγκάζοντο πάλιν τοὺς ἀριθμοὺς ἐπανάγειν καὶ μείζονας ποιεῖν. ἔδει μὲν γὰρ ἐφεξῆς ἐπόγδοα γίγνεσθαι δύο· τῆς δ’ ἑξάδος οὔτ’ αὐτόθεν ἐπόγδοον ἐχούσης, εἴ τε τέμνοιτο, κερματιζομένων εἰς μόρια τῶν μονάδων δυσθεωρήτου τῆς μαθήσεως ἐσομένης, αὐτὸ τὸ πρᾶγμα τὸν πολλαπλασιασμὸν ὑπηγόρευσεν, [c] ὥσπερ ἐν ἁρμονικῇ μεταβολῇ τοῦ διαγράμματοσ ὅλου συνεπιτεινομένου τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν ἀριθμῶν. ὁ μὲν οὖν Εὔδωρος ἐπακολουθήσας Κράντορι πρῶτον ἔλαβε τὸν τπδ΄, ὃς γίγνεται τοῦ ἓξ ἐπὶ τὰ ξδ΄ πολλαπλασιασθέντος· ἐπηγάγετο δ’ αὐτοὺς ὁ τῶν ξδ΄ ἀριθμὸς ἐπόγδοον ἔχων τὸν οβ΄. τοῖς δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος λεγομένοις συμφωνότερόν ἐστιν ὑποθέσθαι τὸ ἥμισυ· τούτου γὰρ τὸ λεῖμμα τὸ τῶν ἐπογδόων ἕξει λόγον ἐν ἀριθμοῖς, οὓς ὁ Πλάτων εἴρηκεν Ϛ΄ καὶ ν΄ καὶ σ΄ πρὸς τρία καὶ μ΄ καὶ σ΄, τῶν ἑκατὸν [d] ἐνενήκοντα δύο πρώτων τιθεμένων. ἂν δ’ ὁ τούτου διπλάσιος τεθῇ πρῶτος, ἔσται τὸ λεῖμμα λόγον μὲν ἔχον τὸν αὐτὸν ἀριθμὸν δὲ τὸν διπλάσιον, ὃν ἔχει τὰ φιβ΄ πρὸς υπϚ΄· γίγνεται γὰρ ἐπίτριτα τῶν μὲν ἑκατὸν ἐνενήκοντα δύο τὰ σνϚ΄, τῶν δὲ τπδ΄ τὰ φιβ΄. καὶ οὐκ ἄλογος ἡ ἐπὶ τοῦτον ἀναγωγὴ τὸν ἀριθμόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Κράντορα παρασχοῦσα τὸ εὔλογον· τὰ γὰρ ξδ΄ καὶ κύβος ἐστὶν ἀπὸ πρώτου τετραγώνου καὶ τετράγωνος ἀπὸ πρώτου κύβου· γενόμενος δ’ ἐπὶ τὸν γ΄, πρῶτον ὄντα περισσὸν καὶ πρῶτον τρίγωνον καὶ πρῶτον τέλειον ὄντα καὶ ἡμιόλιον, ἑκατὸν ἐνενήκοντα δύο πεποίηκεν, ἔχοντα [e] καὶ αὐτὸν ἐπόγδοον, ὡς δείξομεν.

Πρότερον δὲ τί τὸ λεῖμμά ἐστι καὶ τίς ἡ διάνοια τοῦ Πλάτωνος, μᾶλλον κατόψεσθε τῶν εἰωθότων ἐν ταῖς Πυθαγορικαῖς σχολαῖς λέγεσθαι βραχέως ὑπομνησθέντες. ἔστι γὰρ διάστημα ἐν μελῳδίᾳ πᾶν τὸ περιεχόμενον ὑπὸ δυεῖν φθόγγων ἀνομοίων τῇ τάσει· τῶν δὲ διαστημάτων ἓν ὁ καλούμενος τόνος, ᾧ τὸ διὰ πέντε μεῖζόν ἐστι τοῦ διὰ τεσσάρων. τοῦτον οἱ μὲν ἁρμονικοὶ δίχα τεμνόμενον οἴονται δύο διαστήματα ποιεῖν, ὧν ἑκάτερον ἡμιτόνιον καλοῦσιν· οἱ δὲ Πυθαγορικοὶ τὴν μὲν εἰς ἴσα τομὴν ἀπέγνωσαν [f] αὐτοῦ, τῶν δὲ τμημάτων ἀνίσων ὄντων λεῖμμα τὸ ἔλαττον ὀνομάζουσιν, ὅτι τοῦ ἡμίσεος ἀπολείπει. διὸ καὶ τῶν συμφωνιῶν τὴν διὰ τεσσάρων οἱ μὲν δυεῖν τόνων καὶ ἡμιτονίου ποιοῦσιν οἱ δὲ δυεῖν καὶ λείμματος. μαρτυρεῖν δὲ δοκεῖ τοῖς μὲν ἁρμονικοῖς ἡ αἴσθησις τοῖς δὲ μαθηματικοῖς ἡ ἀπόδειξις, ἧς τοιοῦτος ὁ τρόπος ἐστίν· ἐλήφθη διὰ τῶν ὀργάνων θεωρηθέν, ὅτι τὸ μὲν διὰ πασῶν τὸν διπλάσιον λόγον ἔχει, τὸ δὲ διὰ πέντε τὸν ἡμιόλιον, τὸ δὲ διὰ τεσσάρων τὸν ἐπίτριτον, ὁ δὲ τόνος τὸν [1021] [a] ἐπόγδοον. ἔξεστι δὲ καὶ νῦν βασανίσαι τὸ ἀληθές, ἢ βάρη δυεῖν ἄνισα χορδῶν ἐξαρτήσαντας ἢ δυεῖν ἰσοκοίλων αὐλῶν τὸν ἕτερον μήκει διπλάσιον τοῦ ἑτέρου ποιήσαντας· τῶν μὲν γὰρ αὐλῶν ὁ μείζων βαρύτερον φθέγξεται ὡς ὑπάτη πρὸς νήτην, τῶν δὲ χορδῶν ἡ τῷ διπλασίῳ κατατεινομένη βάρει τῆς ἑτέρας ὀξύτερον ὡς νήτη πρὸς ὑπάτην· τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ ‹τὸ› διὰ πασῶν. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τρία πρὸς δύο ληφθέντα μήκη καὶ βάρη τὸ διὰ πέντε ποιήσει καὶ τέσσαρα πρὸς τρία τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων, ὧν τοῦτο μὲν ἐπίτριτον ἔχει λόγον ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἡμιόλιον. ἐὰν δ’ ὡς ἐννέα [b] πρὸς ὀκτὼ γένηται τῶν βαρῶν ἢ τῶν μηκῶν ἡ ἀνισότης, ποιήσει διάστημα τονιαῖον, οὐ σύμφωνον ἀλλ’ ἐμμελὲς ὡς εἰπεῖν ἔμβραχυ, τῷ τοὺς φθόγγους, ἂν ἀνὰ μέρος κρουσθῶσι, παρέχειν ἡδὺ φωνοῦντας καὶ προσηνές, ἂν δ’ ὁμοῦ, τραχὺ καὶ λυπηρόν· ἐν δὲ ταῖς συμφωνίαις κἂν ὁμοῦ κρούωνται κἂν ἐναλλάξ, ἡδέως προσίεται τὴν συνήχησιν ἡ αἴσθησις. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ λόγου τοῦτο δεικνύουσιν. ἐν μὲν γὰρ ἁρμονίᾳ τὸ διὰ πασῶν ἔκ τε τοῦ διὰ πέντε σύγκειται καὶ τοῦ διὰ τεσσάρων, ἐν δ’ ἀριθμοῖς τὸ διπλάσιον ἔκ τε τοῦ ἡμιολίου καὶ τοῦ ἐπιτρίτου· τὰ γὰρ δώδεκα τῶν μὲν ἐννέα ἐστὶν ἐπίτριτα τῶν δ’ ὀκτὼ [c] ἡμιόλια τῶν δὲ Ϛ΄ διπλάσια. σύνθετος οὖν ὁ τοῦ διπλασίου λόγος ἐστὶν ἐκ τοῦ ἡμιολίου καὶ τοῦ ἐπιτρίτου, καθάπερ ὁ τοῦ διὰ πασῶν ἐκ τοῦ διὰ πέντε καὶ τοῦ διὰ τεσσάρων. ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖ τὸ διὰ πέντε τοῦ διὰ τεσσάρων τόνῳ κἀνταῦθα τὸ ἡμιόλιον τοῦ ἐπιτρίτου τῷ ἐπογδόῳ μεῖζόν ἐστι. φαίνεται τοίνυν, ὅτι τὸ διὰ πασῶν τὸν διπλάσιον λόγον ἔχει καὶ τὸ διὰ πέντε τὸν ἡμιόλιον καὶ τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων τὸν ἐπίτριτον καὶ ὁ τόνος τὸν ἐπόγδοον.

Ἀποδεδειγμένου δὲ τούτου, σκοπῶμεν εἰ δίχα τέμνεσθαι πέφυκε τὸ ἐπόγδοον· εἰ γὰρ μὴ πέφυκεν, οὐδ’ ὁ τόνος. ἐπεὶ δὲ πρῶτοι τὸν ἐπόγδοον λόγον ὁ θ΄ καὶ ὁ η΄ [d] ποιοῦντες οὐδὲν διάστημα μέσον ἔχουσι, διπλασιασθέντων δ’ ἀμφοτέρων ὁ παρεμπίπτων μεταξὺ δύο ποιεῖ διαστήματα, δῆλον ὅτι τούτων μὲν ἴσων ὄντων δίχα τέμνεται τὸ ἐπόγδοον. ἀλλὰ μὴν διπλάσια γίγνεται τῶν μὲν θ΄ τὰ ιη΄ τῶν δ’ η΄ τὰ ιϚ΄, δέχονται δ’ οὗτοι μεταξὺ τὰ ιζ΄ καὶ γίγνεται τῶν διαστημάτων τὸ μὲν μεῖζον τὸ δ’ ἔλαττον· ἔστι γὰρ τὸ μὲν πρότερον ἐφεπτακαιδέκατον τὸ δὲ δεύτερον ἐφεξκαιδέκατον. εἰς ἄνισα τοίνυν τέμνεται τὸ ἐπόγδοον· εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, καὶ ὁ τόνος. οὐδέτερον ἄρα γίγνεται διαιρεθέντος αὐτοῦ τῶν τμημάτων ἡμιτόνιον, ἀλλ’ ὀρθῶς ὑπὸ τῶν μαθηματικῶν λεῖμμα προσηγόρευται.

[e] καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ὅ φησιν ὁ Πλάτων τὰ ἐπίτριτα τοῖς ἐπογδόοις συμπληροῦντα τὸν θεὸν λείπειν ἑκάστου μόριον αὐτῶν, οὗ λόγος ἐστίν, ὃν ἔχει τὰ Ϛ΄ καὶ ν΄ καὶ σ΄ πρὸς τὰ γ΄ καὶ μ΄ καὶ σ΄. εἰλήφθω γὰρ τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων ἐν ἀριθμοῖς δυσὶ τὸν ἐπίτριτον λόγον περιέχουσι, τοῖς σνϚ΄ καὶ τοῖς ἑκατὸν ἐνενήκοντα δύο· ὧν ὁ μὲν ἐλάττων, τὰ ἑκατὸν ἐνενήκοντα δύο, κείσθω κατὰ τὸν βαρύτατον τοῦ τετραχόρδου φθόγγον, ὁ δὲ μείζων, τὰ σνϚ΄, κατὰ τὸν ὀξύτατον· ἀποδεικτέον ὅτι, τούτου συμπληρουμένου δυσὶν ἐπογδόοις, λείπεται διάστημα τηλικοῦτον, ἡλίκον ὡς ἐν ἀριθμοῖς τὰ Ϛ΄ καὶ ν΄ καὶ σ΄ πρὸς τὰ γ΄ καὶ μ΄ [f] καὶ σ΄. τοῦ γὰρ βαρυτέρου τόνον ἐπιταθέντος, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἐπόγδοον, γίγνεται σιϚ΄· τούτου πάλιν τόνον ἄλλον ἐπιταθέντος, γίγνεται σμγ΄· ταῦτα μὲν γὰρ ὑπερέχει τῶν σιϚ΄ τοῖς κζ΄, τὰ δὲ σιϚ΄ τῶν ἑκατὸν ἐνενήκοντα δύο τοῖς εἴκοσι καὶ τέσσαρσιν· ὧν τὰ μὲν κζ΄ τῶν σιϚ΄ [ἐπ]ὄγδοά ἐστι, τὰ δὲ κδ΄ τῶν ἑκατὸν ἐνενήκοντα δύο. διὸ γίγνεται τῶν τριῶν τούτων ἀριθμῶν ὅ τε μέγιστος ἐπόγδοος τοῦ μέσου καὶ ὁ μέσος τοῦ ἐλαχίστου· τὸ δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐλαχίστου διάστημα μέχρι τοῦ μεγίστου, τουτέστι τὸ ἀπὸ τῶν ἑκατὸν ἐνενήκοντα δύο μέχρι τῶν σμγ΄, δίτονον ἐκ δυεῖν συμπληρούμεν‹ον› ἐπογδόων· [1022] [a] ἀφαιρουμένου δὲ τούτου, περίεστι τοῦ ὅλου διάστημα λοιπὸν τὸ μεταξὺ τῶν σμγ΄ καὶ τῶν σνϚ΄, τὰ τρισκαίδεκα· διὸ καὶ λεῖμμα τοῦτον τὸν ἀριθμὸν ὠνόμαζον.

Ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν εὐσημότατα δηλοῦσθαι τὴν Πλάτωνος οἶμαι γνώμην ἐν τούτοις τοῖς ἀριθμοῖς. ἕτεροι δὲ τοῦ διὰ τεσσάρων ὅρους θέμενοι, τὸν μὲν ὀξὺν ἐν ‹τοῖς› σπη΄ τὸν δὲ βαρὺν ἐν τοῖς σιϚ΄, ἀναλόγως ἤδη τὰ ἑξῆς περαίνουσιν· πλὴν ὅτι τὸ λεῖμμα τῶν δυεῖν τόνων μεταξὺ λαμβάνουσι· τοῦ γὰρ βαρυτέρου τόνον ἐπιταθέντος, γίγνεται σμγ΄· τοῦ δ’ ὀξυτέρου τόνον ἀνεθέντος, γίγνεται σνϚ΄· ἔστι γὰρ ἐπόγδοα τὰ μὲν σμγ΄ τῶν σιϚ΄ τὰ δὲ σπη΄ τῶν [b] σνϚ΄· ὥστε τονιαῖον εἶναι τῶν διαστημάτων ἑκάτερον, λείπεσθαι δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ τῶν σμγ΄ καὶ τῶν σνϚ΄, ὅπερ οὐκ ἔστιν ἡμιτόνιον ἀλλ’ ἔλαττον· τὰ μὲν γὰρ σπη΄ τῶν σνϚ΄ ὑπερέχει τοῖς λ΄ καὶ δυσί, τὰ δὲ σμγ΄ τῶν σιϚ΄ ὑπερέχει τοῖς κζ΄, τὰ δὲ σνϚ΄ τῶν σμγ΄ ὑπερέχει τοῖς ιγ΄· ταῦτα δὲ τῶν ὑπεροχῶν ἀμφοτέρων ἐλάττω ἢ ἡμίσεά ἐστι. διὸ δυεῖν τόνων καὶ λείμματος, οὐ δυεῖν καὶ ἡμίσεος, εὕρηται τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἔχει τοιαύτην ἀπόδειξιν. ἐκεῖνο δ’ οὐ πάνυ χαλεπὸν ἐκ τῶν προειρημένων συνιδεῖν, τί δήποτε φήσας ὁ Πλάτων ἡμιολίους καὶ ἐπιτρίτους καὶ ἐπογδόους γίγνεσθαι διαστάσεις ἐν τῷ [c] συμπληροῦσθαι τὰς ἐπιτρίτους ταῖς ἐπογδόοις, οὐκ ἐμνήσθη τῶν ἡμιολίων ἀλλὰ παρέλιπε. τὸ γὰρ ἡμιόλιον τοῦ ἐπιτρίτου τῷ ἐπογδόῳ τῷ ἐπιτρίτῳ προστιθεμένου συμπληροῦσθαι καὶ τὸ ἡμιόλιον.

Ὑποδεδειγμένων δὲ τούτων, τὸ μὲν συμπληροῦν τὰ διαστήματα καὶ παρεντάττειν τὰς μεσότητας, εἰ καὶ μηδεὶς ἐτύγχανε πεποιηκὼς πρότερον, ὑμῖν ἂν αὐτοῖς ἕνεκα γυμνασίας παρῆκα· νῦν δὲ πολλοῖς κἀγαθοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἐξειργασμένου τούτου, μάλιστα δὲ Κράντορι καὶ Κλεάρχῳ καὶ Θεοδώρῳ τοῖς Σολεῦσι, μικρὰ περὶ τῆς τούτων διαφορᾶς εἰπεῖν οὐκ ἄχρηστόν ἐστιν. ὁ γὰρ [d] Θεόδωρος οὐχ ὡς ἐκεῖνοι δύο στίχους ποιῶν, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ μιᾶς εὐθείας ἐφεξῆς τούς τε διπλασίους ἐκτάττων καὶ τοὺς τριπλασίους, πρῶτον μὲν ἰσχυρίζεται τῇ λεγομένῃ (Tim. 36b) κατὰ μῆκος σχίσει τῆς οὐσίας, δύο ποιούσῃ μοίρας ὡς ἐκ μιᾶς οὐ τέσσαρας ἐκ δυεῖν· ἔπειτά φησι τὰς τῶν μεσοτήτων παρεντάξεις οὕτω λαμβάνειν προσήκειν χώραν· εἰ δὲ μή, ταραχὴν καὶ σύγχυσιν ἔσεσθαι καὶ μεταστάσεις εἰς τὸ πρῶτον εὐθὺς τριπλάσιον ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου διπλασίου τῶν συμπληροῦν ἑκάτερον ὀφειλόντων. τοῖς δὲ περὶ τὸν Κράντορα βοηθοῦσιν αἵ τε θέσεις τῶν ἀριθμῶν, ἐπιπέδων ἐπιπέδοις καὶ τετραγώνων [e] τετραγώνοις καὶ κύβων κύβοις ἀντιθέτως συζυγούντων, τῇ τε μὴ κατὰ τάξιν αὐτῶν λήψει, ἀλλ’ ἐναλλὰξ ἀρτίων [1027] καὶ (30b) περιττῶν ‹αὐτὸς ὁ Πλάτων›. τὴν γὰρ μονάδα κοινὴν οὖσαν ἀμφοῖν προτάξας λαμβάνει τὰ ὀκτὼ καὶ [1028] [a] ἐφεξῆς τὰ κζ΄· μονονουχὶ δεικνύων ἡμῖν, ἣν ἑκατέρῳ γένει χώραν ἀποδίδωσι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἑτέροις προσήκει μᾶλλον ἐξακριβοῦν, τὸ δ’ ἀπολειπόμενον οἰκεῖόν ἐστι τῆς ὑποκειμένης ἡμῖν πραγματείας.

Οὐ γὰρ ἐπίδειξιν ὁ Πλάτων θεωρίας μαθηματικῆς ποιούμενος εἰς φυσικὴν ὑπόθεσιν μὴ δεομένην μεσότητας ἀριθμητικὰς καὶ ἁρμονικὰς παρεισήγαγεν, ἀλλ’ ὡς μάλιστα δὴ τῇ συστάσει τῆς ψυχῆς τοῦ λόγου τούτου προσήκοντος. καίτοι τινὲς μὲν ἐν τοῖς τάχεσι τῶν πλανωμένων σφαιρῶν τινὲς δὲ μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς ἀποστήμασιν ἔνιοι δ’ ἐν τοῖς μεγέθεσι τῶν ἀστέρων, οἱ δ’ ἄγαν ἀκριβοῦν δοκοῦντες [b] ἐν ταῖς τῶν ἐπικύκλων διαμέτροις ζητοῦσι τὰς εἰρημένας ἀναλογίας, ὡς τὴν ψυχὴν ἕνεκα τούτων τοῦ δημιουργοῦ τοῖς οὐρανίοις ἐναρμόσαντος, εἰς ἑπτὰ μοίρας νενεμημένην. πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ τὰ Πυθαγορικὰ δεῦρο μεταφέρουσιν, ἀπὸ τοῦ μέσου τὰς τῶν σωμάτων ἀποστάσεις τριπλασιάζοντες· γίγνεται δὲ τοῦτο κατὰ μὲν τὸ πῦρ μονάδος τιθεμένης, κατὰ δ’ ἀντίχθονα τριῶν, κατὰ δὲ γῆν ἐννέα καὶ κατὰ σελήνην εἰκοσιεπτά, καὶ κατὰ τὸν Ἑρμοῦ μιᾶς καὶ ὀγδοήκοντα, κατὰ δὲ Φωσφόρον τριῶν καὶ μ΄ καὶ σ΄, κατ’ αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν ἥλιον θ΄ καὶ κ΄ καὶ ψ΄, ὅς γ’ ἅμα τετράγωνός τε καὶ κύβος ἐστί· διὸ καὶ τὸν ἥλιον [c] ἔστιν ὅτε τετράγωνον καὶ κύβον προσαγορεύουσιν. οὕτω δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐπανάγουσι τοῖς τριπλασιασμοῖς, πολὺ τοῦ κατὰ λόγον οὗτοί γε παραπαίοντες, εἴ τι τῶν γεωμετρικῶν ὄφελός ἐστιν ἀποδείξεων, καὶ μακρῷ πιθανωτέρους ‹ὡς› παραβαλεῖν αὐτοῖς ἀποδεικνύοντες τοὺς ὁρμωμένους ἐκεῖθεν, οὐδ’ αὐτοὺς παντάπασιν ἐξακριβοῦντας ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔγγιστα λέγοντας, ὅτι τῆς μὲν ἡλίου διαμέτρου πρὸς τὴν διάμετρον τῆς γῆς λόγος ἐστὶ δωδεκαπλάσιος, τῆς δὲ γῆς αὖ πάλιν διαμέτρου πρὸς τὴν σελήνης διάμετρον τριπλάσιος, ὁ δὲ φαινόμενος ἐλάχιστος τῶν ἀπλανῶν ἀστέρων οὐκ ἐλάττονα τῆς διαμέτρου τῆς [d] γῆς ἢ τριτημόριον ἔχει τὴν διάμετρον· τῇ δ’ ὅλῃ σφαίρᾳ τῆς γῆς πρὸς τὴν ὅλην σφαῖραν τῆς σελήνης ὡς ἑπτὰ καὶ εἴκοσι πρὸς ‹ἕν› ἐστι· Φωσφόρου δὲ καὶ γῆς αἱ μὲν διάμετροι τὸν διπλάσιον αἱ δὲ σφαῖραι τὸν ὀκταπλάσιον ἔχουσι λόγον, τὸ δὲ διάστημα τῆς ἐκλειπτικῆς σκιᾶς τῆς διαμέτρου τῆς σελήνης τριπλάσιον· ὃ δ’ ἐκτρέπεται πλάτος ἡ σελήνη τοῦ διὰ μέσων τῶν ζῳδίων ἐφ’ ἑκάτερα δωδεκάμοιρον. αἱ δὲ πρὸς ἥλιον σχέσεις αὐτῆς ἐν τριγώνοις καὶ τετραγώνοις ἀποστήμασι διχοτόμους καὶ ἀμφικύρτους σχηματισμοὺς λαμβάνουσιν· ἓξ δὲ ζῴδια διελθοῦσα τὴν [e] πανσέληνον ὥσπερ τινὰ συμφωνίαν ἐν ἑξατόνῳ διὰ πασῶν ἀποδίδωσι. τοῦ δ’ ἡλίου περὶ τὰς τροπὰς ἐλάχιστα καὶ μέγιστα περὶ τὴν ἰσημερίαν ἔχοντος κινήματα, δι’ ὧν ἀφαιρεῖ τῆς ἡμέρας καὶ τῇ νυκτὶ προστίθησιν ἢ τοὐναντίον, οὗτος ὁ λόγος ἐστίν· ἐν ‹γὰρ› ταῖς πρώταις ἡμέραις λ΄ μετὰ τὰς χειμερινὰς τροπὰς τῇ ἡμέρᾳ προστίθησι τὸ ἕκτον τῆς ὑπεροχῆς, ἣν ἡ μεγίστη νὺξ πρὸς τὴν βραχυτάτην ἡμέραν ἐποίει, ταῖς δ’ ἐφεξῆς τριάκοντα τὸ τρίτον, τὸ δ’ ἥμισυ ταῖς λοιπαῖς ἄχρι τῆς ἰσημερίας, ἐν ἑξαπλασίοις καὶ τριπλασίοις διαστήμασι τοῦ χρόνου τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν ἐπανισῶν. Χαλδαῖοι δὲ λέγουσι τὸ ἔαρ ἐν τῷ διὰ τεττάρων [f] γίγνεσθαι πρὸς τὸ μετόπωρον, ἐν δὲ τῷ διὰ πέντε πρὸς τὸν χειμῶνα, πρὸς δὲ τὸ θέρος ἐν τῷ διὰ πασῶν. εἰ δ’ ὀρθῶς ὁ Εὐριπίδης διορίζεται θέρους τέσσαρας μῆνας καὶ χειμῶνος ἴσους (fr. 990)

‘φίλης τ’ ὀπώρας διπτύχους ἦρός τ’ ἴσους’

ἐν τῷ διὰ πασῶν αἱ ὧραι μεταβάλλουσιν. ἔνιοι δὲ γῇ μὲν τὴν τοῦ προσλαμβανομένου χώραν ἀποδιδόντες σελήνῃ [1029] [a] δὲ τὴν ὑπάτην Στίλβωνα δὲ καὶ Φωσφόρον ἐν διατόνοις ‹παρυπάταις› καὶ λιχανοῖς κινοῦντες, αὐτὸν τὸν ἥλιον ὡς μέσην συνέχειν τὸ διὰ πασῶν ἀξιοῦσιν, ἀπέχοντα τῆς μὲν γῆς τὸ διὰ πέντε τῆς δὲ τῶν ἀπλανῶν τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων.

Ἀλλ’ οὔτε τούτων τὸ κομψὸν ἅπτεταί τινος ἀληθείας οὔτ’ ἐκεῖνοι παντάπασι τοῦ ἀκριβοῦς ἔχονται. οἷς δ’ οὖν οὐ δοκεῖ ταῦτα τῆς τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἀπηρτῆσθαι διανοίας, ἐκεῖνα κομιδῇ φανεῖται τῶν μουσικῶν λόγων ἔχεσθαι, τὸ ε΄ τετραχόρδων ὄντων τῶν ὑπάτων καὶ μέσων καὶ συνημμένων καὶ διεζευγμένων καὶ ὑπερβολαίων ἐν πέντε διαστήμασι τετάχθαι τοὺς πλάνητας· ὧν τὸ μέν ἐστι τὸ ἀπὸ σελήνης ἐφ’ ἥλιον καὶ τοὺς ὁμοδρόμους ἡλίῳ, [b] Στίλβωνα καὶ Φωσφόρον· ἕτερον τὸ ἀπὸ τούτων ἐπὶ τὸν Ἄρεος Πυρόεντα· τρίτον δὲ τὸ μεταξὺ τούτου καὶ Φαέθοντος· εἶθ’ ἑξῆς τὸ ἐπὶ Φαίνωνα καὶ πέμπτον ἤδη τὸ ἀπὸ τούτου πρὸς τὴν ἀπλανῆ σφαῖραν· ὥστε τοὺς ὁρίζοντας φθόγγους τὰ τετράχορδα τὸν τῶν πλανωμένων λόγον ἔχειν ἀστέρων. ἔτι τοίνυν τοὺς παλαιοὺς ἴσμεν ὑπάτας μὲν δύο τρεῖς δὲ νήτας μίαν δὲ μέσην καὶ μίαν παραμέσην τιθεμένους, ὥστε τοῖς πλάνησιν ἰσαρίθμους εἶναι τοὺς ἑστῶτας. οἱ δὲ νεώτεροι τὸν προσλαμβανόμενον, τόνῳ διαφέροντα τῆς ὑπάτης, ἐπὶ τὸ βαρὺ τάξαντες τὸ μὲν ὅλον σύστημα δὶς διὰ πασῶν ἐποίησαν, τῶν δὲ συμφωνιῶν [c] τὴν κατὰ φύσιν οὐκ ἐτήρησαν τάξιν· τὸ γὰρ διὰ πέντε πρότερον γίγνεται τοῦ διὰ τεσσάρων, ἐπὶ τὸ βαρὺ τῇ ὑπάτῃ τοῦ τόνου προσληφθέντος. ὁ δὲ Πλάτων δῆλός ἐστιν ἐπὶ τὸ ὀξὺ προσλαμβάνων· λέγει γὰρ ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ (617b) τῶν ὀκτὼ σφαιρῶν ἑκάστην περιφέρειν [εἶτ’] ἐπ’ αὐτῇ Σειρῆνα βεβηκυῖαν· ᾄδειν δὲ πάσας ἕνα ‹ἑκάστην› τόνον ἱείσας, ἐκ δὲ πασῶν κεράννυσθαι μίαν ἁρμονίαν. αὗται δ’ ἀνιέμεναι τὰ θεῖα εἴρουσι καὶ κατᾴδουσι τῆς ἱερᾶς περιόδου καὶ χορείας ὀκτάχορδον ἐμμέλειαν· ὀκτὼ γὰρ ἦσαν καὶ οἱ πρῶτοι τῶν διπλασίων καὶ τριπλασίων ὅροι λόγων, ἑκατέρᾳ προσαριθμουμένης μερίδι [d] τῆς μονάδος. οἱ δὲ πρεσβύτεροι Μούσας παρέδωκαν καὶ ἡμῖν ἐννέα, τὰς μὲν ὀκτὼ καθάπερ ὁ Πλάτων περὶ τὰ οὐράνια, τὴν δ’ ἐνάτην τὰ περίγεια κηλεῖν ἀνακαλουμένην καὶ καθιστᾶσαν ἐκ πλάνης καὶ διαφορᾶς ἀνωμαλίαν καὶ ταραχὴν ἐχούσης.

Σκοπεῖτε δὲ μὴ τὸν μὲν οὐρανὸν ἄγει καὶ τὰ οὐράνια ταῖς περὶ αὐτὴν ἐμμελείαις καὶ κινήσεσιν ἡ ψυχὴ φρονιμωτάτη καὶ δικαιοτάτη γεγονυῖα· γέγονε δὲ τοιαύτη τοῖς καθ’ ἁρμονίαν λόγοις, ὧν εἰκόνες μὲν ὑπάρχουσιν εἰς τὰ ἀσώματα ἐν τοῖς ὁρατοῖς καὶ ὁρωμένοις μέρεσι τοῦ κόσμου καὶ σώμασιν· ἡ δὲ πρώτη καὶ κυριωτάτη [e] δύναμις ἀοράτως ἐγκέκραται τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ παρέχει σύμφωνον ἑαυτῇ καὶ πειθήνιον, ἀεὶ τῷ κρατίστῳ καὶ θειοτάτῳ μέρει τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ὁμονοούντων. παραλαβὼν γὰρ ὁ δημιουργὸς ἀταξίαν καὶ πλημμέλειαν ἐν ταῖς κινήσεσι τῆς ἀναρμόστου καὶ ἀνοήτου ψυχῆς διαφερομένης πρὸς ἑαυτὴν τὰ μὲν διώρισε καὶ διέστησε τὰ δὲ συνήγαγε πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ συνέταξεν, ἁρμονίαις καὶ ἀριθμοῖς χρησάμενος· οἷς καὶ τὰ κωφότατα σώματα, λίθοι καὶ ξύλα καὶ φλοιοὶ φυτῶν καὶ θηρίων ὀστᾶ καὶ πυτίαι, συγκεραννύμενα [f] καὶ συναρμοττόμενα θαυμαστὰς μὲν ἀγαλμάτων ὄψεις, θαυμαστὰς δὲ παρέχει φαρμάκων καὶ ὀργάνων δυνάμεις. ᾗ καὶ Ζήνων ὁ Κιτιεὺς (fr. 299) ἐπὶ θέαν αὐλητῶν παρεκάλει τὰ μειράκια καταμανθάνειν, οἵαν κέρατα καὶ ξύλα καὶ κάλαμοι καὶ ὀστᾶ λόγου μετέχοντα καὶ συμφωνίας φωνὴν ἀφίησι. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀριθμῷ πάντα ἐπεοικέναι κατὰ τὴν Πυθαγορικὴν ἀπόφανσιν λόγου [1030] [a] δεῖται· τὸ δὲ πᾶσιν, οἷς ἐκ διαφορᾶς καὶ ἀνομοιότητος ἐγγέγονε κοινωνία τις πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ συμφωνία, ταύτης αἰτίαν εἶναι μετριότητα καὶ τάξιν, ἀριθμοῦ καὶ ἁρμονίας μετασχοῦσιν, οὐδὲ τοὺς ποιητὰς λέληθεν ‘ἄρθμια’ μὲν τὰ φίλα καὶ προσηνῆ καλοῦντας ‘ἀναρσίους’ δὲ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς καὶ τοὺς πολεμίους, ὡς ἀναρμοστίαν τὴν διαφορὰν οὖσαν. ὁ δὲ τῷ Πινδάρῳ ποιήσας τὸ ἐπικήδειον

‘ἄρμενος ἦν ξείνοισιν ἀνὴρ ὅδε καὶ φίλος ἀστοῖς’

εὐαρμοστίαν δῆλός ἐστι τὴν ἀρετὴν ἡγούμενος· ὥς που καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Πίνδαρος (fr. 32) τοῦ θεοῦ φησιν ἐπακοῦσαι ‘μουσικὰν ὀρθὰν ἐπιδεικνυμένου’ τὸν Κάδμον. οἵ τε πάλαι [b] θεολόγοι, πρεσβύτατοι φιλοσόφων ὄντες, ὄργανα μουσικὰ θεῶν ἐνεχείριζον ἀγάλμασιν· οὐχ ὡς λύραν που ... καὶ αὐλοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ οὐθὲν ἔργον οἰόμενοι θεῶν οἷον ἁρμονίαν εἶναι καὶ συμφωνίαν. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ τοὺς ἐπιτρίτους καὶ ἡμιολίους καὶ διπλασίους λόγους ζητῶν ἐν τῷ ζυγῷ τῆς λύρας καὶ τῇ χελώνῃ καὶ τοῖς κολλάβοις γελοῖός ἐστι (δεῖ μὲν γὰρ ἀμέλει καὶ ταῦτα συμμέτρως γεγονέναι πρὸς ἄλληλα μήκεσι καὶ πάχεσι, τὴν δ’ ἁρμονίαν ἐκείνην ἐπὶ τῶν φθόγγων θεωρεῖν), οὕτως εἰκὸς μέν ἐστι καὶ τὰ σώματα τῶν ἀστέρων καὶ τὰ διαστήματα τῶν κύκλων καὶ τὰ τάχη τῶν περιφορῶν ὥσπερ ὄργανα [c] ἐν τεταγμένοις ‹λόγοις› ἔχειν ἐμμέτρως πρὸς ἄλληλα καὶ πρὸς τὸ ὅλον, εἰ καὶ τὸ ποσὸν ἡμᾶς τοῦ μετρίου διαπέφευγε· τῶν μέντοι λόγων ἐκείνων, οἷς ὁ δημιουργὸς ἐχρήσατο, καὶ τῶν ἀριθμῶν ἔργον ἡγεῖσθαι τὴν αὐτῆς τῆς ψυχῆς ἐμμέλειαν καὶ ἁρμονίαν πρὸς αὑτήν, ὑφ’ ἧς καὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐγγενομένη μυρίων ἀγαθῶν ἐμπέπληκε, καὶ τὰ περὶ γῆν ὥραις καὶ μεταβολαῖς μέτρον ἐχούσαις ἄριστα καὶ κάλλιστα πρός τε γένεσιν καὶ σωτηρίαν τῶν γιγνομένων διακεκόσμηκεν.

Epitome libri de animae procreatione in Timaeo

ΕΠΙΤΟΜΗ ΤΟΥ ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΕΝ ΤΩΙ ΤΙΜΑΙΩΙ ΨΥΧΟΓΟΝΙΑΣ

[1030] Ὁ περὶ τῆς ἐν τῷ Τιμαίῳ ψυχογονίας ἐπιγεγραμμένος λόγος, ὅσα Πλάτωνι καὶ τοῖς Πλατωνικοῖς πεφιλοτίμηται, [e] ἀπαγγέλλει· εἰσάγει δὲ καὶ γεωμετρικάς τινας ἀναλογίας καὶ ὁμοιότητας, πρὸς τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ὡς οἴεται θεωρίαν συντεινούσας αὐτῷ, καὶ δὴ καὶ μουσικὰ καὶ ἀριθμητικὰ θεωρήματα.

Λέγει δὲ τὴν ὕλην διαμορφωθῆναι ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ δίδωσι μὲν τῷ παντὶ ψυχήν, δίδωσι δὲ καὶ ἑκάστῳ ζῴῳ τὴν διοικοῦσαν αὐτό, καὶ πῆ μὲν ἀγένητον εἰσάγει ταύτην πῆ δὲ γενέσει δουλεύουσαν· ἀίδιον δὲ τὴν ὕλην καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ θείου διὰ τῆς ψυχῆς μορφωθῆναι· καὶ τὴν κακίαν δὲ βλάστημα τῆς ὕλης γεγονέναι, ἵνα μή, φησί, [f] τὸ θεῖον αἴτιον τῶν κακῶν νομισθείη.

Ὅτι οἱ περὶ τὸν Ποσειδώνιον οὐ μακρὰν τῆς ὕλης ἀπέστησαν τὴν ψυχήν, ἀλλὰ δεξάμενοι τὴν τῶν περάτων οὐσίαν περὶ τὰ σώματα λέγεσθαι μεριστὴν καὶ ταῦτα τῷ νοητῷ μίξαντες ἀπεφήναντο τὴν ψυχὴν ἰδέαν εἶναι τοῦ πάντῃ διαστατοῦ κατ’ ἀριθμὸν συνεστῶσαν ἁρμονίαν περιέχοντα· [1031] [a] τά τε γὰρ μαθηματικὰ τῶν πρώτων νοητῶν μεταξὺ καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν τετάχθαι, τῆς τε ψυχῆς τῷ νοητῷ τὸ ἀίδιον καὶ τῷ αἰσθητικῷ τὸ παθητικὸν ἐχούσης, προσῆκον ἐν μέσῳ τὴν οὐσίαν ὑπάρχειν. ἔλαθε γὰρ καὶ τούτους ὁ θεὸς τοῖς τῶν σωμάτων πέρασιν ὕστερον, ἀπειργασμένης ἤδη τῆς ψυχῆς, χρώμενος ἐπὶ τὴν τῆς ὕλης διαμόρφωσιν, τὸ σκεδαστὸν αὐτῆς καὶ ἀσύνδετον ὁρίζων καὶ περιλαμβάνων ταῖς ἐκ τῶν τριγώνων συναρμοττομένων ἐπιφανείαις. ἀτοπώτερον δὲ τὸ τὴν ψυχὴν ἰδέαν ποιεῖν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀεικίνητος ἡ δ’ ἀκίνητος, καὶ ἡ μὲν ἀμιγὴς πρὸς τὸ αἰσθητὸν ἡ δὲ τῷ σώματι [b] συνειργμένη· πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ὁ θεὸς τῆς μὲν ἰδέας ὡς παραδείγματος γέγονε μιμητής, τῆς δὲ ψυχῆς ὥσπερ ἀποτελέσματος δημιουργός. ὅτι δ’ οὐδ’ ἀριθμὸν ὁ Πλάτων τὴν οὐσίαν τίθεται τῆς ψυχῆς ἀλλὰ ταττομένην ὑπ’ ἀριθμοῦ, προείρηται.

Πρὸς δ’ ἀμφοτέροις τούτοις κοινόν ἐστι τὸ μήτε τοῖς πέρασι μήτε τοῖς ἀριθμοῖς μηθὲν ἴχνος ἐνυπάρχειν ἐκείνης τῆς δυνάμεως, ᾗ τὸ αἰσθητὸν ἡ ψυχὴ πέφυκε κρίνειν. νοῦν μὲν γὰρ αὐτῇ καὶ νοητὸν ἡ τῆς νοητῆς μέθεξις ἀρχῆς ἐμπεποίηκε, δόξας δὲ καὶ πίστεις καὶ τὸ φανταστικὸν καὶ τὸ παθητικὸν ὑπὸ τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα ποιοτήτων, ὃ οὐκ ἄν τις ἐκ μονάδων οὐδὲ γραμμῶν οὐδ’ ἐπιφανειῶν [c] ἁπλῶς νοήσειεν ἐγγινόμενον. καὶ μὴν οὐ μόνον αἱ τῶν θνητῶν ψυχαὶ γνωστικὴν τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ δύναμιν ἔχουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν τοῦ κύκλου φησὶν (Tim. 37a sq.) ἀνακυκλουμένην αὐτὴν πρὸς ἑαυτήν, ὅταν οὐσίαν σκεδαστὴν ἔχοντός τινος ἐφάπτηται καὶ ὅταν ἀμέριστον, λέγῃ κινουμένην διὰ πάσης ἑαυτῆς, ὅτῳ ἄν τι ταὐτὸν ᾖ καὶ ὅτου ἂν ἕτερον, πρὸς ὅτι τε μάλιστα καὶ ὅπη καὶ ὅπως συμβαίνει, καὶ τὰ γιγνόμενα πρὸς ἕκαστον ἕκαστα εἶναι καὶ πάσχειν. ἐν τούτοις ἅμα καὶ τῶν δέκα κατηγοριῶν ποιούμενος ὑπογραφὴν ἔτι μᾶλλον τοῖς ἐφεξῆς διασαφεῖ. ‘λόγος’ γάρ φησιν ‘ἀληθής, ὅταν μὲν περὶ τὸ αἰσθητὸν γένηται καὶ [d] ὁ τοῦ θατέρου κύκλος ὀρθὸς ἰὼν εἰς πᾶσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν ψυχὴν διαγγείλῃ, δόξαι καὶ πίστεις γίγνονται βέβαιοι καὶ ἀληθεῖς· ὅταν δ’ αὖ πάλιν περὶ τὸ λογιστικὸν ᾖ καὶ ὁ τοῦ ταὐτοῦ κύκλος εὔτροχος ὢν αὐτὰ μηνύσῃ, ἐπιστήμη ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀποτελεῖται. τούτω δὲ ἐν ᾧ τῶν ὄντων ἐγγίγνεσθον, ἐάν ποτέ τις αὐτὸ ἄλλο πλὴν ψυχὴν προσείπῃ, πᾶν μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ ἀληθὲς ἐρεῖ.’ πόθεν οὖν ἔσχεν ἡ ψυχὴ τὴν ἀντιληπτικὴν τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ καὶ δοξαστικὴν ταύτην κίνησιν, ἑτέραν τῆς νοητῆς ἐκείνης καὶ τελευτώσης εἰς ἐπιστήμην, ἔργον εἰπεῖν μὴ θεμένους βεβαίως ὅτι νῦν οὐχ ἁπλῶς ψυχὴν ἀλλὰ κόσμου ψυχὴν συνίστησιν ἐξ [e] ὑποκειμένης τῆς τε κρείττονος οὐσίας καὶ ἀμερίστου καὶ τῆς χείρονος, ἣν περὶ τὰ σώματα μεριστὴν κέκληκεν, οὐχ ἑτέραν οὖσαν ἢ τὴν δοξαστικὴν καὶ φανταστικὴν καὶ συμπαθῆ τῶν αἰσθητῶν κίνησιν, οὐ γενομένην ἀλλ’ ὑφεστῶσαν ἀίδιον, ὥσπερ ἡ ἑτέρα. τὸ γὰρ νοερὸν ἡ φύσις ἔχουσα καὶ τὸ δοξαστικὸν εἶχεν· ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο μὲν ἀκίνητον καὶ ἀπαθὲς καὶ περὶ τὴν ἀεὶ μένουσαν ἱδρυμένον οὐσίαν· τοῦτο δὲ μεριστὸν καὶ πλανητόν, ἅτε δὴ φερομένης καὶ σκεδαννυμένης ἐφαπτόμενον ὕλης. οὔτε γὰρ τὸ αἰσθητὸν εἰλήχει τάξεως ἀλλ’ ἦν ἄμορφον καὶ ἀόριστον, ἥ τε περὶ [f] τοῦτο τεταγμένη δύναμις οὔτε δόξας ἐνάρθρους οὔτε κινήσεις ἁπάσας ἔχουσα τεταγμένας, ἀλλὰ τὰς πολλὰς ἐνυπνιώδεις καὶ παραφόρους καὶ ταραττούσας τὸ σωματοειδές, ὅσα μὴ κατὰ τύχην τῷ βελτίονι περιέπιπτεν· ἐν μέσῳ γὰρ ἦν ἀμφοῖν καὶ πρὸς ἀμφότερα συμπαθῆ καὶ [1032] [a] συγγενῆ φύσιν εἶχε, τῷ μὲν αἰσθητικῷ τῆς ὕλης ἀντεχομένη τῷ δὲ κριτικῷ τῶν νοητῶν.

Οὕτω δέ πως καὶ Πλάτων διασαφεῖ τοῖς ὀνόμασιν· ‘οὗτος’ γάρ φησι (Tim. 52d) ‘παρὰ τῆς ἐμῆς ψήφου λογισθεὶς ἐν κεφαλαίῳ δεδόσθω λόγος ὄντος καὶ χώραν καὶ γένεσιν εἶναι τρία τριχῆ καὶ πρὶν οὐρανὸν γενέσθαι.’ καὶ χώραν τε γὰρ καλεῖ τὴν ὕλην ὥσπερ ἕδραν ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ ὑποδοχήν, ὂν δὲ τὸ νοητόν, γένεσιν δὲ τοῦ κόσμου μήπω γεγονότος οὐδεμίαν ἄλλην ἢ τὴν ἐν μεταβολαῖς καὶ κινήσεσιν οὐσίαν, τοῦ τυποῦντος καὶ τοῦ τυπουμένου μεταξὺ τεταγμένην, διαδιδοῦσαν ἐνταῦθα τὰς ἐκεῖθεν [b] εἰκόνας. διά τε δὴ ταῦτα μεριστὴ προσηγορεύθη καὶ ὅτι τῷ αἰσθητῷ τὸ αἰσθανόμενον καὶ τῷ φανταστῷ τὸ φανταζόμενον ἀνάγκη συνδιανέμεσθαι καὶ συμπαρήκειν· ἡ γὰρ αἰσθητικὴ κίνησις, ἰδία ψυχῆς οὖσα, κινεῖται πρὸς τὸ αἰσθητὸν ἐκτός· ὁ δὲ νοῦς αὐτὸς μὲν ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ μόνιμος ἦν καὶ ἀκίνητος, ἐγγενόμενος δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ κρατήσας εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐπιστρέφει καὶ συμπεραίνει τὴν ἐγκύκλιον φορὰν περὶ τὸ μένον ἀεὶ μάλιστα ψαύουσαν τοῦ ὄντος. διὸ καὶ δυσανάκρατος ἡ κοινωνία γέγονεν αὐτῶν, τῷ ἀμερίστῳ τὸ μεριστὸν καὶ τῷ μηδαμῇ κινητῷ τὸ πάντῃ φορητὸν μιγνύουσα καὶ καταβιαζομένη θάτερον εἰς ταὐτὸν [c] συνελθεῖν. ἦν δὲ τὸ θάτερον οὐ κίνησις ὥσπερ οὐδὲ ταὐτὸν στάσις, ἀλλ’ ἀρχὴ διαφορᾶς καὶ ἀνομοιότητος. ἑκάτερον γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς ἑτέρας ἀρχῆς κάτεισι, τὸ μὲν ταὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς τὸ δὲ θάτερον ἀπὸ τῆς δυάδος· καὶ μέμικται πρῶτον ἐνταῦθα περὶ τὴν ψυχήν, ἀριθμοῖς καὶ λόγοις συνδεθέντα καὶ μεσότησιν ἐναρμονίοις, καὶ ποιεῖ θάτερον μὲν ἐγγενόμενον τῷ αὐτῷ διαφοράν, τὸ δὲ ταὐτὸν ἐν τῷ ἑτέρῳ τάξιν, ὡς δῆλόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς πρώταις τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεσιν· εἰσὶ δ’ αὗται τὸ κριτικὸν καὶ τὸ κινητικόν. ἡ μὲν οὖν κίνησις εὐθὺς ἐπιδείκνυται περὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐν μὲν τῇ ταὐτότητι τὴν ἑτερότητα τῇ περιφορᾷ [d] τῶν ἀπλανῶν, ἐν δὲ τῇ ἑτερότητι τὴν ταὐτότητα τῇ τάξει τῶν πλανήτων· ἐπικρατεῖ γὰρ ἐν ἐκείνοις τὸ ταὐτόν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς περὶ γῆν τοὐναντίον. ἡ δὲ κρίσις ἀρχὰς μὲν ἔχει δύο, τόν τε νοῦν ἀπὸ τοῦ ταὐτοῦ πρὸς τὰ καθόλου καὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου πρὸς τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα. μέμικται δὲ λόγος ἐξ ἀμφοῖν, νόησις ἐν τοῖς νοητοῖς καὶ δόξα γινόμενος ἐν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς· ὀργάνοις τε μεταξὺ φαντασίαις τε καὶ μνήμαις χρώμενος, ὧν τὰ μὲν ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ τὸ ἕτερον τὰ δ’ ἐν τῷ ἑτέρῳ ποιεῖ τὸ ταὐτόν. ἔστι γὰρ ἡ μὲν νόησις κίνησις τοῦ νοοῦντος περὶ τὸ μένον, ἡ δὲ δόξα μονὴ τοῦ αἰσθανομένου περὶ τὸ κινούμενον· φαντασίαν δὲ [e] συμπλοκὴν δόξης πρὸς αἴσθησιν οὖσαν ἵστησιν ἐν μνήμῃ τὸ ταὐτόν· τὸ δὲ θάτερον κινεῖ πάλιν ἐν διαφορᾷ τοῦ πρόσθεν καὶ νῦν, ἑτερότητος ἅμα καὶ ταὐτότητος ἐφαπτόμενον.

Δεῖ δὲ τὴν περὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῦ κόσμου γενομένην σύνταξιν εἰκόνα λαβεῖν τῆς ἀναλογίας ἐν ᾗ διηρμόσατο τὴν ψυχήν. ἐκεῖ μὲν γὰρ ἦν ἄκρα τὸ πῦρ καὶ ἡ γῆ, χαλεπὴν πρὸς ἄλληλα κραθῆναι φύσιν ἔχοντα, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἄκρατον καὶ ἀσύστατον· ὅθεν ἐν μέσῳ θέμενος αὐτῶν τὸν μὲν ἀέρα πρὸ τοῦ πυρὸς τὸ δ’ ὕδωρ πρὸ τῆς γῆς, ταῦτα πρῶτον ἀλλήλοις ἐκέρασεν· εἶτα διὰ τούτων ἐκεῖνα πρός τε ταῦτα καὶ ἄλληλα συνέμιξε καὶ συνήρμοσεν. ἐνταῦθα [f] δὲ πάλιν τὸ ταὐτὸν καὶ τὸ θάτερον, ἐναντίας δυνάμεις καὶ ἀκρότητας ἀντιπάλους, συνήγαγεν οὐ δι’ αὑτῶν, ἀλλ’ οὐσίας ἑτέρας μεταξύ, τὴν μὲν ἀμέριστον πρὸ τοῦ ταὐτοῦ, πρὸ δὲ τοῦ θατέρου τὴν μεριστήν, ἔστιν ᾗ προσήκουσαν ἑκατέραν ἑκατέρᾳ τάξας, εἶτα μιχθείσαις ἐκείναις ἐπεγκεραννύμενος, οὕτω τὸ πᾶν συνύφηνε τῆς ψυχῆς εἶδος, ὡς ἦν ἀνυστόν, ἐκ διαφόρων ὅμοιον ἔκ τε πολλῶν ἓν ἀπεργασάμενος.

De Stoicorum repugnantiis

ΠΕΡΙ ΣΤΩΙΚΩΝ ΕΝΑΝΤΙΩΜΑΤΩΝ

[1033] Πρῶτον ἀξιῶ τὴν τῶν δογμάτων ὁμολογίαν ἐν τοῖς βίοις θεωρεῖσθαι· δεῖ γὰρ οὐχ οὕτως τὸν ῥήτορα κατ’ [b] Αἰσχίνην (III 16) τὸ αὐτὸ φθέγγεσθαι καὶ τὸν νόμον ὡς τὸν βίον τοῦ φιλοσόφου τῷ λόγῳ σύμφωνον εἶναι. ὁ γὰρ λόγος τοῦ φιλοσόφου νόμος αὐθαίρετος καὶ ἴδιός ἐστιν, εἴ γε δὴ μὴ παιδιὰν καὶ εὑρησιλογίαν ἕνεκα δόξης ἀλλ’ ἔργον ἄξιον σπουδῆς τῆς μεγίστης, ὥσπερ ἔστιν, ἡγοῦνται φιλοσοφίαν.

Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν πολλὰ μὲν ὡς ἐν ὀλίγοις αὐτῷ Ζήνωνι πολλὰ δὲ Κλεάνθει πλεῖστα δὲ Χρυσίππῳ γεγραμμένα τυγχάνει περὶ πολιτείας καὶ τοῦ ἄρχεσθαι καὶ ἄρχειν καὶ δικάζειν καὶ ῥητορεύειν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς βίοις οὐδενὸς ἔστιν εὑρεῖν οὐ στρατηγίαν οὐ νομοθεσίαν οὐ πάροδον εἰς βουλὴν [c] οὐ συνηγορίαν ἐπὶ δικαστῶν οὐ στρατείαν ὑπὲρ πατρίδος οὐ πρεσβείαν οὐκ ἐπίδοσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ ξένης ὥσπερ τινὸς λωτοῦ γευσάμενοι σχολῆς τὸν πάντα βίον οὐ βραχὺν ἀλλὰ παμμήκη γενόμενον διήγαγον ἐν λόγοις καὶ βιβλίοις καὶ περιπάτοις, οὐκ ἄδηλον ὅτι τοῖς ὑφ’ ἑτέρων γραφομένοις καὶ λεγομένοις μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ὑφ’ αὑτῶν ὁμολογουμένως ἔζησαν, ἣν Ἐπίκουρος (fr. 426) ἡσυχίαν ἐπαινεῖ καὶ Ἱερώνυμος (fr. 16), ἐν ταύτῃ τὸ παράπαν καταβιώσαντες. αὐτὸς γοῦν Χρύσιππος ἐν τῷ τετάρτῳ περὶ Βίων οὐδὲν οἴεται τὸν σχολαστικὸν βίον τοῦ ἡδονικοῦ διαφέρειν· αὐτὰς [d] δὲ παραθήσομαι τὰς λέξεις· ‘ὅσοι δ’ ὑπολαμβάνουσι φιλοσόφοις ἐπιβάλλειν μάλιστα τὸν σχολαστικὸν βίον, ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς τί μοι δοκοῦσι διαμαρτάνειν, ὑπονοοῦντες διαγωγῆς τινος ἕνεκεν δεῖν τοῦτο ποιεῖν ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς τούτῳ παραπλησίου καὶ τὸν ὅλον βίον οὕτω πως διελκύσαι· τοῦτο δ’ ἐστίν, ἂν σαφῶς θεωρηθῇ, ἡδέως· οὐ γὰρ δεῖ λανθάνειν τὴν ὑπόνοιαν αὐτῶν, πολλῶν μὲν σαφῶς τοῦτο λεγόντων οὐκ ὀλίγων δ’ ἀδηλότερον.’ τίς οὖν μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ σχολαστικῷ βίῳ τούτῳ κατεγήρασεν ἢ Χρύσιππος καὶ Κλεάνθης καὶ Διογένης καὶ Ζήνων καὶ Ἀντίπατρος, οἵ γε καὶ τὰς αὑτῶν κατέλιπον πατρίδας, οὐδὲν ἐγκαλοῦντες ἀλλ’ ὅπως [e] καθ’ ἡσυχίαν ἐν τῷ Ὠιδείῳ καὶ ἐπὶ Ζωστῆρος σχολάζοντες καὶ φιλολογοῦντες διάγωσιν; Ἀριστοκρέων γοῦν ὁ Χρυσίππου μαθητὴς καὶ οἰκεῖος εἰκόνα χαλκῆν ἀναστηλώσας ἐπέγραψε τόδε τὸ ἐλεγεῖον

†’τὸν νέον Χρύσιππον Ἀριστοκρέων ἀνέθηκε,

τῶν Ἀκαδημιακῶν στραγγαλίδων κοπίδα.’

τοῦτ’ οὖν ὁ Χρύσιππος, ὁ γέρων, ὁ φιλόσοφος, ὁ τὸν βασιλικὸν καὶ πολιτικὸν ἐπαινῶν βίον, τὸν δὲ σχολαστικὸν οὐδὲν οἰόμενος τοῦ ἡδονικοῦ διαφέρειν. ὅσοι γε μὴν ἄλλοι πολιτείᾳ προσίασιν, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐναντιοῦνται τοῖς αὑτῶν [f] δόγμασι· καὶ γὰρ ἄρχουσι καὶ δικάζουσι καὶ συμβουλεύουσι καὶ νομοθετοῦσι καὶ κολάζουσι καὶ τιμῶσιν, ὡς πόλεων μὲν οὐσῶν ἐν αἷς πολιτεύονται, βουλευτῶν δὲ καὶ δικαστῶν ἀεὶ τῶν λαγχανόντων, στρατηγῶν δὲ τῶν χειροτονουμένων, νόμων δὲ τῶν Κλεισθένους καὶ Λυκούργου καὶ Σόλωνος, οὓς φαύλους καὶ ἀνοήτους γεγονέναι λέγουσιν. ὥστε καὶ πολιτευόμενοι μάχονται.

[1034] [a] Καὶ μὴν Ἀντίπατρος ἐν τῷ περὶ τῆς Κλεάνθους καὶ Χρυσίππου διαφορᾶς ἱστόρηκεν, ὅτι Ζήνων καὶ Κλεάνθης οὐκ ἠθέλησαν Ἀθηναῖοι γενέσθαι, μὴ δόξωσι τὰς αὑτῶν πατρίδας ἀδικεῖν. ὅτι μέν, εἰ καλῶς οὗτοι, Χρύσιππος οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἐποίησεν ἐγγραφεὶς εἰς τὴν πολιτείαν, παρείσθω· πολλὴν δὲ μάχην καὶ παράλογον ἔχει τὸ τὰ σώματα καὶ τοὺς βίους οὕτω μακρὰν ἀποξενώσαντας τὰ ὀνόματα ταῖς πατρίσι τηρεῖν, ὥσπερ εἴ τις τὴν γαμετὴν ἀπολιπών, ἑτέρᾳ δὲ συζῶν καὶ συναναπαυόμενος καὶ παιδοποιούμενος ἐξ ἑτέρας, μὴ συγγράφοιτο γάμον, ὅπως ἀδικεῖν μὴ δοκῇ τὴν προτέραν.

[b] Χρύσιππος δὲ πάλιν ἐν τῷ περὶ Ῥητορικῆς γράφων οὕτω ῥητορεύσειν καὶ πολιτεύσεσθαι τὸν σοφόν, ὡς καὶ τοῦ πλούτου ὄντος ἀγαθοῦ καὶ τῆς δόξης καὶ τῆς ὑγιείας, ὁμολογεῖ τοὺς λόγους αὐτῶν ἀνεξόδους εἶναι καὶ ἀπολιτεύτους καὶ τὰ δόγματα ταῖς χρείαις ἀνάρμοστα καὶ ταῖς πράξεσιν.

Ἔτι δόγμα Ζήνωνός ἐστιν ‘ἱερὰ θεῶν μὴ οἰκοδομεῖν· ἱερὸν γὰρ μὴ πολλοῦ ἄξιον καὶ ἅγιον οὐκ ἔστιν· οἰκοδόμων δ’ ἔργον καὶ βαναύσων οὐδέν ἐστι πολλοῦ ἄξιον.’ οἱ δὲ ταῦτ’ ἐπαινοῦντες ὡς εὖ ἔχοντα μυοῦνται μὲν ἐν ἱεροῖς, ἀναβαίνουσι δ’ εἰς ἀκρόπολιν, προσκυνοῦσι δὲ τὰ ἕδη καὶ [c] στεφανοῦσι τοὺς ναούς, οἰκοδόμων ὄντας ἔργα καὶ βαναύσων ἀνθρώπων· εἶτα τοὺς Ἐπικουρείους ἐλέγχεσθαι δοκοῦσι θύοντας θεοῖς, αὐτοὶ δὲ μᾶλλον ἐλέγχονται θύοντες ἐπὶ τῶν βωμῶν καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν, ἃ μήτ’ εἶναι μήτ’ οἰκοδομεῖσθαι δεῖν ἀξιοῦσιν.

Ἀρετὰς ὁ Ζήνων ἀπολείπει πλείονας κατὰ διαφοράς, ὥσπερ ὁ Πλάτων, οἷον φρόνησιν ἀνδρείαν σωφροσύνην δικαιοσύνην, ὡς ἀχωρίστους μὲν οὔσας ἑτέρας δὲ καὶ διαφερούσας ἀλλήλων. πάλιν δ’ ὁριζόμενος αὐτῶν ἑκάστην τὴν μὲν ἀνδρείαν φησὶν εἶναι φρόνησιν ἐνεργητέοις τὴν δὲ δικαιοσύνην φρόνησιν ἐν ἀπονεμητέοις, ὡς μίαν οὖσαν ἀρετὴν ταῖς δὲ πρὸς τὰ πράγματα σχέσεσι κατὰ [d] τὰς ἐνεργείας διαφέρειν δοκοῦσαν. οὐ μόνον δ’ ὁ Ζήνων περὶ ταῦτα φαίνεται αὑτῷ μαχόμενος, ἀλλὰ καὶ Χρύσιππος Ἀρίστωνι μὲν ἐγκαλῶν ὅτι μιᾶς ἀρετῆς σχέσεις ἔλεγε τὰς ἄλλας εἶναι, Ζήνωνι δὲ συνηγορῶν οὕτως ὁριζομένῳ τῶν ἀρετῶν ἑκάστην. ὁ δὲ Κλεάνθης ἐν Ὑπομνήμασι Φυσικοῖς εἰπὼν ὅτι ‘πληγὴ πυρὸς ὁ τόνος ἐστί, κἂν ἱκανὸς ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ γένηται πρὸς τὸ ἐπιτελεῖν τὰ ἐπιβάλλοντα, ἰσχὺς καλεῖται καὶ κράτος’ ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν ‘ἡ δ’ ἰσχὺς αὕτη καὶ τὸ κράτος, ὅταν μὲν ἐπὶ τοῖς φανεῖσιν ἐμμενετέοις ἐγγένηται, ἐγκράτειά ἐστιν, ὅταν δ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς ὑπομενετέοις, ἀνδρεία· περὶ τὰς ἀξίας δὲ δικαιοσύνη· [e] περὶ δὲ τὰς αἱρέσεις καὶ ἐκκλίσεις σωφροσύνη.’

Πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα

‘μηδὲ δίκην δικάσῃς, πρὶν ἄμφω μῦθον ἀκούσῃς’

ἀντέλεγεν ὁ Ζήνων τοιούτῳ τινὶ λόγῳ χρώμενος ‘εἴτ’ ἀπέδειξεν ὁ πρότερος εἰπών, οὐκ ἀκουστέον τοῦ δευτέρου λέγοντος (πέρας γὰρ ἔχει τὸ ζητούμενον), εἴτ’ οὐκ ἀπέδειξεν (ὅμοιον γὰρ ὡς εἰ μηδ’ ὑπήκουσε κληθεὶς ἢ ὑπακούσας ἐτερέτισεν). ἤτοι δ’ ἀπέδειξεν ἢ οὐκ ἀπέδειξεν· οὐκ ἀκουστέον ἄρα τοῦ δευτέρου λέγοντος.’ τοῦτον δὲ τὸν λόγον ἐρωτήσας αὐτὸς ἀντέγραφε μὲν πρὸς τὴν Πλάτωνος Πολιτείαν, ἔλυε δὲ σοφίσματα, καὶ τὴν διαλεκτικὴν ὡς τοῦτο ποιεῖν δυναμένην ἐκέλευε παραλαμβάνειν [f] τοὺς μαθητάς. καίτοι ἢ ἀπέδειξε Πλάτων ἢ οὐκ ἀπέδειξε τὰ ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ, κατ’ οὐδέτερον δ’ ἦν ἀναγκαῖον ἀντιγράφειν ἀλλὰ πάντως περιττὸν καὶ μάταιον. τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ καὶ περὶ τῶν σοφισμάτων ἔστιν εἰπεῖν.

[1035] [a] Ὁ Χρύσιππος οἴεται δεῖν τῶν λογικῶν πρῶτον ἀκροᾶσθαι τοὺς νέους δεύτερον δὲ τῶν ἠθικῶν μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα τῶν φυσικῶν, ὡς ἂν τέλος δὲ τούτοις τὸν περὶ θεῶν λόγον ἔσχατον παραλαμβάνειν. πολλαχοῦ δὲ τούτων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λεγομένων ἀρκέσει παραθέσθαι τὰ ἐν τῷ τετάρτῳ περὶ Βίων ἔχοντα κατὰ λέξιν οὕτως· ‘πρῶτον μὲν οὖν δοκεῖ μοι κατὰ τὰ ὀρθῶς ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχαίων εἰρημένα τρία γένη τῶν τοῦ φιλοσόφου θεωρημάτων εἶναι, τὰ μὲν λογικὰ τὰ δ’ ἠθικὰ τὰ δὲ φυσικά· εἶτα τούτων δεῖν τάττεσθαι πρῶτα μὲν τὰ λογικὰ δεύτερα δὲ τὰ ἠθικὰ τρίτα δὲ τὰ φυσικά· τῶν δὲ φυσικῶν ἔσχατος εἶναι ὁ περὶ τῶν θεῶν λόγος· [b] διὸ καὶ τελετὰς ‹προς›ηγόρευσαν τὰς τούτου παραδόσεις.’ ἀλλὰ τοῦτόν γε τὸν λόγον, ὃν ἔσχατόν φησι δεῖν τάττεσθαι, ‹τὸν› περὶ θεῶν, ἔθει προτάττει καὶ προεκτίθησι παντὸς ἠθικοῦ ζητήματος· οὔτε γὰρ περὶ τελῶν οὔτε περὶ δικαιοσύνης οὔτε περὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν οὔτε περὶ γάμου καὶ παιδοτροφίας οὔτε περὶ νόμου καὶ πολιτείας φαίνεται τὸ παράπαν φθεγγόμενος, εἰ μή, καθάπερ οἱ τὰ ψηφίσματα ταῖς πόλεσιν εἰσφέροντες προγράφουσιν Ἀγαθὴν Τύχην, οὕτως καὶ αὐτὸς προγράψειε τὸν Δία, τὴν Εἱμαρμένην, τὴν Πρόνοιαν, τὸ συνέχεσθαι μιᾷ δυνάμει τὸν κόσμον ἕνα ὄντα καὶ πεπερασμένον· ὧν οὐθὲν ἔστι [c] πεισθῆναι μὴ διὰ βάθους ἐγκραθέντα τοῖς φυσικοῖς λόγοις. ἄκουε δ’ ἃ λέγει περὶ τούτων ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Θεῶν· ‘οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν εὑρεῖν τῆς δικαιοσύνης ἄλλην ἀρχὴν οὐδ’ ἄλλην γένεσιν ἢ τὴν ἐκ τοῦ Διὸς καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῆς κοινῆς φύσεως· ἐντεῦθεν γὰρ δεῖ πᾶν τὸ τοιοῦτον τὴν ἀρχὴν ἔχειν, εἰ μέλλομεν ὀρθῶς τι ἐρεῖν περὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν.’ πάλιν ἐν ταῖς Φυσικαῖς Θέσεσιν ‘οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἄλλως οὐδ’ οἰκειότερον ἐπελθεῖν ἐπὶ τὸν τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν λόγον οὐδ’ ἐπὶ τὰς ἀρετὰς οὐδ’ ἐπ’ εὐδαιμονίαν, ἀλλ’ ‹ἢ› ἀπὸ τῆς κοινῆς φύσεως καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου διοικήσεως.’ [d] προελθὼν δ’ αὖθις· ‘δεῖ γὰρ τούτοις συνάψαι τὸν περὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν λόγον, οὐκ οὔσης ἄλλης ἀρχῆς αὐτῶν ἀμείνονος οὐδ’ ἀναφορᾶς, οὐδ’ ἄλλου τινὸς ἕνεκεν τῆς φυσικῆς θεωρίας παραληπτῆς οὔσης ἢ πρὸς τὴν περὶ ἀγαθῶν ἢ κακῶν διάστασιν.’ γίνεται τοίνυν ἅμα πρόσω καὶ ὀπίσω τῶν ἠθικῶν ὁ φυσικὸς λόγος κατὰ Χρύσιππον· μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἄπορος ἡ περιτροπὴ τῆς τάξεως, εἰ μετὰ ταῦτα τακτέον ἐκεῖνον, ὧν καταλαβεῖν οὐθὲν ἐκείνου χωρὶς ἔστιν· καὶ πρόδηλος ἡ μάχη τοῦ τὸν φυσικὸν λόγον ἀρχὴν μὲν εἶναι τοῦ περὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν τιθεμένου κελεύοντος δὲ μὴ πρότερον ἀλλ’ ὕστερον ἐκείνων παραδίδοσθαι.

[e] εἰ δέ τις ἐρεῖ γεγραφέναι τὸν Χρύσιππον ἐν τῷ περὶ Λόγου Χρήσεως, ὡς ‘οὐ καθάπαξ ἀφεκτέον ἐστὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῷ τὴν λογικὴν ἀναλαμβάνοντι πρώτην, ἀλλὰ κἀκείνων μεταληπτέον κατὰ τὸ διδόμενον,’ ἀληθῆ μὲν ἐρεῖ βεβαιώσει δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν· μάχεται γὰρ πρὸς ἑαυτόν, ὅπου μὲν ἔσχατον τὸν περὶ θεῶν λόγον ἀναλαμβάνειν κελεύων καὶ τελευταῖον, ὡς διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τελετὴν προσαγορευόμενον, ὅπου δὲ πάλιν ἐν πρώτοις ἅμα καὶ τούτου μεταληπτέον εἶναι λέγων· οἴχεται γὰρ ἡ τάξις, εἰ πάντων ἐν πᾶσι μεταλαμβάνειν δεήσει. τὸ δὲ μεῖζον, ὅτι τοῦ περὶ ἀγαθῶν [f] καὶ κακῶν λόγου τὸν περὶ θεῶν ἀρχὴν πεποιημένος οὐκ ἀπὸ τούτου κελεύει τὸν ἠθικὸν ἀρξαμένους ἀναλαμβάνειν, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνον ἀναλαμβάνοντας τούτου μεταλαμβάνειν κατὰ τὸ διδόμενον, εἶτα μεταβαίνειν ἐπὶ τοῦτον ἀπ’ ἐκείνων, οὗ χωρὶς οὐδεμίαν ἀρχὴν [ἀπ’] ἐκείνων οὐδ’ ἔφοδον εἶναί φησι.

Τὸ πρὸς τὰ ἐναντία διαλέγεσθαι καθόλου μὲν οὔ φησιν ἀποδοκιμάζειν, χρῆσθαι δὲ οὕτω παραινεῖ, μετ’ εὐλαβείας ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς δικαστηρίοις, μὴ μετὰ συνηγορίας [1036] [a] ἀλλὰ διαλύοντας αὐτῶν τὸ πιθανόν· ‘τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ἐποχὴν ἄγουσι περὶ πάντων ἐπιβάλλει’ φησί ‘τοῦτο ποιεῖν καὶ συνεργόν ἐστι πρὸς ὃ βούλονται· τοῖς δ’ ἐπιστήμην ἐνεργαζομένοις καθ’ ἣν ὁμολογουμένως βιωσόμεθα, τὰ ἐναντία, στοιχειοῦν καὶ καταστοιχίζειν τοὺς εἰσαγομένους ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς μέχρι τέλους· ἐφ’ ὧν καιρός ἐστι μνησθῆναι καὶ τῶν ἐναντίων λόγων, διαλύοντας αὐτῶν τὸ πιθανόν, καθάπερ καὶ ἐν τοῖς δικαστηρίοις·’ ταυτὶ γὰρ αὐταῖς λέξεσιν εἴρηκεν. ὅτι μὲν οὖν ἄτοπός ἐστι τοὺς φιλοσόφους τὸν ἐναντίον λόγον οἰόμενος δεῖν τιθέναι μὴ μετὰ [b] συνηγορίας ἀλλ’ ὁμοίως τοῖς δικολόγοις κακοῦντας, ὥσπερ οὐ πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἀλλὰ περὶ νίκης ἀγωνιζομένους, εἴρηται πρὸς αὐτὸν δι’ ἑτέρων. ὅτι δ’ αὐτὸς οὐκ ἐν ὀλίγοις ἀλλὰ πολλαχοῦ τοὺς ἐναντίους οἷς δοκιμάζει λόγους κατεσκεύακεν ἐρρωμένως καὶ μετὰ σπουδῆς καὶ φιλοτιμίας τοσαύτης, ὥστε μὴ παντὸς εἶναι καταμαθεῖν τὸ ἀρέσκον, αὐτοὶ δήπου λέγουσι, τὴν δεινότητα θαυμάζοντες τοῦ ἀνδρὸς καὶ τὸν Καρνεάδην οὐθὲν οἰόμενοι λέγειν ἴδιον, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ὧν ἐπεχείρησε Χρύσιππος εἰς τοὐναντίον, ὁρμώμενον ἐπιτίθεσθαι τοῖς λόγοις αὐτοῦ καὶ πολλάκις παραφθέγγεσθαι· ‘δαιμόνιε, φθίσει σε τὸ σὸν μένος’ (Ζ 407), ὡς [c] μεγάλας ἀφορμὰς καθ’ ἑαυτοῦ διδόντα τοῖς κινεῖν τὰ δόγματα καὶ διαβάλλειν βουλομένοις. ἐπὶ δὲ τοῖς κατὰ Συνηθείας ἐκδοθεῖσιν οὕτω κομῶσι καὶ μεγαληγοροῦσιν, ὥστε τοὺς πάντων ὁμοῦ τῶν Ἀκαδημαϊκῶν λόγους εἰς ταὐτὸ συμφορηθέντας οὐκ ἀξίους εἶναι παραβαλεῖν οἷς Χρύσιππος ἔγραψεν εἰς διαβολὴν τῶν αἰσθήσεων. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἀπειρίας τῶν λεγόντων ἢ φιλαυτίας σημεῖόν ἐστιν· ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἀληθές, ὅτι βουληθεὶς αὖθις συνειπεῖν τῇ συνηθείᾳ καὶ ταῖς αἰσθήσεσιν ἐνδεέστερος γέγονεν αὑτοῦ καὶ τὸ σύνταγμα τοῦ συντάγματος μαλακώτερον. ὥστ’ αὐτὸν [d] ἑαυτῷ μάχεσθαι, κελεύοντα μὲν ἀεὶ τὰ ἐναντία μὴ μετὰ συνηγορίας ἀλλὰ μετ’ ἐνδείξεως τοῦ ὅτι ψευδῆ ἐστι παρατίθεσθαι, τῶν δ’ αὑτοῦ δογμάτων κατήγορον ὄντα δεινότερον ἢ συνήγορον, καὶ φυλάττεσθαι μὲν ἑτέροις παραινοῦντα τοὺς εἰς τὰ ἐναντία λόγους ὡς περισπῶντας τὴν κατάληψιν, αὐτὸν δὲ τῶν βεβαιούντων τὴν κατάληψιν λόγων φιλοτιμότερον συντιθέντα τοὺς ἀναιροῦντας. καίτοι αὐτὸς ὅτι τοῦτ’ αὐτὸ φοβεῖται, σαφῶς ὑποδείκνυσιν ἐν τῷ τετάρτῳ περὶ Βίων, ταῦτα γράφων· ‘οὐχ ὡς ἔτυχε δ’ οὐδὲ τοὺς ἐναντίους ὑποδεικτέον λόγους οὐδὲ ‹τὰ› πρὸς [e] τὰ ἐναντία πιθανὰ ἀλλ’ εὐλαβουμένους μὴ καὶ περισπασθέντες ὑπ’ αὐτῶν τὰς καταλήψεις ἀφῶσιν, οὔτε τῶν λύσεων ἱκανῶς ἂν ἀκοῦσαι δυνάμενοι καταλαμβάνοντές τ’ εὐαποσείστως· ἐπεὶ καὶ οἱ κατὰ τὴν συνήθειαν καταλαμβάνοντες καὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἐκ τῶν αἰσθήσεων ῥᾳδίως προΐενται ταῦτα, καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν Μεγαρικῶν ἐρωτημάτων περισπώμενοι καὶ ὑπ’ ἄλλων πλειόνων καὶ δυναμικωτέρων ἐρωτημάτων.’ ἡδέως ἂν οὖν πυθοίμην τῶν Στωικῶν, εἰ τὰ Μεγαρικὰ ἐρωτήματα δυναμικώτερα νομίζουσιν εἶναι τῶν ὑπὸ Χρυσίππου κατὰ τῆς συνηθείας [f] ἐν ἓξ βιβλίοις γεγραμμένων· ἢ τοῦτο παρ’ αὐτοῦ Χρυσίππου δεῖ πυνθάνεσθαι; σκόπει γὰρ οἷα περὶ τοῦ Μεγαρικοῦ λόγου γέγραφεν ἐν τῷ περὶ Λόγου Χρήσεως οὕτως· ‘οἷόν τι συμβέβηκε καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ Στίλπωνος λόγου καὶ Μενεδήμου· σφόδρα γὰρ ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ γενομένων αὐτῶν ἐνδόξων, νῦν εἰς ὄνειδος αὐτῶν ὁ λόγος περιτέτραπται, ὡς τῶν μὲν παχυτέρων τῶν δ’ ἐκφανῶς σοφιζομένων.’ εἶτα [1037] [a] τούτους μέν, ὦ βέλτιστε, τοὺς λόγους, ὧν καταγελᾷς καὶ καλεῖς ὀνείδη τῶν ἐρωτώντων ὡς ἐμφανῆ τὴν κακίαν ἔχοντας, ὅμως δέδιας μή τινας περισπάσωσιν ἀπὸ τῆς καταλήψεως· αὐτὸς δὲ τοσαῦτα βιβλία γράφων κατὰ τῆς συνηθείας, οἷς, ὅ τι ἀνεῦρες, προσέθηκας ὑπερβαλέσθαι φιλοτιμούμενος τὸν Ἀρκεσίλαον, οὐδένα τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων ἐπιταράξειν προσεδόκησας; οὐδὲ γὰρ ψιλοῖς χρῆται τοῖς κατὰ τῆς συνηθείας ἐπιχειρήμασιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν δίκῃ μετὰ βάθους τινὸς συνεπιπάσχων μωρολογεῖν τε πολλάκις λέγει καὶ κενοκοπεῖν. ἵνα τοίνυν μηδ’ ἀντίρρησιν [b] ἀπολίπῃ τοῦ τὰ ἐναντία λέγειν, ἐν μὲν ταῖς Φυσικαῖς Θέσεσι ταῦτα γέγραφεν· ‘ἔσται δὲ καὶ καταλαμβάνοντάς τι πρὸς τὰ ἐναντία ἐπιχειρεῖν, τὴν ἐνοῦσαν συνηγορίαν ποιουμένους· ποτὲ δ’ οὐδέτερον καταλαμβάνοντας εἰς ἑκάτερον τὰ ὄντα λέγειν’. ἐν δὲ τῷ περὶ τῆς τοῦ Λόγου Χρήσεως εἰπών, ὡς οὐ δεῖ τῇ τοῦ λόγου δυνάμει πρὸς τὰ μὴ ἐπιβάλλοντα χρῆσθαι καθάπερ οὐδ’ ὅπλοις, ταῦτ’ ἐπείρηκε· ‘πρὸς μὲν γὰρ τὴν τῶν ἀληθῶν εὕρεσιν δεῖ χρῆσθαι αὐτῇ καὶ πρὸς τὴν τούτων συγγυμνασίαν, εἰς τἀναντία δ’ οὔ, πολλῶν ποιούντων τοῦτο’, πολλοὺς [δὲ] λέγων ἴσως [c] τοὺς ἐπέχοντας. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν οὐδέτερον καταλαμβάνοντες εἰς ἑκάτερον ἐπιχειροῦσιν, ὡς εἴ τι καταληπτόν ἐστιν οὕτως ἂν μόνως ἢ μάλιστα κατάληψιν ἑαυτῆς τὴν ἀλήθειαν παρέχουσαν· σὺ δ’, ὁ κατηγορῶν ἐκείνων, αὐτὸς τἀναντία γράφων οἷς καταλαμβάνεις περὶ τῆς συνηθείας ἑτέρους τε τοῦτο ποιεῖν μετὰ συνηγορίας προτρεπόμενος ἐν ἀχρήστοις καὶ βλαβεροῖς ὁμολογεῖς τῇ τοῦ λόγου δυνάμει χρώμενος ὑπὸ φιλοτιμίας νεανιεύεσθαι.

Τὸ κατόρθωμά φασι νόμου πρόσταγμα εἶναι, τὸ δ’

ἁμάρτημα νόμου ἀπαγόρευμα, διὸ τὸν νόμον πολλὰ τοῖς [d] φαύλοις ἀπαγορεύειν προστάττειν δὲ μηθέν· οὐ γὰρ δύνανται κατορθοῦν. καὶ τίς οὐκ οἶδεν ὅτι τῷ μὴ δυναμένῳ κατορθοῦν ἀδύνατόν ἐστι μὴ ἁμαρτάνειν; αὐτὸν οὖν αὑτῷ μαχόμενον ποιοῦσι τὸν νόμον, προστάττοντα μὲν ἃ ποιεῖν ἀδυνατοῦσιν ἀπαγορεύοντα δ’ ὧν ἀπέχεσθαι μὴ δύνανται· ὁ γὰρ μὴ δυνάμενος σωφρονεῖν ἄνθρωπος οὐ δύναται μὴ ἀκολασταίνειν, καὶ ὁ μὴ δυνάμενος φρονεῖν οὐ δύναται μὴ ἀφραίνειν. αὐτοί γε μὴν λέγουσι τοὺς ἀπαγορεύοντας ἄλλο μὲν λέγειν ἄλλο δ’ ἀπαγορεύειν ἄλλο δὲ προστάττειν· ὁ γὰρ λέγων ‘μὴ κλέψῃς’ λέγει μὲν αὐτὸ τοῦτο ‘μὴ κλέψῃς’, ἀπαγορεύει δὲ ‹κλέπτειν, προστάττει [e] δὲ› μὴ κλέπτειν· οὐδὲν οὖν ἀπαγορεύσει τοῖς φαύλοις ὁ νόμος, εἰ μηδὲ προστάξει. ἔτι καὶ τὸν ἰατρὸν τῷ μαθητῇ προστάττειν λέγουσι τεμεῖν καὶ καῦσαι, κατὰ παράλειψιν τοῦ εὐκαίρως καὶ μετρίως, καὶ τὸν μουσικὸν λυρίσαι καὶ ᾆσαι, κατὰ παράλειψιν τοῦ ἐμμελῶς καὶ συμφώνως· δι’ ὃ τοὺς ταῦτα ποιήσαντας ἀτέχνως καὶ κακῶς κολάζουσιν, ὡς προσετάχθη μὲν ὀρθῶς, οἱ δ’ οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἐποίησαν. οὐκοῦν καὶ ὁ σοφὸς τῷ θεράποντι προστάττων εἰπεῖν τι καὶ πρᾶξαι, κἂν μὴ εὐκαίρως τοῦτο πράξῃ μηδ’ ὡς δεῖ, κολάζων δῆλός ἐστι μέσον προστάττων οὐ κατόρθωμα· [f] εἰ δὲ μέσα προστάττουσιν οἱ σοφοὶ τοῖς φαύλοις, τί κωλύει καὶ τοῦ νόμου προστάγματα τοιαῦτ’ εἶναι; καὶ μὴν ἡ ὁρμὴ κατά γ’ αὐτὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου λόγος ἐστὶ προστακτικὸς αὐτῷ τοῦ ποιεῖν, ὡς ἐν τῷ περὶ Νόμου γέγραφεν. οὐκοῦν καὶ ἡ ἀφορμὴ λόγος ἀπαγορευτικὸς καὶ ἡ [1038] [a] ἔκκλισις εὔλογος ἔκκλισις· καὶ ἡ εὐλάβεια τοίνυν λόγος ἐστὶν ἀπαγορευτικὸς τῷ σοφῷ· τὸ γὰρ εὐλαβεῖσθαι σοφῶν ἴδιον οὐ φαύλων ἐστίν. εἰ μὲν οὖν ἕτερόν ἐστιν ὁ τοῦ σοφοῦ λόγος καὶ ἕτερον ὁ νόμος, μαχόμενον τῷ νόμῳ λόγον οἱ σοφοὶ τὴν εὐλάβειαν ἔχουσιν· εἰ δ’ οὐκ ἄλλο τι νόμος ἐστὶν ἢ ὁ τοῦ σοφοῦ λόγος, εὕρηται νόμος ἀπαγορευτικὸς τοῖς σοφοῖς τοῦ ποιεῖν ἃ εὐλαβοῦνται.

Τοῖς φαύλοις οὐδὲν εἶναι χρήσιμον ὁ Χρύσιππός φησιν οὐδ’ ἔχειν χρείαν τὸν φαῦλον οὐδενὸς οὐδὲ δεῖσθαι. ταῦτα δ’ εἰπὼν ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν Κατορθωμάτων αὖθις λέγει καὶ τὴν εὐχρηστίαν καὶ τὴν χάριν εἰς τὰ μέσα διατείνειν, [b] ὧν οὐδέν ἐστι χρήσιμον κατ’ αὐτούς. καὶ μὴν οὐδ’ οἰκεῖον οὐδ’ ἁρμόττον οὐδὲν εἶναι τῷ φαύλῳ φησὶν ἐν τούτοις· ‘κατὰ ταὐτὰ δὲ τῷ μὲν ἀστείῳ ἀλλότριον οὐδὲν τῷ δὲ φαύλῳ οὐδὲν οἰκεῖόν ἐστιν, ἐπειδὴ τὸ μὲν ἀγαθὸν τὸ δὲ κακόν ἐστιν αὐτῶν’. πῶς οὖν ἀποκναίει πάλιν ἐν παντὶ βιβλίῳ φυσικῷ ‹τὰ› ἴδια καὶ ἠθικῷ γράφων ὡς ‘οἰκειούμεθα πρὸς αὑτοὺς εὐθὺς γενόμενοι καὶ τὰ μέρη καὶ τὰ ἔκγονα τὰ ἑαυτῶν’; ἐν δὲ τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Δικαιοσύνης καὶ τὰ θηρία φησὶ συμμέτρως τῇ χρείᾳ τῶν ἐκγόνων ᾠκειῶσθαι πρὸς αὐτά, πλὴν τῶν ἰχθύων· ‘αὐτὰ γὰρ τὰ κυήματα τρέφεται δι’ αὑτῶν’. ἀλλ’ οὔτ’ αἴσθησίς ἐστιν οἷς μηδὲν αἰσθητὸν οὔτ’ οἰκείωσις οἷς μηδὲν οἰκεῖον· [c] ἡ γὰρ οἰκείωσις αἴσθησις ἔοικε τοῦ οἰκείου καὶ ἀντίληψις εἶναι.

Καὶ τὸ δόγμα τοῦτο τοῖς κυριωτάτοις ἑπόμενόν ἐστι, καὶ Χρύσιππος, εἰ καὶ πολλὰ πρὸς τοὐναντίον γέγραφε, δῆλός ἐστι προστιθέμενος τῷ μήτε κακίαν κακίας ἢ ἁμαρτίαν ἁμαρτίας ὑπερέχουσαν εἶναι μήτ’ ἀρετὴν ἀρετῆς ἢ κατόρθωσιν κατορθώσεως· ὅς γέ φησιν ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Φύσεως ‘ὥσπερ τῷ Διὶ προσήκει σεμνύνεσθαι ἐφ’ αὑτῷ τε καὶ τῷ βίῳ καὶ μέγα φρονεῖν καί, εἰ δεῖ οὕτως εἰπεῖν, ὑψαυχενεῖν καὶ κομᾶν καὶ μεγαληγορεῖν, ἀξίως [d] βιοῦντι μεγαληγορίας, οὕτω τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς πᾶσι ταῦτα προσήκει, κατ’ οὐθὲν προεχομένοις ὑπὸ τοῦ Διός’. ἀλλ’ αὐτός γε πάλιν ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Δικαιοσύνης φησὶν ὅτι τὴν δικαιοσύνην ἀναιροῦσιν οἱ τέλος ὑποτιθέμενοι τὴν ἡδονήν, οἱ δὲ μόνον ἀγαθὸν εἶναι λέγοντες οὐκ ἀναιροῦσιν· ἔστι δὲ ταυτὶ τὰ κατὰ λέξιν· ‘τάχα γὰρ ἀγαθοῦ αὐτῆς ἀπολειπομένης τέλους δὲ μή, τῶν δὲ δι’ αὑτῶν αἱρετῶν ὄντος καὶ τοῦ καλοῦ, σῴζοιμεν ἂν τὴν δικαιοσύνην, μεῖζον ἀγαθὸν ἀπολιπόντες τὸ καλὸν καὶ τὸ δίκαιον τῆς ἡδονῆς.’ ἀλλ’ εἴπερ μόνον τὸ καλὸν ἀγαθόν ἐστιν, ἁμαρτάνει μὲν ὁ τὴν ἡδονὴν ἀγαθὸν ἀποφαίνων, ἧττον δ’ ἁμαρτάνει τοῦ [e] καὶ τέλος αὐτὴν ποιοῦντος· ἀναιρεῖ γὰρ οὗτος τὴν δικαιοσύνην ἐκεῖνος δὲ σῴζει· καὶ κατὰ τοῦτον ἡ κοινωνία φροῦδός ἐστι καὶ ἀπόλωλεν, ὁ δὲ χρηστότητι καὶ φιλανθρωπίᾳ χώραν δίδωσιν. ἔτι τὸ μὲν λέγειν αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ περὶ τοῦ Διὸς ‘αὔξεσθαι τὰς ἀρετὰς καὶ διαβαίνειν’ ἀφίημι μὴ δόξω τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι, καίτοι πικρῶς ἐν τῷ γένει τούτῳ καὶ Πλάτωνα καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους τοῦ Χρυσίππου δάκνοντος· ἐπαινεῖν δὲ μὴ πᾶν τὸ πραττόμενον κατ’ ἀρετὴν κελεύων ἐμφαίνει τινὰ τῶν κατορθωμάτων διαφοράν· λέγει [f] δ’ οὕτως ἐν τῷ περὶ τοῦ Διός· ‘ἔργων γὰρ κατὰ τὰς ἀρετὰς ὄντων οἰκείων ἐστί τιν’ ἀποπροαχθέντα καὶ τούτων, οἷον ἀνδρείως τὸν δάκτυλον ἐκτεῖναι καὶ ἐγκρατῶς ἀποσχέσθαι δυσθανατώσης γραὸς καὶ ἀπροπτώτως ἀκοῦσαι τοῦ τὰ τρία τέσσαρα [μὴ] εἶναι, τελέως ‹τέ› τιν’ ἐμφαίνει ψυχρίαν ὁ διὰ τῶν τοιούτων ἐπαινεῖν τινας ἐγχειρῶν καὶ ἐγκωμιάζειν·’ [1039] [a] ὅμοια δ’ εἴρηται τούτοις ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Θεῶν· ‘ἔτι γὰρ οἶμαι’ φησί ‘τοὺς ἐπαίνους ἀλλοτριώσεσθαι κατὰ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν συμβαινόντων ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς, οἷον δυσθανατώσης γραὸς ἀποσχέσθαι καὶ καρτερῶς ὑπομεῖναι μυίας δηγμόν.’ τίν’ οὖν οὗτος ἄλλον κατήγορον περιμένει τῶν αὑτοῦ δογμάτων; εἰ γὰρ ψυχρός ἐστιν ὁ ταῦτ’ ἐπαινῶν, πολλῷ δήπου ψυχρότερος ὁ τούτων ἕκαστον ἂν κατόρθωμα καὶ μέγα καὶ μέγιστον εἶναι τιθέμενος· εἰ γὰρ ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ ἀνδρείως δῆγμα μυίας ἐνεγκεῖν καὶ τὸ σωφρόνως ἀποσχέσθαι τῆς γραός, οὐδὲν οἶμαι διαφέρει τὸν σπουδαῖον ἀπὸ τούτων ἢ ἀπ’ ἐκείνων ἐπαινεῖσθαι. ἔτι τοίνυν [b] ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ περὶ Φιλίας διδάσκων ὡς οὐκ ἐπὶ πᾶσι δεῖ τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι τὰς φιλίας διαλύεσθαι, ταύταις κέχρηται ταῖς λέξεσι· ‘προσήκει γὰρ τὰ μὲν ὅλως παραπέμπεσθαι τὰ δὲ μικρᾶς ἐπιστροφῆς τυγχάνειν, τὰ δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ μεῖζον, τὰ δ’ ὅλως διαλύσεως ἀξιοῦσθαι.’ ὃ δὲ τούτου μεῖζόν ἐστιν, ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ φησιν ὅτι ‘τοῖς μὲν ἐπὶ πλεῖον τοῖς δ’ ἐπ’ ἔλαττον συμβαλοῦμεν, ὥστε τοὺς μὲν μᾶλλον τοὺς δ’ ἧττον φίλους εἶναι· ἐπὶ πολὺ δὲ τῆς τοιαύτης παραλλαγῆς γινομένης (οἱ μὲν γὰρ τοσαύτης οἱ δὲ τοσαύτης γίγνονται φιλίας ἄξιοι), καὶ οἱ μὲν ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον ‹οἱ δ’ ἐπὶ [c] τοσοῦτον› πίστεως καὶ τῶν ὁμοίων καταξιωθήσονται.’ τί γὰρ ἄλλο πεποίηκεν ἐν τούτοις ἢ καὶ τούτων μεγάλας διαφορὰς ἀπολέλοιπε; καὶ μὴν ἐν τῷ περὶ Καλοῦ πρὸς ἀπόδειξιν τοῦ μόνον τὸ καλὸν ἀγαθὸν εἶναι τοιούτοις λόγοις κέχρηται· ‘τὸ ἀγαθὸν αἱρετόν, τὸ δ’ αἱρετὸν ἀρεστόν, τὸ δ’ ἀρεστὸν ἐπαινετόν, τὸ δ’ ἐπαινετὸν καλόν’ καὶ πάλιν· ‘τὸ ἀγαθὸν χαρτόν, τὸ δὲ χαρτὸν σεμνόν, τὸ δὲ σεμνὸν καλόν.’ οὗτοι δ’ οἱ λόγοι μάχονται πρὸς ἐκεῖνον· εἴτε γὰρ πᾶν ἀγαθὸν ἐπαινετόν ἐστι, καὶ τὸ σωφρόνως ἀποσχέσθαι τῆς γραὸς ἐπαινετὸν ἂν εἴη· εἴτε πᾶν ἀγαθὸν οὔτε σεμνὸν οὔτε χαρτόν· ἀλλ’ οἴχεται ὁ λόγος· πῶς γὰρ οἷόν [d] τε τὸ μὲν ἄλλους ἀπὸ τῶν τοιούτων ἐπαινεῖν ψυχρὸν εἶναι, τὸ δ’ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις χαίρειν καὶ σεμνύνεσθαι μὴ καταγέλαστον;

Πολλαχοῦ μὲν τοιοῦτός ἐστιν· ἐν δὲ ταῖς πρὸς ἑτέρους ἀντιλογίαις ἥκιστα φροντίζει τοῦ μηδὲν εἰπεῖν ἐναντίον ἑαυτῷ καὶ διάφωνον. ἐν γοῦν τοῖς περὶ τοῦ Προτρέπεσθαι τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐπιλαμβανόμενος λέγοντος ὅτι τῷ μηδὲ μαθόντι μηδ’ ἐπισταμένῳ ζῆν λυσιτελεῖ μὴ ζῆν, ταῦτ’ εἴρηκε κατὰ λέξιν· ‘ὁ γὰρ τοιοῦτος λόγος καὶ ἑαυτῷ μάχεται καὶ ἥκιστ’ ἐστὶ προτρεπτικός. πρῶτον γὰρ παραδεικνύων ὅτι κράτιστον ἡμῖν ἐστι τὸ μὴ ζῆν καὶ τρόπον τινὰ ἀποθνήσκειν ἀξιῶν, πρὸς ἕτερά τινα μᾶλλον ἡμᾶς [e] προτρέψεται ἢ τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν· οὐ γὰρ ἔστι μὴ ζῶντα φιλοσοφεῖν οὐδὲ μὴν πολὺν χρόνον ἐπιζήσαντα κακῶς καὶ ἀπείρως φρόνιμον γενέσθαι.’ καὶ προελθὼν δέ φησιν ὅτι καὶ τοῖς φαύλοις καθήκει μένειν ἐν τῷ ζῆν· εἶτα κατὰ λέξιν· ‘πρῶτον γὰρ ἡ ἀρετὴ ψιλῶς οὐδέν ἐστι πρὸς τὸ ζῆν ἡμᾶς, οὕτως δ’ οὐδ’ ἡ κακία οὐδέν ἐστι πρὸς τὸ δεῖν ἡμᾶς ἀπιέναι.’ καὶ μὴν οὐχ ἕτερα δεῖ βιβλία διειλῆσαι τοῦ Χρυσίππου τὴν πρὸς αὑτὸν ἐνδεικνυμένους μάχην, ἀλλ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς τούτοις ποτὲ μὲν τοῦ Ἀντισθένους ἐπαινῶν προφέρεται τὸ δεῖν κτᾶσθαι νοῦν ἢ βρόχον καὶ τοῦ Τυρταίου τὸ ‘πρὶν ἀρετῆς πελάσαι τέρμασιν ἢ θανάτου’ (fr. 11 D.)· - καίτοι [f] τί ταῦτα βούλεται δηλοῦν ἄλλο πλὴν ὅτι τὸ μὴ ζῆν λυσιτελέστερόν ἐστι τοῦ ζῆν τοῖς κακοῖς καὶ ἀνοήτοις; - ποτὲ δὲ τὸν Θέογνιν (v. 175) ἐπανορθούμενος ‘οὐκ ἔδει’ φησίν ‘εἰπεῖν ‘χρὴ πενίην φεύγοντα,’ μᾶλλον δέ

‘χρὴ κακίαν φεύγοντα καὶ ἐς βαθυκήτεα πόντον

ῥιπτεῖν καὶ πετρῶν, Κύρνε, κατ’ ἠλιβάτων.’’

[1040] [a] τί οὖν ἄλλο δόξειεν ἂν ποιεῖν ἢ ταὐτὰ πράγματα καὶ δόγματα παρεγγράφειν αὐτός, ἑτέρων δὲ γραφόντων ἐξαλείφειν, Πλάτωνι μὲν ἐγκαλῶν ὅτι τοῦ κακῶς ζῆν καὶ ἀμαθῶς τὸ μὴ ζῆν ἀποδείκνυσι λυσιτελέστερον, Θεόγνιδι δὲ συμβουλεύων κατακρημνίζειν καὶ καταποντίζειν ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τοῦ φυγεῖν τὴν κακίαν; Ἀντισθένη μὲν γὰρ ἐπαινῶν ὅτι τοὺς μὴ νοῦν ἔχοντας εἰς βρόχον συνήλαυνεν, ‹αὑτὸν› αὐτὸς ἔψεγεν εἰπόντα μηδὲν εἶναι τὴν κακίαν πρὸς τὸ ἐκ τοῦ ζῆν ἡμᾶς ἀπαλλάττειν.

Ἐν δὲ τοῖς πρὸς αὐτὸν Πλάτωνα περὶ Δικαιοσύνης εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐνάλλεται τῷ περὶ θεῶν λόγῳ καί φησιν [b] οὔτ’ ὀρθῶς ἀποτρέπειν τῷ ἀπὸ τῶν θεῶν φόβῳ τῆς ἀδικίας τὸν Κέφαλον, εὐδιάβλητόν τ’ εἶναι καὶ πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἐξάγ‹ειν ἔχ›οντα πολλοὺς περισπασμοὺς καὶ πιθανότητας ἀντιπιπτούσας τὸν περὶ τῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ κολάσεων λόγον, ὡς οὐδὲν διαφέροντα τῆς Ἀκκοῦς καὶ τῆς Ἀλφιτοῦς, δι’ ὧν τὰ παιδάρια τοῦ κακοσχολεῖν αἱ γυναῖκες ἀνείργουσιν. οὕτω δὲ διασύρας τὰ τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐπαινεῖ πάλιν ἐν ἄλλοις καὶ προφέρεται τὰ τοῦ Εὐριπίδου ταυτὶ πολλάκις (fr. 991)·

‘ἀλλ’ ἔστιν, κεἴ τις ἐγγελᾷ λόγῳ,

Ζεὺς καὶ θεοὶ βρότεια λεύσσοντες πάθη·’

καὶ ὁμοίως ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Δικαιοσύνης τὰ Ἡσιόδεια ταυτὶ προενεγκάμενος (O. D. 242)

[c] ‘τοῖσιν δ’ οὐρανόθεν μέγ’ ἐπήλασε πῆμα Κρονίων,

λιμὸν ὁμοῦ καὶ λοιμόν· ἀποφθινύθουσι δὲ λαοί’

ταῦτά φησι τοὺς θεοὺς ποιεῖν, ὅπως τῶν πονηρῶν κολαζομένων οἱ λοιποὶ παραδείγμασι τούτοις χρώμενοι ἧττον ἐπιχειρῶσι τοιοῦτόν τι ποιεῖν. πάλιν ἐν μὲν τοῖς περὶ Δικαιοσύνης ὑπειπὼν ὅτι τοὺς ἀγαθὸν ἀλλὰ μὴ τέλος τιθεμένους τὴν ἡδονὴν ἐνδέχεται σῴζειν καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην, θεὶς τοῦτο κατὰ λέξιν εἴρηκε· ‘τάχα γὰρ ἀγαθοῦ αὐτῆς ἀπολειπομένης τέλους δὲ μή, τῶν δὲ δι’ αὑτῶν αἱρετῶν ὄντος καὶ τοῦ καλοῦ, σῴζοιμεν ἂν τὴν δικαιοσύνην, μεῖζον ἀγαθὸν ἀπολιπόντες τὸ καλὸν καὶ τὸ δίκαιον τῆς [d] ἡδονῆς.’ ταῦτα μὲν ἐν τούτοις περὶ τῆς ἡδονῆς. ἐν δὲ τοῖς πρὸς Πλάτωνα κατηγορῶν αὐτοῦ δοκοῦντος ἀγαθὸν ἀπολιπεῖν τὴν ὑγίειαν, οὐ μόνον τὴν δικαιοσύνην φησὶν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν μεγαλοψυχίαν ἀναιρεῖσθαι καὶ τὴν σωφροσύνην καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἀρετὰς ἁπάσας, ἂν ἢ τὴν ἡδονὴν ἢ τὴν ὑγίειαν ἤ τι τῶν ἄλλων, ὃ μὴ καλόν ἐστιν, ἀγαθὸν ἀπολίπωμεν. ἃ μὲν οὖν ῥητέον ὑπὲρ Πλάτωνος, ἐν ἄλλοις γέγραπται πρὸς αὐτόν· ἐνταῦθα δ’ ἡ μάχη καταφανής ἐστιν, ὅπου μέν, ἂν μετὰ τοῦ καλοῦ τις ὑποθῆται καὶ τὴν ἡδονὴν ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, σῴζεσθαι δικαιοσύνην λέγοντος, ὅπου δὲ πάλιν τοὺς μὴ μόνον τὸ καλὸν ‹ἀγαθὸν› ἀπολιπόντας [e] αἰτιωμένου τὰς ἀρετὰς ἁπάσας ἀναιρεῖν. ἵνα δὲ μηδ’ ἀπολογίαν ὑπολίπῃ τοῖς ἐναντιώμασιν, Ἀριστοτέλει περὶ δικαιοσύνης ἀντιγράφων οὔ φησιν αὐτὸν ὀρθῶς λέγειν, ὅτι τῆς ἡδονῆς οὔσης τέλους ἀναιρεῖται μὲν ἡ δικαιοσύνη, συναναιρεῖται δὲ τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀρετῶν ἑκάστη· τὴν μὲν γὰρ δικαιοσύνην ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀναιρεῖσθαι, τὰς δ’ ἄλλας ἀρετὰς οὐδὲν κωλύειν ὑπάρχειν, εἰ καὶ μὴ δι’ αὑτὰς αἱρετὰς ἀλλ’ ἀγαθὰς γοῦν καὶ ἀρεστὰς ἐσομένας· εἶθ’ ἑκάστην ἐξ ὀνόματος προσαγορεύει. βέλτιον δὲ τὰς ἐκείνου λέξεις ἀναλαβεῖν· ‘τῆς γὰρ ἡδονῆς’ φησίν [f] ‘ἐμφαινομένης τέλους κατὰ τὸν τοιοῦτον λόγον τὸ μὲν τοιοῦτο πᾶν μοι δοκεῖ οὐκ ἐμπεριλαμβάνεσθαι, δι’ ὃ ῥητέον μήτε τῶν ἀρετῶν τινα δι’ αὑτὴν αἱρετὴν εἶναι μήτε τῶν κακιῶν φευκτήν, ἀλλὰ πάντα ταῦτα δεῖν ἀναφέρεσθαι πρὸς τὸν ὑποκείμενον σκοπόν· οὐδὲν μέντοι κωλύσει κατ’ αὐτοὺς τὴν ἀνδρείαν μὲν καὶ τὴν φρόνησιν καὶ τὴν ἐγκράτειαν καὶ τὴν καρτερίαν καὶ τὰς ὁμοίας ταύταις ἀρετὰς εἶναι τῶν ἀγαθῶν, τὰς δ’ ἐναντίας ‹κακίας› ὑπάρχειν [1041] [a] φευκτάς.’ τίς οὖν τούτου πρὸς λόγους ἰταμώτερος γέγονεν, ὃς δυεῖν τῶν ἀρίστων φιλοσόφων ἐγκέκληκε τῷ μὲν ὅτι πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν ἀναιρεῖ μὴ μόνον τὸ καλὸν ἀγαθὸν ἀπολιπών, τῷ δ’ ὅτι τῆς ἡδονῆς τέλους οὔσης οὐ πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν ἄνευ τῆς δικαιοσύνης σῴζεσθαι νομίζει; θαυμαστὴ γὰρ ἡ ἐξουσία περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν πραγμάτων διαλεγόμενον, ἃ τίθησιν αὐτὸς ἐγκαλῶν Ἀριστοτέλει, ταῦτ’ ἀναιρεῖν πάλιν Πλάτωνος κατηγοροῦντα. καὶ μὴν ἐν ταῖς περὶ Δικαιοσύνης Ἀποδείξεσι λέγει ῥητῶς ὅτι ‘πᾶν κατόρθωμα καὶ εὐνόμημα καὶ δικαιοπράγημά ἐστι· τὸ δέ γε [b] κατ’ ἐγκράτειαν ἢ καρτερίαν ἢ φρόνησιν ἢ ἀνδρείαν πραττόμενον κατόρθωμά ἐστιν· ὥστε καὶ δικαιοπράγημα.’ πῶς οὖν, οἷς ἀπολείπει φρόνησιν καὶ ἀνδρείαν καὶ ἐγκράτειαν, οὐκ ἀπολείπει δικαιοσύνην; εὐθὺς αὐτῶν ὅσα κατορθοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς εἰρημέναις ἀρεταῖς καὶ δικαιοπραγούντων;

Τοῦ δὲ Πλάτωνος εἰπόντος τὴν ἀδικίαν ὡς διαφορὰ ψυχῆς οὖσα καὶ στάσις οὐδ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς ἔχουσιν ἀποβάλλει τὴν δύναμιν ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἑαυτῷ συμβάλλει καὶ ‹συγ›κρούει [ταράττει] τὸν πονηρόν, ἐγκαλῶν Χρύσιππος ἀτόπως φησὶ λέγεσθαι τὸ ἀδικεῖν ἑαυτόν· εἶναι γὰρ πρὸς ἕτερον οὐ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν τὴν ἀδικίαν· ἐπιλαθόμενος δὲ τούτων [c] αὖθις ἐν ταῖς περὶ Δικαιοσύνης Ἀποδείξεσιν ἀδικεῖσθαί φησιν ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ τὸν ἀδικοῦντα καὶ αὑτὸν ἀδικεῖν, ὅταν ἄλλον ἀδικῇ, γενόμενον ἑαυτῷ τοῦ παρανομεῖν αἴτιον καὶ βλάπτοντα παρ’ ἀξίαν ἑαυτόν. ἐν μὲν τοῖς πρὸς Πλάτωνα ταῦτ’ εἴρηκε περὶ τοῦ τὴν ἀδικίαν λέγεσθαι μὴ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἕτερον· ‘†οἱ γὰρ κατ’ ἰδίαν ἄδικοι συνεστήκασιν ἐκ πλειόνων τοιούτων τἀναντία λεγόντων, καὶ ἄλλως τῆς ἀδικίας λαμβανομένης ὡς ἂν ἐν πλείοσι πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς οὕτως ἔχουσιν εἰς δὲ τὸν ἕνα μηδενὸς διατείνοντος τοιούτου, καθ’ ὅσον δὲ πρὸς τοὺς πλησίον ἔχει οὕτως.’ ἐν [d] δὲ ταῖς Ἀποδείξεσι τοιούτους ἠρώτηκε λόγους περὶ τοῦ τὸν ἄδικον καὶ ἑαυτὸν ἀδικεῖν· ‘παραίτιον γενέσθαι παρανομήματος ἀπαγορεύει ὁ νόμος· καὶ τὸ ἀδικεῖν ἐστι παρανόμημα· ὁ τοίνυν παραίτιος γενόμενος αὑτῷ τοῦ ἀδικεῖν παρανομεῖ εἰς ἑαυτόν· ὁ δὲ παρανομῶν εἰς ἕνα καὶ ἀδικεῖ ἐκεῖνον· ὁ ἄρα καὶ ὁντινοῦν ἀδικῶν καὶ ἑαυτὸν ἀδικεῖ.’ πάλιν ‘τὸ ἁμάρτημα τῶν βλαμμάτων ἐστί, καὶ πᾶς ἁμαρτάνων παρ’ ἑαυτὸν ἁμαρτάνει· πᾶς ἄρ’ ὁ ἁμαρτάνων βλάπτει ἑαυτὸν παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν· εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, καὶ ἀδικεῖ ἑαυτόν.’ ἔτι καὶ οὕτως ‘ὁ βλαπτόμενος ὑφ’ ἑτέρου ἑαυτὸν βλάπτει [e] καὶ παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν ἑαυτὸν βλάπτει· τοῦτο δ’ ἦν τὸ ἀδικεῖν· ὁ ἄρ’ ἀδικούμενος καὶ ὑφ’ ὁτουοῦν πᾶς ἑαυτὸν ἀδικεῖ.’

Τὸν περὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν λόγον, ὃν αὐτὸς εἰσάγει καὶ δοκιμάζει, συμφωνότατον εἶναί φησι τῷ βίῳ καὶ μάλιστα τῶν ἐμφύτων ἅπτεσθαι προλήψεων. ταυτὶ γὰρ ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ τῶν Προτρεπτικῶν εἴρηκεν· ἐν δὲ τῷ πρώτῳ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον φησὶν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων ἀφέλκειν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὡς οὐδὲν ὄντων πρὸς ἡμᾶς οὐδὲ συνεργούντων πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν οὐδέν. ὅρα τοίνυν, πῶς αὑτῷ σύμφωνός ἐστι, τὸν ἀφέλκοντα τοῦ ζῆν καὶ τῆς ὑγιείας καὶ τῆς ἀπονίας καὶ τῆς τῶν αἰσθητηρίων ὁλοκληρίας καὶ μηδὲν [f] εἶναι ταῦτα φάσκοντα πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἃ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν αἰτούμεθα, μάλιστα συμφωνεῖν τῷ βίῳ καὶ ταῖς κοιναῖς προλήψεσιν ἀποφαινόμενος. ἀλλ’ ἵνα μηδ’ ἄρνησις ᾖ τοῦ τἀναντία λέγειν, ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Δικαιοσύνης ταῦτ’ εἴρηκε· ‘διὸ καὶ διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τοῦ τε μεγέθους καὶ τοῦ κάλλους πλάσμασι δοκοῦμεν ὅμοια λέγειν καὶ οὐ [1042] [a] κατὰ τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν.’ ἔστιν οὖν ὅπως ἄν τις ἐξομολογήσαιτο σαφέστερον τἀναντία λέγειν αὐτὸς πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἢ οὗτος, ἃ δι’ ὑπερβολήν φησι πλάσματα δοκεῖν εἶναι καὶ ὑπὲρ τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ ὑπὲρ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν λέγεσθαι, ταῦτα συμφωνεῖν τῷ βίῳ φάσκων καὶ μάλιστα τῶν ἐμφύτων ἅπτεσθαι προλήψεων;

Οὐσίαν κακοδαιμονίας ἀποφαίνει τὴν κακίαν, ἐν παντὶ βιβλίῳ φυσικῷ καὶ ἠθικῷ γράφων καὶ διατεινόμενος ὅτι ‘τὸ κατὰ κακίαν ζῆν τῷ κακοδαιμόνως ζῆν ταὐτόν ἐστιν’· ἐν δὲ τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Φύσεως ὑπειπὼν ὅτι ‘λυσιτελεῖ ζῆν ἄφρονα μᾶλλον ἢ ‹μὴ› βιοῦν, κἂν μηδέποτε μέλλῃ φρονήσειν’ [b] ἐπιλέγει ‘τοιαῦτα γὰρ τἀγαθά ἐστι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ὥστε τρόπον τινὰ τὰ κακὰ τῶν ἀνὰ μέσον προτερεῖν.’ ὅτι μὲν οὖν εἰρηκὼς ἐν ἑτέροις μηδὲν εἶναι τοῖς ἄφροσι λυσιτελὲς ἐνταῦθά φησι λυσιτελεῖν τὸ ἀφρόνως ζῆν, ἀφίημι· τῶν δ’ ἀνὰ μέσον λεγομένων παρὰ τοῖς Στωικοῖς μήτε κακῶν ὄντων μήτ’ ἀγαθῶν τὰ κακὰ προτερεῖν λέγων οὐδὲν ἄλλο λέγει πλὴν τῶν μὴ κακῶν τὰ κακὰ προτερεῖν καὶ τὸ κακοδαιμονεῖν λυσιτελέστερον εἶναι τοῦ μὴ κακοδαιμονεῖν, καὶ τοῦ κακοδαιμονεῖν ἀλυσιτελέστερον ἡγεῖται τὸ μὴ κακοδαιμονεῖν· εἰ δ’ ἀλυσιτελέστερον, καὶ βλαβερώτερον· τὸ μὴ κακοδαιμονεῖν ἄρα βλαβερώτερον τοῦ κακοδαιμονεῖν. βουλόμενος οὖν ταύτην ἐπιλεαίνειν τὴν ἀτοπίαν [c] ἐπιλέγει περὶ τῶν κακῶν· ‘ἔστι δ’ οὐ ταῦτα προτεροῦντα, ἀλλ’ ὁ λόγος, μεθ’ οὗ βιοῦν ἐπιβάλλει μᾶλλον, καὶ εἰ ἄφρονες ἐσόμεθα.’ πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τὰ κακὰ κακίαν λέγει καὶ τὰ μετέχοντα κακίας, ἄλλο δ’ οὐθέν· ἡ δὲ κακία λογικόν ἐστι μᾶλλον δὲ λόγος ἡμαρτημένος· οὐδὲν οὖν ἕτερόν ἐστι τὸ μετὰ λόγου βιοῦν ἄφρονας ὄντας ἢ τὸ μετὰ κακίας βιοῦν· ἔπειτα τὸ βιοῦν ἄφρονας ὄντας βιοῦν ἐστι κακοδαίμονας ὄντας. πρὸς τί οὖν προτερεῖ τοῦτο τῶν ἀνὰ μέσον; οὐ γὰρ πρός γε τὸ εὐδαιμονεῖν φήσει προτερεῖν τὸ κακοδαιμονεῖν. ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὅλως, φασίν, οἴεται δεῖν Χρύσιππος [d] οὔτε μονὴν ἐν τῷ βίῳ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς οὔτ’ ἐξαγωγὴν τοῖς κακοῖς παραμετρεῖν ἀλλὰ τοῖς μέσοις κατὰ φύσιν· διὸ καὶ τοῖς εὐδαιμονοῦσι γίνεταί ποτε καθῆκον ἐξάγειν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ μένειν αὖθις ἐν τῷ ζῆν τοῖς κακοδαιμονοῦσιν. εἶτα τί τούτου μεῖζόν ἐστιν ὑπεναντίωμα πρὸς αἵρεσιν καὶ φυγήν, εἰ τοῖς ἐπ’ ἄκρον εὐδαιμονοῦσιν ἀπουσίᾳ τῶν ἀδιαφόρων ἀφίστασθαι τῶν ἀγαθῶν παρόντων καθήκει; καίτοι τῶν ἀδιαφόρων οὐθὲν αἱρετὸν οὐδὲ φευκτόν, ἀλλὰ μόνον αἱρετὸν τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ μόνον φευκτὸν ἡγοῦνται τὸ κακόν· ὥστε συμβαίνει κατ’ αὐτοὺς μὴ πρὸς τὰ αἱρετὰ μηδὲ πρὸς [e] τὰ φευκτὰ τοὺς τῶν πράξεων τίθεσθαι λογισμούς, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρων στοχαζομένους ἃ μήτε φεύγουσι μήθ’ αἱροῦνται, πρὸς ταῦτα καὶ ζῆν καὶ ἀποθνήσκειν.

Τἀγαθὰ πρὸς τὰ κακὰ τὴν πᾶσαν ἔχειν διαφορὰν ὁμολογεῖ Χρύσιππος· καὶ ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν, εἰ τὰ μὲν ἐσχάτως ποιεῖ κακοδαίμονας εὐθὺς οἷς ἂν παρῇ, τὰ δ’ ἐπ’ ἄκρον εὐδαίμονας. αἰσθητὰ δ’ εἶναι τἀγαθὰ καὶ τὰ κακά φησιν, ἐν τῷ προτέρῳ περὶ Τέλους ταῦτα γράφων· ‘ὅτι μὲν γὰρ αἰσθητά ἐστι τἀγαθὰ καὶ τὰ κακά, καὶ τούτοις ἐκποιεῖ λέγειν· οὐ γὰρ μόνον τὰ πάθη ἐστὶν αἰσθητὰ σὺν τοῖς [f] εἴδεσιν, οἷον λύπη καὶ φόβος καὶ τὰ παραπλήσια, ἀλλὰ καὶ κλοπῆς καὶ μοιχείας καὶ τῶν ὁμοίων ἔστιν αἰσθέσθαι, καὶ καθόλου ἀφροσύνης καὶ δειλίας καὶ ἄλλων οὐκ ὀλίγων κακιῶν· οὐδὲ μόνον χαρᾶς καὶ εὐεργεσιῶν καὶ ἄλλων πολλῶν κατορθώσεων, ἀλλὰ καὶ φρονήσεως καὶ ἀνδρείας καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ἀρετῶν.’ τούτων τὴν μὲν ἄλλην ἀτοπίαν ἀφῶμεν, ὅτι δὲ μάχεται τοῖς περὶ τὸν διαλεληθότα σοφόν, τίς οὐκ ἂν ὁμολογήσειεν; αἰσθητοῦ γὰρ ὄντος τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ [1043] [a] καὶ μεγάλην πρὸς τὸ κακὸν διαφορὰν ἔχοντος, τὸν ἐκ φαύλου γενόμενον σπουδαῖον ἀγνοεῖν τοῦτο καὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς μὴ αἰσθάνεσθαι παρούσης ἀλλ’ οἴεσθαι τὴν κακίαν αὐτῷ παρεῖναι, πῶς οὐκ ἔστιν ἀτοπώτατον; ἢ γὰρ οὐδεὶς ἀγνοεῖν ἢ ἀπιστεῖν δύναται τὰς ἀρετὰς ἔχων ἁπάσας, ἢ μικρά τίς ἐστι καὶ παντάπασι δυσθεώρητος ἡ διαφορὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς πρὸς τὴν κακίαν καὶ τῆς εὐδαιμονίας πρὸς τὴν κακοδαιμονίαν καὶ τοῦ καλλίστου βίου πρὸς τὸν αἴσχιστον, εἰ ταῦτά τις ἀντ’ ἐκείνων κτησάμενος ἑαυτὸν λέληθε.

Μία σύνταξις ἡ περὶ Βίων τέτταρα βιβλία· τούτων ἐν τῷ τετάρτῳ λέγει τὸν σοφὸν ἀπράγμονά τ’ εἶναι καὶ [b] ἰδιοπράγμονα καὶ τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν· ἔστι δ’ ἡ λέξις αὕτη· ‘οἶμαι γὰρ ἔγωγε τὸν φρόνιμον καὶ ἀπράγμονα εἶναι καὶ ἰδιοπράγμονα καὶ τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν ὁμοίως τῆς τ’ αὐτοπραγίας καὶ τῆς ὀλιγοπραγμοσύνης ἀστείων ὄντων.’ τὰ δ’ ὅμοια σχεδὸν ἐν τῷ περὶ τῶν Δι’ αὑτὰ αἱρετῶν εἴρηκε ταύταις ταῖς λέξεσι· ‘τῷ γὰρ ὄντι φαίνεται ὁ κατὰ τὴν ἡσυχίαν βίος ἀκίνδυνόν τι καὶ ἀσφαλὲς ἔχειν, οὐ πάνυ τῶν πολλῶν δυναμένων τοῦτο συνιδεῖν.’ ὅτι μὲν τῷ Ἐπικούρῳ τὴν πρόνοιαν ἀναιροῦντι διὰ τῆς ἀπραγμοσύνης τῆς περὶ τὸν θεὸν οὐκ ἀπᾴδει, δῆλόν ἐστιν· ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ὁ Χρύσιππος ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Βίων βασιλείαν τε τὸν σοφὸν ἑκουσίως [c] ἀναδέχεσθαι λέγει χρηματιζόμενον ἀπ’ αὐτῆς, κἂν αὐτὸς βασιλεύειν μὴ δύνηται, συμβιώσεται βασιλεῖ καὶ στρατεύσεται μετὰ βασιλέως, οἷος ἦν Ἰδάνθυρσος ὁ Σκύθης ἢ Λεύκων ὁ Ποντικός. παραθήσομαι δὲ καὶ ταύτην αὐτοῦ τὴν διάλεκτον, ὅπως εἰδῶμεν, εἰ, καθάπερ ἐκ νήτης καὶ ὑπάτης γίνεται σύμφωνον, οὕτως ὁμολογεῖ βίος ἀνδρὸς καὶ ἀπραγμοσύνην αἱρουμένου καὶ ὀλιγοπραγμοσύνην, εἶτα συνιππαζομένου Σκύθαις καὶ τὰ τῶν ἐν Βοσπόρῳ τυράννων πράττοντος ἐξ οἱασδήτινος ἀνάγκης· ‘ὅτι γάρ’ φησί ‘καὶ στρατεύσεται μετὰ δυναστῶν καὶ βιώσεται, πάλιν [d] ἐπισκεψώμεθα τούτων ἐχόμενοι, τινῶν μὲν οὐδὲ ταῦτ’ ὑπονοούντων διὰ τοὺς ὁμοίους ὑπολογισμούς, ἡμῶν δὲ καὶ ταῦτ’ ἀπολιπόντων διὰ τοὺς παραπλησίους λόγους.’ καὶ μετὰ μικρόν· ‘οὐ μόνον δὲ μετὰ τῶν προκεκοφότων ἐπὶ ποσὸν καὶ ἐν ἀγωγαῖς καὶ ἐν ἔθεσι ποιοῖς γεγονότων, οἷον παρὰ Λεύκωνι καὶ Ἰδανθύρσῳ.’ Καλλισθένει τινὲς ἐγκαλοῦσιν, ὅτι πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ἔπλευσεν ἐλπίζων ἀναστήσειν Ὄλυνθον, ὡς Στάγειρα Ἀριστοτέλης· Ἔφορον δὲ καὶ Ξενοκράτη καὶ Μενέδημον ἐπαινοῦσι παραιτησαμένους τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον· ὁ δὲ Χρύσιππος ἕνεκα χρηματισμοῦ τὸν σοφὸν ἐπὶ κεφαλὴν ἐς Παντικάπαιον ὠθεῖ καὶ τὴν ‘Σκυθῶν [e] ἐρημίαν’. ὅτι γὰρ ἐργασίας ἕνεκα καὶ χρηματισμοῦ ταῦτα ποιεῖ, καὶ προδεδήλωκε τρεῖς ὑποθέμενος ἁρμόζοντας μάλιστα τῷ σοφῷ χρηματισμούς, τὸν ἀπὸ βασιλείας καὶ τὸν ἀπὸ φίλων καὶ τρίτον ἐπὶ τούτοις τὸν ἀπὸ σοφιστείας. καίτοι πολλαχοῦ μὲν ἀποκναίει ταῦτ’ ἐπαινῶν (Eur. fr. 892)·

‘ἐπεὶ τί δεῖ βροτοῖσι πλὴν δυοῖν μόνον,

Δήμητρος ἀκτῆς πώματός θ’ ὑδρηχόου;’

ἐν δὲ τοῖς περὶ Φύσεως λέγει τὸν σοφόν, εἰ τὴν μεγίστην οὐσίαν ἀποβάλοι, δραχμὴν μίαν ἐκβεβληκέναι δόξειν. οὕτω δ’ αὐτὸν ἄρας ἐκεῖ καὶ ὀγκώσας ἐνταῦθα πάλιν εἰς μισθαρνίαν καταβάλλει καὶ σοφιστείαν· καὶ γὰρ αἰτήσειν καὶ [f] προλήψεσθαι τὸ μὲν εὐθὺς ἀρχομένου, τὸ δὲ χρόνου τῷ μαθητῇ διελθόντος, ὅπερ εὐγνωμονέστερον εἶναί φησιν, ἀσφαλέστερον δὲ τὸ προλαμβάνειν, ὡς ἀδικήματα τοῦ τόπου ἐπιδεχομένου. λέγει δ’ οὕτως· ‘εἰσπράττονται δὲ τὸν μισθὸν οὐ πάντας οἱ νοῦν ἔχοντες ὡσαύτως, ἀλλ’ †ἄλλως πλῆθος, ὡς ἂν ὁ καιρὸς φέρῃ, οὐκ ἐπαγγελλόμενοι ποιήσειν ἀγαθούς, καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐν ἐνιαυτῷ· ὅσον δὲ πρὸς ἑαυτούς, ταῦτα ποιήσειν πρὸς τὸν συμφωνηθέντα χρόνον.’ [1044] [a] καὶ πάλιν προελθών· ‘τόν τε καιρὸν εἴσεται, πότερον εὐθὺς δεῖ τὸν μισθὸν λαμβάνειν ἅμα τῇ προσόδῳ, καθάπερ πλείους πεποιήκασιν, ἢ καὶ χρόνον αὐτοῖς διδόναι, τοῦ τόπου τούτου μᾶλλον καὶ ἀδικήματα ἐπιδεχομένου δόξαντος δ’ ἂν εἶναι εὐγνωμονεστέρου.’ καὶ πῶς ἢ χρημάτων καταφρονητὴς ὁ σοφός, ὑπὸ συγγραφὴν ἐπ’ ἀργυρίῳ τὴν ἀρετὴν παραδιδούς, κἂν μὴ παραδῷ τὸ μισθάριον εἰσπράττων ὡς πεποιηκὼς τὰ παρ’ αὑτόν, ἢ βλάβης κρείττων, φυλαττόμενος μὴ ἀδικηθῇ περὶ τὸ μισθάριον; ἀδικεῖται γὰρ οὐδεὶς μὴ βλαπτόμενος· ὅθεν μὴ ἀδικεῖσθαι τὸν σοφὸν [b] ἐν ἄλλοις ἀποφηνάμενος ἐνταῦθά φησιν ἀδικήματα τὸν τόπον ἐπιδέχεσθαι.

Ἐν δὲ τῷ περὶ Πολιτείας οὐδὲν ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα πράξειν οὐδὲ παρασκευάσεσθαί φησι τοὺς πολίτας, καὶ τὸν Εὐριπίδην ἐπαινεῖ ταῦτα προφερόμενος (fr. 892)·

‘ἐπεὶ τί δεῖ βροτοῖσι πλὴν δυοῖν μόνον,

Δήμητρος ἀκτῆς πώματός θ’ ὑδρηχόου;’

εἶτα μικρὸν ἀπὸ τούτων προελθὼν ἐπαινεῖ τὸν Διογένη τὸ αἰδοῖον ἀποτριβόμενον ἐν φανερῷ καὶ λέγοντα πρὸς τοὺς παρόντας ‘εἴθε καὶ τὸν λιμὸν οὕτως ἀποτρίψασθαι τῆς γαστρὸς ἠδυνάμην’. τίν’ οὖν ἔχει λόγον ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐπαινεῖν τὸν ἐκβάλλοντα τὴν ἡδονὴν ἅμα καὶ τὸν ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα [c] τοιαῦτα πράττοντα καὶ τοιαύτης ἁπτόμενον αἰσχρουργίας; γράψας τοίνυν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Φύσεως, [ὡς] ὅτι πολλὰ τῶν ζῴων ἕνεκα κάλλους ἡ φύσις ἐνήνοχε φιλοκαλοῦσα καὶ χαίρουσα τῇ ποικιλίᾳ, καὶ λόγον ἐπειπὼν παραλογώτατον ὡς ὁ ταὼς ἕνεκα τῆς οὐρᾶς γέγονε διὰ τὸ κάλλος αὐτῆς, αὖθις ἐν τῷ περὶ Πολιτείας νεανικῶς ἐπιτετίμηκε τοῖς ταὼς τρέφουσι καὶ ἀηδόνας, ὥσπερ ἀντινομοθετῶν τῷ τοῦ κόσμου νομοθέτῃ καὶ τῆς φύσεως καταγελῶν φιλοκαλούσης περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν ζῴων, οἷς ὁ σοφὸς ἐν τῇ πόλει τόπον οὐ δίδωσι. πῶς γὰρ οὐκ ἄτοπον ἐγκαλεῖν τοῖς τρέφουσιν ἃ γεννῶσαν ἐπαινεῖ τὴν πρόνοιαν; ἐν μὲν οὖν τῷ [d] πέμπτῳ περὶ Φύσεως εἰπὼν ὅτι ‘οἱ κόρεις εὐχρήστως ἐξυπνίζουσιν ἡμᾶς καὶ οἱ μύες ἐπιστρέφουσιν ἡμᾶς μὴ ἀμελῶς ἕκαστα τιθέναι, φιλοκαλεῖν δὲ τὴν φύσιν τῇ ποικιλίᾳ χαίρουσαν εἰκός ἐστι’, ταῦτα κατὰ λέξιν εἴρηκε· ‘γένοιτο δ’ ἂν μάλιστα τούτου ἔμφασις ἐπὶ τῆς κέρκου τοῦ ταώ. ἐνταῦθα γὰρ ἐπιφαίνει τὸ ζῷον γεγονέναι ἕνεκα τῆς κέρκου καὶ οὐκ ἀνάπαλιν, τῷ ‹δ’› ἄρρενι γενομένῳ οὕτως τὸ θῆλυ συνηκολούθηκεν.’ ἐν δὲ τῷ περὶ Πολιτείας εἰπὼν ὅτι ‘ἐγγύς ἐσμεν τοῦ καὶ τοὺς κοπρῶνας ζωγραφεῖν’, μετ’ ὀλίγον τὰ γεωργικά φησι καλλωπίζειν τινὰς ἀναδενδράσι καὶ μυρρίναις, ‘καὶ ταὼς καὶ περιστερὰς τρέφουσι [e] καὶ πέρδικας ἵνα κακκαβίζωσιν αὐτοῖς καὶ ἀηδόνας.’ ἡδέως δ’ ἂν αὐτοῦ πυθοίμην, τί φρονεῖ περὶ μελιττῶν καὶ μέλιτος· ἦν μὲν γὰρ ἀκόλουθον τῷ τοὺς κόρεις εὐχρήστως τὸ τὰς μελίττας ἀχρήστως φάναι γεγονέναι· εἰ δὲ ταύταις τόπον ἐν τῇ πόλει δίδωσι, διὰ τί τῶν πρὸς ἀκοὴν καὶ ὄψιν ἐπιτερπῶν ἀπείργει τοὺς πολίτας; καθόλου δ’ ὥσπερ ὁ τοὺς συνδείπνους μεμφόμενος ὅτι χρῶνται τραγήμασι καὶ οἴνῳ καὶ ὄψοις, τὸν δ’ ἐπὶ ταῦτα κεκληκότα καὶ ταῦτα παρεσκευασμένον ἐπαινῶν ἄτοπός ἐστιν, οὕτως ὁ τὴν μὲν [f] πρόνοιαν ἐγκωμιάζων ἰχθῦς καὶ ὄρνιθας καὶ μέλι καὶ οἶνον παρασκευάσασαν, ἐγκαλῶν δὲ τοῖς μὴ παραπέμπουσι ταῦτα μηδ’ ἀρκουμένοις (Eur. fr. 892) ‘Δήμητρος ἀκτῇ πώμασίν θ’ ὑδρηχόοις, ἅπερ πάρεστι καὶ πέφυκεν ἡμᾶς τρέφειν,’ οὐθένα ποιεῖσθαι λόγον ἔοικε τοῦ τἀναντία λέγειν ἑαυτῷ.

Καὶ μὴν ἐν τῷ τῶν Προτρεπτικῶν εἰπὼν ὅτι ‘καὶ τὸ μητράσιν ἢ θυγατράσιν ἢ ἀδελφαῖς συγγενέσθαι καὶ τὸ φαγεῖν τι καὶ προελθεῖν ἀπὸ λεχοῦς ἢ θανάτου [1045] [a] πρὸς ἱερὸν ἀλόγως διαβέβληται’, καὶ πρὸς τὰ θηρία φησὶ δεῖν ἀποβλέπειν καὶ τοῖς ὑπ’ ἐκείνων γινομένοις τεκμαίρεσθαι τὸ μηδὲν ἄτοπον μηδὲ παρὰ φύσιν εἶναι τῶν τοιούτων· εὐκαίρως γὰρ πρὸς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι τὰς τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων παραθέσεις εἰς τὸ μήτε συγγινόμενα μήτε γεννῶντα μήτ’ ἐναποθνήσκοντα ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς μιαίνειν τὸ θεῖον. ἐν δὲ τῷ πέμπτῳ πάλιν περὶ Φύσεως λέγει καλῶς μὲν ἀπαγορεύειν τὸν Ἡσίοδον (O. D. 757) εἰς ποταμοὺς καὶ κρήνας οὐρεῖν, ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἀφεκτέον εἶναι τοῦ πρὸς βωμὸν οὐρεῖν ἢ ἀφίδρυμα θεοῦ· μὴ γὰρ εἶναι πρὸς λόγον, εἰ κύνες καὶ ὄνοι τοῦτο ποιοῦσι καὶ παιδάρια νήπια, μηδεμίαν ἐπιστροφὴν μηδ’ ἐπιλογισμὸν ἔχοντα περὶ τῶν τοιούτων.

[b] ἄτοπον μὲν οὖν τὸ ἐκεῖ μὲν εὔκαιρον εἰπεῖν τὴν τῶν ἀλόγων ζῴων ἀποθεώρησιν, ἐνταῦθα δ’ ἀπὸ λόγου.

Τοῦ κατηναγκάσθαι δοκοῦντες ὑπὸ τῶν ἔξωθεν αἰτιῶν ταῖς ὁρμαῖς ἀπόλυσιν πορίζειν ἔνιοι τῶν φιλοσόφων ἐπελευστικήν τινα κίνησιν ἐν τῷ ἡγεμονικῷ κατασκευάζουσιν, ἐπὶ τῶν ἀπαραλλάκτων μάλιστα γινομένην ἔκδηλον· ὅταν γὰρ δυοῖν ἴσον δυναμένων καὶ ὁμοίως ἐχόντων θάτερον ᾖ λαβεῖν ἀνάγκη, μηδεμιᾶς αἰτίας ἐπὶ θάτερον ἀγούσης τῷ μηδὲν τοῦ ἑτέρου διαφέρειν, ἡ ἐπελευστικὴ δύναμις αὕτη τῆς ψυχῆς ἐπίκλισιν ἐξ αὑτῆς λαβοῦσα διέκοψε τὴν ἀπορίαν. πρὸς τούτους ὁ Χρύσιππος ἀντιλέγων, [c] ὡς βιαζομένους τῷ ἀναιτίῳ τὴν φύσιν, ἐν πολλοῖς παρατίθησι τὸν ἀστράγαλον καὶ τὸν ζυγὸν καὶ πολλὰ τῶν μὴ δυναμένων ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλας λαμβάνειν πτώσεις καὶ ῥοπὰς ἄνευ τινὸς αἰτίας καὶ διαφορᾶς ἢ περὶ αὐτὰ πάντως ἢ περὶ τὰ ἔξωθεν γινομένης· τὸ γὰρ ἀναίτιον ὅλως ἀνύπαρκτον εἶναι καὶ τὸ αὐτόματον· ἐν δὲ ταῖς πλαττομέναις ὑπ’ ἐνίων καὶ λεγομέναις ταύταις ἐπελεύσεσιν αἰτίας ἀδήλους ὑποτρέχειν καὶ λανθάνειν ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ θάτερα τὴν ὁρμὴν ἀγούσας. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐν τοῖς γνωριμωτάτοις ἐστὶ τῶν [d] ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ πολλάκις εἰρημένων· ἃ δὲ τούτοις πάλιν αὐτὸς ἐξ ἐναντίας εἴρηκεν, οὐχ ὁμοίως οὕτως ἐν μέσῳ κείμενα, δι’ αὐτῶν παραθήσομαι τῶν ἐκείνου λέξεων. ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῷ περὶ τοῦ Δικάζειν ὑποθέμενος δύο δρομεῖς ὁμοῦ συνεκπίπτειν ἀλλήλοις διαπορεῖ τί τῷ βραβευτῇ καθήκει ποιῆσαι· ‘πότερον’ φησίν ‘ἔξεστι τὸν βραβευτὴν τὸν φοίνικα, ὁποτέρῳ βούλεται, ἀποδοῦναι, καθ’ ὃ ἂν τύχωσιν αὐτῷ συνηθέστεροι ὄντες, ὡς ἂν ἐνταῦθα τῶν αὑτοῦ τι χαρισάμενον; ‹ἢ καθήκει› τρόπον τινὰ μᾶλλον, ὡς κοινοῦ τοῦ φοίνικος γεγονότος ἀμφοτέρων, οἱονεί τινος κλήρου [e] γινομένου ἀδήλως, κατὰ τὴν ἐπίκλισιν, ὡς ἔτυχε, δοῦναι αὐτόν; λέγω δ’ ἣν ἔτυχεν ἐπίκλισιν, οἵα γίνεται, ὅταν δυεῖν προκειμένων δραχμῶν ὁμοίων κατὰ τὰ λοιπὰ ἐπὶ τὴν ἑτέραν ἐπικλίναντες λαμβάνωμεν αὐτήν.’ ἐν δὲ τῷ ἕκτῳ περὶ Καθήκοντος εἶναί τινα φήσας πράγματα μὴ πάνυ πολλῆς ἄξια [εἶναι] πραγματείας μηδὲ προσοχῆς, ἀφιέναι περὶ ταῦτα τῇ ὡς ἔτυχεν ἐπικλίσει τῆς διανοίας οἴεται δεῖν τὴν αἵρεσιν ἀποκληρώσαντας· ‘οἷον’ φησίν ‘εἰ τῶν δοκιμαζόντων τάσδε τινὰς δραχμὰς δύο ἐπὶ τοσόνδε οἱ μὲν τήνδε οἱ δὲ τήνδε φαῖεν εἶναι καλήν, δέοι δὲ μίαν [f] αὐτῶν λαβεῖν, τηνικαῦτ’ ἀφέντες τὸ ἐπὶ πλεῖον ἐπιζητεῖν, ἣν ἔτυχε ληψόμεθα, κατ’ ἄδηλόν τιν’ ἀποκληρώσαντες αὐτὰς λόγον, καὶ εἰ μάλιστα τὴν μοχθηρὰν ληψόμεθα αὐτῶν.’ ἐν τούτοις γὰρ ‹ἡ› ἀποκλήρωσις καὶ ‹τὸ› ὡς ἔτυχεν ἐπικλῖνον τῆς διανοίας [τὸ] ἄνευ πάσης αἰτίας εἰσάγει τῶν ἀδιαφόρων λῆψιν.

Ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ τῆς Διαλεκτικῆς ὑπειπὼν ὅτι ‘Πλάτων ἐσπούδασε περὶ τὴν διαλεκτικὴν καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης καὶ ‹οἱ› ἀπὸ τούτων ἄχρι Πολέμωνος καὶ Στράτωνος, [1046] [a] μάλιστα δὲ Σωκράτης’ καὶ ἐπιφωνήσας ὅτι ‘καὶ συνεξαμαρτάνειν ἄν τις θελήσειε τούτοις τοσούτοις καὶ τοιούτοις οὖσιν’ ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν· ‘εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἐκ παρέργου περὶ αὐτῶν εἰρήκεσαν, τάχ’ ἄν τις διέσυρε τὸν τόπον τοῦτον· οὕτω δ’ αὐτῶν ἐπιμελῶς εἰρηκότων ὡς ἐν ταῖς μεγίσταις δυνάμεσι καὶ ἀναγκαιοτάταις αὐτῆς οὔσης, οὐ πιθανὸν ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον διαμαρτάνειν αὐτοὺς ἐν τοῖς ὅλοις ὄντας οἵους ὑπονοοῦμεν.’ τί οὖν σύ, φήσαι τις ἄν, αὐτὸς ἀνδράσι τοιούτοις καὶ τοσούτοις οὐδέποτε παύσῃ μαχόμενος οὐδ’ [b] ἐλέγχων, ὡς νομίζεις, ἐν τοῖς κυριωτάτοις καὶ μεγίστοις διαμαρτάνοντας; οὐ γὰρ δήπου περὶ μὲν διαλεκτικῆς ἐσπουδασμένως ἔγραψαν, περὶ δ’ ἀρχῆς καὶ τέλους καὶ θεῶν καὶ δικαιοσύνης ἐκ παρέργου καὶ παίζοντες, ἐν οἷς τυφλὸν αὐτῶν ἀποκαλεῖς τὸν λόγον καὶ μαχόμενον αὑτῷ καὶ μυρίας ἄλλας ἁμαρτίας ἔχοντα.

Τὴν ἐπιχαιρεκακίαν ὅπου μὲν ἀνύπαρκτον εἶναί φησιν, ἐπεὶ τῶν μὲν ἀστείων οὐδεὶς ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις κακοῖς χαίρει, ‹τῶν δὲ φαύλων οὐδεὶς χαίρει› τὸ παράπαν· ἐν δὲ τῷ δευτέρῳ περὶ Ἀγαθοῦ τὸν φθόνον ἐξηγησάμενος ὅτι ‘λύπη ἐστὶν ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις ἀγαθοῖς, ὡς δήποτε βουλομένων ταπεινοῦν [c] τοὺς πλησίον, ὅπως ὑπερέχωσιν αὐτοί,’ συνάπτει τὰ τῆς ἐπιχαιρεκακίας· ‘ταύτῃ δὲ συνεχὴς ἡ ἐπιχαιρεκακία γίνεται, ταπεινοὺς βουλομένων εἶναι τοὺς πλησίον διὰ τὰς ὁμοίας αἰτίας· καθ’ ἑτέρας δὲ φυσικὰς φορὰς ἐκτρεπομένων ὁ ἔλεος γίνεται.’ δῆλος ἄρ’ ἐστὶν ἐνταῦθα τὴν ἐπιχαιρεκακίαν ὑπαρκτὴν ὥσπερ τὸν φθόνον καὶ τὸν ἔλεον ἀπολιπών, ἣν ἐν ἑτέροις ἀνύπαρκτον εἶναί φησιν ὥσπερ τὴν μισοπονηρίαν καὶ τὴν αἰσχροκέρδειαν.

Ἐν πολλοῖς εἰρηκὼς ὅτι παρὰ τὸν πλείονα χρόνον οὐδὲν μᾶλλον εὐδαιμονοῦσιν ἀλλ’ ὁμοίως καὶ ἐπίσης τοῖς τὸν ἀμερῆ χρόνον εὐδαιμονίας μετασχοῦσιν, ἐν πολλοῖς πάλιν εἴρηκεν ὡς οὐδὲ τὸν δάκτυλον καθήκει προτεῖναι [d] χάριν ἀμεριαίας φρονήσεως καὶ καθάπερ ἀστραπῆς διιπταμένης. ἀρκέσει δὲ παραθεῖναι τὰ ἐν τῷ ἕκτῳ τῶν Ἠθικῶν Ζητημάτων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ γεγραμμένα περὶ τούτων· ὑπειπὼν γὰρ ὡς ‘οὔτε πᾶν ἀγαθὸν ἐπίσης εἰς χαρὰν πίπτει οὔτε πᾶν κατόρθωμα εἰς σεμνολογίαν’ ἐπενήνοχε ταῦτα· ‘καὶ γάρ, εἰ μόνον μέλλοι ἀμερῆ χρόνον ἢ τὸν ἔσχατον ἕξειν φρόνησιν, οὐδ’ ἂν τὸν δάκτυλον καθήκοι ἐκτεῖναι ἕνεκα τῆς οὕτω παρεσομένης φρονήσεως,’ καίπερ παρὰ τὸν πλείονα χρόνον οὐδὲν μᾶλλον εὐδαιμονούντων οὐδὲ τῆς ἀιδίου εὐδαιμονίας αἱρετωτέρας γινομένης παρὰ τὴν ἀμεριαίαν.

[e] εἰ μὲν οὖν τὴν φρόνησιν ἡγεῖτο ποιητικὸν εἶναι τῆς εὐδαιμονίας ἀγαθὸν ὥσπερ ὁ Ἐπίκουρος (fr. 515), αὐτῆς ἔδει μόνον τῆς ἀτοπίας καὶ παραδοξολογίας ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαι τοῦ δόγματος· ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡ φρόνησις οὐχ ἕτερόν ἐστι τῆς εὐδαιμονίας κατ’ αὐτὸν ἀλλ’ εὐδαιμονία, πῶς οὐ μάχεται τὸ λέγειν ἐπίσης μὲν αἱρετὴν εἶναι τὴν ἀμεριαίαν εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ τὴν ἀίδιον, μηδενὸς δ’ ἀξίαν τὴν ἀμεριαίαν;

Τὰς ἀρετάς φασιν ἀντακολουθεῖν ἀλλήλαις, οὐ μόνον τῷ τὸν μίαν ἔχοντα πάσας ἔχειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ τὸν κατὰ μίαν ὁτιοῦν ἐνεργοῦντα κατὰ πάσας ἐνεργεῖν· οὔτε γὰρ [f] ἄνδρα φασὶ τέλειον εἶναι τὸν μὴ πάσας ἔχοντα τὰς ἀρετὰς οὔτε πρᾶξιν τελείαν, ἥτις οὐ κατὰ πάσας πράττεται τὰς ἀρετάς. ἀλλὰ μὴν ἐν τῷ ἕκτῳ τῶν Ἠθικῶν Ζητημάτων ὁ Χρύσιππος οὐκ ἀεί φησιν ἀνδρίζεσθαι τὸν ἀστεῖον οὐδὲ δειλαίνειν τὸν φαῦλον, ὡς †δέον ἐν φαντασίαις ἐπιφερομένων τινῶν τὸν μὲν ἐμμένειν τοῖς κρίμασι τὸν δ’ ἀφίστασθαι. [1047] [a] ‘πιθανὸν δέ’ φησί ‘μηδ’ ἀκολασταίνειν ἀεὶ τὸν φαῦλον.’ εἴπερ οὖν τὸ ἀνδρίζεσθαι τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν οἷον ἀνδρείᾳ χρῆσθαι καὶ τὸ δειλαίνειν οἷον δειλίᾳ χρῆσθαι, μαχόμενα λέγουσι λέγοντες κατὰ πάσας μὲν ἅμα τὰς ἀρετὰς καὶ τὰς κακίας ἐνεργεῖν τὸν ἔχοντα ‹μίαν›, μὴ ἀεὶ δὲ τὸν ἀστεῖον ἀνδρίζεσθαι μηδὲ δειλαίνειν τὸν φαῦλον.

Τὴν ῥητορικὴν ὁρίζεται τέχνην περὶ †κόσμου καὶ εἰρημένου λόγου τάξιν· ἔτι δ’ ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ καὶ ταῦτα γέγραφεν· ‘οὐ μόνον δὲ τοῦ ἐλευθερίου καὶ ἀφελοῦς κόσμου δεῖν οἴομαι ἐπιστρέφεσθαι κἀπὶ τῶν λόγων †ᾧ καὶ τῶν οἰκείων ὑποκρίσεων κατὰ τὰς ἐπιβαλλούσας τάσεις τῆς [b] φωνῆς καὶ σχηματισμοὺς τοῦ τε προσώπου καὶ τῶν χειρῶν.’ οὕτω δέ τις φιλότιμος ἐνταῦθα περὶ τὸν λόγον γενόμενος πάλιν ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ βιβλίῳ περὶ τῆς τῶν φωνηέντων συγκρούσεως ὑπειπών ‘οὐ μόνον’ φησί ‘ταῦτα παρετέον τοῦ βελτίονος ἐχομένους, ἀλλὰ καὶ ποιὰς ἀσαφείας καὶ ἐλλείψεις καὶ νὴ Δία σολοικισμούς, ἐφ’ οἷς ἄλλοι ἂν αἰσχυνθείησαν οὐκ ὀλίγοι.’ τὸ δὴ ποτὲ μὲν ἄχρι χειρῶν καὶ στόματος εὐπρεπείας ἐπιχωρεῖν τοῖς λέγουσιν ἐν κόσμῳ τὸν λόγον διατίθεσθαι, ποτὲ δὲ μήτ’ ἐλλείψεων ἐπιστρέφεσθαι καὶ ἀσαφειῶν μήτε σολοικίζοντας αἰσχύνεσθαι τελέως ὅ τι ἂν ἐπίῃ λέγοντός ἐστιν.

[c] Ἐν δὲ ταῖς Φυσικαῖς Θέσεσι περὶ τῶν ἐμπειρίας καὶ ἱστορίας δεομένων διακελευσάμενος τὴν ἡσυχίαν ἔχειν, ἂν μή τι κρεῖττον καὶ ἐναργέστερον ἔχωμεν λέγειν, ‘ἵνα’ φησί ‘μήτε Πλάτωνι παραπλησίως ὑπονοήσωμεν τὴν μὲν ὑγρὰν τροφὴν εἰς τὸν πλεύμονα φέρεσθαι τὴν δὲ ξηρὰν εἰς τὴν κοιλίαν, μήθ’ ἕτερα παραπλήσια γεγονότα τούτοις διαπτώματα’. δοκῶ δὴ τὸ ἐγκαλεῖν ἑτέροις εἶτα περιπίπτειν αὐτὸν οἷς ἐγκαλεῖ καὶ μὴ φυλάττεσθαι τῶν ἐναντιωμάτων μέγιστον εἶναι καὶ τῶν διαπτωμάτων αἴσχιστον. ἀλλὰ μὴν αὐτὸς τὰς διὰ δέκα ἀξιωμάτων συμπλοκὰς πλήθει φησὶν ὑπερβάλλειν ἑκατὸν μυριάδας οὔτε δι’ αὑτοῦ [d] ζητήσας ἐπιμελῶς οὔτε διὰ τῶν ἐμπείρων τὸ ἀληθὲς ἱστορήσας. καίτοι Πλάτων μὲν ἔχει τῶν ἰατρῶν τοὺς ἐνδοξοτάτους μαρτυροῦντας, Ἱπποκράτην Φιλιστίωνα Διώξιππον τὸν Ἱπποκράτειον, καὶ τῶν ποιητῶν Εὐριπίδην Ἀλκαῖον Εὔπολιν Ἐρατοσθένην, λέγοντας ὅτι τὸ ποτὸν διὰ τοῦ πνεύμονος διέξεισι· Χρύσιππον δὲ πάντες ἐλέγχουσιν οἱ ἀριθμητικοί, ὧν καὶ Ἵππαρχός ἐστιν ἀποδεικνύων τὸ διάπτωμα τοῦ λογισμοῦ παμμέγεθες αὐτῷ γεγονός, εἴγε τὸ μὲν καταφατικὸν ποιεῖ συμπεπλεγμένων ἀξιωμάτων μυριάδας δέκα καὶ πρὸς ταύταις τρισχίλια τεσσαράκοντα [e] ἐννέα, τὸ δ’ ἀποφατικὸν ἐνακόσια πεντήκοντα δύο πρὸς τριάκοντα καὶ μιᾷ μυριάσι.

Τῶν πρεσβυτέρων τινές, ἃ τῷ τὸν ὀξίνην ἔχοντι συνέβαινε μήθ’ ὡς ὄξος ἀποδόσθαι δυναμένῳ μήθ’ ὡς οἶνον, ἔφασαν τῷ Ζήνωνι συμβαίνειν· τὸ γὰρ προηγμένον αὐτῷ μήθ’ ὡς ἀγαθὸν μήθ’ ὡς ἀδιάφορον ἔχειν διάθεσιν. ἀλλ’ ὁ Χρύσιππος ἔτι μᾶλλον τὸ πρᾶγμα δυσδιάθετον πεποίηκεν· ὁτὲ μὲν γάρ φησι μαίνεσθαι τοὺς τὸν πλοῦτον καὶ τὴν ὑγίειαν καὶ τὴν ἀπονίαν καὶ τὴν ὁλοκληρίαν τοῦ σώματος ἐν μηδενὶ ποιουμένους μηδ’ ἀντεχομένους τῶν τοιούτων, καὶ παραθέμενος τὰ τοῦ Ἡσιόδου (O. D. 299) ‘ἐργάζευ, Πέρση, δῖον γένος’ ἐπιπεφώνηκεν ὅτι τἀναντία [f] παραινεῖν μανικόν ἐστι, τό ‘μὴ ἐργάζευ, Πέρση, δῖον γένος’· καὶ τὸν μὲν σοφὸν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Βίων καὶ βασιλεῦσι συνέσεσθαί φησιν ἕνεκα χρηματισμοῦ καὶ σοφιστεύσειν ἐπ’ ἀργυρίῳ, παρ’ ὧν μὲν προλαμβάνοντα πρὸς οὓς δὲ συντιθέμενον τῶν μαθητῶν, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἑβδόμῳ ‹περὶ› τοῦ Καθήκοντος καὶ κυβιστήσειν τρὶς ἐπὶ τούτῳ λαβόντα τάλαντον· [1048] [a] ἐν δὲ τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Ἀγαθῶν τρόπον τινὰ συγχωρεῖ καὶ δίδωσι τοῖς βουλομένοις τὰ προηγμένα καλεῖν ἀγαθὰ καὶ κακὰ τἀναντία, ταύταις ταῖς λέξεσιν· ‘εἴ τις βούλεται κατὰ τὰς τοιαύτας παραλλαγὰς τὸ μὲν ἀγαθὸν αὐτῶν λέγειν τὸ δὲ κακόν, ἐπὶ ταῦτα φερόμενος τὰ πράγματα καὶ μὴ ἄλλως ἀποπλανώμενος, ἐν μὲν τοῖς σημαινομένοις οὐ διαπίπτοντος αὐτοῦ, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα στοχαζομένου τῆς κατὰ τὰς ὀνομασίας συνηθείας.’ οὕτω δὲ τὸ προηγμένον τῷ ἀγαθῷ συναγαγὼν ἐγγὺς ἐνταῦθα καὶ συμμίξας, ἐν ἑτέροις πάλιν οὐδὲν εἶναί φησι τούτων καθόλου πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἀλλ’ [b] ἀποσπᾶν τὸν λόγον ἡμᾶς καὶ ἀποστρέφειν ἁπάντων τῶν τοιούτων· ταῦτα γὰρ ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ τοῦ Προτρέπεσθαι γέγραφεν. ἐν δὲ τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Φύσεως μακαρίζεσθαί φησιν ἐνίους βασιλεύοντας καὶ πλουτοῦντας, ὅμοιον εἰ χρυσαῖς ἀμίσι χρώμενοι καὶ χρυσοῖς κρασπέδοις ἐμακαρίζοντο· ‘τῷ δ’ ἀγαθῷ τὸ τὴν οὐσίαν ἀποβαλεῖν οἱονεὶ δραχμὴν ἀποβαλεῖν καὶ τὸ νοσῆσαι οἷον προσκόψαι.’

Διὸ τῶν ἐναντιωμάτων τούτων οὐ μόνον τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν πρόνοιαν ἀναπέπληκεν. ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀρετὴ μικρολόγος ἐσχάτως φανεῖται καὶ ἀνόητος περὶ ταῦτα πραγματευομένη καὶ τούτων ἕνεκα πλεῖν εἰς Βόσπορον κελεύουσα [c] καὶ κυβιστᾶν τὸν σοφόν· ὁ δὲ Ζεὺς γελοῖος εἰ Κτήσιος χαίρει καὶ Ἐπικάρπιος καὶ Χαριδότης προσαγορευόμενος, ὅτι δηλαδὴ χρυσᾶς ἀμίδας καὶ χρυσᾶ κράσπεδα χαρίζεται τοῖς φαύλοις, τοῖς δ’ ἀγαθοῖς ἄξια δραχμῆς, ὅταν πλούσιοι γένωνται κατὰ τὴν τοῦ Διὸς πρόνοιαν· ἔτι δὲ γελοιότερος ὁ Ἀπόλλων, εἰ περὶ χρυσῶν κρασπέδων καὶ ἀμίδων κάθηται θεμιστεύων καὶ περὶ προσκομμάτων ἀπολύσεως. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον τῇ ἀποδείξει τὸ ἐναντίωμα ποιοῦσι φανερώτερον. ᾧ γὰρ ἔστιν εὖ χρήσασθαι καὶ κακῶς, τοῦτό φασι μήτ’ ἀγαθὸν εἶναι μήτε κακόν· πλούτῳ δὲ καὶ ὑγιείᾳ καὶ ῥώμῃ σώματος κακῶς χρῶνται πάντες οἱ ἀνόητοι· [d] διόπερ οὐδέν ἐστι τούτων ἀγαθόν. εἴπερ οὖν ὁ θεὸς ἀρετὴν μὲν οὐ δίδωσιν ἀνθρώποις ἀλλὰ τὸ καλὸν αὐθαίρετόν ἐστι, πλοῦτον δὲ καὶ ὑγίειαν χωρὶς ἀρετῆς δίδωσιν, οὐκ εὖ χρησομένοις δίδωσιν ἀλλὰ κακῶς, τουτέστι βλαβερῶς καὶ αἰσχρῶς καὶ ὀλεθρίως. καίτοι εἰ μὲν δύνανται τὴν ἀρετὴν παρέχειν οἱ θεοί, οὔκ εἰσι χρηστοὶ μὴ παρέχοντες· εἰ δὲ μὴ δύνανται ποιεῖν ἀγαθούς, οὐδ’ ὠφελεῖν δύνανται, μηδενός γε τῶν ἄλλων ὄντος ἀγαθοῦ μηδ’ ὠφελίμου. τὸ δ’ ἄλλως τοὺς γενομένους ἀγαθοὺς κρίνειν ‹ἢ› κατ’ ἀρετὴν ἢ ἰσχὺν οὐδ’ ἔνεστι· καὶ γὰρ τοὺς θεοὺς οἱ ἀγαθοὶ κρίνουσι [e] κατ’ ἀρετὴν καὶ ἰσχύν· ὥστε μηδὲν μᾶλλον ὠφελεῖν ἢ ὠφελεῖσθαι τοὺς θεοὺς ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων. καὶ μὴν οὔθ’ αὑτὸν ὁ Χρύσιππος ἀποφαίνει σπουδαῖον οὔτε τινὰ τῶν αὑτοῦ γνωρίμων ἢ καθηγεμόνων. τί οὖν περὶ τῶν ἄλλων φρονοῦσιν; ἢ ταῦτα ἅπερ λέγουσι; μαίνεσθαι πάντας, ἀφραίνειν, ἀνοσίους εἶναι, παρανόμους, ἐπ’ ἄκρον ἥκειν δυστυχίας, κακοδαιμονίας ἁπάσης· εἶτα προνοίᾳ θεῶν διοικεῖσθαι τὰ καθ’ ἡμᾶς οὕτως ἀθλίως πράττοντας; εἰ γοῦν οἱ θεοὶ μεταβαλόμενοι βλάπτειν ἐθέλοιεν ἡμᾶς καὶ κακοῦν καὶ διαστρέφειν καὶ προσεπιτρίβειν, οὐκ ἂν δύναιντο διαθεῖναι χεῖρον ἢ νῦν ἔχομεν, ὡς Χρύσιππος ἀποφαίνει [f] μήτε κακίας ὑπερβολὴν ἀπολείπειν μήτε κακοδαιμονίας τὸν βίον· ὥστ’, εἰ λάβοι φωνήν, εἰπεῖν ἂν αὐτὸν τὰ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους

‘γέμω κακῶν δή, καὶ οὐκ ἔσθ’ ὅπου τεθῇ.’

τίνας οὖν ἄν τις εὕροι μαχομένας μᾶλλον ἀλλήλαις ἀποφάσεις τῆς περὶ θεῶν Χρυσίππου καὶ τῆς περὶ ἀνθρώπων, [1049] [a] τοὺς μὲν ὡς ἔνι βέλτιστα προνοεῖν τοὺς δ’ ὡς ἔνι χείριστα πράττειν λέγοντος;

Ἐγκαλοῦσιν αὐτῷ τινες τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Δικαιοσύνης γράφοντι περὶ τῶν ἀλεκτρυόνων ὅτι ‘χρησίμως γεγόνασιν· ἐπεγείρουσι γὰρ ἡμᾶς καὶ τοὺς σκορπίους ἐκλέγουσι καὶ κατὰ τὰς μάχας ἐπιστρέφουσι, ζῆλόν τινα πρὸς ἀλκὴν ἐμποιοῦντες· ὅμως δὲ δεῖ κατεσθίειν καὶ τούτους, ἵνα μὴ τὴν χρείαν ὑπερβάλλῃ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν νεοττῶν.’ ὁ δ’ οὕτως καταγελᾷ τῶν ἐπὶ τούτοις ἐγκαλούντων, ὥστε περὶ τοῦ Διός, τοῦ Σωτῆρος καὶ Γενέτορος καὶ πατρὸς Δίκης καὶ Εὐνομίας καὶ Εἰρήνης, ταῦτα [b] γράφειν ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Θεῶν· ‘ὡς δ’ αἱ πόλεις πλεονάσασαι εἰς ἀποικίας ἀπερῶσι τὰ πλήθη καὶ πολέμους ἐνίστανται πρός τινας, οὕτως ὁ θεὸς φθορᾶς ἀρχὰς δίδωσι·’ καὶ τὸν Εὐριπίδην μάρτυρα καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους προσάγεται τοὺς λέγοντας ὡς ὁ Τρωικὸς πόλεμος ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν ἀπαντλήσεως χάριν τοῦ πλήθους τοῦ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένους γένοιτο. τούτων δὲ τὰς μὲν ἄλλας ἀτοπίας ἄφες· οὐ γὰρ εἴ τι μὴ καλῶς ἀλλ’ ὅσα πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς διαφόρως λέγουσιν, ἐξετάσαι μόνον πρόκειται· σκόπει δ’ ὅτι τῷ θεῷ καλὰς μὲν ἐπικλήσεις ἀεὶ καὶ φιλανθρώπους, ἄγρια δ’ ἔργα καὶ βάρβαρα καὶ Γαλατικὰ προστίθησιν. οὐ γὰρ ἀποικίαις [c] ἐοίκασιν αἱ τοσαῦται φθοραὶ καὶ πανωλεθρίαι τῶν ἀνθρώπων, οἵας ὁ Τρωικὸς εἰργάσατο πόλεμος καὶ πάλιν ὁ Μηδικὸς καὶ ὁ Πελοποννησιακός, εἰ μή τινας ἐν Ἅιδου καὶ ὑπὸ γῆς ἴσασιν οὗτοι πόλεις κτιζομένας, ἀλλὰ τῷ Γαλάτῃ Δηιοτάρῳ ποιεῖ Χρύσιππος ὅμοιον τὸν θεὸν, ὅς, πλειόνων αὐτῷ παίδων γεγονότων, ἑνὶ βουλόμενος τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπολιπεῖν καὶ τὸν οἶκον ἅπαντας ἐκείνους ἀπέσφαξεν, ὥσπερ ἀμπέλου βλαστοὺς ἀποτεμὼν καὶ κολούσας, ἵν’ εἷς ὁ λειφθεὶς ἰσχυρὸς γένηται καὶ μέγας. καίτοι γ’ ὁ μὲν ἀμπελουργὸς ἔτι μικρῶν ὄντων καὶ ἀσθενῶν τοῦτο ποιεῖ τῶν κλημάτων, καὶ ἡμεῖς νεογνῶν καὶ τυφλῶν ὄντων τῶν σκυλακίων [d] ὑφαιροῦμεν τὰ πολλὰ φειδόμενοι τῆς κυνός. ὁ δὲ Ζεὺς οὐ μόνον ἐάσας καὶ περιιδὼν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ γενομένους ἀλλὰ καὶ φύσας αὐτὸς καὶ αὐξήσας ἀποτυμπανίζει, φθορᾶς καὶ ὀλέθρου μηχανώμενος προφάσεις, δέον αἰτίας καὶ ἀρχὰς γενέσεως μὴ παρασχεῖν. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ἔλαττόν ἐστιν· ἐκεῖνο δὲ μεῖζον. οὐδεὶς γὰρ φύεται ἀνθρώποις πόλεμος ἄνευ κακίας, ἀλλὰ τὸν μὲν φιληδονία τὸν δὲ πλεονεξία τὸν δὲ φιλοδοξία τις ἢ φιλαρχία συρρήγνυσιν. οὐκοῦν εἰ πολέμους ὁ θεὸς ἐνεργάζεται, καὶ κακίας, παροξύνων καὶ διαστρέφων τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. καίτοι λέγει δ’ αὐτὸς ἐν τῷ περὶ τοῦ Δικάζειν καὶ πάλιν ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ [e] περὶ Θεῶν ὡς ‘τῶν αἰσχρῶν τὸ θεῖον παραίτιον γίγνεσθαι οὐκ εὔλογόν ἐστιν· ὃν τρόπον γὰρ οὔτε νόμος τοῦ παρανομεῖν παραίτιος γένοιτ’ ἂν οὔθ’ οἱ θεοὶ τοῦ ἀσεβεῖν, οὕτως εὔλογον μηδ’ αἰσχροῦ μηδενὸς εἶναι παραιτίους.’ τί οὖν αἴσχιον ἀνθρώποις φθορᾶς ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων γινομένης, ἧς φησι Χρύσιππος ἐνδιδόναι τὰς ἀρχὰς τὸν θεόν; ‘ἀλλὰ νὴ Δία’ φήσει τις ‘ἐπαινεῖ πάλιν ‹τὸ› τοῦ Εὐριπίδου λέγοντος (fr. 292, 7)

‘εἰ θεοί τι δρῶσιν αἰσχρόν, οὔκ εἰσιν θεοί·’

καί (fr. 254, 2)

‘τὸ ῥᾷστον εἶπας, αἰτιάσασθαι θεούς·’’ -

ὥσπερ ἡμῶν ἄλλο τι νῦν πραττόντων ἢ τὰς ἐναντίας αὐτοῦ φωνὰς καὶ ὑπολήψεις παρατιθεμένων.

[f] Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ αὐτό γε τοῦτο τὸ νῦν ἐπαινούμενον οὐχ ἅπαξ οὐδὲ δὶς οὐδὲ τρὶς ἀλλὰ μυριάκις ἔσται πρὸς Χρύσιππον εἰπεῖν

‘τὸ ῥᾷστον εἶπας, αἰτιάσασθαι θεούς’.

πρῶτον γὰρ ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Φύσεως τὸ ἀίδιον τῆς κινήσεως κυκεῶνι παρεικάσας ἄλλ’ ἄλλως στρέφοντι καὶ [1050] [a] ταράσσοντι τῶν γινομένων, ταῦτ’ εἴρηκεν· ‘οὕτω δὲ τῆς τῶν ὅλων οἰκονομίας προαγούσης, ἀναγκαῖον κατὰ ταύτην, ὡς ἄν ποτ’ ἔχωμεν, ἔχειν ἡμᾶς, εἴτε παρὰ φύσιν τὴν ἰδίαν νοσοῦντες εἴτε πεπηρωμένοι εἴτε γραμματικοὶ γεγονότες ἢ μουσικοί·’ καὶ πάλιν μετ’ ὀλίγον· ‘κατὰ τοῦτον δὲ τὸν λόγον τὰ παραπλήσια ἐροῦμεν καὶ περὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἡμῶν καὶ περὶ τῆς κακίας καὶ τὸ ὅλον τῶν τεχνῶν καὶ τῶν ἀτεχνιῶν, ὡς ἔφην,’ καὶ μετ’ ὀλίγον ἅπασαν ἀναιρῶν ἀμφιβολίαν· ‘οὐθὲν γὰρ ἔστιν ἄλλως τῶν κατὰ μέρος γενέσθαι οὐδὲ τοὐλάχιστον ἢ κατὰ τὴν κοινὴν φύσιν καὶ κατὰ τὸν ἐκείνης λόγον.’ ὅτι δ’ ἡ κοινὴ φύσις καὶ ὁ κοινὸς τῆς [b] φύσεως λόγος εἱμαρμένη καὶ πρόνοια καὶ Ζεύς ἐστιν, οὐδὲ τοὺς ἀντίποδας λέληθε· πανταχοῦ γὰρ ταῦτα θρυλεῖται ὑπ’ αὐτῶν· καὶ τὸ ‘Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή’ τὸν Ὅμηρον εἰρηκέναι φησὶν ὀρθῶς ἐπὶ τὴν εἱμαρμένην ἀναφέροντα καὶ τὴν τῶν ὅλων φύσιν, καθ’ ἣν πάντα διοικεῖται. πῶς οὖν ἅμα μὲν οὐδενὸς αἰσχροῦ παραίτιος ὁ θεός, ἅμα δ’ οὐδὲ τοὐλάχιστον ἐνδέχεται γίνεσθαι ἄλλως ἢ κατὰ τὴν κοινὴν φύσιν καὶ τὸν ἐκείνης λόγον; ἐν γὰρ πᾶσι τοῖς γινομένοις καὶ τὰ αἰσχρὰ δήπουθέν ἐστιν. καίτοι ὁ μὲν Ἐπίκουρος (fr. 378) ἁμωσγέπως στρέφεται καὶ φιλοτεχνεῖ, τῆς ἀιδίου [c] κινήσεως μηχανώμενος ἐλευθερῶσαι καὶ ἀπολῦσαι τὸ ἑκούσιον ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ καταλιπεῖν ἀνέγκλητον τὴν κακίαν· ‹ὁ δὲ Χρύσιππος› ἀναπεπταμένην παρρησίαν αὐτῇ δίδωσιν ὡς οὐ μόνον ἐξ ἀνάγκης οὐδὲ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην ἀλλὰ καὶ κατὰ λόγον θεοῦ καὶ κατὰ φύσιν πεποιημένῃ τὴν ἀρίστην. ἔτι δὲ καὶ ταῦθ’ ὅρα τὰ κατὰ λέξιν οὕτως ἔχοντα· ‘τῆς γὰρ κοινῆς φύσεως εἰς πάντα διατεινούσης δεήσει πᾶν τὸ ὁπωσοῦν γινόμενον ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ καὶ τῶν μορίων ὁτῳοῦν κατ’ ἐκείνην γενέσθαι καὶ τὸν ἐκείνης λόγον κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς ἀκωλύτως διὰ τὸ μήτ’ ἔξωθεν εἶναι τὸ ἐνστησόμενον [d] τῇ οἰκονομίᾳ μήτε τῶν μερῶν μηδὲν ἔχειν ὅπως κινηθήσεται ἢ σχήσει ἄλλως ‹ἢ› κατὰ τὴν κοινὴν φύσιν.’ τίνες οὖν αἱ τῶν μερῶν σχέσεις εἰσὶ καὶ κινήσεις; δῆλον μὲν ὅτι σχέσεις αἱ κακίαι καὶ τὰ νοσήματα, φιλαργυρίαι φιληδονίαι φιλοδοξίαι δειλίαι ἀδικίαι, κινήσεις δὲ μοιχεῖαι κλοπαὶ προδοσίαι ἀνδροφονίαι πατροκτονίαι. τούτων οἴεται Χρύσιππος οὔτε μικρὸν οὔτε μέγα παρὰ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς λόγον εἶναι καὶ νόμον καὶ δίκην καὶ πρόνοιαν· ὥστε μὴ γίνεσθαι παρὰ τὸν νόμον τὸ παρανομεῖν μηδὲ παρὰ τὴν δίκην τὸ ἀδικεῖν μηδὲ παρὰ τὴν πρόνοιαν τὸ κακοποιεῖν.

[e] Ἀλλὰ μὴν τὸν θεὸν κολάζειν φησὶ τὴν κακίαν καὶ πολλὰ ποιεῖν ἐπὶ κολάσει τῶν πονηρῶν, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ περὶ Θεῶν ποτὲ μὲν τὰ δύσχρηστα συμβαίνειν φησὶ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς οὐχ ὥσπερ τοῖς φαύλοις κολάσεως χάριν, ἀλλὰ κατ’ ἄλλην οἰκονομίαν, ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι· καὶ πάλιν ἐν τούτοις· ‘πρῶτον δὲ τῶν κακῶν παραπλησίως ἐστὶν ἀκουστέον τοῖς προειρημένοις· εἶθ’ ὅτι ταῦτ’ ἀπονέμεται κατὰ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς λόγον ἤτοι ἐπὶ κολάσει ἢ κατ’ ἄλλην ἔχουσάν πως πρὸς τὰ ὅλα οἰκονομίαν.’ ἔστι μὲν οὖν καὶ τοῦτο δεινόν, τὸ καὶ γίνεσθαι τὴν κακίαν καὶ κολάζεσθαι κατὰ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς λόγον· ἐπιτείνει δὲ τὴν ὑπεναντίωσιν [f] ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ περὶ Φύσεως γράφων τάδε· ‘ἡ δὲ κακία πρὸς τὰ δεινὰ συμπτώματα ἴδιόν τιν’ ἔχει λόγον· γίνεται μὲν γὰρ καὶ αὐτή πως κατὰ τὸν τῆς φύσεως λόγον καί, ἵν’ οὕτως εἴπω, οὐκ ἀχρήστως γίνεται πρὸς τὰ ὅλα· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἂν τἀγαθὸν ἦν.’ καὶ οὗτος ἐπιτιμᾷ τοῖς ἐπίσης πρὸς [1051] [a] τὰ ἐναντία διαλεγομένοις, ὃς ὑπὸ τοῦ πάντως τι βούλεσθαι καὶ περὶ παντὸς εἰπεῖν ἴδιον καὶ περιττὸν οὐκ ἀχρήστως λέγει βαλλαντιοτομεῖν συκοφαντεῖν καὶ ἀφραίνειν, οὐκ ἀχρήστως ἀχρήστους εἶναι, βλαβεροὺς κακοδαίμονας. εἶτα ποῖός τις ὁ Ζεύς, λέγω δὲ τὸν Χρυσίππου, κολάζων πρᾶγμα μήτ’ ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ μήτ’ ἀχρήστως γινόμενον; ἡ μὲν γὰρ κακία πάντως ἀνέγκλητός ἐστι κατὰ τὸν τοῦ Χρυσίππου λόγον, ὁ δὲ Ζεὺς ἐγκλητέος εἴτ’ ἄχρηστον οὖσαν τὴν κακίαν πεποίηκεν εἴτε ποιήσας οὐκ ἀχρήστως κολάζει.

Πάλιν ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Δικαιοσύνης εἰπὼν περὶ τῶν θεῶν ὡς ἐνισταμένων ἐνίοις ἀδικήμασι ‘κακίαν δέ’ [b] φησί ‘καθόλου ἆραι οὔτε δυνατόν ἐστιν οὔτ’ ἔχει καλῶς ἀρθῆναι’. τὴν ἀνομίαν τὴν ἀδικίαν τὴν ἀβελτερίαν, οὐ τοῦ παρόντος ἐστὶ λόγου τὸ ζητεῖν· αὐτὸς δὲ τὴν κακίαν, ὅσον ἐφ’ ἑαυτῷ, διὰ τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν ἀναιρῶν, ἣν οὐκ ἔχει καλῶς ἀναιρεῖν, μαχόμενόν τι ποιεῖ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ καὶ τῷ θεῷ. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις λέγων ἐνίοις ἀδικήμασιν ἐνίστασθαι τὸν θεὸν ἔμφασιν πάλιν τῆς τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων δίδωσιν ἀνοσιότητος.

Ἔτι περὶ τοῦ μηδὲν ἐγκλητὸν εἶναι μηδὲ μεμπτὸν ‹ἐν τῷ› κόσμῳ, κατὰ τὴν ἀρίστην φύσιν ἁπάντων περαινομένων, πολλάκις γεγραφὼς ἔστιν ὅπου πάλιν ἐγκλητάς τινας ἀμελείας οὐ περὶ μικρὰ καὶ φαῦλα καταλείπει. ἐν [c] γοῦν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Οὐσίας μνησθεὶς ὅτι συμβαίνει τινὰ τοῖς καλοῖς καὶ ἀγαθοῖς τοιαῦτα ‘πότερον’ φησίν ‘ἀμελουμένων τινῶν, καθάπερ ἐν οἰκίαις μείζοσι παραπίπτει τινὰ πίτυρα καὶ ποσοὶ πυροί, τῶν ὅλων εὖ οἰκονομουμένων; ἢ διὰ τὸ καθίσταθαι ἐπὶ τῶν τοιούτων δαιμόνια φαῦλα, ἐν οἷς τῷ ὄντι γίνονται καὶ ἐγκλητέαι ἀμέλειαι;’ φησὶ δὲ πολὺ καὶ τὸ τῆς ἀνάγκης μεμῖχθαι. τὸ μὲν οὖν τὰ τοιαῦτα συμπτώματα τῶν καλῶν κἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν, οἷον ἡ Σωκράτους καταδίκη καὶ ὁ Πυθαγόρου ζῶντος ἐμπρησμὸς ὑπὸ τῶν Κυλωνείων καὶ Ζήνωνος ὑπὸ Δημύλου τοῦ τυράννου καὶ [d] Ἀντιφῶντος ὑπὸ Διονυσίου στρεβλουμένων ἀναιρέσεις, πιτύροις παραπίπτουσιν ἀπεικάζειν ὅσης ἐστὶν εὐχερείας, ἐῶ· τὸ δὲ φαύλους δαίμονας ἐκ προνοίας ἐπὶ τὰς τοιαύτας ἐπιστασίας καθίστασθαι πῶς οὐκ ἔστιν ἔγκλημα τοῦ θεοῦ, καθάπερ βασιλέως κακοῖς καὶ ἐμπλήκτοις σατράπαις καὶ στρατηγοῖς διοικήσεις ἐπιτρέποντος καὶ περιορῶντος ὑπὸ τούτων ἀμελουμένους καὶ παροινουμένους τοὺς ἀρίστους; καὶ μὴν εἰ πολὺ τὸ τῆς ἀνάγκης μέμικται τοῖς πράγμασιν, οὔτε κρατεῖ πάντων ὁ θεὸς οὔτε πάντα κατὰ τὸν ἐκείνου λόγον διοικεῖται.

Πρὸς τὸν Ἐπίκουρον μάλιστα μάχεται καὶ πρὸς [e] τοὺς ἀναιροῦντας τὴν πρόνοιαν ἀπὸ τῶν ἐννοιῶν, ἃς ἔχομεν περὶ θεῶν, εὐεργετικοὺς καὶ φιλανθρώπους ἐπινοοῦντες. καὶ τούτων πολλαχοῦ γραφομένων καὶ λεγομένων παρ’ αὐτοῖς οὐδὲν ἔδει λέξεις παρατίθεσθαι καὶ τὸ χρηστοὺς ἅπαντας εἶναι τοὺς θεοὺς προλαμβάνειν· ὅρα γὰρ οἷα Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ Σύροι περὶ θεῶν φρονοῦσιν, ὅρα τὰ τῶν ποιητῶν πόσης ἐμπέπλησται δεισιδαιμονίας· φθαρτὸν δὲ καὶ γενητὸν οὐδεὶς ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν διανοεῖται θεόν. ὧν ἵνα τοὺς ἄλλους ἀφῶ πάντας, Ἀντίπατρος ὁ Ταρσεὺς ἐν τῷ περὶ Θεῶν γράφει ταῦτα κατὰ λέξιν· ‘πρὸ δὲ τοῦ σύμπαντος λόγου τὴν ἔννοιαν, ἣν ἔχομεν περὶ θεοῦ, διὰ βραχέων [f] ἐπιλογιούμεθα. θεὸν τοίνυν νοοῦμεν ζῷον μακάριον καὶ ἄφθαρτον καὶ εὐποιητικὸν ἀνθρώπων·’ εἶτα τούτων ἕκαστον ἀφηγούμενός φησιν οὕτως· ‘καὶ μὴν ἀφθάρτους αὐτοὺς ἡγοῦνται πάντες.’ οὐδεὶς οὖν ἐστι τῶν πάντων ὁ Χρύσιππος κατ’ Ἀντίπατρον· οὐδένα γὰρ οἴεται πλὴν τοῦ [1052] [a] πυρὸς ἄφθαρτον εἶναι τῶν θεῶν, ἀλλὰ πάντας ὁμαλῶς καὶ γεγονότας καὶ φθαρησομένους. ταῦτα δὲ πανταχοῦ, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λέγεται. παραθήσομαι δὲ λέξιν ἐκ τοῦ τρίτου περὶ Θεῶν· ‘καθ’ ἕτερον λόγον· οἱ μὲν γὰρ γενητοὶ εἶναι καὶ φθαρτοὶ λέγονται, οἱ δ’ ἀγένητοι· καὶ ταῦτ’ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ὑποδείκνυσθαι φυσικώτερον. ἥλιος μὲν γὰρ καὶ σελήνη καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι θεοὶ ‹οἱ› παραπλήσιον ἔχοντες λόγον γενητοί εἰσιν, ὁ δὲ Ζεὺς ἀίδιός ἐστιν.’ καὶ πάλιν προελθών· ‘ὅμοια δὲ καὶ περὶ τοῦ φθίνειν καὶ περὶ τοῦ γενέσθαι ῥηθήσεται, περί τε τῶν ἄλλων θεῶν καὶ τοῦ Διός· οἱ μὲν γὰρ φθαρτοί εἰσι τοῦ δὲ τὰ μέρη ἄφθαρτα.’ τούτοις ἔτι βούλομαι παραβαλεῖν μικρὰ τῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀντιπάτρου [b] λεγομένων· ‘ὅσοι δὲ περιαιροῦνται τὸ εὐποιητικὸν ἐκ τῶν θεῶν, ἀπὸ μέρους προσβάλλουσι τῇ τούτων προλήψει· κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον καὶ οἱ νομίζοντες αὐτοὺς γενέσεώς τε καὶ φθορᾶς κοινωνεῖν.’ εἴπερ οὖν ἐπίσης ἄτοπος ὁ φθαρτοὺς ἡγούμενος τοὺς θεοὺς τῷ μὴ νομίζοντι προνοητικοὺς εἶναι καὶ φιλανθρώπους, ἐπίσης διαπέπτωκεν Ἐπικούρῳ Χρύσιππος· ὁ μὲν γὰρ τὸ εὐποιητικὸν ὁ δὲ τὸ ἄφθαρτον ἀφαιρεῖται τῶν θεῶν. καὶ μὴν ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Θεῶν ὁ Χρύσιππος περὶ τοῦ τρέφεσθαι τοὺς ἄλλους θεοὺς τάδε λέγει· ‘τροφῇ τε οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι θεοὶ χρῶνται παραπλησίως, συνεχόμενοι δι’ αὐτήν· ὁ δὲ [c] Ζεὺς καὶ ὁ κόσμος καθ’ ἕτερον τρόπον ἀναλισκομένων καὶ ἐκ πυρὸς γινομένων.’ ἐνταῦθα μὲν ἀποφαίνεται πάντας τοὺς ἄλλους θεοὺς τρέφεσθαι πλὴν τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τοῦ Διός· ἐν δὲ τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Προνοίας τὸν Δία φησὶν αὔξεσθαι, μέχρι ἂν εἰς αὑτὸν ἅπαντα καταναλώσῃ· ‘ἐπεὶ γὰρ ὁ θάνατος μέν ἐστι ψυχῆς χωρισμὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος, ἡ δὲ τοῦ κόσμου ψυχὴ οὐ χωρίζεται μὲν αὔξεται δὲ συνεχῶς μέχρι ἂν εἰς αὑτὴν καταναλώσῃ τὴν ὕλην, οὐ ῥητέον ἀποθνήσκειν τὸν κόσμον.’ τίς ἂν οὖν ἐναντιώτερα λέγων ἑαυτῷ φανείη τοῦ τὸν αὐτὸν θεὸν νῦν μὲν αὔξεσθαι νῦν δὲ μὴ τρέφεσθαι λέγοντος; καὶ τοῦτ’ οὐ δεῖ συλλογίζεσθαι· σαφῶς γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ γέγραφεν· ‘αὐτάρκης [d] δ’ εἶναι λέγεται μόνος ὁ κόσμος διὰ τὸ μόνος ἐν αὑτῷ πάντ’ ἔχειν ὧν δεῖται, καὶ τρέφεται ἐξ αὑτοῦ καὶ αὔξεται, τῶν [ἄλλων] μορίων εἰς ἄλληλα καταλλαττομένων.’ οὐ μόνον οὖν ἐν ἐκείνοις τοὺς ἄλλους θεοὺς ἀποφαίνων τρεφομένους πλὴν τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τοῦ Διός, ἐν τούτοις δὲ καὶ τὸν κόσμον λέγων τρέφεσθαι μάχεται πρὸς αὑτόν· ἀλλ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον, ὅτι τὸν κόσμον αὔξεσθαί φησιν ἐξ αὑτοῦ τρεφόμενον. τοὐναντίον δ’ εἰκὸς ἦν τοῦτον μόνον μὴ αὔξεσθαι τὴν αὑτοῦ φθίσιν ἔχοντα τροφήν, τοῖς δ’ ἄλλοις θεοῖς ἔξωθεν τρεφομένοις ἐπίδοσιν γίνεσθαι καὶ αὔξησιν καὶ μᾶλλον εἰς τούτους καταναλίσκεσθαι τὸν κόσμον, εἴ γ’ ἐκείνῳ μὲν ἐξ αὑτοῦ τούτοις δ’ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου [e] λαμβάνειν ἀεί τι καὶ τρέφεσθαι συμβέβηκε. δεύτερον τοίνυν ἡ τῶν θεῶν ἔννοια περιέχει τὸ εὔδαιμον καὶ μακάριον καὶ αὐτοτελές. διὸ καὶ τὸν Εὐριπίδην ἐπαινοῦσιν εἰπόντα (Herc. 1346)

‘δεῖται γὰρ ὁ θεός, εἴπερ ἔστ’ ὀρθῶς θεός,

οὐδενός· ἀοιδῶν οἵδε δύστηνοι λόγοι.’

ἀλλ’ ὅ γε Χρύσιππος, ἐν οἷς παρεθέμην, αὐτάρκη μόνον εἶναι τὸν κόσμον φησὶ διὰ τὸ μόνον ἐν αὑτῷ πάντ’ ἔχειν ὧν δεῖται. τί οὖν ἕπεται τῷ μόνον αὐτάρκη τὸν κόσμον εἶναι; τὸ μήτε τὸν ἥλιον αὐτάρκη μήτε τὴν σελήνην εἶναι μήτ’ ἄλλον τινὰ τῶν θεῶν. αὐτάρκεις δὲ μὴ ὄντες οὐκ ἂν εἶεν εὐδαίμονες οὐδὲ μακάριοι.

[f] Τὸ βρέφος ἐν τῇ γαστρὶ φύσει τρέφεσθαι νομίζει καθάπερ φυτόν· ὅταν δὲ τεχθῇ, ψυχόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀέρος καὶ στομούμενον τὸ πνεῦμα μεταβάλλειν καὶ γίνεσθαι ζῷον· ὅθεν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου τὴν ψυχὴν ὠνομάσθαι παρὰ τὴν ψῦξιν. αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν τὴν ψυχὴν ἀραιότερον πνεῦμα τῆς φύσεως καὶ λεπτομερέστερον ἡγεῖται μαχόμενος αὑτῷ. [1053] [a] πῶς γὰρ οἷόν τε λεπτομερὲς ἐκ παχυμεροῦς καὶ ἀραιὸν γενέσθαι κατὰ περίψυξιν καὶ πύκνωσιν; ὃ δὲ μεῖζόν ἐστι, πῶς περιψύξει γίνεσθαι τὸ ἔμψυχον ἀποφαινόμενος ἔμψυχον ἡγεῖται τὸν ἥλιον, πύρινον ὄντα καὶ γεγενημένον ἐκ τῆς ἀναθυμιάσεως εἰς πῦρ μεταβαλούσης; λέγει γὰρ ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Φύσεως· ‘ἡ δὲ πυρὸς μεταβολή ἐστι τοιαύτη· δι’ ἀέρος εἰς ὕδωρ τρέπεται· κἀκ τούτου γῆς ὑφισταμένης ἀὴρ ἀναθυμιᾶται· λεπτυνομένου δὲ τοῦ ἀέρος ὁ αἰθὴρ περιχεῖται κύκλῳ· οἱ δ’ ἀστέρες ἐκ θαλάσσης μετὰ τοῦ ἡλίου ἀνάπτονται.’ τί οὖν ἀνάψει περιψύξεως ἐναντιώτερον [b] ἢ διαχύσει πυκνώσεως; ‹ὡς› τὰ μὲν ὕδωρ καὶ γῆν ἐκ πυρὸς καὶ ἀέρος ποιεῖ, τὰ δ’ εἰς πῦρ καὶ ἀέρα τρέπει τὸ ὑγρὸν καὶ γεῶδες. ἀλλ’ ὅμως ὅπου μὲν τὴν ἄναψιν ὅπου δὲ τὴν περίψυξιν ἀρχὴν ἐμψυχίας ποιεῖ. καὶ μὴν ὅταν ἐκπύρωσις γένηται, διόλου ζῆν καὶ ζῷον ‹ἔμψυχον τὸν κόσμον› εἶναί φησι σβεννύμενον δ’ αὖθις καὶ παχυνόμενον εἰς ὕδωρ καὶ γῆν καὶ τὸ σωματοειδὲς τρέπεσθαι. λέγει δ’ ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Προνοίας· ‘διόλου μὲν γὰρ ἂν ὁ κόσμος πυρώδης ‹γένηται›, εὐθὺς καὶ ψυχή ἐστιν ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἡγεμονικόν· ὅτε δέ, μεταβαλὼν εἴς τε τὸ ὑγρὸν ‹καὶ τὸ γεῶδες› καὶ τὴν ἐναπολειφθεῖσαν ψυχήν, τρόπον τινὰ εἰς σῶμα καὶ ψυχὴν μετέβαλεν ὥστε συνεστάναι ἐκ τούτων, [c] ἄλλον τινὰ ἔσχε λόγον.’ ἐνταῦθα δήπου σαφῶς τῇ μὲν ἐκπυρώσει καὶ τὰ ἄψυχα τοῦ κόσμου φησὶν εἰς τὸ ἔμψυχον τρέπεσθαι, τῇ δὲ σβέσει πάλιν καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀνίεσθαι καὶ ἀνυγραίνεσθαι, μεταβάλλουσαν εἰς τὸ σωματοειδές. ἄτοπος οὖν φαίνεται τῇ περιψύξει νῦν μὲν ἐξ ἀναισθήτων ποιῶν ἔμψυχα, νῦν δ’ εἰς ἀναίσθητα καὶ ἄψυχα μεταβάλλων τὸ πλεῖστον μέρος τῆς τοῦ κόσμου ψυχῆς. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων ὁ περὶ ψυχῆς γενέσεως αὐτῷ λόγος μαχομένην ἔχει πρὸς τὸ δόγμα τὴν ἀπόδειξιν. γίνεσθαι μὲν γάρ φησι τὴν ψυχήν, ὅταν τὸ βρέφος ἀποτεχθῇ, καθάπερ στομώσει τῇ περιψύξει τοῦ [d] πνεύματος μεταβαλόντος, ἀποδείξει δὲ χρῆται τοῦ γεγονέναι τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ μεταγενεστέραν εἶναι μάλιστα τῷ καὶ τὸν τρόπον καὶ τὸ ἦθος ἐξομοιοῦσθαι τὰ τέκνα τοῖς γονεῦσι. βλέπεται δ’ ἡ τούτων ἐναντίωσις· οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε τὴν ψυχὴν πρὸ τῆς ἀποκυήσεως ἠθοποιεῖσθαι, γινομένην μετὰ τὴν ἀποκύησιν· ἢ συμβήσεται, πρὶν ἢ γενέσθαι ψυχήν, ὁμοίαν εἶναι ψυχῇ, τουτέστι καὶ εἶναι τῇ ὁμοιότητι καὶ μὴ εἶναι διὰ τὸ μήπω γεγονέναι. εἰ δὲ φήσει τις ὅτι ταῖς κράσεσι τῶν σωμάτων ἐγγινομένης τῆς ὁμοιότητος αἱ ψυχαὶ γενόμεναι μεταβάλλουσι, διαφθείρει τὸ τεκμήριον τοῦ γεγονέναι τὴν ψυχήν· ἐνδέχεται γὰρ οὕτως καὶ ἀγένητον οὖσαν, [e] ὅταν ἐπεισέλθῃ, μεταβάλλειν τῇ κράσει τῆς ὁμοιότητος.

Τὸν ἀέρα ποτὲ μὲν ἀνωφερῆ καὶ κοῦφον εἶναί φησι, ποτὲ δὲ μήτε βαρὺν μήτε κοῦφον. ἐν μὲν οὖν τῷ δευτέρῳ περὶ Κινήσεως τό τε πῦρ ἀβαρὲς ὂν ἀνωφερὲς εἶναι λέγει καὶ τούτῳ παραπλησίως τὸν ἀέρα, τοῦ μὲν ὕδατος τῇ γῇ μᾶλλον προσνεμομένου τοῦ δ’ ἀέρος τῷ πυρί· ἐν δὲ ταῖς Φυσικαῖς Τέχναις ἐπὶ τὴν ἑτέραν ῥέπει δόξαν, ὡς μήτε βάρος ἐξ αὑτοῦ μήτε κουφότητα τοῦ ἀέρος ἔχοντος. τὸν ἀέρα φύσει ζοφερὸν εἶναι λέγει, καὶ τούτῳ τεκμηρίῳ χρῆται τοῦ καὶ ψυχρὸν εἶναι πρώτως· ἀντικεῖσθαι γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὸ μὲν ζοφερὸν πρὸς τὴν λαμπρότητα τὸ δὲ ψυχρὸν [f] πρὸς τὴν θερμότητα τοῦ πυρός. ταῦτα κινῶν ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν Φυσικῶν Ζητημάτων πάλιν ἐν τοῖς περὶ Ἕξεων οὐδὲν ἄλλο τὰς ἕξεις πλὴν ἀέρας εἶναί φησιν· ‘ὑπὸ τούτων γὰρ συνέχεται τὰ σώματα· καὶ τοῦ ποιὸν ἕκαστον εἶναι τῶν ἕξει συνεχομένων αἴτιος ὁ συνέχων ἀήρ ἐστιν, ὃν σκληρότητα μὲν ἐν σιδήρῳ πυκνότητα δ’ ἐν λίθῳ λευκότητα [1054] [a] δ’ ἐν ἀργύρῳ καλοῦσι,’ πολλὴν ἀτοπίαν καὶ μάχην τούτων ἐχόντων· εἰ μὲν γὰρ μένει ὁποῖός ἐστι φύσει, πῶς τὸ μέλαν ἐν τῷ μὴ λευκῷ λευκότης γίνεται καὶ τὸ μαλθακὸν ἐν τῷ μὴ σκληρῷ σκληρότης καὶ τὸ μανὸν ἐν τῷ μὴ πυκνῷ πυκνότης; εἰ δὲ μιγνύμενος ἐν τούτοις ἐξίσταται καὶ συνομοιοῦται, πῶς ἕξις ἐστὶν ἢ δύναμις ἢ αἰτία τούτων, ὑφ’ ὧν κρατεῖται; πάσχοντος γάρ ἐστιν οὐ δρῶντος, οὐδὲ συνέχοντος ἀλλ’ ἐξασθενοῦντος ἡ τοιαύτη μεταβολή, καθ’ ἣν ἀπόλλυσι τὰς αὑτοῦ ποιότητας. καίτοι πανταχοῦ τὴν ὕλην ἀργὸν ἐξ ἑαυτῆς καὶ ἀκίνητον ὑποκεῖσθαι ταῖς ποιότησιν ἀποφαίνουσι, τὰς δὲ ποιότητας πνεύματ’ οὔσας καὶ [b] τόνους ἀερώδεις, οἷς ἂν ἐγγένωνται μέρεσι τῆς ὕλης, εἰδοποιεῖν ἕκαστα καὶ σχηματίζειν. ταῦτα δ’ οὐκ ἔνεστι λέγειν αὐτοῖς, τὸν ἀέρα φύσει τοιοῦτον ὑποτιθεμένοις· ἕξις γὰρ ὢν καὶ τόνος αὑτῷ συνεξομοιώσει τῶν σωμάτων ἕκαστον ὥστε μέλαν εἶναι καὶ μαλθακόν· εἰ δὲ τῇ πρὸς ἐκεῖνα κράσει τὰς ἐναντίας λαμβάνει μορφὰς αἷς ἔχειν πέφυκεν, ὕλη τρόπον τινὰ τῆς ὕλης, οὐκ αἴτιον οὐδὲ δύναμίς ἐστιν.

Ὅτι τοῦ κόσμου κενὸν ἐκτὸς ἄπειρόν ἐστι, τὸ δ’ ἄπειρον οὔτ’ ἀρχὴν οὔτε μέσον οὔτε τελευτὴν ἔχει, πολλάκις ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λέγεται. καὶ τούτῳ μάλιστα τὴν λεγομένην ὑπ’ Ἐπικούρου (fr. 299) τῆς ἀτόμου κάτω φορὰν [c] ἐξ αὑτῆς ἀναιροῦσιν, οὐκ οὔσης ἐν ἀπείρῳ διαφορᾶς, καθ’ ἣν τὸ μὲν ἄνω τὸ δὲ κάτω νοεῖται γινόμενον. ἀλλ’ ἔν γε τῷ τετάρτῳ περὶ Δυνατῶν μέσον τινὰ τόπον καὶ μέσην χώραν ὑποθέμενος ἐνταῦθά φησιν ἱδρῦσθαι τὸν κόσμον· ἔστι δ’ ἡ λέξις αὕτη· ‘διὸ καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ κόσμου εἰ ῥητέον φθαρτὸν εἶναι αὐτόν, λόγου οἴομαι δεῖσθαι. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐμοὶ φαίνεται οὕτως ἔχειν. οἵα τε δ’ εἰς τὴν ὥσπερ ἀφθαρσίαν πολύ τι αὐτῷ συνεργεῖν καὶ ἡ τῆς χώρας κατάληψις, οἷον διὰ τὸ ἐν μέσῳ εἶναι· ἐπεί, εἰ ἀλλαχῆ νοηθείη ὤν, καὶ παντελῶς ἂν αὐτῷ συνάπτοι ἡ φθορά.’ καὶ μετὰ μικρὸν [d] αὖθις· ‘οὕτω γάρ πως καὶ ἡ οὐσία συντέτευχεν ἀιδίως τὸν μέσον κατειληφυῖα τόπον, εὐθὺς τοιάδε τις οὖσα ὥστε ‹καὶ› καθ’ ἕτερον τρόπον, ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τὴν συντυχίαν μὴ ἐπιδέχεσθαι αὐτὴν φθοράν, καὶ κατὰ τοῦτ’ εἶναι ἀίδιον.’ ταῦτα μίαν μὲν ἔχει καταφανῆ καὶ βλεπομένην ἐναντίωσιν, ἐν ἀπείρῳ μέσον τινὰ τόπον καὶ μέσην χώραν ἀπολείποντος· δευτέραν δ’ ἀδηλοτέραν μὲν ἀλογωτέραν δὲ ταύτης. οἰόμενος γὰρ οὐκ ἂν ἄφθαρτον διαμένειν τὸν κόσμον, εἰ κατ’ ἄλλο μέρος αὐτῷ τοῦ κενοῦ συντετεύχει γενέσθαι τὴν ἵδρυσιν, δῆλός ἐστι δεδιὼς μή, τῶν μερῶν τῆς οὐσίας ἐπὶ [e] τὸ μέσον φερομένων, διάλυσις καὶ φθορὰ τοῦ κόσμου γένοιτο. ταῦτα δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐφοβεῖτο, μὴ φύσει τὰ σώματα φέρεσθαι πανταχόθεν ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον ἡγούμενος οὐ τῆς οὐσίας ἀλλὰ τῆς περιεχούσης τὴν οὐσίαν χώρας. περὶ οὗ καὶ πολλάκις εἴρηκεν ὡς ἀδυνάτου καὶ παρὰ φύσιν ὄντος· οὐ γὰρ ὑπάρχειν ἐν τῷ κενῷ διαφοράν, ᾗ τὰ σώματα δευρὶ μᾶλλον ἢ δευρὶ προσάγεται· τὴν δὲ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου σύνταξιν αἰτίαν εἶναι τῆς κινήσεως ἐπὶ τὸ κέντρον καὶ τὸ μέσον αὐτοῦ νευόντων καὶ φερομένων πανταχόθεν. ἀρκεῖ δ’ εἰς τοῦτο παραθέσθαι λέξιν ἐκ τοῦ δευτέρου περὶ Κινήσεως. ὑπειπὼν γὰρ ὅτι ‘τέλεον μὲν ὁ κόσμος σῶμά [f] ἐστιν, οὐ τέλεα δὲ τὰ τοῦ κόσμου μέρη τῷ πρὸς τὸ ὅλον πως ἔχειν καὶ μὴ καθ’ αὑτὰ εἶναι’ καὶ περὶ τῆς κινήσεως αὐτοῦ διελθὼν ὡς ἐπὶ τὴν συμμονὴν καὶ τὴν συνοχὴν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ κινεῖσθαι διὰ τῶν μερῶν πάντων πεφυκότος, οὐκ ἐπὶ τὴν διάλυσιν καὶ τὴν θρύψιν, ταῦτ’ ἐπείρηκεν· ‘οὕτω δὲ τοῦ ὅλου τεινομένου εἰς αὑτὸ καὶ κινουμένου καὶ τῶν μορίων ταύτην τὴν κίνησιν ἐχόντων ἐκ τῆς τοῦ σώματος [1055] [a] φύσεως, πιθανὸν πᾶσι τοῖς σώμασιν εἶναι τὴν πρώτην κατὰ φύσιν κίνησιν πρὸς τὸ τοῦ κόσμου μέσον, τῷ μὲν κόσμῳ οὑτωσὶ κινουμένῳ πρὸς αὑτόν, τοῖς δὲ μέρεσιν ὡς ἂν μέρεσιν οὖσιν.’ εἶτα, φήσαι τις ἄν, ὦ ἄνθρωπε, τί παθὼν ἐπελάθου τῶν λόγων τούτων, ὥστε τὸν κόσμον, εἰ μὴ τὴν μέσην χώραν ἐκ τύχης κατειλήφει, διαλυτὸν καὶ φθαρτὸν ἀποφαίνειν; εἰ γὰρ αὐτός γε νεύειν ἐπὶ τὸ αὑτοῦ μέσον ἀεὶ πέφυκε καὶ τὰ μέρη πρὸς τοῦτο κατατείνειν πανταχόθεν, ὅποι ποτ’ ἂν τοῦ κενοῦ μετατεθῇ, συνέχων ἑαυτὸν οὕτως καὶ περιστέλλων, ἄφθαρτος καὶ ἄθρυπτος [b] διαμενεῖ· τὰ γὰρ θρυπτόμενα καὶ σκεδαννύμενα τοῦτο πάσχει διακρίσει τῶν μερῶν ἑκάστου καὶ διαλύσει πρὸς τὸν οἰκεῖον τόπον ἐκ τοῦ παρὰ φύσιν ἀπορρέοντος. τί δὴ κατ’ ἄλλο τοῦ κενοῦ τεθέντα τὸν κόσμον οἰόμενος οὕτω παντελεῖ συνάπτεσθαι φθορᾷ καὶ λέγων οὕτως καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μέσον ἐν τῷ μηδὲν ἔχειν πεφυκότι μέσον ζητῶν ἀπείρῳ, τὰς μὲν τάσεις καὶ συνοχὰς καὶ νεύσεις ἐκείνας ὡς οὐδὲν ἐχέγγυον εἰς σωτηρίαν ἐχούσας ἀφῆκας, τῇ δὲ καταλήψει τοῦ τόπου τὴν σύμπασαν αἰτίαν τῆς διαμονῆς ἀνέθηκας; καίτοι τοῖς προειρημένοις ταυτὶ συνάπτεις, ὥσπερ αὐτὸς σεαυτὸν ἐξελέγξαι φιλοτιμούμενος· ‘ὃν τρόπον δὲ κινεῖται ἕκαστον τῶν μορίων συμφυὲς ὂν τῷ λοιπῷ, [c] εὔλογον οὕτως καὶ καθ’ αὑτὸ κινεῖσθαι, καὶ εἰ λόγου χάριν νοήσαιμεν αὐτὸ καὶ ὑποθοίμεθα εἶναι ἐν κενῷ τινι τοῦ κόσμου τούτου· ὡς γὰρ ἂν συνεχόμενον πάντοθεν ἐκινεῖτο ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον, μενεῖ ἐν τῇ κινήσει ταύτῃ, κἂν λόγου χάριν ἐξαίφνης περὶ αὐτὸ γένηται κενόν.’ εἶτα μέρος μὲν ὁτιοῦν ὑπὸ κενοῦ περιληφθὲν οὐκ ἀποβάλλει τὴν ἐπὶ τὸ τοῦ κόσμου μέσον ἄγουσαν ῥοπήν, αὐτὸς δ’ ὁ κόσμος, ἂν μὴ τὴν μέσην παρασκευάσῃ χώραν αὐτῷ τὸ αὐτόματον, ἀπολεῖ τὸν συνεκτικὸν τόνον, ἄλλοις ἀλλαχόσε τῆς οὐσίας αὐτοῦ μέρεσι φερομένης. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἔχει μεγάλας [d] ὑπεναντιώσεις πρὸς τὸν φυσικὸν λόγον, ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἤδη καὶ πρὸς τὸν περὶ θεοῦ καὶ προνοίας, τὸ τὰ μικρότατα τῶν αἰτίων τούτοις ἀνατιθέντα τὸ κυριώτατον ἀφαιρεῖσθαι καὶ μέγιστον. τί γάρ ἐστι κυριώτερον τῆς τοῦ κόσμου διαμονῆς καὶ τοῦ τὴν οὐσίαν ἡνωμένην τοῖς μέρεσι συνέχεσθαι πρὸς αὑτήν; ἀλλὰ τοῦτό γε συμπέπτωκεν αὐτομάτως κατὰ Χρύσιππον. εἰ γὰρ ἡ τοῦ τόπου κατάληψις αἰτία τῆς ἀφθαρσίας ἐστὶν αὕτη δὲ συντυχίᾳ γέγονε, δῆλον ὅτι συντυχίας ἔργον ἡ σωτηρία τῶν ὅλων ἐστίν, οὐχ εἱμαρμένης καὶ προνοίας.

Ὁ δὲ τῶν δυνατῶν λόγος πρὸς τὸν τῆς εἱμαρμένης λόγον αὐτῷ πῶς οὐ μαχόμενός ἐστιν; εἰ γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι [e] δυνατὸν ὅπερ ἤ ἐστιν ἀληθὲς ἢ ἔσται κατὰ Διόδωρον, ἀλλὰ πᾶν τὸ ἐπιδεκτικὸν τοῦ γενέσθαι, κἂν μὴ μέλλῃ γενήσεσθαι, δυνατόν ἐστιν, ἔσται δυνατὰ πολλὰ τῶν μὴ καθ’ εἱμαρμένην ἀνίκητον καὶ ἀνεκβίαστον καὶ περιγενητικὴν ἁπάντων ἡ εἱμαρμένη δύναμιν ἀπόλλυσιν, ἢ ταύτης οἵαν ἀξιοῖ Χρύσιππος οὔσης τὸ ἐπιδεκτικὸν τοῦ γενέσθαι πολλάκις εἰς τὸ ἀδύνατον ἐμπεσεῖται. καὶ πᾶν μὲν ἀληθὲς ἀναγκαῖον ἔσται τῇ κυριωτάτῃ πασῶν ἀνάγκῃ κατειλημμένον, πᾶν δὲ ψεῦδος ἀδύνατον, τὴν μεγίστην ἔχον αἰτίαν ἀντιπίπτουσαν αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸ ἀληθὲς γενέσθαι. ᾧ γὰρ ἐν θαλάττῃ πεπρωμένον ἐστὶν ἀποθανεῖν, πῶς ἂν οἷόν τε [f] τοῦτον ἐπιδεκτικὸν εἶναι τοῦ ἐν γῇ ἀποθανεῖν; τί δέ; τὸν Μεγαροῖ δυνατόν ἐστιν ἐλθεῖν εἰς Ἀθήνας ὑπὸ τῆς εἱμαρμένης κωλυόμενον;

Ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ τὰ περὶ τῶν φαντασιῶν λεγόμενα νεανικῶς πρὸς τὴν εἱμαρμένην ἐναντιοῦται. τὴν γὰρ φαντασίαν βουλόμενος οὐκ οὖσαν αὐτοτελῆ τῆς συγκαταθέσεως αἰτίαν ἀποδεικνύειν, εἴρηκεν ὅτι ‘βλάψουσιν οἱ σοφοὶ ψευδεῖς φαντασίας ἐμποιοῦντες, ἂν αἱ φαντασίαι ποιῶσιν αὐτοτελῶς τὰς συγκαταθέσεις· πολλάκις γὰρ οἱ σοφοὶ ψεύδει [1056] [a] χρῶνται πρὸς τοὺς φαύλους καὶ φαντασίαν παριστᾶσι πιθανήν, οὐ μὴν αἰτίαν τῆς συγκαταθέσεως· ἐπεὶ καὶ τῆς ὑπολήψεως αἰτία τῆς ψευδοῦς ἔσται καὶ τῆς ἀπάτης.’ ταῦτ’ οὖν ἄν τις ἀπὸ τοῦ σοφοῦ μεταφέρων ἐπὶ τὴν εἱμαρμένην λέγῃ μὴ διὰ τὴν εἱμαρμένην γίνεσθαι τὰς συγκαταθέσεις, ἐπεὶ διὰ τὴν εἱμαρμένην ἔσονται καὶ ψευδεῖς συγκαταθέσεις καὶ ὑπολήψεις καὶ ἀπάται καὶ βλαβήσονται διὰ τὴν εἱμαρμένην, ὁ τοῦ βλάπτειν τὸν σοφὸν ἐξαιρούμενος λόγος ἅμα καὶ τὸ μὴ πάντων αἰτίαν εἶναι τὴν εἱμαρμένην ἀποδείκνυσιν. εἰ γὰρ μήτε δοξάζουσι μήτε βλάπτονται διὰ τὴν εἱμαρμένην, δῆλον ὅτι οὐδὲ κατορθοῦσιν [b] οὐδὲ φρονοῦσιν οὐδ’ ὑπολαμβάνουσι βεβαίως οὐδ’ ὠφελοῦνται διὰ τὴν εἱμαρμένην, ἀλλ’ οἴχεται τὸ πάντων αἰτίαν εἶναι τὴν εἱμαρμένην. ὁ δὲ λέγων, ὅτι Χρύσιππος οὐκ αὐτοτελῆ τούτων αἰτίαν ἀλλὰ προκαταρκτικὴν μόνον ἐποιεῖτο τὴν εἱμαρμένην, ἐκεῖ πάλιν αὐτὸν ἀποδείξει μαχόμενον πρὸς αὑτόν, ὅπου τὸν μὲν Ὅμηρον ὑπερφυῶς ἐπαινεῖ περὶ τοῦ Διὸς λέγοντα (Ο 109)· ‘τῷ ἔχεθ’, ὅττι κεν ὔμμι κακὸν πέμπῃσιν ἑκάστῳ’ ἢ ἀγαθόν, καὶ τὸν Εὐριπίδην (Suppl. 734)

‘ὦ Ζεῦ, τί δῆτα τοὺς ταλαιπώρους βροτοὺς

φρονεῖν λέγοιμ’ ἄν; σοῦ γὰρ ἐξηρτήμεθα,

δρῶμέν τε τοιάδ’, ἃ σὺ τυγχάνεις φρονῶν·’

[c]αὐτὸς δὲ πολλὰ τούτοις ὁμολογούμενα γράφει, τέλος δέ φησι μηδὲν ἴσχεσθαι μηδὲ κινεῖσθαι μηδὲ τοὐλάχιστον ἄλλως ἢ κατὰ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς λόγον, ὃν τῇ εἱμαρμένῃ τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι. ἔτι τοίνυν τὸ μὲν προκαταρκτικὸν αἴτιον ἀσθενέστερόν ἐστι τοῦ αὐτοτελοῦς καὶ οὐκ ἐξικνεῖται κρατούμενον ὑπ’ ἄλλων ἐνισταμένων, τὴν δ’ εἱμαρμένην αἰτίαν ἀνίκητον καὶ ἀκώλυτον καὶ ἄτρεπτον ἀποφαίνων αὐτὸς Ἄτροπον καλεῖ καὶ Ἀδράστειαν καὶ Ἀνάγκην καὶ Πεπρωμένην ὡς πέρας ἅπασιν ἐπιτιθεῖσαν. πότερον οὖν τὰς συγκαταθέσεις μὴ λέγωμεν ἐφ’ ἡμῖν εἶναι μηδὲ τὰς ἀρετὰς [d] μηδὲ τὰς κακίας μηδὲ τὸ κατορθοῦν μηδὲ τὸ ἁμαρτάνειν, ἢ τὴν εἱμαρμένην λέγωμεν ἐλλείπουσαν εἶναι καὶ τὴν πεπρωμένην ἀπεράτωτον καὶ τὰς τοῦ Διὸς κινήσεις καὶ σχέσεις ἀσυντελέστους; τούτων γὰρ ἕπεται τὰ μὲν τῷ αὐτοτελῆ τὰ δὲ τῷ προκαταρκτικὴν μόνον αἰτίαν εἶναι τὴν εἱμαρμένην. αὐτοτελὴς μὲν γὰρ αἰτία πάντων οὖσα τὸ ἐφ’ ἡμῖν καὶ τὸ ἑκούσιον ἀναιρεῖ, προκαταρκτικὴ δὲ τὸ ἀκώλυτος εἶναι καὶ τελεσιουργὸς ἀπόλλυσιν. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἅπαξ ἢ δὶς ἀλλὰ πανταχοῦ μᾶλλον δ’ ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς Φυσικοῖς [e] γέγραφε ταῖς μὲν κατὰ μέρος φύσεσι καὶ κινήσεσιν ἐνστήματα πολλὰ γίνεσθαι καὶ κωλύματα, τῇ δὲ τῶν ὅλων μηδέν. καὶ πῶς εἰς τὰς κατὰ μέρος ἡ τῶν ὅλων διατείνουσα κίνησις, ἐμποδιζομένων καὶ κωλυομένων ἐκείνων, ἀνεμπόδιστος αὐτὴ καὶ ἀκώλυτός ἐστιν; οὐδὲ γὰρ ἡ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσις ἀνεμπόδιστος, εἰ μηδ’ ἡ τοῦ ποδὸς ἢ τῆς χειρός· οὐδ’ ἡ τῆς νεὼς κίνησις ἀκώλυτος ἂν εἴη, ἂν αἱ περὶ τὸ ἱστίον ἢ τὴν εἰρεσίαν ἐνέργειαι κωλύσεις τινὰς ἔχωσιν. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων, εἰ μὲν αἱ φαντασίαι μὴ γίνονται καθ’ εἱμαρμένην τῶν συγκαταθέσεων· εἰ δ’ ὅτι ποιεῖ φαντασίας ἀγωγοὺς ἐπὶ τὴν συγκατάθεσιν, καθ’ εἱμαρμένην αἱ συγκαταθέσεις γίνεσθαι λέγονται, πῶς οὐ μάχεται πρὸς [f] ἑαυτὴν πολλάκις ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις διαφόρους ποιοῦσα φαντασίας καὶ περισπώσας ἐπὶ τἀναντία τὴν διάνοιαν, ὅτε τοὺς προστιθεμένους τῇ ἑτέρᾳ καὶ μὴ ἐπέχοντας ἁμαρτάνειν λέγουσιν, ἂν μὲν ἀδήλοις εἴκωσι, προπίπτοντας, ἂν δὲ ψευδέσι, διαψευδομένους, ἂν δὲ κοινῶς ἀκαταλήπτοις, δοξάζοντας; καίτοι δεῖ, τριῶν ὄντων, ἢ μὴ πᾶσαν εἶναι φαντασίαν εἱμαρμένης ἔργον ἢ πᾶσαν παραδοχὴν φαντασίας καὶ συγκατάθεσιν ἀναμάρτητον ἢ μηδ’ αὐτὴν τὴν εἱμαρμένην [1057] [a] ἀνεπίληπτον· οὐκ οἶδα γὰρ ὅπως ἀνέγκλητός ἐστι τοιαύτας ποιοῦσα φαντασίας, αἷς τὸ μὴ μάχεσθαι μηδ’ ἀντιβαίνειν ἀλλ’ ἕπεσθαι καὶ εἴκειν ἐγκλητόν ἐστι. καὶ μὴν ἔν γε τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς Ἀκαδημαϊκοὺς ἀγῶσιν ὁ πλεῖστος λόγος αὐτῷ τε Χρυσίππῳ καὶ Ἀντιπάτρῳ περὶ τίνος γέγονε; περὶ τοῦ ‘μήτε πράττειν μήθ’ ὁρμᾶν ἀσυγκαταθέτως, ἀλλὰ πλάσματα λέγειν καὶ κενὰς ὑποθέσεις τοὺς ἀξιοῦντας οἰκείας φαντασίας γενομένης εὐθὺς ὁρμᾶν μὴ εἴξαντας μηδὲ συγκαταθεμένους.’ αὖθις δέ φησι Χρύσιππος καὶ τὸν θεὸν ψευδεῖς ἐμποιεῖν φαντασίας καὶ τὸν σοφόν, [b] οὐ συγκατατιθεμένων οὐδ’ εἰκόντων δεομένους ἡμῶν, ἀλλὰ πραττόντων μόνον καὶ ὁρμώντων ἐπὶ τὸ φαινόμενον· ἡμᾶς δὲ φαύλους ὄντας ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας συγκατατίθεσθαι ταῖς τοιαύταις φαντασίαις. ἡ δὲ τούτων τῶν λόγων ταραχὴ καὶ διαφορὰ πρὸς αὑτοὺς οὐ πάνυ δυσθεώρητός ἐστιν. ὁ γὰρ οὐ δεόμενος συγκατατιθεμένων ἀλλὰ πραττόντων μόνον, οἷς ἐνδίδωσι τὰς φαντασίας, εἴτε θεὸς εἴτε σοφός, οἶδεν ὅτι πρὸς τὸ πράττειν ἀρκοῦσιν αἱ φαντασίαι καὶ παρέλκουσιν αἱ συγκαταθέσεις· ὡς εἴ γε γινώσκων ὅτι πρακτικὴν ὁρμὴν οὐ παρίστησι φαντασία δίχα συγκαταθέσεως, ψευδεῖς ἐνεργάζεται καὶ πιθανὰς φαντασίας, ἑκὼν αἴτιός ἐστι [c] τοῦ προπίπτειν καὶ ἁμαρτάνειν ἀκαταλήπτοις συγκατατιθεμένους.

Stoicos absurdiora poetis dicere

ΟΤΙ ΠΑΡΑΔΟΞΟΤΕΡΑ ΟΙ ΣΤΩΙΚΟΙ ΤΩΝ ΠΟΙΗΤΩΝ ΛΕΓΟΥΣΙΝ

[1057] Ὁ Πινδάρου Καινεὺς εὔθυναν ὑπεῖχεν, ἀπιθάνως ἄρρηκτος [d] σιδήρῳ καὶ ἀπαθὴς τὸ σῶμα πλασσόμενος, εἶτα καταδὺς ἄτρωτος ὑπὸ γῆν ‘σχίσας ὀρθῷ ποδὶ γᾶν’ (fr. 167)· ὁ δὲ Στωικὸς Λαπίθης, ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀδαμαντίνης ὕλης ὑπ’ αὐτῶν τῆς ἀπαθείας κεχαλκευμένος, οὐκ ἄτρωτός ἐστιν οὐδ’ ἄνοσος οὐδ’ ἀναλγής, ἄφοβος δὲ μένει καὶ ἄλυπος καὶ ἀήττητος καὶ ἀβίαστος, τιτρωσκόμενος ἀλγῶν στρεβλούμενος, ἐν κατασκαφαῖς πατρίδος ἐν πάθεσιν οἰκείοις. καὶ ὁ μὲν Πινδάρου Καινεὺς βαλλόμενος οὐ τιτρώσκεται· ὁ δὲ τῶν Στωικῶν σοφὸς ἐγκλειόμενος οὐ κωλύεται καὶ κατακρημνιζόμενος [e] οὐκ ἀναγκάζεται καὶ στρεβλούμενος οὐ βασανίζεται καὶ πηρούμενος οὐ βλάπτεται καὶ πίπτων ἐν τῷ παλαίειν ἀήττητός ἐστι καὶ περιτειχιζόμενος ἀπολιόρκητος καὶ πωλούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν πολεμίων ἀνάλωτος, οὐθὲν τῶν πλοίων διαφέρων, οἷς ἐπιγέγραπται μὲν Εὔπλοια καὶ Πρόνοια ‹καὶ› Σῴζουσα καὶ Θεραπεία, χειμάζεται δὲ καὶ συντρίβεται καὶ ἀνατρέπεται.

Ὁ Εὐριπίδου Ἰόλαος ἐξ ἀδρανοῦς καὶ παρήλικος εὐχῇ τινι νέος καὶ ἰσχυρὸς ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην ἄφνω γέγονεν (Heracl. 851 sqq.)· ὁ δὲ τῶν Στωικῶν σοφὸς χθὲς μὲν ἦν αἴσχιστος ἅμα καὶ κάκιστος, τήμερον δ’ ἄφνω μεταβέβληκεν εἰς [f] ἀρετὴν καὶ γέγονεν ἐκ ῥυσοῦ καὶ ὠχροῦ καὶ κατ’ Αἰσχύλον (fr. 361) ‘ἐξ ὀσφυαλγοῦς καὶ ὀδυνοσπάδος λυγροῦ γέροντος’ εὐπρεπὴς θεοειδὴς καλλίμορφος.

[1058] [a] Καὶ τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως ἡ Ἀθηνᾶ τὴν ῥυσότητα καὶ φαλακρότητα καὶ ἀμορφίαν ἀφῄρηκεν, ὅπως φανείη καλός (ψ 156, π 172)· ὁ δὲ τούτων σοφός, οὐκ ἀπολιπόντος τὸ σῶμα τοῦ γήρως ἀλλὰ καὶ ‹κακὰ› προσεπιθέντος καὶ προσεπιχώσαντος, μένων κυρτός, ἂν οὕτω τύχῃ, νωδὸς ἑτερόφθαλμος οὔτ’ αἰσχρὸς οὔτε δύσμορφος οὔτε κακοπρόσωπός ἐστιν. ὁ γὰρ Στωικὸς ἔρως, ὥσπερ οἱ κάνθαροι λέγονται τὸ μὲν μύρον ἀπολείπειν τὰ δὲ δυσώδη διώκειν, οὕτως τοῖς αἰσχίστοις καὶ ἀμορφοτάτοις ὁμιλῶν, ὅταν εἰς εὐμορφίαν καὶ κάλλος ὑπὸ σοφίας μεταβάλωσιν, ἀποτρέπεται.

Ὁ παρὰ τοῖς Στωικοῖς κάκιστος, ἂν οὕτω τύχῃ, [b] πρωῒ δείλης ἄριστος, καὶ καταδαρθὼν ἔμπληκτος καὶ ἀμαθὴς καὶ ἄδικος καὶ ἀκόλαστος καὶ ναὶ μὰ Δία δοῦλος καὶ πένης καὶ ἄπορος αὐθημερὸν ἀνίσταται [καὶ] βασιλεὺς καὶ πλούσιος καὶ ὄλβιος γεγονώς, σώφρων τε καὶ δίκαιος καὶ βέβαιος καὶ ἀδόξαστος, οὐ γένεια φύσας οὐδ’ ἥβην ἐν σώματι νέῳ καὶ ἁπαλῷ, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἀσθενεῖ καὶ ἁπαλῇ ψυχῇ καὶ ἀνάνδρῳ καὶ ἀβεβαίῳ νοῦν τέλειον, ἄκραν φρόνησιν, ἰσόθεον διάθεσιν, ἀδόξαστον ἐπιστήμην καὶ ἀμετάπτωτον ἕξιν ἐσχηκώς, οὐδὲν ἐνδούσης πρότερον αὐτῷ τῆς μοχθηρίας, ἀλλ’ ἐξαίφνης ὀλίγου δέω εἰπεῖν ἥρως τις ἢ δαίμων ἢ θεὸς ἐκ θηρίων τοῦ κακίστου γενόμενος. ἐκ τῆς Στοᾶς [c] γὰρ λαβόντα τὴν ἀρετὴν ἔστιν εἰπεῖν ‘εὖξαι εἴ τι βούλει· πάντα σοι γενήσεται’· πλοῦτον φέρει, βασιλείαν ἔχει, τύχην δίδωσιν, εὐπότμους ποιεῖ καὶ ἀπροσδεεῖς καὶ αὐτάρκεις, μίαν οἴκοθεν δραχμὴν οὐκ ἔχοντας. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ποιητικὸς μῦθος τὸ κατὰ λόγον φυλάττων οὐδαμοῦ προλείπει τὸν Ἡρακλέα τῶν ἀναγκαίων δεόμενον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐκ πηγῆς ἐπιρρεῖ *** αὐτῷ καὶ τοῖς συνοῦσιν· ὁ δὲ τὴν Στωικὴν λαβὼν Ἀμάλθειαν πλούσιος μὲν γέγονεν, ἐρανίζεται δὲ τροφὴν παρ’ ἑτέρων, καὶ βασιλεὺς μέν ἐστι μισθοῦ δ’ ἀναλύει συλλογισμούς, καὶ πάντα μὲν ἔχει μόνος [d] ἐνοίκιον δὲ τελεῖ καὶ ἄλφιτ’ ὠνεῖται, πολλάκις δανειζόμενος ἢ μεταιτῶν παρὰ τῶν οὐδὲν ἐχόντων.

Καὶ ὁ μὲν Ἰθακησίων βασιλεὺς προσαιτεῖ λανθάνειν ὅς ἐστι βουλόμενος καὶ ποιῶν ἑαυτὸν ὡς μάλιστα ‘πτωχῷ λευγαλέῳ ἐναλίγκιον’ (π 273)· ὁ δ’ ἐκ τῆς Στοᾶς βοῶν μέγα καὶ κεκραγώς· ‘ἐγὼ μόνος εἰμὶ βασιλεύς, ἐγὼ μόνος εἰμὶ πλούσιος’ ὁρᾶται πολλάκις ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίαις θύραις λέγων

‘δὸς χλαῖναν Ἱππώνακτι· κάρτα γὰρ ῥιγῶ

[e] καὶ βαμβακύζω.’

De communibus notitiis adversus Stoicos

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΚΟΙΝΩΝ ΕΝΝΟΙΩΝ ΠΡΟΣ ΤΟΥΣ ΣΤΩΙΚΟΥΣ

[1058] ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Σοὶ μὲν εἰκός, ὦ Διαδούμενε, μὴ πάνυ [f] μέλειν, εἴ τινι δοκεῖτε παρὰ τὰς κοινὰς φιλοσοφεῖν ἐννοίας, ὁμολογοῦντί γε καὶ τῶν αἰσθήσεων περιφρονεῖν, ἀφ’ ὧν σχεδὸν αἱ πλεῖσται γεγόνασιν ἔννοιαι, τήν [γε] περὶ τὰ φαινόμενα πίστιν ἕδραν ἔχουσαι καὶ ἀσφάλειαν· ἐμὲ δὲ πολλῆς, [1059] [a] ὥς γ’ ἐμαυτῷ φαίνομαι, καὶ ἀτόπου μεστὸν ἥκοντα ταραχῆς εἴτε τισὶ λόγοις εἴτ’ ἐπῳδαῖς εἴτ’ ἄλλον ἐπίστασαι τρόπον παρηγορίας οὐκ ἂν φθάνοις ἰατρεύων· οὕτω σοι διασέσεισμαι καὶ γέγονα μετέωρος ὑπὸ Στωικῶν ἀνδρῶν τὰ μὲν ἄλλα βελτίστων καὶ νὴ Δία συνήθων καὶ φίλων, πικρῶς δ’ ἄγαν ἐγκειμένων τῇ Ἀκαδημείᾳ καὶ ἀπεχθῶς. οἵ γε πρὸς μικρὰ καὶ μετ’ αἰδοῦς τὰ παρ’ ἐμοῦ λεχθέντα σεμνῶς, οὐ γὰρ ψεύσομαι, καὶ πράως ἠντίασαν, τοὺς δὲ πρεσβυτέρους μετ’ ὀργῆς σοφιστὰς καὶ λυμεῶνας τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ καὶ δογμάτων ὁδῷ βαδιζόντων ἀνατροπέας καὶ πολλὰ τούτων ἀτοπώτερα λέγοντες καὶ [b] νομίζοντες τέλος ἐπὶ τὰς ἐννοίας ἐρρύησαν, ὡς δή τινα σύγχυσιν καὶ ἀναδασμὸν αὐταῖς ἐπάγοντας τοὺς ἐκ τῆς Ἀκαδημείας. εἶτά τις εἶπεν αὐτῶν ὡς οὐκ ἀπὸ τύχης ἀλλ’ ἐκ προνοίας θεῶν νομίζοι μετ’ Ἀρκεσίλαον καὶ πρὸ Καρνεάδου γεγονέναι Χρύσιππον, ὧν ὁ μὲν ὑπῆρξε τῆς εἰς τὴν συνήθειαν ὕβρεως καὶ παρανομίας ὁ δ’ ἤνθησε μάλιστα τῶν Ἀκαδημαϊκῶν. Χρύσιππος γοῦν ἐν μέσῳ γενόμενος ταῖς πρὸς Ἀρκεσίλαον ἀντιγραφαῖς καὶ τὴν Καρνεάδου δεινότητα ἐνέφραξε, πολλὰ μὲν τῇ αἰσθήσει καταλιπὼν ὥσπερ εἰς πολιορκίαν βοηθήματα, τὸν δὲ περὶ τὰς προλήψεις καὶ [c] τὰς ἐννοίας τάραχον ἀφελὼν παντάπασι [καὶ] διαρθρώσας ἑκάστην καὶ θέμενος εἰς τὸ οἰκεῖον· ὥστε καὶ τοὺς αὖθις ἐκκρούειν τὰ πράγματα καὶ παραβιάζεσθαι βουλομένους μηδὲν περαίνειν ἀλλ’ ἐλέγχεσθαι κακουργοῦντας καὶ σοφιζομένους. ὑπὸ τοιούτων ἐγὼ λόγων διακεκαυμένος ἕωθεν σβεστηρίων δέομαι, καθάπερ τινὰ φλεγμονὴν ἀφαιρούντων τὴν ἀπορίαν τῆς ψυχῆς.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜΕΝΟΣ. Ὅμοια πολλοῖς ἴσως πέπονθας. εἰ δ’ οἱ ποιηταί σε πείθουσι, λέγοντες ὡς ἐκ θεῶν προνοίας ἀνατροπὴν ἔσχεν ἡ παλαιὰ Σίπυλος τὸν Τάνταλον κολαζόντων, πείθου τοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς ἑταίροις, ὅτι καὶ [d] Χρύσιππον οὐκ ἀπὸ τύχης ἀλλ’ ἐκ προνοίας ἡ φύσις ἤνεγκεν, ἄνω τὰ κάτω καὶ τοὔμπαλιν ἀνατρέψαι δεομένη τὸν βίον· ὡς οὐ γέγονε πρὸς τοῦτο τῶν ὄντων οὐδεὶς εὐφυέστερος, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὁ Κάτων ἔλεγε περὶ Καίσαρος ‹πλὴν› ἐκείνου μηδένα νήφοντα μηδὲ φρονοῦντ’ ἐπὶ συγχύσει τῆς πολιτείας τοῖς δημοσίοις προσελθεῖν πράγμασιν, οὕτως ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ μετὰ πλείστης ἐπιμελείας καὶ δεινότητος οὗτος ὁ ἀνὴρ ἀνατρέπειν καὶ καταβάλλειν τὴν συνήθειαν, ὡς ἐνιαχοῦ καὶ αὐτοὶ μαρτυροῦσιν οἱ τὸν ἄνδρα σεμνύνοντες, ὅταν αὐτῷ περὶ τοῦ ψευδομένου μάχωνται. τὸ γάρ, ὦ ἄριστε, συμπεπλεγμένον τι δι’ ἀντικειμένων μὴ φάναι [e] ψεῦδος εὐπόρως εἶναι, λόγους δὲ πάλιν αὖ φάναι τινὰς ἀληθῆ τὰ λήμματα καὶ τὰς ἀγωγὰς ὑγιεῖς ἔχοντας εἶτα καὶ τὰ ἀντικείμενα τῶν συμπερασμάτων ἔχειν ἀληθῆ, ποίαν ἔννοιαν ἀποδείξεως ἢ τίνα πίστεως οὐκ ἀνατρέπει πρόληψιν; τὸν μέν γε πολύποδά φασι τὰς πλεκτάνας αὑτοῦ περιβιβρώσκειν ὥρᾳ χειμῶνος, ἡ δὲ Χρυσίππου διαλεκτικὴ τὰ κυριώτατα μέρη καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς αὑτῆς ἀναιροῦσα καὶ περικόπτουσα τίνα τῶν ἄλλων ἐννοιῶν ἀπολέλοιπεν ἀνύποπτον; οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε δήπου [καὶ] τὰ ἐποικοδομούμενα [μὴ] βέβαια κεῖσθαι καὶ πάγια, τῶν πρώτων μὴ μενόντων ἀπορίας [f] δὲ καὶ ταραχὰς ἐχόντων τηλικαύτας. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ πηλὸν ἢ κονιορτὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ σώματος ἔχοντες τὸν ἁπτόμενον αὐτῶν καὶ προσαναχρωννύμενον οὐ κινεῖν ἀλλὰ προσβάλλειν τὸ τραχῦνον δοκοῦσιν, οὕτως ἐκεῖνοι τοὺς Ἀκαδημαϊκοὺς αἰτιῶνται καὶ νομίζουσι τὰς αἰτίας παρέχειν ὧν ἀναπεπλησμένους ἀποδεικνύουσιν αὐτούς· ἐπεὶ τάς γε κοινὰς [1060] [a] ἐννοίας τίνες μᾶλλον διαστρέφουσιν; εἰ δὲ βούλει, τὸ κατηγορεῖν ἐκείνων ἀφέντες, ὑπὲρ ὧν ἐγκαλοῦσιν ἡμῖν ἀπολογησώμεθα.

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Ἐγώ μοι δοκῶ τήμερον, ὦ Διαδούμενε, ποικίλος τις ἄνθρωπος γεγονέναι καὶ παντοδαπός· ἄρτι μὲν γὰρ ἀπολογίας δεόμενος προσῄειν ταπεινὸς καὶ τεθορυβημένος, νῦν δὲ μεταβάλλομαι πρὸς τὴν κατηγορίαν καὶ βούλομαι ἀπολαῦσαι τῆς ἀμύνης ἐλεγχομένους εἰς ταὐτὸν τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπιδών, τὸ παρὰ τὰς ἐννοίας καὶ τὰς προλήψεις τὰς κοινὰς φιλοσοφεῖν, ἀφ’ ὧν μάλιστα τὴν αἵρεσιν ὥσπερ ἐπιβαθρῶν ἀνα‹βαίνειν› δοκοῦσι καὶ μόνην ὁμολογεῖν τῇ φύσει λέγουσιν.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Ἆρ’ οὖν ἐπὶ τὰ κοινὰ πρῶτα καὶ περιβόητα [b] βαδιστέον, ἃ δὴ παράδοξα καὶ αὐτοὶ μετ’ εὐκολίας δεχόμενοι τὴν ἀτοπίαν ἐπονομάζουσι, τοὺς μόνους βασιλεῖς καὶ μόνους πλουσίους καὶ καλοὺς αὐτῶν καὶ πολίτας καὶ δικαστὰς μόνους; ἢ ταυτὶ μὲν εἰς τὴν τῶν ἑώλων καὶ ψυχρῶν ἀγορὰν βούλει παρῶμεν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα πραγματικοῖς καὶ μετὰ σπουδῆς λεγομένοις ποιησώμεθα τοῦ λόγου τὸν ἐξετασμόν;

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Ἐμοὶ γοῦν ἥδιον οὕτως· τῶν γὰρ πρὸς ἐκεῖνα γενομένων ἐλέγχων τίς οὐκ ἤδη διάπλεώς ἐστιν;

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Ἤδη τοίνυν αὐτὸ τοῦτο σκόπει πρῶτον εἰ κατὰ τὰς κοινάς ἐστιν ἐννοίας, ὁμολογεῖν τῇ φύσει τοὺς τὰ κατὰ φύσιν ἀδιάφορα νομίζοντας, καὶ μήθ’ ὑγίειαν [c] μήτ’ εὐεξίαν μήτε κάλλος μήτ’ ἰσχὺν ἡγουμένους αἱρετὰ μηδ’ ὠφέλιμα μηδὲ λυσιτελῆ μηδὲ συμπληρωτικὰ τῆς κατὰ φύσιν τελειότητος· μήτε τἀναντία φευκτὰ καὶ βλαβερά, πηρώσεις ἀλγηδόνας αἴσχη νόσους· ὧν αὐτοὶ λέγουσι πρὸς ἃ μὲν ἀλλοτριοῦν πρὸς ἃ δ’ οἰκειοῦν ἡμᾶς τὴν φύσιν, εὖ μάλα καὶ τούτου παρὰ τὴν κοινὴν ἔννοιαν ὄντος, οἰκειοῦν πρὸς τὰ μὴ συμφέροντα μηδ’ ἀγαθὰ τὴν φύσιν καὶ ἀλλοτριοῦν πρὸς τὰ μὴ κακὰ μηδὲ βλάπτοντα, καὶ ὃ μεῖζόν ἐστιν, οἰκειοῦν ἐπὶ τοσοῦτο καὶ ἀλλοτριοῦν, ὥστε τῶν μὲν μὴ τυγχάνοντας τοῖς δὲ περιπίπτοντας [d] εὐλόγως ἐξάγειν τοῦ ζῆν ἑαυτοὺς καὶ τὸν βίον ἀπολέγεσθαι.

Νομίζω δ’ ἐγὼ κἀκεῖνο παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν λέγεσθαι, τὸ τὴν μὲν φύσιν αὐτὴν ἀδιάφορον εἶναι τὸ δὲ τῇ φύσει ὁμολογεῖν ἀγαθὸν μέγιστον. οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸ νόμῳ κατακολουθεῖν οὐδὲ τὸ λόγῳ πείθεσθαι σπουδαῖον ‹καὶ ἀστεῖον›, εἰ μὴ σπουδαῖος εἴη καὶ ἀστεῖος ὁ νόμος καὶ ὁ λόγος. καὶ τοῦτο μὲν ἔλαττον· εἰ δέ, ὡς Χρύσιππος ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ τοῦ Προτρέπεσθαι γέγραφεν, ἐν τῷ κατ’ ἀρετὴν βιοῦν μόνον ἐστὶ τὸ εὐδαιμόνως, ‘τῶν ἄλλων’ φησίν ‘οὐδὲν ὄντων πρὸς ἡμᾶς οὐδ’ εἰς τοῦτο συνεργούντων’, οὐ μόνον οὔκ ἐστιν ἀδιάφορος ἡ φύσις, ἀλλ’ ἀνόητος καὶ [e] ἀπόπληκτος, οἰκειοῦσ’ ἡμᾶς πρὸς τὰ μηδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς· ἀνόητοι δὲ καὶ ἡμεῖς εὐδαιμονίαν ἡγούμενοι τὸ τῇ φύσει ὁμολογεῖν ἀγούσῃ πρὸς τὰ μηδὲν συνεργοῦντα πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν. καίτοι τί μᾶλλόν ἐστι κατὰ τὴν κοινὴν ἔννοιαν ἢ καθάπερ τὰ αἱρετὰ πρὸς τὸ ὠφελίμως, οὕτω τὰ κατὰ φύσιν πρὸς τὸ ζῆν κατὰ φύσιν; οἱ δ’ οὐχ οὕτως λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ζῆν κατὰ φύσιν τέλος εἶναι τιθέμενοι τὰ κατὰ φύσιν ἀδιάφορ’ εἶναι νομίζουσιν.

Οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τούτου παρὰ τὴν κοινὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστι τὸ ἔννουν καὶ φρόνιμον ἄνδρα πρὸς τὰ ἴσα τῶν ἀγαθῶν μὴ ἐπίσης ἔχειν, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν ἐν μηδενὶ λόγῳ τίθεσθαι [f] τῶν δ’ ἕνεκα πᾶν ὁτιοῦν ἂν ὑπομεῖναι καὶ παθεῖν, μηδὲν ἀλλήλων μικρότητι καὶ μεγέθει διαφερόντων· ταὐτὸ δὲ λέγουσιν αὐτοὶ [του] τῷ τὸ σωφρόνως δυσθανατῶσαν ἀποτρίψασθαι πρεσβῦτιν· ὁμοίως γὰρ ἀμφότεροι κατορθοῦσιν. ἀλλὰ δι’ ἐκεῖνα μὲν ὡς λαμπρὰ καὶ μεγάλα κἂν [1061] [a] ἀποθάνοιεν, ἐπὶ τούτοις δὲ σεμνύνειν ἑαυτὸν αἰσχύνη καὶ γέλως. λέγει δὲ καὶ Χρύσιππος ἐν τῷ περὶ τοῦ Διὸς συγγράμματι καὶ τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Θεῶν ψυχρὸν εἶναι καὶ ἄτοπον καὶ ἀλλότριον τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν ἀπ’ ἀρετῆς συμβαινόντων ἐπαινεῖν, ὅτι δῆγμα μυίας ἀνδρείως ὑπέμεινε καὶ δυσθανατώσης γραὸς ἀπέσχετο σωφρόνως. ἆρ’ οὖν παρὰ τὴν κοινὴν φιλοσοφοῦσιν ἔννοιαν, ἃς αἰσχύνονται πράξεις ἐπαινεῖν, μηδὲν τούτων κάλλιον ὁμολογοῦντες; ποῦ γὰρ αἱρετὸν ἢ πῶς ἀποδεκτόν, ὃ μήτ’ ἐπαινεῖν μήτε θαυμάζειν ἄξιόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἐπαινοῦντας ἢ θαυμάζοντας ἀτόπους καὶ ψυχροὺς νομίζουσιν;

[b] Ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον, οἶμαι, φανεῖταί σοι παρὰ τὴν κοινὴν ἔννοιαν, εἰ τῶν μεγίστων ἀγαθῶν ὁ φρόνιμος μήτ’ ἀπόντων μήτ’ εἰ πάρεστιν αὐτῷ φροντίζοι, ἀλλ’ οἷός ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς ἀδιαφόροις καὶ τῇ περὶ ταῦτα πραγματείᾳ καὶ οἰκονομίᾳ, τοιοῦτος ἂν κἀν τούτοις εἴη. πάντες γὰρ δήπουθεν ‘εὐρυεδοῦς ὅσοι καρπὸν αἰνύμεθα χθονός’ (Simon. fr. 4, 16), οὗ μὲν καὶ παρόντος ὄνησίς ἐστι καὶ μὴ παρόντος ὥσπερ ἔνδεια καὶ ὄρεξις, αἱρετὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν καὶ ὠφέλιμον νοοῦμεν, ἐφ’ ᾧ δ’ οὐδὲν ἄν τις πραγματεύσαιτο μὴ παιδιᾶς ἕνεκεν μηδὲ ῥᾳστώνης, τοῦτ’ ἀδιάφορον. ἄλλῳ γὰρ οὐδενὶ [c] τοῦ φιλοπόνου τὸν κενόσπουδον ἀφορίζομεν ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις ‹ἴσον› ὄντα πολλάκις ἢ τῷ τὸν μὲν εἰς ἀνωφελῆ πονεῖν καὶ ἀδιάφορα τὸν δ’ ἕνεκά του τῶν συμφερόντων καὶ λυσιτελῶν. ἀλλ’ οὗτοί γε τοὐναντίον· ὁ γὰρ σοφὸς αὐτοῖς καὶ φρόνιμος ἐν πολλαῖς καταλήψεσι καὶ μνήμαις καταλήψεων γεγονὼς ὀλίγας πρὸς αὑτὸν ἡγεῖται, τῶν τ’ ἄλλων οὐ πεφροντικὼς οὔτ’ ἔλαττον ἔχειν οὔτε πλέον οἴεται μνημονεύων ὅτι πέρυσι κατάληψιν ἔλαβε πταρνυμένου Δίωνος ἢ σφαιρίζοντος Θέωνος· καίτοι πᾶσα κατάληψις ἐν τῷ σοφῷ καὶ μνήμη τὸ ἀσφαλὲς ἔχουσα καὶ βέβαιον εὐθύς ἐστιν ἐπιστήμη καὶ ἀγαθὸν μέγα καὶ μέγιστον. ἆρ’ [d] οὖν ὁμοίως ὑγιείας ἐπιλειπούσης, αἰσθητηρίου καμόντος, οὐσίας ἀπολλυμένης ἄφροντίς ἐστι καὶ πρὸς αὑτὸν οὐδὲν ἡγούμενος τούτων ὁ σοφός; ἢ νοσῶν μὲν ἰατροῖς τελεῖ μισθοὺς χρημάτων δ’ ἕνεκα πρὸς Λεύκωνα πλεῖ τὸν ἐν Βοσπόρῳ δυνάστην καὶ πρὸς Ἰδάνθυρσον ἀποδημεῖ τὸν Σκύθην, ὥς φησι Χρύσιππος, τῶν δ’ αἰσθήσεων ἔστιν ἃς ἀποβαλὼν οὐδὲ ζῆν ὑπομένει; πῶς οὖν οὐχ ὁμολογοῦσι παρὰ τὰς ἐννοίας φιλοσοφεῖν, ἐπὶ τοῖς ἀδιαφόροις τοσαῦτα πραγματευόμενοι καὶ σπουδάζοντες, ἀγαθῶν δὲ μεγάλων καὶ παρόντων καὶ μὴ παρόντων ἀδιαφόρως ἔχοντες;

[e] Ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖνο παρὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας ἐστίν, ἄνθρωπον ὄντα μὴ χαίρειν ἐκ τῶν μεγίστων κακῶν ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις ἀγαθοῖς γενόμενον. τοῦτο δὲ πέπονθεν ὁ τούτων σοφός· ἐκ γὰρ τῆς ἄκρας κακίας μεταβαλὼν εἰς τὴν ἄκραν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὸν ἀθλιώτατον βίον διαφυγὼν ἅμα καὶ κτησάμενος τὸν μακαριώτατον οὐδὲν ἐπίδηλον εἰς χαρὰν ἔσχεν, οὐδ’ ἐπῆρεν αὐτὸν οὐδ’ ἐκίνησεν ἡ τοσαύτη μεταβολή, κακοδαιμονίας ἀπαλλαγέντα καὶ μοχθηρίας ἁπάσης, εἰς δ’ ἀσφαλῆ τινα καὶ βεβαίαν παντέλειαν ἀγαθῶν ἐξικόμενον. παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστιν ἀγαθῶν μὲν εἶναι μέγιστον τὸ ἀμετάπτωτον ἐν ταῖς κρίσεσι καὶ βέβαιον, μὴ δεῖσθαι [f] δὲ τούτου τὸν ἐπ’ ἄκρον προκόπτοντα μηδὲ φροντίζειν παραγενομένου, πολλάκις δὲ μηδὲ τὸν δάκτυλον προτεῖναι ταύτης γ’ ἕνεκα τῆς ἀσφαλείας καὶ βεβαιότητος, ἣν τέλειον ἀγαθὸν καὶ μέγα νομίζουσιν. οὐ μόνον οὖν ταῦτα λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνδρες, ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖνα πρὸς τούτοις, ὅτι ‘ἀγαθὸν [1062] [a] ὁ χρόνος οὐκ αὔξει προσγινόμενος, ἀλλὰ κἂν ἀκαρές τις ὥρας γένηται φρόνιμος, οὐδὲν πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν ἀπολειφθήσεται τοῦ τὸν αἰῶνα χρωμένου τῇ ἀρετῇ καὶ μακαρίως ἐν αὐτῇ καταβιοῦντος.’ ταῦτα δ’ οὕτως νεανικῶς ἀπισχυρισάμενοι πάλιν οὐδὲν εἶναί φασιν ἀρετῆς ὄφελος ὀλιγοχρονίου· ‘τί γάρ, ἂν μέλλοντι ναυαγεῖν εὐθὺς ἢ κατακρημνίζεσθαι φρόνησις ἐπιγένηται; τί δ’ ἂν ὁ Λίχας ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ἀποσφενδονώμενος εἰς ἀρετὴν ἐκ κακίας μεταβάλῃ;’ ταῦτ’ οὖν οὐ μόνον παρὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας ἐστὶ φιλοσοφούντων ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ἰδίας κυκώντων, εἰ τὸ [b] βραχὺν χρόνον κτήσασθαι τὴν ἀρετὴν οὐθὲν ἀπολείπεσθαι τῆς ἄκρας εὐδαιμονίας ἅμα καὶ μηδενὸς ὅλως ἄξιον νομίζουσι.

Τοῦτο δ’ οὐκ ἂν μάλιστα θαυμάσαις αὐτῶν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τῆς ἀρετῆς καὶ τῆς εὐδαιμονίας παραγινομένης πολλάκις οὐδ’ αἰσθάνεσθαι τὸν κτησάμενον οἴονται, διαλεληθέναι δ’ αὑτὸν ὅτι μικρῷ πρόσθεν ἀθλιώτατος ὢν καὶ ἀφρονέστατος νῦν ὁμοῦ φρόνιμος καὶ μακάριος γέγονεν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἔχοντά τινα τὴν φρόνησιν τοῦτο μόνον μὴ φρονεῖν ὅτι φρονεῖ μηδὲ γινώσκειν ὅτι τὸ ἀγνοεῖν διαπέφευγεν εὐτράπελόν ἐστιν· ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅλως εἰπεῖν τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀρρεπὲς ποιοῦσι καὶ ἀμαυρόν, εἰ μηδ’ αἴσθησιν αὑτοῦ [c] ποιεῖ παραγενόμενον. φύσει γὰρ ἀνεπαίσθητον οὐκ ἔστι κατ’ αὐτούς, ἀλλὰ καὶ λέγει διαρρήδην Χρύσιππος ἐν τοῖς περὶ Τέλους αἰσθητὸν εἶναι τὸ ἀγαθόν, ὡς δ’ οἴεται, καὶ ἀποδείκνυσι. λείπεται τοίνυν ἀσθενείᾳ καὶ μικρότητι διαφεύγειν αὐτὸ τὴν αἴσθησιν, ὁπόταν παρὸν ἀγνοῆται καὶ διαλανθάνῃ τοὺς ἔχοντας. ἔτι τοίνυν ἄτοπον μέν ἐστι τὴν τῶν ἀτρέμα καὶ μέσως λευκῶν αἰσθανομένην ὄψιν ἐκφεύγειν τὰ ἐπ’ ἄκρον λευκὰ καὶ τὴν τὰ μαλακῶς καὶ ἀνειμένως θερμὰ καταλαμβάνουσαν ἁφὴν ἀναισθητεῖν τῶν σφόδρα θερμῶν, ἀτοπώτερον δέ, εἴ τις τὰ κοινῶς κατὰ φύσιν, οἷόν ἐστιν ὑγίεια καὶ εὐεξία, καταλαμβάνων τὴν [d] ἀρετὴν ἀγνοεῖ παροῦσαν, ἣν μάλιστα καὶ ἄκρως κατὰ φύσιν εἶναι τίθενται. πῶς γὰρ οὐ παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστιν ὑγιείας καὶ νόσου διαφορὰν καταλαμβάνειν, ‹φρονήσεως δὲ μὴ καταλαμβάνειν› καὶ ἀφροσύνης, ἀλλὰ τὴν μὲν ἀπηλλαγμένην οἴεσθαι παρεῖναι, τὴν δὲ κεκτημένον ἀγνοεῖν ὅτι πάρεστιν; ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐκ τῆς ἄκρας προκοπῆς μεταβάλλουσιν εἰς εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ ἀρετήν, δυοῖν ἀνάγκη θάτερον, ἢ τὴν προκοπὴν κακίαν μὴ εἶναι μηδὲ κακοδαιμονίαν, ἢ τὴν ἀρετὴν τῆς κακίας μὴ πολλῷ παραλλάττειν μηδὲ τῆς κακοδαιμονίας τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν, ἀλλὰ μικρὰν καὶ ἀνεπαίσθητον [e] εἶναι τὴν πρὸς τὰ κακὰ τῶν ἀγαθῶν διαφοράν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἑαυτοὺς διελάνθανον ἀντ’ ἐκείνων ταῦτ’ ἔχοντες.

Ὅταν μὲν οὖν μηδενὸς ἐκστῆναι τῶν μαχομένων ἀλλὰ πάνθ’ ὁμοῦ λέγειν καὶ τιθέναι θέλωσι, τὸ τοὺς προκόπτοντας ἀνοήτους καὶ κακοὺς εἶναι, τὸ φρονίμους καὶ ἀγαθοὺς γενομένους διαλανθάνειν ἑαυτούς, τὸ μεγάλην διαφορὰν τῆς φρονήσεως πρὸς τὴν ἀφροσύνην ὑπάρχειν, ἦ πού σοι δοκοῦσι θαυμασίως ἐν τοῖς δόγμασι τὴν ὁμολογίαν βεβαιοῦν; ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς πράγμασιν, ὅταν πάντας ἐπίσης κακοὺς καὶ ἀδίκους καὶ ἀπίστους καὶ ἄφρονας τοὺς μὴ σοφοὺς ἀποφαίνοντες εἶτα πάλιν τοὺς μὲν [f] αὐτῶν ἐκτρέπωνται καὶ βδελύττωνται, τοὺς δ’ ἀπαντῶντες μηδὲ προσαγορεύωσι, τοῖς δὲ χρήματα πιστεύωσιν, ἀρχὰς ἐγχειρίζωσιν, ἐκδιδῶσι θυγατέρας; ταῦτα γὰρ εἰ μὲν παίζοντες λέγουσι, καθείσθωσαν τὰς ὀφρῦς· εἰ δ’ ἀπὸ σπουδῆς καὶ φιλοσοφοῦντες, παρὰ τὰς κοινάς ἐστιν ἐννοίας ψέγειν [1063] [a] μὲν ὁμοίως καὶ κακίζειν πάντας ἀνθρώπους, χρῆσθαι δὲ τοῖς μὲν ὡς μετρίοις τοῖς δ’ ὡς κακίστοις, καὶ Χρύσιππον μὲν ὑπερεκπεπλῆχθαι καταγελᾶν δ’ Ἀλεξίνου, μηδὲν δὲ μᾶλλον οἴεσθαι μηδ’ ἧττον ἀλλήλων ἀφραίνειν τοὺς ἄνδρας. ‘ναί’ φασίν, ‘ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὁ πῆχυν ἀπέχων ἐν θαλάττῃ τῆς ἐπιφανείας οὐδὲν ἧττον πνίγεται τοῦ καταδεδυκότος ὀργυιὰς πεντακοσίας, οὕτως οὐδ’ οἱ πελάζοντες ἀρετῇ τῶν μακρὰν ὄντων ἧττόν εἰσιν ἐν κακίᾳ· καὶ καθάπερ οἱ τυφλοὶ τυφλοί εἰσι, κἂν ὀλίγον ὕστερον ἀναβλέπειν μέλλωσιν, οὕτως οἱ προκόπτοντες, ἄχρις οὗ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀναλάβωσιν, [b] ἀνόητοι καὶ μοχθηροὶ διαμένουσιν.’ ὅτι μὲν οὖν οὔτε τυφλοῖς ἐοίκασιν οἱ προκόπτοντες ἀλλ’ ἧττον ὀξυδορκοῦσιν, οὔτε πνιγομένοις ἀλλὰ νηχομένοις, καὶ ταῦτα πλησίον λιμένος, αὐτοὶ διὰ τῶν πραγμάτων μαρτυροῦσιν. οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἐχρῶντο συμβούλοις καὶ στρατηγοῖς καὶ νομοθέταις ὥσπερ τυφλοῖς χειραγωγοῖς, οὐδ’ ἂν ἐζήλουν ἔργα καὶ πράξεις καὶ λόγους καὶ βίους ἐνίων, εἰ πάντας ὡσαύτως πνιγομένους ὑπὸ τῆς ἀφροσύνης καὶ μοχθηρίας ἑώρων. ἀφεὶς δὲ τοῦτο θαύμασον ἐκείνῃ τοὺς ἄνδρας, εἰ μηδὲ τοῖς ἑαυτῶν διδάσκονται παραδείγμασι προέσθαι ‹τοὺς› διαλεληθότας [c] ἐκείνους σοφοὺς καὶ μὴ συνιέντας μηδ’ αἰσθανομένους ὅτι πνιγόμενοι πέπαυνται καὶ φῶς ὁρῶσι καὶ τῆς κακίας ἐπάνω γεγονότες ἀναπεπνεύκασι.

Παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστιν ἄνθρωπον, ᾧ πάντα τἀγαθὰ πάρεστι καὶ μηδὲν ἐνδεῖ πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ τὸ μακάριον, τούτῳ καθήκειν ἐξάγειν ἑαυτόν· ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον, ᾧ μηδὲν ἀγαθὸν ἔστι μηδ’ ἔσται, τὰ δεινὰ δὲ πάντα καὶ τὰ δυσχερῆ καὶ κακὰ πάρεστι καὶ παρέσται διὰ τέλους, τούτῳ μὴ καθήκειν ἀπολέγεσθαι τὸν βίον, ἂν μή τι νὴ Δία τῶν ἀδιαφόρων αὐτῷ προσγένηται. ταῦτα τοίνυν ἐν τῇ Στοᾷ νομοθετεῖται, καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν ἐξάγουσι τῶν σοφῶν ὡς [d] ἄμεινον εὐδαιμονοῦντας πεπαῦσθαι, πολλοὺς δὲ κατέχουσι τῶν φαύλων ὡς καθήκοντος αὐτοῖς ζῆν κακοδαιμονοῦντας. καίτοι ὁ μὲν σοφὸς ὄλβιος μακάριος πανευδαίμων ἀσφαλὴς ἀκίνδυνος, ὁ δὲ φαῦλος καὶ ἀνόητος οἷος εἰπεῖν· ‘γέμω κακῶν δὴ καὶ οὐκ ἔσθ’ ὅπου τεθῇ·’ ἀλλὰ καὶ τούτοις μονὴν οἴονται καθήκουσαν εἶναι κἀκείνοις ἐξαγωγήν. ‘εἰκότως δέ’ φησὶ Χρύσιππος· ‘οὐ γὰρ ἀγαθοῖς καὶ κακοῖς δεῖ παραμετρεῖσθαι τὸν βίον ἀλλὰ τοῖς κατὰ φύσιν καὶ παρὰ φύσιν.’ οὕτως ἄνθρωποι σῴζουσι τὴν συνήθειαν καὶ πρὸς τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας φιλοσοφοῦσι. τί λέγεις; οὐ δεῖ σκοπεῖν

‘ὅττι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόν ‹τ’› ἀγαθόν τε τέτυκται’

τὸν περὶ βίου καὶ θανάτου σκοπούμενον, οὐδ’ ὥσπερ ἐπὶ [e] ζυγοῦ τὰ πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ κακοδαιμονίαν ἐξετάζειν †ἐπίσημα μᾶλλον ὠφελ... ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῶν μήτ’ ὠφελούντων μήτε βλαπτόντων τοὺς ‹πότερον› βιωτέον ἢ μὴ ποιεῖσθαι λογισμούς; οὐ μέλλει πρὸς τὰς τοιαύτας ὑποθέσεις καὶ ἀρχὰς καθηκόντως αἱρεῖσθαί τε τὸν βίον, ᾧ τῶν φευκτῶν οὐδὲν ἄπεστι, καὶ φεύγειν, ᾧ πάντα τὰ αἱρετὰ πάρεστι; καίτοι παράλογον μέν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, καὶ τὸ φεύγειν τὸν βίον ἐν μηδενὶ κακῷ γενομένους, παραλογώτερον δέ, εἰ μὴ τυγχάνων τις τοῦ ἀδιαφόρου τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἀφίησιν· ὅπερ [f] οὗτοι ποιοῦσι, τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν προϊέμενοι καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν παροῦσαν ἀνθ’ ὑγιείας καὶ ὁλοκληρίας, ὧν οὐ τυγχάνουσιν. ‘ἔνθ’ αὖτε Γλαύκῳ Κρονίδης φρένας ἐξέλετο Ζεύς’ (Ζ 234), ὅτι χρύσεια χαλκείων, ἑκατόμβοια ἐννεαβοίων ἔμελλε διαμείψεσθαι. καίτοι τὰ μὲν χάλκεα τῶν ὅπλων οὐχ ἧττον ἢ τὰ χρυσᾶ παρεῖχε χρείαν μαχομένοις, εὐπρέπεια δὲ σώματος καὶ ὑγίεια τοῖς Στωικοῖς οὔτε χρείαν οὔτ’ ὄνησίν [1064] [a] τινα φέρει πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν· ἀλλ’ ὅμως οὗτοι τῆς φρονήσεως ἀντικαταλλάττονται τὴν ὑγίειαν. καὶ γὰρ Ἡρακλείτῳ φασὶ καὶ Φερεκύδῃ καθήκειν ἄν, εἴπερ ἠδύναντο, τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀφεῖναι καὶ τὴν φρόνησιν, ὥστε παύσασθαι φθειριῶντας καὶ ὑδρωπιῶντας· καὶ τῆς Κίρκης ἐγχεούσης δύο φάρμακα, τὸ μὲν ποιοῦν ἄφρονας ἐκ φρονίμων τὸ δ’ ο... τὸν Ὀδυσσέα πιεῖν τὸ τῆς ἀφροσύνης μᾶλλον ἢ μεταβαλεῖν εἰς θηρίου μορφὴν τὸ εἶδος, ἔχοντα τὴν φρόνησιν - καὶ μετὰ τῆς φρονήσεως δηλονότι τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν - , καὶ [b] ταῦτά φασιν αὐτὴν ὑφηγεῖσθαι καὶ παρακελεύεσθαι τὴν φρόνησιν· ‘ἄφες με καὶ καταφρόνησον ἀπολλυμένης ἐμοῦ καὶ διαφθειρομένης εἰς ὄνου πρόσωπον.’ ἀλλ’ ὄνου γε, φήσει τις, ἡ τοιαῦτα παραγγέλλουσα φρόνησίς ἐστιν, εἰ τὸ μὲν φρονεῖν καὶ εὐδαιμονεῖν ἀγαθόν ἐστι τὸ δ’ ‹ὄνου› περιφέρειν πρόσωπον ἀδιάφορον. ἔθνος εἶναί φασιν Αἰθιόπων, ὅπου κύων βασιλεύει καὶ βασιλεὺς προσαγορεύεται καὶ γέρα καὶ τιμὰς ἔχει βασιλέως, ἄνδρες δὲ πράσσουσιν ἅπερ ἡγεμόσι πόλεων προσήκει καὶ ἄρχουσιν. ἆρ’ οὖν παρὰ τοῖς Στωικοῖς ὁμοίως τὸ μὲν ὄνομα καὶ τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ πάρεστι τῇ ἀρετῇ καὶ μόνην ταύτην αἱρετὸν καὶ [c] ὠφέλιμον καὶ συμφέρον καλοῦσι, πράττουσι δὲ πάντα καὶ φιλοσοφοῦσι καὶ ζῶσι καὶ ἀποθνήσκουσιν ὥσπερ ἀπὸ προστάγματος τῶν ἀδιαφόρων; καίτοι τὸν κύνα μὲν ἐκεῖνον οὐδεὶς Αἰθιόπων ἀποκτίννυσιν, ἀλλὰ σεμνῶς κάθηται προσκυνούμενος, οὗτοι δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀπολλύουσιν ἑαυτῶν καὶ διαφθείρουσι, τῆς ὑγιείας περιεχόμενοι καὶ τῆς ἀπονίας.

Ἔοικε δ’ ἡμᾶς ἀπαλλάττειν τοῦ περὶ τούτων ἔτι πλείονα λέγειν ὁ κολοφών, αὐτὸς ὃν ὁ Χρύσιππος τοῖς δόγμασιν ἐπιτέθεικεν. ὄντων γὰρ ἐν τῇ φύσει τῶν μὲν ἀγαθῶν τῶν δὲ κακῶν τῶν δὲ [καὶ] μεταξὺ καὶ καλουμένων ἀδιαφόρων, οὐδεὶς ἔστιν ἀνθρώπων ὃς οὐ βούλεται τἀγαθὸν [d] ἔχειν μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ ἀδιάφορον ‹καὶ τὸ ἀδιάφορον› ἢ τὸ κακόν. ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς δήπου ποιούμεθα μάρτυρας, αἰτούμενοι ταῖς εὐχαῖς παρ’ αὐτῶν μάλιστα μὲν κτῆσιν ἀγαθῶν, εἰ δὲ μή, κακῶν ἀποφυγήν, τὸ [δὲ] μήτ’ ἀγαθὸν μήτε κακὸν ἀντὶ μὲν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ μὴ θέλοντες ἔχειν ἀντὶ δὲ τοῦ κακοῦ θέλοντες. ὁ δὲ τὴν φύσιν ἐναλλάττων καὶ τὴν τάξιν ἀναστρέφων ἐκ τῆς μέσης χώρας τὸ μέσον εἰς τὴν ἐσχάτην μετατίθησι, τὸ δ’ ἔσχατον εἰς τὴν μέσην ἐπανάγει καὶ μετοικίζει, καθάπερ οἱ τύραννοι τοῖς κακοῖς προεδρίαν διδοῦσι, [καὶ] νομοθετῶν πρῶτον διώκειν τὸ [e] ἀγαθὸν δεύτερον δὲ τὸ κακόν, ἔσχατον δὲ καὶ χείριστον ἡγεῖσθαι τὸ μήτ’ ἀγαθὸν μήτε κακόν· ὥσπερ εἴ τις μετὰ τὰ οὐράνια τὰ ἐν Ἅιδου τιθείη, τὴν δὲ γῆν καὶ τὰ περὶ γῆν εἰς τὸν τάρταρον ἀπώσειε

‘τῆλε μάλ’, ἧχι βάθιστον ὑπὸ χθονὸς ἔστι βέρεθρον’ (Θ 14).

εἰπὼν οὖν ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Φύσεως ὅτι ‘λυσιτελεῖ ζῆν ἄφρονα ἢ ‹μὴ› βιοῦν, κἂν μηδέποτε μέλλῃ φρονήσειν’ ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν· ‘τοιαῦτα γὰρ τὰ ἀγαθά ἐστι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ὥστε τρόπον τινὰ καὶ τὰ κακὰ τῶν [ἄλλων] ἀνὰ μέσον προτερεῖν· ἔστι δ’ οὐ ταῦτα προτεροῦντα, ἀλλ’ ὁ λόγος μεθ’ οὗ βιοῦν ἐπιβάλλει μᾶλλον, εἰ καὶ ἄφρονες ἐσόμεθα’ - δῆλον οὖν, εἰ καὶ ἄδικοι καὶ παράνομοι καὶ [f] θεοῖς ἐχθροί, καὶ εἰ κακοδαίμονες· οὐθὲν γὰρ ἄπεστι τούτων τοῖς ἀφρόνως βιοῦσιν. ἐπιβάλλει τοίνυν κακοδαιμονεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ μὴ κακοδαιμονεῖν καὶ βλάπτεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ μὴ βλάπτεσθαι καὶ ἀδικεῖν ἢ μὴ ἀδικεῖν καὶ παρανομεῖν ἢ μὴ παρανομεῖν· τουτέστιν ἐπιβάλλει τὰ μὴ ἐπιβάλλοντα ποιεῖν καὶ καθήκει ζῆν καὶ παρὰ τὸ καθῆκον. ‘ναί· χεῖρον γάρ ἐστι τὸ ἄλογον καὶ τὸ ἀναίσθητον εἶναι τοῦ ἀφραίνειν.’ εἶτα ‹τί› παθόντες οὐχ ὁμολογοῦσιν εἶναι κακόν, ὃ τοῦ κακοῦ χεῖρόν ἐστι; διὰ ‹τί› φευκτὸν ἀποφαίνουσι μόνον [1065] [a] τὴν ἀφροσύνην, εἰ οὐχ ἧττον ἀλλὰ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπιβάλλον ἐστὶ φεύγειν τὴν μὴ δεχομένην τὸ ἀφραίνειν διάθεσιν;

Ἀλλὰ τί ἄν τις ἐπὶ τούτοις δυσχεραίνοι, μεμνημένος ὧν ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ περὶ Φύσεως γέγραφεν, ἀποφαίνων οὐκ ἀχρήστως τὴν κακίαν πρὸς τὰ ὅλα γεγενημένην; ἄξιον δ’ ἀναλαβεῖν τὸ δόγμα ταῖς ἐκείνου λέξεσιν, ἵνα καὶ μάθῃς πως, οἱ τοῦ Ξενοκράτους καὶ Σπευσίππου κατηγοροῦντες ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ τὴν ὑγίειαν ἀδιάφορον ἡγεῖσθαι μηδὲ τὸν πλοῦτον ἀνωφελὲς ἐν τίνι τόπῳ τὴν κακίαν αὐτοὶ τίθενται καὶ τίνας λόγους περὶ αὐτῆς διεξίασιν· ‘ἡ δὲ κακία πρὸς τὰ λοιπὰ συμπτώματα ἔχει ὅρον· γίνεται γὰρ [b] ‹καὶ› αὐτή πως κατὰ τὸν τῆς φύσεως λόγον καί, ἵν’ οὕτως εἴπω, οὐκ ἀχρήστως γίνεται πρὸς τὰ ὅλα· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἂν τἀγαθὸν ἦν.’ οὐκοῦν ἐν θεοῖς ἀγαθὸν οὐδὲν ἔστιν, ἐπεὶ μηδὲ κακόν· οὐδέ, ὅταν ὁ Ζεὺς εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἀναλύσας τὴν ὕλην ἅπασαν εἷς γένηται καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἀνέλῃ διαφοράς, οὐθὲν ἔστιν ἀγαθὸν τηνικαῦτα, μηθενός γε κακοῦ παρόντος· ἀλλὰ χοροῦ μὲν ἔστιν ἐμμέλεια μηδενὸς ἀπᾴδοντος ἐν αὐτῷ, καὶ σώματος ὑγίεια μηδενὸς μορίου νοσοῦντος, ἀρετὴ δ’ ἄνευ κακίας οὐκ ἔχει γένεσιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐνίαις τῶν ἰατρικῶν δυνάμεων ἰὸς ὄφεως καὶ χολὴ ὑαίνης ἀναγκαῖόν [c] ἐστιν, οὕτως ἐπιτηδειότης ἑτέρα τῇ Μελήτου μοχθηρίᾳ πρὸς τὴν Σωκράτους δικαιοσύνην καὶ τῇ Κλέωνος ἀναγωγίᾳ πρὸς τὴν Περικλέους καλοκἀγαθίαν. πῶς δ’ ἂν εὗρεν ὁ Ζεὺς τὸν Ἡρακλέα φῦσαι καὶ τὸν Λυκοῦργον, εἰ μὴ καὶ Σαρδανάπαλον ἡμῖν ἔφυσε καὶ Φάλαριν; ὥρα λέγειν αὐτοῖς ὅτι καὶ φθίσις γέγονεν ἀνθρώπῳ πρὸς εὐεξίαν καὶ ποδάγρα πρὸς ὠκύτητα· καὶ οὐκ ἂν ἦν Ἀχιλλεὺς κομήτης, εἰ μὴ φαλακρὸς Θερσίτης. τί γὰρ διαφέρουσι τῶν ταῦτα ληρούντων καὶ φλυαρούντων οἱ λέγοντες μὴ ἀχρήστως γεγονέναι πρὸς τὴν ἐγκράτειαν τὴν ἀκολασίαν καὶ πρὸς τὴν [d] δικαιοσύνην τὴν ἀδικίαν; ὅπως εὐχώμεθα τοῖς θεοῖς ἀεὶ μοχθηρίαν εἶναι (Hes. O. D. 78) ‘ψεύδεά θ’ αἱμυλίους τε λόγους καὶ ἐπίκλοπον ἦθος’, εἰ τούτων ἀναιρεθέντων οἴχεται φροῦδος ἡ ἀρετὴ καὶ συναπόλωλεν.

Ἢ βούλει τὸ ἥδιστον αὐτοῦ τῆς γλαφυρίας καὶ πιθανότητος ἱστορῆσαι; ‘ὥσπερ γὰρ αἱ κωμῳδίαι’ φησίν ‘ἐπιγράμματα γελοῖα φέρουσιν, ἃ καθ’ αὑτὰ μέν ἐστι φαῦλα τῷ δ’ ὅλῳ ποιήματι χάριν τινὰ προστίθησιν, οὕτω ψέξειας ἂν αὐτὴν ἐφ’ ἑαυτῆς τὴν κακίαν, τοῖς δ’ ὅλοις οὐκ ἄχρηστός ἐστι.’ πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τὴν κακίαν γεγονέναι κατὰ τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ πρόνοιαν, ὥσπερ τὸ φαῦλον ἐπίγραμμα γέγονε κατὰ τὴν τοῦ ποιητοῦ βούλησιν, πᾶσαν ἐπίνοιαν ἀτοπίας [e] ὑπερβάλλει. τί γὰρ μᾶλλον ἀγαθῶν ἢ κακῶν δοτῆρες ἔσονται; πῶς δ’ ἔτι θεοῖς ἐχθρὸν ἡ κακία καὶ θεομισές; ἢ τί πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα δυσφημήματα λέγειν ἕξομεν, ὡς (Aesch. Niobe fr. 156)

‘θεὸς μὲν αἰτίαν φύει βροτοῖς,

ὅταν κακῶσαι δῶμα παμπήδην θέλῃ·’

καί (Α 8)

‘τίς τ’ ἂρ σφῶε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι;’

ἔπειτα δὲ τὸ μὲν φαῦλον ἐπίγραμμα τὴν κωμῳδίαν κοσμεῖ καὶ συνεργεῖ πρὸς τὸ τέλος αὐτῆς, ἐφιεμένης τοῦ γελοίου ἢ κεχαρισμένου τοῖς θεαταῖς· ὁ δὲ πατρῷος καὶ ὕπατος καὶ θεμίστιος Ζεὺς καὶ ‘ἀριστοτέχνας’ κατὰ Πίνδαρον, οὐ δρᾶμα δήπου μέγα καὶ ποικίλον καὶ πολυμερὲς δημιουργῶν [f] τὸν κόσμον, ἀλλὰ θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων ἄστυ κοινόν, συννομησομένων μετὰ δίκης καὶ ἀρετῆς ὁμολογουμένως καὶ μακαρίως, τί πρὸς τὸ κάλλιστον τοῦτο καὶ σεμνότατον τέλος ἐδεῖτο λῃστῶν καὶ ἀνδροφόνων καὶ πατροκτόνων καὶ τυράννων· οὐ γὰρ ἡδὺ τῷ θείῳ καὶ κομψὸν ἡ κακία γέγονεν [1066] [a] ἐπεισόδιον, οὐδὲ δι’ εὐτραπελίαν ἡ ἀδικία καὶ γέλωτα καὶ βωμολοχίαν προστέτριπται τοῖς πράγμασιν, ὑφ’ ὧν οὐδ’ ὄναρ ἰδεῖν ἔστι τῆς ὑμνουμένης ὁμολογίας. ἔτι τὸ μὲν φαῦλον ἐπίγραμμα τοῦ ποιήματος πολλοστημόριόν ἐστι καὶ μικρὸν ἐπέχει παντάπασιν ἐν τῇ κωμῳδίᾳ χωρίον, καὶ οὔτε πλεονάζει τὰ τοιαῦτα οὔτε τῶν εὖ πεποιῆσθαι δοκούντων ἀπόλλυσι καὶ λυμαίνεται τὴν χάριν, τῆς δὲ κακίας ἀναπέπλησται πάντα πράγματα, καὶ πᾶς ὁ βίος εὐθὺς ἐκ παρόδου καὶ ἀρχῆς ἄχρι κορωνίδος ἀσχημονῶν καὶ ἐκπίπτων καὶ ταραττόμενος καὶ μηδὲν ἔχων μέρος καθαρὸν μηδ’ ἀνεπίληπτον, ὡς οὗτοι λέγουσιν, αἴσχιστόν [b] ἐστι δραμάτων ἁπάντων καὶ ἀτερπέστατον.

Ὅθεν ἡδέως ἂν πυθοίμην, πρὸς τί γέγονεν εὔχρηστος ἡ κακία τοῖς ὅλοις. οὐ γὰρ δὴ πρὸς τὰ οὐράνια καὶ θεῖα φήσει. γελοῖον γὰρ εἰ, μὴ γενομένης ἐν ἀνθρώποις μηδ’ οὔσης κακίας καὶ ἀπληστίας καὶ ψευδολογίας μηδ’ ἀλλήλους ἡμῶν ἀγόντων καὶ φερόντων καὶ συκοφαντούντων καὶ φονευόντων, οὐκ ἂν ἐβάδιζεν ὁ ἥλιος τὴν τεταγμένην πορείαν οὐδ’ ἂν ὥραις ἐχρῆτο καὶ περιόδοις καιρῶν ὁ κόσμος οὐδ’ ἡ γῆ τὴν μέσην χώραν ἔχουσα τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὰς πνευμάτων ἐνεδίδου καὶ ὄμβρων. ἀπολείπεται τοίνυν [c] πρὸς ἡμᾶς καὶ τὰ ἡμέτερα τὴν κακίαν εὐχρήστως γεγονέναι· καὶ τοῦτ’ ἴσως οἱ ἄνδρες λέγουσιν. ἆρ’ οὖν ὑγιαίνομεν μᾶλλον κακοὶ ὄντες, ἤ τι δὴ μᾶλλον εὐποροῦμεν τῶν ἀναγκαίων; πρὸς δὲ κάλλος ἡμῖν ἢ πρὸς ἰσχὺν εὔχρηστος ἡ κακία γέγονεν; οὔ φασιν. †ἡ δέ, ποῦ γῆς ἐστιν· ὄνομα μόνον καὶ δόκημα νυκτερωπὸν ἐννύχων σοφιστῶν· οὐχ ὥσπερ ἡ κακία πᾶσιν ὑπερέκκειται καὶ πᾶσιν ἐναργὴς οὐδενὸς ὡς ἀχρήστου μεταλαβεῖν, ἥκιστα δ’ ἀρετῆς, ὦ θεοί, δι’ ἣν γεγόναμεν; †εἶτ’ οὐ δεινόν, εἰ γεωργῷ μὲν καὶ κυβερνήτῃ καὶ ἡνιόχῳ τὰ εὔχρηστα φορὰ καὶ συνεργὰ πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖόν ἐστι τέλος, τὸ δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ πρὸς ἀρετὴν [d] γεγονὸς ἀπολώλεκε τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ διέφθαρκεν;

Ἀλλ’ ἴσως ἤδη καιρὸς ἐπ’ ἄλλο τρέπεσθαι, τοῦτο δ’ ἀφεῖναι.

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Οὐδαμῶς, ὦ φίλος, ἐμὴν χάριν· ἐπιθυμῶ γὰρ πυθέσθαι, τίνα δὴ τρόπον οἱ ἄνδρες τὰ κακὰ τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ τὴν κακίαν τῆς ἀρετῆς προεισάγουσιν.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Ἀμέλει καὶ ἄξιον, ὦ ἑταῖρε. πολὺς μὲν ὁ ψελλισμὸς αὐτῶν, τέλος δὲ τὴν μὲν φρόνησιν ἐπιστήμην ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν οὖσαν ‹ἀναιρεθέντων τῶν κακῶν› καὶ παντάπασιν ἀναιρεῖσθαι λέγουσιν· ὡς δ’ ἀληθῶν ὄντων ἀδύνατον μὴ καὶ ψευδῆ τιν’ εἶναι, παραπλησίως οἴονται προσήκειν ἀγαθῶν ὑπαρχόντων καὶ κακὰ ὑπάρχειν.

[e] ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν οὐ φαύλως λέλεκται, τὸ δ’ ἕτερον οἶμαι μηδ’ ἐμὲ λανθάνειν. ὁρῶ γὰρ διαφοράν, ᾗ τὸ μὲν οὐκ ἀληθὲς εὐθὺς ψεῦδός ἐστιν, οὐ μὴν εὐθὺς κακὸν τὸ μὴ ἀγαθόν. ὅθεν ἀληθῶν μὲν καὶ ψευδῶν οὐδέν ἐστι μέσον, ἀγαθῶν δὲ καὶ κακῶν τὸ ἀδιάφορον. καὶ οὐκ ἀνάγκη ταῦτα συνυπάρχειν ἐκείνοις· ἐξήρκει γὰρ τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν τὸ ἀγαθόν, τοῦ κακοῦ μὴ δεομένην ἀλλὰ τὸ μήτ’ ἀγαθὸν μήτε κακὸν ἔχουσαν. πρὸς δὲ τὸν πρότερον λόγον εἴ τι λέγεται παρ’ ὑμῶν, ἀκουστέον.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Ἀλλὰ πολλὰ μὲν λέγεται, τὰ δὲ νῦν τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις χρηστέον. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν εὔηθες οἴεσθαι [f] φρονήσεως ἕνεκα γένεσιν κακῶν ὑποστῆναι καὶ ἀγαθῶν. ὄντων γὰρ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν ἐπιγίνεται φρόνησις, ὥσπερ ἰατρικὴ νοσερῶν ὑποκειμένων καὶ ὑγιεινῶν. οὐ γὰρ τὸ ἀγαθὸν ὑφίσταται καὶ τὸ κακόν, ἵνα γένηται φρόνησις, ἀλλ’ ᾗ τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ τὸ κακὸν ὄντα καὶ ὑφεστῶτα κρίνομεν, ὠνομάσθη φρόνησις· ὥσπερ ὄψις ἡ λευκῶν καὶ μελάνων αἴσθησις οὐ γενομένων ὅπως ἔχοιμεν ὄψιν ἡμεῖς, [1067] [a] ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἡμῶν πρὸς τὸ τὰ τοιαῦτα κρίνειν ὄψεως δεηθέντων. δεύτερον, ὅταν ἐκπυρώσωσι τὸν κόσμον οὗτοι, κακὸν μὲν οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν ἀπολείπεται, τὸ δ’ ὅλον φρόνιμόν ἐστι τηνικαῦτα καὶ σοφόν· ἔστι τοίνυν φρόνησις οὐκ ὄντος κακοῦ, καὶ οὐκ ἀνάγκη κακὸν ὑπάρχειν, εἰ φρόνησις ἔνι. εἰ δὲ δὴ πάντως δεῖ τὴν φρόνησιν ἀγαθῶν εἶναι καὶ κακῶν ἐπιστήμην, τί δεινόν, εἰ τῶν κακῶν ἀναιρεθέντων οὐκ ἔσται φρόνησις ἑτέραν τ’ ἀντ’ ἐκείνης ἀρετὴν ἕξομεν, οὐκ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν ἀλλ’ ἀγαθῶν μόνων ἐπιστήμην οὖσαν; ὥσπερ εἰ τῶν χρωμάτων τὸ μέλαν ἐξαπόλοιτο παντάπασιν, [b] εἶτά τις βιάζοιτο καὶ τὴν ὄψιν ἀπολωλέναι, λευκῶν γὰρ οὐκ εἶναι καὶ μελάνων αἴσθησιν, τί κωλύει φάναι πρὸς αὐτόν, ὅτι δεινὸν οὐδέν, εἰ τὴν μὲν ὑπὸ σοῦ λεγομένην ὄψιν οὐκ ἔχομεν, ἄλλη δὲ πάρεστιν ἀντ’ ἐκείνης αἴσθησις ἡμῖν καὶ δύναμις, ᾗ λευκῶν ἀντιλαμβανόμεθα καὶ μὴ λευκῶν χρωμάτων; ἐγὼ μὲν γὰρ οὔτε γεῦσιν οἶμαι φροῦδον ἂν γενέσθαι πικρῶν ἐπιλιπόντων, οὔθ’ ἁφὴν ἀλγηδόνος ἀναιρεθείσης, οὔτε φρόνησιν κακοῦ μὴ παρόντος, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνας τε μένειν αἰσθήσεις γλυκέων καὶ ἡδέων καὶ τῶν μὴ τοιούτων ἀντιλαμβανομένας, ταύτην τε τὴν φρόνησιν ἀγαθῶν καὶ μὴ ἀγαθῶν ἐπιστήμην οὖσαν.

[c] οἷς δὲ μὴ δοκεῖ, τοὔνομα λαβόντες ἀπολιπέτωσαν ἡμῖν τὸ πρᾶγμα. χωρὶς δὲ τούτων, τί ἐκώλυε τοῦ μὲν κακοῦ νόησιν εἶναι τοῦ δ’ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ ὕπαρξιν; ὥσπερ οἶμαι καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς ὑγιείας μὲν ἔστι παρουσία, πυρετοῦ δὲ καὶ πλευρίτιδος νόησις. ἐπεὶ καὶ ἡμεῖς, κακῶν μὲν ἀφθόνως πᾶσι παρόντων ἀγαθοῦ δὲ μηδενός, ὡς οὗτοι λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ γε νοεῖν οὐκ ἀπολελείμμεθα τὴν φρόνησιν τὸ ἀγαθὸν τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν. ὃ καὶ θαυμαστόν ἐστιν, εἰ τῆς μὲν ἀρετῆς μὴ παρούσης εἰσὶν οἱ διδάσκοντες ὁποῖόν ἐστι καὶ κατάληψιν ἐμποιοῦντες, τῆς κακίας δὲ μὴ γενομένης [d] οὐ δυνατὸν ἦν κτήσασθαι νόησιν. ὅρα γὰρ οἷα πείθουσιν ἡμᾶς οἱ κατὰ τὰς ἐννοίας φιλοσοφοῦντες, ὅτι τῇ μὲν ἀφροσύνῃ καταλαμβάνομεν τὴν φρόνησιν, ἡ δὲ φρόνησις ἄνευ τῆς ἀφροσύνης οὔθ’ αὑτὴν ‹οὔτε τὴν› ἀφροσύνην καταλαμβάνειν πέφυκεν.

Εἰ δὲ δὴ πάντως ἐδεῖτο κακοῦ γενέσεως ἡ φύσις, ἓν ἦν δήπου παράδειγμα κακίας ἱκανὸν ἢ δεύτερον· εἰ δὲ βούλει, δέκα φαύλους ἢ χιλίους ἢ μυρίους ἔδει γενέσθαι, καὶ μὴ κακίας μὲν φορὰν τοσαύτην τὸ πλῆθος -

‘οὐ ψάμμος, ἢ κόνις, ἢ πτερὰ ποικιλοθρόων οἰωνῶν

τόσσον ἂν χεύαιτ’ ἀριθμόν’ - ,

[e] ἀρετῆς δὲ μηδ’ ἐνύπνιον. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν Σπάρτῃ τῶν φιδιτίων ἐπιμελούμενοι δύο ἢ τρεῖς ἐπίτηδες εἵλωτας ἐμπεφορημένους ἀκράτου καὶ μεθύοντας ‹εἰσάγοντες› εἰς κοινὸν ἐπιδείκνυνται τοῖς νέοις ὁποῖόν ἐστι τὸ μεθύειν, ὅπως φυλάττωνται καὶ σωφρονῶσιν, ἐν δὲ τῷ βίῳ ‹μάτην› τὰ πολλὰ ταῦτα τῆς κακίας γέγονε παραδείγματα. νήφων γὰρ οὐδὲ εἷς ἐστι πρὸς ἀρετήν, ἀλλὰ ῥεμβόμεθα πάντες, ἀσχημονοῦντες καὶ κακοδαιμονοῦντες· οὕτως ὁ λόγος ἡμᾶς μεθύσκει καὶ τοσαύτης καταπίμπλησι ταραχῆς καὶ παραφροσύνης, οὐδὲν ἀπολείποντας τῶν κυνῶν, ἅς φησιν Αἴσωπος (fab. 138 Hr.) δερμάτων τινῶν ἐμπλεόντων ἐφιεμένας [f] ὁρμῆσαι μὲν ἐκπίνειν τὴν θάλασσαν, ῥαγῆναι δὲ πρότερον ἢ τῶν δερμάτων λαβέσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς ὁ λόγος ἐλπίζοντας εὐδαιμονήσειν δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τῇ ἀρετῇ προσοίσεσθαι, πρὶν ἐπ’ ἐκείνην ἀφικέσθαι, διέφθαρκε καὶ ἀπολώλεκε, πολλῆς ἀκράτου καὶ πικρᾶς κακίας προεμφορηθέντας· εἴ γε δὴ καὶ τοῖς ἐπ’ ἄκρον προκόπτουσιν, ὡς οὗτοι λέγουσιν, οὔτε κουφισμὸς οὔτ’ ἄνεσις ἔστιν οὔτ’ ἀναπνοὴ τῆς ἀβελτερίας καὶ κακοδαιμονίας.

[1068] [a] Ὁ τοίνυν λέγων οὐκ ἀχρήστως γεγονέναι τὴν κακίαν ὅρα πάλιν οἷον αὐτὴν ἀποδείκνυσι χρῆμα καὶ κτῆμα τοῖς ἔχουσι, γράφων ἐν τοῖς περὶ Κατορθωμάτων ὡς ‘ὁ φαῦλος οὐδενὸς δεῖται, οὐδενὸς ἔχει χρείαν· οὐθέν ἐστιν αὐτῷ χρήσιμον, οὐθὲν οἰκεῖον, οὐθὲν ἁρμόττον’. πῶς οὖν εὔχρηστος ἡ κακία, μεθ’ ἧς οὐδ’ ὑγίεια χρήσιμον οὐδὲ πλῆθος χρημάτων οὐδὲ προκοπή; οὐ δεῖται δέ τις ὧν τὰ μὲν προηγμένα καὶ ληπτὰ καὶ νὴ Δί’ εὔχρηστα, τὰ δὲ κατὰ φύσιν, ὡς αὐτοὶ καλοῦσιν; εἶτα τούτων οὐδεὶς ἔχει [b] χρείαν, ἂν μὴ γένηται σοφός; οὐδὲ τοῦ σοφὸς οὖν γενέσθαι χρείαν ἔχει ὁ φαῦλος. οὐδὲ διψῶσιν οὐδὲ πεινῶσιν ἄνθρωποι, πρὶν σοφοὶ γενέσθαι; διψῶντες οὖν ὕδατος οὐκ ἔχουσι χρείαν οὐδ’ ἄρτου πεινῶντες.

‘ἔστε ξένοισι μειλίχοις ἐοικότες

στέγης τε μοῦνον καὶ πυρὸς κεχρημένοις·’

οὗτος οὐκ εἶχε χρείαν ὑποδοχῆς; οὐδὲ χλαίνης ἐκεῖνος ὁ λέγων

‘δὸς χλαῖναν Ἱππώνακτι· κάρτα γὰρ ῥιγῶ;’

ἀλλὰ βούλει παράδοξον εἰπεῖν τι καὶ περιττὸν καὶ ἴδιον; λέγε τὸν σοφὸν μηδενὸς ἔχειν χρείαν μηδὲ δεῖσθαί τινος· ἐκεῖνος ὄλβιος, ἐκεῖνος ἀπροσδεής, ἐκεῖνος αὐτάρκης μακάριος [c] τέλειος. νυνὶ δὲ τίς ὁ ἴλιγγος οὗτος τὸν μὲν ἀνενδεᾶ δεῖσθαι ὧν ἔχει ἀγαθῶν, τὸν δὲ φαῦλον ἐνδεᾶ μὲν εἶναι πολλῶν δεῖσθαι δὲ μηδενός; τουτὶ γὰρ λέγει Χρύσιππος, ὡς οὐ δέονται μὲν ἐνδέονται δ’ οἱ φαῦλοι, πεττῶν δίκην δεῦρο κἀκεῖ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας μετατιθείς. πάντες γὰρ ἄνθρωποι τὸ δεῖσθαι πρότερον εἶναι τοῦ ἐνδεῖσθαι νομίζουσιν, ἡγούμενοι τὸν οὐχ ἑτοίμων οὐδ’ εὐπορίστων δεόμενον ἐνδεῖσθαι. κεράτων γοῦν καὶ πτερῶν οὐδεὶς ἐνδεὴς ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν, ὅτι μηδὲ δεῖται τούτων· ἀλλ’ ὅπλων ἐνδεεῖς λέγομεν καὶ χρημάτων καὶ ἱματίων, ὅταν ἐν χρείᾳ γενόμενοι μὴ τυγχάνωσι μηδ’ ἔχωσιν. οἱ δ’ οὕτως ἐπιθυμοῦσιν [d] ἀεί τι παρὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας φαίνεσθαι λέγοντες, ὥστε πολλάκις ἐξίστασθαι καὶ τῶν ἰδίων ἐπιθυμίᾳ καινολογίας, ὥσπερ ἐνταῦθα.

Σκόπει δὲ μικρὸν ἀνωτέρω ἀναγαγὼν ἑαυτόν. ἕν τι τῶν παρὰ τὰς ἐννοίας λεγομένων ἐστὶ τό ‘μηδένα φαῦλον ὠφελεῖσθαι’. καίτοι παιδευόμενοί γε πολλοὶ προκόπτουσι καὶ δουλεύοντες ἐλευθεροῦνται καὶ πολιορκούμενοι σῴζονται καὶ π[λ]ηρούμενοι χειραγωγοῦνται καὶ θεραπεύονται νοσοῦντες· ‘ἀλλ’ οὐκ ὠφελοῦνται τούτων τυγχάνοντες οὐδ’ εὖ πάσχουσιν οὐδ’ εὐεργέτας ἔχουσιν οὐδ’ εὐεργετῶν ἀμελοῦσιν.’ οὐ τοίνυν οὐδ’ ἀχαριστοῦσιν οἱ [e] φαῦλοι· καὶ μὴν οὐδ’ οἱ νοῦν ἔχοντες. ἀνύπαρκτον οὖν ἐστι τὸ ἀχάριστον· οἱ μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἀποστεροῦσι χάριν λαμβάνοντες, οἱ δὲ λαμβάνειν χάριν οὐ πεφύκασιν. ὅρα δὴ τί πρὸς ταῦτα λέγουσιν· ὅτι ‘ἡ χάρις εἰς τὰ μέσα διατείνει, καὶ τὸ μὲν ὠφελεῖν καὶ ὠφελεῖσθαι σοφῶν ἐστι, χάριτος δὲ καὶ φαῦλοι τυγχάνουσιν.’ εἶθ’ οἷς χάριτος μέτεστι, τούτοις οὐ μέτεστι χρείας; ὅπου δὲ διατείνει χάρις, ἐκεῖ χρήσιμον οὐθέν ἐστιν οὐδ’ οἰκεῖον; ἄλλο δέ τι ποιεῖ τὴν ὑπουργίαν χάριν ἢ τὸ πρός τι χρήσιμον ὑπάρξαι τῷ δεομένῳ τὸν παρασχόντα;

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἄφες. ἡ δὲ πολυτίμητος [f] ὠφέλεια τίς ἐστιν, ἣν ὡς μέγα τι τοῖς σοφοῖς ἐξαίρετον φυλάσσοντες οὐδ’ ὄνομα λείπουσιν αὐτῆς τοῖς ‹μὴ› σοφοῖς;

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Ἂν εἷς σοφὸς ὁπουδήποτε προτείνῃ τὸν δάκτυλον φρονίμως, οἱ κατὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην σοφοὶ πάντες ὠφελοῦνται. τοῦτο τῆς φιλίας ἔργον αὐτῶν, εἰς τοῦτο τοῖς κοινοῖς ὠφελήμασι τῶν σοφῶν αἱ ἀρεταὶ τελευτῶσιν. [1069] [a] ἐλήρει δ’ Ἀριστοτέλης, ἐλήρει δὲ Ξενοκράτης (fr. 94), ὠφελεῖσθαι μὲν ἀνθρώπους ὑπὸ θεῶν ὠφελεῖσθαι δ’ ὑπὸ γονέων ὠφελεῖσθαι δ’ ὑπὸ καθηγητῶν ἀποφαινόμενοι, τὴν δὲ θαυμαστὴν ἀγνοοῦντες ὠφέλειαν, ἣν οἱ σοφοὶ κινουμένων κατ’ ἀρετὴν ἀλλήλων ὠφελοῦνται, κἂν μὴ συνῶσι μηδὲ γινώσκοντες τυγχάνωσι.

Καὶ μὴν πάντες ἄνθρωποι τὰς ἐκλογὰς καὶ τὰς τηρήσεις καὶ τὰς οἰκονομίας, ὅταν χρησίμων ὦσι καὶ ὠφελίμων, τότε χρησίμους καὶ ὠφελίμους ὑπολαμβάνουσι, καὶ κλεῖδας [b] ὠνεῖται καὶ ἀποθήκας φυλάττει χρηματικὸς ἀνήρ ‘πλούτου διοίγων θάλαμον ἥδιστον χερί’ (Eur. Bell. fr. 285, 8), τὸ δ’ ἐκλέγεσθαι τὰ πρὸς μηδὲν ὠφέλιμα καὶ τηρεῖν ἐπιμελῶς καὶ πολυπόνως οὐ σεμνὸν οὐδὲ καλὸν ‹ἀλλ’ ἀπειρόκαλον› καὶ καταγέλαστόν ἐστιν. ὁ οὖν Ὀδυσσεύς, εἰ τὸν δεσμὸν ἐκεῖνον ἐκμαθὼν παρὰ τῆς Κίρκης κατεσημαίνετο δι’ αὐτοῦ μὴ τὰ παρ’ Ἀλκινόου δῶρα, τρίποδας καὶ λέβητας καὶ εἵματα καὶ χρυσὸν ἀλλὰ συρφετόν τινα καὶ λίθους καὶ ... συναγαγὼν τὴν περὶ ταῦτα πραγματείαν καὶ κτῆσιν αὐτῶν καὶ τήρησιν εὐδαιμονικὸν ἔργον ἡγεῖτο καὶ μακάριον, τίς ἂν ἐζήλωσε τὴν ἀνόητον ταύτην πρόνοιαν καὶ κενόσπουδον ἐπιμέλειαν; [c] ἀλλὰ μὴν τοῦτο τῆς Στωικῆς ὁμολογίας τὸ καλόν ἐστι καὶ σεμνὸν καὶ μακάριον, ἕτερον δ’ οὐθὲν ἀλλ’ ἐκλογὴ καὶ τήρησις ἀνωφελῶν πραγμάτων καὶ ἀδιαφόρων. τοιαῦτα γὰρ τὰ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ τὰ ἐκτὸς ἔτι μᾶλλον, εἴ γε κρασπέδοις καὶ ἀμίσι χρυσαῖς καὶ νὴ Δία ληκύθοις, ὅταν τύχωσι, παραβάλλουσι τὸν μέγιστον πλοῦτον· εἶθ’ ὥσπερ οἱ θεῶν τινων ἢ δαιμόνων ἱερὰ δόξαντες ὑπερηφάνως καθυβρίσαι καὶ λοιδορῆσαι μετανοήσαντες εὐθὺς ὑποπίπτουσι καὶ κάθηνται ταπεινοὶ κατευλογοῦντες καὶ μεγαλύνοντες τὸ θεῖον, οὕτως ἐκεῖνοι νεμέσει τινὶ τῆς μεγαλαυχίας [d] ταύτης καὶ κενολογίας περιπεσόντες αὖθις ἐν τούτοις ἐξετάζονται τοῖς ἀδιαφόροις καὶ μηδὲν πρὸς αὐτούς, μέγα βοῶντες ὡς ἕν ἐστιν ἀγαθὸν καὶ καλὸν καὶ σεμνόν, ἡ τούτων ἐκλογὴ καὶ περὶ ταῦτα οἰκονομία, καὶ τούτων μὴ τυγχάνοντας οὐκ ἄξιόν ἐστι βιοῦν ἀλλ’ ἀποσφάττειν ἑαυτοὺς ἢ ἀποκαρτερεῖν, πολλὰ τῇ ἀρετῇ χαίρειν φράσαντας. τὸν τοίνυν Θέογνιν αὐτοὶ παντελῶς ἀγεννῆ καὶ μικρὸν ἡγοῦνται λέγοντα (175)

‘χρὴ πενίην φεύγοντα καὶ ἐς μεγακήτεα πόντον

ῥιπτεῖν καὶ πετρῶν, Κύρνε, κατ’ ἠλιβάτων’,

[e] ὡς ἀποδειλιῶντα πρὸς τὴν πενίαν ἀδιάφορον οὖσαν· ἀλλ’ αὐτοί γε ταὐτὰ πεζῷ λόγῳ παρακελεύονται καὶ λέγουσιν, ὅτι χρὴ νόσον φεύγοντα μεγάλην καὶ ἀλγηδόνα σύντονον, ἐὰν μὴ παρῇ ξίφος ἢ κώνειον, εἰς θάλατταν ἀφεῖναι καὶ ‘κατὰ πετρῶν ῥιπτεῖν’ ἑαυτόν· ὧν οὐδέτερον βλαβερὸν οὐδὲ κακὸν οὐδ’ ἀσύμφορόν ἐστιν, οὐδὲ κακοδαίμονας ποιεῖ τοὺς περιπίπτοντας.

‘Πόθεν οὖν’ φησίν ‘ἄρξωμαι; καὶ τίνα λάβω τοῦ καθήκοντος ἀρχὴν καὶ ὕλην τῆς ἀρετῆς, ἀφεὶς τὴν φύσιν καὶ τὸ κατὰ φύσιν;’ πόθεν δ’ Ἀριστοτέλης, ὦ μακάριε, καὶ Θεόφραστος ἄρχονται; τίνας δὲ Ξενοκράτης καὶ Πολέμων λαμβάνουσιν ἀρχάς; οὐχὶ καὶ Ζήνων τούτοις ἠκολούθησεν [f] ὑποτιθεμένοις στοιχεῖα τῆς εὐδαιμονίας τὴν φύσιν καὶ τὸ κατὰ φύσιν; ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν ἐπὶ τούτων ἔμειναν ὡς αἱρετῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ ὠφελίμων, καὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν προσλαβόντες ‹ἐν› αὐτοῖς ἐνεργοῦσαν οἰκείως χρωμένην ἑκάστῳ τέλειον ἐκ τούτων καὶ ὁλόκληρον ᾤοντο συμπληροῦν βίον καὶ συμπεραίνειν, τὴν ἀληθῶς τῇ φύσει πρόσφορον καὶ συνῳδὸν ὁμολογίαν ἀποδιδόντες. οὐ γὰρ ὥσπερ οἱ τῆς γῆς ἀφαλλόμενοι καὶ καταφερόμενοι πάλιν [1070] [a] ἐπ’ αὐτὴν ἐταράττοντο, τὰ αὐτὰ πράγματα ληπτὰ καὶ οὐχ αἱρετὰ καὶ οἰκεῖα καὶ οὐκ ἀγαθὰ καὶ ἀνωφελῆ μὲν εὔχρηστα δέ, καὶ οὐδὲν μὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἀρχὰς δὲ τῶν καθηκόντων ὀνομάζοντες, ἀλλ’ οἷος ὁ λόγος, τοιοῦτος ἦν ὁ βίος τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐκείνων, ἃ ἔπραττον οἷς ἔλεγον οἰκεῖα καὶ σύμφωνα παρεχόντων. ἡ δὲ τούτων αἵρεσις, ὥσπερ ἡ παρ’ Ἀρχιλόχῳ γυνή ‘τῇ μὲν ὕδωρ ‹ἐφόρει› δολοφρονέουσα χειρὶ τῇ δὲ πῦρ’, τοῖς μὲν προσάγεται τὴν φύσιν τοῖς δ’ ἀπωθεῖται δόγμασι· μᾶλλον δὲ τοῖς μὲν ἔργοις καὶ τοῖς πράγμασιν ὡς αἱρετῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἔχονται τῶν κατὰ φύσιν, τοῖς δ’ ὀνόμασι καὶ τοῖς ῥήμασιν ‹ὡς› ἀδιάφορα [b] καὶ ἄχρηστα καὶ ἀρρεπῆ πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν ἀναίνονται καὶ προπηλακίζουσιν.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ καθόλου τἀγαθὸν ἅπαντες ἄνθρωποι χαρτὸν νοοῦσιν, εὐκταῖον εὐτυχὲς ἀξίαν ἔχον τὴν μεγίστην αὔταρκες ἀπροσδεές, ὅρα τὸ τούτων παρατιθεὶς ἀγαθόν, ἆρά γε χαρτὸν ποιεῖ τὸ φρονίμως τὸν δάκτυλον προτεῖναι; τί δ’; εὐκταῖόν ἐστι φρονίμη στρέβλωσις; εὐτυχεῖ δ’ ὁ κατακρημνίζων ἑαυτὸν εὐλόγως; ἀξίαν δ’ ἔχει τὴν μεγίστην, ὃ πολλάκις αἱρεῖ λόγος ἀντὶ τοῦ μὴ ἀγαθοῦ προέσθαι; τέλειον δὲ καὶ αὔταρκές ἐστιν, οὗ [μὴ] παρόντος, ἂν μὴ τυγχάνωσι τῶν ἀδιαφόρων, οὐχ ὑπομένουσιν οὐδὲ βούλονται ζῆν; γέγονε δ’ ἕτερος λόγος, ὑφ’ οὗ μᾶλλον [c] ἡ συνήθεια παρανενόμηται, τὰς μὲν γνησίας ὑφαιροῦντος αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀποσπῶντος ἐννοίας ὥσπερ τέκνα, νόθας δ’ ὑποβάλλοντος ἑτέρας θηριώδεις καὶ ἀλλοκότους καὶ ταύτας ἀντ’ ἐκείνων ἐκτιθηνεῖσθαι καὶ στέργειν ἀναγκάζοντος; καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν αἱρετῶν τε καὶ φευκτῶν οἰκείων τε καὶ ἀλλοτρίων, ἃ μᾶλλον ἔδει θερμῶν [τε] καὶ ψυχρῶν λευκῶν τε καὶ μελάνων σαφεστέραν ἔχειν τὴν ἐνάργειαν· ἐκείνων μὲν γὰρ ἔξωθέν εἰσιν αἱ φαντασίαι ταῖς αἰσθήσεσιν ἐπεισόδιοι, ταῦτα δ’ ἐκ τῶν ἀρχῶν τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν σύμφυτον ἔχει τὴν γένεσιν; οἱ δ’ ὥσπερ εἰς τὸν ψευδόμενον ἢ τὸν κυριεύοντα μετὰ τῆς [d] διαλεκτικῆς ἐμβάλλοντες εἰς τὸν περὶ εὐδαιμονίας τόπον ἔλυσαν μὲν οὐδεμίαν ἀμφιβολίαν ἐν αὐτῷ μυρίας δ’ ἐποίησαν.

Καὶ μὴν ὅτι δυοῖν ἀγαθῶν, τοῦ μὲν τέλους τοῦ δὲ πρὸς τὸ τέλος, μεῖζόν ἐστι τὸ τέλος καὶ τελειότερον, ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἀγνοεῖται. γινώσκει δὲ καὶ Χρύσιππος τὴν διαφοράν, ὡς δῆλόν ἐστιν ἐν τῷ τρίτῳ περὶ Ἀγαθῶν· τοῖς γὰρ τέλος ἡγουμένοις τὴν ἐπιστήμην ἀνομολογεῖ, καὶ τίθησιν ἔν γε τοῖς περὶ Δικαιοσύνης· εἰ μέν τις ὑπόθοιτο τὴν ἡδονὴν τέλος, οὐκ οἴεται σῴζεσθαι τὸ δίκαιον· εἰ δὲ μὴ τέλος ἀλλ’ ἁπλῶς ἀγαθόν, οἴεται· τὰς δὲ λέξεις οὐκ οἴομαί σε δεῖσθαι νῦν ἀκούειν ἐμοῦ καταλέγοντος· τὸ [e] γὰρ τρίτον περὶ Δικαιοσύνης βιβλίον ἔστι πανταχόθεν λαβεῖν. ὅταν οὖν αὖθις, ὦ φίλε, μηθὲν ἀγαθὸν λέγωσι μηθενὸς ἀγαθοῦ μεῖζον εἶναι μηδ’ ἔλαττον ἀλλ’ ἴσον τῷ τέλει τὸ μὴ τέλος, οὐ ταῖς κοιναῖς μόνον ἐννοίαις ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς αὑτῶν λόγοις φαίνονται μαχόμενοι. καὶ πάλιν εἰ δυοῖν κακοῖν ὑφ’ οὗ μὲν γινόμεθα χείρονες, ὅταν παραγένηται, τὸ δὲ βλάπτει μὲν οὐ ποιεῖ δὲ χείρονας, παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστι μὴ λέγειν ἐκεῖνο μεῖζον εἶναι κακόν, ὑφ’ οὗ γινόμεθα χείρονες, ὅταν παραγένηται, τοῦ ὃ βλάπτει μὲν οὐ ποιεῖ δὲ χείρονας, μηδὲ κακίονα βλάβην τὴν κακίονας ἡμᾶς ἀποτελοῦσαν. ἀλλ’ ὁμολογεῖ γε Χρύσιππος εἶναί τινας φόβους καὶ λύπας καὶ ἀπάτας, αἳ βλάπτουσι μὲν ἡμᾶς χείρονας [f] δ’ οὐ ποιοῦσιν. ἔντυχε δὲ τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν πρὸς Πλάτωνα γεγραμμένων περὶ Δικαιοσύνης· καὶ γὰρ ἄλλων ἕνεκα τὴν ἐκεῖ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς εὑρησιλογίαν ἄξιον ἱστορῆσαι, πάντων ἁπλῶς πραγμάτων καὶ δογμάτων οἰκείων ὁμοῦ καὶ ἀλλοτρίων ἀφειδοῦσαν.

Παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστι δύο τέλη καὶ σκοποὺς προκεῖσθαι τοῦ βίου καὶ μὴ πάντων, ὅσα πράττομεν, ἐφ’ ἕν [1071] [a] τι γίνεσθαι τὴν ἀναφοράν· ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλόν ἐστι παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν ἄλλο μὲν εἶναι τέλος, ἐπ’ ἄλλο δὲ τῶν πραττομένων ἕκαστον ἀναφέρεσθαι· τούτων δ’ αὐτοὺς ὑπομένειν ἀνάγκη θάτερον. εἰ γὰρ αὐτὰ μὲν ‹τὰ› πρῶτα κατὰ φύσιν ‹ἀγ›αθὰ μή ἐστιν, ἡ δ’ εὐλόγιστος ἐκλογὴ καὶ λῆψις αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ πάντα τὰ παρ’ ἑαυτὸν ποιεῖν ἕκαστον ἕνεκα τοῦ τυγχάνειν τῶν πρώτων κατὰ φύσιν, ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνο δεῖ πάντα ἔχειν τὰ πραττόμενα τὴν ἀναφοράν, τὸ τυγχάνειν τῶν πρώτων κατὰ φύσιν. †εἴπερ γὰρ οἴονται μὴ στοχαζομένους μηδ’ ἐφιεμένους τοῦ τυχεῖν ἐκείνων τὸ τέλος ἔχειν ἄλλο ἕνεκα οὗ δεῖ ἀναφέρεσθαι , τὴν τούτων ἐκλογὴν καὶ [b] μὴ ταῦτα· τέλος μὲν γὰρ τὸ ἐκλέγεσθαι καὶ λαμβάνειν ἐκεῖνα φρονίμως, ἐκεῖνα δ’ αὐτὰ καὶ τὸ τυγχάνειν αὐτῶν οὐ τέλος, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὕλη τις ὑπόκειται τὴν ἐκλεκτικὴν ἀξίαν ἔχουσα· τοῦτο γὰρ οἶμαι καὶ τοὔνομα λέγειν καὶ γράφειν αὐτοὺς ἐνδεικνυμένους τὴν διαφοράν.

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Ἀνδρικῶς μὲν ἀπομεμνημόνευκας καὶ ὃ λέγουσι καὶ ὡς λέγουσι.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Σκόπει δ’ ὅτι ταὐτὸ πάσχουσι τοῖς τὴν σκιὰν ὑπεράλλεσθαι τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἐφιεμένοις· οὐ γὰρ ἀπολείπουσιν ἀλλὰ συμμεταφέρουσι τὴν ἀτοπίαν τῷ λόγῳ, πορρωτάτω τῶν ἐννοιῶν ἀφισταμένην. ὡς γὰρ εἰ τοξεύοντα [c] φαίη τις οὐχὶ πάντα ποιεῖν τὰ παρ’ αὑτὸν ἕνεκα τοῦ βαλεῖν τὸν σκοπὸν ἀλλ’ ἕνεκα τοῦ πάντα ποιῆσαι τὰ παρ’ αὑτόν, αἰνίγμασιν ὅμοια καὶ τεράστια δόξειεν ἂν περαίνειν, οὕτως οἱ τριπέμπελοι βιαζόμενοι μὴ τὸ τυγχάνειν τῶν κατὰ φύσιν τοῦ στοχάζεσθαι τῶν κατὰ φύσιν εἶναι τέλος, ἀλλὰ τὸ λαμβάνειν καὶ ἐκλέγεσθαι, μηδὲ τὴν ἔφεσιν τῆς ὑγιείας καὶ δίωξιν εἰς τὸ ὑγιαίνειν ἑκάστῳ τελευτᾶν, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον τὸ ὑγιαίνειν ἐπὶ τὴν ἔφεσιν αὐτοῦ καὶ δίωξιν ἀναφέρεσθαι, περιπάτους τινὰς καὶ ἀναφωνήσεις καὶ τομὰς νὴ Δία καὶ φαρμακείας εὐλογίστους τέλη ποιούμενοι τῆς ὑγιείας, οὐχὶ τούτων ἐκείνην, ὅμοια ληροῦσι τῷ λέγοντι [d] ‘δειπνῶμεν, ἵνα θύωμεν, ἵνα λουώμεθα’ (Com. adesp. 464). μᾶλλον δ’ ἐκεῖνος εἰωθός τι καὶ νενομισμένον ἀλλάττει καὶ ταράττει τὴν τάξιν· ἃ ‹δ’› οὗτοι λέγουσι, τὴν πᾶσαν ἔχει τῶν πραγμάτων ἀνατροπὴν καὶ σύγχυσιν· ‘οὐ σπουδάζομεν εὐκαίρως περιπατεῖν ἕνεκα τοῦ πέττειν τὴν τροφὴν ἀλλὰ ‹πέττειν τὴν τροφὴν› ἕνεκα τοῦ περιπατεῖν εὐκαίρως.’ ἦπου καὶ τὴν ὑγίειαν ἡ φύσις τοῦ ἐλλεβόρου χάριν πεποίηκεν, οὐ τῆς ὑγιείας τὸν ἐλλέβορον; τί γὰρ ἄλλο καταλείπεται αὐτοῖς εἰς ὑπερβολὴν παραδοξολογίας ἢ τοιαῦτα ληρεῖν; τί γὰρ διαφέρει τοῦ λέγοντος γεγονέναι τὴν [e] ὑγίειαν τῶν φαρμάκων ἕνεκα, μὴ τὰ φάρμακα τῆς ὑγιείας ὁ τὴν ἐκλογὴν τὴν περὶ τὰ φάρμακα καὶ σύνθεσιν καὶ χρῆσιν αὐτῶν αἱρετωτέραν ποιῶν τῆς ὑγιείας, μᾶλλον δὲ τὴν μὲν οὐδ’ ὅλως αἱρετὸν ἡγούμενος, ἐν δὲ τῇ περὶ ἐκεῖνα πραγματείᾳ τὸ τέλος τιθέμενος καὶ τὴν ἔφεσιν ἀποφαίνων τῆς τεύξεως ‹τέλος›, οὐ τῆς ἐφέσεως τὴν τεῦξιν; ‘τῇ γὰρ ἐφέσει νὴ Δία τὸ εὐλογίστως καὶ τὸ φρονίμως πρόσεστι.’ πάνυ μὲν οὖν, φήσομεν, ἂν ὡς πρὸς τέλος ὁρᾷ τὴν τεῦξιν ὧν διώκει καὶ τὴν κτῆσιν· εἰ δὲ μή, τὸ εὐλόγιστον αὐτῆς ἀφαιρεῖται, πάντα ποιούσης ἕνεκα τοῦ τυχεῖν, οὗ τυχεῖν οὐ σεμνὸν οὐδὲ μακάριόν ἐστι.

[f] ‹Ἐπειδὴ δ’› ἐνταῦθα ‹τοῦ› λόγου γεγόναμεν, τί ἂν φαίης μᾶλλον εἶναι παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν ἢ τὸ μὴ λαβόντας ἔννοιαν ἀγαθοῦ μηδὲ σχόντας ἐφίεσθαι τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ διώκειν; ὁρᾷς γὰρ ὅτι καὶ Χρύσιππος εἰς ταύτην [μᾶλλον] συνελαύνει τὸν Ἀρίστωνα τὴν ἀπορίαν, ὡς τῶν πραγμάτων ‹οὐ διδόντων› τὴν πρὸς τὸ μήτ’ ἀγαθὸν μήτε κακὸν ἀδιαφορίαν ἐπινοῆσαι τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ τοῦ κακοῦ μὴ προεπινοηθέντων· οὕτως γὰρ αὑτῆς φανεῖσθαι τὴν ἀδιαφορίαν προϋφισταμένην, εἰ νόησιν μὲν αὐτῆς οὐκ ἔστι [1072] [a] λαβεῖν μὴ πρότερον τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ νοηθέντος, ἄλλο δ’ οὐθὲν ἀλλ’ αὐτὴ μόνον τὸ ἀγαθόν ἐστιν. ἴθι δὲ καὶ σκόπει τὴν ἐκ τῆς Στοᾶς ταύτην ἀρνουμένην ἀδιαφορίαν καλουμένην δ’ ὁμολογίαν, ὅπως δὴ καὶ ὁπόθεν παρέσχεν αὑτὴν ἀγαθὸν νοηθῆναι. εἰ γὰρ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ χωρὶς οὐκ ἔστι νοῆσαι τὴν πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀγαθὸν ἀδιαφορίαν, ἔτι μᾶλλον ἡ τῶν ἀγαθῶν φρόνησις ἐπίνοιαν αὑτῆς οὐ δίδωσι τοῖς ἀγαθὸν μὴ προεννοήσασιν. ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὑγιεινῶν καὶ νοσερῶν τέχνης οὐ γίνεται νόησις, οἷς μὴ πρότερον αὐτῶν ἐκείνων γέγονεν, οὕτως ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν ἐπιστήμης οὐκ ἔστιν [b] ἔννοιαν λαβεῖν μὴ τἀγαθὰ καὶ τὰ κακὰ προεννοήσαντας. τί οὖν ἀγαθόν ἐστιν; οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ φρόνησις. τί δ’ ἡ φρόνησις; οὐδὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ ἀγαθῶν ἐπιστήμη.

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Πολὺς οὖν ὁ Διὸς Κόρινθος ἐπὶ τὸν λόγον αὐτῶν ἀφῖκται.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Τὴν γὰρ ὑπέρου περιτροπήν, ἵνα μὴ σκώπτειν δοκῇς, ἔασον· καίτοι τόν γε λόγον αὐτῶν ὅμοιον ἐκείνῳ πάθος κατείληφε. φαίνεται γὰρ εἰς τὴν τἀγαθοῦ νόησιν αὐτὴν νοῆσαι δεόμενος φρόνησιν ‹τὴν δ’ αὖ φρόνησιν› ἐν τῇ περὶ τἀγαθὸν ζητῶν νοήσει, καὶ πρὸ τῆς ἑτέρας ἀναγκαζόμενος ἀεὶ τὴν ἑτέραν διώκειν, ἀπολειπόμενος δ’ ἑκατέρας τῷ ‹πρὸς τὸ› πρὸ αὐτῆς νοούμενον δεῖσθαι τοῦ χωρὶς νοηθῆναι μὴ δυναμένου. καὶ κατ’ ἄλλον δὲ τρόπον ἔστι τὴν οὐκέτι διαστροφὴν ἀλλ’ ἐκστροφὴν [c] αὐτῶν τοῦ λόγου καὶ ἀπαγωγὴν τελέως εἰς τὸ μηδὲν καταμαθεῖν. οὐσίαν τἀγαθοῦ τίθενται τὴν εὐλόγιστον ἐκλογὴν τῶν κατὰ φύσιν· ἐκλογὴ δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν εὐλόγιστος ἡ ‹μὴ› πρός τι γενομένη τέλος, ὡς προείρηται. τί οὖν τοῦτ’ ἐστίν; οὐδὲν ἄλλο, φασίν, ἢ τὸ εὐλογιστεῖν ἐν ταῖς τῶν κατὰ φύσιν ἐκλογαῖς. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν οἴχεται καὶ διαπέφευγεν ἡ ἔννοια τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ· τὸ γὰρ εὐλογιστεῖν ἐν ταῖς ἐκλογαῖς σύμπτωμα δήπουθέν ἐστι γινόμενον ἀπὸ ἕξεως τῆς εὐλογιστίας· διὸ ταύτην μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ τέλους, τὸ τέλος δ’ οὐκ ἄνευ ταύτης ἀναγκαζόμενοι νοεῖν, ἀπολειπόμεθα τῆς ἀμφοῖν νοήσεως. ἔπειτα, [d] ὃ μεῖζόν ἐστι, τῷ μὲν δικαιοτάτῳ λόγῳ τὴν εὐλόγιστον ἐκλογὴν ἀγαθῶν ἔδει καὶ ὠφελίμων καὶ συνεργῶν πρὸς τὸ τέλος ἐκλογὴν εἶναι· τὸ γὰρ ἐκλέγεσθαι τὰ μήτε συμφέροντα μήτε τίμια μήθ’ ὅλως αἱρετὰ πῶς εὐλόγιστόν ἐστιν; ἔστω γάρ, ὡς αὐτοὶ λέγουσιν, εὐλόγιστος ἐκλογὴ τῶν ἀξίαν ἐχόντων πρὸς τὸ εὐδαιμονεῖν· ὅρα τοίνυν, ὡς εἰς πάγκαλόν τι καὶ σεμνὸν αὐτοῖς ὁ λόγος ἐξήκει κεφάλαιον. ἔστι γάρ, ὡς ἔοικε, τέλος κατ’ αὐτοὺς τὸ εὐλογιστεῖν ἐν τῇ ἐκλογῇ τῶν ἀξίαν ἐχόντων πρὸς τὸ εὐλογιστεῖν. ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Ἀλλ’ οὑτωσὶ μὲν ἀκούοντι τῶν ὀνομάτων [e] ἀλλόκοτόν τι φαίνεται δεινῶς, ὦ ἑταῖρε, τὸ φραζόμενον· ἔτι δὲ δέομαι μαθεῖν πῶς τοῦτο συμβαίνει.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Προσεκτέον οὖν σοι μᾶλλον. οὐ γὰρ τοῦ τυχόντος ἐστὶν αἴνιγμα συνιέναι· ἄκουε δὴ καὶ ἀποκρίνου. ἆρ’ οὖν τέλος ἐστὶ κατ’ αὐτοὺς τὸ εὐλογιστεῖν ἐν ταῖς ἐκλογαῖς τῶν κατὰ φύσιν;

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Λέγουσιν οὕτως.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Τὰ δὲ κατὰ φύσιν πότερον ὡς ἀγαθὰ ἐκλέγονται ἢ ὡς ἀξίας τινὰς ἔχοντα ἢ προαγωγάς;

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. ‹Ὡς ἔχοντα προαγωγάς›.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. ‹Καὶ› τοῦτο πρὸς τὸ τέλος ἢ πρὸς ἕτερόν τι τῶν ὄντων;

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Οὐ νομίζω, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τέλος.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Ἤδη τοίνυν ἀποκαλύψας ὅρα τὸ συμβαῖνον [f] αὐτοῖς, ὅτι τέλος ἐστὶ τὸ εὐλογιστεῖν ἐν ταῖς ἐκλογαῖς τῶν ἀξίαν ἐχόντων πρὸς τὸ εὐλογιστεῖν· ἄλλην γὰρ οὐσίαν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ τῆς εὐδαιμονίας οὔτ’ ἔχειν φασὶν οὔτε νοεῖν οἱ ἄνδρες ἢ τὴν πολυτίμητον εὐλογιστίαν ταύτην περὶ τὰς ἐκλογὰς τῶν ἀξίαν ἐχόντων.

Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μέν εἰσιν οἱ πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον οἰόμενοι λέγεσθαι μὴ πρὸς τὴν αἵρεσιν· ἐκεῖνον γὰρ ὑπὸ Καρνεάδου πιεζόμενον εἰς ταύτας καταδύεσθαι τὰς εὑρησιλογίας. τῶν δὲ περὶ ἔρωτος φιλοσοφουμένων ἐν τῇ Στοᾷ παρὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας τῆς ἀτοπίας πᾶσιν αὐτοῖς μέτεστιν. [1073] [a] αἰσχροὺς μὲν γὰρ εἶναι τοὺς νέους, φαύλους γ’ ὄντας καὶ ἀνοήτους, καλοὺς δὲ τοὺς σοφούς· ἐκείνων δὲ τῶν καλῶν μηδένα μήτ’ ἐρᾶσθαι μήτ’ ἀξιέραστον εἶναι. καὶ οὐ τοῦτό πω δεινόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἐρασθέντας αἰσχρῶν παύεσθαι λέγουσι καλῶν γενομένων. καὶ τίς ἔρωτα γινώσκει τοιοῦτον, ὃς ἅμα σώματος μοχθηρίᾳ ‹μοχθηρίας› ψυχῆς βλεπομένης συνέχεται καὶ ἀνάπτεται, κάλλους δ’ ἅμα φρονήσει μετὰ δικαιοσύνης καὶ σωφροσύνης ἐγγινομένου κατασβέννυται καὶ ἀπομαραίνεται; οὓς μηδὲν οἴομαι τῶν κωνώπων διαφέρειν· χαίρουσι γὰρ λάμπῃ καὶ ὄξει, τὸν δὲ πότιμον καὶ χρηστὸν οἶνον ἀποπετόμενοι φεύγουσιν.

[b] ἣν δὲ λέγοντες καὶ ὀνομάζοντες ἔμφασιν κάλλους ἐπαγωγὸν εἶναι τοῦ ἔρωτος λέγουσι, πρῶτον μὲν οὐκ ἔχει τὸ πιθανόν· ἐν γὰρ αἰσχίστοις καὶ κακίστοις οὐκ ἂν ἔμφασις γένοιτο κάλλους, εἴπερ, ὡς λέγουσιν, ἡ μοχθηρία τοῦ ἤθους ἀναπίμπλησι τὸ εἶδος. ἔπειτα κομιδῇ παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστιν ἀξιέραστον εἶναι τὸν αἰσχρόν, ὅτι μέλλει ποτὲ καὶ προσδοκᾶται κάλλος ἕξειν, κτησάμενον δὲ τοῦτο καὶ γενόμενον καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν ὑπὸ μηδενὸς ἐρᾶσθαι.

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Θήρα γάρ τις, φασίν, ἐστὶν ὁ ἔρως ἀτελοῦς μὲν εὐφυοῦς δὲ μειρακίου πρὸς ἀρετήν.

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Εἶθ’, ὦ βέλτιστε, πράττομεν ἄλλο νῦν ἢ [c] τὴν αἵρεσιν αὐτῶν ἐλέγχομεν, οὔτε πιθανοῖς πράγμασιν οὔθ’ ὡμιλημένοις ὀνόμασι τὰς κοινὰς ἐκστρέφουσαν ἡμῶν καὶ παραβιαζομένην ἐννοίας; οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἦν ὁ κωλύων τὴν περὶ τοὺς νέους τῶν σοφῶν σπουδήν, εἰ πάθος αὐτῇ μὴ πρόσεστι, θήραν ἢ φιλοποιίαν προσαγορευομένην· ἔρωτα δ’ ἔδει καλεῖν ὃν πάντες ἄνθρωποι καὶ πᾶσαι νοοῦσι καὶ ὀνομάζουσιν, ‹ὡς Ὅμηρος (α 366)·

‘πάντες δ’ ἠρήσαντο παραὶ› λεχέεσσι κλιθῆναι·’

‹καί (Ξ 315)

‘οὐ γὰρ πώποτέ μ’ ὧδε θεᾶς› ἔρος οὐδὲ γυναικὸς

‹θυμὸν› ἐνὶ στήθεσσι περιπροχυθεὶς ἐδάμασσεν.’

Εἰς τοιαῦτα μέντοι πράγματα τὸν ἠθικὸν λόγον ἐκβάλλοντες, ‘ἑλικτὰ καὶ οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς ἀλλὰ πᾶν πέριξ’, εὐτελίζουσι καὶ διασύρουσιν, ὡς δὴ μόνοι τὴν φύσιν καὶ συνήθειαν ὀρθοῦντες ᾗ χρὴ καὶ καθιστάντες τὸν λόγον, ὃς [d] ἅμ’ ἀποστρέφει καὶ ἐπάγει ταῖς ἐφέσεσι καὶ διώξεσι καὶ ὁρμαῖς πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον ἕκαστον. ἡ δὲ συνήθεια τῆς διαλεκτικῆς διέραμα γινομένη χρηστὸν μὲν οὐδὲν οὐδ’ ὑγιὲς ἀπολέλαυκεν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀκοὴ νοσώδης ὑπὸ κενῶν ἤχων δυσηκοΐας καὶ ἀσαφείας ἐμπέπλησται. περὶ ἧς αὖθις ἑτέραν ἀρχὴν λαβόντες, εἰ βούλει, διαλεξόμεθα· νυνὶ δὲ τὸν φυσικὸν αὐτῶν λόγον, οὐχ ἧττον τοῦ περὶ τελῶν διαταράττοντα τὰς κοινὰς προλήψεις, ἐν τοῖς κυριωτάτοις καὶ πρώτοις ἐπιδράμωμεν.

Καθόλου μὲν ἄτοπον καὶ παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστιν εἶναι μέν τι μὴ ὂν δ’ εἶναι, μὲν οὐκ ὄντα δ’ εἶναι [e] λεγόντων ἀτοπώτατόν ἐστι τὸ ἐπὶ τοῦ παντὸς λεγόμενον. κενὸν γὰρ ἄπειρον ἔξωθεν τῷ κόσμῳ περιθέντες οὔτε σῶμα τὸ πᾶν οὔτ’ ἀσώματον εἶναι λέγουσιν. ἕπεται δὲ τούτῳ τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶναι τὸ πᾶν· ὄντα γὰρ μόνα τὰ σώματα καλοῦσιν. ἔπειτα δ’ ὄντος τὸ ποιεῖν τι καὶ πάσχειν, τὸ δὲ πᾶν οὐκ ὄν ἐστιν· ὥστ’ οὔτε τι ποιήσει οὔτε τι πείσεται τὸ πᾶν. ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἐν τόπῳ ἔσται· σῶμα γὰρ δήπου τὸ ἐπέχον τόπον, οὐ σῶμα δὲ τὸ πᾶν, ὥστ’ οὐδαμοῦ τὸ πᾶν. καὶ μὴν ‹ᾧ› τὸν αὐτὸν ἐπέχειν τόπον συμβέβηκε, τοῦτο [τὸ] μένον· ὥστ’ οὐ μένει τὸ πᾶν· οὐ γὰρ ἐπέχει τόπον. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ κινεῖται· πρῶτον ὅτι καὶ τῷ κινουμένῳ τόπου δεῖ καὶ [f] χώρας ὑποκειμένης, ἔπειθ’ ὅτι τὸ [μὴ] κινούμενον ἢ αὑτὸ κινεῖν ἢ ὑφ’ ἑτέρου πάσχειν πέφυκε· τὸ μὲν οὖν ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ κινούμενον ἔχει τινὰς νεύσεις ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ῥοπὰς κατὰ βάρος ἢ κουφότητα· κουφότης δὲ καὶ βάρος ἤτοι σχέσεις τινὲς ἢ δυνάμεις εἰσὶν ἢ διαφοραὶ πάντως σώματος· τὸ δὲ [1074] [a] πᾶν οὐ σῶμά ἐστιν· ὥστ’ ἀνάγκη μήτε βαρὺ μήτε κοῦφον εἶναι τὸ πᾶν μηδ’ ἔχειν ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ κινήσεως ἀρχήν. ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδ’ ὑφ’ ἑτέρου κινήσεται τὸ πᾶν· ἕτερον γὰρ οὐδέν ἐστι τοῦ παντός· ὥστ’ ἀνάγκη λέγειν αὐτοῖς ὅπερ λέγουσι μήτε μένον εἶναι τὸ πᾶν μήτε κινούμενον. ὅλως δέ, ἐπεὶ τὸ λέγειν σῶμα τὸ πᾶν μηδ’ ἔνεστι κατ’ αὐτούς, σῶμα δ’ οὐρανὸς καὶ γῆ καὶ ζῷα καὶ φυτὰ καὶ ἄνθρωποι καὶ λίθοι, τὸ μὴ ὂν σῶμα σώματα μέρη ἕξει καὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος μέρη ὄντα ἔσται καὶ τὸ μὴ βαρὺ χρήσεται βαρέσι μορίοις καὶ κούφοις τὸ μὴ κοῦφον· ὧν οὐδ’ ὀνείρατα λαβεῖν [b] μᾶλλον ἔστι παρὰ τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας. καὶ μὴν οὕτως οὐδὲν ἐναργές ἐστι καὶ τῶν κοινῶν ἐχόμενον ἐννοιῶν ὡς τό, εἴ τι μὴ ἔμψυχόν ἐστιν, ἐκεῖνο ἄψυχον εἶναι, καὶ πάλιν, εἴ τι μὴ ἄψυχον, ἐκεῖνο ἔμψυχον εἶναι· καὶ ταύτην οὖν ἀνατρέπουσι τὴν ἐνάργειαν οὗτοι, τὸ πᾶν ὁμολογοῦντες μήτ’ ἔμψυχον εἶναι μήτ’ ἄψυχον. ἄνευ δὲ τούτων, ἀτελὲς μὲν οὐδεὶς νοεῖ τὸ πᾶν, οὗ γε δὴ μηθὲν μέρος ἄπεστιν· οὗτοι δὲ τέλειον οὔ φασιν εἶναι τὸ πᾶν· ὡρισμένον γάρ τι τὸ τέλειον, τὸ δὲ πᾶν ὑπ’ ἀπειρίας ἀόριστον· οὐκοῦν ἔστι τι κατ’ αὐτούς, ὃ μήτ’ ἀτελὲς μήτε τέλειόν ἐστιν. ἀλλὰ μὴν οὔτε μέρος ἐστὶ τὸ πᾶν (οὐθὲν γὰρ αὐτοῦ μεῖζον), οὔθ’ [c] ὅλον, ὡς αὐτοὶ λέγουσι· τεταγμένου γὰρ τὸ ὅλον κατηγορεῖσθαι, τὸ δὲ πᾶν δι’ ἀπειρίαν καὶ ἀόριστον εἶναι καὶ ἄτακτον. αἴτιον τοίνυν οὔτε τοῦ παντὸς ἕτερόν ἐστι τῷ μηθὲν εἶναι παρὰ τὸ πᾶν ἕτερον, οὔτ’ ἄλλου τὸ πᾶν ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἑαυτοῦ· ποιεῖν γὰρ οὐ πέφυκε, τῷ δὲ ποιεῖν τὸ αἴτιον νοεῖται. φέρε τοίνυν πάντας ἀνθρώπους ἐρωτᾶσθαι, τί νοοῦσι τὸ μηθὲν καὶ τίνα τοῦ μηθενὸς ἐπίνοιαν λαμβάνουσιν· ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν εἴποιεν, ὡς τὸ μήτ’ αἴτιον ὑπάρχον μήτ’ αἴτιον ἔχον μήθ’ ὅλον μήτε μέρος μήτε τέλειον μήτ’ ἀτελὲς μήτ’ ἔμψυχον μήτ’ ἄψυχον μήτε κινούμενον μήτε μένον [d] που μηδ’ ὑπάρχον μήτε σῶμα μήτ’ ἀσώματον; τοῦτο καὶ οὐκ ἄλλο τι τὸ οὐθέν ἐστιν. ὅταν οὖν ὅσα πάντες οἱ λοιποὶ τοῦ μηθενός, οὗτοι μόνοι τοῦ παντὸς κατηγοροῦσι, ταὐτὸν ὡς ἔοικε φαίνονται τῷ μηθενὶ τὸ πᾶν ποιοῦντες. οὐθὲν οὖν ἔτι δεῖ λέγειν τὸν χρόνον τὸ κατηγόρημα τὸ ἀξίωμα τὸ συνημμένον τὸ συμπεπλεγμένον, οἷς χρῶνται μὲν μάλιστα τῶν φιλοσόφων, ὄντα δ’ οὐ λέγουσιν εἶναι. καίτοι τό γ’ ἀληθὲς ὂν μὴ εἶναι μηδ’ ὑπάρχειν, ἀλλὰ καταλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ καταληπτὸν εἶναι καὶ πιστὸν ᾧ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ ὄντος μὴ μέτεστι, πῶς [οὖν] οὐ πᾶσαν ἀτοπίαν ὑπερβέβληκεν;

Ἀλλὰ μὴ δοκῇ ταῦτα λογικωτέραν ἔχειν τὴν ἀπορίαν, [e] ἁψώμεθα τῶν φυσικωτέρων. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν (Orph. fr. 21a 2)

‘Ζεὺς ἀρχὴ Ζεὺς μέσσα Διὸς δ’ ἐκ πάντα τέτυκται’

ὡς αὐτοὶ λέγουσι, μάλιστα μὲν ἔδει τὰς περὶ θεῶν ἐννοίας, εἴ ‹τι› ταραχῶδες ἢ πλανητὸν ἐγγέγονεν αὐταῖς, ἰωμένους ἀπευθύνειν καὶ κατορθοῦν ἐπὶ τὸ βέλτιστον· εἰ δὲ μή, ‹πεις›θέντας γ’ ἐᾶν ὡς ἔχουσιν ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου ἕκαστοι καὶ τῆς συνηθείας πρὸς τὸ θεῖον (Soph. Ant. 456).

‘οὐ γάρ τι νῦν γε κἀχθὲς ἀλλ’ ἀεί ποτε

ζῇ ταῦτα, κοὐδεὶς οἶδεν ἐξ ὅτου ‘φάνη’

οἱ δ’ ὥσπερ ἀφ’ ἑστίας ἀρξάμενοι τὰ καθεστῶτα κινεῖν καὶ πάτρια τῆς περὶ θεῶν δόξης οὐδεμίαν, ὡς ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν, [f] ἔννοιαν ὑγιῆ καὶ ἀκέραιον ἀπολελοίπασι. τίς γάρ ἐστιν ἄλλος ἀνθρώπων ἢ γέγονεν, ὃς οὐκ ἄφθαρτον νοεῖ καὶ ἀίδιον τὸ θεῖον; τί ταῖς κοιναῖς προλήψεσι περὶ θεῶν ὁμολογουμένως ἀναπεφώνηται μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ τοιαῦτα· (ζ 46)

‘τῷ ἔνι τέρπονται μάκαρες θεοὶ ἤματα πάντα’

‹καί› (Ε 442)

‘ἀθανάτων τε θεῶν χαμαὶ ἐρχομένων τ’ ἀνθρώπων’

[1075] [a] καὶ τό (Pind. fr. 143)

‘κεῖνοι γάρ τ’ ἄνοσοι καὶ ἀγήραοι

πόνων τ’ ἄπειροι, βαρυβόαν

πορθμὸν πεφευγότες Ἀχέροντος;’

καὶ ἴσως ἐντύχοι τις ἂν ἔθνεσι βαρβάροις καὶ ἀγρίοις θεὸν μὴ νοοῦσι, θεὸν δὲ νοῶν μὴ νοῶν δ’ ἄφθαρτον μηδ’ ἀίδιον ἄνθρωπος οὐδὲ εἷς γέγονεν. οἱ γοῦν ἄθεοι προσαγορευθέντες οὗτοι, Θεόδωροι καὶ Διαγόραι καὶ Ἵππωνες, οὐκ ἐτόλμησαν εἰπεῖν τὸ θεῖον ὅτι φθαρτόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐπίστευσαν ὡς ἔστι τι ἄφθαρτον, τοῦ μὲν ἀφθάρτου τὴν ὕπαρξιν μὴ ἀπολείποντες τοῦ δὲ θεοῦ τὴν πρόληψιν φυλάττοντες. ἀλλὰ Χρύσιππος καὶ Κλεάνθης, ἐμπεπληκότες [b] ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν τῷ λόγῳ θεῶν τὸν οὐρανὸν τὴν γῆν τὸν ἀέρα τὴν θάλατταν, οὐδένα τῶν τοσούτων ἄφθαρτον οὐδ’ ἀίδιον ἀπολελοίπασι πλὴν μόνου τοῦ Διός, εἰς ὃν πάντας καταναλίσκουσι τοὺς ἄλλους· ὥστε καὶ τούτῳ τὸ φθείρειν προσεῖναι τοῦ φθείρεσθαι μὴ ἐπιεικέστερον· ἀσθενείᾳ γάρ τινι καὶ τὸ μεταβάλλον εἰς ἕτερον φθείρεται καὶ τὸ τοῖς ἄλλοις εἰς ἑαυτὸ φθειρομένοις τρεφόμενον σῴζεται. ταῦτα δ’ οὐχ ὡς ἄλλα πολλὰ τῶν ἀτόπων συλλογιζόμεθα ‹περι›έχειν τὰς ὑποθέσεις αὐτῶν καὶ τοῖς δόγμασιν ἕπεσθαι, ἀλλ’ αὐτοὶ μέγα βοῶντες ἐν τοῖς περὶ Θεῶν καὶ Προνοίας Εἱμαρμένης τε καὶ Φύσεως γράμμασι διαρρήδην λέγουσι [c] τοὺς ἄλλους θεοὺς ἅπαντας εἶναι γεγονότας καὶ φθαρησομένους ὑπὸ πυρός, τηκτοὺς κατ’ αὐτοὺς ὥσπερ κηρίνους ἢ καττιτερίνους ὄντας. ἔστιν οὖν παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν ὡς τὸ ἄνθρωπον ἀθάνατον εἶναι, καὶ τὸ θεὸν θνητὸν εἶναι· μᾶλλον δ’ οὐχ ὁρῶ, τίς ἔσται θεοῦ πρὸς ἄνθρωπον διαφορά, εἰ καὶ ὁ θεὸς ζῷον λογικὸν καὶ φθαρτόν ἐστιν. ἂν γὰρ αὖ τὸ σοφὸν τοῦτο καὶ καλὸν ἀντιθῶσι, θνητὸν εἶναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οὐ θνητὸν δὲ τὸν θεὸν ἀλλὰ φθαρτόν, ὅρα τὸ συμβαῖνον αὐτοῖς· ἢ γὰρ ἀθάνατον εἶναι φήσουσιν ἅμα τὸν θεὸν καὶ φθαρτόν, ἢ μήτε θνητὸν εἶναι μήτ’ ἀθάνατον· ὧν οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲ πλάττοντας ἐξεπίτηδες ἕτερα παρὰ τὴν [d] κοινὴν ἔννοιαν ὑπερβάλλειν τὴν ἀτοπίαν· λέγω δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους, ἐπεὶ τούτοις γε τῶν ἀτοπωτάτων οὐδὲν ἄρρητον οὐδ’ ἀνεπιχείρητόν ἐστι παρειμένον. ἔτι τοίνυν ἐπαγωνιζόμενος ὁ Κλεάνθης τῇ ἐκπυρώσει λέγει τὴν σελήνην καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ἄστρα τὸν ἥλιον ... ἐξομοιῶσαι πάντα ἑαυτῷ καὶ μεταβαλεῖν εἰς ἑαυτόν. ἀλλ’ ὅτι ... οἱ ἀστέρες θεοὶ ὄντες πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτῶν φθορὰν συνεργοῦσι τῷ ἡλίῳ, συνεργοῦντές ‹γέ› τι πρὸς τὴν ἐκπύρωσιν, πολὺς ἂν εἴη γέλως ἡμᾶς περὶ σωτηρίας αὐτοῖς προσεύχεσθαι καὶ σωτῆρας ἀνθρώπων νομίζειν, οἷς κατὰ φύσιν ἔστι τὸ σπεύδειν ἐπὶ [e] τὴν αὑτῶν φθορὰν καὶ ἀναίρεσιν.

Καὶ μὴν αὐτοί γε πρὸς τὸν Ἐπίκουρον ‹κατ’› οὐδὲν ἀπολείπουσι τῶν γραμμάτων ‘ἰοὺ ἰού, φεῦ φεῦ’ βοῶντες, ὡς συγχέοντα τὴν τῶν θεῶν πρόληψιν ἀναιρουμένης τῆς προνοίας· οὐ γὰρ ἀθάνατον καὶ μακάριον μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ φιλάνθρωπον καὶ κηδεμονικὸν καὶ ὠφέλιμον προλαμβάνεσθαι καὶ νοεῖσθαι τὸν θεόν· ὅπερ ἀληθές ἐστιν. εἰ δ’ ἀναιροῦσι τὴν περὶ θεοῦ πρόληψιν οἱ μὴ ἀπολείποντες πρόνοιαν, τί ποιοῦσιν οἱ προνοεῖν μὲν ἡμῶν τοὺς θεοὺς λέγοντες μὴ ὠφελεῖν δ’ ἡμᾶς μηδ’ ἀγαθῶν εἶναι δοτῆρας ἀλλ’ ἀδιαφόρων, ἀρετὴν μὲν μὴ διδόντας πλοῦτον δὲ καὶ [f] ὑγίειαν καὶ τέκνων γενέσεις καὶ τὰ τοιοῦτα διδόντας, ὧν οὐδὲν ὠφέλιμον οὐδὲ λυσιτελὲς οὐδ’ αἱρετὸν οὐδὲ συμφέρον ἐστίν; ἢ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν [οὐκ] ἀναιροῦσι τὰς περὶ θεῶν ἐννοίας, οὗτοι δὲ καὶ περιυβρίζουσι καὶ χλευάζουσιν, Ἐπικάρπιόν τινα θεὸν λέγοντες εἶναι καὶ Γενέθλιον καὶ Παιᾶνα [1076] [a] καὶ Μαντεῖον, οὐκ ὄντος ἀγαθοῦ τῆς ὑγιείας καὶ τῆς γενέσεως οὐδὲ τῆς πολυκαρπίας ἀλλ’ ἀδιαφόρων καὶ ἀνωφελῶν τοῖς λαμβάνουσι.

Τὸ τρίτον τοίνυν τῆς περὶ θεῶν ἐννοίας ἐστὶ μηδενὶ τοσοῦτον τοὺς θεοὺς τῶν ἀνθρώπων διαφέρειν, ὅσον εὐδαιμονίᾳ καὶ ἀρετῇ διαφέρουσιν. ἀλλὰ κατὰ Χρύσιππον οὐδὲ τοῦτο περίεστιν αὐτοῖς· ἀρετῇ τε γὰρ οὐχ ὑπερέχειν τὸν Δία τοῦ Δίωνος ὠφελεῖσθαί θ’ ὁμοίως ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων τὸν Δία καὶ τὸν Δίωνα, σοφοὺς ὄντας, ὅταν ἅτερος θατέρου τυγχάνῃ κινουμένου. τοῦτο γάρ ἐστιν ὃ καὶ παρὰ θεῶν ἀνθρώποις ἀγαθὸν ὑπάρχει καὶ θεοῖς παρ’ ἀνθρώπων, σοφῶν [b] κινουμένων, ἄλλο δ’ οὔ. ἀρετῇ δὲ μὴ ἀπολειπόμενον ἄνθρωπον οὐδὲν ἀποδεῖν εὐδαιμονίας λέγουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπίσης εἶναι μακάριον τῷ Διὶ τῷ σωτῆρι τὸν ἀτυχῆ, διὰ νόσους καὶ πηρώσεις σώματος ἐξάγοντα τοῦ ζῆν ἑαυτόν, - εἴπερ εἴη σοφός. ἔστι δ’ οὗτος οὐδαμοῦ γῆς οὐδὲ γέγονεν· ἄπλετοι δὲ μυριάδες ἀνθρώπων κακοδαιμονοῦντες ἐπ’ ἄκρον ἐν τῇ τοῦ Διὸς πολιτείᾳ καὶ ἀρχῇ τὴν ἀρίστην ἐχούσῃ διοίκησιν. καίτοι τί μᾶλλον ἂν γένοιτο παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν ἢ τοῦ Διὸς ὡς ἔνι ἄριστα διοικοῦντος ἡμᾶς ὡς ἔνι χείριστα πράσσειν; εἰ γοῦν, ὃ μηδὲ θέμις ἐστὶν εἰπεῖν, ἐθελήσειε μὴ Σωτὴρ μηδὲ Μειλίχιος εἶναι μηδ’ Ἀλεξίκακος, ἀλλὰ [c] τἀναντία τῶν καλῶν τούτων προσηγοριῶν, οὐθὲν ἔστι προσθεῖναι τοῖς οὖσι κακὸν οὔτ’ εἰς πλῆθος οὔτ’ εἰς μέγεθος, ὡς οὗτοι λέγουσι, πάντων ἀνθρώπων ἐπ’ ἄκρον ἀθλίως ‹καὶ› μοχθηρῶς βιούντων καὶ μηδὲ τῆς κακίας ἐπίδοσιν μηδ’ ὑπερβολὴν τῆς κακοδαιμονίας δεχομένης.

Οὐ μὴν ἐνταῦθα τὸ δεινότατόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ Μενάνδρῳ μὲν εἰπόντι θεατρικῶς (fr. 786 Koerte)

‘ἀρχὴ μεγίστη τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις κακῶν

τὰ λίαν ἀγαθά’

δυσκολαίνουσι· τοῦτο γὰρ εἶναι παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν· αὐτοὶ δὲ τῶν κακῶν ἀρχὴν ἀγαθὸν ὄντα τὸν θεὸν ποιοῦσιν. οὐ γὰρ ἥ γ’ ὕλη τὸ κακὸν ἐξ ἑαυτῆς παρέσχηκεν· ἄποιος [d] γάρ ἐστι καὶ πάσας ὅσας δέχεται διαφορὰς ὑπὸ τοῦ κινοῦντος αὐτὴν καὶ σχηματίζοντος ἔσχε· κινεῖ δ’ αὐτὴν ὁ λόγος ἐνυπάρχων καὶ σχηματίζει, μήτε κινεῖν ἑαυτὴν μήτε σχηματίζειν πεφυκυῖαν. ὥστ’ ἀνάγκη τὸ κακόν, εἰ μὲν δι’ οὐδέν, ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος, εἰ δὲ διὰ τὴν κινοῦσαν ἀρχήν, ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ γεγονὸς ὑπάρχειν. καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὲν οἴονται τὸν Δία μὴ κρατεῖν τῶν ἑαυτοῦ μερῶν μηδὲ χρῆσθαι κατὰ τὸν αὑτοῦ λόγον ἑκάστῳ, παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν λέγουσι καὶ πλάττουσι ζῷον, οὗ πολλὰ τῶν μορίων ἐκφεύγει τὴν βούλησιν, ἰδίαις ἐνεργείαις χρώμενα καὶ πράξεσιν, αἷς τὸ ὅλον ὁρμὴν οὐ δίδωσιν οὐδὲ κατάρχει κινήσεως. οὕτω γὰρ [e] κακῶς ‹τί› συντέτακται τῶν ψυχὴν ἐχόντων, ὥστ’ ἀβουλοῦντος αὐτοῦ προϊέναι πόδας ἢ φθέγγεσθαι γλῶτταν ἢ κέρας κυρίττειν ἢ δάκνειν ὀδόντας; ὧν ἀνάγκη τὰ πλεῖστα πάσχειν τὸν θεόν, εἰ παρὰ τὴν βούλησιν αὐτοῦ μέρη ὄντες οἱ φαῦλοι ψεύδονται καὶ ῥᾳδιουργοῦσι καὶ τοιχωρυχοῦσι καὶ ἀποκτιννύουσιν ἀλλήλους. εἰ δέ, ὥς φησι Χρύσιππος, οὐδὲ τοὐλάχιστον ἔστι τῶν μερῶν ἔχειν ἄλλως ἀλλ’ ἢ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ Διὸς βούλησιν, ἀλλὰ πᾶν μὲν ἔμψυχον οὕτως ἴσχεσθαι καὶ οὕτω κινεῖσθαι πέφυκεν, ὡς ἐκεῖνος ἄγει κἀκεῖνος ἐπιστρέφει καὶ ἴσχει καὶ διατίθησιν, ‘ὅδ’ αὖτ’ ἐκείνου φθόγγος ἐξωλέστερος’. μυριάκις γὰρ ἦν [f] ἐπιεικέστερον ἀσθενείᾳ καὶ ἀδυναμίᾳ τοῦ Διὸς ἐκβιαζόμενα τὰ μέρη πολλὰ δρᾶν ἄτοπα παρὰ τὴν ἐκείνου φύσιν καὶ βούλησιν, ἢ μήτ’ ἀκρασίαν εἶναι μήτε κακουργίαν ἧς οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ Ζεὺς αἴτιος. ἀλλὰ μὴν τὸ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι πόλιν καὶ πολίτας τοὺς ἀστέρας, εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, καὶ φυλέτας καὶ ἄρχοντας δηλονότι καὶ βουλευτὴν τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τὸν [1077] [a] ἕσπερον πρύτανιν ἢ ἀστυνόμον, - οὐκ οἶδ’ ‹εἰ› μὴ τοὺς ἐλέγχοντας τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν λεγόντων καὶ ἀποφαινομένων ἀποδείκνυσιν ἀτοπωτέρους.

Ἀλλὰ τῶν φυσικώτερον λεγομένων ἆρ’ οὐ παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστι σπέρμα πλέον εἶναι καὶ μεῖζον ἢ τὸ γεννώμενον ἐξ αὐτοῦ; τὴν γοῦν φύσιν ὁρῶμεν ‹ἐν› πᾶσι καὶ ζῴοις καὶ φυτοῖς ‹καὶ ἡμέροις› καὶ ἀγρίοις ἀρχὰς τὰ μικρὰ καὶ γλίσχρα καὶ μόλις ὁρατὰ τῆς τῶν μεγίστων γενέσεως λαμβάνουσαν. οὐ γὰρ ἐκ πυροῦ στάχυν οὐδ’ ἄμπελον ἐκ γιγάρτου μόνον, ἀλλ’ ἐκ πυρῆνος ἢ βαλάνου τινὸς ὄρνεον διαφυγούσης ὥσπερ ἐκ μικροῦ σπινθῆρος ἐξάψασα καὶ ῥιπίσασα τὴν γένεσιν ἔρνος ἢ βάτου ἢ δρυὸς [b] ἢ φοίνικος ἢ πεύκης περιμήκιστον ἀναδίδωσιν, ᾗ καί φασιν ... τὸ μὲν σπέρμα ‹παρὰ› τὴν ἐπὶ μικρὸν ὄγκον ἐκ πολλοῦ σπείρασιν ὠνομάσθαι, τὴν δὲ φύσιν ἐμφύσησιν οὖσαν καὶ διάχυσιν τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτῆς ἀνοιγομένων καὶ λυομένων λόγων ἢ ἀριθμῶν. ἀλλὰ τοῦ γε κόσμου †πάλιν τὸ πῦρ ὃ σπέρμα λέγουσιν εἶναι καὶ †μετὰ τὴν ἐκπύρωσιν εἰς σπέρμα μετέβαλε τὸν κόσμον, ἐκ βραχυτέρου σώματος καὶ ὄγκου χύσιν ἔχοντα πολλὴν καὶ τοῦ κενοῦ προσεπιλαμβάνοντα χώραν ἄπλετον ἐπινεμομένην τῇ αὐξήσει, [c] γεννωμένου δ’ αὖθις ὑποχωρεῖν τὸ μέγεθος καὶ συνολισθάνειν, δυομένης καὶ συναγομένης περὶ τὴν γένεσιν εἰς ἑαυτὴν τῆς ὕλης.

Ἀκοῦσαι τοίνυν ἔστιν αὐτῶν καὶ γράμμασιν ἐντυχεῖν πολλοῖς πρὸς τοὺς Ἀκαδημαϊκοὺς διαφερομένων καὶ βοώντων, ὡς πάντα πράγματα συγχέουσι ταῖς ἀπαραλλαξίαις, ἐπὶ δυοῖν οὐσιῶν ἕνα ποιὸν εἶναι βιαζόμενοι. καίτοι τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν ὅστις ἀνθρώπων οὐ διανοεῖται, καὶ τοὐναντίον οἴεται θαυμαστὸν εἶναι καὶ παράδοξον, εἰ μήτε φάττα φάττῃ μήτε μελίττῃ μέλιττα μήτε πυρῷ πυρὸς ἢ σύκῳ, τὸ τοῦ λόγου, σῦκον ἐν τῷ παντὶ χρόνῳ γέγονεν [d] ἀπαράλλακτον· ἐκεῖνα δ’ ὄντως παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστιν, ἃ λέγουσιν οὗτοι καὶ πλάττουσιν, ἐπὶ μιᾶς οὐσίας δύ’ ἰδίως γενέσθαι ποιοὺς καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν οὐσίαν ἕνα ποιὸν ἰδίως ἔχουσαν ἐπιόντος ἑτέρου δέχεσθαι καὶ διαφυλάττειν ὁμοίως ἀμφοτέρους. εἰ γὰρ δύο, καὶ τρεῖς καὶ τέτταρες ἔσονται καὶ πέντε καὶ ὅσους οὐκ ἄν τις εἴποι περὶ μίαν οὐσίαν· λέγω δ’ οὐκ ἐν μέρεσι διαφόροις, ἀλλὰ πάντας ὁμοίως περὶ ὅλην τοὺς ἀπείρους. λέγει γοῦν Χρύσιππος ἐοικέναι τῷ μὲν ἀνθρώπῳ τὸν Δία καὶ τὸν κόσμον τῇ δὲ ψυχῇ τὴν πρόνοιαν· ὅταν οὖν ἡ ἐκπύρωσις γένηται, μόνον ἄφθαρτον ὄντα τὸν Δία τῶν θεῶν ἀναχωρεῖν ἐπὶ [e] τὴν πρόνοιαν, εἶθ’ ὁμοῦ γενομένους ἐπὶ μιᾶς τῆς τοῦ αἰθέρος οὐσίας διατελεῖν ἀμφοτέρους.

Ἀφέντες οὖν ἤδη τοὺς θεοὺς καὶ προσευξάμενοι κοινὰς φρένας διδόναι καὶ κοινὸν νοῦν, τὰ περὶ στοιχείων πῶς ἔχει αὐτοῖς ἴδωμεν.

Παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστι σῶμα σώματος εἶναι τόπον καὶ σῶμα χωρεῖν διὰ σώματος, κενὸν μηδετέρου περιέχοντος ἀλλὰ τοῦ πλήρους εἰς τὸ πλῆρες ἐνδυομένου καὶ δεχομένου τὸ ἐπιμιγνύμενον τοῦ διάστασιν οὐκ ἔχοντος οὐδὲ χώραν ἐν αὑτῷ διὰ τὴν συνέχειαν. οἱ δ’ οὐχ ἓν εἰς ἓν οὐδὲ δύο οὐδὲ τρία ἢ δέκα συνωθοῦντες, ἀλλὰ πάντα μέρη τοῦ [f] κόσμου κατακερματισθέντος ἐμβάλλοντες εἰς ἓν ὅ τι ἂν τύχωσι, καὶ ‹οὐδὲ› τοὐλάχιστον αἰσθητὸν ἐπιφάσκοντες ἐπιλείψειν ἐπιὸν τῷ μεγίστῳ νεανιεύονται, δόγμα ποιούμενοι τὸ ἀνέλεγκτον ὡς ἐν ἄλλοις πολλοῖς, ἅτε δὴ μαχομένας ὑποθέσεις ταῖς ἐννοίαις λαμβάνοντες. αὐτίκα γοῦν ‹ἀκόλουθον› τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ πολλὰ τερατώδη καὶ ἀλλόκοτα προσδέχεσθαι τοὺς τὰ σώματα τοῖς σώμασιν ὅλοις [1078] [a] ὅλα κεραννύντας· ὧν ἐστι καὶ τό ‘τὰ τρία τέσσαρα εἶναι’. τουτὶ γὰρ οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι λέγουσιν ἐν ὑπερβολῇ παράδειγμα τῶν ἀδιανοήτων· τούτοις δὲ συμβαίνει τὸν ἕνα κύαθον τοῦ οἴνου πρὸς δύο κεραννύμενον ὕδατος, εἰ μέλλει μὴ ἀπολείπειν ἀλλ’ ἐξισοῦσθαι, παράγοντας ἐπὶ πᾶν καὶ διασυγχέοντας ἕν’ ὄντα δύο ποιεῖν τῇ πρὸς τοὺς δύο τῆς κράσεως ἐξισώσει· τὸ γὰρ μένειν ἕνα καὶ δυοῖν παρεκτείνειν καὶ ποιεῖν ἴσον ‹ἴσον› τῷ διπλασίῳ. εἰ δ’, ὅπως ἐξίκηται τῇ κράσει πρὸς τοὺς δύο, δυοῖν λαμβάνει[ν] μέτρον ἐν τῇ διαχύσει, τοῦτο μέτρον ἅμα καὶ τριῶν ἐστι καὶ τεσσάρων, τριῶν μέν, ὅτι τοῖς δύο εἷς μέμικται, τεσσάρων [b] δέ, ὅτι δυσὶ μεμιγμένος ἴσον ἔσχηκε πλῆθος οἷς μίγνυται. τοῦτό ‹τε› δὴ συμβαίνει τὸ καλὸν αὐτοῖς ἐμβάλλουσιν εἰς σῶμα σώματα καὶ τὸ τῆς περιοχῆς ἀδιανόητον. ἀνάγκη γὰρ εἰς ἄλληλα χωρούντων τῷ κεράννυσθαι, μὴ θάτερον μὲν περιέχειν περιέχεσθαι δὲ θάτερον, καὶ τὸ μὲν δέχεσθαι τὸ δ’ ἐνυπάρχειν (οὕτω γὰρ οὐ κρᾶσις ἁφὴ δὲ καὶ ψαῦσις ἔσται τῶν ἐπιφανειῶν, τῆς μὲν ἐντὸς ὑποδυομένης τῆς δ’ ἐκτὸς περιεχούσης, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων μερῶν ἀμίκτων καὶ καθαρῶν ἐνδιαφερομένων)· ἀλλ’ ἀνάγκη γινομένης ὥσπερ ἀξιοῦσι τῆς ἀνακράσεως ἐν ἀλλήλοις τὰ μιγνύμενα γίνεσθαι καὶ ταὐτὸν ὁμοῦ τῷ ἐνυπάρχειν περιέχεσθαι [c] καὶ τῷ δέχεσθαι περιέχειν θάτερον, καὶ μηδέτερον αὐτῶν αὖ πάλιν δυνατὸν εἶναι συμβαίνειν, ἀμφότερα τῆς κράσεως δι’ ἀλλήλων διιέναι καὶ μηδὲν ἔτι λείπεσθαι μηδενὸς μόριον ἀλλὰ ‹πᾶν› παντὸς ἀναπίμπλασθαι βιαζομένης. ἐνταῦθα δὴ καὶ τὸ θρυλούμενον ἐν ταῖς διατριβαῖς Ἀρκεσιλάου σκέλος ἥκει ταῖς ἀτοπίαις ἐπεμβαῖνον αὐτῶν μετὰ γέλωτος. εἰ γάρ εἰσιν αἱ κράσεις δι’ ὅλων, τί κωλύει, τοῦ σκέλους ἀποκοπέντος καὶ κατασαπέντος καὶ ῥιφέντος εἰς τὴν θάλατταν καὶ διαχυθέντος, οὐ τὸν Ἀντιγόνου μόνον στόλον διεκπλεῖν, ὡς ἔλεγεν Ἀρκεσίλαος, [d] ἀλλὰ τὰς Ξέρξου χιλίας καὶ διακοσίας καὶ τὰς Ἑλληνικὰς ὁμοῦ τριακοσίας τριήρεις ἐν τῷ σκέλει ναυμαχούσας; οὐ γὰρ ἐπιλείψει δήπουθεν προϊὸν οὐδὲ παύσεται ἐν τῷ μείζονι τοὔλαττον· ἢ πέρας ἡ κρᾶσις ἕξει καὶ τὸ τελευταῖον αὐτῆς ἁφὴν ὅπου λήγει ποιησάμενον εἰς ὅλον οὐ δίεισιν ἀλλ’ ἀπαγορεύσει μιγνύμενον. εἰ δὲ μεμίξεται δι’ ὅλων, εὖ μάλα τὸ σκέλος ἐνναυμαχῆσαι παρέξει τοῖς Ἕλλησιν. ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν δεῖται σήψεως καὶ μεταβολῆς· εἷς δέ τις κύαθος ἢ μία σταγὼν αὐτόθεν εἰς τὸ Αἰγαῖον ἐμπεσοῦσα πέλαγος ἢ τὸ Κρητικὸν ἐφίξεται τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ καὶ τῆς Ἀτλαντικῆς θαλάσσης, οὐκ ἐπιπολῆς ψαύουσα τῆς ἐπιφανείας ἀλλὰ πάντῃ διὰ βάθους εἰς πλάτος ὁμοῦ καὶ μῆκος ἀναχεομένη. καὶ ταῦτα προσδέχεται Χρύσιππος εὐθὺς ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ τῶν Φυσικῶν Ζητημάτων οὐδὲν ἀπέχειν φάμενος οἴνου σταλαγμὸν ἕνα κεράσαι τὴν θάλατταν· καὶ ἵνα δὴ μὴ τοῦτο θαυμάζωμεν, εἰς ὅλον φησὶ τὸν κόσμον διατενεῖν τῇ κράσει τὸν σταλαγμόν· ὧν οὐκ οἶδα τί ἂν ἀτοπώτερον φανείη.

Καὶ μὴν παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν μήτ’ ἄκρον ἐν τῇ φύσει τῶν σωμάτων μήτε πρῶτον μήτ’ ἔσχατον ‹εἶναι› μηθέν, εἰς ὃ λήγει τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ σώματος, ἀλλ’ ἀεί ‹τι› τοῦ ληφθέντος ἐπέκεινα φαινόμενον εἰς ἄπειρον καὶ ἀόριστον [e] ἐμβάλλειν τὸ ὑποκείμενον. οὔτε γὰρ μεῖζον οὔτ’ ἔλαττον ἔσται νοεῖν ἕτερον ἑτέρου μέγεθος, εἰ τὸ προϊέναι τοῖς μέρεσιν ἐπ’ ἄπειρον ἀμφοτέροις ὡσ‹αύτως› συμβέβηκεν, ἀλλ’ ἀνισότητος αἴρεται φύσις· ἀνίσων γὰρ νοουμένων τὸ μὲν προαπολείπεται τοῖς ἐσχάτοις μέρεσι τὸ δὲ παραλλάττει καὶ περίεστι· μὴ οὔσης δ’ ἀνισότητος ἕπεται μὴ ἀνωμαλίαν εἶναι μηδὲ τραχύτητα σώματος· ἀνωμαλία μὲν γάρ ἐστι μιᾶς ἐπιφανείας ἀνισότης πρὸς ἑαυτήν, [1079] [a] τραχύτης δ’ ἀνωμαλία μετὰ σκληρότητος. ὧν οὐθὲν ἀπολείπουσιν οἱ σῶμα μηθὲν εἰς ἔσχατον μέρος περαίνοντες ἀλλὰ πάντα πλήθει μερῶν ἐπ’ ἄπειρον ἐξάγοντες. καίτοι πῶς οὐκ ἐναργές ἐστι τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐκ πλειόνων συνεστηκέναι μορίων ἢ τὸν δάκτυλον τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, καὶ πάλιν τὸν κόσμον ἢ τὸν ἄνθρωπον; ταῦτα γὰρ ἐπίστανται καὶ διανοοῦνται πάντες, ἂν μὴ Στωικοὶ γένωνται· γενόμενοι δὲ Στωικοὶ τἀναντία λέγουσι καὶ δοξάζουσιν, ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ πλειόνων μορίων ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἢ ὁ δάκτυλος οὐδ’ ὁ κόσμος ἢ ὁ ἄνθρωπος. ἐπ’ ἄπειρον γὰρ ἡ τομὴ [b] προάγει τὰ σώματα, τῶν δ’ ἀπείρων οὐθέν ἐστι πλέον οὐδ’ ἔλαττον οὐδ’ ὅλως ὑπερβάλλον πλῆθος, ἢ παύσεται τὰ μέρη τοῦ ὑπολειπομένου μεριζόμενα καὶ παρέχοντα πλῆθος ἐξ αὑτῶν.

ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ. Τί οὖν; οὐκ ἀμύνονται ταύτας τὰς ἀπορίας;

ΔΙΑΔΟΥΜ. Εὐμηχάνως κομιδῇ καὶ ἀνδρείως. λέγει γὰρ ὁ Χρύσιππος ἐρωτωμένους ἡμᾶς, εἴ τινα ἔχομεν μέρη καὶ πόσα καὶ ἐκ τίνων συγκείμενα μερῶν καὶ πόσων, διαστολῇ χρήσεσθαι, τὸ μὲν ὁλοσχερὲς τιθέντας, ὡς ἐκ κεφαλῆς καὶ θώρακος καὶ σκελῶν συγκείμεθα· τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν πᾶν τὸ ζητούμενον καὶ ἀπορούμενον· ‘ἐὰν δ’ ἐπὶ τὰ ἔσχατα μέρη τὸ ἐρωτᾶν προάγωσιν, οὐδέν’ φησί ‘τῶν τοιούτων ἐστὶν ὑποληπτέον, ἀλλὰ ῥητέον οὔτ’ ἔκ τινων συνεστάναι, [c] καὶ ὁμοίως οὔτ’ ἐξ ὁποσωνοῦν, οὔτ’ ἐξ ἀπείρων οὔτ’ ἐκ πεπερασμένων.’ καί μοι δοκῶ ταῖς ἐκείνου κεχρῆσθαι λέξεσιν αὐταῖς, ὅπως συνίδῃς ὃν τρόπον διεφύλαττε τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας, κελεύων ἡμᾶς νοεῖν τῶν σωμάτων ἕκαστον οὔτ’ ἔκ τινων οὔτ’ ἐξ ὁποσωνοῦν μερῶν, οὔτ’ ἐξ ἀπείρων οὔτ’ ἐκ πεπερασμένων, συγκείμενον. εἰ μὲν γάρ, ὡς ἀγαθοῦ καὶ κακοῦ τὸ ἀδιάφορον, οὕτως πεπερασμένου τι καὶ ἀπείρου μέσον ἐστίν, εἰπόντα τί τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ἔδει λῦσαι τὴν ἀπορίαν· εἰ δέ, ὡς τὸ μὴ ἴσον εὐθὺς ἄνισον καὶ τὸ μὴ φθαρτὸν ἄφθαρτον, οὕτως τὸ μὴ πεπερασμένον ἄπειρον νοοῦμεν, ὅμοιόν ἐστιν, οἶμαι, τῷ τὸ σῶμα εἶναι μήτ’ ἐκ [d] πεπερασμένων μήτ’ ἐξ ἀπείρων τὸ λόγον εἶναι μήτ’ ἐξ ἀληθῶν λημμάτων μήτ’ ἐκ ψευδῶν μήτ’ ἐξ ...

Ἐπὶ δὲ τούτοις ἐπινεανιευόμενός φησι τῆς πυραμίδος ἐκ τριγώνων συνισταμένης τὰς πλευρὰς κατὰ τὴν συναφὴν ἐγκεκλιμένας ἀνίσους μὲν εἶναι, μὴ ὑπερέχειν δ’ ᾗ μείζονές εἰσιν. οὕτως ἐτήρει τὰς ἐννοίας. εἰ γὰρ ἔστι τι μεῖζον καὶ μὴ ὑπερέχον, ἔσται τι μικρότερον καὶ μὴ ἐλλεῖπον· ὥστε καὶ ἄνισον μήθ’ ὑπερέχον μήτ’ ἐλλεῖπον, τουτέστιν ἴσον τὸ ἄνισον καὶ οὐ μεῖζον τὸ μεῖζον οὐδὲ μικρότερον [e] τὸ μικρότερον. ἔτι τοίνυν ὅρα τίνα τρόπον ἀπήντησε Δημοκρίτῳ διαποροῦντι φυσικῶς καὶ ἐπιτυχῶς, εἰ κῶνος τέμνοιτο παρὰ τὴν βάσιν ἐπιπέδῳ, τί χρὴ διανοεῖσθαι τὰς τῶν τμημάτων ἐπιφανείας, ἴσας ἢ ἀνίσους γινομένας. ‘ἄνισοι μὲν γὰρ οὖσαι τὸν κῶνον ἀνώμαλον παρέξουσι, πολλὰς ἀποχαράξεις λαμβάνοντα βαθμοειδεῖς καὶ τραχύτητας· ἴσων δ’ οὐσῶν ἴσα τμήματα ἔσται καὶ φανεῖται τὸ τοῦ κυλίνδρου πεπονθὼς ὁ κῶνος, ἐξ ἴσων συγκείμενος καὶ οὐκ ἀνίσων κύκλων, ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἀτοπώτατον.’ ἐνταῦθα δὴ [f] τὸν Δημόκριτον ἀποφαίνων ἀγνοοῦντα τὰς μὲν ἐπιφανείας φησὶ μήτ’ ἴσας εἶναι μήτ’ ἀνίσους, ἄνισα δὲ τὰ σώματα τῷ μήτ’ ἴσας εἶναι μήτ’ ἀνίσους τὰς ἐπιφανείας. τὸ μὲν δὴ νομοθετεῖν τῶν ἐπιφανειῶν μήτ’ ἴσων ‹μήτ’ ἀνίσων› οὐσῶν τὰ σώματα συμβαίνειν ἄνισα εἶναι θαυμαστὴν ἐξουσίαν αὑτῷ τοῦ γράφειν ὅ τι ἂν ἐπίῃ διδόντος ἐστί. τοὐναντίον γὰρ ὁ λόγος μετὰ τῆς ἐναργείας νοεῖν δίδωσι, τῶν ἀνίσων σωμάτων ἀνίσους εἶναι τὰς ἐπιφανείας καὶ μείζονα τὴν τοῦ [1080] [a] μείζονος, εἴ γε μὴ μέλλει τὴν ὑπεροχήν, ᾗ μεῖζόν ἐστιν, ἐστερημένην ἐπιφανείας ἕξειν. εἰ γὰρ οὐχ ὑπερβάλλουσι τὰς τῶν ἐλαττόνων ἐπιφανείας αἱ τῶν μειζόνων ἀλλὰ προαπολείπουσιν, ἔσται σώματος πέρας ἔχοντος μέρος ἄνευ πέρατος καὶ ἀπεράτωτον. εἰ γὰρ λέγει, ὅτι βιαζόμενος οὕτω ... ‘ἃς γὰρ ὑφορᾶται περὶ τὸν κῶνον ἀναχαράξεις, ἡ τῶν σωμάτων ἀνισότης δήπουθεν οὐχ ἡ τῶν ἐπιφανειῶν ἀπεργάζεται.’ γελοῖον οὖν τὸ τὰς ἐπιφανείας ὑπεξαιρούμενον ἐν τοῖς σώμασιν ἐλεγχομένην ἀπολιπεῖν ἀνωμαλίαν.

[b] ἀλλ’ ἂν μένωμεν ἐπὶ τῆς ὑποθέσεως, τί μᾶλλόν ἐστι παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν ἢ τὰ τοιαῦτα πλάττειν; εἰ γὰρ ἐπιφάνειαν ἐπιφανείᾳ θήσομεν μήτ’ ἴσην εἶναι μήτ’ ἄνισον, καὶ τὸ μέγεθος ἔσται μεγέθει φάναι καὶ ἀριθμὸν ἀριθμῷ μήτ’ ἴσον εἶναι μήτ’ ἄνισον, καὶ ταῦτ’ ἴσου καὶ ἀνίσου μέσον, ὃ μηδέτερόν ἐστιν, οὐκ ἔχοντας εἰπεῖν οὐδὲ νοῆσαι δυναμένους. ἔτι δ’ οὐσῶν ἐπιφανειῶν μήτ’ ἴσων μήτ’ ἀνίσων, τί κωλύει καὶ κύκλους νοεῖσθαι μήτ’ ἴσους μήτ’ ἀνίσους; αὐταὶ γὰρ δήπουθεν αἱ τῶν κωνικῶν τμημάτων ἐπιφάνειαι κύκλοι εἰσίν· εἰ δὲ κύκλους, καὶ διαμέτρους κύκλων θετέον μήτ’ ἴσους μήτ’ ἀνίσους· εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, καὶ [c] γωνίας καὶ τρίγωνα καὶ παραλληλόγραμμα καὶ παραλληλεπίπεδα καὶ σώματα· καὶ γὰρ εἰ μήκη ἐστὶ μήτ’ ἴσα μήτ’ ἄνισα ἀλλήλοις, καὶ βάθος ἔσται καὶ πλάτη καὶ σώματα. εἶτα πῶς τολμῶσιν ἐπιτιμᾶν τοῖς τὰς κενότητας εἰσάγουσι καὶ ἀμερῆ τινα καὶ μαχόμενον ‹τὸ› μήτε κινεῖσθαι μήτε μένειν ὑποτιθεμένοις, αὐτοὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ἀξιώματα ψευδῆ λέγοντες εἶναι· ‘εἴ τινα μή ἐστιν ἴσα ἀλλήλοις, ἐκεῖνα ἄνισά ἐστιν ἀλλήλοις’ καί ‘οὐκ ἔστι μὲν ἴσα ταῦτ’ ἀλλήλοις, οὐκ ἄνισα δ’ ἐστὶ ταῦτ’ ἀλλήλοις’; ἐπεὶ δέ φησιν εἶναί τι μεῖζον οὐ μὴν ὑπερέχον, ἄξιον ἀπορῆσαι πότερον ταῦτ’ [d] ἐφαρμόσει ἀλλήλοις. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἐφαρμόσει, πῶς μεῖζόν ἐστι θάτερον; εἰ δ’ οὐκ ἐφαρμόσει, πῶς οὐκ ἀνάγκη τὸ μὲν ὑπερέχειν τὸ δ’ ἐλλείπειν; τῷ μηδέτερον ὑπάρχειν, καὶ οὐκ ἐφαρμόσει τῷ μεῖζον εἶναι καὶ ἐφαρμόσει τῷ μὴ μεῖζον εἶναι θάτερον. ἀνάγκη γὰρ ἐν τοιαύταις ἀπορίαις γίνεσθαι τοὺς τὰς κοινὰς ἐννοίας μὴ φυλάττοντας.

Καὶ μὴν τὸ μηθενὸς ἅπτεσθαι μηθὲν παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστιν· οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τούτου τὸ ἅπτεσθαι μὲν ἀλλήλων τὰ σώματα μηδενὶ δ’ ἅπτεσθαι· τοῦτο δ’ ἀνάγκη προσδέχεσθαι τοῖς μὴ ἀπολείπουσιν ἐλάχιστα μέρη σώματος, ἀλλ’ ἀεί τι τοῦ δοκοῦντος ἅπτεσθαι πρότερον λαμβάνουσι [e] καὶ μηδέποτε τοῦ προάγειν ἐπέκεινα παυομένοις. ὃ γοῦν αὐτοὶ μάλιστα προφέρουσι τοῖς τῶν ἀμερῶν προϊσταμένοις, τοῦτ’ ἐστί, τὸ μήθ’ ὅλοις ὅλων ἁφὴν εἶναι μήτε μέρεσι μερῶν· τὸ μὲν γὰρ οὐχ ἁφὴν ἀλλὰ κρᾶσιν ποιεῖν, τὸ δ’ οὐκ εἶναι δυνατὸν μέρη τῶν ἀμερῶν οὐκ ἐχόντων. πῶς οὖν οὐκ αὐτοὶ τούτῳ περιπίπτουσι, μηδὲν μέρος ἔσχατον μηδὲ πρῶτον ἀπολείποντες; ‘ὅτι νὴ Δία ψαύειν κατὰ πέρας τὰ σώματα ‹ἀλλ’ οὐχ› ὅλα ὅλων οὐδὲ κατὰ μέρος λέγουσιν. τὸ δὲ πέρας σῶμα οὔκ ἐστιν’. ἅψεται τοίνυν σῶμα σώματος ἀσωμάτῳ, καὶ οὐχ ἅψεται πάλιν, ἀσωμάτου μεταξὺ ὄντος.

[f] εἰ δ’ ἅψεται, καὶ ποιήσει τι καὶ πείσεται τῷ ἀσωμάτῳ τὸ σῶμα· ποιεῖν δέ τι καὶ πάσχειν ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων καὶ ἅπτεσθαι τὰ σώματα πέφυκεν. εἰ δ’ ἁφὴν ἴσχει τῷ ἀσωμάτῳ τὸ σῶμα, καὶ συναφὴν ἕξει καὶ κρᾶσιν καὶ συμφυΐαν· ἔστιν ἄρ’ ἐν ταῖς συναφαῖς καὶ κράσεσιν ἢ μένειν ἀναγκαῖον ἢ μὴ μένειν ἀλλ’ ἐφθάρθαι τὰ πέρατα τῶν σωμάτων· ἑκάτερον δὲ παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστι. φθορὰς μὲν γὰρ ἀσωμάτων καὶ γενέσεις οὐδ’ αὐτοὶ καταλείπουσι· κρᾶσις δὲ καὶ [1081] [a] συναφὴ σωμάτων ἰδίοις χρωμένων πέρασιν οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο· τὸ γὰρ πέρας ὁρίζει καὶ ἵστησι τὴν τοῦ σώματος φύσιν. αἱ δὲ κράσεις εἰ μὴ μερῶν παρὰ μέρη παραθέσεις εἰσὶν ἀλλ’ ὅλοις ὅλα τὰ κιρνάμενα συγχέουσιν, ὥσπερ οὗτοι λέγουσι, φθορὰς ἀπολειπτέον περάτων ἐν ταῖς μίξεσιν, εἶτα γενέσεις ἐν ταῖς διαστάσεσι· ταῦτα δ’ οὐδεὶς ἂν ῥᾳδίως νοήσειεν. ἀλλὰ μὴν καθ’ ὅ γ’ ἅπτεται τὰ σώματα ἀλλήλων, κατὰ τοῦτο καὶ πιέζεται καὶ θλίβεται καὶ συντρίβεται ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων· ἀσώματον δὲ ταῦτα πάσχειν ἢ ποιεῖν οὐ δυνατόν, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ διανοητόν ἐστι· τοῦτο δὲ [b] βιάζονται νοεῖν ἡμᾶς. εἰ γὰρ ἡ σφαῖρα τοῦ ἐπιπέδου κατὰ σημεῖον ἅπτεται, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ σύρεται κατὰ σημεῖον διὰ τοῦ ἐπιπέδου· κἂν ᾖ μίλτῳ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν ἀληλιμμένη, μιλτίνην ἐνομόρξεται τῷ ἐπιπέδῳ γραμμήν· ‹κἂν ᾖ› πεπυρωμένη, πυρώσει τὸ ἐπίπεδον· ἀσωμάτῳ δὲ χρώζεσθαι καὶ ἀσωμάτῳ πυροῦσθαι σῶμα παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστιν. ἂν δὲ δὴ κεραμεᾶν ἢ κρυσταλλίνην σφαῖραν εἰς ἐπίπεδον φερομένην λίθινον ἀφ’ ὕψους νοήσωμεν, ἄλογον εἰ μὴ συντριβήσεται πληγῆς πρὸς ἀντίτυπον γενομένης· ἀτοπώτερον δὲ τὸ συντριβῆναι κατὰ πέρας καὶ σημεῖον ἀσώματον προσπεσοῦσαν. ὥστε πάντῃ τὰς περὶ τῶν ἀσωμάτων [c] καὶ σωμάτων αὐτοῖς ταράττεσθαι προλήψεις, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀναιρεῖσθαι, πολλὰ τῶν ἀδυνάτων παρατιθεμένοις.

Παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστι χρόνον εἶναι μέλλοντα καὶ παρῳχημένον, ἐνεστῶτα δὲ μὴ εἶναι χρόνον, ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν ἄρτι καὶ τὸ πρῴην ὑφεστάναι, τὸ δὲ νῦν ὅλως μηδὲν εἶναι. καὶ μὴν τοῦτο συμβαίνει τοῖς Στωικοῖς ἐλάχιστον χρόνον μὴ ἀπολείπουσι μηδὲ τὸ νῦν ἀμερὲς εἶναι βουλομένοις, ἀλλ’ ὅ τι ἄν τις ὡς ἐνεστὼς οἴηται λαβὼν διανοεῖσθαι, τούτου τὸ μὲν μέλλον τὸ δὲ παρῳχημένον εἶναι φάσκουσιν· ὥστε μηθὲν κατὰ τὸ νῦν ὑπομένειν μηδὲ λείπεσθαι μόριον χρόνου παρόντος, ἄν, ὃς λέγεται παρεῖναι, τούτου τὰ μὲν εἰς [d] τὰ μέλλοντα τὰ δ’ εἰς τὰ παρῳχημένα διανέμηται. δυοῖν οὖν συμβαίνει θάτερον, ἢ τό ‘ἦν χρόνος’ καί ‘ἔσται χρόνος’ τιθέντας ἀναιρεῖν τό ‘ἔστι χρόνος’, ἢ ‹σῴζοντας τό› ‘ἔστι χρόνος ἐνεστηκώς’, οὗ τὸ μὲν ἐνειστήκει τὸ δ’ ἐνστήσεται, [καὶ] λέγειν ὅτι τοῦ ὑπάρχοντος τὸ μὲν μέλλον ἐστὶ τὸ δὲ παρῳχημένον, καὶ τοῦ νῦν τὸ μὲν πρότερον τὸ δ’ ὕστερον· ὥστε νῦν εἶναι τὸ μηδέπω νῦν καὶ τὸ μηκέτι νῦν· οὐκέτι γὰρ νῦν τὸ παρῳχημένον καὶ οὐδέπω νῦν τὸ μέλλον. ‹ἕπεται δ’ οὕτω› διαιροῦσι λέγειν αὐτοῖς, ὅτι καὶ το‹ῦ σήμερον τὸ μὲν ἐχθὲς τὸ δ’ αὔριον› καὶ τοῦ τῆτες τὸ μὲν πέρυσι τὸ δ’ εἰς νέωτα, καὶ τοῦ ἅμα τὸ μὲν [e] πρότερον τὸ δ’ ὕστερον. οὐθὲν γὰρ ἐπιεικέστερα τούτων κυκῶσι, ταὐτὰ ποιοῦντες τό ‘μηδέπω’ καὶ τό ‘ἤδη’ καὶ τό ‘μηκέτι’, καὶ τό ‘νῦν’ καὶ τό ‘μὴ νῦν’. οἱ δ’ ἄλλοι πάντες ἄνθρωποι καὶ τό ‘ἄρτι’ καὶ τό ‘μετὰ μικρόν’ ὡς ἕτερα τοῦ νῦν μόρια, καὶ τὸ μὲν μετὰ τὸ νῦν τὸ δὲ πρὸ τοῦ νῦν τίθενται καὶ νοοῦσι καὶ νομίζουσι. τούτων ‹δ’› Ἀρχέδημος μὲν †ἀρχήν τινα καὶ συμβολὴν εἶναι λέγων τοῦ παρῳχημένου καὶ τοῦ ἐπιφερομένου τό ‘νῦν’ λέληθεν αὑτὸν ὡς ἔοικε τὸν πάντα χρόνον ἀναιρῶν. εἰ γὰρ τὸ νῦν οὐ χρόνος ἐστὶν ἀλλὰ πέρας χρόνου πᾶν δὲ μόριον χρόνου τοιοῦτον [f] οἷον τὸ νῦν ἐστιν, οὐδὲν φαίνεται μέρος ἔχων ὁ σύμπας χρόνος ἀλλ’ εἰς πέρατα διόλου καὶ συμβολὰς καὶ †ὁρμὰς ἀναλυόμενος. Χρύσιππος δὲ βουλόμενος φιλοτεχνεῖν περὶ τὴν διαίρεσιν ἐν μὲν τῷ περὶ τοῦ Κενοῦ καὶ ἄλλοις τισὶ τὸ μὲν παρῳχημένον τοῦ χρόνου καὶ τὸ μέλλον οὐχ ὑπάρχειν ἀλλ’ ὑφεστηκέναι φησί, μόνον δ’ ὑπάρχειν τὸ ἐνεστηκός, ἐν δὲ τῷ τρίτῳ καὶ τετάρτῳ καὶ πέμπτῳ περὶ τῶν Μερῶν τίθησι τοῦ ἐνεστηκότος χρόνου τὸ μὲν μέλλον εἶναι τὸ δὲ [1082] [a] παρεληλυθός. ὥστε συμβαίνει τὸ ὑπάρχον αὐτῷ τοῦ χρόνου διαιρεῖν εἰς τὰ μὴ ὑπάρχοντα τοῦ ὑπάρχοντος, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως τοῦ χρόνου μηδὲν ἀπολείπειν ὑπάρχον, εἰ τὸ ἐνεστηκὸς οὐδὲν ἔχει μέρος, ὃ μὴ μέλλον ἐστὶν ἢ παρῳχημένον.

Ἡ μὲν οὖν τοῦ χρόνου νόησις αὐτοῖς οἷον ὕδατος περίδραξις, ὅσῳ μᾶλλον πιέζεται, διαρρέοντος καὶ διολισθάνοντος· τὰ δὲ τῶν πράξεων καὶ κινήσεων τὴν πᾶσαν ἔχει σύγχυσιν τῆς ἐναργείας. ἀνάγκη γάρ, εἰ τοῦ νῦν τὸ μὲν εἰς τὸ παρῳχημένον τὸ δ’ εἰς τὸ μέλλον διαιρεῖται, καὶ τοῦ κινουμένου κατὰ τὸ νῦν τὸ μὲν κεκινῆσθαι τὸ δὲ κινήσεσθαι, πέρας δὲ κινήσεως ἀνῃρῆσθαι καὶ ἀρχήν, [b] μηδενὸς ‹δ’› ἔργου πρῶτον γεγονέναι μηδ’ ἔσχατον ἔσεσθαι μηδέν, τῷ χρόνῳ τῶν πράξεων συνδιανεμομένων· ὡς γὰρ τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος χρόνου τὸ μὲν παρῳχῆσθαι τὸ δὲ μέλλειν λέγουσιν, οὕτως τοῦ πραττομένου τὸ μὲν πεπρᾶχθαι τὸ δὲ πραχθήσεσθαι. πότε τοίνυν ἔσχεν ἀρχὴν πότε δ’ ἕξει τελευτὴν τὸ ἀριστᾶν τὸ γράφειν τὸ βαδίζειν, εἰ πᾶς μὲν ὁ ἀριστῶν ἠρίστησε καὶ ἀριστήσει πᾶς δ’ ὁ βαδίζων ἐβάδισε καὶ βαδιεῖται; τὸ δὲ δεινῶν, φασί, δεινότατον· εἰ τῷ ζῶντι τὸ ἐζηκέναι καὶ ζήσεσθαι συμβέβηκεν, οὔτ’ ἀρχὴν ἔσχε τὸ ζῆν οὔθ’ ἕξει πέρας, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ὡς ἔοικε γέγονε μὴ ἀρξάμενος τοῦ ζῆν καὶ τεθνήξεται [c] μὴ παυσόμενος. εἰ γὰρ οὐθέν ἐστιν ἔσχατον μέρος ἀλλ’ ἀεί τι τῷ ζῶντι τοῦ παρόντος εἰς τὸ μέλλον περίεστιν, οὐδέποτε γίνεται ψεῦδος τό ‘ζήσεσθαι Σωκράτη’· ‹ἀλλ’› ὁσάκις ἀληθὲς ‹ἔσται› τό ‘ζῇ Σωκράτης’, ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον ψεῦδος τό ‘τέθνηκε Σωκράτης’· ὥστ’, εἰ τό ‘ζήσεται Σωκράτης’ ἀληθές ἐστιν ἐν ἀπείροις χρόνου μέρεσιν, ἐν οὐδενὶ χρόνου μέρει τό ‘τέθνηκε Σωκράτης’ ἀληθὲς ἔσται. καίτοι τί πέρας ἂν ἔργου γένοιτο, ποῦ δὲ λήξειε τὸ πραττόμενον, ἄν, ὁσάκις ἀληθές ἐστι τό ‘πράττεται’, τοσαυτάκις ἀληθὲς ᾖ καὶ τό ‘πραχθήσεται’; ψεύσεται γὰρ ὁ λέγων περὶ τοῦ γράφοντος καὶ διαλεγομένου Πλάτωνος [d] ὅτι ‘παύσεταί ποτε Πλάτων ‹γράφων καὶ› διαλεγόμενος’, εἰ μηδέποτε ψεῦδός ἐστι τό ‘διαλεχθήσεται’ περὶ τοῦ διαλεγομένου καὶ τό ‘γράψει’ περὶ τοῦ γράφοντος. ἔτι τοίνυν ‹εἰ› τοῦ γινομένου μέρος οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅπερ οὐκ ἤτοι γεγονός ἐστιν ἢ γενησόμενον καὶ παρεληλυθὸς ἢ μέλλον, γεγονότος δὲ καὶ γενησομένου καὶ παρῳχημένου καὶ μέλλοντος αἴσθησις οὐκ ἔστιν, οὐδενὸς ἁπλῶς αἴσθησίς ἐστιν. οὔτε γὰρ ὁρῶμεν τὸ παρῳχημένον ἢ τὸ μέλλον οὔτ’ ἀκούομεν οὔτ’ ἄλλην τινὰ λαμβάνομεν αἴσθησιν τῶν γεγονότων ἢ γενησομένων· οὐδὲν ‹οὖν› οὐδ’ ἂν παρῇ τι, αἰσθητόν ἐστιν, εἰ τοῦ παρόντος ἀεὶ τὸ μὲν μέλλει τὸ δὲ παρῴχηκε καὶ τὸ μὲν γεγονός ἐστι τὸ δὲ γενησόμενον. Καὶ μὴν αὐτοί γε σχέτλια ποιεῖν τὸν Ἐπίκουρον λέγουσι καὶ βιάζεσθαι τὰς ἐννοίας, ἰσοταχῶς τὰ σώματα κινοῦντα καὶ μηδὲν ἀπολείποντα μηδενὸς ταχύτερον. πολλῷ δὲ τούτου σχετλιώτερόν ἐστι καὶ μᾶλλον ἀπήρτηται τῶν ἐννοιῶν τὸ μηδὲν ὑπὸ μηδενὸς περικαταλαμβάνεσθαι, μηδ’ εἰ χελώνην, τὸ τοῦ λόγου, φασί, ‘μετόπισθε διώκοι Ἀδρήστου ταχὺς ἵππος’. ἀνάγκη δὲ τοῦτο συμβαίνειν, τῶν μὲν κινουμένων κατὰ τὸ πρότερον ‹καὶ τὸ ὕστερον›, τῶν δὲ διαστημάτων, ἃ διεξίασιν, εἰς ἄπειρον ὄντων μεριστῶν, ὥσπερ ἀξιοῦσιν οὗτοι. εἰ γὰρ ‹φθαίη› πλέθρῳ μόνον ἡ χελώνη τὸν ἵππον, οἱ τοῦτο μὲν εἰς ἄπειρον τέμνοντες [e] ἑκάτερα δὲ κινοῦντες κατὰ τὸ πρότερον καὶ τὸ ὕστερον, οὐδέποτε τῷ βραδυτάτῳ προσάξουσι τὸ τάχιστον, ἀεί τι διάστημα τοῦ βραδυτέρου προλαμβάνοντος εἰς ἄπειρα διαστήματα μεριζόμενον. τὸ δ’ ἔκ τινος φιάλης ἢ κύλικος ὕδατος ἐκχεομένου μηδέποτε πᾶν ἐκχυθήσεσθαι πῶς οὐ παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστιν, ἢ πῶς οὐχ ἑπόμενον οἷς οὗτοι [1083] [a] λέγουσι; τὴν γὰρ κατὰ τὸ πρότερον ‹διὰ› τῶν εἰς ἄπειρον μεριστῶν κίνησιν οὐκ ἄν τις νοήσειε τὸ πᾶν διανύουσαν, ἀλλ’ ἀεί τι μεριστὸν ὑπολείπουσα ποιήσει πᾶσαν μὲν ἔκχυσιν πᾶσαν δ’ ὀλίσθησιν καὶ ῥύσιν ὑγροῦ καὶ φορὰν στερεοῦ καὶ βάρους μεθειμένου πτῶσιν ἀσυντέλεστον.

Παρίημι δὲ πολλὰς ἀτοπίας αὐτῶν τῶν παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιαν ἐφαπτόμενος. ὁ τοίνυν περὶ αὐξήσεως λόγος ἐστὶ μὲν ἀρχαῖος· ἠρώτηται γάρ, ὥς φησι Χρύσιππος, ὑπ’ Ἐπιχάρμου· τῶν δ’ ἐν Ἀκαδημείᾳ οἰομένων μὴ πάνυ ῥᾴδιον μηδ’ αὐτόθεν ἕτοιμον εἶναι τὴν ἀπορίαν, πολλὰ κατῃτιᾶσθαι ... κατεβόησαν ὡς τὰς προλήψεις ἀναιρούντων [b] καὶ παρὰ τὰς ἐννοίας φυλάττουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν προσδιαστρέφουσιν. ὁ μὲν γὰρ λόγος ἁπλοῦς ἐστι καὶ τὰ λήμματα συγχωροῦσιν οὗτοι· τὰς ἐν μέρει πάσας οὐσίας ῥεῖν καὶ φέρεσθαι, τὰ μὲν ἐξ αὑτῶν μεθιείσας τὰ δέ ποθεν ἐπιόντα προσδεχομένας· οἷς δὲ πρόσεισι καὶ ἄπεισιν ἀριθμοῖς ἢ πλήθεσι, ταὐτὰ μὴ διαμένειν ἀλλ’ ἕτερα γίνεσθαι, ταῖς εἰρημέναις προσόδοις ‹καὶ ἀφόδοις› ἐξαλλαγὴν τῆς οὐσίας λαμβανούσης· αὐξήσεις δὲ καὶ φθίσεις οὐ κατὰ δίκην ὑπὸ συνηθείας ἐκνενικῆσθαι τὰς μεταβολὰς ταύτας λέγεσθαι, γενέσεις [δὲ] καὶ φθορὰς μᾶλλον αὐτὰς ὀνομάζεσθαι προσῆκον, ὅτι τοῦ καθεστῶτος εἰς [c] ἕτερον ἐκβιβάζουσι· τὸ δ’ αὔξεσθαι καὶ τὸ μειοῦσθαι πάθη σώματός ἐστιν ὑποκειμένου καὶ διαμένοντος. οὕτω δέ πως τούτων λεγομένων καὶ τιθεμένων, τί ἀξιοῦσιν οἱ πρόδικοι τῆς ἐναργείας οὗτοι καὶ κανόνες τῶν ἐννοιῶν; ἕκαστον ἡμῶν δίδυμον εἶναι καὶ διφυῆ καὶ διττόν - οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ ποιηταὶ τοὺς Μολιονίδας οἴονται, τοῖς μὲν ἡνωμένους μέρεσι τοῖς δ’ ἀποκρινομένους, ἀλλὰ δύο σώματα ταὐτὸν ἔχοντα χρῶμα, ταὐτὸν δὲ σχῆμα, ταὐτὸν δὲ βάρος καὶ τόπον ... ὑπὸ μηδενὸς ἀνθρώπων ὁρώμενα πρότερον· ἀλλ’ οὗτοι μόνοι εἶδον τὴν σύνθεσιν ταύτην καὶ διπλόην [d] καὶ ἀμφιβολίαν, ὡς δύο ἡμῶν ἕκαστός ἐστιν ὑποκείμενα, τὸ μὲν οὐσία τὸ δὲ ‹ποιότης›· καὶ τὸ μὲν ἀεὶ ῥεῖ καὶ φέρεται, μήτ’ αὐξόμενον μήτε μειούμενον, μήθ’ ὅλως οἷόν ἐστι διαμένον, τὸ δὲ διαμένει καὶ αὐξάνεται καὶ μειοῦται, καὶ πάντα πάσχει τἀναντία θατέρῳ, συμπεφυκὸς καὶ συνηρμοσμένον καὶ συγκεχυμένον καὶ τῆς διαφορᾶς τῇ αἰσθήσει μηδαμοῦ παρέχον ἅψασθαι. καίτοι λέγεται μὲν ὁ Λυγκεὺς ἐκεῖνος διὰ πέτρας καὶ διὰ δρυὸς ὁρᾶν· ἑώρα δέ τις ἀπὸ σκοπῆς ἐν Σικελίᾳ καθεζόμενος τὰς Καρχηδονίων ἐκ τοῦ λιμένος ναῦς ἐκπλεούσας, ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς ἀπεχούσας δρόμον· οἱ δὲ περὶ Καλλικράτη καὶ Μυρμηκίδην [e] λέγονται δημιουργεῖν ἅρματα μυίας πτεροῖς καλυπτόμενα καὶ διατορεύειν ἐν σησάμῳ γράμμασιν ἔπη τῶν Ὁμήρου· ταύτην δὲ τὴν ἐν ἡμῖν ἑτερότητα καὶ ‹δια›φορὰν οὐδεὶς διεῖλεν οὐδὲ διέστησεν, οὐδ’ ἡμεῖς ᾐσθόμεθα διττοὶ γεγονότες καὶ τῷ μὲν ἀεὶ ῥέοντες μέρει τῷ δ’ ἀπὸ γενέσεως ἄχρι τελευτῆς οἱ αὐτοὶ διαμένοντες. ἁπλούστερον δὲ ποιοῦμαι τὸν λόγον· ἐπεὶ τέσσαρά γε ποιοῦσιν ὑποκείμενα περὶ ἕκαστον, μᾶλλον δὲ τέσσαρ’ ἕκαστον ἡμῶν· ἀρκεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰ δύο πρὸς τὴν ἀτοπίαν, εἴ γε τοῦ μὲν Πενθέως ἀκούοντες ἐν τῇ τραγῳδίᾳ λέγοντος ὡς ‘δύο μὲν ἡλίους [f] ὁρᾷ, διττὰς δὲ Θήβας’ (Eur. Bacch. 918), οὐχ ὁρᾶν αὐτὸν ἀλλὰ παρορᾶν λέγομεν, ἐκτρεπόμενον καὶ παρακινοῦντα τοῖς λογισμοῖς· τούτους δ’ οὐ μίαν πόλιν, ἀλλὰ πάντας ἀνθρώπους καὶ ζῷα καὶ δένδρα πάντα καὶ σκεύη καὶ ὄργανα καὶ ἱμάτια διττὰ καὶ διφυῆ τιθεμένους οὐ χαίρειν ἐῶμεν, ὡς παρανοεῖν ἡμᾶς μᾶλλον ἢ νοεῖν ἀναγκάζοντας;

Ἐνταῦθα μὲν οὖν ἴσως αὐτοῖς συγγνωστὰ πλάττουσιν [1084] [a] ἑτέρας φύσεις ὑποκειμένων· ἄλλη γὰρ οὐδεμία φαίνεται μηχανὴ φιλοτιμουμένοις σῶσαι καὶ διαφυλάξαι τὰς αὐξήσεις· ἐν δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ τί παθόντες ἢ τίνας πάλιν ἄλλας ὑποθέσεις κοσμοῦντες ἐνδημιουργοῦσι σωμάτων διαφορὰς καὶ ἰδέας ὀλίγου δέω εἰπεῖν ἀπείρους τὸ πλῆθος, οὐκ ἂν ἔχοι τις εἰπεῖν· ἀλλ’ ὅτι τὰς κοινὰς καὶ συνήθεις ἐξοικίζοντες ἐννοίας, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἀναιροῦντες καὶ διαφθείροντες ἑτέρας ἐπεισάγουσιν ἀλλοκότους καὶ ξένας. ἄτοπον γὰρ εὖ μάλα τὰς ἀρετὰς καὶ τὰς κακίας, πρὸς δὲ ταύταις τὰς τέχνας καὶ τὰς μνήμας πάσας, ἔτι δὲ φαντασίας [b] καὶ πάθη καὶ ὁρμὰς καὶ συγκαταθέσεις σώματα ποιουμένους ἐν μηδενὶ φάναι κεῖσθαι μηδ’ ὑπάρχειν τόπον τούτοις, ἕνα ‹δὲ› τὸν ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ πόρον στιγμιαῖον ἀπολιπεῖν, ὅπου τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν συστέλλουσι τῆς ψυχῆς, ὑπὸ τοσούτων σωμάτων κατεχόμενον, ὅσων τοὺς πάνυ δοκοῦντας ἀφορίζειν καὶ ἀποκρίνειν ἕτερον ἑτέρου πολὺ πλῆθος διαπέφευγε. τὸ δὲ μὴ μόνον σώματα ταῦτα ποιεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ζῷα λογικὰ καὶ ζῴων τοσούτων σμῆνος οὐ φίλιον οὐδ’ ἥμερον, ἀλλ’ †ὄχλον ἀντιστάτην κακίαις καὶ πολέμιον νοῦν ἔχοντας, ἀποφαίνειν ἕκαστον ἡμῶν παράδεισον ἢ μάνδραν ἢ δούριον ἵππον - ἢ τί ἄν τις ἃ πλάττουσιν οὗτοι διανοηθείη καὶ προσαγορεύσειεν; - ὑπερβολή τίς ἐστιν ὀλιγωρίας καὶ παρανομίας εἰς τὴν ἐνάργειαν καὶ τὴν συνήθειαν. οἱ δ’ οὐ μόνον τὰς ἀρετὰς καὶ τὰς κακίας [c] ζῷα εἶναι λέγουσιν οὐδὲ τὰ πάθη μόνον, ὀργὰς καὶ φθόνους καὶ λύπας καὶ ἐπιχαιρεκακίας, οὐδὲ καταλήψεις καὶ φαντασίας καὶ ἀγνοίας, οὐδὲ τὰς τέχνας ζῷα, τὴν σκυτοτομικὴν τὴν χαλκοτυπικήν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τούτοις ἔτι καὶ τὰς ἐνεργείας σώματα καὶ ζῷα ποιοῦσι, τὸν περίπατον ζῷον, τὴν ὄρχησιν τὴν ὑπόδεσιν τὴν προσαγόρευσιν τὴν λοιδορίαν· ἕπεται δὲ τούτοις καὶ γέλωτα ζῷον εἶναι καὶ κλαυθμόν· εἰ δὲ ταῦτα, καὶ βῆχα καὶ πταρμὸν καὶ στεναγμὸν πτύσιν τε πάντως καὶ ἀπόμυξιν καὶ τὰ λοιπά· ἔνδηλα γάρ ἐστι. καὶ μὴ δυσχεραινέτωσαν ἐπὶ ταῦτ’ ἀγόμενοι τῷ κατὰ μικρὸν λόγῳ, Χρυσίππου μνημονεύοντες ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ [d] τῶν Φυσικῶν Ζητημάτων οὕτω προσάγοντος· ‘οὐχ ἡ μὲν νὺξ σῶμ’ ἐστίν, ἡ δ’ ἑσπέρα καὶ ὁ ὄρθρος καὶ τὸ μέσον τῆς νυκτὸς σώματ’ οὔκ ἐστιν· οὐδ’ ἡ μὲν ἡμέρα σῶμ’ ἐστὶν οὐχὶ δὲ καὶ ἡ νουμηνία σῶμα καὶ ἡ δεκάτη καὶ πεντεκαιδεκάτη καὶ ἡ τριακὰς καὶ ὁ μὴν σῶμ’ ἐστὶ καὶ τὸ θέρος καὶ τὸ φθινόπωρον καὶ ὁ ἐνιαυτός.’

Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν παρὰ τὰς κοινὰς βιάζονται προλήψεις· ἐκεῖνα δ’ ἤδη καὶ παρὰ τὰς ἰδίας, τὸ θερμότατον περιψύξει καὶ πυκνώσει τὸ λεπτομερέστατον γεννῶντες. ἡ γὰρ ψυχὴ θερμότατόν ἐστι δήπου καὶ λεπτομερέστατον· ποιοῦσι δ’ αὐτὴν τῇ περιψύξει καὶ πυκνώσει τοῦ [e] σπέρματος οἷον στομώσει τὸ πνεῦμα μεταβάλλοντος, ἐκ φυτικοῦ ψυχικὸν γενόμενον. γεγονέναι δὲ καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἔμψυχον λέγουσι, τοῦ ὑγροῦ μεταβάλλοντος εἰς πῦρ νοερόν. ὥρα καὶ τὸν ἥλιον διανοεῖσθαι περιψύξει γεννώμενον. ὁ μὲν οὖν Ξενοφάνης διηγουμένου τινὸς ἐγχέλεις ἑωρακέναι ἐν ὕδατι θερμῷ ζώσας ‘οὐκοῦν’ εἶπεν ‘ἐν ψυχρῷ αὐτὰς ἑψήσομεν’ (Vorsokr. 21 A 17). τούτοις δ’ ἕποιτ’ ἄν, εἰ περιψύξει τὰ θερμότατα γεννῶσι καὶ πυκνώσει τὰ κουφότατα, θερμότητι πάλιν αὖ τὰ ψυχρὰ καὶ διαχύσει τὰ πυκνὰ καὶ διακρίσει τὰ βαρέα γεννᾶν, ἀλογίας τινὸς φυλάττουσιν ἀναλογίαν καὶ ...

[f] Ἐννοίας δ’ οὐσίαν αὐτῆς καὶ γένεσιν οὐ παρὰ τὰς ἐννοίας ὑποτίθενται; φαντασία γάρ τις ἡ ἔννοιά ἐστι, φαντασία δὲ τύπωσις ἐν ψυχῇ· ψυχῆς δὲ φύσις ἀναθυμίασις, ἣν τυπωθῆναι μὲν ἐργῶδες διὰ μανότητα, δεξαμένην δὲ τηρῆσαι τύπωσιν ἀδύνατον. ἥ τε γὰρ τροφὴ καὶ ἡ γένεσις [1085] [a] αὐτῆς ἐξ ὑγρῶν οὖσα συνεχῆ τὴν ἐπιφορὰν ἔχει καὶ τὴν ἀνάλωσιν, ἥ τε πρὸς τὸν ἀέρα ‹διὰ› τῆς ἀναπνοῆς ἐπιμιξία καινὴν ἀεὶ ποιεῖ τὴν ἀναθυμίασιν, ἐξισταμένην καὶ τρεπομένην ὑπὸ τοῦ θύραθεν ἐμβάλλοντος ὀχετοῦ καὶ πάλιν ἐξιόντος. ῥεῦμα γὰρ ἄν τις ὕδατος φερομένου μᾶλλον διανοηθείη σχήματα καὶ τύπους καὶ εἴδη διαφυλάττον ἢ πνεῦμα φερόμενον ἐντὸς ἀτμοῖς καὶ ὑγρότησιν, ἑτέρῳ δ’ ἔξωθεν ἐνδελεχῶς οἷον ἀργῷ καὶ ἀλλοτρίῳ πνεύματι κιρνάμενον. ἀλλ’ οὕτω παρακούουσιν ἑαυτῶν, ὥστε τὰς ἐννοίας ‹ἐν›αποκειμένας τινὰς ὁριζόμενοι νοήσεις, μνήμας [b] δὲ μονίμους καὶ σχετικὰς τυπώσεις, τὰς δ’ ἐπιστήμας καὶ παντάπασι πηγνύντες ὡς τὸ ἀμετάπτωτον καὶ βέβαιον ἐχούσας, εἶτα τούτοις ὑποτίθεσθαι βάσιν καὶ ἕδραν οὐσίας ὀλισθηρᾶς καὶ σκεδαστῆς καὶ φερομένης ἀεὶ καὶ ῥεούσης.

Στοιχείου γε μὴν ἔννοια καὶ ἀρχῆς κοινὴ πᾶσιν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν ἀνθρώποις ἐμπέφυκεν, ὡς ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἄκρατον εἶναι καὶ ἀσύνθετον· οὐ γὰρ στοιχεῖον οὐδ’ ἀρχὴ τὸ μεμιγμένον ἀλλ’ ἐξ ὧν μέμικται. καὶ μὴν οὗτοι τὸν θεὸν ἀρχὴν ὄντα σῶμα νοερὸν καὶ νοῦν ἐν ὕλῃ ποιοῦντες οὐ καθαρὸν οὐδ’ ἁπλοῦν οὐδ’ ἀσύνθετον ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἑτέρου καὶ δι’ ἕτερον ἀποφαίνουσιν· ἡ δ’ ὕλη καθ’ αὑτὴν ἄλογος [c] οὖσα καὶ ἄποιος τὸ ἁπλοῦν ἔχει καὶ τὸ ἀρχοειδές. ὁ θεὸς δή, εἴπερ οὐκ ἔστιν ἀσώματος οὐδ’ ἄυλος, ὡς ἀρχῆς μετέσχηκε τῆς ὕλης. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἓν καὶ ταὐτὸν ἡ ὕλη καὶ ὁ λόγος, οὐκ εὖ τὴν ὕλην ἄλογον ἀποδεδώκασιν· εἰ δ’ ἕτερα, †καὶ ἀμφοτέρων ταμίας ἄν τις ὁ θεὸς εἴη καὶ οὐχ ἁπλοῦν ἀλλὰ σύνθετον πρᾶγμα τῷ νοερῷ τὸ σωματικὸν ἐκ τῆς ὕλης προσειληφώς.

Τά γε μὴν τέσσαρα σώματα, γῆν καὶ ὕδωρ ἀέρα τε καὶ πῦρ, πρῶτα στοιχεῖα προσαγορεύοντες οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως τὰ μὲν ἁπλᾶ καὶ καθαρὰ τὰ δὲ σύνθετα καὶ μεμιγμένα ποιοῦσι. γῆν μὲν γὰρ τιθέασι καὶ ὕδωρ οὔθ’ αὑτὰ [d] συνέχειν οὔθ’ ἕτερα, πνευματικῆς δὲ μετοχῇ καὶ πυρώδους δυνάμεως τὴν ἑνότητα διαφυλάττειν· ἀέρα δὲ καὶ πῦρ αὑτῶν τ’ εἶναι δι’ εὐτονίαν συνεκτικά, καὶ τοῖς δυσὶν ἐκείνοις ἐγκεκραμένα τόνον παρέχειν καὶ τὸ μόνιμον καὶ οὐσιῶδες. πῶς οὖν ἔτι γῆ στοιχεῖον ἢ ὕδωρ, εἰ μήθ’ ἁπλοῦν μήτε πρῶτον μήθ’ αὑτῷ διαρκές, ἀλλ’ ἐνδεὲς ἔξωθεν εἰς ἀεὶ τοῦ συνέχοντος ἐν τῷ εἶναι καὶ σῴζοντος; οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐσίας αὐτῶν ἐπίνοιαν ἀπολελοίπασιν, ἀλλὰ πολλὴν ἔχει ταραχὴν καὶ ἀσάφειαν οὕτως ὁ λόγος λεγόμενος, τῆς γῆς ... τινὸς καθ’ ἑαυτήν. εἶτα πῶς οὖσα γῆ [e] καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ἀέρος δεῖται συνιστάντος αὐτὴν καὶ συνέχοντος; ‘ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστι γῆ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν οὐδ’ ὕδωρ, ἀλλὰ τὴν ὕλην ὁ ἀὴρ ὧδε μὲν συναγαγὼν καὶ πυκνώσας γῆν ἐποίησεν, ὧδε δὲ πάλιν διαλυθεῖσαν καὶ μαλαχθεῖσαν ὕδωρ.’ οὐδέτερον οὖν τούτων στοιχεῖον, οἷς ἕτερον ἀμφοτέροις οὐσίαν καὶ γένεσιν παρέσχηκεν.

Ἔτι τὴν μὲν οὐσίαν καὶ τὴν ὕλην ὑφεστάναι ταῖς ποιότησι λέγουσιν, ὡς σχεδὸν οὕτως τὸν ὅρον ἀποδιδόναι· τὰς δὲ ποιότητας αὖ πάλιν οὐσίας καὶ σώματα ποιοῦσι. ταῦτα δὲ πολλὴν ἔχει ταραχήν. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἰδίαν οὐσίαν αἱ ποιότητες ἔχουσι καθ’ ἣν σώματα λέγονται καί εἰσιν, [f] οὐχ ἑτέρας οὐσίας δέονται· τὴν γὰρ αὑτῶν ἔχουσιν. εἰ δὲ τοῦτο μόνον αὐταῖς ὑφέστηκε τὸ κοινόν, ὅπερ οὐσίαν οὗτοι καὶ ὕλην καλοῦσι, δῆλον ὅτι σώματος μετέχουσι, σώματα δ’ οὔκ εἰσι· τὸ γὰρ ὑφεστὼς καὶ δεχόμενον διαφέρειν ἀνάγκη τῶν ἃ δέχεται καὶ οἷς ὑφέστηκεν. οἱ δὲ τὸ [1086] [a] ἥμισυ βλέπουσι· τὴν γὰρ ὕλην ἄποιον ὀνομάζουσι, τὰς δὲ ποιότητας οὐκέτι βούλονται καλεῖν ἀύλους. καίτοι πῶς οἷόν τε σῶμα ποιότητος ἄνευ νοῆσαι, ποιότητα σώματος ἄνευ μὴ νοοῦντας; ὁ γὰρ συμπλέκων σῶμα πάσῃ ποιότητι λόγος οὐδενὸς ἐᾷ μὴ σύν τινι ποιότητι σώματος ἅψασθαι τὴν διάνοιαν. ἢ τοίνυν πρὸς τὸ ἀσώματον τῆς ποιότητος μαχόμενος μάχεσθαι καὶ πρὸς τὸ ἄποιον τῆς ὕλης ἔοικεν, ἢ θατέρου θάτερον ἀποκρίνων καὶ ἀμφότερα χωρίζειν ἀλλήλων. ὃν δέ τινες αὐτῶν προβάλλονται λόγον, ὡς ἄποιον τὴν οὐσίαν ὀνομάζοντες οὐχ ὅτι πάσης ἐστέρηται ποιότητος ἀλλ’ ὅτι πάσας ἔχει τὰς [b] ποιότητας, μάλιστα παρὰ τὴν ἔννοιάν ἐστιν· οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἄποιον νοεῖ τὸ μηδεμιᾶς ποιότητος ἄμοιρον οὐδ’ ἀπαθὲς τὸ πάντα πάσχειν ἀεὶ πεφυκὸς οὐδ’ ἀκίνητον τὸ πάντῃ κινητόν. ἐκεῖνο δ’ οὐ λέλυται, κἂν ἀεὶ μετὰ ποιότητος ἡ ὕλη νοῆται, τὸ ἑτέραν αὐτὴν νοεῖσθαι καὶ διαφέρουσαν τῆς ποιότητος.

Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum

ΟΤΙ ΟΥΔ’ ΗΔΕΩΣ ΖΗΝ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΚΑΤ’ ΕΠΙΚΟΥΡΟΝ

[1086] [b] Κωλώτης ὁ Ἐπικούρου συνήθης βιβλίον ἐξέδωκεν ἐπιγράψας ‘Ὅτι κατὰ τὰ τῶν ἄλλων φιλοσόφων δόγματα οὐδὲ ζῆν ἔστιν’. ὅσα τοίνυν ἡμῖν ἐπῆλθεν εἰπεῖν πρὸς [c] αὐτὸν ὑπὲρ τῶν φιλοσόφων, ἐγράφη πρότερον. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τῆς σχολῆς διαλυθείσης ἐγένοντο ‹λόγοι› πλείονες ἐν τῷ περιπάτῳ πρὸς τὴν αἵρεσιν, ἔδοξέ μοι καὶ τούτους ἀναλαβεῖν, εἰ καὶ δι’ ἄλλο μηθὲν ἀλλ’ ἐνδείξεως ἕνεκα τοῖς εὐθύνουσιν ἑτέρους, ὅτι δεῖ τοὺς λόγους ἕκαστον ὧν ἐλέγχει καὶ τὰ γράμματα μὴ παρέργως διελθεῖν, μηδὲ φωνὰς ἀλλαχόθεν ἄλλας ἀποσπῶντα καὶ ῥήμασιν ἄνευ πραγμάτων ἐπιτιθέμενον παρακρούεσθαι τοὺς ἀπείρους.

Προελθόντων γὰρ ἡμῶν εἰς τὸ γυμνάσιον ὥσπερ εἰώθειμεν ἐκ τῆς διατριβῆς, Ζεύξιππος ‘ἐμοὶ μέν’ ἔφη ‘δοκεῖ πολὺ τῆς προσηκούσης ὁ λόγος εἰρῆσθαι παρρησίας [d] μαλακώτερον· ἀπίασι δ’ ἡμῖν ἐγκαλοῦντες οἱ περὶ Ἡρακλείδην ‹ὡς› τοῦ Ἐπικούρου καὶ τοῦ Μητροδώρου [ἡμῶν] μηδὲν αἰτίων ὄντων θρασύτερον καθαψαμένοις.’ καὶ ὁ Θέων ‘εἶτ’ οὐκ ἔλεγες’ εἶπεν ‘ὅτι τοῖς ἐκείνων ὁ Κωλώτης παραβαλλόμενος εὐφημότατος ἀνδρῶν φαίνεται; τὰ γὰρ ἐν ἀνθρώποις αἴσχιστα ῥήματα, βωμολοχίας ληκυθισμοὺς ἀλαζονείας ἑταιρήσεις ἀνδροφονίας, βαρυστόνους πολυφθόρους βαρυεγκεφάλους συναγαγόντες Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ Σωκράτους καὶ Πυθαγόρου καὶ Πρωταγόρου καὶ Θεοφράστου καὶ Ἡρακλείδου καὶ Ἱππαρχίας καὶ τίνος γὰρ οὐχὶ τῶν ἐπιφανῶν κατεσκέδασαν, ὥστ’, [e] εἰ καὶ τἄλλα πάντα σοφῶς εἶχεν αὐτοῖς, διὰ τὰς βλασφημίας ταύτας καὶ κατηγορίας πορρωτάτω σοφίας ἂν εἴργεσθαι· ‘φθόνος γὰρ ἔξω θείου χοροῦ’ καὶ ζηλοτυπία δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἀποκρύψαι μὴ δυναμένη τὸ ἀλγοῦν.’ ὑπολαβὼν οὖν ὁ Ἀριστόδημος ‘Ἡρακλείδης οὖν’ ἔφη ‘γραμματικὸς [1087] [a] ὢν ἀντὶ τῆς ‘ποιητικῆς τύρβης’, ὡς ἐκεῖνοι λέγουσι, καὶ τῶν ‘Ὁμήρου μωρολογημάτων’ ἀποτίνει ταύτας Ἐπικούρῳ χάριτας, ἢ ὅτι Μητρόδωρος ἐν γράμμασι τοσούτοις ‹τῷ› ποιητῇ λελοιδόρηκεν; ἀλλ’ ἐκείνους μὲν ἐῶμεν, ὦ Ζεύξιππε· τὸ δ’ ἐν ἀρχῇ τῶν λόγων ῥηθὲν πρὸς τοὺς ἄνδρας, ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν ‹εὖ› ζῆν κατ’ αὐτούς, τί οὐ μᾶλλον, ἐπεὶ κέκμηκεν οὗτος, αὐτοὶ δι’ ἑαυτῶν περαίνομεν ἅμα καὶ Θέωνα παραλαβόντες;’ καὶ ὁ Θέων πρὸς αὐτόν ‘ἀλλ’ οὗτος μέν’ ἔφη ‘ὁ ἆθλος ἑτέροις ἐκτετέλεσται πρὸ ἡμῶν, ‘νῦν αὖτε σκοπὸν ἄλλον’ (χ 5. 6), εἰ δοκεῖ, θέμενοι τοιαύτῃ τινὶ δίκῃ μετίωμεν ὑπὲρ τῶν φιλοσόφων τοὺς ἄνδρας· [b] ἀποδεῖξαι γάρ, ἄνπερ ᾖ δυνατόν, ἐπιχειρήσωμεν, ὅτι μηδὲ ζῆν ἡδέως ἔστιν κατ’ αὐτούς.’ ‘παπαί’ εἶπον ἔγωγε γελάσας, ‘εἰς τὴν γαστέρα τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἔοικας ἐναλεῖσθαι καὶ τὴν περὶ τῶν κρεῶν ἐπάξειν, ἀφαιρούμενος ἡδονὴν ἀνθρώπων βοώντων· ‘οὐ γὰρ πυγμάχοι εἰμὲν ἀμύμονες’ οὐδὲ ῥήτορες οὐδὲ προστάται δήμων οὐδ’ ἄρχοντες, ‘ἀεὶ δ’ ἡμῖν δαίς τε φίλη’ (θ 246. 248) καὶ πᾶσα διὰ σαρκὸς ἐπιτερπὴς κίνησις ἐφ’ ἡδονήν τινα καὶ χαρὰν ψυχῆς ἀναπεμπομένη. δοκεῖς οὖν μοι μὴ τὸ ἔαρ ἐξαιρεῖν, ὥς φασιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ζῆν ἀφαιρεῖσθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας, εἰ τὸ ζῆν ἡδέως μὴ ἀπολείψεις αὐτοῖς.’ ‘τί οὖν’ εἶπεν ὁ Θέων, ‘εἰ [c] δοκιμάζεις τὸν λόγον, αὐτὸς οὐ χρῇ παρόν;’ ‘χρήσομαι’ εἶπον ‘ἀκροώμενος καὶ ἀποκρινόμενος, ἂν δέησθε· τὴν δ’ ἡγεμονίαν ὑμῖν παραδίδωμι.’ μικρὰ δὴ προφασισαμένου τοῦ Θέωνος Ἀριστόδημος ‘ὡς σύντομον’ ἔφη ‘καὶ λείαν ἔχων ὁδὸν ἀπετάφρευσας ἡμῖν πρὸς τὸν λόγον, οὐκ ἐάσας περὶ τοῦ καλοῦ πρότερον εὐθύνας ὑποσχεῖν τὴν αἵρεσιν. ἀνθρώπους γὰρ ἡδονὴν ὑποτιθεμένους τέλος οὐκ ἔστιν ἐξελάσαι τοῦ ἡδέως ζῆν ῥᾴδιον· τοῦ δὲ καλῶς ἐκπεσόντες ἅμ’ ‹ἂν› καὶ τοῦ ἡδέως συνεξέπιπτον, ἐπεὶ τὸ ἡδέως ζῆν ἄνευ τοῦ καλῶς ἀνύπαρκτόν ἐστιν, ὡς αὐτοὶ λέγουσι.’

Καὶ ὁ Θέων ‘ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μέν’ εἶπεν, ‘ἂν δόξῃ, τοῦ [d] λόγου προϊόντος ἀναθησόμεθα· νῦν δὲ χρησώμεθα τοῖς διδομένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν. οἴονται δὲ περὶ γαστέρα τἀγαθὸν εἶναι καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους πόρους τῆς σαρκὸς ἅπαντας, δι’ ὧν ἡδονὴ καὶ μὴ ἀλγηδὼν ἐπεισέρχεται· καὶ πάντα ‹τὰ› καλὰ καὶ σοφὰ ἐξευρήματα τῆς περὶ γαστέρα ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα γεγονέναι καὶ τῆς ὑπὲρ ταύτης ἐλπίδος ἀγαθῆς, ὡς ὁ σοφὸς εἴρηκε Μητρόδωρος (fr. 7). αὐτόθεν μὲν οὖν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, φαίνονται γλίσχρον τι καὶ σαθρὸν καὶ οὐ βέβαιον αἴτιον τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ λαμβάνοντες, ἀλλὰ τοῖς πόροις τούτοις, δι’ ὧν ἡδονὰς ἐπεισάγονται, καὶ πρὸς ἀλγηδόνας [e] ὁμοίως κατατετρημένον, μᾶλλον δ’ ἡδονὴν μὲν ὀλίγοις ἀλγηδόνα δὲ πᾶσι τοῖς μορίοις δεχόμενον. ποία γὰρ ἡδονὴ περὶ ἄρθρα καὶ νεῦρα καὶ πόδας καὶ χεῖρας, οἷς ἐνοικίζεται τὰ δεινὰ πάθη καὶ σχέτλια, ποδαγρικὰ καὶ ῥευματικὰ καὶ φαγεδαινικὰ καὶ διαβρώσεις καὶ ἀποσήψεις; ὀσμῶν τε καὶ χυμῶν τὰ ἥδιστα προσαγαγὼν τῷ σώματι μικρὸν εὑρήσεις χωρίον ἐν αὐτῷ παντάπασι τὸ κινούμενον λείως καὶ προσηνῶς, τὰ δ’ ἄλλα πολλάκις δυσχεραίνει καὶ ἀγανακτεῖ· πυρὶ δὲ καὶ σιδήρῳ καὶ δήγματι καὶ ὑστριχίσιν οὐδὲν ἀπαθὲς οὐδ’ ἀναίσθητον ἀλγηδόνος, ἀλλὰ καὶ καῦμα καὶ ῥῖγος εἰς ἅπαντα καταδύεται καὶ πυρετός, αἱ δ’ [f] ἡδοναὶ καθάπερ αὖραι πρὸς ἑτέραις ἕτεραι τοῦ σώματος ἄκραις ἐπιγελῶσαι διαχέονται. καὶ χρόνος ὁ μὲν τούτων οὐ πολὺς ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ διᾴττοντες ἔξαψιν ἅμα καὶ σβέσιν ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ λαμβάνουσιν, ἐκ‹είνων› δὲ τοῦ πόνου μάρτυς ὁ Αἰσχύλου Φιλοκτήτης ἱκανός· οὐ γὰρ ὁ δράκων, φησίν, ἀνῆκεν, ἀλλ’ ‘ἐνῴκισε †δεινὴν στομάτων ἔμφυσιν, [1088] [a] ποδὸς λαβεῖν’ (fr. 252). ὀλισθη... ἀλγηδὼν † οὐδ’ ἕτερα τοιαῦτα κινοῦσα καὶ γαργαλίζουσα τοῦ σώματος· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τὸ τῆς μηδικῆς σπέρμα πολυκαμπὲς καὶ σκαληνὸν ἐμφύεται τῇ γῇ καὶ διαμένει πολὺν χρόνον ὑπὸ τραχύτητος, οὕτως ὁ πόνος ἄγκιστρα καὶ ῥίζας διασπείρων καὶ συμπλεκόμενος τῇ σαρκὶ καὶ παραμένων οὐχ ἡμέρας οὐδὲ νύκτας μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ὥρας ἐτῶν ἐνίοις καὶ περιόδους ὀλυμπιακὰς μόλις ὑπ’ ἄλλων πόνων ὥσπερ ἥλων σφοδροτέρων ἐκκρουόμενος ἀπαλλάττεται. τίς γὰρ ἔπιε χρόνον τοσοῦτον ἢ ἔφαγεν, ὅσον διψῶσιν οἱ πυρέττοντες καὶ πεινῶσιν οἱ πολιορκούμενοι; ποῦ δ’ ἔστιν ἄνεσις καὶ συνουσία [b] μετὰ φίλων, ἐφ’ ὅσον κολάζουσι καὶ στρεβλοῦσι τύραννοι; καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο τῆς τοῦ σώματος φαυλότητος καὶ ἀφυΐας πρὸς τὸ ἡδέως ζῆν ἐστιν, ὅτι τοὺς πόνους ὑπομένει μᾶλλον ἢ τὰς ἡδονὰς καὶ πρὸς ἐκείνους ἔχει ῥώμην καὶ δύναμιν, ἐν δὲ ταύταις ἀσθενές ἐστι καὶ ἁψίκορον. τὸ δ’ ἡδέως ζῆν †ἂν ἅπτωνται , πλείονα περὶ τούτου λέγειν οὐκ ἐῶσιν ἡμᾶς, ὁμολογοῦντες αὐτοὶ μικρὸν εἶναι τὸ τῆς σαρκὸς ἡδύ, μᾶλλον δ’ ἀκαρές, εἴ γε δὴ μὴ κενολογοῦσι μηδ’ ἀλαζονεύονται, Μητρόδωρος μὲν λέγων ὅτι ‘πολλάκις προσεπτύσαμεν ταῖς τοῦ σώματος ἡδοναῖς’ (fr. 62), Ἐπίκουρος [c] δὲ καὶ γελᾶν φησι ταῖς ὑπερβολαῖς τοῦ περὶ τὸ σῶμα νοσήματος πολλάκις κάμνοντα τὸν σοφόν. οἷς οὖν οἱ πόνοι τοῦ σώματος οὕτως εἰσὶν ἐλαφροὶ καὶ ῥᾴδιοι, πῶς ἔνεστί τι ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ἀξιόλογον; καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ χρόνῳ μηδὲ μεγέθει τῶν πόνων ἀποδέουσιν, ἀλλὰ περὶ πόνους ἔχουσι, καὶ πέρας αὐταῖς κοινὸν Ἐπίκουρος τὴν παντὸς τοῦ ἀλγοῦντος ὑπεξαίρεσιν ἐπιτέθεικεν, ὡς τῆς φύσεως ἄχρι τοῦ λῦσαι τὸ ἀλγεινὸν αὐξούσης τὸ ἡδύ, περαιτέρω δὲ μὴ ἐώσης προελθεῖν κατὰ τὸ μέγεθος ἀλλὰ ποικιλμούς τινας οὐκ ἀναγκαίους, ὅταν [οὐκ] ἐν τῷ μὴ πονεῖν γένηται, δεχομένης· ἡ δ’ ἐπὶ τοῦτο μετ’ ὀρέξεως [d] πορεία, μέτρον ἡδονῆς οὖσα, κομιδῇ βραχεῖα καὶ σύντομος. ὅθεν αἰσθόμενοι τῆς ἐνταῦθα γλισχρότητος ὥσπερ ἐκ χωρίου λυπροῦ τοῦ σώματος μεταφέρουσι τὸ τέλος εἰς τὴν ψυχήν, ὡς ἐκεῖ νομὰς καὶ λειμῶνας ἀμφιλαφεῖς ἡδονῶν ἕξοντες,

‘ἐν δ’ Ἰθάκῃ οὔτ’ ἂρ δρόμοι εὐρέες ‹οὔτε τι λειμών›’

(δ 605),

οὔτε λείη περὶ τὸ σαρκίδιον ἡ ἀπόλαυσις ἀλλὰ τραχεῖα, μεμιγμένη πρὸς πολὺ τὸ ἀλλότριον καὶ σφυγματῶδες.’

Ὑπολαβὼν οὖν ὁ Ζεύξιππος ‘εἶτ’ οὐ καλῶς’ ἔφη ‘δοκοῦσί σοι ποιεῖν οἱ ἄνδρες, ἀρχόμενοι μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος, ἐν ᾧ πρῶτον ἐφάνη γένεσις ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχὴν [e] ὡς βεβαιοτέραν καὶ τὸ πᾶν ἐν ταύτῃ τελειοῦντες;’ ‘καλῶς νὴ Δί’’ ἔφη Θέων ‘καὶ κατὰ φύσιν, εἴ τι κρεῖττον ἐνταῦθα μετιόντες καὶ τελειότερον ἀληθῶς ἀνευρίσκουσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ θεωρητικοὶ καὶ πολιτικοὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν. εἰ δ’ ἀκούεις αὐτῶν μαρτυρομένων καὶ βοώντων, ὡς ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ ψυχὴ τῶν ὄντων πέφυκε χαίρειν καὶ γαληνίζειν πλὴν ἐπὶ σώματος ἡδοναῖς παρούσαις ἢ προσδοκωμέναις, καὶ τοῦτ’ αὐτῆς τὸ ἀγαθόν ἐστιν, ἆρ’ οὐ δοκοῦσί σοι διεράματι τοῦ σώματος χρῆσθαι τῇ ψυχῇ, ‹καὶ› καθάπερ οἶνον ἐκ πονηροῦ καὶ μὴ στέγοντος ἀγγείου τὴν ἡδονὴν διαχέοντες ἐνταῦθα καὶ παλαιοῦντες οἴεσθαι σεμνότερόν τι ποιεῖν καὶ [f] τιμιώτερον; καίτοι γ’ οἶνον μὲν χρόνος διαχυθέντα τηρεῖ καὶ συνηδύνει, τῆς δ’ ἡδονῆς ἡ ψυχὴ παραλαβοῦσα τὴν μνήμην ὥσπερ ὀσμὴν ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν φυλάσσει· ζέσασα γὰρ ἐπὶ σαρκὶ κατασβέννυται, καὶ τὸ μνημονευόμενον αὐτῆς ἀμαυρόν ἐστι καὶ κνισῶδες, ὥσπερ ἑώλων ὧν τις [1089] [a] ἔπιεν ἢ ἔφαγεν ἀποτιθεμένου καὶ ταμιεύοντος ἐπινοίας ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ χρωμένου δηλονότι ταύταις προσφάτων μὴ παρόντων. ὅρα δ’ ὅσῳ μετριώτερον οἱ Κυρηναϊκοί, καίπερ ἐκ μιᾶς οἰνοχόης Ἐπικούρῳ πεπωκότες, οὐδ’ ὁμιλεῖν ἀφροδισίοις οἴονται δεῖν μετὰ φωτὸς ἀλλὰ σκότος προθεμένους, ὅπως μὴ τὰ εἴδωλα τῆς πράξεως ἀναλαμβάνουσα διὰ τῆς ὄψεως ἐναργῶς ἡ διάνοια πολλάκις ἀνακαίῃ τὴν ὄρεξιν. οἱ δὲ τούτῳ μάλιστα τὸν σοφὸν ἡγούμενοι διαφέρειν, τῷ μνημονεύειν ἐναργῶς καὶ συνέχειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὰ περὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς φάσματα καὶ πάθη καὶ κινήσεις, εἰ μὲν οὐθὲν ἄξιον σοφίας παρεγγυῶσιν, ὥσπερ ἐν ἀσώτων οἰκίᾳ [b] τῇ ψυχῇ τοῦ σοφοῦ τὰ τῆς ἡδονῆς ἐκκλύσματα μένειν ἐῶντες, μὴ λέγωμεν· ὅτι δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν ἀπὸ τούτων ἡδέως ζῆν, αὐτόθεν πρόδηλον. οὐ γὰρ εἰκὸς εἶναι μέγα τῆς ἡδονῆς τὸ μνημονευόμενον, εἰ μικρὸν ἐδόκει τὸ παρόν· οὐδ’ οἷς συνεξεφέρετο μετρίως γινομένοις, ὑπερχαίρειν γενομένων· ὅπου οὐδὲ τοῖς ἐκπεπληγμένοις τὰ σωματικὰ καὶ θαυμάζουσιν ἐμμένει τὸ χαίρειν παυσαμένοις, ἀλλὰ σκιά τις ὑπολείπεται καὶ ὄναρ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τῆς ἡδονῆς ἀποπταμένης, οἷον ὑπέκκαυμα τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν, ὥσπερ ἐν ὕπνοις διψῶντος ἢ ἐρῶντος ἀτελεῖς ἡδοναὶ καὶ ἀπολαύσεις δριμύτερον [c] ἐγείρουσι τὸ ἀκόλαστον. οὔτε δὴ τούτοις ἐπιτερπὴς ἡ μνήμη τῶν ἀπολελαυσμένων, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ὑπολείμματος ἡδονῆς ἀμυδροῦ καὶ διακένου πολὺ τὸ οἰστρῶδες καὶ νύττον ἐναργοῦς ἀναφέρουσα τῆς ὀρέξεως, οὔτε τοὺς μετρίους καὶ σώφρονας εἰκὸς ἐνδιατρίβειν τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ τῶν τοιούτων οὐδ’, ἅπερ ἔσκωπτε τὸν ‹Ἐπίκουρον› Καρνεάδης, πράττοντας οἷον ἐξ ἐφημερίδων ἀναλέγεσθαι, ποσάκις Ἡδείᾳ καὶ Λεοντίῳ συνῆλθον ἢ ποῦ Θάσιον ἔπιον ‹ἢ› ποίας εἰκάδος ἐδείπνησαν πολυτελέστατα. δεινὴν γὰρ ἐμφαίνει καὶ θηριώδη περὶ τὰ γινόμενα καὶ προσδοκώμενα τῆς ἡδονῆς ἔργα ταραχὴν καὶ λύσσαν ἡ τοσαύτη πρὸς [d] ἀναμνήσεις αὐτῆς βάκχευσις τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ πρόστηξις.

Ὅθεν αὐτοί μοι δοκοῦσι τούτων αἰσθόμενοι τῶν ἀτοπημάτων εἰς τὴν ἀπονίαν καὶ τὴν εὐστάθειαν ὑποφεύγειν τῆς σαρκός, ὡς ἐν τῷ ταύτην ἐπινοεῖν περί τινας ἐσομένην καὶ γεγενημένην τοῦ ἡδέως ζῆν ὄντος· τὸ γὰρ εὐσταθὲς σαρκὸς κατάστημα καὶ τὸ περὶ ταύτης πιστὸν ἔλπισμα τὴν ἀκροτάτην χαρὰν καὶ βεβαιοτάτην ἔχειν τοῖς ἐπιλογίζεσθαι δυναμένοις. ὅρα δὴ πρῶτον μὲν οἷα ποιοῦσι, τὴν εἴθ’ ἡδονὴν ταύτην εἴτ’ ἀπονίαν ἢ εὐστάθειαν ἄνω καὶ κάτω μετερῶντες ἐκ τοῦ σώματος εἰς τὴν ψυχήν, εἶτα πάλιν ἐκ ταύτης εἰς ἐκεῖνο τῷ μὴ στέγειν ἀπορρέουσαν [e] καὶ διολισθάνουσαν ἀναγκαζόμενοι τῇ ἀρχῇ συνάπτειν, καί ‘τὸ μὲν ἡδόμενον’, ὥς φησι, ‘τῆς σαρκὸς τῷ χαίροντι τῆς ψυχῆς ὑπερείδοντες, αὖθις δ’ ‹ἐκ› τοῦ χαίροντος εἰς τὸ ἡδόμενον τῇ ἐλπίδι τελευτῶντες.’ καὶ πῶς οἷόν τε τῆς βάσεως τινασσομένης μὴ συντινάσσεσθαι τὸ ἐπὸν ἢ βέβαιον ἐλπίδα καὶ χαρὰν ἀσάλευτον εἶναι περὶ πράγματος σάλον ἔχοντος τοσοῦτον καὶ μεταβολάς, ὅσαι σφάλλουσι τὸ σῶμα, πολλαῖς μὲν ἔξωθεν ὑποκείμενον ἀνάγκαις καὶ πληγαῖς ἐν αὑτῷ δ’ ἔχον ἀρχὰς κακῶν, ἃς οὐκ ἀποτρέπει λογισμός; οὐδὲ γὰρ προσέπιπτεν ‹ἂν› ἀνδράσι νοῦν ἔχουσι στραγγουρικὰ πάθη καὶ δυσεντερικὰ καὶ φθίσεις καὶ [f] ὕδρωπες, ὧν τοῖς μὲν αὐτὸς Ἐπίκουρος συνηνέχθη τοῖς δὲ Πολύαινος τὰ δὲ Νεοκλέα καὶ Ἀγαθόβουλον ἐξήγαγε. καὶ ταῦτ’ οὐκ ὀνειδίζομεν, εἰδότες καὶ Φερεκύδην καὶ Ἡράκλειτον ἐν νόσοις χαλεπαῖς γενομένους, ἀλλ’ ἀξιοῦμεν αὐτούς, εἰ τοῖς πάθεσι βούλονται τοῖς ἑαυτῶν ὁμολογεῖν [1090] [a] καὶ μὴ κεναῖς φωναῖς θρασυνόμενοι καὶ δημαγωγοῦντες ἀλαζονείαν προσοφλισκάνειν, ἢ μὴ λαμβάνειν χαρᾶς ἀρχὴν ἁπάσης ‹τὴν› τῆς σαρκὸς εὐστάθειαν ἢ μὴ φάναι χαίρειν καὶ ὑβρίζειν τοὺς ἐν πόνοις ὑπερβάλλουσι καὶ νόσοις γινομένους. κατάστημα μὲν γὰρ εὐσταθὲς σαρκὸς γίνεται πολλάκις, ἔλπισμα δὲ πιστὸν ὑπὲρ σαρκὸς καὶ βέβαιον οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν ψυχῇ νοῦν ἐχούσῃ γενέσθαι· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν θαλάσσῃ κατ’ Αἰσχύλον (Suppl. 770) ‘ὠδῖνα τίκτει νὺξ κυβερνήτῃ σοφῷ’ καὶ γαληνή (τὸ γὰρ μέλλον ἄδηλον), οὕτως ἐν σώματι ψυχὴν εὐσταθοῦντι καὶ ταῖς περὶ σώματος [b] ἐλπίσι τἀγαθὸν θεμένην οὐκ ἔστιν ἄφοβον καὶ ἀκύμονα διεξαγαγεῖν. οὐ γὰρ ἔξωθεν μόνον, ὥσπερ ἡ θάλασσα, χειμῶνας ἴσχει καὶ καταιγισμοὺς τὸ σῶμα, πλείονας δὲ ταραχὰς ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ μείζονας ἀναδίδωσιν· εὐδίαν δὲ χειμερινὴν μᾶλλον ἄν τις ἢ σαρκὸς ἀβλάβειαν ἐλπίσειεν αὑτῷ παραμενεῖν βεβαίως. τὸ γὰρ ἐφήμερα ‹τὰ ἡμέτερα› καλεῖν καὶ ἀβέβαια καὶ ἀστάθμητα φύλλοις τε γινομένοις ἔτους ὥρᾳ καὶ φθίνουσιν εἰκάζειν τὸν βίον τί παρέσχηκεν ἄλλο τοῖς ποηταῖς ἢ τὸ τῆς σαρκὸς ἐπίκηρον καὶ πολυβλαβὲς καὶ νοσῶδες, ἧς δὴ καὶ τὸ ἄκρον ἀγαθὸν δεδιέναι καὶ κολούειν παρεγγυῶσι· ‘σφαλερὸν γὰρ αἱ εἰς ἄκρον [c] εὐεξίαι’ φησὶν Ἱπποκράτης (Aph. I 3), ‘ὁ δ’ ἄρτι θάλλων σαρκὶ διοπετὴς ὅπως ἀστὴρ ἀπέσβη’ κατὰ τὸν Εὐριπίδην (fr. 971)· ὑπὸ δὲ βασκανίας καὶ φθόνου βλάπτεσθαι προσορωμένους οἴονται τοὺς καλούς, ὅτι τάχιστα τὸ ἀκμάζον ἴσχει μεταβολὴν τοῦ σώματος δι’ ἀσθένειαν.

Ὅτι δ’ ὅλως μοχθηρὰ τὰ πράγματα [καὶ] πρὸς βίον ἄλυπόν ἐστιν αὐτοῖς, σκόπει καὶ ἀφ’ ὧν πρὸς ἑτέρους λέγουσι. τοὺς γὰρ ἀδικοῦντας καὶ παρανομοῦντας ἀθλίως φασὶ καὶ περιφόβως ζῆν τὸν πάντα χρόνον, ὅτι, κἂν λαθεῖν δύνωνται, πίστιν περὶ τοῦ λαθεῖν λαβεῖν ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν· ὅθεν [d] ὁ τοῦ μέλλοντος ἀεὶ φόβος ἐγκείμενος οὐκ ἐᾷ χαίρειν οὐδὲ θαρρεῖν ἐπὶ τοῖς παροῦσι. ταῦτα δὲ καὶ πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς εἰρηκότες λελήθασιν. εὐσταθεῖν μὲν γὰρ ἔστι καὶ ὑγιαίνειν τῷ σώματι πολλάκις, πίστιν δὲ λαβεῖν περὶ τοῦ διαμενεῖν ἀμήχανον· ἀνάγκη δὴ ταράττεσθαι καὶ ὠδίνειν ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ μέλλον ὑπὲρ τοῦ σώματος, ἣν περιμένουσιν ἐλπίδα πιστὴν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ βέβαιον οὐδέποτε κτήσασθαι δυναμένους. τὸ δὲ μηδὲν ἀδικεῖν οὐδέν ἐστι πρὸς τὸ θαρρεῖν· οὐ γὰρ τὸ δικαίως παθεῖν ἀλλὰ τὸ παθεῖν φοβερόν, οὐδὲ συνεῖναι μὲν αὐτὸν ἀδικίαις ἀνιαρὸν περιπεσεῖν δὲ ταῖς [e] ἄλλων οὐ χαλεπόν· ἀλλ’ εἰ μὴ μεῖζον, οὐκ ἔλαττόν γε τὸ κακὸν ἦν Ἀθηναίοις ἡ Λαχάρους καὶ Συρακοσίοις ἡ Διονυσίου χαλεπότης ἤπερ αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις· ταράττοντες γὰρ ἐταράττοντο καὶ πείσεσθαι κακῶς προσεδόκων ἐκ τοῦ προαδικεῖν καὶ προλυμαίνεσθαι τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας. ὄχλων δὲ θυμοὺς καὶ λῃστῶν ὠμότητας καὶ κληρονόμων ἀδικίας, ἔτι δὲ λοιμοὺς ἀέρων καὶ θάλασσαν †εὐβραγκήν, ὑφ’ ἧς Ἐπίκουρος ὀλίγον ἐδέησε καταποθῆναι πλέων εἰς Λάμψακον, ὡς γράφει, τί ἂν λέγοι τις; ἀρκεῖ γὰρ ἡ φύσις τῆς σαρκός, ὕλην ἔχουσα νόσων ἐν ἑαυτῇ καὶ τοῦτο δὴ τὸ [f] παιζόμενον ‘ἐκ τοῦ βοὸς τοὺς ἱμάντας’ λαμβάνουσα τὰς ἀλγηδόνας ἐκ τοῦ σώματος, ὁμοίως τοῖς τε φαύλοις καὶ τοῖς ἐπιεικέσι τὸν βίον ἐπισφαλῆ ποιεῖν καὶ φοβερόν, ἄνπερ ἐπὶ σαρκὶ καὶ τῇ περὶ σάρκα ἐλπίδι μάθωσιν ἄλλῳ δὲ [1091] [a] μηθενὶ χαίρειν καὶ θαρρεῖν, ὡς Ἐπίκουρος ἔν τ’ ἄλλοις πολλοῖς γέγραφε καὶ τούτοις ἃ ἔστι περὶ Τέλους.

Οὐ μόνον τοίνυν ἄπιστον καὶ ἀβέβαιον ἀρχὴν λαμβάνουσι τοῦ ἡδέως ζῆν ἀλλὰ καὶ παντάπασιν εὐκαταφρόνητον καὶ μικράν, εἴπερ αὐτοῖς κακῶν ἀποφυγὴ τὸ χαρτόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν, ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν διανοεῖσθαί φασιν, οὐδ’ ὅλως τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν ὅποι τεθήσεται τὸ ἀγαθόν, εἰ μὴ μόνον, ὅθεν ἐξελαύνεται τὸ κακὸν αὐτῆς, ὥς φησι Μητρόδωρος ἐν τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς Σοφιστάς (fr. 28)· ‘ὥστε τοῦτ’ αὐτὸ ‹τὸ› ἀγαθόν ἐστι, τὸ φυγεῖν τὸ κακόν· ἔνθα γὰρ τεθήσεται τἀγαθόν, οὐκ ἔστιν, ὅταν μηθὲν ἔτι ὑπεξίῃ μήτ’ [b] ἀλγεινὸν μήτε λυπηρόν.’ ὅμοια δὲ καὶ τὰ Ἐπικούρου λέγοντος τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ φύσιν ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς φυγῆς τοῦ κακοῦ καὶ τῆς μνήμης καὶ ἐπιλογίσεως καὶ χάριτος, ὅτι τοῦτο συμβέβηκεν αὐτῷ, γεννᾶσθαι· ‘τὸ γὰρ ποιοῦν’ φησίν ‘ἀνυπέρβλητον γῆθος τὸ †παρ’ αὐτὸν πεφυγμένον μέγα κακόν· καὶ αὕτη φύσις ἀγαθοῦ, ἄν τις ὀρθῶς ἐπιβάλῃ, ἔπειτα σταθῇ καὶ μὴ κενῶς περιπατῇ περὶ ἀγαθοῦ θρυλῶν.’ φεῦ τῆς μεγάλης ἡδονῆς τῶν ἀνδρῶν καὶ μακαριότητος, ἣν καρποῦνται χαίροντες ἐπὶ τῷ μὴ κακοπαθεῖν μηδὲ λυπεῖσθαι μηδ’ ἀλγεῖν. ἆρ’ οὐκ ἄξιόν ἐστιν ἐπὶ τούτοις καὶ φρονεῖν καὶ λέγειν ἃ λέγουσιν, ἀφθάρτους καὶ ἰσοθέους [c] ἀποκαλοῦντες αὑτοὺς καὶ δι’ ὑπερβολὰς καὶ ἀκρότητας ἀγαθῶν εἰς βρόμους καὶ ὀλολυγμοὺς ἐκβακχεύοντες ὑπὸ τῆς ἡδονῆς, ὅτι τῶν ἄλλων περιφρονοῦντες ἐξευρήκασι μόνοι θεῖον ἀγαθὸν καὶ μέγα τὸ μηδὲν ἔχειν κακόν; ὥστε μήτε συῶν ἀπολείπεσθαι μήτε προβάτων εὐδαιμονίᾳ, τὸ τῇ σαρκὶ καὶ τῇ ψυχῇ περὶ τῆς σαρκὸς ἱκανῶς ἔχειν μακάριον τιθεμένους. ἐπεὶ τοῖς γε κομψοτέροις καὶ γλαφυρωτέροις τῶν ζῴων οὐκ ἔστι φυγὴ κακοῦ τέλος, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς ᾠδὰς ἀπὸ κόρου τρέπεται καὶ νήξεσι χαίρει καὶ πτήσεσι καὶ ἀπομιμεῖσθαι παίζοντα φωνάς τε παντοδαπὰς καὶ [d] ψόφους ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς καὶ γαυρότητος ἐπιχειρεῖ· καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα χρῆται φιλοφροσύναις καὶ σκιρτήσεσιν, ὅταν ἐκφύγῃ τὸ κακόν, τἀγαθὸν πεφυκότα ζητεῖν, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως πᾶν τὸ ἀλγεινὸν καὶ τὸ ἀλλότριον ὡς ἐμποδὼν ὄντα τῇ διώξει τοῦ οἰκείου καὶ κρείττονος ἐξωθοῦντα τῆς φύσεως.

Τὸ γὰρ ἀναγκαῖον οὐκ ἀγαθόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐπέκεινα τῆς φυγῆς τῶν κακῶν κεῖται τὸ ἐφετὸν καὶ τὸ αἱρετὸν καὶ νὴ Δία τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ οἰκεῖον, ὡς Πλάτων ἔλεγε, καὶ ἀπηγόρευε τὰς λυπῶν καὶ πόνων ἀπαλλαγὰς ἡδονὰς μὴ νομίζειν, ἀλλ’ οἷόν τινα σκιαγραφίαν ἢ μῖξιν οἰκείου καὶ ἀλλοτρίου, καθάπερ λευκοῦ καὶ μέλανος, ἀπὸ τοῦ κάτω πρὸς τὸ [e] μέσον ἀναφερομένων, ἀπειρίᾳ δὲ τοῦ ἄνω καὶ ἀγνοίᾳ τὸ μέσον ἄκρον ἡγουμένων εἶναι καὶ πέρας· ὥσπερ Ἐπίκουρος ἡγεῖται καὶ Μητρόδωρος, οὐσίαν τἀγαθοῦ καὶ ἀκρότητα τὴν τοῦ κακοῦ φυγὴν τιθέμενοι καὶ χαίροντες ἀνδραπόδων τινὰ χαρὰν ἢ δεσμίων ἐξ εἱργμοῦ λυθέντων ἀσμένως ἀλειψαμένων καὶ ἀπολουσαμένων μετ’ αἰκίας καὶ μάστιγας, ἐλευθέρας δὲ καὶ καθαρᾶς καὶ ἀμιγοῦς καὶ ἀμωλωπίστου χαρᾶς ἀγεύστων καὶ ἀθεάτων. οὐ γάρ, εἰ τὸ ψωριᾶν τὴν σάρκα καὶ λημᾶν τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν ἀλλότριον, ἤδη καὶ τὸ κνᾶσθαι καὶ τὸ ἀπομάττεσθαι θαυμάσιον· οὐδ’ [f] εἰ τὸ ἀλγεῖν καὶ φοβεῖσθαι τὰ θεῖα καὶ ταράττεσθαι τοῖς ἐν Ἅιδου κακόν, ἡ τούτων ἀποφυγὴ μακάριον καὶ ζηλωτόν. ἀλλὰ μικρόν τινα τόπον καὶ γλίσχρον ἀποφαίνουσι τῆς χαρᾶς, ἐν ᾧ στρέφεται καὶ κυλινδεῖται, μέχρι τοῦ μὴ ταράττεσθαι τοῖς ἐν Ἅιδου κακοῖς [ἡ τούτων] παρὰ τὰς κενὰς δόξας προϊοῦσα καὶ τοῦτο ποιουμένη τῆς σοφίας [1092] [a] τέλος, ὃ δόξειεν ‹ἂν› αὐτόθεν ὑπάρχειν τοῖς ἀλόγοις. εἰ γὰρ πρὸς τὴν ἀπονίαν τοῦ σώματος οὐ διαφέρει πότερον δι’ αὑτὸ ἢ φύσει τοῦ πονεῖν ἐκτός ἐστιν, οὐδὲ πρὸς τὴν ἀταραξίαν τῆς ψυχῆς μεῖζόν ἐστι τὸ δι’ αὑτὴν ἢ κατὰ φύσιν οὕτως ἔχειν ὥστε μὴ ταράττεσθαι. καίτοι φήσειεν ἄν τις οὐκ ἀλόγως ἐρρωμενεστέραν εἶναι διάθεσιν τὴν φύσει μὴ δεχομένην τὸ ταράττον ἢ τὴν ἐπιμελείᾳ καὶ λόγῳ διαφεύγουσαν. ἔστω δ’ ἔχειν ἐπίσης· καὶ γὰρ οὕτως φανοῦνται τῶν θηρίων πλέον οὐδὲν ἔχοντες ἐν τῷ μὴ ταράττεσθαι τοῖς ἐν Ἅιδου καὶ ‹τοῖς› περὶ θεῶν λεγομένοις μηδὲ [b] προσδοκᾶν λύπας μηδ’ ἀλγηδόνας ὅρον ‹οὐκ› ἐχούσας. αὐτὸς γοῦν Ἐπίκουρος εἰπὼν ὡς ‘εἰ μηδὲν ἡμᾶς αἱ ὑπὲρ τῶν μετεώρων ὑποψίαι ἠνώχλουν ἔτι τε τὰ περὶ θανάτου καὶ ἀλγηδόνων, οὐκ ἄν ποτε προσεδεόμεθα φυσιολογίας’ (Κ. δ. 11) εἰς τοῦτ’ ἄγειν ἡμᾶς οἴεται τὸν λόγον, ἐν ᾧ τὰ θηρία φύσει καθέστηκεν. οὔτε γὰρ ὑποψίας ἔχει φαύλας περὶ θεῶν οὔτε δόξαις κεναῖς ἐνοχλεῖται ‹περὶ› τῶν μετὰ θάνατον οὐδ’ ὅλως ἐπινοεῖ τι δεινὸν ἐν τούτοις οὐδ’ οἶδε. καίτοι εἰ μὲν ἐν τῇ προλήψει τοῦ θεοῦ τὴν πρόνοιαν ἀπέλιπον, ἐφαίνοντ’ ἂν ἐλπίσι χρησταῖς πλέον ἔχοντες οἱ φρόνιμοι τῶν θηρίων πρὸς τὸ ἡδέως ζῆν· ἐπεὶ δὲ τέλος ἦν τοῦ περὶ θεῶν λόγου τὸ μὴ φοβεῖσθαι θεὸν ἀλλὰ παύσασθαι [c] ταραττομένους, βεβαιότερον οἶμαι τοῦθ’ ὑπάρχειν τοῖς ὅλως μὴ νοοῦσι θεὸν ἢ τοῖς νοεῖν μὴ βλάπτοντα μεμαθηκόσιν. οὐ γὰρ ἀπήλλακται δεισιδαιμονίας ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ περιπέπτωκεν, οὐδ’ ἀποτέθειται τὴν ταράττουσαν ἔννοιαν περὶ τῶν θεῶν ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ εἴληφε. τὰ δ’ αὐτὰ περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου λεκτέον· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἐλπίζειν χρηστὸν ἀπ’ ἐκείνων οὐδετέροις ὑπάρχει, τοῦ δ’ ὑποπτεύειν καὶ φοβεῖσθαι ‹τὰ› μετὰ θάνατον ἧττον μέτεστιν οἷς οὐ γίνεται θανάτου πρόληψις ἢ τοῖς προλαμβάνουσιν ὡς οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς ὁ θάνατος. πρὸς μέν γε τούτους ἐστίν, ἐφ’ ὅσον διαλογίζονταί τι καὶ σκοποῦσι, [d] τὰ δ’ ὅλως ἀπήλλακται τοῦ φροντίζειν τῶν οὐ πρὸς ἑαυτά, πληγὰς δὲ φεύγοντα καὶ τραύματα καὶ φόνους τοῦτο τοῦ θανάτου δέδοικεν, ὃ καὶ τούτοις φοβερόν ἐστιν.

Ἃ μὲν οὖν λέγουσιν αὑτοῖς ὑπὸ σοφίας παρεσκευασμένα, τοιαῦτά ἐστιν· ὧν δ’ ἑαυτοὺς ἀφαιροῦνται καὶ ἀπελαύνουσιν, ἤδη σκοπῶμεν. τὰς μὲν γὰρ ἐπὶ σαρκὸς εὐπαθείᾳ τῆς ψυχῆς διαχύσεις, ἐὰν ὦσι μέτριαι, μηθὲν ἐχούσας μέγα μηδ’ ἀξιόλογον, ἂν δ’ ὑπερβάλλωσι, πρὸς τῷ κενῷ καὶ ἀβεβαίῳ φορτικὰς φαινομένας καὶ θρασείας οὐδὲ ψυχικὰς ἄν τις οὐδὲ χαράς, ἀλλὰ σωματικὰς ἡδονὰς [e] καὶ οἷον ἐπιμειδιάσεις καὶ συνεπιθρύψεις προσείποι τῆς ψυχῆς. ἃς δ’ ἄξιον καὶ δίκαιον εὐφροσύνας καὶ χαρὰς νομίζεσθαι, καθαραὶ μέν εἰσι τοῦ ἐναντίου καὶ σφυγμὸν οὐδένα κεκραμένον οὐδὲ δηγμὸν οὐδὲ μετάνοιαν ἔχουσιν, οἰκεῖον δὲ τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ ψυχικὸν ἀληθῶς καὶ γνήσιον καὶ οὐκ ἐπείσακτον αὐτῶν τἀγαθόν ἐστιν οὐδ’ ἄλογον, ἀλλ’ εὐλογώτατον ἐκ τοῦ θεωρητικοῦ καὶ φιλομαθοῦς ἢ πρακτικοῦ καὶ φιλοκάλου τῆς διανοίας φυόμενον. ὧν ὅσας ἑκάτερον καὶ ἡλίκας ἡδονὰς ἀναδίδωσιν, οὐκ ἄν τις ἀνύσειε διελθεῖν προθυμούμενος· ὑπομνῆσαι δὲ βραχέως ‹αἵ τε μαθήσεις› αἵ θ’ ἱστορίαι πάρεισι πολλὰς μὲν ἐπιτερπεῖς [f] διατριβὰς ἔχουσαι τὸ δ’ ἐπιθυμοῦν ἀεὶ τῆς ἀληθοῦς ἀκόρεστον καταλείπουσαι καὶ ἄπληστον ἡδονῆς· δι’ ἣν οὐδὲ τὸ ψεῦδος ἀμοιρεῖ χάριτος, ἀλλὰ καὶ πλάσμασι καὶ ποιήμασι τοῦ πιστεύεσθαι μὴ προσόντος ἔνεστιν ὅμως [1093] [a] τὸ πεῖθον. ἐννόει γάρ, ὡς δακνόμενοι τὸν Πλάτωνος ἀναγινώσκομεν Ἀτλαντικὸν καὶ τὰ τελευταῖα τῆς Ἰλιάδος, οἷον ἱερῶν κλειομένων ἢ θεάτρων ἐπιποθοῦντες τοῦ μύθου τὸ λειπόμενον. αὐτῆς δὲ τῆς ἀληθείας ἡ μάθησις οὕτως ἐράσμιόν ἐστι καὶ ποθεινὸν ὡς τὸ ζῆν καὶ τὸ εἶναι, διὰ τὸ γινώσκειν· τοῦ δὲ θανάτου τὰ σκυθρωπότατα λήθη καὶ ἄγνοια καὶ σκότος. ᾗ καὶ νὴ Δία μάχονται τοῖς φθείρουσι τῶν ἀποθανόντων τὴν αἴσθησιν ὀλίγου δεῖν ἅπαντες, ὡς ἐν μόνῳ τῷ αἰσθανομένῳ καὶ γινώσκοντι τῆς ψυχῆς τιθέμενοι τὸ ζῆν καὶ τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ χαίρειν. ἔστι [b] γὰρ καὶ τοῖς ἀνιῶσι τὸ μεθ’ ἡδονῆς τινος ἀκούεσθαι· καὶ ταραττόμενοι πολλάκις ὑπὸ τῶν λεγομένων καὶ κλαίοντες ὅμως λέγειν κελεύομεν, ὥσπερ οὗτος·

‘οἴμοι πρὸς αὐτῷ γ’ εἰμὶ τῷ δεινῷ λέγειν.’ -

‘κἄγωγ’ ἀκούειν· ἀλλ’ ὅμως ἀκουστέον’

(Soph. O. R. 1169).

ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ἔοικε τῆς περὶ τὸ πάντα γινώσκειν ἡδονῆς ἀκρασία τις εἶναι καὶ ῥύσις ἐκβιαζομένη τὸν λογισμόν, ὅταν δὲ μηδὲν ἔχουσα βλαβερὸν ἢ λυπηρὸν ἱστορία καὶ διήγησις ἐπὶ πράξεσι καλαῖς καὶ μεγάλαις προσλάβῃ λόγον ἔχοντα δύναμιν καὶ χάριν, ὡς τὸν Ἡροδότου τὰ Ἑλληνικὰ καὶ τὰ Περσικὰ τὸν Ξενοφῶντος, ‘ὅσσα θ’ Ὅμηρος [c] ἐθέσπισε θέσκελα εἰδώς’, ἢ ἃς Περιόδους Εὔδοξος ἢ Κτίσεις καὶ Πολιτείας Ἀριστοτέλης ἢ Βίους ἀνδρῶν Ἀριστόξενος (fr. 10a W.) ἔγραψεν, οὐ μόνον μέγα καὶ πολὺ τὸ εὐφραῖνον ἀλλὰ καὶ καθαρὸν καὶ ἀμεταμέλητόν ἐστι. τίς δ’ ἂν φάγοι πεινῶν καὶ πίοι διψῶν τὰ Φαιάκων ἥδιον ἢ διέλθοι τὸν Ὀδυσσέως ἀπόλογον τῆς πλάνης; τίς δ’ ἂν ἡσθείη συναναπαυσάμενος τῇ καλλίστῃ γυναικὶ μᾶλλον ἢ προσαγρυπνήσας οἷς γέγραφε περὶ Πανθείας Ξενοφῶν ἢ περὶ Τιμοκλείας Ἀριστόβουλος ἢ Θήβης Θεόπομπος;

Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα τῆς ψυχῆς, ἐξωθοῦσι δὲ καὶ τὰς [d] ἀπὸ τῶν μαθημάτων. καίτοι ταῖς μὲν ἱστορίαις ἁπλοῦν τι καὶ λεῖον ἔστιν, αἱ δ’ ἀπὸ γεωμετρίας καὶ ἀστρολογίας καὶ ἁρμονικῆς δριμὺ καὶ ποικίλον ἔχουσαι τὸ δέλεαρ οὐθὲν τῶν ἀγωγίμων ἀποδέουσιν, ἕλκουσαι καθάπερ ἴυγξι τοῖς διαγράμμασιν· ὧν ὁ γευσάμενος, ἄνπερ ἔμπειρος ᾖ, τὰ Σοφοκλέους περίεισιν ᾄδων (fr. 224)

‘μουσομανεῖ †δὲ λάφθην δαν καὶ τὸ ποτιδειραν,

εὔχομαι δ’ ἔκ τε λύρας ἔκ τε νόμων,

οὓς Θαμύρας περίαλλα μουσοποιεῖ’

καὶ νὴ Δί’ Εὔδοξος καὶ Ἀρίσταρχος καὶ Ἀρχιμήδης. ὅπου γὰρ οἱ φιλογραφοῦντες οὕτως ἄγονται τῇ πιθανότητι τῶν [e] ἔργων, ὥστε Νικίαν γράφοντα τὴν Νεκυίαν ἐρωτᾶν πολλάκις τοὺς οἰκέτας εἰ ἠρίστηκε, Πτολεμαίου δὲ τοῦ βασιλέως ἑξήκοντα τάλαντα τῆς γραφῆς συντελεσθείσης πέμψαντος αὐτῷ, μὴ λαβεῖν μηδ’ ἀποδόσθαι τὸ ἔργον, τίνας οἰόμεθα καὶ πηλίκας ἡδονὰς ἀπὸ γεωμετρίας δρέπεσθαι καὶ ἀστρολογίας Εὐκλείδην γράφοντα τὰ διοπτικὰ καὶ Φίλιππον ἀποδεικνύντα περὶ τοῦ σχήματος τῆς σελήνης καὶ Ἀρχιμήδην ἀνευρόντα τῇ γωνίᾳ τὴν διάμετρον τοῦ ἡλίου τηλικοῦτον τοῦ μεγίστου κύκλου μέρος οὖσαν, ἡλίκον ἡ γωνία τῶν τεσσάρων ὀρθῶν, καὶ Ἀπολλώνιον καὶ Ἀρίσταρχον ἑτέρων τοιούτων εὑρετὰς γενομένους, ὧν νῦν [f] ἡ θέα καὶ κατανόησις ἡδονάς τε μεγάλας καὶ φρόνημα θαυμάσιον ἐμποιεῖ τοῖς μανθάνουσιν; καὶ οὐκ ἄξιον οὐδαμῇ τὰς ἐκ ‘τῶν ὀπτανίων καὶ ματρυλείων ἡδονὰς’ [1094] [a] ἐκείνας παραβάλλοντα ταύταις καταισχύνειν τὸν Ἑλικῶνα καὶ τὰς Μούσας,

‘ἔνθ’ οὔτε ποιμὴν ἀξιοῖ φέρβειν βοτὰ

οὔτ’ ἦλθέ πω σίδαρος’ (Eur. Hipp. 75)·

ἀλλ’ αὗται μέν εἰσιν ὡς ἀληθῶς ‘ἀκήρατοι’ νομαὶ ‘μελισσῶν’, ἐκεῖνα δὲ συῶν καὶ τράγων κνησμοῖς ἔοικε, προσαναπιμπλάντα τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ παθητικώτατον. ἔστι μὲν οὖν ποικίλον καὶ ἰταμὸν τὸ φιλήδονον, οὔπω δέ τις ἐρωμένῃ πλησιάσας ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ἐβουθύτησεν οὐδ’ ηὔξατό τις ἐμπλησθεὶς ὄψων ἢ πεμμάτων βασιλικῶν εὐθὺς ἀποθανεῖν· Εὔδοξος δ’ ηὔχετο παραστὰς τῷ ἡλίῳ καὶ καταμαθὼν τὸ [b] σχῆμα τοῦ ἄστρου καὶ τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ εἶδος ὡς ὁ Φαέθων καταφλεγῆναι, καὶ Πυθαγόρας ἐπὶ τῷ διαγράμματι βοῦν ἔθυσεν, ὥς φησιν Ἀπολλόδωρος·

‘ἡνίκα Πυθαγόρης τὸ περικλεὲς εὕρετο γράμμα,

κεῖνος ἐφ’ ᾧ λαμπρὴν ἤγαγε βουθυσίην,’

εἴτε περὶ τῆς ὑποτεινούσης ὡς ἴσον δύναται ταῖς περιεχούσαις τὴν ὀρθήν, εἴτε [πρόβλημα] περὶ τοῦ χωρίου τῆς παραβολῆς. Ἀρχιμήδην δὲ βίᾳ τῶν διαγραμμάτων ἀποσπῶντες ὑπήλειφον οἱ θεράποντες· ὁ δ’ ἐπὶ τῆς κοιλίας ἔγραφε τὰ σχήματα τῇ στλεγγίδι, καὶ λουόμενος ὥς [c] φασιν ἐκ τῆς ὑπερχύσεως ἐννοήσας τὴν τοῦ στεφάνου μέτρησιν οἷον ἔκ τινος κατοχῆς ἢ ἐπιπνοίας ἐξήλατο βοῶν ‘εὕρηκα’, καὶ τοῦτο πολλάκις φθεγγόμενος ἐβάδιζεν. οὐδενὸς δ’ ἀκηκόαμεν οὔτε γαστριμάργου περιπαθῶς οὕτως ‘βέβρωκα’ βοῶντος οὔτ’ ἐρωτικοῦ ‘πεφίληκα’, μυρίων μυριάκις ἀκολάστων γεγονότων καὶ ὄντων· ἀλλὰ καὶ βδελυττόμεθα τοὺς μεμνημένους δείπνων ἐμπαθέστερον, ὡς ἐφ’ ἡδοναῖς μικραῖς καὶ μηδενὸς ἀξίαις ὑπερασμενίζοντας. Εὐδόξῳ δὲ καὶ Ἀρχιμήδει καὶ Ἱππάρχῳ συνενθουσιῶμεν, καὶ Πλάτωνι πειθόμεθα περὶ τῶν μαθημάτων, [d] ὡς ἀμελούμενα δι’ ἄγνοιαν καὶ ἀπειρίαν ‘ὅμως βίᾳ ὑπὸ χάριτος αὐξάνεται’ (Rep. 528c).

Ταύτας μέντοι τὰς τηλικαύτας καὶ τοσαύτας ἡδονὰς ὥσπερ ἀεννάους ‹ποταμοὺς› ἐκτρέποντες οὗτοι καὶ ἀποστρέφοντες οὐκ ἐῶσι γεύεσθαι τοὺς πλησιάσαντας αὐτοῖς, ἀλλὰ τοὺς μὲν ‘ἐπαραμένους τὰ ἀκάτια’ φεύγειν ἀπ’ αὐτῶν κελεύουσι, Πυθοκλέους δὲ πάντες καὶ πᾶσαι δέονται δι’ Ἐπικούρου καὶ ἀντιβολοῦσιν, ὅπως οὐ ζηλώσει τὴν ἐλευθέριον καλουμένην παιδείαν· Ἀπελλῆν δέ τινα θαυμάζοντες καὶ ὑπερασπαζόμενοι γράφουσιν ὅτι τῶν μαθημάτων ἀποσχόμενος ἐξ ἀρχῆς καθαρὸν ἑαυτὸν ἐτήρησε.

[e] περὶ δὲ τῆς ἱστορίας, ἵνα τὴν ἄλλην ἀνηκοΐαν ἐάσω, παραθήσομαι μόνα τὰ Μητροδώρου, γράφοντος ἐν τοῖς περὶ Ποιημάτων (fr. 24)· ‘ὅθεν μηδ’ εἰδέναι φάσκων, μεθ’ ὁποτέρων ἦν ὁ Ἕκτωρ, ἢ τοὺς πρώτους στίχους τῆς Ὁμήρου ποιήσεως ἢ πάλιν τὰ ἐν μέσῳ, μὴ ταρβήσῃς.’

Ὅτι τοίνυν αἱ τοῦ σώματος ἡδοναὶ καθάπερ οἱ ἐτησίαι μαραίνονται μετὰ τὴν ἀκμὴν καὶ ἀπολήγουσιν, οὐ λέληθε τὸν Ἐπίκουρον. διαπορεῖ γοῦν, εἰ γέρων ὁ σοφὸς ὢν καὶ μὴ δυνάμενος πλησιάζειν ἔτι ταῖς τῶν καλῶν ἁφαῖς χαίρει καὶ ψηλαφήσεσιν, οὐ τὰ αὐτὰ μέντοι Σοφοκλεῖ διανοούμενος ἀσμένως ἐκφυγόντι τὴν ἡδονὴν ταύτην ὥσπερ [f] ἄγριον καὶ λυττῶντα δεσπότην. ἀλλ’ ἔδει γε τοὺς ἀπολαυστικοὺς ὁρῶντας ὅτι πολλὰς ἀφαυαίνει τῶν ἡδονῶν τὸ γῆρας ‘ἥ τ’ Ἀφροδίτη τοῖς γέρουσιν ἄχθεται’ κατ’ Εὐριπίδην [1095][a] (fr. 23), ταύτας μάλιστα συνάγειν τὰς ἡδονάς, ὥσπερ εἰς πολιορκίαν ἄσηπτα σιτία καὶ ἄφθαρτα παρατιθεμένους, εἶτ’ ἄγειν ἀφροδίσια τοῦ βίου καὶ μεθεόρτους καλὰς ἐν ἱστορίαις καὶ ποιήμασι διατρίβοντας ἢ προβλήμασι μουσικοῖς καὶ γεωμετρικοῖς. οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἐπῆλθεν αὐτοῖς εἰς νοῦν βαλέσθαι τὰς τυφλὰς καὶ νωδὰς ἐκείνας ψηλαφήσεις καὶ ἐπιπηδήσεις τοῦ ἀκολάστου μεμαθηκόσιν, εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο, γράφειν περὶ Ὁμήρου καὶ περὶ Εὐριπίδου, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης καὶ Ἡρακλείδης καὶ Δικαίαρχος. ἀλλ’ οἶμαι τοιούτων ἐφοδίων μὴ φροντίσαντες, τῆς δ’ [b] ἄλλης αὐτῶν πραγματείας ἀτερποῦς καὶ ξηρᾶς, ὥσπερ αὐτοὶ τὴν ἀρετὴν λέγουσιν, οὔσης ἥδεσθαι πάντως ἐθέλοντες, τοῦ δὲ σώματος ἀπαγορεύοντος, αἰσχρὰ καὶ ἄωρα πράττειν ὁμολογοῦσι, τῶν τε προτέρων ἡδονῶν ἀναμιμνήσκοντες ἑαυτοὺς καὶ χρώμενοι ταῖς παλαιαῖς ἀπορίᾳ προσφάτων ὥσπερ τεταριχευμέναις, καὶ νεκρὰς ἄλλας πάλιν καὶ τεθνηκυίας οἷον ἐν τέφρᾳ ψυχρᾷ τῇ σαρκὶ κινοῦντες παρὰ φύσιν καὶ ἀναζωπυροῦντες, ἅτε δὴ μηδὲν οἰκεῖον ἡδὺ μηδὲ χαρᾶς ἄξιον ἔχοντες ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ παρεσκευασμένον.

Καίτοι τὰ ἄλλα μὲν ὡς ἡμῖν ἐπῆλθεν εἴρηται, [c] μουσικὴν δ’ ὅσας ἡδονὰς καὶ χάριτας οἵας φέρουσαν ἀποστρέφονται καὶ φεύγουσι, ‹καὶ› βουλόμενος οὐκ ἄν τις ἐκλάθοιτο, δι’ ἀτοπίαν ὧν Ἐπίκουρος λέγει, φιλοθέωρον μὲν ἀποφαίνων τὸν σοφὸν ἐν ταῖς Διαπορίαις καὶ χαίροντα παρ’ ὁντινοῦν ἕτερον ἀκροάμασι καὶ θεάμασι Διονυσιακοῖς, προβλήμασι δὲ μουσικοῖς καὶ κριτικῶν φιλολόγοις ζητήμασιν οὐδὲ παρὰ πότον διδοὺς χώραν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς φιλομούσοις τῶν βασιλέων παραινῶν στρατιωτικὰ διηγήματα καὶ φορτικὰς βωμολοχίας ὑπομένειν μᾶλλον ἐν τοῖς συμποσίοις ἢ λόγους περὶ μουσικῶν καὶ ποιητικῶν [d] προβλημάτων περαινομένους. ταυτὶ γὰρ ἐτόλμησε γράφειν ἐν τῷ περὶ Βασιλείας, ὥσπερ Σαρδαναπάλῳ γράφων ἢ Νανάρῳ τῷ σατραπεύσαντι Βαβυλῶνος. οὐδὲ γὰρ Ἱέρων γ’ ἂν οὐδ’ Ἄτταλος οὐδ’ Ἀρχέλαος ἐπείσθησαν Εὐριπίδην καὶ Σιμωνίδην καὶ Μελανιππίδην καὶ Κράτητας καὶ Διοδότους ἀναστήσαντες ἐκ τῶν συμποσίων κατακλῖναι Κάρδακας καὶ Ἀγριάνας μεθ’ ἑαυτῶν καὶ Καλλίας γελωτοποιοὺς καὶ Θρασωνίδας τινὰς καὶ Θρασυλέοντας, ὀλολυγμοὺς καὶ κροτοθορύβους ποιοῦντας. εἰ δὲ Πτολεμαῖος ὁ πρῶτος συναγαγὼν τὸ μουσεῖον τούτοις ἐνέτυχε τοῖς καλοῖς καὶ βασιλικοῖς παραγγέλμασιν, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν εἶπε ‘τοῖς Σαμίοις, ὦ Μοῦσα, τίς ὁ φθόνος;’ Ἀθηναίων γὰρ οὐδενὶ πρέπει ταῖς Μούσαις οὕτως ἀπεχθάνεσθαι καὶ πολεμεῖν,

‘ὅσσα δὲ μὴ πεφίληκε Ζεύς, ἀτύζονται βοὰν

Πιερίδων ἀίοντα’ (Pind. Pyth. 1, 13).

τί λέγεις, ὦ Ἐπίκουρε; κιθαρῳδῶν καὶ αὐλητῶν ἕωθεν ἀκροασόμενος εἰς τὸ θέατρον βαδίζεις, ἐν δὲ συμποσίῳ Θεοφράστου περὶ συμφωνιῶν διαλεγομένου καὶ Ἀριστοξένου περὶ μεταβολῶν καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους περὶ Ὁμήρου τὰ ὦτα καταλήψῃ ταῖς χερσὶ δυσχεραίνων καὶ βδελυττόμενος; εἶτ’ οὐκ ἐμμελέστερον ἀποφαίνουσι τὸν Σκύθην [e] Ἀτέαν, ὃς Ἰσμηνίου τοῦ αὐλητοῦ ληφθέντος αἰχμαλώτου καὶ παρὰ πότον αὐλήσαντος ὤμοσεν ἥδιον ἀκούειν τοῦ ἵππου χρεμετίζοντος; οὐχ ὁμολογοῦσι δὲ τῷ καλῷ πολεμεῖν τὸν ἄσπονδον καὶ ἀκήρυκτον πόλεμον, εἰ μηδεμία ἡδονὴ πρόσεστι; τί σεμνὸν καὶ καθάριον ἀσπάζονται καὶ [1096] [a] ἀγαπῶσιν; οὐκ ἦν δὲ πρὸς τὸ ἡδέως ζῆν ἐπιεικέστερον μύρα καὶ θυμιάματα δυσχεραίνειν ὡς κάνθαροι καὶ γῦπες ἢ κριτικῶν καὶ μουσικῶν λαλιὰν βδελύττεσθαι καὶ φεύγειν; ποῖος γὰρ ἂν αὐλὸς ἢ κιθάρα διηρμοσμένη πρὸς ᾠδὴν ἢ τίς χορός ‘εὐρύοπα κέλαδον ἀκροσόφων ἀγνύμενον διὰ στομάτων’ φθεγγόμενος οὕτως εὔφρανεν Ἐπίκουρον καὶ Μητρόδωρον, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλη καὶ Θεόφραστον καὶ Δικαίαρχον καὶ Ἱερώνυμον οἱ περὶ χορῶν λόγοι καὶ διδασκαλιῶν καὶ τὰ [δι’] αὐλῶν προβλήματα καὶ ῥυθμῶν καὶ ἁρμονιῶν; οἷον διὰ τί τῶν ἴσων αὐλῶν ὁ στενότερος ‹ὀξύτερον, ὁ δ’ εὐρύτερος› βαρύτερον φθέγγεται· καὶ [b] διὰ τί, τῆς σύριγγος ἀνασπωμένης, πᾶσιν ὀξύνεται τοῖς φθόγγοις, κλινομένης δὲ πάλιν βαρύνεται, καὶ συναχθεὶς πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον ‹βαρύτερον›, διαχθεὶς δ’ ὀξύτερον ἠχεῖ· καὶ τί δήποτε τῶν θεάτρων ἂν ἄχυρα τῆς ὀρχήστρας κατασκεδάσῃς, ὁ ἦχος τυφλοῦται, καὶ χαλκοῦν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐν Πέλλῃ βουλόμενον ποιῆσαι τὸ προσκήνιον οὐκ εἴασεν ὁ τεχνίτης ὡς διαφθεροῦντα τῶν ὑποκριτῶν τὴν φωνήν· καὶ τί δήποτε τῶν γενῶν διαχεῖ τὸ χρωματικόν, ἡ δ’ ἁρμονία συνίστησιν. ἤθη δὲ ποιητῶν καὶ πλάσματα καὶ διαφοραὶ χαρακτήρων καὶ λύσεις ἀποριῶν ἐν τῷ [c] πρέποντι καὶ γλαφυρῷ τὸ οἰκεῖον ἅμα καὶ πιθανὸν ἔχουσαι τὸ τοῦ Ξενοφῶντος ἐκεῖνο μοι δοκοῦσι (Cyn. 5, 33) καὶ τὸν ἐρῶντα ποιεῖν ἐπιλανθάνεσθαι· τοσοῦτον ἡδονῇ κρατοῦσιν.

Ἧς οὐ μέτεστι τούτοις, ὡς δέ φασιν οὐδὲ βούλονται μετεῖναι· κατατείναντες δὲ τὸ θεωρητικὸν εἰς τὸ σῶμα καὶ κατασπάσαντες ὥσπερ μολιβδίσι ταῖς τῆς σαρκὸς ἐπιθυμίαις οὐδὲν ἀπολείπουσιν ἱπποκόμων ἢ ποιμένων χόρτον ἢ καλάμην ἤ τινα πόαν προβαλλόντων, ὡς ταῦτα βόσκεσθαι καὶ τρώγειν προσῆκον αὐτῶν τοῖς θρέμμασιν. ἢ γὰρ οὐχ οὕτως ἀξιοῦσι τὴν ψυχὴν ταῖς τοῦ σώματος [d] ἡδοναῖς κατασυβωτεῖν, ὅσον ἐλπίσαι τι περὶ σαρκὸς ἢ παθεῖν ἢ μνημονεῦσαι χαίρουσαν, οἰκεῖον δὲ μηδὲν ἡδὺ μηδὲ τερπνὸν ἐξ αὑτῆς λαμβάνειν μηδὲ ζητεῖν ἐῶντες; καίτοι τί γένοιτ’ ἂν ἀλογώτερον ἢ δυοῖν ὄντοιν, ἐξ ὧν ὁ ἄνθρωπος πέφυκε, σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς, ψυχῆς δὲ τάξιν ἡγεμονικωτέραν ἐχούσης, σώματος μὲν ἴδιόν τι καὶ κατὰ φύσιν καὶ οἰκεῖον ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, ψυχῆς δὲ μηθέν, ἀλλὰ τῷ σώματι καθῆσθαι προσβλέπουσαν αὐτὴν καὶ τοῖς μὲν τοῦ σώματος πάθεσιν ἐπιμειδιῶσαν καὶ συνηδομένην καὶ συγχαίρουσαν, αὐτὴν δ’ ἀκίνητον ἐξ ἀρχῆς καὶ ἀπαθῆ καὶ μηδὲν αἱρετὸν ἔχουσαν μηδ’ ὀρεκτὸν ὅλως μηδὲ χαρτόν; [e] ἢ γὰρ ἁπλῶς ἀποκαλυψαμένους ἔδει σαρκοποιεῖν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὅλον, ὥσπερ ἔνιοι ποιοῦσι τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς οὐσίαν ἀναιροῦντες, ἢ δύο φύσεις ἐν ἡμῖν διαφόρους ἀπολιπόντας ἴδιον ἀπολιπεῖν ἑκατέρας καὶ ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακὸν καὶ οἰκεῖον καὶ ἀλλότριον· ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ τῶν αἰσθήσεων ἑκάστη πρὸς ἴδιόν τι πέφυκεν αἰσθητόν, εἰ καὶ πάνυ συμπαθοῦσιν ἀλλήλαις. ἔστι δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς ἴδιον αἰσθητήριον ὁ νοῦς, ᾧ μηθὲν οἰκεῖον ὑποκεῖσθαι, μὴ θέαμα μὴ κίνημα μὴ πάθος συγγενὲς οὗ τυγχάνουσα χαίρειν πέφυκε, πάντων ἀλογώτατόν ἐστιν· εἰ μή τι νὴ Δία λέληθα [f] συνεπισυκοφαντῶν τοὺς ἄνδρας.’

Κἀγὼ πρὸς αὐτόν ‘οὐχ ἡμῖν γε κριταῖς’ ἔφην, ‘ἀλλὰ πάσης ἀφεῖσαι τῆς ἐπηρείας, ὥστε θαρρῶν τὰ λοιπὰ τοῦ λόγου πέραινε.’ ‘πῶς;’ εἶπεν· ‘οὐ γὰρ Ἀριστόδημος ἡμᾶς, εἰ σὺ παντάπασιν ἀπηγόρευκας, διαδέξεται;’ [1097] [a] ‘πάνυ μὲν οὖν’ εἶπεν ὁ Ἀριστόδημος, ‘ὅταν ἀποκάμῃς ὥσπερ οὗτος· ἔτι δ’ ἀκμάζων, ὦ μακάριε, χρῆσαι σεαυτῷ, [καὶ] μὴ δοκῇς ἀπομαλθακίζεσθαι.’ ‘καὶ μήν’ ὁ Θέων εἶπε ‘πάνυ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστι τὸ λειπόμενον· λείπεται δὲ τὸ πρακτικὸν ὅσας ἡδονὰς ἔχει διελθεῖν. αὐτοὶ δὲ δήπου λέγουσιν ὡς τὸ εὖ ποιεῖν ἥδιόν ἐστι τοῦ ‹εὖ› πάσχειν. εὖ δὲ ποιεῖν ἔστι μὲν ἀμέλει καὶ διὰ λόγων, τὸ δὲ πλεῖστον ἐν πράξει καὶ μέγιστον, ὡς τοὔνομα τῆς εὐεργεσίας ὑφηγεῖται καὶ μαρτυροῦσιν αὐτοί. μικρῷ γὰρ ἔμπροσθεν ἠκούομεν’ ἔφη ‘τούτου λέγοντος, οἵας φωνὰς ἀφῆκεν Ἐπίκουρος, [b] οἷα δὲ γράμματα τοῖς φίλοις ἔπεμψεν, ὑμνῶν καὶ μεγαλύνων Μητρόδωρον, ὡς εὖ τε καὶ νεανικῶς ἐξ ἄστεως ἅλαδε κατέβη Μιθρῇ τῷ Σύρῳ βοηθήσων, καὶ ταῦτα πράξαντος οὐθὲν τότε τοῦ Μητροδώρου. τίνας οὖν οἰόμεθα καὶ πηλίκας ἡδονὰς εἶναι τὰς Πλάτωνος, ὁπηνίκα Δίων ὁρμήσας ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ κατέλυσε Διονύσιον καὶ Σικελίαν ἠλευθέρωσε; τίνας δ’ Ἀριστοτέλους, ὅτε τὴν πατρίδα κειμένην ἐν ἐδάφει πάλιν ἀνέστησε καὶ κατήγαγε τοὺς πολίτας; τίνας δὲ Θεοφράστου καὶ Φαινίου τοὺς τῆς πατρίδος ἐκκοψάντων τυράννους; ἰδίᾳ μὲν γὰρ ὅσοις ἐβοήθησαν [c] ἀνδράσιν, οὐ πυροὺς διαπέμποντες οὐδ’ ἀλφίτων μέδιμνον, ὡς Ἐπίκουρος ἐνίοις ἔπεμψεν, ἀλλὰ φεύγοντας διαπραξάμενοι κατελθεῖν καὶ δεδεμένους λυθῆναι καὶ τέκνα καὶ γυναῖκας ἐστερημένους ἀπολαβεῖν, τί ἂν λέγοι τις ὑμῖν ἀκριβῶς εἰδόσιν; ἀλλὰ τὴν ἀτοπίαν οὐδὲ βουλόμενον ἔστι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου παρελθεῖν, τὰς μὲν Θεμιστοκλέους καὶ Μιλτιάδου πράξεις ὑπὸ πόδας τιθεμένου καὶ κατευτελίζοντος, ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ δὲ ταυτὶ τοῖς φίλοις γράφοντος· ‘δαιμονίως τε καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς ἐπεμελήθητε ἡμῶν τὰ περὶ τὴν τοῦ σίτου κομιδὴν καὶ οὐρανομήκη σημεῖα ἐνδέδειχθε τῆς πρὸς ἐμὲ εὐνοίας.’ ὥστ’, [d] εἴ τις ἐξεῖλε τὸ σιτάριον ἐκ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς τοῦ φιλοσόφου, δόξαν ἂν παραστῆσαι τὰ ῥήματα τῆς χάριτος ὡς ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ὅλης ἢ τοῦ δήμου τῶν Ἀθηναίων ἐλευθερωθέντος ἢ σωθέντος γραφομένης.

Ὅτι μὲν οὖν καὶ πρὸς τὰς τοῦ σώματος ἡδονὰς ἡ φύσις δεῖται χορηγίας πολυτελοῦς καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν μάζῃ καὶ φακῇ τὸ ἥδιστον, ἀλλ’ ὄψα καὶ Θάσια καὶ μύρα ‘καὶ πεπτὰ καὶ κροτητὰ τῆς ξουθοπτέρου πελάνῳ μελίσσης ἀφθόνως δεδευμένα’ (Eur. fr. 467) ζητοῦσιν αἱ τῶν ἀπολαυστικῶν ὀρέξεις, καὶ πρός γε τούτοις εὐπρεπεῖς καὶ νέας γυναῖκας, οἷα Λεόντιον καὶ Βοίδιον καὶ Ἡδεῖα καὶ [e] Νικίδιον ἐνέμοντο περὶ τὸν κῆπον, ἀφῶμεν. ταῖς μέντοι τῆς ψυχῆς χαραῖς ὁμολογουμένως μέγεθος ὑποκεῖσθαι δεῖ πράξεων καὶ κάλλος ἔργων ἀξιολόγων, εἰ μέλλουσι μὴ διάκενοι μηδ’ ἀγεννεῖς καὶ κορασιώδεις ἀλλ’ ἐμβριθεῖς ἔσεσθαι καὶ βέβαιοι καὶ μεγαλοπρεπεῖς. τὸ δὲ †περὶ τοῦ πρὸς εὐπαθείας ἐπαίρεσθαι ναυτῶν δίκην ἀφροδίσια ἀγόντων καὶ μέγα φρονεῖν, ‘ὅτι νοσῶν νόσον ἀσκίτην τινὰς ἑστιάσεις φίλων συνῆγε καὶ οὐκ ἐφθόνει τῆς προσαγωγῆς τοῦ ὑγροῦ τῷ ὕδρωπι καὶ τῶν ἐσχάτων Νεοκλέους λόγων [f] μεμνημένος ἐτήκετο τῇ μετὰ δακρύων ἰδιοτρόπῳ ἡδονῇ’, ταῦτ’ οὐδεὶς ἂν ὑγιαινόντων εὐφροσύνας ἀληθεῖς ἢ χαρὰς ὀνομάσειεν, ἀλλ’ εἴ τις ἔστι καὶ ψυχῆς Σαρδάνιος γέλως, ἐν τούτοις ἔστι τοῖς παραβιασμοῖς καὶ κλαυσιγέλωσιν. εἰ δ’ οὖν ταῦτα φήσει τις εὐφροσύνας καὶ χαράς, σκόπει τὰς ὑπερβολὰς τῶν ἡδονῶν ἐκείνων·

[1098] [a] ‘ἡμετέραις βουλαῖς Σπάρτη μὲν ἐκείρατο δόξαν’ καί

‘οὗτός τοι Ῥώμης ὁ μέγας, ξένε, πατρίδος ἀστήρ’

καί

‘δίζω, ἤ σε θεὸν μαντεύσομαι ἢ ἄνθρωπον.’

ὅταν δὲ λάβω τὰ Θρασυβούλου καὶ Πελοπίδου πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν κατορθώματα καὶ τὸν ἐν Πλαταιαῖς Ἀριστείδην ἢ τὸν ἐν Μαραθῶνι Μιλτιάδην, ἐνταῦθα κατὰ τὸν Ἡρόδοτον (VII 139) ‘ἐξείργομαι’ γνώμην εἰπεῖν, ὅτι τῷ πρακτικῷ βίῳ τὸ ἡδὺ πλέον ἢ τὸ καλὸν ἔστι. μαρτυρεῖ δέ μοι καὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδας εἰπών, ὥς φασιν, ἥδιστον αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τὸ τοὺς τεκόντας ζῶντας ἐπιδεῖν τὸ ἐν Λεύκτροις τρόπαιον αὐτοῦ στρατηγοῦντος. παραβάλωμεν οὖν [b] τῇ Ἐπαμεινώνδου μητρὶ τὴν Ἐπικούρου, χαίρουσαν ὅτι τὸν υἱὸν ἐπεῖδεν εἰς τὸ κηπίδιον ἐνδεδυκότα καὶ κοινῇ μετὰ τοῦ Πολυαίνου παιδοποιούμενον ἐκ τῆς Κυζικηνῆς ἑταίρας. τὴν μὲν γὰρ Μητροδώρου μητέρα καὶ τὴν ἀδελφὴν ὡς ὑπερέχαιρον ἐπὶ τοῖς γάμοις αὐτοῦ ‹καὶ› ταῖς πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀντιγραφαῖς, ἐκ τῶν βιβλίων δήπου δῆλόν ἐστιν. ‘ἀλλ’ ἡδέως τε βεβιωκέναι καὶ βρυάζειν καὶ καθυμνεῖν τὸν ἑαυτῶν βίον ἐκκραυγάζοντες λέγουσι.’ καὶ γὰρ οἱ θεράποντες ὅταν Κρόνια δειπνῶσιν ἢ Διονύσια κατ’ ἀγρὸν ἄγωσι περιιόντες, οὐκ ἂν αὐτῶν τὸν ὀλολυγμὸν [c] ὑπομείναις καὶ τὸν θόρυβον, ὑπὸ χαρμονῆς καὶ ἀπειροκαλίας τοιαῦτα ποιούντων καὶ φθεγγομένων

‘‘κλίθητι καὶ πίωμεν· οὐ καὶ σιτία

πάρεστιν; ὦ δύστηνε, μὴ σαυτῷ φθόνει.’

οἱ δ’ εὐθὺς ἠλάλαξαν, ἐν δ’ ἐκίρνατο

οἶνος· φέρων δὲ στέφανον ἀμφέθηκέ τις·

ὑμνεῖτο δ’ αἰσχρῶς κλῶνα πρὸς καλὸν δάφνης

ὁ Φοῖβος οὐ προσῳδά· †τήν τ’ ἐναύλιον

ὠθῶν τις ἐξέκλαγξε †σύγκοιτον φίλην.’

ἦ γὰρ οὐ τούτοις ἔοικε τὰ Μητροδώρου πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν γράφοντος (fr. 41)· ‘οὐδὲν δεῖ σῴζειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας οὐδ’ ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ στεφάνων παρ’ αὐτῶν τυγχάνειν, ἀλλ’ ἐσθίειν καὶ πίνειν οἶνον, ὦ Τιμόκρατες, ἀβλαβῶς τῇ [d] γαστρὶ καὶ κεχαρισμένως.’ καὶ πάλιν πού φησιν ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῖς γράμμασιν ὡς ‘καὶ ἐχάρην καὶ ἐθαρσυνάμην, ὅτι ἔμαθον παρ’ Ἐπικούρου ὀρθῶς γαστρὶ χαρίζεσθαι’ (fr. 42)· καί ‘περὶ γαστέρα γάρ, ὦ φυσιολόγε Τιμόκρατες, τὸ ἀγαθόν’ (fr. 40). καὶ γὰρ ὅλον οἱ ἄνθρωποι τῆς ἡδονῆς τὸ μέγεθος καθάπερ κέντρῳ καὶ διαστήματι τῇ γαστρὶ περιγράφουσι, λαμπρᾶς δὲ καὶ βασιλικῆς καὶ φρόνημα ποιούσης μέγα καὶ φῶς καὶ γαλήνην ἀληθῶς εἰς ἅπαντας ἀναχεομένην χαρᾶς οὐκ ἔστι μετασχεῖν βίον ἀνέξοδον καὶ ἀπολίτευτον καὶ ἀφιλάνθρωπον καὶ ἀνενθουσίαστον εἰς τιμὴν καὶ χάριν ἀνελομένους. οὐ γάρ τι φαῦλον [e] ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ μικρὸν οὐδ’ ἀγεννές ἐστιν οὐδ’ ὥσπερ οἱ πολύποδες ἄχρι τῶν ἐδωδίμων ἐκτείνει τὰς ‹πλεκτάνας τῆς› ἐπιθυμίας, ἀλλὰ ταύτην μὲν ὀξύτατος ἀποκόπτει κόρος ἀκαρὲς ὥρας μόριον ἀκμάσασαν, τῶν δὲ πρὸς τὸ καλὸν ὁρμῶν καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ τῷ καλῷ τιμὴν καὶ χάριν ‘οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτῶν μέτρον ὁ τοῦ βίου χρόνος’, ἀλλὰ τοῦ παντὸς αἰῶνος ἐπιδραττόμενον τὸ φιλότιμον καὶ φιλάνθρωπον ἐξαμιλλᾶται ταῖς πράξεσι καὶ ταῖς χάρισιν ἡδονὰς ἀμηχάνους ἐχούσαις, ἃς οὐδὲ φεύγοντες οἱ χρηστοὶ διαφεύγειν δύνανται, πανταχόθεν αὐτοῖς ἀπαντώσας καὶ περιεχομένας, ὅταν εὐφραίνωσι πολλοὺς εὐεργετοῦντες,

[f] ‘ἐρχόμενον δ’ ἀνὰ ἄστυ θεὸν ὣς εἰσορόωσιν’ (θ 173).

ὁ γὰρ οὕτω διαθεὶς ἑτέρους, ὥστε καὶ χαίρειν καὶ γάνυσθαι καὶ ποθεῖν ἅψασθαι καὶ προσαγορεῦσαι, δῆλός ἐστι καὶ τυφλῷ μεγάλας ἔχων ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ καρπούμενος [1099] [a] ἡδονάς. ὅθεν οὐδὲ κάμνουσιν ὠφελοῦντες οὐδ’ ἀπαγορεύουσιν, ἀλλὰ τοιαύτας αὐτῶν ἀκούομεν φωνάς ‘πολλοῦ σε θνητοῖς ἄξιον τίκτει πατήρ’ καί ‘μή γε παυσώμεσθα δρῶντες εὖ βροτούς’ (Trag. adesp. 410). καὶ τί δεῖ περὶ τῶν ἄκρως ἀγαθῶν λέγειν; εἰ γάρ τινι τῶν μέσως φαύλων μέλλοντι θνήσκειν ὁ κύριος, ἤτοι θεὸς ἢ βασιλεύς, ὥραν ἐπιδοίη μίαν, ὥστε χρησάμενον αὐτῇ πρός τινα καλὴν πρᾶξιν ἢ πρὸς ἀπόλαυσιν εὐθὺς τελευτᾶν, τίς ἂν ἐν τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ βούλοιτο μᾶλλον Λαΐδι συγγενέσθαι καὶ πιεῖν οἶνον Ἀριούσιον ἢ κτείνας Ἀρχίαν ἐλευθερῶσαι τὰς [b] Θήβας; ἐγὼ μὲν οὐδένα νομίζω. καὶ γὰρ τῶν μονομάχων ὁρῶ τοὺς μὴ παντάπασι θηριώδεις ἀλλ’ Ἕλληνας, ὅταν εἰσιέναι μέλλωσι, προκειμένων πολλῶν ἐδεσμάτων καὶ πολυτελῶν ἥδιον τὰ γύναια τοῖς φίλοις ἐν τῷ χρόνῳ τούτῳ παρακατατιθεμένους καὶ τοὺς οἰκέτας ἐλευθεροῦντας ἢ τῇ γαστρὶ χαριζομένους.

Ἀλλὰ καί, εἴ τι μέγα περὶ τὰς τοῦ σώματος ἡδονάς, κοινόν ἐστι δήπου τοῦτο τοῖς πρακτικῶν πράγμασι· καὶ γὰρ ‘σῖτον ἔδουσιν’ καὶ ‘πίνουσιν αἴθοπα οἶνον’ καὶ μετὰ φίλων ἑστιῶνται πολύ γ’ οἶμαι προθυμότερον ἀπὸ τῶν ἀγώνων καὶ τῶν ἔργων, ὡς Ἀλέξανδρος καὶ Ἀγησίλαος [c] καὶ νὴ Δία Φωκίων καὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδας, ἢ καθάπερ οὗτοι πρὸς πῦρ ἀλειψάμενοι καὶ τοῖς φορείοις ἀτρέμα διασεισθέντες, ἀλλὰ καταφρονοῦσι τούτων ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς μείζοσιν ὄντες. τί γὰρ ἂν λέγοι τις Ἐπαμεινώνδαν οὐκ ἐθελήσαντα δειπνεῖν, ὡς ἑώρα πολυτελέστερον τῆς οὐσίας τὸ δεῖπνον, ἀλλ’ εἰπόντα πρὸς τὸν φίλον ‘ἐγώ σ’ ᾤμην θύειν οὐχ ὑβρίζειν’; ὅπου καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος ἀπεώσατο τῆς Ἄδας τοὺς μαγείρους αὐτὸς εἰπὼν ἔχειν ἀμείνονας ὀψοποιούς, πρὸς μὲν ἄριστον τὴν νυκτοπορίαν πρὸς δὲ δεῖπνον τὴν ὀλιγαριστίαν· Φιλόξενον δὲ γράψαντα περὶ παίδων [d] καλῶν, εἰ πρίηται, μικρὸν ἐδέησε τῆς ἐπιτροπῆς ἀποστῆσαι. καίτοι τίνι μᾶλλον ἐξῆν; ἀλλ’, ὥσπερ φησὶν Ἱπποκράτης (Aph. II 46) δυοῖν πόνων τὸν ἥττονα ὑπὸ τοῦ μείζονος ἀμαυροῦσθαι, καὶ τῶν ἡδονῶν τὰς σωματικὰς αἱ πρακτικαὶ καὶ φιλότιμοι τῷ χαίροντι τῆς ψυχῆς δι’ ὑπερβολὴν καὶ μέγεθος ἐναφανίζουσι καὶ κατασβεννύουσιν.

Εἰ τοίνυν, ὥσπερ λέγουσι, τὸ μεμνῆσθαι τῶν προτέρων ἀγαθῶν μέγιστόν ἐστι πρὸς τὸ ἡδέως ζῆν, Ἐπικούρῳ μὲν οὐδ’ ἂν εἷς ἡμῶν πιστεύσειεν ὅτι ταῖς μεγίσταις ἀλγηδόσι καὶ νόσοις ἐναποθνήσκων ἀντιπαρεπέμπετο [e] τῇ μνήμῃ τῶν ἀπολελαυσμένων πρότερον ἡδονῶν. εἰκόνα γὰρ ὄψεως ἐν βυθῷ συνταραχθέντι καὶ κλύδωνι μᾶλλον ἄν τις ἢ μνήμην ἡδονῆς διαμειδιῶσαν ἐν σφυγμῷ τοσούτῳ καὶ σπαραγμῷ σώματος ἐπινοήσειε. τὰς δὲ τῶν πράξεων μνήμας οὐδεὶς ἂν οὐδὲ βουληθεὶς ἐκστήσειεν ἑαυτοῦ. πότε[ρον] γὰρ ἢ πῶς οἷόν τ’ ἦν ἐπιλαθέσθαι τῶν Ἀρβήλων τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἢ τοῦ Λεοντιάδου τὸν Πελοπίδαν ἢ τῆς Σαλαμῖνος τὸν Θεμιστοκλέα; τὴν μὲν γὰρ ἐν Μαραθῶνι μάχην ἄχρι νῦν Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ τὴν ἐν Λεύκτροις Θηβαῖοι καὶ νὴ Δί’ ἡμεῖς τὴν Δαϊφάντου περὶ Ὑάμπολιν ἑορτάζομεν, ὡς ἴστε, καὶ θυσιῶν καὶ τιμῶν ἡ Φωκὶς ἐμπέπλησται, [f] καὶ οὐδεὶς ἔστιν ἡμῶν, ἐφ’ οἷς αὐτὸς βέβρωκεν ἢ πέπωκεν οὕτως ἡδόμενος ὡς ἐφ’ οἷς ἐκεῖνοι κατώρθωσαν. ἐννοεῖν οὖν πάρεστι, πόση τις εὐφροσύνη καὶ χαρὰ καὶ γηθοσύνη συνεβίωσεν αὐτοῖς τοῖς τούτων δημιουργοῖς, ὧν ἐν ἔτεσι πεντακοσίοις καὶ πλείοσιν οὐκ ἀποβέβληκεν ἡ μνήμη τὸ εὐφραῖνον.

‘Καὶ μὴν ἀπὸ δόξης γίνεσθαί τινας ἡδονὰς Ἐπίκουρος [1100] [a] ὡμολόγει.’ τί δ’ οὐκ ἔμελλεν αὐτὸς οὕτως σπαργῶν περιμανῶς καὶ σφαδάζων πρὸς δόξαν, ὥστε μὴ μόνον ἀπολέγεσθαι τοὺς καθηγητὰς μηδὲ Δημοκρίτῳ τῷ τὰ δόγματα ῥήμασιν αὐτοῖς ἀφαιρουμένῳ ζυγομαχεῖν περὶ συλλαβῶν καὶ κεραιῶν, σοφὸν δὲ μηδένα φάναι πλὴν αὑτοῦ γεγονέναι καὶ τῶν μαθητῶν, ἀλλὰ γράφειν ὡς Κωλώτης μὲν αὐτὸν φυσιολογοῦντα προσκυνήσειε γονάτων ἁψάμενος, Νεοκλῆς δ’ ὁ ἀδελφὸς εὐθὺς ἐκ παίδων ἀποφαίνοιτο μηδένα σοφώτερον Ἐπικούρου γεγονέναι μηδ’ εἶναι, ἡ δὲ μήτηρ ἀτόμους ἔσχεν ἐν ἑαυτῇ τοιαύτας, οἷαι συνελθοῦσαι σοφὸν [b] ἂν ἐγέννησαν; εἶτ’ οὐχ ὥσπερ Καλλικρατίδας ἔλεγε τὸν Κόνωνα μοιχεύειν τὴν θάλασσαν, οὕτως ἄν τις εἴποι τὸν Ἐπίκουρον αἰσχρῶς καὶ κρύφα πειρᾶν καὶ παραβιάζεσθαι τὴν δόξαν, οὐ τυγχάνοντα φανερῶς ἀλλ’ ἐρῶντα καὶ κατατεινόμενον; ὥσπερ γὰρ ὑπὸ λιμοῦ τὰ σώματα τροφῆς μὴ παρούσης ἀναγκάζεται παρὰ φύσιν ὑφ’ αὑτῶν τρέφεσθαι, τοιοῦτον ἡ φιλοδοξία ποιεῖ κακὸν ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς, ὅταν ἐπαίνων πεινῶντες παρ’ ἑτέρων μὴ τυγχάνωσιν, αὐτοὺς ἑαυτοὺς ἐπαινεῖν· ἀλλ’ οἵ γε πρὸς ἔπαινον οὕτως καὶ δόξαν ἔχοντες ἆρ’ οὐχ ὁμολογοῦσι μεγάλας ἡδονὰς προΐεσθαι δι’ ἀσθένειαν ἢ μαλακίαν φεύγοντες ἀρχὰς καὶ πολιτείας [c] καὶ φιλίας βασιλέων, ἀφ’ ὧν τὰ μεγάλα καὶ λαμπρὰ εἰς τὸν βίον γίνεσθαι ἔφη Δημόκριτος; οὐ γὰρ ἄν τινα πείσειεν ἀνθρώπων ὁ τὴν Νεοκλέους μαρτυρίαν καὶ τὴν Κωλώτου προσκύνησιν ἐν τοσούτῳ λόγῳ τιθέμενος καὶ ἀγαπῶν, ὡς οὐκ ἂν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων κροτηθεὶς Ὀλυμπίασιν ἐξεμάνη καὶ ἀνωλόλυξε, μᾶλλον δ’ ὄντως ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ἤρθη κατὰ τὸν Σοφοκλέα (fr. 784) ‘γραίας ἀκάνθης πάππος ὣς φυσώμενος’. εἴ γε μὴν τὸ εὐδοξεῖν ἡδύ, τὸ ἀδοξεῖν δήπου λυπηρόν· ἀδοξότερον δ’ ἀφιλίας ἀπραξίας ἀθεότητος ἡδυπαθείας ὀλιγωρίας οὐθέν ἐστι. ταῦτα δὲ πάντες ἄνθρωποι πλὴν αὐτῶν ἐκείνων τῇ αἱρέσει προσεῖναι νομίζουσιν.

[d] ‘ἀδίκως’ φήσει τις. ἀλλὰ τὴν δόξαν οὐ τὴν ἀλήθειαν σκοποῦμεν. καὶ βιβλία μὲν μὴ λέγωμεν μηδὲ ψηφίσματα βλάσφημα πόλεων, ὅσα γέγραπται πρὸς αὐτούς (φιλαπεχθῆμον γάρ). εἰ δὲ χρησμοὶ καὶ μαντικὴ καὶ θεῶν πρόνοια καὶ γονέων πρὸς ἔκγονα στοργὴ καὶ ἀγάπησις καὶ πολιτεία καὶ ἡγεμονία καὶ τὸ ἄρχειν ἔνδοξόν ἐστι καὶ εὐκλεές, οὕτως ἀνάγκη τοὺς λέγοντας, ὡς οὐ δεῖ σῴζειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἀλλ’ ἐσθίειν καὶ πίνειν ἀβλαβῶς τῇ γαστρὶ καὶ κεχαρισμένως, ἀδοξεῖν καὶ κακοὺς νομίζεσθαι, νομιζομένους δὲ τοιούτους ἀνιᾶσθαι καὶ ζῆν ἀτερπῶς, εἴ γε δὴ τὸ καλὸν ἡδὺ καὶ τὴν εὐδοξίαν ἡγοῦνται.’

[e] Ταῦτ’ εἰπόντος τοῦ Θέωνος, ἐδόκει καταπαῦσαι τὸν περίπατον, καὶ καθάπερ εἰώθειμεν ἐπὶ τῶν βάθρων καθεζόμενοι πρὸς τοῖς εἰρημένοις ἦμεν σιωπῇ, χρόνον οὐ πολύν. ὁ γὰρ Ζεύξιππος ἀπὸ τῶν εἰρημένων ἐννοήσας ‘τίς’ ἔφη ‘τὰ λειπόμενα τῷ λόγῳ προσαποδίδωσι; καὶ γὰρ οὔπω ‹τὸ› προσῆκον ἔχει τέλος. αὐτὸς ‹δ’› ἄρτι μαντικῆς μνησθεὶς καὶ προνοίας ὑποβέβληκε ταῦτα γὰρ οὐχ ἥκιστά φασιν οἱ ἄνδρες ἡδονὴν καὶ γαλήνην καὶ θάρσος αὐτοῖς παρασκευάζειν εἰς τὸν βίον, ὥστε δεῖ τι λεχθῆναι καὶ περὶ τούτων.’ ὑπολαβὼν δ’ ὁ Ἀριστόδημος ‘ἀλλὰ περὶ ἡδονῆς μὲν εἴρηται σχεδόν’ εἶπεν, ‘ὡς εὐτυχῶν καὶ κατορθῶν ὁ [f] λόγος αὐτῶν φόβον ἀφαιρεῖ τινα καὶ δεισιδαιμονίαν, εὐφροσύνην δὲ καὶ χαρὰν ἀπὸ τῶν θεῶν οὐκ ἐνδίδωσιν· ἀλλ’ οὕτως ἔχειν ποιεῖ πρὸς αὐτοὺς τῷ μὴ ταράττεσθαι [1101] [a] μηδὲ χαίρειν, ὡς πρὸς τοὺς Ὑρκανοὺς ἢ Ἰχθυοφάγους ἔχομεν, οὔτε χρηστὸν οὐθὲν οὔτε φαῦλον ἀπ’ αὐτῶν προσδοκῶντες. εἰ δὲ δεῖ προσθεῖναί τι τοῖς εἰρημένοις, ἐκεῖνό μοι δοκῶ λήψεσθαι παρ’ αὐτῶν πρῶτον, ὅτι τοῖς ἀναιροῦσι λύπας καὶ δάκρυα καὶ στεναγμοὺς ἐπὶ ταῖς τῶν φίλων τελευταῖς μάχονται καὶ λέγουσι τὴν εἰς τὸ ἀπαθὲς καθεστῶσαν ἀλυπίαν ἀφ’ ἑτέρου κακοῦ μείζονος ὑπάρχειν, ὠμότητος ἢ δοξοκοπίας ἀκράτου καὶ λύσσης· διὸ πάσχειν τι βέλτιον εἶναι καὶ λυπεῖσθαι καὶ νὴ Δία λιπαίνειν τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς καὶ τήκεσθαι, καὶ ὅσα δὴ παθαινομένοις γράφοντες [b] ὑγροί τινες εἶναι καὶ φιλικοὶ δοκοῦσι. ταῦτα γὰρ ἐν ἄλλοις τε πολλοῖς Ἐπίκουρος εἴρηκε καὶ περὶ τῆς Ἡγησιάνακτος τελευτῆς πρὸς Σωσίθεον τὸν πατέρα γράφων καὶ Πύρσωνα τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ τεθνηκότος. ἔναγχος γὰρ κατὰ τύχην τὰς ἐπιστολὰς διῆλθον αὐτοῦ· καὶ λέγω μιμούμενος, ὡς οὐχ ἧττόν ἐστι κακὸν ἀθεότης ὠμότητος καὶ δοξοκοπίας, εἰς ἣν ἄγουσιν ἡμᾶς οἱ τὴν χάριν ἐκ τοῦ θείου μετὰ τῆς ὀργῆς ἀναιροῦντες. βέλτιον γὰρ ἐνυπάρχειν τι καὶ συγκεκρᾶσθαι τῇ περὶ θεῶν δόξῃ κοινὸν αἰδοῦς καὶ φόβου πάθος, ἢ [που] τοῦτο φεύγοντας μήτ’ ἐλπίδα μήτε [c] χάριν ἑαυτοῖς μήτε θάρσος ἀγαθῶν παρόντων μήτε τινὰ δυστυχοῦσιν ἀποστροφὴν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἐναπολείπεσθαι.

Δεῖ μὲν γὰρ ἀμέλει τῆς περὶ θεῶν δόξης ὥσπερ ὄψεως λήμην ἀφαιρεῖν τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν· εἰ δὲ τοῦτ’ ἀδύνατον, μὴ συνεκκόπτειν μηδὲ τυφλοῦν τὴν πίστιν, ἣν οἱ πλεῖστοι περὶ θεῶν ἔχουσιν. αὕτη δ’ ἐστὶν οὐ φοβερά τις οὐδὲ σκυθρωπή, καθάπερ οὗτοι πλάττουσι, διαβάλλοντες τὴν πρόνοιαν ὥσπερ παισὶν Ἔμπουσαν ἢ Ποινὴν ἀλιτηριώδη καὶ τραγικὴν ἐπικρεμαμένην. ἀλλ’ ‹οὐκ› ὀλίγοι μὲν τῶν ἀνθρώπων δεδίασι τὸν θεόν, οἷς οὐκ ἄμεινον μὴ [d] δεδιέναι· δεδιότες γὰρ ὥσπερ ἄρχοντα χρηστοῖς ἤπιον ἐπαχθῆ δὲ φαύλοις ἑνὶ φόβῳ, δι’ ὃν οὐκ ἀδικοῦσι, πολλῶν ἐλευθεροῦνται τῶν ἐπὶ τῷ ἀδικεῖν, καὶ παρ’ αὑτοῖς ἀτρέμα τὴν κακίαν ἔχοντες οἷον ἀπομαραινομένην ἧττον ταράττονται τῶν χρωμένων αὐτῇ καὶ τολμώντων εἶτ’ εὐθὺς δεδιότων καὶ μεταμελομένων. ἡ δὲ τῶν πολλῶν καὶ ἀμαθῶν καὶ οὐ πάνυ μοχθηρῶν διάθεσις πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἔχει μὲν ἀμέλει τῷ σεβομένῳ καὶ τιμῶντι μεμιγμένον τινὰ σφυγμὸν καὶ φόβον, ᾗ καὶ δεισιδαιμονία κέκληται, μυριάκις δὲ πλεῖόν ἐστι καὶ μεῖζον αὐτῇ τὸ εὔελπι καὶ περιχαρὲς καὶ πᾶσαν εὐπραξίας ὄνησιν ὡς ἐκ θεῶν οὖσαν [e] εὐχόμενον καὶ δεχόμενον. δῆλον δὲ τεκμηρίοις τοῖς μεγίστοις· οὔτε γὰρ διατριβαὶ τῶν ἐν ἱεροῖς οὔτε καιροὶ τῶν ἑορτασμῶν οὔτε πράξεις οὔτ’ ὄψεις εὐφραίνουσιν ἕτεραι μᾶλλον ὧν ὁρῶμεν ἢ δρῶμεν αὐτοὶ περὶ τοὺς θεούς, ὀργιάζοντες ἢ χορεύοντες ἢ θυσίαις παρόντες καὶ τελεταῖς. οὐ γὰρ ὡς τυράννοις τισὶν ἢ δεινοῖς κολασταῖς ὁμιλοῦσα τηνικαῦτα ἡ ψυχὴ περίλυπός ἐστι καὶ ταπεινὴ καὶ δύσθυμος, ὅπερ εἰκὸς ἦν· ἀλλ’ ὅπου μάλιστα δοξάζει καὶ διανοεῖται παρεῖναι τὸν θεόν, ἐκεῖ μάλιστα λύπας καὶ φόβους καὶ τὸ φροντίζειν ἀπωσαμένη τῷ ἡδομένῳ μέχρι μέθης καὶ παιδιᾶς καὶ γέλωτος ἀφίησιν ἑαυτήν. ἐν τοῖς ἐρωτικοῖς, [f] ὡς ὁ ποιητὴς εἴρηκε (Callim. fr. an. 386 Schn.)

‘καί τε γέρων καὶ γρῆυς, ἐπὴν χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης

μνήσωνται, καὶ τοῖσιν ἐπηέρθη φίλον ἦτορ,’

ἐν δὲ πομπαῖς καὶ θυσίαις οὐ μόνον γέρων καὶ γρῆυς οὐδὲ πένης καὶ ἰδιώτης ἀλλὰ ‘καὶ παχυσκελὴς ἀλετρὶς πρὸς [1102] [a] μύλην κινουμένη’ (fr. iamb. adesp. 28 D.) καὶ οἰκότριβες καὶ θῆτες ὑπὸ γήθους καὶ χαρμοσύνης ἀναφέρονται· πλουσίοις τε καὶ βασιλεῦσιν ἑστιάσεις καὶ πανδαισίαι τινὲς πάρεισιν ‹ἀεί›, αἱ δ’ ἐφ’ ἱεροῖς καὶ θυηπολίαις, καὶ ὅταν ἔγγιστα τοῦ θείου τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ ψαύειν δοκῶσι μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ σεβασμοῦ, πολὺ διαφέρουσαν ἡδονὴν καὶ χάριν ἔχουσι. ταύτης οὐδὲν ἀνδρὶ μέτεστιν ἀπεγνωκότι τῆς προνοίας. οὐ γὰρ οἴνου πλῆθος οὐδ’ ὄπτησις κρεῶν τὸ εὐφραῖνόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς, ἀλλ’ ἐλπὶς ἀγαθὴ καὶ δόξα τοῦ παρεῖναι τὸν θεὸν εὐμενῆ καὶ δέχεσθαι τὰ γινόμενα κεχαρισμένως.

[b] αὐλὸν μὲν γὰρ ἐνίων ἑορτῶν καὶ στέφανον ἀφαιροῦμεν, θεοῦ δὲ θυσίᾳ μὴ παρόντος πρὸς ἱερῶν ἀποδοχὴν ἄθεόν ἐστι καὶ ἀνεόρταστον καὶ ἀνενθουσίαστον τὸ λειπόμενον· μᾶλλον δὲ ‹τὸ› ὅλον ἀτερπὲς αὐτῷ καὶ λυπηρόν· ὑποκρίνεται γὰρ εὐχὰς καὶ προσκυνήσεις οὐθὲν δεόμενος διὰ φόβον τῶν πολλῶν καὶ φθέγγεται φωνὰς ἐναντίας οἷς φιλοσοφεῖ· καὶ θύων μὲν ὡς μαγείρῳ παρέστηκε τῷ ἱερεῖ σφάττοντι, θύσας δ’ ἄπεισι λέγων τὸ Μενάνδρειον (fr. 750)

‘ἔθυον οὐ προσέχουσιν οὐδέν μοι θεοῖς’·

οὕτως γὰρ Ἐπίκουρος οἴεται δεῖν σχηματίζεσθαι καὶ μὴ [c] καταφρονεῖν μηδ’ ἀπεχθάνεσθαι τοῖς πολλοῖς, οἷς χαίρουσιν ἕτεροι πράττοντας, αὐτοὺς δυσχεραίνοντας·

‘πᾶν γὰρ ἀναγκαῖον πρᾶγμ’ ὀδυνηρὸν ἔφυ’

κατὰ τὸν Εὔηνον (fr. 8). ᾗ καὶ τοὺς δεισιδαίμονας οὐ χαίροντας ἀλλὰ φοβουμένους οἴονται θυσίαις καὶ τελεταῖς ὁμιλεῖν, μηθὲν ἐκείνων αὐτοὶ διαφέροντες, εἴ γε δὴ διὰ φόβον τὰ αὐτὰ δρῶσιν, οὐδ’ ἐλπίδος χρηστῆς ὅσον ἐκεῖνοι μεταλαγχάνοντες, ἀλλὰ μόνον δεδιότες καὶ ταραττόμενοι μὴ φανεροὶ γένωνται τοὺς πολλοὺς παραλογιζόμενοι καὶ φενακίζοντες· ἐφ’ οὓς καὶ τὰ περὶ θεῶν καὶ ὁσιότητος αὐτοῖς βιβλία συντέτακται, ‘ἑλικτὰ καὶ οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς ἀλλὰ πᾶν πέριξ’ (Eur. Andr. 448) ἐπαμπεχομένοις καὶ ἀποκρυπτομένοις [d] διὰ φόβον ἃς ἔχουσι δόξας. καὶ μὴν μετά γε τοὺς πονηροὺς καὶ τοὺς πολλοὺς τρίτον ἤδη σκεψώμεθα τὸ βέλτιστον ἀνθρώπων καὶ θεοφιλέστατον γένος ἐν ἡλίκαις ἡδοναῖς ‹καθεστᾶσιν› καθαραῖς περὶ θεοῦ δόξαις συνόντες, ὡς πάντων μὲν ἡγεμὼν ἀγαθῶν πάντων δὲ πατὴρ καλῶν ἐκεῖνός ἐστι, καὶ φαῦλον οὐθὲν ποιεῖν αὐτῷ θέμις ὥσπερ οὐδὲ πάσχειν. ‘ἀγαθὸς γάρ ἐστιν, ἀγαθῷ δὲ περὶ οὐδενὸς ἐγγίνεται φθόνος’, οὔτε φόβος οὔτ’ ὀργὴ ἢ μῖσος· οὐδὲ γὰρ θερμοῦ τὸ ψύχειν ἀλλὰ ‹τὸ› θερμαίνειν, ὥσπερ οὐδ’ ἀγαθοῦ τὸ βλάπτειν. ὀργὴ δὲ χάριτος [e] καὶ χόλος εὐμενείας καὶ τοῦ φιλανθρώπου καὶ φιλόφρονος τὸ δυσμενὲς καὶ ταρακτικὸν ἀπωτάτω τῇ φύσει τέτακται· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἀρετῆς καὶ δυνάμεως τὰ δ’ ἀσθενείας ἐστὶ καὶ φαυλότητος. οὐ τοίνυν ὀργαῖς, ‹ὅτι› καὶ χάρισι, συνέχεται τὸ θεῖον, ἀλλ’ ὅτι χαρίζεσθαι καὶ βοηθεῖν πέφυκεν, ὀργίζεσθαι καὶ κακῶς ποιεῖν οὐ πέφυκεν. ἀλλ’ ‘ὁ μὲν μέγας ἐν οὐρανῷ Ζεὺς πτηνὸν ἅρμα ἐλαύνων ἄνω πρῶτος πορεύεται, διακοσμῶν πάντα καὶ ἐπιμελούμενος’, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων θεῶν ὁ μέν ἐστιν Ἐπιδώτης ὁ δὲ Μειλίχιος ὁ δ’ Ἀλεξίκακος· ὁ δ’ Ἀπόλλων ‘κατεκρίθη θνατοῖς ἀγανώτατος ἔμμεν’ ὡς Πίνδαρός φησι (fr. 149). πάντα δὲ [f] τῶν θεῶν κατὰ τὸν Διογένη, καὶ κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων, καὶ φίλοι τοῖς θεοῖς οἱ ἀγαθοί, καὶ τὸν θεοφιλῆ μή τι εὖ πράττειν ἢ θεοφιλῆ ‹μὴ› εἶναι τὸν σώφρονα καὶ δίκαιον ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν. ἆρά γε δίκης ἑτέρας οἴεσθε δεῖσθαι τοὺς ἀναι[1103][a]ροῦντας τὴν πρόνοιαν, οὐχ ἱκανὴν ἔχειν ἐκκόπτοντας ἑαυτῶν ἡδονὴν καὶ χαρὰν τοσαύτην, ὅση πάρεστι τοῖς οὕτω διακειμένοις πρὸς τὸ δαιμόνιον; ἢ τῷ μὲν Ἐπικούρῳ καὶ Μητρόδωρος καὶ Πολύαινος καὶ Ἀριστόβουλος ‘ἐκθάρσημα’ καὶ ‘γῆθος’ ἦσαν, ὧν τοὺς πλείστους θεραπεύων νοσοῦντας ἢ καταθρηνῶν ἀποθνήσκοντας διετέλεσε, Λυκοῦργος δ’ ὑπὸ τῆς Πυθίας προσαγορευθείς ‘Ζηνὶ φίλος καὶ πᾶσιν Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχουσι’ καὶ Σωκράτης οἰόμενος αὑτῷ διαλέγεσθαι τὸ δαιμόνιον ὑπ’ εὐμενείας καὶ Πίνδαρος ἀκούων ὑπὸ τοῦ Πανὸς ᾄδεσθαί τι μέλος ὧν αὐτὸς [b] ἐποίησε μετρίως ἔχαιρεν; ἢ Φορμίων τοὺς Διοσκόρους ἢ τὸν Ἀσκληπιὸν Σοφοκλῆς ξενίζειν αὐτός τε πειθόμενος καὶ τῶν ἄλλων οὕτως ἐχόντων διὰ τὴν γενομένην ἐπιφάνειαν; ἃ δ’ Ἑρμογένης ἐφρόνει περὶ τῶν θεῶν, ἄξιόν ἐστιν αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασι διαμνημονεῦσαι. ‘οὗτοι γάρ’ φησίν ‘οἱ πάντα μὲν εἰδότες πάντα δὲ δυνάμενοι θεοὶ οὕτω μοι φίλοι εἰσίν, ὡς διὰ τὸ ἐπιμελεῖσθαί μου οὔποτε λήθω αὐτοὺς οὔτε νυκτὸς οὔθ’ ἡμέρας ὅποι ἂν ὁρμῶμαι οὔθ’ ὅ τι ἂν μέλλω πράττειν· διὰ δὲ τὸ προειδέναι καὶ ὅ τι ἐξ ἑκάστου ἀποβήσεται σημαίνουσι, πέμποντες ἀγγέλους φήμας καὶ ἐνύπνια καὶ οἰωνούς.’

Καλὰ μὲν οὖν εἰκὸς εἶναι καὶ τὰ γινόμενα παρὰ τῶν [c] θεῶν· τὸ δὲ γίνεσθαι διὰ τῶν θεῶν ταῦτ’ αὐτὸ μεγάλην ἡδονὴν ποιεῖ καὶ θάρσος ἀμήχανον καὶ φρόνημα καὶ χαρὰν οἷον αὐγὴν ἐπιγελῶσαν τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς. οἱ δ’ ἄλλως ἔχοντες τῆς μὲν εὐτυχίας τὸ ἥδιστον κολούουσι, ταῖς δὲ δυστυχίαις ἀποστροφὴν οὐκ ἀπολείπουσιν, ἀλλ’ εἰς μίαν καταφυγὴν καὶ λιμένα πράττοντες κακῶς τὴν διάλυσιν καὶ τὴν ἀναισθησίαν ἀποβλέπουσιν· ὥσπερ εἴ τις ἐν πελάγει καὶ χειμῶνι θαρρυνῶν ἐπιστὰς λέγοι μήτε τινὰ τὴν ναῦν ἔχειν κυβερνήτην μήτε τοὺς Διοσκόρους αὐτοῖς ἀφίξεσθαι ‘ἐπερχόμενόν τε μαλάξοντας βίαιον πόντον ὠκείας τ’ ἀνέμων [d] ῥιπάς’, οὐδὲν δ’ ὅμως εἶναι δεινόν, ἀλλ’ ὅσον οὐδέπω καταποθήσεσθαι τὴν ναῦν ὑπὸ τῆς θαλάττης ἢ συντριβήσεσθαι ταχὺ πρὸς πέτρας ἐκπεσοῦσαν. οὗτος γάρ ἐστιν ὁ Ἐπικούρειος λόγος ἐν νόσοις δειναῖς καὶ πόνοις ὑπερβάλλουσιν· ‘ἐλπίζεις τι χρηστὸν παρὰ θεῶν δι’ εὐσέβειαν; τετύφωσαι· τὸ γὰρ μακάριον καὶ ἄφθαρτον οὔτ’ ὀργαῖς οὔτε χάρισι συνέχεται. βέλτιόν τι τῶν ἐν τῷ βίῳ μετὰ τὸν βίον ἐπινοεῖς; ἐξηπάτησαι· τὸ γὰρ διαλυθὲν ἀναισθητεῖ τὸ δ’ ἀναισθητοῦν οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς.’ πῶς οὖν, ἄνθρωπε, φαγεῖν με καὶ χαίρειν κελεύεις; ὅτι νὴ Δία χειμαζομένῳ τὸ ναυάγιον ἐγγύς ἐστιν· ‘ὁ γὰρ πόνος ὁ ὑπερβάλλων συνάψει [e] θανάτῳ.’ καίτοι νεὼς μὲν ἐκπεσὼν ἐπιβάτης διαλυθείσης ἐπ’ ἐλπίδος ὀχεῖταί τινος ὡς γῇ προσέξων τὸ σῶμα καὶ διανηξόμενος, τῆς δὲ τούτων φιλοσοφίας ‘ἔκβασις οὔπη φαίνεθ’ ἁλὸς πολιοῖο θύραζε’ (ε 410) τῇ ψυχῇ, ἀλλ’ εὐθὺς ἠφάνισται καὶ διέσπαρται καὶ προαπόλωλε τοῦ σώματος· ὥσθ’ ὑπερχαίρειν τὸ πάνσοφον τοῦτο δόγμα καὶ θεῖον παραλαβοῦσαν, ὅτι τοῦ κακῶς πράττειν πέρας ἐστὶν αὐτῇ τὸ ἀπολέσθαι καὶ φθαρῆναι καὶ μηδὲν εἶναι.

Ἀλλὰ γάρ’ ἔφη πρὸς ἐμὲ βλέψας ‘εὔηθές ἐστι καὶ περὶ τούτου λέγειν ἡμᾶς, σοῦ πρῴην ἀκηκοότας ἱκανῶς [f] διαλεγομένου πρὸς τοὺς ἀξιοῦντας τὸν Ἐπικούρου λόγον τοῦ Πλάτωνος περὶ ψυχῆς ῥᾴονας καὶ ἡδίους ἡμᾶς ποιεῖν πρὸς θάνατον.’ ὑπολαβὼν οὖν ὁ Ζεύξιππος ‘εἶθ’ οὗτος’ ἔφη ‘δι’ ἐκεῖνον ἀτελὴς ὁ λόγος ἔσται, καὶ φοβηθησόμεθα ταυτολογεῖν πρὸς Ἐπίκουρον λέγοντες;’ ‘ἥκιστα’ ἔφην ἐγώ· ‘καὶ δὶς γὰρ ὃ δεῖ καλόν ἐστιν ἀκοῦσαι κατ’ Ἐμπε[1104][a]δοκλέα (B 25). πάλιν οὖν ὁ Θέων ἡμῖν παρακλητέος· οὐ γὰρ αὐτὸν οἶμαι ‹παρέργως› παρεῖναι τοῖς τότε λεχθεῖσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ νέος ἐστὶ καὶ οὐ δέδιε μὴ λήθης εὐθύνας ὑπόσχῃ τοῖς νέοις.’

Καὶ ὁ Θέων ὥσπερ ἐκβιασθείς ‘ἀλλ’ εἰ δοκεῖ ταῦτα’ ἔφη ‘ποιεῖν, οὐ μιμήσομαί σε, ὦ Ἀριστόδημε. σὺ μὲν γὰρ ἐφοβήθης τὰ τούτου λέγειν, ἐγὼ δὲ χρήσομαι τοῖς σοῖς. ὀρθῶς γάρ μοι διαιρεῖν ἔδοξας εἰς τρία γένη τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, τὸ τῶν ἀδίκων καὶ πονηρῶν, δεύτερον δὲ τὸ τῶν πολλῶν καὶ ἰδιωτῶν, τρίτον δὲ τὸ τῶν ἐπιεικῶν καὶ νοῦν ἐχόντων. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄδικοι καὶ πονηροὶ τὰς καθ’ Ἅιδου [b] δίκας καὶ τιμωρίας δεδιότες καὶ φοβούμενοι κακουργεῖν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μᾶλλον ἡσυχίαν ἄγοντες ἥδιον βιώσονται καὶ ἀταρακτότερον. οὐ γὰρ Ἐπίκουρος ἄλλῳ τινὶ τῆς ἀδικίας οἴεται δεῖν ἀπείργειν ἢ φόβῳ κολάσεων. ὥστε καὶ προσεμφορητέον ἐκείνοις τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας καὶ κινητέον ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ἅμα τὰ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς δείματα καὶ χάσματα καὶ φόβους καὶ ὑπονοίας, εἰ μέλλουσιν ἐκπλαγέντες ὑπὸ τούτων ἐπιεικέστερον ἔχειν καὶ πραότερον. λυσιτελεῖ γὰρ αὐτοῖς τὰ μετὰ τὸν θάνατον φοβουμένοις μὴ ἀδικεῖν ἢ ἀδικοῦσιν ἐπισφαλῶς ἐν τῷ βίῳ διάγειν καὶ περιφόβως. τοῖς δὲ πολλοῖς ‹ἱκανὴ› καὶ ἄνευ φόβου περὶ τῶν ἐν [c] Ἅιδου ἡ παρὰ τὸ μυθῶδες τῆς ἀιδιότητος ἐλπίς. καὶ ὁ πόθος τοῦ εἶναι, πάντων ἐρώτων πρεσβύτατος ὢν καὶ μέγιστος, ἡδοναῖς ὑπερβάλλει καὶ γλυκυθυμίαις τὸ παιδικὸν ἐκεῖνο δέος. ᾗ καὶ τέκνα καὶ γυναῖκας καὶ φίλους ἀποβάλλοντες εἶναί που μᾶλλον ἐθέλουσι καὶ διαμένειν κακοπαθοῦντας ἢ παντάπασιν ἐξῃρῆσθαι καὶ διεφθάρθαι καὶ γεγονέναι τὸ μηθέν· ἡδέως δὲ τῶν ὀνομάτων τοῦ μεθίστασθαι τὸν θνήσκοντα καὶ μεταλλάττειν καὶ ὅσα δηλοῖ μεταβολὴν ὄντα τῆς ψυχῆς οὐ φθορὰν τὸν θάνατον ἀκροῶνται καὶ λέγουσιν οὕτως

‘αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ κἀκεῖθι φίλου μεμνήσομ’ ἑταίρου’ (Χ 390)

καί

[d]’τί σοι πρὸς Ἕκτορ’ ἢ γέροντ’ εἴπω πόσιν;’ (Eur. Hec. 422).

ἐκ δὲ τούτου παρατροπῆς γενομένης καὶ ὅπλα καὶ σκεύη καὶ ἱμάτια συνήθη τοῖς τεθνηκόσι καὶ ὡς ὁ Μίνως τῷ Γλαύκῳ, ‘Κρητικοὺς αὐλοὺς θανοῦσι κῶλα ποικίλης νεβροῦ’ (Trag. adesp. 419) συνθάπτοντες ἥδιον ἔχουσι. κἄν τι δόξωσιν αἰτεῖν καὶ ποθεῖν ἐκείνους, χαίρουσιν ἐπιδιδόντες· ὥσπερ ὁ Περίανδρος τῇ γυναικὶ τὸν κόσμον ὡς δεομένῃ καὶ ῥιγοῦν λεγούσῃ συγκατέκαυσεν. οἱ δ’ Αἰακοὶ καὶ Ἀσκάλαφοι καὶ Ἀχέροντες οὐ πάνυ διαταράττουσιν, οἷς γε καὶ χοροὺς καὶ θέατρα καὶ μοῦσαν †ἡδομένοις παντοδαπὴν γενομένου δεδώκασιν. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο τοῦ θανάτου [e] τὸ πρόσωπον ὡς φοβερὸν καὶ σκυθρωπὸν καὶ σκοτεινὸν ἅπαντες ὑποδειμαίνουσι, τὸ τῆς ἀναισθησίας καὶ λήθης καὶ ἀγνοίας· καὶ πρὸς τό ‘ἀπόλωλε’ καὶ τό ‘ἀνῄρηται’ καὶ τό ‘οὐκ ἔστι’ ταράσσονται καὶ δυσανασχετοῦσι τούτων λεγομένων· (fr. mel. chor. adesp. 16 D.)

‘τὸ ἔπειτα κείσεται βαθυδένδρῳ

ἐν χθονὶ συμποσίων τε καὶ λυρᾶν ἄμοιρος

ἰαχᾶς τε παντερπέος αὐλῶν·’

καί (Ι 408)

‘ἀνδρὸς δὲ ψυχὴ πάλιν ἐλθεῖν οὔτε λεϊστὴ

οὔθ’ ἑλετή, ἐπεὶ ἄρ κεν ἀμείψεται ἕρκος ὀδόντων’.

ἣν καὶ προεπισφάττουσιν οἱ ταυτὶ λέγοντες ‘ἅπαξ ἄνθρωποι γεγόναμεν, δὶς δ’ οὐκ ἔστι γενέσθαι· δεῖ δὲ τὸν [f] αἰῶνα μηκέτ’ εἶναι.’ καὶ γὰρ τὸ παρὸν ὡς μικρὸν μᾶλλον δὲ μηδ’ ὁτιοῦν πρὸς τὸ σύμπαν ἀτιμάσαντες ἀναπόλαυστον προΐενται, καὶ ὀλιγωροῦσιν ἀρετῆς καὶ πράξεως οἷον ἐξαθυμοῦντες καὶ καταφρονοῦντες ἑαυτῶν ὡς ἐφημέρων καὶ ἀβεβαίων καὶ πρὸς οὐθὲν ἀξιόλογον γεγονότων. [1105] [a] τὸ γάρ ‘ἀναισθητεῖν τὸ διαλυθὲν καὶ μηθὲν εἶναι πρὸς ἡμᾶς τὸ ἀναισθητοῦν’ οὐκ ἀναιρεῖ τὸ τοῦ θανάτου δέος ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀπόδειξιν αὐτοῦ προστίθησιν. αὐτὸ γὰρ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ὃ δέδοικεν ἡ φύσις·

‘ἀλλ’ ὑμεῖς μὲν πάντες ὕδωρ καὶ γαῖα γένοισθε’ (Η 99),

τὴν εἰς τὸ μὴ φρονοῦν μηδ’ αἰσθανόμενον διάλυσιν τῆς ψυχῆς, ἣν Ἐπίκουρος εἰς κενὸν καὶ ἀτόμους διασπορὰν ποιῶν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐκκόπτει τὴν ἐλπίδα τῆς ἀφθαρσίας, δι’ ἣν ὀλίγου δέω λέγειν πάντας εἶναι καὶ πάσας προθύμους τῷ Κερβέρῳ διαδάκνεσθαι καὶ φορεῖν εἰς τὸν τρητόν, ὅπως ἐν τῷ εἶναι μόνον διαμένωσι μηδ’ ἀναιρεθῶσι. καίτοι [b] ταῦτα μέν, ὥσπερ ἔφην, οὐ πάνυ πολλοὶ δεδίασι, μητέρων ὄντα καὶ τιτθῶν δόγματα καὶ λόγους μυθώδεις, οἱ δὲ καὶ δεδιότες τελετάς τινας αὖ πάλιν καὶ καθαρμοὺς οἴονται βοηθεῖν, οἷς ἁγνισάμενοι διατελεῖν ἐν Ἅιδου παίζοντες καὶ χορεύοντες ἐν τόποις αὐγὴν καὶ πνεῦμα καθαρὸν καὶ φέγγος ἔχουσιν. ἡ δὲ τοῦ ζῆν στέρησις ἐνοχλεῖ καὶ νέους καὶ γέροντας·

‘δυσέρωτες γὰρ φαινόμεθ’ ὄντες

τοῦδ’, ὅ τι τόδε στίλβει κατὰ γῆν’

ὡς Εὐριπίδης φησίν (Hipp. 193). οὐδὲ ῥᾳδίως οὐδ’ ἀλύπως ἀκούομεν

‘ὣς ἄρ’ εἰπόντα μιν τηλαυγὲς ἀμβρόσιον

ἐλασίππου πρόσωπον

ἀπέλιπεν ἁμέρας’ (fr. mel. chor. adesp. 29 D.).

[c]διὸ τῇ δόξῃ τῆς ἀθανασίας συναναιροῦσι τὰς ἡδίστας ἐλπίδας καὶ μεγίστας τῶν πολλῶν. τί δῆτα τῶν ἀγαθῶν οἰόμεθα καὶ βεβιωκότων ὁσίως καὶ δικαίως, ‹οἳ› κακὸν μὲν οὐθὲν ἐκεῖ τὰ δὲ κάλλιστα καὶ θειότατα προσδοκῶσι; πρῶτον μὲν γάρ, ‹ὡς› ἀθληταὶ στέφανον οὐκ ἀγωνιζόμενοι λαμβάνουσιν ἀλλ’ ἀγωνισάμενοι καὶ νικήσαντες, οὕτως ἡγούμενοι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς τὰ νικητήρια τοῦ βίου μετὰ τὸν βίον ὑπάρχειν θαυμάσιον οἷον φρονοῦσι τῇ ἀρετῇ πρὸς ἐκείνας τὰς ἐλπίδας· ἐν αἷς ἐστι καὶ τοὺς νῦν ὑβρίζοντας ὑπὸ πλούτου καὶ δυνάμεως καὶ καταγελῶντας ἀνοήτως τῶν κρειττόνων ἐπιδεῖν ἀξίαν δίκην τίνοντας.

[d] ἔπειτα τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ θέας τοῦ ὄντος οὐδεὶς ἐνταῦθα τῶν ἐρώντων ἐνέπλησεν ἑαυτὸν ἱκανῶς, οἷον δι’ ὁμίχλης ἢ νέφους τοῦ σώματος ὑγρῷ καὶ ταραττομένῳ τῷ λογισμῷ χρώμενος, ἀλλ’ ὄρνιθος δίκην ἄνω βλέποντες ὡς ἐκπτησόμενοι τοῦ σώματος εἰς μέγα τι καὶ λαμπρόν, εὐσταλῆ καὶ ἐλαφρὰν ποιοῦσι τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπὸ τῶν θνητῶν, τῷ φιλοσοφεῖν μελέτῃ χρώμενοι τοῦ ἀποθνήσκειν. οὕτως μέγα τι καὶ τέλεον ὄντως ἀγαθὸν ἡγοῦνται τὴν τελευτήν, ὡς βίον ἀληθῆ βιωσομένην ἐκεῖ τὴν ψυχήν, οὐχ ὕπαρ νῦν ζῶσαν ἀλλ’ ὀνείρασιν ὅμοια πάσχουσαν. εἰ τοίνυν ‘ἡδὺ [e] πανταχόθεν ἡ φίλου μνήμη τεθνηκότος’, ὥσπερ Ἐπίκουρος εἶπε, καὶ ἤδη νοεῖν πάρεστιν ἡλίκης ἑαυτοὺς χαρᾶς ἀποστεροῦσι φάσματα ‹μὲν› καὶ εἴδωλα τεθνηκότων ἑταίρων οἰόμενοι δέχεσθαι καὶ θηρεύειν, οἷς οὔτε νοῦς ἐστιν οὔτ’ αἴσθησις, αὐτοῖς δὲ συνέσεσθαι πάλιν ἀληθῶς καὶ τὸν φίλον πατέρα καὶ τὴν φίλην μητέρα καί που γυναῖκα χρηστὴν ὄψεσθαι μὴ προσδοκῶντες μηδ’ ἔχοντες ἐλπίδα τῆς ὁμιλίας ἐκείνης καὶ φιλοφροσύνης, ἣν ἔχουσιν οἱ τὰ αὐτὰ Πυθαγόρᾳ καὶ Πλάτωνι καὶ Ὁμήρῳ περὶ ψυχῆς δοξάζοντες. ᾧ δ’ ὅμοιόν ἐστιν αὐτῶν τὸ πάθος, Ὅμηρος [f] ὑποδεδήλωκεν, εἴδωλον τοῦ Αἰνείου καταβαλὼν εἰς μέσον τοῖς μαχομένοις ὡς τεθνηκότος, εἶθ’ ὕστερον αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον ἀναδείξας ‘ζωὸν καὶ ἀρτεμέα προσιόντα καὶ μένος ἐσθλὸν ἔχοντα’ τοῖς φίλοις, ‘οἱ δ’ ἐχάρησαν’ φησί, καὶ [1106] [a] τὸ εἴδωλον μεθέμενοι περιέσχον αὐτόν. οὐκοῦν καὶ ἡμεῖς τοῦ λόγου δεικνύοντος, ὡς ἔστιν ἐντυχεῖν ἀληθῶς τοῖς τεθνεῶσι καὶ τῷ ‹φρονοῦντι καὶ› φιλοῦντι τοῦ φρονοῦντος αὐτοῦ καὶ φιλοῦντος ἅψασθαι καὶ συγγενέσθαι, μὴ δυναμένους μηδ’ ἀπορρῖψαι τὰ εἴδωλα πάντα καὶ τοὺς φλοιούς, ἐφ’ οἷς ὀδυρόμενοι καὶ κενοπαθοῦντες διατελοῦσιν.

Ἄνευ δὲ τούτου, οἱ μὲν ἑτέρου βίου τὸν θάνατον ἀρχὴν κρείττονος νομίζοντες, ἐάν τ’ ἐν ἀγαθοῖς ὦσι, μᾶλλον ἥδονται μείζονα προσδοκῶντες· ἄν τε μὴ κατὰ γνώμην τῶν ἐνταῦθα τυγχάνωσιν, οὐ πάνυ δυσχεραίνουσιν, ἀλλ’ αἱ τῶν μετὰ τὸν θάνατον ἀγαθῶν καὶ καλῶν ἐλπίδες [b] ἀμηχάνους ἡδονὰς καὶ προσδοκίας ἔχουσαι πᾶν μὲν ἔλλειμμα πᾶν δὲ πρόσκρουσμα τῆς ψυχῆς ἐξαλείφουσι καὶ ἀφανίζουσιν ὥσπερ ἐν ὁδῷ μᾶλλον δ’ ὁδοῦ παρατροπῇ βραχείᾳ ῥᾳδίως τὰ συντυγχάνοντα καὶ μετρίως φερούσης. οἷς δ’ ὁ βίος εἰς ἀναισθησίαν περαίνει καὶ διάλυσιν, τούτοις ὁ θάνατος οὐ τῶν κακῶν μεταβολὴν ‹ἀλλὰ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀποβολὴν› ἐπιφέρων, ἀμφοτέροις μέν ἐστι λυπηρός, μᾶλλον ‹δὲ› τοῖς εὐτυχοῦσιν ἢ τοῖς ἐπιπόνως ζῶσι; τούτων μὲν γὰρ ἀποκόπτει τὴν ἄδηλον ἐλπίδα τοῦ πράξειν ἄμεινον, ἐκείνων δὲ βέβαιον ἀγαθόν, τὸ ἡδέως ζῆν, ἀφαιρεῖται. καὶ καθάπερ οἶμαι τὰ μὴ χρηστὰ τῶν φαρμάκων [c] †ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαῖα, κουφίζοντα τοὺς νοσοῦντας ἐπιτρίβει καὶ λυμαίνεται τοὺς ὑγιαίνοντας, οὕτως ὁ Ἐπικούρου λόγος τοῖς μὲν ἀθλίως ζῶσιν οὐκ εὐτυχῆ τοῦ κακῶς πράσσειν τελευτὴν ἐπαγγέλλεται τὴν διάλυσιν καὶ ἀναίρεσιν τῆς ψυχῆς, τῶν δὲ φρονίμων καὶ σοφῶν καὶ βρυόντων ἀγαθοῖς παντάπασι κολούει τὸ εὔθυμον, ἐκ τοῦ ζῆν μακαρίως εἰς τὸ μὴ ζῆν μηδ’ εἶναι καταστρέφων. αὐτόθεν μὲν ‹οὖν› ἐστι δῆλον, ὡς ἀγαθῶν ἀποβολῆς ἐπίνοια λυπεῖν πέφυκεν, ὅσον ἐλπίδες βέβαιοι καὶ ἀπολαύσεις εὐφραίνουσι παρόντων. οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ λέγουσιν αὑτοῖς κακῶν ἀπαύστων ‹καὶ› ἀορίστων λυθεῖσαν ὑποψίαν [d] ἀγαθὸν βεβαιότατον καὶ ἥδιστον ἀπολιπεῖν τὴν ἐπίνοιαν τοῦ λελύσθαι· καὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖν τὸν Ἐπικούρου λόγον, ἱστάντα τοῦ θανάτου τὸ δέος ἐν τῇ διαλύσει τῆς ψυχῆς. εἴπερ οὖν ἥδιστόν ἐστιν ἀπαλλαγὴ προσδοκίας κακῶν ἀπείρων, πῶς οὐκ ἀνιαρὸν αἰωνίων ἀγαθῶν ἐλπίδος στερεῖσθαι καὶ τὴν ἀκροτάτην εὐδαιμονίαν ἀποβαλεῖν; ἀγαθὸν μὲν γὰρ οὐδετέροις, ἀλλὰ πᾶσι τοῖς οὖσι τὸ μὴ εἶναι παρὰ φύσιν καὶ ἀλλότριον· ὧν δ’ ἀφαιρεῖ τὰ τοῦ βίου κακὰ τῷ τοῦ θανάτου κακῷ, τὸ ἀναίσθητον ἔχουσι παραμύθιον ὥσπερ ἀποδιδράσκοντες, καὶ τοὐναντίον, οἷς [e] ἐξ ἀγαθῶν εἰς τὸ μηδὲν μεταβολή, φοβερώτατον ὁρῶσι τέλος, ἐν ᾧ παύσεται τὸ μακάριον. οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἀρχὴν ἑτέρου τὴν ἀναισθησίαν δέδιεν ἡ φύσις, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τῶν παρόντων ἀγαθῶν στέρησίς ἐστι. τὸ γάρ ‘οὐ πρὸς ἡμᾶς’ παντὸς ἀναιρέσει τοῦ ἡμετέρου γινόμενον ἤδη πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἐστι τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ, καὶ τὸ ἀναίσθητον οὐ λυπεῖ τότε τοὺς μὴ ὄντας, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ὄντας εἰς τὸ μὴ εἶναι βαπτομένους ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ μηδαμῶς ἐκδυσομένους. ὅθεν οὐδ’ ὁ Κέρβερος οὐδ’ ὁ Κωκυτὸς ἀόριστον ἐποίησε τοῦ θανάτου τὸ δέος, ἀλλ’ ἡ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἀπειλή, μεταβολὴν εἰς τὸ εἶναι πάλιν οὐκ ἔχουσα τοῖς φθαρεῖσι· ‘δὶς γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι γενέσθαι, δεῖ [f] δὲ τὸν αἰῶνα μὴ εἶναι’ κατ’ Ἐπίκουρον. εἰ γάρ ἐστι πέρας τῷ ‹εἶναι τὸ› μὴ εἶναι, τοῦτο δ’ ἀπέραντον καὶ ἀμετάστατον, εὕρηται κακὸν αἰώνιον ἡ τῶν ἀγαθῶν στέρησις ἀναισθησίᾳ μηδέποτε παυσομένῃ. καὶ σοφώτερος Ἡρόδοτος εἰπὼν ὡς ‘ὁ θεὸς γλυκὺν γεύσας τὸν αἰῶνα φθονερὸς ἐν [1107] [a] αὐτῷ ὢν φαίνεται’ (VII 46), καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς εὐδαιμονεῖν δοκοῦσιν, οἷς δέλεάρ ἐστι λύπης τὸ ἡδύ, γευομένοις ὧν στερήσονται. τίνα γὰρ εὐφροσύνην ἢ ἀπόλαυσιν καὶ βρυασμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐκκρούσειε καὶ καταποντίσειεν ἐμπίπτουσα συνεχῶς ἡ ἐπίνοια τῆς ψυχῆς ὥσπερ εἰς πέλαγος ἀχανὲς τὸ ἄπειρον ἐκχεομένης, τῶν ἐν ἡδονῇ τιθεμένων τὸ καλὸν καὶ μακάριον; εἰ δὲ δὴ καὶ μετ’ ἀλγηδόνος, ὥσπερ Ἐπίκουρος οἴεται, τοῖς πλείστοις ἀπόλλυσθαι συμβαίνει, παντάπασιν ἀπαρηγόρητός ἐστιν ὁ τοῦ θανάτου φόβος, εἰς ἀγαθῶν στέρησιν διὰ κακῶν ἄγοντος.

Καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα μὲν οὐκ ἀποκαμοῦνται μαχόμενοι [b] καὶ βιαζόμενοι πάντας ἀνθρώπους, ἀγαθὸν μὲν ἡγεῖσθαι τὴν τῶν κακῶν ἀποφυγήν, κακὸν δὲ μηκέτι νομίζειν τὴν τῶν ἀγαθῶν στέρησιν· ἐκεῖνο δ’ ὁμολογοῦσι, τὸ μηδεμίαν ἐλπίδα μηδὲ χαρὰν ἔχειν τὸν θάνατον ἀλλ’ ἀποκεκόφθαι πᾶν τὸ ἡδὺ καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν. ἐν ᾧ χρόνῳ πολλὰ καλὰ καὶ μεγάλα καὶ θεῖα προσδοκῶσιν οἱ τὰς ψυχὰς ἀνωλέθρους εἶναι διανοούμενοι καὶ ἀφθάρτους ἢ μακράς τινας χρόνων περιόδους νῦν μὲν ἐν γῇ νῦν δ’ ἐν οὐρανῷ περιπολούσας, ἄχρις οὗ συνδιαλυθῶσι τῷ κόσμῳ, μεθ’ ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης εἰς πῦρ νοερὸν ἀναφθεῖσαι. τοιαύτην χώραν ἡδονῶν [c] τοσούτων Ἐπίκουρος ἐκτέμνεται, καὶ ἐπὶ ταῖς ἐκ θεῶν ἐλπίσιν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, καὶ χάρισιν ἀναιρεθείσαις τοῦ θεωρητικοῦ τὸ φιλομαθὲς καὶ τοῦ πρακτικοῦ τὸ φιλότιμον ἀποτυφλώσας εἰς στενόν τι κομιδῇ καὶ οὐδὲ καθαρὸν τὸ ἐπὶ τῇ σαρκὶ τῆς ψυχῆς χαῖρον συνέστειλε καὶ κατέβαλε τὴν φύσιν, ὡς μεῖζον ἀγαθὸν τοῦ τὸ κακὸν φεύγειν οὐδὲν ἔχουσαν.’

Adversus Colotem

ΠΡΟΣ ΚΩΛΩΤΗΝ

[1107] Κωλώτης, ὃν Ἐπίκουρος εἰώθει Κωλωταρᾶν ὑποκορίζεσθαι καὶ Κωλωτάριον, ὦ Σατορνῖνε, βιβλίον ἐξέδωκεν ἐπιγράψας ‘Περὶ τοῦ ὅτι κατὰ τὰ τῶν ἄλλων [e] φιλοσόφων δόγματα οὐδὲ ζῆν ἔστιν’. ἐκεῖνο μὲν οὖν Πτολεμαίῳ τῷ βασιλεῖ προσπεφώνηται· ἃ δ’ ἡμῖν ἐπῆλθεν εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὸν Κωλώτην, ἡδέως ἂν οἶμαί σε γεγραμμένα διελθεῖν, φιλόκαλον καὶ φιλάρχαιον ὄντα καὶ τὸ μεμνῆσθαι καὶ διὰ χειρῶν ἔχειν ὡς μάλιστα δυνατόν ἐστι τοὺς λόγους τῶν παλαιῶν βασιλικωτάτην διατριβὴν ἡγούμενον.

Ἔναγχος οὖν ἀναγινωσκομένου τοῦ συγγράμματος εἷς τῶν ἑταίρων, Ἀριστόδημος ὁ Αἰγιεύς (οἶσθα γὰρ τὸν ἄνδρα τῶν ἐξ Ἀκαδημείας οὐ ναρθηκοφόρον ἀλλ’ ἐμμανέστατον ὀργιαστὴν Πλάτωνος), οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως παρὰ τὸ εἰωθὸς ἐγκαρτερήσας σιωπῇ καὶ παρασχὼν ἑαυτὸν ἀκροατὴν ἄχρι τέλους κόσμιον, ὡς τέλος ἔσχεν ἡ ἀνάγνωσις, [f] ‘εἶεν’ ἔφη, ‘τίνα τούτῳ μαχούμενον ἀνίσταμεν ὑπὲρ τῶν φιλοσόφων; οὐ γὰρ ἄγα‹μαι τὸ› τοῦ Νέστορος ἑλέσθαι δέον ἐκ τῶν ἐννέα τὸν ἄριστον ἐπὶ τῇ τύχῃ ποιουμένου καὶ διακληροῦντος.’ ‘ἀλλ’ ὁρᾷς’ ἔφην ‘ὅτι κἀκεῖνος ἐπὶ τὸν κλῆρον ἑαυτὸν ἔταξεν, ὥστε τοῦ φρονιμωτάτου βραβεύοντος [1108] [a] γενέσθαι τὸν κατάλογον, ‘ἐκ δ’ ἔθορε κλῆρος κυνέης, ὃν ἄρ’ ἤθελον αὐτοί, Αἴαντος’ (Η 182). οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ εἰ σὺ προστάττεις ἑλέσθαι, ‘πῶς ἂν ἔπειτ’ Ὀδυσῆος ἐγὼ θείοιο λαθοίμην;’ (Κ 243) ὅρα δὴ καὶ σκόπει, πῶς ἀμυνῇ τὸν ἄνδρα.’ καὶ ὁ Ἀριστόδημος ‘ἀλλ’ οἶσθα’ ἔφη ‘τὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος, ὅτι τῷ παιδὶ χαλεπήνας οὐκ αὐτὸς ἐνέτεινε πληγὰς ἀλλὰ Σπεύσιππον ἐκέλευσεν, εἰπὼν αὐτὸς ὀργίζεσθαι. καὶ σὺ τοίνυν παραλαβὼν κόλαζε τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὅπως βούλει· ἐγὼ γὰρ ὀργίζομαι.’ τὰ αὐτὰ δὴ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων παρακελευομένων ‘λεκτέον μέν’ ἔφην ‘ἄρα, [b] φοβοῦμαι δὲ μὴ δόξω καὶ αὐτὸς ἐσπουδακέναι μᾶλλον ἢ δεῖ πρὸς τὸ βιβλίον ὑπ’ ὀργῆς, δι’ ἀγροικίαν καὶ βωμολοχίαν καὶ ὕβριν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου χόρτον τινὰ προβάλλοντος ...ήσεως Σωκράτει καί, πῶς εἰς τὸ στόμα τὸ σιτίον οὐκ εἰς τὸ οὖς ἐντίθησιν, ἐρωτῶντος. ἀλλ’ ἴσως ἂν ἐπὶ τούτοις καὶ γελάσειέ τις ἐννοήσας τὴν Σωκράτους πραότητα καὶ χάριν, ‘ὑπέρ γε μέντοι παντὸς Ἑλλήνων στρατοῦ’ τῶν ἄλλων φιλοσόφων, ἐν οἷς Δημόκριτός ἐστι καὶ Πλάτων καὶ Στίλπων καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς καὶ Παρμενίδης καὶ Μέλισσος, οὕτω κακῶς ἀκηκοότων, οὐ μόνον ‘αἰσχρὸν σιωπᾶν’, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὅσιον ἐνδοῦναί τι καὶ ὑφελέσθαι τῆς ἄκρας ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν παρρησίας εἰς τοῦτο δόξης [c] φιλοσοφίαν προαγαγόντων. καίτοι τὸ μὲν ζῆν οἱ γονεῖς μετὰ τῶν θεῶν ἡμῖν ἔδωκαν, παρὰ δὲ τῶν φιλοσόφων δίκης καὶ νόμου συνεργὸν οἰόμεθα λόγον ἐπιθυμιῶν κολαστὴν λαβόντες εὖ ζῆν· τὸ δ’ εὖ ζῆν ἐστι κοινωνικῶς ζῆν καὶ φιλικῶς καὶ σωφρόνως καὶ δικαίως. ὧν οὐθὲν ἀπολείπουσιν οἱ περὶ γαστέρα τἀγαθὸν εἶναι βοῶντες, οὐκ ἂν δὲ τὰς ἀρετὰς ὁμοῦ πάσας τετρημένου χαλκοῦ πριάμενοι δίχα τῆς ἡδονῆς πάσης πανταχόθεν ἐξελαθείσης· ἐνδεῖν δ’ αὐτοῖς τῶν περὶ θεῶν καὶ ψυχῆς λόγων, ὡς ἡ μὲν ἀπόλλυται διαλυθεῖσα, τοῖς δ’ οὐθενὸς μέλει τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς. τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοις φιλοσόφοις ἐγκαλοῦσιν [d] οὗτοι, διὰ ‹τὸ ἀγνοεῖν τοῦτο› τὸ σοφὸν ὡς τὸ ζῆν ἀναιροῦσιν, ἐκεῖνοι δὲ τούτοις, ὅτι ζῆν ἀγεννῶς καὶ θηριωδῶς διδάσκουσι.

Καίτοι ταῦτα μὲν ἐγκέκραται τοῖς Ἐπικούρου λόγοις καὶ διαπεφοίτηκεν αὐτοῦ τῆς φιλοσοφίας. ὁ δὲ Κωλώτης ὅτι φωνάς τινας ἐρήμους πραγμάτων ἀποσπῶν καὶ μέρη λόγων καὶ σπαράγματα κωφὰ τοῦ βεβαιοῦντος καὶ συνεργοῦντος πρὸς νόησιν καὶ πίστιν ἕλκων ὥσπερ ἀγορὰν ἢ πίνακα τεράτων συντίθησι τὸ βιβλίον, ἴστε δήπου παντὸς μᾶλλον ὑμεῖς’ ἔφην ‘τὰ συγγράμματα τῶν παλαιῶν διὰ χειρὸς ἔχοντες. ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκεῖ καθάπερ ὁ Λυδὸς ἐφ’ αὑτὸν ἀνοίγειν οὐ θύραν μίαν, ἀλλὰ ταῖς πλείσταις τῶν ἀποριῶν [e] καὶ μεγίσταις περιβάλλειν τὸν Ἐπίκουρον.

Ἄρχεται γὰρ ἀπὸ Δημοκρίτου, καλὰ καὶ πρέποντα διδασκάλια κομιζομένου παρ’ αὐτοῦ. καίτοι πολὺν χρόνον αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀνηγόρευε Δημοκρίτειον ὁ Ἐπίκουρος, ὡς ἄλλοι τε λέγουσι καὶ Λεοντεύς, εἷς τῶν ἐπ’ ἄκρον Ἐπικούρου μαθητῶν, πρὸς Λυκόφρονα γράφων τιμᾶσθαί τέ φησι τὸν Δημόκριτον ὑπ’ Ἐπικούρου διὰ τὸ πρότερον ἅψασθαι τῆς ὀρθῆς γνώσεως, καὶ τὸ σύνολον τὴν περὶ φύσεως πραγματείαν Δημοκρίτειον προσαγορεύεσθαι διὰ τὸ περιπεσεῖν αὐτὸν πρότερον ταῖς ἀρχαῖς. ὁ δὲ Μητρόδωρος ἄντικρυς ‹ἐν τῷ› περὶ Φιλοσοφίας εἴρηκεν (fr. 33), [f] ὡς, εἰ μὴ προκαθηγήσατο Δημόκριτος, οὐκ ἂν προῆλθεν Ἐπίκουρος ἐπὶ τὴν σοφίαν. ἀλλ’ εἰ κατὰ τὰ Δημοκρίτου δόγματα ζῆν οὐκ ἔστιν, ὡς οἴεται Κωλώτης, γελοῖος ἦν ἐπὶ τὸ μὴ ζῆν ἄγοντι Δημοκρίτῳ κατακολουθῶν ὁ Ἐπίκουρος.

Ἐγκαλεῖ δ’ αὐτῷ πρῶτον, ὅτι τῶν πραγμάτων ἕκαστον εἰπὼν οὐ μᾶλλον τοῖον ἢ τοῖον εἶναι συγκέχυκε τὸν [1109] [a] βίον. ἀλλὰ τοσοῦτόν γε Δημόκριτος ἀποδεῖ τοῦ νομίζειν μὴ μᾶλλον εἶναι τοῖον ἢ τοῖον τῶν πραγμάτων ἕκαστον, ὥστε Πρωταγόρᾳ τῷ σοφιστῇ τοῦτ’ εἰπόντι μεμαχῆσθαι καὶ γεγραφέναι πολλὰ καὶ πιθανὰ πρὸς αὐτόν. οἷς οὐδ’ ὄναρ ἐντυχὼν ὁ Κωλώτης ἐσφάλη περὶ λέξιν τοῦ ἀνδρός, ἐν ᾗ διορίζεται μὴ μᾶλλον τό ‘δέν’ ἢ τό ‘μηδέν’ εἶναι, ‘δέν’ μὲν ὀνομάζων τὸ σῶμα ‘μηδέν’ δὲ τὸ κενόν, ὡς καὶ τούτου φύσιν τινὰ καὶ ὑπόστασιν ἰδίαν ἔχοντος. ὁ δ’ οὖν δόξας τό ‘μηδὲν μᾶλλον εἶναι τοῖον ἢ τοῖον’ Ἐπικουρείῳ δόγματι κέχρηται, τῷ ‘πάσας εἶναι τὰς δι’ αἰσθήσεως [b] φαντασίας ἀληθεῖς’. εἰ γὰρ δυοῖν λεγόντων τοῦ μὲν αὐστηρὸν εἶναι τὸν οἶνον τοῦ δὲ γλυκὺν οὐδέτερος ψεύδεται τῇ αἰσθήσει, τί μᾶλλον ὁ οἶνος αὐστηρὸς ἢ γλυκύς ἐστι; καὶ μὴν λουτρῷ γε τῷ αὐτῷ τοὺς μὲν ὡς θερμῷ τοὺς δ’ ὡς ψυχρῷ χρωμένους ἰδεῖν ἔστιν· οἱ μὲν γὰρ ψυχρὸν οἱ δὲ θερμὸν ἐπιβάλλειν κελεύουσι. πρὸς δὲ Βερρονίκην τὴν Δηϊοτάρου τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων τινὰ γυναικῶν ἀφικέσθαι λέγουσιν· ὡς δ’ ἐγγὺς ἀλλήλων προσῆλθον, εὐθὺς ἀποστραφῆναι τὴν μὲν τὸ μύρον ὡς ἔοικε τὴν δὲ τὸ βούτυρον δυσχεράνασαν. εἴπερ οὖν μὴ μᾶλλόν ἐστιν ἡ ἑτέρα τῆς ἑτέρας ἀληθὴς αἴσθησις, εἰκός ἐστι καὶ τὸ [c] ὕδωρ μὴ μᾶλλον εἶναι ψυχρὸν ἢ θερμὸν καὶ τὸ μύρον καὶ τὸ βούτυρον μὴ μᾶλλον εὐῶδες ἢ δυσῶδες. εἰ γὰρ τὸ αὐτὸ φαινόμενον ἕτερον ἑτέρῳ φάσκει τις ‹ἀμφοτέροις τοιοῦτον εἶναι›, ἀμφότερα εἶναι λέγων λέληθεν.

Αἱ δὲ πολυθρύλητοι συμμετρίαι καὶ ἁρμονίαι τῶν περὶ τὰ αἰσθητήρια πόρων αἵ τε πολυμιξίαι τῶν σπερμάτων, ἃ δὴ πᾶσι χυμοῖς καὶ ὀσμαῖς καὶ χροιαῖς ἐνδιεσπαρμένα λέγουσιν ἑτέραν ἑτέρῳ ποιότητος κινεῖν αἴσθησιν, οὐκ ἄντικρυς εἰς τό ‘μὴ μᾶλλον’ τὰ πράγματα συνελαύνουσιν αὐτοῖς; τοὺς γὰρ οἰομένους ψεύδεσθαι τὴν αἴσθησιν, ὅτι τὰ ἐναντία πάθη γινόμενα τοῖς χρωμένοις ἀπὸ [d] τῶν αὐτῶν ὁρῶσι, παραμυθούμενοι διδάσκουσιν, ὡς ἀναπεφυρμένων καὶ συμμεμιγμένων ὁμοῦ τι πάντων, ἄλλου δ’ ἄλλῳ πεφυκότος ἐναρμόττειν οὐκ ἔστι τῆς αὐτῆς ‹πᾶσι› ποιότητος ἐπαφὴ καὶ ἀντίληψις οὐδὲ πᾶσι τοῖς μέρεσι κινεῖ πάντας ὡσαύτως τὸ ὑποκείμενον, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνοις ἕκαστοι μόνοις ἐντυγχάνοντες, πρὸς ἃ σύμμετρον ἔχουσι τὴν αἴσθησιν, οὐκ ὀρθῶς διαμάχονται περὶ τοῦ χρηστὸν ἢ πονηρὸν ἢ λευκὸν ἢ μὴ λευκὸν εἶναι τὸ πρᾶγμα, τὰς αὑτῶν οἰόμενοι βεβαιοῦν αἰσθήσεις τῷ τὰς ἄλλων ἀναιρεῖν· δεῖ δ’ αἰσθήσει μὲν μηδεμιᾷ μάχεσθαι (πᾶσαι γὰρ ἅπτονταί τινος, οἷον ἐκ πηγῆς τῆς πολυμιξίας ἑκάστη [e] λαμβάνουσα τὸ πρόσφορον καὶ οἰκεῖον), ὅλου δὲ μὴ κατηγορεῖν ἁπτομένους μερῶν, μηδὲ τὸ αὐτὸ δεῖν οἴεσθαι πάσχειν ἅπαντας, ἄλλους κατ’ ἄλλην ποιότητα καὶ δύναμιν αὐτοῦ πάσχοντας. ὥρα δὴ σκοπεῖν, τίνες μᾶλλον ἄνθρωποι τό ‘μὴ μᾶλλον’ ἐπάγουσι τοῖς πράγμασιν ἢ οἳ πᾶν μὲν τὸ αἰσθητὸν κρᾶμα παντοδαπῶν ποιοτήτων ἀποφαίνουσι, ‘σύμμικτον ὥστε γλεῦκος αὐλητήριον’ (Trag. adesp. 420), ἔρρειν δ’ ὁμολογοῦσι τοὺς κανόνας αὐτοῖς καὶ παντάπασιν οἴχεσθαι τὸ κριτήριον, ἄνπερ εἰλικρινὲς αἰσθητὸν ὁτιοῦν καὶ μὴ πολλὰ ἕκαστον ἀπολίπωσιν.

Ὅρα δὴ ἃ περὶ τοῦ οἴνου τῆς θερμότητος ἐν τῷ Συμποσίῳ Πολύαινον αὑτῷ διαλεγόμενον Ἐπίκουρος πεποίηκε.

[f] λέγοντος γάρ ‘οὐ φῂς εἶναι, ὦ Ἐπίκουρε, τὰς ὑπὸ τοῦ οἴνου διαθερμασίας;’ ὑπέλαβε †’τίς σε τοκαθόλου θερμαντικὸν ἀποφαίνεσθαι τὸν οἶνον εἶναι’; καὶ μετὰ σμικρόν ‘φαίνεται μὲν γὰρ δὴ τὸ καθόλου οὐκ εἶναι θερμαντικὸς ὁ οἶνος, τοῦδε δέ τινος ὁ τοσοῦτος εἶναι θερμαντικὸς ἂν ῥηθείη.’ καὶ πάλιν αἰτίαν ὑπειπὼν θλίψεις τε καὶ διασπορὰς [1110] [a] ἀτόμων, ἑτέρων δὲ συμμίξεις καὶ παραζεύξεις αἰτιασάμενος ἐν τῇ πρὸς τὸ σῶμα καταμίξει τοῦ οἴνου, ἐπιλέγει ‘διὸ δὴ καθόλου μὲν οὐ ῥητέον τὸν οἶνον εἶναι θερμαντικόν, τῆς δὲ τοιαύτης φύσεως καὶ τῆς οὕτω διακειμένης θερμαντικὸν τὸν τοσοῦτον ἢ τῆσδε τὸν τοσοῦτον εἶναι ψυκτικόν. ἔνεισι γὰρ καὶ τοιαῦται ἐν τῷ τοιούτῳ ἀθροίσματι φύσεις, ἐξ ὧν ἂν ψυχρὸν συσταίη, ‹ἢ αἳ› εἰς δέον γε ἑτέραις παραζυγεῖσαι ψυχρασίας φύσιν ἀποτελέσειαν· ὅθεν ἐξαπατώμενοι οἱ μὲν ψυκτικὸν τὸ καθόλου φασὶν εἶναι τὸν οἶνον οἱ δὲ θερμαντικόν.’ ὁ δὴ λέγων ἐξηπατῆσθαι τοὺς πολλοὺς τὸ θερμαῖνον θερμαντικὸν [b] ἢ τὸ ψῦχον ψυκτικὸν ὑπολαμβάνοντας, εἰ μὴ νομίζοι τό ‘μὴ μᾶλλον εἶναι τοῖον ἢ τοῖον ἕκαστον’ ἀκολουθεῖν οἷς εἴρηκεν, αὐτὸς ἐξηπάτηται.

Προστίθησι δ’ ὅτι ‘πολλάκις οὐδ’ ἦλθεν εἰς τὸ σῶμα θερμαντικὴν ἐπιφέρων ἢ ψυκτικὴν δύναμιν ὁ οἶνος, ἀλλὰ κινηθέντος τοῦ ὄγκου καὶ γενομένης τῶν σωμάτων μεταστάσεως αἱ ποιοῦσαι τὸ θερμὸν ἄτομοι νῦν μὲν συνῆλθον εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ παρέσχον ὑπὸ πλήθους θερμότητα καὶ πύρωσιν τῷ σώματι, νῦν δ’ ἐκπεσοῦσαι κατέψυξαν.’ ὅτι δὲ τούτοις πρὸς πᾶν ἔστι χρῆσθαι τὸ καλούμενον καὶ νομιζόμενον πικρὸν γλυκὺ καθαρτικὸν ὑπνωτικὸν φωτεινόν, ὡς οὐδενὸς ἔχοντος αὐτοτελῆ ποιότητα [c] καὶ δύναμιν οὐδὲ δρῶντος μᾶλλον ἢ πάσχοντος, ὅταν ἐγγένηται τοῖς σώμασιν, ἄλλην δ’ ἐν ἄλλοις διαφορὰν καὶ κρᾶσιν λαμβάνοντος, οὐκ ἄδηλόν ἐστιν. αὐτὸς γὰρ οὖν ὁ Ἐπίκουρος ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ τῶν πρὸς Θεόφραστον οὐκ εἶναι λέγων τὰ χρώματα συμφυῆ τοῖς σώμασιν, ἀλλὰ γεννᾶσθαι κατὰ ποιάς τινας τάξεις καὶ θέσεις πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, οὐ μᾶλλόν φησι κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ἀχρωμάτιστον σῶμα εἶναι ἢ χρῶμα ἔχον. ἀνωτέρω δὲ κατὰ λέξιν ταῦτα γέγραφεν· ‘ἀλλὰ καὶ χωρὶς τούτου τοῦ μέρους οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως δεῖ τὰ ἐν τῷ σκότει ταῦτ’ ὄντα φῆσαι χρώματα [d] ἔχειν’. καίτοι πολλάκις ἀέρος ὁμοίως σκοτώδους περικεχυμένου οἱ μὲν αἰσθάνονται χρωμάτων διαφορᾶς οἱ δ’ οὐκ αἰσθάνονται δι’ ἀμβλύτητα τῆς ὄψεως· ἔτι δ’ εἰσελθόντες εἰς σκοτεινὸν οἶκον οὐδεμίαν ὄψιν χρώματος ὁρῶμεν ἀναμείναντες δὲ μικρὸν ὁρῶμεν. οὐ μᾶλλον οὖν ἔχειν ἢ μὴ ἔχειν χρῶμα ῥηθήσεται τῶν σωμάτων ἕκαστον. εἰ δὲ τὸ χρῶμα πρός τι, καὶ τὸ λευκὸν ἔσται πρός τι καὶ τὸ κυανοῦν, εἰ δὲ ταῦτα, καὶ τὸ γλυκὺ καὶ τὸ πικρόν. ὥστε κατὰ πάσης ποιότητος ἀληθῶς τὸ μὴ μᾶλλον εἶναι ἢ μὴ εἶναι κατηγορεῖσθαι· τοῖς γὰρ οὕτω πάσχουσιν ἔσται τοιοῦτον, οὐκ ἔσται δὲ τοῖς μὴ πάσχουσι. τὸν οὖν βόρβορον [e] καὶ τὸν ‹πηλόν›, ἐν ᾧ φησι γίνεσθαι τοὺς τό ‘μηδὲν μᾶλλον’ ἐπιφθεγγομένους τοῖς πράγμασιν, ἑαυτοῦ κατασκεδάννυσι καὶ τοῦ καθηγεμόνος ὁ Κωλώτης.

Ἆρ’ οὖν ἐνταῦθα μόνον ὁ γενναῖος ‘ἄλλων ἰατρὸς αὐτὸς ἕλκεσιν βρύων’ ἀναπέφηνεν; οὐ μὲν οὖν· ἀλλ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ τῶν ἐπιτιμημάτων λέληθε τῷ Δημοκρίτῳ τὸν Ἐπίκουρον ἐκ τοῦ ζῆν συνεξωθῶν. τὸ γὰρ νόμῳ χροιὴν εἶναι καὶ νόμῳ γλυκὺ καὶ νόμῳ σύγκρισιν ‹ἅπασαν, ἐτεῇ δὲ τὸ κενὸν καὶ› τὰς ἀτόμους εἰρημένον φησὶν ὑπὸ Δημοκρίτου ‹μάχεσθαι› ταῖς αἰσθήσεσι, καὶ τὸν ἐμμένοντα τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ καὶ χρώμενον οὐδ’ ἂν [f] αὑτὸν ὡς ‹ἄνθρωπός› ἐστιν ἢ ζῇ διανοηθῆναι. πρὸς τοῦτον ἀντειπεῖν μὲν οὐδὲν ἔχω τὸν λόγον, εἰπεῖν δέ, ὅτι ταῦτα τῶν Ἐπικούρου δογμάτων οὕτως ἀχώριστά ἐστιν, ὡς τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὸ βάρος αὐτοὶ τῆς ἀτόμου λέγουσι. τί γὰρ λέγει Δημόκριτος; οὐσίας ἀπείρους τὸ πλῆθος ἀτόμους τε καὶ ἀδιαφθόρους, ἔτι δ’ ἀποίους καὶ ἀπαθεῖς ἐν τῷ κενῷ φέρεσθαι διεσπαρμένας· ὅταν δὲ πελάσωσιν [1111] [a] ἀλλήλαις ἢ συμπέσωσιν ἢ περιπλακῶσι, φαίνεσθαι τῶν ἀθροιζομένων τὸ μὲν ὕδωρ τὸ δὲ πῦρ τὸ δὲ φυτὸν τὸ δ’ ἄνθρωπον, εἶναι δὲ πάντα τὰς ἀτόμους, ἰδέας ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ καλουμένας, ἕτερον δὲ μηδέν· ἐκ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος οὐκ εἶναι γένεσιν, ἐκ δὲ τῶν ὄντων μηδὲν ἂν γενέσθαι τῷ μήτε πάσχειν μήτε μεταβάλλειν τὰς ἀτόμους ὑπὸ στερρότητος· ὅθεν οὔτε χρόαν ἐξ ἀχρώστων οὔτε φύσιν ἢ ψυχὴν ἐξ ἀποίων καὶ ‹ἀψύχων› ὑπάρχειν. ἐγκλητέος οὖν ὁ Δημόκριτος οὐχὶ τὰ συμβαίνοντα ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ὁμολογῶν ἀλλὰ λαμβάνων ἀρχὰς αἷς ταῦτα συμβέβηκεν. ἔδει γὰρ [b] ἀμετάβλητα μὴ θέσθαι τὰ πρῶτα, θέμενον δὲ δὴ συνορᾶν ὅτι ποιότητος οἴχεται πάσης γένεσις. ἀρνεῖσθαι δὲ συνορῶντα τὴν ἀτοπίαν ἀναισχυντότατον· ‹ὥστ’ ἀναισχυντότατον›, ὃ Ἐπίκουρός φησιν, ἀρχὰς μὲν ὑποτίθεσθαι τὰς αὐτάς, οὐ λέγειν δέ ‘νόμῳ χροιὴν καὶ γλυκὺ καὶ λευκόν’ καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ποιότητας. εἰ μὲν οὖν τό ‘οὐ λέγειν τοιοῦτον’ ἐστίν ‘οὐχ ὁμολογεῖν’, τῶν εἰθισμένων τι ποιεῖ· καὶ γὰρ τὴν πρόνοιαν ἀναιρῶν εὐσέβειαν ἀπολείπειν λέγει, καὶ τῆς ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα τὴν φιλίαν αἱρούμενος ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων τὰς μεγίστας ἀλγηδόνας ἀναδέχεσθαι, καὶ τὸ μὲν πᾶν ἄπειρον ὑποτίθεσθαι, τὸ δ’ ἄνω καὶ κάτω [c] μὴ ἀναιρεῖν. †ἔστι δὲ οὓσ... κύλικα μὲν λαβόντα καὶ πιεῖν ὅσον ἂν ἐθέλῃ καὶ ἀποδοῦναι τὸ λεῖπον, ἐν δὲ τῷ λόγῳ μάλιστα δεῖ τοῦ σοφοῦ τούτου μνημονεύειν ἀποφθέγματος ‘ὧν αἱ ἀρχαὶ οὐκ ἀναγκαῖαι, τὰ τέλη ἀναγκαῖα’. οὐκ οὖν ἀναγκαῖον ὑποθέσθαι μᾶλλον δ’ ὑφελέσθαι Δημοκρίτου, ἀτόμους εἶναι τῶν ὅλων ἀρχάς· θεμένῳ δὲ τὸ δόγμα καὶ καλλωπισαμένῳ ταῖς πρώταις πιθανότησιν αὐτοῦ προσεκποτέον ἐστὶ τὸ δυσχερές, ἢ δεικτέον ὅπως ἄποια σώματα παντοδαπὰς ποιότητας αὐτῷ μόνῳ τῷ συνελθεῖν παρέσχεν. οἷον εὐθύς, τὸ καλούμενον θερμὸν ὑμῖν πόθεν ἀφῖκται καὶ πῶς ἐπιγέγονε ταῖς [d] ἀτόμοις, αἳ μήτ’ ἦλθον ἔχουσαι θερμότητα μήτ’ ἐγένοντο θερμαὶ συνελθοῦσαι; τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἔχοντος ποιότητα τὸ δὲ πάσχειν πεφυκότος, οὐδέτερον δὲ ταῖς ἀτόμοις ὑπάρχειν φατὲ προσῆκον εἶναι διὰ τὴν ἀφθαρσίαν.

‘Τί οὖν; οὐχὶ καὶ Πλάτωνι συνέβαινε καὶ Ἀριστοτέλει καὶ Ξενοκράτει χρυσὸν ἐκ μὴ χρυσοῦ καὶ λίθον ἐκ μὴ λίθου καὶ τἄλλα γεννᾶν ἐκ τεσσάρων ἁπλῶν καὶ πρώτων ἅπαντα;’ πάνυ μὲν οὖν. ἀλλ’ ἐκείνοις μὲν εὐθύς τε συνίασιν αἱ ἀρχαὶ πρὸς τὴν ἑκάστου γένεσιν ὥσπερ συμβολὰς μεγάλας φέρουσαι τὰς ἐν αὑταῖς ποιότητας, καὶ [e] ὅταν συνέλθωσιν εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ συμπέσωσι ξηροῖς ὑγρὰ καὶ ψυχρὰ θερμοῖς καὶ στερεὰ μαλθακοῖς, σώματα κινούμενα παθητικῶς ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων καὶ μεταβάλλοντα δι’ ὅλων, ἑτέραν ἀφ’ ἑτέρας κράσεως συναποτίκτει γένεσιν. ἡ δ’ ἄτομος αὐτή τε καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ἔρημός ἐστι καὶ γυμνὴ πάσης γονίμου δυνάμεως, καὶ πρὸς ἄλλην προσπεσοῦσα βρασμὸν ὑπὸ σκληρότητος καὶ ἀντιτυπίας ἄλλο δ’ οὐδὲν ἔσχεν οὐδ’ ἐποίησε πάθος, ἀλλὰ παίονται καὶ παίουσι τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον, οὐχ ὅπως ζῷον ἢ ψυχὴν ἢ φύσιν ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ πλῆθος ἐξ ἑαυτῶν κοινὸν οὐδὲ σωρὸν ἕνα παλλομένων ἀεὶ καὶ [f] διισταμένων δυνάμεναι παρασχεῖν.

Ὁ δὲ Κωλώτης, ὥσπερ ἀγραμμάτῳ βασιλεῖ προσδιαλεγόμενος, πάλιν ἐξάπτεται τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους ταὐτὸ πνέοντος (B 8)·

‘ἄλλο δέ τοι ἐρέω· φύσις οὐδενὸς ἔστιν ἑκάστου

θνητῶν, οὐδέ τις οὐλομένη θανάτοιο γενέθλη·

ἀλλὰ μόνον μῖξίς τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων

ἔστι, φύσις δ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς ὀνομάζεται ἀνθρώποισι.’

ταῦτ’ ἐγὼ μὲν οὐχ ὁρῶ καθ’ ὅ τι πρὸς τὸ ζῆν ὑπεναντιοῦται [1112] [a] τοῖς ὑπολαμβάνουσι μήτε γένεσιν τοῦ μὴ ὄντος εἶναι μήτε φθορὰν τοῦ ὄντος, ἀλλ’ ὄντων τινῶν συνόδῳ πρὸς ἄλληλα τὴν γένεσιν διαλύσει δ’ ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων τὸν θάνατον ἐπονομάζεσθαι. ὅτι γὰρ ἀντὶ τῆς γενέσεως εἴρηκε τὴν φύσιν, ἀντιθεὶς τὸν θάνατον αὐτῇ δεδήλωκεν ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς. εἰ δ’ οἱ μίξεις τὰς γενέσεις τιθέμενοι τὰς δὲ φθορὰς διαλύσεις οὐ ζῶσιν οὐδὲ δύνανται ζῆν, τί ποιοῦσιν ἕτερον οὗτοι; καίτοι ὁ μὲν Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τὰ στοιχεῖα κολλῶν καὶ συναρμόττων θερμότησι καὶ μαλακότησι καὶ ὑγρότησι μῖξιν αὐτοῖς καὶ συμφυΐαν ἑνωτικὴν ἁμωσγέπως ἐνδίδωσιν, οἱ [b] δὲ τὰς ἀτρέπτους καὶ ἀσυμπαθεῖς ἀτόμους εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συνελαύνοντες ἐξ αὐτῶν μὲν οὐδέν, αὐτῶν δὲ πολλὰς ποιοῦσι καὶ συνεχεῖς πληγάς. ἡ γὰρ περιπλοκὴ κωλύουσα τὴν διάλυσιν μᾶλλον ἐπιτείνει τὴν σύγκρουσιν, ὥστε μηδὲ μῖξιν εἶναι μηδὲ κόλλησιν ἀλλὰ ταραχὴν καὶ μάχην κατ’ αὐτοὺς τὴν λεγομένην γένεσιν· εἰ δ’ ἀκαρὲς ... νῦν μὲν ἀπίασι διὰ τὴν ἀντίκρουσιν, νῦν δὲ προσίασι τῆς πληγῆς ἐκλυθείσης, πλεῖον ἢ διπλάσιον χωρίς εἰσιν ἀλλήλων χρόνον, οὐ ψαύουσαι καὶ πλησιάζουσαι, ὥστε μηδὲν ἐξ αὐτῶν ἀποτελεῖσθαι μηδ’ ἄψυχον, αἴσθησις δὲ καὶ ψυχὴ καὶ νοῦς [c] καὶ φρόνησις οὐδὲ βουλομένοις ἐπίνοιαν δίδωσιν ὡς γένοιτ’ ἂν ἐν κενῷ καὶ ἀτόμοις. ὧν οὔτε καθ’ ἑαυτὰ ποιότης ἐστὶν οὔτε πάθος ἢ μεταβολὴ συνελθόντων, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ συνέλευσις ἡ σύγκρασιν ποιοῦσα καὶ μῖξιν καὶ συμφυΐαν ἀλλὰ πληγὰς καὶ ἀποπηδήσεις. ὥστε τοῖς τούτων δόγμασι τὸ ζῆν ἀναιρεῖται καὶ τὸ ζῷον εἶναι, κενὰς καὶ ἀπαθεῖς καὶ ἀθέους καὶ ἀψύχους, ἔτι δ’ ἀμίκτους καὶ ἀσυγκράτους ἀρχὰς ὑποτιθεμένοις.

Πῶς οὖν ἀπολείπουσι φύσιν καὶ ψυχὴν καὶ ζῷον; ὡς ὅρκον ὡς εὐχὴν ὡς θυσίαν ὡς προσκύνησιν, ῥήματι καὶ λόγῳ καὶ τῷ φάναι καὶ προσποιεῖσθαι καὶ ὀνομάζειν, ἃ ταῖς ἀρχαῖς καὶ τοῖς δόγμασιν ἀναιροῦσιν. εἰ δὲ δὴ τὸ [d] πεφυκὸς αὐτοὶ φύσιν καὶ τὸ γεγονὸς γένεσιν ὀνομάζουσιν, ὥσπερ οἱ ξυλείαν τὰ ξύλα καὶ συμφωνίαν καλοῦντες ἐκφορικῶς τὰ συμφωνοῦντα, πόθεν ἐπῆλθεν αὐτῷ τοιαῦτα προβάλλειν ἐρωτήματα τῷ Ἐμπεδοκλεῖ; ‘τί κόπτομεν’ φησίν ‘ἡμᾶς αὐτούς, σπουδάζοντες ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν καὶ ὀρεγόμενοί τινων πραγμάτων καὶ φυλαττόμενοί τινα πράγματα; οὔτε γὰρ ἡμεῖς ἐσμεν οὔτ’ ἄλλ’ οἷς χρώμενοι ζῶμεν.’ ἀλλὰ θάρρει, φαίη τις ἄν, ὦ φίλον Κωλωτάριον· οὐδείς σε κωλύει σπουδάζειν ὑπὲρ σεαυτοῦ, διδάσκων ὅτι ‘Κωλώτου φύσις’ αὐτὸς ὁ Κωλώτης ἐστὶν ἄλλο δ’ οὐθέν, [e] οὐδὲ χρῆσθαι τοῖς πράγμασι (τὰ δὲ πράγματα ὑμῖν ἡδοναί εἰσιν), ὑποδεικνύων ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν ἀμήτων φύσις οὐδ’ ὀσμῶν οὐδὲ πλησιάσεως, ἄμητες δ’ εἰσὶ καὶ μύρα καὶ γυναῖκες. οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ γραμματικὸς λέγων τό ‘βίην Ἡρακλείην’ αὐτὸν εἶναι τὸν Ἡρακλέα ‹ἀναιρεῖ τὸν Ἡρακλέα›, οὐδ’ οἱ τὰς συμφωνίας καὶ τὰς δοκώσεις ἐκφορὰς μόνον εἶναι φάσκοντες οὐχὶ καὶ φθόγγους καὶ δοκοὺς ὑπάρχειν λέγουσιν· ὅπου καὶ ψυχήν τινες ἀναιροῦντες καὶ φρόνησιν οὔτε τὸ ζῆν ἀναιρεῖν οὔτε τὸ φρονεῖν δοκοῦσιν. Ἐπικούρου δὲ λέγοντος ‘ἡ τῶν ὄντων φύσις σώματά ἐστι καὶ τόπος’, πότερον οὕτως ἀκούωμεν ὡς ἄλλο τι τὴν φύσιν παρὰ τὰ ὄντα [f] βουλομένου λέγειν ‹ἢ› τὰ ὄντα δηλοῦντος ἕτερον δὲ μηθέν; ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ κενοῦ φύσιν αὐτὸ τὸ κενόν, καὶ νὴ Δία τὸ πᾶν ‘παντὸς φύσιν’ ὀνομάζειν εἴωθε. κἂν εἴ τις ἔροιτο ‘τί λέγεις, ὦ Ἐπίκουρε, τὸ μέν τι κενὸν εἶναι τὸ δὲ φύσιν κενοῦ;’ ‘μὰ Δία’ φήσει, ‘νενόμισται δέ πως ἡ τοιαύτη τῶν ὀνομάτων ὁμιλία, νόμῳ δ’ ἐπίφημι καὶ αὐτός.’ τί οὖν ἕτερον ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς πεποίηκεν [ἢ] διδάξας ὅτι φύσις παρὰ τὸ φυόμενον οὐθέν ἐστιν οὐδὲ θάνατος παρὰ [1113] [a] τὸ θνῆσκον, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ οἱ ποιηταὶ πολλάκις ἀνειδωλοποιοῦντες λέγουσιν ‘ἐν δ’ Ἔρις, ἐν δὲ Κυδοιμὸς ὁμίλεον, ἐν δ’ ὀλοὴ Κήρ’ (Σ 535), οὕτως γένεσίν τινα καὶ φθορὰν καλοῦσιν οἱ πολλοὶ ἐπὶ τοῖς συνισταμένοις καὶ διαλυομένοις; τοσοῦτον ‹δ’› ἐδέησε τοῦ κινεῖν τὰ ὄντα καὶ μάχεσθαι τοῖς φαινομένοις, ὥστε μηδὲ τὴν φωνὴν ἐκβαλεῖν ἐκ τῆς συνηθείας, ἀλλ’ ὅσον εἰς τὰ πράγματα βλάπτουσαν ἀπάτην παρεῖχεν ἀφελὼν αὖθις ἀποδοῦναι τοῖς ὀνόμασι τὸ νενομισμένον ἐν τούτοις (B 9)·

‘οἱ δ’ ὅτε μὲν κατὰ φῶτα †μιγὲν φῶς αἰθέρι ...

ἢ κατὰ θηρῶν ἀγροτέρων γένος ἢ κατὰ θάμνων

[b] ἠὲ κατ’ οἰωνῶν, τότε μὲν τὸν ... γενέσθαι.

εὖτε δ’ ἀποκρινθῶσι, τὸ δ’ αὖ δυσδαίμονα πότμον.

ᾗ θέμις, ‹οὐ› καλέουσι· νόμῳ δ’ ἐπίφημι καὶ αὐτός.’

‹ἃ› ὁ Κωλώτης παραθέμενος οὐ συνεῖδεν ὅτι φῶτας μὲν καὶ θῆρας καὶ θάμνους καὶ οἰωνοὺς ὁ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς οὐκ ἀνῄρηκεν, ἅ γέ φησι μιγνυμένων τῶν στοιχείων ἀποτελεῖσθαι, τοὺς δὲ τῇ συγκρίσει ταύτῃ καὶ διακρίσει ‘φύσιν’ τινὰ καί ‘πότμον δυσδαίμονα’ καί ‘θάνατον ἀλοίτην’ ἐπικατηγοροῦντας ᾗ σφάλλονται διδάξας οὐκ ἀφείλετο τὸ χρῆσθαι ταῖς εἰθισμέναις φωναῖς περὶ αὐτῶν.

Ἐμοὶ μέντοι δοκεῖ μὴ τοῦτο κινεῖν τὸ ἐκφορικὸν ὁ [c] Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ἀλλ’, ὡς πρότερον εἴρηται, πραγματικῶς διαφέρεσθαι περὶ τῆς ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων γενέσεως, ἣν φύσιν τινὲς καλοῦσι· δηλοῖ δὲ μάλιστα διὰ τούτων τῶν ἐπῶν (B 11)

‘νήπιοι· οὐ γάρ σφιν δολιχόφρονές εἰσι μέριμναι·

οἳ δὴ γίνεσθαι πάρος οὐκ ἐὸν ἐλπίζουσιν

ἤ τι καταθνήσκειν τε καὶ ἐξόλλυσθαι ἁπάντῃ.’

ταῦτα γὰρ τὰ ἔπη μέγα βοῶντός ἐστι τοῖς ὦτα ἔχουσιν, ὡς οὐκ ἀναιρεῖ γένεσιν ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐκ μὴ ὄντος, οὐδὲ φθορὰν ἀλλὰ τὴν πάντῃ, τουτέστι τὴν εἰς τὸ μὴ ὂν ἀπολλύουσαν. ἐπεὶ τῷ γε βουλομένῳ μὴ ἀγρίως οὕτω μηδ’ ἠλιθίως ἀλλὰ πραότερον συκοφαντεῖν τὸ μετὰ ταῦτ’ ἐπὶ τοὐναντίον ἂν [d] αἰτιάσασθαι παράσχοι, τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους λέγοντος (B 15)

‘οὐκ ἂν ἀνὴρ τοιαῦτα σοφὸς φρεσὶ μαντεύσαιτο,

ὡς ὄφρα μέν τε βιῶσι, τὸ δὴ βίοτον καλέουσι,

τόφρα μὲν οὖν εἰσιν καί σφιν πάρα δεινὰ καὶ ἐσθλά,

πρὶν δὲ πάγεν τε βροτοὶ καὶ ‹ἐπεὶ› λύθεν, οὐδὲν ἄρ’ εἰσί.’

ταῦτα γὰρ οὐκ ἀρνουμένου μὴ εἶναι τοὺς γεγονότας καὶ ζῶντάς ἐστιν, εἶναι δὲ μᾶλλον οἰομένου καὶ τοὺς μηδέπω γεγονότας καὶ τοὺς ἤδη τεθνηκότας. ἀλλ’ ὅμως ὁ Κωλώτης τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἐγκέκληκε, λέγει δὲ κατ’ αὐτὸν οὐδὲ νοσήσειν ἡμᾶς οὐδὲ τραυματισθήσεσθαι. καὶ πῶς ὁ πρὸ τοῦ βίου καὶ μετὰ τὸν βίον ἑκάστῳ λέγων παρεῖναι δεινὰ [e] καὶ ἐσθλά, περὶ τοὺς ζῶντας οὐκ ἀπολείπει τὸ πάσχειν; τίσιν οὖν ἀληθῶς ἕπεται τὸ μὴ τραυματίζεσθαι μηδὲ νοσεῖν, ὦ Κωλῶτα; ὑμῖν τοῖς ἐξ ἀτόμου καὶ κενοῦ συμπεπηγόσιν, ὧν οὐδετέρῳ μέτεστιν αἰσθήσεως. καὶ οὐ τοῦτο δεινόν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι μηδ’ ἡδονὴν τὸ ποιῆσον ὑμῖν ἔστι, τῆς μὲν ἀτόμου μὴ δεχομένης τὰ ποιητικὰ τοῦ δὲ κενοῦ μὴ πάσχοντος ὑπ’ αὐτῶν. -

Ἐπεὶ δ’ ὁ μὲν Κωλώτης ἐφεξῆς τῷ Δημοκρίτῳ τὸν Παρμενίδην ἐβούλετο συγκατορύσσειν, ἐγὼ δ’ ὑπερβὰς τὰ ἐκείνου τὰ τοῦ Ἐμπεδοκλέους προέλαβον διὰ τὸ μᾶλλον ἀκολουθεῖν τοῖς πρώτοις ἐγκλήμασιν αὐτοῦ, ἀναλάβωμεν [f] τὸν Παρμενίδην. ἃ μὲν οὖν αὐτόν φησιν αἰσχρὰ σοφίσματα λέγειν ὁ Κωλώτης, τούτοις ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἀνὴρ οὐ φιλίαν ἐποίησεν ἀδοξοτέραν, οὐ φιληδονίαν θρασυτέραν, οὐ τοῦ καλοῦ τὸ ἀγωγὸν ἐφ’ ἑαυτὸ καὶ δι’ ἑαυτὸ τίμιον ἀφεῖλεν, οὐ τὰς περὶ θεῶν δόξας συνετάραξε· τὸ δὲ πᾶν ἓν εἰπὼν [1114] [a] οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως ζῆν ἡμᾶς κεκώλυκε. καὶ γὰρ Ἐπίκουρος, ὅταν λέγῃ τὸ πᾶν ἄπειρον εἶναι καὶ ἀγένητον καὶ ἄφθαρτον καὶ μήτ’ αὐξόμενον μήτε μειούμενον, ὡς περὶ ἑνός τινος διαλέγεται τοῦ παντός. ἐν ἀρχῇ δὲ τῆς πραγματείας ὑπειπὼν τὴν τῶν ὄντων φύσιν σώματα εἶναι καὶ κενὸν ὡς μιᾶς οὔσης εἰς δύο πεποίηται τὴν διαίρεσιν, ὧν θάτερον ὄντως μὲν οὐθέν ἐστιν, ὀνομάζεται δ’ ὑφ’ ὑμῶν ἀναφὲς καὶ κενὸν καὶ ἀσώματον· ὥστε καὶ ὑμῖν ἓν τὸ πᾶν ἐστιν, εἰ μὴ βούλεσθε κεναῖς φωναῖς περὶ κενοῦ χρῆσθαι, σκιαμαχοῦντες πρὸς τοὺς ἀρχαίους. ἀλλ’ ἄπειρα νὴ Δία πλήθει τὰ σώματα κατ’ Ἐπίκουρόν ἐστι, καὶ γίνεται τῶν φαινομένων [b] ἕκαστον ἐξ ἐκείνων. ὅρα μέντοι, ἃς ὑποτίθεσθε πρὸς γένεσιν ἀρχάς, ἀπειρίαν καὶ κενόν· ὧν τὸ μὲν ἄπρακτον ἀπαθὲς ἀσώματον, ἡ δ’ ἄτακτος ἄλογος ἀπερίληπτος, αὑτὴν ἀναλύουσα καὶ ταράττουσα τῷ μὴ κρατεῖσθαι μηδ’ ὁρίζεσθαι διὰ πλῆθος. ἀλλ’ ὅ γε Παρμενίδης οὔτε πῦρ ἀνῄρηκεν οὔθ’ ὕδωρ οὔτε κρημνὸν οὔτε πόλεις, ὥς φησι Κωλώτης, ἐν Εὐρώπῃ καὶ Ἀσίᾳ κατοικουμένας· ὅς γε καὶ διάκοσμον πεποίηται, καὶ στοιχεῖα μιγνύς, τὸ λαμπρὸν καὶ σκοτεινόν, ἐκ τούτων τὰ φαινόμενα πάντα καὶ διὰ τούτων ἀποτελεῖ. καὶ γὰρ περὶ γῆς εἴρηκε πολλὰ καὶ περὶ οὐρανοῦ καὶ ἡλίου [c] καὶ σελήνης καὶ ἄστρων καὶ γένεσιν ἀνθρώπων ἀφήγηται· καὶ οὐδὲν ἄρρητον, ὡς ἀνὴρ ἀρχαῖος ἐν φυσιολογίᾳ καὶ συνθεὶς γραφὴν ἰδίαν οὐκ ἀλλοτρίαν διαφορῶν, τῶν κυρίων παρῆκεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ Πλάτωνος καὶ Σωκράτους ἔτι πρότερος συνεῖδεν, ὡς ἔχει τι δοξαστὸν ἡ φύσις ἔχει δὲ καὶ νοητόν, ἔστι δὲ τὸ μὲν δοξαστὸν ἀβέβαιον καὶ πλανητὸν ἐν πάθεσι πολλοῖς καὶ μεταβολαῖς τῷ φθίνειν καὶ αὔξεσθαι καὶ πρὸς ἄλλον ἄλλως ἔχειν καὶ μηδ’ ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸν αὐτὸν ὡσαύτως τῇ αἰσθήσει, τοῦ νοητοῦ δ’ ἕτερον εἶδος, ἔστι γάρ

‘οὐλομελές τε καὶ ἀτρεμὲς ἠδ’ ἀγένητον’,

[d] ὡς αὐτὸς εἴρηκε (B 8, 4), καὶ ὅμοιον ἑαυτῷ καὶ μόνιμον ἐν τῷ εἶναι, ταῦτα συκοφαντῶν ἐκ τῆς φωνῆς ὁ Κωλώτης καὶ τῷ ῥήματι διώκων οὐ τῷ πράγματι τὸν λόγον ἁπλῶς φησι πάντ’ ἀναιρεῖν τῷ ἓν ὂν ὑποτίθεσθαι τὸν Παρμενίδην. ὁ δ’ ἀναιρεῖ μὲν οὐδετέραν φύσιν, ἑκατέρᾳ δ’ ἀποδιδοὺς τὸ προσῆκον εἰς μὲν τὴν τοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ ὄντος ἰδέαν τίθεται τὸ νοητόν, ὂν μὲν ὡς ἀίδιον καὶ ἄφθαρτον ἓν δ’ ὁμοιότητι πρὸς αὑτὸ καὶ τῷ μὴ δέχεσθαι διαφορὰν προσαγορεύσας, εἰς δὲ τὴν ἄτακτον καὶ φερομένην τὸ αἰσθητόν. ὧν καὶ κριτήριον ἰδεῖν ἔστιν, ‘ἠμὲν Ἀληθείης εὐπειθέος ἀτρεκ‹ὲς [e] ἦτορ›’, τοῦ νοητοῦ καὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔχοντος ὡσαύτως ἁπτόμενον, ‘ἠδὲ βροτῶν δόξας αἷς οὐκ ἔνι πίστις ἀληθής’ (Parmen. B 1, 29. 30) διὰ τὸ παντοδαπὰς μεταβολὰς καὶ πάθη καὶ ἀνομοιότητας δεχομένοις ὁμιλεῖν πράγμασι. καίτοι πῶς ἂν ἀπέλιπεν αἴσθησιν καὶ δόξαν, αἰσθητὸν μὴ ἀπολιπὼν μηδὲ δοξαστόν; οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν. ἀλλ’ ὅτι τῷ μὲν ὄντως ὄντι προσήκει διαμένειν ἐν τῷ εἶναι, ταῦτα δὲ νῦν μὲν ἔστι νῦν δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν, ἐξίσταται δ’ ἀεὶ καὶ μεταλλάσσει τὴν φύσιν, ἑτέρας ᾤετο μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς ἐκείνου τοῦ ὄντος ἀεὶ δεῖσθαι προσηγορίας. ἦν οὖν ὁ περὶ τοῦ ὄντος ὡς ἓν εἴη λόγος οὐκ ἀναίρεσις τῶν πολλῶν καὶ αἰσθητῶν, [f] ἀλλὰ δήλωσις αὐτῶν τῆς πρὸς τὸ νοητὸν διαφορᾶς. ἣν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐνδεικνύμενος Πλάτων τῇ περὶ τὰ εἴδη πραγματείᾳ καὶ αὐτὸς ἀντίληψιν τῷ Κωλώτῃ παρέσχε. -

Διὸ καὶ τὰ πρὸς τοῦτον εἰρημένα δοκεῖ μοι λαβεῖν ἐφεξῆς. καὶ πρῶτόν γε τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ πολυμάθειαν [1115] [a] τοῦ φιλοσόφου σκεψώμεθα, λέγοντος ὅτι τούτοις τοῖς δόγμασι τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐπηκολουθήκασιν Ἀριστοτέλης καὶ Ξενοκράτης καὶ Θεόφραστος καὶ πάντες οἱ Περιπατητικοί. ποῦ γὰρ ὢν τῆς ἀοικήτου τὸ βιβλίον ἔγραφες, ἵνα ταῦτα συντιθεὶς τὰ ἐγκλήματα μὴ τοῖς ἐκείνων συντάγμασιν ἐντύχῃς μηδ’ ἀναλάβῃς εἰς χεῖρας Ἀριστοτέλους τὰ περὶ Οὐρανοῦ καὶ τὰ περὶ Ψυχῆς, Θεοφράστου δὲ τὰ πρὸς τοὺς Φυσικούς, Ἡρακλείδου δὲ τὸν Ζωροάστρην, τὸ περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου, τὸ περὶ τῶν Φυσικῶς ἀπορουμένων, Δικαιάρχου δὲ τὰ περὶ Ψυχῆς, ἐν οἷς πρὸς τὰ κυριώτατα καὶ μέγιστα τῶν φυσικῶν ὑπεναντιούμενοι τῷ Πλάτωνι καὶ [b] μαχόμενοι διατελοῦσι; καὶ μὴν τῶν ἄλλων Περιπατητικῶν ὁ κορυφαιότατος Στράτων οὔτ’ Ἀριστοτέλει κατὰ πολλὰ συμφέρεται καὶ Πλάτωνι τὰς ἐναντίας ἔσχηκε δόξας περὶ κινήσεως, περὶ νοῦ καὶ περὶ ψυχῆς καὶ περὶ γενέσεως, τελευτῶν ‹τε› τὸν κόσμον αὐτὸν οὐ ζῷον εἶναί φησι, τὸ δὲ κατὰ φύσιν ἕπεσθαι τῷ κατὰ τύχην· ἀρχὴν γὰρ ἐνδιδόναι τὸ αὐτόματον, εἶθ’ οὕτως περαίνεσθαι τῶν φυσικῶν παθῶν ἕκαστον. τάς γε μὴν ἰδέας, περὶ ὧν ἐγκαλεῖ τῷ Πλάτωνι, πανταχοῦ κινῶν Ἀριστοτέλης καὶ πᾶσαν ἐπάγων ἀπορίαν αὐταῖς ἐν τοῖς ἠθικοῖς ὑπομνήμασιν ἐν τοῖς ‹λογικοῖς, ἐν τοῖς› φυσικοῖς, διὰ τῶν ἐξωτερικῶν [c] διαλόγων φιλονεικότερον ἐνίοις ἔδοξεν ἢ φιλοσοφώτερον ἐκ τῶν δογμάτων τούτων, ὡς προθέμενος τὴν Πλάτωνος ὑπερείπειν φιλοσοφίαν· οὕτω μακρὰν ἦν τοῦ ἀκολουθεῖν. τίνος οὖν εὐχερείας ἐστὶ τὰ δοκοῦντα τοῖς ἀνδράσι μὴ μαθόντα καταψεύδεσθαι τὰ μὴ δοκοῦντα; καὶ πεπεισμένον ἐλέγχειν ἑτέρους αὐτόγραφον ἐξενεγκεῖν ἀμαθίας ἔλεγχον καθ’ αὑτοῦ καὶ θρασύτητος, ὁμολογεῖν Πλάτωνι φάσκοντα τοὺς διαφερομένους καὶ ἀκολουθεῖν τοὺς ἀντιλέγοντας;

‘Ἀλλὰ δὴ Πλάτων φησὶ τοὺς ἵππους ὑφ’ ἡμῶν ματαίως ἵππους εἶναι ‹νομίζεσθαι› καὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ‹ἀνθρώπους›.’ καὶ ποῦ τοῦτο τῶν Πλάτωνος συγγραμμάτων [d] ἀποκεκρυμμένον εὗρεν ὁ Κωλώτης; ἡμεῖς γὰρ ἐν πᾶσιν ἀναγινώσκομεν καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἄνθρωπον καὶ τὸν ἵππον ἵππον καὶ πῦρ τὸ πῦρ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ δοξαζόμενον· ᾗ καὶ δοξαστὸν ὀνομάζει τούτων ἕκαστον. ὁ δ’ οἷα δὴ σοφίας οὐδ’ ἀκαρὲς ἀπέχων ὡς ἓν καὶ ταὐτὸν ἔλαβε τὸ μὴ εἶναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ τὸ εἶναι μὴ ὂν τὸν ἄνθρωπον. τῷ Πλάτωνι δὲ θαυμαστῶς ἐδόκει διαφέρειν τὸ μὴ εἶναι τοῦ μὴ ὂν εἶναι· τῷ μὲν γὰρ ἀναίρεσιν οὐσίας πάσης τῷ δ’ ἑτερότητα δηλοῦσθαι τοῦ μεθεκτοῦ καὶ τοῦ μετέχοντος. ἣν οἱ μὲν ὕστερον εἰς γένους καὶ εἴδους καὶ κοινῶς τινων καὶ ἰδίως λεγομένων ποιῶν διαφορὰν ἔθεντο μόνον, ἀνωτέρω [e] δ’ οὐ προῆλθον, εἰς λογικωτέρας ἀπορίας ἐμπεσόντες. ἔστι δὲ τοῦ μεθεκτοῦ πρὸς τὸ μετέχον λόγος, ὃν αἰτία τε πρὸς ὕλην ἔχει καὶ παράδειγμα πρὸς εἰκόνα καὶ δύναμις πρὸς πάθος. ᾧ γε δὴ μάλιστα τὸ καθ’ αὑτὸ καὶ ταὐτὸν ἀεὶ διαφέρει τοῦ δι’ ἕτερον καὶ μηδέποτ’ ὡσαύτως ἔχοντος· ὅτι τὸ μὲν οὔτ’ ἔσται ποτὲ μὴ ὂν οὔτε γέγονε καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πάντως καὶ ὄντως ὄν ἐστι, τῷ δ’ οὐδ’ ὅσον ἀπ’ ἄλλου συμβέβηκε μετέχειν τοῦ εἶναι βέβαιόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἐξίσταται δι’ ἀσθένειαν, ἅτε τῆς ὕλης περὶ τὸ εἶδος ὀλισθανούσης καὶ πάθη πολλὰ καὶ μεταβολὰς ἐπὶ τὴν εἰκόνα τῆς οὐσίας, [f] ὥστε κινεῖσθαι καὶ σαλεύεσθαι, δεχομένης. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ λέγων Πλάτωνα μὴ εἶναι τὴν εἰκόνα τὴν Πλάτωνος οὐκ ἀναιρεῖ τὴν ὡς εἰκόνος αἴσθησιν αὐτῆς καὶ ὕπαρξιν, ἀλλ’ ἐνδείκνυται καθ’ αὑτό τινος ὄντος καὶ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἑτέρου γεγονότος διαφοράν, οὕτως οὔτε φύσιν οὔτε χρῆσιν οὔτ’ αἴσθησιν ἀνθρώπων ἀναιροῦσιν οἱ κοινῆς τινος οὐσίας [1116] [a] μετοχῇ καὶ ἰδέας γινόμενον ἡμῶν ἕκαστον εἰκόνα τοῦ παρασχόντος τὴν ὁμοιότητα τῇ γενέσει προσαγορεύοντες. οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ πῦρ μὴ λέγων εἶναι τὸν πεπυρωμένον σίδηρον ἢ τὴν σελήνην ἥλιον, ἀλλὰ κατὰ Παρμενίδην (B 14) ‘νυκτιφαὲς περὶ γαῖαν ἀλώμενον ἀλλότριον φῶς’, ἀναιρεῖ σιδήρου χρῆσιν ἢ σελήνης φύσιν, ἀλλ’ εἰ μὴ λέγοι σῶμα μηδὲ πεφωτισμένον, ἤδη μάχεται ταῖς αἰσθήσεσιν, ὥσπερ ὁ σῶμα καὶ ζῷον καὶ γένεσιν καὶ αἴσθησιν μὴ ἀπολείπων. ὁ δὲ ταῦθ’ ὑπάρχειν τῷ μετεσχηκέναι καὶ ὅσον ἀπολείπεται τοῦ ὄντος ἀεὶ καὶ τὸ εἶναι παρέχοντος αὐτοῖς ὑπονοῶν οὐ παρορᾷ τὸ αἰσθητὸν ἀλλ’ ‹οὐ› παρορᾷ τὸ νοητόν, οὐδ’ [b] ἀναιρεῖ τὰ γινόμενα καὶ φαινόμενα περὶ ἡμᾶς τῶν παθῶν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι βεβαιότερα τούτων ἕτερα καὶ μονιμώτερα πρὸς οὐσίαν ἐστὶ τῷ μήτε γίνεσθαι μήτ’ ἀπόλλυσθαι μήτε πάσχειν μηθέν, ἐνδείκνυται τοῖς ἑπομένοις καὶ διδάσκει καθαρώτερον τῆς διαφορᾶς ἁπτομένους τοῖς ὀνόμασι τὰ μὲν ὄντα τὰ δὲ γινόμενα προσαγορεύειν. τοῦτο δὲ καὶ τοῖς νεωτέροις συμβέβηκε· πολλὰ γὰρ καὶ μεγάλα πράγματα τῆς τοῦ ὄντος ἀποστεροῦσι προσηγορίας, τὸ κενὸν τὸν χρόνον τὸν τόπον, ἁπλῶς τὸ τῶν λεκτῶν γένος, ἐν ᾧ καὶ τἀληθῆ πάντ’ ἔνεστι. ταῦτα γὰρ ὄντα μὲν μὴ εἶναι τινὰ δ’ εἶναι λέγουσι, χρώμενοι δ’ αὐτοῖς ὡς [c] ὑφεστῶσι καὶ ὑπάρχουσιν ἐν τῷ βίῳ καὶ τῷ φιλοσοφεῖν διατελοῦσιν.

Ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἡδέως ἂν ἐροίμην τὸν κατήγορον, εἰ τοῖς ἑαυτῶν πράγμασι τὴν διαφορὰν οὐκ ἐνορῶσι ταύτην, καθ’ ἣν τὰ μὲν μόνιμα καὶ ἄτρεπτα ‹τὰ δὲ μεταβλητὰ καὶ τρεπτὰ› ταῖς οὐσίαις ἐστίν, ὡς λέγουσι καὶ τὰς ἀτόμους ἀπαθείᾳ καὶ στερρότητι πάντα χρόνον ὡσαύτως ἔχειν, τὰ δὲ συγκρίματα πάντα ῥευστὰ καὶ μεταβλητὰ καὶ γινόμενα καὶ ἀπολλύμενα εἶναι, μυρίων μὲν εἰδώλων ἀπερχομένων ἀεὶ καὶ ῥεόντων, μυρίων δ’ ὡς εἰκὸς ἑτέρων ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἐπιρρεόντων καὶ ἀναπληρούντων τὸ ἄθροισμα ποικιλλόμενον ὑπὸ τῆς ἐξαλλαγῆς ταύτης καὶ μετακεραννύμενον, [d] ἅτε δὴ καὶ τῶν ἐν βάθει τοῦ συγκρίματος ἀτόμων οὐδέποτε λῆξαι κινήσεως οὐδὲ παλμῶν πρὸς ἀλλήλας δυναμένων, ὥσπερ αὐτοὶ λέγουσιν. ἀλλ’ ἔστι μὲν ἐν τοῖς πράγμασιν ἡ τοιαύτη διαφορὰ τῆς οὐσίας, σοφώτερος δὲ τοῦ Πλάτωνος ὁ Ἐπίκουρος, ᾗ πάντα ὁμοίως ὄντα προσαγορεύει, τὸ ἀναφὲς κενὸν τὸ ἀντερεῖδον σῶμα, τὰς ἀρχὰς τὰ συγκρίματα, κοινῆς καὶ μὴ διαφερούσης ἡγούμενος οὐσίας μετέχειν τὸ ἀίδιον τῷ γινομένῳ, τὸ ἀνώλεθρον τῷ φθειρομένῳ, τὰς ἀπαθεῖς καὶ διαρκεῖς καὶ ἀμεταβλήτους καὶ μηδέποτε τοῦ εἶναι δυναμένας ἐκπεσεῖν φύσεις ταύταις ὧν ἐν τῷ πάσχειν καὶ μεταβάλλειν τὸ εἶναι, ταῖς [e] μηδένα χρόνον ὡσαύτως ἐχούσαις; εἰ δὲ δὴ καὶ ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα διήμαρτε τούτοις ὁ Πλάτων, ὀνομάτων ὤφειλε συγχύσεως εὐθύνας ὑπέχειν τοῖς ἀκριβέστερον ἑλληνίζουσι τούτοις καὶ καθαρώτερον διαλεγομένοις, οὐχ ὡς ἀναιρῶν τὰ πράγματα καὶ τοῦ ζῆν ἐξάγων ἡμᾶς αἰτίαν ἔχειν, ὅτι τὰ γινόμενα ‹γινόμενα› καὶ οὐκ ὄντα, καθάπερ οὗτοι, προσηγόρευσεν. -

Ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ τὸν Σωκράτην μετὰ τὸν Παρμενίδην ὑπερέβημεν, ἀναληπτέος ... . εὐθὺς οὖν τὸν ἀφ’ ἱερᾶς κεκίνηκεν ὁ Κωλώτης, καὶ διηγησάμενος ὅτι χρησμὸν ἐκ Δελφῶν περὶ Σωκράτους ἀνήνεγκε Χαιρεφῶν, ὃν ἴσμεν [f] ἅπαντες, ταῦτ’ ἐπείρηκε· ‘τὸ μὲν οὖν τοῦ Χαιρεφῶντος διὰ τὸ τελέως σοφιστικὸν καὶ φορτικὸν διήγημα εἶναι παρήσομεν.’ φορτικὸς οὖν ὁ Πλάτων ὁ τοῦτον ἀναγράψας τὸν χρησμόν (Apol. 21a), ἵνα τοὺς ἄλλους ἐάσω· φορτικώτεροι δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τὸν περὶ Λυκούργου χρησμὸν ἐν ταῖς παλαιοτάταις ἀναγραφαῖς ἔχοντες· σοφιστικὸν δ’ ἦν διήγημα τὸ Θεμιστοκλέους, ᾧ πείσας Ἀθηναίους τὴν πόλιν ἐκλιπεῖν κατεναυμάχησε τὸν βάρβαρον· φορτικοὶ δ’ οἱ τῆς [1117] [a] Ἑλλάδος νομοθέται τὰ μέγιστα καὶ πλεῖστα τῶν ἱερῶν πυθόχρηστα καθιστάντες. εἰ τοίνυν ὁ περὶ Σωκράτους, ἀνδρὸς εἰς ἀρετὴν θεολήπτου γενομένου, χρησμὸς ἀνενεχθεὶς ὡς σοφοῦ φορτικὸς ἦν καὶ σοφιστικός, τίνι προσείπωμεν ἀξίως ὀνόματι τοὺς ὑμετέρους ‘βρόμους’ καί ‘ὀλολυγμούς’ καί ‘κροτοθορύβους’ καί ‘σεβάσεις’ καί ‘ἐπιθειάσεις’, αἷς προστρέπεσθε καὶ καθυμνεῖτε τὸν ἐπὶ ἡδονὰς παρακαλοῦντα συνεχεῖς καὶ πυκνάς; ὃς ἐν τῇ πρὸς Ἀνάξαρχον ἐπιστολῇ ταυτὶ γέγραφεν ‘ἐγὼ δ’ ἐφ’ ἡδονὰς συνεχεῖς παρακαλῶ καὶ οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀρετάς, κενὰς καὶ ματαίας καὶ ταραχώδεις ἐχούσας τῶν καρπῶν τὰς ἐλπίδας.’ ἀλλ’ ὅμως ὁ [b] μὲν Μητρόδωρος τὸν Τίμαρχον παρακαλῶν φησι (fr. 38)· ‘ποιήσωμέν τι καλὸν ἐπὶ καλοῖς, μόνον οὐ καταδύντες ταῖς ὁμοιοπαθείαις καὶ ἀπαλλαγέντες ἐκ τοῦ χαμαὶ βίου εἰς τὰ Ἐπικούρου ὡς ἀληθῶς θεόφαντα ὄργια.’ Κωλώτης δ’ αὐτὸς ἀκροώμενος Ἐπικούρου φυσιολογοῦντος ἄφνω τοῖς γόνασιν αὐτοῦ προσέπεσε, καὶ ταῦτα γράφει σεμνυνόμενος αὐτὸς Ἐπίκουρος· ‘ὡς σεβομένῳ γάρ σοι τὰ τόθ’ ὑφ’ ἡμῶν λεγόμενα προσέπεσεν ἐπιθύμημα ἀφυσιολόγητον τοῦ περιπλακῆναι ἡμῖν γονάτων ἐφαπτόμενον καὶ πάσης τῆς εἰθισμένης ἐπιλήψεως γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὰς σεβάσεις τινῶν [c] καὶ λιτάς· ἐποίεις οὖν’ φησί ‘καὶ ἡμᾶς ἀνθιεροῦν σὲ αὐτὸν καὶ ἀντισέβεσθαι.’ συγγνωστὰ νὴ Δία τοῖς λέγουσιν ὡς παντὸς ἂν πρίαιντο τῆς ὄψεως ἐκείνης εἰκόνα γεγραμμένην θεάσασθαι, τοῦ μὲν προσπίπτοντος εἰς γόνατα καὶ περιπλεκομένου τοῦ δ’ ἀντιλιτανεύοντος καὶ ἀντιπροσκυνοῦντος. οὐ μέντοι τὸ θεράπευμα τοῦτο, καίπερ εὖ τῷ Κωλώτῃ συντεθέν, ἔσχε καρπὸν ἄξιον· οὐ γὰρ ἀνηγορεύθη σοφὸς ἀλλὰ μόνον ‘ἄφθαρτός μοι περιπάτει’ φησί, ‘καὶ ἡμᾶς ἀφθάρτους διανοοῦ.’ τοιαῦτα μέντοι ῥήματα καὶ κινήματα καὶ πάθη συνειδότες αὑτοῖς ἑτέρους φορτικοὺς ἀποκαλοῦσι.

[d] Καὶ δῆτα καὶ προθεὶς ὁ Κωλώτης τὰ σοφὰ ταῦτα καὶ καλὰ περὶ τῶν αἰσθήσεων, ὅτι ‘σιτία προσαγόμεθα καὶ οὐ χόρτον, καὶ τοὺς ποταμούς, ὅταν ὦσι μεγάλοι, πλοίοις διαπερῶμεν, ὅταν δ’ εὐδιάβατοι γένωνται, τοῖς ποσίν’ ἐπιπεφώνηκεν· ‘ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἀλαζόνας ἐπετήδευσας λόγους, ὦ Σώκρατες· καὶ ἕτερα μὲν διελέγου τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν ἕτερα δ’ ἔπραττες.’ πῶς γὰρ οὐκ ἀλαζόνες οἱ Σωκράτους λόγοι μηδὲν αὐτοῦ εἰδέναι φάσκοντος ἀλλὰ μανθάνειν ἀεὶ καὶ ζητεῖν τὸ ἀληθές; εἰ δὲ τοιαύταις, ὦ Κωλῶτα, Σωκράτους φωναῖς περιέπεσες, οἵας Ἐπίκουρος γράφει πρὸς Ἰδομενέα· ‘πέμπε οὖν ἀπαρχὰς ἡμῖν εἰς τὴν τοῦ [e] ἱεροῦ σώματος θεραπείαν ὑπέρ τε αὑτοῦ καὶ τέκνων· οὕτω γάρ μοι λέγειν ἐπέρχεται’, τίσιν ἂν ῥήμασιν ἀγροικοτέροις ἐχρήσω; καὶ μὴν ὅτι Σωκράτης ἄλλα μὲν ἔλεγεν ἄλλα δ’ ἔπραττε, θαυμαστῶς μαρτυρεῖ σοι τὰ ἐπὶ Δηλίῳ τὰ ἐν Ποτιδαίᾳ τὰ ἐπὶ τῶν τριάκοντα τὰ πρὸς Ἀρχέλαον τὰ πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἡ πενία ὁ θάνατος· οὐ γὰρ ἄξια ταῦτα τῶν Σωκρατικῶν λόγων. ἐκεῖνος ἦν, ὦ μακάριε, κατὰ Σωκράτους ἔλεγχος ἕτερα μὲν λέγοντος ἕτερα δὲ πράττοντος, εἰ τὸ ἡδέως ζῆν τέλος ἐκθέμενος οὕτως ἐβίωσε.

Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν πρὸς τὰς βλασφημίας. ὅτι δέ, οἷς [f] ἐγκαλεῖ περὶ τῶν ἐναργῶν, ἔνοχος αὐτός ἐστιν, οὐ συνεῖδεν. ἓν γάρ ἐστι τῶν Ἐπικούρου δογμάτων, τὸ μηδὲν ἀμεταπείστως πεπεῖσθαι μηδένα πλὴν τὸν σοφόν. ἐπεὶ τοίνυν ὁ Κωλώτης οὐκ ἦν σοφὸς οὐδὲ μετὰ τὰς σεβάσεις ἐκείνας, ἐρωτάτω πρῶτον ‹ἑαυτὸν› ἐκεῖνα τὰ ἐρωτήματα, πῶς σιτία προσάγεται καὶ οὐ χόρτον †ἐπιτήδειος ὢν καὶ τὸ ἱμάτιον τῷ σώματι καὶ οὐ τῷ κίονι περιτίθησι, μήθ’ ἱμάτιον εἶναι τὸ ἱμάτιον μήτε σιτίον τὸ σιτίον ἀμεταπείστως [1118] [a] πεπεισμένος. εἰ δὲ καὶ ταῦτα πράττει καὶ τοὺς ποταμούς, ὅταν ὦσι μεγάλοι, ποσὶν οὐ διέρχεται, καὶ τοὺς ὄφεις φεύγει καὶ τοὺς λύκους, μηδὲν εἶναι τούτων οἷον φαίνεται πεπεισμένος ἀμεταπείστως ἀλλὰ πράττων ἕκαστα κατὰ τὸ φαινόμενον, οὐδὲ Σωκράτει δήπουθεν ἐμποδὼν ἦν ἡ περὶ τῶν αἰσθήσεων δόξα τοῦ χρῆσθαι τοῖς φαινομένοις ὁμοίως. οὐ γὰρ Κωλώτῃ μὲν ὁ ἄρτος ἄρτος ἐφαίνετο καὶ χόρτος ὁ χόρτος, ὅτι τούς ‘διοπετεῖς’ ἀνεγνώκει Κανόνας, ὁ δὲ Σωκράτης ὑπ’ ἀλαζονείας ἄρτου μὲν ὡς χόρτου χόρτου δ’ ὡς ἄρτου φαντασίαν ἐλάμβανε. δόγμασι γὰρ ἡμῶν καὶ λόγοις οὗτοι χρῶνται βελτίοσιν οἱ [b] σοφοί, τὸ δ’ αἰσθάνεσθαι καὶ τυποῦσθαι πρὸς τὰ φαινόμενα κοινόν ἐστι πάθος ἀλόγοις περαινόμενον αἰτίαις. ὁ δὲ τὰς αἰσθήσεις λόγος ἐπαγόμενος ὡς οὐκ ἀκριβεῖς οὐδ’ ἀσφαλεῖς πρὸς πίστιν οὔσας οὐκ ἀναιρεῖ τὸ φαίνεσθαι τῶν πραγμάτων ἡμῖν ἕκαστον, ἀλλὰ χρωμένοις κατὰ τὸ φαινόμενον ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις ταῖς αἰσθήσεσι τὸ πιστεύειν ὡς ἀληθέσι πάντῃ καὶ ἀδιαπτώτοις οὐ δίδωσιν αὐταῖς· τὸ γὰρ ἀναγκαῖον ἀρκεῖ καὶ χρειῶδες ἀπ’ αὐτῶν, ὅτι βέλτιον ἕτερον οὐκ ἔστιν· ἣν δὲ ποθεῖ φιλόσοφος ψυχὴ λαβεῖν ἐπιστήμην περὶ ἑκάστου καὶ γνῶσιν, οὐκ ἔχουσι.

[c] Περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων καὶ πάλιν ὁ Κωλώτης εἰπεῖν παρέξει, ταὐτὰ πολλοῖς ἐγκεκληκώς. ἐν οἷς δὲ κομιδῇ διαγελᾷ καὶ φλαυρίζει τὸν Σωκράτην ζητοῦντα τί ἄνθρωπός ἐστι καὶ νεανιευόμενον, ὥς φησιν, ὅτι μηδ’ αὐτὸς ‹αὑτὸν› εἰδείη, δῆλος μέν ἐστιν αὐτὸς οὐδέποτε πρὸς τούτῳ γενόμενος, ὁ δ’ Ἡράκλειτος ὡς μέγα τι καὶ σεμνὸν διαπεπραγμένος ‘ἐδιζησάμην’ φησίν ‘ἐμεωυτόν’ (B 101), καὶ τῶν ἐν Δελφοῖς γραμμάτων θειότατον ἐδόκει τό ‘γνῶθι σαυτόν’· ὃ δὴ καὶ Σωκράτει ‹τῆς› ἀπορίας καὶ ζητήσεως ταύτης ἀρχὴν ἐνέδωκεν, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης ἐν τοῖς Πλατωνικοῖς εἴρηκε (fr. 1). Κωλώτῃ δὲ γελοῖον δοκεῖ. τί οὖν οὐ [d] καταγελᾷ καὶ τοῦ καθηγεμόνος τοῦτ’ αὐτὸ πράττοντος, ὁσάκις γράφοι καὶ διαλέγοιτο περὶ οὐσίας ψυχῆς καὶ τοῦ ἀθρόου τῆς καταρχῆς; εἰ γὰρ τὸ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν, ὡς ἀξιοῦσιν αὐτοί, σώματος τοιοῦδε καὶ ψυχῆς, ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν, ὁ ζητῶν ψυχῆς φύσιν ἀνθρώπου ζητεῖ φύσιν ἐκ τῆς κυριωτέρας ἀρχῆς. ὅτι δ’ αὕτη λόγῳ δυσθεώρητος αἰσθήσει δ’ ἄληπτός ἐστι, μὴ παρὰ Σωκράτους ‘σοφιστοῦ καὶ ἀλαζόνος ἀνδρός’, ἀλλὰ παρὰ τῶν σοφῶν τούτων λάβωμεν, οἳ μέχρι τῶν περὶ σάρκα τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεων, αἷς θερμότητα καὶ μαλακότητα καὶ τόνον παρέχει τῷ σώματι, τὴν οὐσίαν [e] συμπηγνύντες αὐτῆς ἔκ τινος θερμοῦ καὶ πνευματικοῦ καὶ ἀερώδους οὐκ ἐξικνοῦνται πρὸς τὸ κυριώτατον ἀλλ’ ἀπαγορεύουσι· τὸ γὰρ ᾧ κρίνει καὶ μνημονεύει καὶ φιλεῖ καὶ μισεῖ, καὶ ὅλως τὸ φρόνιμον καὶ λογιστικὸν ἔκ τινός φησιν ‘ἀκατονομάστου’ ποιότητος ἐπιγίνεσθαι. καὶ ὅτι μὲν αἰσχυνομένης ἐστὶν ἀγνοίας τουτὶ τό ‘ἀκατονόμαστον’ ἐξομολόγησις οὐκ ἔχειν ὀνομάσαι φασκόντων ὃ μὴ δύνανται καταλαβεῖν, ἴσμεν· ‘ἐχέτω δὲ συγγνώμην καὶ τοῦτο’, ὡς λέγουσι. φαίνεται γὰρ οὐ φαῦλον οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιον οὐδὲ τοῦ τυχόντος εἶναι καταμαθεῖν ἀλλ’ ἐνδεδυκὸς ἀπόρῳ τινὶ τόπῳ [f] καὶ δεινῶς ἀποκεκρυμμένον, ᾧ γ’ ὄνομα μηδὲν ἐν τοσούτοις πρὸς δήλωσιν οἰκεῖόν ἐστιν. οὐ Σωκράτης οὖν ἀβέλτερος, ὅστις εἴη ζητῶν ἑαυτόν, ἀλλὰ πάντες, οἷς ἔπεισί τι τῶν ἄλλων πρὸ τούτου ζητεῖν, ὅτι τὴν γνῶσιν ἀναγκαίαν ἔχον οὕτως εὑρεθῆναι χαλεπόν ἐστιν. οὐ γὰρ ἂν ἐλπίσειεν ἑτέρου λαβεῖν ἐπιστήμην, ὃν διαπέφευγε τῶν ἑαυτοῦ τὸ κυριώτατον καταλαβεῖν.

Ἀλλὰ διδόντες αὐτῷ τὸ μηδὲν οὕτως ἄχρηστον εἶναι [1119] [a] μηδὲ φορτικὸν ὡς τὸ ζητεῖν αὑτόν, ἐρώμεθα τίς αὕτη τοῦ βίου σύγχυσίς ἐστιν ἢ πῶς ἐν τῷ ζῆν οὐ δύναται διαμένειν ἀνήρ, ὅτε τύχοι, πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἀναλογιζόμενος ‘φέρε, τίς ὢν οὗτος ὁ ἐγὼ τυγχάνω; πότερον ὡς κρᾶμά τι μεμιγμένον ἔκ τε τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τοῦ σώματος, ἢ μᾶλλον ἡ ψυχὴ τῷ σώματι χρωμένη, καθάπερ ἱππεὺς ἀνὴρ ἵππῳ χρώμενος, οὐ τὸ ἐξ ἵππου καὶ ἀνδρός; ἢ τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ κυριώτατον, ᾧ φρονοῦμεν καὶ λογιζόμεθα καὶ πράττομεν, ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ἐστι, τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ καὶ ψυχῆς μόρια πάντα καὶ σώματος ὄργανα τῆς τούτου δυνάμεως; ἢ τὸ παράπαν οὐκ [b] ἔστιν οὐσία ψυχῆς ἀλλ’ αὐτὸ τὸ σῶμα κεκραμένον ἔσχηκε τὴν τοῦ φρονεῖν καὶ ζῆν δύναμιν;’ ἀλλὰ τούτοις μὲν οὐκ ἀναιρεῖ τὸν βίον ὁ Σωκράτης, ἃ δὴ πάντες οἱ φυσικοὶ ζητοῦσιν, ἐκεῖνα δ’ ἦν τὰ ἐν Φαίδρῳ (230a) δεινὰ καὶ ταρακτικὰ τῶν πραγμάτων, αὑτὸν οἰομένου δεῖν ἀναθεωρεῖν, ‘εἴτε Τυφῶνός ἐστι θηρίον πολυπλοκώτερον καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπιτεθυμμένον εἴτε θείας τινὸς καὶ ἀτύφου μοίρας φύσει μετέχον’; ἀλλὰ τούτοις γε τοῖς ἐπιλογισμοῖς οὐ τὸν βίον ἀνῄρει, τὴν δ’ ἐμβροντησίαν ἐκ τοῦ βίου καὶ τὸν τῦφον ἐξήλαυνε καὶ τὰς ἐπαχθεῖς καὶ ὑπερόγκους κατοιήσεις καὶ [c] μεγαλαυχίας. ταῦτα γὰρ ὁ Τυφών ἐστιν, ὃν πολὺν ὑμῖν ἐνεποίησεν ὁ καθηγεμὼν καὶ θεοῖς πολεμῶν καὶ θείοις ἀνδράσι. -

Μετὰ δὲ Σωκράτην καὶ Πλάτωνα προσμάχεται Στίλπωνι· καὶ τὰ μὲν ἀληθινὰ δόγματα καὶ τοὺς λόγους τοῦ ἀνδρός, οἷς ἑαυτόν τε κατεκόσμει καὶ πατρίδα καὶ φίλους καὶ τῶν βασιλέων τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν σπουδάσαντας, οὐ γέγραφεν, οὐδ’ ὅσον ἦν φρόνημα τῇ ψυχῇ μετὰ πραότητος καὶ μετριοπαθείας, ὧν δὲ παίζων καὶ χρώμενος γέλωτι πρὸς τοὺς σοφιστὰς λογαρίων προύβαλλεν αὐτοῖς, ἑνὸς μνησθεὶς καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο μηδὲν εἰπὼν μηδὲ λύσας τὴν πιθανότητα τραγῳδίαν ἐπάγει τῷ Στίλπωνι καὶ τὸν βίον [d] ἀναιρεῖσθαί φησιν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λέγοντος ἕτερον ἑτέρου μὴ κατηγορεῖσθαι. ‘πῶς γὰρ βιωσόμεθα μὴ λέγοντες ἄνθρωπον ἀγαθὸν μηδ’ ἄνθρωπον στρατηγὸν ἀλλ’ ἄνθρωπον ἄνθρωπον καὶ χωρὶς ἀγαθὸν ἀγαθὸν καὶ στρατηγὸν στρατηγόν, μηδ’ ἱππεῖς μυρίους μηδὲ πόλιν ἐχυράν, ἀλλ’ ἱππεῖς ἱππεῖς, καὶ μυρίους μυρίους, καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ὁμοίως;’ τίς δὲ διὰ ταῦτα χεῖρον ἐβίωσεν ἀνθρώπων; τίς δὲ τὸν λόγον ἀκούσας οὐ συνῆκεν, ὅτι παίζοντός ἐστιν εὐμούσως ἢ γύμνασμα τοῦτο προβάλλοντος ἑτέροις διαλεκτικόν; οὐκ ἄνθρωπον, ὦ Κωλῶτα, μὴ λέγειν ἀγαθὸν οὐδ’ ἱππεῖς μυρίους [e] δεινόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τὸν θεὸν μὴ λέγειν θεὸν μηδὲ νομίζειν, ὃ πράττετε ὑμεῖς μήτε Δία γενέθλιον μήτε Δήμητραν θεσμοφόρον εἶναι μήτε Ποσειδῶνα φυτάλμιον ὁμολογεῖν ἐθέλοντες. οὗτος ὁ χωρισμὸς τῶν ὀνομάτων πονηρός ἐστι καὶ τὸν βίον ἐμπίπλησιν ὀλιγωρίας ἀθέου καὶ θρασύτητος, ὅταν τὰς συνεζευγμένας τοῖς θεοῖς προσηγορίας ἀποσπῶντες συναναιρῆτε θυσίας μυστήρια πομπὰς ἑορτάς. τίνι γὰρ προτέλεια θύσομεν, τίνι σωτήρια; πῶς δὲ φωσφόρεια, βακχεῖα, προτέλεια γάμων ἄξομεν, μὴ ἀπολιπόντες μηδὲ βακχεῖς καὶ φωσφόρους καὶ προηροσίους καὶ σωτῆρας; ταῦτα γὰρ ἅπτεται τῶν κυριωτάτων καὶ μεγίστων [f] ἐν πράγμασιν ἔχοντα τὴν ἀπάτην, οὐ περὶ φωνάς τινας οὐδὲ λεκτῶν σύνταξιν οὐδ’ ὀνομάτων συνήθειαν. ὡς εἴ γε καὶ ταῦτα τὸν βίον ἀνατρέπει, τίνες μᾶλλον ὑμῶν πλημμελοῦσι περὶ τὴν διάλεκτον, οἳ τὸ τῶν λεκτῶν γένος οὐσίαν τῷ λόγῳ παρέχον ἄρδην ἀναιρεῖτε, τὰς φωνὰς καὶ τὰ τυγχάνοντα μόνον ἀπολιπόντες, τὰ δὲ μεταξὺ σημαινόμενα πράγματα, δι’ ὧν γίνονται μαθήσεις διδασκαλίαι [1120] [a] προλήψεις νοήσεις ὁρμαὶ συγκαταθέσεις, τὸ παράπαν οὐδ’ εἶναι λέγοντες;

Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐπὶ τοῦ Στίλπωνος τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν· εἰ περὶ ἵππου τὸ τρέχειν κατηγοροῦμεν, οὔ φησι ταὐτὸν εἶναι τῷ περὶ οὗ κατηγορεῖται τὸ κατηγορούμενον ἀλλ’ ἕτερον· ‹οὐδ’ εἰ περὶ ἀνθρώπου τὸ ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, ἀλλ’ ἕτερον› μὲν ἀνθρώπῳ τοῦ τί ἦν εἶναι τὸν λόγον, ἕτερον δὲ τῷ ἀγαθῷ· καὶ πάλιν τὸ ἵππον εἶναι τοῦ τρέχοντα εἶναι διαφέρειν· ἑκατέρου γὰρ ἀπαιτούμενοι τὸν λόγον οὐ τὸν αὐτὸν ἀποδίδομεν ὑπὲρ ἀμφοῖν. ὅθεν ἁμαρτάνειν τοὺς ἕτερον ἑτέρου κατηγοροῦντας ... . εἰ μὲν γὰρ ταὐτόν ἐστι τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ τῷ ἵππῳ τὸ τρέχειν, πῶς καὶ [b] σιτίου καὶ φαρμάκου τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ νὴ Δία πάλιν λέοντος καὶ κυνὸς τὸ τρέχειν κατηγοροῦμεν; ‹εἰ› δ’ ἕτερον, οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἄνθρωπον ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἵππον τρέχειν λέγομεν. εἴπερ οὖν ἐν τούτοις †ἐξαιμάξει πικρῶς ὁ Στίλπων, τῶν ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ καὶ καθ’ ὑποκειμένου λεγομένων μηδεμίαν ἀπολιπὼν συμπλοκὴν πρὸς τὸ ὑποκείμενον, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστον αὐτῶν, εἰ μὴ κομιδῇ ταὐτὸν ᾧ συμβέβηκε λέγεται, μηδ’ ὡς συμβεβηκὸς οἰόμενος δεῖν περὶ αὐτοῦ λέγεσθαι, φωναῖς τισι δυσκολαίνων καὶ πρὸς τὴν συνήθειαν ἐνιστάμενος, οὐ τὸν βίον ἀναιρῶν οὐδὲ τὰ πράγματα δῆλός ἐστι. -

Γενόμενος δ’ οὖν ὁ Κωλώτης ἀπὸ τῶν παλαιῶν [c] τρέπεται πρὸς τοὺς καθ’ ἑαυτὸν φιλοσόφους, οὐδενὸς τιθεὶς ὄνομα· καίτοι καλῶς εἶχε καὶ τούτους ἐλέγχειν ἐπ’ ὀνόματος ἢ μηδὲ τοὺς παλαιούς. ὁ δὲ τὸν Σωκράτην καὶ τὸν Πλάτωνα καὶ τὸν Παρμενίδην τοσαυτάκις θέμενος ὑπὸ τὸ γραφεῖον δῆλός ἐστιν ἀποδειλιάσας πρὸς τοὺς ζῶντας, οὐ μετριάσας ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς, ἣν τοῖς κρείττοσιν οὐκ ἔνειμε. βούλεται δὲ προτέρους μέν, ὡς ὑπονοῶ, τοὺς Κυρηναϊκοὺς ἐλέγχειν, δευτέρους δὲ τοὺς περὶ Ἀρκεσίλαον Ἀκαδημαϊκούς. οὗτοι γὰρ ἦσαν οἱ περὶ πάντων ἐπέχοντες· ἐκεῖνοι δὲ τὰ πάθη καὶ τὰς φαντασίας ἐν αὑτοῖς τιθέντες [d] οὐκ ᾤοντο τὴν ἀπὸ τούτων πίστιν εἶναι διαρκῆ πρὸς τὰς ὑπὲρ τῶν πραγμάτων καταβεβαιώσεις, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἐν πολιορκίᾳ τῶν ἐκτὸς ἀποστάντες εἰς τὰ πάθη κατέκλεισαν αὑτούς, τό ‘φαίνεται’ τιθέμενοι τὸ δ’ ‘ἐστί’ ‹μηκέτι› προσαποφαινόμενοι περὶ τῶν ἐκτός. διό φησιν αὐτοὺς ὁ Κωλώτης μὴ δύνασθαι ζῆν μηδὲ χρῆσθαι τοῖς πράγμασιν· εἶτα κωμῳδῶν ‘οὗτοι’ φησίν ‘ἄνθρωπον εἶναι καὶ ἵππον καὶ τοῖχον οὐ λέγουσιν, αὑτοὺς δὲ τοιχοῦσθαι καὶ ἱπποῦσθαι καὶ ἀνθρωποῦσθαι’, πρῶτον αὐτὸς ὥσπερ οἱ συκοφάνται κακούργως χρώμενος τοῖς ὀνόμασιν· ἕπεται μὲν γὰρ ἀμέλει καὶ ταῦτα τοῖς ἀνδράσιν, ἔδει δέ, ὡς ἐκεῖνοι [e] διδάσκουσι, δηλοῦν τὸ γινόμενον. γλυκαίνεσθαι γὰρ λέγουσι καὶ πικραίνεσθαι ‹καὶ ψύχεσθαι καὶ θερμαίνεσθαι› καὶ φωτίζεσθαι καὶ σκοτίζεσθαι, τῶν παθῶν τούτων ἑκάστου τὴν ἐνάργειαν οἰκείαν ἐν αὑτῷ καὶ ἀπερίσπαστον ἔχοντος· εἰ δὲ γλυκὺ τὸ μέλι καὶ πικρὸς ὁ θαλλὸς καὶ ψυχρὰ ἡ χάλαζα καὶ θερμὸς ὁ ἄκρατος ‹καὶ φωτεινὸς ὁ ἥλιος› καὶ σκοτεινὸς ὁ τῆς νυκτὸς ἀήρ, ὑπὸ πολλῶν ἀντιμαρτυρεῖσθαι καὶ θηρίων καὶ πραγμάτων καὶ ἀνθρώπων, τῶν μὲν δυσχεραινόντων ‹τὸ μέλι›, τῶν δὲ προσιεμένων τὴν θαλλίαν καὶ ἀποκαομένων ὑπὸ τῆς χαλάζης καὶ καταψυχομένων ὑπ’ οἴνου καὶ πρὸς ἥλιον ἀμβλυωττόντων καὶ [f] νύκτωρ βλεπόντων. ὅθεν ἐμμένουσα τοῖς πάθεσιν ἡ δόξα διατηρεῖ τὸ ἀναμάρτητον, ἐκβαίνουσα δὲ καὶ πολυπραγμονοῦσα τῷ κρίνειν καὶ ἀποφαίνεσθαι περὶ τῶν ἐκτὸς αὑτήν τε πολλάκις ταράσσει καὶ μάχεται πρὸς ἑτέρους ἀπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν ἐναντία πάθη καὶ διαφόρους φαντασίας λαμβάνοντας. ὁ δὲ Κωλώτης ἔοικε τὸ αὐτὸ πάσχειν τοῖς νεωστὶ γράμματα μανθάνουσι τῶν παίδων, οἳ τοὺς χαρακτῆρας ἐν τοῖς πυξίοις ἐθιζόμενοι λέγειν, ὅταν ἔξω γεγραμμένους ἐν ἑτέροις ἴδωσιν, ἀμφιγνοοῦσι καὶ ταράττονται. [1121] [a] καὶ γὰρ οὗτος, οὓς ἐν τοῖς Ἐπικούρου γράμμασιν ἀσπάζεται καὶ ἀγαπᾷ λόγους, οὐ συνίησιν οὐδὲ γινώσκει λεγομένους ὑφ’ ἑτέρων. οἱ γὰρ εἰδώλου προσπίπτοντος ἡμῖν περιφεροῦς ἑτέρου δὲ κεκλασμένου τὴν μὲν αἴσθησιν ἀληθῶς τυποῦσθαι λέγοντες, προσαποφαίνεσθαι δ’ οὐκ ἐῶντες ὅτι στρογγύλος ὁ πύργος ἐστὶν ἡ δὲ κώπη κέκλασται, τὰ πάθη τὰ αὑτῶν καὶ τὰ φαντάσματα βεβαιοῦσι τὰ δ’ ἐκτὸς οὕτως ἔχειν ὁμολογεῖν οὐκ ἐθέλουσιν· ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐκείνοις τὸ ἱπποῦσθαι καὶ τὸ τοιχοῦσθαι λεκτέον, οὐχ ἵππον οὐδὲ τοῖχον, οὕτως ἄρα τὸ στρογγυλοῦσθαι καὶ τὸ σκαληνοῦσθαι τὴν [b] ὄψιν, οὐ σκαληνὸν οὐδὲ στρογγύλον ἀνάγκη ‹τούτοις τὴν κώπην καὶ› τὸν πύργον λέγειν· τὸ γὰρ εἴδωλον, ὑφ’ οὗ πέπονθεν ἡ ὄψις, κεκλασμένον ἐστίν, ἡ κώπη δ’ ἀφ’ ἧς τὸ εἴδωλον οὔκ ἐστι κεκλασμένη. διαφορὰν οὖν τοῦ πάθους πρὸς τὸ ὑποκείμενον ἐκτὸς ἔχοντος ἢ μένειν ἐπὶ τοῦ πάθους δεῖ τὴν πίστιν ἢ τὸ εἶναι τῷ φαίνεσθαι προσαποφαινομένην ἐλέγχεσθαι. τὸ δὲ δὴ βοᾶν αὐτοὺς καὶ ἀγανακτεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς αἰσθήσεως, ‹ὡς› οὐ λέγουσι τὸ ἐκτὸς εἶναι θερμὸν ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐν αὐτῇ πάθος γεγονέναι τοιοῦτον, ἆρ’ οὐ ταὐτόν ἐστι τῷ λεγομένῳ περὶ τῆς γεύσεως, ὅτι τὸ ἐκτὸς οὔ φησιν εἶναι γλυκύ, πάθος δέ τι καὶ κίνημα περὶ αὐτὴν [c] γεγονέναι τοιοῦτον; ὁ δὲ λέγων ἀνθρωποειδῆ φαντασίαν λαμβάνειν, εἰ δ’ ἄνθρωπός ἐστι μὴ αἰσθάνεσθαι, πόθεν εἴληφε τὰς ἀφορμάς; οὐ παρὰ τῶν λεγόντων καμπυλοειδῆ φαντασίαν λαμβάνειν, εἰ δὲ καμπύλον ἐστί, μὴ προσαποφαίνεσθαι τὴν ὄψιν μηδ’ ὅτι στρογγύλον, ἀλλ’ ὅτι φάντασμα περὶ αὐτὴν καὶ τύπωμα στρογγυλοειδὲς γέγονε; ‘νὴ Δία’ φήσει τις, ‘ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ τῷ πύργῳ προσελθὼν καὶ τῆς κώπης ἁψάμενος ἀποφανοῦμαι τὴν μὲν εὐθεῖαν εἶναι τὸν δὲ πολύγωνον, ἐκεῖνος δέ, κἂν ἐγγὺς γένηται, τὸ δοκεῖν καὶ τὸ φαίνεσθαι, πλέον δ’ οὐδὲν ὁμολογήσει.’ ναὶ μὰ Δία [d] σοῦ γε μᾶλλον, ὦ βέλτιστε, τὸ ἀκόλουθον ὁρῶν καὶ φυλάττων, τὸ πᾶσαν εἶναι φαντασίαν ὁμοίως ἀξιόπιστον ὑπὲρ ἑαυτῆς, ὑπὲρ ἄλλου δὲ μηδεμίαν ἀλλ’ ἐπίσης ἔχειν. σοὶ δ’ οἴχεται τὸ πάσας ὑπάρχειν ἀληθεῖς, ἄπιστον δὲ καὶ ψευδῆ μηδεμίαν, εἰ ταύταις μὲν οἴει δεῖν προσαποφαίνεσθαι περὶ τῶν ἐκτός, ἐκείναις δὲ ... τοῦ πάσχειν πλέον οὐδὲν ἐπίστευες. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἐπίσης ἔχουσιν ἐγγύς ‹τε› γενόμεναι καὶ μακρὰν οὖσαι πρὸς πίστιν, ἢ πάσαις δίκαιόν ἐστιν ἢ μηδὲ ταύταις ἕπεσθαι τὴν προσαποφαινομένην τὸ εἶναι κρίσιν· εἰ δὲ γίνεται διαφορὰ τοῦ πάθους ἀποστᾶσι καὶ προσελθοῦσι, ψεῦδός ἐστι τὸ μήτε φαντασίαν μήτ’ αἴσθησιν [e] ἑτέραν ‹ἑτέρας› ἐναργεστέραν ὑπάρχειν. καθάπερ ἃς λέγουσιν ἐπιμαρτυρήσεις καὶ ἀντιμαρτυρήσεις, οὐθέν εἰσι πρὸς τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὴν δόξαν· ὥστ’ εἰ ταύταις ἑπομένους ἀποφαίνεσθαι περὶ τῶν ἐκτὸς κελεύουσι, τῆς δόξης κρῖμα τὸ εἶναι τῆς δ’ αἰσθήσεως πάθος τὸ φαινόμενον ποιοῦντες, ἀπὸ τοῦ πάντως ἀληθοῦς τὴν κρίσιν ἐπὶ τὸ διαπῖπτον πολλάκις μεταφέρουσιν. -

Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὅσης ἐστὶ μεστὰ ταραχῆς καὶ μάχης πρὸς ἑαυτά, τί δεῖ λέγειν ἐν τῷ παρόντι; τοῦ δ’ Ἀρκεσιλάου τὸν Ἐπικούρειον οὐ μετρίως ἔοικεν ἡ δόξα παραλυπεῖν ἐν τοῖς τότε χρόνοις μάλιστα τῶν φιλοσόφων ἀγαπηθέντος.

[f] μηδὲν γὰρ αὐτὸν ἴδιον λέγοντά φησιν ὑπόληψιν ἐμποιεῖν ‹καινοτομίας› καὶ δόξαν ἀνθρώποις ἀγραμμάτοις, ἅτε δὴ πολυγράμματος αὐτὸς ὢν καὶ μεμουσωμένος. ὁ δ’ Ἀρκεσίλαος τοσοῦτον ἀπέδει τοῦ καινοτομίας τινὰ δόξαν ἀγαπᾶν καὶ ὑποποιεῖσθαί ‹τι› τῶν παλαιῶν, ὥστ’ ἐγκαλεῖν τοὺς [1122] [a] τότε σοφιστάς, ὅτι προστρίβεται Σωκράτει καὶ Πλάτωνι καὶ Παρμενίδῃ καὶ Ἡρακλείτῳ τὰ περὶ τῆς ἐποχῆς δόγματα καὶ τῆς ἀκαταληψίας οὐδὲν δεομένοις, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἀναγωγὴν καὶ βεβαίωσιν αὐτῶν εἰς ἄνδρας ἐνδόξους ποιούμενος. ὑπὲρ μὲν οὖν τούτου Κωλώτῃ χάρις καὶ παντὶ τῷ τὸν Ἀκαδημαϊκὸν λόγον ἄνωθεν ἥκειν εἰς Ἀρκεσίλαον ἀποφαίνοντι. τὴν δὲ περὶ πάντων ἐποχὴν οὐδ’ οἱ πολλὰ πραγματευσάμενοι καὶ κατατείναντες εἰς τοῦτο συγγράμματα καὶ λόγους ἐκίνησαν· ἀλλ’ ἐκ τῆς Στοᾶς αὐτῇ τελευτῶντες ὥσπερ Γοργόνα τὴν ἀπραξίαν ἐπάγοντες ἀπηγόρευσαν, ὡς πάντα πειρῶσι καὶ στρέφουσιν αὐτοῖς οὐχ [b] ὑπήκουσεν ἡ ὁρμὴ γενέσθαι συγκατάθεσις οὐδὲ τῆς ῥοπῆς ἀρχὴν ἐδέξατο τὴν πρόσθεσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἑαυτῆς ἀγωγὸς ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις ἐφάνη, μὴ δεομένη τοῦ προστίθεσθαι. νόμιμοι γὰρ οἱ πρὸς ἐκείνους ἀγῶνές εἰσι, καί ‘ὁπποῖόν κ’ εἴπῃσθα ἔπος, τοῖόν κ’ ἐπακούσαις (Υ 250)’· Κωλώτῃ δ’ οἶμαι τὰ περὶ ὁρμῆς καὶ συγκαταθέσεως ὄνῳ λύρας ἀκρόασιν εἶναι. λέγεται δὲ τοῖς συνεπομένοις καὶ ἀκούουσιν, ὅτι τριῶν περὶ τὴν ψυχὴν κινημάτων ὄντων, φανταστικοῦ καὶ ὁρμητικοῦ καὶ συγκαταθετικοῦ, τὸ μὲν φανταστικὸν οὐδὲ βουλομένοις ἀνελεῖν ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ ἀνάγκη προεντυγχάνοντας [c] τοῖς πράγμασι τυποῦσθαι καὶ πάσχειν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν, τὸ δ’ ὁρμητικὸν ἐγειρόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ φανταστικοῦ πρὸς τὰ οἰκεῖα πρακτικῶς κινεῖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οἷον ῥοπῆς ἐν τῷ ἡγεμονικῷ καὶ νεύσεως γινομένης. οὐδὲ τοῦτ’ οὖν ἀναιροῦσιν οἱ περὶ πάντων ἐπέχοντες, ἀλλὰ χρῶνται τῇ ὁρμῇ φυσικῶς ἀγούσῃ πρὸς τὸ φαινόμενον οἰκεῖον. τί οὖν φεύγουσι μόνον; ᾧ μόνῳ ψεῦδος ἐμφύεται καὶ ἀπάτη, τὸ δοξάζειν καὶ προπίπτειν τὴν συγκατάθεσιν, εἶξιν οὖσαν ὑπ’ ἀσθενείας τῷ φαινομένῳ, χρήσιμον δ’ οὐδὲν ἔχουσαν. ἡ γὰρ πρᾶξις δυοῖν δεῖται, φαντασίας τοῦ οἰκείου καὶ πρὸς τὸ [d] φανὲν οἰκεῖον ὁρμῆς, ὧν οὐδέτερον τῇ ἐποχῇ μάχεται. δόξης γάρ, οὐχ ὁρμῆς οὐδὲ φαντασίας ὁ λόγος ἀφίστησιν. ὅταν οὖν φανῇ τὸ ἡδὺ οἰκεῖον, οὐθὲν δεῖ πρὸς τὴν ἐπ’ αὐτὸ κίνησιν καὶ φορὰν δόξης, ἀλλ’ ἦλθεν εὐθὺς ἡ ὁρμή, κίνησις οὖσα καὶ φορὰ τῆς ψυχῆς.

Καὶ μὴν αὐτῶν γε τούτων ‹ἀκούομεν βοώντων›, ὡς ‘αἴσθησιν ἔχειν δεῖ καὶ σάρκινον εἶναι, καὶ φανεῖται ἡδονὴ ἀγαθόν’. οὐκοῦν καὶ τῷ ἐπέχοντι ἀγαθὸν φανεῖται· καὶ γὰρ αἰσθήσεως μετέχει καὶ σάρκινός ἐστι, καὶ λαβὼν ἀγαθοῦ φαντασίαν ὀρέγεται καὶ ὁρμᾷ, πάντα πράττων ὅπως οὐ διαφεύξεται αὐτόν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀνυστὸν ἀεὶ συνέσται τῷ οἰκείῳ, φυσικαῖς οὐ γεωμετρικαῖς ἑλκόμενος ἀνάγκαις.

[e] ‘ἄνευ διδασκάλου γὰρ αὐτὰ προκαλεῖται’, τὰ καλὰ ταῦτα καί ‘λεῖα καὶ προσηνῆ κινήματα τῆς σαρκός’, ὡς αὐτοί φασιν οὗτοι, καὶ τὸν πάνυ μὴ φάσκοντα μηδ’ ὁμολογοῦντα κάμπτεσθαι καὶ μαλάσσεσθαι τούτοις. ‘ἀλλὰ πῶς οὐκ εἰς ὄρος ἄπεισι τρέχων ὁ ἐπέχων ἀλλ’ εἰς βαλανεῖον, οὐδὲ πρὸς τὸν τοῖχον ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὰς θύρας ἀναστὰς βαδίζει, βουλόμενος εἰς ἀγορὰν προελθεῖν;’ τοῦτ’ ἐρωτᾷς ἀκριβῆ τὰ αἰσθητήρια λέγων εἶναι καὶ τὰς φαντασίας ἀληθεῖς; ὅτι φαίνεται δήπουθεν αὐτῷ βαλανεῖον οὐ τὸ ὄρος ἀλλὰ τὸ βαλανεῖον, καὶ θύρα οὐχ ὁ τοῖχος ἀλλ’ ἡ θύρα, καὶ τῶν [f] ἄλλων ὁμοίως ἕκαστον. ὁ γὰρ τῆς ἐποχῆς λόγος οὐ παρατρέπει τὴν αἴσθησιν, οὐδὲ τοῖς ἀλόγοις πάθεσιν αὐτῆς καὶ κινήμασιν ἀλλοίωσιν ἐμποιεῖ διαταράττουσαν τὸ φανταστικόν, ἀλλὰ τὰς δόξας μόνον ἀναιρεῖ χρῆται δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὡς πέφυκεν. ‘ἀλλ’ ἀδύνατον τὸ μὴ συγκατατίθεσθαι τοῖς [1123] [a] ἐναργέσι· τὸ γὰρ ἀρνεῖσθαι τὰ πεπιστευμένα τοῦ μήτ’ ἀρνεῖσθαι μήτε τιθέναι παραλογώτερον.’ τίς οὖν κινεῖ τὰ πεπιστευμένα καὶ μάχεται τοῖς ἐναργέσιν; οἱ μαντικὴν ἀναιροῦντες καὶ πρόνοιαν ὑπάρχειν θεῶν μὴ φάσκοντες μηδὲ τὸν ἥλιον ἔμψυχον εἶναι μηδὲ τὴν σελήνην, οἷς πάντες ἄνθρωποι θύουσι καὶ προσεύχονται καὶ σέβονται. τὸ δὲ φύσει περιέχεσθαι τὰ τεκόντα τῶν γεννωμένων οὐχὶ πᾶσι φαινόμενον ἀναιρεῖτε; τὸ δὲ πόνου καὶ ἡδονῆς μηδὲν εἶναι μέσον οὐκ ἀποφαίνεσθε παρὰ τὴν πάντων αἴσθησιν, ἥδεσθαι τὸ μὴ ἀλγεῖν καὶ πάσχειν τὸ μὴ ‹κινεῖσθαι› λέγοντες; ἀλλ’ ἵνα τἄλλα ἐάσω, τί μᾶλλον ἐναργὲς [b] οὕτως ἐστὶ καὶ πεπιστευμένον ὡς τὸ παρορᾶν καὶ παρακούειν ἐν πάθεσιν ἐκστατικοῖς καὶ μελαγχολικοῖς ὄντα, ὅταν ἡ διάνοια τοιαῦτα πάσχῃ καὶ ταράττηται·

‘αἱ δέ με δᾳδοφόροι μελανείμονες ὄμμα πυροῦσι·’

καί

 ‘... μητέρ’ ἀγκάλαις ἐμὴν

ἔχουσα’ (Eur. Iph. Taur. 289);

ταῦτα μέντοι καὶ πολλὰ τούτων ἕτερα τραγικώτερα, τοῖς Ἐμπεδοκλέους ἐοικότα ‘τεράσμασιν’ ὧν καταγελῶσιν, ‘εἱλίποδ’ ἀκριτόχειρα’ καί ‘βουγενῆ ἀνδρόπρωρα’ καὶ τίνα γὰρ οὐκ ὄψιν ἢ φύσιν ἔκφυλον εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ συνενεγκόντες ἐκ τῶν ἐνυπνίων καὶ τῶν παρακοπῶν οὐδὲν εἶναί [c] φασι παρόραμα τούτων οὐδὲ ψεῦδος οὐδ’ ἀσύστατον, ἀλλὰ φαντασίας ἀληθεῖς ἁπάσας καὶ σώματα καὶ μορφὰς ἐκ τοῦ περιέχοντος ἀφικνουμένας. εἶτ’ ἔστι τι τῶν ὄντων ἀδύνατον ἐπισχεῖν, εἰ ταῦτα πιστεύεσθαι δυνατόν ἐστιν; ἃ γὰρ οὐδεὶς σκευοποιὸς ἢ πλάστης θαυμάτων ἢ γραφεὺς δεινὸς ἐτόλμησε μῖξαι πρὸς ἀπάτην εἰκάσματα καὶ παίγνια, ταῦθ’ ὑπάρχειν ἀπὸ σπουδῆς τιθέμενοι, μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως, εἰ ταῦτα μὴ ὑπάρχοι, πίστιν οἴχεσθαι καὶ βεβαιότητα καὶ κρίσιν ἀληθείας φάσκοντες αὐτοὶ καταβάλλουσιν εἰς ἀφασίαν πάντα πράγματα· καὶ ταῖς κρίσεσι φόβους καὶ ταῖς [d] πράξεσιν ὑποψίας ἐπάγουσιν, εἰ τὰ πραττόμενα καὶ νομιζόμενα καὶ συνήθη καὶ ἀνὰ χεῖρας ἡμῖν ἐπὶ τῆς αὐτῆς φαντασίας καὶ πίστεως ὀχεῖται τοῖς μανικοῖς καὶ ἀτόποις καὶ παρανόμοις ἐκείνοις φάσμασιν. ἡ γὰρ ἰσότης, ἣν ὑποτίθενται πᾶσι, τῶν νενομισμένων ἀφίστησι μᾶλλον ἢ προστίθησι τοῖς παραλόγοις τὴν πίστιν. ὅθεν ἴσμεν οὐκ ὀλίγους τῶν φιλοσόφων ἥδιον ἂν θεμένους τὸ μηδεμίαν ἢ τὸ πάσας ἀληθεῖς εἶναι τὰς φαντασίας, καὶ μᾶλλον ἂν οἷς ὕπαρ ἐντυγχάνουσι διαπιστήσαντας ἀνθρώποις καὶ πράγμασι καὶ λόγοις ἁπλῶς ἅπασιν ἢ μίαν ἐκείνων ἀληθῆ καὶ ὑπάρχουσαν εἶναι φαντασίαν πεισθέντας, ‹ἃς› λυττῶντες [e] ἢ κορυβαντιῶντες ἢ κοιμώμενοι λαμβάνουσιν. ἃ τοίνυν ἔστι μὲν ἀναιρεῖν, ἔστι δ’ ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν ἐπέχειν περὶ αὐτῶν, εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο, τήν γε διαφωνίαν ταύτην λαβόντας αἰτίαν ἀποχρῶσαν ὑπονοίας πρὸς τὰ πράγματα †καὶ οὐδὲ οὕτως ὑγιὲς οὐδέν, ἀσάφειαν δὲ καὶ ταραχὴν ἔχοντα πᾶσαν; ταῖς μέν γε περὶ κόσμων ἀπειρίας καὶ ἀτόμων φύσεως καὶ ἀμερῶν καὶ παρεγκλίσεων διαφοραῖς, εἰ καὶ πάνυ πολλοὺς διαταράττουσιν, ἔνεστιν ὅμως παραμυθία, τὸ μηδὲν ἐγγὺς εἶναι μᾶλλον δ’ ὅλως ἐπέκεινα τῆς αἰσθήσεως ἀπῳκίσθαι τῶν ζητουμένων ἕκαστον· ἡ δ’ [f] ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς αὕτη καὶ ἀκοαῖς καὶ χερσὶν ἀπιστία καὶ ἄγνοια καὶ ταραχὴ περὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ καὶ τὰς φαντασίας, εἴτ’ ἀληθεῖς εἰσιν εἴτε ψευδεῖς, τίνα δόξαν οὐ σαλεύει; ποίαν δ’ οὐκ ἄνω καὶ κάτω ποιεῖ συγκατάθεσιν καὶ κρίσιν; εἰ γὰρ οὐ κραιπαλῶντες οὐδὲ φαρμακῶντες ἄνθρωποι καὶ παρακόπτοντες ἀλλὰ νήφοντες καὶ ὑγιαίνοντες καὶ γράφοντες περὶ ἀληθείας καὶ κανόνων καὶ κριτηρίων [1124] [a] ἐν τοῖς ἐναργεστάτοις πάθεσι καὶ κινήμασι τῆς αἰσθήσεως ἢ τὸ ἀνύπαρκτον ἀληθὲς ἢ ψεῦδος καὶ ἀνύπαρκτον ἡγοῦνται τὸ ἀληθές, οὐκ εἰ περὶ πάντων ἡσυχάζουσιν, ἀλλ’ εἴ τισιν ὅλως ἄνθρωποι συγκατατίθενται, θαυμάζειν ἄξιον· οὐδ’ ἄπιστον, εἰ μηδεμίαν κρίσιν ἔχουσι περὶ τῶν φαινομένων, ἀλλ’ εἰ τὰς ἐναντίας ἔχουσι. τοῦ γὰρ ἐναντία λέγειν ἀλλήλοις καὶ ἀντικείμενα τὸ ‹μὴ τιθέναι› μηδέτερον, ἀλλ’ ἐπέχειν περὶ τῶν ἀντικειμένων ἧττον ἄν τις θαυμάσειεν. ὁ γὰρ μή‹τε› τιθεὶς μήτ’ ἀρνούμενος ἀλλ’ ἡσυχάζων καὶ τῷ τιθέντι τὴν δόξαν ἧττον μάχεται τοῦ ἀρνουμένου καὶ τῷ ἀρνουμένῳ τοῦ τιθέντος. εἰ δὲ περὶ τούτων δυνατόν ἐστιν ἐπέχειν, οὐδὲ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀδύνατον, [b] κατά γ’ ὑμᾶς αἴσθησιν αἰσθήσεως καὶ φαντασίαν φαντασίας οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν διαφέρειν ἡγουμένους.

Οὐ μῦθος οὖν οὐδὲ θήρα ‘μειρακίων λαμυρῶν καὶ προπετῶν’ ὁ περὶ τῆς ἐποχῆς λόγος ἐστίν, ὡς οἴεται Κωλώτης, ἀλλ’ ἕξις ἀνδρῶν καὶ διάθεσις φυλάττουσα τὸ ἀδιάπτωτον καὶ μὴ προϊεμένη ταῖς διαβεβλημέναις οὕτω καὶ δυστατούσαις αἰσθήσεσι τὴν κρίσιν μηδὲ συνεξαπατωμένη τούτοις, οἳ τὰ φαινόμενα τῶν ἀδήλων πίστιν ἔχειν φάσκουσιν, ἀπιστίαν τοσαύτην καὶ ἀσάφειαν ἐν τοῖς φαινομένοις ὁρῶντες. ἀλλὰ μῦθος μέν ἐστιν ἡ ἀπειρία καὶ [c] τὰ εἴδωλα, προπέτειαν δὲ καὶ λαμυρίαν ἐμποιεῖ νέοις ὁ περὶ Πυθοκλέους οὔπω γεγονότος ὀκτωκαίδεκα ἔτη γράφων οὐκ εἶναι φύσιν ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ Ἑλλάδι ἀμείνω καὶ τερατικῶς αὐτὸν εὖ ἀπαγγέλλειν, καὶ πάσχειν αὐτὸς τὸ τῶν γυναικῶν, εὐχόμενος ἀνεμέσητα πάντα εἶναι καὶ ἀνεπίφθονα τῆς ὑπερβολῆς τῷ νεανίσκῳ· ‘σοφισταί’ δ’ εἰσὶ καί ‘ἀλαζόνες’ οἱ πρὸς ἄνδρας ἐλλογίμους οὕτως ἀσελγῶς καὶ ὑπερηφάνως γράφοντες. καίτοι Πλάτων καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης καὶ Θεόφραστος καὶ Δημόκριτος ἀντειρήκασι τοῖς πρὸ αὐτῶν· βιβλίον δὲ τοιαύτην ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον ὁμοῦ πρὸς ἅπαντας οὐδεὶς ἄλλος ἐξενεγκεῖν ἐτόλμησεν.

[d] Ὅθεν ὥσπερ οἱ περὶ τὸ θεῖον πλημμελήσαντες ἐξαγορεύων τὰ ἑαυτοῦ κακὰ τελευτῶντος ἤδη τοῦ βιβλίου φησὶν ὅτι ‘τὸν βίον οἱ νόμους διατάξαντες καὶ νόμιμα καὶ τὸ βασιλεύεσθαι τὰς πόλεις καὶ ἄρχεσθαι καταστήσαντες εἰς πολλὴν ἀσφάλειαν καὶ ἡσυχίαν ἔθεντο καὶ θορύβων ἀπήλλαξαν· εἰ δέ τις ταῦτα ἀναιρήσει, θηρίων βίον βιωσόμεθα καὶ ὁ προστυχὼν τὸν ἐντυχόντα μονονοὺ κατέδεται’. τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ Κωλώτης αὐταῖς λέξεσιν ἐκπεφώνηκεν, οὐ δικαίως οὐδ’ ἀληθῶς. ἂν γὰρ ἀνελών τις τοὺς νόμους τὰ Παρμενίδου καὶ Σωκράτους καὶ Ἡρακλείτου [e] καὶ Πλάτωνος ἀπολίπῃ δόγματα, πολλοῦ δεήσομεν ἀλλήλους κατεσθίειν καὶ θηρίων βίον ζῆν· φοβησόμεθα γὰρ τὰ αἰσχρὰ καὶ τιμήσομεν ἐπὶ τῷ καλῷ δικαιοσύνην, θεοὺς ἄρχοντας ἀγαθοὺς καὶ δαίμονας ἔχειν τοῦ βίου φύλακας ἡγούμενοι καί ‘τὸν ὑπὲρ γῆς καὶ ὑπὸ γῆν χρυσὸν ἀρετῆς ἀντάξιον’ μὴ τιθέμενοι καὶ ποιοῦντες ἑκουσίως διὰ τὸν λόγον, ᾗ φησι Ξενοκράτης (fr. 31), ἃ νῦν ἄκοντες διὰ τὸν νόμον. πότ’ οὖν ἔσται θηριώδης καὶ ἄγριος καὶ ἄμικτος ἡμῶν ὁ βίος; ὅταν ἀναιρεθῶσι μὲν οἱ νόμοι, μένωσι δ’ οἱ πρὸς ἡδονὴν παρακαλοῦντες λόγοι, πρόνοια δὲ θεῶν μὴ νομίζηται, σοφοὺς δ’ ἡγῶνται τούς ‘τῷ καλῷ προσπτύοντας, ἂν ἡδονὴ μὴ προσῇ’, χλευάζωσι [f] δὲ ταῦτα καὶ γελῶσιν (Trag. adesp. 421)

‘ἔστιν Δίκης ὀφθαλμός, ὃς τὰ πάνθ’ ὁρᾷ’

καί (Trag. adesp. 496)

‘πέλας γὰρ ἑστὼς ὁ θεὸς ἐγγύθεν βλέπει’

καί ‘ὁ μὲν θεός, ὥσπερ δὴ καὶ ὁ παλαιὸς λόγος, ἀρχήν τε καὶ μέσα καὶ τελευτὴν ἔχων τοῦ παντὸς εὐθείᾳ περαίνει κατὰ φύσιν περιπορευόμενος· τῷ δ’ ἕπεται Δίκη, τῶν [1125] [a] ἀπολειπομένων τιμωρὸς τοῦ θείου νόμου’. οἱ γὰρ τούτων καταφρονοῦντες ὡς μύθων καὶ περὶ γαστέρα τἀγαθὸν ἡγούμενοι καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους πόρους δι’ ὧν ἡδονὴ παραγίνεται, νόμου δέονται καὶ φόβου καὶ πληγῆς καὶ βασιλέως τινὸς καὶ ἄρχοντος ἐν χειρὶ τὴν δίκην ἔχοντος, ἵνα μὴ τοὺς πλησίον κατεσθίωσιν ὑπὸ λαιμαργίας ἀθεότητι θρασυνομένης. καὶ γὰρ ὁ τῶν θηρίων βίος τοιοῦτός ἐστιν, ὅτι τῆς ἡδονῆς οὐδὲν ἐπίσταται κάλλιον οὐδὲ δίκην θεῶν οἶδεν οὐδὲ σέβεται τῆς ἀρετῆς τὸ κάλλος, ἀλλ’ εἴ τι θαρραλέον αὐτοῖς ἢ πανοῦργον ἢ δραστήριον ἐκ φύσεως ἔνεστι, τούτῳ πρὸς ἡδονὴν σαρκὸς καὶ ἀποπλήρωσιν ὀρέξεως χρῆται.

[b] καθάπερ οἴεται δεῖν ὁ σοφὸς Μητρόδωρος (fr. 6), λέγων τὰ καλὰ πάντα καὶ σοφὰ καὶ περιττὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐξευρήματα τῆς κατὰ σάρκα ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα καὶ τῆς ἐλπίδος τῆς ὑπὲρ ταύτης συνεστάναι καὶ πᾶν εἶναι κενὸν ἔργον, ὃ μὴ εἰς τοῦτο κατατείνει. τούτοις τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς καὶ φιλοσοφήμασιν ἀρθέντων ‹τῶν› νόμων ὄνυχες λύκων ἐνδέουσι καὶ ὀδόντες λεόντων καὶ γαστέρες βοῶν καὶ τράχηλοι καμήλων. καὶ ταῦτα τὰ πάθη καὶ τὰ δόγματα λόγων καὶ γραμμάτων ἀπορίᾳ τὰ θηρία βρυχήμασι καὶ χρεμετισμοῖς καὶ ‹ὑλακαῖς σημαίνει›, καὶ πᾶσα φωνὴ γαστρός ἐστιν αὐτοῖς καὶ σαρκὸς ἡδονὴν ἀσπαζομένη καὶ [c] σαίνουσα παροῦσαν ἢ μέλλουσαν, εἰ μή τι φύσει φιλόφωνόν ἐστι καὶ κωτίλον. οὐδεὶς οὖν ἔπαινος ἄξιος ἂν γένοιτο τῶν ἐπὶ ταῦτα τὰ πάθη τὰ θηριώδη νόμους θεμένων καὶ πολιτείας καὶ ἀρχὰς καὶ νόμων διάταξιν. ἀλλὰ τίνες εἰσὶν οἱ ταῦτα συγχέοντες καὶ καταλύοντες καὶ ἄρδην ἀναιροῦντες; οὐχ οἱ πολιτείας ἀφιστάντες αὑτοὺς καὶ τοὺς πλησιάζοντας; οὐχ οἱ τὸν τῆς ἀταραξίας στέφανον ἀσύμβλητον εἶναι ταῖς μεγάλαις ἡγεμονίαις λέγοντες; οὐχ οἱ τὸ βασιλεύειν ἁμαρτίαν καὶ διάπτωσιν ἀποφαίνοντες καὶ γράφοντες αὐταῖς λέξεσιν, ὅτι ‘λέγειν δεῖ, πῶς ἄριστα τὸ τῆς φύσεως τέλος συντηρήσει καὶ πῶς τις ἑκὼν εἶναι μὴ πρόσεισιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπὶ τὰς τῶν πληθῶν [d] ἀρχάς’· καὶ ἔτι ταῦτα πρὸς ἐκείνοις· ‘οὐδὲν οὖν ἔτι δεῖ τοὺς Ἕλληνας σῴζειν οὐδ’ ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ στεφάνου παρ’ αὐτῶν τυγχάνειν, ἀλλ’ ἐσθίειν καὶ πίνειν, ὦ Τιμόκρατες, ἀβλαβῶς τῇ σαρκὶ καὶ κεχαρισμένως’ (Metrod. fr. 41); ἀλλὰ μὴν ἧς γε καὶ Κωλώτης ἐπαινεῖ διατάξεως τῶν νόμων πρῶτόν ἐστιν ἡ περὶ θεῶν δόξα καὶ μέγιστον, ᾗ καὶ Λυκοῦργος Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ Νομᾶς Ῥωμαίους καὶ Ἴων ὁ παλαιὸς Ἀθηναίους καὶ Δευκαλίων Ἕλληνας ὁμοῦ τι πάντας καθωσίωσαν, εὐχαῖς καὶ ὅρκοις καὶ μαντεύμασι καὶ φήμαις ἐμπαθεῖς πρὸς τὰ θεῖα δι’ ἐλπίδων ἅμα καὶ φόβων καταστήσαντες. εὕροις δ’ ἂν ἐπιὼν πόλεις ἀτειχίστους, [e] ἀγραμμάτους, ἀβασιλεύτους, ἀοίκους, ἀχρημάτους, νομίσματος μὴ δεομένας, ἀπείρους θεάτρων καὶ γυμνασίων· ἀνιέρου δὲ πόλεως καὶ ἀθέου, μὴ χρωμένης εὐχαῖς μηδ’ ὅρκοις μηδὲ μαντείαις μηδὲ θυσίαις ἐπ’ ἀγαθοῖς μηδ’ ἀποτροπαῖς κακῶν οὐδείς ἐστιν οὐδ’ ἔσται γεγονὼς θεατής· ἀλλὰ πόλις ἄν μοι δοκεῖ μᾶλλον ἐδάφους χωρὶς ἢ πολιτεία τῆς περὶ θεῶν δόξης ὑφαιρεθείσης παντάπασι σύστασιν λαβεῖν ἢ λαβοῦσα τηρῆσαι. τοῦτο μέντοι τὸ συνεκτικὸν ἁπάσης κοινωνίας καὶ νομοθεσίας ἔρεισμα καὶ βάθρον οὐ κύκλῳ περιιόντες οὐδὲ κρύφα καὶ δι’ αἰνιγμάτων, [f] ἀλλὰ τὴν πρώτην τῶν κυριωτάτων δοξῶν προσβαλόντες εὐθὺς ἀνατρέπουσιν. εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ὑπὸ Ποινῆς ἐλαυνόμενοι δεινὰ ποιεῖν ὁμολογοῦσι συγχέοντες τὰ νόμιμα καὶ τὰς διατάξεις τῶν νόμων ἀναιροῦντες, ἵνα μηδὲ συγγνώμης τύχωσι. τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἁμαρτάνειν περὶ δόξαν, εἰ καὶ μὴ σοφῶν, ὅμως ἀνθρώπινόν ἐστι· τὸ δ’ ἐγκαλεῖν ἑτέροις ἅπερ αὐτοὶ πράττουσι πῶς ἄν τις εἴποι φειδόμενος τῶν ἀξίων ὀνομάτων;

[1126] [a] Εἰ γὰρ πρὸς Ἀντίδωρον ἢ Βίωνα τὸν σοφιστὴν γράφων ἐμνήσθη νόμων καὶ πολιτείας καὶ διατάξεως, οὐκ ἂν [τις] εἶπεν αὐτῷ (Eur. Or. 258) ‘μέν’, ὦ ταλαίπωρ’, ἀτρέμα σοῖς ἐν δεμνίοις’ περιστέλλων τὸ σαρκίδιον, ἐμοὶ δὲ περὶ τούτων ‹οἱ› οἰκονομικῶς καὶ πολιτικῶς βεβιωκότες ἐγκαλείτωσαν; εἰσὶ δὲ ‹τοι›οῦτοι πάντες οἷς Κωλώτης λελοιδόρηκεν. ὧν Δημόκριτος μὲν παραινεῖ τήν τε πολιτικὴν τέχνην μεγίστην οὖσαν ἐκδιδάσκεσθαι καὶ τοὺς πόνους διώκειν, ἀφ’ ὧν τὰ μεγάλα καὶ λαμπρὰ γίνεται τοῖς ἀνθρώποις· Παρμενίδης δὲ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ πατρίδα διεκόσμησε νόμοις ἀρίστοις, ὥστε τὰς ἀρχὰς καθ’ ἕκαστον [b] ἐνιαυτὸν ἐξορκοῦν τοὺς πολίτας ἐμμενεῖν τοῖς Παρμενίδου νόμοις· Ἐμπεδοκλῆς δὲ τούς τε πρώτους τῶν πολιτῶν ὑβρίζοντας καὶ διαφοροῦντας τὰ κοινὰ ἐξελέγξας τήν τε χώραν ἀπήλλαξεν ἀκαρπίας καὶ λοιμοῦ διασφάγας ὄρους ἀποτειχίσας, δι’ ὧν ὁ νότος εἰς τὸ πεδίον ὑπερέβαλλε· Σωκράτης δὲ μετὰ τὴν καταδίκην φυγῆς αὐτῷ μεμηχανημένης ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων οὐκ ἐχρήσατο, τοὺς νόμους βεβαιῶν, ἀλλ’ ἀδίκως ἀποθανεῖν εἵλετο μᾶλλον ἢ σωθῆναι παρανόμως· Μέλισσος δὲ τῆς πατρίδος στρατηγῶν Ἀθηναίους κατεναυμάχησε· Πλάτων δὲ καλοὺς [c] μὲν ἐν γράμμασι λόγους περὶ νόμων καὶ πολιτείας ἀπέλιπε, πολὺ δὲ κρείττονας ἐνεποίησε τοῖς ἑταίροις, ἀφ’ ὧν Σικελία διὰ Δίωνος ἠλευθεροῦτο καὶ Θρᾴκη διὰ Πύθωνος καὶ Ἡρακλείδου Κότυν ἀνελόντων, Ἀθηναίων δὲ Χαβρίαι στρατηγοὶ καὶ Φωκίωνες ἐξ Ἀκαδημείας ἀνέβαινον. Ἐπίκουρος μὲν γὰρ εἰς Ἀσίαν ἐξέπεμπε τοὺς Τιμοκράτει λοιδορησομένους, [καὶ] τῆς βασιλικῆς ἐξελῶν αὐλῆς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ὅτι Μητροδώρῳ προσέκρουσεν ἀδελφὸς ὤν, καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐν τοῖς βιβλίοις γέγραπται τοῖς ἐκείνων· Πλάτων δὲ τῶν ἑταίρων ἐξαπέστειλεν Ἀρκάσι μὲν Ἀριστώνυμον διακοσμήσοντα τὴν πολιτείαν, Ἠλείοις δὲ Φορμίωνα, [d] Μενέδημον δὲ Πυρραίοις. Εὔδοξος δὲ Κνιδίοις καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης Σταγειρίταις, Πλάτωνος ὄντες συνήθεις, νόμους ἔγραψαν· παρὰ δὲ Ξενοκράτους Ἀλέξανδρος ὑποθήκας ᾔτησε περὶ βασιλείας· ὁ δὲ πεμφθεὶς πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐν Ἀσίᾳ κατοικούντων Ἑλλήνων καὶ μάλιστα διακαύσας καὶ παροξύνας ἅψασθαι τοῦ πρὸς τοὺς βαρβάρους πολέμου Δήλιος ἦν Ἐφέσιος, ἑταῖρος Πλάτωνος. Ζήνων τοίνυν ὁ Παρμενίδου γνώριμος ἐπιθέμενος Δημύλῳ τῷ τυράννῳ καὶ δυστυχήσας περὶ τὴν πρᾶξιν ἐν πυρὶ τὸν Παρμενίδου λόγον ὥσπερ χρυσὸν ἀκήρατον καὶ δόκιμον παρέσχε, καὶ ἀπέδειξεν ἔργοις ὅτι τὸ αἰσχρὸν ἀνδρὶ μεγάλῳ [e] φοβερόν ἐστιν, ἀλγηδόνα δὲ παῖδες καὶ γύναια καὶ γυναίων ψυχὰς ἔχοντες ἄνδρες δεδίασι· τὴν γὰρ γλῶτταν αὑτοῦ διατραγὼν τῷ τυράννῳ προσέπτυσεν. ἐκ δὲ τῶν Ἐπικούρου λόγων καὶ δογμάτων οὐ λέγω τίς τυραννοκτόνος ἢ τίς ἀριστεὺς ἢ τίς νομοθέτης ἢ τίς ἄρχων ἢ βασιλέως σύμβουλος ἢ δήμου προστάτης ἢ βεβασανισμένος ὑπὲρ τῶν δικαίων ἢ τεθνηκώς, ἀλλὰ τίς τῶν σοφῶν ἔπλευσεν ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος, ἐπρέσβευσεν, ἀνήλωσε, ποῦ γέγραπται πολιτικὴ πρᾶξις ὑμῖν; καίτοι ὅτι Μητρόδωρος εἰς Πειραιᾶ κατέβη σταδίους τεσσαράκοντα Μιθρῇ τινι [f] Σύρῳ τῶν βασιλικῶν συνειλημμένῳ βοηθήσων, πρὸς πάντας ἐγράφετο καὶ πάσας ἐπιστολαῖς, μεγαληγοροῦντος Ἐπικούρου καὶ σεμνύνοντος ἐκείνην τὴν ὁδόν. τί οὖν εἴ τι τοιοῦτον ἐπέπρακτο αὐτοῖς οἷον Ἀριστοτέλει, τὴν πατρίδα κτίσαι διεφθαρμένην ὑπὸ Φιλίππου, Θεοφράστῳ δὲ δὶς ἐλευθερῶσαι τυραννουμένην; οὐκ ἐπιλιπεῖν ἔδει πρότερον φέροντα βύβλους τὸν Νεῖλον ἢ τούτους ἀποκαμεῖν γράφοντας περὶ αὑτῶν; καὶ οὐ τοῦτο δεινόν ἐστιν, ὅτι τοσούτων [1127] [a] ὄντων φιλοσόφων μόνοι σχεδὸν ἀσύμβολοι τῶν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν ἀγαθῶν κοινωνοῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ὅτι καὶ τραγῳδιῶν ποιηταὶ καὶ κωμῳδιῶν ἀεί τι πειρῶνται χρήσιμον παρέχεσθαι καὶ λέγειν ὑπὲρ νόμων καὶ πολιτείας, οὗτοι δέ, κἂν γράφωσι, γράφουσι περὶ πολιτείας ἵνα μὴ πολιτευώμεθα, καὶ περὶ ῥητορικῆς ἵνα μὴ ῥητορεύωμεν, καὶ περὶ βασιλείας ἵνα [μὴ] φεύγωμεν τὸ συμβιοῦν βασιλεῦσι· τοὺς δὲ πολιτικοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπὶ γέλωτι καὶ καταλύσει τῆς δόξης ὀνομάζουσι μόνον ὡς τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν, ἐσχηκέναι τι λέγοντες ἀγαθὸν καὶ τοῦτο δέ ‘μικκόν’, οὑτωσὶ τῷ ῥήματι φράζοντες, αὐτὸν δέ ‘σιδηροῦν σπλάγχνον’ ἀποκαλοῦντες καὶ πυνθανόμενοι, τί παθὼν ἐβάδιζε διὰ τῆς Πελοποννήσου μέσης καὶ οὐ πιλίδιον ἔχων οἴκοι καθῆτο, δηλαδὴ περὶ τὴν τῆς γαστρὸς ἐπιμέλειαν ὅλος καθεστώς. ἃ δὲ Μητρόδωρος ἐν τῷ περὶ Φιλοσοφίας ἐξορχούμενος πολιτείαν γέγραφεν (fr. 31), οὐκ ᾤμην δεῖν παρεῖναι· λέγει δέ, ὅτι ‘τῶν σοφῶν τινες ὑπὸ δαψιλείας τύφου οὕτως καλῶς ἐνεῖδον τὸ ἔργον αὐτῆς, ὥστ’ οἴχονται φερόμενοι πρὸς τὰς αὐτὰς Λυκούργῳ καὶ Σόλωνι ἐπιθυμίας κατὰ τοὺς περὶ βίων λόγους καὶ ἀρετῆς’. τῦφος οὖν ἦν καὶ δαψίλεια τύφου τὸ ἐλευθέρας εἶναι τὰς Ἀθήνας τήν τε Σπάρτην εὐνομεῖσθαι καὶ τοὺς νέους μὴ θρασύνεσθαι, [b] μηδ’ ἐξ ἑταιρῶν παιδοποιεῖσθαι μηδὲ πλοῦτον καὶ τρυφὴν καὶ ἀσέλγειαν ἄρχειν ἀλλὰ νόμον καὶ δικαιοσύνην ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν· αὗται γὰρ ἦσαν ἐπιθυμίαι Σόλωνος ‹καὶ Λυκούργου›. καὶ λοιδορῶν ὁ Μητρόδωρος ἐπιλέγει τοῖς εἰρημένοις (fr. 32) ‘διὸ καὶ καλῶς ἔχει τὸν ἐλεύθερον ὡς ἀληθῶς γέλωτα γελάσαι ἐπί τε δὴ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις καὶ ἐπὶ τοῖς Λυκούργοις τούτοις καὶ Σόλωσιν’. ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐλεύθερος οὗτος, ὦ Μητρόδωρε, ἐστὶν ἀλλ’ ἀνελεύθερος καὶ ἀνάγωγος καὶ οὐδὲ μάστιγος ἐλευθέρας δεόμενος, ἀλλὰ τῆς ἀστραγαλωτῆς ἐκείνης, ᾗ τοὺς Γάλλους πλημμελοῦντας ἐν τοῖς Μητρῴοις κολάζουσιν.

[c] Ὅτι δ’ οὐ νομοθέταις ἀλλὰ νόμοις ἐπολέμουν, ἔξεστιν ἀκούειν Ἐπικούρου· ἐρωτᾷ γὰρ αὑτὸν ἐν ταῖς Διαπορίαις, εἰ πράξει τινὰ ὁ σοφὸς ὧν οἱ νόμοι ἀπαγορεύουσιν, εἰδὼς ὅτι λήσει, καὶ ἀποκρίνεται· ‘οὐκ εὔοδον τὸ ἁπλοῦν ἐστι κατηγόρημα,’ τουτέστι ‘πράξω μέν, οὐ βούλομαι δ’ ὁμολογεῖν’. πάλιν δ’ οἶμαι γράφων πρὸς Ἰδομενέα διακελεύεται ‘μὴ νόμοις καὶ δόξαις δουλεύοντα ζῆν, ἐφ’ ὅσον ἂν μὴ τὴν διὰ τοῦ πέλας ἐκ πληγῆς ὄχλησιν παρασκευάζωσιν’. εἴπερ οὖν οἱ νόμους καὶ πολιτείας ἀναιροῦντες τὸν βίον ἀναιροῦσι τὸν ἀνθρώπινον, Ἐπίκουρος δὲ καὶ Μητρόδωρος [d] τοῦτο ποιοῦσι, τοὺς μὲν συνήθεις ἀποτρέποντες τοῦ τὰ κοινὰ πράττειν τοῖς δὲ πράττουσιν ἀπεχθανόμενοι τοὺς δὲ πρώτους καὶ σοφωτάτους τῶν νομοθετῶν κακῶς λέγοντες τῶν δὲ νόμων παρακελευόμενοι περιφρονεῖν, ἐὰν μὴ προσῇ φόβος πληγῆς καὶ κολάσεως, οὐκ οἶδα τί τηλικοῦτο κατέψευσται τῶν ἄλλων ὁ Κωλώτης, ἡλίκον ἀληθῶς τῶν Ἐπικούρου λόγων καὶ δογμάτων κατηγόρηκεν.’

De latenter vivendo

ΕΙ ΚΑΛΩΣ ΕΙΡΗΤΑΙ ΤΟ ΛΑΘΕ ΒΙΩΣΑΣ

[1128] Ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὁ τοῦτ’ εἰπὼν λαθεῖν ἠθέλησεν· αὐτὸ γὰρ τοῦτ’ εἶπεν, ἵνα μὴ λάθῃ, ὥς τι φρονῶν περιττότερον, [b] ἐκ τῆς εἰς ἀδοξίαν προτροπῆς δόξαν ἄδικον ποριζόμενος.

‘μισῶ σοφιστήν, ὅστις οὐχ αὑτῷ σοφός’ (Eur. fr. 905).

τοὺς μὲν γὰρ περὶ Φιλόξενον τὸν Ἐρύξιδος καὶ Γνάθωνα τὸν Σικελιώτην ἐπτοημένους περὶ τὰ ὄψα λέγουσιν ἐναπομύττεσθαι ταῖς παροψίσιν, ὅπως τοὺς συνεσθίοντας διατρέψαντες αὐτοὶ μόνοι τῶν παρακειμένων ἐμφορηθῶσιν· οἱ δ’ ἀκράτως φιλόδοξοι καὶ κατακόρως διαβάλλουσιν ἑτέροις τὴν δόξαν ὥσπερ ἀντερασταῖς, ἵνα τυγχάνωσιν αὐτῆς ἀνανταγωνίστως, καὶ ταὐτὰ τοῖς ἐρέσσουσι ποιοῦσιν· ὡς γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι, πρὸς τὴν πρύμναν ἀφορῶντες τῆς [c] νεὼς τῇ κατὰ πρῷραν ὁρμῇ συνεργοῦσιν, ὡς ἂν ἐκ τῆς ἀνακοπῆς παλίρροια καταλαμβάνουσα συνεπωθῇ τὸ πορθμεῖον, οὕτως οἱ τὰ τοιαῦτα παραγγέλματα διδόντες ὥσπερ ἀπεστραμμένοι τὴν δόξαν διώκουσιν. ἐπεὶ τί λέγειν ἔδει τοῦτο, τί δὲ γράφειν καὶ γράψαντα ἐκδιδόναι πρὸς τὸν μετὰ ταῦτα χρόνον, εἰ λαθεῖν ἐβούλετο; ‹ἢ λαθεῖν ἐβούλετο› τοὺς ὄντας ὁ μηδὲ τοὺς ἐσομένους;

Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ‹ἐῶμεν›· αὐτὸ ‹δὲ› τὸ πρᾶγμα πῶς οὐ πονηρόν; ‘λάθε βιώσας’ - ὡς τυμβωρυχήσας; ἆρ’ αἰσχρόν ἐστι τὸ ζῆν, ἵν’ ἀγνοώμεθα πάντες; ἐγὼ δ’ ἂν εἴποιμι· ‘μηδὲ κακῶς βιώσας λάθε, ἀλλὰ γνώσθητι σωφρονίσθητι μετανόησον· εἴτ’ ἀρετὴν ἔχεις, μὴ γένῃ [d] ἄχρηστος, εἴτε κακίαν, μὴ μείνῃς ἀθεράπευτος.’ μᾶλλον δὲ διελοῦ καὶ διόρισον, τίνι τοῦτο προστάττεις· εἰ μὲν ἀμαθεῖ καὶ πονηρῷ καὶ ἀγνώμονι, οὐδὲν διαφέρεις τοῦ λέγοντος ‘λάθε πυρέττων’ καὶ ‘λάθε φρενιτίζων, μὴ γνῷ σε ὁ ἰατρός· ἴθι ῥίψας ποι κατὰ σκότους σεαυτόν, ἀγνοούμενος σὺν τοῖς πάθεσιν’. ‹φῂς γὰρ› καὶ σύ· ‘ἴθι τῇ κακίᾳ νόσον ἀνήκεστον νοσῶν καὶ ὀλέθριον, ἀποκρύπτων τοὺς φθόνους, τὰς δεισιδαιμονίας ὥσπερ τινὰς σφυγμούς, δεδιὼς παρασχεῖν τοῖς νουθετεῖν καὶ ἰᾶσθαι δυναμένοις.’ οἱ δὲ σφόδρα παλαιοὶ καὶ τοὺς νοσοῦντας φανερῶς †προσεῖχον· [e] τούτων δ’ ἕκαστος εἴ τι πρόσφορον ἔχοι, παθὼν αὐτὸς ἢ παθόντα θεραπεύσας, ἔφραζε τῷ δεομένῳ· καὶ τέχνην οὕτω φασὶν ἐκ πείρας συνερανιζομένην μεγάλην γενέσθαι. ἔδει δὴ καὶ τοὺς νοσώδεις βίους καὶ τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς παθήματα πᾶσιν ἀπογυμνοῦν, καὶ ἅπτεσθαι καὶ λέγειν ἕκαστον ἐπισκοποῦντα τὰς διαθέσεις· ‘ὀργίζῃ; τοῦτο φύλαξαι· ζηλοτυπεῖς; ἐκεῖνο ποίησον· ἐρᾷς; κἀγώ ποτ’ ἠράσθην ἀλλὰ μετενόησα.’ νῦν δ’ ἀρνούμενοι ἀποκρυπτόμενοι περιστέλλοντες ἐμβαθύνουσι τὴν κακίαν ἑαυτοῖς. καὶ μὴν εἴ γε τοῖς χρηστοῖς λανθάνειν καὶ ἀγνοεῖσθαι παραινεῖς, Ἐπαμεινώνδᾳ λέγεις ‘μὴ στρατήγει’ [f] καὶ Λυκούργῳ ‘μὴ νομοθέτει’ καὶ Θρασυβούλῳ ‘μὴ τυραννοκτόνει’ καὶ Πυθαγόρᾳ ‘μὴ παίδευε’ καὶ Σωκράτει ‘μὴ διαλέγου’, καὶ σεαυτῷ πρῶτον, Ἐπίκουρε ‘μὴ γράφε τοῖς ἐν Ἀσίᾳ φίλοις μηδὲ τοὺς ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου ξενολόγει [1129] [a] μηδὲ τοὺς Λαμψακηνῶν ἐφήβους δορυφόρει· μηδὲ διάπεμπε βίβλους, πᾶσι καὶ πάσαις ἐπιδεικνύμενος τὴν σοφίαν, μηδὲ διατάσσου περὶ ταφῆς.’ τί γὰρ αἱ κοιναὶ τράπεζαι; τί δ’ αἱ τῶν ἐπιτηδείων καὶ καλῶν σύνοδοι; τί δ’ αἱ τοσαῦται μυριάδες στίχων ἐπὶ Μητρόδωρον, ἐπ’ Ἀριστόβουλον, ἐπὶ Χαιρέδημον γραφόμεναι καὶ συντασσόμεναι φιλοπόνως, ἵνα μηδ’ ἀποθανόντες λάθωσιν, ἂν ἀμνηστίαν νομοθετῇς ἀρετῇ καὶ ἀπραξίαν τέχνῃ καὶ σιωπὴν φιλοσοφίᾳ καὶ λήθην εὐπραγίᾳ;

Εἰ δ’ ἐκ τοῦ βίου καθάπερ ἐκ συμποσίου φῶς ἀναιρεῖς τὴν γνῶσιν, ὡς πάντα ποιεῖν πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἐξῇ λανθάνουσιν, [b] ‹λέγε μοι› ‘λάθε βιώσας’. πάνυ μὲν οὖν, ἂν μεθ’ Ἡδείας βιοῦν μέλλω τῆς ἑταίρας καὶ Λεοντίῳ συγκαταζῆν καί ‘τῷ καλῷ προσπτύειν’ καὶ τἀγαθόν ‘ἐν σαρκὶ καὶ γαργαλισμοῖς’ τίθεσθαι· ταῦτα δεῖται σκότους τὰ τέλη, ταῦτα νυκτός, ἐπὶ ταῦτα τὴν λήθην καὶ τὴν ἄγνοιαν. ἐὰν δέ τις ἐν μὲν φυσικοῖς θεὸν ὑμνῇ καὶ δίκην καὶ πρόνοιαν, ἐν δ’ ἠθικοῖς νόμον καὶ κοινωνίαν καὶ πολιτείαν, ἐν δὲ πολιτείᾳ τὸ καλὸν ἀλλὰ μὴ τὴν χρείαν, διὰ τί λάθῃ βιώσας; ἵνα μηδένα παιδεύσῃ, μηδενὶ ζηλωτὸς ἀρετῆς μηδὲ παράδειγμα καλὸν γένηται; εἰ Θεμιστοκλῆς [c] Ἀθηναίους ἐλάνθανεν, οὐκ ἂν ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἀπεώσατο Ξέρξην· εἰ Ῥωμαίους Κάμιλλος, οὐκ ἂν ἡ Ῥώμη πόλις ἔμεινεν· εἰ Δίωνα Πλάτων, οὐκ ἂν ἠλευθερώθη ἡ Σικελία. ὡς γὰρ οἶμαι τὸ φῶς οὐ μόνον φανεροὺς ἀλλὰ καὶ χρησίμους καθίστησιν ἡμᾶς ἀλλήλοις, οὕτως ἡ γνῶσις οὐ μόνον δόξαν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρᾶξιν ταῖς ἀρεταῖς δίδωσιν. Ἐπαμεινώνδας γοῦν εἰς τεσσαρακοστὸν ἔτος ἀγνοηθεὶς οὐδὲν ὤνησε Θηβαίους· ὕστερον δὲ πιστευθεὶς καὶ ἄρξας τὴν μὲν πόλιν ἀπολλυμένην ἔσωσε, τὴν δ’ Ἑλλάδα δουλεύουσαν ἠλευθέρωσε, καθάπερ ἐν φωτὶ τῇ δόξῃ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐνεργὸν ἐπὶ καιροῦ παρασχόμενος.

[d] ‘λάμπει γὰρ ἐν χρείαισιν ὥσπερ εὐγενὴς

χαλκός, χρόνῳ δ’ ἀργῆσαν ἤμυσεν’

οὐ μόνον ‘στέγος’ ὥς φησι Σοφοκλῆς (fr. 780), ἀλλὰ καὶ ἦθος ἀνδρός, οἷον εὐρῶτα καὶ γῆρας ἐν ἀπραξίᾳ δι’ ἀγνοίας ἐφελκόμενον. ἡσυχία δὲ κωφὴ καὶ βίος ἑδραῖος ἐπὶ σχολῆς ἀποκείμενος οὐ μόνον σώματα ἀλλὰ καὶ ψυχὰς μαραίνει· καὶ καθάπερ τὰ λανθάνοντα τῶν ὑδάτων τῷ περισκιάζεσθαι καὶ καθῆσθαι μὴ ἀπορρέοντα σήπεται, οὕτω τῶν ἀκινήτων βίων, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἄν τι χρήσιμον ἔχωσι, [μὴ ἀπορρεόντων μηδὲ πινομένων] φθείρονται καὶ ἀπογηράσκουσιν αἱ σύμφυτοι δυνάμεις.

Οὐχ ὁρᾷς, ὅτι νυκτὸς μὲν ἐπιούσης τά τε σώματα [e] δυσεργεῖς βαρύτητες ἴσχουσι καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς ὄκνοι καταλαμβάνουσιν ἀδρανεῖς, καὶ συσταλεὶς ὁ λογισμὸς εἰς αὑτὸν ὥσπερ πῦρ ἀμαυρὸν ὑπ’ ἀργίας καὶ κατηφείας μικρὰ διεσπασμέναις πάλλεται φαντασίαις, ὅσον αὐτὸ τὸ ζῆν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὑποσημαίνων, ‘ἦμος δ’ ἠπεροπῆας ἀπεπτοίησεν ὀνείρους’ ὁ ἥλιος ἀνασχὼν καὶ καθάπερ εἰς ταὐτὸ συμμίξας ἐπέστρεψε καὶ συνώρμησε τῷ φωτὶ τὰς πράξεις καὶ τὰς νοήσεις τὰς ἁπάντων, ὥς φησι Δημόκριτος (B 158), ‘νέα ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ φρονέοντες’ ἅνθρωποι, τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὁρμῇ καθάπερ ἀρτήματι συντόνῳ σπασθέντες ἄλλος ἀλλαχόθεν ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις ἀνίστανται;

[f] Δοκῶ δ’ ἐγὼ καὶ τὸ ζῆν αὐτὸ καὶ ὅλως τὸ φῦναι καὶ μετασχεῖν ἀνθρώπῳ γενέσεως εἰς γνῶσιν ὑπὸ θεοῦ δοθῆναι. ἔστι δ’ ἄδηλος καὶ ἄγνωστος ἐν τῷ παντὶ πόλῳ [καὶ] κατὰ μικρὰ καὶ σποράδην φερόμενος· ὅταν δὲ γένηται, συνερχόμενος αὑτῷ καὶ λαμβάνων μέγεθος ἐκλάμπει καὶ καθίσταται δῆλος ἐξ ἀδήλου καὶ φανερὸς ἐξ ἀφανοῦς. οὐ γὰρ εἰς οὐσίαν ὁδὸς ἡ γένεσις, ὡς ἔνιοι λέγουσιν, ἀλλ’ οὐσίας εἰς γνῶσιν· οὐ γὰρ ποιεῖ τῶν γινομένων ἕκαστον [1130] [a] ἀλλὰ δείκνυσιν, ὥσπερ οὐδ’ ἡ φθορὰ τοῦ ὄντος ἄρσις εἰς τὸ μὴ ὄν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον εἰς τὸ ἄδηλον ἀπαγωγὴ τοῦ διαλυθέντος. ὅθεν δὴ τὸν μὲν ἥλιον Ἀπόλλωνα κατὰ τοὺς πατρίους καὶ παλαιοὺς θεσμοὺς νομίζοντες Δήλιον καὶ Πύθιον προσαγορεύουσι· τὸν δὲ τῆς ἐναντίας κύριον μοίρας, εἴτε θεὸς εἴτε δαίμων ἐστίν, ὀνομάζουσιν, ὡς ἂν εἰς ἀειδὲς καὶ ἀόρατον ἡμῶν, ὅταν διαλυθῶμεν, βαδιζόντων, ‘νυκτὸς ἀιδνᾶς ἀεργηλοῖό θ’ ὕπνου κοίρανον’ (fr. mel. chor. adesp. 13 D.). οἶμαι δὲ καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον αὐτὸν οὑτωσὶ φῶτα καλεῖν τοὺς παλαιούς, ὅτι τοῦ γινώσκεσθαι καὶ [b] γινώσκειν ἑκάστῳ διὰ συγγένειαν ἔρως ἰσχυρὸς ἐμπέφυκεν. αὐτήν τε τὴν ψυχὴν ἔνιοι τῶν φιλοσόφων φῶς εἶναι τῇ οὐσίᾳ νομίζουσιν, ἄλλοις τε χρώμενοι τεκμηρίοις καὶ ὅτι τῶν ὄντων μάλιστα τὴν μὲν ἄγνοιαν ἡ ψυχὴ δυσανασχετεῖ καὶ πᾶν τὸ ἀφεγγὲς ἐχθαίρει καὶ ταράττεται ‹πρὸς› τὰ σκοτεινά, φόβου καὶ ὑποψίας ὄντα πλήρη πρὸς αὐτήν· ἡδὺ δ’ αὐτῇ καὶ ποθεινὸν οὕτω τὸ φῶς ἐστιν, ὥστε μηδ’ ἄλλῳ τινὶ τῶν φύσει τερπνῶν ἄνευ φωτὸς ὑπὸ σκότους χαίρειν, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο πᾶσαν ἡδονὴν καὶ πᾶσαν διατριβὴν καὶ ἀπόλαυσιν, ὥσπερ τι κοινὸν ἥδυσμα καταμιγνύμενον, ἱλαρὰν [c] ποιεῖ καὶ φιλάνθρωπον. ὁ δ’ εἰς τὴν ἄγνοιαν αὑτὸν ἐμβάλλων καὶ σκότος περιαμπισχόμενος καὶ κενοταφῶν τὸν βίον ἔοικεν αὐτὴν βαρύνεσθαι τὴν γένεσιν καὶ ἀπαυδᾶν πρὸς τὸ εἶναι.

†Καίτοι τῆς γε δόξης καὶ τοῦ εἶναι φύσιν εὐσεβῶν χῶρον,

‘τοῖσι λάμπει μένος ἀελίου τὰν ἐνθάδε νύκτα κάτω,

φοινικορόδοις ἐνὶ λειμώνεσσι’ (Pind. fr. 129),

καὶ [τοῖσιν] †ἀκάρπων μὲν ἀνθηρῶν καὶ σκυθίων δένδρων ἄνθεσι τεθηλὸς ἀναπέπταται πεδίον, καὶ ποταμοί τινες ἄκλυστοι καὶ λεῖοι διαρρέουσι, καὶ διατριβὰς ἔχουσιν ἐν μνήμαις καὶ λόγοις τῶν γεγονότων καὶ ὄντων παραπέμποντες αὑτοὺς καὶ συνόντες. ἡ δὲ τρίτη τῶν ἀνοσίως [d] βεβιωκότων καὶ παρανόμως ὁδός ἐστιν, εἰς ἔρεβός τι καὶ βάραθρον ὠθοῦσα τὰς ψυχάς,

‘ἔνθεν τὸν ἄπειρον ἐρεύγονται σκότον

βληχροὶ δνοφερᾶς νυκτὸς ποταμοί’ (Pind. fr. 130),

δεχόμενοι καὶ ἀποκρύπτοντες ἀγνοίᾳ καὶ λήθῃ τοὺς κολαζομένους. οὐ γὰρ οὔτε γῦπες κειμένων ἐν γῇ τῶν πονηρῶν κείρουσιν ἀεὶ τὸ ἧπαρ (κατακέκαυται γὰρ ἢ κατασέσηπεν), οὔτε βαρῶν τινων ἀχθοφορίαι θλίβουσι καὶ καταπονοῦσι τὰ σώματα τῶν κολαζομένων (‘οὐ γὰρ ἔτι σάρκας τε καὶ ὀστέα ἶνες ἔχουσιν’, οὐδ’ ἔστιν ὑπόλειμμα σώματος τοῖς τεθνηκόσι τιμωρίας ἀπέρεισιν ἀντιτύπου δέξασθαι δυνάμενον)· [e] ἀλλ’ ἓν κολαστήριον ὡς ἀληθῶς τῶν κακῶς βιωσάντων, ἀδοξία καὶ ἄγνοια καὶ παντελῶς ἀφανισμός, αἴρων εἰς τὸν ἀμειδῆ ποταμὸν [ἀπὸ] τῆς Λήθης ‹καὶ› καταποντίζων εἰς ἄβυσσον καὶ ἀχανὲς πέλαγος, ἀχρηστίαν καὶ ἀπραξίαν πᾶσάν τ’ ἄγνοιαν καὶ ἀδοξίαν συνεφελκόμενον.

De libidine et aegritudine

ΠΛΟΥΤΑΡΧΟΥ ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΟΥ ΠΟΤΕΡΟΝ ΨΥΧΗΣ Η ΣΩΜΑΤΟΣ ΕΠΙΘΥΜΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΛΥΠΗ

[1] Ἡ μὲν πρόθεσις περὶ ἐπιθυμίας γέγονε καὶ λύπης, πότερον σώματος πάθος ἐστὶν ἢ ἐπὶ σώματι ψυχῆς· καὶ γὰρ εἰ τὴν αὐτοπάθειαν ἀπολύσεται τὸ σῶμα τούτων, οὐ διαφεύξεται τὴν αἰτίαν, ἀλλὰ διὰ σώματος πάθη φαίνεται, κἂν περὶ ψυχὴν ἀπελέγχηται. ἡ δὲ κοινότης τοῦ λόγου καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ πάθη ζητήσει συνυποβάλλει, φόβον καὶ ἡδονήν, ὧν τὸ μὲν λύπῃ, τὸ δ’ ἐπιθυμίᾳ συμπέφυκεν, εἴ γε πᾶς ἄνθρωπος ὧν μὲν λυπεῖται παρόντων, ὧν δὲ δέδιε μελλόντων, ὧν δ’ ὀρέγεται [καὶ] μὴ παρόντων, οἷς δ’ ἥδεται δεδομένοις. τὸν μὲν γὰρ κόσμον οἱ φυσικοὶ λέγουσιν ἐκ τεττάρων σωμάτων πρώτων καὶ μεγίστων συνηρμόσθαι, κατ’ ἀντίθεσιν καὶ ἀντίταξιν ἀλλήλοις ἄνω καὶ κάτω φύσει ῥεπόντων, τὴν δὲ κακίαν καὶ ἀκοσμίαν τὴν ἐν ἡμῖν τέσσαρα πάθη τὰ πρῶτα κινεῖ καὶ διαφέρει πρὸς τοὐναντίον ἀτάκτως καὶ ἀλόγως, ἄνω μὲν ἡδονὴ καὶ κάτω λύπη, πρόσω δ’ ἐπιθυμία καὶ ὀπίσω φόβος, ὥσπερ ἐξ ὀργάνων ἀ‹συμ›μέτρων μετασχηματιζομένης ‹τῆς ψυχῆς›. ἔπαρσις γὰρ αὐτῆς ἡδονή, συστολὴ δὲ λύπη· τείνεται δ’ εἰς ἐπιθυμίαν, φεύγει δ’ ὃ δέδιεν. ὅ γε μὴν θυμός, εἴτε τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἐστὶν εἶδος κατ’ ὄρεξιν ἀντιλυπήσεως ὑφιστάμενος, εἴτε ἕτερόν τι καὶ διάφορον, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ μαχόμενον πρὸς ἐπιθυμίαν πάθος, ὡς ὑπενόει Πλάτων (resp. IV 439e sq.), οὐκ ἄδηλον ὅτι καὶ αὐτὸς παρέξει ζήτησιν, εἴτε τοῦ σώματος ἐκριπιζόμενος χειμάζει τὸν ἄνθρωπον.

[2] Ἔοικε παλαιά τις αὕτη τῷ σώματι διαδικασία πρὸς τὴν ψυχὴν περὶ τῶν παθῶν εἶναι. καὶ Δημόκριτος μὲν (Vorsokr. 68 B 159) ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀναφέρων ‹τὴν αἰτίαν τοῦ› κακοδαιμον‹εῖν› φησιν, εἰ τοῦ σώματος αὐτῇ δίκην λαχόντος, παρὰ πάντα τὸν βίον ὧν ὠδύνηται ‹καὶ› κακῶς πέπονθεν, αὐτὸς γένοιτο τοῦ ἐγκλήματος δι‹καστής›, ἡδέως ἂν καταψηφίσασθαι τῆς ψυχῆς, ἐφ’ οἷς τὰ μὲν ἀπώλεσε τοῦ σώματος ταῖς ἀμελείαις καὶ ἐξέλυσε ταῖς μέθαις, τὰ δὲ κατέφθειρε καὶ διέσπασε ταῖς φιληδονίαις, ὥσπερ ὀργάνου τινὸς ἢ σκεύους κακῶς ἔχοντος τὸν χρώμενον ἀφειδῶς αἰτιασάμενος. Θεόφραστος δὲ τοὐναντίον ἔφη τῷ σώματι πολλοῦ τὴν ψυχὴν ἐνοικεῖν, ὀλίγου χρόνου βαρεῖς μισθοὺς ὑποτελοῦσαν, τὰς λύπας, τοὺς φόβους, τὰς ἐπιθυμίας, τὰς ζηλοτυπίας, αἷς συμφερομένη περὶ τὸ σῶμα δικαιότερον ἂν αὐτῷ δικάζοιτο πηρώσεως ὧν ἐπιλέλησται, καὶ βιαίων ἐφ’ οἷς κατέχεται, καὶ ὕβρεως ὧν ἀδοξεῖ καὶ λοιδορεῖται, τῶν ἐκείνου κακῶν ἀναδεχομένη τὰς αἰτίας οὐ προσηκόντως.

[3] Ἀγωνιστέον οὖν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἀληθείας. καλὸς γὰρ ὁ ἀγών, καὶ τῇ ψυχῇ ὁ λόγος πάντως χρήσιμος, εἰ μὲν οὐκ αὐτῆς τὰ πάθη φαίνεται, πρὸς ἀπολογίαν, εἰ δ’ αὐτῆς, πρὸς ἀπαλλαγήν· ὥστ’ ἢ φυλάξασθαι τὸ ἑκούσιον ἢ μὴ λοιδορεῖσθαι τὸ ἀλλότριον.

[4] Ἔδει μὲν τοὺς δογματικοὺς καὶ καταληπτικοὺς εἶναι φιλοσόφους φάσκοντας, εἰ μὴ περὶ ἄλλο τι, τήν γε τῶν παθῶν ἐνάργειαν ὁμολογεῖν ἀλλήλοις καὶ συμφέρεσθαι. πολὺς δ’ αὐτῶν ὁ παράλογός ἐστιν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἅπαντα συλλήβδην ταῦτα τῇ ψυχῇ φέροντες ἀνέθεσαν, ὥσπερ Στράτων ὁ φυσικός, οὐ μόνον τὰς ἐπιθυμίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς λύπας, οὐδὲ τοὺς φόβους καὶ τοὺς φθόνους καὶ τὰς ἐπιχαιρεκακίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ πόνους καὶ ἡδονὰς καὶ ἀλγηδόνας καὶ ὅλως πᾶσαν αἴσθησιν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ συνίστασθαι φάμενος, καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς τὰ τοιαῦτα πάντ’ εἶναι, μὴ τὸν πόδα πονούντων ἡμῶν, ὅταν προσκρούσωμεν, μηδὲ τὴν κεφαλήν, ὅταν κατάξωμεν, μη‹δὲ› τὸν δάκτυλον, ὅταν ἐκτέμωμεν· ἀναίσθητα γὰρ τὰ λοιπὰ πλὴν τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ, πρὸς ὃ τῆς πληγῆς ὀξέως ἀναφερομένης τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀλγηδόνα καλοῦμεν. ὡς δὲ τὴν φωνὴν τοῖς ὠσὶν αὐτοῖς ἐνηχοῦσαν ἔξω δοκοῦμεν εἶναι, τὸ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐπὶ τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν διάστημα τῇ αἰσθήσει προσλογιζόμενοι, παραπλησίως τὸν ἐκ τοῦ τραύματος πόνον οὐχ ὅπου τὴν αἴσθησιν εἴληφεν, ἀλλ’ ὅθεν ἔσχε τὴν ἀρχὴν εἶναι δοκοῦμεν, ἑλκομένης ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνο τῆς ψυχῆς ἀφ’ οὗ πέπονθε. διὸ καὶ προσκόψαντες αὐτίκα τὰς ὀφρῦς συνάγομεν, τῷ πληγέντι μορίῳ τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ τὴν αἴσθησιν ὀξέως ἀποδιδόντος, καὶ παρεγκάπτομεν ἔσθ’ ὅτε τὸ πνεῦμα, κἂν τὰ μέρη δεσμοῖς διαλαμβάνηται, χερσὶ σφόδρα πιέζομεν, ‹ἐν›ιστάμενοι πρὸς τὴν διάδοσιν τοῦ πάθους καὶ τὴν πληγὴν ἐν τοῖς ἀναισθήτοις θλίβοντες, ἵνα μὴ ‹τῷ› συνάψαι πρὸς τὸ φρονοῦν ἀλγηδὼν γένηται. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὁ Στράτων ἐπὶ πολλοῖς ὡς εἰκὸς τοιούτοις.

[5] Ἔνιοι δ’ ἄντικρυς καὶ δόξαν καὶ διαλογισμὸν εἰς τὸ σῶμα κατατείνουσιν, οὐδ’ εἶναι οὐσίαν ‹τὸ› παράπαν ψυχῆς λέγοντες, ἀλλὰ τῇ τοῦ σώματος διαφορᾷ καὶ ποιότητι καὶ δυνάμει συντελεῖσθαι τὰ τοιαῦτα. τὸ μὲν γὰρ Περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου βιβλίον ἐπιγραφόμενον, ἐν ᾧ τὴν ψυχὴν τῇ οὐσίᾳ παρυπάρχειν ἀποφαίνεται ὁ λόγος, οἱ μὲν οὐδ’ εἶναι τὸ παράπαν Ἡρακλείδου νομίζουσιν, οἱ δὲ πρὸς ἀντιπαρεξαγωγὴν ‹συν›τετάχθαι τῶν εἰρημένων ἑτέροις περὶ οὐσίας ψυχῆς· ὅτῳ ‹δ’ οὖν› γεγραμμένον, ἄντικρυς ἀναιρεῖ τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτῆς, ὡς τοῦ σώματος ἔχοντος ἐν αὑτῷ τὰς εἰρημένας δυνάμεις πάσας.

Οἳ δ’ ὥσπερ διὰ μέσου τῶν λόγων ἐπεχείρησαν ἀφορίζειν τῆς ψυχῆς ἴδια πάθη καὶ ἴδια τοῦ σώματος, ἐν κοινῷ καὶ πλάτος οὐκ ἔχοντι φερόμενοι τόπῳ συνεχύθησαν.

[6] Ὅ γέ τοι Ποσειδώνιος τὰ μὲν εἶναι ψυχικά, τὰ δὲ σωματικά, καὶ τὰ μὲν οὐ ψυχῆς, περὶ ψυχὴν δὲ ‹σωματικά, τὰ δ’ οὐ σώματος, περὶ σῶμα δὲ ψυχικά φησι, ψυχικὰ μὲν› ἁπλῶς τὰ ἐν κρίσεσι καὶ ὑπολήψεσιν οἷον ἐπιθυμίας λέγων, φόβους, ὀργάς, σωματικὰ δ’ ἁπλῶς πυρετούς, περιψύξεις, πυκνώσεις, ἀραιώσεις, περὶ ψυχὴν δὲ σωματικὰ ληθάργους, μελαγχολίας, δηγμοὺς, φαντασίας, διαχύσεις, ἀνάπαλιν δὲ περὶ σῶμα ψυχικὰ τρόμους καὶ ὠχριάσεις καὶ μεταβολὰς τοῦ εἴδους κατὰ φόβον ἢ λύπην.

Διόδοτος πάλιν ἴδια μέν τινα τοῦ λογικοῦ φησι τῆς ψυχῆς πάθη, ἴδια δὲ τοῦ συμφυοῦς καὶ ἀλόγου εἶναι, ῥιπταζόμενος ἐπὶ πάντα καὶ ψηλαφῶντι προσεοικὼς τὰς διαφοράς. ὅπου γὰρ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀγγείων ἔργον ἐστὶ διακρῖναι, πότε τῇ περὶ αὑτὰ κακίᾳ τὸ ἐγκεχυμένον διέφθαρκε, καὶ πάλιν πότε τῶν ὑγρῶν νοσησάν‹των› διαβέβρωται [κέκρυπται], ἦπού γε τῆς ψυχῆς ἀναμεμιγμένης εἰς τὸ σῶμα καὶ κατὰ σύγκρασιν ἑνωτικὴν συμπεφυκυίας εὔπορόν ἐστιν ἐκκαθᾶραι τὴν διαφοράν; ὅρους ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος ἐπιζητεῖς, οὓς ἡ φύσις ἀνεῖλεν, ἐκ δυοῖν μίαν γενέσθαι σοφιζομένη, καὶ τῷ λόγῳ παρενδῦναι γλιχόμενος διαστέλλεις κοινωνίαν οὐδενὶ λυτὴν οὐδὲ χωριστὴν ἢ μόνῳ θανάτῳ. ἐκεῖνος δὲ τὰ πρὸς ἄλληλα ‹συγκραθέντα δια›κόψας ἢ ἀποκρίνας θάτερον, ἐξελέγξει τὴν ἑκατέρου φύσιν ὅσον εἶχεν ἀλλότριον· μέχρι δὲ τούτου τὸ συγκεκραμένον ἡ κοινωνία δείκνυσιν, ἀρνουμένη ἐκ δυοῖν εἶναι, καὶ ἀποκρύπτουσα τὰς ἀμφοῖν εἰς κοινωνίαν ἀρχάς, καὶ ἀναπιμπλᾶσα θατέρου θάτερον, ὡς μήτε ψυχῆς εἶναι πάθος ὃ σώματος οὐ καθάπτεται, μήτε σώματος μεταβολὴν ἣ διὰ ψυχῆς οὐ κεχώρηκε. κινδυνεύομεν ὅμοιόν τι ποιεῖν τῇ περὶ τὸν Ὧρον ὑπ’ Αἰγυπτίων μυθολογουμένῃ διανομῇ· δικάσαντος ‹γάρ› τινος τῶν παλαιοτέρων θεῶν, ἐπεὶ τῷ πατρὶ τιμωρῶν ἀπέκτεινε τὴν μητέρα, καὶ τὸ αἷμα αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸν μυελὸν καταλιπεῖν, περιελεῖν δὲ τὴν πιμελὴν καὶ τὰς σάρκας, ὡς τούτων ἐν τῇ μητρὶ τὴν σύστασιν λαβόντων, ἐκείνων δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς ‹κατὰ› τὴν γένεσιν ῥυέντων αὐτῷ. καθάπερ γὰρ οὗτοι τῶν σπερ‹μά›των ‹τὴν› ἄνωθεν κατὰ φύσιν κρᾶσιν ἀχώριστον ἐπιχειροῦντες διαιρεῖν ἄχρι λόγου μυθώδους καὶ ἀπίστου προέρχονται, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον ἡμεῖς σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς εὐθὺς ἐν πρώτῃ καταβολῇ συγχυθέντων πάθη διαλαβεῖν καὶ χωρίσαι ζητοῦντες, ἀκριβοῦς σφόδρα λόγου καθάπερ ὀργάνου λεπτοῦ πρὸς τὴν διαίρεσιν δεόμεθα.

[7] Ταύτην ἀπογνόντες ‹τινὲς› φιλόσοφοί φασι μήτε σώματος εἶναί τι μήτε ψυχῆς ἴδιον πάθος, ἀλλὰ τοῦ κοινοῦ· τὸν γὰρ ἄνθρωπον ἥδεσθαι καὶ λυπεῖσθαι καὶ φοβεῖσθαί τινα [ἄνθρωπον], οὐχὶ τὴν ψυχήν, ὥσπερ γε πάλιν οὐ τὸ σῶμα βάλλειν καὶ ὀρχεῖσθαι καὶ περιπατεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἀμφοτέροις χρώμενον ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν συνέστηκε. καὶ οὐκ ἂν θαυμάσαιμι, ‹εἴ› τούτοις μάλιστά πως τὸ ἀληθὲς συμφέρεται. κρίσις γὰρ ἡ λύπη κακοῦ τινος αὐτῷ παρόντος, ἐφ’ ᾧ συστέλλεσθαι καθήκει, καὶ ὁ φόβος κακοῦ μέλλοντος, ἀφ’ οὗ φεύγειν καθήκει καὶ ἀναχωρεῖν· ὥστε τὸν λυπούμενον αὐτὸν αὑτῷ λέγειν ὅτι ‘μοι κακὸν πάρεστι’, καὶ τὸν φοβούμενον ὁμοίως ὅτι ‘μοι κακὸν ἔσται’. ‘ἐγὼ’ δ’ οὔκ εἰμι ἡ ψυχή, ἀλλ’ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, καὶ τὸ κακὸν οὔκ ἐστι τῆς ψυχῆς, ἀλλὰ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, πενία, νόσος, ἀδοξία, θάνατος. διὸ τήν τε λύπην καὶ τὸν φόβον ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι πάθη τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ οὐχὶ τῆς ψυχῆς. καὶ γὰρ ἄλλως ὁρμὴ μὲν [προς]πλεονάζουσα τὸ πάθος, τῷ ἀλόγῳ ‹τὸ› σφοδρὸν ἔχουσα καὶ ἀπειθές· ὁρμᾷ δὲ τὸ ζῷον, οὐχ ἡ ψυχή, πρὸς τὸ κείρασθαι, πρὸς τὸ ὁπλίσασθαι, πρὸς τὸ λούσασθαι ‹καὶ› κατακλιθῆναι· ταῦτα γάρ ἐστι τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ πρακτά, τῇ ψυχῇ δ’ ἀσύμπτωτα. οἷς καὶ πιθανὸν ὁρμᾶν τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οὐχὶ τὴν ψυχήν· εἰ δ’ ὁρμᾶν, καὶ ὀρέγεσθαι· οὐκοῦν καὶ ἀλόγως ὀρέγεσθαι, τουτέστιν ‹ἐπιθυμεῖν›· εἰ δ’ ἐπιθυμεῖν, καὶ ἥδεσθαι· εἰ δ’ ἥδεσθαι, καὶ λυπεῖσθαι καὶ φοβεῖσθαι· ταῦτα γὰρ ἐκείνοις ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἕπεσθαι συμβέβηκεν· ὥστε μηδ‹ὲν› εἶναι ψυχῆς ἴδιον, ἀλλὰ καὶ χαίρειν καὶ ἄχθεσθαι καὶ ὀρέγεσθαι καὶ φοβεῖσθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον.

[8] Ταῦτα δ’ ἐστὶν οὐ λυόντων τὴν ἀπορίαν, ἀλλ’ ἀποδιδρασκόντων. καὶ γὰρ εἰ τὰ μάλιστα φαίη τις εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ταῦτα πάθη, μένει τὸ ἀπορεῖν, τίνι καὶ κατὰ τί ταῦτα πάσχει, πότερον κατὰ τὴν ψυχὴν ἢ κατὰ τὸ σῶμα. καὶ ‹γὰρ› ὀρχεῖται ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἀλλὰ ταῖς χερσί, καὶ λακτίζει ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ἀλλὰ τοῖς σκέλεσι, καὶ βλέπει κατὰ τὴν ὄψιν, καὶ ἀκούει κατὰ τὰ ὦτα· καὶ ὅλως τὸ μὲν ἔργον ἐστὶ κοινὸν τοῦ ἐκ τούτων πάντων συνεστῶτος, τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν τῆς συμπράξεως ἔχει τὸ μέρος ᾧ προσχρώμενος ἐνεργεῖ ‹ὁ› ἄνθρωπος. ‘ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν πλεῖον πολυάικος πολέμοιο’ φησὶν Ἀχιλλεύς (Α 165) ‘χεῖρες ἐμαὶ διέπουσιν’, οὐκ ἀποστερῶν ἑαυτὸν τῶν πολεμικῶν ἔργων, ὅτι ταῖς χερσὶν ἐπέγραψε τὴν αἰτίαν, ἀλλὰ δηλῶν ὅτι ταῖς μὲν χερσὶ κατειργάζετο τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ τῷ ξίφει, αὐτὸς μέντοι ἦν ὁ διεργαζόμενος. καὶ ὁ λέγων (Trag. adesp. 412 N.²) ‘δεινὸς κολαστὴς πέλεκυς αὐχένος τεμεῖν’ οὐ τὸ ὃ κολάζει εἴρηκεν, ἀλλ’ ᾧ κολάζουσιν. οὕτως οὖν ὁ ‹τὴν λύπην καὶ› τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἐπιζητῶν, πότερον τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ἢ τῆς ψυχῆς, οὐκ ἀγνοεῖ ὅτι τὸ λυπούμενον καὶ ἐπιθυμοῦν ἅνθρωπός ἐστι, πότερον ‹δὲ› τῇ ψυχῇ προσχρώμενος ἢ τῷ σώματι καὶ ‹κατὰ τὴν ψυχὴν ἢ› κατὰ τὸ σῶμα τοῦτο πάσχει, διηπόρηκεν. ὥστε τὰς προφάσεις ἐάσαντες ἁψώμεθα τοῦ λόγου καὶ κατὰ τὴν ζήτησιν ἤδη ‹τραπώμεθα›.

[9] Ὅσοι τοίνυν τὴν ψυχὴν οὐκ ἄφθαρτον οὐδ’ ἀθάνατον μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀπαθῆ πειρῶνται διαφυλάττειν, ῥώμην τινὰ τὴν ἀπάθειαν τῇ ἀφθαρσίᾳ προβαλλόμενοι, καὶ τὸ πάσχον ἁμωσγέπως ἤδη φθορᾶς ἀναδέχεσθαι πεῖραν οἰόμενοι, τὰ δὲ πάθη πάντα καὶ τὰς ἀσθενείας ὥσπερ ἐκ ῥίζης τῆς σαρκὸς ἀναβλαστάνειν ἐπὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον, τῶν διαφορῶν πρῶτον ἕξονται τῶν περὶ τὰ σώματα φαινομένων κατὰ χρόνους καὶ φύσεις καὶ μεταβολάς. οἷον εὐθὺς ἐν νέοις ἀκμάζει τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν, ἐν πρεσβύταις ‹δὲ› τὸ περίλυπον· τοῖς μὲν γὰρ αἷμά τε θερμὸν ἐγκέκραται, καὶ πνεῦμα ῥαγδαῖον ἐπὶ τὰς πράξεις παρέστηκε, καὶ τὸ σῶμα τοῖς ὀργάνοις καθαροῖς καὶ ἀκραιφνέσιν ἐμμελὲς ἀεὶ καὶ πολύσφυκτον ἀνακινεῖ καὶ ἀναρριπίζει τὰς ἐπιθυμίας, ὥσπερ ἐξ ὕλης νεαρᾶς ἀναπτομένας †περιφέρειν αἵματος, ἐξ ὧν μεταβαλλόμενον ἐπὶ πολλὰ ταῖς ὁρμαῖς τὸν νέον ‹ὁρῶμεν›. ὁ ‹δὲ› πρέσβυς τοῦ τε θερμοῦ προλιπόντος ἤδη, ᾧ τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν ἀνεζωπυρεῖτο, καὶ τῷ πνεύματι χαλῶν καὶ κατατετριμμένος τῷ σώματι περὶ τὰς ἡδονάς, ἀμβλὺ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ δυσκίνητον * * *

Parsne an facultas animi sit vita passiva

ΕΙ ΜΕΡΟΣ ΤΟ ΠΑΘΗΤΙΚΟΝ ΤΗΣ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΥ ΨΥΧΗΣ Η ΔΥΝΑΜΙΣ

[1] Περὶ τῆς παθητικῆς καὶ ἀλόγου ζωῆς, πότερα μέρος ἐστὶ τῆς ἀνθρώπου ψυχῆς ἢ δύναμις, ἐπισκεπτέον. ἐοίκασι γὰρ τῶν ἀρχαίων οἱ μὲν οὕτως, οἱ δ’ ἐκείνως ἀποφηνάμενοι περὶ αὐτῆς. ἄξιον οὖν καὶ ἡμᾶς ἀπορήσαντας καὶ ἐπὶ ζήτησιν τραπομένους ταύτῃ δοξάσαι, ᾗπερ δὴ καὶ ζητοῦσι φανεῖται πιθανώτερον.

[2] Ὅσοι μὲν οὖν μέρος ἀποδιδόασιν αὐτήν, δόξαιεν ἂν οὐκ εἶναι λέγειν ἔμψυχα τὰ ἄλογα τῶν ζῴων οὐδὲ ψυχὴν ἔχοντα, ἀλλά τι μόριον ψυχῆς, εἴ γε τοῖς ἀλόγοις ἡ παθητικὴ μέν ἐστιν, ἡ λογικὴ δ’ οὐδαμῶς· ὅσοι δ’ αὖ δύναμιν, πρῶτον μὲν ἄτοπον ὅτι τῷ τόπῳ διαχωρίζουσιν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀντιδιαιρουμένης αὐτῇ δυνάμεως, τῆς λογικῆς· οὐ γὰρ διαιροῦνται ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων αἱ δυνάμεις, ὅσαι τοῦ αὐτοῦ τυγχάνουσιν οὖσαι· ἔπειτα ‹ὅτι› καὶ συνυπάρχειν ποιοῦσι τἀναντία κατὰ ταὐτό. αἱ γὰρ δυνάμεις τοιαῦται ὥστε ἑκάστην, κἂν ὁποσαιοῦν ὦσι, περὶ ὅλον θεωρεῖσθαι τὸ ὑποκείμενον. τὸ δὲ λογικὸν καὶ τὸ ἄλογον οὐχ οὕτω περὶ ψυχήν· ἀποτέμνεσθαι γὰρ δοκεῖ τῆς ὅλης καὶ ποιεῖν αὐτὴν τὸ μὲν ἄλλο, τὸ δ’ ἄλλο, καὶ τοῦτ’ εἰκότως· ἐναντία γάρ· τὰ δ’ ἐναντία καθ’ ἓν καὶ τὸ αὐτὸ συνυπάρχειν ‹ἀδύνατον, ...› ἀληθές. οὐδὲν γὰρ ἴσως κωλύει καὶ τἀναντία συνυπάρξαι τὸν εἰρημένον τρόπον, ἐὰν δυνάμεις ὦσι καὶ μὴ ἐνέργειαι λαμβάνωνται. λογίζεσθαι μὲν γὰρ καὶ ἀλογιστεῖν ἢ ὑγιάζειν καὶ κακοῦν ‹ἅμ’› ἄμφω ἀδύνατον· ἡ μέντοι δύναμις τοῦ ‹ὑγιάζειν καὶ τοῦ› κακοῦν ἅμα περὶ τὸ αὐτό, ἥ ‹τε τοῦ λογίζεσθαι καὶ τοῦ› ἀλογιστεῖν περὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἅμα, οὐ μέντοι καὶ αἱ κατὰ ταύτας ἐνέργειαι· καὶ πλείω δὴ τὸ αὐτὸ δύνασθαι οὐθὲν κωλύει, οἷον τὸ ἀληθεύειν τόν τε ἐπιστήμονα καὶ τὸν διαλεκτικόν· οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἀλογιστεῖν τήν τε τῶν ἀλόγων ζῴων ψυχὴν καὶ τὴν ἀνθρώπου, ἀλλὰ τὴν μὲν τῶν ἀλόγων ἐν τῷ εἶναι αὐτῆς τὸ ἀλογιστεῖν ἔχειν (διὸ καὶ ἀεὶ ἀλογιστεῖ καὶ οὐχ ὁτὲ μὲν τοῦτο, ὁτὲ δὲ τὸ ἐναντίον), τὴν δὲ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὸ μὲν ἀλογιστεῖν οὐκ ἐν τῷ εἶναι ἔχειν αὐτῆς (οὐ γὰρ ἂν καὶ ἐλογίζετο), τὸ δύνασθαι μέντοι ἀλογιστεῖν καὶ τὸ δύνασθαι λογίζεσθαι. ἐνεργεῖ δὲ κατ’ ἄμφω· κατὰ λόγον μέν, ὁπηνίκ’ ἂν βλέψῃ πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτῆς οὐσίαν, αὕτη δ’ ἐστὶν ὁ ἐν αὐτῇ νοῦς, κατὰ δὲ τὴν ἀλογίαν, ὁπόταν νεύσῃ πρὸς τὰ ἔξω αὐτῆς, ταῦτα δ’ ἐστὶ τὰ αἰσθητά. ἄλλο οὖν τὸ ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ ἄλογον, καὶ ἄλλο τὸ ἐν τοῖς ζῴοις· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἐν τούτοις ψυχή, τὸ δ’ ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ δύναμις· καὶ τοῦτ’ ἂν εἴη τῆς τοῦ λογίζεσθαι δυνάμεως ἀχώριστον. ὀρθῶς ἄρα καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης τὴν ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴν δύναμιν συναποκαλῶν, ὅτι ποτὲ μὲν λογίζεται, ποτὲ δ’ οὔ.

[3] Ὅταν οὖν μὴ λογίζηται, ἄλλο τι ἢ ἀλογιστεῖ; ἆρ’ οὖν ἡ κατὰ τὸ λογίζεσθαι δύναμις καὶ αὐτὸ ‹τὸ› λογίζεσθαι ψυχῆς ἐστι, καὶ ἐν χάρτῃ, χάρτης δ’ οὔ; ἀλλ’ εἰ τοῦτο, ἑτέρα ἔσται αὐτῆς ‹ἡ› οὐσία παρὰ τὸ ἔργον καὶ τὴν πρὸς τοῦτο δύναμιν, καὶ ἕξει τι ὑποκείμενον περὶ ὃ θεωρηθήσεται ἡ δύναμις αὐτῆς, καὶ ἔσται τὸ ὄνομα τοῦτο ‘ψυχή’ τὸ ὑποκείμενον μετὰ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸ θεωρουμένων δυνάμεων· καὶ ζωὴν ἕξει οὐ διὰ πάσης ἑαυτῆς· κατὰ γὰρ τὸ ὑποκείμενον ἄζωος ἔσται, τάχα δὲ καὶ παντάπασιν. οὐδεμία γὰρ αὐτῆς ἐν τῇ φύσει ἐνέργεια ζωτική, ἀλλὰ πάντα δύναμις. δυνάμει οὖν ἔσται ζῶσα.

[4] Ἢ τὸ δυνάμει τὸ καθ’ ἕξιν ῥητέον, ἵνα πὼς μὲν ἔχῃ ζωήν, πὼς δ’ οὐκ ἔχῃ; δύο γὰρ ζωαί, ἡ μὲν ὡς ἕξις, ἡ δ’ ὡς τὸ ἐνεργοῦν· καὶ ἡ μὲν ὡς ἕξις ‹ἡ› ψυχή, ἡ δ’ ὡς τὸ ἐνεργοῦν ὁ νοῦς. εἰ οὖν ἡ ὡς ἕξις ζωὴ ἡ ψυχή, ἁπλῆ ἂν εἴη χωρὶς ὑποκειμένου. τοιοῦτον γάρ τι τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπολαμβάνομεν, ὃ τὴν ζωὴν ἔχει σύμφυτον καὶ οὐ παρ’ ἄλλου, ἀλλὰ παρ’ αὑτῆς· σωμάτων γὰρ τὸ παρ’ ἄλλου τὴν ζωὴν μεταλαγχάνειν. εἰ δ’ ἦν τι σύνθετον ἡ ψυχή, ἐξ ὑποκειμένου καὶ εἴδους συγκειμένη, οὐκ ἂν ἔσχε παρ’ αὑτῆς, ἀλλὰ παρ’ ἄλλου τὴν ζωήν· παρὰ γὰρ τοῦ εἴδους, ὥσπερ καὶ τῷ πυρὶ τὸ θερμῷ εἶναι παρὰ τῆς θερμότητος καὶ οὐ παρὰ τῆς ὕλης. ἔπειτα κἂν σῶμα ἦν· τὸ γὰρ ἐξ ὑποκειμένου καὶ εἴδους συνεστηκὸς σῶμα.

[5] Δύναμις οὖν ζωτικὴ ἡ ψυχή, δύναμις δ’ ἡ ὡς ἕξις. διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ἐλευθέρα καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἐνεργείας ἀκώλυτος. ἔχουσα γὰρ ζωήν, μᾶλλον δ’ οὖσα ζωή, κινεῖται καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ὁπότε βούλεται. τοῦτο δὲ περὶ τῆς ἔξω σωμάτων ψυχῆς ὑποληπτέον· ἡ γὰρ κρατηθεῖσα σώματι καὶ τοῖς ἐκ τούτου πάθεσιν ἀπόλλυσι τὸ ἐλεύθερον, καὶ οὐχ ὁπότε βούλεται κινεῖσθαι ἐᾶται, ἀλλὰ δεδουλωμένη πέπαυται τῆς ἐνεργείας, καὶ εἴ τις ἐπὶ ψυχῆς ὄλεθρος εἴη, οὗτος ἂν εἴη· οἷον γὰρ ἀπόλλυται σβεννυμένης ἐν αὐτῇ τῆς κατὰ νοῦν ἐνεργείας. ἃ δὲ δοκεῖ ἐνέργειαν ἀποστρέφειν, ταῦτα παθήματα ἂν εἴη μᾶλλον, οὐκ ἐνεργήματα, καὶ οὐκ αὐτῆς ταῦτα, ἀλλὰ τοῦ ζῴου, κατ’ αὐτὴν μέντοι. τὸ γὰρ λογίζεσθαι καὶ θεωρεῖν μόνον αὐτῆς, καὶ τοῦθ’ ἡ κυρίως ἐνέργεια, τὰ δὲ παρὰ τοῦτο τοῦ ζῴου πάντα, καὶ πάθη μᾶλλον, οὐκ ἐνέργειαι.

[6] Ἀλλὰ πῶς, εἰ κατ’ αὐτὴν εὖ πάσχει τὰ ζῷα, οὐκ αὐτὴ παθητική; πάσχειν γὰρ κατὰ τὴν παθητικὴν εὔλογον ψυχὴν ὥσπερ καὶ ὑφαίνειν κατὰ τὴν ὑφαντικήν. ἢ τοῦτο μὲν ἀληθὲς καὶ διδόναι χρή, ἀπορητέον δὲ περὶ τῆς καλουμένης παθητικῆς καὶ περὶ τοῦ πάσχειν ὅλως, πῶς γίνεται, πότερα τῷ μὴ ἐνεργεῖν τὴν ψυχὴν κατὰ λόγον ἢ ἄλλως; εἰ[τε] γὰρ τῷ μὴ ἐνεργεῖν, οὐθέν ἐστι πάθος ἐπαινετόν. φαίνεται δ’ ‹ἐπαινετὰ› πάντα ὁπόσα μετρεῖται ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου, χρήσιμα ὄντα (ἀρετὰς γὰρ αὐτὰ καλοῦμεν πολιτικὰς καὶ ἐπαινοῦμεν τὸν ἔχοντα αὐτάς)· μετρεῖσθαι δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἠδύνατο μὴ ἐφορῶντος αὐτὰ ‹τοῦ› νοῦ καὶ ἐνδιδόντος αὐτοῖς ἀφ’ αὑτοῦ μέτρον καὶ ὅρον· τοῦτο δ’ οὐθὲν ἀλλ’ ἢ ἐνεργοῦντος περὶ αὐτά, ἐνεργεῖ τε οὖν ἅμα ὁ λόγος καὶ πάσχει τὸ ζῷον, καὶ τῷ αὐτῷ καὶ λογιζόμεθα ἅμα καὶ πάσχομεν· ἓν γὰρ εἶδος ἔχει. δυνάμεις δ’ ἦσαν πλείους, ἥ τε τοῦ ἐνεργεῖν καὶ μή; μᾶλλον δὲ μία δύναμις· τὸ γὰρ μὴ ἐνεργεῖν ἀδυναμίας ἂν εἴη, καθ’ ὃ καὶ ἀλογιστεῖν ἐλέγετο τὸ ζῷον.

[7] Ἀλλὰ τῇ τε ὑποθέσει ταύτῃ φαίνεται πλείω τὰ ἑπόμενα ἄτοπα, καὶ ἄλλως ἀποδοῦναι τὰ πάθη τοῖς ἀνθρώποις οὐκ εὔπορον. ἐπισκεπτέον δ’ ἔτι, πῶς ἔφαμεν ἐνεργεῖν τε ἅμα τὸν λόγον ‹καὶ πάσχειν τὸ ζῷον› καὶ εἶναι τὰ πάθη περὶ τὸ συναμφότερον. φαίνεται γὰρ οὐχ ἅμα ταῦτα γινόμενα ἄμφω, ‹ἀλλὰ› μεινάσης μὲν ἀργῆς τῆς διανοίας ἐπεισελθόντα τὰ πάθη περὶ τὸ συναμφότερον, ‹ἐγ›γενομένων δὲ τῶν παθῶν παρελθὼν αὖθις ὁ λόγος καὶ διακοσμήσας αὐτά. τίς οὖν ἡ καλουμένη παθητικὴ ψυχή; ἡ αὐτὴ ἥπερ καὶ ‹ἡ› λογιστική. πάθος γάρ τι αὐτῆς τὸ μὴ ἀπαύστως ἐνεργεῖν, καὶ παθητικὴ ὅτι θεωρεῖν ἀεί τε καὶ συνεχῶς ἀδύνατος. ὅταν οὖν μὴ θεωρῇ, πρὸς τὸ σῶμα ἐπέστραπται καὶ ἀπόστροφός ἐστι ‹τοῦ νοῦ›· τοῦ νοῦ δ’ οὖσα ἀπόστροφος ἀνοηταίνειν εἰκότως λέγοιτ’ ἂν καὶ οὐθὲν ὑγιὲς βλέπειν οὐδὲ κρίνειν ὀρθῶς, ἀλλὰ δοξάζειν τά τε μὴ ἀγαθὰ ‹ὡς ὄντα ἀγαθὰ› καὶ τοὐναντίον, ἐκ δὲ τῆς τοιαύτης δόξης καὶ κρίσεως ἀποτελεῖσθαι τὰ πάθη περὶ τὸ σύνθετον, σύνθετον δ’ ἔκ τε τοῦ σώματος καὶ τῆς ἐν αὐτῷ ζωῆς, ἣν ἐνδίδωσιν ἡ ψυχή. ἐνδίδωσι γὰρ ἅπασα δύναμίς τινα ἀφ’ αὑτῆς ἀπόρροιαν τῷ * * *

Fragmenta

ΕΠΑΜΕΙΝΩΝΔΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΣΚΙΠΙΩΝ

[1] Plut. Vit. Agesilai, c. 28. Πολλῶν δὲ σημείων μοχθηρῶν γενομένων, ὡς ἐν τῷ Περὶ Ἐπαμεινώνδου γέγραπται, καὶ Προθόου τοῦ Λάκωνος ἐναντιουμένου πρὸς τὴν στράτειαν, οὐκ ἀνῆκεν ὁ Ἀγησίλαος ἀλλ’ ἐξέπραξε τὸν πόλεμον.

[2] Plut. Vit. Pyrrhi, c. 8. Ἀννίβας δὲ συμπάντων ἀπέφαινε τῶν στρατηγῶν πρῶτον μὲν ἐμπειρίᾳ καὶ δεινότητι Πύρρον, Σκιπίωνα δὲ δεύτερον, ἑαυτὸν δὲ τρίτον, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ Σκιπίωνος γέγραπται.

ΣΚΙΠΙΩΝ ΑΦΡΙΚΑΝΟΣ

[3] Plut. Vit. Ti. Gracchi, c. 21. Σκιπίων ὁ Ἀφρικανός, οὗ δοκοῦσι Ῥωμαῖοι μηδένα δικαιότερον μηδὲ μᾶλλον ἀγαπῆσαι, παρὰ μικρὸν ἦλθεν ἐκπεσεῖν καὶ στερέσθαι τῆς πρὸς τὸν δῆμον εὐνοίας, ὅτι πρῶτον μὲν ἐν Νομαντίᾳ τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦ Τιβερίου πυθόμενος ἀνεφώνησεν ἐκ τῶν Ὁμηρικῶν (α 47).

Ὣς ἀπόλοιτο καὶ ἄλλος ὅ τις τοιαῦτά γε ῥέζοι·

ἔπειτα τῶν περὶ Γάιον καὶ Φούλβιον αὐτοῦ δι’ ἐκκλησίας πυνθανομένων, τί φρονοίη περὶ τῆς Τιβερίου τελευτῆς, οὐκ ἀρεσκομένην τοῖς ὑπ’ ἐκείνου πεπολιτευμένοις ἀπόκρισιν ἔδωκεν. ἐκ τούτου γὰρ ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἀντέκρουσεν αὐτῷ λέγοντι, μηδέπω τοῦτο ποιήσας πρότερον, αὐτὸς δὲ τὸν δῆμον εἰπεῖν κακῶς προήχθη. περὶ μὲν οὖν τούτων ἐν τῷ Σκιπίωνος βίῳ τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα γέγραπται.

[4] Plut. Vit. C. Gracchi, c. 10. Καὶ ὅτε Σκιπίων ὁ Ἀφρικανὸς ἐξ οὐδενὸς αἰτίου προφανοῦς ἐτελεύτησε καὶ σημεῖά τινα τῷ νεκρῷ πληγῶν καὶ βίας ἐπιδραμεῖν ἔδοξεν, ὡς ἐν τοῖς περὶ ἐκείνου γέγραπται, τὸ μὲν πλεῖστον ἐπὶ τὸν Φούλβιον ἦλθε τῆς διαβολῆς, ἐχθρὸν ὄντα καὶ τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος τῷ Σκιπίωνι λελοιδορημένον, ἥψατο δὲ καὶ τοῦ Γαΐου ἡ ὑπόνοια.

ΤΙΒΕΡΙΟΣ

(v. fr. 182)

[5] ΝΕΡΩΝΟΣ ΒΙΟΣ

Plut. Vit. Galbae, c. 2. Νυμφίδιος γὰρ Σαβῖνος ὢν ἔπαρχος, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, μετὰ Τιγελλίνου τῆς αὐλῆς ...

ΗΡΑΚΛΕΟΥΣ ΒΙΟΣ

[6] Plut. Vit. Thesei, c. 29. Ὅτι δ’ Ἡρακλῆς πρῶτος ἀπέδωκε νεκροὺς τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐν τοῖς Περὶ Ἡρακλέους γέγραπται.

[7] Aulus Gellius, 1.1. Plutarchus in libro quem de Herculis, quantum inter homines fuit, animi corporisque ingenio et virtutibus conscripsit scite subtiliterque ratiocinatum Pythagoram philosophum dicit in reperienda modulandaque a aaa. a fere constaret curriculum stadii quod est Pisis apud Iovem Olympium Herculem pedibus suis metatum idque fecisse longum pedes sescentos, cetera quoque stadia in terra Graecia ab aliis postea instituta pedum quidem esse numero sescentum sed tamen esse aliquantulum breviora, facile intellexit modum spatiumque plantae Herculis, ratione proportionis habita, tanto fuisse quam aliorum procerius quanto Olympicum stadium longius esset quam cetera. comprehensa autem mensura Herculani pedis, secundum naturalem membrorum omnium inter se competentiam modificatus est atque ita id collegit quod erat consequens, tanto fuisse Herculem corpore excelsiorem quam alios quanto Olympicum stadium ceteris pari numero factis anteiret.

[8] Arnobius, contra Gentes, 4. p. 144. Chaeroneus Plutarchus a a a, Oetaeis verticibus Herculem post morborum comitialium ruinas dissolutum in cinerem prodidit.

[9] ΠΙΝΔΑΡΟΥ ΒΙΟΣ

Eustathius, Prooem. Comm. Pindaricorum, c. 25. Ἐπιμεμέληται ὑπὸ τῶν παλαιῶν καὶ εἰς γένους ἀναγραφὴν τὴν κατά τε Πλούταρχον καὶ ἑτέρους, παρ’ οἷς φέρεται ὅτι κώμη Θηβαίων οἱ Κυνοσκέφαλοι.

[10] ΚΡΑΤΗΤΟΣ ΒΙΟΣ

Julian. Orat. 7 p. 200b. Ἐντυχὼν δὲ τῷ Χαιρωνεῖ Πλουτάρχῳ τὸν Κράτητος ἀναγράψαντι βίον οὐδὲν ἐκ παρέργου [τοῦ] μανθάνειν δεήσῃ τὸν ἄνδρα.

[11] ΔΑΙΦΑΝΤΟΣ

Plut. Mul. Virt. 244B. Τὸ δὲ τῶν Φωκίδων ἐνδόξου μὲν οὐ τετύχηκε συγγραφέως, οὐδενὸς δὲ τῶν γυναικείων ἔλαττον εἰς ἀρετήν ἐστι, μαρτυρούμενον ἱεροῖς τε μεγάλοις, ἃ δρῶσι Φωκεῖς ἔτι νῦν περὶ Ὑάμπολιν, καὶ δόγμασι παλαιοῖς, ὧν τὸ μὲν καθ’ ἕκαστον τῆς πράξεως ἐν τῷ Δαϊφάντου βίῳ γέγραπται.

[12] ΑΡΙΣΤΟΜΕΝΗΣ

Stephanus Byz. s. v. Ἀνδανία. Ἐκ ταύτης Ἀριστομένης ἐγένετο ἐπιφανέστατος στρατηγός. τοῦτον οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι πολλάκις αὐτοὺς νικήσαντα θαυμάσαντες, ὡς μόλις ἐκράτησαν ἐν τοῖς Μεσσηνιακοῖς, ἀνατεμόντες ἐσκόπουν, εἰ παρὰ τοὺς λοιποὺς ἔστι τι. καὶ εὗρον σπλάγχνον ἐξηλλαγμένον καὶ τὴν καρδίαν δασεῖαν, ὡς Ἡρόδοτος καὶ Πλούταρχος καὶ Ῥιανός (Coll. Alex. fr. 53).

ΑΙΤΙΑΙ ΤΩΝ ΑΡΑΤΟΥ ΔΙΟΣΗΜΕΙΩΝ

[13] Schol. in Arat. Phaen. 820:

ἠελίῳ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐοικότα σήματα κεῖται

Αἱ τοῦ ἡλίου πρὸς τὸν ἀέρα διαφοραὶ κυριώτεραι τῶν τῆς σελήνης εἰσί· δυναστεύων γὰρ ἡμέρας σαφέστερα δείκνυσι τὰ τεκμήρια. δεύτερον δὲ ὅτι λαμπρότερός ἐστι, καὶ εἰ μὴ μεγάλη καὶ ἰσχυρὰ τοῦ ἀέρος εἴη μεταβολή, οὐκ ἂν κρατηθείη· τὰς γὰρ μικρὰς καὶ ἐλαφρὰς ἀναστέλλει καὶ σκεδάννυσιν. οὕτω Πλούταρχος.

[14] Schol. in Arat. Phaen. 828:

ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὅπποτε κοῖλος ἐειδόμενος περιτέλλῃ.

Αἱ ἐν τῷ ἡλίῳ κοιλότητες οὔκ εἰσιν αὐτοῦ, φαντασίαι δὲ εἰσὶ τῆς ὄψεως κατ’ ἐπιπρόσθεσιν ζοφεροῦ ἀέρος. οὐ γὰρ τὸ μέσον ὁρᾶται ἀλλ’ ἡ κύκλῳ ἁψίς· λαμπρὰ ‹δὲ› οὖσα δοκεῖ περιφέγγειν καὶ εἰς τὸ ἐκλιπὲς ἔμφασιν κοιλότητος παρέχειν. ὃν τρόπον γὰρ οἱ ζῳγράφοι ἀντρώδεις τόπους γράφοντες φωτὶ τραχύνουσι τὴν ὄψιν, ἅτε τῇ φύσει τοῦ μὲν λαμπροῦ προβάλλοντος ἔξω καὶ διωθοῦντος τὴν φαντασίαν τοῦ δὲ μέλανος ὑποσκιάζειν καὶ βαθύνεσθαι δοκοῦντος, οὕτω καὶ περὶ τὸν ἥλιον τὸ [μὴ] φαινόμενον τῇ ὄψει κατὰ ἀντίφραξιν τοῦ ἀέρος, ἡ ἐκκοπὴ τοῦ μέσου λαμπροῦ, διὰ τὴν σκιὰν ὑποφαίνεται.

Ὃ ὅλην ποιεῖ τὴν ἀντίφραξιν· ὁ ἀὴρ σφόδρα πιληθεὶς καὶ παχὺς ζοφωθεὶς διὰ χειμέριον τὸ ζῴδιον. Πλούταρχος.

[15] Schol. in Arat. Phaen. 829-830:

οὐδ’ ὁπότ’ ἀκτίνων αἱ μὲν νότον αἱ δὲ βορῆα σχιζόμεναι βάλλωσι, τὰ δ’ αὖ περὶ μέσσα φαείνῃ.

Ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τῶν ὀφθαλμικῶν, ὅταν συμβαίνῃ κοιλαίνεσθαι τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς, δηλονότι ἐξασθενήσαντος τοῦ σώματος, ἢ ὥσπερ ὅταν βλέφαρον καταγαγόντες ἢ περιθλίψαντες τῷ λύχνῳ τὴν ὄψιν προσβάλλωμεν, οὐ φαίνεται συνεχὲς τὸ φῶς ἀλλὰ πλάγιαι καὶ σποράδες αἱ αὐγαί· οὕτως ὅταν ἀχλὺς ἢ νέφωσις ἀνώμαλος πρὸ τοῦ ἡλίου στᾶσα περιθλίψῃ καὶ σείσῃ τὸν τῆς ὄψεως κῶνον εἰς λεπτὰς ἀκτῖνας καὶ ῥαβδοειδεῖς, ὃ πάσχομεν αὐτοὶ τῇ αἰσθήσει, τοῦτο περὶ τὸν ἥλιον εἶναι δοκοῦμεν. οὕτω Πλούταρχος.

[16] Schol. in Arat. Phaen. 1033-1036:

μηδ’ ὅτε ...

ἢ πῦρ αὔηται σπουδῇ καὶ ὑπεύδια λύχνα,

πιστεύειν χειμῶνι.

Τὰ καυστὰ βραδέως ἐξάπτεται παχυμεροῦς τοὺς πόρους ἐπιφράττοντος τοῦ ἀέρος· διόπερ οἱ τὰς δᾷδας ἅπτοντες προτρίβουσιν ἐν τῇ τέφρᾳ, ἵνα ἀποκρουσθῇ εἴ τι ἔνικμον [ᾖ] καὶ τὸ πῦρ τῆς ὕλης μᾶλλον ἅψηται. οὕτω Πλούταρχος.

[17] Schol. in Arat. Phaen. 1047:

πρῖνοι μὲν θαμινῆς ἀκύλου κατὰ μέτρον ἔχουσαι

Κατὰ μέτρον δὲ ἔχουσαι ἀντὶ τοῦ συμμέτρως ἔχουσαι τῶν καρπῶν. φησὶν οὖν ὁ Θεόφραστος ὅτι ὁ πρῖνος καὶ ἡ σχῖνος αὐχμηρὰ τῇ κράσει καὶ ξηρότερα τῶν ἄλλων πεφυκότα πολὺν καρπὸν οὐ φέρει, ἐὰν μὴ εἰς βάθος ὑγρανθῇ. εἰκότως οὖν τῇ τούτων ἀφορίᾳ καταμαντεύονται περὶ τῶν σπερμάτων οἱ γεωργοί, μιᾶς αἰτίας οὔσης δι’ ἣν ἀμφοτέροις ἡ πολυκαρπία· εἰ δ’ ὑπερβάλλει τοῦ καρποῦ τὸ πλῆθος, οὐκ ἀγαθὸν σημεῖον· ἄμετρον γὰρ ἐπομβρίαν καὶ πλεονασμὸν ὑγρότητος ἡ περὶ τὸν ἀέρα ἄνεσις καὶ θηλύτης δηλοῖ. οὕτω Πλούταρχος.

[18] Schol. in Arat. Phaen. 1051-1052:

τριπλόα δὲ σχῖνος κυέει, τρισσαὶ δέ τε αὖξαι,

γίνονται καρποῖο, φέρει δέ τε σήμαθ’ ἑκάστη

Ὅσα γὰρ τὴν σχῖνον ἐκ τοῦ ἀέρος ὠφελεῖ, ταῦτα καὶ τὸν σῖτον· ὁμοίως καὶ τὰ βλάπτοντα. δείγματα οὖν τῶν σπόρων ὁ πρῶτος ἐν τῇ σχίνῳ ἐστὶ τῶν πρώτων, καὶ τῶν μέσων ὁ μέσος, καὶ ὁ τρίτος τῶν τελευταίων. οὕτω Πλούταρχος.

[19] Schol. in Arat. Phaen. 1057-1058:

ὅντινα γὰρ κάλλιστα λοχαίη σχῖνος ἄρηται,

κείνῳ γ’ ἐξ ἄλλων ἄροσις πολυλήιος εἴη.

Οὐ μόνον ἐν τοῖς ζῴοις συμπάθειά ἐστι, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τοῖς φυτοῖς. ὁσαοῦν κεκραμένην ὑγρότητι ἢ ψυχρότητι παραπλησίως ἔχει τὴν ἕξιν [ἢ] τρέφεται ἀπὸ τῶν ὁμοίων καὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς εὐθηνεῖ καὶ μαραίνεται. διὸ πολλὰ μετ’ ἀλλήλων συνακμάζει καὶ καρποφορεῖ, τὰ μὲν θέρει τὰ δὲ χειμῶνι τινὰ δὲ καὶ ἔαρι. τῶν μὲν οὖν αἱ κράσεις διάφοροι, τῶν δ’ ὅμοιαι καὶ συγγενεῖς σφόδρα· τῶν οὖν τὴν ὁμοίαν κρᾶσιν ἐχόντων εἰσὶ πρῖνος, σχῖνος, σκίλλα, πυρός. οὕτω Πλούταρχος.

[20] Schol. in Arat. Phaen. 1094-1096:

οὐδὲ μὲν ὀρνίθων ἀγέλαις ἠπειρόθεν ἀνήρ,

ἐκ νήσων ὅτε πολλαὶ ἐπιπλήσσωσιν ἀρούραις

ἐρχομένου θέρεος, χαίρει ...

Ξηρότεραι γὰρ αἱ νῆσοι τῶν ἠπείρων ὑπάρχουσαι, ὥς φησι Πλούταρχος, θᾶττον καὶ ῥᾷον τοῦ αὐχμηροῦ καταστήματος ἀντιλαμβάνονται. διὸ καὶ τὰ ὄρνεα φεύγει καὶ ταῖς ἠπείροις ἐπιπελάζει· καὶ ἄχθεται μὲν ὁ γεωργὸς τῇ τῶν ὀρνίθων ἐπιδημίᾳ τὸν αὐχμὸν ὑποπτεύων, χαίρει δὲ ταῖς αὐταῖς ὄρνισιν ὁ αἰπόλος, ὅταν ἐν κόσμῳ καὶ τεταγμέναι φέρωνται, ὡς πλείονος γάλακτος γενησομένου διὰ τὸ ἔνθερμον εἶναι τὸν ἐνιαυτόν.

ΕΙ Η ΤΩΝ ΜΕΛΛΟΝΤΩΝ ΠΡΟΓΝΩΣΙΣ ΩΦΕΛΙΜΟΣ

[21] Stobaeus 1.5.19 (`1. p. 81 W.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Εἰ ἡ τῶν μελλόντων πρόγνωσις ὠφέλιμος.

Τὸ γὰρ εἱμαρμένον ἄτρεπτον καὶ ἀπαράβατον, ‘χὤπερ μόνον ὀφρύσι νεύσῃ, καρτερὰ τούτῳ κέκλωστ’ ἀνάγκα’ (fr. chor. mel. adesp. 19 D., 99 P.) [καὶ πεπρωμένη] διὰ τοῦτο τὴν εἱμαρμένην ‹καὶ Πεπρωμένην› καὶ Ἀδράστειαν καλοῦσιν, ὅτι πέρας ταῖς αἰτίαις ἠναγκασμένον ἐπιτίθησιν ἀνέκφευκτος οὖσα καὶ ἀναπόδραστος.

[22] Stobaeus 2.8.25 (`2. p. 158 W.). ἐκ τοῦ Πλουτάρχου Εἰ ἡ τῶν μελλόντων πρόγνωσις ὠφέλιμος.

Ὁ δὲ Νέστωρ οὐκ ἀβέλτερος, ὕπνου φθονῶν τοῖς τὰς ναῦς φυλάσσουσι καὶ διακελευόμενος (Κ 192-193)

‘οὕτω νῦν φίλα τέκνα φυλάσσετε, μηδέ τιν’ ὕπνος

αἱρείτω, μὴ χάρμα γενώμεθα δυσμενέεσσιν’;

οὐ γενησόμεθα, φησί τις, οὐδ’ ἂν καθεύδωμεν, εἰ πεπρωμένον ἐστὶ μὴ ἁλῶναι τὸν ναύσταθμον. τίς οὐκ ἂν εἴποι πρὸς τοὺς ταῦτα ληροῦντας, ὅτι καθείμαρται μὲν ἴσως ἅπαντα ταῦτα, συγκαθείμαρται δ’ ἑκάστῳ τὸ διὰ τούτων καὶ τὸ ἐν τούτοις καὶ οὕτω καὶ τὸ μὴ ἄλλως συντελεῖσθαι δίχα τούτων; οὐ γὰρ ἔστι φυλακὴ καθευδόντων οὐδὲ νίκη φευγόντων οὐδὲ θερίσαι μὴ σπειράντων γῆν ἀγαθὴν καὶ καθαράν, οὐδὲ γεννῆσαι μὴ συγγενόμενον γυναικὶ ἡλικίαν ἐχούσῃ καὶ σώματος φύσιν γόνιμον, οὐδ’ ἄγρας τυχεῖν ἐν ἀθήροις χωρίοις.

[23] Stobaeus 3.3.41 (`3. p. 207 H.). ἐκ τοῦ Πλουτάρχου Εἰ ἡ τῶν μελλόντων πρόγνωσις ὠφέλιμος.

Ἀλλὰ μὴν ἡ φρόνησις οὐ σωμάτων ἀλλὰ πραγμάτων ὄψις ἐστί, πρὶν ἐν αὐτοῖς γενέσθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ὅπως ἄριστα χρήσεται τοῖς ἀπαντῶσι καὶ προστυγχάνουσι, παρέχουσα διασκοπεῖν τὸ μέλλον. τὸ μὲν οὖν σῶμα πρόσω μόνον ὠμμάτωται τοῖς δ’ ὄπισθεν τυφλόν ἐστιν ἀτεχνῶς, ἡ δὲ διάνοια καὶ τὰ παρῳχημένα βλέπειν τῇ μνήμῃ πέφυκεν· ὁ γὰρ ἐγκαθήμενος ἀεὶ καὶ οἰκουρῶν γραμματεὺς ἐν ἡμῖν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Philebus 39a), οὗτός ἐστι καὶ προγεγονὼς ‹τῶν› ἐνταῦθα, τῆς ψυχῆς εἴτε μέρος εἴτε ὄργανον, ᾧ τῶν πραγμάτων ἀντιλαμβάνεται φερομένων καὶ φυλάττει καὶ ἵστησι καὶ κύκλον ποιεῖ, τὸ παρῳχημένον ἐπιστρέφουσα καὶ συνάπτουσα τῷ παρόντι καὶ παραρρεῖν εἰς τὸ ἄπειρον οὐκ ἐῶσα καὶ ἀνύπαρκτον καὶ ἄγνωστον.

[24] ΕΙΣ ΕΜΠΕΔΟΚΛΕΑ

Hippolytus, Refutatio haeresium 5.20.5. Τετέλεσται δὲ ταῦτα (sc. Orphica quaedam) καὶ παραδέδοται ἀνθρώποις πρὸ τῆς Κελεοῦ καὶ Τριπτολέμου καὶ Δήμητρος καὶ Κόρης καὶ Διονύσου ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι τελετῆς ἐν Φλιοῦντι τῆς Ἀττικῆς· πρὸ γὰρ τῶν Ἐλευσινίων μυστηρίων ἔστιν ἐν τῇ Φλιοῦντι ‹τῆς› λεγομένης Μεγάλης ὄργια. ἔστι δὲ παστὰς ἐν αὐτῇ, ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς παστάδος ἐγγέγραπται μέχρι σήμερον ἡ [τὰ τῶν] πάντων τῶν εἰρημένων λόγων ἰδέα. πολλὰ μὲν οὖν ἐστι τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς παστάδος ἐκείνης ἐγγεγραμμένα περὶ ὧν Πλούταρχος ποιεῖται λόγους ἐν ταῖς πρὸς Ἐμπεδοκλέα δέκα βίβλοις· ἔστι δὲ τοῖς πλείοσι καὶ πρεσβύτης τις ἐγγεγραμμένος πολιὸς πτερωτός, ἐντεταμένην ἔχων τὴν αἰσχύνην, γυναῖκα ἀποφεύγουσαν διώκων κυανοειδῆ· ἐπιγέγραπται δὲ ἐπὶ τοῦ πρεσβύτου ‘φάος ῥυέντης’, ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς γυναῖκος ‘περεηφικόλα’.

ΕΙΣ ΤΑ ΗΣΙΟΔΟΥ ΕΡΓΑ

[25] Schol. in Hesiodi OD 7:

ῥεῖα δέ τ’ ἰθύνει σκολιὸν καὶ ἀγήνορα κάρφει

Τὸν ποικίλον τὸ ἦθος διὰ πανουργίαν ‘σκολιὸν’ ὀνομάζει. τοῦτον οὖν ἰθύνειν λέγει τὸν Δία, πάλιν εἰς τὸ ἁπλοῦν ἐπανάγοντα ἦθος διὰ τὸ κολάζειν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῇ πανουργίᾳ. τὸν αὐθάδη καὶ ὑπερόπτην εὐτελῆ ποιεῖ καὶ ταπεινόν. ἡ γὰρ αὐθάδεια πρὸς καταφρόνησιν ἐγείρει τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων, ἡ δὲ ταπείνωσις εἰς ἔννοιαν ἄγει τοῦ μηδὲν ἡμᾶς διαφέρειν τῶν ὁμοίων καὶ μετρίους ποιεῖ τὸ ἦθος.

[26] Ibid. in OD 41:

οὐδ’ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχῃ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγ’ ὄνειαρ.

Ἴσως δὲ καὶ ἀφ’ ἱστορίας τοῦτο λέγει. Ἕρμιππος γὰρ ἐν τῷ ‹Περὶ› τῶν ἑπτὰ σοφῶν περὶ τῆς ἀλίμου βρώσεως λέγει (F. H. G. III. 37, 40). [μέμνηται δὲ τῆς ἀλίμου καὶ Ἡρόδωρος ἐν τῷ πέμπτῳ τοῦ καθ’ Ἡρακλέα λόγου (F. Gr. Hist. I. 31 F 1) καὶ Πλάτων ἐν ‹τῷ› τρίτῳ τῶν Νόμων (677DE)]. Ἐπιμενίδην φησὶ μικρόν τι ἐδεσμάτιον προσφερόμενον ὧδε ὅλην διατελεῖν τὴν ἡμέραν ἄσιτον καὶ ἄποτον. ἦν δ’ ἐξ ἀσφοδέλου καὶ μαλάχης, ὅπερ αὐτὸν ἄλιμον καὶ ἄδιψον ἐποίει.

[27] Ibid. in OD 48:

ἐξαπάτησε Προμηθεὺς ἀγκυλομήτης.

Εἰ δὲ ἀγκυλομήτης ὁ Προμηθεύς (οὕτω γὰρ γράφειν δεῖ καθὰ καὶ Πλούταρχος) ...

[28] Ibid. in OD 126:

πλουτοδόται, καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιλήιον ἔσχον.

Καὶ πλουτοδότας εἶναι δεῖ τοὺς βασιλικοὺς ἄνδρας καὶ καθαρεύειν πάσης τῆς κακουργίας καὶ τῆς τῶν χρημάτων ἐπιθυμίας, ὧν εἰσιν ἄλλοις χορηγοὶ κατὰ βούλησιν τῶν θεῶν.

[29] Ibid. in OD 127-128:

δεύτερον αὖτε γένος πολὺ χειρότερον μετόπισθεν

ἀργύρεον ποίησαν Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες.

Ὅτι δὲ ἄργυρος ἰοῦ δεκτικός, ὡς καὶ διίησιν ἔξω τεγγόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ὑγρῶν τὴν θερμότητα καὶ ψυχρότητα παντὸς μᾶλλον κεράμου καὶ χαλκοῦ, δῆλον. ψύχεται γὰρ τὸ ὕδωρ ἐν αὐτῷ ῥᾳδίως καὶ θερμαίνεται περιτιθεμένων ψυχρῶν ἢ θερμῶν, ὥστε διὰ τῶν πόρων τούτων καὶ ἰὸν δέχεσθαι, τοῦ χρυσοῦ πυκνοτάτου ὄντος.

[30] Ibid. in OD 143-145:

Ζεὺς δὲ πατὴρ τρίτον ἄλλο γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων

χάλκειον ποίησ’, οὐκ ἀργυρέῳ οὐδὲν ὁμοῖον,

ἐκ μελιᾶν δεινόν τε καὶ ὄβριμον - - -

Τοῦτο τὸ γένος εἰκότως τρίτον οὔτε νοερὸν ὂν οὔτε πανοῦργον, ἀλλὰ δεινὸν ὄντως καὶ εἰς τυραννικὴν δυναστείαν ἐκλακτίσαν καὶ φονικόν, τῶν σωμάτων μόνων ἐπιμελές. διό φησιν

‘ἄπλατοι, μεγάλη δὲ βίη καὶ χεῖρες ἄαπτοι

ἐξ ὤμων ἐπέφυκον’.

δηλοῖ γὰρ ὅτι τῶν σωμάτων τὴν ῥώμην ἤσκουν οἱ ἐν τούτῳ τῷ γένει, τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἀμελοῦντες περὶ τὴν τῶν ὅπλων κατασκευὴν διέτριβον καὶ τῷ χαλκῷ πρὸς τοῦτο ἐχρῶντο, ὡς τῷ σιδήρῳ πρὸς γεωργίαν, διά τινος βαφῆς τὸν χαλκὸν στερροποιοῦντες ὄντα φύσει μαλακόν. ἐκλιπούσης δὲ τῆς βαφῆς, ἦλθον ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ σιδήρου καὶ ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις χρῆσιν. τοῦτο δὴ τὸ χαλκοῦν γένος ‘ἐκ μελιᾶν’ εἶπε φῦναι δωρικῶς, ἀντὶ τοῦ ἐκ τῶν μελιῶν τῶν δένδρων, οὐχὶ ἐκ τῶν Μελιῶν Νυμφῶν (καὶ γὰρ Μελίας Νύμφας εἶναί φασιν· ἄτοπον δὲ τὸ ἐκ τοῦ θείου γένους ὄντας θηριώδεις φῦναι) ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐκ δένδρων στερεῶν καὶ δυσσήπτων γεγονότας τά τε σώματα γενέσθαι ἰσχύοντας καὶ τὰ ἤθη ἀτεράμονας καὶ βιαίους.

[31] Ibid. in OD 199-200:

ἀθανάτων μετὰ φῦλον ἴτον προλιπόντ’ ἀνθρώπους

Αἰδῶς καὶ Νέμεσις - - -

Τουτέστι τὸ τῶν κακῶν ἔσχατον. ἀναιδείας γὰρ κρατησάσης καὶ φθόνου τῶν ἀνθρώπων, πάντῃ τὸ γένος ἡμῶν ἀπολιπεῖν αἰδῶ καὶ νέμεσιν· τούτων γὰρ ἀπόπτωσίς ἐστιν ἡ ἀναίδεια καὶ ὁ φθόνος, ἀλλ’ οὗτος μὲν εἴδωλον ὢν νεμέσεως (δοκεῖ γὰρ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τοῖς παρ’ ἀξίαν εὐτυχοῦσιν ἀγανακτεῖν), ἡ δ’ ἀναίδεια οὐχὶ εἴδωλον τῆς αἰδοῦς ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐναντιώτατον πρὸς αὐτὴν ὑποκρινόμενον τὴν παρρησίαν. ... καλῶς οὖν καὶ Πλάτων (CAF I. 660) ἐρωτηθεὶς τί ποτε προσγέγονε τοῖς κατ’ αὐτὸν ἀνθρώποις, ἀπεκρίνατο μὴ αἰσχύνεσθαι κακοὺς ὄντας. ὅτι δὲ θεῖον πρᾶγμα καὶ ἡ νέμεσις, δηλοῖ τὸ καὶ θεοῖς αὐτὴν ὑπάρχειν· ‘νεμέσησε δὲ πότνια Ἥρη’ φησὶν ἡ ποίησις (Θ 198). φθόνος δ’ ἔξωθεν θείου χοροῦ παντός.

[32] Ibid. in OD 214-215:

ὕβρις γάρ τε κακὴ δειλῷ βροτῷ· οὐδέ μιν ἐσθλὸς

ῥηιδίως φερέμεν δύναται βαρύθει δέ θ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῆς.

Λέγει δὲ ἐσθλοὺς οὐ τοὺς τῇ τύχῃ καὶ τῇ δυνάμει προέχοντας, ὥς φησι Πλούταρχος, ἀλλὰ τοὺς κατ’ ἀρετὴν προέχοντας, ἐκ τούτου μᾶλλον δεικνὺς τὴν ὕβριν ἀφόρητον. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν δυνάμει καὶ σφόδρα δυσχεραίνουσιν ἐπὶ ταῖς ἐκ τῶν ἀσθενεστέρων εἰς αὐτοὺς ὕβρεσιν· οἱ δὲ κατ’ ἀρετὴν ζῶντες καὶ ταύτας τὰς ὕβρεις διαπτύουσιν. οὐδὲ γὰρ χείρων ἐγώ, φησὶν ὁ Σωκράτης, ἂν ὁ δεῖνα ἐπὶ κόρρης πατάξῃ με ἀδίκως.

[33] Ibid. in OD 219:

αὐτίκα γὰρ τρέχει ὅρκος ἅμα σκολιῇσι δίκῃσιν.

Σκολιὰς δὲ δίκας λέγει νῦν τὰς κακῶς δεδικασμένας διὰ τὸ μηδὲν ὑγιὲς φρονεῖν τοὺς δικάζοντας ἀλλ’ ἐμπαθῶς δικάζειν· πᾶν γὰρ πάθος σκολιόν, ὡς ἁπλοῦν τὸ ἀπαθές.

[34] Ibid. in OD 220:

τῆς δὲ δίκης ῥόθος ἑλκομένης - - -

Τὸν ῥόθον οἱ μὲν ἤκουσαν τὸν ψόφον, ὅθεν καὶ ῥόθιον καλεῖσθαι τὸ κτυποῦν κῦμα καὶ ῥεῦμα· Πλούταρχος δὲ βοιωτιάζων (οὕτω γὰρ καλεῖν φασι Βοιωτούς) τὰς ὀρεινὰς ὁδοὺς τὰς στενὰς καὶ δυσάντεις ῥόθους ὀνομάζεσθαί φησιν. εἰ οὖν τοῦτο κρατοίη, λέγοι ἂν ὅτι, τῆς δίκης ἑλκομένης ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπὶ δώροις τὰς δίκας κρινόντων σκολιῶς, ῥόθος ἐστί, τουτέστι δυσάντης ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ τραχεῖα, δι’ ἧς ἕλκεται ὑπὸ τῶν δικαστῶν· ἀντίκειται γὰρ τῷ εὐθεῖ τὸ σκολιὸν καὶ τῷ λείῳ τὸ τραχὺ καὶ τῷ εὐδιοδεύτῳ τὸ στενὸν καὶ δυσχωρίαν ἔχον· τοιαύτη δὲ ἐστὶ πᾶσα μοχθηρὰ κρίσις.

[35] Ibid. in OD 230:

οὐδέ ποτ’ ἰθυδίκῃσι μετ’ ἀνδράσι λιμὸς ὀπηδεῖ

Οὔκουν οὐδὲ οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι λιμὸν εὐλαβοῦντο δι’ εὐτέλειαν διαίτης, ἣν ἔχοντες τῶν ἀδικιῶν ἐκαθάρευον· ταῖς γὰρ πολυτελείαις ἡ πλεονεξία συνεισελθοῦσα λιμοῦ γίνεται πρόξενος.

[36] Ibid. in OD 240:

πολλάκι καὶ ξύμπασα πόλις κακοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀπηύρα.

Τοῦτο δοκεῖ μὲν οὐκ εἶναι κατὰ δίκην, τὸ ἑνὸς ἕνεκα πονηροῦ πόλιν ὅλην διδόναι ποινήν. δύναται δὲ λέγειν ὅτι μοχθηροῦ ἑνὸς ὄντος ὥσπερ νοσήματος ἡ πόλις παραπολαύουσα πολλάκις εἰς ὅλην ἑαυτὴν ἀναμάττεται τὴν πονηρίαν ἐξομοιουμένη τῷ ἑνί . δύναται δὲ κἀκεῖνο σημαίνειν ὅτι ἑνὸς ὄντος πονηροῦ δίδωσιν ἡ πᾶσα πόλις δίκην, ὡς ἐξὸν κωλύειν μὴ κωλύουσα τὴν τοῦ ἑνὸς πονηρίαν. οὕτω καὶ τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος αὐθαδῶς τῷ ἱερεῖ προσενεχθέντος, εἰς πάντας Ἕλληνας διέτεινεν ὁ λοιμός, ὡς παρέντας βοηθῆσαι τῷ ἱερεῖ· καὶ τοῦ Αἴαντος ἀσεβήσαντος περὶ τὸ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς ἱερόν, πάντες ἔνοχοι τῇ δίκῃ γεγόνασιν, ὡς μὴ ἀγανακτήσαντες ἐπὶ τῷ ἀσεβήματι. δεῖ γὰρ μὴ ἐπιτρέπειν τοῖς ὑβρισταῖς μηδὲ συνεπινεύειν τοῖς ἀδίκοις, δυναμένους μὲν παῦσαι περιορῶντας δὲ τοῦ παῦσαι τὴν ἐξουσίαν τῶν πονηρῶν.

[37] Ibid. in OD 244:

Δεῖ δὲ συνάπτειν τῷ

‘λιμὸν ὁμοῦ καὶ λοιμόν, ἀποφθινύθουσι δὲ λαοί’,

τοὺς ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς φερομένους ὑπερβάντα δύο στίχους, ‹τὸ›

‘ἢ τῶν γε στρατὸν ‹εὐρὺν› ἀπώλεσεν’

καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. οὕτω Πλούταρχος.

[38] Ibid. in OD 270-272:

νῦν δὴ ἐγὼ μήτ’ αὐτὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποισι δίκαιος

εἴην μήτ’ ἐμὸς υἱός· ἐπεὶ κακὸν ἄνδρα δίκαιον

ἔμμεναι, εἰ μείζω γε δίκην ἀδικώτερος ἕξει.

(Τὸ μὲν λεγόμενον φανερόν· εἰ μὴ ἔστι δίκη καὶ τιμωρία κατὰ τῶν ἀδίκων, μηδ’ ἕξουσί τι πλέον οἱ δίκαιοι τῶν ἀδίκων ἐν τῷδε τῷ παρόντι ὃ ἐφορᾷ ὁ Ζεύς, μήτ’ αὐτὸς εἴην δίκαιος μήτε παῖς ἐμός· δίκης γὰρ οὐκ οὔσης, ὄνομα μόνον ἔσται τὸ δίκαιον.) εἰ δὲ δὴ τὸ δίκαιον αἱρετόν, κἂν μὴ ᾖ πρόνοια, καὶ φευκτὸν τὸ ἄδικον, δῆλον ὅτι πᾶς οὗτος ὁ λόγος περιττός. διόπερ ὁ Πλούταρχος τοὺς ἑπτὰ τούτους στίχους ἐκβάλλει ἀπὸ τοῦ

‘πάντα ἰδὼν Διὸς ὀφθαλμὸς ...’

ἕως τοῦ

‘ἀλλὰ τά γ’ οὔπω ἔολπα τελεῖν Δία μητιόεντα’,

ὡς ἀναξίους τῆς Ἡσιόδου περὶ δικαίων καὶ ἀδίκων κρίσεως.

[39] Ibid. in OD 282-284:

ὃς δέ κε μαρτυρίῃσι ἑκὼν ἐπίορκον ὀμόσσας

ψεύσεται, ἐν δὲ δίκην βλάψας νήκεστον ἀασθῇ,

τοῦ δέ τ’ ἀμαυροτέρη γενεὴ μετόπισθε λέλειπται.

Τὰ γὰρ τῶν πατέρων ἀδικήματα χραίνει καὶ τοὺς ἐκγόνους αὐτῶν καὶ ἐνόχους ἀποφαίνει ταῖς τιμωρίαις· καὶ γὰρ ὀνείδη καὶ ἀδοξίαι αὐτοῖς ἐκ τῶν ἀδικιῶν συμβαίνουσι, καὶ τίσεις ἐκ τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἀπολαμβάνοντες, ὧν ἔσχον ἀδικήσαντες οἱ πατέρες αὐτῶν, συναπολαύουσι τῶν ὀφειλομένων ἐκείνοις κολάσεων . ἄλλως δὲ γινώσκει τὸ θεῖον ὡς τοῖς ἤθεσιν αὐτῶν ἐμπέφυκέ τι τῆς ἀδίκου τῶν γεννησάντων προαιρέσεως κἂν ἡμᾶς λανθάνωσι, καὶ εἰκότως ταύτην ἐν αὐτοῖς ὁρῶντες τὴν ῥίζαν ἐκκόπτουσι διὰ τῶν τιμωριῶν καὶ τοῦ μὴ ἐνεργῆσαι κωλύουσιν ὡς ἰατροὶ προκαθαίροντές τινας ὧν ὑφορῶνται νόσους.

[40] Ibid. in OD 286:

σοὶ δ’ ἐγὼ ἐσθλὰ νοέων ἐρέω - - -

Κάλλιστα τὸ φιλόσοφον ἦθος οἷόν ἐστιν εἶπε διὰ τούτων ὁ Πλούταρχος δηλοῦσθαι. τὸν μὲν γὰρ Ἀρχίλοχον καὶ τὸν Ἱππώνακτα βλασφημίας συγγράψαι κατὰ τῶν λυπησάντων· Τιμοκράτην δὲ καὶ Μητρόδωρον τοὺς Ἐπικουρείους, ἀδελφοὺς ὄντας καὶ προσκρούσαντας ἀλλήλοις, ἐκδοῦναι κατ’ ἀλλήλων συγγράμματα. καὶ τί δεῖ τούτους λέγειν, ὅπου γε καὶ Ξενοφάνην διὰ δή τινα πρὸς τοὺς κατ’ αὐτὸν φιλοσόφους καὶ ποιητὰς μικροψυχίαν σίλλους ἀτόπους συνθεῖναι κατὰ πάντων φιλοσόφων καὶ ποιητῶν; ἀλλὰ τὸν ὄντως μουσικὸν Ἡσίοδον μηδὲν τοιοῦτο παθεῖν· οὐ γὰρ μουσικοῦ τὸ μελαγχολᾶν· λυπηθέντα δὲ πρὸς τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἀντὶ τοῦ βλασφημεῖν νουθετεῖν, εἰδότα τοῦτο δὴ τὸ τοῦ Σωκράτους, ὅτι πᾶς ὁ κακὸς ἄκων ἐστὶ κακός· δεῖται οὖν νουθεσίας, καὶ ἴσως ἐπιγνώσεται ἑαυτὸν ὄντα κακόν.

[41] Ibid. in OD 287:

τὴν μέν τοι κακότητα καὶ ἰλαδὸν ἔστιν ἑλέσθαι.

Οὐκ ἀποδεκτέον τὸ ἰλαδόν, ὡς Πλούταρχος ἐξηγήσατο, τὸ πᾶσαν ἐγκολπίσασθαι κακίαν ὁμοῦ δηλοῦν.

[42] Ibid. in OD 293:

Ζήνων μὲν ὁ Στωικὸς ἐνήλλαττε τοὺς στίχους, λέγων

‘οὗτος μὲν πανάριστος ὃς εὖ εἰπόντι πίθηται·

ἐσθλὸς δ’ αὖ κἀκεῖνος ὃς αὑτῷ πάντα νοήσῃ·’

τῇ εὐπειθείᾳ τὰ πρωτεῖα διδούς, τῇ φρονήσει δὲ τὰ δευτερεῖα (SVF I 235). Ἀρίστιππος δὲ ἀπ’ ἐναντίας ὁ Σωκρατικὸς ἔλεγε τὸ συμβούλου δεῖσθαι χεῖρον εἶναι τοῦ προσαιτεῖν (fr. 17 Mannebach, I 55 Giannantoni). ὁ δὲ Ἡσίοδος τοῦ μέτρου μάλιστα τυγχάνει, τρεῖς ἕξεις διελών, τὴν ἔμφρονα τὴν ἀνόητον τὴν μέσην· ὧν ἡ μὲν ἀρίστη καὶ τῷ θείῳ παραπλησία· καὶ γὰρ τὸ θεῖον αὔταρκες, ὥσπερ καὶ ὁ ἑαυτῷ πάντα νοῶν καὶ προορῶν ὅσα ἂν ᾖ καὶ εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον ἀμείνω. ἡ δὲ φευκτοτάτη τὸ μήθ’ ἑαυτῷ δύνασθαι τὰ ὀρθὰ λογίζεσθαι μήτ’ ἄλλοις ἕπεσθαι συμβούλοις ἐθέλειν. μέση δὲ τούτων ἡ τοῦ συνορατικοῦ μὲν τῶν ἀμεινόνων οὐκ ἔχουσα δύναμιν, ἐπακολουθητικὴ δὲ τοῦ συνορῶντος. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν οὕτως ἔχει· μάλιστα δὲ ἄξιον ἐπαίνου τὸ εἰπεῖν τί τοῦ ἔμφρονος ἴδιον· οὐ γὰρ τὸ τὰ παρόντα ὁρᾶν καὶ τὰ ἐγγύς, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ τὰ ἐσόμενα προορᾶν· τοῦτο γὰρ δηλοῖ τὸ φράσασθαι ἅπερ ἂν εἴη ἐπὶ τὰ ἀμείνω.

[43] Ibid. in OD 313:

πλούτῳ δ’ ἀρετὴ καὶ κῦδος ὀπηδεῖ.

Μηδεὶς λοιδορείτω τὸν στίχον εἰς τὸν πολυάρατον πλοῦτον ὁρῶν ‹τὸν› πόρρω τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐσκηνημένον, ἀλλὰ πλοῦτον οἰέσθω νῦν λέγεσθαι τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων πορισθεῖσαν ἀφθονίαν τοῖς ἐργαζομένοις δικαίαν οὖσαν καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν οἰκείων πόνων ἠθροισμένην. εἴρηται γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν ἐκ τῶν ἔργων τοὺς ἀνθρώπους γίνεσθαι πολυμήλους καὶ ἀφθόνους καὶ ἀφνειούς. τῷ δὲ τοιούτῳ πλούτῳ ἕπεσθαι πάντως τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν δόξαν· ἕπεσθαι δ’ οὐχ ὡς παρακολουθήματα ὄντα ταῦτα τῆς εὐπορίας ἀλλ’ ὡς συνυπάρχοντα τῷ τοιούτῳ πλούτῳ· καὶ ὡς παντός, ὃς ἂν οὕτω πλουτῇ, καὶ δόξαν ἀγαθὴν κεκτημένου καὶ δηλοῦντος ὅτι ἀρετὴν ἔχει, δι’ ἣν προσκαρτερεῖ τοῖς οἰκείοις ἔργοις.

[44] Ibid. in OD 314:

δαίμονι δ’ οἷος ἐῆσθα, τὸ ἐργάζεσθαι ἄμεινον

Δαίμων οὐ μόνον ὁ ἀπονέμων ἡμῖν τὸν βίον καὶ διοικῶν τὰ ἡμέτερα κρείττων ἡμῶν καλεῖται, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου βίος ἑκάστοις ἀπονεμόμενος, εἰς ὃν βλέποντες τοὺς μὲν εὐδαιμονεῖν φαμεν τοὺς δὲ κακοδαιμονεῖν· ὡς καὶ τύχη λέγεται ἥ τε ἐπιτροπεύουσα τοὺς βίους ἡμῶν καὶ τὸ ἀποδιδόμενον ἑκάστοις παρ’ αὐτῆς· ὅθεν καὶ εὐτυχεῖν τινας καὶ δυστυχεῖν λέγομεν. τοῦτο οὖν φησιν ὁ Ἡσίοδος προτρέπων εἰς τὸ μὴ ζῆν ἀργόν, ὅτι ὁποῖος ἂν ἑκάστῳ τυγχάνῃ βίος ἀποδεδομένος, τούτῳ ἄμεινον ἐργάζεσθαι, εἴτε ἀμείνων εἴτε χείρων· καὶ μὴ ποιεῖσθαι πρόφασιν ἀργίας ἡλικίαν ἢ τύχην ἢ ἄλλο τι τοιοῦτον, ἀλλὰ πάντως ἔργον τι ζητεῖν ἢ γεωργικὸν ἢ τεκτονικὸν ἢ ἐμπορικὸν ἢ ἄλλ’ ὁτιοῦν.

[45] Ibid. in OD 317:

αἰδῶς δ’ οὐκ ἀγαθὴ κεχρημένον ἄνδρα κομίζει.

Καὶ τοῦτον καὶ τὸν ἑξῆς στίχον παρεμβεβλῆσθαι, ληφθέντας ἀπὸ τοῦ Ὁμήρου, καὶ Πλούταρχος εἶπε.

[46] Ibid. in OD 327-334:

ἶσον δ’ ὅς θ’ ἱκέτην ὅς τε ξεῖνον κακὸν ἔρξῃ,

ὅς τε κασιγνήτοιο ἑοῦ ἀνὰ δέμνια βαίνῃ

...............................

...............................

ὅς τε γονῆα γέροντα κακῷ ἐπὶ γήραος οὐδῷ

νειμείη χαλεποῖσι καθαπτόμενος ἐπέεσσιν,

τῷ δ’ ἦτοι Ζεὺς αὐτὸς ἀγαίεται, ἐς δὲ τελευτὴν

ἔργων ἀντ’ ἀδίκων χαλεπὴν ἐπέθηκεν ἀμοιβήν.

Διαφερόντως δὲ τοῦ Διὸς ἐμνημόνευσεν, ἐπειδὴ πάσας εἰς τὸν θεὸν τοῦτον ἀνῆγον τὰς τοιαύτας προσηγορίας Ἱκέσιον καλοῦντες ὡς ἔφορον τῶν ἱκετῶν καὶ Ξένιον ὡς τῶν ξένων προστάτην ‹καὶ› Ὁμόγνιον ὡς τῶν συγγενῶν μάλιστα φύλακα καὶ τῶν πρὸς τοὺς ὁμογνίους καθηκόντων. οὕτω γὰρ καὶ τῶν ἐν ὀρφανίᾳ ζώντων αὐτὸν ἔλεγον κηδεμόνα, πατέρα νομίζοντες πάντων καὶ ὧν οὔκ εἰσιν ἄνθρωποι πατέρες, καὶ βοηθὸν τῶν ἀδικουμένων πατέρων ὑπὸ τῶν παίδων. ἀγάλματα γάρ εἰσιν οἱ πατέρες τοῦ πάντων πατρός, τοῦ Διός· οἱ δ’ εἰς τὰ ἀγάλματα τῶν θεῶν δυσσεβεῖς, εἰς αὐτοὺς ἀναφέρουσι τοὺς θεούς, ὧν τὰ ἀγάλματα, τὴν δυσσέβειαν· ὥστε εἰκότως ἔφη τὸν Δία καὶ νεμεσᾶν τούτοις καὶ πᾶσιν ὁμοῦ τῶν ἀδίκων ἔργων, ἅπερ διηριθμήσατο, χαλεπὴν ἀποδιδόναι ἔκτισιν. αὕτη γὰρ ἡ ἀμοιβὴ τῶν ἀδικημάτων τιμωρία τις οὖσα τῆς ἀδικίας ἀκόλουθος.

[47] Ibid. in OD 336:

κὰδ δύναμιν δ’ ἔρδειν ἱέρ’ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν.

Τὸ μὲν θύειν, ὅπερ εἰώθασιν οἱ νεώτεροι λέγειν, ἔρδειν ὠνόμαζον οἱ παλαιοὶ καὶ ῥέζειν. τὸ δ’ ἀπάρχεσθαι τῶν παρόντων διὰ τοῦ θύειν ἐδήλουν καὶ θυηλὰς τὰς ἀπαρχὰς ἐκάλουν· ‘ὁ δ’ ἐν πυρὶ βάλλε θυηλάς’ φησὶν Ὅμηρος. (Ι 220) ... τὸ μὲν οὖν κατὰ δύναμιν ἔρδειν ἀφαιρεῖται πᾶσαν τὴν πολυτέλειαν ἐπὶ τῇ προφάσει τῆς εὐσεβείας ἡδυπάθειαν εἰσάγουσαν, καλῶς οὖν τοῦ Λάκωνος εἰπόντος, ὃς ἐρωτηθεὶς διὰ τί εὐτελῆ θύουσιν ἔφη ὅτι ἵνα πολλάκις θύωσιν. οὕτω γὰρ καὶ Νουμᾶς Ῥωμαίοις, ὡς Λυκοῦργος Λακεδαιμονίοις, προσέταξεν ἀπὸ τῶν εὐτελεστάτων θύειν. τὸ γοῦν μὴ ὑπερβάλλειν τὴν περιουσίαν ἐν τῇ θεραπείᾳ τῶν θεῶν πρεπωδέστατόν ἐστι παράγγελμα τοῖς εἰς αὐτὸ μόνον βλέπουσι τὸ ὅσιον· τὴν δ’ ἁγνείαν καὶ καθαρότητα μάλιστα προηγουμένως δεῖ σπουδάζεσθαι τοῖς ἱερουργεῖν μέλλουσι, τὴν μὲν ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ζωῇ - τοιαύτη δ’ ἐστὶν ὅση ἂν ἐξάντης ᾖ πάσης ἀσελγείας πάσης ἀδικίας πάσης ἐμπαθείας· ταύτην γὰρ ἂν εἴποιμεν κυρίως ἁγνεύειν, καὶ μετὰ ταύτην τὴν ἀποχὴν τῶν βρωμάτων καὶ τῶν ποτῶν κατὰ τὰ πάτρια ἤθη· καὶ γὰρ ἄλλα ἄλλοις ἐστίν, ὧν ὁ μετασχὼν εἴργεται τῶν νομίμων θυσιῶν - τὴν δὲ ἐν τοῖς ὀργάνοις πᾶσι τοῖς ἱεροῖς, ‹τοῖς› τόποις ἐν οἷς δεῖ θύειν, τοῖς περὶ τὸ σῶμα ἡμῶν κόσμοις. γελοῖον γὰρ τοῖς καθαρωτάτοις προσιόντας οἷς θύουσιν ἀκαθάρτοις χρῆσθαί τισιν, ἢ ἐν τοῖς μεμολυσμένοις οἴκοις τοῦτο πράττοντας ἢ μοῖραν τῷ ἱερῷ προσάγοντας ἔκ τινος μεμιασμένης ἐνεργείας ἢ ἐσθῆτα φέροντας ἀκάθαρτον, ὅπου γε καὶ τῷ πάντα καθαίροντι πυρὶ παρήγγελται χρῆσθαι μὴ ἐξ ἀκαθάρτου οἰκίας ληφθέντι. τὸ ‹δ’› αὖ ἱλάσκεσθαι τοὺς θεοὺς ταῖς ἀπαραλείπτοις σπονδαῖς καὶ τοῖς μετὰ τούτων θυέσσιν, ἀρχομένης ἡμέρας ἢ νυκτός, οἷον ψαιστοῖς ἢ ἄλλοις τισὶ τοιούτοις, ἐνδείκνυται· καὶ ὅτι χρὴ ταῖς τοιαύταις ἀπαρχαῖς ταῖς εὐπορίστοις ἀπάρχεσθαι τῶν προσόδων αὐτοῖς, διὰ τῆς συνεχείας τηροῦντας αὐτῶν τὸ πρὸς ἡμᾶς εὐμενές· ἡ γὰρ ἱλέωσις οὐκ ἐκείνοις προστίθησιν ὃ μὴ εἶχον, ἀλλ’ ἡμᾶς ἐπιτηδειοτέρους ποιήσει πρὸς τὸ μενόντων αὐτῶν ἀεὶ τοιούτων οἷοί πέρ εἰσι μετέχειν ἀκωλύτως· καὶ τοῦτο δηλοῖ τὸ εὐμενές, τὸ μένειν ἡμῖν τὸ εὖ ἀεὶ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν, καὶ ὡς ἐκεῖνοι διαμένουσιν ἀεὶ ὅμοιοι ὄντες.

[48] Ibid. in OD 342-343:

τὸν φιλέοντ’ ἐπὶ δαῖτα καλεῖν, τὸν δ’ ἐχθρὸν ἐᾶσαι.

τὸν δὲ μάλιστα καλεῖν ὅς τις σέθεν ἐγγύθι ναίει.

Ταῦτα καὶ τὰ ἑπόμενα τούτοις περὶ τῶν πρὸς τοὺς φίλους καὶ γείτονας καθηκόντων ἔχει τὴν παραίνεσιν οὐκ ὄντα ‹εὐ›ηθικὰ ὥς τισιν ἔδοξεν ἀλλ’ εἰς εὐγενὲς ἦθος καὶ δεξιὸν προσάγοντα τὸν πειθόμενον. οὐ γὰρ δεῖ τὰ αὐτὰ φίλοις καὶ ἐχθροῖς ἀποδιδόναι οὐδ’ ὁμοίως ἑκατέρους ὁμοτραπέζους ποιεῖσθαι καὶ ὁμοσπόνδους, ἡγουμένους καὶ τράπεζαν βωμὸν εἶναι τῆς Ἑστίας καὶ ‹θεῶν› πάντων τῶν τὴν τροφὴν δωρησαμένων. θύειν μὲν οὖν καὶ ὑμνεῖν νόμος πρὸ τοῦ τῆς τροφῆς ἅψασθαι· δεῖ οὖν μὴ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ἄγειν ἐπὶ δαῖτα φιλίαν δὴ ὑποκρινομένους, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ὄντως φίλους, οἷς καὶ κοινωνεῖν ὅσιον ὡς τῆς ἄλλης φιλίας οὕτω καὶ ἁλῶν καὶ σπονδῶν καὶ ἑστίας [θεῶν] καὶ φιλοφροσύνης. καὶ γὰρ εἰ ὡς ἔτυχε καὶ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ἑστιῶμεν, τί ποιήσομεν ἐκείνων ἡμᾶς ἐν μέρει καλούντων ἐπὶ τὰ ὅμοια; μὴ ὑπακούοντες γὰρ ἀδικήσομεν τοὺς ὑπακούσαντας, ὑπακούοντες δὲ προησόμεθα ἑαυτοὺς ἀνθρώποις ἀπεχθῶς διακειμένοις.

[49] Ibid. in OD 346, 348:

πῆμα κακὸς γείτων, ὅσσον τ’ ἀγαθὸς μέγ’ ὄνειαρ

..................................

οὐδ’ ἂν βοῦς ἀπόλοιτ’ εἰ μὴ γείτων κακὸς εἴη.

Ταῦτα καὶ διὰ τῆς ἱστορίας ὁ Πλούταρχος ἐπιστώσατο· καὶ γὰρ Αἰτωλοὺς καὶ Ἀκαρνᾶνας, Ἕλληνας ὄντας καὶ γείτονας, ἐκτρῖψαι διὰ πλεονεξίαν ἀλλήλους, καὶ Χαλκηδονίους καὶ Βυζαντίους διὰ τὴν ἔμφυτον δυσμένειαν περὶ σκαλμοῦ διενεχθέντας ἐν τῷ Βοσπόρῳ ναυμαχῆσαι· καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἰδιωτικῶν γειτνιάσεων πολλὰ μὲν ἀγαθὰ συμβαίνειν διὰ ταύτας, ὡς ἐπὶ Φλάκκου καὶ Κάτωνος, πολλὰ δὲ τὰ ἐναντία· τὰς γὰρ γειτνιάσεις ἀφορμὰς προξενεῖν ἐνίοτε πολλῶν ἐπηρειῶν. αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν τὸν βοῦν εἰς παράδειγμα παρέλαβε· δεῖ δ’ ἐκτείνειν ἐπὶ τὰ ὅμοια τὸν λόγον, ὡς οὐκ ἂν οὐδὲν ἀπόλοιτο ‹εἰ μὴ› διὰ τὸν γείτονα. πρὸς ἃ καὶ οἱ παλαιοὶ νόμοι βλέποντες ἐδικαίωσαν τῶν ἀπολλυμένων τοὺς γείτονας τὴν τίμην συνεισάγειν.

[50a] Tzetzes in OD 346:

Δείκνυσι τοῦτο Πλούταρχος. Θεμιστοκλέα γάρ φησιν ἢ Κάτωνα πιπράσκοντα τὸν ἀγρὸν λέγειν ὅτι ἀγαθὸν ἔχει γείτονα.

[50b] Scholia in OD 348:

Λέγεται ὅτι Θεμιστοκλῆς χωρίον πιπράσκων ἐκέλευσε κηρύττεσθαι ὅτι ἀγαθὸν ἔχει γείτονα.

[51a] Scholia in OD 353-354:

τὸν φιλέοντα φιλεῖν καὶ τῷ προσιόντι προσεῖναι,

καὶ δόμεν, ὅς κεν δῷ, καὶ μὴ δόμεν, ὅς κεν μὴ δῷ.

Τούτους ὁ Πλούταρχος ἐκβάλλει τοὺς στίχους. ὁ γὰρ μέλλων λέγειν ὅτι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς τὸ διδόναι προσήκει καὶ ὡς χαίρουσι διδόντες, ἄτοπος ἂν εἴη λέγων καὶ διδόναι τῷ διδόντι καὶ μὴ διδόναι τῷ μὴ διδόντι· οὕτω γὰρ ἂν τὰς δόσεις ἀναγκαίας ἐποίει, τὰς δὲ προκαθηγουμένας τῶν εὐεργεσιῶν ἐξέκοψεν.

[51b] Tzetzes in OD 353:

Ὁ μὲν Πλούταρχος τούτους ὀβελίζει τοὺς στίχους, λέγων οὐδέποτε ἂν γενέσθαι φίλον, εἰ τῶν φιλιωθησομένων ἑκάτερος ἀναμένει παρὰ τοῦ ἑτέρου προφιλιωθῆναι.

[52] Schol. in OD 355:

δώτῃ μέν τις ἔδωκεν, ἀδώτῃ δ’ οὔ τις ἔδωκεν.

Τὸν δώτην καὶ ἀδώτην οὐ λέγει τὸν δεδωκότα πρότερον ἢ μὴ δεδωκότα - καὶ γὰρ ἂν καὶ τοῦτο ὑπεναντίως ἔλεγε τοῖς περὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν δόγμασιν - ἀλλὰ τὸν δωρητικὸν καὶ μὴ δωρητικὸν χαρίτων ἐμμελῶν καὶ χαριέντων. ὁ Πλούταρχος εἰκάζει τοὺς τοιούτους, ὅσοι προαίρεσιν δωρητικὴν ἔχουσι, τοῖς σφαιρίζουσιν, οἳ λαβόντες τὴν ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων ῥιφεῖσαν σφαῖραν οὔτε κατέχουσιν οὔτε ἀντιπέμπουσι τοῖς μὴ εἰδόσι σφαιρίζειν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἀντιπέμψαι δυναμένοις.

[53] Ibid. in OD 359-362:

ὃς δέ κεν αὐτὸς ἕληται ἀναιδείηφι πιθήσας,

καί τε σμικρὸν ἐόν, τό γ’ ἐπάχνωσεν φίλον ἦτορ.

εἰ γάρ κεν καὶ σμικρὸν ἐπὶ σμικρῷ καταθεῖο

καὶ θαμὰ τοῦτ’ ἔρδοις, τάχα κεν μέγα καὶ τὸ γένοιτο.

Δοκεῖ μὲν ἀπηρτῆσθαι τοῦτο τοῦ προρρηθέντος· ἔχει δὲ καὶ συνέχειαν. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ εἶπεν ὅτι, κἂν ᾖ σμικρὸν τὸ ἀφαιρεθέν, παχνοῖ τὸν ἀφαιρεθέντα διὰ τὴν ἀκούσιον ἀφαίρεσιν, ἐπήγαγεν ὅτι τὸ σμικρὸν ἐπισωρευόμενον μὲν μέγα τι γίνεται, ἀφαιρούμενον δ’ εἰς τὸ μηδὲν καταλήγει· ὥστε εἰκότως λυπεῖ καὶ τὸ σμικρὸν ἀφαιρούμενον. καὶ εἰ τοῦτο ἀληθές, ὀρθῶς Ἀριστοτέλης ἔλεγεν ὅτι χείριστον τῶν ἐν τῷ βίῳ τὸ μὴ παρὰ τοῦτο λεγόμενον· εἰ γὰρ καταφρονοῖτο ὡς μικρὸν ἕκαστον καὶ ἐπιλέγοιμεν μὴ παρὰ τοῦτο, κακῶς πράξομεν· ἐν μὲν οὖν οἰκονομίαις λιμώξομεν τοῦτο ἀεὶ ἐπᾴδοντες· ἐν δὲ τῇ διαίτῃ νοσήσομεν πολλάκις μὲν παρορῶντες τὸ ὀρθόν, λέγοντες δὲ ταύτην τὴν φωνήν· ἡ γὰρ καθ’ ἓν ἕκαστον ἔλλειψις μεγάλην ἀθροίζει τοῖς παρορῶσι τὴν βλάβην.

[54] Ibid. in OD 368-369:

ἀρχομένου δὲ πίθου καὶ λήγοντος κορέσασθαι,

μεσσόθι φείδεσθαι· δειλὴ δ’ ἐν πυθμένι φειδώ.

Καὶ ἐν τοῖς πατρίοις ἐστὶν ἑορτὴ Πιθοιγία, καθ’ ἣν οὔτε οἰκέτην οὔτε μισθωτὸν εἴργειν τῆς ἀπολαύσεως τοῦ οἴνου θεμιτὸν ἦν, ἀλλὰ θύσαντας πᾶσι μεταδιδόναι τοῦ δώρου τοῦ Διονύσου. καλῶς οὖν εἴρηται δεῖν ‘ἀρχομένου πίθου κορέσασθαι’, καὶ τῇ ἑορτῇ συμφώνως· δεῖ δὲ καὶ φειδοῦς ταμιευομένοις τὴν ἀπόλαυσιν, ὥστε καὶ εἰσαῦθις ἡμῖν γενέσθαι καὶ αὖθις. εἰ δ’ ἀπαναλωθέντος τοῦ πλείστου τὸ λειπόμενον ὀλίγον εἴη, χαλεπὴν εἶναι τὴν φειδώ· τοῦτο γάρ, φησί, τάχα ἂν καὶ τραπείη καὶ ἄχρηστον γένοιτο τοῖς φεισαμένοις.

[55] Ibid. in OD 370-372:

μισθὸς δ’ ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ εἰρημένος ἄρκιος ἔστω.

καί τε κασιγνήτῳ γελάσας ἐπὶ μάρτυρα θέσθαι.

πίστιες ἄρτοι ὁμῶς καὶ ἀπιστίαι ὤλεσαν ἄνδρας.

Τούτους δέ τινες τοὺς στίχους ἐξέβαλον· ὁ δὲ Πλούταρχος ἐγκρίνει· δεῖν γὰρ καὶ τὸν φίλον συνεργὸν παραλαμβάνειν ἐπὶ ὡρισμένῳ μισθῷ· ἔχθραν γὰρ προξενεῖ τὸ τῆς ἀμοιβῆς μετὰ τὸ ἔργον ἐλλιπὲς ἀδοκήτως ὑπάρξαν. τούτῳ δ’ ὅμοιον καὶ τὸ τὰ πρὸς τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς συναλλάγματα μὴ ἀμάρτυρα ποιεῖσθαι. τὸ δ’ ἐπαχθὲς ἀφαιρῶν εἶπεν ὅτι γελάσας, τουτέστιν ὡς παίζοντας καὶ μὴ σπουδάζοντας. πολλοὺς γὰρ ἀπολέσθαι διὰ τὸ πιστεῦσαί τισιν οἷς ἀπιστεῖν δέον, ἀπιστῆσαι δὲ πάλιν οἷς πιστεῦσαι δέον.

[56] Ibid. in OD 375:

ὃς δὲ γυναικὶ πέποιθε, πέποιθ’ ὅ γε φηλήτῃσι.

Τοῦτον ὁ Πλούταρχος χαράττει τὸν στίχον.

[57] Ibid. in OD 376:

μουνογενὴς δὲ πάις σῴζοι πατρώιον οἶκον.

Δόξειεν ἂν ἄτοπος ὁ στίχος εἶναι καὶ ἀγανακτοῦντος, ὅτι γέγονεν οὐ μόνος τῷ πατρί. μήποτε, φησὶν ὁ Πλούταρχος, καὶ Πλάτων (Leges 923) ἕπεται τῷ Ἡσιόδῳ καὶ Ξενοκράτης (fr. 97 Heinze), καὶ Λυκοῦργος πρὸ τούτων· οἳ πάντες ᾤοντο δεῖν ἕνα κληρονόμον καταλιπεῖν· καὶ τοῦτο ἦν τὸ ὑπὸ Ἡσιόδου λεγόμενον.

[58] Tzetzes in OD 378:

γηραιὸς δὲ θάνοις ἕτερον παῖδ’ ἐγκαταλείπων.

Οἱ περὶ Πρόκλον καὶ Πλούταρχον ἀδιανόητον τοῦτό φασιν εἶναι καὶ περισσόν.

[59] Schol. in OD 380:

πλείων μὲν πλεόνων μελέτη, μείζων δ’ ἐπιθήκη.

Μήποτε δέ, φησὶν ὁ Πλούταρχος, ἐκεῖνο λέγει τὸ τοῦ Λάμπιδος, ὅτι πλείων μὲν ἡ φροντὶς ἐπὶ τοῦ πλείονος πλούτου, μείζων δ’ ἡ ἐπίδοσις, ἣν ‘ἐπιθήκην’ εἶπεν, αὐτοῦ συναύξοντος ἑαυτὸν τοῦ πλούτου διὰ τὴν τῶν ὀργάνων εὐπορίαν καὶ τῶν ὑπηρετῶν. ὃ καὶ ὁ Λάμπις εἴρηκεν ἐρωτηθεὶς πῶς ἐκτήσατο τὸν ‹πλοῦτον· τὸν› μὲν γὰρ ὀλίγον ἔφη χαλεπῶς, τὸν δὲ πολὺν ῥᾳδίως, πολλῶν ὄντων ἤδη τῶν ὑπουργούντων.

[60] Ibid. in OD 391:

γυμνὸν σπείρειν - - -

Κάλλιον δέ, φησὶν ὁ Πλούταρχος, μετὰ τὸν σπόρον ὑετὸν συμβῆναι ἢ πρὸ σπόρου· δῆλον δέ· τὰ γὰρ μετὰ Πλειάδα σπαρέντα καὶ πρὸ τροπῶν φύεσθαι ἑβδομαῖα - ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ δὲ καὶ τριταῖα - τὰ δὲ μετὰ τροπὰς μόλις ἐν τριπλασίῳ τούτου τοῦ χρόνου. οὕτως τὸ ἐπιγενέσθαι ὑετὸν ἀγαθὸν μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ προγενέσθαι. οἱ δ’ ἀρχαῖοι καὶ πρωϊαίτερον ἔσπειρον, ὡς δῆλον ἐκ τῶν Ἐλευσινίων τελετῶν, ἐν αἷς ἐλέγετο ‘πάριθι κόρη γέφυραν· ὅσον οὔπω †τριπόλεον δέ’ (Carmina Popularia 50 Diehl 31 Page).

[61] Ibid. in OD 414:

ἦμος δὴ λήγει μένος ὀξέος ἠελίοιο

καύματος ἰδαλίμου μετοπωρινὸν ὀμβρήσαντος

Ζηνός ...........................

................................

................................

................................

τῆμος ἀδηκτοτάτη πέλεται τμηθεῖσα σιδήρῳ

ὕλη .............................

Λέγοι δ’ ἂν καὶ τὴν ἄβρωτον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐγγινομένων θηριδίων τοῖς φυτοῖς, ὡς ἀδηκτοτάτην οὖσαν, οἷον θριπῶν καὶ τερηδόνων, ἃ διεμφύεται τοῖς δένδρεσι σηπομένης τῆς ἐν αὐτοῖς ὑγρότητος. τὸ δ’ ἐν τούτῳ ὑλοτομεῖν ὀρθόν, ὅτε ξηρὰ μέν ἐστι τὰ δένδρα, ἀποδεδωκότα τὸν οἰκεῖον καρπόν, καὶ οὐκέτι κάμνει περὶ τὴν ἐκτροφὴν αὐτοῦ, μετρίας δὲ ἔτυχεν ὑγρότητος ἀλλ’ οὐ πολλῆς ἤδη πρὸς τὸ οἰκεῖον, τοῖς τέμνουσιν ὥστε [γε] μὴ σήπεσθαι μετὰ τὴν τομήν. εἰς ὅ τινας βλέποντας καὶ φθινούσης τέμνειν τῆς σελήνης ἀλλὰ μὴ πανσελήνου μηδ’ αὐξανομένης· ἡ γὰρ τοῦ φωτὸς ἐπίδοσις ὑγρότερα ποιεῖ τὰ δένδρα καὶ εὐεπίφορα τεμνόμενα πρὸς τὴν σῆψιν.

[62] Ibid. in OD 423:

ὅλμον μὲν τριπόδην - - -

Πολὺς ἐν τούτοις ὁ Πλούταρχος ἀμυνόμενος τοὺς γελῶντας τὸν Ἡσίοδον τῆς σμικρολογίας, καὶ Πλάτωνα (Leges 746E) λέγων περὶ τῆς τῶν σκευῶν ἐν τοῖς οἴκοις διειλέχθαι συμμετρίας καὶ Λυκοῦργον περὶ τῆς τῶν θυρῶν κατασκευῆς, ἵν’ ἀπὸ πρίονος ὦσι καὶ πελέκεως μόνον ἀποίκιλοι. δεῖν οὖν ἀποδέχεσθαι καὶ τὸν Ἡσίοδον μέτρα παραδόντα καὶ ὅλμου καὶ ὑπέρου καὶ ἄξονος καὶ σφύρας. καὶ τοὺς ἀρχαίους δὲ πολὺν καὶ τούτων ποιεῖσθαι λόγον καὶ τῶν εὑρετῶν Πάμφων μὲν τιμᾶν, διότι τὸν λύχνον πρῶτος εὗρε καὶ τὸ ἐκ τούτου φῶς εἰσήγαγεν εἴς τε τὰ ἱερὰ καὶ τὴν ἰδίαν χρῆσιν, τὸν δὲ τῶν Πιτθέων δῆμον διὰ τοῦτο οὕτως ὀνομάσαι, διότι τῶν πίθων ἐπενοήσαντο τὴν πλάσιν· ὥστε μὴ τὴν πολυτέλειαν προσήκειν θαυμάζειν ἀλλὰ τὴν τῶν χρειωδῶν, κἂν εὐτελῆ τυγχάνῃ, περιποίησιν.

[63a] Schol. in OD 426:

τρισπίθαμον δ’ ἄψιν τάμνειν δεκαδώρῳ ἁμάξῃ.

Σπιθαμὴ μέν ἐστιν ἁπλωθείσης τῆς χειρὸς ‹ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀντίχειρος› ἐπὶ τὸ ἄκρον τοῦ σμικροτάτου δακτύλου διάστημα ... δῶρον δὲ τὸ αὐτό πως καὶ παλαιστή, ἀλλ’ αὕτη μὲν ἐκ τῶν τεσσάρων δακτύλων ὀρθῶς συντεθέντων, δῶρον δὲ τούτων συστραφέντων καὶ τοῦ ἀντίχειρος ἐγερθέντος.

[63b]

Hesych. s. v. δεκαδώρῳ ἁμάξῃ.

Ἧς ἡ διάμετρος τῶν τροχῶν δέκα δώρων. δῶρον δέ, ὡς μέν τινες, ἡ παλαιστή· ὡς δ’ ἕτεροι, ὅταν τοὺς τέσσαρας δακτύλους συστρέψας ἐγείρῃς τὸν ἀντίχειρα, ὡς Πλούταρχος.

[64] Schol. in OD 427:

... φέρειν δὲ γύην ...

(Τὸν μὲν οὖν γύην εἶναι κελεύει πρίνινον, προσθείς ‘ἢ κατ’ ἄρουραν εἰ εὕροις, ἢ κατ’ ὄρος, πρίνινον.) οὐ γὰρ εὔπορος Βοιωτοῖς ἡ πρῖνος, φησὶν ὁ Πλούταρχος, ἀλλὰ τοῖς πτελεΐνοις ἀντὶ τῶν πρινίνων χρῶνται τοὺς γύας κατασκευάζοντες.

[65] Ibid. in OD 435:

δάφνης ἢ πτελέης ἀκιώτατοι ἱστοβοῆες

Τὸ δ’ ἄσηπτον ἐδήλωσεν εἰπὼν ἀκιώτατον· ὁ δὲ Πλούταρχος ἐξηγήσατο τὴν αἰτίαν, λέγων εἶναί τι θηρίδιον, ὃ καλεῖται κίς, διεσθίον τὰ ξύλα· τοῦτο καὶ Πίνδαρον οὕτω καλεῖν περὶ τοῦ χρυσοῦ λέγοντα (fr. 222 Bergk, 261 Turyn)

‘κεῖνον οὐ σῆς, οὐ κὶς δάμναται’,

ὡς ἄσηπτον· ἐγγίνεται δ’ οὖν τὰ τοιαῦτα θηρίδια τοῖς γλυκέσι καὶ μαλακοῖς ξύλοις, δάφνη δὲ καὶ πτελέα δριμύτατα.

[66] Ibid. in OD 453-354:

ῥηίδιον γὰρ ἔπος εἰπεῖν· βόε δὸς καὶ ἅμαξαν.

ῥηίδιον δ’ ἀπανήνασθαι· πάρα ἔργα βόεσσιν.

(Τούτων τὸ μὲν ὁ ‘ἀβούτης’ εἴποι ἂν αἰτῶν βόας ἵν’ ἀρόσῃ τοῦ καιροῦ καλοῦντος, τὸ δ’ ὁ εὐπορῶν βοῶν ἀποκρίναιτο ἄν, ὅτι καὶ οἱ παρ’ αὐτῷ βόες ἔργα ἔχουσι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἂν αἰτούμενος δοίη.) ὃ καὶ ὁ Λάκων τὴν κυνῆν αἰτούμενος εἰπεῖν λέγεται πρὸς τὸν αἰτοῦντα· ‘εἰ μὲν εὐδία, ἔσται καὶ σοὶ ἄχρηστος· εἰ δὲ χειμών, καὶ ἐμοὶ χρήσιμος’. καὶ γὰρ καὶ περὶ τῶν βοῶν ἐρεῖ ταὐτὸν ὁ αἰτηθείς· ‘εἰ μὲν καιρὸς τοῦ ἀροῦν, καὶ σοὶ ἄχρηστοι· εἰ δὲ καιρός, κἀμοὶ χρήσιμοι’.

[67] Ibid. in OD 465:

εὔχεσθαι δὲ Διὶ χθονίῳ Δημήτερί θ’ ἁγνῇ.

Ταῦτα καὶ θεοσεβείας ἐστι δόγματα, τρέποντα τοὺς ἔργων ἁπτομένους ἐπὶ τὰς παρακλήσεις τῶν τὰ ἔργα ταῦτα ἐφορώντων καὶ τελειοῦν δυναμένων θεῶν· καὶ οὐδὲν ἀπολείπει πρὸς τέρψιν, εἰ ἐννοήσομεν τὸν ἀροῦν μέλλοντα, λαβόμενον τῆς ἐχέτλης, ἣν προείπομεν ὅ τι ποτὲ δηλοῖ τοῦ ἀρότρου μέρος, πρὶν ἐλάσῃ τοὺς βόας, μάρτυρα καλοῦντα τοῦ ἔργου τὸν Δία καὶ τὴν Δήμητραν, τὸν μὲν ὡς τελεσιουργὸν διὰ τῶν ὄμβρων τῆς σπορᾶς, τὴν δ’ ὡς προστάτιν τῶν γονίμων δυνάμεων τῆς γῆς. ὁ γοῦν πάντα τὰ παρ’ ἑαυτοῦ ποιήσας οὐχ ἁπλῶς αἰτεῖ τοὺς θεοὺς ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἀπαιτεῖ τὸ τέλος. ὡς οὖν ἔλεγε Σωκράτης εὔχεσθαι δεῖν μουσικὴν τὸν μανθάνοντα καὶ γονὴν παίδων τὸν γαμοῦντα, οὕτω καὶ Ἡσίοδος καρπῶν γονὴν τὸν τῆς ἐχέτλης ἤδη λαμβανόμενον καὶ ὅρπηκα φέροντα καὶ ἐπάγοντα τοῖς νώτοις τῶν βοῶν ὥστε κινηθῆναι καὶ ἑλκύσαι τὸ ἄροτρον.

[68] Ibid. in OD 486-489:

ἦμος κόκκυξ κοκκύζει δρυὸς ἐν πετάλοισι

τὸ πρῶτον, τέρπει δὲ βροτοὺς ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν,

τῆμος Ζεὺς ὕοι τρίτῳ ἤματι μηδ’ ἀπολήγοι,

μήτ’ ἄρ’ ὑπερβάλλων βοὸς ὁπλὴν μήτ’ ἀπολείπων.

Ὅτι δ’ ὁ τοιοῦτος ὄμβρος χρήσιμος, πιστοῦται ἀπὸ τοῦ τὴν Σικελίαν εὐκαρπεῖν, πολλοὺς δεχομένην ἐαρινοὺς ὄμβρους· καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ προσηνὲς εἶναι τῇ γῇ τότε τὸ ὕδωρ ὑποθερμαινόμενον, καὶ νηπίοις οὖσι τοῖς καρποῖς συμφέρον· καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ τινας καὶ ἐν ἰσημερίᾳ σπείραντας ἐαρινῇ πολλοὺς θερίσαι καρπούς· καὶ γὰρ ὁ τριμηνιαῖος λεγόμενος πυρὸς ὑπὸ τοιούτων ὄμβρων ἐκτρέφεσθαι ἔοικε τῶν ἐαρινῶν.

[69] Ibid. in OD 496-497:

μή σε κακοῦ χειμῶνος ἀμηχανίη καταμάρψῃ

σὺν πενίῃ, λεπτῇ δὲ παχὺν πόδα χειρὶ πιέζῃς.

Τῶν λιμωττόντων τοὺς πόδας παχύνεσθαί φησι τὸ δ’ ἄλλο σῶμα λεπτύνεσθαι. καὶ εἷς νόμος ἦν Ἐφεσίων, μὴ ἐξεῖναι πατρὶ παῖδας ἀποθέσθαι, ἕως ἂν διὰ λιμὸν παχυνθῇ τοὺς πόδας. ἴσως δὲ καὶ τὴν ἀπὸ καθίσεως καὶ ἀργίας πάχυνσιν δηλοῖ τῶν ποδῶν· γίνεται γὰρ τοῦτο τοῖς ἐπὶ πολὺ καθημένοις. ἐὰν οὖν ἐν τοῖς ἀλεεινοῖς οἴκοις ἀργὸς καθιζάνῃς, λεπτῇ χειρὶ διὰ λιμὸν τοὺς παχεῖς ὄντας πόδας πιέσεις. ἔοικε δὲ καὶ ἡ ἐν τοῖς λιμοῖς πάχυνσις εἶναι κατὰ φύσιν, ὡς ὁ Πλούταρχος· δεῖται γὰρ τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν θερμόν, ἵνα μένῃ, τῆς ἔξωθεν τροφῆς, ἣν οὐ δεχόμενον δαπανᾷ τὸ σῶμα καὶ αὐτοῦ τι ἀποσπᾷ· δι’ ἀσθένειαν δ’ ἀδυνατοῦν ἀλλοιῶσαι τὸ ἀποσπώμενον ἄπεπτον [ὂν] ἀφίησι· καὶ αὐτὸ μὲν τὰ μέσα καὶ τὰ ἄνω λεπτύνει τοῦ σώματος, ἐν οἷς ἐστι πλεῖον· ἐκεῖνο δ’ ἄρα τὸ ἄπεπτον εἰς τὸ κάτω φέρεται, καὶ οὕτω δὴ παχύνει τοὺς πόδας.

[70] Ibid. in OD 502503:

δείκνυε δὲ δμώεσσι θέρευς ἔτι μέσσου ἐόντος·

οὐκ αἰεὶ θέρος ἐσσεῖται, ποιεῖσθε καλιάς.

Διὰ τούτου τοῦ παραγγέλματος καὶ τὰ ὅμοια νοητέον. οὐκ ἀεὶ εὐτυχήσομεν· παρασκευαστέον οὖν καὶ πρὸς τὰς περιστάσεις. οὐδ’ ἀεὶ ὑγιανοῦμεν· φροντιστέον οὖν καὶ τῶν ‹ταῖς› νόσοις ἐπιτηδείων.

[71a] Ibid. in OD 504:

μῆνα δὲ Ληναιῶνα.

Πλούταρχος οὐδένα φησὶ μῆνα Ληναιῶνα Βοιωτοὺς καλεῖν· ὑποπτεύει δ’ ἢ τὸν Βουκάτιον αὐτὸν λέγειν, ὅς ἐστιν ἡλίου τὸν αἰγόκερων διιόντος (καὶ τοῦ βούδορα τῷ Βουκατίῳ συνᾴδοντος διὰ τὸ πλείστους ἐν αὐτῷ διαφθείρεσθαι βόας) ἢ τὸν Ἑρμάϊον, ὅς ἐστι μετὰ τὸν Βουκάτιον εἰς ταὐτὸν ἐρχόμενος τῷ Γαμηλιῶνι, καθ’ ὃν καὶ τὰ Λήναια παρ’ Ἀθηναίοις· Ἴωνας δὲ τοῦτον οὐδ’ ἄλλως, ἀλλὰ Ληναιῶνα καλεῖν.

[71b] Hesych. s. v. Ληναιών.

Οὐδένα τῶν μηνῶν Βοιωτοὶ οὕτω καλοῦσιν· εἰκάζει δὲ ὁ Πλούταρχος Βουκάτιον. καὶ γὰρ ψυχρός ἐστιν. ἔνιοι δὲ τὸν Ἑρμάϊον, ὃς κατὰ τὸν Βουκάτιόν ἐστιν· καὶ γὰρ Ἀθηναῖοι τὴν τῶν Ληναίων ἑορτὴν ἐν αὐτῷ ἄγουσιν.

[72] Ibid. in OD 524:

ὅτ’ ἀνόστεος ὃν πόδα τένδει.

Ἀριστοτέλης δέ φησι (HA 591ab) ψεῦδος εἶναι τὸ κατὰ τοὺς πολύποδας· αὐτοὺς γὰρ ἑαυτοὺς μὴ κατεσθίειν ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τῶν παγούρων κατεσθίεσθαι.

[73] Ibid. in OD 539-540:

τὴν περιέσσασθαι, ἵνα τοι τρίχες ἀτρεμέωσι,

μηδ’ ὀρθαὶ φρίσσωσιν ἀειρόμεναι κατὰ σῶμα.

Τοῦτο συμβαίνει τοῖς ῥιγῶσι· πιεζομένων γὰρ τῶν τριχῶν κατὰ τὰς ῥίζας ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχρότητος καὶ πυκνώσεως περὶ αὐτὰς γινομένης αἴρονται ὀρθαί.

[74] Ibid. in OD 541-542:

ἀμφὶ δὲ ποσσὶ πέδιλα βοὸς ἶφι κταμένοιο

ἄρμενα δήσασθαι, πίλοις ἔντοσθε πυκάσσας.

Ἐκ βοείων δερμάτων εἶναι κελεύει τὰ ὑποδήματα, καὶ τούτων τῶν ἰσχυρῶν· τοιαῦτα δ’ εἶναι τὰ τῶν σφαγέντων βοῶν, ἀλλ’ οὐ τὰ τῶν αὐτομάτως ἀποθανόντων. εἰκότως· ἀποθνήσκουσι μὲν γὰρ ἢ νοσήσαντες ἢ γηράσαντες ὥστε ἠσθενηκότες, τῶν δὲ σφαγέντων ἡ ἐν τοῖς δέρμασιν ἐνοῦσα δύναμις μένει. δεῖν οὖν ἐκ τούτων εἶναι τὰ ὑποδήματα· δεῖν δὲ καὶ πίλοις ἔνδοθεν χρῆσθαι συμφύεσθαι τοῖς ποσὶ δυναμένοις καὶ μειζόνως ἀλεαίνειν· τὰ γὰρ ἄκρα μείζονος δεῖται βοηθείας ὡς πορρώτερον ὄντα τοῦ μέσου, ἐν ᾧ τὸ ἔμφυτον θερμόν.

[75] Ibid. in OD 548-552:

ἠῷος δ’ ἐπὶ γαῖαν ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος

ἀὴρ πυροφόρος τέταται μακάρων ἐπὶ ἔργοις·

ὅς τε ἀρυσσάμενος ποταμῶν ἄπο αἰεναόντων,

ὑψοῦ ὑπὲρ γαίης ἀρθεὶς ἀνέμοιο θυέλλῃ,

ἄλλοτε μὲν ὕει ποτὶ ἕσπερον, ἄλλοτ’ ἄησι

πυκνὰ Θρηϊκίου Βορέω νέφεα κλονέοντος.

Ταῦτα λέγεται φυσικῶς περὶ τῶν εἰς τὸν ἀέρα φερομένων ἐκ τῶν ὑγρῶν τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς οἷον ποταμῶν ἢ λιμνῶν ἀναθυμιάσεων ... τὴν δὲ θέσιν ‹αὐτοῦ› μεταξὺ [αὐτὴν] γῆς καὶ οὐρανοῦ τάσιν ἐκάλεσεν ὡς καὶ εἰς ὕψος χωροῦντος καὶ εἰς τὰ κοῖλα καταδυομένου τῆς γῆς. τοῦτον δέ φησιν ἀπὸ τῶν ποταμῶν ἀρυσάμενον τὰς ἀτμίδας αἴρεσθαι ὑπὲρ τὴν γῆν ἀνάγοντα ταύτας. διὰ γὰρ τὴν ψῦξιν τὸ θερμὸν εἴσω τῆς γῆς εἰργόμενον ἀναπέμπει τὰς ἀτμίδας καὶ ἐκ τῶν ποταμῶν τῶν ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ ἐκ τῶν φρεάτων· καὶ ἔστιν ἰδεῖν τοῦτο ἐναργῶς ἀποτελούμενον ἀπὸ τῶν ἁλυκῶν καὶ φρεατίων ἀνάδοσιν ἕωθεν τοιαύτην ἀτμώδη. ὁ οὖν ἀὴρ δεχόμενος ταύτας ὑψοῖ διὰ τῆς τῶν ἀνέμων συστροφῆς, καὶ ὅταν τοῦτο γένηται τότε μὲν ὡς πρὸς ἑσπέραν ὕει, ψυχθείσης τῆς ἀτμίδος, τότε δὲ εἰς πνευμάτων μεταβάλλει συστάσεις.

[76] Ibid. in OD 559-560:

τῆμος τὤμισυ βουσίν, ἐπ’ ἀνέρι δὲ πλέον εἴη

ἁρμαλιῆς· μακραὶ γὰρ ἐπίρροθοι εὐφρόναι εἰσίν.

Διὰ τὸν χειμέριον μῆνα τροφὴν πλείονα κελεύει διδόναι, τοῖς μὲν βουσὶ τὸ ἥμισυ τῆς εἰωθυίας προστιθέντα, τοῖς δ’ ἀνθρώποις πλέον ἢ τὸ ἥμισυ· εἰ μὴ ἄρα τὸ ἥμισυ καὶ τὸ πλέον δεῖ συντάττειν, ἵν’ ἀμφοτέροις πλέον ἢ τὸ ἥμισυ διδῷ τις τοῦ ἔθους· πέττεται γὰρ χειμῶνος ὄντος ἡ τροφὴ μᾶλλον ἐν μήκει τῶν νυκτῶν· ἥ τε γὰρ θερμότης εἴσω καθειργμένη διὰ τὴν ἔξωθεν πύκνωσιν πλείονα δαπανᾷ· καὶ μῆκος αἱ νύκτες ἔχουσαι πλείονα πέττουσι τροφήν, ἣν ‘ἁρμαλιάν’ εἶπεν ὡς προσφιλῆ τοῖς τρεφομένοις καὶ εὐάρμοστον.

[77] Ibid. in OD 561:

ταῦτα φυλασσόμενος ....

Τοῦτον καὶ τοὺς ἑξῆς δύο διαγράφει Πλούταρχος ... τούτων δὲ διαγραφέντων ἀκόλουθα τὰ ἑξῆς [ᾖ].

[78] Ibid. in OD 571:

ἀλλ’ ὁπόταν φερέοικος ...

Ὁ μὲν Θρᾷξ Διονύσιος ἔλεγε φερέοικον τὸν κοχλίαν, ἐπιτιμῆσαι δέ φησιν ‹ὁ Πλούταρχος› αὐτῷ τινα τοῦτο λέγοντι Ἀρκάδα· εἶναι γὰρ ἐν Ἀρκαδίᾳ τὸν φερέοικον ὁρᾶν μελίττῃ ἐοικότα σμικρότατον κάρφη καὶ συρφετὸν ἑαυτῷ συνάγοντα στεγοποιεῖσθαι διὰ τοὺς χειμῶνας, βαίνειν δ’ ἀνὰ τὰ φυτὰ θέρους, τὸν δὲ κοχλίαν μὴ φαίνεσθαι θέρους, ἀλλ’ ὁπόταν ὄμβρος γένηται ἀναδυόμενον [φαίνεσθαι] διὰ τῶν φυτῶν βαίνειν, ἕλκοντα τὸ κοῦφον ἐξόπισθεν ὄστρακον.

[79] Ibid. in OD 580-581:

ἠώς, ἥ τε φανεῖσα πολέας ἐπέβησε κελεύθου

ἀνθρώπους.

Τὸν μὲν οὖν Ὅμηρόν φησιν ὁ Πλούταρχος ἐπιθέτοις εἰς τέρψιν εὐδοκιμοῦσι κοσμῆσαι τὴν ἡμέραν ‘κροκόπεπλον’ αὐτὴν λέγοντα καί ‘ῥοδοδάκτυλον·’ τὸν δ’ Ἡσίοδον μειζόνως ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων, ἐφ’ ἃ δὴ προϊοῦσα κινεῖ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκλύσεως εἰς τὴν ἐνεργὸν μεθίστησι ζωήν.

[80] Ibid. in OD 586:

μαχλόταται δὲ γυναῖκες, ἀφαυρότατοι δέ τοι ἄνδρες.

Ὡς ψυχρότεραι τὴν κρᾶσιν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο βράδιον ὀργῶσαι ἀναθερμαινόμεναι. οἱ δ’ ἄνδρες ἀφαυρότεροι διὰ τῆς ἔξωθεν θέρμης ἀφαυαινόμενοι, φύσει θερμότεροι ὄντες καὶ ξηρότεροι τῶν γυναικῶν. τοιαῦτα δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἀλκαῖον ᾄδειν (fr. 94 Diehl)

‘οἴνῳ πνεύμονας τέγγε· τὸ γὰρ ἄστρον περιτέλλεται,

ἁ δ’ ὥρα χαλεπά,

ἀχεῖ δ’ ἐκ πετάλων ἁδέα τέττιξ,

ἀνθεῖ δὲ καὶ σκόλυμος· νῦν δὲ γυναῖκες μιαρώταται,

λεπτοὶ δέ τοι ἄνδρες, ἐπεὶ κεφαλὴν καὶ γόνατα

Σείριος ἄζει.’

[81] Ibid. in OD 591-596:

καὶ βοὸς ὑλοφάγοιο κρέας μή πω τετοκυίης

πρωτογόνων τ’ ἐρίφων· ἐπὶ δ’ αἴθοπα πινέμεν οἶνον,

ἐν σκιῇ ἑζόμενον, κεκορημένον ἦτορ ἐδωδῆς,

ἀντίον ἀκραέος Ζεφύρου τρέψαντα πρόσωπα,

κρήνης τ’ αἰενάου καὶ ἀπορρύτου, ἥ τ’ ἀθόλωτος,

τρὶς ὕδατος προχέειν, τὸ δὲ τέτρατον ἱέμεν οἴνου.

Ἐργάτῃ μὲν ἡ τροφὴ πρέπουσα πληροῦν βοείων κρεῶν τὴν γαστέρα, καὶ ἐν σκιᾷ δὲ καθήμενον καὶ ὑπὸ Ζεφύρου καταπνεόμενον πίνειν ἐπὶ τῇ κρεωφαγίᾳ, μίξαντα κρηναῖον ὕδωρ τῷ οἴνῳ, τρία μέτρα πρὸς ἕν· οὐ γὰρ διαρρέουσιν ἀνθρώποις γράφει δίαιταν, ἀλλ’ ἐκπονοῦσι τὴν γῆν καὶ αὐτουργοῖς καὶ βιωτικοῖς· τοῖς γὰρ τοιούτοις οὐδὲν προσφορώτερον τῆς ἰσχυρᾶς καὶ δυσφθάρτου ταύτης τροφῆς, οὐ χιόνων δεομένοις οὐδὲ ῥιπιδίων, ἀλλὰ φυσικῆς εὐπνοίας, οἷος ὁ ἀκραὴς Ζέφυρος, καθαρὸς ὤν· τὰ γὰρ βόρεια λήγοντα συνάπτεται τοῖς δυτικοῖς πνεύμασι . τὸ δὲ ταύτην ἐπαινέσαι τὴν κρᾶσιν τοῦ οἴνου καὶ τοῦ ὕδατος ἄτοπον εἶναι δοκεῖ· λέγεται γὰρ

‘ἢ πέντε πίνειν ἢ τρί’ ἢ μὴ τέσσαρα’·

τὸ δὲ τρία μιγνύναι πρὸς ἓν τοιοῦτον εἶναι δοκεῖ. ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖναι μὲν αἱ κράσεις, δύο πρὸς ἓν καὶ τριῶν πρὸς δύο, κατὰ λόγους διπλάσιον καὶ ἡμιόλιον, τοὺς ἡγεμόνας τῶν πολλαπλασίων καὶ ἐπιμορίων, εἰς μέθην εἰσὶ πινόντων· αὕτη δὲ σωφρόνως πινόντων. καὶ μὴν καὶ περὶ ὕδατος ἄλλοι μὲν γράφουσιν εἰς σταθμὸν ἀποβλέποντες ἐκλεγόμενοι τὸ κουφότερον· καί τινες καὶ ὑδροστάτας κατασκευάζουσι, δι’ ὧν τὸ βαρὺ καὶ κοῦφον ὕδωρ κρίνουσι· καίτοι πολλαχοῦ κοῦφον μέν ἐστι πονηρὸν δέ, ὡς ἐν Χαλκίδι Πλούταρχος ἱστορεῖ τὸ τῆς Ἀρεθούσης. οἱ δὲ καὶ τὸ ῥᾳδίως οἴνῳ κεραννύμενον δοκιμάζουσιν ὕδωρ ἄριστον, πολλῆς δεόμενον πείρας καὶ διαφόρων οἴνων εἰς τὸ φωραθῆναι μὴ τοιοῦτον ὄν· ἄλλοι δὲ εἰς κεράμειον ποτήριον ὕδωρ ἐμβαλόντες ἐῶσι δι’ ὅλης μεῖναι νυκτός, εἶτα γενομένης ἡμέρας ὁρῶσιν εἴ τινα ἐντὸς τῆς κύλικος ἔχει γεώδη περιφέρειαν συστᾶσαν καὶ μελανίζουσαν· καὶ τοῦτο σημεῖον τίθενται τῆς τοῦ ὕδατος φαυλότητος, οὐδ’ οὗτοι πεῖραν παραδιδόντες εὐπόριστον. πάντων δὴ οὖν τῶν τοιούτων ἁπλούστερον ὁ Ἡσίοδος κελεύει τῷ γεωργικῷ μιγνύναι τῷ οἴνῳ ὕδωρ ἐκ κρήνης ἀπορρύτου, ἵν’ ᾖ κινούμενον καὶ λεπτὸν καὶ ἀθόλωτον, ἀλλὰ μὴ γεῶδες.

[82] Ibid. in OD 639-640:

ὀιζυρῇ ἐνὶ κώμῃ -

Ἄσκρῃ.

Κεῖται μὲν οὖν ὑπὲρ τὴν ὁδόν, ἣν βαδίζουσιν οἱ ἐπὶ τὸ Μουσεῖον ἀπιόντες, ἡ Ἄσκρη. τοῦ δ’ Ἑλικῶνος ἐκκειμένου τοῖς ἀνέμοις, καὶ θαυμαστὰς μὲν ἀναπαύλας ἔχοντος ἐν θέρει δυσηνέμου δὲ ὄντος ἐν χειμῶνι, τὴν Ἄσκρην ἐν τῷ μεσημβρινῷ κειμένην τοῦ ὄρους τῆς μὲν ἐκ τῶν ἀνέμων ἀπολαύειν βίας ἐν δὲ τῷ θέρει τὸ εὔπνουν μὴ ἔχειν. ἀοίκητον δ’ αὐτὴν ὁ Πλούταρχος ἱστορεῖ καὶ τότε εἶναι, Θεσπιέων ἀνελόντων τοὺς οἰκοῦντας, Ὀρχομενίων δὲ τοὺς σωθέντας δεξαμένων· ὅθεν καὶ τὸν θεὸν Ὀρχομενίοις προστάξαι τὰ Ἡσιόδου λείψανα λαβεῖν καὶ θάψαι παρ’ αὑτοῖς, ὡς καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης (fr. 565) φησὶ γράφων τὴν Ὀρχομενίων πολιτείαν.

[83] Ibid. in OD 643:

νῆ’ ὀλίγην αἰνεῖν.

Αἰνεῖν δέ τινες ἀντὶ τοῦ παραιτεῖσθαι παρέλαβον, †τὸ ‘χαίρειν’ λέγειν ἢ παρέρχεσθαι ἢ οὐκ αἰνεῖν ὡς δεινήν, ὥσπερ ἐπαινὴν Περσεφόνειαν.

[84] Ibid. in OD 654-662:

ἔνθα δ’ ἐγὼν ἐπ’ ἄεθλα δαίφρονος Ἀμφιδάμαντος

Χαλκίδα τ’ εἰσεπέρησα· τὰ δὲ προπεφραδμένα πολλὰ

ἆθλ’ ἔθεσαν παῖδες μεγαλήτορες· ἔνθα μέ φημι

ὕμνῳ νικήσαντα φέρειν τρίποδ’ ὠτώεντα.

τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ Μούσῃς Ἑλικωνιάδεσσ’ ἀνέθηκα,

ἔνθα με τὸ πρῶτον λιγυρῆς ἐπέβησαν ἀοιδῆς.

τόσσον τοι νηῶν γε πεπείρημαι πολυγόμφων·

ἀλλὰ καὶ ὣς ἐρέω Ζηνὸς νόον αἰγιόχοιο·

Μοῦσαι γάρ μ’ ἐδίδαξαν ἀθέσφατον ὕμνον ἀείδειν.

Ταῦτα πάντα περὶ τῆς Χαλκίδος ‹καὶ› τοῦ Ἀμφιδάμαντος καὶ τοῦ ἄθλου καὶ τοῦ τρίποδος ἐμβεβλῆσθαί φησιν ὁ Πλούταρχος οὐδὲν ἔχοντα χρηστόν. τὸν μὲν οὖν Ἀμφιδάμαντα ναυμαχοῦντα πρὸς Ἐρετριέας ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ληλάντου ἀποθανεῖν· ἆθλα δ’ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ καὶ ἀγῶνας θεῖναι τελευτήσαντι τοὺς παῖδας· νικῆσαι δ’ ἀγωνιζόμενον τὸν Ἡσίοδον καὶ ἆθλον μουσικὸν τρίποδα λαβεῖν καὶ ἀναθεῖναι τοῦτον ἐν τῷ Ἑλικῶνι, ὅπου καὶ κάτοχος ἐγεγόνει ταῖς Μούσαις, καὶ ἐπίγραμμα ἐπὶ τούτῳ θρυλοῦσι. πάντα οὖν ταῦτα ληρώδη λέγων ἐκεῖνος ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἄρχεται τῶν εἰς τὸν καιρὸν τοῦ πλοῦ συντεινόντων, “ἤματα πεντήκοντα.”

[85] Ibid. in OD 706:

εὖ δ’ ὄπιν ἀθανάτων μακάρων πεφυλαγμένος εἶναι.

Τοῦτο μετὰ τοὺς περὶ γάμου λόγους προοίμιόν ἐστι τῶν ῥηθησομένων παιδευμάτων· δεῖ γὰρ πρὸ πάντων στοχάζεσθαι τοῦ κεχαρισμένου τοῖς θεοῖς. καὶ γὰρ ὡς Πλάτων φησὶν ὁ βλέπων εἰς τὸ θεῖον ἐξ ἀσελγημάτων [αὐτοῦ] φυλάττειν ἑαυτὸν σπουδάζει καὶ πάντων ἀσεβημάτων· καὶ γὰρ ὁ τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας αἰσχυνόμενος, παρόντων αὐτῶν ἀπέχεται τούτων, μή τί γε ὁ τοὺς θεούς. καὶ τί λέγω τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς αὐτούς; ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰκόνας ἀγαθῶν τινες σέβονται, καὶ ὑπ’ αὐταῖς ὀκνοῦσί τινα πονηρὰν πρᾶξιν πρᾶξαι, ὡς ἡ μὴ προσιεμένη τὸν ἐραστὴν ἑταίρα δρᾶσαί τι ἄσχημον ὑπὸ τῇ τοῦ Ξενοκράτους εἰκόνι τοῦ σώφρονος.

[86] Ibid. in OD 707-708:

μηδὲ κασιγνήτῳ ἶσον ποιεῖσθαι ἑταῖρον·

εἰ δέ κε ποιήσῃς, μή μιν πρότερος κακὸν ἔρξῃς.

Τὴν κατὰ φύσιν ἡμῶν σχέσιν πρὸς ἀλλήλους τῆς κατὰ προαίρεσιν εἶναι τιμιωτέραν φησὶν οὗτος ὁ λόγος. καὶ γὰρ τὴν μὲν ἀποθέσθαι ἐφ’ ἡμῖν· τῆς δὲ τὸν δεσμὸν ἐπήγαγε τὸ πᾶν αὐτὴν φυλάττειν βέβαιον· δεῖν οὖν μείζονα τιμὴν νέμειν ἀδελφοῖς ἢ ἑταίροις· καὶ γὰρ καὶ τοῖς πατράσιν οὕτω φίλα πράξομεν, οὓς δεῖ μετὰ θεοὺς τιμᾶν ὡς ἀγάλματα, φησίν, ὄντας ἐφέστια θεῶν. οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὴν οἰκείαν πόλιν τινὲς εἶπον ἐγγυτέραν τῆς μὴ οἰκείας, κἂν μᾶλλόν τις ἐν ταύτῃ τυγχάνῃ τιμώμενος, διὰ τὴν κατὰ φύσιν σχέσιν. καὶ ὀρθῶς ὁ Παναίτιος, πολίτην αὐτὸν Ἀθηναίων ποιεῖσθαι σπευδόντων, εἶπε τῷ σώφρονι μίαν πόλιν ἀρκεῖν (fr. 27 van Straaten) καὶ ὁ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν βασιλεὺς πρὸς τὸν Ἀρκάδα τὸν ξένον, εἰπόντα πρὸς αὐτὸν ὅτι φιλολάκων οἴκοι καλοῖτο, ‘κάλλιόν τοι’ εἶπεν ‘εἰ φιλόπολις ἐκαλοῦ μᾶλλον ἢ φιλολάκων’ ... (τούτῳ δ’ ἀκόλουθον τὸ ἑξῆς, ὅτι, εἴ τινα ποιησόμεθα φίλον, ἀπροσκρούστους εἶναι δεῖ πρὸς αὐτόν). καὶ γὰρ ἡ τῶν Πυθαγορείων παραίνεσις, οὐχ ὅτι προτέρους ἁμαρτάνειν εἰς φίλον διακωλύσειεν ἄν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ ἁμαρτήματα τοῦ φίλου πρᾴως φέρειν, ἕως ἂν δυνώμεθα, παρακελεύεται. καὶ ἔχει τὸ παράγγελμα πρὸς τῇ ἄλλῃ δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ τὸ ἔμφρον· εἰκὸς γὰρ ἡμᾶς καὶ θαρρήσαντας τυγχάνειν τινὰ τῷ φίλῳ, καὶ δεῖ μηδὲν εἰς αὐτὸν ποιεῖν λύον τὴν σχέσιν.

[87] Ibid. in OD 709:

μηδὲ ψεύδεσθαι γλώσσης χάριν.

Μὴ μόνον παραιτεῖσθαι τὸν φίλον λυπεῖν διά τινος ἔργου προσκρούοντα, ἀλλὰ μηδὲ ψευδόμενον πρὸς αὐτὸν φαίνεσθαι διὰ περιττὴν καὶ ἀνόνητον τῆς γλώττης ὁρμήν· καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο λυπηρὸν καὶ προάγον εἰς ἀπέχθειαν· ὁ γὰρ ψευδόμενος καὶ ἀπατῶν οὐ φίλος· ὅθεν τοῦτο παραιτητέον. ὃ καὶ Πλάτων εἶπε (Legg. 730c), τὸν ἑκουσίως ψευδόμενον ἄπιστον εἰκότως εἶναι, τὸν δ’ ἄπιστον ἄφιλον. μέγα οὖν σημεῖον ἤθους οὐ φιλητικοῦ τὸ ψευδολόγον [εἶναι] πρὸς ὃν οἴεται φίλον εἶναι καὶ ἐπιθολοῦν τὴν φιλίαν.

[88] Ibid. in OD 717-718:

μηδέ ποτ’ οὐλομένην πενίην θυμοφθόρον ἀνδρὶ

τέτλαθ’ ὀνειδίζειν, μακάρων δόσιν αἰὲν ἐόντων.

Τὴν πενίαν ἢ ἡμεῖς ἑαυτοῖς προξενοῦμεν διχῶς ἢ δι’ ἀργίαν ἢ δι’ ἀσωτίαν πενόμενοι, ἢ ἀπὸ τοῦ παντὸς ἔχομεν ἀποκληρωθεῖσαν ἡμῖν. ταύτην οὖν ἀξιοῖ μὴ ὀνειδίζειν, ὡς τήν γε παρ’ ἡμᾶς ἀξίαν εἶναι μυρίων ὀνειδῶν οὐ βοηθουμένην ὑφ’ ἡμῶν. οὕτω δὴ καὶ νόσον τὴν μὲν εἱμαρμένην οὐ δεῖ ὀνειδίζειν, τὴν δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς ἡμετέρας ἀκρασίας διὰ τὴν ἀκρασίαν ὀνειδιστέον, οἷς ἐξὸν ὑγιαίνειν οὐχ ὑπάρχει τοῦτο δι’ αὐτήν.

[89] Ibid. in OD 719-721:

γλώσσης τοι θησαυρὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἄριστος

φειδωλῆς, πλείστη δὲ χάρις κατὰ μέτρον ἰούσης·

εἰ δὲ κακὸν εἴποις, τάχα κ’ αὐτὸς μεῖζον ἀκούσαις.

Ὁ μὲν θησαυρὸς τῆς γλώττης ἐστὶν ἡ κρύψις τῶν νοημάτων ἡ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ καὶ τῶν φαντασιῶν τῶν μὴ γενομένων ἐκφόρων ὑπὸ τῆς γλώττης προπετῶς κινουμένης· δεῖ γὰρ τὴν κρίσιν ἐπιμετρεῖν τῇ γλώσσῃ τὸν καιρὸν τῆς κινήσεως, ἀλλ’ οὐ ταύτην κυρίαν εἶναι ἑαυτῆς. τὸ δὲ πλείστην μὲν αὐτῆς εἶναι χάριν μετρίας οὔσης, ἀρχὴν δὲ γίνεσθαι μειζόνων καὶ ἀλγεινοτέρων ἀκουσμάτων τὴν προπέτειαν αὐτῆς, ἄμφω παρέστησε, καὶ ὅτι αἱρετὸν τοῦτο τὸ μόριον καὶ ὅτι φευκτόν· ὡς Πιττακόν φασι, πέμψαντος αὐτῷ τοῦ Ἀμάσιδος ἱερεῖον καὶ ἀξιώσαντος ἀντιπέμψαι τῶν μορίων αὐτοῦ τὸ κάλλιστον ἅμα καὶ χείριστον, ἐξελόντα τὴν γλῶσσαν ἀποστεῖλαι. καὶ ἔοικεν ἡ φύσις τὸ μὲν τῶν ὀδόντων ἕρκος αὐτῆς θεῖναι πρόσθεν, κατακλείουσα μαλακὴν αὐτὴν οὖσαν καὶ εὐκίνητον, τὸν δ’ ἐγκέφαλον ἄνω θεῖναι, παρὰ τοῦ λόγου τὸ μέτρον αὐτῇ δεῖν ὑπάρχειν ἐνδεικνυμένη.

[90] Ibid. in OD 724-725:

μηδέ ποτ’ ἐξ ἠοῦς Διὶ λείβειν αἴθοπα οἶνον

χερσὶν ἀνίπτοισιν.

Τοῦτο καθαρότητός ἐστι παράγγελμα. πολλὰ γὰρ αἱ χεῖρες τῶν ἀναγκαίων μὲν ἀκαθάρτων δὲ ποιοῦσιν· εἰς τὴν οὖν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἐνέργειαν δέονται καθάρσεως, διότι τὸ θεῖον καθαρόν. δεῖ δὲ τὸ ὅμοιον αὐτοῖς ὑπηρετεῖν· μὴ σπένδειν οὖν μὴ προκαθήραντας τὰς χεῖρας. πολλῷ ἄρα μᾶλλον τῷ ὅλῳ σώματι δεῖ καθαρῶς πράττειν τὰ πρὸς θεούς· ἐκ γὰρ ἀκαθάρτων τῶν ὀργάνων εἰ τιμῴημεν αὐτούς, ἀποπτύουσιν ἡμῶν τὰς ἐπὶ τοῖς ἔργοις τοιούτοις ἀράς· αὗται γάρ εἰσιν αἱ ἐπαραὶ ταῖς θυσίαις ἢ ταῖς σπονδαῖς ἐπᾳδόμεναι. ἐν μὲν οὖν Σπάρτῃ τοῖς ‹πολίταις οἱ› εἰς ἀρχὴν καθισταμένοι [οἱ] ἔφοροι προεκήρυττον μὴ τρέφειν μύστακας, ἵνα τοὺς τὸ φαῦλον τοῦτο καὶ εὐτελὲς παραβάντας μειζόνως κολάζωσιν· ὁ δ’ Ἡσίοδος νίπτεσθαι τὰς χεῖρας παραινῶν πρὸ τοῦ σπένδειν ἐνδείκνυται τὸν περὶ τοῦτο μὴ πεισόμενον μείζονος ἄξιον εἶναι καταγνώσεως, ὡς ἀνεπιτήδειον πρὸς παιδείαν.

[91] Ibid. in OD 733-744:

μηδ’ αἰδοῖα γονῇ πεπαλαγμένος ἔνδοθεν οἴκου

ἑστίῃ ἐμπελαδὸν παραφαινέμεν.

Ταῦτα τῆς ἀπαιδευσίας ὄντα ἔκγονα, κἂν σμικρὰ ᾖ, δεῖ παραφυλάττειν, καλῶς τοῦ Πλουτάρχου λέγοντος, ὅτι καθάπερ ἐν λόγοις τὸ μὴ σολοικίζειν οὐ θαυμαστόν, ἀλλὰ τὸ σολοικίζειν καταγέλαστον, καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις οὐ τὸ μὴ πράττειν τὰ τοιαῦτα ἐπαινετόν, ἀλλὰ τὸ πράττειν ἐπονείδιστον· δεῖν οὖν ‹τὸν› μεμολυσμένον ἀπὸ γονῆς ἀποκρύπτειν τὰ αἴτια τοῦ μολυσμοῦ, καὶ μὴ γυμνοῦν ἐγγὺς τῆς ἑστίας· βωμὸς γὰρ καὶ αὕτη τῶν θεῶν καὶ καθημερινῶν θυσιῶν καὶ σπονδῶν ὑποδοχή.

[92] Ibid. in OD 742-743:

μηδ’ ἀπὸ πεντόζοιο θεῶν ἐν δαιτὶ θαλείῃ

αὖον ἀπὸ χλωροῦ τάμνειν αἴθωνι σιδήρῳ.

Παρακελεύεται τοίνυν μὴ ἐν εὐωχίαις θεῶν τέμνειν τοὺς ὄνυχας· τεμόντας γὰρ καὶ καθηραμένους ἐκείναις δεῖ παραβάλλειν, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐν αὐταῖς τοῦτο ποιεῖν· καὶ γὰρ τρόπον τινὰ νεκροῦν ἐστι τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν τινα μορίων, ἀφαιροῦντας αὐτὰ τοῦ σώματος, ὡς συμπεφυκότα ᾧ ποτε τρέφεται. χρὴ οὖν [εἰ] μηδὲ ταῦτα, προαποθνῄσκοντα τοῦ λοιποῦ σώματος, ἀποστερεῖν ζωῆς ἐν ταῖς ἄσβεστον ἐχόντων τὴν ζωὴν θεῶν εὐωχίαις· ἀλλότριον γὰρ ἐκείνων τὸ τοιοῦτον.

[93] Ibid. in OD 744-745:

μηδέ ποτ’ οἰνοχόην τιθέμεν κρητῆρος ὕπερθε

πινόντων.

Πολλὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ τοῖς Πυθαγορείοις ἐλέγετο· ζυγὸν μὴ ὑπερβαίνειν καὶ χελιδόνα μὴ εἰσδέχεσθαι καὶ μαχαίρᾳ πῦρ μὴ σκαλεύειν, συμβολικῶς παραινοῦντας τῶν ὀργιζομένων μὴ ἐπεγείρειν διὰ λόγων παροξυντικῶν τὸ πάθος, καὶ φλυάρους μὴ εἰσάγειν εἰς τὸν οἶκον καὶ λάλους, καὶ μὴ δεῖν τὸ δίκαιον ὑπερβαίνειν. τοιοῦτον οὖν καὶ τὸ ἐπιτιθέναι τῷ κρατῆρι τὴν οἰνοχόην συμβολικὸν παίδευμα· τουτέστι μὴ ἐπίπροσθεν ἄγειν τοῦ κοινοῦ τὸ ἴδιον. ὁ μὲν γὰρ κρατὴρ προὔκειτο κοινὸς ἐν ταῖς τραπέζαις, ἐκ δὲ τῆς οἰνοχόης ἀρυόμενοι ἔπινον οἱ συνδειπνοῦντες. μήτ’ οὖν τὸ μέρος νομίζειν τοῦ ὅλου ὑπέρτερον μήτε τὸ ἴδιον τοῦ κοινοῦ προτιμότερον· χαλεπὴν γὰρ εἶναι τὴν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ μοῖραν ὡς ἑπομένην ἔχοντι ποινὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ παντός, ἐν ᾧ τὰ ὅλα τῶν μερῶν ἐθέλει κρατεῖν.

[94] Ibid. in OD 746-747:

μηδὲ δόμον ποιῶν ἀνεπίξεστον καταλείπειν,

μή τοι ἐφεζομένη κρώξῃ λακέρυζα κορώνη.

Οἱ μὲν ὅτι δεῖ τὰς οἰκίας πρὸ χειμῶνος συντελεῖν· ὁ γὰρ κρωγμὸς τῆς κορώνης χειμῶνος σύμβολον· οἱ δ’ ὅτι μὴ ἀτελῆ δεῖ τὸν οἶκον ἐᾶν, μὴ ψόγον ἐπαγάγῃ παρ’ ἄλλων, οὓς τῇ κορώνῃ ἀπείκασεν, ὡς πολλὰ ἂν φθεγξαμένους νεμεσῶντας ἐπὶ τῷ ἐλλιπεῖ . δεῖ δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ ἄλλα τὸ παράγγελμα διατείνειν καὶ μηδὲν τῶν ἡμετέρων ἔργων ἀτελὲς περιορᾶν φερόμενον, ἀλλ’ ἑκάστῳ τὸ προσῆκον ἐπάγειν τέλος.

[95] Ibid. in OD 748-749:

μηδ’ ἀπὸ χυτροπόδων ἀνεπιρρέκτων ἀνελόντα

ἔσθειν μηδὲ λούεσθαι.

Θυσίαν ταύτην ὁ Πλούταρχος πρόχειρον καὶ καθημερινὴν εἶπεν ὀρθῶς, ἀφ’ ὧν μέλλομεν ἐσθίειν ἱερὰ πάντα ποιοῦντας διὰ τοῦ ἀπάρξασθαι. καὶ γὰρ αἱ τῶν ἱερῶν τραπεζώσεις τοῦτο εἶχον· ἀπαρξάμενοι γὰρ ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἐδαίνυντο. χρῆναι δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν λουτρῶν τὸ αὐτὸ δρᾶν· ἐλούοντο δὲ περιχεόμενοι ‘κατὰ κρατός τε καὶ ὤμων’· χρῆν οὖν καὶ τούτου πρότερον ἀφορίσαι τι πρὸ τῆς ἡμετέρας χρήσεως ἱερὸν θεῶν, καὶ οὕτω τὸ λοιπὸν εἰς τὴν ἀναγκαίαν χρείαν παραλαμβάνειν.

[96] Ibid. in OD 750-752:

μηδ’ ἐπ’ ἀκινήτοισι καθίζειν, οὐ γὰρ ἄμεινον,

παῖδα δυωδεκαταῖον, ὅ τ’ ἀνέρ’ ἀνήνορα ποιεῖ,

μηδὲ δυωδεκάμηνον· ἴσον καὶ τοῦτο τέτυκται.

Μήποτε δὲ κάλλιον Πλούταρχος, ὅτι μὴ δεῖ τὰ νεογνὰ ἀκίνητα ἐᾶν καὶ ἀποτίθεσθαι ἐν ἀκινήτοις· ἀσθενέστερα γὰρ γίνεται· κινεῖν δ’ αὐτὰ ὅτι μάλιστα, κἂν ἐπί τινων αὐτά τις καθίζῃ, ‹ἐπὶ› κινουμένων καθίζειν καὶ σαλεύειν διὰ τούτων, οἷά τισιν εὐκίνητα κλινίδια μεμηχάνηται πρὸς τὴν τῶν παιδίων εὐνήν.

[97] Ibid. in OD 753:

μηδὲ γυναικείῳ λουτρῷ χρόα φαιδρύνεσθαι.

Μὴ δεῖν συναπογυμνοῦσθαι ταῖς γυναιξὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας· πρὸς γὰρ τῷ ἀσχήμονι καὶ ἀπόρροιαί τινες ἐκ τῶν γυναικείων σωμάτων καὶ περιττωμάτων χωροῦσιν, ὧν ἀναπίμπλασθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας μολυσματῶδές ἐστι· καὶ τοῖς εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν ἀέρα εἰσιοῦσι καὶ τοῖς εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ ὕδωρ ἀνάγκη τούτων ἀπολαύειν.

[98] Ibid. in OD 757-759:

Μηδέ ποτ’ ἐν προχοαῖς ποταμῶν ἅλαδε προρεόντων,

Μηδ’ ἐπὶ κρηνάων οὐρεῖν, μάλα δ’ ἐξαλέασθαι,

Μηδ’ ἐναποψύχειν.

Ταῦτα διαγράφει Πλούταρχος, ὡς εὐτελῆ καὶ ἀνάξια παιδευτικῆς Μούσης· μὴ οὐρεῖν ἐν προχοαῖς ποταμῶν ἢ ἐπὶ κρηνῶν μηδ’ ἀποπατεῖν· τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ ἀποψύχειν.

[99] Ibid. in OD 760-764:

ὧδ’ ἔρδειν· δεινὴν δὲ βροτῶν ὑπαλεύεο φήμην

.................................

.................................

.................................

θεὸς νύ τίς ἐστι καὶ αὐτή.

(Τοῦτο τὸ τέλος ἐστὶ τῶν παραγγελμάτων, ἱκανὸν εἰς τὸ παιδεῦσαι ἡμᾶς τὸ ἑαυτῶν ἦθος, εὐλαβουμένους τὴν φήμην.) οὐ γὰρ ὅσον ἀρετῆς οἱ ἄνθρωποι σφάλλονται, τοσοῦτον καὶ κρίσεως ἀρετῆς, φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων ... ἔτι δὲ καὶ ἀρξαμένην ταύτην παῦσαι χαλεπόν· εἰώθασι γὰρ οἱ ἄνθρωποι πολλαπλασιάζειν ἃς ἂν παραλάβωσι φήμας καὶ ἐκ σμικρῶν μεγάλας ποιεῖν. καὶ τέλος προσέθηκεν ὅτι κινδυνεύει καὶ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πλεῖστον ἀληθὴς εἶναι πᾶσα φήμη ‘ἣν λαοὶ πολλοὶ φημίξωσι’, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἔχειν τι καὶ αὐτὴν θεῖον· πολλάκις γοῦν ὁ μὲν ἄρξας αὐτῆς οὐκ ἔστιν, εὔστοχος δ’ αὕτη δι’ αὐτῶν ἀναφαίνεται τῶν ἀποβαινόντων, ὥστε εἰκότως δεῖ φυλάττεσθαι τὴν κακὴν φήμην. κατὰ τοῦτο οὖν χρήσιμον τὸ δεῖν καὶ δόξαν ὑφορᾶσθαι τὸν παιδευόμενον. οὐ γὰρ ἁπλῶς ἀληθὲς ὃ ἔλεγε Γοργίας· ἔλεγε δέ ‘τὸ μὲν εἶναι ἀφανὲς μὴ τυχὸν τοῦ δοκεῖν, τὸ δὲ δοκεῖν ἀσθενὲς μὴ τυχὸν τοῦ εἶναι’ (B 26 DielsKranz). παρὰ γὰρ τοῖς πολλοῖς καὶ τὸ δοκεῖν ἰσχὺν ἔχει καὶ τὰ ἐκ τοῦ δοκεῖν ἀποβαίνοντα δυσχερῆ δείκνυται οὐκ ὄντα ὀλίγα. μᾶλλον οὖν, ὡς Ξενοκράτης ἔλεγε τοῦ μὲν [οὖν] φίλον Ἀλέξανδρον ἔχειν ἕνεκα μηδ’ ἂν τὸν δάκτυλον κινῆσαι, τοῦ δὲ μὴ ἐχθρὸν πάντα ἂν πρᾶξαι (fr. 105 Heinze), οὕτω καὶ Ἡσίοδος τῆς μὲν παρὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς δόξης ἀξιοῖ ποιεῖσθαι λόγον μηδένα, τῆς δ’ ἀδοξίας, ἵνα μὴ συμβῇ, πάντα ποιεῖσθαι λόγον.

[100] Plut. Vit. Camilli, c. 19. Περὶ δ’ ἡμερῶν ἀποφράδων εἴτε χρὴ τίθεσθαί τινας εἴτε [μὴ] ὀρθῶς Ἡράκλειτος (B 106 DielsKranz) ἐπέπληξεν Ἡσιόδῳ τὰς μὲν ἀγαθὰς ποιουμένῳ, τὰς δὲ φαύλας, ὡς ἀγνοοῦντι φύσιν ἡμέρας ἁπάσης μίαν οὖσαν, ἑτέρωθι διηπόρηται.

[101] Schol. in OD 765-766:

ἤματα δ’ ἐκ Διόθεν πεφυλαγμένος εὖ κατὰ μοῖραν

πεφραδέμεν δμώεσσι.

Αἱ περὶ τῆς τῶν ἡμερῶν ἐκλογῆς καὶ ἀπεκλογῆς παραινέσεις ἔχουσι μὲν τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐκ τῶν παρατηρήσεων, ἄλλαι δὲ παρ’ ἄλλοις ἐκράτησαν, ἐπεὶ καὶ παρ’ Ὀρφεῖ λέγονταί τινες αὐτῶν διακρίσεις καὶ ἐν τοῖς Ἀθηναίων πατρίοις διωρίσθησαν αἱ μὲν ἀγαθαί τινες αἱ δὲ φαῦλαι μέσαι δέ τινες εἶναι. καὶ οὐχ ὅλας ἡμέρας μόνον ὑπέλαβόν τινες εὐκαιρίαν ἔχειν πρὸς καταρχάς τινων πράξεων ἀλλὰ καὶ μόρια τῆς ἡμέρας, ὁτὲ μὲν τὰ ἑωθινὰ ἐπαινοῦντες ὁτὲ δὲ τὰ περὶ δείλην ὀψίαν, ὅπου δὲ καὶ τοῖς μὲν θεοῖς οἰκεῖα τὰ πρὸς μεσημβρίαν εἰρήκασιν, ἥρωσι δὲ τὰ μετὰ μεσημβρίαν. ὁ γοῦν Ἡσίοδος τὰς πολλὰς ἐν τούτοις εἰδὼς τῶν κατ’ αὐτὸν παρατηρήσεις, εἰς τὰς ἡλίου κινήσεις καὶ σελήνης καὶ τὰς πρὸς ἀλλήλους σχέσεις αὐτὸς ἀποβλέψας ἀνάγει τὰς τῶν ἐπιτηδείων καὶ ἀνεπιτηδείων διαφοράς, ἀφ’ ὧν μάλιστα γίνεται πάντα μὲν τὰ θνητὰ τῶν κινουμένων, ἄλλα δὲ μᾶλλον ἄλλων. πρὸς τὰς δὲ [τὰς] περιόδους αὐτῶν οἰκείως ἢ ἀλλοτρίως ἔχει [τῶν γινομένων]. δηλοῖ δὲ καὶ τῶν φυτῶν τὰ μὲν σελήνῃ συγκινούμενα τὰ δὲ ἡλίῳ· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ῥόδα καὶ ἴα καὶ μετὰ τούτων τὰ ἡλιοτρόπια πρὸς ἥλιον ἀνίσχοντα τρέπει τὰ φύλλα καὶ πρὸς καταδυόμενον ὡσαύτως εἰς ἑσπέραν ῥέποντα, τὰ δὲ τῶν ἐλαιῶν φύλλα διδάσκει καὶ τοὺς γεωργικοὺς γεγονέναι τροπὰς ἢ χειμερινὰς ἢ θερινὰς διὰ τῆς ἑαυτῶν περιστροφῆς, ὁτὲ μὲν ἄνω τὸ μελάντερον ἰσχόντων ὁτὲ δὲ τὸ λευκόν. τὰ δὲ τῶν αἰλούρων ὄμματά φασι καὶ τὰ σπλάγχνα τῶν μυῶν πάντων φθίνειν μὲν σελήνης ληγούσης, αὔξεσθαι δὲ ἀκμαζούσης ‹...› εἰ μὲν περὶ πανσέληνον ἐξαιρεθείη, τὴν μὲν γόνιμον ἀρχὴν ἔτι φυλάττει καὶ αὖθις βλαστάνει κατὰ τὴν προσήκουσαν ὥραν, εἰ δὲ φθινούσης, ἄγονον γίνεται. καὶ ἁπλῶς τὰ μὲν πληρουμένης εὐθηνεῖται τὰ δὲ ληγούσης αὐτῆς, τοῖς μὲν ὠφελίμου τῆς ὑγρότητος οὔσης ἣν διαχεῖ τὸ σεληναῖον φῶς αὐξανόμενον, τοῖς δὲ βλαβερᾶς.

[102] Aulus Gellius 20.8.

Id etiam, inquit, multo mirandum est magis, quod apud Plutarchum in quarto in Hesiodum commentario legi: ‘cepetum revirescit et congerminat decedente luna, contra autem inarescit adulescente; eam causam esse dicunt sacerdotes Aegyptii cur Pelusiotae cepe non edint, quia solum olerum omnium contra lunae augmenta atque damna vices minuendi et augendi habeat contrarias.’

[103] Schol. in OD 770-771:

πρῶτον ἔνη τετράς τε καὶ ἑβδόμη ἱερὸν ἦμαρ·

τῇ γὰρ Ἀπόλλωνα χρυσάορα γείνατο Λητώ.

Τὴν δὲ σῦν ἀνίερον Αἰγύπτιοί φασιν, ὅτι μίξεσι χαίρει κρυπτομένης ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου τῆς σελήνης. καὶ μήποτε καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ζῷον, ὡς χθόνιον καὶ γεννήσεσι χαῖρον, οἰκεῖόν ἐστι πρὸς ταύτην εἰκότως μάλιστα τῆς θεοῦ τὴν συνοδικὴν φάσιν, ἣν πρὸς ἥλιον λόγον ἔχειν ὡς θήλεος πρὸς ἄρρενά φασιν. (μετὰ δὲ ταύτην ... ἐπαινεῖ τὰς τρεῖς· τὴν ἔνην ... τὴν τετράδα, τὴν ἑβδόμην, καὶ πάσας ἱερὰς λέγων), τὴν δὲ ἑβδόμην καὶ ὡς Ἀπόλλωνος γενέθλιον ὑμνῶν, διὸ καὶ Ἀθηναῖοι ταύτην ὡς Ἀπολλωνιακὴν τιμῶσι δαφνοφοροῦντες καὶ τὸ κανοῦν ἐπιστέφοντες καὶ ὑμνοῦντες τὸν θεόν.

[104] Ibid. in OD 780-781:

μηνὸς δ’ ἱσταμένου τρισκαιδεκάτην ἀλέασθαι

σπέρματος ἄρξασθαι· φυτὰ δ’ ἐνθρέψασθαι ἀρίστη.

Καλῶς ἐπέστησεν ὁ Πλούταρχος ὅτι τὸ σπεῖραι καὶ τὸ φυτεῦσαι οὐχ ὑπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν ἔοικεν ὠφελεῖσθαι. τὸ μὲν γὰρ σπέρμα δεῖ καταβληθὲν κρυφθῆναι πρῶτον εἴσω τῆς γῆς καὶ σαπῆναι, καὶ οὕτως ἑαυτοῦ διαδοῦναι τὴν δύναμιν εἰς τὴν περικρύψασαν αὐτὸ γῆν, ἵν’ ἐξ ἑνὸς πυροῦ τυχὸν ἢ κριθῆς γένηται πλῆθος. διὸ καὶ ὑετοῦ δεῖσθαι καὶ πάχνης αὐτό φασι τὴν ἀρχὴν πιεζόντων ἔσω καὶ χεόντων τὰς ἐν αὐτῷ φυσικὰς δυνάμεις. τὸ δὲ φυτὸν ῥιζωθὲν βλαστῆσαι χρὴ καὶ ἀναδοῦναι τὸν ἐν τῇ ῥίζῃ κρυπτόμενον λόγον, οἷον διοιχθείσῃ διὰ φωτός· ὥστ’ εἰκότως τὴν τρισκαιδεκάτην πρὸς μὲν τὸ σπείρειν ἀνεπιτήδειον εἶναι, πρὸς δὲ τὸ φυτεύειν ἐπιτηδείαν· διὸ καὶ τὸ ‘ἐνθρέψασθαι’ οἰκείως ἔχει πρὸς τὴν φυτείαν· τὸ γὰρ προκαλέσασθαι τὸν ῥιζικὸν λόγον καὶ εἰς ἐπίδοσιν ἄγειν καὶ βλάστην ἐσήμηνε διὰ τοῦ ὀνόματος, πρὸς ἃ συντελεῖ πλεῖον ὂν τὸ ἐκ τῆς σελήνης ἐν ταύτῃ φῶς.

[105] Ibid. in OD 782-784:

ἕκτη δ’ ἡ μέσση μάλα σύμφορός ἐστι φυτοῖσιν,

ἀνδρογόνος δ’ ἀγαθή· κούρῃ δ’ οὐ σύμφορός ἐστιν,

οὔτε γενέσθαι πρῶτ’ οὔτ’ ἂρ γάμου ἀντιβολῆσαι.

Τὴν ἑκκαιδεκάτην μέσην ἕκτην εἰπὼν ὠφέλιμον εἶναι τοῖς φυτοῖς φησιν δι’ ἣν εἴπομεν αἰτίαν· τὸ γὰρ φῶς θερμὸν ὂν τὸ σεληναῖον καὶ ὑγρὸν προκαλεῖται τὴν βλάστην αὐτῶν. τῶν δὲ ἀνθρώπων ἄρρεσι μὲν σπέρμασι σύμφορον θήλεσι δὲ ἀσύμφορον· αἴτιον δὲ τούτων ὅτι τὸ μέν ἐστι ξηρότερον τὸ δ’ ὑγρότερον τῶν σπερμάτων, οἷς καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ ἄρρεν διαφέρει τοῦ θήλεος· καὶ διὰ ταῦτά φασι καὶ τὰς συλλήψεις τὰς μὲν βορείων πνευμάτων ὄντων γινομένας εἶναι ἀρρενογόνους τὰς δὲ νοτίων θηλυγόνους. καὶ μέντοι καὶ τὰς διαθρώσεις τῶν θηλέων ἐμβρύων βραδυτέρας γίνεσθαι ἢ τῶν ἀρρένων διὰ τὸ πλῆθος ἐκεῖ τῆς ὑγρότητος, μὴ ῥᾳδίως κρατουμένης ὑπὸ τῆς δημιουργούσης ἐν τῇ θερμότητι φύσεως. φυσικῶς οὖν εἴρηται τὴν ἑκκαιδεκάτην ἀρρενογόνον μὲν ἄριστον εἶναι θήλεσι δὲ ἀσύμφορον· ἔχει δέ τινα καὶ πρὸς γάμους ἐναντίωσιν, τῆς σελήνης πάμπολυ τοῦ ἡλίου διεστώσης. διὸ καὶ Ἀθηναῖοι τὰς πρὸς σύνοδον ἡμέρας ἐξελέγοντο πρὸς γάμους καὶ τὰ Θεογάμια ἐτέλουν τότε, φυσικῶς εἶναι πρῶτον οἰόμενοι γάμον τὴν σελήνης πρὸς ἥλιον σύνοδον.

[106] Ibid. in OD 790-791:

μηνὸς δ’ ὀγδοάτῃ κάπρον καὶ βοῦν ἐρίμυκον

ταμνέμεν, οὐρῆας δὲ δυωδεκάτῃ ταλαεργούς.

Τὴν ὀγδόην τοῦ μηνὸς τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ἱερὰν ὡς ἐπὶ τρία διαστᾶσαν πρώτην τῷ τριαινούχῳ θεῷ προσήκειν εἰκότως λέγουσι καὶ †τριχίτωνι, τριῶν ἄρχοντι τῶν ἐν κινήσει στοιχείων. διὸ καὶ τοὺς ταύρους αὐτῷ φέροντες ἀνῆκαν ὡς ὁρμητικοὺς καὶ τοὺς κάπρους· ἄμφω γὰρ διὰ θυμὸν ἀκάθεκτοι γίνονται, πραΰνονται δὲ ἐκτμηθέντες. εἰκότως οὖν ‹πρὸς› τὴν τῷ κινητικῷ θεῷ προσήκουσαν ἡμέραν - ὃς καὶ τὴν ἀκίνητον γῆν κινεῖ Ἐνοσίχθων καλούμενος - ᾠκείωσαν ταῦτα τὰ ζῷα ὁρμητικὰ ὄντα· καὶ μήποτε τὸν μὲν ταῦρον ὡς τῆς ὑγρᾶς οὐσίας κινητικῷ, τὸν δὲ κάπρον ὡς τῆς ξηρᾶς. τοῦ δὲ αὐτοῦ ἐστι τὸ κινεῖν καὶ ἠρεμεῖν τὰς ἀστάτους τῶν κινουμένων ὁρμάς· διὸ καὶ ὁ θεὸς οὗτος οὐ μόνον Ἐνοσίχθων ἀλλὰ καὶ Ἀσφάλειος ὑμνεῖται, καὶ οἱ τοὺς σεισμοὺς παύειν ἐθέλοντες Ποσειδῶνι θύουσιν. ἔχει δ’ ἄρα καὶ ἡ πραΰνουσα διὰ τῆς τομῆς τὰ ζῷα τὰ οἰκεῖα τῷ θεῷ πρᾶξις οἰκειότητα πρὸς τὴν ἱερὰν τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ταύτην ἡμέραν.

[107] Ibid. in OD 791:

Τὰς ἡμιόνους οἰκειοῦσι τῇ σελήνῃ· διὸ καί τινες αὐτήν φασιν ἐφ’ ἡμιόνων ὀχεῖσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ὁ μὲν ἵππος ἡλιακόν ἐστι ζῷον ὡς εὔδρομον, ‹ὁ δ’ ὄνος› χθόνιον ὡς Τυφῶνι φίλον καὶ συνουσιαστικόν. ἡ δὲ σελήνη μέση ἀμφοῖν, γῆς μὲν ἔχουσα τὸ σκοτίζεσθαι, ἡλίου δὲ τὸ οἰκεῖον εἰληχέναι φῶς· ταύτῃ μὲν οὖν ᾠκείωται πρὸς αὐτὴν ἡ ἡμίονος.

[108] Ibid. in OD 797-799:

πεφύλαξο δὲ θυμῷ

τετράδ’ ἀλεύασθαι φθίνοντός θ’ ἱσταμένου τε

ἄλγεα θυμοβορεῖν.

Τοὺς πρὸ τούτων τέσσαρας στίχους οὐδὲ μνήμης ὁ Πλούταρχος ἠξίωσεν, ὡς ἂν μὴ φερομένους· τούτους δ’ ἐξηγούμενος ἀξιοῖ μὴ ἐγκαλεῖν τῷ Ἡσιόδῳ ὡς ἂν γελοίως εἰπόντι μὴ χρῆναι λύπας ἑαυτῷ κινεῖν ἐν ταύταις, ὡς δέον ἐν ἄλλαις τισὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖν· οὐ γὰρ τοῦτο λέγειν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐν ἱεραῖς ταύταις μάλιστα τὰς λυπηρὰς ἀποσκευάζεσθαι ἐνεργείας, ἃς εἰ καὶ ἄλλοτε δεῖ ὡς ἀναγκαίας αἱρεῖσθαι, ἐν ταύταις οὐ δέον. τὰς δὲ τετράδας ἄμφω εἶναι ἱεράς, τὴν μὲν ὡς μάλιστα τὸ σεληναῖον ἐκφαίνουσαν φῶς, τὴν δὲ ὡς τοῦτον ἔχουσαν πρὸς τὴν τριακάδα λόγον, ὃν ἡ ἑβδόμη πρὸς τὴν νουμηνίαν· καὶ γὰρ ἡ τετάρτη καὶ εἰκοστὴ ἑβδόμην ἔχει τάξιν πρὸς τὴν ἐσχάτην.

[109] Ibid. in OD 805-807:

μέσσῃ δ’ ἑβδομάτῃ ...

............................

ὑλοτόμον τε ταμεῖν θαλαμήια δοῦρα.

Τὸ μὲν οὖν ὑλοτομεῖν τηνικαῦτα συμβαίνει τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν ἐν οἷς εἶπε τότε χρῆναι τοῦτο ποιεῖν ὅταν ἄρχηται τὸ μετόπωρον·

τῆμος ἀδηκτοτάτη πέλεται τμηθεῖσα σιδήρῳ (OD 420),

μετρίως ξηρῶν ὄντων τῶν ξύλων ὑγρότητός τέ τινος οὐκ ἐπιδεῶν. †ἡ γὰρ αὐτὴ τῆς ὥρας εὔκαιρος καὶ μηνὸς ἡ ἑπτακαιδεκάτη χρήσιμος, ὅτε τὸ μὲν φῶς τῆς σελήνης πρόσθεσιν οὐκέτ’ ἔχει πανσελήνου γεγονυίας, ἔνικμα δέ πῶς ἐστι τὰ ξύλα καὶ διὰ τῆς ἐλαττώσεως τοῦ φωτὸς ἐλαττοῦται τὸ ὑγρὸν ἀφ’ οὗ συμβαίνειν εἴωθεν ἡ σῆψις.

[110] Ibid. in OD 809:

τετράδι δ’ ἄρχεσθαι νῆας πήγνυσθαι ἀραιάς.

Καὶ τοῦτο συμβαίνει τοῖς περὶ τῆς τετράδος ἀξιώμασιν· εἰ γὰρ στιγμῇ μὲν ἡ μονὰς ἀνάλογος γραμμῇ δ’ ἡ δυὰς ἐπιπέδῳ δ’ ἡ τριάς, δῆλον ὡς τῷ στερεῷ προσήκοι ἂν ἡ τετράς· εἰκότως οὖν ἐπιτηδεία πρὸς σύμπηξιν τῶν νεῶν. εἰ δὲ καὶ πρώτη τὸ ἰσάκις ἴσον ἔχει καὶ πρώτη πάντας τοὺς ἁρμονικοὺς περιέχει λόγους, ὡς εἴπομεν, καὶ ταύτῃ πρὸς τὸ εἰρημένον ἔργον εὐκαιρίαν δίδωσιν. οὐδὲν γὰρ οὕτως ἁρμονίας δεῖται τῶν ἔργων, ὡς ναῦς μέλλουσα καὶ ἀέρος κινήσει μαχεῖσθαι καὶ θαλάσσῃ πολλῇ, καὶ μόνην ἔχουσα τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς ἁρμονίας βοήθειαν τοῦ σῴζεσθαι, τάχα καὶ Ὁμήρου διὰ τοῦτο μόνον καλέσαντος Ἁρμονίδην τὸν ναυπηγόν· εἰ δὲ τὰς ναῦς ὡς κούφας ἀραιὰς ἐκάλεσε (δεῖ γὰρ αὐτὰς εἶναι κούφας ἐπιπλεῖν μελλούσας), δῆλός ἐστι καὶ αὐτὸς τὴν μὲν πύκνωσιν βαρύτητος αἰτίαν τὴν δὲ μάνωσιν κουφότητος ὑπολαβών.

[111] Ibid. in OD 814-816:

παῦροι δ’ αὖτ’ ἴσασι τρισεινάδα μηνὸς ἀρίστην

ἄρξασθαί τε πίθου καὶ ἐπὶ ζυγὸν αὐχένι θεῖναι

βουσὶ καὶ ἡμιόνοισι καὶ ἵπποις ὠκυπόδεσσι.

Τρίτην εἰνάδα τὴν εἰκοστὴν εἶπεν ἐνάτην ... φησὶ γὰρ τῆς σελήνης ἀρχομένης ἀποκρύπτεσθαι δοκεῖν καὶ τὰ θυμοειδέστερα τῶν ἀλόγων ἀμβλύνειν τὸν θυμὸν καὶ μὴ ὁμοίως ἀνθίστασθαι τοῖς δαμάζουσιν, ἀσθενέστερα γινόμενα. καὶ τὸ περὶ τὴν ἄνοιξιν δὲ τοῦ πίθου φυσικῶς εἴρηκε. μάλιστα γάρ φασι περὶ τὰς πανσελήνους ἐξίστασθαι τὸν οἶνον διὰ τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς σελήνης ὑγρὰν θέρμην, ὥστ’ εἰκότως ὅταν ἥκιστα τοῦτο προβάλῃ κελεύει τὸν πίθον ἀνοίγειν καὶ τοῦ οἴνου πεῖραν λαμβάνειν.

[112] Ibid. in OD 819:

τετράδι δ’ οἶγε πίθον.

Τὴν μέσην τετράδα ταύτην λέγων τὴν τεσσαρεσκαιδεκάτην ἐπαινεῖ καὶ ὡς πίθοιγον καὶ ὡς πᾶσιν ἀρίστην· καὶ γὰρ τὸ φῶς τῆς σελήνης πλούσιον ἅμα τῷ ἡλίῳ καταδυομένῳ ἀνατελλούσης ... καί τις Αἰγύπτιος μυθολογεῖ μῦθος τὸν Ὄσιριν τοσαῦτα ἔτη βασιλεῦσαι ὁπόσος ἐστὶν ὁ τῶν ἡμερῶν τούτων ἀριθμός, ἐνδεικνύμενος ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ πάντων αὐτὸν εἶναι τῶν γεννητῶν δημιουργὸν καὶ τελεσιουργόν, μετὰ τῶν σεληνιακῶν ἀκτίνων τέχνῃ τεύχοντα τὴν γένεσιν τῶν τε αὐξητικῶν καὶ τῶν μειωτικῶν, ἵνα καὶ γίνηται τὰ τῇδε καὶ φθείρηται.

ΕΙΣ ΤΑ ΝΙΚΑΝΔΡΟΥ ΘΗΡΙΑΚΑ

[113] Schol. in Nicandri Theriaca 94:

Ἐν δὲ χεροπληθῆ καρπὸν νεοθηλέα δαύκου

λειαίνειν τριπτῆρι.

Δαύκου· δύο γένη τῆς βοτάνης, ἡ μὲν Κρητικὴ ἡ δὲ Ἀσιατική. Πλούταρχος πλείονα μέν φησιν γένη αὐτῆς εἶναι, τὸ δὲ κοινὸν τῆς δυνάμεως ἰδίωμα δριμὺ καὶ πυρῶδες, ὡς καὶ ἡ γεῦσις αἰσθάνεται καὶ ὄσφρησις· καὶ πειρώμενον δῆλον εἶναι· καὶ γὰρ ἔμμηνα κινεῖ σφόδρα καὶ διαλύει στρόφους τῇ θερμότητι, καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν θώρακα σπλάγχνων καθαρτικὸν καὶ πρόσετί γε μὴν λεπτυντικὸν ἔχει σθένος.

[114] Schol. (Ambr. C. 32 sup.) in Nicandri Theriaca 333.

Ὁ Πλούταρχος τὰς πικρὰς ἀμυγδάλας φησὶ τὰς τῶν προσώπων ἐξαιρεῖν ἐφηλίδας.

[115] Stephanus Byz. s. v. Κορόπη. Νίκανδρος ἐν Θηριακοῖς (613):

ᾗ ἐν Ἀπόλλων

μαντείας Κοροπαῖος ἐθήκατο καὶ θέμιν ἀνδρῶν.

Οἱ δὲ ὑπομνηματίσαντες αὐτὸν Θέων καὶ Πλούταρχος καὶ Δημήτριος ὁ Χλωρός φασι· ‘Νίκανδρος Ὀροπαῖος καὶ Κοροπαῖος Ἀπόλλων. ἀγνοεῖ δὲ ὅτι Ἀμφιαράου ἱερόν, ‹οὐκ› Ἀπόλλωνός ἐστι.’ λέγεται δὲ κατ’ ἔλλειψιν τοῦ ι Κοροπαῖος [Κορόπη]. Κορόπη δὲ Θεσσαλίας πόλις. βέλτιον δ’ ὑπονοεῖν ὅτι ἡμάρτηται. καὶ γράφεται Ὀροπαῖος. Ὀρόπη γὰρ πόλις Εὐβοίας, ὅπου Ἀπόλλωνος διασημότατον ἱερόν.

ΚΑΤΑ ΗΔΟΝΗΣ

[116] Stobaeus 3.6.49 (3 p. 297 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Κατὰ ἡδονῆς.

Ὅτι τὰ σώματα ἀνίησιν ἡ ἡδονή, καθ’ ἡμέραν ἐκμαλάττουσα ταῖς τρυφαῖς, ὧν ἡ συνέχεια παραιρεῖται τὸν τόνον, ἀναχαλῶσα τὴν ἰσχὺν αὐτῶν. ἐξ ὧν ῥᾳστώνη μὲν νόσων ῥᾳστώνη δὲ καμάτων, προμελετώμενον δ’ ἐν νεότητι γῆρας.

[117] Stobaeus 3.6.50 (3 p. 297 H). ἐν ταὐτῷ·

Θηρίον ἐστὶ δουλαγωγὸν ‹ἡ› ἡδονή, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἄγριον· εἴθε γὰρ ἦν· φανερῶς ἂν πολεμοῦσα ταχέως ἑάλω· νῦν δὲ καὶ ταύτῃ μισητότερον, ὅτι κλέπτει τὴν ἔχθραν ὑποδυομένη σχῆμα εὐνοίας. ὥστε διχῶς ἀποτρόπαιον καὶ ὧν βλάπτει καὶ ὧν ψεύδεται.

[118] Stobaeus 3.6.51 (3. p. 298 H). ἐν ταὐτῷ·

Τὰς μὲν οὖν δικαίας ἡδονὰς οὐκέτ’ ἂν ἡδονὰς οὔτε καλέσαιμεν οὔτε νομίσαιμεν, ἀλλὰ θεραπείας. ὅσαι δὲ παρὰ ταύτας, πᾶσαι ὕβρεις περιτταί εἰσι, πεπληρωμένα βιαζόμεναι, καὶ ταῖς ποικιλίαις κολακεύουσαι λανθάνουσι βλάπτουσαι· ὁ δὲ εἰς τὰ ἡμέτερα νόμος ὁ καὶ τῶν ἀλόγων ζῴων, ‹ὧν› μετὰ τὸ ἀκέσασθαι τὰς ἐπιθυμίας οὐδενὸς ὄρεξις, ἀλλὰ κόρος τῶν ἐπειγόντων ἀβιάστοις ἡδοναῖς.

[119] Stobaeus 3.6.52 (3 p. 298 H). ἐν ταὐτῷ·

Μή τις προδότας ἐπαινεῖ; τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν ἡ ἡδονή, προδίδωσι τὰ τῆς ἀρετῆς. μή τις βασανιστάς; τοιοῦτόν ἐστι τὸ ἥδεσθαι, βασανίζει τὰ τῆς σωφροσύνης. μή τις φιλαργυρίαν; ἀπλήρωτόν ἐστιν ἑκάτερον. τί τηλικούτῳ χαίρομεν θηρίῳ, ὃ κολακεῦον ἡμᾶς ἀναλίσκει.

[120] Stobaeus 3.6.53 (3 p. 299 H.). ἐν ταὐτῷ·

Τί δ’ οὐ πάντων ὁρώντων ἀριστεύεις, ἀλλὰ καὶ σαυτὸν αἰδούμενος φεύγεις, νυκτὶ καὶ σκότῳ τοῖς ἀμαρτύροις πιστεύων τὴν ὕβριν; οὐδεὶς γὰρ τῶν καλῶν ἔργων σκότος προβάλλει, τὸ φῶς αὐτοῖς μαρτυρεῖν αἰσχυνόμενος· ἀλλ’ ὅλον ἅμα τὸν κόσμον ἥλιον γενέσθαι πρὸς ἃ κατορθοῖ βούλοιτ’ ἄν. ἅπασα δὲ κακία ὁρᾶσθαι γυμνὴ φυλάττεται, σκέπην προβαλλομένη τὰ πάθη. ἀποκόψαντες οὖν αὐτὰ γυμνὰς βλέπωμεν τὰς ἡδονάς· μεθύουσιν εἰς ἀναισθησίαν, λαγνεύουσιν εἰς αἰῶνα, καθεύδουσιν εἰς ἔργα, οὐκ ἐπιστρέφονται πόλεων, οὐ φροντίζουσι γονέων, οὐκ αἰσχύνονται νόμους.

[121] ΚΑΤ’ ΙΣΧΥΟΣ

Stobaeus 4.12.14 (4 p. 344 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Κατ’ ἰσχύος.

Τί δέ σοι τοιοῦτον ἀγαθὸν †εὐτυχεῖται μᾶλλον, ὡς ἕνεκα τούτου μητρυιὰν μὲν τῶν ἀνθρώπων μητέρα δὲ τῶν ἀλόγων ζῴων γεγενῆσθαι τὴν φύσιν, μεγέθους καὶ ὠκύτητος καὶ ὀξυωπίας χάριν; ἡ δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἴδιος ἰσχὺς ὁ ψυχῆς ἐστι λογισμός, ὃς καὶ ἵππους ἐχαλίνωσε καὶ βόας ἀρότροις ὑπέζευξε καὶ ἐλέφαντας ὑπὸ δρυμὸν εἷλε ποδάγραις καὶ τὰ ἐναέρια κατέσπασε καλάμοις καὶ τὰ βύθια δεδυκότα δικτύοις ἀνήγαγε· τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ἰσχύς. ἡ δ’ ἔτι μείζων, ὅταν γῆς περιόδους καὶ οὐρανοῦ μεγέθη καὶ ἀστέρων κύκλους διώκουσα μὴ κάμῃ· ταῦτ’ ἦν Ἡρακλέους ἄξια. τίς γὰρ οὐκ ἂν βούλοιτο μᾶλλον Ὀδυσσεὺς εἶναι ἢ Κύκλωψ;

ΚΑΤΑ ΠΛΟΥΤΟΥ

v. ΠΕΡΙ ΠΛΟΥΤΟΥ

ΟΜΗΡΙΚΑΙ ΜΕΛΕΤΑΙ

[122] Aulus Gellius 4.11. Plutarchus quoque, homo in disciplinis gravi auctoritate, in primo librorum quos de Homero composuit Aristotelem philosophum scripsit eadem ipsa de Pythagoricis scripsisse, quod non abstinuerint edundis animalibus, nisi pauca carne quadam. verba ipsa Plutarchi, quoniam res inopinata est, subscripsi: Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ μήτρας καὶ καρδίας καὶ ἀκαλήφης καὶ τοιούτων τινῶν ἄλλων ἀπέχεσθαί φησιν τοὺς Πυθαγορικούς, χρῆσθαι δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις.

[123] Idem 2.8. Plutarchus secundo librorum, quos de Homero composuit, imperfecte atque praepostere atque inscite syllogismo esse usum Epicurum dicit verbaque ipsa Epicuri ponit: ὁ θάνατος οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς· τὸ γὰρ διαλυθὲν ἀναισθητεῖ, τὸ δὲ ἀναισθητοῦν οὐδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς. ‘nam praetermisit’ inquit ‘quod in prima parte sumere debuit, τὸν θάνατον εἶναι ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος διάλυσιν· tunc deinde eodem ipso, quod omiserat, quasi posito concessoque ad confirmandum aliud utitur. progredi autem hic’ inquit ‘syllogismus, nisi illo prius posito, non potest.’

[124] Idem 2.9. In eodem libro idem Plutarchus eundem Epicurum reprehendit, quod verbo usus sit parum proprio et alienae significationis. ita enim scripsit Epicurus: ὅρος τοῦ μεγέθους τῶν ἡδονῶν ἡ παντὸς τοῦ ἀλγοῦντος ὑπεξαίρεσις. ‘non’ inquit ‘παντὸς τοῦ ἀλγοῦντος sed παντὸς τοῦ ἀλγεινοῦ dicere oportuit. detractio enim significanda est doloris’ inquit ‘non dolentis’.

[125] Galen, Hippocratis et Platonis Dogmata 3. p. 265 Mü. (v. 300 Kühn).

Ἐν οἷς ἐγὼ μὲν ἐκπλήττομαι τῇ μεγαλοψυχίᾳ τοῦ Χρυσίππου· δέον γὰρ ὡς ἄνθρωπον ἀνεγνωκότα τοσούτους ποιητὰς καὶ γινώσκοντα σαφῶς ἅπασι τοῖς δόγμασιν αὐτοῦ μαρτυροῦντας ἄλλοτε κατ’ ἄλλα τῶν ἐπῶν, ὥσπερ καὶ Πλούταρχος ἐπέδειξεν ἐν τοῖς τῶν Ὁμηρικῶν μελετῶν, ἐκλέγειν μὲν ἐξ αὐτῶν ὅσα μαρτυρεῖ τῷ σπουδαζομένῳ πρὸς αὐτοῦ δόγματι ...

[126] Schol. in Eur. Alcestim 1128.

Ψυχαγωγοί τινες γόητες ἐν Θετταλίᾳ οὕτω καλούμενοι, οἵτινες καθαρμοῖς τισι καὶ γοητείαις τὰ εἴδωλα ἐπάγουσί τε καὶ ἐξάγουσιν· οὓς καὶ Λάκωνες μετεπέμψαντο, ἡνίκα τὸ Παυσανίου εἴδωλον ἐξετάραξε τοὺς προσιόντας τῷ ναῷ τῆς Χαλκιοίκου, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Πλούταρχος ἐν ταῖς Ὁμηρικαῖς μελέταις.

[127] Schol. in Il. Ο 624; Et. Magn. s. v. ἀνεμοτρεφές.

Ἀντὶ τοῦ ὑπὸ ἀνέμου γεγυμνασμένον, ἰσχυρόν. τὰ γὰρ ὑπεύδια καὶ κατασκιαζόμενα τῶν δένδρων εὐγενῆ μὲν καὶ λεῖον τὸν ὅρπηκα ποιεῖ, ἀσθενῆ δὲ καὶ μαλακὸν καὶ ἀγύμναστον ἀναδίδωσιν· οἷς δὲ προσπίπτει τραχὺς ἀὴρ καὶ ἀνεμώδης, ταῦτα ταῖς τῶν πνευμάτων τριβόμενα πληγαῖς εὔτονον καὶ δύσθρυπτον ἔχει τὴν στερρότητα, ὥς φησι Πλούταρχος ἐν μελέταις Ὁμηρικαῖς.

ΟΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΓΥΝΑΙΚΑ ΠΑΙΔΕΥΤΕΟΝ

[128] Stobaeus 3.18.27 (3 p. 520 H). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Ὅτι καὶ γυναῖκα παιδευτέον.

Τῷ Διονύσῳ νάρθηκα καὶ λήθην συγκαθιεροῦσιν, ὡς μὴ δέον μνημονεύειν τῶν ἐν οἴνῳ πλημμεληθέντων ἀλλὰ νουθεσίας παιδικῆς δεομένων. ᾧ συνᾴδει καὶ τὸ ‘μισέω μνάμονα συμπόταν’. ὁ δ’ Εὐριπίδης (Or. 213) τῶν ἀτόπων τὴν λήθην σοφὴν εἴρηκε.

[129] Stobaeus 3.18.31 (3 p. 521 H). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Ὅτι καὶ γυναῖκα παιδευτέον.

Ἀμαθίην, ὥς φησιν Ἡράκλειτος (B 95 DielsKranz) καὶ ἄλλως κρύπτειν ἔργον ἐστὶν ἐν οἴνῳ δὲ χαλεπώτερον· καὶ Πλάτων (Legg. 650A) δέ φησιν ἐν οἴνῳ τὰ ἤθη φανερὰ γίνεσθαι, ὥσπερ καὶ Ὅμηρος (φ 35)

‘οὐδὲ τραπέζῃ

γνώτην ἀλλήλων’.

[130] Stobaeus 3.18.32 (3 p. 521 H). τοῦ αὐτοῦ.

Σοφοκλῆς ἐμέμφετο Αἰσχύλῳ, ὅτι μεθύων ἔγραφε· ‘καὶ γὰρ εἰ τὰ δέοντα ποιεῖ’ φησίν ‘ἀλλ’ οὐκ εἰδώς γε’.

[131] Stobaeus 4.1.140 (4 p. 89 H.), 4.31.46 (`5 p. 749 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Ὅτι καὶ γυναῖκα παιδευτέον.

Μὴ παιδὶ μάχαιραν, ἡ παροιμία φησίν· (Par. gr. 1.276, 2.528) ἐγὼ δὲ φαίην ἄν· ‘μὴ παιδὶ πλοῦτον μηδὲ ἀνδρὶ ἀπαιδεύτῳ δυναστείαν’.

[132] Stobaeus 4.32.15 (5 p. 784 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Ὅτι καὶ γυναῖκα παιδευτέον.

Ἀρχύτας ἀναγνοὺς τὸν Ἐρατοσθένους Ἑρμῆν, τοῦτον ἐπήνεγκε τὸν στίχον (fr. 3 Powell)

‘χρειὼ πάντ’ ἐδίδαξε· τί δ’ οὐ χρειώ κεν ἀνεύροι;’

καὶ τοῦτον (fr. 4)

‘ὀρθοῦ· καὶ γὰρ μᾶλλον ἐπωδίνουσι μέριμναι’.

[133] Stobaeus 4.52.43 (5 p. 1085 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Ὅτι καὶ γυναῖκα παιδευτέον.

Τροφώνιος καὶ Ἀγαμήδης ποιήσαντες ἐν Δελφοῖς ναὸν ᾔτουν παρὰ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος τὸν μισθόν· ὁ δ’ αὐτοῖς ἔφη δώσειν τῇ ἑβδόμῃ ἡμέρᾳ· καὶ τῇ ἑβδόμῃ ἀπέθανον. ἔτι δὲ Κλέοβις καὶ Βίτων, Κυδίππης τῆς μητρὸς αὐτῶν εὐξαμένης τῇ Ἥρᾳ δοῦναι τοῖς παισὶν ὅπερ ἂν εἴη κάλλιστον, ὅτι ἑαυτοὺς ὑποζεύξαντες τὴν μητέρα εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν ἀνήγαγον, τὸν βίον παραχρῆμα κατέστρεψαν· εἰς οὓς καὶ τοιόνδε τις ἐπίγραμμα πεποίηκεν·

‘οἵδε Βίτων Κλέοβίς τ’ ἐπὶ σώμασιν οἰκείοισιν

ζεῦγλαν ζευξάμενοι μητέρα ἣν ἀγέτην

Ἥρας εἰς ἱερόν· λαοὶ δέ μιν ἐζήλωσαν

εὐτεκνίας παίδων. ἡ δὲ χαρεῖσα θεᾷ

εὔξατο παῖδε τυχεῖν τοῦ ἀρίστου δαίμονος αἴσης,

οὕνεκ’ ἐτίμησαν μητέρα τὴν σφετέρην.

αὐτοῦ δ’ εὐνηθέντε λίπον βίον ἐν νεότητι,

ὡς τόδ’ ἄριστον ἐὸν καὶ μακαριστότατον.’

ΠΕΡΙ ΕΡΩΤΟΣ

[134] Stobaeus 4.20.34 (4 p. 444 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Περὶ ἔρωτος.

Τῶν Μενάνδρου δραμάτων ὁμαλῶς ἁπάντων ἓν συνεκτικόν ἐστιν, ὁ ἔρως, οἷον πνεῦμα κοινὸν διαπεφοιτηκώς. ὄντ’ οὖν μάλιστα θιασώτην τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ὀργιαστὴν τὸν ἄνδρα συμπαραλαμβάνωμεν εἰς τὴν ζήτησιν, ἐπεὶ καὶ λελάληκε περὶ τοῦ πάθους φιλοσοφώτερον. ἄξιον γὰρ εἶναι θαύματος φήσας τὸ περὶ τοὺς ἐρῶντας, ὥσπερ ἔστιν, †ἅμα λαλεῖ, εἶτ’ ἀπορεῖ καὶ ζητεῖ πρὸς ἑαυτόν (fr. 568),

‘τίνι δεδούλωνταί ποτε;

ὄψει; φλύαρος· τῆς γὰρ αὐτῆς πάντες ἂν ἤρων· κρίσιν γὰρ τὸ βλέπειν ἴσην ἔχει.

ἀλλ’ ἡδονή τις τοὺς ἐρῶντας ἐπάγεται

συνουσίας; πῶς οὖν ἕτερος ταύτην ἔχων

οὐδὲν πέπονθεν, ἀλλ’ ἀπῆλθε καταγελῶν,

ἕτερος ‹δ’› ἀπόλωλε; καιρός ἐστιν ἡ νόσος

ψυχῆς· ὁ πληγεὶς δ’ †εἴσω δὴ τιτρώσκεται.’

ταῦτα τίν’ ἐστὶ σκεψώμεθα· καὶ γὰρ ἔχει τι κρουστικὸν καὶ κινητικὸν αἴτιον ‹ὁ ἔρως, εἰ καὶ μήτε τὴν ὄψιν› μήτε τὴν συνουσίαν αἰτίαν εἶναι πιθανόν ἐστι· ἀρχαὶ γὰρ αὗταί τινες ἴσως, ἡ δ’ ἰσχὺς καὶ ῥίζωσις τοῦ πάθους ἐν ἑτέροις. ἡ δ’ ἀπόδειξις ἐλαφρὰ καὶ οὐδ’ ἀληθής· οὐ γὰρ ἔχει κρίσιν ‹ἴσην› τὸ βλέπειν, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τὸ γεύεσθαι. καὶ γὰρ ὄψις ὄψεως καὶ ἀκοῆς ἀκοὴ φύσει τε μᾶλλον διήρθρωται καὶ τέχνῃ συγγεγύμνασται πρὸς τὴν τοῦ καλοῦ διάγνωσιν, ἐν μὲν ἁρμονίαις καὶ μέλεσιν αἱ τῶν μουσικῶν ἐν δὲ μορφαῖς καὶ ἰδέαις αἱ τῶν ζῳγράφων· ὥσπερ εἰπεῖν ποτε Νικόμαχον λέγουσι πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἰδιώτην φήσαντα μὴ καλὴν αὐτῷ φανῆναι τὴν Ζεύξιδος Ἑλένην· ‘λάβε γάρ’ ἔφη ‘τοὺς ἐμοὺς ὀφθαλμούς, καὶ θεός σοι φανήσεται’. πολὺ δὲ καὶ μυρεψοὶ περὶ τὰ ὀσφραντὰ καὶ νὴ Δί’ ὀψοποιοὶ περὶ τὰ γευστὰ διατριβῇ καὶ συνηθείᾳ διαφέρουσαν ἡμῶν κρίσιν ἔχουσι. πάλιν δὲ τὸ συνουσίᾳ τὸν ἐρῶντα μὴ κρατεῖσθαι, διὰ τὸ τῇ αὐτῇ συγγενόμενον ἄλλον ἀπαλλαγῆναι καὶ καταφρονῆσαι, τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν, οἷον εἰ λέγοι τις μηδὲ χυμῶν ἡδονῇ δεδουλῶσθαι Φιλόξενον τὸν ὀψοφάγον, ὅτι τῶν αὐτῶν Ἀντισθένης γευσάμενος οὐδὲν ἔπαθε τοιοῦτον· μηδ’ ὑπὸ οἴνου μεθύειν Ἀλκιβιάδην, ὅτι Σωκράτης πίνων τὸν ἴσον οἶνον ἔνηφεν.

Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἐάσωμεν, τὰ δ’ ἐφεξῆς, ἐν οἷς ἤδη τὴν αὑτοῦ δόξαν ἀποφαίνεται, σκοπῶμεν. ‘καιρός ἐστιν ἡ νόσος ψυχῆς.’ εὖ καὶ ὀρθῶς. δεῖ γὰρ ἅμα τοῦ πάσχοντος εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ τοῦ ποιοῦντος ἀπάντησιν γενέσθαι, πρὸς ἄλληλά πως ἐχόντων· ὡς ἄκυρον εἰς τὴν τοῦ τέλους ἀπεργασίαν ἡ δραστικὴ δύναμις, ἂν μὴ παθητικὴ διάθεσις ᾖ. τοῦτο δ’ εὐστοχίας ἐστὶ καιροῦ τῷ παθεῖν ἑτοίμῳ συνάπτοντος ἐν ἀκμῇ τὸ ποιεῖν πεφυκός.

[135] Stobaeus 4.20.67 (4 p. 468 H.). ἐκ τῶν Πλουτάρχου Ὅτι οὐ κρίσις ὁ ἔρως.

Οἱ μὲν γὰρ νόσον τὸν ἔρωτα οἱ δ’ ἐπιθυμίαν ‹οἱ δὲ φιλίαν› οἱ δὲ μανίαν οἱ δὲ θεῖόν τι κίνημα τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ δαιμόνιον, οἱ δ’ ἄντικρυς θεὸν ἀναγορεύουσιν. ὅθεν ὀρθῶς ἐνίοις ἔδοξε τὸ μὲν ἀρχόμενον ἐπιθυμίαν εἶναι τὸ δ’ ὑπερβάλλον μανίαν τὸ δ’ ἀντίστροφον φιλίαν τὸ δὲ ταπεινότερον ἀρρωστίαν τὸ δ’ εὐημεροῦν ἐνθουσιασμόν. διὸ καὶ πυρφόρον αὐτὸν οἵ τε ποιηταὶ λέγουσιν οἵ τε πλάσται καὶ γραφεῖς δημιουργοῦσιν, ὅτι καὶ τοῦ πυρὸς τὸ μὲν λαμπρὸν ἥδιστόν ἐστιν τὸ δὲ καυστικὸν ἀλγεινότατον.

[136] Stobaeus 4.20.68 (4 p. 469 H.). ἐν ταὐτῷ.

Ὥσπερ γὰρ τοὺς φίλους ὑγιαίνοντας μέν, ἂν πλημμελῶσιν, ἐξελέγχειν καὶ νουθετεῖν κράτιστόν ἐστιν, ἐν δὲ ταῖς παρακοπαῖς καὶ τοῖς φρενιτισμοῖς εἰώθαμεν μὴ διαμάχεσθαι μηδ’ ἀντιτείνειν ἀλλὰ καὶ συμπεριφέρεσθαι καὶ συνεπινεύειν· οὕτω τοὺς δι’ ὀργὴν ἢ πλεονεξίαν ἁμαρτάνοντας ἀνακόπτειν τῇ παρρησίᾳ δεῖ καὶ κωλύειν, τοῖς δ’ ἐρῶσιν ὥσπερ νοσοῦσι συγγνώμην ἔχειν. διὸ κράτιστον μὲν ἐξ ἀρχῆς τοιούτου πάθους σπέρμα μὴ παραδέχεσθαι μηδ’ ἀρχήν· ἂν δ’ ἐγγένηται, ἴθι ἐπὶ ἀποτροπαίων βωμοὺς θεῶν κατὰ τὸν Πλάτωνα (Legg. 854b), ἴθι ἐπὶ τὰς τῶν σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν συνουσίας, ἐξέλασον αὑτοῦ τὸ θηρίον πρὶν ὄνυχας φῦσαι καὶ ὀδόντας· εἰ δὲ μή, μαχέσῃ τελείῳ κακῷ, τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο καὶ νήπιον ἐναγκαλιζόμενος. τίνες δ’ εἰσὶν οἱ τοῦ ἔρωτος ὄνυχες καὶ ὀδόντες; ὑποψία, ζηλοτυπία. ἀλλ’ ἔχει τι πιθανὸν καὶ ἀνθηρόν. ἀμέλει καὶ ‹ἡ› Σφὶγξ εἶχεν ἐπαγωγὸν τὸ ποίκιλμα τοῦ πτεροῦ, καὶ

‘εἰ μὲν πρὸς αὐγὰς ἡλίου, χρυσωπὸν ἦν

νώτισμα θηρός· εἰ δὲ πρὸς νέφη βάλοι,

κυανωπὸν ὥς τις Ἶρις ἀντηύγει σέλας’.

οὕτω δὴ καὶ ὁ ἔρως ἔχει τι χάριεν καὶ οὐκ ἄμουσον ἀλλ’ αἱμύλον καὶ ἐπιτερπές· ἁρπάζει δὲ καὶ βίους καὶ οἴκους καὶ γάμους καὶ ἡγεμονίας, οὐκ αἰνίγματα προβάλλων ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς αἴνιγμα δυσεύρετον ὢν καὶ δύσλυτον, εἰ βούλοιτό τις προτείνειν τί μισεῖ καὶ φιλεῖ, τί φεύγει καὶ διώκει, τί ἀπειλεῖ καὶ ἱκετεύει, τί ὀργίζεται καὶ ἐλεεῖ, ‹τί› βούλεται παύσασθαι καὶ οὐ βούλεται, τί χαίρει τῷ αὐτῷ μάλιστα καὶ ἀνιᾶται, †τοῦτο λῦσαι καὶ θεραπεῦσαι. τῆς μὲν γὰρ Σφιγγὸς τὸ αἴνιγμα τὰ πλεῖστα καὶ πεπλασμένα ἔχει· οὔτε γὰρ τρίπους ὁ γέρων ἀληθῶς, εἴ ‹τι› προσείληφε τοῖς ποσὶ βοηθεῖν, οὔτε τετράπους ὁ νήπιος, ἐπεὶ ταῖς χερσὶν ὑπερείδει τὴν τῶν βάσεων ὑγρότητα καὶ ἀσθένειαν. τὰ δὲ τῶν ἐρώντων πάθη ἀληθῆ· στέργουσιν, ἐχθραίνουσι· τὸν αὐτὸν ποθοῦσιν ἀπόντα, τρέμουσι παρόντος· κολακεύουσι, λοιδοροῦσι, προαποθνῄσκουσι, φονεύουσιν, εὔχονται μὴ φιλεῖν, καὶ παύσασθαι φιλοῦντες οὐ θέλουσι· σωφρονίζουσι καὶ πειρῶσι, παιδεύουσι καὶ διαφθείρουσιν, ἄρχειν θέλουσι καὶ δουλεύειν ὑπομένουσι. τοῦτ’ αἴτιον γέγονε μάλιστα τοῦ μανίαν ὑποληφθῆναι τὸ πάθος·

‘ἤρων· τὸ μαίνεσθαι δ’ ἄρ’ ἦν ἔρως βροτοῖς’

ἐρωτικὸς ἀνὴρ Εὐριπίδης φησίν.

[137] Stobaeus 4.20.69 (4 p. 470 H.). τοῦ αὐτοῦ Περὶ ἔρωτος.

Ὁ ἔρως οὔτε τὴν γένεσιν ἐξαίφνης λαμβάνει καὶ ἀθρόαν ὡς ὁ θυμός, οὔτε παρέρχεται ταχέως καίπερ εἶναι πτηνὸς λεγόμενος· ἀλλ’ ἐξάπτεται μαλακῶς καὶ σχεδὸν οἷον ἐντήκων ἑαυτόν, ἁψάμενός τε τῆς ψυχῆς παραμένει πολὺν χρόνον, οὐδ’ ἐν γηρῶσιν ἐνίοις ἀναπαυόμενος ἀλλ’ ἐν πολιαῖς ἀκμάζων ἔτι πρόσφατος καὶ νεαρός· ἂν δὲ καὶ λήξῃ καὶ διαλυθῇ, χρόνῳ μαρανθεὶς ἢ λόγῳ τινὶ κατασβεσθείς, οὔπω παντάπασιν ἐξαπήλλακται τῆς ψυχῆς ἀλλ’ ἐναπολείπει πυρίκαυτον ὕλην καὶ σημεῖα θερμά, καθάπερ οἱ κεραυνοὶ τυφόμενοι. λύπης μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀπαλλαγείσης ἴχνος ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ παραμένει σύνοικον οὐδ’ ὀργῆς τραχείας πεσούσης, συστέλλεται δὲ καὶ φλεγμονὴ ἐπιθυμίας παρεχούσης τραχὺ κίνημα· τὰ δ’ ἐρωτικὰ δήγματα, κἂν ἀποστῇ τὸ θηρίον, οὐκ ἐξανίησι τὸν ἰόν, ἀλλ’ ἐνοιδεῖ τὰ ἐντὸς σπαράγματα, καὶ ἀγνοεῖται τί ἦν, πῶς συνέστη, πόθεν εἰς τὴν ψυχὴν ἐνέπεσεν.

[138] Stobaeus 4.21.25 (4 p. 492 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Περὶ ἔρωτος.

Καὶ τοὺς καλοὺς ὁρᾶν μὲν ἐπιτερπέστατον, ἅψασθαι δὲ καὶ λαβεῖν οὐκ ἀκίνδυνον· μᾶλλον δέ, ὥς φησιν ὁ Ξενοφῶν (Cyrop. 5.1.16), τὸ μὲν πῦρ τοὺς ἁψαμένους κάει μόνον, οἱ δὲ καλοὶ καὶ τοὺς μακρὰν ἑστῶτας ὑφάπτουσιν· ἡ γὰρ ὄψις λαβὴ τοῦ πάθους ἐστί.

ΠΕΡΙ ΕΥΓΕΝΕΙΑΣ

[139] Stobaeus 4.29.21 (5 p. 708 H. = Ps.Plut. De nobilitate . ). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Κατὰ εὐγενείας.

Τί γὰρ ἄλλο νομίζομεν εἶναι τὴν εὐγένειαν, εἰ μὴ παλαιὸν πλοῦτον ἢ παλαιὰν δόξαν, οὐδέτερον ἐφ’ ἡμῖν ὄν, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν τύχης ἀδήλου τὰ δ’ ἀκρισίας χάριν ἀνθρωπίνης; ὥστ’ ἐκ δυεῖν ἀλλοτρίων κρέμαται τὸ πεφυσημένον ὄνομ’ ἡ εὐγένεια. καὶ ὁ πλοῦτος μὲν οὐχ ὁμοίους αὐτῷ τοὺς γεννηθέντας ποιεῖ, ἀλλ’ ὁ ἐξ ἀρετῆς γεννηθεὶς εἰκονίζεται, τῶν ἐπὶ τῆς ψυχῆς δικαίων εἰς τοὺς ἐκγόνους διαχεομένων. καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔστιν ἡ ὄντως εὐγένεια, ὁμοίωσις δικαιοσύνης.

Stobaeus 4.29.22 (5 p. 709 H. = Ps.Plut. De nobilitate . ). ἐν ταὐτῷ.

[140]  Ἆρ’ οὖν εὐγενέστερος ἦν ὁ Μίδου πλοῦτος τῆς Ἀριστείδου πενίας; καίτοι ὁ μὲν ‹ἀπέθανεν› οὐδ’ ἐντάφια καταλιπών, τῷ δὲ Φρυγὶ πάντ’ ἂν ἐδύνατ’ εἶναι τάφος. ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐν πλουσίῳ τὸ εὐγενές. πυρὸς ἔχει τινὰ τρόπον πᾶσα πονηρία· ἀμφότερα χωρὶς τροφῆς ἀφανίζεται σβεννύμενα. ἡ δὲ Σωκράτους ἀδοξία, μαίας καὶ ἑρμογλύφου πατρός, οὐκ ἦν εὐγενεστέρα τῆς Σαρδαναπάλλου δόξης; μὴ σύ γε νομίζεις ὅτι Ξέρξης εὐγενέστερος ἦν Κυνεγείρου; καίτοι ὁ μὲν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἰδίας πατρίδος ἀπεκόπη τὴν χεῖρα, ὁ δ’ ὑπὲρ τοῦ ζῆν ἔφυγεν, ἀντὶ τῆς μεγάλης βασιλείας μεγάλην περικειμένος δειλίαν.

[141] Stobaeus 4.29.51 (5 p. 722 H. = Ps.Plut. De nobilitate . ). Πλουτάρχου ὑπὲρ εὐγενείας.

Ἄπιστος ἡ τῶν σοφιστῶν συκοφαντία κατὰ τῆς εὐγενείας, εἰ μηδὲ τὰ ἐν μέσῳ καὶ πᾶσι γνώριμα σκοποῦσιν, ὅτι πρὸς τὰς ὀχείας τοὺς εὐγενεῖς ἵππους καὶ κύνας ὠνοῦνται καὶ κιχρῶνται καὶ ἀμπέλων εὐγενῆ σπέρματα καὶ ἐλαιῶν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων δένδρων, ἀνθρώπου δ’ οὐδὲν ὄφελος νομίζουσιν εὐγένειαν εἰς τὰς μελλούσας διαδοχάς, ἀλλὰ ταὐτὸ πείθονται βάρβαρον εἶναι καὶ Ἑλληνικὸν σπέρμα καὶ οὐκ οἴονται λεληθυίας τινὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ σπέρματ’ ἀρετῆς συγκαταβάλλεσθαι τοῖς γεννωμένοις, ὥσπερ τῷ Τηλεμάχῳ τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως, ἐφ’ οὗ καὶ πάνυ †τῷ ὀνόματι ὁ ποιητὴς εἴρηκεν (β 271)

‘ἐνέστακται μένος ἠύ’,

ὡς ἂν ἐν ταῖς σπερμάτων ὀλίγαις σταγόσι καὶ τῶν ἀρετῆς συρρεόντων ἀγαθῶν.

[142] ΠΕΡΙ ΗΜΕΡΩΝ

Plut. Vit. Camilli, c. 19. Οἱ ‹δ’› Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ τὴν περὶ Νάξον ἐνίκων ναυμαχίαν, ἧς Χαβρίας ἐστρατήγει, τοῦ Βοηδρομιῶνος περὶ τὴν πανσέληνον, ἐν δὲ Σαλαμῖνι περὶ τὰς εἰκάδας, ὡς ἡμῖν ἐν τῷ Περὶ ἡμερῶν ἀποδέδεικται.

[143] ΠΕΡΙ ΗΣΥΧΙΑΣ

Stobaeus 4.16.18 (4 p. 398 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Περὶ ἡσυχίας.

Σοφὸν ἔοικε χρῆμα τὸ τῆς ἡσυχίας πρός τ’ ἄλλα καὶ εἰς ἐπιστήμης καὶ φρονήσεως μελέτην· λέγω δ’ οὐ τὴν καπηλικὴν καὶ ἀγοραίαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν μεγάλην, ἥτις ἐξομοιοῖ θεῷ τὸν αὐτὴν ἀναλαβόντα. αἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι καὶ τοῖς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὄχλοις γινόμεναι μελέται γυμνάζουσι τὴν λεγομένην δριμύτητα, πανουργίαν οὖσαν· ὥστε τοὺς ἐν αὐταῖς ἄκρους οἷον ὑπὸ μαγείρων τῶν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι χρειῶν διαπεποικιλμένους ‹πόσα μὲν οὐχὶ › πόσα δ’ οὐχὶ καὶ διακονήματα δεινὰ ἐργάζεσθαι. ἡ δ’ ἐρημία, σοφίας οὖσα γυμνάσιον, ἠθοποιὸς ἀγαθὴ καὶ πλάττει καὶ μετευθύνει τῶν ἀνδρῶν τὰς ψυχάς. οὐδὲν γὰρ αὐταῖς ἐμπόδιόν ἐστι τῆς αὐξήσεως, οὐδὲ πρὸς πολλὰ καὶ μικρὰ νόμιμα προσπταίουσαι κάμπτονται †εὐθύ, καθάπερ αἱ ταῖς πόλεσιν ἐναπειλημμέναι ψυχαί· ἀλλ’ ἐν ἀέρι καθαρῷ καὶ τὰ πολλὰ ἔξω διαιτώμεναι τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀνίασιν ὀρθαὶ καὶ πτεροφυοῦσιν, ἀρδόμεναι τῷ διαυγεστάτῳ τε καὶ λειοτάτῳ ῥεύματι τῆς ἡσυχίας, ἐν ᾧ τά τε μαθήματα τοῦ νοῦ θεοειδέστερα καὶ καθαρώτερον ὁρᾷ. διὰ τοῦτό τοι καὶ τῶν θεῶν τὰ ἱερά, ὅσα ἐκ τοῦ ἀρχαίου πάλαι νενόμισται, τοῖς ἐρημοτάτοις χωρίοις ‹ἐνίδρυσαν› οἱ πρῶτοι, μάλιστα δὲ Μουσῶν τε καὶ Πανὸς καὶ Νυμφῶν καὶ Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ ὅσοι μουσικῆς ἡγεμόνες θεοί, διακρίναντες, ὡς οἶμαι, τὰς παιδείας †κατὰ τῶν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι δεινῶν τε καὶ μιαρῶν τινῶν.

ΠΕΡΙ ΚΑΛΛΟΥΣ (?)

[144] Stobaeus 4.21.12 (4 p. 485 H.). Πλουτάρχου Ὑπὲρ κάλλους.

Τί γάρ; οὐ σύνθετον φύσις ἀνθρώπων ἐκ σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς; ἢ θάτερον ἀρκοῦν ἡμῖν; καὶ πῶς οἷόν τε; τὸ μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἂν εἴη μὴ χρώμενον ψυχῇ, ψυχὴ δ’ οὐκ ἂν εἴη μὴ ἔχουσα τὸ συνερεῖδον. τί οὖν; ὥσπερ ἐξ ἴσου κοσμεῖται ἑκάτερα τοῖς συγγενέσιν, ἡ μὲν δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ σωφροσύνῃ καὶ φρονήσει, τὸ δ’ ἰσχύι καὶ κάλλει καὶ ὑγιείᾳ. καὶ πῶς οὐ θαυμαστὸν λέγειν τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς καλά, τὰ τοῦ σώματος ὑπερορῶντα;

[145] Stobaeus 4.21.13 (4 p. 485 H.). ἐν ταὐτῷ.

Ἡ γοῦν τοῦ σώματος εὐμορφία ψυχῆς ἐστιν ἔργον σώματι χαριζομένης δόξαν εὐμορφίας. πεσέτω γοῦν θανάτῳ τὸ σῶμα, καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς μετῳκισμένης, οὐ στάσις, οὐ χρῶμα, οὐκ ὀφθαλμός, οὐ φωνή, οὐδὲν ἔτι καταλείπεται τῶν ἐρασμίων, προδεδομένον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχαίων οἰκητόρων· ὥστε καὶ ‹τὴν› ψυχὴν συνυβρίζεις λανθάνων, ἧς ἔστιν ἀνθρώπου κάλλος.

[146] Stobaeus 4.21.22 (4 p. 491 H.). Πλουτάρχου.

Ἀλλὰ μήν, ὥσπερ ἔφην, οὐδὲν τῶν ἄλλων ‹καλλῶν› κινδύνων γένεσίς ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ μόνου τοῦ σώματος. τὰ μὲν γὰρ τῆς ψυχῆς κάλλη καὶ σωτηρίας ἐλπίδες εἰσί, φρόνησις, εὐσέβεια, δικαιοπραγία· καὶ τὸ παιδείας εὐπρόσωπον κάλλος οἴκου καὶ πόλεως καὶ ἐθνῶν ἀθόρυβος εἰρήνη διατελεῖ γιγνομένη· ἡ δὲ γυναικῶν εὐμορφία ἀφορμὴ τοῖς πάθεσι καὶ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις.

[147] ΠΕΡΙ ΜΑΝΤΙΚΗΣ

Stobaeus 4.18a.10 (4 p. 414 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Περὶ μαντικῆς.

Τῶν τεχνῶν, ὡς ἔοικε, τὰς μὲν ἡ χρεία συνέστησεν ἐξ ἀρχῆς καὶ μέχρι νῦν διαφυλάσσει -

‘χρειὼ πάντ’ ἐδίδαξε, τί δ’ οὐ χρειώ κεν ἀνεύροι’

τῶν ἀναγκαίων; - ὑφαντικὴν οἰκοδομικὴν ἰατρικὴν καὶ ὅσαι περὶ γεωργίαν ἀναστρέφονται· τὰς δ’ ἡδονή τις προσηγάγετο καὶ κατέσχε, τὴν τῶν μυρεψῶν καὶ τῶν ὀψοποιῶν καὶ κομμωτικὴν πᾶσαν καὶ ἀνθοβαφίαν. ἔστι δ’ ὧν τὴν πιθανότητα καὶ τὴν ἀκρίβειαν καὶ τὸ καθάριον ἀγαπῶντες ἐκμανθάνουσι καὶ περιέπουσιν, ὡς ἀριθμητικὴν καὶ γεωμετρίαν καὶ κανονικὴν πᾶσαν καὶ ἀστρολογίαν, ἅς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Rep. 528c) καίπερ ἀμελουμένας ‘βίᾳ ὑπὸ χάριτος αὔξεσθαι’.

[148] ΠΕΡΙ ΟΡΓΗΣ

Stobaeus 3.20.70 (3 p. 555 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Περὶ ὀργῆς.

Ὅσα δ’ ὀργῇ χρώμενοι πράττουσιν ἄνθρωποι, ταῦτ’ ἀνάγκη τυφλὰ εἶναι καὶ ἀνόητα καὶ τοῦ παντὸς ἁμαρτάνειν. οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τ’ ὀργῇ χρώμενον λογισμῷ χρῆσθαι, τὸ δ’ ἄνευ λογισμοῦ ποιούμενον πᾶν ἄτεχνόν τε καὶ διεστραμμένον. λόγον οὖν ἡγεμόνα χρὴ ποιησάμενον οὕτως ἐπιχειρεῖν τοῖς κατὰ τὸν βίον ἔργοις, τὰς ἑκάστοτε προσπιπτούσας ὀργὰς διωθούμενον καὶ διανεύοντα, ὥσπερ οἱ κυβερνῆται τὰ κύματα προσφερόμενα. ἔστι γοῦν οὐκ ἔλαττον τὸ δέος, ὀργῆς ‹δ’› ἀντιπρῴρου κυλινδουμένης, αὑτόν τε καὶ σύμπαντα οἶκον ἔστιν ἄρδην ἀπολέσαι καὶ ἀνατρέψαι μὴ διαπλεύσαντα δεξιῶς. οὐ μὴν ἀλλ’ ἐπιμελείας εἰς αὐτὰ δεῖ καὶ μελέτης ἢ καὶ μάλιστα ἁλίσκονται κατ’ ἄκρας· ‹κατορθοῦσι δὲ μάλιστα› οἱ παραδεξάμενοι τὸν θυμὸν ὡς σύμμαχον ἀρετῆς, ἀπολαύοντες ὅσον αὐτοῦ χρήσιμόν ἐστιν ἔν τε πολέμῳ καὶ νὴ Δί’ ἐν πολιτείαις, τὸ πολὺ δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ ἐπιπολάζον ‹σπουδάζοντες› ἐκκρίνειν καὶ ἐκβάλλειν τῆς ψυχῆς, ὅπερ ὀργή τε καὶ πικρία καὶ ὀξυθυμία λέγεται, νοσήματα ἥκιστα ταῖς ἀνδρείαις ψυχαῖς πρέποντα. τίς οὖν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ τούτων γίγνεται μελέτη; ἐμοὶ μὲν δοκεῖ μάλιστ’ ἂν ὧδε γίγνεσθαι, πόρρωθεν ἡμῶν προμελετώντων καὶ προαπαντλούντων ‹τὸ› πλεῖστον, οἷον ἐν οἰκέταις τε καὶ πρὸς γυναῖκας τὰς γαμετάς. ὁ γὰρ οἴκοι πρᾷος καὶ δημοσίᾳ πρᾶος πολὺ μᾶλλον ἔσται, τοιοῦτος ἔνδοθεν καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν οἴκοι πεποιημένος †αὐτῷ τῆς αὑτοῦ ψυχῆς εἶναι ἀγαθός.

ΠΕΡΙ (vel ΚΑΤΑ) ΠΛΟΥΤΟΥ

[149] Stobaeus 4.31c.85 (5 p. 765 H.). Πλουτάρχου Κατὰ πλούτου.

Φύσει μὲν γὰρ δυσχαλίνωτον ὄρεξις, προσλαβοῦσα δὲ καὶ πλούτου χορηγίαν ἀχαλίνωτον.

[150] Stobaeus 4.31c.86 (5 p. 765 H.). ἐν ταὐτῷ.

Ἀλλ’ ἀπληστία καὶ ἄπιστός ἐστιν ἐν αὐτοῖς μανία, τοιούτῳ μὲν ἐνθουσιασμῷ χρῆσθαι περὶ τὴν κτῆσιν, ὡς εἰ κτήσαιντο μηκέτι καμουμένους, τοσαύτῃ δ’ ἀμελείᾳ περὶ τὰ ληφθέντα, ὡς μὴ γενόμενα. δυσερωτιῶσι δὲ τῶν ἀπόντων, ὑπερορῶντες ὧν ἔχουσιν· οὐδὲν γὰρ οὕτως ἀγαπῶσιν ὡς [δὲ] ἐλπίζουσιν. οὐκ οἶδα πότερον αὐτοῖς ἄμεινόν ἐστιν, ἔχειν ἢ προσδοκᾶν· ἔχοντες γὰρ οὐ χρῶνται, προσδοκῶντες δὲ κάμνουσι. τί οὖν ἐπαινοῦμεν τοιοῦτον ἀγαθόν, οὗ πέρας ἔστιν οὐδέν, ἀλλ’ ᾧ τὸ ληφθὲν ἑτέρων ἀρχή;

[151] Stobaeus 4.32a.16 (5 p. 784 H.). Πλουτάρχου Κατὰ πλούτου.

Οὐδέποτε λιμὸς ἐγέννησε μοιχείαν, οὐδέποτε ἀπορία χρημάτων ἀσωτίαν. βραχεῖά τίς ἐστι σωφροσύνη τὸ πενητεύειν, ὀλίγη τις εὐνομία τὸ ἀπορεῖσθαι.

[152] Stobaeus 4.32a.17 (5 p. 784 H.). Ἀρκεσιλάου·

Ἀρκεσίλαος τὴν πενίαν λυπρὰν μὲν ἔλεγεν εἶναι ὥσπερ καὶ τὴν Ἰθάκην, ἀγαθὴν δὲ κουροτρόφον, ἐθίζουσαν συνεῖναι λιτότητι καὶ καρτερίᾳ, καὶ καθόλου γυμνάσιον ἀρετῆς ἔμπρακτον.

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΔΙΑΒΑΛΛΕΙΝ (?) vel ΠΕΡΙ ΔΙΑΒΟΛΗΣ (?)

[153] Stobaeus 3.20.59 (3 p. 551 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ Περὶ διαβολῆς.

Οἱ νεώνητοι δοῦλοι πυνθάνονται οὐκ εἰ δεισιδαίμων ἢ φθονερὸς ὁ δεσπότης, ἀλλ’ εἰ ὀργίλος.

[154] Stobaeus 3.38.31 (3 p. 714 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ ‹Περὶ τοῦ› διαβάλλειν.

Τὸν φθόνον ἔνιοι τῷ καπνῷ εἰκάζουσι· πολὺς γὰρ ἐν τοῖς ἀρχομένοις ὤν, ὅταν ἐκλάμψωσιν ἀφανίζεται. ἥκιστα γοῦν τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις φθονοῦσιν.

[155] Stobaeus 3.38.32 (3 p. 715 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ ‹Περὶ τοῦ› διαβάλλειν.

Ἱππίας λέγει δύο εἶναι φθόνους· τὸν μὲν δίκαιον, ὅταν τις τοῖς κακοῖς φθονῇ τιμωμένοις· τὸν δ’ ἄδικον, ὅταν τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς. καὶ διπλᾶ τῶν ἄλλων οἱ φθονεροὶ κακοῦνται· οὐ γὰρ μόνον τοῖς ἰδίοις κακοῖς ἄχθονται, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνοι, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις ἀγαθοῖς.

[156] Stobaeus 3.42.10 (3 p. 761 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τοῦ ‹Περὶ τοῦ› διαβάλλειν.

Ἱππίας φησὶν ὅτι δεινόν ἐστιν ἡ διαβολία, οὕτως ὀνομάζων· ὅτι οὐδὲ τιμωρία τις κατ’ αὐτῶν γέγραπται ἐν τοῖς νόμοις, ὥσπερ τῶν κλεπτῶν· καίτοι ἄριστον ὂν κτῆμα τὴν φιλίαν κλέπτουσιν, ὥστε ἡ ὕβρις κακοῦργος οὖσα δικαιοτέρα ἐστὶ τῆς διαβολῆς διὰ τὸ μὴ ἀφανὴς εἶναι.

ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΕΝ ΠΛΑΤΑΙΑΙΣ ΔΑΙΔΑΛΩΝ

[157] Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 3 Prooem. Λαβὼν ἀνάγνωθι τοῦ Χαιρωνέως Πλουτάρχου τὰς περὶ τῶν προκειμένων φωνάς, ἐν αἷς σεμνολογῶν παρατρέπει τοὺς μύθους ἐφ’ ἅς φησιν εἶναι μυστηριώδεις θεολογίας, ἃς δὴ ἐκκαλύπτων τὸν μὲν Διόνυσον τὴν μέθην εἶναί φησιν ... τὴν δὲ Ἥραν τὴν γαμήλιον ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς συμβίωσιν· εἶθ’, ὥσπερ ἐπιλελησμένος τῆς ἀποδόσεως, ἑτέραν ἑξῆς ἐπισυνάψας ἱστορίαν τὴν Ἥραν οὐκέτι ὡς τὸ πρότερον ἀλλὰ τὴν Γῆν ὀνομάζει, λήθην δὲ καὶ νύκτα τὴν Λητώ· καὶ πάλιν τὴν αὐτὴν τῇ Λητοῖ φησιν εἶναι τὴν Ἥραν· εἶτ’ ἐπὶ τούτοις εἰσάγεται αὐτῷ ὁ Ζεὺς εἰς τὴν αἰθέριον δύναμιν ἀλληγορούμενος. καὶ τί με δεῖ ταῦτα προλαμβάνειν, αὐτοῦ παρὸν ἀκοῦσαι τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὧδέ πως ἐν οἷς ἐπέγραψεν Περὶ τῶν ἐν Πλαταιαῖς Δαιδάλων τὰ λανθάνοντα τοὺς πολλοὺς τῆς ἀπορρήτου περὶ θεῶν φυσιολογίας ἐκφαίνοντος;

Ὅτι μὲν οὖν ἡ παλαιὰ φυσιολογία καὶ παρ’ Ἕλλησι καὶ βαρβάροις λόγος ἦν φυσικὸς ἐγκεκαλυμμένος μύθοις, τὰ πολλὰ δι’ αἰνιγμάτων καὶ ὑπονοιῶν ἐπίκρυφος, καὶ μυστηριώδης θεολογία τά τε λαλούμενα τῶν σιγωμένων ἀσαφέστερα τοῖς πολλοῖς ἔχουσα καὶ τὰ σιγώμενα τῶν λαλουμένων ὑποπτότερα, κατάδηλόν ἐστιν τοῖς Ὀρφικοῖς ἔπεσι καὶ τοῖς Αἰγυπτιακοῖς καὶ Φρυγίοις λόγοις· μάλιστα δ’ οἱ περὶ τὰς τελετὰς ὀργιασμοὶ καὶ τὰ δρώμενα συμβολικῶς ἐν ταῖς ἱερουργίαις τὴν τῶν παλαιῶν ἐμφαίνει διάνοιαν.

Οἷον, ἵνα μὴ μακρὰν τῶν ἐνεστηκότων λόγων βαδίζωμεν, οὐ νομίζουσιν οὐδ’ ἀξιοῦσι κοινωνίαν εἶναι πρὸς Διόνυσον Ἥρᾳ· φυλάσσονται δὲ συμμιγνύναι τὰ ἱερά, καὶ τὰς Ἀθήνησιν ἱερείας ἀπαντώσας φασὶν ἀλλήλαις μὴ προσαγορεύειν, μηδ’ ὅλως κιττὸν εἰς τὸ τῆς Ἥρας εἰσκομίζεσθαι τέμενος, οὐ διὰ τὰς μυθικὰς καὶ φλυαρώδεις ζηλοτυπίας, ἀλλ’ ὅτι γαμήλιος μὲν ἡ θεὸς καὶ νυμφαγωγός, ἀπρεπὲς δὲ τὸ μεθύειν νυμφίοις καὶ γάμοις ἀναρμοστότατον, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων (Legg. 775bd)· ἀκρατοποσία γὰρ ταραχὴν ἐμποιεῖ καὶ ψυχαῖς καὶ σώμασιν, ὑφ’ ἧς ἄπλαστα καὶ πεπλανημένα ῥιζοῦται κακῶς τὰ σπειρόμενα καὶ κυϊσκόμενα. πάλιν οἱ θύοντες Ἥρᾳ τὴν χολὴν οὐ καθαγίζουσιν ἀλλὰ κατορύττουσι παρὰ τὸν βωμόν, ὡς δέον ἄθυμον καὶ ἄχολον καὶ καθαρεύουσαν ὀργῆς καὶ πικρίας ἁπάσης τὴν γυναικὸς καὶ ἀνδρὸς εἶναι συμβίωσιν.

Τοῦτο δὲ τὸ συμβολικὸν εἶδος ἐν τοῖς λόγοις καὶ τοῖς μύθοις μᾶλλόν ἐστιν· οἷον ἱστοροῦσι τὴν Ἥραν ἐν τῇ Εὐβοίᾳ τρεφομένην ἔτι παρθένον ὑπὸ τοῦ Διὸς κλαπῆναι, καὶ διακομισθεῖσαν ἐνταῦθα κρύπτεσθαι, Κιθαιρῶνος αὐτοῖς μυχὸν ἐπίσκιόν τινα καὶ θάλαμον αὐτοφυῆ παρασχόντος· ἐλθούσης δὲ τῆς Μακρίδος κατὰ ζήτησιν (ἦν δὲ Ἥρας τιθήνη) καὶ βουλομένης ἐρευνᾶν, οὐκ ἐᾶν τὸ Κιθαιρῶνα πολυπραγμονεῖν οὐδὲ τῷ χωρίῳ προσάγειν, ὡς τοῦ Διὸς ἐκεῖ τῇ Λητοῖ συναναπαυομένου καὶ συνδιατρίβοντος. ἀπελθούσης δὲ τῆς Μακρίδος, οὕτω τότε μὲν διαλαθεῖν τὴν Ἥραν, ὕστερον δὲ τῇ Λητοῖ χάριν ἀπομνημονεύουσαν ὁμοβώμιον θέσθαι καὶ σύνναον· ὥστε καὶ Λητοῖ Μυχίᾳ προθύεσθαι· τινὲς δὲ Νυχίαν λέγουσι. σημαίνεται δ’ ἐν ἑκατέρῳ τῶν ὀνομάτων τὸ κρύφιον καὶ διαλεληθός. ἔνιοι δὲ τὴν Ἥραν αὐτὴν ἐκεῖ τῷ Διὶ λάθρᾳ συνοῦσαν καὶ λανθάνουσαν οὕτω φασὶ Λητὼ Νυχίαν προσηγορεῦσθαι· φανερῶν δὲ τῶν γάμων γενομένων καὶ περὶ τὸν Κιθαιρῶνα πρῶτον ἐνταῦθα καὶ τὰς Πλαταιὰς τῆς ὁμιλίας ἀνακαλυφθείσης, Ἥραν Τελείαν καὶ Γαμήλιον αὐτὴν προσαγορευθῆναι.

Οἱ δὲ φυσικῶς μᾶλλον καὶ πρεπόντως ὑπολαμβάνοντες τὸν μῦθον οὕτως εἰς ταὐτὸ τῇ Λητοῖ συνάγουσι τὴν Ἥραν. γῆ μέν ἐστιν ἡ Ἥρα καθάπερ εἴρηται, νὺξ δ’ ἡ Λητώ ‘ληθώ’ τις οὖσα τῶν εἰς ὕπνον τρεπομένων. νὺξ δ’ οὐδέν ἐστιν ἄλλο πλὴν σκιὰ γῆς· ὅταν γὰρ πλησιάσαντα ταῖς δυμαῖς ἀποκρύψῃ τὸν ἥλιον, ἀναπλατυνομένη μελαίνει τὸν ἀέρα· καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔστι τὸ ἐκλειπτικὸν ὀλίσθημα τῶν πανσελήνων, ὅταν τῆς σελήνης περιφερομένης ἡ σκιὰ τῆς γῆς ἐπιψαύσῃ καὶ διαθολώσῃ τὸ φέγγος.

Ὅτι δ’ οὐκ ἄλλη τίς ἐστι τῆς Ἥρας ἡ Λητώ, μάθοιτ’ ἂν ἐνθένδε. τὴν Ἄρτεμιν δήπου θυγατέρα Λητοῦς καλοῦμεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ Εἰλείθυιαν τὴν αὐτὴν ὀνομάζομεν· οὐκοῦν ἥ τε Ἥρα καὶ ἡ Λητὼ δύο εἰσὶ μιᾶς θεοῦ προσηγορίαι. πάλιν ἐκ μὲν Λητοῦς ὁ Ἀπόλλων ἐκ δ’ Ἥρας ὁ Ἄρης γέγονε· μία δ’ ἐστὶν ἀμφοτέρων δύναμις, καὶ κέκληται Ἄρης μὲν ὡς ‘ἀρήγων’ τοῖς κατὰ βίαν καὶ μάχην συμπτώμασιν, Ἀπόλλων δ’ ὡς ‘ἀπαλλάττων’ καὶ ‘ἀπολύων’ τῶν περὶ σῶμα νοσηματικῶν παθῶν τὸν ἄνθρωπον. διὸ καὶ τῶν ἐμπυρωτάτων ἄστρων καὶ πυριφλεγεστάτων ὁ μὲν ἥλιος Ἀπόλλων κέκληται ὁ δὲ πυροειδὴς Ἄρης ἐπωνόμασται. καὶ οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου ἐστὶν τὴν αὐτὴν θεὸν Γαμήλιον λέγεσθαι καὶ μητέρα Εἰλειθυίας καὶ Ἡλίου νομίζεσθαι· γάμου μὲν γὰρ τέλος γένεσίς ἐστιν, γένεσις δ’ ἡ εἰς ἥλιον καὶ φῶς ἐκ σκότους πορεία· καὶ καλῶς ἔφη ὁ ποιητής (Π 187)

‘αὐτὰρ ἐπειδὴ τόν γε μογοστόκος Εἰλείθυια

ἐξάγαγε προφόωσδε καὶ ἠελίου ἴδεν αὐγάς’.

εὖ ὁ ποιητὴς τῇ μὲν προθέσει τὴν σύνθεσιν ‹συν›έθλιψεν, ἐμφαίνων τὸ βεβιασμένον τῆς ὠδῖνος, τέλος δὲ τῆς γενέσεως ἐποίησεν ἥλιον ἰδεῖν. οὐκοῦν ἡ αὐτὴ θεὸς ἐποίησε καὶ γάμον συνελθεῖν, ἵνα γένεσιν παρασκευάσῃ.

Δεῖ δ’ ἴσως καὶ τὸν εὐηθέστερον μῦθον εἰπεῖν. λέγεται γὰρ ὁ Ζεύς, τῆς Ἥρας αὐτῷ διαφερομένης καὶ μηκέτι φοιτᾶν εἰς ταὐτὸ βουλομένης ἀλλὰ κρυπτούσης ἑαυτήν, ἀμηχανῶν καὶ πλανώμενος Ἀλαλκομενεῖ τῷ αὐτόχθονι συντυχεῖν καὶ διδαχθῆναι ὑπὸ τούτου, ὡς ἐξαπατητέον τὴν Ἥραν σκηψάμενον γαμεῖν ἑτέραν. συνεργοῦντος δὲ τοῦ Ἀλαλκομενέως, κρύφα τεμόντας αὐτοὺς εὐκτέανον καὶ παγκάλην δρῦν μορφῶσαί τ’ αὐτὴν καὶ καταστεῖλαι νυμφικῶς, Δαιδάλην προσαγορεύσαντας· εἶθ’ οὕτως ἀναμέλπεσθαι μὲν τὸν ὑμέναιον, λουτρὰ δὲ κομίζειν τὰς Τριτωνίδας Νύμφας, αὐλοὺς δὲ καὶ κώμους τὴν Βοιωτίαν παρασχεῖν· περαινομένων δὲ τούτων οὐκέτι τὴν Ἥραν καρτερεῖν, ἀλλὰ καταβᾶσαν ἐκ τοῦ Κιθαιρῶνος, τῶν Πλαταιατίδων αὐτῇ γυναικῶν ἑπομένων, ὑπ’ ὀργῆς καὶ ζηλοτυπίας θέουσαν ἐλθεῖν πρὸς τὸν Δία, καὶ τοῦ πλάσματος φανεροῦ γενομένου, διαλλαγεῖσαν μετὰ χαρᾶς καὶ γέλωτος αὐτὴν νυμφαγωγεῖν· τιμὴν δὲ τῷ ξοάνῳ προσθεῖναι, καὶ Δαίδαλα τὴν ἑορτὴν προσαγορεῦσαι, κατακαῦσαι δ’ ὅμως αὐτὸ καίπερ ἄψυχον ὂν ὑπὸ ζηλοτυπίας.

Ὁ μὲν οὖν μῦθος τοιοῦτος, ὁ δὲ λόγος αὐτοῦ τοιόσδε. Ἥρας καὶ Διὸς διαφορὰ καὶ στάσις οὐδὲν ἄλλο πλὴν στοιχείων δυσκρασία καὶ τάραχός ἐστιν, ὅταν ἀλλήλοις μηκέτι συμμετρῆται κατὰ κόσμον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀνωμαλίας καὶ τραχύτητος ἐγγενομένης δυσμαχήσαντα λύσῃ τὴν κοινωνίαν καὶ φθορὰν τῶν ὅλων ἀπεργάσηται. ἂν μὲν οὖν ὁ Ζεύς, τουτέστιν ἡ θερμὴ καὶ πυρώδης δύναμις, αἰτίαν παράσχῃ τῆς διαφορᾶς, αὐχμὸς τὴν γῆν καταλαμβάνει· ἐὰν δὲ περὶ τὴν Ἥραν, τουτέστι τὴν ὑγρὰν καὶ πνευματικὴν φύσιν, ὕβρις τις ἢ πλεονασμὸς γένηται, ῥεῦμα ἦλθε πολὺ καὶ συνώμβρισε καὶ κατέκλυσε τὰ πάντα. τοιούτου δέ τινος γενομένου καὶ περὶ τοὺς τότε χρόνους, καὶ μάλιστα τῆς Βοιωτίας βυθισθείσης, ὡς πρῶτον ἀνέδυ τὸ πεδίον καὶ ἡ πλήμμυρα ἐλώφησεν, ὁ μὲν ἐξ εὐδίας κόσμος τοῦ περιέχοντος ὁμόνοια καὶ διαλλαγὴ τῶν θεῶν ἐλέχθη. πρῶτον δ’ ἀνέσχεν ἐκ τῆς γῆς τῶν φυτῶν ἡ δρῦς, καὶ ταύτην ἠγάπησαν οἱ ἄνθρωποι, τροφὴν βίου καὶ σωτηρίας διαμονὴν παρασχοῦσαν. οὐ γὰρ μόνον τοῖς εὐσεβέσιν, ὡς Ἡσίοδός φησιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ὑπολειφθεῖσι τῆς φθορᾶς

‘ἄκρη μέν τε φέρει βαλάνους, μέσση δὲ μελίσσας’ (OD 233).

[158] Ibid. 3.8.1. λέγει δ’ οὖν Πλούταρχος ὧδέ πῃ κατὰ λέξιν.

Ἡ δὲ τῶν ξοάνων ποίησις ἀρχαῖον ἔοικεν εἶναί τι καὶ παλαιόν, εἴγε ξύλινον μὲν ἦν τὸ πρῶτον εἰς Δῆλον ὑπὸ Ἐρυσίχθονος Ἀπόλλωνι ‹πεμφθὲν› ἐπὶ τῶν θεωριῶν ἄγαλμα, ξύλινον δὲ τὸ τῆς Πολιάδος ὑπὸ τῶν αὐτοχθόνων ἱδρυθέν, ὃ μέχρι νῦν Ἀθηναῖοι διαφυλάττουσιν. Ἥρας δὲ καὶ Σάμιοι ξύλινον εἶχον ἕδος, ὥς φησιν Καλλίμαχος (fr. 100 Pfeiffer)·

‘οὔπω Σκέλμιον ἔργον ἐύξοον, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τεθμὸν

δηναιὸν γλυφάνων ἄξοος ἦσθα σανίς.

ὧδε γὰρ ἱδρύοντο θεοὺς τότε· καὶ γὰρ Ἀθήνης

ἐν Λίνδῳ Δαναὸς λιτὸν ἔθηκεν ἕδος’.

Λέγεται δὲ Πείρας ὁ πρῶτος Ἀργολίδος Ἥρας ἱερὸν εἱσάμενος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ θυγατέρα Καλλίθυιαν ἱέρειαν καταστήσας, ἐκ τῶν περὶ Τίρυνθα δένδρων ὄγχνην τεμὼν εὐκτέανον, Ἥρας ἄγαλμα μορφῶσαι. πέτραν μὲν γὰρ εἰς θεοῦ κόπτειν εἰκόνα σκληρὰν καὶ δύσεργον καὶ ἄψυχον οὐκ ἐβούλοντο, χρυσὸν δὲ καὶ ἄργυρον ἡγοῦντο γῆς ἀκάρπου καὶ διεφθαρμένης χρώματα νοσώδη καὶ κηλῖδας ἐξανθεῖν ὥσπερ μώλωπας ὑπὸ πυρὸς ῥαπισθείσης· ἐλέφαντι δὲ παίζοντες μὲν ἔσθ’ ὅπου προσεχρῶντο ποικίλματι τρυφῆς.

ΠΕΡΙ ΦΙΛΙΑΣ ΕΠΙΣΤΟΛΗ

[159] Stobaeus 2.31.82 (2 p. 215 W.). ἐκ τῆς Περὶ φιλίας ἐπιστολῆς.

Ἡ παιδεία, κἂν μηδὲν ἕτερον ἀγαθὸν ἔχῃ, τό γε συμφοιτᾶν ‹δι’› αὐτὴν νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας ἔξω κακίας, οἷς ἂν ᾖ τις αἰδώς· καὶ πολλοὶ σφᾶς αὐτοὺς καὶ ἄλλους

[160] Stobaeus 2.46.15 (2 p. 262 W.). ἐκ τῆς Περὶ φιλίας ἐπιστολῆς.

Ὡς μέντοι λαμπρόν ἐστιν εὖ ποιεῖν, οὕτως ἀμειπτέον, ἵνα μὴ μόνον ἀχαριστίας ὄφλῃ τις δίκην, ἀλλὰ καὶ βλάβους κοινοῦ τῶν εὖ πεισομένων εἰσαῦθις ἑτέρων ἀνακοπῇ πρὸς εὐεργεσίαν.

[161] Stobaeus 3.2.34 (3 p. 186 H.). ἐκ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς τῆς Περὶ φιλίας.

Κακίας αὑτῶν πλάσσονταί τινες ῥημάτων εὐπρεπείᾳ, τὸ μὲν φιλοσώματον ‹φιλόκαλον, τὸ δ’ ἄγροικον› ἁπλοῦν, τὸ δὲ φιλάργυρον προμηθὲς ἀποκαλούμενοι.

[162] Stobaeus 3.2.35 (3 p. 186 H.). ἐν ταὐτῷ.

Πολύβουλον εἶναι καὶ πολύτροπον, ἔνθα δεῖ καὶ τέχνης κατ’ ἀλλοφύλων πολεμίων, χρήσιμον καὶ ἀναγκαῖον· ἐπίβουλον δ’ ἦθος καὶ κακομηχανώτατον διὰ παντὸς ἔχειν καὶ κατὰ πάντων οὐ τῇ τῶν ἀγχινόων, ὥς τινες οἴονται, τῇ δὲ τοῦ πονηροτάτου μερίδι προστίθημι.

[163] Stobaeus 4.5.68 (4 p. 221 H.). ἐκ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς τῆς Περὶ φιλίας.

Μάρτυς δ’ ἄριστος ὁ μηθὲν μὲν εὖ παθών, ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς εἰς ἄλλους εὐνοίας κρίνων.

[164] Stobaeus 4.7.42 (`4 p. 258 H.). Πλουτάρχου ἐκ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς τῆς Περὶ φιλίας.

Ἡμερότητι τοίνυν καὶ εὐεργεσίᾳ μᾶλλον ἢ φόβῳ πρὸς εὔνοιαν ὑπακτέον.

[165] Stobaeus 4.7.43 (4 p. 258 H.). ἐν ταὐτῷ.

Ἠπίους οὖν εἶναι δεῖ μετὰ τοῦ ἔμφρονος εἰς τὸ κοινῇ λυσιτελές.

[166] Stobaeus 4.12.11 (`4 p. 344 H.). ἐκ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς τῆς Περὶ φιλίας.

Ἔτι δὲ κολάσεως ἀπαραιτήτου φόβος αἴτιός ἐστιν ἀπονοίας· ὁ γὰρ ὄλεθρον αὑτοῦ προλαβὼν ὁμόσε χωρεῖ κινδύνοις.

[167] Stobaeus 4.28.8 (5. p. 678 H.). ἐκ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς τῆς Περὶ φιλίας.

Γάμος γὰρ ἀπὸ μὲν φιλίας διττῆς κράσεως βελτίων, ἑτέρως δὲ σφαλερός.

[168] Stobaeus 4.31.126 (5 p. 778 H.). ἐκ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς τῆς Περὶ φιλίας.

Πλούτῳ μέντοι χρηστέον ὡς ὕλῃ τινός, οὐκ ἐπὶ παντὸς ὁμοίως.

[169] Stobaeus 4.31.127 (5 p. 779 H.). ἐν ταὐτῷ.

Ἀρετὴν οὖν τοῖς πᾶσι μᾶλλον εὐκτέον ἢ πλοῦτον ἀνοήτοις σφαλερόν· ὑπὸ γὰρ χρημάτων αὔξεται κακία. καὶ ὅσῳ τις ἂν ἄφρων ᾖ, τοσούτῳ πλέον ἐξυβρίζει, τὸ λυσσῶδες αὑτοῦ τῶν ἡδονῶν ἐκπληροῦν ἔχων.

[170] Stobaeus 4.33.20 (5 p. 805 H.). ἐκ τῆς ἐπιστολῆς τῆς Περὶ φιλίας.

Ἐν πενίᾳ μέν τις διετέλεσεν εὐδαίμων, ὡς ἥκιστα δὲ πλουτῶν κἀν ἀρχαῖς.

[170] Ibid. Τοσοῦτον ὑπεραίρει πενίας ἀγαθόν, ὥστ’ αἰσχροῦ πλούτου νόμιμος ἀνὴρ ἀλλάξαιτ’ ἂν πενίαν· εἴ γε μὴ τῶν ποτ’ Ἀθηναίων ὁ πλουσιώτατος ἀμείνων ἦν Ἀριστείδου καὶ Σωκράτους [Θεμιστοκλῆς ὁ Νεοκλέους] ἐν πενίᾳ τῆς ἀρετῆς· ὁ δὲ πλοῦτος ἐκείνου αὐτοῦ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐξίτηλός τε καὶ ἀνώνυμος. φαύλῳ γὰρ ἅμα τῷ θανάτῳ πάντα συνοίχεται, τὸ δὲ καλὸν αἰώνιον.

[172] ΠΕΡΙ ΦΥΣΕΩΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΟΝΩΝ

Photius, Bibliotheca 161. Περί τε φύσεως καὶ πόνων, ὅπως τε πολλοὶ πολλάκις πόνῳ τὴν φύσιν οὐκ εὖ φερομένην ὤρθωσαν, ἕτεροι δὲ καλῶς ἔχουσαν ἐξ ἀμελείας διέφθειραν, ὅπως τε ἔνιοι ἐν μὲν νέοις βραδεῖς ἐνεωρῶντο πᾶσι καὶ ἀσύνετοι, ἀκμασάντων δὲ εἰς τὸ ταχὺ καὶ συνετὸν αὐτοῖς ἡ φύσις ἐξέλαμψε.

ΠΕΡΙ ΨΥΧΗΣ

[173] Origenes contra Celsum, v. 57. Παράδοξα δὲ πράγματα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐπιφαίνεσθαί ποτε καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἱστόρησαν οὐ μόνον οἱ ὑπονοηθέντες ἂν ὡς μυθοποιοῦντες ἀλλὰ καὶ οἱ πολὺ ἐπιδειξάμενοι γνησίως φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ φιλαληθῶς ἐκτίθεσθαι τὰ εἰς αὐτοὺς φθάσαντα. τοιαῦτα δ’ ἀνέγνωμεν παρὰ ... τῷ Χαιρωνεῖ Πλουτάρχῳ ἐν τοῖς Περὶ ψυχῆς.

[174] Aulus Gellius 1.3.31. Super hoc eodem Chilone Plutarchus philosophus in libro Περὶ ψυχῆς primo verbis his ita scripsit: Χείλων ὁ παλαιός, ἀκούσας τινὸς λέγοντος μηδένα ἔχειν ἐχθρόν, ἠρώτησεν εἰ μηδένα φίλον ἔχει, νομίζων ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἐπακολουθεῖν καὶ συνεμπλέκεσθαι φιλίαις ἀπεχθείας.

[175] Aulus Gellius 15.10. Plutarchus in librorum, quos Περὶ ψυχῆς inscripsit, primo, cum de morbis dissereret in animos hominum incidentibus, virgines dixit Milesii nominis, fere quot tum in ea civitate erant, repente sine ulla evidenti causa voluntatem cepisse obeundae mortis, ac deinde plurimas vitam suspendio amisisse. id cum accideret in dies crebrius, neque animis earum mori perseverantium medicina adhiberi quiret, decrevisse Milesios, ut virgines, quae corporibus suspensis demortuae forent, ut hae omnes nudae cum eodem laqueo, quo essent praevinctae, efferrentur. post id decretum virgines voluntariam mortem non petisse, pudore solo perterritas tam inhonesti funeris.

[176] Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 11.36.1. συγγενῆ δὲ τούτοις (sc. Platonis de Ere historiae) καὶ ὁ Πλούταρχος ὧδέ πῃ ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ Περὶ ψυχῆς ἱστορεῖ.

Ἀντύλλῳ δὲ τούτῳ καὶ αὐτοὶ παρῆμεν ἅμα Σωσιτέλει καὶ Ἡρακλέωνι διηγουμένῳ. νοσῶν γὰρ ἔναγχος ἀβιώτως ἔχειν ἐδόκει τοῖς ἰατροῖς· ἀνενεχθεὶς δὲ μικρὸν ἔκ τινος οὐ βεβαίου καταφορᾶς, ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν οὔτ’ ἔπραξεν οὔτ’ εἶπε παρακινητικόν, ἔλεγε δὲ τεθνάναι καὶ πάλιν ἀφεῖσθαι καὶ μὴ τεθνήξεσθαι τὸ παράπαν ὑπὸ τῆς ἀρρωστίας ἐκείνης, ἀλλὰ καὶ κακῶς ἀκηκοέναι τοὺς ἀγαγόντας αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ κυρίου· πεμφθέντας γὰρ ἐπὶ Νικανδᾶν, αὐτὸν ἥκειν ἀντ’ ἐκείνου κομίζοντας. ὁ δὲ Νικανδᾶς ἦν σκυτοτόμος, ἄλλως δὲ τῶν ἐν παλαίστραις γεγονότων καὶ πολλοῖς συνήθης καὶ γνώριμος. ὅθεν οἱ νεανίσκοι προσιόντες ἔσκωπτον αὐτὸν ὡς ἀποδεδρακότα καὶ διεφθαρκότα τοὺς ἐκεῖθεν ὑπηρέτας· αὐτὸς μέντοι δῆλος ἦν εὐθὺς ὑποθραττόμενος καὶ δυσχεραίνων· τέλος δὲ πυρετοῦ προσπεσόντος, ἐξαίφνης ἀπέθανε τριταῖος. οὗτος δ’ ἀνεβίω καὶ περίεστιν εὖγε ποιῶν, ἡμῖν ξένων ἐπιεικέστατος.

[177] Stobaeus 4.52.48 (5 p. 1087 H.). Θεμιστίου ἐκ τοῦ Περὶ ψυχῆς.

Ταῦτα τοῦ Τίμωνος εἰπόντος, ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Πατροκλέας ‘ὁ μὲν λόγος’ εἶπεν ‘οὐχ ἧττον ἰσχυρὸς ἢ παλαιός, ἔχει δ’ ὅμως ἀπορίας. εἰ γὰρ ἡ δόξα τῆς ἀφθαρσίας παμπάλαιός ἐστι, πῶς αὖ πάλιν τὸ τοῦ θανάτου δέος πάντων πρεσβύτατον ‹εἰκὸς› εἶναι τῶν φόβων, εἰ μὴ νὴ Δία καὶ πάντας ἡμῖν τοῦτο τοὺς ἄλλους ἐγγεγέννηκεν; οὐ γὰρ νεαρὸν οὐδὲ πρόσφατόν ἐστι τὸ κλαίεσθαι τὸν τεθνηκότα, καὶ ταῦτα δὴ τὰ θρηνώδη καὶ δύσφημα τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐπιλέγεσθαι, τὸν ἄθλιον καὶ τὸν οἰκτρόν.’

‘Ἀλλ’ οὕτω μέν’ ἔφη ὁ Τίμων ‘λογιζόμενοι καὶ τὰ ἄφθαρτα δοξάζουσι συνδιαλύεσθαι ‹τοῖς› φθειρομένοις. ὅτι μὲν οὖν τὸ μετηλλαχέναι καὶ μεθίστασθαι καὶ οἴχεσθαι τὸν τεθνηκότα δυσχεροῦς οὐδενὸς ἁπλῶς, ἀμείψεως δέ τινος ἢ μεταβολῆς ὑπόνοιαν δίδωσιν, οὐκ ἄδηλόν ἐστι· ὅποι δ’ αὕτη γίγνεται τοῖς μεταλλάττουσιν ἡ μεταβολή, καὶ πότερον εἰς χεῖρον ἢ βέλτιον, ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων ὀνομάτων σκοπῶμεν. αὐτὸ τοίνυν τὸ τοῦ θανάτου πρῶτον οὐχ ὑπὸ γῆν ἔοικεν οὐδὲ κάτω δεικνύναι χωροῦν τὸ μετηλλαχὸς ἀλλ’ ἄνω φερόμενον καὶ θέον· διὸ δὴ καὶ λόγον ἔχει καθάπερ ἐκ καμπῆς τινος ἀνείσης οἷον ἐξᾴττειν καὶ ἀναθεῖν τὴν ψυχὴν ἀποπνέοντος τοῦ σώματος ἀναπνέουσαν αὐτὴν καὶ ἀναψύχουσαν. ὅρα δὲ τὸ ἀντικείμενον θανάτῳ, τὴν γένεσιν, ὡς τοὐναντίον δηλοῖ ῥοπήν τινα κάτω καὶ νεῦσιν ἐπὶ γῆν ἐκείνου τοῦ περὶ τὴν τελευτὴν πάλιν ἀναθέοντος· ᾗ καὶ γενέθλιον τὴν ‹πρώτην› ἡμέραν καλοῦσιν, ὡς ἄθλων καὶ πόνων μεγάλων ἀρχὴν γενομένην. μᾶλλον δ’ ἴσως ἀφ’ ἑτέρας ταὐτὸ συζυγίας κατοψόμεθα καὶ σαφέστερον. ἀπολύεσθαι γὰρ τὸν ἀποθνῄσκοντα καὶ τὴν τελευτὴν ἀπόλυσιν καλοῦσιν, ἂν δὲ ἔρημαι σώματος· τοῦτο γὰρ ‘δέμας’ ὀνομάζουσιν, ὡς ‘δεδεμένης’ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐνταῦθα παρὰ φύσιν· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐν ᾧ πέφυκεν εἶναι κατέχεται βίᾳ, καὶ τὸ δεδέσθαι τήν τε ‘βίαν’ ταύτην παραγαγόντες ὠνόμασαν ‘βίον’, ὥσπερ οἶμαι τὴν ‘ἑσπέραν’ Ὅμηρος ‘ἕσπερον’. ὅθεν ἀντίφωνον τοῦ βίου ὄνομα γέγονε τὸ ἀναπαύεσθαι τὸν θνῄσκοντα, μεγάλης καὶ παρὰ φύσιν ἀνάγκης ἀπαλλαττόμενον.

[178] Stobaeus IV.52.49 (v. p. 1089 H.). ἐν ταὐτῷ.

‘Οὕτω κατὰ τὴν εἰς τὸ ὅλον μεταβολὴν καὶ μετακόσμησιν ὀλωλέναι τὴν ψυχὴν λέγομεν ἐκεῖ γενομένην· ἐνταῦθα δ’ ἀγνοεῖ, πλὴν ὅταν ἐν τῷ τελευτᾶν ἤδη γένηται· τότε δὲ πάσχει πάθος οἷον οἱ τελεταῖς μεγάλαις κατοργιαζόμενοι. διὸ καὶ τὸ ῥῆμα τῷ ῥήματι καὶ τὸ ἔργον τῷ ἔργῳ τοῦ τελευτᾶν καὶ τελεῖσθαι προσέοικε. πλάναι τὰ πρῶτα καὶ περιδρομαὶ κοπώδεις καὶ διὰ σκότους τινὲς ὕποπτοι πορεῖαι καὶ ἀτέλεστοι, εἶτα πρὸ τοῦ τέλους αὐτοῦ τὰ δεινὰ πάντα, φρίκη καὶ τρόμος καὶ ἱδρὼς καὶ θάμβος· ἐκ δὲ τούτου φῶς τι θαυμάσιον ἀπήντησεν καὶ τόποι καθαροὶ καὶ λειμῶνες ἐδέξαντο, φωνὰς καὶ χορείας καὶ σεμνότητας ἀκουσμάτων ἱερῶν καὶ φασμάτων ἁγίων ἔχοντες· ἐν αἷς ὁ παντελὴς ἤδη καὶ μεμυημένος ἐλεύθερος γεγονὼς καὶ ἄφετος περιιὼν ἐστεφανωμένος ὀργιάζει καὶ σύνεστιν ὁσίοις καὶ καθαροῖς ἀνδράσι, τὸν ἀμύητον ἐνταῦθα τῶν ζώντων ‹καὶ› ἀκάθαρτον ἐφορῶν ὄχλον ἐν βορβόρῳ πολλῷ καὶ ὁμίχλῃ πατούμενον ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ συνελαυνόμενον, φόβῳ δὲ θανάτου τοῖς κακοῖς ἀπιστίᾳ τῶν ἐκεῖ ἀγαθῶν ἐμμένοντα. ἐπεὶ τό γε παρὰ φύσιν τὴν πρὸς τὸ σῶμα τῇ ψυχῇ συμπλοκὴν εἶναι καὶ σύνερξιν ἐκεῖθεν ἂν συνίδοις’.

‘Πόθεν;’ ἔφη ὁ Πατροκλέας. - ‘ὅτι τῶν περὶ ἡμᾶς παθῶν ὁ ὕπνος ἥδιστόν ἐστι. πρῶτα μὲν γὰρ αἴσθησιν ἀλγηδόνος πάσης σβέννυσι διὰ τὴν ἡδονὴν πολλῷ τῷ οἰκείῳ κεραννυμένης· ἔπειτα τῶν ἄλλων ἐπιθυμιῶν κρατεῖ, κἂν ὦσι σφοδρόταται. καὶ γὰρ πρὸς ἡδονὴν οἱ φιλοσώματοι δυσανασχετοῦσιν, ἐπιόντος αὐτοῖς τοῦ καθεύδειν, καὶ περιβολὰς ἐρωμένων προΐενται καταδαρθάνοντες. καὶ τί δεῖ ταῦτα λέγειν, ὅπου καὶ τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ μανθάνειν καὶ διαλέγεσθαι καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν ἡδονὴν καταλαμβάνων ὁ ὕπνος ἀποκλείει, τῆς ψυχῆς ὥσπερ ἀπὸ ῥεύματος λείου καὶ βαθέος ὑποφερομένης; ἡδονὴ δὲ δὴ πᾶσα μὲν ἴσως οὐσίαν ἔχει καὶ φύσιν ἀλγηδόνος ἀπαλλαγήν, αὕτη δὲ καὶ παντάπασιν· οὐδενὸς γὰρ ἔξωθεν οἷον ἐπιτερποῦς καὶ κινητικοῦ προσιόντος, ἡδόμεθα καταδαρθάνοντες· ἀλλ’ ἐπίπονόν τινα καὶ κοπώδη καὶ σκληρὰν ἔοικεν ἐξαιρῶν ὕπνος διάθεσιν ἥδιστον εἶναι· αὕτη δ’ ἐστὶν οὐχ ἑτέρα τῆς πρὸς τὸ σῶμα τὴν ψυχὴν συνδεούσης. χωρίζεται γὰρ ἐν τῷ καθεύδειν ἀνατρέχουσα καὶ συλλεγομένη πρὸς ἑαυτὴν ἐκ τοῦ διατετάσθαι πρὸς τὸ σῶμα καὶ διεσπάρθαι ταῖς αἰσθήσεσι. καίτοι λέγουσί τινες ὡς καταμίγνυσι μᾶλλον ὁ ὕπνος πρὸς τὸ σῶμα τὴν ψυχήν, οὐκ ὀρθῶς λέγοντες· ἀντιμαρτυρεῖ γὰρ τῇ ἀναισθησίᾳ καὶ ψυχρότητι καὶ βάρει καὶ ὠχρότητι τὸ σῶμα κατηγοροῦν τῆς ψυχῆς ἔκλειψιν μὲν ὅταν τελευτήσῃ μετάστασιν δ’ ὅταν καθεύδῃ. καὶ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶ τὸ τὴν ἡδονὴν ποιοῦν, ἀπόλυσις καὶ ἀνάπαυλα τῆς ψυχῆς, ὥσπερ ἄχθος κατατιθεμένης καὶ πάλιν ἀναλαμβανούσης καὶ ὑποδυομένης. φεύγειν γὰρ ἔοικε κομιδῇ τὸ σῶμα θνῄσκουσα δραπετεύειν δὲ καταδαρθάνουσα. διὸ θνῄσκουσι μὲν ἔνιοι μετὰ πόνων καθεύδουσι δὲ μεθ’ ἡδονῆς ἅπαντες· ὅπου μὲν γὰρ ἀπορρήγνυται παντάπασιν ὁ δεσμός, ὅπου δ’ ἐνδίδωσι καὶ χαλᾶται καὶ γίγνεται μαλακώτερος, οἷον ἁμμάτων ἀφιεμένων τῶν αἰσθήσεων παραλυομένων καὶ προϊεμένων τὴν περὶ τὸ σῶμα τῆς ψυχῆς ἔντασιν.’

‘Εἶτα πῶς’ εἶπεν ὁ Πατροκλέας ‘οὐ δυσφοροῦμεν οὐδ’ ἀλγοῦμεν ἐγρηγορότες;’ ‘πῶς δέ’ ἔφη ὁ Τίμων ‘κειρομένων μὲν αἰσθάνεται κουφότητος ἡ κεφαλὴ καὶ ῥᾳστώνης, κομώντων δὲ βαρύτητος αἴσθησιν οὐ πάνυ παρεῖχεν; καὶ λυθέντες μὲν ἐκ δεσμῶν ἥδονται, δεδεμένοι δ’ οὐκ ἀλγοῦσι; καὶ φῶς ἐπεισενεχθὲν ἐξαίφνης συμποσίῳ τινὶ συνηρεφεῖ θόρυβον καὶ κρότον ὑφ’ ἡδονῆς ἐποίησε, πρότερον δὲ τὸ ἀλαμπὲς ἐδόκει μὴ ἐνοχλεῖν μηδὲ λυπεῖν τὴν ὄψιν; ἓν γὰρ αἴτιον, ὦ φίλε, τούτων ἁπάντων, ὅτι τῷ παρὰ φύσιν τὸ κατὰ μικρὸν συνήθη καὶ σύντροφον ἐποίει τὴν αἴσθησιν, ὥστε μὴ πάνυ δυσχεραίνειν πάσχουσαν, ἀπαλλαγείσης δὲ καὶ μεταβαλούσης εἰς τὴν φύσιν, φαίνεται παρευθύς, τῷ οἰκείῳ τἀλλότριον καὶ τῷ ἡδομένῳ τὸ λυποῦν ὅτι παρῆν καὶ βαρῦνον. οὕτω δὴ καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν τῇ πρὸς τὰ θνητὰ πάθη καὶ μέρη καὶ ὄργανα κοινωνίᾳ τὸ παρὰ φύσιν καὶ ἀλλότριον οὐ πάνυ δοκεῖ πιέζειν ὑπὸ μακρᾶς συνηθείας· αἰσθάνεται δὲ ῥᾳστώνης καὶ κουφότητος μεθ’ ἡδονῆς ἀφιεμένη τῶν διὰ τοῦ σώματος ἐνεργειῶν· ἐκείναις γὰρ ἐνοχλεῖται καὶ περὶ ἐκείνας ἐκπονεῖται καὶ ἀπ’ ἐκείνων σχολῆς δεῖται καὶ ἀναπαύσεως· ἃ δ’ αὐτὴ καθ’ αὑτὴν ἐνεργεῖ κατὰ φύσιν, τὸ σκοπεῖν ἀεί τι καὶ λογίζεσθαι καὶ μνημονεύειν καὶ θεωρεῖν, πρὸς ταῦτα ἄτρυτός ἐστι καὶ ἀκόρεστος. καὶ γὰρ ὁ κόρος κόπος ἐν ἡδοναῖς ἔοικεν εἶναι τῷ μετὰ σώματός τι τὴν ψυχὴν πάσχειν, ἐπεὶ πρός γε τὰς αὑτῆς ἡδονὰς οὐκ ἀπαγορεύει· συμπεπλεγμένη δέ, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, τῷ σώματι ταὐτὰ τῷ Ὀδυσσεῖ πέπονθεν· ὡς γὰρ ἐκεῖνος τῷ ἐρινεῷ προσφὺς εἴχετο καὶ περιέπτυσσεν οὐ ποθῶν οὐδ’ ἀγαπῶν ἐκεῖνον, ἀλλὰ δεδιὼς ὑποκειμένην τὴν Χάρυβδιν (μ 432), οὕτως ἔοικεν ἡ ψυχὴ ‹τοῦ σώματος› ἔχεσθαι καὶ περιπεπλέχθαι δι’ εὔνοιαν οὐδεμίαν αὐτοῦ καὶ χάριν, ἀλλ’ ὀρρωδοῦσα τοῦ θανάτου τὴν ἀδηλότητα.

‘κρύψαντες γὰρ ἔχουσι θεοὶ βίον ἀνθρώποισι’ (OD 42)

κατὰ τὸν σοφὸν Ἡσίοδον, οὐ σαρκίνοις τισὶ δεσμοῖς πρὸς τὸ σῶμα τὴν ψυχὴν κατατείναντες, ἀλλ’ ἕνα δεσμὸν αὐτῇ καὶ μίαν φυλακὴν μηχανησάμενοι καὶ περιβαλόντες, τὴν ἀδηλότητα καὶ ἀπιστίαν τῶν μετὰ τὴν τελευτήν· ἐπεὶ τήν γε πεισθεῖσαν, ὅσα ἀνθρώπους περιμένει τελευτήσαντας καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον (Β 27), οὐδὲν ἂν κατάσχοι.’

[179] ΣΤΡΩΜΑΤΕΙΣ

Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 1.7.16. Τούτῳ δ’ ἂν εὕροις συμφώνους καὶ τοὺς πλείστους τῶν παρ’ Ἕλλησι φιλοσόφων, ὧν ἐγώ σοι τὰς περὶ ἀρχῶν δόξας καὶ τὰς πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαστάσεις καὶ διαφωνίας, ἐκ στοχασμῶν ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀπὸ καταλήψεως ὁρμηθείσας, ἀπὸ τῶν Πλουτάρχου Στρωματέων ἐπὶ τοῦ παρόντος ἐκθήσομαι. σὺ δὲ μὴ παρέργως, σχολῇ δὲ καὶ μετὰ λογισμοῦ θέα τῶν δηλουμένων τὴν πρὸς ἀλλήλους διάστασιν.

Θάλητα πρῶτον πάντων φασὶν ἀρχὴν τῶν ὅλων ὑποστήσασθαι τὸ ὕδωρ· ἐξ αὐτοῦ γὰρ εἶναι τὰ πάντα καὶ εἰς αὐτὸ χωρεῖν. μεθ’ ὃν Ἀναξίμανδρον, Θάλητος ἑταῖρον γενόμενον, τὸ ἄπειρον φάναι τὴν πᾶσαν αἰτίαν ἔχειν τῆς τοῦ παντὸς γενέσεώς τε καὶ φθορᾶς· ἐξ οὗ δή φησι τούς τε οὐρανοὺς ἀποκεκρίσθαι, καὶ καθόλου τοὺς ἅπαντας ἀπείρους ὄντας κόσμους. ἀπεφήνατο δὲ τὴν φθορὰν γίγνεσθαι καὶ πολὺ πρότερον τὴν γένεσιν, ἐξ ἀπείρου αἰῶνος ἀνακυκλουμένων πάντων αὐτῶν. ὑπάρχειν δέ φησι τῷ μὲν σχήματι τὴν γῆν κυλινδροειδῆ, ἔχειν δὲ τοσοῦτον βάθος ὅσον ἂν εἴη τρίτον πρὸς τὸ πλάτος. φησὶ δὲ τὸ ἐκ τοῦ ἀιδίου γόνιμον θερμοῦ τε καὶ ψυχροῦ κατὰ τὴν γένεσιν τοῦδε τοῦ κόσμου ἀποκριθῆναι, καί τινα ἐκ τούτου φλογὸς σφαῖραν περιφυῆναι τῷ περὶ τὴν γῆν ἀέρι ὡς τῷ δένδρῳ φλοιόν, ἧς ἀπορραγείσης καὶ εἴς τινας ἀποκλεισθείσης κύκλους, ὑποστῆναι τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τὴν σελήνην καὶ τοὺς ἀστέρας. ἔτι φησὶν ὅτι κατ’ ἀρχὰς ἐξ ἀλλοειδῶν ζῴων ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐγεννήθη, ἐκ τοῦ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα δι’ ἑαυτῶν ταχὺ νέμεσθαι, μόνον δὲ τὸν ἄνθρωπον πολυχρονίου δεῖσθαι τιθηνήσεως· διὸ καὶ κατ’ ἀρχὰς οὐκ ἄν ποτε τοιοῦτον ὄντα διασωθῆναι. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ὁ Ἀναξίμανδρος.

Ἀναξιμένην δέ φασι τὴν τῶν ὅλων ἀρχὴν τὸν ἀέρα εἰπεῖν, καὶ τοῦτον εἶναι τῷ μὲν μεγέθει ἄπειρον, ταῖς δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν ποιότησιν ὡρισμένον· γεννᾶσθαί τε πάντα κατά τινα πύκνωσιν τούτου καὶ πάλιν ἀραίωσιν. τήν γε μὴν κίνησιν ἐξ αἰῶνος ὑπάρχειν· πιλουμένου δὲ τοῦ ἀέρος, πρώτην γεγενῆσθαι λέγει τὴν γῆν, πλατεῖαν μάλα· διὸ καὶ κατὰ λόγον αὐτὴν ἐποχεῖσθαι τῷ ἀέρι· καὶ τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τὴν σελήνην καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ἄστρα τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς γενέσεως ἐκ γῆς ἔχειν· ἀποφαίνεται γοῦν τὸν ἥλιον γῆν, διὰ δὲ τὴν ὀξεῖαν κίνησιν καὶ μάλ’ ἱκανῶς θερμότητα [κίνησιν] λαβεῖν.

Ξενοφάνης δ’ ὁ Κολοφώνιος, ἰδίαν τινὰ ὁδὸν πεπορευμένος καὶ παρηλλαχυῖαν πάντας τοὺς προειρημένους, οὔτε γένεσιν οὔτε φθορὰν ἀπολείπει, ἀλλ’ εἶναι λέγει τὸ πᾶν ἀεὶ ὅμοιον· εἰ γὰρ γίγνοιτο τοῦτο, φησίν, ἀναγκαῖον πρὸ τούτου μὴ εἶναι· τὸ μὴ ὂν δ’ οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο οὐδ’ ἂν τὸ μὴ ὂν ποιῆσαί τι οὔτε ὑπὸ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος γένοιτ’ ἄν τι. ἀποφαίνεται δὲ καὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις ψευδεῖς, καὶ καθόλου σὺν αὐταῖς καὶ αὐτὸν τὸν λόγον διαβάλλει. ἀποφαίνεται δὲ καὶ τῷ χρόνῳ καταφερομένην συνεχῶς καὶ κατ’ ὀλίγον τὴν γῆν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν χωρεῖν. φησὶ δὲ καὶ τὸν ἥλιον ἐκ μικρῶν καὶ πλειόνων πυριδίων ἀθροίζεσθαι. ἀποφαίνεται δὲ καὶ περὶ θεῶν, ὡς οὐδεμιᾶς ἡγεμονίας ἐν αὐτοῖς οὔσης· οὐ γὰρ ὅσιον δεσπόζεσθαί τινα τῶν θεῶν, ἐπιδεῖσθαί τε μηδενὸς αὐτῶν μηδένα μηδ’ ὅλως· ἀκούειν δὲ καὶ ὁρᾶν καθόλου καὶ μὴ κατὰ μέρος. ἀποφαίνεται δὲ καὶ τὴν γῆν ἄπειρον εἶναι καὶ κατὰ πᾶν μέρος μὴ περιέχεσθαι ὑπ’ ἀέρος· γίγνεσθαι δ’ ἅπαντα ἐκ γῆς. τὸν δ’ ἥλιόν φησι καὶ τὰ ἄστρα ἐκ τῶν νεφῶν γίγνεσθαι.

Παρμενίδης δ’ ὁ Ἐλεάτης, ἑταῖρος Ξενοφάνους, ἅμα μὲν καὶ τῶν τούτου δοξῶν ἀντεποιήσατο, ἅμα δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐναντίαν ἐνεχείρησε στάσιν· ἀίδιον μὲν γὰρ τὸ πᾶν καὶ ἀκίνητον ἀποφαίνεται [καὶ] κατὰ τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων ἀλήθειαν· εἶναι γὰρ αὐτὸ (B 8.34).

‘μοῦνον μουνογενές τε καὶ ἀτρεμὲς ἠδ’ ἀγένητον’·

γένεσιν δὲ τῶν καθ’ ὑπόληψιν ψευδῆ δοκούντων εἶναι· καὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις ἐκβάλλει ἐκ τῆς ἀληθείας· φησὶ δ’ ὅτι, εἴ τι παρὰ τὸ ὂν ὑπάρχει, τοῦτο οὐκ ἔστιν ὄν, τὸ δὲ μὴ ὂν ἐν τοῖς ὅλοις οὐκ ἔστιν. οὕτως οὖν τὸ ὂν ἀγένητον ἀπολείπει. λέγει δὲ τὴν γῆν τοῦ πυκνοῦ καταρρυέντος ἀέρος γεγονέναι.

Ζήνων δ’ ὁ Ἐλεάτης ἴδιον μὲν οὐδὲν ἐξέθετο, διηπόρησε δὲ περὶ τούτων ἐπὶ πλεῖον.

Δημόκριτος δ’ ὁ Ἀβδηρίτης ὑπεστήσατο τὸ πᾶν ἄπειρον διὰ τὸ μηδαμῶς ὑπό τινος αὐτὸ δεδημιουργῆσθαι, ἔτι δὲ καὶ ἀμετάβλητον αὐτὸ λέγει· καὶ καθόλου, οἷον τὸ πᾶν ἐστι, ῥητῶς ἐκτίθεται, μηδεμίαν ἀρχὴν ἔχειν τὰς αἰτίας τῶν νῦν γιγνομένων, ἄνωθεν δ’ ὅλως ἐξ ἀπείρου χρόνου προκατέχεσθαι τῇ ἀνάγκῃ πάνθ’ ἁπλῶς τὰ γεγονότα καὶ ἐόντα καὶ ἐσόμενα. ἡλίου δὲ καὶ σελήνης γένεσίν φησι· κατ’ ἰδίαν φέρεσθαι ταῦτα μηδέπω τὸ παράπαν ἔχοντα θερμὴν φύσιν μηδὲ μὴν καθόλου λαμπρότητα, τοὐναντίον δ’ ἐξωμοιωμένην τῇ περὶ τὴν γῆν φύσει· γεγονέναι γὰρ ἑκάτερον τούτων πρότερον ἔτι κατ’ ἰδίαν ὑποβολήν τινα κόσμου, ὕστερον δέ, μεγεθοποιουμένου τοῦ περὶ τὸν ἥλιον κύκλου, ἐναποληφθῆναι ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ πῦρ.

Ἐπίκουρος Νεοκλέους Ἀθηναῖος τὸν περὶ θεῶν τῦφον πειρᾶται καταστέλλειν· ἀλλὰ καὶ οὐδέν, φησί, γίγνεται ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος· ὅτι τὸ πᾶν ἀεὶ τοιοῦτον ἦν καὶ ἔσται τοιοῦτον· ὅτι οὐδὲν ξένον ἐν τῷ παντὶ ἀποτελεῖται παρὰ τὸν ἤδη γεγενημένον χρόνον ἄπειρον· ὅτι πᾶν ἐστι σῶμα, καὶ οὐ μόνον ἀμετάβλητον ἀλλὰ καὶ ἄπειρον· ὅτι τέλος τῶν ἀγαθῶν ‹ἡ› ἡδονή.

Ἀρίστιππος ὁ Κυρηναῖος τέλος ἀγαθῶν τὴν ἡδονὴν κακῶν δὲ τὴν ἀλγηδόνα· τὴν δ’ ἄλλην φυσιολογίαν περιγράφει, μόνον ὠφέλιμον εἶναι λέγων τὸ ζητεῖν (δ 392).

‘ὅττι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόν τ’ ἀγαθόν τε τέτυκται’.

Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ Ἀκραγαντῖνος στοιχεῖα τέσσαρα, πῦρ, ὕδωρ, αἰθέρα, γαῖαν· αἰτίαν δὲ τούτων φιλίαν καὶ νεῖκος· ἐκ πρώτης φησὶ τῆς τῶν στοιχείων κράσεως ἀποκριθέντα τὸν ἀέρα περιχυθῆναι κύκλῳ· μετὰ δὲ τὸν ἀέρα τὸ πῦρ ἐκδραμὸν καὶ οὐκ ἔχον ἑτέραν χώραν ἄνω ἐκτρέχειν ὑπὸ τοῦ περὶ τὸν ἀέρα πάγου. εἶναι δὲ κύκλῳ περὶ τὴν γῆν φερόμενα δύο ἡμισφαίρια, τὸ μὲν καθόλου πυρὸς τὸ δὲ μικτὸν ἐξ ἀέρος καὶ ὀλίγου πυρός, ὅπερ οἴεται τὴν νύκτα εἶναι. τὴν δ’ ἀρχὴν τῆς κινήσεως συμβῆναι ἀπὸ τοῦ τετυχηκέναι κατὰ τὸν ἀθροισμὸν ἐπιβρίσαντος τοῦ πυρός. ὁ δ’ ἥλιος τὴν φύσιν οὐκ ἔστι πῦρ ἀλλὰ τοῦ πυρὸς ἀντανάκλασις ὁμοία τῇ ἀφ’ ὕδατος γιγνομένῃ. σελήνην δέ φησι συστῆναι καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ἐκ τοῦ ἀποληφθέντος ἀέρος ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρός· τοῦτον γὰρ παγῆναι καθάπερ καὶ τὴν χάλαζαν· τὸ δὲ φῶς αὐτὴν ἔχειν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου. τὸ δ’ ἡγεμονικὸν οὔτ’ ἐν κεφαλῇ οὔτ’ ἐν θώρακι ἀλλ’ ἐν αἵματι· ὅθεν καθ’ ὅ τι ἂν μέρος τοῦ σώματος πλεῖον ᾖ παρεσπαρμένον [τὸ ἡγεμονικόν], οἴεται κατ’ ἐκεῖνο προτερεῖν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους.

Μητρόδωρος ὁ Χῖος ἀίδιον εἶναί φησι τὸ πᾶν, ὅτι, εἰ ἦν γενητόν, ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἂν ἦν· ἄπειρον δέ, ὅτι ἀίδιον· οὐ γὰρ ἔχειν ἀρχὴν ὅθεν ἤρξατο οὐδὲ πέρας οὐδὲ τελευτήν. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ κινήσεως μετέχειν τὸ πᾶν· κινεῖσθαι γὰρ ἀδύνατον μὴ μεθιστάμενον· μεθίστασθαι δ’ ἀναγκαῖον ἤτοι εἰς πλῆρες ἢ εἰς κενόν. πυκνούμενον δὲ τὸν ἀέρα ποιεῖν νεφέλας, εἶτα ὕδωρ, ὃ καὶ κατιὸν ἐπὶ τὸν ἥλιον σβεννύναι αὐτὸν καὶ πάλιν ἀραιούμενον ἐξάπτεσθαι· χρόνῳ δὲ πήγνυσθαι τῷ ξηρῷ τὸν ἥλιον καὶ ποιεῖν ἐκ τοῦ λαμπροῦ ὕδατος ἀστέρας, νύκτα τε καὶ ἡμέραν ἐκ τῆς σβέσεως καὶ ἐξάψεως, καὶ καθόλου τὰς ἐκλείψεις ἀποτελεῖν.

Διογένης ὁ Ἀπολλωνιάτης ἀέρα ὑφίσταται στοιχεῖον· κινεῖσθαι δὲ τὰ πάντα ἀπείρους τ’ εἶναι τοὺς κόσμους. κοσμοποιεῖ δ’ οὕτως· ὅτι τοῦ παντὸς κινουμένου καὶ ᾗ μὲν ἀραιοῦ ᾗ δὲ πυκνοῦ γιγνομένου, ὅπου συνεκύρησε τὸ πυκνόν, συστροφὴν ποιῆσαι, καὶ οὕτω τὰ λοιπὰ κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον· τὰ κουφότατα τὴν ἄνω τάξιν λαβόντα τὸν ἥλιον ἀποτελέσαι.

EX INCERTIS LIBRIS

[180] Aelian. fr. 108 (Suda s. vv. ἐγγώνιος, Ἰόρτιος, Μαικήνας).

Ἐν τῷ συνδείπνῳ τῷ τοῦ Μαικήνα τράπεζα ἐγγώνιος ἦν ὑπὸ τῇ κλισίᾳ τὸ μέγεθος μεγίστη καὶ κάλλος ἄμαχος· καί, οἷα εἰκός, ἐπῄνουν ἄλλοι ἄλλως αὐτήν· ὁ δὲ Ἰόρτιος, οὐκ ἔχων ὅ τι παρ’ ἑαυτοῦ τερατεύσασθαι, σιγῆς γενομένης, ‘ἐκεῖνο δὲ οὐκ ἐννοεῖτε, ὦ φίλοι συμπόται, ὡς στρογγύλη ἐστὶ καὶ ἄγαν περιφερής’. ἐπὶ τοίνυν τῇ ἀκράτῳ κολακείᾳ, ὡς τὸ εἰκός, γέλως κατερράγη· Πλούταρχος.

[181] Aulus Gellius, 3.5. Plutarchus refert Arcesilaum philosophum vehementi verbo usum esse de quodam nimis delicato divite, qui incorruptus tamen et a stupro integer dicebatur. nam cum vocem eius infractam capillumque arte compositum et oculos ludibundos atque illecebrae voluptatisque plenos videret, ‘nihil interest’, inquit, ‘quibus membris cinaedi sitis, posterioribus an prioribus.’

[182] Damascius Vit. Isidori 64 Westermann (6 Photius Bibl. 242). Τούτου (sc. Σεβήρου) ὁ ἵππος ... ψηχόμενος σπινθῆρας ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος πολλούς τε καὶ μεγάλους ἠφίει ... ἀλλὰ καὶ Τιβερίῳ ὄνος, ὡς Πλούταρχος ὁ Χαιρωνεύς φησιν, ἔτι μειρακίῳ ὄντι καὶ ἐν Ῥόδῳ ἐπὶ λόγους ῥητορικοὺς διατρίβοντι τὴν βασιλείαν διὰ τοῦ αὐτοῦ παθήματος προεμήνυσεν.

[183] Et. Magn. 184.30. Πλούταρχος δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὀπίσω τὸ ἄψ λέγει εἶναι, τοῦ ο εἰς α τραπέντος καὶ τοῦ π εἰς ψ.

[184] Eunapius Vit. Sophistarum 2.7. Αὐτίκα οὖν ὁ θεσπέσιος Πλούταρχος τόν τε ἑαυτοῦ βίον ἀναγράφει τοῖς βιβλίοις ἐνδιεσπαρμένως καὶ τὸν τοῦ διδασκάλου, καὶ ὅτι γε Ἀμμώνιος Ἀθήνῃσιν ἐτελεύτα, οὐ βίον προσειπών ... ἀλλὰ τὸ ἴδιον καὶ ‹τὸ› τοῦ διδασκάλου καθ’ ἕκαστον τῶν βιβλίων ἐγκατέσπειρεν ὥστε εἴ τις ὀξυδορκοίη περὶ ταῦτα [καὶ] ἀνιχνεύων κατὰ τὸ προσπῖπτον καὶ φαινόμενον, καὶ σωφρόνως τὰ κατὰ μέρος ἀναλέγοιτο, δύνασθαι τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν βεβιωμένων αὐτοῖς εἰδέναι.

[185] Geoponica, 13.9.

Πλούταρχος λεπτοκάρυον προσάπτει τοῖς κλινόποσιν εἰς τὸ μὴ προσιέναι τὸν σκορπίον αὐτοῖς. φησὶ γὰρ τῷ λεπτοκαρύῳ μὴ προσιέναι τὸν σκορπίον.

[186] Isidorus Pelusiotes, Epistulae, 2.42.

Πλουτάρχῳ δὲ δοκεῖ τὸ σαφὲς καὶ λιτὸν γνήσιον εἶναι Ἀττικισμόν· οὕτω γάρ, φησίν, ἐλάλησαν οἱ ῥήτορες. Γοργίας δ’ ὁ Λεοντῖνος πρῶτος τὴν νόσον ταύτην εἰς τοὺς πολιτικοὺς λόγους εἰσήγαγε, τὸ ὑψηλὸν καὶ τροπικὸν ἀσπασάμενος καὶ τῇ σαφηνείᾳ λυμηνάμενος. ἥψατό τε, φησίν, ἡ νόσος αὕτη καὶ τοῦ θαυμαστοῦ Πλάτωνος.

[187] Iohannes Antiochensis, Archaeologia (Anecd. Graec. Cramer 2. p. 388). Ἰορδάνης λέγεται ὁ ποταμὸς διότι δύο ἅμα μίγνυνται ποταμοί, Ἰόρ τε καὶ Δάνης, καὶ ἀποτελοῦσιν αὐτόν, ὥς φησι Πλούταρχος.

[188] Lydus, De mensibus 4.148. Εἰλείθυια ‹δ’ ἐστὶν ἡ τ›ῶν τικτουσῶν ἔφ‹ορος, ὅ›πω‹ς τὸ ἕν›, ὥς φησι Πλούτ‹αρχος, ὁμ›οίως ἑαυτῇ δ‹ύο ποιή›σειε.

[189] Iohannes Malalas, Anecdota Graeca 2 p. 232 Cramer.

Ὁ δὲ Πλούταρχός φησιν ὅτι σφαῖρα πυρὸς κατενέχθη εἰς τὴν Κελτικὴν χώραν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ‹καὶ› κατέκαυσε τοὺς Γίγαντας, καὶ εἰς τὸν Ἡριδανὸν ποταμὸν ἐνεχθεῖσα ἡ σφαῖρα ἐσβέσθη.

[190] Iohannes Malalas, Chronographia 2 p. 55 Dind. 6667 Hode (Migne 97 col. 130). Ἦσαν γὰρ καὶ αὐτοὶ ἀγαλμάτων ποιηταὶ καὶ μυστηρίων ἐξηγηταὶ καὶ τελεσταί (sc. Aegyptii Babylonii Phryges etc.), ἀφ’ ὧν μάλιστα εἰς Ἕλληνας ἤχθη ἡ αὐτὴ θρησκεία ... Ἴωνες δὲ οἱ ἐκ τῆς Ἰὼ τούτων ἀρχηγοὶ ἐγένοντο ... οὕστινας μεμφόμενος ὁ Χερονήσιος Πλούταρχος τῇ παλαιᾷ φιλοσοφίᾳ παρ’ Ἕλλησι καὶ βαρβάροις ἐπαινουμένῃ ἐξέθετο ὡς πλάνην ἀγαλμάτων τινες εἰσάγουσιν. αὐτὸς δέ φησι τοὺς κατ’ οὐρανὸν φωστῆρας θεοποιεῖν ἔδοξεν, τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τὴν σελήνην παρεισάγων, ὡς ἡ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων θεολογία ἔχει αὐτοὺς τὸν σύμπαντα κοσμὸν διοικεῖν τρέφοντας καὶ αὐξάνοντας τὰ πάντα τῇ τριμερεῖ κινήσει τῶν πέντε πλανητῶν καὶ τῆς λοιπῆς ἀστροθεσίας κατὰ γένεσιν καὶ †ἀέρα.

[191] Philoponus in Arist. Meteor. 1 p. 82 (Comm. Arist. Graec. 14 p. 26).

(Διὰ τί μὴ συνίσταται νέφη ἐν τῷ πολὺ τῆς γῆς ὑπερανεστηκότι τόπῳ; ὅτι γὰρ οὐ συνίσταται, ἐκ τῆς μακρᾶς ἱστορίας ἐστὶ δῆλον· τὰ γὰρ ὑψηλότατα τῶν ὀρῶν ὑπερνεφῆ τ’ ἐστὶ καὶ ὑπερήνεμα.) τέφραν γὰρ ἔν τισι τούτων ἀποθέμενοί τινες ἢ καὶ ἐκ θυσιῶν τῶν ἐν ἐκείνοις γενομένων ἀπολελοιπότες, μετὰ πλείστους ἐνιαυτοὺς περιεργασάμενοι, κειμένην εὗρον αὐτὴν οὕτως ὡς ἔθεσαν. καὶ ἐν Κυλλήνῃ δέ φασιν (Ἀρκαδίας δ’ ὄρος ἐστὶ τοῦτο λίαν ὑψηλόν) θύσαντές τινες ἐν τῷ ἐπιόντι θέρει πάλιν θῦσαι ἀνελθόντες ἔτι τὴν τέφραν τῶν ἱερείων οὕτω κειμένην εὗρον μήτε ὑπ’ ὄμβρων κατακλυσθεῖσαν μήτε ὑπὸ πνευμάτων διεσκεδασμένην. ἱστορεῖ δὲ Πλούταρχος καὶ γράμματα μεῖναι εἰς ἑτέραν τῶν ἱερείων ἀνάβασιν ἐκ τῆς προτέρας ἐν τῷ Ὀλύμπῳ τῷ Μακεδονικῷ.

[192] Philostratus. Epist. 73. Πεῖθε δὴ καὶ σύ, ὦ βασίλεια, τὸν θαρσαλεώτερον τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Πλούταρχον μὴ ἄχθεσθαι τοῖς σοφισταῖς μηδ’ ἐς διαβολὰς καθίστασθαι τοῦ Γοργίου.

[193] Porphyrius, De abstinentia, 3.18.

Ἀρχὴν δέ, ὡς καὶ Πλούταρχός φησιν, οὐκ ἐπεὶ δεῖταί τινων ἡμῶν ἡ φύσις καὶ χρώμεθα τούτοις, ἤδη ἐπὶ πᾶν προακτέον καὶ πρὸς πάντα τὴν ἀδικίαν. δίδωσι μὲν γὰρ καὶ παρέχει τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις τὴν ἄχρι τινὸς βλάβην (εἴ γε βλάβη τὸ λαμβάνειν τι παρὰ τῶν φυτῶν, καίτοι ζώντων μενόντων)· τὸ δ’ ἐκ περιουσίας καὶ πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἀπολλύειν ἕτερα καὶ φθείρειν τῆς παντελοῦς ἦν ἀγριότητος καὶ ἀδικίας· καὶ ἡ τούτων ἀποχὴ οὔτε πρὸς τὸ ζῆν οὔτε πρὸς τὸ εὖ ζῆν ἡμᾶς ἠλάττου. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἀέρος καὶ ὕδατος φυτῶν τε καὶ καρπῶν, ὧν ἄνευ ζῆν ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν, οὕτω φόνου ζῴων καὶ βρώσεως σαρκῶν ἐτυγχάνομεν δεόμενοι πρὸς τὸν βίον, ἀναγκαίαν ἡ φύσις συμπλοκὴν εἶχεν ἂν πρὸς ταύτην τὴν ἀδικίαν· εἰ δὲ πολλοὶ μὲν ἱερεῖς θεῶν πολλοὶ δὲ βασιλεῖς βαρβάρων ἁγνεύοντες ἄπειρα δὲ γένη ζῴων τὸ παράπαν οὐ θιγγάνοντα τῆς τοιαύτης τροφῆς ζῶσι καὶ τυγχάνουσι τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν τέλους, πῶς οὐκ ἔστιν ἄτοπος ὁ κελεύων, εἴ τισιν ἀναγκαζόμεθα πολεμεῖν, μηδ’ οἷς ἔξεστιν εἰρηνικῶς ὁμιλεῖν, ἀλλ’ ἢ πρὸς μηδὲν τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ χρωμένους ζῆν ἢ πρὸς πάντα χρωμένους μὴ ζῆν; ὥσπερ οὖν ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπων ὁ μὲν αὑτοῦ σωτηρίας ἕνεκα καὶ παίδων καὶ πατρίδος ἢ χρήματά τινων παραιρούμενος ἢ χώραν ἐπιτρίβων καὶ πόλιν ἔχει πρόσχημα τῆς ἀδικίας τὴν ἀνάγκην, ὅστις δὲ ταῦτα δρᾷ διὰ πλοῦτον ἢ κόρον ἢ ἡδονὰς τρυφώσας καὶ ἀποπληρώσεις οὐκ ἀναγκαίων ποριζόμενος ἐπιθυμιῶν, ἄμικτος εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ ἀκρατὴς καὶ πονηρός· οὕτω τὰς μὲν εἰς φυτὰ βλάβας καὶ πυρὸς καὶ ναμάτων ἀναλώσεις κουράς τε προβάτων καὶ γάλα βοῶν τ’ ἐξημέρωσιν καὶ κατάζευξιν ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ καὶ διαμονῇ τοῖς χρωμένοις ὁ θεὸς δίδωσι συγγνώμων· ζῷα δ’ ὑπάγειν σφαγαῖς καὶ μαγειρεύειν ἀναπιμπλαμένους φόνου, μὴ τροφῆς ἢ πληρώσεως χάριν ἀλλ’ ἡδονῆς, καὶ λαιμαργίας ποιουμένους τέλος, ὑπερφυῶς ὡς ἄνομον καὶ δεινόν. ἀρκεῖ γὰρ ὅτι μηδὲν πονεῖν δεομένοις χρώμεθα προκάμνουσι καὶ μοχθοῦσιν,

‘ἵππων ὄνων τ’ ὀχεῖα καὶ ταύρων γονάς’

ὡς Αἰσχύλος φησίν (fr. 194 Nauck, 336 Mette)

‘ἀντίδουλα καὶ πόνων ἐκδέκτορα’

χειρωσάμενοι καὶ καταζεύξαντες.

Ὁ δ’ ἀξιῶν ἡμᾶς ὄψῳ μὴ χρῆσθαι βοῒ μηδὲ πνεῦμα καὶ ζωὴν διολλύντας καὶ διαφθείροντας ἡδύσματα πλησμονῆς καὶ καλλωπίσματα προτίθεσθαι τραπέζης τίνος ἀναγκαίου πρὸς σωτηρίαν ἢ καλοῦ πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἀφαιρεῖται τὸν βίον; οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ζῴοις τὰ φυτὰ παραβάλλειν κομιδῇ βίαιον· τὰ μὲν γὰρ αἰσθάνεσθαι πέφυκε καὶ ἀλγεῖν καὶ φοβεῖσθαι καὶ βλάπτεσθαι, διὸ καὶ ἀδικεῖσθαι· τοῖς δ’ οὐδέν ἐστιν αἰσθητόν, οὕτως δ’ οὐδὲ ἀλλότριον οὐδὲ κακὸν οὐδὲ βλάβη τις οὐδ’ ἀδικία· καὶ γὰρ οἰκειώσεως πάσης καὶ ἀλλοτριώσεως ἀρχὴ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι, τὴν δ’ οἰκείωσιν ἀρχὴν τίθενται δικαιοσύνης οἱ ἀπὸ Ζήνωνος. πῶς δ’ οὐκ ἄλογον πολλοὺς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐπ’ αἰσθήσει μόνον ζῶντας ὁρῶντας νοῦν δὲ καὶ λόγον οὐκ ἔχοντας, πολλοὺς δὲ πάλιν ὠμότητι καὶ θυμῷ καὶ πλεονεξίᾳ τὰ φοβερώτατα τῶν θηρίων ὑπερβεβληκότας, παιδοφόνους καὶ πατροκτόνους τυράννους καὶ βασιλέων ὑπουργούς, πρὸς μὲν τούτους οἴεσθαι ‹δίκαιόν τι› εἶναι ἡμῖν, πρὸς δὲ τὸν ἀροτῆρα βοῦν καὶ τὸν σύντροφον κύνα καὶ τὰ γάλακτι μὲν τρέφοντα κουρᾷ δὲ κοσμοῦντα θρέμματα μηδὲν εἶναι, πῶς οὐ παραλογώτατόν ἐστι;

Ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο νὴ Δία τοῦ Χρυσίππου πιθανόν [ἦ], ὡς ἡμᾶς αὑτῶν καὶ ἀλλήλων οἱ θεοὶ χάριν ἐποιήσαντο, ἡμῶν δὲ τὰ ζῷα, συμπολεμεῖν μὲν ἵππους καὶ συνθηρεύειν κύνας, ἀνδρείας δὲ γυμνάσια παρδάλεις καὶ ἄρκτους καὶ λέοντας· ἡ δ’ ὗς (ἐνταῦθα γάρ ἐστι τῶν χαρίτων τὸ ἥδιστον) οὐ δι’ ἄλλο τι πλὴν θύεσθαι ἐγεγόνει, καὶ τῇ σαρκὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ὁ θεὸς οἷον ἅλας ἐνέμιξεν, εὐοψίαν ἡμῖν μηχανώμενος· ὅπως δὲ ζωμοῦ καὶ παραδειπνίων ἀφθονίαν ἔχωμεν, ὄστρεά τε παντοδαπὰ καὶ ἀκαλήφας καὶ γένη πτηνῶν ποικίλα παρεσκεύασεν, οὐκ ἀλλαχόθεν, ἀλλ’ [ὡς] αὑτοῦ μέγα μέρος ἐνταῦθα τρέψας εἰς γλυκυθυμίας, τὰς τιτθὰς ὑπερβαλλόμενος, καὶ καταπυκνώσας ταῖς ἡδοναῖς καὶ ἀπολαύσεσι τὸν περίγειον τόπον. ὅτῳ δὴ ταῦτα δοκεῖ τι τοῦ πιθανοῦ καὶ θεῷ πρέποντος μετέχειν, σκοπείτω τί πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ἐρεῖ τὸν λόγον, ὃν Καρνεάδης ἔλεγεν, ‹ὡς› ἕκαστον τῶν φύσει γεγονότων, ὅταν τοῦ πρὸς ὃ πέφυκε καὶ γέγονε τυγχάνῃ τέλους, ὠφελεῖται· κοινότερον δὲ ‹τὸ› τῆς ὠφελείας, ἣν εὐχρηστίαν οὗτοι λέγουσιν, ἀκουστέον· ἡ δ’ ὗς φύσει γέγονε πρὸς τὸ σφαγῆναι καὶ καταβρωθῆναι· καὶ τοῦτο πάσχουσα τυγχάνει τοῦ πρὸς ὃ πέφυκε καὶ ὠφελεῖται. καὶ μὴν εἰ πρὸς ἀνθρώπων χρῆσιν ὁ θεὸς μεμηχάνηται τὰ ζῷα, τί χρησόμεθα μυίαις, ἐμπίσι, νυκτερίσιν, κανθάροις, σκορπίοις, ἐχίδναις, ὧν τὰ μὲν ὁρᾶν εἰδεχθῆ καὶ θιγγάνειν μιαρὰ καὶ κατ’ ὀδμὰς δυσανάσχετα καὶ φθέγγεται δεινὸν καὶ ἀτερπές, τὰ δ’ ἄντικρυς ὀλέθρια τοῖς τυγχάνουσιν; φαλαίνας τε καὶ πρίστεις καὶ τὰ ἄλλα κήτη, ‘ἃ μυρία βόσκειν’ Ὅμηρός φησιν (μ 97) ‘ἀγάστονον Ἀμφιτρίτην’, τί οὐκ ἐδίδαξεν ἡμᾶς ὁ δημιουργός, ὅπῃ χρήσιμα τῇ φύσει γέγονε; εἰ δ’ οὐ πάντα φασὶν ἡμῖν καὶ πρὸς ἡμᾶς γεγονέναι, πρὸς τῷ σύγχυσιν ἔχειν πολλὴν καὶ ἀσάφειαν τὸν διορισμὸν οὐδὲ ἐκφεύγομεν τὸ ἀδικεῖν, ἐπιτιθέμενοι καὶ χρώμενοι βλαβερῶς τοῖς οὐ δι’ ἡμᾶς ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς κατὰ φύσιν γεγενημένοις. ἐῶ λέγειν ὅτι τῇ χρείᾳ τὸ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ὁρίζοντες οὐκ ἂν φθάνοιμεν ἑαυτοὺς ἕνεκα τῶν ὀλεθριωτάτων ζῴων, οἷα κροκόδειλοι καὶ φάλαιναι καὶ δράκοντες, γεγονέναι συγχωροῦντες. ἡμῖν μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀπ’ ἐκείνων ὑπάρχει τὸ παράπαν ὠφελεῖσθαι· τὰ δὲ ἁρπάζοντα καὶ διαφθείροντα τοὺς παραπίπτοντας ἀνθρώπους βορᾷ χρῆται, μηδὲν ἡμῶν κατὰ τοῦτο δρῶντα χαλεπώτερον, πλὴν ὅτι τὰ μὲν ἔνδεια καὶ λιμὸς ἐπὶ ταύτην ἄγει τὴν ἀδικίαν, ἡμεῖς δ’ ὕβρει καὶ τρυφῆς ἕνεκα, ‹καὶ› παίζοντες πολλάκις ἐν θεάτροις καὶ κυνηγεσίοις, τὰ πλεῖστα τῶν ζῴων φονεύομεν.

[194a] Porphyrius, Περὶ ἀγαλμάτων fr. 8 (Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 3.11.23).

Τοῦ δ’ αὖ πυρὸς τὴν δύναμιν προσειπόντες Ἥφαιστον ἀνθρωποειδὲς μὲν αὐτοῦ τὸ ἄγαλμα πεποιήκασιν, πῖλον δὲ περιέθεσαν κυάνεον τῆς οὐρανίου σύμβολον περιφορᾶς ἔνθα τοῦ πυρὸς τὸ ἀρχοειδές τε καὶ ἀκραιφνέστατον· τὸ δ’ εἰς γῆν κατενεχθὲν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ πῦρ ἀτονώτερον, δεόμενόν τε στηρίγματος καὶ βάσεως τῆς ἐφ’ ὕλης· διὸ χωλεύει ὕλης δεόμενον εἰς ὑπέρεισμα. καὶ ἡλίου δὲ τὴν τοιάνδε δύναμιν ὑπολαβόντες Ἀπόλλωνα προσεῖπον ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν ἀκτίνων αὐτοῦ πάλσεως· ἐννέα δ’ ἐπᾴδουσιν αὐτῷ Μοῦσαι, ἥ θ’ ὑποσελήνιος σφαῖρα καὶ ἑπτὰ πλανητῶν καὶ μία ἡ τῆς ἀπλανοῦς. περιέθεσαν δ’ αὐτῷ τὴν δάφνην, τοῦτο μὲν ὅτι πυρὸς πλῆρες τὸ φυτὸν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀπεχθὲς δαίμοσιν, τοῦτο δ’ ὅτι λάλον καιόμενον εἰς παράστασιν τοῦ προφητεύειν τὸν θεόν.

[194b] Lydus, De mensibus 4.86.

Ὁ δὲ Χαιρωνεύς φησιν ὅτι τοῦ πυρὸς τὴν δύναμιν ... ἀκραιφνέστατον.

[194c] Lydus, De mensibus 4. 4 = Geoponica 11.2.4.

Τὴν δάφνην δὲ οἱ παλαιοὶ τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι καθιεροῦσιν ὅτι πυρὸς πλῆρες τὸ φυτόν, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλούταρχος, καὶ ὁ Ἀπόλλων πῦρ· ἥλιος γάρ ἐστιν. ὅθεν καὶ ἀπεχθάνεται δαίμοσι τοῦτο τὸ φυτόν, καὶ ἔνθεν ἂν εἴη δάφνη ἐκποδὼν δαίμονες, καὶ ἐν ταῖς μαντείαις καίοντες ταύτην οἱ ἄνθρωποι παράστασιν προφητείας δοκοῦσιν εὑρηκέναι.

[195] Proclus in Platonis Timaeum, 1 p. 415 Diehl.

Καὶ δεῖ μεμνῆσθαι καὶ ὧν ὁ Χαιρωνεὺς εἶπε περὶ τοῦ τῆς προνοίας ὀνόματος, ὡς Πλάτωνος οὕτως τὴν θείαν αἰτίαν καλέσαντος.

[196] Proclus in Euclidem, 2 p. 35.

Ποσότητα δὲ λέγουσιν αὐτὴν (sc. τὴν γωνίαν) ὅσοι φασὶ τὸ πρῶτον διάστημα ὑπὸ τὸ σημεῖον εἶναι τὴν γωνίαν· ὧν καὶ Πλούταρχός ἐστιν, εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν δόξαν συνωθῶν καὶ τὸν Ἀπολλώνιον. ‘δεῖ γὰρ εἶναί τι’ φησί ‘διάστημα πρῶτον ὑπὸ τὴν κλάσιν τῶν περιεχουσῶν γραμμῶν ἢ ἐπιφανειῶν.’ καίτοι γε συνεχοῦς ὄντος τοῦ ὑπὸ τὸ σημεῖον διαστήματος, ἀδύνατον τὸ πρῶτον λαβεῖν· ἐπ’ ἄπειρον γὰρ πᾶν διάστημα διαιρετόν, πρὸς τῷ καὶ ἐὰν ὁπωσοῦν ἀφορίσωμεν τὸ πρῶτον καὶ δι’ ἐκείνου γραμμὴν ἀγάγωμεν, γίνεσθαι τρίγωνον ἀλλ’ οὐ μίαν γωνίαν.

[197] Prolegomenon in Hermogenis Περὶ στάσεων appendices (p. 217 Rabe). ἐκ τῶν Πλουτάρχου εἰς τὸν Πλάτωνος Γοργίαν.

Ὅρος ῥητορικῆς κατὰ Γοργίαν· ῥητορική ἐστι τέχνη περὶ λόγους τὸ κῦρος ἔχουσα, πειθοῦς δημιουργὸς ἐν πολιτικοῖς λόγοις περὶ παντὸς τοῦ προτεθέντος πιστευτικῆς καὶ οὐ διδασκαλικῆς· εἶναι δὲ αὐτῆς τὴν πραγματείαν ἰδίαν μάλιστα περὶ δίκαια καὶ ἄδικα ἀγαθά τε καὶ κακὰ καλά τε καὶ αἰσχρά.

[198] Schol. in Plat. Gorg. 462E (p. 307.12 Hermann).

Ἰστέον ὅτι διαφέρει ἐπιτήδευμα καὶ ἐπιτήδευσις· αὕτη μὲν γὰρ ἐνέργειαν δηλοῖ, ἐκεῖνο δὲ οἷον οὐσίαν, ὥς φησι Πλούταρχος.

[199] Ibid. 495D (p. 318.26 Hermann). Ὦ σοφώτατέ συ· κατ’ εἰρωνείαν ὑπὸ Καλλικλέος εἴρηται, ὥς φησι Πλούταρχος.

[200] Stobaeus 1.49.60 (1 p. 445 W). τοῦ αὐτοῦ (sc. Πορφυρίου). Τὰ δὲ παρ’ Ὁμήρῳ περὶ τῆς Κίρκης λεγόμενα θαυμαστὴν ἔχει τὴν περὶ ψυχὴν θεωρίαν. λέγεται γὰρ οὕτως (κ 239)

‘οἱ δὲ συῶν μὲν ἔχον κεφαλὰς φωνήν τε τρίχας τε

καὶ δέμας· αὐτὰρ νοῦς ἦν ἔμπεδος ὡς τὸ πάρος περ’.

Ἔστι τοίνυν ὁ μῦθος αἴνιγμα τῶν περὶ ψυχῆς ὑπό τε Πυθαγόρου λεγομένων καὶ Πλάτωνος, ὡς ἄφθαρτος οὖσα τὴν φύσιν καὶ ἀίδιος, οὔ τι μὴν ἀπαθὴς οὐδ’ ἀμετάβλητος, ἐν ταῖς λεγομέναις φθοραῖς καὶ τελευταῖς μεταβολὴν ἴσχει καὶ μετακόσμησιν εἰς ἕτερα σωμάτων εἴδη, καθ’ ἡδονὴν διώκουσα τὸ πρόσφορον καὶ οἰκεῖον ὁμοιότητι καὶ συνηθείᾳ βίου διαίτης· ἔνθα δὴ τὸ μέγα παιδείας ἑκάστῳ καὶ φιλοσοφίας ὄφελος, ἂν μνημονεύουσα τῶν καλῶν ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ δυσχεραίνουσα τὰς αἰσχρὰς καὶ παρανόμους ἡδονὰς δύνηται κρατεῖν καὶ προσέχειν αὑτῇ καὶ φυλάττειν, μὴ λάθῃ θηρίον γενομένη καὶ στέρξασα σώματος οὐκ εὐφυοῦς οὐδὲ καθαροῦ πρὸς ἀρετὴν φύσιν ἄμουσον καὶ ἄλογον καὶ τὸ ἐπιθυμοῦν καὶ θυμούμενον μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ φρόνιμον αὐξάνοντος καὶ τρέφοντος. αὐτῆς γὰρ τῆς μετακοσμήσεως εἱμαρμένη καὶ φύσις ὑπὸ Ἐμπεδοκλέους δαίμων ἀνηγόρευται

‘σαρκῶν ἀλλογνῶτι περιστέλλουσα χιτῶνι’ (B 126)

καὶ μεταμπίσχουσα τὰς ψυχάς, Ὅμηρος δὲ τὴν ἐν κύκλῳ περίοδον καὶ περιφορὰν παλιγγενεσίας Κίρκην προσηγόρευκεν, Ἡλίου παῖδα τοῦ πᾶσαν φθορὰν γενέσει καὶ γένεσιν αὖ πάλιν φθορᾷ συνάπτοντος ἀεὶ καὶ συνείροντος. Αἰαίη δὲ νῆσος ἡ δεχομένη τὸν ἀποθνῄσκοντα μοῖρα καὶ χώρα τοῦ περιέχοντος, εἰς ἣν ἐμπεσοῦσαι πρῶτον αἱ ψυχαὶ πλανῶνται καὶ ξενοπαθοῦσι καὶ ὀλοφύρονται καὶ οὐκ ἴσασιν ὅπῃ ζόφος

‘οὐδ’ ὅπῃ ἠέλιος φαεσίμβροτος εἶσ’ ὑπὸ γαῖαν’ (κ 191),

ποθοῦσαι δὲ καθ’ ἡδονὰς τὴν συνήθη καὶ σύντροφον ἐν σαρκὶ καὶ μετὰ σαρκὸς δίαιταν ἐμπίπτουσιν αὖθις εἰς τὸν κυκεῶνα, τῆς γενέσεως μιγνύσης εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ κυκώσης ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀίδια καὶ θνητὰ καὶ φρόνιμα καὶ παθητὰ καὶ ὀλύμπια καὶ γηγενῆ, θελγόμεναι καὶ μαλασσόμεναι ταῖς ἀγούσαις αὖθις ἐπὶ τὴν γένεσιν ἡδοναῖς, ἐν ᾧ δὴ μάλιστα πολλῆς μὲν εὐτυχίας αἱ ψυχαὶ δέονται πολλῆς δὲ σωφροσύνης, ὅπως μὴ τοῖς κακίστοις ἐπισπόμεναι καὶ συνενδοῦσαι μέρεσιν ἢ πάθεσιν αὑτῶν κακοδαίμονα καὶ θηριώδη βίον ἀμείψωσιν. ἡ γὰρ λεγομένη καὶ νομιζομένη τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου τρίοδος ἐνταῦθά που τέτακται περὶ τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς σχιζομένη μέρη, τὸ λογιστικὸν καὶ θυμοειδὲς καὶ ἐπιθυμητικόν, ὧν ἕκαστον ἀρχὴν ἐξ αὑτοῦ καὶ ῥοπὴν ἐπὶ τὸν οἰκεῖον βίον ἐνδίδωσι. καὶ οὐκέτι ταῦτα μῦθος οὐδὲ ποίησις ἀλλ’ ἀλήθεια καὶ φυσικὸς λόγος. ὧν μὲν γὰρ ἐν τῇ μεταβολῇ καὶ γενέσει τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν ἐξανθοῦν ἐπικρατεῖ καὶ δυναστεύει, τούτοις εἰς ὀνώδη καὶ ‹ὑώδη› σώματα καὶ βίους θολεροὺς καὶ ἀκαθάρτους ὑπὸ φιληδονίας καὶ γαστριμαργίας φησὶ γίνεσθαι τὴν μεταβολήν. ὅταν δὲ φιλονεικίαις σκληραῖς καὶ φονικαῖς ὠμότησιν ἔκ τινος διαφορᾶς ἢ δυσμενείας ἐξηγριωμένον ἔχουσα παντάπασιν ἡ ψυχὴ τὸ θυμοειδὲς εἰς δευτέραν γένεσιν ἀφίκηται, πλήρης οὖσα προσφάτου πικρίας καὶ βαρυφροσύνης ἔρριψεν ἑαυτὴν εἰς λύκου φύσιν ἢ λέοντος, ὥσπερ ὄργανον ἀμυντικὸν τὸ σῶμα τῷ κρατοῦντι προσιεμένη πάθει καὶ περιαρμόσασα. διὸ δεῖ μάλιστα περὶ τὸν θάνατον ὥσπερ ἐν τελετῇ καθαρεύοντα παντὸς ἀπέχειν πάθους φαύλου τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ πᾶσαν ἐπιθυμίαν χαλεπὴν κοιμήσαντα καὶ φθόνους καὶ δυσμενείας καὶ ὀργὰς ἀπωτάτω τιθέμενον τοῦ φρονοῦντος ἐκβαίνειν τοῦ σώματος. οὗτος ὁ χρυσόρραπις Ἑρμῆς ἀληθῶς ὁ λόγος ἐντυγχάνων καὶ δεικνύων ἐναργῶς τὸ καλὸν ἢ παντάπασιν εἴργει καὶ ἀπέχει τοῦ κυκεῶνος, ἢ πιοῦσαν ἐν ἀνθρωπίνῳ βίῳ καὶ ἤθει διαφυλάσσει πλεῖστον χρόνον, ὡς ἀνυστόν ἐστι.

[201] Stobaeus 1.49.61 (1 p. 448 W.). τοῦ αὐτοῦ.

Πάλιν αἰνιττόμενος ὅτι ταῖς τῶν εὐσεβῶς βεβιωκότων ψυχαῖς μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν οἰκεῖός ἐστι τόπος ὁ περὶ τὴν σελήνην, ὑπεδήλωσεν εἰπών (δ 563)

‘ἀλλά σ’ ἐς ἠλύσιον πεδίον καὶ πείρατα γαίης

ἀθάνατοι πέμψουσιν, ὅθι ξανθὸς Ῥαδάμανθυς’,

ἠλύσιον μὲν πεδίον εἰκότως προσειπὼν τὴν τῆς σελήνης ἐπιφάνειαν ὑφ’ ἡλίου καταλαμπομένην, ‘ὅτ’ ἀέξεται ἁλίου αὐγαῖς’ ὥς φησι Τιμόθεος (fr. 13 Diehl), πέρατα δὲ γῆς τὰ ἄκρα τῆς νυκτός, ἣν σκιὰν τῆς γῆς εἶναι λέγουσιν οἱ μαθηματικοί, πολλάκις ἐπιψαύουσαν τῆς σελήνης, ὡς τοῦτο τῆς γῆς πέρας ἐχούσης, οὗ τῇ σκιᾷ μακρότερον οὐκ ἐξικνεῖται.

[202] Stobaeus 3.1.199 (3 p. 150 H.). Πυθαγορικά·

Καὶ μὴν οὐδέν ἐστιν οὕτω τῆς Πυθαγορικῆς φιλοσοφίας ἴδιον, ὡς τὸ συμβολικόν, οἷον ἐν τελετῇ μεμιγμένον φωνῇ καὶ σιωπῇ διδασκαλίας γένος· ὥστε μὴ λέγειν

‘ἀείσω ξυνετοῖσι, θύρας δ’ ἐπίθεσθε βέβηλοι’,

ἀλλ’ αὐτόθεν ἔχειν φῶς καὶ χαρακτῆρα τοῖς συνήθεσι τὸ φραζόμενον, τυφλὸν δὲ καὶ ἄσημον εἶναι τοῖς ἀπείροις. ὡς γὰρ ὁ ἄναξ ὁ ἐν Δελφοῖς οὔτε λέγει οὔτε κρύπτει ἀλλὰ σημαίνει κατὰ τὸν Ἡράκλειτον (V. S. B. 93), οὕτω τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν συμβόλων καὶ τὸ φράζεσθαι δοκοῦν κρυπτόμενόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ κρύπτεσθαι νοούμενον.

[203] Stobaeus 3.13.68 (3 p. 468 H.). Θεμιστίου Περὶ ψυχῆς.

Εἰ μὲν οὖν ὀρθῶς ἐπὶ Πλάτωνος εἶπε Διογένης ‘τί δαὶ ὄφελος ἡμῖν ἀνδρὸς ὃς πολὺν ἤδη χρόνον φιλοσοφῶν οὐδένα λελύπηκεν;’ ἕτεροι κρινοῦσιν· ἴσως γὰρ ὡς τὸ μέλι δεῖ καὶ τὸν λόγον τοῦ φιλοσόφου τὸ γλυκὺ δηκτικὸν ἔχειν τῶν ἡλκωμένων.

[204] Stobaeus 4.22.89 (4 p. 530 H.). Θεμιστίου ἐκ τοῦ Περὶ ψυχῆς.

Ἀλλ’ οὖν μάλιστα διψῶν ἀπέθανε τῆς γυναικός, ἐρῶν ἐρώσης ἀπολειπόμενος. οὐθὲν εἰπεῖν οὔτε ποιῆσαι πρὸς αὐτὴν ἰταμὸν ἐτόλμησαν, ἀλλ’ οὕτως ἐνεκαρτέρησαν ἀμφότεροι τῷ πρέποντι, ὥσπερ ἀποδείξασθαι θέλοντες ὅτι πλεῖστον αἰδοῦς ἔρωτι δικαίῳ μέτεστιν. ὅθεν ἔμοιγε πλεῖστον αὐτῇ φαίνεται χρόνον ἀνὴρ συμβεβιωκέναι· πάντα γὰρ διόλου τὸν δεκαετῆ χρόνον ὁμαλῶς συνεβίωσεν. αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι συνοικοῦσιν οὐ συμβιοῦσιν, ὅταν λυπῶσι τοὺς [μὲν] ἄνδρας ἢ ζηλοτυπῶσιν ἢ διαφέρωνται περὶ χρημάτων ἢ κακῶς λέγωσιν ἢ φεύγωσι θρυπτόμεναι τὰς φιλοφροσύνας καὶ συνδιαιτήσεις· ὥστ’ ἂν τοῦτον ἐξαιρῇς τὸν χρόνον ἐν ᾧ ταῦτα πράττουσιν, ἀπολείπεται βραχὺς ἐκεῖνος ὁ τῆς συμβιώσεως.

[205] Stobaeus 4.50.29 (5 p. 1032 H.). ἐκ τοῦ Θεμιστίου Περὶ ψυχῆς.

Καίτοι περί γε τῶν γερόντων ὁ Σοφοκλῆς εἴρηκε χαριέντως (O. T. 961)

‘σμικρὰ παλαιὰ σώματ’ εὐνάζει ῥοπή’·

καταγωγῇ γὰρ ἔοικεν ὁ γεροντικὸς θάνατος, ἐκβολὴ δὲ καὶ ναυάγιόν ἐστιν ὁ τῶν νέων· ἐκπίπτει γὰρ ἡ ψυχὴ βίᾳ συντριβομένου τοῦ σώματος.

[206] Stobaeus 4.52.45 (`5 p. 1086 H.). Θεμιστίου ἐκ τοῦ Περὶ ψυχῆς.

Ὅπου τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς φιλόσοφον Ἀντίπατρον ἀποθνῄσκοντα λέγουσιν ἐν εὐτυχήματος μέρει †διακεῖσθαι καὶ τὴν ἐκ Κιλικίας αὐτῷ γενομένην εἰς Ἀθήνας εὔπλοιαν.

[207] Stobaeus 3.33.16 (`3 p. 681 H.). Πλουτάρχου.

Περὶ τῆς καθ’ Ὅμηρον ἐχεμυθίας διὰ τούτων σαφῶς δείκνυται· λέγει γὰρ (Β 246-247)

‘Θερσῖτ’ ἀκριτόμυθε, λιγύς περ ἐὼν ἀγορητὴς

ἴσχεο, μηδ’ ἔθελ’ οἶος ἐριζέμεναι βασιλῆι’.

καὶ τοῦ Τηλεμάχου εἰπόντος (τ 40)

‘ἦ μάλα τις θεῶν ἔνδον, οἳ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν’

ἐπιλαμβανόμενος ὁ πατὴρ ἔφη (τ 42-43)

‘σίγα καὶ κατὰ σὸν νόον ἴσχανε μηδ’ ἐρέεινε·

αὕτη τοι δίκη ἐστὶ θεῶν οἳ Ὄλυμπον ἔχουσι’.

τοῦτο ἐκσίγησιν οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ καλοῦντες οὐδὲν ἀπεκρίνοντο τοῖς περὶ θεῶν ὅ τι τύχοιεν ἰταμῶς καὶ εὐχερῶς ἐρωτῶσι.

[208] Stobaeus 4.36.23 (5 p. 873 H.). Πορφυρίου ἐκ τοῦ Περὶ Στυγός.

Ἥ τε ἰτέα αὕτη τὸν καρπὸν ἀποβάλλει πρὶν ἐκθρέψαι· διὸ ‘ὠλεσίκαρπον’ αὐτὴν ὁ ποιητὴς ὀνομάζει (κ 510). καὶ μέντοι ἱστόρηται ὡς μετὰ οἴνου δοθεὶς ὁ ταύτης καρπὸς ἀγόνους ποιεῖ τοὺς πιόντας καὶ κατασβέννυσι τὸ σπέρμα καὶ μαραίνει τὴν γόνιμον ὁρμήν.

[209] Stobaeus 4.41.57 (5 p. 944 H.). ἐκ τῶν Πορφυρίου Περὶ Στυγός.

Ἥ τε γὰρ αἴγειρος, ὥς φασιν ἄλλοι τε καὶ Πλούταρχος, φιλοπενθὴς καὶ ἀτελὴς πρὸς καρπογονίαν. διὸ καὶ Σοφοκλῆς ἔν τισί φησιν (fr. 535 Nauck, 593 Pearson)

‘οὐ χρή ποτ’ ἀνθρώπων μέγαν ὄλβον ἀποβλέψαι· τανυφλοίου γὰρ ἰσαμέριος

φύλλοις τις αἰγείρου βιοτὰν ἀποβάλλει’.

[210] Stobaeus 4.50.19 (5 p. 1024 H.). Πλουτάρχου. Νέοις δὲ ζηλωτέον τοὺς γέροντας, κατὰ Σιμωνίδην (Semonides, fr. 5 Diehl)

‘ἄθηλος ἵππῳ πῶλος ὣς ἅμα τρέχειν’·

καθάπερ φησὶν ὁ Πλάτων ἐπὶ τοῦ μιγνυμένου πρὸς ὕδωρ ἀκράτου μαινόμενον θεὸν ἑτέρῳ θεῷ νήφοντι σωφρονίζεσθαι (Legg. 773D).

[211] Syncellus, Chronographia I 625 Dindorf.

Οὗτος καὶ τὸν Ἰούλιον Κᾶνον, ἕνα τῶν Στωικῶν φιλοσόφων, ἀνεῖλε· περὶ οὗ παράδοξον Ἕλλησιν, ὡς δοκῶ, πέπλασται. ἀπαγόμενος γὰρ πρὸς τὸ θανεῖν ἀταράχως λέγεταί τινι τῶν ἑταίρων Ἀντιόχῳ τοὔνομα, Σελευκεῖ, συνεπομένῳ προειπεῖν, ὡς ἐντεύξεται αὐτῷ κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν νύκτα μετὰ τὴν ἔξοδον, καὶ διαπορήσει τι τῶν σπουδῆς ἀξίων, καὶ ὅτι μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας Ῥεκτός, εἷς τῶν ἑταίρων, ὑπὸ Γαΐου φονευθήσεται. ἃ καὶ γέγονεν, τοῦ μὲν ἀναιρεθέντος τριταίου, τοῦ δ’ Ἀντιόχου τὴν ἐποψίαν εἰπόντος τῆς νυκτός, ὅτι φανεὶς Ἰούλιος Κᾶνος τὰ περὶ διαμονῆς τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ καθαρωτέρου φωτὸς μετὰ τὴν ἔξοδον διηγήσατο. ταῦτα Πλούταρχος ὁ Χαιρωνεὺς ἱστορεῖ.

[212] Theodoretus, Cur. Graec. Affect. 1.468a.

Ὅτι δὲ καὶ τῶν Διονυσίων καὶ τῶν Παναθηναίων καὶ μέντοι τῶν Θεσμοφορίων καὶ τῶν Ἐλευσινίων τὰς τελετὰς Ὀρφεύς, ἀνὴρ Ὀδρύσης, εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας ἐκόμισε, καὶ εἰς Αἴγυπτον ἀφικόμενος τὰ τῆς Ἴσιδος καὶ τοῦ Ὀσίριδος εἰς τὰ τῆς Δηοῦς καὶ τοῦ Διονύσου μετατέθεικεν ὄργια, διδάσκει μὲν Πλούταρχος ὁ ἐκ Χαιρωνείας τῆς Βοιωτίας.

[213] Ibid. 1.510b.

Ὅτι πρώτους θεοὺς ἐνόμισαν καὶ Αἰγύπτιοι καὶ Φοίνικες καὶ μέντοι καὶ Ἕλληνες ἥλιον καὶ σελήνην καὶ οὐρανὸν καὶ γῆν καὶ τἄλλα στοιχεῖα· τοῦτο γὰρ δὴ καὶ ὁ Πλάτων καὶ ὁ Σικελιώτης Διόδωρος καὶ ὁ Χαιρωνεὺς ἐδίδαξε Πλούταρχος.

[214] Tzetzes, Chiliades 1.812-820. περὶ τοῦ ἱματίου Ἀντισθένους Συβαρίτου.

Τοιοῦτον τὸ ἱμάτιον ὑπῆρχεν Ἀντισθένους·

ἦν σοῦσον ἁλουργὲς πεντεκαιδεκαπηχυαῖον,

ἔχον μὲν ζῷδα καὶ θεοὺς καὶ Περσικὰ καὶ σοῦσα,

μαργάροις ἠσκημένα τε καὶ λίθοις τιμαλφέσι,

χειρίδι δὲ θατέρᾳ μὲν εἶχε τὸν Ἀντισθένην

ἐν δὲ θατέρᾳ Σύβαριν, τὴν πόλιν Ἀντισθένους.

τοῦτο δὲ Διονύσιος, ὁ πρότερος κρατήσας,

εἰς ἑκατὸν καὶ εἴκοσι τάλαντα νομισμάτων

Καρχηδονίοις ἐμπολεῖ· Πλούταρχος οἶμαι γράφει.

[215] Marc. gr. 196

ΕΚ ΤΩΝ ΤΟΥ ΧΑΙΡΩΝΕΩΣ

[215a] Ὅτι οὐ τὸ ἐπιστητὸν αἴτιον τῆς ἐπιστήμης, ὡς Ἀρκεσίλαος· οὕτω γὰρ καὶ ἡ ἀνεπιστημοσύνη τῆς ἐπιστήμης αἰτία φανεῖται.

[215b] Ὅτι οὐχ ἡ ψυχὴ τρέπει ἑαυτὴν εἰς τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων κατάληψιν καὶ ἀπάτην κατὰ τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς. πῶς γὰρ αἰτία ἑαυτῇ γνώσεως ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ ἀγνοίας, μήπω αὐτὰς ἔχουσα ἀρχήν;

[215c] Ὅτι μόνῳ τῷ Πλάτωνι ῥᾷστον ἀποδοῦναι τὸν λόγον, εἰς λήθην καὶ ἀνάμνησιν ἀναφέροντι τὴν γνῶσιν καὶ τὴν ἄγνοιαν.

[215d] Ὅτι ἔνεισιν μὲν αἱ ἐπιστῆμαι, κρύπτονται δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἐπεισοδίων ὁμοίως τῇ ὑπὸ Δημαράτου πεμφθείσῃ δέλτῳ.

[215e] Ὅτι καὶ τὸ ζητεῖν καὶ τὸ εὑρίσκειν δηλοῖ τὴν ἀνάμνησιν· οὔτε γὰρ ζητήσειεν ἄν τις οὗ ἐστιν ἀνεννόητος οὔτε ἀνεύροι διά γε ζητήσεως· λέγεται γὰρ εὑρίσκειν καὶ ὁ κατὰ περίπτωσιν.

[215f] Ὅτι ἄπορον ὄντως εἰ οἷόν τε ζητεῖν καὶ εὑρίσκειν, ὡς ἐν Μένωνι (81d) προβέβληται· οὔτε γὰρ ἃ ἴσμεν, μάταιον γάρ· οὔτε ἃ μὴ ἴσμεν, κἂν γὰρ περιπέσωμεν αὐτοῖς, ἀγνοοῦμεν, ὡς τοῖς τυχοῦσιν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ Περιπατητικοὶ τὸν δυνάμει νοῦν ἐπενόησαν· ἡμεῖς δ’ ἠποροῦμεν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐνεργείᾳ εἰδέναι καὶ μὴ εἰδέναι. ἔστω γὰρ εἶναι τὸν δυνάμει νοῦν, ἀλλ’ ἔτι ἀπορία ἡ αὐτή· πῶς γὰρ οὗτος νοεῖ; ἢ γὰρ ἃ οἶδεν ἢ ἃ οὐκ οἶδεν. οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς τὰς φυσικὰς ἐννοίας αἰτιῶνται· εἰ μὲν δὴ δυνάμει, ταὐτὸ ἐροῦμεν· εἰ δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ, διὰ τί ζητοῦμεν ἃ ἴσμεν; εἰ δὲ ἀπὸ τούτων ἄλλα ἀγνοούμενα, πῶς ἅπερ οὐκ ἴσμεν; οἱ δὲ Ἐπικούρειοι τὰς προλήψεις· ἃς εἰ μὲν διηρθρωμένας φασί, περιττὴ ἡ ζήτησις· εἰ δὲ ἀδιαρθρώτους, πῶς ἄλλο τι παρὰ τὰς προλήψεις ἐπιζητοῦμεν, ὅ γε οὐδὲ προειλήφαμεν;

[215g] Ὅτι καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια τὸ ὄνομα δηλοῖ λήθης ἐκβολὴν εἶναι τὴν ἐπιστήμην, ὅ ἐστιν ἀνάμνησις.

[215h] Ὅτι καὶ οἱ μητέρα τῶν Μουσῶν τὴν Μνημοσύνην εἰπόντες αὐτὸ τοῦτο ἐνδείκνυνται· αἱ μὲν γὰρ Μοῦσαι τὸ ζητεῖν παρέχονται, ἡ δὲ Μνημοσύνη τὸ εὑρίσκειν.

[215i] Ὅτι καὶ οἱ πολλοὶ τὸ ἀγνοεῖν ἐπιλελῆσθαι λέγοντες τῷ αὐτῷ μαρτυροῦσι· λανθάνειν γὰρ ἡμᾶς φαμεν ἅπερ ἀγνοοῦμεν, καὶ λαθραῖα πράγματα καλοῦμεν τὰ ἀγνοούμενα.

[215j] Ὅτι καὶ προβιοτῆς ἀναμνήσεις ἱστοροῦνται, οἵα καὶ ἡ τοῦ Μύρωνος.

[215k] Ὅτι καὶ ὅσοι γαλῆν φοβοῦνται ἢ σαῦρον ἢ χελώνην, οὓς εἰδέναι αὐτός· καὶ ὁ Τιβερίου ἀδελφιδοῦς ἄρκτους θηρῶν καὶ λέοντας, ὅμως ἀλεκτρυόνα οὐδὲ ἰδεῖν ἠδύνατο· φαρμακοπώλην δέ τινα εἰδέναι ὑπὸ μὲν ἀσπίδων καὶ δρακόντων μηδὲν πάσχειν, μύωπα δὲ φεύγειν μέχρι βοῆς καὶ ἐκστάσεως. Θεμίσων δὲ ὁ ἰατρὸς τὰ μὲν ἄλλα πάθη πάντα μετεχειρίζετο, τὸν δὲ ὑδροφόβαν εἴ τις καὶ ὠνόμασε μόνον, ἐταράττετο καὶ ὅμοια ἔπασχε τοῖς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ κατεχομένοις· ὧν αἰτίαν εἶναι τὴν ἀνάμνησιν τῆς προπαθείας.

[215l] Ὅτι αἱ τῶν προπαθειῶν σφοδρότεραι τυποῦσι τὰς μνήμας εἰς δύο γενέσεις· οἷον τὸ Πολεμάρχου καὶ τῶν ἐν Κορίνθῳ ὑπὸ τῷ μεγάλῳ σεισμῷ καὶ τὸ ἐν Ἀμοργῷ τοῦ Δημητρίου ἐγγεγραμμένον τῷ τάφῳ.

[215m] Ὅτι ὅμοια πάσχουσι καὶ οἱ ποταμοὺς μᾶλλον ἢ θάλατταν δεδοικότες καὶ οἱ πρὸς τὰ ὕψη ταραττόμενοι.

[216] Ibid. παρὰ τοῦ αὐτοῦ συστάσεις ἕτεραι.

[216a] Ὅτι τὰ νεογενῆ παιδία ἀμειδῆ ἐστι καὶ ἄγριον βλέπει μέχρι τριῶν σχεδὸν ἑβδομάδων ὑπνώττοντα τὸν πλείω χρόνον· ἀλλ’ ὅμως ποτὲ καθ’ ὕπνους καὶ πολλάκις γελᾷ καὶ διαχεῖται. τίνα οὖν τρόπον ἄλλον τοῦτο συμβαίνει ἢ τῆς ψυχῆς τότε ἀπὸ τῆς δίνης τοῦ ζῴου ἀναφερούσης καὶ κατὰ τὰς ἑαυτῆς προπαθείας κινουμένης;

[216b] Ὅτι καὶ αἱ πρὸς τάδε ἢ τάδε εὐφυίαι τοῦτον ἀποβαίνουσι τὸν τρόπον.

[216c] Ὅτι τὸ μὲν λέγειν οὕτω πεφυκέναι παχύ τε καὶ ἰδιωτικὸν καὶ ἀρκοῦν πρὸς πᾶσαν ἀπόκρισιν. ἀλλ’ οἷον τὸ πεφυκέναι ζητητέον ὅμως· ἄλλο γὰρ ἄλλου, ὡς τῆς λογικῆς ψυχῆς τὸ ἀπὸ τῶν προεγνωσμένων τὰ παρόντα ἀναγνωρίζειν.

[216d] Ὅτι ἔσωθεν ἐκφέρομεν τὰς τῶν ζητημάτων ἐπιστήμας, δηλοῖ τὸ πρὸς τὴν εὕρεσιν συντεινομένους εἴσω βλέπειν.

[216e] Ὅτι καὶ ἡ εὐφροσύνη ἡ ἐπὶ τοῖς εὑρήμασι δηλοῖ τὸν ἀναγνωρισμὸν τῆς ὅτι μάλιστα οἰκείας ἡμῖν ἀληθείας ἐν τῷ μέσῳ χρόνῳ οἷον ἀπολομένης.

[216f] Ὅτι Βίων ἠπόρει περὶ τοῦ ψεύδους, εἰ καὶ αὐτὸ κατ’ ἀνάμνησιν ὡς τοὐναντίον γε, ἢ οὔ· καὶ τί ἡ ἀλογία. ἢ ῥητέον ὡς καὶ τοῦτο γίγνεται κατὰ τὸ εἴδωλον τοῦ ἀληθοῦς· τὸ δὲ εἴδωλον εἶναι τοῦτο, ὅπερ ἀληθὲς οὐκ ἄν τις νομίσειεν, εἰ μή πῃ εἰδείη τὸ ἀληθές.

[216g] Ὅτι Στράτων ἠπόρει, εἰ ἔστιν ἀνάμνησις, πῶς ἄνευ ἀποδείξεων οὐ γιγνόμεθα ἐπιστήμονες, πῶς δὲ οὐδεὶς αὐλητὴς ἢ κιθαριστὴς γέγονεν ἄνευ μελέτης. ἢ μάλιστα μὲν γεγόνασί τινες καὶ αὐτοδίδακτοι· Ἡράκλειτος, ὁ Αἰγύπτιος γεωργός, Φήμιος ὁ Ὁμήρου, Ἀγάθαρχος ὁ γραφεύς. εἶτα καὶ αἱ ψυχαὶ πολλῷ τῷ κάρῳ κατεχόμεναι τῆς γενέσεως πολλῆς πρὸς ἀνάμνησιν δέονται τῆς μολείας· διὸ καὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν χρῄζουσιν.

[217] Ibid.

Ἐπιχειρημάτων διαφόρων συναγωγὴ δεικνύντων ἀναμνήσεις εἶναι τὰς μαθήσεις ἐκ τῶν τοῦ Χαιρωνέως Πλουτάρχου.

Εἰ ἀφ’ ἑτέρου ἕτερον ἐννοοῦμεν. οὐκ ἂν εἰ μὴ προέγνωστο. τὸ ἐπιχείρημα Πλατωνικόν.

[217b] Εἰ προστίθεμεν τὸ ἐλλεῖπον τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς. καὶ αὐτὸ Πλατωνικόν.

[217c] Εἰ παῖδες εὐμαθέστεροι, ὡς ἐγγίους τῆς προβιοτῆς, ἐν ᾗ ἡ μνήμη ἐσῴζετο. ἐπιπόλαιος ὁ λόγος.

[217d] Εἰ ἄλλοι πρὸς ἄλλο μάθημα ἐπιτηδειότεροι.

[217e] Εἰ πολλοὶ αὐτοδίδακτοι ὅλων τεχνῶν.

[217f] Εἰ πολλὰ παιδία ὑπνώττοντα γελᾷ, ὕπαρ δὲ οὔπω· πολλὰ δὲ καὶ ὄναρ ἐφθέγξατο, ἄλλως οὔπω φθεγγόμενα.

[217g] Εἰ ἔνιοι καὶ ἀνδρεῖοι ὄντες ὅμως φοβοῦνται φαῦλα ἄττα, οἷον γαλῆν ἢ ἀλεκτρυόνα, ἀπ’ οὐδεμιᾶς φανερᾶς αἰτίας.

[217h] Εἰ μὴ ἔστιν ἄλλως εὑρίσκειν. οὔτε γὰρ ἃ ἴσμεν ζητήσειεν ἄν τις, οὔτε ἃ μηδαμῶς ἴσμεν πρότερον, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἂν εὕροιμεν ἃ μὴ ἴσμεν.

[217i] Εἰ ἡ ἀλήθεια κατ’ ἀφαίρεσιν τῆς λήθης ἔντευξις τοῦ ὄντος ἐστίν. λογικὴ ἡ ἐπιχείρησις.

[217j] Εἰ ἡ μήτηρ τῶν Μουσῶν Μνημοσύνη, ὡς ἡ ἀδιάρθρωτος μνήμη τῶν ζητήσεων αἰτία.

[217k] Εἰ, ἅπερ ἀδύνατον γιγνώσκειν, οὐδὲ ζητοῦμεν. ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐπιχείρημα πάλιν ἀπὸ τῆς εὑρέσεως.

[217l] Εἰ τοῦ ὄντος ἡ εὕρεσις πάντως, ὅτι καὶ θεωρημάτων· καὶ ποῦ οὖν ὄντων; ἢ δῆλον ὅτι ἐν ψυχῇ.

Παροιμίαι αἷς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς ἐχρῶντο

[1] [1] Οἴκοι τὰ Μιλήσια: ἐπὶ τῶν ὅποι μὴ προσήκει τὴν τρυφὴν ἐπιδεικνυμένων. Ἀρισταγόρας ὁ Μιλήσιος ἐλθών ποτε εἰς Λακεδαίμονα ἠξίου βοηθεῖν τοῖς Ἴωσι πολεμουμένοις ὑπὸ Περσῶν· ἐδημηγόρει δὲ ἐσθῆτα ἔχων πολυτελῆ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην τρυφὴν τὴν Ἰωνικήν· εἶπεν οὖν τις πρὸς αὐτὸν τῶν Ἐφόρων, Οἴκοι τὰ Μιλήσια.

[2] Αἱ Χάρητος ὑποσχέσεις: ἐπὶ τῶν προχείρως ἐπαγγελλομένων. Χάρης γὰρ στρατηγὸς Ἀθηναῖος προχείρως πολλὰ ἐπηγγείλατο.

[3] Ὀπισαμβώ: ἐπὶ τῶν ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι προβαινόντων ἀεί· παρὰ τὸ ὀπίσω βαίνειν.

[4] Εὐδαίμων ὁ Κορίνθιος * * * : κώμη ἐστὶ πλησίον τῆς Κορίνθου * * * κατάφυτος· ὡς τῶν ἐν τῇ κώμῃ ὁμολογούντων μὲν Κόρινθον εἶναι εὐδαίμονα, αἱρουμένων δὲ ἥττονα κώμην ἔχειν.

[5] Τυδεὺς ἐκ συφορβίου: ἐπὶ τῶν ἀπαιδεύτων. Οἰνεὺς τὴν θυγατέρα Ἱππονόου Περίβοιαν ἐβιάσατο· γνοὺς δὲ αὐτὴν ἔγκυον οὖσαν ὁ πατὴρ συφόρβοις παρέδωκε μετὰ τοῦ γενομένου παιδίου Τυδέως.

[6] Κλειτοριάζεις: ἐπὶ τῶν παιδεραστούντων.

[7] Τί σοι ὁ Ἀπόλλων ἐκιθάρισεν; ἤγουν, τί ἐμαντεύσατο;

[8] Κεστρεὺς νηστεύει: ἐπὶ τῶν δικαιοπραγούντων μὲν, οὐδὲν δὲ πλέον ἐκ τῆς δικαιοσύνης ἐπιφερομένων. ὁ γὰρ κεστρεὺς τῶν ἄλλων ἰχθύων ἀλληλοφαγούντων μόνος ἀπέχεται τῆς σαρκοφαγίας, ἐσθίων ἰλύν.

[9] Βοιωτοῖς μαντεύσειας: αὕτη κατάρα τίς ἐστί. μαντευομένοις γὰρ τοῖς Θηβαίοις περὶ πολέμου ἀνεῖλεν ἡ Πυθία νίκην αὐτοῖς ἀσεβήσασιν ἔσεσθαι· εἷς δὲ τῶν θεωρῶν ἁρπάσας τὴν προφῆτιν Μυρτίλαν ἐνέβαλεν εἰς θερμοῦ παρακείμενον λέβητα. ἄλλοι φασὶ, Θηβαίοις πολεμοῦσι Βόμβρος μάντις πλείους ἔφη νικήσεσθαι, εἰ προθύσαιεν τῶν ἡγεμόνων ἕνα· οἱ δὲ ἀποκτείναντες τὸν Βόμβρον ἐνίκησαν.

[10] Πλείους τῶν Καλλικυρίων: Καλλικυρίων ποτὲ πλῆθος ἐπῴκησε τὰς Συρακούσας οὕτω πολλοὶ, ὥστε καὶ τοὺς προτέρους οἰκήτορας ἐκβαλεῖν.

[11] Κέλμις ἐν σιδήρῳ: ἐπὶ τῶν σφόδρα ἑαυτοῖς πιστευσάντων, ὅτι ἰσχυροὶ καὶ δυσχείρωτοι πεφύκασι. Κέλμις γάρ τις ἐν Ἴδῃ στεῤῥότατον σίδηρον ἐργαζόμενος.

[12] Ὁ Κερκυραῖος μαστιγούμενος ἅμα αὐτὸν †ἠργολάβησαι: αἱ μάστιγες αἱ Κερκυραῖαι λέγονται διάφοροι εἶναι παρὰ τὰς ἄλλας.

[13] Ἵππῳ γηράσκοντι τὰ μείονα κύκλ’ ἐπίβαλλε: ἐπὶ τῶν διὰ γῆρας δεομένων ῥᾳστώνης τινὸς καὶ ἀναπαύλης.

[14] Πόλεις παίζομεν: πόλις εἶδος ἐστὶ παιδιᾶς πεττευτικῆς.

[15] Ἄριστα χωλὸς οἰφεῖ: αἱ Ἀμαζόνες τοὺς γενομένους ἄρσενας ἐπήρουν, ἢ σκέλος ἢ χεῖρα περιελόμεναι· πολεμοῦντες δὲ πρὸς αὐτὰς οἱ Σκύθαι καὶ βουλόμενοι πρὸς αὐτὰς σπείσασθαι ἔλεγον, ὅτι συνέσονται τοῖς Σκύθαις εἰς γάμον ἀπηρώτοις καὶ μὴ λελωβημένοις. ἀποκριναμένη δὲ πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἡ Ἀντιάνειρα ἡγεμὼν τῶν Ἀμαζόνων εἶπεν· Ἄριστα χωλὸς οἰφεῖ.

[16] Ἔφυγον κακὸν, εὗρον ἄμεινον: ἐπὶ τῶν μεταβολὴν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς κρείττονα οἰωνιζομένων. Ἀθήνησι γὰρ ἐν τοῖς γάμοις ἔθος ἦν ἀμφιθαλῆ παῖδα ἀκάνθας μετὰ δρυΐνων καρπῶν στέφεσθαι, καὶ λίκνον ἄρτων πλήρη περιφέροντα λέγειν, Ἔφυγον κακὸν, εὗρον ἄμεινον. Ἐσήμαινον δὲ ὡς ἀπεώσαντο μὲν τὴν ἀγρίαν καὶ παλαιὰν δίαιταν, εὑρήκασι δὲ τὴν ἥμερον τροφήν.

[17] Μυκόνιος γείτων: ἐπὶ τῶν διαβεβλημένων ἐπὶ γλισχρότητι καὶ μικροπρεπείᾳ, παρὰ τὴν μικρότητα τῆς νήσου καὶ εὐτέλειαν, τῆς Μυκόνου.

[18] Τὸ σκαμβὸν ξύλον οὐδέποτε ὀρθοῦν: ἐπὶ τῶν πειρωμένων διάστροφα ξύλα κατευθύνειν.

[19] Ὁ παῖς τὸν κρύσταλλον: ἐπὶ τῶν μὴ κατέχειν δυναμένων, μήτε μεθεῖναι βουλομένων.

[20] Τὸν ἵππον ὁ Σκύθης: ἐπὶ τῶν κρύφα τινὸς ἐφιεμένων, φανερῶς δὲ ἀπωθουμένων καὶ διαπτυόντων αὐτό.

[21] Ἡράκλειος ψώρα: ἡ τῶν Ἡρακλείων λουτρῶν δεομένη πρὸς θεραπείαν· ἡ γὰρ Ἀθηνᾶ τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ πολλαχοῦ ἀνῆκε θερμὰ λουτρά.

[22] Οὐκ ἔστι δούλων πόλις: διὰ τὸ σπάνιον εἴρηται.

[23]  Βούνας δικάζει: ἐπὶ τῶν τὰς κρίσεις ἀναβαλλομένων ἀεὶ καὶ ὑπερτιθεμένων. Βούνας γὰρ Ἀθηναῖος ἐγένετο· τούτῳ Ἠλεῖοι πρὸς Καλλιωναίους †διαφερόμενοι ἐπέτρεψαν δίκας νομίσαντες ἀναμένειν, ἕως ἂν ἀποφήναι· γνοὺς δὲ ὁ Βούνας τοῦτο ἀνεβάλλετο μέχρι τελευτῆς τὴν ἀπόφασιν.

[24] Λοκρικὸς βοῦς: ἐπὶ τῶν εὐτελῶν. οἱ Λοκροὶ γὰρ ἀποροῦντες βοῶν πρὸς δημοτελῆ θυσίαν, σικύοις ὑποθέντες ξύλα μικρὰ καὶ σχηματίσαντες βοῦν, τούτῳ τὸ θεῖον ἐθεράπευσαν.

[25] Θεὸς ἡ Ἀναίδεια: ἐπὶ τῶν διὰ τὴν ἀναισχυντίαν ὠφελουμένων.

[26] Κάκιον Βάβυς αὐλεῖ: ἐπὶ τῶν κατὰ τὸ χεῖρον ἀσκούντων.

[27] Ἄειδε τοὺς Τέλληνος: ὁ Τέλλης ἐγένετο αὐλητὴς καὶ μελῶν ἀνυποτάκτων ποιητής.

[28] Ὕδωρ παραῤῥέει: ἐπὶ τῶν ἐκ παντὸς ἔργου ἐπαγγελλομένων καταπράξασθαι τὸ προκείμενον. μετῆκται δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ὑπὸ σπουδῆς καὶ εἰς ῥέοντα πλοῖα ἐμβαινόντων καὶ παραβαλλομένων τῷ κινδύνῳ.

[29] Μιχθοφορῶν: αὕτη λέγεται ἐπὶ τῶν ἐρασμίων διδάσκαλος καὶ ὑπερηφάνων, ὥς φασι καὶ τὴν Σαπφὼ ἐρασθῆναι· μὴ φέρουσαν δὲ τὸ πάθος ῥῖψαι αὑτὴν κατὰ τῶν ἐν Λευκαδίᾳ πετρῶν.

[30] Λιμοῦ πεδίον: ἐπὶ τῶν ὑπὸ λιμοῦ πιεζομένων πόλεων. τόπος γάρ ἐστιν οὕτω καλούμενος Λιμοῦ πεδίον.

[31] Πεύκης τρόπον: ἐπὶ τῶν πανωλεθρίᾳ ἀπολλυμένων· παρόσον ἡ πεύκη κοπεῖσα οὐκέτι φύεται.

[32] Οὐκ εἰμὶ τούτων τῶν ἡρώων: ἐπὶ τῶν βουλομένων εὖ ποιεῖν. οἱ γὰρ ἥρωες κακοῦν ἕτοιμοι μᾶλλον ἢ ὠφελεῖν.

[33] Βοῦθος περιφοιτᾷ: ἐπὶ τῶν ἀσυνέτων καὶ παχυφρόνων, ἀπό τινος Πυθιονίκου Βούθου καλουμένου.

[34] Λιμοδωριεῖς: σιτοδείας ποτὲ γενομένης ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ ἐφόδια τινὲς λαβόντες ἀπῆραν· πλανωμένους δὲ αὐτοὺς ἀπεδέξατο ἡ ἐν Ῥόδῳ Τρίπολις· ἐκλήθησαν δὲ διὰ τοῦτο Λιμοδωριεῖς.

[35] Μερὶς οὐ πνίγει: φασὶ περὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα μὴ εἶναι σύνηθες τοῖς ἀρχαίοις διανέμειν μερίδας· διὰ δὲ προφάσεις τινὰς ἐνδεεστέρων γενομένων τῶν ἐδωδίμων, κρατῆσαι τὸ ἔθος τῶν μερίδων, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὴν παροιμίαν εἰρῆσθαι.

[36] Ἡράκλειος νόσος: τὴν ἱερὰν νόσον Ἡράκλειον ὠνόμαζον· εἰς ταύτην γὰρ ἐκ μακρῶν πόνων ἐμπεσεῖν Ἡρακλέα.

[37] Τάδε Μῆδος οὐ φυλάξει: μελλούσης γενέσθαι τῆς Ξέρξου στρατείας, οἱ Ἕλληνες ἀπογνόντες τὴν σωτηρίαν, τὰς οὐσίας αὑτῶν ἀνήλισκον, ἐπιλέγοντες· Τάδε Μῆδος οὐ φυλάξει.

[38] Ἐκκέκοφθ’ ἡ μουσική: τῶν παλαιῶν ἐν τοῖς συμποσίοις φιλολόγῳ ζητήσει χρωμένων, οἱ ὕστερον τὰς μουσουργοὺς καὶ κιθαριστρίας καὶ ὀρχηστρίας ἐπεισήγαγον, ὅθεν τὴν καινοτομίαν τινὲς αἰτιώμενοι τῇ παροιμίᾳ ἐχρῶντο.

[39] Λευκὴ στάθμη: αὕτη κατ’ ἔλλειψιν εἴρηται ἐπὶ τῶν μὴ ἀκριβῶς τι διακρινόντων. ἐν γὰρ λευκῷ λίθῳ λευκὴ στάθμη λέγεται· ἥκιστα γὰρ διὰ τὸ ὁμοειδὲς σαφής ἐστιν.

[40] Μωρύχου Διονύσου: καὶ, Μωρότερος εἶ Διονύσου, ὃς τἄνδον ἀφεὶς, ἔξω τῆς οἰκίας κάθηται: ἐπὶ τῶν εὔηθές τι διαπεπραγμένων. Μώρυχος δὲ ὁ Διόνυσος κατ’ ἐπίθετον ἀπὸ τοῦ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ μολύνεσθαι, ἐπειδὰν τρυγῶσι, τῷ ἀπὸ τῶν βοτρύων γλεύκει καὶ τοῖς χλωροῖς σύκοις. μωρύξαι δὲ τὸ μολῦναι· καταγνωσθῆναι δὲ αὐτοῦ εὐήθειαν, παρόσον ἔξω τοῦ νεοῦ τὸ ἄγαλμα αὐτοῦ ἐστὶ παρὰ τῇ εἰσόδῳ ἐν ὑπαίθρῳ.

[41] Ἡ Ἀμαία τὴν Ἀζησίαν μετῆλθεν: ἐπὶ τῶν πολυχρονίῳ ζητήσει χρωμένων. Ἀμαία γὰρ ἡ Δημήτηρ παρὰ Τροιζηνίοις προσαγορεύεται, Ἀζησία δὲ ἡ Κόρη.

[42] Ὁ Λέσβιος πρύλις: αὕτη καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν λέγεται, ὥσπερ Λέσβιος πρύλις. δοκεῖ δὲ ὁ Πρύλις Ἑρμοῦ παῖς γενέσθαι καὶ μάντις.

[43] Ἁ φιλοχρηματία τὰν Σπάρταν ἕλοι, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδέν: ἐπὶ τῶν ἐξ ἅπαντος κερδαίνειν προαιρουμένων. μετήνεγκται ἀπὸ χρησμοῦ δοθέντος Λακεδαιμονίοις. ἔχρησε γὰρ ὁ θεὸς, τότε ἀπολέσθαι ὅταν ἀργύριον καὶ χρυσίον τιμήσωσιν.

[44] Ἡ ἐν Ἄργει ἀσπίς: οἱ ἐν Ἄργει οἱ τὴν ἐν τοῖς παισὶν ὥραν καθαρὰν καὶ ἀδιάφθορον φυλάξαντες, ἀναλαβόντες χρυσῆν ἀσπίδα προπομπεύουσι, τοῦτο γέρας ἔχοντες κατά τι νόμιμον ἀρχαῖον.

[45] Ἀθηνᾷ τὸν αἴλουρον: ἐπὶ τῶν κακῶς συγκρινόντων τὰ κρείττονα τοῖς ἥττοσι διὰ μικρὰν ὁμοιότητα· ὡς εἴ τις διὰ γλαυκότητα τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν τὸν αἴλουρον τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ συμβάλλοι.

[46] Ἑστίᾳ θύεις: ἐπὶ τῶν μηδενὶ ῥᾳδίως μεταδιδόντων. Δι’ ἔθους γὰρ ἦν τοῖς παλαιοῖς, ὁπότε ἔθυον Ἑστίᾳ, μηδενὶ μεταδιδόναι τῆς θυσίας.

[47] Τί [ὅτι] οὐκ ἀπήγξω, ἵνα Θήβησιν ἥρως γένῃ: φασὶν, ἐν Θήβαις ἑαυτοὺς ἀναιροῦντες οὐδεμιᾶς τιμῆς μετεῖχον. ὅθεν τὸ, ἵνα ἥρως γένῃ, κατ’ εὐφημισμὸν εἴρηται.

[48] Δέχεται καὶ βῶλον Ἀλήτης: ἐπὶ τῶν ἅπαντα πρὸς τὸ κρεῖττον ἐκδεχομένων. Ἀλήτης γὰρ, ὥς φησι Δοῦρις, ἀποπεσὼν Κορίνθου, κατὰ χρησμὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἀπεπειρᾶτο πάλιν κτηθεῖν· ἐνὶ †τῇ χώρᾳ περιϊδών τινα βουκόλον, ᾔτει τροφήν· ὁ δὲ βῶλον ἐκ τῆς πήρας ἀράμενος ἐδίδου. ὁ δὲ Ἀλήτης ἐδέξατο οἰωνισάμενος καὶ εἰπών· Δέχεται καὶ βῶλον Ἀλήτης.

[49] Ἄδακρυς πόλεμος: ἐπὶ τῶν ἔξω τινὸς χαλεποῦ πράγματα κατορθούντων. ὁ γὰρ Δωδωναῖος προεῖπε Λακεδαιμονίοις πολεμοῦσι πρὸς Ἀρκάδας, μάχην ἄδακρυν ἔσεσθαι· συμβαλόντες δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα ἐνίκησαν μηδενὸς ἀποθανόντος.

[50] Ἀττικοὶ τὰ Ἐλευσίνια: ἐλλείπει τὸ, καθ’ ἑαυτούς. Ὅταν καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς συλλεγέντες τινὲς πράττωσί τι, ἐπιλέγουσιν ἑαυτοῖς, Ἀττικοὶ τὰ Ἐλευσίνια.

[51] Ἐν Τροφωνίου μεμάντευται: ἐπὶ τῶν σκυθρωπῶν καὶ ἀγελάστων. οἱ γὰρ καταβαίνοντες ἐς Τροφωνίου λέγουσι τὸν ἑξῆς χρόνον ἀγέλαστοι εἶναι. ὁ γὰρ Τροφώνιος ἔχων τὴν κεφαλὴν τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ Ἀγαμήδους καὶ διωκόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ Αὐγέου, εὐξάμενος εἰς χάσμα ἐνέπεσεν, οὗ δὴ καὶ μαντεῖον ἐγένετο.

[52] Φάλλος τῷ θεῷ: ἐπὶ τῶν ἀπονεμόντων ἐνίοις τὰ οἰκεῖα πρόσφορα· ἐπεὶ τῷ Διονύσῳ ἵστατο ὁ φάλλος.

[53] Δῶρον δ’ ὅ, τι δῷ τις ἐπαίνει.

[54] Ταινάριον κακόν: τὸ μέγα καὶ παρανομούμενον εἰς ἱκέτας. οἱ γὰρ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τοὺς καταφυγόντας εἰς Ταίναρον τῶν Εἱλώτων ἀπαγαγόντες ἀπέκτειναν.

[55] Πιτάνη εἰμί: κατὰ τῶν πυκναῖς συμφοραῖς χρωμένων. τῇ γὰρ Πιτάνῃ τοιαῦτα συνέβη πράγματα.

[56] Θρᾷκες ὅρκια οὐκ ἐπίστανται.

[57] Ταχύτερον ὁ Μάνδρης κρητίνας †ἀπεπέρασε: Ἐφέσιοι κρητίνας ἐκτήσαντο τὰς Μαγνήτων· ἀπεπέρασε δέ σφιν Μάνδρης ὁ Μανδρολύτου παρ’ οἶνον καὶ μέθην καὶ κύβην.

[58] Πολυκράτης μητέρα νέμει: Πολυκράτης ὁ Σάμιος τῶν ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ ἀποθανόντων τὰς μητέρας συναγαγὼν, δέδωκε τοῖς πλουσίοις τῶν πολιτῶν τρέφειν, πρὸς ἕκαστον λέγων, ὅτι Μητέρα σοι ταύτην δίδωμι.

[59] Ἀττικὸς πάροικος: οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι τοὺς παροικοῦντας αὐτοῖς καὶ γειτνιάζοντας ἐξέβαλλον. ἢ ἀπὸ τῶν εἰς Σάμον πεμφθέντων Ἀθήνηθεν ἐποίκων.

[60] Εἰς Μασσαλίαν πλεύσειας: οἱ Μασσαλιῶται θηλύτερον ἔζων, καὶ στολαῖς ποικίλαις καὶ ποδήρεσι χρώμενοι, ἔτι δὲ τὰς κόμας μεμυρισμένας ἀναδεδεμένοι, καὶ διὰ ταύτην τὴν μαλακίαν ἀσχημονοῦντες.

[61] Σαμίων ἄνθη, καὶ, Σαμιακὴ λαύρα: ἐπὶ τῶν ὑστάταις ἡδοναῖς χρωμένων. ἡ Σαμιακὴ λαύρα στενωπὴ ἦν παρὰ Σαμίοις, ἐν ᾗ τὰ πέμματα ἐπιπράσκετο. τὰ δὲ Σαμίων ἄνθη τόπος, ἐν ᾧ συνῄεσαν αἱ γυναῖκες τοῖς ἀνδράσι συνευωχησόμεναι. διὰ ταύτην τὴν τρυφὴν οἱ Σάμιοι τοῖς Πέρσαις ἐδουλώθησαν.

[62] Ἡ Σκυθῶν ῥῆσις: πρὸς Δαρεῖον τὸν Πέρσην ἀπεκρίναντο οἱ Σκύθαι, κλαίειν αὐτόν. ἐπὶ τῶν ἀποτόμως οἰμώζειν τινὰ λεγόντων.

[63] Διὸς ἐγκέφαλος: ἐπὶ τῶν ἡδυπαθούντων. τὰ γὰρ πολυτελῆ βρώματα παρὰ τοῖς Πέρσαις Διὸς καὶ βασιλέως ἐγκέφαλος ἐκαλεῖτο.

[64] Λευκηπατίας: φασὶ συμβαίνειν τι ἐπὶ τὸ ἧπαρ ἐπί τινων, ὃ δειλοὺς ποιεῖ. εἴρηται οὖν ἐπὶ τῶν τοιούτων.

[65] Ἀκκώ: αὕτη γέγονεν ἐπὶ τῶν ἐπὶ μωρίᾳ διαβεβλημένων, ἥν φασιν ἐσοπτριζομένην τῇ εἰκόνι ὡς ἑτέρᾳ διαλέγεσθαι.

[66] Ἀεὶ κολοιὸς πὰρ κολοιὸν ἱζάνει: διὰ τὸ φιλάλληλον τοῦ ζώου.

[67] Κινήσω τὸν ἀφ’ ἱερᾶς: ἐπὶ τῶν τὴν ἐσχάτην βοήθειαν κινούντων τέτακται. δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν πεττευόντων· περὶ τούτοις κυκειόν †τις ψῆφος οἷον ἱερὴ καὶ ἀκίνητος τεῶν νομιζομένη.

[68] Τιθωνοῦ γῆρας: ἐπὶ πολυχρονίων καὶ ὑπεργήρων. ὁ γὰρ Τιθωνὸς κατ’ εὐχὴν τὸ γῆρας ἀποθέμενος τέττιξ ἐγένετο.

[69] Οἰταῖος δαίμων: οὗτος ὁ δαίμων ὕβριν καὶ ὑπερηφανίαν πάνυ ἐμίσησεν.

[70] Ἐπὶ βωμόν: εἴρηται ἀπὸ τῶν θυομένων πρὸς τοῖς βωμοῖς.

[71] Φωκαέων ἀρά: οἱ Φωκαεῖς τῆς αὑτῶν ἐκπεσόντες γῆς ἐπηράσαντο μηδέποτε κατελθεῖν εἰς αὐτήν.

[72] Φασηλειτῶν θῦμα: ἐπὶ τῶν εὐτελῶν καὶ ἀναίμων. φασὶ γὰρ τοὺς Φασηλείτας ταρίχους τοῖς θεοῖς θύειν.

[73] Καρικὸν θῦμα: ἐπὶ τῶν ἄσαρκα μέλη θυόντων. οἱ γὰρ Κᾶρες κύνας ἱερουργοῦσι.

[74] Εὔρυμνος: οὗτος πειρώμενος διαβάλλειν Κάστορα πρὸς τὸν Πολυδεύκην, ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς τὴν μεγίστην δίκην.

[75] Δειλαιότερος εἶ τοῦ παρακύπτοντος: φοβούμενός τις τὸν Ἡρακλέα κατέδυ εἰς σπήλαιον καὶ διὰ δειλίαν ἀπέθανεν. ἐντετύπωται ἐν τῷ λίθῳ ἀνθρωποειδὴς εἰκὼν, καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ὑπερέχει τοῦ σπηλαίου· καλεῖται δὲ παρακύπτων.

[76] Ἐν πέντε κριτῶν γόνασι κεῖται: τὸ παλαιὸν πέντε κριταὶ ἔκρινον τοὺς κωμικούς.

[77] Βοιωτίων νόμος: ἐπὶ τῶν τὰς ἀρχὰς ἠρεμαίως ἐχόντων, αὖθις δὲ σφοδρῶς ἐπιγιγνομένων.

[78] Ἁρπαγὰ Κοτυττίοις: Κοτύττια ἑορτή τις ἐστὶ Σικελικὴ, ἐν ᾗ περί τινας κλάδους ἐξάπτοντες πόπανα καὶ ἀκρόδρυα ἐπέτραπον ἁρπάζειν.

[79] Μέγα στόμα ἐνιαυτοῦ: οἱονεὶ πολλὴ παῤῥησία πάντων, εὐφορίας γενομένης.

[80] Εἰκῆ τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ: ἐπὶ τῶν ἀσυκοφαντήτως τὰ πράγματα ἐπιτελούντων, ἐπειδὴ ὁ Ἡρακλῆς ἦγε καὶ ἔφερε τὰ ἀλλότρια.

[81] Οὐχ ἱππολέκτας †περισσὰς πλῶμες: ἐπὶ τῶν βραχέα κεκτημένων.

[82] Χαμαὶ ἀντλεῖς, Φακὸν κόπτεις: ἐπὶ τῶν ἀδυνάτοις ἐπιχειρούντων.

[83] Τίς τρόπος ἵππων: ἐπὶ τῶν παρηλλαγμένον τι καὶ ἀλλόκοτον ποιούντων.

[84] Χαλκιδίζειν: ἐπὶ τῶν γλισχρευομένων. οἱ γὰρ ἐν Εὐβοίᾳ Χαλκιδεῖς ἐπὶ φιλαργυρίᾳ ἐκωμῳδοῦντο.

[85] Πρόσω καὶ χελιδὼν ὁλοσχοίνους παρεῖται.

[86] Οὐκ ἐπαινεθείη οὐδὲ ἐν περιδείπνῳ: ἐπὶ τῶν μηδενὸς ἀξίων. εἰώθεσαν γὰρ ἐν τοῖς δείπνοις τὸν τελευτήσαντα ἐπαινεῖν, καὶ εἰ φαῦλος ἦν.

[87] Σῦκον αἰτεῖς: κατὰ τῶν κολακευόντων. οἱ γὰρ Ἀθηναῖοι ἐκολάκευον τοὺς γεωργοὺς βουλόμενοι λαμβάνειν τὰ πρώϊμα σῦκα.

[88] Μυσὶ κανθαρίς: ἐπὶ τῶν μηδενὸς ἀξίων.

[89] Κέρδος αἰσχύνης ἄμεινον· ἕλκε μοιχὸν εἰς μυχόν.

[90] Κυρνία ἄτη: Κύρνος νῆσος ἦν πάλαι ἄβατος τοῖς πλέουσι διὰ συνεχεῖς λῃστείας.

[91] Κωφότερος τοῦ Τορωναίων λιμένος: λιμήν ἐστι καλούμενος περὶ Τορώνην τῆς Θρᾴκης· οὗτος δὲ ἔχει καὶ μακρὰς τὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ πελάγους καθαιρέσεις, ὡς μὴ ἀκούεσθαι τοῖς ἐν αὐτῷ τὸν τῆς θαλάσσης ἦχον.

[92] Ἀκροκορινθία ἔοικας χοιροπωλήσειν: ἐπὶ τῶν παρ’ ὥραν θρυπτομένων γυναικῶν· οἷον, ἔοικας μισθαρνήσειν ἐν Κορίνθῳ· τὸ γὰρ γυναικεῖον μόριον χοῖρος λέγεται.

[93] Ἐκ παντὸς ξύλου: κατ’ ἔλλειψιν λέγεται· τὸ γὰρ πλῆρες, ἐκ παντὸς ξύλου κύφων ἂν γένοιτο· ἐπὶ τῶν τὸ μὲν εἶδος εὐκαταφρονήτων, εἰς δὲ χρείαν ἀναγκαίαν πιπτόντων.

[94] Ἄρκτου παρούσης τὰ ἴχνη ζητεῖς: ἐπὶ τῶν δειλῶν κυνηγῶν.

[95] Σικελὸς ὀμφακίζεται: ἐπὶ τῶν τὰ μηδενὸς ἄξια κλεπτόντων.

[96] Οὐδὲν ἦν ἄρα τὰ ἄλλα πλὴν ὁ χρυσός.

[97] Τὸ θερμὸν τοῦ ὀβελοῦ: ἐπὶ τῶν ἀναιρουμένων τὰ χείρονα ἀντὶ τῶν κρειττόνων· ἀπὸ τῶν ἀπείρως δρασσομένων κατὰ τὸ θερμὸν τῶν ὀβελίσκων.

[98] Ἀκεσίας ἰάσατο: Ἀκεσίας ἐγένετο ἰατρὸς ἀφυὴς, ὃς τὸν πρωκτόν τινος ἀλγοῦντος κακῶς ἰάσατο.

[99] Τρίτῃ κεφαλῇ καὶ τρίτῳ ἐγκεφάλῳ: ἐπὶ τῶν ἀχθοφορούντων οὐ μόνον κατὰ τῶν ὤμων, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς.

[100] Ἐπὶ σπειρῶν σχοινίον: ἐπὶ τῶν ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῖς πλεοναζόντων.

[2] [1] Γαλῇ χιτώνιον, καὶ, Οὐ πρέπει γαλῇ κροκωτός: ἐπειδὴ γαλῆ κατὰ πρόνοιαν Ἀφροδίτης γυνὴ γενομένη ἐν χιτῶνι κροκωτῷ οὖσα ἐπέδραμε μυΐ.

[2] Ὁ κνὶψ ἐν χώρᾳ: ἐπὶ τῶν ταχέως μεταπηδώντων. κνὶψ γάρ ἐστι θηρίδιον τῶν ξυλοφάγων.

[3] Λυδὸς ἐν μεσημβρίᾳ: οἱ Λυδοὶ κωμῳδοῦνται ταῖς χερσὶν ἑαυτῶν πληροῦντες τὰ ἀφροδίσια.

[4] Οὐ μάλα κυκᾷς: κατὰ τῶν μηδὲν ὄντων.

[5] Οὐδὲν Πυλαία ταῦτα καὶ Τυττιγίας: ὁ Τυττιγίας ἀνδραποδιστὴς ἦν· ἐπώλει δὲ ἐν τῇ Πυλαίᾳ τὰ ἀλλότρια. κατὰ τῶν τὰ ἀλλότρια ἁρπαζόντων καὶ πωλούντων.

[6] Τὰ πρῶτα ἀρίστους παῖδας * * * ἐγείνατο: ἐπὶ τῶν ἐν ἀρχῇ κοσμίων, μετὰ ταῦτα δὲ ἀσελγαινόντων.

[7] Δοῦλον οὐκ ἄγω, εἰ μὴ νεναυμάχηκε περὶ τῶν κρεῶν: περὶ τῶν στρατευομένων δούλων, οἵτινες περὶ τοῦ σώματος μόνου μάχονται. λέγεται καὶ, εἰ μὴ νεναυμάχηκε περὶ τῶν νεκρῶν, καί φησιν, ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν Ἀργεννούσαις ναυμαχησάντων δούλων τὴν παροιμίαν εἰρῆσθαι, οἷς ἐλευθερίαν ἐψηφίσαντο οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι περὶ τῶν νεκρῶν ἀγωνισαμένοις.

[8] Τὸν ἐν Σάμῳ κομήτην: Σάμιός τις ἐγένετο πύκτης, ὃς ἐπὶ μαλακίᾳ σκωπτόμενος, ἐπειδὴ κόμας εἶχεν, ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνταγωνιστῶν, συμβαλὼν αὐτοὺς ἐνίκησεν. λέγεται ἐπὶ τῶν αἱρουμένων ἀνταγωνιστὰς ἑαυτοῖς κρείττονας, ἢ προσεδόκησαν· * * * ὥσπερ τὸν ἀληλεσμένον βίον οἱ μὲν ἐπὶ τῶν πλάνητι βίῳ χρωμένων προσεδέξαντο· οἱ δὲ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀταλαιπώρως βιούντων, οἱονεὶ κατειργασμένων καὶ πρὸς τροφὴν ἑτοίμων.

[9] Εἴ τι κακὸν, εἰς Πύῤῥαν: οἱ Πυῤῥαῖοι πρὸς τοὺς ὁμόρους πάντας ἀπεχθῶς εἶχον. ἐκεῖνοι οὖν τὰ συμβαίνοντα αὐτοῖς κακὰ ἀποτροπιαζόμενοι καὶ ἐκβάλλοντες εἰς τὴν Πυῤῥαίων χώραν, ἐπεφώνουν, εἴ τι κακὸν, εἰς Πύῤῥαν.

[10] Μετὰ Λέσβιον ᾠδόν: Λακεδαιμόνιοι στασιάσαντες μετεπέμψαντο κατὰ χρησμὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκ Λέσβου Τέρπανδρον τὸν μουσικόν· ἐλθὼν δὲ ἐκεῖνος καὶ παρὰ τοὺς κώμους τῇ μουσικῇ χρώμενος, ἥρμοσεν αὐτῶν τὰς ψυχὰς, καὶ τὴν στάσιν ἔπαυσεν. εἴποτε οὖν μετὰ ταῦτα μουσικοῦ τινος ἤκουον Λακεδαιμόνιοι, ἐπεφώνουν, μετὰ Λέσβιον ᾠδόν.

[11] Ὑπὲρ τὰ Καλλικράτους: Καλλικράτης τις ἐγένετο ἐν Καρύστῳ πλουσιώτατος. εἴποτε οὖν ἐθαύμαζόν τινα οἱ Καρύστιοι ἐπὶ πλούτῳ, ὑπερβολικῶς ἔλεγον, ὑπὲρ τοὺς Καλλικράτους. ἄλλοι δέ φασι, τῇ Ἀθηναίων πολιτείᾳ, Καλλικράτην τινὰ πρῶτον τοὺς δικαστικοὺς μισθοὺς εἰς ὑπερβολὴν αὐξῆσαι.

[12] Ἐν πίθῳ τὴν κεραμείαν μανθάνειν: ἐπὶ τῶν παριέντων τὰς πρώτας μαθήσεις καὶ ἁπτομένων τῶν τελευταίων.

[13] Ἐπὶ σαυτῷ τὴν σελήνην καθέλκεις: αἱ τὴν σελήνην καθαιροῦσαι Θετταλίδες λέγονται τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν καὶ τῶν ποδῶν στερίσκεσθαι. ἐπὶ τῶν ἑαυτοῖς κακὰ ἐπισπωμένων.

[14] Ἐν ὅλμῳ ἐκοιμήθην: οἱ ἐν ὅλμῳ κοιμηθέντες ἐπιθειαστικώτατοί εἰσιν.

[15] Χρυσὸς ὁ Κολοφώνιος: οἱ Κολοφώνιοι τὸν κάλλιστον χρυσὸν ἐργάζεσθαι νομίζονται.

[16] Κράδης ῥαγείσης: κράδη νῦν οὐχ ὁ σύκινος κλάδος, ἀλλ’ ἡ ἀγκυρὶς, ἀφ’ ἧς οἱ ὑποκριταὶ ἐν ταῖς τραγικαῖς σκηναῖς ἐξαρτῶνται, θεοῦ μιμούμενοι ἐπιφάνειαν, ζωστῆρσι καὶ ταινίαις κατειλημμένοι. ἐπὶ τῶν προσφανέντων αἰφνιδίως καὶ ἀσχημονούντων.

[17] Εἶτ’ ἐφ’ ὕδωρ κακόν: ἐπὶ τῶν δυσκληρούντων. ἐν γὰρ τοῖς δικαστηρίοις τὸ φαυλότατον τῶν ἔργων ἦν ὕδωρ διαμετρεῖν τοῖς δικαζομένοις. ἐγίνετο δὲ οὗτος ἀπὸ κλήρου.

[18] Ἠλιθιώτερος τοῦ Πραξίλλας Ἀδώνιδος: Πράξιλλα Σικυωνία μελοποιός· αὕτη τὸν Ἄδωνιν ἐν τοῖς μέλεσιν εἰσάγει ἐρωτώμενον ὑπὸ τῶν κάτω, τί κάλλιστον καταλιπὼν ἥκοι, ἀποκρίνασθαι, ἥλιον καὶ σελήνην καὶ σικύους καὶ μῆλα. ἠλιθίου γὰρ παραβάλλειν τῷ ἡλίῳ τοὺς σικύους.

[19] Ἀμελὴς γωνία: χωρίον ἐστὶ περὶ τὴν Λιβύην καλούμενον Ἀμελὴς γωνία.

[20] Ἀσπένδιος κιθαριστής: ἐπὶ τῶν φιλοχρημάτων. οἱ γὰρ Ἀσπένδιοι τῶν κιθαριστῶν οὐδεμίαν φορὰν ἔξω φέρουσι, πάσας δ’ ἐντὸς ὀργάνων. οὕτω καὶ ὁ φιλοχρήματος οὐδὲν τῶν πέλας ἕνεκα οἰκονομεῖ, ἕλκει δὲ ἐφ’ ἑαυτόν.

[21] †Εἴ τις περὶ πόλιν αἰγὶς λέγεται: τοὺς ἀνέδην περιϊόντας καὶ πλανωμένους ἐπέσκωπτον.

[22] Εὐρυκλῆς: ἐπὶ τῶν ἑαυτοῖς τινα καταμαντευομένων. Εὐρυκλῆς γάρ τις ἐγένετο μάντις ἐγγαστρίμυθος.

[23] Φώκου ἔρανος: κατὰ τῶν εὐωχίαν συναγόντων ἐπὶ τῷ ἑαυτῶν κακῷ. Φῶκος γὰρ τὴν θυγατέρα ἔχων ἐπίγαμον, πολλῶν αὐτὴν μνηστευομένων, ἐράνους συνῆγεν ἑστιῶν τοὺς μνηστῆρας, καὶ ἀνεβάλλετο τὸν γάμον. ὀργισθέντες οὖν ἐκεῖνοι ἐν τῷ συμποσίῳ ἀπέκτειναν τὸν Φῶκον.

[24] Τὸ Πέρδικος σκέλος: ὁ Πέρδιξ κάπηλος Ἀθήνησι χωλὸς, καὶ κωμῳδούμενος ἐπὶ χωλότητι.

[25] Οὐχ ἡ Γλαύκου τέχνη: ἐπὶ τῶν εὖ εἰργασμένων καὶ δυσκατανοήτων. Γλαῦκος γάρ τις ἐγένετο Σάμιος δημιουργὸς, ὃς πρῶτος σιδήρου κόλλησιν ἐξεῦρεν.

[26] Ὡς τῶν Ἀργείων ἀσπίδα καθελὼν σεμνύνεται: λόχον φασὶν εἶναι ἐν Ἄργει ἀσπίδα καλούμενον ἐκ νέων πάνυ ἀκμαζόντων.

[27] Ἀμαλθείας κέρας: ἡ Ῥέα τεκοῦσα τὸν Δία ἔδωκεν Ἀμαλθείᾳ τρέφειν· ἡ δὲ οὐκ ἔχουσα γάλα, αἰγὶ ὑπέβαλεν αὐτόν. ὅθεν Αἰγίοχος ἐκλήθη. ὁ τοίνυν Ζεὺς τὴν μὲν αἶγα κατηστέρισε· τὸ δὲ ἕτερον τῶν κεράτων αὐτῆς ἀφελὼν παρέσχε τῇ Ἀμαλθείᾳ, παρασκευάσας γίγνεσθαι αὐτῇ ὃ ἂν παρὰ τοῦ κέρατος αἰτήσειε. ὅθεν τοὺς εὐδαίμονάς φασιν Ἀμαλθείας κέρας ἔχειν.

[28] Ἀφύας πῦρ: ἐπὶ τῶν τέλος ὀξὺ λαμβανόντων. τὴν γὰρ ἀφύαν τάχιστα ἕψεσθαι συμβαίνει.

[29] Ἀεί τις ἐν Κύδωνος: ἐπὶ τῶν φιλοφρόνως καταδεχομένων τοὺς ξένους. ἀπὸ Κύδωνος Κορινθίου φιλοξένως διατεθέντος.

[30] Τί οὐ γενήσῃ ἰὼν εἰς Ἀρβέλας: Ἀρβέλαι πόλισμα Σικελῶν, εὐεξαπάτητοι δοκοῦντες οἱ ἐνοικοῦντες εἶναι.

[31] Ἐν Τεμέσῃ ἥρως: ὅτ’ ἀπαιτῶν τις αὐτὸς ὕστερον προσοφείλων εὑρεθῇ, ὁ ἐν Τεμέσῃ γέγονεν ἥρως.

Πλουτάρχου παροιμίαι, αἷς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς ἐχρῶντο.

Ἐκλογὴ περὶ τῶν ἀδυνάτων

ΠΛΟΥΤΑΡΧΟΥ ΕΚΛΟΓΗ ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΑΔΥΝΑΤΩΝ.

Κατὰ πετρῶν σπείρεις.

Πλίνθον πλύνεις.

Δικτύῳ ἄνεμον θηρᾷς.

Εἰς πίθον ἀντλεῖς.

 5Εἰς ὕδωρ γράφεις.

Εἰς οὐρανὸν τοξεύεις.

Αἰθίοπα σμήχεις.

Κοσκίνῳ ὕδωρ ἀντλεῖς.

Νεκρὸν μαστίζεις.

 10Εἰς ψάμμον οἰκοδομεῖς.

Εἰς ὕδωρ σπείρεις.

Ἀκίνητα κίνεις.

Ἀκίχητα διώκεις.

Σίδηρον πλεῖν διδάσκεις.

 15Δελφῖνα νήχεσθαι διδάσκεις.

Ἡλίῳ φῶς δανείζεις.

Κύματα μετρεῖς.

Ὑπὲρ τὰ ἐσκαμμένα πηδᾷς.

Λύκου πτερὸν ζητεῖς.

 20Τράγον ἀμέλγεις.

Ἄμμον θαλάσσης κοφίνῳ ζητεῖς μετρεῖν.

Ἐλαίῳ πῦρ σβεννύεις.

Αἰγιαλῷ λαλεῖς.

Λίθῳ διαλέγου.

 25Ἄνευ πτερῶν ζητεῖς ἵπτασθαι.

Φαλακρῷ κτένας δανείζεις.

Τυφλῷ κάτοπτρον χαρίζῃ.

Ἠπειρώτῃ δίκτυα δίδως.

Πρὸς κωφοῖς ἀποπέρδεις.

 30Ἄνεμον διώκεις.

Παρὰ δικτύοις ὕδωρ κομίζεις.

ΕΠΙ ΤΩΝ ΡΕΠΟΝΤΩΝ ΕΥΚΟΛΩΣ ΕΙΣ ΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΑΚΡΙΒΩΣ ΕΙΔΟΤΩΝ ΤΟΥΤΟ.

Ἵππος εἰς λεῖον πεδίον.

Ἀετὸς εἰς θήραν.

Ξυρὸς εἰς ἀκόνην.

 35Σφαῖρα κατὰ πρανοῦς.

Πῦρ εἰς ἀκάνθας.

Σπόγγος εἰς ὕδωρ.

ΕΠΙ ΔΕ ΑΔΥΝΑΤΩΝ ΠΡΑΓΜΑΤΩΝ ΤΑΥΤΑ ΟΦΕΙΛΕΙ ΛΕΓΕΣΘΑΙ.

Ὄρνιθος γάλα ζητεῖς.

Φακοῦ γωνίαν κάμπτεις.

 40Ὠὸν τίλλεις.

Θάλασσαν σπείρεις.

Πλίνθον πλύνεις.

Κωφῷ ὁμιλεῖς.

Τυφλῷ διανεύεις.

 45Ἀνδριάντα γαργαλίζεις.

Εἰς τετρημένον πίθον ἀντλεῖς.

Ἄστρα τοξεύεις.

Πῦρ ἀλείφεις.

Κατὰ μαχαιρῶν κυβιστᾷς.

 50Κοσκίνῳ φέρεις ὕδωρ.

Νεφέλας ξαίνεις.

Αἰθίοπα λευκαίνεις.

De proverbiis Alexandrinorum

ΠΛΟΥΤΑΡΧΟΥ ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΠΑΡ’ ἈΛΕΧΑΝΔΡΕΥΣΙ ΠΑΡΟΙΜΙΩΝ

[1] οἶδα Σίμωνα καὶ Σίμων ἐμέ· Τελχίνων φύσει βασκάνων ὄντων (καὶ γὰρ τῷ τῆς Στυγὸς ὕδατι τὴν γῆν καταρραίνοντες ἄγονον ἐποίουν) δύο ἐγένοντο ἡγεμόνες, Σίμων καὶ Νίκων. ὑπερίσχυσε δὲ ὁ Σίμων κακοτροπώτατος ὢν ὥστε καὶ τὴν ἐπὶ Νίκωνι φήμην ἀπαλεῖψαι. διόπερ οἱ παροιμιαζόμενοι μόνον τὸν Σίμωνα ὀνομάζουσι. λεχθείη δ’ ἂν ἡ παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν ἀλλήλους ἐπὶ κακίᾳ γινωσκόντων.

[2] τὸ Βάβυος χεῖρον: Μαιάνδρῳ τῷ ποταμῷ δύο ἐγενέσθην παῖδε, Βάβυς καὶ Μαρσύας· ὧν ὁ Μαρσύας μὲν δυσὶ καλάμοις κατὰ τὸν Φρύγιον ηὔλει νόμον, ἑνὶ δὲ μόνῳ ὁ Βάβυς. ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ἐπαρθεὶς τοῖς αὐλοῖς εἰς τοσοῦτον ἀπονοίας ἦλθεν [ὁ Μαρσύας], ὣς καὶ τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι περὶ αὐλητικῆς φιλονεικῆσαι. ἀγανακτήσαντος δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ εἰσπράττεται τῆς ἀπονοίας δίκην ‹καὶ› ἐν Κελαιναῖς τῆς Φρυγίας ἀσκὸς ἐξεδάρη. μέλλοντα δὲ καὶ τὸν Βάβυν ὁμοίως κολάζεσθαι, Ἀθήνη ἐπιφανεῖσα ἐξῃτήσατο ὑποθεμένη ὡς ἀφυῶς τῷ αὐλῷ χρᾶται. ὅθεν

[3] Ὑπερβερεταῖα: ἐπὶ τῶν ὑπερχρονίων εἴρηται. παρὰ γὰρ Μακεδόσιν ὁ τελευταῖος μὴν τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ Ὑπερβερεταῖος καλεῖται.

[4] Τὰ ἐκ παλαιᾶς: λείπει ἐνθάδε τὸ ‘τῆς Τύρου’. Τύρον γὰρ τὴν παλαιὰν Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μακεδὼν πολλῇ χειρὶ ἐπελθὼν διέθηκε τὰ χαλεπώτατα, ὥστε τὴν πόλιν κατασκάψαι, τοὺς δὲ πολίτας οὓς μὲν ἀνασκολοπίσαι, οὓς δὲ κατακαῦσαι. ἐκ τούτου γοῦν ἡ παροιμία ‹λέγεται› ἐπὶ τῶν κακῶς διακειμένων.

[5] δανάκη: τοῦτο νομίσματός ἐστιν ὄνομα, ὃ τοῖς νεκροῖς ἐδίδοσαν πάλαι συγκηδεύοντες ‘νεὼς Ἀχερουσίας ἐπίβαθρον.’ Ἀχερουσία δέ ἐστι λίμνη ἐν Ἅιδου, ἣν διαπορθμεύονται οἱ τελευτῶντες, τὸ προειρημένον νόμισμα τῷ πορθμεῖ διδόντες.

[6] Ἰνοῦς ἄχη: Ἰνὼ ἡ Κάδμου συνελθοῦσα Ἀθάμαντι δύο ἐγέννησε παῖδας, Λέαρχον καὶ Μελικέρτην, καὶ θυγατέρα Εὐρύκλειαν. οὗτοι ὑπὸ Ἀθάμαντος μανέντος κατετοξεύθησαν. μετὰ δὲ τοῦ Μελικέρτου ἡ Ἰνὼ ἔρριψεν ἑαυτὴν εἰς τὴν πρὸς τῷ Μολουρίῳ θάλασσαν· καὶ τὴν μὲν εἰς Μέγαρα προσβρασθεῖσαν Μεγαρεῖς ἀνελόμενοι καὶ πολυτελῶς κηδεύσαντες ἐκάλεσαν Λευκοθέαν· τὸν δὲ εἰς Κορίνθιοι θάψαντες Μελικέρτην καὶ ἄγουσιν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ ἀγῶνα τὰ Ἴσθμια. διὰ δὴ ταῦτα εἴρηται Ἰνοῦς ἄχη. ἄχος γὰρ ἡ λύπη ἀχανεῖς ποιοῦσα τοὺς κακῶς παθόντας. Ἀθάμαντι δὲ μανίαν ἐμβαλόντες ‹οἱ θεοὶ› τὴν Ἰνὼ τοιαῦτα παθεῖν παρεσκεύασαν. ταῦτα δὲ δηλώσει καὶ Μενεκράτης ὁ Τύριος

[7] ὁ ἄπληστος πίθος: ἐπὶ τῶν πολλὰ ἐσθιόντων καὶ γαστριμαργούντων. μετενήνεκται δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ μύθου τοῦ περὶ τὰς Δαναΐδας, καὶ τοῦ πίθου εἰς ὃν ἀνιμῶσαι ὕδωρ βάλλουσι· λέγεται γὰρ οὗτος ὁ πίθος ἐν Ἅιδου εἶναι οὐδέποτε πληρούμενος· πάσχουσι δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν αἱ τῶν ἀμυήτων ψυχαί, καὶ αἱ κόραι, ἃς ἔνιοι Δαναΐδας λέγουσιν, αἳ πληροῦσαι ἐν κατεαγόσιν ἀγγείοις ὕδωρ πρὸς αὐτὸν φέρουσι τετρημένον. ‹ἐγ›γέγραπται δὲ τῷ πίθῳ ‘ἀμυήτων’ Λέγονται δὲ αἱ κόραι ‘ἠπεδαναί’, τουτέστιν ἀσθενεῖς παρὰ τὸ ἄπεδον δύναται δὲ ἡ παροιμία καὶ ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ λέγεσθαι τοῦ Ἅιδου, ὅτι πολλῶν πάντοτε θνησκόντων οὐδέποτε πληροῦται.

[8] τὰς ἐν Ἅιδου τριακάδας: τιμᾶται ἡ τριακὰς ἐν Ἅιδου διὰ τὴν Ἑκάτην μυστικώτερον, ᾗ καὶ τρίγλα ἐπιθύεται, , ἐπεὶ καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν Ἑκάτην φασὶ Τριτογενῆ εἶναι. καὶ γὰρ Ἀθηνᾶ καὶ Ἄρτεμις καὶ Ἑκάτη αἱ τρεῖς δοκοῦσιν ἓν εἶναι. τὸ γοῦν μυστικὸν Ἑκάτη ἡ Φερσεφόνεια καλεῖται, τῶν ὑποχθονίων δεσπότις. ὅθεν καὶ ἀφιδρύματα Ἑκάτης πρὸς ταῖς τριόδοις ἐστὶ καὶ τὰ νεκύσια τῇ τριακάδι ἄγεται. λεχθείη δ’ ἂν ἡ παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν περιέργων καὶ τὰ ἀποκεκρυμμένα ζητούντων γινώσκειν.

[9] ἐν παντὶ μύθῳ καὶ τὸ Δαιδάλου μύσος· Πασιφάην φασὶν ἐρασθεῖσαν ταύρου Δαίδαλον ἱκετεῦσαι, ποιῆσαι ξυλίνην βοῦν ‹καὶ› κατασκευάσαντα [εἰς] αὐτὴν ἐνθεῖναι· ἣν ἐπιβαίνων ὡς βοῦν ὁ ταῦρος ἔγκυον ἐποίησεν. ἐξ ἧς ἐγεννήθη ὁ Μινώταυρος. Μίνως δὲ διά τινας αἰτίας ὀργιζόμενος τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἑπτὰ παρθένους καὶ ἴσους νέους ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐδασμολογεῖτο, οἱ παρεβάλλοντο τῷ θηρίῳ. ὡς οὖν τὸν Δαίδαλον ἀρχηγὸν τούτων τῶν κακῶν γενόμενον διά τε τὸ κατεσκευακέναι τὴν ξυλίνην βοῦν καὶ διὰ τὸ αἴτιον τῆς τοῦ θηρίου γενέσεως γεγονέναι ἐμυσάχθησαν, ἐξηνέχθη ἡ παροιμία.

[10] νόμος καὶ χώρα: ἡ παροιμία αὕτη λέγεται διὰ τὸ ἕκαστον ἔθνος ἰδίοις νόμοις χρῆσθαι. Πέρσαι μὲν γὰρ μεθύοντες βουλεύονται. καὶ τοὺς βασιλεῖς ἑαυτῶν ὡς θεοὺς προσκυνοῦσι, καὶ οἱ μὲν ἶσοι ἀλλήλους καταφιλοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ ταπεινότεροι τῶν παρειῶν τῶν μειζόνων μόνον θιγγάνουσι· τὰ δὲ γεννηθέντα αὐτοῖς παιδία μετὰ τετραετίαν βλέπουσιν.

καὶ ἄλλα εἰσὶ παρ’ ἄλλοις, οἷς μόνοι κατὰ ἴδιον ἔθος χρῶνται.

Γόρδιοι τὸν παχύτατον αὑτῶν βασιλέα αἱροῦνται. Σούρακοι τὸ διάδημα τῷ μακροτάτῳ διδόασιν: ὡς δέ τινες φασὶ, τῷ μακροτάτην ἔχοντι τὴν κεφαλήν.

Στάφυλοι τιμῶσι γυναῖκα τὴν πλείοσιν ἀνδράσι γαμηθεῖσαν. Ὄρειοι Μασσαγέται ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς πλησιάζουσι. Σαυρομάται παρὰ πότον τὰς θυγατέρας πιπράσκουσι. παρ’ Ἀμαζόσιν οὐδεμία γαμεῖται, ἐὰν μὴ πολέμιον ἀνέλῃ.

Τιβαρηνοὶ τῶν γυναικῶν τεκουσῶν αὐτοὶ τὰς κεφαλὰς δέονται καὶ κατακλίνονται.

παρὰ τοῖς Κερκεταίοις οἱ ἐργάται τὰ φορτία βαστάζουσιν, ἄχρις οὗ τις αὐτὰ ὠνήσεται.

Ἐσσηδόνες τοὺς γονεῖς ἐσθίουσι χωρὶς τῆς κεφαλῆς· τὴν δὲ κεφαλὴν χρυσοῦσιν. Καυσιανοὶ ἐπὶ μὲν τοῖς γεννωμένοις δακρύουσιν, ἐπὶ δὲ ἀποθνήσκουσι χαίρουσιν.

Βακχείριοι ἐὰν ἀπὸ νόσου ‹μὴ› σωθῶσι, κυσὶν ἑαυτοὺς παραβάλλουσιν.

Ὀργεμπαῖοι οἰκίας οὐκ ἔχουσιν, οὐδ’ ἔμψυχόν τι σιτοῦνται· εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ σὺν γυναιξὶ φαλακροὶ διὰ τὴν φύσιν τοῦ ὕδατος, οὗ πίνουσι.

Θυσσαγέται τὰ ὀστᾶ τοῖς θεοῖς ἐπιθύουσιν, αὐτοὶ τὰς σάρκας ἐσθίοντες. Ταυροσκύθαι ἀνθρωποθυτοῦσιν.

Βυζωνοὶ μεσόγειοι βοῦς ἀμέλγοντες μόνῃ ταύτῃ τροφῇ χρῶνται. οἱ κατὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν οἰκουμένην Ἴβηρες κυνῶν ἀγέλας τρέφουσιν ἀντὶ προβάτων. Αἰθίοπες δὲ οἱ λεγόμενοι Κολχεῖς ὑαίνας. διὰ ταῦτα ἡ παροιμία εἴρηται.

[11] οἶκος φίλος, οἷκος ἄριστος: ἔνιοι τὴν παροιμίαν ἐπὶ τὸ γελοιότερον μεταφράζοντες αὐτὴν ἐπὶ τῆς χελώνης εἶναί φασιν.

[12] συντομώτερος ληκύθου: οἱ γῆς ἐπίβαθρον παρ’ Ἀθηναίοις τελοῦντες μέτοικοι λοιδορούμενοι ὑπὸ τῶν φύσει Ἀθηναίων ἠνείχοντο, οὐδὲ χανεῖν πρὸς τὰς λοιδορίας δυνάμενοι.

[13] λούσαιο τὸν Πελίαν: αὕτη ἡ παροιμία προήχθη ἐκ τῶν συμβεβηκότων τῷ Πελίᾳ· ὃν αἱ θυγατέρες αὐτοῦ εἰς λέβητα ζέοντα καθῆκαν, ἐξαπατηθεῖσαι ὑπὸ Μηδείας, ὡς νέον ποιήσουσαι, καὶ οὕτως αὐτὸν δαπανηθέντα ἀπώλεσαν. ἐλούσαντο δὲ καὶ ἄλλοι πολλοὶ κακῶς. Μάγαν μὲν γὰρ τὸν τοῦ Φιλοπάτορος ἀδελφὸν ὁ Θέογος λουόμενον καθήψησε ζέοντα λέβητα ἐπικλύσας αὐτῷ. Μίνῳ δὲ τῷ Κρητῶν βασιλεῖ αἱ Κωκάλου θυγατέρες ἐπέχεαν ζέουσαν πίσσαν.

[14] ἢ δεῖ χελώνης κρέα φαγεῖν ἢ μὴ φαγεῖν: ἐπὶ τῶν κατακόρως καὶ ἀδιαφόρως πάντα ἐσθιόντων

[15] ἧλιξ ἥλικα τέρπει:

[16] καθ’ αὑτοῦ Βελλεροφόντης: Βελλεροφόντης ἀνελὼν Πειρῆνα περὶ ἱερὸν εἰς Τίρυνθα φυγὰς ἐξ Ἄργους παραγίνεται πρὸς τὸν Προῖτον· Προῖτος δ’ αὐτὸν διαβληθέντα ὑπὸ τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ εἰς Λυκίαν ἀποστέλλει πρὸς Ἀμφιάνακτα γράμματα ἔχοντα, ὥστε τὸν φέροντα ἀποκτιννύναι. ὁ δὲ ἀγνοῶν τὰ γεγραμμένα καθ’ ἑαυτοῦ, ἀπήνεγκε ὁ δὲ πέμπει ‹αὐτὸν› πρὸς Ἀμισόδαρον

[17] Βησᾶς ἕστηκας: οὗτος ἕστηκεν [οἷον ἀχανὴς καὶ] παταγώδης καὶ ὑπόμωρος.

[18] μερὶς οὐ πνίγει: τῶν ἐδεσμάτων κοινῇ καὶ μὴ κατὰ μέρος τιθεμένων τὸ πρότερον οἱ δυνατώτεροι τὰς τροφὰς τῶν ἀσθενῶν ἥρπαζον, καὶ συνέβαινε τούτους ἀποπνίγεσθαι, ἐπεὶ ἄρα αὑτοῖς βοηθεῖν οὐκ ἠδύναντο. διὰ τοῦτο οὖν ὁ διαμερισμὸς ἐπενοήθη· καὶ ἕκαστος ἑκάστῳ τὸ ἶσον λαμβάνων ἐπεφώνει· ‘μερὶς οὐ πνίγει.’

[19] ἀφ’ ἵππων ἐπ’ ὄνους: τὴν παροιμίαν ταύτην ἐροῦμεν ἐπὶ τῶν ἀπὸ τῶν σεμνῶν εἰς τὰ ἄσεμνα ἡκόντων· οἷον ἀπὸ γραμματικῶν ἢ πραγματικῶν εἰς χαλκευτικὴν ἢ ἡνιοχευτικὴν ἢ εἰς ἄλλο τι τῶν ἀτιμοτάτων.

[20] Κόττας Μάξιμος: οὗτος ὕπαρχος ἦν Πομπηΐου, πιστευθεὶς Κυπρὸν καὶ Σαρδώ. ἀγανακτήσας δὲ κατ’ αὐτοῦ ὁ Καῖσαρ Ἰούλιος δι’ ἣν εἶχεν ὑπεροψίαν καθεῖλεν αὐτόν. λέγεται γοῦν ἐπὶ τῶν ὑπὲρ τὸ δέον φρονηματιζομένων.

[21] τὸ ἀρνίον σοι λελάληκεν: Αἰγύπτιοι τοῦτο ἀνέγραψαν ὡς ἀνθρωπείᾳ φωνῇ λαλῆσαν· εὑρέθη δὲ ἔχον βασίλειον δράκοντα ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτοῦ πτερωτὸν ἔχοντα μῆκος πήχεων δ’, καὶ τῶν βασιλέων τινὶ λελάληκε τὰ μέλλοντα .

[22] τὸ βασιλικὸν βοΐδιον: ἐπὶ Πτολεμαίου τοῦ νέου Διονύσου βασιλεύοντος βοῦς ἀπέτεκεν ἓξ βοΐδια· πρὸς ἀγαθοῦ δὲ οἰωνοῦ τὸ συμβεβηκὸς λαβὼν ὁ Πτολεμαῖος προσέταξεν ἐν τοῖς βασιλείοις μετὰ πάσης ἐπιμελείας πολυτελῶς αὐτὰ τρέφεσθαι. διὸ καὶ βασιλικὰ ἐκλήθη· χρήσῃ δὲ τούτῳ ἢ ἐπὶ τῶν θεραπείας πολλῆς ἀξιουμένων ἢ ἐπὶ τῶν εὐτυχούντων.

[23] ὁ Φθάς σοι λελάληκεν: Μεμφῖται τὸν Ἥφαιστον Φθὰν καλοῦσιν. ἔστι δὲ χρησμολόγος ὁ Φθὰς παρ’ αὐτοῖς.

[24] ἄφωνος Ἱππαρχίων: κατὰ τοὺς προπάτορας ἡμῶν δύο κιθαρῳδοὶ διάσημοι ἐγένοντο, Ἱππαρχίων καὶ Ῥουφῖνος. καὶ δὴ ἀγῶνος ἐνστάντος πενταετηρικοῦ ἀγομένου ἐν Ἰουλιοπόλει κατὰ τὸ ἔθος ὁ Ἱππαρχίων ἀχανὴς ἔστη ταραχῇ τῇ περὶ τὸ θέατρον ἀποσιωπήσας.

[25] Βόκχορις: οὗτος βασιλεὺς Αἰγύπτιος ὢν ἐπὶ δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ ἐπινοίᾳ κρίσεων ἀπομνημονεύεται. εἴρηται δὲ ἡ παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν δικαιότατα καὶ παρευρημένως κρινόντων.

[26] Προμέρου κύνες: οὗτος βασιλικὸς οἰκέτης ὢν ἐμίσησε καθ’ ὑπερβολὴν Εὐριπίδην τὸν [τῶν] τραγῳδοποιὸν [ποιητὴν] ἔκ τινων διαβολῶν τῶν πρὸς τὸν ἐαυτοῦ δεσπότην· ἀναλύοντι δ’ αὐτῷ ἐπαφῆκε κύνας ἀγρίους, οἳ τὸν Εὐριπίδην κατεθοινήσαντο. διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ἡ παροιμία

[27] Πτολεμαῒς ἡ δίκη: πρεσβῦτις ἦν ἀρχαία αὕτη, ἄχρις οὗ ἀποθάνοι δίκας λαχοῦσα διὰ τὸ ἀεὶ [ποτε] ὑπερτίθεσθαι καὶ μήποτε βούλεσθαι ἀπαλλαγῆναι τοῦ δικάζεσθαι. ἐπὶ τῶν ἀεὶ δικαζομένων.

[28] Ἄννας κρίβανος: μυθεύεται [ὅτι] τὴν Ἄνναν Αἰγυπτίαν οὖσαν εἰς τὴν τῶν ἄρτων ὄπτησιν ἐπινενοηκέναι τὸν κρίβανον. ἀφ’ ἧς ἡ παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν καινόν τι ἐφευρηκότων.

[29] τὸ τοῦ Δίωνος γρῦ: οὗτος ὁ Δίων Ἀλεξανδρεὺς μὲν ἦν τὸ γένος, διαβόητος δὲ ἐπὶ φιλοσοφίᾳ, ἔχων ἀδελφὸν παλαίστην Διονύσιον, Τόψιον ἐπικαλούμενον. λοιδορούμενος δ’ ὑπό τινος τῶν ἀνταγωνιστῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀκούων ῥητὰ καὶ ἄρρητα καίτοι πολλοῦ παρακολουθοῦντος ὄχλου αὐτὸς μὲν οὐδὲν ἐφθέγξατο κατεσταλμένος τὸ τῆς φιλοσοφίας παράγγελμα τηρῶν· ἐντὸς δὲ τοῦ ἰδίου πυλῶνος γενόμενος καὶ μηδὲν ὀργῆς ὑποφήνας εἶπε πρὸς τὸν νεανίαν ‘οὐδὲ γρῦ’. ὁ δὲ ἀθυμήσας ἀπήγξατο.

εἴρηται δὲ καὶ παρὰ τοῖς Ἀττικοῖς τὸ γρῦ [καὶ] ἐπὶ τοῦ μικροῦ καὶ τοῦ τυχόντος. καὶ γὰρ τὸν ἐν τοῖς ὄνυξι ῥύπον λέγουσι γρῦ καὶ γρυτάρια τὰ κατὰ τὴν οἰκίαν λεπτὰ σκευάρια καὶ γρυτοπώλην τὸν τὰ σκευάρια πωλοῦντα.

[30] τὰ μηδὲν πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον: τὴν κωμῳδίαν καὶ τὴν τραγῳδίαν ἀπὸ γέλωτος εἰς τὸν βίον φασὶ παρελθεῖν. καὶ ‹γὰρ› κατὰ καιρὸν τῆς συγκομιδῆς τῶν γεννημάτων παραγενομένους τινὰς ἐπὶ τὰς ληνοὺς καὶ τοῦ γλεύκους πίνοντας [ποιήματά τινα] σκώπτειν· ‹ὕστερον δὲ σκωπτικὰ› ποιήματά τινα καὶ γράφειν, ‹ἃ› διὰ τὸ πρότερον ἐν ‹κώμαις ᾄδεσθαι› κωμῳδίαν καλεῖσθαι. ἤρχοντο δὲ καὶ συνεχέστερον εἰς τὰς κώμας τὰς Ἀττικὰς γύψῳ τὰς ὄψεις κεχρισμένοι καὶ ἔσκωπτον. τραγικὰ παρεισφέροντες, ‹ἐπὶ τὸ› αὐστηρότερον μετῆλθον ταῦτα οὖν καὶ ἐπεὶ τῷ Διονύσῳ πολέμιόν ἐστιν ὁ τράγος ἐπισκώπτοντές τινες ἔλεγον. ἐπὶ τῶν τὰ ἀνοίκειά τισι προσφερόντων.

[31] Ἀτρέως ὄμματα: οἱονεὶ ἄτρεπτα καὶ σκληρά· εἴρηται ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀτρέως παρανομίας, ὃς ὑπονοήσας ἐκ διαβολῆς τὸν ἀδελφὸν Θυέστην μοιχεύειν Ἀερόπην τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ, τὰ τέκνα τοῦ Θυέστου συγκόψας καὶ ἑψήσας δειπνοῦντι παρέθηκε τῷ πατρὶ, αἴσθησιν παρασχὼν τῆς συμφορᾶς ἐκ τοῦ τελευταῖα τὰ ἄκρα παραθεῖναι.

[32] ὄνῳ τις ἔλεγε μῦθον· ὁ δὲ τὰ ὦτα ἐκίνει: εἰς ἀναισθησίαν τινῶν ἡ παροιμία εἴρηται κατ’ ἀμφότερα· τό τε γὰρ ζῷον νωχελές ἐστι ἐπὶ τὰ ἔργα καὶ τὰ ὦτα κινεῖ, οἷον εἰ πρὸ τοῦ τινα λαλῆσαι πάντα ἀκήκοεν· ὅπερ ἐστὶ καὶ αὐτὸ ἀναισθησίας· πῶς γὰρ ἂν δύναιτό τις ἐγνωκέναι τὰ μὴ λαληθέντα αὐτῷ, κἂν ὦτα μεγάλα ὥσπερ ὄνος ἔχῃ;

[33] ὄνος λύρας ἀκούει.

[34] εἴποις τὰ τρία τὰ παρὰ τῇ αὐλῇ: τοῖς ἐπὶ θάνατον ἀπαγομένοις ταύτης μετῆν τῆς παρρησίας, ὥστε τροφῆς καὶ οἴνου πληρωθεῖσι τρία λέγειν ἃ βούλονται· μεθ’ ἃ φιμωθέντες ἀπήγοντο πρὸς τὴν κόλασιν. τὸ δὲ νῦν ἀρχεῖον λεγόμενον αὐλὴ ἐκαλεῖτο [ὅπου ἀπήγοντο], καὶ τοὺς ἐν αὐτῷ διαιτωμένους ὑπηρέτας αὐλικοὺς ὠνόμαζον. ὡς ἐκ τούτου φανερὰν εἶναι τὴν λοιδορίαν.

[35] γράψαις πρὸς τὴν Ἄρτεμιν· διὰ τὸ εἶναι κακωτικὸν εἴρηται.

[36] σὺν Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ χεῖρα κίνει· [παροιμία] ἐπὶ τοῦ μὴ χρῆναι ἐπὶ ταῖς τῶν θεῶν ἐλπίσι καθημένους ἀργεῖν. τίθεται δὲ ἡ παροιμία ἐπὶ γυναικῶν μάλιστα ὀφειλουσῶν ἐργάζεσθαι· ἡ γὰρ Ἀθηνᾶ ἐργάνη ἕτεροι δέ φασιν ὅτι μέλλων τὶς ἀγωνίσασθαι χρησμὸν παρὰ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς εἴληφεν, ὅτι νικήσει· ἐνστάντος δὲ τοῦ ἀγῶνος εἰσελθὼν εἰς τὸ θέατρον καὶ κάτω βαλὼν τὰς χεῖρας εἱστήκει, ἕως τυπτόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀνταγωνιστοῦ ἐνικήθη.

[37] Αἰσώπειον αἷμα· ἐπὶ τῶν δυσαποτρίπτοις ὀνείδεσιν ἐνεχομένων εἴρηται ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης.

[38] ἀγαθῶν ἀγαθὰ καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀγαθίδες· ὡς δεινότερα Δεινίου καὶ κυνώτερα Κύντωνος· ἐπὶ τῶν καθ’ ὑπερβολήν ‹κακῶν›.

[39] ἅλις δρυός.

[40] ἄλλην δρῦν βαλάνιζε.

[41] βουλήσεταί τις μᾶλλον ἢ δυνήσεται· ἐπὶ τῶν προαιρουμένων μὲν ἀδικῆσαι, οὐ δυναμένων δέ. ὅλον κεῖται ἐν τῷ μωμήσεταί τις μᾶλλον ἢ μιμήσεται.

[42] Βουμίλκου νῆες· ἐπὶ τῶν παραλογιζομένων. φασὶ γὰρ ‹ὅτι› Κυρηναίας οὔσας τὰς ναῦς προσεποιεῖτο ἰδίας ἔχειν.

[43] Ἡλιάδων δάκρυα· ἐπὶ τῶν πολλὰ ἐχόντων χρήματα· παρόσον τὰς Ἡλιάδας ‹εἰς› αἰγείρους ‹ἀποδενδρωθείσας› Φαέθοντα θρηνούσας τὸν ἀδελφὸν στάζειν δάκρυα τὸν ἤλεκτρον οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐμυθεύσαντο· Ἡλίου δὲ τέκνα Φαέθων καὶ αἱ Αἴγειροι.

[44] βάλλειν μήλοις: ἐπὶ τῶν τυχόντων ὧν ἐρῶσι. παρῆκται δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν πεμφθέντων παρ’ Ἱππομένους ἐπὶ Ἀταλάντην μήλων. προύκειτο μὲν γὰρ τῷ νικῶντι δρόμῳ τὴν Ἀταλάντην ἔπαθλον ὁ ταύτης γάμος. Ὁ γοῦν Ἱππομένης εἰς ἅμιλλαν καταστὰς χρυσᾶ μῆλα πρότερον παρὰ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης λαβὼν καὶ ταῦτα ῥίπτων αὐτῆς περιγέγονεν ἀσχολουμένης περὶ τὴν τῶν μήλων συλλογήν.

[45] Εἰρὰς καὶ Χάρμιον: τούτων ἡ μὲν τῶν τριχῶν ἐπιμέλειαν ἐποιεῖτο Κλεοπάτρας τῆς βασιλίσσης, ἡ δὲ τῶν ὀνύχων· παρέμειναν δ’ αὐτῇ καὶ μέχρι θανάτου καὶ ἀποθανοῦσαι πολυτελοῦς ταφῆς ἠξιώθησαν καὶ τιμῆς ἔτυχον. Κλεοπάτραν γὰρ Καῖσαρ ὁ Αὔγουστος Ἀντώνιον χειρωσάμενος ἐβουλήθη τὸ βασιλικὸν αὐτῆς περιελεῖν διάδημα καὶ ἐν θριάμβῳ ἀγαγεῖν ἐπὶ μέσου τῆς πόλεως. ἡ δὲ Κλεοπάτρα αἱρουμένη μᾶλλον ἐντίμως ἀποθανεῖν ἢ ἐν ἰδιωτικῇ τάξει ἐπὶ θεάτρου ἀτιμασθῆναι, ἀνελεῖν ἑαυτὴν ἐμέλλησεν. ἀπόπειραν δὲ τῆς σκέψεως ποιουμένη ἐπέτρεψεν Εἰράδι καὶ Χαρμίῳ ἐχίδνας παρ’ ἑκατέρῳ τῶν μαζῶν ἐπιθέσθαι· αἱ δὲ τοῦτο ποιήσασαι ἀνῃρέθησαν. εἰθ’ οὕτως καὶ Κλεοπάτρα βασιλικῶς ἑαυτὴν περιστείλασα ἔχιδναν ἐπέθηκε τῷ μαζῷ καὶ ὑπ’ αὐτῆς ἀνῃρέθη. ἀνδριάντες οὖν χάλκεοι πρὸ τοῦ μνήματος τῆς Κλεοπάτρας, ὃ καλεῖται Μαυσώλειον, Εἰράδι καὶ Χαρμίῳ ἀνετέθησαν διὰ τὸ καὶ μέχρι θανάτου αὐτῇ παραμεῖναι. εἴρηται δὲ ἡ παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν μέχρι θανάτου τοῖς εὐεργέταις συγκινδυνευόντων.

[46] Εὔνους ὁ σφάκτης: αὕτη ἡ παροιμία προηνέχθη ἀπὸ τοῦ Ὀρέστου, ὡς καὶ Ὅμηρος ἐδήλωσεν· ἀποκτείνας γὰρ τὴν μητέρα περίδειπνον ἐποίησεν. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ἀπὸ Ἀντιγόνου τοῦ βασιλέως, ὃς Σελήνην φονεύσας τὰ ὀστᾶ αὐτῆς μετὰ πολλῆς φροντίδος ἔπεμψε τῇ μητρί. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον ἀπὸ Πτολεμαίου τοῦ Φιλοπάτορος· τὴν γὰρ μητέρα Βερσενίκην καθείρξας ἐν μεγάροις καὶ παραδοὺς Σωσιβίῳ φυλάσσειν, ἡνίκα ἐκείνη οὐ φέρουσα τὴν κόλασιν ἔπιε θανάσιμον βοτάνην καὶ τὸ φάρμακον πιοῦσα ἀπέθανε, διὰ τὰς ἀπ’ αὐτῆς τῶν ὀνείρων ταραχὰς ἐν μέσῃ τῇ πόλει μνῆμα οἰκοδομήσας, ὃ νῦν Σῆμα καλεῖται, πάντας ἐκεῖ τοὺς προπάτορας σὺν αὐτῇ κατέθετο, καὶ Ἀλέξανδρον τὸν Μακεδόνα. καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν Αἰγιαλῶν δὲ ἱερὸν αὐτῇ ἱδρύσαντο, ὃ ἐκάλουν Βερσενίκης σωζούσης.

[47] ὤδινεν ὅρος, εἶτα μῦν ἀπέτεκεν: ὅταν ἐλπίσας τις μεγάλα μικροῖς ἐντύχῃ.

[48] Κασιωτικὸν ἅμμα: ἐπὶ τῶν σκολιῶν τοὺς τρόπους. ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν Πηλουσίῳ Κασιωτῶν, οἳ φυσικῇ τέχνῃ ἅμματα ἔπλεκον δύσλυτα δοκοὺς ἐπὶ δοκοῖς συνάπτοντες.

[49] Κάθαμμα λύεις: παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν δύσλυτόν τι λύειν ἐπιχειρούντων. λόγιον γὰρ τοῖς Φρυξὶν ἐκπεπτώκει, τῆς κομισάσης τὸν Μίδαν ἁμάξης εἴ τις ἐπιλύσειε τὸν δεσμὸν, τοῦτον τῆς Ἀσίας ἄρξειν. Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ ἔλυσεν.

[50] τὸ Πάσητος ἡμιωβόλιον: ὁ δὲ Πάσης οὗτος μαλακὸς ἦν τὴν φύσιν, πάντας δὲ ἀνθρώπους ἐν μαγείᾳ διενήνοχεν, ὥστε ἐκ τῶν ἐπαοιδῶν αὐτοῦ καὶ δεῖπνα πολυτελῆ ὁρᾶσθαι καὶ διακονουμένους τινάς, καὶ πάλιν ἀφανῆ πάντα γίνεσθαι. εἶχε δὲ καὶ ἡμιωβόλιον ἐκ μιᾶς αὐτῷ πεποιημένον, ὁ διαδιδόμενον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῖς πιπράσκουσι παρ’ ὧν ἤθελεν ὠνεῖσθαι, εἰ ἐβούλετο, πάλιν παρ’ αὐτῷ ηὑρίσκετο. καὶ Ἀπίων δὲ ὁ γραμματικὸς μνημονεύει αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ περὶ μάγου.

[51] Βυζίνη παρρησία: ἐπὶ τῶν σφόδρα πεπαρρησιασμένων. ἀπὸ Βυζίνου τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος μετὰ παρρησίας ἀεὶ διαλεγομένου.

The Biographies

The ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where Plutarch served as one of the priests responsible for interpreting the predictions of the oracle.

INTRODUCTION TO PLUTARCH by Bernadotte Perrin

Plutarch was born at Chaeroneia, a small town on the northern confines of Boeotia, about the middle of the first century of our era, and toward the close of the reign of the emperor Claudius. he belonged to a family of ample means and generous culture, and was liberally educated. He studied at Athens, the most attractive university town in his day for both Greeks and Romans, and was a disciple of Ammonius of Lamptrae, a Peripatetic philosopher deeply versed in religious lore. Returning to his native town, he was soon called upon to represent it as deputy to the Roman governor of the province of Greece. That he travelled extensively over Greece, visited Asia Minor, Egypt, and Italy, and resided much at Rome, may be inferred from his writings, as most that is known about him must be inferred. At Rome, he was in charge of certain public business, so that he had not time to learn thoroughly the Latin language, as he himself confesses in the introduction to the Demosthenes. But Greek was the language of literary and polite society at Rome, and cultivated Greeks, especially philosophers, were welcome there. As a Greek philosopher, and a populariser of Platonism, Plutarch read and lectured at Rome, much as he did in the small but select circle of his intimates and friends at home. He made and retained a large acquaintance with the prominent Romans of his day, and was familiar with the questions which most occupied the minds of men at the political centre of the world. Then, after Athenian education, generous travels, diplomatic missions, modest literary celebrity, and considerable residence at Rome, he seems to have retired to his little country home, with his books, notes, lectures, essays, and gentle philosophy, and there, in a leisure not all too much encroached upon by local magistracies and certain religious offices at neighboring Delphi, to have elaborated the sketches of his lectures and essays, which have come down to us under the collective name of Morals, and to have composed the work on which his fame chiefly rests, — the Parallel Lives of Greeks and Romans. He lived through the reigns of Nero, Domitian, and Trajan, and, leaving the world as he did about 120 A.D., must have rejoiced at the accession of Hadrian to the imperial throne. His world had grown steadily better while he lived, and was now to enjoy its second golden age.

The Morals were composed, for the greater part, before the Lives, and are an invaluable prelude to and commentary on them, especially if we would know just what manner of man the author of the Lives was. They tell us, as the Lives do not, “of the points of view, moral and religious, from which he contemplated not this man’s life or the other’s, but the whole life of men. Nor is it too much to affirm that of the two halves of Plutarch’s writings, of his Lives and his Morals, each constitutes a complement of the other; the one setting forth to us, and, so far as this was possible, from ideal points of view, what the ancient world had accomplished in the world of action, and the other what, in like manner, it had aimed at and accomplished in the world of thought” (Trench, Plutarch, p90). But even in the Lives, Plutarch is far more moralist than historian.

Greece, after passing under Roman sway, lost sight gradually of her great men of action, and contented herself with the glories of her men of thought. Here surely the dominant Romans could not vie with her. It was to prove that the more remote past of Greece could show its lawgivers, commanders, statesmen, patriots, and orators, as well as the nearer and therefore more impressive past of Rome, that the Parallel Lives were written. With Scipio Africanus the Elder, the greatest man of Rome, Plutarch matched Epaminondas, the greatest man of Greece. This pair, or “book,” of Lives is unfortunately lost. With Camillus, who saved Rome from the Gauls, he matched Themistocles, who saved Athens from the Persians. Then followed, as nearly as the order can be determined — for the order of the Lives in our collection is not the original one, the Cimon and Lucullus, the Lycurgus and Numa, the Demosthenes and Cicero, the Pelopidas and Marcellus, the Lysander and Sulla, the Philopoemen and Flamininus, the Pericles and Fabius Maximus, the Aristides and Cato Major, and thirteen other pairs. Eighteen of the twenty-two pairs which have come down to us, close with a formal comparison of the two careers and characters. This is often fanciful and forced, abounds in contrasts rather than resemblances, and is seldom of any special historical value, although it often has great literary charm. There are also four single Lives in our collection, Artaxerxes, Aratus, Galba, and Otho, and we get traces of twelve more that are now lost. One of the pairs is a double one, where, to match the two Gracchi, Plutarch selects the two reforming Spartan kings, Agis and Cleomenes. We have in all, therefore, fifty Lives by Plutarch.

LIFE OF PLUTARCH by Aubrey Stewart

Plutarch was born probably between A.D. 45 and A.D. 50, at the little town of Chaeronea in Boeotia. His family appears to have been long established in this place, the scene of the final destruction of the liberties of Greece, when Philip defeated the Athenians and Boeotian forces there in 338 B.C. It was here also that Sulla defeated Mithridates, and in the great civil wars of Rome we again hear, this time from Plutarch himself, of the sufferings of the citizens of Chaeronea. Nikarchus, Plutarch’s great-grandfather, was, with all the other citizens, without any exception, ordered by a lieutenant of Marcus Antonius to transport a quantity of corn from Chaeronea to the coast opposite the island of Antikyra. They were compelled to carry the corn on their shoulders, like slaves, and were threatened with the lash if they were remiss. After they had performed one journey, and were preparing their burdens for a second, the welcome news arrived that Marcus Antonius had lost the battle of Actium, whereupon both the officers and soldiers of his party stationed in Chaeronea at once fled for their own safety, and the provisions thus collected were divided among the inhabitants of the city.

When Plutarch was born, however, no such warlike scenes as these were to be expected. Nothing more than the traditions of war remained on the shores of the Mediterranean. Occasionally some faint echo of strife would make itself heard from the wild tribes on the Danube, or in the far Syrian deserts, but over nearly all the world known to the ancients was established the Pax Romana. Battles were indeed fought, and troops were marched upon Rome, but this was merely to decide who was to be the nominal head of the vast system of the Empire, and what had once been independent cities, countries, and nations submitted unhesitatingly to whoever represented that irresistible power. It might be imagined that a political system which destroyed all national individuality, and rendered patriotism in its highest sense scarcely possible, would have reacted unfavourably on the literary character of the age. Yet nothing of the kind can be urged against the times which produced Epictetus, Dio Chrysostom and Arrian; while at Rome, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Martial, and Juvenal were reviving the memories of the Augustan age.

From several passages in Plutarch’s writings we gather that he studied under a master named Ammonius, at Athens. For instance, at the end of his Life of Themistokles, he mentions a descendant of that great man who was his fellow-student at the house of Ammonius the philosopher. Again, he tells us that once Ammonius, observing at his afternoon lecture that some of his class had indulged too freely in the pleasures of the table, ordered his own son to be flogged, “because,” he said, “the young gentleman cannot eat his dinner without pickles,” casting his eye at the same time upon the other offenders so as to make them sensible that the reproof applied to them also.

By way of completing his education he proceeded to visit Egypt. The “wisdom of the Egyptians” always seems to have had a fascination for the Greeks, and at this period Alexandria, with its famous library and its memories of the Ptolemies, of Kallimachus and of Theokritus, was an important centre of Greek intellectual activity. Plutarch’s treatise on Isis and Osiris is generally supposed to be a juvenile work suggested by his Egyptian travels. In all the Graeco-Egyptian lore he certainly became well skilled, although we have no evidence as to how long he remained in Egypt. He makes mention indeed of a feast given in his honour by some of his relatives on the occasion of his return home from Alexandria, but we can gather nothing from the passage as to his age at that time.

One anecdote of his early life is as follows:— “I remember,” he says, “that when I was still a young man, I was sent with another person on a deputation to the Proconsul; my colleague, as it happened, was unable to proceed, and I saw the Proconsul and performed the commission alone. When I returned I was about to lay down my office and to give a public account of how I had discharged it, when my father rose in the public assembly and enjoined me not to say I went, but we went, nor to say that I said, but we said, throughout my story, giving my colleague his share.”

The most important event in the whole of Plutarch’s pious and peaceful life is undoubtedly his journey to Italy and to Rome; but here again we know little more than that he knew but little Latin when he went thither, and was too busy when there to acquire much knowledge of that tongue. His occupation at Rome, besides antiquarian researches which were afterwards worked up into his Roman Lives, was the delivery of lectures on philosophical and other subjects, a common practice among the learned Greeks of his day. Many of these lectures, it is conjectured, were afterwards recast by him into the numerous short treatises on various subjects now included under the general name of Moralia. Plutarch’s visit to Rome and business there is admirably explained in the following passage of North’s ‘Life of Plutarch’:— “For my part, I think Plutarch was drawn to Rome by meanes of some friends he had there, especially by Sossius Senecio, that had been a Consull, who was of great estimation at that time, and namely under the Empire of Trajan. And that which maketh me think so, is because of Plutarch’s own words, who saith in the beginning of his first book of his discourse at the table, that he gathered together all his reasons and discourses made here and there, as well in Rome with Senecio, as in Greece with Plutarch and others. Not being likely that he would have taken the pains to have made so long a voyage, and to have come to such a city where he understood not their vulgar tongue, if he had not been drawn thither by Senecio, and such other men; as also in acknowledgement of the good turnes and honour he had received by such men, he dedicated diverse of his bookes unto them, and among others, the Lives unto Senecio, and the nine volumes of his discourse at the table, with the treaty, How a man may know that he profiteth in vertue. Now for the time, considering what he saith in the end of his book against curiosity, I suppose that he taught in Rome in the time of Titus and of Domitian: for touching this point, he maketh mention of a nobleman called Rusticus, who being one day at his lecture, would not open a letter which was brought him from the Emperor, nor interrupt Plutarch, but attended to the end of his declamation, and until all the hearers were gone away; and addeth also, that Rusticus was afterwards put to death by the commandment of Domitian. Furthermore, about the beginning of the Life of Demosthenes, Plutarch saith, that whilst he remained in Italy and at Rome, he had no leizure to study the Latine tongue; as well for that he was busied at that time with matters he had in hand, as also to satisfie those that were his followers to learne philosophie of him.”

A list of all Plutarch’s writings would be a very long one. Besides the Lives, which is the work on which his fame chiefly rests, he wrote a book of ‘Table Talk,’ which may have suggested to Athenaeus the plan of his ‘Symposium.’

The most remarkable of his minor works is that ‘On the Malignity of Herodotus.’ Grote takes this treatise as being intended seriously as an attack upon the historian, and speaks of the “honourable frankness which Plutarch calls his malignity.” But it is probably merely a rhetorical exercise, in which Plutarch has endeavoured to see what could be said against so favourite and well-known a writer.

He was probably known as an author before he went to Rome. Large capitals have always had a natural attraction for literary genius, as it is in them alone that it can hope to be appreciated. And if this be the case at the present day, how much more must it have been so before the invention of printing, at a time when it was more usual to listen to books read aloud than to read them oneself? Plutarch journeyed to Rome just as Herodotus went to Athens, or as he is said to have gone to the Olympian festival, in search of an intelligent audience of educated men. Whether his object was merely praise, or whether he was influenced by ideas of gain, we cannot say. No doubt his lectures were not delivered gratis, and that they were well attended seems evident from Plutarch’s own notices of them, and from the names which have been preserved of the eminent men who used to frequent them. Moreover, strange though it may appear to us, the demand for books seems to have been very brisk even though they were entirely written by hand.

The epigrams of Martial inform us of the existence of a class of slaves whose occupation was copying books, and innumerable allusions in Horace, Martial, &c., to the Sosii and others prove that the trade of a bookseller at Rome was both extensive and profitable. Towards the end of the Republic it became the fashion for Roman nobles to encourage literature by forming a library, and this taste was given immense encouragement by Augustus, who established a public library in the Temple of Apollo on the Mount Palatine, in imitation of that previously founded by Asinius Pollio. There were other libraries besides these, the most famous of which was the Ulpian library, founded by Trajan, who called it so from his own name, Ulpius. Now Trajan was a contemporary of our author, and this act of his clearly proves that there must have been during Plutarch’s lifetime a considerable reading public, and consequent demand for books at Rome.

Of Plutarch’s travels in Italy we know next to nothing. He mentions incidentally that he had seen the bust or statue of Marius at Ravenna, but never gives us another hint of how far he explored the country about which he wrote so much. No doubt his ignorance of the Latin language must not be taken as a literal statement, and probably means that he was not skilled in it as a spoken tongue, for we can scarcely imagine that he was without some acquaintance with it when he first went to Rome, and he certainly afterwards became well read in the literature of Rome. In some cases he has followed Livy’s narrative with a closeness which proves that he must have been acquainted with that author either in the original or in a translation, and the latter alternative is, of the two, the more improbable.

It seems to be now generally thought that his stay at Rome was a short one. Clough, in his excellent Preface, says on this subject, “The fault which runs through all the earlier biographies, from that of Rualdus downwards, is the assumption, wholly untenable, that Plutarch passed many years, as many perhaps as forty, at Rome. The entire character of his life is of course altered by such an impression.” He then goes on to say that in consequence of this mistaken idea, it is not worth while for him to quote Dryden’s ‘Life of Plutarch,’ which was originally prefixed to the translations re-edited by himself. Yet I trust I may be excused if I again quote North’s ‘Life of Plutarch,’ as the following passage seems to set vividly before us the quiet literary occupation of his later days.

“For Plutarch, though he tarried a long while in Italy, and in Rome, yet that tooke not away the remembrance of the sweet aire of Greece, and of the little towne where he was borne; but being touched from time to time with a sentence of an ancient poet, who saith that,

“‘In whatsoever countrey men are bred (I know not by what sweetnesse of it led), They nourish in their minds a glad desire, Unto their native homes for to retire,’

“he resolved to go back into Greece againe, there to end the rest of his daies in rest and honour among his citizens, of whom he was honourably welcomed home. Some judge that he left Rome after the death of Trajan, being then of great yeares, to leade a more quiet life. So being then at rest, he earnestly took in hand that which he had long thought of before, to wit, the Lives, and tooke great pains with it until he had brought his worke to perfection, as we have done at this present; although that some Lives, as those of Scipio African, of Metellus Numidicus, and some other are not to be found. Now himselfe confesseth in some place, that when he began this worke, at the first it was but to profit others; but that afterwards it was to profit himselfe, looking upon those histories, as if he had looked in a glasse, and seeking to reform his life in some sort, and to forme it in the mould of the vertues of these great men; taking this fashion of searching their manners, and writing the Lives of these noble men, to be a familiar haunting and frequenting of them. Also he thought, [said he himselfe] that he lodged these men one after another in his house, entering into consideration of their qualities, and that which was great in either of them, choosing and principally taking that which was to be noted, and most worthy to be knowne in their sayings and deeds.”

Of Plutarch in his domestic relations we gather much information from his own writings. The name of his father has not been preserved, but it was probably Nikarchus, from the common habit of Greek families to repeat a name in alternate generations. His brothers Timon and Lamprias are frequently mentioned in his essays and dialogues, where Timon is spoken of in the most affectionate terms. Rualdus has ingeniously recovered the name of his wife, Timoxena, from internal evidence afforded by his writings. A touching letter is still extant, addressed by Plutarch to his wife, bidding her not give way to excessive grief at the death of their only daughter, who was named Timoxena after her mother. The number of his sons we cannot exactly state. Autobulus and Plutarch are especially spoken of as his sons, since the treatise on the Timaeus of Plato is dedicated to them, and the marriage of his son Autobulus is the occasion of one of the dinner-parties recorded in the ‘Table Talk.’ Another person, one Soklarus, is spoken of in terms which seem to imply that he was Plutarch’s son, but this is nowhere definitely stated. His treatise also on Marriage Questions, addressed to Eurydike and Pollianus, seems to speak of her as having been recently an inmate of his house, but without enabling us to form an opinion whether she was his daughter or not. A modern writer well describes his maturer years by the words: “Plutarch was well born, well taught, well conditioned; a self-respecting amiable man, who knew how to better a good education by travels, by devotion to affairs private and public; a master of ancient culture, he read books with a just criticism: eminently social, he was a king in his own house, surrounded himself with select friends, and knew the high value of good conversation; and declares in a letter written to his wife that ‘he finds scarcely an erasure, as in a book well written, in the happiness of his life.’”

He was an active member of the little community of Chaeronea, being archon of that town. Whether this dignity was annual or for life we do not know, but it was probably the former, and very likely he served it more than once. He speaks of his devotion to the duties of his office as causing him to incur the ridicule of some of his fellow-citizens, when they saw him engaged in the humblest duties. “But,” he says, in Clough’s version, “the story told about Antisthenes comes to my assistance. When some one expressed surprise at his carrying home some pickled fish from market in his own hands, It is, he answered, for myself. Conversely, when I am reproached with standing by and watching while tiles are measured out, and stone and mortar brought up, This service, I say, is not for myself, it is for my country.”

Plutarch was for many years a priest of Apollo at Delphi. The scene of some of his ‘Table Talk’ is laid there, when he in his priestly capacity gives a dinner party in honour of the victor in the poetic contest at the Pythian games. Probably this office was a source of considerable income, and as the journey from Chaeronea to Delphi, across Mount Parnassus, is a very short one, it interfered but little with his literary and municipal business. In his essay on “Whether an old man should continue to take part in public life,” he says, “You know, Euphanes, that I have for many Pythiads (that is, periods of four years elapsing between the Pythian festivals), exercised the office of Priest of Apollo: yet I think you would not say to me,’Plutarch, you have sacrificed enough; you have led processions and dances enough; it is time, now that you are old, to lay aside the garland from your head, and to retire as superannuated from the oracle.’”

Thus respected and loved by all, Plutarch’s old age passed peacefully away. “Notwithstanding,” as North says, “that he was very old, yet he made an end of the Lives.... Furthermore, Plutarch, having lived alwaies honourably even to old age, he died quietly among his children and friends in the city of Chaeronea, leaving his writings, an immortal savour of his name, unto posterity. Besides the honour his citizens did him, there was a statue set up for him by ordinance of the people of Rome, in memory of his virtues. Now furthermore, though time hath devoured some part of the writings of this great man, and minished some other: neverthelesse those which remaine, being a great number, have excellent use to this day among us.”

Ancient Delphi — believed to be where Plutarch died